Trust but Verify

The finish line was maybe forty seconds out. You could see the flare of the orange cones in your rear view, the silhouette of the flagger already lifting his arm. Another racer had fallen back to a full car length. This was yours. This was already—

Clunk.

You felt it before you heard it. A vibration through the pedal, through the floorboard, through the bones of your right foot. Not the good kind.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

Your stomach dropped.

There was a rattling now, coming from somewhere beneath the driver’s side—under the dash, maybe, or lower, somewhere in the guts of the transmission tunnel. It was rhythmic, metallic, and getting louder with every press of the accelerator. 

You glanced at the dash. No lights. No temperature spike. Nothing on the gauges to tell you what was dying under the hood.

“Come on,” you muttered, gripping the wheel tighter. “Come on, baby, just thirty more seconds. Give me thirty.”

You eased off the throttle. Just barely, just enough to keep the rattle from becoming something you couldn’t drive home from. The headlights behind you swelled in your mirrors like something hungry. Whoever it was had sensed the hesitation. Their engine climbed in pitch, closing fast.

Not tonight.

You dropped back into gear and put your foot down, and the rattle became a groan that you felt in your back teeth, in the base of your skull, but the car gave you what you asked for. It always did. You crossed the line with that sound still filling the cabin like a bad omen, and you had no idea by how much, and you didn’t care.

The crowd was already moving toward you. A flare went up somewhere near the overpass, throwing red light across the ground. They were chanting something—your car’s name, probably, or the name they’d given it, which had stopped feeling separate from your own a long time ago.

You cut the engine at the turnout and sat in the silence that followed, listening to the metal tick and settle around you. The rattle was gone. Clean as if it had never happened. You’d learned not to trust that. The car only ever confessed when it had no choice.

A window rolled down somewhere behind you. “No way your shitty car beat mine”

“Well...” you said, and forced a laugh you didn’t feel. “It is what it is. Get good next time, yeah?”

They laughed and drove off to collect their losses from the betters, and you were left alone with the hood of your car and the creeping dread that something expensive had just given up on you.

You popped the hood. The engine bay looked normal, from a racers eye anyway. The wires ran they should be, belts tight, no obvious leaks. You ran your hand along the underside of the frame near the transmission mount and came away with nothing but grease and road grit. Whatever was wrong was hiding from you, somewhere you couldn’t reach without a lift and a full set of tools.

You pulled out your phone. Scrolled past three missed calls from your roommate and a text from your mother asking if you’d eaten dinner. Found the number you needed—the one you’d saved three months ago after your last catastrophic breakdown, the one with the shop logo as the contact photo. You dialed. It rang twice.

“ATZ’s Auto, this is Mingi speaking.”

You exhaled, and some of the tightness in your chest loosened just hearing his voice. That low, unhurried drawl that always made it sound like he’d been expecting your call. A part of you hoped so, anyways.

“Hey—”

“Hi, sweetheart.” There was a smile in it already. You could hear it, the way his voice went soft at the edges. “What did you do to her this time?”

You leaned your hip against the fender, phone pressed between your ear and your shoulder, and let your free hand rest on the warm hood. The metal was still ticking, still settling, and somewhere deep in the chassis, you were pretty sure something was still dying.

“I didn’t do anything,” you sighed, hearing your own defensiveness. “She just—I don’t know. She started making this sound on the last stretch. Like a clunk sound? Like something’s swinging loose under the driver’s side.”

“Clunking?” He repeated, and you could hear the scratch of a pen on paper. Mingi always wrote things down, even the small stuff, even the things you thought were nothing. It was one of the reasons you kept coming back. “If it's under the driver’s side... Maybe it's the transmission tunnel area?”

“Maybe? I couldn’t tell. It was rhythmic, though. Tied to the rotation. Got worse when I gave it gas, went away when I let off.”

“Mmm.” The sound was thoughtful. You heard the creak of his chair, the muffled thump of what might have been his boots coming off the desk. “No dash lights?”

“Nothing. Gauges looked fine. The temperature was steady. I popped the hood and poked around but I couldn't see anything obvious from the top.”

“Of course you can’t,” he teased, “Because the car knows better than to show you what’s wrong. It’s saving it for me.”

“Don’t be smug.”

“I’m not being smug. I’m being right. There’s a difference.” You could hear him moving through the shop—the familiar background percussion of a metal door swinging open, the overhead lights buzzing to life. He was already walking toward the bay. “Where are you? Still on the industrial stretch?”

“Yeah, just by the turnout by the overpass."

“I know the one.” There was a pause, and you heard the jingle of keys. “Stay put. I’ll come get you. Twenty minutes, tops.”

“Mingi, you don’t have to—”

“See you soon,” the line went dead before you could argue.

You stared at your phone for a second, then slipped it into your back pocket. The crowd had thinned out now. Most of them following the money to the next unofficial bet, a few stragglers lingering near the guardrail with their phones still recording the aftermath. Someone had brought a speaker. The bass was thumping low and lazy, and someone else was laughing too loud about something that probably wasn’t funny.

You slid down onto the curb and pulled your knees up to your chest. The asphalt was still warm from the day’s heat, and the night air smelled like diesel and the distant, greasy promise of the all-night diner three blocks over. You let your head fall back and stared at the underside of the overpass, at the graffiti someone had painted in fluorescent pink that you’d never been able to fully read.

Twenty minutes.

You closed your eyes and listened to your car breathe. The ticking had slowed to something almost peaceful, the way a person’s pulse slows after a scare—still elevated, still wary, but pretending to be fine. You knew that rhythm intimately. You’d felt it in your own chest more times than you wanted to count.

The tow truck arrived in eighteen. You’d know the sound of it anywhere—that particular diesel grumble, the squeak of the suspension that Mingi kept meaning to fix and never did because, in his words, it gives her character. The headlights swept across you in a wide arc before settling, and then there he was, climbing down from the cab in that oversized mechanic’s jacket with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, grease already smudged along the inside of one forearm like he’d been working on something else before you called.

He was tall enough that he had to duck under the tow rig’s boom, and the motion made his dark hair fall across his forehead in a way that was, frankly, unfair. His eyes found you on the curb before they found the car—which, coming from Mingi, was basically a love confession.

“There she is,” he announced as he walked over to where you where seated.

You couldn’t tell if he meant you or the car. Maybe both. He was looking at you like you were the one making the concerning noise. “You in one piece?”

“I’m fine. The car’s the one—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just messing with ya,” he was already crouching beside your driver’s side door, one hand flat against the frame, the other reaching underneath. You watched his fingers move with the kind of practiced confidence that made your stomach do something complicated. He’d barely touched the car, and already he looked like he understood it better than you did. “Can you pop the hood for me?”

You reached through the window and pulled the release. He stood, and the hood swung up between you like a shield, and for a moment you could only see his hands—long fingers, silver rings decorating them, a thin white scar across the knuckle of his right index finger that you’d asked about once and he’d shrugged off with "kitchen accident, don’t worry about it." You worried about it.

He leaned into the engine bay, and you heard him hum. A low, considering the sound he made when he was cataloguing damage. You’d heard it enough times to know the variations.

“Transmission mount,” he noted, pulling back. A streak of fresh grease ran from his wrist to his elbow now, and he didn’t seem to notice. “Or something connected to it. The bolt’s either sheared or backed out entirely. I can hear the play from here.”

“Well... Can you fix it?”

He looked at you over the hood, and his mouth did that thing—the half-smile, the one that meant he was trying very hard not to be charmed by the question and failing. “Can I fix it?” He repeated, like you’d asked him if water was wet. “Sweetheart. I could fix this car with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.”

“Then why do you charge me so much?”

“That's because you keep breaking it in increasingly creative ways, and my emotional labour isn’t free.” He closed the hood with a soft thunk and wiped his hands on a rag he pulled from his back pocket. “C'mon. Help me get her on the flatbed and I’ll take you to the shop. I can pull it apart tonight if you want to watch.”

You stood, brushing the grit off your jeans. “You’re not going to lecture me about racing, are you?”

“I’ve given up on that.” He was already walking toward the tow controls, but he glanced back over his shoulder, and the streetlight caught the line of his jaw and the curve of his smile in a way that made your breath catch. “Besides. You won anyway, didn’t you?”

“Huh? How'd you know?”

“You called me from the turnout instead of a ditch.” He shrugged like it was obvious. “Winner stays. Loser limps home. That’s how it works.”

You helped him hook the chains—your hands under his direction, his voice low and patient beside your ear, his fingers guiding yours when you fumbled with the latch. The car went up onto the flatbed with a groan that sounded almost relieved. You stood there in the red glow of the tow lights with grease on your palms and Mingi’s jacket brushing your shoulder, and something in your chest that had been rattling all night finally went quiet.

He gave the last strap a snap to check the tension, then straightened up and wiped his hands on the rag. You walked together back to the truck and the gravel shifted under your boots and his footsteps were easy and unhurried beside yours, like he had nowhere else to be. He opened the passenger door before you reached for it. An old habit, one he never skipped, even though the hinges groaned like they were protesting the gentleness—and you climbed up into the seat, settling into the seat that still smelled like him. Coffee, motor oil and that cedar-sandalwood cologne he wore ever since the day you mentioned that combination smelled good.

The engine turned over with a rumble that vibrated through the floorboards and up through the soles of your boots. Mingi pulled out onto the industrial road with the kind of unhurried confidence that came from knowing every pothole and crack by heart, his left arm resting on the door frame, his right hand loose on the wheel at the bottom. You watched his profile in the dashboard light—the sharp line of his nose, the way his jaw worked when he was thinking about something he wasn’t saying.

“You’re staring,” he said, without looking over.

“You have grease on your face.”

He touched his cheek, found nothing. “Where?”

“Nah, it's on the other side.”

He touched the other cheek. “What a little liar.”

“You’ll never know.”

The smile he gave you was small and private, just for the dark of the truck, and you turned to look out the window at the streetlights blurring past. The tow rig swayed gently with each turn, and your car rocked on the flatbed behind you with a soft metallic creak that sounded almost like a lullaby. You hadn’t realized how tired you were until the adrenaline drained out of you all at once, leaving you hollow and heavy-limbed.

You pressed your forehead against the cool glass and let your eyes drift half-shut. The engine hummed quietly. Mingi’s thumb tapped a rhythm against the steering wheel tapping along to a beat of a song you couldn’t quite recognise. The streetlights strobed across your closed eyelids in warm amber pulses.

You didn’t remember falling asleep. One moment you were watching the city slide past in streaks of neon and shadow, and the next there was nothing—just the deep, dark quiet of a body that had decided it was done.

You came back to consciousness in pieces.

First: the smell. Motor oil and metal and something warm—cotton, maybe, or the inside of a jacket? You couldn't tell. Second: The feeling of being carried. Strong arms under your knees and across your back, the steady rise and fall of someone’s breathing close to your ear, the careful way they shifted their weight to keep from jostling you through a doorway that was too narrow.

Then: a voice, very low, and very very close. “—she’s fine, she’s just—no, I’ve got her.”

You forced your eyes open. The ceiling was familiar, you think. Not to mention the acoustic tile and water stain in the shape of something that might have been a rabbit if you squinted. A fluorescent light buzzed somewhere out of sight, casting everything in that particular shade of institutional pale yellow.

You were in Mingi’s office.

You came to that conclusion after you recognized the framed poster on the wall. It was some vintage Porsche ad he’d found at a flea market and hung crooked because he thought straight lines were boring. The desk was covered in invoices and a half-eaten sandwich on a paper plate.

You were on the couch. Or—not a couch, not exactly. Mingi had pushed the two waiting-room chairs together and draped them with what looked like every clean shop towel he owned, layered thick enough that the metal armrests had disappeared entirely. A folded hoodie served as a pillow. He had tucked your boots off to the side, lined up neatly against the baseboard like they were standing at attention.

You tried to sit up but unfortunately your body said no.

“Hey.” His voice came from the doorway, and you turned your head to find him leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, watching you with an expression that was equal parts amused and something softer. “You’ve been out for twenty minutes. I was starting to think I’d have to check your pulse.”

“How did I—”

“You fell asleep in the truck. Like, fully. Head against the window, mouth open, the whole thing.” The amusement won out. His smile was wide and unguarded, the kind he only wore when he thought no one was looking. “It was very dignified. Very graceful and adorable”

You groaned and pressed the heel of your hand against your eye. “You carried me in here.”

“Yes, I did.”

You pouted, a flush of pink creeping up your cheeks. The thought of Mingi carrying you alone sent shivers down your spine. "You didn't have to, could've just woken me up too."

“And be a dickhead for waking up sleeping beauty? Absolutely not.” He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room in three long strides, and before you could protest, something heavy and warm settled over you—his jacket, the oversized mechanic’s one, still carrying the heat of his body and the smell of him up close. He tugged it up to your chin with the same careful precision he used on engine bolts, making sure it covered your shoulders. “Go back to sleep. I promise the car isn’t going anywhere.”

“But… I wanted to watch you work on it," you yawned, clearly your body betrayed what your heart wanted.

“You can watch me work on it tomorrow, when your eyes are open and you are fully conscious.” His hand lingered on the collar of the jacket, adjusting it, and his knuckles brushed your jaw. You held very still. “I’m just going to get her up on the lift and take a look. No heavy lifting tonight. Scout’s honour.”

“You were never a scout.”

“How do you know? Maybe I had a very brief and disappointing scouting career.” His thumb traced a line along the edge of the jacket—once, twice—and then he pulled his hand back like he’d remembered himself. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be right outside if you need me, okay?”

He left the door open a crack—enough that the sounds of the shop filtered through: the hydraulic hiss of the lift engaging, the clank of a toolbox being rolled across concrete, the low murmur of whatever he was saying to your car under his breath. You’d heard him do that before. Talk to engines like they were old friends. Tell them it was going to be okay. You’d always found it endearing in a way that made your chest ache.

You pulled his jacket tighter around you and buried your face in the collar. It smelled like him—the coffee and the oil and the cedar and something underneath that was just warmth. The makeshift bed was more comfortable than it had any right to be. The shop towels were soft from a hundred washes, and the hoodie-pillow held the shape of his head like a confession.

Outside, the lift groaned as it took the weight of your car. You heard Mingi’s boots on the concrete, the metallic click of a drop light being positioned, the soft whistle he made when he was concentrating—the same three-note tune every time, becoming your lullaby for the night.

You closed your eyes and listened to him work, and the sound was steadier than any lullaby, and you were asleep again before the first bolt came loose.

══════════════════

Light came through the half-closed blinds in thin, dusty stripes, and you woke to the sound of water hitting glass. Not rain. Something more deliberate. The measured pour of a coffee machine doing its one job in the world with quiet, mechanical devotion. You blinked against the soft morning light and found the ceiling tile rabbit still there, still watching over you with its water-stain eyes. You were on the couch. Or—the chair-couch. The shop towels had shifted in the night, bunched up under your left hip, and Mingi’s jacket was still draped over you like a promise he’d made and kept. Your neck had a crick in it that felt like it had been personally installed by someone with a grudge.

You turned your head.

Mingi was standing at the small counter he’d wedged into the corner of his office. The one that held the coffee maker, a stack of paper cups, and a jar of sugar packets that had been there so long the paper had gone soft at the edges.

He had his back to you. White tank top, the ribbed kind, worn soft from too many washes, and dark denim that sat low on his hips—not a mechanic’s uniform, not a work shirt. Something he’d changed into. His hair was damp at the temples, like he’d splashed water on his face recently, and you could see the shift of muscle in his bare arms as he measured something into the machine with the kind of focus most people reserved for open-heart surgery. He’d either gone home and come back or kept a change of clothes in the shop. Knowing Mingi, you weren’t sure which answer was more like him.

The machine gurgled and hissed. He reached for two mugs from the shelf above, the ceramic kind with the shop logo chipped along the rim from years of being knocked against the sink. One was blue the other green. He set them side by side with the care of someone arranging chess pieces.

He pulled the carafe and poured it into the blue mug first. Two sugars. A splash of the creamer from the mini-fridge under the counter—the oat milk kind, the specific brand you’d mentioned exactly once, six months ago, when he’d handed you a black coffee and you’d said "oh, I usually take it with—" and he’d cut you off with "oat milk, two sugars, I know, I was testing you."

He didn’t look over. Didn’t ask. Just poured the oat milk in with the same steady hand he used on transmission fluid, stirred it twice with a spoon that had the ATZ logo printed on the handle, and set it on the edge of the desk closest to where you were lying.

The green mug got black. Nothing in it. He took a sip straight from the carafe before setting it back on the warmer, and you watched the line of his throat move when he swallowed, and you thought about how unfair it was that a person could look like that at—you squinted at the clock on the wall—seven-forty in the morning.

“Morning,” he greeted, his back was still facing you. “You snore, by the way. Just so you know. It’s not loud. It’s more of a—” He made a small, rhythmic puffing sound with his lips. “Like a cute little engine trying to start on a cold morning.”

You scoffed. “I do not snore.”

“You absolutely snore.” He turned finally, leaning his hip against the counter with his mug cradled in both hands. “It’s cute, though. Don’t worry about it.”

The morning light caught his eyes and made them warmer than they had any right to be. The cut on his left thumb was wrapped in electrical tape because of course it was. His hair had dried crooked from wherever he’d splashed water on his face, pushed back and slightly flattened on one side, and there was a shadow of his stubble catching the light—along the line of his jaw. You looked at all of it and felt a low, private irritation settle in your chest. Just how could someone look so beautiful?

You sat up slowly, wincing as the kink in your neck announced itself with a crack that echoed off the acoustic tile. His jacket slid down to your lap, and you caught it before it hit the floor and pulled it back over your shoulders. The coffee was right there, steam curling up in lazy spirals, and you reached for it and wrapped both hands around the mug and let the warmth seep into your palms.

“How long have you been up?” you asked, taking the first sip. The coffee hit your bloodstream like a jumpstart cable.

“Since about four.” He took a drink from his own mug, watching you over the rim. “Got as far as I could on the car, then hit a wall—parts house doesn’t open until eight. So.” He lifted a shoulder. “I reorganized the tool wall.” You raised an eyebrow, “At four in the morning? Really?” “The socket wrench set was out of order,” he insisted, like that explained everything, and in the context of Mingi’s brain, maybe it did. “It was bothering me.”

You held the mug against your chest and studied him—the way he stood in the morning light like he’d been built for it, all long lines and easy posture, the white shirt doing absolutely nothing to hide the fact that he spent most of his waking hours lifting things heavier than himself.

“How’s my car?”

Something shifted in his expression. He set his mug down on the counter and crossed his arms, and you watched the fabric pull across his chest and tried very hard to focus on his words and not the way the morning light was doing something illegal to the line of his shoulders.

“Transmission mount bolt sheared clean through,” he explains, “Right at the base. The threads are still in the block, which is the good news—I didn’t have to drill and tap new ones. The bad news is that the mount itself took some damage when it came loose. There’s a crack along the bracket on the driver’s side. Not catastrophic, but it needs replacing.”

You closed your eyes. “Thank God it wasn't that bad. How much do I owe you?”

“Taking into everything into account,” He paused, and you could hear him doing the math in his head, always honest, never padding. “Three-fifty, maybe four hundred. I’ll have to call the parts house when they open to confirm the bracket price.”

You opened your eyes. He was watching you with that careful, measured look—the one that meant he was already running through the options, the payment plans, the ways he could make it hurt less.

Mingi had never once pressed you for money. He’d let you pay in installments more times than either of you could count, and there was a running tab on a sticky note on his monitor that had your name at the top and a number that would have made a bank manager faint.

“I can pay up front,” you weren’t entirely sure that was true, but you said it anyway because pride was a thing you’d never fully excised from your system. “I’ve got some cash from—from last night.”

“From the race.” He replied it flatly, without judgment, but you heard the the underlying concern he always had for you. “How much did you take?”

“More than enough, thankfully.” You took another sip of coffee. “The other racer had a big ego and a bigger wallet. It worked out.”

“Mmm.” The sound was noncommittal, which from Mingi meant he had opinions he was choosing not to share. He picked up his mug again and tilted his head toward the door. “You want to see her?”

You were already standing. The shop towels rustled to the floor as you swung your legs off the makeshift bed, and you pulled Mingi’s jacket over your shoulders because the morning air coming through the cracked window was sharper than you expected. Your boots were still lined up by the baseboard, and you stepped into them and laced them quickly, fingers still clumsy with sleep. He held the door open for you as you walked past him into the shop proper.

The overhead fluorescents were already on, buzzing their familiar yellow-white hymn, and the air smelled the way it always smelled in here—metal and solvent and the particular sweetness of fresh rubber. The shop was organized chaos: tool chests along the far wall, each drawer labeled in Mingi’s careful handwriting; a rolling cart stacked with parts bins; the hydraulic lift in the center bay, and on it—

Your car.

She was up on the lift, raised to chest height, and the undercarriage was exposed in a way that felt almost intimate—the transmission tunnel open, the exhaust piping curled along the frame like veins, the differential housing gleaming with fresh grease where Mingi had been working. You could see the damage from here: the empty bolt hole where the mount should have been secured, the cracked bracket hanging at an angle that made your stomach clench. There was a new bolt already threaded partway in, shiny and clean against the old, oil-darkened metal around it.

Mingi came to stand beside you, close enough that his arm brushed yours when he pointed. “See there? The crack runs along the weld line. It’s been stressed out for a while—this didn’t happen last night. This has been a gradual build up”

You crouched down to get a better look, and Mingi crouched with you, his knees popping softly. His shoulder pressed against yours, warm and solid, and you could feel the heat of him through the jacket, through your shirt, through the thin barrier of everything you both weren’t saying.

“How long has it been building?” you asked.

“Hard to say. A few weeks, maybe. You said you tuned it yourself—when was the last time you had the transmission out?”

“Three months ago. When you replaced the clutch.”

“Right.” He reached past you—his arm extending over your shoulder, his chest nearly against your back—and tapped the bracket with one finger. The metal gave a dull, hollow sound that confirmed everything he’d already told you. “The mount was probably already compromised then. The new clutch put more torque through it, and the racing just—” He made a sound with his tongue, a soft tch, like he was scolding the car. “She held on as long as she could. She’s a good girl.”

The last two words landed somewhere low in your stomach and stayed there. You’d heard him say it before—to engines that turned over after a hard rebuild, to cars that limped in and left running clean—but with his jaw close enough to your temple that you could feel the warmth radiating off his skin, the phrase did something it had no business doing. You wondered how much better it would be if those words were directed at you.

You looked up at him. He was close—closer than he needed to be, his face inches from yours. You tear your gaze away to reassess your car.

“You fixed the bolt already?” you gasp, pressing your lips together to fight a smile.

“Started to. I couldn't sleep, remember?” His voice had dropped to something quieter, something that belonged to the space between the two of you and nowhere else. “The bracket’s the holdup. I’ve got to call the parts house soon. If they have it in stock, I can have her back on the road by this afternoon.”

“That quick? Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I‘m sure.” He held your gaze, and his eyes did that thing—that slow, warm thing that made your chest feel like it was full of something too big for your ribs. “Unless you had somewhere else to be?”

You didn’t. You looked back at the car—at the cracked bracket, the new bolt, the careful way Mingi had already cleaned the mating surfaces and applied thread locker to the fresh threads. He’d been working on your car in the dark hours of the morning while you slept on his makeshift bed in his office, wearing his jacket, drinking coffee he’d made exactly the way you liked without being asked.

He’d cut himself on your transmission and wrapped it in electrical tape and kept going. He’d reorganized the socket wrench set at four in the morning because the disorder bothered him, and he’d remembered your oat milk, and you realized, belatedly, that it wasn’t just about the car and it wasn’t just about the coffee and it wasn’t just about the sharp sting of a cut wrapped in cheap tape. It was the sum of it, the way it all stacked up into a scaffolding of care, a habit of showing up for you that had never announced itself as anything special but now, under the ugly shop fluorescents and the pale creep of morning, felt like the kind of thing people wrote songs about. It hit you with a force that absolved every sleepless night you’d ever spent wondering if you meant anything to anyone outside of a set of hands on a steering wheel, or the numbers on a finish line clock.

You remembered the first time you’d stumbled into his shop: rain in your hair, a half-dead alternator in your trunk, and a chip on your shoulder big enough to wedge open the front door. Mingi had looked at you over the top of his glasses, rainwater pooling under your boots, and said, “No offense, but you look like you lost a fight to a lawnmower.” He’d fixed your alternator for half what the dealer quoted, showed you the basics so you could DIY next time, and called you “boss” with a straight face even as you stripped a bolt and almost started a small electrical fire.

You remembered the way he never commented on your hands, even when they shook after a race, even when you cut them on cold steel and stained the shop rags dark. He’d hand you a fresh towel, or a bottle of water, or a protein bar from his desk drawer, and just say, “You good?” Like he already knew you weren’t, but he’d be there when you started to be.

You remembered that night you lost by a nose and blew out the input shaft. You’d expected nothing—maybe a lecture, a bill, perhaps even silence. Instead, you’d found a note under your windshield wiper: “Nice launch. Shift faster next time. Come by tomorrow, I’ll fix her up. - M :)"

You remembered a lot of small things. The way he’d always find the one good song on the radio and turn it up just before the solo. The way he’d set his jaw when he was about to say something he thought might piss you off. How he’d talk to your car when he worked on them, in the low, careful voice some people reserved for frightened animals or babies. How he’d stand close, when you both leaned under the hood—shoulders bumping, elbows knocking—and none of it ever felt accidental.

You looked at him now, this tall, loose-limbed mechanic with his wild hair, goofy smile and hands that looked like they’d been built to break and repair the same things over and over. The cut on his thumb was leaking through the electrical tape, and his shirt was streaked with something dark.

You thought about every time you’d tried to pay him back, every time you’d tried to balance the emotional ledger, and how he always found a way to tip the scales in your favour. You thought about all the ways you’d failed to say thank you, or I owe you, or just—anything that would make it clear that you noticed. That you noticed everything.

The weight of it all landed on your chest with the slow, terrifying certainty of falling in love with the exact person you’d told yourself that would never fall in love with you. It didn’t hurt—it just rearranged some things inside you, made space for something that might not have a name but absolutely had a pulse.

You reached for the coffee again, just for something to do with your hands, and took a sip that was mostly oat milk and sugar from the lack of stirring. Mingi watched you, waiting, like he knew you were on the verge of some personal catastrophe and was already prepping the metaphorical fire extinguisher.

You finished the coffee in two long swallows and set the mug down on the edge of the lift, where it wobbled once before settling. Mingi caught it with the edge of his hand—a reflex, the same one he used to catch falling tools before they hit concrete—and set it somewhere safer without comment.

“I should go,” you cleared your throat, your voice came out steadier than you expected. “Don't want to bother you more while you're working on my baby."

He straightened up from his crouch, and you both rose together, and the distance between you was exactly the same as it had been a moment ago—close enough to feel the warmth, far enough to pretend it was nothing. He nodded once, that slow, easy nod that meant he understood and wasn’t going to make it difficult.

“Like I said, I'll phone the parts house and if, hopefully, they have the shit I need I can have her buttoned up by—” He tilted his head, calculating. “Three, maybe four this afternoon. I'll call you as soon as I'm finished”

You nodded, finding a sense of calm with his reassurance. “Sounds good! Also, don’t bother calling 'cause I might not answer. Text me instead.”

“Of course.” He pulled his phone from his back pocket and held it up like proof. “Go home. Sleep in a real bed, please.”

You pulled his jacket tighter around your shoulders and walked toward the office to collect your things. Your phone was on the desk where you’d left it, the screen lit with three new notifications—your best friend asking if you were alive, a group chat you’d muted, and a weather alert you didn’t read. You shoved it into your pocket and hesitated at the door, one hand on the frame.

“Mingi?”

He was already turning back toward the lift, a socket wrench in his hand, but he paused and looked over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Thank you. For—” You gestured vaguely at the car, the shop, the jacket, the coffee, the entire architecture of care he’d built around you without ever asking for permission. “All of it.”

His mouth did the half-smile thing—the one that meant he was trying not to be charmed and failing. “Don’t mention it, it’s my job after all.”

You left before he could see whatever was happening on your face.

══════════════════

You showered in water hot enough to turn your skin pink, scrubbing road grit and engine grease from under your nails until your fingertips went raw. You changed into clean clothes—jeans, a t-shirt that had seen better days, a hoodie that smelled like your own laundry detergent and not someone else’s cologne. You ate a bowl of cereal standing at the kitchen counter and stared at your phone, waiting.

The text came at 8:47.

Parts house has the bracket.

Pulling it now.

She’ll be ready by 3.

Don’t come early, I mean it.

You sent back a thumbs-up and nothing else, because if you started typing you’d say something stupid, and Mingi would read it in the middle of a transmission job and drop something heavy on his foot.

You spent the morning doing nothing useful. You organized the junk drawer. You called your mother and listened to her talk about the neighbour’s cat for eleven minutes. You scrolled through your phone and found a video someone had posted from last night’s race—the angle was bad, the audio even worse. You could hear the clunking in the last stretch, that rhythmic metallic death rattle that had sent your stomach through the floorboards. The comments were already filling up. She’s cooked. That’s a rod. Nah that’s transmission. RIP to another one. You closed the app and put the phone face-down on the couch.

At two, you couldn’t sit still anymore. You grabbed your keys and your wallet and this jacket, still draped over the back of the kitchen chair where you’d left it that morning, because you’d forgotten to give it back, or maybe because you hadn’t wanted to—and headed out the door.

You stopped at the place on the corner. The one with the yellow awning and the handwritten menu taped to the window and the cook who knew your order by heart because you’d been coming here since before you had a car to break. You got two orders of the spicy pork bulgogi bowls—extra kimchi on the side, extra rice, the way Mingi liked it, because you’d watched him eat it enough times to memorize the ratio.

You added a container of japchae because he’d mentioned once, offhand, that his mother used to make it on Sundays, and the way he’d said it had made you want to put the entire city between you and the feeling it produced. You got two coffees—black for him, oat milk and two sugars for you—and a slice of the honey butter cake that the owner’s wife made fresh every afternoon, because Mingi had a sweet tooth he pretended he didn’t have and you’d watched him eat three pieces at a shop potluck without breathing between bites.

The bag was heavy and warm against your hip as you walked the six blocks to the shop. The afternoon sun was high and bright, and the city smelled like exhaust and fried food and the particular greenness of the potted trees someone had placed along the sidewalk in a doomed attempt at beautification. You passed the auto parts store where Mingi had sourced your bracket, the hardware store where he bought his electrical tape in bulk, the laundromat where he washed his shop rags because the machines at his apartment complex ate quarters. You knew this stretch of road the way you knew the inside of your own engine bay—every crack, every stain, every story it told about the people who walked it.

The shop’s roll-up door was half-open when you arrived, and you could hear the radio before you could see inside—some old rock station Mingi kept tuned to because the signal was clear and the DJs never talked during the guitar solos. You ducked under the door and stepped into the fluorescent hum.

Your car was on the ground. The hood was closed. The driver’s side door was open, and the interior light was on, and you could see the fresh gleam of something newly installed through the gap in the door frame.

Mingi was sitting on an overturned bucket near the workbench, wiping his hands on a rag that had long since given up any pretense of cleanliness. He had the radio turned up just loud enough that he didn’t hear you come in, and for a moment you just stood there and watched him. The way his shoulders moved when he reached for the solvent bottle, the way his jaw worked around whatever he was chewing (gum, probably, or the inside of his cheek), the fresh bandage on his left hand where he’d clearly cut himself again and upgraded from electrical tape to something that actually qualified as medical supplies.

You cleared your throat.

He turned. His face went through three expressions in rapid succession—surprise, recognition, and then something warm and slow that started at the corners of his mouth and spread upward until his whole face was doing the thing, the thing you’d been cataloguing for months without admitting what it was.

“What did I tell you about coming early, hm?” He deadpanned.

“Don't be dramatic, Min.” You held up the bag. “I got your favourites.”

His eyes dropped to the bag, then back to your face, and the warmth deepened into something that looked almost endearing, which was not a look you’d ever seen on Mingi and did not know what to do with.

“All of this for me?” He set the rag down and stood, and he was taller than you remembered, or maybe you’d just forgotten in the hours since morning how he filled a room without trying. “You shouldn’t have, baby.”

The word landed somewhere between your ribs and stayed there. He said it casually, the way he said everything—like it cost him nothing, like it was just a sound the air made when it passed through him on its way to you.

You crossed the shop and set the bag on the workbench, pulling out the containers one by one. The bulgogi bowls steamed when you opened the lids, and the smell of garlic and gochujang filled the space between the tool chests and the lift. You handed him the black coffee without asking and kept the other one for yourself, and you set the japchae and the honey butter cake on the bench beside the bowls like you were setting a table.

“It’s for my favourite mechanic, after all,” you smirked, keeping your voice light and easy.

Kept it from doing the thing it wanted to do—which was crack open and spill everything you’d been carrying since four that morning when you’d woken up on his makeshift bed with his jacket over you and his coffee in your hands and the sound of him working on your car like a prayer in the next room. Maybe even beyond that.

Mingi’s smile went wide and bright, showing the dimples that only appeared when he was genuinely, stupidly happy. “So, you finally admit I’m your favourite, huh?”

You handed him a pair of chopsticks and fixed him with a look that you hoped conveyed the appropriate ratio of affection and threat. “Don’t push it, pretty boy.”

He laughed—full and loud, the kind of laugh that echoed off the concrete walls and made the overhead lights buzz in sympathy. He pulled the bucket closer to the bench and sat, and you pulled up a stool from the corner, and you ate lunch together.

He told you about the bracket—how the parts house had exactly one left in stock, how he’d had to sweet-talk the guy behind the counter into holding it, how the installation had gone smooth except for the bolt that fought him for twenty minutes before finally surrendering. You told him about the cereal, and the cat, and the video someone had posted, and he made a face and said, “Send me the link, I want to see these idiots diagnosing your car from a thirty-second clip.”

You ate the japchae first, and he didn’t comment on it, but you watched his face when he took the first bite and saw something shift behind his eyes—something old and fond and a little bit melancholic—and he looked at you across the workbench with an expression that said he knew exactly why you’d ordered it and exactly what it meant that you’d remembered, and he didn’t say thank you because he didn’t need to.

The honey butter cake disappeared in four minutes flat, and he licked the glaze off his thumb with the shamelessness of a man who had given up pretending he didn’t have a sweet tooth approximately three bites ago.

When the food was gone and the coffees were empty and the radio had cycled through two more songs, Mingi stood and stretched—arms overhead, back arching, the white tank pulling tight across his chest in a way that you absolutely did not stare at—and walked to your car. He patted the roof twice, the way you’d seen him do a hundred times, and looked at you over the hood.

“She’s ready when you are.”

You walked to the driver’s side and ran your hand along the door frame, tracing the line where the paint chipped and the clearcoat had started to surrender to time and sun and too many city winters. It was cool and solid under your palm, and for the first time in days you didn’t imagine hearing the sickly metallic tick that had haunted every drive since the first warning sign. No rattle. No vibration. No secret countdown to catastrophic failure shivering through the welds. Just a door, a car, a moment of stillness as you drew in a breath and let your shoulders drop.

You slid into the seat, and the interior smelled like Mingi—solvent, engine oil, the sharpness of fresh brake cleaner and something sweeter underneath, a cedar note that clung to the cloth. You could see where he’d wiped down the steering wheel, the faintest imprint of a towel snagged on the horn pad, and the new bracket gleaming through the gap below the dash. The seat was exactly the way you left it, except you could tell he’d sat here, adjusted the mirrors, checked the fit of the pedals. It was like stepping into a space that had been quietly, lovingly proofed against disaster.

The key was already in the ignition. You turned it.

The engine caught on the first try—clean, steady, the deep throaty hum you’d tuned into existence with your own hands, but different now. Quieter. Settled. Like something that had been suffering in silence had finally been allowed to breathe again. You pressed the throttle lightly and listened, heart in your mouth, waiting for the telltale clunk or metallic swing-and-bang. Instead, there was only the smooth, even purr, the delicate click of injectors priming, the systems waking up like a body stretching after a long sleep.

You pressed a little harder, feathering the pedal. The tach jumped, held, dropped. No hesitations. No overcompensation. No subtle warning in the feedback through the wheel. If you closed your eyes, you could almost believe this was someone else’s car—someone who’d never driven it to the edge, never asked it to survive three consecutive summers of midnight street circuits, never let it run a degree hotter than it was supposed to just to beat a kid with something newer and flashier. But it was yours, and you’d earned every scar on the center console, every burn mark on the carpet. And now, for the first time in years, it didn’t sound like a ticking time bomb. It sounded like something that was meant to last.

You sat with that for a minute, hands resting on the wheel, the engine’s steady rhythm echoing in your bones. You shifted into neutral and let the engine idle. Mingi’s handwriting was on a sticky note taped to the dash: “Check oil before running. -M.” You popped the hood just to be sure, and the dipstick came up clean and full, the oil exactly where it should be, the new gasket already sealing like it was part of the block from the beginning. He’d even topped off your washer fluid, the little things he always did, the ones he never mentioned but that you always noticed.

When you came back around, Mingi was standing by the shop door. He’d wiped his hands again, but there was a new smudge of something across his cheekbone, and he was watching you with an expression so open it made it impossible to look away. There was pride there, and relief, and a weird kind of gentleness that didn’t fit with the way he usually moved through the world. You realized, suddenly and with embarrassing clarity, that he was waiting for you to say something. To react, to light up, to show him that this mattered.

So you revved the engine, just a little, and gave him a thumbs-up through the windshield.

He grinned, and the whole shop seemed to brighten. You cut the engine and stepped out, and for a second the world held its breath.

He nodded, then pointed at the car. “How does she feel?”

You tried to come up with something technical. Something that would do justice to the hours he’d put in, the parts you knew he’d paid for himself, the sweat and blood literally on the line. But all that came out was, “She’s perfect.”

Mingi’s face went soft around the eyes, and he scrubbed a hand through his hair like he didn’t know what to do with the compliment. “You did most of the work, I just did some touch ups,” he smiled.

You barked a laugh. “All I did was fall asleep in your office and bring you lunch. You fixed my car.”

He shrugged, but you could tell he was pleased. “Yeah? What’s next, then? An oil change? New tires? You know, just for fun.”

You grinned. “I was thinking about a test drive. Want to come with?”

He hesitated, then held up his hands. “I’ll sit in the passenger seat, but only because I don’t want to get kimchi juice on your nice upholstery.”

You tossed him the keys. “No Min, You’re driving.”

He caught them one-handed, easy, and you felt something loosen in your chest. You hopped into the passenger seat, let the window down again, and watched as he adjusted the mirrors just so, checked the angle of the seat, and all the little rituals he did before a test drive.

He started the engine, and this time you noticed the way the sound made him smile. He rolled slowly out of the shop and down the street, careful at first, but then letting the car stretch out as the road opened up. You watched the city go by in a blur—corner store, laundromat, the park with the busted swing set—and realized you were seeing all of it through the windshield of a car that was finally, blissfully, whole.

Mingi drove with one hand on the wheel and one on the shifter, and he kept glancing at you like he was trying to memorize your reaction. You leaned back in the seat, let the sun warm your face, let the feeling of the world working as it should sink in.

Halfway to the river, he turned to you and said, “So what do we do now? Victory lap? Or do we just keep driving until something else breaks?”

You considered it. “Can we...” You stopped, not sure how to put it into words, and settled for, “Let’s just keep going for a while.”

And so you did. You let the city recede, let the noise fade into the background, and just existed, two people in a car that was finally running right, the road unspooling ahead of you like there was nowhere else you needed to be.

The road curved along the riverbank, and the water caught the late afternoon light in long, lazy ribbons of gold. Mingi drove with the windows down, one elbow resting on the door frame, and the wind pushed his hair back from his forehead in a way that made him look younger, looser, like someone who’d set down a weight he’d been carrying for years and forgotten what it felt like to stand up straight.

You watched the trees slide past and let the silence hold for another mile before you spoke.

“Hey,” you began, and your voice came out quieter than you meant it to. “I have another race on Friday. The industrial stretch again—the same one as last night, but bigger. More cars. Some guys from out of town are coming up.”

Mingi’s thumb tapped the steering wheel once. Twice. “Yeah?”

“Mhm.” You turned in the seat to face him, pulling one knee up under you. The leather creaked. “I’m in, obviously. Jihoon, the guy that had that fat stack of cash, wants a rematch, and there’s this new kid from Busan who’s been talking shit online all week.”

Mingi nodded slowly, eyes still on the road. “You can beat him for sure.”

“I don’t even know what he drives.”

“Nah, it doesn't matter.” He glanced over, a warm smile spread across his face. “It’s not about the car, it’s about who’s behind the wheel. That cocky piece of shit will not win, trust me.”

The warmth that spread through your chest was embarrassing in its intensity. You looked down at your hands, at the grease still lingering in the creases of your knuckles, and you said the thing you’d been turning over in your head since you woke up on his shop-towel bed with his jacket over your shoulders and his coffee in your hands.

“You should come watch me. In the race— I mean.”

The words hung in the air between you, carried on the wind rushing through the open windows. You kept your eyes on your hands, on the grease, on anything that wasn’t his face, because you’d said it casually—or tried to—and you needed a second to make sure the casual had landed.

Mingi was quiet for too long. Unusually long, you think. His jaw had set. Not in a hard way—in the way it did when he was about to deliver news he didn’t want to deliver.

“Friday,” he repeated, and the word came out carefully, measured, like he was testing its weight. “This Friday?”

“Mhm. Starts around ten. Should be over by midnight, hopefully by one.”

He exhaled through his nose—a slow, controlled breath that told you everything before the words did.

“Oh I'm sorry, sweetheart.” His voice had gone soft in that particular way, the way that meant he was about to disappoint you and he already hated himself for it. “I can’t. I’m booked solid. Like—completely. I’ve got three clients coming in after hours, and one of them’s a timing chain replacement on a V6 that’s going to take me till two in the morning if everything goes right, which it won’t, because timing chains never go right.”

“Oh,” you mumbled. And then, because you were a person who’d spent your entire adult life pretending you didn’t need anything from anyone: “That’s fine. No big deal. It’s just a race.”

You turned back to the windshield. The river was on your left now, wide and flat and silver, and a heron stood motionless in the shallows, and you focused on the heron because the heron didn’t care about Friday nights or timing chains or the particular ache that had settled behind your sternum like a stone dropped into still water.

The car slowed. Mingi pulled over onto the gravel shoulder, the tires crunching softly, and cut the engine. The sudden silence was enormous—just the tick of cooling metal and the distant hum of the highway and the sound of your own breathing, which you were trying very hard to keep even.

He turned in his seat.

You didn’t look at him. You kept your eyes on the heron, which had taken a step forward into the water with the slow, deliberate grace of something that had never once needed to explain itself to anyone.

“You’re doing the thing,” he frowned as he scanned your facial expression.

“What thing?”

“The thing where you say it’s fine and it’s not fine.” His voice was close. Closer than the passenger seat should have allowed. “Look at me, please.”

You looked at him.

His face was right there—inches away, the afternoon light catching the gold in his eyes. He was looking at you with an expression that made your chest do something complicated and painful, like a valve opening somewhere you hadn’t known was closed.

