innjeong

You weren’t born the smartest, in deep contrast to your boyfriend, Jisung, who’s the top of his class.

Dating a genius came with a price, and that is your conscience taking a toll. You were pretty, popular, however a bit ditzy. A tiny bit. A tiny lot. Eventually, as a dutiful boyfriend—Jisung decided to help you. Well, tried to.

Nothing worked, no matter how hard or efficient his method was. A real challenge to actually get you to sit still and study. All your papers come out wrong, sighing whenever he needs to correct them. Yet, he tries. Because he loves you too much. He loves the silly dumb expression you make whenever he points out your mistakes, the slight pout of your lips, the curve of your brows forming a frown. He adores it. But you have your finals soon, and he needs you to pass.

So. He decided to set up his game. His plan was simple.

First, he’ll mask the study sessions as ways to spend time together. Calling you over to his dorm in the guise of a sleepover. Dragging the strap of your bag off your shoulders as you make it inside of his dormitory, urging you to his bedroom. “Hm, baby.” he calls, acknowledging the confused blink you give him. “Brought your laptop?”

You nod, beaming. “To play games? You promised to,” replying with such eagerness, he almost feels bad for lying.

“Yeah, totally.”

It did start as a gaming session.

Which he turned into a game of guessing, creating a whole discourse. Therefore, explaining the situation, in which you were doing the research your professor assigned a week ago, just to be able to prove him wrong after he particularly pissed you off. Completely unaware that you were given such tasks. Noting down the information as he played dumb, refusing to give you the right answer—to the point of brimming tears to your eyes, knowing damn well he wasn’t. That he was playing with you.

Second, he’ll set the atmosphere whenever you show efforts to study. Casting a dim lampshade by your desk, comfortable, easy to focus. Unfortunately, you always have something to say, “Sungie, this is making me sleepy. Are you sure that’s necessary?” you whine, slapping your pen on the wooden surface with a click. Laying your hunched face on your arms in defeat as you yawn.

He pats you on the head, a gentle caress. “That’s because you aren’t paying attention. Do I need to raise the brightness, want to go blind baby?”

You shake your head, heaving upwards. “No.”

He smiles, pecking your lips adoringly.

Here it was.

The third step.

Each time that you get something right, or decide to study on your own. He’ll reward you with a kiss. It starts off as innocent, a smooch here and then. Soft lips finding your cheek, forehead, lips.Which undeniably escalated as time went on, and you started craving more. Salivating for more. Your grades tilted upwards, a small insignificant upgrade. But it was still progressing. A minuscule step is gigantic for an ant. Though, time was ticking, and there were little to no hopes of you achieving that grade. He raises the bar, making the stakes higher. The rewards become more satisfying for your poor–dippy brain to understand. Something that you’d get lots easier, the simplest route being the one of your body.

“Baby focus,” he hushes, fingers deep inside your squelching cunt. You’re shaking, probably begging him to let you cum, you can’t tell. “I’ll ask you again, hm?” curling his digits so sweetly, hitting that vulnerable part of you. You mumble a ‘no’, gripping his wrist but he pays you no mind, resulting in his session. “How does feedback inhibition regulate metabolic pathways? Use an example like threonine deaminase in amino acid synthesis.”

This is torture. He’s torturing you.

It’s the third time he’s asking you this question, and the third time you’re about to get it wrong. Edging you on each incorrect answer. “—Jisung… please.”

His fingers slow, stilling them within the embrace of your snug walls. “That’s not the answer,” he coos, nuzzling his face on your shoulder, eyes meeting your nearly-closed ones. “Come on, I know you’ve got the answer.” Smiling, he takes his ministrations out of your throbbing core, coaxing a whimper of disapproval from your throat, but it quickly fades when he uses the same hand to draw your jaw open. “Is it on the tip of your tongue?” he asks, bringing the coated digit inside your mouth, playing with the muscle of your tongue. “Hint?”

Nodding, you taste yourself on him. Tasting like something you shouldn’t be doing in this context, but the lack of him inside has you sobbing, so close to the edge—only to get snatched away. Again.

“Okay, picture this.” he says. You can’t, his absence is all you can muster. He flicks the surface of your forehead, flickering your lashes open. Giggling lightly. “Think about what happens when there’s too much of the final thing the cell is making. Does the cell keep going forever, or does it have a way to stop it?”

There’s a second of silence, hesitation sinks it. Trying your best, it’s so cute. You’re so cute, he just wants to give you everything you want. To have your already stupid expression fucked out on his cock, tongue, fingers. Anything he can gift you with.

“I don’t know, Jisung.” it comes off as tired, sighing in a pout. "The enzymes just keep working until the cell runs out of energy—?”

He returns your sigh, his proximity fading as he sits back on your bed, earning a soft whine of disapproval from you. From the lack of warmth provided. He picks his notebook, writing in the question with a roll of ink. “Fine, you don’t know. I’ll just go back to my dorm then.”

“Wait—no!” you reach for him but he’s already on the verge of packing. Panic seers, not wanting him gone yet. You ruminate, the hardest you can. The answer is there—barely able to remember it. He stands and you tug on his sleeve, “Jisung wait— the end product, it binds with something,” knuckles tightening on the fabric of his shirt, eyes begging him to stay.

“On what?”

All… allestric… “Allosteric site!”

“And why?”

“To uhm, inhibit it to prevent production—overproduction?” you’re unsure, but his smile coils something in your stomach, growing you hopeful.

“Kiss?” he asks, you shake your head. Grabbing his wrist, pulling his hand back where you need him the most.

“More,” it’s a plea, and he indulges. Pushing you back on the bed as he climbs on top of your figure, palm resting on the flesh of your thighs.

“That brain of yours can really only muster a thought when given attention, hm?” giving you a gentle squeeze when you pout, gaze trailing to where your fingers tighten on his wrist, begging him to give in already. “You want it so bad baby… did biology make you this wet?”

“Don’t be mean,” you swallow in a hitch, chest heaving under him.

Grinning, Jisung brings his lips to the corner of your mouth, a gentle contact. “‘M sorry, so proud of you.” he praises, finally running his knuckles across the hood of your clit, applying little to no pressure. Not enough, but just enough to rip the faintest gasp out of you. “Smart girls deserve big prizes, you think?”

“Yes—yes, please, Sungie.” your whine melts him, ice to the morning sun. Hot mouth leaves open kisses to the side of your jaw, driving low to your neck. Hiking your tank top up, spilling out your tits for him to latch on. He had insisted that you wear no bra today, perhaps you hadn’t caught on to his perverse intentions. He assumes you’re still oblivious, a saint to your eyes, even when he’s being so mean. Lips wrap around the swell of your nipple, an obscene suck, he moans as if he was the one being rewarded for your right answer.

He is.

Glasses tilting over his frame when you nearly knock them off his face in an attempt to push him away—pull him closer. Can’t decide. Can’t think. He presses two fingers on your slit, lubing them properly before moving to your clit, thighs jolt close, but he holds them wide. Laying between your thighs, his erection rubs on the bed, a shiver of dull pleasure coursing through. He wishes he could bury himself in that nasty cunt of yours already, but he has other plans in mind when he pampers your thighs with subtle kisses. Teasing. You sob, and he pities. Licking a stripe off the spilling juices at last, hips jerking forward. The first lap is patient, because he’s trying to be. It doesn’t last long when he catches on your taste, your smell, the sound of your reactions. Both up there and down here. Losing the virtue as soon as it came when he lets out a delirious whimper when you tug on his hair, nails brushing his scalp to escape the inviting sensation.

He spreads your folds apart with his fingers, tongue probing at your clit, encircling it. Heels dig onto the mattress, too sensitive after his teasings. Puffing out a breath of cool air, smile smug when you keen towards it. He inches downwards, nose rubbing on your nub deliciously, sending a wave of pleasure across your nerves. “God, yn. Baby, tastes so good. Tastes like mine.” he’s whining, middle finger breaching you open. Your stomach flex, contracting under the coiling knot returning from his earlier torments. He adds another when he deems necessary, curling them into your sweetest spot. You crumble, drawing embarrassingly close fast. “Hold it in, a little longer.” he demands, his own voice coming off as hitched. The spectacles of his glasses fogging under the searing tension.

“Can’t—” you breathe out, and he adds to the fire. Spitting on your aching cunt with a hum, watching the glob of saliva drool past your lips to the pumps of his fingers. He licks at the liquid, the wet sounds getting louder with every movement of his muscle. Thighs quivering under him, but he doesn’t care. He riles in it, humping the mattress in a hope of satisfying the pain of his hard cock. Parting his fingers, he lets his tongue slide in along with them. The pace of them’s so different. Too different—body confused on how to react with every shiver snapping through. He moans, each noise vibrating at your core. You can’t.

“Jisung—fuck,” cursing, thighs pleading to suffocate him, he loves it. Giving you the chance to block his airflow, to bury himself inside your seeping cunt and perish from suffocation. His choked moan tilts you over the edge, guts wrenching as you come around him. Clenching impossibly onto his adoration, wetting his chin with your overflow. He’s unrelenting, adamant on sucking the liquid out of you. Every single drop. Making it out when your cries turn louder, landing one last kiss onto the hood of your overstimulated clit.

Y/N had always wanted to be in a pack. 

She had never thought much about it, but it was just something that she knew she wanted. Something that, when they learned about them in school, she was bummed they were recognized as a necessity of the past and no longer an evolutionary requirement. Y/N remembered, even in her school-aged days, thinking about how nice it would be to just have a group of people to cuddle, kiss, and love. She always had so much love to give in her heart, barely able to bottle it sometimes -- it felt like it would be too much for one person. 

And sometimes it was. She could be clingy and needy, but she knew people didn't like that, so she reeled it in the best she could. Alpha partners she's had in the past always praised her for her independence, so she thought that's what they wanted from her. To not need the constant scenting and the cuddling, even if a knotting didn't precede it. Y/N would like to come home and curl in someone's lap and scent them until they melt into each other in such a way that you wouldn't be able to tell where she ended and they began. She would like to nest with their clothes outside of her heat without it being weird. She'd want to be a little whiny and have them placate her with kisses and coos about how she's cute. 

With omegas, that was easier. Y/N had casually dated a couple of omegas before, but they always ended up breaking things off, usually when the other person realized how much they missed being knotted. Which. . .well, that sucked. Especially because with omegas, constant scenting and snuggling were sort of a given; finding comfort in each other and understanding the hormonal shifts and instinctual needs was nice. Y/N didn't feel like she was as much of a bother with omegas as she felt like she could be with alphas, if she expressed all that she wanted all of the time. 

Beta partners were somewhere in the middle for her. They were always very sweet and calming, but she was still too worried about being too much that she almost accidentally always made it seem like she didn't like them at all. It was frustrating, because most of the time she liked them too much, which was precisely why she was trying to be "normal". Y/N had only two long-ish term relationships with betas, and both times it didn't work out, Y/N couldn't help but feel like she was the problem.

It was a heavy load on her shoulders, though. To be in a pack would be so nice; if there was something she couldn't give to one person, it'd be quite easy for them to find it in another without her feelings getting hurt. And if there was something she needed, she'd have a couple of avenues to obtain it without making someone else uncomfortable having to put up with her. Sometimes she thought maybe she was being selfish, wanting to have her cake and eat it too, but it was just a fantasy is all. A maladaptive daydream that got her through hard times. 

And then she met Felix. 

Felix used to just be the sweet, omega customer who always seemed to come around when she was the manager on duty at work, and they were drowning. He smelled so sweet, all the time, free of his scent patch and with a pretty smile on his mouth. He ordered the same strawberry smoothie and raspberry muffin every time he came in during the morning rush. Y/N, no matter how overwhelmed and busy they were, always made time to ask how his day was and drew his name with a silly little cat on the plastic cup. She warmed his muffin too, just because, and he'd always wish her well in a very deep voice that rarely matched his appearance. 

That's all he'd been for a while -- just her favorite pretty customer that she liked to daydream about. Y/N thinks it'd be fun to date Felix, because he wears pretty clothes and he's sweet, and whenever she asks what his plans were for the day, it always seemed like something fun. In a couple of her daydreams, she would ask him what he was doing after she got off shift, and he would say he's free, then Y/N would suggest something super casual like staring longingly into each other's eyes during a walk in the park. And then he'd fall in love with her, ask her to be his girlfriend, and they'd scent and cuddle and melt into one being or something, she doesn't know -- it was just another fantasy. 

But then one day, she's literally having the worst shift ever. One of her coworkers was on vacation, and the other called in because her cat ate a hair tie and needed to go to the vet. Which left Y/N alone to deal with the morning rush, and of course, it was a Monday, so every person in the city decided they needed coffee from this shop in particular. It didn't help that they were in the business district, which is good for business, but bad for break times if you wanted one. So her feet were aching, her upper back hurt, she reeked of the espresso she accidentally got all over her apron, and she burned her hand on the oven when she was warming a sandwich. It didn't help that she'd not slept much the night before, and her weird situationship had officially called it off randomly at 4 AM because he met a cute omega who was really into scenting and cuddling and needed him the way he wanted to be needed (which Y/N could have done too, if she wasn't so busy trying to not be herself and seem nonchalant, but he was sort of a dick anyway). 

Really, it was a bad day all around. When the morning rush had finally settled, and Y/N was holding her face in her hands with her elbows resting on the counter -- the doorbell chimed again. She hadn't even bothered looking up while she attempted to steel herself before she took a deep breath, so she didn't cry as soon as someone gave her their complicated coffee order. 

But then a deep, but caring and soft voice said, "Y/N? Are you okay?" 

She looked up to see Felix, but he wasn't alone. To his left was another man who looked like he'd stepped out of a magazine page and into her cafe. His hair was ginger at the time, but she could tell it was dyed and mussy atop his head in a fashionable way. Y/N hated that she was meeting Felix's hot, sexy alpha friend when she probably looked seconds away from morphing into a coffee bean, but she still mustered her best smile. 

"Oh, hi Felix," she cleared her throat, then willed her voice not to wobble, "Um, it's just been sort of a horrible shift so far." And Felix, who always smells like jasmine and the wind in spring, oozes the most comforting scent. It took her a second to realize he was doing it to calm her down -- she realized she probably must stink, with how stressed she was, but he didn't even wrinkle his nose when he walked in. His friend was looking at her with a small, empathetic pout, but he had a patch on his neck that covered his scent entirely. His glasses slid to the tip of his nose, but he pressed them back up, "Hi, Felix's friend. What would you guys like to drink?" 

Felix placed a hand on the man's shoulder, squeezing a little, "Why don't you come sit down, hm?"

"Oh, but I should really clean out the machine since there's some downtime," she motioned toward the back, "I'm the only one here, so --" 

"Just for a little?" 

So Y/N did sit with them. She found out that the guy with Felix is named Jeongin, and actually, they were dating. It was a blow that snuffed out every daydream Y/N had about dating Felix and skipping along their omega merry way -- like a cigarette under the toe of a boot. She sort of wanted to cry about it, but she thinks that was more so a product of the day she'd been having, and this just piled on top of it. Honestly, she always knew she didn't stand a chance with Felix; he was out of her league and too good to be true. There was no way it would have surpassed fantasy status. 

However, when Y/N asked him when he and Jeongin met and how long they'd been together, he said, "Oh, for a while now -- like, 7 or 8 years? That's when we started the pack at least." 

She paused, blinked at them a couple of times as the sentence processed in her brain. 

"You're a part of a pack?" She repeated, and Felix nodded, grinning. 

Felix spoke with his hands a lot, but he grabbed his phone like he meant to show her a photo of them all. "I know it's not super common anymore, but yeah -- I think packs get a lot of flak for being some old age, primal arrangement, but it's actually super fulfilling and really lovely, so --" 

"Yongbokkie," Jeongin spoke -- he didn't speak a lot, but from what he had said, Y/N thought his voice was pretty. She knew that he hadn't grown up in Seoul, though, and his slight lisp was really cute, "You're making her cry." 

And Y/N felt bad, that when Felix looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. His face warped into that of pure distress as Y/N shook her head, covering her face, "No! No, I'm okay, I'm sorry," her voice warbled, "You're in a pack? That's so amazing! I think that's so beautiful, I've always wanted to be in one myself, haha, they should be more common?" 

The sound of a chair scooting against the floor was loud, scraping an echo that bounced off the sides of her skull. Her head hurt that day, too, she remembered, and her stomach grumbled at the same time as everything else. She just wanted to crawl into her nest and bury herself in blankets until the day washed away. It was all so embarrassing; Felix probably should have grabbed Jeongin's hand and run the hell out of there before she could do anything else humiliating. 

But he doesn't. Instead, he plopped down in the chair beside her and drew her into a hug. It was the sort of hug that you give a friend you've known for a long time, not your barista that you're familiar with, but Y/N melted into it all the same. He smelled so good, and his hand was delicate and gentle against the back of her neck, where he petted her carefully. He squeezed her, "When's the last time you ate, Sweetheart?" 

She sniffled, her voice muffled against his chest, "I -- um. . .Well, I had half a bagel around 6, but then I dropped the rest on the way here." 

Y/N could hear the pout in Felix's voice, "That was 6 hours ago, and not nearly enough," he clicked his tongue, "I bet you haven't been drinking any water either. Innie used to work in a cafe, so he knows how to use the little oven, yeah? He's flipping the sign to ‘closed’, and he's going to warm you something. You need a proper break." 

If that was what it was even remotely like to be in a pack, Y/N understood the appeal even more than she had before. Felix wiped away her tears and spoke to her gently, and Jeongin did somehow work very diligently in warming her one of their sandwiches. They were very nice to her, and after she ate something and took a few pain pills from Jeongin's stash in his bag ("They tease me about being a walking pharmacy, but everyone's really grateful when they need something."), she felt a lot better. 

"Thank you," she remembered saying before they left, "I really appreciate all of this so much, and I'm so humiliated I kind of want to espresso myself." 

Felix squeezed her thigh, still pumping out all these comforting pheromones to set her back at ease, "Don't worry about any of it," he told her, "I'll be back tomorrow for my usual, okay?" 

After that, Felix would either come by himself or bring a different packmate each time, slowly introducing Y/N to all of them. She wasn't sure what he was doing apart from just going on mini dates with his boyfriends. It did sort of seem like he was plotting something, but she couldn't put a finger on what and couldn't explain why it felt that way, so she ignored it. All of his packmates were very sweet, and if they were able to talk for a couple of minutes, she understood why Felix loved them all so much. They were funny and silly, and all of them were so pretty it was almost annoying. 

He had introduced her to everyone but Chan, who Y/N understood to be the pack alpha. The opportunity to meet him came in an invitation; one afternoon, Felix told Y/N they were having their first barbecue of the summer season the following Saturday and that she was welcome to come. 

Y/N had felt a little hesitant at first. "Would that be okay?" She remembered asking, twisting the strings of her apron around her index and middle fingers. Felix had come alone again to propose this. If she didn't know any better, then she'd think he'd done it for her benefit, so that she wouldn't feel pressured by two people staring at her waiting for an answer. But that would be giving herself a little too much self-importance, she thought, probably. Hell, what if they don't even know that he was inviting her? Felix probably just saw her as this sad little stray on the side of the road with no pack and no prospects, and wanted to feed her -- get her out of the storm, fluff her up, then take her to a shelter. "Like. . .to come to your home? That's okay?" 

Felix tilted his head, "Of course," he replied, "Why wouldn't it be?" 

She remembered shrugging, "I -- oh, I don't know. I just thought pack houses were sacred or something." 

He scrunched his nose, "Yeah, it might have been sacred before Jisung's hole-y underwear entered it," he giggled, "We want you there! Everyone likes you, you know? And I'd love to hang out with you for longer than a lunch break or a chat in between you making lattes. If you're interested, at least." 

Of course Y/N was interested! She had tried to map out what their house looked like 1000 times, so to actually get the offer -- she would've been stupid to turn it down. 

So she agreed, and she went, and she meant Chan the first time and just about drooled. She'd never met a pack alpha before, and even in the first couple of minutes, she understood why he was. Could see why they all trusted him wholeheartedly, why they chose him as their leader. He smells good, like the sort of breeze you only smell when you're close to the ocean. He's not super tall, but his presence alone makes it feel like he's looming over them at 10 feet. And he walked like his knot was fat too, so like. . .yeah, Y/N was a little bewitched. 

Plus, he was nice. He was soft when he spoke to her and gentle. His hair was soft and pretty, long like Felix's at the time. He was mostly tied up with grilling when she was there, but she saw him interact with his pack members throughout the night. How he acted cute for them, how he would sort of whine and bleat for attention every so often. It was fun to see that he wasn't some intense, silent, brooding presence. 

They were really welcoming. Felix stayed by her side that whole night, and Minho silently piled her plate with plenty of food (and Y/N thought it was cute how his ears went red when she went back for seconds of the kimchi-jjigae and told them how delicious it was). She shared a relatively big piece of meat with Felix and tried the pepper that Hyunjin offered right off his kabob skewer (she found out very early how much Hyunjin loved omegas, and how willing he was to share anything and everything). Changbin praised her for eating so well, then went on a spiel about protein and carbs and some fitness stuff that went right over her head, and Jeongin called her noona right away, hiding behind her in the pool when Changbin and Jisung were chasing after him, splashing. Jisung pouted when she was braiding shells into Felix's hair (he had a whole pack of them), until she gave him a tiny braid with a shell close to the front of his head. Seungmin was silly, and they locked eyes when he was cheating in whatever water game they were playing, so he put a finger up to his lips, and Y/N nodded, agreeing not to say anything. 

And toward the end of the night, when the sun was starting to set, and Chan was dripping water from his hair, he plopped down in the spot beside her on the edge of the pool. "Felix has told us loadssss about you," he told her, and Y/N was practicing an absurd amount of self-restraint not to look at his bare chest, "I'm sorry I was never able to make it to the cafe and meet you properly. Everyone kept saying how nice you were, though, so I'm glad you could come today." 

"Oh, that's -- yes! Thank you for having me," she motioned around, "Your home is really beautiful. And the food was very good, I don't think I've eaten this well since I moved out." 

Chan chuckled, and it was warm, and bright, and wow -- was a requirement to be in the pack to have pretty, plush lips or what? "Well, you're welcome to come over any time you want. It's good to have a little estrogen in this house now and then," he waved his hand at all of the men in the pool, splashing around, "It's sort of a cock fest." 

Y/N laughed, and at the sound of it, Felix came swimming over underwater, appearing suddenly at her feet, "What's so funny?" He asks, eyes still closed but tilted in her direction. His small hand grabs her calf and squeezes. Jisung comes too, on his orange slice floaty, bouncing off the edge of the pool. 

"Yeah, you haven't laughed like that for me all night, and I know for a fact I'm funnier than Channie." 

Chan's response was to jump into the pool and take Jisung with him, splashing into the water, and Y/N squealed a little with Felix, who twisted to look up at her from the pool. His hands gripped the edge, and his chin rested on the side of it. They'd been in the sun all day, so his freckles were even more prominent than they usually are, blinking up with her with a gaze so big and brown she understood every meme she'd seen about people having boba eyes. 

"You're having fun?" He inquired, smiling up at her, and even if she wasn't, she would have lied. But thankfully, there had been no need to -- Y/N was having a lot of fun, actually. 

"Yes," she agreed, "A lot! I think I'll probably sleep really well tonight." 

Felix grinned even wider, pressed his face into her damp calf, and held her ankle, "Yay," he cheered, "You'll have to come over all of the time then." 

And he really meant it. Felix invited her to everything, and then, when the others got her number, they started inviting her places too. It's how she ended up in Osaka with Jisung, in this whole, huge predicament where he started his heat during a convention (they both watched the same show, and Minho, who would have gone with him, had already agreed to house sit for a relative, so he couldn't). Y/N had smelled it on him as soon as he peeled his scent patch off the first day. He had been fussing, whining, had one single shirt that Y/N recognized as Felix's (but now she wasn't sure because they all share their clothes), and she had realized that was his nest. 

(Y/N remembered being pretty nervous, because she'd never helped someone through a heat before, especially someone who was mated. Honestly, she didn't even know if she was allowed in his "nest" at first, until she'd very gently, tentatively said, "Jisungie? Can I put some cold cloths on your head?" and he grumbled, kicking his feet, saying, "Why aren't you in here cuddling me? Do you hate me? If you do just say it!") 

After that, Y/N thinks she'd solidified her spot as a permanent friend. She'd only had Jisung alone for a day before Chan and Hyunjin got there, and he was still early enough in his heat that he didn't need her to get him off or anything. But she'd been prepared to help in all ways that she could. They were all very grateful to her for looking after him, and when being in such close quarters with another omega in heat, inevitably threw her into hers a couple of weeks early -- well, they told her to let them know if she needed anything. 

Y/N had kept it a secret, how hard her heats were. She wasn't in the business of being a burden or a bother, especially when she knew they were all so busy. The last thing any of them needed was some random, unmated omega complaining about how horrible it was to go through her heat alone. How her cramps were debilitating, enough to have her doubled over and unable to move for hours. How her fevers reached such high temperatures that it was getting borderline dangerous, if she didn't sit in a cool bath to try and bring it down. How she wouldn't be able to get out of bed, trembling even to grab the water and protein bars she placed on her nightstand for easy access. How, no matter how many times she rode her knotting dildo, or used a vibrator, or even just her hand, it was never satisfying and nowhere near enough to satiate her desires. 

It sucked, but she was used to it at that point. Her heats had always been horrible, starting from her very first, so she went to the doctor's regularly for check-ups. So there was a clear history of when they started getting worse, the longer she went unmated, with only a few dips in severity if she was in a relationship. Even then, no matter omega or alpha or beta, Y/N's heats were intense. Being knotted and/or scented by one person just didn't cut it. 

So when her doctor said she should try one with a pack. . .well, it made sense. It all made so much sense, even though it was scary, and exciting, and nerve-racking. Maybe it was something written down to the very sequence of codes that made her DNA. Perhaps that's why she'd always wanted to be in a pack so badly, not just a want, but actually a need of some kind. She needed a pack. Her body needed it, her mind needed it. 

But there weren't just hundreds of packs looking to add someone on a rainy day. And as soon as her doctor had suggested it, Felix's face popped into her head immediately. Felix and his sweet smile, in their big nesting room that he'd shown her once while taking her through the house on a tour. The big, nice nest, with all his mates, and all of them welcoming her inside of it, and scenting her, and holding her, and... her eyes did tear up some, yeah. Could you blame her? That seemed so nice! There was no way she could ask, though. . .no way she could impose that on all of them. She would just need to stick it out like she always did, suffer through it, and come out on the other end hopefully. 

The days come and go, and the threat of her heat is making her stomach turn all the time. It would be a bad one, she could sense it already, and it was when a violent set of cramps tore her from bed one morning that she decided that she needed to call. It would be nice to at least see. And if they said no, then she wouldn't spend the whole time wondering if it could have happened. She knew, though, that she couldn't call Felix, because Felix would say yes in an instant -- he wouldn't even really think about it, and probably wouldn't consider how anyone else felt on the matter. She needed to ask the person she knew would look at it from an objective view. . .one that would see the whole picture, rather than just seeing their friend in pain. 

So she called Chan. She stumbled through the request, and she waited very patiently for him to discuss it with his pack mates. She'd prepared herself, with an aching belly, to hear something along the lines of 'We're sorry, but that just doesn't really work for us, we only accept pack members mating cycles and adding you would kind of be a bother', pacing back and forth, gnawing at her bottom lip, pulling at her upper one, feeling her eyes bead with tears on and off. Y/N was scared. She really didn't know what she would do if they said no. 

