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strang3lov3 · 5 months

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Massage Chair

Summary: Joel teaches you to massage him, then takes advantage of your new skill. After, he shows his gratitude.

Tags: Lots of joel teasing, malicious compliance, light arguing, smut, fingering, teasing, romantic massaging, creampie, slower and more emotional, joel comforting u after boning.

a/n: thank you for your patience with me! I wanted to have this done last week, but I ended up in the ER which slowed me down a little. But, that gave me more time to write and @papipascalispunk time to beautifully edit this <3 she's such a babe.

(mall rats 5, though can be read as standalone. find more mall rats in my masterlist)

A brown leather chair is flipped on its side, and Joel’s tinkering with the parts inside, cursing and hissing expletives. It’s a broken massage recliner that came with Joel’s house, and he spotted the same model at Macy’s back in the old mall. So he stole bits and pieces, and now he’s attempting to fix the chair. It’s not going too well.

“God bless it,” Joel grumbles at you, “Quit shinin’ the flashlight on the damn floor. Shine it inside the chair.”

“I am shining it inside the chair, Joel,” you argue, “Why don’t you make Ellie hold the flashlight for you?”

“‘Cause she can’t hold it right either. You girls suck at using flashlights,” Joel grimaces as he sits up off the ground, then reaches for your hand that’s holding the light. He manipulates your position, adjusting the way you’re sitting and how you hold the flashlight and says, “There. Stay like that.”

You smirk, “Oh Joel, it makes me so hot and bothered when you take control of me like that.”

Joel sighs, frustrated with you. Like always. “Was that really necessary?”

“Of course it was,” you reply. Moving gingerly, he lays back down on the carpeting. The chair makes small, metallic clanging noises as he works, and you’ve got a perfect view of his ass. So tight and plump in those jeans. What a treat.

Joel turns on his side, twisting his torso to reach for a different screwdriver. This time, he grunts in pain. He works a little longer, then tosses the screwdriver aside before hoisting himself up. His knees crack and ache as he slowly stands up, carefully pulling the chair upright and plugging it into an outlet. You watch as he sits in the chair, lifts up the armrest to press a few buttons, and the chair comes to life. He keeps his eyes squinted shut, his chest rising and falling heavily with every labored breath he takes. He fidgets with the buttons as the chair makes different mechanical whirring noises, vibrating and pressing into his back.

“Can I try it?”, you ask.

“No,” he deadpans, “S’not massagin’ too good anyway – kinda just vibrates. And before you ask – no,” you smirk as he glares at you, “It doesn't vibrate like that. So don’t even think about doin’ that to my chair, you horndog.” He knows you so well.

When Joel is done speaking, he sighs and closes his eyes again. It’s a little awkward, watching Joel sit in his massage chair. He doesn’t seem very comfortable, and it’s making you feel sort of sad. His back has been killing him for weeks. He doesn’t talk about it much, but you can tell it’s getting worse. As he squeezes his eyes shut, those two little lines between his brows grow more prominent than usual. He inhales through his nose and exhales from his mouth, like he’s trying to breathe away the pain.

Before the outbreak, he found things like heated massage chairs and beds that move up and down to be frivolous and unnecessary. In his twenties and thirties, if his back hurt he’d pop a few Advil and tough it out. Not exactly an option now. So, an old massage chair it is.

“Have you been icing your back, Joel?”, you ask but Joel opens just one eye and glares at you. You take his silence as a no. “You need to ice it.”

“My back’s fine,” Joel lies as he rolls his eyes at you, “Go away. Go play in traffic.”

“Are you keeping yourself hydrated?”, you continue.

“Yes.” You look at Joel, then you look next to him. The full glass of water on his end table says otherwise, condensation pooling on the wood. Joel looks there too, then back at you as you stare at him, unimpressed, “Yeah, I drink enough water, dammit. What’s with the third degree?”

You ignore his question, “Are you getting enough rest?”

“What do you think I’m tryin’ to do right now?” Again, you stare at him with an unimpressed expression. Joel sighs, exasperated, “For the love of god, I rest plenty.” Out of all the ways you could annoy him, this is the most brutal. It’s torturous. He continues, “I’d rest easier if you weren’t here, y’know. So get gone. Quit naggin’ me.”

“Charming, Joel. Like always,” you tell him, your tone sarcastic. Lifting yourself up, you stand in front of him and take his hand in your own. You pull with all of your might to lift him up, and drag him to his feet. He groans the entire time.

“Oh, come on,” Joel complains. He knows that look you’ve got on your face, knows that you’re on a mission and he’s coming with. Of course he’s coming with. He’s always stuck with you, somehow. “What are you signin’ me up for now?”, as you lead him to his room, matching his slow pace as he takes heavy steps, so as not to overwhelm his ancient bones.

“Bed,” you tell him.

Oh. Joel gets it now. You’re forcing him to take a rest. Could be worse, he supposes, but he always has a flair for the dramatic, so he sighs heavily as he lays down, making sure you know he is not happy that you’re putting his ass to bed. You untie his boots and pull them off his feet, then toss them aside.

Just as Joel settles on his back, you move to his side of the bed and put your hands under his torso and thigh, then roll him onto his stomach rather harshly. He yelps in pain, “Jesus Christ–”

“Sorry,” you mumble sheepishly. You join him on the bed, straddling his butt, careful not to put too much pressure on him.

Joel is confused beyond words. Before he can process what you’re doing, he feels you bouncing the sides of your hands down his shoulders and spine, and then you’re pinching and smushing his body haphazardly. “Uhh, what are you doin’ to me?”, he questions now. It is a deeply uncomfortable sensation.

“Massaging you, because your chair doesn’t work,” you tell him, continuing your work on his back, “It’ll help you rest. I’m feeding two birds with one scone, Joel.”

“That – that’s not how the phrase – fuck, never mind,” Joel relents, baffled as you “massage” him. He lets you continue for a few moments longer before deciding he’s had enough. “Sweetheart, it’s very kind of you, but you are terrible at this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, no, this is god awful. You’re gonna break my damn spine in half,” Joel pauses before speaking again, thinking to himself. There’s no way you’ve had or given a massage before now. “Am I your guinea pig?”

“Kinda,” you answer quietly.

“I could tell,” Joel taps you on the leg twice, “Alright, get off and switch me spots.”

“What for?”, you ask.

“So I can teach ya how it’s done and keep you from committing a fuckin’ felony assault on my back,” he says, “What you’re doin’... it’s inhumane, darlin’.” He’s being very Joel about this. Harsh, a little rude. Dramatic. You climb off him and he scoots off of his bed. “Take off your shirt,” he tells you, “S’rule one of a good massage. You’re supposed to massage a person, not their clothes.”

“Noted,” you say. Joel leaves then, maybe to give you privacy or something, not that you need it. If Joel wants you to strip naked, you’ll strip naked, no questions asked. You’d lay yourself on a silver platter for him, cherries on your ass and an apple in your mouth. Though, you do think it’s sweet he’s trying to keep you feeling comfortable. Joel Miller, always the gentleman.

You strip nude, then lay on your stomach on the bed, right where Joel was. His sheets feel warm from his body heat and they smell like him too, warm and musky and woody. You’re facing his window, where outside it’s overcast and gloomy. On his bedside table sits his book of crossword puzzles.

The stairs and floorboards creak as Joel returns to you. He stops dead in his tracks at the sight of you naked and face down in his bed, rolling his eyes at your lack of modesty. Joel places a few things on his dresser, then a little glass container full of oil on his bedside table. “Only had to take your shirt off, hon,” he says.

“Oh. I thought you wanted me naked.”

“You’ve got selective hearing,” Joel lowers the curtains by his window and lights a few candles on his dresser, “I think you wanted you naked.” In the darkened room, he moves behind you and you hear the sound of fabric moving before he’s draping a blanket over your bum. You shrug, “Sorry, Joel. Guilty as charged.”

“Uh huh,” he mumbles. Joel rolls up his sleeves before beginning. “You ready?”, you nod, and so does he. He takes the container of oil and drizzles it down your spine. It’s warm, a little sweet and fragrant. You feel relaxed already. Joel then pours some of oil into the palm of his hands and rubs them together. “First thing, you always wanna be mindful of any painful or sensitive areas. Anything you need me to be careful about?”

“Uh, no. My back doesn’t usually hurt,” you tell him.

“Must be nice,” he mumbles. After rubbing his palms together, he places them on your back. He spreads the drizzled oil from your lower back up to your neck and shoulders in long strokes with his palms, so big and strong and warm. You sigh in relief. “The oil makes it easier to glide your hands. Don’t wanna use too much, though. And you’re gonna spread it out, nice and even.”

You nod, your eyes closed, “What about the candles?”

“Candles don’t make a difference. Just thought you’d like ‘em,” Joel whispers.

“I do.”

He spends the next couple minutes using wide, gentle strokes of his hands to completely spread the oil over your body. Once he’s satisfied, he places his hands at your shoulders. He works his thumbs into your traps and up your neck, pushing and sliding them up your skin. “How’s the pressure?”, he asks, “Too much? Not enough?”

“Little too much,” you tell him.

Joel lightens the pressure and continues the motion, “Feel nice?”

All you can do is hum in response. It feels incredible. His hands are so firm and gentle, so careful. Your skin is warm and his touch is comforting. He works his way down your body, massaging and rubbing your muscles. He alternates between circular and back and forth movements.

“Good. Remember that. Be nice and fluid when you massage me,” Joel whispers, “None of that karate choppin’ shit.”

“None of that karate choppin’ shit,” you repeat, matching his tone.

Joel massages you everywhere for the next ten minutes. Instructing you to stay away from the spine directly, but focus your pressure next to it. Focus on the muscles. You can dig your thumbs in, use your knuckles, even the heels of your palms. He tells you he’s being more gentle, but he’s gonna need you to use your body weight.

“You writin’ this down?”, he asks.

“Mmm, yeah. Got my pen and paper right here,” you murmur. He massages a sensitive spot on your back and you moan softly.

“Hey,” he warns, “Don’t be enjoyin’ this so much. S’for my benefit, not yours. I’ve got ulterior motives for massagin’ you.”

“Oh?”, you whisper.

“Yeah, oh. You volunteered yourself to fix my back, so I’m gonna take advantage.”

“Joel?”

“What’s that, hon?” he asks quietly.

“I’m not, fuck, right there,” you breathe, “M’not learning a whole lot. Need some more pointers.”

“Always workin’ an angle,” he retorts, “But I don’t have nothin’ else to tell ya.” Joel massages you quietly for a couple more minutes, generously giving you more massaging than he anticipated. But he likes it, likes knowing you’re feeling good. The soft noises you’re making, how smooth your skin feels. He loves watching the candlelight dance across your skin while he runs his palms up and down your hips, your sides, pouring over your curves. You’re lost in the sensation for a few moments longer before Joel taps your hip, “Alright, time’s up.”

“No, Joel, come on,” you whine, “Not yet, don’t stop now.”

“Move it,” he says, tapping your hip harder, “S’my turn. My back hurts, not yours. You said so yourself.”

You whine again, “Please? Just a little longer.”

“Mmm, nope. Let this be a lesson to ya, don’t start somethin’ you can’t finish.” Joel leaves to go to his bathroom then, turns on the hot water in his sink and returns with a warm rag. He gently scrubs your back, removing the excess oil.

Finally, you sit up in defeat. “Give me that,” you grumble, reaching for the rag. You take it to the bathroom and rinse it out for Joel as he begins undressing. When you return, Joel is shirtless face down in his bed, a blanket draped over his ass, just like how he had you.

“Alright hon, I’m ready. Show me whatcha got.”

Standing next to him, you step a little closer to the bed and survey Joel. He’s on his tummy facing you, his eyes shut gently. He looks gorgeous like this, his hair messy, his shoulders thick and broad. You trace the curve of his back with your eyes, curious when you look at his ass. So plump under that blanket. Reaching forward, you lift the blanket.

“What’re ya doin’,” Joel asks in an annoyed tone.

“I’m just…”, you trail off, admiring the swell of his ass cheeks. Joel doesn’t seem to mind when you touch his bum, squeezing the flesh gently and watching it move beneath your fingertips.

“You’re snoopin’,” he answers his own question for you.

“Yeah,” you breathe. You look at Joel again, and he’s still got his eyes shut. A small smile on his face that you know wouldn’t be there if he knew you were looking at his face.

“Why don’t you snoop a little higher, dirty bird.”

“Okay,” you murmur, draping the blanket over his ass. “Can you remind me of step one again?”

“Ah, someone wasn’t payin’ attention,” he teases, “Sure. Ya gotta ask me where it hurts.”

“Where’s it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

You sigh, “Thanks, Joel. That’s helpful.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to give my neck and shoulders a little extra lovin’, though.” You nod, then reach for his shoulders. “Nuh uh,” he tuts, “Oil first.” You reach for the oil and hover it over Joel’s body. “Easy does it. Little goes a long–”, but Joel is interrupted when he feels a large splash of oil on his back, dripping over his sides and onto his sheets. Definitely gonna stain.

“Ah, fuck,” you curse, “My bad.”

“God bless it,” Joel grumbles, “S’alright. Get the rag and clean me up a little.”

Doing as you’re told, you get the rag from the bathroom and wipe away the oil you don’t need. Then you spread the oil on Joel’s back, using your palms to drag it from the area just above his ass cheeks to his wide shoulders. Joel hums in satisfaction. You lean over him to begin massaging his body, but you’re finding it uncomfortable. “Do you mind if I straddle you again?” you ask, “To reach your back easier.”

“Go for it.”

You hold onto Joel’s shoulders for stability as you straddle yourself over him, sitting on his ass and settling your knees at his sides. This way, you have much more mobility. You place your palms at his lower back, thumbs on either side of his spine and press into him hard, then work your hands up his body. He sighs softly. “How’s that?”, you ask.

“Jury’s still out,” he replies, “Do that again, little harder this time.” When you do, Joel sighs deeper, “S’it. Much better.”

You repeat the general motion, but vary your movements. Sometimes letting your hands explore his sides, making big and small circles, large sweeping motions. Joel groans when you walk your thumbs up his spine. “Yeah, very nice,” he praises.

Once at his upper back, you focus pressure on his shoulders and neck. You curl your fingers inward and use your knuckles for added pressure. “Little more,” he tells you. You press harder, but his muscles are so tight. “Harder,” he says, “C’mon, use some elbow grease.”

“I’m gonna hurt you, Joel,” you argue.

“You ain’t gonna hurt me,” he says. “In fact, I want you to try.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, hon. Hard as you can. Like you’re tryna squeeze the life outta me.”

Shaking your head, you try it. You squeeze his traps, digging your thumbs into his flesh as hard as you can. You watch his skin turn white under your fingertips.

“Fuck,” he moans, “There it is. Good girl, doin’ such a good job.”

Oh dear lord. His words go straight to your pussy. You continue to work his neck and shoulders, listening to Joel breathe and sigh, moan and groan. You admire his back, his freckles and moles and stretch marks here and there. “Good girl,” he praises you again. He whispers it over and over and over. Good girl.

He’s making all sorts of sinful noises, cursing all kinds of obscenities, and you’re falling to pieces just listening to him, feeling his hot skin. You picture his face, contorted in pleasure.

You feel warm, your core beginning to ache. You didn’t quite expect to get so worked up over this. As you lean forward over Joel to massage him, you tilt your hips into his back, pressing yourself against him for some sort of relief. Maybe repeating the motion once or twice.

“I can feel that,” he says.

“Feel what?”

“You. Drippin’. Rockin’ those hips on me. You’re makin’ a mess all over me, dirty bird.”

Your cheeks heat up and you’re feeling a little bashful at the accusation.

“Ya gotta finish my massage before we take care of that, hm?”

“Yeah,” you agree. Not like you have much left to do anyway. You’ve been massaging him for half an hour at this point, paid special attention to each area of his back. After massaging him for a few minutes longer, you tap his shoulder blade to let him know you’re done. Joel lifts himself up and begins to twist over, so you lift up to your knees to make room. “Wait, Joel, your sheets–”

“You ruined ‘em already.” He’s right. Oh well.

Once he’s settled, you sit down on his lap. His cock is half hard already. You reach for it, and he swats your hand away. You balk in confusion. “Ya ain’t done yet,” he tells you.

“What are you talking about?”

“Massage tax,” he says plainly, as if somehow you should have known that’s a thing and you roll your eyes, “It’s the law.”

“That is not a law.”

“Is now,” he says, taking his cock into his hand. You watch him work himself, swiping his thumb over the blushed tip a couple of times before holding it tightly, restricting your access.

“Joel,” you whine, “This isn’t– come on, man.”

“I know. I ain’t happy about it either,” he says, though his mischievous smile says differently,

“Government’s just rife with corruption, ain’t it?”

You can’t say you didn’t have this coming. You’ve tormented Joel for months in a myriad of ways. You deserve this.

“I don’t deserve this,” you tell him.

“‘Course not,” he says softly, still holding his member tightly. You try to wriggle his fingers away, but he’s got an iron grip. You sigh in defeat, annoyed. Joel looks all too proud of himself.

“I hate you, Joel.”

“You wound me sweetheart, really. It hurts,” he inhales sharply through his teeth, extending an arm to you, “Hurts almost as much as my arm, you know that? S’been so sore, my hands an’ fingers too.”

Yeah, yeah. You get the picture.

Glaring at him, you watch him shimmy into the pillows and wiggle his arm at you again. You’ve still got some oil on your hands, so you don’t bother with the bottle on his nightstand.

“Start up top,” he instructs you.

You move a little closer, taking his upper arm into your hands. You squeeze the muscles of his biceps and triceps, and as much as this is bothersome, it’s nice too. His muscles are strong, big, and firm. You’ve never really seen them until now. You admire the contours of his arm, the soft lines his muscles make. “And work your way down, down,” he says. And you follow, massaging his forearm. He sighs when you reach his hands, “S’my favorite part,” as you massage his palm, each knuckle of his digits. His hands are worn and calloused.

You drop his hand once you feel like you’ve done enough, “Done.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Hm,” Joel hums before offering you his other arm, holding his cock now with his other hand, “I’ve got an entire arm you haven’t touched yet.” You stare at him with a blank expression. Joel pouts and acknowledges your disappointment by saying, “I know, hon. I’m so sorry.”

You roll your eyes, taking his other arm into your hands. “No, you aren’t.”

“Yeah, I’m not sorry,” he says, “Not one bit.”

And so again, you repeat the motions, first massaging his biceps and triceps. The hand that holds his cock rests between your thighs, and you begin grinding into it. Eyes shut, he raises one brow in amusement at your arousal. You’re soaked.

Finally, he lets himself go. His cock springs free, rock hard with protruding veins, and you inch forward so that it sits between your thighs.

As you massage his forearm now, you rock your hips slightly. Joel surely notices, though he doesn’t mind. You rock yourself quicker, chasing that sweet friction on your clit. Your hands are at his palm now, thumbs urgently rubbing circles into the flesh. You need to be done with this.

“Slow it down,” he tells you, “S’not a race.”

You groan, but slow down anyway. You screw your eyes shut as you massage his palm sloppily, your focus now concentrated on what's happening between your thighs. Your pussy is slick as you roll your hips, grinding against his hard cock. That familiar coil in your gut is back. “Joel,” you cry, “My hands are sore.”

“Now you know how I feel,” he retorts, and you whine impatiently. “Ya never do any hard work in your life. C’mon, you’re almost done,” he taps your ass, “Lift up a little. I like watchin’ you get yourself all worked up on my cock.”

As you work Joel’s hand, you lift yourself, hovering just inches above him. With his free hand, he takes his cock and drags himself through your dripping folds, collecting your slick on his tip. It feels good, your pussy is sensitive. He nudges his head against your clit, back and forth and periodically notches himself at your entrance, playing with you, achingly torturing you. “Joel,” you whine as he teases you, “My thighs are aching, hands too, ca— can’t do this anymore.”

“Sure ya can,” he coos. It feels like you’ve been massaging him for hours, way longer than he massaged you. This isn’t fair in the slightest, even with his back pain.

Truth be told, the hand and arm massage stopped feeling good for Joel a long time ago. You’re aching and tired, and so are your hands, not giving him the proper pressure he needs. But he’s taking advantage of this opportunity to tease you, drive you insane. He feels it’s warranted.

And then finally, finally, he pulls his hand away from you. You’re done.

You flop next to Joel and take his hand back in yours, guiding his fingers to your center. “Please,” you beg him, “Touch me. Do something.”

Joel clicks his tongue, “No can do.”

“What?”

“Yeah, think I just wanna rest now.” You stare at Joel, confused. He shrugs, “And I’m just parched. Need some water. And I’d go and get it, but I don’t want ya to yell at me again. I’m supposed to be resting, like you said.”

“You want me to get you water,” you confirm, annoyed.

“And some ice, too,” he adds.

Joel watches with a smirk on his face as you shove his hand away from your thigh and huff, then stomp out of his bedroom and all the way downstairs. After Joel hears the sound of running water and the slamming of cabinets, you return moments later with a glass of water and some ice wrapped in a towel. You mumble, “You can shove this ice right up–”

“Right up my ass, got it,” Joel takes the ice in one hand and the glass of water in his other. Joel drinks a sip of the water, then makes a disgusted face, “You gave me warm water? What is wrong with you?”

“You didn’t specify the temperature.”

Joel rolls his eyes and sets both the ice and the water on his nightstand. “Fuckin’ psycho,” he mumbles. Even when he thinks he’s one step ahead of you in the never-ending quest to piss one another off, he’s not. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

You smile, “Thanks.”

Joel stares at you for a moment, admiring the mischievous grin on your face and that look in your eye. And then faster than you can blink, he takes your arm in his hand and pulls you back into bed as you giggle. You hear him laughing too, and then he’s situating himself above you. Hovering over you with one arm by your head, he takes his fingers into his mouth and sucks on them before bringing his hand between your thighs.

You breathe a sigh of relief. You’re so sensitive and he’s finally fucking touching you, fingertips dragging through your slick folds, circling your clit before dipping one, then two fingers inside you. He finds your clit with his thumb, rubbing tight circles into you. “Quit teasing,” you plead.

Joel laughs breathlessly above you, “M’not teasin’—”

“More,” you interrupt him, “I need more.”

“You got it,” he says, then inserts a third finger. He curls them repeatedly inside you, your pussy gushing and soaking his fingers, making all sorts of wet, sticky noises.

But it’s still not enough. You’re so fucking needy, so ready for Joel to just fuck you. You push his hand away and reach for his cock, wrapping your legs around him and using your feet on his ass to push him down closer to you.

“Ah, fuck,” Joel hisses when he feels your hand touch his member, “Hey, easy, sweetheart. Let’s slow it down.”

“Slow it down my ass,” you argue, “I want you now, Joel.”

“Now?”

“Need you now,” you repeat, tilting your hips and bouncing your heels on his ass, “Now, now, now, now–”

Joel smiles at your desperation, at the way he’s managed to torture you. “Didn’t quite catch that, bad hearing and all that. You want me to fuck you when exactly?”, you cry in pure agony and Joel says, “Gotta mark my calendar, set my alarm clock...”

Your groans of frustration quickly turn into a soft sigh of pleasure as Joel takes you by surprise, pushing his cock inside you deeply, inch by inch, in one fluid motion. The stretch feels incredible and you’re so perfectly full of him. You wrap your arms around him, holding him close with one of your hands resting on his shoulder and the other tangled in the soft curls on his head.

“Been needin’ this, huh?”, Joel asks as he settles inside you, letting you adjust to the stretch.

You nod, your cheek brushing against his scratchy, salt and pepper facial hair. “You’re such an asshole,” you whisper, “You make me so mad.”

“Ditto, sweetheart,” he mumbles as he kisses your cheek. That’s become a regular thing, now. Always kissing your forehead, your cheeks. It always makes you blush. Joel pulls out of you nearly all the way before pushing back in. Over and over, building to a steady pace, and he makes soft grunts as he fucks you.

You love how he cages you in, surrounds you, the low light of the candles dancing on his face as he fucks you passionately. And he’s watching you, big brown eyes full of something you can’t quite read. He pulls your hand from his hair and pins it next to your head, his fingers interlaced with your own. It’s sweet and it’s intimate, almost too intimate.

You can’t take this right now. Can’t deal with the way it feels, to be treated so specially by Joel.

You untangle your fingers from his, and he watches you with a confused expression on his face. Reaching low, you slap his ass, “C’mon, fuck me harder. Use some elbow grease,” you mock his words from earlier, “Or does your old ass back hurt too much?”

Joel stills and stares at you. You stare back, challenging him. “Why are you bein’ like this?” he asks, “Do y’always have to instigate?”

“Think I just heard your hip crack, too,” you tease, but it gets no reaction from Joel.

“Quit while you’re ahead,” he warns, then composes himself before speaking again, “Have some faith. You trust me?”

There’s something different about the way he’s looking at you, watching you. You’re apprehensive, but you nod anyway.

“I said, we’re gonna slow it down this time,” he whispers, “Gonna go nice and slow.”

Joel pulls out of you then, and you groan in disappointment. He silences your displeasure with a quiet shhhh, then moves lower down your body. He runs his hands over your tummy, up your sides, tracing each and every curve. Kisses one hip bone, “I know I was teasin’ ya,” he says, “And I really put ya to work with that massage. That you offered t’do, mind you,” he adds as he kisses your other hip bone, “Really didn’t think that you were gonna get me ice and a glass of water. Wasn’t surprised when you told me to shove it up my ass, but I wasn’t expectin’ to drink warm water. Was a nice touch, trouble.”

You begin to speak, but you stammer, struggling to find the right words. You squirm under his touch. He’s being so gentle, so sweet that he’s got you all flustered now.

“Yeah, I know, sweet girl,” Joel mumbles against your skin. Pressing soft and wet kisses on your body, his fingers leisurely dragging through your dripping folds as he looks up at you, “I want you to know that I appreciate you. I appreciate all the ass backward things you do for me. I really do.”

“Joel, I–fuck,”, you moan. He’s pumping his fingers inside you again, now licking and kissing your nipples, swirling his tongue over the soft skin, worshiping every inch of your body.

“Yeah, don’t let it go to your head. Y’still drive me fuckin’ nuts.” You laugh breathlessly, voice caught in your throat as Joel kisses up your neck, up your jaw, your chin, and stopping just before your lips when he hears your breath hitch. He searches your eyes, sensing your apprehension. He knows the weight of the intimacy that kissing your lips holds, especially since it’s been put off so long. He’s gonna kiss you. Just not yet. “Now can we try this again?”

When you whisper a quiet yes, he enters you for a second time, burying himself inside of you. He begins to fuck you again, slow and deep, letting you feel every inch of him, parts of him you don’t usually feel. His quiet breaths on your skin, the thick vein of his cock, his soft tummy, so warm against yours. Usually he fucks you hard, fast. But today, he’s savoring you. You dig your heels into his ass, faster. It has to be faster.

“Don’t fight me on this,” he says, “We can just be nice, pretend you like me and I like you. Just this once. We don’t always have to argue.”

“Joel,” you whine, “Please. I can’t–I want–”

“I know what you want, ya want what we’re used to. But s’not so bad, I promise,” he purrs above you, “Tell me– fuck, tell me how you feel.”

Exposed, but good. Really good. It’s new and unfamiliar, but so fucking good, but it feels like a crime to admit that. “Joel,” is all you can say, “Joel.”

“I know,” he murmurs, rolling his hips against yours, one hand on your waist holding you tight as he fucks you, “Doin’ so good for me.”

You still can’t bring yourself to say anything, don’t know how to respond to him. You’re at a loss for words, feeling him like this. How warm and protected and loved you feel. Your skin is on fire and you can’t help but close your eyes, retreating inward. But as different as this is, you don’t want him to stop, so you hold him tighter, pulling his face down to yours and burying yourself in his neck.

Joel fucks you like that for a while. Just like that, with every thrust being intentional, feeling devastatingly good. You lose yourself in the feeling and Joel seemingly does as well. Words are left unspoken as he savors this moment with you.

Hours could have passed, you wouldn’t know. Joel’s movements are becoming erratic, quicker. “Come with me,” he begs, resting his forearm above your head and moving the other to your center, as he paints tight circles around your clit, “I want you to come with me, sweetheart. Please.”

It’s not long after that when that familiar heat in the pit of your stomach is back, fluttering and intense. “Oh, god,” you moan, “M’close.”

“That’s it, just let yourself go,” he breathes, “With me, now.”

His words are all it takes. Your orgasm washes over you slowly, intensely. It’s powerful, the way lava flows from the earth, setting your skin ablaze. It’s overwhelming as Joel fucks you through it, chasing his own release. He makes broken moans and grunts as he comes with you, painting your insides with his hot seed.

He pants on top of you, catching his breath before pulling out of you, not caring that you’re now dripping his spend onto his bed. He lays next to you, pulling you into his side with your legs tangled between his and your head resting on his shoulder.

You’re crying, quietly. That’s never happened before. Joel feels your tears dripping down his skin, and he looks at you with concern.

“M’fine, Joel, I was just–It was just–”

Joel speaks to you soothingly, “I know, I know,” he whispers, “I’m right here.”

He just holds you like that, his fingertips trailing over your skin in lazy patterns. When he chuckles to himself, you look at him. “What?” you ask.

“Warm water,” he says, amused, “You amaze me.”

#strang3lov3 #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #the last of us #joel miller #pedro pascal #the last of us hbo #pedro pascal joel miller #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal x reader #mall rats!joel #mall rats joel #mall rats

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forget-you-morelike-fuck-you · 10 months

Text

That's What Friends Are For Pt. 2- E.M.

I'm so thankful for all of the love on part one! I love each and every one of you, and I hope that you enjoy!

The morning after Eddie helps you with your first orgasm, you get to experience more new things.

Part 1

Masterlist

TW- 18+ Minors DNI, smut, cursing, pnv, first time, pet names (angel, sweetheart, baby), a lil crying (the good kind), slight fingering, handjob (lmk if I missed any!)

Pairings- Virgin!Bestfriend!Reader x Eddie

Word Count- 4,402

(Gifs not mine, Credit to owners!)

With a deep breath, your mind comes close to consciousness, rolling over into the warm being lying next to you. You’re about to delve back into the depths of sleep when you feel his arm snake over your waist, pulling you closer and pressing a kiss into your hair. You hum in satisfaction, cracking your eyes open with a smile forming on your lips, eyes searching for Eddie.

You look up at him through the bleary film of sleep and find him looking down at you, the morning light filtering through the curtains and highlighting the sweet freckles littered across his nose and cheeks. The bun he slept in is almost completely unraveled, wild curls formed in a sort of halo around him. “Good morning, gorgeous,” He says quietly. He still has the rasp of sleep in his voice, so you know he hasn’t been awake long. You take another deep breath and stretch your toes down, arms up in a catlike motion that loosens your muscles.

“Morning, handsome,” Your sleepy smile makes him chuckle, and he presses another kiss to your hair, the hand over your waist rubbing sweet circles on the exposed skin where your shirt had hiked in your sleep.

“How are you feeling?” There’s a quirk of his eyebrow, almost imperceptible. There’s a subtext there: Do you remember and/or regret what we did last night?

You stretch up a hand to his face, letting your thumb brush over his cheekbone before gently pulling him down to meet your lips. It’s a sweet kiss, slow and thoughtful. Last night was fucking awesome, it says. “I feel perfect,” If Eddie were a cartoon, he swears he’d have hearts and stars floating around his head at the way you look, the way you feel, the way you speak to him, and he curses himself for not snatching you up sooner. “What time is it?” It’s a Saturday. You don’t have to work today, but checking the clock when you wake up is always part of your routine.

Eddie reaches for the windowsill next to his bed to pick up his watch, to glance at the face. His lean arms and broad hands bring back memories from last night so abruptly it almost makes your head spin. You feel a twitch between your thighs. “A little after ten,” He says, putting the watch back. “Why, do you have plans today?”

“No, not really. But we could go to that farmer’s market later today if we wanted to. I like that stand that sells all those different kinds of honey,” Your hand finds his chest, fingers lightly tracing the tattoos you’ve memorized every detail of.

“And what would we do if we didn’t want to?” He asks, eyebrow raised playfully. You feel your heart leap in your chest, what would you do?

“I dunno. We could go get something from Benny’s. Or go see a movie,” You suggest. Eddie plays like he’s lost in thought, fingers drumming on his chin as he considers the options. “Or... We could lay in bed all day.”

His eyes flick to you, “That sounds like a good option,” The lopsided, dimpled smile you love so much pulls at his lips before he dips his head down to capture you in a kiss again, and you giggle into the kiss as you wrap your arms around his neck. He wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you into his chest, calloused fingers digging lightly into your side. When you part, you rub your noses against each other, both of you still smiling.

“Can I ask you something?” You mutter, the cogs turning in your head.

“Anything,” Eddie presses a kiss to your nose, then your forehead. Your cheeks are beginning to ache from smiling so much.

“I know we didn’t really say it last night, but I was wondering if we were like... boyfriend-girlfriend now? Or... I don’t know. Are we putting a label on us?” There’s a bit of hesitation in your voice, but not enough to really alarm Eddie.

“Do you want to be boyfriend-girlfriend?” He asks, eyes widened a bit. You bite your lip and nod sheepishly, your fingers curling around the hair at the back of his neck. You didn’t think it was possible for his smile to be any more radiant than usual, but it is then as he leans in to kiss you again, the hand on your waist going to your face, cradling your cheek and jaw in his large hand. It makes you dizzy, and you run your hands down his back, the kiss deepening as you open your mouths to each other. As you rake your hands back up Eddie’s back, there’s a noise from the back of his throat, one that sets your nerves on fire. It’s so beautiful that you do it again, with the same glorious result.

There’s a pounding in your chest as Eddie moves his lips down to your neck, and yours miss his skin so much you press them anywhere you can reach— the edge of his jaw, his shoulder, the base of his neck—and when Eddie sucks at that sweet spot below your ear, you let out a little whine, hands tightening around his lean frame again. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” He mutters against your skin. “I’m such an idiot for not doing this sooner,”

You want to protest, to tell him that you’re the idiot for not bucking up sooner, but his hand roams up your side, over your ribs and you can’t help but sigh. “Eddie...” It’s all you can get out. It’s like you’re on drugs all over again, but the only drug here is the intoxicating feeling of Eddie—his hands, his mouth, his body—all over you.

Eddie moves so that he’s hovering over you between your legs, and you whimper, loudly and unexpectedly, as he grinds against you. You can feel him throbbing through your shorts and his pants, and it’s the most erotic thing you’ve ever felt. Of course, that position doesn’t have much competition at this point, but nevertheless, it’s like your head is stuffed with cotton candy. You instinctively push your hips up to meet his, and Eddie moans again, a needier sound this time that has you feeling almost feral.

Your hands fumble around, searching for the waistband of his pants, desperate to feel him, but Eddie pulls back, both of you panting lightly. “Are you sure you want to do this? I know I said if you still wanted to in the morning, we could, but I...” He looks away, not being able to find the words.

