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moonjxsung · 6 months

Text

Lost in Translation

Pairing: Lee Minho x fem reader

W/c: 26.5k

Warnings: accidental nudity, hospital visit, mention of masturbation, use of pet names, breast/nipple play, clitoral stimulation, unprotected sex, bulge kink, sexual asphyxiation, breeding kink, creampie, oral sex (male receiving), brief mention of pregnancy

Synopsis: The older brother of the boy you babysit is an enigma, in every sense of the word- and you’re determined to figure him out.

[this work was based off a request by @antoniorhinothethird - thank you for requesting!]

18+. Mdni!

•

The idea of babysitting isn’t some brilliant proposal you conjured up in a day- but it’s not exactly a choice, either. The idea isn’t even yours, in fact, the advertisements you published on the colorful inquiry site at your mother’s behest. But “college courses are virtual these days” and “you’ll be a mother at some point in your life,” according to her. So two months into the semester, you’ll now spend the majority of your time in a new place you’ll call home, just 30 minutes out at the Lee Household.

The Lee household is considerably larger than you’d originally anticipated it to be, spanning a sizable amount of grassland and standing nobly tall at 2 stories high. The exterior of the flashy home is surrounded by paved gravel driveways, lining the neat rows of bushels and vines that surround the off-white architectural build. Giant glass windows reflect sunlight in nearly every room of the house, with the exception of the dimly-lit library on the second floor, which flaunts colossal cherry wooden bookshelves that line the walls and cover most of the smaller windows.

“Joon is usually very mellow in the daytime,” Mrs. Lee tells you as she walks you through a tour of the garden. “You’ll only have to worry about his feeding schedules, which I’ve already written and posted on the refrigerator.”

She pivots in front of you, stopping for a moment and gesturing to the stone fountain by the rose bushes. “Do you like it? It was a gift from my husband. When he’s not running the furniture business, he works in restoration a lot. This was his first project.”

“Wow,” you say, your lips parted at the sight of the koi fish and the cascading waterfall from its lips. “It’s very beautiful.”

Mrs. Lee smiles at you in response, turning on her heel and continuing to the iron gates in the front.

“Do you have any other questions?” She asks, clasping her hands together and shooting you a saccharine smile. She’s intimating, not because of her personality, which you quickly clock as rather warm and inviting. But rather, because she’s so elegant, her navy silk dress perfectly complementing the chunky pearl earrings she wears, making her look like a character from an old film. You’re not sure you’ve ever crossed paths with such an interesting woman before.

“I think that covers everything,” you say finally, giving her a small bow. “I’ll be sure to provide updates throughout the day.”

“Oh, no need,” she says quickly. “Unless it’s an emergency, l know you’ll have your hands full doing your work while watching Joon. Feel free to just give us a little summary when we’re home for the evening.”

She shoots you a little wink when she finishes speaking, clasping her hands together again and smiling down at you.

“We’ll see you tomorrow for your first day!” She exclaims warmly, opening gate doors as you make your exit out of the garden. When you begin down the paved road, Mrs. Lee suddenly gasps, calling out to you again in a frantic manner.

“Oh! Y/n, wait please!” She calls, pulling the skirt of her dress up to her ankles to jog over to where you’re standing.

“My other son will be home from school in the afternoon tomorrow. Don’t be alarmed if you hear him moving about the house. He’ll just keep to himself.”

You ponder the words for a moment, a little frustrated when you realize there will be two kids in the household instead of one, like she’d previously mentioned. But you just nod and smile at her, seeing yourself out of the driveway once again and beginning the journey back home to prepare for your first day here tomorrow.

This castle-at-end-of-the-road is eerily quiet when no one’s home, a once lively sight of rose bushes and marble statues appearing like something out of a horror movie when you’re by yourself. At every corner you turn, your brain runs rampant with paranoia, placing shadowy figures and silhouettes of people where there are none- except for when you’re in the presence of Joon.

At just a year old, Joon is considered one of the cutest ages, only being able to babble incoherent noises and flail his little hands around when he wants something. His closet is full of matching neutral tones, per his mother’s styling, and his sparse black hair is combed neatly to one side.

Mrs. Lee is right about him- he doesn’t cry. Nor does he ever make a fuss, really. He simply sits quietly, in the comfort of his crib, or his high chair, and he curiously peers at the world around him. You’re certain he’s taken a liking to you already, judging at how he smiles when you spoon-feed him mashed carrots and mimic airplane noises. And he only cries briefly once in the day, stopping almost immediately when you put him down for his nap.

This may be an easier gig than you thought.

While Joon naps, you take the opportunity to get some work done in the library, settling comfortably on the velvet armchair in the corner and running through a few of your online class assignments for the week.

Although you’ll be babysitting here for the next few weeks, you’re also completing your final year at university this year, your last semester being completely remote. Which gives you time to take on the babysitting task as a side hustle, and hopefully save enough money to travel a bit after university like you’ve always dreamt of.

At half past noon, Joon is still peacefully asleep in his crib where you’ve left him, the ambient sound of waves echoing softly from his baby monitor as little snores emit from his curled lips. He looks like an angel when he sleeps, and you can’t help but feel your heart swell to twice its size at the sight of him.

The gentle breeze of the October wind travels through the open windows of the library, sending chills up your spine when you sit down to work again. You get up from where you’re sitting on the armchair to latch the windows shut, making sure to lock them, before turning around to take your seat again- quickly startled by the figure standing in the doorway.

“Jesus,” you yelp, one hand clutching your chest in fear as you nearly drop your laptop.

The figure- or man, rather, says nothing, scanning the room like he’s searching for something, before turning on his heel and exiting the room once again.

He’s tall, with a slim yet muscular build, honey tanned skin complementing his chocolate brown tresses. He’s also dressed rather casually in a pair of light-wash jeans and a black top, a black leather jacket thrown over his broad shoulders and left unzipped.

“Sorry, did you need something?” You call out, perplexed by his demeanor. You can’t remember if the Lees warned you of potential visitors, but you’re suddenly panicked for Joon, remembering you left his door open.

“Nope,” the man calls out over his shoulder, not turning around to face you. And then you see it- a black backpack, slung over one shoulder and seemingly filled to the brim with textbooks.

Their other son.

This must be the son Mrs. Lee warned you would be making appearances in the afternoon. But you had assumed him to be much younger, especially considering he’s definitely old enough to be watching over his own brother.

Before you can gather your thoughts to introduce yourself, he’s gone again, disappearing down the hall the same way he so mysteriously appeared. And you wonder, briefly, how he can be so much colder than his own mother.

The first day of your new job is a success. When Mrs. Lee returns home for the evening, she pays you in cash, true to her traditional style, and sends you home with a tin of shortbread cookies as another ‘thank you’, though she’s already voiced it a million times. But the second day is rougher than the first, reminding you of why babysitting isn’t always an easy task despite what it may seem.

Joon is particularly antsy today, flailing his arms around when you try to spoon feed him and whining relentlessly when you pick him up. He needs several diaper changes in just your first few hours of working, and when you finally do get him clean, he’s a crying, screaming mess.

Fortunately, he still goes down for his nap at noon, which means you have a narrow window of time to complete your work for the day and get freshened up. The windows in the library are propped wide open again, a cold breeze coming through as you settle in your new favorite spot and open your laptop.

There are a myriad of assignments to complete today, and you’re briefly panicked that you won’t be able to complete the necessary few pieces if Joon suddenly wakes again. But still, you try, skimming through textbooks and typing away as much as you can to make steady progress. And at the hour mark, Joon begins to cry. Rather he wails, loudly, from the other room, startling you when you’re already in deep concentration working through a practice quiz.

You make your way down the hallway and to the right, where Joon’s room is, approaching the crib and catching a glimpse of his anguished state. His face is a robust shade of red as he wails loudly, bubbles of saliva forming at his nostrils and his eyes squeezed shut. You guide him out of the crib and into the safety of your arms, shushing him gently and rocking him back and forth the way Mrs. Lee taught you. And Joon calms instantly, hiccuping through tears as he locks his gaze on yours and fists at strands of your hair.

“That’s okay,” you coo at him, grazing your finger along his chin and cleaning some of the drool that dribbles from the corners of his lips. “I’m here. Look at you! You’re okay,” you continue, giggling at him when his quivering lips pull into a small smile. He softens in your arms, smiling and babbling with hushed sounds, clutching tightly on strands of your hair as you balance him in your arms.

“You want to come do some work?” You ask, nodding your head as if to coax an answer out of him. “That’s a good baby, huh? Let’s go do some work.”

And you travel back to the library with Joon in your arms, giving him gentle pats on his back as you hoist him tighter into your embrace and balance your laptop with one arm.

When you’re starting on your last task of the evening, you’re interrupted again today by Mrs. Lee’s eldest son, who pokes his head in the doorway and observes as you coo down at Joon’s sleeping figure while working on your computer with one hand.

“Do you want me to take him?” You hear from the doorway, and you crane your neck to look where he’s standing, his hands shoved in his pockets and his backpack slung lazily over one arm.

“I’m okay,” you respond, typing out a word with one hand. He furrows his eyebrows at your failed attempt, approaching you and reaching out his arms to take Joon from your embrace.

“You can’t work like this,” he says, as he peacefully transfers Joon to his own arms. “He won’t wake up if I put him back, I promise.”

“Thanks,” you reply, taking note of his features now that he’s at a closer proximity to you for the first time. He has large round eyes, and long eyelashes that make even you jealous. His nose bridge is sharp and straight, and when he chuckles softly at Joon, you notice his skewed front teeth, ones that make his smile seem sweeter- softer.

As he begins out the doorway, you try to think of what to say to him, not wanting to have another awkward run-in with him like your last one. But nothing comes to mind that won’t be just as awkward as the encounter itself, and you settle on painful silence once again.

As you unlock your laptop, continuing on to your last assignment, you hear the faint noise of Mrs. Lee’s elder son putting Joon back to sleep.

Except he sounds different than he has during your two previous encounters. He’s laughing, babbling, even cooing at Joon as he puts him back to sleep. And though you really shouldn’t intrude, you make your way to the doorway again, where you peer down the hall to listen in on the endearing noises he makes.

“Are you sleepy?” He asks, his voice two octaves higher than usual. “Let’s sleep now, okay? No, you can’t have my shirt. That’s mine, remember? Let’s have good dreams now. I love you!”

You hear Joon giggling from the end of the corridor and you smile to yourself, wholly moved by the tender little moment he shares with his baby brother. He might not be his full-time caregiver, but he certainly knows what he’s doing. As you stay pondering his behavior for a moment, you don’t even notice when he exits the room again, turning to watch you standing around the doorway. Your ear is still leaned into the corridor, clearly having listened in on the private moment.

“Sorry,” you say quickly, straightening your posture, a wave of embarrassment quickly washing over you. “I was making sure Joon got to bed okay.”

He just nods once, looking you over briefly before meeting your gaze again.

“Minho,” he then practically mutters, averting your gaze as he waits for you to speak.

It’s his name, you realize, barely even having registered what he said to you. He’s telling you his name.

“Y/n,” you respond quickly, giving him a small bow and smiling nervously.

And Minho says nothing, pivoting on his heel to exit the corridor and disappear all over again.

For two weeks, your job runs smoothly, no glaring problems or hangups. Joon remains fond of you, obedient at mealtimes and when he’s put to bed. And the system of completing your college coursework goes smoothly, being able to get through several assignments a day while Joon takes his afternoon nap. If anything, you might be more productive than you were before this job, despite balancing it between university.

It’s an overcast Tuesday afternoon, and you’ve spent most of your day working in Joon’s nursery on the rocking chair next to his crib. He’s been a little fussy today, but you find that he calms down a little at the repetitive clicking noises of your laptop keyboard. Once you’ve confirmed he’s asleep, little snores emitting from his lips, you gather your belongings and sneak away to the library again. Only this time, it’s not vacant.

Minho sits in your usual spot today, his legs propped up on the footrest in front of him and a book in his lap. He doesn’t even notice you in the doorway, strands of hair hanging loosely in front of his face as he scans the page of his book. He also looks significantly more casual than other days you’ve seen him around, wearing a plain black t-shirt and gray sweats, a pair of round wireframe glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

He feels your gaze on him, shuffling about suddenly and closing his book.

“Sorry,” Minho says. “I was just… reading.”

He realizes how awkward he sounds, verbally conveying his actions to you like this, but he’s too caught off guard to form a more coherent string of words.

“It’s okay,” you say politely, setting your bag down on the floor and occupying the chair across from him.

“What book?” You ask, cocking your head at the small red novel he clutches in his lap.

“Hm? Oh, uh… it’s Love and Limerence. By Dorothy Tennov.”

You nod in response, studying the cherub painted on the cover, wielding a bow and arrow.

“Big romance fan?”

“No,” Minho says, chuckling at your words. “It’s a required read for my class.”

“How neat,” you reply. “What class requires romance novels these days?”

“My philosophy course,” Minho says, running the pads of his fingers over the raised text on the cover. “The psychology of emotion.”

“PHIL 105,” you say, knowing very well the course he speaks of.

“Yeah- you’ve taken it?”

“No, but I had a friend who did in freshman year. I’m in my last semester now- my remaining classes are virtual, though.”

“It’s my last semester, too,” Minho says with a little smile, fiddling with the lobe of his ear as he talks.

“Well best of luck to you in the final stretch,” you reply, shooting him a small smile back. “I hope it all goes smoothly.”

Minho gives a half nod, and then furrows his eyebrows together, like he’s just remembered something.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” he says suddenly, sitting up and gathering his belongings.

“Oh, I really don’t mind-”

“Catch you later,” He interrupts with a nervous tone, almost jogging out of the library and back down the corridor.

And just like the first day you met him, you maintain the same idea of him- he’s such an enigma. Appearing in and out of the household, not one to voice his thoughts or his opinions, no eagerness to know the stranger sitting in his house watching over his baby brother. But somehow, like the rest of the household, you can’t help but have a lingering curiosity for Minho, too.

“My husband and I might be late getting back today,” Mrs. Lee says one morning as you feed Joon his breakfast. His tongue dodges the plastic spoon, dribbling mashed food out from the corners of his lips and laughing when you go to dab his face clean with a napkin.

“That’s alright,” you reply, loading up the spoon with more food. “I can wait until you’ve arrived.”

“You will?” Mrs. Lee asks, a kind of sparkle in her eyes as she speaks. “That would mean the world to us. It’s just that my husband has an auction to attend today. And sometimes these events run longer than they’re meant to.”

“No problem at all,” you say, smiling at her as you turn your attention back to Joon. “Joon and I will just hang out a little longer today. Isn’t that right?”

He babbles something in response, a string of saliva trailing from his lips, and Mrs. Lee laughs at the sight.

“He’s really taken a liking to you!”

As she fixes Joon’s hair, Minho enters the kitchen, dressed for the day with his backpack already slung over his shoulder.

“Minho,” his mother says in a scolding tone. “No gum for breakfast. Have a fruit.”

“Can’t,” he replies curtly. “My philosophy exam is today.”

“What does that have to do with depriving yourself of food?”

“It’s bad luck to eat before an exam,” Minho retorts, coming around the granite island to kiss her on the cheek. “Besides,” Minho continues. “I’m ditching my second class, so I’ll be home a little earlier.”

When he turns around, his gaze meets yours, and he instantly stiffens.

His gaze turns cold again, his hands shoving in his jacket pockets as he says nothing to you. He just bows, once, and then turns to exit like he’s suddenly in some rush.

“Bye,” he calls out, and you’re not even sure who he’s addressing it to at this point.

“I should get going, too,” Mrs. Lee says to you. “I’ll call you when we leave the event tonight. And please, feel free to make yourself comfortable after Joon gets put to bed. There’s cash on the table if you want to order something for dinner, and extra blankets are in the upstairs closet if you get sleepy.”

“Thank you,” you say to Mrs. Lee as she gathers her car keys and handbag. And the house is quiet again when you’re all alone, with the exception of Joon’s heavy breathing as he stares at you curiously.

“It’s like a mansion here,” you say to your best friend as you balance Joon in your arms and crane your neck on your shoulder to hold the phone against your ear. “Mrs. Lee is so nice. I thought she’d be stuck up or something, but she’s like a second mother.”

“You hit the jackpot,” your friend voices on the other end of the line. “Any idea how long they need you around?”

“Not sure,” you reply, wiping the granite counter with a rag as you finish up the dishes. “Probably until their son is done with the semester.”

“Son?” She says excitedly. “Is he cute?”

“Please,” you echo, rolling your eyes. “His looks mean nothing considering he doesn’t say a word.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly that. He just doesn’t talk. We go to the same university and it’s like pulling teeth trying to figure out something as simple as what his major is. I think he despises having me around.”

“I mean, to be fair, I wouldn’t love someone in my space 24/7. It’s probably a territorial thing.”

“He’s not a cat,” you respond, laughing lightly. “He’s a grown man. I just get the feeling he doesn’t like me.”

“Well I highly doubt that,” she says, and you can hear her shuffling about on her end of the line.

“Hey, I have to go,” she chimes in. “But I’ll talk to you later. Good luck with baby Joon and the cat man.”

“Thanks,” you reply, chuckling to yourself.

As you hang up the phone, you turn around to gather the last of the dishes, stopping in your tracks when you’re met with Minho himself.

He’s standing in the kitchen, popping a bubble of gum with his teeth, his gaze locked coldly on yours as he observes the place.

That’s right- he did say he would be home a bit earlier after his exam today. Was he standing there for the entirety of your conversation? You can’t recall how long the phone call lasted, or even the specifics of what you said. But you do know it certainly wasn’t good.

“Hi,” you say nervously, scanning his expression for a hint of what he’s thinking. But he provides you none, kicking off his boots and making his way up the stairs again.

The guilt is still eating away at you two hours later- Minho hasn’t descended the staircase once since the incident, and you can hardly focus on your school work at the thought of what he’s thinking of you.

Here you are, complaining about him seeming “cold” or “off”- the whole time you’re the one talking about him behind his back and stirring up drama. If he hated you before, he definitely despises you now. And if he's as close with his mother as he seemed this morning, you could be out of a job by tomorrow.

In reluctant steps, you ascend the wooden staircase, clutching a small mug of coffee and a stack of buttered toast. You remember Minho saying he’d have breakfast after his exam, a task he wasn’t able to complete due to your impolite conversation earlier. And while you’re not even sure he’s going to give you the time of day anymore, it’s worth a shot to try.

At the top of the staircase, you realize you’re unsure of which room even belongs to Minho. There are rows of doors down the corridor, which you peer into, looking for any sign of him.

A closet, another closet, the laundry room… it feels like a futile task at this point- not to mention, the sinking feeling that you’re intruding, poking into every room in the house like this.

But at the end of the hallway, just across the staircase from Joon’s room, lies one more closed door you haven’t tried yet, and you’re sure this one has to be his.

With a deep breath, you balance the mug of coffee on the plate you’re carrying, bringing your free hand up to knock, just once.

No answer.

You pause for a moment, debating whether to just leave and drop the idea of an apology altogether. But you don’t, instead forcing yourself to knock once more this time, a little harder than the first.

And after muffled sounds of shuffling about, the door finally opens again, Minho standing with a confused expression on his face. He has a pair of earphones in, one side pulled out to hear you, his glasses sat on his face and a number of textbooks on the bed behind him.

“Is Joon okay?” He asks, looking down the hall in panic as you meet his gaze.

“What? Oh! Yes, he’s fine. He’s sleeping.”

“Oh. What are you…”

“I… made you some breakfast. I know you didn’t have any before your exam this morning. And no, gum isn’t a breakfast food.” You chuckle lightly as you hold the items out to him, and Minho looks down at them, blinking a few times before speaking.

“Oh. Uh, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s no problem. Should I leave them with you?”

“Oh, you can put them on the desk over there,” Minho replies, and it’s then that you notice his hands are full with papers. He steps aside to let you in, gesturing to the desk with a piece of paper, and you oblige, clearing the space of a few scattered items and setting down his breakfast.

When you turn around to look at the place, your lips part in awe at the sight of the grandiosity of it. Minho’s room has bigger windows than any of the others you’ve seen, concave around a crescent-shaped seating area that boasts tall ceilings and large glass windows. There are books lining the floors, the desk space and even the window sills, many of them left bookmarked or lying open where they sit.

His giant wooden bed frame is almost hidden behind a hanging curtain, and his desk is nearly inhabitable at the amount of university paraphernalia that lives on its surface.

“Wow,” you say, craning your neck to look around the room. “It’s really nice in here.”

“Thanks,” Minho says awkwardly, toying with a loose hem on his pants.

“You really like reading,” you comment, taking note of the books he has lying around. When you say this, Minho seems to stiffen a bit, shutting some of the books and lining them on their spines along his shelves.

“Yeah,” he mutters, dropping a few books and kicking them away from him.

You nod at him, pursing your lips, well aware that you’re in the midst of yet another awkward interaction with him, but wanting to fulfill the reason you came up here all the same.

“Listen,” you begin. “I wanted to apologize. I don’t know how much you heard of that, but I assume it was enough to be hurt by it. And you’re justified in being hurt. It was totally uncalled for of me to say those things- and sure, you might be a quiet person. But that doesn’t make it okay for me to go around airing it out like it’s my business. In fact I shouldn’t even be on my phone on the job. I’m here to watch your brother, and I get paid for that service, and it’s completely unprofessional-”

“It’s cool,” Minho says, an unchanging expression on his face.

“Oh, um… I mean, if you want to fire me I totally understand.”

Minho chuckles softly, and then shakes his head. “I’m not going to fire you. I am quiet. It’s cool. Really.”

“I mean, I totally get that-”

“Unless you want to be fired?” He inquires with a half-smile, and you chuckle softly in response.

“I really don’t. I love watching your brother.”

“Good,” he replies. “Then we’re all good.”

And although you want to say something else to him, you don’t, feeling as though you should be satisfied with the state of the conversation. You apologized, he forgave you, and you haven’t lost your job. And he’s still quiet, but that’s just who he is.

When Joon wakes from his afternoon nap, it’s nearly 3pm. He’s a crying mess when he’s up again, flailing his arms around to beg for a bottle, which you promptly prepare for him after a diaper change.

With Joon in your arms, you get some chores around the house finished, including vacuuming the rugs, dusting off the furniture and tidying Joon’s toys that are usually scattered about his nursery.

Doing chores wasn’t an agreement between you and Mrs. Lee- in fact, she usually urges you to focus on your schoolwork and take breaks when you’re not caring for Joon. But you want to, feeling compelled to take care of the space as much as you care for Joon. Although tensions are still somewhat present between you and Minho, the Lee household feels comfortable to you by this point, almost like a second home now.

After chores, the library calls out to you again, evening beginning to fall over the neighborhood and painting the sky with vibrant hues of an autumnal sunset.

The windows are still rolled open from earlier, and your velvet couch looks particularly inviting at this hour, beams of sunset setting it aglow and luring you to choose a book from the cherry wood shelves around you.

So you do, selecting a children’s book about animals, comfortably sprawling out on the chair with Joon in your arms. He eyes the book curiously, spreading his short, chubby fingers over the cover and tapping repeatedly, as if asking you to read to him.

And you do, setting the book on your knee to angle the pages toward him, as you begin to vocalize the choppy sentences to him.

“A is for apple, hanging from a tree,” you say, caressing his stubby fingers as he pouts in focus. “B is for buzzing bumblebee.”

Joon’s lips curl into a smile, making his best attempt to clap as you point out the colorful images to him.

“C is for crab, walking in the sand… D is for dolphin, swimming toward the land!”

Joon laughs hysterically now, clapping his little hands and rocking back and forth in your lap. You laugh, too, at his darling reaction, and give him a little kiss on the head as he fiddles with the cover of the book.

It’s moments like this that reaffirm the notion for you that this job was the right idea, after all. You’re inexplicably happy alongside him like this, seeing the world through his eyes and rediscovering things you would otherwise take for granted, like silly picture books or doing chores with him in your arms. You feel so protective of him, eager to make his mom proud and provide a safe, nurturing environment for him as his babysitter- not because you’re paid to do it, but because he now holds a special place in your heart.

The sound of someone clearing their throat startles you from the doorway, and you look up to find Minho standing there, an amused smirk tugging at his lips.

“Did you… want something to eat? I was going to order takeout, unless you wanted something else.”

“Sure,” you reply, propping Joon up a little closer to your chest. “Anything’s fine with me.”

“I’ll get Chinese, then,” Minho says nodding. He averts your gaze a little, but you can tell he’s just a little awkward when he’s face-to-face with you like this. And perhaps your best friend is right- perhaps it’s not unusual of him to feel territorial over his household. After all, you are here almost every hour of the day, making yourself comfortable in almost every room, tending to the chores here and eating food from their kitchen. You suppose you would be irritated at the thought of it, too.

As Minho leaves to place an order, you take Joon back to the nursery, where you gently put him to sleep for the evening and program his baby monitor to play calm ocean noises again. It’s like clockwork- he’s out like a light, and the minute he leaves your arms, you’re exhausted, too. The stress of watching over him while balancing your school work might finally be getting to you now- you’re undoubtedly tired, your limbs aching from sauntering about this big house all day with Joon in your arms. And although you’re on a good track, you can hardly remember which assignment pertains to each of your classes these days.

When Minho returns almost an hour later, he holds a thin plastic bag in hand, his other one clutching a fistful of cutlery and two plates. He gives you a small nod when he enters the library, and you put away your laptop to join him on the floor in front of the coffee table.

For a moment, he says nothing as he prepares a plate for you, sliding a cup of wonton soup toward you and dividing portions of chow mein and tofu with wooden chopsticks.

You watch as he breaks a spring roll in half, holding both sides up and comparing to make sure they’re even.

“You’re very precise,” you say with a soft laugh, and a breathy chuckle emits from his lips, too.

“I’m trying to make sure it’s even.”

“However you cut it is fine,” you respond, pleasantly surprised at how polite he is.

When he’s finished dividing your portions, he slides a plate to you, setting a plastic fork down on the napkin beside you and ushering to the food.

“Enjoy,” he says, shooting you a small smile.

And the two of you eat in silence, the room quiet, aside from the sounds of slurping soup present between you two. Although it’s quiet, it feels comfortable, having him keep you company like this. It’s a change of pace from your usual days babysitting in the Lee household.

“How is your school work?” Minho interrupts your thoughts, and you’re momentarily taken aback by him initiating the conversation first.

“It’s good,” you respond, poking at the vegetables on your plate with a chopstick. “It’s on my own time, so I mostly just have to make sure I’m staying on track. But I’m finding it easy to get through despite watching Joon in the daytime.”

Minho nods in response, keeping his gaze set on the bowl of soup in front of him.

“How did your exam go?” you ask, and Minho cocks his head a little. “I got full marks,” he responds after a moment of silence.

“That’s great! I guess you were right about skipping breakfast having something to do with your academic success, then.”

And Minho laughs for the first time- not a chuckle or a giggle, but a laugh, holding one hand up to his mouth as he does. His laugh is gentle and melodic, filling the room around him with its sound, and you can’t help but laugh, too.

“I suppose,” he responds. “I also go nowhere without those philosophy books, so I have them memorized like the back of my hand.”

“Philosophy major?” you voice back, and Minho nods.

“So Love and Limerence is like second nature to you at this point.”

Minho gets a little awkward at this, his smile fading a little as he pokes around his chow mein. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “You could say that.”

And fearing you’ve somehow offended him, you change the subject again.

“Well I’m a business major,” you chime in. “So we don’t get interesting reads at all. And I’m not lugging around a six-pound textbook about returns on investments in my backpack.”

He laughs again, and you feel satisfied at the motion. Making him laugh feels like an exciting feat, like you’ve succeeded at something after trying so hard to. And considering how hard you’ve been trying to break down his walls these days, maybe it is an exciting feat, getting to know the stranger you’ve been sharing a home with for one month now.

“Business is a great field,” Minho says, slurping down the remainder of his soup. “Your parents must be really proud of the direction you’re headed.”

You shrug in response. “They’re indifferent. I don’t have a great relationship with them. They mostly just want me out of their hair once I graduate.”

“You have any post-college plans?” Minho inquires.

“I finished an internship before this whole babysitting gig, actually. I want to travel a bit after graduation, and then I’ll really settle down for the whole 9-5 working life.”

“Where are you hoping to travel to?”

There’s a glint in Minho’s eyes as he presses you for answers, like he’s genuinely interested in what you have to say. It makes you feel all warm inside- not many people usually care what you’re up to these days, your family trying their hardest to send you away to work another job and your most of your friends having drifted apart when you began university. Even the friends you do have are more distant these days, considering their classes are still in person, and you don’t have a need to be back on campus anymore. It’s a bit of a lonely life you lead, so being here beside Minho feels different, but pleasant.

“I’m not sure,” you say with a smile. “I’m not really sure where I belong yet.”

“Hey, I don’t know where I belong, either,” Minho echoes. “So that makes two of us.”

When the two of you are finished with dinner, Minho takes your plates downstairs, despite you offering, and you’re briefly left alone in the library. It’s much later than usual now, nearing 9:00, when you’re usually home by 7. The house also has a different vibe to it this hour, many of the rooms feeling much dimmer despite the same lamps being on, and the corridors feeling much quieter and more haunting. You feel a wave of sleepiness wash over you, and though you don’t want to be asleep when Mrs. Lee arrives, you can’t help but shut your eyes for a few minutes. You can still make out the shape of the bookshelves behind your heavy eyelashes, trying your best not to close your eyes completely, but your mind has already wandered off to slumber, and inevitably, your body follows shortly after.

You’re somewhere between sleep and consciousness when you feel Minho enter the room once again, looming over you like he wants to ask you something. But he says nothing- instead, he unfolds a knit blanket above you, sprawling it out over your legs and pulling it up to your torso. And you hadn’t realized how cold you were before he did, because you’re almost instantly with a wave of warmth and comfort over your listless body.

It feels almost uncharacteristic or Minho to carry out an action this polite- but as he takes his seat across from you, watching as you doze off peacefully, you think he may finally be coming around to you.

“I’m ditching my second class again today,” Minho announces the next morning at breakfast. He doesn’t eat much, you notice, as he bites into a single apple and hoists his backpack further up his shoulders.

“I’ll be home a bit earlier,” he then continues, eyeing you a little, and you give him a little nod.

“Then help with lunch,” Mrs. Lee says, gathering her own briefcase for work. “Y/n shouldn’t do it all by herself when you’re here.”

“Oh, it’s no worry at all,” you quickly chime in, not wanting to be the reason Minho refutes his mother’s words. “It’s what I’m here to do, after all.”

“No worries,” Minho says back to you. “I’ll be home around noon and we can prepare something together.”

For some reason, your heart flutters a little at the implication of doing something alongside Minho- something so planned and seemingly intimate. You normally just take the days as they come, so having a commitment hanging over your head like this is a little nerve-racking. And in all your worrying, you don’t respond to Minho, realizing only as he’s exiting the house with his apple in hand.

“I might be late again today,” Mrs. Lee turns to you, snapping you out of your trance. “But Minho can stay for the remainder of the time. I’ll still pay you the full amount like I did yesterday-”

“I’m happy to stay again,” you reply to her. “Like I said, it’s what I’m here to do.”

She smiles in return, clasping her hands and gesturing to the food on the table.

“I can’t get Minho to eat for the life of me, but help yourself to whatever you’d like. And thank you again, for staying.”

You’re reading to Joon in the living room when Minho arrives home from school. He kicks off his shoes dramatically, tossing his bag on the floor and breathing out a heavy sigh while you thumb through the pages of a new picture book.

“Hi,” Minho says first, his expression remaining stoic and unchanging.

“Hey,” you reply, hoisting Joon a little further up in your arms. “How was school?”

“Terrible,” he responds, making his way around the granite island to collect another apple.

“Why’s that?”

“Professor Kim,” he says curtly, polishing the apple on his button down shirt before taking a generous bite. “A three hour lecture on a Friday really wasn’t a smart choice. ”

You chuckle a little to yourself, adjusting your position on the floor and trying to balance Joon in your embrace. Minho takes notice of your struggle, abandoning his apple on the counter to come take Joon from your arms.

“Thanks,” you say, dusting off your legs as you stand again. “I’m going to get started on something for Joon to eat if you want to wait around. Unless you’re sticking to this exclusively-apple diet.”

Minho chuckles to himself and shakes his head. “I’ll help. We don’t have much prepared right now and I really need to go grocery shopping.” He secures Joon in his high chair, cocking his head toward the fridge.

“Could you just grab his orange juice? It should be the blue bottle on the right.”

And you comply with his request, promptly locating the blue sippy cup and handing it to Minho.

“Thank you,” he says, setting it down on the white tray in front of Joon and twisting it open. “This should be enough to hold him off until we can whip something up with the few ingredients we have. I want to do something with those sweet potatoes, they’re reaching the end of their time.”

Joon is a little fussy as he reaches for his sippy cup, flailing his arms around and sliding the cup across the tray to the edge. The cap seems to loosen as he does, tilting dangerously to one side.

“I got it,” you say to Minho, as you approach Joon. You retrieve the cup from the edge of the tray, twisting off the cap again to secure it properly. And as you do, Joon lets out a particularly loud yelp, knocking his hand toward you and letting the bottle fall off the tray entirely.

As you realize what’s happening, you bring two hands up to push it away from you, but you’re too late- the entirety of the bottle’s contents are spilt onto your shirt, completely soaking you and dripping onto the floor with loud, wet noises.

Minho doesn’t see what happened, but he turns around at the sound of your loud gasp, his eyes widening at the sight of you. Even your hair’s gotten wet, stringy pieces falling into your face, damp with the tangy scent of orange juice and dripping down your shirt. His mind races with guilty thoughts, feeling as though he should have stayed watching Joon, being the one to have been caught in the crossfire of his tantrum instead. Joon’s always fussy before meals- he knows this very well. As his mind races with the urgency to grab a towel, a rag- something, his eyes graze to your t-shirt, and he practically freezes.

Your thin white t-shirt is soaked like the rest of you, painting a clear outline of your black bra as the cold contents drip down your chest and torso. The see-through fabric sticks to your body like a cellophane wrapping, outlining every inch of you, every curve and every raised goosebump as you shudder at the sensation. Minho’s eyes remain locked on your dampened breasts for an embarrassing amount of time, taking careful note of the way your hardened nipples practically protrude through the thin white fabric, almost appearing increasingly noticeable with every passing second. The delicate curves of your stomach are accentuated with your skin-tight shirt, even your navel now visible.

A shake of your hands finally snaps him out of his trance, and you wrap your arms around yourself in a futile effort to cover yourself.

“I’m sorry,” you utter to him, at a loss for words at the notion of being so exposed to him. And Minho is quick to shake his head, now scrambling for a towel.

“Don’t apologize,” he says, pulling a towel off the oven handle and sliding it to you. “Here, use this and I’ll go get a larger towel from upstairs and a change of clothes.”

You want to deny the offer, feeling shameful for having already intruded this much on the Lee household and still needing more from them. But as you look down at your t-shirt, you know you don’t have a choice, the fabric now feeling cold and uncomfortable as it sticks to your flesh.

“Thanks,” you say to him, giving a small nod and not moving your hands from your chest.

And Minho retreats upstairs quickly, trying his best to avert his gaze as you remain in the kitchen.

As Joon babbles incoherently next to you, you can’t help but feel stupid, a sense of shame and embarrassment replacing the excitement you had to be preparing lunch alongside Minho for the afternoon. You’re in disbelief he’s practically seen you half naked like this, and you feel inadequate at not being able to stop Joon from committing the incident in the first place. As you run your hands up and down the raised goosebumps on your arms, you do your best to hold back tears, hoping Minho won’t think less of you for being caught in such a humiliating accident.

Minho is gone for a little while, and you blot at the wet patches on your shirt as you wait, Joon now laughing at your messy state. You can’t help but laugh a little, too, admittedly amused at what a disaster the afternoon has been- and you haven’t even begun the cooking part of it yet.

When he returns, he tosses you a large white bath towel and a gray t-shirt, still keeping his gaze on the floor instead of on yours.

“Here,” he says simply, his veiny arm scratching the back of his head. “I can also get a sweater if you’re cold.”

As you observe the t-shirt, you realize it’s one of his, not one of Mrs. Lee’s. For some reason, you’d assumed Minho would opt for a woman’s clothes as your change, but the t-shirt has clearly been pulled from his closet, and you blush a little at the idea of wearing his clothes.

“This is fine,” you reply, wrapping the bath towel around your body and excusing yourself to the bathroom.

You peel the sticky clothes off your body, crumpling them into a pile and changing into Minho’s t-shirt. It’s a bit large on you, but it’s much more comfortable, hanging loosely off your body and covering every bit of you that was previously exposed. His shirt smells like him, too, a pleasant scent of laundry detergent and his musky cologne.

When you exit the bathroom, you gesture to the change of clothes, your wet crumpled clothes balled in your hand. “I kinda look like you now,” you say, and Minho chuckles.

“You can keep it,” he responds, giving you another once-over and nodding shyly. “It looks better on you, anyway.”

He holds his hand out to you for the wet clothes, which he kindly takes from you to put in the wash. As he does, you go to the fridge to retrieve more orange juice for Joon- except there is none. You desperately search for milk, orange juice- any form of a snack that will keep him busy until his mealtime. But the kitchen is void of anything he can consume, and you begin to panic a little, knowing Joon hasn’t eaten in a good while now.

“That was the last of his orange juice,” you say to Minho when he returns. “And there’s not much else for him to snack on.”

Minho searches the kitchen too, digging through cabinets and moving around jars in the fridge to check for expiration dates. But he quickly realizes you’re right- the fridge is even more sparse than he’d assumed it to be.

“I guess we’ll have to make a trip to the store, then. How do you feel about strapping him into a car seat?”

“I’ve never done it,” you reply nervously.

“I can show you,” Minho says, grabbing his keys off the kitchen counter and spinning them around his index finger. “We can do it together.”

The nearest grocery store is just 20 minutes out from the Lee household. Minho drives a fancy black SUV, and he guides you through how to strap Joon into his car seat, which you carry out with no issues. He drives with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting casually on the center console as you chat with him about your university courses. For the first time, you notice how Minho seems much more comfortable around you now, cracking jokes occasionally and smiling at your stories about your afternoons alone with Joon. When Joon chimes in from the back seat with his excited babbling, you and Minho babble equally in response, sharing laughter at the ridiculous exchanges among the three of you.

You opt to carry Joon inside the grocery store while Minho walks alongside you, checking off a list he routinely uses to stock up on all of Joon’s favorite foods. And the atmosphere around you is homely, instilling the same sense of comfort in you as your afternoons alone with Joon. One that reminds you why you’re doing this job in the first place- you feel respected here, like your efforts don’t go unnoticed, and like you belong. It fills the lonely void inside of you with the sounds of Joon’s laughter, Minho’s tales of his classes and the trivial tasks of grocery store runs and learning to maneuver a baby car seat.

“I think that’s it,” Minho says as he checks the list one last time. “Milk, juice, bread…” he reads the items one by one again, and then nods affirmatively when he’s ensured they’re in the basket.

“That’s it,” he repeats, shooting you a small smile. “Let’s go pay.”

An older cashier gestures you to her lane at the registers, beginning to scan your items as Minho places them down on the conveyor belt. And then she gives a little wave to Joon, who curiously stares back at her.

“What a beautiful baby,” she says, pausing from scanning with a jar of mashed carrots in her hand.

Joon smiles in response, a trickle of drool escaping his lips.

“And what a beautiful family,” she continues, looking back and forth between you and Minho. “It’s not easy being young parents, but I can tell the two of you are doing a fine job at it.”