"We discussed it, and yeah, you can spend it with us." 

And wow! How exciting! Y/N packed with such a skip in her step, her cramps didn't even matter anymore. She'd get to go over, and they'd treat her like a pack member, probably, at least a little bit, and even if she couldn't go into the nesting room, she would be happy just to be around all of their scents. Maybe they'd let her nest in the guest room or something. Or maybe Felix's room? He'd sent her a message that night promising her that he would take care of her no matter what during her heat. That he'd already called off work, so there would always be someone in the house regardless. She was nervous, because these were her friends and they were about to see her in not her best state, but still excited. Y/N knew they'd take care of her well, whether they wanted to be intimate with her or not. 

All of that led her here. She was snuggled into Jeongin's side with his arm wrapped around her shoulders, holding her close. His glasses were at the tip of his nose while he scrolled through his socials, and she could tell he was pumping out more of his scent for her. Felix and Hyunjin had both left the nest -- Hyunjin to shower, she thinks, and Felix to eat? Or maybe he was showering too. She isn't sure -- they'd been showering together the last few days, so she didn't know if he was planning on keeping that up or not. Y/N would understand if he wanted to get clean, though; she'd had them in bed all morning. She'd lost track of how many times they'd made her cum, how much slick she'd gotten on them, how much she sweated. Hyunjin was sweaty too, almost like he was in heat, but she knew that his baseline was pretty sweaty (and he still always smells so good, which is unfair). 

Her waves of heat are very irregular, and they always have been. Her peaks and valleys were all over the place, and she thinks everything is a little more hectic, considering she's being taken care of so well. She doesn't feel as out of her mind as she usually does, though, but on the first official day, she is never really as foggy. Her second day is when her brain is more full of cotton. 

Right now, she is good, though. Jeongin is nice to be pressed against, and he didn't seem to mind that she was probably hot to the touch. Did she smell good to him? She worried that she wouldn't. Y/N actually didn't know what everyone thought about her scent, since she'd been so preoccupied with theirs. Like right now, she's worried about her own, but she's absolutely drowning in Jeongin's. It's like when she worked at a bakery a couple of years ago, how it used to smell in the mornings when the bread would come out of the oven. She liked working mornings for that reason (and because evening time is when the boss liked to work. At the time, she didn't know, but soon figured out he was using the bakery as a cover-up for a whole drug thing. . .it was sort of crazy.). 

She absently pawed at his shirt, and he understood what she wanted. Silently, he raised the hem of it, and Y/N scooted down his body. It was nice, getting up under their shirts. It's something she's always done with the people she felt safest with. She tried once with a boyfriend three years ago, and he sort of made fun of her for it, so she hadn't tried again since. None of Felix's pack made her feel weird about it. Honestly, they sort of encouraged it, especially when it made her purr. 

Jeongin giggles when she does start to purr, unbeknownst to her at first. She can't make herself purr; they just happen when she's at her most content, so sometimes she doesn't even realize it. His belly is nice -- it's a little softer than it usually is, which Y/N likes. The softest bellies are the nicest for her head, so she'd been willing them with her brain waves to eat a lot and not worry about working out or anything. At least not doing crunches. 

The moment is fleeting, however, when the door clicks open, and Minho's scent fills the room. It wasn't bad by any stretch -- Y/N loves Minho's scent. Being cuddled with him is like snuggling your nose into a pile of fresh, warm laundry straight out of the dryer. Honestly, he might have her favorite scent in the whole house, and he lets her breathe him in as much as she wants, pumps it out in waves, lets her get drunk off of it. He always sort of lets her, which is nice. 

When she first met them, Minho was always kind, but she felt like he might not have liked her for a while. At least it's what she thought until one day, she came over to see Felix, who hadn't actually gotten home yet. Minho was the one who answered the door and offered for her to wait in his room, or -- "You could sit out here with me instead. When's the last time you've eaten?" With a furrowed brow, he inquired. Y/N thought his brow was furrowed because he was irritated with her, but she found out weeks later (from Felix) that she'd looked a little flushed and pretty exhausted. Coincidentally, her heat had been a week and a half prior, and she was still recuperating from it. He could smell that she wasn't doing well from kilometers away. 

So she sat in the kitchen while he warmed her a meal on the stove and chopped up some extra veggies (which she only later realized were her favorites -- how he knew what they were, she couldn't tell you). He made sure she drank two glasses of water and ate all of her food, which she did graciously. Once she was finished, he took her back to the living room and held out his arm, "Bokkie says you like to cuddle." He doesn't ask it like a question or really say anything else. And Y/N is burrowed in his side just a moment later, nuzzling close. It was the closest she'd been with any of them besides Felix, and the most time she'd spent alone. She even fell asleep before waking up hours later in Felix's room, with him playing games in bed beside her. 

"You smell like Minho hyung," he told her, tossing the game in favor of rolling over and wrapping his arm around her, "S'good. Isn't he good at cuddling?" 

So, yeah, Y/N loves his scent. It's why she notices the smallest twinge in it, something that's not necessarily irritation but something close. Disappointment? That makes her stomach twist. 

"What is this I'm hearing about you refusing the avocado?" He bent down, his knees off the mattress to still respect her nest, and her head was revealed from beneath Jeongin's shirt, "Hm? Didn't I tell you to eat everything on your plate?" 

"Hyung, be nice," Jeongin coos, petting the top of her head, "She's never liked avocado." 

Y/N's vision is a little hazy, and so is her brain, but she can feel herself pouting up at Minho. He looks pretty -- he always does. His face is soft, even though he's a little upset with her; his eyes give away that he couldn't be too mad. 

"Well, this is news to me," Minho replied, "Considering she always eats it when I put it on her plate in any form: sliced, mashed, mixed with lime juice and chopped onion. . ." 

"Because she doesn't want to disappoint you," Jeongin explained, and Y/N wondered how he knew -- had she ever told him before? Everyone seems to know much more about her than she thought they did. "You and Binnie hyung praise her so much when her plate is clean, she eats even the parts she doesn't like, for you." Jeongin is not one for skinship, they told her once, but he's always been accepting whenever she wants it. Y/N thinks he just puts on an act for everyone else because he likes the chase of it. But right now, his fingers feel good on her scalp, and he has her fit in the cradle of his legs perfectly. 

Minho huffs, "My baby could never disappoint me," he grumbled, "Let me in." 

Y/N nods before she feels Minho crawl into the nest as well. He strokes his wrist against hers where it rested on the bed, before tipping his nose against her sweaty nape, "Sorry," she musters up, "I'm sorry." 

"Shh, I'm not mad," he murmurs, letting his tongue lull against her salty skin, and Y/N shivers, "I'll find an alternative then. When's the last time you were knotted?" 

Jeongin answered for her, "Two hours ago? Hyunjin did, but Lix had just stuffed her full when I'd gotten here." 

Minho clicks his tongue before his hands find her hips and his fingers press deep dents into her flesh, "I can smell that you need it again," he tells her, "You've been slicking all over the nest with Innie, haven't you? Did our baby alpha get you all worked up?" 

Her whole body flushes with heat, almost like Minho had just reminded her how badly she needed it. In an instant, she feels too empty -- nothing in her mouth, nothing in her pussy, nothing in her bum. How horrible is that? When she can feel the swell and press of Jeongin's cock against her tummy, especially with Minho stretched across her back, pushing her down? It's miserable. She needs it so badly. So, so, so badly. 

A whine leaves her throat, her hips wriggling uselessly, but Minho's heavy on top of her. His knees are on either side of her, just like his arms, so he's caging her in; she feels safe and warm beneath him. Even safer and warmer pressed up against Jeongin, and his prick that she hadn't noticed was hard. Had it been hard this whole time, or did this just happen? She doesn't know. She needs it. Has she said that out loud yet? Words are just too hard right now, though. 

"My sweet kitty," Minho presses plush kisses from her nape to her ear, pulling the top between his teeth and nipping playfully, "You're supposed to ask for what you want, hm? Or do you just want Innie to know?" He nips again, and Y/N tries to swallow the drool that's threatening to dribble from her mouth, "Stupid Alpha, doesn't he know he's supposed to read your mind?" 

Jeongin whines now, "Heyyyyy. We were doing just fine!" Minho uses one hand to squeeze around Jeongin's hip, his thumb finding the dip where the muscle leads down to his dick, swollen in his briefs. He's sensitive there; his hips jolt forward, but he continued his complaint, "I was letting her sleep. She needs rest." 

"She needs a knot," Minho counters, "Don't you, kitty? Need this stupid alpha to fill up this tight little pussy?" 

Y/N rubs her face into Jeongin's belly, pushing her nose into his belly button, "Not. . .stupid," she forces her mouth to move, "Innie isn't stupid." 

"Yeah," Jeongin pets the top of her head, "Don't let hyung turn you evil like he did the others." 

Minho scoffs, and she thinks he must bite Jeongin's hand because the youngest alpha squawks and jerks his hand away from her head, "She's just too sweet, little heat drunk thing. Now lift your hips, stupid alpha, and get your knot out." 

Jeongin lifts his hips, managing the weight of both her and Minho on top of him. His cock nearly slapped against his belly, but her body is in the way, so it slaps against her neck a little, touching her chin. Y/N breathes out a sigh, her mouth finding his prick instantly like a magnet had led her there. Jeongin moans when she sponges wet, drooling kisses all over the shaft, on the head, sliding her tongue into his slit. Precum oozes around the tip of her tongue, her eyes fluttering closed while the taste of him fills her mouth. He moans, high and pretty, while his hand finds the top of her head again. His fingers thread in her hair, close to the root. 

"That's it," Minho's hands slip down her back. They still feel cool against her heated skin, palms skating along either side of her spine. Y/N pushes back against him, his zipper digging into her bum, and the hard press of his cock makes her moan. Minho isn't as big as an alpha, but he's still a handful, a mouthful; something that feels good when it's in or around her at any capacity. She kisses along Jeongin's shaft, down to the starting swell of a knot. Felix had whispered to her once that when an omega in the pack is in heat, all of the alphas are practically pre-swollen, their body always prepared to knot at least once. When he shared this tidbit with Y/N, she thought he'd just been bragging about how lucky he was. She'd brag too, if that was what she got during her heat. 

She did not expect it to mean her heat as well. Hyunjin was already swollen when he'd peeled off his briefs, but she'd attributed that to him being a sucker for omegas. It was a little more suspicious with two alphas already having their knots swell preemptively, but Jeongin is still only 2ish years out of presentation, and their bodies are still quite sensitive to pheromones, especially heat. She'd overheard Changbin, though, when they thought she was asleep under Seungmin's shirt, that the base of his dick was sore and sensitive. Even Chan had been readjusting himself more, and he's typically pretty polite about doing that.

So maybe it's just any omega in heat? She isn't sure, really. Y/N doesn't have many alpha friends outside of this pack, and they had never discussed the intricacies of their knot during a packmate's heat. How was she supposed to know? All she knew right now was that she was warm, and she took Jeongin down as close to the root as she could, choking around him. It made him groan, his legs twitching up and around her -- "Fuck," he cries out, tugging at her head to pull her back where Y/N drools all over his shaft, his balls, coughing a little before sucking in a sharp breath. Her eyes sting, and she is about to dip down and get him back in her mouth, but Minho stops her. 

"C'mon, honey, Innie can't handle that," he murmurs, sliding his arm over the front of her shoulders and tugging her up to his chest, "He'll try to pop his knot in your mouth." Y/N whines, shivering as Minho ushers her forward and all but drops her on his cock. Twin moans lift in the air when her messy slit meets Jeongin's shaft. His hips buck forward, slipping between her folds, and Minho is still holding onto her tightly, but now he's a bit lower. She felt him reach down with one hand to touch her, his fingers slipping between her lips and spreading her open. Jeongin moans, and it gets louder when Minho grips his cock. Y/N could only imagine that he grabbed it a little tightly, as he tilted it up so that the tip was lined up with her hole. 

He guides them like two dolls he was pushing together. Minho presses her down and keeps Jeongin's cock still until she feels the head stretch her hole out. Y/N sighs out the further she sinks on him, her walls mold around him, shaping to his prick. Her heart is racing, thundering in her chest, while one hand rests against his belly, the other grips Minho's arm wrapped around her waist. 

"There you go," he hums, "My two little kitties." 

Y/N likes it when Minho takes ownership of her in any way. She likes being his anything, and even if it's pretend, it makes her feel like she's in the pack. Not just some outsider that they're letting stay, so she doesn't get hospitalized due to her heat. Once she's seated, he lets his fingers dance all around her again, on her sides, up her arms, squeezing around her shoulders, and then running his thumb against her scent gland. Her scent gets more potent, filling the room further while Minho's nose is pressing against the opposite end of her throat, breathing it in from her other gland. Jeongin's big hands find her hips, his fingers dig into the flesh, and he plants his feet on either side. 

He starts to bounce her with an ease that she'd never really experienced before. If Minho wasn't holding onto her, she definitely would have fallen forward. Y/N mewls, her head lulling back -- it felt really good, to be stretched like this, and filled up. He hits the swollen, spongy bump inside of her with every buck of his hips; the sound of their skin slapping is loud. There was not a lot of buildup, but she really didn't need it. Her thighs squeeze his hips tightly, and Minho grabs one of her breasts, kneading it. 

"Does that feel good, Aegi?" Minho asks, and Y/N isn't sure who he's asking, but both she and Jeongin make pathetic sounds. He chuckles, clicking his tongue, "Yeah? Alpha, are you g'na knot her?" 

"Yes," Jeongin's face is flushed, and strands of his hair press messy against his face. His mouth is red and spit slicked, hanging open, and Y/N can see the sharp point of canines meant to bite and mark, and she shivers from how badly she needs it. That's all she wants, actually, is to be bit, and marked, and claimed by them. She couldn't ask for that, but she wanted to. Sometimes it's for the best that her mouth doesn't always move when she wants to speak like this. That would be embarrassing, really, even though she knew they might understand it was her heat talking. 

But her hand moves before she can really think about it, because while her mouth is useless, her fingers aren't. And they trail up his tummy, over his chest, along his throat until she is at his chin. Jeongin didn't say anything, lips still parted for her as she slid her finger inside and touched his tooth with the tip of her index. It's pointy, shiny -- it nearly pierces her skin from how much pressure she tries to put on it. 

One of Jeongin's hands leaves her hips and grabs her wrist. He pulls her hand away so that she doesn't actually injure herself, but stays close enough that she's still touching his mouth. He pushes kisses into her palm, dragging the edge of his teeth against the meat of it, "What is it, hm?" Jeongin asks, "You want me to bite you?" 

"Ahhh, this is fun," Minho hums from behind her, "She's awfully bite-y herself, I didn't know it went both ways. You want Alpha to bite you, huh? Mark you up? Make you his?" Y/N trembles all over, and when Jeongin playfully nips at her thumb, she cums before she even realizes it's happening. It's rapid little squeezes, and tons of slick oozing out of her, all over his cock, slipping over his knot, and down against his balls. Jeongin's eyes flutter, rolling back, while Minho curses beneath his breath, a soft, "Fuck." 

Y/N is surprised she's being held together -- she thinks Minho is the one holding her together -- but any sense of keeping her body lifted is completely gone. She's slumping in Minho's hold, enough that he carefully guides her down to press her front to Jeongin's. 

"God, hyung, her pussy is so messy," Jeongin pushes his nose into the top of her head, rolling his hips in a way that starts fitting his knot inside of her, "She's perfect, s'like -- wow, fuck -- I --" 

Minho chuckles, his hands on her hips, rubbing soothing circles like he knows where they're sore, "Yeah, I had a feeling you'd like pussy. Y/N's the first one you've tried, hm?" Jeongin hums his assent, and Y/N's brain feels like it's melting from her ears. She swallows hard, thickly, her eyes squeezing closed as another orgasm starts to build. Each tug of his knot against her hole is making her feel crazy, and the wet sound of her pussy is echoing through her ears and making her a little embarrassed, "It'll be the first time a lot of you have felt it." 

The noise that leaves her is a moan and a squeal when Jeongin's knot finally slips inside of her. Then he's grinding her down against him, with the help of Minho, and rubs her swollen clit against his pelvis. Heat boils over in her belly as she starts to squeeze around his knot, milking it when he starts to cum, hot white streaks painting up her walls. His fingers dug into her deep, and he held on so tightly she wondered if he would leave marks behind. Y/N hoped it would; she didn't mind. It felt good with him so deep inside of her, like she could feel him in her belly. And to be surrounded by all of the scents of the pack, to have Minho pressed against her back and Jeongin against her front. She feels loved and cared for, and it makes her cum again; somehow, she shakes through it. 

Minho pets her back, and she thinks Jeongin is stroking her head. Y/N feels satiated and scent drunk and so pleased beyond words. Her face is stuffed into Jeongin's throat still, breathing him in, warm bread so delicious she could eat him. Her belly growls softly, and both of them giggle a little. 

Then she feels Minho again, against her bum, and she whines when he takes it away. 

"Want --" she struggles out, reaching blindly for him, "Min--Minnie, I want -- in my mouth." 

Minho leans in and kisses her spine, "Lovely little omega, you just want to take care of everyone, don't you? Won't be satisfied until everyone's satisfied." 

She warbles a sound, but Minho crawls on his knees up to her head. When Y/N turns her head, her eyes light up at the sight of his cock, hard and leaking, already pulled from his pants. "You'll have to share with Innie-ah, my aegi." 

"Yes," she nods like it was obvious, "Yes, oh, yes, I will." 

Jeongin, who usually protests anything and everything (for the love of the game, Y/N thinks, because he always ends up doing it anyway -- he was a brat comparable to Seungmin almost, he just somehow avoids the title), merely opens his mouth the same way she does. Tongues outstretched and wet, Minho slides his hard, drippy cock right between them. Neither is very passive, though he does shallowly roll his hips. Y/N is licking wet kisses against the shaft, going toward the head, and Jeongin finds his balls and sucks them into his mouth. They're coating him in spit and moaning like they're the ones getting licked. Minho tastes too good -- he always tastes so good. When he lets her cock warm him, that's all she can think about, is how good he tastes (if she can think at all, that is). 

It doesn't take him long to cum. He pets both of their heads and murmurs something about how sweet she is, and how sweet Jeongin can be "once an omega has softened him up around his knot". They had taken turns on what end they'd been licking and sucking, so Y/N had been pressing her nose deep against his balls and inhaling the sweet scent of Minho. But since it's her heat, he grips the hair at the back of her head and guides her back to the tip, "You can have it, yeah? You hungry?" He says, voice tight, before he pops the head back into her mouth and starts emptying on her tongue. There's a lot of it, filling up her mouth, and Y/N wants to swallow it greedily because she's feeling greedy. 

But when she opens her eyes, she sees Jeongin's gaze, and Y/N feels like it was just as wanting as she felt. And, even though it's her treat for being in heat, she is nothing if not magnanimous, so she leans in and presses her mouth to Jeongin's. She pushes some of the cum into his mouth to share, and he moans against her, startled, his hips jerking into her and only reinforcing how locked they are together. Y/N swallows what was left in her mouth, then tilts up to look at Minho, parts her lips, and lets him see that there's nothing left. 

Minho curses under his breath, cradles her face, and strokes her face with the pad of his thumb, "God, you're so good," he murmurs, "I'm keeping you." 

Her eyes flutter, nuzzling into his palm. She'd be okay with being kept. Like a little pet, she'd let them keep her. They could chain her up in the nesting room and just come use her when they wanted. Keep her fed and bathed, they'd pet her and keep her full, and she could bark or meow or whatever they want. Y/N would like that so much. How does she ask them for that? 

She isn't sure how long they were stuck together. All she knew was that Jeongin was scenting her thoroughly, his hands moving up and down her body, squeezing and pinching and pulling at her. Minho giggled while watching them, murmured things about his sweet kittens, how cute it was seeing them like this, saying how he'd wished he'd had a picture of this so he could remember it. 

When the knot finally loosens, Jeongin pours out of her. Minho's fingers trail through it, and she can hear him lick them sloppily, the taste of them mixed together. Jeongin makes a rumbling growl in his chest, and Minho clicks his tongue, "Ah aht." There's a slapping sound behind her -- he must get Jeongin's thigh with the flat of his palm, "Don't you growl at me, baby alpha. I'll let you have some." Jeongin whines when he uses both hands now, gets more of his cum on his fingers before offering some to Jeongin and some to Y/N. 

"Okay," he murmurs, "Y/N, we need to get you in the bath." Y/N knows better than to grumble and growl after hearing Jeongin get scolded, but that didn't stop her from pouting. Especially when Minho carefully pries her off of Jeongin's body, shushing her when she does whine a little bit. "I know, kitty, we'll get you back in the nest and scent you real well." 

The door opens after a perfunctory knock, and Y/N lazily lulls her head to find Jisung pressing his face through the crack, "Jagi," he whines, "You started without me." 

"Would you want to wait during your heat? Actually, I think you'd tear us up if we tried to make you." He helps Y/N stand on trembling legs, more of Jeongin's cum slipping out of her, making the insides of her thigh all sticky -- and probably Felix and Hyunjin's too. Jisung makes an affronted noise in his throat but still takes a step inside, "Come help me with her bath. Then we can scent her again. Jeonginnie, call Bin, and he'll help you change out the nest." 

Jeongin grunts from his spot, his eyes closed. 

"Is it okay if Jisung helps wash you up?" Minho asks, "Or do you just want it to be me?" 

It takes her a second to sift through her thoughts, but she decides she doesn't mind, "That's okay," she tells him as he guides her the rest of the way. 

He kicks the toilet seat up and plops her down on it, "Go ahead and pee, your first pack heat can't lead to a UTI. We've got appearances to uphold." 

"So weird," Jisung murmured to himself, but he was leaning over the tub to get the water started.

They fill it up with bubbles and oils, the water steaming before she steps inside of it. The tub is quite big, and the water sloshes around as she sinks into it, letting the heat of it soak deep into her muscles. Minho hikes his shorts up a little further than they were, stepping inside with her but sitting on the edge and grabbing for a new loofa. He rips the tag off, dunks it in the water, "I'm going to clean you up, kitty, okay? But if it's too much, tell me. Jisung is going to tell us about his day and grab stuff for me as I need it." 

It's nice, actually. Typically, during her heat, Y/N has to just stay and wallow in her own stink and filth. She tried her best to wash up when she could, but it was difficult when she could barely stand. But Minho is carefully scrubbing her, which is good -- she knows she'll feel better once she has. Part of her still aches at the fact that she's losing a day's worth of scenting. He's careful around her glands, but for some reason, it doesn't help as much as it probably should. Unlike the pack members who, no matter how many times they scrub, would have the scent of their pack mates interwoven in every single skin cell -- Y/N doesn't have that. She was just an intruder, really, mooching off their kindness. Using up their resources, taking up space, making it difficult for them to continue their day-to-day life without having to take care of her. 

She goes from content to all around achy very quickly. Her scent must give her away, because Minho stops mid-scoop of water to pour over her sudsy body. Jisung notices too, frowning, "What's wrong? Is the water not good?" 

Y/N shakes her head, "Sorry," is all she says, "I'm sorry. I'm -- this is a lot of work. . .for me, and I'm not. . .I'm not even a part of your --" 

"Enough," Minho cuts her off before she could say anymore, then takes his wrist and rubs it against the side of her neck. He reaches for Jisung's hand as well, stretching him across the tub and ignoring his little, startled yelp as he strokes it against her throat, "Don't say such silly things. Cleaning you rubbed off our scent, so it's making you think stupid thoughts." She melts almost instantaneously -- Minho is really good at this. She guesses you'd have to be good at this when you've got 3 other omegas and yourself to manage. Y/N shivers, then leans back between Minho's legs. She gets his clothes all soaked, but he doesn't seem to care, instead handing the loofa to Jisung to finish her front. "We'll get you all scented up as soon as we're done, okay?" 

Y/N's head is tilted back to look up at him. When she nods, he smiles, then slides his hands down her shoulders. He keeps talking casually, as he strokes her, "Bin's going to want to jump you as soon as you get out," he explains, "But you need to eat a little, hydrate, and rest. He'll probably stay by to cuddle, though. Jisung will too." 

"Yes," he smiles dopily at her as he scrubs her calves, "I've been thinking about it all day. Can't believe I had to work while Jinnie and Felix got you all to themselves! So unfair," he pouts his mouth, and Y/N giggles softly, a little amused huff, "They're both passed out on the couch right now -- you really wore them out, hm?" 

That feels so far away, being snuggled between them. Had that really been today? She feels like it must have been yesterday or something, but she knows her frame of time is all screwed up. When Jisung brushes past her hand in the water, Y/N catches him and laces their fingers together. He giggles, pulling their wet hands out of the water together to show off, "You want to hold hands? We can hold hands all night." 

"Channie comes home soon," Minho mentions softly, the pad of his thumbs digging into her nape, "He's going to pretend he's being chill, but he probably wants this more than he even realizes. Just because he's the pack alpha, though, doesn't mean you have to do anything with him if you're tired, okay, kitty? That goes for everyone, but I think your heat brain is convinced that Chan's a different type of pack alpha than he is. He's patient, and he's kind, and he's very, very nervous because he hasn't dealt with an unmated omega in a very long time, so all of this is on your terms, okay?" He grabs her chin and tilts her up to look at him again, so they can lock eyes, "Just wanted to remind you." 

"Yes," she agrees, "Okay." 

Once she's out of the tub, she brushes her teeth, but that's all the strength that she's able to muster. Y/N is led back to the bed where the bottom pads and sheets had been changed to dry ones, but the nest itself seems relatively untouched. Changbin, whom Y/N had not seen all day, is waiting patiently with one arm behind his head and his hand holding his phone. He's lying off to the side of the mattress because he doesn't have permission yet, and it makes her bristle. What good alphas they have in this pack. 

Y/N crawls into the nest, "Hi," she greets him, before nuzzling her face into the pillows beside her head, "Thank you." 

Changbin smiles, "Of course," he says, "You smell good. Did the terrible twosome clean you up well?" 

Y/N hums, and it takes her a second, but she does eventually reply, "Yes," before rolling over to her back. The shirt she wears -- she's unsure who the owner is. It smells like all of them a little bit, maybe leaning more toward Hyunjin. It rucks up around her thighs. "Come in, please." 

Changbin doesn't have to be told twice. He clambers in, and Y/N is almost immediately engulfed in big arms that tug her close. He doesn't make any move to touch her, but he does nuzzle the top of her head, "Ahh, I've been wanting to do this all day!" 

Jisung makes an affronted noise, and Y/N huffs again, another amused sound before peeking her eyes out from beneath Changbin's arms, "You too, please." 

Minho swats his ass before he all but dives in, and he's lacing his arms around her waist, hugging and holding her there. Before he leaves, Minho tilts his head toward the door, "I'll send Seungmin in here too. I can smell him lingering." He pointed at both of them, "Let her rest a little. I'm going to warm up some soup -- make her drink water. No bickering over her head." 

"I have no problem not bickering so long as he doesn't open his mouth," Jisung mumbled into Y/N's belly, the words muffled and vibrating. 

Changbin scoffs, "You can't go 5 minutes without picking a fight. It's okay, me and Y/N will just kick you out of the nest." 