“I want to be there,” he mumbled. The words were simple and direct, the way Mingi’s words always were when he meant them. “You know I want to be there. I’d rather be watching you race than doing a timing chain on a V6 that some idiot ran dry for six months. But I told these people I’d do it, and they’re counting on me, and—”

“I know.” You did know. That was the worst part. You knew exactly the kind of person Mingi was—the kind who showed up, who kept his word, who rebuilt transmissions at four in the morning because someone had asked him to and he’d said yes. You’d fallen for that person. You didn’t get to resent him for being exactly who he was. “It’s okay, Mingi. I understand.”

He studied your face for a long moment—the way your mouth was doing something you hoped passed for a smile, the way your eyes kept flicking to the heron because holding his gaze for too long felt like standing too close to a fire. He saw it. Of course he saw it. Mingi saw everything.

His hand came up.

Slow. Deliberate. Giving you every chance to pull away, to deflect, to make a joke, to do any of the things you usually did when someone tried to touch you with intention. You didn’t move.

His palm settled against your cheek. His thumb traced the line of your cheekbone—once, twice—and his skin was warm and rough and smelled like solvent and the honey butter cake from lunch, and the touch was so gentle it made your eyes sting.

“Hey,” he whispered. Soft. So soft. “I’ll make it up to you. You name it, and I’m there. I promise.”

You leaned into his hand before you could stop yourself. Just a fraction—just enough to feel the pressure of his palm, the steady warmth of it, the way his thumb stilled against your skin like he was holding his breath.

“You promise?” you mumbled against his hand, your voice came out smaller than you wanted it to.

“Promise.” His thumb moved again—a slow sweep along your cheekbone that sent something warm and liquid through your bloodstream. “I’ll clear a night. I’ll put it on the calendar in permanent marker. I’ll tell every client in the city that Song Mingi is unavailable that evening because he has a prior engagement that is non-negotiable.”

A laugh escaped you, a little broken, but real. “Non-negotiable?”

“Completely non-negotiable.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, and the dimple appeared, and the cut on his lip stretched when he smiled, and you thought—with the kind of clarity that only comes in the quiet moments between one heartbeat and the next—that you would remember this exact image for the rest of your life. Mingi in the driver’s seat of your car, his hand on your face, the river silver behind him, promising you something he meant with every molecule of his being.

“Okay,” you exhaled. “Another night.”

“Another night, I promise.” He held your gaze for one more beat—long enough that the air between you changed, thickened, became something you could almost taste—and then his hand dropped from your cheek and returned to the wheel, and the moment collapsed back into the ordinary like it had never happened.

He started the engine. The car came alive around you, that clean, steady hum that meant everything was where it was supposed to be. He pulled back onto the road, and the heron lifted from the shallows and beat its slow, heavy wings into the sky, and you watched it go until it was a speck against the pale blue, and then you watched the road unfold ahead of you, and you didn’t say anything else because you didn’t need to.

The silence held. The kind that didn’t need to be filled. The kind that felt like a promise.

══════════════════

Friday arrived like a held breath finally released.

The industrial stretch was different tonight—larger, louder, the energy cranked up to something that buzzed against your skin like a live wire. More cars lined the turnout than you’d seen in months, their engines idling in a low, impatient chorus that vibrated through the soles of your boots. The crowd had spilled past the guardrail and onto the shoulder, phones out, speakers blasting three different songs at once, the smell of cigarette smoke and cheap beer and someone’s body spray mixing with the burnt-rubber perfume of the asphalt. Someone had strung LED lights along the overpass supports, casting everything in a pulsing, carnival-bright wash that made the night feel like something staged, something that knew it was being watched.

You stood at the open driver’s side door with your hands on the roof and your head bowed, running through the checklist.

Tire pressure: thirty-two all around, checked four times.

Oil: full, clean, Mingi’s handwriting still on the dipstick tube where he’d marked the fill line with a pencil.

Coolant: topped off. Brake fluid: clear and full. Belts: tight, no cracks, no fraying.

You’d gone over every inch of the engine bay yourself that afternoon, twice, with a headlamp and a torque wrench and the kind of obsessive attention to detail that bordered on compulsion. The new bracket gleamed under the hood like a promise kept, and the transmission mount bolt sat snug and true, and you’d driven the car here tonight without a single sound that didn’t belong.

Still. You checked again. You always checked again.

Behind you, the pre-race circus was in full swing. You could hear your best friend, Yuna, before you could even see her. A voice that could cut glass and a laugh that could shatter it—was arguing with someone about the bet spread, her hands moving in sharp, emphatic arcs while three guys in matching jackets nodded along like they understood a word she was saying. Your friend, Soobin, was crouched beside your rear tire with a flashlight, double-checking the tread depth because he’d lost fifty bucks once on a blowout and had never fully recovered emotionally.

And there, leaning against the hood of a black sedan that had no business being at a street race, were three figures you’d recognize anywhere.

Hongjoong saw you first. He was the shortest of the three but carried himself like he’d been genetically engineered for maximum authority—black beanie pulled low over his forehead, a leather jacket that cost more than most of the cars on the stretch, arms crossed, jaw set in that permanent expression of mild, world-weary amusement that he wore like a second skin. He raised his chin in greeting, and you raised yours back, and that was the entirety of the conversation Hongjoong ever needed to have with anyone.

Beside him, Seonghwa stood with the kind of posture that suggested he’d been born in a finishing school and escaped at the first opportunity. Tall, lean, dressed in all black like he was attending a funeral for someone he didn’t like, his dark hair swept back from his face in a way that looked effortless and absolutely was not. He was the manager at ATZ—the one who kept the books, handled the clients, and maintained the delicate fiction that the shop operated within the bounds of something resembling a schedule. He was also, you’d learned over the months, the only person on earth who could make Mingi do paperwork without a fight, which meant he was either a wizard or had blackmail material of catastrophic proportions. You suspected both.

Jongho was on Seonghwa’s other side, arms folded, watching the crowd with the alert, slightly wary expression of someone who’d seen enough to know that crowds were where trouble went to multiply. He was the youngest at the shop but moved through it like he’d been born under a lift—quiet, capable, the kind of mechanic who could diagnose an engine from the sound of the starter alone. He’d helped Mingi with your transmission mount the morning after the repair, you’d learned later, holding the bracket in place while Mingi threaded the new bolt. He gave you a small nod when you caught his eye, and you nodded back, and the exchange contained approximately as much warmth as two people who respected each other’s competence could manage in a single gesture.

You straightened up from the door and walked over to them, wiping your palms on your jeans.

“I can’t believe you guys made it,” you beamed, because it was the polite thing to say, even though the sight of them—of anyone from ATZ, anyone who knew the shape of your engine bay the way you did—had loosened something tight behind your ribs.

“Hongjoong lost a bet,” Seonghwa said, without looking at Hongjoong.

“I did not lose a bet.” Hongjoong’s voice was flat. “I made a strategic decision to attend a cultural event.”

“Uh-huh, cultural event… right, right.” you nodded your head slowly, heavy with suspicion.

“Street racing is a cultural institution with deep roots in—”

“He lost twenty dollars to Jongho about whether you’d check your tire pressure two times or four,” Seonghwa said, and Jongho’s mouth twitched in something that was almost a smile. “It was three, by the way.”

“Four, actually.” you corrected, and Hongjoong pointed at Jongho with the satisfied air of a man who’d just been vindicated.

“See? She checked it four times and I said four. You said three. Pay up, kid.”

Jongho reached into his back pocket without argument and handed over a crumpled twenty. Hongjoong took it with the gravity of someone accepting a Nobel Prize.

You laughed, the sound felt good in the night air, loosening something that had been wound tight since you’d pulled into the turnout and cut the engine. The three of them were here. They’d come. Mingi’s people had come, which meant maybe he was also there too. 

“How’s the car?” Seonghwa asked, and his tone was professional—the manager’s tone, the one that meant he was genuinely interested in the answer and not just making conversation.

“She’s solid,” you answered back confidently. “Mingi did the bracket last week. She’s running cleaner than she has in months.”

“Mm. Good.” Seonghwa’s eyes moved past you to the car, assessing it with the same quiet attention he gave everything—invoices, clients, the state of the break room microwave. “He spent three hours on that mount. Wouldn’t let anyone else touch it.”

Something warm bloomed behind your sternum. You didn’t let it show on your face.

“Control freak,” you joked lightly.

“The worst,” Seonghwa agreed, and there was something in his voice—something knowing, something that suggested he’d been paying attention to more than just the state of the break room microwave—but before you could parse it, Hongjoong was speaking again.

“Who are you running against tonight? The Busan kid?”

“Jihoon and the Busan kid, yeah. And a few others—some guy in a WRX who’s been talking a big game on the forums, and a girl in a Civic that’s been modded within an inch of its life. It should be interesting.”

Jongho made a sound—a low, considering hum that was eerily similar to the one Mingi made when he was cataloguing damage. “The Civic’s got a K-swap. I saw it at the meet last weekend. She’s running a bigger turbo than she should be. She’ll pull hard off the line but fade by the second turn if the cooling can’t keep up.”

You looked at him. “You went to the meet?”

“I go to all of them.” He said it like it was nothing. Like attending every unofficial car gathering within a thirty-mile radius was a perfectly normal hobby for a twenty-five-year-old mechanic who otherwise gave the impression of being allergic to social interaction. “Research.”

“Research,” Hongjoong repeated, deadpan.

“Market analysis,” Jongho smirked, and didn’t elaborate.

You grinned and turned back to the car. The ritual wasn’t finished. You still had to walk the length of the stretch—check the surface for debris, note the manhole cover on the second turn, feel the asphalt under your boots and commit its texture to memory. You still had to sit in the driver’s seat for exactly three minutes with the engine off, hands on the wheel, eyes closed, running the course in your head—every shift point, every braking marker, every place where the road cambered in a way that could send an unwary car wide.

Your eyes moved past the crowd. Past Yuna and her betting spreadsheet, past Soobin and his flashlight, past the three ATZ mechanics standing in their cluster of black leather and quiet competence. Past the LED lights and the speaker stacks and the groups of strangers with their phones raised like offerings to some digital god. You scanned the turnout. The guardrail. The overpass. The shadows where the streetlights didn’t reach.

You looked for him.

You looked for the tall frame, the dark hair, the oversized jacket with the sleeves pushed up. You looked for the way he stood—loose and easy, one hip cocked, like gravity was a suggestion he’d chosen to follow. You looked for the familiar smile. You looked for the one person in the crowd who would be watching you the way he watched engines—with total, uncomplicated attention, like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.

The turnout was full of people. None of them were Mingi.

You let your gaze sweep one more time—slower now, deliberate, giving him every chance to materialize from behind a car or step out of the shadows or call your name from somewhere you hadn’t checked. The crowd shifted and pulsed, and a flare went up near the starting line, throwing red light across a hundred faces, and none of them were his.

He wasn’t here. Of course he wasn’t here. He’d told you, and you’d said it was fine, and it was fine. It was completely, totally, one-hundred-percent fine.

You turned back to the car and placed both hands on the roof again, fingers spread wide, and you took a breath that went all the way to the bottom of your lungs and held it there for a count of four.

“You okay?” Seonghwa asked from behind you. His voice was careful. Observant. He’d seen you looking.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine,” you replied, and you meant it about the car, and you meant it about the race, and the part that wasn’t about the car or the race—the part that was about a mechanic who rebuilt transmissions at four in the morning and remembered your oat milk and carried you through a doorway too narrow for his shoulders—you set that part aside. You set it in the same place you kept all the other things you weren’t ready to examine, and you closed the door on it, and you turned the lock.

You had a race to win.

You walked the stretch. You checked the surface—clean, dry, the manhole cover still loose on the second turn, the same one that had sent Jihoon wide last time. You committed the texture to memory—smooth here, slightly rough there, the seam where the old pavement met the new running like a scar down the centerline. You sat in the driver’s seat for exactly three minutes with the engine off, hands on the wheel, eyes closed, and you ran the course in your head.

You opened your eyes. The dashboard glowed its familiar amber, and the key was in your hand, and the crowd outside had gone quiet in that particular way that meant the flagger was taking position.

You turned the key.

The engine caught—clean , steady, that deep throaty hum that meant every bolt was where it belonged and every belt was singing the same song. You let the RPMs settle, then blipped the throttle twice—once for luck, once because the car asked for it—and pulled forward to the starting line.

Jihoon was already there. His silver coupe idled beside you, its aftermarket exhaust popping and crackling with the aggressive, attention-seeking rhythm of someone who’d spent more on sound than substance. He revved at you—three quick stabs, the automotive equivalent of a middle finger—and you didn’t respond. You kept your eyes on the flagger, on the strip of white cloth hanging limp in the still night air, on the exact point where it would snap upward and the world would narrow to nothing but asphalt and instinct.

The Busan kid was two cars back in his modified Civic, the intercooler gleaming under the LED lights like a promise of trouble. The WRX was on your other side, its driver—a guy you didn’t recognize, late twenties, a baseball cap pulled low—cracking his neck side to side with the theatrical tension of someone who’d watched too many movies. The girl in the K-swapped Civic was behind you, engine ticking over with the tight, impatient rhythm of a turbo spooling against its wastegate.

The flagger raised his arm.

Your hand found the shifter. First gear. Clutch in. Throttle to the sweet spot—three thousand, hold it, feel the car strain against the brakes like a dog pulling at its leash. Your heartbeat was steady. Your breathing was even. Everything outside the windshield had gone soft and distant, the way it always did in the seconds before the green—the crowd noise flattening to a dull roar, the LED lights blurring into streaks of color, the smell of burnt rubber and beer and body spray condensing into a single, meaningless note.

The flag dropped.

You released the clutch and the brakes simultaneously, the way you’d practiced ten thousand times in empty parking lots and deserted stretches of road, and the car launched forward with a violence that pressed you into the seat. The tires bit—clean, no spin, no wasted energy—and you were through first gear before the WRX had found its footing, the tach needle swinging past redline and your hand already moving to second, third, the engine screaming its approval as you fed it everything it asked for.

The first turn came fast. You took it tight—tighter than the line you’d rehearsed, cutting inside the apex marker by a close margin because Jihoon was already trying to crowd you wide, his front bumper edging into your peripheral vision like something predatory. You held the line. Your right rear tire kissed the inside curb and the car shuddered once—a brief, violent protest—and then settled, and you were through, accelerating hard into the short straight before the second turn.

The manhole cover. You could see it ahead—a dark circle in the asphalt, slightly raised, slightly loose, the same one that had cost Jihoon a bumper last time. He’d remember it. He’d be cautious. You wouldn’t.

Your foot came off the pedal at the last possible moment, and the car rotated into the turn with the kind of precision that only comes from knowing exactly how much grip you had left and being willing to use all of it. The manhole passed under your left tires with a dull, metallic thunk that you felt through the steering column, and you were already unwinding the wheel, already feeding power back in, already watching Jihoon in your rearview as he lifted—just barely, just enough—to avoid the cover, and the gap between you opened by half a car length.

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

The third turn was sweeping and fast, the camber pulling you toward the outside guardrail, and you fought it with micro-adjustments of the wheel—tiny, instinctive corrections that kept the car on the line you’d drawn in your head three minutes ago. The tach sat at six thousand in fourth gear, the engine pulling hard and clean, no hesitation, no vibration, no sound that didn’t belong. Mingi’s bracket held. Mingi’s bolt held. The transmission mount sat silent and true beneath you, and you pushed harder because it let you.

The Busan kid was gaining. You could hear him—the high, tight whine of his turbo spooling, the sharp crack of his exhaust on overrun—and in your mirrors you could see the Civic’s headlights swelling, closing, eating the gap you’d built on the first two turns. He was fast. Jongho had been right about the cooling—you could see heat shimmer rising from his hood in the LED light—but he was fast enough that the fade wouldn’t matter if he caught you before the straight.

The fourth turn. The one that looked easy and wasn’t.

Jihoon had recovered from the manhole. He was on your right now, his front bumper level with your door, his engine screaming as he pushed for the inside line. You could see his face through his window—jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the road ahead with the desperate intensity of someone who’d bet more than he could afford to lose. His car was faster in a straight line. You both knew it. If he got past you before the fifth turn, the straight would belong to him, and you’d never close the gap.

You braked early.

You let the car slow a fraction of a second before the braking marker, and Jihoon took the bait. He shot past your bumper, diving for the inside, certain he’d found the opening, and you let him have it. You let him have the inside line on a turn that tightened at the exit, on a road that cambered outward, on an asphalt surface that was slightly rougher on the inside than the outside.

He realized his mistake a half-second too late. You saw it happen—the moment his wheels lost their grip, the moment the camber pulled him wide, the moment his rear end stepped out and he had to catch it with a correction that cost him speed, momentum, everything. You cut to the outside, carried your speed through the exit, and when you looked in your mirror, Jihoon was a full car length behind and fighting to stay on the road.

The straight opened ahead of you—flat, dark, the orange cones of the finish line glowing like distant candles. Fifth gear. Foot to the floor. Don’t lift. Don’t think. Just go.

The Civic was still there. The Busan kid had found something on the fourth turn—some line you hadn’t anticipated, some technique that kept his turbo spooled and his tires planted—and he was alongside you now, his front bumper creeping past yours inch by inch, his engine howling with the particular fury of a K-swap pushed past its comfort zone. Heat poured from his hood in visible waves. The cooling was failing. You could see it in the way his tach was fluctuating—dropping a hundred RPM, climbing back, dropping again—the engine fighting for air it couldn’t get.

But he was still moving. Still gaining. His front bumper was at your door. Then at your front wheel. Then past it.

The finish line was thirty seconds away. Maybe less. The cones were getting bigger, the crowd noise swelling from a dull roar to something sharp and specific—you could hear individual voices now, individual shouts, someone screaming your name.

You dropped to fourth. The engine screamed—past the redline, into territory you’d never asked it to visit, the tach needle buried in the red and the valves singing a song that was equal parts defiance and desperation. The car responded. It always responded. The RPMs climbed past anything the factory had ever intended, and the power came back—not smoothly, not cleanly, but enough. Enough to close the gap. Enough to pull even with the Civic’s rear bumper, then its door, then its front wheel.

The Busan kid looked over. You saw his face through his window—young, flushed, eyes wide with the particular shock of someone who’d been certain they’d won and was watching the certainty evaporate. He pushed the throttle harder. You heard his engine stutter—a single, violent misfire that cost him everything—and in that fraction of a second, you were past him.

The finish line. The cones. The flagger’s arm dropping.

You crossed first.

You knew it before the crowd told you. You knew it in the way the Civic’s headlights fell behind you, in the way the straight opened up empty ahead of your bumper, in the way the engine’s scream shifted from desperate to triumphant as you lifted off the throttle and let the car coast, the adrenaline still singing through your veins like electricity through a live wire.

The crowd erupted.

You could hear it even through the closed windows—a wall of sound that hit the car like a physical force, hundreds of voices merging into a single, incoherent roar of celebration. Phones were raised, flashlights swinging, the LED lights along the overpass pulsing in time with the bass from the speakers someone had turned up to maximum. You pulled into the turnout and cut the engine, and the sudden silence was immediately filled by the sound of people running toward your car, their boots pounding on the asphalt, their voices overlapping in a cacophony of congratulations and disbelief.

You sat there for a moment. Hands on the wheel. Breathing hard. The dashboard lights faded slowly, and the engine ticked its cooling song, and something behind your chest—something that had been wound tight since the starting line, since the moment you’d scanned the crowd and found him missing—unspooled all at once, leaving you lightheaded and grinning like an idiot.

The door opened from the outside.

Yuna was there, her face split in a grin so wide it looked like it hurt, both hands gripping the door frame like she was afraid the car might try to escape. “You absolute madwoman! You insane, beautiful, completely unhinged—” She was pulling you out of the seat before you could unbuckle, her arms around your neck, her voice shouting directly into your ear at a volume that should have required a permit. “You killed it, babe! You beat them all! The Busan kid looked like he was going to cry!”

Soobin was right behind her, his flashlight still in his hand, his face flushed with the particular joy of someone who’d just won back the fifty dollars he’d lost on the blowout plus interest. “Dude, that fourth turn was insane! That was literally criminal, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal but who gives a fuck.”

You were laughing—you couldn’t stop, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep and raw and entirely involuntary—and people were pressing in from all sides, hands clapping your shoulders, voices shouting your car’s name, your name, variations of your name that you’d never heard before. Someone had a bottle of champagne—the cheap kind, the kind that came in a green bottle with a foil label—and the cork popped with a sound like a gunshot, and foam sprayed across your hood in a wide, arcing fan that caught the LED light and turned to gold.

“Careful on my paint man!” you shouted, but you were laughing, and someone else had a second bottle, and then a third, and within seconds your car was glistening with cheap champagne, the hood dripping, the windshield streaked, the headlights wearing crowns of foam that slid slowly down the lenses. The crowd was chanting—your name, your car’s name, something rhythmic and obscene that Yuna had probably started—and you stood in the center of it with champagne in your hair and the particular, dizzying high of having done the thing you’d set out to do and done it perfectly.

Hongjoong materialized at your left shoulder, his twenty-dollar bill now folded neatly in his breast pocket, his expression one of grudging respect. “Not bad, kid.” He nudged your shoulder, which from Hongjoong was roughly equivalent to a standing ovation.

Seonghwa was beside him, arms crossed, a small, satisfied smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “The bracket held,” he observed, like he’d been watching for exactly that and nothing else.

“Thank god for that, huh,” you confirmed, and the words came out slightly breathless, slightly giddy, and you wiped champagne from your eyebrow with the back of your hand and grinned at both of them like you’d just won the lottery.

And then you saw him. He was at the edge of the crowd—tall, unmistakable, the white of his tank top bright against his leather jacket, dark jeans that had no right to fit the way they did. Hair pushed back. Rings shining brightly on his fingers and silver chains by his throat catching the light they always did. Both hands clean, the left one uninjured and wrapped around the stems of a bouquet he was holding down at his side with the careful, slightly uncertain grip of someone who had never bought flowers before and was now standing in a crowd of street racers holding flowers. Proudly wearing that stupid smile of his.

Mingi.

Your brain short-circuited. You blinked. You blinked again. The champagne was still dripping from your hair, and the crowd was still roaring, and Yuna was still screaming something in your ear that you couldn’t hear, and Mingi was there, standing at the edge of the turnout like he’d materialized from the very specific fantasy you’d been refusing to acknowledge for the past couple of weeks.

You pushed through the crowd. People moved aside—or you moved through them, you weren’t sure. The crowd parted like water, and you were running. Boots slapping against the champagne-wet asphalt, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your teeth. Mingi lifted the bouquet from his side and held it out to you like an offering, like a confession, like the only thing he could think to bring to the most important moment of his week.

You took the flowers without breaking stride. Wildflowers, not the kind from a shop, the kind that grew along the riverbank where you’d pulled over that afternoon, blue and yellow and white, stems wrapped in what looked like shop towel because Mingi didn’t own ribbon. Then you were launching yourself at him, both arms around his neck, your legs wrapping around his waist because the momentum demanded it, because physics demanded it, because every molecule in your body demanded it.

He caught you. Of course he caught you—his free arm hooking under your thighs, the other still clutching the bouquet, his body absorbing the impact with the same easy, practiced confidence he brought to everything that mattered. You buried your face in his neck, and he smelled like something warm and new—aftershave, maybe?

The crowd erupted.

Not the race-winning eruption—something different, something bright, the particular sound of hundreds people collectively losing their minds over something they hadn’t known they were watching for. A chorus of whoops and whistles and someone—Yuna, definitely Yuna—screaming “OH MY GOD” at a frequency that could transcend both space and time. Phones were up, cameras flashing, and you could hear the cooing, the affectionate, slightly drunk awwww that rolled through the turnout like a wave, and someone shouted “KISS HER, BRO!” and someone else shouted “AW MAN I THOUGHT I HAD A CHANCE.” and the whole thing collapsed into laughter and applause that vibrated through the asphalt and up through Mingi’s chest and into yours.

His mouth was at your ear. His breath was warm against your skin, and his voice was low—so low that only you could hear it, the words meant for you and you alone, tucked into the space between his jaw and your hair.

“Congratulations, my little racer,” he whispered. “You were incredible. I watched the whole thing from the overpass. You kicked their asses.”

You pulled back just enough to look at him—his face inches from yours, the gold in his eyes catching the LED light, the cut on his lip healed to a thin white line, the flowers crushed between your chest and his, releasing their faint, sweet smell into the narrow gap between your bodies.

“You came,” you beamed up at him, your voice came out breathless and disbelieving, like you were still waiting for the punchline. “I thought you said you couldn’t—the timing chain, the V6—”

“I pulled some strings.” His dimple appeared. “I finished the timing chain at nine. Drove straight here. Parked on the overpass and watched you absolutely murder that Civic.”

“You finished a timing chain in—”

“Did you forget that I’m very good at my job?” The smile was wide now, unashamed, the kind of smile that belonged in a movie montage, and you were laughing—both of you were laughing, your foreheads pressed together, the crowd still cheering around you like you’d invented something new.

He shifted his grip on you—adjusting, settling, his arm tightening under your thighs—and then he was walking. Carrying you. Back through the crowd, past Yuna who was filming with both hands and sobbing dramatically, past Soobin who gave you a thumbs-up that was mostly champagne foam, past Hongjoong who looked like he was trying very hard to maintain his world-weary composure and failing, past Seonghwa who was watching with the quiet, knowing satisfaction of someone who’d seen this coming from three months away.

Mingi’s mouth found your ear again. His lips brushed the shell of it—barely, accidentally, not-accidentally—and his voice dropped to that register that lived in the space between a whisper and a thought.

“Did you want to give them a show, hm?” The words were warm and teasing, his breath ghosting across your skin. “Because we could. We could stand right here and let them film every second. I’m sure everyone would appreciate the content.”

You shook your head against his shoulder—a quick, emphatic no—and felt him smile against your temple.

“Smart girl, aren’t you.” His arm tightened around you, possessive and gentle in equal measure. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

You reached into your back pocket without looking, your fingers finding the key fob by touch alone, and you pressed it into his free hand—the one not holding the bouquet, the one not holding you. He caught it without looking, the way he caught everything—tools, keys, the particular weight of your trust—and his fingers closed around it like it belonged there.

He carried you to the car. The crowd was still cheering, still filming, still living in the moment you’d already left behind, and Mingi set you down gently at the passenger door—your feet finding the ground, his hand lingering at the small of your back—and opened it for you with the same old habit, the one he never skipped. You slid into the seat, the flowers in your lap, their stems cool against your palms, and Mingi closed the door behind you with a soft, deliberate click.

He walked around the hood—you watched him through the windshield, the way he moved through the champagne-streaked light with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going—and dropped into the driver’s seat. The engine turned over on the first try, that clean, steady hum that meant everything was where it was supposed to be, and Mingi pulled out of the turnout with the kind of smooth, controlled precision that made your stomach flip.

The crowd fell away behind you. The LED lights shrank to pinpoints in the rearview. The champagne and the shouting and the bass-heavy music dissolved into the night, replaced by the sound of the engine and the wind through the open windows and the faint rustle of wildflowers in your lap.

══════════════════

The road unwound beneath you, and the city thinned to scattered streetlights and the occasional glow of a late-night convenience store. You held the flowers in your lap, their stems cool against your palms, their scent—something green and wild and faintly sweet—mixing with the smell of Mingi’s cologne that still clung to the upholstery. The radio was off. The engine hummed its steady, contented song. The wind through the open windows pushed your hair across your face, and you didn’t bother pushing it back.

Mingi’s hand left the wheel. You felt it before you saw it. The shift in the air, the subtle change in the weight distribution of the car as he turned his body slightly toward you. His fingers found yours on the center console, warm and rough and sure, and they laced through yours with the easy, unhurried confidence of someone who’d been waiting to do exactly this and had decided that the waiting was over.

You looked down at your joined hands. His thumb traced a slow circle over your knuckle—once, twice—and then his grip tightened, just barely, and he lifted your hand from the console and brought it to his mouth.

His lips pressed against the back of your hand. Soft, deliberate, lingering. The kiss was warm and dry and over almost before it began, but it sent something electric cascading through your bloodstream, a current that started at the point of contact and raced up your arm and settled somewhere behind your ribs like a spark catching dry tinder.

You didn’t pull away. You didn’t speak. You just watched him—the sharp line of his profile in the dashboard light, the way his jaw worked as he lowered your hand but didn’t let go, his thumb resuming its slow, circling pattern on your skin.

The car turned left. You recognised the road—the one that curved along the riverbank, the one you’d driven that afternoon with the windows down and the silence between you feeling like a promise. The water was dark now, reflecting the moon in long, broken ribbons of silver, and the trees along the bank stood in silhouette against the pale sky. The road narrowed to a single lane, then to gravel, and Mingi pulled into the empty parking lot.

He cut the engine.

The silence was immediate and total—just the tick of cooling metal and the distant murmur of the river and the sound of your own breathing, which had gone slightly uneven without your permission. Mingi’s hand was still in yours. The flowers were still in your lap. The moonlight came through the windshield and painted everything in shades of blue and silver, and for a long moment neither of you moved.

Then Mingi turned in his seat.

He looked at you the way he looked at engines—with total, uncomplicated attention, like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at. His eyes moved from your face to the flowers in your lap and back, and something shifted in his expression—something vulnerable and warm and slightly terrified, the look of a man who’d decided to say something he’d been carrying for a long time and was now realizing there was no taking it back.

“I picked those,” he said, nodding at the bouquet. “From the riverbank. This morning, before the shop opened. I drove out here at five-thirty and walked along the water and picked the ones that looked the prettiest, reminded me of you.”

You looked down at the flowers. Blue and yellow and white, stems wrapped in shop towel, slightly crushed from being held between your bodies during the champagne-soaked celebration. They were imperfect—wild, uneven, some of them already starting to droop—and they were the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given you.

“You drove out here at the ass crack of dawn” you repeated, your voice barely above a whisper. “To get me flowers?”

“Mm.” His thumb was still moving on your hand—slow circles, steady and grounding. “I was going to give them to you at the race. Had this whole plan—I’d wait until you won, and then I’d walk up like it was nothing, suuuuper nonchalant. Like hey, congratulations, here are some flowers I found, no big deal.” He huffed a laugh, soft and self-deprecating. “But then you came up and ambushed my whole plan.”

“You remembered the flowers.”

He turned to look at you—really look at you—with an expression you’d never seen on him before. Not the easy grin, not the teasing half-smile. Something quieter. Something that made your breath catch.

“You’re surprised?” he said. It wasn’t a question.

You didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“Sweetheart.” His voice was low, almost careful, like he was choosing each word by hand. “I remember your fancy oat milk creamer. I remember that you check your tire pressure four times before a race. I remember the little sound you make right before you shift, and the way your hands shake after, and you shove them in your pockets, so nobody sees.” His thumb stilled on your knuckles. “It’s you. How could I forget all the things that make you, you?”

The words landed in the space between you like stones dropped into still water. You could feel the ripples spreading—through your chest, through your stomach, through the places you’d been keeping locked and quiet for months.

“Mingi—”

“I know,” there was a thread of nervousness in his voice that you’d never heard before—not from him, not from the man who rebuilt transmissions at four in the morning with one hand tied behind his back. “I know it’s a lot. And I know the timing is—I showed up at your race with riverbank flowers wrapped in shop towel, that’s not exactly—”

“No, It’s perfect,” you breathed.

He stopped. Blinked. “What?”

“It’s perfect.” You squeezed his hand, and your voice was steadier now, steadier than it had any right to be given the way your heart was trying to escape through your sternum. “The flowers are perfect. Showing up when you said you couldn’t is perfect. Finishing a timing chain in four hours to watch me race is—” You laughed, a little broken, a little giddy. “That’s the most ridiculous, over-the-top, completely unnecessary thing anyone has ever done for me, and it’s absolutely perfect.”

His eyes went bright—not with tears, but with something close, something that made the gold in them catch the moonlight and hold it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You held his gaze, and the air between you had gone thick and warm and charged with something that had been building since the first time he’d called you sweetheart over the phone, since the first time he’d carried you through a doorway too narrow for his shoulders, since the first time you’d woken up on his makeshift bed with his jacket over you and his coffee in your hands and the sound of him working on your car like a prayer in the next room.

“I’ve been remembering things too, you know. The way you talk to engines. The way you wrap cuts in electrical tape. The way you always open the door even though the hinges complain. The way you—” Your voice cracked, just barely, and you pushed through it. “The way you make me feel like I’m worth showing up for. Like I’m worth the overtime and the missed sleep and the riverbank flowers at five-thirty in the morning.”

Mingi’s hand tightened around yours. His jaw worked—once, twice—and when he spoke, his voice was rough at the edges, like something had been sanded down to its most honest layer.

“You are,” he said. “You’ve always been. I just didn’t know how to say it without sounding—”

“Like a lovesick mechanic?”

The laugh that escaped him was startled and genuine, and it broke the tension like a window shattering—not violently, but completely, the barriers between you dissolving all at once. “Yeah,” he admitted, still laughing. “Like a lovesick mechanic who picks wildflowers at dawn and drives across the city to watch his girl race because he can’t stand the idea of her crossing the finish line without him there.”

His girl.

Your chest was so full it hurt. You looked at him, at the way his eyes were shining in the moonlight with something that looked terrifyingly, beautifully like love—and you made a decision.

You swung your leg over the centre console, bracing one hand on the dashboard and the other on the back of Mingi’s seat, and the flowers tumbled from your lap into the footwell—you’d apologise to them later—and you were halfway across when your back connected with the steering wheel.

BEEEEP!

The horn blared. One long, deafening, comically loud sound that shattered the romantic tension like a brick through a greenhouse window.

The sound bounced off the river and came back at you from three directions, and a flock of something erupted from the trees along the bank in a flurry of wings and indignant squawking.

You froze. Mingi froze. The horn kept blaring—your weight still pressing against the wheel—and for one horrible, eternal second the only sound in the universe was the aggressive, unwavering beep of your car announcing to every living creature within a half-kilometre radius that two people were having a moment.

Then Mingi laughed.

It started low—a rumble in his chest that you felt through the hand still pressed against his seat—and then it broke open, wide and bright and completely unrestrained, his head falling back against the headrest, his whole body shaking with it. You were laughing too. you couldn’t help it, the absurdity of it crashing over you like a wave. You shifted your weight off the horn, and the silence that followed was somehow even funnier than the noise had been.

“Oh my god,” you wheezed, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes. “I just—I can’t believe I did that.”

“So smooth,” Mingi confirmed, his voice cracking with laughter. “That’s going in the wedding vows. I’m putting it in our wedding vows one day.”

“Stop—” You were laughing too hard to finish the sentence. “This is so embarrassing.”

“To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, and that one time you honked the horn with your back—”

You swatted his shoulder, and he caught your wrist—easy, instinctive, the way he caught everything—and the laughter died between you like a candle guttering in a draft, and the silence that replaced it was different from the one before. Charged. Intentional. The kind of silence that had a destination.

You were in his lap.

You hadn’t fully registered it until this moment. The solid warmth of his thighs beneath yours, the way your knees bracketed his hips, the way his free hand had found your waist and settled there with the kind of certainty that suggested it had been planning this landing for months. His face was inches from yours. You could see every detail—the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, the faint stubble along his jaw, the way his lower lip caught the moonlight and held it.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he murmured.

“Hi, pretty boy,” you whispered back.

His hand slid from your waist to the small of your back and pulled you in with the quiet confidence of someone who had already decided. Your chest met his, and through the thin cotton of his tank top you felt it: the hard press of a chain against your chest, cold metal warming fast between your bodies, and beneath it the steady knock of his heartbeat going just a little faster than it should have been. His other hand still had your wrist, his thumb resting over your pulse, and you had the dizzy, helpless thought that he could feel exactly what he was doing to you—every traitorous beat of it.

“Mingi,” you whispered.

“Tell me to stop,” he murmured, his voice was low and rough, the words coming from somewhere deep in his chest. “If you want me to stop, tell me now, because—”

You kissed him.

You didn’t hesitate. The need in your chest had built past the point of thinking, past the point of planning, leaving you with nothing but the gravitational certainty of wanting him so badly it hurt. You leaned in and claimed his mouth with both hands—one threading into his hair, the other cupping the sharp angle of his jaw, thumb grazing the stubble as you tilted his face toward yours. Your lips crashed together, all the trembling restraint of the last few months shattering between your teeth, and you kissed him with none of the gentleness you’d always thought a first kiss was supposed to have. It was hungry, greedy, almost angry—a collision of lips and breath and hands, your pent-up longing poured into the space of a single, shuddering breath.

Mingi met you with an equal, ferocious urgency. His hands found your hips and pulled you even closer, and the heat between your bodies was immediate, as if the months of flirting and 'what ifs' had been gasoline and someone finally struck the match. His mouth tasted like cool mint and something darker, sweeter, and you licked into him without thinking, chasing the sound he made when your tongue brushed his. He groaned, low in his throat, and the vibration went straight through your bones, finding all the places in you that had been waiting for this and lighting them up at once.

The kiss turned reckless almost instantly. Your fingers curled into his hair, tugging just enough to make his breath catch and his lips part for you. His hands slid up your back, bunching the fabric of your shirt at your waist, exposing a strip of skin that tingled in the cool air and then burned under the heat of his palms. He kissed you like he was trying to learn you—memorise you. Take as much as you would give and then ask for more, and you gave it to him gladly, shamelessly, your body moving in the small, instinctive ways that said yes, now, please.

He tasted you, mapped you, his breath coming faster as the kiss deepened, and when you broke away to gasp for air, his mouth didn’t leave your skin—it travelled along your jaw, down to your neck, finding the spot just beneath your ear that made your eyes flutter shut, and your nails dig into his shoulders. You heard yourself make a noise, helpless and wrecked, and felt him grin against your neck, triumphant.

You chased his mouth back to yours, biting his lower lip, and he let you, let you take and take until you were dizzy with it, until nothing else existed except the press of his lips, the slide of his hands, and the wild, intoxicating rush of wanting him and being wanted back just as fiercely.

You barely heard yourself whisper his name as you pressed your forehead to his, breathing the same air, letting his hands anchor you while the rest of the world spun out beneath you.

He kissed you like he wanted to ruin you for anyone else, and you let him. You kissed him back like you wanted to ruin him too. You lost track of time. Of the river outside, of the moon overhead, of anything that wasn’t the taste of him and the weight of his hands on your body.

When you finally separated, both of you breathing hard, his hands were still at your waist and your fingers were still in his hair. He was looking at you like a starved man, a little wrecked and utterly, unironically smitten.

“I should’ve done that a long time ago,” you heard yourself say, voice shaky but certain.

He grinned, slow and devastating, and pulled you in for another, softer kiss, barely a brush of lips but somehow more intimate than everything before. “You know damn well that I would’ve let you,” he breathed, and you felt the words all the way down your spine.

You kissed him again.

This time it was deeper, hungrier, his hands sliding up your sides with a deliberateness that made your skin prickle. His thumbs hooked under the hem of your shirt, and he broke the kiss just long enough to murmur against your lips.

“Lift your arms for me, baby.”

You did, arms lifting without hesitation, and he peeled the fabric up and off in one smooth motion, tossing it somewhere behind the driver’s seat without looking. The cool night air hit your bare skin, and you shivered— but not from the cold. His gaze darkened as it dropped to your chest, and his fingers went to the clasp of your bra with the same practiced ease he used on engine bolts. One flick, and the band loosened. He didn’t pull it away yet, just let the straps slide down your shoulders an inch at a time, his knuckles grazing your skin like a promise.

“Fuck,” he murmured, voice rough. “Look at you.” His thumb traced the edge of the lace, teasing the swell of your breast before finally dragging the fabric away.

The air hit your nipples first, tightening them instantly, but then his hands were there—warm, calloused, cupping you with a reverence that made your breath catch. He rolled one peak between his fingers, watching your face contort with pleasure as you gasped, then leaned in to take the other into his mouth. The wet heat of his tongue made you arch into him, your fingers tangling in his hair as he teased you, alternating between gentle suction and sharp little nips that sent sparks straight to your core.

“S’not fair I’m half naked, and you’re still fully dressed,” you whined, tugging at his own shirt. He smirked and let you pull it over his head, revealing the lean muscle you’d been thinking about all evening—all week, if you were being honest. His chains pooled against his collarbones, still warm from his skin. Your fingers went to them before you’d made any conscious decision to, looping them gently, feeling the small links drag across your knuckles as you gave a slow, idle tug. “Fuck… Damn,” you breathed, because apparently your vocabulary had abandoned you.

Mingi’s laugh was low and pleased. “Yeah? That’s all you’ve got for me?”. His hands were already on your hips, guiding you down onto his lap, and the words dissolved into something more primal when you settled against him.

You rolled your hips experimentally, and the sound he made—half groan, half growl—went straight to the blooming heat of your pussy. His fingers dug into your waist, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to steer, and you found a rhythm that had both of you panting against each other’s mouths. “That’s it,” he drawled, his voice dropping into that register that made your stomach flip. “Always so pretty f'me.”

You ground down harder, chasing the friction, and his head fell back against the headrest. His throat was right there, and you kissed it, nipped at it.

“Backseat,” the command in his tone sent a thrill down your spine. “Now.”

You blinked, dazed. “What?”

“Go to the backseat. I’m not doing this half-assed in the front of your car.” His hands were already pushing you off his lap, and you stumbled out of the driver’s side, your legs unsteady. He followed, unfolding his long frame from the passenger seat with considerably less grace.

You both climbed into the back—you first, sliding across the leather—and then Mingi ducked in after you. Or tried to. His head connected with the roof with a solid thunk, and he winced, rubbing the spot with a rueful grin.

“Jesus—Forgot this car is so tiny. Might need to buy you a bigger car if we're going to do this again.”

You burst out laughing, the tension breaking into something bright and giddy. “It’s a perfectly normal-sized car! You’re just—” You gestured vaguely at all six feet of him.

“I’m just what?” He was grinning now too, that lopsided smile that crinkled his eyes. He settled beside you, the space suddenly very, very small. “Don't get shy on me now.”

“Massive,” you smirked, and the word came out breathier than you intended.

His eyes darkened. “Is that so? You know…My height isn’t the only thing that’s massive.” Instead of answering, you pulled him into another kiss, and he let you for a moment before pulling back, his hand on your jaw “Lie back for me, baby.” He nodded toward the door behind you. “Right there.” You shifted, letting your back find the door, the handle pressing briefly into your shoulder blade before you angled away from it. Your upper body sank against the cool window, your legs stretching across the seat toward him. The leather was cold against the backs of your thighs. Mingi settled in the footwell—knees at his chest, impossibly folded—and reached for the button of your jeans. “Lift your hips.” You did. He worked your jeans down your legs, his hands trailing fire along your skin, then dealt with your boots—one lace, then the other—and you kicked them off into the darkness somewhere near the front seats.

Then it was just you, stretched across the backseat in your panties, propped against the door with Mingi crouched between your knees, looking up at you like you were something worth taking his time with.

“Spread your legs wider,” he drawled.

