you are my light

San took a careful step forward with his good leg, using his crutches to propel himself toward the entrance of the training facility. His palms were already sore from gripping the handles so tightly.

In front of him stood the place he'd spent years calling his second home. The place he longed for—ached for.

A place that somehow managed to fill him with both excitement and dread all at once.

He stood outside for another moment, taking a deep breath.

Finally, he pushed himself through the automatic doors.

Immediately, the familiar smell of disinfectant and fresh rubber flooring hit him. Somewhere deeper inside the building, weights clanged together. Music echoed faintly through the hallways. Everything sounded the same—yet, everything felt completely different.

This club was one of the best in the country. The best facilities. The best coaches. The best players. The best staff. He used to walk through these doors carrying a soccer ball under one arm, nodding at teammates as they headed toward training.

Today, well, he looked down at the brace locked around his leg. He was here for his worst nightmare.

His stomach twisted.

He wasn't here to train.

He wasn't here to practice.

Hell, he wasn't even here to work out.

He was here to learn how to walk normally again.

The thought alone made him feel sick.

—

When San finally reached the athletic training center, he paused in the doorway, His eyes slowly scanning the room.

He'd only ever been in here for a quick ankle tape before a match...or a bruised shoulder...or one of the countless little knocks that came with professional soccer—never as an actual patient.

He let out a quiet breath. Guess I'll have to get comfortable, he thought to himself.

"...Great."

"San!" A familiar voice pulled him from his thoughts. 

"My god, bro!" Wooyoung called from across the room. "How are you feeling?"

San looked over.

Wooyoung sat comfortably on one of the treatment tables near the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, one leg stretched out in front of him while the other bounced lazily off the edge. His ankle was propped up, and judging by the way he looked completely relaxed, today's rehab wasn't nearly as miserable as San's was about to be.

San couldn't help smiling.

"Ah...good." He nodded once. "I'm good."

A lie, a total lie—but he'd gotten pretty good at saying it over the past couple of weeks.

He adjusted himself on his crutches, preparing to make his way over.

Then he saw you.

There you were at the end of Wooyoung’s table, sleeves rolled to your elbows, your hands working carefully around his ankle.

His steps slowed.

You looked...comfortable. Comfortable enough that he almost forgot you were working.

Wooyoung was saying something animatedly, talking with his hands like he always did.

You laughed in an unfamiliar way—not the little smile you'd occasionally given San whenever he made one of his sarcastic comments.

Your shoulders relaxed, eyes crinkling.

San realized that he had never seen this version of you before—something in his chest tightened at the sight of you and Wooyoung. 

Maybe it was because he spent nearly every day with you for the past two weeks. You helped him shower, forced him to eat, listened to him complain.

Yet somehow...

He'd never made you laugh like that.

His eyebrows pinched together, his face contorting in irritation before he could stop it.

You happened to glance up.

The moment your eyes landed on him, your expression brightened. "There you are." you motioned toward the empty treatment table beside Wooyoung. "Come on over."

San didn't realize how quickly he started moving until he was already halfway across the room. A little too eager.

He mentally cursed himself. Smooth, Smooth.

He carefully lowered himself onto the table beside Wooyoung, gripping the brace straps to lift his leg up manually.

He hissed quietly through his teeth, silencing the pain.

Wooyoung practically melted beneath your hands. "Ohh, That feels so good."

San looked over.

Wooyoung had actually thrown his head back against the table. A little...too dramatically—too sensually, in San's opinion.

"Seriously," he groaned. "Why are you so good at this?" He cracked one eye open to look at you. "Where have you been my whole life, baby?"

You simply smiled, completely unfazed.

Something about the way Wooyoung looked at you suddenly bothered him.

Not because he was flirting—damn, Wooyoung flirted with everyone. Probably anyone who breathed. It wasn't unusual or something super out of the ordinary.

So why...why was it bothering him now?

"I'll be right with you, San," you called over to him.

He nodded absentmindedly. Truthfully...He hadn't heard a word you'd said, his attention stayed fixated on the midfielder next to you.

On the way he leaned just a little closer whenever you spoke. The way he smiled at you. The way he lightly bumped your arm when he laughed. When you finally finished, you gave his shoulder a friendly pat.

"Alright. The soft tissue mobilization should help. If your ankle starts acting up again, come find me or one of the other therapists, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Wooyoung hopped off the table. As he stood, his hand brushed against yours. It couldn't have lasted more than half a second—completely accidental.

Yet, San felt something tighten uncomfortably in his chest.

He didn't like it. Didn't know why.

Just...Didn't like it.

"See you later, dude!" Woo called to San as he slung his gym bag over one shoulder. "Once you're better, drinks are on me."

San forced a smile. "...Sounds good."

He clenched his jaw tightly as he watched him disappear through the doorway. He didn't even realize he'd been staring after him until your voice cut through his thoughts.

"Hey."

He blinked.

You were standing beside him now, chart tucked against your side.

Your eyebrows pinched together. "How are you feeling?"

He looked up at you. He didn’t say anything.

"Everything okay?" You followed his line of sight before looking back at him. "...You know he's gone, right?"

San blinked. "Hm?"

"Wooyoung."

"Oh."

A small smile tugged at your lips. "You looked like you wanted to fight him."

He let out a quiet laugh. "I don't think I'd win right now."

You looked down at his brace. "...Definitely not. Unless you used your brace as a weapon."

He scoffed.

You wheeled the stool over and sat down in front of him. "So..." you began, reaching for the straps of his brace to unlock it. "How are we feeling today?"

He shrugged. "Nervous, I guess." He looked around, running an anxious hand through his dark hair. “Worried I'm not progressing enough.”

You paused for just a second. "I know," you breathed. “But you’re on the right track. Recovery isn't linear.”

As you unlocked the brace, he glanced toward the hallway again.

"...So."

You looked up.

"So?"

"...You work with everybody here?"

You laughed. "I do now."

"You were with Woo."

"I was."

"I thought..." He stopped, hesitant.

"You thought what?"

"...Nothing."

You smiled, enjoying the expression San was making. "I want to know."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I thought he was your patient."

You smirked. "He was."

"...I thought I was your patient."

Your eyebrows lifted. "You are."

Silence followed your answer, San’s eyebrows furrowing as he bit the bottom of his lip.

"...My main patient." you added. "I was just helping another therapist for a few minutes."

His shoulders relaxed a little. "Oh."

You took a moment to study his expression—he looked relieved to hear what you said, which was confusing, to say the least. 

He watched you type something into his chart.

"...Do you like working here?"

You looked up, surprised—and also easily distracted by him. "That's random," you murmured.

His expression was a look of curiosity. "I was just wondering."

You shrugged. "I do. It's different."

"...Different good?"

You shrugged. "I think so. But I do miss my old coworkers."

He smiled, happy to know something about you—but also a deep, confusing feeling took hold of him. 

San watched you as you continued to evaluate him, watched you as you walked away to grab something in a cabinet across the room. He looked at you, watched you, as if no one else was in the room.

You pulled up the cords attached to the Russian stimulation unit over beside the treatment table, plugging it into the wall before peeling the backing off the adhesive electrodes.

"Alright," you said, patting his quad. "This part's going to feel weird."

San looked at the machine suspiciously, then back at you, then back to the machine. "...Weird how?"

You pondered, thinking about how to explain it. "Like…an intense grip that forces your thigh to tightly bunch up.” you paused, gently placing the electro pads on him. “It will straighten your knee for you since you can't do it on your own.”

He stared at you, sighing dramatically. "I already don't like it."

"I know." You positioned his leg on a towel roll. "I'm just trying to wake your quad back up."

"I was hoping it'd wake itself up."

You leaned over his leg, one hand steadying his thigh while the other carefully pressed the other pad into place. San stiffened underneath you, suddenly extremely aware of your scent, the lipgloss on your lips, your delicate touch.

San then watched your hands. You had small hands. Strong hands. Hands that somehow managed to hurt him and help him at the same time.

He was uncomfortably nervous under your touch. It made him both excited and terrified. Maybe it was the lack of physicality he’s had for quite some time.

As you smoothed out the pads on his legs, he noticed it.

Your left hand.

No ring.

His eyes lingered for a second longer than they probably should have.

—

You finished adjusting the last electrode before reaching over to switch off the Russian stimulation unit.

"There." You peeled the adhesive pads off his quad carefully. "How'd that feel?"

San looked down at his leg, giving his quad a little flex. "...Strange."

"That's a glowing review."

"I never said it was bad,” he teased.

"I'll take it." You smiled. "Your quad's waking up nicely. That's exactly what we wanted."

"So...good news?"

You smiled at him. "Very good news."

He couldn't help smiling a little as well. "I'll see you tomorrow?" he croaked out hesitantly.

"You'll see me tomorrow,” you laughed, turning toward the door, desperately needing to use the bathroom. 

The rehab gym buzzed with activity outside the athletic training room—a few players were scattered around the weight room, music playing quietly through the speakers while one of the strength coaches counted reps across the room.

Wooyoung was standing near the cable machine, resistance band looped around his ankles as he worked through his exercises.

The second he spotted you walking out of the treatment room, he waved dramatically.

"Y/N!"

You sighed before you even reached him. "...What now?"

"I've got a question," he hollered from across the way.

"I don't like the sound of that," you mumbled, watching him drop the resistance band to make his way over to you.

"It's harmless."

You blinked. "So you say."

"So..." He grinned, leaning up against the wall next to him. "Your husband cool with you spending all day hanging around a bunch of professional soccer players?"

You laughed. "I don't have a husband."

"No?"

"No."

"Huh." He frowned dramatically. "Boyfriend?"

"No."

"Fiancé?" His tone was playful.

You shook your head. "Nope."

"So..." He pointed at you again. "You're single?"

"I am."

Wooyoung looked around the room. “So you're saying I have a chance—”

“Woo, leave the poor woman alone,” another trainer called from across the room, probably equally as irritated as you were. 

Wooyoung gave you a flirtatious wink before turning back around to what he was doing, his fellow teammates giggling like little kids at the thought of you being available.

— 

Back in the treatment room, San sat frozen on the edge of the table.

He hadn't meant to listen, but the entire gym had practically shouted the conversation.

Single.

The word echoed in his head.

He wasn't sure why his shoulders suddenly felt lighter, why he caught himself smiling. But before he could think too hard about it, you walked back into the room, shaking your head.

“Oh!” you raised your eyebrows. “You're still here, I thought you left.”

“I..” he gulped. “I didn't know if I was completely done.” 

“My bad,” you sighed, picking up his brace and assisting him. “I went out to go to the bathroom quickly, but Wooyoung got me sidetracked.”

San peered over at you as you gently clipped his brace back on, watching you bite the inside of your cheek, noticing the hair that falls over your face, and again, the lack of a ring on your finger.

Silence settled between the two of you.

San rubbed the back of his neck. "So..."

You raised an eyebrow. "You got a lot of questions today, huh?” You leaned back against the treatment table next to his, folding your arms.

“Is…Jun...”He looked down at the floor for a second before meeting your eyes again. “Never mind, I’m sorry,” he moved to stand up. “Its not important.”

Your expression softened immediately. "What about him?"

He opened his mouth. "...I said," Never mind."

You laughed quietly. "Bring up my kid and then say 'never mind?"

He sighed through his nose. "I was just..." He scratched the back of his neck again. "You know, wondering."

"About?"

"...His dad." The words came out much quieter than he'd intended.

Your smile faded, though not completely.

“See, this is why I said never mind.” San immediately regretted asking. "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that. I shouldn't have said anything."

You looked at him for a long moment before letting out a small breath. "No..." you said softly. "It's okay."

You shrugged one shoulder. "People usually wonder. It was never...that kind of relationship, if you know what I mean.”

San stayed quiet.

"He knows Jun exists," you continued, absentmindedly picking at your fingertips. "He just chose not to be involved."

San looked down at his brace. "...I'm sorry."

You offered him a small smile. "Don't be."

You slung your clipboard under your arm.

"I got the better end of the deal."

He looked back up. "What do you mean?"

Your smile grew—this time genuine.

"I got Jun."

—

San had barely made it back to his apartment before every muscle in his body began protesting.

His first real day back at the training center had exhausted him in ways he hadn't expected. His knee throbbed relentlessly beneath the brace, his quad twitched every few seconds thanks to the Russian stim, and the simple act of walking from the elevator to his apartment had somehow felt harder than rehab itself.

He let out a long sigh as he tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter. "...Food."

That was manageable. Probably.

He opened the refrigerator.

Half a bottle of ketchup. Expired yogurt. A suspicious-looking container of leftovers that definitely should be thrown out as soon as possible.

Luckily, when he crutched over to the pantry, he found a can of tomato sauce and pasta. Believing it was doable, he threw the ingredients underneath one arm, using one crutch to make his way back to the stove. 

Twenty minutes later, he was regretting every decision he'd ever made.

Who knew making pasta required this much standing?

He balanced awkwardly on one crutch while stirring the pot with the other hand, trying not to put too much weight through his bad leg. "So far, so good..." he smirked, pleased with himself despite the occasional throb in his leg.

However, the moment of pleasure didn't last. The pot of pasta sauce began to boil over, spilling onto the burner. The sauce burned against the heat, sizzling and spritzing.

He reached to move the pot, but his crutch slipped slightly, balance completely gone. "Oh, fuck—"

The pot clattered loudly against the stove, the wooden spoon flying across the kitchen. The pan of sauce tipped and splattered all over San, the stove, and directly onto the floor.

San stared, pinching the bridge of his nose. "...You've got to be kidding me."

He carefully bent down to grab the spoon.

…Bad idea.

His knee protested immediately. "...Ow, motherfucker.”

He looked around his apartment.

Sauce on the floor…pasta boiling over. One wooden spoon halfway under the cabinet.

“I’m a fucking mess.”

—

You felt exhausted, knowing the minute you hit your couch, you would probably take the longest nap ever.

Tonight, Jun was staying at your parents’ house, leaving you with some alone time other than when you are at work. You couldn't wait to spend your time taking a nap. Maybe you’d pick up a book. Maybe—no, you wanted to nap, for sure.

As you stood in front of your door rooting for your keys that were somehow in your purse but nowhere near your grasp, the thought of that nap abruptly disappeared at the sound of pots clanking down the hall, followed by a string of profanity, and the smell of something burning.

“Is that…San?” you muttered to yourself, feeling slightly hesitant. Was it him, or were you just thinking about him?

You didn't even bother unlocking your own apartment. Instead, you hurried a few steps down the hall, knocking twice against his door.

"San?"

A muffled groan answered you. "...Door's open."

You pushed it open cautiously. The room felt still, but the smell hit you first—burnt tomato sauce…

"...Oh my God." you looked at the scene in front of you. It looked like a tornado had ripped through the room—red sauce streaked across the stovetop. The pot had somehow ended up crooked on the burner, pasta water bubbling over the sides. The wooden spoon sat abandoned beneath the cabinets.

And in the middle of it all...

San.

Tomato sauce covered the front of his black t-shirt, splattered across one shoulder, his forearm, and somehow even his cheek. He stood frozen on his crutches, staring at the disaster like if he looked long enough it might clean itself up.

He slowly looked over at you. "...Hi." he muttered out awkwardly, embarrassed.

You pressed your lips together.

"What?"

"I'm just…” you bit your lip. “I’m trying really hard not to laugh."

His shoulders slumped. "...It's been a day."

The smile slipped from your face. You'd seen that look before—the look of someone who was simply...tired.

Tired of needing help. Tired of everything being harder than it used to be.

You quietly walked past him and reached over to turn off the burner. "You almost set your apartment on fire."

"I was making pasta."

"I see that," you blinked.

"It was…going well."

You glanced around the kitchen. "...At what point?"

San rubbed the back of his neck, unable to meet your gaze. "The first thirty seconds, maybe. If that."

You couldn't help but let out a little chuckle at his words—yes, was he standing in the middle of his kitchen covered in sauce? Was he utterly embarrassed? Yes. But something about the scene made your heart race for him.

Without thinking, you reached up. "Hold still," you mumbled, your thumb brushing gently across his cheek, wiping away the streak of tomato sauce.

He froze, whole body stiffening under your touch. 

"There."

Neither of you moved.

Your hand lingered for a heartbeat longer than it should have, his eyes staying on yours. You peered into his irises, dark as night, and saw freckles of browns. He was beautiful.

You cleared your throat first, stepping back. "I'll...uh, I’ll get something to clean this."

You quickly moved away and grabbed a roll of paper towels from the counter, crouching to wipe up the floor.

A moment later you heard him mutter behind you. "...Seriously?"

You glanced over your shoulder.

He was tugging awkwardly at the hem of his ruined shirt with one hand while trying to keep himself balanced on his crutches. The fabric caught around his shoulders as he tried to take his shirt off. Something deep inside you fluttered, your stomach in knots at his appearance.

Without a second thought, you stepped in front of him. "Can you keep your balance for a second?" you asked him hesitantly, unable to meet his gaze.

"I…think so."

"I need you to let go of the crutch."

He listened to you without hesitation. Carefully, you slipped one arm around his waist to steady him.

His breath caught audibly, and you were certain he could hear your heart beat through your chest.

He was warm. Solid. Strong. You held your breath as you gathered the hem of his shirt, gently moving it upwards over his torso. "Arms up."

He obeyed without a word.

Slowly, you pulled the shirt over his head, careful not to catch it on his shoulders. It snagged for a second—those damn wide, sexy shoulders.

You laughed softly.

"What?" he murmured, eyes wide.

"Your shoulders."

"My...shoulders?"

"The shirt doesn't want to let go."

You finally worked the shirt free, and for just a second...you forgot to move. You'd treated professional athletes before—shirtless wasn't exactly new.

But this...This wasn't the clinic. This wasn't work.

It was just...him.

Standing in his kitchen, hair slightly messy from the shirt, a faint scar peeking along his shoulder, tomato sauce somehow still streaked across his collarbone.

You blinked, forcing yourself back to reality. "I, um..." You grabbed the dish towel from the sink and ran it under warm water. "You've still got sauce."

He looked down. "I missed some?"

"You missed...most of it."

He laughed quietly, but didn't speak. It was as if he had no clue what to say or do.

You stepped closer again, the damp towel sliding gently across his shoulder, his collarbone.

His breathing slowed.

