#he needs some self love and growth as well | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cursedcola · 6 months

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Prompt: "Will You Marry Me?" - Proposal Headcannons Characters: Everyone :) Part(s): Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde(here!), Diasomnia(Pt.1)(Pt.2) Fandom: Twisted Wonderland Warning(s): The relationship is kinda toxic because it's Idia and I have to be realistic - but it gets better as you read. Just know that there are themes of miscommunication, self-sabotage, self-neglect, and insecurity in both Idia and the MC. I gave him some character growth at least and some maturation to the character. Note: All Ignihyde has is Idia so I gave his piece some extra love(super long. Like, this isn't even considered a headcannon set anymore. I really went overboard, I'm so sorry). Not proofread for grammar since I'm a bit lazy right now. Also, I haven't finished his chapter in game because I'm too weak (seriously wtf is up with these fights). I know the plot mostly but forgive me if there's an inaccuracy in a reference

Idia had it made during his youth - and deep down he knows it despite all his complaining. He knows that he won the introvert lottery. For three years he was able to live in a reclusive dorm room with no expectations beyond showing up to class (via a tablet of all things) and doing his work. Sure, he had to return home at some point and deal with that hot mess...but it was a displaced problem. One to be dealt with whenever. As a full-time 'student' he had junk food readily available, his brother down the hall, all the games and tech he needed, and somehow managed to land himself a loving partner despite his quirks.

The Ramshackle prefect - someone he initially wanted nothing to do with. Chaos seemed to follow their every move and Idia wanted no part of it. He never expected to come within a twenty-foot radius of them without force.

For the record, force indeed was used. Unfortunately they had a nasty habit of being nosy. Very 'main character complex' of them, if you ask him.

Yet it worked in his favor. Their stubbornness and intrusive ways wormed a place in his stone-cold heart. It fueled his ego much to everyone's chagrin. Out of everyone - princes, busy bodies, future doctors and the literal fish mafia - you picked him. The noob cursed to lose all his 50/50s and rot in bluelight. Idia seriously questions your tastes, but hey! He beat the normies and that's all he cares about.

Well, at least that's how he phrases it. Underneath that god-tier ego is an inferiority complex that he tries to keep down for your benefit. Something about your mood dipping by 20% when he talks trash? He'd need Ortho to run another test on that. Just to be safe.

Unfortunately, he still can't reign it in all the way. Victories can be temporary and who's he to say that your relationship isn't a one-shot story? Nothing worthwhile is ever that simple. Good games always get sequels...so the question lingers, will he still be a main character in yours?

When Idia graduates, he fully expects for you to walk out of his life. He returns to S.T.Y.X and leaves NRC to fulfill his role back home. You have no reason to care about him when he's no longer nearby. Life isn't like an isekai manga. You won't wait for him - no, you'll get a taste for how life is without him and indulge. Slowly you'll stop texting him, calling him, playing games with him - well, he'll do it first! He refuses to be the second male lead that gets dumped when you finally find your prince. That's for chumps.

He'd rather you just up and leave this world! At least then he wouldn't be in this pitiful situation...but he's seen that crow's shitty work ethic. You're stuck.

Idia's scared to say the least. One could say that his self sabotage was in action before your relationship even began. Old habits die hard, and no one could stop his spiral. Not even Ortho. Idia left his little brother behind as well. The boy sent him off with a smile, promising to take good care of you in his big brother's stead. After all, you both were in the same year.

It's not surprising that he reverts to his old ways. A hard battle is even more difficult to win when you don't have the motivation to fight it in the first place. Idia loses his drive...and in turn his already negative outlook grows worse.

Needless to say, Idia ... neglects you.

Your relationship has always been more of an 80:20 than a 50:50 - with him taking more than he ever gave. You always set aside time and made sure he was comfortable. You respected his anxieties and dealt with his temper on more than one occasion. His jealousy. You indulged his hobbies, always tried to include him in on activities with your friends (even though he rarely ever accepted), wore your heart on your sleeve and always took the lead. You were always too good to be true.

Two years. Two years with him at S.T.Y.X and you at NRC. Not a day passed where you did not text him or call. Not a week passed where you did not video-chat or play a game with him. You made time. You checked in. Told him stories about your life an friends. Ortho often would send him recordings and clips as well. During vacations you'd make plans to see him and always invited him to come to campus for events. Even though he never accepted, you still always offered. Throughout it all he kept you at a distance, yet unable to fully let you go at the same time. He needed you to do it. He needed his inner thoughts to shut up and to have someone else to blame.

You. You. You. When would you stop? Why weren't you tired of him yet? On a good day he can be frustrating, so how were you not mad when he was physically trying to make you hate him? Were you waiting until graduation to drop the bomb on him that you'd leave for good? On another's arm or back to your world?

Imagine his surprise when neither happened. On the dawn after Ortho's graduation ceremony, Idia came out of his cave to greet him at the S.T.Y.X entrance. He would no longer be as lonely, and perhaps without Ortho around, you'd finally put distance between yourself and the Shroud family. All would be as it should.

He did not expect to see you at the gate as well. Ortho flew up to him with a bright grin and twirl in the air - babbling on and on about how he arranged for you to come work as a research assistant in the lab. After all, you had an extensive knowledge of blot as well as field experience. It was a win-win situation for the company and your relationship! You could now be a happy family! Isn't that just amazing?

"It was extremally difficult to keep this a surprise!...Brother?" Ortho halts mid-rant, his receptors going haywire, "Brother, your heartrate has increased and your temperature is dropping below stable levels. You must regulate your breathing pattern!"

White noise rang like television static in Idia's eardrum. He watched you thank one of the guards while handing off your suitcase. His pulse increased and mind went under water. How long had it been since you were together longterm? You looked different. More mature. Meanwhile he was still the same - physically and emotionally. Still the pasty shut-in with dark eyebags and energy drinks running through his veins instead of blood. He wasn't used to seeing you in person. How should he react? Should he hug you? Do you want him to? That's weird. He hasn't held you in a while - yeah, it would be creepy. Does he even deserve to? What made you want to work here anyways?! You could have gone anywhere. ANYWHERE. - Shit. You're looking this way. What should he do?! aHH! You're walking over!

He does what he knows best. Shuts down. You receive a disgraceful greeting. No affection. Not even a smile.

Idia's brow furrows at your approach and he buries his hands deep into the pockets of his lab-coat. When you lean in to kiss his cheek, he catches you by the forearms and holds you in place. "Since when were you going to work here? You do remember what S.T.Y.X is in charge of, right? Once you're in, there's no going back. Are you a masochist or something?" Ah. There goes the heartfelt reunion. Being home did bring out a more harsh and cut-throat side of him after all.

Despite his poor treatment, you don't react upset. Now the relationship has now become something of a 90 : 10. He knows you have no reason to come here other than for Ortho and himself. You really are an Otome protagonist, jeez. Willing to do all that for him? Giving up your future and friends just to be at his side...dammit. Don't give him hopes! Don't undo all the work he's put in to survive without you! Stop welcoming misfortune for his sake! You're stupid. Stupidstupidstupid .... man he loves that stupidity. Gods he missed it.

Shit. Not even an hour in and he's reverting.

You don't realize it but you're heading straight for a bad ending. He does though. He's read the guides and played more visual novels than he can count. As a pro, he needs to steer you off this villainy ending and towards the true route.

After all ... what was that one saying? Heroes will sacrifice you for the world, while Villans will sacrifice the world for you? He heard it from some normie bookworm...but it seems fitting right now.

Idia's no hero. He'll destroy his world if it means you get to be happy. Not that he had much of one to begin with. You...gave him a life beyond fiction while all he's offered is a curse. Literally and figuratively. Its time he returned what he so greedily stole. He'll make you move on through force.

The months are slow and difficult. Despite being nearby, Idia only ever seeks you out for work-related reasons. Even then he is very cold and dismissive . He also does not turn you away when you take the initiative. Just like old times, you linger around his room and prod him for attention. He wants you to leave, but also doesn't want to be cruel. So, he maintains this impassive position and lets you do whatever you please. Yet the situation is scarily similar to how you both were at NRC. Except instead of using his past as an excuse, he now uses your work dynamic to enable his noncommittal ways.

There really is only so much one person can take. After Idia left NRC, you pinned his switch in behavior on the lifestyle change and distance separating you both. You knew Idia would be someone you had to work hard for when you started to date, and so the situation was one you viewed as an obstacle to overcome. The solution was simple - you would go to S.T.Y.X and prove to him that you were willing to make it work. Without the physical distance, you hoped that he would let you in again. That you wouldn't have to hear reassurances from his brother anymore, and instead hear his feelings from his own mouth instead. Then you both could work out the details together in time. Seeing him reject you at first was discouraging, but you did not let it rest there. Perhaps he needed time and to get used to your presence in his home. After all, these were new waters. You would be patient. You would prove yourself capable.

Life becomes a time capsule. As the days went by, a bitter feeling grew in your stomach. Why wouldn't he laugh? Why wouldn't he look in your eyes anymore? Why is he retreating even further? What were you doing wrong? How could you fix it? Is it you? Your performance in the lab is outstanding according to your supervisors, and your work friends seem to find you agreeable enough. Can't he see that you've adjusted well and are happy here? There's nothing to worry about. How else can you prove yourself?

These thoughts plague your mind to an extend that Ortho felt the need to preform psychiatric evaluation. You dismissed his concerns with a long list of things about your new home that make you happy - including him. It pacifies his panic and somehow mitigates your own as well.

Until one fateful day, when you decided to take your lunch early and overheard a conversation between two senior S.T.Y.X employees

"Isn't the boss' partner kind of pitiful?" One technician spoke in a hush whisper, taking a bite from her salad, "He doesn't give them the time of day. I can't believe they've stuck around this long. Screw the job, I would have been out after the first week," "Shhh! Quit gossiping, it's bad. Especially about the one who pays our bills," The other scolds. "I know....but isn't it just sad. They're clearly being taken advantage of. I can't help but feel sorry" "It's not just you...to tell the truth, I had no clue Director Idia had a partner up until recently. If anything, I thought he disliked Assistant MC and kept them around for Director Ortho's sake. Imagine my shock..." They both snicker at the notion. "Yeah. I give them a few more months...maybe a year. Despite being smart in the lab, they clearly can't read the room:

It was the last straw. Like ice water being dunked over your head after a hot shower. The lunch pale in your grasp suddenly felt like it weighed ten times heavier, and a cold sweat dripped down your back. They were right. He didn't want you here. It was time to move on or else you'll just be living out an endless loop. Nothing has changed since your youth aside from the location. No matter how long you wait, no matter how much effort and time you offer ... the relationship is doomed to fail. You gave him everything...and it was time to stop waiting. To stop expecting and hoping. Time to accept reality.

Your lunch goes discarded in a nearby bin and your shift abandoned. You would not work another second for S.T.Y.X despite the facility not being the source of your anguish. Your shoes clack loudly against the tile flooring as you speed-walk to Idia's office, where he was lazily reviewing data on a recent experiment. His phone set off to the side with some automated gatcha daily playing.

You use your 'special' pass (curtesy of ortho) to get in. The metal door swings out as you march inside and turn off his screen without asking.

"H-h'-hey! What are you-" He shrieks and turns in his chair. "We need to talk" "Can't it wait until later? I'm busy working, if you can't tell" "No" Your tone is demanding. Definite. You all but yank the badge from around your neck and drop it in his lap. In that motion, he knew. Your eyes scrunch tight and teeth grind together. He was prepared for this. For you to lash out and yell at him for your suffering. Make him the bad guy in your story and finally beat the game for good. Not for you to deflate. Not for the glassy, disappointed stain on your eyes. Or the shallow breaths as you calm yourself - not letting your emotions frighten him like a spooked cat. "I'm quitting," "S.T.Y.X? You know you can't just quit. There's a process," He refutes, lazily pushing his chair back with an anxious fidget. "Not just S.T.Y.X...I'm quitting us. I can't do this anymore," "Oh. Alright. Let me get the paperwork," "Alright?" You whisper, gaping at him "...just alright? That's all you have to say to me? Not even 'why' ?" He pauses typing on a holographic keyboard, cocking an eyebrow at the question. "What? You want me to beg you to stay or something like that? We're not in an anime," His words die out at the end, and had it not been for your disbelief you would have caught the note of sadness in them, "you want to go? Then go. I warned you about this place" "No...you warned me about the facility. It's not the facility I have a problem with. I actually like it here" "So it's me then, huh? I warned you about that too," He grumbles and continues to type, "I'm not whatever it is that you saw in me. It's your fault for sticking it out this long. I knew this was how it would end from the start" A silence follows aside from the occasional noise from his computer. That's it. The nail in the coffin. You finally realized the truth. He was no good for you. He couldn't be 'fixed'. With an approving chime, he finally has all the departure paperwork pulled up for you to sign. "Alright. Sign these and I'll get you an escort," He holds out a tablet in pen without looking from his computer. You don't take it. "Hello? I said - " he turns to face you, irritated "....here" Silent tears stream down your cheeks and pool at the tip of your chin, dripping to the tile below. Wide eyes lock in his general direction. Your hands tremble slightly at your sides, as if your mind was thousands of miles away. His heart breaks. "You never even gave us a chance, did you?" He says nothing. "It wasn't about 'making it work' for you. It was always a matter of 'how long'. You've been waiting for me to leave you, all this time?" It wasn't a question. "All this time, I've been trying to prove myself. I've been thinking that I did something wrong...that I needed to be better" the word stings your tongue and seems to strike him, " but I was never even close to enough" we were never enough

With languid movements, you take the pen from him and sign the papers. You would not hide your sadness. Your grief. Your pain for a relationship that was never actually one. For a battle that only had one party fighting.

He lets you go, the metal door swinging shut and rattling him to his core. Idia's hands shake as he tries to return to his work. They tremble over the holographic keyboard, making his blue nails look like moving neon streaks in the air.

He had always thought you ere just being kind. That your self-sacrificing nature was natural, and that someone else was more deserving of it. He failed to consider the possibility that all the things you did...you did for him alone. You did out of the same anxieties and fears he felt.

In a way, you both were at fault. He led himself down a self-fulfilling prophecy - letting his anxieties and what-ifs become reality. And you? You thought everything could be fixed with time. With sacrifice. That eventually he would grow. You both were plants, one overwatered and the other left parched in the sun.

He did get one thing right. This was defiantly a bad end. Just not in the way he originally believed...

Somehow, life becomes worse than before you arrived at S.T.Y.X. At least when you were around, people did see him more out of his office or room. Seeing him revert to his previous ways without so much as an inkling of sadness for losing you....yeah, it did not look good. Worse than people not even knowing you were his partner at first. After your departure, rumors began to spread that you had finally snapped. The pity felt for you morphed into judgement towards his character. Others saw him as a heartless recluse, and the pity was extended to Ortho of all things. If Idia could toss out a loyal partner of years, what about the little robot? Perhaps despite all the gossip, the others at S.T.Y.X did not fully believe that he would let you leave so easily. That he wasn't as detached as the Shroud name dictates.

Little do they know that he's become a shadow of his former self. He can't even act self-depreciative. Pleasantries don't hit like they used to. Having you at a distance...well, was still considered as being with you. Now that you're never coming back, it's harder. Everything reminds him of you. Your favorite snacks are still stocked in the cafeteria, and there are blankets in his room that still have your scent. Occasionally a file will pop up with your work in it while he's doing reviews...and then there's Ortho. When you left, he was crushed. He pestered Idia for days - the security cameras giving him full knowledge of what happened. Yet no matter what the robot said about the situation, Idia didn't want to hear it. Eventually he took away Ortho's access data to his personal spaces.

That didn't stop the bot from talking through the door and spamming his brother's inboxes. Despite cutting off contact with his big brother, you still spoke to Ortho regularly. He refused to let his big brother lose all connection to you, and updated him on your well-being. Regardless of what Idia said, hearing about you made a difference. At first it increases his anxiety and drops his mood...but every time, like a scheduled delay, his serotonin levels will spike. Be it from a clip of your voice, a picture, or even just the mention of your name.

"Brother! I just finished a call with MC. Today they decided to adopt a cat! Would you like to see a picture?" His computer beeps with an incoming missive. Idia clicks it, and the screen displays a photo of you with a small white kitten in your arms. "They've decided to name it Grimm Jr. From what I heard, the predecessor was not pleased to be 'replaced,' as he calls it" Ortho laughs from the other side of the door, but Idia is too focused on the image on his screen. The curve in your smile and the way you gently cradle the kitten. You seem...happy. Much better than how he is doing. He fails to hear the door beep, granting access, neither the bot fly up next to him to look at the picture. "Big brother, why don't you apologize to MC? They would listen," Idia startles, clutching his chest as his hair flairs cherry red for a brief moment. He swivels in his chair and closes the image quickly. "I'm not apologizing for nothing. It's not like I miss them or anything. My life's great without having a normie relationship to manage" "Your body language suggests that you are lying" Ortho states, his eyes squinting cheekily. Idia hunches over, glaring at his keyboard and fiddling with his sleeves, "It's not like they'd want to see me anyways. I blew it. Only an idiot would forgive what I did," "That's not true! MC loves you!" Idia glares at him from the corner of his eye, "Yeah? They look pretty happy without me. They were miserable here" "Because you purposefully made them miserable! You are very smart brother, but even I understand emotions better than you and I am an artificial lifeform!" "Then what should I do, Ortho? Go beg them to take me back like some cringe sitcom?!" "Yes!" Idia blanches at the thought, but doesn't entirely dismiss it. Ortho glares holes into his head, causing Idia to shrink into his chair. "You are always afraid, brother. You lost them to your fears once...do you want to regret that? Are you really satisfied with pictures and stories? Why deny yourself wonderful things! We are not trapped anymore!"

Ortho leaves him with one piece of information - an apartment address. He sends it to all of Idia's emails and even somehow makes it the background of his tablet. He can't change it or take it off.

He stares at it long and hard. Searches the place up and even uses virtual reality to scope out the building. While perhaps a bit creepy...he hacks the security cameras and watches feed of you coming and going over the past moths. Some days you look perfectly well, and others you look worse for wear. If he went...would you even want to see him? Would you let him in? Kick him out? Is he willing to even try? What if you already moved on...no, Ortho wouldn't set him up for that if he knew you were happy with someone else.

Idia leaves S.T.Y.X for the first time in months. His request for leave shocks other employees. Yet he's gone the moment it's approved, afraid that he'll lose his edge if he thinks too long on it.

He finds himself at the door of a middle-class apartment in the Kingdom of Roses. Second floor, third door to the left, just like he memorized. He knows its yours from the ribbons tied on the doorknob, themed after one of your favorite animes. One he introduced to you...

In his hands is a small box of candies - a peace offering, just in case you want to kill him on sight.

His boney knuckles wrap around the doorknocker and thwack it three times. Sweat pools in his palms and he jolts away. The seconds like hours as his painted nails dig crescents into his palms. The door opens. "Hi, how can I -" You pause mid-sentence, your mouth going dry. Grimm Jr. snuggled in one of your arms while the other holds the door open, "I-idia?" "T-that's my name," He grimaces, looking anywhere but at you. "What are you doing here?" His tongue feels heavy and the tips of his hair fade to a pale orange. He studders and fumbles with the box of candies, holding them out to you with a grimace. "I wanted to see you...urk. I hope that's not weird! Can ... I come in?" You eye the box in thought, before reaching out to take it and opening the door further. It was a start.

You hear him out - through the stuttering and the self-depreciative comments that he hastily retracts. This isn't just about him. It's about you and everything else in-between. Shockingly enough, you agree to give him a second chance. It wasn't entirely his fault after all ... and you did still love him. Although now there are ground rules. You would not be returning to S.T.Y.X. You've finally created a stable home for yourself and have a life in this new city. You have a career, friends, and a life that doesn't include him. You need the individuality. You would no longer try to morph yourself for him or be placid. If he wanted to spend time with you, he would have to leave S.T.Y.X and come stay at your apartment. You would no longer be the one always reaching out, he would have to start showing initiative and making time for you. You would see how things progress from that point. He was not a child, and you would not beg for basic needs to be met anymore. Words would not be enough, you need actions. It was time for 50 : 50.

Weirdly enough, he agrees to all your rules without a single complaint. Not a normie comment or slang filled statement leaves his lips. He's still that nerdy dork you fell in love with at heart, but these 'normie' things? Well, Idia's accepted that he wants those things. As much as it is difficult for him to admit, they only grossed him out so much before because he always believed they were unattainable

He's true to his word. He calls you every day, first thing when he wakes up (in the late afternoon. He still is a hermit at heart). At first it made him anxious, and he'd hover over the contact for fifteen minutes before dialing. Yet it soon became easy, with his heart only beating fast from happiness. He takes the weekends off and comes to spend them at your apartments. Sometimes he brings Ortho and it becomes a sleepover with games - and at some point you start inviting your other heartslabyul friends from back in the day too. Eventually you do come around the compound again. It's awkward to say the least, considering how you left. Yet at the same time, it's a breath of fresh air. The others are shocked to see him out of his office, and he eats IN THE CAFETERIA. Woah. He calls you by your name and not 'assistant' when in public. Homie scares some people. That's what he does. He gives you a special watch for your anniversary. It's paired with on he has and solar powered, so you can contact him at any time. As a natural born worry-wart, he can't help but worry for your safety. Since watching the appartment CCTV is 'creepy,' he just asks that you wear the watch if you're going out anywhere. It won't die and with the click of a button he'll be alerted. In exchange, you can use it to contact him whenever you want. He'll always get back instantly since it might be an emergency. The watch is also directly linked to Ortho's system, so you can contact him as well. Who needs Cortana when you have Ortho?

For the first time, Idia feels secure in a relationship. He can't count Ortho since the boy is technically his creation. Ortho would always be there...and now? Idia's confident you will too.

Does that mean you should get married? Isn't that the next step in all this?

Well....shit (pleasant connotation)

He never would have tinkered with this idea before considering his 'family'. Who the hell in their right mind would marry a Shroud? A fool. Are you a fool? Maybe.

It's late evening on a Sunday night when you're both walking home together after hitting up a local diner for hearty eats. Wow. Look at him. On a date. So weird...pshh.

Idia walks at your side, forcing his pace to match yours. Not everyone is graced with his long stickman legs. His hands are buried deep in his hoodie and his posture is slightly slouched. Classic scary dog privilege for a nighttime walk - well, if his hair didn't scream valentine's day pink to the world. Although no one else has flaming hair other than the Shroud family, so he doubts anyone would interrupt.

You decide to take the long path home and through a nearby park. The night was still young for nightowls such as yourselves, and fresh air was always crisp at this hour.

Along that path you decide to stop at a cement bench by some vending machines and chill out for a bit. Despite having just ate, Idia gets you each a can of coffee.

He'd be leaving to go back to S.T.Y.X tomorrow. Like he does every Sunday. His gaze drifts to the watch on your wrist and thinks about adding some new features - maybe video chat? So he can see you throughout the day. He wonders what you'll be up to while he's stuck in the lab. Maybe you'll go shopping, or play a new game. Maybe you'll try out a new recipe or take Grimm Jr. out to play. He wishes he could see you during the week.

Ah. You're talking. He should probably tune in or you'll get mad at him. Why's it so hard to focus? He hasn't felt this uneasy in a while...

Why is he having these kinds of thoughts? It's weird.

"You okay? You seem a little spaced," You pull him from his thoughts, a concerned crease wrinkling your temple. "Eh. It's nothing. Just not looking forward to the week," he chuckles weakly. "I know that feeling. It's always a bummer when you dip. Not to sound clingy or anything" His golden hues spark for a moment, a pale pink dusting his cheeks as he whips his head to look at you.

"W-wait - really? I was just thinking the same thing...." "You were?" "Yeah. It's...kind of weird without you. Everything's emptier. Wow. That was pretty cringe. Sorry." He grimaces, internally screaming and knowing that this was going to replay when he tried to sleep later. You tilt your head at him, a slight frown on the cusp of your lip. Something tickles at his fingers and he looks down to see you lace your hand with his. "I miss you too," your words are soft. Genuine. He feels his neck grow hot, the pink glow radiating off him betraying him. Idia looks between your interlaced fingers and the drink in his hand. There...wouldn't ever be a 'right' time for this. Would there? You've waited long enough. He pulls his hand away and pops the soda tab off with deft hands.

"Hey..." he twiddles with the soda tab in his hands, "on a scale of 1-10, how are my odds of getting a yes?" "A 'yes' to what?" "To this, " he sighs through his nose, holding the tab out towards you with a shaking hand, "will you marry me?"

{A soda tab from canned coffee. Not the most charming offering, and it barely fits around your pinky finger. Yet, Idia's always been impulsive at his core. Had he not acted in the moment, he likely would have ran countless possibilities over and over in his mind. While not your forever ring, the tab will remain a sentimental piece}

{Idia is not a man with a keen eye fore jewelry - but he knows quality. Combine his eye for perfection with his craftsmanship and behold - a ring made from purified blot. The center gem is a piece of magestone in it's most refined state. The band is titanium and there are small sapphires along the molding. Since he would be wearing a matching band, Idia decided to keep the design simple. He prefers functionality over all. Yet he does want you to feel proud of his handiwork, so he includes vintage molding on your band only. He wears a smooth black band on his ring finger, and never removes it}

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst scenarios #twst imagines #twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios #twst idia shroud #idia shroud x reader #idia shroud #twst idia #IM DEAD #THIS TOOK FOUR HOURS #I LEGIT WAS NOT PLANNING TO WRITE ALL THIS #MY HANDS

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jnnul · 7 months

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ric flair drip

a/n: oh my god. it's finished. i've finally written all of her. i genuinely don't know how to explain the relief i feel right now. it feels strange writing this after writing and healing myself through writing this. i hope that anyone in college who's feeling the way y/n or jaehyun did knows that you can and will grow from it. heartbreak is inevitable and so is growth. quick note: feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

word count: 20k

tags: college au!, frat boy!jaehyun x girlboss!y/n, honestly it just a dissertation about modern love and how people nowadays love each other, there's a lot of soul searching in this one, i poured my heart and soul into this please love her the way i do warnings: mentions of sex, underage drinking, and general college shenanigans! also explicit mentions of oral sex, uhhh foreplay and sex

HONESTLY, NOTHING ABOUT JUNG JAEHYUN IS REMOTELY APPEALING TO YOU. you hate the perfect boy act he puts on, you hate his need to impress everyone and everything, and you really fucking hated his dick.

because if it wasn't for his dick, which you were sure is just as perfect as the rest of his stupid self, you wouldn't be awake at inhumane hours, listening to your friend recount their sexcapades.

"oh my god, and then he did this thing with his tongue and i swear, i'm literally never going to be able to have oral again. he's fucking ruined me. i'm genuinely going to just make every guy i fuck put a jaehyun mask on from now onwards just to recreate it," sia yoo, unfortunately one of your best friends, quips dreamily. she yelps when roseanne park, your roommate and singular other voice of reason, throws a pillow at her.

"you sound like a fucking psycho. as in needs to be checked to a mental facility psycho. as in if i hadn't heard worse when you got with johnny suh, i'd be calling the cops right now psycho," roseanne says and easily ducks when sia winds up to throw the pillow back at her. fatima khan, sia's roommate and mother friend extraordinaire, pouts sympathetically with sia as the two of them turn to you as if you would fall on their side.

"sia, baby, honey, love and light of my life - i'm really sorry but i'm with rosie on this one," you say and sia puts on the most theatrical frown you she possibly could before she cocks her head curiously.

"rosie's got a reason for judging jaehyun since she doesn't even like men all that much. what's your excuse, y/n? you like men, judging by the way you were getting railed to next week by that freshie park seonghwa. you've never gotten dicked down by jaehyun."

you're half-tempted so tell sia that it's not fucking weird that you got with seonghwa, considering the fact that you're only a sophomore yourself but you're even more tempted to remind her that even though you were no stranger to a good time, you never recount your stories.

in fact, the only reason why the other three (well, you suppose rosie would know regardless given that you literally live with her) know about your sex life is because you choose to tell them whenever you felt like it. and usually, it was more than three days after the encounter.

you loved your friends, you really did - and sia was notorious for getting into one night stand rehash sessions at ungodly hours, so this was nothing new - but for some reason, every time jaehyun's name came up in the conversation, your skin would prickle with irritation.

maybe it was the fact that every single person around you seemed to be infatuated with him. or the fact that he was just so effortlessly good at capturing the attention of everyone in the room, no matter where he was.

or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that you knew that if you looked too closely into the deep end, you'd fall right in with no life jacket. and jaehyun was an endless ocean.

