𝓛𝔂𝓻𝓪

What was once a fairy tale turned out to be your worst nightmare. The type of one that you didn't wish for your worst enemy: nights with no sleep, crying sessions that led to you literally passing out…

When you first confessed, Jongseob couldn't be more relieved — after all, keeping his feelings to himself for months was hell.

But even with the mutual feelings, both of you never established your relationship. Friends? No. Best friends? Way past that. Friends with benefits? I mean, you kiss and there's some touching but all of that came after the “I love you's" shared late at night.

Although you pretended everything was perfectly fine, the answer was found in the hospital bed with your friends and him by your side. You promised yourself — and Jongseob — that you would never try to do something like that again. But the reason for your stupid impulsive act? He never really asked. But you knew. You knew how much you felt compared to him. Was it your fault, though? Could you really blame yourself for loving so much? — So much to the point of leaving scars along your arms every time he showed a slight change in his attitude.

While you tried to be your best version for him, Jongseob didn't seem to love you at the same level. It was like the initial sparkle was long gone.

You've tried to push him away: excuses for not replying to his texts nor meeting up with him. But what if he found someone better? Someone that was his perfect match? Someone that wasn't insecure and dumb like you? Suffering in silence was the best option. "Communication is the key" my ass.

And why would he act mad when you confront him? Why would he confirm that you are not the most important person to him? Why did he even confess in the first place?

You know Jongseob is a busy man with a busy life, but he claimed you as part of it. So why were you such a burden to him?

It didn't matter how many times both of you discussed: you’d always apologise for disrupting his peace and lock your feelings in a box, way too scared to lose him.

You wouldn't be able to leave and see him moving on with his life. Maybe you just can't live in a world where you suffer with or without him. You pray to whatever entity to drag you with them to anywhere, away from the pain.

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You haven't said a word to each other since climbing into the car, but the silence is louder than any conversation. The undercurrent of tension made your breath shallow and your heart bang against your ribs, begging to be freed like it’s in a prison cell.

Taeyang's words earlier tonight weren't idle promises — they were declarations, and you understood the weight behind them.

At the club, you found yourself tethered to his side like a willing satellite in his orbit. He paid for your drinks with the casual authority of someone accustomed to claiming what he wanted, his arm a permanent fixture around your waist. His gaze was a weapon, mean mugging anyone who even tried to look your way — friends included.

And it was the way he transformed when even Keeho or Jiung offered you a compliment that truly undid you. The subtle shift in his body, the tightening of his grip, and how he'd pull your back flush against him with a hand splayed across your stomach.

Each possessive gesture sent a current of electricity through you, igniting something primal in your core. You craved it, craved him, and the exhilarating feeling of being claimed so completely.

You shift in your seat, crossing and uncrossing your legs while his thumb stills for a fraction of a second before pressing harder, kneading into your muscle.

A faint, smug smile flickers at the corner of his mouth, barely visible in the dim dashboard glow.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

The car slows at a red light, and he turns to look at you. His stare travels slowly, from your eyes down to your lips, then lower, tracing the curve of your neck where your pulse flutters, the swell of your breasts in that tight top you'd chosen.

"You okay?" He asks, his voice low.

You nod, swallowing hard. "Yeah. Just... tired."

He hums a noncommittal sound, and his hand slides an inch higher. The light turns green. He accelerates, but his eyes stay on the road now, though his fingers resume their slow, torturous exploration.

Up, then down. Up…. then down… Each pass creeping a little higher, until his fingertips brush the warm, damp fabric of your panties beneath your skirt.

Your breath hitches and god, you can't help it. He doesn't look at you, but you catch his smirk deepening.

The car turns onto a quieter street, lined with darkened storefronts and the occasional flickering neon sign. Fewer cars and lights. The world narrows to the space inside this vehicle and the weight of his hand on your thigh. Heat pooled low in your belly as his fingers press more firmly against the soaked cotton.

You squeeze your thighs together instinctively, trapping his hand there. He chuckles under his breath, a low, dark sound.

"Spread your legs.” He murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper, but the command is unmistakable.

Your body reacts before your mind catches up. Your knees fall apart, your skirt riding up higher, baring your thighs to the warm air and to his hungry gaze. He glances down, then back at the road, and you watch his jaw tighten.

"Good girl."

The praise sends a shiver through you. His fingers hook into the side of your panties, pulling them aside, and then there's nothing between his touch and your slick, aching cunt.

He drags two fingers through your folds, slowly, gathering your wetness, and you bite your lip so hard you practically taste copper.

"So fucking wet," He mumbled, almost to himself. "Been like this all night?"

You can't answer. You can barely breathe. His fingers circle your clit in lazy strokes teasingly, never quite pressing hard enough to satisfy, and your hips twitch involuntarily, chasing his touch.

"Answer me."

"Yes—“ You gasp. "All night."

He hums approvingly before he presses inside you — one finger, then two, sliding in with a slick, obscene sound that fills the quiet car.

Your head falls back against the headrest, your eyes fluttering shut as he curls his fingers, searching and finding that spot that makes your whole body jolt.

"Hm." He hums in satisfaction before starting a rhythm: slow, deep thrusts, his palm grinding against your clit with every push. The car swerves slightly as he takes a corner too fast, and you realize he's leaving the main roads, guiding the car into a maze of back alleys and darkened parking lots.

Your hands grip the edge of the seat, knuckles white. His fingers are relentless, fucking you in that slow, torturous pace and building a pressure that coils tighter and tighter in your belly. You're already close, embarrassingly close, and he knows it.

"No," He says, pulling his fingers out abruptly. You whimper at the loss, and he chuckles, bringing his wet fingers to his lips, licking them clean with an exaggerated slowness. "Not yet."

He pulls the car into a narrow back street between two brick buildings, the headlights illuminating a graffiti-covered wall. He kills the engine as the silence rushes in, thick and deafening.

He turns to you, and there's no amusement now —just raw, naked hunger. He reaches over, grabs the back of your neck, and pulls you into a kiss that steals the air from your lungs.

It's messy from the start. His lips are hot and demanding, tongue pushing past your teeth to taste you and claim you. There was nothing slow to this, instead, it was desperation and years of pent-up tension crashing together.

You moan into his mouth, your hands flying up to tangle in his hair, pulling him closer. The center console digs into your ribs, but you don't care. You can't get enough of him.

He breaks the kiss just long enough to fumble with his seatbelt, then leans over, crowding you back against the passenger window. The cold glass presses against your bare shoulders, a sharp contrast to the heat of his body covering yours.

His mouth finds your neck, sucking hard, biting down on the curve where it meets your shoulder, and you cry out, your nails raking down his back.

"Been waiting for this all night," He growls against your skin, his hand sliding down your stomach, beneath your skin and into your panties again. "Fought every urge to just fuck you in your living room but I decided against it.” He snickered, trailing slow and sloppy kisses along your neck — whispering into your ear.

“I should’ve though. Wanted to keep you all to myself.” He continued. “Every time you talked to Keeho or even Intak, I wanted to break their fucking jaws. You knew that though, didn't you?“

You shake your head, but you're lying, and he knows it. He pinches your clit, hard, and you gasp.

"Don't lie to me.”

His fingers plunge into you again, three this time, stretching you, and you sob against his mouth as he fucks you with a brutal, fast rhythm.

His thumb circles your clit, pressing down with just the right amount of pressure, and the pressure in your belly builds again, faster this time, hotter.

"Look at you," He mutters, pulling back just enough to watch your face.

“C-close.” You hold his gaze with yours.

"Go ahead." His voice is a command, low and fierce. "On my fingers, now."

Your back arches off the seat, your inner walls clenching around his fingers as a wave of pleasure crashes through you, leaving you trembling and gasping and crying out his name as he works you through it, slowing down only when you whimper from overstimulation.

He pulls his fingers out slowly, watching the strings of your arousal stretch and break between his knuckles. He brings them to your mouth, and you open without hesitation, sucking them clean and tasting yourself on his skin.

His eyes darken. "God, you're perfect."

He pulls away just long enough to recline his seat as far as it will go, then pats his lap. "Come here."

And you don't hesitate for even a second. You climb over the center console weakly, your skirt still riding up around your hips, before you straddle his thighs. The driver's seat is cramped, his knees bracketing your hips, but you make it work. His hands find your waist, guiding you forward until your chest presses against his, your lips inches apart.

Taeyang kisses you again, deep and slow, his tongue stroking yours in a melody that promises more. His hands slide down to grip your ass, squeezing, spreading your cheeks as he grinds you against the hard length of him through his jeans. You can feel him straining against the denim, thick and aching while you reach down between your bodies to free him.

He helps you for a moment, unbuttoning and unzipping himself as your hands moved quick with desperation before he hisses at your fingers wrappinf around his cock, hot and slick with precum.

You stroke him once, twice, spreading the moisture, and he groans into your mouth, his hips bucking into your fist.

"Need you..” You whisper against his lips.

"Take me, then."

You guide him to your entrance, rubbing the tip through your folds, coating him in your wetness. He's breathing hard, his forehead pressed to yours, his eyes half-closed, watching you with a mixture of adoration and raw need.

You sink down slowly.

The stretch is delicious, burning in a fullness that makes your eyes roll back. He fills you completely and perfectly — your bodies practically molded for each other and you pause halfway to adjust, feeling every inch of him inside you.

He groans, his hands gripping your hips so tight you'll bruise. “Feel just as good as I imagined," He breathes, his voice wrecked. "My perfect girl."

You slowly start moving again with a rolling grind that drags his cock against your walls in a way that makes both of you moan.

His lips find yours, and you kiss him through every motion, your tongues tangling and breath mingling — never breaking apart.

The pace builds gradually, your hips finding a pattern that's messy and everything you’ve ever needed.

The car rocks with your movements, the leather seat creaking beneath you. His hands slide up your back, gripping your shoulder blades, pulling you closer. Your knees ache against the seat, but you don't care. You need this. You just needed him.

"Harder—“ You beg against his lips, your voice cracking. "Please—."

He obliges, slamming you down onto him, your thighs burning as you ride him with abandon. His hands are on your ass again, guiding your pace, meeting your bounces with upward bucks of his hips.

The sound of skin slapping against skin fills the car, obscene and wet, accompanied by your choked moans and his guttural groans.

"Look at me.” He grunts, and you do, your eyes locking with his. "I want you to remember who makes you feel this good.“

"You," You gasp, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from the intensity. "Fuck—Only you."

He kisses you harder, swallowing your cries as your second orgasm builds, coiling in your gut like a spring wound too tight. He can feel it—your walls fluttering around him, your stamina growing sloppy.

"Come with me," He pants, his lips brushing yours with every word. "Right now."

You nod — your eyes closed shut before you shatter together, a shared implosion of heat and noise and blinding pleasure.

You cry out into his mouth as your release crashes over you, waves of ecstasy wringing every last drop of sensation from your body.

He follows a heartbeat later, his hips stuttering as he spills inside you, his groan swallowed by your kiss.

You collapse against him, your forehead resting on his shoulder, your bodies still joined, slick with sweat and cum. His arms wrap around you, holding you close, his lips pressing soft, lingering kisses to your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth.

"Wanna go home?" He whispers, echoing his earlier words, but now his tone is softer, laced with something deeper than lust.

You laugh breathlessly, nuzzling into his neck. "Only if you promise a couple more rounds."

He snickers against your skin. “I don’t know if you can handle that.” He says softly.

And the car settles into silence, the city humming beyond the alley walls, the windows fogged, the night clearly far from over.

💌 mika’s message! okay so basically this was rushed ok.. ESPECIALLY THE END. i’m going out soon and wanted to finish this sorry. i hope u fw it tho hes just yeah. guys please be kind to me. ANYWAYS ALSO KENNY AND ENI HAAIIII my theo baddies this is for u. FOR YOUUUU.

Theo knows that falling for his best friend’s sister is one of the stupidest things one can do, but he’s surrounded by stupid every day at work so it's only natural that he starts to pick up on some of those stupid tendencies.

But seriously, how is he not supposed to fall for you?

Theo knew from the moment that Jiung brought you into work after you returned home from your studies abroad that he was truly and utterly fucked.

And for the first few weeks after meeting you, he could ignore it on the grounds that he didn’t see you much. But when you started working in the building just down the street and decided to pop in without prompt from time to time, ‘fucked’ didn’t even begin to cover just how gone Theo was for you.

He couldn’t help but ‘subtly’ linger around your space when you joined them during dance practice break (because they aligned with yours). And when you’d join studio sessions, he’d do his extra best to be impressive. And whenever you’d vocalize that you were, in fact, impressed, Theo would ascend.

It didn’t even take a month for him to start memorizing the little things you’d liked. He would find himself scouring a cafe menu and thinking to himself, you would like that. He would text you his recommendation right after but would be too chicken to ask you to try it out with him. 

He learned the kind of scents you liked, so when he went shopping to restock his perfume, he would adjust accordingly. When you told him he smelled really nice the next day, his entire body heated in warmth and his legs nearly gave out. 

Your taste in music, in books, in shows, movies, fashion, furniture, skincare— hell, even fabrics. Theo knew it all.

He was a sucker for you, and everything that reminded him about you. He cannot explain to Jiung why his room has suddenly taken a vastly different turn in aesthetics. He can’t explain to Jongseob why there are little knick-knacks littered around the dorm that he’d bought on a whim because they simply reminded him of you.

He knows he’s being obvious though, with the way he laughs a little too hard at your lame jokes, leans a little too close in to chase your warmth, stares a little too long at you across rooms, and talks a little too much about you when you’re not there. 

He just doesn’t understand what it is about you. Well, he doesn’t understand you, kind of like how most people don’t understand him, but all he knows is that it takes a simple, “Afternoon, sunshine,” with a beaming smile from you to leave his legs feeling like jelly for the rest of practice.

It was bad enough that you were affecting the wiring of his brain but you were starting to affect his focus at work too. But he, by no means, by any chance, wants to fix it.

“Hyung?”

No, he'd rather fall further into this pit of delirium that he’s dug for himself if it means he can go to sleep thinking about the angle of the smile you gave him that day and wake up looking forward to another possible afternoon, sunshine from you, and go about his day looking towards—

“Hyung!”

Theo snaps out of his reverie, nearly dropping the water bottle in his hand. He whips around to glare at Jongseob for interrupting his pleasant stream of thought.

“What?”

Jongseob raises his judgemental brows at him. “You were staring at noona again.”

Heat floods his face. His eyes immediately fly over to where you’re hovering over Jiung curled on a bench tucked away in the corner of the practice room, nagging him over something on his laptop while he keeps trying to shoo you away. When he sees your attention is not on him, he sighs in relief— and mild disappointment. 

“I was not,” he huffs, lowering his head to sip from the straw of his bottle. He raises his eyes to glare again when he hears Jongseob start to snicker.

“Wow,” he giggles. “You’re worse than I am.”

Theo tries to whack him but Jongseob has gotten too good at predicting his moves.

An arm swings suddenly around Theo’s shoulder and Theo jumps, almost dropping his bottle again. He whines under the weight pressing on his already sore shoulders and tries to swing at Keeho but Keeho intercepts with a hand around Theo’s wrist, laughing.

“What’s got you so jumpy?” Keeho teases, eyes glinting with mischief. Theo doesn’t trust that look one bit.