Your breath caught. “Mingi—”

“Don’t make me ask twice, sweetheart.” His voice was velvet over steel, and your thighs fell open almost involuntarily. “Good girl.”

His hands settled on your knees, and he just looked at you—all of you, laid out for him. The parking lot light filtered amber through the windows. You could feel your own heartbeat in your throat. “You’re so beautiful,” he coos, his thumb grazing the inside of your thigh and stopping long before you needed him.

“Please,” you managed, voice trembling.

He flashed that infuriating smile and inched his thumb higher, then paused. “Please what? You’re my smart girl—you can use your words.”

“You know what I want,” you whispered, voice cracking.

He reached up, cupping your face and tilting your chin until you met his gaze. “If you want something, you have to use your words.”

You wanted to kill him—or kiss him. Maybe both. “Touch me properly. Please, Mingi, I need—”

“Shh.” At last his thumb brushed the edge of your underwear and you whined. “Good job, baby. That’s all you had to say.”

He shifted forward, knees braced against your thighs, steam and intent filling the small space between you. His eyes were dark, fixed on the bare skin just above his reach. When you looked down, your heart stuttered—he was entirely present, and you trembled before his touch even arrived.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he murmured, voice absolute. You obeyed, so helplessly drawn in that you’d have done anything he asked.

His touch feathered across your knee crease, drifting upward along the line where your skin warmed with anticipation. He watched every shiver, every hitch of your breath, lingering on the inner curve of your thigh. You squirmed; his hands held you steady, grounding you with effortless strength.

When your lids fluttered closed, he cleared his throat, and you snapped them open, mortified by how much it turned you on. He extended each second, building tension until you felt you might scream.

Finally, his thumb caught the elastic of your underwear, teasing the fabric. He leaned in close enough for each breath to scorch your skin. “Want it right here don’t you, baby?”

You nodded, barely able to whisper, “I do, Please Mingi...”

He rewarded you with a devastating smile and hooked both thumbs into the waistband of your underwear, dragging it down your legs in one slow, deliberate pull. He held your gaze as he folded the fabric and tucked it into his back pocket, casual as anything, like he was keeping it. Then his hand found you, fingers gathering your slickness, mapping every gasp and twitch as he traced your clit in gentle, maddening circles.

Your hips bucked, and he murmured, “Easy, pretty girl. I’ve got you.” But instead of rushing, he slowed, keeping you perched at the edge. Your knees knocked against his shoulders as he leaned back to admire his work.

“You look so perfect like this,” he breathed, voice low and ragged, “alll of this just for me.” He paused, satisfaction in every curve of his smile, as though he’d painted a masterpiece with his own two hands.

“Please, Mingi, p-please,” you heard yourself beg, the words rolling out of you shameless and raw.

He gave in, at last, sliding one long finger inside you, the sensation so intense you almost blacked out. The stretch and the heat and the pressure, all of it hit you at once, and your hands flew to his shoulders, digging in.

He curled that finger, just so perfectly, and when you arched off the car door, he kept pace, never breaking that perfect eye contact, never letting you drift even a second away from his attention.

He pumped his finger with a slow, luxurious rhythm, letting you ride the wave until you could hardly breathe. “So fucking tight, need to get you all ready for me,” he whispered, the pride in his voice made you even wetter. His thumb came up to circle your clit again, this time with purpose, dialling your body up to eleven in the space of a heartbeat.

He added a second finger, stretching you wider, and that was it—you were gone, hips rolling, head tossed back, mouth open in a silent scream. He pressed his face against your thigh, biting softly, and the feeling of his teeth and tongue sent shivers through your whole body.

But even when you tried to hide your face behind your hands, to ride the sensation out in the darkness of your palms, he stopped, pulling his hand away just long enough to force your gaze back to his.

“Don't you hide that cute face from me. I wanna see all of you.”

"Ah! M-mingi, fuck!" You cried out, unconsciously pulling away from him when his fingertips were already hitting so sinfully against your g-spot. You gripped onto his forearms for purchase, steadying yourself against his promiscuous rythmn.

He kept his fingers moving through it—curling, stroking, finding that sweet spot again and again with devastating precision, the filthy wet sounds of your cunt filling the silence of the car each time he drove his fingers deeper.

"You're taking my fingers so well," Mingi cooed, picking up the pace even faster.

Broken moans left your lips as he fucked you with his fingers. Your thighs clamped around his wrist and he pulled them apart with his free hand, firm and unhurried, spreading you back open without ever breaking his rhythm.

“You’re close, aren't you?” He murmured, not as a question rather as a statement. His voice was low and honeyed, that lazy confidence threading through every word like he’d mapped out every single one of your reactions before you’d even felt them. “I can feel it. You’re clenching so pretty around my fingers, baby.”

You whined, high and desperate, because he was right and he knew he was right and the worst part was that he sounded so goddamn pleased about it.

“That’s it. Don’t fight it.” His free hand slid up your thigh, fingers splayed wide against your skin, and he pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee like it was something sacred. “Let go for me. I’ve got you.”

The coil in your belly pulled tighter, tighter, and your hands fisted in the leather seat because there was nothing else to hold onto, nothing solid in a world that had narrowed down to the curl of his fingers inside you and the rough velvet of his voice.

“C’mon, sweetheart. Right on my hand. Show me how good I made you feel.”

You shattered.

It hit you like a wall of white noise, blinding and electric, and your back arched clean off the backseat as you came apart around him. His fingers didn’t stop for a second. If anything they slowed, drawing it out, wringing every last shudder and pulse from your body until you were trembling and gasping and completely, utterly ruined.

He watched you the entire time. You cracked your eyes open at some point and found him staring down at you with that crooked half-smile, the one that always made your stomach flip even when you were too wrung out to do anything about it.

“Fuck,” he breathed, and there was something almost reverent in it. “Look at you.”

He pulled his fingers free slowly, and you whimpered at the loss, but then he was bringing his hand up between your puffy folds gathering the remains of your pleasure on his digits.

You watched, still trembling, your chest heaving, as he slipped those slick fingers them between his lips and sucked them clean with the kind of deliberate, unhurried pleasure that made your thighs clench all over again. His eyes never left yours, dark and heavy-lidded, and the sound he made—a low, appreciative hum—vibrated through the small space between you.

“So sweet,” he murmured, pulling his fingers free with a soft pop. He licked the pad of his thumb, slow and thorough, like he was tasting something worth savouring. “So fucking perfect. You taste even better than I imagined.” He paused, searching for the word, and the half-smile that curved his mouth was devastating. “And I've imagined it a lot.”

Your face burned. Your entire body burned. You couldn’t look away from his mouth, from the way his tongue traced the line of his knuckles, from the way his eyes went half-lidded and dark with satisfaction.

You made a noise that was supposed to be indignation but came out embarrassingly close to a moan. “Such a fucking perv.”

“Mm.” He lowered himself over you, bracing his weight on one forearm against the back of the seat, and pressed his lips to the corner of your jaw. Still wet. Still tasting like you. “You love it though.”

You did. God help you, you really did.

He lowered his hand and reached for you, his palm warm against your hip, guiding you with that easy, unhurried confidence that made your knees weak even when you were already lying down. “Come lie down properly, you know I don’t bite,” he purred, and you obeyed—sliding backward onto the leather seat, letting him guide you. His hands traced your spine like he was tuning something precious. He shifted, smoothing your body until you lay flat, legs splayed, arms above your head, torso exposed beneath the cool leather.

He hovered over you, one hand on your hip to anchor you, the other brushing your inner thigh. The door handle pressed into your shoulders, the stickiness of the leather biting into your ribs, but none of it mattered. Only Mingi’s heat and the slow, hungry gleam in his eyes.

“How flexible are you?” he asked, as casually as if checking the time.

Your mind still foggy, you blinked. “I’d say I’m pretty flexible. Why?”

He hummed, hands sliding beneath your hips with mechanical precision, and lifted. Your lower body left the seat entirely, suspended in the air, nothing beneath your but his grip. You grabbed for something to hold and found his thighs—thick and solid under your palms, the denim warm.

“Is this okay?” he murmured. You nodded as you dug your fingers in his thighs.

Then his mouth was on you.

His tongue was a live wire, tracing a slow, molten path from where you ached to where you burned. The first drag of it—flat, deliberate, searing—sent a jolt through you like a spark plug firing. Your hips jerked upwards in his grasp, a broken sound clawing its way out of your throat. Mingi hummed against you, the vibration a deep, resonant purr that thrummed through your bones, your nerves, your very core. He explored you like he was memorizing a blueprint—each ridge, each sensitive fold, each flutter of muscle beneath his lips. His tongue lingered where your breath hitched, swirled where your thighs trembled, pressed where your pulse hammered like a piston in overdrive.

“M-Mingi—fuck, feels so good!” Your voice was raw, shredded by the pleasure coiling tighter inside you.

His grip on your hip intensified, fingertips biting into your flesh with an urgency that made your spine arch. You could feel the imprint he was leaving on your skin—five points of possession, claiming you as his even as you squirmed helplessly in his hold. The other hand slid up, tracing the natural curve of your back with almost reverent care before splaying wide and holding you there, helplessly suspended, a perfect angle for his tongue to do its damage. The cold air inside the car prickled against the sweat beading along your skin, but the contrast only sharpened the focus of every hot, wet, maddeningly precise thing Mingi was doing between your thighs.

He worked you with a methodical, almost mechanical intensity, the kind you’d seen him use on the shop floor with a stubborn bolt or a seized part—determined, relentless, and utterly sure of himself. His mouth didn’t just tease; it engineered your pleasure, tracing out every sensitive ridge and dip, every stuttering gasp and involuntary twitch. He learned you so quickly it was terrifying—every time you tried to twist away or clamp your knees shut, he countered, easily, like a wrench snapping onto a stripped nut. You had no leverage. No hope. Just the inevitability of what he was building in you.

He alternated, sometimes flattening his tongue and dragging it up your puffy pussylips in one long, slow burn, sometimes isolating the spot that made your vision strobe, focusing the pressure until you were clawing at his jeans and choking on your own moans. There was no rhythm to fall into, no lull; just spikes of pleasure, sharp and unpredictable, wracking through you until your thighs shook uncontrollably. He hummed again, the sound low and smug, vibrating straight into your core like a tuning fork.

Somewhere in the haze, you realized you’d started to beg. Not with words, not at first—just hoarse little whimpers, your ragged breathing an open admission of defeat. But then the words tumbled out, torn from you by the merciless grind of his tongue. “Please, Mingi, please, please, I can’t—” You weren’t sure what you were asking for. Mercy, maybe. Or more, always more.

He paused only long enough to meet your eyes, his gaze dark with heat and satisfaction. “I thought you could handle more, baby?” he rasped, breath fanning over your swollen flesh.

“I can-fuck, I can handle it.” you snarl back, your words having no real bite behind them. Mingi knows that, hell, even you know that.

He bent to his work with renewed vengeance—faster now, chasing your pleasure like it was something he could catch and pin down. The car’s interior filled with the obscene wet sounds of his mouth and your body betraying you, slick and desperate under his assault. The seat vibrated under your head as you started to thrash, your legs locked tight around his shoulders, your fingers digging deeper and deeper into the meat of his thighs.

Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off, a shrill warble that barely penetrated the cocoon of sensation. The world could have ended around you and you wouldn’t have noticed. Not when he was doing this, not when he was making you feel like your whole body had been rewired for his touch alone.

He played you up and down the scale, sometimes gentle, sometimes ruthless, reading every clench and flutter with greedy satisfaction. When he sensed you hovering on the knife’s edge, he eased off, letting you breathe for exactly two seconds before diving back in, measuring out your pleasure in cruel increments. He wanted you to break. He wanted to see it.

And you did.

Then he sealed his mouth over your clit and sucked, hard. The sensation detonated through you, a backfire of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. You came apart with a cry, your voice fracturing on his name, the seat shuddering beneath your frantic grip. The orgasm wasn’t just a release—it was a full-system failure, white-hot and all-consuming, waves of sensation crashing over you like a blown gasket. Your vision whited out, your body convulsing in his grasp as he drew it out, his tongue still working, still demanding, still taking until you were nothing but a trembling, sobbing mess of sweat and tears.

When he finally lifted his head, his lips were slick with small strings of your arousal hung between his lips and your dripping cunt. You collapsed against the seat, your chest heaving like you’d just run a 10km marathon, your arms limp, your legs still trembling in the cradle of his hands.

He blew warm breath against your thigh and groaned, part laugh, part moan. “Fuck,” he rasped. “You’re incredible. So good for me, my sweet girl.”

Then he rose, slow and deliberate, his body unfolding from between your legs with the easy grace of someone who knew exactly how much power he held. Your breath still came in short, hitching gasps as he leaned over you, one hand braced on the headrest beside your temple, the other still tangled with your fingers.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The look in his eyes said enough—hungry, satisfied in a way that was only temporary, the kind of satisfaction that fueled something deeper. He tilted your chin up with his free hand, thumb tracing your lower lip, and then he was kissing you.

His mouth was hot and wet and you—the unmistakable taste of your own release still clinging to his tongue as it swept past your lips. The flavor was sharp, musky, intimate in a way that made your cheeks burn even hotter. You moaned into the kiss, the sound muffled against his mouth, your body still trembling with the aftershocks that his taste seemed to reignite. He swallowed the sound like it was something precious, his hand sliding from your chin to cup the back of your neck, tilting your head to deepen the angle.

You could feel the rough texture of his calloused fingers against your jaw, the faint scent of cologne and sweat and him filling your lungs with every ragged breath you shared. His tongue moved against yours with the same deliberate precision he’d used between your thighs—methodical, thorough, tasting every corner of your mouth like he was cataloging you. The kiss was filthy and tender all at once, possessive in a way

You couldn’t speak. Still pulsing with aftershocks, you looked and saw him—flushed, lips swollen, eyes dark with hunger sharpened, not sated. His hand found yours on the seat, fingers lacing through yours, squeezing gently.

“Still with me?” he whispered, genuine concern in his voice, as careful as checking an engine after a hard run. You nodded, something warm and new cracking open behind your sternum. You squeezed his hand back. “Still here,” you managed, and your voice was hoarse, barely recognisable. “Want… more.”

His eyes went dark—deeper, hungrier, the look of a man who’d been holding himself back by a thread and just heard the thread snap. “More,” he repeated, and the word came out low and rough, like gravel dragged across silk. “Does my baby want more?”

You nodded. “Please. I need—I need to feel you inside me, Mingi.”

The sound he made was barely human—a low, guttural growl that started in his chest and vibrated through the console into your bones. Then his hands were on you, sure and unhurried, guiding you forward until your stomach met the centre console, the leather cool against your bare skin. He arranged you with careful, deliberate hands—chest down, hips tilted back toward him, your ass and cunt angled up and open, completely exposed to whatever he wanted to do next.

“Stay right there,” he murmured, his voice dropping into that register that made your thighs clench. “Don’t move. Keep your hips up, just like that—perfect, sweetheart, perfect.”

You stayed. The hard edge of the gear shift dug into your body and none of it mattered because Mingi’s hands were on you, warm and sure.

His hand left your hip. You heard the rustle of denim, the soft clink of a belt buckle, and then the sound of fabric being pushed down—and your heart hammered so hard you were certain he could hear it, certain it was echoing off the windows and the river and the moon. You glanced over your shoulder to watch him, he smirked when he realised you were watching him, then pulled down his boxers.

Precum was already oozing from his pinkish mushroom tip. Mingi wasn’t kidding, he was fucking massive. A good 7 to 8 inches you thought to yourself. You reached behind you and pumped the base of his cock, earning a low groan from him as you traced your thumb across the head. Mingi twitched in your palm and gently bucked his hips into your hand.

Mingi’s jaw tightened, a muscle flickering in his cheek as you squeezed him again, your thumb swirling another lazy circle around his tip just to watch his nostrils flare. His hand closed over yours—large, warm, calloused—and stilled your movements.

“Careful,” he moaned, his voice had dropped into that dangerous register, the one that sounded like a warning label on something flammable. “You keep teasing me like that and you’re gonna regret it, sweetheart.”

You bit your lip, a grin spreading despite yourself. “Regret what, exactly?”

His eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what.”

You didn’t stop. You couldn’t help it. The power of making him twitch, of watching his composure crack, was intoxicating. You gave him one more deliberate pump, slow and tight, your fingers curling just the way you knew would make his hips buck.

“Mingi, I don’t think you’d actually be so big—”

The words died in your throat because he was moving, shifting behind you with that fluid, predatory grace that made your stomach drop. His hand left yours and found the small of your back, pressing you flat against the console. You felt the blunt, hot head of him drag through your slick—not pushing, not entering, just smearing—trailing a path of your own arousal along your swollen, desperate entrance with agonizing precision.

You clenched. Your body tried to pull him in, hips tilting back, chasing the pressure that wasn’t there. Your cunt pulsed around nothing, fluttering, aching, empty.

“Mingi—please—”

“Uh-uh.” His voice was velvet over steel, warm and utterly merciless. “You had your chance to behave. You didn’t take it.”

Then his hand was on your ass. Not gently or tentatively. His palm settled against the curve of your right cheek with a weight that made your breath catch, his fingers spreading wide, and for one suspended moment he just held you there like he was claiming his territory.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” he said, almost to himself, his thumb tracing a slow arc along the crease where your thigh met your ass. “Such a shame, you just had to be a brat, didn’t you?”

The first spank landed without warning.

His palm connected with your right cheek with a sharp, stinging crack that echoed through the car’s interior like a gunshot. The sound was obscene—wet, resonant, the kind of sound that made your face burn and your cunt clench simultaneously. The pain bloomed hot and bright, spreading across your skin in a wave that crested and broke into something that wasn’t pain at all—something electric, something that lit up every nerve ending it touched and sent a jolt of pleasure straight to your core.

You gasped. Your fingers scrabbled against the dashboard, and Mingi made a sound—low, satisfied, the sound of a man who’d just confirmed a hypothesis and found the results exceeded every expectation.

“Again,” you whimpered at the impact. “Harder, Mingi.”

“Tsk, Greedy girl,” he murmured, but there was no admonishment in it. Only warmth, only approval, only the particular pleasure of being asked for exactly what he wanted to give. His hand came down again—left cheek this time, harder, the impact ringing through your bones—and you cried out, your hips jerking forward, your body chasing the sting like it was oxygen.

He spanked you three more times—alternating sides, each one landing with a precision that spoke to practice, or instinct, or both. The pain built in layers, each impact compounding the last, until your entire ass was burning and your cunt was so wet you could feel it dripping down your inner thighs. You were moaning openly now, embarrassing, desperate sounds that you’d never made in your life, sounds you’d have been mortified by if anyone but Mingi could hear them.

And still—still—he didn’t push inside you. His cockhead just rested there, right at your entrance, hot and heavy and right there, and every time your hips shifted back to try and take him, he pulled away just enough to deny you.

“Min—baby please, I’m sorry, I’ll be good, I’ll—”

“You’ll be good?” he repeated, and you could hear the smirk in his voice without turning around. “I asked you to stop teasin' me but you didn't listen, baby. Look where that got you.”

His hand smoothed over the burning skin of your ass, palm flat and warm, soothing the sting even as he stoked it. The gentleness was almost worse than the spanking. The tenderness in contrast to the punishment making your eyes sting.

He leaned down, his chest pressing against your back, his lips brushing your ear. “You’ll get what I give you, when I decide to give it,” he murmured, his breath hot against your skin. “And right now, I think you need to learn some patience.”

His hand returned between your thighs, fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering your arousal before circling your entrance again still refusing to push inside. You whined, your hips bucking desperately against his teasing touch.

“Aww you poor thing,” he chuckled, his voice thick with satisfaction. “So wet. So desperate. All because you couldn’t resist being a brat.”

You were beyond words now, reduced to incoherent sounds of need as he continued his torment. The spanks had left your skin hypersensitive, every nerve ending alight, amplifying the sensation of his fingers as they traced patterns around your entrance without ever granting you the penetration you craved.

When he finally, mercifully, pressed the tip of his cock against your entrance, you nearly sobbed with relief. But he didn’t push in—he just held it there, letting you feel the heat and weight of him without giving you what you needed.

“Still want to tease me?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft.

“No,” you gasped, shaking your head frantically. “No, I’m sorry. I’ll be good I-I promise…”

He rewarded your submission with a slow, deliberate push—just the head of his cock entering you, stretching you just enough to make your breath catch. Then he stopped again, pulling back slightly.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded, his voice rough with restraint.

“You,” you panted, your fingers gripping the dashboard so hard your knuckles turned white. “All of you. Please, just fuck me, Mingi.”

The sound he made sent shivers down your spine. “That's my girl. Look how easy that was when you just ask nicely.” he murmured, and then he was pushing forward. His fingers were spreading you open, and you felt his cock—hot, heavy, already slick—pressing against your entrance with a pressure that made your whole body clench in anticipation.

“Hands,” he said, the command was quiet but absolute, leaving no room for interpretation.

You reached back automatically, and his hand caught both of your wrists in one grip and pulled them behind your back. His fingers laced through yours, locking your hands together, and the position pushed your chest forward, your breasts pressing into the console, your back arching in a curve that left you completely exposed, completely vulnerable, completely his.

“Now, be a good girl and stay still for me, okay?” He instructed, and you gripped your own hands, your fingers interlaced behind your back, held in place by the warm cage of his palm. The restraint was gentle but unyielding, and the vulnerability of it—the inability to move, to brace, to control anything about what was happening to you—sent a wave of heat through your body so intense it bordered on vertigo.

Then he was pushing inside you.

Slow. So slow. Inch by agonising inch, his cock stretching you open with a fullness that made your breath stutter and your vision white-out at the edges. You were still sensitive from before, still trembling with aftershocks, and the sensation of him filling you—thick, relentless, every ridge and vein pressing against walls that were already singing—was almost too much. You whimpered against the console, your fingers tightening behind your back, and Mingi groaned above you—low, broken, the sound of a man who was fighting for control and losing.

“Fuck—fuuuck, you’re so tight, sweetheart—” His voice cracked on the last word, and his free hand found your hip, gripping hard enough to leave marks. “So perfect. So goddamn perfect for me.”

He bottomed out, and the feeling of him—fully seated, his hips flush against your ass, his cock buried to the hilt inside you—drove the air from your lungs. You could feel his heartbeat through the point of connection, fast and strong and slightly out of rhythm, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just breathed. Just existed in the same impossible, electric space.

Then he pulled back and thrust forward, and the world narrowed to nothing.

The angle was devastating with the console holding your hips at exactly the right height, the position forcing him deep, deeper than you’d thought possible, every stroke hitting something inside you that made stars burst behind your eyelids. You couldn’t move. Your hands were locked behind your back, his grip unrelenting. The helplessness of it, the complete surrender of control, turned every nerve in your body into a live wire.

“Mingi—oh my god, oh fuck—” The words tumbled out of you in a broken stream, your voice cracking on every syllable, and you felt him shift behind you—adjusting, finding the angle, his hips snapping forward with a precision that told you he was paying attention to every sound you made, every hitch in your breathing, every involuntary clench of your body around him.

“I want to hear you,” he growled, and his voice was rough, wrecked, barely holding together. “Every sound. Every moan. Every time I make you feel good, I want to hear it. Don’t hold back. Don’t be quiet. I’ve been thinking about the sounds you make—” His hips pressed forward, just an inch, just enough to make you gasp. “—for months. So be loud for me, baby.”

He punctuated the words with a thrust that drove the air from your lungs, and the sound you made was loud—embarrassingly loud, the kind of sound that would have carried across the parking lot if anyone had been there to hear it—and Mingi groaned like you’d punched him.

“Louder,” he demanded, and his hand tightened on your wrists, pulling them higher up your back, the new angle arching your spine and pressing your chest harder against the console. “You think I pulled up to this abandoned car park to hear you be quiet?”

You laughed—or tried to, the sound dissolving into a moan as he hit that spot again, that devastating, mind-melting spot that turned your bones to liquid. “You—you’re such an asshole—mmf!”

“Mm-hm.” His hips snapped forward, harder this time, and the console creaked beneath you. “And you love it. Now be loud for me, baby. Let me hear how good I’m making you feel.”

He set a devastating rhythm—deep, relentless, each thrust measured and deliberate. His cock dragging against every sensitive point inside you with a precision that bordered on cruel. You couldn’t hold back. You didn’t try. The sounds poured out of you. Moans and whimpers and half-formed pleas, his name repeated like a prayer, a mantra, the only word your brain could still form.

Each thrust pulled another sound from your throat, each one louder than the last, and Mingi fed on them. You could feel it in the way his grip tightened, in the way his breathing went ragged, in the way his hips moved faster, harder, chasing the particular pitch of your voice that told him he was doing something right.

“So—fuck, so fucking tight,” he panted, and his forehead dropped between your shoulder blades, his breath hot against your spine. “My pretty little slut to ruin.”

His free hand slid from your hip to your stomach, pressing flat against your abdomen, and you could feel him through the thin wall of muscle—the thick, heavy shape of his cock moving inside you, stretching you open with every thrust—and the obscenity of it, the visceral, undeniable reality of being filled so completely, made you sob.

“That’s it,” he murmured against your ear, and the words sent a shiver down your spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. “You were made to take this cock.”

He established a rhythm—steady, unhurried, each thrust deep enough to hit the spot that made your eyes roll back and your mouth fall open. The console creaked beneath you with every movement, the gearshift vibrating against your hip, the leather squeaking where your skin met it. The sounds were so pornographic. Wet, rhythmic, the slap 'plap, plap, plap' of skin against skin punctuated by your increasingly desperate moans and Mingi’s low, ragged breathing.

You kept your promise. You were loud. Every thrust pulled a gasps, moans, whimpers and broken versions of his name that dissolved into nothing before they finished. When he angled his hips and found the spot that made you see stars. The pleasure was so euphoric you felt fat wads of tears trailing down your face.

“Right there, baby?” he grunted, barely controlled. “That feel good?”

“Yes—fuck, yes, right there, d-don’t stop, please don’t stop—”

He didn’t stop. He shifted his angle, changed the depth, found the exact position that had your entire body lighting up like a switchboard and he stayed there, driving into you with a precision that was almost mechanical in its consistency. Each thrust hit the same spot, built the same pressure, sent the same cascade of pleasure rolling through you in waves that grew taller and closer together with every repetition.

His free hand left your hip and found your hair, fisting in it, pulling your head back just enough to expose your throat. His mouth found the pulse point beneath your jaw. Sucking, biting, leaving marks you’d find tomorrow. The overwhelming combination of sensations—his cock inside you, his hand in your hair, his teeth on your neck—pushed you toward the edge with a speed that was almost frightening.

“Min—Mingi, I’m close, I’m so close—”

“I know, baby.” His voice was strained, the words coming in sharp bursts between thrusts. “I can feel it. You’re clenching so hard—fuck, sweetheart.”

His hand left your hair and slid down between your bodies, his fingers finding your clit with unerring accuracy. The first touch was electric. A direct connection to the live wire of your pleasure and you completely fell apart.

Your orgasm hit you like a tidal wave, no warning, no build up, just a sudden detonation that ripped through your body and turned every muscle to liquid fire. Your walls clamped down around his dick, pulsing in tight, rhythmic waves, and Mingi’s breath hitched—a sharp, broken sound that told you he was right there with you. His jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables, and his thrusts grew slower, sloppier, the precise mechanical rhythm dissolving into something raw and desperate.

His fingers kept working your clit through your high, drawing out every last tremor, and you could feel the sweat dripping from his forehead and chest onto your back. The ministrations he had on your clit wasn’t his normal teasing ones. It felt like he was spelling something out—S-O-N-G M-I-N-G-I. You gasp at the realisation. The bastard wrote his name on your clit. He didn’t pause, didn’t pull away, just kept moving inside you through the wreckage of your own orgasm.

“Gonna cum, baby,” he rasped, and his voice was wrecked—scraped raw, barely recognizable, the voice of a man hanging by a thread. “Where do you want it?”

“Inside,” you whimper, the word torn from you as another wave crested and broke. You were still coming, still trembling, still clenching around him in pulses that you couldn’t control, and you were pretty sure if he kept going like this, kept hitting your sweet spot, kept his fingers on your clit—he’d pull another orgasm from you before you’d even finished the first. “Want it inside, need it inside. Need you s’bad ohmygod.”

He groaned as his hips snapped forward three more times, deep and deliberate, each one driving the air from your lungs. Then his entire body locked, every muscle going rigid, and you felt him spill inside you—hot, thick, pulsing in time with the frantic beat of his heart.

“Wait, baby—don’t do that,” he choked out weakly when your cunt fluttered around him, trying to milk every last drop.

His cock twitched inside you, still sensitive, still spilling, and you hummed—content, satisfied, smug—at the feeling of him filling you up exactly the way you’d asked. He laughed, the sound hoarse and breathless, his forehead dropping between your shoulder blades.

“You’re greedy,” he murmured, carefully lowering himself until his chest pressed flush against your back. His body was warm despite the sweat, solid and heavy and grounding, and you felt him press a kiss to the nape of your neck—soft, almost tender, completely at odds with the animal intensity of the last twenty minutes.

“Mm,” you managed, your voice barely a whisper. Your hands were still locked behind your back, still held in his grip, and you made no move to free them. You didn’t want to. You wanted to stay exactly like this—trapped between the console and his body, filled and claimed and utterly, completely his.

Mingi’s grip loosened on your wrists. His fingers uncurled from yours, and your hands fell to your sides, tingling with returning blood flow. His forehead was still pressed between your shoulder blades, and you could feel the rapid hammer of his heartbeat against your back, slowly, slowly beginning to steady.

“Are you okay?” he murmured against your skin, and his voice was wrecked—hoarse and tender and slightly dazed, like he’d just woken from a dream he wasn’t sure was real.

You turned your head on the console, your cheek pressed against the leather, and managed a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “Barely.”

He laughed—a warm, rumbling sound that vibrated through your back and into your chest—and his arms came around you, gathering you against him with a gentleness that made your chest swell with love. He pulled you upright, carefully, mindful of the cramped space and the awkward angle, and you collapsed back against his chest, your body boneless and trembling, your head falling against his shoulder.

His arms were warm around you, his heartbeat steadying beneath your ear, and the world was slowly reassembling itself from the scattered pieces the orgasm had left behind. His hand was tracing lazy patterns on your lower back, his fingers drawing circles that made your skin prickle with renewed sensitivity.

His face was right there—inches away, his eyes half-lidded, his lips swollen and slightly parted, a thin sheen of sweat catching the moonlight that filtered through the windows. You looked at the way his hair stuck to his forehead, and at the flush still high on his cheekbones, shifted in your chest. You turned your head and found his mouth with yours.

The kiss was different this time. Slower. Softer. The desperate, hungry collision of before had given way to something deeper, something that tasted like relief and wonder and the particular sweetness of a thing you’d been waiting for without admitting you were waiting. His lips moved against yours with a tenderness that made your chest ache, and you felt him smile into the kiss.

You pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes were dark and soft and slightly unfocused, the way they got when he was looking at something he couldn’t believe was real, and you pressed your forehead to his and breathed him in.

Then you moved.

You shifted in his lap, turning your body, swinging one leg over his hips until you were straddling him—facing him, your knees pressed into the leather on either side of his thighs, your hands braced on his shoulders. The position was awkward in the cramped backseat—your head nearly brushing the roof, your knees at angles that would make a chiropractor weep—but you didn’t care. You looked down at him, at the way his eyes went wide and dark and hungry all at once, and something hot and liquid pooled low in your belly.

His hands found your waist immediately. Both of them, warm and rough, his thumbs tracing slow circles on your hipbones through the thin barrier of your skin. His gaze dropped from your face to your chest, and the sound he made—low, appreciative—sent a shiver cascading down your spine.

“Oh fuck,” he breathed, and his hands slid upward, tracing the line of your ribs with a touch so light it barely qualified as contact. “Now this is a view I could get used to.”

You rolled your hips. The movement was deliberate. Slow, grinding, your cunt dragging along the length of his cock where it lay heavy and spent against his stomach. You felt him twitch, felt the soft sound he made vibrate through his chest, and you did it again—slower this time, more pressure, watching his face the whole time.

His hands tightened on your waist. His jaw clenched. His eyes went dark—not the playful dark, not the teasing dark, but the deep, consuming dark of a man who was being given something he hadn’t known to ask for.

“Again,” he groaned, his voice was rough, wrecked, the words barely holding together. “Do that again.”

You did. You rolled your hips in a slow, circular motion that pressed your clit against the base of his cock, and the friction—combined with the oversensitivity still singing through your nerves—made your breath catch. You braced your hands on his shoulders and lifted your hips, just enough to shift the angle, and when you sank back down. Taking him inside you in one smooth, devastating stroke.

His head fell back against the seat, his throat exposed, the tendons standing out in sharp relief. His hands flew to your hips, gripping hard, and you felt his cock twitch inside you—still soft, still recovering, but the sensation of being filled, of being stretched around him even in this state, sent a fresh wave of heat rolling through your core.

“Holy shit…” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re gonna kill me. You know that, right?”

You smiled slow and deliberate. “Good.” Then, you started to move.

Not fast. Not yet. You set a torturous rhythm. Slow, grinding, your hips rolling in tight circles that dragged his cock against every sensitive wall inside you. You kept your eyes on his face, cataloguing every reaction—the way his breath hitched when you clenched around him, the way his fingers dug into your hips when you changed the angle, the way his eyes went half-lidded and glassy when you found the spot that made his whole body tense.

His hands never stopped moving.

They traced your waist, your ribs, and the curve of your lower back. Like he was trying to touch every inch of you at once and couldn’t decide where to start. His hands were everywhere, and each point of contact sent sparks cascading through your nervous system, building on the pleasure already coiling tight in your belly.

Then his hands found your breasts.

You felt the shift in his attention before you saw it. His gaze dropping, his breath catching, his hands moving with a new kind of intention. His palms cupped you from below, lifting, weighing, his thumbs tracing the undersides with a touch so light it made your skin prickle. He squeezed gently—once, twice—and the sound you made was involuntary, a soft, broken moan that escaped before you could catch it.

“These,” he murmured, and his voice was thick, reverent, his eyes fixed on your chest with the same focused attention he gave to engine bays. “I’ve been thinking about these. Every time you leaned over the hood, every time you stretched. I tried to be a gentleman but fuck, baby, you made it so hard.”

His thumbs found your nipples—hard, sensitive, still aching from before—and rolled them between his fingers with a precision that made your vision blur. The sensation was sharp and electric, sending jolts of pleasure straight to your core, and you arched into his touch, your hips stuttering in their rhythm.

“Oh god, that feels s-so good!”

“I know, sweetheart,” he breathed, and his mouth was already moving, leaning forward, closing the distance, his tongue finding your left nipple with a flat, wet stroke that made you cry out. He circled it, his tongue painting tight spirals around the peak and then he sucked, and the sound you made was loud enough to echo.

His hand kept working the other breast. Rolling, squeezing, his fingers finding the perfect pressure while his mouth lavished attention on the first. He alternated between gentle suction and sharp, teasing bites that made your whole body jerk, and every time you moved, every time your hips rolled or your back arched, he groaned against your skin like you were doing something specifically designed to destroy him.

You were. You knew you were. The way you moved, the way you clenched around him on every upstroke, the way your hands found his hair and pulled just hard enough to make his breath catch—you were giving him exactly what he’d given you, and then some.

His cock was hardening inside you. You could feel it. You could feel him. The gradual thickening, the way he filled you more completely with every passing second, the way his breathing went ragged and his grip on your hips turned desperate. You rolled your hips harder, faster, chasing the friction, chasing the building pressure, and Mingi broke away from your breast with a gasp that was almost a sob.

“You feel so fucking good.” His hands were everywhere—your waist, your back, your tits, your thighs—touching, squeezing, mapping your body with the frantic energy of someone who was trying to memorise every detail before the moment ended.

You leaned down and kissed him. Deep, hungry, your tongue sliding against his, your hips never stopping their rhythm. He kissed you back with equal fervour, his hands sliding up your back and pressing you closer, your chest flush against his, your nipples dragging against the hard planes of his pecs with every movement.

When you pulled back, you were both breathing hard, your foreheads pressed together, your noses brushing. Mingi’s eyes were dark and dazed and full of something that looked terrifyingly like love.

“Ride me like you mean it, baby. Show me what you’ve got.” he whispered, and the words were a plea and a command in equal measure.

You sat up straight, your hands braced on his shoulders, and you moved.

Your thighs flexing as you lifted yourself up and dropped back down, setting a pace that was fast and deep and absolutely devastating. The angle was different from before. You were facing him, your weight driving you down onto his cock with a force that made the leather squeak and the seat frame creak and Mingi’s hands fly to your hips like he was trying to hold on to something solid in a world that had gone liquid.

“Atta girl, that’s it baby jus’ like that” The words tumbled out of him in a broken stream, his head falling back, his jaw clenched so tight you could see the muscles jumping.

His cock was fully hard now, thick and heavy inside you, stretching you open with every downstroke, and the sensation combined with the friction of your clit against his pelvis was building something enormous and inevitable at the base of your spine. You were bouncing now, your body moving with a fluid, athletic grace that surprised even you—and every time you dropped down, Mingi’s cock hit that spot, that devastating, mind-melting spot, and the sounds you made were obscene.

“Harder,” he growled, and his hands tightened on your breasts, squeezing, rolling, his fingers pinching your nipples just hard enough to make you see stars. “Ride me harder, baby. I want you to feel me until tomorrow.”

You obliged. You drove yourself down onto him with everything you had. Every ounce of strength in your thighs, every shred of control in your core. The impact was sharp and bright and perfect. The car rocked beneath you, the suspension groaning, and Mingi’s grip on your breasts turned bruising, his mouth finding your collarbone and biting down hard enough to leave a mark.

“You’re—fuck, you’re so good at this,” he panted against your skin, his voice cracking.

“Shut up,” you gasped, and you meant it fondly, your hands sliding from his shoulders to his chest, your nails dragging down the hard planes of muscle. “Stop talking and touch me.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

His hands moved. They slid up your sides—slow, reverent, his palms mapping the terrain of your body with the same careful attention he gave to engine components. His hands cupped you—both of them, warm and sure, his thumbs brushing over your nipples in slow, deliberate circles that made your breath hitch and your hips falter. You were still riding him, still moving in that steady, controlled rhythm, but his touch was pulling your focus, scattering your concentration, turning the deliberate pace into something more desperate, more urgent.

You couldn’t stop. You were moaning—loud, unrestrained sounds that filled the car’s interior—and every sound you made seemed to spur him on, his mouth working harder, his tongue more insistent, his hands gripping tighter.

“Fuck—Mingi, I can’t—it’s too much—”

“You can.” His voice was muffled against your breast, his tongue still working, his hand still moving. “You’re doing so good, sweetheart. So fucking good for me. Oh fuck— This pussy was made for me.”

You found the rhythm again—or something close to it. Your body moving on its own, chasing the pleasure that his mouth and his hands and his cock were building inside you in overlapping waves. Your hands found his shoulders, gripping hard, your nails digging into the muscle, and you rode him with everything you had—every ounce of strength, every shred of desire, every month of pent-up longing poured into the movement of your hips.

Mingi’s mouth left your breast. His lips traced a burning path up your sternum, along your collarbone, to the pulse point in your throat, where he sucked hard enough to leave a mark you’d wear like a trophy. His hands were on your back now, his palms sliding from your shoulder blades to the base of your spine, pressing you closer, holding you flush against his chest as you moved.

“My pretty girl giving me the best ride of my life,” he breathed against your throat, and his voice was shattered, barely holding together.

You rolled your hips harder, faster, your body tightening around him with every downward thrust, and you could feel him swelling inside you, thicker, harder, his control fraying at the edges. His hands dropped to your ass, gripping both cheeks, spreading you open, and the obscenity of it—the way he was holding you, positioning you, watching you take him apart—sent you spiralling toward the edge.

“Mingi, I’m so close again—I’m gonna cum again!”

“Me too, baby.” His forehead pressed against yours, his breath coming in sharp, ragged bursts. “Together. Cum with me... I want to feel you cum all over me.”

You kissed him. Messy, desperate, your teeth catching his lower lip, your tongue pushing past his, and your hips didn’t stop. They couldn’t stop. The rhythm had taken on a life of its own, your body moving with a primal, instinctive urgency that left no room for thought. Mingi kissed you back with equal desperation, his hands gripping your ass, his hips thrusting upward to meet your downward movements, and the collision of forces—you riding him, him driving into you—created a friction that was devastating.

The orgasm built from the base of your spine—a slow, tight coil of pressure that wound tighter with every thrust. You could feel it approaching like a wave, could feel the moment the water started to pull back from the shore, and you held Mingi’s gaze through it all—his eyes dark, desperate, fixed on yours with an intensity that told you he was right there with you, hanging by the same thread.

It broke.

The orgasm hit you with a sensation so immense it threatened to strip away your consciousness, leaving you suspended in a single, blinding instant of pleasure that fused every muscle, every nerve, every trembling synapse into a singular electric current. You screamed, a sound that started low and guttural and built into a thin, ragged shriek, the kind you’d never made before, the kind that left your throat raw and echoing in the thick, humid air of the car.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the way your body seized around Mingi’s cock, the way you milked him, the way every wave of release hit harder than the last, scattering your thoughts to the corners of your skull and leaving you utterly, beautifully ruined.

You felt him come apart under you. Felt the way he jerked inside you, the way his breath stuttered, the way his hands flew up to lock around your waist like he could anchor himself in your wreckage. He was gasping your name, voice wrecked and desperate, his hips slamming up to meet you with a force that jolted your spine, his cock throbbing as he emptied himself inside you with a velocity that bordered on violence. The aftershocks were nearly as intense as the orgasm itself; your body took his, drank him down, and doubled the force of his own release, the sensation so raw and so real it went straight to your soul.

Your legs shook. Your vision went white at the edges. You collapsed forward, your hands flattening against the sweat-slicked muscle of his chest, your hair falling in a tangled curtain around your face as you panted, desperate for air, for sanity, for a return to the world that didn’t seem to want you anymore. Mingi’s hands were still on your waist, trembling slightly, his chest heaving beneath your palms. You could feel his heartbeat—fast, erratic, slowly steadying—and the wet heat of him still inside you, still filling you, still marking you as his in the most primal way possible.

You shifted. Slowly, carefully, your body protesting every movement, and reached between your bodies. Your fingers found the mess between your thighs. Warm, slick, the mingled evidence of both of you leaking from where you were still joined and you gathered it. Your fingers came away glistening, and you brought them to your mouth without thinking, without planning, without anything but the raw, animal instinct to taste what you’d made together.

You closed your lips around your fingers. Sucked. The taste hit you. Salt and musk and something uniquely, unmistakably both of you. You moaned around your own knuckles, your eyes fluttering shut, your hips clenching involuntarily around his softening cock.

Mingi went absolutely still beneath you. The way his breath stopped, the way his hands tightened on your waist, the way every muscle in his body locked into sudden, rigid attention. You opened your eyes and found him staring at you with an expression you’d never seen before—not hunger, not satisfaction, not even the dark, possessive gleam from before. Something rawer. Something that looked like he’d just been hit by a car he hadn’t seen coming.