You bite your lip, eyes wide and wanting. “Eddie, look at me,” You plead. There’s a worry on his face as he does, his chocolate eyes soft and gorgeous. “I want you so bad I feel like I could burst into flames. I have wanted you for as long as I’ve known you. I have thought of this, dreamed of this, for years. You are my best friend and I trust you with my life. So please...”

“All I’m saying is that we don’t have to do this now. We can wait if you—”

“Edward Munson, if you don’t get down here and do me right now I swear to god!” You threaten, and Eddie lets out a bubble of laughter from his throat at your seriousness.

“Okay, okay, quit yanking my leg! I just wanted to make sure.” You smile at his smile and then you’re kissing again, all tongues and teeth as you paw at his pants again, nearly drooling at the thought of touching him. Eddie’s hand smooths down your body to your thigh, holding it up against his hip, fingertips digging deliciously into the meat of it.

“Please,” You gasp between kisses, “c-can I touch you?” Eddie groans, his eyes practically rolling to the back of his head.

“God, yes,” You finally manage to get your fingers below his waistband, searching for his long, throbbing length that’s already painfully straining against his pants. When you touch it, it’s like you’ve been shocked by an electrical socket, right between your thighs. It’s so much warmer than you expected it to be, and softer, the skin smooth save for the thick vein running up the side. Though you can’t see it yet you know it’s going to be absolutely perfect. You gently grasp it as best you can in your position and give a experimental stroke. “Oh, my god. Fuck, angel,” Eddie gasps, pressing his face into the crook of your neck. You bite your lip and stroke again, studying the way it feels in your hand. You’ve heard about what this is like from the few girlfriends you have. You can’t do it too hard, or it hurts like a bitch, You remember your friend saying. When you slide your hand up, you feel moisture dripping from the tip, and you gasp at the sensation. It’s hot and thick, and you get the sudden urge to taste it, but you hold back.

Eddie’s having a rough time focusing on anything other than the feeling of his cock in your hand. The sounds he’s making have you getting hotter by the second, but you’re enjoying how much Eddie’s enjoying this, so you don’t mind. You try squeezing a little harder, not much, just enough to make a difference, and Eddie bites into your collarbone lightly, making you shiver. His hand on your thigh grips you harder. “If you- If you want me to last, sweetheart,” He pants, “You’re gonna need to stop that soon,” He involuntarily ruts into your hand then with another beautiful whimper.

Suddenly, you don’t know if you want him to last. As much as you want him inside you, you also really enjoy the thought of making him unravel just like this. You gently pull your hand away, collecting the drips of precum at the tip before pulling out of his pants, and you marvel at the clear, sticky liquid pooled on your fingers before tentatively brushing it across your tongue. Eddie stares wide, mouth hung open like he’s seeing a fucking unicorn. “You’re fucking perfect,” He muses.

You giggle, a blush growing on your cheeks. “I wanna see it,” You confess, eyes wide and doe-like. Eddie nods, his lips kiss swollen and pink as he sits up on his knees between your thighs. His fingers find the waistband of his pants and he shimmies them down, his cock bouncing up to lightly slap against his abdomen as he kicks the pants off his feet. “Oh my god,” You whisper.

If you had to guess, you would say he’s about 7 inches. There’s a slight curve to it, and the tip is almost a hot pink and messy with precum. Your mouth starts watering again at the sight of it. Screw using your hand, you want him inside you. Now. “You want me to get your shorts off?” He asks, his voice husky from lust. You nod wildly, already lifting your butt off the mattress to help him. He hooks his fingers under the waistband and lowers his head to the tops of your thighs to kiss the skin there as he pulls them down. You let out a sharp whine at the new sensation and Eddie hums happily against you as you writhe beneath him. He sits up to pull the shorts from your legs to toss them to the floor with his pants, and just like last night, he looks at you beneath him like he’s just been served a gourmet meal. “So fucking beautiful,” You sit up then, reaching out to touch along his sides, breathing heavily as you press your lips to the space between his thighs and stomach. Eddie gasps above you, his head rolled back as you trace your tongue in little patterns, mirroring the path he took with his mouth on you.

You reach for the hem of your shirt and pull it over your head, wanting to be naked with him, wanting for every inch of skin to touch him when he marks you from the inside. You reach up to his neck and pull him down with you, mouths finding each other as you rest your head back on Eddie’s pillow. Eddie takes his time to peruse your newly naked skin with his mouth, kissing over the mounds of your breasts before gently pulling a nipple into his mouth. You moan deeply, tangling your fingers through his hair as he sucks gently, running his tongue over the hardened bud before seeking the other one. “God, Eddie, fuck. Please, I need you... Please,” you beg, sending your hips up in search of him. Eddie shushes you, bringing his lips back to yours.

“I know, baby, I know,” He murmurs against your lips. “I’ve got you,” He leans over to his bedside table, pulling the drawer open. He fumbles through the junk for a moment before fishing out a little foil packet, which he rips open with his teeth. He tries putting the condom on with one hand while he supports himself with the other, but he fumbles, so you reach your hand down to help him, rolling it down to the base of his cock, earning another moan from him at the mere feeling of you.

He looks back to your face, the hand not supporting him goes to your face, thumb brushing over your cheek. “This might hurt. I’m gonna go as slow as I can, but you’ll tell me if I need to stop, right?” He searches your eyes for any doubt.

“I will,” You promise with a little nod. He mirrors your nod as he leans to kiss you again, and his hand goes down to the space between the two of you to position himself correctly to slide into you. He rubs the tip of his cock up and down your slit for a moment to spread the wetness before slowly, so slowly, he starts pushing himself past your tight entrance.

You both gasp at the same time, clutching each other as you adjust. There’s a burn as you stretch open around him, and you’re not sure if going slow helps or hurts, but you can’t even think straight to decide. Behind the burn of being split open is a mind-crushing pleasure that has you curling your toes and arching your back. “Oh my god, oh my god,” You hear yourself cry.

“I know, baby, fuck...” Eddie’s eyes are screwed shut, you assume to focus on not completely slamming into you. “So fucking tight, angel...” He mutters. It’s hard to keep your breath with the way you’re panting, but you try to focus on it as he inches into you. He whispers encouragement to you as he sinks in deeper and deeper until you feel him so deep you know he won’t be able to go any further.

“Fuck, I feel so... full.” Your eyes screw shut as you feel the pressure of his head against your cervix. Eddie gives a strained chuckle and sighs.

“I’m not even all the way in, sweetheart. I’m gonna have to do a better job warming you up next time. I just needed to fucking feel this,” He hangs his head against your chest, and your hands go to his hair, smoothing it out away from his face. You’re hips suddenly move on their own, and you both hiss a breath of pleasure at the delicious friction. “Oh fuck! Jesus, angel, you’re so fucking needy for it,” He moans, pressing hot, wet kisses to your shoulder before starting back up toward your face.

“I-I’m sorry!” Your head is buzzing like a beehive, the only word you’re able to consciously focus on is EddieEddieEddieEddie. Eddie captures your lips again, your tongues smoothing across each other.

“Don’t worry. I just didn’t expect it is all,” He heaves a breath, scrunching his eyes closed. “I- I think I need to start moving now, though. It’s a crime to sit still while I’m inside you,” The erotic praise sends another shockwave through you, and you nod.

“Yeah, yeah, please do that,” You hang your head back on the pillow to let him do pretty much whatever he wants. You don’t know what you’re doing so you have to trust him to show you everything. He pulls out slowly, too, though not as slowly as he went in. You give a little whine as you feel the pleasure-pain again, and Eddie looks at you with alarmed eyes, but you nod at him for him to continue. He’s not all the way out when he starts pushing back in again, and you begin to feel more pleasure than pain. Your limbs are heavy and warm with pleasure as he starts setting a slow rhythm.

Eddie’s hand hoists your thigh up around his hip again, and the new angle offers deeper pleasure than before, making you moan as he pushes in again. “Oh my god,” You whine, your fingertips grasping at the skin of his back. Your lips search for Eddie’s face, and you kiss across his cheek to his lips, feeling the vibration of his moan on your mouth.

“You feel—so fucking—so fucking good, baby.” His words are strained, he’s so focused on going slow enough to not cause you pain, but he’s also suffering for it. He wants nothing more than to be able to fuck you deep into the mattress, hard and fast. But maybe next time. He’ll be good for you. He’ll be so good for you.

“A little faster, please,” You plead, your breath coming in uneven and heavy. Eddie is all to eager to provide, gradually working the pace up a bit, his hips hitting yours a bit harder in a way that makes your breasts bounce on your chest with every snap of his hips. “Oh, fuck—” He’s hit something different now, something deep inside you that makes your vision go fuzzy for a minute, then he hits it again. You let out a tense whine at the contact, and your nails dig into his back.

“You like that, angel? Fuck, does that feel good?” In a different tone, it would sound taunting, but the way Eddie’s voice drips with need, you know that he’s begging to hear the answer.

“God, yes—feels so fucking good, Ed,” You feel your eyes start to itch with tears, and you hold back a choked sob as he continues fucking into you. He presses hot kisses to your neck, and you move one of your hands to grasp at the hand supporting him on the bed. He moves to accommodate, careful to keep himself up while you thread your fingers together above your head.

“So fucking good for me. You’re so pretty, sweetheart. I’ve got you, don’t you worry.” He squeezes your hand, his other does the same to the meat of your thigh, making you buck your hips beneath him without meaning to.

You continue like this for a few minutes, suspended somewhere otherworldly as you push each other closer and closer toward that undiluted bliss you felt for the first time last night. Between the kissing and the sighs, Eddie releases the hand he’s holding. “I need you to do something, sweetheart,” He rasps. You nod eagerly, trying to keep your focus on what he’s saying to you. “I’m- fuck, I’m getting pretty close. And I want you to cum with me. So I want you to take these pretty fingers,” He leans down to kiss them one by one, nibbling on the very tips of them, “and I want you to go down and rub your clit for me, okay? You remember how I did it last night?” You nod again, beginning to run your hand down between your bodies in search of that magic button Eddie brought you to tears with.

You shiver when you brush over it, letting out a mewl. “That’s a good girl,” Eddie encourages. “Take your fingers and rub it in circles. Not too hard, you don’t want to bruise it,”

“’Kay,” You start trying to find a rhythm, starting slow, moving the pads of your fingers over the swollen bud. You start to feel it drive your pleasure forward, so you keep your focus on it, trying not to lose your rhythm.

“That’s it, angel. You’re doing so good for me. Fuck, I can feel you squeezing me. Don’t stop pretty girl, I wanna feel you cum on my cock,” You drink in the words like water, ignoring the pain beginning in your inexperienced wrist as you continue, pressing a bit harder, circling a little faster on instinct.

“Oh my God, Eddie,” You whine, “feels so fucking good,” You’re getting that crying feeling again now, like your body is working in overdrive to accommodate for the blanket of sensation around you.

“I know, I know, baby,” He moans, capturing you in a sloppy kiss. Your tears spill over your eyes then, falling in hot drips down your face, cooling as they reach your neck. You shiver, from that and from hitting a certain spot around your clit. You gasp, and the tension in your stomach starts building.

“Oh my God,” You whine again. “I’m-- I think I’m getting close.” You let your eyes screw shut, lewd noises spilling from your lips like a waterfall as you get closer and closer to release.

“Fuck, I know, pretty girl. I am too. So fucking close,” He’s panting above you, “Don’t you stop. Make yourself cum on my cock. I know you can do it, angel. Cum for me, please, baby. I wanna feel it,” His voice is so sweet and needy in your ear that you can feel your body begin to unravel, the tension in your stomach teetering on a tightrope.

Then, the tightrope snaps, and you have to bite back a scream, tears flooding down your face as you descend into a dizzying orgasm. Your vision blackens around the edges as your walls clamp around Eddie’s cock, and he starts spewing profanities, his thrusts get sloppier. With a low moan into your neck, you feel him twitch inside you, hips stuttering as he reaches his own peak. You keep rubbing at your clit, like Eddie did after you came last night, and it does seem to keep the waves rolling through you for a little longer. Finally, when your wrist is too tired to move anymore, you let your fingers come to a stop, and you let your hand flop to the side, both of you sucking breaths to try to regain your composure. You let your eyes flutter closed again as you let your soul return to your body, and Eddie leans down to kiss anywhere his lips can reach.

You revel in the feeling, knowing that if you died spontaneously, you’d do it with a smile, and soon Eddie is easing himself out of you, adjusting his lower body so that he can lay his head on your chest without completely crushing you. “Sweetheart?” He asks. “Are you okay?” There’s a slight laugh in his voice, but he can see the tears on your face.

In response, you raise a hand to run through his hair, not remembering how to speak yet, and give a slow nod. You can feel a smile rising on your lips, lazy and dreamy, like this had all been some beautiful fantasy of the subconscious. Finally, you start to open your eyes, and you find Eddie looking intently at your face, trying to gauge your feelings. “There you are,” He murmurs, his hand coming to brush a stray tear from your cheek.

“Here I am,” You breathe, a little bubble of laughter bursting from your throat. That makes Eddie feel better, much better. He laughs a little, too.

“How you feelin’ angel?” You sigh deeply, leaning down to press a chaste kiss to his forehead.

“I feel fantastic.” You kiss Eddie’s forehead again and press your cheek into his hair. The laugh he gives now sounds a little less hesitant with the verbal confirmation of your wellbeing.

“Good. I’m gonna get up in a minute to get you a towel, okay?” His hand slides down the length of your body, stopping to rest on your hip. You let your fingers card through his dark curls as he lightly kisses your collarbone.

“You take such good care of me,” You compliment, that dreamy tone still lilting your voice. You feel him squeeze your hip just slightly, like he’s trying to hug you while laying on you.

“Anything for my favorite girl,” You giggle. He said that last night, too. You both rest for a quiet moment then, just feeling the warmth of your bodies pressed together. Finally, after a few minutes of this, Eddie raises his head to look at you again. “You still want to go to the farmer’s market later?” You don’t know why you find this so funny, but you laugh a lot harder than you probably should.

“I don’t think so,” You say. “I don’t think we’re going to want to go very far from this bed, today,”

“Oh?” Eddie raises an eyebrow, amusement written all over his face. “And why is that?”

“Because I think you’ve just created a monster,” You tell him matter-of-factly. “I don’t know how I lived so long without this.” Eddie laughs at your brazenness.

“We’ll see about that, baby. Wait until you try to stand up. We’ll see how much you want it after trying to walk,”

“Well, how about I just lay here then? Then I won’t have to worry about it!” Eddie reaches his face to meet yours, his warm lips moving over yours with increasing ease as you settle into each other like this.

“What am I going to do with you?” He asks, breath fanning over your face. Your heart breaks out in a sprint at his tender touch. You breathe another, exaggerated sigh.

“I don’t know. What are you going to do with me?” You grin playfully as he ponders this.

“Everything, I hope,” He settles on, giving you your favorite smile.

“Ooh, I can get on board with that!” With that, you pull his face toward yours, both of you laughing as you kiss each other breathless once again.

@eddiernunson @names-were-taken @unverifiedmeatsuit

#eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things fic #eddie stranger things #eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie #eddie munson smut #eddie x reader #eddie x fem!reader

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jyoongim · 2 months

Note

Hiii

Alastor X human!reader where she is desperate to make a deal for fame and glory.

She tries to summon a demon, accidentally conjuring Alastor. Beside her feisty facade she’s quite innocent and naive. He’s intrigued by her and toys with her, like a prey,tricking her into him, she signs the deal. He’ll come back after 1yr to collect his pretty little prize…her body and soul. 🌶️🔥

Title: A Price to Pay

part 2

You frowned at the check your boss had handed you.

Too little. You looked at your boss, a nervous smile on your lips as a laugh bubbled out of your throat ”haha this is half of what i should be getting. That’s funny, where's the rest? Am i getting that in cash or some?” Your boss laughed “HA! No thats what you’re getting for the week‘

Your eyes damn near popped out of your head.

For the week?

This was your pay for the entire week?

Oh hell no!

You poked a finger into the mans chest “What?! The whole week? I’ve been singing my ass off in this shit hole for two weeks! Where are my commissions?” You were angry!

He gave a low laugh as he pulled out a cigar ”You think just because you’re my best in this joint that I wasn’t gonna get the Final Cut? You better take it before i hand your ass nothing”

You sniffled as you wiped at your runny nose.

The yellow paper with EVICTION stared at you as you felt another wave of tear hit you.

Why?

Why couldn’t you just make enough to stay afloat?

Why did you have to suffer?

Why didn’t fate grant you mercy?

You had been busting your ass for months trying to make enough money to just pay the damn pills.

You were the best singer on your side of town and that shit hole needed a singer almost every night and when big shots went there. The money wasn’t terrible, it beat standing out on the pier at night, waiting to be taken to gods know where.

You laughed dryly, you would gladly get pimped out if it meant that you could still afford food to eat.

Why was life so cruel?

You had worked so hard and it felt like it was all for nothing.

You could hear your momma in your head

”You wanna dream big? Then never let life beat you down. Take it by the balls and make your dream a reality”

The next thing you know, you found yourself pulling out your mother’s old grimoire and drawing symbols on your bedroom floor.

what the hell were you doing?

You used to scoff at your mother when she did spells.

Because magic wasn’t real…right?

But it felt like you had no other option as you threw some herbs into the small fire pot.

Momma used to tell you about all types of things that were possible with a little magic. That you always had friends on the other side who could help if you knew what you doing.

And you indeed had no fucking clue.

But you were tired, angry, and desperate and wanted to do something about it.

This was your life!

You felt your body tingle as you chanted the incantation.

The room turned cold and the fire from the candles blew out. The building started to shake as you spoke the last verse and suddenly you were thrown back from an explosion in the middle of your pentagram.

You watched in terror as the floor glowed red and rising from the smoke was a very large demon.

You panicked as it began to stand, gulping at its full height.

Oh what did you just do?

—————————————————

Alastor blinked as he stood. Fanning the smoke away from his face, he grimaced once he saw the pentagram, candles, and herbs. Who dared? His ears perked at the sound of heavy breathing. He turned his head and red eyes caught sight of a mortal woman standing against the wall, eyes wide.

He took a step towards her, head tilting as she cowered away. He huffed as he got to the edge of the protection boundary. He gave her a smile, sharp teeth glistening with narrowed eyes

“Hello my dear”

——————————————————————

You took in the tall demon that stood in your bedroom.

He was dressed like one of those fancy gents.

Red and black tailored suit with a cane.

You watched as he curled his lip when he saw your protection boundary. You felt your body freeze as his eyes met yours.

Red.

Glowing red.

He was rather handsome looking for a demon.

He reminded you of-

“Deer” you squeaked, causing Alastor to tilt his head, ears flicking.

oh come on! You can’t be scared of something that you’re in control of!

”Hello my dear” you heard him say. He stood on the cusp of the salt boundary giving you his full attention.

That smile of his was very uncanny.

You shivered.

You found your nerves and puffed your chest out

”Hello demon-sir”

”Alastor” you blinked at him “w-what?”

He never lost that smile “The names Alastor. Pleasure to meet you” you were at a lost for words. Alastor took your silence to look around, your spellbook caught in his attention before he took you in.

You cleared your throat “I summoned-” “conjured” “You to um make a deal?” You said uncertain

Alastor smirked “oh reallly? And what makes you think Ill make a deal with a human like you?”

You frowned ”You don’t have a choice! I summoned YOU here you have to do what I ask!’

He laughed darkly “Oh my dear that isn’t how things work” he looked back at the salt ”lets chat”

You didn’t trust him, but he seemed friendly girl don’t do it

you inched close and with a sweep of your foot, dusted a bit of the salt to let him through.

Alastor stepped through and now you were being towered over.

Alastor took you in.

what a small thing you were. He was sure you had no idea what you were doing or dealing with.

But if it was deal you wanted, he will grant that.

”What do you want?”

You wrung your hands nervously as you spilled your sad excuse of a life and your far fetched dream.

You felt a surge of determination as you finished your little rant “That’s why I need a deal! I deserve to rise to the top! I’ve worked my ass off for years and nothing! Why-Why should I settle for this? My life deserved to be full of glamor and money! I deserve that right? Right! S-s-so what do you say”

Oh what an innocent thing you were.

Such a fire that had nowhere to burn.

Perfect

Alastor feigned mulling it over, your face dropping as he walked away from you.

”A deal works both ways my dear”he started as he turned back to you “What will you give me in return?” His smile stretched across his face as his calm facade faded.

You gulped but you were not gonna back out “Ill give you anything j-just please I don’t care what I have to do!”

He was in front of you in a flash, making you take a step back nervously

“Anything?” A clawed hand squished your cheeks hard as he leaned his face to yours

”prove it” he purred

You blinked. How the hell were you suppose to do that?

Nothing in this world is free. Your momma taught you that and your warning bells were screaming.

His thumbs was running over your lips and you opened your mouth to suck it.

You could die right now. Was this worth it? To give up your dignity to a demon?

Alastor growled and in a swift motion, you were on your bedroom floor, heart thumping in your ears as you looked up at the demon on top of you.

Alastor’s free hand swiped down your body, tearing your clothes to shreds, leaving you naked.

You felt a soft heat curl in your stomach.

Alastor laughed darkly as he took in your naked form. His hand dipped down and thumbed at the small bundle of nerves, causing you to jolt.

Oh he was going to have fun with you

”One year.” He said as he dipped a finger into your tight heat.

You gasped around his finger.

”You’ll get your fame. You’ll have riches and power beyond your imagination. A top star. It’ll all be yours. But in one year you are mine. Your soul and body. Do we have a deal?” He was slowly fingering you, relishing in the softness your cunt offered as it squeezed around him.

Your body and soul in exchange for glory.

Did you still want this?

”yes” you whimpered

A green glow emitted around the two of you. Alastor eyes glowed and his antlers grew as he plucked his thumb from your mouth and slammed his lips onto yours as he rubbed your clit as he slammed his fingers into you.

”mmmhmm hmmm!’ You cried into his mouth as your orgasm hit you.

Your cunt clenched around him, creamy slick drowning his hand.

Your body buzzed as he retracted his fingers, watching in bliss as he licked your cum off his fingers.

”Oooh such a sweet cunt” He Purred at you as he scooped you up into his arms to lay you on your bed.

”Ill always keep close watch my dear, so don’t think you can back out of this” he said, you blinked sleepily as you felt the coldness of a necklace clasped around your neck.

“One year my dear”

Your world faded to black.

pt 2 coming soon..hehehe

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lemonlover1110 · 6 months

Text

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬

Satoru Gojo

[Chapter 15] Ren The Cat

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Pairing: Satoru Gojo x f!Reader

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“Satoru, can we talk?” Shoko exits the bathroom, and she luckily bumps into Satoru. Satoru shakes his head, his eyes falling on you as you run out of the place. He’s about to run after you, but Shoko stops him. Her hand goes to his forearm.

“What the fuck are you doing? Why the hell is she running off?” Satoru sounds irritated, and Shoko knows that if she lets go, he’ll stop you. He’s about to push her away, and she knows that he’s much stronger.

“Let her go. It’s an emergency.” She says, and he furrows his brows. An emergency? Like what?

“Someone better be in the hospital.” Satoru responds, and this wave of guilt hits Shoko. For too many of her actions, the biggest of all is her hiding his son from him. She shouldn’t care, it’s none of her business.

“Satoru…” Her heartbeat races, and she’s about to stop herself from talking. She shouldn’t, it’s not her place. But you’re not speaking up ever, and Satoru deserves to know about the existence of his son. “She’s going to see Ren at the hospital.”

“The cat? Why the fuck–” Satoru begins but he’s cut off. The next words that leave her mouth, leave him dumbfounded.

“Ren isn’t a cat. Ren is her son.” Shoko blurts out. Satoru feels his blood boil at the mere thought of you being with someone else. He’s confused though, why would you hide the fact that you have a kid? Shoko tries to read his emotions, but she can’t. It’s hard.

“Who’s the father?” Satoru asks, wondering if it’s someone he knows. It doesn’t click in his head quite that second. Shoko gives him a moment to think about it, but it doesn’t occur in his head. Shoko has to tell him,

“I don’t think you get it… Why would she not tell you that she has a son?” Shoko feels like she’s dumbing it down. Satoru isn’t an idiot, but a million thoughts run through his head. He shrugs. “Ren is her son. Your son. She’s leaving because you have a son together, and he’s in the hospital.”

“You’re lying. She would tell me. She wouldn’t keep that from me.” Satoru answers, and Shoko lets go of him. He goes chasing after you, but you’re gone. He’ll just stop by every hospital nearby, until he finds you. He’ll remember the name– Either Ren has your last name, or his. He’ll ask about either name.

“Satoru…” You stand up from your chair, and you watch as tears well up in his eyes as he takes in the scene. Shoko wasn’t lying– Ren doesn’t have his last name, but one swift look at the kid and he realizes that is his son. That’s his spitting image.

You stare at each other, frozen in time. Your heart feels as if it’s in your throat, and your mind chases a thousand miles per hour as you think of what you’ll say next. What can you say? You weren’t exactly preparing yourself for this moment, you thought this would never happen. How fucking stupid.

While Satoru feels betrayed. Utterly hurt. He’s always thought the best of you; you were damn near the perfect woman. Yet you’ve betrayed him in the worst possible way. You hid his own flesh and blood from him… For what?

But Satoru isn’t going to argue, not when a little boy that he just met is in pain, and the kid is calling him daddy. Satoru rushes to Ren’s side, pressing a kiss on his forehead. Satoru isn’t quite sure what to say, what do you say to your son? A kid that’s probably almost five, a kid you just met?

“He has appendicitis, he has surgery in the morning.” You inform him. Should you tell him to go back to his event? And deprive Satoru and Ren from this sweet moment? You have no option but to sit back down and watch the scene unfold.

“I’ll be by your side, buddy. Everything’s gonna be okay.” Satoru’s finger pushes Ren’s hair out of his face. Satoru takes in the little details of his son’s face. Ren has your nose, but apart from that, he looks just like Satoru. Tears stream down Satoru’s face, and his voice breaks, in disbelief that this is happening, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier, Ren. Your daddy is here now.”

You feel nauseous, tears streaming down your face as you watch them. Guilt for the last couple months that you’ve kept him hidden when Satoru was right in front of you. But you didn’t. You could’ve defied Mrs. Gojo’s orders, but you selfishly didn’t. You watch as Satoru kisses his son’s forehead again.

If he could, Satoru would hug Ren so tight that he’d nearly leave the boy breathless. But he can’t. He’ll do it next week though, when Ren is better.

The sweet moment is interrupted by his ringing phone, and Satoru takes it out. His mother calls, and he’s about to pick up since he has this news; she’s a grandmother. For a moment he stares at the phone, and he realizes something. You’ve mentioned Ren the cat before and his mother knew. His mother fucking knew. That’s why you’re working with her, because his mother knows that she has a grandson.

He declines the call, instead he focuses on his son. Grabbing his tiny hand, and taking note of every crevice. He always swore that when he had a baby, he’d look at every finger and toe individually, and he’d count them over and over again. He can’t believe he missed that.

There’s a smile on Ren’s face as he looks at his father, finally meeting the man that he’s been waiting for.

“Granny!” Ren shouts when his grandmother comes to sight. Your mother, who happily walks in with food but drops the bag when she sees him. Satoru looks back at your mother, and it’s like she’s just seen a ghost. Satoru walks over to her, and wraps his arms around your mother.

She isn’t sure what to do as Satoru hugs her. This isn’t the same little kid that would come running to her after an injury, the man that hugs her is the father of her grandson. A man that’s left many unattended wounds in her daughter. Satoru pulls away, and goes back to his son.

Your mother looks at you, watching as you silently cry. It seems as if more tears stream down your face when Satoru asks, “So how old are you, buddy? Sorry for not knowing.”

Ren puts up four fingers, excitedly replying, “Four!”

“Nice to see he isn’t in pain anymore.” Your mother comments. Your hand holds onto Ren’s, and you rest your head on the empty space of the mattress again, listening to your son and his father talk.

Ren is taken in the morning, and Satoru assures him that he’ll be there right after surgery. Neither of you slept a wink last night, and you hope that while you wait you can sleep for an hour or so. You doubt you will though since you have a lot to talk about. So much to talk about.

When you’re left alone, you sit in silence for a minute. Both of you gather your thoughts. Until Satoru finally clears his throat, “So you faced me everyday like that? Like you weren’t hiding anything. You were planning on keeping quiet about my son.”

“I tried to tell you when I was pregnant.” You answer, and you take a deep breath. That’s not good enough. Not now, not when you’ve been seeing each other daily. “And then… Mrs. Gojo didn’t want me to tell you.”

“And why the hell did you listen to her?” Satoru slowly begins to see red. His own mother did this to him. He has no trouble believing you, it does seem like something his mother would do. “You had no problem looking me in the eye while hiding him.”

“She gave me an opportunity that would make my life easier, I would obviously listen to her.” You respond. “You started over with someone else, I feel like I’d ruin everything if I’d come out of nowhere with a child.”

“You don’t have to lie to me. You don’t care about that, do you? You’re just scared I’ll take Ren from you.” He says, and maybe Satoru remembers how you are.

“I struggled with him for so long, the last thing I need is for you to take him from me. You have no right to take him from me. I don’t care if you can financially support him better than me, he’s my son.” You get defensive, and Satoru’s hand goes over your own to reassure you. He squeezes it, feeling tears well up in his eyes again. He hates that this is how you think of him. It’s not unwarranted.

“And I won’t take him from you, but at the very least I deserved to know. I deserved to know I have a son.” He’s clearly upset, and his emotions reflect in his voice with every word that leaves his lips. “Do you know how hurt I am? You hid my own flesh and blood from me, you know better than anyone how badly I wanted to be a father.”

“I wanted to tell you, Satoru. I tried to tell you. But then I realized you had other priorities, and I understood that I didn’t need you by our side. And I’m sorry that it happened like this, but you’re partially at fault for the outcome.” You answer, standing up from your seat. You need a breath of fresh air and a shower. You begin to walk towards the door, and it opens before your hand goes to the doorknob. You’d be terrified of her at any other time, but not now. You take a deep breath,

“Mrs. Gojo… Your son is here to speak with you.”

#[changes]#gojo saturo #satoru gojo #gojou satoru x you #jjk satoru #gojou satoru x reader #jujutsu kaisen gojo #jjk gojo #gojo angst #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo satoru #jujutsu gojo #gojo x reader #gojo fanfic

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nymphomatique · 7 months

Note

Thinking about reader getting rejected by some guy and she gets drunk and loser nerd miguel is there to comfort her and she is like "miggy you are so much better than him!!" (She won't admit she said that when she is sober) and she is crying and saying embarrassing stuff she likes about miguel while he is trying his best to comfort her. Things like "i actually think the glasses are so cute" "i love how smart you are, always so helpful" and it escalates into things like "i love sitting on your face and seeing the glasses fog up" "your dick is big for a nerd, i love sucking you off" etc. And Miguel is like 😳

she is finally here!! had a blast writing this one 🤭

cw: drunk reader, reader gets rejected and gets shitfaced, miguel being a sweetie, unprotected sex, overstimulation, erm like pantie sniffing? 😭 idk, cunnilingus, creampie, squirting (because why wouldn’t there be it’s me whose writing this), slightly drunk sex (can be considered dubcon), switch miguel??, undercover feelings if u squint🕺🏽i think that’s it lmk if i miss smt. and as usual, not proofread ❤️ enjoy my luvvies

wc: 3.0k

your head was pounding. but that’s to be expected with the excessive amount of alcohol in your system paired with the booming bass of whatever song was playing at whatever club you were at.

you felt so disoriented. at the beginning of the night, you wouldn’t have shown up if you had known what was going to happen. you came out tonight with your sorority friends because you had your sights set on hobie brown. tall, lanky, and fucking gorgeous. all night, you had done your best to push your tits up in your skimpy dress and sway your hips to the song that had been playing at the club to no avail. he left you alone, feeling high and dry to hook up with one of your friends instead. seeing him make out with her in the shared booth you had all pitched in for bad made you feel slightly insecure. was there something wrong with you? you had chosen not to dignify that question with a verbal answer but rather with shots of tequila, and that had been 4 shots ago.

your head was spinning, and you felt so so warm in the club. in this moment you found yourself thinking of one thing only, miguel. you hated yourself for it. and when a mysterious double shot of vodka had appeared in front of you, the bartender saying some guy had payed for them with you, you downed them no question. the burn in your throat quieting the burn in your mind. but only temporarily. you can’t stop thinking about him. his curly brown hair, his plump lips, his cut nose, his eyes, and those glasses he wears. you find yourself missing him in this moment, yearning for him to make you feel better. you’re ready to go home.

you push yourself away from the bar counter, and the push sends you reeling backwards and onto your ass with an “oof!”. with the strobe lights, loud music, and moving bodies, you were nothing in the sea of movement and stimulation on the floor. you figure the floor is your best option at regaining some sense of orientation, so you pull your phone out and order yourself an uber home to the best of your ability. through your hazy vision, you open your messages, scrolling through your contacts until you find the one you’re looking for, under the name ‘four eyes’. without thinking, your thumbs start moving, and you’re pressing send periodically.

you figure you’re done, and you brace yourself to get up and navigate through the sea of bodies ahead of the exit.

in his dorm at his desk, miguel sat quietly studying for his upcoming molecular biology quiz, when his phone starts to buzz.

my love <3

1:22 am. — r y awsje

1:22 am. — awake

1:22 am. — my roon in 15

1:23 am. — pls

miguel looks at his phone, trying to decipher whatever gibberish you had been typing. he figures you mean to meet him at your dorm, a little escape between you two at this time of night wasn’t unusual, but never initiated like this. miguel bookmarks his page in his textbook before closing it, grabbing some water and ibuprofen with him before he makes his way to your dorm.

when he arrives, he sees you on the floor leaning against your door, barely awake. you perk up however at miguel’s footsteps, your eyes fluttering open and a small smile plastering across your face. “miguellll,” you exclaim, throwing your hands towards him. “dunno my room code. piggy back me!” you giggle, rather loudly at that. miguel smiles a bit, walking over briskly to shush you. “okay baby, but you gotta be quiet, yeah?” he smiles, taking you in so.. free. happy.

a smile graces your lips, eyes hazy and blinking, hair messy and unkept like the clothes you wore, but to miguel you were as beautiful as ever, even at your most unguarded. he watches you with a smile, knowing this will be the last time for a good while he’s going to see you like this. he kneels, placing an arm at your back, scooping under you arms, the other arm at the back of your knees. with a swiftness, he steps back up with you in his harms with no sweat, and as drunk as you are damn do you find it hot. your face burries itself in miguel’s pectoral, covered by his soft grey sweater.

you breathe him in quietly as your head the buttons to your room door beep and your handle twist somewhere distant. all you can think about is miguel. as drunk as you were, your eyes would always find the time to focus on him. the way butterflies erupted in your stomach as you saw him walk towards you in his plaid pyjama pants and his loose sweater, glasses atop his head. he looked tired as ever, probably busy studying quantum mechanics or something. yet, here you were in his string arms. miguel, miguel, miguel. you look up at him as he walks you to your bed, and you catch a look at his resting face. he naw tense and sharp, lips pursed, brows bushy and furrowed, his brown eyes sharp and attentive. you’ve never seen him like this. you like seeing him like this. your hand creeps up to his jaw, tracing the muscle and vein, in brief brushes as miguel finally sets you down on your bed.

you’re sat with your back parallel to the wall the length of your bed sits along, head leaning back and reeling in the coolness of the painted wall.