Neither of you spoke. The apartment suddenly felt impossibly quiet. You lifted your gaze, and he was already looking at you.

The towel slipped from your fingers and landed softly on the floor, your bare hand pressing against his chest. You swallowed hard, fighting all the terrible, horny ass thoughts that were spinning through your mind, but it seemed like he had other plans.

His hand came up hesitantly, brushing a loose strand of hair back behind your ear.

His eyes were intoxicating, exhilaration dripping from his expression. Your ears rang with temptation, heat sparking throughout your body. For a second, you were just a woman in a man’s apartment. For a second, you were just…someone who deserved a life of love.

"I..." he murmured, letting out an awkward laugh. He smelled like a mixture of tomato sauce and vanilla, his lips wet from licking them. “Fuck, please forgive me.”

He leaned in, and suddenly, his lips met yours in a soft, hesitant kiss.

Gentle. Questioning. You let your heart choose over your head in the moment, offering a kiss back, your hand finding the back of his head as he kissed you. His lips were soft. Gentle. Obsessive. You felt your body pulse under his touch, his hands finding the small of your back. 

The kiss began to get more desperate—his hand gripped the back of your head, his body falling into yours as he lost balance. He left out a breath of air as he parted his lips against yours, and you couldn't help yourself. Your hands ran down his bare, muscular back, his hot breath tickling your face as he stuck his tongue in your mouth. Whole body chills took over as he pushed you into the kitchen counter, your back hitting the granite countertop, his hand gripping your hair.

But the minute you felt his lower half press against you, reality rushed in.

Your eyes widened as you pulled away. "...San."

His expression fell immediately. He hobbled away, shocked at his actions. "I'm…Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry."

"No..."you took two hurried steps backward.

"Y/N—" 

You grabbed your bag from the counter, your heart pounding so loudly you were sure he could hear it. "I should go."

"You don't have to—"

He stopped mid sentence as he noticed your frantic movements, grabbing his crutches to steady himself.

You reached the door before looking back one last time. "I'll...see you tomorrow, San." you swallowed hard. “Let’s just…uh, this never happened, okay?”

Then you were gone.

The apartment fell silent again.

San stood in the middle of his disaster in a kitchen, shirtless, surrounded by tomato sauce and paper towels.

After a long moment, he looked down at the mess.

“Then keep it vague,” you shrug. “Say what you think without saying too much. Just enough to keep him entertained.”

She smacks her teeth, heels scruffing against the pavement. “You’re a good liar, not me. Clearly.” You whip your head around to narrow your eyes at her. Shades covering her eyes, she grins, “Am I wrong?”

“No,” you huff. “But you’re either mad at me or you’re not. Don’t drag it out.”

She whines again, the vodka on her tongue already speaking for her, “I’m not mad at you, I’m sorry. It’s just fucking crazy and I’m scared I’m gonna slip up.”

You come to a full stop at the entrance, crossing your arms over your chest. “You’re not gonna slip up because you’re my best friend and you love me and you’d hate yourself if you ruined my life.”

She nods. “Yes. Yes to all of that. You’re right.”

“Okay,” you nod, assured, then rip the front door to the Penny open.

Immediately you’re hit with the scents of grease and liquor, bright music pounding through the dimly lit bar. The small tables were put away again, replaced with taller ones, they premeditated the standing room needed tonight. And thank fucking god, because once again, the Lucky Penny is packed.

There’s streamers, balloons, a banner for whoever the fuck’s birthday it is. You think Jihyo invited all of you to get bodies into the bar, even if the Penny is usually packed on weekends anyway, they rarely have any issues getting people inside. 

You and Yunjin decided to match again, different versions of the same outfit, long pants on your legs, heels on your feet. You have on a white, high-necked top while hers is low-cut and black, your jewelry even complimented one another. Your shades are on your head instead of over your eyes, she insists that you get at least one picture with them on. 

You spent the second half of yesterday together, once again discussing the technicalities of Unscripted, how you’ve managed to keep a double life for so long. You answered all her questions, broke down stories, told her every little secret she wanted to know. By the end of it she came to the conclusion that even though you kept so much from her, it’s kinda cool that it’s you. She lives with a micro-celebrity. Her words. 

It’s strange, liberating, in a way, that someone knows. Terrifying, but freeing that there’s a person who knows all of you, the secrets, the voice, the humor, all of it. Thank god it’s Yunjin. 

“I see them,” Yunjin says from behind you, pointing towards the back of the bar. You follow her line of sight, spotting San, Yunho, Mingi, Jongho. “Should we get a drink first?”

“Should we get a drink and find the girls first?” you counter. “We’re here for someone’s birthday. Whose is it again?”

“Mina,” Yunjin reminds you. “Jihyo’s friend, I think they’ve been friends for a long time, I don't know. Let’s go to the bar.”

You follow behind her after she skirts in front of you, leaving her wrist for you to grab as she pulls you into the mob of people. You should be used to it by now, swimming through the horde of people gathered in layers around the bar, but getting pushed and shoved while you’re also pushing and shoving just to get a fucking drink is too aggravating to be considered regular. 

Yunjin spots Sana and Momo before you do, tugging you forward until you’re in their line of sight, screams and squeals from the two making the crowd part to let you through. Your greetings were the same, shouted in squeals and pitched noises, side hugs and cheek-kisses like you haven’t seen each other in a month.

“You made it!” Sana beams, chocolate brown hair similar to Jen’s down, waved like she went to a salon for a fresh blowout. “Ji will be so happy, she put her whole soul into planning this.”

Your chest warms at another mention of her name, remembering your conversation with Yunho.

“Beer is free tonight,” Momo explains, her grin wide and excited. “We bought two kegs from the Penny. Miller, unforch.” You can’t help your smile, fully amused. She brings her gaze to you, “We should have gotten barrels of vodka and vermouth for you, Martini Girl.”

You shake your head, waving a hand, “I can pretend to be a frat boy for the night, don’t worry about me.”

“Just tell the bartender you’re here for Mina’s party and they’ll hook you up,” Sana adds. “Start chugging, though, two kegs will go quickly. There’s more people here than we thought would show.”

You and Yunjin take the advice quickly, switching spots with Sana and Momo to flag down the bartender, double-fisting to ensure you both end up catching a buzz. You didn’t drive since your car is in the shop, but you still want the twenty-dollar Uber to be worth it. Knowing Yunho, he’ll pay for the Uber ride home. 

Wait— can you even assume you’re going home with Yunho anymore? Since you’re no longer exclusive, that means he… He could go home with someone else. You could go home with someone else. You don’t know what feeling is blooming in your chest, but it doesn’t feel right. 

You find yourself beelining toward him, feet moving without a second thought, you don’t even tell Yunjin or the other two that you’re leaving. Your beer sways in the two glasses, toppling over the sides as you skip over shoes and slide between pockets of bodies, pushing yourself toward the tall table the four massive men stand at. 

Your glasses hitting the table introduce your presence before anyone has noticed you snuck up. Yunho’s head snaps, mid-sentence, brows tied together before his face expands in a beaming smile. “There you are, sunshine.” 

Relief washes over you at the sight. He bends down to press his lips to yours, a short peck, soft and sweet, he tastes like beer, like chapstick. Like Yunho. 

“Double fisting?” he asks, teasing, eyeing up your two beers. “Planning to get fucked up?” 

You snort, “Just ensuring I milk the kegs before they’re tapped.” You greet the rest of the table as Yunjin finally catches up, sliding between San and Jongho, setting her two draft glasses on the table, too. 

“Damn,” Jongho says, gaze bouncing between your four glasses taking up half the table, including their own glasses. “Might as well have brought a pitcher over.” 

“Can we do that?” Yunjin pops a chocolate brow over her shades. “Is that allowed?” 

Mingi asks, “Why wouldn’t it be?”

You’re quick to jump in, “Because the beers are free and a pitcher feels…” Your lips scrunch, brows furrowing, “I don’t know. Feels mooch-y.”

San laughs, “And four beers isn’t?” 

“Sana told us to get it before it’s gone!” Yunjin is laughing as she brings her beer up to her lips, taking a deep gulp. 

Jongho is about to argue again but Yunho cuts him off, “You go get a pitcher.” 

“Yeah,” Yunjin nods, glass hitting the table again. “You go get a pitcher, since you want one so bad.”

Your eyes are bouncing back and forth to each face, smile growing with each interaction, every comeback. Jongho scowls as he moves from the table, no doubt thinking about what a climb it will be to get back up to the bar. At least he brings his beer with him. 

“So,” Yunho starts, leaning down to get close to your ear. His breath is hot against your skin, it makes you shiver. “See anyone yet?”

Your cheeks heat up, eyes widening at the question. You take a swig of your beer, hoping the chilled carbonation will cool you off a bit. “No,” you mutter softly, turning your head to face him. His hair is down, curly over his forehead, almost touching his lashes. “I came straight to you.” 

His face flattens out, but there’s humor in his pretty eyes. “Boring.” 

You smack your teeth with your lips and smack his arm with the back of your hand, a laugh falling out of your open mouth. “Not boring, Jeong Yunho.” 

He giggles, goading you, “Come on, it’s your first night of freedom. Start shopping.” 

Shopping. You push the memory out as your eyes travel over the crowd, loosing a heavy breath as absolutely fucking no one catches your attention. Not that no one here is attractive– but there’s no one who you’d want one night of really hot, intense fucking with. 

You’re pouting as you glance back at Yunho. “I don’t think I’m gonna be good at this.”

“You don’t think so?” His brows sit high, a playful grin on his lips like he knows something you don’t. His chin dips in the direction you were just looking at, “Look again, baby.” 

You turn, faces blending together, bodies moving as one until you see her. As if she’s beneath a fucking spotlight, her golden, tanned skin sparkles in the pockets of her cut-out, black mini dress. Her dark hair flows down her back, curled, shiny, so pretty. She looks so fucking sexy your heartbeat picks up in your chest. 

You look back at Yunho, cheeks hot, the tips of your ears on fire, “Fuck.” 

He laughs with his head tipped backward before he brings his beer up to his lips. “Told you,” he says with a little shrug. “You’ll be just fine. Go talk to her.” 

“No!” you whisper, well, more like a whisper-yell. “I can’t go hit on her.” 

“Why not?” he’s still smiling as he asks, amused by you. “Fine. Go tell her she did a great job with the party or something.” 

“That’s so fucking corny,” you groan, shaking your head as you bring your beer back up to your lips again. 

San cuts in from across the table, “What are you two whispering about over there?” 

You’ve barely swallowed your gulp of beer before you’re blurting, “Nothing!” Your gaze lands on Yunjin, and her eyes narrow. “Fine,” your lips flatten. “Yunho wants me to go hit on Jihyo.” 

The table falls into a confused silence. Mingi breaks it by asking, “You’re gay?” 

“Aren’t you two together?” San adds on. 

“Like, our Jihyo?” Yunjin adds on, and your head bobbles between the three of them, each question adding another layer of frustration. 

All you can do is groan. A pitiful, droning groan, instinctively you bring your beer back up to your lips. 

“We’re not exclusive anymore,” Yunho answers for you. “And she has her eye on your Jihyo, yes. Gay question isn’t mine to answer.”

“Mind you, you had all day yesterday to tell me about this,” Yunjin’s eyes are still narrowed at you. 

Your cheeks are flaming, hiding beneath your glass of beer. “Baby steps?” you offer with a tiny shrug. 

Yunjin sighs, “I’ll take it, I guess.”

The conversation moves on, but your head keeps turning involuntarily, taking small glances at her. She's in heels, her muscled calves flexing each time she moves her body, shifting her stance. Fuck, she looks hot. She always looks hot. She looks especially hot tonight. 

When you look back at Yunho, he’s already looking at you. Then his brows raise as if he’s saying you gonna do it, or what? Your lips purse, heartbeat picking up again. You don’t think you’ve ever approached someone with the sole intention of flirting with them in your life. 

This past month has been filled with so many firsts for you. What’s one more?

You pick up your beer and chug the rest of it down, it’s screaming all the way down your throat, the taste not wonderful but not unbearable either. It’s the bubbles, the carbonation, but you wipe your lips with the back of your hand, look at Yunho with a determined expression, and nod. 

He grins, “That’s my girl.” 

“Are you going?” San asks, thick, dark brows wiggling. “Should we give you a pep talk? Act like we’re sending you off to war?” 

You try to scowl at him, but your lips curve at the corners. “Go fuck Jen in the bathroom or something.” 

“Go fuck Jihyo in the bathroom or something,” he fires back automatically. 

“Maybe I will, bitch,” it comes out of your mouth before you can think about it and your palm flies over your mouth, shocked that you just fucking said that. Maybe the Miller gave you a little more than just courage. 

San howls with laughter. “Fuck yes, do it.”

Your cheeks are warm, and that definitely wasn’t a pep talk, but for some reason it feels like what you needed. You turn on your heel, breath pushing out of your circled lips shakily as you wipe your sweaty palm on your pant leg. Your other hand holds your other, full beer. 

She’s mid-conversation as you approach her, and before speaking, interrupting, you lay your hand softly on her shoulder blade. “Just wanted to say hi.” 

She just about fucking screams when she sees you. Forgetting her conversation completely, she throws her arms around you, yelling, “You came! You came! I’m so happy!” 

You laugh into her arms, pretending you don’t care about her body pressed against yours, that you didn’t come over here with an ulterior motive. “Of course I did, you invited me.” 

She keeps her hands on your shoulders as she pulls away, barely keeping space between you, she’s beaming, her cheeks flushed. You keep catching the gloss on her lips as she barrages you with questions, “How are you? Who are you here with? Is Jen here?” 

You point behind you, and her eyes follow. “She’s here, we invited some of the guys we’re friends with.” 

“Oh,” her brows furrow as she waves her manicured hand. “They’re already all looking over here.” 

Your face drops, you turn your head and scowl in their direction, just to catch them all staring at you. When they catch your expression they all turn away, caught. Guilty. Fuckers. 

“Isn’t the blonde one yours?” she asks, brows wiggling. “He’s hot. Tall.”

“He’s not mine,” you blurt, shaking your head. Fuck, this is harder than you thought it’d be. “We’re not exclusive, I’m– I’m fully single.” 

“Oh,” she says like this is the most scandalous information she’s ever heard. “My girl who’s committed to being committed is in a non-exclusive relationship? Who are you?” 

“I’m me,” you smile, eyes finding the floor for a millisecond. You shrug, “Just… different now. I guess.” 

“I’m proud of you,” she nods, one arm that was holding onto your shoulder sliding down to pet your bicep. You physically have to stop yourself from shivering at the contact. She’s taller than you in her heels, looking down at you as she says it, her soft palm brushing your bare skin…

“Thank you,” you murmur, cheeks heating up again. “This place looks great– I– you look great.” 

“Yeah?” She beams, taking a step back to look down at her own outfit. “I know it’s Mina’s birthday, but since I planned it I figured I have to look good, too.” 

“You do,” you affirm her, looking at her outfit with her, nodding your head. You run a hand through your hair. Why is this so hard? How do you start flirting with a girl who’s your friend? How do you un-friend your friend? How do you even flirt?

Someone grabs at her wrist, a small girl, long, black hair, she’s beaming at her. You can only assume that’s Mina. “Ji! There’s someone I want you to meet!” 

Jihyo nods toward her, and then the girl is tugging at her arm, and Jihyo shoots you an apologetic look. “I’ll find you later!” 

“Don’t worry about it!” you wave your hand, feeling a pang of disappointment in your gut. Fuck. You absolutely fumbled that. Fuck. 

You turn back to your friends with regret heavy in your eyes. You take another gulp of beer before deflating into the table, debating guzzling the pitcher Jongho brought back. 

“How’d it go?” Yunho asks as soon as you’re back in ear shot. You scowl. His lips flatten. “Can you give me more than just a look?”

You pout. “I barely got to say anything before the birthday girl pulled her away. Damn, I didn’t even say happy birthday.” 

“You have all night,” San assures you from across the table. 

Mingi cooes, “Oh my god, baby’s first gay-crush.” 

You don’t even have the time to roll your eyes before Jongho starts cracking up, “What the fuck did I miss?” 

“A lot,” you gruff out, picking up your beer again. 

Yunho lowers it before you can bring it up to your lips, “Pace yourself, sunshine. We literally have all night.” 

“Damn, no Jihyo and now no beer?” you complain, but your words are playful. “So bossy.” 

“You know bossy, and that wasn’t bossy,” he reminds you, voice sliding into that velvety cadence. 

Your gut warms. “Don’t start with that or else I’ll really give up on Jihyo.” 

His grin is bright, satisfied. “You’re funny tonight.” 

“I’m always funny,” you quip, slightly offended. 

“I don’t even know how to flirt with her,” you’re talking to the table now. “How do you flirt with a girl who’s your friend?” 

Yunjin answers, “You do know she’s super gay, right? Like she fucks with dudes but not nearly as much as women? I don’t think you even have to try that hard, she probably saw you all cute and flustered while you were talking to her.” 

If your cheeks get any hotter, you might overheat like a cell phone on a fucking beach. Your elbow lands on the table, palm hitting your forehead. “I’m not cut out for this life.” 

The table responds by laughing. The conversation moves on, San talks about the gym, Yunho talks about the really good weed he bought from a guy in his public speaking class, Mingi talks about the girl he slept with last weekend, and Jongho tells him he slept with her the weekend before.

You don’t have anything to add except a joke here and there or laughing along with the table. You can feel the absence of one, you catch yourself scanning the room, looking for a familiar head of black hair and bronzy skin. You don’t see him. You let the thought pass. 

Mingi pulls you back to the conversation by asking, “Did you guys listen to the new episode of Unscripted?” 

Yunjin’s eyes lift to yours. Your expression doesn’t so much as flicker. 

“I listened!” San beams. “I think every single person in this room listened. Who’s side are you guys on?” 

Yunho, without missing a beat, answers, “Mister Tall and Dominant.” 

Your expression cracks, a smile forcing its way through the mask. He didn’t tell his friends it’s you— well, that it’s him. 

Yunjin nods, “Same.” She’s definitely speaking just to add something to the conversation, because you know she’s team Wooyoung. 

“What?” San gawks at the table, “Are you shitting me? She’s obviously in love with Mister Piss-Me-Off.” 

“No she’s not,” you find yourself arguing. Defensively, too. 