+++

maybe you had given jaehyun too much credit, you lament. maybe jung jaehyun's as deep as a fucking kiddie pool. you know you're wrong because you were in the same english literature class and the man had been published because the professor liked his prose so much, she had submitted it to a literary journal.

and they had accepted it.

but as you stare at him across the lecture hall, burning holes into the poor guy's skull, you sure think he's stupid. because there was no way in fresh hell that jung jaehyun was in an introduction to east asia class. as a south korean.

people begin settling into their seats as you mull over the possibility that jaehyun had fucked so much, his brain had fallen out through his dick. from the stories of his more than above average size, it was definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

just as you're send a very judgmental text to fatima, who was supposed to be taking the class with you but had had to switch last minute when one of her major required classes opened up, jaehyun gets out of his seat to stand at the front of the room, next to the professor.

you realize belatedly that the people jaehyun had been so animatedly speaking to were none other than bambam and ten - two people who most definitely were in this class. and of course, they had chosen this class over all the others because oh my god, jung jaehyun is the uta for this class.

in hindsight, it makes sense, given that jaehyun is a east asian studies minor and a stellar fucking student. but it doesn't make the text you were about to send fatima any less humiliating as you realize your attempts to undermine his character were desperately failing. you try to backtrack on your phone, deleting the winding paragraph you were about to send her when your thumb slips, accidentally sending a half written message.

you: jaehyun is fucking

you're sure the statement will be true within the next couple hours (the jung bed at the nct frat never seemed to stay empty for too long - and that was just from orientation week last week) but it felt almost blasphemous that you would send a text so crude to your friend when you insisted that you couldn't stand his guts.

or what lay between them, really.

three gray dots appear on your screen as you half-heartedly listen to your professor drone on about how he went to china, became a changed man, and now taught about the wonders of east asia and its exoticism. his name was paul but the class could refer to him by his 'enlightened name' - lao ma. even jaehyun rolls his eyes behind the professor's back as all of the asian kids in the classroom begin to eye each other warily.

if this class wasn't so easy, you're sure the population would've shrunk to a quarter its size based on the weirdness of the professor on its own. or maybe not, if it meant that people got to stare at jaehyun's gorgeous face for an hour and a half every monday morning.

mommy tima 🤍: honey, i think whatever sia's got going is contagious. mommy tima 🤍: aren't you the one who hates him? mommy tima 🤍: he really lives in your mind rent free, huh.

you scoff under your breath as you type furiously, vaguely registering that you definitely need to check the syllabus for this class later because you have not been listening to a word the professor has said this whole time.

you: first sia's got cooties or a raging std that's what she's got going you: second he's my fucking uta you: as in i am going to be forced to see his face for an entire semester mommy tima 🤍: drop the class then, babe. you: can't this is too good for my gpa & the prof's a freak you: it's a gpa cushion and a circus in one go

you tuck your phone away when you see that jaehyun is coming up the aisle on your side with a packet while the professor is on the other aisle on the other side with the same packet to hand out. jaehyun probably wouldn't care that you had your phone out during lecture (syllabus week was just an excuse for college kids to get drunk during school days anyway) but it was the principle of the thing.

"here you go - oh, it's stuck together," jaehyun says as he stops at where you're sitting. his tongue slips out as he thumbs at the packet to give you one instead of three and suddenly, your treacherous brain takes you back to sia's rambling the night before.

and then he did this thing with his tongue...

you're shaken back to reality when you realize that you're staring at a blank wall, with a pink packet in front of you, and jaehyun has already reached the back of the classroom.

fuck. shit. bitch.

jaehyun had seen you stare at his stupidly handsome face and then some. he was your ta. oh my god, what if he docked points on some test because he thought you were the creepy stalker type.

damn you, sia yoo, you curse in your head.

+++

"damn you, sia yoo!" you yell over the blaring music that's so loud, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. there absolutely no reason you should be caught dead in a frat on the friday of syllabus week but sia had made it her mission to make sure you had a going out rate of at least 80% this school year, given that you were prone to trying to skip out on weekends out last year.

not that you didn't like going out - you actually really liked going out with your friends. you just took a little more inertia to get to the energy levels of actually going on.

sia just nods at you lazily as she bounces to the beat of another shitty remix of 'what you came for' by calvin harris and rihanna. you never understood why frats always found the worst remixes of classic party bangers but anything flew after you had enough alcohol in your system so the music would recede to the depths of your mind in a couple cups of whatever the fuck this drink was.

especially since you were a full sunshine drunk; whenever you were drunk, you became the life of the party and would always be found in the center of the room, regardless of the music. sia was a flirty drunk and you really couldn't remember the last time sia actually spent the entire weekend in her own bed. props to her stamina, honestly.

rosie was a mix of you and sia in that she would become so much more bubbly but the second she found someone she wanted to spend the night with, she went after them with no hesitation.

fatima usually played the role of sober mommy when you all went out. although she was never one to miss out on a good time, when she did get drunk, she much preferred it to be within the confines of the four walls that she shared with her roommate and the people she trusted the most - you, rosie, and sia.

which is why when rosie abandons you for her on again, off again fuck buddy (miyeon cho) and her fuck buddy (yugyeom kim), you're not surprised at all.

"that's going to be an interesting story in the morning," you say, nodding to where rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom are all heading upstairs together. fatima nudges you to look at sia, where she's pressed up against none other than johnny suh (or the love of her life, prior to jaehyun, apparently).

"that's going to be an interesting story in the afternoon," fatima counters. you turn to her with furrowed eyebrows, as if to question the timing. "i don't think i've ever heard of a girl leaving johnny's bed before 3 o'clock the next afternoon."

your jaw hangs in shock as you watch your friend wrap her arms around the tall man's neck, whispering something into his ear when he bends down to kiss her collarbone.

"are all of the nct boys secretly porn stars or something? how can they all be that good in bed?" you gape, waving at sia when she turns around to wink at you and fatima as her and johnny are bustling out of the door, undoubtedly to the nct frat house.

"they test us as part of rushing," says a low, velvety voice behind you. a hot rush of shame runs up your spine for two reasons: a) you were able to recognize jung jaehyun just from his voice and b) he heard you gossiping about his frat brothers' sexual prowess.

you exchange a look with fatima before whipping around to meet jaehyun eye to eye. he's wearing a plain black t-shirt and lightwash distressed jeans but he might as well be wearing designer trash bags for all you care. what you do care about, unfortunately, is the almost slutty way his v-neck dips to show off the beginnings of the planes of his chest.

you feel no better than a victorian man and it takes fatima a poorly concealed cough to break you out of your thoughts. fuck, you'd done it again. you really needed to stop getting caught up in jung jaehyun's pretty face. and body. and that stupid smile.

"haha. very funny. sounds like something straight out of a cheesy porno sponsored by viagra or something," you say, rolling your eyes. smooth. very smooth. normally, you like to think that you're proficient in the witty banter department but something about this boy made you almost feel dumb about your comebacks.

jaehyun cocks an eyebrow, and you're distinctly made aware that even with platform sneakers on, jaehyun is a good head taller than you when you have to look upwards to notice the motion. "you seem to be well versed, y/n. you make it a habit to stay up to date?"

you flush at the thinly veiled euphemism at your x-rated movie watching habits before clearing your throat. "i'm more of a fan of practical study, really. i am a scientist, after all."

you're aware that fatima has slipped away from you to talk to another friend, park jeonghwa, and also the fact that you are slowly beginning your descent into drunkenness but you can't seem to bring yourself to find the caution in it all. it's just jaehyun, after all.

jaehyun hums, bringing the solo cup in his hand to his lips to take a swig. "you're a biomedical engineering major, aren't you?"

you balk at that. "wait, wait. you know my name and my major?"

jaehyun nods slowly, seemingly stumbling for a moment before he gains his self-confidence once more. "you don't know mine?"

"you're literally my ta. i know you're an east asian studies minor and your name because you told the class," you say, recovering quickly. it was a really good thing you were a quick thinker because you were lying through your teeth.

you knew jaehyun's name, minor, and even major (computer science) because of his notorious reputation, not because he was your ta. but the last thing you wanted was to give him the satisfaction of asserting his popularity on campus.

"anyway. what was that you were saying about 'practical study'?" jaehyun's eyes twinkle in the dim lighting of the cramped basement you were in and you had a feeling that if you were any more inebriated, you'd be diving headfirst into jung jaehyun's bed as long as he looked at you like that.

but fortunately (unfortunately?) you're sober enough to make mostly intelligent decisions - which just means that you're not going to jump headfirst. maybe feet first but not headfirst.

"wouldn't you like to know," you sing-song, leaning into jaehyun's body enough to smell the mix of woody pine, fresh water, and vodka that seems to emanate from him. jaehyun watches you as you lean over him to grab another solo cup from the assortment that some lower ranked frat brother had been forced into bartending.

you down the entire drink in two swigs, patting away the stray stream of alcohol that had dripped down onto your chest. you don't notice the way jaehyun's eyes follow your hand down its descent to your chest. but you finally feel like your element, and in a moment of sheer idiocy and liquid courage, you enter the growing throng of bodies behind you, beckoning jaehyun to follow you.

you're not 100% sure what you want from him, honestly. you want to have a good time, and you're sure you'll have one with or without him. but something about the way jaehyun follows you like a puppy into the mess of people makes you feel like a zap of electricity has hit your body.

and if you're being completely honest with yourself (as you usually only are with ethanol in your system), you really didn't hate jaehyun. you had no qualms with him as a person, even if you hated the consequences that came with a night with him.

it's when you're in the middle of the crowd, with jaehyun looking at you with those hooded eyes and hands tucked into his pockets when you realize what you want from jaehyun jung.

you want him to desire you the way that his mere presence makes people desire him.

so you do what you do best and just let go. it's ric flair drip by metro boomin that's playing - a song that's definitely not the one to get down to. but the bass fills you up in a way that never hits the same outside of a sweaty frat basement so you can't even bring yourself to care.

"i'm tryna fuck you and your bestie," you sing along with the near hundred people surrounding you. jaehyun is still looking at you with an eyebrow sitting higher and an appraising expression; something that somehow manages to get under your skin.

in a moment of passion, you manage to hook your fingers into one of jaehyun's belt loops, pulling him closer to you. you're aware that you've painted yourself to be jaehyun's next conquest if the way that the girls next to you look upset means anything, but you couldn't care less.

especially when you're this close to the bane of your existence. the song switches to something a little more what you need (under the influence by chris brown) and you look up at jaehyun through your lashes and in that moment, jaehyun knows what you're offering him through your gaze.

a challenge.

+++

jaehyun never really meant to take on the role of nct's resident whore. in fact, jaehyun had been planning on doing the exact opposite when he came to college.

although it was unbelievable now, jaehyun jung had originally just been a very strange, nerdy, and sweet boy. he never got up to much trouble, kept to himself most of the time, and was known for...nothing, really. he was sweet and bubbly but he wasn't exactly running with the popular crowd.

in fact, jaehyun was kinda forgotten all throughout his schooling. it was easy to forget about jaehyun, as though he were some visage in a dream that everyone shared.

it hurt.

so when jaehyun finally hit his growth spurt in senior year, started going to the gym, and his voice no longer cracked every other sentence, he felt like a whole new person. like he was finally the main character in his own life.

it felt so fucking good to look at the same girls who had smiled at him pitifully and have them melting under a single wink. the summer between high school and college had been wild, with more stories than jaehyun could really even care to keep track of.

but when college began, jaehyun was fully intending to return to flying under the radar with his new upgrade in personality, appearance, and wardrobe. with a face like his, however, doing so was about as easy as trying to pass professor yoon's intro to bio class - nearly impossible.

slowly but surely, jaehyun morphed back into the personality he had adopted that summer and surprisingly, it wasn't as foreign as he thought. he was still a good student and wasn't a stranger to having to skip out on hanging out with his friends to study.

but having a new girl in his bed every other day? that was definitely new. a new revelation, but a welcome one nonetheless.

and in that, jaehyun was used to people using all sorts of tactics to get with him. playing hard to get, with coy smiles and flirtatious winks. or the bold ones, who told him straight up that they wanted to spend the night with him. even the downright horrifying ones who tried to pretend like they were blackout drunk in hopes that that would 'attract' him. spoiler alert? it didn't.

jaehyun originally thought you were of the 'hard to get' caliber. the type of girl to say that she wasn't like other girls and that's why he should get with her instead. so initially, when he approached you at the party after seeing you in his class, he was mentally preparing himself for the whole pick me speech.

but it was something about the way you looked at him.

it was like two halves of your mind were battling against each other. on one hand, you looked like you wanted to fax jaehyun straight into the fiery pits of hell with high speed shipping. on the other, it also seemed like you wanted nothing more than to ride him until the sun came up. mixed with a little bit of curiosity, confusion, and downright anger with yourself for all the emotions, you looked like the perfect cocktail of firebrand that jaehyun couldn't help but become intrigued by.

so when you were laughingly talking to your best friend (jaehyun's frat brother kun was half in love with fatima, which meant that jaehyun was more than well acquainted with her) about him and frat brothers, he took it to be the opportunity he needed.

and when you're looking at him like this, daring him to make a move, almost as if to make your mind fall one way or another about drawing a conclusion on him, what is jaehyun to do but to make good on the challenge you've offered?

he watches you for a moment more, trying to commit the memory of what you look like when you're this carefree and happy, before taking the micro-step it takes to get so close he can smell the citrus and apple cider that you seem to always smell like.

"i promise you i can fuck you better than johnny," jaehyun says, a corner of his lips tilted up as your eyes flutter the closer he draws.

"johnny's your 'bestie'?" you say, and jaehyun can tell that the last threads of your resolve are starting to snap by the way that your hand is now pressed against his chest.

"that's what you're curious about right now? the dynamics of the nct frat brothers?" jaehyun asks but he knows that this back and forth is exactly you need right now; the time to decide if you can take the plunge. or if jaehyun's worth your time tonight.

"as i mentioned, i'm a scientist," you say, and even as your voice stays stable, your fingers seem to leave burning trails against jaehyun's skin as they dip and feed into crevices of jaehyun's body that he didn't even know existed.

"hmm," jaehyun manages to eke out when your fingers lace into his hair. he's not sure how you manage to find every single sensitive spot he has but he's fairly impressed by the way you catch his breath hitching as you work your other hand up as well.

"hmm? cat got your tongue, jaehyun?" you say, making sure that jaehyun looks straight into your eyes as you lean impossibly closer. "you know that sia's with johnny right now, right? girls talk - especially with your best friends. which means that if you can't make good on your promise, i will find out."

jaehyun feels like he's sweating like a pig but thankfully, you don't notice, too busy making him sweat. he clears his throat once, and then twice to make sure that his voice doesn't give out.

"that right?" he says, and you roll your eyes, letting go of him and stepping back. you seem to appraise him for a moment (and jaehyun is unnaturally nervous about what you will decide) before grabbing his hand and leading him to the door. you only pause to flag down fatima, who takes one look at your intertwined hands, and waves the two of you away.

jaehyun blushes like a schoolgirl at the way fatima flashes him a catty smile.

"i swear to god, jaehyun, if you're all talk and no game - or if you're gonna sit still and look pretty the whole time - i will literally blue ball you. i don't do pillow princes," you throw over your shoulder as the two of you make your way to the nct frat. jaehyun knows for a fact that the nct frat will not be a quiet place tonight by the number of dresses and pants he sees in the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

he says nothing, even as you're quite nearly storming up the stairs with a certain level of urgency, almost as though if you were to slow down and think about just exactly what you're doing, you'd turn around and leave right now.

jaehyun definitely can't let that happen.

so the second that he gets you into his bedroom (he had to rock, paper, scissors with doyoung to get the room tonight), he shuts the door and locks it behind him. he turns around to see you looking between the two beds, as if trying to guess which one was jaehyun's.

he mentally pats himself on the back when he sees the fresh sheets on the bed. reaching where you stand in less than a stride, jaehyun turns you so that you're facing his bed, and you squirm to turn to meet his eyes even as his hands are on your waist.

"what is with your hands?" you ask harshly and jaehyun blinks as he looks down.

"what do you mean? they're on your waist," jaehyun says softly, and once again, he's hit with a wave of citrus and apple cider. you simper at him, grabbing his wrist and moving it incriminatingly downwards.

"what am i? a virgin? put them somewhere useful." you whisper the last part and it's as though jaehyun has just woken up.

"you know," jaehyun begins, sliding his other hand downwards to sit comfortably on the curve of your ass. "if i didn't know any better, i'd think you were trying to rile me up. i wonder..."

he doesn't finish his thought, instead pulling you close so that your hips are pressed against his. he can hear the gasp that you're desperately trying to conceal, coughing uselessly to the side. a devilish smirk grows on jaehyun's lips and for the first time in a long time, you're sure you're going to be up all night.

+++

you were, in fact, trying to rile him up. you had heard all the rumors about jaehyun and johnny, about how one night with them was like one night in heaven. hell, you'd had first hand accounts from sia yoo about exactly what it's like to be in bed with either of them - multiple times.

so when jaehyun had fronted with such a cautious attitude when he realized what you wanted, you were almost offended. if you wanted to take control and fuck a man's brains out, you could do that with anyone. why would you fight against your own mind this much to get with him?

but seonghwa park. changkyun im. even kun qian, before you discovered he was head over heels for fatima. jung jaehyun.

these were all people who put you in your place. the way you wanted to be. it just seemed as though jaehyun might've needed a little more persuasion to get there.

so yes, you were riling him up. was that such a crime?

by the way jaehyun's looking at you right now, his breath hot and heavy on your neck and his eyes dark with a feeling that you can't describe but resonates with you on a deeper, more primal level.

"you know, after you got with kun, he wouldn't shut up about it for a week," jaehyun says, pressing kisses down your neck, pausing when he reaches your breastbone. he eyes your corset top with a discerning eye before reaching behind you to pull the lace strings that were precariously holding your top for a week.

"yeah?" you ask, threading your fingers through jaehyun's thick hair as he makes quick work of your top, leaving it pooled on the floor as his lips find your chest as though he couldn't be physically parted from it.

"yeah. even after he met fatima, he said that you were the best he's ever had - that's a big reputation to live up to when you're in nct," jaehyun says, his voice breathy and deep as he walks you backwards so that the back of your knees hit the frame of his bed.

"hmm. what can i say? i know what i want and what i want is usually lots of fun," you say, letting jaehyun unzip your jeans, pulling them down and kicking them off when jaehyun moves too slowly.

"i know. god, after knowing that you and kun were going at it, i swear everyone was jerking off in their room for an hour. even winwin wanted to go for you today. you're an unpredictable woman; no one knows where and when you're going to show up to one of the parties so everyone has to take their chances when they get them," jaehyun says, tugging his shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind him carelessly.

you nearly melt when you see jaehyun's uncovered top, eyeing each and every hard ridge of his body, reaching out to touch him. his chest is almost soothingly warm as your fingers memorize each and every aspect of the planes of his chest, almost worried that they might disappear if you let go.

jaehyun looks at you amusingly as he lets your fingers dance across his body, focusing on tugging your panties off to discard them where he's sure he's going to have to search for them later on.

you pout when you see the difference in clothing but jaehyun just gently pushes you backwards so that your back is against his bed, leaving your pussy exposed in away that makes you feel absolutely mortified. you move to gain some level of privacy back but jaehyun is too fast, gripping onto your thighs incriminatingly as he raises an eyebrow.

"don't think that i'm soft just because i'm being nice to you now, pretty girl. i know you don't like to listen but don't hide from me. i will not let you have any fun if you try to hide from me," jaehyun says, his voice dropping a full octave. you suppress the shiver that runs through your body (and that simultaneously delights jaehyun) as you nod softly.

he seems satisfied by the way your body melts and rewards you for your submission by licking a wet strip up your pussy, one hand snaking up to touch your nipple while the other one keeps your thighs open.

jaehyun is slow at first, exploring each and every hidden crevice of your body but as he feels you get wetter and wetter, he can't seem to stay soft for too long. he continues to press his lips against yours but the moment you try to grind your hips against his lips, he pulls away, his tongue darting out to taste your essence on him.

you almost whine at the loss of his hot mouth on your pussy, and you're embarrassed to realize that in front of jaehyun jung, you are no better than your best friend in falling in love with the way he moves.

"you're not going to cum from my tongue, baby," jaehyun says, practically ripping the belt out from where it was caging his jeans. "especially when i know that your pussy is magic."

"you say that, jaehyun, but you're being so fucking soft. if i didn't know any better, i'd think you're in love with me," you snort, trying to catch your breath. jaehyun freezes from where his boxers are hanging so low on his hips, you can see the muscles in his pelvis tense angrily as he looks at you dangerously.

"my fucking bad for making sure you're wet enough to take me," jaehyun whispers, pulling close to you. his eyes turn even darker than usual and a small spark of excitement ignites in your chest when you realize that you've finally reached it - jaehyun's breaking point.

"sounds like you're scared, jaehyun. you know what? you know why kun was so good? because he wasn't scared. he wasn't scared to fuck me like he was trying to break the bed," you retort, and saying kun's name is when jaehyun finally snaps. he tears his boxers off as he pushes you so that you're further up on his bed.

"y/n, i'm not fucking joking around. if you want me to stop, say it now. just say the word, and i'll pretend like this never happened. because i swear to every god in existence, if you let me, i'll ruin every other man for you," jaehyun says and his knuckles turn white from how hard his clenching his fingers to keep himself from pouncing. the thought is almost cute if you weren't desperate to be fucked into next week.

"if i wanted you to stop, i wouldn't have said kun's name, would i?"

that's all it takes. no sooner do the words leave your mouth, jaehyun's on top of you, every inch of his body fighting to claim yours. he's not sure what it is about being with a bratty girl but every time a girl tries to challenge him, jaehyun can feel his excitement grow as his mind runs wild with ways to prove you wrong.

and with a girl as beautiful and sexy as you? he was going to have the time of his life.

time of his life he does.

+++

when jaehyun wakes up, he's almost happy. almost because he has bruises on his hips from how hard he had pounded into you, a litter of hickeys across his chest, and freshly washed hair from when you had enticed him into taking a shower with you.

inevitably, it led to another hour in the shower that jaehyun had spent having his soul sucked out from his dick, eating you out under the shower, and seeing you cum twice just from his tongue.

if only he had woken up with you still in his bed, jaehyun would've actually been happy.

realistically, jaehyun had no clue what he was expecting. after taking a shower, it had taken you a total of five minutes to fall asleep in his arms, wearing nothing but jaehyun's oversized t-shirt and your panties.

there was no pillowtalk, no heart to hearts, nothing. no discussions of having whatever happened last night happening again. no trying to get to know each other better.

not that you had ever been obligated to do so. if anything, jaehyun was far more obligated to do so, after practically declaring that he had wanted to get with you since last semester - which he had been completely serious about.

but with his reputation, regardless of what he had said last night, jaehyun's almost 100% sure that you would've disappeared by the morning.

he's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses the bright pink post-it note on his neatly folded shirt on his desk in the corner of the room.

9.5/10. if you see sia, tell her she was right about your tongue. see you in intro to east asia on monday.

jaehyun's half disappointed and half happy. disappointed because you'd never left your number or anything and happy because at least he knew that you weren't going to completely avoid him whenever you ran into each other next.

he shakes his head as he folds the post-it note and throws it in the trash can next to his desk.

jaehyun jung may not have started college with the intention of becoming the resident fuckboy but he still had a reputation to maintain. he had fucked countless women over his time at sm university and he had no intention of falling for any of them.

he was not about to get soft-hearted or soft-dicked by a girl he was with once.

even if she was really good in bed. like really really good. like good enough to make him think about the other boys she's been with and if they'd made you feel as good as he did.

fuck. her. which jaehyun had already done. which meant that he needed to move onto the next step of the day before his head exploded with all of the implications flying around in his mind about their relation to each other (nonexistent) and if you were thinking about him like he was thinking of you (you weren't).

he pads out of his room, passing doyoung on the way out, who claps him on the back and says, "you finally got with y/n?" jaehyun doesn't know how doyoung knows but it strikes him that neither of you are very subtle people and you had caused quite the scene leaving with him last night.

similar reactions are offered to him by everyone he passes. he's not really sure how many of the boys you've been with but jaehyun can feel his street cred go up by at least a decameter with the way some of these pledges are looking at him.

in fact, everyone is looking at him with a new look of respect in their eyes until he reaches the kitchen, where yoo sia and johnny are sitting, practically eye-fucking.

jaehyun was very used to seeing johnny's friends in the kitchen the next day, neither of them ready to really say goodbye each other yet but for some reason, knowing that sia was your best friend and seeing her with johnny sets jaehyun's stomach into a series of knots that he was sure he was going to have to unravel when he had his head on straight.

"she already left?" sia says, finally breaking her stare from johnny's. jaehyun shrugs, digging around the fridge to see if they had any coffee. they didn't (none that wasn't expired anyway) so he has to settle for a caprisun.

"she had somewhere to be," jaehyun says. he wants to ask sia if it's normal for you to leave that early. it can't be if sia seems surprised that you'd left before the clock struck ten. what did that mean? what does that say about jaehyun? oh god. what if you hated it. what if you hated it so much that you didn't want to spend a second longer with jaehyun.

he cringes as he locks eyes with another shiny eyed pledge (jaehyun thinks his name is jungwoo) and tries to shake his head to clear any and all thoughts of you. he was pussydrunk. that was the only explanation. he just needed to dick down someone else and then he would get over whatever little infatuation thing he had going on.

"really? hmm..." sia says finally. jaehyun turns to see her looking right at him and suddenly, he's transported back to the previous weekend, when sia had been wrapped up in his sheets.

+++

"why did you start fucking around like this?" sia had asked, her chest still heaving from their previous illicit activities as she wraps herself tighter in jaehyun's sheets. jaehyun pauses for a moment as he catches his breath, pulling on his boxers as he thinks. he throws the shirt that sia's grabbing at, still not sure how to piece together his thoughts.

or why he wants to tell sia the truth. maybe it's because no one's ever asked about it before, but jaehyun feels strangely vulnerable as sia watches as he clambers back into his bed, her expression pensive and uncharacteristically wise.

"i don't know," jaehyun says honestly, laying over the covers as he feels his face grow hotter under sia's unrelenting stare. "i think it's because i wanted to know what it felt like. to know what it felt like to be wanted for a night instead of just being in the sidelines as the guy with the potential. just the guy that people brought along as the friend of the hot guys that kept him around."

sia doesn't say anything, instead turning so that she was lying on her back. jaehyun turns to look at her, to see if he could decipher some level of understanding from her silence. really, he knows that he should feel embarrassed about confessing his insecurities to a girl that he's hooked up with two or three times but he can't bring himself to for some reason.

maybe it's because he knows that she wouldn't say anything about it to anyone. or because he knows that she's head over heels for johnny, whether she'd admit it or not. or maybe it's just because for the first time, someone had asked something about jaehyun just to get to know him as a person, rather than trying to get him in their bed.

not that he really minded that - it just made him feel like it was all a lot more transactional than he was used to. he had been a romantic once upon a time. when you grew up with the nickname of 'valentine boy', it would have been stranger if he didn't have some sense of romance.

but jaehyun's penchant for romance disappeared almost just as soon as he realized that no one else was yearning for a pure type of love like he was.

and yet, it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. turns out that jaehyun's a very adaptable man. if he wouldn't find love in this decade, then perhaps it would be lust that he would have to settle for.

"then again," he begins, gaze darting over to where sia had slipped on his t-shirt as she tiredly begins to settle down in his bed once more. "isn't that what everyone is doing nowadays? looking for a warm body for the night, instead of a genuine connection?"

sia snorts at that, turning so that she was facing jaehyun now. "don't tell me that you're one of the boomer types. the ones who always go around peacocking about how they were born in the wrong generation and that they're one of the 'good guys'. i might actually leave right now if you are."