“Oh my god.” His voice came out wrecked—not the sexy, post-orgasm wrecked, but genuinely, fundamentally destroyed. “Oh my fucking god.”

You pulled your fingers from your mouth slowly, your tongue dragging across your knuckles one last time, and you watched his eyes track the movement with the intensity of a man watching his life flash before him.

“That,” he said, and his voice cracked on the word, “might be the hottest thing I have ever seen in my entire goddamn life.”

You smiled and as you were about to say something clever when his hands flew to your face and he was kissing you. Hard. Desperate. His mouth crashed into yours with a force that knocked the air from your lungs, his tongue pushing past your lips, tasting the remnants of what you’d just licked from your fingers, and the sound he made—a low, broken groan that vibrated through your chest and into your bones—made your entire body clench around him again.

His hands were in your hair, cradling your skull, angling your head to deepen the kiss even further, and you kissed him back with everything you had left. Which wasn’t much, but it was enough. Enough to make his hips shift beneath you, enough to make him gasp against your mouth, enough to make the world narrow to nothing but the heat of his lips and the taste of you both on his tongue.

When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing like you’d just run a sprint. His forehead pressed against yours, his eyes still closed, his lips still parted, and you could feel the smile forming on his mouth before you even looked at him.

“You’re trying to kill me,” he murmured, and his voice was warm and dazed and full of something that made your chest ache. “You know that, right? I haven't even taken you out to a proper date yet and I'm already dead.”

You laughed—soft, breathless, your hands still flat against his chest. “Would you have it any other way?”

His eyes opened. Soft, shining with something that looked terrifyingly, beautifully like devotion. “Not a chance in hell, sweetheart.” Mingi shifted beneath you once more, his arms loosening just enough to let you breathe, and you felt his lips press against your temple.

“We should go and get out of here,” he murmured against your skin, and his voice was low, rough, still carrying the gravel of everything you’d just done to each other. “Do you wanna come back to mine?”

You lifted your head to look at him, and the expression on his face made your stomach flip. Hungry. Determined. The look of a man who’d tasted something and was addicted.

“Your place?” you repeated, your voice still wrecked, still barely functional.

“Yeah.” His hand slid down your spine, settling at the small of your back with a possessiveness that made your toes curl. “Because this car is about three seconds away from being declared a biohazard, and I have a bed that’s significantly bigger and more comfortable than this console.” His thumb traced a slow circle on your skin. “And I’m not done with you yet. Not even close.”

The words hit you like a spark jumping a gap—sudden, electric, lighting up every nerve ending you had left. You felt your body respond before your brain caught up, a fresh pulse of heat rolling through your core despite the fact that you were still trembling, still oversensitive, still leaking him onto the leather beneath you.

“Not done?” you managed, and your voice came out breathier than you intended.

Mingi’s grin was slow and devastating, the kind that started at the corners of his mouth and spread until it reached his eyes, turning them dark and dangerous and full of promise. His hand slid from your back to your hip, squeezing gently, and you felt him shift beneath you—felt the unmistakable, traitorous twitch of his cock, still buried inside you, already stirring back to life.

“Sweetheart,” he said, and the word came out like a caress, like a threat, like both at once, “we’ve been in this car for what—an hour? Maybe two?” His hips rolled upward, deliberate, and the friction made you gasp. “I’ve been thinking about this for months. You think I’m gonna call it quits because your backseat’s uncomfortable?”

You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling, and he was smiling, and then he was easing you off of him—slow, careful—and you both made a sound at the same time, a soft, involuntary whimper at the sudden cold where there had been warmth, the absence where there had been fullness. He pressed his lips to your temple like an apology.

He helped you dress.

Not in a hurry because nothing about Mingi was ever in a hurry, but with the same methodical care he brought to everything. His hands found your bra first, hooking it closed with fingers that trembled just slightly, his knuckles brushing your spine in a way that made you shiver. He smoothed the straps up your arms, adjusting them with a precision that suggested he’d been paying attention to how they sat before, and when his thumbs traced the line where the fabric met your skin, you caught his wrist.

“Mingi.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded pleased. “Can’t help it. You’re right here.”

You pulled your shirt over your head, and his hands were there immediately—tugging the hem down, smoothing the wrinkles, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear with a gesture so domestic it made your chest ache. He found your jeans in the footwell, shook them out with a quiet efficiency that made you think of him folding shop towels, and held them open for you like a gentleman helping you into a coat.

Before reaching for your jeans, he paused and reached behind him, two fingers hooking your underwear out of his back pocket like it was the most natural thing in the world, like he’d been carrying them there all evening on purpose.

He crouched down and held them open at your feet without a word, and something about the quiet patience of the gesture made your throat tighten. You stepped in. He took his time drawing them up, his thumbs pressing slow, warm circles into the outside of your hips as he settled the waistband into place.

Then he shook out your jeans and held them open the same way—“ Step in,” he said— and you did, balancing on one foot, your hand on his shoulder. He pulled the denim up after, his palms warm against your calves, your thighs, the curve of your hips, and when he fastened the button, his fingers lingered at your waistband, pressing a kiss to your stomach through the fabric.

“There,” he murmured against your skin. “All dressed.”

“Not all of us are dressed.” You gestured at his bare chest, the leather jacket still draped over the front passenger seat, his own shirt nowhere to be found. “You’re half naked.”

“Am I?” He looked down at himself with mock surprise. “So I am! The absolute horror.”

You found his shirt balled behind the driver’s seat and tossed it at him. He caught it one-handed and pulled it over his head, the fabric stretching across his shoulders in a way that made your mouth go dry all over again. His jeans were already on. You had no memory of when he’d managed that. He reached past you for his jacket, shaking it out with a practiced flick of his wrists.

Then he held it open for you.

The gesture was so simple—so stupidly, achingly simple. You turned, and he draped the jacket over your shoulders, his hands settling on your arms for a moment, pulling you back against his chest. The leather was warm from the car’s interior, and it smelled like him—cedar and engine oil and the faint sweetness of whatever he’d put on after his shower—and it was so big on you that the sleeves swallowed your hands entirely.

“You look good in my jacket,” he said, his chin resting on your crown.

“It looks like I'm being swallowed by your jacket.”

“You look perfect.” His arms tightened around you, and you let yourself lean into him, let the weight of his body hold you upright when your legs were still shaky and your brain was still soft around the edges. “Absolutely perfect.”

You stayed like that for a moment—wrapped in his jacket, wrapped in his arms, the car ticking quietly around you, the river murmuring its endless, indifferent song beyond the steamed-up windows. Then Mingi pressed one more kiss to the top of your head—soft, lingering, the kind that felt like a period at the end of a sentence—and pulled back.

“Alright, let's go home.” he exhales.

“Okay.” You tugged the jacket tighter around yourself, the leather creaking softly. “But you’re driving. I can barely feel my legs.”

“Of course.” He kissed you once more—quick, chaste, the kind of kiss that was more punctuation than prose.

Unfolding his long frame from the backseat with considerably more grace than he’d managed on the way in. You heard the soft thud of his boots hitting the gravel, and then his hand appeared through the open door, palm up, waiting. You took it. 

He helped you out of the backseat. Steadying you when your knees buckled, his arm around your waist, his body a warm wall of support, and you stood in the moonlight together, the river silver behind you, the city a distant constellation of light beyond the trees. The night air was cool against your flushed skin, and you pulled his jacket tighter, breathing in the smell of him like it was oxygen.

Mingi opened the passenger door for you and you slid into the seat, the leather warm beneath you, the dashboard glowing its familiar amber. He closed the door with that soft, deliberate click, and you watched him walk around the hood—tall and sure and slightly dishevelled, his hair a mess, his shirt still untucked, the moonlight catching the line of his jaw and the satisfied curve of his mouth.

He dropped into the driver’s seat, and the car came alive around you. That clean, steady hum that meant everything was where it was supposed to be. He adjusted the mirrors, checked the seat position, and turned to you with an expression so open and warm it made your breath catch.

“Ready?” he asked.

You nodded your head. He pulled onto the road, and the river fell away behind you, and the city lights grew closer, and you sat in the passenger seat of your own car—wearing his jacket, smelling like his skin, your body still singing with the echo of his touch—and you watched the road unfold ahead of you.

His hand found yours on the console. Not tentative—not the careful, testing reach of someone still figuring out the impossible. This was different. This was his palm sliding across the leather, his fingers lacing through yours. His thumb settled into the groove between your knuckles, and the warmth of his skin against yours was so familiar it made your chest ache.

You looked down at your joined hands. At the way his thumb traced a slow, absent circle on your skin, the same pattern he’d used that afternoon on the river road, the same pattern he’d use a thousand more times if you let him.

You lifted his hand from the console.

He glanced over—just briefly, just long enough to register the movement—and you brought his knuckles to your mouth. You pressed your lips to the back of his hand and felt the slight roughness of his skin, the faint chemical smell of solvent that lived in the creases of his fingers, the steady pulse of blood beneath the surface. You held the kiss there for a count of three, maybe four, and then you lowered your joined hands into your lap, tucking them between your thighs, his palm warm against your denim-clad leg.

Mingi laughed.

Not the startled, horn-induced laugh from before. Something quieter. Something that started in his chest and came out through his nose, a soft, incredulous huff of sound that carried more tenderness than any word could have. His thumb resumed its circling on your knuckle, and he kept his eyes on the road, but the smile, the one that crinkled his eyes and pulled at the cut on his lip, was doing something devastatingly beautiful to his face.

“You’re so cute, baby,” he coos. The words were simple, almost offhand, delivered with the same casual confidence he used when he told you your oil level was fine. But you heard the weight behind them. The particular, careful weight of a man who meant what he said and was still learning how to say it without sounding like he was about to combust.

“Only for you,” you replied, because you couldn’t think of anything else, because your chest was so full it was pressing against your ribs, because his hand was in your lap and his jacket was on your shoulders and his smell was in your lungs, and you were fairly certain you’d never been this happy in your entire life.

He kept driving. One hand on the wheel, one hand in yours, the road unspooling ahead of you like a ribbon of dark silk under the pale wash of the streetlights. The city rose around you in increments—first the scattered houses, then the convenience stores with their neon signs still burning, then the apartment blocks and the late-night buses and the occasional taxi drifting through the empty streets like a fish through deep water.

The city had a way of falling in love with the people who moved through it at night—the ones who knew its empty streets and its quiet corners, the ones who understood that the best parts were the ones nobody else was awake to see. The racer and the mechanic drove through those streets now, their hands locked together over the center console, the engine humming its steady, contented song beneath them, and neither of them said a word about timing belts or transmission mounts or the particular, terrifying thrill of falling in love with someone who could take you apart and put you back together better than you’d been before.

But the car knew. The car had always known. It had carried you to him and it had carried you home, and somewhere between the starting line and the finish, between the riverbank and the backseat, between the first time he called you sweetheart and the last time you screamed his name, the engine had learned a new song—one about two people who’d been running on parallel tracks for so long they’d forgotten what it felt like to collide, and who were now, finally, beautifully, irreversibly headed in the same direction.

The mechanic’s hands knew every bolt and belt and bearing in the city, but they’d never held anything as perfectly as they held yours. And the racer’s heart, which had spent its whole life chasing finish lines, had finally found the one that mattered—the one that didn’t end with a checkered flag, but with a man in a leather jacket who picked wildflowers at dawn and rebuilt transmissions at midnight and promised you another night in a voice that meant forever.

You squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

The city lights blurred past the windows, and the engine hummed, and the road stretched ahead, endless and open and full of possibility, and you didn’t need to say a word, because the car was already saying it for you. In every clean shift, every steady rev, every mile that carried you closer to the place where the racer and the mechanic had stopped being two separate things and become something neither of them had the words for yet.

But they’d find them. They had all the time in the world, and an engine that would never let them down, and a road that went on forever, and each other.

And really—when it came down to it—what else did anyone need?

“Why’d you turn it off?” San asks from Wooyoung’s passenger seat, his face knitted in frustration. “I was listening to that!”

“She clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Wooyoung argues, sinking further into the leather bucket seats of his car, downshifting as he comes up to a red light. “I don’t know why you insist on listening to it, she’s not giving you any tips you don’t already know.”

“Some of us aren’t as experienced as you, Woo.” He turns his head to see San staring at him with pointed eyes, the older man’s frustration hasn’t settled at all. “She’s a window into the female mind. Girls don’t talk about sex so openly.”

“They do if you just ask,” Wooyoung counters. “They say a lot if you just ask.” 

Unscripted. The podcast his entire campus is listening to, talking about, praising, worshiping, Wooyoung hates it down to his very fucking bones. The woman whose voice was just grating through his car’s incredible speaker system claims her pod is an open conversation, an outlet where viewers can send in their questions, topics, so that the ‘taboo’ topic of sex can be spoken about openly, shamelessly.

Wooyoung has no issue talking about sex. It’s far from taboo for him, it’s talked about every day of his life, every hour, he thinks about it every minute. While he gets shit for it from just about everyone in his goddamn life, this woman who he cannot stand is treated like a deity for it. Usually a podcast is paired with a video, some kind of face to the name, something that viewers can fact-check. But this woman is a no-face, no-name ghost. 

“You’re telling me if I laid a woman down and asked her to teach me to make her squirt, she’d do it?” San asks, back straightened, brows in his hairline. 

Wooyoung turns his head with a dead stare, “Yes, San. It’s really that fucking easy.”

San huffs. “Well, imagine how much cooler it was when I already knew how to do it. You know the reaction I got, after learning step-by-step from Unscripted? My hips were sore the next day. My hips, Wooyoung.”

“You would have gotten the same reaction if you just asked her.” Wooyoung upshifts, engine roaring as his frustration grows. “Women like that shit, teaching, showing you exactly what to do. And when you succeed? God, none of you listen to me, you listen to the no-face, no-resume, self-appointed sex god.”

“No resume?” San snorts. “Maybe we’d rather listen to a woman tell us what women want, and not the self-appointed campus whore.”

Wooyoung can’t even be mad at the jab, because at a different time, he gave himself that exact title. It was like wearing a crown, having women flock to him, his bed filled with someone different every night, learning how to please others with his mind, two hands and his cock. He learned it all himself, by asking, by doing the work, and now his friends were getting a tutorial by some nobody named Unscripted? It’s so corny it threatens to ruin the concept of sex for him.

“Maybe you should try actually asking a woman what she wants,” Wooyoung snaps back, pulling his car into the driveway of his frat. A long strip of blacktop big enough to hold six cars, he liked being parked at the back, not blocked in by anyone else. He could leave whenever he wanted, to fuck whoever he wanted. He throws his car in park and turns to San again. “Maybe you shouldn’t assume what all women want just because a random one told you her tips are universal.”

“I really don’t get why you hate her so much.” San is shaking his head as he reaches for the forty-rack from the backseat. “If you don’t need the tips, then you can simply not listen. Why shit on everyone who enjoys it?”

“I’m not– why are you so offended?” Wooyoung asks before sliding out of the driver’s side, closing the door behind him. Locking the car, starting the trek up to the two story house, Wooyoung continues, “Who cares if I don’t like it?”

“I care because I enjoy it and you’re shitting on my enjoyment.” San keeps Wooyoung’s pace as the sound of bass grows louder, cans of beer clinking together in the case hanging from San’s fingers. “Maybe I wanted to find out if someone is in love with me when they ask me for missionary tonight.”

Wooyoung stops in his tracks. “If a girl wants missionary, she wants your dick so far inside her she can’t breathe. That’s it. She’s not in love with you, she wants your dick to tear her apart. That’s Unscripted.”

San stares for a moment before bursting out in laughter. “Man,” he wheezes, “you should be a guest star or something.”

Wooyoung’s face stays flat, unimpressed. “I would never want my name attached to that shit-show of a fucking podcast. It’d tarnish my good name.”

“Your name has about four STDs and three pregnancy scares attached to it. I don’t think the podcast would tarnish that.”

“I had chlamydia once, San,” Wooyoung bites, walking up the brick steps to the house, voice louder to travel over the sound of bass. “And I took the fucking medication. Drop it, no one talks about that anymore.”

San is smirking as he rips open the door, “Everyone talks about it, Woo. Just not to your face.”

Wooyoung doesn’t even have a chance to respond before the music swallows their conversation whole. Inside the house was a mass of bodies, too many to count, too many to breathe between. But Wooyoung tries anyway, letting the bass cleanse him of his frustration, or maybe that was the brunette he caught out of the corner of his eye that made instinct grab the wheel.

He stores the information for later, when he’s ingested at least three beers and he’s ready to take the party to his bedroom. Her friend was cute, too, darker hair and a silver hoop in her nose, he wonders if they’d both be down for taking the party upstairs.

“You’re back!” Yunho beams from the kitchen, the older man’s head of blonde hair spotting him easily, his eye level above everyone else’s. “Where’s the beer?”

“San has it,” Wooyoung throws a thumb behind him, beside him, he doesn’t know where the hell San had gone. “He’s around here somewhere.”

Yunho smacks his teeth as he looks as far as his brown eyes can see, “Where the fuck else is there to go with a case of forty fucking beers other than the kitchen?”

Wooyoung eyes up the bottle of vodka standing tall on the counter. He wasn’t planning to get drunk tonight, just tipsy enough for his orgasm(s) to feel that much better, but the clear liquid beckons to him. Dares him. And Wooyoung never, ever backs down from anything, let alone a dare.

He pours a shot, then another one, then the jacket clinging to his shoulders feels suffocating. Not the seventy-five people in his house, no, but the leather on his shoulders that hangs off his body enough to feel a summer breeze on the back of his neck. It’s hot enough to swim outside, but Wooyoung was married to his leather jacket the way he was married to casual sex. Wooyoung, sex and leather go together hand-in-hand.

San finally barrels into the kitchen to pack the beers into the fridge, and Wooyoung grabs one before attempting to make his way to the stairs, up to his room where he could hang his precious baby in his closet. He’s stopped twice, a third time in the middle of the staircase, all by women who were wondering why he was going upstairs so early, and why he had no one at his side. Their eyes told him they wanted to take the spot.

After assuring all three of them he’d be right back downstairs, and offering them all a dance and a drink, voices on the other side of his beige bedroom door stop him from going inside. His brows furrow, irritation blooming because why the fuck are there people in his room? He starts to make out words, and the conversation makes his palm hover over the door handle.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.” A guy. A voice he doesn’t recognize.

A woman’s voice follows, “Come on, we never do anything like this, it’s risky. Isn’t that fun?”

“What if someone walks in?”

“Let them see.” Her voice drops into something seductive, low and velvety, it makes Wooyoung’s already-warm insides ten times hotter. “Don’t you want to fuck me? We don’t even know who’s room this is.”

“I… we should go back downstairs. Let’s get a drink, dance a little.”

Wooyoung can hear his own bed creak. “So you don’t want to fuck me?”

“That’s not what I said–”

“Fine.” The word is sharp, angry. 

The bed creaks again, and before Wooyoung can move, his own bedroom door is ripped open, and a new, beautiful face he’s never seen before is staring at him like he’s a fucking pervert.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asks, voice edged with anger. No, that’s frustration– horny frustration. 

Wooyoung can’t help his grin. “Who are you?”

She cringes– physically cringes before gritting her teeth, “Were you listening? Waiting to hear us fuck so you could jerk off or something, you fucking creep?”

Wooyoung doesn’t let the cringe make him falter. His smirk grows, finally looking over her shoulder to see the pitiful, utterly boring man behind her. Tall, buff, but the face of a fucking baby. Someone who definitely wouldn’t fuck her in a stranger’s bedroom, and even if it was Wooyoung’s bedroom, he kind of felt sorry for her.

“I was putting my jacket in my room, actually,” Wooyoung brings his eyes back to her just to watch all the color drain from her face. Before she can offer her apologies, he quips, “But I would have stayed for the show. It’s a shame you didn’t put one on for me.”

Her face that had just read apologetic a second ago morphs into shame, embarrassment, then the sort of rage Wooyoung was expecting. But it wasn’t directed at Wooyoung, it was directed at the man behind her, the one she had her back to, and kept it that way.

Without a word, she pushes past him to rush down the stairs, and Wooyoung steps to the side to let baby-face follow. But before he’s completely out of reach, Wooyoung stops him with, “Hold on.”

The guy turns, hands folded together to hide the tent that Wooyoung couldn’t comprehend why he wasn’t acting on. Sharp jaw, full lips, hair shaggy and unkempt like she had just had her knuckles in it, he was an attractive guy. From looks alone, he seems like a keeper, a real score for the girl Wooyoung would have been trying to get balls deep inside of right now if he wasn’t here. 

He doesn’t know why he offers his advice. “When you have a girl like that, you take the risk.”

“You seem to take a lot of risks,” the man says coolly. “I know who you are, chlamydia.”

“Oh my fucking god,” Wooyoung groans, then walks into his bedroom. Stopping in his doorway, he turns to watch baby-face laugh down the stairs, and yells behind him, “That was a year ago, by the way!”

He can still hear the man laughing as he uses too much strength to hook his jacket onto a hanger, and then on the top rack of his closet. Frustration boils in his gut, and anger isn’t a party favor, so he makes his way to his bathroom, washes his face with freezing cold water, and lets his emotions reset before he even thinks about going back downstairs.

Wooyoung loves sex. He loves everything about sex, he loves giving, he loves receiving, he loves pleasure. Life is about enjoying, learning and changing and growing, and to Wooyoung, sex is the perfect blend of all life has to offer. He can’t imagine himself getting into a relationship, a pitiful one like that girl has, and sex becoming… regular. Boring. Not full of fantasy and shamelessness, being so carnally human, giving into your desire, but instead an activity, a routine, something you’re supposed to do so you do it.

No, sex to Wooyoung isn’t a routine, something to be fit into a schedule. Sex is fun, it’s about exploration, trusting someone else enough to be at your most vulnerable, and trusting them to carry you through it. Then trusting them to not call afterwards, or expect another night, or anything else from him at all, for that matter.

Maybe a skewed view on sex and relationships, but that’s Wooyoung’s fantasy, his life, his bible.

Just as he finishes his beer, there’s a knock at his door. He throws himself in-character, a lazy smirk on his lips, assuming it’s one of the girls he talked to on his way up here, in his heart he prays it's the best friends he spotted downstairs.

Much to his dismay, it’s neither. It’s the girlfriend from five minutes ago, still raging, apparently. Her arms are crossed, foot tapping against the carpet, eyes darting everywhere but on Wooyoung like she’s guilty. Already playing the part, Wooyoung leans into his doorframe as he asks, “Back to put on a one-woman show instead?”

She scoffs, “Like I’d ever fuck you.”

Wooyoung’s brows furrow. Interesting reaction. “Okay,” he starts, standing up a little straighter. “Then did you need a place to get yourself off or something? My bed has seen plenty of orgasms, don’t be shy.”

Her face morphs into pure disgust. “God, you’re disgusting, is sex all you think about?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Wooyoung smiles anyway. “Kinda.”

“I’m here because I know who you are. I have about six friends who have fucked you, and I need your advice,” she says quickly, shamelessly, each and every one of her features flat and serious. When Wooyoung motions for her to continue, intrigued, she asks, “You would have done it, right?”

Wooyoung’s eyes thin, brows kissing. “Done what? Fucked you?”

“Yeah,” she nods. Talking with her hands flying everywhere, she rages, “Fucked me in a random room, in a random house, at a random party on a random Friday night.”

“I’m sensing there’s more to unpack here,” Wooyoung says with growing boredom, shifting his weight on his other foot before leaning against the other side of his dooframe.

“Just answer the question,” she urges, hands landing on her hips.

Wooyoung lets out a short huff. “Your boyfriend is boring,” he says simply. “If you’re already bored with your sex life, then the relationship isn’t going to last. Go shopping, there’s plenty of dudes downstairs that would slobber at the idea of fucking you in my room.” He holds up a finger. “Don’t fuck in my room, though. My room is off-limits.”

Her lips scrunch to one side, a flush on her cheeks. “Is there any way to make him more… adventurous?”

“It’s a personality thing, baby. He doesn’t have the fun-guy gene. Like I said, go shopping, that’s what I’m about to do.” Wooyoung takes a step forward, closing his door behind him. “Shall we?”

“Why do you say that like it’s easy?” she snaps, not moving an inch, leaving an awkwardly small amount of space between them. Usually, Wooyoung would be all over it, but he isn’t in the mood to pick up the pieces of someone else’s relationship tonight. But it seems she’s insistent upon him putting it back together completely as she explains, “We’ve been together for over a year, I can’t just break up with him because he won’t fuck me in a frat house.”

Wooyoung sighs, leaning his back against his closed door. “You’re, what, twenty? Twenty-one? You have your entire life to have shitty, boring sex. Why are you rushing?”

“I refuse to believe that,” she crosses her arms. “That the rest of my life will consist of shitty, boring sex.”

“I can’t fix delusional,” Wooyoung mutters, and to him, that's the end of the conversation.

He’s three steps away from her before she starts it again. “That’s not delusion, that’s optimism. Manifestation. I shouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.”

He stops in his tracks, looking over his shoulder. He retorts, “Someone like me?”

Her brows are high, hands on her hips, one leg bent. Full of attitude. “You never called any of my friends back. Not one. Why would I expect someone like you to understand what a relationship would be like, what it takes to keep one, when you spend your free time sticking your dick in anything that has a hole?”

Wooyoung snorts, a little impressed by the jab, but he’s more irritated that everyone seems to be on his fucking ass tonight. What did he do? He even took San to the liquor store to buy more beer, he should be drowning in pussy by now.

“Fair enough,” he shrugs, he’s more than bored of the conversation at this point. “Enjoy the three minutes of missionary tonight, or will it be forty-five seconds with you on top because he’s too drunk to fuck you properly?”

Her face blooms in Technicolor, and he knows he’s won. With a wide grin, he gives her a little wave over his shoulder, and makes his way down the stairs. He doesn’t have it in him to go back to the kitchen for another drink, or to find any one of his friends and have a conversation, his patience is running thin and his dick is starting to ache from lack of use.

“Hey, Wooyoung.” He’s greeted at the base of the steps by a blonde, he thinks he fucked her last week. Maybe two weeks ago. 

He gives her a smirk, “Hey, baby, good to see you.” What was her name again?

He keeps it pushing, searching for the staircase girls, or the two from the entrance that together resemble a monarch butterfly. If he can’t find any of them, maybe he’ll come back to the blonde. If he can remember her name.

Another beer miraculously finds its way to his palm before he finds one half of the butterfly, the one with dark hair, silver through her nose. He’s made out with her twice before the other half finds them, and to his satisfaction, it seems both halves of the butterfly had the plan to make it back to his bedroom tonight.

“One last topic for today: a little birdie asked me about threesomes, and in my heart, I genuinely can’t believe I haven’t touched on this topic sooner. I have a story, I know, surprise surprise, but this one is recent, so I’m excited to debrief it, because I think it’s too scandalous to even bring up to my friends.”

You throw your index cards on the bed. The rest would actually be unscripted, straight off the dome.

“This past weekend I found myself in a… compromising position. Well, several compromising positions, if I’m honest. Imagine you’re hooking up with a guy in a random bedroom of a house party, and the person whose bedroom it is walks inside and wants to join. Sorry– I paused, I was waiting for a gasp or something, but then I remembered I’m by myself.”

You laugh a little before continuing. “I was on my back, hooking up with this really sexy guy who I had met, maybe fifteen minutes prior. You know the house party deal, talk for ten minutes, the boring shit, but it’s the boring shit that gets you on the same page. We’re making out all the way up the stairs, and he pushes me inside this bedroom, undresses me, lays me out on the bed, his head is in between my legs before the door opens.”

“The second guy walks in, and there’s no moment of, what the fuck? Or, oh my god, get out of my room. He smirks, a sexy smirk, the kind of smirk that doesn’t need words, y’know? The guy who’s in between my legs doesn’t stop. He sees the other one, he knows he’s there, but he doesn’t even pause. The second guy takes my mouth, and then I’m being fed while the other one’s eating, and– you know the drill. It was overstimulating, but also… liberating, to be worshiped, to be treated like something holy by two guys whose names I didn’t even know.”

“I feel like MMF threesomes have become something for the male gaze, or maybe they always have been– actually, they always have been. In porn, the woman is treated like some kind of doll, thrown between two guys, used for their pleasure over and over, but what if it’s the opposite? What if it’s the woman who’s using two men for her own pleasure? Double the orgasms, double the penetration, double the foreplay, double the pleasure, what if it’s the woman calling the shots, like some kind of super-straight power bottom action? And I know I shouldn’t use gay terms for straight sex, but hear me out on this…”

“Some of us tend to fear taking control in the bedroom. With one man, with two men, it’s terrifying. But I’ve never been so satisfied or as confident as I felt in that bedroom, ordering pleasure and receiving it. Giving it because I wanted to, because sex is fun, and women are allowed to enjoy sex the way men do. If men can fetishize two women in the bedroom, why can’t we do it back? The only thing I wished for was that they would fuck each other, too. They only kissed. Boring. Sorry if you’re listening, there’s a reason I’m not saying your names.”

Because there are no names to fucking say.

“I need to dedicate an entire episode to exploring threesomes, positions, dynamics, everything. Unforch, there’s just not enough time today, but trust that I will come back to this topic and do a proper debrief of every single one of my thoughts, I just wanted to touch on the topic in case any of my listeners find themselves in the compromising position I was in mere days ago. Do it, enjoy it, and don’t be afraid to walk ‘em like dogs, girls. On the plate for next week are toys– for yourself, for your partner, the best ones for your partner to use on you, I’m diving into all of it. Stay tuned, and I’ll catch you next week, unscripted, as always.”

You press stop on your laptop, cutting off the recording, and take a deep, relieving sigh. Eyes catching the top right corner, you gasp, panic shooting up your spine as you read seven-thirty-two on the clock. Fishing your phone out from the duvet beneath you, you check your notifications, the fourteen texts from your boyfriend, and six missed calls.

You don’t even read them before pressing call on his contact.

“Where the hell are you?” His voice is gruff, angry. Which is fair, because you were supposed to meet him for dinner thirty-two minutes ago. 

You hop off the bed, grabbing your mic and shoving it into your closet. “I fell asleep!” you lie, and it rolls off your tongue like butter. “I’m so sorry, Jun, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“We lost our reservation, I’m at the bar next door.”

He hangs up. You curse, throwing your phone back onto your bed before scurrying to your closet to pick out something for drinks and dinner instead of dinner and drinks. You throw your hair up after turning your makeup from daytime to nighttime, and hop in the car with record time. Speeding through the city, thankfully finding quick parking, you’re late to your fifteen-minute promise by four minutes.

Your boyfriend of over a year doesn’t even care that you took the barstool beside him. You barely take in your surroundings, your tunnel vision focused on Yeonjun and only Yeonjun, wondering how the hell you’ll make it up to him. 

Wordlessly, he slides you a drink, a martini, extra dirty. Three olives. Your heart aches.

“I’m sorry,” you mutter, eyes finding your lap. “I didn’t mean to miss our reservation, but we can still have fun tonight, right?” You look around you, at the dimly lit bar that seemed to have lost all its patrons to the sardine-packed dance floor. “We can go dance, you love to dance. I’ll get us a reservation for next week.”

His head snaps to yours, dark hair meticulously styled around his forehead, his eyes dark with irritation. “It took me three weeks to get that reservation.”

“Am I going somewhere?” You tilt your head to the side. “Are you going somewhere? I think we have the time to wait another three weeks.”

“That’s not the point,” he urges, watching as you grab the skewer of olives from your martini glass, biting one off the end. “The point is that I did something nice for us, and you didn’t show up.”

“It was an accident,” you say, muffled with your mouth full. Swallowing, you reiterate, “It was an accident, Yeonjun. Don’t let it spoil date night.” His nose crinkles, mouth bending downward. You pop a brow, “What?”

“You called me Yeonjun,” he says, so low it could be considered a whisper. His eyes are brighter when he looks back up at you, “My name is Junie to you.”

It makes a smile break across your lips, a giggle falling past. “You’re right, I’m sorry, Junie. I’ll make it up to you tonight. Or…” you look around, scanning the crowd of drunken people, all seeming in their own world. “I could make it up to you now.”

A deep blush paints his cheeks crimson. “Don’t even start.”

“No?” you tease, smirk on your lips, eyes sparkling as you take a sip of your martini. “You don’t wanna fuck me in the bathroom? So mad at me for missing our fancy, expensive date, you don’t wanna take out all your frustrations on me?”

He shushes you, body turning toward you like he might clamp his hand over your mouth, his shoulders caving inward. “You can’t say shit like that in public, oh my god– what if the bartender heard you, and kicked us out?”

“The bartender is focused on drinks and tips,” you say simply before taking another gulp of your martini. “She’s not worried about me taking my boyfriend’s cock down my throat in the bathroom.” His right hand covers his lap, and it makes you laugh, a snarky giggle. “Look at you, your body wants it, I want it. What are you so afraid of?”

He uses his other hand to count. “A public lewdness charge, or lewd conduct, or public indecency. I’m gonna be a doctor, I will not catch a charge to do what I can do at home.” Your eyes roll without you giving them the okay to do so. He sees it, and immediately he presses, “Why are you so obsessed with this? Why can’t we have sex at your place, or at mine? That’s normal.”

“What’s wrong with trying to spice up our sex life?” Your martini glass hits the bar harder than intended. “I just want you to want me so bad you can’t help yourself, Junie. I want you to fuck me, to really fuck me like it’s not even me you’re fucking.”

Your boyfriend’s ears go bright red, his eyes dancing all around you, and for a second you think he might really clamp his hand over your mouth. “Can you stop saying that shit in public?”

“Whatever,” you huff. “I’ll stop. I’m sorry.”

After a moment of silence, another sip taken from his glass of whiskey, he runs both hands through his hair. Keeping his voice low, he leans into you so you can hear him, “Last weekend, after the party… I fucked you after, didn’t I? Like, really fucked you, like you weren’t even you or whatever.”

No. No, you didn’t.

“Yeah,” you smile, tight-lipped. “You did. Sorry. I must be ovulating or something.”

You’re not ovulating, you’re just fucking bored. You spend your free time talking about sexcapades, basically making up stories, soft porn on a podcast, but in reality, your life doesn’t even come close. The podcast is a dream, a fantasy, what sometimes you wish your life actually was. A sex life that was always new, changing, with one person who loves you as much as you love them, and wants to do new things just as much as you do. Someone who would never judge you for your wants, your needs, your fantasies that sometimes you’re embarrassed to think about, let alone bring up to someone else.

You want someone who you can tell all of them to. You need someone who wants to do them even more than you do, because they want to please you as much as you want to please them. 

But that’s not enough to break up with the man sitting beside you, the one who knows everything about you, the one who is the love of your life in so many different ways. How is it that such a huge part of you, such an important part of you, is the only part of him that isn’t a mirror?

“I’ve been thinking lately,” Yeonjun says, his voice uneven like he’s unsure of bringing it up. You raise your brows to let him know you’re listening. “After you graduate, we should get married.”

You blink. “M-Married?”

“I know we talk about it all the time,” he sits back in the stool, keeping his eyes on the amber liquid in his glass. “But I think we should get married. Have a baby.”

You lean forward. “A baby?”

Being pre-med now, he’ll be in school for a hell of a lot longer than you, and he knows it. He smiles to himself, like he’s leaning into his own fantasy as he says, “You can stay home, take care of the baby and stuff until I graduate, start working.”

“I’ll stay home… while you’re in school?” you ask, brows high. “Who’s gonna pay for me and the baby?”

His eyes meet yours, brows knitted together in confusion. “My parents?”

“Don’t you think we should be, y’know, financially secure before even thinking about marriage?”

“I’ll be in my residency program by twenty-six,” he counters. “That’s only four years that my parents will help us. I want to marry you, I want you to have my kids.”

“I don’t want to be married at twenty-two,” you answer, too fast for Yeonjun, too fast for yourself. He winces like you punched him. “It’s not that I don’t want to marry you, I just… I don't want to be a married twenty-two year old.”

“What does age have to do with it?” he asks, and you’re stunned that age is what he’s taking from this. “Twnety-two, twenty-six, I’d marry you tomorrow, baby.”

Your head shakes before your mind can comprehend what’s transpiring. “Yeonjun, no. Absolutely not. Why are we talking about this now? Can’t we drink and dance? Have a fun date night like we planned?”

“Absolutely not?” he retorts, sitting straighter. “As if it’s a death sentence to marry me. I thought you’d be jumping up and down right now.”

“You think I’m the type to pop out a baby at twenty-three years old?!” you ask, bewildered. “Yeonjun, I… why would you think I’d be happy?”

“Hear me out,” he counters. “By twenty-two, we’ll have been together for over two years. We can have a long engagement, if you want, be married right before your twenty-third birthday. Technically, you’ll have the baby closer to twenty-four, and my parents only have to help us for two years.”

You’re horrified. What’s even more horrifying is that while you’ve been fantasizing about him fucking you right, he’s been fantasizing about you pregnant. And apparently working out all the logistics for it, too. “Yeonjun,” you whisper. “Let’s talk about this another time. Another day. In another year, or five.”

“This is what any woman would want,” he turns toward you fully. You can’t believe he thinks that’s true. “This is stability, a future. Why are you upset that I want a future with you?”

Your cheeks feel hot, the vodka in your stomach has long ago solidified. It’s heavy, pushing on your bladder, your gut. “I need to go to the bathroom,” you blurt. “I need to pee, I need to think about… about all that.”

You don’t give him time to react before you’re sliding off the stool. Your head feels fuzzy, and it could be from the vodka, from you literally eating zero calories today, but you know it’s from the bomb he just dropped. You know in your soul it’s because that’s a future you cannot give him– that you won’t give him. You didn’t even eat today, and he wants you to be the mother of his child? It’s almost comedic. Or at least it would be if you weren’t stumbling across the bar in the direction of the bathroom, feeling nauseous enough that you might not even make it there.

You can see it, like the light at the end of the tunnel, the glowing, pink neon sign that reads Girls Room. But the walls are closing in, your chest feels heavy, your breaths even heavier, slower, and the sign dims like someone was turning down the brightness. 

“Woah.” An arm around your back, strong and thick, scoops you straight up. Were you going down? “Are you okay? Holy shit, you’re gonna pass out. Don’t pass out.”

Your eyes, half-open, can only see the man keeping you steady. Broad shoulders, absolutely insane biceps, slicked back, onyx locks, they show off his sculpted cheeks, his sharp jaw, his dimples. He’s cute, and he’s holding you up like you’re a fucking doll. 

“Water,” you croak. He slings your arm over his shoulder, and with his height he’s basically dragging you across the room until he’s sitting you down on a chair, crouching beside you, holding a glass of water up to your lips. 

“Slow sips,” he coaxes, his voice soft, pleasant. “Don’t chug it. It’s only eight, how are you hammered at eight o’clock? Guys, we need to be on her time.”

“‘m not hammered,” you mumble through sips. “I’m not even drunk, my boyfriend just told me he wants to tradwife me. I must be having an allergic reaction or something.”

Biceps snorts, you watch as his head tips back in laughter, his dimples showing. “You’re allergic to what, marriage?”

“Do you have any food?” you ask, stomach still feeling wretchedly hollow. Biceps ushers his hand to the table in front of you, and at that moment, you realize nothing in your life could be more embarrassing than this. There’s a table full of men, all with food and drinks in front of them, and you just… you just interrupted. Talking about being allergic to Yeonjun wanting to marry you. 

Directly across from you, with the most appetizing plate of chicken tenders and fries in front of him, sat Jung Wooyoung. With his eyes on yours, a humored twinkle swirling in shit brown, you start to stand. “Fuck no,” you shake your head. “I’ll be going now, thanks.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” the man who saved you from eating shit on the bar’s floor stands with you, hands out, palms facing you. His face reads concern, scrunched up, clearly scared that you’ll crumble to the floor again. “Eat something, drink more water, then you can go. I don’t want them to stop the music so they can put you on a gurney.”

You scowl. Even if he saved you, now Biceps is at the top of your shit list. 

You redirect your scowl at Wooyoung. Before sitting back in the chair, silently you reach across the table to grab his plate of chicken tenders, and place it in front of yourself. 

“Jesus,” another one at the table mutters under his breath. Tall, blonde hair. “What’d you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Wooyoung shrugs. You eat his chicken, satisfied. “I’ve never even seen her before.”

You laugh, a punched sound of sarcasm. “Right,” you mutter.

“Wooyoung, you asshole,” another one whisper-yells. Shorter than the blonde, golden skin, brown, wavy hair. “You slept with her and forgot? That’s fucked up.”

“I never fucked him,” you seethe. “I don’t want chlamydia.”

The table waits a second before roaring in laughter. Wooyoung thins his eyes, his gaze pointed from across the table. You can’t help your growing, prideful smirk. 

“I don’t have chlamydia,” Wooyoung announces after a second, jaw set, eyes dark and pissed. “She tried to fuck her boyfriend in my bedroom last weekend until I broke them up.”

You gasp, mortified. “You’re a liar!”

“Were you not trying to have sex in my room last week?”

“Okay, yes, but–”

“Exactly,” he smirks, satisfied. “So did you get three minutes that night, or forty-five seconds?”

“Wooyoung,” Biceps warns. “Stop it.”

“I got more than you did, I’m sure,” you counter. “Even if you’re disgusting and you.”

“Wow,” his hands come together in a slow clap. “Good for you. Has he gotten any more adventurous? I assume not, since he wants you, three kids, and a white picket fence.”

Your cheeks burn. Biceps, again, warns, “Wooyoung.”

You stand once more, and this time, Biceps doesn’t stop you. The table watches as you stomp all the way back over to Yeonjun, body shaking with irritation, trading one poison for another. You almost forgot what you were coming back to. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, cheeks still pink, face bent in concern. 

Sinking back into the stool, you reach for your martini, throwing the rest of it back. Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, you spit out, “Fine.”

Wooyoung wouldn’t be able to explain himself if someone were to walk into his bedroom right now. They would find him in his desk chair, listening to Unscripted, the podcast he hates, while staring out his window like he was debating the seven wonders of the world.

“Everybody loves a curved dick. It’s like a walking, living, breathing toy, designed to make you cum a thousand times. If it curves upward, missionary, being on top, is your best friend. If it curves to the left, have him fuck you on your side. If it curves to the right, have him fuck you on your other side. If it curves down, you’re lucky if he’s ugly, because you’ll never have to see his face while fucking him again.”

He laughs, then he catches himself laughing, and stops. God, he hates her with such an unimaginable passion, fuck her for making him laugh. His dick is curved, so maybe a part of him feels targeted, but how dare she put him, and what he can only assume is a million other men, into a box? A category? A you can only fuck this way bracket?

The part about ugly guys is funny, but only because he’s not targeted by that one, and he understands the joke. But who’s to say the women he’s with can’t enjoy backshots because his cock curves upward? He’s never received a bad review for it.

He huffs, shutting his laptop, then he smiles when her voice goes silent. Then his stomach drops, because why was he listening to Unscripted past eight at night? And why was he letting her voice dictate his emotions?