“you enjoy yourself back there?” he teases, smiling softly at you, beginning to undo your necklace clasp. you smile sheepishly, feeling warm and embarrassed you let yourself get caught staring and touching him like that. “s’okay. you know i love it when you touch me.”

and there it is. the sharpness and the bite in miguel that you’re not used to seeing, the miguel who makes your stomach burn with a look, makes your chest pound by saying things like ‘i love it when you touch me.’ he’s long gone from your neck, his nimble fingers at your wrists, unclamping your bracelets and slipping off your rings, placing an occasional kiss on your knuckles. and you sit in silence as he takes care of you, stripping you ever so slightly more bare than you were before, not just physically.

you watch and see the attentiveness in his moved, how he’s careful with you. he moves to take your shoes off next, kneeling as he does so. the begins to unbuckle one strap of your heel, focus built in his face as he does so. he pulls your shoe off, massages your foot, up to your ankle, up to your calf, stopping right as the burning you feel on your skin begins to pick up. you break the comfortable silence with the whisper of his name from your lips.

“yes, my love?” he hums, rubbing soft circles in your calves.

“you’re so good to me. make me really happy,” you murmur.

“yeah? you make me happy too.”

“not just that,” you begin, perking up a bit from your slumped posture. “you’re really smart. makes you really attractive.”

he keeps rubbing soft circles into your supple skin, but this time he’s looking up at you, a slight redness to his cheeks. adorable.

“you’re big n’strong too. carryin’ me like that to my bed,” you giggle. you lean forward, your face a few inches closer to miguel’s. “made my pussy fuckin’ wet,” you whisper at him, leaning back against the wall to watch him, a stunned look on his face. “my other shoes not gonna take itself off.”

miguel doesn’t let your comment phase him, at least beyond the physical sense, as he moves to take your other shoe off. and he repeats. unbuckle, massage, foot, ankle, calf, thigh- thigh? you watch miguel quietly, his hands rubbing and kneading into the meat of your lower thigh. higher and higher his hands creep, until they’re sitting right below the rolled-up hem of your dress. miguel looks up at you, waiting for a sign, an order. wordlessly, you let your legs spread apart.

miguel takes heed of your cue, and his hands gently trail up your thigh and split at its junction, each of his large hands latched onto your hips. he abruptly pulls you forward, and you let out a small squeak. miguel pays you no mind, his eyes on the prize present between your legs. he burries his strong nose into your clothed vagina, rubbing at your clit a bit and he inhales, moaning at the smell. your stomach tightens a bit and you feel both embarrassed and aroused at his display.

“smell as good as you taste.”

you bite your lip and snake your hand up to the thick head of hair in between your legs, pushing him closer to your panty covered wetness. “quit teasin’ me, you breathe out, miguel’s strong nose prodding at your clit. at your expression he moves to lick a stripe up your pussy, licking up the taste of you from your soaked underwear. you let out a soft exhale, feeling sated at the kitten licks miguel gives you. he trails up your clothed wetness once more, and moves the gusset of your panty to the side, exposing you to him.

ever anxious, you hold in a breath, ready and waiting for miguel. after a beat he finally places his mouth on you, delving between your folds and training up between them to reach your clit, which he sucks into his mouth hard. you can’t help but let out a moan, praising him for his work. “f-feels so good, migs. keep goin’ for me.”

and he does, licking and sucking and thrusting up into you until you’re writhing writhin his grasp and you find yourself on the cusp of your orgasm. that is until he pulls away. he’s sat on his haunches, mouth wet and face flushed, lust heavy in his eyes at he looks at you.

“please, mistress, can i make you feel good?”

you lean forward and grab him by his sweater collar, pulling him up to your bed, his face inches from yours. your lips ghost his as you whisper, “you always make me feel good.” you pull him in for a kiss, your lips hot and heavy against miguel’s, swirling your tongues between each others. when you feel void of breath, you break up the kiss, taking a moment to look at miguel until you push him back against the bed, throwing your leg over his hips so that you were straddling him.

“wanna know something else?” you begin, leaning your head down to kiss his cheek. “you always make me cum. with that big dick of yours.” you grind your hips against his, feeling him throb against your pussy even through his sweats. “you always make me cum, even make me wet the bed and squirt. no other man has done that to me.” you continue kissing and suckung his neck, being sure to leave the unmistakable mark of hickeys down his jugular.

miguel moans, his arms tensing and hips jerking up at the sensation and you giggle a bit. “want you to fuck me and make me cum with that dick of yours. hard.” you leave him with your words as you get off him, stumbling a bit, the remaining alcohol in your blood making itself present. you watch miguel, still laying against your bed and you strip for him. you pull your tight dress up and over your head, shimmying it off you until you’re only in your panties. you wore no bra.

at the sight, miguel gulps and raises off the bed, ridding himself of his pants and sweater in record time, until he’s naked in front of you. you peel your panties off of you, throwing them at miguel’s face as you walk over to him and push him back into the position the two of you were in once more. you’re sat on top of miguel’s hard length, laughing at his eyes peeking through the gusset of your lacy underwear. “bet you like havin’ my panties on your face,” you tease, running your hands up his chest, ghosting his hard nipples. he lets out a sharp inhale and you roll your eyes, grabbing your underwear off of miguel’s face. “open,” you command, and his jaw unhinges without a spare moment. you ball up the lace fabric in your hands and shove it in his mouth, biting your lip at seeing miguel like this.

“you’re so fucking sexy, especially now that you can’t talk.”

you decide you’re done teasing, ready to finally satisfy yourself, and you lift you hips up. “put it in yourself,” you tell miguel, and a muffled sigh comes out of his mouth as he grabs his cock, aligning it with your wetness. miguel’s eyes close and his hips jerk up, his fat tipping pushing through you. miguel grabs your hips, squeezing and his keeps going, pushing the entirety of his length within you. you moan, the stretch burning so good along with the slight rush of liquor running through you. you feel hot and lightheaded, and good. so good. when miguel is fully sheathed in you, you don’t give him a moments rest before you plant your hands on his soft pecks and push your hips up to slam them back down.

miguel let’s out muffled curses, and your breaths become to come out faster and shorter as your hips keeping going up and down. “fuckin’ love this cock. s’all mine. don’t ever wanna share you,” you moan out. miguel’s feet plant into your bed and he matches your thrusts, his hands pulling your hips down as he thrusts up into you, causing you to squeal. he’s hitting you deep and hard and you don’t know how long you can take it like this. in the midst of it all, one of miguel’s hands leave your hips to make its way to your clit, rubbing your swollen bud. your body tenses and shakes, and your feel your orgasm build itself up quickly.

“g-gonna cum,” you moan out, looking at miguel. you already find him looking at you, his face in utter ecstasy. your underwear in his mouth is darkened from his saliva, his forehead covered in a light sheen of sweat, his hair strewn across your sheets. he makes your stomach clench, and you feel yourself shake from your orgasm. miguel doesn’t let up, he’s still fucking you and prodding your clit. he’s determined to make you squirt, just like you told him to.

“oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, i’m- ah!” you babble, your brain beginning to fog. your first orgasm doesn’t even let up when you feel a second one hit you, and a groan leave miguel at you tightening and leaking around him. “h-hurts to good, please don’t stop baby please please please.”

he has you begging, the pleasure feeling too much. he’s still not done yet, his determination to make you squirt keeping him going. he flips you both, so that you’re laying against the bed, with him kneeling above you. you’re in such a deep haze that you don’t even realize until you hear miguel speak. he took your panties out of his mouth.

“gonna soak me? i need it, baby. you can do it, huh?” you hear him in your ear. your legs are over his shoulders and he’s pistoning into you and you just can’t. your head falls to the side when you feel a pressure build in your abdomen and you think you did it. liquid spurts from you, soaking you sheets and miguel’s stomach, and he lets out the deepest groan at the feeling. he’s still fucking you, hard thrusts and skin slapping. you feel light and you don’t know how much more you can take until miguel comes, and your hand weakly pushes at his stomach.

“move your hand, baby.”

you moan, the overstimulation becoming too much, and miguel assures you he’s close, almost there baby, hold on for me, yeah? and you do, you hold on even though you feel like his dick is in your throat and you’re gonna pass out if he keeps fucking you like this. you swear your prayers are answered when his thrusts slow, his moaning becoming erratic and loud.

“fuck baby, m’cumming. so good for me, mommy, so fuckin’ good.”

his warm seed fills you up and his thrust still, your back arches at the feeling and a small stream of liquid gushes from you again with a heavy moan. “fuck baby, you still squirting f’me” miguel groans. he pulls out of you slowly, the feeling causing you to shake a bit. when he’s finally removed from yoh, you close your eyes, feeling a kiss to your forehead and sleep pulling a cover over you.

the next morning, you wake up with a blistering headache and a soreness to your body that just pisses you off, more than the sun peeking through your blinds. you groan as you get up, your sheets falling off of you and you see you’re in a grey sweater. huh.

you turn to your bedside table and see that it’s 10:37 am, with a glass of water and two white pills next to it. you reach for them when you hear your room door open, and none other than miguel o’hara enters your room. he greets you with a smile and you scowl at him, noticing the bag of fast food in his hands.

“brought breakfast for you. thought you would, um, be hungry.” he says. you look at him, the scowl leaving your face, and you feel the itchings of a smile poking at your face. if miguel notices, he doesn’t say anything, but he drops the fast food bag on your bed and kisses your forehead, before he disappears off into your bathroom somewhere.

you fucking can’t stand him.

#miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara drabble #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x you #miguel atsv smut #miguel o’hara smut #miguel o’hara fanfiction #miguel o’hara x y/n #sub miguel o'hara #<nerd!miguel3 #you’ve got mail 💌

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taexual · 11 days

Text

sleepwalking ● 23 | jjk

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader

summary: due to unfortunate circumstances, you ended up managing your ex-boyfriend’s band. you thought you’ve both made peace with it, but suddenly he’s very eager to prove to you that first love never dies.

genre: rockstar!jungkook / exes to lovers

warnings: explicit language, mentions of drugs (nothing graphic), descriptive SMUT (pet names and a sprinkle of worship included, beware), fluff and too much flirting to be allowed, some angst, SLOW BURN

words: 19.8k

read from the beginning ○ masterlist

chapter 23 ► in this open warfare, i won't fight fair, and in your waking moments, i will be there

The next morning, you and Jungkook took Minjun, Luna, and Maggie to a small restaurant—unreasonably far from your hotel in London—to have a late breakfast and to plot. The five of you were a lot more concerned with the latter, and the bacon and egg sandwiches on your plates were relegated to mere decoration.

You had already discussed your plan with Luna and Maggie over the phone last night, but you wanted to meet everyone in person to ensure you were all on the same page, and to inform Jungkook of his role (which was intentionally non-existent).

You believed that the fewer members of Rated Riot got tangled up in Sid’s slimy web, the lower the risk of collateral damage. Ideally, you would have left Jungkook out entirely. But his friendship with Sid made him a linchpin in the machinations of your scheme—he would be the most affected if something went awry.

“This plan relies heavily on the circumstances, I admit,” you said, while your friends feigned interest in their food to avoid the disapproving glances of the restaurant staff. “But maybe that will work to our advantage because we will hardly have to do anything. We will draw the authorities’ attention to Sid, and that’s it. He’ll do the rest himself.”

“Yeah,” Minjun added as your primary accomplice in this scheme. He was busy trying to stop his napkins from blowing away in the fierce wind on the restaurant’s terrace. “And that’s why we need Jude to let us into their hotel room—”

“Wait,” had become Jungkook’s new favourite word. He used it now, too. “And are we sure that Jude won’t change his mind?”

Maggie and Luna turned to you, mirroring Jungkook’s skepticism.

“We’re not,” you admitted. You were aware of the risk, but time has never been more of the essence, and Jude was your best option. “We’re not telling him too much and hoping for the best.”

“And to be honest,” Minjun added, “the fact that she gave him that laundry list of shit to do—”

“Wait,” Jungkook said again. “What list?”

You waved off his question, but Minjun answered on your behalf, clinging to this as if it was the only convincing evidence the five of you had against Jude changing his mind.

“Like, vitamins and stuff,” he explained. “To ease his withdrawals. I don’t know if he followed her instructions, but anyone could see how much it meant to him, just the fact that she cared enough. Maybe that’ll be what keeps him on our side, even though he’s back with Sid right now.”

Maggie wrinkled her nose in clear disapproval, although you knew she would have reacted the same way if she’d seen Jude—her heart was bigger than her head, bless her.

“He’s done nothing to deserve this from you,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, he—yeah,” Jungkook agreed, the confidence in his voice wavering as he alternated between gratitude for your concern about Jude, and guilt for putting you in this position. “You didn’t have to help him.”

“He’s really not doing well,” you said. “And don’t think I’m so kind, I acted largely out of my own self-interest. We need him for our plan.”

Jungkook recalled Jude’s sneezing, his shivers in forty-degree heat, and his nausea. All of his symptoms always came and went without warning, but the memory of someone going out of their way for him was likely to stay.

“Okay,” Jungkook acquiesced. “That’s—let’s keep going.”

“We won’t need to involve Jude every step of the way, though, right?” Luna clarified. “I mean, I assumed we’d mainly need him to get rid of whatever Sid has in his phone gallery.”

“Yeah, but not just—we’re not just deleting the videos with Jungkook,” you said, glancing at Minjun, who had supported you wholeheartedly when you mentioned this part of the plan to him. He nodded now, too, encouraging you to explain. “We’ll delete everything he has in his Cloud storage and factory reset his phone. I doubt Sid had enough sense to back up his files to an external drive, so this will clear every copy of everything he has on there.”

Maggie’s eyes finally lit up with lively excitement, Luna nodded in agreement, and you felt a smile forming on your own lips, too.

Jungkook, on the other hand, appeared almost disappointed.

“W-we don’t have to go through all of this just to delete those videos,” he said, fixing his gaze on his untouched cup of matcha latte; the artwork on the surface had begun to blur. “Those things happened. I did all of that shit, and Sid recorded it. That’s who I was back then, and maybe I shouldn’t try to—”

You interrupted his words—the ones you’d already heard before—with a gentle touch of your hand over his restless fingers, and Jungkook stilled, turning to you.

“No, those videos are not who you are. You are the one who decides who you are,” you reiterated once more and the table fell silent around you as if everyone had witnessed something they were not supposed to. “And if you want to leave those things in the past, you should be able to. Sid has no right to bring it up now.”

“But if we lock Sid up,” he persisted, “then maybe those videos won’t matter anyway.”

“He could publish them,” Minjun countered. “He sent them directly to you now, but he could post them publicly later. I’m sure he’d find a way to do that even behind bars.”

Jungkook felt a rush of dizziness and he was very grateful that you’d pressed your hand on his. Minjun was right. Sid had done something like this before when he’d posted your picture; he clearly wasn’t above making private matters public.

“We would leave the videos be, let Sid have them, whatever,” you continued, reading the colour on his face, “but he wants to use them against you. He’s cutting them up to paint you as an irresponsible asshole. And you’re not an asshole, Jungkook.”

“Yeah,” Minjun agreed. “And I talked to Jude about an hour ago. He sounded sober, which is shocking to me, but, anyway—Sid has plans to go out tonight, so Jude should be able to do this tomorrow morning while Sid’s still passed out.”

The whole terrace of the restaurant seemed to hold its breath in anticipation as soon as he said that, the clink of cutlery and the muffled chatter around you growing tense.

Jungkook, even dizzier now, turned back to you once more. You gave him a small nod.

He took a breath and nodded back. “Okay. Alright. Fine. Let’s do it.”

“Good!” Maggie cheered from across the table. She turned to Jungkook, and you watched as her reassuring tone chased the last doubts from his eyes. “Even without those videos, we need to do this to get back at Sid. And I know this will do just that. I’d be tearing my hair out if someone cleansed my Cloud.”

You noticed that Maggie was much more vigilant with her phone today, hardly letting it out of her sight. She’d improved her security measures and had to enter her passcode every time she wanted to reply to a text today, because the facial recognition struggled to recognise the wind in her hair. This was the reason she hadn’t bothered with it before, but Sid had taught her a valuable lesson.

You gave your friend an agreeing nod and settled against the back of your chair.

Luna sat on your other side, leaning her elbows on the table, and she quickly noted the way Jungkook’s eyes widened when you pulled back, as if you had torn off a piece of his skin. She glanced at Maggie, who noticed nothing and kept checking the time on her phone as if she was late for another meeting to plan someone’s arrest.

Somewhat disappointed, Luna turned back to you, her grin doubling in size to compensate for her lack of company in teasing you.

“One big problem,” you said, focused on the intricacies of your plan and, therefore, unaware of your surroundings, “lies in our next steps. If we manage to get Sid arrested, he will likely weaponise his friendship with Jungkook. He’ll try to make it seem like they’re as close as brothers, and if he’s going to jail for meth possession, then Jungkook is probably doing drugs, too.”

You pulled your phone out from your bag and allowed for the weight of your words to settle on the table like a heavy grey tablecloth while you opened your gallery.

“So, this morning,” you continued, “Maggie and I put something together. This is a list of people who are banned from Rated Riot’s shows.”

You passed your phone to Luna first. She looked at the screen, nodded, and handed the phone to Maggie, who smiled to herself right away—she had designed the layout of the list and was very pleased with it.

By the time your phone reached Jungkook, he was already squirming in his chair. As he examined the list of names, displayed in bold white letters on a black background with a crumpled paper texture that Maggie had crafted and digitalised herself, he realised that the only name he recognised was Sid’s.

He looked up. “But if you post that—that’s—isn’t it supposed to be confidential?”

“I won’t post it,” you said. “We’ll leak it.”

“Oh.” A gleam of affection suddenly sparkled in his eyes. He felt a little like he’d just met you for the first time, all over again. “Can we do that?

Maggie reached across the table, snatching your phone from Jungkook’s hand to see the picture of the list again. She scrutinised the names for a minute as if trying to uncover the social security numbers of the people listed.

“No,” you replied. “But Sid never played fair, so we’re simply levelling the playing field. The other names on the list are made up anyway. They’re generic enough to match someone on Facebook, but no one will know which person is on this list.”

“But they’ll recognise Sid,” Maggie pointed out, squinting at your phone. “Even though he’s listed as Isidore here. Right?”

“That’s him, yeah,” you confirmed. “And you’re right. Everyone will recognise Sid. We’ll leak this before he gets arrested, and anything he says after that will just be taken as blatant slander.”

Jungkook took another deep breath and glanced at your phone, which Maggie slid towards you across the table. It bumped against the corner of your empty water glass.

“Won’t there be consequences if something else leaks?” he asked, his teeth grazing his bottom lip.

“Yeah, I was thinking that, too,” you admitted. “But then, Luna texted me a brilliant idea last night.”

You gestured towards your friend, and she continued.

“It’ll be accidental,” she explained. “Maggie usually posts backstage pictures on her Instagram. She has almost as many followers as the main account of your band at this point. So, later today, she will post a new set of pictures, and this list of names will just happen to be visible in some shots. Just a coincidence, really. And then we hope that one of your fans will notice it, zoom in, catch Sid’s name, and share it.”

Jungkook looked down, nodding to himself. He realised that Sid stood little chance against the collective resolve of everyone at this table.

“They will notice it,” he said. “I don’t doubt it.”

“We’ll have to rely on them to spread this,” you added. “Even though this list isn’t really something we need to hide. It’s just, you know, sort of customary in the industry to keep your dirty laundry to yourself.”

“Alright,” Jungkook said, sensing the weight of everyone’s gaze on him. He had the feeling that everyone was waiting for his final approval to move forward with this plan. “So, uh, Maggie won’t get into trouble for posting it?”

“Hmm?” Maggie looked up from her phone at the sound of her name. “Oh. No. I’m the photographer. As long as I get good shots, I never get in trouble. And this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve taken a picture that reveals more than I intended.”

She gave you a sheepish look, and you shook your head, sensing where the guilt in her eyes stemmed from. Maggie knew that Sid was behind the chaos caused by the bathtub picture, but she still felt a gnawing sense of responsibility because she was the one who had taken the picture.

“Alright. You, uh—you guys really put a lot of thought into this,” Jungkook remarked, looking at you first, then at your friends, and finally at Minjun on his other side. “I’m, uh—I-I’m actually a little afraid of you.”

Luna and Minjun snickered—Maggie was back on her phone, but she was smiling, too—and their excitement made you feel much more optimistic.

“Good,” you said, reaching out to touch Jungkook’s hand again. He immediately turned his hand round and firmly clasped yours—to ensure you wouldn’t pull away this time. “Sid should be, too.”

A tense silence settled over the table, punctuated by the subdued conversations on the terrace.

For the first time since you arrived at the restaurant, Jungkook finally took a sip of his coffee. It tasted bitter and lukewarm. You refrained from touching yours, but accepted a bite of Luna’s tiramisu. Everyone else at the table seemed to remember simultaneously that they had ordered food when they got here.

“Uh,” Maggie spoke up after a second, still chewing on the brown crust of her bacon and egg tart. “Is this a safe space for us to voice our, uh, concerns?”

You straightened in your seat, bracing yourself before she’s even said anything. Jungkook sensed your growing anxiety and squeezed your hand.

“Of course,” you replied, keeping your voice steady.

“Okay.” Maggie swallowed and set down her fork after taking exactly one and a half bites. “Well, I’m worried that Sid will say something provocative and one of us will end up getting arrested for assault.”

There was something absurdly comical in her question—or the potential outcome it suggested—and you could see Minjun quickly lower his head to conceal his broad smile.

Jungkook, meanwhile, was extremely pleased that no one turned to look at him, the person who had, more or less, already assaulted Sid before. It comforted him to know that everyone here would have loved to smack Sid upright in the head, too.

“That’s a great point,” you said, clearing your throat. “If he provokes you—well, then you might have a legitimate reason to, uh, land a good punch. You probably wouldn’t be held in custody too long for that. There’s no premeditation, you acted on impulse because of something he said.”

Minjun raised an eyebrow at you from across the table.

“I thought our focus was drug laws,” he said. “Did you research assault, too?”

“I researched assault laws the day I met Sid,” you deadpanned.

He snorted. “Yeah, fair enough.”

“Not to mention, we can always argue it’s self-defence,” Luna added, prodding her sandwich with a toothpick as if it were a not-quite-dead bug. “Sid is very—let’s say, aggressive.”

“That’s true,” Minjun agreed. “Especially when he’s irritated.”

The energy around the table had increased considerably; everyone seemed to have something to say about possible reasons to hit Sid. Maggie was already listing five ways to throw a punch that would knock out your opponent—she had a WikiHow article open and was illustrating it with enthusiastic demonstrations on Minjun.

You realised, quite suddenly, how happy you were to sit here with your friends. They were smart and cunning enough to rob a bank, escape a prison, and start a money laundering scheme all in a week, but they chose to be sweet and loving and a little vengeful instead. You felt almost giddy.

“He wouldn’t throw the first punch, though,” Jungkook interjected with a hint of frustrated sorrow. Maggie halted her research, retracting her fist from Minjun’s cheek. “He’ll just keep running his mouth until you strike him. And he’ll make sure the provocation is very minimal.”

“Well, sure, but who at this table will attest to any of that?” Luna questioned, undeterred. “Everyone who witnessed Sid throwing the first punch, raise your hands.”

All of you raised your hands in perfect synchronisation, and Jungkook felt himself smile again.

He had never doubted the success of your plan, even if he doubted the details. But sitting here now, while all of you held your hands up, he was fully convinced that this meeting marked the beginning of the end for Sid.

“Right. Okay,” he said. “I like how this is looking.”

“Me too,” Maggie said, locking her phone and slouching in her chair. “I feel better now. Didn’t want to spend the night at the police station.”

“You wouldn’t,” Luna assured her. “We’d bail you out.”

She snickered. “That’s good to—”

Jungkook suddenly jumped up in his chair, interrupting her.

“What about Sid’s bail?” he asked urgently. “Can he—could he pay for his release?”

Everyone at the table turned to you once more. When you and Minjun did your research yesterday, your focus had quickly turned from penalties to potential loopholes that Sid might use with his money, so you understood their sudden concern.

“No,” you said. “Apparently, it doesn’t work like that here. They would give him bail automatically; he wouldn’t have to pay. But they need to charge him with a specific offence first, and they won’t know the exact charges until they know what, uh, substances he was carrying on him and keeping in his hotel room—oh, and how much. Not to mention, bail may be denied if there is a risk that he’ll commit further crimes. And we know Sid is violent. He will not sit idly in his little cell.”

“Yeah,” Minjun agreed. “We’re 95% sure he won’t be given bail.”

You nodded, grateful for his confidence.

“So, we definitely won’t be in London by the time they charge him,” Maggie concluded, frowning. She regretted not ordering whiskey instead of espresso; alcohol helped her think.

“Definitely not,” you confirmed. “Our plan concludes with Sid’s arrest, everything else is not our problem anymore. And we’re only participating in this as the staff of Rated Riot, so the only people who will have to speak to the police are those who will be present when they arrive at the venue tomorrow. So, ideally, only Luna, Mick, and me. That’s it. That’s as far as we’re getting involved.”

“Wait,” Jungkook said. He understood the need for Mick’s presence and felt comforted that you’d have someone from security with you, but now he was worried about your friend. “Why Luna?”

“We need an additional witness to observe Sid’s erratic behaviour,” Luna explained. “We thought it’d be better to have someone random, and not just your manager and head of security there.”

Jungkook kept his gaze on hers. “How do you know he’ll behave erratically?”

She gave him a look.

“Right.” He leaned back in his seat. “Good point. Okay.”

He already knew that the odds were good that Sid would try to provoke you tomorrow, but now he realised that even if Sid suddenly decided to be docile, it wouldn’t matter. The five of you were tight as a glove—Sid could sit in a corner, purring and meowing, and you would all collectively claim that he was threatening you.

Finally, Jungkook realised that he had narrowly escaped something dreadful, and he felt very grateful to find himself at this table, and not on the other side of this plan.

“I, uh—this isn’t a concern exactly,” you said after a minute. “But I have to say that a lot of this hinges on Sid trusting my word, and I’m—well, I’m not sure if he’ll care about anything I tell him.”

Minjun looked almost offended. He was the one who devised this strategy after you told him that you needed a way to quickly draw the attention of the authorities to Sid.

Why don’t you call him? Minjun had suggested. And invite him to meet you.

You had thought he’d decided to go insane right before talking to you. But you’d kept your suspicions to yourself because, ultimately, calling Sid seemed like the only option. It felt unfair, however, not to mention your doubts now.

“Actually, I agree,” Jungkook said, giving you a long look. “I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with any of that. You’ll have to be alone in a room with Sid. And we can’t be sure that he won’t—”

“Sid will care,” Minjun asserted, ignoring everything Jungkook had said. He kept his gaze on you, his certainty almost as intimidating as it was comforting. “Maybe not because he has feelings for you, but because you’re Jungkook’s girlfriend.”

Maggie looked up from her phone, surprised about the possibility of Sid having any feelings at all, and turned to Luna. The two of them finally exchanged the look that Luna had been waiting for.

“And you’re okay with doing this?” Jungkook asked you, his gaze flickering from your eyes to your lips. He was careful not to miss any hint of dishonesty.

“I’m okay if this actually works,” you said. “If Sid shows up. If we get him arrested. I’m willing to try this if you’re all sure that we’ll succeed. And I wouldn’t be all by myself anyway.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about that part,” Maggie said to Jungkook, rolling up her sleeves for emphasis. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be at the scene tomorrow, but she felt she had a personal debt to settle with Sid, so she would find a way to interfere if she had to. “I can fight.”

Jungkook looked at her in a way that was more amused than it was skeptical—Maggie was very small in size, but very big in energy—and she tried to flex her arms to prove her point.

“I believe you,” he said, a smile breaking through his uncertainty. “I just don’t like that this will all be happening during our show. I won’t be there with you.”

“That’s just the plan,” you said. “We need to keep you away from him so that anything he says later won’t carry any weight. He’s obsessed with you and he has problems, and you’ve been distancing yourself from him for some time now. We’ll release an official statement about your, uh, separation once we’re done with him. And the leaked blacklist will back up our claims.”

A resigned acceptance clouded Jungkook’s features: he understood that this was the right decision, but he couldn’t help feeling unhappy about it. However, although he would have typically complained and whined about this—and you expected him to—now his posture was stoic.

You felt a little dispirited. You knew you wouldn’t joke around much today, but Jungkook’s unusually serious demeanour emphasised the gravity of the situation even more.

“Okay,” Minjun said. “Any other concerns?”

You shifted your gaze to him.

“Actually, I have another one,” you said. “I’m also worried about how this will affect your parents.”

The two girls beside you exchanged another glance—you hadn’t explained Minjun’s family’s dependence on Sid’s mother yet.

“If Sid’s in prison?” Minjun asked, unperturbed. “Well, their stocks will probably drop, so it will be weird to throw a party. I think we’ll celebrate quietly.”

You glanced at Jungkook, and he met your eye with an amused grin.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” he asked Minjun then.

“Are you kidding?” Minjun looked optimistic and upbeat. He seemed ready to take on the world, and locking up Sid was just the first step. “We should have done this years ago.”

Maggie suddenly slammed her palm on the table, forcing everyone’s coffee cups to rattle against the plates.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” she exclaimed, and her excitement quickly spread to the rest of the table.

“I agree,” Luna added, much quieter. “But maybe it’s time we headed out. The people at the next table are whispering and, uh, pointing at Jungkook.”

Jungkook raised his eyebrows and turned to you instead of looking around, his expression filled with a shocked wonder. He had only been recognised in public a handful of times since Rated Riot started out, and each instance had left an indelible mark on him.

You gave him a smile and a nod that spurred him out of his chair and towards the people at the neighbouring table, all of whom held their breaths when he stood up.

You glanced back at your friends—all smiling as they watched Jungkook introduce himself and singlehandedly cut off the air supply of four different people—and you thought about how wonderful it would have been if you had met Maggie and Luna earlier. If Jungkook and Minjun had stopped entertaining Sid’s whims sooner. If you and Jungkook had never broken up at all.

Perhaps, you thought, there was an alternative universe where you’d known and loved these people your whole life. You felt very close to that universe now.

Just as you finished your breakfast—where the five of you consumed one cup of coffee and half a slice of tiramisu in total—you executed the first step of your plan and sent a text message to Sid. It was innocuous, just a conversational, “are you ever going to stop doing this?” but it was meant to serve as a subtle precursor—so as not to approach him out of the blue tomorrow.

Then, as the five of you exited the restaurant, Maggie got enthralled by the most gracious little corgi sitting at a table, and dragged Luna and Minjun (who looked like he was not sure what was happening) back inside to ask for pictures. You and Jungkook opted for a scenic route back to the hotel instead.

Although the day was overcast, the sky did not look particularly ominous, offering instead an unexpected serenity that you thought you could use to clear your thoughts.

Interestingly, fresh air was not what you really needed at all. It was his hand holding yours as you strolled past extravagant hotels and expensive restaurants near Hyde Park, weaving through crowds of rushing tourists and cranky locals.

You felt significantly lighter with your hand in his, but Jungkook still appeared troubled. The shadows on his face were far more pronounced than those in the sky.

“What’s on your mind?” you asked.

He let out a weary sigh as he met your gaze. He seemed overwhelmed—as though his head was trying very hard to grow twice as large to contain all his thoughts, while the rest of his body fought desperately to resist the growth.

“I—well, I didn’t want to say this in front of everyone,” he started slowly, “but I’m worried about you.”

“Me?” You frowned. “Wh—because of Sid?”

“Because you’re doing all of this on top of your other responsibilities,” he said. “I don’t want you to burn out.”

Your expression visibly softened, but dark edges of guilt still coated the appreciation in your eyes. You felt disappointed in yourself—for letting it get so far that, over a week later, Jungkook still sometimes looked at you as though you might faint any second.

“That won’t happen,” you replied, your tone gentle, but determined. “I promise. And I’m not alone. I have so much help. And this won’t—it’s just a few days. We deal with it tomorrow, and it’s over.”

“Okay. But what if it’s not?” he questioned then. “We’re heading to Paris right after we, potentially, deal with Sid. And what if it doesn’t work, and we’re not here to fix it?”

You had to admit, this same possibility had been weighing on your mind ever since Jude first mentioned the bags of drugs in Sid’s hotel room. However, as soon as you saw Jungkook’s solemn features, you found yourself resisting all these worries. You would figure it out, no matter what happened, just so he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

You shrugged nonchalantly. “Then it won’t work.”

“He’ll be furious,” Jungkook said. “Even more vindictive than before.”

“I know,” you replied. “But no matter what he decides to do, we won’t back down, either.”

Jungkook frowned so deeply that several new wrinkles declared permanent residence between his brows. He dreaded the idea of spending a lifetime seeking revenge.

You sensed the reason for his apprehension—you wanted this over quickly, too—and instinctively squeezed his hand.

“I’m with you,” you said, reaching for your phone to check if Sid had reacted to your text. “And I told you, I’m not entirely convinced that this will work, either. I mean, here, look. Sid hasn’t replied. But if this plan falls through, we’ll come up with something else. Maybe something—well, less grand.”

He glanced at your phone, toying with his lip ring between his teeth. The prospect of failure felt more daunting with each second that Sid remained free to do whatever he pleased.

Jungkook didn’t want to do something else. He wanted this to work.

“Maybe he hasn’t replied because Jude deleted everything,” he suggested, searching for a plausible explanation that aligned with your plan. “Including the texts.”

“No, that’s tomorrow,” you reminded him. He groaned. “We need—Sid needs to notice my texts first. Then we delete them. I’ll use a disposable SIM card tomorrow, so there’s no trace that I ever contacted him.”

Jungkook felt like his head had already grown far too large for his body. He was a bit unsteady on his feet and clutched your hand tighter.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. That—yeah, no.” He lifted your intertwined hands to scratch something at his forehead. “My head is spinning. I can’t remember that much.”

You gave him a sympathetic nod. “That’s fine.”

“I’m not saying that I’d be too dumb to follow a plan like this,” he felt the need to insist.

“I didn’t think that.”

“I’m just saying,” he continued. “There’s a lot.”

You nodded in exaggerated agreement again. “Mhmm.”

His eagerness to prove his intelligence to you was very endearing. But it was a little funny, too, and Jungkook stopped walking to study your expression more closely. After a moment, he came to an appalling conclusion.

“You think I’m dumb,” he said.

A wide smile finally broke out on your face. “I think you’re very pretty.”

“Very pr—okay.” His expression shifted as you laughed, pulling on his hand to continue walking after an elderly couple gave you a rather well-deserved disapproving look for blocking their path. “Pretty and dumb. Is that your type?”