"no, no i'm not. well. maybe a little bit. but i don't know why that's so bad to be honest," jaehyun acquiesces finally. sia rolls her eyes, but even she goes quiet for a moment. once again, jaehyun's reminded that this is sia yoo - a girl who routinely wakes up in someone else's sheets every saturday (although it was johnny's more often than not) and as sexist as it was, someone who carried a reputation for it. even jaehyun was surprised to find that she was such a deep conversationalist.

of course, he mentally berates himself soon after but he can't help the thought. for him, sia was just the girl he would get with a couple times. a good time. the fact that that's the only role she fulfilled in his mind made him feel disgusting inside out as he waits for her response, vowing that he would work to change his mindset. or maybe just change personalities altogether. ick.

"you know one of my best friends? y/n? the one who got with kun before he decided to go clean for fatima?" sia says with a careful tone. jaehyun nods, not trusting that he wouldn't say something dumb after his sudden realization of his flawed thinking.

"this is something she always says but it's honestly pretty simple: love is however you want to define it. humans spend so much trying to find labels and definitions for things that just might not have or need them. for such an advanced species, we spend so much time concerned about how to put a feeling into a box or how to classify a thought instead of rejoicing in the fact that we had such a beautiful feeling in the first place."

"for people in this generation, the old school love is hard to find because they've got so many other types of love that weren't allowed back when old school love was big. it's a different type of freedom to love someone on the weekends but never to fall in love with them. maybe we're just romanticizing hookup culture but who's to say that we can't? maybe we're all more romantic than we want to admit. maybe when we fall into the sheets with someone we barely know, we're looking for a fragment of love to satiate our heart in ways we didn't know it needed."

jaehyun doesn't know what to say to that so he just pulls her closer to him and she lets him, throwing her leg over his as they fall asleep, closer to each other than they had ever been.

+++

you're not sure what had compelled you to leave so quickly that morning. you usually like to get the boys who sleep with to at least cook you breakfast before you left (for compensation of being terrible in bed, if the situation so called for it) but for some reason, every instinct in your body had pulled you to leave.

you had waken up at nearly 5 in the morning, a mere two and a half hours after the two of you had fallen asleep, gathered your clothes, and were about to leave when you turn to look at jaehyun, still snoring away peacefully, his arm crossing his body to rest on the empty space next to him that you had occupied previously.

you had a feeling that you're going to lament leaving this early after psychoanalyzing why you were leaving so early later in the day but for now, if your gut was telling you to leave, you were going to heed the precautions.

but even as you're about to leave, you find yourself turning to jaehyun's desk, sparse but somehow still a little messy as you rummage for a post-it note and a pen to write with. you grin to yourself when you find yourself successful (and endearing somehow that jaehyun has bright pink post-it notes).

you pass a brother on the way out (undoubtedly a freshman who had received the short stick of the duties tonight) but you wave him off when he offers to walk you home. dangerous? most definitely. but you really needed the time and space to yourself and the short, almost ten minute walk back to your apartment would offer some enlightenment.

spoiler alert: it didn't. no matter how hard you wracked your brain to come up with some version of a logical explanation, you realized that there was just simply no way to do so.

and something about that frustrated you. you knew it wasn't a big deal. jaehyun was just a hook-up. a one night stand. and yet...something wasn't fitting right in your mind. so you start to think in the only way you know how, collecting all of the pieces of information you did have.

a) you just had sex - mind-blowing sex with jaehyun. he was everything you expected and more when it came to a sexual partner. b) you didn't develop feelings for him. sex comes fifth on the list of things you subconsciously (or now consciously, since you've spoken it into existence) have when looking for a potential boyfriend. first comes personality, then intelligence, then ambition, then looks, and then sex. you didn't even have a conversation long enough to figure out if jaehyun had more than three brain cells to piece together. c) jaehyun jung had confessed that he had wanted to get with you since last semester. did he mean with you-r body or with you?

you shake your head as if to physically shake the irrational thoughts in your mind out and press your id against the scanner at the entrance of your apartment building, rubbing your fingers against your temples as you get into the elevator to reach your apartment.

unlocking the door to your (empty) apartment, you decide to shelf the thoughts for some time when your head wasn't pounding and collapse on your bed, thanking the lords you'd had the sense to take a shower at jaehyun's.

and the last thing you remember is the smell of jaehyun's shampoo in your hair as you drift into blissful, dreamless sleep.

+++

you're not surprised to feel a weight on your bed when you wake up the next morning. you blearily open your eyes to make out sia's general figure, rosie and fatima undoubtedly chatting quietly in the kitchen.

you vaguely piece together something about fatima having kun over but him sleeping on the couch and you try to push down the guilt that creeps up into your brain as you realize that you had left fatima alone at the party. a party where all of you knew a lot of people (and the outcome was just as everyone had thought it would be) but the principle of the matter stung nonetheless.

you push aside the thought - along with the idea that you should probably apologize to fatima when the cottony feeling in your mouth started to subside - in favor of looking at sia, who is strangely quiet as she watches you gather yourself. for her boisterous personality, sia yoo could see through anyone to the extent of theorized telepathy so you don't even bother trying to hide anything from her.

although, it really is hard to take her seriously when she's got hickey's littered across her neck. well. you suppose you don't look much better at the moment.

"you left before 10 o'clock," sia says simply. you don't pretend to not understand what she means as you nod, pushing yourself up on your bed as fatima and rosie also enter, rosie handing you a glass of water.

"i know," you say softly. "but i want to hear about everyone else's nights right now. i just don't know that i'm in the right headspace to think about why i left so early - i'm not even sure i know why i left so early."

sia says nothing for a moment, watching your face, almost as if she were trying to read your very essence. but she relents, reaching out to hold your hand briefly before completely switching up, speaking animatedly about her very adventurous night, leaving you to simmer in your thoughts.

had sia always been this smart? probably. who's to say that she wasn't, after all?

turns out that sia and johnny were actually going to go on a date on wednesday, after realizing that their chemistry extended further out of the bedroom than either of them had expected. sia was through the roof, obviously, given that she had been thirsting over johnny (although more in a sexual sense than anything else) for so long.

rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom also worked a lot better than any of them had thought so you were sure that you were going to lose your roommate to the other '97 liners more often for the foreseeable future.

fatima was the only one who had a pg night, with kun coming over to her apartment and just chilling together the whole night, eventually having him sleep over since he was too tired to walk back to the apartment that he lived out (it was on the other side of campus, given that he moved out of the nct house pretty late into the semester last year).

"speaking of kun, when are you guys gonna make it official? i mean after this year, you guys are going to only have one year together before you guys graduate," you say, bunching your comforter before letting go. it felt weird saying that. especially in regards to your friends. theoretically, you had all the time in the world together.

but all the time in the world wasn't enough when it came to these girls.

fatima sighs before getting up, wringing her hands together as she thinks. "i don't know. i mean kun's graduating a year early so i really only have this year left. i - i know how much he likes me. i know that he wants to do this right way. go the whole nine yards."

"but...?" rosie says, elongating the syllables as you and sia look at her patiently. fatima shakes her head, getting up to walk around the room, six paces enough to take her from one side of your room to the other.

"i just don't know. kun's great and honestly, i really think that's the one. or at least one of the ones for me. but i just don't know if my parents would be okay with it. i mean my parents are great! they give me so much freedom and honestly, i'm really thankful that my parents allowed me to find religious and spiritual freedom on my own, without ever trying to shove it down my throat."

"but at the same time...how can i betray their trust in me by dating someone who is so far from my religion? like. kun is a great guy but he's not muslim. and sure, i don't follow a lot of the stricter things in islam but i - i have god in my heart. and i don't know that god would want me to start a family that doesn't follow islam. especially since i can see that in my future with kun and kun - i don't know that i could ask kun to convert to another religion for me."

the room is silent for a little bit after fatima finishes, with her collapsing in your bed next to you. rosie and sia exchange a look with each other, and then you, as they both decide to leave the room, leaving you to console fatima.

you were always the most philosophical one out of the bunch anyway.

"look, fatima, i can't pretend to know what it's like to have that kind of mental burden and i really can't understand what it's like to think about the future and be concerned about the impact on the world you might create. i read about something the other day though - did you know that kun means 'manifesting' or 'believing' in arabic?" fatima looks at you with disbelief written all over her face, shaking her head.

"how did you know that?" she asks and you just shrug, nodding at the 'islam for dummies' book you had bought in hopes of understanding a little bit more about one of your closest friend's religion.

"that's not the point. but fatima, you are the single kindest, most beautiful person i know. and i have faith that you will choose what's right for you, not what's right for the people around you because you know better than everyone that the only person who can judge you is god. and no one - no one - on this earth has the right to take that peace away from you."

fatima is silent before wrapping you in her arms, the soft material of her hoodie comforting you and lulling you back into a sleep that's dreamless and calm.

+++

jaehyun doesn't know what to expect when he walks into intro to east asia on monday. should he say hi? wave? start a conversation? should he acknowledge that he spent the better part of his weekend wondering if he would lose his fuckboy status if someone realized just how down bad he was for you?

probably anything but the last one was a good idea.

jaehyun was not in a good state of mind. he was a hot 19 year old man with a near perfect gpa (a whopping 3.98 only because he got a singular a-), a not so terrible set of dimples, and a killer body. and yet he was walking around like how he had been prior to his enlightening summer.

it's almost freeing but also humiliating to think that one night in bed was enough to make him start an entire philosophy but that was where jaehyun was at so who was he to question anything, really?

in fact, jaehyun is so caught up in what he would name his new branch of philosophy (loserism, with a lot of inspiration from zeno) that he doesn't even realize that you've already walked past him and taken your seat.

third row, first seat. you're putting your bag down next to your chair, pulling out your laptop, tossing your hair over your shoulder when it falls in your face. jaehyun tears his eyes away, knowing that this was not a good look for him.

if jaehyun really wanted to pursue you, which he was sure was where all of his jumbled emotions were eventually going to lead him anyway, he knew for a fact that you weren't going to be interested in having to take the lead. especially if jaehyun wasn't even sure that you were interested in the possibility.

but that's a struggle for another day. what was it that stephanie laurens said? that all women want sometimes is a little old-fashioned loving?

that was, in fact, the opposite of what sia had said you were really into but jaehyun had a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn't mind handing the reigns over in the decision making process portion of a relationship, or the courtship, if your time together this weekend alluded to anything.

jaehyun almost misses the beginning of the lecture, where professor ma (no one actually calls him that besides himself) was going into some of his favorite places to stay during his time in china. and while missing any portion of professor ma's lecture was of no crime, he also almost misses the way that you're looking straight at him, faking a yawn when jaehyun finally locks eyes with you.

professor ma was known for giving stellar recommendation letters (which was why johnny had coerced jaehyun into ta'ing for his class in the first place) but he was such a pain in the ass.

jaehyun has to keep from laughing out loud when he sees your exaggerated gestures to show how boring you were finding the professor's lecture to be, pulling himself together in time for him to finally be able to take a seat in the back of the classroom, professor ma having asked him to take attendance for the some two hundred students in the classroom. by hand.

he almost drops the piece of paper that you slide into his hand, subtly slipping it into the pocket of his basketball shorts as makes his way up the flight of stairs to the tenth row, dropping his backpack on the floor next to him, in a rush to open the delicate piece of paper in his hands.

there's only three words on the piece of paper and a series of dashes and yet jaehyun knows that this is all he needs. this is all the signal he needs to know that he wasn't imagining the chemistry or the tension between the two of you. and fuck what anyone said about his 'reputation'; it was jaehyun's turn - the old jaehyun's turn - to get the chance to experience the relationship he had always been dreaming of.

he rereads the little piece of paper before smiling and tucking it into his pocket again.

earn the rest. 9__-___-____.

+++

johnny suh is getting whiplash from his best friend's actions.

one day, he's asking sia yoo if her best friend usually leaves her one night stands by the time they wake up. then he's throwing said one night stand's notes into the trash can before leaving for some frat meeting or another.

the next day, he's carrying another note from the same one night stand he can't seem to get out of his head.

jaehyun doesn't tell johnny anything. he really doesn't need to at this point. johnny suh is a senior in college and he's pretty much seen it all. he's also the vice president of a frat - which means that even if he didn't have all the experience that he did just because of his seniority, he definitely seen it because of the sheer number of stupid decisions frat brothers will find themselves making when they think they're going to either a) get drunk b) get high c) get their dick wet.

johnny knows it's all in good fun (fun that he's definitely not opposed to) but jaehyun's always been a little bit of an enigma when it came to all of it. he was good at the drinking and alright at the getting high and absolutely fan-fucking-tastic at the getting his dick wet.

it was the goddamn dimples. everyone always fell for the dimples.

and sure, while jaehyun had had crushes before (johnny could read his little like no other), they'd always been fueled by the hormonal rush of adrenaline and testosterone pumping through his veins. in fact, johnny's not sure that jaehyun had had a proper crush on anyone at college after getting fucked over in high school, where johnny had also gone to with jaehyun.

not that johnny had really known jaehyun. he was quieter and kept to himself more then. didn't really hang out in the same crowd as johnny.

he knows that's not necessarily true. johnny had, truthfully, just completely overlooked jaehyun. like a lot of girls had until jaehyun had finally started to grow into his features.

but johnny knows jaehyun now and he also knows that if jaehyun had never met gianna lee, jaehyun wouldn't have ever dove headfirst into the deep end of shitfuckery and sleeping around with every breathing body in sight.

cliché story of course. college boy becomes a fuckboy after having his heart broken by a girl in high school. johnny's almost 100% positive that sia's shoved at least two or three novels like those in johnny's face, with the same exact plot.

but what is life but a series of clichés after all. and honestly, did it even matter? it was real. it happened to jaehyun. that was all. end of story.

so johnny doesn't even say a word when he sees the post-it note in jaehyun's trash can. he's silent as he watches sia and jaehyun talk and jaehyun fall into a period of overthinking (and jaehyun knows he's overthinking too because johnny can see him shake his head even as he continues to stare at the 'people' tab of intro to east asia).

and johnny finally decides to break his silence when he sees jaehyun with a new post-it note, although this time it was a much more tame blue post-it, and a pensive look.

jaehyun slips it to johnny to read as they're sitting at the local starbucks, with johnny filling out some paperwork for the job he was signed on for as soon as the school year ended and jaehyun studying for the organic chemistry exam he had coming up the next week.

he doesn't say anything when he passes the note but johnny can see him sideye-ing him to catch his reaction and it's all he can do to keep from letting a little smile slip through.

he hands the piece of paper back, watching as jaehyun immediately stuffs it into his backpack, and for some reason, he's really not sure what to say. if sia were here, she would know exactly what to say, and how to say it. she had a way of saying things that were a little too straightforward to feel good but also obviously coming from a generally good place.

it was one of the reasons why johnny had thought it would be a good idea to make it official with her. sia yoo was nothing like what johnny had thought - and the thought simultaneously frightens him and comforts him.

"you plan on asking her out on a date?" johnny says lightly, sliding his laptop over to pretend to look at his phone casually. in actuality, he's typing furiously to sia (one of the few people that johnny trusted or consulted when it came to advice giving) about what was happening.

johnny is not very surprised when sia's gray bubble appears, disappears, and then appears again only to say, "yeah, i know."

he waits for a more elaborate response. or even a more sia-like response but the more that he talks to her, the more johnny is learning that sia is more unpredictable than she really seems to be.

and sia yoo seems to be completely out of the box.

johnny shakes his head, as if to physically get rid of the thoughts of her from his head, unsure why he was thinking of her when he was supposed to be helping out one of his boys.

"yeah. i think so? i don't know. i mean we had a good time and we definitely have chemistry. but we literally just had one night in bed and that's it." jaehyun furrows his eyebrows as he realizes that's not just it. "well, there is the fact that kun was walking around singing her praises. and i know that fatima wouldn't be friends with kun or y/n if she wasn't sure they're both good people. not to mention the fact that i've always thought she's kinda hot. but it's always been superficial. even us spending the night together was really nothing more than finding each other hot or trying to figure out if the talk around town was real or not."

johnny takes a sip of his americano as he lets jaehyun's words sink into his own mind. jaehyun rests his heads on his arms crossed in front of him and johnny knows exactly the set of thoughts that's running through jaehyun's mind because they were the same as johnny's when he had decided to ask sia out on a date.

is it worth it? is it worth possibly getting my heart strung up on someone again just to face the possibility of breaking it again?

so johnny offers the only advice that he really has.

"talk to roseanne. girls' fiercest protectors are their friends and something tells me that talking to her will make you fall on one side or the other."

+++

the next time that jaehyun sees roseanne is a complete coincidence. he really only meant to say hi to one of his homies, yugyeom, on the way out of the library and hadn't expected to run into roseanne or miyeon at all. especially not a singular day after johnny had suggested that he seek her out in the first place.

he watches as yugyeom thumbs the rip in miyeon's jeans as he continues to talk to jaehyun about something jeongguk had done the previous weekend. and then he sees miyeon press a kiss to roseanne's cheek as she gets up to fill up her water bottle.

jaehyun didn't think he would understand that dynamic at all but whatever floated their boat. who was he to judge? he had watched the barbie movie and was still having a crisis about his masculinity and was actively searching out his one night stand's (were you still just his one night stand?) roommate and best friend to fix it. to be fair, he didn't really fully understand the barbie movie, to the chagrin of doyoung's girlfriend nairobi but that was besides the point.

yeah. jaehyun was really in no position to speak. wow he had a lot of things to work on internally. the more he talked to the women in his life, the more he was realizing this. again. not the point.

roseanne takes one look at his face and then exchanges a look with miyeon and then yugyeom before standing up and walking towards the exit, looking at jaehyun questioningly when she realizes that jaehyun hasn't moved an inch. jaehyun hurriedly bids yugyeom and miyeon goodbye as he rushes after her.

the two of them linger outside of the library and roseanne just raises an eyebrow as she appraises jaehyun. and for some reason, jaehyun stands up straighter, and she just sighs, a small smile playing on her lips.

"let me guess. 'who makes people work for their number? what is this? sprinkle sprinkle type of stuff?' or maybe 'this is kinda cringey, isn't it?' or just a sweet and simple 'what the actual fuck?'" roseanne says nonchalantly, listing out each possible question jaehyun could have come to ask.

"would it make me a bad man if i said yes to all of the above?" jaehyun asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. roseanne shrugs, crossing her arms across her chest.

"not really. i don't think so at least. it's a fair set of questions that even i asked her the first time a guy came up to me asking who the fuck my roommate thought she was," roseanne says. she takes sees the look of confusion on jaehyun's face as she continues, "you're definitely not the first person to ask me that but you are of a selective few. y/n usually doesn't let people get this far in the first place. and secondly, she doesn't really tell us much about people she's interested in until much later."

"she's a strange person, if i'm being honest with you. there's just something about her that makes her so captivating and invisible at the same time. she'll capture the attention of everyone in the room but if you talk to her, she'll make you feel like her best friend. she seems like an open book, and an even more open friend. and you feel so close to her within a conversation and then you end the conversation, you realize that even as she spoke, she revealed nothing about herself."

"i'm her best friend and i could tell you very confidently that i didn't know a single thing about her truly until recently. it made me frustrated at first. like i was a shitty friend or something. but the closer to her i got, the more i realized that she's always been a great friend but no one's been a great friend to her. she's very selective with the people she associates with - not just people she lets herself be seen with but people she confides in."

"this whole thing is a defense mechanism. she'd be caught dead before she'd ever admit it but she just hasn't been loved in the way that she's loved and now she's more guarded for it. i'll tell you this jaehyun, but if you want to give up, do it now. she says she's just going to give you her number if you earn it but once you get all 10 digits, know that she's gonna give you her heart."

"it seems like i'm violating girl code by telling you all this but like i said, even if you were to ask y/n, she would say the same thing. not in so many words but still. like i said. she's an open book and a closed heart. she knows you're gonna ask me and so she only tells me something that she would be okay with you hearing."

jaehyun, who had been listening quietly and patiently the whole time, cuts in with a quiet voice. "isn't it exhausting to live like that?"

roseanne looks at him strangely, as though she was truly seeing him for the first time. jaehyun doesn't know if he's offended or relieved that she'd done what he'd done to sia - made assumptions based on his appearance. he lands on neutral. it's human nature, to try and make proper guesses about who's gonna act like what.

the ancient art of preventing heartbreak, jaehyun supposes.

"maybe. i don't think so though. it's gotta be a different level of relief knowing that no one's gonna talk shit about you because a) no one knows you well enough to do that or b) because you're so careful with who you trust that you know they'd never betray you or even c) they can only talk about what you put out into the world. it's why censorship is so effective. people can only talk about what they know. there's few people who will ignore what they see to find what they can't see tangibly."

"are all of y/n's friends secretly poets or something? why the hell are you guys all speaking cryptically like you're all freemasons or some shit like that. i can't tell if i find it cringey or cool," jaehyun says, cocking his head.

roseanne lets out a real, full bellied laugh at that, clutching her stomach as chuckles escape her. jaehyun's not sure what he's said that's so funny but he knows for a fact that she's not laughing with him, but at him.

"why is it cringey, jaehyun? why would it be cool? it's just what it is. we're just girls. you'll see us at the party next weekend, drinking our weight in alcohol. we'll have the conversations about makeup and dresses and having fun and our future and our past. there's nothing like freemasonry, i promise. it's just so amusing to see men get alarmed by the thoughts that girls have been wrestling with since they've been twelve. the duality of man, i guess," roseanne says finally, once she's caught her breath.

jaehyun doesn't know how to respond to that so he elects to save the remaining tatters of his dignity by just not responding at all. if there's one thing he's learned about you, it's that you surround yourself by women who are not hesitant about putting him in his place. and he's oddly thankful for it.

"i have one last question. well, two last questions, actually," jaehyun says when he sees roseanne turning around to head back inside, still wiping the tears from her eyes from laughing too hard.

roseanne turns, a knowing glint in her eyes even before jaehyun asks his question.

"how many guys have talked to you? and what's the highest number anyone's ever gotten to?"

roseanne is silent and just as the silence begins to turn awkward, she promptly turns on her heel and begins to walk away. she opens the door to the library before she seemingly changes her mind and looks back at jaehyun.

"two guys have talked to me. you're gonna have to ask fatima about the second question though. and jaehyun? the next number is 6."

96_-___-____.

+++

jaehyun finds fatima not soon after his conversation with roseanne. he's sitting in the nct house, watching johnny pace back and forth in his room, trying to figure out if what he was wearing was too casual for a date to a bowling alley.

it was way too formal, in jaehyun's opinion. but he was just going to wait for johnny to finish panicking (even if he would never admit that he was, in fact, panicking) to figure that out on his own. seriously though, who wore a button down and slacks to a bowling alley?

then again, he was going on a date with sia yoo so really, anything was fairplay when it came to that girl. she was a whirlwind of literally everything that could possibly go into a human being. she was a maximalist to the fullest, seizing every opportunity she could to make good memories, pressing forward with a sense of perfect clarity and sobriety that most people would be scared of.

the type of girl who was the main character of any story that she would feature in. sia was the type of person that people who trip and fall over themselves trying to have a good time with that she practically promised. she walked around with fairy dust in her fingers and a strange sense of wisdom that felt like she could read you like a book within a singular meeting with her.

jaehyun knows that she's the most intimidating out of all of the girls. out of you, roseanne, fatima, and sia, she was hands down the most frightening because even though she could read everyone else, no one could really read her.

then there was roseanne. she was the wet dream of every girl alive - the reason why straight girls lamented that they were straight and still falling a little bit in love with her. she was hot, flirtatious to the extent of making everyone wonder what they were when she gave them even a split second of attention, and so incredibly full of life. it doesn't surprise jaehyun that she had become exclusive with miyeon and yugyeom. for some reason, he feels like she just wouldn't have been able to settle for liking one person at once.

she was a little too much for just one person to be able to handle. she was like the human personification of a leather jacket wearing, motorcycle driving, woody cologne smelling wattpad trope. jaehyun understands her appeal all too well.

and then there was fatima. she was kind, sweet, kept to herself, and always offered a helping hand to those around her. jaehyun understood why kun had fallen so hard for her within two minutes of meeting her. she had an air about her that made you feel like she was someone who truly cared about you, even if you didn't know her and she didn't know you all that well. she was the type of girl who was always forgotten in the novels about warriors and princesses. the girl who was often reduced to nothing more than the main character's best friend.

until you met a girl like her in real life. fatima was still a little forgotten, and jaehyun knew that. guys often overlooked her in favor of her 'hotter' or 'wilder' friends, which is admittedly what jaehyun had thought at first. but she was just so genuine and clearheaded. she protected her peace in a way that was so unusual for young, college-going students. not to say that sia, roseanne, or you weren't genuine or anything like that. but fatima was the type of girl that jaehyun knew was perfect for kun. the girl that he could go home and know that no matter what he had done in his past, she would love him all the same.

and there was you. smart, strangely private, and a series of contradictions housed within one heart. jaehyun wracks his brain, trying to gather everything that he knew about you and yet, he comes up empty.

frustratingly empty.

jaehyun vaguely registers the fact that johnny has finally changed and is getting ready to go. he knows that he should say something about how johnny should just be himself and that sia liking him is completely up to her, regardless of what johnny were to do. but when he locks eyes with johnny, he realizes that johnny already knows.

so jaehyun just claps him on the back as he heads back to his room, his mind spinning as he tries to think of everything that he knows about you. and he draws a blank every fucking time.

he knows superficial things about you. maybe it's because he doesn't know you like he knows your friends. he hasn't talked to you as much as he's talked to them. but how does he not know you? he's been wanting to get with you for so long. he wanted more than just your body. he wanted your charm and your appeal.

was it just your body? is that all it was? is that all jaehyun wanted? somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to believe that. he doesn't want that for himself. logically, he knows that gianna's impact on his life shouldn't be extending this far. he knows that he shouldn't want or have to fight himself this hard but you're not making it much easier for him.

when was the last time jaehyun wanted to get to know such an enigma of a girl? gianna lee. and he wants nothing to do with a girl like that ever again.

and yet, here he is. falling into the same trap all over again.

jaehyun's so caught up in his own thoughts, feeling himself starting to spiral when he bumps in fatima and kun, who are equally caught up in a conversation with each other.

"oh, my bad," jaehyun mumbles, ready for fatima to brush past him but she doesn't, looking at jaehyun and then kun.

"hey man, we're headed back to my place. why don't you come back with us?" kun offers, and jaehyun just nods blankly, as he starts to follow them out of the nct house. kun stops at the entrance where he picks up a textbook from yuta, who had been borrowing it for the last week, before the three of them make their way out.

"how are you, jaehyun?" fatima asks with a sweet smile as they pile into kun's car. somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to give her a generic, insincere answer.

"i'm...okay. i'm just okay. confused but okay," jaehyun says and fatima seems alright with this answer. kun pulls out of the 'driveway' of the frat house, exchanging in a quiet conversation with fatima about what they were planning on eating for the night, leaving jaehyun to simmer in his thoughts.

gianna lee. there was a name that he thought about almost every day and never all at the same time. the girl who had made him and broke him. the girl that jaehyun had trusted with his heart and made him regret ever doing that.

the girl who had been the first love of his life.

