#<- including the old tag bc why not | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

joelsgreys · 1 year

Text

a safe haven l six

Post Outbreak! Joel Miller x Female Reader

series masterlist l previous chapter l next chapter

summary: Joel opens up to you about a very traumatic loss; he makes a confession about his feelings towards you; you make a confession of your own and it leads to something more.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. fluff, infidelity, Joel and reader are having a full blown affair at this point, angst, talks of child loss (Sarah), lots of feelings come to the surface, two idiots realize they are in love. SMUT. oral sex (m receiving), size mention bc i will always be convinced our man is packing) unprotected p in v sex (wrap it up pls), reader discovers she likes praise, creampie.

word count: 8.4k

August 2024

The next two and a half weeks that had passed by had done so without major incident, but things had taken a somewhat complicated turn.

You and Joel still manage to see one another a handful of times even with the exhausting amount of hours he’s been putting into his patrol duties, though it isn’t nearly as often as either of you wanted or would have preferred. But there was no other choice.

After numerous sightings of a group of potential raiders earlier on in the month, Tommy had no choice but to assign every last competent, able bodied patrol person, including himself, to work double shifts to ensure the safety and security of Jackson. He and Joel had come across the remnants of a campsite just about fifteen miles south of the settlement and they worried the group was hiding out, planning a violent, ambush attack on the community when it was least expected. Tommy had done his absolute best to keep the word from spreading throughout the commune to avoid causing a panic, but he found himself having to fess up when people went up to him and all but furiously demanded to know the truth—the real reason behind why their loved ones were now being asked to be on the other side of wall twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Joel, who you’d come to learn is one of the sharpest and strongest shooters out of everybody in Jackson besides his younger brother, reluctantly took on the role of lead patrolman. He had been assigned an absurd amount of double shifts to work, including the overnight routes, making it almost impossible for you to see each other. You’d understood he had no choice but to comply, but still—that didn’t make the situation any easier to deal with. Both of you tried to make the very best of what little time you managed to get together, but it hadn’t been nearly enough. As if not being able to see Joel wasn’t agonizing enough for you, the fact that he was out on the other side of the wall scared the hell out of you. The only way to keep yourself from losing your goddamn mind was to distract yourself.

You did everything that you could to keep your mind off Joel being out there. Burying yourself deeply into your work helped for the most part.

Besides that, Joel had asked you, as a favor to him, to keep a watchful eye on Ellie in light of his absence. You’d spend most of the day with her in the stables, you would have lunch with her in the mess hall along with Dina, and in the evening, you would go home and make dinner early enough to fix an extra plate of food for her so she had a nutritious homemade meal to enjoy instead of two decades old canned ravioli. You would take it over to her place and drop it off before Luke came home from the clinic. Ellie waited until it was late in the evening and he was asleep to return the plate back to you, and the two of you would take a lengthy, late night stroll through the town, keeping each other company for a while before heading off to bed. She hadn’t seemed to be all too concerned about Joel, but then again, Ellie had known better than you did that he could take care of himself out there just fine. If anything, you spending so much time with her had been more for your benefit than hers, and you started to suspect that just like Joel had asked you to keep an eye on Ellie, he had also asked her to keep an eye on you too. After all, you had made it abundantly clear to him that you were nervous about him being out on patrol while there was a possible threat looming in the shadows.

By the time the middle of August came around, no additional traces of the group had been found—they seemed to have vanished into thin air, causing a wave of relief to sweep through the town. Tommy and Maria finally decided to ease up and end the double shift assignments, allowing every single patrolman and woman to return to their normally scheduled work rotations. Joel went back to his usual early morning and afternoon patrol hours, which meant that the both of you could resume your clandestine meetings out behind the barn underneath the stars.

“I missed you,” you say, sighing out contentedly as you lean back against him.

You and Joel are sitting out on the large, vacant patch of field behind the barn, his soft, green flannel blanket acting as a barrier between your bodies and the itchiness of the grass the animals would graze on during the day. You’re nestled in between his long legs, your back against his warm chest as the two of you share the delicious, ripe peach he’d brought along with him as a surprise for you.

“Mm, probably not as much as I was missin’ you, sweet girl,” Joel replies with a hum before taking a bite of the fruit. Noticing there’s only a couple bites of it left, he reaches his arm around and holds it out for you, his bulging bicep straining against the sleeve of his faded black t-shirt. “Here, darlin’. Want you to go on and have the rest.”

“These will be out of season in a couple of months.” Giving a sad little pout to nobody in particular, you sigh again and sink your teeth into the peach. Through a small mouthful, you realize, “Who knows when we’ll ever get peaches around here again.”

Joel’s lips meet the spot on your neck right behind your ear and you feel him grin. “S’alright with me. I’ve got my sweet, perfect little peach right here. And I’ve got her all year round.”

You playfully elbow him in his chest. After polishing off the rest of the peach, you lick off the pit and toss it out into the distance.

“Didn’t think you’d be the type to litter,” he teases.

“It’s biodegradable,” you retort with a tiny laugh as you leaned your head back against his shoulder and gaze up, admiring the stars that sprinkle the velvet night skies. “Or at least, I think it is. Come to think of it, I never paid much attention in life science when I was in FEDRA school. It was my least favorite subject.”

You gather your hair in your hand, bringing it over your shoulder to keep it out of Joel’s face.

“Mm,” he whispers, licking his lips as his eyes fall to the delicate flesh of your exposed neck. He ghosts his mouth over your pulse point and his warm breath fans against your cool skin, prompting your eyes to flutter closed. “Just temptin’ me on purpose now, ain’t you, baby?”

“I would never do such a thing,” you object in an innocent tone, and he immediately clocks the smirk behind it. A comfortable silence falls over the both of you and while you’d normally welcome the peaceful, tranquil moment with him, tonight it feels impossible. You had gone so long without Joel over the last couple of weeks—at least, it had certainly felt long—and you realize one of things you’d missed most about him was the sound of his voice. “Ask me a question, Joel.”

“What kinda question can I ask, darlin’?”

Feeling brave, you offer, “You can ask me anything you want. No limits.”

Humming curiously to himself, he tries to think of something he hasn’t asked you before. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Really, Joel?” You snort, trying to mask your laughter as he rests his chin on your shoulder, the scruff of his beard tickling your skin as he presses his cheek against yours. “I just told you that you can ask me anything you want and that’s your question? What’s my favorite color?”

“Yeah,” he answers, simply. “I wanna know what it is.”

He turns his head, lifting it off your shoulder to brush a gentle kiss to your temple. Joel could not, for the life of him, even remember the last time he’d shared this kind of physical tenderness with anybody. Forehead kisses, holding your hand, all sorts of little tokens of affection he didn’t think he could still be capable of giving to someone came to him so naturally with you. You had brought out an entirely different side of him, one that had been buried beneath his rough exterior for well over two decades, and the part that Joel still can’t quite wrap his own head around is that you’d done it with such ease. He’d go as far as to say that you had done it without even trying.

“So?” Joel prompts you. “What is it?”

“It’s brown,” you answer.

“Brown? Why brown?”

“Because. It’s earthy, it’s warm—and your eyes are brown,” you state, grinning to yourself as you feel his loud laugh rumble through his chest and against your back. “What about you? I mean that’s if Joel Miller even has a favorite color,” you giggle teasingly, placing a hand on one of his denim clad legs. You then add, “Actually, I’m kind of curious now. Do you have a favorite color, Joel?”

Joel hesitates, momentarily holding onto his answer.

“I do. It’s purple,” he finally responds after a brief bout of silence. “Purple’s my favorite color.”

“Purple,” you repeat after him, unable to mask the surprise in your tone. “Really?”

Joel chuckles. “What? That weird or somethin’?”

“Uh, sort of. For one, you just don’t strike me as the kind of guy who would have a favorite color in the first place—and even if you’d told me you did, I would have never in a million years guessed that it was purple,” you admit, sheepishly. You trace a small circle around his knee with your finger and curiously ask him, “Why is purple your favorite color?”

“‘Cause. That’s my daughter’s favorite color.”

You scoff playfully. “Come on, Joel. Ellie’s favorite color sure as hell isn’t purple. Her favorite color is green. But red’s a close second.”

When he speaks again, his voice is so quiet you almost don’t hear him despite being in such close proximity.

“I ain’t talkin’ about Ellie.”

At first, it doesn’t quite register, but after a moment of processing, the pieces click together in your mind. Joel has another daughter.

Your smile vanishes and you slowly turn around between his legs to face him. Looking at him with wide, shocked eyes, you utter, “What?”

“Her name was Sarah,” he confesses, softly.

Was.

Your throat dries at his use of past tense.

Because you know exactly what that means.

Opening your mouth to speak, words fail you and you close it. You suddenly remember the way he would tap dance around certain details of his first life in Texas. Whenever he would speak about his life before the outbreak, he would be cautious, careful to watch himself and his words. You’d known Joel had been keeping something from you, something he wasn’t ready to disclose to you for one reason or another—but never would you have guessed that him having a daughter would be the secret he had been hiding.

By now, you’ve turned your body around and you kneel in front of him, sitting back onto your heels. Not wanting to push him too hard or too fast, you clasp your hands together in your lap and wait silently—patiently—for him to continue when he’s ready.

“Sarah’s favorite color was purple. She’d wear it all the time. Her backpack, her school supplies, they all had to be purple or she wouldn’t use them. When she was nine years old, she begged me to paint the walls of her bedroom purple. One day, I took her to Home Depot after school to look at all the different shades.” He laughs, musing, “Didn’t know there could be so goddamn many of them. Anyhow, I told her I’d think ‘bout it. I went back to the store the next day while she was at school, bought a couple cans of the lavender shade I knew she’d like the best and by the time she got home, I had it all painted for her,” he explains, a sadness glazing over the fondness of the memory. “She loved purple. It was the color of the t-shirt she was wearin’ the last time we were together on the night of the outbreak.”

Your heart sinks. “Joel, you don’t have to tell me—”

“S’alright, peach. I wanna tell you ‘bout her,” Joel assures you, reaching out for your hand and taking it in his own. “I trust you, baby. Trust you more than enough to tell you ‘bout Sarah.”

Nodding, you lace his fingers together with your own.

“I was never married,” he starts to say, knowing whether or not he’d also had a wife before the world ended would be a question on your mind—that’s if it wasn’t already. “I was never with Sarah’s mom. I met her in high school and we’d been friends up through senior year of college. We started to date then, but after a year, we realized we weren’t a good fit together. We broke up and a couple months later, we found out she was pregnant with Sarah. Her mom and me, well we both made an agreement to co-parent her as best as we could. Just a few months shy of our daughter’s first birthday, she realized she couldn’t handle raisin’ a child at our age. I tried real hard to convince her to stick around and keep tryin’ but I couldn’t get her to stay. She bailed out on me, but the worst part of it was that she bailed out on Sarah.”

He stops for a moment and you give his hand a gentle, but firm, encouraging squeeze.

“As if bein’ a father to a baby girl didn’t scare the shit of me, being a single father made it all feel so much scarier, y’know? I was young, in my early twenties. I was always workin’ so damn much, tryin’ to build my construction business with Tommy. Now I had this tiny little person to take care of, and I honestly didn’t know how the fuck I was gonna do it.” Joel pauses, his sixth sense detecting that your knees have started hurting from the position you’re in. He closes his legs together and pulls you to sit on his lap. “It wasn’t easy, and I probably made a lot more mistakes than I’d like to admit. But somehow, I made it work and it turned out alright. Sarah was my best friend in the whole entire world. Hell, I loved her more than fuckin’ life itself. She could be a handful, but she was perfect in every single way. She was my sweet little butterfly, my ray of sunshine on even the darkest of days.”

Swallowing harshly, you ask, “What happened to her, Joel?”

Joel sighs, resting a hand on your bare thigh. His fingers skim the scalloped hem of your floral shorts. “It was the first night of the outbreak. We were tryin’ to get out of Austin. Me, Sarah, and Tommy. We didn’t know where the hell we were gonna go or what we were gonna do, but we just needed to get far away from the city. We got separated at one point when our pickup truck got into an awful wreck. I had Sarah in my arms ‘cause she couldn’t walk. She’d broken her ankle in the crash. Tommy told me to get her to the river where she’d be safer, said he’d find his way over there to meet us.”

Your heart begins to pound. Part of you almost doesn’t want to hear how his story is going to end—because in a way, you already know how it’s going to end. But if Joel is telling you about Sarah, it’s for a reason. He’s opening up to you, the way you’ve opened up to him. He’s sharing his heartbreaking loss because he trusts you—and Joel Miller doesn’t trust anyone that’s not his family.

Draping an arm around his shoulders, your fingers toy with the curls at the nape of his neck as you anxiously wait for him to recount the event that follows next, the event that will surely shatter your heart into pieces.

“The streets were crawlin’ with infected. One caught us in its sights and chased after us. Tried to dodge it through a buildin’ but it followed us, runnin’ us out into a field just a mile from the river. I didn’t think we were gonna make it—then, a soldier came outta nowhere and shot it dead. It felt like some kinda fuckin’ miracle. I thought we were lucky. I thought we were gonna get some help.” His voice grows hoarse, thickening with emotions he’s not too sure he can hold back this time. “I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was given the order by his command to kill us both, even though we weren’t sick. I tried tellin’ him over and over we weren’t infected, but it didn’t matter. He shot at us. He grazed me in my side, but Sarah—he got her. Got her multiple times. I was foolish enough to think it hadn’t been fatal. I tried gettin’ her up, begged Tommy to help me—but it was useless. Sarah died in my arms. Took her very last breath in some field outside of Austin.”

“God,” you whisper shakily, a sharp, painful ache shooting through your chest at the thought of him cradling his daughter’s lifeless body in his arms, her purple shirt soaked in crimson. “Joel, I don’t—I don’t even know what to say. I’m so sorry.” Willing yourself to keep it together for his sake, you hold the back of his neck in your hand, fingers coaxing him to look up and meet your gaze.

“After that, I just didn’t see any point in carryin’ on anymore. I’d lost the most important thing in the fuckin’ world to me. I couldn’t see in the darkness now that my little ray of sunshine was gone. So, a couple nights later, I picked up my gun and tried to end my own life,” he confesses. Even though it’s been over twenty years, traces of shame still linger behind. “Put the barrel of a pistol to my temple. Told myself it was what I wanted to do and I pulled the trigger.”

Without thinking, you reach towards the scar on his right temple with your opposite hand, the one you’d noticed for the first time before he had kissed you in Ranger’s stall. You lightly brush your fingertips over the jagged, raised patch of skin. You’d wanted to ask him about it on several different occasions, but never had the courage to actually do it. Now that you know he’d gotten it from his own hand, it just makes the entire thing all that much more heart wrenching.

“M’sure you’ve guessed it by now, but I missed. I flinched and I missed. For twenty fuckin’ years, all I could do was wish I hadn’t missed. Spent a long time hatin’ myself for missin’ what should’ve been the easiest goddamn shot of my entire life. Then, Ellie came along.” Joel moves his hand, gingerly taking your chin between his thumb and index finger. “And not long after her, I met you, sweet girl. The two of you came at me outta nowhere.” He can’t help but chuckle, remembering his first encounter with Ellie, the way she had flown at him with her switchblade clutched in hand only to end up thrown against the wall. “You both came outta left fuckin’ field and brought out sides of me I thought had been dead and buried for years now. You and her, you mean more to me than I can fuckin’ explain. You’re the most important things in the world to me now.”

Your breath catches in the back of your throat at his declaration. It’s not like you didn’t know Joel cared about you. Of course you know that. But the extent to which he did had been something of a mystery, at least up until this very moment.