"What makes you think she'd take your side?" 

"I'll kick you both out of the nest." Minho cut them off as he headed toward the door, "I'll be back." 

Y/N closed her eyes and breathed in deep. 

Having a pack is nice, even if it isn't her own. 

. . .

Jisung

For the record, changbin keeps putting his foot in my face and I am being VERY BRAVE and PATIENT not yelling at him so that y/n can sleep

Changbin

🦶🏻

Jeongin

Not right now

I'm trying to recoup

Jisung

everyone tell me how good I am for not letting him kick me out of the nest with his childish antics

Changbin

he woke y/n up to make her say she was on his side btw

Jisung

NO I DID NOT !!!

SHE WAS ALREADY AWAKE

MINHO SHE WAS ALREADY AWAKE

NEVER MIND the nest he's trying to get me kicked out of the HOUSE 

Chan

How is she doing? Is she okay?

I'll be home soon. I just have a few more things to get done

Does anyone need anything at the store? 

Also, if you're in the nest with her, where are Jinnie and Lix? 

Jeongin

Hyung. . .

pudding please 

Minho won't share 

Changbin

I'll tell u everyone's whereabouts I know you want to know

Jin and Bbokki are passed out on the couch 

Jeongin is in his room but i can tell he wants to come back

Minho warmed her up some soup and is now taking a shower 

Seungmin is also in the nest being suspiciously well behaved, but I think it's because he was pacing outside the door so now he's happier.

Jisung is at the bottom of the nest, right in the way of my feet 

he called y/n slick NyQuil btw 

Jisung

snitch

im not saying it tastes like nyquil!!! it has NyQuil-like properties 

I can hear Hyunjin and Yongbokkie snoring from in here 

and jeongin's fighting sleep so he doesn't ruin his schedule for tonight but when Minho checked on him he was falling asleep with his phone in his hand

Changbin

And Y/N is safe in my arms 🫶🏻💪🏻

Chan

lol good, I'm glad to hear it

I'll be home soon

Love you 

the show was still playing from jisung’s laptop, some loud scene getting drowned out by dialogue neither of you had actually listened to in at least twenty minutes.

at some point he’d ended up on top of you, settled between your legs like it had happened by accident.

except, honestly, both of you knew it hadn’t been an accident at all. your makeout sessions always started the same way: slow, distracted, a couple soft laughs in between.

and then jisung completely lost his mind.

you felt him sigh against your mouth the second your hand slipped under his hoodie, barely brushing the warm skin of his waist.

his hips moved against you on instinct and he let out a broken sound, immediately hiding his face in your neck like he was embarrassed with himself the second after.

“fuck…” he whined, the word coming out muffled. “so wet…”

jisung kept rubbing the tip through your soaked folds, hissing every time he accidentally brushed your entrance. his fingers dug into the skin of your hips, feeling his cock throb at the thought of finally being inside you.

you breathed softly, fingers sliding up the back of his neck, playing with his hair while your nails lightly scraped at his skin. and jisung literally trembled on top of you.

you couldn’t stop the amused smile tugging at your lips. because jisung was completely gone. his eyes stayed locked on his own movements, brows furrowed as he whimpered whenever the feeling got too intense.

and still, he kept looking at you with that completely lost expression that always showed up right before he started begging.

“p-please…” he panted, voice shaky, broken. “god- baby… let me in- fuck- i promise i’ll be good…”

his doe eyes looked glossy while he stared at you like he was begging without even realizing it. his cheeks were bright red, glasses crooked, lips swollen from kissing so much he could barely close them properly anymore.

and somehow he was still trying to grind closer again, body trembling, those pathetic little sounds completely ruining your head.

“don’t,” you breathed out, frowning a little when he pushed his hips against you again.

jisung let out a small frustrated sound into your neck.

“but, baby… need you so bad,” he whimpered quietly. “need to be inside you…”

the way he said it almost ruined you too, because jisung was completely out of it.

you shook your head, finding it harder and harder to think with his cock pathetically dragging against your folds and your clit. and don’t even get started on the messy, desperate, wet kisses he kept scattering all over your body.

every touch seemed to go straight through him. he trembled whenever your nails scraped his neck, whimpered against your skin whenever you kissed him too deep, and kept burying his face in your neck every time he got embarrassed by the sounds leaving him.

jisung was inexperienced. out of all his hobbies and obsessions, he’d genuinely never considered the possibility of touching a real woman. or at least, not until you started dating a few months ago.

ever since then, every single makeout session had gotten erotic enough for jisung to cum in his pants from just a couple kisses and touches alone.

it was ridiculously adorable.

and probably the worst part was that he wasn’t even trying to act sexy. jisung just looked like this whenever he got desperate for you. messy, shaky, completely incapable of thinking straight.

“jisung,” you murmured, fingers slowly running through his damp hair. “you’re already struggling.”

he let out another one of those miserable little sounds immediately.

“if we actually have sex,” you continued, “you’re gonna lose your mind.”

and that seemed to completely destroy him.

he buried his face in your neck instantly with a muffled moan, though his hands still wandered over you absentmindedly like he physically couldn’t stop touching you. your waist, your thighs, your tits. any part of you he could hold onto without completely losing it.

his breathing was a warm mess against your skin. his movements clumsy, wandering over you just to feel how soft and warm you were.

you could feel his uneven breaths against your neck, mumbling nonsense and kissing you chaotically. you whimpered when he finally pulled back to look at you with that devoted expression he always got around you.

“maybe…” he swallowed hard, breathless. “maybe just the tip?”

your laugh came out softer than expected. because of course jisung would still try negotiating despite trembling, flushed bright red, barely able to breathe right.

“sweetie, you’re shaking,” you murmured, brushing your thumb over his cheek. “i don’t think you can handle that.”

“i’ll be good,” he insisted quickly, almost stumbling over his own words. “i swear. i’d stop if you want me to- i can do it- i-i can behave… please…”

and honestly, seeing him like this was starting to drive you insane too.

you hooked your legs around his waist, pulling him sharply against you.

jisung let out a small broken whimper that died in his throat, briefly squeezing his eyes shut when he felt your wetness drag against his aching cock.

“you’re lucky i like you,” you murmured. “all right. go on. but if you lose your mind, that’s not my fault”

“oh my god- thank you,” he blurted out almost desperately, peppering quick clumsy kisses all over your face like he had no idea what to do with himself now that you’d actually said yes.

it was impossible not to laugh a little. because just minutes ago he’d been trying to act like he could control himself, and now he looked seconds away from passing out just from having you under him.

his hands trembled slightly, his breathing still completely wrecked. even the way he looked at you seemed too vulnerable for someone who’d spent the last twenty minutes shamelessly begging.

he moved closer slowly, way too focused on every little reaction from you to think straight anymore.

he wrapped a hand around his cock and lined himself up against you eagerly. and the second he pushed the head in, barely two centimeters, finally feeling you around him, his whole body froze completely still.

“oh my god…” he breathed out in a broken whisper.

his eyes shut immediately and one hand gripped your thigh like he needed something to hold onto. you could feel him shaking above you, breathing like he’d just run miles.

“shit… okay. okay, i’m good…” he tried to say, though he sounded completely destroyed by the end of it.

the smile that spread across your lips probably made everything worse. because the second he looked at you again and saw that pleased expression on your face, something inside him seemed to snap for good.

jisung let out another embarrassed little moan and buried his face in your neck instantly, like he was trying to survive the feeling.

“you’re doing good…” you whispered, running a hand slowly down his back.

and honestly, that didn’t help either.

you could feel him trying to control himself. the way he kept taking deep breaths, the way he slowly pulled himself back out of you, clearly losing his mind from how overwhelming it felt. he’d push in just a little before stopping again, like he was trying to buy himself time before completely losing it.

he dragged against your wet folds again, whining audibly every time he felt how tightly you took him. he could feel the urge to sink fully into you, make you moan his name, fill you completely.

“i-i’m behaving,” he murmured with a weak smile that disappeared immediately after another shaky gasp slipped out. “see?”

he started this tiny little pattern that was driving him straight to insanity. teasing your folds, brushing your entrance, slowly pushing in until his head spun from the pleasure, then pulling out before he embarrassed himself by cumming too fast.

you could practically see the superhuman effort in his movements, trembling every time he got a little deeper. until eventually he let out a frustrated whine, one that sounded genuinely desperate.

and that’s when you knew he’d already lost the fight with himself.

unable to take it anymore, jisung immediately dug his fingers into your thighs and slammed fully into you in one motion, stuffing you completely. one clumsy, needy thrust, completely out of control.

the sound he let out this time was almost miserable.

and he probably could’ve cum right there from how soft, wet, tight, and warm you felt around him. it felt unbelievably good. your cunt pressed against his hips, taking him completely with no problem at all.

it felt so good that the only thing he could think to do was grip your thighs tightly just so he could stay buried inside you until he got used to how tight you were.

“ji-jisung? you- ah…” you gasped, voice breaking in surprise.

but jisung wasn’t really listening anymore. or at least not fully.

something in his expression changed instantly. that desperate little look he always got whenever you were too close, whenever you touched him just a little too much.

and then he started moving again. started thrusting in and out in this messy, hungry rhythm like he was trying to get even closer to you somehow, even though there wasn’t any possible space left between you anymore.

his broken moans and pathetic whimpers every time his tip hit your cervix mercilessly were loud enough to make you worry someone might hear. you watched his tongue fall out slightly as he panted, feeling you squeeze him impossibly tight.

“oh shit- baby, you’re so fucking tight i-” a whine interrupted him, sounding completely wrecked. “i-i think m’gonna come already. god- i-i’m sorry… i didn’t mean to- fuck…”

jisung didn’t even know where to put his hands anymore. one second he was gripping your waist and the next he was touching you everywhere like he needed to feel every inch of you before completely losing his mind.

“oh fuck- you were totally right. you feel so fucking good- mmmh- i’m already losing it…”

you literally couldn’t respond. every thrust was so deep and overwhelming that all you could do was moan incoherently, nails digging into his back for support.

jisung moved erratically against you, pleasure crashing into him nonstop. he couldn’t think anymore. he was completely buried between your legs. your body twisted beneath him, trembling and taking him fully. his hands found your breasts again, squeezing and kneading desperately, not even knowing where to start.

completely ruined.

“mmmh- you feel- fuck- you feel even better than i thought, jagi…” he sighed against your hot skin, voice completely gone.

his glasses were fogged up now. hair stuck to his forehead, lips red and swollen from all the desperate kisses he kept leaving on your neck, your tits, any skin he could reach.

and still, he kept looking at you with that devastated expression, like he couldn’t believe you were really letting him do this.

he lowered his head and pressed it between your breasts. leaving a trail of open-mouthed, wet, sucking kisses. your back arched the second you felt his hot breath against your sensitive nipples.

it felt like heaven. jisung genuinely thought nothing had ever felt as good as the moans spilling out of you with every touch, lick, and kiss he left on your skin.

“fuck- i think i’m addicted to you…” he let out between shaky breaths. “too much, too much. you’re milking me so good…”

the confession came out so pathetic and sincere that your heart literally skipped a beat.

jisung needed more. he needed everything from you. your moans and shaky breaths in his ear were pushing him right to the edge. your legs trembled, thighs hugging his body tightly, trying to pull him deeper.

jisung felt like he could do this for hours and hours. except, unfortunately, his body had completely different plans.

breathing was getting harder and harder. keeping a steady rhythm without fully losing his mind was becoming impossible. the heat in his stomach was unbearable and he knew it.

he knew it from the way his movements were getting sloppier, from how his hands trembled against your body, from how he couldn’t stop staring at you.

your broken breaths only made everything worse. every tiny sound you let out had jisung reacting immediately with a gasp, an embarrassed moan, his hips speeding up, getting sloppier before he could stop himself.

“oh my god…” he whispered in a broken breath, desperately searching for your lips.

his thrusts were deep, rough, but inexperienced. he just wanted to stay completely inside you, fucking you mercilessly until he could empty every last drop into you.

you moaned against his lips with every thrust, desperate, whiny from the feeling, and jisung could feel every sound running straight through his body and directly into his cock.

then he looked down to where your bodies met and felt the heat in his stomach become unbearable. he watched the spot where his cock disappeared into you over and over again, the way your thighs were turning pinker from how relentlessly he kept slamming into you.

“s-shit- you’re perfect. made for me. taking me so good- fuck-” he threw his head back with a whine.

his words mixed together with sloppy kisses and uneven breaths. he didn’t even seem aware of what he was saying anymore. he was just talking, completely out of his mind, like the pleasure was ripping every thought straight out of his chest.

“ji- m’so close…” you panted, your voice broken.

and those words made his cock twitch inside you. he needed to make you cum on his cock while he fucked you. he wanted to push you right to that point where all you could do was cry out his name.

“that’s it- ah… wanna hear you coming, baby… please…” he whimpered against your lips.

the kiss turned messy, chaotic. jisung couldn’t stop, even when you started writhing beneath him from the huge wave of pleasure wrapping around you. jisung let out the most wrecked sound you’d heard from him all night.

and with a couple broken whines and incoherent moans, you came violently. your body tensed, your cunt clenching around him so tightly that jisung stopped completely after hitting your cervix one more time, freezing in place.

your head fell back and your whole body trembled. you could feel jisung’s hands roaming all over you, his devoted, excited gaze fixed on your body.

he’d done all of that. made you feel so good you couldn’t stop moaning his name until the very end. it was like making you cum was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“baby- f-fuck… i’m gonna-!”

all of it made his cock ache, throbbing harder and harder until the orgasm hit when he felt you squeeze him suffocatingly tight one more time.

nothing had ever felt this good, this deep, this overwhelming. there was nothing left for him to do except chase it. he was moaning and whining like every nerve in his body was about to explode.

he came so fast he didn’t even have time to warn you before it happened. he finished completely inside you, cock twitching while he emptied every last drop.

it lasted longer than any time he’d ever touched himself thinking about you.

his cock wouldn’t stop pulsing and spilling, feeling his release slide out of you and onto the sheets beneath. he hissed and moaned, babbling praise that made you stare at him in shock, cheeks burning red while you smiled so hard at how utterly destroyed he looked.

exhaustion finally hit him, making him collapse beside you after carefully pulling out. he immediately wrapped his arms around you tightly, leaving kisses all over your face. all you could do was hum softly and melt into his arms, your tired breathing blending together.

“d-did i… d-did i do good? did you like it?” he asked, searching your eyes for reassurance. “i know i said i could control myself but- you’re… you felt so-” his voice came out fast, nervous.

“jisung,” you murmured, cutting off his rambling. “it was good. more than good.”

you could literally see his eyes light up before he started peppering even more kisses across your face. you could feel his heart-shaped smile against your skin through every soft kiss, relaxed like he’d been waiting for your approval since the second everything started spiraling out of control.

“really?” he asked quietly.

you nodded slightly and that alone was enough to ruin him all over again.

“fuck,” he laughed tiredly before burying his face in your neck. “i was so nervous.”

your laugh vibrated against his chest and jisung immediately pressed another absentminded kiss under your jaw. then another. and another, like he physically couldn’t stop.

“you were right, though,” he murmured against your skin.

“about what?”

“if we actually did it…” he paused for a second, sighing tiredly. “i kinda lost my mind.”

he let out another soft laugh before lifting his head just enough to look at you. his hair was messy, lips swollen, eyes still half-lidded with exhaustion. completely ruined.

and somehow, he was still looking at you like you were his favorite thing in the world.

thank you so much for reading! sending you a kiss, quick, catch it . . . ᥫ᭡

THE FIRST THING YOU BECAME AWARE OF WAS THE SILENCE. not the absence of sound–no, that would have been too simple, too clean. this was a silence with texture, thick and velvety as mourning cloth, pressing against your eardrums like the weight of water at impossible depths. it had presence, it had intent. the stillness wrapped around you, and held you the way grief holds the living; gentle, relentless, impossible to escape.

then came the cold.

it started at your shoulder, a point of pressure so familiar it bypassed your confusion entirely and spoke directly to something older, something buried beneath years of practiced composure and carefully constructed walls. the cold seeped through the fabric of your blouse—was it always this thin?—and settled into your epidermis like a brand, like a benediction, like the memory of a hand that once knew the geography of your anatomy better than you knew it yourself.

and then the voice.

“y/n.”

your name, spoken the way only one person had ever spoken it. it sounded like a prayer, a secret, and the answer to a question you never expected to inquire yet again.

you would have known that voice in the wreckage of the world. you would have known it at the bottom of the ocean, in the heart of a fire, at the moment of your death. you had known it at the moment of your death, you realized dimly, though the thought slid off your consciousness like water off wax—slick, fleeting, impossible to grasp.

it was the voice that once whispered terrible, beautiful poetry into your hair at three in the morning, when the rest of the world slept and you two were the only people alive. it was the voice that laughed—that bright, breathless sound like sunrise breaking over the ocean. every time you pulled him away from his producing dungeon by the earlobe, scolding him for forgetting to eat again. it was the voice that promised you forever in a hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and dying flowers, and you had believed him because how could you not? how could you not believe in forever when he looked at you like you had invented the concept just for him?

your eyes opened.

the world was grey. not the grey of depression, not the grey of rainy days or old photographs. this was a grey that existed between things—between light and shadow, between life and whatever came after, between the person you were five minutes ago and the person you were now. it was the grey of liminal spaces, of train stations at midnight, of hotel rooms in cities you would never visit again. it was the grey of almost and not quite and still waiting.

you were lying on cold asphalt. the surface was rough against your back, gritty with the debris of a thousand passing tires. the smell that filled your nostrils was an unholy cocktail of burnt rubber, gasoline, and something else… something metallic and sweet that your mind refused to categorize.

copper. iron. the building blocks of ichor. the taste of it lingered at the back of your throat, coppery and wrong, and you wondered vaguely if this was what dying tasted like.

above you, a figure stood silhouetted against lights that flashed and swirled; blue and red, blue and red, the colors of emergency, of urgency, of too late. the lights washed over him in rhythmic pulse, painting him in colors that seemed out of this world, and yet—

and yet, it was him.

…it was… him.

chan stood over you like a fallen angel, like a prayer answered in the worst possible way, like every dream you ever had and every nightmare you couldn;t admit to wanting. his face was exactly as you remembered it: the soft, kind curve of his cheeks that made him look younger than his years, the worried downturn of his lips that appeared every time you so much as stubbed your toe, those deep, expressive eyes that once held your entire universe in their dark depths and refused to let go.

however, something was wrong.

something was deeply, fundamentally wrong, and it took you a long, suspended moment to understand what it was.

his skin. it was perfect; flawless, unblemished, the same neutral winter tone you used to trace with your fingertips for hours, memorizing every mole, every freckle, every tint imperfection that made him him–yet it glowed. not with the healthy radiance of life, not with the flush of exertion or emotion, but with an ethereal, internal light. the light of things that existed beyond the veil. the lights of moon, deep sea creatures, and concepts that were never meant to take human form.

and his eyes.

his eyes were the most… peculiar.

they were still his eyes… the shape, the set, the way they focused on you with that familiar devastating intensity. however, the color had drained away, replaced by something vest, something endless. they were voids now, his eyes, starless, hollow, and deep as the space between galaxies, and when you looked into them you felt yourself falling, falling, falling into an infinity that had no bottom, no top, and no sides, just the terrible, beautiful forever of oblivion.

he reached down and pulled you to your feet.

his hand was cold… so cold, impossibly cold, the cold of winter graves and forgotten attics and the dark side of the moon—but it was real. present. in this grey, shifting world where nothing felt quite anchored, his grip was the one constant thing. the only thing you could trust.

you looked down.

your car was gone—no, not exactly gone. that was the wrong word. your car was there, but it no longer looked like a car.

it was a sculpture of violence, a testament to physics, momentum, and the terrible fragility of human engineering. metal had been folded like origami paper, wrapped around a lamppost that stood utterly unimpressed by the destruction it had wrought. glass sparkled across the road in a million crystalline fragments, each one catching the flashing lights and throwing them back like tiny, cruel stars.

the driver's side door was... somewhere else. you spotted it twenty feet away, torn from its hinges and lying crumpled against a parked car. the steering wheel had been pushed through what used to be the dashboard. and there, still partially inside, still strapped into the seat by a seatbelt that had done its job even when everything else failed—

there was a figure, covered by a sheet.

white, pristine, untouched by the blood that pooled beneath the wreckage in a dark, spreading stain that seemed to grow even as you watched. the sheet had been placed with care, with reverence, with the particular gentleness of people who did this for a living and had learned that the dead deserved dignity even when the living couldn't give it to them.

you looked at it. you looked at it for a long, long time. the sheet rose and fell with nothing—no breath, no movement, no life. just the terrible stillness of something that would never move again.

and somewhere in the deep, survival part of your brain that had kept you alive for twenty-seven years, a switch flipped. a door closed. an understanding settled into your bones like cold water filling a grave.

oh, you thought, with a strange, distant clarity that felt almost peaceful. oh, that's me.

you turned back to him—to the man who wore your lost love's face like a mask, like a mercy, like the cruelest joke the universe could possibly play.

"chan?" you heard yourself ask, and your voice sounded wrong, thin and echoey, like it was traveling from very far away, like it belonged to someone else entirely.

he tilted his head.

it was such a small gesture, such a him gesture—the slight cant to the left, the way his brow furrowed just slightly, the way his lips parted as if he was about to speak—that your heart (did your heart still beat? you don’t know. you couldn't really feel it anymore) clenched in your chest with a pain that was almost physical.

“i beg your pardon?”

his voice was his. it was his. the same timber, the same resonance, the same quality that used to make you close your eyes and just listen when he spoke, drinking in the sound of him like water in a desert. however, there was something layered beneath it now, an echo that hadn't been there before, a vibration that seemed to come from everywhere at once rather than from a single throat. it was the voice of something ancient, something eternal, something that had existed long before humans walked the earth and would exist long after they were gone.

“for i am death, miss y/l/n.”

his introduction hung in the grey air between you, heavy as headstones, final as a closed casket.

“y/n y/l/n, you have met the end of life,” he paused, and something flickered in those moonless eyes; something that might have been gentleness, if gentleness could exist in a being of finality, “time, 14:43 pm.”

you stared at him.

the words bounced off your understanding like coins off frozen ground–pinging, skittering, refusing to find purchase. you knew what they meant. you weren't stupid, you had a brain, you could process language. you knew what each word signified, individually, as a sentence.

however, the meaning of them, the weight, the implication, refused to settle. it was like trying to pour water into a cup that was already full. there was simply no room left in your consciousness for this information.

“what are you saying?” a huff of disbelief slithered through your lips, thin, and reedy. “this isn’t funny, chan.”

for a heartbeat—or whatever passed for a heartbeat in this place, something shifted in his expression.

it was there and gone so fast you might have imagined it, a crack in the perfect, still mask of his features, a glimpse of something raw and wounded beneath the surface of divine indifference. his eyes flickered for just a moment, the void replaced by something warm, brown, and achingly familiar.

and then it was gone, sealed over like ice forming on a lake.

or maybe… you were just being delusional. maybe this was your brain’s last desperate attempt to find comfort in the face of the incomprehensible, projecting familiarity on a stranger who happened to share the same exact features with your past lover.

maybe you wanted so badly for him to still be present that you were seeing thing that weren’t real.

“...please come along with me, miss y/l/n.”

he extended his hand towards you. it was the hand that had pulled you into countless embraces, that had brushed strands from your face when you were sick, that had gripped yours so tightly during horror movies. it looked the same. the same long fingers, the same slight calluses from years of producing music.

a laugh bubbled up in your throat.

it wasn't a happy sound. it wasn't even a sad sound, really. it was the sound of a mind pushed past its breaking point, of a soul that had encountered something so fundamentally absurd that laughter was the only possible response. you laughed, and the sound echoed in the grey space around you, bouncing off buildings you couldn't see and returning to you distorted, wrong, like a funhouse mirror version of itself.

this was a dream. it had to be a dream. a hallucination brought on by the impact, by the blood loss, by the chemicals your dying brain was releasing in its final moments. any second now, you would wake up in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines and worried nurses, and this would all be a story you told people at parties.

i saw my dead ex-boyfriend as the grim reaper when i died. can you believe it? god forbid a girl to die in peace.

to prove it—to prove that none of this was real, that you were still alive, that the universe hadn't actually become this cruel, you turned away from him, declining his hand, and started walking toward the crowd of onlookers gathered at the edge of the wreckage.

a man in a heavy coat ran straight through you.

there was no impact. no resistance. just a fleeting sensation of cold, like stepping through a curtain of ice water, and then he was on the other side, stumbling to a halt, his face pale as he stared at the wreckage with the particular horror of someone who had just realized they were witnessing something they would never be able to unsee.

he pulled out his phone with trembling hands and started filming. of course he did. everyone filmed everything these days. your death would probably be on the internet within the hour, viewed by strangers who would scroll past it with the same detachment they used for everything else.

you turned, slowly, and looked at the scene properly for the first time.

the flashing lights weren't just ambiance; they belonged to real vehicles, solid vehicles, fire trucks and police cars and an ambulance that had arrived too late. officers in crisp uniforms were redirecting traffic, their faces professionally blank, their movements efficient and practiced. paramedics stood in a small cluster near the wreckage, their postures slack with the particular exhaustion of people who had done everything they could and watched it amount to nothing.

one of them, a young woman with tired eyes and hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, was talking to a police officer, shaking her head. you drifted closer, drawn by some invisible current, and heard fragments of her report.

"...died on impact. nothing we could have done. the steering column... massive internal injuries... probably didn't feel anything."

probably didn’t feel anything.

you wanted to laugh again, or cry, or scream. you had felt everything. you had felt the headlights blinding you through the windshield, the screech of tires that wasn't yours, the terrible suspended moment of knowing what was about to happen and being utterly powerless to stop it. you had felt the impact, the shattering, the brief, bright flare of pain that was almost beautiful in its intensity before everything went grey and quiet.

however, you hadn't felt this. this floating, this weightlessness, this strange detachment from the body that was yours only minutes ago. this was new. this was different. this was what came after.

the paramedic walked away, and you followed her gaze to the wreckage, to the sheet-covered form still strapped into the driver's seat.

no one was rushing to help. no one was prying open the door, cutting through the metal, trying to reach the person inside. there was no point. the person inside was gone. the person inside was you, and you were standing ten feet away, watching yourself be dead.

you exhaled a long, slow breath.

and instead of grief, instead of horror, instead of any of the emotions you were supposed to feel at the moment of your own death, a strange, profound relief washed over you.

it started in your chest—a warmth, a loosening, a release of tension you hadn't even known you'd been carrying. it spread outward, through your arms and legs, up into your face, until every part of you felt lighter, freer, easier than you had in years.

you were tired.

god, you were so tired.

you were tired of the life that you had to continue. you were tired of the career you had to pursue. you were tired of the impossible deadlines, the passive-aggressive emails, the endless meetings that could have been emails, the emails that could have been a single text message. you were tired of coming home to an empty apartment at 11 p.m., too exhausted to cook, too drained to do anything but fall into bed and do it all over again the next day.

you were tired of the silence.

the silence of a bed meant for two that only held one. the silence of a dinner table set for one, eaten alone, cleaned up alone. the silence of weekends stretching out before you like an endless grey desert, with no one to fill them, no one to share them, no one to make them mean anything.

you were tired of being alone.

and now… now you weren't alone anymore, were you? now there was someone here, someone who looked at you with eyes that might be empty but still saw you, still focused on you, still made you feel, for the first time in five years, like you existed in the same universe as another person.

death, it seemed, was a vacation you never knew you needed.

you turned back to him.

to death. to the being who wore your lost love's face like a second skin, like a gift, like a punishment.