“I’m being attacked,” Theo states, shoving Keeho’s arm off him, and tries to drink his water again.

“He was fawning over noona again,” Jongseob says with a cackle. 

Theo shoves his bottle into Keeho’s hand then pulls Jongseob into a headlock.

“Watch what you’re saying you little twerp,” Theo hisses as he tackles Jongseob, who’s shrieking and flailing, to the ground. He’s too busy trying to avoid Jongseob’s bony elbows to notice you walking over.

“It doesn’t matter when you’re being that obv— ow!”

They’re tumbling around on the ground and trying to choke each other out when you come to a stand by their wriggling bodies and hover your head over them. “Hey.”

Theo and Jongseob pause, looking up at your amused face.

“Just wanted to say bye before you two kill each other.”

Theo’s face falls, his grip on Jongseob loosening, all his focus shifted to you. “You’re leaving already?”

Your smile turns sheepish. “Break’s short today. I gotta make it back in time.”

“Oh,” Theo says, then notes how disappointed he sounds, so he quickly detangles himself from Jongseob and sits up, brushing his hair back as he schools his expression with a swift nod. “Cool.”

There’s an expectant pause as you look down at him and all Theo can do is sit still in the awkward silence, watching you back. He feels Jongseob and Keeho’s eyes drilling into the sides of his face.

He opens his mouth to say something to diffuse the silence but you beat him to it.

“Well,” you clap your palms against the sides of your thighs. “Bye guys.”

Then you’re gone, and Theo’s left with Keeho and Jongseob glaring down at him.

Theo bristles, glaring right back at them. “What?!”

Keeho’s hand whacks against the back of Theo’s head while Jongseob shakes his head disappointedly. “That was your chance to offer to walk her back!”

Theo gapes up at Keeho. “Huh? Why would I do that?”

Jongseob facepalms. “Okay. This is going nowhere.” He stands and turns to where Jiung is sitting with his laptop.

“Hyung!”

Jiung looks up, pushing his headphones back. “Yeah?”

“Can Taeyang-hyung ask your sister out?”

Before Theo can launch himself at Jongseob, Keeho grabs onto him and holds him back. He stops mid yell when Jiung furrows his brows and asks,

“Aren’t they dating already?”

The words have him freezing, and all Theo can do is stare at Jiung, mouth agape. Keeho speaks for him because he can’t form sounds now, apparently.

“What?”

Jiung frowns, somehow looking more confused than Theo feels. “With how much she talks about him I just thought…” He trails off as he glances between his shell-shocked members.

All Theo can do is sit there dumbfounded and stare at Jiung’s scrunched up face.

You talk about him? What do you say about him? Wait, that must mean you like him too, right? There’s no other explanation because if you talk about him to Jiung enough for him to think you’re dating then that must mean you do.

These are all things he means to say aloud. But all he can do is sit there in his shock.

Until Keeho kicks his thigh and that spurs Theo into motion. He springs up to his feet and bolts through the door without any prompt, practically flying past Intak and Soul approaching in the halls. 

He doesn’t hear their questions as he practically flings himself down the stairs. All he knows is that he needs to get to you before you make it too far and he loses his nerve, and entirely misses his shot.

When he makes it out of the doors, he can barely make out your figure disappearing down the street.

Despite the burn in his lungs, he sprints forward and yells out your name loud enough to have the entire block turn heads. But he ignores them all when he sees you stop and turn, and he runs the rest of his way to you, nearly barrelling into you when you reach out to stop him.

“Woah, Tae!” You exclaim, holding onto his arms as he nearly keels over. “Is everything okay?”

“Just—” He can’t get a word out. He doubles over, heaving, unintentionally pushing his head into your shoulder. The contact makes his entire body jolt and he jumps back. 

He notices you watching him with wide eyes and quickly straightens, trying to seem unaffected.

But he’s pretty sure his hair is a mess and his face is red and that he looks a little insane chasing a girl down the street at full speed.

But you’re standing there, looking up at him with your brows furrowed cutely in concern.

You’re worried about him, he thinks as a dopey grin spreads across his lips.

You raise your hand, waving it in his face to test his attention. “Taeyang?”

“Coffee,” he blurts out dumbly. Then he winces. “I mean—”

“Okay,” you cut him off, your face lighting up. 

Theo blinks at your quick agreement to… What are you even agreeing to? He hasn’t even asked you. 

“Uh—”

“It’s a date,” is all you say before turning back around and rushing the rest of your way to your building.

Theo stands there, replaying the words in his head with a stupid smile on his face. 

It’s a date.

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For as long as he could remember, Theo had been Jiung’s best friend. The right hand man by his side through thick and thin. His other (platonic) half. His future best man. 

That all changed when he met you on a Wednesday afternoon at the beginning of second semester.

You were a gravitational force that pulled his heart the moment he laid eyes on your glittering ones and that sonic smile. He could hear the smile in your voice as you greeted him— warm, musical, siren-like— and he knew he was done for. 

As it was, he wasn’t the only one. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” you chirped, placing your application down on the desk. “I’m at the right place, right? For the band?”

Theo had jumped in before Jiung could, answering you with that devastating smile of his. 

“Yes you are, sweetheart,” he drawled, leaning forward on his chair in a rare show of actual interest in the happenings around him. “You’re right where you need to be.”

Jiung watched the way you bit down on your lip to smother your shy smile. But then your eyes had landed on his and Jiung’s heart nearly gave out when you aimed that smile at him instead. 

“Cool,” you said, voice an octave lower from your fluster. “I’ll see you guys soon then?”

Jiung found his voice faster than he’d expected, stumbling out a hurried, “Of course.” He felt warm under your intent stare, the way you were hanging on to each of his words. “Uh— I mean, yeah, yes. We’ll see you at the auditions for sure.”

“After that too, I hope,” Theo chimed in and Jiung immediately mourned when your gaze fell back to Theo. 

In a ridiculous, childless realization, Jiung found that he didn’t want that grin of yours to be pointed at anyone other than himself. 

“Me too,” you’d admitted softly, before leaving them with a meek wave and their hearts in array. 

It was quiet in the following moment as Jiung recovered from his world being tilted on its axis. 

“She seems nice,” Theo murmured after the silent stretch. “Did you see the callouses on her fingers?”

Jiung had to blink himself back to reality, turning to his best friend with a puzzled stare. “Huh?”

Theo looked back at him with a raised brow and amused smirk. “Got you too huh?” He chuckled, leaning back on his chair with his arms crossed. 

“I—“ Jiung started, then stopped and swallowed around the tightness in his throat. He turned back to the pile of applications in front of them, at the one on top with the characters of your name. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

Auditions were a mess of trigger happy idiots who thought they had what it took just because they could pick up a bass guitar or a pair of drumsticks or memorize the lyrics to an Ariana Grande song. 

It wasn’t all entirely in vain though; they’d found their lead vocalist by the name of Yoon Keeho and a drummer called Hwang Intak.

All that was left was a bassist, and by the end, Theo was left to bang his clipboard repeatedly against his head while Jiung stared hopelessly at the stage. 

“My ears are bleeding,” Theo grunted, dropping his clipboard onto his lap. 

Jiung glanced at him to find only a red spot on his forehead. “No they’re not.”

“How many more left?”

Jiung looked down at his binder and his heart nearly gave out at the familiar characters that had burned itself into his retinas the first time he’d laid eyes on them. 

When Jiung failed to find the words, Theo hovered over his shoulder to peer at what had gotten his tongue. 

“Ah!” He yelled, and Jiung flinched at the sound, immediately shoving Theo back in his chair. 

“Not in my ear!”

Theo just giggled— giggled— and curled into his chair with a dazed look in his eye. “Our angel.”

And their angel, you were, because it had taken about ten seconds into the start of your audition for Theo and Jiung to look at each other and subliminally communicate that yes, you were indeed their angel. 

Plus One had formed shortly after that, and with that you had solidified your place in their lives.

You’d fit in seamlessly, all five of you had, like puzzle pieces to form the university band.

And so every Wednesday, in room 777, Jiung would get to have you in his orbit while the band prepared for the end of the year showcase with their original song, Pandemonium. 

As it seemed, Theo looked forward to that day of the week as much as Jiung did. 

It went unspoken between them though, the tension when it came to you, but it was present nonetheless. 

It was a simple crush, Jiung had told himself. Harmless. Two lovesick idiots pining for a girl way beyond their league. It wouldn’t be anything more than that. 

But that didn’t stop Jiung from trying. Two Wednesday’s after their formation, he ditched his Econ class so he could arrive early to practice after learning that you were always the first one in.

His knees nearly gave out when he walked in and saw you perched at the keyboard— his keyboard— with your brows pinched in concentration while you stared at the sheets propped up in front of you. 

“Hey,” he heaved, trying to settle his breaths after running through campus. You looked up from the sheets, taken aback by the sudden voice. “Didn’t think you’d be here so early.”

You broke out into the smile that never failed to make his heart flip. “Hey!”

He looked down to see your hands draped over the keys and he had to bite down on his lip to reel himself in from completely losing it. He could not be losing his mind over you just touching his instrument. He wasn’t that ridiculous. 

Except he was, because when you called him over to show you how he played, he wobbled over on jelly legs and stuttered his way through an impromptu lesson. 

But you seemed all for it, brows furrowed in concentration as he explained, then laughing all endeared whenever he stumbled over a word. 

“I swear I’m not this pathetic,” he sighed midway through a sentence that he’d failed to get out after stumbling on one word four times. 

But his worries absolved when you giggled behind your hand, telling him, “You’re cute,” with a bump of your shoulder against his. 

Jiung swore he could die right there, face burning with heat and heart stumbling dangerously in his chest. He was glad for the distraction when the door barged open right after, letting in Keeho, Intak, their hovering friends Jongseob and Soul who only ever visited for the ‘vibes’, and Theo, who took one look at you practically glued to Jiung’s side before tucking himself away in the other side of the room. 

Jiung thought nothing of it, his attention immediately pulled to get practice going. But maybe he should have, because as he was packing up to go home at the end, he noticed you and Theo sitting idle. Theo was hovering over where you were sat, leaning into your space with a hand on the back of your chair as he compared hand callouses with you. 

Jiung stared at the display as he shouldered on his bag. “You guys coming?”

Theo looked up at him while you busied yourself with poking at Theo’s hand. “Nah, we’re gonna stay back to practice,” he said before immediately turning his attention back to you.

Jiung’s chest tightened when he looked down to see your hand connected with Theo’s. But he pushed away the juvenile feeling and straightened. 

“Make sure to lock up,” he’d said stiffly before turning to the door. “Night.”

“Night Jiung!” Your voice called but he didn’t let himself linger to hear Theo’s before he shut the door behind him. 

𓆩⟡𓆪

None of it was malice, Jiung figured after a month and a half in. But it was always hard to read Theo, even though he’d known him his entire life. And yet around you, Theo was an open book. Jiung could read everything on his face when he was near you, every emotion raw and true whenever he looked at you. 

Maybe Jiung should have backed off. But he couldn’t  help that his heart called for you.

“Jongseob was showing me some costume designs,” you said from across the cafe booth, twirling a fry between your fingers. “They’re pretty cool. Kind of a dark vibe but it fits our song well I think.”

Jiung hummed along but he was too focused on the way your lips wrapped around the fry as you bit into it.

“I can send them to you. I already showed Tae and he’s on board for them.”

Jiung was snapped out of his reverie when he heard the nickname. “Tae?” He asked, brows raising. 

You took one look at him and giggled, leaning forward to take a sip from your milkshake and narrow your eyes mischievously over the glass cup. “Mhm,” you hummed as you sipped. He traced the way your tongue licked along your lower lip. “Jealous I didn’t give you a nickname?”

Jiung flushed at the blunt accusation, but he didn’t back down at your challenge. He was used to you poking around at him to get a reaction. And he would play right into it to get a reaction back from you. 

He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, stopping just as his face neared inches from yours. “Maybe I am,” he answered in that low voice you once told him you’d liked. 

He didn’t imagine that way your eyes flicked down to his lips for a split second, your smile mellowing into a shier one. “Are you, Ji?” You asked, lowering your voice into something low and sweet. 

Jiung could drown right there under the blue and red neon lights, leave himself good and dead on the floor of the retro cafe he’d managed to drag you to after Wednesday practice. 

Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline from the sound of your voice around a name no one else called him that drove him to say it. He can’t quite remember why, but he recalls how his heart had risen up to his throat right after. 

“Will you go on a date with me?”

He remembers the way his breaths had gotten stuck in the silent moment that followed right before you’d said, 

“I thought I already was on a date with you?”

He remembers the sound of your laugh when he’d dropped his head on the table, nearly missing his abandoned bowl of nachos, and groaned in both relief and exasperation at your little mind games. He remembers ignoring the guilt that started festering in his chest, tiny but surely there. 

𓆩⟡𓆪

But it wasn’t just a mind game. When he’d asked you out on a proper date after dropping you home that Wednesday night, you’d accepted him with a kiss to his cheek and an inadvertent shot to his heart. 

He’d planned the date for the next Wednesday after practice at a nearby beach that he frequented. 

When Theo had seen you both breaking away from the rest of the group in the parking lot to Jiung’s car, he’d interjected.

“Where are you two heading off?” Theo asked as he paused on the way to his bike, turning to face the both of you. 

Jiung didn’t have to respond because you’d done it for him with a bright grin as he tossed his bag in the backseat. “On a date. See you next week, Tae!”

The guilt sank its sharp tendrils in the deeper crevices of his ribs when Theo’s eyes landed on Jiung’s. And the soulless smile Theo gave him did nothing to soothe it away. 

“Cool,” Theo had said before continuing on his way. “Have fun.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

Jiung couldn’t have fun. Even as he’d watched you scramble around clumsily in the water, even as you’d pulled him in and bombarded him with splashes, even as you’d kissed him in the water under the late setting summer sun. 

The guilt had gnawed its merry way up to his brain and Jiung was already a Grade A overthinker. But he pushed it all aside in favour of attending to you, because he had the girl he was falling for in his arms and he couldn’t do anything to fumble that. 

But he knew he’d have to face Theo at some point. Sooner rather than later, because he could already feel Theo slipping away in unanswered phone calls and ignored texts. 

When next Wednesday rolled around, Jiung intercepted Theo just before he could leave.

“Hey.” Jiung grabbed Theo’s elbow on his way out, letting go when Theo stopped and looked at him over his shoulder. “Can we talk?”

Theo looked at him, a distance present in his gaze that Jiung hadn’t ever seen from him before. “…Sure.” Hesitation. Theo was never one to hesitate.

Before Jiung could start, your voice called from the door. “Ji?” You peaked your head in through the doorway. “You coming?”

Jiung had to hold back a wince when Theo’s eyes averted, his jaw gritting at the sound of your voice. 

“Just give me a few, I’ll meet you outside,” Jiung said quickly.

He let out a breath when you nodded and shut the door, leaving him alone with Theo. 

The silence that followed made his skin itch. 

“Taeyang—“ Jiung started, then stopped. The words caught in his throat when Theo looked back at him, a solemn look in his eyes. A look that made Jiung nauseous and sweaty at his palms. “…Are we okay?” He finally asked, sure that the plea for his best friend to stay was clear in his eyes. 