“Oh,” you say, chuckling lightly. “We’re not-”

“Thank you,” Minho interrupts, placing an arm around your waist and pulling you a little closer to him.

“We don’t get told that very often.”

You almost freeze at the contact, butterflies erupting in your stomach as he keeps his hand on the small of your back. This woman thinks the two of you are a couple- and worse, Minho is playing along with it. You can’t figure out why he’d entertain such a blatant lie, but you don’t interrupt him either, curious to see where he’s taking this little bit.

“People can be so unfair,” the cashier replies, shaking her head. “As long as the child is cared for, your status shouldn’t matter.”

“Exactly,” Minho replies, throwing his hand in the air like she’s making a point that pertains to him. “You know, when we got married, everyone told us it would never work. And now look at us- our child just turned 1 and we’re already making plans for a second honeymoon.”

“That’s amazing!” The woman says, clasping her hand over her heart like she’s touched by the bogus story.

“It is, isn’t it honey?” Minho says, turning to you.

Thoughts swirl your mind about this performance he’s putting on, but you’re undoubtedly entertained by the whole thing, stifling laughter as you nod in response.

“It is amazing,” you say finally. “We eloped and had a shotgun wedding- booked it to Italy right after and now we’re thinking of taking the little one to Paris for a real ceremony.”

The older woman removes her glasses now, wiping her eyes and shaking her head in disbelief. You can’t help but feel bad for her, seeing how easily she’s falling for your blatant lies, but Minho shows no remorse, grinning ear to ear and keeping his hand on the small of your back.

“Well I’ll tell you what,” the woman says, putting her glasses back on and shifting her eyes around the store.

“Since you guys just made my day, I’m going to provide you with our senior discount. It’s not everyday I see a young couple so beautiful raising such a darling little child.”

“Oh, you really don’t-” you start to say, and Minho interrupts you before you can finish.

“That would mean the world to us,” he says in an exaggerated voice, giving the cashier a little bow. “It would help us out a ton.”

You want to protest, to slap Minho in his pretty little face and ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing lying for a discount like this, but you’re afraid the cashier will see right through your whole stunt and reprimand both of you. So you just nod and let Minho take the lead again.

“Thank you,” you echo back to her,” holding Joon’s stubby little fingers as the woman types a lengthy code into the computer.

And Minho smiles at you, shooting you a little wink as he gathers boxes of cereal and jars of food in his arms.

“What was that?” You practically yell as you exit the store, balancing Joon in one arm and a bag of groceries in another. “You totally lied to her.”

“I didn’t lie,” Minho says. “I told her a different reality.”

“That is literally what a lie is,” you echo back to him, securing Joon in his car seat and lining grocery bags on the floor. Minho slides into the driver's seat again, putting his keys in the ignition but not yet starting the car as he waits for you to get in, too.

“I mean, that was like a 10% discount,” you continue, huffing frustratedly as you wait for him to speak. “How is that worth telling someone a whole list of lies?”

“You know, there’s this really cool theory called the anthropic principle,” Minho begins, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “Suggests the existence of a multitude of universes.”

“What?”

“So,” he continues. “Philosophically speaking, maybe in one of those we're married, and we have a child, and our honeymoon was in Italy.”

You stay quiet for a moment, pondering his words, completely unsure of if he’s flirting with you or teasing you right now.

“And maybe,” he chimes in again. “In one of them, we robbed the store and killed the cashier. And in another, we don’t even know each other.”

“What are you getting at?” You say, narrowing your eyes in confusion.

“It’s not lying,” Minho says with a smile as he finally starts up the car. “We just told her about a different reality.”

“So it’s lying,” you say with a smile, unable to hold back the giggle that escapes your lips.

“A little,” he finally says. “But it was fun, right?”

And you start to say no, but you can’t get the words out, aware you’ll be lying twice today if you do.

Minho takes your silence as confirmation, a grin plastered on his face as he rests one arm behind your headrest to pull out of the parking lot. And you can’t help but smile, too, the spontaneous thrill of lying to the cashier admittedly being some of the most fun you’ve had all week. And the conclusion stands- Minho’s a little odd. But he’s great company.

Mrs. Lee is late again tonight, the second hand on the clock ticking in slow intervals as it nears 10pm. You yawn for the umpteenth time tonight, exhausted from having done so much today, wanting nothing more than to sleep in the comfort of your own bed at home and mentally recharge for another day of this tomorrow. But you’ve promised to wait for her, always eager to wait it out until the last second, because Mrs. Lee always expresses her sincerest gratitude when you wait for her.

“Sorry, she’s really late today,” Minho says as he lowers the volume on the television. You completed a few more chores around the house after dinner while Minho powered through his schoolwork, putting Joon to bed before settling on the sofa and watching old cartoon reruns. Now you’ve been in and out of sleep for the better part of an hour, Minho remaining close by watching infomercials again, peering at your tired figure and feeling guilty that you’ve been here so long.

“It’s okay,” you reply quietly, letting out another yawn. You cross your arms over yourself, still dressed comfortably in Minho’s t-shirt, and do your best to keep your gaze on the television.

Tonight Minho is stuck on an infomercial for artificial plants, the dull narration lulling you to sleep even further as he checks the time on his watch and glances nervously at the front door.

Minho cranes his neck at your figure again, not missing the way gray bags hang heavy below your eyes, your lashes half-lidded as you feign sleep and force your gaze onto the infomercial.

“Don’t you have an early exam tomorrow?” You say to Minho, another yawn escaping your lips as you speak. “Don’t wait up on my account. You should get some sleep.”

Minho shuts off the television, standing up from where he’s sitting and dusting off his pants.

“I’ll take you home,” he announces, fishing around on the table for his car keys.

“It’s okay,” you reply, not wanting to inconvenience him anymore than you already have today. “I can walk to the bus stop.”

“You’re not walking,” Minho retorts, scoffing as you sit up and rub your tired eyes with the back of your hand. “It’s pitch black outside.”

“It’s fine,” you say, gathering your book bag and rushing to put your shoes on. It’s a race between the two of you now, Minho scrambling to locate his car keys while you get ready to leave for the evening.

“It’s really not a problem- where are my keys?” Minho mutters to himself, patting the pockets on his jacket and rearranging stacks of papers on the coffee table.

“I’m fine, really.”

“No, I’ll drive you,” Minho says, still tossing aside the mess he’s made to locate his keys.

“I’ll walk,” you reiterate again, and Minho finally exhales frustratedly.

“Then I’ll walk with you,” he finally announces, ditching the car keys altogether and stopping to look at you. He looks tired, too, evident bags under his eyes and his hair tousled from running his hands through it frustratedly.

“Minho, I really don’t want to burden you-”

“It’s not a burden.”

As he speaks, you hear Joon’s baby monitor alerting you that he’s awake for the evening, wailing loudly when he realizes that he’s alone. It’s perfect timing, too, Minho already having planned to wake him up so he can walk you back.

“Wait here,” Minho says to you as he begins toward the stairs. “I’ll get his harness.”

The dim street lights illuminate the dark paved roads, a crisp chill in the air as you walk alongside Minho with your hands in your pockets.

Joon sits comfortably in his harness against Minho’s chest, curiously taking in the atmosphere around him as you walk in silence to your bus stop. It’s not a long walk, only 20 minutes from Minho’s, but you feel admittedly much safer with Minho by your side, his and Joon’s presence feeling homely even at this hour. For nearly the entirety of the walk, the two of you say nothing, too tired to engage in conversation, but still comfortable in the presence of each other, and not needing to say anything. Joon babbles saliva every now and then, Minho bringing a finger up to wipe his chin, and the only other sounds are that of crickets and the gentle sway of the trees.

“This is me,” you say to Minho when you reach the familiar blue bench of your stop.

You sit on one side of the bench, slinging your book bag over beside you and crossing your legs. And to your surprise, Minho occupies the other side, one hand resting gently on the back of Joon’s head while the other pats his back gently.

“You don’t have to wait,” you tell Minho quickly, and he just shakes his head silently in response.

The silence between you remains, Joon toying with the collar of Minho’s shirt as you wait for the bus. There’s so much you want to ask Minho, so much you still want to find out from him. You’re well aware that you haven’t quite figured him out yet, but you’re undoubtedly sure that he is a nice guy, after all. From lending you his t-shirt, waiting up for you on late nights, even walking you to your bus stop and waiting for the bus with you. You think briefly back to his little joke at the grocery store, smiling to yourself when you remember he’d chosen to pretend you were a married couple for no other reason than to make you laugh after having had such a rough day. And his innate fascination with looking at everything through a philosophical lens, the passion for his favorite subject so robustly present wherever he goes.

“What’s that theory again?” You ask Minho as your thoughts verbalize amidst the silence.

“Hm?”

“The one about the universe.”

“The anthropic principle?” He questions, and you hum in response.

“Yeah, that one. Do you think there are like, a million versions of us right now, just…sitting here?”

“Sure,” Minho replies. “But the conditions would have to be just right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the theory states that conditions have to be just right for us to coexist in the universe we’re in right now. It’s sort of like a coincidence that this one evolved so that we could thrive in it. So there might be other versions of us, just not as definitive. We might be rocks, or bugs. Or maybe there’s a more advanced version, where we’re still on our honeymoon in Italy.”

“Or the one where we killed that cashier,” you chime in.

“Exactly,” Minho replies, a small smile tugging at his lips.

You ponder his words for a moment.

“Do they all follow the same timeline?” You ask him.

“What do you mean?”

“Do they all last forever? What if we got divorced? Would we part ways in every universe?”

Minho stays quiet for a moment, thinking back to the philosophical theories tucked in the back of his mind.

“I don’t know,” he finally replies. “I’d like to think some versions have a happy ending, but maybe some of them don’t.”

As silence falls over you again, your bus finally turns the corner, making its way down the street toward your stop.

“That’s me,” you say, getting up and gathering your belongings again.

Minho stands up, too, saying nothing as the bus finally halts in front of you, the brakes screeching to a stop with the loud exhaust of the doors as they open.

“Thanks,” you say to Minho before getting on. “For walking me.”

“It’s no problem,” he replies, shooting you a tired smile.

Minho watches as you board the bus, taking your seat toward the back. He scans the aisles momentarily, making sure you’re sat somewhere safe, away from anyone he might deem sketchy at this hour. And when he feels confident you’ll make it home okay, he brings Joon’s hand up in front of him, giving you a little wave as he watches you smile back through the tinted windows, sending him off with a wave back.

From then on, things shift between the two of you. Minho is a constant, always offering to walk you home on late nights to engage in discussions about your university work or his favorite theories. When he’s home early from his classes, the two of you enjoy cooking for Joon together, making trips to the grocery store where the cashiers are now fully convinced you’re a married couple. On late nights, the two of you often engage in lighthearted philosophical debates while you wait for Mrs. Lee to get home for the evening. When he’s walking you home for the night, doing homework alongside you or just passing by, Minho indulges you in all his favorite philosophical questions, and you entertain them, using the opportunity to get a better glimpse into his mind and how he thinks.

It’s exactly this that tears down Minho’s walls, you find- he, in all his philosophically-educated glory, sharing his perspective while you poke holes in his arguments and reach a conclusion together. Sometimes you’ll reach a stalemate, the argument fizzling out with no clear answer. And sometimes he can change your mind almost instantly, the arguments leaving his lips like second nature, always quick to persuade you in the opposite direction and provide clear reasoning. He’s very skilled at his work, and you quickly realize why he’s so passionate about philosophy in the first place.

It’s not something Minho’s used to yet- having a companion like this, one who actually cares about anything he has to say. Someone to come home to, somebody to bask in the simplicities of life with and affirm that he’s not completely incapable of making real human connections. And admittedly, maybe he loves playing house with you, coming home to your home-cooked meals and caring for the baby together.

Maybe this version of the universe deems you a babysitter, and he, just an outcast. But sometimes Minho swears he can see different versions where you’re so much more than that to each other.

In late November, you take your first week off, leaving on a small family trip to a city just a few hours out to go see extended family.

You tell Minho of your little excursion the week prior, and he pretends to be disheartened, but you know deep down he must be relieved to have some space to himself again. Of course you’re not able to watch Joon, and Mrs. Lee has a friend watch him in your absence, but you’re surprised at how much you miss the Lee household when you’re not there. The trip to the city is filled with repetitive questions from family about your major, your internship, your potential salary in an entry-level position and general university questions. And yet all you catch yourself thinking about is Joon, and Mrs. Lee and especially Minho.

You wonder what he’s doing in the comfort of his grand room all by himself, surrounded by books and tall windows. Minho once told you that he can go a whole day without talking when he’s not having philosophical debates with you over coffee. You wonder if he’s talked today, or if he attended his classes or how his exam on Tuesday went. Thoughts of him plague your mind every waking second- whether Minho would like a certain food, if Minho would agree with this statement, even what the people around you would think if you dragged him along and played house with him like you do back home. In this version of the universe, maybe he’s reading a book or watching a movie, but in another, he could be right here, telling his string of lies to your extended family.

On the last day of your family vacation, you find yourself in an old bookstore, and all you can think about is Minho. He’d love it here, you think, grazing your fingertips along the old cracked spines and yellowing pages. And as you scan through the philosophy section, several of the books already piquing your interest, you spot it.

The small familiar crimson book, just barely larger than your hand, delicate to the touch and painted with the same Cupid depiction as the one you know so well. A first edition copy of Dorothy Tennov’s Love and Limerence. You can’t help but smile to yourself, scanning the book’s contents briefly before closing it again and bringing it up to the counter. It’s not like you’re trying to worsen this little developing crush you have on Minho, but he seems to be everywhere you go- and candidly, you just want to have him figured out.

When you return to the Lee household from your vacation, the atmosphere is calm, sunbeams shining through the large glass windows and illuminating the house with a romantic glow. Joon eats his breakfast well, downing his orange juice and causing you little trouble throughout the day. And Minho arrives just after 3, his backpack slung over his shoulder and a book in hand.

Your heart beats erratically to see him again, trying your best to avert his gaze as he enters through the front door and kicks off his shoes. When he makes his way through the kitchen, you attempt to look busy, wiping down the counters with a kitchen rag and balancing Joon in your arms.

“Hi,” Minho says, a little shyly as you keep your eyesight on the granite counter below you.

“Hey,” you respond, pretending like you hadn’t noticed him enter the room, when in reality, you’ve been well aware of his arrival since he parked his car out front.

“How was your trip?” Minho asks, setting down his backpack and loosening the collar of his sweater.

He’s dressed for the chilly weather outside, a simple black knit sweater paired with blue jeans.

“It was good,” you reply, folding the rag with one hand and setting it aside. “I kinda missed it here.”

Minho smiles at you nervously, toying with the hem of his sweater as he hears you speak.

“It was pretty quiet without you here. I think Joon missed you.”

“Did he?” You question excitedly, poking at Joon with your finger and cooing at him. “Is that right? You missed me?” And Joon giggles excitedly, smiling between the two of you.

When the room falls quiet again, Minho clears his throat like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t, instead keeping his gaze fixed on yours. The room is teeming with awkward tension between the two of you, two hearts clouded in desire to act on this conflicting emotion of fleeting lust and a mutual understanding of each other, but neither one of you say anything, letting it die with your silence and circle your minds aimlessly again.

“I got you something,” you say suddenly, and Minho’s heart quickens a little.

“Me?” He questions, pointing to himself as if you need clarity of who he speaks of.

“Yes, you. It’s in my bag upstairs.”

And you begin your ascent to the staircase, motioning for Minho to follow you as you bring Joon with you.

“Close your eyes,” you tell Minho when you‘ve entered the library again.

“Should I be scared?” He asks, a soft chuckle escaping his lips.

“Close them!” You exclaim, and he finally puts his hands out in front of him, shutting his eyes, a big grin plastered on his face. You place the book in Minho’s palms gently, making sure to position it so that the cover is facing him properly.

“Now open.”

When Minho opens his eyes again, he doesn’t even need to read the words before knowing what it is. He’s immediately familiar with the first edition of Dorothy Tennov’s Love and Limerence he holds in his hands, uniquely characterized by the contrasting art style to his, and the much older, yellowing pages.

“My book,” Minho says, biting his lip as he holds back a bigger smile, one that will most definitely point to the incriminating fact that he’s smitten.

“Your book,” you echo, leaning on the wall across from him. “It’s a first edition. The bookkeeper said they’re pretty rare to come by.”

“You didn’t have to-”

“Don’t worry about it,” you reply, fixing Joon’s hair and averting Minho’s gaze. You’re afraid if you make eye contact with him, this whole nonchalant front will crumble down in front of you, because you’re embarrassingly smitten with him, too.

“Thank you,” Minho says, thumbing the raised gold-foiled cover outline of Cupid. “I’ll go put it with the rest of them.”

And he disappears down the corridor, his book tucked in the endeared clutch of his hands.

While Minho adds his book to the rest of his collection, you put Joon down for his nap, gently placing him on the soft blanket in his crib and adjusting the baby monitor. He blinks up at you a few times, his lips pulling into a shaky smile as his lashes finally flutter shut and a wave of sleepiness washes over him. You exit the room quietly, closing the door just halfway like you always do, and then make your way down the corridor to Minho’s room. The door is left ajar, but you hear him shuffling about, and you enter after giving a gentle knock.

Minho seems startled at this, jumping up from where he’s standing, in front of his bookshelf with Love and Limerence held open in the palms of his hands. He shuts it quickly, shoving it on the top with another stack of books, and then almost shields his bookshelf as he turns to face you.

“I didn't hear you come in,” he says, nervously shifting his eyes to more stacks of books on his window sill and nightstand.

“I put Joon down for his nap,” you reply, cocking an eyebrow as he stands there awkwardly. “Is… everything okay?”

“Yes,” he says quickly, blinking nervously when he sees you peer over his torso at the bookshelf.

“Where’d you put it?”

“Can’t remember,” Minho says, a breathy chuckle emitting from his lips as he tries his best to avoid talking about it. But you catch on- and you’re certainly not going to let him evade the subject.

“What are you hiding?” You finally ask, eyeing him with a small smile. Minho’s face drops a little, sighing once as he steps aside and grants you full visibility of his bookshelf. There’s nothing out of the ordinary- books of all colors and sizes lined neatly on the shelves, some of them left open or bookmarked. A good amount of them appear to be philosophy books, which doesn’t come as a surprise to you.

“It’s just your books,” you say flatly, and Minho scratches the back of his head before he speaks again.

“Love and Limerence isn’t a required read for university.” He says in a low voice.

“Oh,” you reply, unsure of why it should really matter to you.

“None of them are,” he continues. “It’s just my personal… collection. Of romance novels.”

And then you finally understand.

Minho- the stoic, otherwise quiet being, in all his philosophical studiousness and awkwardness, is a sucker for romance. Once the cogs begin turning in your head, they don’t stop, everything about him now making a little more sense to you. Why he stays locked up in his little tower all day reading book after book, why he’s so hopeful when he speaks of the human condition and of love, why he loves taking care of people so much. He’s just a big softie underneath it all.

“There’s nothing weird about that,” you chime in. “In fact, it’s really cool.”

“Yeah right,” he retorts.

“I’m dead serious. I’ve never met someone with so many copies of Thorns and Roses before.”

Minho shakes his head, moving to sit on his bed with his palms tucked under his legs. His gaze remains locked on the floor, an expression of shame still visible on his face. And when you see him exhale deeply, like he’s been nervously holding his breath all this time, you feel bad for him. If there’s anything you’ve learned about him since meeting him, it’s that he’s really a bit of a dork. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen him look so vulnerable before.

“Which one’s your favorite?” You ask, skimming your finger along the neat row of spines.

He shrugs. “Pride and Prejudice, maybe. But these days it’s Love and Limerence.”

Minho’s voice is trembling, just above a whisper as he reads off his list of favorite novels to you. And you chuckle softly in reply, pulling the little red book out of its respective home on the shelf and tossing it to him.

“Read me your favorite passage.”

He furrows his brows a little, like he thinks you might be making fun of him. But when you take a seat next to him on the bed, wide-eyed and gesturing to the book in his hands, he realizes you’re genuinely asking him to.

“Go on,” you say, gesturing to the book once more.

Minho opens the book to the middle, flipping through yellowing pages with small font. Most of the pages are littered generously with blue sticky notes, Minho’s messy handwriting annotating all his favorite passages. When he finds the page he’s searching for, he eyes you cautiously, as if waiting for permission to begin reading. And with a deep breath, he begins, his voice shaking a little as he finds his footing.

“Now by these presents let me assure you that you are not only in my heart, but my veins, this morning. I turn from you half abashed--yet you haunt me, and some look, word or touch thrills through my whole frame--yes, at the very moment when I am labouring to think of something, if not somebody else.”

At the last words, his gaze meets yours again, eyelashes trembling as he waits for your reaction. He waits for you to laugh, or to dismiss the words, or leave altogether. But you just stare back at him, your heart beating erratically at the poetry he utters, completely in awe with him.

He feels otherworldly at this distance, this intricate fascination with love and human connection. The way his brown tresses fall loosely in front of his big eyes as he speaks, his plump lips pulling into a nervous smile to reveal the row of skewed teeth you find a home in every time. He’s like the passage reads- thrilling your whole frame, consuming you whole and filling your mind with thoughts of him, and his poetry and his kind demeanor. You find yourself a little closer to him, your eyes darting to his lips and then back to his curious eyes, fantasies of him running rampant in your mind.

And Minho keeps his gaze locked on yours, too, leaning in a little closer to you, the book closing on its own as his hand slips away from holding it open and onto the bed beside you. The implications are there, the atmosphere around you heavy with desire and uncertainty, and just as you wield the courage to bring your lips a little closer to his, you’re promptly interrupted.

“Minho-ah!” A voice calls from downstairs. You quickly clock it as Mrs. Lee’s, who must be home early from work.

“I’m home early!” She calls again, confirming your theory, her footsteps getting louder as she makes her way up the stairs.

You sit up promptly, smoothing down your shirt and standing to bow when Mrs. Lee pokes her head in the doorway. Minho stands up too, making the whole situation look unbearably obvious, and you pray she can’t tell what’s going on between the two of you.

“Y/n,” she says with a warm smile. “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you I would be home a little earlier today. Joon has a doctor’s appointment.”

“No worries at all!” You voice back, bowing again as she smiles. “I was actually going to leave early today. I have a bit of a headache.”

“Oh, do you want a cup of tea?” She asks, heavy concern present in her voice.

“No thanks, I think I just need some sleep.”

You turn to Minho, who’s standing with his hands in his pockets, looking a little disappointed as you give him a small bow.

“Take care,” you say to him, pivoting to head back to the library and gather your things.

Minho hears his mom see you out of the front door, chatting briefly with you about your trip and sending you off with a little wave.

He shuts his bedroom door and locks it, sprawling out on the duvet of his bed and running his hands over the book still beside him.

He’s not sure what happened- whether you were about to kiss him, or whether it was just wishful thinking. But every way he interprets the encounter, Minho swears he can feel your yearning for him, too. Is he crazy to think you might feel the same? Maybe he, too, finds it laboring to think of something- if not, someone else, besides you.

Joon is a particularly picky eater in afternoons, making a big fuss of foods he usually devours in the mornings and evenings. He skillfully dodges every spoon, every bite and feigns his interest in even his favorite snacks and desserts. And while you’re usually patient with him, today you’re frustrated, having mentally scolded yourself several times since yesterday’s events.

A part of you wants to ditch all of this, reminding yourself that you’re here to work a job, not lust after the son of the person who hired you. But the other part of you can’t help but imagine how things would be different if you just let yourself fall gracefully into him- he’s so much more than a fleeting thought to you. You want to understand him, having challenged yourself to figuring him out from the moment you came across him. But maybe you want him to understand you, too. You want him to understand that you feel at home whenever he’s around, his philosophical discussions and this game of house you play making you feel like you belong here. You want him to understand that although you know he feels like an outcast, none of his odd quirks matter to you when he’s reading his favorite love stories across from you in the library, catching glimpses of you when he thinks you’re not looking. And that maybe this universe conditioned itself just right so that you took up this job and crossed paths- and that has to mean something bigger.

There’s nothing different about the afternoon following yesterday’s, except for you spending a considerable amount of time on your hair and makeup, the anticipation bubbling inside you at the idea of seeing Minho again. You have no definitive plan, no script of how it’s going to go when he arrives from school. But you also know there’s something in your throat that wants so desperately to get out, and you won’t let it. As Joon toys with the cereal in his bowl, he looks up at you with big, curious eyes, and you wonder what he’s thinking, if anything. He doesn't know anything beyond the simple tasks of eating and sleeping, living with the comfortable knowledge that he’s being cared for. And although it seems much easier, you can’t help but sympathize. What a gift it is to feel- what a gift it is to carry emotions so deeply they eat away at you like this.

You’re infatuated with Minho- that fact stands true. And whether or not it benefits you to do anything about it, you’re determined to do something with all of this feeling, lest it slips through your fingers like he almost did.

You don’t hear Minho come home when he does, busy in the garden tending to Mrs. Lee’s plants when the usual alert of his car pulling into the driveway passes you by. So when he wanders the corridors searching everywhere for you, you don’t take notice.

Minho’s desperate, hoping to ask you to stay just a little bit longer tonight, having also had the epiphany that he’s completely fallen for you, too. And what he hopes to do with it, he’s unsure- but he does know that every romance novel on his shelf would refute the idea of letting this feeling dissipate. Kiss her, tell her, do something. Anything.

He strides down the halls with purpose and vigor, a nervous smile pulling at his face at the thought of seeing you again. It’s all he’s thought about today, having had just two hours of sleep as he sorted out what to say to you. And while he’s not well-versed in the practice of confessing his love, he feels his whole life has been devoted to the very purpose of being here and finding you. The debates you share, midnight walks to the bus stop, the book- he’d be a fool not to reciprocate what you yearn for. And when he doesn’t find you, Minho feels the familiar pit of worry form in his stomach. He’s not accounted for a change of plans, or even what might happen if you reject his admission. He wants to believe so badly that the answer is yes, risking everything just to say something.

20 minutes after he’s been home, Minho receives a phone call, answering in a rush while he checks the upstairs rooms for you.

“Hello?”

“It’s Sujin from class,” the phone at the other end says plainly. “I’m here for our project.”

And Minho freezes, remembering very well that he has a project due very soon, and his partner is here tonight to work on it with him. He sighs heavily into the line at the change in plans, knowing he’ll have to bottle his emotions another day and act on them tomorrow when he can get you alone.

“Oh, right,” Minho responds, making his way to the stairs and jogging down them. “The door should be unlocked.”

He stuffs his phone in his back pocket, making his way to the door to meet Sujin, and as he passes the sliding door to the backyard, he finally sees you. Knelt on the ground in a white sundress, your hands tainted with soil as you tend to the tomato plants and hum to yourself. Minho smiles at the sight of you, the urge to tell you right now stronger than ever. But before he can call out to you, Sujin’s already made her way inside, peering curiously around the place and clutching her purse in hand.

“Wow,” she says, chuckling lightly. “You didn’t tell me you were rich.”

Minho scratches the back of his head awkwardly as she grazes a marble sculpture with her fingers. His eyes remain on you through the glass door, transfixed by the way you tuck your hair behind your ears and pat your dress as you stand up again. Sujin takes note of Minho’s evident distraction, briefly glancing out the window and back to him.

“Where are we working?” She asks, pursing her lips together.

“We can work upstairs,” Minho explains, as you finally make your way inside.

At first you’re confused at the sight, Minho looming over a girl much prettier than you, her long hair styled neatly over one shoulder and a matching formal two-piece hugging her curves beautifully. And then as you see her begin up the stairs in the direction of Minho’s room, you finally understand.

Of course there’s another woman.

Of course there was a catch to all of this, because why else would things condition themselves so perfectly that you’d win him over?

And suddenly everything feels pointless- confessing to him, feeling any ounce of emotion regarding all of this, even working this job. He has a girlfriend, and she’s much prettier than you are. And he's trailing behind her after giving you a shy nod, likely embarrassed at the fact that you’ll be here tending to his household while he fucks her in his upstairs bedroom.

You can’t help but think that perhaps something got lost in translation, because Minho evidently never liked you, and unless this version of the universe magically conditions to work in your favor just once, it’s going to remain that way.

When the tears begin to prick at the corners of your eyes, they don’t stop. You can’t feed Joon without hiccuping through a hot rush of tears that fall from your cheeks onto his tray below him. Joon seems to sense something is wrong, pausing the task of dodging his food to observe the way your face contorts as you wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. And when you do stop to look at him, all you can see is Minho, his eyes and lips resembling exactly that of his elder brother’s.

The chores feel like a futile task now, and you let them sit there for the remainder of the evening you’re working for. In fact, the only thing you do complete is the task of getting Joon to bed when the sun begins to set, marching carefully upstairs to not interrupt Minho’s time with his girlfriend. And the word makes you sick, to think that he’s been stringing you along all while having a girlfriend- a fact he so conveniently left out.

Joon goes down without a fuss, and when he’s finally asleep, you escape the confines of the second story to lock yourself in the downstairs living room and complete your school work. How much of that is spent crying instead, you can’t quite remember.

It’s just after 9 when Sujin leaves for the evening, but you’re not awake to take notice when she does. You wake to the familiar sound of infomercials playing quietly on the television in front of you, Minho sitting on the floor in front of the sofa you occupy. His head hangs as he holds a book in his lap, probably some cheesy romance he projects onto him and his girlfriend, and his thin wireframe glasses rest on the bridge of his nose.

The dull narration on the television advertises jewelry tonight, and you let out a sigh as you feel your swollen eyes adjust to the bright screen in front of you. At this, Minho turns around, giving you a sheepish smile as you try to shut your eyes again. But it’s too late- he’s already seen you awake for the evening.

“Hi,” Minho says for the first time today, bookmarking his page and lowering the volume on the television. “She’s late again today, but I saved you some takeout.”

“I’m not hungry,” you reply quickly, sitting up and reaching for your bag. “In fact, I need to go home.”

“Oh, sure,” Minho replies, a little hurt at your rushed tone. “I can walk you-”

“No need,” you say to him, pulling on your sneakers and doing everything in your power to avert his gaze. He furrows his brows a little, knowing you never reject his offers to walk you home.

“Is everything-”

“Fine. I just need to get home,” you reiterate, finally sitting down and smoothing down your wrinkled dress.

Every part of him is annoying you right now, your mind teeming with the reminder that you’ve been wasting your time trying to know him better while he’s been entertaining a whole girlfriend these past few months.

“Y/n, wait,” Minho calls, still intent on telling you tonight, while the feelings remain stronger than ever. But you’ve already crossed the room to the front door, where you avert his gaze so he won’t see you begin to cry again.

“Bye,” you call to him, not even looking back before you’re turning the knob and seeing yourself out. “Tell Mrs. Lee it was an emergency.”

And he wants to ask if it was, but he can’t, staring at your rushed figure jogging down the street as you distance yourself from him before he can string you along any further.

Thus begins the game of avoidance.

It starts through keeping your conversations with Minho as short as possible, not engaging him when he tells you about theories he’s studied this week or what his days on campus were like. When he asks about your day, you give him one-word responses, muttering a simple “fine” before turning your attention to Joon again.

When Minho asks to go to the grocery store, you pretend you have a headache- for three days straight. So he makes the trips solo, balancing bags on one arm and telling you about how the cashiers have begun to ask where his pretend wife’s been. You give him no reaction, nodding as you feed Joon his dinner and glance at the clock for the umpteeth time, desperate to get away from him.

And the mystery woman remains, marching into the Lee household in afternoons like she owns the place, already having memorized the path to Minho’s room as she makes her way up the stairs and doesn’t acknowledge you. She’s beautiful everyday that she’s here, short skirts and long ponytails you can’t seem to look away from. And she’s even more hypnotic when she’s in the presence of Minho, the two of them as a couple certainly a sight for sore eyes. If they were a married couple, you’d reckon they'd be much more distinguished than you and Minho would.

“Do you want a coffee?” Minho peers into the library one night to ask you. You keep your gaze locked on the computer in front of you, trying your best to keep your guard up as he waits for a response.

“No, thank you,” you say coldly, continuing to work on your essay.

When he realizes you’re not going to say anything else, Minho enters the room reluctantly, his hands shoved in his pockets as he leans against the doorframe and gives you a once-over. You say nothing, still, holding back your emotions so as not to cause a scene. And Minho can tell something’s wrong in the way that you shift your eyes to him briefly and shake your head as if scolding yourself for doing so.

“Did I do something?” Minho finally asks, his voice a little shaky.

“No,” you say quickly, skimming the same sentence on your laptop screen over and over again.

“Are you… sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

He fiddles with a loose thread in the pocket of his pants, keeping his gaze on the floor and thinking about your differing behavior toward him the past week.

“We just haven’t talked much. And you never really leave here anymore. I wanted to make sure I didn’t overstep any boundaries-”

“Overstep?” You interrupt, scanning your eyes over the screen of your computer. “There’s nothing to overstep. I get paid to watch your brother, not hang out with you.”

You feel guilty the minute the words leave your mouth, but you feel even worse knowing he’s just been stringing you along with a girlfriend this whole time. The atmosphere feels akin to when you first met him, awkward and cold, and with tensions high like this, you don’t feel at home in the Lee household anymore.

“Sorry,” Minho says, nodding. “You’re right. I guess I’m overstepping by asking.”

You only look up at him when he leaves, his shoulders sagging as he leaves you alone once again- only this time, you have a feeling he’s going to stop making an attempt to rekindle things anymore.

And you’re right- Minho stops trying entirely. There are no more offers to walk you home, no philosophical debates over coffee or grocery store trips where you act as a married couple. You’re still covered in knit blankets when you fall asleep accidentally on the couch, but Minho doesn’t stick around watching his infomercials to wait up for you anymore. And he still saves you his takeout when he orders, but he leaves it neatly packaged for you in the fridge instead of bringing it up to you like he used to.

You’ve gone from a mutual infatuation for each other to complete strangers once again. The house feels lonely and cold like it once did, your only real human interaction occurring in the few minutes you have with Mrs. Lee at the start and end of the day.

Minho doesn’t talk to you at all, locking himself away in his room like he did when you first started caring for Joon. And when you see him in passing at late hours of the night, he looks indifferent, sagging his shoulders as he averts your gaze with a book in hand and disappears down the corridors again. At some point, you begin to see his girlfriend less- in fact, his stoic composure makes you wonder if something’s happened between them. But as time goes on, you start to realize this is less about his girlfriend- and more about you.

What a gift it is to feel- but also what a curse. To let something consume you so entirely you can barely breathe without it. It’s laboring to think of anything else, of anyone else besides Minho and what he means to you. And as you replay your last interaction in your head for the nth time this evening, you think back to the day you started here. You knew the fundamentals of caring for a baby, having trained just enough to land a job doing it. All you wanted was to be liked by Mrs. Lee, and by baby Joon- and by extension, Minho. This household quickly became someplace you felt like you actually belonged in. But your purpose here has completely diverted from its original path, having prioritized Minho’s complexities and his feelings toward you above what you were hired here to do. You’ve experienced a roller coaster of emotions trying to understand him, and just when you thought you’d cracked him, you realized his heart belongs to someone else. So with the comfortable knowledge in mind that perhaps the universe isn’t, in fact, conditioned for you to mean anything more to him than just a babysitter, you understand it’s time to stop forcing any other version of it.

There’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary two weeks into your avoidance of Minho.

You still haven’t talked, he still keeps his distance and you get paid to perform the job you’re here to do. But one afternoon before Minho’s even home from school, Joon refuses to eat. It starts with a tantrum he throws at breakfast time, which you consider typical as he knocks his cereal onto the floor and waves his hands around restlessly. You can only spoon feed him a couple spoons of yogurt before he’s put down for his afternoon nap. And when you wake him for his post-nap meal, he’s just as fussy. He seems to be bothered by something, crying loudly as you offer him different snacks and try your best to calm him down. But nothing seems to work, and when he begins refusing his bottles late into the afternoon, you start to panic.

Mrs. Lee isn’t home for a few hours, you’re unsure of when Minho gets home and you don’t have any way of getting to a hospital right now. The guilt and the fear eat away at you as Joon cries loudly, his face turning a bright shade of red as snot dribbles from his nose onto his shirt. He must be hungry, and clearly uncomfortable by something, only you’re entirely unsure what. His pacifier doesn’t calm him, nor does his favorite stuffed animal or his favorite television program. When his crying reaches the 10-minute mark, you feel hopeless, well prepared to drag him onto the bus to the nearest hospital yourself, fully convinced you’re going to lose your job. And as you begin to cry, too, the front door opens, Minho walking in with his backpack clutched casually in one hand and his car keys in the other. His girlfriend is with him this time, her head hanging as she uses her phone, completely oblivious to the atmosphere around her.

“Minho,” you call helplessly from the kitchen, and his head snaps instantly to look at you. Your eyes are nearly bloodshot from crying, your sleeves drenched in tears from wiping your eyes and your voice shaky as you speak. It’s the first time you’ve said his name in weeks, you realize, feeling your heart race as you call for him.

“What happened?” Minho asks when he turns the corner, throwing off his backpack and approaching a very fussy Joon.

“He won’t eat,” you reply through hiccups, wiping your tears with the sleeve of your sweater again. “I’ve tried everything. He won’t stop crying.”

Minho takes Joon in his arms, rocking him gently back and forth, to no avail; Joon starts crying even harder now, dribbling snot onto Minho’s sweatshirt and hitting his chest repeatedly.

“I’ll have to take him to the clinic,” Minho says in a rushed tone, fishing his car keys out of his pocket and making his way toward the door.

His girlfriend finally turns the corner into the kitchen, putting down her cellphone and huffing frustratedly.

“What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” Minho replies, shoving past her with Joon in his arms. “I have to go. We can work on our project another time.”

Your heart drops at the words- project. Project, as in a project for his university. With a classmate.

You want to cry more now, for being so stupidly angry with him over nothing, but you still have to help Minho take Joon to the clinic. Sujin doesn’t protest, quick to exit without so much as a goodbye as Minho scrambles to fetch Joon’s car seat.

“I’ll get him in the car seat,” you say, pulling your sneakers on as he balances Joon in his arms.

“You’re coming?”

“Of course I’m coming,” you scoff, already taking Joon from his arms and ushering him outside. “Go start the car.”

“Lee?” A nurse calls, holding a clipboard close to her chest as she scans the waiting room.

You and Minho both stand up, Minho balancing Joon in his arms as the nurse gestures you to the door.

“Please, follow me.”

Both of you walk side-by-side down the corridor as she double-checks papers on her clipboard, making a sharp right and leading you into a private room.

Minho sets Joon down on the examination table, holding his arms to steady him, and you stand beside him as you wait for the doctor.

“She’s just reviewing the results,” the nurse says, referring to the x-rays Joon took earlier. “She’ll be in shortly to discuss them.”

Minho nods silently as the nurse leaves the room, leaving the two of you alone once again. You say nothing, unsure of how to break the awkward silence as Minho wipes a string of drool from Joon’s mouth and avoids eye contact with you.

You feel awkward, embarrassed and so, so stupid, for having treated Minho like absolute scum because you assumed the worst of him. It breaks you to see him avert your gaze like this, treating you the same way he did when you first crossed paths. He has his guard completely up again, and you’re not sure he’s ever going to let it down around you. As you lose yourself in doubtful thoughts, the door opens, Joon’s doctor sauntering inside and wiping her hands with the strong scent of hand sanitizer.

“Hi there,” she says cheerfully, giving you both a warm smile. “Are we here for baby Joon today?”

“Yes,” you both say in unison, and she laughs a little.

