SPOILED ROTTEN

SPOILED ROTTEN

(SEE: RICHBOY!SAKUSA SPOILS YOU A LITTLE TOO MUCH).

“ABSOLUTELY not.” He deadpans, glaring at you like you’ve just kicked his dog and insulted his mother. It’s not a kind tone, “Don’t ask me again.” 

“Kiyoomi, you always do this,” you seethe, ignoring the discomfort of the round-cheeked waitress holding the card reader, “Let. Me. Pay.”

“Fuck. No.” He returns, redirecting his attention to the server and handing her his card, “I’m terribly sorry about her. Debit, please.”

“Sakusa Kiyoomi.” You say as she scurries off, clearly amused at the battlefield the two of you have created in the center of this high-end, dimly lit restaurant. You wouldn’t be surprised to find a moviestar seated at the table behind you. 

He repeats your name back to you in the same tone you used with him, a handsome grin on his face, “Yes, my love?”

“Stop paying for everything!” You demand, “People already think I’m using you for your money, and you aren’t really helping my case.” You’ve seen the tweets. Some are accusatory. Some are happy for you. None of them attest to your character. 

“Well,” he leans over the table, finding your hands and softly stroking the knuckle there, trapping you in his coffee-cold gaze, “Are you using me for my money?”

“No,” you grumble, a little flustered at his forwardness, “But still–”

He releases your hand as the words leave your mouth, a satisfactory smile tugging at his lips, “Then there’s no issue. Though, I wouldn’t be opposed to you using me for money. I’m a useful guy.”

“Kiyoomi, that’s not the point–”

“As a matter of fact,” he sifts through his wallet to find what he’s looking for, gently sliding it across the table when he locates whatever it is, “I’ve been meaning to give this to you.”

The young waitress returns with a smooth leather checkbook and a pen. He thanks her as she walks off, delivering his signature to the flimsy receipt with a few flicks of his wrist, “What’s twenty percent of two hundred? I wasn’t good at math.”

You don’t answer that, “You can’t be serious. Kiyoomi, I can’t accept–”

“Is fifty dollars enough to tip? Fuck it, I’ll just leave sixty.”

“This is your credit card.”

“You have great eyesight,” he comments, shrugging like it’s nothing, “And I have good credit. Use it for whatever. I’ll pay it off.”

You nearly laugh at the absurdity of it all, “Since when were you so confident?”

“When you started giving me attention,” He grins easily, “I’d do a lot of things to get you to pay attention to me.”

His transparency catches you off guard, “You’re serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he fires back, “You’re too pretty to not be taken seriously.” 

You sigh, face feeling hot. 

“You’re too much,” It takes a great effort to fight back the grin that threatens to break through, to suppress a smile at his ease, “Let’s go home.”

“Why don’t we go find something sweet?” He offers, standing to help you into your coat, “There’s a good ice cream place around here that stays open late.”

Your shy smile gives Kiyoomi enough of an answer. Thanking the staff as the two of you head for the door, he slithers a sneaky arm around your waist.

“I’ll even let you pay,” he flirts, pulling you closer to combat the late-night temperatures, “With your new credit card, of course.”

This was so self-indulgent it's actually ridiculous. Marrying rich is a very real, very serious goal of mine. Hmu for offers serious inquires ONLY <33

You Are My Sunshine || l.s.m.

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Lee Seokmin x Reader

Warnings: none, hurt comfort

Word count: 1.6k

Summary: Seokmin is like the sun, but eventually even the sun has to give way to the stillness of night.

A/N: I am pretty much just reposting my old fics while I work on something new lol. so obv this is also posted on my marvel account (@capwogers).

Sometimes, the sadness hits you slowly and silently. The clouds crawl their way across the sky until they’ve hidden the sun, replacing the blue sky with gray clouds. Small waves lap at the shore until one day you look up, face to face with tsunami tides. You’re happy until you’re not, with no idea how long the rain will last.

That was how you found yourself in the passenger’s seat of Seokmin’s car, wrapped up in his coat, hands fidgeting on your lap. It was a fun night – a night out with all of your friends, full of karaoke and laughter – until suddenly it wasn’t. The tsunami tides had crashed, and all too quickly you were left teary-eyed and weary with the heaviness of an all-encompassing sadness. 

It was the type of sadness you couldn’t name, the kind that had built up for weeks under your nose. So when your eyes met Seokmin’s across the room, a silent plea for rescue in a secret language that the two of you had become fluent in, he grabbed his keys and coat and said goodbye as he took your hand and led you into the cold air.

“What happened?” He asked as the two of you made your way to his car. The question was quiet, almost buried under the whistle of the chilly winter wind. You were thankful that you had taken him up on his offer to drive, as being alone with your thoughts was the last thing you wanted to do. 

“I wish I could say,” you replied. “I was fine, then all of a sudden… I just wasn’t.” You pulled your scarf a little higher, trying to protect your cheeks from the biting cold. Seokmin glanced over your way, and you stared straight into the night pretending not to notice the way his eyebrows furrowed together or the way he stepped just a little bit closer to you. 

Seokmin didn’t say anything else until the two of you were safely buckled into the car, waiting for the heater to warm you both up. “Do you… want to talk about it?” He asked tentatively. If he was honest, he wasn’t sure what to say, but all he could do was act on the tug in his heart to make you feel better somehow. 

You gave him a tired smile and wondered if he could even see it in the darkness of the night. “I do,” you began. “But I don’t even know what ‘it’ is. I’m just sad, and my heart feels tired.” It wasn’t a lot, but it was the best you could give him… or yourself for that matter. If you could talk it through, you would, because it was always easy to talk to Seokmin. But right now, you favored the silence.

Seokmin set the gear shift on drive, pulling out into the empty 2 a.m. roads. “You know, sometimes I like to drive around with nowhere to go,” he said softly. “It helps me think.” You looked towards him, but stayed quiet as he continued. “Especially when the stars are out like this, it’s a bit easier to put things into perspective. The universe is so big… It makes my problems feel a little smaller.

“Lately... things have been really difficult” he continued, pausing to take a breath. “There wasn’t really anyone I felt I could talk to. Not even the boys. But being out here, it felt like I could just take a minute to breathe. Like the world is on pause, for even just an hour.” 

Under the warm yellow lights of the city, you could see Seokmin's fingers tightening around the wheel ever so slightly. Though he tried to keep his voice even, you could see the slight tremble in his lips, and you wanted so badly to touch him, to remind him that you were here now. Seokmin was not the type to talk about the heavier things that were weighing on him, and you were afraid that speaking might suddenly snap him out of it.

So instead you turned your attention forward once again to the empty streets, lined with restaurants that had closed hours ago and apartment balconies with Christmas lights still left hanging on the railings. Seokmin was right, it felt like the world was on pause. No one was walking around the street, no speedy drivers swerving through traffic. It was like you were the only people in the city… in the world.

Seokmin was quiet after his confession, letting whatever was playing on the radio fill the silence. It seemed to last for an eternity, until he finally put the car in park at the top of a parking garage. He reached up, pulling back the screen that covered the moon roof of his car.

“It’s a little too cold to sit outside, but this should be fine.” For the first time since you had entered the car, Seokmin looked at you and you could clearly see the beginnings of the tears that he had swatted away, lining the dark bags under his eyes. Has he always looked this tired? You wondered how lonely he must have been, hiding behind the walls he had built up and you were grateful to share even a fraction of the weight he’s been carrying alone all this time.

“Fine for what?” You asked.

“Like I said, looking at the stars helps to put it all into perspective,” he repeated, pointing out at an arbitrary speck of light in the night sky. “Just imagine you’re standing on one of them, looking down at Earth. It’s barely a speck in the distance. There’s nothing that can reach you from there. Nothing can touch you.” The energy in his explanation ended in a tired, resigned sigh that escaped his lips. “Nothing can reach you,” he added, barely a whisper.

Suddenly, your problems did begin to feel small, but not because of the stars. Looking at Seokmin now, the only thing on your mind was him. For all you’ve known him, he would listen to everyone else’s problems and fix them with a laugh, the way only he could, but who was there for him? Before you could think too hard about what you were doing, you reached across the console to find his hand. He didn’t look up, but when you laced your fingers in his, you felt a gentle squeeze.

“Seokmin,” you called his name. “I’m here.”

“I mean yeah, obviously you’re here–”

“No, Seokmin, I’m here,” you cut him off. “And I’m not going anywhere.” When he looked up finally and allowed himself to meet your eyes, you suddenly wondered if you were as fluent in your secret language as you had thought. In all the shared smiles, the times you scanned the room to find him whenever you laughed, the knowing glances, you had never seen his eyes this tired. The walls he built up were beginning to crumble, and all you could do was reach out to him.

“I am so tired,” he confessed. “And I didn’t even realize how tired I’ve become.” He took your other hand in his, bringing it up to his cheek, relaxing the slightest bit in your touch.

Before you met Seokmin, you would have described your life as being stuck under a rainy cloud. But one day, the skies parted and there he was. And for as long as you’ve known him, Seokmin has always been the sun. Giving off warmth to everyone around him, radiating nothing but joy and laughter, but also somewhat distant. Keeping himself away because if he got too close he might burn someone. But even the sun doesn’t stay out forever. 

“It’s okay,” you assured him, pulling him closer to you. “Let yourself rest.” In that moment, all you could do was make a silent promise to God, the universe, the stars, whoever was listening, that you would always be there with Seokmin to let him rest, to let the quietness of night take over until he was ready to be the sun again.

The strained breaths coming from Seokmin made your heart ache, and you brought his forehead to yours. “If I’m not strong enough to carry these things alone,” he choked out. Before he could even finish his thought, you cut him off.

“No one said you have to carry it alone,” you said sternly, bringing your hand under his chin to force his eyes to meet yours. “Let us – let me, carry it with you.”

You stayed that way for a little while longer, or maybe it was forever, foreheads resting against each other over the console until you heard his ragged breathing finally steady itself. Seokmin let out a quiet but tired chuckle and you pulled away to look at him, unable to read the small smile that had made its way onto his features.

“What’s so funny, Seokmin?” you asked.

“It’s just,” he chuckled again. “I thought we were driving around to make you feel better, but as only you can do, you made me feel better instead.” It was his turn to reach up and touch your cheek, softly, as if he applied any more pressure he might break you. “And I didn’t even know I was sad,” he laughed, louder this time.

You laughed with him, as you always did, and looked down at your lap where your hands were fidgeting. Seokmin called your name quietly, his voice still raspy from crying and you looked back up. There it was again, the unreadable look in his eyes. “You…” he began. “You’re like the sun.”

Before you could even reply, his lips were already on yours.

HAECHAN ♡ Beatbox

Mermaids Part Two

Frankie Morales x Fem! Reader

Part One

Summary: After your first meeting, Frankie brings Lili to the fall festival to see you. What he doesn't expect is some of his secrets to be exposed.

Rating: Explicit 18+ (Fluff for this chapter and pining but we aren't getting spicy until the next one)

Content: Pining, mermaids, over protective Frankie, girl dad! Frankie, drinking, mentions of drug use, Benny!!!, Pope!!!, swimming, these two idiots in like with each other stripping

A/N: We're baaaack! Thank you for the love I received on part one and thanks again to @heythere-mel for being my beta reader and hyping me up!!

“No food in the tank.” 

“What’s the matter with my son trying to feed the fish? Cotton candy dissolves anyway.” A dad let out a gravely chuckle at his own little fish food joke, even though you’re not a fish. You are a mermaid, a fake mermaid. 

You were leaning on top of the tank, rolling your eyes at the sad attempt at a joke as your tank handler tried to ward off pieces of spun sugar being thrown up to the performers. 

You expected nothing less from the fall festival; you had already been there for a few hours and had an alright shift; some families were friendly, some families were rude and then here was the family of the evening, a young boy and his son throwing candy into the tank trying to get you to eat soggy food. 

What a night. You were almost ready to get off and go home already. Almost, because you were waiting for two very special guests to show up and make your night much better. Frankie and his adorable daughter Liliana were supposed to come and see you and based on the texts Frankie had sent, it seemed like they were still coming at some point but where were they?

“Sweetheart, you like cotton candy don’t you?” You’re pulled from your thoughts when you hear the gravel voiced man make more jokes at your expense. Unfortunately, you’re still at work and not only can you not talk but you can’t give him a piece of your mind. So you give him your stiffest smile and shake your head in disagreement. 

“Please, you lay in a tank all day and do dolphin tricks the least you can do is let my kid have some fun.” 

“Sir, you cannot throw food into the tank and if we have to ask you and your child again, you’ll have to leave.” Your handler says. 

“Is there a problem here?” You hear a familiar voice and before you can even see him, you feel your insides light up. 

There was Frankie, hair mussed in his cap striding over in his worn out jeans with Lili on his hip. He looked over at you and gave you a wink as your stiff smile came unglued for him and Lili.

Lili called out your name and wriggled out of Frankie’s arms to run towards the tank. She tugged onto the sleeve of another man that was with them, a broad, tall blonde with movie star good looks and a black MMA shirt on that stressed his muscles in all the right places. 

“Uncle Benny, I told you my friend was a mermaid!!!” Lili beamed at you as you waved back to her. They were truly a sight for sore eyes. Benny eyed you from your fin to your face and it made you feel slightly exposed, but not in the same way that Frankie had made you feel. He gave you a cheeky wink and wave. 

“Benjamin Miller.” He grinned at you, you could’ve sworn you saw in your peripheral Frankie’s eyes roll back. “What seems to be the problem here?” 

“I think the both of you should mind your business here and let my kid feed your friend.” The dad interjected. 

“I wanna feed the mermaid cotton candy!” The kid whined. 

“Mermaids can’t eat cotton candy, silly. Besides it’s not nice to waste food!” Lili interjected. You tried to hide your grin. 

“Liliana, be nice.” Frankie said in a low, stern voice. He walked up towards the dad, “Come on, man. Show’s over. He asked you to stop.” 