Theo was silent for another excruciating moment, before he pulled on another one of those smiles that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “We’re okay man,” he’d said with a pat on Jiung’s back. When Jiung’s frown only deepened with disbelief, Theo laughed. “Seriously. I’ll get over it. She chose you… And I hate to say it, but you guys look good together.”

With just those few simple words, Jiung could feel the guilt slowly dislodge itself from his being, though it didn’t subside fully. “Thank god,” he breathed, before pulling Theo into a hug. 

Theo froze, no doubt in shock from the unusual display of affection from Jiung, but was quick to hug him back. “We’re good, Ung,” he mumbled, ruffling his hair. “We’re good.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

Except they weren’t, apparently. Because Theo was still pulling away from him. He’d bail out on plans Jiung made for game night at the last minute claiming that assignments were due soon (Theo was never one to leave things until the last minute), responses to his texts would always come a day late, and their phone line had become metaphorically rusted. Even in person, conversations with him were short and clipped. 

Things were different. Jiung felt it in his soul, no matter how much Theo would try to smile and pretend to be normal around him. 

But the one thing that remained the same for Theo was you. He’d still smile the same way at you, joke the same way with you, linger the same way around you— as if nothing at all had changed between him and you even after you’d made it official with Jiung.

Jiung hated that he was the jealous type. He also hated that you let yourself be subject to Theo’s hovering, but he told himself he wouldn’t be the possessive, controlling type. 

And he couldn’t push Theo back because he didn't want to chase him away. He just hated that Theo only seemed to hang around Jiung now for you.

And you… Jiung saw the way your eyes would linger on Theo’s back as he drifted away when Jiung entered the scene. The way you always asked for Theo’s whereabouts when he wasn’t present for a group gathering. The way you’d bring up Theo every chance you’d get when the conversation had nothing to do with him. 

But with the showcase nearing and finals piling up, Jiung had become otherwise occupied. 

He had to leave practices on time to stay on top of his studies even if you wanted to stay back. Then Theo would jump at the opportunity to keep you company instead and while Jiung wanted to scowl and protest otherwise, he kept himself sane. 

He trusted you. He trusted Theo. You were friends with Theo too before Jiung started dating you, so he couldn’t let his brain spiral into unsightly depths. 

He just couldn’t help it but feel all of this. He was in love. You had him completely at your mercy and it drove him mad that it might not be the same for you.

And Jiung would tell you that after the showcase, when everything settled down to make space for something of that grandeur. 

The showcase happened on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025 and it was a raging success. Pandemonium was a hit. But none of it mattered because when Plus One won first place for best performance, you had jumped into Theo’s arms instead of his.

The pure, unadulterated joy wasn’t directed at Jiung, your boyfriend, but at Theo. Maybe it was a stupid thing to get worked up over especially with their victory, but Jiung was nothing if not someone who took everything to heart.

He didn’t waste time waiting for the next day. He’d pulled you aside after they finished hauling their instruments back and kissed you, smothering your yelp of surprise and ignoring the others’ hooting and hollering as they filtered out of the room to head home. 

“Impromptu date night?” He asked you as he pulled away, relishing the dazed look he left behind in your eye, lips parted in breathless shock. He didn’t miss the way Theo lingered for a moment in the corner of his eye. “The beach?”

You had blinked out of your stupor and smiled. “Yeah.”

Jiung wishes you had said no, that you were tired. Maybe then things would have ended differently.

𓆩⟡𓆪

Jiung remembers the familiar cold of the water lapping at his bare feet as he walked hand in hand with you, the moon and the stars keeping you both company as you walked along the shoreline, shoes held in your free hands.

Even though he was attached to you, listening to you recounting the story of how Soul almost inadvertently sabotaged your performance by locking the practice room and misplacing the keys, he couldn’t feel more distant from you.

There was a demon rattling around in his head, nagging at him that you weren’t his. At least, not fully. 

“And then Tae came in and—“ 

He stopped in his tracks, cutting you off when you felt your hand, still in his grip, snag behind you.

You stopped in front of him, turning and frowning at the pensive look on his face. 

“Ji? What’s wrong?”

He felt helpless. He didn’t know how to do this, if he even should. 

“You really don’t know?” He asked instead, not with anger, but with defeat.

You stepped towards him, entering his space. And where he would normally seek out the heat of your body against his, he stepped back to evade its suffocating presence. But he didn’t let go of your hand, desperately clinging on like it was his last tether to you.

Your face fell when he dodged you, and Jiung wished that the hurt in your eyes wasn’t caused by him. 

“Jiung,” you started slowly, and he remembers wishing it didn’t hurt less to hear that instead of the familiar ‘Ji’. “What is it?”

The admission didn’t come warm like he’d planned for it to. 

“I’m in love with you.”

It came cold and scared, if a little hopeful. 

He remembers the way your eyes had widened. How your lips had parted to speak but nothing came out. How your hand had slipped from his grasp. 

His hand was left lonely at his side, clenched around nothing.

“Ji,” you whispered and he wished you’d never called him that. He still wishes you hadn’t ruined the name for him.

Jiung couldn’t look away from the war of emotions flitting through your eyes. He couldn’t look away from the sight of you— hair fluttering in salt-licked winds, your moon-soaked skin shimmering like the sea at his side. 

He didn’t interrupt. He waited for you to drop the knife and split his heart in two. 

“It’s difficult—“

“Is it?” He asked. What could be so difficult about loving him back?

You lowered your gaze, shoulders shaking with the steadying breaths you took. “I-I can’t…” You started quietly. “I can’t say it yet.”

“Why not?”

When you stayed silent, he knew. Jiung didn’t want to skirt around it anymore. 

“It’s because of him, isn’t it?”

Panic flashed through your eyes, snapping up to him at the insinuation his words entailed. “It’s not like that!” You tried to step forward, he only moved back. 

“Be honest with me,” he begged. “Do you have feelings for him?”

You wouldn’t answer him directly. “Ji, please—“

A surge of fury sifted through him, sudden and unannounced. “Don’t call me that,” he snapped.

You faltered back, and Jiung no longer cared that your hurt was because of him. “Jiung,” you whispered carefully. “I care about you, you have to believe that.”

“But what, you care about him too?” His breaths were uneven, shaky as they stumbled through his lips. “You care about him so much you’d put our relationship in jeopardy?" His voice rose with the anger that cracked through his carefully crafted restraint. “He’s my best friend!”

The tears in your eyes glittered like the stars. “Is he?” You asked, and Jiung felt his heart tear right out of his chest. 

He grit his teeth, willing back his own tears. “Does it matter?”

You went silent again, eyes falling from his hold. You had stopped fighting for him.

Jiung scoffed, holding together his anger to drown out his insurmountable grief. “Whatever. You don’t have to worry about me anymore. Clearly I was the one who got in the way.”

He didn’t fall for your sobs, for the way you called his name as he turned and left you at the beach. Theo would come running to you if you called. 

And come running he must have, because Jiung remembers the moment he saw you leave room 777 the next day, bass slung across your back with Theo’s hand in yours. 

𓆩⟡𓆪

Jiung knows he isn’t absolved of all blame for what happened. He should never have gotten involved with you when he learned Theo was falling for you the same as him. It would have saved him the heartache, and his best friend.

Because now he walks the same beach at sunset, barefoot along the shoreline with his shoes in his hand, all in his lonesome as he recalls the memory of you and of the man he considered his brother at one point. 

Thursday, April 23rd, 2026. 

One year since you’d broken his heart on that fateful Wednesday night. One year since you’d chosen his best friend over him. One year since his best friend had chosen you over him. 

One year, and he still can’t get the sound of your laugh out of his mind. It echoes around him like he’s being haunted by a past ghost. 

Only, it’s not just a sound that he’s mourning in his head. 

It’s real, because when he looks up from the sand, you’re there, stumbling around at the shoreline with the water at your ankles. 

It feels like watching a frame-by-frame showing of his first date with you, the scene before him carved right out of his memories and projected before him like a live replay of moments that haunt him in his dreams. Except instead of him with you, there was Theo right by your side, keeping you from falling. 

The emotion that rushes through him is too complicated for him to dissect. All he can focus on is that you’re here— one year later, at the very same spot that he’d shown you as something dear to him, the same one that you’d shattered his heart at— with him. 

And Theo was there with you, laughing without a care in the world like he hadn’t taken a lifelong friendship and buried it like it was nothing just for you. 

The ocean calls his name. He considers following its voice right into churning ceruleans and never resurfacing. 

“Ji?”

He feels hollow. Carved out to a shell, a vessel fit for nothing but misery.

You look just as beautiful as he remembers under golden rays, just like that very first day he’d brought you here.

Theo looks like he’s seen a ghost.

The moment lays standstill, charged and shock-laden, as Jiung stands before you and Theo.

His own voice sounds distant, faraway as he finally breaks the silence. 

“I see you two are doing well.” 

It pulls the scene back in motion. Theo takes your hand and tugs you behind his arm in a protective manner, and Jiung nearly laughs. 

“Jiung,” Theo says, voice low like he’s approaching a volatile beast. “It’s been a while.”

Jiung actually does laugh this time, cold and sharp. “Has it? I couldn’t tell.”

You peer over Theo’s shoulder to look at Jiung, eyes wide and disbelieving. You hesitate a moment before you speak. “Jiung. I’ve been meaning to—“

Jiung doesn’t care what you’ve been meaning to do. 

“Does he know I brought you here first?”

He sees Theo’s face shift with something unspoken, but he keeps his gaze locked on your glassy one. 

Jiung looks away when neither you nor Theo speak up, peering out at the horizon and squinting his eyes at the direct view of the sun. 

“April 23rd,” he says, fingers digging harder into the heels of his sneakers. “It’s your one year anniversary, no?”

“How’d you—“

Jiung doesn’t let Theo finish. “Ah, you don’t remember,” he chuckles, turning back to look at Theo. “It was the same day I broke up with her. Night of the showcase.” He pauses, lets the realization sink into Theo’s face. “I’m just assuming that’s when things kicked off for you two since I saw you together the next day.”

He pretends the silence after doesn’t hurt.

No sorry’s, no regrets. Just unspoken acceptance that you’d given him a world of pain and there was nothing that can be done about it. 

Jiung takes that acceptance and uses it to lock up his aching heart. He steps back. 

“Enjoy it,” he says before he turns and leaves. 

He ignores your call of his name, just like he’d done that night a year ago, and vows to never step foot on this wretched beach again.

blame @lilacs4ung (prompter) @jsshu (nominater) and @liliesonthego (plot inducer) jk i actually loved writing this thank you for leading me to 🫶

and thank you lily for beta-reading <3

taglist: @jellyybelly, @jseobbie, @lycxee, @tintedsvn, @dollieholls, @missmaiamay, @mrssaturday, @sweetasberry, @smingki99, @hxraiiii, @elmolovesw33d, @peachy-x-k33n, @halaziasupremacy, @choxochip, @girlcrushd, @ozzysoatsolivesandpasta, @snyngjhn, @boptak, @orchidves, @peonyjoo, @kittyshotak, @oyasumiaikko, @straystar-8, @pxronbeat1, @chandlxa, @aalyluvz, @evemds, @willowedjelly, @delicatechris, @dejaphobick, @velvetjoong, @seonghwaswifeuuuu, @soulssnucky, @starrystarryung, @leleluvrs, @princessthelsa, @vvalever, @quiiirkiiis2, @v4ciaa, @izzyreadsstuff, @mo8ny4951, @numberoneobsession, @shmooooo @cherryyberry1 @keymeadoww

message me or comment to be added to my taglist! 𓆩⟡𓆪 check out my masterlist for my other works + works in progress 

1 reblog/comment = 1 virtual kiss <3

ex!THEO is fully convinced that you’ll come running after him. Theo doesn’t chase, he waits for you to become fed up with your current boyfriend and finally return to his arms ex!THEO doesn’t expect for the tables to turn where he is the one begging for you to come back home. His ego definitely deflates a little, but he’ll make it his mission to earn your trust back. This man YEARNS. ex!THEO sends you song covers, love songs, mostly. The attachments are usually captioned “been thinking of you” or “i miss you”. ex!THEO swears he would never be this desperate for anyone, not until he lost you, and boy, was he desperate. Complains to the boys about how badly he misses your smile, your laugh, and almost sheds a tear when they tell him how badly he fucked up. When ex!THEO gets you back, he almost sheds a tear, and swears to treat you better than last time—better than anyone else has. ex!KEEHO is desperate and doesn’t even try to hide it. He already has no filter, so when it comes to something he really cares about? He’s loud about it. ex!KEEHO will text you every day, sometimes multiple times in the span of a few hours when he’s really missing you. Sends you photos of cute things, and sneaks a few selfies of himself in the attachments hoping you’ll see them and maybe even miss him as badly as he misses you. ex!KEEHO is genuinely distraught when he realizes that you don’t need him like he needs you, and tries his absolute hardest to get you back. He personally delivers those gourmet sweets you like to your house, always with a note attached. “For the sweetest girl - K”. He couldn't care less if your current boyfriend sees them on your doorstep, might even celebrate. ex!KEEHO will send you videos a little later into the day, where he's bare-faced, lying in bed and softly speaking like he’s on the phone with you. Sometimes he’ll talk about his day, but most times he’s ranting about how badly he misses you. When you respond to one? He actually screams. ex!JIUNG is actually miserable. When you were in a relationship he couldn’t stand being 6 feet away from you for more than a few minutes, so being broken up is uncharted territory for him. He immediately runs to the boys for help, frantically asking where it all went wrong and devising strategies to get you back. ex!JIUNG can’t imagine life without you. ex!JIUNG who literally tells the others that a world without you is like a world without any color. They think he’s just being dramatic, but Jiung is deadly serious. ex!JIUNG will comment under every social media post you make like nothing changed, complimenting one of the photos on your instagram dump or mentioning how you still wear that necklace he got you. You can’t find the strength in you to delete the comments, because realistically, you aren’t over him either. This man will NOT hesitate to get on his knees for you. If you gave him the chance, he’d be on his hands and knees at your doorstep, begging for a chance to make things right. When you agree hesitantly, ex!JIUNG showers you in affection and promises to treat you better.

It really did feel like you’ve gone right back to square one after that. Taeyang becomes evasive again and he doesn’t show up to any of your sessions for the next week.

You try not to feel too disappointed but it’s hard now that your sessions become you just going through the motions once again. While he hadn’t been joining all of them, the few that he did brought a new challenge besides just the task at hand. It was almost… fun. Which isn’t a word you thought you’d ever associate with him.

But his words still linger in your mind, telling you to “know your place” and it reminds you that he’s better off distant if he’s just going to keep treating you that way. So you push aside any thoughts of him as you go through your week with the help of the Choi Princess and the guard attached to her hip, Shota.

But something nags at your heart when it starts to feel as though Taeyang has simply disappeared. You think he’d just fallen back to his old habits, but there’s a feeling deep in your chest that worries otherwise, leading you to seek him out late at night one day.

You tell yourself you’re seeking him out to put him in his place for speaking to you that way.

But when you make it to the doors of his bedroom, all you can do is stand there fidgeting. You’ve never been here before, and the idea of stepping in through these bounds is an intimidating one. It feels intimate in a way you’re not sure you’re ready to explore.