“I didn’t know I could feel this way ‘bout anyone again,” Joel admits. He slides his arm around you, pulling you closer to him. “Openin’ up my heart to Ellie, that was one thing. But openin’ it up to you? That’s been somethin’ else, peach. I don’t think you even realize the hold you’ve got over me and my heart. What really fuckin’ gets me is that you don’t even gotta try. All you gotta do is look at me with those eyes and give me that pretty smile of yours, and I’m fuckin’ done for. You’ve got me wrapped all the way around your little finger and then back again, baby. Y’need to know that I’d do just ‘bout fuckin’ anythin’ for you. You understand that?”

You stare at him like a deer caught in headlights.

“Joel,” you stammer his name, your nerve endings feeling like they’ve been lit on fire. “You really need to stop talking like that.”

“Why’s that?”

You don’t even think—you just blurt the words out before you can stop them.

“Because I think I’m falling in love with you.”

The tables turn and it’s now Joel who is at a complete loss for words.

Embarrassed by your own admission, you begin to ramble nervously. “Look, I know it’s ridiculous. We haven’t known each other long, but I can’t help it. And maybe it’s for the best if you know where I stand and how I feel. You still have time to back out of this—”

Still holding your chin, Joel carefully brings your face toward his, silencing you by slotting his lips to yours. He moves to cup the side of your face in his palm, forgetting about any kind of softness as he greedily licks into your mouth. He’s kissed you plenty of times before and you thought you knew all of his kisses well enough by now, but you’d been wrong. This one is different from all the rest. His lips move against yours in a possessive manner, but not the kind of possessive you’re used with Luke. No, with Joel, it isn’t a possessive stemming from control and abuse, rather, it’s out of pure need, want, and desire. Even as his mouth devours yours, there’s still a sweet, loving tenderness to it.

“Joel,” you whimper against him. “I—”

You falter, unable to say those three words. There’s something holding you back—maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s knowing that once you say them, you can’t take them back. Not that you would. But it’s a big step, and you’re not quite ready to say it, even if it is how you feel.

And he feels the same.

He deepens the embrace.

I love you.

Joel might not be ready to say it either, but he hopes the way he’s holding you and swelling your lips with his puts your mind at ease and reassures you that you’re not the only one who’s falling.

You shift yourself in his lap, moving to straddle him, your legs on either side of his thighs as your mouths remain fused to one another. He reaches and grabs for every single part of you that he can, running his hands all over you from your shoulders down to your hips, dragging lower until they’re unabashedly cupping the delicious curves of your ass. You whimper in his mouth again and the moment your lips part, his tongue takes advantage, darting inside to start the heated, unhinged dance with your own.

You clutch at his shoulders, your fingers curling around tight around fistfuls of his t-shirt in an attempt, and a very desperate one at that, to keep yourself planted on the ground. You hold on trying to keep yourself tethered to planet earth, but with the way his searing hot mouth moves with yours in perfect unison, it’s impossible. You’re free falling without a safety net, and you don’t even care.

Seating yourself completely on his lap, you feel the bulge of his cock straining against the zipper of his jeans and the wetness pools between your thighs.

Letting go of his shirt, you reach around him and bury your fingers in his curls, lightly tipping his head back as your tongue explores his mouth like it’s the first time all over again. Joel tastes like the sweet fruit you’d shared, a strange mix when combined with the mint from his toothpaste. But there’s something else he tastes like and you’ve tasted it several times before, however even after all this time, you still can’t figure out what it could be. It tastes like Joel. That’s the only way you can think of to describe it. It just tastes like Joel and it’s addicting and you want it on your lips for the rest of your life.

After a minute, you and Joel finally force yourselves apart, your lungs and his begging for oxygen.

“Joel,” you choke his name between heavy pants for air.

“Baby.” He’s about as breathless as you are, possibly even more. “Baby, please. I’ve gotta have you,” he pleads, hands now splayed on the small of your back. “Please. I fuckin’ need you. Or else m’gonna lose my goddamn fuckin’ mind.”

“Barn,” you rasp out, releasing your grip on his hair.

Confused, Joel’s eyebrows knit together. “Barn?”

“Barn,” you repeat as you climb off of him.

You’re unsteady—incredibly unsteady. Knees wobbling, legs trembling and feeling like they’re seconds away from giving out underneath you. But you hold a hand out to Joel, exhaling a tiny, labored grunt as you help him up off the ground. Grabbing his blanket, you give it a shake before taking his hand in yours and leading him around to the front of the barn. Dropping his hand, you use both of yours to slide one of the double doors open an inch or two and take a peek inside to make sure the coast is clear. You then slide the door open a bit further, just wide enough for you and Joel to slip inside.

“Wait a minute,” he chuckles as he watches you slide the door closed. “How’d y’know it would be unlocked?”

“I didn’t know it would be unlocked. I was just hoping we’d get lucky,” you admit, beckoning him for him to follow you. “Come on.”

Through various cracks and gaps and open windows, enough moonlight filters into the barn, shining a decent amount of light into the structure—enough so that it’s not pitch black and you two are left stumbling around in complete darkness.

Joel glances around. The last time he’d been inside the barn was back in June for the summer party. He remembered it having been cleaned and cleared out for the event and now, two months later, it’s packed to the rafters with countless bales of hay. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have been surprised. But as he walks, piles of loose dried grass and herbs crunch underneath his boots and he remarks, “There’s fuckin’ hay everywhere, darlin’.”

“Um, yeah. What else do you keep in a barn?” you jeer lightly, earning yourself a small scoff from him. “Hey, at least they don’t keep sheep and other livestock in here, Joel. Besides, beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

Joel snorts, masking his laughter at the thought of walking into a barn full of animals instead of an absurd amount of hay. “Yeah, guess that’s fair enough,” he concedes. “Might kill the mood if that were the case.”

You lead him over towards one of the far corners of the barn, your eyes falling to a large, almost bed sized pile of loose hay. Draping the blanket over it, you stand upright and then freeze, your body flooding with nerves once you realize what’s inevitably about to happen between you and Joel.

You hadn’t done anything with him since the night he’d pleasured you out on his front porch. Of course you wanted more, so much more, but that doesn’t make you any less nervous. You’re so much younger, hardly have any experience—you’ve only ever been with one man, and even then, it hardly counts. It’s been such a long time since you’d found sex something you wanted, something you enjoyed. Whenever Luke touches you, it makes your skin crawl, but when Joel Miller touches you?

It sets you ablaze, leaves you needing more of it. Of him.

Part of you wonders if your touch makes him feel the same. What if it doesn’t?

His arms wrap around your waist from behind and you exhale the breath you’d been holding shakily.

“What’s the matter, darlin’?” Joel murmurs softly into your hair, sensing your pensiveness.

“I’m just really nervous,” you blurt out.

“S’okay,” he says, quietly. “M’kinda nervous too.”

You’re slightly taken aback. “Really? What are you nervous about?”

Joel rests his chin on your shoulder. “We’ve both crossed a lot of lines already, peach. But this one? S’gonna be the one we can’t come back from,” he tells you. “Might be what seals the deal between us, y’know?”

Slowly, you turn around to face him. “Yeah, I know,” you respond, peeking up at him through your eyelashes. “And I know I should care, but I don’t. It’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“S’wrong,” he agrees with a tight nod. “But I don’t care either, sweet girl.”

Before you can utter another word about it, Joel crashes his mouth onto yours. He snakes one of his arms around you and lifts the other, cupping the back of your neck as he ravages you with his lips and tongue, kissing you with such urgency, such desperation that it melts you into a whimpering mess in his arms. Your mind is hopelessly lost in a thick, cloudy haze—all you can focus on is breathing him into your lungs like he’s the air you need to stay alive. His hands fall down to the hem of your white camisole and his mouth abandons yours to pull it over your head. He discards it, tossing it over his shoulder somewhere behind him. He then pushes your shorts and underwear down your legs and you kick them off along with your shoes. You’re now standing before him completely naked.

Desperate to feel his skin against yours, you take the hem of his t-shirt and clumsily tug it over his head, eliciting a laugh from him. You throw it somewhere over his shoulder to join yours and your hands eagerly meet his warm, bare chest for the first time. Biting down on your bottom lip, your trembling fingertips brush over several bumps and rough, raised patches of skin that you know have to be his scars. He has so many, and all you want to do is kiss each and every single one of them, but Joel has other ideas. He pulls you into his arms, flush against his chest, and he holds you tightly.

More often than not, Joel feels as if you’re not real—worries that you’re just a perfect, flawless figment of his own imagination. He doesn’t know whether or not you’ve caught onto what he’s been doing, but he steals moments like these whenever he can, moments where he stands there and takes you into his arms and holds you without saying a word.

It’s his own way of reminding himself that not only are you real, but you’re real and you’re his. Joel doesn’t care about the fucking ring on your finger. He doesn’t care that you’re promised to another man. He doesn’t care that he can only hold you in secret, that he can’t walk next you down the streets of Jackson in broad daylight and hold your hand while doing so. He doesn’t get to share a roof or a bed with you and he doesn’t get to join you for dinner at the table every night—maybe this isn’t how he preferred things to be, but he just doesn’t care.

It doesn’t matter to him.

Nothing matters to him except for one thing.

Your heart belongs to him. It bleeds with his name.

You’re his. You’re all fucking his, and only his, in all the ways that truly matter.

And he is yours.

Joel chokes out a strained groan as you press your plush lips softly against his neck, your tongue swiping across his pulse point. You firmly suckle his flesh, hard enough to break the tiny blood vessels underneath his skin and once you’ve left your mark, you trail your lips down his neck, eliciting another strangled noise from him. You sweep them over his collarbone, then down the length of his chest, showing each scar you come across with the affection it deserves. Your teeth nip and scrape at the softness of his belly and you quickly discover that it’s one of your favorite parts of him. Lowering yourself to your knees, your nose skims over the trail of dark, coarse hair below his navel and your fingers suggestively skim the waistband of his jeans.

His eyes widen. “You ain’t gotta do that—”

“I already told you, Joel. I want to,” you assure him, your voice low, sexy, filled with a lust for him and only for him. You make yourself comfortable, a challenging feat since you’d overshot the blanket and are now kneeling directly on the itchy, dried grass. It doesn’t matter, though—you’re more than willing to deal with discomfort for him. You place a hand on his hip and peer up at him. Your eyes meet his in the milky white moonlight. “You made me feel good. Please, just let me do the same for you?”

The nod he gives you is so subtle, so quick, that you almost don’t catch it.

He’d grown tense beneath your touch.

You can’t help but laugh softly—not at him, but at the fact that he doesn’t realize that pleasuring him isn’t a want for you, it’s a need.

Gently, you pat his hip. “Relax, honey,” you encourage him, surprised at how the pet name rolls off your tongue with such natural ease.

Your hands reach for the button of his jeans and you swiftly undo it, then tug at his zipper. You start pulling the denim down his legs. Joel helps you, kicking off his worn, black leather boots before stepping out of his jeans, kicking the article of clothing off to the side. Heart racing in anticipation, you slide his dark boxer briefs down his legs, but stop short, breath hitching the second you feast your eyes on his cock. You’ve felt him through his clothes before, knew he was well endowed, but you’re still shocked to see just how big he really is. The mere thought of his hard, thick length filling you up and stretching your cunt makes your entire body ache with need. You can’t be certain how he’ll fit, but truth be told, he could tear you in half and you would thank him for it.

Joel draws in a quick, sharp breath when he feels your small hand wrap around his base. Just as fast as he’d breathed it in, it’s knocked back out of his lungs when your other hand joins in and you run your fingertips along the thick, prominent vein on the underside of his cock. He twitches in your hands—you’ve hardly touched him, haven’t even put your mouth on him, and he’s already teetering on the edge.

“Christ, baby. You’re gonna be the fuckin’ death of me, I hope y’know that,” Joel croaks, tilting his head back to look up at the rafters as he silently wills himself not to explode too soon. His hips involuntarily jerk forward as you lick his tip, collecting his leaking precome on your tongue before wrapping your soft lips around it. Another loud, ragged groan tears from the back of his throat as you take him in slowly, inch by inch, further into your warm, wet mouth. Your own moaning around him causes a vibrating sensation, making it harder for Joel to keep himself from spilling into your mouth.

“Fuck, peach,” he curses, feeling the head of his cock nudge the back of your throat. He’s more than a mouthful for you, but you accept the challenge with eagerness and take him in further, gagging around him as drool dribbles down the sides of your chin. You, the same woman who just moments ago had said she was nervous about being intimate with him—whoever that woman had been, she was long fucking gone.

Joel’s eyes flit down and he sinks his teeth hard into his lower lip. He can see your silhouette as you work him with that pretty little mouth of yours. One glance is all he can handle before he’s squeezing his eyes shut, the pressure building in his lower abdomen and already dangerously close to reaching its peak. If Joel so much as looks at you again, he’ll come down your throat, and that’s not where he’s planning on finishing tonight.

You bob your head back and forth on his cock, your eyes watering each time he slips past the back of your throat—your cheeks hollow as you suck him greedily, and you alternate between that and stroking his long, thick shaft, your tongue swirling around his head.

Without opening his eyes, Joel reaches down with his hand and cradles the back of your head in his palm. The sounds that fill the barn are nothing short of obscene. His grunts and groans mixed together with the sounds of the moans you’d release in between your wet and sloppy slurping. He forces his eyes open and bravely takes another look at you, his heart slamming painfully against his sternum as you move your head faster, chasing his release as if you’re chasing your own.

“Fuck, baby—wait, stop. Need you to stop.” Joel’s hand leaves the back of your head and he cups your jaw, gently, but firmly, forcing you to release his cock from your mouth with an audible pop. “Ain’t gonna last much longer, not if you keep on like that.”

“Isn’t that the whole point?” you ask, smirking up at him as you wipe the mixture of his precome and your saliva away from your chin with the back of your hand.

Joel leans over and takes your arms, effortlessly yanking you up to your feet. His hand dives between your thighs to get a feel—to find whether you’re ready to take him or not. He slips two fingers between your soaked folds without so much as a warning, causing you to gasp out and grip his biceps, your fingernails digging into the firm muscle. Joel withdraws his hand from your cunt, admiring the way his digits come back coated with your slick. He looks at you, his eyes locking with yours as he lifts his hand to his mouth and slowly licks his fingers clean.

That alone nearly makes you come undone, almost makes you melt into a pathetic, whimpering mess at his feet.

“Joel,” you say his name pleadingly. “Please.”

Sliding his fingers out of his mouth, he steps forwards and curls them around your wrist. “What is it, my sweet little peach? Hm? What do you want?”

“You. I want you,” you answer. You’re quick to correct yourself. “No, I need you. I fucking need you—I need you more than anything I’ve ever needed in my life, Joel.”

Leaning down, Joel skims the tip of his nose against your cheek before bringing it down along your jawline. “Where, darlin’?” he whispers huskily, sending a shiver up your spine. “Where do you need me, baby?”

Your mouth falls open slightly unable to say it. You don’t know why you’re suddenly shy, flustered as if you just hadn’t been down on your knees gagging around his cock.

“Tell me, peach,” he coaxes you gently with another low whisper. “Tell me where you need me. Tell me where you need my cock, sweetheart. Need to hear you say it.”

“Inside me.” Blazing heat floods your face. “I need you inside of me—I need you to fuck me. Please, Joel.”

“So polite ‘bout it, too,” he remarks. “What a good girl.”

Though he says it in a teasing manner, his praise nearly makes you collapse.

“You like that,” he realizes, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “Yeah, baby? Y’like it when I call you a good girl?”

“Fuck, I—yes, I do,” you confess.

“C’mere.” Joel wraps an arm around your waist, hand splayed over your back as he lowers you down onto the blanket. He follows suit. You both let out breathy laughs at the way your naked bodies sink down into the pile of hay. Propping himself up with his arm, Joel looks down at you, his smile fading as a serious expression crosses his features. He tucks a lock of hair behind your ear, finger grazing the silkiness of your cheek. “Y’sure ‘bout this, peach? Ain’t too late to stop.”