San looks at you like you’re ridiculous. “Did you listen to the way she talked about him? It was word vomit, she’s obsessed.” 

There’s warning in the hinge of Yunjin’s jaw. You shrug, “I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s that serious. Unscripted fucks a new person every week, let’s be honest with ourselves here.” 

“That’s true,” Mingi adds. “Just another fling. Content for the pod.” 

“I didn’t even listen,” Jongho reveals, “but everyone keeps fucking talking about it. Who cares who she fucks?” 

“We do, apparently,” Yunho adds with a little laugh, picking up his beer again. You should buy him something. Or fuck him really, really good tomorrow. 

Yunjin’s body is so tight you think she might explode. “Can we go to the bathroom?” she asks, keeping her voice light, but you can hear the panic lining her tone because you know her. 

You nod, sliding from the table, meeting her on the other side before walking with her toward the bathroom. She waits until you’re out of earshot before exploding, “How did you do that? How do you do that? I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack!” 

You snort, rolling your eyes, “You did fine, Jen. You’re fine.”

“Does Yunho know?” 

“He thinks I submitted the story,” you explain, approaching the neon pink Girls Room sign. The line isn’t too long, you lower your voice as you walk towards the end of it. “He knows it’s about him, but he doesn’t think I’m… Her.”

“How the hell did he figure that out?” 

You shrug, “Don’t know, but he came to the conclusion on his own. I just agreed.”

Yunjin sighs. “He’s so fucking smart, but he’s kinda stupid at the same time.” 

You giggle. “I don’t think he’s stupid at all, he’s like, one thought process away from putting all the pieces together.” 

She presses her back up against the wall, brows furrowed over her shades. “That doesn’t scare you?” 

“It does,” you nod. “I don’t know… he’s kind. I trust him. He didn’t tell everyone else the story was about him, I think if he ended up figuring it out, he’d keep it to himself, too.” 

Her head tilts. “You don’t think he’d be upset that you kept it from him?” 

“I mean, do you think he has a right to?” 

Her lips purse, shoulders shrugging. “Maybe.” 

You think on it, taking the spot beside her, sighing as you back up against the wall. You turn your head to her, “Do you really think Jihyo saw my flustered-ness as cute?” 

She wears a lazy grin as she turns her head to you. “I think you’re cute when you’re flustered, so there’s no way she didn’t.”

Your smile brightens, cheeks warming all over again. It’s too fucking early into the night to break the seal, but you do anyway because the sound of the sinks running makes your bladder feel heavier than it’s ever been. 

On the way back to the table, you spot her again. She’s talking to someone else you don’t know, a guy, tall, buff. He’s kinda hot. Her body language is friendly but your stomach jumps in warning, your mind and your legs are in agreement as you part ways with Yunjin to purposely interrupt her conversation this time. 

“I found you first,” you say, cutting off whatever this fuckass guy is saying. 

Jihyo beams, “And thank god you did.” 

The guy pouts, “Why’s it suddenly fuck me?” 

Jihyo laughs, smooth and pretty, “Sorry, Johnny.” She introduces the two of you, and then turns her attention fully on you. “Those pants make your legs look so fucking long. Is your top backless?” 

You do a little spin, and she whistles. Whistles. Your cheeks are fucking burning when you turn back to her, and you desperately wish you had your beer. 

She reads your mind. “Where’s your drink?” 

You look at her empty hands. “Where’s yours?” 

Her lips tighten in a grin. “Touché, let’s go to the bar.”

She grabs your hand and electricity shoots up your spine, excitement, adrenaline. Is this working? Are you doing it? You can’t tell. Your eyes drop while following behind her, taking in her curves, the way her hips way with every hurried step. She cuts through the layers of people before the bar like she’s the human version of a sword, shoulders back as she tugs you all the way up to the front. 

She doesn’t let go of your hand when she gets up to the bar. She swings her upper half over the deep oak, giving you a perfect view of the way her shiny hair glistens under the lighting, how her back arches, ass poking out. She calls over the bartender like he’s working for her. 

She orders two shots and two beers. Your brow pops as you lean in almost over her shoulder, “Shots aren’t free, Ji. Just get beers.” 

Her head tilts, a tiny smirk on her lips. “I can’t buy you a shot?”

Your mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. “Oh. Yes, you can. Thank you.” 

Her smile widens, a tiny laugh falling off her tongue. “You’re so cute.” 

Coming from her, you think maybe you don’t want to be cute. Coming from Yunjin, sure, cute is fine, but coming from Jihyo? You want to be as sexy as you think she is. You chew on your bottom lip, your cheeks flame anyway. 

The bartender brings your shots and she thanks him, yelling an ‘add it to my tab’ before she hands one to you. It’s clear, vodka, your throat is already burning before a drop has touched your tongue. 

“Cheers to new beginnings,” she holds up her plastic shot glass to you. “New beginnings, a new mindset, and freedom that you didn’t have before.” 

You tease, “We’re still celebrating my breakup?” 

“No, baby,” she shakes her head, smirk still playing on her lips. “I told you that you’re not a passive girl. You’re out of the funk.” 

Baby sounds different on her lips now. Heat curls as you clink your plastic shot glass with hers, and shoot the vodka back. You whistle as you slam it back on the bar, sipping the beer that was waiting for you, letting it wash the aftertaste off the back of your throat. 

“Fuck, I drink vodka, and taking shots still fucking burns,” you’re wiping off your lips again as you turn back to her, she looks unbothered as ever. “How are you not cringing?” 

She shrugs, “I’m older than you. More experience.” 

“You’re older than me by one year, Ji,” you almost roll your eyes, smile bending your lips. “How much more experience can you have?” 

“A lot,” she says coolly before sipping her beer. “Trust me.” 

Are you still talking about vodka? You can’t tell. Heat blooms, and whether it's from her words, the liquor, both, you don’t care. 

“Tell me about the guy,” she starts again, still leaning up against the bar. She's holding her glass with two hands, hair off her shoulders, chest on display. She's radiating the same comforting dominance she always has, the one that makes you want to obey without even realizing you’re doing it. 

“Yunho?” you question. “The tall, blonde one?” 

“The one you’re casually fucking,” she corrects, or points out, you don’t know. 

Your legs cross as you lean up against the bar, too. “He’s sweet. He takes care of me.”

She hums, looking you up and down, and doesn’t do a damn thing to hide it. “Do you need to be taken care of?” 

“Sometimes,” you answer, feeling the weight of her gaze. “Sometimes not.”

Her smile grows. “Good,” she leans forward a little more, closing some of the distance between you. “Is he taking care of you tonight?” 

Your heartbeat picks up, mouth going dry. You sip your beer, and then shake your head. “N-no, he’s not.” 

She looks like she’s won, satisfied as hell. “Do you want to dance with me?”

You’re nodding profusely, you don’t even say the word yes before she’s grabbing your hand again and tugging you toward the dance floor. 

Wooyoung’s getting real sick of the Lucky Penny. He feels like he’s spending his entire fucking week in the step-above-shithole bar, but maybe he’s just allowing himself be angry at the Penny because the alternative is too damning. It’s been two days and it’s still eating him alive, the way you looked at him in his car, like you never want to speak to him again. He doesn’t know why that hurts the way it does.

He shouldn’t care, oh, he shouldn’t give a flying fuck. But he does, and he fucking hates it.

The way he came home to Yunho with fucking word vomit, getting the entire sequence of events off his chest because he felt guilty. He didn’t even do anything and he felt fucking guilty. The batting cage, the diner, he never should have done any of it knowing that you and Yunho are exclusive. He shouldn’t have let himself get to know you any better, and he sure as hell shouldn’t have let you know him.

But it’s so fucking hard to stop himself when he’s around you. Usually it’s his dick controlling him, and… and– and it still is. He just wants to fuck you. He’s gotten a taste of you, and he’s hungry for the rest. 

He has to tell himself that with every pretty face that looks at him inside the Penny. Every wink, every longing stare, every fuckable face he sees he has to remind himself that the only reason you’re on his mind is because he’d rather fuck you. 

He didn’t mean to be late tonight. Every outfit in his closet didn’t seem appropriate, and by the time he was on the fifth outfit he almost yelled out in frustration because when the fuck has he ever cared about his outfit? No one in the Penny is looking at his goddamn outfit. Every woman whose eyes land on him is thinking he’s sexy, or they’ve heard he’s great in bed and they’re wondering if it’s true, every woman is debating if they’ll have a chance to find out, tonight. And they won’t. None of them will fucking know because you’re suddenly a drug, a fucking poison he accidentally injected into his veins. 

It’s disgusting. He needs to get drunk. 

He approaches the bar, slams his card on the oak. The bartender tells him something about a keg, he orders whiskey on the fucking rocks. He’s not drinking draft Miller fucking Lite tonight.

“Oh no,” Sana approaches him, a glass of beer in one hand. She looks pretty, hair tied back, showing enough skin that usually would make Wooyoung want to find out what the rest looks like. “It’s gotten worse. What’s wrong with you?”

He takes a swig of whiskey, doesn’t cringe as it burns its way down. “Nothing,” he answers. Short, definitely not sweet.

“Should you be here with an attitude like that?” she asks, brows raised. “Drinking hard liquor, of all things?”

He gives her a blank stare. “I don’t have an attitude.”

“Let me ask you something, then,” she stands a little straighter. “If I asked you to fuck me in the bathroom right now, would you do it?”

“I just got here,” he answers, voice flat. “Can you ask me after I’ve made my rounds? Scouted the rest?”

She laughs, but it’s hollow. “Glad to find out the whore is still in there. For a second, I thought you were upset about a girl.”

He gives her a look, eyes hard, brows flat. His jaw clenches as he swallows down some more whiskey. “I’ll never be upset about a girl, Sana. You know that.”

She looks at him sideways like she doesn’t really believe him. “Whatever you have going on, you better fix it real quick. No one wants a miserable man drinking hard fucking liquor at a birthday party.”

She turns on her heel, miniskirt dancing on her hips as she disappears into the crowd. Something tight within his chest unwinds as her words sink in. She’s right. Anger isn’t a fucking party favor. He sighs, more so pushes whatever he can get out from his chest, hoping it’s all the frustration and confusion that’s bottled up inside him. 

He rolls his shoulders before walking through the crowd, ignoring the eyes, saying hi here and there to those who say hi to him, he spots San before anyone else. He doesn’t know how he recognized him, he’s currently mauling Yunjin’s face off, standing beside a tall table filled with a half-filled pitcher of beer and eight tall glasses. Some empty, some full, some half-empty. 

Mingi and Jongho are talking, clearly trying to ignore the way San’s basically having sex in the middle of the bar. He approaches the two, “Not watching the show?”

“That’s something only someone like you would enjoy,” Jongho grins, clasping Wooyoung’s hand.

Mingi does the same before adding, “Are you about to?”

“Not in the mood,” Wooyoung shrugs his shoulders. “Who else is here?”

Jongho points toward Yunho, who’s standing a foot behind Wooyoung. His brows furrow, “The fuck is he doing?”

“Go find out,” Mingi says, full of amusement.

Wooyoung’s brows furrow, but he walks up to Yunho anyway, curious. He’s facing the dance floor, Wooyoung follows his line of sight, squinting as he tries to find what the older man is looking at.

His stomach drops when he sees it. You’re… you’re kissing someone. You’re kissing a girl. You’re kissing the only fucking girl in that goddamn friend group that he hasn’t fucked. Yunho might have to pick his jaw up from the floor. 

“You’re– you’re watching this?” Wooyoung’s voice is shakier than he wants it to be.

Yunho smiles. “I’m about to stop, it feels weird to watch. They just started making out.”

Wooyoung doesn’t understand. His mind is moving a mile a fucking minute. He asks, “You’re okay with that?”

Yunho finally looks at him, and he’s wearing a prideful smile. “Of course I’m okay with it.” Wooyoung blinks at him. Once, twice. Yunho laughs like he can’t help it. “We’re not exclusive anymore.”

Wooyoung’s jaw might be on the floor again. “Are you serious?”

Yunho nods, “Sorry it didn’t happen before she tried to kiss you.”

Wooyoung’s face drops, and so does his stomach. You told him?

He starts, guilt lining his tone, “Yun–”

“Don’t apologize,” Yunho shakes his head. “We’re cool.”

Wooyoung nods, and his eyes betray him as they lead out to the dance floor again. He doesn’t even fucking know her name, but your hands are on her cheeks, her hands on your waist, no– one hand is on your waist, the other is on your ass, squeezing it. You’re kissing her like you can’t get enough of her, like there isn’t a single part of you that’s second-guessing it, like you want it more than you’ve ever wanted anything. 

He swallows. He can feel the whiskey at the bottom of his stomach, heavy, leaden. You’re– you’re kissing someone else. You’re kissing a fucking girl. You just ended exclusivity with Yunho and you’re kissing someone fucking else?

He turns, walking past Yunho, past Mingi, Jongho, past San and Yunjin who look like they don’t even need air to breathe anymore. He sets the half-full glass of whiskey on the table, and announces to anyone who can fucking hear him, “I’m leaving.”

Jongho calls from behind him, “You just fucking got here!”

Wooyoung ignores him, then ignores every other person who tries to get his attention before he leaves the Lucky Penny.

Jihyo kisses you differently than Yunho kisses you. Different from Wooyoung. From Yeonjun. She kisses you like she’s trying to prove something, no, like she wants you to prove something. Like there’s still a part of you shielded, a part of you that’s begging to be released, and she wants to be the one to pull it out of you. Where her hands go, you arch into her touch. When her tongue pries your lips open, you let her explore until it evokes a soft moan from the back of your throat. When your hands finally find her cheeks, when one drops to her waist, her soft sigh makes your brain short-circuit. 

You made her make a noise. A sound. Of pleasure. You did that.

Your eyes open in surprise just to see her lips parted, her head tipped back, her spine bent toward you. The sight of someone else swimming in a haze of pleasure has never been so fucking beautiful. It’s sheer instinct to kiss her again, harder this time, your tongue pushing past her lips, your hands on her hips, needing more of her. 

You’ve imagined this a thousand times, usually alone, in your bed, sometime around twilight. You’ve imagined her, her face blown out with pleasure, dark eyes heavy with arousal, and in each and every daydream, you’ve been the reason why. You didn’t think it could feel this good, even just from some fucking kissing, to make someone else feel good. 

Her nails dig into the fabric of your pants, sinking into your skin beneath. You hiss into her mouth and she smiles into the kiss, “What is this, baby?”

“What?” you ask, brain cloudy, consumed with lust. 

“Are we just gonna make out on the dance floor?” she asks, then her teeth grab onto your bottom lip, biting soft enough to tease. “Or do I get more of you?”

Her chest presses against yours, your brows furrow, jaw cracking open. “You– you want more?”

“Are you kidding me?” she asks with a little laugh, and even that makes your gut churn with heat. “Do you want more?”

“I–” you’re panting, breaths layered. “Yes– yeah, I want– yes.”

Her grin turns to a nasty smirk, “Come.”

She tugs on your hand, pulling you through the crowd, and your eyes drift over the heads to your left. He’s exactly where you left him, with Mingi, with Jongho, they’re laughing about something. Like he can feel your gaze, his head turns, meeting your eye. He smiles, and it’s so fucking full of warmth that it eases something inside you that you didn’t realize needed to be eased.

You’re smiling, too, as Jihyo tugs you through the crowd, turning a corner around the entrance to the bathrooms, tugging on the bronze door handle to what looks like a coat closet. Or a supply closet. 

You don’t have time to decipher which, because as soon as she gets you inside the closet, she has you pinned to the door. Her lips are on yours again, sloppier, like her restraint is running thin, you hear the door lock before her hands push your hips into the door. 

Your hands fly to her hair, fingers tangling at the nape of her neck, tugging ever so slightly. Her neck bends backward with a sharp sound, and you follow, attaching your lips again because even a fucking second without it is too long. 

Her hands slide up your waist, cupping over your chest, squeezing your boobs through your bra. Your hips twitch, canting forward, the tips of your tongues still touching. 

“This your first time?” she asks, panting. “With a girl?”

You nod, voice breathy and layered, “Yeah.” She smiles wide, her eyes flaring. You laugh a little, “What?” 

“You should be happy it’s me,” she whispers, huskier now. Her hands slide down to your hips, one hand coming to the center to toy with the button to your pants. 

“Yeah?” There’s cockiness in your tone, from a part of yourself that you haven’t cracked open yet. It’s dark in the closet, the light seeping through the bottom of the door lighting her face from below. “You wanna take care of me?” 

“Do you need to be taken care of?” she asks again, head tilting. One of her fingers slips into the waistband of your pants, tugging them toward her. 

You don’t. You want to show her that you don’t. 

One hand slides around her waist, turning her swiftly until her back is pressed up against the door. She laughs, and it’s arrogant as hell, “You wanna take care of me?” 

“I can take care of you,” you murmur, now the words feel less foreign on your tongue. You think of the sound she made earlier, the soft noise of pleasure you pulled from her. You want to hear it again. 

The way her grin beams with pride only makes you kiss her harder, more confidence in your hands, pressing into the skin you can feel in the cutouts of her dress. She hooks a leg around you and you slot one leg between hers, pressing exactly where you know she needs it. 

She gasps, her manicured nails finding your shoulders, her hips immediately grinding up against your pant leg. You dip your head under her jawline, leaving open-mouthed kisses down her neck as her hips work against your thigh. 

One hand finds her ass as you murmur, “Yes.” She moans and a surge of heat boils through your blood, especially as her head dips back. It thuds against the door, giving you access to her neck. Your lips suck at the spot where her neck meets her chest, just above her collarbone. 

She moans a little louder, mumbling a choked out ‘fuck’ as she works up a rhythm against your thigh. You can feel the heat, the wetness seeping through, you want to clench your thighs together. You want to feel it. You want to taste it. 

Your hands slide up her waist, fingers settling over her chest, squeezing. She squeaks out another moan, one of her hands tugging at your roots, making you moan, too. 

You tug at her straps, sliding them down her arms until she gets herself free. You reach behind her, two hands working the clasp of her bra until you pull it off of her, throwing it on the floor. 

Fuck. “You’re so fucking sexy, Ji, oh my god.” 

“Please,” she whimpers. Whimpers. You think you might have moaned again at the sound. “I wanna see you, too.” 