+++

gianna was a year younger than him. smart, so incredibly sweet, and yet someone that no one could confidently say that they knew. she was the type of girl who could slip under the radar as easily as her friends seemed to always stay on top of.

she ran in the same circle as jaehyun had in senior year, right when jaehyun was beginning to blossom into the man that he was today. she had always been kind to him, if not a little withdrawn, even when he was a skinny boy with proportions that absolutely did not seem to match each other.

jaehyun didn't even know her well enough for her to break his heart, honestly. jaehyun had liked her even before having a proper conversation with her. he knew how left out she felt in her own body. even though he couldn't imagine a more gorgeous girl, he knew that she didn't feel that way about herself.

he knew that she always compared herself to her friends. her well-accomplished, 'main character' best friends who were the talk of the school. and her. no matter how intelligent or kind or put together she was, no one really looked at her the way that jaehyun did. she knew it.

even jaehyun couldn't place why he liked her so much. maybe it was the fact that he was somehow comforted that a girl with so much beauty could feel the same way as him. maybe it was the fact that she had always held the same smile for him, regardless of what he looked like. or maybe it was even the fact that one time, she had held his hand as she pulled him across the street, running to catch up with their friends who had already crossed.

jaehyun just remembers looking at her dyed cherry red hair falling into her eyes as she laughs, pulling him forward to where the rest of their friends were standing. and as he breathes in the smoke in the air and the raspberry scent of her perfume, he just knows that he really, truly likes gianna lee.

gianna lee doesn't like him the way that he likes her. he knows that. logically, jaehyun knows that his feelings are truly unfounded. he really has no reason to like gianna the way that he does. and yet, there's a part of him that holds onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll turn around with those big eyes and upturned lips and say that she likes him the way that he likes her.

so he continues to look at her first when he makes the friend group laugh. he always slips her a napkin when he's getting one for himself when they're out getting milkshakes. he offers to help her with apush when she's stressing about a test the next week.

the closer he gets to her, the more jaehyun realizes that really, she was nothing like the image of her he had conjured in his head. she was every bit sweet as he had thought but she was argumentative, competitive, and all too obsessed with perfection. she always needed to be right in an argument, always had to win, and always had to make sure that she looked flawless doing so.

jaehyun doesn't realize it, of course. he's so obsessed with his glazed over façade of her that he just continues to let her win the arguments even when he knows that she's wrong. and she lets him wrap his arms around her when she gets an 89% on her test.

he lets her walk all over him and she lets him act on his feelings.

it was a toxic, parasitic relationship that neither of them were truly happy in. when gianna asked him out, jaehyun hadn't felt like fireworks were going off in his stomach. he felt like he had won a prize at a marathon. like he'd won a medal.

gianna wasn't a medal. she was a flawed, beautiful human being - every bit gorgeous and horrible as jaehyun and every other human being was. but jaehyun had won, hadn't he?

he hadn't. and it took so long for him to realize that by the time he'd realized that gianna had really only taken to him out of pity, he was so far in his own head that he didn't know how to leave her.

eventually, the summer before college rolled around and gianna had taken it upon herself to do the nasty deed of breaking up with him. it had been an amicable split, as far as their friends were concerned.

but none of them had ever truly either of their friends. so what did they know?

what did they know about gianna finding comfort in her ex's arms? what did they know about her grades slipping at the end of the school year? what did they know about her having to excuse herself at a meeting for her internship to sob in the bathroom as she realized the true fallacy in the way she had acted? what did they know about the way she had to reconstruct herself bottom up? nothing.

what did they know about jaehyun spending every other night with a different girl, trying to ease the ache in his heart? what did they know about the obscene number of hours at the gym, not sure how to combat the sudden numbness after girl after girl? what did they know about the fact that jaehyun could not physically stand the smell of raspberries anymore? absolutely nothing.

no one knew anything until jaehyun had finally come to college. it was once he joined the frat and met guys who were so alike and different from him at the same time that he finally opened up about gianna.

only to doyoung, kun, and johnny but people nonetheless. everyone had gone through something similar - while for some it happened at college or back home, they all knew the pain. some of them were more in the fault than others but pain is pain and a paper cut bleeds the same red as a gunshot wound.

which is why when kun sits him down on the couch and fatima hands him a cup of iced tea to save them all from the sweltering heat as august makes a last stand against september's winds, jaehyun spills everything.

gianna. his past. his insecurities. everything. he knows he shouldn't. logically, fatima had nothing stopping her from going and telling everything that jaehyun had told her to you, but for some reason, jaehyun thinks that she won't.

she doesn't.

+++

fatima knows that jaehyun was going to talk to her about something like this. it seemed that all of the nct boys came with some level of trauma like this. she wasn't sure what it was about every single boy she had met in college (although, granted, they were either her friends' conquests or kun's friends - a very interesting group of very intertwined boys) having their hearts getting ripped to shreds. sometimes it was of their own volition but they all seemed to be some level of hurt either way.

so when jaehyun spills his heart out on kun's carpeted floors, she's ready with a well-rehearsed speech. he's one of six boys she'd already had this same exact conversation with (kun has a bad habit of picking up strays) but when he looks at her with such raw anguish in his eyes, she falters.

she looks to kun, who's looking at her with the same question that she knows jaehyun is asking.

"how do you know when to choose between your head and your heart? because my heart is so fucking scared of getting attached to someone again. but my head knows that i can't push everyone away because i'm scared."

fatima is quiet, searching for the right words. she's about to say something when kun speaks up, looking determinedly at fatima.

"you learn to choose you. instead of choosing between your head and your heart, just choose yourself. at the end of the day, you and y/n are good people who aren't trying to hurt each other. you're both trying not to get hurt. and honestly, maybe you'll realize that you both are better off as friends along the way. maybe you just realize that you don't want to be with someone right now. or maybe you find someone who makes you feel like you're safe and loved when you're around them, whether you're in love with them or not." fatima looks at kun with a soft smile, reaching out to hold his hand gently.

"you have to choose yourself, jaehyun. trust me. the more you start thinking about what is best for the people around you instead of thinking for yourself, you'll look back fifteen, twenty years down the road and see everyone but yourself in your life. don't do something because gianna and how she made you feel. don't let your past define your future," fatima says, and jaehyun can feel the tears prick his eyes. he blinks determinedly, trying to make them disappear but when kun sits on one side of him and fatima on the other, he starts losing his battle against his emotions, finally letting himself mourn the innocence he had once had.

he buries his head into fatima's shoulder and for some reason, he feels as though kun and fatima would be amazing parents. because jaehyun doesn't remember the last time that he had felt this safe in an embrace.

"and jaehyun? the furthest anyone has ever gotten is five numbers. you're at three. it's your call from here. do what you want, not what you think you need to do." fatima taps his shoulder gently and lets him cry for as long as he needs to.

963-___-____.

+++

jaehyun gets the next number from you. after his conversation with fatima, he's sure that if he wants to go any further than this, he needed to talk to you first.

it's strange. he's earning your number but it feels like jaehyun's somehow earning himself back. and when he finds you again, he knows that you can tell.

even johnny could tell. when he had come back from his (successful) date with sia, the first thing he had said was, "wow. you look so...light."

jaehyun hadn't said anything but 'thank you' but it was enough.

johnny had just smiled at him and recounted the date, stating that he was going to ask her to go on another date this saturday night. jaehyun doesn't mention the fact that nct is throwing that night because johnny already knows.

and honestly, sia is a junior and johnny is a senior. they've been to their fair share of parties. one party being missed wouldn't be life changing for them. but skipping a party as the vice president of a frat and a girl who was sought after as a sweetheart for six frats meant something nonetheless.

he hadn't expected that they were to get that serious that quickly but it was a refreshing change. even fatima and kun were starting about talking about talking to fatima's parents to get their blessing for their relationship. her dilemma was no secret and it seemed that the conversation between the three of them had served to help them through their own issues as well.

there was just something in the air, jaehyun had supposed. august turned to september in the week that jaehyun had wrestled with himself, eventually leading to seeking you out.

it had been at the nct party, actually. you were standing with some of your acquaintances, all of your friends having dispersed to do what they were going to do. jaehyun had been on the other side of the room, convincing bambam that it was most definitely not a good idea to try and pursue soyeon jeon if he wanted to make sure that he woke up with all his limbs intact the next morning.

you had met his eye, raising an eyebrow before continuing your conversation, all thoughts of him seemingly out of your mind. jaehyun looks between bambam (who has gone from trying to get with soyeon to jumping into the pool) (that pool had not been cleaned in a full six months) and you. he just finds jungwoo, one of the pledges, and hands him a very drunk bambam.

"do not let him do anything dumb. i'm counting on you pledge," jaehyun called out over his shoulder as he weaves through people to get to you.

"jaehyun! hey! long time no see," hailey whitfield says, throwing herself in jaehyun's arms. jaehyun looks at you, where you're staring straight at where hailey's body ends and his arms begin. jaehyun tries to push her off of him. once upon a time, jaehyun would've been behind happy about getting with her again - she was so good with her mouth. but now, he has no intentions of giving you the wrong impression.

at least until he has a proper conversation with you so that you knew where he stood with you. and where you stood with him.

"hey hailey, sorry i've gotta get to my friend," he says, not even looking at her as he pushes off of her, resuming his threading through the crowd to where you're standing. you look at him, unimpressed, but jaehyun knows you well enough to know that three numbers are enough to make you feel a certain way if jaehyun was fooling around with other girls.

which he hasn't been. not a single night. jaehyun jung's bed has been empty for an entire two weeks, something that doyoung and nairobi have been taking full advantage of.

even some of jaehyun's friends had started asking if he was having problems or something but he had brushed them off. he definitely wasn't having problems, if hailey whitfield was any indication. but he felt like it would be doing you dirty if he had someone in his bed while he was talking to your friends about you.

so he hadn't.

he knows you know. he knows that you know he's talked to sia, roseanne, and fatima. he'd figured that you'd find out either through them or just by him. he can tell by the look in your eyes that you've read him thoroughly.

so he really doesn't feel bad about pulling you away from your friends, taking you upstairs to his room. finally, doyoung had promised that they would go back to nairobi's place on the condition that jaehyun made sure that no one would try to fuck on his bed. he promised, knowing that the only person who'd be coming up here would be him. he needed to talk to you tonight. if he knew anything it was that.

but once you're sitting on his bed, watching him pace back and forward, he's lost everything he's been wanting to say. where does he even start? with gianna? with the questions he has for you? with the number? where does he begin?

jaehyun looks at you, where you're watching him with a small smile on your face and suddenly, it doesn't matter where he begins. you'll listen to it all. he knows that much.

"why do you want me to work for your number?" jaehyun asks. you look at him curiously, tilting your head as you piece together an answer.

"are you sure you don't know the answer to that question?" you say, folding your legs so that you're sitting criss cross on the navy covers.

"i do. but i want to hear it from you, y/n. you know what all your friends say about you? that they didn't properly know you until a full year of friendship with you. but they said that you never lie. so i want you to tell me," jaehyun says, chest heaving by the end of his ramble. his eyes turn soft as he watches you become more and more solemn and he steps forward, sitting down on his desk chair and swiveling it over so that he was sitting directly across from you.

you pause for a moment, searching for the words before saying anything. "i've never been in a relationship before. so i don't have the trauma that could come from something like that. but i know what it's like to lose your heart to someone. and i know that it hurts. i want to be loved in the way that i never thought i could be. so the number thing is just an excuse for me to get to the point where i won't feel guilty about liking someone."

you shrug, smiling but not allowing the smile to reach your eyes. "it's a good way to make sure that the guy knows what he's getting into either way."

jaehyun nods at that. he knew that much. it feels different hearing it from you though. when you're the one saying it, jaehyun knows that it's real. raw. not coming from people trying to protect you because they know that you're far too soft to truly come at him guns blazing.

somehow, he likes it. he likes that you're much softer than you seem. that you're a lot more vulnerable than you come off as. and for some reason, jaehyun hopes that you never perfect the art of becoming standoffish.

"hmm. you've never been in a relationship before?" jaehyun says finally and you nod, shrugging once more. a shadow of bittersweet nostalgia crosses your face before you're back to your soft smile and guarded yet curious eyes.

"nope. part of it was on me; i've got high standards, if you can't tell. and the other part was that i've always wanted someone who fascinates me. of course, i wasn't all that appealing to men because i spent so much time trying to beat them at the only thing they were good at - ego-boosting themselves but they weren't interesting. none of them were people i really wanted to get to know," you say, unfolding your legs.

jaehyun likes the fact that the tips of your toes are the only part of your feet that touch the ground from how far back you're sitting on the bed. in an act of boldness, jaehyun moves forward to sit next to you, right where you're sitting. his feet are flat on the floor, he realizes.

he doesn't know why he's noticing things like this but he is and something about that frustrates him, frightens him, and tugs at his heartstrings altogether.

"you're heartbroken, aren't you? boys like you always seem to be a little hurt," you say, tossing the words into the air like rose petals. they're recklessly thrown but they're somehow beautiful in the way that blackened roses are always beautiful.

"yeah. i was. i think i will always mourn who i was before that. i was so naïve. but i'm not him anymore. and i think i'm realizing that i'm actually okay with that." jaehyun says the words just as carelessly as you do but once they're out in the open, he realizes that he's being completely honest. he turns to you with a strange look though.

"boys like me?"

you smile and nod at him. "boys like you."

you stand up, walking to where jaehyun has a corkboard with a shitload of scraps and photos from the past two years. you don't mention the fact that none of the memories that he has on the board date from before senior year. you don't need to.

"boys like you who've never been loved completely. boys who think that they need to listen to what the world says about how they should be acting or thinking. boys who are hopeless romantics but what would the world say if they knew that these boys just wanted a little bit of love? what would they say if they were looking for warmth in an empty and cold bed?"

jaehyun hates that you're right. it's the college boy tragedy. condemned to never be able to completely heal from one bad experience and then always breaking hearts to collect enough pieces to build themselves a new one.

he didn't want to end like that. even if it wasn't with you, he was ready to grow past it. he didn't want to end as a heartbreaker.

"boys like me...and you like a boy like me?" jaehyun asks. he doesn't know why he does. this is the first proper conversation you've had with him when both of you are decidedly sober. you want to deflect the question but if he's being honest, that's a sign for you to be just as honest.

"i don't know. from what my friends say, and what i know about you as a person in class, i know you mean well. and honestly, i've always just been the type of person to like someone past things like the books they read or the way they dress," you say, still looking at the memories jaehyun's pieced together over the years on this board. "i feel something around you. and i don't know you well enough to know that i like you as someone more than a friend but i'd like to at least have the chance to get that far."

that's all jaehyun needs. he gets another number that night.

+++

jaehyun waits for you outside of intro to east asia, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for you to make it out of the classroom. you're the last one to leave, knowing that technically, you and jaehyun weren't allowed to see each other while he was your ta.

jaehyun had never really pegged you as someone with so much respect for the rules but you had argued that it was mostly about the principle.

he'd learned a lot about you that last weekend. you and him had stayed up all night, talking about nothing and everything under the sun until the sun itself rose, eventually falling asleep in a tangled mess of limbs and conversations.

he learned that while you didn't like the rules, you often followed them as long as they followed your own moral code. that you would die for your friends and that had landed you in many bad friendships when people would use that to their advantage before you'd met your friends in college. he learned that you were super close with your family, and that they were quite literally the best friends that you could always rely on.

and he learned that you wanted to see him again. on a date. sometime soon. so with no real way of communicating with you outside of social media (and he somehow felt like sliding into your dm's was corny and somewhat of a copout), here he was. waiting outside of the classroom like he was ripped straight from a 1950's romance movie. he even had the letterman jacket on to boot.

"oh my god, you scared me," you say, pressing a hand to your chest as you quite nearly bump into jaehyun. he smiles, readjusting his backpack on his shoulders as the two of you start walking.

"you knew i was waiting for you outside, didn't you?" he says, pushing the side door open to walk towards the parking lot, where he's convinced kun to let him borrow his car for the day.

"yeah but i didn't think you would be literally outside the door," you murmur, checking your phone to see the rest of your day's schedule. you had purposefully blocked off three hours of your schedule to hang out with jaehyun, which you were sure to regret later on when your organic chemistry class kicked your ass. but that was a later issue.

"well, i couldn't text you where i was so i figured i'd wait in plain sight," jaehyun retorts, opening the passenger door for you without a word. huh. that was the first time a man has ever done that for you. and jaehyun did it as though it were second nature - like it was a given.

you don't know why something so small means so much to you but you're alright with it. you're alright with just appreciating it.

"that's fair," you say. another number's on the tip of your tongue as you watch him get into the driver's seat but jaehyun beats you to the punch.

"don't give me a number. not yet," jaehyun says. "not that i don't want one. but i just...me waiting outside your classroom or opening your door isn't enough for a number. even if i don't get all ten, you've got to up your standards."

you don't know what to say to that so you don't say anything, turning on the music and letting the melody of chemtrails under the country club by lana del ray fill the rainy september afternoon sky.

+++

when jaehyun pulls up to a run down diner, you're pleasantly surprised. although you're not much of a sucker for romantic places, the fact that jaehyun is somehow makes you happy. it makes you happy that he still sees the beauty in places like these. and when you look over at him, dimples threatening to show as he breathes in the air of misty fog and the smell of milkshakes and burgers, you're so tempted to kiss him.

so you lean over, looking at him with a twinkle in your eyes once jaehyun has parked.

"can i kiss you?" you ask, mere inches from his lips. jaehyun just looks at you, and from this close, you realize just how beautiful his eyes are. they're dark, darker than anyone else's that you know. and yet, it feels like you could fall in and never regret it.

"please."

it's all you need. and it's all he needs because as soon as word slips from his lips, he's pressing forward, his lips against yours. he's soft, you register vaguely. nothing like last time. nothing like how he'd kissed you like he could think of nothing but absolutely ruining you.

jaehyun is soft. like the feeling of slipping a cold hand into someone's warm jacket pocket. he kisses you like he's scared of ruining you. ruining this. and you're absolutely addicted to the feeling.

the feeling of knowing that he could just claim you instead of trying his best to claim your heart. no matter how fucked up it was that you were even thinking that someone could 'claim' you. he wasn't like that and you could work with that.

he pulls away from you, eyes still closed as he sits against the drivers seat, his head against the headrest. you watch him, a silly and childish smile on your face - although you're not really sure why it's there in the first place. but who are you to knock anything?

there aren't many words to exchange as the two of you make your way into the diner. jaehyun had opened your car door again. this time, you just offer him your hand and you're strangely alright with just how safe you feel with his hand locked in yours.

the diner seems as though time has frozen still here.

and everything about the date seems the same. it feels as though time has frozen still - almost as though the two of you are in a little bubble with no one but each other. it's a feeling you haven't experienced in a while. a feeling you don't think you've ever had because of a boy.

it feels...almost scarily comfortable. it doesn't feel as though there are fireworks exploding for every word that jaehyun says. but it does feel as though that there's a hot mug of cocoa that's been handed to you on a cold winter night. and that feeling, the feeling of warmth spreading through every corner of your body, is the feeling that you know is good for you.

so you listen to him, watch him speak animatedly about basketball or a book he read, chin resting in your palm as you find yourself falling deeper and deeper.

jaehyun gets two numbers that day.

+++

it doesn't take much longer for jaehyun to get the rest of the numbers. soon enough, you're more than happy just to spend time with him the way that you spend time with your friends. you feel as though you've made a good friend out of someone you'd thought that you wouldn't even be able to get along with.

"you know, when i first met you, even before i knew you, i really didn't like you," you say, taking a sip out of your latte. the seasons have changed, fall giving way to winter. the november air bites your skin every time someone opens the door to the tiny café the two of you were sitting in.

jaehyun smiles, nodding as he leans back in his chair. "i know. i could tell by the look in your eyes."

"the look in my eyes?"

"yeah. the one that said that you wanted to get to know me. to figure out my deal even if you didn't necessarily want to find out for sure. kind of like you wanted to be the one that said 'aha!' at the end of a movie, even though you weren't sure of the ending at all."

you look at jaehyun for a moment before laughing, shaking your head as you laugh. "you're even starting to talk like me now."

jaehyun pauses before he nods, smiling with you. "yeah, i know. you've rubbed off on me in a lot of ways."

"i've improved your music taste, that's for sure," you snort, taking another sip out of your latte. "i still can't believe you didn't like ric flair drip when we met."

"it's not that i didn't like it and it's still not that i like it now. but i guess i just have a good memory associated with it now so it's growing on me," jaehyun says. your eyebrows furrow as you try to recollect what good memory he could possibly be referring to.

"oh my god. the night that we met! i was trying to get in your pants with ric flair drip," you say incredulously, shivering when someone opens and closes the door once more. jaehyun hands you his hoodie, leaving his arm extended silently when you protest.

you don't know why you still bother trying to protest with him when you knew you were going to lose. you put the sweater on as jaehyun starts talking, letting the scent of clean water and pine trees swaddle you softly.

"honestly, i think i was more than you that night," jaehyun says, as he looks at you with an incriminating twinkle in his eyes. "that was around the time that even taeyong said that he wanted to see if kun's vivid descriptions were true or not. and i wasn't about to let him get the opportunity to get to you before i did. i don't know why. i felt almost protective over you. but not in a good way. in the type of way where i wanted to show you how good i could make you feel - more than anyone could even begin to think of making you feel."

the previously cold café begins to become a lot hotter than you were feeling before, clearing your throat as you try to let the moment pass.

"how did we even get here?" you say, fanning yourself delicately. the move only serves to work against you when you fan yourself so that the scent of his cologne on his hoodie only gets stronger in your mind.

jaehyun leans back, letting you switch the conversation. he'd bring it up to you later in the night, anyway. besides, for someone who puts on such a strong front, it's honestly a little fun to see you squirm at the slightest implications from jaehyun.

"but, uh, jaehyun. i've been meaning to ask you something for a while," you begin, fidgeting with the wrapper of the straw in front of you. jaehyun tilts his head as if to question what you have to say as he waits patiently.

"what are we?"

now jaehyun is truly confused. was the past month of going on dates not clear enough? jaehyun wasn't going on dates with anyone else. oh my god. were you going on dates with other men? is that why you're asking.

"i thought we were dating?" jaehyun says, phrasing his sentence more like a question than a statement. "i mean i'm not talking to anyone else and i kinda assumed that since i'd gotten all ten numbers, neither were you."

you hum, unable to stop the silly smile on your face.

"good. that's just what i was thinking too."

+++

honestly, everything about jaehyun jung is appealing to you. from the way that he engulfs you in a hug when you're up late studying. or the way that he convinces you that you have a virus on your laptop just so that he could spend more time with you 'fixing' your laptop for you. or the way that he sits with you and your friends, patiently listening and offering advice wherever he can (or honestly, is just allowed to speak).

you're so glad to see him like this. as your boyfriend of four and a half months (you hadn't let him make it official until he was no longer your ta), you've seen him grow in ways that you'd never thought. jaehyun was every inch the stupid, naïve fuckboy you'd thought him to be in the beginning. and he was also every inch the hopeless romantic with a little too much love to give for a scarred heart.

so you heal together. you help each other when you quite literally can't handle the pain and together, you grow. he's more confident. not just in the way that he looks - but the way that he speaks around people. the way that he educates himself. the way that he communicates how he feels.

and he helps you everyday. he shows you what it feels like to be loved the way you love others. he shows you that you are worth the princess treatment. and most importantly for you, he loves the people around you the way you love the people around you.

kun and fatima find their happy ending. fatima had spoken to her parents and while they took some time to warm up to kun, his soft demeanor and the way that he loved fatima so completely and sincerely eventually won them over. fatima even met kun's parents with equal success, although kun's mother kept asking when fatima and kun would get married.

(their wedding was already in the works by both fatima's mother and kun's mother. you were beyond elated to go to both the traditional muslim ceremony and the traditional chinese ceremonies.)

johnny and sia ended up going out on a couple more dates before realizing that they probably just weren't meant to be a couple. they loved each other as friends and were probably always going to hold a special place in each other's lives but it just wouldn't be as each other's significant others. johnny was already starting to retreat from the frat boy lifestyle after meeting a girl at the library one day. and sia had finally met someone who could handle her crazy personality with a sweet smile, bringing her back down to reality whenever she went a little...too lively. you're looking forward to meeting him over summer, where the four of you and your friends were going on a vacation together.

roseanne, yugyeom, and miyeon still haven't put a label on their relationship. but you've caught roseanne falling asleep in yugyeom's arms more than once (one too many times than rosie cares to admit) so you figure that it's a good thing that they've all found each other. as unconventional as their relationship might be, they all mesh together so well that you can't even find it in yourself to question it. all's fair in love and war.

jaehyun and you frequent the diner as a favorite date night spot to visit, although you're upset to hear that they're remodeling the entire establishment for favor of a new, more 'modern' atmosphere. although how modern a diner could get was a little bit of a strange notion. but as people change, so do the winds.

and when you walk into the diner the next semester, hand in hand with jaehyun, you're a little comforted to see that diner is now a speakeasy (in true 1970s fashion) with three words written in blinding rhinestones against the velvet background. of course.

ric flair drip.

#jnnul #nct fic #jaehyun fic #jaehyun fluff #nct fluff #jaehyun smut #nct smut #nct 127 fic #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #jaehyun angst #nct angst #nct x reader #jaehyun x reader #nct 127 x reader #jaehyun imagines #nct imagines

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icanseethefuture333 · 2 months

Text

PAC: What your pretty self needs to hear for Valentine's Day ♡

Your heart's message to you + a message from your secret admirer 💌

They say the truth ain't pretty, but coming from that pretty mouth

The truth is fitting, cause you ain't ever talkin' loud

And you know plenty

Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about

Cause you just get me

Yeah, you so pretty... ♡

Pile 1:

Your heart's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Girl by Destiny's Child

Far by SZA

I MISS YOU SO BAD by iKON

The Lovers, Seven of Cups, & Three of Cups

So what your heart wishes to tell to you is that there is still love out there. You may have previously gotten over an ex, a past crush, or you are in the process of recovering from a break up. In the song "Far" SZA asks Sadhguru how to deal with rejection, in which he responds, "That's great! If nobody wants you then you're free." You have to look on the bright side of things. You also have to know what your worth is. No one else can define your worth but you. You have to be secure with who you are as a person. No one can love the parts you need to heal from. Once you feel fulfilled with who you are as a person. That is when you can form healthy connection with others. I believe you still are hoping for you and this person to get back together but you are hurting yourself even more by obsessing over this person (was going to say focus but instead I heard obsess). Reflect on your current situation and ask yourself, "What wound is this person triggering in me?". What do you need to move on from? To take care of your heart you should do some self reflection. Journaling and shadow work would help provide some clarity. Your heart asks you to not fall back into old habits. Self love is important for your growth, pile 1!

Your secret admirer's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Time To Love by Red Velvet

Changes by Jeff Bernat

I Think I'm Falling by KOHH

Wallflower, New Love, & Union

There is a new love coming in for you! This person could be shy and likes to admire you from afar. They could be self conscious about some things about themselves as well. The feelings seem to be mutual here. There could be a new crush that you like and wish to speak to, but are to nervous to ask them out of fear of rejection. Don't fret! Confessing your feelings helps build courage. If the person rejects you, then that just means there isnsomeone else better out there for you. It is not the end of the world just because you got rejected. Have a little more confidence in yourself, you are great, pile 1! Regardless, I see you and this secret admirer actually being intimate. Things could develop into something more serious with this union card. So make sure to be open to this energy and give them a chance at love ♡

Pile 2:

Your heart's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Mine by Slayyyter

ANTIFRAGILE by LE SSERAFIM

Post To Be by Omarion ft. Chris Brown & Jhené Aiko

Four of Cups, Eight of Wands, & The Fool

Your heart does not want to be tied down at the moment! I believe it has plenty of love to give lol. You also have no problem with turning people down or vice versa. You are looking for a fling and just wish to have a casual relationship! You could have a lot of options in love and would like to explore things romantically, maybe even sexually. Your heart suggests that you focus on your happiness and learn what pleases you. Love does not always have to be serious. Sometimes short lived romances have the best stories to tell! You will be feeling very confident and sexy in your romantic endeavors.

Your secret admirer's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Boys Wanna Be Her by Peaches

No Flex Zone by Rae Sremmurd

STUCK IN MY HEAD by Twice

Open Relationship, Mature Woman, & Fun Times

This secret admirer of yours is honestly hilarious 😭. I kept getting meme songs and I hs to shuffle again to get a proper message. This could be my queer pile as well 🏳️‍🌈. I'm getting Renee Rapp vibes from your secret admirer, Pile 2 😋. They could suit the 'girl crush' aesthetic or if it is someone who identifies as masculine, they have a very pretty face. They are open minded, flirtatious, and exciting to be around. This person wishes to tell you that you are stuck in their head! They find you to be "so fine" 😜! They would like take you out soon. I'm getting it will be a bar date or they will take you dancing at a night club.

Pile 3:

Your heart's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

More Than Enough by Alina Baraz

Bluffin by Brent Faiyaz

Mona Lisa by Naji ft. Monter Booker

Death, Six of Swords, & Six of Pentacles

Oh, pile 3, bless your heart 🥹. You are someone who has such a kind, gentle heart. You have the purest intentions and for that people can tell how geniune you are as a person. You could be selfless and caring towards others. You have so much love to give that it is obvious to others. I don't see any bitterness in your heart and I feel like your heart wishes to tell you how proud it is of you for being able to find forgiveness. You are leaning to let go of the people who have hurt you in the past. The essence of your spirit is so soft and it's very beautiful to witness. Your heart's message to you is that anyone would be lucky to have you in their life. So don't ever feel like you are not enough because you're more than that. You are this cup that is overflowing with love and sincerity.