Smiling softly, you lift a hand to the side of his face, your fingers stroking his graying beard. “I’ve never been so sure about anything, Joel,” you promise him. “If you could take a peek into my mind, you would see how bad I want this, how bad I need this—how bad I need you. I don’t want to stop.” And you don’t just mean the sex. You don’t any of this to stop—the secret, late night meetings, the stolen kisses, the illicit affair. “I’m sure about this. I’m sure about you, Joel.”

That’s all he needs to hear.

Joel reaches down between your bodies, gripping his base, pumping his throbbing cock in his fist before lining himself up at your sopping entrance. Adrenaline courses through your veins—every nerve ending in your body is going up in flames. You spread your legs wider for him, hoping he’ll understand the nonverbal cue. He does. He begins to ease himself into your cunt and you hook a leg around his waist, encouraging him to go deeper. The barn fills with the sound of his grunt and your loud cry at the initial stretch. He sinks his cock further into you until he bottoms out and you cry out again, feeling a delicious burning sensation as he cradles his hips between your thighs.

“M’gonna need you to relax a little sweetheart,” he whispers gently, ceasing his movements to give your body a chance to adjust to him. Joel takes advantage of having you pinned underneath him with your head thrown back and his lips latch onto your neck, hungrily. He fervently kisses his way down the column of your throat, nips his way to your collarbone—but unlike you, he’s careful to do so without leaving any kind of mark behind. He would give anything to have the freedom to leave traces of his loving all over you. Maybe it’s the heat of the moment and the way he’s buried inside you to the hilt that brings out the primal in him, but Joel wouldn’t mind seeing you walk around Jackson covered in his love bites. He wants everyone to know he’s the one who’d left them behind, needs them to understand that you’re his. But that isn’t possible. Joel lifts his head from the hollow of your neck and nibbles lightly at your chin. “You alright, baby?”

Forcing your eyes open, you lift your head and bring yourself to look at him. At first, you feel discomfort, but after a minute, your body finally relaxes around him and it subsides. It’s replaced with the burning desire to feel more of him. The pretty glow coming in from outside the barn illuminates his face and you smile. “I’m better than alright. I’m perfect,” you assure him. You place a hand delicately on his chest, feeling his heart thrum hard against your fingertips. “This is perfect.”

Joel kisses the tip of your nose. He slides out of you slowly, then right back into you in an experimental thrust that brings your body off the blanket, your back arching in sheer pleasure. It’s such a deliciously tight fit, and he almost can’t believe how fucking good it feels to be sheathed in your taut heat. He drops his head, taking your breast into his mouth, tongue swirling around your hardened nipple as he bucks his hips once more. He’s being careful. Too careful.

“Joel—I need you to move,” you gasp. You drag a hand down his chest and over his soft stomach, letting your fingernails rake lightly over his flushed skin. It’s warm to the touch, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. “Joel, please. Fuck me.”

Thankfully, you don’t have to tell him twice.

Joel releases the pebbled flesh from his mouth with a loud, lewd pop. He pulls his cock out of your dribbling pussy, then slams back into you with such force that he places a hand on the crown of your head, keeping you in place underneath him on the blanket. You wrap your own leg around him, locking your ankles together, your heels digging into the firm curve of his ass. You lift your hips just as he rolls his own right into them. The new angle gives Joel the opportunity to fuck you even deeper and he hits the sensitive, spongy spot inside you, making you see stars. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you hold onto him, moans you’ve never heard come out of your own mouth before ringing in your ears and in his. He starts picking up his pace.

“Baby.” He’s breathless and speaks between every snap of his hips. “Fuck, y’feel s’good—s’tight around me—”

“Don’t stop, Joel. God, please don’t fucking stop,” you plead him, your finger burying themselves in his hair. “Keep going, just like that—fuck, you feel so fucking good inside me—”

You bite down on your bottom lip, adoring how Joel squeezes his dark eyes shut each and every single time the head of his cock brushes that one particularly deep spot inside of you. Knowing that you and your body has this kind of an effect on him, it gives you a boost of confidence. You’ve spent the last couple of years allowing a pathetic excuse of a man—if one could even call him that—pick on you, say things about your body, and make you feel like your inability to conceive a child made you defective. Worthless, even. And here’s a real man, one who makes you feel beautiful with the way he talks to you, the way he kisses you, touches you, and fucks you. You’re not perfect by any means, but Joel Miller makes you feel what your own husband doesn’t.

He makes you feel like you’re enough. More than enough.

The barn fills with a combination of moaning, panting, and the sound of damp skin slapping against damp skin.

Glancing down at you, Joel shakes his head and warns, “Ain’t gonna last much longer, baby. M’so goddamn close.”

An unexpected wave of courage washes over you. Planting your hands firmly on his chest, you take him by complete surprise and slide out from underneath him. A small grunt escapes him as you push him onto his back. Amused, you can’t help but giggle at the shocked expression on his face as you guide him to lie down on the flannel blanket. Eager to see his reaction, you keep your eyes trained on his face as you straddle his lap. You grip the base of his cock in your hand and then slowly sink down onto him, your cunt greedily squeezing him as you slide down until you’re fully seated.

Joel’s jaw falls slack. It’s the most stunning sight he’s ever seen.

You, completely naked on top of him, your pouty lips plump and swollen from his kisses. Your smooth, supple skin glows in the moonlight shining through the open window behind you. All while every inch of Joel’s cock was buried deep inside of you, head nudging at your cervix. Eyes glimmering devilishly, the sexiest little smirk tugs at the corners of your mouth. “Like what you see?”

He tries to speak, but he can’t.

You’ve rendered him speechless.

Grabbing his hands in yours, you guide them to your hips. His blood roars in his ears and his fingers dig into the pillowy soft flesh, holding on as you begin to rock them back and forth. You throw your head back, your hair spilling over your shoulder. The friction of your clit against his pelvis heightens your pleasure. Joel had thought he would be the one to topple over the edge first, but he’d been wrong.

Eyes pinching shut, you start bouncing yourself on his cock, your desperation mounting. You feel the tension between your hips coiling back tightly, ready to snap forward.

“Fuck, Joel—I’m gonna—I’m so fucking close.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Fuckin’ come for me, baby,” Joel encourages you, his fingers digging even harder into your hips. One of his hands abandons your side and he reaches up and gently takes your slackened jaw in the palm of his hand. He coaxes you to look down at him. “Need you to be a good girl and look at me, peach,” he instructs you, slipping his thumb between your parted lips. “Need to see that pretty face of yours when you come all over my cock, sweetheart.”

“Oh fuck—fuckfuckfuck!”

Crying out, you unravel and fall apart all over him, the ecstasy blurring the edges of your vision.

It doesn’t take Joel much longer to follow. He lets out a low, guttural growl, choking out a string of profanities as he slams you down onto his lap and holds you in place, spurts of warm come coating your velvet walls. Your pussy squeezes him, draining him of every last drop.

You collapse forward onto him in a sweaty, whimpering mess and he wraps his arms around you. With him still inside you, you both lay there and try to catch your breaths as the high slowly but surely begins to wear off.

After a few minutes, Joel pulls out of you and he shifts your bodies, moving you so you’re now laying beside him. Tucking you against his side, he slides his arm around your shoulders and pulls you even closer. His other hand finds one of yours and he takes it, bringing them both to rest on his chest.

“You alright?” he asks you, lacing his fingers together with yours.

“I’m great,” you answer him tiredly, prompting him to chuckle. “What about you?”

Joel strokes at your hair. “Never been better, sweet girl.”

You groan. “Joel, don’t do that,” you mumble into his shoulder. “You’re going to put me right to sleep.”

He laughs again. “We’ve still got a bit more time, y’know. If you’re tired, you can take a quick nap. I can wake you up in ‘bout an hour when it’s time to head home.”

“No, that’s okay,” you decline the offer, worried he would accidentally fall asleep too. “I really wish we could sleep together—I mean, actually sleep together. In an actual bed. Not having to worry about anything. Just like normal couples do.”

“Well, we ain’t exactly a normal couple, darlin’.”

“No, we’re definitely not,” you murmur. You don’t even realize how sad you’d sounded until you feel Joel give your shoulders a comforting squeeze.

Neither of you say anything else about it as you spend the next hour laying there, tangled up in each other’s embrace, waiting until it was time to go your separate ways.

1K notes · View notes

sohnric · 8 months

Text

millennium bug – e. sohn

pairing: eric sohn x fem! reader

genre: 90s au, twenty-five twenty-one au, brother's best friend au, childhood friends au, fluff, slice of life, coming of age. older brother! sunwoo. essentially just eric being baek yijin. oct-nov scenes inspired by weak hero class 1. no plot just vibes im sorry

warnings: minimal swearing and thats all lol

word count: 19k

a/n: posting a fic for a new fandom is always so scary pls be nice to me deobiblr bc im literally abt to cry. also yes i am calling this a 2521 au bc the plot is so heavily inspired it might just be one. a special thank you goes out to @csenke for dragging me into stanning this group i am enjoying myself 🤞

there are some pros and cons to not having friends growing up. cons: you're always forced to tag along with your brother and his group wherever he goes. pros: his childhood best friend is kind of hot.

JUNE OF 1999

Being Kim Sunwoo’s younger sister is no bed of roses sometimes.

Sure, you get the occasional excitement of having him bring you rollerskating with you down the hill or the ever so rare moments of him defending you in front of your mother when you two have done something wrong (while never saying he was in on the bad act as well, of course), but more than often, you are met with his disgusted looks and insults whenever the two years older boy passes by your room and casually bangs at the door just to spite you.

His snarky looks are especially ones to remember. Maybe it’s because he offers them to you often– much like in this very moment, completely unprovoked, and completely not by your fault.

“But mum–”

“I already told you, Sunwoo,” your mother looks at him with a stern look in her eye, the one that makes chills run down your spine, “you can go if you take Y/N with you.”

“But nobody’s bringing their sister! Mum, come on–”

“Take it or leave it, young man.”

And see, your brother may be 19 years old, but he’s still in need of getting permission to leave the house if it includes an overnight stay. It’s an unspoken rule he always follows, since he’s usually granted the right to leave, but the result of his conversation was different than what he expected this time. And see, you may be just two years younger than him (one year left until you are an adult), but even though your mother is too busy to take care of you and entertain your slowly adultling self on most days because of her highly demanding job, she always makes sure that you don’t stay alone for long, and that’s exactly why (you realize, contrary to your brother) she insists on making you tag along on Sunwoo’s trip to the beach house with his friends.

The male grunts and turns on his heel, not giving your mother another response– and with this, you know she won. And that means you’ll have to pack your bag soon, because you know that there’s no way Sunwoo would miss going to the beach house with his friends– even if it meant making his little sister tag along.

And sure enough, Lee Juyeon’s minivan pulls up into your driveway only a few hours later, and the sound of the honking outside is enough for your older brother to aggressively drag you outside of the house, shutting the door behind you and hollering an angry “Bye mum!” to your mother. Your figure is handled with the least amount of care possible as you’re thrown towards the white van, the door opened and 5 heads already peeking out with expecting eyes, waiting for your brother’s arrival.

“My mum made my stupid sister go with me, so I hope we have space for one more,” Sunwoo huffs as he throws his bag into the trunk, slamming it with more force than was necessary (boy does he know how to throw a scene), an encouraging voice of none other than Juyeon– the driver himself– landing in your ear.

“Sure, just hop in!”

With that, your feet finally unglue themselves off the ground and bring you into the vehicle. You’re familiar with his friends– since a scenario like this hasn’t happened for the first time and you had to spend your fair time with Sunwoo’s circle growing up, mainly because you never really had many friends yourself. You’re not close with any of them, though, and you’re sure you haven’t seen half of them for ages.

Lee Juyeon is the responsible one of the group. You’re comfortable with the fact that he’s the driver, since you’re not entirely sure if you’d trust any of the other men in this space behind the wheel (you fear the day your brother gets a driver’s license. You'd bet a million dollars that he’ll die while driving recklessly one day). Next to him on the passenger’s seat is Choi Chanhee, his best friend, carrying a map in his hands and twirling it in all possible directions to get his friend on the right track. In the three-seat behind those two is Ju Haknyeon, Ji Changmin and your brother himself, and in the very back of the whole van, almost in the trunk, you’re sat next to Eric Sohn– your brother’s childhood best friend.

“Hi guys,” you offer a greeting to all of them, settling into the uncomfortable leather seat (that’s peeling off, just by the way), watching as the rest of the men pay you no mind and ignore your voice, falling into a comfortable conversation with each other.

Sighing, because this always happens– your brother gets too annoyed because he has to bring you with him all the time, and you imagine his friends aren’t fond of the fact either– you settle deeper into the seat and cross your hands on your chest, looking outside of the window. You can’t imagine enjoying your trip now, since you feel like you’re a nuisance, a child they have to take care of (yes, it embarrasses you just the tiniest bit, you have to admit. Although, you do enjoy getting out of the house from time to time), and the fact that your feelings were probably more than justified and also true has you pouting, an unsatisfied feeling weighing at your lungs.

“Hi,” a voice resonates from your side, the sight of a smiling Eric peering at you taking you off guard. You didn’t expect anyone to react to your greeting– not so delayed anyway– and the sight of your brother’s best friend carrying on in the conversation with you has you shocked beyond belief. “Excited?”

Finding yourself hum in agreement– how much you are still excited for the pool and for the sun, you’re not really sure– and although you are upset, something about his open and nice demeanor has you visibly relaxing, the sparkles inviting themselves back into your eyes. “I’ve never been to the beach,” you admit, seeing Eric gasp at you in surprise.

“Really?” he asks. “I go every year with my parents.”

“Well,” you hum, “you know how my mother is…” you sigh, chewing on the inside of your cheek. It’s easier to joke about it than to actually let the fact get to you– with your mother being the main news anchor, she is too busy to actually go on trips and form bonds with her own children sometimes. That’s why you spent most of your childhood at Eric’s family’s house in the first place– this is what made you the closest with Sunwoo’s same aged friend. His parents were nice enough to let you stay over and have sleepovers whenever your mum had to leave suddenly and take week-long trips abroad, or have emergency shifts during late evenings.

Eric hums, sympathizing with you. “Well, at least you get to experience it now!”

“Yeah,” you awkwardly nod, playing with the hem of your jean shorts. It’s the shorts you made yourself by cutting the legs off your favorite pants after you grew out of them and they got too short, and they’re starting to look a little worn-out now. Maybe you should beg your mum to get you some new clothing.

The conversation between the boys grows in volume, doing nothing to help you to relax in the crowded vehicle. You can’t really find a place to fit yourself in and talk, the topics too unfamiliar for you and the feeling of not even being welcome in the discussion sitting heavy on your chest, when a finger bears itself to the flesh of your thigh, making you snap your head around to gape at the source of the contact. Eric looks at you with a boyish grin, sparkles evident in his eyes.

“Wanna see something?” he asks.

“Sure.”

The male digs around his backpack, hands searching through the contents of his bag for only a couple of seconds– since he’s the neat one, contrary to your messy brother– before he takes out a small gadget: a square with a little screen on top, a silver, circular button space sitting big in the very middle of the device. Eric throws the thing into your lap, smiling when you take it into your hands and examine it with curious eyes.

“Have you seen one before? My dad got it for me last week,” he boosts, satisfied with your reaction to it.

Your mother’s job pays quite well– meaning that you usually have the latest gadgets, the latest trends– but if you’re being honest, you haven’t seen one of these in real life before. Yes, you caught a glimpse of an ad for it in the town center, on one of the big billboards while passing by to get to school in the morning, so you know that it’s an MP3 player, but still; this was your first time touching one and examining it in real life.