“It is,” you said, grinning. “That’s why you’re the only boyfriend I’ve had.”

He raised his eyebrows and scoffed. “Oh—wow. Wow. I am both very flattered and very offended.”

You chuckled, gently pushing his shoulder with yours. Jungkook shook his head and finally smiled, too. But right as he prepared to say something else, he ended up having to quickly yank your hand, pulling you into him and out of the way of an oncoming bicycle.

“Shit,” you were breathless against his chest as the bike drove past, your hair whipping forcefully in the wind, “thank you.”

“Pretty and dumb,” he said, allowing you to take a step away from him now that the danger has passed, “but with great reflexes, huh?”

You laughed again, leaning into him when you did and successfully dissolving everything sharp and uncomfortable in his chest.

“I know you’re not dumb,” you said. “And let’s be realistic: Minjun and I had been simmering in the details of this plan for days. You just barely learned about it a few hours ago. We’ve got this. I wanted you to know what we’ll do, but I don’t want you to be involved at all.”

“Yeah. I—no, I just…” he faltered, weighing his next words. The thought of everything that would happen tomorrow made his stomach feel very heavy. “I feel like you’re trying to protect me from Sid by keeping me out of this, and I’m—I don’t know how that makes me feel.”

“We’re not just keeping you out, we’re keeping the whole band out,” you said. “I want to protect all four of you. And if anything, you’re the only member who isn’t entirely excluded. Does that… make it any better?”

Jungkook considered this for a moment.

“Not sure,” he said. “Because I’m still not participating.”

Exhaling softly, you looked around, searching for a quiet spot on the pavement where the two of you could step away from the crowd. Nearby, there were two traditional phone booths that tourists were gathered around, obstructing your view. Once you passed them, you noticed a parking meter right by the park gate that everyone seemed to avoid. You decided to pause there.

Jungkook glanced around before stopping in front of you, slightly unsettled by the large, dark green hedge covering the park fence, and all the bugs that emerged from it—bees, mostly. They all seemed very curious about him.

“Okay, look at it this way,” you began. “Sid has known you and Minjun since you were kids. He knows all your weak points. He can predict exactly how you and Minjun will react in any situation. Sure, you took him off guard when you gave up your Katana, but he can still read you very well. He doesn’t have that luxury with me, Luna, or Maggie. He’s less certain about our reactions. Who else could do this if not us?”

“Right,” Jungkook murmured. “But you’re still going out of your way for me, and I feel—”

“And why wouldn’t I?” you interrupted. “I love you.”

He thought he died for just a second and it felt surprisingly nice: he could feel something soft and warm against his skin—the phantom shivers of every time you’ve touched him before—and he could taste a sweet, lingering flavour on his tongue—from every time he felt your mouth against his own.

He would never tire of hearing you say you loved him. The only downside was that his chest usually attempted to collapse in on itself right after that, leaving him speechless for anywhere from a minute to several days.

“Not to mention,” you continued while Jungkook fought against the haze in his mind and the bumblebees around his neck. “Sid has long stopped at just you. With the videos and pictures he’s sending you, he’s threatening everyone on this tour. Anything that affects your reputation, affects the band and the staff, too. So, when you look at it like that, we’re really doing this for everyone.”

Finally, Jungkook managed to stop his thoughts from pulling him in every direction and anchored himself to this pavement right here—with you, and the persistent bugs, and the chattering of people as they walked past you.

He squeezed your hand that he had not let go—not now, and probably not ever, really—and exhaled.

“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “But I was the one who brought him here, and that’s—I guess that’s what’s bothering me right now.”

“You did bring him here,” you agreed.

“I—oh.” He looked up, his eyebrows knitting together. He had expected something else. An ‘I told you that was a shit decision’ or a sarcastic ‘yeah, and thanks for that’—but your kind expression did not change. “Y-yeah. I did.”

“But we’ll get him out,” you said.

Jungkook held your hand and observed you, trying to process this while simultaneously trying to figure out what was it about him that attracted these British bees to him so much. It couldn’t be his cologne, because you loved him far more than he’d allowed himself to believe. It couldn’t be his clothes, either, because you were looking at him like you believed anything was possible in this world, and he thought it really was.

He realised that to you, he must have appeared as if he were struggling to interpret prehistoric cave wall paintings, and this process was causing him immense pain. He cleared his throat.

“You don’t blame me?” he asked.

“For making a stupid decision?” you replied, and shrugged your shoulders after he nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

He pressed his lips together, his expression a mixture of incredulity and pure delight.

“Okay,” he said. “Sure.”

You were smiling again, and he was a little too proud to admit how much your loving eyes and your great mood soothed his anxiety.

“And what would I gain from punishing you?” you added. “You’ve already seen through Sid. You’ve had enough. You learned your lesson. You’re good.”

Jungkook felt his chest swell as though he’d swallowed the swarms of bees around him, and now they’ve built a cosy little home right on the hills of his heart.

“You think so?” he asked, his eyes glistening.

“Why do you look so excited?” you countered. “Do you have more dickhead friends I haven’t met yet?”

He chuckled, waving his hand around his face. “Can I answer that inside the park? I’m afraid these bees are in love with me.”

You had already noticed his struggle with the bees—it was hard not to, one was perched right on his shoulder—and you found your own apparent immunity to this new bee predicament especially entertaining.

“Want me to fight them for you?” you suggested.

“Oh, in a battle of who loves me more?” he quipped, swatting vigorously at three stubborn bees that were particularly intrigued in his eyes.

“Yeah,” you said. “We’ll all sting you at the same time, and whoever dies first, wins.”

He snorted. “These are bumblebees. They don’t die after they sting.”

“Oh, so maybe we should just stay here,” you teased. “You all seem to know quite a bit about each other already.”

He squinted at you, a smirk playing on his lips. “Are you jealous I’ve grown so close to these bees?”

“Of course. They’re all over you.”

“I’d rather have you all over—”

“Public park!” you interjected hastily, cutting him off.

His laughter in response was unapologetic and infectious—you found yourself shaking your head to suppress a treacherous smile.

“Did you also research public indecency laws?” he asked, turning past the menacing, bee-infested hedge.

You followed him through the gates into the park, your fingers intertwined with his. The clouds above had thickened, and the wind had picked up, but there was nothing about this afternoon that Jungkook did not enjoy.

“Actually, I did,” you replied. “Because of that stunt you pulled in New York last year.”

Recognition flashed in his eyes for just a fleeting moment before he pursed his lips, distancing himself from the memory. A gentle breeze swept through the park, rustling leaves and carrying the scent of damp earth; it would rain soon.

“I don’t remember,” he declared.

“Really?” you responded wryly. You both knew very well that he remembered. “Nothing familiar to you about the busking that turned into half-naked dancing in the middle of the street?”

“Nope,” he said. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“There was a lot more grinding than actual dancing, now that I think about it,” you pressed on. You noticed, through your peripherals, the way he scrunched his nose and furrowed his brows, evidently despising the memory he claimed he did not have. “Someone had drawn a crown of thorns on your forehead. You had a—sort of a cloth wrapped around your waist, and nothing else. Almost everyone on the face of the earth accused you of being in a sex cult after those pictures came out.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he insisted. “They must have confused me with someone else.”

“Sure. They must have,” you relented, pouting your lips in mock-sympathy. “There are plenty of people in sex cults out there.”

“Exactly,” he replied, finally meeting your eyes.

Something about you bringing up this incident—“incidents” were a prominent category of his actions in his mind—reminded him of the videos Sid had sent him. However, with you, the feelings in his chest were vastly different.

You were playful. Lighthearted. Your love language was teasing the hell out of him.

Sid was venomous. Arrogant. Vile. His intentions were humiliation and destruction.

You were joking about a matter for which Jungkook undoubtedly owed you another apology. He could tell that you knew he would apologise eventually, but you were hoping—with every jest, every tender smile, every affectionate bite you sent his way—that he would not plunge himself into self-loathing again.

He wouldn’t. He had matured significantly since the day under discussion. He knew he had, even if it was easy to forget.

“I’m surprised how well you remember all that, actually,” he commented. “Are you secretly into sexual rituals?”

Your scoff returned his smile to his face.

“Oh, absolutely,” you said. “I keep a picture of you from that day on my desk at home. I look at it every night before I fall asleep.”

Jungkook kicked a few dry, scattered leaves on the pavement. When he glanced back at you, his grin bordered on ridiculous.

“I am aware that you’re trying to mock me right now,” he said, “but I feel obligated to inform you that I’m taking absolutely everything you say as a compliment.”

You nodded sagely. “I would expect nothing less from you.”

“Good,” he replied. “Please tell me more about how you look at pictures of me before you fall asleep every night.”

You tsked reproachfully at his grin.

“I take back what I said about you being smart,” you said. “You are the biggest idiot I’ve met.”

“Oh,” his face was jubilant, “but that just means you love me that much more, right?”

You let out a deep sigh. “I’m afraid so.”

He felt the swarms of bees in his chest, and they were buzzing incessantly—eager, restless, and yearning. They took every emotion he felt and spread them across his skin.

“I knew it,” he said, delighted by the look on your face. You were so captivating when you were trying to resist smiling; it was why he never stopped teasing you. “This must be awful for you.”

“Mmhm. It is,” you said. “You’re like a disease.”

He nodded, attempting a formal tone. “How bad is it?”

“Chronic and untreatable, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I am so sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, thank you.”

A deep, vibrant laughter finally erupted from his chest, and he stopped walking. Tugging on your linked hands, he drew you closer and wrapped his arms around your waist before you could say another word.

“I love you so much, you know that?” he whispered, his voice low against your neck. “It’s not even funny how much.”

He rocked gently on his feet with you in his arms, and you could not tell if the vibrations you felt came from his chest or yours.

“More than the bees love you?” you asked, your hands sliding over his shoulders.

“Much more than the bees love me.”

“Oh, must be quite a lot, then.”

“It is,” he said, chuckling hopelessly. “It really fucking is.”

He tightened his already firm grip until he felt your deep exhale against the side of his neck. He held you and his heartbeat chased after yours while the bustling crowds, the rustling leaves, and the solemn park benches whispered incomprehensibly around you, their frustration about your public affection lost on you.

When he pulled away a minute—or ten—later, he realised that his cologne had brushed off on you. There was something wildly intoxicating about you smelling exactly like him, and he needed a minute to make the park stop spinning.

“I, um—” he started to say, but his voice broke. He cleared his throat, took your hand in his to continue down the park, and tried again. “Jokes aside, I feel—I really appreciate what you do for me. What you’re doing to fix my shit right now, and what you—what you’ve always done to fix my shit. I don’t say that enough. Thank you. For taking care of Sid, too.”

You shook your head. You knew you couldn’t tackle Sid alone—probably no one could.

“This is a team effort,” you replied. “If this works, you can bake us all a cake later.”

Jungkook no longer had even half of a doubt that this would work, one way or the other. And if he’d stayed with you longer, he would have easily started to believe that Rated Riot would be elected presidents, too—one after the other.

“I’m not much of a baker,” he said.

“I’ll help,” you offered.

“Your help,” he responded, his smile turning mischievous, “usually consists of walking around, eating chocolate sprinkles, and distracting me.”

It was your turn to look offended.

“I’m the only one who remembers how many eggs the recipe needs,” you retorted, dignified. “How do I distract you?”

“How can I remember the eggs when you’re dancing and singing around me?” he countered.

He noticed the way your chin quivered as you fought to maintain a serious expression.

“Well, that’s on you,” you said. “Any skilled chef knows to keep their staff busy so they wouldn’t have time to sing and dance. Also, don’t play good songs when we’re in the kitchen.”

“Alright, we’ll bake in silence,” he decided. “And you’ll do everything while I sit and order you around.”

The corners of your lips finally curled into a smirk.

“That’s interesting,” you said, your thumb lightly brushing over his as he swayed your hands. “Switching up the dynamics.”

He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye, very intrigued by the insinuation in your words. “You want me to order you around?”

“I mean…” You shrugged. “I’d like to see you try.”

He stopped walking suddenly, right in the midst of a group of senior ladies, forcing a few of them to gasp and walk around him with very exaggerated expressions of disbelief as though they’d never felt more wronged (there were a few obligatory comments about “kids these days,” too, of course).

Jungkook, undeterred, took a step to the right until he was standing in front of you.

“Kiss me,” he said.

The demand in his tone caught you off guard, but you tried to blink away your surprise. “I didn’t mean right now—”

“Kiss me,” he repeated more assertively.

You felt your stomach lighten and go for a little float inside you, like a loose helium-filled balloon.

“We are in the middle of a busy park,” you said, looking around. “We’re blocking—”

“Kiss me,” he interrupted again, his voice firm but lively, “or I won’t move.”

You poked the inside of your cheek with your tongue, torn between amusement and apprehension as you battled his self-assured grin, while passersby shot disapproving glances at the two of you.

“See, there’s ordering people around,” you said, “and there’s acting like a three-year-old.”

He simply shrugged, relentless. “I see no difference.”

“Do I sound like a toddler when I tell you to do things?”

“Sometimes.”

His satisfied grin only gained prominence when you scoffed and looked away, rolling your eyes.

You questioned, sometimes, how you managed to put up with him for so long. But then you also questioned, much more often, how you’d survived without him at all.

“If I were a teacher,” you said, “you’d be in detention for disrupting everyone’s day.”

“Oh! And what would I have to do?” he teased, mischief gleaming proudly in his eyes. “Write an essay on the importance of respecting authority?”

“That might do you good, actually,” you retorted. “Maybe you should consider writing it anyway.”

He shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head to the side. “Kiss me and I’ll do it.”

He looked so utterly unfazed that you did feel very compelled to lay your hands on him and do something.

He might have been one of the most exasperating people you’ve met in your life, always ready to say something cheeky no matter what you told him, always causing trouble wherever he went, never letting you breathe in peace for just one second.

You were outrageously grateful to have found him.

“People are staring at us,” you said, but there was no conviction in your voice. “We look like idiots.”

Jungkook admired your cautiousness, but he wanted you to let go of it. People would always stare; he just wanted you to kiss him.

“They’re staring because you’re defying authority,” he countered easily.

“Jungkook, just—”

“Oh, see?” he cut in, his tone triumphant. “Maybe you should be the one to write that essay.”

You groaned very demonstratively, but he saw the corners of your lips lift. Finally, you took a small step towards him and pressed your lips to his in a quick peck. He pulled you into him just as you attempted to pull away, and kissed you properly.

At last, the crowds disappeared, allowing you to dissolve in the warmth of his lips and come back to life with all the shivers that ran down your spine when he touched the back of your neck. You felt his smile and felt your own, too, when he brought his tongue over yours, deepening the kiss.

“You are insufferable,” you managed to mumble between kisses, and the affection in your voice was impossible to mistake for something else.

“I love you,” he whispered in response, each word sweet and sugary against your lips.

You kissed him once more—to soothe your racing heart—and then once more again—to soothe his—before you pulled away, whispering back, “I love you.”

Jungkook only managed half of a pleased “I—” before he felt a few soft, cold droplets land on his forehead and both of his cheeks. He raised his head.

“Is it me, or is it—”

“Yeah,” you confirmed, looking up at the angry clouds. “It’s raining.”

“Do you—should we go inside?” he asked, looking around.

There was no specific “inside” anywhere close to the two of you, but you looked at him again and spotted something at the very edge of the park behind him, right across a busy bike lane.

“There’s a little gazebo over there,” you suggested, pointing.

Jungkook turned around and seemed to have an epiphany when he noticed the crooked structure.

“In the—in the park,” he mumbled to himself, feeling a little weak in the knees. He took your hand in his again. “Let’s go.”

He led you straight into the bicycle traffic as he crossed the road, causing a commotion and undoubtedly endangering everyone’s lives—and not even realising it in his eagerness to get to the gazebo. You attempted to raise your hand in apology to the cyclists, but quickly realised that the smile on your face likely made the gesture seem mocking.

It occurred to you that you and Jungkook were being very disruptive today, very annoying, very much in everyone’s faces about your relationship. And you realised, as he pulled you past the groups of people running from the rain, that you did not actually mind this all that much. Or at all.

There was a certain beauty in the unapologetic way that people in love behaved in public—grinning at their phones, kissing at bus stops, holding hands on narrow streets barely wide enough for one person. Running across the park in the rain and stumbling into every puddle possible.

When you and Jungkook finally reached the gazebo, you were both drenched and breathless. And you realised, belatedly, that it was not a suitable shelter at all: there were no railings or benches, the roof was not only crooked, but obviously decaying, and the rain splattered you if you got too close to the edge.

But you’d been here before: caught in the rain on your way to the restaurant for your first date seven years ago, seeking refuge under a much sturdier roof of a similar gazebo in an empty park, while the vividly green trees—almost a rarity so late in September—whispered wearily from the heavy rain on their leaves.

You’d been here before, and you did not want to go anywhere else.

“I’m starting to think,” you began, “that there’s something about us that attracts rain.”

Jungkook was thinking this very thought and laughed so heartily that the rain stopped for just a second, shamed into silence by a sound far more charming than the eager pitter-patter against the roof.

“You think we could make some money out of it?” he joked, his eyes energetic. “Maybe add a little performance to it? Rain dance?”

“We might have accidentally performed one already,” you said, stepping closer to the edge of the gazebo to watch the raindrops splash against the damp ground.

“You’re right,” he agreed, taking your hand in his and guiding you to face him. “Let me see.”

He brought your hand to his chest and you watched, puzzled, as he closed his eyes and pretended to concentrate very hard on the sounds around him. People across the street screeched as they ran from the rain. A stubborn gull was screeching in the exact same way somewhere overhead.

Jungkook clutched your hand tighter and hummed. He was joking, clearly putting up a show, but you heard the faint sound of distant thunder, and the joy on his face turned luminous.

“I knew it!” he exclaimed as you laughed, and the rain, encouraged by your approval, began to pour even harder.

You watched him revel in this delightful coincidence—or an elusive sign—and allowed his radiant smile to bring back the memories that you had locked away in a box you didn’t dare touch unless you were half-asleep.

It had been raining on your first date seven years ago, but it had also been raining when he suggested that date. You’d felt invincible then, the only one staying dry in the whole world, as you nearly sprinted home from the party where he’d asked you out. You stumbled over the threshold of your dorm room, your shoes wet and slippery, and landed on your knees, shouting the news to your roommate, who was startled out of bed by your loud entrance.

This was the beginning of the happiness you’d felt almost every day since then. But this happiness came with a price: you would come to class and you could not rest, could not find it in yourself to calm down, until Jungkook arrived and took his usual seat behind you. You wouldn’t even have to look, you’d always know he had come because you’d feel a sudden sense of peace—and then you’d lock eyes with him across the room.

For years after this, even today, when you tried to find a period of your life where you’d felt the happiest, these were the moments that your mind returned to.

“What are you thinking?” Jungkook asked, brushing a damp strand of hair from your cheek and bringing your focus back to the rainy moment with his touch.

“It—it’s been seven years and now we’re back in the rain,” you replied, distracted by the lingering echo of the years that have passed outside this gazebo. “Nothing’s changed.”

A faint smile danced on his lips.

“Yeah. Nothing important has,” he agreed. “I still love you.”

You met his gaze, a little thrown off. “W-what do you mean, still? That was our first date seven years ago.”

“Yeah,” he said, raising his eyebrows at the confusion on your face. “Oh, did you think I asked you out right after I saw you? No, no. I spent a whole year absolutely fucking pining after you before I finally mustered the courage to ask you out.”

You assumed he might have liked you a little, based on the way he’d introduced himself to you. But you obviously didn’t know about his alleged year-long pining that preceded your first date. And you weren’t sure if you wanted to believe him, given your own year-long pining. It made little sense for the two of you to like each other for so long and not do anything about it.

On the other hand, considering the past few years, perhaps it made perfect sense.

Your heartbeat had sped up, so you argued childishly, “no, you didn’t.”

“I did. Ask anyone,” he said, grinning. He wasn’t as embarrassed about this as he used to be—and your surprise made it easier for him to admit everything. “I never knew how to love you quietly. But it still took me ages to talk to you even with everyone’s encouragement. And that, uh—our first conversation didn’t go very well.”

“Wait—what do you mean? It went very well,” you disagreed. “I remember everything you said word for word. ‘We have Sociology together, I saw you sleeping in class, very cute by the way, the professor does not know how to shut up, have you seen that new Studio Ghibli film, I recently watched their classic with some friends, My Neighbour Jungkook, I’m Totoro by the way, I thought maybe—wait—no—’”

He interrupted you once your smile had grown dangerously wide. “Don’t you dare make fun of me.”

“I would never!” you said through laughter. “I think I knew I was in it for life the moment you said all that.”

He had to look down because the bees inside him had multiplied, spreading rapidly to his head and his lungs and his stomach, and he was a little concerned that he’d start buzzing, too.

“Not one period, nothing,” you continued, a melancholic haze in your eyes. “Just commas and an endless stream of thought. You could have asked me to bury a body, I would have said yes.”

He smiled, but everything inside of him was turning upside down, returning to normal, then turning downside up.

Every time he remembered how he approached you seven years ago, he either felt a little uncomfortable or completely mortified. He’d never thought you’d remember that day so well and with such fondness.

“By the way,” you added when he did not speak, “you did look a little like you were about to confess to accidentally murdering my roommate when you started to speak.”

This finally made him chuckle, and he felt his skin thaw from the frozen state of amazement. He remembered hoping that you’d forget all about what he’d said that day. Now he realised he had never felt more thrilled that you remembered.

“I know,” he said. “I was shaking.”

“Yeah. I, um—” you trailed off, needing another minute. “I had a crush on you, too, actually. For a long while.”

His smile faded, replaced by a look of criminal disbelief. “You did not.”

You recognised your own suspicion in his words and smiled. However, unlike Jungkook, who owned up to his stressful pining and memorable first impression, you did not feel ready to confess to your silent sulking quite as easily.

“I did,” you said. “But you turned away every time I looked at you on campus, so I thought, oh, okay. That guy hates me for some reason. Nevermind.”

“I didn—I never—”

“I actually made a playlist before we met,” you added quickly before you could change your mind. “And I, uh, kept updating it throughout our relationship.”

You did not look at him when you said this, so you missed the befuddled look on his face.

“A pl—you made a playlist?” he repeated, his thoughts momentarily derailed. He couldn’t even hear the rain anymore. “And you never told me?”

“And I will continue to act like you don’t know about it,” you said.

He was too ecstatic to care. He hadn’t dared to imagine that he would have such a strong presence in your thoughts that you would create a playlist about him—for him? (he thought he might faint)—before you even met.

“No, b-but I’m supposed to be the one making grand gestures in our relationship, and you have a playlist about me? Ab-about us?” he questioned, almost frantic. “Is it—well, what songs are in it? About our relationship?”

You tried to put your words together, your slow, calculated breaths a stark contrast against his passionate energy. Another clap of thunder, unusually intense, rumbled in the sky.

“Sort of,” you finally answered. You thought that a playlist did not come anywhere close to everything he’d done and attempted to do for you, but you still struggled to articulate yourself. “Or songs that we both liked. Songs that we listened to together. Songs that we discovered on roadtrips—just, uh, stuff like that.”

He shook his head, every part of his skin itching with an unfathomable urge to hear these songs.

“You have to let me listen to it,” he stated.

“No,” you said, giving a determined shake of your head. “It’s enough that you know it exists.”

“I will absolutely never shut up about this,” he retorted, gesturing with his hands to emphasise his commitment to being annoying, “and I might end up telling more people.”

“I will kill you if I have to,” you warned.

“So I will haunt you, then,” he returned. “Is it on Spotify?”

You narrowed your eyes. “It’s private.”

“I am not above pulling a Sid and stealing your phone,” he said, resolute.

You snorted despite yourself.

“Okay. Fine,” you said. “Maybe I’ll give you the link after.”

Jungkook waited for further clarification, but you decided you’d said enough.

He was confused. He no longer had any clear delineations of time in his life—ever since he found you again, his whole life had shifted to “after.”

“After—after Sid?” he asked.

“After everything,” you replied, unintentionally ominous as your gaze wandered to the fragmented reflections of the clouds on the rain-soaked pavement. “After we leave London. After we deal with the label. After it stops fucking raining every time we go out together.”

Jungkook thought he could already see these things: the Parisian streets after you’ve left Sid in London, the peace after you’ve told the label about your relationship, the sun in the sky after the rain lost its courage to threaten you again.

“Okay,” he relented, his features softening. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Your lips curved into a gentle smile. “I know you will.”

He hummed, stepping on a loose floorboard with the edge of his boot.

“Now, then,” he said, “tell me about this crush you supposedly had on me.”

“It was a crush,” you insisted, your voice growing more fervent right away.

Jungkook smiled but tried to remain collected. He had decided it was better for his sanity not to believe you.

“I liked you ever since I saw you at that first freshman party,” you continued and he realised that he was absolutely, without a doubt not collected at all. “I spent that entire night scrolling through the list of people invited to this event on Facebook until I found your profile. But I didn’t dare to send you a friend request, because—well, you know. We hadn’t talked or anything. I thought maybe you’re not interested.”

He thought his heart might stop because this freshman event was where he first saw you—and for every waking and sleeping moment since then, he had been interested.

“I noticed you around campus after that,” you continued. “And I would have talked to you first, I think. If you hadn’t looked like you dreamed of my violent death every time you met my eye.”

He groaned, rubbing his eyes with the pillows of his palms.

“Well, obviously, I liked you too much to look at you and not glare,” he said, even though none of that was obvious. “I actually thought I developed some sort of an allergy right when I first saw you.”

You raised your eyebrows. “An allergy?”

“Yeah. Shortness of breath, just feeling hot all over, sweating profusely,” he elaborated, moving his hands away from his face to reveal his faint, nostalgic smile. “That had never happened to me before. It was either the dust in the room or you. And there wasn’t a lot of dust.”

You pursed your lips before your cheeks could stretch any further.

“I don’t know,” you teased, “they don’t clean the building that well.”

“It was you,” he stated firmly. “Got my breath catching in my throat. Gave me butterflies, made my heart race—made me feel all the things that people write embarrassing bubblegum pop songs about.”

You looked down to collect yourself before all the signals that your heart was sending to your brain could reflect on your face.

“Catchy songs, though,” you murmured.

“Catchy, sure,” he agreed, his tone wistful. “Until all those things they sing about happen to you, and you feel like you’re drowning.”

You felt a little like you might drown just now as your heart pounded in your chest, angry at you for another wasted year.

“I’m really happy we finally ended up together,” he said. “Seven years ago, and today.”

You finally looked up at him and remembered all the times when you used to worry that you had already lived through your happiest moments, and any little joy you’d come across later would pale in comparison. You knew better now.

Jungkook was your happiest moment, and he was right here. He’d always been right here.

“I love you,” you said, a little suffocated by the overwhelming warmth in your chest. “I’ve loved you every day for all these years.”

He was smiling so widely that his lip ring dug into his stretched lips. He reached out to caress your cheek, resting his palm on the side of your face for a moment, his eyes bright and glittering.

He kissed you slowly, his bottom lip lingering between your lips while the rain washed the noise of the city away. He tasted love and longing on your tongue, and he had never in his life wished for the sunshine to stay away longer.

The rain listened. It had become a fundamental part of your present and a prophet of your future: the two of you were going to spend the rest of your lives listening to the rain and falling in love.

Since Rated Riot had a day off and the other members let you know where they were by bickering continuously in the groupchat, you and Jungkook locked yourselves in his hotel room when you returned.

You changed into dry clothes first, and then noticed that Sid still hadn’t replied to your text. In case he really hadn’t received it, you sent another one—with just question marks—hoping that he’d interpret your repeated messages as a sign of your desperation to talk to him.

You put your phone away and climbed back into bed. The sun had already set outside the window, casting faint, elongated shadows around you in the room. You and Jungkook listened to the music playing on his phone and returned to the snacks he had bought for your film night a few days earlier.

As the song switched to the latest Bad Omens collaboration, you closed your eyes to nod along, and he reached over to snatch a chocolate-covered cherry bonbon from you, causing a spark of static electricity to pass between you.

“Sorry,” he said, chuckling after he heard you gasp. “It’s from the bees, I think. They must have somehow electrified me.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely something that bees can do,” you played along, sitting up on the bed and unwrapping another candy for him. “Maybe you should take an ice bath to avoid these after-effects.”

He accepted the candy with a grin. “No. I like shocking you when I touch you.”

To be fair, he didn’t need bees or electricity for that—but you decided not to point that out.

You realised how much peace you felt here: listening to music and eating sweets with him across the bed from you. You didn’t think there was anything you still needed in life. Watching him close his eyes as the chocolate melted on his tongue, and hearing him hum with childlike delight as he swallowed, filled an emptiness inside of you that nothing—no trips abroad, no late-night drinks, no shopping sessions—could have filled.

This random moment in his hotel room was nothing at all, yet it was everything.

Suddenly, your phone buzzed, startling you both.

“Sid?” Jungkook asked eagerly, letting the remaining chocolate melt slowly on his fingers while you reached for your phone.

“No,” you replied, checking the screen. “It’s Maggie. She just posted the backstage pictures with our list.”

His expression tightened. “Oh.”

“There’s nothing from Sid,” you added.

Jungkook finally popped the rest of the candy into his mouth. He decided—quite abruptly—that he’s had enough discussions about Sid and everything you’ve been through because of him.

“You know what we should do?” he asked, licking the remnants of the chocolate off his fingers. “We should go to the sea after the tour ends.”

“Oh—we—yeah?” you asked, stumbling over your words. You thought it was very unfair of him to ask you this while running his tongue over his fingers all in the same breath. “We—but we don’t know when that’ll be.”

“Whenever,” he said with a shrug. “Let’s go.”

It took you half of a second to say “okay,” and he didn’t think he’d ever learn how to stop his heart from soaring every time your agreement came so quickly, so easily.

To be honest, you didn’t know why he even asked. It was fairly clear that there weren’t many instances where you would have refused him.

However, your response still painted his features with every warm hue in existence, and he settled back on the bed, resting his head on the pillows and closing his eyes. As you watched him, you were forced to acknowledge one more time that witnessing him like this should have required an admission ticket—and a sign reading, “do not touch the exhibit.”

“I feel like I have everything,” he said, unknowingly echoing every sentiment you felt. “I don’t even care if Sid replies to you and if our plan works.”

You leaned against the pillows on the other side of the bed and turned to your side to face him. “Yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” he replied, a melodious hum in his tone. He opened his eyes to meet yours and placed his hand on the pillow beneath his head. “We’re—you’re here with me. The tour is going well, it’s—that’s it. That’s my whole dream.”

He looked beautiful in an almost devastating way. He looked like every extravagant adjective that sounded made-up when you encountered it in writing for the first time: transfixing. Beguiling. Effulgent. Pulchritudinous.

You really wanted to touch the exhibit.

“Do you know how we formed Rated Riot?” he asked suddenly, distracting you.

You raised your eyebrows, then turned your gaze away. Jungkook realised you probably didn’t understand where his question had come from, but you didn’t ask him anything, so he did not explain.

Truthfully, you did not know the complete story behind how Rated Riot got together. You only knew what each of the boys was doing when they first met.

“I don’t know much,” you admitted. “I know that Hoseok kicked things off.”

“Yeah.” Jungkook nodded, then stopped. “Or maybe Namjoon, actually? Because Namjoon saw Hoseok at some gig that he went to. When he asked about his band, Hoseok gave him, like, fifteen business cards. But even though he filled in for all these bands, it was still only maybe one gig per week. That’s nothing. So, Namjoon told him he’s too talented for that shit. He said he needed his own band.”

You recalled Yoongi mentioning that Namjoon was the first producer that Rated Riot have worked with, but you hadn’t realised this was before the band was even formed.

Suddenly, the broken air conditioner in the room whirred back to life, interrupting your thoughts.

“S-so, they started talking,” Jungkook said, momentarily distracted by the loud noise. “Hoseok wanted to be independent, and Namjoon didn’t push him to sign with Jett Records back then. He helped him. Unofficially, I guess. They found Taehyung very randomly at this one after-party for somebody at our label—well, our future label. Namjoon took Hoseok there to network, and Taehyung just happened to be there. No one knows why, but you know Taehyung. He’s always going to be right where he needs to be.”

“Yeah,” you said, nodding knowingly. Taehyung always seemed to find his way to the people and places meant for him.

“Yeah, so he was at that party,” Jungkook continued, “and he overheard Namjoon and Hoseok discussing the plan for Hoseok’s band. They were saying that they needed a bassist first. And Taehyung just chimed in like, “I play bass.” Just out of the blue. Namjoon asked him who he was, and he introduced himself. Namjoon then asked what he was doing here, and Taehyung said, “I’ll tell you if you let me join the band”—which he never did, by the way. We still don’t know what he was doing at that party.”

You chuckled softly. Knowing Taehyung, nothing in this story surprised you, but you were still impressed by how quickly his energy captivated Hoseok and Namjoon.

“So, they let him join?” you asked.

“Namjoon claims he auditioned for them first,” Jungkook said, clicking his lips questioningly. “But one time when Hoseok was very drunk, he admitted that he’d felt desperate. Namjoon was busy and couldn’t help him much, so Hoseok had to figure things out on his own. He said he called and invited Taehyung to join right away. He thought they could find a proper bassist later, and Taehyung could fill the spot for the time being. Funny.”

“Oh,” you said. “Because he hadn’t heard him play yet?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “He hadn’t seen Taehyung even holding a bass before. So, he had doubts. I guess I get that. Anyway. He invited Namjoon to their first rehearsal and Taehyung blew Namjoon the fuck away. That’s it. Hoseok said that after that, he was worried Namjoon would sign Taehyung and leave him behind. Not that Namjoon would do that, but uh—yeah. Taehyung was that good.”

“They’re both that good,” you said. “Hoseok never acknowledges his own talent.”

“Right?” he nodded eagerly, turning to his side to look at you. There was a warm smile on your lips that Jungkook really enjoyed. “They’re both amazing.”

“So, how do you come into the picture?” you asked.

He took a breath before answering.

“I saw Hoseok and Taehyung playing at this dive bar that Sid dragged me to,” he said.

Your eyebrows arched in surprise. “No shit?”

“Yeah,” he said, running his tongue over his lips. “He said I was annoying and mopey, so he kept taking me to a new place every night. There were hardly any people at this bar that night. Taehyung was singing, but he sang, like, one verse, and then they launched into the longest instrumental break I’ve ever fucking heard. And it was incredible. Shit, I—I’m more into vocal music. But seeing Hoseok and Taehyung play together—there was another guitarist with them, actually, I don’t even know who it was—anyway. It made me realise how powerful instrumental music can be on its own.”

A dreamy fog had descended upon his face, and only now did you realise that the air conditioner had stopped working again, seemingly calling it a day. You appreciated the silence and the way Jungkook looked when he played back the memories in his head, his eyes shimmering with the bright lights and the sounds of the bar that night.

“I didn’t know that Sid met the other members before you joined the band,” you said.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “He also said he could be a better bassist than ‘that guy.’”