Your secret admirer's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

At Your Best (You Are Loved) by Aaliyah

Freaky Deaky by Tyga ft. Doja Cat

LOVE by Kendrick Lamar ft. Zacari

Dating, True Love, & True Gem

Your secret admirer absolutely adores you, pile 3. They see your value as a person and they know that there is no one else like you in this world. You have so much love to give and they do as well. I am getting that they want to literally treat you like a princess/princess - just overall royalty. Their have geniune intentions as well and they would like to spoil you this Valentine's day ❤. (Channeled song: Kiss It Better by Rihanna 💋) for a few of you, you and your specific person could be separated. I see that things will turn out for the better soon. So have faith in yourself and in this person for things to work out. They could offer you some sort of proposal, love offer, or a token of their gratitude to show how much they love you. I see things would be passionate, flirty, and romantic for you and your secret admirer 🎆.

Pile 4:

Your heart's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Green Light by Beyoncé

Standing Next To You by Jungkook

God of Music by SEVENTEEN

Two of Pentacles, Page of Wands, & The Magician

You are such an optimistic person, pile 4! You could be someone who often gives advice to others and help others look on the bright side of things. You radiate such positive energy and it makes you a joy to be around. You could be someone who knows what they want and goes after it. You know how to balance your heart with your brain. Intuitive but also logical. People wonder how you are able to turn your ideas into reality. Your heart's message to you is to keep going after your goals and not let anyone distract you from your dreams. As long as you are happy that is all that matters. Your heart also wishes to tell you that whatever makes you light up inside is meant for you. Whatever your heart is set on whether that's a new job, house, etc. You have the ability to manifest whatever you desire.

Your secret admirer's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Phone Me by Che Ecru

Novacane by Frank Ocean

Own It by Drake

Passion, Friendship, & Communication

For some of you, you could be currently in a "situationship" or have a FWB with someone. While for others, your secret admirer is possibly a friend of yours. This person is conflicted on how to approach you. You may receive a text or phone call from them soon where they ask you about your relationship with another. They could ask you how you feel about them or drop hints that they are attracted to you. The ball is in your park, pile 4, if you decide to be more than just friends with this person.

Pile 5:

Your heart's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Girl Like Me by Alexa Demie

Fulfillment? By Kilo Kish

Baddie by IVE

Eight of Cups, Two of Cups, & Seven of Swords

I am getting like "manic pixie dream girl" vibes from you, Pile 2. Something about you is hard to pin point to others. Mysterious but also so enchanting. You know you are someone who is complex but also so beautiful. You have these interesting quirks that makes you stand out and memorable to others. You are comfortable with who you as a person and it could have took you a long time to get to a place of being this self assured. You could have a child like wonder as well and it is admirable to others. You could be questioning what direction to take in life and could find "adulting" very hard but don't give up, pile 5! Everything will be okay in the end. Your heart's message to you is to learn what gives you emotional fulfillment in life. Also to not take shit from no one. What's interesting is your face could look quite sweet but you are actually feisty and have a firey spirit. There is a duality to your personality and its attractive. I am getting like Song Jia, Alexa Demie, Wonyoung, & Taylor Russell vibes from you, pile 5. Your heart wants you to embrace your confidence and focus on the abundance in your future. Do not let people drag you down and dim your light. Your heart believes it is time for some self pampering. Set your standards high in love and know that you are deserving of everything you desire. I also believe it is time to burn bridges with people who no longer serve you. How can you live the life of your dreams if other people only acknowledge the version of yourself that no longer resonates with you? If you wish to be the girl of your dreams, you have to learn to put yourself first.

Your secret admirer's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Lilith by Halsey

Ditto by NewJeans

High Fashion by Roddy Rich ft. Mustard

Triangle, Travel, & Spiritual Growth

What is this Single's Inferno?! You have options, pile 5. You could have more than one secret admirer. You could be observing your current options in love and feeling "Well! Let the best person win☺️!" I see people wanting to fly you out and pay for your trips, oh my🫠. One of the people you will date could be popular or have a well known social status. You give people butterflies and some of you may know what affect you have on people, while some of you are innocent to the fact. You could receive love confessions or you may even already have. I feel like you are the type of person who receives love letters, jewelry, candies, and box of chocolates, if not you are going to be spoiled for this Valentine's day! You could meet your secret admirer(s) while traveling or when going on vacation. Your secret admirer's message to you is that they "like you" and hoping you feel the same 💕. They want to understand your love language and words of affirmations / gift giving could be one of their love languages in particular.

Pile 6:

Your heart's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Rose by Miyeon

Honey Dew by Lion Babe

Chanel by TiaCorine

King of Pentacles, Five of Wands, & Queen of Cups

I feel like you are at odds with your heart and brain right now, pile 6. You seem to feel confused about a decision you have to make. I believe you could think things are "sweeter" in other people's lives but that is not necessarily true. I know sometimes we can want what other people have but if it gets to the point of comparing yourselves to others then its not healthy. You have to remember to be grateful for what you have in life. It's okay to want the finer things, but what are you overlooking when you are doing that? Your heart's message to you is to not worry about what other people are doing in life and instead focus on what makes you great of a person. You are just as lovable, sweet, and beautiful.

Your secret admirer's message to you:

Shufflemancy -

Congratulations by Mac Miller ft. Bilal

Little Things by Sunni Colón

Aura by Mariah The Scientist

Work, Money, & Long Distance

I believe you and this person are already in a relationship. If not, your secret admirer will be the next person you end up in a romantic relationship with. This person could live further away from you and has a high paying job. They prefer to take on a traditional role of a provider. This person could have a hard time discussing their feelings though and shows their love through acts of services. While you, I feel you are more of an emotional person. You both could have a hard time expressing your feelings and thoughts properly to each other, which would cause conflict. Things might be tense for Valentine's Day. You and your secret admirer could have strong feelings for each other, but there needs to be an important conversation had in order for this relationship to progress. Both of you could be disheartened by this but there's hope! Try to appreciate the little things in your relationship and not focus on being the "perfect couple", for that does not exist. Every relationship has its flaws and all that matters is that you and you partner love each other very much. If it's meant to be, it will be, it won't be something you have to force, it'll come naturally.

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maaarine · 5 months

Text

The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms (Anna Moore, The Guardian, June 15 2021)

"Naming specific acts, rather than using broad – and loaded – terms such as “abuse” or “rape”, her survey asked more than 22,000 women if, for example, they had ever been spat at, or strangled, kicked or bitten.

It also asked respondents if they had ever woken to their male partner having sex with them or performing sex acts on them while they slept.

To this question, 51% answered yes.

This was not randomised sampling – the survey was widely shared online and participants were self-selected. For this reason, it’s hard to extrapolate from the findings.

The results sparked a predictably polarised online response. “This was extremely validating for me after years of thinking, ‘Am I being raped?’ I’m not alone”, tweeted one woman.

“It’s why I now jerk awake if someone even gently brushes against me while I’m sleeping, 13 years later,” wrote another.

Other comments included, “Only chance I get!” and “the other half was OK with it!”

Katie Russell, spokesperson for Rape Crisis, says she was “not massively surprised” by the findings.

“There isn’t a lot of research into the multiple ways women experience violence from known men, but we do know the numbers are so much higher than any official statistics,” she says.

“Rape myths are still incredibly pervasive. It’s commonly believed that if it’s your boyfriend or your spouse, if you’re sharing a bed, if you’re naked, if you consented earlier, then it can’t be rape.

There is a really big difference between gently waking your partner and initiating sexual activity and actually doing something sexual or penetrating someone while they’re still asleep. (…)

In Martha’s case, the rape happened once, but for some men, seeking sex with a sleeping woman is an active preference, a fetish known as somnophilia.

Svein Overland, a Norwegian psychologist, is one of the few to have studied it – his interest sparked partly by his work in prisons, trying to understand the motivations of sex offenders, and also by his work with victims of what Norwegians call “after-party rapes” – attacks on vulnerable women who were either sleeping or drugged.

Overland believes somnophilia is part of the wider growth of what he calls “one-way sex”.

His research into online porn showed a steep rise over the past decade in categories such as “sleeping sex”, as well as other forms of sex that are based on unresponsiveness, on only meeting your own needs.

(“Flexi dolls” is another example – where women pretend to be sex dolls.)

These preferences overlap with porn itself, says Overland. “With one-way sex, with porn, with masturbation, there’s no dance, no seduction, no interaction and no pressure to perform,” he says.

“The more I looked at this area, the more you see that a lot of men are afraid of having sex.

Society is becoming more pornified but, at the same time, many studies show that people are becoming less sexually active. We have young men buying Viagra, unable to keep an erection.”

A sleeping woman is no threat – she’s absent, an object, a receptacle. (…)

“There seems to be a perception that something like this is a ‘lesser crime’ because it might not be at the hands of a stranger but your partner.

But what would feel worse? Being pickpocketed by a stranger or robbed by someone you love and trust?” she asks.

“The idea that you’re asleep so it didn’t require violence is also very dangerous. Penetrating someone’s body without their permission is an inherently violent act.

“Imagine being asleep and waking to find someone going through your personal things,” she continues. “Now imagine it’s your actual body that has been intruded into.” (…)

“When I first left him, I wouldn’t sleep. I’d lie awake all night and have hallucinations – him raping me.

Those flashbacks, that trauma response, was the mind and body trying to piece things together.

Even now, nine years on, I still wake at two every morning. I don’t even need to check the clock.

We know that the body stores memories of trauma – and I think 2am is when it used to happen.” (…)

In February 2020, she told the jury: “There has never been a part of me that has not been profoundly impacted,” and that in the immediate aftermath, she suffered PTSD and had tried to take her own life.

She said she had felt “unsafe everywhere”, frightened to trust anyone, even her parents."

#article #weaker sex #tw rape #tw suicide

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merbear25 · 1 month

Text

Long awaited rest

The sheets had been rustled from your aggitated turning; their coolness long since faded under your body heat. As the moon changed its position in the sky, you refrained from checking the time—that would only make the sought after rest more unattainable. Lying on your back, you wondered how much longer it'd be until he joined you.

Sanji, Zoro, Corazon

CW: SFW, fluff, established relationship, gn!reader

Sanji: He'd been up late trying to perfect a new recipe he'd been on the brink of completing. After success had finally graced him, the clock taunted him with the amount hours of his life he'd spent. His eyes were droopy, dark circles were teasing his soft glow: the lack of sleep was catching up to him.

Stumbling into your shared room, his body practically gave way, letting itself flop down next to you. With him face down, his breaths were drawn out as his body was swallowed by the much needed comfort.

You curled up next to him, letting your finger tips trace up and down his back. He didn't stir: only a twitch at the side of his mouth indicated his knowledge of your gentleness. A hushed groan came from him as he rolled his body against your hand, unaware of how much he'd been desperate for your affection.

You rubbed his back being mindful not to massage too deeply and wake him. Leaving light kisses on his shoulder, cheek and forehead, your heart warmed at his dreamlike gratitude, affectionately murmuring about how much he loved you.

Snuggling up to him, you only kept a light hand on his arm, giving room for tosses or turns that may ensue. With him finding his way back to your side, your body was able to dose off, as well.

When the light of the new day shined into your room, its soft rays were casted on the both of you: curled up in each other's embrace and still fast asleep.

Zoro: Having come dangerously close to losing his previous battle, iradicating the imperfections that'd rusted his techniques was a must. Getting lost in his self-analyzation, losing track of time: consequences that were both small prices to pay for growth. However, his body was telling him that its limits had been reached and sleep was inevitable.

Exasperated from the unavoidable limitations, he let up for the night and shuffled off to bed. When opening the door, he noticed you were still awake, despite you not even turning to face him. There was a notable difference between the calmness of your sleeping person when compared to a simply relaxed state—the way your chest rose and fell was a dead giveaway.

Crawling in next to you, he asked why you were still awake. Turning over to face him, you admitted that some nights were just harder to fall alseep without him than others.

Taking a moment to think to himself, he scooched closer you. He patted his chest, signaling for you to lay your head upon it, to which of course you were more than happy to oblige.

Hearing his heartbeat soothed parts you didn't realize needed mending. The tranquility of your embrace offered its services, easing your tired bodies to sleep.

He was the first to wake the following morning: you were still sound asleep against his chest, your hair was ruffled ever so slightly. The peace shown on your face charmed him into placing a kiss on the top of your head.

Corazon: There was still so much to do, yet never enough time to do it. The stress and anxiety of the encounters to come weren't eating away at him though; he was resilient and determined to complete his purpose. That being said, even the heros who work within the shadows need their sleep.

Trying his best not to disturb you, he attempted to ease the door open. You were always sweet, but when you slept, you had a certain tenderness to you, one which alleviated all the woes weighing on his heart.

Getting into bed, he couldn't ignore his need to hold you. When you felt his arm drapping over you, you looked up at him and asked if everything was alright.

Kissing your temple, he assured you that everything was fine, while adding in an apology to having woken you up. Hearing this, you informed that you hadn't been able to sleep.

Cozying up closer to you, he ran his thumb over the top of your hand and asked the reason for it. Fearing you might add to his already worried mind, you simply answered that it was just one of those nights.

You stayed awake for a little while longer, talking to each other, barely above a whisper until you slipped into your dreams.

You were the first to wake up to the dawn of the new day. He had shifted onto his back and was still in a deep sleep. Wanting to enjoy the early morning by his side, you hung your arm over his and nuzzled into the crook of his neck, kissing the top of his shoulder.

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randxmthxughts · 1 year

Text

Nerves talking - Neteyam x Crybaby!Reader

summary: after spending months teaching his little sister's friend how to hunt, neteyam is surprised by the lack of her progress. later on, he discovers then that she is just too nervous to be around him because of her not-so-small crush

wc: 3.1k

contains: miscommunication trope, reader as a sensitive mess, kiri being mvp

masterlist

incredible art by @ArtKokhan on twitter

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

“Try again,” Neteyam ordered, as he watched you adjust your grip on the bow.

You gulped, trying to shove the growing frustration back into your stomach. The more you missed the target, the more embarrassed you felt to be working under Neteyam’s watchful eye. Especially because you hadn’t hit it even once since the lesson had started.

And it wasn’t like Neteyam was a strict teacher or would ever get angry with you for failing. On the contrary, his approach was gentle, patient. Even when his father first ordered him to teach his sister how to hunt, and you were pulled along into it by Kiri, Neteyam didn’t even bat an eye at the extra student. Though, somewhere along the way, Kiri grew tired of archery and started missing the lessons, leaving you alone with Neteyam more frequently than your poor heart could ever handle.

You had the biggest crush on the man, always so jittery and nervous to be in his presence that you could hardly concentrate at all. Every time Neteyam would correct your stance, or help you with the bow, all your blood rushed to your ears, skin feeling tingly and hot even by the faintest of his touches. And he genuinely didn’t even suspect it; always being his lovely, charming self, throwing jokes and compliments your way, as if you weren’t one of his worst students. What was more ironic that you were actually a decent archer when practicing in your own company.

As you aimed and released the arrow, it sailed towards the painted tree with a loud swoosh and hit the outer ring. You let out a disappointed sigh, shoulders hunching immediately in discomfort, but it didn’t seem to discourage Neteyam. Instead, he stepped close to you, and guided your weak stance with a gentle touch.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” he advised in a low voice, and you knew for sure that he could feel the goosebumps covering your skin.

As he didn’t rush to step away, his warm breath on your neck, and his hand resting lightly on your back, you became even more flustered. Oh, this was going to suck, you thought. And just like you expected, Neteyam’s proximity to you made matters worse; this time the arrow didn’t even graze the tree, but flew downwards and dug itself into the ground. Neteyam chuckled softly.

“Well, we’re getting somewhere,” he flicked the tip of your nose, “But next time try to aim for the target.”

“Very funny,” you mumbled, shying away from his playful gesture, “I don’t think I can ever hit it.”

“Hey, what did I say about the negative-talk?”

You watched as he took out his own bow and aimed at a fruit that was hanging precariously from a far tree branch. He took a breath and released the arrow, hitting its mark perfectly.

“Bad thoughts hinder the growth,” you answered simultaneously with the thud of the fruit hitting the ground

“Good girl.”

Neteyam went to retrieve the fruit, his back turned, and in that moment you could have sworn that Eywa was looking out for you and saving you from being caught in your deepest shade of blue.

“I think that’s enough for today,” he turned around with a smile, throwing you the fruit. You managed to catch it, “Have some, you need to eat.”

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

“Hey, did Neteyam teach you that?” Kiri pointed at the arrow that landed close to the bullseye, its tail springing up and down from the force of the release.

You let out a bitter chuckle, unsure of how to respond to Kiri's question. It was true that you often went to train by yourself to work on your composure around Neteyam, meticulously recalling every piece of advice he had given you. But the moment you were around him, it seemed like all of that knowledge seemed to evaporate into thin air.

“To be quite honest, I had no hopes for you,” Kiri teased.

“Oh, please,” you rolled your eyes at her, “I can actually kick your ass now.”

“Is that so? Let’s see it then,” she challenged, gesturing towards the target.

You grinned with a newfound confidence, taking out another arrow. You guessed that it was definitely the effect of Neteyam and his amber eyes because you didn’t feel nearly as nervous when you were being watched by Kiri. Instead, there was a surge of sureness when you looked at the arrows you shot before, clustered around the closest circle to the middle. You adjusted your stance like a pro, and Kiri couldn’t deny it, she was actually impressed with the way you presented yourself.

It didn’t take you long to focus and shoot, the arrow landing exactly in the bullseye with a swift release. Kiri clapped her hands, releasing a loud excited squeak, and pulled you into a hug.

“You’re actually a pro!” she exclaimed, and you couldn’t resist the sweet satisfaction of your accomplishment. You usually had to reserve it for yourself but sharing it with Kiri felt more special.

But as you let your chin rest on her shoulder, and she went on about how impressed she was, you spotted a figure not too far away. Your eyes widened at the realization that it was Neteyam, and you rapidly pulled away from Kiri in the shame of being watched by him. With heavy steps, Neteyam approached you, forcing you to lower your gaze to the ground. What if he draws a connection between his teaching and you failing miserably, and cracks your little secret about the not-so-little crush?

“Y/N, did you shoot all of these?” he asked, the slight anger in his voice catching both you and Kiri off guard.

She looked in between you confused, never having seen her brother to be so tense around you. Clearly, the possibility of Neteyam getting irritated with you hadn’t even crossed either of your minds.

“She did, even the bullseye,” Kiri shrugged, “Why are you so grumpy about it?”

"So all this time you were pretending to be bad at it, even though you knew how to shoot?" Neteyam ignored her, his tone more accusatory.

“Hey, back off,” Kiri scrunched up her nose in irritation, gently shoving Neteyam to make him move. He took a few involuntary steps back, but his expression remained cold and frustrated.

“No, I wasn’t pretending, I really didn’t know how to…” you trailed off, staring at the ground. The lump growing in your throat at the accusation was making you too emotional to remain calm. You had never heard Neteyam speak to you that way before, and you were afraid that you might burst into tears if you had to look at him.

“We have been having lessons for months, Y/N. You think this was a funny prank to pull? Do you have any idea how much time I wasted, and for what?” he let out a disappointed sigh, his hands falling to his sides.

Your heart sank as you forced yourself to meet Neteyam's gaze. You couldn't tell him the real reason, at least not like this, not here. His anger was morphing into disappointment, which was confusing, because he was usually so patient with you. But Neteyam hated being lied to, and he didn't want to feel like a fool for your own entertainment. He wondered if you had been going around with other hunters, showing off your skills while he put all his time and energy into teaching you something you already knew.

“I’m sorry,” you managed to say with a sniff, tears already welling in your eyes, “I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

Neteyam only shook his head in response, his expression softening slightly as he caught the glistening of the tears you were barely holding back. He exhaled loudly through his nose and stormed off, and the second he was gone, the tears broke like a rainstorm.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

If you had thought that being around charming Neteyam was difficult, you had clearly underestimated facing angry Neteyam. The cold shoulder he kept giving you was agonizing, eating you from the inside slowly and painfully. And being the way that you were, you could cry on the spot every time he ignored you in public.

Kiri was convinced that the only solution to your reconciliation would be telling him the truth. Neteyam had been burned by being taken advantage of before; girls pretending to be incompetent at things they were actually skilled at to gain his attention, and completely disregarding his time. Especially with the intensity of his Olo’eyktan training, Neteyam barely had time to breathe, let alone use it on someone who didn’t need his help.

And what you didn’t know was that it especially hurt Neteyam that it was you. Someone he had grown to care for and looked forward to meeting up with. A chore that didn’t feel like one. If he had a choice, he would spend all day watching over you, guiding you through every misstep without a care. Because being around you allowed him to drop down his guard and be himself, something he struggled with as the future Olo’eyktan burdened with heavy responsibilities. There was no pressure to perform.

Your shy nature, your sensitivity, was what encouraged him to be more open, light-hearted. You were so comforting to him, Neteyam felt like he could crack jokes and even flirt sometimes, without feeling guilty for it. Oh, he thought he was such a fool for believing anyone could ever see him for the way he was.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

You gripped the handle of the basket so tightly, your knuckles had turned white with the effort. Holding it close to your chest, it was much heavier than you remembered, filled to the brim with fruits picked out from the tallest trees grazed by the sunlight, and aromatic herbs woven into bouquets. It was naive to think it could be enough to get Neteyam’s forgiveness but you still felt bad. Very bad.

As you approached the corner of their house, he suddenly sprang out in front of you, causing you to stumble and almost drop the basket. You were startled, but Neteyam seemed unimpressed to see you there.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice cutting through the air like a sharpened blade.

“I just wanted to give you this and apologize again,” you mumbled, offering him the basket.

But as Neteyam stared at your outreached hands with pursed lips, he made no effort to accept it. He stepped back with a shake of his head, and you could feel your heart sink.

“I don’t want it.”

"I didn't mean to offend you - ," you began to explain yourself, trying to remain calm but your vision was already blurring from tears.

“You had done enough already,” he scoffed and walked past you, leaving you standing there.

You let the basket hang in your hands, so heavy, you were barely holding it. Tears streamed down your cheeks in big drops, and despite your mind telling you to go back home, it was like your feet were glued to the ground.

“Y/N?” Kiri’s gentle voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

You hurried to wipe away the evidence of your humiliation but Kiri was quick to draw the connection between the look on your face and the basket filled with gifts. Without hesitation, she pulled you into their home and sat you down on the ground.

“Don’t cry, Y/N, it wasn’t your fault,” she put a hand on your shoulder, “It was all a big misunderstanding, I’m sure Neteyam will come around.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to him,” emotions were overflowing within you, and between your sniffling, Kiri had to concentrate to make out your words, “I just like him so much, he makes me shaky...”

“Well, you have to tell him that he makes you nervous,” Kiri urged with a softened gaze, “Neteyam will be flattered.”

“No, he will think I am pathetic,” you shook your head.

“He won’t,” she disagreed, "I mean, you didn't even want him to teach you in the first place. I forced you into the lessons and left you alone. Honestly, it was my fault."

“It wasn’t,” you sniffled again, “I shouldn’t have wasted his time like that. He taught me so much but I just can’t concentrate around him… I can’t even talk to him sometimes, let alone shoot well.”

A small smile stretched Kiri’s lips, the sight of her friend confessing to her such obvious feelings was amusing. Like everybody else, Kiri had known well that you were soft, taking the smallest things to your heart. And though the solution seemed too clear to her, she didn't want to interfere in something that should be left between you and Neteyam. Instead, she was prominent in only nudging either of you in the right direction. She threw a meaningful look at the entrance where she had sensed Neteyam’s lingering for some time now.

When he saw you tear up at the refusal of the gift and stormed off, Neteyam’s heart couldn’t bear it to know it was already the second time that he made you cry. And no matter how disappointed he was with you, he just simply wasn’t going to tolerate the thought of you being so upset over him. The regret pushed him to chase after you, to apologize and hope that the words he’d pour out would be enough to calm you down. And it was then when he overheard you crying to his sister, the confession stopping him in his tracks.

His heartbeat was so loud, it filled out his ears and vibrated through his throat. Neteyam came to a stunning realization that the feelings he had buried deep within himself were reciprocated. That the reason why he was never frustrated with your slowness was finally justified; all this time, he secretly hoped you would need his guidance for as long as possible, just so he could spend more time with you. The sight of your delicate tear-stained face, glistening eyes adorned with long lashes clumped together, made him want to hold you and never let go. Yet, knowing that he had such an effect on you made Neteyam feel like the happiest man on Pandora.

“I think it’s my cue to leave,” Kiri stood up, glancing at her brother.

You frowned at her sudden movement and followed her gaze to the entrance. Neteyam stepped in nervously, his eyes locking with yours. Mixed emotions washed over him like a bucket of cold water, drenching him to the bone. You liked him. And he hurt you for it. Embarrassed and flustered, you clung to Kiri’s hand, silently pleading for her to stay, not wanting to be left alone with him.

“Can we talk?” Neteyam asked quietly.

He caught your attention just enough to allow Kiri to slip away. She nudged him playfully upon her exit and there you were... Has he heard your confession? The look on his face was so sour, almost like he was readying himself to turn you down.

“Y/N, first, I must apologize for being this cold with you,” his voice was soft, startling you slightly.

Your eyebrows shot up in surprise, never expecting it. Was Neteyam apologizing? He hesitated before lowering himself to the ground in front of you. His eyes observed the basket of gifts for a moment, as he was pondering over his next words.

“And I also heard what you said to Kiri about me. And I...I didn't know you felt that way."

Your heart beated trepidly at his words, humiliation flooding your veins immediately. You had never intended for him to find out, especially not like this.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, this must be worse than if I had pulled a prank on you instead,” your voice was so sincere with apology, it mortified him.

“No, no, don’t apologize, you did nothing wrong,” he shook his head so desperately, it must have strained his neck, "And I don't want you to feel like you have to impress me or anything. I just want us to be... comfortable with each other. I guess, just didn’t think you liked me so much, I threw you off your game,” he chuckled weakly.

“This is so embarrassing,” you covered your face with your palms, but Neteyam was quick to gently peel them away. He lifted your chin with his fingers, urging you to look at him.

“No, I think it’s cute… you’re very cute.”

“W-what?”

You stammered, the words you could only wish to hear in your dreams were spilling out of his mouth. How could he have been that blind towards your affections? You were always carefree and bubbly with others, but so shy with him. And Neteyam adored your shyness, he just couldn’t believe he had never made a connection before.

He beamed at you, as if he was seeing you for the first time. Your timid nature, delicate features, the way you blushed under his gaze. Neteyam leaned closer, the proximity sending shivers down your spine.

“I like you too,” he whispered.

You blinked in shock, your gaze darted between his captivating eyes and his plump lips. Unable to hold back any longer, Neteyam leaned in even closer, his breath warm against your skin. He kissed you, and it was as if the world around you had ceased to exist. Your mind went blank as his soft lips moved in sync with yours, and his hands tangled in your hair, pulling you closer in a gentle, swift move. Everything he did was perfect. He was perfect.

Neteyam pulled away for breath with a toothy grin, leaving you completely wordless. You tried to calm your own breathing, but the feeling of the kiss was still too fresh on your lips, blushing profusely as he leaned back.

He observed the basket once more before reaching out to pluck a fruit from it. As he brought it to his lips and took a bite, you couldn't help stealing glances at him, desperately appreciating the way he savored it.

"Thank you," he said, looking up at you, "This is delicious."

And with no further warning, he pressed his lips against yours once more, his gratefulness manifesting in that sweet gesture. Your cheeks flamed as you savored the taste of fruit on his lips. When you parted, Neteyam rested his forehead on yours, a small smile on his lips.

“I don’t think I can keep up with our lessons after this,” you joked, trying to ease the tension between you.