“How does it work?” you ask, watching as the boy scoots from his seat to the middle one, so he is now sitting directly next to you, before he takes out wired headphones from the first department of his backpack and turns the little square over in his hands, finding where the jack goes.

“You put those in,” he says, plugging in the headphones, “and then you press this…” he explains, taking the device out of your hand and pushing on the power button for a few seconds, “and then it should play.”

Watching him with expecting eyes, the boy finally puts the MP3 player back into your hold. Then, his fingers swiftly put the respective earphones into your ears– like you’d do to a little kid that has no idea how they work, making you a little flushed at the action– and after that, you’re left with the sound of an unfamiliar song playing in your ears, making the sound of the chatter in the van completely tune out. Eric keeps on watching you, a sense of pride in his eyes as you nod at him, all excited with the new explory, before he takes one of the earphones out of your ear, grinning.

“Cool, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “The song is good,” you dumbly say, watching as the boy next to you pridefully nods at the compliment, resting his back against the car seat.

“It’s the H.O.T album. My dad says they’re good,” he mumbles, moving the headphone he took from you and placing it into his ear, making you nod at him in acknowledgement. The action has your insides bubble with disappointment, thinking that the fun is over as you reach for the other earphone as well, offering it to the male.

Eric looks at you with a shocked pout, shaking his head. “No, we can share!” he says, pointing towards your ear. “If you want, of course.”

The action has you smiling, a shy nod escaping out of you as you reach and put the earphone back into your ear, letting yourself fall deeper into the car seat, listening to the song from Eric’s MP3 player. You’re grateful for his presence– he didn’t have to keep up a conversation with you. He could ignore you, just like the rest of his friend group always has. Maybe it was something about the two of you growing up together that always made the boy at least a bit more affectionate towards you than the rest.

You spend the car ride to the beach house with Eric leaning on your side, listening to music and his occasional blabbering about how his previous days went.

Somehow, you're glad the seat beside him was the only vacant one when you arrived to the vehicle.

YOUR SEVENTH BIRTHDAY, 1989

You don't quite remember when you met Eric for the first time, if you’re being completely honest. The first memory you have of him is of your seventh birthday party, although you’re almost certain the boy’s been present at some point of your life before– at one point, you think you saw a picture of him and Sunwoo, two chubby toddlers, watching you as you laid on a blanket on the ground somewhere in your photo album. As far as you’re concerned, he may as well have been there when your mother brought you back from the hospital– although you think he must have been too young for that back then.

The first memory you have of Eric Sohn is the day you turned seven– a gloomy, sad day that in the moment, you prayed you wouldn’t have to remember in the first place.

It was already established that while your brother is the social butterfly, you don’t have a big friend group. Actually, you could count the number of your friends on one hand, and since the amount wasn’t as big, your mother allowed you to invite them all over to your house to celebrate your birthday with you.

She baked a cake, she decorated the living room, hell, she even took a day off from work– something you deemed special, for it doesn’t happen often– and as you sat on the floor of your living room, the cake standing proud on the small coffee table, waiting for your friends to arrive, you hummed a song under your breath, the clock slowly passing the time you agreed for them to come over and celebrate.

At first, you didn’t mind it– everybody gets late sometimes, it’s okay. It was just a birthday party, and you had a lot of time. Not everything had to be set on schedule.

But the closer the clock moved to being one hour, than two after the time your friends were supposed to come, you grew worried. Your mother’s nervous pacing around the living room and her heavy sighs as she sat next to you on the floor, smiling at you in what you can only explain as sad way made you more and more anxious about the fact that you only had three friends, but all three of them seemed to not care enough to come celebrate your birthday with you. And as your mother finally took the final bow in the form of a soft hand on your inner thigh, her tone gentle as she called your name– “Y/N, I think we should light the candles,” you began to tear up.

You were supposed to eat the cake with your friends. You were supposed to hear them sing the birthday song to you. You were supposed to turn on the radio and dance around with your classmates, eat the sweets and unwrap the cheap, but heartfelt gifts they brought along with them to celebrate your birthday.

But none of these scenarios were happening, and you felt incredibly, incredibly lonely and sad. Forgotten, if you will. Not cared for, definitely.

Hiding your face into your hands, you started to cry. This disappointment was too big for your small heart to take, and you no longer cared about the cake, the candles, the seaweed soup your mother cooked for you to celebrate, the gifts, or the party. All you wanted to do was hide in your room and never come out– something about the whole situation felt deeply embarrassing, and to this day, the moment before the whole day turned around still makes you feel a bit ashamed of yourself.

Too busy crying, you didn’t notice your older brother watching you with big bambi eyes, a worried glance sent your way each time your sobs grew louder and louder. And maybe the boy only wanted to taste the cake (he’s been bugging your mum about it since the very morning, but he was always sent off with a scolding look telling him that he’ll get a slice when everyone arrives), but no matter what his true intentions were, his actions still managed to pull your seventh birthday party together in a way you never imagined.

The sound of the front door faintly resonated in your brain somewhere in the middle of your aimless sobbing, but you paid it no mind, thinking it was just Sunwoo going out to the yard to kick the ball. See, your older brother had never really known what to do when you cried growing up– it didn’t matter if he was the reason for your tears or if anyone else was. If he was the reason for your emotional outbursts, he tried to shut you up with his palm and get you to stop crying before his mother found out and gave him a scolding, but if someone else was, the small boy sometimes turned angry at the source. Kicking his classmate that once made a snarky comment about you and made you tear up or punching his friend when he was too harsh with you was all he knew to do in these situations, so he wasn’t the one to comfort you with words or hugs. It was only natural for him to escape in this situation.

You were brought to a state of shock and surprise when a hand landed on your shoulder, a familiar voice breaking you from your emotional turmoil.

“Why are you crying? We have to eat the cake!” you heard, your big, sad eyes meeting the small figure of the boy living next door, your brother nervously stepping from one side to the other right behind his best friend. “Can you light the candles, Mrs?” Eric politely asked your mum, pointing towards the cake waiting sadly at the coffee table, the figure of your mother leaving your side only shortly to get the matches from the kitchen and illuminate your face with the small flames.

Confusion mirrored your features as you watched your brother and his best friend sing the birthday song to you while your mum lit your candles, both boys clapping and dancing around, acting silly just to get a laugh from you. You didn't know how Eric got there, but you guessed there are some good sides to having him as your neighbor. The energetic boy did his best to brighten up your mood a bit, and when you blew out the candle, making a wish, Sunwoo even went as far as smashing your face into the cake to bring in the full birthday authenticity.

That got him a slap to the back of his head from your mother, as well as made you stand up from your position– no longer making you look like a disappointed bulk of pity– and chase him around the room, icing falling off your nose to the laminated floor. You got your revenge and smeared the chocolate all over his forehead (he let you chase him down only because it was your birthday and he really, really hated to see his sister cry, but he won’t ever tell you that) and as the three of you sat back down to the floor, watching your mother slice the cake and offer it to you on small white plates, you realized you suddenly weren't as sad anymore.

“What did you wish for?” Eric asked you, mouth full of cake and face messy with chocolate.

“I can’t tell you,” you hummed, eyebrows furrowed. “Then it won’t come true.”

“You probably wished for that doll you saw in the store the other day,” Sunwoo snickered as he swallowed, having you glare at him and send a sharp kick to his shin, unwatched by your mother (thankfully), as the boy fought you back, having no mercy.

Music suddenly filled the room as Eric stood up and put the radio on, his 9 year old brain smart enough to know how the device worked, his small figure dancing away to the songs playing on the single radio station you could play without carefully sorting out the antenna so it faced the north, and truly, you didn’t know how it happened, but it had you standing up and dancing around, exactly how you'd imagined doing with your friends from school.

The day wasn’t ruined– quite the opposite, really. It was one of your favorite birthday parties, and ever since then, Eric was invited to every single one you had after. And while Sunwoo may act like he doesn’t hate anything more in this world than having a younger sister, every time you feel like a burden to him, you remember this very afternoon.

You will never tell anyone what you wished for that day– but just to let everyone in on the secret,

it was to somehow, just like Sunwoo, find someone like Eric for yourself as well.

JUNE OF 1999

Standing at the side of the pool, eyes squinting from the inevitable force of the sun, you’re starting to regret your decision of coming along just a little. See, you usually don’t protest whenever Sunwoo aggressively drags you around and brings you everywhere he’s supposed to, because even though you love to see your brother angry (especially when you’re the reason behind the emotion), you’d also hate to see him miss out, but now, as the scorching hot sun is having no mercy on every exposed inch of skin– and believe me, there’s a lot of it, since you’re wearing your swimming trunks– and the sweat on your forehead is no longer culminating in beads, but rolling painfully slowly down your forehead, you do admit you’d be a little bit happier in the shade of your little room than here, watching the guys play volleyball in the comfort of the freezing cold pool.

And as the only female around the house, you settle with the patriarchy and bring out a small folding chair and a camping table alongside with a big, sharp knife, struggling to hoist up the giant watermelon you got in a grocery store on your way to the beach house, with the intention of cutting it and serving it to the guys later. Who knows, maybe they’ll like you a little more after that.

The knife sinks into the thick green skin of the watermelon easily, and so as you accompany yourself with the excited (and not so excited screams coming from the losing side of the game– mainly your brother himself), you cut up the fruit into halves, then quarters, and as you stare at the moon crescents settled on the camping table, you decide to play nice and cut up the fruit into smaller triangles as well, to really get on everyone’s good side.

The yearning for male validation awakes in a woman pretty early on in life. It’s an inevitable misfortune.

“Told you Sunwoo’s all talk but no game!” you hear Haknyeon yell out as the game seemingly ends, the younger boy lunging at him in the pool, fighting him for the truthful words. Glancing at the commotion, you notice the guys slowly getting out of the pool, making you heave out in victory– you’re finally gonna have your turn in the pool. Well, if they don’t decide to occupy it again before you even get a chance to get in.

“Y/N! You cut up the watermelon?” Eric asks a very obvious question, walking up to you with beads of water all over his half-naked body. His dark hair is damply sitting against his forehead, making him look like a wet puppy, but as the male gets closer to you, he drags his palm through the locks and pushes them back, revealing his forehead– a sight sweet to your eyes, but you refuse to pay it much attention in the heat of the moment. It’s just the sun making you delirious as the idea of finding him attractive flashes through your brain, that’s all.

“I did! Take one,” you smile, watching as the rest of the guys walk over to your little stand– while also obnoxiously swatting out water out of their hair like dogs, refusing to use towels like normal people– and finally, there it comes: appreciative smiles appear on their faces as they each take a piece, biting down on the fruit with delighted sighs.

Sunwoo walks up to you with a surprised look on his face, sighing as he messes with your hair. “If I knew you’d be our servant, I wouldn’t have even minded you going in the first place.”

“You do something nice for people and they jump on the chance to exploit you,” you hum, shaking your head in disbelief. “That’s just like you, Kim Sunwoo.”

“No, that’s just me having older brother privileges.”

“I hope you choke on that, you know,” you bite at him, pointing towards the piece of sweet watermelon in his hands, the smile on his face turning bitter. There’s a satisfied look on your face when your brother does, indeed, choke on a watermelon seed a few seconds later– and they say dreams don’t come true.

“You didn’t have to,” you hear Eric speak up from the other side, your head turning to face the male, his features appreciative and warm. “Thank you,” he beams. There’s redness on the tip of his nose and his forehead, signaling his quickly approaching sunburn, and you can’t help but laugh out at his clueless, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer self.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, furrowing his eyebrows at you in question.

“Nothing,” you peep, “you just look like you forgot to use sunscreen,” you mumble, watching as the male gasps and touches his face, a horrified expression overtaking him when the skin under his fingertips burns to the touch.

“I didn’t forget! It must have rubbed off in the pool,” he mourns, “I must look stupid!”

“Only a little,” you tease, a grin overtaking your features. See, there’s something about the fact that you’ve known Eric for the entirety of your whole life that makes you more prone to teasing him– you’re familiar with your dynamics and just how far you can go, so his next actions startle you just the tiniest bit as the male looks sternly at you, throwing the half-eaten watermelon slice to the camping table. You thought you had the risks calculated– apparently, you didn't.

“What did you say?”

Examining his features, seeing no signs of anger– just the stoic, fakely-offended face of your brother’s childhood best friend– you shrug. “That you look a bit stupid with your face like that.”

“Oh, okay,” he nods, “you’re going down for that.”

“What do you mea–”

Your words are cut short when the male lunges at you, his arms enveloping your thighs and holding you up. The contact of his cold skin from the pool and your heated figure makes goosebumps appear all over your body, your hands instinctively reaching around him to support yourself as he walks closer to the pool– his intentions are suddenly painfully clear and you start to panic.

“This will teach you to respect your elders,” Eric huffs, the turquoise surface of the water slowly coming into your point of view.

“Stop! Stop-stop-stop,” you squirm, kicking your feet and trying to take down the predator, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, alright?”

The male takes a halt for a split second– making you foolishly believe he’ll let you off– before he breaks out into a devilish grin and continues to walk to the edge of the pool. “Too late.”

“Eric!” you scream, the volume of your voice resonating through the whole beach, your heart thumping wild against your ribcage with the awaiting process. You’re not even sure what you’re scared of anymore– you can swim and you bet the water will feel nice against the scorching sun– but still, you’re absolutely terrified as the male has no mercy on you, carrying you steadily towards the water. “At least let me tie my hair first! You can dump me in after, I promise,” you mourn, trying to buy yourself more time.

“Alright,” he nods, waiting at the very edge of the pool, leaving you to take the purple scrunchie off your wrist and gather your hair together, preparing to tie it into a bun so it doesn’t get in your way when you’re in the pool. The hair tie is just at the tips of your fingertips, the first loop over the hair ready to be done, when a scream cuts out of your throat.

The feeling of falling suddenly overtakes your body, leaving you no time to prepare yourself for the impact of the cold water against your skin and all up in your nose, since you didn’t pluck it when you were dumped into the pool. The fall only lasts a split second until you’re below the water, the force of it resonating in your ears, and when you finally act on your instincts and stand up in the pool (it wasn’t even that deep in the first place, only reaching to your upper stomach), you cough out all the water and pray to gods you don’t throw up chlorine into the freshly cleaned pool. After you’re done catching your breath and getting oxygen into your lungs again, you do your best at getting all the hair out of your face.

There is laughter landing into your ears as soon as you manage to get all the water out of them by leaning your head to the side and violently slapping each one, and when your eyes look up, you see an amused Eric Sohn bending over in his waist at your disheveled appearance.

Grunting and pointing a finger to the criminal that almost made you drown, you huff out. “I’ll kill you! Just you watch.”

Your scrunchie nowhere to be found, forever lost somewhere outside of the beach house, you think, as it flew off your hand in the impact of the attack, shock makes your figure shake alongside of the coldness of the water, making you audibly sigh.

Yes. You do regret coming along just a little.

JULY OF 1999

Somewhere along the way, Eric Sohn starts acting as if he’s your second older brother. Sure, you’ve known the male your whole entire life and he’s seen you grow up, but it took him 17 years of your life to come to a point where he gives you equal amount of attention whenever he’s over at your house than he does to your brother, and even asks Sunwoo if you’re coming along with them whenever they leave to hang out somewhere else. It’s a change that comes naturally and slowly, and you welcome it unknowingly– the revelation shocks you on a hot summer day, though, when the idea finally comes to you in full force.