You untie your top at the back of your neck, letting it fall over the front of your pants until it pools at your hips. You don’t give her a chance to compliment you back, kissing her again, and her hips pick back up the rhythm against your thigh, harder this time. 

“Shit, Ji,” you choke out, grabbing at the hem of her dress, tugging it upward, watching how she drags her panty-clad cunt over your thigh. “Yes, use me, fuck.” 

“Want you,” she mutters, thick with arousal. “Want more. Mouth, fingers, I don’t care.” 

Her panties, thin, black and lacy, you slide your palm underneath the waistband, greeted with a thick wetness, so much fucking wetness that you gasp. 

“Holy shit, you’re wet,” you marvel. 

She giggles, throwing her head back against the door again. “All for you, baby. You wanna taste it?” 

Keeping your eyes on her, you pull your hand from her panties, and bring your fingers to your mouth. Tangy sweet, her brows knit together at the sight of you shoving your fingers past your lips, tasting her, enjoying her. 

“Sweet,” you tease, and her hips jerk at the word. You want more. You want to taste all the wetness that's built up for you. 

Sinking down to your knees, she watches as you reach up for her panties, slowly dragging them down her toned, muscled legs. “Tell me…” you trail off, searching for the words. “Tell me if you like it. Okay?” 

“You know what to do,” she assures you, nodding. “But I’ll tell you, baby.” 

You throw her leg over her shoulder, fingers dancing over her soft skin, feeling the dips of her muscles as your lips press small kisses toward the apex of her thighs. Her breathing grows labored, her hips twitching toward you. 

You finally look at her core, glistening even under the darkness of the closet. You curse under your breath at the sight, so fucking beautiful, you’re throbbing, your own hips twitching, trying to get some kind of friction in your pants. 

Like a dog to a fucking bone, you bring your lips to her core, pressing one soft, steady kiss to her clit. She hisses, one hand flying to your hair and you welcome it as your tongue pokes out from between your lips, tasting her from bottom to top. 

Her moan is soft, coated in relief. It gives you a little more confidence, massaging your tongue against her clit, her fingers tightening in your roots as a sharp, gasped moan tumbles off her tongue. 

“Yes,” she moans out, hips twitching into your tongue. “Just like that.” 

You look upward, taking in her tight brows, her parted, glossy lips. She’s enjoying this. She’s enjoying you. 

One hand stays on her thigh over your shoulder, the other holds the skin just above her knee. You keep your tongue flat as she grinds herself against it, head tilting backward as she chokes out a heavy, “Fu–uck.” 

Your brows tie together, a moan falling past your lips. You wrap your lips around her clit, sucking, and you feel her spine go rigid, you can hear her toes curl against the leather of her sole, the heel poking at your back. Her hips stutter, jaw clenched like she was too aware of the noise she’s making. 

“Let me hear you,” you break away to say quickly, fast enough that you barely register that the words feel familiar. “Fuck whoever else hears.” 

“Uh-huh,” she’s nodding as you dive back into her core again, tongue lapping at her folds, flicking at her clit in a steady rhythm. 

“Holy shit,” she gasps out. “Fuck, fuck, keep doing that.”

You do, you will your head into stillness, a wall that she can fuck herself against. Her hips roll, using your head for purchase as she uses you, uses your face, your tongue. 

You can feel it, the tremor in her legs, how her hips start to lose rhythm. You keep it instead, never faltering, watching as her mouth stretches wider, as her brows tie further together. She’s close. 

Feeling, knowing she’s almost there is enough to keep your body a rock, you want to watch her come undone. Her moans heighten in pitch, breaking up in staccato until her breath gets caught in her chest, and then she starts to shake. 

She cries out your name as she comes, fingers tightening in your hair like she might rip it out of your head, but you don’t fucking care. You eat her through it, letting her shake and convulse on your face, you lick up every last drop. 

“Easy,” she finally says, breathing labored, letting go of your head. She collapses into the door, chest heaving as you sit back into your thighs, running a hand through your hair, too aware of the sweat gliding down your spine. 

After a minute of just breathing, she starts to laugh. You blink at her before a smile curves your lips, and then you start laughing, too. 

“I didn’t even know you liked girls,” she says, fixing her panties into place. “I’m learning so much about you tonight.”

The grin you give her is lazy, your head tilting, falling onto your shoulder. You wipe at your wet chin, “I’ve always liked girls, you’ve just always known me with a boyfriend.” 

She’s shaking her head as she picks her bra up from the floor. “He’s a demon.” She’s clipping it behind her back as she asks, “Can I take care of you now?” 

Your head tilts to the other side, thinking. You don’t really need more, you already got what you wanted, and the satisfaction of making her come on your face is enough. And it’s strange, different in a way you can’t pick apart, that you chose this, and you got it. And Jihyo’s still your friend. 

Your grin is coy, “I don’t really know how to say no, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, or think I don’t want you or something. But I’m kinda good.” 

Her brows raise as she crouches down into her calves, almost eye level with you in her heels. She smiles like she’s amused, “You’re kinda good?” 

You laugh, grabbing for your straps, attempting to tie them around the back of your neck. “Not that I don’t… I don’t know. I’m tired.” 

“I’m sure you are,” she drawls, amused. “You just ate pussy for the first time and did an incredible fucking job.” 

Your cheeks warm. “You enjoyed it?” 

“I came, did I not?” Her brows raise before she stands up again, moving around you to help you tie your top at the back of your neck again. She presses a kiss to the top of your head after finishing off the knot, “You’re like… I don’t know. Different than you were with the demon. I really am proud of you.” 

You tilt your head backward to see her, and she’s just as beautiful upside down. “You think so?” 

“In a good way,” she nods. “You’re more comfortable in your skin. Confident. It looks good on you.” 

You beam, “Thanks, Ji.”

“Come on,” she stands up straight again, reaching for your hand. “I’m hosting, people are gonna start to notice I left to fuck one of my friends in a closet.” 

You erupt into laughter as she pulls you up, shaking your head in disbelief. You can’t believe you just did that. You can, actually, because you chose to do it. You can’t wait to tell Yunho.

When you leave the closet again, everything feels brighter. It's almost as if the music is turned back on, or someone fucked with the dimness of the lighting, you aren’t sure. She keeps your fingers locked until you spot Yunho again, letting you go with a kiss to your cheek and a whispered ‘love you’ in your ear. 

Your cheeks are warm again as you approach Yunho, “You’re lucky you made it, the Uber’s out front.” 

You gasp, “You would have left me?” 

Yunho beams. “No, silly. I would’ve sent Yunjin and San home, absolutely, but I would have stayed for you.” 

“Good,” you lean into him as you sort through the mass of bodies, following behind Yunjin and San who were somehow still making out. They take a step, kiss, take a step, kiss. You look up at Yunho, “Has it been that way all night?”

“He owes me for it,” Yunho says nonchalantly. “That’s all I’m saying.” 

You laugh, then you notice your purse over his shoulder, poking into your back. It warms you all over, you think this might have actually been the best day of your life. The most affirming day of your life. Almost as if you’re really one with Unscripted. You might be getting closer. 

“Did you have fun?” he asks when you get outside, while San and Yunjin, then Mingi and Jongho pile into the minivan Uber. 

You nod, “I can’t wait to tell you all about it.” 

“I can’t wait to hear,” he says, letting you climb into the car first, then following behind you. 

You think Yunjin might’ve sat on San’s lap the entire ride home. You think they might have done more in the backseat besides makeout, but you didn’t look. Ignorance is bliss. 

You’re still in that state of bliss as you walk through the front door of his frat, climbing all the way up the stairs, and collapsing in Yunho’s bed as soon as it’s in sight. 

Yunho closes the door behind him, “Oh, she tired you out, huh?” 

“I think I tired her out,” you turn your head so you can see him, smirking at him. 

He undresses himself quickly, yawning, back arching in a stretch as his pants pool at his ankles. You kick all your clothes off, too, your pants, your top. 

When you climb into bed together, you lay on opposite sides, but neither of you feel the distance. And then you tell him everything, every detail, until you can’t keep your eyes open anymore. 

Seonghwa's chosen it, his suggestion coming with a shy smile earlier in the evening, like he knows it'll lead somewhere exciting.

His dark hair is slightly tousled from the day. You lean into him, your head resting against his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

As the plot thickens, the main characters finally give in to their tension. The female lead pushes the male lead down onto the bed. The camera angles suggest more than they show—the way she straddles his chest, sliding up until her thighs frame his face. His hands grip her hips, pulling her closer, and she rocks against him, her head thrown back in obvious pleasure. The scene cuts away before it gets too graphic, but the implication is clear: she's riding his face, grinding down as he licks and sucks her pussy.

Your body heats up watching it, a familiar ache building between your legs. Seonghwa shifts beside you, his fingers pausing their tracing. You glance up at him, catching the flush creeping up his neck, his lips parted slightly. He loves anything that hints at surrender, at being used for pleasure. As a switch leaning submissive, he thrives on it, especially when it's you taking control.

The credits haven't even rolled yet, but the air feels thicker now, charged. You turn to him, your hand sliding onto his thigh.

“That looked intense,” you murmur, your voice low. “Her sitting on his face like that... I wouldn't mind trying it with you.”

Seonghwa's eyes widen, dark and eager, locking onto yours. A slow smile spreads across his face, equal parts shy and hungry.

 “Yeah?” he breathes, his voice husky. “You want to sit on my face? Use my mouth to make you cum?” He swallows hard, his hand moving to cover yours on his thigh, squeezing gently.

The idea clearly excites him—his sweatpants tent slightly at the crotch, his cock stirring at the thought of you dominating him that way.

You nod, biting your lip.

“Exactly. I want to feel your tongue on my pussy, licking me while I grind down on you.” Your words are direct, and you see the way they affect him, his breath hitching.

He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your lips, but it's brief—testing, waiting for your lead.

“Then use me,” he says, pulling back just enough to meet your gaze. His submissiveness shines through, the way he yields to your desire without hesitation. “Tell me what you want. I'll make you feel so good.”

The movie drones on in the background, forgotten now. You stand, tugging his hand to pull him up with you. He follows willingly, his taller frame moving with that graceful ease, but there's a deference in how he lets you guide him toward the bedroom. The hallway is short, and soon you're pushing open the door, the king-sized bed waiting with its rumpled sheets from last night.

You turn to him, your hands on his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric.

“Lie down,” you instruct, your tone firm but affectionate. Seonghwa obeys immediately, kicking off his slippers and stretching out on his back, his head on the pillow. His eyes never leave yours, filled with anticipation. He props his hands behind his head at first, but you shake your head. “No. Hands on my hips when I'm ready. I want you to hold me.”

He nods, lowering his arms to his sides, palms up in surrender.

“Like this? So you can use me however you need?” His voice is soft, almost reverent, and it sends a thrill through you.

You strip slowly, peeling off your shirt to reveal your bra, then shimmying out of your shorts and panties. Seonghwa watches every movement, his gaze tracing your body—the curve of your breasts, the dip of your waist, the bare skin of your thighs. His cock hardens fully now, straining against his sweatpants, but he doesn't touch himself. That's not his role tonight; he's here for you.

Naked now, you climb onto the bed, straddling his waist first. His skin is warm under your thighs, and you can feel the rapid beat of his heart beneath your hand. Leaning down, you kiss him deeply, your tongue sliding into his mouth, tasting the faint mint from his earlier gum. He moans into the kiss, his hands twitching at his sides, waiting for permission.

You break away, trailing kisses down his jaw, his neck, nipping at his collarbone. “You're so good for me,” you whisper against his skin. “Letting me take what I want.”

Seonghwa shudders, his voice a low whine. “Always. I love when you use me.”

Emboldened, you slide higher, positioning yourself over his face. Your pussy hovers just above his mouth, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from you. You see his tongue dart out, wetting his lips in eagerness.

“Please,” he murmurs, eyes locked on your folds. “Sit on my face. Let me taste you.”

You lower yourself slowly, savoring the moment. The first contact is electric—his warm breath against your clit, then the flat of his tongue pressing up to lick a long stripe through your slit. You gasp, your hands bracing on the headboard for balance. He doesn't rush; instead, he laps at you steadily, his tongue circling your entrance before flicking over your clit. The sensation is immediate, wet and insistent, making your hips rock forward instinctively.

“That's it,” you encourage, grinding down a little harder.

Seonghwa's hands come up now, gripping your hips as you allowed, his fingers digging in just enough to steady you. He pulls you closer, burying his face deeper, his nose brushing your clit as his tongue thrusts inside you. You can hear the slick sounds of his mouth working you, slurping at your juices, and it drives you wild. Your thighs tighten around his head, trapping him there, and he groans in response, the vibration humming against your pussy.

You start to ride him in earnest, setting a rhythm that has you chasing the pleasure. Seonghwa matches you, his tongue never stopping—licking, sucking, swirling. He focuses on your clit now, drawing it between his lips and sucking gently, then harder when you moan.

“Fuck, yes,” you pant, one hand leaving the headboard to tangle in his hair, holding him in place. His hair is soft under your fingers, and you tug lightly, earning another muffled moan from him.

The room fills with the sounds of your activities—your breathy gasps, his wet licks, the creak of the bed as you move. Seonghwa's cock throbs untouched in his pants, a wet spot forming from his pre-cum, but he ignores it, devoted entirely to your pleasure. You glance down, seeing his eyes half-lidded, blissful, as if this is his heaven.

“You love this, don't you?” you tease, rolling your hips in a slow circle.

He hums affirmatively, the sound buzzing through you, and you feel the coil tightening in your belly. Faster now, you grind against his face, using his nose and mouth like they were made for this. His tongue spears into you again, before fucking you shallowly, his lips then sealing around your clit. The pressure builds, overwhelming, and you chase it relentlessly.

“Don't stop,” you command, your voice breaking. “Make me cum on your face.”

Seonghwa redoubles his efforts, one hand sliding from your hip to your ass, squeezing the flesh as he encourages you to press down harder. His other hand stays on your hip, guiding your movements. You feel him everywhere—his tongue delving deep, his lips sucking, his breath hot and ragged.

That’s when your orgasm hits you like a wave, crashing over you as your pussy clenches, flooding his mouth with your release. You cry out, thighs quivering around his head, riding through the spasms as he laps it all up, swallowing greedily.

When the aftershocks fade, you lift off him slightly, catching your breath. Seonghwa's face is glistening, your wetness smeared across his lips and cheeks and chin, his eyes dazed and satisfied. He licks his lips, tasting you still, and smiles up at you.

“Did I do good?” he says, voice rough.

You lean down to kiss him, tasting yourself on his tongue, and nod. “Perfect. But I'm not done with you yet.” Sliding down his body, you straddle his thighs now, feeling his hard cock press against your still-sensitive pussy through his sweats. He bucks up instinctively, seeking friction, but you pin his hips down with yours.

“No, stay still.”

Seonghwa's breath catches, his hands roaming your sides, thumbs brushing the undersides of your breasts.

“Whatever you want,” he promises, arching into your touch as you reach for the waistband of his sweatpants. You tug them down, freeing his cock—it springs up, thick and veined, the tip slick with pre-cum. He's perfect, curving slightly upward and begging to be touched.

You wrap your hand around him, stroking slowly from base to tip, watching his face contort in pleasure.

“I want to ride this too,” you say, positioning yourself over him.

His eyes darken, nodding eagerly. “Please. Use me to feel good.”

Shifting your position again, you slowly lower yourself down, taking him inch by inch. He fills you completely, stretching you in the best way, and you both moan at the connection. You start slow, lifting and dropping, feeling him slide in and out. Seonghwa's hands grip the sheets, knuckles white, as he lets you set the pace. But you want more from him.

“Touch me”, you order, and his hands fly to your breasts, cupping them, thumbs circling your nipples until they're hard peaks.

You ride him harder, your hips snapping down, the slap of skin on skin echoing. His cock hits deep, brushing that spot inside you that makes you moan. Seonghwa thrusts up to meet you, but it's controlled, submissive, following your lead.

“You feel so tight,” he gasps, his voice strained. “So good around me.”

The build is quicker this time, your body still sensitive. You lean forward, bracing on his chest, nails digging into his skin as you grind your clit against his pubic bone. He pinches your nipples, twisting lightly, and it helps to push you over the edge again. Your pussy clamps down on his cock, nearly milking him as you cum, waves of pleasure rippling through you.

Seonghwa almost follows seconds later, barely able to hold back, his hips jerking as he groans your name, body tensing under you.

You collapse onto his chest, both of you panting, sweaty. His arms wrap around you, holding you close, pressing kisses to your hair. “I love when you use me like that,” he whispers.

You lift off him slightly, catching your breath, but the sight of Seonghwa's face—flushed, slick with your arousal—stirs something deeper. His eyes are heavy-lidded, locked on you with that devoted hunger, and you realize you're not quite done grinding against him. The way his chest heaves, the twitching of his cock all tells you he's on the edge already; and he’s desperate. You want to push him there, make him spill without a single stroke, just from pleasuring you.

“I want more,” you murmur, sliding back up his body until your thighs straddle his face again. Seonghwa's breath hitches, his hands immediately returning to your hips, fingers flexing with need. “Make me cum again. And don't you dare touch yourself.”

He nods eagerly beneath you, his tongue already darting out to trace your folds once more. The sensitivity from your first orgasm makes every swipe electric, your clit throbbing as he laps at it with renewed focus. You sink down fully this time, smothering him with your pussy, rolling your hips in slow, deliberate circles. His nose presses against your clit, the pressure perfect, while his tongue thrusts inside you, fucking you with wet, insistent strokes.

The room echoes with the obscene sounds—your moans mixing with the slurps of his mouth devouring you, the faint rustle of sheets as you chase your final release. Seonghwa's grip tightens on your ass, pulling you down harder, his own hips bucking up into empty air. You glance back, seeing his cock straining visibly, twitching with every grind you make. He's close, you can tell from the muffled whimpers vibrating against your core, the way his body tenses under you.

“That's it,” you gasp, picking up speed, fucking his face with abandon.

Your hands brace on the headboard, nails digging into the wood as you ride his face faster. His tongue flattens, letting you slide along it, coating him in more of your wetness. He sucks your clit between his lips, teeth grazing just enough to send sparks through you, then releases it with a pop before plunging back in. The coil in your belly winds tighter, heat pooling low and insistent.