“You two are very synced. They say it happens in the first year of marriage.”

“We’re not married,” Minho chimes in quickly, and you turn to look at him, feeling a pit in your stomach all over again.

“No?” She questions. “My apologies. Is mom here today?”

“I’m just his babysitter,” you say quietly. “This is his brother.”

“I see,” the doctor says, eyeing you both. “Well you may notice I’m fairly calm, and that’s because there’s no terrible news I have to share. Baby Joon is just suffering from a little mucus buildup. He’s probably feeling the impaction, and the discomfort has caused a loss of appetite.”

You feel a weight off your shoulders instantly, relieved that this isn’t a more serious matter. He’s going to be fine, you think to yourself. He’s going to be his normal self as soon as this is over.

“… Just be sure to use a syringe to drain the mucus a couple times per day, and make sure he gets plenty of sleep.”

As the doctor writes Joon a prescription for his saline syringe, you catch Minho’s gaze briefly, shooting him a relieved look. He gives you a small nod in response, as if to say he’s glad you came along. And he is, he just can’t say it out loud.

“I think he’s finally sleeping,” Minho says, patting Joon’s back gently as he stands up from his chair. The two of you have been sat in the library for nearly two hours since getting back home, in complete silence as you read your books and wait for Joon to fall asleep. You take breaks every now and then to drain Joon’s mucus, alternating roles between holding his face still and using the syringe on him. And when he’s finally comfortable again, he dozes back off to sleep, little snores escaping his lips.

Minho leaves the room to put Joon to bed, and while he’s gone, you take the opportunity to pack your stuff and prepare to leave for the night. You feel guilty, not having said much to Minho this evening, especially with the newfound knowledge that this mystery woman was just a partner for his project. But you’re not sure what to say, well aware that he’s probably already decided you hate him, and there’s not much else you can do to fix things.

“He’s down,” Minho says as he re-enters the library.

“That’s good,” you reply with a solemn smile, packing your laptop in your bag and slinging it over your shoulder.

“I should get going.”

“Do you… need me to walk you?” Minho asks a little shyly, and although the offer is tempting, you shake your head no.

“I’ll be fine. It’s really not as unsafe as you’d think.”

Minho just nods, understanding that you still don’t want to be close to him. And he gives you a little bow, before he exits the room and makes his way up the stairs to his own.

As you begin to leave, an object left on the chair across from you catches your eye.

It’s Minho’s book- the first edition copy of Love and Limerence you gifted him. You take the small book in your hands, scanning its contents briefly and examining the pages. He’s already annotated several of them, despite having read the book numerous times now, and you can’t help but smile at his scribbled notes circling all his favorite quotes and underlining them twice. You know it’s valuable to him, despite coming from somebody he probably despises right now, but you decide to take it up to him anyway, not wanting him to lose it.

When you’re outside his door, you give a small knock as it’s left ajar, and Minho hums in response.

You enter quietly, holding the book out to him and shooting him a small smile.

“You left this downstairs,” you say, and Minho reaches for it quickly, embarrassed you might’ve seen some of his annotations.

“Thanks,” he replies, setting it back on his bookshelf of romance novels.

He takes a seat on the edge of his bed, patting the spot next to him, and you join him at a comfortable distance as he keeps his gaze on the hardwood floor.

For a moment, no one says anything. And then he sighs deeply, before finally speaking.

“I’m sorry. If I made you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t,” you’re quick to reply.

“I clearly did,” Minho retorts. “And I know I’m quiet, and I kind of shut myself off from the rest of the world. But I never meant for it to affect you.”

“It didn’t affect me,” you reiterate.

He scoffs lightly in response.

“Why won’t you just say it? You haven’t talked to me in weeks. You don’t even look at me. I clearly did something to push you away.”

You don’t reply immediately, pondering what to say. And ultimately, you let your emotions speak for themselves.

“I was jealous.”

“Of what?”

“Of the girl. The one who’s been here almost every night.”

“Sujin?”

“Look, I don’t know, okay? I don’t know who she is or what she is to you-”

“My project partner,” Minho interrupts. “One who hates my guts.”

“Project partner,” you continue. “It doesn’t matter who she is- I like you, Minho,” you finally emphasize, turning to meet his gaze. His lips are parted in shock, his eyebrows furrowed as he hears you speak.

“I’m fucking infatuated with you, and it drives me crazy. I can’t go on vacation without seeing you in the books at the stores, I can’t sleep at night without your stupid theories replaying in my head. And I jump to the worst possible conclusions when you’re even near another girl. I’m going crazy trying to be liked by you- trying to look at everything through the lens of your romance theories or your book quotes, or whatever. But it’s so scary to like someone this much.”

Minho says nothing for a minute, collecting his thoughts as you let go of the breath you’ve been holding. He’s not used to people liking him- let alone being this intrigued by him. And especially when it’s in the form of reciprocation, from the one person he’s infatuated with, too.

“Why is it scary?” Minho questions, facing you now, his eyes darting briefly over your lips and then back up to your worried gaze.

“Because I’m here for a job. I’m not supposed to be feeling all this. You’re not supposed to be part of this.”

“How do you know that?” Minho retorts, leaning in a little closer to you now.

“I just…”

“You’re allowed to feel, y/n. You’re allowed to want this.”

And before you can protest his words, his lips are on yours, kissing you passionately like he’s pacifying the arguments before they can come to fruition. Your heart beats erratically in your chest, your mind racing with a million thoughts about what you’re doing, and what this whole thing even implies, but you shut them out with the rest of your concerns, pressing your thighs together as he brings two hands to your face and cups your chin gently. His lips work against yours so beautifully, so effortlessly, like the two of you have done this several times before. And maybe you have, in all his alternate universe theories- on your honeymoon, on the run from the police- right here in the comfort of his grand bedroom, his hands snaking up to pull off your cardigan as you tug desperately at the fabric of his t-shirt. Minho says nothing between passionate kisses, afraid if he talks you might realize what’s happening and leave. But you won’t leave, especially not when you’ve been dreaming of this, too.

When your cardigan is off, Minho moves a little closer to you on the bed, letting one hand guide itself onto your waist and trace the gentle curve of your body there. He’s delicate with his movements, careful not to startle you with his touches, but he’s also admittedly thought about this for weeks. The thought of you confessing was never something that crossed his mind- he was so sure he’d driven you away after that night. Never in his wildest fantasies had Minho considered the possibility that you were this smitten with him, too. But he did have thoughts of your lips on his, thoughts of your hands intertwined with his and ungodly visions of you under him, right here in his bed. Visions of his mouth on your breasts after you’d accidentally exposed yourself to him in the kitchen and he was forced to give attention to the massive erection that grew in his pants. And after you’d gifted him his favorite book, attentive to the details he’d indulged you in which he never otherwise shared with people, visions of making love to you ran rampant in his mind, filling you up over and over again with remnants of him as a form of saying I’m infatuated with you, too.

Minho’s kisses become needier as your words replay in his head, darting his tongue out to dance against yours with the sounds of exchanging saliva present between your plump, eager lips. He pushes you back gently so that you’re now lying on his pillow, the angle so intimate, the view of his room from here like something you’re not supposed to see. The ceilings appear even larger when you’re flat against his bed, the curtains that drape over his bedpost seemingly miles high.

Minho’s kisses trail down to your neck now, eagerly peppering your flesh in wet kisses as your hands reach up to tangle in his hair, holding him closer to you and letting him graze his lips wherever he desires. You can’t help but feel guilty having him all over you like this when you remember how you’ve treated him these past couple months- criticizing his tendencies to be quiet, intruding on his space and pushing him away because of a girl you’d assumed to be his girlfriend. But you also know most of it has been because you want him to mean more to you- perhaps you’ve just been trying to change things so that in this version of the universe, he’s not just an enigma to you. You want all of this- his lips on yours, his body pressed into you and to give yourself completely to him.

“Just so we’re clear,” Minho says suddenly, pulling away from you to hold eye contact with you. “I’m crazy about you, too. I really like you.”

And you can’t help but smile back in response, pulling him in again to press his lips on yours. He smiles into the kiss, too, satisfied you’re both on the same page. And although your now eager movements imply something more is about to happen, you don’t have to verbalize anything, his fingers snaking up your shirt serving as answer enough.

“Is this okay?” Minho asks, grazing your flesh with his big hands as he toys with the hem of your shirt.

You nod in response, sitting up a little and completing the task of pulling it off over your head and discarding it beside you. You waste no time on your bra, either, reaching around to unclasp it and rid yourself of the fabric without him having to ask. His eyes widen again at the sight, having remembered every curve of your body since that incident in the kitchen. But now in front of him again, he feels his cock swell in his pants, desperate to act on the urge. In nimble movements, his hand cups the mound of your breast, kneading it gently and sighing at the sensation of your soft skin against his. His mouth finds yours again, indulging you in a slow, passionate kiss, and then he trails down until he meets his hand at the mound of your breast, pressing a chaste kiss to your flesh before finally latching his lips around your nipple.

He starts with gentle kisses while your nipple rests between his lips, a string of saliva dribbling down to coat your hardened bud. And then he takes it between his lips with more force, beginning a gentle sucking motion as he gives your other nipple attention with his free hand, circling the tip with his thumb in tender movements.

You sigh beneath him, the sensation sending a shiver up your core, your nipples hardening even more in his touch, now eager for him to give your soaking core some attention. But he takes his time stimulating you, moving to your other breast to take your nipple in his mouth and leave a trail of saliva. Your body shivers when the cool air grazes your wet nipples as he pulls away, and he meets your lips again to kiss you passionately.

While he kisses you, your hands now toy with the hem of his shirt too, signifying for him to take it off. And Minho reciprocates with a little nod, finally pulling his shirt over his head and revealing his bare chest to you. It’s a marvelous sight to see more of his honey-tanned skin, his toned muscles and his broad pectorals practically begging for you to touch them. And just above his stomach, a horizontal pale pink scar, one that he eyes momentarily and then gives you a shy shrug.

You run your fingers along the scar briefly, tracing it in its entirety and bringing your hand up to caress his face.

“I didn’t think I could be any more attracted to you,” you say to him sheepishly, tracing the scar again. “You look like the poetry you’re so obsessed with.”

Minho feels an involuntary smile pulling at his face as he leans in to kiss you again, this time intent on giving himself fully to you the way you deserve.

Your kisses both grow hungrier, needier, as your bodies tangle into each other, and Minho loops a finger into the hem of your panties, tugging them down so that he has access to your sopping cunt. As your hands tangle further into his soft brown hair, his finger traces down the length of your stomach, dipping into every curve and over every inch of flesh he only got a brief sight of. And when he finds your mound, you arch up into him, parting your legs slightly to give him access. Minho doesn’t waste another second, attaching the pads of his fingers to your clit and working you in circular motions as he kisses you. Little gasps escape your mouth as he does, breathing heavily into his kisses and grinding your core closer to him as he quickens his pace, smearing your arousal around your aching clit and circling two fingers around to massage you gently. His cock is now fully erect against his abdomen, prodding into your upper thigh as he trails his kisses down your neck again, but he’s patient, forgiving with his movements, eager to pleasure you first.

As his kisses graze your neck, you tug his boxers over his cock, pulling them down so you’re equal parts undressed. Minho winces a little at the sensation, a bead of precum already dripping down the head of his cock, and you feel yourself clench around nothing at just the sight of him hard for you.

When he takes note of your anticipation, he glances down at his own erection, locking his gaze with yours again as if to confirm again that this is okay. You nod in response, reaching your hands around to loop them behind his neck and pull him a little closer. And then your gaze falls to his cock again, waiting for him to make the next move.

The two of you say nothing as Minho’s hand finds the base of his cock, pumping himself gently before leaning in to kiss you. He lets himself hover closer over you, until his cock is kissing your entrance in the same gentle, wet movements as your lips. You lift your leg up slightly to grant him access, and then in gentle movements as your eyes remain shut, you feel him push his tip inside of you, stretching you out around his girth and causing you to gasp. He’s bigger than you anticipated, even the dripping arousal of your cunt having trouble taking him wholly. But he brings his fingers down to your clit again, massaging you slowly to ease the pain. And it works, your body relaxing around him as he pulls back a little and thrusts in again, this time pushing further until he’s completely bottomed out inside of you. You let out a fervent moan at the sensation, his cock pulsating inside of you as he holds it there, feeling every inch of you clench around him and take him so well now. And then with a gentle kiss to your lips, he begins to move, his hips pulling back slowly to thrust back inside of you.

You feel so full of him, having him exactly as you’d always imagined him- circling your thoughts, hovering over you and finally inside of you, his cock brushing against your cervix so delicately with every thrust. Your labored breaths become one as you pant into each other’s mouths with overwhelming pleasure. Minho steadies himself with one hand on the mattress beside you, quickening his pace a little as he feels his cock twitch inside of you in response to a particularly pornographic moan of yours.

“Fuck,” he breathes, shutting his eyes as he continues to slip in and out of your soaking cunt. “You’re so full of me, aren’t you?”

He brings his lips to your neck again, nibbling the flesh between his teeth and letting it bruise as you moan beneath him.

“I’ve thought about you everyday,” you respond, angling his lips to yours again as he fucks you. “I’ve thought about this so many times.”

“Yeah?” Minho says with a satisfied smile, working circles back onto your clit.

“Yes,” you breathe back, toying with his hair as your arms wrap around his neck. “I wanted you to fuck me like the characters in your romance novels.”

Minho feels his cock twitch again, wincing and slowing his pace so as not to finish just yet.

“I can’t help it,” you whimper underneath him. “I think about you all the time. I think about you fucking me all the time.”

Minho intertwines his hand with yours, pressing it down on your abdomen and letting yourself feel when his bulge fills you up at every thrust, the motion visible beneath your palms.

“Feel that, baby?” He asks between kisses to your drooly lips. “Feel how good I fuck you? Is this what you imagined?”

You gasp at the sensation once you feel it, the bulge of his cock protruding against your palm with every pump inside of you. You nod breathlessly, almost unable to reply to his words now.

“I imagined it, too,” he says, picking up his pace now. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to bend you over the couch and fuck you right there the moment I met you.”

He groans a little as you clench around him and moan in response.

“Minho,” you say breathlessly, not missing the way his cock twitches inside of you once again. “Will you finish inside of me?”

He pauses for a moment, scanning your expression for a sign of whether or not you’re being serious.

“Please,” you beg, as if reading his thoughts. “I’m on birth control. Just want to feel your seed inside of me.”

He shuts his eyes briefly as you wrap your legs around his waist and pull him in a little closer.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Minho asks, locking his gaze on yours again. “I want to, but I want you to be sure about it.”

“I’m sure,” you say quickly, the last syllable hitching in the back of your throat as he hits a particularly sensitive spot. “Please, just wanna feel you fill me up.”

He thrusts harder into you now, the room teeming with the squelching noises of your pussy taking him so effortlessly.

“You like it when we play house like this, huh?” He says, wrapping a hand gently around your throat. “You like imagining me as your husband, don’t you? Fucking you like we’re married?”

And it doesn’t take you more than a second to think before you’re nodding desperately at his words. You do love it, this sense of belonging when you’re in the Lee household. But you also get aroused at this second life you lead alongside him, caring for the baby like it’s one of yours and being fucked by Minho when no one else is around to hear your lewd moans.

“Yes,” you reply, your response muffled by his grasp on your throat. “You make such a good dad.”

“We’d make such good parents,” he emphasizes, kissing you breathlessly. “What do you say I fuck a baby into you and we find out for real?”

You feel yourself contract around his girth at the words, not having considered it seriously, but turned on at the idea of carrying a child just for him.

“Is that what you want?” Minho asks, nearing his orgasm as he thrusts even faster into you now, panting into your mouth above you.

“Yes,” you reply with a whimper. “Want you to fill me up so bad.”

“Yeah?” He cuts you off, pressing your abdomen harder with his hand. “I’m gonna cum, baby. Want you to feel it.”

Your senses hone in on the feeling of your palm over his bulge, pulsating rhythmically as he nears his orgasm.

“I’m cumming, fuck, I’m gonna finish,” Minho says, shutting his eyes in pleasure as he moves at his fastest pace now, his grip around your throat holding you steady as you lose yourself underneath him. He’s never finished inside someone before, but he has no intention of pulling out now, the conversation of impregnating you sending him over the edge as he reaches the cusp of his release.

You contract around his breathlessly now, eager to take his load, never having taken someone’s either, but desperate for Minho to be your first.

And with a few more harsh thrusts, Minho’s cock twitches once inside of you, finally letting out a generous load of his cum inside of you, the gush of his release filling you up so fully, the warm sensation of his milky white release thrusting deep inside of your pussy as he fucks the rest into you.

He feels his head spin, his eyes shutting instinctively at the sensation as he lets go fully inside of you, no urgency to pull out or stave off his release like he usually has to. And it takes a while before he’s begun to soften again, the knowledge of giving you his cum almost rousing him again and lengthening the period of his release inside of you. Minho already knows he’s going to be addicted to finishing inside of you from here on out- and he doesn’t want it any other way.

The warm feeling is all it takes for you to finish in mere seconds, contracting around him as he fucks you through his orgasm, your release mixing with his and dribbling down the side of your thighs as he begins to slow down. Minho doesn’t pull out immediately, instead caressing your face to gauge your reaction as he softens inside of you.

“Was it okay?” Minho queries, tucking sweaty strands of hair behind your ears and loosening his grasp on your throat.

“It was more than okay,” you say breathlessly, tears pricking the corners of your eyes as he smiles down at you. “I feel so full of you.”

Minho kisses you sweetly, rubbing his thumb along your hand soothingly as he pulls out of you, a string of his cum connecting to you still and dribbling onto the sheets as he rolls over to lay on his side.

For a moment, the two of you say nothing, your chests rising and falling as you catch your breath and ponder the day’s events. It’s not what you expected was going to happen when you saw yourself up to his room again, but it is what you’d hoped would happen eventually. And the atmosphere feels much lighter around you now, completely void of the lingering sexual and emotional tension that’s plagued you for so long.

“Minho?” you say quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Philosophically speaking, how many versions of us do you think are lying next to each other like this, right now?”

Minho thinks over your words for a moment, and then he chuckles lightly.

“Well if the universe was conditioned right, I’d hope for an infinite amount. But considering how long it took us to get here in this version, I’d say just one.”

And he sits up, leaning in for another kiss as two fingers tuck his arousal further into you, holding his release inside of your still-sensitive body.

“Have some bacon, honey,” Mrs. Lee says to you as she scrambles to get her things together for the day. “I made a lot, so help yourself.”

“Thanks,” you reply, strapping Joon into his high chair and smoothing down your skirt.

Ever since that evening, you and Minho have been inseparable. The two of you wait until Mrs. Lee is gone for the morning, desperately grabbing at each other and giggling between kisses until Minho has to leave for his classes. And when he returns, it’s much of the same, the two of you helping put Joon down for his afternoon nap before escaping up to his bedroom and making love until Joon wakes again.

Minho is completely and utterly obsessed with you, the same way you are with him, but you both know this game of house you play can’t go on forever. Mostly because you feel the guilt eating away at you day by day, every waking minute you’re tending to your duties as a babysitter or conversing with Mrs. Lee. It’s hard to be in the same room as Minho when she’s around, the urge to just confess even more present when she attempts to facilitate conversation between the two of you and you’re forced to act like he’s still a mystery.

But you have him more figured out than you ever have before, memorizing the freckles on his body like the back of your hand, reciting his favorite quotes like prayers and replaying the melodic giggles that escape his lips. You don’t want to be apart from him, but the point still stands- it’s scary to like someone this much. He consumes you more than he ever has before, filling every waking second of your life with remnants of him. You love when he reads romantic philosophical theories to you, or when he cooks you and Joon dinner after a long day. But you feel guilty when you’re alone with Joon again, hoping he can’t somehow tell that you’re only thinking of his brother when you’re preparing his bottles or feeding him. You hope Mrs. Lee doesn’t notice when your hair is a little too tousled to have just been from a nap, or the time you had to cross your legs to keep Minho’s release inside of you when the two of you had finished just in time for her to make it home. It’s selfish, and it’s unfair. And with no sign of this fling stopping anytime soon, you don’t see any other option to be fit.

“I’m leaving,” Mrs. Lee finally says, grabbing her car keys off the kitchen table and pulling her heels on. “Make sure to get Joon his medicine!”

The two of you watch as she shuts the front door behind her, and then you wait until her car starts, holding your breath as she pulls out of the driveway and begins down the street in what feels like an agonizing amount of time.

The minute she’s gone, Minho turns to you again, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as you lean back against the counter.

“Morning,” he says with a shy smile. He wastes no time leaning in for a romantic kiss, which you reciprocate, wrapping your arms around his neck and smiling into him.

When he pulls away, the two of you say nothing, holding each other in a comfortable embrace as he rubs little circles into the small of your back.

“I guess it’s just mom and dad home right now,” he says, pressing a chaste kiss to your neck. “I’ll ditch class right now if you want me to fill you up again.”

And his offer is tempting as he presses his erection into you, working more kisses down the nape of your neck and trailing his hands up your skirt.

“No,” you finally say, pushing him away and collecting your thoughts. “You need to get to class. I have a lot of stuff to do. I’m working, in case you forgot.”

“Okay, okay,” Minho says, holding his hands up in surrender. “I digress.”

He pulls back to caress your face with a visible smirk as your eyes graze his thighs, so beautifully sculpted under the fabric of his jeans. You’re not sure you’ve ever been so sinfully tempted by somebody before, like Eve to the apple, like a moth to a flame- he’s intoxicating, but you know you shouldn’t be indulging this while you’re here to fulfill your role as a babysitter.

“You should go,” you say to him, swallowing nervously as his hands trace the outline of your lips.

“Yeah,” Minho replies, a hint of disappointment present in his voice.

And without another word, he gathers his car keys off the table, sending you off with a little wave as he disappears for the day.

You may have Minho mostly figured out now- his fascination with romance and philosophy, his soft interior under the stoic exterior he presents everyone else with, his astounding levels of emotional intelligence and unwavering kindness for the people he loves. But now that things have become a little more complicated between the two of you, you fear all of this will come to an end as fortuitously as it all began.

The reality is, this isn’t one of Minho’s romance novels- you’re both real people, with emotions and convictions and reservations. And though you want this fleeting thing to last forever, you’re well aware that things don’t work that way, especially when you’re just a babysitter at the end of it all. Sure, Minho sees you as much more than that- but you were hired to be here in the Lee household, paid to fulfill your role here, and once this comes to an end, your relationship with Minho likely will, too.

… and thus, the decision to quit your job isn’t one you take lightly. It succeeds hours of thinking, weighing your options and planning out exactly what you’re going to tell Mrs. Lee when she asks why you’re leaving so suddenly. You want to do another internship, you decide on telling her, hoping she doesn’t poke enough holes to get the truth out of you- “I think far too much about your eldest son and it’s eating me alive.”

All day long, you try your best to shut Minho out of your thoughts, focusing on your online courses and caring for Joon like you used to. But it feels futile, this task of pretending things are the way they used to be. They’re not- you’re sneaking behind Mrs. Lee’s back and hooking up with her eldest son. When all’s said and done, you’ll be right back in your own home, with your parents desperate to send you elsewhere once again, and your own life to tend to. This double life you romanticize isn’t real, nor is it attainable anymore.

Your phone call with Mrs. Lee to announce your decision doesn’t set anything in stone yet, her words urging you to speak with her later this week when she has some free time. But you know once you do speak with her, you’ll only have a few evenings left with Minho until this is all over. And you don’t have the heart to tell him just yet, but if things go anything the way they did when you first brought it up to him, you know he’s going to be heartbroken.

When Minho arrives home that evening, he can already sense something is wrong. You’re sat in the garden, where you typically don’t go, your legs crossed neatly over one of the sunlounger chairs as you let your thoughts consume you. Mrs. Lee’s koi fish fountain stands nobly in front of you, a robust stream of water trickling from its lips and into the concrete bowl below. You’re mesmerized by it as you always are, the steady sound of water coupled with the birds chirping in the sunny greenery around you as peaceful as ever.

“Hey,” Minho says, sliding open the screen door and stepping outside to meet you.

“Hi,” you reply, holding a hand up over you to shield your eyes from the sun. You’d forgotten how divine he looked today, his white button up now folded up at the sleeves and exposing his veiny forearms to you.

“How was your day?” Minho asks, pressing a small kiss to your temple as he occupies the spot beside you and stares at the fountain.

“Okay,” you respond, though you’re lying through your teeth. “Joon went down about an hour ago.”

Minho nods, and then he furrows his brows together as he speaks again.

“Why are you out here?”

You shrug in response, keeping short with your words as he pushes you for answers. And you want to tell him it’s because you made the most painful decision to call Mrs. Lee and forfeit all of this, but you know it’ll only hurt more, so you divert from the truth.

“It was stuffy inside,” you voice back, shooting him a small smile.

Minho seems to relax beside you, his shoulders sagging a little as he takes notice of your calm demeanor. He doesn’t have reason to believe anything’s wrong, judging by the way you converse so casually.

“You want me to cook you something?” Minho asks, placing his palm up next to you, and you let your hand intertwine with his.

“Will you read to me?” You ask, eager to indulge in your favorite activity alongside him.

“I can read to you,” Minho echoes back, pressing a chaste kiss to the back of your hand. “Which book?”

You’re both in the cozy atmosphere of the library later that evening, Minho sat on his favorite velvet armchair as you occupy a spot in his lap with his arms wrapped around you. The book is positioned in front of him so you can both see, his fingers holding open the thin pages as the poetry leaves his lips, pausing in between lines to press kisses to the crook of your neck when he’s reminded of you in his favorite characters.

And you hold back tears in the moment, wanting so badly to tell Minho that you’ll be letting go of all of this, running back to the monotony of your old life, one where Minho doesn’t exist and you don’t have to balance the complicated feelings of liking someone to this degree. But you bite back your words, careful not to ruin the intimate moment you share while he loves you in an ignorant state of bliss.

“The pleasures of love are always in proportion to the fear,” Minho begins a new chapter, grazing your neck with his lips.

He trails a bit lower to graze your shoulder now, pressing a small trail of kisses as he pauses his reading. You giggle softly in response, feeling his fingers find the strap of your tank top to pull it down your shoulder so he can pepper kisses there, too.

“Minho,” you say softly, writhing in his embrace as he tickles every inch of your skin with his kisses, now shutting the book and setting it on the arm of the chair.

“Can’t help it,” Minho responds, shutting his eyes as he snakes his hands up the back of your tank top. “You look so beautiful right now.”

As you adjust in his lap, you can feel he’s now rock-hard in his jeans below you, his thighs flexing underneath you as he wraps two hands around your waist and runs them up and down your sides. You take the hint, turning around in his lap to face him, and let your arms wrap around his neck to steady yourself.

“What are you thinking about?” Minho asks, bringing his lips to yours as he feels his hardened cock graze against the fabric of his jeans, eager to pleasure you.

You want to express your fears, your doubts, to tell him the truth about what you spoke about on the phone with Mrs. Lee earlier today. But you can’t, not when he looks so tantalizing in front of you like this, his bulge perfectly outlined in his tight jeans and his veiny arms flexing below the fabric of his collared button-up. You’ve been roused for him since he left in the morning, his offer swirling your mind coupled with his appearance, like something out of a wet dream.

“You,” you voice back, whimpering pathetically into another kiss and rocking your hips gently over him so that he’s practically whimpering for you, too.

Neither of you have to say much, knowing already where the evening is headed, as you unzip his pants and palm his erection through the fabric of his boxers. Minho watches as you slide off his lap, dropping to your knees in front of him and tugging the fabric of his jeans. He complies with your urges, pulling them down to his knees and freeing his erection from his boxers, exhaling deeply as the cool breeze of the room grazes his leaking tip.

Without a second to waste, you take him in your mouth, letting your saliva coat his shaft as you kiss his tip tenderly and then guide him down your throat, the base of his cock just barely meeting your lips as you struggle to take him fully. Minho groans at the contact, bucking his hips off the chair to guide himself further into you, feeling his cock twitch when you gag a little at the contact. You stay like that for a good while, bobbing your head in rhythmic motions up and down his hardened length, your saliva allowing you to graze his shaft with ease.

Minho’s thighs contract desperately below him, trying his best to stave off the orgasm he’s been longing for since the moment he saw you this morning. His hands find your hair, pulling your locks into a makeshift ponytail and gasping as you take him a bit deeper now, pulling back again to pepper the tip of his wettened cock in drooly kisses.

“Fuck,” Minho breathes out, clutching the arm of the chair so desperately. “Baby, stop, I don’t want to finish yet,”

And you release him with a gentle pop, knowing exactly what it is he wants so badly. You never deny it, sitting back up again to position yourself over his cock you intertwine his hands with yours. He uses one hand to tug your panties to the side, and then in one swift motion, you guide his cock inside of you, sliding down the slick of his length and bottoming out with ease. You take him so well now, always able to adjust to his girth instantly as your cunt is always dripping in anticipation when he’s near.

Minho’s hand moves to push your tank top up, taking a nipple in his mouth and sucking harshly as you begin to bounce on him with gentle movements. The room fills with sounds of panting, sucking and desperate moans as his cock fills you fully with every thrust, brushing against your cervix as he moves to your other nipple and kneads your breast desperately.

“What was that quote again?” You ask in labored breaths as he comes back up to kiss your lips.

“The pleasures of love,” he begins, breathlessly working his lips against yours as you clench around his length. “Are always in proportion to the fear.”

Minho feels his cock twitch inside of you, always nearing his finish much faster when you make him recite all his favorite quotes and book excerpts to you.

Except this one speaks much louder to you, directly aligning with your present-day emotions, circling your mind relentlessly as he fills you. Maybe this is what his book speaks of- the pleasures of love, being filled so fully and lovingly by Minho, two pieces of one whole like you’re both made for this, to make love into the late hours of the night while he recites poetry to you.

And all of this in proportion to the fear- this constant fear that he’s just a fleeting entity, that you’re both naive to play house like this and pretend it’s anything more. The fear present while you’re sneaking behind Mrs. Lee’s back, letting him fuck you like he’s married to you and indulge you in all of his deepest secrets, as though you’re the only one allowed to know him this intimately.

The love and fear and indeed in proportion to one another- you love him as much as you’re afraid of loving him.

“I love you,” you say suddenly, bringing him in for another kiss before he can respond. But the way his kisses work against yours, hungry and passionate, there’s not a hint of reluctance in his response when he pulls away to speak again.

“I love you,” Minho breathes back, working his kisses against yours as his cock pulsates inside of you, desperate for release. “And I hope every version of the universe is conditioned for us to be right here.”

You smile into him, slowing your movements as you feel him contract inside of you, and then his thighs flex as he finally finishes inside of you, shooting hot white ropes of his cum into your still-clenching cunt, his release already beginning to dribble back down his length as he feels you slow down over him.

You bring a hand between the two of you, gathering his cum on the pads of your fingers to circle your clit in gentle movements, stimulating yourself to your release, too, as you contract desperately around him and breathe labored kisses back into his mouth. Your juices mix with his as you catch your breath, keeping him inside of you as your chest rises and falls with gentle movements. But the two of you say nothing, pressing your lips together to indulge in more passionate kisses for the few minutes you have left before Mrs. Lee makes it home for the evening.

The garden is particularly beautiful the next afternoon, teeming with the sounds of birds chirping and trees swaying in the gentle autumn breeze. Mrs. Lee let you know she’d be home a little earlier to have a chat about your decision to leave, and when Joon is put down for his afternoon nap, you receive the call that she’s in the garden waiting for you. You enter hesitantly, worried Minho might catch you and question what you’re doing out here. But he’s not home from school yet, you remind yourself, glancing around the tall grass and neat rows of potted plants for Mrs. Lee.

“Y/n!” A voice calls from one of the patio chairs. “Come, sit!”

Mrs. Lee sits with her back facing you, a large white sun hat atop her neatly styled hair and complementing her matching white jumpsuit. Her gaze remains locked on the koi fountain you’re always transfixed by, too.

“Hi Mrs. Lee,” you say, giving her a small bow as you take the seat next to her. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

She nods with a smile. “So good to see you when we have a little more time. I’m sorry I’m always such a mess in the mornings.”

You shake your head quickly, brushing off her words. “Not at all! It’s always nice to greet the family before I start my day.”

She just smiles in response, turning to nod at you, and then she turns back to the fountain.

“I was a little surprised when you called the other day. I hope things are going okay.”

“They are,” you interrupt quickly. “They absolutely are. Joon is so pleasant, and the job is great. I really love it here.”

“I hope everything at home is okay,” she moves on to say, and you quickly reassure her.

“Yes, everything is fine! Everyone is doing great.”

“I understand,” Mrs. Lee says, eyeing the ground before turning to face you now. “You’ve done so much for us, I’d be lying if I said I’m not going to miss having you around here in the mornings.”

You shoot her a sympathetic look, feeling a pit form in your stomach, too. You feel the same, probably tenfold, at the idea of leaving behind the household you’ve called home for so many days.

“I’m going to miss it here, too.”

“And I know Joon is going to be heartbroken,” Mrs. Lee says with a chuckle.

You chuckle too, giving her an understanding nod.

She pauses briefly, furrowing her brows together, before continuing her speech.

“You’re such a bright young woman, and I know you’re destined to do amazing things. If there’s a way I can help in this transition, please don’t hesitate to let me know, okay?”

You nod at her words, and watch as she smooths down her top before standing up. She seems to wait for a moment, as if hoping for you to say something, and when you don’t, she begins to make her way back inside.

“Well, I’ll let you go for the evening. Thank you again, for everything. And you have my phone number if-”

“Mrs. Lee?” You call out suddenly, catching her before she can get much further. She turns around at the worry present in your voice, her face shifting into that of concern.

Without having to voice anything else, Mrs. Lee sits down again, waiting for you to continue. But you can’t, your heart beating wildly in your chest at the thought of even bringing up the topic of Minho. I’m in love with your son, you want to say to her. I’m so in love with Minho and I hope you understand I don’t have a choice but to leave this all behind me.

“You know,” Mrs. Lee interrupts your thoughts, breaking the silence that fills the air. “This koi fountain was my first gift from Mr. Lee.”

You nod at her, remembering when she introduced it to you on your first day here.

“We weren’t married yet. It was his first restoration project, and my dad hated him. So he had a lot of trouble getting it over to me.”

You chuckle lightly, amused at her story which seems to calm you down a little.

“Luckily his parents adored me,” she continues. “And they offered to house it in their backyard until we married. For the 15 years we dated, my koi fish lived in their garden. And when we did marry, they rented a big truck to help haul it over. It was such a project! But it’s my favorite part of the garden.”

You shoot her a saccharine smile, well endeared at the way she speaks of Mr. Lee. You can tell she’s in love with him, even this many years later.

“Sometimes I wondered why they would do something so nice for me. But as I grew closer to them, I learned not to question what was meant for me. They loved me, as did Mr. Lee. And I wasn’t going to run from any of that, no matter what I felt I deserved.”

Your head snaps in her direction at her last words, realizing how they apply to you. But she doesn’t know about Minho- at least not to your knowledge, or Minho’s. She gives you a sheepish smile as you furrow your brows, and then she takes your hand in hers, giving it a little squeeze.

“I hope you won't run from what you deserve, either.”

You nod a little bit at her words, finally understanding the weight of them, and then you look back at her with a confused expression.

“Mrs. Lee, are you talking about…”

“Minho?” She finally says, with a warm smile. She takes your other hand in hers, too, tilting her face to yours so that she’s making proper eye contact as she speaks.

“I had wondered why he was so happy these days. Minho’s always been a bit of an outcast. But I haven’t seen this spark in him since he started his obsession with all those romance novels and philosophy studies of his.”

You chuckle lightly, a weight off your shoulders as she finally speaks of what circles your mind so heavily.

“But how did you…”

“I knew it when I saw it,” she says. “I knew it, because he had the same look in his eyes as when I met his father.”

You feel your heart swell in your chest, your shoulders relaxing as she continues to speak.

“He speaks of you like poetry,” she tells you. “And for that alone, I’m thankful for you. Now what you choose to do is your decision- but I hope you know you will always have a home here with us. Not just as a babysitter, but as family.”

When Mrs. Lee finishes her speech, she gives your hands a little squeeze, smiling at you and back at the koi fish fountain. It feels much more sentimental to you even now, the beautiful waterfall that cascades serving as a reminder of its permanent restoration rooted in the infatuation Mr. Lee had for Mrs. Lee. And watching it stand so beautifully like it did all those years ago, you’re reminded that love can be a lasting thing, no matter the circumstances. The universe can condition itself to make things last, affirming the philosophical notions Minho’s always told you. And that perhaps you do deserve this, a sense of belonging here in the Lee household, right here alongside Mrs. Lee and Minho, and even baby Joon.

As you watch the fountain together, the sound of the sliding door makes itself known behind you, and you turn around to find Minho entering the garden, baby Joon sitting comfortably in his arms as he makes his way over.

“Hi,” Minho says, coming around to give Mrs. Lee a kiss on her cheek. “What’s going on here?”

He looks visibly worried, his eyes darting back and forth between you and Mrs. Lee, as if to silently ask you what she’s told you.

But Mrs. Lee just smiles at him, as she gets up from where she’s sitting and smooths down her jumpsuit.

“We were just having a girl chat. I’ll leave you two alone.”

And she disappears behind the screen door again, shooting you a little wink as she does, her anecdote circling your mind, still.

“What happened?” Minho asks, settling down next to you and balancing baby Joon on his knee. Joon fists at the fabric of his shirt, babbling incoherently as you smile down at him.

“Nothing,” you say, leaning in to press a quick kiss to his lips. You refrain from saying anything about leaving, not wanting to interrupt the tender moment you share with Minho and Joon in the sunlight of the garden.

“You have a really cool mom,” you settle on saying, smiling at Minho as he chuckles softly in response.

The afternoon sun beams through the glass windows of the library as you lie comfortably in Minho’s lap, his book positioned in front of you as he presses a small kiss to the back of your hand before turning the page.

Outside, the birds chirp songs of early spring, the steady stream of Mrs. Lee’s koi fountain audible as you peer down at the garden.

Mr. and Mrs. Lee sit in the tall grass, fiddling with a box of tools as Mr. Lee repairs a new project for Mrs. Lee. This one’s a much larger fountain, one he’d told you would take several months, perhaps even years. But Mrs. Lee sits beside him, relishing in stories of his restoration process and laughing with him as he works. You can’t help but smile at the sight, her stories about him playing in your mind whenever you catch a glimpse of them together.

“Do you think they could be us in another universe?” You ask Minho, turning to face him as he peers out the window, too.

“I hope so,” he says with a smile.

You settle closer to him in his lap, pressing a small kiss to his hand as he continues reading.

“And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

At his words, you hear baby Joon cry out, having woken from his afternoon nap.

“I’ll get him,” Minho says, shutting the book and setting it aside to go tend to the baby.

And as you peer back out the window, the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Lee’s laughter filling your ears, baby Joon’s voice calling to you, Minho’s philosophy book perched on the chair beside you and the sun beams shining their light through the windows, you know that this is belonging, this is love.

#stray kids #skz smut #Lee Minho #Lee know #stray kids hard hours #Lee know smut #lee know scenarios #skz x reader #skz hard hours #stray kids x you #skz #fanfic #request #requests open #Spotify

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lainsshop · 3 months

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Dates With Him ౨ৎ

Pairing: Alastor x Reader

Tags: fluff, established relationship n probably more..

A/N: Another long work of mine, hope you like it cause.. I don’t know. If you have more date ideas please tell me and I’ll make sure to put them here!