You would even argue and say Eric acts more like your brother than your actual sibling does– he asks if you’ve eaten and listens to you when you talk (which Sunwoo never does, well, except from when he’s arguing with you). Eric even compliments your outfits sometimes and lets you borrow his MP3 player from time to time– Sunwoo would never share his things with you, no matter how hard you pleaded and threatened to tell your mum. Yes, your brother's an adult and you’re one year away from becoming one– you still resolve your conflicts through your only parent, though. Some things, you never grow out of.

“I wanna try using the skateboard now, Sunwoo,” you order sternly when the boy finally reaches your destination. You’ve been sitting on the sidewalk for quite some time now, since your brother and his friend decided that they’re gonna try out their new skateboards on the hottest day of the year. Your town doesn’t have fancy skateparks and ramps like the ones you’ve seen in the music videos on TV, so you don’t really know what initially made the two buy those things, but you do admit that even driving up and down the road in front of your house does seem a little fun– so much you’d love to try it.

“What a shame we all wish for things we can’t have,” he shrugs ironically, shaking his head at you from his position above. The male reaches down for his bag, taking out a water bottle and putting it against his plush lips, all while you glare at him from below, still seated in your initial position. Eric comes up to you two, squishing at the soft plastic bottle in Sunwoo’s hold, making the water splash your older brother in the face, leaving a winning grin to be shared between you and the shorter boy, an expression that makes you all warm on the inside. See, at least Eric always has your back.

“You can try mine, if you want,” the latter shrugs, offering you a smile.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he nods, “why not?”

“I don’t know,” you shrug, “I just didn’t expect you to offer, since as you saw, my dear brother just refused when I asked…” you mumble, standing up from the sidewalk and taking the skateboard into your hand. Eric offers it to you with an outstretched arm and watches as you put the board on the floor, squinting at it with much examination.

“Do you know how to ride it?” he asks.

“No,” you shake your head, “but I mean, if Sunwoo can do it, how hard can it really be?” you joke, seeing as the said boy glares at you, finally finishing his water and dropping the bottle to the ground.

“I’ll remind you of that statement when you eat shit on the pavement,” he shushes you, rolling his eyes.

Not paying more attention to the grumpy being that is your own brother, you relocate your attention back to the skateboard on the heated road. You’re lucky you live on a street where cars don’t often drive by, since your neighborhood is on the very edge of the town, so you don’t really fear being run over by a pickup truck. What you do worry about, though, is your lacking sense of balance, which you discovered when you learned how to ride the bike for the first time. While your brother was a professional in no time, it took you weeks to get it right, and so with the idea of riding a board that provides you zero sense of security, you get a bit worried for your own life.

Dragging your hair out of your face and aimlessly trying to tuck it behind your ears– there’s no use in trying though, as the strands slip out just as fast as they found their place– you keep staring at the board only a few centimeters away from your feet, mentally calculating your next move. There’s a noise of a backpack being opened and rustling around in the background of your miserable thoughts, and when you look up to see what’s going on, you notice Eric offering you a small, purple bundle of fabric.

“What’s that?” you ask, even though the answer is clear as the day– you recognise your own scrunchie with no problem. You’re just surprised to see it in his hold. You thought it was forever buried somewhere in the beach house, since you weren’t able to find it after you got out of the pool, no matter how hard you tried.

“Oh,” he shrugs, amidst a little too nonchalantly, “I found it and figured it was yours, but I forgot to give it back to you then… it seems like you need it now, though,” he offers you an explanation, lips pressed into a thin line that slightly signifies a smile.

“Ah,” you gasp, nodding as you take the hair tie out of his outstretched palm, gathering your hair into a bun and tying it up on the crown of your head– the staring contest you’ve been having with the board is much clearer now, when you don’t have your messy strands in the way. The idea of Eric keeping your scrunchie after finding it at the beach house makes your stomach do a weird kind of turn– you guess it made you a bit weirded out, if you’re being honest.

“Want some help with that?” he asks, pointing towards his skateboard.

Nervous, cracking your knuckles as you meet his eyes– he looks a bit amused, but still genuine– you nod, admitting defeat. There’s no way you’re getting on top of that board without help and not falling down. It’s always better to be safe than to be sorry, and so when Eric laughs airly at your composure and takes a few steps closer towards you, you let the male lead you, finding comfort in his secure words and actions.

Eric offers you his arms to hold when you try to get on the skateboard. He is peering at you from under his eyelashes when you put one of your legs onto the wood, his grip on your forearm getting firmer when you try to get your other foot on as well– and you must admit that you suddenly don’t feel like you might die anymore when there’s someone holding you and standing by your side.

“See? It’s not that hard,” Eric mumbles, his voice low and reassuring from the proximity. You notice your hands sweating a little when his palm envelopes yours– damn the sun and its unbearable heat making you embarrass yourself– but he doesn’t mention it as he firmly holds you and meets your eyes. “I’m gonna drag you around a bit so you get used to it before trying yourself,” he says before taking a few steps forward, preparing to be your own type of personal driver.

Having him instruct you and help you around makes you feel more comfortable on the board. Sunwoo would never do such a thing for you– he’d enjoy watching you fall down and break your neck and possibly die– so you’re more than happy to have someone in your life that takes care of you in ways your older brother refuses to.

The skateboard moves forward a little, starting slow, but then picking up speed as Eric jogs a little, making you laugh at the action. He does not have to go above and beyond, but he still does– but you guess it’s good for him to let out his energy somewhere. After a while, he looks back at you and meets your eye with a warm gaze, making you nod at him reassuringly and hold up a thumb of the hand he’s not holding right now, signaling that you’re okay and enjoying yourself. That has the male let go of your hand and let you take the road with the laws of physics, moving forward by yourself with the force he created.

It’s nice. It’s fun.

Yes, you totally understand why Eric and Sunwoo wanted skateboards after seeing them on TV. Hell, you want one now.

“Try it yourself now!” Eric encourages you as the board naturally comes to a stop under you, and his smiling face is enough for you to take initiative and nod, relocating one foot off the wood and placing it on the floor, then kicking it and making yourself move on the simple vehicle.

A moment of surprise envelopes you like a warm hug when you manage to not fall off and keep your balance, the joy of it making you try to go faster on the board, kicking once, twice against the pavement with the sole of your old, beaten up shoe. “I’m doing it!” you yell, glancing back at Eric standing on the sidewalk, watching you with excited eyes. The male offers you a victorious holler, something that makes you break into a laugh, makes your confidence blossom in marvelous ways.

Confidence rises in you so much you try to take a U-turn and go back to your teacher– perhaps showing off that you really got the hang of it now, or something– but as you try to maneuver the board and turn right, there it comes: the moment where you realize that you were, once again, too overly-confident in your abilities that are, sadly, very poor. Your body sways from side to side, your poor balance laughs at you and points an accusing finger at your attempts, and, well, to put it frankly, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes and the moment plays in slow motion as you lose the board from below your feet– the wood flying somewhere to the opposite side of the road, not at all where you meant to go in the first place– and your body inevitably comes crashing to the ground.

Awaiting the hard pavement meeting your nose and breaking it, you brace yourself with palms outstretched in front of you, the last remains of self-perseverance entering the sane parts of your brain in what you think are the last seconds of your miserable life. Another moment of surprise greets you when your yelp is muffled against something soft and your hands don’t hit the hard pavement, your ears filled with a grunt that belongs to another human swiftly chiming in and catching you before you fall.

Firm hands hold your waist– the touch somehow familiar, enveloping you in a strange sense of deja vu– and even though your body goes limp in terror, the male has you back on your feet in no time, his palms on the exposed skin of your stomach. The realization has you burning up as you look up and meet Eric’s eyes, gasping at the closeness of his face to yours.

“You okay over there?” he asks as you unconsciously study his face– you never noticed his nose looked this nice up close– before you wake out of it and nod urgently, breaking away from his hold. You’re not gonna try to calculate the effort he must have put in just to chime in and catch you from where he was standing in such a short moment, but something about the passing thought of it has you weak in your knees from gratefulness.

“Uhm- yeah,” you nod, kicking the pavement with your stained shoes, “I just… miscalculated my skills, that’s all,” you sheepishly hum, hearing the boy snicker at your shaken-up composure.

Watching him take off and retrieve his skateboard from where it wandered off against the curb– much to his golden retriever energy– you sigh and prepare to go sit back on the sidewalk, having enough of new experiences from the shock still lingering in your fingertips. You take a glance down the road, seeing your older brother cruising on the street– when and how he got there, you truly have no idea– when you hear Eric, who seemingly has different ideas for your next actions, call at you from the middle of the pavement.

“Where are you going? Come back!” he asks, having you look at him in surprise, mouth agape and eyes big, staring at him. He now has the board under his shoulder, but puts it back on the road and points at it, shrugging to himself. “I’ll push you down the road, it’s gonna be fun!”

“Eric, I’m literally going to die–”

“No, you’re not. Come on, I promise,” he says, but still, he doesn’t have you convinced. Your feet move against your best conclusions, though, and when you come to a halt right in front of your companion, he offers you a boyish grin. “Sit down on it, that way you’re more balanced. I swear you’re not gonna fall off, okay? I got you.”

“You promise?”

“Yes,” he nods, determined.

“Pinky swear,” you mumble, holding up your pinky finger– all thoughts of seeming childish pushed to the side in the desperate moment– and the male in front of you shakes his head in disbelief, breaking into a laugh.

“Cute,” he huffs, “yeah, okay. Pinky swear,” he nods, interlacing your pinky with his and bumping his thumb against yours, the seal foolishly making you feel more secure as you follow his order and take a seat on the skateboard, your hands gripping the bottom of the wood so hard your knuckles turn white.

“Okay, ready? 3, 2, 1–” he chants as he pushes you, two steady hands coming in contact with your shoulder blades, force making you move on the board, wheels taking you down with gravity. The sound of Eric’s shoes hitting the pavement fills your ears as you go faster, and as you finally get to the part of the hill that takes a downwards slope, he offers you a final push, sending you down the road.

Wind makes your hair fly back, your surroundings blurring as you yelp and scream, but you can’t say you’re not enjoying the ride. Eric was right– it was fun, you liked it, and something about the gesture had you all warm on the inside. The breeze has you cool down a little in the summer heat, and the board continues to move even as you pass your older brother standing at the bottom of the slope, away from your trajectory.

Body relaxing when the skateboard finally slows down, you let out a heartfelt laughter. Turning back and seeing Eric jog down the road with a humongous grin on his face, you offer him two thumbs up above your head, watching as he returns the gesture and makes his way back to the two of you on the bottom of the small hill.

The truth is, this was the day you realized Eric Sohn has always found his way to make you feel included and safe.

You can’t help but feel grateful.

AUGUST OF 1999

“Sunwoo, you have to tie a knot here and then– no, you dumbass, you’re doing it completely wrong,” you mourn as you watch your older brother with a mess of thread in his lap, a focused scowl on his face. There’s a fan standing across from you, blowing cold air into your face, but you still feel yourself grow heated with frustration as Sunwoo just can’t help but not understand the art of making friendship bracelets. It’s not like you’re forcing him to do them– he was the one that asked you to show him how to, muttering something about offering one to his classmate Yeji once he’s back in school– so in theory, he should be putting in effort, no?

Or maybe he is. Maybe he’s just… incompetent.

“I don’t get it,” Sunwoo hums under his breath, sighing as he leans against the sofa in your living room, the two of you sitting on the floor accompanied by his best friend squinting at you from the opposite side, a comic book in the latter's hand. The myth of men not being able to multi-task is quickly thrown into the bin as you watch Eric pay equal amount of attention to the comic book and the dialogue between you and your brother, and when Sunwoo seems to give up on the art of making friendship bracelets, his best friend can’t help but laugh.

“You’re giving up already? This is how you want to get a girlfriend?” you poke your brother to his side and take the threads off his lap, examining the mess of a safety pin and meters of yarn, all knotted up and not coming along in the shape you taught him to at all.

“It’s not to get a girlfriend, I just-”

“Sure,” you roll your eyes, huffing as you roll his poor attempt at friendship bracelet into a ball and throw it to the corner of the room, making a mental note to pick it up and throw it to the bin later. “You know what, just give her this one and pretend you made it,” you mutter, taking a bracelet you'd already made to demonstrate in between your fingers and throw it into Sunwoo’s lap, the older one catching it and examining it under his nose.

“That looks pretty good,” he hums, making you snort at his appreciative comment. The bracelet is pink and red, the colors just screaming romance and cute energy, which is exactly what a girl needs to be swayed by your brother. You can’t really believe a bracelet will make her swoop into his arms, because truthfully, with your brother’s face and manners, every living thing is keeping a fair distance, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to try, does it? Maybe his classmate is… majorly blind? That might do it?

“Of course it looks good,” you scoff, “that’s because I made it,” you nod, averting your gaze towards your lap, threading your fingers through the yarn you attached to a safety pin on your sweatpants to keep the growing friendship bracelet in place.

“Then why is the one you’re making right now so ugly?” Eric asks, pointing towards the creation.

Glancing up at the male slowly, mentally throwing all different kinds of curses at him for daring to talk badly about your craft, you huff. “What do you mean, ugly?”

“The colors… they don’t… they don’t really go together,” Eric sheepishly admits, scratching the back of his neck, quickly averting his gaze from you and gluing it back into his comic book. You think that if he doesn’t stop being a smart-ass and throw jabs at your artistic choices, he’s gonna have to protect his comic book with his own body– and you bet he’d do that, because he borrowed it from the library. The fees for damage are high.

“That’s just… not true at all,” you muse, but groggily take a look at the creation once again, but now, thanks to the remark, seeing it in a completely different way. Shades of orange, brown and purple stare back at you amidst a little disappointedly, and as you thread the yarn and make a couple of knots to end the bracelet, you can’t help but feel a pout growing on your face from the realization. Eric might be right. It does look a little bad…

“Whatever. Your taste is just bad,” you snap as you finish off the craft piece, unclasping the safety pin and sliding the bracelet off the inside, freeing it from the hold. Eric laughs a little at your frustrated state– similarly to what you do when you manage to get Sunwoo upset– and with that, you sigh and put the bracelet on the coffee table.

“I’m going out to the store to get some chocolates,” you say as you stand up, goal clear in your mind, “have fun, losers.”

“You’re still collecting the stickers from these?” Sunwoo asks, a mischievous smile growing on his lips. The teasing is inevitable and coming very soon, and there’s nothing you can do about it– you’re fully aware, which only further makes you want to escape the situation more quickly. Rolling your eyes at your brother’s antics, you move towards the door.

“Yes, Sunwoo, I am. They’re cute and make me happy, do you have a problem with that?” you point an accusing finger at the male, having him shrug, tongue poking the inside of his cheek.

“You’re such a kid,” he huffs, averting his gaze from you when he lands the comment, the jab coming straight at your fragile heart.

“Okay, then,” you note, “I’ll just have my pretty and cute bracelet back, and you can get your girlfriend something else-”

The male quickly regains his previous composure, swatting his hands in hurry just to make you halt in your sentence. His eyes are big and his mouth is a little agape in terror as he tries to save his ass, plea written all over his face. “I was just joking! Don’t be so petulant… go get your cute stickers, they’re so fun!”

Humming to yourself, your face is tugged up into a victorious smile. “That's what I thought. So, as I was saying, have fun, losers.”

“Wait!” Eric suddenly calls for you, making you turn on your heel in the middle of your escape, eyes peering at the male. “Don’t I get a bracelet too?”

The request catches you off guard. There’s a certain kind of spark in Eric Sohn’s eyes as he asks the question, and you can’t really place it in any category, but it has you nervously shrugging at the preposition. You’re not really sure why Eric would want a bracelet from you, but to avoid confrontation and also the weird leap of your heart surely leading you into cardiac arrest, you only shrug and move back inside of the living room, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you scan the surroundings, searching for something.

“Sure,” you nod, taking the ugly bracelet off the table and offering it to him, “you can have that one.”