“Mhm, maybe we should just try out a new reward system instead,” he teased back. Your laughter bubbled up at his words, and Neteyam thought it was going to become his favorite sound in the world.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

taglist (let me know if you want to be added):

@bigdikzaddy @awriana @scarletrosesposts @abbersreads @mechformers @my-love-of-books @avatarbyamara @robin-the-enby @netemoon @minjix @nilrilie @grierpilots @suntizme @live-laugh-neteyam @misscaller06 @darkacademictrash @arminsgfloll @omnifanfic-copycat @crazyforteyam @sakura-onesan

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thefallennightmare · 1 month

Text

Just Pretend-Twenty Four

*gif created by me. feel free to use, simply give credit*

Parings: Noah Sebastian x Musician! Reader

Warnings/Tropes: language, angst, fluff, smut, star-crossed lovers, right person/wrong time, cheating, talks of mental abuse.

Summary: “I can wait for years, heaven knows I’m not getting over you.” A story about two star-crossed lovers, that always find their way back because their souls are entwined. The universe desperately attempts to bring them together, no matter what the cost.

Authors Note: Did y'all bring your umbrellas and washcloths? Cause it gets a bit messy in this.

FUCK YOU. EAT SHIT. KILL GOD. DETHRONE.

We are Fallenvvitch. Goodnight.

🪽🔮

Collaborating With: @thescarlettvvitch(better give her all the love as well)

Tags: @thescarlettvvitch @ozwriterchick @waake-meee-up @notingridslurkaccount @niicoleleigh @sammyjoeee @xxrainstorm @dominuslunae @notmaddihealy @malice-ov-mercy @crimson-calligraphyx @iknownothingpeople @writethrough @thebadchic @blackveilomens Claudia on Tumblr @tobe-written @blacksoul-27 @loeytuan98 @loverofagoodbeard @comfortcharactercraze @lma1986 @plutonikchaos1 @spicywhenspeaking @lyschko666 @somewhere-diamond @hi-fancy-seeing-you-here @koskeepsake @bngurngheart @shilohrosechicken @emzandthevoid @casangel1986 @qualityvoidcollectorsblog @myownthoughts12 @jilliemiw86 @bellaboo967 @halloweenaesthetic @collapsedglasshouses @iamamatus

NOAH

“So are you saying there’s a new Bad Omens music video on the horizon?”

With a trick smile, I adjusted my position in the chair and shrugged to the camera on my computer. “Uh, yeah. I can’t tell you which one but it’ll be out there soon.”

The group of people who were interviewing me via Zoom cheered until one of them asked the next question. It went like this for a few more minutes and I did my best to pay attention and not reach for my phone. Tonight was important and even with how poised and professional I looked during the interview, my knee was bouncing under my desk with nerves. Everything had been planned down to the last detail, Michael giving me shit for stressing out about nothing.

“It’s Y/N, you know she’d be fine with just an easel and new paints,” he chuckled while watching me set up Y/N’s studio.

I paused setting up the plants on a shelf to turn towards him. “I know. But she deserves this; all of this. She needs a place to escape by herself for a little while.”

“You have to relax,” Michael rested his hands on my shoulders, looking directly into my eyes. “You need to enjoy the new beginnings of your relationship. You and Y/N love each other, that’s what matters. Not how many plants she has.”

Shaking my head from the earlier memory, I hummed towards the interviewer. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

She chuckled. “We’ve seen some growth vocally on this new record from the last. Can you give us a little insight on that?”

With a nod, I divulged how I recently started working with a vocal coach who helped bring out this side of me that I had always hidden under a veil of self-doubt and insecurities.

Suddenly my phone buzzed on the desk and I quickly peered down at it, my heart jumping into my throat.

Angel 🪽: I’m walking out of therapy right now, I’ll be home and ready to go in an hour!

While the interviewers chatted amongst themselves briefly, I typed out a fast response before taking a long drink of my coffee.

Me: No rush, angel. We have all night. I should be finishing up this interview soon.

Another question and another answer. It went on like this for a few minutes until I noticed another text from Y/N.

Angel 🪽: You already got coffee?🥺

My heart dropped when I saw that emoji because I could vividly picture her soft lips in a pout just like it. Her bright eyes wide.

Me: Don’t do that, you know I can’t resist that face you pull. Jolly brought it from Fika. Astrid made an extra by mistake. We can swing by and get you one.

Thankfully, my hands were just off camera so no one who was watching would be able to see my texting.

Wait.

Me: Wait, are you watching? You little sneak.

Deciding to give my attention back to the interview, I finished it within the next thirty minutes and thanked them with a wide smile before clicking out of Zoom. Standing up from the desk in the studio, I read Y/N’s message as I trotted down the stairs toward my bedroom.

Angel 🪽: Of course, I’m watching. I watch all of your interviews. I also love teasing you. I already stopped by Fika after therapy. I will say that I’m excited about what you have planned for later.

Veering left instead of right, I stepped inside Y/N’s art studio and stood in the middle of the room, assessing every inch of it to make sure it was absolutely perfect. The memory of earlier today stumbling inside with both arms full of bags that contained a variety of different paint and drawing supplies. The guys merely smirked as they saw me struggling even having a bag hanging from my teeth before I motioned to the outside with my head and mumbled two words.

Help. Car.

The studio was perfect and spotless when I made sure that everything was where it needed to be. As I headed across the hall into my bedroom to finish getting ready, I sent a text to Y/N; one she responded to almost immediately.

Me: I can’t wait. I love you.

Angel 🪽: I love you too, mochi.

READER

“Oh my god, I’m stuffed. I can’t eat another bite,” I groaned while stepping out of Noah’s car as he held the door open for me.

“Greek was a good choice, huh?” He chuckled as he walked around the car towards me; a little bell jingling behind him.

I looped my arm through his and rested my head against his shoulder. “You know I’d never turn down a chance for Greek food.”

“I never thought I’d be such a fan of it. I’ve always thought it was just gyros. The spinakorprita was good.”

I stifled my laugh into his bicep. “It’s spanakopita.”

“Spa-na-ko-pi-ta.”

Noah sounded out slowly and I kissed his shoulder. “Good job! Pretty soon I’ll have you fluent in Greek and we can visit Greece.”

He brushed a kiss along my forehead and I peered down at the feline that rubbed his face along Noah’s leg.

“Are you sure he’s okay on the harness?” I bit my lip. “He can’t slip out of it?”

“Salem is fine, angel. He loves this thing. You should have seen him running through the grass when I had him a couple of months ago.”

To reassure me worries, however, Noah picked up Salem to hold him against his chest, our cat purring loudly as I pressed a kiss on his head.

“Thank you for letting me bring him. I figured it would be good to get him acclimated here in case you have to watch him for me,” I said as we began walking up towards the house.

“I’ve been wanting to show him the new cat tree I bought him,” Noah smiled.

When we came to a stop at his front door I untangled myself from him and then reached inside my purse for my camera.

“Angel,” he started.

Waving him off, I backed away a few feet and motioned to him to stay there. “Just one picture in front of the house. You look so cute tonight. Plus, I need a picture of my boys.”

Even with the dim street light but the bright glow of the moon, I saw the red hue cover Noah’s cheeks with my compliment, and eventually, threw up his trademark peace sign with one hand and continued to hold Salem in the other.

Snapping a few different poses, I pocketed the Polaroids after they printed and skipped back toward Noah, who had opened the front door and allowed me to step inside the quiet house.

“Where is everyone?” I wondered.

Noah hung up his keys on the hook next to the front door. “Movies. The local theater is playing the old Japanese version of Godzilla.”

“You turned that down?” I asked with wide eyes. “You love old Japanese movies.”

“No place I’d rather be than right here, with you,” he mused while wrapping his arms around me to place a chaste kiss on my lips.

“How sweet,” I cooed while patting his chest.

Noah let Salem off the harness so he could explore the house, he immediately found the cat tree and curled up in the top bed part.

Something was bothering Noah, however, no matter how bright he smiled. I could sense it in the way he kept fidgeting with his hands during dinner to how often he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel on the way back to his house.

“What’s on your mind?” I questioned while palming his cheek.

He left a kiss on the inside of my palm. “I want to show you something.”

“You do?” My heart fluttered.

Linking our fingers together, Noah led me down the hallway towards his room, but we veered left instead to stop in front of a closed door. With our hands on his chest, I felt the rapid beat of his heart and let out a low laugh.

“Mochi, your heart is racing,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve been working on something the last few months since I’ve moved in trying to make it perfect. I think I’ve annoyed both my roommates and yours.”

“Chase and Malcolm know about this?” I questioned.

“Yeah. They sent me some of the products you use, your favorite brands; things like that. I wanted to make sure that you don’t have to worry about lugging things back and forth,” Noah shifted on his feet.

“Okay, what is it?” I bounced on my heels with excitement. “You’ve already surprised me with the vanity. What do you have hiding behind that door?

I gasped. “Is it a puppy?! No, wait. That wouldn’t make sense.”

Noah chuckled while cupping my face to leave a kiss on my forehead. “No puppy. Maybe down the road.”

“Well, will you show me already? I’m getting antsy!” I patted his chest before messing with his chain between my fingers.

I still wore my matching set, never taking them off.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered.

With a pout, I tried to get out of doing it but instead, Noah covered my vision with his large hand. Feeling his presence behind me, I heard the door click open and he led me inside the room. The hand over my eyes shook so I grazed my fingers over the back of it, letting him know that he didn’t have to be nervous.

“I want to make sure you love it, angel,” Noah pressed a kiss behind my ear. “OK. Are you ready?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

Blinking a few times to adjust to the light, a hand went to my mouth as a gasp fell from my lips. It was overwhelming and almost too many different things to take in, I didn’t know where to look first.

There were four different-sized easels in each corner of the room.

An angled desk in front of the large window, one that people would use to draw on.

Three shelves above that desk held various paints, brushes, and charcoals.

Plants littered almost every inch of space that wasn't overtaken with painting supplies.

The closet in the room was wide open, showcasing even more stock of supplies and different size canvases.

The best part? Hardwood floors.

With tears in my eyes, I slowly turned back to Noah, standing in the doorway with his hands behind his back.

“So?”

“I-,” I cleared my throat when the words came out jumbled. “You did this?”

“Yeah. I wanted to give you your own space here. To come too whenever you wanted, even if I wasn’t home,” he wrung his hands together.

“Really?” I choked out. “Don’t you think you should maybe check with the guys about having me come over here all the time unannounced?”

“Angel,” he took a step towards me and grabbed my hands, his thumb brushing mine. “Jesse was the one that suggested I give you a key.”

My eyes doubled. “A key?”

Noah now dug into his pocket to pull out a black key, gently setting it in my open palm. “I want you to have a place to come and stay. I’m not asking you to move completely in, but if it's getting a little stuffy in that small apartment with Chase and Malcolm, you and Salem can come to spend the night here.”

I let out a small chuckle, a few tears falling from my eyes, and then held the key close to my chest. “You gave me all of this but I have nothing in return, Noah.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and mused. “Your love is enough, Y/N.”

“I love you. Thank you for all of this.” I pressed my head against his chest while wrapping my arms around him.

“I love you too.” He kissed the top of my head. “Now, welcome to the other part of our first date.”

I gazed up at him through lashes. “We’re going to paint?”

“Now, I’m not a professional like you,” he snorted before pulling me over to two easels that were next to each other. “But I thought it would be a cute idea.”

“I would not call myself a professional.”

“Still better than me,” Noah said.

I raised a playful brow while crossing my arms over my chest. “Want to make this interesting?”

He smirked while resting his hands on my hips. “I’m all ears, angel.”

“Whoever has the worst painting has to get the winner's birthday tattooed on them.”

“Oh, it’s a bet,” he sealed it with a kiss.

Noah pulled out the little stool for me to which I sat with a smile, pulling up the ends of my yellow maxi skirt to sit comfortably. While Noah busied himself with setting up music to play from the Bluetooth speaker, I removed my jacket to set it neatly on the ground at my feet.

“Do you want an old shirt of mine to change into?” He asked while pointing to my white top.

I noticed that Noah had shed his gray button-up and was wearing a blank tank top. I licked my lips at the site of his muscles, the tattoos suddenly seeming more fitting now that he had been working out a lot more.

Remind me to thank Ash.

Snapping my eyes away from the broadness of his chest, I shook my head. “I’ll be fine, mochi. Thank you though. I don't typically make a mess.”

“Hm, the paint stains on the dining room carpet say otherwise,” he teased.

Playfully smacking Noah’s arm, we both got settled as the music filtered into the air and I got lost in my mind, painting whatever my soul called for. We found ourselves in a peaceful quiet, simply enjoying each other's presence. Every so often I would glance over to Noah, making sure that he was enjoying himself only because I knew painting wasn't for everyone.

He had narrowed eyes of precision as he stroked the brush wave after wave against the canvas. From this angle, I couldn’t see what he was painting. Instead, I leaned over to rummage in my purse, pulled out my Polaroid camera, and snapped a few shots of Noah before one of me, with him in the background. I set the pictures on the desk next to me before getting back to my painting.

“How’s it going over there?”

Noah’s soothing voice brought me out of my trance and I glanced over at him with a smile. “Good, I’m almost finished. What about you?”

“Promise you won't laugh?”

“Of course, mochi.”

I made a show of crossing my heart but let out a squeal of laughter when Noah hooked his foot around the foot of the stool and dragged me over towards him. He gave me a quick kiss but still wouldn’t let me see what he painted.

“I’ve been told I’m a great artist, granted that was in the second grade,” Noah chuckled before finally showing me his canvas and what he spent the last thirty minutes painting.

I covered my mouth with a hand not to stifle a gasp but instead a laugh. He painted stick figure versions of him, me, and Salem in front of a house; even with the bright yellow sun in the corner of the canvas.

“Wow,” I nodded. “All I’ll have to say is don’t quit your day job, mochi.”

Noah scoffed. “Fuck, that was cold. But it's true. There’s a reason why I’m a musician, not a painter. I’ll leave that to you, angel.”

“I love it!” I beamed while ruffling his hair and laying a gentle kiss on his cheek. “I’ll hang it up above my bed.”

“What did you paint?” He wondered.

“Oh nothing too important, just some abstract colors. I didn’t really have an actual vision. I kind of let the paint speak to me as I go,” I said.

When I showed him my painting, Noah’s eyes glinted and he smiled. “I like it. I’ll have to hang this above my bed.”

“So I think it’s safe to say that I won the bet? And now you have to get my birthday tattooed on you,” I grinned while going about to clean up the paint and brushes.

When Noah didn’t respond, I glanced over my shoulder to see that he had a very sly smirk playing on his lips and I popped my hip out, resting a hand on it.

“Noah Sebastian. Did you purposely lose this bet so you could get my birthday tattooed?”

He hummed along to the song playing on the speaker, still not answering my question but never getting rid of that smirk on his face. His silence, however, was exactly the answer I needed.

What a cheeky little...

With the dirty paintbrush in my hand, I flicked it over at Noah, the leftover paint spraying over his chest when he turned towards me. His eyes bounced down to the paint splatter over his black tank top to me, a shocked expression on his face.

“Did you just throw paint on me?”

I shrugged. “Oops?”

“Really? Oops?” Noah dipped a larger paintbrush into a handful of different colors before throwing it all over my face and neck.

“NOAH!” I screeched with a boisterous laugh.

Suddenly, he picked me up to twirl me in the air before tackling me onto the ground then started painting my arms and neck as I found underneath him.

“I’m sorry!” I giggled while trying to reach for the paintbrush I dropped; fingertips grasping at it.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m busy painting a masterpiece,” Noah responded, painting shapes on my cheek now.

With my fingers finally grasping the brush, I flicked some paint into his hair, covering it in bright pinks, blues, and yellows. Our peals of laughter overpowered the music still playing in the room and eventually, after we both were covered in pain, I threw up my hands in surrender.

“OK!” I chuckled breathlessly. “You win. You win.”

Noah kissed me, smearing the paint over my lips. “Damn straight I do.”

Somehow in the shuffle of our paint fight, I managed to straddle Noah, who lost his tank top; it was destroyed due to all the paint. So he lay shirtless underneath me and I couldn’t help but bite my lip at the sight of him with his arm propping his head up and his tattoos on full display for only me to devour.

Reaching up towards my easel, I grabbed a few different paints and clean brushes before settling back on Noah’s hips, getting to work on painting the flowers of his chest piece.

He hummed at the feeling of the cool brush and let his eyes flutter shut for a long moment, reveling in the feeling of me on top of him. And not in a sexual way but in a way of knowing that I was here and not going anywhere.

“Am I an adult coloring book for you?” Noah questioned after he took a few Polaroid pictures of me painting him.

“Maybe,” I teased with a glance down at his face.

His chest was a vibrant picture of greens, reds, and oranges. I was working on painting the headband in the girl's hair when he spoke again.

“Well don’t stop, I like this form of meditation.”

Once the round frame was painted gold, I adjusted my position so I could sign my name just above the words across his sternum.

Noah opened one eye and smiled. “I see you signed your work.”

“I did because you’re not it anymore.” I pressed a soft kiss along each letter.

“I’m not what?” He breathed in pleasure, slightly arching off the ground.

“You’re no longer desolate,” I promised into his skin then took a couple of Polaroid pictures of my masterpiece.

Noah let out a soft noise from the back of his throat when his strong hand wrapped around the back of my neck to pull me down to his lips, we met in a fiery, air-bending kiss. Every single fiber of my soul blazed with such passion I melted into his embrace, folding into him as we became one. His tongue brushed along my bottom lip, lapping up the strawberry chapstick I applied in the car earlier, him humming in delight.

I adjusted myself as I lay flat on Noah, his hands running up and down the skin of my back underneath my shirt. The heat radiated off of him making my insides flare with so much desire that I was practically burning up at his touch.

“Noah,” I whined when his lips began attacking my neck.

When he pulled away, his almond eyes gazed up at me with pupils blown wide with lust; pure black over taking his eyes.

“How about I run you a bath?” His thumb brushed along my bottom lip, voice hoarse from our kiss.

“I’d like that a lot,” I beamed.

NOAH

I sat on the edge of the tub to check the temperature of the water making sure it was perfect before adding the bubbles and bath salts. As it began to fill up, I peered through the open bathroom door to gaze over at Y/N who was sitting at her vanity taking off her makeup. My heart swelled in my chest when I noticed how relaxed she was, as if she was meant to be there; here with me.

Sitting here in observation, it struck me like a bolt of lightning. I’d been so lost in constructing scenarios for tonight that I was surprised to see how far I’d come. Y/N’s movements were so fluid, so serene as she gently wiped everything off her face and neck. I’d never been so jealous of a makeup towelette before.

Observing her using the vanity table I fussed over for weeks made my stomach flutter, the ongoing moment of quiet bliss was by far my favorite way to let time tick by.

Waiting here offers me time to let my mind escape the boundaries of the ordinary. From where I sat here in the bathroom, watching her carefully with the faintest of smiles, I knew I wanted this view for the rest of my life. After all the bullshit endured on and off over the years, for both of us, this was what I got to see.

Watching Y/N was such a gift, a blessing of time. Something I vowed right now that I wouldn’t take for granted.

Shaking off the excess water after checking the temp, I turned off the tub and walked into the bedroom with a light spring in my step. I snuck up behind Y/N and rested my chin on top of her head, watching her smile in the reflection of the mirror.

“Your bath is ready, angel,” I informed.

She reached for my left hand to lay a gentle kiss on the floral design. “You mean, our bath is ready.”

I raised a brow at her when she stood and led me into the bathroom with her.

“Wait, what?”

Y/N chuckled at the slight confusion in my voice. “You heard me. You’re covered in paint too, Noah. You need to clean up.”

I rubbed the back of my neck as we stood together in the bathroom. “I was-uh- going to take a shower once you were finished. I don’t want to pressure you into-.”

“Stop overthinking this,” she cupped both sides of my face and pressed a kiss to my nose. “I want you to join me if you’re comfortable with it.”

I may have nodded a little too eagerly but it didn't bother her.

“I’d love that, angel.”

While she shed her clothes, I stepped out of my pants and briefs, both of us watching each other with such inferno in our eyes and when we were naked, Y/N reached for my hand. She stepped into the tub first then me, positioning myself behind her. Even though it was a larger tub, it was still a snug fit for the both of us so to make sure she had enough room, I kept my long legs bent; my knees breaking the surface of the water.

“Oh this is perfect,” Y/N groaned while leaning herself into my chest.

Reaching for her shampoo, I went to work scrubbing the paint out of her hair, my nails scraping along her scalp. Her fingers traced over the rose tattoo on my knee, delicately following the design.

“What’s on your mind, angel?” I questioned after rinsing out her hair and then applying the conditioner.

“You’ve really thought about everything, huh? You have all of my products here so I don’t ever have to bring a bag over?”

The giggle that erupted from her throat made something twinge inside of me.

I kissed her shoulder. “I’ve already told you. This is your home just as much as your apartment is. We can bounce back and forth as long as you want.”

Once she was completely clean of the dried paint, Y/N turned to position herself on my lap to face me. The head of my cock brushed along her folds and I grasped at her hips, trying not to let my hormones push her too far.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She smiled and reached for my shampoo. “You washed me. Let me wash you now.”

Sighing in content, I sat back against the tub to let Y/N wash my hair. Her fingers worked meticulously in scrubbing out the paint.

“You know,” she shifted herself on me and I choked on a groan.

Surely she had to know what she was doing.

“While I love how you look with this new haircut. I really do miss your long hair.”

I gazed up at her, tracing the drop of water that trailed down her neck, over the silver chain, and between the valley of her breasts that were just peeking above the bubbles.

I licked my lips, tongue begging to trace the water in its wake, but refrained.

“Imagine if you gave yourself bangs. You’d be in your Shelby era,” Y/N chucked while moving my hair in a certain way so I could have bangs.

I glanced over to the mirror above the sink and smirked at the sight of us in the tub, especially me with bangs.

“You think so?” I asked.

“You can pull off any look, mochi.”

She gently went about washing the paint off my chest with the loofah while I continued to watch her.

“You’re staring,” her eyes flicked up at me.

“I love you,” I brushed away the wet strands of hair from her face.

“I love you too,” Y/N kissed the freckles on my shoulder.

Once again we found ourselves in our previous position, her back to my chest, and we sat there for some time as the water began to chill. Although neither of us was ready to get out yet.

“Noah?”

Snapping my eyes open, I wrapped my arms around her. “Yeah?”

Y/N shifted a bit in my embrace and with how she was wading her fingers through the water, I knew something heavy was on her mind.

“Do you think we could listen to Bad Decisions?”

My body stilled behind her. I knew at some point we would have to talk about the songs I wrote when I was in the dark parts of my life but it still didn't prepare me for the moment it happened.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She turned slightly in my arms to leave an array of kisses on my chest.

“I know you were in a dark place when you wrote it. It holds bad memories so I’d like to create new memories for this song with you if you want to.”

“I’d want nothing more, Y/N,” I whispered into her hairline.

After asking the Alexa device on the bathroom counter to play the song, I let my voice echo in the confines of the room. Y/N eased into my embrace as I linked our fingers together while I sang along with the words in a hushed tone. She hummed along with me as our bodies swayed together in the water.

“No God. No religion. Just you,” I vowed when the song faded out, cupping her cheek so I could kiss her lips.

Without missing a beat, Y/N returned the kiss just as slowly as I, our tongues lazily fighting for dominance as her hand snaked behind my neck to play with the wet strands of hair.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled against my lips.

Pulling away, I remained holding her face but furrowed my brows. “What are you apologizing for?”

Her gaze left mine. “I just hate that it took us so long to get here. I know we talked about everything at the party but I still feel the need to apologize for everything.”

“It’s not all on you, angel. I did some things I wasn’t proud of during our time apart and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for it.”

“Stop, Noah,” Y/N straddled me again to hold my chin with a stern grasp, the water sloshing around us. “You need to stop blaming yourself for what happened. I’ve already told you all is forgiven. Please stop letting that moment of weakness eat away at you.”

I blinked away the burning tears in my eyes and cleared my throat. “I only want to make better memories with you. I know in the beginning I couldn’t communicate, even now it’s a bit hard for me, especially with everything that happened. It was a mess and I apologize too.”

Y/N bent low to kiss me; it was slow at first but soon became heavy with passion when her tongue slipped between my lips. Her hips began grinding against my cock revving me up with such force, I wrapped my hand around her neck with my thumb against the pulse point in her neck.

Breaking free from the kiss, I dragged my teeth along her jawline and then down her neck.

“Noah,” Y/N breathed. “I love you.”

Her pussy was now brushing over the head of my cock and every inhibition with me wanted to plunge myself deep inside of her, feel her grip me with that vice grip I’ve missed and longed for.

Something inside of my chest rumbled before I realized it was my voice.

“How many have you loved before me?” I rasped as my tongue brushed over her nipple.

Y/N arched herself back so she could fully expose herself to me. “None.”

With one hand holding her throat, my other slipped between our bodies underneath the now-freezing water to glide over the slit between her legs. I attacked her lips again with a ravenous desire, nibbling on her bottom lip.

“And after me?” I demanded to know, slipping a finger inside of her finally.

“None,” she moaned while digging her nails into the skin of my shoulders.

Trembling fingers trace Y/N’s skin. To be in her company is a little slice of heaven as if her aura were an elixir. Emotions swam in our eyes, in our body language, and the inflections of her voice.

She was the one who I thought of when I needed to restart my heart and rekindle my soul; for so long I kept that to myself. Feeling the intensity of her intelligence, Y/N’s words were my medicine.

Deep inside I couldn’t help but feel like I’ve over-explained my feelings to compensate for what hadn’t been said. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t shake the fear of losing her. She needed to know where I stood, where we belonged.

Soulmates.

To be a possessor? I don’t know if you’d call it that. I yearned to be her protector, the one who held her heart in my hands, just as she held mine. These large hands are secured. I would grant her any wish in my power, to be the one who will always love her.

My fingers worked in sync as I pumped them in and out of her. She squirmed in my grasp, and the head of my cock nearly slipped inside of her. Every single part of me was sensitive to her touch and it felt like any moment I would combust underneath her.

Peering up at her face, I noticed that there was worry pulling tight in her forehead.

“What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?” I asked briefly, stopping.

“No, you’re fine,” Y/N reassured me with a kiss on my forehead. “It’s just-.”

When her words trailed off, I lifted her chin with a knuckle. “Talk to me, angel.”

Her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “The water is really cold and I was hoping we could move this to the bed.”

A playful smirk pulled on my lips and just before agreeing, I was struck with a thought.

“How far do we want to take this?”

“Noah, I can’t wait anymore. I need this. I need to feel connected to you again,” she rubbed herself against me.

Shit.

Even though I was ready for this, something was keeping me from lifting her out of this tub and tossing her on the bed to feel all of her again. The last time we slept together, it ended in disaster and heartbreak. I was stronger than I was back then but I don’t know if I could recover if it were to happen again.

It won’t.

It was as if Y/N’s soul could feel the pain in mine because she cupped both sides of my face so I had no choice but to meet her gaze.

“I’m not going anywhere, Noah. I’m right here. Always.” She reassured me with a firm nod, not an ounce of lies behind her bright eyes.

I kissed her palm. “I know. Are you sure this is what you want? I don’t want you to feel like you have to rush.”

“You’re not, Noah. I want this. I need this. I need to be connected to you so deeply, that it feels like we’ll never be apart again.”

Her hand wrapped around my cock, pumping it up and down under the chilled water. By now the bubbles have dissipated and I peered through the clear water to choke on my moan.

“We won’t,” I promised.

Y/N’s warm breath fanned over the shell of my ear. “Please, Noah. I need you to fuck me.”

READER

I erupted with laughter as Noah dropped my wet body on top of the bed. Resting up on my elbows, I gazed over his naked form as he stood at the foot of the bed. Water traced every bend and groove of his muscles and the tattoos that littered his skin were something that seemed to surprise me each time.

When my gaze lowered to his cock, a starved moan fell from my lips and I licked them hungrily.

“Y/N?”

I hummed while tearing my gaze away from him to look into his eyes.

“If you feel any pain, please let me know,” he said.

“I’m okay,” I nodded. “I promise.”

Noah towered over me as he crawled up the bed, droplets of water falling from his hair onto my chest. His chain hung just above my lips as I looked up at him, spreading my legs when his fingers tickled the inside of my thigh.

“I want to make love to you tonight, angel. Will you let me?” He asked into the crook of my neck.

“Please,” I nodded vigorously.

Once more, Noah’s fingers slipped between my folds to gently tease me, slowly dragging them up and down. I whined in protest and dug my nails into his back, feeling his muscles tense from my touch. When the pad of his calloused finger pressed against my clit, I arched my chest into his, the itch I felt from the moment we were in the tub together finally being scratched.