Seonghwa's moans grow frantic, trapped against your skin, and you feel his muscles clench, his body arching. Without warning, his hips jerk upward, a choked groan rumbling from his throat as he cums hard. The knowledge that he's losing control just from eating you out, from being your personal fucktoy, tips you over.

Your orgasm crashes through you, pussy clenching around nothing as you flood his mouth again. Waves of pleasure ripple out, your thighs shaking as you grind down one last time, smearing your release across his lips and chin. Seonghwa doesn't stop, lapping greedily through your spasms, swallowing every drop while his own body shudders in aftershocks.

Finally, you ease off him, collapsing beside his head on the pillow. He's panting, face a mess of your release and sweat, but his eyes find yours, sparkling with satisfaction.

“Did I make you feel good?” he asks, voice hoarse, a shy smile tugging at his swollen lips.

You trace a finger along his jaw, smudging the wetness there. “So good.”

He blushes, but preens under the praise, turning his head to kiss your palm. There's cum covering his sweats and shirt, but he makes no move to clean up, content to lie there with you until you tell him he can move again.

"You chose that movie on purpose, didn't you?" you question him.

he’s trying to hold back his cute little sobs, biting at his bottom lip, eyes closed tight, which causes you to huff in annoyance and grip him tighter. “you’re safe, baby, just cry for me. I know it feels good.”

“m’gonna get you back for this, I s-swear,” he hiccups, but you shush him. you love when he talks back to you, but that’s not what you want to hear right now. he’s panting, his lips dropped open into an ‘o’, ruby eyes watching each of your movements so carefully.

he cries, almost a yelp, and copious beads of sweet, clear precum roll down his thick shaft again, which you lick up without a second thought, making his eyes nearly cross. “fuck, m’gonna cum again, I can’t—” it feels so good that his tongue almost lolls out before he tries to compose himself again, shaking his head and pulling at the restraints.

“it’s so sensitive, pretty boy .. you love when I make you cum, yeah? it feels better than anyone else, better than yourself, huh?”

you kiss his length before easing him back into your perfect mouth, down your warm throat. you’re finally able to almost fit all of him with all of the practice that you’ve gotten tonight.

“mmhmm, fuck, love your fucking mouth, angel girl, and such pretty hands. not gonna last—”

“cum, katsuki, it’s okay,” and he does, with a gorgeous moan unlike anything you’ve heard from him before, finally just letting go of himself and any insecurities that were holding him back. he sniffles, his handsome face still wet with tears, easily tugging himself out of the necktie wrapped around his wrists, desperately reaching for you.

he’s out of breath and his heart is about to beat out of his chest, but he still needs your touch, kissing you messy and needy. “I needed that, thanks for taking care of me.” he whispers, uncharacteristically vulnerable. you smile sweetly, taking his face in your hands and kissing his cheek before offering to help clean him up. he’s so in love.

thus he finally taps out for the night, but don’t worry, because he’ll last even longer in following sessions …

[ @slutsenpai × @sidesenpai × my masterlist × event masterlist ]

prompt 04 / 15 for my 2k follower event !! ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭

hongjoong has a heavy lean towards dominance. but if you can get him under you his whimpers are CRAZY. he’d try it out if you liked it! doesn’t take himself too seriously when he’s the one underneath. kinda embarrassed, actually. it might be a little awkward the first few times, but helping him decompress by taking the lead easily becomes something to look forward to. he will put you in your place if he feels you’re overdoing it, though. sorry.

seonghwa is a huge service dom. like he’s finishing just from eating you out. your pleasure to him is what matters most, and he’s gentle even when you ask him to be rougher. probably tries to be strict, but he crumbles so easily when it comes to you. he could lean into submission for sure. he enjoys watching you learn how to pull the strings. it’s just always a mind-blowing experience, no matter who’s doing what. that mouth on him is too good.

yunho would try submitting just for fun and end up liking it a lot more than expected. you bring it up and he’s like “haha sure”. fully expects that he’s gonna have to end up flipping you over. ends up breathless and kinda shy about it. in a ‘i just discovered something new about myself’ way. but he’d still prefer to call the shots most of the time. sorry again.

yeosang switch. he’s just overly eager to please. so he can either have you in a tight headlock from behind or be shaking as you deny him. so dynamic. malleable to whatever you want him to be. but he groans just the same no matter what. yum!

san is also a service dom. even in his dirty talk, he’s centering how you feel and what you want. he’d be so down to let you take charge, if you brought it up to him. but you’d have to ease him into it a little. vulnerability is huge for him regarding intimacy. trust is really important too, so that aspect really does it for him. like handing over full control to you is so sentimental that it turns him on. he slips into it so easily afterwards, he begs so pretty. yeah.

mingi’s just easy asf for you. he likes his hands on you as much as he enjoys your hands on him. he just loves having all your attention, regardless of the power dynamic. you could switch ten times in an hour without missing a beat. by the time you’re done, you don’t even remember who brought the handcuffs and who wore them or what day it is, really.

wooyoung can take any role from any position, genuinely. he’d try anything at least once and he would not make a big deal out of disliking something new. like oh, well, now you know, and you move on. zero shame. but shove your fingers in his mouth and spit at him, he likes it just because it’s you. he’s probably the most experimental member. so he encourages you to bring all your curiosity to your intimacy. he’ll have crazy requests too. everything’s just so easy and carefree that telling him you wanna try slapping him feels like discussing the weather. “could i slap you?” is met with a “how hard?” no further questions asked.

Jealous!hongjoong who glares at you whenever your attention is on anything but him, he feels like he needs to be the center of your entire world.

Jealous!hongjoong who clears his throat every time a person tries to talk to you for too long.

Jealous!hongjoong who squeezes your hand a little too hard whenever another person compliments literally anything you’re wearing, butting in and saying “yeah, I know. I was the one who bought it for her.” Before pulling you away from the conversation.

Jealous!hongjoong who always puts your chair right next to his, to the point neither one of you barely have any room.

Jealous!hongjoong who sucks his teeth and pulls that one smirk whenever he catches another man looking at you too long for his liking, even if the man was just zoning out.

Jealous!hongjoong who always keeps his hand on your lower back whenever you’re at a party or event. He claims it’s so you don’t get lost, but it’s so others know you’re taken.

— “What were you doing yesterday?” “Nothing, why?” “You didn’t answer my calls.”

Jealous!hongjoong who will bend you over in the bathroom when he can’t take it anymore, gripping your chin to make you watch through the mirror as well.

Jealous!hongjoong who leaves a trail of hickeys from your jaw to your collar bone, he needs it to be as visible as possible.

Jealous!hongjoong who if he’s feeling a little too jealous or upset, he’ll get a whip and will smack you on the ass with it over and over until he’s satisfied.

Jealous!hongjoong who won’t wear a condom, and he will make sure to cum inside as well. It reminds him that you are completely his and that he’s yours.

Jealous!hongjoong who will stop mid session just to hear you beg for him. It’s an ego boost for him.

Jealous!hongjoong who laughs at you when you start crying, telling you to suck it up and take it until he’s done.

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

Clunk.

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

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

Your stomach dropped.

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

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

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

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

Not tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ATZ’s Auto, this is Mingi speaking.”

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

“Hey—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t be smug.”

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

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

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

“Mingi, you don’t have to—”

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

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

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

Twenty minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m fine. The car’s the one—”

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

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

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

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

“Well... Can you fix it?”

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

“Then why do you charge me so much?”

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

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

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

“Huh? How'd you know?”

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

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

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

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

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

“You have grease on your face.”

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

“Nah, it's on the other side.”

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

“You’ll never know.”

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

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

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

You came back to consciousness in pieces.

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

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

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

You were in Mingi’s office.

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

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

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

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

“How did I—”

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

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

“Yes, I did.”

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

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

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

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

“You were never a scout.”

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

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

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

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

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

══════════════════

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

You turned your head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You scoffed. “I do not snore.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s my car?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your car.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That quick? Are you sure?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mingi?”

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

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

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

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

══════════════════

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

The text came at 8:47.

Parts house has the bracket.

Pulling it now.

She’ll be ready by 3.

Don’t come early, I mean it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You cleared your throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She’s ready when you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t even know what he drives.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He turned in his seat.

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

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

“What thing?”

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

You looked at him.

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

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

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

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

His hand came up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” you exhaled. “Another night.”

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

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

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

══════════════════

Friday arrived like a held breath finally released.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still. You checked again. You always checked again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Control freak,” you joked lightly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Research,” Hongjoong repeated, deadpan.

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

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

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

You looked for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You had a race to win.

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

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

You turned the key.

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

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

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

The flagger raised his arm.

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

The flag dropped.

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

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

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

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

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

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

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

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

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

You braked early.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You crossed first.

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

The crowd erupted.

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

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

The door opened from the outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mingi.

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

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

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

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

The crowd erupted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You finished a timing chain in—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

══════════════════

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

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

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

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

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

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

He cut the engine.

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

Then Mingi turned in his seat.

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

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

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

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

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

“You remembered the flowers.”

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

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

You didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

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

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

“Mingi—”

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

“No, It’s perfect,” you breathed.

He stopped. Blinked. “What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like a lovesick mechanic?”

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

His girl.

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

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

BEEEEP!

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

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

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

Then Mingi laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You were in his lap.

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

“Hi, gorgeous,” he murmured.

“Hi, pretty boy,” you whispered back.

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

“Mingi,” you whispered.

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

You kissed him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You kissed him again.

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

“Lift your arms for me, baby.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You blinked, dazed. “What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Spread your legs wider,” he drawled.

Your breath caught. “Mingi—”

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

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

“Please,” you managed, voice trembling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You shattered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You did. God help you, you really did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then his mouth was on you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what.”

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

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

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

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

“Mingi—please—”

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

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

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

The first spank landed without warning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he was pushing inside you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Min—Mingi, I’m close, I’m so close—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then you moved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His hands never stopped moving.

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

Then his hands found your breasts.

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

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

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

“Oh god, that feels s-so good!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes Ma’am.”

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

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

“Fuck—Mingi, I can’t—it’s too much—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It broke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He helped you dress.

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

“Mingi.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he held it open for you.

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

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

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

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

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

“Alright, let's go home.” he exhales.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ready?” he asked.

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

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

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

You lifted his hand from the console.

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

Mingi laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

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

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

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

Your boyfriend of two years was sitting right across from you as a peachy-red color creeped over his cheeks all the way to his ears. He diverted his gaze down, almost afraid you'd hear his thoughts out loud, teeth lightly grazing his own bottom lip as he bit down in embarrassment.

San’s hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing it in what he thought was a soothing motion; a deep sigh escaped his slightly parted lips, now with faint residual marks of his teeth on the lower lip from the sheer strength he’d used to bite down on it. You mentally noted that it was a little plumper, a little more red, than it had been a few seconds ago. But you let him take his time, not wanting to bother the man over something that so obviously affected him. You knew he’d tell you in the end, however long it took. There was no reason to pry.

The two of you were seated at the table in your apartment, enjoying the meal that San had practically begged to make for you—claiming it was a special recipe that Wooyoung had recently taught him back at their dorm. He was dressed in a black t-shirt with sleeves that wrapped comfortably around his biceps, revealing the years of hard work he had put in at the gym. The shirt was paired with a basic pair of washed-out blue jeans, hugging his absurdly—and unfairly—small waist perfectly.

Afraid you had stayed quiet for too long, you gave him an encouraging nod to keep going. The hand that previously occupied his neck had now made it to his eyes; his thumb and index finger simultaneously found their way to each eyebrow, circling their way to the bottom of his eyes in a furrow. It was weird seeing him this flustered. Especially when it came to something he was mentioning himself.

“Well, I've been thinking about our, uhm—" he started, the last sound coming out almost like a whisper as he used his hand to motion back and forth between the two of you.

“Well, our sex life," he finished hurriedly. The subtle blush on his cheeks had deepened into a vibrant crimson as he finally lifted his gaze to meet yours.

"O-okay," you let out, a small hint of an underlying question filling the air. The feeling of a familiar warmth spread across your cheeks. It was your time to avoid his gaze, not wanting him to see how easily a simple word could turn you into a blushing mess.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love what we have," he exclaimed, his hands displayed in front of him in an almost defensive position.

“It’s just that..." he trailed off. "I want you to try being the, uh, dominant one next time we do it," he said softly, averting his gaze from your now widened eyes and shocked expression.

Oh

"If it's not something you like or want to do—that's, you know, completely fine," the man said hastily, as if he were afraid of scaring you away.

Of all the things your boyfriend could have said, you did not expect for even a second that it would be…this. It's not like you had distinct roles of dominant and submissive in the bedroom. But San did lean towards being in control of your pleasure, his larger build allowing him to easily toss you around as he pleased. It was something that came naturally to the two of you and required little thought.

Not for San, apparently.

You adjusted yourself in your chair; heat blossomed through your body subconsciously as a shiver traveled from your spine to your core. You probably both looked a mess with tension so thick you could cut it and cheeks so red a poet could spend his life writing about it.

Where did this come from, though? You knew San was a very soft and naturally cute person, but he also liked the idea of having control. He loved having people listen to him as he oozed confidence and a sense of authority. Memories flooded your mind, trying to find a glimpse of something, anything that could have anticipated the words that left his lips mere seconds ago.

Your expression softened as you glanced at your boyfriend in front of you; he looked so disheveled and nervous. San's hands were placed on the table in front of you, fingers intertwined as he nervously played with his thumbs. The pout that came so naturally to him, almost as if it were the default shape of his lips, was obvious as his eyes quickly scanned yours for any indication of how you were feeling.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't surprised," you began with a soft smile as your hand came to touch his, giving it a light squeeze to indicate that you were fine. A mental image of San on his knees suddenly popped up, eyes lidded as he stared up at you in almost a plea. His naked chest was heaving up and down, lips slightly parted as if he were about to begin begging any moment. Fuck. Is that what you had been missing out on?

With your eyes fixed on Sans, you went on, "But I'd like to try." A comforting, gentle smile appeared on his lips as his eyes grew wide. You giggled as your boyfriend stood up, the chair he had sat on not even a second ago long forgotten as it fell behind him from the mere force of his excitement. You followed, walking over to the side of the table where San stood.

“I promise I’ll make you feel so good, baby—I’ll be so good." He breathed out. His eyes darted between yours and down to your lips as he cupped your cheeks, his gaze growing darker.

He said he’ll be good.

Fuck—

Before you can even think of what to say, soft lips are pressed against yours. You lean into the kiss as San showed a hunger you've never known before. He quickly found your bottom lip, teeth grazing the soft, wet flesh, making you gasp in return. All the idol saw this as was an invitation to slide his tongue in, exploring the familiar warmth of your mouth as his tongue meets yours. Your hand slowly traveled up his chest, applying a light pressure that caused San to let out the neediest of whines when you accidentally grazed his nipple.

So sensitive, you thought. Had he always been this sensitive?

San was now kissing you like his life depended on it. Like he grew needier for every graze of your tongue against his, only stopping the kiss to gasp for air and then back again to chase your lips. And it felt so good. It’s like San had gone completely pliant and was kissing you not just because he wanted to but because he needed it—like he couldn’t live without it. He needed to feel your warm, soft mouth against his. He needed to feel your hot, radiating body against his to prove that this is real. That you want him the way he’s wanted you for such a long time.

Your hand, which had just led to the man in front of you making the sweetest of sounds, now found its way to the back of his neck, right where his hair grows longer. To test the waters, you lightly grabbed whatever hair was long enough to welcome your grasp and gave it a solid tug. What you didn’t expect was a loud moan escaping San’s lips, his whole body going still as he submits to your touch.

“Nghm—” he whined as he furrowed his brows; the lips that had chased yours were now flushed red and so fucking swollen as he bit down on his bottom lip. The heavy weight of his cock was now evidently straining against the tight fabric of his jeans. Your non-occupied hand made its way to the outline, touching the tip with only enough force that San would know your touch is there, but not enough to give him any relief.

“Please baby—nngh, ah,” he gasped. And holy fuck he was so pretty like this. His eyes were locked shut, the furrow of his brows never faltering as he tried to rock against your hand, desperate to feel anything at this point. His swollen, perky lips opened oh so slightly to let the tiniest drop of saliva pool against the opening of his bottom lip. So needy, so pliant, and so fuckable. Just for you. You were going insane.

You used the leverage you had from pulling his hair to guide him back to your mouth, instantly grazing your tongue against his lips to know you were entering. San whined in response, giving you access to whatever you needed.

“Please what? Use your words, San-ah.” You broke free from the kiss to say, squeezing the tip of his cock through the jeans. A wet patch was already forming where the head of his cock lay against; he was already so wet. And all you did was tug his hair.

“I want to—ah, eat you out—Nngh, please… please, I need it.” San was a blabbering, hot mess. He looked at you; no, he begged you with glossy, half-lidded eyes. His breathing was ragged, and he looked so desperate like this. Like the smallest of touches would tip him over the edge. You gave him a quick nod along with an 'okay,' so quiet you could barely hear it yourself. You could barely hear anything over the loud sound of your beating heart.

You were nervous, you had to admit. This was a completely new experience to you. The few relationships you had before San were all the same: vanilla with an occasional doggy, and that was it. The thought of being in control of someone like this, of someone's pleasure, had never crossed your mind. But right now it was all you could think about. San whined at the loss of your warmth as you pulled away, but you quickly took his hand as you led him to your bedroom. Your nightlight was already on from earlier, as San had interrupted your reading session to tell you dinner was ready and served. Something about seeing San in the dim light of your bedroom just fueled your arousal even more.

San closed the door behind him as you sat down on the edge of the bed, the cool comforter a clear contrast to your hot, aching body. Since it was in the middle of June, you had decided to go for a short dark green skirt, lace covering the hem of it. It reached the middle of your thighs, not dangerously short but not long either. It simply gave you enough movement to feel comfortable and sexy; the lighter breeze it gave you in the hot weather was just an added bonus.

Your gaze never left San’s as you slowly spread your legs; the cold air that hit your aching heat made you realize just how aroused you were. You had been so focused on San and his pretty sounds, how he had just submitted to you the second he got manhandled. And oh my god, why did you not think of this sooner?

San looked at you like he was waiting for a command, for anything that would let him touch you right now. You lifted the hem of your skirt to reveal your panties, already soaked through, and motioned for San to sit down on the floor.