You hold a staring contest with the older boy for a couple of seconds, his head undoubtedly swirling with arguments and comments about the apparel of the friendship bracelet, but he’s smart– he must know the survival of his beloved comic book must be at stake. So, he only nods and smiles at you, outstretching his hand to you and nudging his head in its direction.

“Okay,” he hums, “tie it for me?”

A second comes by– a heartbeat, really– in which you chew on your bottom lip and gasp at the request, but still, you nod and come closer, crouching down to be at his level and taking the thread into your fingers. You wrap the bracelet around his wrist, making sure to leave a bit of wiggle room before you tie a knot, bringing the ends together, all while feeling the eyes of Eric glued to your face, watching every micro expression flash through your unsettling composure.

When you’re done, making a move to hide your hands behind your back and standing up, your limbs bump into each other and send an unspoken sense of electricity all through your body. The sensation is so strange you don’t meet anyone’s eye before you leave the room, yelling out a goodbye as you hurriedly open the front door and run out to get fresh air (it’s August, though. The air is humid and only makes your head spin more).

You clear your throat before you take off to the grocery store. It's only when you're halfway there that you realize you'd forgotten to bring your wallet with you. It's okay, though– you take this chance to walk around, regaining your casualty.

You bet Eric will take the bracelet off in a matter of a week.

SEPTEMBER OF 1999

The leaves start turning orange and the weather a bit colder when you become hyper-aware of your shifting composure whenever Eric Sohn is around. The way you feel heat rushing to your cheeks whenever he calls you cutie, a nickname he’s had reserved for you since you two were little kids, the way you feel weak in your knees whenever he casually brings his arm around your shoulders or when he bends down to tie your shoelace in the middle of the sidewalk. You don’t really know what those sudden changes are, yet, you feel a bit embarrassed by them whenever they take place. You don’t think it’s normal to feel this way around your brother’s best friend, and the more you hang out with him, the more you wish you read less books as a child– because now, you’re also hyper-aware of the title those feelings may have.

Still, it only comes to you on one September afternoon– you wake up from blissful unawareness and jolt with the quickly opening pit in your stomach at the strange revelation.

“Eric! Sunwoo isn’t home, though?” you mumble, confused as you notice the boy standing on your doorway, a plastic bag in his hand and a red Nike jacket enveloping his frame.

“I know, he said he’s hanging out with Juyeon hyung today,” he nods, “I brought you something, though,” he says, holding up the bag and making sure you get a chance to see it, offering you a boyish grin.

“Oh?” you gasp, furrowing your eyebrows at the male. When you do nothing to invite him inside, he does so himself– slightly nudging you in your side as he passes your figure and enters your house. He acts like he owns the place, and by the amount of time he’s spent in your home, you’d think he does– he doesn’t, though. The only thing he owns is just a lot of audacity.

The male takes off his shoes in the entryway and walks his way over to your room– a surprising act, considering he’s spent the least amount of time in this very place– and when he’s sure you’re following his every move, he empties the contents of the bag to the middle of your freshly made bed. Watching as approximately ten items fall out of the plastic, your eyes widen with surprise as you recognise your favorite chocolate– the mini bars with stickers inside, the ones you collect and stick into your journal and look at in the middle of the night, giggling to yourself and kicking your feet at the adorable pictures in your make-shift collect book.

“Woah,” you gasp when the male looks at you, seemingly awaiting your response, and when he gets the wished outcome, pride overtakes his features, shrugging to himself.

“My mum got some for free because she bought a lot of cabbage for kimchi yesterday,” he explains, “I thought of you when I saw them, so I bought you some more.”

“I- you-” you stutter, emotions too big for your own good swelling all inside your fragile, little self, hands running into your hair and tugging at the roots to wake yourself up from the dream. “You didn’t have to!”

“We got them anyway, and I know you like the stickers,” Eric shrugs, scratching the back of his neck, completely ignoring the fact that he said he bought you some more, your heart skipping a beat at the sentiment. Clearing your throat, you tentatively take a step closer to your bed, gathering a bar of chocolate into your hand and opening it, taking a bite.

“You can have the stickers if you give me some chocolate,” Eric says close to your ear, almost as if he was creating a masterplan, to which you eagerly nod and plop onto your bed, moving the bars of sweets into one pile. As you continue to munch on the first one, you unwrap the sticker and look at it, praying to yourself as if you were checking if your lottery ticket was worth any cent– hoping you get a sticker you don’t own yet.

The image of a cute panda would cheer anyone up even in their darkest moments– not you, though, as you mourn and sigh, disappointment clear in your features.

“What?” Eric asks, eyes big pools of worry.

“I already got that one.”

“Ah,” he nods, seemingly understanding– much to your surprise, “well, we got 9 more tries, let’s get to eating.”

Wrappers are rustling in your bed sheets as you and Eric eat the concerning amount of chocolate, gathering the stickers in a little pile on top of your notebook, promising each other to not look at the stickers as you go and just make a grand reveal at the end. Eric’s full cheeks are a sight you enjoy, telling him he looks like a squirrel– to which he sends a light flick to your forehead, telling you you don’t look much different– and soon enough, the nine bars left disappear from your plain sight (you only had 3 and Eric ate the remaining 5. He’s a growing boy, though, so you understand. He needs to get his undying energy from somewhere.).

“Ready for the reveal?” you ask, locking your gaze with Eric.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

With that, you get to the pile of stickers in the middle of your bedsheets. Looking at the first one, there’s a happy squeal cutting out of your throat, the image of an adorable yellow duck warming you up with euphoria.

“You don’t have that one yet?”

“I don’t,” you nod, “this is just perfect.”

Eric nods and watches you with a certain kind of warmth in his gaze as you open up your notebook and stick the newest addition to your little sticker farm– or a ZOO, however you wanna call it. The next sticker from the pile is added as well– a brown, big bear– and the next one too, the most adorable colorful parrot slapped to the corner of your page.

The rest of your stickers are the ones you already own, though– a displeased look takes over your features at the knowledge, but still, you can’t help but beam at the fact that you have 3 new additions to your collection, and they were a gift from Eric Sohn himself. Someone who doesn’t make fun of your childish habit. Someone who feeds your little interest, watches you with excitement in his eyes as you indulge. Someone not like your brother.

Someone you could never see the way you see your brother.

“What do you do with the duplicates?” Eric asks, pointing to the sad pile on the top of your notebook. His figure is closer to you now, since he wanted to watch you stick the animals into your notebook, his crossed legs almost pressed against yours on the small bed.

“Well, usually, I just throw them out,” you shrug, “but since you’re here…” you muse, the idea plopping into your head like the newest discovery you should probably patent, peeling the back of one of the dog stickers off and swiftly turning towards your companion, mischief sparkling in your eyes.

You put the sticker on his left cheek, making the boy jump. “Hey!”

Giggling, taking another one of the stickers and pressing it to the middle of his forehead, Eric starts to fight you, your bodies wrestling on the bed. You don’t think he puts much effort into getting you off him– that, or he’s insanely weak– and in no time, his face is adorned with all different kinds of animals, his hair messy from tussling in your bedsheets. The image has you laughing before you realize you’re basically straddling him on your bed, his big eyes gaping at you from below, his appearance enough to make something in your brain short-circuit and make you leap off him, clearing your throat.

Heat rushes into your cheeks as you take a seat next to him, playing with your fingers. You pray for anything to come and ease the awkwardness you caused, and sure enough, today must be your lucky day. “Hey, look here!”

You call for the boy as you swiftly take your polaroid camera off your bedside table– the one that belonged to your dad, the one you fought with Sunwoo about, the one your mum said was yours because Sunwoo is too careless with his things to keep it safe– and snap a picture of the puppy-like boy, laughing at the fact that now, you have the image of him looking dumb and covered in stickers forever. Or at least until he doesn't take it away from you– which he attempts quickly.

“Hey!” he yelps again, huffing as he lunges at you, trying to take the picture out of your grasp as you drop the camera into your soft sheets. Your feet take you to the living room, navigating through furniture, and when you don’t hear footsteps follow you, you think you’re safe– Eric does have a lot of energy, but chasing you around gets tiring for him quickly when he knows you'll never let him win.

Entering your room once again, prepared to find him on your bed like before, you’re taken by surprise as a shutter sound goes off right after you open the door, a polaroid picture taken of your face making you temporarily blind at the flash.

“Eric!” you whine, hating that there’s a picture of you standing shocked at your doorway now forever in the universe– not really caring that the boy just got you back with the exact stunt you pulled on him just a few minutes ago. Before you get a chance to blink out the blind spots in your vision caused by the flash and run after him, though, you feel him gently press you out of the doorway and slip outside, the sound of the front door opening and closing after him resonating along his slowly disappearing, amused laughter.

Serves you right, doesn’t it?

Sighing, you shake your head and take a seat on your bed, the picture of the boy still in between your fingertips. You only take a look at it when your vision comes back to normal, and as the image of Eric covered in stickers, hair messy and cheeks rosy below the animal print comes into your sight, the revelation arrives the same second a starstruck smile plays with your features.

And with that, you’re absolutely terrified.

Throwing the polaroid picture onto the bedside table and lunging yourself into the sheets, you scream into your pillow and wish for the feelings to disappear– because in what world does a crush on your brother’s best friend ever come to a happy ending?

OCTOBER OF 1999

Once October hits, you find yourself home alone more often than you’d like. Sure, you don’t mind having some me time to read comic books or watch the TV uninterrupted in the living room, but still– alone turns lonely pretty quickly, and somehow, you start to regret the fact that you’ve been relying on your older brother and his friends for so long instead of making some connections on your own.

Sunwoo started to play soccer at school– something is telling you that he might go far if he keeps it up– and that’s why he’s been stuck at practice every single day, coming home late in the evening all tired, but happy, so you’re not really complaining. Eric works in the little bistro downtown now, since he wanted to make some money and not rely on the allowance Mrs. Sohn gives him every month, and it’s not like you were that close to begin with, but the fact that the boy is now too busy to meet you is making your spirit fall just the tiniest bit. And with your mother always being at work, you find yourself alone in your room, laying in your bed and staring at the ceiling.

Sometimes, you journal. About anything and everything, really. You don’t really think you’re ever gonna read back the entries once you’re older, since they would just be a reminder of how miserable and boring your teenage years really were, and that’s why you allow yourself to be authentic. On most days, you write about your assignments for school. Sometimes you bad mouth a classmate or two– gossiping with the diary pages, because you don’t really have any human beings to do so in real life– and seldom, you allow yourself to get into topics that evoke the slightest bits of existential crisis in you.

Topics like college. Growing up. Your lack of hobbies and social interaction with the outer world. The newly found crush on Eric Sohn…

Okay, maybe you do write about the boy with brown hair and dark eyes a little too often. You can’t help it, though– when he’s not giving you any new interactions to dwell on, you have to just pick apart the old ones. You think it’s a natural reaction.

And that’s exactly what you’re doing one October afternoon, the lamp in your room on, since the evening comes faster when the weather is colder, as you’re laying in your bed and kicking your feet back and forth, chewing on the end of your pencil. The sound of your doorbell resonates through the house suddenly and startles you, making you jump awake from your delirious delusions.

Mentally going through the list of possible visitors you could have– because it can’t be your mother or your brother, since they never forget to carry their house keys– you’re lost, not really finding any fitting candidates. Furrowing your brows, lost in thought and frankly, a bit confused, you plant your socked feet onto the wooden floor and walk over to the front door just in time for the bell to ring again. Scratching the back of your neck in nerves, thinking of precautions you could take for your own safety– since your front door doesn’t have a peep hole and you don’t want to open the door to a complete stranger– you clear your throat and yell over the door.

“Who is it?” you ask.

“Delivery!” a voice calls through the door, making you huff.

“I didn’t order any food?” you yell back, confused. “Sir, there’s another house behind ours, sometimes the mailmen get confused and we get their mail. Maybe try there?”

“The address is right, though?” the voice calls again, and somehow, it sounds kind of familiar… no, it can’t be, you dumb goose. You’re just imagining things because you’ve spent the last 20 minutes writing about the curve of his nose into your diary.

“There must be a mistake-”

“Come on, Y/N, open the door,” the voice on the other side mourns, the mention of your name making you jump, completely startled. The tone the man says it in is sweet like honey, though, so familiar in your ears, that you mentally want to slap yourself– so you weren’t dreaming. It is him.

Dragging your hand through your hair to smooth it down, praying you look at least a little presentable– although in your stained sweatpants and the Pokémon shirt you inherited from Sunwoo when he grew out of it, you doubt that’s even possible– you open the door and try to offer Eric a warm smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Food delivery,” Eric shrugs, pointing with his thumb in the direction behind his back, where his bike undoubtedly stands up against your gate.

“Oh…. but I already told you I didn’t order anything,” you mumble, confused. Studying his face– because a girl can indulge when she has the opportunity, am I right? – you notice his hair has grown a little longer, falling into his eyes. You bet it’s hard for him to see, but you must admit it looks nice, and you almost tell him, before you catch yourself and break away from the sentiment.

The male snickers. “I know, I was just joking,” he says, “I did bring you food, though.”

“Why?” you ask, confused when he bends over and picks up a plastic bag off the ground, a container of food inside, the warmth of the contents making condensation appear all over the red sack.

“We made this by mistake and it was just gonna be thrown out if nobody took it,” he shrugs, “and I figured you haven’t eaten yet– or if you did, you just had those cold kimbap rolls from the store– and I wanted to get some warm food into your stomach.”

“Ah,” you gasp, nodding at the explanation. It does explain the source of the food really well, but truthfully, it explains nothing about the fact why Eric thought of bringing you the food instead of taking it home with himself– he’s a foodie if you’ve ever seen one. The idea of him worrying about if you were fed or not is equally as strange and interesting in your head– still, you clasp your hand around the bag and take it, the smell making you involuntarily hungry. “Thank you.”

Eric only nods at you, a smile beaming at his face. “Well,” he sighs, “I’d love to stay longer and hang out, but I’m still on the clock, so…” he mumbles, taking a hesitant step backwards towards his bike, eyes never breaking contact with yours.

“Oh, right,” you nod, “that’s okay. Have a fun day at work!” you muse, watching him as he grins and finally retrieves back his bike, opening up the gate to your property and escaping, waving at you as he gets on.

“I’ll see you soon!” he calls as he rides off, your eyes following him until his figure disappears behind a corner, your ears buzzing with excitement and your lower lip trapped between your teeth with the innocent promise.

Walking back into the house, you grin as you close the front door behind you and carry the food into the kitchen. You quickly get the containers out of the damp bag, putting them onto the wooden table, and gasp when you find a sticky note on the very top one, a messy handwriting scribbled in a rush, but stuck to the food with care.

Eat well and don’t skip meals, Y/N-ie!! – Eric x

Not being able to battle your smile anymore, you decide to open up the containers and stuff your mouth with the food instead– only to find your favorite dish inside, staring back at you in what seems to be a dream that’s too good to wake up from.

And sure, you are delusional, but are you delusional enough to believe that this wasn’t all a coincidence? You’re not so sure.

Still, you eat the food with feet kicking back and forth as you sit in the silent kitchen, the empty house no longer feeling so lonely. When you’re done, you throw the trash out– everything but the sticky note, which you glue into your diary a few minutes later, hoping to keep the memory forever.

NOVEMBER OF 1999

The world around you is dark as you step outside of cram school, your eyes are tired and your skin is prickled with goosebumps in the chilly air. You despise going to cram school, but your mother told you you have to– since you didn’t have any athletic features that could get you far in life like Sunwoo, you had to be good at studying, or else you won’t get into university. There was a lot of work ahead of you, but since you didn’t really have anything else to do in the day, you didn’t protest and went anyway.