He picks himself up, shaking off the thoughts. He needed to clear his mind, think about something else other than the shape of his cock… he needed to fuck. He texted Haewon, no response. Amara, busy. Nadia, working. Daeun apparently transferred schools. Mira didn’t answer either. He had about twenty goddamn minutes before he lost his mind. 

Hissing through his teeth, he grabs his gym bag from the corner of his room and leaves. The guys in the living room playing FIFA didn’t ask any questions as Wooyoung basically sprinted through the front door. He always goes to the gym in the morning, at the brink of dawn, when the sun is spreading over the horizon, he’s never gone at night. He figures he’ll do cardio, sprint off the thoughts, the feelings, the ache in his dick that he can’t satisfy with his own hand. 

He plugs his phone in after turning over the engine, and the moment his audio connects, it picks up right where she left off.

“I feel like men are insecure about it, and they shouldn’t be. It’s like circumcision, women don’t give a fuck if you have foreskin, as long as you keep it clean. Please, for the love of god, keep it clean–”

He curses as he rips the chord out of his phone. Fuck that. He’ll drive to the gym in fucking silence.

The gym is busy, as he knew it would be, he despises the gym when it's busy. That’s why he goes in the morning, when no one else on campus is awake, only the really smart types who have days jam packed full of shit that require brain energy. That’s what an ass crack of dawn workout is for.

He barely looks up as he scans his ID, but when he catches a glimpse of the face that’s starting to bother him as much as Unscripted’s voice, it catches his attention. 

“Oh, hell no,” he groans. This is exactly the opposite of what he needs right now. “Why are you suddenly everywhere?”

You, behind the desk in your bright purple, collared shirt, scoff. “I’m everywhere? You’re everywhere.”

“Shouldn’t you be off getting married?” He can feel his smirk growing. “Pushing out babies and shit?”

“Fuck you,” you grumble, leaning back into the opposite side of the desk. “Shouldn’t you be off giving someone chlamydia?”

“You need to drop that now,” Wooyoung points at you. “I don’t have chlamydia.”

“Aw, is the big-shot whore bothered by my jokes?” you pout, using the worst case of baby-voice Wooyoung’s ever heard. His ears seem to frown, too.

“Big-shot whore?” Wooyoung repeats, face morphing into disappointment. “We need to work on your insults if bantering is going to become our thing.”

“We don’t have a thing,” you’re quick to answer. “There is no we, we does not exist. Go snort a line of pre-workout.”

Wooyoung grins, humored by your irritated expression. “Did he propose yet? Does he have a ring in his underwear drawer? Is he just dying to pop the question? Wait, let me guess: moissanite, set in sterling silver.”

“You’re an asshole,” you gruff, turning away from him like you had work to do. Wooyoung knows you’re not even reading the words on the paper you’re staring at.

He can’t help himself. He walks around the desk until he’s in front of you again and asks, “Does your boyfriend know you almost passed out when he told you his idea of your future?”

“No,” you respond without even looking up at him.

His grin widens. “Is it because he’s boring? Is that why you don’t want to marry him?”

“I do want to marry him,” you finally look up, eyes pointed, gaze angry. Wooyoung’s grin only spreads. “I just don’t want to marry him next fucking year. I think he’s insane for wanting to.”

Wooyoung’s lower lip folds over like he might start fake crying out of cuteness, “How sweet. He wants to lock you down after graduation so he doesn’t have to go wife-hunting while becoming an MD.”

Your face goes flat. “How do you know he’s pre-med?”

“I’m well-connected,” he shrugs. He just has Instagram. “Have you proposed that he doesn’t propose until he’s working?”

“Yes,” you turn again, ignoring his comedic wording, crossing to the other side of the desk as another gym-goer walks inside. You watch as they scan in their ID, what information pops up on the screen. When they walk away, you turn to him again, “Why are you so interested? Shouldn’t you be lifting by now?”

“I’m just absolutely perplexed trying to figure out how you’re going to marry a guy who doesn’t fuck you right.” Wooyoung’s leaning over the counter now, arms crossed, ankles crossed beneath it. Right at home. “Isn’t that, like, a huge part of being with someone forever? Great sex?”

You throw your hands on your hips, “Sex really is all you think about, isn’t it?”

“Humor me,” Wooyoung replies.

You sigh. “I’m wondering how I’m going to do it, too. You told me the night at the party that if I’m already bored with my sex life, then my relationship isn’t going to last. That’s kinda haunting me, even though you’re you, and a relationship is so much more than just sex.”

“Have you tried anything else, other than trying to fuck him in my bedroom?”

Wooyoung watches your cheeks flush in real time. You mutter, “I tried fucking him in the bathroom of Lucky Penny.”

Wooyoung laughs, genuine and true. “Everyone’s fucked at Lucky Penny. He wouldn’t do it?” You shake your head, and Wooyoung ties his lips to one side, shooting you an apologetic stare. “Man, I don’t think he’s fixable.”

“He doesn’t need to be fixed, Wooyoung,” you scold, running a hand through your hair. “There are so many other great, perfect things about him. Sex is the only area where— why am I even telling you this? I should not be confiding in you right now.”

Wooyoung stands, “What else are big-shot whores for, other than to fuck and give advice about fucking?” He’s smiling, but you both know there’s some truth to it.

“Go hit a PR or something,” you shoo him off with a dust of your fingers, turning around.

And surprisingly, he listens. He grabs his headphones from his bag, connecting his phone before putting them over his ears, walking towards the row of treadmills.

“I, personally, love a dick that curves upward. I know I said missionary is for lovers, but if a dick is curved—and even though you don’t love him—you’re going to finish more times in that one session than with your vibrators, and that’s my why.”

At the sound of her voice, he almost rips his headphones off and throws them in the trash. But now that he’s being spoken to personally, and being praised, he throws his bag against the wall, hops on the treadmill, and raises both the incline and speed.

“The reason why there’s different positions for curved dicks? Well, we never learned this in Sex Ed, and some of my listeners, I’ve come to find out, are seriously lacking in the female-genitalia knowledge department.”

Blah blah blah. It’s like he’s watching a repeat episode from one of those nineties sitcoms, he knows all the words, he can follow along like he’s reading the script. But even though his phone is in front of him, resting on the little ledge below the screen of the treadmill, he doesn’t reach for it to turn it off. 

“That little recap was for those who didn’t listen to my squirting episode. And if you did, you get a recap anyways, because I think everyone should have it burned to memory where exactly you should stimulate to get your partner off. If you’ve never had a penetrative orgasm, or your curved-dick partner has never given you one, have them listen to this, and you’ll never wish for anything again.”

He’s gotta give it to her, she does know her shit. Wooyoung wonders if he’s met her, if he’s ever fucked her before. He comes to the conclusion that he would know if he fucked her, he’s had some great lays before, even incredible ones, but she seems different. In the sense that it would be memorable, he’d come back to that night in his mind, those nights he only has his fist and his cock. Those nights would be dedicated to her, and her terrifyingly vast knowledge of human anatomy and orgasms. 

He stays on the treadmill for an hour, burning through the soles of his sneakers and yet another podcast episode. The topic was making out, which felt really adolescent, but actually had some decent tips that even Wooyoung hasn’t thought of before. Tucking the tips into his back pocket, he throws his headphones back into his bag, wipes down the treadmill, and chugs his water on his way back to the front. 

You’re still there, arms crossed, looking like you hate the world.

Wooyoung smiles as he leans over the counter. “I have an idea.”

You smack your teeth. “Great, I’m about to lose brain cells.”

“Shut up,” he quips. “Why don’t you have your boyfriend listen to that podcast that’s going around campus? Unscripted?” 

Your face falls impossibly further. “What? No, he doesn’t even watch porn, he would never listen to a sex podcast.”

Wooyoung snorts. “A man in his twenties who doesn’t watch porn? I can’t tell if you’re stupid for believing that or if this guy is secretly super religious.”

“Neither,” you snap. “Leave. Your workout is over.”

“How do you know?” He pops his brows, suddenly offended. “Maybe I’m taking a quick break.”

“Then do it somewhere else,” you shoo him away again, fingers sweeping the air. “And never talk to me about that podcast again.”

“Damn, are you super religious or something?” he asks.

“Wooyoung,” you warn.

“Fine, damn, fine.”

Wooyoung is home for exactly two hours before his night goes to shit.

He showered immediately upon walking through the door, which was a relief, but after laying in his bed and realizing he was in fact not getting laid tonight, the voice in the back of his mind started reminding him of every devious, terrible thing he’s ever done.

That was a strong contender for ruining his night. Instead, he picked himself up, went downstairs to the kitchen, and cleaned up. He did the dishes, loaded the dishwasher, cleaned every surface, even organized the top shelf of the pantry. The other guys knew not to talk to him– they knew when Wooyoung was in this mood, it was best to let him think on it, get it out of his system, rather than to bombard him with every question, every distraction they could think up.

He made himself food, allowed himself something comforting after all the extra cardio he did at the gym. That made it half better. But the real damning of his night happened about thirty minutes later, when he was in his bed, fist wrapped around his cock, fantasizing about the night he had a monarch butterfly in his bed, there were three knocks at his door.

“Busy!” Wooyoung called out, his voice shaky, so close to the edge he could taste it.

“It’s me.” You.

You.

He groans out his frustration, his orgasm that he could taste, now gone. Floating away in the wind, with the rest of his hopes and fucking dreams. Pulling up his sweats, sitting up in his bed, he calls out, “Come in.”

You spill into his room. Literally. You push the door open and it slams behind you, you waste no time throwing your bag to the floor and sitting on the foot of his bed. It takes you all of six seconds to put the pieces together.

“Why are you sweaty?” you ask. Wooyoung doesn’t answer, his face bored. “Why don’t you have a shirt on, and why are you sweaty?”

“I’m in my room, lights off, tissues on my nightstand,” he answers plainly. “What do you think I was doing?”

Like a skittish cat, you jump off his bed, yelping a disgusted noise. “And you just let me come in here? Oh my god, go wash your hands or something, that’s gross, Wooyoung.”

“It’s natural,” he shrugs, leaning back into his pillows. “It’s probably what you do immediately after fucking your boyfriend.” He made himself laugh with that one. You stay silent. His face drops. “Oh shit, am I right? I didn’t mean to be right.”

“Fuck you, whatever,” you snap. “I’m not here to bicker. I need your help.”

Wooyoung groans, head tipping back into his pillows, he already knows what that means. “God, go to fucking counceling or something, stop involving me in your relationship bullshit.”

“You were interested earlier,” you argue. “You brought this upon yourself the night you listened to me in the hallway. You should have told me to fuck off.”

Mumbling to himself, he repeats, “I need to stop being nice. I need to stop being kind.”

“You told me to listen to that podcast earlier, but she thinks like a woman, right? She is a woman, I mean. I need to think like a man,” you’re rambling, pacing at the foot of his bed. “You’re a man, Yeonjun’s mind is closer to yours than mine, like, biologically. I need to think like you. Or I need you to tell me what he’s thinking. I don’t know, but what I do know is that I can’t live my life like this, and I can’t be in a sexless marriage. You have to help me.”

“I am the last person on earth you want to help you,” Wooyoung announces. “I already told you to leave him, what the fuck else do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want to leave him, asshole.” You’re finally still at the center of the foot of his bed, arms wide on either side of you. “I said he doesn’t need to be fixed, but maybe just a little… shaping.”

“To the salon,” Wooyoung responds, in the same singsong tone from the Barbie movie. When your face bends in confusion, he asks, “Oh, we weren’t quoting that sound?”

“I need to fundamentally change my boyfriend’s brain,” you say matter-of-factly. “No, I’m not quoting a stupid video.”

Wooyoung sits up. “So there’s zero chance of you leaving the Jesus freak?”

“He’s not a Jesus freak,” you bite back, but take a step closer to his bed. “But no, there’s not. I love him.”

Wooyoung groans his frustration in a short, harsh noise. “God, fuck,” he runs his hands over his face roughly before they land on his bedspread again. “Okay, what do you want me to do? What’s the quickest way to get you out of my fucking bedroom, again?”

You grin, accomplished as you sit on the foot of his bed again. “I think my first order of business is making sex fun again, like how it was in the beginning. The marriage and baby shit I won’t make you deal with.”

“Thanks,” he responds, tone dripping in sarcasm. “Making sex fun… are you sure you can’t ask any of the six girls I fucked to help you with this? They’re all your friends, right?”

“Do you know how embarrassing it is to tell your friends that your sex life sucks?” you ask, and it’s not rhetorical. You don’t give him time to answer. “You already know, you witnessed it first-hand. Just help me, Wooyoung, something simple, something I can do tonight–”

“Edge him or something,” Wooyoung answers like he’s shoving the words out of his mouth. “You want him to act unlike himself, right? Push him to the limit? Then actually push him to the limit, and see what he does.”

Your face softens. Mumbling, almost under your breath, you wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Put yourself in control,” Wooyoung continues. “Make him obey you. Is he usually the dominant one?” You nod, coy all of the sudden. “Then you’re going to act unlike yourself, too. Show him what you want. Make him work for it.”

He watches you swallow, he can see the flush on your cheeks even under the dim lighting of his bedroom. His head tilts, a smirk growing, “Are you shy right now? Shy like a fucking virgin.”

“Shut up, Wooyoung,” you bark, but all the bite is gone into thin air, just like his lost orgasm. “I just… I don’t act like this with him. Loud and rude and stuff, I’m not like that with him. What if he doesn’t like it?”

“Like you said, you need to think like a man,” he finds himself soothing you, maybe he can consider this his one good deed of the day. “I’m a man, and I’m giving you sound advice. Try it. If he doesn’t like it, he won't leave you. If he does like it, he’ll probably grab the ring from his underwear drawer.”

You smile, the smallest laugh tumbling out of your lips. “I fucking hate you. If he proposes, you’re getting blamed for that, too.”

Wooyoung doesn’t even realize he’s smiling, too. “You’re really weird for coming to my house while I’m jerking off, by the way.”

“I know where you live, just felt easier to come here. Biceps let me in,” you shrug. “And I didn’t know you’d be jerking off.”

“Biceps?” Wooyoung pops a brow before realizing, “Oh, San.”

“I’m gonna go edge my boyfriend,” you announce, standing from his bed. Grabbing your bag from the floor, you give him a wave, “I’ll update you.”

“Please don’t,” Wooyoung calls after you. “It’s getting really fucking weird now, Virgin.”

“Expect an update!” you yell through his closed door, after you’ve shut it behind you.

It takes a minute before Wooyoung realizes he’s smiling, and he quickly wipes it right off his face. Getting cozy under his covers again, he reaches for the lube on his nightstand, and picks back up right where he left off.

Putting in your earrings has never presented more of a struggle until now. 

You’re chipping the side of your nails, your ears are irritated, the stack doesn’t look good, and you can’t find your favorite hoops. In short, you’re a disaster, a silent one. 

Because pissed is not the word, you're sure the word you’re looking for doesn’t exist. 

You continue to put on your jewelry, give up on perfecting your earring stack–focus on your bracelet bangles instead. The led bathroom light at hotels always hides blemishes well, but you know the real look will be shown in the car mirror. 

You look damn good regardless, and you’re about to make him sick to his stomach. You’re one to sweep things under the rug, but your blood is boiling, it matches the deep maroon of your dress. Your collarbones on display, a slit so high you think about pinning the threads together. 

You go to clasp the necklace around your neck, you almost drop it after you’re hit with the most annoying memory. 

The memory of walking in on Mingi getting his makeup done before a shoot, the artist engrossed in conversation with him, hands lingering too long on his jaw, his smile showing all thirty-two, her tripping over him, and her hands landing on his thighs. 

The moment when Mingi glances up to see you holding his favorite soup and vitamin water, your ritual, your routine. He doesn’t acknowledge what just happened, doesn’t think it was a big deal. But you’re a girl, and you’re a girl with a very hot, very tall, very talented, lusted-after boyfriend.

This was definitely a big deal. 

Mingi came home later that night, continued with the dismissal of it all. His words, “it’s just work, baby. No issues.”

You nod, turn back over in bed, you gave him no more words. He assumed all was well, that no response was a great response in his book. You fell asleep scheming as he joined you and engulfed you in his arms that night. 

You try to push the memory to the back of your mind as you look at yourself again in the mirror, you’re genuinely satisfied with how you look. Is it a little skimpy for a company event? Possibly, maybe…but that’s not the point. The point is to see Mingi rage.

You arrive at the venue alone, you were gifted separate rooms for the event. While you love him, you’re grateful for the time spent apart. It’s very upscale, it’s the annual awards event, everyone is here. Flowy table cloths, organized cutlery, dimmed chandelier lights exude class in the air. 

You’re already thinking about getting fast food afterwards because you know the finger food about to be served will not be filling in the slightest. 

Tables are assigned, but artist partners are seated at the same table. You immediately glance over the makeup artist's table. Gross, and scan for the boy with blonde hair with light pink tips. 

You find Mingi talking in a corner, a glass in his hand. Not sure who he’s conversing with, but he looks good. Hair has grown out longer, his suit fits him in all the right places, you’re salivating even when you’re supposed to be angry. 

He still hasn’t looked your way as you still stand near the entrance until a hand graces your back, rings sending a shiver up your spine. The soft voice didn’t fall on deaf ears.

“Standing here like a deer in headlights, huh?” You could feel the smile in Hongjoong’s voice without turning around to even look at him. 

“That obvious am I?”

“Very, come sit over here. Mingi is at the same table as me.” Hongjoong keeps his hand on the small of your back as he guides you to the table, pulls out your chair for you, and sits right next to you. His scent is intoxicating, always has been lately. 

Chatter is loud around you, both sitting in silence as you make eye contact with Mingi, still standing in the corner. You look away immediately, you don’t smile, don’t flutter your lashes. Just a blank face is all he gets in your book. 

You know it’s eating him up inside by the way his body glitches between leaving his current conversation or approaching your table. But the formality has to remain due to the fact that there are eyes everywhere, the media is everywhere, and your body language is not very inviting. 

Time goes on for a little while in silence at the table, until Hongjoong turns towards you. You can tell he’s just as bored, just as unoccupied. 

“I have a needle and thread in my jacket pocket if you need it.”

You furrow your eyebrows at him, confused. Give him a huh sound for him to elaborate a little further. 

“That slit. Too high.” You laugh, genuinely. You know it’s high, but you know you’re not receiving an award, so there shouldn’t be as many eyes on you compared to the other people that are here. 

“Bothering you?”

Hongjoong smirks, “a little.”

You lean in, “Tragic, hope you can find a remedy. Your needle and thread are not needed, dork.” Hongjoong laughs, leans back, and keeps his eyes on you. You match his intensity, the conversation flows, your laughs are free, the focus is all on him. 

“You ever crave something so bad, like dessert or a fruit? Like I’d love some cherries right now.” Hongjoong asks the question, seriously, it’s not rhetorical. He asks while also trying to find the answer for himself. 

You lean in, chuckle a bit, because cherries feel like such a random thing to crave right now. “I do, I crave lots of things. But I normally don’t wallow in the want of it. Pretty sure you could get some cherries somewhere around here.”

Hongjoong smiles and nods in agreement. “You’re right, you look like one. Looks like I found it–you look good tonight if someone hasn’t let you know already.”

Your pulse fastens, he’s smooth with his words. The only thing you can do is smile, because you’d be lying if you said you didn’t love the way he spoke. 

Mingi still hasn’t come over to greet you or even sit down, he is constantly glancing over his shoulder to see you fawning over his bandmate. Memories of the three of you before flooding his mind aren't helping as he clutches his glass. 

Hongjoong isn’t dumb, you never thought he was. He’s very quick to catch on to things, knows there’s something brewing underneath, but he’s not going to say a word because you’re beautiful and you’re paying attention to just him.

You’re both in the middle of laughing about when Jongho made Mingi chase their car when Hongjoong’s hand lands on your thigh. His hand lingers, seems not to care about any wandering eyes. You don’t pull away, you shift a little in your seat, his hand brushing your skin, the slit of your dress rising even more. 

His hands are warm, dainty with rings adorning them. His fingers spread with a firm grip, if he holds on any longer, he may leave an imprint. You look down at his hand, tracing around his hand with your fingers. Your thighs subtly press together, Hongjoong takes note of it, the eye contact between you two lasts for about thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds of such charged energy, what you’ve created. 

Mingi’s daily glance at you catches it, the way Hongjoong is leaning over, but his eyes, looking up at you, see the placement of hands. His jaw tightens, and he sets his drink down by a nearby podium. His body is completely tense, no longer relaxed, brushing it all off is not going to suffice much longer. You can feel it across the room, but you still don’t focus on Mingi, you hone all of your attention to Hongjoong.

At this point, Hongjoong is painfully aware of the energy bouncing off you two. 

Mingi tries to catch your attention anytime he can, shifts in your peripheral vision constantly, talks a little louder than normal. You pay him no mind. You keep turning towards Hongjoong, you’ve scooted your chair so much it’s touching his. 

“So any new gossip, any new love interest? I saw that rumor about you being with—”

Hongjoong stops you, fingers pressing into your leg as he talks. “Nope, just rumors…Not really interested.” He’s testing you, your reaction, seeing if what he’s doing is okay, also knows you asked him a loaded question. 

From onlookers, it looks like two friends chatting it up. But between the three of you, you know it’s quite the opposite. 

Your heart is racing, his touch bringing memories you haven’t acknowledged in a while. You’re suffocating, not in a bad way, but in a way of not knowing what to do. You stand from the table, smooth out your dress, huff out a bit of air. “Bathroom real quick, be right back.”

Hongjoong nods. He doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest, goes back to looking at his phone as you move through the standing crowds to find the bathroom. 

You check yourself in the bathroom mirror, despite your blood rushing, you still look good. You have no clue when the actual announcing of the awards is going to start, and killing the time with Hongjoong has put you in a very, very tough predicament.

You’re in the bathroom longer than anticipated, Hongjoong stands up from his table to go find you, making sure no one has cornered you or to make sure you haven’t fallen into the toilet. The latter wouldn’t surprise him. 

He’s nosy by nature, but so curious when it comes to you. He wants to know what’s really going on with you. 

As you push the door open, you’re met with Hongjoong’s face, his hand up, looking like he was about to knock. You step back a bit as he caught you off guard, and the fact that it’s the women’s restroom. “You okay in here?”

You think for a second, you’re in private, and you can tell he’s offering an out that you’re not about to take. The tension is too much for you. “No–no. Not at fucking all.”

Hongjoong motions for you to step further into the bathroom some more, he steps fully in, closing the door behind him. He steps closer to you, concern in his eyes. “What’s going on? You’ve been in here for a bit.”

“Actually, nothing, nothing. I’m good. We should get back out there.” You’re lying, he knows it. Neither of you moves toward the door. 

“No, we’re not doing this. What is it really? Mingi? Me?” Hongjoong’s voice has gone even softer, it cradles you in a way that makes you want to spill your guts to him. But your expression is what gives it all away, that all of this is about someone else and not him. 

“Is this—” He starts, then stops. Moves closer to you. “Does he know?”  You shake your head, shoulders kind of slouch over. Hongjoong pushes your shoulders back up, fixes your posture as his thumbs come up to brush over your cheeks. 

You don’t push back, you lean into him, and your body language is all telling. Hongjoong feels it, he lets his hand linger, his eyes pouring into yours, red creeping up his neck and over his shirt collar. 

“You said you’d wanted cherries, right? Would you eat one without permission even though the lips it’s meant for are standing out there?” 

Hongjoong’s hand comes up to caress your collarbones, then moves up to gently squeeze your neck. He’s breathing hard, nose is flared as he bites his lip. His restraint is slipping away, but it’s completely gone when you go to smash your lips onto his. 

Your tongues are tied when the swinging of the bathroom door is heard. Hongjoong didn’t lock it. The only thing locked is your eyes with Mingi’s. 

Hongjoong’s back is to Mingi, but he can feel the looming presence behind him when he feels you pull back a bit. Knows it’s Mingi behind him, but he’s not profusely apologizing to you, he’s frozen, doesn’t move. 

Mingi’s eyes immediately go dark. He doesn’t say anything, everyone is standing in silence. All you can feel is his fury, the possessiveness as he clenches his hands. The way he’s looking at the back of Hongjoong is nothing short of scary, his eyes don’t leave him. 

Hongjoong slowly turns around, steps back a little to look at Mingi. He knows the line he’s crossing, Mingi had given permission before–not this time, and that’s where he fucked up. You have not moved a limb, part of you feels guilty, and the other part is turned on. 

Mingi’s eyes do not leave either of yours as he reaches back to lock the restroom door, effectively trapping all of you together. 

“Having fun, dear?” He looks directly at you, fingers motion for you to come. You don’t move, which makes him laugh a bit, he’s entertained and pissed at the same time. He then begins to walk past Hongjoong to get to you. 

Mingi's hands wrap around your throat before you can even breathe. He’s mad, but the bulge in his pants also lets you know he’s fucking horny. His thumb presses harder against the evident vein in your neck, feeling your fast pulse.

“You think I didn’t see that shit?” His voice goes lower, “every single fucking second of it.” 

Hongjoong hasn’t moved, he chooses to wait and watch because he knows this dance, knows better than to speak first. 

Mingi’s other hand slides down your side, his fingers catch on the slit of the dress, dragging it higher up your thigh. “This isn’t how it went down last time, baby.” Your breath hitches, the memory of being in this position before, but this time, there’s no kind of negotiation.

There’s no couch or soft blankets, a track on loop with your voice on it. Right now, it’s just cold tile, locked doors, and the threat of industry sitting outside the door. “Mingi–” 

He cuts you off with his lips, his tongue enters without full permission, teeth catch your bottom lip enough to make you bleed. When he pulls back, your gloss is smeared all over his mouth. 

“Don’t.” Mingi turns his head slightly, glancing back to Hongjoong, finally acknowledging his presence. “You. Come here.”

Hongjoong doesn’t move with hesitancy, he steps so close to you that you can feel the pure lust radiating off of him. His hands find your waist like he knows what sets you off, what gets you going, and the reality of it, he actually does. 

Mingi sees it, how you move like familiars. The way Hongjoong’s fingers press into your hip, that spot that makes you a little whiny, and arch into the touch.

“You remember how she sounds.” Mingi’s voice is rough, you can tell he’s on edge.

Hongjoong gulps, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah. I do.” 

“Lovely.” Mingi’s hand slides from your throat down to your chest, palming your breast through the fabric. “Then you know what happens when she gets what she wants.”

You’re closer to the wall now, you head falls back against it as both of them close in on you. Mingi’s mouth is all over your neck, biting down hard. You won’t be able to go back into the award ceremony, he knows this. All the while, Hongjoong’s hand slips under the slit of your dress, trailing up.

“Guys–” You gasp, and Mingi lets out a laugh. 

Mingi shuts you up, yanking down the top part of your dress, exposing your breasts, your necklace swaying back and forth between them. 

“Fuck,” Hongjoong breathes out, eyes locked on your chest. His hand doesn’t falter, he cups your breast, thumb brushing over your nipple until it hardens under his touch, the coldness of the restroom adding to it all. 

Mingi’s eyes zone in on Hongjoong’s movements, “You’re not shy anymore.”

“Mmm. Should I be?” Hongjoong’s voice stays steady as his other hand moves under your dress to graze the edge of your panties. You gasp, hips jerking. Mingi catches your chin, forcing you to look at him. “Eyes on me.”

Hongjoong doesn’t care, his fingers slip inside your panties, finding you already wet, and your eyes flutter shut immediately. “She’s leaking,” he murmurs. He drags two fingers through your folds, “just like last time.”

Mingi’s grip on your jaw tightens, “Don’t fucking compare.”

“How come?” Hongjoong’s fingers circle your clit, and you whimper. “Her body acts the same way, gets this wet when she’s between us.”

“Hongjoong.” Mingi puts his mouth back onto yours before you can even finish your sentence. His kiss is brutal while Hongjoong continues to scissor you with his fingers. You look like a mess, shaking already, and overwhelmed by the sensations.

Mingi pulls back, breathing hard. “You think you can make her cum before I do?”

Hongjoong’s eyes flash, then a quick smirk on his lips. “I swear I’ve already done that once before.”

Mingi goes still, his hand sliding down to grip your hip harder. “When?”

“Few weeks ago, actually.” Hongjoong’s fingers push inside you even more, and you cry out. “Came on my tongue while you were in that merch meeting or whatever.”

You’re blue in the face from the lack of air that just left your body, you’re shocked, but also laughing on the inside. Knows lying to Mingi makes him go harder, and that’s exactly what you want–what you need.

“Fuck you, fuck this.” Mingi yanks your dress up higher, exposing your legs completely. “She tell you that, or you just running your mouth?”

“She didn’t have to.” Hongjoong continues with his lie as he curls his fingers, hitting your spot. “I could taste how much she needed it.” 

Mingi’s hand joins Hongjoong’s between your legs, both hands stretching you wider as fingers glide. You sob, you’re losing the muscle to stand up. “Mingi—fuck, I can’t.”

“Oh no no. Yes, the fuck you can.” His voice is harsh in your ear, “You wanted his attention so bad tonight. Guess what, sweetie—now you got both of us.”

Hongjoong’s thumb finds your clit while Mingi’s fingers pump inside you, they’re working together instead of against one another. Your thighs tremble, gasping as you struggle for air. “She’s close,” Hongjoong says as he watches your face with great intent. “Look at her.”

That only makes Mingi mad all over again. “You don’t get to make her cum I can tell you that much.”

“Then stop me.”

Mingi’s hand moves away and spins you around, making Hongjoong remove his hand. Mingi presses your chest against the wall, your dress bunches around your waist, ass on display for the both of them. 

Mingi unbuckles his belt, the sound of the zipper being the loudest thing in the room. Hongjoong moves to your side, his hand sliding up your spine. “You good?”

You nod, and he leans in to kiss you while Mingi gets behind you. His cock presses against you, thick and hard as ever, and he pushes in without giving you any warning. You pull away from the kiss to scream his name when Mingi slams in.

“Yeah baby, say my name, not his.” 

Hongjoong turns your face toward him again, making you maintain eye contact with him while Mingi fucks the living daylights out of you. He twiddles with your necklace as it sways back and forth from the rough pace Mingi has set. 

“You’re so pretty like this.” Hongjoong whispers, breath hitting your face.

Mingi’s hand fists in your hair, messing up the careful style you put it in for the night. He yanks your head back some more, “This pretty is mine.”

“Then why’d she let me kiss her tonight?” Hongjoong’s voice almost sounds amused. “Why’d she let me touch her at that table?”

Mingi’s hips stutter, and he grits through his teeth. “Because she wanted to piss me off.”

“Did it work?”

“Fuck yes, it worked obviously.” Mingi’s voice cracks, “I hated watching you touch her, hated seeing her smile at you like that.”

Your heart is pounding, you wouldn’t be surprised if you saw it on the tile floor at this point. Hongjoong’s thumb brushes your lower lip, smudging the gloss even more. “She’s got you fucked up,” Hongjoong says softly.

“Royally fucked up.” Mingi agrees, and his pace doesn’t slow, his cock driving into you with no mercy. “And you’re not helping.”

Hongjoong looks at Mingi to smirk, “wasn’t trying to.”

You’re close, the pressure is building, walls constantly clenching around Mingi’s cock, he feels it, and his hand slides around to rub your clit in rough circles. “Cum for me, and only me.”

Hongjoong disregards his words. He moves to your neck, sucking hard. Trying to leave a mark that overlaps with Mingi’s. Hongjoong’s hand then goes to cover Mingi’s, pressing even harder against your clit. “You can do it for both of us.”

Your orgasm hits you hard, Mingi groans as you puls around him. He doesn’t last much longer as he spills everything he has inside you. Your legs shake, and Mingi rests along your back as his hands grip your hips. 

Hongjoong steps back slowly, hand trailing down your arm before he lets go completely. His lips and face are left with the evidence of you.

Mingi pulls out carefully, the sound echoing. He adjusts your dress before turning you back around. His eyes are still dark like he’s not done, like there’s no way he’d stop right here. “We’re not finished,” his thumb brushes your swollen lip.

Hongjoong adds on, sitting on the opposite wall, watching everything unfold in front of him. “Didn’t think we were.”

“Go out first,” Mingi says to Hongjoong, “we’ll follow in a minute.”

Hongjoong fixes his collar and slips out the door without another word. The second it clicks shut, Mingi’s hand is back in your hair. He yanks you to face him directly. “Knees now.” Mingi takes off his jacket, puts it on the floor, points to where you need to be

You sink down slowly onto the cloth of his jacket. He’s still half hard, still slick with you and him, and the sight makes your mouth water. “Open up for me.” He doesn’t ease in, just pushes into your mouth till you’re gagging around him.

Your hands go straight to his thighs, nails digging in, but he doesn’t stop. He just holds you there as your eyes begin to water, makeup surely isn’t lasting. 

“You wanted to make me so fucking jealous, to let him touch you like that–just a damn slut.” You can’t breathe, just gagging as he pulls back and thrusts deeper. Spit drips down your chin, he wipes some up with his thumb and pops it into his mouth, mascara’s running even more.

“Can you say anything? You were a fucking chatterbox at the table. Or are you too full of my cock right now?” 

He pulls back to give you a small breath to speak, “It was worth it.” He pushes right back in, your throat burns, and your jaw aches, but you don’t pull away. You take it all. 

When he pulls out completely, you’re gasping, drool and cum smeared across your lips, he tilts your chin up, forcing you to look at him.

“Shit. Go fix yourself,” he’s still angry, you can hear it in his voice, “then get back to the damn table.”

You nod, legs shaking as you stand, your reflection is scary to look at, it’s progressively gotten worse. Lips swollen, eyes glossed over, throat a fucking abstract painting. Mingi tucks himself back in, adjusting his shirt. “And don’t take too long.” He leaves right after.

You stand there for a moment, still tasting him on your tongue, until you get a text.

joong: vip lounge. upstairs, now

You don’t listen to Mingi out of pure rebellion, out of still being agitated. You head in the opposite direction from the main ceremony. 

The lounge is dimmed, plush velvet couches. It’s meant for the donors and execs of the event, but it’s empty since everyone has filtered into the main room. You can hear the muffled sound of applause starting downstairs as you push open the door. 

Hongjoong’s already inside, leaning against the back of the couch. He straightens when he sees you, eyes looking over your appearance that you put in no effort to fix. 

“Fuck–” he breathes, “he really–”

You walk up to him, grab his tie, and pull him down into a kiss. He groans into your mouth, tasting Mingi on your tongue, and you feel him get harder. His hands find your waist, pulling you against him. “You taste like him,” he whispers, and he’s not complaining. 

“I know. Now you’re going to make me taste like you.” You push him back onto the couch, his thighs spread and cock straining against his dress pants. You straddle him, and his hands grip your thighs.

You pull out your phone.

“What are you–”

You dial Mingi, and he picks up on the first ring. “Baby? Where are you? The ceremony’s starting—” 

You lean forward and kiss Hongjoong slowly, tongue sliding against his while Mingi’s voice booms through the speaker. “Hello? You there?”

You pull back from Hongjoong’s mouth, breathless. “I’m here, honey.”

“Where the fuck did you go? I’ve been waiting–”

“Wanna hear something?” You interrupt his thoughts, tired of him having his way.

There’s a pause, then you can hear the weariness in his voice. “What?”

You set the phone down on the armrest, speaker on, and grind against Hongjoong’s cock. He hisses, hands tightening. 

“I get to make my own special track now,” Hongjoong says, eyes locked on yours. He pushes your dress to expose the wet mess between your legs. Silence on the other end of the phone until Mingi speaks again. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Vip lounge,” you say, rolling your hips again. “Upstairs.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“You’re going to fucking listen.” Your hand slides down to palm Hongjoong through his pants, and he groans. “You’re going to sit through that ceremony and smile for the cameras while I let him fuck me. Understand?”

Barely audible over the phone, Mingi groans. “Fuck.”

Hongjoong’s hands are yanking your panties to the side, fingers sliding through your slick folds again. “Jesus, you’re so soaked still,” he says loud enough for the phone to pick up. “You this wet from him? Or from knowing he’s listening?”

“Both,” you gasp as two fingers push inside you. Through the phone, you hear Mingi’s sharp breath. Hongjoong pumps his fingers slowly, curling them upwards, and you whimper. “She’s dripping down my hand,” like he’s narrating an audiobook for Mingi, “clenching around my fingers. You should feel how tight she is.”

“Hongjoong—” Mingi’s voice is strained.

“What?” Hongjoong pulls his fingers out, sucks them clean. His eyes roll back, “fuck she tastes good. You already knew that, though.”

You fumble with his belt, can barely focus as you shake with need. He helps you to free his cock, he’s leaking and flushed. You wrap your hand around him, stroking, and he groans. 

“She’s got her hand on my cock now,” Hongjoong says, head falling back again, “stroking me, fuck–tighter, baby, just like that.” 

You listen and twist your wrist the way he likes, and precum beads at the tip, you swipe your thumb through it, bringing it to your lips. 

“She just licked my precum off her thumb,” He’s still reporting everything with a wrecked voice, “while looking right at me.”

Through the phone, you hear someone speaking to Mingi. His voice is strained when he responds, “Yeah. I’m fine. Just give me a sec.”

You try your hardest not to laugh, you go to line Hongjoong up and sink down onto his cock in one motion. The sound you make is desperate and loud. 

“Holy hell,” he chokes out. You start moving, riding him hard. Your dress is bunched up, tits bouncing in his face with every thrust, Hongjoong is going cross-eyed.

You’re so wet the squelches fill the room, you know Mingi can hear it through the speaker. “Hongjoong–” you gasp, “fuck you’re so deep.”

“Yeah?” he thrusts up to meet your pace, “tell him. Tell him how deep i am.”

“So deep,” you moan, much louder now. “Filling me up–fuck.”

Mingi makes a choked noise, Hongjoong’s hand comes up, wrapping around the necklace. It’s actually a necklace Mingi gifted you. He pulls it, using it as leverage to pull you down harder onto his cock. 

“This his?” 

You nod, eyes watering as he pulls tighter. “Damn. You really give no fucks.” He shifts you right away, flipping you onto your back, your legs wrap around his waist as he ruts into you deeper and harder. “Hongjoong, please–”

“Please, what?” He slows down, grinding deep as you whimper. “Say it loud enough for him to hear.” 

“Please harder—fuck I need it.”

He slams so hard the couch moves against the floor, his hand finds your clit, and rubs. Through the phone, Mingi’s voice has little control, “Hongjoong–”

“She’s close. She’s about to cum on this cock.”

“No–” Mingi starts, but you’re already losing it. Your body arches off the couch, a broken scream ripping from your throat. Hongjoong groans as you clench around him. You sob through it, Hongjoong’s name on your lips over and over, he keeps fucking you through it.

“Hey Mingi, she just came so hard she’s crying by the way.” There are tears streaming down your face, and it doesn’t stop. Hongjoong pulls out and bends you over the arm of the couch, then slams in from behind.

“Oh fuck–” you gasp, hands trying to find something to hold onto.

“One more for me–give me one more.” He fucks you brutally, skin slapping, his hand comes down on your ass, and you moan.

“She likes being spanked. Ooo Mingi, you got it good.” Mingi doesn’t answer, just breathes heavy through the phone. Hongjoong picks up the pace again, and you feel another orgasm coming. He overstimulates your clit, and you scream. 

Hongjoong pumps you a few more times before he’s spilling inside you, you feel every pulse and twitch, making you clench around him again. For a moment, you can only hear the mingling of heavy breathing between the three of you. 

Then downstairs, a loud sound of applause indicating someone has won an award. Hongjoong pulls out slowly, and you feel his cum start to drip down your legs. He collapses onto the couch, and you slump against the armrest, pure exhaustion. 

You reach over with an unsteady hand, picking up the phone. Your voice is completely wrecked. “He just came inside me…I can feel it dripping out.” Then you hang up.

Hongjoong laughs beside you. “He’s gonna get you for that.”

mymingithingi: ur gonna quit fuckin playin w/ me.

You stare at the screen with a smile, heart still racing, cum sticky between your thighs, then you toss the phone onto the couch and close your eyes for a quick power nap.

Thirty minutes later, you’re back at the table. You’ve cleaned up as best as one could, given the circumstances. You fixed your lip combo, covered up the marks as best you could, smoothed down your dress, tamed your hair. But there’s no hiding the tremor in your hands and the way you walk like you still have a cock stuck up your ass. 

 Mingi’s still seated, doesn’t look at you when you sit down beside him. The ceremony’s still going, someone’s giving an acceptance speech. 

Mingi’s hand slides under the table, finding your thigh. His grip is firm. “Smile, baby,” he says, deadly calm. “We’re being photographed.”

You smile, one flash and a click, then his hand moves higher, fingers pressing against the wet mess between your legs through your dress. 

“You’re going to sit here,” he leans in like he’s whispering sweet nothings, “and feel him dripping out of you, and you’re going to think about what happens when we get home.” 

You go still. His other hand comes up, adjusting your necklace, the one he gave you. The one Hongjoong used to leverage you with. Mingi straightens it carefully, gently, then leans in close enough so his lips brush your ear.

“At the end of the day, this is mine. And I’m going to remind you what the fucking definition of ‘mine’ means for the rest of the night.” He pulls back once more, smiles for the camera, and you realize your hands are shaking. 

Across the table, Hongjoong catches your eye. He still looks a mess, hair messy and tie loose. Mingi notices, and his hand tightens around you. 

“Both of you,” voice low enough that only you and Hongjoong hear. “When we leave here. Our place.”

Hongjoong only smiles, but your stomach is dropping into your ass. You thought tonight would get you even, would satiate your anger. Instead, you’ve made everything ten times worse.

Friday evening, the best time of your week. after working yourself to the brim all week, you can finally find the time to relax at the comforts of your own apartment.

as soon as you entered the entry way, you felt your shoulders drop down, a deep breath exiting your lungs. at last, some ease. walking through the living room, you made it to your bedroom, the light scent of citrus circling in the air. by the look of it, you had made it home first, no signs of your boyfriend around.

you take your time getting out of your work attire, lathering yourself in scented soaps and all kinds of other self-care. after washing your face, you stepped back your bedroom in your pink bathrobe, only to be positively surprised. at the foot of your bed sat a very familiar dark haired man, scrolling away on his phone. upon hearing your steps, his phone gets put down in seconds, gaze landing on you with that special grin of his.

"there's my princess" with a few more steps you made it to your boyfriend, burying your head in his chest as his tall form sucked you closer. the warmth of his skin covered you like a blanket, letting you sink against him.

"hi min" mingi chuckled at your mumbling, ruffling your hair as you sat back up in his lap. his hand traveled down your hair, caressing down your arm down to your thigh, leaving it sat there.

you were quick to get up though before he'd get the chance to be too handsy, making your way to your closet.

"i'll be ready in about 30 minutes yeah? that good?" you spoke to mingi over your shoulder, but unbeknownst to you, he had walked up with you, hands wrapping around your hips. you look back up at him with a knowing sigh before turning back to your clothes.

"you're in luck, we got a whole hour since yunho and his girlfriend are quote on quote definitely late" with a satisfied sound, you let mingi stay close as you skim through your options. then, an idea pops in your head.