Oh, God, you probably already know what type of dates this man will suggest..

Well, of course, it’s gonna be classy, fancy and jazzy! This man only knows the classic type of dates, the “proper” way of taking your partner to dates, according to him that is.

Lots of dancing! It could be anywhere! He doesn’t care if people are watching you, he could just break their limbs if the people around y’all criticize you guys, especially if they judge you.

Even if you suck at dancing he will teach you! Don’t worries, what type of partner will he be if he didn’t. But if you do know how to dance then that’s even better! You two are stealing the dance floor in seconds, I promise you.

Fancy restaurants. Not the white fancy or the bright fancy ones, oh, nuh uh.. I’m talking about the ones with warm dim lights, brown; pearl white; gold n red color palate, good scented candles, soft jazz playing in the background or maybe a live group/solo playing, the finest servings, etc etc..

Yea, those type of restaurants that need a reservation and have a big ass price but don’t worry, Alastor will pay for everything even if you insist on paying too he would just-

“Nonsense, my dear! What kind of gentleman will I be if I let you pay?” You were gonna insist again but you knew he would still pay for it at the end so you gave up.

You just feel kinda guilty cause he pays for almost always pays for everything when you two go out to eat and even on things you want, he likes to spoil you..? You could say that but I don’t really know.

Jazz clubs! Oh, you two will always and when I say always I mean alwaysssss go to jazz clubs! Even before you became official, you two will always go to a jazz venue at least once a month. It became a tradition between you two at this point.

If you haven’t listen to jazz before, oh, you’re on a ride, this man will talk about it and probably even more genres of his era. He would recommend you one artist and then two and like ten and- you get the deal.

Book reading. Now there’s time where Alastor or you.. or both of you like to just stay indoors so sometimes you guys just stay at the hotels library and read. Just enjoying your guys presence, the fire crackling and the soft music in the background.

And when you get tired, he would absolutely read to you while you put your head on his shoulder. (He’s voice is so &;&:&: like it could put me to sleep, okay?😭)

Cooking or Baking. Well, I don’t know if Alastor knows how to bake but I will assume he does. He loves to cook or bake with you! It’s probably his top 3 favorite dates to do with you like.. you literally can do it at any hour, in the mornings, evenings, nights and even midnights like wow there.

If you don’t know how to bake or cook, oh, he would absolutely love to teach you. If it comes out wrong, he would def laugh a bit.. but don’t worries, it’s your first time after all, right? It takes times to learn something new!

#alastor x reader #alastor #hazbin hotel

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axelsagewrites · 3 months

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Felix Catton*Best Gift Ever

Pairing: felix x working class!reader

Word count: 1241

Warnings: money struggles, insecurity, rich people

Masterlist Here

You and Felix had been going out for around few months now and it had been amazing. You could tell his friends were defiantly shocked. You were from a different background to put it politely. Aka he was absolutely filthy rich, and you were your average broke uni student.

This was your first Valentine’s day together and Felix had been going on for the past week about how much you were going to love what he had planned. All you knew was that it involved dinner and likely some kind of gift that was way nicer than anything else you owned.

Being surrounded by so many rich people though had a tendency to make you doubt yourself especially since one of Felix’s ex flings told you that she had bought him a gold necklace for valentines last year. Felix had assured you he’d gotten rid of it ages ago and thought it looked tacky as hell, but you couldn’t help the pit in your stomach.

You were essentially just waiting for your student loan to come in to get him something but by the time it came in and you paid for all your essentials, you were left with 100 quid for the month. Which considering Felix and his friends liked to go eat and drink out all the time and he always wanted you to come meant it wouldn’t last very long. it didn’t help that whenever Felix would buy you a drink you’d inevitably get comments from one of the jealous rich girls in the group about it.

After writing down your months budget you felt like you were going to cry. You only had a spare tenner to get him something. How the hell does money go away so fast? You tried looking around the local shops for something but there was another issue about going to oxford; everything nearby was designer or name brand.

Your options were essentially a sample size of cologne or one tenth of a bracelet. Eventually you decided to suck it up and just try make something.

There you were on valentines waiting for Felix to arrive at your dorm while you finished wrapping up his present. You had bought a blank CD and spend hours curating the perfect playlist and illegally burning it onto the disc. You’d also diy’d a bunch of kiss notes by writing a small note, kissing the back of it, cutting it out and sealing the whole note in sticky tape so it didn’t smudge.

It had actually turned out pretty cute however when you opened the door and saw Felix holding a huge bouquet of flowers and 2 wrapped presents you felt your heart sink but you tried not to show it, “Roses for my flower,” he grinned, leaning down to give you a quick kiss before pressing the bouquet into your hand, “Happy valentines baby,”

“Happy valentines,” you said, opening the door so he could come in without a care in the world while you internally freaked out.

Felix instantly went to sit on the bed, sitting one of the gifts down and holding the other one out to you, “Cmon open it. I cannot wait to see your reaction,” he said, bouncing up and down like a kid on Christmas.

“Okay okay,” you laughed, taking the gift and starting to carefully unwrap it. Felix reached a hand out, pulling you by your hip to sit on his leg while you opened it. “Wow Felix I can’t accept this,” you gasped as you opened the jewellery box revealing a gorgeous pink pearl necklace.

“Don’t be silly of course you can,” he said, taking the box from your hand, “You deserve it. can you?” he said, nodding at your hair. You moved it out the way while he clasped the necklace around your neck, “and done. Almost as beautiful as you,”

You found yourself melting into his smile. Before you could say anything else however his eyes landed on the gifts you’d just finished wrapping. “Oh, are these for me?” he asked, grinning even wider as you nodded and he reached for the gifts.

You bit your lip as he tore into the first present. The CD. Suddenly it looked so cheap, and you felt your heart break as he flipped it over. you closed your eyes, expecting him to get annoyed but instead you felt him wrap his arm around you as he read the back, “This is so wicked thanks babe,” he said as he laughed at some of the songs you had listed on the back, “We should listen to it tonight. I’ve never had someone make me a CD,”

“Theres the envelope too,” you mumbled, and he lit up all over again as he gently sit the CD down and picked up the envelope.

As he pulled out the kisses his eyebrows knitted in confusion but when he flipped them over, you’d never seen as big a smile on his face, “Did you make these? These are so fucking cute oh my god you’re amazing,” he said, sitting them down so he could wrap his arms so tightly around you, you wondered if you may snap.

“I didn’t expect you to like them so much,” you laughed as Felix finally let you go enough to breathe again, “Sorry it’s not much,” you said, smile dropping slightly when you saw your gifts laid side by side.

“Hey,” Felix said, reaching up a finger to your chin, turning your head to face him, “I love them. Why do you look so sad?” he said, his smile dropping.

“I just don’t want you to think I’m some cheap skate. I wanted to get you something good and- “

Felix practically picked you up and turned you to face him while straddling his lap, “No. don’t feel bad about any of this. I love them. You have no idea how much this means to me. I mean the time and effort you put into this,” he said, looking down at the gifts. “The money doesn’t matter to me. It never has. But you,” he said, moving to hold your hands, “you mean way more than any dumb bit of jewellery,”

“I’m sorry,”

“Don’t you apologise,” he said, wrapping his arms around you for a tight hug which you quickly reciprocated. You stayed like that for a solid minute before Felix pulled away, “Now, you need to get ready or we’re going to be late,” he said with that dopey smile back on his face. He was never one to linger on the sadness after all, “Speaking of open it,” he said pulling the last gift over.

You laughed as you tore into the present, Felix getting a kick out how you didn’t try save the wrapping paper like last time. you gasped, yet again at the sight. “And don’t even think of trying to refuse it. seeing you in that is a gift for me too you know,” he joked making you slap his chest before you went to pull the gorgeous red dress out the box. “Now c’mon,” he said, pushing you out his lap before slapping your ass.

“Hey!”

“Cmon get dressed,” he said, leaning back in the bed.

“Aren’t you gonna leave?” you teased, holding the dress up to yourself.

“Nope,” he said, popping the p, “I think I’ll stay right where I am,”

“You’re lucky you’re cute,”

“No. I’m lucky I have you,”

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#felix catton x reader #felix catton #felix catton fluff #felix catton imagine #saltburn #saltburn x reader #saltburn fluff #saltburn imagine #jacob elordi x reader #jacob elordi fluff

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macfrog · 5 months

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little aphrodite sex on fire chapter nine

the amount i had to write jean-marc in this chapter makes me nauseous. anywho. these two heal my soul and make me weep. please enjoy a little look back at the ceo's experience of paris.

pairing: ceo!joel x fem!reader

summary: we're going back to paris. this time, through joel's eyes.

warnings: age gap (reader is late 20s, joel late 40s), workplace relationship, imbalance of power dynamic, alcohol consumption, ostentatious flaunting of wealth (eat the rich i say), sugardaddy!joel, softdom!joel, oral (f and m receiving), daddy kink, praise kink, cursing, angst & pining, and...well. the ceo falls in love.

word count: 7.5k

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 💚

He wasn’t even sure you’d say yes when he asked. Thought you’d find it a bit much, flying halfway across the world just for one lousy meeting. He had what he’d say when you turned him down in mind, already: Sure, yeah, no problem. No, I just thought �� Yeah. ‘s alright. I’ll bring you back som’ as a souvenir.

But you didn’t.

Oh, yeah? you’d said. Your face seemed to light – humored, impressed even. It made Joel feel braver. Reassured. You’ve a habit of doing that to him.

Mhm, he replied, chewing on the sub you’d ordered him after his conference call. He can’t remember what he promised Human Resources he’d have done within the hour. You walked in as he was saying it, and – well. Two days, he said, swallowing, Saturday Sunday.

And are you gonna make me take minutes while you meet with this Jean-Marc? You wiggled your fingers as you said it, letting the name drip through your lips in some kind of dreamy song. I don’t make the flight back unless they’re typed up by the time we leave? That the catch?

No catch. You don’t even gotta come to the meetin’.

I don’t have to –? Wow, Miller. You’re spoiling me, no? You kicked your leg, one knee hooked over the other. Your skirt shrinking up your thigh.

You were sat in the chair on the right, opposite his desk. You always sit in that one – and Joel’s still trying to figure out why. The working theory so far is that it’s at a good angle to watch the city below, and at the same time, see exactly who comes and goes in and out of the office during lunch.

But there has to be more to it, he thinks. He suspects. Martha’s desk is, like, five feet from yours. She spends her lunches in the conference room with Deb, shaking salads doused in balsamic vinegar and sharing cross-floor gossip. They invite you every day, and almost every day, you turn them down in favor of his shuttered office, the muted swish of cars on the street, the mock gasps and clutch of invisible pearls when you share that same fifth-floor gossip with him over the desk.

You’d been talking while he’d been thinking about the damn chair. He hadn’t heard a word of it. Huh? he asked, and you rolled your eyes.

Ain’t never listenin’, you muttered, peeling the damp paper back from your own sub.

Say it again, Joel said. Was just making a mental note to book dinner for us over there.

You scoffed, licking mayo from the corner of your lips. Why you making mental notes for anything? That’s what you pay me for.

And you were right – it is what he pays you for. Pays you to be his shadow, his right-hand man, his eyes and his ears and his entire brain, some days.

But lately – he doesn’t know. It’s different.

Truth be told, he has no idea what’s gotten into him. Looking at you the way he is. You’ve fucked around twice, now, and both times have been…nothing short of fucking amazing. Both times, Joel’s thought he might come within the first two minutes. Pushing inside your velvet walls, watching the way you roll forward, hearing the lewd moans pour across your lips.

He’s always thought you were attractive. It’s pretty fucking hard to ignore. Physically, sure – the look of your body, the way you know how to dress it. And the prettiest, softest face he’s ever seen. You can win him over in any discussion without a word, just by fluttering your eyelashes at him.

But you’re more than that. He thinks of you both as friends, maybe something more. Something deeper. It’s in the glances you steal, the silent lines tossed between one another. The way you read one another like an open book. Sometimes, he wonders if you actually can read his mind.

You’re intelligent, you’re funny, and you’re a hard fucking worker. Always on time, always seemingly juggling thirty things at once, and never letting him down. Nothing is too much, it seems; everything just is as it is. And he likes that about you. Simple. No baggage.

The morning of the flight, you send him a voice note telling him you’re downstairs. “And I ain’t lugging two cases up to the top floor only to bring ‘em back down when we’re leaving, Mr. CEO.”

He’s striding past Martha for the elevator before he’s even done listening to the message.

“Uh-uh!” she chirps, dashing over to slip between the brass doors behind him.

Joel sighs under his breath.

“I know better than to rely on you to remember all this stuff,” she says, holding up a file he’d asked her to put together for the trip.

She’s right not to – he’d probably leave that file in the car, or put it down somewhere and walk off without it. You’re the only one who can be trusted with it – with anything. You’re good at your job. And yet, he resents the fact that Martha’s about to lump you with even a fraction of responsibility for the next four days.

So when the Rolls pulls off and Martha is nothing but a pin-sized silhouette through the back window, still waving from the sidewalk, he pinches the folder in two fingers and tosses it to his left hip. Out of your grasp. You smile, eyes rolling, and pop your earbuds in. Joel breathes a laugh, eyes dipping again to skim read some contract on his phone. His hand is locked around your thigh. He likes that you just let him do it now.

Likes a lot of things about you. Likes that you put your music on shuffle, and then skip eleven tracks until you find one you actually want to listen to. Likes that your fingers twirl around the light chain of your necklace – the way they do anytime you’re nervous – and when he asks if you’re alright, you bareface lie to him and squeak, Yep.

Likes the glow the morning sun casts on you when you emerge from the car on the tarmac, pooling in the dimples on your cheeks, bright gold. The way you tug on the loose cotton of your sweatpants, bashful. Shy. And he likes that, when he follows you up the steps to the plane cabin, your awestruck expression lasts all of five seconds before that quick wit kicks straight back in.

“Feelin’ pretty guilty about all the air pollution,” you tell him, and Joel silently says his fifth thankful prayer this morning that he thought to ask you and not Martha.

He watches you settle into a seat by the window, watches you crane your neck to survey the view from the tiny circle of thick glass. He thinks about what he’d do if you were alone right now, if there weren’t crew slowly filing into the jet behind him.

He floats the idea. Tells you about the bedroom up back, tells you it’s cozy. You read between the lines just like he wants you to. And when the plane’s in the air, you follow after him.

You fall into bed together the same way you do when you arrive at the hotel. A tangle of limbs, of sweat and stuffy plane air. He sleeps the soundest he has in months – years, maybe. Pushed off by the sound of your breathing, the dip in the mattress by his side. The warmth which radiates from your body, the soft brush of your hand against his.

He puts it down to the travelling – the eight-hour flight, the plushy super king waiting on the other side. He puts it down to the way the world feels different, this side of the Atlantic. The privacy he feels come over the two of you, like sneaking into the next room: your voices muffled through the wall, your movements reduced to vague shadows beneath the door.

He watches you through sleepy eyes as you prance around the suite in the morning, twirling in and out of the bathroom while you get ready for the day. He wonders if this is what you’re like every day – if you spend your Monday mornings beaming like a little kid, toothbrush hanging lopsided from the corner of your mouth, white bubbles lining your gums. He wonders why he’s wondering. Why a part of him wants to see that version of you, too.

This version – now following his lead down Avenue Montaigne, doe-eyed and wonderstruck – is over all too soon. He’s dragged from her, from you, before he’s ready to leave.

His phone vibrates in his pocket right as he’s leading you out of some ridiculously overpriced jewelers – an irritating reminder of his meeting in an hour’s time.

“Fuck,” he whispers, holding you steady as you spin around to glimpse at the baroque building. “Hey, pretty girl,” he squeezes your hand, “I got some bad news.”

Your bottom lip pouts, eyes gleaming. It’s enough, he thinks, to convince him to stick around. If you asked him to, he’d text Jean-Marc right now and tell him to fuck off. But you tell him to go, tell him you’ll meet him back at the hotel once he’s done and you’re tired. With a teasing smirk and a tiny wave, you see him off down the cobbled street. He watches from the back window as you set off again, heading towards another iron-gated store.

Denis pulls up alongside the towering hotel, totters around the car to meet Joel as he stretches out of the Maybach. The square-jawed man stands with his hands linked, and nods enthusiastically when Joel thanks him.

“The shopping – I will take it back to the hotel,” he assures his boss, a wide smile on his lips.

He’s a good guy, Denis. He’s chauffeured Joel to five of these meetings over as many years – he knows the drill by now. Knows it’ll be a couple hours and a few whiskeys before he gets another call to pick him up.

His nodding doubles, more obedient when Joel asks him to make sure he listens for your call. “You mind stayin’ nearby that part of town?” he asks. “Just so – when she’s done, y’know…”

“Not at all,” Denis says, flapping two palms to the ground. Swatting away Joel’s concern, his worrying, his missing you.

He replies, a little absentmindedly, passing by the head of gray hair with a distant smile. “Thanks, Denis. See you later.”

Five meetings, five trips over here to be pestered by some obnoxious little man in an obnoxious little robe and obnoxious little loafers, and still, Joel never knows what to expect. He strides beneath the golden archway entrance into a domed lobby, every surface spotless and shining; marble counter in the center with a symmetrically-suited clerk sat behind.

She stands and smiles politely to Joel as he approaches, recognizing him with a flutter of her eyelashes. He feels the absence of your arm on his, an ache at his elbow.

“Monsieur,” she croons, pale fingers reaching for the telephone. She whispers something softly into the receiver and then nods, folding her painted lips together as she places the handset back into its cradle. With a floating hand aimed at the elevator behind her, she says, sultry and dreamlike, “He is ready for you.”

Joel fights an eyeroll with every fiber of his being. He wanders round the circular desk, bunches his shoulders into the tight elevator, and jams his thumb into the button marked P.

The doors shudder open when he reaches the top floor. He steps out slowly, waiting for the Frenchman to pounce on him like some kind of wild cat. Wouldn’t put it past him, Joel thinks. As he’s scanning the room, counting the six bouquets dotted around, there’s a single clap from behind the veiled curtains. A silhouette out on the terrace.

Jean-Marc swings between the sheer white, calling out to the lonely figure in his entryway. “If it isn’t my favorite American,” he sings, taking Joel by the arms and squeezing roughly. “How lovely to see you again, Joelie. Please, come.”

The sunlight blinds Joel when he steps out into it, peering over the city skyline under low brows. Jean-Marc is already sat at the top of a thin, glass table, pouring golden whiskey into a square glass and scooping two bulky ice cubes in. The nectar swirls around when the glass is held out to Joel, the ice tittering as he accepts it.

The table, a rocky terrain of pain au chocolat and brioche, pools of citrus spreads and dishes of butter. Joel keeps his hands to himself as Jean-Marc slaps jam onto a croissant, bronze flakes fluttering all over the table as he attempts to regale Joel with some investment into a casino.

“Riccardo says it is too much; I told him to go to hell. We will double the cost of the place, I know it, Joel. We have the eye for things like these, men like you and I, hm?”

Men like you and I, Joel thinks, lips tilting. He balances the glass on his thigh, watches the ice cubes turn over themselves. He thinks of you, thinks of the man you see him as. Thinks how tall he stands against the man Jean-Marc must see sat opposite him right now.

Thinks how rotten, and ugly, and how small the latter is. How easily you and your words could crumble him. All show, all sitting on perfect terraces with pretentious dickbags disguised as friends, drinking pissy whiskey with a plastered smile on his lips.

How comical it all is – the sound of yapping across the tabletop, These idiots would pay millions for manure if you painted it golden, the sprawling sheets of green-leafed plants, the headache-inducing flowers, the buckled loafers and the signet ring catching the sun.

How much he misses the weight of you on his hips, forearms flat on his chest, ear against his heart. The sound of your laughter lilting in his ear. The rosy smell of your skin and the feel of your eyelashes, featherlight on his cheek. He feels the distance between the two of you like elastic strung apart, stretching thinner and thinner, weaker and frailer, ready to snap into two halves at any moment.

“Anyways,” Jean-Marc says, lifting the wine bottle shakily. It clinks brashly against the lip of his glass, a painful scrape. Joel wonders if he’s already halfway to hammered. “Tell me how you’ve been, Joelie.”

Joel tells him he’s been fine. Business is fine. Money is fine. Company’s doing fine. Everything’s fucking fine. Easiest answer to avoid further questioning, to satiate Jean-Marc’s constant thirst for news, or intel, or just plain gossip.

He slips up, though. Makes the one colossal mistake he spent all morning hoping and praying and drilling directly into his brain that he wouldn’t.

Jean-Marc asks how his flight was, sticking the damp end of a cigarette to his bottom lip.

Joel says, “Good, yeah. We got here, maybe, ten o’clock last night.”

And Jean-Marc’s eyebrows arch. His hands freeze, match held against the striker strip. “We?” he asks, white stick flapping between his teeth.

“Uh,” Joel shifts in his seat. Your gentle wave, the corners of your lips, the toss of hair over your shoulder. It’s as though Jean-Marc can see his thoughts played on a reel before him, the haste with which Joel attempts to wipe you from his own mind. “Yeah,” he clears his throat, “Jerry ‘n Lisa. Len and Pol.”

The Frenchman’s eyes narrow, a grin pulling on his pink lips. “We,” he says again, whipping the match roughly against the strip. Speaking into cupped hands, a cloud of white billowing from his leathery fingers, he murmurs, “Joel brought company with him to Paris, yes? Who is the lucky tourist? Une petite amie?”

Joel’s tongue dabs at the sickly wash of whiskey on his lips. He thinks to grab the fucker by the throat, throttle him until the idea of you rattles from his skull, spilling back into Joel’s safe hands where you belong.

He almost fucking lies. Almost says it’s just Martha, or Drew, or his fucking mother. But Jean-Marc is like a rat, scurrying along after a source of water. He’ll find it in the end. They always do.

He breathes your name, reluctant to let it go. Jean-Marc cocks his head, leans in, a swirling snake of silky smoke lifting from the cigarette between his fingers. Joel repeats it, voice louder, but flatter. Breaks it into too many syllables. Lets his host hear every bite of annoyance.

“She’s my assistant,” he says, and Jean-Marc claps again.

“Your assistant! How wonderful. And where is she today? She is not…” his fingers circle the air, disturbing the trail of smoke, “…assisting you?”

“Gave her the afternoon off.” Joel lifts his glass to his lips. The geometric shape amplifies his voice, bass like the growl of a bear. “Busy couple days. She deserves some downtime.”

He hates the sound of your name as it peels from Jean-Marc’s tongue. Like a hangnail, the residue a gorge of bloody, torn skin. Your name is Joel’s favorite sound, he realizes now, and the way this little asshole keeps butchering it boils an anger so hot and so quick under his skin that he’s not sure he can hold it at bay.

It’s not as if he owns you or your name – far from it. He has no desire to be anything more than a placeholder: somewhere for you to slot your hand, rest your head, curl your body against. Still, he feels a direct protectiveness over you right now. An impulse to stand in front of Jean-Marc’s tiny figure, arms wide, stopping him from picturing you or learning about you or meeting you.

Which is, of course, exactly what the little fucker suggests.

A wet pff sound as he rids his mouth of bitter smoke, and he offers to host breakfast in the morning.

“No, no, we, uh –” Joel’s hands are up, like pleading with the man, whiskey kissing the lip of its glass, “– you don’t have to – Look, Jean-Marc, I’m sure you’re busy enough with all –”

“Nonsense!” Jean-Marc waves a hand. Ash sprinkles down the cuff of his robe. “It would be my pleasure. Shall we say, ten?”

Joel grumbles, eye following the flight of a bird in the distance. What are you doing right now? Are you back in the suite, trying on the outfit you picked out together? Are you still wandering down the streets, drinking up the lavish city like a perfect little cocktail of bliss and wonder?

And what the fuck does he have to do to excuse himself, to come find you, to wrap his arms around you and never let you leave his side again?

He feels idiotic. Juvenile. Like a stupid little teenager, pining for his junior year girlfriend. The feelings all sharp and brittle, prodding his heart roughly anytime he thinks too hard on them.

When he looks back to Jean-Marc – the cigarette tearing closer and closer to his fingers, an expectant smile on his lips – he concedes.

“Ten is fine,” he says, and suddenly, the sky casts over.

You’re on the terrace when he finally returns to the hotel room. Head aching from the alcohol and forced conversation, he drags himself over to you.

The sight of you, hair lifting in the breeze, the sweet smell and soft touch under his hands feels like the pouring of honey on a raw throat, like cool water lapping at his waist on a scorching day. And he needs more, and he feels the saliva pool beneath his tongue, and you’re touching him and talking to him and all he can think about is replacing his saliva with you – with every drop of you that you’ll lend him.

You follow his every request – parting your legs, making room for him between them, opening yourself to him like coming home after work, like sinking deep into your shared bed, like pushing your salt-slicked fingers on his tongue and chanting taste me taste me love me need me.

Petals opening, shards of orange separating. His cock throbs in his pants when he feels the circle of your hips against his jaw, the taste of sweet, sweet nectar spilling from your center. His clothes still smell of the smoke from Jean-Marc’s weedy lips; the sweat on his skin borne from three hours sat in the sun, dehydrated by whiskey, discussing money and gold and then money again.

He doesn’t want to fuck you here, like this. As that puny, pompous prick he’s felt like since the second he wandered through the Frenchman’s hotel doors. He can’t. You deserve him clean, new. You deserve the Joel you think he is – yours. Affected by your touch alone, moved by the gleam in your eye. You deserve him, Joel decides, on your terms.

And that same night, stood in the same spot, dregs of sunlight replaced by molten moonlight, staring at the dazzling Eiffel Tower against the deep blue sky – that same night, when he turns and clocks the silhouette of your body just feet from him, he realizes that this is it.

He’s sure he thinks you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on, standing in the dim light, your fingers playing with the bust of the silk robe draped over your body. The jewelry on your neck catching the light like his own private attraction, his own little spectacle. Just for him.

He forgets any other version of himself. Shakes them off like seawater flying from his body as he emerges from the ocean. Venus stood before him; hair lifting in the light, palm over her breast. And he doesn’t notice the departure of those old versions; doesn’t feel the way they tear from his skin. His eyes are glued on you, only you, everything around the two of you reducing to dark matter. There is only his awestruck gaze pointed to your radiant form, as though the scene sits alive in the eye of Botticelli or Michelangelo.

Baby, he whispers, and you move forward, dragging him with you under a wave of lust and rebirth.

He stirs the next morning to the feeling of a weight shifting across his body, two divots in the mattress either side of his waist. Something nuzzling, warm and featherlight, into the nook below his earlobe. Wet kisses trailing down his neck.

There’s no weight of you in the crook of his arm anymore. He’s scooping thin air. He lifts it, and his palm meets the baggy cotton of his own T-shirt, draped over your body, draped over him.

A laugh brushes between his lips. “Mornin’, darlin’,” he croaks, voice still low and broken.

“Hi,” you whisper back, voice like silk and sugar and tufts of lustrous clouds.

He opens his eyes and you’re hovering over him. Tip of your nose circling his, hips light as air across his own.

You look so fucking cute, he thinks. He’d take what he had last night – you, dripping in black lace and bound by satin straps – every night for the rest of his life, if he could. If you’d grant him it. But, this. This.

You – in Joel’s clothes and nothing else. You – the curl of your hair now a lazy wave, the smoky afterthought of your half-removed makeup. The smell of sex still lingering on your skin, the taste of Joel still home on your tongue. Each part of you laced with a part of him.

You – holding yourself up over him, less than an inch apart, and all Joel thinks to do is wrap his arms around your back and let you drop onto his body; his strong, solid body, which accepts the weight of you with only so much as a tiny grunt over his lips when you fall on top of him.

You giggle. He swears he feels butterflies in his stomach. He prays you don’t feel them, fluttering purposefully against your ribcage.

“You’re an idiot,” you mumble into his collarbone, words curled by the smile on your lips. You suck a mark into the hot skin, teeth and flesh and sel et sucre, and then push off from his chest, nudging his thighs wider with your knee.

Your tongue drags a wet trail down his chest, from solid sternum to suppler stomach, following the thickening of hair the lower you move. You leave wet kisses along the crests of his hipbones, the gentle slope of skin leading you to the wide base of his cock, already stiff.

Joel’s breath hitches when your tongue sweeps across it. Your eyes lift and lock with his, fingers taking a heavy hold of him. He smiles, tongue sitting patiently behind his teeth.

“Go on, angel,” he nods, “put that pretty little mouth on daddy.”

You obey instantly, as hungry for it as he is, your tongue swiping from the base of him up, curling around as you reach the head. Swollen, gleaming, slit dripping with slick precome that you lick with just the tip of your tongue and send a roll of pleasure across every nerve in Joel’s body.

He falls back, hands searching for the back of your skull as your lips sink further down down down, tightening around the smooth skin, stopping only when they meet the tuft of hair decorating his dick. His tip pushes against the back of your throat. His head begins to spin.

His back arches, hands anchored on your head, holding you steady as you bob up and down. His shoulders push heavy into the mattress, tummy sucks in until the points of his ribcage mold through his skin. And, oh – you’re so soft with it, so wet and so warm and so good with your tongue, kitten licks over his tip, wet fist wrapped tight around the width of him.

You lift your hand and meet his halfway up his stomach, fingers intertwining, Joel’s knuckles instantly whitening.

“Doin’ so good, baby,” he groans, gasping when your throat constricts around him again.

You gag, choking with a wet grunt, but you never pull away. A quick pause, a heavy breath from your nostrils, and your movements resume.

“’s alright,” Joel coos, fingers rubbing against the back of your hand, “you got it. Atta-girl, fuck.”

His hips begin to lift, slowly jerking up into your mouth. He looks down, loosens the grip you have on his hand only to run his thumb delicately across your cheek, dabbing lightly at the tears in the corner of your eye.

You suck hard around him, cheeks hollowing, tongue flattening to his underside to let him fuck your mouth – a rhythm of sopping sounds and heartbeat hums from your throat. He’s close. He’s so fucking close.

“Just like that,” he tells you, and you blink up at him. Moans muffled by the mouthful of cock, saliva and sex slipping from your swollen lips. “Fuck, baby, I’m gonna come. You’re such a good girl – you want daddy to give it to you?”

Mhm, you mumble into the warmth of his cock, the vibration of your throat on the eager skin enough to send Joel over the fucking edge. He throws his head back, lifts his hips up to you, and fills your mouth at the same rate he fills the room with the sound of his orgasm.

You take every last drop. You’re so good for him. Once he stills, once the screaming in his ears subsides, once the room slowly desaturates back to normal, a faded, blurry normal – he sits up and hooks his hands under your arms, pulling you up into him.

You collapse against his chest for the second time this morning, giggling and licking the last of his come from your mouth. Joel guides your jaw towards his, lips meeting in the middle, and licks the salty aftertaste from your tongue.

He rolls you both over, your thighs sitting safe on his hips.

“I know,” you sigh, head rolling against the curve of his arm beneath, “I know. You don’t gotta tell me.”

“Tell you what, angel?” he asks, one eyebrow lifting.

“Best head you ever had. I know.”

He scoffs, lips finding the hinge of your jaw. You giggle into his ear, a sound softer than birds cooing at the break of dawn, sweeter than the first bite of ripe fruit – the sharp taste bursting across his tongue and coating his teeth in sugar, numbed by the holy coaxing of feathered doves.

“You’re good with it, I’ll give you that,” he murmurs, and the giggle erupts into a laugh which fuels him enough to follow your roll out of bed, tear his shirt from your shoulders, and slip into the shower behind you, kneeling before you when you turn to look.

Joel’s second encounter with Jean-Marc in as many days, goes about as well as the first.

He balls his fists as he introduces the pair of you, watches like a caged and bound animal as Jean-Marc’s eyes loop all around your face, your shoulders, the pull of your dress around your waist.

He knows he’s being quiet. The glances you keep stealing at him tell him you know it, too. He wishes there was something he could say, something his lips might be able to carve into a neat little sentence. Tongue sanding the jagged edges of what he’d really like to say into a joke, a quip to ease the tension you so obviously feel.

But he can’t. His tongue isn’t blunt, isn’t defensive. It’s sharp like the kiss of venom, protective and aggressive. He knows he’d do better to hold it tight between his teeth.

The best he finds himself able to do is keep a heavy hand on your thigh, let you wrap your fingers around his own, squeeze you in place of whispering in your ear.

You hold your own, up against Jean-Marc. He knew you would. He learned less than a week into working with you, not to underestimate you. Your quick tongue, the million and one observations hidden behind the flash of a frown. He knows you can read Jean-Marc – probably better than he can, having known the guy ten years.

It doesn’t make it feel any safer, though. Luring you into a lion’s den. He knows you’ll make it out alive, but he can’t stand the thought of the claw marks in your skin.

That feeling washes over him again – that urge scored so deep into his bones that it hits marrow, to put himself between you and anything which might come to harm you. He swallows it down with the acidic sting of orange juice – slots it somewhere safe in his chest until he can assess whatever the fuck it is. Whatever the fuck it means.

His hand tightens around your leg when Jean-Marc mutters something to his assistant. Joel decides against asking you what it means, for fear he’ll tear the Frenchman limb from limb, strips of satin robe strung across the paved patio.

The assistant – tall, thin, looming over you like impending doom on legs – offers to show you the view of the city. And as Jean-Marc settles into your empty chair, the image of that torn satin robe shunts closer towards reality.

“I wonder if you might indulge me,” Jean-Marc slithers, pinching thin air with one hand and resting the other on the back of Joel’s chair.

“I wonder,” Joel mutters, finger tapping angrily on the table.

“She is a wonderful character. Beautiful, and very smart, I can see. I would be crazy not to ask, you must understand, Joel –”

He can’t help himself. He bites before Jean-Marc lays the trap. His head shakes. “She’s – she’s –”

And suddenly there isn’t a single word in the English dictionary worthy of describing you. Not a single combination of letters, of sounds, of syllables and phonetics that would do you justice.

He settles for, “I wouldn’t be anywhere without her.” It feels fucking redundant. It is fucking redundant.

Jean-Marc nods. “And you know that I see the value in things, hm?”

Joel dead-eyes his opponent, gaze narrowing. “What are you sayin’, Jean-Marc?”

“Well,” he shrugs, gesturing to the shadow pointing out the Eiffel Tower, “Paul is fantastic. Dedicated, hardworking. But it is a lot, for one person. I am sure you can understand, being that you have two assistants yourself.”

“And you wanna take one of ‘em out from under me?”

Jean-Marc chuckles, shaking his head. Tutting. Teeth grinding. He senses the bitter tone, hears the distortion of words squeezing through gritted teeth. “Not at all, my dear Joelie, not at all.”

Placating. It pisses Joel off more.

“I simply would like to raise the question of: would she like to be…taken?”

“Taken?”

“Hired. By me.”

The smug grin which pulls over taut lips incites Joel with a desire to punch the luminous veneers from their gummy holders. His fist balls again, nails digging harshly into his palm. He swallows roughly.

“She seems…she seems happy enough where she is to me.” He glances over, catches your eye for a fleeting second before Paul’s ghostly hand perches on your shoulder and turns your attention away again. Resigned, he adds, “You would have to ask her. I ain’t speakin’ for her.”

Jean-Marc’s leer only grows. “Ask her,” he repeats, nodding. “That is an idea.” He pushes out of his chair with a squeal of wood across stone, calling to the party, “Why don’t we take a drive? There is so much of the city I would love to show you – both of you, of course.”

Before he knows it, Joel’s on his feet, too, panic hammering through every muscle in his body. He tosses some half-assed excuse to the breeze; a half-truth, a desperate attempt to pull you away from the beady eyes and sharp claws of Jean-Marc and his assistant, and back over to his side. He takes your arm and scatters, pulling you past four, five, six bursting bouquets, your heels clicking along the polished floor, your head spinning.

He can feel the blood thrashing through his veins as the elevator arrives back in the lobby. Can see the shadow of Paul the assistant still over your shoulder, the place his hand sat like charcoal on white linen. He feels red hot, anger mixed with panic mixed with a word he hasn’t let slip just yet. He covers it by answering your questions shakily, diverting the ones about the conversation on the terrace.

And then you’re back in the safety of Denis’s car. You’re back to being on your own, together. No third set of eyes watching your every move, studying you like you’re some doll to be observed, or worse. You’re touching him again, holding his arm, caressing his cheek. His breathing eases, his body relaxes into the backseat of the Maybach.

You tell him you’d like to see the Louvre. So Joel takes you to see the Louvre.

Joel Miller has never been in love.

He’s said it, sure. Said it plenty to Avery.

G’night, love you.

I’m so proud of you, sweet; I love you so much.

Thanks for makin’ dinner, babe, I love you.

It began to take the form of breath, passing over his tongue with as much ease and instinct as his lungs would push out air. She looked at him a certain way – he’d say he loved her. They’d talk about the future – he’d tell her he loved her. They fought, over his working hours or the interest rates at different banks or whose family to spend Christmas with – and he’d remind her he loved her.

He meant every single one. He did, truly, love her. He loved her auburn hair, the way it’d sweep over her shoulders like a wave of fire. He loved the way she would pause to take thirty photos of the sky at sunset. He loved how homely she was, how simple and warm she could be. Her recipe books lining the shelves in her kitchen. Her pajamas folded neatly at the foot of her bed, waiting for her at the end of the day.

He loved her enough to spend four years with her, a life split nearly down the middle. Never seeping into one another. His side of the bed, and hers. His items in the fridge, and hers. His fucking bathrobe, and hers.

But right now, standing in a jam-packed room, maneuvering awkwardly around museum guides and backpacked tourists, avoiding the knee-height glass barriers and dodging fucking selfie sticks – Joel knows: he has never been in love.

Not until the moment he turns from some headless bust to search the room – the dark marble walls and great, carved arches; the white Parisian sky illuminating everything in a pale glow. Not until he catches a glimpse of you amongst the sea of bodies – stood before the Venus de Milo, staring up in wonder at Aphrodite like she’s the first thing in the world you’ve ever truly seen. The gentle lean of her body, the low sling of marble fabric around her waist, the soft dimple of her navel.

The way your eyes scan every detail of her form – every fold draped over her thigh, ever chisel mark and chip in her torso. The round swell of her breasts and the wavelike swirl of her hair. Barely blinking, afraid to lose sight of her for even a second.

Joel’s never been in love. Not until this very moment.

He only turned to make some quip about…well, now he can’t fucking remember, can he? Something irrelevant. Something so mundane, so meaningless, so dull that he wishes he could take back every word he ever said to you and use the breath more wisely – use the time spent making stupid jokes and work orders, just to look at you. Watch you, like he is right now. Every other thought, every worry and concern drop weightlessly from his mind, with such ease that he doesn’t feel the loss.

Your fixed stare up at the statue’s set face, the slow pacing of your heels, ankles crossing over one another as you pivot around her. And the look of wonder on your face – as if Joel instantly recognizes eight-year-old you, thumbing through the pages of the first art book she was ever gifted, copying the curled hair and round shoulders of the marble goddess in a pencil sketch.

Haloed by the towering windows behind you, arms crossed over your chest. Lips melting from a content smile to agape, and then pinning back in a smile again.

And suddenly – he can’t remember the flame of hair over his ex’s shoulder. Doesn’t remember a single meal she ever cooked for him. In the blink of an eye, he realizes he doesn’t want a life neatly split anywhere.

He realizes that his life, the way he wants it, was always meant to be meshed with yours. Intertwined so tightly that there is no his and hers. Last night at dinner, you couldn’t decide between the bœuf bourguignon and the confit de canard, so Joel ordered both – as well as what he wanted – and the two of you picked at three separate meals. Holding out forkfuls to feed one another, comparing and judging them like professional chefs on a fucking cooking show.