The days are usually very long and you get off very late, resulting in you being tired almost all the time. When you get home, you undress yourself and change into your sleep clothes and doze off until the morning, when you have to wake up and go to school again– it’s an exhausting cycle, but you know you have to endure it for your own sake.

Walking down the steps that lead out the cram school building, you stretch your body and huff, cursing at yourself for the fact that you didn’t bring a jacket– you forgot that evenings get really chilly, and frankly speaking, you didn’t have much time to think when you were rushing to get ready in the morning. You’ll just have to get through it, you think to yourself as you walk in the direction of your house– the last bus to your neighborhood already left an hour ago, when you were in the middle of revising division– your sneakers kicking the stray rocks below your feet as you tug the sleeves of your hoodie lower, desperately trying to feel more heat.

“Do you never watch where you’re going? That’s gonna get you in trouble one day, you know,” you hear a familiar voice say, the joking tone making your heart skip a few beats as you place the owner of the saccharine voice to its face. Looking up, slightly alarmed at being caught in such a distressed state, you gasp.

“I was… watching my step, I guess,” you shrug as you come into a halt in front of him, shivering both under Eric’s gaze and the cold weather at once. “What are you doing here? Deliveries?”

“I just got off,” he says, “so I figured I could stop by. Sunwoo said you’re going to cram school, I thought you might enjoy some company on your way home.”

Gaping at his explanation, you nod, completely startled. The idea of your brother talking about you in front of Eric, the boy you have a very embarrassing, very big crush on scares you, to say the least. See, it doesn’t really matter that the boy grew up with you, pretty much seeing you at your lowest whenever he was around over at your house when you were both just little kids– the image of Sunwoo telling Eric about finding you sobbing at your comic book (the scene got too sad, nobody can really blame you) or about how your favorite jeans ripped right before you had to go to school one morning is terrifying. You don’t really want him to know about these things. He may act like your brother sometimes, but you never really saw him in that light in the first place.

“Well, then,” you clear your throat, “it’s… it’s good to see you,” you say. Eric shows you his boyish grin as your lips utter out the words, and you can’t help but mirror it, your eyes locking with the male. As if you just took a step back, your eyes see him in a light you’ve never seen him before– as if this was your first time meeting your brother’s best friend– and something about the sentiment has your stomach feeling all uneasy, heat rushing to your face. His hair is styled in a way that tells you that he didn’t really style it (or if he did, it looked truly effortless in your eyes, so props to him), pushed back a little and revealing his forehead, a few of the strands carelessly falling into his eyes. His jawline is sharper than how it was when you first met the boy, and with the realization of a foolish teenage girl, you have to admit that Eric Sohn grew up to be a very attractive, attentive man.

“You’re cold?” he says, although the sentence sounds more like a statement rather than a question, before he shakes his head at your antics and heaves out a sigh. “You should’ve taken a jacket with you when you went, you know it gets cold in the evening,” he scolds you. In those times, he reminds you the most of your brother– because although you and Sunwoo act like you hate each other sometimes, you know the older male still cares about you. He just hates showing it, which translates in his scolding tone whenever you do something wrong or against his wishes.

In those times, Eric reminds you the most of the way your brother treats you, and you somehow hate it. You despise the fact, because that means he must only see you as someone like his younger sister– he never had one, so maybe he just likes to compensate for it by taking care of you all the time. Maybe he feels responsible to do so because of Sunwoo. The thought makes you equally as nauseous– you’d never want him to hang out with you just because he feels like he has to.

“I didn’t have time in the morning,” you grunt, rolling your eyes at him. You avert your gaze from the male, for it makes you slightly uncomfortable after your previous thoughts, so when the noise of a zipper being pulled down and the weight of fabric on your shoulders brings you back to reality, you snap your head around at him all alarmed.

“What? Wear it,” he says, head shrugging towards the direction of his jacket on your figure. “You’re gonna catch a cold if you don’t.”

Trying to wrestle out of the red material, you squirm in the hold of the windbreaker– Eric’s hands gripping each side of the jacket, as if predicting your next moves, making sure it stays on you and doesn’t fall down. His strong arms tug you closer to him to make your fight more difficult– and he’s successful with his efforts, because the proximity of him and his smell engulfs you and unarms you, heat rushing to your cheeks as you halt in your movements.

“Stop,” you mourn, “I don’t need it.”

“Yes you do,” he insists, “so stop being a baby about it and wear it.”

Staring into his eyes, as if to mentally tell him to stop what he’s doing– to stop how he’s treating you, how he’s making you all weak in your knees and sleepless at nights because of how much you think of him and hope he’s doing well each day, to stop being so gentle with you and taking care of you, because it brings all sorts of both doubts and delusions into your head– but he doesn’t back down. You’ve known him for quite some time, you should already be aware of just how stubborn he can be.

“Arms in,” he hums, holding on to the jacket and waiting for you to wear it properly. One thing about you– you can always admit your defeat. So, with a sigh, you put your arms through the sleeves of Eric’s red windbreaker, shrinking a little under his firm gaze. He looks at you with a look full of something you can’t decipher, and it’s all making you so, so insanely lost in the many thoughts and feelings swirling around your head, not helping your current state.

“I already have a brother, y’know,” you mumble in a moment of weakness, looking at your feet– your dirty white sneakers almost touching his from how close you are standing right now, “so you should stop treating me like one.”

A moment of silence overtakes you two, and you suddenly feel like you’ve done something wrong. Still, Eric’s hands are holding on to the sides of the opened jacket, keeping you close to him. “Hm?”

Clearing your throat and shaking your head, you snicker to yourself. “Forget it.”

“No- I mean,” he blurts out, tone of voice a little nervous, “do you see me as your brother figure?” he asks, tone of voice more quiet now, more gentle.

Breathing in the crispy air, taking a moment before you reply, you shake your head in disapproval. “No,” you say, “no, I don’t. I- I don’t think I do,” you say, scared of what your answer will bring out of him. You don’t really know why, but at this moment, you feel insanely fragile– as if any bad move could make you break in his hands, waiting for him to glue you back together.

Metaphorically, he does just that. “Good,” he nods, leaning down towards you, hands gripping the zipper of his jacket and zipping it together, making sure no cold can get to your bones as his fingers tug it up towards the very top, under your chin. “Because I’ve never seen you as my sister either.”

His answer once again startles you– but when you take a step back from the situation, you think it was in a good way. His hands grip your shoulders for a second as his eyes meet yours and he offers you a warm smile. “Come on, let’s get you home,” he says, tugging you towards the fence where you find his bike, his motions guiding you like a rag doll sucked out of all life.

“Hop in,” he motions towards the back of the bike, where the basket would usually be– Eric moved it towards the front, though, leaving enough room for you to sit at– and as you do, he takes a seat in front of you and looks back at you over his shoulder. “Hold on tight so you don’t fall.”

Like in a trance, your arms sneak around his middle– this was the first time you had this kind of physical touch with him, and just the thought of it makes you want to scream your throat out– before the male takes off on the bike, riding towards your neighborhood. With the cold wind slapping your face, you foolishly rest your cheek on his shoulder blade and close your eyes, enjoying the closeness of his body keeping you warm.

If anyone asked you about the action, you’d tell them you were just tired.

DECEMBER OF 1999

Socked feet make their way through the room, the sound of footsteps resonating on the laminated floor, as the short male comes up to you with a bowl of potato chips in his right hand and a bottle of soda under his left arm. Eric Sohn sighs at you, shaking his head in disbelief, before he places the items onto the coffee table and takes a seat next to you on the floor, opening up the bottle and pouring the three of you drinks.

“Can’t believe I’m spending New Year’s Eve with you losers, of all people,” Eric snickers, having you roll your eyes at the male and grumpily furrow your eyebrows at his sentence.

“No one’s stopping you if you wanna go, y’know,” you grunt as you take the filled glass off the table, taking a sip of the sweet drink and sighing at him. If he’s gonna take a leap into the new year with you while making you annoyed, he may as well leave now and do whatever his initial plan was– once again, no one’s stopping him if that’s what he wants to do.

“I’m just saying,” he shrugs, “it would’ve been so much more fun if we all went to Juyeon hyung’s. Everyone’s there celebrating, but we’re stuck here in your room.”

“Well, Eric,” your brother smiles ironically at him, shrugging to himself, “it’s not like it’s my fault you’re not over at Juyeon hyung’s right now. You chose to spend the new years here with me. My mother prohibited me from going there, not yours.”

The argument has the male shrug, his eyes averting your brother’s gaze once his comment gets a bit too honest and realistic. It’s true and he’s right– it’s not like Eric’s mum told him he can’t go celebrate with his friends, because she didn’t. Eric’s mum trusts him and wants him to have fun and do what all the kids his age are doing. Your mum, on the other hand, is making you and Sunwoo stay home for New Year’s Eve to celebrate with your family, because, as she quoted, New Year’s Eve the only time she gets time off work, and she wants to spend it with her kids– forget the fact that you’re currently sitting locked in your room with your friend, protesting the family time just because you can– and when Sunwoo told her she has to stop treating him like a little kid, she told him she has all the right to do so, because he is her kid. And that’s how the party he was supposed to attend with Eric (the party you foolishly thought you’re gonna have to tag along to, not hating the sentiment as much as before now) got canceled from your brother’s plans.

“Well,” Eric chews on the inside of his cheek, “I did it for you two. Be grateful.”

“Whatever,” you hum, “let’s turn on the TV. I bet there’s some variety show on.”

Eric heaves out a sigh as he reaches for the TV remote, clicking the power button and making the boxy device in front of you light up. Your mum got you a TV in your room when you complained about being too bored one November day, and although the box of entertainment didn’t really help like you imagined it to, you’re glad it’s of service at least today. Instead of the expected variety show, though, there’s news on– the face of the old announcer looking at you with a serious look on his face, the professional tone making chills run down your spine, for he reminds you a bit of your mother when she scolds you. You think that’s a common news announcer trait.

“As the year 2000 approaches, computer programmers realize that computers might not interpret the 00 in the software as 2000, but 1900. The softwares currently running only use a two-digit code for the year, excluding the 19. The data was excluded because the data storage is costly and takes up too much space. Activities that were planned on a daily basis could be damaged or flawed,” the announcer says, making the three of you look at the screen with interest. Maybe it’s true that when you get older, you get more interested in news– you think it’s good to know what’s going on around you, although the topic discussed right now might not even concern you in the slightest.

“Banks, which calculate the interest rates on a daily basis, could face real problems. Interest rates are the amount of money a lender, such as a bank, charges a customer, such as an individual or business, for a loan. Instead of the rate of interest for one day, the computer could calculate a rate of interest for minus almost 100 years!”

“Oops,” Eric lets out next to you, a reaction so far away from what a real adult would think of the situation. See, you are all just kids, after all.

“Centers of technology, such as power plants, are also threatened by this issue. Power plants depend on routine computer maintenance for safety checks, such as water pressure or radiation levels. Not having the correct date could throw off these calculations and possibly put nearby residents at risk,” the announcer continues, the information coming out of his mouth suddenly making you hyper aware of the reality you’re experiencing right now.

“Do we have a nuclear power plant nearby?” you ask in a hushed whisper, watching as the men next to you almost comically widen their eyes, shrugging.

“I’m not sure,” Sunwoo peeps.

“The worst of all, this software and hardware issue could cause such a big problem in nuclear energy facilities, where nuclear bombs and missiles could be set off, causing the world to go into utter chaos, or worse, an end,” the announcer concludes, the last word making you gasp in terror.

“An end?” you chirp, sitting up straight in your seat as you look at the two men, now equally as terrified. There’s something in Sunwoo’s gaze that makes chills run down your spine, the reality crushing down on you with heavy measures.

“I knew I shouldn’t have fought with mum. What if the last words the two of us exchanged before we die are the harsh words I had said yesterday?” your brother mourns, seeing as his best friend chews on his bottom lip, lost in thought.

“What did you say to your mum?”

“That- that I’ll never forgive her for ruining this for me,” he mumbles, his voice breaking at the end, “and… other things,” he adds, the hint of incoming panic making his best friend frantically wave his hands around and try to make your brother relax before he has to deal with the breakdown. If the world is ending, this is not how any of you want to go.

“It’s okay, don’t worry,” Eric says, clearing his throat and pointing to the TV, “look! The show is on, we should watch before the year ends,” he proposes, taking the remote into his hand and turning the volume up to hopefully drown out Sunwoo’s thoughts and have him focus on something else. And it works– noting that your brother has an attention span of a 5 year old– he can hardly remember what he was worrying about just 30 seconds ago.

Still, the thought keeps bouncing around your head like a child in a bouncy castle. The words of the news anchor keep repeating in your brain, making your ears ring as you look at Eric from the corner of your eye, watching his angelic face. Oh how you hate disturbing the peace now that you’ve all calmed down– but still, you can’t deal with the worries alone. Checking the clock hung above the TV, noticing there’s at least 5 minutes left before midnight, you clear your throat, feeling your whole body on fire.

“Do you really think the world is gonna end?” you ask, cracking your knuckles in a nervous manner. Looking at Eric, pupils shaking, you find your brother’s best friend seemingly lost in thought. The music of the variety show program serves you three as a background sound now, none of you paying attention to the TV anymore, instead, focusing on all the things you've done wrong in your life and how somehow, this feels like karma for all of it.

“I dunno,” Sunwoo shrugs, “I mean- they said it’s possible! It was on the news, and they wouldn’t lie on the news…” he nervously mumbles, scratching the back of his head.

“That’s what’s worrying me,” you sigh, “we shouldn’t have turned on the TV.”

“It was your idea in the first place!”

“And I’ll carry the burden into my grave,” you admit, gulping as you press a forced smile onto your lips.

Momentarily looking back at the TV, you desperately want to keep the thought of the world being over out of your head before you spend your last minutes on this earth going crazy– but now that you started, you can’t keep thinking about it. “Man, the world can’t end yet. There’s so many things I haven’t tried yet! I’m too young to die!”

The men don't reply to that– you presume they’re too busy trying to find other things to occupy themselves with instead of the inevitable– which has you dissatisfied as you throw your body back into the sofa, heaving out a sigh. Seconds go by painfully slow but also painfully fast at the same time, given the circumstances, as you listen to the cheerful song playing in the background and nudge your friend into his upper arm with your pointer finger, feeling his arm encircle your shoulders and pull you closer to him. The contact of his fingers on your upper arm makes you squirm and break out into a smile, feeling a particular lightness in your stomach at the action, a sensation that has you in shock.

“I’m gonna talk with mum before we die,” Sunwoo suddenly calls as he stands up from his seat on the floor, sighing to himself, “I can’t go with the thought of her being upset with me,” he sentimentally adds before he’s out of the door, rushing towards the living room.

The space falls into momentary silence now that your brother is gone, having you chew on your bottom lip with nerves. You think now is the time to beg for forgiveness with the higher forces– I'm sorry for not studying well. I'm sorry for being rude and ungrateful towards my mum. I'm sorry for being greedy– when the sound of Eric’s voice resonates through the place as he speaks up again, waking you up from the anxious slumber, the clock now striking 2 minutes before midnight. “What would you wanna do before you die?” he asks.

The question is simple. You presume he wants simple answers– things like getting into college, getting a good job and making a lot of money, growing old– but as you lean away from him and get back to your place on his left, your eyes locked with his, you’re left clueless. There are so many things you have yet to achieve, and the idea of not being able to pushes a burden to your chest, but at this very moment, you can’t really name one.

Shrugging, you chew on the inside of your cheek as your eyes scan his face. His firm eye contact has you a bit flustered, making you shrivel in your seat, and as the sound of the TV morphs from the song into a countdown from 55, you’re overwhelmed with the thought that your friend is insanely pretty– and he always has been, you just hated admitting it to yourself for the past few months, despite still being fully aware– and that now, when the world ends, you’re dying unkissed and alone.