“…okay," you said, and your voice was calm now, steady, the voice of someone who had made peace with something they couldn't change. "okay."

something flickered beneath that stone-cold demeanor. it was there and gone so fast you couldn't name it, couldn't categorize it, could only feel its passing like the brush of a ghost's fingers against your consciousness. surprise, maybe. curiosity. interest in a soul that didn't fight, didn't bargain, didn't scream.

he glanced down at his hand, and you watched as a pocket watch materialized in his palm—silver, antique, etched with symbols you didn't recognize but somehow understood. the hands didn't point to hours or minutes. they pointed to something else entirely, something beyond the reach of mortal timekeeping.

he looked back at you, and for a moment… just a moment… his expression softened into something gentle, almost human.

“it’s time,” he announced, the words fell into the silence like stones into deep water, sending ripples through the grey.

he offered his hand once again.

this time, you took it.

his fingers closed around yours, cold, solid, and real, and in the space between one breath and the next, the world dissolved.

THE TRANSITION WAS SEAMLESS… one moment you were standing on a rain-slicked street, surrounded by the wreckage of your mortal life and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles that could no longer touch you; a tableau of tragedy you had already cited, akin to an actor watching the final scene of a play they had once starred in. the next moment, your feet found purchase on polished, grimy floor tiles, and the world reformed itself around you like water settling after a stone had been dropped into it.

you were in a train station—at least, you thought it was just an ordinary train station. the architecture was right, the high, arched ceilings ribbed with iron, the long platforms stretching into darkness like fingers reaching for something just beyond sight, the tracks gleaming dully in the low light, twin silver ribbons leading nowhere and everywhere.

this was like no train station you had ever seen. the ceiling vanished into shadow so complete it felt solid, a weight of darkness pressing down from above like the lid of a closed casket. you could stare into it for hours, for days, for eternities, and never find its end. the tiles underfoot were white, or had been once; now they were veined with cracks, stained with the grime of decades, of centuries, of something that predated time itself. here and there, tiles were missing entirely, revealing only more darkness beneath.

the air was cool and still, carrying the faint, mineral scent of places underground; the breath of caves, of catacombs, of all the places where light feared to tread. it was the smell of buried things, of secrets kept, of journeys that had no return ticket.

and the silence… it was different from the silence of the accident site. the silence of the crime scene had been thick, muffled, the silence of shock and aftermath–a blanket thrown over chaos. the silence here was active. it hummed with a frequency just below hearing, a vibration you felt in your teeth, in your bones, in the place where your soul used to anchor to your body. it breathed in slow, patient rhythms, the breath of something vast and ancient that had been waiting here for longer than mountains. it listened. you could feel its attention on you, curious and detached, like a curator examining an art.

in the center of the platform, sitting motionless on the tracks, was a train.

it was old—no, ancient might be the right word. the kind of ancient that spoke of craftsmanship that no longer existed, of an era when things were built to last forever because forever was understood to be a real and present concept, a destination rather than a word. the metal was dark, polished to a deep gleam that caught the light and held it hostage, refusing to let go. the windows were tall and arched, filled with glass that was slightly rippled, slightly imperfect. along the sides, brass fixtures glowed with a warm, muted light, their surfaces worn smooth fingers that had touched them across centuries.

and at the front, a single lantern burned with a flame that never flickered, never wavered, never died; a flame that had been burning since before your ancestors first walked upright, that would still be burning when the last star in the universe guttered into darkness.

it was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen… and the most terrifying.

beauty and terror, you were learning, were not opposites. they were two sides of the same coin, two faces of the same god. to truly see one was to glimpse the other, standing just behind it, waiting to be acknowledged.

“this way,” death led you towards a small booth at the edge of the platform. it resembled the kind of ticket booth you might find in an european train station, the kind with a curved window and a little ledge for setting down your fare, the kind that had once been staffed by an old man with spectacles and patient eyes. however, there was no one inside. there was just a slot, dark and waiting, and above it, words covered into the wood with a permanence that felt like law:

PRESENT YOUR TICKET

you looked down at your hand.

a ticket lay across your palm.

you hadn't felt it appear. you hadn’t seen it materialize. but there it was, as real as anything in this unreal place–a small rectangle of heavy cream paper, the kind that felt expensive between your fingers, the kind that had been made to last. text ran across it in elegant, flowing script:

PLATFORM 9

DESTINATION: █████

VALID FOR: ONE SOUL

NON-REFUNDABLE

beneath the text, in smaller letters, was your name. your full name, the one your mother had given you, the one that appeared on your birth certificate, your driver’s license, and the headstone that would soon be carved in your memory.

you stared at it for a long moment.

then, without quite knowing why, you stepped forward and slid the ticket into the slot.

for a heartbeat, nothing happened. the ticket disappeared into the darkness of the booth, and you were left standing there, empty-handed, wondering if you had just made a terrible mistake.

then a soft click chimed from somewhere deep in the mechanism. a small barrier beside the booth, a wooden turnstile, old and ornate, swung open, inviting you through.

you had been approved. you wouldn’t be a wandering spirit, trapped between worlds, unable to move forward or back. you had a destination. you had a place. you had, for the first time since waking up from a bloodbath, a purpose.

you stepped through the turnstile and onto the platform proper. the train had waited long for your arrival.

death walked beside you, his presence a constant coolness at your shoulder. he didn't speak, didn’t guide, didn’t direct. he simply was, a shadow that accompanied you without demanding anything, without expecting anything, without asking for anything in return, and you didn’t mind. you were, instead, grateful.

the doors of the train slid open as you approached, noiseless and smooth, revealing a corridor of warm wood and soft velvet. you stepped inside, and the door closed behind you with a gentle hiss.

the interior looked even more pleasing than the exterior.

you stood in the corridor, taking in the details that your eyes had skimmed over in that first moment of entrance. each compartment was a small room unto itself, with seats of deep burgundy velvet arranged around small tables of polished mahogany. lamps glowed on the walls, casting long shadows that danced and swayed with the movement of the train—although the train itself wasn’t moving yet.

death stood beside you, waiting.

after a moment, he gestured towards one of the compartments, “you may choose any seat. they’re all reserved for you.”

you moved into the nearest compartment, sliding into a seat by the window. the velvet was soft against your back, cooler than you expected yet not that uncomfortable, like sitting on a cloud that had been left in the shade. it yielded to your weight perfectly, cradling you in a way that felt almost intentional, as if the seat itself had been waiting for you, had been shaped specifically for your soul.

death sat across from you.

for a long moment, neither of you spoke. your gaze remained on him, drinking him in. the familiar slope of his shoulders, the way arms were crossed above his chest, the particular set of his mouth that used to mean he was deep into his thinking. and he reciprocated yours, watching you with those dark, dark eyes that held nothing of the warmth they had once carried.

the silence between you was torture. you searched his face like a diver searching for air, desperate for some sign, some crack in the façade, some flicker of the man who had once held you through panic attacks and whispered that everything would be okay. you looked for the crinkle at the corner of his eyes and the adorable dimples when he smiled. for the way his lips used to be pressed against yours in the rain, in the studio, in the hospital when there were no words left to say. for the softness that would bloom across his features when he looked at you, like flowers opening to the sun.

and there was… nothing.

nothing but that quiet, detached curiosity, like a false god examining a mortal prayer they do not intend to answer. like a scholar studying an interesting specimen. like a cat watching a bird through a window—mildly engaged, fundamentally unmoved.

this was not the silence of comfort, because there was nothing comfortable about this. about being trapped in an endless train ride with the face of your dead lover and the hollow eyes of something you had never known you feared until this moment. the train hummed beneath you, a low, constant vibration that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and the world outside the windows was only darkness, only void, only the absence of everything you had ever known.

he didn't recognize you. you figured it out in a harsh way, the way you figure out that a limb is broken when you try to use it and the pain tells you everything you need to know. there was no recognition in his gaze. no familiarity. no emotion at all, beyond that mild, academic interest. you were a soul. one of billions. one in a trillion. a face in an endless crowd of faces, all of them eventually forgotten, all of them eventually reduced to the same grey nothing.

it was the silence of a love that existed solely on one side now, a bridge that had collapsed halfway, leaving you stranded on the edge with nothing but memory to hold onto. you could still see the other side, still remember what it looked like, still feel the phantom weight of footsteps that would never cross again.

but he was gone... the man you had loved—still loved, would always love, could not stop loving no matter how many years passed, he had been gone for three years and seemed to remain that way. succumbed to his illness, to the terminal disease that had eaten him slowly from the inside while you sat helplessly by his bedside, holding his hand, pretending you couldn’t feel it growing colder. you had kissed him one last time. you had accompanied him the whole time in his death bed. you had watched the light leave his eyes. you had stood at his grave and promised to move on, to live, to carry him with you without letting his absence destroy you.

and you had failed. you had failed so completely. you had just been too stubborn to accept it until now.

and this… this ancient being sitting across from you was making things far worse.

he tilted his head.

it was such a small gesture, such a him gesture—the slight cant to the left, the way his brow furrowed just slightly, the way his lips parted as if he was about to speak. it was a ghost of the person he used to be, a muscle memory that had survived the transformation, a remnant of humanity that even the gods hadn't been able to erase completely.

it sent a knife through your heart.

"you're quiet," he observed. his voice was soft, curious, the voice of someone examining an interesting specimen. "most souls talk. they ask questions. they bargain. they beg. they weep. they try to run. you just... sit there. staring at me.”

"you look like someone i used to know," you replied almost instantly, and your voice was steady, surprisingly steady, even though you felt like you were crumbling inside, even though every word felt like glass in your throat.

"ah." he nodded, as if this explained something, as if this was a phenomenon he encountered regularly. "…that happens. the form death takes… it's drawn from the soul death is guiding. whatever face will bring the most comfort, the most peace. sometimes it's a parent. sometimes a child. sometimes a beloved pet." a pause. "sometimes, i'm told, it's a lover.”

you flinched. the word lover, spoken in his voice—chan's voice, applied to someone else, to some hypothetical soul who wasn't you, who had never been you, who would never matter the way you had mattered to the man in the hospital bed.

“you’re not him,” you declared, the words landing like a verdict.

“…no,” he said simply, his expression devoid of any of the things a human might have felt in that moment… or so you thought. however, there was something in the way he held himself, something in the almost-imperceptible pause before he spoke again, that made you wonder if the emptiness ran as deep as it appeared. if perhaps, beneath that void, something was listening. something was watching. something was waiting for you to say more.

“i am… the end of life,” he continued, his voice touched by something that might have been gentleness, might have been curiosity, might have been the faintest echo of the humanity he had lost, “your… temporary friend, if you must.”

temporary friend.

the words lodged in your chest like shards of glass.

because he wasn't your friend—he didn't feel like a friend. he was a stranger wearing your lover's face, a specter dressed in the skin of your most precious memories, a void disguised as the man who had once held your heart in his hands and promised to keep it safe forever. every familiar line of him was a lie. every gesture that echoed the past was an accident, a coincidence, a trick of the light. the being sitting across from you had never held you in the dark. had never whispered that everything would be okay. had never traced idle patterns on your skin while the world slept.

but he was also all you had, at this exact moment.

in this place between places, on this train to the end of forever, he was the only presence that felt real. the only voice that spoke. the only eyes that looked at you and saw something, even if that something was just another soul to be guided, another name on an endless list, another brief flicker of consciousness on its way to oblivion. he was a stranger, yes. a void wearing a familiar shape. but he was here, and you were here, and in the absence of everything else you had ever known, that had to be enough.

"temporary friend," you repeated, testing the weight of the words on your tongue. "that's what you are? to all of them? to all the souls you guide?"

"to all of them," he confirmed. "for the journey, at least. some want to talk. some want silence..." he paused, and something shifted in those eyes—something that might have been the faintest stirring of interest. "i don't know what you want.”

i want you to be him, you thought. i want you to remember. i want you to hold me the way you used to hold me, to look at me the way you used to look at me, to love me the way you promised you would love me forever.

of course, you didn’t say any of that.

because what would be the point?

"i don't know what i want either," you admitted, and the honesty of it surprised you. "i thought i did. i thought i wanted to live. i thought i wanted to go back, to keep fighting, to keep existing in that world that was slowly killing me. but when i saw my body, along all those people standing around doing nothing—"

you shook your head. "i felt relieved. i felt free. for the first time in three years, i felt like i could breathe."

his silence was loud, boisterous, and terrifying. his stare sent shivers cascading down your spine, forcing you to avert your gaze to the ground.

"…three years," he repeated. "that's how long you've been waiting."

it wasn't a question, but you answered anyway.

"that's how long since he died. since chan died." you looked at him, at the face that was and wasn't his, at the eyes that held nothing of the love you remembered. "since i lost the only person who ever made me feel like i mattered."

the words hung in the air between you, heavy as stones dropped into deep water. you watched them sink, watched them disappear into the vast emptiness of his gaze, and wondered if they would reach anything at all. if there was anything to reach, beneath that void, beneath that eternal stillness.

before death could open his mouth, before he could offer whatever response he might have offered; comfort, perhaps, or curiosity, or that strange, detached interest that was the closest thing to warmth he seemed capable of, the train began to move.

it was not the gentle lurch you had expected.

it was a shudder, deep and resonant, like the waking of some ancient beast from slumber deeper than time. a sound rolled through the carriage, low and vibrational, the kind of sound you felt in your bones before you heard it with your ears—a subsonic thrum that seemed to bypass hearing entirely and speak directly to something primal, something buried in the oldest part of your brain. the floor trembled beneath your feet. the lights flickered once, twice, and then steadied, their glow somehow dimmer than before, as if the train itself had drawn on their strength to fuel its awakening.

and through the window, the world began to change.

you turned, instinctively, drawn by the movement, by the shift in light, by something deeper and older than conscious thought. your reflection stared back at you for a moment; pale, hollow-eyed, a ghost even to yourself, and then it dissolved, replaced by something else entirely.

the memories.

they came not as images, not as scenes played out on a screen, but as presences. as if the walls of the train had become transparent, as if you were looking not at a window but at a door into your own past, your own heart, your own self. they pressed against you from all sides, not visually but viscerally, flooding the compartment with the weight of everything you had been.

the first memory was simple. small. almost insignificant.

a kitchen, bathed in afternoon light so golden it seemed liquid, pouring through the windows like honey. your mother's hands, dusted with flour, shaping dough into imperfect circles on a worn wooden counter. your father's laughter from somewhere off-screen, the distant drone of a football match on television, the smell of something baking: bread, maybe, or cookies, that particular warmth that meant home. you were small—seven, maybe eight, sitting at the kitchen table with crayons spread before you like treasure, coloring a picture of a house with a rainbow arched above it like a promise.

you remembered this.

you remembered the way the sun felt on your arms. the way your mother hummed while she worked, some old song you didn't know the name of. the way your father would come in at halftime and kiss the top of your head, his lips warm against your hair, and say, "that's beautiful, sweetheart. the best one yet."

you had been loved.

so deeply, so completely, so unquestioningly loved that you had taken it for granted, had assumed it would always be there, had never once considered that love was a thing that could be lost.

the memory shifted, dissolved, reformed.

now you were older–eleven, maybe twelve, standing on a stage in a school auditorium. the lights were hot against your face, too bright to see the audience, but you could hear them. the rustle of programs, the coughs and whispers, the expectant silence that fell just before you opened your mouth to sing. your heart hammered against your ribs, a trapped bird throwing itself against its cage.

you sang.

your voice, high and clear and pure, filled the space. you didn't remember the song… something from a musical, maybe, something you had practiced for weeks until the notes lived in your bones. however, you remembered the feeling. the way your heart soared with every note, lighter than air, lighter than anything you had felt since. the way the music seemed to flow through you rather than from you, as if you were just a vessel, just a channel for something larger than yourself, something ancient and eternal that had been using human throats to sing since before words existed.

when you finished, the applause was like thunder. like rain after drought. like proof that you existed, that you mattered, that you had touched something in them that they couldn't touch themselves.

you had been good at this, once. you had been alive.

more memories came, faster now, a cascade of moments that built the architecture of your life like bricks in a wall. your first boyfriend, awkward and sweet, holding your hand at the movies with palms so sweaty you couldn't tell where his ended and yours began. your first heartbreak, curled on your bedroom floor while your mother brought you tea and didn't ask questions, just sat with you in the silence until the worst of it passed. graduation, your cap tilted at a jaunty angle, your friends' arms around your shoulders, the future stretching out before you like an unwritten book. university, the nervous excitement of moving into dorms, the terror and thrill of being on your own for the first time, the slow realization that you were becoming someone new.

and then—

him.

the memory slowed, lingered, breathed.

a lecture hall, the projectors, the drone of a professor's voice. you were taking notes, or trying to, your attention wandering to the window, to the grey sky beyond, to anything other than the lecture you had heard a hundred times before. your pen moved automatically, scratching out words your brain wasn't processing.

a shadow fell across your desk.

"mind if i sit here?"

you looked up, and there he was.

bang chan.

twenty years old, with eyes that held depths you couldn't yet fathom and a smile that seemed to suggest he knew something you didn't, something wonderful, something that was about to change your life in ways you couldn't yet imagine.

"it's free," you said, and gestured to the empty seat beside you.

he sat, and the world shifted on its axis.

you watched the memory unfold like a story you had told yourself a thousand times, in the dark, when sleep wouldn't come. late nights in the studio, you at the microphone, him at the mixing board, both of you so absorbed in the music that hours passed like minutes, that time became meaningless, that the only thing that existed was the sound you were building together. the first time he played you something he had produced; a track built around your voice, your melody, your soul, and the way your heart had stopped when you realized what it meant. what he was telling you without words.

the first time he kissed you.

under fairy lights he had strung up in the studio, "for ambiance," he said, but you had known. his lips were tentative at first, sweet, questioning—and then, when you didn't pull away, when you leaned into him instead, they became something else. something certain. something forever. the world outside ceased to exist. there was only his mouth on yours, his hands on your waist, the quiet sound he made against your lips that sounded like coming home.

two years.

two years of laughter, arguments, and making up. two years of learning each other's bodies, each other's minds, each other's souls. two years of building a future together, brick by brick, dream by dream, until the architecture of your life was so intertwined with his that you couldn't tell where you ended and he began.

and then—

the hospital room.

you knew what was coming. you had lived it once, and you had just finished telling him about it, just finished spilling the story of your grief into the void of his attention. but knowing didn't prepare you. knowing didn't protect you. knowing just meant you had time to brace yourself before the blow fell.

the machines. the tubes. the antiseptic smell that clung to everything, that would cling to your memories forever, that would haunt you in unexpected moments for the rest of your life.

and chan in the bed, so thin, so pale, so wrong. the man who had glowed with life, who had burned so bright you sometimes had to look away, was reduced to this—a skeleton draped in skin, a ghost before his time.

you watched yourself walk into that room, your face blotchy from crying, your hands trembling at your sides. you watched his eyes light up when he saw you, as if your presence could somehow override the reality of his situation, could somehow make everything okay. as if love alone could cheat death.

"hey," he whispered. "you came."

"of course i came." your memory-self's voice cracked, broke, reformed. "i'll always come. i'll always be here."

his hand, reaching for yours. his fingers, cold against your skin—that particular cold you now recognized, that cold you now knew belonged to the dead and the dying and the in-between.

"promise me something."

"anything."

"don't stop singing."

you blinked at the memory; you, at the confusion on your face, at the tears streaming down your cheeks like rivers that would never run dry.

"promise me." his grip tightened, desperate despite its weakness. "when i'm gone—don't stop. the world needs your voice. i need your voice. even if i can't hear it anymore, i'll know. i'll know somehow. i'll be listening."

"i promise."

the words echoed in the train compartment, overlapping with your memory-self's voice, creating a dissonance that hurt to hear, that cut through you like glass.

"i promise. i won't stop singing. i promise."

and then—

the flat line.

the sound of it. you had long forgotten the sound of it; that endless, horrible tone that signified the end of everything–the man that you loved most, he was everything. it went on and on, a needle through your eardrums, a knife through your heart.

“chan…? chan, no… please…”

your voice, high, thin, and desperate, similar to a child’s voice, a voice that did’;t understand why the world kept turning when it had just ended.

“chan… chris.. christopher, please wake up.”

you watched yourself grab his hand, his cold, still hand, and press it so your cheek as if warmth could be forced back into him by sheer force of will. as if love could resurrect. as if promises meant anything at all in the face of this.

“CHRISTOPHER, PLEASE–DOCTOR! ANYONE PLEASE!”

the scream went on and on, even after the nurses came, even after the hands pulled you away, even after you had no air left to fuel it. It went on in your memory, in your bones, in the part of you that would never stop screaming, not really, not ever.

“GOD, WHY?! BABY, PLEASE! WAKE UP! I CAN’T LOSE YOU!”

the sheet, being drawn up, over his face, over the face of the man you loved, the man who had promised you forever, the man who had left you alone in a world that didn't care, that kept spinning, kept turning, kept existing as if nothing had changed.

the memory held on that image. the sheet. the stillness. the terrible, absolute finality of it. the way his hand had looked, lying on the bed beside him, no longer reaching for anything.

and then it dissolved.

you were left staring at your own reflection in the train window, your face wet with tears you hadn't realized you were crying, your body shaking with sobs you hadn't noticed escaping.

across from you, death was silent.

you didn't turn to look at him. you couldn't. if you turned, if you saw his face—your beloved chan's face, wearing that empty expression, those pale eyes, that terrible, beautiful indifference, you would break. you would shatter into a thousand pieces and never be able to put yourself back together. the shards of you would scatter across this impossible train, across this journey to the end of everything, and there would be no one left to gather them. not even him. especially not him.

so you stared at your reflection, at the ghost you had become, and you let yourself feel it. all of it. the grief you had been carrying for three years like a stone in your chest, heavy and smooth and worn by constant handling. the loneliness that had become your only companion, that slept in your bed beside you, that sat across from you at dinner tables meant for two. the exhaustion of waking up every morning to a world that expected you to keep living when half of you had already died. the desperate, aching need for something you could never have again, for a hand you would never hold, for a voice you would never hear—except here, except now, except in this cruel parody of return.

the confession came out before you could stop it, raw, ugly and true.

"i didn't keep my promise."

the words fell into the silence like bodies into graves. you watched them land in your reflection's eyes, watched the ghost of you absorb their weight.

"i tried." a laugh escaped you, bitter and broken. "god, i tried. for a few months after, i sang every day. i have tried auditions after auditions, training after training. i sang until my throat was raw, until i had no voice left, until the sound that came out of me was nothing but scraping and air."

your hands were trembling. you watched them tremble in the reflection, watched the ghost of you fall apart in slow motion.

"but it hurt too much. every time i opened my mouth to sing, i heard his voice in my head… telling me i was good, telling me the world needed to hear me, telling me he loved me. and i couldn't—" your voice cracked, splintered, bled. "i couldn't carry that weight. i couldn't carry him anymore. so i stopped."

the silence that followed was boisterous.

"i stopped singing," you whispered. a tear slid down your reflection’s cheek. you watched it fall, watched it catch the dim light of the train, watched it disappear into the collar of your shirt. "i stopped everything. i went to work, i came home, i slept, i did it all again. i’ve tried so hard to forget him.”

the words hung in the air between you like smoke from a fire that had finally burned itself out.

you had said it. after three years of carrying this secret, this shame, this failure, you had finally spoken it aloud. you had broken the promise. you had let him down. you had taken the one thing he had asked of you—the only thing he had ever asked of you—and you had abandoned it because you were too weak, too broken, too human to bear the weight of it.

across from you, death was motionless.

for a long, terrible moment, he simply looked at you with those grey eyes, and you braced yourself for whatever came next. judgment, perhaps. disappointment. that quiet, detached curiosity that seemed to be his default state, observing your pain like a scientist observing a specimen.

but none of those things came.

instead, he moved.

it was slow, deliberate, as if he was giving you time to pull away, time to refuse, time to build your walls back up before he could reach you. he rose from his seat across from you and crossed the small space between you in two silent steps. then, without a word, without asking permission, without any of the things a human might have done in this moment, he lowered himself onto the velvet seat beside you.

and he took your hand.

his fingers were wintry, akin to the cold of winter graves and forgotten attics and the space between stars. however, they wrapped around yours with a gentleness that stole your breath. not the grip of someone trying to hold on. not the clutch of someone afraid you might disappear. just... presence. just here. just a hand, holding yours, in the darkness.

then softly, so softly, you almost didn’t hear it over the pounding of your own grief in your ears, “...i’m sorry.”

the words landed like snowflakes on warm skin—there and gone, melting into nothing, but leaving behind a trace of cold that you felt all the way down to your bones.

i’m sorry. two words from a being who had existed for eternity, who had guided countless souls to their final destinations, who had worn a thousand faces and would wear a thousand more. two words that meant nothing and everything, that should have been empty yet somehow weren't.

you gazed up at him, at this stranger wearing your lover's face, at these ashen eyes that held no memory of you but somehow, impossibly, seemed to see you. really see you. not as another soul to be processed, another name on an endless list, but as something more. something that had caught his attention. something that made him, for the first time in perhaps millennia, feel something other than the endless, weightless drift of eternity.

"what are you sorry for?" you whispered.

“you have been alone, you have been hurting… i’m sorry for everything you have lost, for everything you are still losing. consider this as my act of…”

he trailed off, his brow slightly furrowing in that achingly familiar way; the same expression chan used to wear when he was searching for the right word, the right note, the right way to say something that mattered. the silence stretched between you, fragile as spun glass, and you found yourself holding your breath, waiting for something you couldn’t name.

“kindness,” he finished finally, and the word seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised you,. his lips parted slightly, as if he was testing the weight of it, the shape of it in his mouth. “perhaps, of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindness.”

the words sank into you like anchors finding the ocean floor, disturbing depths you hadn't known existed.

death was kind.

this cold, empty, eternal thing was offering you kindness. not because he had to. not because it was his duty. but because he wanted to. because something in you, something in your grief, something in the way you had loved and lost and kept loving anyway, had seemed to reach him in a way nothing else ever had.