“I’ll do what I damn well please and so can my kid. If he wants to put candy in the tank, he can put candy in the tank. Hell, if I wanna pay her to take her top off she better— “

“Seriously?!” You yelled out, unable to keep character any longer. 

Now Benny, Frankie and your handler all cornered this man. “I think you need to leave before you have problems with all three of us.” Frankie lowered his voice. The man stared at Frankie for a moment, eyeing him with an uncomfortable familiarity. 

“Aren’t you in my NA meetings?” He sneered. Benny went to grab Lili, picking her up and covering her ears at the perfect moment. “What’s the matter? Too much coke in your system?” 

“You need to leave before we call the police.” You interjected. The man took his son, chuckling to himself as he walked away. All of you stood there frozen for a moment. An uncomfortable, faraway look on Frankie’s face. Benny looked down at the ground while he still had Lili in his arms. You felt your pulse quicken — that man you had just dealt with was disgusting, but he also knew Frankie from Narcotics Anonymous? What was the story there? Was it even your right to know? 

If there was ever a moment that Frankie wished that the ground would swallow him whole, it was then. He was coming to see you, hoping to be in good spirits for you and Lili and out of nowhere you get ahold of his dirty laundry. Would you even want to associate with him still hearing cocaine thrown around? 

“Listen… I think you’ve clearly had enough for one night. If you wanna take the rest of the night off, you’ve earned it.” Your handler said. You thanked him, looking towards your three guests. 

“I’m so sorry about all of that.” 

“I’m just sorry we were late and we couldn’t help with him sooner.” Frankie said to you, his eyes not meeting yours. There’s another uncomfortable silence. 

“Listen… since I’m done for the night, how about we all do some games together? Lili, do you like funnel cake?” You asked. She animatedly wriggled in Benny’s arms, bounding at the idea of free sugar. You told them you’d meet them once you were done getting dressed as your mind kept replaying what had just happened. 

——————————————

When you had come out to meet Frankie, Benny and Lili, the atmosphere was less awkward has you had gone through the night. You got to learn more about Benny; he was an old army friend of Frankie’s and called him by a strange nickname - Fish or Catfish. Benny was especially friendly, walking next to you and taking it upon himself to hold your bags. He cracked a lot of jokes and loved talking about his career as an MMA fighter, occasionally breaking up the walking the group had done to show off some punches, he even won you a stuffed animal.

You weren't exactly gullible; you knew Benny's angle and how he was desperately trying to flirt. And he seemed like a great guy, but considering he had a wandering eye for anyone in a 5-mile radius you knew that he just wasn't your type. He was clearly too much of a playboy and you wanted someone more grounded, more serious, more reserved, more—

"Fish!!" You heard Benny call out. "I think this little one deserves a funnel cake already!" He nudged towards an ecstatic Lili.

When you ate your funnel cakes, the four of you took a moment to relax after walking through the festival. The boys set the stuffed animals down on a bench while you and Lili ate your funnel cakes and watch the Music Express go by. Frankie watched you gently handling Lili, making her giggle and matching her animated conversation. He looked over towards Benny and saw him looking at you like a predator stalking his prey. He felt his insides melt into a molten hot goo.

“Lili loves her, man. That’s impressive.” Benny said, organizing Lili’s new stuffed animals he won for her.

“She hasn’t stopped talking about her since we met her.” Frankie chuckled, he playfully rolled his eyes but in the back of his mind he thought about how he loved the way Lili talked about you, you were a much welcomed addition into their lives.

"Sounds like little Lili's got a great eye for her new Aunt, doesn't she?" Benny winked, the girls turned back to look at them as he gave you a wave and a wink. You saw Frankie's face still as a statue and you gave a small wave back.

“No way, man.” Frankie said. “She’s a grad student. She’s got this whole mermaid thing going on, she’s way too busy to fuck with a pendejo like you.” 

Benny looked at Frankie with an appraising look on his face. A sly smirk that rivaled the Cheshire Cat crept on his face as Frankie saw his shit-eating grin from the corner of his eye. 

“What?” He asked tersely. 

“Fish, if I knew you were into her I would’ve just backed off!” Benny chuckled. Frankie fully turned over to Benny. 

“Just because I’m looking out for her doesn’t mean I like her, I just don’t want her getting her heart broken since I have never seen you date the same girl past two weeks.”

Benny held up his hands in mock defense. “Alright, alright. But for the record, I think your girl can hold her own. Totally didn't sink to my bait."

"She's a woman, not a fish." Frankie rolled his eyes, Benny could be such a kid. You needed an actual man in your life.

“That’s right, you’re the fish.” He chuckled to himself. “I’m just saying, whenever I tried to lay it on her she clearly had her eyes on someone else." Benny gave Frankie a knowing look, Frankie's curiosity getting the better of him. He looked over at you and Lili, you being ever so patient at her steamroll of questions. You were so patient, so composed to any chaos going on around you. He didn't want to add any more chaos into your life.

"I mean, hell, I could be wrong." Benny started. "But that doesn't mean I still won't try to help my boy out. Hey!" He called out. "Who wants to play Lili the Leapfrog?"

Lili hopped up and down, nearly dropping her funnel cake. "Me!! Me!! Me!!"

Benny ran over to Lili, turning back to give him a wink as you headed over to sit next to him on the bench.

"Sorry if I overdid it on the sugar rush." You chuckled. "I got her the cake but I'm sure you're gonna be paying for it."

"Sugar rush now equals sleepy Lili later." He smiled back, you admired his side dimple.

"Thank you for earlier. Seriously, some of these people can be such assholes and it's just so much to deal with sometimes."

“I’m just glad he can’t bother you anymore.” Frankie said. There was a moment of silence as he hesitated. “Listen, about what that guy said— “

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Frankie. That guy was a dick.” You assured him. 

“Yeah, but I still think you have a right to know. I don’t want you to think you’re hanging out with a total slime ball.” Frankie inhaled deeply before letting it all out. 

“When I got out, I just had a hard time adjusting. Shit just felt so different and out my control and I didn’t know how to handle it. So I went to…” Frankie doesn’t say it, he can’t say it. It’s like he’s compartmentalized that part of his life to his meetings so he can move forward and not look back. 

“And then me and Benny and a few of our army buddies went on a mission that went south. Really fucking bad.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, mournful and dejected. 

“It was just hard to adjust to the changes that happened once I came back. Liliana had just been born, me and her mom weren’t on the best ground, anyway. So I turned to something I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t there for Lili like I could’ve been. I lost my license. What got me out of rock bottom is when Lili’s mom and I split and she said if I didn’t clean up my act, I couldn’t be a part of her life.“

Frankie turns to watch Lili and Benny still passionately in their game of leapfrog. He had such a stillness and such gravitas in that look. "That was it for me. There was no way I would not be a part of that little girl's life."

"Of course. She's a special girl." You agreed.

"Anyway, it didn't take me long to reach out to people around me for help. I started going to meetings, Benny and the rest of our buddies really held me accountable. Now I'm 3 years sober, flying again and I have that wild child over there.”

You put your hand on Frankie's shoulder, trying to ignore the electricity that surged through your fingers. "I'm so proud of you. You shouldn't be ashamed at all about what some random asshole said. Hell, he’s in recovery too so why should he try to knock you down?" 

“Honestly? Sometimes I just feel like a hypocrite or something. I try to teach Lili to be good and stop people like that but I’m still getting my shit together.” 

"Everyone is getting shit together. You’re talking to a girl who plays in swim tanks for a living. What you did to save your relationship with Lili is so admirable. I could tell from the moment we met that little girl adored you. You’re not a hypocrite for wanting to be better.” 

Frankie realized several things in that moment; that you were absolutely right, and he had nothing to be ashamed of, that he wanted to take your small hand and fit it in his, rubbing the softness of his palm until his pulse steadied, and that Benny Miller was too god damn right sometimes. Sure, he could be a little shit, but the man can read people like a book and Frankie’s pages were wide open on his feelings towards you. 

Frankie offered to drive you home after another hour at the fair, dropping Benny off first who stopped trying to give you his Casanova act. You wondered if Frankie had said something, not that you would be upset. But if he did say something, was he trying to protect you as a friend? You looked over at him from the passenger seat from his truck, who was this man? This stoic family man whose entire world revolved around his daughter and his friends. That’s the person you need in your life and you’re so glad he stumbled into yours. 

He pulled up to your house as you gathered your things. 

“Thanks for the ride, Fish.” You grinned at him. 

“Oh god.” He groaned. “You do not have to call me that.”  

“How’d you get that nickname, anyway?” You bit your lip, Frankie admiring how lush the bottom one was. 

“That’s another story for another day.” Frankie sighed, giving you a lopsided grin that made your stomach somersault. 

“Another day soon?” You asked. 

Frankie couldn’t hide his excitement even if he tried. “Of course. If you’re free this week a few of my buddies and I are going to Magic Dog Brewery. I promise, these won’t hit on you, too.”

“Ah, so I have a chance with Benny. I couldn’t tell, he was so shy and subtle.” You winked at him, feeling your excitement when he rolled his eyes. “I’ll see you then?"

Damn Benny for hitting on her, damn Benny for being so right about how he felt. “See you then.”

Frankie was a man of his word which was another thing that attracted him to you. For the next two weeks if you weren’t studying or working you were talking to Frankie or getting ready to see Frankie.

Your friendship developed fast and Lili loved having you around. They’d come visit you at the park and afterwards you’d spend time together on the rides as Lili asked about your day. Frankie would send you videos from his flight lessons, leaving you awestruck with the views he got to see almost every day. He let you pick his brain over flying questions and he asked about your studies. At night you’d meet at the bar and you got to know the boys that rounded out Benny and Frankie’s group. 

There was Will, Benny’s older brother who was called Ironhead. He was stoic and serious to Benny’s relaxed attitude. And then there was Santiago, nicknamed Pope. Frankie’s best friend and not bad on the eyes either. When you met Santi, you got to see Frankie at his absolute most authentic self, laughing and carrying on in Spanglish and telling old stories. They all welcomed you with open arms and Frankie loved how you got on with the guys, whenever you’d have a sharp retort to their jokes he’d grin at you in awe, meeting your eyes at the moment. 

That was happening a lot. The two of you stealing private glances, your eyes meeting and sharing a private smile or a laugh. Frankie made you feel so comfortable in such a short time, your conversations flowing easily and when there was silence in the truck on the drives home it felt comfortable and open. You didn't need to fill the silence, you just needed his company.

One night you had found yourself back at the bar with Frankie and Pope. Liliana was with her mom so it was a rare night that Frankie could go out and he was practically vibrating with excitement. Besides Lili, these were his two favorite people and he could have an adult night out. 

You’d had a not so great shift, a rude mom yelling at you and your co-workers for not being allowed to use flash photography and making everyone pay for it. So you were ready to let loose and have some fun. You’d taken shot after shot and you were feeling loose, good. You were in good company with two great guys. 

Suddenly, Pope had suggested that the three of you grab something to eat and you offered to cook something at your place. Frankie eyed you, seeing the blurred vision in your eyes and hearing your slur. 

“You sure? We can just stop at McDonalds and call it a night.” Frankie said, he felt an air of protection over you, wanting to make sure you were getting home safe and not surrounded by any of these guys who kept eyeing you. Not just because he didn't like that they were looking at you, he wanted to make sure you were okay and didn't end up with a slime ball.

“Okay, fiiiiiine.” You pouted. Frankie audibly sighed, frustrated at himself that he could find you so damn cute doing anything.

Pope had decided he would get the food while Frankie drove you home. You were feeling so comfortable and relaxed. This is exactly the night you needed, with the man you needed. No, no. You tried to fight your drunk thoughts, not giving in to the temptation of the man sitting next to you in his truck. But damn, was he good looking. 

He had his baseball cap on of course to cover up his messy curls, his strong nose illuminating through the streetlights. His large hand on the armrest, tapping along to the music. You wanted so desperately to know how his hand felt around your waist, how his calloused skin would feel against your back, against your curves. 

“You good?” Frankie eyed you, not that he complained that you were staring at him. 

“Yeah, just trying to figure out what to do once we get to the house. I figure Pope might take a while. Wanna go swimming?” You blurted out. Frankie froze, saying he would love to he just didn’t have a swimsuit. 

“That’s what underwear is for, silly. You still have to see my pool, anyway.” Who was this girl and how were you so bold? Frankie was so nice for going along with it. He could tell you were drunk, you were sure of it. And he was just being your sweet friend that he usually was.

When you got to the house, you jumped out of Frankie’s truck before it was fully parked for even a minute. You opened the door to see the lights were off so your roommate was asleep. You waited until Frankie parked and grabbed his hand when he had arrived at the door. The both of you looked at each other briefly, feeling that same electricity at each other’s touch. His hand was big and calloused just like you had imagined. You pulled him towards the back of the house to the swimming pool. 

Frankie stood admiring your backyard for a moment, loving the tranquil feeling that your home made him feel. It was almost like a reflection of how you made him feel. He saw a hammock in the backyard's corner, fantasizing about laying on it with you leaning into him, reading him your studies as the two of you learned together.

You stripped your clothes off, peeling off your layers until you were left in your pink laced bra and thong that exposed your ass. You had completely forgotten what underwear you had on, but you also hadn't expected to go swimming spontaneously. Frankie turned and saw you change. He was trying to be respectful and not look at the way your hips hugged your underwear and the curve of your ass but this definitely wasn't helping his fantasy of imagining how you felt under him.

He took his shirt off, revealing his broad, tanned shoulders and soft stomach to you. This didn’t help any of your liquor induced urges. He removed his hat, carding through his dark curls that you wanted to run your own fingers through, envious of his own hands for being able to touch them. Frankie may have been out of the army for a while but you could definitely see he'd taken care of himself.

He took his jeans off, and the liquid courage was wearing off. You realized you were very half naked in front of your very attractive friend and you were truly alone for the first time since you’d met. 