“He—of course,” you groaned. “Wait until Luna hears this. She’ll take care of Sid for us on Taehyung’s behalf, I think.”

He nodded, snickering. “I bet. But Sid actually left the bar before they finished their set. I stayed back. After they wrapped up, I went up to Hoseok at the bar and told him how much I enjoyed their performance. Told him I was thinking of picking up drums—”

He paused abruptly, noticing your surprise before you remembered him mentioning this to you.

“Oh, was this when you and Sid were planning to start your own band?” you asked. You had assumed they were joking.

“Yeah,” he replied, snickering. He had been joking, but he still found drummers to be effortlessly cool. “So, Hoseok delivered the longest fucking speech about what his job was like. Don’t ask him about it, by the way, or you’ll have to sit through three hours of him making drum sounds. But anyway, I was pretty drunk by then, and I don’t know, I guess I hummed along to some song that was playing or something.”

You nodded. Jungkook was almost always humming something.

“Then Hoseok said they needed a vocalist for their band,” he continued, “because Taehyung didn’t want to do it. And he noticed me humming, so he jokingly asked if I happened to sing. I said sometimes, nothing serious. Everybody sings sometimes. He told me to sing something for him. I told him to get fucked, we’re in a bar.” Jungkook had to pause here to let you finish laughing. “And Hoseok just shrugged, like, “no one’s at the mic, why not?””

“That did it for you?” you asked.

He nodded. “That fucking did it for me.”

You laughed again, knowing that he would never shy away from anything that resembled a challenge.

“What did you sing?” you asked.

Jungkook gave you a look. There was only one song that always lingered at the back of his mind. You could have guessed it, really, but you were a little frightened about its significance in this context.

“You—you sang Biffy Clyro?” Your throat was dry all of a sudden and useless questions continued to pour out of your dumbfounded chest. “At that bar? In front of Hoseok? “M-Many of Horror?””

“Of course,” Jungkook said, as if there had never been any other song he could have chosen to perform that night, besides the one that followed you and him throughout your relationship. “It—it really fucked with me, though. We had just broken up maybe a month ago, so it was still fresh, you know? And this was my first time singing “Many of Horror” in public, on top of that. And I was—I didn’t do well. I think I missed half the lyrics in the last chorus because it was too much.”

He snickered lightly, trying to lessen the impact of his words. You felt frozen.

“I-I was standing there,” he continued, and you could almost see it, “hiccuping to the I still believe, it’s you and me ‘til the end of time, while Hoseok just watched me, expressionless. And then I drank half the bar right after I got off stage.”

He sang the two lines of the song as he shared the story, his voice quiet and tender, and you thought you must have resembled Hoseok right now—so lost in all the emotions brewing inside you that you did not immediately realise he had stopped speaking, and it might have been appropriate for you to reply.

“Y-you still sounded great, though,” you managed. “Obviously.”

“Yeah, maybe four people clapped. Out of the ten or so at the bar,” he said, chuckling. “Hoseok told me he had to make a call, told me to stay right where I was, and then he disappeared. He returned twenty minutes later with some dishevelled guy in a turtleneck with a little hole in the collar.”

You recognised the description. “Namjoon?”

“Namjoon,” Jungkook confirmed, the smile on his face matching the one hesitantly spreading on yours. “I was fucking wasted. They were saying I had to meet with them for rehearsals, they wanted to see how I’d sound with them. And I’m—I couldn’t fucking think straight. They were telling me they wanted me to join the band, and all I could think about was that you weren’t here.”

The excitement in your eyes quickly turned into pain as a sharp twinge of longing pierced through your chest. It cut into every open crevice of your heart, reminding you of the way it had bled in those first few months after you broke up—even on this particular day, while Jungkook was struggling to get himself together in the face of his future, and you were likely at home, tossing and turning in your bed because you did not know what to do with yourself.

“I wanted to tell you so badly,” Jungkook admitted, his eyes fixed on the bedsheets, his voice filled with incorrigible regret. “But we weren’t talking anymore. I thought—there was this one moment where I thought, well, what’s the point? What’s the use of joining this band if I can’t even tell you about it? A-and they weren’t even a full group when I met them anyway. It took about two more weeks for Yoongi to join.”

You made a conscious effort to swallow the lump in your throat, and shifted your focus to Yoongi to allow for the sudden ache in your chest to subside.

“Yeah, uh—Yoongi mentioned that he was the last to join,” you commented, hoping to steer the conversation back to a less emotionally charged topic. “He used to play for a different band before, right?”

“Yeah. Somnia,” Jungkook said. The name did not sound familiar to you. “They weren’t—um, going anywhere. That’s a very blunt way to put it, but they were just stuck. And Yoongi and Namjoon go way back. So, Namjoon called him one day and lied that he was producing for this new, promising band in need of a permanent guitarist. Said they had a solid rhythm section, but their artistic direction needed some refinement.”

“And, uh,” your voice was a little lighter, “I assume they had a great vocalist, too?”

Jungkook smiled. “They did, yeah. I was trying to be modest, but you brought it up.”

You snickered, offering a nonchalant shrug. “Just trying to help you out.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “Yeah. So, Yoongi was the last one to join. He’d—he has a lot more creative freedom with us than he had with Somnia, which still isn’t a lot. But it’s something. And I think that was the main reason why he left them.”

“And they were okay with him leaving?” you asked.

Jungkook turned on his back and sighed.

“I assume they weren’t,” he said, briefly glancing at the ceiling before turning to look at you. “That’s why he doesn’t talk much about it.”

“Ah.” You nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Yeah, but anyway, Yoongi joined and we were complete,” Jungkook continued. “We released “Haunting” independently. That—okay, that was in June. Some time after that, this radio DJ that Yoongi knew played our song on his radio show as a birthday gift to Yoongi. Namjoon and Christian Jett—”

“CJ, apparently,” you cut in.

“Right. CJ,” he repeated. “They heard the song at some event. Apparently, CJ loved it, so Namjoon told him about us. When CJ found out we weren’t signed to a label, he reached out to us. It took Taehyung and me three days to convince Yoongi and Hoseok to go to that meeting. They both had some shitty experiences with record labels in the past. But we persuaded them to at least show up. CJ had us perform “Haunting” and “Cursed” for him, the only songs we had released at the time, and he signed us on the spot. Well, after Yoongi finished negotiating with him about our contracts.”

Your heart started to race as if you had just realised how much the universe had to align, how many intricate coincidences had to happen to lead Jungkook to his band, and to bring the two of you to this moment in his hotel room.

“We started working on our album,” he went on, “and about four months later—in July, right?—the record started to finally come together. That’s when CJ started to look for a manager for us.”

You took a breath and finished for him, “and reached out to me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All CJ told us was that he found someone. He mentioned that this person was already working under the label and that the band they managed had recently broken up.”

You did not interrupt the silence that followed, because you thought that Jungkook had paused for a few seconds. But he stopped speaking altogether, waiting for you to share your perspective.

“I-I was, uh, Nick’s assistant at the time,” you said, realising what the silence was for. “We were working with The Jungle Will Get You.” You turned to Jungkook and he shook his head. “Yeah, they were—they weren’t popular. And the members weren’t really motivated, especially towards the end. They split up, eventually. Nick moved on to manage Reconnaissance, and I took on administrative tasks for various bands under the label. It was only for a few months, but I thought I’d end up buried in endless piles of papers. So, when HR called me in to tell me about Rated Riot, I pretended to know exactly who you were to get that job.”

He was smiling next to you on the bed, lost in the memories that did not hurt anymore now that he shared them with you.

“I doubt even HR knew who we were,” he said, gazing up at the ceiling and clasping his hands on his stomach. “I’m just—I’m constantly—I don’t know. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that it was you that they chose for us. I mean, you’re amazing, you could have worked with any band out there. But they picked you for us.”

You grappled with the same impossible coincidence.

“I’m thinking about that, too,” you said. “You had so much potential and CJ... I wasn’t sure if he even saw it when he reached out to me. Not to mention, you and I were—we were broken up for two years at that point?”

“A year and seven months,” Jungkook replied.

“Right,” you said, slightly out of breath from the precision of his answer.

He turned to face you. “Did you ever consider turning down that offer to work with us after you found out I’m in the band?”

You exhaled what little oxygen you had left in your lungs. You’d considered many things when you saw him again that day, and you realised now that you still hadn’t fully grasped all the thoughts that had passed through your mind at the time.

“For maybe half a second,” you said. “I was very confident that we could move on from our relationship.”

He grinned. “Look how well that worked out for us.”

“Mhmm, right?” you agreed, meeting his gaze. “So professional.”

He chuckled, intoxicated by your proximity and the peace he found in the knowledge that the universe had put in a good effort to lead you two here.

“I know that—well, it seems like everything just fell into place to get all of you together for Rated Riot,” you said. “But it wasn’t that easy for you guys, was it?”

“Yeah, no, it definitely wasn’t,” he agreed. “After Yoongi joined, we struggled to write one fucking original song for months. We thought the band was going nowhere.”

You could see the sadness in his eyes. “It was that bad?”

“Yeah. Everything we tried to work on was shit,” he said. “We were getting drunk every night, trying to find something that could work as our first song. And nothing worked.”

“So, what happened?” you asked.

“You,” he answered simply.

Your brows creased. “How—what do you mean?”

“Namjoon pushed us to release something authentic for our debut single,” he began. “And the other guys decided to kick my ass and force me to work. They knew I was writing something, but it—it wasn’t anything serious. Not like what they write. You know I can’t just create shit on the spot. My lyrics have to be about something that I’ve been through. And you’re—you are every single meaningful experience that I have had in my life. The guys—they wanted to use that. So, you’re sort of the main reason why Rated Riot are where they are”

You exhaled slowly, your mind filled with thoughts just like it had been the first time you walked into Rated Riot’s meeting room and saw Jungkook there—looking only slightly different from the music video Luna had shown you before, and remarkably different from your memories.

“And that—this is why I brought this up now,” he said. “It’s all because of you. We broke up, and Sid dragged me to that bar to help me get over you. I sang our song to Hoseok, and he brought Namjoon to convince me to join the band. I wrote “Haunting” about you, and CJ heard it and decided to sign us. We put out several albums, filled with songs I’ve ever written for you, and now we’re on this tour. If it weren’t for you, I just—w-we wouldn’t be here.”

You felt your skin prickle, the sensation quickly turning to a painful sting, and you looked away. Frankly, you did not believe that your influence was this significant—not even after Jungkook had told you that it was. These events seemed like an unbelievable sequence of coincidences that he decided to treat as signs, and you found that you couldn’t breathe if you looked at them as signs, too.

You felt his eyes on you and only meant to glance at him very briefly, but he held your gaze for a few moments longer, watching as a shuddering breath passed your lips. Then he propped himself up on his elbows.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he declared, the look in his eyes so final, so determined that you were almost afraid to move when you met his gaze. “And then I’m not letting you go. I don’t care if Sid texts.”

Your voice was very small. “I don’t care, either.”

“Fuck,” was more of an echo than a real whisper as his lips finally collided with yours. The kiss was deep and vehement and full of everything that had built up inside you over this day alone.

But then his tongue met yours and you realised that this day wasn’t all that special. You could have kissed him at any point of any day, and you would have still felt overwhelmed and aching, and you would have needed him right at the tips of your fingers as much as ever.

He tasted like the chocolate-covered cherry bonbons that he’d bought you because they reminded him of the summer nights you’d spent together. He tasted like the sticky homemade candy that the two of you baked when there were no other sweets in your dorm room and you craved something, but refused to leave, refused to pull away. Like the moments on the balcony of his house after you snuck away from his cousins. Like the rainy walks to class when your hair would be sticking to your face, but you couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop looking at each other.

All the thoughts that had been screaming at you for the past fifteen minutes suddenly quieted down as he leaned closer until he was hovering over you, one of his hands on the side of your face.

He felt shivers on the back of his neck when your tentative fingers found their way to his hair. He exhaled softly against your mouth and stilled momentarily when he heard your quiet whimper in response to his kiss, to his breathing, to him.

The room suddenly spun completely out of control around him.

He needed you so much and for such a long time that every time you were with him, every time you kissed him, he worried that he was dreaming again. So he kissed you harder, held onto you tighter—not wanting to find out if he was asleep, not wanting to wake up.

He unbuttoned your denim jacket without pulling away and slid it off your arms, holding the side of your neck with one of his hands. His kiss was so deep, so riveting that you felt your lungs give up, felt them pack up and leave, forcing you to breathe him instead.

His hands caressed your shoulders, finding the straps of your shirt and sliding them down your arms—and then stopping abruptly when he realised that you weren’t wearing anything underneath.

Exhaling shakily, he pulled back—lightheaded and winded and completely obsessed with you—just to look at you for a minute. There was a playful grin on his lips when he kissed you again.

You pulled away enough to ask, “what?”

“Nothing,” he murmured in-between kisses, “you’re fucking perfect. But I want this off.”

He pulled you closer and you instinctively bucked your hips off the bed, causing a momentary hitch in his breath. He lifted the hem of your shirt, pulling the material up and tracing the invisible symbols on your skin along your ribs, your chest, and your arms. Tossing your shirt aside without looking, he leaned back in, yearning for the feel of your lips on his again and accepting that he could not last one minute without you. Perhaps not even one second.

He felt your hand on his chest, trailing down to the edge of his black t-shirt and distracting him from the kiss with the softness of your touch. You lifted his shirt up to his chest—as far as it would go without breaking the kiss—and felt him hiss at the cold sensation of your bare fingertips on his stomach.

“I’m sorr—” you began, but the second you pulled away to apologise, he leaned in to capture your lips in another kiss.

“No.” His whispers were frenzied against your lips. You could have electrocuted him with your touch, sliced him into pieces with your fingers, and he would have thanked you for it. “No. You—d-don’t apologise. You’re perfect.”

He heard the way you cursed under your breath—under his breath, too—and he found it hard to inhale against the pressure in his stomach, against the tightness in his jeans. He was humming with near desperation when you pulled him closer, running your hands over his arms, your touch gentle enough to truly kill him.

He was frantic, eager to touch you, to feel your arms, your thighs, your chest, your neck—all of you—before someone interrupted you. Before his time with you ended. He knew he had the rest of his life to spend with you, but now he worried it still wouldn’t be enough.

His tongue moved over yours, his kiss deep, rushing, dizzying. He did not need to look to find the button on your pants, unclasp it, and slide the rough material down your thighs, swallowing a moan when he felt you shivering under his touch.

He quickly pulled his own shirt over his head and tossed it aside before kissing you again, high on the sound of your lips smacking against each other. He shuddered when your hands unexpectedly met his on the belt of his jeans.

“Let me do it,” you asked in a whisper—but he was wholeheartedly yours at that moment, and you didn’t even have to ask.

“Okay,” he complied, allowing you to gently push him back onto the bed.

Closing his eyes, he savoured the newfound sweetness from your kiss on his tongue. He felt you shuffle closer to him on the bed and had to take a sharp breath when one of your hands slid down his abdomen to his jeans.

You leaned over to kiss him again, and he broke—only capable of lying idly for so long—reaching for you and caressing your shoulders and your arms. He made it almost impossible for you to keep doing what you were doing; unruly wildfires blazed everywhere he touched you.

Jungkook was determined not to break the kiss even as you undid his belt and unzipped his jeans. He thought he did well. But then he lifted his hips off the bed to help you pull his jeans off and you brushed your fingers over the bulge in his boxers—your touch featherlight against the material—and he was very nearly finished.

He whimpered lightly into the kiss, his breaths growing heavier, his hands growing greedier. You made sure to hold one of his hands in yours to prevent him from flipping you over on the bed, and he responded to that by cheating: he held onto you tighter and attempted to pull you closer every time he gently bit your bottom lip and you got distracted by the pleasant sting.

Finally, you managed to slide his boxers down his thighs, catching each of his heavy breaths on your tongue. You pulled back, and he was about to protest until he saw you throw one of your legs over his, straddling his hips.

He watched you slide your panties down your legs while hovering over his thighs and he wasn’t sure how long ago he’d stopped blinking. Mesmerised by the sight, he didn’t immediately rush to assist you in maintaining your balance as you lifted one knee off the bed.

Once he recovered enough to remember to inhale, he sat up and pulled you flush to his chest. You gasped in surprise when he hooked his fingers behind the waistband of your panties and slid them down your legs faster.

“I said let me do it,” you reminded him with a pout, and he kissed you instead of replying, too impatient to wait.

Your hands slipped down his chest and your hips bucked into his just barely, but he exhaled deeply, breaking the kiss. You used the moment while he was dazed to push him back into the pillows.

He fell back on the bed, knowing very well that he’d been in this position before—with you on top of him, your fingers tracing over his length before finally wrapping around the base—but he still shivered, throwing his head back into the pillows. He still kept his eyes fixed on your face when you started to move your hand in gentle strokes, killing him a little more with each movement of your wrist.

“Fuck,” he sighed. “At least let—l-let me touch you.”

He phrased it like a request, but he did not mean it like one. You didn’t resist when he reached for you, his hands travelling over your thighs, lingering on your lower back, squeezing your ass, and pulling your hips into his.

One of your hands had come to rest on his chest for support while you continued to stroke his length in deliberately slow, languid motions. You could feel him getting harder under your touch, and you closed your eyes, your teeth sinking into your lip.

He could not look away from you. He wanted to be the one to bite your lips, but he couldn’t move close enough to you with your hands on him. He settled for exploring the skin on your hips, sliding his hands up and down your thighs. Soon, you felt the tips of his fingers brush lightly over your stomach and then descend lower to slip between your folds.

He exhaled deeply through his mouth when he felt how wet you were, and that was enough for him—he would have found a way to hold you tightly against his chest even if you were across the world from him.

In a flash, he was sitting up, connecting your lips again and bringing his tongue over yours while he gathered the wetness between your folds with his thumb. Your grip on his length tightened instinctively, and Jungkook groaned, automatically applying more pressure to the sensitive bundle of nerves on your clit—just enough to have you arch your back into him.

He felt you move faster, squeezing the base and speeding up until your fingers brushed over his tip. Trying to fight back a moan, he reflexively bucked his hips into your hand while two of his fingers teased your entrance, sliding over your wet folds in a teasing, tickling motion. You broke the kiss, sighing and dropping your head on his shoulder.

He didn’t give you much time to catch your breath—you didn’t give him any of that, so he thought this was only fair—as he kissed along your jaw, gently sucking on a spot on the nape of your neck. His fingers continued stimulating your clit with a combination of light, fast circles and harder, slower strokes that he knew would make you break for him.

“F-fuck, wait,” you exhaled, grabbing his wrist to stop his movements. “I w-want you.”

“You have me, my love,” he whispered back, running his tongue over the faint mark he’d left on the sensitive skin of your neck and humming, his tone gravelly and rasp, when you hissed at the feeling. “All of me.”

You gripped his wrist tighter. “Lie back.”

He didn’t immediately obey, opting to use his only free hand—the one you couldn’t hold, because you needed both hands to stop his determined fingers from drawing you any closer to the edge—to squeeze your ass and pull your hips over his length instead.

“Lie back,” you ordered again, your words firm, but breathless. It started a raging flame in his lower stomach, but he still resisted a little more—kissing you again, sucking on your tongue, sliding his hands over your thighs, and nearly making you lose it before he finally leaned back against the pile of pillows.

Jungkook still thought he was doing fairly well, considering the burning on his skin and inside him, but watching you unwrap a condom package and slide the latex down his length—torturously slowly, it seemed to him, to really test his limits—he thought he might lose it, after all.

You felt him jerk slightly in your hand, sensitive as you rolled the condom down his length, and your deep exhale blended with his sharp inhale. He locked the sound of your breathing somewhere deep in his mind, too focused on your touch to revel in it right now, but far too inspired by the response your body had to his to forget it altogether.

He bit his lip, his eyes locked on yours as you positioned yourself over his length. He was convinced that you were teasing him on purpose when you brought his tip closer to your entrance and then paused. He could already feel the wetness of your folds on him, and the second he lifted his hands to touch you, he was forced to let them drop in utter defeat when you finally slid his tip in.

“Fuck,” he whispered, his eyes rolling back at the feeling of your tight, warm walls as you struggled to take all of him in at once, and stopped, most cruelly, halfway in.

You looked breathtaking on top of him and there wasn’t a single coherent thought in his mind, so he couldn’t offer to help you anymore, couldn’t even guide you down on his length. He could barely stay still, biting his lip and clutching the sheets so he wouldn’t ram his hips into yours.

“You’ll kill me,” he whispered in a strained voice when you lifted your hips again, sliding his length over your folds, but not slipping it back inside.

Finally, you lowered yourself on him again, taking all of him in, inch by inch, and a soft sigh escaped your lips before you could stop yourself. “O-oh.”

You had to suppress another whimper when your hips met his, the stretch of his length stinging pleasantly. He hissed at the feeling, his hands flying to your hips to keep you in place.

His touch reminded you of Amsterdam suddenly: of the way he had held you, the way he had felt after all these years.

You wanted him so much that it no longer felt like a simple wish. He felt like a necessity and you could not understand how you’d ever managed to go on with your day when he wasn’t in the room with you.

You needed a moment to adjust to him and Jungkook watched you all through it. Even though he was barely able to keep his eyes open, he took in all of your reactions as the initial sting subsided and your hips twitched against his.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Move for me, love. Please?”

You sighed as his endearing words—and the loving lilt in his voice—lit up your stomach and made you involuntarily clench around him. He groaned, digging his fingers into your hips. You had told him to lie back, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could obey.

Finally, you began to move and he threw his head back, swallowing hard at the feeling. You rotated your hips in slow circles, allowing his entire length to delicately rub the walls inside you, and he could not remember when he’d last felt you like this. He could not remember anything outside this room, and when you rested both of your hands on his chest for balance, he seemed to forget his own name, too.

“Fuck,” was a soft, jagged breath that got caught in his throat as he watched you in the dimly lit room. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out your silhouette, and he squeezed your ass tighter so he wouldn’t immediately lose it at the sight.

You drew back all of a sudden, placing one hand on his chest and resting the other against the mattress, right by his arm. You pulled your bottom lip in with your teeth as you lifted your hips, then slowly lowered yourself on him again. It took you a moment to find your rhythm, and Jungkook parted his lips, inhaling sharply through clenched teeth every time your thighs met his.

You shifted your weight to your knees to increase the pace and he nearly choked on his breath when you placed your hands on his shoulders and bounced your hips against his, his length gliding against your velvety walls.

“Y-you—oh, fuck. You look s-so beautiful,” he stammered, his hands travelling from your hips to your waist, then back down again.

Love and lust burned in his darkened eyes when he looked up at you, his hair falling in messy curls around his face. His chest rose and fell underneath you, the muscles on his abdomen tightening each time you sank down on him again.

You watched him like this and you changed your mind about describing him; an adjective that would fit him had not been invented yet.

You tried to respond to his words, but he suddenly lifted his hips off the bed to meet you halfway and knocked all breath out of your lungs, forcing a soft whine to pass your lips instead as you leaned into him, losing your balance.

It was starting to get too much—how deeply he reached inside of you, how tightly he held onto you—and Jungkook noticed it right away. Squeezing your hips, he adjusted his position by bending his knees for a better angle and bouncing you on his lap very slowly once, then twice, before pulling you into his chest and thrusting into you faster.

Curses and almost desperate whines fell from your lips, matching the rhythm of his skin slapping against yours. He knew he had hit your sweet spot when he felt your nails digging into his chest, when you tightened around him, when your strained breaths got louder, when your teeth grazed his collarbone—and he growled, gripping your hips tighter and trapping you against his chest with his other arm.

“Jungkook—” you panted, barely able to speak, and the sound of his name on your lips ignited the room around him.

He grunted softly and flipped you both to your sides, pulling your back into his chest by wrapping his arms around your waist and chest, his grip firm, deliberately inescapable, but his fingers gentle as he teased your nipples. His thrusts were slower at this new angle, but now they were deep and hard. It was your increased breathing and louder, uncontrollable chants of his name that encouraged him to speed up.

“Fuck,” he exhaled. And again, louder when you clenched around him, “f-fuck.”

This position allowed him to reach even deeper inside you and the way your walls sucked him in was as blissful as it was worrisome—he wanted this to last, and he didn’t think it would. Not when he had you so close to him, inhaling the scent of your apple shampoo, peppering breathy kisses on the side of your neck, feeling the goosebumps that he brought to your skin when he caressed your nipples, and thinking he might actually explode every time your body jolted against his with each one of his thrusts.

He slid one of his hands down your navel and kept his palm right above your entrance for a distracted minute, feeling himself move in and out of you, and groaning into your shoulder before lowering his hand to your clit. You writhed against him as he rubbed on a soft, gummy spot there, bringing you dangerously close to your high.

“Fuck, Jungkook,” you whimpered, almost helplessly clutching his arm that was wrapped around your chest. “I’m—s-so close.”

“I’m here, my love,” he whispered. “Come for me.”

Anything you were going to say died on your tongue when you felt his lips on your neck again. His fingers continued to massage the soft spot between your folds and your walls clenched and pulsated around him with each thrust of his hips. White clouds gathered on the edges of your vision and a low moan passed your lips as the knot in your stomach tightened.

Jungkook felt you tremble in his arms and pulled you into his chest harder. Keeping quiet had stopped being an option for you when he pressed on your clit with the pillows of his fingers, his hips continuously drilling into you—he remembered the spot you liked, and he made sure to hit it every time. He felt you tighten again, so close to your peak, and he relished in your loud whimpers.

Pulling his lip ring in with his teeth, he held you tightly against him to maintain a steady pace, his strokes assured and calculated, to push you completely over the edge. He fell impossibly more in love with you when his name got caught in your throat with your breath.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty,” he cooed as you writhed in his arms, coming down from your high. “S-so pretty—oh, fuck, my love—when you come for me.”

The anticipation of his own climax soon caused his hips to start moving with a certain frenzy, and he pulled all the way out before plunging himself into you again and fully bottoming out.

“Oh, fuck, fuck,” he grunted breathlessly, twitching inside of you.

His hips stilled completely and he cursed again, spilling himself into the condom. Groaning deeply, he drove his hips into yours instinctively, this way prolonging his pleasure and the time he spent watching you bite your lip in an attempt to stay quiet. He thought he heard you whisper a breathless I love you and he was convinced he came again just at the sound of it.

He buried his face into the crook of your neck and his voice cracked in the middle of his breathless chants, “fuck, I love you so much—I-I love you so fucking much—”

He still didn’t release his grip on you, lifting his head to kiss your neck again, while the two of you tried to recover and accepted, eventually, that you probably never truly would.

“Fuck,” he exhaled. Then, again, from the back of his throat, “fuck.”

You turned around as much as you could with his arms around you, and met his lips with your own, humming into the kiss and causing him to lose his sanity again—although, to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t sure if he’d even regained it yet.

Your bodies remained locked in an almost desperate embrace for another minute, your lips moving leisurely against each other as your breaths mingled and the room—but not your hearts—quieted down.

Unfortunately, you had to strain your neck to kiss him from this position, and Jungkook ended up having to let go of you. He pulled out carefully—the gentle contact still making you hiss from sensitivity—and helped you roll to your other side to face him.

After pressing another kiss to your lips, he grabbed a stray pillow and placed it next to your head. He touched your chin gently, prompting you to lift your head so he could slide the pillow underneath.

You smiled at the unnecessary, but very appreciated gesture. “I love you.”

His chest contemplated bursting.

“I love you,” he replied. “So much that I am not—I don’t want you to leave this room. Or my bed, actually. I want to stay with you every second of every day, and I’m okay if every court would qualify me as insane for that.”

You snickered into the pillow, your expression radiant. “I don’t think you’re insane.”

He grinned and got up to discard the condom before climbing back into bed.

“And I want to stay, too,” you added, closing your eyes.

He pressed a kiss to your cheek as he got comfortable on the bed. “Not just tonight, but always?”

“Of course,” you whispered, your voice turning lighter, “but I do have my own room.”

He settled in his spot next to you and draped an arm over your waist with a soft grunt. “Fuck if I knew why.”

He pulled back slightly to see your laughter. You didn’t seem like you were going to object or tell him that you should leave, but he still caressed your cheek, bringing his fingers over the smile lines by your lips that he had caused. His heart fought fiercely against his mind at the sight of them. He was almost ready to call Rated Riot’s next song “Smile Lines” and just sigh dreamily into the microphone for five minutes while Yoongi played gentle piano chords in the background.

“I think you should stay with me everywhere we go,” he said, leaning in to connect your lips in a deep, lingering kiss. His voice was a whisper against your mouth, “so we could do this again. And again. And again.”

You broke the kiss—and he would have been very upset about that, but you did that to laugh again, and he understandably forgot everything he was thinking of doing.

“You have a show tomorrow,” you reminded him gently, your eyes warm.

He shrugged. “So we’ll have to take a break for a few hours.”

You pressed your lips together, trying to contain your smile to an appropriate level. “Hmm.”

He rested his forehead against yours. “Sounds good?”

“You are messing with my head,” you whispered.

He grinned, pressing his lips to yours again. “I love you.”

You kissed him back but made sure to click your lips in feigned disapproval as you pulled away. “What did I just say?”

“You messed with mine first,” he countered, his quiet laughter blending with the warmth of your kiss.

He had already stolen all air from your lungs, robbed your mind of every thought you possessed before him, and kept your heart hostage—and now he was beaming like he knew very well he’d done all that. Like he wasn’t one bit sorry about ingraining himself in your life so much that it felt like you shared one soul, and it had stayed with him after you broke up: forcing him to suffer from the weight of it, while you searched for something missing inside you.

“I love you,” you said again. Your words were a whisper and they got lost on his tongue but found their way to his heart anyway.

Planting a few quick, butterfly kisses to your lips, he leaned back against the pillows, keeping his palm on the side of your face so he could rub gentle circles over your cheek with his thumb.

He loved you, and sometimes this love was all that he could think about.

Other times, however, the shadows in the room grew just a little darker.

“Sid hasn’t replied, huh?” he asked quietly, reluctantly.

You sighed, shaking your head. Your phone had been silent all night, and the more you tried to ignore the silence, the more noticeable it became.

“Should I text him?” he suggested. “To poke the bear a little.”

You frowned and felt your stomach sink—a feeling that Jungkook made even worse by pulling away from you and allowing for the brutal, cold air of the room to fill the space where his hand had been.

“What do you mean?” you asked, sitting up.

He rolled over to grab his phone from the nightstand.

You moved closer to be able to see the screen over his shoulder. You frowned the whole time, but it really did not take Jungkook more than a minute to compose a message that almost sparked an argument between the two of you.

After some relatively mild back and forth—consisting of your annoyed, “I told you I want to keep you out of this” that was followed immediately by his melodramatic, “I’m doing this because I love you”—the two of you reached a compromise.

Look, his text to Sid read. I know you’ve been texting my girlfriend. Stop. Let’s keep this shit between us.

This wasn’t the full truth. After sending you a few mocking texts after he posted that picture to his Instagram, Sid hadn’t texted you anything else. You weren’t sure if this would even provoke a response, but Jungkook was convinced. He sent the text and pulled you back onto the pillows despite your protests.

“I’m sure it’ll only be a few minutes,” he said. “Until he texts you.”

Sure enough, he did.

Just as you lied down next to Jungkook, just as he intertwined your hands, his fingers toying with yours, just as you were about to forget your phone altogether—just then, the text finally came.

Your eyes widened, but Jungkook had the decency not to gloat. Instead, he wrapped his arms around you until the beating of your heart returned to a reasonable pace. Then he let you sit up again and reach for your phone.

Sid’s message read, “eager to talk to me now?:)” and you breathed out a sigh of relief as soon as you showed the text to Jungkook.

“Alright,” you said, content. You didn’t even need to respond to him anymore, he’d already started the next step of your plan. “Now we’re good to go.”

Jungkook, smiled, nodding and extending his hand to pat the bed. You lied back down and he wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to feel your skin against his again. His breathing was soft on your neck and you smiled back, finally losing yourself in the calming darkness of his room and the warmth of his touch.

For one blissful minute, you focused on his breathing and traced the edges of his tattoos, and felt as though nothing bad, nothing hurtful or upsetting had ever happened to either of you.

“Will we be okay, do you think?” you asked wearily. “Tomorrow.”

He was taken aback by the question, you could tell from the way his breathing increased, but his response was quick and certain.

“We’re already okay,” he said. “Today and tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day—”

“I love you,” you interjected softly, successfully stopping him.

“Thank you,” he said. “I would have kept going.”

You grinned. “I know you would have.”

He snickered, pulling you closer until you nestled your face into his neck and rested your hands on his chest, tapping, every now and then, to the beat of his heart.

“Sleep,” he whispered. “For a few hours, at least.”

You leaned your head back enough to press a gentle kiss on the corner of his lips instead of replying.

Jungkook hummed and melted into you, easing his grip to give you some space to breathe, but still remaining attached to you like he was a part of you and you were a part of him.

He could have stayed with you like this, he thought, for the rest of his life. And for at least a hundred more lives after that.

chapter title credits: sleep token, “give”

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corroded-hellfire · 1 year

Note

Eddie x bookworm!Reader angst-to-fluff, where Eddie is always picking on Reader because he has a crush on her, but she thinks he’s just being mean. Like he’ll say “read anything good lately, bookworm?” because he genuinely wants to talk to her about what she’s reading, but she assumes he’s teasing her like everyone else. And then a fluffy ending where he actually has a real conversation and admits that he likes her? Love you, bb! @munson-blurbs 💚

Eddie would love bookish girls like us, Bug! We’d be his favorites and everyone else would be jealous hehehe. I loved this request and I hope you enjoy!

Words: 2k

The library is supposed to be your sanctuary. It’s supposed to be where you can go and be with the books, spending time picking out the perfect one before settling down in a chair to see what new adventure awaits you within the pages. But he’s here again. The metal head who thinks it’s fun to pick on you. It’s no secret that people at school are constantly calling him a freak, so he obviously knows what it’s like to be teased and picked on. So why does he do it to you?

The paperback in your hands is pretty small, but that doesn’t stop you from trying to hide your face behind it, hoping Eddie doesn’t notice you. But you know it didn’t work when you hear the chair on the opposite side of the table from you being pulled back and someone drops down into it.

“Hey, bookworm.”

Taking a moment to close your eyes and take a deep breath behind the cover of the book, you lower it and give Eddie the most unfriendly smile you can manage.

“Edward.”

“Don’t call me that,” he says, wrinkling up his nose.

“Don’t call me bookworm,” you retort.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Eddie says.

You ignore him and go back to reading. Well, pretending to read anyway, but really waiting for him to get up and leave.

“Whatcha reading?”

Slowly, you lower the book down enough where you can peer over the side of it where it clearly shows the title.

“Little Women,” you answer anyway.

“So, like, girls?”

“Sure.”

“What’s it about?”

“Eddie,” you say with a sigh. You lower the book down and slide your bookmark into the page you left off on. “What do you want?”

He leans back in his seat and frowns at you as he laces his fingers behind his head.

“To know what your book is about,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“No,” you say with a shake of your head. “What do you really want?”