Back at the hotel, you fell asleep in his arms. Your head nestled under his chin; your arms curved around his shoulders. In the center of the bed, laying at an angle. When he got up this morning, the robe he threw around himself smelled like your perfume. The terrycloth on your shoulders, tinged with the weak scent of whiskey.

None of it – not the relationship you had before any of this happened, not the strolling over one boundary to the next, not the blurring of lines between colleague, and friend, and lover – has been neat. None of it has made any sense. And maybe that’s why he fucking trusts it so much.

Joel spent the first two weeks after you fooled around in his office swearing he wasn’t that guy. Staring himself down in the mirror with a balled fist, a pointed finger that said, You don’t sleep with your fucking assistant, you idiot.

And now, standing opposite you in a crowded room and only seeing you – he knows. He finally gets it.

He loves you. He – no, fuck.

He doesn’t just love you.

He’s on his knees, dagger through his heart –

blood spilling all over the pristine floor –

pathetic and adolescent in its nature –

butterflies tearing through his stomach as destructive as a hurricane –

in love with you.

He thinks to say it. To wander over and kiss your shoulder, hook his chin into your collarbone like he did in the Dolce and Gabbana store, and whisper, Hey. I love you. Did you know that?

But he knows that’d be fucking insane. Knows you’d probably unstick yourself from him and back up, tripping in your step. Paris ruined.

He knows he’d probably get so far as curving around your back and then bottle it, anyway. The words would die in his throat. You’d just lean back into him, none the wiser. You’d still make his heart pound.

Pound the way it does when you reach for his wrist and drag him off into the next room, and the next, and the next. And with every piece of art your eyes fall upon, another fragment of your soul is revealed to Joel. The depth of da Vinci, the color of Bruyère. The scale of Veronese and the beauty of Canova.

And with every part revealed, a desire blooms in him to learn the next part. Understand you; know you better than he knows himself. See you, the way he’s seeing you right now.

He takes his ex’s lead, when you’re stood in front of the Mona Lisa. All those fucking sunset photos, like she was afraid to forget what it looked like. The thought becomes urgent, pushing past every other meaningless word in his head.

He taps you on the shoulder, says your name lightly. When you turn, he’s already holding the phone up, watching your delayed motions through the screen. Please don’t let me forget this. Don’t let me forget you, like this.

“Smile,” he says, and you do.

“You’re cheesy,” you tell him, wandering off from the painting.

He’s still staring at the photo. At your dimpled cheeks, your red lips. Staring at your eyes, seeing a new glint in them that wasn’t there before. Like eight-year-old you smiling back at him, trusting him, knowing him.

Joel breathes, “She’s beautiful,” taking your waist in a steady arm to guide you out of the room.

You misunderstand him. He knows it. He doesn’t correct you.

She’s beautiful – the Mona Lisa. But she only became beautiful the second you laid eyes on her. The second she handed you a piece of your soul, the transaction laid bare for Joel to witness. A bucket list item ticked, or simply your childhood self, stood before one of her own seven wonders.

Everything is only beautiful after it comes into contact with you.

There’s a change in you, the morning that you leave. Something low-lying, melancholy and blue. Joel feels it under your skin, in the grip you keep on his hand the entire car ride from the hotel to the airport.

“You good?” he asks, walking up the steps of the jet, shelled around you. Safe, with him, safe with him.

You nod, but you’re watching the Maybach roll off, rounding the corner back to the airport. The same way you watch the city disappear beneath the clouds as the plane takes off.

The same way you glance over to him, your glossy eyes twinkling, pearly tears swimming across your waterline. Joel gets it. Figures he feels much the same.

He leads you slowly back through to the dark cabin bedroom, where you peel the shirt and sweats from your body. He watches from the bed, arm outstretched and inviting you to burrow into his side, curl around his body, loop your legs through his. His own little Aphrodite, the curves and the dimples and all the beauty to go with her.

He sinks his shoulder to let you nuzzle into him, let your slow-closing eyes follow his movements like rocking you back and forth to sleep. You link your arm through his, locking your bodies tight together. Joel slows his typing down, moves gentler, so you can fall asleep without being nudged too much by his arm.

You mumble something into the sleeve of his tee. He pauses. Looks down at your already closed eyes, your parted lips.

“What’d you say, baby?”

You take a deep, slow breath. Already sleeping, he thinks. And then, in the sigh that escapes from your mouth, you whisper to him.

“Please don’t ever leave.”

#joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #ceo!joel miller #ceo!joel #sugardaddy!joel miller #the last of us #the last of us fic #tlou #pedro pascal #joel miller smut #sex on fire

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jaidens · 10 months

Text

Only Bought This Dress (So You Could Take It Off)

pairing [s] : miguel o’hara x reader

a/n : guys i really don't know.. except i want him..so

Whenever Miguel invited you to the Spider-Ball, you had no idea what to wear to be completely and totally honest. Your designer was confused whenever you showed her a picture of Miguel's suit and told her to work her magic. And your designer did such.

The colors of blue and red were prominent and it had a collection of dark-orangey red to compliment his webs. It was completely perfect and what you were thinking of without even explaining it. It was a soft silk fabric with lace covered around with strings of pearls.

You had found a matching lingerie set that would have surely made Miguel lose his mind. When he picked you up in front of your apartment you saw how when you walked down the steps in your long, stiletto red bottom heels and that dress he was anxiously moving in his seat and holding only small talk with you.

The limo stopped at a humongous, absolutely gorgeous building the event was being held at. Spider-Men and Women from all over were dressed to the Tens. The driver opened your door and held his hand out for you to grab. You thanked him graciously as you tangled your arm with Miguel's as he straightened out his suit and he looked down at you. “You look absolutely gorgeous tonight. I love this dress.” His hand touches your hip, rubbing across the delicate fabric. You smile up at him, tracing across his features and the moonlight that colors his face with beautiful carvings.

He helps you up the stairs, letting you use him as a guide to getting up with such tall heels and concrete steps aren't the best mix. His hand stays on your lower back, holding you closer to him when more and more people start to show up. When you walk into the beautiful ballroom, the white marble floors are covered with people and you look up at the expressive paintings that reside on the ceiling with admiration.

“Look at that ceiling. My goodness, it's absolutely gorgeous." Miguel looks up at it, and you get a sight of his neck, as it stretches “It’s pretty amazing." Miguel leaves to speak with another caterer of the party and you go talk to sweet Mary-Jane. Her bright red hair strikes you as she turns around quickly and drops her mouth open.

“Aren’t you just gorgeous? Oh my wow... I love this dress!” Mary-Jane compliments you while running her hand down your arm. “Look at you! I'm obsessed with those earrings." You and MJ hold small talk before Peter walks up behind her and pulls her away to the drink and food tables.

You find a conversation with Peter. You ask him about why he decided to come to the event. “It’s for charity, love. I'll always go to these types of functions if it's about charity.” You turn your head and see Miguel staring at you and Peter, and you're in for the game. You put your hand on his shoulder and you start laughing when he makes a joke about robbing banks.

But as the night reached its climax, a shadow was cast over the euphoria. My heart skipped a beat as I glanced toward the entrance, meeting the gaze of a familiar face. There he stood, his eyes narrowed with a simmering mix of anger and hurt. It was him—the man I had left behind, Miguel consumed by jealousy.

You continue such actions, just being more calm and touchy. You really only saw Peter as a brother and nothing more. Even after stating that multiple times, Miguel still got worried about him. The live concert band showed up and you got giddy and grabbed Peter's hand and asked him to dance. You were casually dancing with Peter until the switch partners part of the song began and someone grabbed your hand and pushed you close.

“Such a slut aren't you? We're going home after this dance.” Miguel is angry and you can tell. His words are cut off and you see his eyes slowly darken with lust and jealousy. You stare down and rest your head on his chest. “Acting all innocent now too.” You really weren't trying to act innocent. You were worried about beginning to do it because you knew how Miguel would act.

As we made our way through the crowd, I cast one last glance over my shoulder, yearning for the stranger who had stirred something within me. But all I found were empty eyes, longing for freedom that now seemed like a distant dream.

The sleek, midnight-black car cut through the city streets like a predator on the prowl. Inside, the air crackled with a mix of desire and jealousy, swirling around Miguel and me, creating an intoxicating tension. The dimly lit cabin was suffused with a primal energy that mirrored the storm brewing between us.

Miguel's hands gripped the steering wheel with an intensity that betrayed the seething jealousy consuming him. His jaw clenched, his gaze fixed on the road ahead, but I could feel his eyes flickering with a fiery mix of possessiveness and resentment.

Earlier that evening, we had attended a glamorous social event, where attention naturally gravitated toward me. Miguel had watched as I conversed and laughed with other men, his strong facade cracking with each flirtatious exchange. The allure of his jealousy fueled my desire, and now we found ourselves alone, confined within the intimate space of his car.

The engine's growl mirrored the tension pulsating between us, as Miguel's grip on the wheel tightened, his knuckles turning white. The silence was heavy, pregnant with unspoken words and simmering emotions, as we hurtled through the city streets with dangerous haste.

Unable to bear the weight of the unspoken, I ventured, my voice a gentle tremor, "Miguel, what's wrong?"

His gaze pierced through me, his eyes smoldering with a mixture of frustration and vulnerability. "You know damn well what's wrong," he muttered, his voice laced with a hint of accusation.

A shiver ran down my spine as I felt the air grow thick with his possessive aura. Miguel's simmering jealousy took on a life of its own, threatening to consume us both. I could sense the hunger in his touch, the burning desire to claim what he believed was rightfully his.

With a sudden swerve, the car veered into an empty parking lot, its tires screeching against the pavement. We came to an abrupt stop, the stillness amplifying the intensity of our emotions. Miguel turned to me, his dark eyes staring into mine, his breath shallow and uneven.

"What were you doing back there?" he demanded, his voice low and charged with a mix of anger and longing. "Flirting with Peter, teasing him with your charm."

A flicker of guilt danced across my features, mingling with the thrill of his possessive rage. "Miguel, it was harmless. Just a bit of fun."

His hand shot out, capturing my chin in a firm grip, his touch simultaneously tender and controlling. "Fun? Do you think I find pleasure in watching Peter vie for your attention?" His voice dropped to a husky whisper, laced with a possessiveness that sent a jolt of desire coursing through me. "You're mine, and I won't stand for it."

In that charged moment, the confines of the car became an arena for our desires and frustrations. The boundaries blurred as Miguel's lips descended upon mine, claiming me with a ferocity that matched the fiery jealousy burning within him. The car's interior became a sanctuary for our entangled bodies, as we surrendered to the intoxicating dance of lust and possessiveness, each touch igniting a passionate blaze that threatened to consume us whole.

In the passenger seat, you, a tantalizing and spirited woman, brace yourself for what you sense is about to unfold. The air is thick with tension as you exit the car, your heart pounding in anticipation.

Miguel storms around the vehicle, his movements exuding authority, and yanks open your door. Without a word, he seizes your wrist and pulls you out, his grip firm yet electric with desire. He gracefully opens the door to the large house and he starts angrily dragging you to the bedroom that you shared together. He flips the lights off and presses a button. The LED lights that sat above turned a dark red. His tan skin is even more beautiful and tantalizing than it was in the sunlight.

He pulls his tie loose and he throws you onto the cleanly made bed. You bend your elbows to catch your fall. You put your knees up and close your thighs together, giving a sort of pleasure that was becoming single-handedly harder to hold back from Miguel. He begins to kiss your neck, sending a tingling sensation through your body. His hands move to your waist, feeling the curves of your body before he presses his body against yours. You close your eyes, surrendering to the pleasure that Miguel brings.

His lips travel down to your collarbone, creating a trail of butterflies that spread throughout your body. You can feel the heat of his body against yours and your heart racing. His hands move to your back as he leans in closer, sending sparks through your soul. He looks into your eyes and your lips meet in an electric kiss. You're lost in the moment, feeling alive and full of passion. You never want it to end. You're stuck in this dream before you remember what got you into this mess. He pulls away angrily and rips the perfectly made dress off your body. You stand there, feeling exposed and embarrassed. "Flirting with Peter wasn't a good idea, was it? Or would you rather him fuck you? Your heart raced as he said those words. You felt ashamed. You knew you had to face the consequences of your actions and you were not looking forward to it. He pulls off his tailored suit and you have a full look at his strong chest.

Miguel crawls back onto the bed and he bites your neck. You moan out and grab at his back, your manicured nails scratching red marks on them. "Please.. touch me." You're completely embarrassed that you're begging for him after getting yourself stuck in this situation. He smiles, a wicked glint in his eye as he presses himself against you. His hands roam your body as he kisses your neck, his breath hot on your skin. You feel a wave of pleasure wash over you as you surrender to his touch. His hand runs down your body, tracing over the delicate lace that you were adorned in. Miguel's hand travels just under the waistband of the panties, teasing you further. "You like the taste of your own medicine? I bet you do."

His fingers skim the lace and travel further until they reach your core. He teases and tantalizes you until you can't take it anymore and you cry out in pleasure. Miguel smiles, satisfied with the power he holds over you. "Such a slutty baby. Bet you'll take anything anyone gives you?" You blush and shake your head, unable to find the words to respond. He grins and presses his lips against yours, letting you know he doesn't need your answer. Instead, he just wants to show you how much pleasure he can give you. You feel his fingers rub your clit in figure-eights. You're rubbing your hips against his hands. You're so close before you feel it; he rips his hands away and lays his fingers against your lips.

You accept his fingers into your mouth and suck them off your pleasure. You moan as he moves his fingers in and out of your mouth, savoring the taste of your arousal. His hands return to your clit and you're soon overcome with pleasure, arching your back as you reach your peak. He flips you over and pushes your head down into the soft pillows and pulls your ass up. You're staring at the mirror at his gorgeous body as he pulls his pants down and throws them on the floor.

You can feel his hand rub against your ass before you feel it, a harsh smack against it. You cry out and hear him speak, "I want you to count how many times I spank your ass. If you do it correctly, I'll treat you." You take a deep breath and start counting, determined to do as he asked. As the spanks continue, you feel a strange mixture of pleasure and pain. You grit your teeth and keep counting until he stops. You feel one last rub in a circle over the burning marks. "You did well, baby." He flips you back around and your head it sat between your pillows and he grabs a pillow next to your head.

You twist your body around to be on your back. You're staring into his dark, beautiful eyes. Miguel takes the pillow and sticks it under your ass. You're on display for him. Your legs spread wide to give him room to relax. His strong arms wrap around your thighs and you feel his breath on your core. He looks up at you with a smirk and then explores you with his mouth. His tongue and lips dance around your sensitive areas.

His lips move faster and faster, sending shockwaves through your body that cause you to arch your back and thrust your hips into his face. His tongue is like a warm, gentle wave, caressing you and making you feel more alive than you ever have before. You can feel your muscles tense up as you get closer and closer to the edge, and when you finally reach it you let out a loud, intense moan that echoes through the room.

"So good for me." He groans out as he comes back up from your core and your slick is on his chin and lips, shimmering in the light. Miguel sits up and you notice how tense his body is. He's hard, his tip is dark purple had gotten so worked up from eating you out and hearing your pleasurable moans that echoed throughout the room. You sit up and your hand travels down his abs and to his cock, stroking it. He leans back against the bed; his hands holding him up from falling, and you press your lips against his, tasting yourself and him. You can feel his heartbeat racing as you kiss him passionately. Your hand strokes him as he humps into your hand. "For how dominant you had been earlier... this is different."

Miguel looks up at you. His eyes have tears as you continue to stroke him. You can sense the vulnerability in Miguel as he looks up at you, his eyes glistening with tears. You can feel the emotion radiating off of him as his heart beats rapidly in response to your touch. He is letting you in, allowing you to see a side to him that he usually keeps hidden. You wrap your arms around him, holding him close. You whisper comforting words to him, assuring him that it's ok to let it all out. He relaxes in your embrace, feeling safe and secure in your presence. After a couple of quick thrusts, his abs tighten and he cums in your hand.

He holds you and you lay in his arms. “You did so good baby. Let’s go get you in the bath.” Miguel picks you up under your aching thighs and carries you to the bathroom that was in your room. He sets you down on the chair that sat in the bathroom. He turns on the bathtub and the water begins heating up. Miguel picks you up once more and sets you into the bath. Your body stretches out and you relax. You share I Love You’s and you lay down for the night.

#miguel o'hara x black reader #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x y/n #across the spiderverse fanfiction #miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara is my mans #miguel x you #miguel o'hara fanfiction #miguel o'hara smut #miguel o'hara fluff

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eywamygoddesswrites · 1 year

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— 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓬𝓬𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓽 — (sully family x fem!sully!reader)

pairing: sully family x fem!omatikaya!sully!reader

tags: mourning, getting therapy

warnings: lowercase intended, implied character death, angst

a/n: characters are aged up! this is inspired by that one tiktok audio and then my curiosity got the better of me and turns out, it was a whole youtube series and i was hooked on it. i've been wanting to make a fic based on that audio for a while but didn't know what characters to use. hope you guys enjoy despite it being angst ㅠㅠ

a/n 2: do you want a longer version of this oneshot? look no further because i will be making a short series based on the youtube series called "LUCIDS" and the masterlist can be found here!

word count: 1.1k

+ gif not mine. ctto.

y/n had been keeping herself busy for the past 3 months. she did everything to keep her mind off of everything. weaving baskets and nets like it was a project to give everyone in the clan, fishing for meals that can have her family full for 5 whole months, collecting and discarding every foraged stuff she could get from her endless walks, riding her ilu further and further beyond the reef just to feel something.

being the oldest of the sully kids was tiring but even being a sister wasn't able to make her feel anything. it was much more numbing than it should be. it made her distant from them.

lo'ak couldn't meet y/n in her eyes. it was like if they looked at each other, the walls they both built would crumble the second their gazes meet. it was like strangers being forced to get to know each other after knowing the horrible crimes they both did.

kiri was very concerned for her older sister. y/n exerts her energy beyond her capacity, does dangerous explorations beyond the reef, and sometimes come back with cuts and bruises, and how she would skip meals to finish all the projects she 'needs' to weave. she was overworking herself and in the 3 months y/n was busy, she had fainted countless times eventually norm and max were called when it kept happening.

tuk missed her big sister so much. she missed collecting pearls by the shore and being carried around while exploring the forest. she was scared at how y/n looked now. from once being a bubbly young adult who was curious and eager to learn something new to a drained-out, almost dead-looking na'vi who would kill people if she saw them looking at her weirdly.

if the three were concerned, imagine how her parents feel. it hurt jake and neytiri to see their oldest overwork herself to distract whatever she was feeling. jake knew how it felt like and he wanted to help his daughter badly. but each time he tried to talk to her, y/n would push him away further and further. she even hissed at him to make her point.

neytiri was angry and concerned. why was her daughter pushing her own mother away when all she wanted to do was help? y/n shouldn't push her away because as her mother, neytiri understands her more than y/n knows, or at least that's what she likes to think.

it was like y/n became a stranger that the sully's just allowed to stay in their home.

when y/n was fishing for dinner, her mind had been wandering elsewhere. her eyes stared down at the net she held as dread slowly filled her mind. it was like her sight was enlarging in front of her until she hears a distorted voice call out her name. "y/n."

she pulled away from her trance, eyes widening as her breathing became slightly erratic. y/n breathed in deeply through her nose and out through her mouth before her attention went to ao'nung, or what looked like ao'nung by the shore.

"hey there! just a quick update. tsireya is still swimming with the ikrans, who were gliding through the mountains on their bellies, then they ate an eye of a seaweed. now, the ilus and tulkans are fighting for some reason." ao'nung said, he was far away from y/n but somehow she heard everything clearly.

"oh… wow…" y/n says, clearly not understanding a single thing from what the metkayina had just said.

"how's your existential crisis coming along?" he asked so nonchalantly.

y/n was bewildered to say the least. this was the longest time she had held a conversation for how many months now.

"uh… fine?" she answered back but it sounded more like a question. "good!" ao'nung exclaimed back before turning around to leave when,

"ao'nung!" y/n immediately called for him, who turned back around to look. "can… can dreams also have memories?" that sounded wrong. "i mean, can you still have dreams even when you're dreaming?"

"oh, y/n. what else are memories if not dreams themselves?" ao'nung replies, not making as much sense as the question she asked.

"what–" "alright then, more soon!" ao'nung cuts her off before running off to eywa knows where.

y/n was left once again with her thoughts. she turns back to the net she was holding, only for it to be gone. this confused her and when she turned back to where the shore was, the next thing she knew, she was sitting on a giant rock.

"do you blame yourself?" the same distorted voice that called out her name earlier asked. distress filled her veins as she looked to where she heard the voice.

y/n's eyebrows furrowed. "what?" she asked. she saw herself, an exact copy of herself wearing human clothes that norm and max wear with a pen and paper held in her hands.

"well, it's quite common in this situation for a patient to feel a kind of guilt." her copy said, voice distorting more and more.

y/n's mind was in turmoil. "what situation?" she asked. the same dread she was feeling came into full force. her chest became heavy as it caused her to not breathe well.

her copy had this concerned look but the smallest of a smirk appeared on her lips, the following words leaving the copy's mouth. "the accident."

that's when y/n was transported back to the day neteyam had died.

she was there when he was shot through the chest. she knew the bullet was meant for her but he pushed her away and in turn, the faith of death fell upon him.

while the rest of her family had cried, she didn't. instead, she felt numb and angry. no other emotions filled her body except these two. it had helped her kill some sky people and some avatars when she came back to save kiri with her parents but after that, all y/n felt was numbness.

the heavy routine she placed upon herself became the only thing that made her feel something through the numbness she felt. it wasn't enough but at least it was something.

the same distorted voice came back. "it's very common for people to invent blame or create a causality" then the voice became normal in an abrupt manner, and her surroundings turned to norm's lab where he used his avatar and where they were able to breathe normally. "when in reality, it was completely out of your control." norm's voice was soft as he talked to the young na'vi in front of him, who in turn was staring off through the distance.

the forest where she and neteyam grew up, only for her brother to never come back home.

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mikkomacko · 9 days

Text

Him and I: Meet the Hischiers

Pairing: Mob Boss! Nico x Reader

Warnings: Alcohol, Nico's crappy parents, and mean girls

A/n: Ok I'm so sorry for how long this is, oh my god. I couldn't not add sweet moments between Nico and reader though, but I promise there's only one more chapter of them in Switzerland before they return to Jersey. Anyway, enjoy and please leave comments and thoughts and requests because I love writing mob boss Nico!

~~~~

Nico’s childhood home is humongous. The SUV rolls up the cobblestone driveway to what you’d consider a mansion, honestly. At least three stories, with fields of snow covered grass and hedges, a looping driveway like at a hotel, and a bright red door.

Everything about it screams elegance.

And yet you can picture a tiny Nico toddling after his older siblings in the grass out front, chasing a soccer ball that was half the size of him.

The mental image eases your nerves enough that you’re able to teasingly scoff and smack at Nico’s arm.

“You didn’t tell me your house is the size of New Jersey!”

Nico rolls his eyes at your drama, taking your hand in his and shrugging. “Yes it’s beautiful,” he agrees “but there’s a reason we’re not staying here. Just remember that, ok?”

Dutifully you nod, but that doesn’t stop you from leaning forward to gape at Timo. Your friend just laughs, directing the car into the spot directly in front of the door.

“The Hischier’s are the closest thing to a royal family here,” he tells you. “And Nico is the delinquent prince that ran away from the crown.”

“Stop lying to her Timo.” Nico interjects, his tone hard and commanding. You immediately sink back into your seat, recognizing that for some reason that was a touchy subject.

You’ll ask him about it later when it’s just the two of you.

This time when the car stops, it’s different men in wool coats that pull open Nico’s car door. They greet him in Swiss German, nodding as he slides out and you follow, taking his outstretched hand and stepping onto the stone path.

They look taken aback by your presence, both sharing a look you can’t quite read before greeting you with a simple “miss.”

You smile, wrapping your hand around Nico’s bicep and pressing into his side. Timo falls into step with you, walking alongside as you head for the front door.

Walking into Nico’s childhood home is more like walking into a recently sterilizes hospital room than a house that three children grew up in. Everything is pristine, polished, and pearl white (or beige).

Not a single item in the main room indicates that a family lives here at all. Even the portrait of a man with a thick mustache and sharp nose hanging over the staircase isn’t friendly.

“Wow,” you breathe out, looking over at Timo. He must read the look in your eyes because he nods just once, clearing his throat when Nico shoots him a look over the top of your head.

“Come on baby,” Nico tells you, guiding you further into the house. “They’re probably in the sitting room.”

The sitting room is like a living room, only colder and not exactly lived in. His family is scattered around the large room, perched on white overstuffed furniture. The first to greet you is a light haired woman, and as soon as she smiles you know this is his mother.

“Nico darling!” She exclaims in an accented voice, one that resembles his but with a tone of superiority. Rising from the sofa, she waves the man next to her up. Even if you were seeing him through fogged glass you’d be able to tell he’s Nico’s father.

They have the same nose, same dark eyes that crinkle by the edges. He’s shorter and less broad than Nico, but their posture and gait are the same. Even the way his dark grey hair falls is similar to Nico’s.

They’re carbon copies of each other.

“Son,” the man greets, buttoning up his suit jacket. “The rumors were true then?”

“Rumors?” Nico asks, and his lack of greeting to his parents makes your stomach drop. Throughout the entirety of your relationship you never imagined Nico’s relationship with his family to be like this.

“Word from the airport was that you brought a guest.” His mother supplies, a polite smile being thrown at you. You return it, hanging to Nico’s bicep like a lifeline. Suddenly you feel pathetic, a random American girl pressed at the hip to the heir of a mob family that stretches three countries and two continents. Hiding in the shadow casted by not only Nico but Timo as well.

Maybe it’s a good thing Sieges and the others didn’t come along.

“Timo insisted on tagging along,” your boyfriend jokes and if you weren’t so stunned and stupid you would have laughed. “This,” he continues, prying his arm from your hold to wrap around the small of you back “isn’t a guest, she’s family.”

Steeling your nerves, you take a steady step forward. “Y/n,” you introduce, holding your hand out to his father. “It’s a pleasure to meet you sir.”

He takes your hand, squeezing gently as you meet his gaze. For looking so much like his son, he doesn’t actually resemble him. His eyes are threatening and dark rather than comforting and warm like Nico’s. Even the twitch of his lips feels like it was a muscle spasm.

“Rino,” he tells you. “But sir works better.”

You nod in agreement, now reaching out towards his mother. She’s just as calculated when it comes to introducing herself, her tone haughty and amused as she says “Katja.”

“Wonderful to meet you,” you say, smiling warmly despite the thudding of your heart against your ribcage.

“You as well,” she responds, then shoots her son a look. “I’m afraid we haven’t heard much about you y/n, or anything at all for that matter.”

Ignoring the blow, you settle back into Nico’s side. Timo cuts in, greeting them you think but you can’t really hear him over the voice in your head desperately reminding you that Nico loves you, Nico wants you here.

It’s not until Nico’s nose is pressed to your temple that you snap back into reality. “Breathe y/n,” he whispers, his voice just a tickle in your ear but strong and encouraging. “You’re doing perfect.”

Coming back to yourself, you take his hand in thanks as Katja directs her attention to the few men milling about the room. She speaks to them in Swiss German, an order obviously if them scurrying out of the room is anything to go by.

With her and Rino no longer focused on you for the moment, you helplessly look up at Nico. He’s already watching you, not even a hint of a smile on that handsome face of his. Even so, his gaze is solid and proud, and the subtle tilt of his head tells you enough.

It’s ok.

Your breath shudders, feeling weak under those eyes that know and read you so well. You look away, biting at the inside of your cheek to stop the welling feeling of tears. You have to stop before you let your thoughts run too wild, plagued by images of the sweet man before you living under the scrutinizing gazes of this family.

It’s difficult to even picture how he turned into the Nico you know and love.

The return of the workers distracts you, this time a man and woman following behind them. Another copy of Nico, his brother looks like he could be the elder twin of your boyfriend. The hair, the nose, the jawline, the walk. Must be a Hischier man thing.

And the woman, so obviously his sister, physically resembles Katja but her eyes hold that same twinkle that lights up Nico’s eyes.

“Luca, Nina-“ Katja says warmly. “Your brother is here. With guests.”

Nico sighs, anything he might say remaining unspoken when Nina steps between the two sides.

“Family, Mama.” She corrects, sending you a friendly wink. Like a million bricks have been lifted off your shoulders, you visibly relax at her welcoming.

“Nina,” she tells you “you have no idea how excited I am to meet you.”

She doesn’t hold out a hand, instead stretching out both arms to you. Laughing nervously, you accept her embrace, briefly squeezing her in appreciation and introducing yourself.

“Never thought I’d see Nico with such a beautiful woman,” she teases, an underlying sincerity in her words that warms your cheeks. “He must’ve finally learned how to shower properly.”

Nico mockingly laughs behind you, grumbling in his native tongue to his sister but he’s quick to hug her smaller frame. You almost laugh when he tucks into her shoulder, curling in like he’s supposed to be smaller than her. Like a younger sibling that’s forgotten he’s grown to be the tallest.

Luca greets you, not as warmly as Nina but with more friendliness than their parents. He plants two polite kisses to your cheeks, squeezing your biceps awkwardly before jumping into reuniting with Nico. Nina stands by her mother’s side, nodding at you just once as Katja and Rino tell Nico and Luca something you don’t understand.

Resilience renewed, you turn your head to Timo and he leans down so you can whisper in his ear. “You have to teach me something in German, I’m drowning here.”

He chuckles quietly, leaning into your ear. “I’ll try again but I’m not a miracle worker honey.” You blink at him, jabbing your elbow into him in annoyance. He does it back, jolting you and your gearing up to hit him back when a firm hand is reaching around your back and taking a hold of your elbow.

Easily and swiftly, Nico pulls you into his side. By the way Timo straightens up, you’d imagine he’s been silently scolded by his boss. Smirking, you bat your eyelashes at him and innocently press into Nico’s hold.

“We’ve prepared lunch, if you’re hungry.” Katja offers but she’s already directing everyone to another room. The three of you follow obediently, not having any other option really.

~~~~

Lunch is better than the family reunion that took place in the sitting room. With the distraction of food and a cook and his siblings, Katja and Rino don’t even spare you a second glance or get a chance to grill Nico about anything.

Anytime the Devs or New Jersey comes up, Luca or Nina will steer the conversation away. You’re sure it has something to do with everyone avoiding the topic of Nico’s leave of absence and lack of contact for the past few years, but you can’t be certain because it’s never said.

Nico has a hand on you throughout the whole meal, either lacing his fingers with yours or resting comfortably on your thigh. He makes sure that you eat enough, that your water is ok, that you don’t want more helpings. It’s sweet, the way he always communicates through his actions. Maybe he didn’t prepare you enough for this encounter like he should’ve, but physically he’s been here and done everything to let you know that he has your back.

Besides, after listening to his family carefully navigate around unsavory topics over lunch, you can see why he struggles with words.

Especially when his mother is hell bent on making it uncomfortable. The plates have barely been cleared away when she’s zeroing in on her youngest.

“I suppose it’s time you tell us why you’ve come back,” she says airily. “Or rather why you left?”

Nico’s fingers tighten around yours, eyelids fluttering in annoyance as he suppresses an eye roll. “Mother-“

“Everything was set up Nico,” she cuts in. “The house, the branch, Len-“

“That’s enough!” He cuts off gruffly, silencing Katja. You stroke your thumb over his knuckle, unsure of how to navigate him like this in front of his family. It’s different at home where you have a place, where it’s your job to step in and protect the boys from his angry bouts. But this is different, uncharted. You don’t have a spot in the lives of his family let alone a place to interject. Hell, you don’t even know the context of why Nico left either.

“Watch the tone Nico,” Rino says casually, “that’s your mother.”

Sighing, Nico shakes his head. “I’m here for the week, take it or leave it. And I didn’t come to answer questions you already have the answer for.”

You watch him look around the large table, meeting everyone gaze with a firmness he only gets on jobs and deals. When he receives a simple hum from his mother, he turns to you.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he says quietly, rising from his seat. You follow his lead, pushing your chair back in and sharing a nervous look with Timo.

Nico addresses his parents. “I’m gonna show y/n around the grounds.” Then he’s nudging you towards the hall, large hand on your back as you go.

“Put on a coat Nico!” His mother calls after you and he waves over his head in acknowledgment. You’re silent all the way back to the front door, putty in Nico’s hands as he zips you into your winter coat and slips his beanie over your head.

Returning the favor, the zip his own coat for him, adjusting the collar and hood so his ears and neck stay warm.

Nico doesn’t return to being your Nico until the side door of the house is closing behind you. Immediately he’s attaching himself to you, hunching down to wrap his arms around your waist and tuck his face into your neck. Rising to your toes, you bundle your arms around him as best you can with all the thick winter layers between you.

Closing your eyes, you breathe in the cold air and just hold him for a moment. You don’t let go until he’s pressing a kiss to your jaw, straightening out his posture and looking at you with those moony eyes of his.

“Show me the grounds,” you mock in a posh voice giggling when he rolls his eyes and offers his elbow to you. Taking ahold of him, you tuck your hands into your pockets and let him guide you down the shoveled paths.

The grounds stretch on forever, through untouched wooded land and open plains of snow. Nico shows you a tennis court, a basketball court, the indoor hockey setup him and Luca used religiously as children. You trudge through the snow with him, winter air nipping at your nose and dry lips aching as your awe of the place kept growing and growing. Every ten steps was something new, some fond memory Nico’s dug up of his childhood.

“I almost broke my ankle trying to do cartwheels,” Nico laughs, gaze sweeping over the open area in which Nina apparently tried to teach Nico gymnastics. “She hadn’t even done gymnastics herself, but I wanted her to think I was cool so I did it.”

Giggling, you shake your head at him. “You can’t do a cartwheel?” You ask incredulously. Nico scoffs, shaking his head like it should be obvious. Releasing his arm, you strut to the open space in front of him and throw your arms up.

“Watch and learn Nico baby.” You tease, winking before executing a perfect cartwheel. The snow is cold on your hands, bites at your fingers but you do a couple more anyway just to show off.

Nico exclaims in surprise, staring at you with his jaw dropped and dimples in his cheeks. “Alright, just rub it in my face!” He complains and you laugh, giving him a bow. Leaning down he scoops up some snow, quickly packing it together. You have just enough time to curl into yourself before he’s throwing it at your torso.

Squealing, you dig your numb hands into the snow to throw one back. Dodging and ducking through laughter, you and Nico pelt each other with snow until your hands are so frozen you think they might fall off.

In surrender, you leap at him and throw your arms around his neck. The shock of your bitter cold fingers on his bare skin makes him jump and he goes crashing to the ground, taking you with him.

Luckily he breaks your fall, and the snow breaks his so it’s still giggles when you cup his jaw, sitting up to check him for injuries. He’s got snow in his hair and eyelashes, his cheeks and nose glowing red as he bites at his bottom lip to try and contain his smile.

“You’re so handsome,” you whisper, the words mostly spoken to yourself but in the large, silent estate they carry. Nico’s cheeks redden even more, eyes glimmering with love. Then, thinking of the cold man from whom Nico got his looks, you quickly add “inside and out.”

His face falls with realization, a look of sympathy flashing through his eyes. Not that he should be sympathetic about anything, these people didn’t raise you. “I should’ve warned you,” he says “I just didn’t want to scare you. And I didn’t want you to think I don’t love them because I do, they’re just different.”

The snow has begun soaking into your pants, stinging your skin and you imagine Nico’s butt must be just as cold. Yet he makes no move to get up, just stares up at you from the ground with those all-telling eyes of his.

“You warned me,” you say “maybe not intentionally but you did.” From wasting away the morning with you to the way he always had a protective hand on you today, Nico warned you the best way he knows how. With protective actions.

Brushing his hair off his forehead, you ask “wanna talk about it?” Nico sighs, cheeks puffing up as he does so and the cloud of his breath dances in between you. He agrees though, nodding for you to get up so you climb off his lap and take his hand to help him up.

Nico takes both of your hands in his, squeezing them before drawing the up to his lips. Eyebrows pinched together in concentration, he breathes hot hair in an attempt to warm them up for you. After a moment he squeezes them again, frowning when they’re still too cold for his liking.

Giggling, you pull your hands back and hug his arm. “I’m ok, let’s just go back and we can talk somewhere warm.”

Pressing a kiss to the top of your head, Nico agrees. Oblivious to the figure looming on the balcony that overlooks the grounds, he leads you back towards the house, feet crunching in the snow.

~~~~

Clothes sopping wet and cold, you shuffle into Nico’s old bedroom and immediately begin shedding your winter layers. Unsure of everyone else’s whereabouts in the house, Nico closes the door and locks it before he too strips out of his clothes.

In just his boxers he disappears into the closet and you take the opportunity to look around his room. A large bed sits in the middle of the room, a fluffy blue quilt that matches the accent wall covering it. An old ratty teddy bear sits on the bed, looking out the large window across the room. The view is beautiful, snow covered mountains and white topped trees. There’s a desk in the corner, the top of it empty but the shelves have a few books and childhood awards scattered on them.

You tiptoe over, notice most of the awards have a soccer or hockey player on them. There’s one of a boy snowboarding and one engraved with a book, and though you can’t read them inscription, the year on them tells you that Nico was under 16 when he won all these.

A photo you’ve seen on his phone is hung up next to the desk, Luca and Nina holding a baby Nico on a beach somewhere, all chubby cheeks and blonde hair.

A poster of a Swiss tennis player hangs next to the bed, a few more photos scattered around the room. You don’t get the chance to examine them because Nico strolls back into the room with a ball of clothes in his hands.

“Not sure when these were last washed but it should be fine,” he shrugs, dropping the mess of items to the bed. He digs out a pair of boxers, some dark sweats, and a long sleeve for you. You happily accept the dry clothes, stripping out of your damp underwear and bra.

Nico’s Calvin’s are a little tight when you shimmy them up you hips but not uncomfortable. You pull the sweats on, rolling the waistband so they don’t hang over your feet. It’s not until you’re tugging the shirt over your head that you notice Nico is standing butt naked across from you, boxers in hand as he shamelessly watches you change.

Knowing where this going, you quickly pull the shirt on, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Put that thing away and start talking Hischier.”

He chuckles, beginning to get dressed. You sit on the bed, reaching over for the teddy and pulling it into your lap. “What do you want to know?”

“I know how you ended up in Jersey,” you say, fingers rubbing at the soft fabric of the bears ear. “Inheritance from your grandfather and wanting to get away from here. But I always thought it was because you’re the youngest, ya know? You like to be in charge and you can’t do that with Luca and Nina being in line for everything,”

Nico lets you talk, pulling on his teeshirt and settling into the bed next to you.

“But your parents said everything was lined up. What did they mean?”

Nico sighs, eyes dropping to his lap and he fiddles with the tie on his sweats. You turn to look at him, walking the teddy bear across the mattress and plopping it in his lap. He doesn’t look at you but a dimple sinks into his cheek and he takes the bear from you.

“My parents were trying to branch out, stretch the business like they did sending Nina to France. They had this whole mock up of me using my inheritance to move to Germany and head everything there.

“But they wanted to send someone with me. This girl whose father does business with mine. We had a thing kind of when we’re younger, not dating but like when I wanted to be with someone she was there. So they added a wedding to the plan and invited her to join the family.”

There’s no reason to be jealous of this girl, whoever she is. You know that, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling a little nauseous thinking of his family picking out a wife for him.

“What did you say?” You murmur, slipping your fingers under his shirt and stroking the warm skin of his stomach. Nico picks at a thread on the bear, taking a deep breath.

“Nothing, to them. I took the money and some buddies and left. Told Nina I was starting my own family in Jersey, that I didn’t want to be married or in Germany.

“That’s how I got Timo, Sieges, and Bratter to join me. We’d all been friends for a while and they hated the girl. My parents didn’t know, but she’d been after Luca the whole time she was with me. He was too focused on taking over here in Switzerland though. That’s why she wanted him, she wanted to be the queen or whatever of Switzerland. “

“Why’d she agree to marry you then?”

Nico looks up now, shrugging. You inch closer to him, stomach feeling sick and he must know you don’t particularly like to hear this story because he nudges you into his lap. Straddling his thighs, you relax forward into his chest and let him wrap his arm around you.

“Because one of us was better than neither I guess. I had a feeling she assumed she could marry me and then convince me to push Luca out or something. I don’t know but I didn’t say a word to her either, I just left.”

You nod, the joke Timo made in the car earlier finally adding up. Nico was the prince lined up to be married and grow the business, to make his family stronger. Instead he took his power and his means elsewhere. He built his own kingdom.

“I think you’re so smart Nico,” you mumble, “not many 18 year old boys would be able to do what you did.”

Nico tucks the bear into your chest and you hug it. “I had help,” he says “but it was the best decision I ever made. I got you from it.”

His phone buzzes on the nightstand, interrupting you two. You feel him reach over for it, holding you tighter as he leans over.

“Nina invited us to go out tonight for drinks,” he says. “She wants to have fun without my parents around.”

“Is Timo invited?”

“Yes, Timo is invited.” Nico laughs, stroking your hair.

“Ok. I have to go home for new clothes though.”

Nico hums his agreement, still stroking your hair. You cuddle into him, hugging the teddy bear tighter as you sort through everything he told you. It’s impossible for you to see how some girl had Nico right in front of her, was lined up to spend the rest of her life with him and instead made him feel unwanted.

How could anyone not pick him? How was she not begging on her knees to run away to Jersey with him?

“Nico?”

“Yes baby?”

“I want you,” you whisper. “I always have and I always will. I’d do anything for you.”

You think of everything you’ve given up for Nico, the life you’d left behind for him and it doesn’t even phase you. Because he’s worth it, always worth it.

“Trust me, I know my love,” he assures but you can hear the relief in his tone. Then he’s giggling boyishly, digging his nose into the top of your head. “I knew as soon as met you that there was no getting rid of you.”

Blushing, you close your eyes and enjoy his embrace, enjoying a moment with just him.