“You chickening out on me?” Frankie joked as he read the reluctance on your face. You looked at him, eyebrow raised as you opened your palm for his. He cupped his fingers into yours as you moved towards the edge of the pool.  

“On three, Morales.” One… two… three…

Chlorine surrounded your senses as you felt the calm of the water. This was exactly what you had needed. You steadily moved through the pool at a leisurely pace as Frankie swam towards you in awe, his smile illuminating through the pool lights. 

“Drunk and still able to swim so well, impressive.”

“Reminder that I was a champion swimmer so I could out swim you in my sleep.” You grin at him. 

“Oh, is that so?” He gave you a devilish grin. Swimming towards you and playful dunking you underwater, you came back to surface and splashed at him, jumping on his back and laughing. He grabbed you off of him and you suddenly found yourselves extremely close, both of you still and silent with his hands at your waist. You wondered if he felt the same electric current that you did, you were burning so badly you almost wondered if he could feel your excitement.

You felt his hands slide further around your waist as you moved your legs to wrap around his large back.. You fingered through his curly hair so casually as if this wasn't the first time. It all felt so natural. Frankie gazed into your eyes. He’d never looked at you with such heat before. 

You could feel the energy between you shifting. He moved closer towards you, your eyes drifting to close as you felt his warm breath meet yours. 

And then… a bright fluorescent light shone throughout the backyard. You both quickly turn to see two figures standing near the sliding doors. 

“Hey!!” You hear Santi’s familiar voice and the moment is gone, snatched away so quickly. “No lo puedo creer! I get ditched so you can play Aquaman?”

Frankie was already so far away from you, you weren’t sure how he could move so quickly. Not close enough to reach your arms out to him so his large arms could hold you and you felt incredibly bare. Taylor, your roommate, came around the corner in her robe. One of your closest friends, Taylor knew about Frankie but I don't think she expected this to be the way she had met him. As curious as she had been about him, her eyes were currently attentive to Santiago.

“Luckily, cariño, your very lovely friend over here helped me out. She let me in and gave me the sweetest cup of coffee I think I’ve ever had.” Santi grinned at Taylor as she giggled, twirling a lock of hair around her fingers like a schoolgirl. Taylor was the one to break hearts so this was a shock.

“Come in, dry off and have some coffee! Santiago brought McDonalds!” Taylor called out. You and Frankie looked at each other from across the pool. Frankie swam over to the edge, muttering under his breath about tiempo de mierda. You had no choice now but to get out and enjoy your friends as if nothing had just happened. 

That night you, Frankie, Santi and Taylor stayed up chatting about anything and everything. It was the same feeling of comfort you had always felt around Frankie, loving the dynamic of this group. You looked at Taylor and Santi flirting shamelessly, happy that your best friend and Frankie's best friend got along. You met eyes with Frankie and he gave you an identical smile. Damn, you. wish you hadn't been interrupted in the pool.

At some point you peered out the window and realized that the sun was coming up. The boys had decided it was time to make their way to their respective homes as you said your goodbyes. Santi greeted you first to make sure he could give Taylor an all-encompassing hug, placing his hand on her cheek, stroking it as if he was going off to war and not just to his own bed.

“I’ll call you? I’ll take you out somewhere nice this week, cariño.” He looked at her with his molten dark eyes, turning on a certain charm that clearly worked on Taylor as all she could do was give a small nod and giggle as he kissed her hand.

You and Frankie looked at the two of them in awe and then at each other, you let out a nervous laugh and you weren’t sure why. Nothing about spending time with Frankie was awkward, but it felt like the night’s events were catching up to you. You felt incredibly brazen for touching him and stripping down to your underwear in front of him. You could feel the heat creep up on the back of your neck. 

“Did you have fun?” You asked in a small voice. 

“I always have fun with you.” Frankie grinned, looking down at you and taking your small hand into his. It was so rough and calloused, you couldn’t help but remember how they felt along your sides, your legs around his huge back. Snap out of it you could hear your inner voice. 

“Lili is going to be back tomorrow night. I know you’re usually off on Friday nights. How about you come over for dinner and a movie?” You bit your lip and nodded at Frankie’s question, of course he already knew your schedule. What couldn’t this man take from you? 

He engulfed you in a hug and you could smell the chlorine mixed with his natural scent. You inhaled a little longer to take it in. 

Frankie left your house with you and Taylor watching and leaning on your front door. He waved towards you both as Taylor smiled to him, talking to you through gritted teeth. 

“One down, one to go.” She grinned. 

“Excuse me?!” You balked. 

“He needs to hurry up and ask you out already. Who knows? Maybe we could double date.” 

You scoffed at Taylor’s suggestion but felt the heat rise on the back of your neck. It was impossible to spend this time with Frankie and not continue to fall head over heels for him. You respected that he clearly hadn’t asked you out yet for a reason, probably to focus on Lili and his sobriety, but is a crush on your friend that bad? Your tall, sexy, stoic, brilliant friend? 

"Tay?"

"Yeah?"

"I am so fucked."

ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: sun and moon | lhc

summary | your childhood best friend, donghyuck, claims he loves you. given his other friends and who he is as a person, you don’t believe him.

genre | lee haechan x fem!reader, high school seniors! au, childhood best friends to lovers, angst, fluff at the end, hyuck + the rest of 7dream are canonical assholes

warnings | high school parties (i.e. underage drinking)

wc | 6.1k

a/n: got a little carried away w this one, so thanks to the anon who requested it! anywho, i listened to tek it by cafune on repeat while writing this, so if u want a song rec ^^ imagine black haired glimo hc for this one <33 (p.s., if you want to play the game reader describes, this is the link) (p.p.s ignore their high school classes this is fanfic logic)

ft. sungchan, loona’s gowon, le sserafim’s chaewon

IT’S A SATURDAY AFTERNOON, and Donghyuck is laying down on your bed, watching you play whatever stupid video game you were infatuated with now. He didn’t come over often, not since your first year, so there was a slight bit of awkwardness between you two.

Nevertheless, you allow him to lay there, dressed in the tacky cool-guy getup that he seemed to love so much.

Outside, rain poured, and you knew that was the chief reason he was in your bedroom right now. If there wasn’t a flash flood warning, he’d be out and about with Mark Lee, Na Jaemin, and the rest of them, ruining people’s days left and right for the fun of it.

You wanted to consider Donghyuck to be your best friend, still. Given who he was now, the reputation he harbored, and the lack of time spent with one another, you didn’t feel like he was.

“I don’t understand the game,” he said, catching your attention fairly easily. You turned your head, giving him a dirty look for interrupting your flow. “You just look like you’re putting lines and boxes on a screen, but there’s a score.”

“You’re supposed to make paths. You close them off with the little dots,” you mumbled, turning back to your screen. The sound of Donghyuck sliding off your bed and kneel-walking to your side filled your ears but was mostly drowned out by the rain and the sound of the music coming through your speakers.

He stopped his kneel-walk adjacent to you, squinting at the screen. You didn’t slow down or try to explain your moves, simply placing each piece you were given in a way that most made sense.

“I seriously don’t get it. Is there a strategy to this?”

“No.”

“So you just…play for fun?”

“U-huh.”

“Man,” he mumbled, leaning his chin on the edge of your desk. You continued playing, clicking your shapes around into places they most fit, ignoring the way Dongyuck seemed to stare at you, now, rather than the game. “Who’ve you been hanging out with, these days?”

That question struck a chord. Briefly, you remembered the week-and-a-half where you stuck to Donghyuck as he began growing close with his current friends, and how left out you felt through the whole experience. It was, quite possibly, the worst week of your life.

“Sungchan from the grade below, Chaewon, and Gowon,” you replied, wondering if he’d even know who they were. From the way he didn’t respond, you assumed he didn’t, which hurt a little bit. “Uh, Chaewon is—”

“The girl with the short hair. Yeah, Renjun had a bit of a thing for her a while ago,” he cut you off with some unprompted information, which shocked you. If you remembered correctly, Chaewon had a massive crush on him for about a year; the new information made you wonder if he’d pursued her and dropped her the moment he’d found a better target.

“Really? Huh,” you hummed, glancing down at him. You made eye contact for a split second, but you broke it off the moment you realized how intense his stare was.

“So, how do you play this game?”

A small sigh escaped your lips, short in duration yet heavy in weight. You pointed at one of the boxes on the screen, turning to him once again. “You want to put the little circles in the boxes. Using the ‘X’ shapes, parallel lines, and the single lines, you want to connect all the boxes together to make paths. You put the little circles on the end of empty lines, too. You get points depending on how many circles you put in the boxes and how many circled-off paths you make.”

“Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense,” he scoffed. You were glad his attention was on the screen again. A bright flash of light broke through your bedroom windows, followed by a floor-shaking boom shortly thereafter. “You were always smarter than I was.”

“Not a chance. You just never tried hard enough.”

Silence fell between you two, and the only noise in the room turned into soft clicks and the droning of your music. It was nice being able to pretend like he wasn’t there, although you couldn’t help but wonder when you started feeling so…averse towards him. Maybe it was a product of the leftover hurt of his abandonment last year, or maybe it was because of how different his presence was.

When you were little, your mom always called him the sun and you the moon. He was bright and happy, always dressed in vibrant colors and ready to stand up for you whenever anyone did or said anything mean. He loved it when you and your mom took him to the beach, in the same way you loved it when he and his mom took you up into the countryside.

You were opposites as a kid, in the way that you were puzzle pieces that easily fit together. At some point, though, other pieces were added to that puzzle, and you both were torn apart by pieces that just fit better.

“[First]! Donghyuck!” Your mom called, her voice barely comprehensible above the pouring rain and the music. “Dinner!”

You picked up your phone, paused the music, and unplugged your phone from its charger. But, before you could stand up, Donghyuck put a hand on your knee, sending a shiver down your spine. You gave him a look, mentally saying “what the hell?” but he quickly explained himself.

“Can we talk? Just for a second.”

You gave him another look but complied. “One second, Mom!” you yelled, hoping she heard. “Just finishing up a game!”

He pushed himself off the floor, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. You spun around in your desk chair, pulling your knees up to your chest and chewing on the inside of your cheek. He cleared his throat as if he was nervous, which would be surprising given his personality.

You never thought you’d see the day when both you and Donghyuck were nervous to talk to each other.

“You don’t hate me or anything, right?”

You wished you knew the answer to that.

“What? No,” you replied, shaking your head. “Why would I hate you? We just grew apart, it’s not the end of the world. It was bound to happen.”

“Yeah, well,” he mumbled, looking off to the side. There was a pause in his sentence, then he cleared his throat again. “I’m in love with you.”

The whole room seemed to freeze over. You were utterly speechless.

“Pardon?”

“I love you. A lot. Like, love you.”

Letting your mind move faster than your mouth, you replied faster than you would’ve wanted to.

“No, you don’t.”

That seemed to stun him, as his eyes widened and his lips parted ever-so-slightly. You watched as hurt filled his expression, but you couldn’t help but stick with your response. He didn’t move to say anything else, so you stood up, stretching your arms into the air.

“Look, we’re friends and all, but you don’t love me, Hyuck. You can’t love someone when you barely know them.”

Saying that probably hurt you more than it hurt him, but you stood by it nonetheless. “How do I barely know you?” he asked, standing and walking to block your path. “Did I imagine the past fifteen years or something? I practically know everything there is to know about you.”

“I’m not sixteen anymore, dude. We’re practically eighteen. The last time we talked frequently was the end of our first year,” you said, crossing your arms. “If you told me you were in love with me back then, I might’ve believed you. But, as things stand right now, you are not.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” he replied, frowning at you. “A year isn’t going to change everything about you, [First]. I knew you were weird about this, but that’s—that’s just ridiculous. Don’t you realize how ridiculous that is?”

“It’s not very ridiculous when I spent three months wondering if we were even friends anymore. You realize it took you three months to even text me back? You ignored me, pretended like I wasn’t there, and now you expect me to think you’re in love with me? Give me a break.”

“Maybe I ignored you because I was trying to get rid of the part of me that was hopelessly in love with you because I didn’t want to destroy the decade and a half of friendship we’ve built. Ever consider that? I bet not because you’re always so goddamn unreasonable with this. God forbid anyone gets too close, huh? God forbid the one person who knows you best get too close.”

“I let you get close, Donghyuck,” you spat, narrowing your eyes. “I put my whole trust into you, my entire life was you. I was nothing if not yours, and then you threw me to the curb the moment you found better people. I’m not upset about that, it was bound to happen, but—”

“But what?”

“But you didn’t even apologize.”

He scoffed at that, crossing his arms. “Oh my god, it’s not like I told you to fuck off and never talk to me again, did I? Back then even looking at you was difficult, but, for the entire three months, my friends—who you so vehemently hate—kept telling me to reach out. I thought that if you disappeared, if I pretended like I never let my feelings go that far, things would go back to normal, but they didn’t. They still haven’t.”

“Why now, then? Why now, after I already decided that our friendship was pretty much over, huh? Why did you wait? Why not after those three months? Why not any time other than now?”

You side-stepped past him, opening the door to your bedroom and approaching the stairwell. You didn’t hear him follow, but you didn’t care to look back or check what he was doing. Instead, you ran downstairs, cringing when your mom’s face turned into one of confusion.

“Where’s Donghyuck, sweetie?”

“He’ll be down in a second,” you said nonchalantly, assuming your normal seat at the dinner table. “He just needed to deal with something quickly.”

-

The summer sun beamed down on you and your friends, and you lamented the lack of clouds, or really anything, blocking the sun. You sometimes wondered why you and your friends had decided to eat lunch at the very corner of the school’s soccer field, but, when the weird time between summer and autumn hit, you were sure to remember.

“It’s so god damn hot,” Sungchan panted, flopping onto the grass. The green seemed to cradle him in a way that made him look a bit majestic, even with your ugly uniforms. Chaewon hummed in agreement, shoveling noodles in her mouth; she, like you, always brought lunch from home.