"min, you like clothes a lot right" the man nods, taking his hands off you to lean on the closet door.

you definitely knew the answer to that one. mingi absolutely loved dressing up and clothes in general. tonight he was in a black top, and some dark jeans, as well to typical mingi style, dozens of accessories. ranging from rings, to necklaces to the three belts hugging his hipbones.

"what're you going after doll?" he chuckles with that knowing look in his eye.

"wanna help me dress up for tonight?" he raises a brow, interest certainly peaking. glancing over at your- only- pink closet, he nods with a wide toothy grin.

"anything i want?"'

"as long as i have something on my body, i think it will do min" rubbing his hands together like a hungry fly, mingi nods again.

"you got yourself a deal princess"

with a smile, you walk back to your bed, letting your boyfriend get to work. skimming through the rows of skirts and dresses, his hands testing all the fabrics, he starts throwing back some options enthusiastically. one dress smacks you right in the face causing you to groan in playful annoyance.

"oh min, it can't be this difficult!" he pleas his sorry's before twisting back around to work. mingis focus doesn't snap, tuning into your clothes like he's having visions of you in them.

eventually, after much consideration, mingi finally turns back to you, placing a piece of pink fabric in your hands. with a guiding nod, you open the folded pile, revealing a dress, a rather special dress at that. this is the dress you wore on your first date with mingi, if it counted as a date. you had been out all night with your friends, ending up spending it in bed with mingi - sleeping next to one another. inseparable since.

"min i cant possibly wear this to a restaurant, this is too revealing!" he groans, sitting down next to you on the bed, one hand on your plush thigh, squeezing the skin.

"you did say anything i want doll" you chuckle, punching him on his side. you know he's just playing, but to be fair, you did love this dress.

it was light pink, with lace details on the neckline, low-cut, the type that hangs on your body like a light hug. mingis hand moves back and forth on your thigh, a soothing touch. but from his touchiness, to his choice of dress, you knew something was bubbling up inside him- as well as yourself.

with slow gradual movements, mingis fingers linger higher, gracing up your thighs, burning against your flesh. an airy sigh passes your lips, hand tightening around his wrist.

"alright, but you can help me put it on" mingis satisfactory hum rumbles against your skin as he places an openmouthed kiss on your jaw, one down your neck before turning you around, slipping off your pink robe with ease.

exposing the skin of your bare shoulders, mingis mouth attaches to the area, plump lips tracing a pattern. with a shiver, you stand up with guidance, your fully naked body now upon mingis gaze, his hands tight on your hipbones. raising to tower over you, he turns you around to meet his deepend gaze, tongue gliding alongst his lips.

”raise your hands baby”

doing as asked, he does a satisfactory nod before raising the pink flimsy fabric, slipping it down your body. mingis hands move down alongside the fabric, fingertips toying on your hardened buds of your nipples, causing your breath to catch in your throat.

his hot breath looms near yours, eyes dazed and slightly closed as one of his hands pauses on your hip again, the other trails further, the heat of his wide fingertips caressing over your clothed pussy.

”min- we got places to be” your words come out less strong that intended, falling short, breath halting as mingis dragon eyes lock on yours.

”we better hurry then, don’t we doll?”

not leaving you time to answer other than a nod, his ghosting touch is gone, both hands tight on your hips as he places you down against the edge of the bed. with a shiver trailing down your back, your fingers lean forward to tug on mingis tight biceps, pulling him down to meet you. that signature smirk paints his lips as his large body shadows over you, mouth landing against your jaw, licking the heated skin before finally meeting your eager lips.

one hand on your hip, the other is back to tease where you need him most, your body impulsively flying forward to meet his fingers. he chuckles into the kiss, his tongue gliding against yours.

mingis fingers land against your clit, spinning light circles on the throbbing bud, causing your nails to dig into his arms.

”you like that babydoll?” you nod eagerly, feeling the intensity of the moment. your other hand tugs against his top, pulling on it with need, need for more.

”off, please” you sigh, causing mingi to place one more deliciously lingering kiss before pulling up, tugging the shirt off from the hem.

with the next exposed skin, you can’t help it but moan, leaning forward up to your elbows. you let your hand glide along the tan surface, leaving your hand to lay where the hairs of his happy trail start.

”wha’chu doing there doll?” you bat your eyelashes, trying to think of a response, only to be pushed back down.

”i know what you want, just give me a second baby, you’ll have all of it” you nod, feeling like you’re dazing away. the fabric of the skirt pools around your hips as mingi pushes your legs up, placing you into a mating press to wait for him.

”just like that, now just stay like that baby ’kay?” his large palms tighten around his third belt, pulling it off, looking at you with a grin before pulling his bottoms down just enough to lay exposed upon you.

his cock stands tall, the veins hugging the sides so nicely, the tip flushed and leaking out. your lip tucked between your teeth you squirm, trying to feel his body on yours again.

”ready doll?” mingi asks with that deep tone of his as his hand fists himself, prepping to dive in you with ease.

”yes, please” he leans forward, the tip of his dick gliding through your lips, meeting your clit, causing your body to ripple.

”attagirl” his words turn your cogs, floating away with the pleasure as he positions himself into you. standing by the edge of the bed, mingi looks more massive then ever, those big biceps exposed, hiding the light-source behind him, sucking you into a view of just mingi.

pushing in with slow but sure ease, your lips fall open, mingis hands kneading the skin of your sides, soothing you into the raw adjustment that is his massive cock. you feel the pulsing veins against your walls, the way his thickness widens you out to him.

as he bottoms out, the hairs on his base tickle against your heated skin, your slick sticking to them like webs. mingis control shakes for a second, his eyes glossed over as he looks down at you; all at his mercy, cheeks flared, breath uneven, body ever so slightly covered by your pink gown- that he chose on purpose.

"min- faster, please" you plead, nails raking red stains into his sweaty skin. with a gravely groan, mingi pulls back, letting himself ram into you with more intent now, more need.

with every deep thrust you feel his tip kiss your sweet spot, the sensations around beginning to come together, that familiar coil burning in your abdomen. something feral shines in mingis eyes as he looks down at you, mouth hung open, one hand roaming your clothed torso.

"so fucking perfect, my little doll" his hand kneads into your left breast, thumb circling the perking nipple, your mind messing into a blur. your walls flutter around him, tightening as you feel yourself drawing awfully closer to that familiar eruption. mingi knows it too, he knows your body like nobody else.

"open your eyes baby, want you to look at me when you cum yeah?"

you try your best, eyes opening to meet the view above you, mingis sweaty form thrusting into you, his large veiny hands covered in cold silver tingling on your skin. neither of you even notice the alarm that rings from mingis phone, the 30 minute marker he set hours ago blasting into the air but certainly not enough for you to care.

his hand goes back to toy your clit, the pleasure all aligning so close you can taste it.

"there you go, give it to me babydoll, let it all go" what closes the deal is when mingi leans forward to kiss your neck, the mirror behind you showing you the view of you two, mingis back flexing as he fucks you relentlessly against the edge of the bed. you feel the band snap.

your release flies all over mingis abdomen, running down his thighs, messing into his pubes. his hips struggle to move a bit, low groans spilling from his lips.

"shittt baby, that's it" it takes everything in mingi not to finish inside, but with the very little energy left, he slowly pulls out, fisting his cock like there's no tomorrow. you sigh, the view of his face tightening as his orgasm draws near, the voices he makes making your hole flutter.

"oh fuck- oh fuck baby- coming" with one last loud groan, mingis load shoots all over your lower stomach, painting the messy scene with his stickiness. falling forward towards you, he cages himself above you on his arms, face falling onto your shoulder blade.

you stay there for a minute, catching your breath before your hand lays softly on his hair, petting it down as he spoke, muffled into your skin;

"you all good baby?" you chuckle lightly, nodding as he lifted up from your body, placing a tender kiss on your forehead in the process.

"perfect, need a new shower though" mingi nods, picking you up bridal style into his arms, your hands tying around his neck.

"so about that double date.. we still going?" your lean against his chest, eyes still half closed.

"negative"

mingi let out an airy laugh, placing you next to the bathroom sink. with a shared nod, he goes to turn the water on, and you let yourself ease into the moment. there's no way you were going out now, especially once you look over at mingis phone, seeing the text message upon the screen.

⋆ ˚｡𖦹 a lot of graphic wet dreams it’s the whole plot, so much dirty talk bc i headcanon he’s a talker, daddy kink (sorry), but freak4freak like mingi’s technically dom but they’re both dirty freaky, pervy reader pervy mg, dry humping, so much praise, oral (f rec), vaginal fingering, size kink he’s big, big dick!mingi (he knows it), fingering (f rec), unprotected sex, oral (f rec), unprotected p in v including creampie

It starts off like any other dream. 

You’re lying on your bed, comfortably spread out with the same old pyjamas you had on when you fell asleep - a t-shirt stained with hair dye and shorts that have worn elastic, sagging down over your hips. The air’s a little dense at first when you try to move, like you’ve been doing some heavy lifting and your limbs haven’t quite started to work again, and it takes you a moment to come into yourself, fighting through the haze.

Immediately, it feels more real than your dreams normally would. Smoking weed before bed means that you don’t often get any dreams at all, really, and your two best friends-turned-housemates are loud enough at all points of the day that your sleep can be interrupted at regular intervals. However, you can feel the softness of your sheets, the lilac floral set you put on when you got home from class, and you rub your feet against it. It’s nice, comforting, and so normal that you quickly forget what it is - a dream.

A soft brush against your side, and you feel like a fish out of water. There’s someone here with you. On your bed. It’s rare for San and Wooyoung to sit there, and this person definitely isn’t either of them. 

It’s blurry initially, so hazy that you can’t quite focus on his face, but his long limbs are splayed across your bed like he’s been here a million times before. The touch was his fingers, and his hands are big too, dexterous and clad in bulky silver rings and drumming a beat you can’t recognise against your skin. It’s too comfortable, familiar in a way that feels almost too vulnerable - it’s almost like you’ve dreamed about this before.

He speaks, and you can’t make out what he’s saying. His voice is a deep, gravelly tone, making you feel like you’re drifting asleep all over again. With insane willpower you blink rapidly, forcing yourself to look at his face. 

You finally see him. He’s staring at you like you’ve done something silly, plump lips curled up with the hint of a smile, and his hair is messy and dark and cascading over his forehead. You can just about make out two beauty spots on his honey toned face. He’s not wearing much, not really, clad in a tank top and baggy, below knee shorts for ultimate comfort, lensless glasses sitting on a sharp nose. 

He blinks at you rapidly, scrunching his nose into a silly face to get your attention, lips forming a line, and all you can think is pretty, pretty, pretty. 

“Are you listening to me, baby?” He says again, and you hear him this time, loud and clear. Baby. It makes a chill run through your body. He’s your type - steady, cool, teasing and big and… he’s so handsome, soothing your skin with his fingertips as if he knows you, has known you for a while and-

“Mingi,” You croak, unable to help yourself. It’s Song Mingi from your economics class, that tall, cool kid who’s always late to class but still really fucking smart, gets amazing grades; unlike you. He dresses really nice, chic, lots of bulky rings and these big chains, like the one he’s wearing now. You think you’ve heard San and Wooyoung say they were friends before, and if you think harder it’s like you’ve seen him drive San home before, but have you ever really paid attention? 

Song Mingi from your economics class who is your mutual friend and also… your boyfriend? Right, yeah. That feels right. “Sorry, honey. What were you saying?”

“I was saying,” He sing-songs, but it’s raspy, like he smoked just before he came over. “It’s always nice being here with you. You’re beautiful, you know that? But it makes me…”

His eyes move to your lips. You think you know what he’s going to say, and maybe it’s a little cliche, straight out of a show you’ve seen, but the butterflies still flitter in your tummy. 

You rub your feet against the blanket again - it’s exciting, sue you. “Makes you what?” 

Mingi’s leaning in before he speaks again, shuffling across your blanket until his breath is tumbling across your face. He’s closer now, but it’s not intimidating, it’s exciting. If you focus you swear you can smell him, something like cedar and vanilla, sweet but enriching and you want more of it, now.

His hand moves to your hip, just barely dipping underneath your sleep shorts. Is he going to kiss you? Even better, is he going to touch you? Your mouth feels dry, and his hands are a little calloused on your skin. He goes to the gym, you remember through the fog. San goes with him sometimes - it’s from the weights. You feel dizzy, head spinning, inching even closer.

“It makes me want more,” he breathes tentatively, “I want to do more with you, if you’ll let me.”

“I’ll let you.” You blurt, and he smiles. He wriggles his way on top of you, your arms closing around those broad shoulders - he is big. While your cunt starts to slick up dumbly at the first sign of a big, strong man, he finally kisses you, a sweet peck to the corner of your lips before a deeper, proper one, tangling his tongue with yours, and it feels so fucking real. Letting out a keen, you squirm underneath him, managing to pull away from his lips to speak. “I’ll let you, please,” you whimper against his lips, messy, “more, Mingi-”

He groans in disbelief, kissing you sloppy again, again, again, finally moving his hand down, cupping your pussy through your sleep shorts and balancing on one forearm. His lips slide against yours a little messily but it’s still amazing, making you whimper when his tongue moves against yours, more than igniting that fire in your belly. You can feel the pressure of his fingertips against your core, sure that nothing’s ever felt like this in your life. “So pretty. You sound so fuckin’ pretty, baby, saying my name like that, shit-”

His fingers slide underneath your shorts, and of course you haven’t got panties on. He meets your pussy bare, slick and sensitive under his touch, and he starts to rock against your fucking leg before he can even get a finger in.

He feels big, from what you can make out, pressing into your thigh. Big, hard, and god - does he leak too? Is he getting so worked up that he can’t help but soak a pool in his boxers? You try to reach down to them, but he pins your hands back to the pillow with one big palm.

You can feel the cold metal of his rings biting against your hole when he adds a second finger. He finds your g-spot effortlessly, curling his long digits upwards, and tap tap taps until your eyes cross. 

“Like this,” He murmurs, cheeks flushing. His lips part and his eyebrows knit in admiration when he looks back to your face and sees the way your own expression can’t be controlled in your haze of lust, mouth falling open, letting out a wrecked whimper. “Can you cum like this? Drench your fucking shorts and let me suck ‘em clean after?”

He talks frantically, viciously almost, fucking into your pussy faster, trying to give you more stimulation. It’s filthy and you can’t believe it’s happening to you, hurtling into an orgasm that you know is going to be unsatisfying because he hasn’t even brushed your clit but fuck, you want to be good. Is he doing this deliberately? His spare hand cups your breasts, palm jiggling the flesh with a noise of disbelief.

“I can! F-fuck, I can,” You hiccup, and he pushes your thighs back, uses his thumb and finger of his other hand to pinch your clit in such a way that you think you might cry. It would normally be not enough but it’s the sight of him, the way he pants on top of you from just humping your leg and wants you to cum so badly - you’re done for. 

Digging your nails into his shoulders, you seize, crying out - and you wake up in a pool of your own sweat. 

Your pyjamas are sticking to you, shorts drenched between your legs and you’re not sure where you are. For a second you think you’re still high, or even still dreaming, but now this is definitely real. 

Alone in your room, your chest heaves as if you’ve run a marathon, and when you slide your feet against your blanket it doesn’t feel as good as it did before. What the fuck was that? You just had a sex dream about a guy that you’ve spoken to maybe twice, and it was so real. The surroundings of your room feel like an entirely different dimension, even though you were just there, with him, with his scent and his large presence, almost too overwhelming.

Are you going crazy? Are you smoking too much weed? Probably the latter, but that doesn’t change how that felt. You groan, rolling over to reach blindly for your phone. Knocking over a few things on your bedside table, you finally find it, and the time reassures you. 

7:02. Still two hours until class, two hours to sort yourself out. 

It would be great if it wasn’t a Wednesday. Your first class is economics, where you normally sit just a few seats over from the main character of your all consuming dream. Can you ignore him for the whole class? Shit, could you just skip it? Did it really matter?

No, you’re close to failing that stupid class already. It’s too complicated, it just doesn’t go into your brain. It would be hard to get a tutor when everything costs money, too, and you’re committed to spending a large part of your student loan on getting high and ordering pizza with Wooyoung and San.

With yet another loud groan, you swing your legs over the side of the bed and bring yourself to go to the bathroom to wash up. In the mirror, your hair is sticking multiple different directions and you have that recently fucked look, eyes half lidded, t-shirt hanging off of one shoulder. 

Is this rock bottom?

“What’s up with you today?”

Wooyoung’s gaze feels like the sharpest daggers shooting into your face. Considering you walked from your house together and managed to converse quite well until you got to class, you’re not really sure what you did wrong. You even complimented him on his bleached hair that he did himself at midnight because it really did look good. Despite that he still doesn’t look happy, plump lips pursed in a scowl and fingers tapping on the table.

He sits to your left, and only three seats to your right is his seat. He hasn’t shown up yet, he’s always late, but you already feel like the class is getting a little too hot. You’re determined to persevere, despite the fact that your jeans feel too tight and even though you’re wearing them, it still feels like your legs are sticking to the plastic chair. 

Clutching the signature banana milk you always get from the vending machine outside, you grumble - even the delicious taste isn’t helping.

“Nothing. Nothing’s up,” You mumble, licking sugary milk and banana flavouring from your lips, “Woo, should we just go?”

“Baby, you’re nearly failing,” He coos, rubbing his thumb over your shoulder. You don’t know why he’s talking, because he hasn’t even got a bag with him, only a single sheet of paper from your notebook and one of your sparkly pens. Looking at the big clock on the wall, you sigh deeply - he’s going to be here soon - and your friend nudges you under the table with his knee. The movement jostles your milk and you scowl. “What’s the matter? Seriously.”

“I’ll tell you later, but it’s fucking stupid and you’ll laugh.”

Wooyoung seems satisfied with this, grinning and ruffling your hair, but it’s then through messy strands that you see him. Well, the professor walks in first, but Mingi trails in behind her as if he’s got all the time in the world, and you frantically smooth your hair down. 

His chains jingle with his movement, and his bag hangs off one shoulder. He looks confident, prepared, probably with books and his laptop in the bag. He’s smart, you know he is, he’s top of the class, probably going to have a really stable analytical job after college that you’d never be able to comprehend. Thinking about it makes you want to giggle like a schoolgirl, and you wish Wooyoung knew what was going on so he could slap you awake.

You drink your banana milk diligently.

The professor begins the lesson while Mingi’s walking to his seat, taking no notice of him as she arranges her things on the stand, and when he sits down you realise no one’s sat between you this time. Low attendance, you suppose, looking around the entire room to see that not many seats are filled at all. He doesn’t even look at you when he sits down and throws his bag to the floor. You’re not sure why you expect him to, but you take the time to analyse him fully.

He never dresses casually. Shrugging off his leather jacket and letting it drape over the chair, the cheap plastic creaks with his movement, and the light glints off the bulky silver rings adorning his long fingers. 

It’s suddenly getting really hot now, and your banana milk is doing nothing to cool you. Your eyes scan over his hands and up his arms to his chest. His black turtleneck is tight on firm muscles and such a contrast to his silver chains, so pleasing to your eye. Mingi’s dark hair drapes over his eyes, but you can still see them, chocolate brown and striking and narrowing at you. 

At you? You blink, and no, really, he is looking at you, and you’re not sure what to do. He doesn’t give you a chance, thankfully, because he gives you a small smile and a little wave and turns to listen to the lecture. 

Wooyoung practically chases you out of class by the end of it, even launching your carton in the bin for you. You manage to get him to a bench outside and once he’s situated, you clear your throat. He has his head in his hands, waiting, foot tapping against the floor. He’s never been good with patience; San always teases him about the time you told him you’d tell them something in class the next day and he didn’t sleep all night.

“I had a wet dream last night.”

Wooyoung groans loudly, kicking you in the shin. You squeal, falling onto the bench with an affronted stare, and he scowls at you. “Is that it? I probably have a wet dream every other night!”

“Woo, listen- listen to me. It was about Mingi. Your friend, Song Mingi. Be honest, is it over for me?”

His eyes light up. His face straightens, and then he leans forward, and you know you’re done before he even starts laughing, but the noise is still so loud that it makes your ears ring when he’s off. Multiple people in the quad turn towards you both, making you scowl at your housemate. He claps a few times in joy before he’s done.

“That’s- that’s probably the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, baby,” He giggles, hitting your shoulder playfully. “Have you spoken to him? At all? You never come to our friends’ parties. Not one, actually, now that I think about it.”

The birds in the campus trees tweet a rhythm mockingly. Your eye twitches. Wooyoung’s lips curl again.

“Maybe once or twice, in passing,” You frown, voice soft and timid, “Woo, it’s not my fault. We don’t choose our dreams, it’s your subconscious or something. Y’know scientists have literally said that?”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about, do you?” He’s still smiling, and you shake your head. He’s right, you don’t, but you’re still sure you read that somewhere. “I guess you’re right though. Maybe- oh my god, maybe you do have a crush on him or something, a repressed one, and now it’s coming to the surface because it’s time. Like fate or something.”

You hum, thinking, deciding that Wooyoung’s insane. “Still, it felt real. Like, insanely real, Woo. It was better than anything I’ve had in person, and now I feel like I’m seeing him differently.”

Wooyoung raises his eyebrows, but still rubs your knee comfortingly. You’re thankful that he’s still being nice despite finding it very amusing. “It’s just a dream anyway. I don’t think you have to worry about it that much, baby, you’ll forget about him in a few days. I’ve had dreams that have given me crushes before too.”

“What if I don’t? You don’t get how intense it was.”

“Well, then we can talk to him,” He nods confidently, nudging you. “I can put a good word in, get you your dream boyfriend-”

“That is literally the worst idea you’ve ever had,” You deadpan, shaking your head, “I have a solid two friends for a reason, I’m not a people person, I am just trying to get through college with zero problems. And he’s- Woo, he’s… cool. Like you two. I don’t get cool guys.”

“You got us, didn’t you?” He pulls you into his side, kissing your forehead, then adds, “and we love you. You’re our best friend,” It comforts you enough to quell your insecurities for a moment. He checks the time on his phone and whoops triumphantly, “let’s go home. San will be back from the gym and we can smoke and order food. My treat. Oh also, can I tell him?”

“... I don’t think I have a choice.”

“No, you don’t. There's three of us in this relationship.”

Despite the fact that you fall asleep in some form of a puppy pile with Wooyoung and San in the latter’s bed, it happens again. 

This time, you’re on the sofa in your living room. Mingi’s positioned underneath you, in a black compression shirt and grey sweatpants like an anime character you’d fantasise over, and you’re on his lap. 

What are these fantasies? 

Has your brain taken note of outfits he’s worn before?

You know it’s him from the size of his body and the way it feels, intense and all consuming, although you haven’t managed to see everything yet, still fuzzy at the edges with sleep. The sweat drips down your collarbone already, and he seems just as wrecked from the squirming he’s doing, moving upwards into your body while he pulls you down against him by your hips. His hands move up your oversized t-shirt, settling on your flushed skin.

“Feels so fuckin’ g-good,” He huffs, “even just- just like this,”

His deep voice makes your head spin, and when you see his face it feels like a relief. His cheeks are flushed, lips kiss bitten, and you place another few pecks on his lips for good measure. He’s yours, after all, your boyfriend. “Is your little hole wet? Can you feel it, b-baby, drenching these cute little panties?” He whines, nosing into the crook of your neck, licking over the skin, “Is it begging for me? F-fuck, talk to me, please.”

He babbles incoherently but you can make out that it’s filthy, and you can’t fucking believe it. Is he like this, really? Your hips grind down against him sharply, needing more, because he’s right. Panties drenched, too delirious to even think about it, your hands scramble against his shoulders. You can see everything in that t-shirt, the way his biceps bulge against the fabric and the way his chest clenches as he ruts himself against you, nipples poking through, tempting. He’s got that expression again - eyebrows furrowed, lips parted, but this time he’s looking directly down at where you’re connected, bottom lip slick with spit. The pressure of his cock against your core in his sweatpants is so much, and you can’t help it, eyes rolling back to your head.

“Want you, want you so bad,” You pant. It feels like the most honest thing you’ve ever said. He nods, thrusting harder. He wants more, wants you to say more, his hands pulling you down against him. It’s a dirty rhythm, a sinuous grind. “I want it so fucking bad, Mingi, you don’t even-“ you buck, whining, “-don’t even know how bad, please, please-”

“Yeah? Did you touch your little clit thinking about me?” He pushes you upwards, still letting you move against him but slipping his hand underneath his waistband to rub over his cockhead. He’s desperate too, teeth biting into his lower lip. He wants it just as bad. You feel wet, and you look down to see you’ve leaked right through your panties onto his sweatpants. Have you ever been this fucking wet before? “Did you think about my cock stretching you open, ruining you until you can’t even remember your own- own fucking name?”

“I d-did, fuck,” You can’t move, eyes fixated on where his hands move under the wet fabric. “Fuck, Mingi, baby, please show me, I’ll do anything, please.”

His hand pauses, and your gaze flits back up to his face. His eyes narrow at you, just like they did in class, and his teeth have released his lower lip so that he can smirk at you, teeth white as snow. It’s promising, but it’s like a threat, and your hands feel a little sweaty against his broad shoulders. 

“Really, pretty thing?” His voice is hopeful, and his other hand begins to move his waistband down. You see the beginnings of his dark smattering of pubic hair and almost shaking, you whimper, nodding eagerly. “You’ll do anything for me?”

“Anything, I promise, please, fuck.”

Your eyes shoot open on a particularly loud snore from San. His leg and his arm are both slung over you, head resting on your shoulder with a steady stream of drool pooling on your t-shirt. When you glance at him, he sniffles out a snore, nose scrunching up and thick eyebrows knitting together. He’s lucky you love him. 

Once you’ve spluttered yourself awake enough, the warm light of the desk lamp bathing the room catches your attention, and you see Wooyoung sitting on the chair by San’s desk. He’s eating something, and the smell of bacon is the next thing that you register, slowly unwrapping yourself from the older man to crawl towards the younger at the desk. 

He’s already clocked you, a smile pulling at his lips as he loads the fork. “Good morning, sunshine.”

You snatch the fork from his fingers, munching before you can even talk. Eggs and bacon, and you wonder who Wooyoung learned to cook from. You make a mental note to ask, because it’s delicious. After you swallow, you mumble, “time?”

“Nine in the morning,” Relaxed as ever, he stretches out on the chair with an overpronounced yawn. He’s still scrutinising you, and you know for sure that you haven’t gotten away with it. “Two nights in a row, huh?”

“How’d you know?” You raise an eyebrow. Wooyoung looks pleased with himself and takes the fork back from you, continuing to eat his meal. Is it your hair? Were you… God, were you making noise?! He still hasn’t said anything! “Oh my fucking- Wooyoung?!”

“All I’m saying is I’m surprised Sannie didn’t wake up with all that squirming,” He finally responds, and the mentioned man grunts in his sleep at being mentioned, always alert, but goes back to snoring almost immediately after. “Don’t worry, it was cute. I think you do have a crush. Subconsciously and all that.”

“I hate you,” You grumble, and he sighs, patting his lap. You still climb onto him, and he hums until you start to doze, stroking your hair in rhythm to San’s snores. It would make you laugh if you weren’t nearly falling asleep again, but every time your eyes flutter shut you see big hands and a sharp nose and those beautiful dark eyes. Sighing, you stretch your legs out to wake yourself back up, “Wooyoungie, I think I’m going crazy. I don’t even know the guy.”

“It’s okay,” He coos, and you can hear how amused he is. Still, he entertains it. “He’s kind, very loyal. Smart, as you know. Sometimes he’s a little unsettling, but it’s endearing, in a way. A little like you.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”

“Well, I love you both dearly, if that counts for anything.”

Still, this doesn’t solve your problem, “Wooyoung, what do I do?”

“I think it’ll surprise you how easy this is going to be.”

It is a surprise to find yourself done up in a cute dress at a party not ten hours later, San and Wooyoung on each arm. You knew they knew people, sure, but they’d been such good friends to you that they’d sworn to be by your side through college, so you’d never bothered to ask to be introduced to their other friends. 

From what you can gather, they’re not frat boys but normal college students, too - Wooyoung told you that the two guys that live here are some of their good friends, and that makes you feel a bit better about arriving uninvited. It’s quaint but well decorated, with music memorabilia on the walls, but you don’t get a chance to take it all in because the house is absolutely packed. 

San waves and hugs a few people as he walks through, and you see Wooyoung smiling at a group of people that you think must be in his dance classes, because they look as cool and sculpted as him. Still, they pull you through the throes of people into the kitchen, tipsy and stoned and honestly, a content smile on Wooyoung’s face that he finally got you in this position.

You’re not even sure who’s party this is, but the boys help themselves to drinks and San keeps a comforting hand on your lower back, leaning in close so that you can hear him while your other friend pours you a drink. 

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Sannie, I have been to parties before, I’m not a total shrew,” You tease. He pulls you into a sort of half-hug and you smell him, something earthy with a hint of jasmine, comfortable and grounding, familiar. Different to… you’re trying not to think about that.

The younger man hands you both the finished drinks, a concoction of something purple, and well, liquid confidence you suppose. You knock half of it down before you can think. He seems satisfied with this, but you hiss at the aftertaste, sticking your tongue out. “I’m definitely a smoker, not a drinker. This is fucking nasty. You guys drink this stuff all the time?”

“He does, I kinda hate it too,” San huffs, swirling his cup in his hand and watching the liquid move. 

Wooyoung scoffs, “that and you can’t handle your drink. You pass out after a few.”

San’s already flushed, but you swear he gets redder, shooting Wooyoung a dirty look with a too-cute pout before turning back to you. “Refresh me on the situation again by the way. You had a dream about Mingi? Song Mingi?”

Right, Wooyoung had caught him up over the course of the day while you napped and attempted to study. You lick your lips, trying to somehow clean yourself of the drink’s bitter aftertaste but only getting a mouthful of sticky lipgloss. 

“Two dreams,” Wooyoung corrects, pointing at San, smiling so wide you can see his teeth in the dim light of the kitchen. They’re practically shouting over the music, and you want to tell them to be quiet but you are in a quieter area.  No one can hear you, you hope, groups having filtered into the back garden, bedrooms and the living room. “And I think she liked him before. Fate, science - look, you had to be there. Anyway, we should go talk to him.”

“Wooyoung, I do not know this man.”

“We know him,” San smiles. He’s too easy. “Hey, this is cute! Is this your first crush? He’s a good guy.”

You swat him away when he tries to pinch your cheeks. “Not my first crush or my first party. You have literally met some of my exes. I also don’t think this is a good idea.”

“First, all of your exes were assholes so I didn’t like them and therefore they don’t exist. Second, you have to think it’s a somewhat good idea because you did come - to the party, I mean,” Wooyoung grabs your hand, pulling you to the back door. “I think they’ll probably be out here.”

Wooyoung’s right, about both things. All of your exes were assholes, men that only cared about getting their dick wet and their own feelings and not at all about yours. You’ve always thought it would be nice to have a man who takes notice of the things you like, the way you feel; the longer life dwindles on it seems to become less attainable. 

He’s also right that you came to this party with the idea that your friends were setting you up. You don’t expect them to be subtle about it though - a fact that daunts on you as they lead you through the kitchen.

As soon as the back door opens, you’re hit with the sight of what seems to be a much cooler, more private party. The smell of weed and the sound of softer, less overwhelming music are the first things you can process and yeah, okay, this might be more your type of scene. There’s a cute, shorter guy wearing flared jeans and a shiny tiara, chatting with a group of people enthusiastically; surely it must be his party. 

You’re pulled over to a section of outdoor seating where there’s a few people sitting down. There’s a small fire going, contained in a silver pit, and the warmth is welcomed on your skin, cold from the outside air biting at your skin in the cute dress you’re wearing. Really, you don’t clock him at first, but Wooyoung and San are eager to take you over to that area and there can only be one reason why.

“Yunho!” Wooyoung’s way too chipper, but Yunho falls for it, springing up from one of the chairs to wrap his arms around the shorter male. San’s hugging someone too, and from the corner of your eye you see it’s fucking Mingi, and you’ve never felt so betrayed in your life. 

“Fancy seeing you here, huh?” San says, way too exaggerated, and you hover in confusion as he continues, “we finally brought our cute friend, look.”

Cute friend? Suddenly all of the attention is on you. Yunho and Mingi are both peering at you, and Mingi is - he has to be assessing you, eyes scanning your frame. You can’t see them properly due to the sunglasses. Does he recognise you? You’ve only spoken once or twice before, in passing. He probably doesn’t even know your name. 

Yunho seems to know who you are, grinning from ear to ear and pulling you into a hug before you can even introduce yourself. You can’t help but laugh, throwing your arms around him while avoiding spilling your purple drink on his white satin shirt.

“It’s so good to meet you!” He shakes you happily. Mingi still hasn’t said anything, but he’s clutching a bottle of jagermeister and a cup with a different drink, looking at you as if he’s waiting for the moment. You try not to be uncool right in front of his eyes, smiling at Yunho politely. “Wooyoungie kept talking about you, all nice things, I promise. You have some good friends here.”

“I can’t really get rid of them, kinda like the plague,” You smile, and you’re glad Yunho detects your sarcasm and lets out a loud laugh, a bit too loud to be normal. He ushers you all to sit down, and when everyone’s situated the only available spot left is next to Mingi. 

How convenient. 

In your peripheral vision, you can see your best friends have already roped Yunho into a conversation, leaving the subject of your fantasies free and still fucking looking at you. 

Hesitantly, you sit down. The fire is nice you suppose, warming up your legs quite quickly, and you keep your knees firmly planted together and far away from him. The other three chatter away, preoccupied in such an intentional way that it makes your blood boil. It’s time to consider rooting through your bag in a way that looks like you’re doing something.

He says your name, and it feels like time stops. He’s speaking to you. This is the worst possible situation, how are you even meant to talk to him? Slowly, you turn to look at him. He’s in a black zip up jacket, bottle of Jagermeister in hand, sunglasses pushed down to the end of his nose. Those chains glint in the light again, and he leans forward, saying your name again, pushing the sunglasses onto his head. They push his hair back in the most delicious way that you shiver. No. Not right now. “It’s nice to finally meet you. You’re in my economics class too, right? You sit with Wooyoung.”

He knows you. “R-right,” You blurt, smiling nervously. “I am. Mingi, right?”

“You sit just a few seats over from me, with Wooyoung. I wanted to say hi to you, but to be honest, I never knew how,” He scratches the back of his neck. He’s cute, a little shy despite how big and scary he looks. Just like Wooyoung said. It feels like that makes it all even worse - he really is a dream, delightful traits rolled all into one. “It’s good to all get together though, right? I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”

“Oh, no. I don’t really get out much, to be honest. I’m a homebird,” You say, and cringe inside. What the fuck are you saying? You need to be cool. 

But Mingi only smiles, letting out an ‘ah’. “Me too, to be honest. I’m an anime in bed guy, but I live here, so I have to leave my room. It’s really sad.”

Not only is he actually so easy to talk to, but he reassured you quickly - he’s the same. Wooyoung was right again.

He lives here, though, which means… Wooyoung and San brought you to a party at Mingi’s house? This is some sort of next level interfering that you never even considered, but you have to act normal, so you clear your throat.

“You live with that guy wearing the tiara, then?”

“His name is Hongjoong,” Mingi laughs. “You don’t know who’s house you’re at?”

Fiddling with the clasp of your bag, you look down at your lap. “I told you, I don’t normally go to parties. I got dragged to this.” White lie. 

“It’s fine, I’m only kidding. Anyway, you know me,” He grins playfully. You flush, suddenly too warm from the fire, a little too awkward but also with such deep desperation in your belly. His zip-up slips from his shoulder and you see a bit of tanned skin that makes you inhale. “So you drink. You smoke too?”

You laugh. “Oh yeah, I smoke.”

Mingi’s eyes narrow at you again, perceiving you. Is he impressed? Flustered? He’s still smiling, like he knows something about you, but you’re not sure what. 

The conversation is interrupted by Yunho, who’s pulling a bong out from by the side of the table with a loud cheer. Wooyoung’s already dragging the bong from his lap. San has fallen asleep next to him, cheeks flushed and shoulders slouched over. Wooyoung doesn’t take any notice, giggling as he readies the pipe. He spills some weed on his lap but doesn’t look bothered. 

You point at San. “Is he okay?”

Everyone chimes in at once - “He does this”.

Mingi leans closer to you, and you manage not to tense up when he speaks easily, “What are you drinking?”

You motion at the plastic cup of Purple Concoction on the floor, and he sucks his teeth, shaking his head. While the others carry on, Mingi leans down and you immediately seize up.

“I’m not drinking jager,” you panic, “that’s way too-“

He chuckles and hands you his plastic cup, with a liquid not dissimilar in appearance to coke, and you want to laugh in his face. 

Is this like… inadvertently sharing spit? 

Reaching for the cup, you take a sip of the drink, and he watches you, waiting for your reaction.

It’s surprisingly nice. A lot better than whatever the fuck the guys gave you in the kitchen, and definitely not jager. It’s some sort of rum with coke and you hum at the taste, handing the cup back to him. He’s still watching you, keeping eye contact as you swallow the liquid down. 

When he lets you get this close, you notice the two beauty spots on his face from your dream, one by his eye and one on his cheek, and it makes your heart soar. He’s so cute, despite the way he dresses, rough and raw on the exterior and kind and gentle inside.

“Much better, right?” 

“Much better,” You agree. For a second, the ugly, rearing insecurity appears in your head again - what are you doing? He’s so out of your league. 

Before it can fester, Mingi clicks his tongue, taking a sip himself. “See, you should stick with me tonight,” he leans back, then smiles, “I’ve got the good stuff, and I’m cooler than San. He’s fallen asleep already.”

Stick with him tonight. Just as you think there might be something there, a little flickering of intrigue in his eyes as well as yours, the guy with the flared jeans rushes over out of nowhere.

“Mingi-ah, I’m so sorry, but someone’s throwing up in the living room and I need your help.”

The gentle voice brings you both out of your trance, and he immediately spins his head to the other man. Hongjoong, you think you remember him saying. Mingi all but rolls his eyes - does he look disappointed? - but swings his legs over the edge of the seat, leaving you with the nice tasting drink.

“Sorry, I better go,” He says, and Hongjoong gives him a look full of something that you can’t work out. Mingi looks awkward, eyebrows raising in expectation for you to say something, so you nod politely and he shoots you a grin. You think you’ll replay that grin forever, late at night when you’re trying to remember all of the angles of his face. “I’ll see you in class, yeah?”

“Yeah.” You nod, licking over your lips. “it was really nice talking to you, Mingi.”

He shoots you a smile that looks a little too upset, but he’s off then, housemate in tow; Wooyoung wordlessly passes you the bong, eyes pink and limbs stretched over the sleeping San. It’s hard not to go over the events with the sudden silence and your clammy fingers wrap around the cup he left you, taking another gulp of the alcohol as it pops into your head.

Apologetic.

Hongjoong looked apologetic that he was interrupting you both, and you want to tell your friends and deepen that and make it more than it is; but you’re reminded that in reality, you’re just another girl Mingi was talking to at a party.

It’s been a couple days with no dreams now, which feels good, because you only saw him in passing again during the party. You have thought about him, in fleeting thoughts where you’ve gone over the events of the party, but it’s good not to let it linger. Just two dreams, that’s all it was, and you sit in economics class the following Wednesday with a relatively clear head and a nice skirt on, determined that you definitely do not have a crush.

Additionally, another decision - you will not fail this class. Two simple resolutions; last week was just a minor setback.

He walks in, and sits in his seat, and there’s actually people sitting between you this time. This is reassuring because you can’t focus on how his thighs fit in those jeans, or how nice his hands look when he types, or how his hair falls over his forehead in such a mysterious way-

No. You stare at your notes, flicking over the pages. It’s good to refresh before the professor starts, you think, and you really think it works when she begins her lesson and does a brief recap… before she starts talking about a test a few weeks after break. Huh?

“Since it’s the last week before fall break, I thought I’d give some of you a chance to study and get your grades up,” She explains, and you think you see her glance towards you and Wooyoung. Everyone groans, and she tuts, laughing. “This test isn’t that hard, I’m being really nice to you guys!”

You zone out again. Now you’re going to have to do a stupid test on something you don’t care about, and you’re either going to let yourself down or just not show up to do it at all, to be honest. You sigh and huff and puff, scribbling a doodle on your page.

To everyone, you included, the bell ringing after the rest of the boring lesson is a welcome sound. You huff when you put your books into your bag, you huff when you sling your bag over your shoulder, and you’re still huffing at Wooyoung as you both walk out of the door. 

That is, until a firm hand stops your path and a very clear, deep voice says your name.

Looking up, you see Mingi, lensless glasses on his nose again and that little shy smile on his lips, and the last few days of progression are forgotten. 

How could you ever forget how pretty he is? Love songs start playing in your head, intricate violins and piano, and it’s jarring how nervous you feel all of a sudden, uncertain of yourself. He’s so beautiful and he dresses well and he’s smart and kind and easygoing, but you still have that looming feeling of it’s never gonna happen, hopping from foot to foot in your boots.

Wooyoung keeps walking, pretending to be occupied on his phone, and you realise you’re staring at Mingi and not saying anything. “Mingi. Hi!”

“Hi, it’s good to see you again,” He seems a little flustered himself, fingers pulling at the collar of his t-shirt and you can’t help but smile. He’s so endearing. “How have you been since the party?”

“Good,” You shrug easily, like it hasn’t been destroying your nerves for the past few days, “I’ve been good. I- you’re good too, I hope?”

Inwardly cringing, you flush, but Mingi seems to find it amusing, lips curling up. “I’m great. Hey, listen, couldn’t help but overhear you’re not doing too well in economics, and well, I’m not too bad at it myself,” he snaps his fingers, and your eyes widen. No. “I can study with you for the test, if you want.”

“Is that a good idea?” You’re straight to the point, and Mingi offers a pout, confused, and you want to cry. “I mean, Mingi, I would just take up your time-”

“I want to study with you,” He seems to straighten up then, and you remember how big he is, towering over you. “No offence, but I know you’re not doing too well, and I want to help you,” He seems determined, and you can’t work out why, but he continues, “We could bump your grade up a little if you do well on the test.”

You let out a strangled noise, tapping your foot. “… Fine.”

“I- I could come to yours later on today? If you’re free, that is.”

You stare. That’s the second worst fucking idea you’ve ever heard, next to Wooyoung’s that got you talking to this tall, beautiful man in the first place. Why not the library? But you’re going to have to, aren’t you, because you can’t deny that face anything, and what other choice have you got? 

The idea of being in close proximity to him like that and being able to trace every single line and dot on his face with your eyes is anxiety and arousal inducing and he’s staring at you hopefully, waiting for an answer-

“Mingi, I’m bad at this class,” You blurt. He only tilts his head in question. “I could bring your grade down, distract you so badly by asking so many questions that you end up at the bottom just like me.”