But it’s late and he’s not in his office, so he can only be here and you’re sure he’s not asleep yet. He never is at this time. And that nagging feeling in your head refuses to let this go unless you quell your worries.

With a steadying breath, you raise your fist and gently knock.

It’s silent for long enough that you do think he actually has gone to sleep. But just as you’re about to step away, you hear his voice, thin and subdued. “Come in.”

You hesitate again when your hands reach the knobs. But with another deep breath, you push them open.

Nothing could have prepared you for the sight of Taeyang sitting in his bed, bare of a shirt, bloodied and bruised.

The breath knocks out of your lungs. Your eyes follow down the trail of welts along his muscled skin—some split open with blood seeping through—with purpling splotches scattered throughout, all the way to the bruised knuckles trembling around a roll of bandages.

His movements falter when he looks up to see that it's you, and your gaze lifts to the bloody lip and the large bruise at his cheekbone.

Your eyes meet, and the moment freezes over. 

Breaking unspoken bounds is the last of your concern as you take the step into his room and let the doors fall shut behind you.

You drift over to him with slow steps while your eyes try to process the state he’s in. Taeyang only watches you with guarded eyes as you close the distance.

“I thought you were Intak,” he admits quietly. His voice is rough and hesitant. Weak.

Your heart thuds in your chest. A million questions run through your brain. But the only thing that your instinct tells you to do is to help him.

You gently pry the bandages from his loose hands that he relinquishes without a fight. 

“Let me,” you whisper, because the moment feels far too delicate for anything louder.

You expect him to turn you away, to tell you he can take care of it—whatever this is—himself. The dim light of the lamp at his bedside reveals nothing but his usual indifference.

But he lowers his gaze from you and nods.

You don’t waste time. You rush into his bathroom to scour anything you can—a handcloth, a bowl of warm water, salve for cuts—before you make it back to where he remains sitting in the same spot you’d found him, tense and unmoving.

He remains still and pliant as you work to gently dab off any blood and apply the salve. His skin is warm under your touch and you can feel his heartbeat, a quick and unsteady rhythm. It stays silent between you as you wrap the open skin on his chest and arms.

But there’s a war in your mind with possibilities of what could have happened, who could have hurt him. Did he get into a fight with someone? Was he attacked? Did he—

“I can hear you thinking.”

You snap out of your thoughts, blinking your gaze up to his. His head is tilted up to watch you where you stand before him. There’s a tiny, lifeless smile on his lips.

You swallow around the tightness in your throat and turn your focus to his injured hand cradled in his lap. It’s only his left one that’s bruised, his right remaining clean and untouched. 

You reach down with shaky hands to lift his battered one in your own. The skin along the knuckles are split open and scabbed over, a gruesome sight. You trace your thumb gently along the outside of the bruise, wondering if it was born from him punching something he shouldn’t have or…

You don’t let your mind travel to unsightly depths.

You hold his hand in your left and carve out some salve from the jar with your right, smoothing it gently over the skin before unravelling some bandage. Your hand holds his all the while, never once detaching, as if the tether between you was needed for… well you don't know what. You just know you don’t want to let go, not right now.

A distant part of you notes how delicate his hands really are, not too large to fit comfortably into yours.

“What happened?” You finally allow yourself to ask.

You let the silence persist, giving him the time to gather himself, as you wrap the bandage around his knuckles. When he finally speaks, it’s quiet. 

“I tried to do as you said,” he murmurs. “To push back against my father when I didn’t agree with something.”

Your movements falter at the admission, your eyes snapping up to see him watching your hands work his.

The bitter laugh that escapes his lips feels like a sudden sting in your heart. “Look where that got me.”

It all makes sense. His need to follow the rules set by his father, to bide to his every word. It must have been in fear of this. And there you were, treating him like just some spoiled, prickly prince who called himself helpless for pity. 

How could you be so wrong about a person? He had taken the weight of your words and carried them with him willingly, going so far as to heed to them. Or try to. 

The sudden guilt that sits in your chest feels too big for your ribs to contain. How naive you were to think things would be so easy for him. To think some harsh words from you would rewire years of habit and submission beaten into him.

“But,” he says, breaking off your miserable train of thought. His fingers tighten just a fraction around yours; you didn’t realize it had started shaking. “It felt good.” His eyes remain on your locked hands, his thumb pressing just slightly into your palm. “To not just follow blindly. To… think for myself.”

His eyes lift up to yours and you feel yourself still against his gaze.

Here lies this man, a shell of one, under your hands with eyes that carry more burden than a man of twenty should bear. You think you can start to see through it—the armour that he’d built up over the years that has rusted to his flesh, unforgiving. 

In this light, soft golden and vulnerable, he looks entirely like a different person. One that you can understand.

He was just another person who had the misfortune of having to bury himself away for his kingdom.

It takes great effort to break away from his gaze to settle it on the bruise at his cheekbone. He watches intently as you lift your free hand and let your finger brush against the darkening skin, stalling for another moment as you search for the courage to speak again.

“Hard to believe you listened to me,” you breathe. The words are meant to be light, but your voice shakes with the weight of your emotion.

Your heart nearly stops when he presses into your touch, his eyes fluttering shut. An overwhelming sense of emotion swells in your chest as he seeks out the warmth of your skin, turning his face to nuzzle into your palm.

He takes a deep breath that you feel against your wrist when he lets it back out.

You let your palm meld against him, thumb tucking against the crevice between his nose and his cheek. His hair cascades onto his forehead as his head tilts down and you’re struck with the urge to brush it back. But you can’t bring yourself to pull your hand that remains in his grasp.

Instead, you just watch him. You watch the way his brows furrow in concentration, like he’s doing everything to memorize the warmth of your touch as if it’s a temporary thing. You watch the way his throat bobs around a tight swallow, like he’s pushing down the emotion in him. You watch the way that some of that emotion seeps through anyway in the form of a crystal drop in the corner of his eye.

“I’m not usually this weak,” he murmurs, lips brushing against the heel of your palm. It sets a fire alight beneath your skin.

“You aren’t,” you answer easily. “Any weak person would not live a day in your shoes.”

His eyes flutter open, warm and dark like dampened soil after rain, carrying depths that you fear you may find yourself sinking into. 

And you can’t help but want to.

The silence feels exposing, like it's giving way for his prying gaze to rip through all of your barriers and seek out hidden truths behind your eyes you’re not even sure you’re keeping.

The lack of distance between you becomes apparent. You realize how close you really are, his knees brushing against the sides of your legs where you stand, your face merely inches above his. It feels so much like the night of your engagement—having him this close to—and yet it’s different in every way.

The soft breath that leaves you is traitorous when his eyes fall to your lips. And the distance somehow feels tighter even though you haven't moved. Threadbare, where you can feel the ghost of his breath brush against you.

Your eyes drop to his lips, the split skin on the plush of his lower one and the blood that pools between the cracked crevices. They beckon you closer.

Instead, you step away. 

“You should get some sleep,” you tell him. The disappointment that flashes across his face is apparent, but you try to make nothing of it. He’s quick to seal it away. “I can send the healer up in the morning to check on you. I’ll be discreet.”

He doesn’t speak as he watches you gather your meager tools and bring them back to his bathroom. When you step back out, he’s pushed up against his headboard, head leaned back. The strange urge to tuck him under his blankets ambushes you, but you push it away and stride across the room towards his doors.

Just as you reach for the handles, his voice cuts in.

“Princess.”

You stop, but you don’t turn around. You feel his gaze pierce into the back of your hair.

“Don’t let my defeat fuel your ego,” he tells you, light and airy.

You look over your shoulder at him, at the lazy smile on his lips, the tilt of his head rolled to the side, the hair brushing over his peering eyes. 

You mirror his smile. “I’d hardly call it a defeat.”

A shift, momentous and present, manifests in the week that follows. Things have changed between you two. To give more space between the tension for something more, relieved of any of the suffocation that came with being in his presence. 

He still remains with his duties while you return to your tasks for the wedding. But he’s no longer a ghost. In fact, you run into him more often than you’d think with him still entirely dedicated to his duties, whether he’s passing through halls by where you’re set up for the day or stopping by the kitchen when you’ve gone to make your own tea.

You share more gazes than you do words, ones that are laden with a tension that you’re not sure what to make of. 

But you don’t disrupt his work and neither does he attempt to belittle you. You’ve formed an unspoken truce. 

Things are finally peaceful, you’d say. 

𓆩⟡𓆪

Until you come home one day with two bloodied people at your sides and Taeyang nearly has a heart attack right there in the foyer in front of a Duke. 

Taeyang doesn’t even take notice of who’s at your side, far more affected than you seem to be, as he pushes past the Duke and beelines right over to you.

He stops in front of you, hands rising to reach over but he stops himself at the last second and shoves them back at his sides. 

“What happened?” He snaps instead, nevermind that you look perfectly at ease. 

He sees the hesitation in your eyes, the shock colouring them at his brutish tone.

The person to your right cuts in and only then does Taeyang realize it’s your sister. “Rebels, Your Highness.”

His blood chills when he sees the state that she’s in; wearing more blood than she is clothes. She must notice the panic on his face because she quickly interjects.

“Not mine,” she says, glancing to her left. “A close call, but gladly we had the best of the best to protect us.”

Intak, stationed at your other side, blushes and shuffles on his feet, averting his gaze.

He’s relieved to hear that, but he still can’t help but worry of the worst. His eyes turn back to you and scan you from head to toe, frantic to search for any evidence that you’re affected. “Are you hurt?”

You shake your head. “No. I had a trusty guard at my side,” you say before turning to Intak and giving him a warm smile. “Isn’t that right?”

Intak’s eyes flit past you, landing on your sister for a quick second before they move onto Taeyang. “I only served my duty to protect the Q—Her Highness,” he says, bowing his head to Taeyang.

Taeyang’s brows furrow at the formal display, unusual coming from his friend but he nods regardless. His worries are rather occupied by you and the fact that you don’t seem a bit of the distress that Taeyang feels.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” you add with a quick bow. “I have duties at hand.”

You brush past him but Taeyang doesn’t let you go far before he grabs your arm and halts you in your path. But when you turn to him, brows raised in question, he can’t figure out what he was even meaning for.

“Yes?” You prod and he just stares, gaping like a fish. 

“You were attacked,” he says stiffly.

“...Yes. It’s been established.”

Taeyang feels the familiar rise of irritation he experiences whenever he’s with you. But the difference is, it’s not at you. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He just knows that you were nearly hurt, it could’ve been plenty worse, and he wasn’t there to stop it.

What kind of a husband was he?

He jolts at the thought, dropping your arm and nearly flinching away from you.

“I—” He starts, then stops when his voice cracks. “Excuse me.”

He makes his quick escape out of the foyer. Tries to, because he can’t run from the feelings that conflict his heart.

He knows it’s an awful game to start evading you again. It starts to become apparent to him that the distance might become a necessary third party in your relationship and it’s no one’s fault but his.

He just can’t help it. Ever since that day when you’d sent his heart into turmoil and confusion, that’s all he can feel every time he sees you. He doesn’t understand why his heart nearly gave out or why he felt ready to burn the entire kingdom down in search of the bastards who’d nearly gotten to you.

The dirty looks you give him at the few dinners that he attends lets him know you’re not happy with his sudden change in behaviour. But if only you knew all his dilemmas were because of you.

It doesn’t help that the necklace he had commissioned for you turns up missing. He’s been so caught up in you that he doesn’t even know, or even bother to understand, how it happened. All he knows is that he sent his sister to have it picked up, that she was nearly robbed of it in town, and that it made it to the castle grounds before it completely vanished. He doesn’t let it show but it only adds to his long list of reasons to spiral.

He thinks his inner turmoil is just that—inner.

Though with the suspect glances that Keeho starts to give him whenever you come up makes him think he’s not being as subtle as he’d like to be.

Whatever it is, he needs the space to figure it out so his brain doesn’t go mad whenever he enters your vicinity. So, for the next week, he lets the distance grow.

And apparently, his healer friend finds herself in a similar spot with his brother. 

“Why must things be more complicated than they need to be?” She huffs. She drops her chin over her folded arms atop the balcony railing, staring out over the horizon morosely. 

“It’s not complicated,” Taeyang corrects, twirling the teacup in his hands. The breeze feels nice under the summer sun. But it does nothing to soothe away his burdensome woes, and neither does the lush greens of the forest below their tall station. “I’m simply keeping my distance from her to keep my head on right. It doesn’t take much from her to throw it askew.”

She only laughs at his misery. “How ironic,” she muses, words dripping with sarcasm.

He places his teacup on the tiny plate perched atop the railing, turning to her with a raised brow. “What?”

He watches her sigh dramatically and tilt her head up to stare at the heavens. “You’re trying to push away,” she states, before looking at him with a solemn gaze he’s not used to seeing from her. “And I’m trying to get closer.”

Taeyang feels his chest twinge with sympathy. He’s watched her pine after Jiung for years now, only to have him dismiss her despite his own feelings for her. 

“He’s still being evasive?” He asks, frowning. “I thought he’d get over it by now.”

She huffs, standing straight to kick her heel mindlessly against the ground, like she was taking it out on it instead of Jiung. “He’s convinced that nothing will cure him. But it doesn’t matter what he says. He can try to push me away all he wants but that won’t stop me from trying to find a cure.” 

He admires her determination to her craft, envies it almost. He just hopes it will fix whatever is wrong with his brother.

“It’s just annoying how stubborn and idiotic it is,” she grouses. 

He scoffs. Stubborn is something he’s becoming very acquainted with as of late. “I know a thing or two about that. I’m practically marrying stubborn.”

Taeyang can feel her disappointed glare from a mile away, nevermind a few feet. 

“Are you blind?” She asks bluntly, and Taeyang bristles back. “Stubborn runs in the Choi blood. You’re just mad you’re marrying yourself.”

It’s ridiculous enough to make him laugh, maybe for the first time in the days since he’d last talked to you in the foyer when he almost found out what it was like to have a stroke.

“You’re not the first one to have said something like that.”

“So you realize its truth, right?”

He reaches over to shove her by the shoulder. “Whatever.”

She swats back in instinct, laughing. “Seriously, Taeyang,” she starts, the mirth in her tone dying away to something more serious. “You know that pushing her away won’t do anything, right? Jiung’s doing it and maybe her feelings towards you aren’t like what I feel for Jiung but…” She frowns. “It’s not a good feeling. Especially not from someone who’s important to you.”

The sight of her downcast eyes and the sound of her sullen voice makes Taeyang’s resolve almost crumble. Almost.

But instead of facing that shifting feeling in his chest, he redirects his focus.

“Hey,” he says gently, reaching for her elbow to pull her into his space. “Jiung’s just scared, you know that?”

She doesn’t meet his eye, opting to stare at his chest as she wraps her arms protectively around herself. “I know,” she mumbles. She sounds small. She reminds him a little bit of his sister, just a tad less gremlin-like.

He smiles fondly. “So don’t let go of him.”

When she finally looks up at him, it's with tears in her eyes.

He reaches up to brush away the little droplet that escapes. “I know you’ll mend him. In more ways than one.” 

He’s not sure if he’s convincing her or himself—he has to believe that Jiung’s condition will get better, otherwise…

He snaps himself out of that train of thought, shaking his head. “Just have some patience,” he continues, clearing his throat of the rising emotion. “You know how he is. He needs to come to things on his own terms.”