“Where’s Gowon?” you asked, glancing down at him. He put a hand over his eyes, covering the painful gaze of the sun. “Did you see her in the lunch line?”

“She’s not walking over yet?” Sungchan asked, turning his head towards you. Chaewon waved away a fly that was getting too close to his uncovered lunch, mumbling something about how bugs in the summer were always so terrible. “She wasn’t too far behind me in line. I dunno where she would’ve gone.”

“Hm.”

You scanned the field, looking for any sign of her, but she was nowhere to be found. Chaewon turned her whole torso around to look as well, looking for any sign of her. “She might’ve gotten caught up with somebody. I’ll go check, just to make sure.”

She hopped up from the grass, running in the direction of the building’s doors. You looked at Sungchan, who didn’t move at all. “Dude, P.E. wrecked me today. I can barely feel my legs.”

“You wouldn’t have to take P.E. if you had taken a music course.”

“Oh, shut up, not everybody is as perfect and lovely as you, [First],” he huffed, pushing himself off the grass. You reached out and brushed a blade of grass out of his hair, but he didn’t thank you for the gesture at all. “You’re quiet today. Is everything good?”

No, my childhood best friend, who I didn’t think even liked me as a friend anymore, confessed his love for me, you thought.

“Yeah, just a bit tired. We had a big English test today.”

“Gross,” he replied, finally picking up his tray and beginning to eat. “Man, I can’t imagine having to start preparing for my CSATs. Do you ever go home?”

“I don’t study often. I’m gonna study enough to get into a college and get a degree.” You shrugged, taking a bite out of the fruit sandwich your mom had made you after you woke up incredibly late. Suddenly, in the distance, the doors to the school building burst open, revealing Chaewon, who was dragging Gowon behind her. Gowon barely had a steady handle on her lunch tray, keeping it balanced enough that it wouldn’t spill everywhere as they ran.

“Jesus,” Sungchan muttered, taking a bite of whatever they served for lunch that day.

Gowon and Chaewon made it to you both at record speeds, with Chaewon practically sliding into her previous sitting spot. “Dude,” she began, huffing and puffing from the running she did. Gowon practically crumbled onto the floor, taking three big swigs from her water bottle. “What in the world happened between you and Donghyuck?”

“What?”

“I found Gowon, like, surrounded by his little gang as he talked to her. She looked like she was going to faint, but he pretty clearly asked where you were,” she giggled, reaching out and slapping your shoulder. “So? What is it?”

“He told me he was in love with me yesterday.”

Chaewon practically shrieked with joy, to the point where it almost made you feel bad for the outcome of his stark leap. “And? And?”

“I told him that he didn’t love me and that he doesn’t know me very well anymore.”

Gowon choked on her water, covering her mouth and trying not to spit it all out. Instead, she just coughed to the side, barely able to swallow it all down. Sungchan stared at you in complete shock, and Chaewon’s excited face morphed into a sad and confused one.

“Excuse me?” Gowon breathed out. “You what? You, [First] [Last], known for your compassion and kindness, said what?”

“I mean, he doesn’t love me. He loves who he knew a year ago, when we were still attached at the hip and he still wore that stupid yellow bomber jacket that I bought him in middle school,” you sighed, taking another bite of the sandwich. “I’m not—I’m not the same, you know? I like different things, I do different things, and I hang out with different people. He’s not the same either. It wouldn’t…it just wouldn’t work.”

“Bullshit.” Sungchan laughed dryly, giving you a sour look. “You can’t just say that to someone confessing their love to you, no matter how well you know them. I mean, imagine if you worked up the courage to confess to someone and they immediately invalidated your feelings?”

“It’s not like I don’t know that my approach was bad, but it’s the truth. We just aren’t compatible as we are now.”

“But…but weren’t you two…? I mean don’t you still hang out?” Chaewon asked, frowning.

“When he can’t make it to his other friends, yes. Snow days, the flash flood yesterday, when we had that huge dry lightning storm and the power went out. I’m his backup entertainment, and, even when we do hang out, we usually just watch movies in silence or do our own things.”

“I agree with [First].” Gowon nodded, her voice hoarse from the coughing fit she just escaped. “She has a point. I mean, you guys remember what he was like first year…nothing like he is now, y’know?”

“But it was mean to do that,” Chaewon argued, crossing her arms. “You can’t just say stuff like that. You need to apologize, [First].”

“I’ll apologize when I feel like I need to. For now,” you paused, taking a final bite of your sandwich. “I am not going to talk to him about it.”

“[First], don’t be an asshole,” Sungchan replied.

“Oh, I’m the asshole? Shall I recount when he left me in the dust last year? Or when he forgot my birthday and skipped out on my birthday dinner, which both of his parents attended, because he was going to Incheon with Na Jaemin and Lee Jeno? Or when he blew me off every single time I tried to keep our friendship going?” you scoffed, turning towards him. Gowon, who’d been the first person to befriend you after you lost Donghyuck, kept quiet, but she placed a hand on your shoulder in support. “I don’t owe him anything for being a dick, and then deciding he wants to date me. It’s a miracle I even keep him around.”

Chaewon frowned, laying off, but Sungchan didn’t seem to like your answer. Instead, he picked up his tray, pushed himself off the ground, and began a tantrum-ish march to the school building. Nobody tried to stop him.

“I didn’t know,” Chaewon muttered, twiddling her thumbs. “Sorry.”

“No harm, no foul,” you hummed, packing up your lunch box. “Sungchan’ll get over himself.”

-

Once again, rain poured outside, trapping you and your classmates in your classroom while everyone waited for the principal to announce it was safe to leave. For the most part, it was quiet, with mostly everybody parked at their desk and studying or napping. You were watching some random Japanese drama from 2008, laying your head on a quasi-pillow (your bunched-up sweater) that rested on your desk.

Everyone was tired. Of course they were, as it was a Thursday, and nobody wanted to be at school past 4 pm on a Thursday.

The sound of the classroom door being thrown open seemed to grab everyone's attention. You glanced up, cringing when you saw who was invading your peaceful, little classroom. They instantly caused everyone (who was awake, that is) to start whispering back and forth as if the visitors were the president and his men.

You were lamenting the fact that the boy who sat in front of you wasn't at school today.

Donghyuck pulled the chair in front of you closer to your desk, taking a seat so that he’d be facing you rather than the chalkboard. You didn’t move, trying to focus on the subtitles of your new show. But, it seemed he wasn’t very deterred by your current activity, as he easily plucked your earbud from your ear.

Sighing, you paused your show, pushing yourself up from the uncomfortable position. Your back creaked as you did, causing a few sharp pains to travel up your spine.

“Did you need to bring your entire posse with you? you mumbled suppressing a yawn. He shrugged, leaning his elbow on your desk and putting his head in his hands.

“My birthday’s tomorrow,” he said, glancing down at your little setup before looking back up at you. “I’m having a party tonight, though. I’d like for you to come.”

Last year, you missed his birthday party, simply dropping off a gift with his mother before it began. You remember looking out your window, staring at the lights protruding from his house at the end of the street, the kids in the front yard, and the cars parked down the street. The neighborhood you lived in was a nice one—your house was one your mom inherited, which was the only reason you lived somewhere that nice—so houses were spread out to the point where he could get away with a party.

Plus, neither his mom nor his dad seemed to care what was happening. After you dropped the gift off, you watched them drive off together, and they didn’t seem to return until the next Sunday.

You remember thinking how much you would hate to go to a party like that.

“I’m not really into stuff like that,” you replied. “I’ll drop off your gift again and say hi, or something, but I’d rather not go to a party.”

“What if I said you could lock yourself in my room and hang out there the entire time?”

You scrunched your nose up, thinking about what your mom would do if she saw the party happening again while you lazed around in your bedroom. “No studying, no partying, just useless,” she’d tell you, pinching your cheek. “At least do something.”

“I guess,” you mumbled, looking around to see everybody staring at you. In the doorway stood Huang Renjun and Zhong Chenle, both watching you converse a little too intently.

At your response, a warm smile blossomed on Donghyuck’s face. “Great. See you tonight.”

He pushed himself up from the chair, leaving it where it was rather than tucking it in. He shoved his hands into his pockets, pushing past Renjun and Chenle, who stayed and stared at you for a second more. Chenle said something, but you couldn’t hear what it was; after that, he walked off, Renjun following.

You laid your head back down, putting your earbud back in your ear, but you didn’t go to play your drama. Instead, you sat there, staring at the rain pour, slamming into the window faster than you’d ever seen it go.

You hoped he’d leave you alone after this. Getting over the loss of the person you spent nearly your whole childhood with would be difficult, but you’d muscle through it—you always did.

-

Chaewon and Gowon sat on your couch, watching you fail at wrapping the gift you’d prepared for Donghyuck. They were dressed casually for the event so that you didn’t feel out of place as you walked in and beelined for the upstairs.

“So, you’re…regifting him something?”

“Yeah,” you mumbled, ripping tape out of the dispenser. “It’s a little keychain he got me two years ago, along with a ring I put on a chain. He likes necklaces…I think. It’ll be a good way to say, ‘let’s not see each other for a while,’ you know?”

You ignored the tugging at your heart and the way your throat seemed to close at the thought, focusing on how best to wrap the small box in a way that didn’t look ugly. Because of your intense focus, you were lost on the way Chaewon and Gowon looked at each other as if they somehow picked up on the way you were feeling.

“You’re sure there’s no way you could be in love with him too, right?” Chaewon suddenly asked, causing you to perk up. You furrowed your brows at that, your heart lurching in your chest at the question. It made you nervous.

“What? No.” You shook your head, placing a final piece of tape on the gift. You held it up and examined the poor wrapping job you did, frowning at it. For a temporary-last gift, it sucked. “Not a chance.”

“Should we go then? It’s 8, we’re already an hour late.”

“Yeah,” you nodded, standing up with the box. “Now or never, I guess. Have you heard from Sungchan?”

“He’s probably there already. Heard he’s friends with Zhong Chenle and never told us,” Gowon said. You looked at her, eyes widened.

“Really? I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah, well, now’s the time for learning, I guess,” she said. The three of you approached the door, slipping on shoes and putting on jackets. The moment you opened the door, you were hit with a blast of wet, hot air.

“I hate summer,” you mumbled, stepping outside. Your friends followed, and, together, you made the small trek to Donghyuck’s house. It was surrounded by cars and kids, and the sound of loud music accompanied by bright lighting filled the air. You were glad you didn’t live in a packed area, because, if you did, you were sure this would’ve gone a lot worse.

You pushed past all the already-drunk people outside, grabbing onto Chaewon’s hand for support. “This doesn’t look like a gift-giving party,” you whispered, to which Chaewon rolled her eyes, squeezing your hand.

“And you’re close to him, so you’re expected to get a gift.”

Gowon opened the door and, instantly, you were hit with the scent of alcohol and sweat, which wasn’t pleasant at all. Donghyuck’s house, having been renovated when you were kids, was the perfect location for a party like this one, with people roaming about and searching for something to do. The music drowned out anything you could hear, so you hoped Gowon would follow as you moved ahead, slipping past several people you knew (and, many people you didn’t).

The stairwell wasn’t far from the door, and you made it easily. Jaemin and Mark were lingering near it, seemingly making sure nobody tried to sneak up there and potentially steal something. You nodded your head at Jaemin the moment you made eye contact, but he didn’t step out of the way.

“I can take the gift,” he half-yelled, holding his hand out. Despite the volume of his voice, you could barely hear him and were a bit confused when he took the box out of your hands. You leaned closer to hear him, but you halfway wished you hadn’t. “Only you’re allowed up.”

You lurched back, looking at Chaewon and Gowon, who both nodded at you reassuringly. Chaewon released your hand, giving you a small smile before linking arms with Gowon. You sighed, running up the stairs as fast as you could. As promised, it was much quieter upstairs—as quiet as it could be given the surroundings—and much emptier. The upstairs looked just as you remembered it looking, with the only difference being a couple of newer pictures placed along the walls.

This felt like your childhood. A bit of nostalgia squeezed your heart as you walked down the hall, staring at pictures of the Lee family that you knew so well. Donghyuck’s parents were beautiful—unsurprising given how beautiful their son was—and that was made known by their wedding pictures, which sat framed at the edge of the hall.

You approached them, examining the bundles of photos they had put up. You remembered the several times you, as a small kid, told Donghyuck’s mother how you wanted to look just like her when she got married, with her gorgeous white gown and veil.

How ironic.

You turned the corner, approaching the final door in that section of the corridor. It was closed, and a small “do not enter!” sign was plastered on it. You blatantly ignored the directions, turning the knob and pushing inside.

His room looked different from the last time you were here.

It was darker, more mature, with more posters and less empty wall space. It looked like the teenage boy's room you’d see on a TV show, especially with the fancy computer and three monitors he had sitting on the desk. You shut the door behind you—it was kind of shocking how his room blocked out all the sound from downstairs—looking around at all he had up.

On his dresser were a few framed pictures, all of which were pictures of you two. The first one was one when you were little, two kids smiling on a playground with no worries in the world, dressed in matching sun and moon outfits. Then, there was a picture of you two at a class performance you had to do in second grade, dressed in tacky outfits that your parents had made together.

The third was a picture of you two in middle school, dressed in your uniforms roaming Lotte World, eating ice cream and laughing at whatever joke was shared between you two. You look back on that day fondly, remembering how much fun you’d had. That was where Donghyuck had gotten the keychain you were gifting back to him.

The final picture was one from your first year of high school. This one was much more robotic than the rest, both of you smiling for the picture and not just to smile. You stood far apart from each other, holding onto your school bags and looking mildly uncomfortable. Your hair was messy from a long day, and there were prevalent bags under Donghyuck’s eyes.

He looked unhappy, in a way. So did you.

Sighing, you approached his bed, taking a seat on the floor and leaning your back against it. You slid your phone from your jacket pocket, scrolling through various notifications you had. Most were from Chaewon, who was using her phone to have her and Gowon communicate with you.