~~~~

Luca owns the bar that Nina had invited you too. Technically the business owns it, but it was Luca’s investment plan that acquired it and it’s his staff that runs it.

You find that out as Nico leads you by the hip to the sectioned off tables in the back. Luca and a few other guys mill about the table, some you recognize from seeing around the house today. Nina is there too, her long hair pulled back into a slick pony and she’s sipping from a fruity cocktail with a blonde girl.

“You made it!” Luca greets upon seeing his brother, his demeanor much more welcoming and laidback than earlier. You let go of Nico’s hand so he can hug Luca again, his eyes crinkling as he laughs.

Timo bro-hugs Luca before disappearing back into the common area, most likely heading to the bar. You’re reaching for Nico’s hand again when Luca crouches down to meet your gaze, glossy eyes and smile shining at you.

He looks so much like Nico.

“There she is!” He shouts, charging you with open arms. You laugh in shock when he scoops you up in a hug, drink sloshing against your back as he sways back and forth.

“Hi Luca,” you giggle, awkwardly rubbing your hand up and down his back. “Nice to see you again.”

He drops you to your feet, gripping your elbow when you stumble. Not that it’s needed; Nico’s hand found your lower back as soon as your toes touched the polished floors.

“You know, I never understood why Nico loved Jersey so much,” he shouts over the music and chatter “but I get it now. I like you a lot even if my parents don’t.”

You’re not shocked to hear that but you dramatically gasp anyway. “Your parents don’t like me?!” You cry, holding a hand over your heart. “What’ll we ever do?”

Luca laughs at you, taking a swig of his beer before shaking his head fondly. “Fuck ‘em,” he says casually “Nico’s better off with you anyway.”

Your cheeks heat up at his words, flattered by the praise. You were hesitant about Luca earlier, not knowing if he liked you or not. He was harder to read than Nico and Nina but you assume that’s the oldest sibling in him.

Without another word he’s walking away, stumbling towards the pool tables with some friends. Nico leans in over your shoulder, nose brushing your temple.

“He’s a friendly drunk,” he explains “but he really does like you.”

You turn towards him. “He’s funny,” you say “I like him too.”

Pressing the lightest kiss to your cheekbone, Nico nods towards the bar. “Something with vodka?” He asks and you peek around him at Nina.

“I want what Nina is drinking.”

Amused, he nods and takes you by the hand. He approaches the booth, leaning over towards his sister to mumble something in her ear. You don’t hear what she says back but Nico straightens out, stepping out of the way and nudging you to sit down. Happily, you slide into the seat next to Nina and accept her giddy hug.

Nico sweeps your hair over your shoulder, squeezing your neck briefly before going to get your drink.

“Oh this is Maja,” Nina introduces you to her friend. You reach over the table to shake her hand and introduce yourself.

“I’m with Luca,” Maja tells you, her pretty blue eyes sparkling. “Sorry I missed lunch today, I tend to skip those gatherings as often as I can.”

“I totally understand!” You laugh,” I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time.”

Nina gasps, gripping your arms as she beams at you. “You’re gonna come back?!”

Giggling, you nod. “Well yeah, I know Nico misses you and Luca and it hasn’t been bad. Besides, it’s beautiful here!”

“You have to visit in the summer!” Maja tells you, “we can make fondue and float the river.”

Nina agrees telling you all about how that was Nico’s favorite thing to do when he was younger. Then she’s inviting you to France, telling you all about the beautiful French men and how much you’d love them.

You let her chatter on, laughing at her antics. French men aren’t exactly your forte, especially not when you’re dating a Swiss man but you can remind her about that later.

“Nina,” Nico interrupts, placing your drink in front of you. “are you trying to set my prinzessin up with a Frenchie?”

Sliding in next to you, he wraps his arm around your stomach and draws you back into his chest. His sister gapes at him, so shocked by his words she’s gone speechless and you shyly sip your drink.

“Prinzessin, Nico!” She gasps, holding her heart. Nina tells him something in Swiss German, reaching around you to excitedly shove her brother.

His response is also lost on you but you can tell by Nina’s moony eyes and how he hunches into you that it was something loving and sweet. “Soon, soon.” Nico finally says, taking a drink of his beer and setting it next to yours.

“Hey don’t talk about me when I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

Laughing, Nico presses a kiss to your temple. “Sorry baby,” he says, squeezing your shoulders. You turn to face him, sliding your leg over his lap.

“You didn’t tell me about Maja,” you murmur, fiddling with the straw in your drink. Nico’s eyebrows pinch together, lips pursing in confusion as he looks around the bar.

“Who?”

“Nico oh my god,” you gasp “Luca’s girlfriend-wife-whatever?”

Some clarity washes over his face and he giggles, glancing across the booth to Maja. Lowering his lips to your ear, “I thought her name was Maria,” he whispers and you laugh.

“I don’t know, Luca got with her after I left and he’s not chatty on the phone. For all I know he’s already married her.”

You look over your shoulder at her hand. “No ring,” you tell him “and I don’t think he’d get married without telling you.”

Nico shrugs, taking a swig of his beer before holding it out to you. You slide him your drink, trying the tangy beer he’s been nursing. It’s not bad but beer isn’t your favorite so you quickly hand it back.

“That’s sweet,” Nico says, smacking his lips and returning it to you. “Too sweet, Jesus Christ.” You laugh, snacking an arm around his shoulders and digging your fingers into the strands of hair at the nape of his neck.

“It’s not that bad,” you argue, guiding him closer to you. Smirking, those dark eyes of his dance across your face before settling on your lips. He does the rest of the work for you, capturing your mouth in a sloppy kiss.

“Mmm,” he hums, pulling back and swiping his tongue across his lips. “Better.”

His voice has that gruffness to it, heavy and thick, and not just because his accent is stronger now that he’s home. It makes your neck and ears feel hot, stomach flipping.

“No PDA in my bar Nico!” Luca’s shouting makes you jump, almost knocking Nico’s beer across the table and him and Timo snicker as they sit across from you.

“Bar PDA is his favorite,” Timo laughs, winking at you. “How do you think they ended up together?”

You can’t even argue with him. Nico is notorious for being handsy, especially when he’s out and drinking.

“Really?” Luca hums, slinging an arm around Maja. “It used be like pulling teeth just to get him to look at girl around here.”

And well, that’s news to you. Although you suppose if he planned on leaving Switzerland anyway and he had that girl to fool around with whenever he wanted, what’s the point? You’re well aware that he was never looking for love.

Nico quickly changes the topic, asking Timo about his day with his family tomorrow and you join Nina and Maja as they sift through songs on the online jukebox to play.

The queue stacks up, your drink starts to run out, and Nico leaves with Timo and his brother to go play pool. Nina leaves the phone with Maja, taking you by the hand to the bar where she orders more drinks and drops them on Nico’s tab. Not that it matters, you doubt he pays for drinks here anyway.

“I’m gonna head to the restroom,” you tell her, and she takes your drink back to the closed off section. The bathrooms are in the opposite back corner, a group of girls huddled in front of the door so you line up behind them.

Your phone buzzes in hand, Nico’s contact lighting up the screen and you almost laugh. Of course he noticed you were missing.

I’ve lost my pretty girl

Biting your lip, you text back bathroom break ♥️

The typing dots pop up and you’re anxiously awaiting his response when the conversation around you catches your attention. Specifically the mention of Nico’s name.

“He’s still as hot as ever,” a dark haired girl in front of you comments, and you keep your eyes on your phone so they don’t think you’re eavesdropping.

“Do you think she’s actually with him or is that just another fuck you to his parents?”

Nico’s text comes through, but you can’t focus enough to read it. “I mean, she doesn’t look his type so who knows. Didn’t he say he wasn’t into commitment Lena?”

Out of the corner of your eye, a tall and leggy brunette twirls her hair around her finger and shrugs. “If he were into commitment don’t you think he’d be with me right now? It’s definitely just to piss off his parents, I mean did you see the size of her? Typical American girl.”

Suddenly you feel sick, like everything you’ve ever eaten is choking up in your throat and about to spew all over the mean girls in front of you.

“I heard he put her in the family,” a quieter voice says. “Timo was talking about it at the bar with Luca. He’s calling her his princess.”

The leader-Lena, scoffs. “Princess? She hasn’t even got a pendent let alone a ring.”

Maybe this why Nico doesn’t talk about his exes. They’re mean and petty little girls, girls that haven’t moved on in over 5 years. That doesn’t make it any easier to hear though.

“Probably another one of his deals. He fucks her, she pretends to be serious with him for a family trip.”

“Why would he decide to come back now with a fake girlfriend?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lena laughs, loud and proud. “He must have heard that I’m back at the estate.”

You decide that’s enough, pocketing your phone and clearing your throat. All the girls jump at the noise, turning to face you and you smile.

“Are you in line for the bathroom or just gossiping?” You ask politely, smirking as the color drains from all their faces. All except Lena, who looks you up and down before sheepishly nodding for you to go ahead.

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” You say, stopping in the doorway to look at her. “You’d think Luca would have bathrooms strictly for family but I guess not.”

Embarrassed, they all laugh awkwardly and you close the door behind you. What the fuck?

~~~~

By the time you’ve returned to the booth, you’ve shaken off the word of those girls. You trust Nico, you know Nico loves you, and high school bullies that pick on girls weight and nationality aren’t going to change that.

Nico is still playing pool, but he catches your eye and winks as you settle in next to Nina. Smirking, you blow him a kiss before Nina is handing you music rights. Sipping on your drink, you pull up your playlist on your phone and find the Swiss songs Nico likes. Adding his favorite to the queue you hand the phone back.

“How do you know that song?” Maja asks you, chewing on the end of her straw. You take another sip of yours.

“Nico plays it every time we’re in the car.” You say, catching the eye of Lena over Maja’s shoulder. She simply raises an eyebrow you, throwing back whatever shot is in hand and purses her lips.

“Hey, do you guys know her?” You suddenly ask, nodding towards the bar where Lena is now perched over the top to steal cherries from behind the counter.

“Oh,” Nina mumbles, laughing awkwardly. “Rino does business with her father and uh…”

“She was into Nico?” You supply, glancing over at your boyfriend. Maja bites her lip, hesitantly nodding.

“She was supposed to marry him.” Nina tells you, lowering her gaze to the table. Suddenly it all clicks; the comments about sleeping with him, about him not committing, about using me.

The song changes, the beat immediately catching the attention of Nico who stands up taller and looks over at you. You smile, wiggling your fingers at him as Nina laughs.

“I never thought Nico could be so romantic.” Maja teases you, not that you get it. The rap song is lost on you, any translation you’ve tried to look up being even more confusing. So you just enjoy the beat of it usually.

“What?”

Nina laughs, finally realizing that you can’t understand Swiss German. “It’s a love song,” she tells you, and then she’s pulling up the lyrics and translating them for you.

It’s a lot of nonsense, cute tidbits about how the artist loves the habits and traits of his lover. But the chorus is sweet, a declaration of him finding love after being told he would always be on his own.

Unable to help yourself, you swallow down the rest of your drink and scramble out of the booth. Nico is watching you, bottom lip caught between his teeth as you approach him. He’s leaning on the pool stick but as soon as you get close he’s moving it aside.

You crash into him, bury your nose in his hoodie and holding his waist tightly. “What’s her deal?” Luca slurs, but he goes ignored. Nico squeezes you just once, swaying side to side in time with the song.

Closing your eyes, you think of him singing along in the car, humming it in the shower while he washes your hair for you, blasting it through the house when you two clean together.

“Who translated it for you?” He finally murmurs, his smile present in his tone.

“Your sister,” you say, resting your chin on his chest and looking up at him. He’s all white teeth and dimples when you meet his gaze, eyes glimmering with pride. “Her and Maja think you’re very romantic.”

Nico shrugs but doesn’t argue. The pool balls clink behind you and then Timo is hollering. “Game over Luca, pay up.”

Luca mutters something in Swiss, heading to the bar with his head low. You let go of Nico, giving Timo a chance to high five you both.

“Let me teach you to play,” Nico tells you, handing you the pool stick. You follow him to the end of the table, letting him show you how to rack up the balls. Timo chalks up your stick for you, tells you about the cue ball.

And you go about your night, teaming up with Nico to play Timo. He stands behind you for every shot, large hands over yours on the pool stick and his warm chest tight against your back.

It feels so good to have him wrapped around you that you don’t even notice the staring eyes of Lena and her friends.

And you don’t bring her up to Nico, though you probably should’ve.

~~~~

#nico hischier #mob boss Nico Hischier #nico hischer x reader #mob boss au #Him and I #nhl #new jersey devils #nj devils #fluff

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clown-owo · 2 months

Text

ok so sorry but this has been haunting me ever since i finished the tutorial. mild side order spoilers under the cut!

and i have to talk about it. Marina's wallpaper. This one

look at the outfit. we've never seen this outfit for pearl before. at first glance the colors look like the final fest outfit, which matches up with the first dev log being about the final fest, but nothing else matches.

pearl's tank top is baggy, she has a chain, she doesn't have makeup or gloves, and the crown is COMPLETELY different.

so my next thought, of course, was "maybe this is an OLD picture of Pearl, Marina seems like the type to keep an old photo as her wallpaper" so i went back to the art of ＃$@%* Dudes Be ＃$@%* Sleepin,

which is a lot closer! no gloves, a chain, and a black tank top. But, this pearl also has piercings and also, again. the crown is different.

Every other pearl costume matches even less. She's usually in white.

so, i decided to look closer at the actual image. see what i could deduce.

interestingly. she's wearing rings.

one on her right hand ring finger. however, its her right hand and there's another ring on her pinky. but still interesting to note. especially as its not symmetrical (we can see her pinky on the other hand) and not something pearl typically wears, even in her youth. (the other young pearl render shows the chain in more detail, but also has her wearing gloves)

which. speaking of that chain. lets take another gander at it, why don't we?

oh, interesting! it has two pendants. but. oh! huh! wow. the one on top. we've seen that before, haven't we?

one silver pendant/zipper with an 8 shape and one gold pendant/zipper with a star.

... Fascinating!

so pearl is: wearing a fancier crown than we've ever seen, rings, and a necklace bearing both her and marina's iconography. isn't that just interesting.

EDIT: thank you to @catcake24 for bringing it to my attention that there was concept art i was unaware of.

so. alas. that explains most things. but they did change the necklace. most notably adding Marina's zipper <3

#og post #splatoon 3 #splatoon #side order #side order spoilers #marina ida #pearl houzuki #pearlina #off the hook #no need for a wedding dlc if they're already married #edit: so perhaps so it is a concept art fit. still could be a wedding fit /hell

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danikamariewrites · 10 months

Note

Okay okay okay, so errr I have like maybe a couple things but I'm not throwing everything with the expectation that you write all of them!!!

First maybe Azriel taking fem reader to a starfall ball. Bonus points if A already knows B is their mate, and they're waiting for A to find out

Okay okay now for Xaddy Xaden. WHAT ABOUT Xaden Riorson smut maybe? Idk I don't have a plot I just kinda want him

THANK YOU SO MUCH

Diamonds and Pearls

Azriel x f!Reader

A/n: I think this is my favorite fic I’ve written so far. I almost started crying writing this tbh. I went with Az bc I’m in a fluffy mood this evening but Xaden smut is coming I swear😉

Warnings: disgustingly fluffy

Azriel was surprised by how bold he had been in asking you to go to the annual Starfall ball with him. He didn’t want to dance around his feelings for you anymore, he had to tell you the truth. And tonight was the perfect night. Azriel never considered himself a romantic male, but that was changing tonight.

The reason for Azriel’s boldness was thanks to the mating bond. The bond had snapped for him exactly three weeks ago at breakfast. It was nothing special, just you, him, Cassian, and Nesta sitting at the table when it hit him. Feeling that golden thread come to life in his chest, being able to feel your calm heartbeat was the best thing that has ever happened to him.

For the first time in his life Azriel felt pure joy. He felt like everything was perfectly aligned. He was already head over heels in love with you and the mating bond just solidified that you were the one for him. You had known each other for centuries, and have been seeing each other romantically for a few months now. He was ready to take your relationship to the next step.

But would you want this with him? To be tied to him forever? He didn’t stop to think about that during his weeks of planning the perfect night to tell you. No, he couldn’t let his mind wander, he was too happy. He realized in his worrying his shadows were swirling around him and the hallway. Azriel called the rogue shadows back to him, he didn’t want to scare you when you came out of your room.

Just as your door opens the last shadow flys back to him. Of course the one shadow that was fond of you was last to come back to Azriel.

As soon as Azriel laid eyes on you he was speechless. You looked like the brightest star that would grace the sky this evening. Your dress was a beautiful light blue, made up of diamonds and pearls strung along the bodice. Your leg peeking out of the slit in your flowing silk skirt that had a layer of shimmering fabric that reflected in the light. Your silver heels clacking on the tiled floors as you made your way towards the shadowsinger.

“Wow.” He breathed out. You spun causing the dress to flare out, it practically glowed, just like you Azriel thought. “You don’t look too bad yourself.” Azriel suddenly felt guilty for wearing just a simple all black outfit on such a special night. A blush dusted his cheeks, “Thank you.” He holds out the box he’s been clutching for 2 hours, afraid he’d lose the gift he bought you. “I got you something for tonight.”

“Oh, Az, you didn’t have to get me anything.” You took the box from his hands, slipping one into his hands, smirking. “Very slick.” You giggle.

“You open yours first, and I promise I did not go to Mor for gift advice.” Azriel laughed, opening the box. His eyes went wide, he couldn’t believe you had given him something so beautiful. In the box was a silver signet ring with his wings and Mount Ramiel with the stars above it. “Y/n…this is incredible. Thank you.” He smiles down at you, his heart soaring at your kindness. “Your turn,” he slips the ring on his index finger, flexing his scarred fingers at the new feeling.

You open the skinny box to a gleaming diamond and sapphire bracelet. “Azriel! This is absolutely gorgeous. Thank you.” He takes the delicate chain out of the box, “Allow me.” You smile at him as he clasps the bracelet on your wrist. He brings your hand up to his mouth leaving a soft kiss on your knuckles.

He drops your hand, offering you his arm, “Shall we?” You interlock your arm with his and he whisks you away to the party. To the future he has planned for you, hopefully.

…

The stars are about to fall and Azriel had stolen you away from the Inner Circle to watch them on a private balcony. You were very excited to watch the stars with just Azriel. You planned to tell him that you loved him tonight, something you haven’t said to each other yet.

Lost in your thoughts about the beautiful shadowsinger, staring up at the stars he sneaks up behind you, tapping you on the shoulder. Startled, you turn towards his smiling face as he holds out a glass of wine for you, “What are sneaking up on me for!” Chuckling at your reaction he pulls you into his side, wrapping a wing around you, “Sorry darling, force of habit.”

You sip from the glass as the stars start to fall, watching in awe. The stars only hold Azriel’s attention briefly, more interested in watching you glow under their flashing light. Mother above you are beautiful, and he’s thanking her, like he has everyday since the bond snapped, that you’re in his life.

After a few more minutes of watching the stars you feel Azriel’s eyes on you. You turn, shifting a little away from him and smile. “I’m very happy I get to spend Starfall with you Az.”

“I am too y/n.” He swallows, now’s the time to tell you. He’s not backing out now. “I have something to tell you.” You say in unison. Laughing at your synchronization, you take Azriel’s hands in yours, swiping your thumb over the new signet ring reflecting all the blues and purples from the stars. “You go first.”

Azriel can feel his hands clamming up, it’s now or never. He’s just going to come right out and say it, even if it comes out sounding foolish. “A few weeks ago, at breakfast the mating bond snapped for me, for you. I could feel your heartbeat and happiness as you laughed at Nesta’s joke. And I swear in that moment I fell in love with you all over again. I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to tell you. I understand if you don’t want this because honestly I don’t deserve you y/n or the love you give me. But I can’t imagine my life without you.”

Tears were falling from your eyes. You couldn’t believe what Azriel was saying. You wanted this so badly from the day you first met. All you wanted was his love, but this was even better. You had dreamed about finding your mate ever since your mother told you about the concept when you were a little girl. Now yours is standing right in front of you confessing his love for you!

“Yes Azriel,” nodding vigorously, sending more tears flying down your cheeks. “I love you and you’re all I’ve ever wanted. I’m so lucky to have you as my mate, I couldn’t ask for anyone better.” Tears were now falling down his face. He wrapped his arms around your waist pulling you flush against him, kissing you heatedly.

In that moment the bond came to life in your chest. Glowing bright, connecting the two of you forever.

tags: @msiecrane @auggiesolovey

#acotar fanfiction #acotar reader imagine #acotar #acotar reader fic #azriel acotar #azriel x reader #azriel x you #azriel fic #acotar imagine #azriel fluff #Azriel acotar x you

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sammysficfactory · 11 months

Text

JJK men’s reaction to you calling them a whore/slut

characters: nanami, gojo, geto, and toji

notes: if you want me to go more in depth for a character lmk!

Nanami Kento

oh em gee

he is SHOCKED

have you no shame? no decorum?

“You look like a whore when you wear your suit without a blazer.” you deadpanned.

“Excuse me?” Nanami is thoroughly confused, hoping he didn’t hear you correctly. But he did. And who could blame you?

“You heard what I said.” You shrug.

he would never admit it, but he liked it

the way you said it so outright threw him for a LOOP honey

if he were a rich woman he’d be clutching his pearls

“Don’t say it like that. Just say you think it’s nice and move on like normal people do.” Nanami rolls his eyes at you. If you looked close enough you could see a light pink dusting the tips of his ears.

you laugh at him for being flustered

but you’re a good person so you suppress it a little bit

as you call him a whore more often he gets used to it

don’t get me wrong, it still flusters the hell out of him

but he’s accepted it as part of your relationship dynamic

Satoru Gojo

i can’t even lie to you

gojo would like it

“You look like a slut in that outfit.” You say in a nonchalant fashion. Gojo smirks.

“Do I look like a slut? Or do you see something you like.” he leans forward to you, the proximity of your faces distressingly close.

if you thought his ego was big then

i can promise you it’s 10x bigger now

“You want me so bad.” Gojo laughs smugly. You scoff.

“You wish.”

the truth is you DID want him

he was in that black tee and wearing sweats😩

I CANT BLAME YOU

despite the two of you being in a relationship gojo loved to tease you like you were still single

gojo probably bites his finger every time he thinks about the first time you called him a slut

every few weeks he texts you ‘remember that time you wanted me so bad that you said i looked like a slut? i do🤭’

he be swinging his feet back and forth as he types it out

Geto Suguru

if he’s nothing else, he’s definitely gojo’s friend

he’s a good sport about it

“You look like a whore when your hair is in a bun.” Geto does a double take.

“I- what?” He’s confused. One moment you were sitting in a peaceful silence with your boyfriend, and the next you’re calling him a slut?

very confused about the train of thought you took to get to that conclusion

but after a few times he gets used to it

and his replies are definitely something

“You look like a slut in those glasses.” you say flatly. Geto sighs,

“Come slut me out then.” he says, leaning back and spreading his legs slightly on the couch.

when you hear him say it for the first time you almost caught whiplash

you for the first time in the entirety of your relationship, were at a loss for words

it was BAD

you opened and closed your mouth like a goldfish bc you couldn’t find anything to say

you in fact do slut him out once you gather yourself

he’s smug asf for the next week

Toji Fushiguro

he’s shocked too

but his reaction was a lot different

“Toji, you look really slutty in that outfit.” You eye him up and down.

“Bitch?” he quickly apologizes for his knee-jerk reaction.

“Watch that bitch word, Toji! Deadass.” You narrow your eyes at him. He already knew how you felt about that word.

he saw his life flash before his eyes when he said ‘bitch’

he’s super smug too

he isn’t as bad as gojo or geto though

it becomes a running inside joke between the two of you

toji would do shit like send photos of his outfit and say ‘feeling extra slutty today’

and it might make you chuckle a little when he sends them

“You’re not going to the market with me looking like a whore Toji, go change.” you joked.

“Wow, are you slut shaming me right now? I thought you were a feminist.” He accuses you in fake shock.

“I’m getting women’s lick back.” you justify yourself.

does it sound kinda weird to other people? yes

but did you care is the real question

the answer is no

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hatkuu · 7 months

Note

m!kylar with a superr virgin f!pc? 😵‍💫

eheheh kylar probably drools over you when you tell him you're a sweet lil virgin. you want him to have your virginity? he's a virgin too! you can have eachothers- it'd be so romantic and wow he's getting so hard just thinking about it and-

discussions of virginity, virgin kink(? you're both virgins so ...), classic kylar obsessive behaviour... nsfw utc!!

"Y-You haven't d-done that sort of thing...?"

You avoid his gaze - it's lecherous, like he thinks you're a liar - your cheeks are too hot and your heart is beating far too fast to even glance at Kylar right now. You still respond to him, stuttering all the while. You find a lot of interest in your beat-up shoes while you ramble out an excuse.

"I, um... I never got around to doing it... A-And I'm just... too nervous to really ask anyone to do it with, so..."

Your words trail off, you overcome your embarrassment, glancing at Kylar's face. His mouth is agape, his eyes are wide, lips slightly chapped as he shakily breathes in and out. His hands are clutching onto his hoodie for dear life, nails digging into the fabric like a feral animal. You avert your eyes awkwardly. You cough.

nsfw under the cut!

"...Have you lost yours?"

Kylar's breath hitches in a flurry of panic. His eyes are wide at your question, offended that you think that he'd let anyone but you touch him!

"No!"

He pauses, fiddling with his hands as the air turns even more awkward between the two of you.

"I-I'm waiting for someone special,"

You watch him twiddle his thumbs together. Kylar's face is just as hot and heavy as your own, maybe even more so. His hair, slightly greasy, cascades over his eyes as he bows his head in embarrassment. His eyes, though you can't see them right now, are cute, - constantly wide and always staring at you - very cute.

"O-Oh, yeah I get that..."

You're dating Kylar.

He's a very sweet boyfriend but... you can't help but notice how weird he is when you're around other people.

But you promised him this and you can't take it back.

His cock, fat and heavy, bobs against your abdomen, throbbing with excitement as Kylar pants. He's leering down at you, watching pearls of pre-cum rivulet off of the tip onto your soft, delicious skin. He's looking at you like he wants to devour you - you can't help but flush under his gaze - no one's ever seen you like this and you itch to cover your naked chest.

"I'll make it feel good, I-I promise,"

Kylar groans loud when his fingers press against your entrance, the feeling of your heartbeat against him proving too much to bear as a thick droplet of pre-cum leaks out onto your stomach. He pulls his fingers to his mouth, licking and tasting your essence from them. Drool coats his fingers, thick and viscous like honey.

"This'll make it easier to put them in..."

You're grateful Kylar's hands are small, but from your position laying underneath him, they look long. You whimper, your hips shifting against his hand as his drool-coated fingers catch on your wet and waiting hole.

"K-Kylar,"

His middle finger slides in, eased by your wetness and Kylar's saliva. Twitching inside of you, Kylar finger wiggles, touching and feeling the hot, gummy flesh of your walls. Kylar breathes in shakily, probing at your untouched hymen.

"I'll put another one in, okay my love?"

You weakly nod, too overwhelmed by the sensation of different fingers that are not your own exploring your insides. The other finger slips in and you whimper, feeling your weak hole stretch to accommodate it. Kylar bites his lip, reopening an old wound in the process. He shuffles downward, hovering over your pussy as you look back at him wide-eyed.

"Kylar w-wait-"

"I-I'll make it feel better, I promise,"

His lips catch on your clit, kissing it reverently before you can squeal at him to stop. He laves at your folds, tasting you, devouring you. His tongue feels strange and you gasp at the feeling of it, thighs twitching at the hot sparks of pleasure that ensue. Your fingers tangle in his hair, grappling yourself onto the dark greasy locks to stabilise your shaky, pleasure-addled body. You moan loud, legs kicking out to wrap around Kylar's shoulders as he happily pumps his fingers in and out of you, licking at your pussy like a man starved.

"Was that, was that good?"

Kylar pants, pulling away from your pussy, ignoring your cries and demanding grip on his scalp. He smiles up at you, kissing the inside of your thigh before sitting up on his knees, positioning himself against your entrance. "My cock will feel better than just fingers - I-I'll go slow - you'll love it." Kylar promises it, rubbing himself against your folds as you writhe and moan.

The head of his cock catches on your entrance and your eyes bulge outward at the sheer size of it. It's bigger than Kylar's fingers. Much bigger.

"I-It's okay," Kylar cooes, pressing forward with just enough pressure that barely half the tip slips inside you. "I'll take care of you-"

It's a tight, tight fit that Kylar can't handle. His hips ache to thrust forward and fuck but he can't because that'd hurt you and he loves you and-

"K-Kylar-" You gasp out his name, reaching out to hold his hands and Kylar can't refuse you, not when you look at him with such pretty tearful eyes. Not when you're so tight and gorgeous and perfect for him. His hands grab your own, entertwining your fingers together in a loving caress.

He pants above you, face flushed red. His eyes are twitching all over your body, you can see the hesitance within them, and you realise that he's waiting for you.

"Y-You can move-" You whisper, squeezing his hands reassuringly, hips shifting against the head of his cock to encourage him. Kylar whimpers, his hips push forward, slow and gentle, just for you.

His cock breaches past your hymen, obliterating it, ruining it beyond repair. Kylar cries out, your walls squeezing against him, halting his movements entirely. His head buries itself into the crux of your neck, kissing and biting at you as his cock works you open. Soon you'll only know the feeling of him inside of you - you'll crave it - and you'll beg him for more. Kylar smiles against you just thinking about it, you're his now! His little slutty girlfriend that fits his cock so well, his future wife.

Kylar's hips snap hard against your own at the thought of it.

You've given him apart of yourself you can never take back - he wants all of your virginities - just one won't suffice now. You have other holes. Don't you want him to make love to those as well?

#dol kylar #kylar the loner #kylar #dol #hatkuuasks #sigh when i got the virginity ask i was like 'is this targeted advertising...?'#real men just do not do it for me

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serasvictoria · 2 years

Text

Title: Pretty Persuasion

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Female Reader

Summary: You are the proud owner of Hawkins Records and have been for some years now, but dwindling sales mean that you might be forced to close the store that you love so much. Help comes in the form of Eddie Munson, former friend and frontman of a very successful band, but since the two of you hadn't parted in the best way 12 years ago there is no telling what will happen when you reunite again.

Word Count: 19.398

Content warning: 18+ mdni. Porn with lots of feelings. I am not joking, there are a lot of feels in this. Two idiots in love. Swearing. Oral (m and f receiving). Unprotected sex (p in v). Alcohol use, but nothing outrageous. Short haired Eddie (hey, if the guys from Metallica got a haircut in the 90s, Eddie can get one too). Please let me know if I missed something!

Notes: This story takes place in 1996 and Eddie and Reader are both 30 years old. Reader character graduated in 1984, the year that Eddie was supposed to have graduated as well, and left Hawkins shortly afterwards.

I made a playlist for this that I played whilst writing and it can be found right here for people that are interested. It's mainly alternative music from the 90s from bands that I love.

Beta read by the lovely Pearl. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.

Tagging @adrille88 @deans-ch-ch-cherrypie @quantumlocked310 @kaybee87 @istorkyou

“Hawkins Records, how can I help you?”

Eddie bit his bottom lip. This was crazy. This was probably the craziest idea that he ever had in his entire life.

“Hello?” He swallowed and before he could answer, the feminine voice on the other end started talking again. “Chase, is that you again? I can hear you breathing down the phone, you fucking perv. I swear to god if you call again I will fucking end you. We’re talking about me taking a pair of garden scissors to your house and cutting off your balls.”

“Wow,” Eddie said with a laugh. “Jesus. Harsh.”

“Oh.“ The surprise in her tone is clearly audible, even in just that one word. “I’m sorry, but we’ve been having some issues.”

“I can tell.” He laughed again and ran his hand through his hair nervously. “Look, I’ll make it quick, because I don’t want that guy to miss out on your furious, and might I add, sexy voice…”

“Fuck you,” the voice on the other end countered with a chuckle of her own. “But what can I do for you then? Want me to hold a copy of the Alice in Chains Unplugged CD for you?”

“Nah, thanks, I already have one,” he replied.

“Lucky you.” Eddie decided not to mention that he was given a copy by Jerry Cantrell himself. He didn’t like to brag. “So? What do you need?”

“Well, it’s not about what I need, but about what you need.” He could hear her groan on the other end so he kept talking before she gave him a lashing with her tongue (which he wouldn’t have minded much to be honest and he hadn’t even seen the girl). “I heard that the store isn’t doing too great…”

“Yeah.” Her voice sounded decidedly smaller then, with a lot less confidence and bravado as before. “We got til the end of the year,” she sighed. “Unless I win the fucking lottery or something.”

“Guess this is your lucky day then, because I can make all your troubles go away,” he snapped his fingers next to the mouthpiece. “Just like that.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse...”

That was two weeks ago.

And now Eddie Munson was on his way to Hawkins Records.

Eddie Fucking Munson. Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson as almost everyone at school used to call him. Eddie, the singer and lead guitarist of Corroded Coffin, the band that you’d seen play many a time at The Hideout before they’d made it big.

It was insane that you could even say that you once knew the frontman of a band that played at sold out venues all over the world. It had taken them years to get there, but they had made it.

While you had been away at college, Gareth, their drummer, graduated and shortly thereafter all four of them had left Hawkins to record a demo in Indianapolis.

Their self-titled demo was available in the store, still did reasonably well actually, and it got reprinted almost every single year. The first pressings were worth quite a bit of money and you actually had two of them upstairs, something that you had been saving for a “rainy day”. You had been slowly trying to get yourself used to the fact that that day might come a lot sooner than you thought, but then Eddie had called to make his offer, to buy the store and thus taking care of all your financial difficulties.

If he had been serious about it at all that was.

Because there was every chance that he might change his mind when he found out that you were the current owner. There was a history between the two of you that you’d rather not think of, but for all you knew, Eddie could turn on his heel and walk straight out again as soon as he saw your face.

The bell above the door rings and you instantly call out, “He’s not here yet.”

It didn't take a genius to figure out who had come round to check if Eddie had arrived. Again. It was only the ninth time that he had come round since the store had opened almost four hours ago.

Hurried footsteps approached the counter and when he reached it, his fingers started drumming on the old wood nervously. “He said that he’d be here over an hour ago,” Dustin says as he keeps his eyes firmly pointed at the door.

“Maybe he’s stuck in traffic somewhere,” you reply as you turn the page of the current edition of Rolling Stone magazine, something that you were barely reading at all. It had Jenny McCarthy on the cover with a hotdog that she was spraying loads of mustard on in a suggestive manner. “Or you know, it could all be some elaborate joke.”

“He’d never do that.” Dustin looks slightly shocked that you even suggested that at all. His curly hair, which was usually hidden underneath a cap, was slicked back. There was so much wet-look gel in it that it shone like crazy. “Eddie loves this place.”

“I know,” you reply with an annoyed tone in your voice. Looking back down at the page, the words ‘An artist wears his work in place of wounds’ in a Patti Smith article caught your attention. “I used to come here with him, you know.”

Whenever Eddie had money to spare, he’d be in here and looking for new releases. When he was listening to something that he liked, which was often, he’d pull the worn headphones off his head and shove them in your face, while excitedly telling you, “You’ve got to hear this.”

You had been with him when he bought Judas Priests’ Defenders of the Faith for example, which had been proclaimed as the best thing ever by Eddie at the time. The then owner, Rob, had later gifted a poster with the cover art on it to Eddie which he had stuck to his bedroom wall that same afternoon. You also distinctly remembered Eddie making fun of your, sometimes poor, taste in music, like when you had bought R.E.M.’s Murmur, a band that you still loved and whose second album you were playing right now.

Every good memory of your teenage years was tied up to this store.

And to Eddie Munson.

“It’s why you took over, right?”

“What?” Your mouth falls open, completely in shock over his question. “I didn’t buy this store because of Eddie! W-why would I- fuck. That would be so incredibly stupid!” Dustin raises an eyebrow, obviously not believing you. “I didn’t! I love this place and I didn’t want to see it turned into another run of the mill store. And look where that got me.”

“It’s okay,” Dustin replies as his fingernail picks at a loose piece of veneer on the old counter. “Eddie will save the day.”

“Yeah right. I still say that all this is some elaborate pr-“

Before you can finish your sentence, the door suddenly swings open, making the bell ring again. You didn’t look up from your magazine this time either, especially not when you heard that voice.

“Jesus. This place hasn’t changed a bit.”

You gave yourself a quick once over and deemed yourself passable enough. Since you had been half convinced that Eddie was never going to show, you hadn't even attempted to dress up. It was hot as fuck too, the height of summer, and the old AC barely offered enough in terms of cooling the place down, so you had opted for a pair of jean shorts and a black tank top with the name of the record store printed on it.

At least the clothes were clean. Thank god for that.

Despite not wanting to, fearful of a look of disappointment on his face when he saw that you were now working here, you did eventually look in his direction. It was all too easy to picture that same boy that you had hung out with daily all those years ago. The youthful exuberance didn't appear to have left him at all, but he wasn't the same guy that you had once known.