She takes a deep breath, blinking away her tears. “You’re right,” she mumbles. There’s a long pause before she adds a quick, “You’re pretty helpful when you’re not being a stubborn ass.”

Taeyang goes to swipe her on the head but she swiftly dodges and embraces him instead, giggling.

“Thanks,” she muffles into his chest, her arms tightening around his torso. He holds back his grunt of pain. “You could learn a thing or two from yourself about your own little problem.”

He snorts, wrapping his arms around her shoulders before digging his chin atop her head, hard enough to make her wince. “My own little problem is more complicated than that.”

A movement in his peripherals catches his gaze. He turns his head to see the tail end of an emerald dress disappear down the hallway from the balcony.

He recognizes it as one of yours, and his heart twists with the reminder of just how delicate it all is.

He lets out a sigh, his arms loosening around his friend. “Much more complicated.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

Taeyang starts to realize that maybe he should have listened to the healer, that maybe he let the distance grow a little too far between you for the next few days when he sees Keeho start to hover around you much too frequently and much too familiarly.

Keeho has started to accompany you to your daily chores. Beyond that, he’s started conversing with you like it's nothing at the dining table, and whenever Taeyang hears your voice chiming around the corner, sending his heart array, Keeho’s nasally one follows right after. He hates that he’s been hovering around to simply keep watch, only driving himself more mad whenever he hears Keeho’s ridiculous jokes getting that laugh out of you. 

An absurd surge of fury pierces through him to see you that way for someone else, and his brother no less.

Suddenly, Taeyang’s duties become the last of his worries. Instead, he makes the time to accompany you to your duties so you wouldn’t have to deal with Keeho. Surely, you’d prefer him over his oaf of a brother.

But he starts to doubt his beliefs when the first thing you do is frown at him when he enters the parlor where you’re set up with a string quartet. Taeyang nearly throws a fit.

“Taeyang?” Four. “Keeho was supposed to accompany me.”

He doesn’t hide his scowl as he walks closer to where you are. “Well it’s me. Disappointed?”

You narrow your eyes, frown shifting to an annoyed pout. “Aren’t you busy?”

Taeyang can’t really say that he is without having to explain that he ditched everything to make time for this, so he just snaps at you to, “Just be grateful for it.”

The session commences tensely, every song grating his ears, but at least he’s suffering it with you.

He thinks it's enough to beat the pest that is Keeho away.

He realizes how wrong he was when he walks too late into the kitchen for the cake tasting, out of breath from darting across the castle to make it in time. Because there was Keeho, lifting a small bit of red velvet cake with his grimy little fingers for you. You’re smiling as you lean in to take the piece on your tongue, practically licking his fingers clean off.

Taeyang sees white.

It only gets worse. Keeho swipes the cream smeared at the corner of your lips and has the nerve to tongue it off, all while leering right into your flustered gaze with that sleazy smile of his. 

All Taeyang can do is stand there, chest heaving for an entirely new reason, as you ogle his brother while he murmurs something about how it, “Tastes so sweet.”

A sudden crash pierces through the horrible moment—a maid shattering a glass bowl at the other end of the kitchen, but Taeyang can’t find it in him to worry about that.

“Keeho,” Taeyang says, far too calmly for what he’s really feeling. “I need you in my office.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before he turns and leaves.

The way to his office remains quiet except for the clacks of Keeho’s boots prancing after him a little ways behind. Even his walk sounds arrogant, each click only stoking the flames of Taeyang’s ire.

As soon as the doors shut behind Keeho, all of Taeyang’s composure drops at once.

“What the hell was that?” He seethes, whirling around to face Keeho who stands there with his cocksure smile, hands folded behind his back.

He shrugs innocently. “What was what, brother?”

Taeyang’s eyes narrow. “You know what. Defiling your Queen out there in the open like that?”

“Woah,” Keeho scoffs, brows rising in shock at the pure anger seeping through Taeyang’s words. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? I was just feeding her cake.”

“Don’t play coy with me, Keeho,” he growls slowly, stepping forward but Keeho only grins.

“I’m not playing, brother,” he says casually. “You were too busy. You can’t blame me for keeping her company while you’re gone, can you? We might have to get used to it anyways, if this is how it’s going to be.” Keeho’s grin widens wolfishly and it only makes Taeyang’s stomach twist further into a knot. “I mean, when she’s all lonely and you’re working, it’s only fair if I get to—”

Taeyang can’t bear to hear him finish that thought. He doesn’t even realize what he’s done until he feels the ache left behind in his knuckles and Keeho’s head is snapped to the side as a violent red blooms across his cheek.

When it sinks in what he’s done, Taeyang can only stare at Keeho. 

Dread follows slowly after the realization. He’s never once raised a hand at his brothers, a vow he made to himself over years of being submitted to his father’s fury. And here he was, hurting his own little brother over—over what, over you?

Keeho stares back, hand cradling his jaw. “Taeyang, I—”

“Get out,” Theo says quietly, lowering his shaky fist. 

He’s not angry anymore. He can’t be, when all he can do is question his sanity. What are you doing to him?

The answer doesn’t hit him until later that night, when he’s perched atop his balcony that oversees the gardens where you’re lounging around with Jiung, Jongseob, Keeho, his younger sister and her guard.

He watches the way you laugh with them, play with them, poke and rib at them like they’re your own. And he realizes, with an aching heart, that you fit right into his home. Maybe more than he ever has.

Is this what he’s been missing out on all this time? You’ve been here for a bit over a measly month and yet you’re more at ease with his own family than he ever was. 

You’ve never been the problem. You’ve never been the spoiled, snobbish, above-anyone-else princess he’s made you out to be. Clearly, you make well with everyone but him. That only speaks to his character, not yours.

And it’s not just you. He’s managed to push everyone else in his family away because of his own ego, his own self-importance. He’s always had a knack for self-destruction. He just didn’t realize how much until it was laid out in front of him.

Taeyang finds himself wondering what it would be like to have his own family with you. Would it be just like this, laughter and late-night garden getaways? Or would he ruin that too? 

When you look up and catch his watchful gaze only to return it with a glare, he realizes that he wants nothing more than the version of you that his family has. The version of you that he wants for himself.

He just needs to work for it.

𓆩⟡𓆪

You’re not sure what’s changed. When Keeho told you what had gone down, you thought Taeyang finally lost it.

But it seems the opposite. Or maybe he’s reached a new level of insanity.

Because three weeks before the day of the wedding, on the morning of your birthday, you wake up to a bouquet of your favourite flowers. You think it’s from your sister, but when you read the neat cursive on the tiny card tucked away in the petals, you nearly lose it yourself.

I can see why they’re your favourite. They remind me of you. I’ll be sure to stay far away from them.

Your Arrogant Prince

The smile that pulls at your lips is immediate and against your will. It’s hard to believe he’d remember your offhanded comment from that day of flower picking, but it’s more likely he must have just asked your sister. 

You pick up the bouquet, note its lousy arrangement, and realize with a fond heart that he must have fixed it together himself.

But you’re quick to fan the flames. It will take more than one lousy bouquet for him to make up for his fair-weather tendencies. But that doesn’t stop you from depositing the flowers in a vase and leaving them at your bedside.

When you make your way down, you find the dining table filled to the brim with all your favourite foods. And, besides the regular cast, Taeyang sits at the head of the table for the first breakfast in many days.

He bids you good morning before anyone else can, taking not only you, but the others by surprise. You think it’s just a special thing, saved for your birthday, but the treatment continues through the following week and what you once thought was a gimmick might actually turn out to be effort.

It becomes even more obvious when you’re bombarded by maids at various hours of the day, tending to your every need.

During your jewelry arranging session, one of them approaches you with the tea that you like, just the way you like it.

You instantly lighten at the familiar aroma, setting aside the tray of jewels on your lap to lean forward and breathe it in. 

“How did you know this is the one I like?” You ask, practically beaming. “I don’t recall telling the staff here.”

The maid bows her head before stepping back. “It was a request from the Crown Prince, Your Highness.”

Your smile drops, shock raising your brows instead. How did he know?

You lift your eyes back up to her. “Is he also the reason I have an army of maids at my disposal at every hour of the day?”

The maid smiles sheepishly. “Yes, Your Highness. He’s asked us to make sure you have everything you need to make your days easier.”

Your lips rise into a slow smile. If this is how he seeks repentance, you can’t find it in yourself to complain.

𓆩⟡𓆪

The wedding is a little over two weeks away, and while the chaos is up to everyone’s necks, you manage to stave an early evening away for yourself to ease off all the stress. Well, Taeyang had a part in that—arranging with the staff to give you a needed day off.

The bow is a familiar weight under your hand, an old one, but not forgotten. You can’t remember the last time you’d felt mentally stable enough to think about anything but your impending doom. But with your impending doom feeling less like impending doom recently, you finally get a break.

You pull the arrow back, aim with a breath, then let them go in tandem.

It hits a few inches from the centre.

You figured you’d be a little rusty but with an hour of practice, you should be back to par.

You draw another arrow, taking your time to fix your aim. Just as you’re about to let go, a voice catches you by surprise and the arrow goes flying astray.

You curse, whipping around to glare at Taeyang.

“Really?” You huff at the smirk on his face as he approaches. “You couldn’t have waited until after I took the shot.”

“If you were good enough you would have gotten it,” he retorts easily, looking over at the target. “I didn’t know you did archery.”

He's casual today, with a white button down and brown slacks. His hair is pushed back messily with stray tresses fluttering over his face in the wind.

You tear your gaze away just as he turns back to you. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” you state, walking back to the quiver you’d left on ground by an oak tree.

You hear him trail after you on the rustling grass, moving to lean against the tree with his hands in his pockets as he watches you fall into position with another arrow.

You can feel his eyes on your figure. His leering has gotten less and less inconspicuous in the past week and as aggravating as it may feel at times, you can’t say you don’t enjoy the attention.

“I’ve never had much time to pick up such hobbies,” you hear him say as you adjust your aim.

You relax and lower the bow, looking at him over your shoulder. His eyes flick up to meet yours as you do and you’re a little taken aback at how fitting he appears with the windswept look. It’s times like this that remind you your misfortune isn’t so vastly great as you’d initially deemed it.

“Would you like to try?” You offer without much thought. You add hastily, “Instead of just standing there and leering like a creep.”

He smiles as he straightens and saunters up to you. “Can’t a man admire his wife?”

You ignore the familiar set of butterflies that he’s been letting loose in your stomach for the past days.

“I’m not your wife,” you correct him, shoving the bow in his hands.

“Yet.”

You roll your eyes as you shove him to position and he lets himself be pushed with a laugh.

You nearly stumble over yourself as you move to stand behind him. His laugh still takes you back, a sound you’re so unused to but has become a part of your routine with him recently. It’s not an unwelcome change.

He takes a breath and stares at the target for a calculating second. “Looks easy,” he mutters quietly. “I just have to pretend that it's Keeho’s head.”

Your stomach twists, cheeks burning at the reminder of your little… plan with Keeho that had practically gone up in flames. It seems that Taeyang still doesn’t know the truth behind it.

“About that,” you start, and Taeyang looks over his shoulder at you, a little startled like he hadn’t expected you to hear. You fumble for an explanation under his inquisitive gaze. “I just wanted to make you upset. And Keeho wanted to make his maid jealous so we—” You bite your tongue, cursing yourself for letting Keeho’s secret slip.

But Taeyang doesn’t seem to care about that. His lips pull up into a winning grin, like a cat with his canary. “You wanted to make me jealous,” he surmises, much to your dismay.

That’s one way to put it. But there was no way that you’d admit something like that. And it’s not as if he’s completely innocent of that crime either.

You scoff, turning your cheek to him. “As if you didn’t start it first.”

You don’t have to look at him to feel his puzzled gaze on the side of your face.

You roll your eyes, turning back to him with narrowed eyes. “Unless you like to cozy up with all your healers?”

Realization dawns on his face, lips parting in a small ‘o’. “Well,” he starts, standing straighter. “Only the ones I’ve been friends with since childhood. Especially the ones that seek advice from me about their feelings for my brother.”

Your cheeks instantly heat up. Now that you really think about it, you have seen Jiung hovering around the healer one too many times, enough to give you the grounds to question whether it was just for health checkups.

You dig your teeth into your lip, glancing up to see Taeyang watching you with a fond little smile. “I didn’t know you were worried about that.”

“I wasn’t,” you say stubbornly, avoiding his twinkling gaze. You push at his shoulder, hoping the blush on your cheek isn’t as intense as it feels. “You know nothing. Now shoot.”

He laughs again, turning his attention back to the target with a shake of his head. 

The line of his shoulders straightens with newfound ardor as he lifts the bow. He’s clumsy as he handles it, hooking the arrow with no finesse, and you have to keep yourself from laughing at his utter cluelessness. But a stifled snicker passes through anyway and his expression quickly sours as he glares at you over his shoulder.

“Instead of just standing there, aren’t you supposed to help me?”

It’s your turn to grin now. “Why would I?” You tease. “It’s so much more entertaining to watch you figure it out yourself.”

His glare deepens. “You’re a terrible teacher.”

“I never claimed to be a good one,” you remark with a smile and Taeyang’s glare melts away to the soft smile you’re slowly becoming fond of. You linger on it for a moment too long before you catch yourself. “Let me.”

You step behind him and raise your hand to his back, hesitating for just a second before you press it flat between the notches of his broad shoulders, placing pressure to straighten his stature. The touch, even through the layer of fabric, feels all too encompassing.

Taeyang takes a breath, a little too sharp to be normal.

“You have terrible posture,” you mumble.

He exhales, keeping his eyes strictly on the target. “So I’ve been told.”

Your arms come around to take his elbows between light fingers to adjust his arms as you start off on an explanation of the angles to hold his stance at. Taeyang stays far too silent, and you start to question whether he’s even listening.

You peer over his shoulder at the grip he has on the bow and the thought of reaching out to adjust his hands takes you back to that night in his bedroom. The purple along the knuckles of his left has faded to a shadowed lilac now, but the thought of touching him there again feels daunting. 

“Loosen your grip on the bow,” you tell him. It’s not on purpose that your breath brushes against his neck, but you’re not against the visible effect it has on him in the form of gooseflesh that rises on his skin.

He swallows, adjusting his grip on the wood. “Like that?”

“Hm. Could be better.” You eye his hand around the nock of the arrow. “That one’s worse, it’s too tight. Loosen and hold it between your thumb and side of your index.”

He follows, or tries to, but the arrow still sits uneasy in his hand.

“Not quite.” 

He tries again, but it still falls short.

He turns his head to peer down his nose at you. You try not to feel his gaze on you like a physical weight, but he makes it difficult. “Apologies, dear, but you may have to do it for me.”

You look up at him, expecting it to be another one of his artful attempts at flirtation, but the way he looks at you is only intense. Wanting.

It’s you who’s affected now, and you can’t help but to give in to his plea.

You tear your eyes from him to reach over and let your hand cover his on the bow. You falter at the tingles that rise beneath your skin before quickly reeling yourself together and adjusting his grip. You move on with haste, reaching around him to adjust his hold on the nock.

All while you try to keep your breaths intact with his gaze fixed on you, persistent and prying in the proximity.