“On an adventure to find a bathroom and lock ourselves insides,” read the first one, along with a couple of random emojis she tacked on.

“Sungchan is all up close and personal with some of Donghyuck’s posse. Who’d have thought they were friends when he’s such a loser lol.”

And, finally, a “Hiding in a non-crowded corner!! Only one bathroom was open, but we will survive by people watching!!”

You typed back a swift response, confirming you were in Donghyuck’s bedroom and feeling quite tired. If you had to guess, this night would end without you seeing Donghyuck at all, and you’d fall asleep on his bedroom floor, only to be woken up by Gowon and Chaewon, who’d snuck upstairs after everyone passed out drunk.

“Gowon here, and I think Donghyuck opened your gift. He doesn’t look pleased, I think. Storming towards the stairs. Fighting!”

Okay, so maybe you spoke too soon. You looked towards the door, wondering what he would have to say to you about it; maybe he’d reject it, giving it back to you and telling you to fuck off, or maybe he’d be reasonable about it, let you talk through things.

Considering the way the door opened, you assumed it to be the former.

Donghyuck practically slammed the door shut behind him, holding up the small white box that you’d put the ring-necklace and keychain in. He stared at you for a second, and you stared back, waiting for him to say something.

“What is this?”

You shrugged, looking at the box. “The sun keychain you got me a few years ago and—”

“The ring you liked to wear all the time in middle school. Yes, I know, I’m aware, but that’s not what I meant.”

You knew what he meant, but you didn’t want to. “Okay, then what did you mean?”

He narrowed his eyes, dropping to the floor in front of you. He stared at you, trying to gauge what exactly you were trying to accomplish by acting clueless. “Why are you giving it back?”

“Because I feel like we need to separate for a bit longer. Like, actually separate this time. Not the not-see-each-other-for-three-weeks routine anymore. A few months without being sun and moon, and just being two different people.”

He put the box down, crossing his legs. Donghyuck didn’t say anything, assuming the same hurt face he had when you told him he didn’t love you. “This is exactly why I never wanted to tell you,” he finally said, letting his head drop to the floor. “One chance your perfect bubble is disrupted and you’ll freak out and shut down.”

Your mouth dropped open, and you were a bit shocked at his response. You had nothing to say, nothing to defend yourself with other than the pitiful look you gave.

“But I’m going to say no to that, [First]. You can’t run every single time something doesn’t go your way. So we either figure this out right here and now, or I don’t think we’ll make it much farther as friends.”

You didn’t want to lose your friendship with him. He was the closest thing to you, the closest person to your secrets, the closest person to your happiness. You were okay with a break for a few months, maybe more, but you did not want to unfriend him for forever.

The way your heart hurt, the way your head spun, the way you found it hard to look him in the eyes and say “but we need this” was taking a toll on you. And, as you went through the motions, a little voice in your head began to say “Maybe you are in love with him, just a little bit. Maybe you have been for a while.”

“I’m sorry for ghosting you last year,” he continued, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I didn’t consider how you would feel and put myself first. I ejected you from a big change in my life, and I just assumed you’d be there to come back to after it was all said and done. You didn’t deserve it.”

You bit your lip in an attempt to keep your emotions squared off and invisible. Even hearing the apology made you want to fall apart, after waiting so long to hear anything of the sort. You remembered how lost you felt without him around, how hurt you felt when you sent text after text and yielded no response.

“Okay, I forgive you.”

It was short, but it got the point across without you bursting into tears at Lee Donghyuck actually apologizing to you. He took another deep breath, closing his hands into a fist.

“One more time, then. [First], I am in love with you.”

You sharply inhaled, looking down at the floor. “Okay. I could be, too. Maybe a little bit.”

It went silent between you, and you refused to look up from the ground. Gently, you reached out and began tracing little drawings on the floor, ones that you visualized in your mind. Saturn, the moon, the stars, the sun, you and Donghyuck, in constant orbit with each other, up in a boundless space you would never reach.

Suddenly, he got onto his knees, causing you to look up. Faster than you would’ve imagined, he shuffled over to you, encasing your face with his hands and pulling you into a soft yet heavy kiss. It left you stunned, but you didn’t seem to mind it that much.

Like the sun, Donghtuck was warm, from the way his hands managed to warm up your already burning cheeks or the way he practically emulated heat, as you felt from the close contact. He tasted like sour lemonade, perfect for a hot, summer day that had you trapped outside for the majority of the day. In a way, he was summer, carefree and bright, ready to ditch all responsibility and run off into the sunset.

When he pulled away from you, he seemed a bit embarrassed, sitting back on his feet and looking off to the side. “Sorry,” he mumbled, clearing his throat. “I didn’t ask if I could do that. Sorry.”

“I…didn’t mind too much,” you responded, looking down at the floor for the white box that held the keychain and the ring necklace. You opened it, picking up the chain and sliding the ring off it. You grabbed his hand, hoping it would at least fit on his pinky (which it did, thankfully). “Happy birthday.”

He looked down, a small scoff escaping his lips. “What, are you proposing? It hasn’t even been a minute, I mean, are you that obsessed with me?”

“Oh, yeah, For sure.” You rolled your eyes, dropping his hand so you could leave a small punch on his shoulder. “Let’s date, Lee Donghyuck.”

He repeated your idea with a high-pitched, mocking voice, and you could tell he was incredibly embarrassed. It made you giggle, and flick his forehead, to which he lurched back and gave you an incredulous look.

“Get over yourself.”

“If I do, will you take the keychain back?”

“Oh, shut up, loser.”

thank you for reading!

˗ˋˏ YUCK! ˎˊ˗ | 18+ Only (Part Two)

synopsis: how can you remain friends with benefits with someone who turns his plushies around during sex, pouts when you don't kiss him goodbye, and spends his time occupying your mind when all you want is for him to leave you alone?

pairing: lsm x yn (gn afab)

genre: fluff, humor, romance | pwp, smut

tags: alcohol/food - reader also briefly blacks out, costume party, cursing, domesticity, fwb, sexual innuendos, showering together, yn un-alives a spider, university au | cowgirl, cunnilingus, dirty talk, fingering, handjob, hickies, love making, pet names, pnv, praise

wc: 11.5k

a/n: hi this is part 2/2 of yuck! thank you all so much for waiting. I honestly had so much fun writing this, and I hope you have fun reading. lmk if I missed any tags in part one or two. comments and reblogs are super appreciated!! pls pee after sex so you don't get an uti ♡ -nu

yuck! - part one

lipglossjun's masterlist

He came to your door unannounced, knocking loudly on your front door and causing you to jump in your seat. Three sharp knocks against the door using his middle knuckles and then a few friendly taps because he realizes he's standing in front of your door and not his resident’s door. The sound echoes loudly inside your lonely apartment but isn’t loud enough to alarm your neighbors because he purposely leans his side against the door to diffuse the sound and vibrations. You can’t blame him for his habit - he’s used to knocking on so many doors in one night that the freezer part of his mini fridge is stocked with frozen sponges in plastic baggies so he can ice his swollen knuckles at night. You don’t even have to look through your peeping hole to know it’s him, but it’s weird because you know he should be on-call today. Still, the knocks are enough to scare you into thinking you’re still dorming in the universities.

He tells you he has an employee banquet a few days before the break and was worried that his makeup might smudge on his suit. He also brought your go-to drink order from the tea shop across campus, punching in your specific add-ons and adjustments into the kiosk before even deciding what new seasonal drink he wanted to try. You had no choice but to begrudgingly take your drink from him while you shuffled to the side of your door so he could come into your apartment.

"I thought you already knew how to do this.”

You see him hold up your hand mirror to his neck to look at the small bruise you left on the side of his neck a few nights ago. He sits cross-legged on your apartment living room carpeted floor while you sit on the ottoman next to him.

“Only for an everyday base routine for my face,” he frowns while softly poking his bruise. “But my neck makeup keeps smudging and I don’t know how to stop it from getting on my clothes,” he admits while he lowers the neckline of his t-shirt, thinking about the stains he left on his shirt collars.

You uncap the bottle you’re holding and spray the cool setting spray on his bruise. He fans the wet product with his hand while you dig through his toiletry bag for his color-correcting palette. You dip his tiny makeup brush into the palette and bring the product-coated brush to paint over his bruise.

“If you want me to stop marking you, you can just tell me,” you suggest to him while brushing another thin layer. You tap your pointer finger lightly around the harsh edges, blending the colors into his skin. An intrusive thought tells you to poke your finger deep into his skin, but you decide not to.

He ooo’s at how you’re blending the product, angling the mirror so he can better see how you’re working.  

“But I like them,” he says while you spritz another light layer of setting spray. “They remind me of you,” he softly confesses while you blow on his skin. He finds himself angling the mirror again so that the mirror now focuses on your face.

He giggles at the tingling sensation of your warm breath against the cold product, and he smiles to himself when he sees your concentrated expression through the reflection in the mirror – how you purse your lips and how your eyebrows furrow together. If he weren’t an RA, he would proudly wear his love bites as a badge for everybody around him to see. He wants people to tease him whenever they see the bruise poking out of his hoodie when his hood is down. It’s not to let people know he’s getting it on. That’s just not who he is.

But there is that part of him that wants others to know you’re his. He’s tired of soft launching you on his Instagram. That’s what people do when they want others to know they’re talking to somebody. But you’re just his friend. He’s completely fine with showing you off, but he respects your privacy, knowing how much you hate having your picture taken. It’s also not like his closest friends don’t know about his relationship with you, but if it makes you happy, he’ll take it. He likes what the two of you have. And after all, he doesn't care about the pictures. It’s the person whose plate is almost always pictured across from his, the hand holding the ice cream cone, the second shadow under the street light who he cares for.

The bruises feel sore, but he loves how you automatically coddle him afterward, especially after a heated session. You always have that worried look on your face, your lips pouty and frowny. He remembers the number of ridges between your brows when you ask him how he’s feeling. He always tells you that he feels fine, great even, but you always sigh with a defeated look on your face. You’ll walk to the fridge in nothing but one of his old t-shirts and grab him a cold metal spoon. He doesn’t know if the cold spoon hack works, but he lets you do it anyway. He’ll let you do anything if it means he gets to spend more time with you no matter how prickly you may seem on the outside.

Now, he’s spending more time with you on a lazy Tuesday night. He’s done for the day and doesn’t have any RA duties at night because the university recently handed on-call duties for the campus security to handle. On the other hand, you didn’t have anything scheduled for today and spent the entire day indoors. You’re still in your pajamas – a free shirt from a past school event and old running shorts that you never wore while exercising. There are leftover food delivery containers in your fridge from dinner. You tell him the importance of investing in a tinted sunscreen while pushing up your wired glasses. It’s ironic because he knows you haven’t washed your face today or applied any form of sun protection at all. The closer you lean into him to be sure he understands, the redder his cheeks flush. He hopes his mineral powder is enough to diffuse the blush or at least make it seem like it’s the redness from his acne.

Feeling a little hot, he reaches over to grab his fruit slushie-turned-juice from the coffee table and brings it to his lips. He sucks the concoction through the metal straw, letting the cool liquid settle in his mouth so he can savor it before swallowing. You notice the condensation dripping down his arms before he does, and you wipe it away with the edge of your t-shirt without any thought. Your drink is already long gone, finished within minutes after poking your straw through the flimsy plastic lid, washed and disposed of in your recycling bin. He wonders if the taste of his drink would linger on your tongue if he kisses you. And he wonders how the tangy sourness of his drink would contrast or balance the extra amount of sweetness in your tea.

But you’re done concealing the bruise, already sealed it off with the last layer of setting spray. Satisfied with your job, you plop yourself on the other side of the couch and grab the book you put face-down on the table when DK arrived at your front door. You tuck your legs under you and use the armrest as your elbow support as you resume your novel. DK types the makeup steps into his notes app and quickly cleans up his products, looking for something to do.

DK snakes his head between the open gap between your stomach and your book, putting his head on your chest. You pay him no mind, flipping another page while he thinks of a conversation starter. He relaxes into the feeling of your chest rising and dropping and the steady thumping of your heartbeat pulsing under his ear. He asks you what your novel is about while twiddling with the hem of your shirt, noticing it’s still a bit damp from before.

“Smut,” you nonchalantly answer him. You didn’t know much about the novel, but you borrowed it from your friend who kept raving about it while you visited her the other day. She claimed it was better than sex, but honestly, all you’ve been reading so far are overly detailed descriptions of scenery while the main character stares out of the parked car window.

“But you have me,” he teases you. He lets go of your shirt to poke you on your cheek between each word, “You. Have. Me.”

You swat his hand away from your face and subsequently decide to place your novel on his head to use as a stand. He huffs underneath the book, and you snicker at him, leaning down to kiss the top of his head. You think it’s cute whenever he’s being annoying, throwing tiny tantrums whenever he doesn’t have enough attention. You catch yourself lingering on the thought of what his neediness would be like if the two of you were together.

“I’m too lazy,” you flip another page after letting the thought dissipate. “You’re on your own unless you can find another way to do it.”

He huffs and lifts the novel from his forehead to sit up. He turns to you and untucks your legs from beneath you.

“Continue reading your book. Let me eat you out while you rest,” he tells you while pulling your legs with ease so only your upper back and head is leaning against the couch’s armrest. He rests your legs on each side of him.

“Go ahead, but wouldn’t that be a little boring for you?” you ask him while your eyes are still trained on your novel. Even though you spend a lot of time thinking about him manhandling you, his persona easily makes you forget about just how strong he is.

He grabs a cushion from the middle of the couch and tucks it behind your neck. He asks you if you’re comfortable. You give him a thumbs-up, and he gently pecks your thumb before moving your hand back to your book so you can properly hold your book. His little touches and kisses aren’t new to you, but you think it’d be a shame if his kiss transferred onto your pages instead of keeping it to yourself. You choose to hover your thumb above the pages, choosing to use your hand’s round fleshy thenar to hold the pages.