“...i understand,” you swallowed, the words scraped past the thickness in your throat, past the tears you were still crying, past the part of you that wanted to scream, the part that simply wanted to rest, the part that wanted to end everything, “i suppose that’s how life works–nothing lasts forever.”

nothing lasts forever.

the admission hung in the air between you, heavy as a funeral shroud, cold as the hand that still held yours. you had heard them before, of course—spoken at funerals, printed in sympathy cards, murmured by well-meaning friends who didn't know what else to say. but you had never truly felt them until now. never understood them in your bones, in the marrow of you, in the place where grief lived like a second heart.

not love. not grief. not even life itself.

not even the man who had promised you forever in a hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and dying flowers.

death went silent. he didn’t speak, didn’t offer comfort, wisdom, or any of the things a human might have said in this moment… no platitudes about moving on, no gentle reminders that grief was the price of love, no assurances that time would heal what had been broken. perhaps he knew, better than anyone, that such words were hollow. perhaps he had said them so many times across so many millennia that they had lost all meaning, worn smooth as river stones by endless repetition.

or perhaps, you thought as you watched his face shift through expressions you couldn't quite name, he simply ran out of words.

instead, his thumb began to move.

slow, rhythmic circles against the skin of your hand, tracing patterns that seemed to mean something even if you couldn't understand them. the motion was unconscious, you realized—he wasn't looking at what he was doing, wasn't thinking about it, wasn't even aware that he had started. it was simply... happening. flowing from him like water from a spring, like breath from lungs, like something his body remembered even if his mind did not.

it was such a small thing. such a human thing. the kind of absent-minded gesture someone made when they were lost in thought, when words failed them, when they didn't know how to say what they were feeling. the kind of thing chan used to do when you were curled up together on the couch, watching movies, existing in the same space without needing to fill it with sound.

your throat tightened.

of course, he had led an endless amount of souls, including you, to the afterlife… he must be used to comforting the living, the dying, the in-between. this was routine for him. another day, another soul, another brief moment of connection before moving on to the next. the thumb circling your hand meant nothing. it was just muscle memory. just habit. just the accumulated weight of millennia of practice.

and yet.

and yet it felt like something. it felt like care. like presence. like… warmth.

the tears came again, silent and hot, tracing warm paths down your cold cheeks.

you didn't know why you were still crying. you had cried so much already—enough tears to fill oceans, to drown in, to lose yourself in. but they kept coming, kept falling, kept being, and through it all, his thumb never stopped its slow, steady rhythm against your skin.

circle. circle. circle. a heartbeat made of motion. a promise made of touch. the only constant in a world that had dissolved into chaos and memory and the wreckage of everything you had ever loved.

minutes passed. or hours. or moments. time didn't matter here, didn't exist here, didn't mean anything in this place between places. the train continued its endless journey through darkness, and the memories continued their slow dance beyond the window, and you continued to cry, and he continued to hold your hand and trace those impossible circles against your skin.

you watched them with a kind of detached wonder, seeing yourself from the outside for the first time, understanding things about your own story that had never been clear before.

the years after chan's death. the grey apartment. the empty bed. the job that drained you, the nights that stretched on forever, the slow erosion of everything that had made you you. you watched yourself fade, day by day, month by month, year by year, until there was almost nothing left.

and then the accident. the headlights. the impact. the end.

you should have felt sad, watching it. you should have felt regret, or fear, or longing for the life you had left behind. you should have wept for the woman who had died alone on a rain-slicked street, for all the things she would never do, all the people she would never meet, all the possibilities that died with her.

but instead, all you felt was peace.

a deep, quiet peace that settled into your bones and made you feel, for the first time in three years, like you could finally rest. like the struggle was over. like you had been released from something that had been holding you captive, something you hadn't even known was a prison until the door swung open.

the tears were still on your cheeks, but they were old tears now. cooling. drying. the last remnants of a grief that had finally, finally run its course.

you took a breath. then another. then you reached up with your free hand and forcibly wiped the tears away with the back of it, smearing them across your skin like the last traces of a storm that had finally passed.

"i'm ready," the words came out steady, settling into the space between you like stones finding their resting place at the bottom of the river, finally still, after so long tumbling in the current.

the words came out steady. calm. certain in a way you hadn't been certain of anything in years.

his thumb stilled against your hand for just a moment–a pause, a question, a silent check, before resuming its slow, steady rhythm, “ready?”

"to go. to wherever i'm going." you turned from the window to face him, and for the first time, you didn't flinch at the sight of his face. didn't feel that sharp stab of grief at seeing chan's features on a stranger. "i've been running from this for so long. from death, from loss, from feeling. but i'm not running anymore."

it was still strange. it would probably always be strange. however, the pain had softened, somehow, during this impossible journey. blunted by time and tears and the simple presence of this ancient being who had sat with you in the dark and held your hand while you fell apart.

christopher chahn bahng was gone. he had been gone for three years, and no amount of wishing, no amount of crying, no amount of broken promises would bring him back. yet this entity, this death, this guide, this ‘temporary friend’, had given you something you hadn't known you needed.

permission to stop.

permission to let go.

permission to finally, after all this time, be ready.

death nodded slowly, understanding in his eyes—not the understanding of someone who had lived through what you had lived through, but the understanding of a ancient god who had witnessed it a million times. who had seen every variation of grief, every shade of loss, every possible way a soul could approach the end. the angry ones and the peaceful ones. the ones who fought until their last breath and the ones who surrendered with grace. the ones who clung to memories like lifelines and the ones who let go so completely they seemed to disappear before they'd even left.

you were neither, and you were both. you were something in between: a soul who had held on too long and was only now learning how to release.

"…it is time, then," he said. his voice was gentle, almost tender—the voice of someone delivering news they wished they didn't have to deliver, "the journey is almost over. beyond this train, beyond these memories, there is something waiting for you. i cannot tell you what it is. i cannot tell you what you will find. every soul experiences it differently, and the only thing i know for certain is that i do not know."

he paused, and something flickered in those soulless eyes.

"but i can tell you this: you will not be alone. whatever comes next, you will face it with everything you have ever been, everyone you have ever loved, every moment that has ever mattered. they are part of you now. they will always be part of you."

your heart, that phantom organ that still somehow managed to beat in your chest, swelled with something that felt almost like hope.

"will i see him again?" you whispered. "chan? will i—"

death's expression softened. it was the first truly soft thing you had seen on his face since this journey began.

"i cannot promise you… that. i do not know what waits beyond this threshold. but i can promise you this: if he is there… he will be waiting. and if he is not—" he reached out and took your hand again, his cold fingers wrapping around yours. "you will carry him with you. and that will be enough. it will have to be enough."

you nodded, swallowing against the thickness in your throat.

"okay," you breathed. "okay.”

his lips curved into something that might have been a smile, if smiles could exist on the face of death, despite crooked, “you’re braver than most. most souls fight until the very last moment. they scream. they bargain. they beg for more time, for second chances, for anything that might let them go back. but you…”

he shook his head, something like wonder in his voice; as if, after millennia of guiding souls, you had still managed to surprise him, “you just… accepted it.”

“maybe i’m just tired.”

"maybe." the edges of his lips twitched slightly, that same feigned simper. "or maybe you've already done all the fighting you needed to do. maybe this is just... rest."

you liked that. rest. not an ending, not a finality, just... rest. the kind of rest you had been craving for three years, the kind you had never been able to find in that grey apartment with its empty bed and its crushing silence. the kind that had eluded you no matter how many hours you slept, no matter how many days you spent pretending to be fine.

"thank you… death.”

"for what?"

"for being kind. for listening. for—" you gestured vaguely at him, at the train, at everything. "for wearing his face. it made this easier. and harder. but mostly easier, i think. it felt like he was here with me, one last time."

something shifted in his expression. too fast to name, too quick to understand. but you felt it. you felt him, beneath the mask, beneath the centuries of solitude and duty and emptiness. you felt something reaching for you, something that wanted to hold on, something that was fighting against its own nature to be present with you in this moment.

"can i ask you for something?" the words came out before you could stop them, before you could think about whether they were appropriate or fair or kind.

"anything."

you hesitated. the train was slowing now, the memories fading from the windows, a soft light beginning to glow in the distance—warm and golden and somehow inviting, like a home you had never seen but somehow recognized. you were running out of time.

"can you…" you stopped. swallowed. started again. "can you hold me? just for a moment? i know you're not him–i just... i want to be held one last time. by someone who looks like him."

he was quiet for a long moment, and you braced yourself for refusal. for the gentle explanation that this wasn't appropriate, wasn't allowed, wasn't what death was supposed to do. for the polite but firm rejection that would send you into the light alone, still hungry for a touch you would never feel again.

however, instead, he moved.

slowly. carefully. giving you every chance to change your mind, to pull away, to take back the request. his arms lifted, opened, offered—a question more than an answer, an invitation more than an assumption. his haunting eyes held yours, asking permission, waiting for consent, refusing to assume anything.

you rose up from your own seat, moving forward to the spot beside him. the train hummed softly around you, the memories flickered beyond the window, and the light grew steadily brighter—yet none of it mattered. none of it existed. there was only him, and his open arms, and the moment stretching between you like a held breath.

you leaned into death himself.

when his arms finally closed around you, they were hesitant at first, as if he had forgotten how. the cold seeped through your clothes, through your skin, through to the bone—yet beneath that chill was something steady. something present. he held you with a gentleness that made your heart ache with recognition, that reminded your body of what it felt like to be held by someone who loved you.

it was slightly different from his.

his hugs had been warm, full-bodied, all-encompassing. he had held you like you were the most precious thing in the universe, like he was afraid you might disappear if he let go. he had pressed his face into your hair and breathed you in, and you had felt, in those moments, like nothing could ever hurt you. like the world outside could burn and you would still be safe, still be loved, still be home.

yet it still felt safe.

in death’s arms, encased in his cold, cradled in his careful tenderness, you found safety for the first time in three years. the first time since chan's fingers had slackened in your grip. the first time since that endless, terrible tone had sliced through the hospital room and carved everything away.

"thank you," you whispered into his chest. the words were muffled, swallowed by the fabric of his black coat, by the cold, by the sheer impossibility of this moment.

his arms tightened. just slightly. just enough to let you know he had heard, he understood, he was here. "…you're welcome."

you stayed like that for a long moment, wrapped in each other, the train slowing around you, the light growing brighter beyond the windows. you didn't want to let go. you didn't want this moment to end. but you knew… you knew… that all moments ended eventually. that was the nature of moments. that was the nature of everything. even this. even him. even the impossible, fleeting connection between a soul and the being who guided it into whatever came next.

"your ‘temporary friend’," you murmured, remembering his words from earlier. the phrase had stuck with you, lodged itself somewhere in your chest. "that's what you said you were."

this entity who had existed since before time had a name, who had guided more souls than there were stars in the sky. the light from beyond the windows caught his features, softening them, gilding the sharp edges of his cheekbones, warming the cold planes of his face. it made him look almost human. almost like chan. almost like someone you could keep.

in another life, perhaps. in another world.

"i think," you said slowly, "that you're the best ‘temporary friend’ i've ever had."

his lips parted slightly, as if he wanted to respond, wanted to offer some words in return.

however, before he could, before the moment could stretch any further, the train came to a halt.

it was not the gentle stop of a train arriving at a station. it was a cessation, a stillness, an absolute end of movement. one moment the world was sliding past in a blur of light and memory; the next, everything was perfectly, utterly still.

THE LIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS WAS NOW SOFT, pearlescent, beautiful in a way that made your chest ache. through the glass, you could see a platform, not the abandoned, grimy platform from before, but something else. something more. it was bathed in that same soft light, and at the end of it, you could see…

a gate.

it was wrought iron, old and beautiful, covered in flowers that seemed to bloom even as you watched. beyond it, you could see a garden—the most beautiful garden you had ever imagined, with colors that didn't exist in the living world and light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

the afterlife.

your final destination.

death rose from the seat beside you, and the motion drew your eyes to his face one last time. then his hand was there, waiting. you took it confidently, letting him pull you gently to your feet. frost enveloped your fingers, yet beneath it was something solid, something steady, something that made you feel, even now, even at the end, like you weren't alone. he led you forward, through the train, down the corridor, towards the door that would open onto forever.

the doors slid open silently, revealing the platform beyond.

you stepped out together, hand in hand, and the light washed over you like warm water, like a blessing, like coming home after a long, hard journey. it was beautiful. it was peaceful. it was everything you had hoped for and more.

death stopped at the edge of the platform, just before the gate. his hand released yours, and you turned to face him, to say goodbye, to thank him one last time for everything he had done—for the kindness, for the patience, for holding you while you fell apart. the words were gathering in your throat, lining up like soldiers ready to march: thank you, i'll never forget you, i hope you find peace too–

however, before you could speak, before you could form the words that were gathering in your throat, he stepped forward and pulled you into his arms.

this was not the careful, hesitant embrace from before. this was not the gentle holding of a being learning to touch for the first time. this one was desperate. this one was fierce. this one held you like he was drowning and you were air, like he had been waiting for this moment for longer than you could imagine, like letting you go would kill him in a way that even death couldn't survive.

you froze, confused, your arms hanging uselessly at your sides.

"death—" you started, your voice muffled against his chest. but before you could finish, before you could ask what was happening, before you could process any of the emotions flooding through you—

he kissed you.

his lips pressed against yours; cold as starlight, cold as the space between heartbeats, cold as everything he had ever been—yet they were familiar. they fit against yours the way they had always fit, the way they had fit in the studio under fairy lights three years ago, the way they had fit in the hospital room when there were no words left to say, when all that remained was touch, tears, and the desperate need to hold on just a little longer.

and without thinking, without understanding, without knowing why…

you reciprocated his kiss.

your arms came up around him, pulling him closer, holding him the way you used to hold chan, the way you had held him a thousand times in a thousand different moments. your lips moved against his like they had never stopped, like the three years of silence and grief had never happened, like you were still the person you had been before everything fell apart.

but it was him.

somewhere in the back of your mind, in the depths of your soul, you knew. you had always known. the way he held you, the way he kissed you, the way his presence made you feel seen in a way that nothing else ever had—it had always been him.

and this broke you.

because you were kissing chan. you were kissing chan one last time, and you hadn't known, hadn't realized, hadn't understood until this moment what you had been missing, what you had lost, what you had been given back for just a handful of heartbeats. three years of emptiness, three years of searching for him in every face, in every crowd, in every quiet moment when the world went still.

and he had been here all along. he had been holding you. he had been guiding you home.

tears streamed down your face, hot and endless, mixing with the cold of his lips, with the salt of three years of grief finally released. they fell between you, onto your joined mouths, onto the hands that clutched at each other like lifelines. he held you close until there were no space left, chest to chest, heart to heart, his hands familiar on your waist.

when you finally broke apart, when you finally pulled back just enough to look at him, his eyes were no longer moonless grey.

they were brown.

they were his brown… warm, genuine, and full of a love so vast it seemed to confine everything. they were the eyes that had held you together when everything else was falling apart, the eyes that haunted you in your dreams. they were the eyes you had searched for in every stranger's face, the eyes you had been so afraid you would never see again.

"chan," you breathed, and the word was a prayer, a question, a desperate hope. "chan, it's you. it's really you."

he smiled, that smile, the one that creased his cheeks with dimples, the one that had made you fall in love with him, the one you had dreamed about for three years, and nodded slowly.

"but you said–you…" you couldn't form the words, couldn't process the betrayal, couldn't understand why he had let you suffer, why he had let you grieve, why he had let you believe he was a stranger.

"i know." his hand came up to cup your face, his thumb tracing the line of your cheek, wiping away tears that wouldn't stop falling. "i know what i said. i know what you believed. and i'm sorry–i'm so, so sorry… i had to. i had to guide you. i had to be here for you, just for a little while, because if i had shown you who i really was from the beginning, you would never have been able to let go."

"let go?" you shook your head, confusion and grief and desperate love all tangled together in your chest, a knot so tight you didn't think it would ever come undone. "let go of what? let go of you? i've been letting go of you for three years, chan. i've been trying so hard to forget you, to move on, to live, and i couldn't! i couldn't do any of it because you were everywhere, in everything, and now you're here, and you're telling me—"

"i'm telling you goodbye."

the words landed like a blade between your ribs.

the world stopped. the light behind you dimmed. the train, the platform, the gate—all of it faded into background noise, into static, into nothing at all. there was only him, and his brown eyes full of love, and the words that had just carved themselves into your heart.

"what?"

"goodbye." his voice was soft, so soft, but it held the weight of eternity. "this is it, baby. this is the end. and i…" his voice cracked, and he had to pause, had to gather himself, had to find the strength to continue. "i have to let you go."

"no." you grabbed his arms, held onto him with a desperation that surprised you both. "no, you can't. you can't do this. you can't come back to me just to leave again. you can't—"

"i have to." tears were falling from his eyes now—not the clear tears of before, but something darker, something that looked almost like ink, trailing black paths down his pale cheeks. "i'm death, y/n. i have a duty, a purpose, a function. i can't leave the train. i can't cross through that gate. but you…" he looked past her, at the garden beyond, at the light, the peace, and the judgement that was waiting. "you can. you will. and you'll be happy there. you'll be at peace. you'll finally rest."

"i don't want to rest." the words came out fierce, desperate, angry. "i want you. i've always wanted you. i waited for you for three years, chan. i died waiting for you. and now you're telling me—"

"i'm telling you that i love you." his voice was steady now, certain, the voice of someone who had made peace with something impossible. "i'm telling you that i've loved you since the moment i saw you, and i'll love you until the end of everything. i'm telling you that i will wait for you–not just in this life, but in every life. when your soul is ready to be reborn, when you return to the world in a new body with a new identity and a new face, i will be here. waiting. and when your time comes again—whenever that may be, however long it takes… i will be the one who comes for you. i will be the one who guides you home."

"you can't promise that."

"i can." he beamed through his tears—black tears, ink tears, the tears of a being who had existed for eternity and was feeling, for the first time, what it meant to lose something. “some connections are too strong to be broken by death, time or the whims of gods. you and i…" he paused, and his eyes held yours with an intensity that took your breath away. "you and i are bound, y/n. we have been since the moment we met, and we will be until the end of everything. that's not something they can take away. that's not something anyone can take away."

he leaned forward and pressed his lips to your forehead; a kiss so gentle, so tender, so full of love that it felt like a benediction.

"goodbye, my love," he whispered against your skin. "i'm more than grateful to see you one last time, to send you off one last time. i will wait for you. always."

he stepped back, out of your arms, out of your reach, and walked toward the train with a slowness that felt like torture.

each step was a slow death. each movement of his body away from you was another wound, another cut, another piece of your heart carved out and left to bleed on the platform.

you tried to follow.

you tried.

your legs moved before your mind could catch up, before you could think, before you could process what was happening. you took a step toward him, then another, your hand reaching out, reaching for him, reaching for chan—

and stopped.

not because you chose to. not because you changed your mind. but because something stopped you.

an invisible barrier, warm and soft but utterly impassable, rose between you and the platform. between you and the train. between you and him.

"CHAN!" you screamed, and the sound tore from your throat like something living, like something dying, like something that would never stop echoing. you slammed your fists aggressively against the invisible barrier, desperate, "chan, please! don't do this! don't leave me again!"

he stopped at the door of the train and turned to look at you one last time.

his face was wet with those raven tears, those tears that spoke of a grief too deep for words. but he was smiling—that smile, the one you had fallen in love with, the one you would carry with you through every life, every death, every rebirth.

"you're a cruel man, christopher chahn bahng!" you screamed, using his full name, the name only you had ever used, the name that held all your love and all your anger and all your desperate, impossible hope. "how can you do this to me? how can you bring me back to you just to let me go again?"

his smile dropped, just slightly, just enough to let you know that he heard you, that he understood, that he loved you even in this, especially in this.

"i’m sorry… i love you, y/n, " he called, his voice carrying across the impossible distance between you. "i always have. i always will."

the train doors began to close.

you pressed against the invisible barrier, your hands flat against nothing, your body straining toward him even though you knew… you knew… you couldn't reach him.

"i love you so much," you called out, and your voice broke on the last word, dissolved into sobs, into tears, into the thousand pieces of your heart that were scattering across the space between you. "i love you so much, chan. i never stopped. i never stopped."

through the closing doors, through the gap that was getting smaller and smaller, you saw him.

those onyx tears, streaming down his cheeks like ink, like grief, like love made visible. that smile, still there, still his, still holding all the warmth and love that had sustained you through three years of darkness.

and then, as the doors sealed shut, as the train began to move in reverse, sliding away from the platform, away from you, away into the darkness from which it had come—he blew you a kiss.

the doors closed.

the train began to move, not forward, towards some unknown destination, but in reverse, sliding away from the platform, away from the gate, away from you.

you slid down against the invisible barrier, your knees crashing against the cold floor with a force you couldn't feel—because what was physical pain compared to this? what were bruises and breaks compared to the sight of him disappearing, of him leaving again, of him choosing to go when every fiber of your being was screaming at him to stay?

your heart shattered even more. you would die the second time due to this.

then, ludicrously, it pieced itself back together… only to shatter again, and again, and again, an endless cycle of breaking, and mending and breaking, each wave of grief more brutal than the last.

through the windows of the train, you could see him.

standing in one of the compartments, his hand pressed to the glass. his eyes remained on yours as the train began to move faster, locked onto yours with an intensity that burned through the distance, through the darkness, through the impossible space between you.

his lips were moving. words you couldn't hear, couldn't catch, couldn't hold onto… but somehow, you were able to comprehend.

i love you. forgive me.

the train slid further into darkness, and his hand stayed pressed to the glass, as if he could reach through it, as if he could touch you one last time, as if he could bridge the impossible distance with nothing but will, want, and love.

his abnormal, inky tears… you could see them even from here, even through the gathering dark, even as the train carried him away from you. rivers of night, pouring from the eyes of the only person you had ever truly loved.

the train was smaller now, a shrinking shape in the endless void, a light growing dimmer with each passing second.

you pressed your hand against the barrier, matching his gesture, reaching for him even though you knew you couldn't touch, couldn't hold, couldn't keep.

and then it was gone.

behind you, the gates to the afterlife blazed with light—warm, welcoming, patient. the garden beyond called to you with its color, its peace, and its promise of rest. yet you couldn’t move towards it. not yet. not while the last image of him still burned behind your eyes… his hand on the glass, his lips that you would kiss a thousand times, his tears falling like the universe itself was mourning with him.

i'll wait for you.

and somewhere, in the darkness between worlds, on a train that ran forever through the spaces between life and death, someone was waiting for you.

would always wait for you.

for as many lifetimes as it took.

i will wait.

© lynsbng 2026 — ‘once upon a broken heart’ event.

The fan meet was buzzing with energy, the kind that always left Felix exhilarated but exhausted. Stray Kids had just wrapped up their latest comeback promotions, and today was a special event for STAYs, complete with games, autographs, and plenty of heartwarming interactions. Felix, with his signature freckles and bright smile, was in his element, waving at fans and posing for selfies. But his eyes kept drifting to you, his wife of two years, who was standing off to the side, helping out with the staff as she often did.

You weren’t officially part of the team, but as Felix’s partner, you’d become a familiar face behind the scenes. Today, though, something unexpected happened. One of the fans, a young mother, had brought her infant daughter along, a tiny bundle of joy wrapped in a pink blanket, cooing softly amid the chaos. The fan had asked if someone could hold the baby for a moment while she got her photo with the group, and without hesitation, you volunteered.

Felix watched from the stage as you cradled the baby in your arms, your face lighting up with a soft, genuine smile. The little girl reached up with chubby fingers, grabbing at your hair, and you laughed, a sound that hit Felix right in the chest. You bounced her gently, whispering nonsense words to keep her calm, and in that moment, Felix felt something shift inside him. It was like a switch flipped. You’d always talked about kids someday, but seeing you like this, nurturing, patient, so naturally maternal, ignited a fire he hadn’t expected.

Baby fever. That’s what it was. Pure, unfiltered baby fever. His mind raced with images: you swollen with his child, your body changing because of him, the two of you building a family. He wanted it. Needed it. And as the meet wrapped up, he couldn’t shake the possessiveness bubbling up. You were his perfect little wife, and tonight, he was going to show you just how badly he wanted to put a baby in you.

By the time you both got back to your shared apartment in Seoul, the sun had dipped low, casting a warm glow through the windows. Felix was unusually quiet in the car, his hand resting on your thigh, fingers tracing lazy circles that sent subtle shivers up your spine. You glanced at him, curious.

“Everything okay, Lix?” you asked, using the nickname that always made him smile.

He turned to you, his deep brown eyes darker than usual, filled with an intensity that made your stomach flutter. “Yeah, angel. Just… thinking about today.”

You nodded, assuming he meant the fans or the performance. But as soon as the door clicked shut behind you, Felix was on you. His hands gripped your waist, pulling you flush against him as he backed you toward the living room couch. His lips crashed into yours, hungry, demanding, like he couldn’t wait another second.

“Felix—” you gasped between kisses, your fingers tangling in his soft, blond hair. He tasted like the mint gum he’d been chewing, and his body heat enveloped you completely.

“You were so good with that baby today,” he murmured against your neck, his voice low and rough. His teeth grazed your skin, nipping lightly. “Holding her, smiling like that… Fuck, Y/N, it drove me crazy.”

You blinked, pulling back slightly to look at him. “The baby? At the meet?”

He nodded, his hands sliding under your shirt, palms hot against your bare skin. “Yeah. Seeing you like that… it made me want one. Our own. Right now.”

Your heart skipped. You and Felix had discussed kids before, someday, when the timing was right. But the way he was looking at you now, like you were the only thing in his world, made heat pool low in your belly. “Lix, are you serious?”

“Dead serious,” he growled, lifting your shirt over your head and tossing it aside. His eyes raked over your body, appreciative and possessive. “You’re my wife. My perfect little wife. And I want to fill you up, make you mine in every way. Put a baby in you.”

The words sent a thrill through you. Felix had always been sweet, playful in bed, but this… this was different. Primal. His breeding kink, something you’d explored lightly before, was in full force now. And mixed with his daddy kink? You knew you were in for it.

He pushed you down onto the couch, hovering over you as he stripped off his own shirt, revealing the lean muscles from years of dancing and performing. His freckles stood out against his flushed skin, and you reached up to trace them, but he caught your wrist, pinning it above your head.

“Not yet, babygirl,” he said, his Australian accent thickening with lust. “Daddy’s in charge tonight.”

The word “daddy” slipped from his lips so naturally, and it made you whimper. You nodded, surrendering to him completely. “Yes, Daddy.”

“Good girl.” He rewarded you with a deep kiss, his tongue exploring your mouth as his free hand unclasped your bra. He broke away to trail kisses down your chest, taking one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard enough to make you arch off the couch.

“Felix—Daddy, please,” you moaned, your hands itching to touch him.

He released your wrist but shook his head. “Hands to yourself until I say so. I want you to feel everything.”

His mouth continued its assault, alternating between your breasts, leaving them sensitive and aching. Then he moved lower, hooking his fingers into your pants and pulling them down along with your panties. You were exposed to him now, and the cool air made you shiver—but not as much as the way he stared at your core, like he was starving.

“Look at you,” he whispered, his fingers parting your folds gently. “So wet already. All for me? For Daddy?”

“Yes,” you breathed, hips bucking instinctively.

He pressed a finger inside you, slow and deliberate, curling it just right to hit that spot that made stars burst behind your eyes. “Gonna stretch you out first. Make sure you’re ready for me. Because tonight, I’m not pulling out. I’m gonna breed you, fill you up until you’re dripping with my cum.”

The dirty talk was new, intense, and it had you clenching around his finger. He added a second, pumping them in and out while his thumb circled your clit. You were a mess already, moans spilling from your lips, but Felix wasn’t done teasing.

“Tell me you want it,” he demanded, his eyes locked on yours. “Tell Daddy you want his baby.”

“I want it,” you gasped, the words tumbling out. “I want your baby, Daddy. Please, breed me.”

That seemed to snap something in him. He withdrew his fingers, making you whine at the loss, but then he was shedding his pants, his hard length springing free. Felix was always impressive, thick, veined, with a slight curve that hit all the right places. But tonight, he looked even more commanding as he stroked himself, pre-cum beading at the tip.

He positioned himself between your legs, rubbing the head against your entrance. “You’re mine, Y/N. My wife. And I’m gonna make you a mommy.”