His hair was a lot shorter for starters.

Back then, he had vowed never to cut it, even though he had had a buzzcut in middle school. The long hair was part of his persona, an extension of it if you will, and he had made jokes about how all his strength was in his hair, very much like Samson. It was cut short now, but still long enough to show off his curls, with one curled over his forehead in what was either a deliberate or accidental move.

His clothing hadn’t changed much. His outfit was still predominantly black, with jeans that were so tight that it looked like they had been spray painted on. His shirt, with a faded Metallica print, was sleeveless and showed off all the new tattoos that he had gotten over the years. You briefly wondered whether there was a piece of his skin that hadn’t been inked yet.

Different, but still the same.

“You’re late!” Dustin calls out.

“Traffic was a bitch,” Eddie replies with a chuckle. “Is that you, Henderson?”

"Who else?" Dustin approaches him and is immediately swept up in a big hug. Dustin had told you that he and Eddie had kept in touch before. From the moment that he had found out that both of you knew Eddie, he hadn't shut up about him. In fact, Dustin had been the one that had told Eddie that the store hadn't been doing well. "Hey, man."

"Hey." They release each other and Eddie pats Dustin's back one more time for good measure. "Haven't seen you in a while, big man." It had looked like Eddie had wanted to say more, but you could see his nose crinkle in disgust even from this distance. "The fuck. R.E.M.? I fucking hate those guys."

You scoff loudly from behind the counter and that was when he finally noticed you. "Fuck you, Munson. Pretty Persuasion is the best song ever."

"Is not, loser," he counters like he used to do more than ten years ago as well. "Jesus,” he grins. “Talk about a blast from the past."

"Something like that," you mumble as you finally close your magazine and move it to the side.

You could hear Michael Stipe singing ‘He’s got a pretty persuasion’ through the speakers. It felt very appropriate to you.

Despite Eddie always being very vocal in his dislike of everything R.E.M., you did wonder if he even heard the lyrics and whether he finally realized that whenever you heard that song, you always thought of him. Sadly, he showed no sign of awareness as his eyes swept over the place that he used to know like the back of his hand and your shoulders immediately slumped in defeat.

Too good to be true, eh? Just like old times, you thought to yourself and tried to settle into an air of indifference, the only line of defense that you had left.

Eddie started walking around the store like he used to do back then as well, with Dustin hot on his heels instead of you on this particular occasion. He kept looking up at the walls and the various release posters that you had plastered all over it.

Some of which were old, like the one for Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation which hung next to one for Rage Against The Machine’s Evil Empire which had been up there for about three months now.

You saw Eddie reach out and touch the Kurt Cobain poster, in a sign of respect. Some local kids had turned into some kind of shrine after Kurt had died two years ago, scribbling messages on it about how much he had meant to them. You didn’t have it in you to take it down.

Eddie and Dustin were talking in hushed tones, laughing occasionally, as they slowly made their way to the counter. Seeing Eddie up close for the first time in ages was making you nervous already.

Stop it, you think to yourself. You're being ridiculous. It's just Eddie. No big deal. Maybe he forgot all about what happened and then you can get on with your life.

"Didn't know you worked here," Eddie said when he was a couple of feet away from you.

"I own the place.” You almost sound too casual, which was a miracle seeing how you were a total mess on the inside.

"Really? Since when?"

"Since Rob died, so that's… what?” You start counting on your fingers quickly. “Eight years ago now?"

It was shortly after you graduated from college and you were still in that “What next?” stage of your life. You had merely been visiting Hawkins at the time, on a social call to visit some relatives, when you found out that Rob had died. Buying the record store had been a rather impulsive decision that you had never regretted, not until quite recently anyway.

"So you're the girl that I talked to on the phone?" He was standing on the other side of the counter now, his hands placed flat on the wooden surface, his rings immediately catching your eye. You nod in reply to his question. "You could have told me that that was you."

"Didn't think about it," you reply. You look at Dustin over Eddie's shoulder first, a big grin spread all over his face for some reason, before looking Eddie in the eye. "Why? Are you disappointed?"

"Fuck, did I say that?" He flashes you a wide grin, his dimples appearing like sunshine that was peeking through the clouds. "I know how much you love this place."

"Yeah. It seemed like the right thing to do, you know?” You thought that you were still pulling off this whole casual indifferent act, but from the way that Dustin was looking at you, who was trying very hard not to burst out laughing, you figured that you probably looked like a damn lunatic. “And I inherited some money when my grandmother died so I had the funds to do it."

“I’m sorry about that.” Eddie’s eyes soften considerably and he reaches out to give your hand a comforting squeeze.

“Don’t be. It happened a long time ago.” When you pull your hand away a bit too quickly, Eddie frowns briefly, unsure why you don’t seem to want him to touch you. Your hands are clammy and shaking so you hide them underneath the counter instead, out of his reach. “So. Here you are.”

“Here I am,” he grins, having recovered from your rejection. “And you’re in trouble. Never thought I’d be bailing you out.”

“It was usually the other way around,” you laugh.

Whenever Eddie was in trouble, and he got into trouble a lot (Hopper practically had Eddie’s number on speed dial), you’d usually provide him with an alibi, swearing up and down that you’d been with him all night and that he had never left your sight.

“So it’s high time that I repay the favor.”

“Guess so.” You look away from him, his stare too intense. “You’ll have to tell me how this is going to work though, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details.”

“Sure.” He pushes himself away from the counter, somehow sensing that you didn’t know how to act around him. “Glad that it’s you by the way.”

“Me?” It was true that you had always loved this place, it was the closest thing to a second home that you knew, but actually going as far as buying it in an effort to save it? It had been a hasty purchase driven entirely by love. You hadn't even given yourself time to think about it. It hadn't been until you were actually standing in the store all those years ago, as the owner this time, that you had taken the time to think about what the hell you had done. "I can't help but think that I shouldn't have, you know?"

"Don't say that. This old place is kinda instrumental in getting us back together now, right?" A shiver runs down your spine when Eddie says that and you know that he didn't mean it like that, but you can't stop your mind from wandering in that particular direction. "Besides, I'm here now, ain't I? Your savior."

"Fuck, Eddie," you laughed. "Still with the theatrics."

"Some things never change, babe."

"I guess not."

After a short amount of time spent catching up, you closed the store early and went out for lunch with Eddie and Dustin at a local diner. Everyone stared at Eddie from the moment that he walked in.

Several of the older patrons still looked at him like he was a devil worshiper whereas some of the people that had attended high school with him had looks on their faces that hinted at jealousy and something else, too. Belinda, a former cheerleader, even came up to him with one of the biggest plastic smiles that she could produce and told him how glad she was to see him.

As soon as she left, after realizing that Eddie wasn’t going to give her any attention, the three of you sniggered and talked about how Belinda had never even looked twice at Eddie when he was still in school.

Now that he had made it big, Eddie was suddenly a lot more interesting.

“Fuck, that was so weird,” he says when you head back to the store. It was just the two of you now, because Dustin had already made plans with Suzie. “I think that she was putting the moves on me, too.”

“You think?” You nudge his side with your fist. “She looked ready to drop down to her knees and suck you off in front of everyone.”

“Ew.” Eddie shoves your shoulder and you laugh in reply. “I don’t even want to think- that’s fucking gross, man.”

“Doesn’t that kind of thing happen to you all the time?”

“Sometimes,” he says with a shrug. “But that doesn’t mean that I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Starfuckers,” you counter as you hold open the door that leads to your apartment above the store. “All looking to become the next Mrs Munson.”

Eddie chuckles at that and you want to laugh along with him, but you could feel a sense of dread begin to form in the pit of your stomach.

You didn’t know why you thought this, but maybe he turned down Belinda Foster, former head cheerleader and current very unhappy housewife, because he had a girl waiting for him back home. It was a very distinct possibility at least.

“I wouldn’t have made fucking Belinda my wife even if I had stayed here,” he sneers when you reached the top of the stairs. “She’s the one that gave me that damn 'Freak' nickname.”

“No way,” you reply and you watch Eddie nod to confirm it. “She started that shit?”

“She did! She was a massive bitch.” Eddie tried to open the door at the top of the steps, but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked.”

“Oh shit. Wait.”

You took the remaining steps until you were standing next to him. The hallway was narrow and you were suddenly very much aware of how close Eddie was. You could feel his body heat radiating off of him as you fiddled with the lock.

“There,” you say and when you looked back up at him, you were looking straight into his warm brown eyes. “Open.”

“Hmm?” Eddie didn’t appear to have heard you, his eyes were on your lips the entire time. “What?”

“Open,” you cleared your throat and pushed the door open suddenly. “The door. It’s open.”

“Oh," he shook his head then, the spell broken. "Okay.”

With a gesture from your arm, very much copying the same kind of gestures he'd make all the time at girls back in high school, Eddie stepped into your place. You leaned against the cool wall for a moment to gather yourself before you followed him inside.

You had already been nervous, but your nerve levels had reached epic proportions now that Eddie was standing in your shitty living room with the old carpet flooring and looking at what was on your walls and what was on the shelves.

He had come to a standstill in front of a collection of picture frames and eventually plucked one from the shelf and held it up to you. “What the hell happened to these kids, huh?”

You didn’t have to look at it more closely to know exactly which picture it was.

Eddie was smiling in it, his signature grin on his lips, and you were sticking your tongue out at whoever had been taking the picture. The two of you must have been around sixteen. Both dressed entirely in black, you wearing a Joy Division shirt and him in an Iron Maiden shirt.

You were at some gig, you couldn’t remember who had been playing anymore, but you did remember how Eddie had wrapped his arms around you that night, his chin resting on your shoulder, to sing along with some cover that the band had played.

“God only knows,” you counter. “Bet they never saw any of this coming.”

That was only half true. Back then, Eddie had the same aspirations that he had since made a reality, to make it big with the band. Your dreams were a little bit more basic, but Eddie was involved in every single one of them.

God, you were such a sap.

“Cute.” Eddie had a different picture in his hand now and since you couldn’t see which one it was, you decided to join him. When you were close enough, he held it up for you to see. “I took this one, right?”

It was an old Polaroid. It was taken during another one of Hawkins’ hot summers. You were wearing a crop top and laying in the grass, a pair of Eddie’s sunglasses obscuring your eyes, your cheeks flushed from the heat with a big smile on your face.

It was probably one of the few pictures where you had a genuine smile, teeth on display and all, which was all down to the guy on the other end of the camera.

“Yeah,” you reach out to take it from him and smile at the memories that come flooding back in. “You gave it to me.”

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

The look in his eyes is softer than you expected it to be and there was something unreadable in there, too. You fumbled with the picture frame and would have dropped it if it hadn’t been for Eddie.

His large hands enclose yours and help you hold the frame more steadily. He opens his mouth, about to speak, when you suddenly tear your hands from his grip and put the frame back down where it belonged.

“Thanks,” you mumble quickly. “Butterfingers.”

You backed away from him slowly, saying something about needing to find the papers of the store. Eddie watches you open a drawer and pull out a couple of folders that were filled with paperwork before taking it to the dining table, which looked more like a dumping ground for various things, and going through them. You’re hunched over the table, every muscle in your body pulled taut as a bowstring from the nerves.

You never used to be this nervous around him, but then again, things had changed. It hadn’t exactly ended well, something that he still regrets and he hopes that he’ll be able to explain it at one point during his stay.

"Who's Chase by the way?"

Eddie had been curious about the guy ever since he had first spoken to you on the phone. He doesn’t miss how your shoulders stiffen at the mere mention of the name and how you release the breath that you’d been holding moments later.

"My ex husband," you reply in a deadpan voice.

"You were married?!”

"As I seem to recall, you’d gotten married, too. My marriage didn't get a mention in the gossip rags though.” It had been fairly big news at the time. Metal guitarist marries a squeaky clean actress. That wasn’t the actual headline of course, just what it had turned into in your head. They had been a very unlikely couple after all. “Mine lasted longer as well."

"Fuck you.” He laughs at his own stupidity. “It was a mistake, alright? I barely knew her. Hope that you knew your guy though."

You look over your shoulder at him. "You know him, too."

"The name doesn't ring a bell."

"Chase Wright?” you ask, but Eddie’s expression doesn’t change. “He was a center on the basketball team?"

"What?” He definitely recognizes the name now. “You married that douche?!"

"Eh," you shrug. "He was cute."

"You hated his guts," he counters with a sneer, still remembering how Chase used to treat others in school.

"People are allowed to change their minds, Eddie." You can’t keep the anger out of your voice, but the anger is mainly aimed at yourself, not at him. “People change.”

"Okay, fair enough." He held his hands up, signaling defeat. "I take it that he's not around anymore."

"Nope. Kicked him out when I caught him fucking a girl that used to work here.” You slam one folder down on the table to get some of the anger out of your system. “In our bed."

"Ouch."

"Ah well. He can go fuck himself,” you say dismissively. You didn’t want to waste any more time thinking about Chase. “Good riddance.”

“You never needed a guy anyway.”

“Huh?” You frown when Eddie says that and while you’re fairly certain that he meant it as a compliment, you’re still left confused by the remark. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were always pretty independent and took shit from no one.” Eddie looks and sounds impressed as he recalls the person that you once used to be. Keywords being 'used to be'. “You were cool.”

“Things were different back then,” you say as you move onto the next folder with papers. “I wouldn’t exactly call myself cool now.”

“I would,” Eddie laughs.

“Shut up.” You laugh along with him and shake your head. “You’re way cooler. You made it, dude. Living the dream and all that bullshit.”

“Not entirely,” he says under his breath as his eyes scan the pictures again, especially the one of you sprawled out on the lawn of his uncle’s old trailer. “Got obligations now. Records to sell, gigs to play… it’s not all fun and games.”

“Yeah well, at least you don’t have to keep this place afloat.”

“I will if you find those papers.”

“Touché.”

“Why’d you really buy this place?” Eddie sees you freeze and can hear the piece of paper that you’re holding shake in your hand. “It couldn't have been doing much better before you took over.”

“Not really,” you say quietly. “I just couldn’t-” He hears you make a little triumphant noise then and sees you reach for the next piece of paper and hold it up. “Found it.”

It takes you a few seconds before you’re standing next to him again, handing him the deed that you’d just found. “This is what you need, right?”

Eddie looks at it and then back up at you again. Whatever you had been about to tell him, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t going to get the answers that he sought right now.

“Yeah,” he eventually replies. “This is what I need.”

Maybe later.

Eddie called the guy that handled finances for him (he actually had a guy for that) and set things in motion on his end.

It should take a couple of days, but at the end of it Eddie would be the new owner of Hawkins Records and the future of the store would be secure.

Crazy when you thought about it.

It hadn’t been talked about in so many words yet, but you assumed that he would be fine with you staying on to run things and that you’d report to him every once in a while? You had no idea what Eddie wanted, but you knew for certain that he wouldn’t stay and run the store himself.

You celebrated your future joint venture with pizza, cheap beer and music. Owning a record store meant that you had plenty of albums to choose from and you swore that Eddie was like a kid in a candy store. You were more than okay with him picking the music and he had dug several gems out of your collection already.

While Motörhead’s Iron Fist is on the record player, an album that Eddie played so much that he ended up ruining the record when he was a teenager, talk turns to his love life when Sex & Outrage plays.

It was a song about groupies, which is something that Eddie thankfully does not discuss. You didn’t want to know how many girls came up to their tour bus in the hopes of getting lucky with one of the band members and you weren’t going to ask him about it either.

“You have no idea,” he says while you grab two new bottles of beer from the fridge. “It’s insane. I could barely get anyone to look twice at me in high school and now I can’t go anywhere without having girls write their phone numbers on whatever they can find and slipping them to me.” He takes a bottle of beer from your hand and pops the cap with his lighter. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” you say with a shrug. He trades his opened bottle for your closed one. “Must be tough, huh? All those models that want to fuck you all the time?”

“For the record, there’s only been one model and she was fucking exhausting.”

“I bet.” When he takes a sip from his beer, you see his nose crinkle, something that you mistake for disgust. “Sorry that it’s not the more expensive stuff, but we don’t really get imports here.”

“Honey, I like Miller. I’m not exactly a fan of that overpriced crap anyway.”

“Huh.” You took a swig of your own bottle and sat down on the lazy chair next to the couch that Eddie was sitting on. “So you’d rather spend your money on keeping a failing record store in business than treating yourself to the finer things in life?”

You reach forward to grab a packet of cigarettes and a lighter off the coffee table so you didn’t see how Eddie’s eyes focused on the collar of your tank top. You had not realized that you had flashed him a more than generous amount of cleavage.

“Like coke and hookers?”

“Call girls,” you correct him right before you lit your cigarette. “Hookers sounds too cheap.”

“And I don’t do cheap?”

“Seeing how you made it enough to buy your way out of Hawkins, why would you?” If you'd been in the same position, you'd be living it up, you knew that much at least.

“I’m still the same guy that I was back then.”

“Only with more money this time round." Corroded Coffin had come back from a very successful world tour only two months ago and there was plenty of talk of them working on a new album so it's not like they were doing badly. "And drowning in pussy, too, I reckon.”

“Pfffff. You keep bringing that up." He put his hands on the back of his head, leaned back and looked at you with raised eyebrows, like he was taking a bit too much satisfaction out of the fact that you seemed to be very much preoccupied with the state of his sex life. "Are you jealous?”

“Jealous of anyone that gets laid regularly," you elaborate. "Not like there are a lot of options round here for an alternative chick that runs a record store.”

The only guy in town who would have potentially been up for a hookup had been Steve Harrington, but a former cheerleader had managed to change Steve's womanizing ways. There was even talk of him buying her a ring to make it official, but who knew if that was actually true.

“There’s someone for everyone," Eddie declares and you're somewhat surprised that he even buys into that shit.

“I got burned one too many times," you counter. "I ain’t looking anymore.”

There’s a silence between you two after that statement. It came out sounding too harsh, too bitter, your words a little bit too scathing.

It was a barefaced lie, too, and you knew it, but the only guy that you ever truly wanted wasn’t exactly available to you. It didn’t matter that he was here right now, because he’d only leave eventually.

They all did.

“We made out once,” Eddie says quietly as he looks at you from the corner of his eye. “Long time ago.”

“Jesus!” you exclaim. “I can’t believe that you remember that.” Pretending that you barely remembered was the best course of action here. You weren’t going to admit to the fact that you still thought about that night regularly and how you regretted that everything had eventually slipped away from you. “I was high as a fucking kite.”

“And drunk.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you were taking advantage of me?”

“You think I needed to?" Seeing how the two of you went way back, it wasn't that hard for Eddie to see straight through your lies. "Fuck, you were throwing yourself at me before you’d even drank one beer.”

“I was not,” you say indignantly. “Besides, I seem to recall that you kept trying to look down my shirt that evening.”

“Was not!“

“You’re such a bad liar, Munson. Always have been.” You lean forward and try to kick his shin, but he pulls away just in time. “My tits were the first thing that you went for when we started making out.”

“Can you blame me?” He gestures at your rack. “Your tits were fucking amazing.”

“Still are,” you say under your breath, thinking that he hadn’t heard you and completely missing how his eyes drift down as soon as you had said it. “You were groping them as if you had no idea what to do with them.”

“Yeah, well, it was my first time feeling someone up, alright?" He flexes his fingers then, as if he was trying to remember exactly how they felt in his hands and you're briefly mesmerized by the seemingly simple gesture. "And I’d been obsessed with your rack for ages.”

“Really?”

“Fuck yeah, couldn’t get them out of my head.”

That one hookup had never really gone anywhere, though.

You had been teenagers, horny teenagers.

There had been tension between you for ages, that’s what you had thought anyway, and Eddie had been ogling you so blatantly that night, too. His eyes were drifting down whenever he thought that you hadn’t been looking and shooting up to your face whenever he thought that you noticed.

In the end, you had made the first move after a couple of beers and one shared joint. The kiss had been impulsive and while it had taken Eddie’s brain a couple of seconds to catch up to what was happening, he had matched your fervor when he kissed you back and pulled you into his lap.

It was just one night of kissing, groping and grinding on each other. A few hours full of breathless giggles, foreheads pressed together, shared breaths, you gasping into his mouth when he pulled you harder against him, his pupils dilated so far that you could barely see the brown of his irises anymore.

How it hadn’t ended with you in his bed was anybody’s guess, but it hadn’t. You vaguely remember the promises of wanting to do it right, wining and dining you properly, instead of fucking you in the back of his van.

Sadly, it had never gotten the chance to evolve into something more.

When the two of you had seen each other again on Monday, it was like nothing had happened at all.

Eddie had blushed furiously at first, but he had recollected himself fairly quickly, slammed his hand in between your shoulder blades and asked you if you had finished your homework, something that he had never taken much interest in before.

“You acted like it had never happened.”

“I was nervous, alright?” he admits. “I spent most of that Sunday jerking off whilst thinking of you on top of me so I kinda freaked out when I saw you again.”

“I tried to kiss you again the next weekend and you turned your head away.”

It was something that you had never forgotten. Despite the fact that he had acted off with you all week, you had still tried to repeat it the following weekend.

Eddie had not let you however. He turned his head away when you leaned in, your lips connecting with his cheek instead, and then he had excused himself.

It was the lowest that you had ever felt in your entire life. After sitting in stunned silence for a short while, you had headed back home and cried yourself to sleep that same night, because you’d been crushing on Eddie hard for ages and then he just… rejected you.

The Saturday night before you had been soaring high above the clouds and the Saturday night after, you crash landed back to Earth.

“I’m sorry, alright, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”

“I’ll say! We barely talked for the rest of the year!” you exclaim, still hurting over something that had happened a lifetime ago. “And then I graduated, went to college and we never spoke again. By the time I came back, you were long gone.”

“And I still regret that every single fucking day!”

That little outburst silences you for a bit. You got the sense that Eddie was as bothered by his own conduct as much as you had been back then. The way that he had responded to it, something that you had perceived as embarrassment that he had even let it happen at all, had ended a friendship of several years after all.

“Dude, why didn’t you ever just tell me?”

This entire conversation was draining you. When he had called you out of the blue two weeks ago to make his offer, you had wondered what he would do when he would find out that you were the one that ran the store now. You had never once counted on the fact that the two of you would have this long overdue conversation.

Part of you hoped that he had forgotten about it entirely, but it appeared to weigh as heavy on his mind as it did on yours.

“Instead you just tried to carry on as usual at first while I had to overhear stories of you hooking up with drunk chicks that came to watch you guys play at The Hideout. I fucking hated you by the end of the school year.”

Things had been tense between you after he had rejected you. Eddie had made an attempt to remain friends by pretending that he hadn’t utterly humiliated you, completely ignoring the fact that he might have needed to apologize. All the while you kept withdrawing from him.

Offers to come hang out or whatever else Eddie thought up were all met with excuses from your end, even using the famous “I need to wash my hair that night” line.

Eventually, he got the picture and left you alone completely.

“I know,” he sighs.

“You broke my heart, Eddie.”

“I know.”

“Is that all you’re gonna say?” You groan loudly and wipe a hand down your face in frustration. “Fuck, you never should have brought that night up to begin with. Would have been better if it had just remained in the past where it belongs.”

Getting up from the couch, you walked over to the small kitchen area and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the counter. You opened it and took a drink straight from the bottle, not bothering to put it in a glass. The liquid burned as it went down your throat, momentarily taking your mind off things.

“That was my first kiss, you know.” You couldn’t resist, even if the hurt was clearly audible in your voice, you still wanted him to be aware of what he had done to you. “And you basically fucking ruined it.”

“I never meant to-“

“Well, you did. I felt like shit, Eddie. You were my best friend and then I lost you because of something stupid like that.” You took another gulp from the bottle, one so large that you gasped for breath afterwards. “I think that you should leave. Go ask Dustin if you can crash in his spare bedroom or something and then we can forget that this ever happened.”

“You want me to leave?”

“Yes! Just go back to whatever fucking mansion you live in right now. Sell your records, fuck your groupies… whatever.”

“You really think the worst of me, don’t you?”

“At least you got out of this shithole of a town,” you bit back. “I’m stuck here with all the fucking memories.”

“What memories?” His voice sounded a lot closer now and when you turned your head, you noticed that he was standing a few feet away from you. He closed the distance and leaned against the counter next to you. “Hey. What memories?” he repeated again.

“This place,” you said as you gestured around you, but really meaning the store down below. “And this dumb fucking town with its dumb fucking people that I can’t shake no matter where the hell I go. I got into Columbia for god’s sake! And look at me now! Running a record store in a town that I hate.”

“So it’s nothing but bad memories then?”

“No,” you replied quietly. “Not all bad.”

“So which ones are the good ones?” He slid in a little closer until his arm made contact with yours. “Wanna tell me?”

“No.”

Because he knew. The bastard fucking knew. He knew that all the good memories involved him. He just wanted to hear you say it out loud for once, for you to stop chickening out for once in your life and to tell him how you really felt.

"Why not?"

"Because."

Too embarrassing to admit to for starters, because how are you even supposed to voice something that you've only ever said in your head? Where would you even start?

"That's not an answer."

"It's all you're getting." You try to move away from him, the need to put distance between the two of you was overwhelming because you couldn't trust yourself around him. "It's late."

"Is it? It’s not even eleven yet." He called you out on your bullshit immediately. His fingers wrap around your wrist and he pulls you back against him. "What are you so scared of, huh?"

"Eddie."

"Come on, just answer the question."

"Don't make me," you say softly. He turned you around until your ass was pressed up against the kitchen drawers. Then he placed his hands on either side of you on the counter, effectively caging you in. His big brown eyes were practically burning a hole through you. "Please don’t make me answer.”

“I’m just curious, is all.”

“Why?”

“Come on.” His smile is warm and inviting, the same one that you remembered, and it was starting to sway you. “We’re old friends, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. I guess,” you shrug halfheartedly.

“You think that I’ll make fun of you or something?”

“I wish you would.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because maybe then I could forget you,” you blurt out. He looks at you curiously, head tilted to the side as he takes you in. His expressive eyes, which usually gave you so much, are unreadable now. Or maybe you just ignored everything that was swirling around in there, still convinced that nothing would come out of this. “If I ever packed up and left, it would be like closing the door completely. And I don’t want to. I can’t.”

“So it’s my fault that you never left?”

“Yes. Because despite everything, I kept hoping that you’d come back one day and seriously, why would you? Everybody hated you.” Almost everyone in town thought that he was some cult leader when all that the Hellfire Club did was offer a safe space for all the rejects. That combined with the fact that Eddie was always so unapologetically himself was a recipe for disaster in a town like Hawkins. “Why would you want to come back to a town that treated you like shit most of the time?”

“Honey, if I had known that you were here, I would have.”

“You mean it?” He nodded in reply. “Don’t lie to me, Eddie.” It sounded too hard to believe, like something made up just because he wanted to get laid, because that was where this was going, wasn’t it? You could feel the electricity crackle in the air between you from the moment that he set foot inside your apartment. “You really mean it?”

“Yes,” he replies and he looked honest enough, his big brown eyes seemed to hold nothing but the truth in them. He still couldn’t lie for shit. Not to you. “I never stopped carrying a torch for you. Kept hoping that you’d come to a gig one night so we could catch up, pick up where we left off, but you never did.”

“I was scared.” Your voice breaks at the last word and you can feel tears begin to well up in your eyes. “I couldn’t-“

“Shhh,” he put his index finger on your lips to silence you. “You’re here now.”

“That’s ‘cause I live here,” you chuckle weakly. “Can’t leave.”

“Lucky me.”

Eddie’s lips ensured that you wouldn’t be able to reply this time. The kiss was desperate and hungry. Your teeth clashed as you came together, but neither of you cared about the clumsiness of it.

This was something that both of you had been looking to repeat for many years now.

Twelve years to be precise.

And while both of you had matured during the years that you had been apart, you were also still very much the same in a way, as if you’d merely been playing at being grownups for all this time. As if time had somehow stopped ever since you parted, only to start again now that you were together again.

“Eddie,” you moan against his lips when he pushes you up against the counter so hard that he was in danger of hurting you. You'd definitely have some bruises to show for this in the morning, as proof that it really happened. “Is this- are we really doing this?”

“I’ve been thinking of nothing else for years, baby.” His hands cup your face desperately, tilting it further back so he can run his teeth down the column of your throat. As soon as they make contact with your skin, you start to make noises as if you are in heat. “Jesus. Keep doing that.”

“I will if you will,” you breathe back.

“Deal.”

His hands grab your waist and he lifts you up onto the counter. You instantly wrap your thighs around his hips and Eddie starts rutting into you a split second later. Every time his pelvis connects with yours, you could feel him growing harder. Whenever his cock presses into the apex of your thighs, you mewl and your eyes practically roll back into your skull every single time.

“Fuck, Eddie,” you dig your nails in his shoulderblades, no doubt leaving little crescent shaped imprints in his skin. “Want you so bad.” His hands slid under the hemline of your tank top, grabbing two handfuls of your tits within seconds. “I need you.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He pulls on the fabric that was covering your torso, almost tearing it in his eagerness to get it off. “Fuck, baby,” he growls when he got an eyeful of your chest. “You were right. They’re still fucking amazing.”

“You heard me?!”

“What do you think?” He buries his face between them and looks up at you. “Most perfect tits I’ve ever seen.” His tongue slides along the scalloped edge of the lace cups. “And you’re not bad either.”

“Shut up,” you lightly smack the back of his head. “You can always leave if you want to.”

“Are you kidding?” Eddie pulls the cups of your bra down, finally uncovering your tits. “I’ve been dreaming about this for years. I’m not gonna leave now.”

He finally stops talking, finally, and puts his mouth to good use. His lips latch on to one of your nipples and you throw your head back so far that the back of your head slams into the cabinets above the counter.

You swear loudly and Eddie pauses for a second, to look up at you and see if you were alright.

“Fine!” you all but shout. “I’m okay. Keep going.”

“Yes, ma’am. Whatever you want.”

Eddie dives straight back in, lavishing your tits in so much attention that you start grinding your hips against his, practically begging for sweet release.

“Goddammit,” he husks against the shell of your ear after his tongue had licked a stripe all the way up to your neck. “Your tits are perfect, sweetheart. Can’t get enough of ‘em.“

“Oh yeah?“

“Yeah.” He moves down again, licking at the pebbled skin around your painfully hard nub. “I want to paint them with my cum.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Not yet, baby.”

Eddie pulls you against him, off the counter. As soon as your feet touch the ground, you kick your flip flops off and he turns you around so he can press his pelvis against the curve of your ass. You press back when you feel his bulge grinding into you.

“Don’t want to come too fast,” he whispers in your ear as his hands start undoing your jeans. “Want to take my time.” He yanks your jean shorts and underwear down roughly, pulls them over your feet and discards them next to him. “But you’ll get my cum eventually, don’t worry about that.”

“I wasn’t. Not worried at all-!” The last word turns into a high pitched yelp when his hand connects with your bare ass. “Jesus, Eddie.”

“Fuckin’ love it when you say my name like that, sweetheart.” He slides his hand between your legs and hums appreciatively when he finds out how wet you are. “You’re so wet.”

“Used to get like that all the time around you,” you admit, moaning loudly when his fingers brush against your clit. “You were a fucking idiot for never noticing it before. Was always worried you’d smell me or somethin’.”

“That bad?”

“Couldn’t go near you without soaking through my panties.” Eddie groans straight into your ear and it sends a flood of warmth straight down to your core. “All the fucking time, Eddie. I had it bad. Real bad.”

“Fuck, I-“ His fingers freeze suddenly and you whine while bucking your hips against his hand in an effort to get him to move again. “I wanna make it up to you.”

“H-How?”

“You’ll see.” He takes a step back and leans against the drawers next to you, leaning back far enough so he can see your face. “Think that you’ll like it.”

You watch him, wide eyed, as he lowers himself and sits on the floor, his back resting against the cabinets behind him. He grins widely, as was usual for him, takes your hand and pulls you to the side. You step over his legs until you’re standing astride him and he looks up at you, his grin bordering on feral now that your pussy is at eye level.

“This how you want me?” You run your hands through his short hair lovingly and he leans into your touch for a moment.

“This is exactly how I want you.” His eyes never once left your cunt and he blows hot air on it, the fucking tease, just to see you squirm. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

His hands grab the back of your thighs, right underneath your ass, and bring you in closer. He presses his lips to your mound, lingering there as he looks up at you. You nod once, giving him permission, not sure if he was even asking for it but giving it all the same.

Eddie hooks your right leg over his shoulder and spreads you open even further. You just know that your foot is going to hurt from the way that it’s wedged between the wooden doors and Eddie’s back, but you could care less.

You had been waiting for this moment for so long that you could deal with some slight discomfort afterwards.

When his tongue finally makes contact with your clit, you swear that you just died and went to heaven. The contact is minimal, a light swirl with the tip of his tongue, but it’s enough to make you shudder and make your lungs constrict.

You moan his name when his tongue dips in deeper, sliding between your folds, pressing against your entrance and it’s enough to make you squeeze your eyes shut so hard that you're seeing stars.

“Stay with me,” he breathes against your sopping folds, the warm air tickling you and making your hips jerk. “Stay with me, princess.”

“Feels so good, Eddie,” you choke out. “I’m not going to last.”

“You’ll have to,” he whispers against you, “Because I’m not gonna stop.”

His tongue works against you like he’s a virtuoso, as if he’d been practicing for this single moment his entire life, hitting you in all the right places with every swipe of his tongue. He played the guitar with the same dexterity, knowing full well that he was good with the instrument, one of the best in fact, and he plays you with the same level of confidence.

A pathetic whine bursts from your lips as he subjects you to this sweet torture, as if you were simply another one of his guitars, adding you to his already extensive repertoire.

You press your hands against the laminate counter hard, your torso bending forward and resting on your forearms, head hanging down as Eddie pulls the most inhuman sounds from your lungs.

The smug bastard smiles against you, enjoying seeing and feeling you come undone by his tongue alone, and then he moans, actually fucking moans, when he pushes his tongue as deep into your pussy as it could go.

It proves to be too much for you. Your entire body tensed up, all your muscles pulled taut, your mouth hanging open in a silent scream as your climax crests and peaks. It’s so intense it almost tears a hole right through you.

Only Eddie doesn’t stop.

Still caught in the aftershocks of your orgasm, breathing so hard that it feels like your lungs are on fire, your hips buck when you feel something probing your entrance.

You sob loudly, tears already pricking your eyes, as Eddie slides two digits into you - slowly, slowly - until they can go no further. He pulls them out completely and then slips them back in.

“P-please,” you cry out. “I c-can’t take any more.”

“You say that,” his voice sounds leisurely and relaxed, his breathing warm on your overworked cunt. “But your body keeps pulling me back in.” You groan in discomfort, but your body betrays you, your hips twitching and moving back and forth in time with his motions. “See? You want more.”

“Eddie-“

“You can do this,” his free hand connects your ass roughly and he laughs when you let out a loud yelp. “One more time. Indulge me.”

“Oh god.” Your voice wavers when he curls his fingers inside you, hitting your sweet spot and making a sudden jolt course through your body. “I really ca-“ Your voice goes up in pitch when his tongue touches your clit again. “D-don’t… s-st-stop…”

Those two words are enough to make him speed up. His fingers thrust up into you harder and faster and his lips practically attach themselves to your clit, sucking on the bundle of nerves and flicking at it with his tongue.

Your second climax is a scorcher and you come whilst screaming his name. Your body convulses, wanting to fold in on itself, and you claw at whatever you can simply to keep yourself standing upright when you feel your knee buckle underneath you.

Eddie unhooks your right leg from his shoulder and you can feel the muscles in it scream from soreness. You can feel a trickle of fluid flow down your thigh as his hands settle on your hips and he pulls you down onto his lap.

Wrapping your arms around his neck, you lean into his chest and Eddie’s hands rub up and down your back gently as you come down from your high.

“You okay?” he finally asks when your breathing has normalized. He listens to you take in a shaky breath before you even say anything and he worries that he may have pushed you too far. “Talk to me.”

“It’s so unfair,” you mumble into his chest.

“Unfair?” Surprise is clearly audible in his voice, but you’re unwilling to move from your very comfortable current position. “What’s unfair?”

“I’m practically naked and you’re still fully dressed.” It makes him burst into laughter and even when he stops, his belly still shakes when he tries to contain himself. “Not funny,” you pout, even though you’re amused yourself.

Sitting back on his thighs, you pull on the collar of his shirt. Eddie hooks a finger underneath the strap of your bra, the only item of clothing that you’re still wearing even if it’s all askew, pulls it back until it snaps against your skin.

“You’re still wearing this.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause it covers up so much.” You roll your eyes, reach around the back to unhook your bra and take it off. “Doesn’t change anything about the fact that you’re not naked.”

“Hmm.” He leans forward a little, his lips ghosting over yours as he grabs the hemline of his shirt, pulls it over his head and tosses it as far as he can. “This better?”

“A little,” you pout, trying to sound disappointed, but who could ever be disappointed when looking at Eddie’s inked chest? It was an amazing sight after all. “You got a lot more since I last saw you.”

“I was eighteen when you last saw me.” Your finger traces the demon head on his chest that you recognize, which has faded a bit over time. “Remember that one?”

“I was with you when you got it, so yeah, I do.” You bring both hands up to his chest, tracing all the new designs that he’s gotten since then, more intricate and colorful. “Do you even have any skin left for more?”

“Well, I have a couple of places…” He trails off, his cheeks coloring and a hand rubbing the back of his neck. “But the most important one is still empty.”

“Oh?” Your eyes go over the parts of his skin that you can see, but there’s barely any space left. “Where?”

Eddie takes your right hand, brings it up to his chest and places it right over where his heart is. “Right there.”

You move your hand away and sure enough, there’s an empty spot that you missed. It’s just about big enough for a name.

“That’s an important one indeed,” you muse as your fingers move back and forth over it. “Any thoughts on what you want there?”

The question was rhetoric, because it was painstakingly obvious what he had reserved that empty spot for.

“A name,” he replies. “Don’t act like you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t want to assume,” you grin. “You never know.”

Even though he had been married and had probably been with loads of women, it was still empty. So maybe that meant-

You shook your head. No way. There’s just no way.

“What’s up?” His voice is so low that it makes you shiver involuntarily.

He obviously wants to know what you’re thinking, but this is something that you can’t voice out loud, not yet, so you need to find a way to distract him somehow.

The easiest way to do that was to…

“Fuck,” Eddie groans when you grind your hips against his. You do it slowly, getting the maximum amount of friction out of it, and your breathing hitches when you angle your hips just right. “Distracting me?”

He knows what you’re doing, of course he does, but the way that he’s smiling tells you that he doesn’t mind.

“Wanna suck your dick, Ed,” you tell him. “Need to wrap my lips around it.” He swears under his breath and you look at him through your lashes, biting your bottom lip teasingly. “You gonna let me? You gonna put it in my mouth and fuck my face?”

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses. “You can't just- fuck. Can’t believe you just fucking said that.”

“Eddie,” you moan, really going in for the kill now. “I want to take all of it. Every. Inch.” You enunciate the last words clearly, emphasizing every syllable, your smile growing when you see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “I want you to make me choke on it. You wanna see the tears stream down my face, don't you? From barely being able to fit all of you into my mouth?”

He grabs the back of your neck, pulls you close and slams his lips down on yours. He kisses you so hard that you forget to breathe and when he pulls away, he’s breathing just as hard as you are.

“When did you get so fucking filthy?”

“You don’t know half of it,” you wink. “What about it then? You want to see me on my knees with your cock in my mouth?”