You lift your hips upwards so he can easily remove your bottoms. He tugs them off you as if he has all the time in the world, folding your shorts and undies and setting them on the coffee table like they’re part of the decoration.

“I don’t think I’d be bored,” he kneels himself in front of you and lowers himself so he’s flat against the couch. He gently lifts your shirt higher so it’s past your belly button and proceeds to hook your legs over his shoulders. “Read to me? Out loud?” he asks you while massaging the outside of your thighs.

You lift your book, looking at him quizzically. However, when you see the tiny fading red mark on his forehead from when you used him as a stand, you can’t help but agree to his request. He lowers his head to your core and quickly taps your thighs twice to tell you to read.

“Now, a black flashy standard motorcycle with matching black chrome wheels pulls into the driveway of the auto shop where your car is currently getting its engine replaced. The steady hum of the engine is enough to have every single mechanic in the vicinity turn their –,” you were doing pretty well at reading until DK, without warning, puts his warm tongue flat against your clit, licking upwards until it reaches your nub. “Ah – h-heads to stare at the bike,” you stumble with the last phrase.

He lets his spit drop at the top of your clit, watching it glide downwards along your ridges before catching it with his tongue like a little game of Plinko. He feels you tense under his tongue, causing him to hum in delight. He mumbles something about you doing good before attaching his tongue to you again.

“One of them whistles when the motorcyclist comes to a full stop in front of the open auto shop garages,” you try to ignore the fact that he’s gently blowing wind to tease you, to hear you stumble across your words. There is no way you are going to cave right when you started reading out loud, so you bite your lip when you feel his soft and open lips close around your labia. But you can’t ignore him no matter how hard you try.

He kisses you deeply, full-mouthed while his large hands lock around your thighs. Painstakingly slowly, he buries his face deeper into your cunt.

“Eungh- O-one of them whistles when the mo- oh,” you moan while your mouth hangs open when he circles the tip of his tongue around your clitoris. You move your novel away to look at DK whose entire face is gone. You can only see his bushy black hair.

He continues to circle his tongue around you while your breathing gets shallower. You feel your arousal building, causing your thighs to close around his head. He looks up at you looking back at him with a lustful expression. He sucks softly on your clitoral hood and pries your thighs open with his hands. He only winks, letting go of your skin through his lips before going back to eating your cunt.

“…motorcyclist can loudly rev his engine,” you manage to finish the paragraph with a little sigh of relief.

“Mmmh. Good job, baby,” he groans, praising you against your cunt.

He kisses the inside of your right thigh while moving your left leg off his right shoulder.

You find yourself frowning just a little bit when you think he’s finished, but truthfully, he’s only moving your leg off the couch so he can finger you while eating you out. He puts his right hand on your stomach and uses his thumb to rub your nub.

“I’ll reward you if you keep reading okay?”

He kisses your stomach and moves your shirt down so you wouldn’t shiver from being cold. If only he knew why you were shivering.

“‘Couldn’t you have driven here?’ you frown at your older brother w- ah- fuck. Fuck,” you jerk in your seat when DK inserts a finger in your cunt. You can feel him smile against you as he drags his tongue against your folds while his finger dips in and out of you knowing exactly how to drag a string of moans from your mouth, to make your legs tremble and shake.

All this, and you’re only half a page into reading out loud.

“…while he reaches between his legs to pass you his extra motorcycle helmet as you approach him,” you read while trying to ignore the fact that you’re gripping your borrowed novel with so much force that you probably bent the matte paperback cover. “He shrugs and passes you the helmet which you – mmm fuck just like that – begrudgingly fit over your head.”

You’re clenched tightly around his two fingers as he curls them in you while sloppily giving you head. You hear exactly how wet you are, how his fingers squelch every time he reinserts them in you, how his coated lips smack against your glistening pussy – devouring you as his life depended on it. You can feel your juices pool around your ass as he uses his left arm to hold you down whenever you lurch upwards. He moans profanities against you, but never at you. When he raises his head to take a break, he makes sure his fingers never stop moving. He always brings you to your high, and you feel so safe with him.

And he tells you you’re sweet. He always does.

Sometimes you’re sweet because he compliments you for doing something for him. He calls you sweet when you’re frowning about somebody criticizing your RBF. You like it when he calls you sweet when he calls you Sweetie. You like it when he says it with flair. You like it when he says it when you show him your project. You like it whenever he says it when you make him take a sip of any of your sugary drinks – the way his face contorts in total disgust, but he still manages to do so with a smile on his face.

He never called you my sweet, but god damn do you wish you could experience what it would feel like for him to call you his. But tonight he describes your flavor as sweet as you like your teas. He can’t stop praising you for how sweet you are, how you’re like dessert on his tongue. And you can’t get him out of your head.

“He leans forward and clicks open the motorcycle’s rear footrests with the back of his boot,” your face scrunches, but you continue. “When he is done, he looks back at you struggling – eungh Kyeom,” you struggle.

He only grips your thigh tighter as he alternates between fingering you and pausing so he can kiss your cunt like he’s kissing you during sex. He flattens his tongue against you and twists it so he can tease your hole. You’re whining and speeding through the last few words of the sentence, desperate to have him in you.

“Whoa. Whoa,” he temporarily detaches himself from you to grab onto your forearm as he raises himself above you. His lips glisten from the wetness, and the color of his flushed face compliment the color of his sore lips. “Slow down baby,” he tells you and kisses your cheek, “Wanna hear your pretty voice, okay? Just read and relax.” He strokes your hair and brushes away the strands covering your eyes, “I’m not going anywhere.”

But you don’t relax. How can you relax when he grips your hips, fingers dipping into your pelvic bone as he shoves his nose against your clitoris, sticking his tongue into your cunt? He bobs his head while he tongue-fucks you, nudging your nub and making your pussy throb even when he briefly comes up for air.

Your vision blurs as he continues to build your high, ignoring you as you continue to call out his name. The words on the page are replaced by stars when you tell him you can’t take it anymore. Heart racing and muscles tightening, you cum while his tongue is in you. And he laps you up as you convulse around him, back arching as you continue to come. He drinks what’s left of you like he’s drinking ice cold water at midnight – you’re insatiable. You moan his name into your book once more, hiccupping as he brings your left leg back on the couch.

“Yn,” he whispers as he removes your book from your face. He puts it on the coffee table without breaking eye contact with you. “What did you call me?”

You don’t hear him as you’re still struggling to catch your breath. Your pussy is still pulsing without pause. Everything is hazy, but you can see him reaching over for something in his cosmetics bag. You close your eyes, still undeniably horny and wanting more.

There is a little bit of shuffling and then the sound of a few light things dropping on the floor. He reaches under you and scoops you up as if you weigh nothing. You briefly remember him telling you about hitting a new PR where he could lift someone a little over his weight. But he brings you to your bed, only switching on your nightstand lamp.

He sits on the side of your bed while he strokes your cheek.

“Yn,” he whispers again while leaning closer to you. “Do you remember what you called me?”

You blink twice at him before slowly realizing. Your lips part in realization, and he only smiles at you.

He opens your nightstand drawer and pulls out a condom and your bottle of lube. Your fingers automatically fly to cover your lips in horror, but he only chuckles at your expression while he positions himself between your legs and leans over you. He coats his wrapped dick in the lube and rubs the remaining gel around your vulva. You whimper at the coldness, and he wipes the remaining bits on his thighs.

He leans over you again and rests his elbows on the sides of your face. He asks you again, gently, if you remember what name you called him.

You nod your head, breath hitching as you stare at him. It’s unfair, you think, to look as pretty as he is under the ugly yellow light your lamp emits. But he looks at you with so much care in the world, and you feel thankful that you’re spending your Tuesday night with him. You thank his lame excuse for intruding on your time for yourself. You thank him for spending time with you, for looking after you, even if he isn’t yours at that moment.

He aligns himself at your entrance while waiting for your answer.

You whisper it almost inaudibly, barely believing yourself as you let the word leave your mouth.

“Say it again,” he instructs you.

“Seokmin.”

You’re not sure if the two of you should have come up with one of those contracts you always read about in books when you first started the relationship. Maybe you should’ve learned from Lara Jean – a binding relationship contract written on notebook paper and signed in pen. There would be a couple of items on the list, a few weird ones, and then a majority of the items being standard ones. Standard item number one? No kissing. Standard item number two? No staying over after sex (sub-line: No cuddling). Standard item number three? No meeting unless it’s for sex. Maybe a weird item would be the option to try pegging. However, the last item on the list? No developing feelings for the other party.

If rules are made to be broken, but contracts signed by people older than eighteen are legally binding, then you would’ve been in jail by now.

His lips are locked against yours, groaning your name as he wraps your legs around his waist. He nibbles along your jaw as he makes love to you, slowly pushing deep inside you so you can feel his balls lay flush against your ass, feeling all of him in you. You call his name through a choked sob, your hands roaming around to find something to grab. Anything.

Your fingers find the back of his head, and you pull on his hair. And he flips like a switch, immediately pounding into you over and over again, praising you and calling you his.

Tonight, the rules have definitely been broken. And you’re starting to realize this isn’t the first offense.

.

“Okay so, I didn’t want to take it off because I wanted to see if my makeup would smudge, but I did it because I knew I was going to get hot.”

“Omg he wanted to keep his shirt on. He’s so quirky!”

“Stoppp,” he laughs while he passes the showerhead to you. “I can’t believe you’re the only person who tried to tell me a joke during sex.”

“It’s because I’m the only person you’ve ever had sex with,” you stick your tongue out at him while you rinse the body wash you previously bought with DK off your body.

“You too,” he retorts while turning around so you can rinse the soap off his body for him.

He grabs your shampoo from your hanging wire basket and plops a dollop into his hand. He tells you to look up while he lathers it in his hand before he brings his hands to massage your scalp. His fingers feel amazing while he massages you, so you close your eyes in the process, hoping to keep the shampoo out of your eyes.

He thinks you look like one of those dogs from the pictures you find online where the owner sticks a metal head massager on their heads. Your eyes are closed in contentment, and there’s a lazy smile on his face that he only gets to see so often. He can’t help himself but sneak a little kiss on your lips while he piles your hair into a mountain so that you look like that one guy from the first Incredibles movie.

You open your eyes to look at him, but you see that he’s purposely looking away, pretending to be interested in something else. You try to follow his eyes, but your eyes land on something dark crawling down the wall above DK’s head.

Being you, you blatantly point out the descending spider, and DK screams, slips, and crashes onto the tiled floor. Your bath products tumble down after him. You sigh, knowing you’ll have to clean up the mess and drive him to school tomorrow instead of sending him off tonight.

.

“Aww you care for me,” Dokyeom coos while you fuss over the ice pack on his ankle.

“I’m just making sure my Sybian isn’t too damaged,” you scoff at him.

You thought you would spend the night with a cozy book in bed while you wait for your face mask to dry. However, you find yourself blow-drying DK’s hair, letting him borrow one of your old t-shirts, and nursing his badly bruised ankle. It’s a wonder how he somehow didn’t end up spraining it after that nasty fall. You could’ve sworn you heard the cartoon swishing sounds while he tried not to slip.

Not to mention, he somehow talked you into cuddling with him in bed through several lame excuses.

Q. What if I fell off the bed?

A. Fuck, then pick yourself up I guess.

Q. What if I sprained my dick?

A. We have toys.

He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Although, you have to admit it feels very nice to sit in bed with him with his left arm around your waist while the two of you silently scroll through your phones. He leans his head on your shoulder and hugs you from the side. You tilt your phone towards him so he could watch you tap through your friends’ stories. You can tell he’s more needy than usual, probably from climaxing more than once in one night and then undergoing the shower incident following right after – he screamed while you crumpled the spider in a wad of tissue. He’s latching onto you like a parasite, but he does give you good dick so you think it’s more like a symbiotic relationship. The way he’s clinging to you makes you think it is what it feels like to be trapped under one of those large teddy bears you can buy at warehouse retail stores. 

He asks you if you’re going to the party on the weekend after you tap through the story of a mutual friend. You tell him you are.

“Be my date to the party?” he asks you.

You think he forgot you always go to parties with Jun and Chan.

“No thank you,” you politely decline his request, “I don’t do party dates.”

He pushes himself off of you, “Why not?”

“Because all of my past dates always left me for their friends and I would just spend every single party alone,” you grumble thinking about how many times you ended up taking care of drunk people you didn’t know because you ended up being sober the whole time.

“But I wouldn’t leave you.”

“There!” you exclaim while pointing your finger at him, “That’s what they all said to me.”

He frowns and crosses his arms, kind of upset you would think he would ever leave your side.

“Date or not I’m still not going to leave your side,” he grumbles while slinking down so he lays on the bed. He turns his body away from you to sulk.

The ice pack falls off his leg and tumbles to the ground. He continues to lay on the bed, not doing anything to pick it up so he can ice himself.

You know how stubborn he can be, especially when his pride is mixed in the equation. Part of you is proud he is sticking through being moody by refusing to move. However, you know how soft he is. If his future kid got a paper cut, he would probably end up crying harder than his kid. His kid would probably end up consoling him. His ankle must feel like pins and needles are sticking into it without the icepack, and he can’t do anything to distract the pain because his phone is out of his reach.

“Kyeom,” you gently shake his body. “You have to ice your ankle.”

He only shakes you off and brings his legs to his chest.

Usually, you would smack him with a pillow and call him dumb, but you think he’s suffered enough damages for the day. You know if you continue asking him to ice his ankle, he would just ignore you. So, you think either climbing on top of him or tricking him into breaking would be better choices. You choose the latter.

“Sigh,” you say out loud, pretending to talk to yourself. “If DK is sleeping then that means I’ll have nobody to cuddle with while I talk about my slutty costume choices.”

You see him slowly turn his head to look at you in the corner of your eye, but he quickly averts your gaze and turns his head back to its original position. You find yourself smiling at his action. He’s like a literal child. A puppy.