“There,” you tell him and hope that pushes his attention back to the task at hand.

But his gaze lingers, like it mourns having to look away before he finally does. 

With a steadying—albeit shaky—breath, he pulls the arrow back and releases.

You’re too caught up in his profile to see whether he’s hit the target. But with the way his face lights up and the bright grin that pulls on his lips, you think he must have hit somewhere in the centre.

Only to turn and see that he’s hit the block, sure, but outside of the circle entirely.

“I did it!” He cheers.

You blink. “You did something.”

But when he laughs, bright and airy and like he’s conquered a nation, you think it doesn’t matter at all if he gets to laugh like this.

𓆩⟡𓆪 

It’s one week until the wedding and Taeyang is sure you’re just about near losing your mind. 

And it’s evident as such when you barge your way into his office again, crying, “I am going crazy!”

Taeyang looks up from his papers to see you practically heaving with your vexation, cheeks flushed and hair unruly. He gets the ridiculous urge to go over and smooth the strands out of your face.

Instead, he sits up straight in his chair. “And you’re just realizing this?”

You bristle at that, turning your glare to him. “Not like that,” you snap, then start pacing around the floor of his office, arms flailing wildly as you commence your timely ramble. It’s a familiar sight, now that you’ve come in here just to pace and complain before promptly leaving in a huff. 

“They pull me away from teatime—mind you I’d already been running around all morning like a headless chicken—to ask me to pick out cutlery of all things—”

“Sounds awful,” he chimes in drily, but you ignore him.

“—so I make my choice and then it’s oh are you sure?” You mock in a high, nasally voice. “We suggest sterling actually, and then she goes on and on and on about quality differences that I truly could not give a single damn about!”

His lips quirk up at the passion with which you tell your grievances. He stands from his chair and starts strolling his way to you. “How dare she?” He asks, but you’re too caught up in your flurry of ire to notice him closing in.

“Right?!” You cry with a toss of your arms in the air. You turn to watch outside the window when he stops a foot behind you. “So what even is the point of me being there? If you’re such an expert, you choose. I couldn’t care less at this point, Taeyang—“ five, he counts in his head, “—let’s just get married in rags. Let’s do it in the stables for all I care. I'm done. I am simply—”

He takes hold of your elbow and pulls you to him, cutting you off. You yelp and nearly topple over but his grip on you is sturdy enough to keep you upright. Your eyes are wide and questioning as they stare up at him.

With how close you are, he notices the flush on your cheeks deepen.

“Are you done?” He asks, his voice far too fond for his liking. But recently, anything he says or does around you is out of his control.

You blink up at him, seeming a little struck. “...Yes.”

“Good,” he says. Then he starts pulling you out of his office. “Come along.”

There’s a little resistance against his hold as you stumble after him. “Where are you taking me?!”

“You will see,” is all he says.

“If this is a scheme to just mess with me more, I swear—“

He moves his hand down to your wrist and yanks you forward to walk alongside him. “Hush. Just follow.”

You settle down, but you don’t shut up, opting to huff and puff under your breath about how “controlling” he is. He only listens with a tiny smile as he carries down the marble floors.

The room he brings you to is in an area you’ve never wandered to before and it feels a little… ghostly. 

It’s dark. It feels cold.

Taeyang strides across the room to the large window that sits on the other end. When he pulls apart the curtains, the sun spills in and sets everything alight.

The walls are a mix of gold and white that glow seraphically with the sun. There’s paintings hung on them of flowers and gardens and natural landscapes. Tarps are draped over all the pieces of furniture that sit dormant.

Something about this room feels like it's trapped in time. Untouched. You wonder how many years.

“This is where my mother spent most of her time.”

Taeyang’s voice pulls your focus to where he leans against the rim of the window, the sun against him like a celestial backlight. 

There’s a distant look in his eyes as they trace the walls. “I didn’t get to spend much time here with the others…” He pauses. He must mean his brothers and his sister. “I come here now when I need to get away. People don’t usually come here. Well, Jongseob does.”

The knowledge of this space, the weight that it carries, makes you feel like an intruder. “You didn’t have to bring me here.”

He looks at you for a thoughtful moment before he nods his head to his side, beckoning you to the empty space by the window.

When you join him, you both stay in silent contemplation. It’s not uncomfortable. It’s soothing, rather.

“Jongseob was in here the most,” he recalls quietly. “Jiung was here whenever he wasn’t busy. Keeho was always the detached type and my sister was more independent. She hated being coddled. But Jongseob always clung to her.” The tiny smile that sits on his lips is distant and a little sorrowed. “She favoured him. And I was…”

“Busy being a King?” You finish for him and he breathes a short laugh.

“Yeah. Too busy for her.” His smile fades, expression clouding with a darkness that doesn’t sit right with the sunlit room. “I had no time to be her son.”

The heavy look in his eye settles like a physical weight in your own chest. 

“That’s not true,” you insist. “I don’t remember much of her, but I recall she always looked at you fondly. She was a loving person.”

His eyes cast lower, head tilting down so his hair curtains his face. “But with no one to love her right.”

The guilt he must feel needs no other explanation. You lift your hand to brush his hair back, catching sight of the remnants of his tears that he blinks quickly away. He turns to you at the touch, lifting his melancholy eyes to you.

“She knew—knows,” you correct yourself. “She knows you love her. You were just… misfortunate enough to not get the chance to show her. But Jongseob did.”

He tries to turn away but you grab hold of his chin, firm yet gentle. Though he doesn’t look at you, lowering his gaze as a furrow sets between his brows.

“It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” You ask him quietly. “That he got to love her enough for both of you?”

His eyes fall completely shut, lips pressing tighter to smother the tremble. You watch him as he breathes, reels his emotions in, and opens his eyes to you.

“I’ve—” He starts, then pauses when his voice shakes. He swallows hard before trying again. “I’ve never thought about it that way before.”

You let your hand fall, fisting it in your lap to ease away the tingles left beneath your skin. “That’s what I’ve always been here for, I suppose.” You smile at the question in his eyes. “To challenge you, Taeyang.”

You expect him to fire back with something of his own but he only gets this sickeningly soft look on his face. One that would normally unsettle you.

But it is a little intimidating so you turn your gaze away. “What is it?”

“You’ve called me by my name six times now.”

Confusion. And then shock. You whip back around to him, eyes shot open wide. “You’ve been keeping track?”

He simply shrugs like it was a normal revelation, like announcing a shift in the weather. “I like the way it sounds on your tongue,” he states, and you feel your stomach twist. It twists further when he tilts his head just so, the corner of his lips lifting. “Say it again?”

A furious heat rises on your cheeks, but you can’t find it in yourself to deny him. Maybe it’s the vulnerability remaining from the moments just prior. “Taeyang, you’re being ridiculous.”

His smile pulls wider as he pushes himself fully up to his feet. “Seven,” he counts. “Again.”

You straighten out of instinct, crossing your arms as you try to tame your fluster. “No, Taeyang,” you grumble at his demand, turning your gaze out the window.

You try to ignore him in your peripherals as he moves closer, but his voice right beside your ear makes it difficult. “Eight.” 

He takes your chin in his hand to make you face him, a shiver climbing up your spine when your eyes meet his. They’re set alight to molten honey by the sun. His skin fares just as tantalizing, a golden dew. 

“Again.”

You watch as his smile fades into something softer. His eyes seem lost as they watch you. 

You let out a quiet, shuddering breath. “Taeyang?”

“Nine,” he answers. His thumb lifts, brushing against the plush of your lip. His body leans into you, eyes falling lower.

You don’t need the command. You give into him without it.

“Taeyang,” you whisper.

“Ten,” he whispers back, then seals his lips over yours. 

It’s warm and soft, everything that your relationship with Taeyang is not. And you find yourself lulled into it, hand finding his chest as his slides up to your cheek.

You falter at the flutter of his fingertips brushing against your heated skin, pushing back your stray locks.

He groans softly when your fingers dig into his shirt and he surges forward, pressing insistently against your lips. You lift on your toes to push back with the same fervour, moving in tandem with him. 

His heart pounds beneath your palm. Yours is a wreckage of its own.

It’s a simple kiss, but it’s enough to make your shackled walls come crumbling down.

“Sister! There you— oh…”

The warmth tears away in a single moment as you jump from the kiss, Taeyang stumbling back on his own. You turn away from him, trying to reel your wild heart in, and your cheeks burn even hotter at the sinking realization of what’s just happened.

You hear your sister’s heels slowly step away, the doors creaking as she starts to draw them shut. “I can come back—”

“No!” Taeyang interjects quickly, clearing his throat when his voice cracks. “What did you need?”

“It’s a bit of a personal matter but—”

“Coming!” You chime, turning and quickly rushing to your sister’s side while pointedly keeping your panicked gaze off of her baffled one. You don’t dare look back at Taeyang.

“Wait, you don’t have to come with me! I can just—” she tries to insist but you ignore her, looping your arm around hers to tug her, and you, away from this treacherous moment while mentally preparing yourself from the barrage of questions your sister is sure to have for you.

Taeyang just stands there helplessly, watching you fade away, with his mind in a storm and fire at his fingertips.

𓆩⟡𓆪

This game seems endless; traipsing around each other. 

After that happened—Taeyang can’t even bring himself to name what happened—things have taken a turn for the awkward. Eye contact is avoided at all costs at dinner, if he even decides to show up. Conversations are kept nonexistent. He simply nods at you to acknowledge your presence to which you only divert from. 

It’s safe to say that neither of you know how to act accordingly with what happened. He’s not sure what the protocol is and it leaves him feeling astray. You surely feel the same if your avoidant behaviour is anything to go by.

It keeps him up at night. The ghost of your lips pressing against his, the soft breaths he pulled out of you, your hand searing heat against his racing chest. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s back beside the window with his heart in his hand.

It’s all he can think of when he sees you. And it throws him so far off course from reality, pulls his focus so far out of his grasp, that he does everything he can to avoid having to face it, even if it means evading you.

He’s not even sure what it is, and he’s not sure he wants to know. He doesn’t want to know what it is that makes his heart lurch whenever it comes to anything remotely related to you. He figures it’s better left untouched and locked away.

But it’s hard to avoid it completely when everything becomes about you with the wedding only a few days away.

To make things worse, the gift he bought for you still hasn’t turned up.

His sister barging in with problems of her own (involving her guard, no less) doesn’t help either, and as much as he appreciates the reconciliation, it only adds to his long list of headaches to tackle.

Then to make things even worse, Intak comes to him with the petrifying news that a second attempt at your life has been made by a rebel, and the guilt he’d been carrying for the past two months heightens tenfold.

It’s safe to say that the days leading up to the wedding, he spends them on edge. And it doesn’t help that he hasn’t been in contact with you in any way. With preparations at all time high and you being pulled this way and that, he can’t even attempt to speak with you if he even grew the courage for it.

But the night before the wedding, Taeyang reaches his limits. Everything feels like it’s falling apart and the worst part is that it is all out of his hand. And he hates feeling helpless.

He needs something, anything, to put his mind at ease. And with a startling realization, he finds that you have become the source for it that he yearns for.

So he musters the meager bits of courage he has left in him and makes his way to your bedroom. He knows it's improper to see his bride the night before the wedding but many things about this betrothal have been anything but proper. Surely, you wouldn’t mind.

He starts to think otherwise when he pushes the door open to see you staring at yourself in the mirror, completely still and devoid of emotion.

“Princess?” He asks, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. When your eyes snap up to meet his through the mirror, wide and stormy, he feels dread pool in his gut. “Are you alright?”

A laugh escapes you, short and devoid of any mirth. “Alright?” You repeat in a disbelieving whisper. “How can I be alright, Your Highness?”

Your Highness. Not Taeyang. 

He tastes poison in his mouth at the idea of you calling him anything other than his name now. It feels like you’ve just erased him; the him that he’s shown you the past few weeks.

He doesn’t understand. Has the kiss pushed you away? Did it make you realize that you didn’t want him that way? His heart twists at the thought and he wishes with a ravenous desperation that it was anything but that.

If only he knew, it was the opposite. You wanted him with a force so great that it terrified you. This was the last thing you wished for, especially after vowing to yourself you would never fall for these men’s games. Falling for Taeyang means falling at the hand of the crown, and with that, it means submission. It means losing yourself. And that is the farthest thing from what you want.

“What do you mean?” 

You hate that his voice sounds so genuinely concerned. This is exactly how he’s played you, isn’t it? By playing the part to get you to lower your defenses.

The familiar bitter tang rises up your throat. “It means,” you start, voice tight. “How can I be alright knowing that I’m marrying you?”

You watch through the glass as Taeyang’s eyes widen. The moment stills as you stare at each other, letting the weight of your words sink in.

Then his eyes sharpen, expression hardening into the familiar fury that you’re used to from him. The anger that only you seem to bring out in him. The anger you’ll be submitted to for the rest of your life. 

“I thought we were okay,” he says, even still doing his best to reel his emotions in. “What the hell is your problem now?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Then make me,” he snaps.

You whip around to face him. “Make you?” You ask, exasperated already. 

His anger feels more real now that you face it with your own two eyes and it's heavy enough to make you falter, too overwhelmed with your own emotions already. But you stand your ground regardless.

“If you couldn’t understand all this time, how can I make you now?” Your chest heaves, the fear that's been growing inside you, faded in the recent days but surely there, rising to the surface all at once. “You’ll never understand the fear of being tied down to a man and becoming nothing more than a wife.” Your voice, and your breaths, rise with each sharpened word. “I have no identity, Taeyang. I have no purpose! If I marry you, I will never have one. That is my problem. Do you understand now?”

His jaw grits, brows furrowed over cutting eyes that reflect your own fury back. “No, I don’t,” he answers, taking a step forward. “You should be grateful, if anything. You’re getting everything a woman can ask for and you still choose to sing your woes about things that don’t matter.”

“Don’t matter?” You whisper in disbelief. The laugh that leaves you is abrupt and sharp. “You can dress this up as opportunity and prosperity all you want, Prince,” you spit the word, nevermind the disrespect. “I am getting everything but my own name. I am becoming yours. Don’t you realize how twisted that is? This… ceremony is to relieve my father of my burden in the name of a truce. It's not a wedding.” You pause, your throat tightening around your words. “It’s not love.”

Taeyang steps back, like the words had physically blown him. His expression crumbles away to a shock etched with what could be pain. But you can’t recognize it past your own.

Instead, you take a step forward, driving the knife deeper. “There have been two attacks on my life now,” you recount, hands quivering at your sides. “Your people do not want me and I have to live in that fear for the rest of my life. I’ve been almost killed twice now and you couldn’t even protect me! And you’re supposed to be my King? My husband?”

Taeyang’s eyes, now ridden with guilt, fall away from you.

You only want to hurt him more. You want him to feel a fraction of what it is that you’re feeling.

“Forget the people,” you scoff. “You can barely even stand me.” His gaze snaps back up to you but you don’t give him the space to counter. “You have hated me your whole life. And I’m supposed to believe you changed your mind about me in, what, two months? You don’t care about me. How can I be alright marrying you knowing that?”

Taeyang’s eyes flash, and you’re not sure what it is about those words, but they trigger something primal in him. “Watch what you’re saying,” he seethes.