Well, not completely alone, since Eric’s here. And he’s always been here– your whole life, since you can remember, and he’s here now as well, even though he should’ve been at Juyeon’s house. As the clock strikes 30 seconds away from midnight, your eyes involuntarily travel down to his chapped lips, all air knocked out of your lungs, the thoughts in your brain picking up on speed the closer you come to the end.

You’re dying soon. You’re dying in 30- now 29 seconds, and you’ve never kissed anyone before. You’re dying before you get a chance to hold hands with someone and have a partner, and you’re dying before you get a chance to tell Eric how you feel about him. There’s 28 seconds left until the end and you’re just staring at him like a coward, because you don’t really let yourself indulge in the silly warmth of your heart whenever you’re around your friend, but god, you can at least admit it to yourself before you die.

And as the clock gets closer and closer to midnight, now only giving you 20 seconds before it all ends and a missile lands on the top of your house, blowing up the whole town and making you all disappear, Eric’s question repeats itself in your brain. What would you want to do before you die?

The answer is suddenly painfully clear as you take action– leaning towards the boy on your right, face closer to his than it’s ever been before, your eyes counting all his eyelashes and focusing on his surprised, yet unmoving face– and as you hear the countdown reach 15, you close your eyes and press your lips against his.

The contact makes you weak in your knees as your hands reach to his face to steady him, your own firework show erupting in your stomach, and suddenly you’re completely content with dying tonight– because at least you’re with Eric, at least you did something. You kiss your friend with something close to an unsaid confession, your lips staying on his throughout the rest of the countdown, the taste of soda you’ve both been drinking the whole evening mixing in the contact of your skin. You’re not sure you’re even doing this right– again, you’ve never kissed anyone before– but it doesn’t matter to you much as you let go of your worries, aware of the fact that in a few seconds, nothing will matter anymore when neither of you are going to be around to say anything to each other after the kiss is over.

The countdown rings in your ears– coming down from 5 as you scoot yourself closer to Eric, 4 as you run the pads of your thumbs along his cheekbones, 3 as you still in your movements, 2 as you notice your knees bumping into each other on the ground and finally, 1 as you get ready to die, kissing your first and only love– when the sound of cheers and fireworks from the TV fills your ears instead, the world around you stilling and completely unchanged.

Your kiss started in 1999 and ended in 2000. Your love for him passed a century.

Eyes fluttering open and your mouth letting go of his, the image of the boy with his lips slightly parted, eyes closed and cheeks rosy comes to you in the yellow light of your room, making your heart fall down to your stomach. He looks absolutely angelic, his hair slightly messy and the fabric of his shirt a little disheveled in the front, and even though you’d love to indulge in your foolish desires and kiss him some more, you’re quickly taken aback with the noise of the door to your room opening and making you jump away from Eric, your brother appearing out of thin air in the presence of your room. It serves you like a weird kind of reality check, Eric’s eyes opening and looking at your brother, and even though you two haven’t been caught, the male clears his throat and bites down on his lower lip, looking almost guilty.

Oh no. What have you done?

Suddenly, you feel insanely silly.

JANUARY OF 2000

“You’ve been awfully quiet the whole day,” Sunwoo mumbles from beside you, his whole body engulfed in a pile of snow, “not that I care, but are you okay?”

“I thought you liked it when I don’t talk,” you mutter, playing with the frozen white all around you, seated on the red plastic sled at the top of the hill. You got tired after dragging it up from the bottom, and when you noticed that the rest of Sunwoo’s friends– Eric included– are still on their way up, you figured you could use up the time to relax and sit around for a while. It’s been quite some time since all of Sunwoo’s friends gathered to hang out at the same time, which made you surprised to see that your own brother invited you to tag along with them as they decided to go sledding on the second day of January, using up their break to best of their abilities. Which is also why you didn’t say no to the invitation– you thought sitting at home and moping around wouldn’t help you much.

“I do,” he says, nodding, “that’s why I’m asking what’s up– so I know what to do when I need to shut you up later,” Sunwoo hums, making you roll your eyes at the masked worry.

Shaking your head in disbelief, you scoff. “It’s nothing.”

“Sure,” he shrugs, “so you’re just going through puberty?” he teases, to which you take a handful of snow into your palm and lunge the white at him, satisfaction running through your veins when the snowball lands into his unsuspecting face, the male coughing and swatting his arms around to defend himself.

“Hey!” your brother screams at you once he gets the ice out of his eyes and his mouth, his body jumping into a standing position before he chases you around, the bubble of a laugh escaping your throat for the first time these days– they’re not wrong when they say malicious joy is the best kind of joy.

Running at the top of the hill, not really looking where you’re going– instead looking over your shoulder to see Sunwoo’s actions, preparing yourself to duck if he decides to turn your small quarrel into a snow fight– your legs get tangled with the red sled you left before you started a war with the angered man, a yelp cutting out of your throat as you get prepared to fall over and knock your teeth out.

Your body comes in contact with something half-firm, half-soft, and as your feet slip and the snow-covered ground disappears from below your legs, two arms wrap around your waist and steady you, making sure you don’t get hurt.

Turns out Eric Sohn is there to catch you every time you are about to eat shit. You hate this kind of deja vu.

As you open your eyes (that you had closed on instinct, not wanting to see your own death) once you’re sure you’re safe and sound, the world around you invites itself into your ears in an overwhelming noise. The laughter of Sunwoo’s friends– some hollering at your fall, some at the redness and last remains of snow covering your brother’s face– and the hushed arguments over who’s going down first– with Haknyeon screaming that he’s stealing Sunwoo’s (yours) sled and Juyeon following him. After all those happening in the matter of a few seconds, you realize you’re left on the top of the hill alone with the male, terror shaking through your insides.

Clearing your throat and taking a step back from him, you tuck your hands into your pockets and avert your gaze from Eric. You two haven’t spoken since you decided to kiss him on New Year’s Eve, and with the awkward tension in the air, you don’t feel like doing so ever again in your whole entire life.

“Thanks,” still, you hum.

Eric seems a little more light-hearted than you, shrugging as he replies to you. “Haven’t I told you to start watching where you’re going?”

“I’m not good with listening sometimes,” you mutter, huffing. Taking a look around yourself– noticing that there are no sleds left on the top of the hill, therefore, if you wanted to escape the situation, the only way down would be to roll around like a human version of a snowman, you once again admit your defeat, standing around nervously and shifting your weight from one foot to the other.

The silence is uncomfortable. It makes you want to dig a hole in the snow and bury yourself alive, to suffocate under the weight of the icy cold and never see Eric’s face again. You know that you ruined whatever friendship you had with the male– by being stupid and foolish, not really thinking about consequences (because there were supposed to be none and you were supposed to be dead), and the weight of the guilt makes you want to puke and hide away.

Still, Eric comes out of his way to talk to you. Honestly, you’re kind of surprised– he should be disgusted with you. Realistically, he should be the one avoiding you, not the other way around.“They’re gonna take long to walk back up,” he notes, “wanna get hot chocolate with me?”

“I’m good, thanks,” you shake your head, not once breaking eye contact with the overwhelming white of the hill.

“Come on,” he sighs, “it’s just around the corner. They built a hot chocolate stand because they knew kids would come sledding here. Honestly, it’s an astute business tactic, but I promise the hot chocolate actually tastes nice,” he says, nudging you slightly with his arm, as if to make you look at him and change your mind.

“Thanks, but no,” you definitely say, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

“Are you avoiding me?” he asks, tone of voice casual– as if it was the most normal thing in the world, as if nothing ever happened and he was genuinely curious about the reasoning behind your actions.

“I’m not, I just don’t really like hot chocolate,” you sheepishly mutter, trying hard to avoid the topic.

“So you are avoiding me,” he hums, as if it wasn’t obvious before– and not only because you’re a bad liar. Plus, you love hot chocolate. Somehow, you think Eric knows.

“Look, Eric,” you sigh, running your hand through your hair, “can’t you just drop it?”

“No,” he shrugs, shaking his head, “and that’s why we’re talking about the reason why you’re avoiding me over a cup of hot chocolate. Let’s go.”

His persistence is terribly overwhelming sometimes. You wonder how the male does it. “I already told you-”

“You owe me for the stickers and the meal and everything,” he corners you, and you know you can’t argue with that. He’s kind of right, you suppose– you never paid him back for all the chocolates or for the free meal he brought you that one evening. And that’s exactly why you find yourself sighing as you follow him, mentally preparing yourself for the talk.

You hate how he can always get his way. Walking up to the stand, you crack your knuckles in the pocket of your jacket, nervously coming up with possible arguments to tell him. I didn’t kiss you on purpose, it was an accident. I only did it to know how it feels. We are both supposed to be dead, it’s not my fault the world didn’t end like it was supposed to! Each sentence sounds more stupid than the previous one, and so with that, you shake your head, wiping the thoughts away, smiling at the elderly lady in the stand. You’re just gonna have to be honest, you figure.

“Two hot chocolates, please.”

Rummaging through your pockets to find your wallet– you do owe Eric, so it’s only natural for you to pay– you’re caught off guard as the male next to you swiftly takes out his own and unzips it, preparing to pay for you.

“I thought I owed you?” you mumble, hand reaching to tug at his forearm to stop him, to which Eric only grins at you and sighs.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay,” he says.

“I think that’s exactly what that means.”

“Just take it,” he huffs as he brings out a note from his wallet, the force making something else fly out and fall to the ground with it, having the boy swiftly crouch down and pick the item up, attempting to hide it before you get a chance to see. And now, you don’t have 20/20 vision, but you recognise your face when you see it– that, and you also recognize the small white sheet to be a polaroid picture, and as far as you’re aware, you’re the only one who has a camera in his circle.

The boy hands you the drink with red-tinted cheeks. The idea of him carrying a picture of you that he took back in September makes you flush as well, and when your gloved fingers accidentally meet as you take the cup from him, he forces out a laugh. “We can talk about that after you tell me why you’re avoiding me.”

His nonchalance has you relaxing only for a few seconds. The boy walks with you as you try to heat up your cold hands on the boiling surface of the cup, and when you see a bench a few meters away from you two, you instinctively take a seat.

“So?” he becomes you, eyebrows rising as he takes a sip from the melted sweetness.

Sighing, you try to come up with the best way to go around this. Do you apologize? Do you promise to never do it again– and you won’t, even though you want to so badly and his lips look surprisingly soft today? Furrowing your brows at the war in your head, you place the cup on the bench next to you and put your head into your hands, hiding away from him when you realize the only way to do this is to be completely, utterly honest.

“I’m just so embarrassed, Eric.”

The only noise meeting your eardrums in the moment is the faint yelling of the crowd sledding in the background, your companion remaining quiet for a bit. When he sees you won’t explain yourself, he goes ahead and asks the question. “Why?”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” you sigh, not believing his so casual composure.

“Maybe,” he laughs, the airy sound taking all breath away from your lungs.

Well, not all of it, since you have enough oxygen to go on a tangent, it seems. “Because I kissed you, goddamnit. And- and I don’t even know why I did it, honestly, I’ve never thought of kissing you before! It’s just- when I heard the world is ending, I realized I hadn’t had my first kiss yet, and that just felt like such a miserable way to die, and then you asked what I wanted to do before I die and I couldn’t think of anything else,” you say, progressively taking out your head from your hands and facing the male, big eyes staring into his soul.

To your surprise, he doesn’t seem mad. Or disgusted. Or any of the reactions you expected, really. Eric stares at you with a soft, but amidst a little star-struck look in his eyes, and you’re suddenly painfully aware of every slight shift in his composure.

“Did you kiss me because you wanted to kiss me, or because you thought the world was gonna end?” he asks, awaiting your answer.

And if you’re being honest, 2 days after New Year’s Eve, you do admit the thought of the world actually ending sounds a bit stupid. Why did you even believe that theory? Why did they talk about it so seriously on the news? They tricked you into ruining your own life.

But still, nothing can be done about it now. “Both,” you admit, shrugging, “I… I kissed you because I really didn’t want to die unkissed, but also… I wanted it to be you, y’know? Like… I thought we were really going to die, and so I thought kissing you might be a nice way to go. I really wanted to spend my last moments with you, I guess,” you sheepishly say, averting your gaze from the male.

Eric offers you his silence again after you’re done explaining. While you do admit you feel a little tense to hear what he has to say, you also realize you feel lighter now that it’s out in the universe and out of your system. A major weight was taken off your shoulders with the confession, and suddenly, you’re kind of glad that your friend was so assertive and insistent on talking about this– who knows how long you’d go before managing to face him. You think you could honestly go on… forever.

Taking a sip of the luscious liquid, you feel your body warm up once the anxiousness slips away from your bones. The boy next to you hums, making you face him with expecting eyes. “Then why were you avoiding me?”

Sighing, you shake your head. “I just told you. I’m starting to think you’re the one that’s bad at listening.”

“No,” he laughs, “that’s still you. Because if you were good at listening, you’d remember me telling you that I’ve never once seen you as my younger sister.”

Shrugging, kicking the pile of snow in front of you with the tip of your winter boots, you’re not quite following. “So?”

“So you should’ve realized that I’m not doing all of this,” he theatrically swings his arms around, “for nothing, you know?”

“All of what?”

“Taking care of you. Feeding you, helping you collect those stupid animal stickers, walking you home…” he mumbles, sighing. “Keeping your picture in my wallet,” he adds with a playful tone, making you smile.

“I thought you were just being a good friend,” you shrug.

“I don’t keep a picture of your brother on me at all times,” he says, tugging off his gloves. The sleeve of his jacket rides up a little as you watch him take his cup of hot chocolate off the bench, surprised (and flooded with warmth) to see the ugly friendship bracelet you made still adorning his wrist.

Grinning to yourself, excitement welcoming itself into the tips of your fingertips, you shrug. “So?” you mirror your own question from a little while ago, wanting him to say it to you instead of relying on your own brain– you think there’s still a possibility of you just being too delusional to see the reality for what it really is. You need to make sure you’re not imagining things.

“So,” he starts, sighing to himself as he turns a little in his seat to face you, “you should stop avoiding me, because I liked the kiss. And you. And we should probably do it again, because I didn’t get the chance to kiss you back the first time,” he says, once again taking all oxygen out of your lungs with the casualty of his preposition.

Locking his eyes with you, having you two staring at each other like two rays of sunshine warming up the cold January, he grins. “How does that sound?”

“Good,” you breathe out, “very good.”

The male takes it as an invitation as he scoots himself closer to you on the bench, his body turning a bit to face you. His free hand cups your cheek, leaning closer to lock his lips with you like he asked you to, your eyes fluttering close at the proximity, the fuzzy feeling in your stomach already expecting to kiss him again. The situation feels a little too idyllic to be real, though– you should’ve expected it to get ruined again.

Something cold and wet comes into contact with the side of your face, and when you sharply open your eyes, you see Eric staring at you with shock and terror in his eyes, the snow dripping down the side of his face as well. Whoever threw the snowball has good aim, you think– managing to target two people at once (even though your faces were that close to each other that it probably wasn’t even that hard), and before you get a chance to look around and see who cut off your kiss, there’s a scream coming from the left side of the two of you, the sound of feet quickly darting in the snow landing into your ears.

“Eric Sohn, what the fuck do you think you’re doing with my sister?” the voice hollers, and before you get a chance to react, the said male fastly stands up from the bench and runs to the other direction, laughter resonating all throughout the place as Sunwoo and his friends chase their shortest friend down.

Snow starts falling as you watch your brother tail his childhood friend, and with a foreign sense of warmth, you get reminded of the birthday wish you made while blowing out the candles on your seventh birthday.

You wished for someone just like Eric. You didn’t know the universe would be so kind to give you him instead.