Twisting your head to the side, you can feel his lips brush against the shell of your ear as he says, “You’re such a dirty little slut.”

His words send a fresh flood of warmth down to your cunt and all that you can reply is, “Uh-huh.”

“On your knees.”

You don’t need to be told twice. You’re off his lap in a flash and on your knees, ready and waiting for him. Eddie gets to his feet and his hands settle on his belt, but you brush them away quickly.

“Allow me.”

There was an overwhelming need to work fast, to unbuckle his belt quickly, yank his trousers down to his knees and stick his cock in your mouth, but it was way more fun to tease him.

Just a little.

Taking his shoes off is what you start with. You quite possibly draw it out a little bit too much, grasping the metal slider of the zippers, pulling them down tooth by tooth, holding onto his black boots as he steps out of them and then putting them side by side next to you.

Starting at his ankles, your hands skim up his jeans slowly, on the outside of his legs until you reach the top. You could have repeated that a couple of times, but decided not to.

That was more down to your own impatience rather than the temptation of pushing the boundaries, because there was nothing but amusement in Eddie’s eyes over your ability to even drag it out this long.

You undo his belt, taking care not to make your fingers brush over his crotch, where he was quite obviously straining away against the fabric in a way that was already making your mouth water. You were so ridiculously careful when you opened his zip too, fingers barely touching, your hands shaking like you were unwrapping the best present that anyone had ever given you.

Which is what he kinda was in a way.

His hand touches the top of your head, so tender that it makes you want to fucking cry, like you’re that same dumb teenager again that just wanted him to notice you and wanted him to pick you so desperately that you were blind to the fact that you’d had him all along.

You can’t even look up, too afraid to see the look in his eyes right now, so you grab at the fabric just above his knees and drag it down his legs. And you can’t even look at his boxer briefs, only catching a flash of the black item of clothing from the corner of your eye, but not focusing on it.

Not yet.

There ought to be something that you should be saying, but your tongue feels thick and your mouth dry as you keep pulling his jeans down, exposing his legs inch by inch until you pull it down his feet and leave it lying there.

When you finally hazard a glance up, Eddie’s expression is gentle, whatever bravado he always put on display was sorely lacking now. His eyes are unbearably soft instead, simply looking at the girl that he once knew, sitting on her knees in front of him and who seemed morbidly afraid to make a move.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s just me.”

As if he had to remind you of that.

But it was also exactly what you needed to hear right now and you lean forward, pressing your lips on his thigh softly, lingering there for a moment, before your hands move up to pull his boxers down.

When his cock finally pops free, proudly standing at attention, hard as a fucking rock, you almost gasp. Almost. You manage to restrain yourself, but he can see it written all over your face. The surprise and yes, the hunger, is all there in your pupils and in the little smile that materializes on your lips.

“Holy shit, Ed,” you whisper, impressed. “I’m definitely going to choke on that.”

“I’m counting on it,” he moans when you wrap your fingers around the base. You move your hand up once, just to feel the velvety shaft against your palm. “You just gonna keep looking at it?”

“Maybe,” you counter with a grin. You lick a stripe up his cock and he hisses through his teeth the second that your tongue makes contact with him. “Will that do?” Eddie raises his eyebrows as he looks down at you, head tilted to the side as if to say ‘are you serious?’ without saying anything at all. You try not to laugh and ask, “No?”

There’s a bead of precum glistening on the tip and you squeeze the base as you lean in closer. Your tongue darts out from between your lips to lick it away. The amount of contact he got out of this was minimal, so his hips press forward, chasing your mouth as you pull back.

“So impatient,” you chide. “That’s your problem. No self control.”

“You started drooling the second you pulled my pants down,” he answers. Unsurprisingly, he has called you out on your bullshit yet again. “Don’t deny it.”

“I’m not,” you reply as your fist gives a lazy stroke upwards. “Pretty damn hard not to considering what you’ve got packed away in your pants.”

With your hand still on his shaft, you keep moving it up and down slowly while also angling his cock out of the way. Eddie notices and was getting ready to ask what you were doing, his mouth already open, when you suddenly move in closer to take one of his balls in your mouth instead.

A low guttural moan bursts from his lips as your tongue moves in circles around the sac and your hand tugs on his cock at the same speed. When he swears under his breath, you start humming contentedly and he reaches down to grasp the back of your head, his fingers spread out, his thumb rubbing circles right behind your ear.

You move on to his other testicle, wanting to give the same amount of attention to both. His digits keep flexing, his fingernails scratching your scalp lightly, a gentle reminder that he could shove you down onto his length whenever he pleases and was merely holding himself back. You pull your head away slowly, tugging gently on his sac with your lips until you release him suddenly.

“Fuck,” he husks out, his voice low and hoarse. “That was insane.”

“You liked that, baby?”

“Thought it was obvious.” He runs a hand through his short hair. The errant curly lock of hair gets brushed back but it pops straight back out again a split second later.

“It was,” you grin. “But I still want to hear you say it.”

“Yes.” His voice is too level, too composed, so you lick up the line between his balls just to feel his cock twitch in your grip and he chokes out the next words. “Ye-yes, I did.”

“Good.”

Your eyes focus on his cock again, especially on the ruddy head this time. You lick your lips and you can’t stop yourself from smiling this time when Eddie whines above you. Your lips make contact with the tip so softly that he barely must have felt it at all, so you do it again, making sure that he feels your kiss this time.

“Still okay?” Your eyes are impossibly wide as you look up at him and Eddie’s pupils are so large that there’s barely any brown of his irises left. “Hm?”

“Great,” he chokes out and his voice goes up in pitch when you kiss his dick again, just below the tip. “Keep doing that.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

How long you even manage to keep this up, you don’t know, but you don’t think that there’s a part of Eddie’s cock that you neglected. You’ve kissed your way up and down his shaft at least twice, sometimes using your tongue as well, and since Eddie never once asks or begs you to take him into your mouth already, you don’t.

It ends up being a natural transition.

You let your tongue circle his tip and Eddie can’t help himself as his hips press forward so you suck it into your mouth, just a couple of inches, nothing more before releasing him with a wet pop.

Eddie laughs breathlessly and swears under his breath. You can see that the fingers of one of his hands have curled around the counter. He’s gripping it so hard that his knuckles have turned white.

“Poor boy,” you say to get his attention, your voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Want me to put you out of your misery?”

Despite swearing once or twice throughout his ‘ordeal’, Eddie had been unusually silent. He blinks, focuses on you, and you can see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows. “Please,” is all that he manages to reply.

You manage to flash him one wicked grin before licking your palm and wrapping your fingers around his shaft once more. Then, without warning, you take him into your mouth and start sucking eagerly.

That seems to make Eddie’s tongue work again.

“Oh fuck,” he groans. “Fuck. Your fucking mouth. Jesus.” His vocabulary is limited and you can’t help but smile around him. “Don’t-don’t you fucking laugh at me.”

If your mouth hadn’t been full, you would have given him a smart ass reply, and the thought to do just that crosses your mind, but you ultimately decide against it. You had tortured the poor guy enough as it was, drawing it out any longer might unleash the beast.

A tempting thought indeed, but maybe later. Tomorrow morning perhaps?

Retaliation soon follows however. Eddie pushes his hips forward, forcing his length further into your mouth, and when he hits the back of your throat, you gag around him.

“Yeah, fuck yeah.” He sounds so desperate that you can feel a fresh flood of warmth pulsing from your cunt. “You promised, sweetheart,” he grunts out. “You fucking promised.”

And he was right. You did.

You explicitly told him that you wanted to choke on his dick, that you wanted him to make you cry and that he could fuck your face.

So far, you hadn’t exactly held up to your side of the bargain. But you would. You fucking would. You’d do anything for the guy and what was a little bit of momentary discomfort if it got him off? He could use you as a sex toy for all you cared, you would be anything that he needed.

When you released him, he let out a long groan of disappointment, convinced that you were teasing yet again and just when he thought that you were done doing that, too. It disappears just as quickly when he sees you spread your thighs a little bit wider, hands settled on your knees, in an attempt to get a bit more comfortable.

“You’re right,” you purr at him. “I did promise.”

Eddie swears that he must have ascended to a higher plain when you open your mouth and stick out your tongue, presenting yourself to him, waiting for him.

He’s seen it before of course, similar poses from faceless girls who’d come to him after gigs, crooning in his ear about how amazing he was. Their hands everywhere on the way back to the tour bus, hotel, alleyway, wherever, but they’d all end up on their knees, whining shit about how badly they wanted him and his cum.

It all hits a little bit different when it’s a girl that he’s wanted ever since he hit puberty. The girl that he watched get more beautiful with every passing day until he finally realized that, fuck, he was in love with you, making his peace with how it could never possibly be reciprocated, ignoring all the times that you’d bat your lashes at him, because no way, there was just no fucking way.

No. Never.

And then fucking panicking when it finally happened like a goddamn loser.

Thank fuck for this day.

“You’re serious?” He almost chokes on the words and it definitely doesn’t help when you nod, batting your lashes and looking at him as if he’s the only guy on the planet. “Fuck, sweetheart.”

It barely registers with him that his hand reaches down on instinct, knowing what to do now that his brain is close to short circuiting, moving on autopilot, settling on the back of your head. You whine the second that his fingers make contact, actually fucking whine, and he’s not sure if he can handle this for much longer.

“Keep sitting there, okay.” Despite the fact that you’d already made it clear that you would do just that, he still feels the need to tell you. “Tap my leg if it gets uncomfortable.” One of your hands releases your knee and grips his calf. “Good girl.”

He taps the tip of his cock against your tongue one, two, three times, before he slides inside. It’s purely exploratory at first, just to check if you’d stay in your position, to see if you won’t pull away at the first sign of discomfort when he hits the back of your throat.

Your eyes well up when he keeps his cock there, pressed as deeply inside that warm, wet cavern of your mouth as was possible for a few seconds and when he finally pulls out, you gasp.

“Good girl,” he repeats. “Good fucking girl.” He doesn’t give you much time to recover before he pushes back in. “Relax for me.”

Breathing in deeply through your nose, you relax your throat and he drives himself in deeper than before. When you blink, you can feel the tears start to leak out and slide down your cheeks.

Just as you promised.

“Fuck.” All his feelings of attempting to take it slow for your sake are replaced by this deep animalistic need to climax. He grabs your face, fingers digging into the flesh of your cheeks as he starts fucking your face in earnest. “Fuck. S-sorry, but- Fuck.”

The sounds that you make, your moans coming out all garbled from having your mouth full, only spur him on. Saliva pools in your mouth, covering his shaft and easing his passage. Every time that he thrusts in, it drips out of the corners of your mouth. Drool soaks your chin, running down the column of your throat which is currently being used for all it’s worth.

You feel his cock jump suddenly and then the first spurt of cum hits the back of your tongue. You swallow it all down obediently, his little words of praise mixed in with his moans working for you in ways that you never thought possible.

There’s almost a sense of disappointment when his hands release you and your mouth feels incredibly empty when he pulls his softening cock out. You rub your jaw, feeling as if you might have dislocated it just to fit all of him inside.

“I think that you sucked my soul out through my dick,” he pants as he sinks down onto the floor. “Shit.”

“My-“ You start talking, but your voice has been reduced to nothing more than a hoarse squeak. The second you hear it, you laugh breathlessly. “My throat is sore.”

“You don’t say,” Eddie replies and then you both laugh. You’re not able to keep it up for long, your throat still sore as it was, and he leans forward to put his finger on your lips. “Wait.”

Pushing his legs under himself, still wobbly, he turns to the counter and grabs the almost entirely forgotten bottle of whisky and hands it to you. You take a sip, coughing when you swallow, but feeling it soothes you a little as well.

“Better?” You nod and hand the bottle back to him. He takes a swig from it as well and sloshes the remaining liquid from side to side. There isn't a lot left so he holds up the bottle and asks, “Finish it with me?”

“Sure.” You settle down on the floor next to him, the vinyl underneath you a little stickier on your bare skin than you would like it to be. You nudge your shoulder into his and say, “You just asked me that because you can’t get up, huh?”

“Shut up.” He pushes back with a laugh. “Maybe if you didn’t give such killer head-“

“You wanted me to do worse?” You take the bottle from his hands and take another swig. “Because, you know, I could try to do badly next time and give you the sloppiest blowjob ever.”

“You’ll fucking kill me if you do that again.” Eddie puts his arm around you and pulls you closer against him. When you start to laugh, he says, “I mean it.”

“Oh, come on. No other girl has given you a good blowjob before?” You hazard a glance in his direction, but his gaze is so intense that you look away after a few seconds. “I don’t believe that for one second.”

“Maybe it’s more down to the girl doing it,” he shrugs. “Yeah. That’s probably it.”

“Big softie,” you reply with a chuckle. “Mister Big Rockstar has a heart after all.”

“Haven’t had possession of it for years,” he counters. “You stole it from me when I was a teenager after all.”

The giggle that escapes your lips makes you clamp a hand over your mouth. It was a full-on teenager with a crush type of laugh, giggling unnecessarily loud over something that the object of her affections had just said and it embarrassed the ever loving crap out of you.

You clear your throat, which is feeling a lot better now, and when you look at him, Eddie’s lips are pressed into a thin line as he tries to not burst out laughing over having elicited such a response from you.

“You want it back?” You sound a little bit angrier than you had intended and that does make him snort. “Fuck’s sake,” you huff without any real conviction. “Why can’t I ever be normal around you?”

“Because I like you this way,” he counters with a chuckle. Eddie turns his head, kisses your temple and then whispers in your ear, “And keep it. It’s always been yours anyway.”

“Lord,” you groan. “That’s so- fuck.”

You want to say that it’s awful or sentimental, cliché even, but you can’t help the way that your heart soars upon hearing his words. It literally feels like your heart has exited your body and is flying up over your head in little circles.

Your stomach is suddenly filled with millions of tiny little butterflies and they’re doing loop-the-loops inside you, running amok through your insides and threatening to burst out like less scary versions of alien chestbursters.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Eddie says with that infuriating grin. “I’m supposed to play it cool, right? Take it slow for a while first before ultimately dragging you on stage during a show and declaring my undying love for you as I reveal to a stunned crowd that you inspired dozens of songs?”

“No,” you snort. “That kind of shit is not for me.” But he would know that, hence why he even said it in the first place. “I don’t want grand, sweeping gestures. I just want you.”

“You’re such a sap.”

“Just like you apparently.” You squeal when he pinches your side. “Hey. Stop that.”

“Nope,” he replies as he does it again. “I’m never gonna stop doing that.”

“Guess I just have to-“ You pull away and lean forward, scrambling away from him on your hands and knees. Eddie manages to give you one well aimed smack on your ass before you get to your feet. “Not nice,” you say to him as you rub a hand over where he hit you, on the apple of your ass cheek.

“Thought you liked me that way.” Eddie leans his head back against the cabinet, his eyes sweeping over the naked expanse of your body first. He catches the tilt of your head, your eyes questioning. “What’s up?”

“…Did I?” Your sentence is half formed, the rest of it in your mind ever since a particular something had been said earlier, and his confused look makes you realize that you hadn’t exactly been clear. “I mean, did I inspire some songs?”

“Now that would be telling,” is his ambiguous answer.

“You’re a damn tease,” you tell him. “Anyway, I’m going to bed. You joining me?”

“I might,” he counters infuriatingly.

“Suit yourself.” You sway your hips exaggeratedly as you walk away and call over your shoulder at him, “You decide what you want to do, sleep on the cold floor alone or fall asleep while holding my warm body.”

When you reach the bedroom, you sit down on the edge of the bed, thighs open and pointed at the door and counting on your fingers. You manage to count to eight when Eddie finally appears. He stands in the doorway for a moment, leaning against the frame and taking you in.

His tongue moistens his lips and then he steps forward to take his place next to you in the bed. Your eyes fall on his half hard cock and you catch his smirk right before he starts kissing your neck.

There’s something on your mind that you need to address first however.

"Hey, can I ask you something first?" Eddie pulls back, your change in tone catching him off guard. "D-don't worry. Nothing bad or anything. I was just wondering."

"Think I know," he replies with a sigh. "You want to know why I never let it go any further back in high school."

"Yeah," you reply. "I never got it and you never talked to me about it either. I always thought that it was…” It was remarkable how all your teenage insecurities from back then just came flooding back and you can’t even look at him when you finish your sentence, “Thought that you didn't like me as much as I hoped… or that I wasn’t good enough… for you."

"Ah, Jesus." You feel his hand on your cheek, his fingers brushing up and down, but he doesn’t make you look at him. "No, that wasn't it at all."

"Then what?” You really wanted to know, you deserved to know. “I spent years agonizing over this."

"You probably don't even remember," he starts to say as he reaches out to take your hand in his and lace his fingers through yours. "We got the grades for some test back that week and I’d failed, as usual, and you had aced it. I already knew that I wasn't going to graduate that year and I figured that I'd only hold you back."

"That's bullshit and you know it."

"That's how I felt though. You had this big dream of going to Columbia and I had nothing since I knew that I’d be stuck in Hawkins for another year,” he sighs, sounding a little embarrassed. “I was worried that you wouldn't go and yeah, it was really fucking stupid of me, but I did it for you."

"You shouldn't have decided that all on your own.” If only he had talked to you about it, things could have at least ended amicably, not with your heart shattered to pieces all over the floor. “God, you're such a jackass."

“I know. I realize that now. That’s why I was so glad that you were here, that I found you again.” He squeezes your hand and brings it up to his lips, kissing the back of it and letting his lips linger there as he continues. “It felt like I got a chance for a do-over, like I was getting a second chance to make things right.”

“I thought that you’d only be disappointed, that you’d just walk out on me again.” A very small part of you still thought that all of this was some elaborate joke. Even if you knew that Eddie would never do that, it was a hard feeling to shake. “I kinda… can’t stop myself from thinking that, even now,” you admit with a shuddering breath.

“I’d never do that,” he gives you a quick kiss. “Never,” he repeats while staring deep into your eyes, so you can see how honest he’s being. “You honestly have no idea how much that dumb decision weighed on me over the years, how much I regretted letting the girl that I loved more than anything slip through my fingers.”

You pull your hand away from him suddenly and for a second there he thinks that that’s it, you’ll never forgive him for what he did to you. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why was he even that big of an asshole? How could he ever have treated you like that? He was such a fucking-

His train of thought stops completely when you straddle his thighs from out of nowhere and you tap his forearms, mouthing the word “up” at him.

Eddie doesn’t even question it, lifts his arms instantly and lets you maneuver them the way you wanted, palms held up to you and you press your much smaller palms against his, lace your fingers through his and squeeze.

“There,” you say with some finality in your voice. “Can’t slip away if I do this, huh?”

The smile that you flash at him almost makes him choke and well up with tears, but then the look in your eyes makes him want to laugh until he cries because he can see what you want to say written all over your face.

Mister Big Rockstar. Such a fucking pussy. Practically in tears because we’re holding hands.

But that’s only half of it.

Throughout his time in Hawkins, you’d always been there in some way, ever since you were little kids. One day, you’d simply sat down next to him and gave him half of your strawberry jelly sandwich when his parents had failed to give him lunch that morning (which they usually did).

That was how the friendship had started.

After his mother died and his dad went to jail, his uncle Wayne had taken him in and the two of you became a very permanent fixture in Eddie’s life. Until he had fucked it all up, which he had all done for you as he had kept telling himself.

Still tore his heart in two every time that he saw you in the hallways at school after you had shut him out completely. It constantly made him want to run after you and drag you into an empty classroom, so he could explain why he had done what he did, but if he told you that there was always a chance that things could get worse.

Not like now, when you’re both older and wiser, and there’s no chance of either one of you running off. You could talk about it now, as adults, or some version of it at least, because Eddie still doesn’t feel very ‘adult’ if he’s totally honest.

The unshed tears are for the connection that he had with you for years, one that he threw away thinking that it would be better, but he got you back now. He’s right here, in your house, your bedroom, and yes, he loves you, always has.

You kiss the corners of his eyes and murmur, “What are you thinking about?” against his skin. “Talk to me.”

“Nothing,” he says too quickly and the way that you’re looking at him tells him that you don’t believe him at all. “Okay,” he chuckles instead. “You. I was thinking about you.”

“I’m right here,” you answer with a smile. “So you don’t have to think about me. Not when I’m right in front of you.” You release his hands and loop your arms around his neck. One of your hands moves to the back of his head, your fingers playing with his short hair, pulling on the curls. “I miss the hair.”

“Oh yeah?” You nod. “I could grow it long again. For you.”

“That’ll take ages.” You grab a handful of his locks and yank his head back. “Besides, it’s long enough to pull.”

“Little minx.”

“It was too tempting, I couldn’t help it.” His hands circle around your waist and his impossibly big brown eyes glaze over again. “Stop doing that. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“You. It’s always been you.” His honesty is making your cheeks burn. That was always the thing about Eddie, he could be brutally honest at times and he wasn’t trying to hide anything from you now. “I’m making you uncomfortable, ain’t I?”

“No, not really.” You press your cheek against his shoulder to avoid his intense gaze. “Just can’t deal with you looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

Pulling away, you sat up straight and looked into those impossibly deep brown pools that were his eyes again. “Like that.” You knew that it didn’t explain anything, but you would damn well try. “Like I’m… I don’t know… special.” When the corners of his mouth turned up into a smile, you covered it with your hand. “I know that it sounds stupid,” you laugh. “I can’t come up with the words to explain it.”

“You are special,” he mumbled against your hand. When you looked at him quizzically, despite having heard him perfectly, he repeated himself. “You’re very special.”

“Sap,” you giggled. “You’re pretty special yourself. You’re everything.”

It was a spur of the moment confession and not something that meant much of anything, but it still meant the world to Eddie. He kissed your palm and you let it drop away from his mouth, fully expecting him to lick it next.

That hadn’t been on his mind at all.

For most of his life he had been told that he would amount to nothing, just like his dad, and he had proven every naysayer wrong since then. Even when he was getting ready to skip out of town with his friends, with nothing but a crazy dream and some cash that they had saved up, there were still people that tried to talk him out of it.

The only one that believed in him was his uncle. And he was sure that you would have believed in him, too, would have told him to go and to never look back if you had still been around.

So you telling him that he was ‘everything’ had unexpectedly hit a soft spot.

Pressing forward, he kisses you then, hard. As if to somehow confirm that you’re really here, that this is really happening, that you’re not some kind of mirage that his mind had conjured up.

“Calm down.” You place your hand on his chest and gently push him back to put some space in between you two. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’d better not,” he replies. He runs a hand from your shoulder blade down to your ass and he squeezes the pliant flesh hard enough to leave a mark. “Feel that?”

“What kinda question is that?” you laugh. “Yeah, I felt that. Wanna do it again?” He repeats it, squeezing harder this time and digging his short fingernails into your skin until you let out a soft moan. “I swear to god, if you skip town tomorrow morning, I will never fucking forgive you.”

“If I’m leaving, I’m taking you with me.” You stare at him as if he just lied to you, as if this is just sex to him and he just told him what you want to hear. “I’m fucking serious, babe. I need you with me.”

He was offering you a ticket out, which was all that you ever wanted, but now that you have it, you don’t know what to say.

So you kiss him instead.

The kiss turns fiery, into a battle between lips with tongue and teeth thrown in, and you’re left gasping into his mouth as his teeth gently close around your bottom lip and pull. Eddie gasps himself when you reach down to wrap your fingers around his now fully erect cock.

“Need to fuck you,” he pants against your cheek. “Please let me fuck you.”

“Lay down,” you answer. “Scoot back on the bed and lay down for me.”

When you pull away, you do it with reluctance. It would have been far easier to simply sink down on him before, but you want him in a different way.

“Good boy,” you say when he does as he’s told, laying in the middle of your bed with his head pressed back against the pillows. You can tell that he likes being called a good boy so you store that away for later usage.

Moving up the bed, you straddle his waist and you press down against his stomach, making sure that he’s able to feel exactly how wet you still are. Reaching a hand back, you grasp his hardened shaft and give him a few tugs until Eddie bites his bottom lip.

“I’m gonna ride you,” you tell him as you move back a little, your wet cunt hovering over him. “That okay?”

“Y-yeah,” he hiccups. “I want you to.”

“Such a good boy.” You can see him shiver and it makes you snicker. “Don’t worry. Good boys get what they deserve.”

You position his cock in front of your entrance and sink down on him. Just a little at first. You pause when his tip has slid in and you moan exaggeratedly. You take some more, moving down until he’s about halfway in and when you look at Eddie, his expression has a slightly pained quality to it.

“You’re so big, Ed,” you keen out as you wink at him. He slaps your ass and the noise of the impact reverberates through the room.

“Brat.” His hands grab your hips and he pulls you down onto him a little bit more. “Stop teasing.”

“But it’s such fun. Don’t you like it? Not even a little bit?” Before he can say that he does or doesn’t, you shift your weight and his cock slips fully inside you. The two of you moaned in unison. “Fuck.”

For a short while, you don’t move, simply marinating in him, adjusting to his size and how full he made you feel. His fingernails had broken through your skin from how tightly he was gripping you, but you barely even noticed. Not when Eddie was underneath you, his eyes half-lidded and looking up at you with such a lustful gaze that it should have killed you on the spot.

“I’m gonna move now,” you mewl as you rock your hips back and forth experimentally. “Holy shit, Eddie.”

“Good?” You bite your lower lip and rotate your hips as your eyelids flutter shut. “Fuck, you look so good like that.”

“N-not so bad yourself,” you manage to reply with your eyes still closed, the image of him burned into your irises. You happen to angle your clit just right against the trail of hair that ran down from his belly button and gasped out, “My god.”

“Just me,” Eddie chuckled smugly. “But thanks anyway.”

“Bet you get that a lot, huh?” Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to think of now, Eddie with other girls, all of whom probably worshiped him. You open your eyes and lean down over him, your face inches away. “But you should probably be worshiping me instead.”

The boldness of your words almost makes you laugh, but the way that his hands gripped you tighter, stopping you from moving against him altogether, the little moan that escaped his plush lips and the way that his pupils seemed to grow even larger for a millisecond there…

“Oh god.” You couldn’t help the wicked tone that seeped into your voice as you talked. “Are you into that?”

“Y-yes.” His reply is bordering on bashful. “Want you to use me.”

“I will,” you say as you sit upright once more. “I damn well will.”

If that was what he wanted, who were you to deny him this?

Lifting yourself up, you groan as he slides out and before his cock can slip out entirely, you slam your hips back down. His hands shift to your ass, pushing you up when you move, but apart from that Eddie doesn’t offer much assistance.

This is all you.

“This what you want, pretty boy?” you ask while you play with your tits. He didn’t even have to answer your question, because it was written all over his face. “Me using you just to get off?”

“Fuck yeah, sweetheart,” he manages to answer. “That’s why I’m here-“ His sentence is cut off with a harsh gasp when you slam your hips down on his particularly hard, temporarily making him forget to draw another breath when the walls of your cunt grip him particularly hard. “Oh god yeah. Fuck. I’m here… j-just for you.”

“Good.” You place your hands on his stomach, pressing down on his sweat slicked skin. The same glistening sheen stuck to your skin as well, partly from the stifling heat outside that got in through the open windows but mostly from how hard you were exerting yourself. “Such a-fuck!”

Both of you swore loudly as you found an angle that was particularly good for both of you. You worked hard to find it again, angling your hips and grinding down so hard that it should have been intolerable, but your legs quivered every time that you got it just right.

The muscles in your thighs and abdomen flex as you keep up your rough pace, riding him roughly, and chasing the friction that would make your toes curl which was steadily building in your gut. Eddie keeps balancing you with his hands on your ass, rocking you a bit more forcefully.

Your right hand shifts and slides up, to the empty spot, right over his heart. You can’t stop yourself from digging your nails into his pectoral muscle and you feel it jump under your palm. You drag your nails over it, creating red marks, to give him something to fill up the space for a short while.

You want to leave your mark. Desperately.

If Eddie notices what you’re doing, he doesn’t say anything. All he does is lay underneath you, his hands tight on your ass, gripping so hard that the imprint of his hands were going to be on your flesh for days afterwards. Several stray strands of hair stuck to his wet forehead and you swore that you could see beads of sweat slide into his hairline every time that you moved. His blown out pupils are on your face at all times, as if he doesn’t want to miss a thing at all.

You wink at him and he chuckles. “You’re crazy.”

“No doubt about it,” you groan. “Oh fuck, Eddie, you’re in so deep.” You gyrate your hips against his once before leaning back, your hands planted on his thighs and moving your hips up and down. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. You feel so fucking good.”

Your jaw goes slack when Eddie pushes his hips up, pressing himself even deeper inside than before, practically impaling you. Your head falls back, your eyes on the ceiling, and you jump slightly when you feel his thumb pressing against your clit.

His eyes are on the point where your bodies meet, where your cunt is dripping with your slick so much that he can feel it oozing down and coat his balls. The sound of skin slapping against skin, the sickening squelch every time that your pussy slams down on his cock, is like music to his ears.

The change in pitch of your voice, turning your desperate mewls into words that got strung together and mashed into one long continuous string of “ohfuckyessoclose” until it was reduced to nothing but “pleasepleaseplease” over and over again.

The words get more strangled the harder he rubs against the swollen bundle of nerves, your walls bearing down and constricting him, until one loud cry bursts from your lungs, his name, and the coil in your belly finally snaps.

Your orgasm washes over you with all the force of a tidal wave and your arms almost buckle behind you when it hits, but you just about manage to keep yourself upright. Eddie’s hands grip your hips tightly, taking over and fucking you through your blinding climax, chasing his own release as he rams himself up into you.

“Where?” His voice manages to pierce through the deafening rush of blood in your ears. “Where do you-“

“Inside,” you choke out. He doesn’t have to finish his sentence for you to know what he’s asking. “Come in-inside m-me.”

The words are barely out of your mouth when you feel his cock twitch, pumping wave after wave of cum inside you. He wouldn’t even have been able to pull out if you had told him to.

Eddie manages a few more tiny thrusts up into you until he’s completely spent. The tension in his muscles eases and his hands move to your lower back in an attempt to pull you forward.

You collapse on top of him a bit harder than you intended, a small “oomph” pulled from his lungs which made you snort out a laugh. He wraps his arms around you, holding you close and you briefly feel his lips connect with the top of your head.

You settle against him, your ear pressed to his chest, and you listen to his racing heartbeat, listening as it calms down and turns into a steady drum inside his ribcage. You can feel your eyes begin to close, seconds away from nodding off, when his hand clutches yours. Your fingers lace together, like they had done many times that night, and you hoped they would do many more times after tonight.

“I meant it, you know,” Eddie says softly, not sure if you’re already asleep or not since you hadn’t moved at all.

“Hm?”

“Everything that I said tonight.” Your mind floods with all kinds of words, there had been a lot of talking in between other things after all. “Every single word.”

“That’s nice,” you murmur, not really in the mood for talking as you drift off to sleep. You’d be kicking yourself for that dumb reply in the morning.

“I love you.” His lips touch the top of your head and they stay there. “Always have.”

“Mm,” you can’t stop yourself from yawning. “I love you too, Eddie.”

“Get some sleep,” he chuckles. “I wore you out.”

You’re too far gone to come up with a smartass reply and barely manage to mumble a “goodnight” to him before you finally doze off.

You didn’t sleep long. Your body had grown an inbuilt clock, ensuring that you woke up at around the same time every day, all because of the store.

Didn’t matter that it was Sunday today, you woke up early regardless.

Despite knowing full well what happened the night before, you’re still kind of surprised to find Eddie next to you when you wake. It takes some time for the realization to set in that it’s still ridiculously early, especially for him. Eddie had never been a morning person and you sincerely doubted that that had changed in your years apart.

When he stirs next to you, which was possibly because he could somehow sense that you were awake, you press your lips against his collarbone. His eyes slowly open, his vision momentarily bleary, and he needs to blink a few times to uncloud his eyesight and focus on you.

“Morning,” he croaks before yawning. “Fuck, it’s too early.”

“For you maybe,” you murmur while leaving a trail of kisses from his shoulder up to his neck. “You can go back to sleep.”

“When you’re kissing me like that?” He still sounds groggy, voice low as he rubs the palm of his hand over his closed eye. “Fat chance.”

“I’m not doing anything,” you grin. When you nip at his jaw, he lazily swats a hand against your arm. “Whaaaat?”

“Tease.” Tilting his head down, your lips finally meet, morning breath be damned. “Morning.”

“Morning, handsome.” His lips freeze and you can actually hear his breathing stall as well so you push yourself up and hover over him. “Did that just elicit a response?” you tease, poking a finger in his side. “Handsome.”

“I-I-“ His cheeks flush pink and a gleeful giggle erupts from your mouth. “I just like it, okay?”

“Aw,” you coo. “Don’t be embarrassed. I think that it’s cute.” Eddie covers his face with his hands and if anything, it just made him look even more adorable. “Alright, alright, I won’t make fun of you.” He spreads his fingers so he can fix one eye on you and then you throw in a quick, “For now.”

He rolls over on his stomach very dramatically with an unnecessarily loud groan and you’re torn between teasing him some more and throwing yourself on top of him.

You do neither, opting instead for getting out of bed completely. You’re only just grabbing a pair of panties out of one of the drawers next to the bed when you hear the bed creak.

“Come back to bed,” Eddie says behind you.

You’re ready to deny his request and you probably could have done it if you hadn’t turned around to face him. The sight of Eddie Munson, butt naked, would be a view that you knew that you would never tire of.

And you already knew that you would be unable to deny him anything.

Without arguing, you joined him again, dropping the underwear on the floor where it would lay completely forgotten for the next few hours.

“No witty replies or smart comebacks?” Eddie asks while you snuggle into his side. “Nothing?” You write the letters ‘N’ and ‘O’ on his stomach and remain silent. “I’ll just enjoy the silence then.”

The silence is pleasant, not uncomfortable like it can be sometimes, instead you lay there and listen to his heartbeat and his steady breathing. He draws patterns into your skin, wherever he can reach, swirls and waves and something that you think are supposed to be leaves and flowers, like he’s painting on you with an invisible brush.

“How quickly can you pack?” His voice is the first thing that cuts through the silence, just as he’s in the process of drawing star after star onto your skin. “Just the essentials so you’ll be good for a couple days.”

“Pack? Pack what?”

“You know, clothes, toothbrush, that kind of thing.”

“I can’t just leave,” you reply as you tilt your head up to look at him. “What about the store?” Even when you had been running nothing but losses for a while now, your first thoughts were of nothing but the store.

“We can get someone to open it up while you’re away?” he offers, his brow furrowed in confusion. “You know that you won’t be able to open the store every morning when you’re living with me, right?”

A half remembered comment from last night pops into your head suddenly, of Eddie saying that you would be coming with him if he left.

“You were serious?” you blurt out suddenly.

“Was I-“ When he shifts underneath you, you move back and sit up. Eddie does the same. “You thought I wasn’t serious?” He actually looks a bit hurt and that in turn makes your heart ache, too. “I’m not the kind of guy that says stuff like that just so I can get laid. You know me.”

“I do, I do.” You start backtracking immediately, not even sure what you want to say when you open your mouth. “It’s just that I’ve been disappointed before, so I don’t know, it sounded too fanciful,” you say apologetically.

“I would never, ever, play with your feelings like that.” He sounds so sincere that you immediately take his word for it. “That Eddie is long gone. I’m so fucking serious right now.”

You avert your eyes, ashamed, feeling awfully foolish right now. You feel his fingers on your jaw and your eyelids flutter shut when he rubs circles against your cheek with his thumb.

“I want you,” he repeats. “You think that I can go back after I got a taste of you? No fucking way. You’re coming home with me and you’re staying right there while I spoil the shit out of you. Fuck, I might even buy a ring to make it official the second I- we get back.”

“Eddie.” You gasp out his name, his sudden declaration enough to make your heart skip several beats. “That sounds good to me, but maybe not make promises that you can’t keep?”

“You doubt me?” He moves so that he’s sitting on his knees on the bed, arms gestured out to you dramatically. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was stark naked, you might even call the pose somewhat chivalrous, but it just looks a bit silly right now. “You doubt the devotion of Eddie the Bard?”

“Oh god!” You smack a hand against his chest and laugh loudly. “You’re such a dork.”

“Milady, I am deadly serious.” And he looked it, too. “Honest.” He reverts back to his normal self, grabbing your hands and holding them to his chest, his expression all serious. “You’re mine. I’ve known that since I was thirteen and covered in acne. I was a pussy about it before, but I’ve grown up since.”

“Barely,” you giggle. He tilts his head to the side and tries to give you his best disappointed look. “I couldn’t resist. Sorry, not sorry.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and continues, “As I was saying, before you so rudely interrupted me…” He presses your joined hands to your sternum and says, “Mine.” Then moves them to his chest. “Yours.”

He has the audacity to look slightly uncertain then, as if the prospect might somehow offend you, as if he was offering you something that could potentially be unwelcome and make you throw it back in his face.

“You know,” he mumbled before looking away. “If you want to, that is.”

As if you would say no.

“I want,” you reply softly, so softly that it’s barely a whisper, that he might not have heard at all, so you say it again. “I want.” And he definitely heard you that time. “Of course I do.”

His face lights back up immediately, as if millions of fireworks just went up into the sky, and he looks like he’s seconds away from screaming “REALLY?” and jumping up and down on your bed, but instead he surges forward and kisses you so hard that the two of you fall back on the mattress.

It feels like he kisses you for ages and your bodies start to move together languidly, with him growing hard against you. When he pulls away to draw in a deep breath, he gives you a dopey smile and your eyes are inexplicably drawn to that single curly lock of hair that’s draped over his forehead.

“Is that deliberate?” you ask as you flick at it with your fingers. “Do you pull that out every single day until it looks just right?”

“That’s what you want to talk about now?!”

“It’s been driving me insane since yesterday!” Eddie starts to laugh and you can feel your cheeks begin to heat up. “I’m sorry alright!”

“I’m not telling,” he chuckles. “So you’ll just have to deal with not knowing.” He sways his head from side to side and your eyes keep following the bouncing curl around as he does it. “Look at me.” You tear your eyes away from his hair with some reluctance and stare into his eyes which are as brown and warm as a mug of hot chocolate. “Mine?”

“What do you-“

“Mine?” He repeats himself a bit more sternly this time.

“Yours,” you answer. “I-I’ve always b-been yours.” You can feel your heart skipping a beat from his scrutinizing gaze. “Y-you said that I’ve had your heart for a long time, but the same thing goes for you.” You reach for one of his hands and place it over your heart like he had done yesterday. “It’s always been yours.”

Eddie looks at you as if you had just told him all the secrets of the universe, something a lot more important than a simple confession of love at least, but then his gaze turns hot and you close your eyes a split second before your lips meet again.

This time you could practically taste it, the promises, the devotion, the love. It was in every single movement of his lips against yours. You were an idiot for doubting his intentions for even one single second. How could you ever doubt him? You blame it on last night’s alcohol. It must have briefly clouded your judgment, muddying your mind and dragging up all your teenage uncertainties.

Those thoughts fade with every kiss. The way that Eddie kisses you makes it easy to forget all about your worries and doubts, tears it all down to its bare bones until it’s nothing but a boy and girl who have been denying themselves this for way too long.

There was no rush this morning, you could take it as slow as you wanted, and Eddie seems to want that as well, his movements slow as molasses in January.

His lips move away from yours, kissing and nipping down your jaw, moving against the shell of your ear where he softly murmurs, “That curl… I pull that one out on purpose every single day.”

“I knew it!”

#stranger things #stranger things fic #eddie munson #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson smut #stranger things smut #mar writes #mar moodboards

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