With that, he thrust in, burying himself to the hilt in one smooth motion. You cried out, nails digging into the couch cushions as he stretched you perfectly. He gave you a moment to adjust, his forehead pressed to yours, breathing ragged.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groaned. “So tight, so perfect for me.”

Then he started moving, slow at first, deep rolls of his hips that had you feeling every inch of him. But as the pleasure built, his pace quickened, turning rougher, more insistent. His hands gripped your hips, holding you in place as he pounded into you.

“Gonna fill you up,” he panted, sweat glistening on his skin. “Gonna breed this pretty pussy until you’re pregnant. You want that, babygirl? Want Daddy’s cum deep inside?”

“Yes, Daddy! Please, give it to me,” you begged, your own climax building fast.

He shifted angles, hitting deeper, and you shattered around him, walls pulsing as waves of ecstasy crashed over you. But Felix didn’t stop. He fucked you through it, chasing his own release, his thrusts erratic now.

“Take it,” he growled, and with a final, deep thrust, he came, hot ropes of cum spilling inside you, just like he promised. He stayed buried deep, plugging you up as if to ensure nothing escaped.

For a moment, you both just lay there, panting, his body covering yours protectively. He kissed your forehead, then your lips, softer now.

“I love you,” he whispered. “And I meant it. I want this with you.”

You smiled, cupping his face. “I love you too, Lix. Let’s make it happen.”

But the night wasn’t over. Felix’s baby fever was far from quenched. After a brief respite, where he fetched you water and cuddled you close, he was hard again, his hands roaming your body possessively.

“Round two?” he asked with a smirk, but his eyes were serious.

You nodded, eager. This time, he flipped you onto your stomach, pulling your hips up so you were on all fours. “Gonna take you like this. Breed you properly.”

He slid back in easily, your combined arousal making it slick and messy. The new angle let him go even deeper, and you moaned into the pillows as he set a punishing rhythm.

“Daddy’s gonna make sure,” he said between thrusts. “Gonna cum in you again and again until it takes.”

His words, combined with the slap of skin on skin, had you climbing toward another orgasm. One hand reached around to rub your clit, the other spanking your ass lightly, enough to sting, enough to heighten everything.

“Come for me, wife,” he commanded. “Milk Daddy’s cock.”

You did, screaming his name as you clenched around him. Felix followed soon after, spilling inside you once more, his groans echoing in the room.

By the third round, you were both exhausted but insatiable. He had you in his lap now, facing him on the bed, riding him slowly as he whispered praises. “Such a good girl. Taking it all for me. Gonna look so beautiful pregnant.”

His hands caressed your belly, imagining it round with his child. The thought spurred him on, and when he came this time, he held you down, ensuring every drop stayed inside.

Finally, as dawn crept in, you collapsed together, tangled in sheets. Felix pulled you close, his hand resting protectively over your stomach.

“Someday soon,” he murmured sleepily.

You kissed him. “Someday soon.”

HAN

FELIX

SEUNGMIN

I.N

아이엔. YANG JEONGIN

© r3chas ⭑.ᐟ do not reupload / copy my work

explicit warnings: loss of virginity (jeongin), intercourse, phone sex, masturbation, fingering, oral (f and m receiving)

a/n: i've been working on this for quite some time and may i say: you better brace yourself for one hell of a rollercoaster ride (i'm sorry)

₊˚⊹∘•····································•∘ʚ ♡ ɞ∘•·····································•∘⊹˚₊

you’d known him long before the world did.

back then, he was just jeongin, the boy who always laughed with his whole face, who leaned into you when he talked, who remembered every small detail you ever mentioned even when you forgot you’d said it.

somewhere along the way, without either of you noticing, he had become the person you shared everything with. the one you messaged first thing in the morning and last thing at night. the one who made even the boring parts of life feel lighter.

you would meet after school, hating that you didn't attend the same one. you'd sit on the swings long after the sun dipped behind the buildings. he used to bring you those cheap convenience store drinks you liked, pretending it was a coincidence that he always chose the exact flavour you wanted. sometimes he’d pluck the straw wrapper off and tuck it behind your ear, saying you looked “distinguished” until you swatted him, both of you laughing too loudly in the empty playground.

he trusted you more easily than he trusted most people. he told you things he didn’t tell anyone. dreams, insecurities, the pressure he felt even before debuting. all of it spilled out in those quiet spaces you created for each other. and you listened, always listened, because his feelings mattered to you in a way you never questioned.

there were nights when he’d show up at your doorstep without warning, hair a little messy, hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands. he’d ask if you wanted to walk around the block with him, claiming he “just needed fresh air,” but you always knew he needed company more than anything. he’d match his steps to yours, bumping your shoulder every now and then as if to make sure you were really there. once, when a stray cat darted in front of you, you startled and grabbed his arm. he didn’t let go even after you both stopped laughing.

he was your friend. your closest friend. the kind you couldn’t imagine losing. and you never once thought the ground beneath you could shift.

after he debuted, you were there. not physically beside him, but watching from your tiny laptop screen, knees pulled to your chest as his face appeared under the stage lights. you remembered the nervous trainee who used to practice vocal runs under his breath when he thought you weren’t listening, and now he stood in front of thousands, smiling like he finally believed he belonged there.

you would always text him after concerts, fingers shaking because you were so damn proud.

« you did amazing, jeongin. i’m so happy for you. i knew you’d get here. »

he answered hours later, a rushed selfie, cheeks flushed from adrenaline.

« did i look okay? i thought of you during the encore... i always do. thank you for watching. »

the months that followed slipped past quickly, swallowed by his schedules, rehearsals, tours, and promotions. you had expected him to get busier, but not this busy. some nights you waited for a text that never came, only to wake up to a string of tired selfies he sent at 3am, apologising, always apologising, for being slow to reply.

still, you always told him you were proud. even on days you felt the ache of missing him like a bruise.

when the group started gaining popularity, you’d send him little congratulations, screenshots of articles, blurry clips from music shows, messages like:

« you’re everywhere these days. you deserve it. »

« your vocals in the live performance were insane, i’m so proud of you i could cry. »

« don’t forget to eat, okay? you look tired. »

he’d respond whenever he could. sometimes with long rambles about the stages, the fans, the crazy schedules. sometimes with nothing but a short voice note, his voice hoarse as he whispered, “thank you for being happy for me. it means more than you think.”

but as the year stretched on, the space between you widened. you stopped waiting for his name to light up your phone because you knew he was doing what he’d always dreamed of. you didn’t want to cling. you didn’t want to be another weight on his shoulders.

still, every time he popped up with a selfie, hair wet from practice, eyes warm in that familiar way, and those goddamn dimples, your chest squeezed with something quietly painful. he’d add little captions like 'thought of you when we passed your favourite café today' or 'i miss hanging out with you', and it softened the sting a little.

the distance didn’t happen all at once. it was gradual. slow. like watching someone you love walk down a hallway, turning around less and less as the door between you slowly drifted shut.

you told yourself it was okay. that this was what growing up looked like.

but some nights, staring at the small glow of your screen, rereading older messages, you wished, selfishly, that he didn’t feel quite so far away.

it took almost a year and a half before your schedules finally aligned again, like two planets drifting close enough to share the same orbit for a moment. he texted you out of nowhere. a simple « are you home tonight? » and you stared at the message long enough for the typing bubble to pop up again.

« never mind, i shouldn’t bother you. you’re probably busy. »

« but i really want to see you... »

you called him immediately. he laughed when he picked up, breathless, as if he’d sprinted to answer.

“i’m free,” you said. “come over.”

when he arrived, he looked both older and exactly the same. his hair was different, styled in a way you’d only seen on stage. his shoulders broader. his posture straighter. but his smile hadn’t changed at all, despite the braces that had come off.

you let him in, and he wandered around your new apartment, commenting on the new pillows, the new mug on your counter, the photos on your fridge. he noticed everything.

you ordered some takeaway and talked for hours, curled up on opposite ends of your couch, legs stretched out until your toes brushed his thigh. he didn’t move away. he never did.

you told him about university, about the projects stressing you out, the long nights in the library. he listened quietly, chin propped on his hand, nodding like every word mattered. he told you stories about tours, backstage chaos, the pressure, the loneliness in hotel rooms. you listened just as intently.

somewhere between the laughter and the comfortable silences, the conversation deepened. it happened the same way everything happened with him. naturally.

he stared at his hands for a long moment, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his hoodie.

“i feel like i missed so much,” he murmured. “i wasn’t here for anything. birthdays. exams. bad days. all of it.”

you nudged his foot with yours. “you were busy living your dream. i get it. i’m proud of you, jeongin." you said, smiling widely.

he looked up then, eyes soft, almost sad. “you always say that.”

“because it’s true.”

“i just… i don’t want you to think i forgot about you.”

your breath hitched a little, not because of what he said, but because of the way he said it, like the thought genuinely hurt him.

“I know you didn’t,” you whispered. for a moment, neither of you spoke. the room felt too small, too quiet, too full of everything unspoken.

he let out a soft sigh, leaning back against the couch, gaze fixed on the ceiling.

“there’s something i’ve been thinking about,” he said, voice almost too calm. “and it’s stupid, but… i don’t want to go into this chaotic life without… without having experienced some things.”

you tilted your head. “like what?”

his cheeks flushed, eyes darting away. “i’ve never kissed anyone, never slept with anyone,” he said quietly. “and i keep thinking about it. about… about wanting to know what that feels like.”

your heart suddenly beat faster. “so? what's holding you back?" you asked, trying to keep your voice steady.

“so,” he breathed, swallowing, “i keep thinking… i kind of want my first time to be with someone i trust.”

your pulse quickened. "jeongin–"

“i mean you,” he blurted, eyes still avoiding yours. “i trust you. and i keep thinking about… experiencing these things with you.”

the room felt warmer, your cheeks burning.

you hadn’t expected this from him. not from the boy who used to believe he wanted to become a priest, not from the boy who used to fall asleep on your shoulder during movie nights, not from the friend you’d spent years pretending you didn’t ache for.

his voice dropped, almost a whisper. “you don’t have to say yes. i just… needed to tell you.”

your heart was already answering before your mouth did. “i mean,” you said softly, “i can… help you.”

he finally looked at you then, eyes wide and hopeful and ...terrified, and you wondered how long you’d both been lying to yourselves.

his breath hitched, barely audible, but you felt it, a tiny tremor in the air between you. he turned towards you fully, one knee drawn up on the couch, his fingers curling slightly like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. you’d seen him nervous before, but never quite like this.

“are you sure?” he whispered. “i don’t… i don’t want to make things weird.”

you almost laughed. not because it was funny, but because it was so painfully him. always worried about you, about how you felt, even when he was the one confessing something that made his voice shake.

“i’m sure,” you said, softer than you meant to. and you were. you absofuckinglutely were.

the next few seconds stretched thin, the kind of moment that asked to be handled gently.

he leaned in cautiously, as if giving you every chance to pull away. his eyes flicked down to your lips, then up again, as if silently asking one last time. you nodded, almost imperceptibly, and that seemed to be all he needed.

his hand lifted hesitantly, then settled lightly against your cheek. his palm was cold and sweaty, his thumb trembling just a little.

“i’ve thought about this,” he admitted, barely breathing the words. “more than i should have.” and before you could process that confession, he closed the distance.

the kiss was tentative. a question, not an answer. his lips brushed yours like he was testing the feeling, memorising it. you felt his breath catch against your mouth. his hand slid back a little, fingers threading through your hair as if he’d always wanted to know what that felt like.

you kissed him back. gently at first, then a little more certain. his response was immediate, a small sound escaping him, surprised and almost relieved. he leaned closer until your knees touched, until there was no space left to pretend you were just helping him.

he pulled away only a fraction, eyes fluttering open. his cheeks were pink, his lips slightly parted.

you didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. your hand found the fabric of his hoodie, tugging him back in.

the second kiss was no longer shy. it was eager, lingering. he moved closer, almost climbing into your space entirely, lips fitting against yours more confidently this time. he kissed you like he was learning you. the pace you liked, the angle that made you sigh into him, the way your fingers curled in the hem of his sleeve.

and once he found the rhythm, he didn’t stop. not for a long while.

time blurred. your couch, the lamplight, the soft hum of the street outside, all of it disappeared under the weight of those slow, careful kisses. every time you pulled back for breath, he chased your lips again, like he didn’t want to lose the feeling.

his hands were starting to get more confident as they explored your body. they were everywhere and when he slipped one underneath your shirt, you inhaled sharply. his hand was cold against your heated skin. and suddenly, the world became blurry.

you couldn't remember the exact moment the kiss turned into something heated. maybe it was when his fingers dug into your skin, pulling you closer to him. you ended up on his lap, straddlig him, arms wrapped around his neck.

jeongin's tongue had found its way into your mouth, one hand trailing up from where he held your waist to the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair.

your hips started doing the inevitable, rocking against him. you could feel him grow hard against you, soft whimpers leaving his lips between kisses. he bucked up against you, his hand grabbing your waist, guiding you as you started grinding.

"fuck," he murmured, head dipping low, hiding in the crook of your neck as uncontrollable moans left his throat. he let you dry hump him, not daring to imagine how good it would feel without the clothes seperating you. and he knew he needed to stop you sooner rather than later, not wanting to cum in his pants.

"can we–" his voice sounded shaky, eyes finding yours again. "can we move this to the bedroom?" he asked. you placed your hands on his shoulders to steady yourself when you got up. jeongin looked like a hot mess. hair dishevelled, lips pink and swollen, his chest rising and falling quickly.

you grinned confidently as you held out your hand, helping him up. his eyes stayed on you constantly as you led him to your bedroom. you stopped in front of the door, turning around. "did you bring um–"

he understood immediately, nodding his head, "yes! yes, hold on." he walked over to where he tossed his jacket earlier, grabbing a foil packet from his pocket.

you raised your eyebrows in amusement, "confident much?" jeongin blushed immediately, looking almost shy, "just hoped you'd say yes." he admitted and you couldn't refrain from smiling softly.

jeongin watched as you undressed yourself, terrified of blinking, terrified you'd vanish into thin air if he did. his lips were parted, completely in awe. all the times he had imagined what you'd look like naked, none of the images in his head came close to your beauty.

when you were stripped down to your underwear, you walked over to where he was standing awkwardly, gaze never leaving yours. "you're so beautiful." he whispered when you stood in front of him. you remained silent, taking his hands into yours and guiding them to the clasp of your bra. jeongin inhaled sharply, holding his breath as his shaky fingers fumbled with it, managing to undo it after a few attempts. he watched you carefully as you slid the straps down your shoulders, his cock twitching inside his trousers when your bare tits came into view.

you looked up at him, trying to read what was going on inside his mind. you could tell his thoughts were racing. "touch me, jeongin." you whispered softly.

his eyes widened as he looked at you, trying to comprehend what you just said. slowly, carefully, he lifted his hand, cupping your tit gently. his lips crashed into yours immediately, kissing you fiercely. you stumbled backwards until your legs hit the foot of your bed. you pulled him down with you, lips never leaving his.

"what–" he pulled away, swallowing hard, "what can i do to make you feel good?"

you guided his hand down, inside your panties. jeongin moaned as he felt your heat against his fingertips, your wetness. you moved his fingertips to your clit. and almost as if driven by instinct, he started moving them in slow circles. you moaned his name, followed by a soft "just like that."

he watched you intensely, watched how your body reacted when he increased the pressure, the pace, slowing down again, running his fingers along your slit to collect some juices before continuing to rub your clit. he placed soft kisses on your neck, all the way down to your breasts.

"jeongin–" you moaned. his head shot up immediately, "yes?"

"i want you inside me."

he suppressed a groan when he heard you say it. he slowly removed his hand from your heated cunt, starting to undress himself. you moved up on the mattress, getting comfortable, watching him with a smirk on your face.

jeongin caught your stare, blushing again. you grabbed the foil packet he had tossed on your nightstand earlier, opening it. he suddenly felt way too eager when he crawled on top of you. you reached down between your bodies, giving his cock a few strokes before rolling the condom on it.

"are you sure you want–"

"yes. fuck, yes." he cut you off. "are you?" you bit your lip, nodding gently.

jeongin smiled. an honest smile. before he kissed you, hand cupping your face. you lined him up at your entrance and he slid inside you ever so slowly. he moaned loudly, way before he was fully buried inside you. you wrapped your arms around him, kissing his forehead as he started moving. his thrusts were slow, careful, scared to do something you wouldn't like. but before he could ask if what he did was alright, you wrapped your legs around him, moaning in his ear. this was enough to make him feel confident.

he wanted to tell you how amazing you felt, but no words came out, only breathy sounds as he pumped his cock in and out of you. his hand moved to your tit, squeezing gently. he was definitely a tits over ass person.

suddenly, his thrusts became uneven, "oh god, i think i'm gonna– fuck, i'm sorry." he groaned.

"that's okay, jeongin. let go for me." your words threw him right over the edge. he collapsed on top of you, moaning against your skin as he filled the condom. you held him close, still trying to catch your breath.

jeongin pulled out of you, removing the condom and knotting it shut. "i'm sorry." he repeated, disappointment settling in his voice. "no, jeongin, don't–"

"can i–" he cut you right off, "can i try to make you come?" you blinked a few times, heat coiling in your lower stomach. you nodded eagerly. jeongin grinned, sliding one arm under your head, pulling you against him. he kissed you slowly, his free hand trailing down your body, leaving feather-light touches, giving you goosebumps.

when he got to your core, he started rubbing your clit the way he learned you liked. you moaned into his mouth, your hips bucking against his touch.

he moved his hand further down, slipping one digit inside you. "fuck!" you threw your head back, biting your lip. "it's so fucking soft in there." jeongin mumbled without realising. he started to move his finger in and out of you a couple of times before adding a second one. "oh god, jeongin!"

it almost embarrassed him how much hearing you moan his name turned him on. when he curled his fingers inside you, somewhat accidentally, you clenched your legs, curses leaving your lips. "did you like that?" you weren't able to respond because he did it again, more confident this time.

he smirked, quickening his pace. the wet sounds of his fingers fucking your cunt mixed with your moans which got louder by the minute. he felt as if he was in trance, pumping his fingers in and out, curling them every now and then, craving the way your body reacted. when you felt your orgasm approaching, you clenched around his fingers. he felt it, moaning at the feeling.

"jeongin, i'm gonna–" he leaned down, kissing you eagerly, slipping his tongue in. you moaned into his mouth, repeatedly. he continued doing precisely what he had been doing to get you here, close to your high. until you finally threw your head back and came around his fingers.

he took it all in, the way your body shook, your legs clenched around his wrist, hips bucking violently against him.

this was probably the hottest thing he's ever experienced. and he already knew...

“i didn’t think… it would feel like this.”

you swallowed, breathing heavily. “like what?”

he let out a breathy laugh, tilting his forehead to yours. “like i want to do it again.”

you laughed softly, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him down for a deep kiss.

eventually he rested his head on your shoulder, breath warm against your neck, his voice small and unbelievably sincere. “thank you,” he murmured.

you smiled into his hair. “for what?”

“for being the person i trust most.”

you closed your eyes. don’t fall, you told yourself. don’t read into this more than you should.

but then he whispered, so quietly you almost missed it: “and for making my first time something i’ll never forget.” your heart sank and lifted all at once.

you held him there, knowing you’d remember it too, knowing things between you had already begun to shift in ways neither of you were ready for.

"so..." he said, trailing his fingertips over your stomach, "can we?"

"can we what?"

jeongin's expression suddenly looked way too smug. "do it again?"

this night, neither of you slept. too invested in exploring every inch of each other's body.

in the morning, when he left, you stood at the door with the ghost of his kisses still on your lips. and you had no idea when you’d see him again.

he’d only been in town to visit family, a rare few days carved out of a schedule that barely let him breathe. you hugged him goodbye, pretending not to notice the way he lingered, how his eyes dipped to your lips for the briefest, dangerous moment before he forced himself to step back.

and he already regretted it. regretted not having kissed you one more time.

you stood at your doorway long after he disappeared, your fingers brushing your mouth like you could still feel the imprint of him there.

you tried to go about your day, tried to be normal, but your mind kept circling back to the kiss. to his breath against your cheek. to the way he’d whispered 'i want to do it again'. every time you remembered it, something warm and confusing pooled in your chest.

and then the messages started. they weren’t unusual. selfies from practice, tired updates, short “miss hanging out with you” texts, but they felt different now. you felt different now. and every time your phone chimed, your heart did this stupid, stumbling thing like it was trying to break free.

you told yourself it was nothing. he’d asked you for help. he trusted you. that was all.

but weeks passed and you knew that you couldn’t pretend forever. you would have to talk about it. anout your feelings. and the very thought made your stomach twist.

so one night, after hours of debating with yourself, you finally typed:

« can we facetime? i… want to talk about something »

you hovered over the send button for a full minute before pressing it. he replied almost immediately.

« give me one sec. »

your heart thudded against your ribs. you imagined him somewhere in the dorm, surrounded by noise and people and his busy new life. you imagined your message cutting through all that.

and you were right.

jeongin was currently sitting at the dorm's dinner table. he was seated between changbin and hyunjin, bowl in one hand, chopsticks in the other when he looked at his phone and read your message.

his chopsticks dropped onto the table mid-bite, already pushing his chair back. behind him, minho yelled, “hey! finish before you run off!”

han shouted, “who’s calling?”

jeongin ignored all of it, bowing a little as he stood. “sorry. it’s important.”

seconds later your phone lit up with an incoming facetime call. his name flashed across your screen, familiar and terrifying all at once.

you swallowed, steadied your breath, and answered.

the video connected, and there he was, hair a little messy, hoodie half-zipped, breathing as if he’d literally run to his room for this.

“hey,” he said softly, eyes warm in a way that made your throat tighten.

and just like that, the memory of his lips on yours flooded back so vividly you almost forgot how to speak.

“so… what did you want to talk about?” he asked, voice gentle, like he could already sense the storm brewing in your chest.

you inhaled slowly, steadying yourself before the words tumbled out in a shaky whisper. “that night,” you said. “i haven’t… stopped thinking about it.”

his eyes widened just a fraction, the tips of his ears turning pink. “oh,” he breathed, and then, with a small, bashful smile, “neither have i.”

the air thickened. your hands trembled slightly out of sight. “i… i don’t mean to bother you,” you stammered, eyes darting away from the screen. “it’s just– i keep thinking about it. about what it means.”

jeongin went quiet. not the awkward kind of quiet... the heavy kind. the kind where you could see thoughts flickering behind his eyes, shadows and light shifting across his expression as he searched for the right words.

finally, he exhaled, voice barely above a whisper.

“it means everything.” your heart nearly burst.

he said your name then, achingly sincere. “god, it meant everything to me. but–"

there it was. the word cut through your chest like a blade. your breath stilled. your shoulders tensed.

“but what?” you whispered.

he looked down, jaw clenched, eyes avoiding the screen like he couldn’t bear to see your reaction.

“my life is such chaos right now,” he said. “i’m being pulled everywhere, every hour of the day. and trust me, i want nothing more than… than you.” he paused, swallowing hard. “just thinking about it makes me want to run back home and be with you.”

your pulse tripped, hope blooming painfully in your chest. “but–" he said again, quieter, “i can’t. at least not right now.”

the sting was immediate. your vision blurred at the edges. you forced a small, steady smile, one you knew he’d see right through, but it was all you had.

“i absolutely understand, jeongin,” you managed, voice thin. “i didn’t mean to pressure you.”

“no, no, you didn’t,” he rushed out, shaking his head. “you didn’t do anything wrong. i just–" his voice cracked. “i just don’t know how all of this will turn out. and for that i’m so sorry.”

you said nothing. you couldn’t. you were too busy blinking back the tears threatening to fall. you truly understood, suddenly not even knowing what you had expected. this was the only logical outcome imaginable.

he must’ve noticed, because he whispered your name like it was something fragile. “don’t ever think i don’t want you,” he said, voice trembling.

and little did you know: it hurt him just as much as it hurt you. maybe more.

as grateful as he was for everything he’d achieved, there were nights he lay awake wishing he hadn’t debuted, wishing he’d stayed a normal boy in your hometown, wishing he never had to lose you in the process of becoming someone else.

your voice cracked when you finally spoke. “i’ll miss you, jeongin.”

his expression softened into something devastatingly tender. “i’ll always be here, jagi,” he whispered. “missing you every second of the day.”the nickname made your heart twist painfully.

you both smiled fragile smiles. the kind that held more longing than either of you dared voice.

“goodnight,” you whispered.

“goodnight,” he murmured back, eyes lingering on you until the screen faded to black.

and just like that, the line disconnected, leaving you alone with your racing heart and the echo of everything that almost was.

for a little while, nothing changed. despite the painful honesty of that facetime call, jeongin still texted you regularly. he still sent silly selfies from practice rooms, voice messages of him humming half-finished melodies, blurry photos of his dinner with a caption like 'it’s not as good as the food we used to get'.

you pretended everything was as before. he pretended it too. but slowly his schedule began swallowing him whole.

days passed where your phone stayed silent until well after midnight, buzzing with messages he sent from dark vans or cramped studio rooms, moments where he finally had a breath to spare. sometimes he’d apologise, sometimes he wouldn’t, but you always answered with warmth.

« don’t worry, i know you’re busy. »

« you’re doing amazing, jeongin. »

« i’m so proud of you. »

you never let him see how much it hurt. how much you missed him. how each unread hour tugged painfully at your chest.

he deserved his dream. you’d always believed that, and you refused to let your longing weigh him down. even if losing him as your closest friend was the price you paid for supporting him.

the drifting wasn’t dramatic. it was slow, like watching a tide pull something precious just a little farther each day.

his messages became rarer. the months slipped by, then melded into a blur of years. you supported him through all of it. every comeback, every show, every award.

you bought every album, always reaching for his version first. you collected foxi.ny merch like a ritual, proudly displaying it even when it made your chest ache. whenever you pulled his photocard, you texted him excitedly, telling him the universe was on your side today.

and almost every morning, you left him a simple message:

« drink water today, okay? »

« you're doing amazing, jeongin! »

« you looked really happy on stage. keep going. »

he read every single one. always.

sometimes he opened the message within seconds. sometimes hours later. but he always read them, and his heart twisted every time. because he wanted to reply, wanted to give you even a fraction of the warmth you poured into him, but he didn’t know how.

guilt ate at him. he felt like he was constantly failing you, failing at being the friend you deserved. so many nights he stared at your messages, typing and deleting replies, unable to find words worthy of your patience, your loyalty, your love he wasn’t allowed to claim. and when he couldn’t find the right words, he’d say nothing at all.

you didn’t know that. you only saw the silence. and so you misinterpreted it. you thought you were overwhelming him. too much. too clingy. too attached to someone who didn’t owe you anything.

so your messages slowly became less frequent, but your support never stopped. you still cheered for him from the sidelines, still clung to the pieces of him you could reach.

but he noticed. every time your name appeared less often in his notifications, a small, sharp ache spread in his chest. he wanted to fix it. but he didn’t know how.

and between the two of you, the distance widened, not because you wanted it, not because he wanted it, but because neither of you knew how to bridge the gap without hurting the other.

you were hunched over your desk, surrounded by notes, empty mugs, and the kind of exhaustion that made your vision blur around the edges. it was well past 2am, the kind of hour where even the silence felt heavy, when your phone suddenly buzzed violently against the wood.

you flinched, eyebrows knitting together. nobody texted you at this hour. or called.

when you saw his name on the screen, your heart stuttered so hard it hurt. you stared at the call for too long, frozen, breath caught in your throat.

finally, with trembling fingers, you answered. “jeongin?” your voice came out soft, worried. “is everything okay?”

there was a tiny pause, but then his voice sounded tired, fragile in a way that made your chest tighten.“did i wake you?”