“F-fuck,” he growled, eyes now glued to your glistening cunt. He followed your order; of course he did. This man was so lost in his own arousal it looked like he didn’t know what to do. He licked his lips eagerly as he lowered himself enough to be at eye level with the thing he so desperately needed right now. You chuckled at his reaction.

“C-can I? Please, baby, you look so good—fuck, I know you taste so good.” And he was gone. There were no thoughts behind his fluttering eyes other than your throbbing cunt displayed so prettily in front of him. Like a full course meal he couldn’t wait to devour.

You took that as a cue to remove your panties—they were soaked anyway and served no purpose as of this moment. As you threw your panties aside, you put your hands on your thighs, making a show of spreading your legs. San looked up at you, waiting for permission to finally touch it, to devour it. You scooted a bit further towards the end of the bed to give San easier access as you leaned back on your forearms to stabilize for what was about to come.

“It’s all yours, baby, go ahead," you breathed out as your eyes carefully scanned the bigger boy in front of you. San whimpered just at the thought of it, wasting no time before devouring you.

The moment his tongue met your slick folds, he moaned like a man starved, lapping it with worshipful devotion, his whines vibrating against your clit as he lost himself in the task. Utterly devoted, utterly yours. You pulled your leg up to rest the sole of your foot on the bed, making your folds separate even further as San continued. A loud moan left your lips, throwing your head back as you reached down to thread your fingers through his hair—gripping firmly to guide the angle of his mouth exactly where you wanted it. San just moaned in content as he carried on working his tongue through your folds, a little whimper escaping here and there when you teasingly hardened the grip on his hair.

You lifted your head to see the filthy image in front of you. San was palming himself through his jeans, not hurriedly, but enough to make his own hips buck into the touch. His other arm was wrapped around the outside of your thigh as he leveraged himself. His nose, the area around his mouth, even parts of his cheeks were glistening with a growing sheen of saliva and your own arousal while his tongue worked in broad, flat strokes.

“Mhmn—’tastes so good,” he whined as he broke free to gather just enough air to allow him to keep going again. Your hips began a steady rhythm, rolling in time with the wet sounds filling the room: the soft, rhythmic lap of his tongue; the occasional choked gasp when you shifted to let him catch a full breath; and the low, continuous whine that built in his throat and traveled straight into your core.

You could feel every detail of his mouth—the rough drag of taste buds along your folds, the way his lips sealed around your clit and sucked with just enough pressure to make your thighs tense, and the slick push of his tongue curling inside as you tilted forward to grant him deeper access. Your free hand slid down your body, fingers tracing the curve of your breast, pinching a nipple lightly before traveling lower to spread yourself wider for him, holding your folds open so his tongue could lap directly at the sensitive inner skin.

Minutes stretched as you used him like this, chasing the building heat low in your belly with patient, unhurried movements. San had unbuckled his jeans without you noticing, his cock springing free against the tummy of his shirt, glistening with precum. So pretty, so wet for you.

“Such a good boy, baby—ah, just like that," you moaned and felt San’s whole body respond—hips rutting uselessly against the air, cock leaking steadily onto the floor beneath him, thighs flexing as he fought to stay still. The small, muted whimpers leaving his lips are sending vibrations deliciously through your core. He was eating you out like he was drunk—drunk on you.

But this wasn’t enough. You needed to feel him. Not just his magical tongue (cause holy fuck), but all of him. You groaned as you caught sight of his neglected cock, the tip flushed red while producing heaps of precum, begging to be touched. You sat up and used the grip on his hair to pull him away from your aching cunt. San straight up whined, his head frantically trying to find its way back to the beautiful sight in front of him.

“Up, baby, n-need you, please. Inside me, now,” you gritted out without any real power, just pure desperation to feel his throbbing cock inside you. And San growled; he growled. Fuck, you were so whipped for this man.

San yet again wasted no time as he stood up, shimming out of his jeans with a bit of resistance from the sweat sticking to his skin. Reaching back to the neck of his shirt, he quickly pulled it over his head and threw it across the room. You made your way back to the head of the bed, feeling the weight of San sink into the bed as he towered over you.

“Sit with your back against the headboard, baby. Wanna ride you.” San whimpered in response the second those words came out of your mouth. You pushed his chest and guided him to sit against the headboard of the bed, throwing your leg over his lap as you straddle him.

His cock lies heavy on his stomach as he breathes in heavy, ragged breaths. You scooted closer to where your leaking cunt was hovering just above his length.

“Mhmm—touch me, please, baby; I’ve been so good.” San whined, hips bucking up to give him any sense of relief. But his hands remained on each side of your thigh, not moving an inch despite the whimpering mess he was, desperate for any friction. The thought of teasing him flashed through your mind, but you decided it was for another time. You needed him, and you needed him now.

You shifted to make yourself more comfortable, taking San’s cock in your hand to guide it to your entrance. San’s eyes rolled back in pleasure as he moaned, finally giving his neglected cock attention. Still, he sat there without moving, panting as you lowered yourself onto him in one slow, relentless slide. The stretch pulled a broken sound from the both of you. You moved your hands to brace against his shoulders and began to move, rising until only the head remained inside before sinking down again, taking him to the hilt each time. His hands clenched hard where they rested on your thighs, veins appearing like they’d pop any minute, letting you set the pace you needed—deep grinding rolls.

You leaned forward to catch him in a kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue, and, fuck, it was so dirty and so hot you couldn’t help but moan into the kiss. Pulling away, you watched San’s face as you rode him in earnest. His eyes were glassy, mouth open and glistening, cheeks flushed darker than before. Every few strokes you would pause, fully seated, and clench around him, savoring the way his cock twitched inside you and the desperate whimper that followed. You could feel the sweat gathered along your spine and between your breasts.

You could feel the familiar tightness forming in your core, but it wasn’t enough. Your pace was faltering as your thighs grew tired, not realizing the tear sliding down your cheek from the sheer desperation of needing to cum. It was like San could read your thoughts as his hands suddenly grabbed your hips, gaze meeting yours as if to ask if he could take over.

“Please—nngh,” you whined, and it was the only confirmation San needed before planting his feet and fucking into you with hard, fast thrusts.

And holy fuck was he fucking you good. You threw your head back as San nibbled on your neck, wrapping his arm around your lower back to get better leverage and actually fuck the shit out of you. A mix of ah’s and oh’s was filling up the room along with hard, wet skin slapping against each other.

San suddenly reached down to circle your clit with his thumb, and the position you were both in should've made it uncomfortable for him to do it, well, comfortably. The thought of him accepting slight discomfort just to please you, to make sure you feel good, elicits a loud, almost porn-like moan from your lips. San sees it as encouragement and uses the arm around your lower back to get a better grip as he picks up the pace and fucks you so hard you're seeing stars.

San is a moaning mess too, face flushed from arousal as sweat pools on the sides of his face, dripping down to where your bodies intertwine. You can tell he's just as affected as you are when you feel his cock twitch inside you. And, fuck, he feels so good inside you, cock grazing right where you need it the most.

You're so close, heat blossoming in your core as you grow more desperate for your release. Without much thought, you clench around San's cock because it feels so good, and he's hitting all the right spots with his thumb still abusing your clit, and fuck, your orgasm hits you hard and fast—inner walls fluttering, and the tight, rhythmic squeeze pulled his own release from him—hot cum pulsing deep as his whole body twitches, and a hoarse cry tore from his throat. You stayed seated through it, rocking gently to prolong the aftershocks for both of you, until the tremors subsided and the only sounds left were your slowing breaths and the faint creak of the mattress.

You eased off him carefully, resting the side of your face on the top of his head and drawing him into your arms. His face pressed into the curve of your neck, damp with sweat and arousal, and you stroked his hair in long, soothing passes while his breathing evened out.

Outside, the city hummed on, but here the world had narrowed to the shared warmth of skin, the slowing thud of heartbeats, and the quiet certainty that the night still held hours more for whatever the two of you did next.

On the floor before you on his knees, Valko speaks directly to Zayne, “Move your finger.”

Zayne’s voice, and the very nature of his reply, is curt, “No.” He's peering down at Valko past your shoulder, a smug look in tow; one of his hands tending to your clit and the other groping your chest.

Valko’s jaw clenches, “Move. Your. Finger.”

“No.”

“G-guys—nngh—” Standing completely upright, you’re struggling against Zayne’s firm grasp on you, your back pressed against his chest.

“Shh, it’s okay.” Zayne’s lips land near the side of your temple. When he feels you tremble again, he hums, “Good girl.”

“I will bite you.” Valko interjects, kneeling eagerly on the floor.

Zayne looks down at him again but speaks to you, “Sweetheart, will you tell him he’s being a bad boy?” Taunting your inability to reply, his fingers softly pinch one of your nipples.

“Mmm—ngh—I-I—”

“Oh, shut up.” Without thinking, Valko leans forward and grips the sides of your thighs, pushing forward until his face is wedged between your standing legs and below the workings of Zayne’s hand.

You gasp at the feeling of his tongue lapping at your leaking, twitching entrance. As Valko’s groaning, Zayne speaks, “So impatient.”

“Mmm—h-holy fuck…”

“I’m warming her up for you, and you can’t even show a little restraint.” Zayne’s tone is unabashedly condescending.

“Mm-mm…” Valko mumbles, licking at your slit. Pulling back, but still holding onto your thighs, he makes brief eye contact with Zayne, “She smells too fuckin’ good.” It’s quick that he’s shoving his face right back between your legs as Zayne continues to delicately work your clit with his middle finger.

The side of Zayne’s face presses against the side of your head again, holding you close against his bare torso with his unoccupied arm, his lips right beside your ear. “He’s such an animal, sweetheart.” You moan in response to the comment.

Dragging the tip of his finger along either side of your clit, ignoring the peak of the bud itself, he whispers into your ear, “But I bet you like that, don’t you?”

Your voice is a desperate, honest whine, “M-mmhm…”

“That’s what I thought.” He grazes the tip of your swollen clit as Valko needily laps at your cunt.

“Aah! Oh my god—”

“Shh, just relax. We’ve got you.”

Stopping his tongue only a moment, you feel Valko’s breath spill over your slit and between your thighs, “You’re not going anywhere.” You moan loudly as soon as his tongue meets your skin again.

Zayne tsks, “So eager.” You’re confident that he's referring to Valko, but...his tightening grip on your body suggests he may very well be speaking to both of you.

Removing his face once again from between your legs, Valko peers up at your moaning form before turning his attention to Zayne, “You know, even though you’re a total stiff, you really are good at warming her up for me.”

Zayne scoffs, “Well, unlike you, I know a thing or two.”

“Mhm, sure.” Valko’s voice lowers, “Now, move your damn hand.”

There’s a brief silence between the pair as they allow for your latest moan to stretch into the air. Without you realizing it, it’s as if the sound goes directly to their throbbing cocks.

Suddenly, Zayne’s voice carries a slight grit, “Or what?”

“G-guys! Fuck—! M’gonna—” You’re trembling against Zayne’s hand and Valko supports your weak legs in a firm grasp with both of his hands.

“See what you—”

Your release close and right before his eyes, Valko interrupts Zayne, “Go ahead, make her cum. I’ll clean her up.”

Zayne chuckles softly against the side of your head, “Be my guest.”

He continues to draw slow circles on your clit with his finger, the base of his palm anchoring on your pelvis, applying a light pressure to add to the sensation of his finger. “That’s it, sweetheart. Just breathe…don’t fight it. You wouldn’t want to keep him waiting, would you?”

“Mm-mm—nngh!”

“See? I’ve made her cum more times than you could even comprehend.”

“Oh m-my god—Zayne…”

“Shh, be a good girl now.”

“You’re so mean—edging her like this just because she wants my cock that badly, hm?”

“No, I’m—”

“Both of you…s-shut up!” A sharp gasp exits your throat directly after reprimanding them, “Mmm—f-fuck! Nngh!” Collapsing your head back onto Zayne’s shoulder, his free hand abandons your chest and his arm squeezes tight around your waist, sure to hold you up and in place as you cum.

Valko doesn’t wait a second to shove his face back between your legs, savoring each sight, sound, and taste of your release.

“Mmm—you’re both r-ridiculous…nngh—”

Pulling away, his tongue slick with the taste of you, “Sorry, doll, it’s in my nature. What’s his excuse?”

Valko stands up and before Zayne can complete a scoff, he’s practically ripping you from Zayne’s arms, turning you around and shoving you forward into his chest. “Mmm, why don’t you kiss him for me? So he stops complaining.”

Without a second thought, you’re snaking your arms around Zayne’s neck. Despite being both dark and hazy, the look in Zayne’s eyes is one full of pride; he really does love making you cum.

There’s a light smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as you’re rushing to get your lips on his. Instantly and mutually moaning at the contact, your arms leave his neck after a short moment. Your hands are then quick to reach and start unbuttoning his pants.

Valko watches quietly and carefully, noticing the way Zayne’s hands come up to caress the sides of your face as his tongue slips into your mouth—holding you close to him. His eyes snap down to the floor, though, when he hears the remainder of Zayne’s clothes hit the floor.

After watching a moment longer, he does the same with his own clothes as Zayne steps out and lightly kicks what’s around his ankles to the side, his lips still locked on yours.

Valko steps forward, pressing a light kiss against your shoulder, “While you’re at it...” you gasp into Zayne’s mouth at the feeling of Valko’s cock pressing against your skin the closer he gets—his voice gravely and just beside your ear, “you should thank him for making you cum…”

Breaking the connection with a gasp, a thin strand of saliva stretches then snaps between your lips. “T-thank you…”

Zayne smiles softly at you, “Mmhm, of course, my love.”

As soon as Zayne finishes speaking, Valko tugs you back by both of your hips, hard. Gasping on your way back and down, Zayne catches your forearms so you don’t go tumbling forward into him.

“Animal.” Zayne tsks yet again.

Valko simply grins at the comment, staring down at you bent over and trembling in front of him. Lining up the head of cock with your entrance using one hand, he waits. He knows the rules.

“Do you want him to fill you up, sweetheart?”

“Mmhm—ngh—y-yes.”

His voice is warm and gentle, “Hold onto me, okay?”

“O-okay…” Sinking down a bit lower and arching between them, you grab Zayne just below his hips, his hard cock resting by your cheek.

“Fuck—you look awfully pretty, sweetheart.” His thumb strokes your opposite cheek, enjoying the look of your helplessness as you lean toward his cock. “Just waiting to get filled from both ends, hm?”

“Uh-huh…” At your confirmation, Valko’s grip on your hip tightens, his tip brushing against you—the feeling causing you to shudder in anticipation.

One of Zayne’s hands sweeps underneath your jaw, his thumb tugging on the space between your bottom lip and chin, the force parting your lips.

“All right,” Zayne speaks to Valko, “go ahead—slowly...”

Valko’s voice breaks into a moan before he’s even pushed his tip into you, and when he does, that moan turns into a whimper at the pressure, his fingertips digging further into your hip.

Zayne’s voice becomes a gentle coo, “Open your mouth, sweetheart.”

“Nngh—mhm—” Hearing all that he needs to in your eager tone, Zayne’s pushing the head of cock past your lips.

“Shit—” Valko’s hand parts from his cock once able, now both of his hands on each of your hips again. “Can I go faster, p-please?”

“Hang on.” Zayne pushes forward just a bit more—stretching your mouth open slowly.

Valko follows suit from behind at an equally slow pace, “Now?”

“I said—hang on.”

“Mmmph…” The slower Valko goes, the tighter you feel around him, twitching and clenching at each mutual push occurring from opposite directions.

You release a series of muffled moans at the multidirectional stretch you feel which are silenced by Zayne’s cock that’s wedged between your lips.

Zayne groans at the feeling of your tongue gliding against the underside of his length. “Such a pretty, good girl, hm?” He takes a short step forward, his cock almost hitting the back of your throat. Your eyes widen and your cunt throbs at the sensation. “Do you want him to lose himself back there?”

You barely nod, squeezing the flesh on Zayne’s legs just beneath his hips with your fingertips. “Mmhm…” The sound of your agreement is hardly heard.

Zayne doesn’t say another word, he simply looks toward Valko and offers a slight nod. You moan as loudly as the situation allows when Valko finally jerks forward and fills you completely, which sends you forward further onto Zayne’s cock.

“Fuck me—h-holy shit…”

Zayne’s voice is low, “Mhm…”

Valko pulls back partially, “You did a g-great job,” filling you only halfway, “she’s already creaming all over me…”

That familiar sense of smugness returns, “Hear that, sweetheart?”

“Mmm…” A small gag emits from your throat against the tip of Zayne’s cock that’s pressed into the soft palate in the back of your throat.

There’s a strong sense of amusement laced into his low tone, “Good boy, you can keep complimenting me—if you want.”

“S-shut up—nngh—fuck—she’s squeezin’ the hell outta me…”

“I bet she is…” Zayne retracts his cock, offering only a little relief to your throat. “She’s begging you to fill her. Fuck her nice…and hard…for me, okay? Give her what she’s asking for.”

Valko’s eyes are fixated on his cock repeatedly disappearing into you, “Mmhm…”

For the following series of lewd thrusts, Zayne simply stands by, allowing the vigorous thrusts from Valko to send your mouth forward onto his cock each time.

“You’re so beautiful, sweetheart.” Zayne reorients the hair falling around your head to the side, holding it in a loose bundle by your shoulder. “You take us so well…”

Zayne abruptly speaks to Valko in a much more clinical tone than he was just using with you a second ago, “Tilt your hips up more.”

Valko’s voice is ragged, “W-what?”

“Each time forward—near the end—tilt upward. You’ll hit—”

You let out a sharp whine against Zayne’s cock, “Mmmph!”

“Like t-that?”

“Mhm—just...like that.” Zayne looks back down at you, his free hand stroking the side of your cheek that’s partially bulging from the stretch of him, “Keep doing that and you’ll feel her squeeze you even tighter.”

Staring down at you, Valko’s thrusts—while still firm—become far more intentional, groans and grunts falling more easily from his lips. “She’s telling you she’s about to cum.”

“Mmm—ngh—m-my god…she feels amazing…”

“I know.” Zayne lets out a choked groan, “Keep going.”

“Ah—careful there with my cock in your mouth, sweetheart.” You moan pathetically against him, squeezing his legs in apology. “Go ahead, baby, cum...so we can fill you together, yeah?”