My knees buckled when his finger twirled in fast circles and when Noah flicked his tongue over my nipple, before slowly trailing down my stomach. The warm wetness of his tongue flicked over my nub when he replaced his fingers. His lips wrapped around my clit to suck up my arousal.

“Noah,” I hissed. “So good.”

I ran my fingers through his hair to bring his mouth closer to me as the coil in my stomach pulled tight. I’d been on edge all night, I knew I wouldn’t last long. And it was like Noah knew or understood because his tongue speared inside of me, in and out, before rubbing against my clit again.

Stars danced at the edge of my vision, nearly overtaking my gaze when I looked down at Noah between my legs. His face was buried there as if he was meant to be there. I brushed away the hair from his face just for his eyes to meet mine, his tongue darting in and out of me. There was pure darkness in his eyes when his hand ran up my stomach and torso to grasp at the silver chain around my neck. He wrapped it around his fingers, pulling taunt, and I felt the breath leave my lungs briefly. Before I could say anything, Noah loosened the grip but still held onto the chain.

I raised my hips off the bed to try and get closer to his mouth when his tongue began to slow, fearing that maybe he was getting tired. But I was so close that my body ached with the release it so desperately needed.

With a tight hold against the back of his head, I tensed my legs and core when he flattened his tongue. Now I rubbed myself against his tongue and my moans echoed throughout the room. I couldn’t even warn him that I was about to cum because my orgasm washed over me without warning. Noah hummed in delight when my arousal coated his lips and chin; it dripped from him and he gathered it up with a finger before sucking it clean himself.

“Fuck,” I panted while running a hand through my hair. “That was-fuck.”

“Watching you cum is addicting, angel,” Noah buzzed with a tender kiss inside of my thigh.

As my heart rate slowed, I ran my tongue over my bottom lip and let out a deep breath in a way to center myself again.

“Missionary hurts right?” Noah asked while leaning over me.

“It depends,” I shrugged. “But if I’m being honest, it’s not my favorite.”

The smirk that pulled on his lips made me tilt my head at him. However, before I could ask what he had in mind, he swiftly turned me to lay on my stomach and raised my ass in the air.

“Noah,” I breathed while peering over my shoulder at him.

Not saying anything, he leaned over towards the nightstand to rummage through it and retrieved a condom. Lust-filled eyes watched as he ripped it open with his teeth and swiftly rolled it over the length of his cock, which was thick and dripping with his arousal.

“Stay on your knees but if you need to lay your lower half on the bed, do it. I want to make sure you're comfortable,” a gentle kiss in the middle of my back; against the snake tattooed there.

I positioned a pillow underneath me to give myself some more leverage and comfort while Noah lined his cock up with my entrance. Slowly, much to my dismay, Noah sank himself inside of me inch by inch until he was fully seated inside of me.

“Shit,” his forehead rested against my shoulder blade. “So tight. I’ve been dreaming of this feeling again, angel.”

“Me too. Oh fuck.”

I moaned when Noah pulled himself almost out, pumping just the head of his cock in between my folds. Then with a snap of his hips, his cock stretched me open again and the weight of his body pressed me farther into the pillow. His chest collided with my back every time he thrust into me and his nails dug into my hips to keep himself grounded. For extra measure, I managed to hook my feet around his ankles.

“I love you,” Noah panted in my ear.

My smile was buried in the pillow. “I love you too.”

“Any pain?”

I did my best to shake my head. “Keep going. Please.”

One hand caressed the grooves of my spine, up and down, while his other wandered around to thrum against my clit again. Noah’s pace was slow but steady, his words from earlier ringing true.

I want to make love to you.

I brushed away the hair from my face so I was able to see, noticing our reflection in the large mirror Noah had leaning against the wall next to the closet. A strangled moan crawled out of my throat when I saw the muscles in Noah’s ass clench with every drive into me. I could vividly see his cock every time he pulled out of me, my arousal glistening on the condom, before disappearing inside of me again.

“I.”

Thrust.

“Love.”

Thrust.

“You.”

I mewled at Noah’s proclamation in between each of his thrusts. “I love you too, Noah.”

The slow pace of his cock but the fast pace of his fingers worked in perfect harmony and I felt my second orgasm slowly creeping its way into my veins. The heat spread like wildfire inside of me with such intensity I began to shake underneath Noah.

“I love you, angel,” he proclaimed again then bit down on the sensitive part of the skin at the back of my neck.

I was gone, blissed out in sheer ecstasy that my words were muffled against the pillow. That wasn’t good enough for Noah so he turned my cheek so I could face him.

“I love you too,” I huffed when my orgasm was seconds away from bursting.

He linked our hands together as he continued to meld with me from behind and I noticed that the hands that were linked were the ones that both had our bracelets. It was almost a good omen, no pun intended, that our souls were always destined to be one. For added measure, I felt the coolness of his necklace brush along the heated skin of my back.

Noah lightly laughed, almost as if he thought the same, and when his cock twitched inside of me, I realized he was close. I wanted to watch him when he fell apart because of me so I glanced back over to our reflection in the mirror. Then with two fingers pressed against my clit, Noah began rubbing up and down which was exactly what I needed for the coil to snap. To finally teeter over the edge where ecstasy was waiting for me.

His name fell from my lips in prayer.

“Fuck, Noah. Oh God, it’s so good,” I cried out through the rest of my orgasm.

“No God. Just us,” he grunted.

There was no God; only him and I.

In the reflection, I watched as his movement stilled, cock throbbing between my walls, and his mouth fell open when he tilted his head back; groaning out his release. Then softly, Noah’s body fell onto mine and he buried his face in my neck.

“Are you okay?” He wondered.

“I’m good, mochi. So fucking good,” I lazily smiled but whimpered when he pulled out of me.

“Let me get you a washcloth,” he left a kiss on my shoulder before slipping into the bathroom.

I snuggled closer into the pillow on my chest to let my eyes rest for a moment. Exhaustion dug itself so deep within my bones that I didn’t even notice when Noah began cleaning me up with the damp but warm cloth then he draped the blanket over my naked form.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed or noticed he left until the bed dipped beside me and I opened one eye to stare up at him. Noah kissed me from between my shoulder blades down my back, his nails grazing beyond the wake of his lips as he traced over the large snake tattoo on my back.

“This sight is familiar,” Noah spoke quietly.

I propped my chin on my hand. “But I’m not going anywhere after. I’m not leaving you to deal with my inconsiderate decisions. I’m right here with you, Noah.”

“I know,” he nodded. “We’re creating new memories now. Righting all of those wrongs. I’ve been excited for both of us to leave the past and move forward.”

“Me too,” I left a chaste kiss on his chin, feeling the slight stubble tickle my lips.

Noah tucked a piece of hair behind my ear then began tracing the line of my cheekbone, and jaw, then booped my nose, earning a giggle from me.

“I brought you some clothes in case you want to get dressed,” he said while handing me a pair of black joggers and a matching shirt.

I took them with a smile. “I think I should start keeping some clothes here.”

“Plenty of space in the closet,” Noah threw a thumb over his shoulder.

My heart fluttered at his words, realizing yet again that Noah was allowing me to occupy parts of his private sanctions.

“I’ll clear out two of my dresser drawers for your stuff the next time you’re over,” I promised with a kiss on his lips.

He hummed while grasping the back of my head to keep me there for a second longer.

“It’s a deal, angel.”

Slipping out of the bed, I trotted into the bathroom to get dressed while I heard Noah open his bedroom door and rummaging in the kitchen. When I hopped back into his bed, Salem came bounding into the room with the bell on his collar jingling.

“Hi baby,” I cooed when he jumped up on the bed. “So, what do you think of the cat tree dad bought you? You like it?”

His response? Curling up on Noah’s pillow with a chirp of approval.

“I’m gone not even five minutes and he steals my spot,” Noah chuckled entering the room again; dressed in nothing but a pair of black Bad Omens joggers and bright yellow socks.

“Get used to it. You invited him over and now what’s yours is his,” I scratched between Salem’s ears.

“I’ll gladly share with him,” he said while handing me a plate.

My eyes lit up as a gasp fell from my lips. “Is that limoncello tiramisù?”

“Yeah, I picked some up from that Italian bakery you love. Carlos’.”

“Yes!” I exclaimed while quickly digging into the treat.

As I leaned against the headboard to eat, Noah sat cross-legged in front of me to eat his share, both of us basking in the silence; beside Salem’s purring.

“Are we a family now?” Noah asked.

With a bright smile, I leaned over to press a kiss on his cheek. “Yeah. We are.”

I set both of our empty plates on the end table next to Noah’s bed then pulled my knees to my chest.

“You know what I’d love right now?” I asked.

Noah winked which caused me to playfully smack his chest. “Not that.”

“OK, sorry. What would you love?” He chuckled while rubbing his chest.

“I’d love to listen to The Grey. I’ve been dying to know how you worked in my poem ever since you sent me that video.”

“Alexa, play The Grey by Bad Omens,” Noah said with a smile.

“Now playing The Grey by the band Bad Omens.”

When Noah’s voice finally broke through the music, I let out a small gasp. It was different, new, hearing this voice come from the man in front of me. It made me proud to see how far he’d come from Finding God Before God Finds Me, knowing what his work ethic was like. He was always trying to break down the typical stereotype of what rock should sound like. He wanted to make changes and from this song alone, Noah was doing that.

Gave you way too many chances, you ran through 'em all. Got everything I could want, but it wasn't enough. Nobody left for me to talk to, nobody to call. Got everything I could want, but I still wanted more.”

My eyes lit up. “Oh, this was from the video!”

Noah giggled. “Yep.”

I continued to listen to the song when he linked our hands together, bringing them to his lips to leave a kiss on each of my fingers.

“I did it to myself, tried to be someone else. I let it tear me down, and I'll never be the same. I did it to myself, tried to be someone else. And you didn't notice 'til I finally got, finally got away.”

“Noah,” I beamed. “This is amazing. The lyrics, your voice, the beat. Everything about it.”

A red hue crossed his cheeks as he sheepishly glanced down at his lap where our intertwined hands were.

“Do you like it?” He gazed up at me through his long lashes.

Rising to my knees, I now draped my arms around his neck and kissed his forehead, nose, both cheeks and then finally his lips.

“I love it, Noah. And I love you.”

He twirled my necklace between two of his fingers. “I love you too, Y/N.”

For the first time since we rekindled our love, it was then that I noticed the tattoo on the side of his hand.

K.E.A.T.O.N.

When Noah realized I was reading the letters, he held up his other hand so I could read the letters on that hand.

P.I.E.R.C.E.

“Noah,” I breathed while putting his hands against my chest.

“I needed to. He needs to know that he can sing his songs through me while he’s gone,” he explained with a lone tear slipping down his cheek.

“I know.” I kissed his hands. “It’s okay.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I took notice of the time and frowned. Earlier, Noah mentioned that tomorrow, well technically later today since it was already nearly two in the morning, Bad Omens were shooting the music video for The Death of Peace of Mind and he needed to be up early for it.

In six hours.

“I should probably get home,” I sighed.

Noah’s hold against my hips tightened. “You can stay. I’ll sleep better if you’re next to me.”

“You need your rest, mochi,” I patted his cheek. “I also have plans with Astrid to help her open up Fika then we’re going shopping right after.”

Reluctantly with a sigh, Noah agreed and let me go, not before leaving a kiss on my forehead.

“Salem is staying here tonight though,” he said.

My jaw dropped as I stood from the bed and placed my hands on my hips. “Excuse me?”

“Look at him,” Noah pointed to a sleeping Salem. “You can’t wake him.”

“Fine,” I dragged out the word with narrowed eyes. “Tomorrow night. My place.”

Noah towered over me when he stood to full length in front of me. “I’ll be there, angel.”

NOAH

Stuffing my hands deep into the pocket of my yellow hoodie, I let my black slides drag my feet behind Y/N as we walked closer to her apartment door. The chill midnight air breezed through the loose strands of hair but I was too far gone in my mind to brush it away. Even though we promised to see each other tomorrow, making plans for me to spend the night here tomorrow night, part of me was worried. Afraid that once we parted ways, Y/N would second guess everything that happened and ignore me for months on end.

Why was I so nervous?

I kept asking myself that as we came to a stop in front of her door. I shook at the thought that what I was doing in all aspects of my life mattered. I felt the need to get it right; especially with Y/N.

Dr. Poulos once said “Nerves are a signal of truth, of what you value, of what you need and cherish. The constant needs of what I’ve wanted, the comfort and stability I desired. That the idea of not gaining happiness brings on those telltale tremors. Always ask yourself what the nerves are telling you. It’s an important way your body speaks.”

She wasn’t wrong. I knew in the back of my mind that I was terrified Y/N would never come back.

What if I wasn’t good for her?

I desperately needed to fight these demons and not let them win.

Y/N loves me. She loves me.

“Mochi, you’re shaking.”

Snapping out of my thoughts, I noticed that Y/N had wrapped her arms around my midsection to pull me closer to her.

“Oh, I am? Didn’t notice,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” She questioned.

“Angel, let it go. It’s nothing.”

Part of me wanted to remove her grasp from me; the part that was used to shrinking away from my problems. But the other part of me that wanted to be a good man for her made me cup the back of her neck instead.

“Talk to me,” she quietly begged.

However, I remained silent; the words weighed heavy on my tongue.

“Noah-.”

“I don't want you to leave,” I blurted out.

Y/N’s eyes softened. “Noah, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No. I-I don’t know. I’m-.” I ran a shaking hand through my hair. “I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and change your mind. I’m not perfect-.”

“Stop,” Y/N shook her head. “Don’t even say that, Noah. You know I love you. Just like I know you love me. Nothing will ever change my mind, alright? We’re both right here. We need to remain here, focus on that.”

I let out a broken breath and brushed my lips over her forehead, my hands going back to grasp behind her neck. “Please don’t leave, don’t leave me in the shape you found me.”

“Never. I will never leave you like that again,” she buried her face into my chest, breathing me in.

I rested my chin on top of her head. “I love you and I want this so bad, angel. I want you.”

“I love you, Noah. I’ll reassure you as many times as I have to,” Y/N turned her head up at me now. “But you have to trust that I won’t let you fall. I’m here with you. It’s you and me, okay?”

I blinked while letting out a calming breath. “I didn’t mean to ruin the night with my worries.”

She kissed the tip of my nose. “You didn’t. And don’t apologize for your feelings. I know what we’ve gone through has done a lot. But we’re moving past that, Noah. I’m proud of that and I’d like for you to start trusting me.”

“I do,” I promised her with a kiss. “I do trust you.”

“Good,” she rose to her tiptoes to lay another kiss on my lips, this one deeper than the last but she pulled away before I could slip my tongue in. “Take care of our baby. I’ll see you two tomorrow night.”

With a heart doubled in size and adoration in my eyes, I watched Y/N as she slinked inside her apartment, throwing a peace sign over her shoulder at me.

We’ll be okay.

NOAH

Grunting, I helped Nicholas, Folio, and Jolly maneuver the large board out of the truck and down the ramp to bring it inside the large warehouse where we had everything else almost set up. It was just before eleven a.m. and even with a second cup of coffee, the caffeine hadn’t seemed to take effect quite yet. After I dropped off Y/N at home last night, I returned to Salem, who was still curled up on my pillow when I left him, and as I lay next to him, my mind was plagued with negative thoughts I tried so hard to push away. It kept me up till almost four in the morning then four hours later, Jolly knocked on my bedroom door to wake me.

As soon as we all arrived at the warehouse, I put on my best professional face and went to work going over the original plans with Orie, making sure we all were on the same page. This was our first music video in our new era so we wanted to make sure it was perfect.

Now, as I stared up at the large board, pulling on the ends of my white shirt, I allowed my mind to wander to Y/N, wondering what she was up to right now.

Did she like the paint idea?

Was the sex good enough? It was great for me but I hoped there was no pain for her. She said there wasn’t.

It sounded like she enjoyed it.

Was I too vocal in my proclamations?

No, I know I wasn’t. Y/N returned those proclamations every time.

I ran an unsteady hand through my hair while letting out a long sigh, and staring down at my feet.

My emotions were a part of me, and in this relationship, they blended with Y/N’s. Although, there are times I had these storms inside of me, never because of her, but from previous damage; the triggers from my past. I was certain things would be okay and this self-deprecation would pass.

I desired Y/N’s presence like a madman gone awol. In those moments of a storm, I had to find my calm and center myself, typically by myself. But with Y/N, I didn’t have to do that. Like my music, she was my muse.

“Noah?”

Glancing over my shoulder, I gave a small smile to Nicholas. “Yea?”

“Are you alright? You’ve been kind of quiet all morning,” he observed while stuffing his hands in the pockets of his black hoodie.

I eventually knew someone would notice my quiet demeanor. I’d only been humoring when it was dire to do so.

Fuck, I missed Y/N. The negative thoughts monster has bitten his way through the bars.

I hated that this had come out of nowhere, sinking its teeth inside of me with no abandon. Our date last night was amazing but these fucking nerves kept trying to sabotage things once again. I did my best to not allow them to.

I needed to stop worrying about last night, knowing I could change anything about what happened even though there was nothing that needed to change. Just like today, I needed to stop worrying about everything that could go wrong and focus on everything that would go right.

“You know you can talk to me,” Nicholas’ voice snapped me from my thoughts.

“I know,” I nodded curtly. “I’m fine. I just want things to go perfect today.”

He reassured me with a squeeze to my shoulder. “It will. We’ve been planning the details for months.”

I shifted all of my weight from one foot to the other, casting my gaze away from him and towards everyone who continued to work tirelessly.

“You miss Y/N?”

My eyes darted back over to Nicholas. “She texted me earlier after she helped Astrid open Fika. They’re going shopping before grabbing some late lunch. I was going to meet Y/N at her place with Salem once we were done here.”

“So let that be the light to help you through today.”

I scratched my chin and nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“Noah! Nicholas! The red lights on the masks aren't working!” Orie’s voice boomed in the vast space of the warehouse.

Motioning Nicholas along, we spent the next handful of hours directing, watching, and redoing some scenes of the music video a few times over to make sure everything went off without a hitch; the perfectionist in me. We even stopped for a few-minute break so Orie could try and throw candy into Folio’s mouth while I peeked at the few unread messages from Y/N.

Angel 🪽: I may have bought a few things I’d like to model for you later. If you’re up for it. 😉

A sudden burst of warmth spread to my cheeks, something that didn't go unnoticed by Orie, who snickered.

“Oh, there’s only one person who can get you to smile like that.”

My eyes pinned into him, a sharp look that said mind your own business. Stepping away from the group of them, I responded to Y/N’s message.

Me: I’d never turn down a show from you, angel. Can I get a hint?

Angel 🪽: It’s red. And I’m very excited for you to take it off.

Fuck.

I adjusted myself with a cough and spent the next couple of minutes texting her with a bright smile. It was nearing nightfall which meant we were close to recording the next scene of the music video.

Angel 🪽: Astrid has not stopped gushing about Jolly. It’s kind of cute though when she calls him Joakim. Did you know that she’s thinking of naming a drink after him at Fika?

I snorted while glancing up at Jolly, who was busy texting away on his phone; most likely to Astrid.

Me: I’d love to know the name of this drink.

Angel 🪽: Älskling. It means honey. She’s thinking honey, Earl orange, and pomegranate tea. Because he’s “sweet like honey.”

Angel 🪽: Noah Sebastian, don’t tell Jolly I told you because I know you can’t keep things like this to yourself.

Feigning a hurt expression, I sent her a selfie and then typed out my response.

Me: My lips are sealed. But I have to get back to work. Me and Salem should be at your place around ten. I’ll grab some food on the way.

Angel 🪽: Burgers? 🥺

Angel 🪽: Also, you gave you the right to look so fucking good, huh? I can’t wait to kiss those lips.

The way my heart jumped in my chest made it almost hard to breathe.

Me: Whatever you want, angel.

Angel 🪽: Just you. And burgers. I’ll always take a burger.

Pocketing my phone, I rounded a finger towards everyone, my voice carrying throughout the space around me.

“Alright! Let’s film this pool scene before it gets too cold for the girls.”

Two hours later, it was nearing eight in the evening and all we had left to shoot was Bad Omens part of the video. We were in the home stretch and I was practically bouncing on the soles of my feet knowing that I’d be seeing Y/N in a few more hours.

As the four of us were dressed in our outfits for the music video, I chatted quietly with Folio while fixing the collar of his jacket. He’d been busy on every break today either talking to his girlfriend or planning something.

“How are things going with her?” I questioned.

The smile that spread on his face made a faint one pull on mine, knowing that one of my best friends was happy.

“Really good. I’d love to have you guys meet her soon.”

I nodded. “Definitely.”

Folio’s eyes peered over my shoulder, a smirk now pulling on his face and he wiggled his eyebrows. Before I could ask what he was staring at, that invisible string in my chest vibrated with such vigor, that it nearly knocked me off my feet.

“Well, look at this group of handsome men!”

Spinning on my heels, I saw Y/N and Astrid walk into the warehouse with bags of food from one of our favorite diners and both of them holding onto two trays of drinks. My heart ran amok in my chest as my stomach flipped three times over at seeing Y/N wearing the yellow hoodie I wore last night when I dropped her off.

“I swung by your place to grab Salem and pack you an overnight bag so once you’re finished here, we can head straight to my place. And yes, I did steal your sweater,” she answered my thoughts.

“Yellow is your color, angel,” I mused while slowly closing the distance to her. “You didn’t have to do all of this.”

Astrid walked up to Jolly, who grabbed the things from her and laid a kiss on her lips; her laughter echoing around us.

Y/N shrugged while I mimicked Jolly’s actions of taking the things from her hands.

“We know how hard all of you are working today, it’s the least we could do.”

Orie came up to grab the food and drinks from me before dispersing it to everyone.

“Thank god you’re here, Y/N. Noah’s been really bossy today.”

She placed a hand on her hip, cocking it out while narrowing her eyes at me. “Bossy, huh?”

“He’s a tyrant,” Orie chuckled before taking a bite of his burger.

I wrapped my arms around Y/N, breathing her in when I brushed my nose along her hairline. “You’re not going to turn her on your side, Orie. You’re wasting your time.”

She raised her lips to meet mine and I hummed in delight when I tasted the milkshake she must have had on the way over here. Even though Y/N was here in my arms, I still couldn’t quiet the negative frame of mind that plagued me throughout the day.

“I like this new look,” Y/N straightened out my jacket.

All I could do was nod in response and her brows creased in worry. “Are you alright?”

Linking our hands together, I pulled her through the warehouse to slip outside where I knew no one would be. We finished the pool scene a while ago and the extras had left for the night.

“Oh, a pool? Are we going skinny dipping?” Y/N teased with a wink.

I ran a hand through my already-styled hair, still not saying anything. My mind was a jumbled mess and I was afraid if I tried to speak, my words wouldn’t make sense.

“Noah, what is going on? You’re worrying me.”

Her warm hands cupped my cheeks so I had to look at her, those bright eyes pleading with worry.

“Talk to me,” Y/N breathed.

“Did you enjoy our date? Was it to your standards? Did I do alright with everything?”

The questions blurted out like word vomit.

“Of course I did, Noah!” Those eyes darted back and forth between mine. “I had a wonderful time. Did I do something to make you think otherwise?”

I clutched her sides. “No, you didn’t! I promise. I know we talked about things last night. I wanted to make sure last night was everything you wanted.”

“It was,” she adjusted the collar of my turtle neck. “I promise.”

“I felt even closer to you than I ever have before. Especially when we had sex and I just wanted reassurance,” I sighed. “That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“Mochi, I loved every second with you. I loved everything about it. I felt closer and more connected with you too. Stop fussing if I had a great time. I’d sit and watch ants crawl out of the ground if it meant I could be with you.”

Something flashed in my mind that brought a genuine smile to my face and washed away all of those worries.

Y/N crossed her arms over her chest. "You'd sit and get a tattoo with me?"

I brushed away a loose strand of hair that fell from her braid behind her ear, fingers trailing against the skin of her neck.

"I'd sit and watch ants crawl out of a hole for hours if that meant I'm sitting next to you," I vowed with hooded eyes as I stared down at her lips.

I pressed a kiss to her lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. I take it we’re on for a second date then?”

“I’m wide open,” Y/N winked with a kiss on my cheek.

“Good,” I grinned.

“Noah! We’re ready!”

We both glanced over to the large opening of the warehouse to Nicholas who was waving us inside.

“So, you’re staying the rest of the shoot?” I asked.

Y/N beamed. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

READER

As I moved about my bedroom, tossing things into the suitcases that laid out on my bed, there was a delicate knock on my open door and Chase gave me a warm smile.

“Malcolm and Noah are at the store right now and wondering if there’s anything else you need for this weekend,” he sat down on the edge of my bed.

“No, just the list I gave them,” I said while zipping up my suitcase.

“Are you nervous?” Chase asked, playing with Salem.

“A bit, yeah,” I sighed while plopping down onto the bed next to him. “This is our first album as a three-piece. It’s completely different from our other albums so I’m afraid people won’t vibe with it.”

Chase squeezed my knee. “They will. The reviews from the singles we already released are positive.”

“I know. I’ve just been in my head a lot.”

There was a slight hesitation in Chase’s breath before he asked his next question.

“Have you talked to your parents at all?”

My heart sank with guilt and I began chipping away at my nail polish. “It’s been a few days since I talked with my dad. With everything from trying to plan the album release party and Noah, I guess I kind of forgot to call him.”

Chase wrapped an arm around me to pull me into his chest. “Your dad understands how busy you are. He’d never hold it against you.”

I snorted. “Unlike my mom. Part of me wants to call her and give her an update on my life. Because I do love her, regardless of all of her faults, but I’m just afraid that she’ll judge me; again.”

“Do whatever your heart tells you, sweets. You never know, she might surprise you.”

Both of us shared a knowing look before we burst out in a fit of laughter knowing the odds of that happening.

“But stop worrying about the small stuff, Y/N. Ethan said the house is booked, the guest list was sent out, and the caterers are paid. Everything is set, all we have to do is show up and promote the album,” Chase said as Salem lay between us.

When I nodded, he stood to his feet and placed a kiss on top of my head then slipped out of my room. Pausing packing for a moment, I reached for my phone that was charging on my nightstand and I let my finger hover over my mom's contact for a long moment, wondering if I really wanted to do this or if it was the guilt for not reaching out to her more.

Pros: she could be happy for me and even want to show up at the party.

Cons: she calls me a disappointment yet again and criticizes my choices.

“Fuck it,” I groaned then clicked on her name.

It rang twice before going straight to voicemail. I rolled my eyes, knowing that she ignored my call, but tried not to dwell on the way my stomach dropped.

“Hey mom, it’s me. How have things been? I heard you went to Greece for a few weeks to visit family. I bet that was nice, I’d love to see some pictures. Maybe we could meet up for coffee to talk?”

I ran my sweaty palms on my sweats before continuing. “I have some news. Hollow Souls new album releases this Saturday and we're throwing this party to celebrate it. I know you never were too keen on my career choice but it would mean a lot if you came. I’ll text you the details. S'agapó.”

Ending the call by saying I loved her in Greek, I hit the red button with a disappointed sigh. I knew there was a higher chance she wouldn’t answer my call rather than actually answering it. Instead of dwelling on it, I texted my dad.

Me: Can I call?

His response came almost instantly.

Dad: You never have to ask, sweetheart.

With a smile, I decided to FaceTime him instead and broke out in a large smile when his face appeared on the screen. His hair had a bit more gray than the last time and a few more wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. The glasses were practically falling off his nose but when he saw me, he pushed them up.

“There she is! Oh, I’m loving the new hair!” He beamed.

“Thanks Dad. I’m sorry I haven’t called in a while, life’s been kind of crazy,” I explained while leaning against the headboard.

My dad waved me off as he spun around in his office chair, the large and filled bookcases now his backdrop. “It’s alright, sweetheart. How have things been?”

We spent the next few minutes catching up when Noah entered my room, both hands full of bags. When I went to help him, he held up the bags higher so I couldn’t. With a playful glare at him, I turned my attention back to my dad while Noah went about emptying the bags.

“So your mom didn’t answer?”