“no,” you sighed, leaning back in your chair. “i’m still glued to my desk. i have an important exam next week.”

silence followed. you could hear his breathing, the soft rustle of sheets, like he was curled up in bed.

“i’m sorry,” he whispered. “i don’t mean to bother you.”

“you’re not,” you said quickly, shaking your head even though he couldn’t see it. “honestly, i’ve been at this for too long. a little break sounds nice.”

you smiled, because his voice alone was enough to ease the pressure in your chest.

“you didn’t answer my question,” you murmured. “is everything okay?”

another pause. and then, suddenly: "i miss you.”

your breath caught.

“i always do,” he continued, voice cracking slightly. “but it’s especially bad right now. i… i went through your messages.” your heartbeat picked up. “you did?”

“yeah,” he exhaled shakily. “i always do that when i can’t sleep. reading them usually calms me down but tonight it just… made everything worse.”

your hand tightened around your phone. "what do you mean?” you whispered.

“i got this stupid snapchat reminder,” he said, letting out a humourless laugh. “from four years ago. the night we–"

he stopped.

you glanced at the date on your screen, realisation washing over you like cold water. four years.

four years since his first kiss.

four years since you’d pressed your lips to his, breathless and terrified and wanting.

four years since you had sex not once but multiple times that night.

you smiled softly, a little heartbreak tugging at the corners of your mouth. “i remember,” you whispered.

he let out a shaky breath. “i can’t stop thinking about it. about you. about how you felt.”

your chest tightened painfully, but your voice stayed gentle. “jeongin…”

“i know, i know,” he said quickly, like he was afraid he’d crossed a line. “i shouldn’t bring it up. it’s late. you’re busy. i just– i needed to hear your voice."

but something had already started to spark inside you. the memories of that night flashing back. his lips, his hesitant fingers exploring your body. and involuntarily, you let out the tiniest sound that sounded almost like a moan.

you've been too caught up in your studies lately. you couldn't remember the last time you were able to let go and make yourself feel good. which was probably why your body acted the way it did.

jeongin didn't miss the soft sound. his breath hitched, "fuck, what was that?" he tried to sound amused, but the truth slipped past. he was extremely turned on.

"sorry." you whispered softly.

"no! i–" it was silent for a bit before he finally said, "do it again." you blinked repeatedly, he probably could have heard it through the phone. "what?"

"do it again." his voice was low in your ear. "please." he added.

you bit your lip and pressed your eyes shut, your mind still trying to comprehend what was happening right now. and you let out another sound similar to the one before. only this time it was his name you moaned.

his pants suddenly felt way too tight, his already semi-hard cock was now fully erected. his hand shot to his waistband, his thumb hovering over the facetime button hesitantly. "i need to see you." he almost groaned as he pressed it.

you gasped, slamming your phone down on your desk after you accepted the video call. "jeongin, i look like absolute shit." you quickly tried to make your messy hair look decent, realising you weren't even wearing make up.

"please." he pleaded. you sighed, finally giving in. jeongin had already seen you on your worst days. when you were sick, when you were feeling like garbage, when you were stressed.

so you propped your phone aginst the book you were currently using for your revision. a soft, warm light surrounded you. jeongin could swear his heart was about to jump out of his chest, his cock twitched inside his pants.

"fuck, you're so beautiful." he breathed. you shook your head, blushing. the only thing illuminating his face was his phone. but you could still see the way his tongue darted out to lick his lips.

"jeongin..." you started, voice teasing. "are you turned on?" you propped your elbows on your desk, leaning forward, knowingly granting him a nice view of your cleavage. his eyes immediately shot down, his jaw clenched visibly. "please tell me if you don't want this."

"what if i... do want this?" you asked, biting down on your pen you were still holding in your hand. jeongin smiled. a smile that was nothing like you ever seen before. there was something wicked all over it.

"if you do want this, then quit teasing me." his voice was lower than usual. dangerously so. "or what?" you asked, twirling the pen between your fingers.

"or i will spank that attitude out of you the next time we see each other."

your eyes widened at his bluntness, the confidence. your pen fell to the desk, your lips slightly parted. you blinked, trying to comprehend the words you just heard coming out of his mouth. "jeongin?!"

smugness was written all over his face. he was indeed pleased by your surprise. "i've been thinking about so many things i'd like to do to you."

heat pooled in your lower abdomen. "now be a good girl and take your shirt off." almost immediately, your hand shot to the hem of your shirt, before you could start thinking about it. that authority in his voice...

his hand slipped inside his boxers, palming his erection as he watched you take your shirt off. god, he missed those tits. he moaned softly, wishing he could just teleport himself to you. he would in a heartbeat. "jagi, touch yourself with me."

you gasped, taken aback by how confident he had become. this was no longer your innocent jeongin. the one whose hands had trembled so badly the first time he had unhooked your bra. who had constantly asked you what you liked and how you liked it. who had blushed from the mere sounds you had made.

but you didn't feel shy. not around him. he made you feel wanted. so you leaned back in your desk chair, hand slowly sliding down your body, eyes fixed on the screen as you undid your trousers. jeongin shifted, sliding his boxers down, freeing his cock.

as soon as you slipped your hand inside your panties, he started stroking his dick, eyes never leaving you, not even for a second.

you drew slow circles on your clit, biting your lip to suppress the moans threatening to escape your throat. "let me hear you." jeongin breaths already sounded laboured. his thumb spread the pre-cum all over his tip before he stroke his cock faster.

you let soft whimpers fill the room as you ran your fingers down your slit, wetting them with your juices before slipping one inside you.

"god, i want to eat you out so bad." jeongin groaned. you threw your head back against the back of the chair, moaning at his words and the sounds of him stroking his cock on the other side of the screen, your wet sounds mixing together.

"i've tried being with other girls but no one ever felt as good as you did." though you certainly didn't want to imagine him with someone else, what he said still did something to you.

you placed one foot on your chair, granting you a better angle. your moans were coming out uncontrollably now. "that's it. make yourself feel good for me." it was insane what a great effect his words had on you. you were already feeling your orgasm approach, imagining his long fingers buried deep inside you.

"fuck, jeongin, i'm gonna–"

"yes." he growled immediately. "god yes, please come for me." and you did. you so did. his words sending you right over the edge.

he watched your legs shake, his name slipping past your lips repeatedly. his balls twitched. he kept his eyes on you for as long as possible, before throwing his head back, moaning your name once before he shot his load all over his stomach.

you removed your hand from your panties, catching your breath before reaching out to grab a paper tissue, cleaning your fingers. jeongin watched you, breathing heavily. "i wish i could lick them clean."

your eyes shot up, meeting his, "god, you're so hot, jeongin."

"sh. don't make me horny again." he mirrored your action, reaching for the paper tissues on his nightstand, putting his phone aside to clean the cum off his body.

"sucks i wasn't there to prevent this mess. would have swallowed all of it." jeongin grabbed his phone, saying your name in a low, warning tone.

"sorry, i'll stop now." you giggled. he was silent for a bit, just looking at you. "i'm sorry. i don't want you to think i only called you because i was horny. i just needed someone who feels… real.”

your throat burned. “well, i’m here, jeongin." you said softly. “always.”

the conversation drifted then. you told him about your exam, about the stress, about how much you missed him too. he told you about tour exhaustion, the pressure, the insomnia, the loneliness he tried so hard to hide.

he admitted he hadn’t spoken to anyone about how overwhelmed he felt. you admitted that hearing him call you made your heart ache and heal at the same time. and slowly, as the minutes stretched into an hour, his voice began to fade, growing sleepier.

“are you still there?” you whispered.

“mmh,” he hummed faintly. “don’t hang up.”

your eyes softened. “i won’t.”

you listened to his breathing, steadying. slowing. evening out. and then, the softest sound, a tiny snore. you smiled, exhaustion melting away into something warm and fragile.

“goodnight, jeongin,” you whispered, even though he couldn’t hear you anymore.

you waited a moment longer, letting your heart hold onto the moment, before finally ending the call, the quiet room feeling heavier now that his soft breaths were gone. he had fallen asleep with your voice in his ear. and you stayed awake far too long, wishing things were different.

the weeks after that late-night phone call felt strangely different, as if the thread between you and him had been tugged closer. jeongin really did try. even when he failed, even when days passed without a single text, you could feel the effort in the way he always came back to you.

a “good morning” here.

a tired selfie from the van.

a voice note of him laughing at something one of the members said.

it wasn’t constant. it wasn’t enough to fill the ache he’d left behind over the years. but it was him trying, and that alone was enough to pull all the old emotions back into the light.

then one afternoon, your phone buzzed with a message that made your breath catch.

« we’re having a concert near your city next week. »

« i put you on the guest list. »

you stared at the screen, heartbeat thundering, an uncontrollable smile tugging at your lips.

« you did?? » you typed back.

« of course »

« you better come. »

so you did. you got ready with shaky excitement, tucking your favourite foxi.ny plushie into your bag like it was a good-luck charm. when you arrived at the venue and took your vip seat, the view felt unreal.

you snapped a photo, sending it to him with a quick caption: « look where i am. »

his reply came instantly.

« you’re really here?? »

« enjoy the show! »

« i’ll be trying to look for you. »

« make sure to come backstage after! »

your cheeks hurt from smiling.

the concert was incredible, even more breathtaking up close. you cheered, sang, jumped, laughed with the stays around you, all of them sweet and excited, never suspecting that the boy they were screaming for had once fallen asleep listening to your voice.

you tried to keep your eyes on him without being obvious, but every time he drifted to your side of the stage, your heart raced.

when it was over, you made your way to the backstage entrance, nerves fluttering inside your stomach. the security guard eyed you suspiciously until you gave him your name. he spoke into his earpiece, waited, then nodded.

“you’re clear. go ahead.”

the hallway beyond was quiet, empty in a way that made you hesitate. you took a few unsure steps, turning left, then right, realising you had absolutely no idea where you were supposed to go.

so you texted him.

« i’m inside… but completely lost. »

you had barely pressed send when the sound of fast footsteps echoed through the corridor.

before you could even lift your head from your screen, someone collided into you, arms wrapping around you with such force it pushed a soft gasp from your chest.

you froze for half a second, then melted. because even though he was drenched in sweat, even though his breathing was uneven from running, even though the smell of the stage still clung to his clothes…

he still smelled like him. comforting.

“you came,” he breathed into your shoulder, arms tightening for just a moment more. your heart twisted. and before you could answer, he pulled back just enough to look at you, eyes shining, cheeks flushed, smiling like you were the best thing he’d seen all night.

“so that’s her?” a familiar voice chimed from behind jeongin. you turned just in time to see chan strolling towards you, grinning like he’d known you for years. jeongin pulled back reluctantly, stepping to your side, still close enough that the warmth of him lingered against your skin.

“hyung, this is…” jeongin said, giving your name softly, almost reverently.

chan offered his hand with a bright, easy smile. “chan. pleasure to meet you. heard a lot about you.”

your eyes widened, heart stuttering. “you… did?” but chan’s grin only widened, impossibly smug.

before you could question it, he nodded towards a door down the hall. “come meet the others.”

jeongin moved beside you, his hand brushing lightly against your lower back, barely touching, but enough to send shivers straight up your spine. he guided you into the room like you were something fragile he wanted to protect.

the rest of the members were scattered around the dressing room, stretching, chugging water, leaning against surfaces, looking exhausted but happy. and yet, when you stepped inside, all eyes flicked towards you.

it felt surreal. you already knew their faces, their voices, their dynamic, but only through screens and jeongin’s stories. watching them laugh in real life, hearing the way they joked with each other, seeing the softness that didn’t always show on camera… it made you smile without even trying.

they welcomed you instantly. felix came up first with a warm hug that nearly knocked you over, while seungmin introduced himself like a polite prince. hyunjin asked if you had enjoyed the concert, minho teased jeongin for sprinting down the hall, and han offered you a water bottle like it was a treasured gift.

you laughed with them, talked with them, waited with them as staff moved around packing up equipment and their vans began lining up outside. it felt natural and strangely easy. like stepping into a world you had only ever seen from afar but somehow belonged in.

eventually, you all headed towards the exit together, a quiet stream of tired boys and buzzing energy. han looked over his shoulder at you and jeongin. “will you guys join us for dinner later?” he asked expectantly. before you could answer, chan appeared behind him, tossing a knowing arm around his shoulders.

“i think they have a lot of catching up to do, considering they’re... such old friends.” he shot jeongin a look. one that said far, far more than the words ever could, and patted his shoulder before steering han toward a waiting van.

your cheeks warmed. jeongin cleared his throat softly, eyes suddenly shy as he glanced sideways at you. “i thought maybe we could just… order some takeaway? like old times?”

like old times. the phrase tugged at something deep inside your chest, both nostalgic and aching.

you nodded without hesitation, a smile stretching across your face. “i’d love that.” his eyes softened, relief washing over him in a quiet exhale.

a staff member opened one of the smaller vans, and jeongin gestured for you to get in first. you climbed inside, the cool night air brushing past you, and he followed after, settling into the seat beside you.

as the door slid shut and the van pulled away from the arena, you felt his knee bump gently against yours. not quite an accident, not quite intentional.

the van ride back to the hotel was quiet, but not in the way that made your stomach knot. it was that soft, shared quiet that felt like slipping into an old sweater: familiar, worn-in, comforting.

jeongin leaned back against his seat, head tilted just slightly towards you. he looked exhausted, hair damp from sweat, eyeliner smudged just a little, chest still rising in faint post-performance breaths. you didn’t want to bother him, didn’t want to ruin the peacefulness settling between you, so you simply watched the passing streetlights blur across the window.

but every time you looked up, every single time, he was already looking at you. a soft, tired smile tugged at his lips each time your eyes met. not embarrassed. not shy. almost… relieved. like seeing you anchored him. neither of you spoke. you didn’t need to.

the van pulled into the hotel parking lot, headlights flashing briefly across the marble entrance. you both stepped out, thanked the driver, and walked inside. the lobby was quiet, the late hour wrapping everything in a muted hush. you followed jeongin to the elevators, shoulders brushing, hands close but not touching.

one of the staff members came up to jeongin, handing him a big envelope.

"what's that?" you asked when the staff was gone. jeongin sighed in annoyance, "confidentiality agreement."

you grinned, "are they scared i'll tell the press about all the embarrassing things you did as a teenager?"

the elevator chimed softly as the doors slid open. you stepped inside together. the moment the doors closed, he moved. so fast you barely registered it.

his hands slid to your waist, fingers gripping like he’d been holding himself back for hours, no, years, and suddenly your back hit the elevator wall with a soft thud.

before you could even gasp, his mouth was on yours. it wasn’t a gentle kisd. not like the first time, not like the kisses in your living room years ago. this was messy, filled with desperation, with aching.

you melted instantly, hands curling into the front of his hoodie, pulling him closer, breath mingling with his as the elevator hummed around you.

“i think they're more scared about you telling the press this.” he murmured against your lips, kissing you again before you even had the chance to answer. your knees went weak.

“missed you so much,” he breathed, voice ragged, hands tightening at your waist like he didn’t trust himself to let go.

you kissed him back with the same intensity. all the longing, all the confusion, all the years of almosts pouring out through your trembling lips. the elevator seemed too small, too bright, too warm. you could feel his heartbeat pounding against your chest, could feel the urgency in every touch.

ding.

the elevator doors slid open. you both froze, breathless, lips still inches apart, his hands still gripping your waist. your chest heaved. his eyes were dark, blown wide, mouth pink and kiss-swollen. neither of you moved. for a moment, it felt like time itself paused.

his hand found yours as you stepped out of the elevator, fingers curling around it with a certainty that made your heart race.

he led you down the hallway, stopping in front of a door near the end. his hand trembled slightly as he slid the key card through the lock. the light turned green, and he pushed the door open, flipping on the dim entryway lamp.

“come in,” he murmured, voice rough from the kiss. “make yourself comfortable.”

you slipped inside, glancing around the simple, neat hotel room. two armchairs near the window, a bed pushed neatly against the wall, bags half-packed near the desk. you sank into one of the armchairs, trying, and failing, to calm the pounding in your chest.

jeongin dropped his backpack onto the bed and the envelope on the nightstand. he grabbed his phone, tossing it to you with a soft thud. you fumbled, barely catching it.

“order us something?” he asked, eyes warm. “passcode’s… uh–" he told you the numbers, cheeks faintly pink. “i’m gonna take a quick shower.”

before you could respond, he grabbed a towel and slipped into the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him. you exhaled slowly, staring at his phone on your lap.

then you unlocked it. the screen lit up instantly with notifications, not from fans or staff, but from the stray kids' group chat. you tried not to pry, not wanting to invade his privacy, but the preview messages were impossible not to see.

[chan]: « who stole my socks »

[seungmin]: « who'd want your stinky socks? »

[felix]: « not me this time »

[han]: « ordering pizza! who wants some? »

[minho]: « pizza? how boring... »

[han]: « ordering pizza and not sharing with minho. who wants some? »

[minho]: ordering fried chicken and not sharing with han. who wants some? »

[seungmin]: « someone tell jeongin to stop running through hallways »

[hyunjin]: « he sprinted like anime main character »

[felix]: « was he running to HER?? 👀 »

[chan]: « don’t tease him he’s fragile »

you clapped a hand over your mouth, stifling a laugh. the knot in your chest loosened just a little.

you opened uber eats and scrolled through options, trying to decide. you were about to pick one when you heard the bathroom door open.

you looked up and your breath caught.

jeongin stepped out, hair dripping, a towel slung around his neck. he wore a plain white t-shirt and loose sweatpants, the simplest outfit you’d ever seen him in, yet somehow he looked… beautiful.

soft. fresh. dangerously real.

a drop of water slid from his hair down his jaw, catching the low light.

“did you pick something?” he asked, voice still warm from the steam.nyou swallowed, suddenly forgetting every food option on the app.

he looked at you with that tired, gentle smile again. and for the first time in years, he felt close enough to touch, close enough to want, close enough to fall for all over again.

jeongin looked at you with that soft expectancy, like whatever you said next actually mattered. you took another second, maybe two, letting yourself admire him. the way his damp hair fell over his forehead. the faint flush on his cheeks from the hot shower. the smell of soap and something warm and unfamiliar settling over you like a blanket.

you blinked rapidly, snapping yourself out of the trance and staring back down at his phone.

“um–" you murmured, scrolling aimlessly. “fried chicken or…” the words died on your tongue. because he moved closer.

slowly, but close enough that you caught the scent of his body wash. he knelt beside your chair, one arm braced on the cushion near your knee as he leaned in to look at the screen.

“or?” he asked softly, his voice brushing against your skin. your eyes were no longer on the menu. they were on him. the soft fall of his hair. the tiny droplet running down his neck. the gentle raise of his eyebrows when he realised you weren’t talking anymore.

his gaze shifted up, meeting yours. your breath caught. you didn’t think. you didn’t plan. you didn’t care. your hand shot forward, grabbing the front of his white t-shirt just above his chest. the fabric bunched in your fist.

“what–" he started, eyes widening, but you were already pulling him in.

your lips crashed into his, messy and desperate, the hunger of years finally breaking loose. he froze for half a heartbeat, surprised, breath hitching against your mouth, and then he melted into you with a soft, helpless sound, his hand flying up to your cheek as he kissed you back just as fiercely.

your pulse roared in your ears. the phone slipped from your lap. his body pressed closer, knees digging into the carpet as he leaned up into you like he needed your lips to breathe.

you felt him smile against your mouth before he kissed you deeper. like he’d wanted this. like he’d dreamed of this.

"fried chicken or me." you replied confidently.

“god,” he whispered between kisses, breath warm against your lips, “i knew you’d make me lose my mind.”

the moment your lips met his again, it was like every year of longing, confusion, heartbreak, and hope snapped into place all at once. every suppressed feeling breaking free in a rush that neither of you could have stopped even if you’d wanted to.

his hands were on you instantly. they were hungry. desperate. claiming.

one slid to your waist, fingers pressing into your skin like he needed the assurance you were real. the other cupped your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek as he kissed you harder, breath mingling with yours in dizzying, uneven bursts.

you tugged him closer by his shirt again, pulling him up from the floor and into you, lips moving against his with a kind of emotion you’d never been brave enough to show before. he stumbled forward, catching himself with a hand on the backrest beside your head, the other staying tangled in your hair as if he couldn’t bear the thought of letting go.

he let out a shaky sound into your mouth, half laugh, half whimper, like he’d finally reached something he’d been running towards for years.

your fingers slid up his chest, over the damp fabric, up to the warm skin of his neck, pulling him down again, swallowing his breath with your own.

his hands roamed. your waist, your back, the side of your ribs, touches reverent and desperate all at once, like he was relearning the shape of someone he’d missed every day without admitting it.

his arm slid around you, pulling you up, making you stand in front of him. he was towering above you as he pulled you closer against him. when your bodies collided fully, he let out a breathy moan.

"jeongin, please–" you whimpered as he grabbed a fistful of your hair and started kissing down your neck. "please what, jagi?" he sucked on the soft skin, making sure to mark you as his.

you arched your back, pressing your front flush against him. jeongin finally pulled away, examining the mark he left on you before he looked at you, raising his eyebrows, awaiting an answer.

"shouldn't i sign this confidentiality agreement thingy first?" you teased, hands sliding under his shirt. your eyes widened when you felt his hard abs under your soft palms. jeongin noticed, the corner of his mouth curling upwards, the grin inevitable. oh, he was aware how much he'd changed.

"you really want to waste the next hour going through the agreement?"

it took every bit of strength to remove your hands from his abs and walk over to the nightstand where the envelope sat. "i should, shouldn't i?" you asked, tracing your fingertips along the edge.

you looked back at him over your shoulder, catching him eyeing you down ever so quickly. you licked your lips, holding his gaze.

"i swear, if i don't have your naked cunt on my mouth within the next ten minutes, i'm gonna combust."

your mouth dropped open so fast, you couldn't stop it. you stared at him in disbelief. he made his way over to where you were standing. his hand slid under your chin, closing your mouth. "you still think of me as the awkward 19 year old boy who couldn't even look at you without almost cumming in his pants, huh?"

you blinked a few times, swallowing hard before your mind finally caught up. you shook your head, breathing hard. he traced his thumb over your lower lip. "good. because i'm not."

you held his gaze as you took his thumb in your mouth, pressing your tongue against it, sucking gently. jeongin groaned, enough for you to finally gain back your confidence. you dropped to your knees. his erection was highly visible, pre-cum already having stained his grey sweatpants.

you didn't waste any time before you grabbed the waistband and pulled his pants down. jeongin inhaled sharply. you licked one long strip all the way from the base to his tip before wrapping your mouth around him.

his hands shot to your hair immediately, letting out the filthiest sound as his hips bucked into you involuntarily. "fuck." he groaned as you started to move your head, your hand coming up to fist what couldn't fit.

jeongin was already in a state of ecstasy, still unable to comprehend what was happening. you flicked your tongue across his tip, making him tighten the grip in your hair. he was trying his hardest to refrain from bucking his hips into you, you could tell. so you looked up at him, eyes as sweet as ever, as you whispered, "fuck my mouth, jeongin."

his gaze shot down, eyes dark. "don't say things like that." he said through clenched teeth. but you just let your hand fall down, sticking your tongue out and opening wide as you looked at him. jeongin took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring before he finally snapped. he used the grip on your hair to hold you in place as he started to buck his hips into you. you closed your lips around him, his cock hitting the back of your throat, making you gag.

"fuck, i forgot how good your mouth feels." his thrusts became quicker as you tried to bob your head in sync. filthy praises left his lips every now and then. throwing his head back as groans and wet sounds filled the room. he loved making you choke on him, shoving his cock deep down your throat.

you moaned around him, almost sending him over the edge. he pulled out of you and you took a deep breath, trying to get in as much oxygen as possible. a long strip of saliva connected the two of you. "you need to stop or i'm gonna cum."

you grinned, "so? shoot your load down my throat then." his hand twitched, about to smack that smugness out of your face. instead he pulled you up, grabbed your throat and kissed you forcefully. his tongue slipped into your mouth, his teeth grazing your bottom lip.

he started peeling off your clothes. "tonight, i'm gonna cum all over that beautiful body of yours." he said as he finally pulled your panties down, arms sliding around your waist, guiding you towards the bed.

he threw the blanket on the floor before he pushed you down onto the mattress, settling between your legs. he kissed the insides of your thighs, moving his lips dangerously high. "you have no idea how often i dreamed about doing this." his mouth was mere inches away from your aching core.

though you had spent the entire night exploring each other's bodies those many years ago, he hadn't eaten you out. and all those years, he felt like he had been missing out.

as much as he would have probably enjoyed teasing you, his mouth was on your clit almost instantly. your clenched your legs around his head. he slid his arms around them, holding them in place as he started flicking your tongue over your sensitive bud. "jeongin." you moaned, rolling your hips against his mouth. he pressed his face harder against you, devouring you.

he had eaten out girls before, curious as to what it felt like, but nothing came close to you. you tasted better than he had ever dreamed of, your wetness already soaking his chin.

he explored further, licking down between your folds before pushing his tongue inside you. your hand shot down to grab his hair, pushing him harder against you.

jeongin felt like this was right where he belonged. with his face buried nose deep in your soaking cunt. his hips bucked into the mattress, eager for the tiniest bit of friction as he moaned against your core.

he moved his tongue back up, sucking on your clit. you already felt your orgasm approaching, rocking your hips, moaning his name. "are you gonna come, jagi?" jeongin asked softly. your head shot up, as you watched him dip his head again, tongue on your clit, eyes on you. "fuck, yes. don't stop."

and he didn't. he kept eating you out, the flick of his tongue finally sending you over the edge. as your orgasm washed over you, you clenched your legs around his head and he absolutely loved the feeling of that. he wouldn't have cared if you'd have broken his fucking skull that way.

when your body came down from your high, jeongin didn't stop. quite the contrary. his fingers found your entrance, one digit slipping into you. you breathed his name but he didn't respond. he just kept his mouth on you as he plunged a second finger into you. "jeongin!" you moaned louder this time and you swore you could feel him smile against you.

he moved his fingers at a steady pace, curling them right where you needed them, remembering everything from the first time he had his fingers buried deep inside you. only that now he additionally had his mouth on your clit.

the mixed sounds of his fingers pumping in and out of you and the sucking on your clit filled the room. your vision went blurry, already feeling overstimulated but loving every second of it.