“Aww I thought Kyeom wanted to cuddle all night, but I guess I have to go to sleep because he’s asleep,” you tell him while leaning over him to check on him.

You see he’s pretending to sleep. He squints his eyes shut. His lips are poutier than usual, pressed in a thin line to probably stop himself from speaking.

“Maybe I’ll go sleep on the living room couch by myself so he can be more comfortable by himself,” you slowly move off the bed by trying to cross over his body.  

“Noo,” he wails while sitting up to grab you. He immediately yanks you back down, trapping you in his arms. “How slutty is it, Yn? HOW SLUTTY?”

.

You have your morning lab in a few hours, but you’re standing alone in your dark kitchen with your head stuck in the freezer. The only source of direct light comes from your freezer, and you’re glad you’ve lived in your place long enough to navigate in the dark. The green digital clock digits flash on your oven. It’s getting close to 4:00 am, but you can’t sleep.

The icepack, or more like a water pack at this point, left a giant wet spot on your carpet while it thawed. It now sits in a lumped form in the side door, wedged between a frozen loaf of bread and some microwavable pizza bagels. The coldness of the freezer feels nice on your skin, but it’s not enough to make you feel numb.

You feel hot and stuffy, and your mind has a million thoughts running around at once. You make him tell you why you should be his date to a stupid costume party, and he tells you he likes you. However, his dumbass knocks out immediately after while he’s still holding you tight in his arms. You’re left alone with your thoughts and a pounding heart while you wait for him to finally let go of you when he is asleep.

Truthfully, you want to tear your hair out. It’s not like you couldn’t wake him up to make him tell you whether or not he finished his sentence. However, you think you’ve already tested his patience enough in one day. You would trust his “I like you” more if he told you while he was drunk, but telling you and then immediately knocking out? You really don’t know if it could count as a confession.

So now you whisper scream into a frozen bag of mixed vegetables while you think about everything that happened this night. You think about him showing up at your door. You think about the hickies he leaves between your thighs. You think about the way he kisses you after you moan his name.

“Seokmin,” find yourself whispering his name.

You don’t understand how this name is so different from the others, but your fingers softly touch your lips as if you just whispered something you weren’t supposed to say. 

“Aww I get it. Jane Goodall. That’s so cute.”

“This is NOT a couple’s costume. I am clearly a hiker,” Chan angrily grumbles at the passerby while dumping another scoop of ice into the glass fishbowl on the kitchen island. He takes out his red handkerchief to wipe his hands and places it around his neck when he’s done.

“Why are you annoyed that people think you’re Jane Goodall? She’s one of the greatest scientists of our time. Do you not appreciate our women scientists? Women in STEM?” Jun asks him while he pops another sour gummy worm into his mouth. He licks the sour and sugary coating off his fingers one by one and wipes them dry on his monkey onesie.

You grab the bag of gummies from the table and dump the rest into the bowl. You tap and shake the edge of the bag until all of the remaining sugar falls into the bowl. Jun quickly plucks a worm out of the bowl before Chan turns around with a bottle of blue curacao in one hand and a bottle of coconut rum in the other hand. Chan insists on making fish bowls at parties for the three of you to share because he refuses to drink the jungle juice Jeonghan and Joshua make for parties. No matter how many times the two show Chan how they clean the giant clear plastic storage container they use for the juice, Chan absolutely refuses to drink from it. He argues that it’s a breeding ground for bacteria from people scooping the liquid with their cups, but Jeonghan dumbly replies that the amount of alcohol in the jungle juice should be enough to kill the germs.

By the time you’re done saying hello to some friends, Chan is already done making the bowl. He takes off his sunglasses and hangs it from his blue and grey colored top, looking at his creation with satisfaction. He swirls the bright blue concoction with three straws and tops it off with a paper umbrella toothpick he found in Jeonghan’s kitchen cabinets. Bon appétit.

The bright blue concoction stains your tongue, but it gives you a really nice buzz before you know how its aftereffects will hit you like a giant tsunami later. However, any precautious thought about getting too drunk and waking up with a massive hangover gets thrown out the window when Chan reminds you that the reason why the three of you took a ride-share cab is that you wantedto get fucked up. So the three of you smile and continue drinking.

.

The three of you are about two-thirds into finishing the fish bowl when you see DK and his friends stumble through the front door. DK’s dressed in the same slutty fireman costume he wears – the firefighter suit hanging low on his hips with the shoulder straps dangling, the hose on his shoulder, and the white tank top decorated with streaks of ash. You see Jeonghan greet him with a jello shot in his hand. The firefighter takes it from him and swirls his tongue around the perimeter of the jello, loosening it from the tiny container, and knocks it back swiftly in one go. He passes the container back to Jeonghan with no amount of blue raspberry flavored gelatin remaining on the inside. And all you can do is stare at him with your straw in your mouth while your friends attempt to play Jenga in their buzzed states.

It’s not long before you take your eyes off DK and realize that you finished the rest of the bowl by yourself. You tap in while Jun taps out of the game so he can happily scoop the slimy gummies out of the bowl and into his mouth. The tower looks jagged enough that one knee bumping against the table leg can easily knock the tower over. Shrek places their block on top of the tower with a shaky hand and sighs when the tower doesn’t topple over. A vampire bites their lip as they remove a side piece from the middle. You hold your breath as they slowly wiggle the piece loose, frowning when they successfully take it out of the stack and add it to the tower.

All eyes are on you as you hover your hand next to the piece that you want. You think if you take out that specific piece, you would make the tower a bit more balanced when it comes to how it leans. It also makes it harder for Chan to pull out a piece because he would end up shifting the balance if he pulled a block. Everything is in your favor – from the EDM song shuffling to a club song to your friends watching you silently – there is nothing that shouldn’t rule in your favor.

However, somebody behind you shrieks your name, and the tower topples. A few filled shot glasses are immediately placed in front of you, and everybody’s phone cameras are pointed at you, waiting to record you taking the shots. You sigh before bringing the first shot up to your mouth. You didn’t even get to touch the Jenga piece.

The perpetrator who stands behind you cheers the loudest every time you tip each empty shot glass over your head. He raises your hand in triumph and hugs you from behind your seat. The tsunami that’s been building up in the distance crashes. And by the end of it, you’re good as gone.

.

He tells you that no matter how comfortable his shoulder may feel at that moment, you do need to sit up and drink some water. And DK, for what seems like the nth time, hands you a bottle of water to drink.

He thanks the person who passed him the water bottle and stops for a minute. He points at him while scanning his outfit. “Hiker,” he finally decides on his answer.

“THANK YOU,” Chan yells at him while slapping him repeatedly on the back, unaware of his own strength, making DK flinch a little. Chan drunkenly decides that DK will become the fourth  person to drink from his fishbowl. He drags Jun, who is chatting up Trixie from the Fairly Odd Parents, with him to the kitchen to make a fresh batch.

DK is the type of person to make you forget, but not in a forgetful type of way. He makes you forget about your troubles. He makes you forget about the resident knocking on his door while the two of you hide in bed together. He makes you forget you’re at a house party in a room full of people. At that moment it’s just you leaning on his shoulder with his arm wrapped securely around you. None of you are hiding the fact that there’s something budding between the both of you. It feels nice, liberating even.

“Hi baby. You doing okay?” he asks you after making sure you drank until the waterline hit the top of the plastic label despite him being extremely drunk.

“I like it when you call me baby,” you mumble while falling back onto his shoulder, feeling yourself slowly sober up.

“Yeah?”

“But don’t tell anybody or else I’ll have your head,” you turn your head and glare at him.

“I’m not sure if that was a sexual reference or maybe you’ve been reading too many isekai mangas that Jun sends you,” he chuckles while laying your head on his shoulder. He almost sighs in relief when you don’t blame him for you losing Jenga earlier.

He gives an okay signal to any passerby who asks if you’re doing alright. 

“You weren’t by my side the whole time I was here. You’re a liar. Slutty liar.”

“I’m horrible aren’t I?” he kisses the top of your head.

“The worst.”

You never knew what “a beat” indicates in screenplays. You didn’t get why the screenwriter would want to indicate a pause. Nothing that you experienced in your life ever indicated a pause in the conversation. But now you understand. There are so many things you want to say, things you’re too afraid to say. You have questions for him, but you’re also happy he’s on your side. Maybe a “beat” is a filler. This pause in the conversation, you staring at him – eyes trying not to waver to his lips – it’s a mutual understanding between the two of you, something that makes up for what words cannot say. 

“I need to pee.”

.

Now is definitely not a good time to be confused about whether you need to pee or if you’re simply horny.

Tonight the two of you are sloppy, bodies pressed against each other in the quiet hallway of a house party. Someone occupies the hallway bathroom, and you’re leaning with your back against the wall. DK stands in front of you with his left forearm leaning against the wall in the space next to your right ear. He kisses along your jawline, nipping the base of your neck. The softness of his lips caresses your skin, blending into the waves while you slur your moans. He hushes you by covering his lips over yours. You prefer him closer to you so you reach behind his head to pull him into you. His mouth opens, and your tongue glosses over his. He meets you in the middle, circling his around yours and groaning when you tug on his lower lip with your teeth. Your hand roams across his chest, and he pushes into your thigh, grinding against you. Both of you are too drunk, too lost in each other to care if others are looking.

He pulls his head back and looks at you with a hooded gaze. He can’t believe the sight in front of him and the ache he feels inside of him. He leans his head against the side of your ear, nipping softly at your lobe before talking to you in a low voice, “I want to pin you against the wall with your legs wrapped around my waist while I whisper every single thought I’m having about you into your ear. I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk out of this party without me supporting you. Everybody passing by will see how well you take me while you beg for me to pound into you deeper and harder. Then, you’d have to say goodbye to all of your friends while trying to keep my cum from leaking out of your sore pussy. I want to be able to open your legs and see it seeping out of you while I fuck it into you again in the car.”

Another beat.

This time it’s different. You feel your knees buckle underneath his body, sliding slightly down the wall. You look at his face hovering over yours, practically begging him to kiss you again. Anything. But he doesn’t. The two of you stay silent while you hear cheers from the living room. Then he proceeds to pull away as if nothing happened between you. He has the dopiest grin on his face. He cheeses at you – tiny wrinkles at the edge of his eyes and his pearly whites in full view. You’re still struggling to process the stream of consciousness he spoke into your ear.

“I like your pizza costume,” he giggles while poking your costume, especially the edges of the crust that hang off your shoulders.

“I bought it because I thought it might humor you,” you mumble while he takes your hands in his.

You see how much he’s gushing with happiness. You think he’s so cute, happy that your costume has such a positive effect on him. But you’re slightly annoyed that he’s able to move onto a different subject so quickly while you’re still stuck on the last one. You want more.

However, he tells you he really likes you and leans in to peck your cheek. When he pulls back, the bathroom door opens, and out steps Lee Jihoon who immediately grabs DK by his left ear and drags him away from you. “No fucking in the hallway,” he reprimands his friend.

DK only smiles at you while he’s being pulled away by his ear, too drunk to care, two finger hearts pointed directly at you.

You can only stand next to the vacant bathroom, now soberer than ever and seriously turned on.

You wake up on the floor next to your bed and slowly push yourself off the carpet, feeling the soreness in your body. You look at the carpet indents in your arm and then your surroundings. You notice your bed is empty, and Chan is asleep in his extra set of clothes, sprawled on the floor near your bedroom door. You can’t remember what happened in the latter half of the night, but you can at least deduce that all of you were at least sober enough to change out of your costumes and get ready for bed.

Your body is sore from sleeping on your floor, and you still feel pretty groggy. Still, the sweet scent of something coming from the kitchen is enough to convince you to walk outside instead of moving onto your bed to sleep some more. You stand up, knees cracking loudly, and you cross over Chan to exit your bedroom. You think it’s Jun who’s cooking, but you see him in his monkey onesie, passed out next to your rack of shoes near your entrance with a spare blanket covering him.

At least he has a blanket, you think to yourself. You woke up cold and with nothing covering you.

You see him standing in front of your toaster, wearing the extra set of clothes he keeps at your place. You see him place waffles into your toaster, minding his business while he hums to himself.

“Why are you here?” you approach him and stand by his side. You can see used wine glasses in the sink and opened chip bags you don’t remember buying sitting on the counter. The four of you probably continued drinking after arriving at your apartment. You hope there’s nobody else sleeping in your place.

“I dunno,” DK shrugs and proceeds to greet you by pulling you into his arms while he stands behind you, keeping a close eye on the frozen waffles.

You don’t get how he can look like he didn’t spend all of last night drinking. He looks completely refreshed with the kind of glow, an aura, you have after a good workout…not that you ever experienced what it must be like. He just looks like one of those smiling actors in fitness commercials.

You can feel his chest rumble against your back as he tells you he’s sorry he couldn’t cook something better for the four of you because he’s been living in the dorms for years. He honestly hasn’t touched a stove since he went home last summer. However, he did perfect cooking frozen food in microwaves and toasters. It’s the least he can do. He also quickly adds that he’s sorry he’s cooking all of your frozen waffles and would gladly reimburse you. You tell him to fuck off. There’s no way you would ever make him pay you back for making breakfast. He should know that by now.

The toaster pops, scaring you a little. A long yawn follows, and DK chuckles at you rubbing your eyes. He removes the waffles from the toaster and tells you to close your eyes. You dumbly follow, believing he’s going to kiss you when he cups your face in his hands. Instead, he rubs the inner corner of your eyes with his thumbs. “Eye boogers,” he says.

“Gross,” you watch him flick them to the ground.

“You thought that I was going to kiss you, huh,” he teases you while adding more frozen waffles into the toaster.

You grumble at him and stand to the side, leaning against your fridge. Your arms are crossed, and you watch him go back to humming the song he was humming before. It’s the same song playing from the speakers when the three of you decide to bring DK back to your apartment as there was no way he would have been allowed on campus in his state. It was partly Chan’s fault for getting him so fucked up – he couldn’t find regular vodka for the bowl so he replaced it with some Everclear he found tucked away under the sink. Jun tells him he really needs to stop snooping in Jeonghan’s cabinets. That’s when your memory starts to clear.