Briefly ignoring the questioning glance from Noah, I shook my head at my dad.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s like she has this radar that goes off before I call to talk about my life. If it’s not about her, she doesn't care,” I pulled my knees up to my chest so Noah could sit down in front of me.

My dad took off his glasses to rub his eyes before putting them back on his nose. “I’m sorry sweetheart. I wish she never took her own frustrations out on you. She’s unhappy with how things ended with the divorce and she can’t seem to heal from it.”

Noah’s fingers grazed over the exposed skin of my ankle.

“All these years later and I still try to make her proud of me,” I shrugged.

“I know sweetheart. But sometimes, you have to think about yourself and make yourself proud before her. That’s what matters.”

Noah’s hand brushed away the hair from my face and I smiled up at him.

“Oh, whose hand is that?” My dad's questionable voice came from my phone. “Those are a lot of tattoos.”

With a glance at Noah, he nodded so I shifted my position for my phone to not only show me but him as well.

“I wish I could introduce you two face to face but this will have to do. Dad, this is Noah.”

Noah gave a small wave to the phone. “Hi, Mr. Y/L/N, it’s an honor to meet you.”

“Shit, even your neck is covered! That had to hurt,” my dad chuckled while rubbing his own neck. “It’s an honor to meet you as well, Noah. My daughter has told me quite a lot about you. All good things, no need to worry.”

My cheeks burned and Noah wrapped an arm around my side, pulling us closer.

“You have a wonderful daughter. I want to assure you that I love her and will take great care of her,” he vowed.

My father snorted while moving about his house now. “I knew it from the moment I saw that video of you two performing on stage together during your last tour that you loved Y/N. It was clear in the way you smiled at her.”

“Dad,” I muttered under my breath.

Noah, however, looked at me with deep affection in those almond eyes. “I think I knew it back then as well, it just took me longer to admit it.”

“Call it father’s intuition,” my dad said. “But I have to go. I’m meeting some friends for ramen.”

“Ugh,” I groaned. “I would kill for some Japanese ramen right now.”

“Well,” my father started while slipping into his jacket one-handed. “Bring Noah the next time you visit and we can all go out for some. There’s this great place next to this shop that sells some kind of Manga drawings. I don’t understand it but the kids your age seem to love it.”

“We’ll be there,” Noah promised with a kiss on the side of my head.

“Have fun at the album release party, sweetheart. I can’t wait to hear the new songs!”

We both waved at the screen before it went black, me hanging up the call.

“Your dad seems like a great guy,” Noah noted while rolling off of my bed and trotting over to my dresser.

He opened the top two drawers, rummaging around for some of his clothes.

About two weeks ago, he slowly brought some of his things over here while I did the same at his place. We’d been bouncing back and forth between the two but with how busy I’d been planning the album release party and all the finishing touches for the album, it’d been a few days since Noah and I spent the night together. So now that we were leaving tomorrow for the weekend, he decided to spend the night at my place so we could ride up to Big Bear with Chase and Malcolm.

“He is,” I rested my chin on my knees. “I really hope one day we can visit him together.”

“We will.”

Noah promised with a kiss on my head before retreating out of my room so he could shower while I finished packing all of our things, the excitement of this weekend making me dance around my bedroom.

READER

My heels clicked against the hardwood floor as I typed away on my phone, the hustle and bustle of everyone setting up for the party falling away from me.

The Power Puff Girls group chat:

Me: You guys on your way back?

Astrid: Had to stop at the store quickly! Matt texted Jolly to grab some Dr. Pepper. We picked up Maxxine about thirty minutes ago but would have been back at the house by now if Jolly wasn’t taking FOREVER in the book section. He’s trying to find some kind of new fantasy book to read this weekend.

Maxxine: It’s kind of cute watching the two of you giggle with your own inside jokes while I just stand here as a third wheel.

I let out my own chuckle as I stopped in front of the large mirror in the rental house, brushing away any lint from my white dress. The sleeves were lace and stopped right at my elbows and the bottom of my dress rested mid-thigh. I was afraid that the front may have been too low cut but Noah reassured me it was fine.

With an array of kisses between my breasts.

My phone vibrated in my hand and I read the new message.

Astrid: Oh hush you.

Me: Well, we’re very excited for you to join us, Maxxine. Bring some more females into this group of male hormones. I’d been dying to introduce you to someone!

Maxxine: No, Y/N. Please. My last date was so horrendous, I still haven’t recovered.

“Angel?”

Glancing away from my phone, I smiled at Noah as he came bounding down the stairs dressed in a black long-sleeve and almost eggshell white pants. I licked my lips at the sight of him dressed up. It wasn’t anything fancy but it still made my heart flutter.

“Have you seen my shoes? The black-.”

“The black lace-ups,” I nodded. “Yes, they’re in the closet in our room. Next to my house shoes.”

He pressed a kiss to my lips. “Thank you.”

As Noah retreated upstairs again, I turned back down to my phone.

Astrid: We promise, this guy is different!

Maxxine: I don’t know. I think I should just be single for a while. My luck with men hasn’t been the greatest. I always chose losers.

Me: Please, you’ll be thanking us for setting you up with him.

Setting my phone on the kitchen counter, I peered over to Jesse, who was setting up the drinks and snacks at the dining room table. Noah mentioned to me the other night how Jesse had been feeling quite down a lot lately due to his anxiety and had been falling into himself, closing himself off from everyone. While Jesse wouldn’t admit it, we all had an inkling feeling that seeing some of his best friends get into relationships, made him doubt himself in finding someone. We also knew how hard of a time he had in Pittsburg when Erra was there touring a few months ago, so Astrid and I decided to set him up with a mutual friend of ours and I invited her to the party tonight.

“Hey,” I slinked up beside Jesse and bumped my shoulder with his.

“Hi,” he smiled. “You look beautiful. Excited for tonight?”

“Thank you! I am. But I just wanted to let you know that there’s someone I want you to meet tonight.”

He set down the cups and raised a brow. “Why me?”

“Oh, no reason,” I shrugged before patting his chest and walking away.

“Y/N! What’s that supposed to mean!”

Giggling, I met up with Chase and Malcolm in the main living area of the house. Chase was brushing away Maclolm’s long auburn locks and I smiled at the two of them. I knew they were nervous about being open about their relationship in the beginning but now they were blossoming together and I couldn’t have been happier for them.

“How are we feeling?” I asked them to check-in.

Malcolm ran a hand down the front of his black dress shirt. “Nervous as hell.”

Chase rubbed his shoulder. “It’ll be fine, love. The support already has been incredible. It’s only going to get better.”

I wrapped my arms around both of them. “In case this album flops, I want you guys to know that I’m glad we took this chance. I love what we created.”

“It’s not going to flop,” Chase rolled his bright blue eyes but returned the hug. “Love you two, idiots.”

I pulled away from them and turned towards the front door when it opened, smiling at Astrid, Jolly, and Maxxine who walked inside. My eyes darted from Maxxine to Jesse, who froze in the middle of his tracks. He took in the sight of her; long legs, olive skin, long black hair, and bright hazel eyes.

Maxxine, who had her arms full of bags, gave a slow once over of Jesse with a blush and faint smile.

“Hi,” he cleared his throat. “Let me help you.”

“Thank you,” she allowed Jesse to take a couple of bags from her.

Astrid and I shared a proud smile.

“Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”

Noah’s deep voice sang in my ear as he wrapped his arms around me from behind, a kiss to the side of my neck. Turning in his embrace, I pecked his lips.

“Hm, once or twice,” I wrapped my arms behind his neck.

With the soft tune of music playing in the background, our bodies began to sway lightly. When his eyes fell behind me, his brows furrowed together.

“Who’s the girl with Jesse?”

I turned slightly in his embrace to see Jesse and Maxxine laughing about something with each other. She was lightly touching his arm and the smile on his face was one that you couldn’t scrub away no matter how hard you tried.

“Oh, that’s a friend of mine and Astrid’s. Her name is Maxxine. I thought that maybe she and Jesse would hit it off,” I explained.

Noah’s lips left feather-like kisses along my forehead. “I love you.”

I grasped the front of his shirt, engulfing myself in his scent.

“I love you too. But before the party starts, I want to show you something.”

Linking our hands together, we slipped away from the group and down the hall of the rental home to the office where I already had things set up. I closed the door behind us and motioned for Noah to sit on the long sofa while I sat on the recliner chair diagonal from him. On the table was a pair of wireless headphones that were already hooked up to my phone.

“What’s this?” Noah wondered after falling onto the couch.

I handed him the headphones. “I know you’ll hear this song later but I wanted you to hear it for the first time with just the two of us. It’s an important song and it means a lot.”

My heart was drumming inside of the confines of my chest making it hard to breathe. I finished recording this song months ago and besides me, Chase, and Malcolm no one else heard it. I wanted Noah to be the first.

Once he placed the headphones over his ears, I loaded up the song on my phone and hit play. Even though I couldn’t hear the song physically, I could hear it in my mind.

I know it's warmer where you are and it's safer by your side. But right now I can't be what you want. Just give it time.

Noah’s shoulders went stiff as he flicked his eyes up at me, steepling his fingers together in his lap. I gave him a reassuring nod, urging him to continue.

And if you and I can make it through the night. And if you and I can keep our love alive, we'll fight.

Now nothing gave way on his face as he stared down at his hands, the only movement was the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

We can meet in the middle. Bodies and souls collide. Dance in the moonlight where all the stars align. Oh you and I, oh you and I, oh.

I couldn’t bear being so far from him while not knowing how he was feeling so I rose from my chair to sit on the other end of the couch next to him.

Well, it's cold when we're apart and I hate to feel this die. But you can't give me what I want. Just give it time

Noah’s eyes fluttered shut and I swore I saw all the oxygen leave his lungs, telling me I knew what part of my lyrics he just heard.

But for now we stay so far. 'Til our lonely limbs connect. I can't keep you in these arms. So I'll keep you in my mind.

My bottom lip caught between my teeth as my knee bounced with anticipation, wanting desperately to know what he thought about my song. But I didn’t want to disturb him yet.

Can we meet in the middle? Bodies and souls collide. Dance in the moonlight. Where all the stars align. Oh you and I, oh you and I, oh.

Glancing at my phone, I realized the song ended, but Noah made no effort to take off the headphones. My lips parted to speak when I noticed a lone tear roll down his cheek.

“Noah?” I tapped his arm.

With the heat of my touch, it was as if he came alive again. Ripping off the headphones, Noah’s lips attacked mine with an inferno, making me fall back onto the couch with him on top of me. My fingers quickly found their usual place in his hair while he hooked my leg around his hips.

“Angel,” he fanned in the crook of my neck.

“Did-did you like it?” I asked.

Noah’s tongue brushed along the pulsepoint of my neck and I shivered underneath him.

“I loved it,” he breathed as his teeth scraped up along my jawline before slipping his tongue into my mouth.

We had a short fight for dominance before reluctantly I let Noah win, his hands running up and down my bare thighs. When he pulled away, I was dizzy; kiss drunk. And his eyes burned as he looked down at me.

“Are you sure?” I questioned, still filled with worry he didn’t like it.

“Y/N,” he lifted my chin with the finger that had the small heart tattooed on it. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this. It was perfect.”

“Thank you,” I wrapped my legs around him to bring his body closer to mine, moaning when I felt the outline of his cock brush along my heated core.

His forehead fell onto my chest and sighed. “Do we have to go out there? Can we stay here the two of us? In our bubble.”

I lifted his head to kiss his nose. “Unfortunately, this party is partly for me so I have to show up.”

Grudgingly, Noah untangled himself from me and then helped me to my feet, fixing my dress and hair for me.

With our fingers linked together, he led me back into the main part of the house where the party was already well underway.

THIRD PERSON POV

The crowd of people kept congratulating the members of Hollow Souls for an amazing album. Everyone loved the new songs and was excited about the new direction they were headed toward. Chase and Malcolm chatted with one of the reps from the record label while Y/N was talking with someone she didn’t expect to see there.

“I can’t believe you flew all the way to Los Angeles from Vermont for this! You didn’t have to,” she smiled while wrapping her arms around the man in a hug.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Y/N,” Joe shrugged. “Where’s Noah?”

“Um, last I saw he was talking with his friend Bryan.”

She glanced around the room but broke out in a large smile when Noah slinked up beside her and left a kiss on her cheek.

“There you are. I have someone I’d like you to meet. This is Joe,” Y/N pointed between the two men.

Noah extended a hand. “Nice to officially meet you.”

“Yeah you too,” Joe shook his hand with a smile.

The three of them chatted for a long while after moving to one of the couches in the living room, Y/N watching with fondness as her boyfriend and one of her good friends got along pretty well. She even stole a glance over towards Jesse and Maxxine who were seated on the couch across from them. His arm was thrown over the top of the couch, fingers grazing over the skin of Maxxine’s shoulder. Every so often she would slink in closer towards him.

“Would you like a drink, angel?” Noah asked.

Her eyes snapped back to him and she nodded. “Dr. Pepper, please.”

Once Noah stood from the couch, Y/N opened her mouth to ask Joe how life was going when someone else sat down on the couch next to her, almost in Noah’s previous spot.

Devon? Derrick? No, his name was Dennis; a mutual acquaintance of Ethan, their manager.

“Hey, Y/N. I thought I’d sneak in to tell you how awesome the new album sounds,” he slicked back his overly gelled hair.

She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Thank you.”

While she knew of him from things Ethan would say, Y/N never actually met him.

“I love the new vibe you guys have going on. It’s very different from your old albums. Although, I must say that my favorite is still your self-entitled. Trey’s vocals kick ass on that.”

Joe sat up straighter from his spot on the other side of Y/N while she narrowed her eyes at Dennis.

“Everyone has their own opinions I suppose,” she said while trying to pull down the ends of her dress when she caught Dennis staring at her legs.

“You know,” he licked his lips and moved closer to Y/N. “You’re doing really well without Trey. How about we go out for a drink?”

“No thank you, I’m not interested.”

Y/N slinked back closer to Joe, who gladly accepted it.

“One drink?” Dennis tried again with a sly smirk.

“I don’t drink,” Y/N narrowed her eyes while crossing her arms over her chest, hoping to show the guy that she was finished with this conversation.

Joe sent a look over to Malcolm, who was standing in the kitchen next to Noah, and with that shared expression, the redhead nodded.

“Noah,” Malcolm motioned behind Noah.

With a perplexed look, Noah turned around and nearly crushed the glass in his hand at what he saw. Y/N was almost in Joe’s lap, trying to get away from some douchebag who kept advancing towards her.

“What the fuck,” he grumbled under his breath, nostrils flaring.

Tonight was not the night to lose his cool but he could feel that ugly feeling burning low in his gut; the feeling he despised. He didn’t want to come off as jealous or that he couldn’t trust Y/N because he could. But Noah did not like the way this guy was almost undressing her with his eyes.

Joe wanted to intervene but also knew that Y/N had it handled; something she’d proven before.

She glanced around the room with panic in her eyes until they fell on Noah, utter relief filling them. The guy followed her gaze and scoffed when he realized what she Y/N was looking at.

Noah’s blood ran cold as his heart was thumping loudly in his ears, everything becoming white noise to him. His fingers shook at his sides, doing his best to remain calm.

“Who is that guy?” He asked Malcolm.

“Dennis. Ethan’s assistant.”

Matt, who had snuck up beside Noah, urged him with a look.

“This asshole just asked Y/N to go outside with him for more privacy.”

Fire burned in Noah’s eyes as he snapped them back over to the couch, where he nearly choked at the sight in front of him. Dennis was dragging his fingers down Y/N’s neck with intimacy that was reserved for Noah only. That was his spot. Y/N was his, it was proven tonight when she played her song for him.

His insides burned with rage that it nearly made him unable to see anything in front of him.

The sound of Y/N’s hand smacking Dennis’ hand away broke through the haze in Noah’s vision.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she seethed.

Joe quickly pulled Y/N up from the couch just as Noah pushed himself off the edge of the counter and made his way through the crowd over towards his girlfriend; hands shaking with more vigor now. It would be so easy to punch Dennis and show him who Y/N belongs to, however, Noah wouldn’t create a scene tonight; not when this night meant so much to Hollow Souls.

With three deep breaths, Noah came to a halt in front of Y/N who quickly found solace underneath his arm.

“Everything alright?” He wondered.

Y/N, albeit with the annoyed look in her usual bright eyes, wore a faux smile. “Yeah, now it is.”

“I think you were just leaving, no?” Joe asked Dennis.

The man shook his head while slowly rising to his feet. “No, actually I wasn’t. I heard that Y/N is single so I thought to shoot my shot.”

Noah’s body vibrated with anger so Y/N rested a hand on his chest, her touch immediately calming him.

“I’d like to know where you heard that,” Noah spoke slowly, even though he was on edge.

“Does it matter?” Dennis harshly laughed. “All I’m saying is that she looks sexy as fuck tonight. I thought we could sneak away for a bit but it seems like she’s too far up your ass to even notice there are other guys here.”

“I already said no,” Y/N’s voice was stern.

Noah’s eyes sliced Dennis in half but remained calm; an eerie calm that seemed to have the gathering crowd of their friends on edge. His arm was still around her, claiming Y/N as his own but for added measure he left a kiss on the side of her head.

Dennis raised his hands in defeat. “Alright, I get it. It’s fine, from what I hear from Trey, you can’t be satisfied anyway.”

Chase appeared almost out of nowhere and grabbed him by the collar of his green polo. “Time for you to go. Now.”

“Chase, please. No fighting,” Y/N begged still in Noah’s embrace.

His usual bright blue eyes were dark, a deep hue of midnight, while he glared at Dennis.

“I promise, no fighting,” Chase gritted out through clenched teeth. “I’m only going to show this asshole the way out.”

Noah and Dennis shared one final glance, victory dancing on the former's lips before he whispered in Y/N’s ear.

“Upstairs. Now.”

Her eyes sparkled when she gazed up at him with a mischievous smirk. The both of them slipped away almost unnoticed by everyone, running up the stairs two at a time with Noah smacking her ass, her giggles echoing far behind them.

READER

As soon as we were in the confines of our bedroom in the rental house, Noah lifted me in the air to press my back against the door. I wrapped my legs around his waist while his hands gripped my thighs. There was a dire need of want in his eyes as he crashed his lips to mine in such a frenzied, hungry kiss, that it made me see stars from the force of it. His teeth grazed over my tongue and then my lips, drawing the teeniest bit of blood.

“Fuck, Noah!” I exclaimed while dotting a finger to my lip.

Growling, he began biting my neck, licking away Dennis’ touch. “I don’t know who the fuck he thinks he is. No one will ever fucking talk to you like that or touch what’s mine.”

“Oh god, yes,” I hissed, running my hands through his hair when he sucked on my sweet spot.

Somehow Noah managed to yank off my panties in our position and stuffed them deep into his pocket. One lone finger slipped between us when he pinned me to the door again and started rubbing fast circles on my clit.

“Shit. Fuck. So good,” I crowed while pulling on the ends of his hair.

Once I was wet enough, Noah quickly pulled out his cock, rubbing a fist over it for a few pumps before slipping in between my folds with a hard snap of his hips that we rattled against the door. I felt so full, so stretched open, that I gasped; not realizing at first that Noah forgot to put on a condom.

“I want that motherfucker to hear who you belong to, angel,” he grunted with each thrust, nails digging into the skin of my bare ass to keep me grounded against him.

“Fuck, god. So good,” I panted while scratching at his shoulders. “Right there.”

We both were grunting so loudly and with the banging of the door, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that everyone could hear us downstairs. But none of them mattered.

Only Noah and I did.

His lips attacked mine once again, teeth smacking and tongues exploring every inch of each other's mouths.

“Say my name, I want him and any other man who thinks they have a shot, to hear who you belong to,” Noah bit down hard on my neck, his thrusts were fast and relentless.

“NOAH!” I screamed when his finger pressed against my clit again, being exactly what I needed to come apart on his cock.

My body writhed in his tight hold on me and with the force of his hands on my ass, I knew that I would have bruises in the morning but I didn’t fucking care.

“You’re mine.” He grunted while craning my neck back by my hair.

Noah went back to working on the raised red mark on my neck, right alongside the other bite marks he left before.

“Yes, I am,” I rasped, gone in ecstasy.

“Forever angel,” Noah’s hips stilled before pulling himself completely out of me. “Fucking say it.”

“I’m yours forever, Noah!” I proclaimed with a feverish nod.

“You’re mine, angel,” he gruffed while now wrapping his hand around his cock.

It was thick and red, almost angry from being denied release.

“It felt too good and I didn’t want to risk it,” he sighed while letting me fall to my feet.

I kissed his lips, this time more gentle than our previous kisses. “Cum on my chest.”

Noah’s movements around his cock faltered for a moment, pupils dilating to pure black.

“What?”

Dropping to my knees, I pulled down the front of my dress to expose my bare chest to him and peered up at him through my lashes.

“I want you to mark me, Noah. Mark what’s yours,” I begged.

“Shit, Y/N,” he mused while running one hand through my hair, dragging his fingers down my neck over my chest to pull and pinch my nipples.

His grip around his cock was tight, knuckles turning white as he moved his hand up and down with such a velocious pace, it almost made it hard to focus on it. I licked my lips when I spotted the precum Noah used to spread over the head of his cock and I whined with the desire to taste him.

The hand he had wrapped around the back of my neck to keep me in place tightened its grip as he bent over me, resting his forehead against the door. Noah was still dressed but I could only imagine that the muscles in his stomach were taut, his release so close.

“Cum for me, Noah. Please,” I begged with a whiny breath.

“Fucking hell,” he howled my name when his warm release shot all over my neck and down between my breasts.

I hummed in pleasure, seeing the white stickiness run down my stomach, reveling in the feeling of his mark all over me. Noah stared down at me through hooded eyes, his chest heaving with each deep breath.

“I didn’t think,” he took a deep breath while licking his lips. “I didn’t think that would be so hot.”

Allow him to help me to my feet, I couldn’t wipe the smirk from my face. “I did, why do you think I asked for it?”

Noah’s eyes flashed as he bent low to capture my lips in a kiss. “Am I going to keep finding out your secret kinks, angel?”

“I think so since you discovered two of them already,” I dragged a finger down his cheek.

“You like possessive sex? I feel terrible for throwing you against the door,” Noah rubbed the back of his neck.

I shrugged. “It’s not so much the possessive side of it but more so the dominant side of you.”

He lifted my hand to his lips, leaving a kiss on my palm. “Do you want to head back downstairs?”

“No, I’m exhausted and need a shower,” I giggled while motioning to my chest.

Even though his cheeks reddened, the look that crossed his face as he looked me over made my core clench.

“Get cleaned up and I’ll sneak downstairs to grab us some snacks,” Noah patted my ass, dismissing me towards the bathroom connected to our bedroom.

“Think Folio will share those chocolate-covered pretzels he brought?” I wondered.

Noah chuckled while stuffing his cock back into his pants before zipping them. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

Right before he slipped through the door, I chastised him when I noticed the large red mark on my neck.

ASTRID

“Okay, I think they’re finally finished,” I chuckled while walking into the bedroom I was sharing with Jolly. “The door stopped rattling awhile ago and when I walked past their bedroom, I heard one of them snoring.”

Jolly peered up from strumming a few notes on the guitar in his lap and smiled at me.

“It’s most likely, Noah. Do you know he wears those nose strips?”

“No way!” I gasped while pulling down the sleeves of his sweater I was wearing, moving about the room to finish getting ready for bed.

It was his black Bad Omens hoodie, with the hand and gun on the front.

“Yeah, try sleeping in a moving sweatbox and hearing that. I sometimes worry he’ll inhale the bus curtains. That’s Y/N’s problem now,” he chuckled while reaching for me and pulling me to the bed with him.

I broke out in a fit of giggles when he placed me in his lap and then rested the guitar in mine. He set my fingers in the position they needed to before helping me strum a few notes.

He placed a kiss on my shoulder. “I’m glad you were able to leave Fika for the weekend to be here with me.”

I turned my head towards him and kissed his lips. “Jessica can handle it. I need to start loosening the reins a bit and enjoy things more.”

Jolly’s eyes glinted as he set the guitar down on the floor before lying me back down on the bed, lifting my end of the sweater to reveal all I was wearing underneath was a pair of black underwear.

“You walked around like this?” His voice rumbled deep within his chest.

I innocently shrugged. “I didn’t run into anyone. Besides, I’m practically swimming in your sweater. No one would have seen anything.”

Hooking my underwear with his fingers, Jolly practically ripped them down my legs before flipping me onto my stomach.

“Keep the sweater on, käraste,” he demanded while spreading my legs wide.

“Fuck, yes,” I nodded while burying my face into the pillow, hearing Jolly’s belt buckle fall to the floor.

NOAH

Jolly and I moved around the large kitchen, almost with ease like we’d done this countless times before as we made breakfast for everyone. It was our last day up in Big Bear and we had a full day of activities planned.

Breakfast, a mountain hike, lunch at a diner in town, and Y/N wanted to steal me away for a few hours to go horseback riding.

The large table was filled with everyone and I had to stop for a moment to appreciate everyone here who came out to support Hollow Souls. They didn’t need to but they did because Y/N, Chase, and Malcolm became part of our family with that tour that seemed so long ago now.

“Noah, can you hand me the eggs?”

Snapping my gaze away from everyone, I turned towards Jolly and handed him the carton of eggs.

“So,” I smirked while pouring more pancake mix onto the sizzling griddle. “I heard you had a great night last night. I walked past your room to come down to the kitchen for a drink and heard you grunting something in Swedish. What was it?”

He froze, mixing the eggs in the large bowl for a moment before scoffing. “Like you’re one to talk. We all heard you guys last night. The door wouldn’t stop rattling, shaking the walls.”

My face was beet red and I adjusted the collar of my sweater to ease it away from my neck. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m surprised you even heard anything over your snoring,” Jolly shrugged with a sly smirk. “I told Astrid you use nose strips.”

I dropped the spatula, it clattering to the counter and gasped. “You did not!”

A sudden movement from the stairs caught both of our attention, our heads snapping to the forms of Jesse and Maxxine walking down, her wearing one of his shirts. With a shared look, Jolly and I scurried over to our girlfriends, me pulling on Y/N’s shirt while she poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Mochi,” she smacked my hand away. “Not now. I’m hungry and need caffeine. Sex in the shower took a lot out of me this morning.”

“Angel,” I reached for her again.

“I’m serious,” she held a stern gaze over the rim of her cup as she looked at me. “I need a break.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned her around just in time for her to see Jesse hold out the chair for Maxxine, who blushed up at him in thanks.

“No fucking way!” Y/N sputtered into her cup and then looked back at me. “She stayed the night with him?”

I wrapped my arms around her, breathing in the peach scent of her body wash, and smiled. “Look at you, little matchmaker.”

We shared a kiss before I motioned for her to sit down at the table so I could bring her a plate of food.

Everyone went about the kitchen, filling up their own plates while I sat down next to Y/N, handing her the plate. Once everyone was seated, Malcolm took a long pull of his coffee before setting it down on the dark oak of the table.

“So, who do you think was louder last night? Jolly or Noah?”

The noise of my fork falling on my plate rang loudly in all of our ears while Jolly nearly choked on his scrambled eggs. Both of us slowly sank into our seats while Astrid and Y/N shared a look across the table, stifling a fit of giggles behind their hands.

Noticing the way our faces reddened, Folio spoke up to change the subject. “Did anyone enjoy seeing the snow dogs? Michelle and I had a great time when we were here last time.”

“Oh that’s right,” Davis nodded. “You guys were here for Valentine's Day, right?”

While their conversation fell on deaf ears, I felt my heart stutter in my chest and glanced over to Y/N, who was having her own conversation with Michael who sat next to her. The realization hit me with such force, that I had to lean farther back into my chair.

Even though it was well into March, we never spent Valentine's Day together, and honestly, that wasn’t something that sat well with me. My heart yearned to make up for all the times we missed during our time apart and for the rest of breakfast, I made those plans in my mind.

“Were we really that loud last night?”

Y/N asked me at the same time Astrid asked Jolly and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into me with a chuckle, brushing my lips against her ear.

“Want to see if we can get even louder before we leave?” I nibbled on her ear lobe.

#noah sebastian #noah sebastian and reader #noah sebastian x reader #noah sebastian reader insert #noah sebastian smut #enemies to lovers #right person wrong time #tina and sarah talks

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