"come for me again and i will fuck you, jagi." his breath was hot against your core, his voice low. and with a few more curls of his fingers, stroking your walls in just the right way, you came undone.

jeongin was grinding his cock against the mattress. "god, i don't want to fucking stop." he murmured as he lifted his head. he looked like a mess, your juices all over his face, all the way down to his white shirt, now clearly stained.

you were still trying to catch your breath, when you whimpered, "jeongin, please." he got up, quickly removing his shirt and rummaging through his backpack. you couldn't keep your eyes off him. his muscular back, his strong arms. he truly had become even more handsome, though you had doubted that was even possible.

then he turned around, walking back towards you, your eyes taking in his chest and abs. you bit your lip, keeping in mind that this was still the same boy you had fallen in love with years ago.

jeongin opened the foil packet, rolling the condom on his cock. he hovered above you, his fingertips tracing your cheek ever so softly. "there are so many positions i want to take you," he murmured, "but right now i just need to see you."

you slid your hand around his neck, pulling him down, kissing him passionately. jeongin lined his cock at your entrance, pressing his lips to yours when he finally pushed in.

you moaned into his mouth, the familiar and at the same time unfamiliar, considering how much time had passed, feeling of his length stretching you. there was not much time to adjust, he was too eager to finally feel you again. and as your bodies moved in sync, his hands roamed over you, memorising every inch of you, reclaiming every inch of you.

his lips trailed down to your tits, one hand kneading gently as he slid his tongue over your hardened nipple. you arched your back to have him closer to you. your legs wrapped around him, allowing him to go even deeper. you threw your head back, as he fucked you into the mattress. his name left your lips repeatedly. and when he felt your walls clench around him, he grabbed your face, making you look at him. his free hand slid down between your bodies, finding your clit immediately. and then it happened way too fast. the wave of your third orgasm crashing over you.

"fuck i–" his thrusts became uneven, his groans intensified, "i don't think i'm gonna last much longer."

the fog in your brain started to lift, you rocked your hips into him with all that you got. he pulled out of you, removing the condom quickly before he shot his load all over your stomach, all the way up to your tits, your name on his lips.

he collapsed next to you and the two of you lay there for quiet some time, catching your breaths.

when he finally regained control over his body, jeongin got up and fetched a damp cloth from the bathroom. he stood at the foot of the bed, grinning at you. "you look absolutely gorgeous covered in my cum."

you snorted but couldn't help the smile forming on your lips. he cleaned you tentatively, fingers still tracing your body even after he had already thrown the wash cloth aside.

then he kissed you again, unbearably tender, his lips brushing yours like they were confessing for him. years of distance, of almosts, of late-night calls and unread feelings poured out of both of you in every breath, every brush of lips, every trembling exhale.

when he finally pulled back, just enough to look at you again, his eyes were glassy, chest heaving, hands still holding you like you were something precious.

“i’m not letting you slip away again,” he whispered, voice raw, forehead pressing to yours. “not this time.”

he got into bed behind you, pulling the blankets over both of you, then wrapped himself around you instantly, an arm snug around your middle, his chest pressed to your back, his legs tangling softly with yours. his hold was firm, almost possessive, but not in a way that scared you. it felt like safety. like he was anchoring himself to you after drifting in open water for years.

you exhaled slowly, your body melting into his warmth.

jeongin tucked his face into the crook of your neck, breath tickling your skin. his lips brushed your shoulder. once. twice. a soft, almost shy kiss.

you shifted, turning slightly to face him. he tightened his hold as if panicking at the thought of you moving away.

“hey,” you whispered, your palm resting against his cheek. his eyes opened, half-lidded, sleepy, but full of something heavy, something tender he didn’t bother hiding anymore. he leaned forward and kissed you again, his lips barely moving against yours like he was savouring the feeling.

you giggled softly against his mouth, and he smiled. one of those quiet, boyish smiles that made your chest ache.

“come here,” he murmured, voice low from exhaustion and emotion alike. you slid closer until your forehead was against his. he kissed it gently, fingers tracing up your arm with feather-light touches that made you shiver.

“i can’t believe you’re here,” he whispered into your skin. “i keep thinking i’m gonna wake up and this will all be gone.”

your fingers threaded into his hair, brushing lightly over the still-damp strands. “i’m not going anywhere.”

he sighed. a sound full of relief and lingering heartbreak and hugged you tighter. “good,” he breathed. “because i don’t think i can ever let you go again.”

you stole another kiss. he followed it with one of his own. then another. and another. quick, warm pecks that made you smile against his lips.

his thumb stroked your hip, his other hand traced the curve of your spine. your legs tangled comfortably beneath the blankets.

the room faded into a warm blur, your bodies fitting together naturally, like they always had.

“you feel like home,” he mumbled, kissing the corner of your mouth. your chest tightened. “you do too.”

he hummed contentedly, nose brushing yours, lips finding your cheek, then your jaw, then the tip of your nose. he kissed you almost absentmindedly between sleepy breaths.

you ran your fingertips along his jaw, down the side of his neck, over the steady rise and fall of his chest. he shivered, pulling you impossibly closer.

“stay with me,” he whispered, not a plea but a promise. "always,” you answered.

the soft rhythm of his breathing gradually slowed, syncing with yours. his touches grew lazier, fingertips tracing aimless shapes on your waist, then stilling as he drifted towards sleep.

the last thing you felt was his lips brushing your temple. barely a kiss, more like a final thought. and the last thing you heard was a sleepy whisper against your hair:

“i love you.”

₊˚⊹∘•····································•∘ʚ ♡ ɞ∘•·····································•∘⊹˚₊

a/n: this man is absolutely wrecking my bias rn😮‍💨

You had all the reasons to trust Seungmin. He’s been nothing but a loving boyfriend for you these past months, and you wouldn’t ask for anything more. Unlike any of the other men you’ve tried to be with, he was understanding that you were a virgin. The minute he brushed it off when you told him and didn’t make a big spectacle of it, you sighed in relief. He never pushed you whenever you came over to his apartment and there was heavy petting involved. He always let you take everything at your own pace. 

Tonight was no different than any date night you guys had. He took you out to get dinner, and you guys lay on the couch tangled in one another as the movie played on the TV. The plot was lost on you the minute you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. The way his bangs were parted, exposing his forehead, had you hooked. You weren’t subtle at all in the way you were ogling him, and it didn’t take long for him to see your stares in his peripheral vision. He didn’t hesitate to scoop you up in his lap and start to kiss you. The feeling of his warm lips against yours had you sighing happily as you kissed him back. You wrapped your arms around his neck and ground your hips against his for some friction. 

The both of you had swollen lips with the way you two kissed with fervor and were gently nibbling at each other. You were content with this. There was always a time in the future for more, but you weren’t in a rush. You were ready to roll off of Seungmin’s hips and tuck yourself into his side for cuddles, but Seungmin wasn’t ready to let you go. His chest was rising and falling fast as he panted. “Baby, let’s just go a little further tonight, hm? We can do just the tip.” Your face flushed at the implications of what he was saying. “I—I don’t know if I’m ready for that, Minnie.” “Don’t worry, baby, you’re in good hands. I’ll guide you every step of the way.” His hips bucked slightly against your core, and you knew he could just tell how wet you were.” 

With shaky hands you slipped off your pants and your underwear. Seungmin also stood up and shucked off his pants with a newfound excitement. “C’mere, baby, just lay down on the couch for me, okay?” He sounded so gentle with you, and he wrapped his arms around your waist and guided you onto the couch. “Have you ever fingered yourself?” You shook your head no, and Seungmin just smirked. “Alright, baby, I’m going to slip a finger in you, and you tell me how that feels, okay?” You nodded and watched his hand as it slipped between your plush thighs. You spread your legs for him, and he slowly plunged his finger into your hole. “O-oh my god.” The pressure you felt inside of you felt so good already.

Seungmin pumped his finger inside of you languidly, and your back was already arching off of the couch. All you could focus on was the sound of how wet you were. “You’re doing so good for me, baby. Do you think you could take another finger? I’ll go just as slow.” You were already panting for air but agreed. Once he heard your confirmation, you felt him push another finger inside, and you could help but gasp at the intrusion. “How are you feeling, baby?” “I feel s-so good, Minnie. So, so good.” Seungmin chuckled at your response. This spurred him on to make you feel even better. He picked up the pace, and this had you squirming and moaning out in pleasure. “You’re doing great, baby.” The praise had your head feeling fuzzy on top of the overwhelming pleasure you were experiencing. 

Seungmin was unrelenting at the pace he held while fingering your cunt, and you knew you were about to orgasm. You had never felt this strength in an orgasm before, though. This couldn’t compare in the slightest to when you rubbed your clit in the confines of your bedroom. Seungmin felt your cunt tightening around his fingers and groaned. “Is my baby about to cum, hm? Let it all out; I can feel how close you are, love.” There were stars behind your eyelids as you squeezed them shut. Your moans were akin to screams as you came, and your thighs trembled as Seungmin kept fingering you through your orgasm. You snapped your legs shut at the overstimulation, but Seungmin was quick to spread them back open. “Oh, baby, you did amazing. Tell me how you’re feeling.” You were dizzy; you don’t think it was possible for you to form a coherent sentence. Words felt thick in your throat as you tried to express how good you felt. Everything felt like it was moving so fast, but you weren’t ready to stop.

“I feel great, Seungmin; let's keep going.” His smile was wide as he heard those words. He slotted himself between your legs, and seeing him hold his cock had you shaking in anticipation. To say the least, he was big. “Minnie, I don’t think you’re going to fit.” Your words trembled. “Don’t worry, baby, it's just the tip. And like I said, you’re in good hands; I’ll take real good care of you.” Seungmin slid closer to you, and you felt his tip right at your entrance, and you braced for the intrusion. “You have to breathe for me, baby, and relax.” He rubbed your thigh, and you tried your best to relax your body and mind. His tip breached inside of you, and the both of you groaned in pleasure. “See, it’s not so bad. Nothing to be worried about.” You made eye contact with him, and he winked. He steadily pumped himself in and out of you, but this still wasn’t enough for Seungmin. He was drunk off of the pleasure he felt as your pussy contracted around the head of his cock, and he was yearning to know how you feel around the full length of him.

 He slid himself about halfway into your cunt, and you gripped onto his forearm trying to steady yourself at the sudden penetration. “S-seungmin!” His eyes were screwed shut as he tried to stop himself from cumming right then and there from how tight you were. “S-sorry, baby, you felt so good I couldn’t help myself. It’s okay, we're both going to feel great; just trust me.” He tried his best to rein in his thrusts and keep it at a slow pace, but he just needed to wreck you. He knew if he destroyed you on his cock tonight, he would ruin you for anyone else. Just the thought of having you addicted to him just had him fucking into you with a pace that would have anyone begging for mercy.

-🩵

Chan greeted you sweetly as he came through the door. Kissing you softly as he took his coat of hanging it on the hook. You smiled fondly at him wrapping your arms around him pulling him into a warm hug. You’ve just missed him so much today you felt like clingy to him and just never letting him go. “How was your day princess?” He asks kissing the top of your head. “It was ok” you said nuzzling your face into his chest. “Whatcha do all day?” He said stroking your hair.

“Sat here and missed you all day” you said with a pout but it was half muffled into Chans chest. He smiled kissing the top of your head again “awe is that so, my baby missed me all day today?” He cooed. You nodded your head looking up at him “so much” you said meeting his gaze. You were giving him the biggest puppy dog eyes a small pout across your lips. He couldn’t help to giggle a bit of just how cute you were. “Well princess how about we spend some time together hmm?” He said taking your hand leading you to the couch.

He pulled you into his lap holding you tightly, he peppered your neck and shoulders with soft kisses swaying back and forth a bit. Chan was so smitten with you, he’d move heaven and hell to make you happy. The way he was swaying you accompanied by the way he had you sitting, had you in perfect position to feel him under you. Were you a bit needy all day? Sure. However you were trying to be good and not just pounce on your amazing boyfriend as soon as he got home. The small bit of friction that was being caused from the movements was enough to start making your core ache.

Your brain started to trail off, by accident you let a soft whimper escape your lips making Chan smile against your skin. “Hmm” he said softly against your ear as his sweet kisses turned into soft nibbles against your skin. “Princess” he said nibbling at your ear now “Do you need me in other ways” he said his voice still so soft so dreamy sounding. You nod in response, Chan laid his hands on your thighs as he moved to face you. “Words princess, tell me what you want.” He said studying your face.

“I want- I want you. Just wanna be close” you said that pout coming back across your face. It was true though you wanted nothing more than to be as close as possible right now. He smiled at your response kissing you ever so lovingly. Bringing a hand to cup your face as his thumb rubbed your cheek. “My baby is so cute” he said against your lips not wanting to break the kiss yet. His hand that was still on your thigh made its was up he gently tapped your inner thigh asking for entrance and of course you gave it to him.

Spreading your thighs apart he quickly started rubbing small circles over your cloth like shorts you had on. “Wanna take this off for me?” He said finally pulling away from the kiss. You nod in response “yes sir” you said voice shaking a bit as you took your shorts off letting them fall with your underwear. A grin crossed his face pulling you swiftly back on to him. His hands met your drenched pussy rubbing your swollen nub as he slowly pushed a finger into you. Your hole was so warm so slippery it just ate his fingers so hungrily.

“My baby is so needy hmm? So wet already, you haven’t touched yourself today have you?” He asked looking over your face. You shook your head “no, I was a good girl all day. Waited for you to come home sir” you said through breathy moans. “Mm good girl, nothing feels as good as me in the pretty cunt huh? Nothing can make you cum as good as me.” He said quickening his pace curving his fingers inside you. “N-no only y-you” you stuttered out mind going blank at the feeling of him.

“I guess my baby deserves to be treated well today then huh? How about I let you cum as much as you want baby?” He cooed. You nod eyes rolling back as he adds 2 more fingers. “Words” he repeats slowing his pace “yes sir, thank- thank you.” You mumble out leaning your head back onto his body. “Gotta keep being a big girl for me though” he said before kissing you passionately. His kisses were deep, full of love and a small bit of lust. As much of a dom Chan could be with you he always ended up becoming so soft with you. You always joked that he could never truly be a mean dom towards you, earning him the softest dom title from you. When he wanted to be mean he could be however you could give him those sweet puppy dog eyes and he’d fold real fast.

He started to buck his hips up into you as his hard on was becoming almost painful at this point “princess, you wanna help take my pants off for me?” He said placing some hair behind your head. You nod quickly but as soon as he removed his fingers from your dripping core you let out the most pity whine. Chan chuckled at you pulling you to him quickly “open” he said, you complied opening your mouth wide as he pushed his fingers into your mouth. He loved watching you suck all your sweet juices from him cleaning his fingers like a good girl.

He groans at the feeling of you sucking them harshly, he was growing just as impatient and horny as you were. You unbuckled his pants as you sucked his fingers trying to pull his pants down quickly needing to feel something. Chan removed his fingers helping you take his pants wanting nothing more than to be inside of you. “Gonna sit so pretty on me princess? Gonna ride me like a good girl?” He said pulling you back on top of him. “Mhm, yes sir” you said aligning him at your entrance. As you sat down taking all of him your cunt gripped him sucking him in as you adjusted.

Chan placed his hands on your ass squeezing trying to get you to move already and you did just that. You started slowly moving the feeling of him wiping your mind completely. He groaned underneath of you pulling you close to him to suck on your nipples. He placed a hand on your clit moving it perfectly at your pace making you throw your head back. You could feel yourself gripping tighter around him your climax coming fast. Chan knew you were close at the way your walls were sucking him dry. His free hand gripped your hips tightly meeting your movements his own thrusts now.

“Gonna cum for me princess? You’ve been such a good girl. Cum all over my cock” his words spewed out as his body jerked under you. His hand moving over your clit making your high come crashing fast. Your body stuttered over him releasing everything over him moaning his name loudly. The feeling drove him crazy but he wasn’t quite done with you yet. He picked you up moving you over the back of the couch. He put your ass up in the air, he would have teased you about how jelly your legs were but he wanted to badly.

“My baby ready to take me, take me in their nice tight ass hmm?” He said spitting on his fingers rubbing your hole. This was a new thing you both have been trying out, Chan found out how much he really loved it. The way your ass was so tight, it milked him so fast made him go crazy. “Yessir please- need you- fill me” you stuttered out head empty. He spat on his cock again aligning it up to your puffy hole slowly pushing in not wanting to hurt you. As he was in the whole way his knees felt almost weak at the feeling.

“Princess fuck” he said slapping your ass hard. He started to move slowly bottoming out fast as he cursed under his breath. His pace becoming fast but erratic. His body stuttering into you your walls clenching so tightly around him. He brought his body down to you laying his chest on your back pulling your body to him as he fucked into your perfect little ass sloppily. The moans from you vibrated against the walls as he left wet kisses on your back nipping at your neck.

He gripped your body so tightly you both just melting together in a puddle of pleasure and sweat. “Sir- close” you moaned out grabbing at one of his hands. He interlocked your fingers together pounding into you sloppily “me to princess, cum- fuck cum with me” he said moving your head to kiss you. The kiss was wet and messy but god was it good, you both were so fucked out at this point both highs crashing together. You came hard body jerking at your second high and the feeling of your boyfriend cuming so deep into your ass.

Your walls milked him so tightly his body feeling weak. You both panted tying to catch your breath as Chan pulled slowly out of you. He scooped you up in his arms pulling you close to him kissing you tenderly. “My perfect baby, you did so well. You feeling ok?” He said softly moving your hair out of your face. You nod cuddling up to him “I love you” you said voice sounding almost sleepy. “I love you to my angel, how about I run us a bath and we relax?” He said kissing your nose. You nod quickly loving the idea.

💙 If you’d like to read more of my stuff you can find it Here: Master List . Thank you for reading and if requests are open or you just wanna talk feel free to send me something🩵

You and Chan are surprisingly still in the game. It hasn't been a test of discipline so much as a consequence of his relentless schedule. He’s been working 18-hour days, and when he finally drags himself home, he’s too emotionally and physically drained for anything but sleep.

You’ve been incredibly supportive. You wear your most comfortable sweats, keep the apartment quiet, and just focus on cuddling when he’s finally free. You realize it’s not much different from comeback or touring season, especially since your focus is on making sure he is okay.

Tonight, he comes home just before midnight, but he doesn't have his usual tired, relieved look. He looks defeated, dropping his laptop bag with a heavy sigh.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs, immediately collapsing onto the couch next to you. He buries his face in your neck, and you can feel the tension radiating off his shoulders.

“What’s wrong, Channie?” you ask, pulling his beanie off and running your hands in his curls.

He pulls back. “I hate this challenge. I hate it. The guys were giving me hell in the studio today.”

“Why? Because you’re still standing?” you chuckle softly, trying to lighten the mood.

His expression hardens with genuine sadness. “No. They were teasing me about how easy it is. They were saying, ‘Wow, Chan is so focused, he doesn’t even seem to notice his girlfriend is alive!’ And then Minho said, he said it’s probably because I prioritize work so much, I’ve forgotten how to be a boyfriend.”

He looks at you with huge, vulnerable eyes, the insecurity raw. “I know I’m busy, baby. I know I’ve been exhausted. But I don’t want you to think… I don’t want you to think I don’t want you. This challenge is supposed to be hard, but I’ve barely even been here. Does that mean I’m a bad partner?”

Your heart breaks instantly. You cup his face in your hands, forcing him to meet your gaze. “Baby, stop. Look at me. I’m okay. I understand you’re busy. We are a team, always.”

His eyes search yours for a long, heavy moment. He doesn't move, just holds your gaze, absorbing the reassurance. "I want to fail," he whispers, the words thick with shame and relief. "I need you to remind me that you love me. Please. I need to be your man right now. I need this"

He reaches for your mouth, the kiss is fierce, consuming, and immediately deep, like a desperate attempt to somehow merge together. You meet his intensity, hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him down against you.

His mouth devours yours, the sound wet and urgent. He groans, pulling your lower lip between his teeth before letting his tongue sweep inside. He pushes you back against the sofa cushions, his body weight pressing you down, but his hands are gentle, cupping your cheeks as he continues to kiss you breathless.

"Up," he manages to pant, breaking the kiss just long enough to grab your hand. Not bothering with the hall light, dragging you through the shadows into the bedroom.

There is no time for foreplay, you tear off his hoodie while he is already shucking his jeans. The only thing that you man is finally home. You can be patient as long as he needs, between the hours of rehearsal and the studio nights and the tour, but when he wants it, there’s nothing anyone could do to pry you off of him. He falls back onto the bed, already naked, pulling you over him instantly. You straddle his hips, running your hands on him, feeling the ridges of his muscles under your hands as you climb onto his chest. He holds you tightly, rubbing circles on your lower back.

"I need you to tell me what to do, Daddy," you whisper, the soft command leaving your lips as you look down at his hard, leaking length.

Chan's eyes, dark and heavy with exhaustion, immediately lighten, focusing sharply. The insecurity fades, replaced by a deep, secure tenderness. "You tell me, babygirl. I'm right here. All yours."

You settle your legs, planting your feet firmly on either side of his hips. You reach down, your hand closing around his thick, hot length, guiding him carefully to your damp entrance. He is panting, watching you with complete devotion.

Using the balls of your feet, you control your movement. It's agonizingly slow. You groan, your inner muscles clenching around the tip, savoring the feeling of him filling you after weeks of missing him. Chan closes his eyes on a sharp, guttural moan, his hips twitching beneath you.

"Perfect," he rasps, his hands flying up to grip your thighs, guiding your movement.

You rock your hips slowly, deliberately, controlling the pace. The position allows you to manage the deep, slow build as you watch his face, feeling the warmth of his hands on your inner thighs, the softness in his eyes.

"Slow," he instructs, the word barely a breath. "Just like that. You're so good, babygirl."

You increase the pace slightly, focusing on a deep grind that has your clit nudging at his base. The heat and friction are overwhelming, the sound of wet skin slapping against his hips a steady beat.

As the pleasure begins to crest, you lean down, pressing a desperate kiss to his mouth. "I always miss you, Daddy. I just know you're tired, and I would rather cuddle than tire you out even more, and I love you. It feels so good.. so good." you whine into his mouth, the words blending with soft, desperate moans. He holds you close, his entire body trembling beneath yours.

A devastatingly tender smile spreads across his lips, and he throws his head back, his voice thick with raw emotion. “It's okay, babygirl," he groans, pushing his hips up to meet yours in a final, furious rhythm, releasing his own control. "I know. I love you too." He pulls you down onto his chest, burying his face in your hair, his body trembling as he spills his release deep inside you. He stays fully inside you, the warmth of his body pressed against yours, panting heavily as his cum starts to slip out.

He shifts slightly, pulling his body back only a fraction, keeping the connection deep, and reaches his hand down. He finds your slick, throbbing clit and immediately begins to stroke it with his thumb, a slow, loving pressure that contrasts exquisitely with the fullness inside you.

“You gonna cum for me, baby?" He murmurs, his voice soft with devotion. "Let me take care of you."

He keeps his rhythm steady, his thumb gentle but insistent, drawing the tension back up quickly. The relief of being held, full, and finally satisfied is overwhelming. You moan, clinging to his broad shoulders, your body arching and clenching around him. Your orgasm hits, a wave of liquid heat and pure sound that tears from your throat. You feel your muscles milking his cock relentlessly as you fall onto his chest, exhausted.

He kisses the top of your head, pulling you into a protective cocoon, his hand resting possessively on your back. “Thank you, baby” he whispers, into your neck.

taglist: @diekleinesuesse @tillaboo @felixsonlyrealwife @geni-627 @skz8riley @lezleeferguson-120 @pixie-felix @headfirstfortoro @alnex05 @baby-stay92 @encoredesires @androgynouscrownorbit @channiesluvrclub @my-neurodivergent-world @chims-dimple @bookswillfindyouaway @stellasays45 @angel-writes-skz-here @m-325 @0sunshinecryptid0 @beal-o @hug4helios @oksullen @rileylovescats @dreamyfelixx @yxna-bliss @turtledove824 @enhacolor @skzz0213 @hannahlue @purplelady85 @velvetmoonlght @inishij @bangchanspineapple @straykids4lifeee @peskybirdysya @gnabsss @zayn-210 @wolfhallows4 @katsukis1wife @sammhisphere @sillyseob @rougegenshin @yaorzu-blog @babigriin @tricky-ritz @kibs-and-bits @warped-rabbithole @crowfrompluto 

Jisung

mutual masturbation : he gets to jerk off while watching his favorite show, you. He's such a loser nothing turns him on more than to look at you fingering yourself or circling your clit. He tries his best to edge himself as much as possible because he wants you to cum at the same time but the sight of your fingers pumping in and out, out of breath, makes him cum so fast. You're the only porn he needs.

"Spread your legs more baby, i wanna see her. Wanna see that sweet little pussy."

"Keep going like that. Yeah you're a fucking pornstar gonna make me crazy."

face fucking : like i said, he's just a loser because as soon as you take him in your mouth he can't control his moves anymore. He tries, he really tries to stay still and let you take care of him but he always ends up fucking the back of your throat. One hand pushing the back of your head while the other covers his eyes because he's so shy. He's all whines and begs. Bonus point if he gets to pull out and spit his load on your face, painting your big glasses with his cum.

"Don't stop pleasepleaseplease i'm so close."

"Gonna cum on that pretty face, yeah ? You want it ? Stick your tongue out."

Felix

role play : i strongly believe he loves to role play. It could be acting like complete strangers in a bar and getting back to his place to destroy the bed. Or it could be cliché porn scenarios like a sexy nurse and her patient, a cop and a criminal. But his favorite his when you act like a fan that goes crazy for him.

"My pretty little fan, letting me fuck her like this. Such a good girl."

"You know these shows are so stressful and tiring. Would you be a good little stay and help me relax ?"

threesome : bisexual king, what could make him more happy than to have you and an handsome man all to himself (preferably Hyunjin). He gets to fuck your tight cunt while you give another man head or if he's feeling like it he might let the other guy fuck him. Either way he's in heaven. Double the fun, double the freak, double the after care. Because at the end he has two people taking care of him and drowning him in kisses.

"You take two dicks so well baby."

"You like how she feels ? Wanna fuck my ass someday too ?"

Seungmin

dirty talk : Mr Kim has a smart mouth of course he's gonna talk you through it. Either to tease you or to praise you. Mostly to tease you let's be honest. He takes immense pleasure in seeing you getting all red and shy while he's deep inside you. If you're covering your face he might have to tie your hands. He knows he makes you feel good and he won't hesitate to remind you every chance he gets.

"Why are you getting all shy now, let me see how you look when i'm making your eyes roll back."

"You like what i'm doing to you ? Seems like you do. Should i keep going ?"

lingerie : i don't know if this is considered a kink but he absolutely loves to see you in pretty lingerie. Knowing you got all dressed up just for him is such a turn on and an ego boost. Of course he'll tease you for it but it truly makes him so happy that you want to please him like that. He'll make you keep the pretty panties on while he fucks you and after, he'll keep them as a reminder.

"All this, just for me ? Wow i'm such a lucky guy."

"You were so desperate to get fucked that you dressed all pretty. Don't worry i'll give you what you want."

Jeongin

spit : That tongue is always out i just know he likes to spit on you. When you're making he'll spit in your mouth, there's something about knowing you'll swallow it all that drives him crazy. If he's eating you out, as a certified munch he has to spit on your pussy and make it extra messy. And if you you're giving him head, he has to spit on your face, just to say thank you. It's so nasty and he loves it this way.

"Open up. Show me if you swallowed everything."

"So wet and juicy fuck i love this pussy."

semi-public : he's the maknae and he's had more than enough with his hyungs teasing him. He wants to show he's not a baby anymore. He'll fuck you in the leaving room, backstage, on the kitchen counter, where any member could walk in and catch you. And he secretly hope they do, because nothing would turn him on more than to let his hyungs know how good he's fucking you.

"Louder baby, let everyone hear how good you're getting dicked down."

"Anyone could walk in and you're still letting me fuck you, you're such a nasty girl."

If forgot the taglist last time (oops :3)