He’s quick to respond, as if he can’t miss this opportunity. “That’s a bit extreme,” he breathes out a laugh, “very unlikely. Anyway, call it helping a friend out.”

A friend. Of course.

“Right, well…” You rub the back of your neck. 

It would be stupid to pass this up. If studying with him could really help your grade, and stop you retaking this dumb class, you’re sure you can reign in the horny demons inside of you for a few nights a week. You look down at the floor, but get caught at his legs. 

In the rips of his black jeans, you see a slither of muscled thigh. Your eye twitches.

Shit, can you reign it in? Fuck, you’re gonna have to. “Okay. I’ll work really hard. I’ll be a really good study partner, like, the best.”

“I know you’ll be good,” He grins, and god, did he mean the way that came out? He’s already pushing his phone into your hands for you to put your number in, and you send an emoji to yourself so that you have his too. “Cool. I’ll text you, let you know when I’m on my way.”

By the time he’s walked away, somehow Wooyoung is right behind you again, giggling in your ear about fate. 

But that’s how you find yourself in your room not five hours later, unfortunately not high and staring at Mingi, sitting contently in front of you. San and Wooyoung had greeted him in the hallway, mumbling too quietly for you to hear - to your dismay - and now you’re in your room. Your plushies and girly things would be embarrassing if he didn’t immediately pick up a fuzzy teddy bear and place it on his lap, cooing and pulling softly at his droopy ear. 

He’s so cute, and the more you think about it the more it’s got you scowling in your loungewear. A matching set, in the hopes that he’d think you look nice.

He’s talking about something, you think, but god you feel like you’re in those dreams you have again with how he’s on your bed and you’re dizzy with it - except you’re not. It’s real, he’s there, perched on your mattress next to you in a zip-up jacket and joggers for comfort with textbooks set beside his lap. He kicked off his shoes in your hallway, and he’s in a spare pair of San’s slippers, two sizes too small. 

You focus back in when he waves his fingers in front of your face teasingly, and all you can do is mumble sorry there’s no desk in my room.

“What? That’s fine, it’s better to be comfortable anyway,” He laughs, finally placing the teddy bear back in its spot. He pats his head. You want to scream. “Do you have any idea what you want to start with? We can keep it pretty basic at first and work our way up. She said the test won’t be too bad - if you actually listen to me, you’ll be fine.”

It’s said pointedly, with a little grin like he knows you’re not going to listen.

“Cool, cool,” You smile with way more confidence than you feel. Your entire body hums like a live wire at the proximity. “So I’ll be top of the class when the grades come out, right?”

He narrows his eyes at you playfully, grabbing a textbook from the pile. “Relax. I’m top of the class.”

Oh.

You stare at him, smirking like you’re not the slightest bit affected, even though you really are. He often rides on the line between confident and cocky, like he’s daring you to call him out. Like he knows something you don’t, always one step ahead.

Scooting a little closer, you scoff, accepting the challenge. You can play ball. “Top of the class doesn’t mean you’re good at tutoring. What if you can’t make me any better?”

Mingi glances up at you, playfulness in his eyes, that slow smile forming like it has all the time in the world. His jaw clicks when he speaks, “You’re being cheeky, y’know that? I guess I’ll have to show you what I can do.”

“That-?” You swat him, and he catches your wrist easily, making you gasp and pull back sharply. Heat crawls up your neck. “Let’s- okay, let’s just start.”

He chuckles, low and easy, satisfied at how flustered you’ve gotten. You wonder for a moment if he can feel it between you too, but he leans closer, resting his elbow on his knee as he opens the textbook between the two of you. There’s a decent amount of distance, but you swear you can feel the heat radiating from his thighs - you have to squeeze yours together to calm down. Not now. 

“You’re already not paying attention, are you?”

It’s hard to because he smells like warm cologne and something familiar, vanilla and cedar and you’ve smelled this before, you swear, in your dreams. His leg brushes yours like it’s no big deal, like you’re not looking at how much bigger than you he is, like he doesn’t notice how you shiver every time he gets this close. Does he?

He taps a paragraph on the page, saying something about how this part is important, and we should go over this too, but his voice is softer now, almost tender. “You’re not even looking at the book. What’s up? Have you really just got a mental block for this?”

No, you’re just too attractive and it’s overwhelming. “Yup, think so,” you exhale, rubbing your sweaty palms on your leggings, “hey, what if we smoke before we study? I think I might focus better.”

Mingi seems to consider it. He scratches a nail down the page in thought - you notice he’s got some letters painted on his nails, and you want to ask. Eventually he shrugs, shutting the book and throwing it to the side. Your jaw drops that he gave up that easily, but he’s rummaging through his bag all of a sudden with ring-clad hands before he pulls out a little plastic bag. 

“I planned for this.”

It’s your turn to grin. 

“I mean, if you insist,” You tease, nudging him with your foot, and Mingi chuckles, low and sexy. The thought pops into your head again - you and him. It’s so easy, bantering back and forth, the nerves only electrifying you more. You remind yourself very quickly that this is nothing more than a study session, or preparing for one at least. 

Passing him the rolling tray from your bedside table, because you’d be damned if you were rolling with his stuff, you settle back on your pillows leisurely. He immediately begins to roll, pulling papers out of his zip-up pocket, and you want to ask him things rather than stare at his hands. Get to know him. Sue you, he’s pretty. “What do you major in?”

“Music production. So does Hongjoong, that’s how we know each other,” He answers easily, and you’re shocked initially, but actually… It makes sense. He’s relaxed and sometimes shy, but he can ride the line between confident and cocky - like he has two personas, the Mingi you see and the Mingi you actually get. It’s fun. “What about you?”

“English, believe it or not,” You say, and Mingi hums. “So you make music?”

He licks the paper, sealing the joint. “I’m not surprised. You seem smart like that,” He seems confused on where to smoke it, but you pass him an ashtray and he throws you a thumbs up as he lights it, inhaling deep and filling your room with the funky-smelling smoke, “but yeah, I make music. I’m a rapper.”

A rapper? So he’s good with his tongue. You shiver, “Right.”

“Oh, do you? Write, I mean?” He smiles at his own joke, eyes already half lidded and a little pink, handing you the joint; you’ll never admit you giggled at it too.

You take a few diligent tokes, ashing in the tray when necessary. “I do, sometimes, but I don’t get much free time anymore.”

“Mm, I bet,” You’re already a little giggly, and you hand the joint back with a warm feeling on your cheeks and limbs feeling a little slower, less in control. “I could… maybe show you a song I made. Only if you show me something you wrote. That would be cool, I think.”

You can’t believe you’re in here smoking with him, and he’s telling you things about himself, too. You can build on this. 

No - you’re getting ahead of yourself again.

“I’d be down,” You smile softly. He hands you the joint again, another quarter smoked, his lips now with a permanent curve of bliss. He’s high, and he looks so pretty when he’s high, fixing his dark shaggy hair with long, ring clad fingers. He lays on his side in front of you, grabbing your teddy bear to hold at his chest while he leans on his hand, comfortable. There’s one burning question in your mind as you examine him, his zip-up slipping off his shoulder, “honestly, I’m surprised you don’t major in fashion. You dress really cool.”

That slow, lazy smirk forms again, ear to ear. You almost choke as you inhale, but you manage to keep it in. “You think I dress cool?”

You shrug, suddenly aware of how hot it is in your room. “I mean… yeah.”

“Thanks,” He says, then adds, almost too casually, “I think you’re really pretty.”

It lands harder than he expected. Your breath stutters, and he licks his lips, eyes widening like he thinks he’s gone too far. “Is that-“ he hesitates, “-okay? Can I say that?”

You nod, still catching your breath. “Yeah, you- yeah, you can say that.”

Now it’s his turn to look nervous, teeth worrying at his lip but this time like he’s trying not to smile too wide. He thinks you’re pretty? Really pretty? The compliment loops around in your head. You hand him the joint back, meaning to follow it up with a question but he simply puts it out in your ashtray, the finality causing you to pause. 

He moves into a sitting position with a quiet sigh, and rifles through his bag a little. Just as you’re about to speak, he pulls out his laptop - the screensaver is one of him, Hongjoong and Yunho from a holiday, you judge by the background of the shot, but he clicks away and types his password in too fast for you to examine it fully.

“Anyway,” He says, too deliberately normal, clicking on a file, “I’ve got some material from the professor. It should help clear things up.”

Just like that, he moves on like the compliment was nothing, like it didn’t linger between you. You assume you should too. 

Friends compliment each other, right? He’s already pulling the file up, dexterous fingers quick and practiced clicking on the pages he needs and your head spins pleasantly from the weed, rubbing your clammy hands on your legs again.

A few clicks of his cursor, and he motions you closer, utterly unaware of how intoxicating he smells this close - you’re pooling in your panties again. Your knees touch and this time it sends a shock through you, but you catch the gasp in your throat before it leaves. 

“Alright,” he says softly, voice deep, “take a look at this…”

Focusing on anything else feels impossible, but you push through it, determined - for him.

It’s only gotten worse.

Rather than the dreams just being sexual, now they’re something more homely and serious than your heart can handle. You’ve had no more study sessions, although you’re due one today, and you’ve had these godforsaken dreams almost every night. 

Mingi cooking you dinner in your kitchen, smelling of oil and something delicious. Mingi holding your hand, safe and sure, as you walk through the city at night. Restaurants with Mingi, him pouring you another glass of wine and giggling when your nose scrunches up at the taste.

It’s getting domestic rather than primal, and you’re not sure how to deal with it. It’s made you want him more, while the times you actually see him only remind you that he doesn’t see you like that. At least, not in real life.

To make matters worse, Mingi insisted you continue your study sessions - along with now sending you some motivational GIFs over text during the week to make sure you’re on top form, like that was meant to help your sick little crush - and now you find yourself sitting waiting for him in the library, heart already fluttering something stupid.

A carton of banana milk slides across the desk. 

You squeak and barely manage to catch it before it tips over, glad that the campus library is pretty much empty due to fall break and you can make however much noise as you like. The librarian would typically tell you off for saying one word, but she’s got her own nose in an old, weathered book, her eyes fluttering shut from sleep.

A big body drops into the seat across from yours, the weight of him making the table feel smaller. Mingi looks entirely too pleased with himself, nodding pointedly at the carton.

“That’s it, right?” He snaps his fingers, “that’s the one you like.”

You stare. It's the same exact one you get from the vending machine in the building where your economics class is every week, but given that you’re now on break you haven’t had a reason to go there. It had been hard, trying to do any form of studying without your banana milk, but… how could Mingi have noticed that you get this one? 

“How…” You shake your head. “How did you know?”

His eyebrow raises, looking confused, opening his laptop. 

“I always see you with one,” He says, as if it explains everything. Your gut clenches, and you feel something tingle in between your legs too, like all it takes is a carton of milk, making you feel nothing but desperate - it’s more than that, though. He noticed. 

A few clicks, and then he digs in his bag again, setting a carton of strawberry milk down for himself and a set of papers next to you both. Your heart flutters. “I brought worksheets too. I know, not really fun, but at least I can see what you know since you know… we weren’t exactly productive last time,” he tuts at you playfully, “bad influence.”

You gasp dramatically. “Excuse you. We studied after, and it was your weed.”

He nudges your ankle softly with his shoe. “And I brought you a banana milk,” he slides the papers over, “now do the sheets for me, you’re wasting time again.”

For him, you’d do anything. Your pencil scribbles across the paper as you write your name with a heart next to it, as if you’re not his only student. Mingi doesn’t notice - he takes the time to do something on his laptop. You wonder what, because he pulls his headphones over his head and starts working dutifully. It’s hard not to simply watch him at work and ignore what he asked you to do; he clocks in so quickly, eyes narrowing at the screen and lips mouthing words you can’t decipher. He’s comfortable in baggy jeans and a hoodie, chains and rings catching your attention but he looks amazing, like everything he wears is straight from a fashion show.

Shaking your head, you turn to the paper - but you read a total of one question before realising that you really have no idea what the fuck is going on in this class.

“Mingi,” You say finally, tapping your pencil on the page, “I need help.”

To your surprise, he pulls his headphones off his dark hair quickly and leans over to you, eyes flickering to your sheet. It takes everything in you not to kiss him then and there. 

“… That’s the first question,” He looks at you, taking in your blank expression, then exhales a laugh. “Okay, I’ve seen you in every class - do you just not focus at all?”

Flailing your limbs around dramatically, you groan, “it’s boring as hell. The lecturer is also boring as hell.”

He snorts, but instead of teasing you more like you expect him to, he pulls his chair around properly, close enough that your knees touch. A shiver wracks through your spine. 

“Alright,” he says gently, voice calmer, more soothing, “forget how she explained it. I’ll do it my way.”

He takes your pencil, fingers brushing against yours, sketching quick boxes and arrows across the page. 

“Okay,” he begins, “economics is just people making decisions but with maths.”

You blink. “I don’t think that’s correct.”

He grins, sharp nose scrunching, clearly pleased that you’re actually interested for once. “No, seriously. It’s people making choices because they want something and don’t have enough money or time for it. All we have to do is sound smart when we talk about it.”

He sketches two simple lines with your pencil, next to the questions on the sheet, a curve sloping upwards and another sloping down right next to it. You recognize it immediately, which makes you a little proud.

“Supply and demand,” You mumble, pointing at the page. His eyes brighten.

“See? You do know things,” He says softly, like it’s a secret. His shoulder brushes yours as he leans closer, and you remember the party, how close he was then, and you forget everything you’ve ever learned. Fuck.

“So this,” He taps the downward curve, your cat-shaped eraser bobbing comically on the edge of the pencil, “is demand. People want less of something when it’s expensive, more when it’s cheap - dramatic, but predictable, right? Of course we do.”

“And supply,” He continues, tapping the other line, “that’s the opposite. Producers are greedy. They’re willing to sell more when prices are higher.”

He freezes, glancing sideways at you. “You still with me? That’s like, basic basic.”

You nod a little too fast. It makes sense, but fuck, are you allowed to kiss him yet? He’s so patient, so kind, and so cute that even his fucking teeth are cute. “Yeah. I’m here.”

His mouth twitches like he doesn’t quite believe you, but he lets it slide and draws a small dot where the lines intersect.

“Equilibrium,” You say, and he nods.

“The sweet spot,” He murmurs, and you shiver. This has to be some sort of fucked up joke. “Everyone’s equally unhappy here. Price equals quantity demanded equals quantity supplied. No shortages. No surplus.”

He leans back just enough to look at you properly. You’re not confused, rather determined, staring at the sheet. 

He fiddles with the eraser, rings glinting in the light. “So what part loses you?”

“All of it,” you admit, “but especially those shifts…? Why do things move?”

His expression softens. You wonder if he’s finally realised you’re hopeless, but he starts speaking again, more determined.

“Okay, so,” He flips to a clean section of the page and starts again, slower this time, drawing the same silly diagrams and the same silly dots and scribbles. His plump lips curl in focus, making him look so handsome that your hands unclench and clench in your lap. “Think of demand shifting like your banana milk.”

Your heart flutters.

“You don’t always want it, right?” He says casually, like he hasn’t just seen you so viscerally. “Like if it’s hot outside, or you’re stressed, or the lecture was particularly boring, then you want it more. I bet you’d even pay more.”

He’s right, you think, but why does this all make sense now, with him? He rubs at the page with your cat-shaped eraser and shifts the curve, oblivious to your internal plight. “That’s a demand increase. Same price, more quantity demanded.”

You stare at the page, then at him. “You’re using me as an example.”

“Well,” he shrugs, too nonchalantly for how you feel looking at him. “You’re the first thing I thought of.”

Your fingers tighten around the edge of the paper. He’s still got your pencil so you can’t fidget, but you can smell his cologne, mixing with the scent of books in the library. It feels way too intimate and the furthest you’ve gone is your knees touching. You want more, but you have to focus.

“And supply, then… if things get cheaper, or easier to produce, you can make more so supply increases,” You try, quieter and uncertain, but he nods encouragingly. “I think this actually makes some sense when you explain it.”

Something unreadable flickers across his face - pride, perhaps. “Good,” he says, softer, “I want you to get it.”

You smile, taking a sip of your banana milk that has you humming with glee. Tasty. He mirrors you and takes a sip of his, sliding the worksheet back towards you, his fingers lingering just a second too long to tap on the words printed. He’s got the same letters written across his fingernails again. 

“Try the next question,” He nudges you. “I’ll stay here.”

It takes you a second to decode, but you start to scribble down things here and there, trying to make heads or tails of the question. Mingi is silent the whole time but you feel him watching what you’re doing, and you feel the weight of his arm when he lays it on the back of the chair behind you.

Within a few minutes you seem to have written something of note, and you slide the paper back to him silently. 

He clicks his tongue without saying a word and leans forward closer to the desk. Dark eyes narrow at the page and read over the few lines you’ve written, before he side eyes you with a satisfied smirk.

“Good girl,” It’s said teasingly, and he smooths your hair, too casual. Your tummy flips but his grin is content, unknowing, his eyes forming crescents, “see, I told you you’d get it. Try the next one.”

Somehow, it starts to seem easier with him around, and over time, he has to help you less and less. It doesn’t quell the burning in your gut, only igniting it to the point it starts to get unsufferable, and all you can do is try to ignore the flames. 

The next time he’s between your legs in your dreams is in your room again, and it feels so much more vivid now that you know more about him, about the way he speaks to you, the way he acts. 

“What a pretty fucking pussy,” He muses, eyes fixated directly on your core. He uses his thumbs to pull your lower lips apart, and you can see those letters on his nails. He watches your folds stick together with arousal once he lets go, groaning, running his fingertip up your slit - the contact makes you gasp, hips bucking tentatively for more. “Does she always get this wet?” he spits down on your mound, watching it drip, “fuck- fucking creamy, baby, shit.”

He lets out a little moan before he’s diving in. You can’t get any relief, trying to squirm away - his broad shoulders are spreading your thighs apart as well as pinning them, and his hands are still playing with your pussy while he tongues over your slit.

“Tasty too, good girl, mmf-“ he whines, moving to pull you closer by your ass instead, his rings biting into your skin. He says it the way he did in the library, and your cunt gushes so wet his lips click against it; the moan you let out is like you’re in distress, hand gripping onto the headboard. 

How does he know you like this? His lips suck over your clit and you wail, reaching down with your spare hand to push his head in. 

“Fuck, Mingi,” you gasp, writhing, “so fucking good, please-“ 

Yanking at his hair, you can’t help but grind your hips into his face. He doesn’t stop you, hands gripping you and pulling you in rhythm against his tongue, and you think he’s gonna make you cum already. It’s too quick, debilitating as you hump his fat tongue to your orgasm and you pull at dark strands, looking down your body to see dark, narrowed eyes staring right up at you and he groans deep against your folds, you’re so close, almost there-

This time you wake up horny but beyond fed up, almost ignorant to the throbbing between your legs. It’s quick and easy to make yourself cum with your fingers, sticking your hands down your pants to rub one out while thinking of soft lips and rapid rapper tongues, and after that it’s just another day of being haunted by him, you suppose. 

Except this time you have a study session at Mingi’s house, and you haven’t been there since the party. 

It may have been the excitement and nerves surrounding the plans that caused the dream, but you’re too tired to care about it, yawning over exaggeratedly and stretching the sleep away from your limbs. You’ve studied hard, had a few more sessions with him that weren’t romantically charged and watched countless videos online. You’ve even read some books, some that he gave you and some that you found yourself - you’re ready to impress him, glancing over at the many papers and folders in your bag.

However, despite the attempts to gain his praise, you’re beginning to accept that you’re doomed to a life without Mingi, or worse, a life with Mingi just as your friend. 

Every single time something appears to click between you, or you have what Wooyoung would call A Moment, something interrupts or distracts one of you. Then, the moment evaporates, and nothing happens. While you’ve been sitting on pins for days, waiting for something to happen - you’re also unsure something will happen.

You’re unsure if you’ve read the entire situation the wrong way, and he really is just a good, kind friend, and your insatiability has just driven you to blur the line between fantasy and reality.

When you finally get ready and go downstairs after doomscrolling on your phone, Wooyoung and San are both looking at you like the cats who got the cream. They’re standing in the kitchen, heads fully spun towards you while you hover in the doorway in your nice jeans with a tote bag on your shoulder. If it surprises either of them that you actually have books in your bag, they don’t say anything, only smiling wider when you bounce from foot to foot. 

You crumble first. “Okay, why are you guys staring at me?”

San answers your question with a question, sipping at his mug of coffee, “Where are you going?”

“You know where I’m going,” You scoff, crossing the kitchen to fill your water bottle up. Wooyoung parts from the sink to let you get there, but his smile doesn’t fall, so pleased your blood starts to boil. “It is not a big deal. We’re just friends.”

“Sure,” Wooyoung says finally, and you groan, stomping your feet. “He’s wasting his time helping you study for a test you’re gonna fail anyway because he’s a good friend.”

You scrunch your nose up, “Wouldn’t you guys do that for me?”

“No,” they reply at the same time, and you screw your water bottle lid on, scowling.

“Wooyoung, you said he was kind. This is him being kind.”

“He’s trying to get in your pants, like, romantically,” San says, and you want to launch your water bottle at him. “Have you tried asking him? Kissing him, maybe?”

“He is tutoring me, Choi San.”

“You need to be tutored in more than economics if you’re this stupid.”

You gasp, affronted, “Since when could boys and girls not be friends?”

Wooyoung snorts, “Since the boy and girl in question both like each other and are being stupid about it.”

It pisses you off even more. They don’t know the situation you’re in, the moments the two of you have had where you think something might break through and every single time, nothing happens, and you’re reminded that it will never happen. It feels like they’re mocking you, and you mumble a “Whatever, goodbye,” that seems to be enough to placate them.

They wave you goodbye, and you choose not to tell them the extent of your hangout to avoid teasing - you’re going to his house. If they caught wind of this, they’d be buying wedding outfits and booking venues.

However, this could really prove catastrophic for you. The dreams were realistic already, but now if you have the information of what his bedroom looks like stored inside your brain, they’re only going to get worse - more variety, more realistic.

You think pathetic horny thoughts the entire walk there, nervous and excited at the same time, hands smoothing down your hair over and over as if the gentle fall breeze was going to make you look effortlessly cool. Not only are you going to his house - his room - you’re hyperaware of your body, of every movement you make, the ache between your legs that’s been lingering since you woke up; it all feels a little too much. 

When you knock on the front door, it swings open almost immediately.

“Mmm- hey, girl,” Mingi says, tall and looming, hair a little messy and curling at the ends, glasses on. His oversized tee is loose on his frame like he just woke up and threw it over his massive shoulders. He looks domestic, like he could be your real boyfriend - it’s exactly the version of him your dreams have been conjuring, and it’s getting to you before you’ve even walked through the door. “You’re right on time, look at that!”

“Hey,” Your voice is small, knees feeling weak.

He steps aside to let you in, and his place smells faintly like weed and, well, that scent of Mingi that you’ve been focused on since you met him. You can smell what must be someone cooking something delicious too, faintly, and when you focus you can hear his housemate tinkering around in the kitchen. 

His house looks different in the daytime. The sofas look lived in and comfortable and you can see the music memorabilia properly, rap album records and posters donning the walls. It seems they’re both very serious about this kind of stuff, and your brain betrays you instantly, noting everything for future dreams.

“Room’s this way,” he says, already turning down the hallway like he doesn’t see you taking everything in. You almost trip over a half-dead potted plant on your way.

His bedroom is smaller than you expect - you wonder if Hongjoong got the bigger room - and it’s neat but not too neat. His bed is made but the pillows are a little smushed, desk cluttered with papers with scribbled lines of writing, packs of rolling papers on his bedside table and empty baggies in the bin. A guitar sits in the corner, obviously well loved and with a large sticker on the corner of the body. He seems content with you looking around, trying to shuffle some papers into a neat pile until he flops down on the floor by his bed, patting the space next to him.

“We can spread out here,” he motions, brushing his hair out of his face, “I don’t have another chair for the desk, I’m sorry.”

You hesitate for a half second too long before joining him, back against the bed, knees bent. You’re so close that your legs touch again, and you shiver despite being used to it by now. He doesn’t move away.

“So,” he says, nodding towards your tote bag, “ready to actually pass this test? This is our last session.”

You grin, reaching into your bag. “I may surprise you.”

“Oh?” He raises a brow, smiling. “Now I’m excited. Don’t tell me you actually-“

You lay out your notes. You’ve not done a lot, but whether he was expecting something amazing or not it doesn’t matter, because the noise of awe he makes is all you need. Your colour coded, annotated tabs stick out from the textbook he gave you before, and his teasing expression drops, replaced with genuine surprise.

“You did.” He murmurs. “You actually studied.”

“Wow,” you say dryly, “you sound full of confidence in me.”

He laughs, shaking his head, flipping through a few pages, “no, not at all. This is good. I’m so impressed, y’know, you didn’t even care a few weeks ago?” his eyes scan your writing quickly, “you did elasticity? On your own? You didn’t even text me!”

You nod. “A demon came to me in a dream and taught it to me.”

Mingi pales, fingers paused on the tabs. “Please don’t joke like that.”

You laugh, shaking your head, “No, I actually just read the books you gave me and watched some videos online. It’s not too hard when someone explains it to you the way you need.”

Despite your last statement, a warm expression creeps over his face, pride softening his features. “I’m so proud of you.”

The words hit harder than they should. Your throat tightens, and you have to look back down at your notes so he doesn’t see the emotion spread across your face. 

“Okay,” he says, scooting a little closer, “let’s test you. Walk me through this one.”

He points to a practice question. You explain, a little slow at first because you haven’t talked about these things out loud before, but once you find your words it gets smoother. He listens intently, eyes on you, not the page; when you finish with a satisfied smile, he nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s it. Well done.”

“Oh,” you smile. “Really? That’s it?”

“You nailed it,” He confirms, and you swat at him again. Surely not. “I’m serious! See, it was always there. You just needed it explained in a way that made sense to you.”

Your knee nudges his when he shifts to point at another question, neither of you moving away. The room feels quieter, heavier, like the air has thickened. You keep going, question after question, and each time he needs to prompt you less and less. Sometimes he just watches you scribble away or think, stumbling over your words, his chin resting on his hand in a way that has to make the rings dig into him, expression soft and unreasonable.

At one point, you get stuck, frowning at a graph.

“Okay, wait,” you mutter, but he’s already there.

“Remember what we said about equilibrium?” He says gently, leaning over your shoulder. His arm comes up and behind you, on the mattress. He doesn’t seem to realise it, but it’s just like at the library, and you want to scowl at the effect he has on you. 

Your heart pounds, but you focus, staring at the page. “Equilibrium…”

“You already know this,” he points at the graph, finger dangerously close to yours, “you do, I promise. You’re just second-guessing yourself. Go with your gut.”

It feels like it means a million things at once. You glance up, and he’s closer than you expect - your breath stutters, and he continues looking at the page. His thumb flicks over a few of your tabs, considering.

“You know, it’s really cute that you put in this much effort,” he says absently, and your brain short circuits, stumbling out a few words that seem to make him snap awake. He finally looks at you, realises how it sounded and for a moment, neither of you move, looking at each other.

He laughs softly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think,” he says after a moment, “you’re gonna do way better than you think you are.”

The praise sits between you. He’s been giving you a lot of it, you think, and it feels like something unspoken is there. Neither of you reach for it, something that doesn’t surprise you. 

Instead, you sit shoulder to shoulder again, letting him show you how to understand economics as the sun dips lower and the room grows dimmer. Nothing happens again, and somehow that makes it worse, causing the knot in your tummy to tighten to an excruciating point. 

You’re really not sure what’s happening anymore. 

Dealing with vivid sex dreams about a man who doesn’t like you back is one thing, but dealing with them while said man is forcing you to study for a test is another thing. Still, if it hadn't been Song Mingi helping you you think you never would’ve studied, never would’ve bothered turning up for the test, and you would’ve been sitting on the same exact cheap plastic chair next semester resitting the entire thing.

You get to class a few minutes before the test starts, a mere few days after your last study session, Wooyoung in tow groaning about how ‘messed up the last minute test is’ - you don’t have the heart to tell him it was mentioned weeks ago and he just wasn’t listening so it can’t be considered last minute. You’re more focused on the crippling fear of you failing this test after all of the work you’ve done, the colour coded tabs and annotations that Mingi checked over to make sure you were on the right track, and you know that Mingi is never on time and so won’t be present to look over your notes with you. 

However, you walk into the room and see a carton of banana milk settled on your desk.

There’s only a few other people in here, you, Wooyoung and a few others, but a quick scan shows you Mingi is sitting in his seat and is doing very well at pretending to be occupied. He flips through a folder of notes, and you hover in the doorway, Wooyoung elbowing you frantically. 

“That’s-“ he gasps, “he- that’s-“

Your mind is racing yourself. Bringing one for you before when you studied was one thing, but he’s brought you one before the test that could determine your fate with this class, and he’s acting like it’s nothing, like it hasn’t shattered your heart into a million pieces that he actually fucking thought of you, unprompted.

Wooyoung continues spluttering behind you as you continue to your desk, waving at Mingi on his way, and you shoot him a look filled with nerves and want. He’s even put the straw in ready for you, so when you sit down, you take a grateful sip instantly. Mid-sip, Wooyoung snatches it from your hand to see a scribbled good luck note stuck on the other side, complete with a drawing of a chicken holding his own carton of milk.

“This is ridiculous,” He mumbles, running a hand through his newly cherry red hair, grabbing the paper between two fingers, “you two are playing a game that does not need to be played.”

“Whatever that means,” you sigh, snatching it back.

Avoiding staring at the side of your crush’s head, you look back down at the milk, contemplating while the class fills up. It’s not long until the professor comes in, and lays down the paper tests on everyone’s desks. Everyone looks nervous apart from Wooyoung, who just generally does not care, and Mingi, who you know is more than prepared. 

A few minutes go by while she talks, and when the class is allowed to start you look down at the questions and hang on… you actually know what this test is talking about. You shoot Mingi a look and he’s already staring at you, smiling with his teeth like he knows exactly what you’re thinking. It hurts your heart, but you smile back, shooting him a nod filled with everything he needs to know.

The test goes by like a breeze, banana milk aiding you along the way. You’re not convinced you’ve done amazing, per se, but you think you’ve done well enough to pass. The entire class pours out at the end of the hour before you have the chance to tell Mingi that you think you’ve done alright. Still, the professor tells you that she’ll upload everyone’s grades online later today, and you hope that you have the chance to talk to him later, for him to tell you how well you’ve done. 

Your mind runs with thoughts as Wooyoung yaps the entire way home. He talks about how hard the test was, how annoying the professor is, how you’ve probably done just fine with the star student’s help, and then he pauses in his tracks on the way home. 

“Speaking of,” he says, pointing a finger at you, “are you going to Mingi’s party tonight?”

You freeze. Your heart skips a beat, and you lick your lips, swallowing hard, mouth suddenly feeling insanely dry.

He hasn’t invited you. If he hasn’t invited you to his party, then that definitely means that there’s nothing between you, that you really have just overanalysed things in your head. It feels like life couldn’t be any crueler to you right now.

You swallow again. “I wasn’t planning on it,” you say, and Wooyoung’s brow rises, red hair flicking around his jaw due to the wind. He sees right through you. “Okay, fine. I wasn’t invited.”

He scowls, “That’s fucked up, especially with how much time you spend together.” He mumbles, contemplating. The two of you start to walk again before he continues, his hands shoved in his pockets, “whatever, you’re coming with us anyway.”

“I can’t turn up there after he didn’t invite me. You’re deranged.”

“That is exactly what you did last time.”

He leaves no room to argue, and when you cross the threshold to your front door, San is perched on the sofa waiting for your arrival. He’s shoving food into his face, cheeks puffed out beyond belief but he perks up upon your return, eyes forming crescents and hands quickly moving to the TV remote to pause whatever he’s got on. Another soppy drama show, you think, since he looks flushed like he’s just been emotional over it.

“How did the test go?!” He shrieks, stumbling over bare-foot in shorts that show too much thigh. Wooyoung’s eyes linger on his bare skin and you scoff. 

“It went fine,” you say, walking in to collapse on the sofa next to the San-shaped dip, “I think I may have scraped a pass. Grades are out later.”

Unfortunately, despite you wanting anything but, you press play on the show that San’s watching and it engrosses you. The boys take themselves out to the kitchen, you assume to fix you all something to eat. From what you can gather, the show is an old one about some kids in school trying to become K-Pop idols. It does seem pretty emotional, but the only thing you can cry over right now is a tall rapper that doesn’t want you. 

It only takes a few minutes, but a loud, hysterical laugh from Wooyoung from the other room makes you sigh. Something’s happened, and you hear the telltale sound of feet clambering down the hallway to thrust his phone in your face, all bright smiles and too-red hair.

“Grades are out already,” He’s still laughing, motioning to the block letters, a number sixty on his screen, “how the fuck did I pass?”

San walks in laughing behind him, hands clapping on your other friend’s shoulders in glee, “I have no idea how you did it but I’m so proud.”

Your chest clenches. Shit. They’re out already? Either that’s a good sign for the class or a very, very bad sign, but you dig in your pocket and pull your phone out to unlock it. No texts from Mingi, not that you expected any, but you quickly open up your student portal and sign in, clicking through the pages you need to get to the class overview. 

It takes too long to load. Wooyoung drops into the San-shaped dip and San leans over him, two sets of peering eyes focused on your phone screen, and they’re both completely silent as they wait. You think San’s stopped breathing. The loading circle spins mockingly, over and over, and then the page loads.

Sixty-two.

Wait.

“Oh my god, I fucking-”

“You passed!” Wooyoung screams, shaking you by the shoulders. “Do you know what this means? Shit, baby, I’m so proud!”

You know what this means. You don’t have to resit that class, you don’t have to ever bother with a stupid economics class at all ever again, you never have to see that professor again, and you have Song Mingi to thank for it all. It feels like a joint achievement, if anything, and you want to text him and tell him and thank him but - should you? Is that okay?

San and Wooyoung bounce around the living room screaming and shouting so loud that you get brought back to reality.

“I fucking passed,” you breathe in disbelief, and San cheers again.

“Hell yeah, you did!” He hugs you, warm and grounding and so nice but not what you want at all. “We’re so proud. We’re gonna get drunk, and high, and go have fun at your boyfriend’s party-”

“San,” Wooyoung pauses, face suddenly straight, shaking his head solemnly, “not her boyfriend. In fact, he didn’t even invite her.”

San’s jaw drops. “He… what? But I thought you-”

“Yeah, I know.” Wooyoung grumbles. You want them to talk more, eyebrow raising, tossing your phone to the floor haphazardly. It’s already smashed enough, you don’t even think it could smash anymore.

“You know what?” You narrow your eyes, and both boys shake their heads too quickly. That’s weird. “Tell me what you know. Now.”

San waves his hand in your face, trying to calm you down, “Just that you two were getting close. I promise, that’s all I’ve been told.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Wooyoung shrugs, too easy. It makes you want to scream. “You’re coming with us anyway, baby. I couldn’t care less what Song Mingi thinks his guestlist is.”

“Hey.” San says, weak. “He is actually a really nice guy.”

You groan, flailing your limbs, and they finally shut up - or at least they start talking about something else.

By the time you get to the party, your head spins, more drunk than you ever have been, feeling nice in your pretty dress and your best boots. The boys had insisted that a strong pregame was essential to celebrate yours and Wooyoung’s results, and Wooyoung fixes your makeup for you at the front door, too sober for your liking, thumbs smudging your eyeliner perfectly.

It’s a little like you’re entering the lion’s den, preparing to be eaten, but your brain hasn’t let you fully understand who’s house you’re entering and the fact that you weren’t even originally invited, too tipsy to care. 

San swings the front door open like he lives there, cheering with a happy, intoxicated flush on his face at whoever he sees first, and you let him introduce you to a few people while you giggle along and smile politely. It turns out a few of these people already know who you are, from the boys mentioning you you presume, so it’s easy to mingle and drink a little more when they offer it.

Your head spins. A little embarrassed, you remind yourself it’s a damn celebration. You never thought you would’ve passed that class.

Wooyoung drags you along to the kitchen, forcing another drink in your hand, and you get an immense sense of deja vu. This time, he’s learned and it’s a rum and coke he places into your grip, while you feel present physically and not mentally. San catches up to you after a while, joining in on whatever conversation the other man is leading seamlessly, and you nod and hum along like you know what’s happening, swaying in your spot.

Two big, firm hands land on your shoulders, and Wooyoong’s eyes widen comically at the figure behind you. 

“You came!” It’s slurred, but you’d know that voice anywhere - Mingi, in front of you when you turn around, black tank top tight and cargo trousers baggy. You feel lightheaded for a different reason all of a sudden, eyes scraping down big shoulders, big arms and even bigger thighs, the way his body tightens at his waist, the way he slings an arm around you like it belongs there. He smells of tequila and bad mistakes, and in any other situation you’d question his behaviour but now, inebriated, you’re leaning in, inhaling deeply for more, letting him ramble on in that deep, soothing voice. “I’m so happy you came! I didn’t- I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to come, I wasn’t sure-“ he hiccups, “I wasn’t sure you’d want to, y’know? It’s not your type of-“

“You’re right, she probably would’ve said no,” San manages for you, and you nod along. 

“They dragged me here again, ‘cause of my test results,” you laugh airily, and Mingi’s eyes widen, round and dark, his hands way too present on your body. He moves down to grip your waist, pulling you into him, and you clock that he’s as drunk as you are - you know that he’d never do this sober, but the warmth of his torso against yours is so nice that you can’t complain. You see Wooyoung trying to drag San away from the corner of your eye.

Mingi huffs out an impatient breath, staring directly into your eyes. It makes your thighs tremble and he raises an eyebrow as if to prompt you, “Your test. How did you do? Why didn’t you-“ he swallows hard, trying to catch his breath, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you invite me, for real?” You blurt, a bit bolder now that you’re alone - perhaps it’s knowing that Wooyoung can’t see you now, but definitely due to the liquid confidence flowing through you. He at least has the decency to look guilty at your words, one hand coming to the back of his neck.

“I- I’m sorry,” He says earnestly, bouncing from one foot to another, too full of energy and the tequila, “I should have. There was no other- no other reason, I just really didn’t think it’d be your scene.”

You frown. He’s probably right, but he doesn’t know that you’d do anything, go anywhere for him. “I- uhm,” you sip your drink, eyes flickering to the back door. It’s ajar, people milling in and out past you both but like before, the kitchen is quieter than everywhere else. You manage to look back at him, voice quiet when you speak, “I passed, Mingi. I managed to- well, I barely passed the class, but I passed. Thank you for-“

You’re cut off by his arms wrapping around you. He shouts with glee, shaking you around in his grip and causing your drink to splash a bit. If he’s bothered by the liquid leaking on his skin he doesn’t show it, pulling back from you with a huge grin that you can’t help but mirror, issues forgotten. He’s jostled your bag off your shoulder, and you scoop it back up as he gets noticeably more excited, smile growing wider. 

“Do you know how proud of you I am?” He gushes, eyes honest, and you melt. Your heart soars, and you smile so wide it hurts your cheeks - this is all you had wanted. Mingi pulls you back into another hug. 

This time, it lasts longer and he holds you close, letting you feel his warmth and you wrap your arms around his middle, content. It’s nice, his dark hair tickling your neck as he nuzzles into the crook there - you hear him take a deep breath, holding you closer, and it makes you feel satisfied, somewhat. If this is all you can get, this is okay, you’re sure you can deal with this.

But Mingi pulls away, and something in his eyes tells you despite the alcohol, he knows what’s going on, knows what he wants, knows that you’re feeling it too.

“I’m so proud of you, so fucking proud,” His chest heaves. He smells of tequila but beneath it, you can smell him, and it makes you lean in closer, head dizzy. “Can I just…?”

“Just what?” You ask, fingers curling around his forearms in the hopes it grounds you - it makes you worse, letting out a whimper at the feeling of his skin on yours that you can’t quite hide, “Mingi, t-tell me.”

He licks his lips, shaking his head as if to get rid of some of his thoughts, dark hair tousling and he looks so handsome, looking down at you over his sunglasses with uncertainty. It looks like he wants to say too many things at once, with no clue on where to start.

“Can I kiss you?” He asks, and your breath hitches. What? “I- I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long.”

Nodding before you can question why, when, what or how, Mingi leans forward, nose nudging yours, finally pressing his lips against you. It’s as satisfying as you always thought it would be, and he’s nothing but enthusiastic - he’s immediately letting his tongue push between your lips and into your mouth so far it pushes against your teeth, like he’s trying to swallow you whole. His fists grip into the fabric of your dress and pull you into him, moving down to grip onto your waist and keep you close, afraid you may try to run away now that he’s finally gotten you.

You kiss him back with just as much enthusiasm, placing wet, open mouthed kisses on his lips when he tries to pull away because you can’t help yourself - is this really happening, for real? He tastes of tequila, jager and Mingi, and you open your mouth in a jagged moan for more. 

When he sees how impatient you are, he cracks. He pushes you against the wall and forces his tongue back into your mouth, moaning, gravelly and deep from his chest; your legs start to tremble, and he reaches down with a strong arm and hooks one of your legs around his waist.

“Oh,” You moan at the way he moves you around easily, his heavy breaths spilling into your mouth. He’s impatient, fingers scrambling at the bare skin of your leg, touching you as much as he can in a split second like he’s still scared it’ll be over soon. He rocks forward with his hips and meets your core, clothed but you’re sure he can feel how wet you are just from being in his presence, finally feeling his lips against yours for real and not in a dream. “Oh, shit-“

“So pretty,” He murmurs, kissing you again, accidentally rutting against your cunt once, twice, before he forces himself to stop. You can barely focus, unbelieving that he’s real, right in front of you, touching you and kissing you like this - but you’ll be damned if you’re not getting answers. “So gorgeous, lovely girl,” he breathes, urgent, eager, “so smart, so proud, mm-“

He moves away again, sucking over your neck, and you take the moment to speak hoarsely, “Mingi, what- what is this? What’s… what’s going on here?”

“I-“ He freezes. His lips hover at your skin before he pulls away just enough to look at you, palms unclenching and clenching at your waist like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “… Isn’t it obvious?” He asks quietly. “Do I have to say it?”

There’s no smugness or cockiness in his tone anymore, only hesitation, like he’s standing on the edge of something and afraid he’ll fall if he says it out loud. You read his face for something, anything that tells you how he feels, but all you see is need, his eyebrows knitting together in pure desire - it just confuses you more. 

“No,” You say, even though it’s a lie and you wish you did know, kissing the corner of his mouth once again - hoping it channels the gentleness and encouragement that you need to show, not the nerves of wanting something so seriously that it feels like it may shatter your insides. It seems to work, because he kisses you again, rings biting into your thigh when he grips you firmer.

Hands moving to Mingi’s hair, you pull lightly at the strands, bringing him as close to you as possible. He groans at the slight pain, nose nudging yours as he devours your mouth, lips so plump and overwhelming that you try your best to kiss back but are left whimpering into his mouth. He controls it, just as you imagined he would, moving you this way and that; he nips at your bottom lip, prompting you to open your mouth and let him massage his tongue over yours, almost useless while he consumes you. 