The bell rings and you don’t give him time to answer your question before your things are back in your backpack and you’re out the door.

Luckily, you don’t see Eddie the rest of the day. The next day, you’re not as lucky. As you're getting the books you need out of your locker, you see Eddie coming down the hall out of the corner of your eye. Hurrying so he doesn’t have the chance to come and tease you, you swap out your things and clutch what you need to your chest. You hardly make sure your locker is properly closed before you’re turning away and walking quickly down the hallway, hoping he won’t spot you.

When you step into your French class, you finally release the breath you’ve been holding in your chest. Head down so no one else will notice you, you open your French notebook and turn it to a clean page for the start of class.

Someone drops down in the seat next to you, but you don’t look their way until you feel them leaning into your personal space. You’re shocked when Billy Hargrove is there, so close to you, an easy smile on his lips.

“Hey, smart girl.”

You’d bet good money he’s calling you that because he doesn’t know your real name.

“Um, hi,” you say. There’s a group of girls on the other side of the classroom who are whispering to each other as they watch the two of you.

Billy’s tongue pokes out against his top lip as he looks at you through his thick eyelashes. It’s a look you’ve seen him give dozens of girls around school. He wants something. And you know it’s not you, so that leaves only one other option.

“You’re really good at this French stuff, yeah? Well, to tell you the truth, I’m struggling a little bit. Do you think there’s any way you could help me out with that? I’d really appreciate it.” It’s a good thing you’re sitting because his smile is enough to make your knees give out.

“I’m not really a tutor,” you tell him, shrugging your shoulders. It’s the truth, but you’re also pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to understand your French because he’d make you a stuttering mess just by looking at you.

“Anything I can do to change your mind?” Billy asks, tilting his head. His voice is so sultry it should be illegal.

“I-I don’t think so.”

Billy tsks and shakes his head.

“Well, damn. Let me know if you change your mind, sweetheart.” He knocks his fist against your desk before going back to his own seat.

The teacher walks in and everyone takes their seats, one of the girls who was whispering about you taking her seat right behind you.

“You’re not as smart as everyone says you are,” she leans forward to whisper in your ear.

Mrs. Shay has her back to the class so you take the opportunity to turn around to face the girl.

“What?”

“For a nerd, you’re pretty dumb. Billy Hargrove was willing to spend time with you and you said no. Tell me, how many guys actually want to be around you? Let alone ones that look like Billy.”

You quickly spin back around so she can’t see the tears forming in your eyes. She’ll only be meaner if she sees she gets a reaction out of you. It’s hard to concentrate for the rest of the class, both interactions replaying in your head the whole period.

Lunch is next and you can’t bring yourself to go into the cafeteria full of students. It’s a nice day out so you decide to go sit outside and eat your sandwich in peace. You’re looking forward to picking up your spot in Little Women as you settle on the grass, back resting against the brick building, but come up empty after looking in your bag.

“No,” you whine to yourself as you double check for the book. Still not there. You must’ve left it in your locker. Alone with just your thoughts and your sandwich, the lunch period seems to go on forever. You get up a few moments before it’s over and go to your locker to grab your novel in case you get a chance to read it in any of your afternoon classes. But it’s not there either. You slam your locker door closed and knock your forehead against it. Where the hell did your book go?

“Hey! Bookworm!”

You don’t need to look up to know who’s calling for you. There have been many times in the past you’ve been grateful your locker is right next to the girl’s room, and this is another one, as you slip in, acting like you didn’t hear Eddie.

Once the bell rings, you wait a minute for the halls to fill with students before joining the sea of teenagers. A quick glance around and there’s no sign of Eddie. You don’t press your luck though and make a beeline straight for your biology class.

The end of the school day can’t come fast enough. Heading to the library after the final bell is like being a salmon swimming upstream as everyone makes for the exits. A sigh leaves your lips once you’re safely inside and find a table in the corner to hide yourself at. Unfortunately, you’re only allowed a few peaceful moments.

“There you are, bookworm.”

It feels like the last straw. You groan and drop your head down to the table, but Eddie still pulls out the seat across from you and plops down in it.

“I’ve been trying to give this back you.” There’s a slide across the table and you pick your head up to see your tattered paperback of Little Women. “You dropped it in the hallway this morning. I tried calling for you but I guess you didn’t hear me.”

“Oh,” you say, stomach sinking with guilt. “Thank you.” You’d just come to expect the worst from people, so Eddie’s act of kindness comes as a surprise.

“No problem,” Eddie says. He leans forward on his forearms and smiles at you. It’s such an open and kind smile that it makes your head feel a little fuzzy. You’d never noticed how pretty Eddie is before. His dark eyes watch you and your cheeks heat up under his gaze.

“You know,” Eddie says. “I don’t think I could’ve forgiven Amy.”

“What?” you ask, face scrunching in confusion.

Eddie nods his head towards the book on the table between the two of you.

“Amy. She burnt Jo’s manuscript. That’s pretty shitty. And I’m pretty sure Laurie is in love with Jo.”

“Oh.” You look down at the cover of Little Women, your fingers coming up to ghost over the edges. “You’ve read it?”

“I started to,” Eddie says with a shrug. “Just don’t tell O’Donnell I was reading that in class today instead of listening to her drone on and on.”

“You were reading it today?” you ask.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He looks down at the table in front of him and knocks his shiny silver rings a few times on the wood. “You didn’t tell me what it was about yesterday, so I decided to find out.”

Thinking back to Eddie finding you in the library yesterday, you remember him asking about what you were reading. You’d assumed it was some ploy to make fun of you, but it seems he was genuinely curious. The guilt tightens your stomach even further. You’re not sure how to apologize without admitting to him you’d assumed he was being an asshole.

“Um, do you want to finish the book? See how it ends?” You extend it to him and Eddie’s head snaps up to look at you.

“Really?” he asks, sounding more excited than you’d expect.

“Sure,” you say. “I’ve read it three times already so I’m in no hurry to finish it. Go ahead.”

Eddie’s face lights up in a grin and you mentally shake yourself for never noticing how absolutely adorable he is before.

“Thanks,” he says. He takes it from you and holds it in his hands like it’s precious and made of glass, not a book that looks like it’s weathered many storms. “Maybe when I’m done we could talk about it?”

Now it’s your turn to be surprised.

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah,” he says, avoiding your eyes. “Maybe we could get coffee or something? Or, pizza if you don’t like coffee.”

You stare at him for a moment before responding.

“You want to hang out with me? Voluntarily?”

His face pinches into a frown as he meets your eyes again.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” he asks.

“I just…” You sigh. “You’re always calling me a bookworm. I figured you were picking on me like everyone else does.”

“Oh.” His face falls and he quickly shakes his head. “Shit, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that bothered you so much.” He sets the book down and rubs his hands over his face. “I guess I was just teasing. I’m not good with emotions and feelings.” He shrugs his shoulders.

“What do you mean?” you ask.

“Ugh,” he groans, but there’s a shy smile on his face. “You know how in, like, third grade, how boys will sometimes pick on girls they like?”

“Yeah,” you say with a nod, clearly missing the hidden message in the question.

He huffs a laugh and gestures to himself.

“Guess I’m about as mature as a third grader.”

Your eyes widen and Eddie can’t help but chuckle in amusement at the look.

“You’re saying you like me? Is…is that what you’re saying?”

“You’re supposed to be the clever one here,” Eddie says with a smirk.

“And you’re…you’re serious?”

He frowns at this and leans in closer towards you.

“I would never joke like that. I know what it’s like to be picked on. It fucking sucks. I’m not about to inflict that on someone else. Especially someone as cute as you.”

Heat blooms on your face, so warm you’re sure you must look like a tomato. Eddie sits up, straightening in pride that he had that effect on you.

“Um, okay,” you say quietly. “Well, finish that book and we’ll go talk about it over pizza.”

“Like…a date?” Eddie asks in a hopeful voice.

“Yeah, a date.” You can’t help the giddy smile that comes to your face.

“Shit, I better get started then.” Eddie opens the book and leans back in his seat. You giggle, thinking he’s joking, but you see his eyes start to actually scan the pages as he reads. Taking advantage of his distraction, you let yourself look over him. His frizzy hair hangs at his shoulders, bangs pushed to the left side of his forehead. His long body reclines in the chair as he reads, his tongue poking out of his pretty lips. He’s beautiful.

You can’t wait until he’s finished with the book. Then he’ll understand what you mean when you say you’d love to be the Jo March to his Friedrich Bhaer.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson fanfic #request

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smileysuh · 11 months

Text

Energizer Bunny

🌙 staring. Haechan x afab!Reader

🔮 preview. “With me here, you’re in no danger at all,” the white wolf hybrid says. “However- I think everyone else might be in danger of becoming quite enamored with you.” You’ve heard about predator hybrids having prey fetishes- with bunnies being an often glorified playmate option- but you’ve never truly witnessed it firsthand, not like you have tonight.

cw/tw. unprotected sex, pussy eating, fingering, bunny hybrid fetishes, praise, big dick hyuck, semi-inappropriate boss x subordinate relationship, hand holding sex, slight choking, slight overstim, dumbification, slight dacryphilia, begging, multiple orgasms, slight orgasm control, dirty talk, etc...

👹 rating. 18+ explicit I wc. 19.1k

🍭 aus. hybrid au, brother!mark, bunny!reader, etc...

☀️ mlist + an. there's just something about Hyuck

1: Friday

“I just don’t see why you won’t let me come visit you while you’re at work,” you sigh, looking your brother up and down while you cross your arms over your chest. “And before you even open your mouth to tell me that ‘it’s not a fun club’ or ‘it’s not always safe,’ I’ll have you know that it’s a top rated hybrid friendly bar, and also that it will be safer for me and my friends because you work there-”

“I just really don’t think it’s a good idea,” Mark groans, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Well, too bad,” you say defiantly. “Your friends keep saying I should stop by, and that wolf dude you’ve been bringing over invited me too-”

“Yuta did?” Now you’ve grabbed Mark’s attention, and he stops in his tracks on the way to the door. He gets finicky about being to work on time, but it seems that the mention of his new ‘friend’ is enough to trump his bunny hybrid time anxieties.

“Uh huh,” you confirm. “You went down to the lobby to get our dinner delivery and he mentioned that it’s odd he’s never seen me around before- something about me already knowing Jeno and Jaemin, and the club always being in need of good little bunny hybrids, with our sensitive noses.”

“Well that’s the last time I invite Yuta over-” Mark groans for the umpteenth time. “Look, I just really don’t think it’s a good place for you.”

“Mark, you know how hard it can be for hybrids like us to get good jobs in this town.”

“Who said my job is a good job?”

“The paycheck you get every month, and the tips, that’s who.” You take a deep breath. “Look- money is still kind of tight- can you imagine how good it would be if we could both be working? I hate to say it Mark, but I’m pretty sure I’d get more tips than you could working at a bar.”

“I’m just-” Mark shakes his head, “you’d get eaten alive in there.”

“Not with you hovering around- and Jeno’s a doberman, he could protect me!” Your brother doesn’t look convinced so you go for a hybrid even higher on the food chain than the puppy you often find yourself enthralled with; “Yuta seems like a good guy.”

“Wolves eat bunnies in the wild,” Mark reminds you, “don’t forget about that part.”

From the vibes Yuta’s given off the two or so times you’ve met him, you can confirm that the wolf definitely wants a piece of your bunny hybrid brother- “Let me come by tonight,” you say again, “just to see what it’s like.”

“Something tells me you’re going to do what you want even if I say no,” Mark sighs, picking up his keys and testing them in the palm of his hand. “If you and your friends really want to see the club tonight- just invite Jeno too, he’s not on shift, and I’d feel better knowing he’s there with you.”

“Mark, it’s just a club, a club you work at- you shouldn’t be so worried about my safety.”

“And you shouldn’t be so sure it’s a safe place for a bunny like you.”

2: Friday con't

Although Jeno’s spent a few nights out with you and your friends, it’s always been with Mark and Jaemin hanging around too. Walking into his work place with a bengal cat, bunny and a fellow doberman hybrid - all three of whom are gorgeous girls - makes Jeno feel like he’s on top of the world, and he has to make a conscious effort to stop his tail from wagging with pride.

“This place is so cool!” you beam, grabbing onto Jeno’s arm as he leads you through the large open space bar. He likes the way you tuck into his arm, looking around with eyes full of bunny wonder - it had taken both Mark and Jaemin a few shifts to get used to all the lights, sounds and smells.

The happy doberman sometimes considers what it would be like to be a prey hybrid - someone at the bottom of the food chain - however, he doesn’t envy you.

On your left Yeji is grinning, already throwing flirty glances at a few men by the bar, and on Jeno’s right, Ryujin is walking with her hands in her pockets, a vision of doberman watchdog calmness.

“I thought you said this was a hybrid bar,” Yeji comments, her cat ears flickering with interest, “I’m not seeing many hybrids.”

Before Jeno can respond, you’re nodding. “I’d say less than half of the people here are like us.”

He marvels at how quickly a prey hybrid like you can read a room for danger, and he’s shocked that you don’t know more about the way the club is run. “Hasn’t Mark told you guys anything about this place?”

“What do you mean?” Ryujin asks, her gaze darting to him.

“This is just the front room, humans and hybrids allowed. The real fun is in the back room, hybrids only.”

“Hybrids only?” Your eyes have widened. “Is that allowed?”

Jeno had asked the same question when he’d been hired, and his raven manager, a regal, intelligent man named Doyoung, had explained that with all the discrimination and segregation the hybrids had faced in the past- well, they all deserved a safe space too. He’d also compared it to a gay bar, but Jeno’s not about to confuse you by making the connection himself.

“It’s legal,” he assures you. “Look, there’s Mark!”

The doberman hybrid is always happy to see his bunny best friend, and Jeno almost forgets himself and lets go of you in favour of lumbering towards your brother- but your grip on his arm makes him be patient. When Mark catches his eye, Jeno can feel his tail wagging again, and an enthusiasm bubbles in his chest.

“You guys came.” Mark, on the other hand, doesn’t sound too enthusiastic, but he makes a visible effort to force a smile.

“Of course we came!” Yeji beams, pulling Mark into a hug.

The bunny stiffens in the cat’s grasp, and Jeno can’t help but grin. Mark used to have a pretty big crush on Yeji, and Jeno will be sure to put in a good word for him tonight.

“Well this is surprising.” Jaehyun, the black lab hybrid on Mark’s right, is looking the small group up and down. Jeno can feel himself deflate a little under his hyung’s gaze.

“They’re with me,” Mark says quickly, letting out a small cough. “Uh, this is my sister, and her two friends.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.” Jaehyun’s eyes linger on you for a few moments.

“Yeah, there’s a reason for that,” Mark sighs. “You guys can all go in, but uh-” he pulls Jeno to his side, lowering his voice, “there’s a lot of Level Fours inside tonight, so try to be quick? I don’t want anyone to get… overwhelmed.”

By anyone, Mark clearly means you, and it warms Jeno’s heart to see his friend be so protective of his sister. “You got it Mark,” he nods, bringing two fingers up to his forehead in a mock salute. “I’ll keep my eye on all three of our girls.”

Yeji practically purrs at Jeno’s words, grabbing onto his arm as Jaehyun opens the door to let them into the back room of the club.

The doberman definitely feels like a big dicked dude now, walking into the hybrid only section of the bar with two pretty girls on his arms… and Ryujin, of course.

“What did Mark mean when he said there’s a lot of Level Fours here tonight?” you ask, and it takes a moment for Jeno to properly register your question.

“Oh uh- it’s a ranking system we have here.” He clears his throat. “So- prey hybrids like you and Mark are Level Ones, and the ranking goes up to Level Five. Basically, Mark was just letting me know we have a lot of Level Four big predator hybrids here tonight- wolves, bears, tigers- that sort of thing.”

You open your mouth as if to ask more questions, but before any words can come out, Jeno’s attention is captured by one of his hot coworkers stationed at the bar.

“Let’s go get drinks,” he announces. “First round’s on me!”

3: Friday con't

“I didn’t know Mark had a sister.”

“What?” Johnny looks up from his drink, leaning closer to Haechan to follow his gaze. “Who?”

“That girl with puppy boy Jeno.” Haechan nods towards you.

“How do you know she’s Mark’s sister?” Johnny asks, taking a sip of his beer.

Haechan cocks his head ever so slightly, somewhat annoyed that even after all this time, he has to explain himself to a bear hybrid below his rank. “I can smell the family resemblance.”

“You can smell the family resemblance,” Johnny repeats with a chuckle. “Your nose never ceases to amaze me. It’s as good as any Level One hybrid’s.”

“Are we talking about Mark’s sister?” The wolf on Haechan’s other side leans in now too, and Haechan smirks at the way his most hardworking bunny employee has Yuta wrapped around his finger.

However, there’s a familiarity in Yuta’s words that doesn’t exactly sit right with Haechan. “You know her?”

“Met her a few times now- and you’re right, there’s something about the Lee bunnies,” Yuta’s gaze darkens, “they always smell particularly tasty.”

“Why have you never mentioned her before?” Haechan can feel himself getting aggravated, he doesn’t like it when his friends keep things from him, especially not pretty little things like you. “And why isn’t she working here yet?”

“Slow down-” Yuta gives his head a small shake, and the slight pink tint to his skin tells Haechan he’s probably already had too many drinks. “I’m the one who told her to come visit- Mark has this thing about your club being dangerous-”

“My club?” Haechan scoffs. “Dangerous?”

“You know how easy it is to scare a bunny,” Yuta’s grin widens wolfishly.

Haechan takes a moment to consider his options. “How about you go buy a round for Mark’s sister and her friends. On the house. As a welcome to our dangerous club.”

“Why can’t you do it yourself?” Yuta asks, but he’s already pulling himself to his feet to follow through.

“Like you said,” Haechan sighs, “bunnies scare easy. We all remember how Mark reacted when I met him for the first time.” All three upper level hybrids let out laughter, but Haechan’s subsides quickly. “I’m not looking to scare her off. I’ll stay here, in VIP, for now- I’m sure I’ll get to meet her sometime soon. Something tells me this little bunny will be back.”

4: Friday con't

You smell the wolf before he’s even fully approached you, but you give him the grace of allowing him to sneak up on your rear as you stand by the bar.

“Funny seeing you again,” Yuta’s voice is as smooth as ever.

You turn to look at him, taking in his white hair and pretty wolf ears. He’s dressed in a simple dress shirt with black pants, and the outfit compliments his pretty ashy colouring. Sharp canines glint at you when he smiles.

“You invited me to come see the club,” you remind him. “How could I pass this up?”

Instead of responding, Yuta catches the eye of the bartender. “Another round for me and my friends,” he announces, “and one for Jeno too.”

“You don’t have to-”

“It’s on the house,” he assures you with a dismissive wave of his hand. Yuta’s gaze shifts past you to where Jeno and Ryujin are in a heated debate over some doberman hybrid thing- “I see you have two watchdogs tonight, and a kitty running around- they seem to like the place, but how do you feel being here?”

“Is my anxiety that obvious?” you laugh, running a hand over the back of your neck in an effort to calm yourself. You’ve been doing your best- but the bright lights, loud sounds and the smells of the club are a lot to get used to.

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, little bunny,” Yuta grins. “The pretty scent of bunny fear only adds to your allure… which is why most bunnies feel more comfortable in the general section, with humans- pretty prey hybrids like you are less inclined to come back here, where it’s a little more… dangerous.”

You blink up at Yuta. “Am I really in that much danger?”

“With me here, you’re in no danger at all,” the white wolf hybrid says, grabbing at the drink that’s placed by his hand. Then he leans in, breath teasing by your throat, “however- I think everyone else might be in danger of becoming quite enamoured with you.”

When he pulls away, his gaze lingers on your face, and you can feel your heart picking up speed in your chest.

You’ve heard about predator hybrids having prey fetishes- with bunnies being an often glorified play mate option- but you’ve never truly witnessed it first hand, not like you have tonight.

You can feel your throat getting dry, and the power behind Yuta’s gaze makes you fold, eyes flickering down to your own drink. You’re glad you’ve only been ordering small cocktails, as they’re much easier to drink than the beer in Yuta’s hand.

“Thank you very much for the mojito,” you say. “I hate to disappoint you, but I was actually just planning on finding my friend Yeji and getting out of here-”

Like the perfect bengal kitty she is, Yeji appears a moment after you say her name, a pretty grin on her face. “You called?”

She’s looking Yuta up and down, and he returns her flirty gaze with one of his own.

“Yeji, this is Yuta, he bought us a round,” you hand her the gin and tonic the bartender had left by your hand, “he’s one of Mark’s friends-”

“One of his bosses, actually.”

This is news to you, and you falter a little, but Yeji takes the cup from your hand, teasing the straw past her lips. “Mark never mentioned he had a cute wolf hybrid boss,” she flirts.

“He never mentioned he had a cute kitten for a friend either,” Yuta returns Yeji’s smile, and you catch another glimpse of sharp teeth.

Before they can continue flirting, Jeno and Ryujin join the conversation, their own drinks in hand. “The bartender said you got us a round?” Ryujin asks in confusion.

“Oh shit-” Jeno runs a hand through his hair, cheeks flaring an even brighter shade of pink than they already were, “Mister Nakamoto-”

“Mister Lee.” The wolf in front of you nods to the two new doberman hybrids.

“You really didn’t have to get us drinks-” Jeno says sheepishly.

“Like I told our pretty bunny friend here,” Yuta’s smile returns to you, “it’s on the house.”

There’s a beat of silence where all four of you ‘lower level hybrids’ wait for the wolf to continue, then he lets out a sigh.

“Y/N was just saying you should be leaving soon. I won’t keep you. Enjoy your drinks, and I hope to see you three lovely ladies again sometime.”

“You bet,” Yeji says dreamily.

With one final nod, Yuta leaves you be, and you watch him retreat towards the raised VIP section.

“Oh my god-” Jeno lets out a deep breath, huddling you all in closer, “that was my boss-”

“Yeah, Mister Nakamoto,” Ryujin teases, elbowing Jeno in the side gently.

“Stop it!” Jeno bats her arm away. “That was so embarrassing- do you think it was obvious I’m drunk?”

“No one could tell,” Yeji plays it cool, but when she reaches out and pinches Jeno’s chin, her grin widens mischievously, “you’re always this lovely pink colour.”

“Fuck-” Jeno groans. “I need to get out of here-”

You watch him finish his beer in three large gulps, and then you’re downing your own cocktail in record time.

The alcohol helps things become fuzzier. You can almost forget that you’re in a room filled with Level Four hybrids - as Mark would say - but when you look out at the crowd, you’re met with all sorts of dangerous eyes.

A tiger hybrid stares you down and you tear your gaze away, looking after Yuta-

Your heart lurches in your chest as you lock eyes with a man in VIP. You’re at a distance, but you could swear his irises are red-

“Come on, y/n,” Yeji tugs on your hand, “let’s go.”

5: Saturday

Ushering a bratty wolf out of his apartment at 8 am isn’t something Mark wants to get used to any time soon, but it’s an obstacle he’s being more and more acclimated to as he pushes and shoves Yuta towards the door.

“No breakfast?” the white wolf questions- he always looks for any reason to stay.

“No breakfast,” Mark confirms. “You have to get out before my sister wakes up.”

Yuta flashes a toothy grin. “Hate to break it to you Mark, but I'm pretty sure that sharp-eared bunny hybrid sister of yours heard us last night.”

“We were quiet-” Mark tries to insist with a shake of his head, but the wolf’s smile only widens.

“Sure you were, bunny boy.”

“I was!”

“What if you come out with me and we get breakfast somewhere else?” Yuta suggests,

“Jeez-” Mark lets out a deep sigh, opening the door to his apartment, “you act as if you’re not going to see me at work in twelve hours- just go!”

With one last eye roll, Yuta steps over the threshold and into the hallway beyond. “Don’t be late, bunny boy.”

“I won’t be-”

“Mark?” Your voice makes the bunny jump- usually he’s pretty good at tracking you with his ears, but he’d been so focused on getting Yuta out of the apartment that you’ve been able to sneak up on him.

He closes the door in his boss's face, and the small chuckle that sounds from the hallway beyond is enough for Mark to know the wolf won’t hold it against him.

“Y/N!” Mark swallows thickly, one hand moving to rub the back of his neck awkwardly. “You’re awake early!”

“I uh… couldn’t sleep.”

The way you’re looking at him tells Mark that you definitely heard him and Yuta last night, and the thought makes his skin flush with heat. He goes for a topic change, grasping at straws until he’s able to state; “Glad Jeno got you back home last night in one piece.”

Now it’s your turn to sigh. “Your club didn’t give that many bad vibes- of course I got home alright.”

“Speaking of the club-” Mark swallows thickly. “Listen, I don’t know how I feel about this yet, but it would be against my morals not to mention it- Yuta told me last night that apparently you caught the eye of one of my managers? They said they’d give me a raise or something if I ‘recruited’ you-”

“Oooh- which manager?”

Mark can see interest in your eyes, and it makes his skin crawl. “You’re not going to fuck one of my managers,” he warns you.

“You’re one to talk Mark Lee,” you look him up and down. “Hypocrite.”

He should never have let Yuta come home with him last night-

“I want to go see your workplace again,” you insist. “To see if I like it. It would be good to have two incomes- besides, all your friends work there- and I’d be getting to use my bunny smelling senses-”

What you’re saying is - by all accounts - true. It would be a good job, for any bunny- but unfortunately you’re not just any bunny, you’re his sister. Mark worries about which manager you caught the attention of- there are a few Level Fours he could handle, but if either of the Level Five managers get their hands on you-

Mark doesn’t even want to think about it.

“I guess you can go see what it’s like,” Mark sighs. “Yuta told me to give you his number- something about maybe popping by tonight when it’s busy and meet the managers and such-”

“Really?” your eyes widen with excitement. “You mean you’re not going to fight me on this anymore?”

“I’m not,” Mark concedes… he’s just hoping you’ll spend one night working behind the scenes and decide to hate the club.

6: Saturday con't

You’re not sure what you’re expecting when you walk into Mark’s bar for the second time in your life, but it’s definitely not a small, timid deer hybrid by the name of Moon Taeil. From the look of his small, spiny, horn-like antlers, you think he might be a pudu, and you wonder how he ever obtained a high ranking position at a club like this one.

“I’m the main manager of the front area of the club,” Taeil explains, as he walks you through the room of both humans and hybrids. “The majority of our servers in this section are Level Twos. Mark must have walked you through the levels?”

“Refresh me?” you suggest, sending a pleading smile Taeil’s way.

The elder man sighs. “Level Ones are small prey animals,” he tells you, “Hamsters, bunnies, rats, mice, that sort of thing. Level Twos are larger prey animals like myself, so deer, zebras, we’ve even got a lovely cow hybrid bartender. We also have a few humans we employ to keep the ‘diversity’ structure. Level Ones like you generally work the door to the back section, with a Level Three hybrid bouncer.”

He takes a deep breath, and his large deer ears flick to follow other sounds in the bar. You can tell that Taeil doesn’t like going through these details, as he runs through them quickly.

“Level Three’s are smaller and ‘domesticated’ predator types, so dogs, cats- we’ve mostly got dogs on the doors. You already know Jeno, our doberman. We also have a golden retriever, and a lab-”

“Not to mention our resident Raven,” a regal man appears on your left, and one whiff of him tells you he’s the bird in question. Hybrids that fly all share a uniquely airy scent, or at least, the ones you know do.

“This is Doyoung- he’ll be your manager while you’re here.” Taeil seems more than happy to pass you off, not that you mind.

“If you end up liking the place,” Doyoung sighs. “And if we like you. We always have openings for Level Ones in door inspection like your brother, but I’m guessing you’ll fit in as more of a bottle girl.”

You’ve heard of bottle girls; the pretty females who provide top of the line waitressing service to VIP’s and such. You’ve also heard that they’re the ones who make big money on tips.

“Have you ever had any experience in a bar?” Doyoung is quick to get to business, and Taeil scurries away.

“I worked in a restaurant once,” you tell him, thinking back to the humans who had been nice enough to give you a shot.

“Bottle service is easy,” the raven assures you. “The real test you have to pass is for manning the door.”

“A test?” you ask, following Doyoung through to the back room.

The bar isn’t open yet, and it’s different to see the large space without fun, flashy lighting, the dancefloor empty of guests.

“Sounds like Taeil was walking you through the levels, right?” Your new manager walks you through to a hallway that leads to the staff restricted zone. “Level Fours are big predator animals, think lions, tigers, bears, wolves-”

“And Level Fives?”

Doyoung gives you a look. “We don’t get many Level Fives in here- and trust me, when we have one, you’ll know.”

It’s the only level that hasn’t come with a hybrid list, and you’re not quite sure what to make of it.

“How will I know-” you ask, as you follow Doyoung into a staff room where a white wolf is waiting for you.

“Trust us, Lee,” Yuta grins, “with a nose like your brother’s, you’ll know.”

Doyoung rolls his eyes at the flirty tone in his coworker’s voice, and he’s quick to move on. “If you could take a seat, we’ll begin the nose test.”

“So soon?” You feel like you have whiplash. Yuta pulls out a chair at the small table by the staff lockers and you’re quick to sit down, looking at both men with confusion.

“Trust me, you’ll pass,” Yuta assures you again, resting one hand on your shoulder while flashing you a charming smile.

“Did you bring your blindfold?” Doyoung isn’t talking to you, but your heartrate picks up in your chest.

“You know I always have one on me,” the wolf responds, reaching into his pocket.

“Blindfold?” you squeak.

“It’s nothing weird,” Doyoung is quick to assure you. “You’ll just put this on, and five people, one from each level, will come in, then you’ll have to identify their level by smell.”

You suppose it’s a fair trial- after all, with your eyes covered you won’t be able to identify anyone by their hybrid marks, so you accept the blindfold and put it on.

With your eyesight gone dark, you take a deep breath, trying to focus on the smell of the Level Three and Four that surround you.

“Are you ready for the first person?” the raven asks.

You nod.

In the periphery of your senses, you hear a door opening, and then a familiar smell washes over you. You’d only spent a short time with the timid deer manager, but Taeil’s scent is already committed to your memory. “Level Two,” you announce, adding “Mister Moon” for good measure.

Yuta lets out a small chuckle at your rear, and you hear Doyoung groan at his friend’s behaviour. “Very good,” he praises you.

The sound of a door opening and closing prepares you for the next smell, and even this one is somewhat familiar. It’s a very puppy specific smell- but you’re not quite sure if it’s one of your friends, so when you say “Level Three,” you simply leave it at, “dog hybrid,” instead of adding a name.

“You can’t take your blindfold off,” Yuta reminds you, “but this is Jungwoo, he’s our resident golden retriever.”

“So lovely to meet you!” comes an enthusiastic voice, and loud footfall tell you the large man is approaching you. He gently shakes your hand and you try not to jump at the sudden contact.

“Good to meet you too,” you smile.

“It’s always nice to have another Lee in the building,” the puppy continues. “We love Jeno, and then we got Mark- now we have you! Everyone loves a cute Lee!”

“Some more than others,” Doyoung mutters, and you can’t help but think it’s a jab at Yuta. It seems you’re not the only one who’s aware of your brother’s shenanigans with his so called ‘boss.’

“I’ll see you on shift, bunny,” Jungwoo says, and you can practically hear his grin.

“She’s not officially hired yet,” Doyoung is quick to remind everyone in the room.

“She’s a Lee- a legacy!” Jungwoo insists. “Like I said, see you on shift.”

You hear him leave the room, but his scent takes longer to drift from your senses.

The door opens again, and it’s the easiest smell to identify so far. A Level One prey is always a pleasant experience, and this one smells particularly earthy. “Level One,” you say with a smile.

“Three for three,” the raven counts. “Although, this one might also be a bit of a cheat- I think you’ve met our Hamster hybrid, Jisung?”

You’d nearly forgotten about the tall, quiet boy that Mark had introduced you to last month, but now that Doyoung mentions it, the meeting comes back to you. “We have met once,” you admit.

“Nice to see you again.” Jisung’s voice is as quiet as ever, and you wonder what an introvert like him is doing in a bar like this, but then again- what are any of your prey hybrid acquaintances doing here?

You listen to the hamster leave the room, and you’re left waiting long enough to start to question it. “Uh, is the test over?” you ask after five minutes of silence have gone by. You can feel your ears twitching, and your nose ruffles as you try to track any new scents.

“Two more,” Doyoung tells you. “These last two like to be late-”

“Or maybe we like to make an entrance,” a new voice and smell nearly overwhelm your senses.

While most hybrids have an earthy note to their scent, this man also brings in a touch of smokiness- for a moment, part of you wants to announce that he’s a Level Five, but you bite your tongue.

You’ve not smelt something like him in a long time, but when you search your brain for a memory, you realize what hybrid he reminds you of. “Level Four?” you ask, feeling unsure for the first time, “a bear?”

“Wow, it’s always the bunnies with good noses, huh?” The new voice lets out a chuckle, and you think you must have clocked him spot on.

“Told you she’d be good,” Yuta says pridefully.

“Does this mean I’ve passed?” You’re eager to take the blindfold off- being in a room with a raven, a wolf, and a bear - without your eyes to protect you - well, it’s making your stomach fill with butterflies.

“There’s one last person you have to meet,” Doyoung explains with a sigh.

“A Level Five?” If you go by process of elimination-

“Yes, a Level Five.” Yuta’s hand finds your shoulder again, giving you a gentle squeeze. “When Mark met this Level Five, he puked- so Doyoung’s put a bucket by your foot… if you need it.”

“Why-” you swallow thickly. “I mean- if I already know it’s a Level Five, do I have to meet him? I thought you said I wouldn’t see many Level Fives-”

Doyoung sighs, and it’s a sound you’re becoming much too familiar with. “We don’t want the first time you see one being on the job- better to puke now rather than later. Besides, the Level Five coming in owns the club, he’s the one who gets the final say on you.”

Now you definitely feel like you’re going to hurl- and the elusive Level Five hasn’t even entered the room yet.

“He’s not that bad,” Yuta reassures you, but you suppose it’s a very Level Four thing for him to say. The wolf behind you can never know what it’s like to be in your shoes as a prey hybrid, so you take his opinion with a massive grain of salt.

“Usually I’d tell you not to trust Yuta,” the bear’s voice sounds again, “but in this case, he’s not wrong. Hyuck’s not so bad.”

If only you knew anything about the bear- about how accurate his perception might be.

Your skin is prickling with anxiety, but you know you’ll have to get used to being surrounded by upper level hybrids if you’re going to do well at this job, so you focus on your breathing.

A minute passes, and then comes the familiar noise of the door squeaking ever so slightly on its hinges.

A shiver runs from the tip of your toes all the way to the top of your head, and an overpowering energy overtakes you.

It’s not so much a smell as it is an overwhelming sense of unease.

Something isn’t right- and you’re pretty sure it’s the new Level Five who’s just entered the room.

“Good job on not puking,” Yuta laughs, patting your shoulder again.

“She’s got a better stomach than Mark,” the bear adds, and as much as you might wish to defend your brother, you can hardly bring yourself to even open your mouth to speak.