“Do you happen to remember what you told me before Jihoon dragged you away?” you curiously ask him.

You expect him to deny the memory or laugh at your sudden boldness, but he tells you that he knows better than to drink to the point where he blacks out and loses his memory. He would also like to stay true to his word, all of it.

“If you’re going to fuck in the kitchen, at least give us the waffles first,” Jun groans from the hallway.

DK winks at you in response, but you don’t know if he was referring to his second confession or if he promised the reality of his sexual fantasy. Before you can clarify, Jun appears in the kitchen, opening the dishwasher to grab a ceramic plate.

It shouldn’t be this confusing. DK told you that he liked you twice. You’re also pretty sure you like him. Nevertheless, it’s DK. He tends to joke around and switch from topic to topic. He throws words of affirmation at everybody he talks with. He confuses you even when you feel like you shouldn't be confused. 

“God Yn. You can’t be doing this to me.”

He sits upright, and his hands are positioned to his sides, tightly gripping his bedsheets.

You use his thighs as your support as you ride him, slowly bouncing up and down so he can watch his cock appear and disappear into your cunt.

You feel him twitching in you as you let soft moans float out of your mouth as you arch your back more and lean your head back toward the ceiling. You make sure you gyrate your hips switching between circular and back and forth motions as you continue to fuck yourself on his cock. He wonders how your soft mewls would break into staccato moans if you were to continuously bounce on him, letting lust cloud his thoughts.

Then you lean further backward, practically grinding on him. He feels your ass rub against his balls, and he does everything he can to restrain himself from rutting himself upwards into your cunt. He knows your thighs are tired as your breathing gets heavier and the way you grind against him gets messier. You sit on him, your whole body trembling and twitching from pleasure simply from the feeling of him fitting so snugly inside you. He feels so warm today, so good, stretching you nicely as you tell him all he needs to do is to sit there and look pretty. You reward him by sitting upright, guiding his hands from behind his back so they rest on your ass. He kneads them roughly, feeling your skin fill the spaces between his fingers.

Your ass cheeks feel sore, and you can’t stop panting when grind on him, rocking him so crudely that his bed begins to squeak. You bring a hand in front of you to start rubbing your nub, and high-pitched whimpers instantaneously escape your mouth. Your soft circular motions increase speed, attacking your soft flesh and making you forget he’s in you.

“Hng Seok,” your face is scrunched in pleasure, “Fucking myself feels so good.” You smirk at him as you ride out your high, knowing very well it would piss him off. You can tell he’s already a little upset you’re fucking him in cowgirl when he doesn’t get to do anything but sit there. 

Annoyed, he brings his right hand upwards and brings it down quickly against your ass. The crisp slap rings throughout his empty room, and he feels you clench around him as you gasp out loud. He slaps your ass again, finding deep pleasure in watching you pulse and quake around him and hearing you moan. 

You lift yourself slightly upwards, having regained some energy, and reach under you to grab the base of his shaft. You watch his face contort from annoyance to surprise to pleasure as you stroke him, squeezing and releasing incrementally as you simultaneously fuck his upper half. 

You can tell he is about to cum when he starts reaching for your face. He wants to make out with you, to dig his fingers into your back as you suck his neck. He moans your name, cavernous and gutturally, and tells you you’re doing so well. His sweet, sweet baby. The way you’re fucking him makes him go feral. 

Just then, there is a knock on his door, and he immediately pushes you off of him, practically hopping off his bed so he can run to his door barefooted and naked. He tells them to wait a minute as he’s wrapping something up. 

You sigh, quickly following behind him so you can hide in his closet, already used to having his residents show up out of the blue. You hand him his sweater and a pair of shorts before climbing into his closet and closing the doors behind you. 

You hear him open his door a minute later. You’re not sure what the topic of their conversation is as everything sounds muffled. You hear DK tell them that he has to grab a few things first, and then he’ll meet them in their room. He closes his front door and opens his closet. 

He looks worried. You observe it must be something important or an emergency as he doesn’t bother to make himself look presentable or deodorize the smell of sex lingering on his skin. He tells you he’s sorry and that he’ll try to be quick. He kisses you on the forehead before leaving with his stuff. However, he tells you you’re welcome to leave. And you sit there in his closet, alone and naked, the spot on your forehead burning. The motion-sensor lights in his bedroom turn themselves off, and you know you’re fucked by the way he gave you a choice to leave instead of telling you, begging you, finding stupid ways to get you to stay like he always does. 

Your feelings are hurt, and you’re pathetically close to tears. Why is it that every time you look at him or talk to him, it feels like you have to stop yourself from having your confession burst out of your mouth? “I like you” always feels like it’s sitting on the tip of your tongue, and you’re too scared to confess to him. 

It’s dark inside the closet, but you’ve been in his room enough times to know what’s hanging above you and sitting beside you. His business shirts are hanging above your head. On the other side of the closet, he has his pants. They’re organized by fabric type and colors. The jeans hang on the far right side of the closet. The sweats and athletic tights are next. Then he has his business pants. Dark colors are on the right, and light colors are on the left. His clothing hanger hooks are always hung over the closet rod, never under. Yet, at this moment, everything feels so foreign, like you’re a new person in a new place. But it’s because you are a different person now – a person who has fallen for their friends with benefits. 

The metal front door whirs and clicks open. You can hear the automatic lights flicker. He tells you he’s alone and that you can come out as he sees your stuff in his room. You’re not replying. 

“Shit Yn,” he opens his closet to find you still sitting in the dark closet, staring into nothing. “Aren’t you cold?”

You shake your head.

“Did you go pee? You should go pee,” he says expressionlessly. There’s not an ounce of care present in his suggestion.  

He leaves your side and stalks over to his bed, throwing himself on it. He loudly groans into a pillow to rid some of his stress. You can only climb out of the closet, your jaw clenched. “I like you! I like you a lot” is still in your mouth, taunting you, threatening to escape. 

“Is he done yet?”

“Bro he literally just started. Have a little more faith in Chan, okay?” you mumble at Jun while looking at your phone. You lock the screen and place your phone face down on the table.

Today is a day for firsts. It is the first time Jun and you are trying the café across the nice-looking residential building near campus. It’s the first time you try an iced mint mojito coffee when you usually have its alcoholic counterpart. It’s the first time Jun had a professor cancel class this semester. It’s also the first time Chan hooks up with somebody he met on the dating app Jun set up for him. It’s also the first time you’ll openly admit that Jun somehow has the most “game” compared to the three of you. Strange universe.

Jun knows something is bothering you. Your comebacks have become snarkier, yet you’ve been more lenient with whatever he does around you. He once told you to pay for the three of your dinners, and you passed him your credit card without saying anything. And it’s not like DK hasn’t been becoming less of the topic of your conversations - you’ve been quieter. And he doesn’t know what’s going on because he’s scared you might punch him. So he doesn’t ask you and only looks around the café’s nice interior, choosing to count the number of glossy white honeycomb tiles on the wall.

“How can you walk up to somebody and ask them out even though you don’t know them?” you blurt loudly at him out of the blue.

“Me?” Jun dumbly asks you. He already forgot the tile number he was on.

You nod your head while you bring your drink up to your lips.

He leans back into his chair and crosses his arms.

“You know how blunt I am.”

You nod your head, recounting all of the times he was called out for his bluntness.

“I think you already know how I can sometimes rub people off in the wrong way because I accidentally say things that I don’t mean. Sometimes people like you understand me and sometimes people don’t. I guess it’s like people liking you? Sometimes people will like my bluntness and sometimes it comes off in the wrong way. So I think it’s the same for liking people? You either like somebody or you don’t? So I’ll ask anybody out as long as I’m interested in them because the answer is always a simple yes or no.”

You’re so confused.

“You literally jumped from one topic to another. I literally could not follow you at all,” you blink.

“Well I’m sorry,” he throws his hands up in defeat. He’s not used to giving helpful advice nor is he used to having people go to him for advice. He wonders if he should start counting the number of chairs in the café.

He remembers an interaction he had in front of your apartment building last week. He was surprised that DK would call him and ask if he could meet him in front of your apartment. Jun told him that Yn is home and that he could just knock on your door, but DK unequivocally rejected his idea and told Jun to come. Jun saw him walking back in forth in front of your apartment building sign with a bunch of ugly roses in his hand, obviously stressed out of his mind. He asked him what was wrong.

“I dunno. I think they’ve been avoiding me for some reason,” DK tells Jun once he feels calmer with the older boy around him. 

“But they’re literally wilting, bro,” Jun tells DK with clear judgment in his voice. “Some of the petals are black. I’d avoid you if you gave me wilting roses,” he points at all the petals with darkened tips and wrinkles.

“Yn will like them,” DK insists. “They think they look cool like that.”

Jun brought them to your apartment for DK, not wanting to ask or press him for more information. Although, he would have to admit it was a bit confusing to have DK ask him to deliver the flowers for him. Albeit, you are pretty scary when you’re mad. You were pretty enthusiastic when you saw the flowers in his hand, but you immediately slammed the door on him when he told you they were from DK. However, you did open your door again to let him use your restroom.

“Do you like DK but you’re having trouble figuring out whether or not he likes you?” Jun cautiously approaches you with his question.

You nod and spill your troubles to your best friend. You tell him about the two times he told you he liked you and about the day you hid in his closet. You tell him about the roses – how he didn’t text you or leave you a card so that you don’t know why he bought the roses and why he couldn’t deliver them himself. You tell him about the “not a date” dates and how he calls you pet names.

Jun tells you it sounds confusing, but it’s actually pretty normal to fall for your friend with benefits especially if you have a strong emotional connection. That’s how normal people fall in love. He feels for you and understands how confusing it must be for you when the two of you have basically skipped the dating part and landed in the married for thirty years part of the relationship without being in a relationship.

“But isn’t it tiring have to hide?” he asks you. “How many times did you have to hide because of a resident? How many times did you have to fake not knowing him or not liking him whenever you saw somebody flirting with him?”

“Too many times,” you admit. It’s exhausting.

Jun only nods and grabs his set of keys from the café table. He pulls out his wallet from his back pocket, “Lemme buy you dessert while I pay for Chan’s ‘congrats on your first hook-up’ cake.”

You stare at your friend, “You aren’t going to give me helpful advice?” You’re dumbfounded.

“Who do I look like to you? Yahoo answers? Reddit? If you want helpful advice, suck it up and tell him that you need to talk to him and talk. It’s going to eat you alive before your future cats get to eat you.”

Fuck. Jun’s right.

Today is a weird day for firsts.

“But I literally just nutted,” DK tells you while you storm into his dorm.

He’s shirtless and is wearing those grey sweatpants that ride dangerously low on his hips. He looks like he just woke up from a nap, his hair messy and matted. A bottle of unscented lotion sits on his nightstand.

“Did you want to shower or do laundry with me later?” he asks you, letting his door shut behind him. He follows you to his bed. “Did you want to get dinner with me? We have a while until Chan’s night class ends. I know you usually wait for him so you can walk home with him.”

You sit on the edge of his bed and pat the space next to you, telling him to sit next to you. He sits next to you and looks at you with a worried expression.

“I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I have it in me to fuck right now unless you find a way to help me get it up,” he confesses while scratching the back of his ear. He’ll say anything to fill the awkward silence, but he’s glad to see you after being out of touch for a week.

He sees you frowning, and his breath hitches when you turn to him.

“You confuse me DK,” your voice wavers. “I like you so much, but you keep on sending me mixed signals by telling me you like me and then acting like nothing happened. And then you’re so kind to me, and you call me those names while constantly treating me like I’m in a relationship with you when I’m not.”

“Oh, Yn,” his lip quivers.

“You don’t understand how much I like you, how much I want to stop being friends with benefits with you. But you confuse me so much. Your kindness is confusing and I wish you were meaner so I wouldn’t have fallen for you…why are you crying?” you slap his bicep.

He flinches in pain from the slap because he’s still shirtless, but the tears keep running down his face.

“I’m sorry,” he cries while clutching his arm. “I thought I was being straightforward with my feelings, but I hurt you instead,” he wails, “I’ve started liking you longer than you could imagine.”

You don’t know how to react to him crying while confessing, so you awkwardly get up and walk over to his mini fridge to bring him one of his frozen sponge packs to ice his arm.

.

You kiss him back before closing his large metal dormitory door behind you. His keypad whirs and clicks its automatic lock into place, and you make your way to the hallway elevators, giddy on the inside.

You make your way past all the bright green dormitory doors and stop in front of the elevators. At the side of the elevator is the large classroom bulletin board with DK’s stupid laminated face smiling at you. This time the board is sky blue. You can recognize the clouds glued onto the board anywhere – they’re sheep repurposed into clouds from when he did the board about sleep facts. Hot air balloons decorate the board. Expensive cardstock letters spell the title: Love is in the air, and so are STDs! You snicker at the tiny rips in the blue background from students ripping off the taped condoms to use for themselves before stepping into the elevator.

Your phone in your pocket buzzes when you step out of the elevator and exit the dormitory. You pull out your phone while standing outside. It’s a text from DK. He says he’s been waiting for a while now, but he wants to be a bit selfish tonight. He asks you if you’re free this Friday night even though he knows your schedule like the back of his hand. He sends another text to let you know he’s horny again, but he missed you. A lot. 

Stepping to the side to let other residents in and out of the dorm, you make your way along the front of the dormitory so you stop under his window. You see him looking out to check if you made it out of the building. You wave at him and hold your phone up for him to see while giving him a thumbs up. He triumphs when he realizes you're agreeing to go on a real date with him, and you laugh when you see his figure disappear when he trips while jumping. He comes back to his window with a shirt on this time. He waves goodbye to you, and you wave back with a large smile on your face. This time the smile doesn’t drop.