“Mmhm…” By now, you’re breathing recklessly in and out through your nose, your whimpers, moans, and gags falling like a hush against Zayne’s cock.

Valko hasn’t let up once since Zayne’s instruction, your legs trembling at each deep, delicious stroke. The stretch, the pressure…each quirk upward of his hips into your cunt has you a vibrating mess, effortlessly clenching down and squeezing him, promptly milking his thick cock as you finally let go.

Zayne moans at the feeling of your whimpers vibrating against his cock, your mouth quite literally now watering, providing a slick, sloppy entrance for him to glide in and out of easily—spit starting to pool out of the corners of your mouth.

He groans, “Good girl.” Zayne and Valko share a glance, “Ready?”

Valko releases a reserved groan, struggling to fight his own release upon feeling yours around him, “Beyond ready…”

As the two finally abandon any and all leftover hesitation, they’re plunging into you from both ends completely. Your hands leave Zayne’s side and press flat against his quads instead, but it doesn’t matter. He’s as deep as his and your body will allow, your eyes widening before softening delicately at the feeling of his hot cum splashing into the back of your throat.

At the same time, your cunt hasn’t abandoned its seemingly endless squeeze and release, Valko’s pelvis pressed firmly into your ass as you feel his cock twitch and release all that he’s been waiting to give you.

With Zayne still his furthest extent inside your mouth, his tip wedging and pushing down into your throat forcefully—additional ropes of his cum spilling down your throat—Valko pulls back to stroke in tandem with each pump of cum he’s providing you, the thrusts still aggressive yet slowed and intentional, each of which in time and in line with the continuation of his release.

Emptying themselves completely, you’re utterly dizzy and trembling, your mind and vision hazy, the only thing you’re able to hear being their moans and grunts that echo throughout the room.

“Holy…fuck…”

9:42 PM

brrrring… brrrring…

[ INCOMING CALL - wooyo 💗🐈‍⬛ ]

you were enjoying a night with your friends at a local bar, but you sigh dramatically at your phone and lower your voice. 

“hi, woo.”

“hiiii,” he drags out the syllable like a kid. “am i on speaker?”

“no… why? don't start being weird just ‘cause no one else can hear you,” you mutter, aware of his embarrassing track record.

“i would never!”

all men do is lie.

“yeah, yeah, what do you want?” you ask, rolling your eyes.

“why so hostile? i miss you.” this kiss-ass.

your friends laugh next to you and you sigh, suddenly fond.

“i’ll be home later, baby.”

“why not now, beautiful? i know you miss me too.”

“i’m gonna hang up,” you deadpan.

“nonono i’m sorry, don’t cut me off,” he says hurriedly and you can hear something like sheets shifting under him, like he's rolling onto his side.

“woo, i’ll be home in a bit, did you need me for something or are you just talking to talk?”

“oh, i need you alright…,” you can feel the grin on his face and the scoff in his voice.

“uh-huh. well, i’m gonna go. text me if you actually need anything.”

the red hang up button is millimeters from your fingertip when-

“wait wait wait! please, not yet,” he rushes, whiny and impatient.

“don't tell me you’re fucking jerking off.”

“what?! don’t say things like that, you’re so perverted…” he sounds oddly offended.

“i’m the perverted one?”

“well, yes.”

“sure.” annoyance sparks in your chest. can this guy get a grip…

“you know i’m not alone right now.”

“mhm.”

“everyone can hear my side of this.”

“mhm.”

“you’re doing this on purpose, aren't you?”

“maybe a little bit.”

there’s a pause. wooyoung makes a sound, and you get ticked off another degree, despite the way his soft voice feels in your ear.

“i just really want my girlfriend,” wooyoung pouts.

“did you lie to me when you said you weren't jerking off?”

“do you think i’m that shallow???... i’m not jerking off, i promise. kinda.”

“what the hell does that mean?”

“i just keep thinking about before you left, when you were being so nice, so good for me.”

“wooyoung.”

“you sounded so pretty. i’m so lucky to be your favorite stress relief.”

“you’re lucky i’m not there right now.”

…

he voice drops - just a little, ridiculously intimate and definitely too much for a phone call in a busy bar.

“so… when you get home…”

“you are so embarrassing,” you mutter as your cheeks turn a traitorous pink.

“what? i’m a yearner, i can't help it.”

“don’t say that, you’re just horny.”

“guilty as charged.”

“you’re not slick, wooyoung.”

“i don't know, i feel pretty slick.”

“oh my god, can you be normal for five seconds?”

“but you’re mad at me and you’re so beautiful and i bet you’re wearing that sexy outfit i like which is so fucking unfair because i can't even see y–”

beeeeep.

you hung up.

wooyoung sits speechless on the sheets, miles away, and scoffs with a grin and his dick hard in his sweatpants, an empty shot glass on the bedside table. he watches the call screen switch back to your messages and pokes his cheek with his tongue.

masterlist ─────────────    @my1003soda  2026 <3

lmk if you guys like this i enjoyed writing it, if u caught the reference ur a real one 👀

“It isn’t.”

“It is to me.”

Before you could argue again, he guided you into the first step almost frustratingly effortlessly and you stumbled immediately. “I told you.”

“You stepped too soon.”

“I stepped exactly when I wanted.”

“You stepped on me.”

“I was testing your reflexes.”

“They’re excellent.”

“So I noticed.”

Another turn and this time he anticipated your hesitation before it happened, adjusting without making it obvious. His hand remained steady at your back while yours rested lightly against his shoulder, and despite every expectation… it became easier. “You’ve done this before,” you murmured.

“A few charity galas.”

“You voluntarily attended galas?”

“I clean up well.”

You glanced down at the pinstripe suit despite yourself. “Unfortunately.”

His eyebrows rose. “Was that almost a compliment?”

“No.”

“You hesitated.”

“I regretted it immediately.”

“I’ll take it.”

The orchestra carried the two of you through another slow turn. Around you, the ballroom seemed to melt into soft gold and candlelight, every couple becoming little more than blurred silhouettes drifting across the polished floor. Somehow, without realizing it, you’d stopped counting your steps. Stopped arguing. Stopped thinking. And Yunho noticed first. “There,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“You’re dancing.”

“I…” You looked down….. you were. Without stumbling. Without fighting him. Your eyes lifted again, only to realize just how close he’d guided you. There was barely any space left between you now, close enough that you could catch the faint scent of cedar lingering beneath whatever cologne the hotel had dressed him in. His hand remained secure at your back, your fingers still resting against the fabric stretched across his shoulder, and for one dangerous heartbeat your mind betrayed you again. The dream. Not the whole thing. Just enough. Enough that your pulse skipped. Enough that your gaze dropped briefly to his mouth before immediately snapping back to his eyes. But he caught it and his smile faded into something quieter, more curious than teasing, as though he’d noticed the change but hadn’t yet decided what to make of it.

Then… everything hanged. Yunho’s body went rigid. The hand at your back tightened instinctively, not enough to hurt, just enough to stop you mid step. His eyes… focused somewhere beyond you. Then beyond the ballroom. Beyond the walls themselves. The warmth disappeared from his expression so suddenly it made your stomach drop. “Yunho?” He didn’t answer as his breathing slowed and his pupils narrowed. Without the protection of his sunglasses, the world he’d been keeping at bay rushed in all at once. At first it was only faint threads. Hair thin ribbons of cursed energy drifting lazily through the ballroom ceiling. Then more.

They multiplied with terrifying speed. Black veins spread through the walls beneath the wallpaper. Dense currents of cursed energy seeped from beneath the polished dance floor like ink beneath glass. Every smiling guest became wrapped in translucent shadows, their cheerful laughter suddenly hollow as wisps of something far older curled around their bodies. Yunho’s jaw clenched. “Don’t move.” His voice had dropped so low you barely recognized it. “What do you…”

“They’re everywhere.”

You followed his line of sight and saw nothing. Just elegant guests. Music and dancing. But Yunho wasn’t looking at the people anymore. He was looking through them. His breathing hitched once as more cursed energy flooded his vision than even he was accustomed to enduring without the barrier of his glasses. “They’ve hidden it…” he murmured, his voice strained for the first time all day. “This entire place…” His fingers tightened against your back. “We’re not standing in a ballroom.” The orchestra played on. No one else reacted. Only Yunho could see what was really beginning to emerge beneath the hotel’s beautiful illusion.

His fingers dug into the fabric at your back. Not enough to hurt just enough to anchor himself. You followed his gaze again, finding nothing except glittering chandeliers and elegantly dressed guests swaying beneath them, but the color had drained ever so slightly from his face. His breathing remained controlled, yet there was a new tension sitting across his shoulders that hadn’t been there seconds ago. “Yunho?” His eyes didn’t leave whatever he was seeing. “I know.”

“You don’t look good.”

“I know.”

The orchestra reached the final note, applause filling the ballroom once more as the surrounding couples resumed their conversations, blissfully unaware that the strongest sorcerer in Japan suddenly looked as though the room itself had begun closing in around him. He blinked once. Twice. Then, with remarkable effort, he smiled. It wasn’t quite convincing, to you anyways. He turned oward the receptionist waiting patiently near the edge of the dance floor, slipping seamlessly back into the role the hotel had assigned him, inclining his head with enough charm that no one would’ve suspected anything was wrong. “Forgive us,” he said pleasantly. “It’s been a long journey. Would you mind showing my wife and me to our suite before dinner?”

The receptionist’s face brightened immediately. “Of course, Mr. Jeong.” She reached beneath the front desk for an ornate brass key attached to an ivory tassel. “The Imperial Suite has been waiting for you.”

“My wife…” You muttered the words beneath your breath as the receptionist turned away and Yunho leaned closer without looking at you. “Play along.” You shot him a look and normally he’d grin. This time… he didn’t and your irritation faded instantly as the receptionist led the way through the hotel, her heels clicking softly against marble as she disappeared into an elegant corridor branching away from the ballroom. Portraits in gilded frames lined the walls, every face frozen in warm smiles that somehow felt increasingly unsettling the farther you walked. Rich burgundy wallpaper stretched endlessly beneath brass sconces, each casting pools of amber light that should’ve felt welcoming.

Instead… the hallway seemed longer than it should’ve been. You’d passed three identical grandfather clocks. Four identical flower arrangements. The same painting… twice. “This hallway wasn’t this long from outside,” you murmured and the receptionist laughed politely without turning around. “The Kurogane has always been famous for its grandeur.”

“It wasn’t…” You stopped yourself. There was no point arguing with whatever this place had become. Beside you, Yunho had fallen unusually quiet. At first you assumed he was concentrating. Then you noticed the way his head moved. His eyes tracked slowly across the walls. The ceiling. The floor. Every doorway you passed and his breathing had become shallower. “Yunho?” No answer. He just kept walking. The farther you moved from the ballroom, the worse it became. Without his sunglasses, every layer of cursed energy concealed beneath the illusion revealed itself all at once.

The elegant wallpaper peeled away in places only he could see, exposing black veins pulsing beneath the walls like living arteries. Smiling portraits momentarily twisted into expressions of agony before returning to normal every time he blinked. Dense rivers of cursed energy poured from beneath closed bedroom doors, flowing silently across the carpet before disappearing through the floorboards. The guests… they weren’t guests anymore. Not entirely. Every person who passed in the hallway carried something wrapped around them. Shadowy figures. Faceless silhouettes clinging to shoulders. Hands protruding from backs. Smiles that stretched just a little too wide before snapping back into place. It all happened in fractions of seconds. Too fast. Too much. Too many.

Yunho’s jaw tightened. He’d lived with overwhelming perception his entire life. He knew how to compartmentalize. How to focus. But whatever cursed technique governed this hotel wasn’t merely creating illusions. It was forcing every layer of cursed energy into existence simultaneously. His temples began to ache as a sharp pressure settled behind his eyes. “Too much,” he muttered so quietly you almost didn’t hear it. You turned fully toward him and saw his eyes… something was wrong. They weren’t focusing anymore. They darted from one point to another, trying to process far more information than any human brain was meant to absorb. “Yunho….”

He blinked hard and the hallway flickered as the smiling receptionist momentarily became little more than a skeleton wrapped in black smoke before returning to normal. Another blink. And the carpet writhed. Another. And the ceiling disappeared beneath endless cursed energy. His breathing caught and your heart dropped. Without thinking, you reached for him, fingers slipping around his hand. Warm and solid. And real. The contact made him stop walking as his eyes left the nightmare unfolding around him and landed on your joined hands. You hadn’t even realized you’d done it. You were simply… holding is hand. Grounding him. “Hey,” you said quietly, your voice softer than it had ever been with him. “Stay with me.”

His breathing remained uneven for another second. Then another. The warmth of your hand cutting through the noise just enough for him to find something real to focus on. You. Not the walls. Not the cursed energy. Not the impossible things crawling just beneath the illusion. Just… you. Always you. His fingers slowly tightened around yours. Not possessively but desperately. “I’ve got you,” you murmured, meeting his eyes without hesitation this time. “Don’t look at everything.” A faint, strained laugh escaped him. “I don’t really…” He swallowed. “get a choice.”

“I know.” Your thumb brushed lightly across the back of his hand before you even realized what you were doing. “Then look at me.” For a long moment…. he did. The endless torrent of cursed energy was still there. The walls still crawled. The guests still wore smiling faces over something monstrous. But your hand remained wrapped around his, steady and unwavering, and your voice cut through the chaos in a way nothing else could as the receptionist glanced back over her shoulder, smiling as though she’d witnessed nothing unusual. “Here we are,” she announced cheerfully, stopping before an enormous pair of mahogany doors trimmed in gold. She slid the brass key into the lock and turned it with a satisfying click before opening the doors wide. “The Imperial Suite.”

Still holding Yunho’s hand… you led him inside. The Imperial Suite looked like something stolen from an old Hollywood film. The mahogany doors swung inward without a sound, revealing a suite so extravagant it barely seemed real. A crystal chandelier hung from the center of a vaulted ceiling, scattering warm light across polished hardwood floors. Floor to ceiling windows overlooked the glittering nighttime skyline of Tokyo, velvet curtains framing the impossible view while a grand piano rested in one corner beside a marble fireplace where a fire crackled softly despite the summer heat. Fresh white roses sat arranged on nearly every surface, their sweet fragrance mixing with the scent of aged wood and expensive perfume. A silver bucket waited beside an impossibly large bed draped in ivory silk, a bottle of champagne nestled inside melting ice with two crystal flutes already poured.

The receptionist stepped aside, her smile never wavering. “I do hope everything meets your expectations, Mr. and Mrs. Jeong. Dinner will be served after tonight’s celebration, but if there’s absolutely anything you require before then, all you need to do is ring for me.” She inclined her head politely before adding, “Congratulations once again. The Kurogane Hotel has always believed newlyweds deserve only the very best.” With another warm smile, she quietly pulled the doors closed behind herself, latch clicking behind her. Silence settled over the room but you didn’t wait a second longer. The moment her footsteps disappeared down the hallway, you turned toward Yunho, your expression losing every trace of the polite smile you’d been forcing. “Talk to me.”

He hadn’t moved. He stood near the windows, shoulders tense beneath the pinstriped jacket, staring across the suite as though he were seeing two entirely different rooms layered over one another. “Yunho?” His eyes finally shifted toward you. “What are you seeing?” For several seconds he didn’t answer. Instead, he slowly removed a hand from his pocket and rubbed at one temple, exhaling carefully before speaking. “The room keeps changing.” His voice had become noticeably quieter than usual, stripped of its teasing confidence. “One second…” His gaze drifted toward the fireplace. “it’s exactly what you’re seeing.” Then it shifted toward the bed. “The next…” His jaw tightened. “the wallpaper peels away and everything underneath it is alive.”

Your stomach sank. “Alive?”

“It isn’t moving like a curse.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s… breathing.” Silence stretched between you. “The walls?”

“They have veins.”

A chill crawled up your spine. “And the people?” His expression darkened. “They’re still here.”

“The guests?”

“I don’t think they’re guests.” He looked toward the closed bedroom door. “I think…they’re trapped.”

You frowned. “Trapped?”

“They don’t know it.” His eyes narrowed slightly, focusing on something only he could see. “Every person we’ve walked past has cursed energy threaded through them. Not inside them…” He searched for the right words before quietly continuing. “Attached to them. Like puppet strings.” You folded your arms, trying to organize everything that had happened since crossing the hotel’s threshold. “So…” Your eyes wandered slowly around the luxurious suite. “it’s not just one cursed spirit.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The hotel itself…”

He looked at you. “Is cursed.” The words hung heavily between you as you glanced around again. The room suddenly felt much smaller. Much less beautiful. “That would explain why none of the reconnaissance teams ever found a central curse.” Yunho nodded once. “They were looking for a monster.”

“But the monster…”

“Is the building.”

You both fell quiet again as outside the enormous windows, the impossible nighttime skyline shimmered peacefully beneath a crescent moon that shouldn’t have existed. Your eyes drifted toward it. “The reports.” Yunho looked over. “The missing civilians. The sorcerers. The construction crews.” You slowly pieced the thoughts together aloud. “Maybe they never disappeared.”

“They’re still here.”

“Like those people downstairs.”

He gave a grim nod. “I think once someone crosses the threshold…” His gaze settled on the closed suite doors. “the hotel doesn’t let them leave.” Your heartbeat slowed. “We did.” His eyebrows lifted. “We left. You remember? We walked back outside.” You stepped closer, your mind racing through the sequence again. “We crossed the barrier, entered the hotel, realized something was wrong…” You pointed toward the door. “then we walked back outside.”

“For a few seconds.”

“Exactly.”

You frowned harder. “So if people can’t leave… why could we?”

Yunho’s expression remained thoughtful. “I don’t know.”

“You think it let us.”

“I think…” He slowly turned away from the windows. “it wanted us to come back.” Neither of you liked that answer. The silence that followed stretched longer this time. Until finally, you looked at him again. “If the building is cursed…. It still has to originate somewhere.”

Yunho nodded. “A technique this complex doesn’t sustain itself.”

“No.”

“There has to be…” You both spoke at exactly the same time. “A demon.” The room fell quiet again as Yunho slipped his hands back into the pockets of his suit, beginning a slow walk around the suite, his eyes carefully studying every detail despite the obvious strain it caused him. “A curse this large needs an anchor.” His fingers brushed absentmindedly across the polished wood of a dresser before immediately pulling away again. “Something intelligent. Something old.”