“This little bunny is a fighter, isn’t that right?” The smoothness of the unfamiliar voice takes you back a little, and despite your eyes being covered, you get the sense that the Level Five has a pretty face to match his pretty voice.

You itch to take the blindfold off- to get a look at the elusive hybrid.

You wonder what markings he might have that would point you in the direction of identifying what, exactly, he is.

“Can I-” you swallow thickly, and the hybrid’s smokey scent that fills your lungs makes your throat feel dry again, “Can I take this off?”

You reach a hand up towards your face, but Yuta is one step ahead of you, pulling the blindfold from your head.

At first, your eyes take a moment to adjust to the light, but your prey instincts are quick to get a gauge on the Level Five.

He’s handsome- more handsome than you could have imagined. But he’s also young- close to your age, you’d guess, if looks are anything to go by-

Fluffy brown hair and caramel eyes match the pretty tan skin that almost shines golden in the light.

You can’t spot any hybrid marks, not even a tail, and you’re completely blindsided by what the man in front of you might be.

“Hi, bunny.” The Level Five grins at you, and the sharp canines that greet you are the only hint towards his hybridism- although, without visible floppy ears, you highly doubt the man in front of you is any sort of dog.

“If you’re looking for hybrid marks, good luck finding them,” Doyoung tells you, pursing his lips. The large, obvious, black wings that protrude from his back ruffle with annoyance, and you wonder how many other prey hybrids have been enthralled by this Level Five’s lack of clear hybrid marks.

“Hyuck’s good at hiding,” Yuta notes. “Come on, give her a hint.”

“But just know,” the bear quips, “you’re not going to leave this room with any definitive answers about what he is. That information is for people who’ve proven their loyalty here.”

“Something tells me she’ll be loyal,” the Level Five, or ‘Hyuck’ as they’ve called him, is looking at you like you’re dinner. “Isn’t that right, little bunny?”

“Yes, sir,” you respond without a moment’s hesitation, clearing your throat. “I’m loyal. It’s a Lee family trait.”

While you’re talking about your brother, you suppose Lee Jeno is also quite loyal, although that might be more of a dog and doberman trait than a Lee-specific one.

The Level Five continues to stare at you, and then his pretty caramel eyes seem to flick with a new colour, almost like a flame, licking from his iris- within a moment his eyes are a fiery red that makes your heart practically stop in your chest, because… you’ve seen these eyes before.

You’d seen them that night when you’d first visited the bar, watching you from up in VIP.

It becomes clear to you that the ‘manager’ who you’d caught the attention of is none other than the Level Five himself.

7: Sunday

“You look tired.” Mark’s usually not the type to enjoy seeing you burnt out, but he’s hopeful that one night on the job had been enough to show you that you might not be cut out for bar life.

“I am tired,” you sigh, taking a seat at the breakfast table.

He watches you for a moment, but when it’s clear you’re intent to just pick at the apple in your hand, he decides to prompt you for more. “Aren’t you going to tell me how it went?”

You groan.

“I mean-” he swallows, “obviously you made it past their scent test-”

“Speaking of which,” now your eyes are on him, and you shift in your seat, “you have to tell me what kind of hybrid Hyuck is!”

Mark nearly chokes on his coffee.

You’re on a first name basis with Lee Donghyuck?!

“When did you meet him?!” Mark gasps.

“What do you mean ‘when did I meet him’?” You roll your eyes. “He was the Level Five in my scent test!”

“He was?!” This is definitely news to Mark.

Your brows furrow with confusion. “Wasn’t he yours too?”

“Of course not! Mine was Renjun!”

“Who the heck is Renjun?”

Mark doesn’t answer- after all, there’s truly no way to explain who Renjun is, not without giving you details about his Level Five status-

“Look, this ‘Renjun’ dude doesn’t matter,” you insist. “I need to know what Hyuck is.”

Mark’s throat goes dry, and he rubs his thumb against the coffee mug in his hand. “I mean… you know I can’t tell you that.” Mark sighs. “What do you think he is.”

“I don’t-” You bite at your lip. “A giant snake? His eyes go red- that’s… that’s kind of snake-like, right? And his skin has a pretty sort of golden sheen sometimes. No one’s described what Level Five’s are yet, so I don’t even know what general hybrid types to be considering. A snake doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but maybe he’s exotic or something? Are Level Five’s exotic predator types?”

The bunny opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s not sure what to say.

“Come on, Mark-” you groan. “Please?”

“Look…” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I really can’t tell you what Hyuck is. He’s my boss’s boss’s boss or something- but… you’ll probably never meet Renjun, so… if I tell you what he is- maybe it will help give you some ideas?”

“I really don’t see how it will help-”

“That’s because you have no idea what a Level Five is- they’re not even in the same ballpark as snakes, which are Level Three’s, by the way.”

“Fine,” you give in. “Tell me what Renjun is.”

“But you have to promise not to repeat this anywhere. And if you end up meeting him… you’ll have to pretend you had no clue about his hybrid type... deal?”

“Of course! Who am I going to tell anyways?”

“Yeji for one, or Ryujin-”

“Yeah, yeah-” you wave a hand. “I promise I won’t.”

He studies you for a second.

You’ve never been one to go back on your word, and after a deep breath, Mark Lee goes back on his own promise not to reveal a Level Five hybrid type.

He supposes sending you into a monster’s den with no clue what you could be up against isn’t the best idea in the world- and perhaps this will finally show you why he’s so hesitant to allow you anywhere near his work.

“Renjun- well…” Mark takes a deep breath. “He’s a phoenix.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then you let out a small laugh. “Stop teasing me.”

“I’m not,” Mark tells you earnestly.

Your eyes search his face for any sign that he could be playing around, and then you’re jaw is dropping. “A phoenix?!”

“Lower your voice!”

When you speak next, it’s in a half yelled whisper; “Pheonix’s exist?!”

“Yeah.”

“So what does that make Hyuck?!”

“You’ve got to drop the Hyuck thing,” Mark groans. “I told you about Renjun, now just trust me when I tell you to stay away from your bosses. That includes Johnny… and Yuta.”

“Again with the hypocrisy, Mark-”

“Just-” he reaches over and places his hand over yours. “Please.”

Your energy dies down before his very eyes, and Mark can guess that it’s probably because he’s made a point not to ask you for much in your life.

He’s glad that this ‘please’ packs a punch.

“Fine,” you say, taking a deep breath. “But I’m still choosing to work at the bar.”

“Oh my Jesus-”

“We need the money!” you insist.

He can’t argue there. “When are you on shift?”

“You’re not going to like this- but uh… they have me on off days right now? Monday through Wednesday-”

“You know I don’t work Monday through Wednesday,” Mark groans, hating the idea that you’ll be at the club without him there to protect you.

Sure, Mark’s a bunny hybrid, but he’s a bunny that bites… if he has to.

“I know, I know-” you sigh. “But I checked the shift chart and it looks like Jaemin will be there, Jisung too!”

He’s glad you’ll have to familiar faces at least. “Who’s the Level Three bouncer?”

“The golden retriever- Jungwoo I think his name was?”

Mark feels himself relax a little. He knows Jungwoo’s character- and despite being a puppy, the dog can hold his own. “I guess you could be working with worse people.”

“Don’t be so hard on your coworkers,” you laugh.

It’s his bosses he’ll have to be explicitly hard on if he’s going to keep you away from them, and Mark knows it.

8: Monday

When you arrive to the club for your first official shift, it begins very much like the training one had. Taeil meets you at the front door and hurries you through the space.

“Doyoung’s in a bad mood,” he tells you, deer ears flickering with something like anxiety. “Something ruffled his feathers this morning. But… it should be an easy night.”

“Oh, okay.” You’re not sure what else to say, and you instead opt for being quiet, adjusting your silky black shirt and toying with the cuff link by your wrist.

“It’s a nice outfit,” Taeil continues, watching your movements with a doe like expression. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tells you to wear a dress next time.”

You swallow thickly and look down at what you consider to be your ‘fancy pants.’

When you’d gotten dressed, you’d decided to go a more modest route. Mark always heads to work in dark attire, and you’d done your best to match it, but you suppose it’s no shock that the bosses might prefer for their female bunnies to be in something a little more showy.

“I’ll uh- look through my wardrobe?” you suggest, as your eyes lock in on the regal raven man who’s just come through the door leading to the back of the bar.

Taeil laughs, and it’s the first time you’ve seen the serious deer hybrid smile. “Don’t worry, outfits will be provided. We’ve had a few bunny bottle girls, and Doyoung has stats on what attire gains the best tips.”

Why are you not surprised that Doyoung has outfit to tip ratio statistics.

“I guess Taeil’s already given you my critique then,” the raven says smoothly as you approach. “Dresses will be provided… if you make it through this first official shift.”

He makes it sound like he thinks you might fail, and it only makes you more determined to prove your worth.

“Tonight you’ll be doing bottle service,” Doyoung explains as he leads you through to the back section.

You’re a little surprised to see a few Level Four hybrids already bustling about by the bar, and when you’re ushered into the staff room, two familiar faces make you feel more at home.

“Little Lee bunny!” Jaemin grins, pulling you into a hug. “Mark told me you’d be working here, but I almost didn’t believe it!”

“Believe it,” Doyoung grunts. “You’ll be showing her the ropes of being a bottle person. Jisung-” your eyes shift to the other man you’ve met in passing, “you’ll be on the door with Jungwoo. Y/N got an intro course in manning the door, and she’ll end the shift with you, got it?”

“Yes, mister Kim.” The hamster hybrid nods solemnly, flashing you a shy smile before scurrying off.

“Speaking of Jungwoo though-” Doyoung sighs, “where is that dog?”

“I believe we passed him at the bar on the way in here?” you suggest, recalling the familiar scent that had briefly caught the attention of your senses as Doyoung had rushed you to the staff room.

The raven looks at you, and then he flashes you a pretty gummy smile. “You are quick on your feet, aren’t you?”

“I try.” You can feel your skin heating at the compliment.

“What else did you smell on the way in here?” he prompts.

“I think- a handful of Level Threes and Fours by the bar- but not a Five in sight.”

“And if you see a Five?” Doyoung presses.

“I’ll assume that as door man, Jisung has made a note of it, but I’ll also come tell you- if it’s not Hyuck or Renjun.”

“Very good,” the raven nods at you. Then he takes a deep breath. “I should warn you both, before shift officially starts-” his eyes shift to Jaemin, “Johnny and Yuta are planning to stop by tonight to see how our new hire is doing-”

“What?” Jaemin’s nose scrunches up with distaste. “But they never come in on Mondays!”

“I know, and I told them not to.” Doyoung sighs again, “It will just throw off our team, but- like I said, they want to see our newest bunny in action.”

Jaemin groans. “Jeez-”

“Just remember,” Doyoung looks at you, “Level Fours - and Fives - can be difficult to manage. Stick close to Jaemin, and if you need anything, come let me know.”

“Okay,” you nod diligently.

“You’re part of my team now.” The raven hybrid offers you a smile. “And I’m not about to let anything bad happen on shift tonight.”

9: Monday con't

Yuta hasn’t been able to take his eyes off of you for what feels like hours. Sure, he might have a little something something going on with your older brother, but he thinks there’s no harm in watching you… it’s for scientific purposes, really.

Okay, maybe more like his own twisted pervert purposes, but who’s going to judge a wolf like him?

“She is cute, I’ll give you that,” Johnny says, drawing Yuta’s attention. “I can see why Hyuck likes her.”

After a moment to consider the bear’s words, Yuta nods, gaze shifting back to you. “And she seems good at the job.”

In the two hours they’ve been sitting in VIP and watching you, you’ve definitely impressed not only them, but many other Level Fours as well.

A snow leopard acquaintance and business partner had even approached the two owners of the club to enquire about you, and Kun’s generally not the type to get so easily enthralled, especially not by bottle girls and workers.

Even though you’re shadowing Jaemin today, you’ve noticed Yuta and Johnny’s drinks being low, and have personally brought over a bottle of champagne for refills, a bright smile on your face every time.

Yuta’s already tipped you more than he’d tipped Mark on his first day doing bottle service, and that’s saying something.

He can’t help it though. There’s something about you- something that makes him want to risk it all-

But there’s also a voice in the back of his mind that tells him not to. For one, he has Mark- and even more- you’ve caught Hyuck’s attention.

Hyuck’s a collector of pretty things, and he can be quite defensive when he thinks someone’s impeding on his territory.

No, Yuta’s better sticking with the elder Lee bunny, and he just hopes any man that’s interested in you has the brains to rethink testing Hyuck’s patience.

10: Tuesday

Although Johnny is one of Hyuck’s most trusted confidants, the Level Five finds himself calling up the wolf in his company for details about your first day.

As a friend of your brother’s, Yuta can provide insight Johnny might not be able to- and besides, Yuta always tells it as it is. He’s not one for fancy language or tiptoeing around, and that’s one of the things Hyuck appreciates most about him.

The wolf answers his phone on the second ring, and Hyuck pays the same respect that Yuta always does; he doesn’t bother inching around the reason he called, and goes straight to ask; “How was our new bunny on shift yesterday?”

“I mean…” Yuta lets out a chuckle, “She’s Mark’s sister, so she took to it pretty naturally. But that’s not too surprising, is it?”

“I guess not.” Hyuck can’t help but smile. He enjoys hearing that you’re already excelling at your new job, and it extends past the pride of a boss finding a new money maker. “I hear she was on bottle duty yesterday.”

“Uh huh, kept my drink full the whole evening.”

“So she’s even better than Jaemin,” Hyuck’s grin widens.

“It’s not that hard to be better than Jaemin.” Yuta’s eye roll is practically audible.

The wolf has never been a fan of the lazy bunny, but Hyuck keeps Jaemin employed for his own entertainment.

“Anyways,” Yuta continues, “a few VIP’s even enquired about our new hire, said she was doing a good job.”

“Really?” Hyuck feels the flames of jealousy licking across his skin. “Who?”

“Kun and Ten mostly, but I think everyone was pretty eager to watch her work. Scurrying around with her little grey bunny tail and those twitchy ears-”

Hyuck will have to deal with Kun and Ten if it comes down to a turf war over his new bunny, but for now, he takes a deep breath, mind more pleasantly occupied; “What was she wearing?”

“I guess no one told her about our affinity for bottle girls in little black dresses-” Yuta sighs. “But she still looked absolutely delicious in black pants and a satin dress shirt.”

“What have I told you about preying on my bottle girls?” Hyuck can’t let this comment slide.

“Yeah, yeah,” Yuta sighs. “I was just trying to paint a pretty picture for you.”

As if Yuta has to verbalize that you looked good enough to eat. Hyuck’s way past that.

“Hey,” the wolf catches Hyuck’s mind from drifting, “just so you know- I know that Girl-Bunny-Lee is off the table. You don’t usually go for bunnies, so a few others might get confused, but… well, I know she’s yours.”

Hyuck takes a moment to consider his friend’s words.

What Yuta’s just said is true though, Hyuck generally isn’t one to spend too much time with Level Ones. He has a preference for Level Four big cat hybrids; panthers, tigers, he’s even had a daring lion or two-

Bunnies always get jumpy around Hyuck, and for good reason.

He’ll enjoy breaking you in- in more ways than one.

“I appreciate that you know your boundaries, wolf,” Hyuck says smoothly. “To ensure that everyone else knows not to toe the line, how about you talk to Doyoung about putting our newest little bunny on bottle service for Friday night. Mark will be working- it will give us both a chance to watch our Level Ones scurrying around.”

“You know, boss,” Yuta chuckles, “I like the way you think.”

11: Friday

Mark can feel his annoyance practically perfuming off his own form, and he’s not the only one who’s noticed. While transiting to work, the few other prey hybrids on the bus have moved away from him, and you keep shooting him worried looks.

A few stops from the club, a human couple leaves, and Mark is quick to snatch the newly vacated seats.

He lets out a deep sigh as he sits down, immediately leaning against the window to cast his gaze outside.

“Mark, stop being such a party pooper,” you say in a hushed tone, gently poking at his side.

He rolls his eyes.

“Seriously. I know it’s a little fast that I’m working a busy shift, but that means more tips, and isn’t making money the whole point of this?”

“I just-” he groans again. “It’s a Friday night, all the VIP big bosses will be there-” He bites his tongue, although he has much more to say. Like how he knows Hyuck’s the reason you’re working tonight, because Hyuck has final say on shifts, and any change in schedule immediately points to the picky Level Five having his hand in it.

“So what if all the big bosses are there?” you ask. “I’ll just work harder to swindle them for their money.”

You’re trying to lighten the mood, and Mark can’t help but crack a small smile.

“You need to be realistic about this though,” he warns you. “Do your job, be nice, but don’t be too nice. Do you understand?”

“I’ll only do what I’m paid to do,” you nod. “Honestly, I think you’re overthinking this. Doyoung’s been a great manager, and tonight’s going to be fine.”

He wants to tell you that you’re too trusting. That you’re a naive little bunny going into a den of upper level hybrids - some of whom, you can’t even truly name.

He might have told you that Renjun is a phoenix, but you still have no idea what you’re going up against when dealing with Hyuck.

“Just-” Mark sighs again. “Don’t be too nice.”

12: Friday con't

It’s a busy night, and Hyuck gets a fabulous view of you and other ‘bottle bitches’ running around his club.

You’re in a black dress, and in many other work places, it would be considered much too short. In fact, the only thing truly keeping the fabric over the rump of your cute little bum is your fuzzy grey tail.

Hyuck thanks god for hybrid specific clothing, and he makes a mental note to congradulate Doyoung on quickly taking care of your wardrobe. Yuta had mentioned the pants you wore to your first shift were nice… but Hyuck doubts that much could look better on you than this.

You look good enough to eat, and Hyuck wants to unwrap you-

But he’s not the only one.

An hour goes by, then two, and as the night gets more lively, a few Level Four hybrids get increasingly cocky with you, much to Hyuck’s annoyance.

Hell, even a few Level Threes who should be working seem to be revolving around you.

Hyuck’s not sure if it’s because they’re also seeing the way men are looking at you, or if they themselves are as into you as everyone else seems to be.

You had come to the club with Jeno your first time, and as Hyuck watches the doberman practically do laps around you while you scurry about, he wonders if there’s anything going on between the two of you.

After tracking you with his eyes for half an hour more, Hyuck decides there’s no way you could be dating Jeno. Hyuck would have smelt you on his doberman, and while Jeno often comes in smelling a little like bunny, it’s always been Jaemin and Mark’s scent still lingering on his skin.

Hyuck is getting increasingly impatient watching you tend to the lower section of the bar. While he’d insisted on having you work tonight, Doyoung had been just as firm about Jisung being the bottle bitch to the VIP’s, and Hyuck’s not sure how much longer he can go without seeing you up close.

Doyoung’s not usually one to put his foot down when Hyuck gives him orders, and as Hyuck watches Doyoung watch you, he begins to wonder about even the raven’s integrity when it comes to pretty little bunnies.

It’s near the end of your shift when something happens that finally allows Hyuck to act; a tiger hybrid seated at a booth catches your arm as you rush past him with a bottle of champagne. The roughness of the sudden grip makes you stagger.

Hyuck’s on his feet in an instant, eyes fixed on you.

The tiger leans up to say something in your ear, and even with top hybrid hearing, Hyuck can’t make it out with all the noise in the room. However, by your reaction, it’s obvious that what ever has been said, well… it doesn’t sit right.

A look of shock crosses your features, your jaw dropping-

Hyuck hurries down the stairs of VIP. He’ll make it to you in less than five seconds-

The tiger hybrid stands up and everything seems to go in slow motion for the Level Five. He’s optimized for this kind of thing, this kind of situation- and his body kicks into high gear, muscles tensing-

The champagne slips from your hand-

Before it can hit the floor, Hyuck’s fingers are wrapping around the bottle’s neck, and in one aggressive motion, he’s using it like a baseball bat and wacking the shit out of the tiger hybrid’s shoulder.

Glass and booze explode at the contact, shards and bubbly spraying every direction.

The tiger hybrid recoils and others jump at the sudden eruption of anger that had come from a VIP who hardly leaves his section. If the big cats and other predators in the vicinity hadn’t smelt Hyuck for what he is before, well- it’s obvious to everyone who the big boss is now.

“Don’t you know anything about being in a club?!” Hyuck rages at the tiger, who practically shrinks under his fiery gaze. “You can look, but don’t you ever think about touching one of my bunnies like that again!”

“I’m sorry-” the man’s eyes are full of fear, and the smell of it makes Hyuck’s lungs burn.

In his periphery, Hyuck sees Jeno, Jungwoo and Doyoung rushing to surround him. He sees Jeno reach for you, protectively putting you behind his back-

“Throw this guy out,” Hyuck announces to his subordinates. “And tell Mark to make a note by his name.” His gaze lands on the cowering hybrid. “If you comes back here, I’ll do worse than break a champagne bottle.”

Hands grab at the tiger, and he’s hauled off by the two dogs who do Hyuck’s bidding.

The Level Five inhales deeply to calm himself, running a hand through his curls before turning to look at you. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine-” you assure him, but you sound breathless, and your eyes are wide.

“Was that really necessary?” Doyoung asks. “Cleaning the champagne and glass up is going to be a shit show-”

“Yes, it was necessary,” Hyuck snaps. “Everyone here needs to know-” he casts his eyes around at the predator hybrids that frequent his club, “employees at my club are off limits.”

“I’m sure they know that now.” The raven isn’t even bothering to hide his exasperation. Surely he wouldn’t have handled things this way, in such an abrupt and aggressive manner- but he’s not Hyuck, and he’s not a Level Five.

Hyuck looks at you again, assessing you for any sign of injury. Up close, you’re even prettier than he could have imagined, and you meet his gaze with those wide, wonderous eyes of yours-

“Your shift is over,” Hyuck declares. “It’s been an eventful night. I’ve been watching you scurry around for hours.”

“But-” you and Doyoung both go to argue, and Hyuck holds up a hand.

“It’s her first night working a busy shift,” Hyuck states. “I think she’s had enough.”

“I-” you bite on your lip. “Thank you- but… I mean, I have to stay here until Mark’s shift is over in half an hour anyways-”

“Then how about you join me in VIP while you wait for your brother.”

Doyoung lets out an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, eyes rolling before he turns to leave. No doubt he’s had enough of this conversation, enough of Hyuck- and the Level Five doesn’t mind. This is a conversation best had without the stickler raven hanging around.

“Thanks for the offer- but I really shouldn’t. Mark wouldn’t like it, and I mean… you’re my boss after all.”

Hyuck lets out a chuckle. “That’s never stopped Mark from joining Yuta when his shift is over. Your brother sounds like a hypocrite if he’d get upset at you joining me.”

You blink up at him- and then you’re smiling and Hyuck feels like he’s on cloud nine. “That’s what I’ve been saying! He’s been very hypocritical lately!” Then you do something no bunny before has ever done, you lean closer to Hyuck, lowering your voice; “He sort of told me to stay away from you.”

Hyuck’s grin widens. “So you and your hypocrite brother have been talking about me, huh?”

Your pretty bunny ears twitch, and you cast your eyes down with embarrassment. “Not at length- he still won’t tell me what type of hybrid you are-”

“Come have a drink with me, and maybe you’ll find out.”

You look up at him again, and Hyuck can tell you’re searching his face for a sign of deception. Then you give in; “Fine. I’ll have one drink while I wait for Mark, but not in VIP.”

It’s almost like you’re taunting him, and when you turn to head toward the bar, Hyuck’s natural predatory instincts kick in. He gives in to the chase, following close on your heels.

People part for Hyuck as he walks through the busy dance floor. He supposes they could just be being careful from the champagne bottle incident, but there’s also the fact that he gives off intense vibes. Even without knowing what Level Five hybrids are, many of the Fours in the room have no problem identifying him, once in a blue moon when he comes down from VIP.

Yuta had told Hyuck when they’d first met that he simply smells and feels like an other- something not of their normal hybrid world. And Hyuck supposes there’s some merit to that.

He joins you at the bar, and within an instant, his persian kitty bartender, Taeyong, is rushing up to take his order. Doyoung eyes Hyuck from the end of the bartop, but keeps his distance.

In record speed, two drinks are being sat in front of you, and Hyuck can finally give you his full attention. “So how’d a bunny like you get into working restaurants?”

“Hmm?”

“Your resume,” Hyuck clarifies. “It said you’ve worked in the industry before.”

“Oh, uh-” you fiddle with the straw in your drink, “I mean- growing up, Mark used to call me Little Miss Energizer Bunny, you know, like the battery? And I guess, I’ve always liked being helpful, so running around a room and making sure people are happy seems like a no brainer.”

Hyuck watches you with a smile. He likes the idea of you being a little Energizer Bunny- his little Energizer Bunny.

“How about you?” you ask, lifting your chin to appear confident in your question, but your eyes and twitchy ears betray you. “How does a young Level Five like yourself end up owning a club?”

Hyuck chuckles. “I’m not as young as I look.”

“Really? Is this a hint as to your hybrid type? I will figure it out, you know.”

You’re his little Sherlock Holmes the Energizer Bunny. It’s cute.

“Sure you will,” Hyuck says, although there are doubts in his mind. “How are you liking the work here?”

“I’m enjoying it,” you tell him. “All my coworkers are really nice, and Doyoung is a great manager.”

Hyuck can’t help but crack a smile at this. The raven has had many complaints against him in the past, mostly from Jaemin and Jeno, who think he’s much too strict and bitchy- but Hyuck guesses there’s no surprise that Doyoung puts his best foot forward with you.

The Level Five opens his mouth to ask another question, but before he can, he notices your brother weaving through the crowd behind you.

“Uh-” Mark coughs awkwardly, gently tapping you on your arm, “Doyoung said there was an altercation- said I should take you home early?”

Maybe Hyuck will have to file a complaint against Doyoung too, for being a royal cock block.

“Oh, yeah-” you nod quickly, “let me finish my drink-”

Hyuck watches the way you suck on your straw, and his mouth starts to water. It takes all his energy to force his eyes to your brother. “You usually bus, don’t you, Mark? I could get someone to drive you both home.”

“We’ll be fine,” Mark states, and there’s a stubborn set to his jaw even though he can’t truly meet Hyuck’s gaze. “I’m sure y/n made enough tips to pay for a cab.”

Hyuck would be entertained by Mark’s big brother protectiveness, if it wasn’t directed at warding him off. But Hyuck also supposes that, if he were in Mark’s shoes and had a sister, especially one as cute as you, he’d be doing the same thing Mark is doing right now.

“Your call, Markie.” Hyuck raises his glass, nodding at the bunny whose cheeks are now a pretty shade of pink. “Get home safe, and I’ll see you-” his eyes meet yours, “sometime soon.”

It’s a promise, but it also might just be a threat.

13: Friday con't

At first, the atmosphere in the cab is tense, silent. Mark is like a brewing volcano on your right side, and you’re just waiting for him to say something. Yet, your brother throws none of his anger your way.

It almost feels like you’re going to get home unscathed, and then all of the sudden Mark is throwing his hands up and looking at you with an exasperated expression; “I thought I told you to stay away from him!”

You’re too stunned to speak. Mark hardly ever raises his voice at you, and the fact that he’s doing this in front of your driver when you’re already so close to home is just as shocking as the outburst itself. “I-”

“I’m serious, y/n-” Mark’s eyes flicker to the taxi driver. “I don’t want to talk about levels too much right now, but- trust me- if you think Yuta and Johnny might be dangerous based on their hybrid types- just know that Hyuck is ten times worse than that!”

“He doesn’t seem that bad-”

“Doesn’t seem that bad,” Mark repeats, and you can’t tell if he’s about to laugh or cry.

Your brother opens his mouth to say more, but the taxi comes to a stop in front of your apartment, and the obviously uncomfortable driver quietly tells you how much you owe him.

You grab money out of your work fanny pack, tossing it into the front of the cab before exiting the vehicle. There’s much more you want to say to your brother, but it’s not going to be said in front of some innocent bystander who’s just trying to make a living.

“Mark, I hate to say it,” you follow him towards the entryway of your building, “but you’re being extremely hypocritical right now.”

“Me?! How?!” Even in the middle of an argument, Mark holds the apartment lobby door open for you.

“Don’t act as if you’re not involved with Yuta. He’s a Level Four, and I see how much calmer you are when he’s around. He’s like a protector, maybe I’d like a protector too.”

You think back to how Hyuck had appeared out of nowhere when the tiger hybrid had been aggressive to you, and you feel dirty at the way your panties begin to stick to your core-

“Then go for Jeno or something! Why does it have to be Hyuck?! He’s a Level Five!” Mark insists as you enter the elevator. “And he’s probably got a bunny fetish-”

“Mark Lee-” you say, shocked beyond belief, “for someone who’s paid to pay attention, you don’t seem to notice the hybrid types that usually surround Hyuck in VIP. They’re all cats, Mark- big cats!”

Your brother doesn’t seem to have a rebuttal for you, so you continue; “Besides, he might not even like me that way…”

“Jeno said that the guy practically swooped down from VIP and smashed a champagne bottle over a tiger hybrid’s head just to protect you.”

“He smashed it over the guy’s arm and shoulder area,” you correct.

“Still!” Mark insists. He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, his tone has calmed down substantially. “Please,” your brother sighs, “trust me on this.”

Doesn’t he know rule number 3 of the imaginary sister code? Never take your brother’s advice, especially when it comes to love.

And you don’t intend to.

14: Saturday

“So I heard that then, Donghyuck comes down from VIP and straight up kills this tiger-”

Mark’s been listening to Xiaojun and Hendery discuss last night’s events since he came into the staff room five minutes ago. Usually their gossip isn’t something that interests him, but tonight, he feels the need to step in.

“He didn’t kill the tiger-” Mark groans, drawing the eyes of the other Level Ones who have just finished their own shifts.

“He didn’t?” Xiaojun blinks.

“He just- whacked him on the arm or something.” Mark shakes his head. “Jisung apparently spent an hour cleaning up all the shards.”

“That’s crazy, dude,” Hendery's large rat hybrid ears wiggle with distaste. He’s never been one to enjoy actually working at work, and even Mark had been a little shocked at how much their resident hamster friend had been forced to do to make up for their boss’s outburst.

“And it was over your sister, right?” Xiaojun presses.

Mark had entered this with a sneaking suspicion that the two of them were talking so openly about the incident to get more information, and the bunny decides he’s not about to fall into their feeble minded trap again.

Especially not when there are more important matters to attend to… like the schedule he’s currently looking at.

Just then, Doyoung walks into the room, and Mark jumps at the opportunity to discuss things with his manager.

“Hey-” the bunny grabs the attention of the raven, “it says here that my sister’s working Wednesday night, I thought you had her on afternoon shifts?”

“Oh-” Doyoung’s broad wings ruffle behind him, “yeah, there was a schedule change.”

“I thought I told you that I only wanted her working evening shifts when I can be here,” Mark sighs. Wednesday is the one night a week he has classes at his local college, and he’s pretty sure everyone here knows it, especially Doyoung.

“Unfortunately, Mark,” Doyoung adjusts a stray piece of hair that’s fallen haphazardly over his brow, “you’re a Level One, and this schedule change was recommended by someone much higher in the food chain than you.”

“Hyuck,” Mark states. Doyoung might not have said their head boss’s name, but Mark can feel the culprit in his very bones.

“He told me to offer to schedule you in as well,” Doyoung breathes, “but we both know you have class.”

Mark would bet all his savings that Hyuck knows it too.

There’s nothing he can do about it though. He can’t miss class.

He hates how easy it is for Hyuck to be a puppeteer, pulling on everyone’s strings. And above all, Mark especially hates how you’ll probably play right into the Level Five’s hands.

15: Wednesday

While Hyuck has always been the kind of guy to love watching his club make money, there’s something to be said about slow nights… or maybe it’s just the fact that you look calmer.

There aren’t fifty plus Level Fours surrounding you, just a handful of Wednesday night regulars, and it’s obvious to Hyuck from his vantage point in VIP that things are easier on you tonight than last Friday.

He’d also be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the way you pay particular attention to him. With only a few VIP clients in tonight, you have much more ability to watch his own cup, and you frequently pop up with a bottle of whisky to refill his glass.

On top of all of this, maybe it also has something to do with Mark not being present. Your brother's watchful gaze is understandable, but yet another barrier between you and Hyuck, a barrier he’d been quick to deal with.

Tonight, the door is manned by Jaehyun, the stoic black lab, and Jaemin, who looks down at his phone absentmindedly between guests arriving. Neither of these men are intent on watching you, and Hyuck hopes it stays that way.

He enjoys the way your gaze so often shifts to his table, even if it’s just to check on his drink, and for the countless time tonight, you hurry up the steps with his favourite whisky in hand.

“Can I refill that for you?” you ask.

Hyuck gently pushes his cup forward, remaining silent and watching you.

“I hate to ask this,” you say, as the amber liquid pours, “but should I maybe grab you some water? I’ve only been keeping this bottle out for you tonight, and you’ve already gone through most of it-”

“You’re concerned I can’t handle my liquor?” Hyuck grins. You’re such a funny, amusing, little thing.

“You can definitely handle this, much better than I could, at least,” you’re quick to assure him. “I just- technically my shift ends soon, and I think I’m the only one who’s really been paying attention to you. If I don’t go grab you some water, something tells me you’ll be neglected till closing.”

As if he couldn’t easily wave down Doyoung- but still, Hyuck enjoys the sentiment.

“If it would make you happy, you can go grab me some water,” he concedes.

You flash him a small smile, and then you’re scurrying off, his little bunny errand girl.

You return with water not two minutes later, and Hyuck has already pulled out a few bills. “Here,” he says, holding them out to you, “for paying special attention to me tonight.”

You blink at the wad of cash. “Sir, you don’t have to-”

“Of course I don’t have to,” Hyuck interrupts. “I own the place. I can do what I want. And what I want, is to give you this. As a token of my appreciation.”

He hasn’t bothered to count the exact amount, but he knows it’s somewhere in the hundreds, which is probably why you’re being so nervous about accepting it.

“Here,” Hyuck sighs, standing. He reaches out, tucking the cash between the waistband of your fanny pack and black dress that's been capturing his attention all shift. “Make sure you don’t lose this.”

“Thank you, I-” you blink up at him, and Hyuck sees something like stars in your eyes- or maybe that’s just the light reflecting from the disco ball. “Are you leaving?

“Yup,” Hyuck runs a hand though his hair, smirking and offering you a wink. “I’ll see you soon though, yeah?”

He likes the way you mutter “yeah” as if you have any choice in the matter, and then he heads down the VIP stairs, ignoring the glare that Doyoung casts his way.

16: Wednesday con't

“You should take a cab,” Mark tells you, and part of you wishes you’d never even called your brother while waiting at the bus stop.

“I’ll be fine,” you assure him. “It’s late so the bus will be empty.”

“Yeah, it’s late, which makes it more dangerous out there,” Mark insists.

You open your mouth to argue back, absentmindedly watching a black sports car slowly approach- and then the window is being rolled down, and Hyuck is looking out at you.

“Need a ride?”

“Mark, good news,” you say into your phone, “Hyuck just offered me a lift.”