You think your dreams are going to be way too vivid from here on out, overwhelmed with the knowledge of what he actually tastes like and how he actually holds you - unsure but desperate. He’s good at this too, and you curse yourself; he’s perfect, he’s everything, and this is probably going to be all you’ll get, a drunken kiss in his kitchen.

“We can set up the beer pong in here-” 

Mingi springs from you like he’s been burned. His cheeks are flushed, lips slick with a mixture of your spit and he spins around to see Hongjoong, looking just as guilty as he did in the last party when he interrupted you but without his tiara, jaw slack, shocked, round eyes flitting between the two of you.

“Or not.” He offers. “Sorry, I didn’t realise you two had finally-“

Mingi starts to babble loudly, drowning out the shorter man, hands waving and mouth making some incoherent high pitched noises that have your eyebrows knitted in confusion. Your chest is still heaving against his damn kitchen wall as you try to catch your breath, yanking down the hem of your dress and he continues babbling - you just about catch the end, when he says, clear as day, “There is nothing going on here.”

Your heart starts to race. Right. You knew that, really, but - well, for a second, you’d hoped that it really was going to be something, forgetting that you’re drunk and so is he and you’re still standing in his kitchen ramrod straight like you’ve been electrocuted. He didn’t even have the decency to take you away to his room - why would he bother, you think, damning yourself for letting your brain run away with hope and excitement. He could have hidden you away from prying eyes and Hongjoong, who seems to interrupt anything good you’ve ever been given by the world, but he didn’t. 

It was nothing. An accident, even. Something you shouldn’t have ever dreamed of.

Speaking of Hongjoong, he huffs, folding his arms over his chest. “It didn’t look like-“

“It was nothing,” You cut him off this time, voice a lot more stable than you feel. You don’t look at Mingi, but from the corner of your eye you see something written on his face, something guilty and upset and like he’s at war with himself, and you can’t be bothered to spend any more time trying to figure him out tonight. “It wasn’t anything. Hey, have you seen San and Wooyoung?”

Hongjoong nods, a small pout on his lips. “Living room. Seriously, sorry about that, I-“

“It was nothing,” You repeat, and he nods again, accepting it - finally. You hear some commotion as you turn your back, hushed whispers that again, you don’t have the energy to try to decipher.

Beelining towards the living room, you’re pleased that San and Wooyoung can tell just by the look on your face that you’re ready to leave. They spring up from the sofa, drinks discarded, arms coming to your frame to usher you to a quieter place - it ends up being outside, in their front lawn, and it happens before you even process it’s coming.

Gagging, your body folds, and you vomit right on your crush’s front lawn, just about avoiding your nice boots. Wooyoung stifles his laugh - not very well - and San elbows him behind you, unamused, hand rubbing up your back. 

“That’s alright, get it up,” He soothes. “Jeez, we shouldn’t have let you drink this much. Let’s get you home, yeah?”

“I wanna know what the hell happened,” Wooyoung argues, and the other man sighs loudly in response, making him groan. “Fine. We’ll talk when we get home.”

The walk home is longer than you remember, made even worse by how your tummy still flips. You’re not sure if it’s from the alcohol or the kiss or Hongjoong interrupting or it being nothing or some fucked up combination of all of it but you hold back sobs the whole way home, arms enveloping your middle until you finally cross the threshold into your house.

The boys move quickly into the kitchen. Wooyoung still eyes you, unimpressed that he’s left in the dark but he starts to fill up three plain glasses of water, hopefully to calm all of you down but San simply waits, arms folded over a broad chest, eyebrow raised until you finally decide to speak.

“He didn’t…” You breathe. Your handbag drops to the floor unceremoniously, lipgloss and compact clattering out of the bag, and San moves to pick them up before you can even ask him to. Wooyoung moves to you, quick across the kitchen to put his arms around your frame. “I don’t think it’s like that between us. He- Mingi didn’t say he liked me, or anything, we just… Well, we kissed, but…”

Tears are starting to form in your eyes. San and Wooyoung share a look, and San appears bewildered, “What do you mean?” He shoves your things back into your bag, pushing it onto the table, eyes soft when he turns to you, “honey, I can’t put this any simpler. You are awful at economics, and the man offered to tutor you. Even Woo wouldn’t waste his time like that just for some sex.”

“It’s true,” Wooyoung says, hands gentle where they soothe over your shoulders, “I feel it in my gut that he likes you back. Really.”

“Then,” you sniffle, “why didn’t he-“

“Tomorrow, no alcohol, you and Mingi are having a conversation,” he urges, “all the cards on the table. I’m sick and tired of seeing you pining.”

You sigh, “It won’t solve anything. He doesn’t like me like that. He can’t like me like that, I know it.”

“Would you listen to yourself?” Wooyoung laughs, “he had his tongue in your mouth less than an hour ago. You’re drunk and sad, he was drunk and Mingi. You both need to get some sleep and talk tomorrow.”

Turning to San, you expect a different response, but he gives you the same look - slightly amused at your unneccessary plight, but very firm. Tomorrow, you’ll be embarrassed that you got so drunk over passing a test that you made out with your crush and cried in your kitchen to your friends, but right now you’re too tired and sad to care. He hands you your bag, items back in safely, and the other man ushers you to your bedroom, not minding at all that you’re sniffling and whining the entire way there. 

The pretty boots you chose for tonight are pulled off by Wooyoung while you sniffle and drizzle on the end of your bed. He doesn’t seem to mind, letting you mess up your mascara and your eyeliner in dark tracks down your cheeks until he sighs so loudly, seriously that it shocks you. He throws your boots on the floor by the door. 

“Promise me,” he says, and then storms over to place his hands on your shoulder. You think he’s still a little drunk too, but he says it with so much conviction that your tears stop in their tracks, eyes round and vulnerable as you look up at him. “Promise me that once you wake up in the morning, you will talk to the man.”

You sniffle, folding your arms over your chest like a child, “Don’t want to anymore.”

“Barefaced lie,” San snorts, and you blink through wetness to see him standing at the door. Was he always there? “Sweetheart, you’ve been making this entirely more complicated than it needs to be.”

Wooyoung pulls your dress over your head and slides a big, oversized t-shirt straight back over you - you think it’s one of his, the hem too stretched and the print a little stained with hair dye. “Tomorrow, full honesty,” He points a finger in your face that makes you go cross-eyed. “Promise me. No more lies. No more beating around the bush. Everything gets said.”

“I promise, Wooyo,” you garble, although now that you’ve stopped crying, all you can feel is exhaustion taking over your body. 

Your body hits your mattress before you recognise you’re falling, and Wooyoung tuts, covering you with your blanket. Everything’s so comfortable all of a sudden, and you feel a hand move a pillow underneath your head to support it - it feels like a damn cloud.

The last thing you register is San’s laugh and the sound of a camera shutter before you pass out.

It’s almost annoying this time, after the almost-confession. 

Mingi heaves deep, staggered breaths into your neck, wearing the same outfit from the party last night - baggy cargos, too many chains, a tight tank top. A bead of sweat drips from already damp, long, dark hair, down the tempting curve of his neck and you’re already won over, too desperate for him to care, reaching up to drag your tongue up his skin. 

“Fu-uck, that’s it,” He moans, deep, gravelly, hands determined where they pull down your shorts. You’re left in your panties, edges of your vision fuzzy with your dream and he’s quick to crowd into your space again, thick thighs forcing yours apart. He makes quick work of his trousers, undoing the button and forcing them past his ass just enough to rut his boxer clad erection against your pussy. “There, there you go honey, fuck, move against me-“

You do, writhing and bucking your hips to grind your swollen clit against his bulge over and over, letting him move from your neck to your lips. He kisses your mouth finally, and fuck you know what he’s like now, enthusiastic and all consuming. His tongue forces into your mouth just like it did earlier, when this was real. His lips are slick against yours because he’s so messy with it, desperate and bucking against you like he can’t get enough. 

You can’t, either, and with desperate fingers moving to his boxers frantically you beg, “Mingi, please, inside, wan’it-“

He groans, long and broken, rings biting into your skin when he grips your hips and pulls you down hard against him, “Yeah, want it inside, my girl? Can you take it for me?”

My girl. Your head spins, your hands scrambling for purchase against the sheets, his arms, anything, finally gripping wet strands and tugging. Mingi whines this time, too high pitched to be normal, and you struggle to direct his attention to you until his fingertips curl around the waistband of your panties and pull down. He yanks them off your ankle, your leg hanging in the air when he moves back over you and thrusts down again, into your newly exposed cunt, wet and wanting.

“Answer me,” He’s determined, rocking against you so steadily you’re worried you might cum from just this, “can you? Tell me you want me to fuck you, baby, please, tell me- tell me you can take it.”

“I can t-take it,” you cry out without a beat, and he nods, meeting your lips again, “inside, inside-“

It seems to work to convince him, and he leans back on muscled thighs. You take him in, the broad expanse of his shoulders and the way he tapers in at the waist, down to the beginning of his Calvin boxers. 

He pulls up the fabric of his tank top just enough to let you see it, the beginning of his happy trail, and it’s never gone this far before. You pull yourself up onto your elbows, excited but nerves going haywire, spread eagle and naked from the waist down, and he finally starts to pull at the waistband. 

Down, down, and the smattering of hair at his base has you gasping, toes curling where your legs lay relaxed over his, and you see the base, and then-

You wake up with shorts so wet that you know you’ve orgasmed in your sleep, and now you’re certain it’s gone too far.

Without needing to make yourself cum like every other morning one of these vivid dreams occurred, you have a clear head and can only think that something has got to give. Looking back on what your friends said last night, it feels right that you and Mingi should talk today, completely sober and with clear judgement. It’s probably the best move. 

You’d be embarrassed of your behaviour if you didn’t know that Wooyoung and San loved you no matter what, and also they know better than anyone that Song Mingi has been giving you a tough fucking time.

Although the idea has your stomach twisting a little with anxiety, it’s time to be brave, and you roll over to grab your phone… only to see that Mingi has had the exact same idea. 

[9:13am] mingi: hey, we should talk. should i come over?

You blink at the text. Sighing, groaning, and sighing again, it’s obvious you have to reply - it was only sent a half hour ago - so you send a quick okay and crawl out of bed. You’re hungover, sure, with a soft pain in the back of your head but the determination takes over anything else you feel. 

Everything feels a little melancholic as you walk around, back hunched over, but you have to know even if it hurts you. You do not want to go another day with any uncertainty. 

It only takes fifteen minutes for a knock at your door to sound. It’s given you time to get yourself ready, in another cute loungewear set with simple makeup and hair just barely brushed, and when you open the door Mingi looks worse than you feel. 

He’s dressed a lot more casually than normal, beanie pulled over his head tight and jumper oversized and hanging off of his frame. A fleeting thought asks you how big it’d be on you, and you shake your head, forcing it out of your brain. When you don’t say anything, he awkwardly tugs at his tote bag on his shoulder, pulling at the bottom of his beanie like he’s got too much energy in his body and doesn’t know what to do with it.

He looks so cosy and domestic that you think that you might just burst into tears in his face.

“It’s nice to see you,” your voice warbles, and Mingi scratches his neck awkwardly, pre-roll in his other hand. That tells you all you need to know. “Should we go to my room?”

“Yeah, I think that’s best,” He sighs, looking more nervous than you’ve ever seen him and you groan internally. He’s normally the picture of confidence, save for the few times you two have… well, you still don’t know. 

This is going to end worse than you thought it would, you think, perhaps even getting to the point where you can’t even be friends anymore. Still, Wooyoung made you swear you’d be honest to the man, and you try not to break promises, especially not when it’s one of your best friends.

Leading him up the stairs, you take him to your room, and he falls on the bed like it’s his own, pulling that same teddy he likes onto his lap, running a hand over his face in exasperation. When he pulls his beanie off, his hair springs up fluffy and brown and cute, and all you can do is hand him the ashtray wordlessly so that you don’t scream. 

He pulls out the same pink lighter you saw him have last time, burning the end of the joint’s paper off and waiting for it to level. You’re not expecting him to speak yet, settling on your bed across from him with your knees pulled up, picking at a loose thread to avoid staring at him, but he swallows hard and sighs.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you yesterday,” he says, and your heart drops. “I’m sorry. I should’ve- I should’ve talked to you first, explained how I feel. It’s been killing me. I especially shouldn’t have kissed you when we were both so drunk, but I-”

“I clearly enjoyed it as much as you,” Honesty, and you try to smile, but it doesn’t reach your ears. Mingi eyes you like he knows, taking the first drag of the joint. “It’s okay. I understand, it was just a drunken kiss and it’s not-”

“What?” Mingi laughs incredulously, “is that really what you think? Do you think I kiss people like that normally?”

You falter. Well, no, you’d hope not, but you hadn’t really had anything to go by.

A longer drag, and he eyes you again, before it seems to dawn on him and his lips curl up in amusement. His tongue drags over his teeth, eyes looking you up and down. Fuck. “You really have no idea, do you?” He hands it to you, leaning back on his hands on the bed, “I’m obsessed with you. Why do you think I asked to tutor you? I mean, no offence, but you were kind of a-”

“A lost cause, yeah, I know,” you inhale. Then, it clicks in your brain, and you blink at him. “Sorry, you’re obsessed with me?”

“For as long as I can remember,” honest, frank, straight. Your head spins, but you inhale a little more, trying to formulate your thoughts better. “Since before we even spoke. I thought that’s why the guys brought you to my party in the first place.”

Hold on. You ash the joint, handing the ashtray and the smoking stick back to Mingi, “Wooyoung and San knew?”

He shrugs. His cheeks are pink, from nerves or the weed you don’t know, but he carries on speaking like he needs to get it all out in one go or he never will. His eyes avert from you, fiddling with the long drawstrings of his sweatpants, “I don’t know about them. Hongjoong and Yunho knew, that’s why they were acting so fuckin’ weird.” He chuckles breathlessly. “Trying to sell me out, honestly, and this whole thing has been so embarrassing. I tried so hard to get close to you and then- then I fucked it up by not being able to tell you how I feel. I’m not very good at that.”

It makes you pause. Mingi, all along, has been going through somewhat of a similar dilemma as you - and suddenly everything makes sense. The banana milk, the studying, the way he spoke to you at the first party, the way he’s been speaking to you - you’re talking before you even realise you are. 

Honesty, Wooyoung said. You’ll stick to that.

“Mingi, this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve had a lot of these really frequent, vivid dreams about you in the past month or so,” you say, breathless, “some before we even started talking to each other."

As soon as it comes out of your mouth, you feel like dying. Mingi doesn’t stop smoking though. He even smokes more, inhaling longer, nodding with every word you say before he finally seems to process it. The flush seems to extend down to his neck, and he yanks at his jumper, pulling at the collar to get air - once the joint’s in your hold, he clears his throat, gulps a few mouthfuls of water down from a bottle he pulls from his tote bag. “I- That’s good to know. Normal dreams, or dirty?”

He’s… okay with it? He’s actually being way more casual about this than you thought he would be. This is the same guy that gets freaked out when he thinks about the concept of demons. You finish the joint and snuff it out, discarding the ashtray to your bedside table.

“A bit of both. Mostly dirty, but like, we were together in them. A little domestic,” You admit. He cracks a grin, showing those teeth that you fell for, and you can’t help but smile back. It is a little funny. A little crazy too, though. “You don’t think it’s weird?”

Mingi shrugs. “Not really, it’s not your fault. You must’ve just had a crush on me too. You know we don’t choose our dreams? Scientists say it’s just stuff from our subconscious, I read about it online.”

No way. You blink. You blink again, and he’s still there in your room sitting with you, the guy from your dreams, grinning crookedly and looking ever so delighted with himself. 

“Or,” He coughs. “It could have been the lines I was writing trying to manifest you in my life. Maybe it worked.”

“Mingi… that’s fucking crazy.”

He swallows hard. His eyes are a little red from the weed, but the flush on his cheeks is from solely nerves now, you know. “Well, I had to do something from a distance. You’re hard to approach - y’know, you seem shy - but you’re really cool. And so fuckin’ pretty, you must know that, right?” He huffs out a quiet laugh, embarrassed, “I’ve definitely had dreams about you, too.”

“It’s not shy,” You say softly. “I’m just awkward.”

There’s something fragile in the way he’s positioned now, something you haven’t seen in Mingi yet - something hopeful but hesitant, like he’s worried he’ll scare you off any second - it’s different to last night with no confidence from his rum. When his brows lift, eyes flickering with uncertainty because you haven’t said enough yet, you realise that you never ever want to be the reason he doubts himself again. 

“Mingi,” you say, steady even though your heart is racing, “I think I’ve been obsessed with you for a long time. Like, a long time. After this, you never have to doubt that.” You inhale, “Not having you was killing me. The dreams felt so real, and I fell for you so quickly but the way you acted around me… It was so up and down. I didn’t know if you felt anything at all, or if it was-“

He’s moving mid sentence to meet your lips with his, decisive and a little desperate. He tastes like weed and Mingi, enticing, and you melt into it, following his mouth without thinking - how did you hold yourself back from jumping him last night, when he’s real, here, in front of you? 

His lips are buttery, grounding against yours, and when you reach out to touch his arms he finally exhales and pulls you closer, yanking you onto his lap on your bed with his hands at your waist.

He mumbles against your mouth, words stumbling out between breaths, “I tried- I did try to tell you how I felt, I just- fuck, I don’t know how to-“

“I know,” You manage, and this time you really do. Two people circling each other, both too excited, too unsure, mistaking intensity for indifference. “I thought… I thought you just wanted something physical after last night, maybe, I didn’t know.”

“God, no,” He chuckles, throwing his head back for a second with closed eyes. “I just get so excited I don’t shut up, and none of what I say ever comes out right.“

“I understand,” Your hand strokes over his hair. It’s said with purpose this time - you really mean it. With Mingi, it was never fear; it’s excitement, pure and unfiltered, knocking everything else out of order, and now that he has permission to show it he can’t stop himself.

The kisses he lays on your neck prove it to you that this is possible, you and him. It’s possible and it’s happening right now, your thighs clenching around his and hands moving to roam down his body, over his broad shoulders and firm chest as he sucks on your neck. 

“Fuck,” Mingi breathes. “I feel like I’m dreaming. You’re unreal, baby.”

“I’m right here,” You laugh, because it’s insane he would say that to you, knowing that his mere presence has you feeling like you’re away with the fairies and has been for a while now. “I’m right here, Min, fuck, do you wanna- get this off, please-“

He pulls back and tugs his oversized jumper off by the back of the neck, launching it somewhere in the room and leaning back for you to follow his body - you do, chasing his heat, but with your eyes down. The removal exposed planes of tan skin, muscles that rival the ones you’d fantasised about. It’s soft to touch too, satin under your fingers as you slide your fingers down the muscles of his tummy.

“Pretty,” You murmur, and he shivers under your touch, breath hitching. “You are. I’ve- I’ve thought about how you look, but this is even better, Min.”

“Oh, baby,” He moans at your words, hands sliding under your shirt and onto your skin. He gives you a hesitant look, and you nod, before he’s sliding them upwards and cupping your breasts over your bra. He lets them sit in his hands for a bit, kissing over your jaw again before he slides his fingers underneath the lace. They’re a little cold, and when his fingertips hit your nipples you shiver, further collapsing into his hold, but he takes your weight easily. “So good, fuck, they feel so- can I- can you take your shirt off? I want to see.”

You pull it off over your head quickly, baring your bralette and Mingi’s palms situated under the fabric, and he moans, quickly sliding his hands out to look at them. He exhales, eyes fixated as he starts to pull at your nipples, and you don’t know if you’re just sensitive or if it’s because it’s him, but your spine arches into him with a gentle noise. 

“Fuck, so pretty, so pretty. Like that, that’s okay?” He murmurs, and you nod eagerly, making him pinch them again, on the line between pleasure and pain, “tell me more about your dreams. What was I like?”

His fingers flick over the nubs until they yank at the lace, hard and swollen, and he pulls your bralette over your head, leaving you naked from the waist up. You gasp when his head ducks down, sucking one of your nipples into his mouth, your hand going to dark strands to keep him there - but you remember he asked you something.

“You… talked a lot,” you admit, embarrassed but he hums around your nipple, encouraging. You whimper and continue, writhing, “You were nice, but- dirty. Pervy. Am I- was I right?”

Mingi pops off your bud. “Well, your dreams sound a lot more innocent than mine,” he grins easily, lips slick and cheeks pink, “I had you bent over my desk with one of my songs playing. So yeah, I guess I am a pervert.”

It shocks you so bad that you don’t make a noise when he moves you, pushing you back on his dark bedsheets and moving over your body. He’s so big above you, just like you imagined, using one strong arm for support and leaning down to kiss you filthy again. 

He tangles his tongue with yours again as he fiddles with the button of your jeans, eventually managing to flick it open and tug the zipper down. You wrestle out of the denim underneath him, giggling when it gets caught at your knees; Mingi lets out an amused huff, smoothing your hair down like he did in the library, fond. 

Eventually, you’re left in your underwear wanting him to strip, too, but he pushes your legs apart. “This- this is okay?” He asks again, against your lips, and moans when you nod, “I didn’t want to last night, when we’d been drinking. I wanted it to be special, baby, I-“

“I know,” you say, kissing his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, landing on his lips when his skin begins to heat in embarrassment, “but I think if you don’t fuck me soon I might die.”

“We’re not drunk now,” his breath is impatient, heavy, and his spare hand moves down to brush against your panties, where the cotton is slick between your legs, “I’m high as hell though, and this pussy feels wet. G’na let me touch it?”

Fuck. Your head spins, like the high is returning but stronger because it’s Mingi; you’re finally here, beneath him, his to touch, his to hold. “You can touch it,” you heave, “I wanna touch you too. Please, I think about it so much, I wanna- wanna see it.”

Mingi’s face crumbles in a desperate noise, but he doesn’t move from his position, kissing you again like he can’t get enough of it.

When he speaks, you can hear him holding back, voice strained, “Not yet, baby. Let me taste it first, yeah? Then you can, I promise.”

“Okay,” you breathe against him, squirming when he rubs his fingertips over your panties, right where your clit is. He feels the pudge and brings his thumb down over it a few times, firm, and you let out a strangled whine. You hope San and Wooyoung are out, but you didn’t even bother checking the house before you let your man in. Your man - your breath stutters, and all of a sudden you’ve stopped caring. “Okay, fuck, please Mingi, want you, touch me properly-”

His fingers hook into your panties and yank them down your legs. Your legs rest over his, relaxed, toes curling into his thighs when you’re finally exposed to him. Despite the insecurity biting at your gut again from being so bare and vulnerable in front of him, he quells it quickly, wiggling down the bed onto his chest to examine you closely.

“Look at that, doll, so fucking wet,” He murmurs, thumbs coming up to spread your folds. They stick together with your arousal, something you’d be embarrassed about if he didn’t moan so loud at the sight, plush lips parting and eyebrows knitting together. “Fuck. G’na eat it now, ‘kay? If you need me to stop just-”

You force him into your pussy by his hair, and he moans at the first taste. His fat tongue swipes through your folds, impatient, and he licks up to flick it over the pudge of your clit, spreading your arousal everywhere. It’s so sensitive that you whimper and writhe underneath him, but he doesn’t seem swayed, burying his face into your cunt and making out with it viscerally, messy, claiming.

It’s just like your dream - except better. He’s pulling you down by your hips, rings biting into your skin, whining into your folds but he’s messier - he sucks all of your arousal into his mouth and spits it back on your pussy just to lick it up again. Your pussy is clinging to his lips by strings of sticky arousal and he flicks his tongue over your clit to hear you moan loudly, incomprehensible. 

“You’re- how are you so fucking good at this, fuck, please, more-”

“Told you, I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he states matter of factly, lips brushing against you, and you can see your slick has spread all over his chin, up to his nose. He doesn’t look bothered - he looks like he enjoys it, voice slurred, eyes half lidded, tongue licking over his lips, down to his chin. “This pussy’s fucking pretty. Tasty, too. I’m gonna have to eat her all the time, okay?”

He rubs over your clit, looking up at you expectantly. He’s waiting for a response, but you can’t focus, legs twitching at the stimulation. “F-uck, Mingi-“

“Mm, what do you say, baby?” He says, voice lower, and you keen. He chuckles in disbelief, shaking his head, rubbing a little faster, your pussy making an embarrassing wet noise with his movements. “Are you gonna let daddy come and eat her whenever he wants?”

“Oh my god, oh my god,” you babble, squirming, desperate for him to eat you again and he’s still fucking laughing at you, eyes full of admiration. “Yes, pleasepleaseplease daddy, you can eat it whenever- whenever you want!”

“Good giiiirl,” He hums, diving back in again. He’s just as vigorous and you’re panting, making way too much noise, gripping and tugging at his hair and bucking into his mouth when he groans in delight at the pain. 

“Haa, fuck, Mingi- baby, baby, ‘s so good-“

He slides his fingers inside, past the resistance of your hole, curling them up instantly. It’s a stretch so quickly but feels so good, you squeal, humping your hips down onto him. He’s trying to find your g-spot, and it only takes a moment of prodding and pressing for you to make an incoherent noise, hips bucking. He taps a few times, teasing it, and you can’t shut up, gripping the pillow, eyes crossing in pleasure. “Noisy girl. Cunt’s fucking noisy too, talkin’ to me. Can you hear that? She’s telling me I own her now.”

“Mingi- f-fuck, you can’t say-“

“What? Don’t you like daddy talking to you?” He’s suddenly over you again, wet mouth forming a lazy grin. His fingers still pump into you and you reach to grab at his wrist, silver bracelets jingling with his movements. Your eyes water, hips grinding a rhythm into him. “I think you do, ‘cause you’re made for me, aren’t you? Fuckin’ unreal,” he hisses, looking down at where your cunt leaks down his skin, “this hole clenches around me when I talk, askin’ me for more. My hole, yeah?”

“Can’t- can’t be yours if you haven’t fucked it-“

“Shush, pretty, don’t be cheeky,” His tone is firm, but he kisses against your lips with affection. “Gonna fuck it. Gonna fuck it so many times it remembers the shape of my cock and can’t cum on anything else, but I want you to cum like this for me first. Can you?”

You’re nodding before he finishes, riding his fingers, and his thick thumb reaches up to flick over your clit. “I can, fuck, daddy, I can!”

“Yeah, moan my fucking name as you cum, there’s a good girl,” He kisses you again, dirtier this time, swallowing your moans with wet lips. You can taste yourself, and it’s that which does you in, Mingi pulling away just quick enough to hear the broken whine of his name that falls from your mouth. He groans back at you, rubbing your clit slower through your orgasm to drag it out, fingers curling to let you feel the shocks from your special spot just once more. 

He’s too good. It’s like he knows your body already and you can’t understand it, but you let yourself cream and gush on his fingers with many babbled words and strangled noises until you’re eventually done. You think you see his fingers stick together when he pulls them out but he sucks them clean quick enough, offering you a crooked, toothy smile as if he just couldn’t help himself when you let out a shaky breath at the sight. He rolls off of you onto his side, leaning his head on his hand all satisfied.

“How was that?” He asks, cute as ever, and you think you see him fucking blushing. He’s so good, and fuck, he’s yours now. “Was it like your dreams?” 

Your chest is still heaving, but you lean over to give him a kiss in response. His hand smooths over your lower tummy and you swoon, too happy, too desperate all over again despite the fact his fingers have just been all over and inside your pussy. “Mm, it looked intense, I liked doing that to you,” He’s getting excited again too - you think you can tell now, when his voice starts to pick up, airy, “you’re so fucking pretty, look so sexy when you cum, I just wanna-”

Furrowing your eyebrows, you glance down to his sweatpants. Mingi is definitely still hard, although there’s a small wet patch on his clothed bulge that you think he’s created without realising and fuck, your pussy is throbbing again. You can see how big he is through the clothes, much bigger than you ever thought, ever dreamed of, and it must be aching. “Let’s do more. I wanna do more with you.”

Mingi definitely blushes now, but he’s climbing on top of you again with that look in his eyes again. “Yeah? I want to do more too, you’re so gorgeous when you cum. Do you think you can you do that on my cock?”

He’s a little impatient, pushing his sweatpants down with one hand and leaning above you with his other. You try to look down but he tuts at you, making you look back at his face straight away, and you link your arms over his shoulders. “Um- maybe? I’ll try, shit.”

“Think you will,” He kicks his bottoms off and wriggles out of his boxers, too, and when you look again he doesn’t stop you. He even leans back to make sure your view isn’t obscured. Desperate, you assume, but shit it is big. 

His muscled arm swings as he jerks it back to full hardness leisurely, and you were right, it leaks heavily in his palm. The lubrication adds to the sensation and he lets out a sigh. His cock is long but thick too, and there’s a smattering of dark hair at his base that makes you want to press your nose into it and inhale as you deepthroat him. You’re quickly distracted, though, because he shuffles forward and positions his cockhead at your hole. It tries to suck him in already, gummy and wet and pliant after your orgasm. 

He pecks your lips again, addicted, nuzzling you with his sharp nose. He looks so pretty on top of you, plush lips pillowing over your cheeks and your chin and your nose, his black hair tickling your forehead. Your belly burns - you don’t think you’ve ever wanted anything this bad, and you’ve known that a while, but it’s real now, happening, not a dream although it still feels like one.

His tip catches in your folds again, and you feel him shiver on top of you but he doesn’t stop looking at you, kissing you again, over and over before he speaks hoarsely, “Condom?” 

You shake your head. No fucking way. You’re on the pill for health reasons, and you’ll be damned if you’re having anything between you and this man when you’ve finally gotten hold of him. “Raw, please, I’m on the pill, wanna- wanna feel you, all of it.”

“Shit, you are a fucking dream, baby,” he groans, finally, finally swiping his cock through your folds. You think he’s finally going to put it in but he uses your arousal to slick his cock, letting you feel the pressure of it against you. “Think it’ll fit? You’re- baby, you’re so fucking tiny down here, could barely get my fingers in- oh shit, trying to suck me in.”

You try to squirm, but he’s so overpowering you can barely move underneath him. There’s a burning feeling in your tummy like you need it or you’ll die, and he’s still playing with you. He swipes his cock through your folds over and over, watching the way his tip disappears a little into the slick mess. You can’t help it - “Mingi, please put it in!”

“Fuck, ‘m so sorry, baby,” He grunts, sounding like he isn’t the least bit sorry, repositioning himself on his knees so that he’s more comfortable. You see him pull at his cock, moving the foreskin down to expose the tip, leaking pearly precum that makes your mouth water, “‘s too fucking pretty, all creamy like that, hadta play a bit. Gonna take it all for me now? It’s not gonna be too big?”

“Mingi, please- please, I’ve thought about this for so long, just- please, oh my god- oh, oh-“

You’re cut off by the deep, gravelly groan he lets out as he finally pushes inside. It slides in easily from how soaked you are, but it’s still a stretch, so thick and hard that your pussy throbs and tries to gush around him, begging for more.

“Please,” you gasp wetly, and he gives you the first inch. It’s barely anything, not compared to the whole size of him, but you moan and he grins in satisfaction. His tongue licks over his teeth as he slowly starts to fuck the first inch in and out, over and over until you start to shake, hands scrabbling for his hips to push him further inside. “Please, Mingi, daddy, I want more, all of it, give it to me-“

He grunts, sliding all of his length home as he pushes your thighs further apart, letting the pits of your knees rest on his elbows. It’s then that he begins a sinuous grind, hips steadily rolling against your ass, jiggling the flesh upon impact. Your bed is creaking with his steady movements, a thud every second that has you worried your housemates can hear you but well, you decided a while ago that you were over that.

“That’s w-what you needed, yeah?” He coos, voice shaky from the way your pussy is clenching around him. Every time his hips roll backwards, your hole grips and clings as if you can’t bear to have him pull out, so Mingi shortens his thrusts - quick, deep bursts that almost pain your cervix when he hits it. It feels too good to hurt though, and you can’t help but push against his tummy, overwhelmed with sensation. He catches your hands, pinning them above your head and grinding his pubic bone against your clit. “I know, ‘s so good, just- baby, f-feel it, feel it. Gonna feel it for the rest of your life. Yours now.”

You feel dizzy. It’s so good, and he’s right - this is all yours now, finally, after everything. 

Mingi quickens his thrusts, hitting right where you need him to. His shoulders catch your attention, broad and rippling with exertion as he holds himself above you, wet, hot pants spilling from his lips with every movement and you can’t help yourself, you feel so full your eyes start to water. He’s throbbing inside of you, desperate to split you open with his teeth biting into his lower lip as he gazes down at where you’re connected. Your pussy drools, slicking up to your mound and over his pubes, up to his happy trail.

“S-so fuckin’ tight, so wet, so warm,” His voice breaks, palm moving to your lower stomach to keep you steady. It quivers under his touch, but he doesn’t notice, thinking solely with his dick. “Wanted to fuck you so bad. Fuck, I’ve wanted this for so long, feels too good, p-please, baby, I gotta fuck you harder-”

“You can, please, please,” You gasp when he does, shifting his knees to balance himself. His hips start move against you steadier, harder, cock pistoning into your pussy, abs rippling as he grinds himself inside of you. It’s everything you dreamed of and more, and it’s almost too much, too full, too big - you can’t help but whimper and scramble at his shoulders, squealing when he starts to rub over your clit in rhythm with his thrusts. It’s so swollen, so sensitive that you squeal as he makes contact, cheeks burning as your back arches into him - you’ve been waiting so long for this, and it’s ruining you, every thrust taking you apart and putting you back together again. 

Mingi’s just as affected. He drools wetly onto your bare shoulder, wrapping one arm around the small of your back and letting the other hand move to cup your breast. He’s flushed, warm and rutting into you like a mindless animal, but the whines falling from his lips are nothing but grateful. “H-How does it feel, baby, is it as good as you imagined?”

“Better,” you hiccup, because it is, “fu-uck, Mingi, so much better, s-so deep!”

“Yeah, pussy’s t-too fucking good,” He cups your head with his hand, pulling your body upright so he’s essentially holding you off the bed to fuck you. He can go harder like this, and you feel his balls slapping against your ass, lips drooling messily on your shoulder while he talks. You don’t think he could be quiet if he tried, and you can’t believe your brain got this so right. “So fuckin- warm, tighttighttight, I could fuckin’ bust now,” he babbles, “feels so good to fuck you open finally, thought about it- s-so much-“

“Baby, oh my god, ‘s so good,” you mewl, hands moving to his chest, cupping the ample flesh and scratching down further, leaving red lines in their wake. It only makes Mingi fuck you harder, thighs trembling as he drives into you over and over, and you realise he’s right - you are gonna cum around his cock, too soon to be acceptable. “Feels- you’re perfect, I can’t, I’ll- it’s so good I’ll cum, I-”

“Oh, honey,” Mingi groans, long and drawn out, “i-it’s okay, you can cum for me. I want you to cum as m-much as you can, okay?” he kisses you, messy and wet against your cheek, “as much as that little pussy lets you, soak my dick over ‘n over, please, baby.”

You hump yourself onto him, managing to push yourself over his shaft and he lets you, lets you fuck your hole on his thick length until you feel it starting to build, too fast, too sudden, too perfect. He holds you close, ruts into you just enough to abuse his cockhead against that spot inside of you and it doesn’t take much, only a few grinds over him until you’re shaking apart.

“That’s it, oh, good girl, my girl, all mine, so pretty,” Mingi babbles through it, and at the crest of your orgasm your lips part in a sharp noise. Your moan is strangled, almost pained, and he moans right back at you, moving one thumb down to your clit to rub over it and extend your orgasm as long as he can. Your walls flutter around him, gummy and soft and gushing so wet down to his balls that he can’t help the way he rocks forward, chasing the wetness - he only causes you to leak more, cumming so long that your pussy starts to force him out; he presses his hips hard against yours to keep himself inside.

“A-Ah, I,” you cry, unsure, still stuttering with the remnants of it, “so good, I- thank you, daddy.”

Mingi gasps, plush lips parting, cock throbbing inside you. “don’t fucking- don’t say that, I almost came,” all of a sudden, he pulls out, gripping his cock at the base to stave off his own orgasm. You see how slick his shaft is, drenched with your arousal and it looks so dirty, white cream moistening his tan skin and contouring the veins with wet mess. As if it catches his attention, he looks down too, groaning at the sight of your release before his eyes move to your body, raking down you unabashedly. You can’t fucking believe this. Was he always this obvious? “Fuck, I… baby, can I have you on your hands and knees? Always wanted-”

You’re moving before he can finish, shaky limbs pushing your body up to your hands and knees. Your back forms an arch that he runs his hand down with a noise of appreciation, and then you hear the sheets rustle where he walks on his knees towards you, impatient. 

“Good girl,” he mumbles, smoothing down the curve of your spine and down to your ass, where he seems to hesitate before he lands one firm slap. The flesh ripples as you cry out, but you don’t run from him - instead, you’re bucking back for more, and Mingi pushes his dick back through your folds once again. “Thought of this s-so much. Your ass, you grinding back on me, tellin’ me- tellin’ me how it feels. Thought of you too fucking much to be normal, baby, thought I was going insane.”

“Mm, Mingi,” you shake your hips, distracted, trying to entice him, and it works. His noise is almost pained, eyes fixated down on where your ass perks up in the air, and he’s sliding back in in one quick thrust. It’s deeper like this, and he hits your cervix almost immediately - this time he doesn’t wait, hips hitting your ass consistently. The headboard thuds against the wall again, too loud and steady to be anything else, incriminating.

Mingi hisses and pulls out right to the tip, “P-please, baby. Shake it on me, like I said, shake it for daddy, good girl.”

Perhaps you’re too obedient but he’s engrossed by it, cock throbbing inside you. You start to grind your hips before you can be embarrassed, moving yourself up and down on his shaft in such a slick slide your chest hits the mattress, hands forming fists on your sheets. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you gasp, scrambling for dear life - has anything ever felt this good outside of those damn dreams? You knew it, knew it had to be him, knew it was always gonna be him - “feels so good, please, please-”

Mingi gasps, hand coming to grip your hips, moving you against him, “You’re unreal. Fucking- oh my god, that’s it, just like that. My girl, my f-fucking dream, god, let me-“

He takes over. You’re thankful for it, because you’ve never felt anything so thick and long and veiny and so fucking perfect inside you - it’s like he’s made for you, carving his ridges and curves into your walls until you couldn’t possibly think of anything else. You’re glad you’re his now, because it’d be impossible to be anyone else’s, to even try to be after he’s given you a taste of what you could have. 

Mingi’s ravenous. Hands come to push you down, like he’s realised he can be rougher, and you’re forced fully onto your front before his teeth bite at your neck. His hips slap into you, sloppy, uneven, size forcing the cream you’ve created to form a ring around his base, and he whines at the wetness. 

“G’na cum, can’t hold it,” He murmurs, hands wrapping around your shoulders for purchase, pulling you back into him. “Can you- f’me, another- fuckin’ give it to me, girl, all for your man.”

His finger and thumb come to roll your clit, and you’re done for. Combined with the feeling of him aching so heavily inside of you you can do nothing more but babble nonsensically, eyes crossing and cunt clenching around him so deliciously that he roars, pressing deep. Bites turn into kisses, softer as he gets closer and he tries to keep the pace the best he can but it’s unnecessary; just feeling his weight on you, his skin, his chest against your front triggers your orgasm, and one hand shoots down to hold Mingi’s wrist right over your bud.

“That’s it, f-fuck, I can feel it,” He gasps, knees scrambling on the bed to get closer to you. He pushes deep once, twice more and then with a sharp whine you feel him too, the head of his fat cock erupting and filling you with more than enough proof that he likes you back.

“Mngh- it’s- fucking deep, I-“ You choke, and Mingi shushes you, voice shaky, pulling your hips back to get it even deeper as he pumps you full, breaths stuttering. Something awful flashes through your brain, something domestic and too serious but it makes your cunt throb, gummy and soothing around his shaft as he empties himself. 

Mingi chuckles, kissing the slope of your shoulder. “Maybe it’ll take, h-huh? Claim you properly. Will you believe it’s real then?”

“J-Jesus,” you stutter, squirming - how did he read your mind like that? - and he laughs again, finally coaxing his softening cock out of your hole. It feels stretched, and you know it is when he groans, elongated, thumb rubbing over the slick opening.

“Could fuck you again looking at that,” He muses, and you wriggle your hips, tempted - he huffs and gives you another smack, this time on your thigh, admonishing you. “Behave. We’ll have a spliff and we’ll go again.”

You roll over on your back, deflated, finally seeing him. He sits next to you on the bed, skin flushed, eyes half lidded. He’s just as fucked out as you but somehow more composed, eyeing you like he wants to laugh but he knows he can’t as he’s not much better.

“Weed and then more sex,” Your hand reaches up to smooth over his cheek, and his eyes flutter shut, a smile pulling at his lips until he falls into you again. Limbs intertwined, you peck at his nose again. “Where have you been all my life?”

“Buying you banana milk and trying to be normal around you, actually.”

“Right, yeah,” You giggle, and he plasters himself to you closer. You’re both sticky and exhausted but it’s comfortable, the heat satiating rather than stifling. Nails trailing up his arm, he shivers, and you watch the goosebumps form - real. It’s real. “We have a lot of making up to do. We could’ve been doing this a while ago.”

Mingi’s eyes open, glinting. “You’re not leaving this room until it stinks, baby.”

“Okay, disgusting,” You shove at him, and he’s amused, finally rolling away to put some clothes on with a shake to his shoulders. Watching him as he moves, sitting on the edge of your bed, you’re unashamed this time - he’s yours to look at - and you hum as his back muscles flex, reaching down to pull his discarded boxers back up. When he stands, you see his thighs tense, and well, that ass… your eyes want to water. How lucky can one girl be?

Mingi stretches his arms above his head and turns to you, making you avert your eyes promptly to the blanket beneath you. “Pervert, I saw that. But, hey, are Wooyoung and San still in?”

You yawn, shrugging, finally reaching over for your own clothes. “Honestly, no idea. Stopped caring.”

“They can thank us for the show, and the many more to come,” Mingi grins, cocky, and you roll your eyes like you aren’t obsessed with him. With that, your phone starts to ping on your bedside table, three tones one after another, and you furrow your eyebrows. It’s quick throwing your clothes on before you check - a fresh pair of panties and a tee as your last pair of panties were ruined - and when you pick your phone up, he sidles in behind you, wrapping his arms around your middle and kissing over your neck.

Nosy ass, you think, but you open your phone with a satisfied little smile, before it promptly falls at seeing that it’s your house group chat.

[2:13pm] wooyo: definitely still in baby

[2:14pm] sannie: Told you he’s a nice guy

[2:14pm] sannie: Do u guys want anything btw we’re ordering food

You splutter. “Oh my god-“

“How kind of him,” Mingi coos. “I think San’s nice too.”

“Mingi,” You scowl, but he doesn’t flinch, and when he plants a sloppy kiss on your cheek you can’t help but smile. “You know that’s not the point!”

“Oh, right. Ask him to get me some chicken. He knows what I like.”

“That’s still-”

“Baaaaby. Chicken, please.”

“Fine.”