You can only shake your head, stepping back when you feel a familiar sting in your eyes. “This won’t work. Is this how we’re supposed to live? Mercurial—okay to not okay. Make peace one day then mess it all up the next, whether it's your fault or mine. I can’t do it.” The tears well heavily but you don’t let them fall. “We’ll be miserable.”

“Then we’ll spend a lifetime being miserable!” He snaps. His chest is heaving, fueled with the intensity that returns to his gaze. “But we’ll do it together. You’re marrying me, whether you like it or not.”

“Like hell I’ll marry a man who can’t make up his mind! Who doesn’t care.”

The air shifts, and the fire in his eye isn’t simple anger. It’s rage. 

He steps forward. You step back. “I don’t care?” He asks in a quiet that pierces you harder than anything loud would. He doesn’t stop, invading your space and closing in every time you step back. “I have spent weeks trying to prove to you that I care. I care, princess, I always have.”

You shake your head, still scrambling back as he closes in on you. “It doesn’t matter if you just say it.” Your voice wavers, the last of your defenses a weary thing, overwhelmed by his sudden force.

He only persists, a slow, almost terrifying grin curling on his lips. “Is that so?” 

You gasp when your back hits the wall. 

He stands right before you, his heaving chest nearly pressed to yours, looking down at you with eyes a wild storm of anger, desperation, and something more.

His hand grasps your jaw, tilting your face up to his, and you feel trapped. 

Your body betrays you; because despite it all, you want nothing more than to stay trapped like this. You want his fingers to dig in deeper, to leave a claim on your flesh.

He leans down, his nose barely brushing yours as he breathes the words right over your lips. “I’ll show you just how much I care so you won’t dare insinuate anything like that ever again.”

The tremble that crawls down your body leaves you feeling breathless. With him so close, your desire for him becomes impossible to ignore. You want to stop hiding from it. You want to give in to it.

The way Taeyang looks at you makes it apparent he wants nothing more than to pull you under.

And pull, he does. 

The kiss is all teeth and tongue, storm and fire, an unforgiving push and pull. His hands feel like they’re everywhere, a trail of heat from your hair to your waist to your hips, pressing your back into the wall as he melds himself against you. 

His fingers feel as if they’re clawing their way to carve space for him. And you let him, but not without a fight of your own. 

Your hand digs into his hair insistently, soft between your fingers as you pull. The groan he lets out into your lips is rough and from the depths of his lungs. 

The part of his lips gives you the chance to lick your way into his mouth in search for claim, claim that he fights with his own tongue. 

You push against his hold with the force of your entire body, but he overpowers you, grabbing your hips to drive you right back into the wall. 

He tears his lips from you but it’s only for a breathless moment before he presses them back to yours, but not for a kiss. 

“I despise you,” he whispers against your lips, shaky and harsh. One of his hands slides up your back, finding the zipper of your dress, his other hand pulling your hips flush against him. You gasp when you feel the hard pressure of his arousal against you. “I despise the way you have crawled into every crevice of my mind.” You shiver as he tugs the zipper down, leaving you vulnerable to the cold brush of air against your back. “I despise the way you leave me defenceless.” He pushes you again, hard enough that you feel the wood digging in through the material of your corset. He burrows his face into your neck, breathing you in. “I despise you,” he whispers against your skin, leaving a thread of electricity as he glides his mouth from your neck up to your chin. He digs his teeth into your flesh and you whimper at the shards of pain, head falling back with a thump against the wall. “I despise the way you drive me absolutely mad.” 

His tongue drags up the cut of your jaw to trace the shell of your ear, fingers clawing into the shoulders of your dress. 

The words spill into your ear, whispered in reverence, as he tears the dress off your body. “I despise everything about you.”

Only your corset holds you together from crumbling into pieces from just his words alone. He stays buried against the side of your hair, unrelenting, and you realize that you’re on uneven grounds.

“Is that what you’re calling it?” You ask. You despise the thought of going down without a fight. So you dig your hands into the cotton of his shirt, pulling him forward as if there was any space to be closed between you. Your head tilts back to peer at him while he meets your gaze down his nose. His eyes are dark, consumed by lust and fury. “Hatred?”

The curl of his lips, the very smirk that would at one point urge you to pull out your hair, makes you want to find out all the ways you can smother it. 

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Princess.”

You grit your jaw, pulling at his shirt hard enough for the buttons to go flying but that’s the last of your worries when you’re met with the smooth expanse of his toned chest, unmarred from the scars you’d last seen him with. 

You force your eyes back up to meet his. “Then what is it?”

His hand comes up to grasp your jaw again, not gently. 

“Obsession.”

When his lips find yours again, they don’t pull easily. His teeth dig into your lip hard enough to draw blood, but he only chases it away with his tongue. 

His fingers are desperate yet clumsy as they search to undo your corset, but it’s a helpless attempt. 

He curses against your lips as he aimlessly tugs at it, impatience drawing higher with each second. “This wretched thing,” he hisses. “Take it off.”

The command makes your head spin, but your instinct is to fight it. 

“Maybe I should have given you that lesson you asked for all those weeks ago,” you mock, and he shuts you up by tugging your hair back and using your gasp to push his tongue back into your mouth. 

The whimper you let out is swallowed right up, and with shaky fingers you undo your corset, letting it pool at your ankles with your dress. 

He hauls you up like you weigh nothing, muscles shifting under your clawing hands as he brings you to your bed. The kiss breaks when he drops you down unceremoniously, and you scramble to gather yourself, lifting up on your elbows and folding your legs to give you some form of cover. 

But it’s not enough cover from his prying eyes as he drinks in your figure without barriers, and the fire in them only burns hotter. 

He tilts his head, messy hair falling over his brows and that smirk finding its way back to his lips. It’s infuriating how much it only adds to the heat pooling between your hips. 

“Hiding?” He asks you. 

You scowl, your eyes falling to the prominent hardness pressing against his slacks. “For someone who despises me, you sure seem desperate.”

His response is to prop his knee against the edge of the bed and reach forward for your legs. You yelp at the sudden pull as he handles you onto your back, pushing your legs apart with his hands under your knees. 

Your face burns with fire as his eyes catch onto the arousal that's pooled between your legs, slick and wanting. 

He clicks his tongue. “I don’t think you’re in any place to speak, Princess,” he drawls, trailing a hand down to swipe two fingers between your slick. The pressure, momentary and barely there, is still enough to have you gasp and swallow back a moan. The intensity in his gaze only turns manic as it climbs up your heaving body and rests on your face. “All that talk about how you can’t stand me and yet here you are, dripping for me.”

You drop your head back to evade meeting his gaze in favour of the ceiling. “Was this your plan?” You bite. “To drive me to the point where I can’t tell lust from anger?”

But he finds his way back to your view, climbing over to cage you between his arms. “It worked, didn’t it?” His smile is cocky as he hovers over you, like he’s already won this battle. 

“Perhaps,” you hum, letting a smile crawl onto your own lips. “You wouldn’t be the first, though.”

His expression immediately falls into a possessive fury that almost makes you give in. Submit. But he needs to learn that won’t be easy.

His harsh hand finds your jaw again. You hold back your wince, not wanting to give him any bit of kindling. 

“Big talk for someone who’s letting me defile her before the wedding,” he spits.

“Again,” you strain and his fingers only dig harder. “Wouldn’t be the first.”

All at once the heat of his body is ripped off of you. You don’t get a chance to centre yourself before you’re being flipped onto your stomach, ragged around like a doll. You’re hauled by your hips up onto your knees and before you can protest at the humiliating position, you feel the weight of his body press against your back. 

He buries his face into your hair and snarls the words right into your ear. “Then it’ll damn well be the last.”

You turn your head to snipe but he only takes the chance to crash his lips into yours, hand locking your jaw in place while the other pins your fist into the sheets. 

It doesn’t matter how hard you try to fight it—your body gives into the kiss far before your mind does.

He pulls from the kiss, but as soon as he does, you feel his hips press flush against yours. And you feel it— the achingly sweet press of his hardness against your core, a pressure so good it tears a moan from your mouth. 

He rolls his hips against you once more just to hear your sweet sounds, groaning at the pressure himself. 

“What are you doing to me?” He mutters, quiet enough that you think it wasn’t meant for you to hear. 

He buries his face into your hair again and presses his lips to the back of your neck. He trails down, leaving hot, wet kisses down the expanse of your spine, the heat of his body leading down. 

You move to turn but his hands are quick to grab onto your hips, pinning you in place. You push against his hold, a question forming on your tongue but it quickly dies away when you feel the heat of his mouth against your cunt. 

You gasp as he drags the flat of his tongue along your folds, the feeling foreign and strange and hot. 

But it seems to affect Taeyang the same that it affects you, if the deep groan that he lets out against your fluttering skin tells anything. “You talk so sour but you taste so sweet,” he breathes, and you feel it against your swollen bud that throbs for more. 

You want to look, want to watch him as he starts to devour you whole, lapping at you like a starved man who’s found salvation in the midst of a drought. Instead, you bury your face into the sheets and let them soak up your moans. 

It’s head-spinning, the way he traces the tip of his tongue through every crevice of you, mapping out your anatomy. The way he circles your entrance and dips in just so to leave you wanting more before he drags down to flick against your pulsing clit. 

You try to push against him in search for more, to feel more, to feel him deeper. But his hands hold you still as he takes his time with you, to pull you undone thread by thread until you’re left quivering on the brink. 

“T-Taeyang,” you plead, and you hate that you do. But you’re on the precipice and you want nothing more than down. 

You regret it when he stops completely, shaking with the loss of stimulation. 

“Say that again,” he commands, and your body seizes up again, your instinct for defiance treading through. 

You only bury your head further into your arms, biting your tongue. 

The silence stretches too long for his liking.

He’s off of you in a second, and before you know it, you're on your back again. 

He hovers over you, eyes dark and manic with want. 

“Say. It. Again.”

It only makes you want to defy more. 

The smile that curls on your lips lights a dangerous thing inside of him. You see it in his eyes as he pulls back, in the furrow of his brows, the set of his lips, and the slow, careful way he rids himself of his slacks. 

Your smile fades to nothing when you catch sight of him. The sheer size of him has a panic seizing through your body and yet the heat between your legs burns hotter all the same. 

He takes himself in his hand, pearly beads of his arousal gathering at the scarlet tip. Instinct presses your legs shut but he catches your thigh with his free hand, prying you open as he settles in the space between your legs. 

“You see what you do to me?” He asks you, and your eyes snap back up to his face. 

You’re adamant as you keep your gaze fixed up, the sight of him becoming too overwhelming to hold. 

He leans forward, hovering over your body with his free hand bracing beside your head. “Do you think this would happen if I didn’t care?”

The words you sparred with just moments ago all come rushing back at once. You’re reminded of all your grievances, and the crack in his hardened expression tells you he notices. 

“I’d hardly call this proof,” you grit, though the thought that you can bring him to this state of undone, that you can pry away the composure of a well controlled Prince, feels like a victory of your own. A small one, but a victory nonetheless. 

His face flashes with irritation. “Then what would you call this?”

“I’d call this nothing at all.”

He clicks his tongue, scowling. “Stubborn as always,” he grits, then retaliates by pushing the head of his cock against your clit, relishing in the sudden moan that it pulls from you. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

You press your mouth shut to smother the noises that threaten to spill out of you as he drags himself through your folds, not pushing in, but doing everything to leave you wanting it. 

“Say my name,” he asks, settling the tip of himself against your entrance. 

You want to cave, just to soothe your body’s cravings, but your pride holds itself high. 

“No.”

You expect him to get angry. To snap at you again. 

But he drops his forehead against you and laughs. 

You watch the smile that blooms on his lips, strained but fond and completely unexpected. “Your ego knows no bounds, does it, Princess?”

The sudden shift confuses you. But past that, a warmth spreads in your chest. The pressure of his head against yours, the heat of his body above yours—it doesn’t feel demanding. Not with the way he looks down at you now, his misplaced anger nowhere to be found. Only want. No, need. For you.

You swallow down the emotion that threatens to climb up your throat. “I fear you shouldn’t be one to pass judgement on that,” you say through your shaky breaths, and his smile mellows out to something softer. 

“Say my name,” he says again, but this time it’s a plea. “Even if it’s for the last time… Please.”

Your heart lurches in your chest. You’re not sure what it is, but something about his plea sounds final. And he’s never one to beg. 

His eyes fall shut as he swallows down a breath. “Please,” he whispers, tucking his nose against yours. “Let me have you just this once.”

When he looks at you again, it’s with that same softness that he’d looked at you with in his bedroom, and then again before he’d kissed you. It’s that same vulnerability that makes you want to tear down your walls then build them back up after making space for him. 

Here he is, the man who never begs, yearning for you, before you, at his most vulnerable. 

In this moment, you can’t remember what it is that you’d feared. 

It falls from your lips as just a tremor of a breath. 

“Taeyang.”

But it hits him like a storm. 

His breath gives like he’s relieved of a burden, shuddering through his body. 

You feel him drag against your folds again until the tip of him catches against your entrance and you hold your breath tight. 

Yet he doesn’t press in.

“Again,” he whispers, and you give in without question. 

“Taeyang.”

He pushes in, and even if he stops at just the tip, it feels all encompassing. 

You gasp at the pressure and pain that sears through you at the intrusion, your hands scrambling to find purchase against his back. 

His head drops against your shoulder as his body shudders at the feeling of you, so warm and so tight around just a fraction of him. The arm he had propped beside you winds around your shoulders to hold your head in a cradle against him. 

And he just holds you, lets you adjust to him as he breathes into your neck, the sounds piercing against the silent night. 

“Again,” he murmurs, but it’s merely a question. 

I’m ready. Are you?

You answer when you are, when the pain fades into an ache that craves for more. 

“‘Yang…” You whimper, because that’s all you can muster. 

He shudders again, before he turns to press his lips against your ear and pushes. 

Consumed—your breath and your body, and slowly, your heart.

That’s the only way you can describe how it feels. 

It feels like fire and ice, like a storm and its eye, the way he fits inside you. Like the space inside of you has always been carved just for him. Like he was made just to fit within you.

He moves only when you call his name again, a soft, “Yangie,” that makes him press a kiss against your shoulder before he lifts himself up and rocks into you. 

He kisses away the salt on your cheeks that you taste against his lips when he kisses you. 

But the kiss is barely a kiss. It's a languid press of lips, another point of connection as the gentle rocking picks up to a steady pace, one that has your nails digging into his flesh at the barrage of sensation. 

Everything that you expected it to be—rough and taking and dominating—it’s the opposite. He’s giving, he’s giving himself to you with a care that you’ve never felt before. 

His hand roams your body, present and soothing and worshipping. His lips whisper sweet nothings, a hum of your name between strings of nonsensical rambling that you’re not even sure he can make sense of. His moans are whines threaded with each of his breaths, desperate as he chases the heat inside of you with movements that get hastier and graceless with each moment that passes. 

But all you can focus on is his eyes—the devotion swimming behind his pleasure. It’s not lust. This isn’t just a chase for another victory. 

It’s a confession. Proof that he cares. That he feels just as you do, vulnerable and in love and scared. 

And it fuels the heat inside of you all the more. 

“Taeyang,” you gasp, your body seizing up as he drives you towards the precipice once more. 

His eyes flutter as he tries desperately to keep himself grounded to the moment and not lose himself completely to the sensation. 