“Don’t get in his car,” comes your brother’s stern response.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you, line’s breaking up-” you lie, “See you in ten!” Then you hang up on Mark, addressing Hyuck for the first time. “Yes, thank you, I’d really appreciate it.” You grab the door handle, getting into the car and quickly telling him your address. “Mark was just hassling me about busses being dangerous-”

“Good thing you’re safe in here with me now, huh?” Hyuck grins, waiting for you to have your seatbelt on before he pulls away from the curb.

“Very safe,” you confirm, even as your bunny senses take a moment to adjust to his overpowering scent. The fiery nature of his presence is something you’ve gotten more and more used to, and in the back of your mind you wonder if he - like his business partner Renjun - is a phoenix of some sort.

“You did good today, on shift,” Hyuck says, and the praise makes your heart sing in your chest.

“Thank you.”

“And you’re doing good now, too, you know. Not many Level One hybrids like to be near me, let alone locked in a car with me.” Hyuck’s fingers gently tap on the steering wheel. “Did your brother ever tell you how he puked the first time we met?”

You laugh. “Mark hasn’t talked about it, but Yuta mentioned it during my scent trial.”

“If you feel sick, let me know and we’ll roll down a window,” Hyuck teases.

“I mean,” you feel your skin heating, “I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, but it’s not puking related.”

Hyuck sneaks a glance at you. “Really?”

“Uh huh.” You look away shyly.

A moment later, his warm hand is finding the middle of your thigh, and he gives you a gentle squeeze.

“You’re cute, bunny,” he tells you, and just as you think things might get even hotter, he pulls away, fingers returning to the wheel. “It’s good to have you on the team.”

“It’s good to be on a team.” Good to feel appreciated.

Hyuck’s a fast driver, and the roads are dead on a Wednesday night, so you’re turning onto your street much sooner than you’d wish to be. To your surprise, you can already see Mark waiting on the curb for you.

“And there’s your brother,” Hyuck sighs. He pulls over a little distance away from your apartment, and Mark begins approaching. “I guess I’ll see you at your shift on Friday night.”

“I guess so.”

“You should plan on ending early again, I’ll want your company in VIP.”

“Is Doyoung going to be okay with that?” you question. “And besides, who says I want to come to VIP? Haven’t I told you already that you’re my boss-”

“Look,” Hyuck cuts you off, “If you weren’t up for it, you wouldn’t be in my car right now.”

He’s right, but you won’t admit it. You just stare at him as Mark comes all the way up to the car with a mildly frustrated scrunch to his nose-

“Like I said,” Hyuck laughs, watching you reach for the handle to exit his vehicle, “I’ll see you at your next shift.”

17: Saturday

“You’ve gotta stop eye fucking my new hire.”

Hyuck assesses Doyoung over the rim of his whisky glass. It’s a busy Saturday night and Hyuck can’t believe the raven hybrid is broaching this subject now of all times.

“Uh oh,” Hyuck grins at Yuta next to him. “Looks like I’ve ruffled some feathers…” His gaze shifts to Doyoung again, “I’ve gotta stop eye fucking your new hire.. Or what?”

“Or we’re going to lose Mark, his sister, and Jaemin and Jeno, because those two losers do everything Mark does-”

“They might be losers, but neither Jaemin or Jeno is stupid enough to quit working here,” Hyuck scoffs. “Besides… why is it so wrong for me to want to get to know the cutest Lee bunny?”

“Well for starters,” Doyoung sighs with exasperation, “You’re her boss?!”

“Get on Yuta’s back then,” Hyuck chuckles, nudging the wolf seated next to him.

“And second-” Doyoung continues, “because it’s just some weird bunny fetish, and it’s not good. Your intentions aren’t pure.”

“Bunny fetishes can be fun,” Yuta notes, and although Hyuck agrees with his friend, this is definitely not a case of Bunny fetishization… or at least, he doesn't think it is.

“I’m getting awfully tired of you questioning me,” Hyuck sighs.

Doyoung lowers his voice, but his words are still laced with venom when he says “And I’m getting tired of you watching y/n work her butt off to pay rent while you sit up here at VIP drinking expensive whisky!”

“You know what?” Hyuck stands up. “Fine! If you want me to be a gentleman about it, I’ll go and ask her on a real date, how’s that sound?”

“That’s not what I meant-” Doyoung’s pale skin flushes a deep red colour, and it only pushes Hyuck to act quicker.

“Too late, I’m going, right now.” He brushes by the dumbstruck raven, heading down the VIP stairs.

His eyes are on the prize; you. Specifically, his gaze is fixed on your cute little tail and perfect ass. Your back is to him as you stand at the bar, waiting for Taeyong to grab you a bottle of wine, and for a moment, Hyuck thinks it might be fun to ambush you-

Then he sees a shiver run up your spine, and you turn to look at him, lips parting in a silent question.

“Hey you,” Hyuck grins. “Got a second?”

“For you, I have two or so minutes.”

“There’s my funny little bunny,” he says affectionately. “Listen, Doyoung’s mad that I keep looking at you. He thinks my intentions are- well, let’s just say he thinks I’m going to be a dick about this. To prove him wrong, I thought I’d ask you out. How do you feel about brunch?”

“I mean…” he watches you swallow thickly, “I love brunch- but, you don’t really seem like a brunch kind of guy?”

“That’s just because you don’t know me yet,” he winks at you. “Brunch is good because I work in the evenings.”

“Oh, right-”

“I know you’ve gotta quickly run away like the little Energizer Bunny you are, so I’ll make this quick. I know a place with a great view and the best mimosas in town… what do you say about tomorrow?”

You look up at him with those big pretty eyes of yours, and then your gaze shifts over his shoulder. He wonders if you’re looking for Mark, but then you’re nodding. “Pick me up at noon?”

Hyuck nods. “You got it, bunny. I do know where you live.”

18: Sunday

When Hyuck drives you to an expensive apartment building, you’re a little confused. But you play along as he parks in the underground and takes you to the elevator.

“The best mimosas in town,” he assures you. “I guarantee.”

“I trust you,” you laugh, leaning back against the wall of the lift and watching him with a smile.

He looks good today, but when does he ever not look good?

In black dress pants and a silky charcoal shirt, with its sleeves rolled up to expose tanned, veiny forearms-

Well, there’s a lot you want to do with the Level Five hybrid in front of you, things you’d never do with a boss.

You admire the golden tint to his skin, and think through a list of things he could be. There’s the phoenix, kitsune, dragon, griffin, chimera, unicorn- you’re pretty sure he’s not a unicorn, but at this point, he could be just about anything.

The elevator dings and the doors open. You find yourself walking into a lovely entry way, and you’re certain now that this location couldn’t possibly be a restaurant.

“Welcome to my home,” Hyuck tells you, flourishing an arm. “Also known as the place with the best mimosas in town.”

“Well aren’t you confident in your cocktail abilities,” you quirk a brow.

“Sure, but I’m actually talking about my private chef,” Hyuck laughs, leading you through a lush living room to the open concept kitchen, were low and behold, a human is standing there preparing food.

You can tell he’s not one of you by the way he smells, and the fact that, while still focused on his craft, his eyes are slow to find you. “Hi there,” the chef smiles.

“Y/N, this is Jin. Jin, this is our lovely brunch guest.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Jin waves his knife around as if it were his own hand giving you a greeting.

“I was thinking,” Hyuck’s palm finds the small of your back, “we could sit on the terrace, have some food, and I could give you a full tour later.”

“Works for me,” you agree, giving one final nod to the chef before allowing the Level Five to guide you through his home once more.

The terrace is lovely. The view is no joke, and it’s decorated modestly with a table and chairs, with many plants livening up the place and enjoying the sun. Hyuck pulls out a chair for you and you sit with your eyes still taking in all the lavish wonder his home has to offer.

“Wow,” you muse, smiling as he takes his own seat, “you’re really pulling out all the stops today, aren’t you?”

“I told Doyoung I’d be a gentleman, so here I am,” he shrugs.

“It’s nice that he’s so protective of me,” you muse.

“It feels like everyone who meets you feels protective,” Hyuck nods. “Is that just due to your bunny charm, or is it something deeper?”

“Let’s just leave it at bunny charm, don’t you think?” you laugh.

“So you’re not a little flirt then?”

You take a moment to respond, grinning before you tell him, “only for you.”

“Good. That’s what I like to hear.”

Jin arrives with mimosas a moment later, and before you know it, you’re sipping on your drink and laughing with Hyuck in the afternoon sun.

It’s easier to talk with him in this non work setting, and the view gives you a constant thing to marvel at- aside from the beautiful man you’re conversing with. You find it easier and easier to hold his gaze, but you’re still not fully comfortable with him yet.

The chef interrupts for a second time, holding two platters of food. On one is every veggie and fruit you could possibly imagine, and on the other are more suitable brunch foods.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” Hyuck says, scanning the eggs, bacon and sausage links, “so I told Jin to make whatever he’s best at. I hope there’s something here for you to eat.”

“This is wonderful,” you look to the chef, “thank you.”

He simply nods. “Is there anything else you two might need before I leave for the day?”

Hyuck waits for you to respond, and after another look at the food in front of you, you shake your head. “This will be perfect.”

Hyuck nods to his chef, and Jin excuses himself.

When you begin to put things on your plate, you keep your bunny ears open, listening to the chef grab his things and depart. It feels like a weight has been lifted as soon as you know you’re alone with Hyuck, and he visibly relaxes also.

“Something’s on your mind,” he says, toying with a piece of bacon. “Tell me.”

“I’m just thinking about what kind of hybrid you are,” you confess.

“Any guesses?”

“A few.”

“Let’s hear them then. Come on Bunny, spill.”

You smile at the Level Five. “At first, I thought you might be some kind of snake-”

“Definitely not.”

“Yeah, don’t be mad, but Mark told me I was way off. He also may have let it slip that one of your friends is a Phoenix-''

“He did, did he?” Hyuck arches a brow, but you don’t see any anger in his expression, only amusement.

“He did,” you confirm. “So I figure, if we’re in the realm of mythical beasts, well, I don’t see any hybrid marks on you-”

“It’s a Level Five adaptation,” he tells you. “So we can blend. Renjun can’t have fire wings protruding out of his back every day now can he? That’s a fire hazard if I’ve ever heard of one.”

“I guess not-” you laugh at the joke, “but… he does have wings?”

“They retract, back under the skin,” Hyuck nods.

“So… theoretically,” you put a fruit down on your plate, giving Hyuck your full attention, “you could be anything.”

“Theoretically.”

You assess him for a moment longer. “Okay, this information totally derails all my theories, but I guess, I was sort of thinking you could also be a phoenix, due to your eyes flaring red. Or maybe a kitsune because you’re kind of fox-like and mischievous-”

“Am I?”

“You definitely are,” you laugh.

“Any other theories?”

“I mean, you could always be a dragon or something-” you mean it as something of an off hand joke, but the way Hyuck’s chin tilts down ever so slightly- his eyes suddenly going serious- you think you may have just guessed your way into a truth “Wait, no, you can’t be-”

“Does it scare you?” Hyuck asks, cocking his head to the side.

You take a breath, trying to ground yourself in your own body. It’s hard to say exactly what you feel, but it’s definitely not fear. “Do you… do you have retractable wings too?”

“Big ones,” he confirms, “and they’re a pretty golden colour.”

Part of you wants to see them, but you bite your tongue, considering what he’d said about Renjun’s own wings. “Does it-” you swallow thickly, “does it hurt when you retract them?”

Hyuck watches you, and it’s a few moments before he answers. “No one’s ever asked me that before,” he confesses. “But yeah. It hurts.”

There’s silence at the brunch table. Your mind is going a million miles a minute, trying to process what he’s just revealed to you.

“Most people want to see my wings when they find out what I am,” he states. “Don’t you want to see them?”

“Not if it hurts you!”

Hyuck chuckles. “You’re a funny little bunny, has anyone ever told you that?”

“I’m sorry-”

“Don’t be,” he waves his hand. “You have nothing to be sorry for. In fact, I’m impressed. You guessed what I am, and like I said, most people just want to see my wings. They don’t care about the pain of skin tearing to reveal the mark of my hybrid self, but you do. I’ve gotta say…” the dragon sips his mimosa, “I like you, bunny.”

“You do?” your voice is practically a squeak.

“It might be stupid, but I’ve been around a long time- and I don’t think I’ve ever met someone quite like you, let alone a Level One.” Hyuck cocks his head to the side again, eyes scanning your form. “You’re something special, aren’t you, bunny?”

You open your mouth to respond, but before you can, your phone rings loudly in your purse.

“Shit,” you cuss, immediately knowing who’s calling; “it must be Mark-”

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you haven’t told him who you’re with right now.”

“Of course not-” you swallow thickly. “I’m really sorry, but I have to answer this-”

“Go ahead.” Hyuck leans back in his chair, eyes never leaving you.

With one last sigh, you answer your phone. “Mark?”

“Where are you?”

“Uh-” you lick your lips, “Yeji wanted to meet up for a bit-”

“Are you coming home soon?” your brother presses. “Jeno said he’d help me move this new shelf into my room that we found down at the thrift store, but he bailed.”

“I can come help,” you say without a second thought.

“Awesome! See you soon then!”

“Bye!” You hang up, gaze lifting to meet Hyuck’s. “I’m really sorry-”

“Again, don’t be,” he tells you. “You’ve told me that you’re a bunny who likes to help, and it sounds like Jeno fucked Mark over. Of course you need to go help your brother, although- I have to admit, the idea of two bunnies carrying a bookshelf is a little amusing-” Hyuck downs the rest of his mimosa. “So our secret brunch gets cut short… come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

19: Wednesday

Watching you work your Wednesday evening shift, Hyuck can’t get the thought of kissing you out of his head. When he’d dropped you off a block from your home on Sunday, he’d known it wasn’t the right time to make a move, and for two nights he’s been dreaming about what if’s.

What if he had kissed you. What if he had cupped your jaw and pressed his lips to yours, moving gently and taking things at your pace. What if his tongue had just happened to glide across your own, earning a pretty moan-

Every time you come to refill his cup, Hyuck finds his patience running thinner and thinner- by the time your shift is officially over, the dragon practically pounces, following you into the staff room.

To his dismay, Taeil is also there, and the Level Five has to push his instincts to the side. You can’t have your first kiss at work, and he hates it- but he knows it too.

“Hi, Hyuck,” you smile at him while pulling your bag from your locker, wrapping your hot little body in a jacket appropriate for the weather outside.

“Hi, Bunny.” He leans against the lockers, looking you up and down. “Shift’s over… how do you feel about coming over to my place,” his gaze moves to Taeil, “I need to talk to you about your resume.”

Taeil scoffs loudly, and it seems the lie hasn’t worked on you or the Level Two who hurries to exit the space.

“I can’t,” you frown. “As much as I’m sure my resume needs to be discussed, Mark’s waiting for me at home.”

“How about tomorrow?” Hyuck presses.

You cock a brow at him, and Hyuck wants to throw you against the lockers and have his way with you-

“Are you really that eager?” you question.

“Yes.”

You smile up at him, and each second you wait to answer is practically painful for the dragon. He’s used to getting what he wants, and what he wants right now, is you.

“I can see you tomorrow,” you confirm. “Your place again?”

“Uh huh,” Hyuck nods. “But this time, no private chef.”

“I wasn’t aware you wanted to get me alone so badly.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention.”

You laugh, and Hyuck only wishes you knew how much energy it’s taking to hold himself back from you right now.

“Let me give you a ride home,” Hyuck insists.

“You know,” you grin, “I’m finding it harder and harder to say no to you.”

Not only does Hyuck know this fact, he’s banking on it.

20: Wednesday con't

When you’d arrived home on Sunday, one whiff of you had told Mark that you’d been with Hyuck. The Level Five’s dragon scent had clung to you like the smell of weed on a stoner, and despite every fibre of his being telling Mark to cause a fuss about it, he’d tried to play things cool.

The more he argues with you about Hyuck, the more he realizes he has to come to terms with the fact that you’re going to do what you want to do, advice be damned.

To be fair, other than the overtly horrible way Mark’s body had reacted when he first met the dragon, Hyuck hasn’t ever actually done anything bad to Mark personally.

When you and he had been children, your mother had told you to follow your noses, and Mark had taken that as personal gospel. One wiff of the dragon had been enough to send him in the opposite direction… but his nose is not your nose.

If your nose is directing you towards the Level Five… then Mark supposes that’s your own truth, and maybe he has to respect that.

With all of this in mind, however, Mark still gets annoyed when you show up home from your shift wreaking of dragon. And he hates the way you walk down the street as if you’d taken the bus, as if you hadn’t gotten a ride home.

Mark holds the door open for you to enter your apartment building, and in the elevator, he finally finds his nerve to address the problem. “I really wish you wouldn’t hide things from me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Mark sighs, “if Hyuck drove you home, that’s fine. Next time, just tell him to drop you off where I can see you instead of parking around the corner.”

“Well what if he drops me off out of your sight because he wants to kiss me?”

“Has he kissed you?!” Mark’s hands ball into fists, an innate reaction when it comes to hearing a dragon may have done bits with his sister-

“No,” you confess. “But in the future he might.”

“So you guys are getting serious, huh?” Mark tries to control his breathing.

“I think so.” The elevator is quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry I’ve been lying to you about seeing him.”

Some of the tension in Mark’s shoulders dissipate, and he lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry I put you in a situation where you felt the need to lie… but, with that being said… if Hyuck ever hurts you, I don’t care if I’m a Level One bunny, I’ll kick that dude’s ass.”

“Sure you will, Mark,” you smile fondly at your brother as you leave the elevator.

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are… and if I’m being honest, I don’t think anything ‘bad’ will happen, at least, not the type of things I think you’re expecting. Hyuck seems like a good guy. I don’t think he goes on real dates often, and that has to count for something, right?”

“I guess,” Mark sighs.

“Besides, stranger things have happened.”

“Stranger than a bunny falling for a dragon? Her biggest and most vicious natural predator?”

“Honestly,” you laugh, “the fact that Level Five’s even exist is pretty strange, even in a world full of hybrids.”

Mark can’t argue with you there.

21: Thursday

You definitely know what to expect when you get to Hyuck’s apartment, and the matching bra and pantie set under your dress is proof of it. What you’re not prepared for, however, is the way the dragon keeps his hands off of you even in the elevator.

Sure, his eyes are practically burning a hole into you, but he stays on his side of the lift.

“Hyuck?” you say his name as you step into the entryway of his penthouse.

“Should I give you a tour now?” he asks. “Seeing as we missed doing that last time-”

“I mean…” you play with the hem of your pretty dress, “sure, you can give me a tour.”

“But?” He smirks at you. “It sounds like there’s a but in there somewhere.”

“I was just…” you bite on your lip, “aren’t you going to tell me I’m pretty?”

His eyes visibly darken, and they take their sweet time looking you up and down. “You look good enough to eat, bunny.”

“Then why don’t you?” you ask. “Eat me, I mean. But in a sexy way, not a dragon way.”

Hyuck lets out a shaky breath, and then his hands are reaching for your waist, tugging you tight to his chest. “Is that really what you want?”

“Isn’t it what you want?”

“I need to know you’re not just doing this because you’re a people pleaser,” Hyuck says. “Or because I’m your boss.”

“Actually, I think I’m doing this despite the fact that you’re sort of my boss.”

“Yeah?” He grins, and you practically melt getting an up close and personal look at his pretty, sharp, canines.

“Please, Hyuck-” you ball your hands in the fabric of his crisp white dress shirt, “just kiss me.”

“Bunny,” his hand comes up to cup your cheek, “I thought you’d never ask.”

He’s surprisingly gentle as he presses his lips to your own, and for a moment, you wonder if he’s even a dragon at all. You’d expected him to be rough- as needy as he’d seemed last night. Instead, he’s controlled, thumb stroking your cheek bone while he kisses you with intention.

His tongue swipes past your bottom lip and you stifle a groan, shifting to wrap your arms around the back of his neck while you open your mouth for him.

Hyuck lets out something of a growl, and the sound nearly rattles your bones. It reminds you who you’re dealing with, and you find yourself clinging to him even tighter.

A whimper of pleasure escapes you and that’s all it takes for Hyuck to snap.

In one fluid motion, he reaches down and grabs your bum, lifting you up so your legs wrap around his waist. He’s strong, and you love it.

Nothing has ever felt as good as kissing him does, and you get lost in his lips- so lost, that you hardly even realize he’s carrying you through his home.

You break the kiss to catch your breath, and that’s when you notice he’s taken you to his room. His mouth is hot on your throat while you look around, soaking in the ambiance of his most personal space.

“Your room is nice,” you tell him, but your words come out in moans when he finds your sweet spot and his sharp teeth drag against your skin.

“Nicer with you in it,” comes his quick witted retort, and it makes your panties stick to your core uncomfortably.

“I like it when you praise me,” you whisper as he moves you closer to the bed, laying you down on the silky covers.

“Yeah?” Hyuck looks down at you, breaking your body contact enough for him to tear off his shirt. “My little bunny likes being told what a good girl she is?”

You whimper, eating up each piece of newly exposed skin with your eyes, which drift down-

There’s a bulge in the front of his pants, and it makes your mouth water.

“Hyuck, you’re so big-” you reach out, and you’re almost surprised he doesn’t bat your hand away. He lets you touch him through his pants, throwing his head back to let out a moan that does wonders for your pussy.

“Probably the biggest you’ll ever have,” Hyuck breathes. “Dragon perk.”

His gaze finds you again, and he lets out something between a chuckle and a groan. “Fuck, Bunny- you have such tiny hands-”

“Anything compared to your huge dragon cock would look tiny,” you defend yourself, and it makes Hyuck laugh.

“I can’t believe-” his hips push forward as you trace him, “can’t believe we just kissed for the first time and now you’re going to let me fuck you. I guess the term ‘fucking like bunnies’ came from somewhere, huh?”

You can only whimper in response, too busy oggling his massive cock to think coherent sentences.

“Tell me you want me to fuck you.”

“I want you to fuck me,” you moan.

“Tell me you’re my good little bunny.”

“I’m your perfect little bunny.”

“Yeah, you are-” Hyuck’s hands find his belt. “Take off your dress. I wanna see you.”

“Can’t you take it off of me yourself?” you suggest, and the dragon’s motions stop.

He looks down at you. Then he’s on top of you, pressing you between his hot body and the mattress while his hand wraps around your throat. He applies just enough pressure to make your eyes widen, and he grins. “For a people pleasing little bunny, sometimes you can be a bit of a brat.”

“I just thought you’d want to unwrap your present.”

Hyuck lets out a deep groan, and then he’s kissing you again. His lips are desperate against your own now, and his tongue invades your mouth with newfound fervour.

You tangle your fingers in his pretty hair, and Hyuck grinds down against you, dragging the front of his pants across your panty covered core.

“Mmm-” you whimper. “Hyuck-”

“That’s it, pretty bunny, say my name,” he growls, pressing feverish kisses down to your throat again while he ruts his hips-

“Please, I need you so bad-” You’ve been needing him since that first day you met, and you’re only truly realizing it now. “I’m so wet-”

“Dirty bunny,” Hyuck’s lips continue downward, and he lifts up your dress, exposing your belly for his hot mouth. Then his fingers hook in your panties. “Ask nicely for me to eat you out.”

“Please, Hyuck, I’d be yours forever-”

“You’re already mine,” the Level Five growls, tearing your panties off your body in one rough tug that leaves you gasping. “Dragon’s covet pretty things,” he tells you as he settles down between your thighs, his breath teasing your pussy- “and you, my perfect little bunny, are the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Hyuck-” you whimper desperately, pushing your hips up in the hope it will entice him-

His hands firmly hold you to the bed. “I’ve never needed anything more than I need you,” he presses a kiss to your inner thigh that has you crying out-

He’s so close- so close to giving you what you need-

“Please-”

Red eyes meet yours as he brings his mouth to your pussy, and a squeal of delight erupts out of you.

Your hands reach down to tangle in his hair, looking for an anchor, and to your surprise, Hyuck offers you his own hand, linking his fingers with yours and giving you a gentle squeeze even as he buries his tongue in your wet hole.

“You feel so good,” you praise him, and you’re rewarded by his lips wrapping around your clit.

More cries of pleasure escape you, and with one of his hands still holding you down, there’s nothing you can do but close your eyes and enjoy what he’s giving you.

“Oh my god-” your stomach is twisting into knots faster than you’d ever imagined it could, “I’m gonna cum-”

Hyuck pulls away from your pussy and lets go of your hand, causing you to whine loudly- only for one of his fingers to slip into you.

“Already?” he taunts. “Fuck, you’re so tight, bunny. Hasn’t anyone fucked you properly?”

“No,” you shake your head, “not properly, not like you-”

“You haven’t even had me yet,” he chuckles, and his breath on your pussy makes you twitch.

“I just know-” you insist. “Your so big, so good, gonna stretch me out so good-”

“Listen to you blabber, my cute little blabbering bunny…” He adds a second finger and you whimper loudly. “I guess you can cum.” His lips return to your clit, and the feeling of both his digits and his mouth has you seeing stars.

“Hyuck-” you gasp, body tensing on the precipice of euphoria-

Then it’s slamming into you, and try as you might to buck your hips, Hyuck holds you down through your high. His tongue flicks your clit while you nearly scream with pleasure.

Without his hand to grab onto, you’re left grasping at the sheets, but try as you might, nothing keeps you anchored to earth. You can feel your body ascending to something akin to heaven, and your mind goes completely blank except for the wonderful tingles that jitter through your form.

“That’s it, bunny,” Hyuck’s breath is hot when he pulls away from your clit, but his fingers continue inside your wet core, “look at my pretty girl cumming for me. You’re so perfect-”

“Hyuck-” you’re nearly crying now, on the cusp of beginning to shake from overstimulation-

The dragon lets up, and when he takes his fingers out of your pussy, the smell of you engulfs your senses.

You’re too tired to open your eyes just yet, but you hear Hyuck lick his fingers clean, and he groans. “You taste as good as you look, pretty bunny,” he tells you, “just like I always knew you would.”

If you had the energy, you might ask him how long he’s been thinking about doing this to you- but you can hardly find the words to speak as you attempt to catch your breath.

“Aw, is my bunny crying?” The bed dips as Hyuck settles his hips flush against your own again, an elbow pressing into the bed beside your head while his hand cups your cheek.

“No,” you whisper.

“Liar,” Hyuck chuckles. “Should I fuck you now? Would that make everything better, bunny?”

“Yes, but…” you take a breath, still recovering from the intensity of your orgasm, “you should know… if you ever hurt me, Mark will kick your ass.”

“Not you thinking of your brother right now.”

“I’m serious,” you swallow thickly. “You’ll have like, two bunnies, a bengal cat, a hamster, two dobermans- a whole hoard of people coming to kick your ass-”

“Oh, I’m so scared of a hoard of Level Ones and Threes,” Hyuck laughs, pressing a kiss to your throat. “I promise not to hurt you. Unless you ask me to.”

“Split me open.”

“You got it, bunny.” The dragon sits up again, and he removes both of your clothes faster than you can keep track of. “I tried to stretch you out with my fingers, but… well… it might not have helped much,” he tells you, and you open your eyes to watch him spit on his hand, lubing his cock up.

He’s big. Even bigger now that his pants are off, and part of you wonders how he’s even going to fit inside of you. However, you know he’ll make it fit.

“You ready?” he asks, laying over you again and pressing a gentle kiss to your lips.

You can feel his cock throbbing on your thigh, and another gush of wetness between your legs makes you nod enthusiastically. “Please-”

He wraps one hand around the base of his cock, guiding the head to your hole- you gasp at the feeling of the intrusion as he slowly pushes into you.

“Oh my god-” you wrap your arms around the back of his neck, eagerly seeking out his lips as some form of distraction-

You know it will feel good once he’s inside of you properly, once he starts to thrust-

“That’s it,” Hyuck groans against your mouth, “Good bunny-”

“You’re so big-”

“I know,” he assures you, “and you’re taking me so well-”

His praise definitely makes you relax, and he slips deeper and deeper into your core until his hips are flush with your own. You both let out groans of pleasure, and Hyuck breaks your kiss. “I’m gonna fuck you now,” he tells you. “Be my perfect little bunny and let me know when you’re going to cum.”

You love how certain he is that you’ll reach your high again. A few of your past lovers had missed the mark completely, but Hyuck doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who misses.

He certainly doesn’t miss your gspot, his cock dragging against it with each thrust-

You can feel your pussy squeezing him, can feel your toes curling with pleasure as he finds an increasingly rough pace.

“Fuck-” Hyuck groans, lacing his fingers with yours and pinning you to the bed while his lips press kisses along your throat. “You feel amazing-”

You’re pretty sure he’s the one who feels amazing- any hole would be tight around a cock like his, you’re just glad you get to be his hole tonight- and hopefully something more afterward.

“And listen to your pretty whimpers-” the dragon hybrid fucking you moans loudly. “You sound so fucking good for me, who’s my perfect bunny?”

“I am!”

“And who loves this big cock stretching out her tight fucking pussy?”

“I do!” You’re nearly crying again. “Hyuck, I’m gonna cum- I’m gonna cum so hard- please-”

“Hold it for me, bunny,” he gasps against your neck. “If you cum, I’ll cum, and I’m not quite done with you yet.”

You squeeze his fingers, focusing all your strength on holding off the orgasm that’s beginning to tingle up your toes-

“So tight, so warm, so good for me-” Hyuck groans again.

“Please-” you feel a tear slip down your cheek. “I can’t hold it- I need to cum- need to cum so badly- please, Hyuck-”

“Fuck, I love it when you beg-” The dragon fucks you even harder, and you know that there’s no way you’ll be able to hold off your orgasm now- “You can cum. Cum for me. Come on bunny, cum on this cock.”

“Hyuck!” His name feels like a prayer, tumbling our of your lips as your orgasm takes over your body. If you’d thought the first one had been heavenly euphoria, you don’t even know how to describe this high.

It’s pure ecstasy, all encompassing and white hot. It sends electric tingles of pleasure up and down your form, making you cry out, muscles tensing as literal contractions wrack your body-

“Fuck-” Hyuck lets out a low groan, and then he’s cumming inside of you, filling you up with everything he’s worth- there’s no fear of you getting pregnant, as cross species hybrids can’t mix, so you’re left to simply enjoy the feeling.

The sounds he makes are music to your ears too, and you swear you could listen to him cum all day long-

He works you through your high, squeezing your hands as his pace begins to slow. When you’re both done, he presses his mouth to yours, kissing you while you both gasp and struggle to catch your breaths.

“You’re so good-” he tells you. “So good for me, bunny-”

You’ve never felt this good in your entire life, and when Hyuck releases your hands, you wrap your arms around the back of his neck, holding him close. You can feel his heart thundering in his chest, and his smell engulfs you. It’s comforting in a way-

He might be a big scary Level Five dragon hybrid, but he’s your big scary Level Five dragon hybrid.

You feel safe with him, like you’ve never felt safe with anyone in your entire life.

“It’s cute,” Hyuck sighs, “what you said about your hoard of friends earlier.”

“Cute?” you echo, opening your eyes to blink up at your new lover.

“If it makes anyone feel safer about this situation, I could work on getting to know them better.”

You can’t believe he’s offering this, while still buried balls deep in your pussy. A laugh bubbles out of you, and you find yourself nodding. “I think I’d like that.”

Hyuck grins down at you, pressing a kiss to the tip of your nose, and when he looks at you, there’s nothing but adoration in his pretty caramel-coloured eyes. “Anything for my Little Bunny.”

And you can tell that he means it.

☀️ mlist + an. thank you for reading! I really liked making this au and the hybrid world that came out of it, although I will note that Dragon Hyuck was a self-indulgent fantasy - read the bear!Johnny spin-off here

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🔮 preview. “I can feel how wet you are through your panties, bunny,” Hyuck groans against your neck. “I didn’t know you were such a little whore for exhibitionism… letting me fuck you at your workplace. What a dirty girl you are.”

cw/ tw. exhibitionism/sex in her workplace, unprotected sex, mirror sex, dirty talk, praise, jealous/possessive hyuck, sexy dragon wings, big dragon dick Hyuck, fingering, multiple orgasms, begging, finger licking, mentions of being ‘full/filled’, choking, etc…

👹 rating. 18+ explicit I wc. 5.1k I teaser wc. 600

🌙 staring.Haechan x afab!reader

bonus

When you’d started seeing Hyuck, you’d thought you’d have the end of unwanted attention while working. Surely his outburst with the champagne bottle and the tiger hybrid was enough of a warning to others, and if not that, then his predatory scent marking you as taken should ward off other would-be suitors-

But nothing, as it seems, is ever enough to keep a Level Four away from a little bunny.

A particularly proud lion hybrid has been trying to capture your attention for over an hour, and you can feel Hyuck’s eyes burning into the back of your head from VIP. Yet, your dragon lover stays with his friends, and you wonder if he’s given the lion grace because the man has kept his hands to himself.

“I dont want another scene,” Doyoung says when you head to the bar to fill a drink order. His gaze is aimed towards VIP, and you think he must be in one of his staring matches with your boyfriend, they do this much too often.

“I’ll try not to make one then,” you promise, “but I can’t help it if the lion decides to test his luck.”

The raven looks at you with a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Which is why I’m sending you to the keg room on an errand. The Guinness needs to be refilled, think you can handle that?”

While Jungwoo had shown you how the keg room in the basement worked when you first got hired, you’ve never been asked to do it yourself. You turn to look at your manager with confusion. “Aren’t the kegs really heavy?”

“Take Jeno with you,” comes his quick response. “I just need you off the floor for a bit. That lion who’s been flirting with you is getting drunk enough for me to cut him off. I’ll go settle his tab and when you come back up, he should be gone, if he knows what’s good for him.”

While Doyoung is quite thin and birdlike in appearance, he’s still a Level Three predator, and you sometimes forget that the raven can hold his own. He’s a manager for a reason, after all, and you respect when he makes decisions like this.

“I’ll go grab Jeno and get that keg fixed for you then,” you agree with a nod.

“Take your time.” Doyoung assesses the tray of drinks that his Persian hybrid bartender has just set in front of you. “I’ll get Jaemin to take these out for you while you’re away.”

With another quick head motion of agreement, you dart off to find Jeno.

The doberman is never that difficult to locate, and tonight you find him monitoring the steps to VIP. The club is packed on a Saturday night, and despite red ropes keeping unsuspecting partygoers away from Hyuck and his friends, the crowd has been encroaching on the sanctity of VIP for over an hour.

“Hey!” you say, raising your voice so your friend can hear you over the loud house music blasting through the speakers. Jeno leans in and you steady your hand on his shoulder so you can relay the information in his ear, “Doyoung wanted us to go deal with a keg!”

Jeno gives you a quick nod, and then he’s pushing through the swarm of people. Before you follow, your gaze shift up to VIP, and you notice Hyuck has stood from his table. His red, dragon eyes are fixed on you, and he looks to be on high alert. When you send him a smile, his shoulders relax ever so slightly, and then you’re turning to race after the doberman hybrid.

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