“With me,” he pants, sliding his hand down your body to hold your hip, firm and grounding. “Fall with me.”

And fall you do, when he holds your hips down and drives into you with a desperate fervour, one that has you both crashing down in tandem. 

You cry out his name as the waves collide in you, your arms tightening around his shoulders, and he presses his face into your neck to bury his own call of your name.

The moments after are still. He remains buried in your neck, his slowly easing breaths soothing over your heated skin while you lie there in your afterglow.

You’re not sure how long it lasts until his voice rings in the delicate air, hushed and rough.

“Marry me.”

It takes you off guard. You can only lay still in your confusion.

When you don’t respond, he lifts his head and places it against yours, hazy eyes peering down at you.

“Marry me,” he repeats. Another plea.

You flounder for a moment more, the implications lost on you. “Are you… asking me?”

He gives a bare thing of a nod, a slight movement of his head against yours. The hand not wrapped around you feathers up your body to press against your cheek. 

“You can say no,” he tells you quietly. Hesitantly, like he doesn’t want to give you the option. “Say no, and I’ll let you disappear. Take your sister—sorry, guard. I won’t say a thing.”

The words don’t process as easily as you’d like. Part of you believes it's all a trick, a scheme to catch you in the act of something treacherous to hold over you for the rest of your life.

But with the way he looks at you, like he’s hanging on to catch the words from your lips right as they fall, makes you believe otherwise.

“You’re giving me a choice?” You ask, because nothing ever comes this easy for you.

He swallows, the pad of his thumb brushing against the corner of your eye to catch the tear before it can fall. 

“I can’t love you right if you don’t want it,” he whispers. “If I’m going to love you, I want to do it right.”

It feels like the closest thing to salvation. A devotion you’ve been expected of your whole life, but instead it’s here being given to you.

“Let me love you,” he begs when you remain silent. His own fear makes way with the water in his eyes, a parallel to your own just an hour ago. 

Still buried inside of you, connected to you in every sense of the word, he asks you again. 

“Marry me.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

Taeyang had never felt so scared.

In that moment, vulnerable before you in a way he’s never been with anyone before, with the fear that he might lose you for good.

The set of jewels sits heavily in his hands, the one he had specially arranged for you, now back in his possession. Even past the stress it’s given him, even past what he had to give up in turn for it, all he can think of is that he can place it upon your neck tonight as your husband.

He places it carefully back in its case and takes a heavy breath.

“Nervous?” 

Taeyang jumps, whipping to his left to face Jiung at his doors with wild eyes.

Jiung scrunches his face apologetically as he approaches. “Apologies. Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, glancing down at the case.

“But you did,” Taeyang bites back pettily, handing the case to Jiung. 

Jiung takes it with careful hands but his eyes don’t leave Taeyang’s face. “You’re evading my question.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

There’s a palpable silence as he feels Jiung’s eyes bore into the side of his head. 

“Something happened,” Jiung observes and Taeyang’s shoulders slump.

He doesn’t even get upset like he normally would with how easily Jiung reads him. Instead, a small smile spreads on his lips. “I’ve been getting that a lot recently.”

Jiung, ever the emphatic, gasps. “I see!”

Taeyang rolls his eyes when he catches sight of the sunny grin on Jiung’s lips.

“Silence,” he intercepts as soon as Jiung’s mouth opens to spew more nonsense. “If I’m correct, I’m not the only one guilty of romantic epiphanies as of late.”

That shuts Jiung right up as a furious flush rises on his cheeks, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “It seems that it’s been a prosperous month for love.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Jiung points out and Taeyang curses his brother for being one to never let things go. 

“I am,” he answers, because admitting things has been feeling easier now. He supposes he has you to thank for that. “But…” He evades his brother’s eye, straightening his shoulders in an attempt to regain his composure. “I think that might be a good thing, right? It means I care.”

There’s a thoughtful look in Jiung’s gaze as he watches Taeyang, and Taeyang feels like shrinking under it. Despite being older, Jiung has a way of making him feel as though he was the younger one. It’s something Taeyang is grateful for no matter how much he grouses about it—to have someone to fall back on when he feels out of his own depth.

“She’s changed you,” Jiung finally says and Taeyang bristles.

“I wouldn’t say changed. Battered up maybe but—”

“Deny it all you want, brother,” Jiung chuckles, patting him a little too hard on the back and making his body jerk forward. “You can’t escape the truth anymore. You’re marrying it.”

Despite his ego, Taeyang grins at the thought.

Jiung’s smile softens, which makes Taeyang brace for the words to come when he catches it.

“Mother would be proud to see the man you’ve become today.”

He swallows, his smile faltering as his gaze falls to the marble floors. While he would normally deny the idea of that, he finds that it’s becoming easier to believe such a thing.

“And I’m sure she would be ecstatic to know who you’re marrying,” Jiung adds, very unnecessarily, with another one of his cheesy grins.

Taeyang groans, tossing his head back as a laugh clambers through regardless. His mother had spent the grueling hours of the carriage rides back home after visits to your kingdom listening to his tantrums over you. Remembering the knowing smiles she would give him, he thinks maybe she wouldn’t be so surprised to see how things turned out.

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” he mumbles with a smile to the ceiling. He pretends it reaches up to the heavens. 

“Speaking of, shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

The headache of having already shooed away several servants presses against his temples again, and Taeyang sighs.

“I will,” he says as he glances at the clock. Six hours until the ceremony commences. Plenty of time for him to make a pitstop. “After I make a quick visit.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

“You’re different.”

You glance to your right at your sister, because you can’t move any more with hands invading your hair and your face from every which way. “What are you talking about?”

The way she eyes you over with a narrowed scrutiny has you squirming in your seat, only to be gently reprimanded by the hair stylist to remain still.

She hums as she leans back in her chair with a calculating look.

You fluster under her eye, like she’s unravelling your secrets with just a look. “Stop that.”

“It seemed to have happened overnight,” she wonders aloud but before she can continue, her eyes catch on something over your shoulder. “Oh, what does he want now?”

You hear commotion behind you as a maid hastily cries, “Your Highness, you shouldn’t be here!”

“It’s improper to see her until the wedding!” Another one laments.

You push away the hands at your face and turn in your chair to see a handful of maids inching a misplaced Taeyang back towards the door, but Taeyang simply looks past them with a grin pointed at you.

“That’s alright, I’ve already seen plenty,” he states, and you quickly shoot up to your feet.

“Taeyang!” You hiss as you hurry up to him, pushing past the maids. His grin only widens. 

You’re in a simple slip dress, so you’re not completely indecent, but you still feel a little too exposed for your liking to be seen in such a disheveled state with your hair and makeup only half done.

“What are you doing here?!” You ask, disgruntled as you try to push him towards the door but he doesn’t budge.

He only leans forward and you have to lean away despite the way your body seeks his warmth. There are too many eyes. “Is it such a crime for me to want to see you?”

You hear a few gasps sounding from the maids which only makes you want to crawl away. Perhaps into his arms.

Caught up in your fluster, you don’t realize the name slip as you start to push him towards the door again. “You’ll see me plenty later, Yangie, now go.”

As soon as the word processes, you freeze. And with his grin somehow pulling even wider and the giggles of your maids becoming even more pronounced, you realize you definitely want to crawl away.

He leans forward again, and you lean away again. “Yangie?”

You dare not meet his eye, glaring at his chin instead. “I knew I shouldn’t have said yes,” you grouse.

His lighthearted demeanor immediately drops. He straightens, fixing you with a hard look. “Don’t kid about that.”

But the shift in his behaviour leaves you grinning at how quickly his composure seems to drop now. “Oh? I see your defenses are already weak.”

He scowls at you, but you can tell it isn’t one of malice. “You’ve spent your whole life scouring for my weak points. It’s only natural that you find some.”

You purse your lips to smother your teasing smile, crossing your arms as you lean forward this time. “It doesn’t help that I’m your biggest one, does it?”

You meant for it to be a light-hearted remark with no real heft.

But the way he smiles tells you otherwise. “I’m just surprised it took you this long to figure it out.”

The flutter in your chest takes you by surprise, and the fawning and giggling that your maids do at your sides does nothing to help.

You hope there’s enough makeup on you to hide your blush as you start to forcefully shove him back towards the door. “Goodbye.”

He huffs but he finally gives under the push of your palms, simply watching you as you shut the doors on his face.

The silence that remains is deafening and you repent under it with your hands against the door and your head dropped between your shoulders.

“Ah,” you hear your sister say, and you don’t even have to look at her to tell that she’s grinning. “I see.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

The new ring around your finger feels nothing like a shackle. It sits around there like a tangible bond, tied with the hope that you feel now with Taeyang standing beside you as your husband, as your to-be-King. 

When you bow together to address the crowd, you do it with your hand in his.

When he takes you down the aisle as azalea petals flurry down from the skies, you follow him with your hand in his.

When he pulls you into your dance, beaming at you like the sun lives in his smile, you fall in step with your hand in his—a point of contact that never once detaches as he leads you with a grace much more delicate than your first.

When he presses his forehead to yours, pulls you in with a hand on your waist and the other in yours, you tell yourself it’s a connection you won’t sever.

𓆩⟡𓆪

The night air soothes your heated skin, a welcome reprieve from the hours of celebration.

Everything turned out perfectly. Your hard work had paid off, and it felt all the more satisfying knowing that it was because of you, and Taeyang, that the finest details came together to paint such a beguiling night.

“Ditching me already?”

You scoff when you hear the question, leaning forward against the balcony rails as you peer up at the stars. You hear his footsteps approaching from behind you. 

“I’ve already suffered a lifetime of you,” you state. “I’m just preparing for another one.”

You try to suppress the shiver that passes up your spine when his hand brushes against your lower back. Even through the thick fabric of your dress, the touch feels charged.

“Always so dramatic,” he murmurs before he presses himself against your back.

You find yourself leaning into the heat of his body, placing your back to his chest as a smile tugs at your lips. “Can’t handle it?”

“I’ve handled it so far,” he chuckles above your ear, arms winding around your waist. “I deserve an award.”

You roll your eyes, knocking your elbow to his torso and he grunts at the impact.

“Mean,” he grumbles and you laugh. 

You remember the night of the engagement and how on this very balcony, you’d heard Taeyang declare his plan to evade you for your entire marriage. You couldn’t be more happy with how things turned out.

“Your aunt was right about you,” you hum without much thought, recalling that unexpected ambush.

“What about?”

“The trick to you was to just pester you until you caved.”

You giggle when he pinches your side lightly. 

“Pester me you did. I thought I would go mad.” There’s a short pause before you feel his smile against your hair. “You still drive me mad.”

You all but melt at the admission, burrowing further into his arms, and he accepts you with a tighter hold.

The moment goes silent, comfortable and in peace. Until—

“Why is your guard kissing my knight?”

You blink at the sudden question, then turn your head to where he’s looking.

There, on the courtyard below the balcony you’re on, is your sister and Intak wrapped up in quite the… intimate embrace. 

You let out a breath of relief then look away to give them their privacy. “Finally,” you sigh, a little prided in the idea that your talk with your sister had finally pushed them to the final stretch.

“Finally?” Taeyang asks, puzzled.

You tilt your head back to look at him. “Don’t tell me you had no clue.”

He only stares down at you with blank eyes, brows furrowed.

You snort, turning back to the skies. “You’re clueless.”

He sputters, winding up for an argument but then seems to think better of it. Instead he digs his chin into your head with a little more force than necessary, huffing, “I’m not clueless.”

The pout in his voice makes you laugh, which in turn makes his arms tighten around you.

“Hey,” he says after another silent moment. “Let’s leave.”

You turn in his arms, looking up at him with your brows raised. “Ditch our wedding?”

The sly grin that curls on his lips ignites a fire in you akin to the one from the night before. “I can think of better things to do.”

𓆩⟡𓆪

When you step into your new room, a massive area brimmed with the finest furniture and practically doused in rose petals, you almost tuck tail and run.

But when you step back, you hit Taeyang’s chest.

“Oh…” He trails off. He moves past you to take it all in with his sweeping eyes. “Their effort sure shows.”

You breathe a quiet laugh, taking in the myriad of lit candles that border on the lines of a fire hazard.

The silence that follows is a little stilted. Awkward. You both know what to expect and although it’s… already been done, it still feels different.

You suddenly feel crowded under your garments and jewels, so you figure you’ll start with that.

“Excuse me,” you mumble to Taeyang before taking off to where the vanities are set. 

You stand before the full mirror as you start to work off the jewelry adorning your body piece by piece. 

Your hands are a little shaky and you know you’re stalling, but Taeyang gives you your space as he busies himself with something at the other end of the room.

You expect your nerves to be remnants of what you were feeling just the night before. But something deep in you has found a peace that you’re still grappling to get used to.

Maybe the change was too sudden. Shouldn’t you feel a little apprehensive? How quickly can you really learn to trust someone? Did it all build up too quickly? Is it even—

“I can hear you thinking.”

You look up from your bangles to meet Taeyang’s eyes in the mirror as he approaches you from behind.

He’d rid his coat, leaving him in a silk button shirt that sits taut over his body. His hands are folded behind his back and there’s a tiny, restrained smile on his lips.

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, giving him a small smile of your own as you unclasp the bracelet around your wrist and place it on the vanity.

“Sorry,” you say, looking down to undo the last bracelet.

But his arms get in the way of your vision and before you can protest, you feel something cold and heavy against your clavicles.

Your eyes snap up to the mirror as Taeyang binds a necklace to you, an intricate piece of garnets and emeralds. The embossing is familiar to the vines of your own family’s royal crest winded around the garnets, along with the sharp swirls akin to the North’s crest around the emeralds. A fusion of your two homes.

Your hand comes up to the necklace, fingers tracing the elegant designs as you stare at the glimmering jewels in awe.

“You wouldn’t believe the drama I’ve had over this damn necklace,” Taeyang says lightly behind you. But he watches you carefully, eyes shifting between the necklace and your face.

“Do I even want to know?” You ask him after a moment as a slow smile rises to your lips, just to keep him on his toes a little longer.

He gives you a hesitant smile of his own. “Probably not now,” he answers meekly.

Your smile widens at the pleading look he fixes you with when you say nothing more.

“It’s beautiful,” you tell him, and the tension leaves his body at once. “I love it.”

He glares playfully at you, clicking his tongue. “Your mischief will get you in trouble one of these days,” he tells you, his hands falling to wrap around your waist.

Your eyes meet his through the mirror again before dropping to the cunning smile that plays on his lips. “I highly doubt that, if you have anything to do with it.”

As if to spite your words, his hand comes up to grasp the zipper of your dress. “Why’s that?” He asks you, voice dropping to a provocative lilt.

You hold your breath as he drags the zipper down, painfully slow to either give you the grace of a choice or keep you on edge.

You swallow at the brush of cold air against your back. There’s no corset to protect you this time. “I don’t think you have the power here.”

You shudder when his knuckles trace down your spine, the touch feeling like nothing more than a gentle breeze. But it’s enough to leave you feeling winded.

You expect him to dispute it, to claim for his hand over you. But you should have learned by now where his priorities lie.

Because when you turn to face him, he simply drops to his knees.

“You’re right,” he says, and he looks up at you with a devotion that takes your breath. “I surrender myself to you.”

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