“Powerful enough to create an entire reality.”

“And powerful enough…” He looked toward the ceiling, where only he could see thin streams of cursed energy flowing through the plaster like rivers beneath ice. “to hide itself inside its own technique.” You followed his gaze, seeing nothing. “So how do we find it?” A faint smile finally returned to his face. Not cocky. Not playful. Just the smile he wore whenever a fight began. “We stop playing by its rules.”

“And how exactly do we do that?”

His eyes slowly moved toward the bedroom. Toward the enormous four poster bed decorated with rose petals and champagne waiting patiently beside it. “I have a feeling,” he said carefully, “this place has a script.” You looked toward the bed then back at him. “The honeymoon.”

“The newlyweds.”

“The dance.”

“The suite.”

He nodded once. “It keeps pushing us toward something.”

“And if we don’t follow it?”

He was quiet for a long moment before answering. “I think…” His voice lowered. “that’s when it’ll finally stop pretending to be hospitable.” The suite settled into an oppressive silence after that. Neither of you moved immediately. The champagne continued to bead with condensation inside its silver bucket. The fire crackled softly in the marble hearth. Somewhere beyond the enormous doors, the muffled sound of laughter drifted up from the ballroom as though the celebration below had never ended. It felt… patient. Like the hotel was waiting. You broke the silence first, pulling your gaze away from the extravagant bedroom. “Then we don’t give it what it wants.” Yunho nodded once, already reaching inside his jacket. “Agreed.”

His fingers disappeared beneath the tailored suit and emerged holding the folded talisman he’d tucked away before entering the barrier. The moment it touched the air, however, the paper blackened around the edges. Ancient ink bled across its surface before the entire thing crumbled into ash between his fingers. “Well,” he muttered, watching the remains fall onto the polished floor. “That’s not encouraging.” You reached instinctively for the sheath normally strapped to your thigh but your hand met nothing. Your expression tightened. “My knife.” Yunho looked over. “It isn’t here.” You searched anyway, patting along the satin dress despite already knowing the answer. Every cursed tool you’d entered with had vanished the moment the hotel dressed the two of you for whatever twisted fantasy it was playing out. “They took everything.”

“No.” Yunho’s eyes swept slowly across the suite. “The hotel did.”

Your jaw clenched. “So we’re walking into this blind.”

“We’ve done worse.”

“We’ve never done worse.”

He smiled faintly. “You always say that.”

“And I’m usually right.”

“You usually are.” The admission earned him a sideways glance. “Don’t get used to agreeing with me.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

You crossed toward the bedroom doors, reaching for the brass handle. “Then let’s stop wasting time.” The moment your fingers closed around the handle the room shifted. It wasn’t visible. There was no flash of light. No violent surge of cursed energy. Instead, it felt like walking into warm water as your thoughts slowed and the air thickened. The silence pressed inward until it settled somewhere behind your ribs and you frowned. “Do you feel…”

Yunho looked up sharply. “Yeah.” His voice sounded farther away than it should have as you turned toward him. He was only a few feet away. Yet somehow…. the distance between you felt immeasurable. Neither of you noticed yourselves stepping closer. Not consciously. The room simply seemed to shrink around you. Yunho frowned first. “You’re looking at me like you want to say something.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I really don’t.”

“You’ve been holding something back all day.”

You folded your arms instinctively, trying to ignore the strange pressure building inside your chest. “You’ve officially lost your mind.”

“Maybe.” He took another slow step. “But so have you.”

“I’ve been perfectly reasonable.”

“You’ve barely looked at me since this morning.”

“Will you shut up with that already.”

“No.” His voice remained calm, almost frustratingly so. “You’ve looked everywhere except at me.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You’ve been avoiding my eyes.”

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

You opened your mouth to argue but nothing came out. Because… he wasn’t wrong. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it,” you said finally, your voice quieter than before.

“I’m making a big deal out of it because it’s different.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is.”

“You imagine things.”

“I notice things.”

“You think you know me.”

“I do know you.” The certainty in his voice caught you off guard. “You clench your jaw when you’re frustrated,” he continued, taking another step without seeming to realize he was doing it. “You crack your knuckles before every mission. You always pretend you’re not hungry until someone puts food in front of you. You drink coffee that’s far too bitter, and every time you’re lying…” His eyes settled steadily on yours. “you stop looking at me.” The room felt warmer. Too warm. Your heartbeat had become strangely loud. “You pay entirely too much attention to me.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I know.”

“You act like I’m easy to read.”

“No.” His smile was smaller now. Softer. “I think you’re impossible to read.”

“Then how…”

“Because I’ve spent two years trying….” He went quiet again. Neither of you seemed capable of stepping back anymore. “You’ve been trying?” you asked quietly and his eyes never left yours. “Every day.” The words landed somewhere deep enough to make your pulse stumble. You shook your head once. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t you.”

“No.” He glanced briefly toward the walls. “I don’t think it is.” The realization hit both of you at almost the same time. The room. The pressure. The strange warmth clouding every thought. It wasn’t forcing words into your mouths. It was… pulling them out. Taking everything carefully buried beneath sarcasm and irritation and dragging it relentlessly toward the surface. “The demon,” you whispered. “It feeds on honesty.”

“No.” Yunho’s jaw tightened. “Worse.” He swallowed once. “It strips away whatever we use to hide it.” The silence that followed somehow grew even heavier. You looked away first. “I still think you’re arrogant.”

“I know.”

“You drive me insane.”

“I know.”

“I want to punch you most days.”

A tiny smile returned to his face. “I know.” Your laugh escaped before you could stop it. “You’re impossible. Is that all you can say? I know? And I…” The next words caught in your throat. Not because you didn’t know them. Because suddenly… you did. The pressure in the room wrapped tighter around your thoughts, urging every hidden feeling toward the surface, and for the first time in two years, it became frighteningly difficult to tell the difference between what the hotel wanted and what had always belonged to you.

Yunho seemed to be fighting the same battle. His expression shifted, frustration flashing across his face as he took one slow step backward. “No.” His voice was firm now. “This isn’t happening because it wants the truth.” You looked up. “It’s happening because it wants us distracted.” He drew a slow breath, forcing his focus back onto the room instead of you. “It doesn’t care what we admit.” His gaze swept across the suite. “It cares that we stop hunting.”

Almost on cue… the chandelier overhead flickered. Once. Twice. Then every light in the suite dimmed at the same time. The warm laughter echoing faintly from somewhere below the ballroom… stopped. Something had realized… its game wasn’t working anymore as the mahogany doors swung open without so much as a creak. The hallway beyond was exactly as they’d left it. Golden sconces cast warm pools of light across impossibly clean wallpaper, the grandfather clocks continued their steady ticking, and somewhere farther down the corridor a woman’s laughter echoed before disappearing around a distant corner. It should have felt comforting. Instead…every instinct either of you possessed screamed that something was watching.

You stepped into the corridor first, your shoulders squaring as your eyes swept from one end of the hallway to the other. “So,” you murmured, keeping your voice low, “where?” Yunho didn’t answer as he removed the easy confidence from his face completely now. His gaze drifted slowly through the corridor, not at the walls themselves but through them, his uncovered eyes tracking currents invisible to anyone else. Every few seconds his focus shifted, following ribbons of cursed energy that bled beneath the carpet before vanishing into the ceiling. “It’s everywhere,” he said at last, frustration creeping into his voice. “I can’t separate it.”

“You said there had to be an anchor.”

“There does.”

“Then find it.”

“I’m trying.”

You folded your arms. “Try harder.”

His eyes finally landed on you. “I’m a little busy seeing six different layers of cursed energy at the same time.”

“That isn’t my problem.”

“It becomes your problem if I can’t tell what’s real.” The words landed sharper than either of you intended. A strange pressure rolled through the hallway. Barely noticeable. Like warm air brushing the back of your neck and you frowned. Something… shifted again. The wallpaper seemed to breathe for the briefest moment before becoming perfectly still again but neither of you noticed. “I need you to focus,” you continued, your tone tightening. “If this thing’s hiding itself, we don’t have time to stand here.”

“And I need you to stop acting like this is simple.”

“I never said it was.”

“You implied it.”

“I implied you were one of the strongest sorcerers alive.”

“I am.”

“Then prove it.”

His jaw tightened and the pressure in the hallway grew heavier as somewhere… something smiled. The demon couldn’t force thoughts. It couldn’t create feelings. But it could feed them. Magnify every irritation. Every frustration. Every unspoken word. Its cursed technique wrapped itself quietly around both your minds, turning tiny sparks into open flame. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing,” Yunho said, his voice noticeably colder now.

“I think you’re distracted.”

“You’ve been distracted all day.”

“I’ve been focused.”

“No.”

His eyes narrowed. “You haven’t.”

“I don’t need this right now.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You’ve barely looked me in the eye since Headquarters.”

“I told you to drop it. God, you are so annoying.”

“You still never answered.”

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“It obviously does.”

The pressure inside your head pulsed and unbeknownst to you, something slipped past your defenses. Not into your thoughts… but into your memories. The dream. Without warning. Without permission. It crashed back into your mind with startling clarity. The warmth of his hands. The feel of him buried inside you…. his lips against yours…. on your neck… his voice murmuring your name with a softness you’d never actually heard from him. Heat rushed into your face. “Stop.”

Yunho frowned. “Stop what?”

You pressed your fingertips briefly against your temple but the memory wouldn’t leave. It only became sharper. More vivid as the demon lingered there, peeling back every wall you’d built around it as Yunho suddenly sucked in a sharp breath, his expression changing completely. “What…” He blinked hard. Then again. “No…”

You looked up. “What?”

His eyes weren’t focused on the hallway anymore. They were focused on you. Specifically… beyond you. Like he was seeing something that shouldn’t have been visible.

“Yunho?”

His breathing became uneven. “I…” He swallowed. “I didn’t mean to…”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked genuinely shaken. “I can see… your memories.”

Your stomach dropped. “What?”

“They’re not mine.” His voice was barely above a whisper now. “They’re yours.” The demon. It wasn’t only pulling at emotions anymore. It was tearing down every barrier between your minds. Yunho staggered back half a step, one hand pressing against his forehead as fragmented images flashed through his vision. A bedroom. Morning sunlight. You. Him with his head between your legs. Him with the taste of you on his tongue…. you waking abruptly. Flushed and breathing hard. Then… him. Looking at you exactly the way the dream had imagined. His hand brushing your cheek. Your fingers tangled in the front of his shirt. The memory fractured into flashes too quick to fully understand, each one carrying the unmistakable certainty that the dream had centered around him.

His eyes widened. “You…”

You froze. “No.”

He stared at you in complete disbelief. “That was…”

“Don’t.”

“You dreamed about me.”

Your pulse thundered. “I said don’t.”

“It was me.”

“I know who it was!”

His laugh escaped in pure disbelief. A sex dream. You had a sex dream about him. “You’ve been avoiding me all day because of that?”

“I wasn’t avoiding you.”

“You absolutely were.”

“I hate you.” The words exploded out of you before you could stop them and Yunho took one step forward. “No.” His voice was quiet and positively more certain then ever before. “You don’t.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I absolutely do.”

“No.” He was right in front of you now, so close your hand only had to reach up to grip at the front of his shirt. “You hate that you want me.” The hallway seemed to disappear as the cursed energy thickened around both of you until breathing itself felt heavier. “I do not.”

“You’ve been proving me right since this morning.”

“I’ve been trying not to strangle you.”

“You’ve been trying not to look at me.”

“I can’t stand you.”

“No.” His voice dropped so low, full of need, want and hunger. “You can’t stand how much you want me inside you…. just like that dream.” Your voice caught. It’s like words became impossible. Because he was right. You knew it. He knew. And apparently the demon did as well. “I would….” Your voice came out shaky, dripping with dishonesty. “I would… rather…”

“You would rather what?”

“I…” The words refused to come. Because they weren’t true. The demon had stripped them away. Everything false. Everything hidden. Everything carefully buried beneath two years of arguments. You huffed, stomping your foot. “I hate you,” you said again, though it came out far quieter this time and Yunho’s eyes never left yours. “No,” he said softly. “You don’t.” And for one heartbeat neither of you moved. Then all at once the distance vanished.

You surged toward each other at the exact same instant, meeting somewhere between anger, relief, and two years of stubborn denial. The kiss was abrupt and breathless, driven more by everything neither of you had ever admitted than by the demon’s influence. It lasted only a moment before the hallway itself convulsed. Every chandelier overhead shattered simultaneously. The lights went black. A deafening screech tore through the corridor. The force of it ripped you apart, hurling you in opposite directions as black tendrils of cursed energy exploded from the walls like living vines and a voice echoed through the darkness. Not loud. Not angry. But absolutely delighted.

“So…” it whispered from everywhere at once, its laughter curling through the hallway like smoke. “There you are.” The hotel had finally stopped pretending as you slammed hard against the wall, the breath driven violently from your lungs splintered as wood rained across the hallway. Twenty feet away, Yunho caught himself on one knee, one hand pressed against the polished floor while the other clutched at his temple. His breathing came in controlled, measured pulls, but without his glasses the torrent of cursed energy flooding his vision had only intensified. The corridor was gone. Or rather… its illusion had finally begun to rot.

The elegant wallpaper peeled back in long strips, revealing flesh like walls beneath that expanded and contracted with slow, rhythmic breaths. Thick black veins pulsed beneath the surface, disappearing into the ceiling where chandeliers now hung twisted and corroded, their shattered crystals suspended in midair instead of falling. The grandfather clocks lining the corridor no longer ticked. Instead they whispered. Hundreds of overlapping voices murmured beneath the walls, too quiet to understand, sounding eerily like conversations taking place behind closed doors. Then… laughter. Low. Patient. Ancient. It echoed from everywhere at once, bouncing through the corridor until it became impossible to tell where it originated.

“So…” the voice purred, every syllable carrying a sickening amusement that vibrated through the walls themselves. “One of the strongest sorcerers alive.” Yunho slowly pushed himself back to his feet, his jaw tightening as he looked into the darkness ahead. “Come out.” The laughter only grew warmer. “No. I rather enjoy watching you search.” The hallway stretched impossibly farther, shadows gathering at the opposite end until they formed something almost human before dissolving again. “I have waited…” the voice continued, “such a very long time to meet you Jeong Yunho.”

Yunho’s expression never changed. “I’m flattered.”

“You shouldn’t be.” The temperature dropped. “I cannot wait to be the one who finally kills you.” The words rolled through the corridor without anger. Without hatred. Only anticipation. “I’ve watched generations of sorcerers come and go.” The walls shuddered. “They all believed themselves exceptional.” A dozen faces briefly emerged beneath the wallpaper. Smiling. Screaming. And then gone again. “They all died.”

Yunho’s shoulders remained relaxed despite the nightmare unfolding around him. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I intend to.” The laughter returned. “Imagine the stories they’ll tell…” Its voice softened almost affectionately. “that Jeong Yunho disappeared inside an old hotel.” You pushed yourself upright, your eyes sweeping across the corridor even though you still couldn’t see the thing speaking. “You won’t get the chance.” It laughed at you. “And yet…” The darkness seemed to lean closer. “you’re both still here.” The corridor trembled. “I think…” The voice sighed almost dreamily. “I’ll keep you. Both of you.”

You frowned, pushing yourself up. “What?”

“For eternity.” Those two words settled over the hallway like a blanket. “The others have been such delightful company.” Every hotel room lining the corridor clicked. One after another. Doors opening just a fraction. And inside each room… figures tood motionless. Men in old suits. Women in evening gowns. Bellhops. Children clutching stuffed toys. All staring silently into the hallway. And none of them blinking. “Most have been with me for decades.” The voice hummed contentedly. “Some longer.”

Yunho’s gaze hardened. “You trapped them.”

“I preserved them.” The figures slowly smiled. Every single one. Exactly the same smile. “They never have to leave.” The corridor darkened again. “And neither will you.” For the first time since the voice had begun speaking, it sounded… excited. “You two…” It let out a low chuckle. “are different.” You exchanged the briefest glance with Yunho before looking back into the darkness. “We amuse you?”

“Oh…” The word stretched almost lovingly. “So very much.” The walls rippled. “I have watched you since you crossed my threshold.” A shadow drifted lazily across the ceiling. “The arguments.” It laughed. “The little insults.” Another ripple went past. “The stolen glances.” Your stomach tightened. “The way you circle one another.” The voice lowered. “So close. So careful. So afraid.” Neither you nor Yunho spoke as the demon sounded positively delighted. “You call it hatred.” Its laughter filled the corridor again. “What fascinating creatures humans are.”

The breathing walls expanded. “You have spent two years convincing yourselves that desire and resentment are the same emotion.” The whisper came from directly behind you. “You almost believed it.” You spun but there was nothing there. Then it came from the opposite side. “But I can taste the truth.” The words seemed to slide across the walls themselves. “It is…” A satisfied sigh left it. “intoxicating.” Yunho’s jaw clenched. “You feed on emotion.”

“I savor it.” The demon practically purred. “Every lingering look. Every heartbeat. Every argument that lasts longer than it should that leads to you both always simmering with desire.” Its laughter echoed through every room. “You wanted one another long before you ever crossed my threshold. I merely removed the lies.” Your pulse quickened despite yourself and the demon noticed immediately. “There…” It sounded almost pleased. “That one. The little flutter. It still happens every time he looks at you.” Yunho stepped instinctively closer to you and the demon laughed harder. “See?” It sounded positively giddy now. “You don’t even realize you’re doing it.”

Another whisper drifted through the corridor. “You protect each other without thinking. You breathe differently when you’re standing this close. You argue because it’s safer than admitting the alternative.” The darkness at the end of the hallway finally began to take shape. Not a full body. Just two glowing eyes opening somewhere inside the blackness. “I think…” The demon’s smile was audible now. “you’ll make marvelous entertainment.”

Yunho’s hand found yours again without either of you acknowledging it and this time… neither of you let go as the demon’s laughter continued to reverberate through the corridor, slithering through the breathing walls until it became impossible to tell whether the sound came from ahead of you… or from inside your own head. Your fingers were still wrapped around Yunho’s hand, the contact grounding enough that neither of you had bothered to let go. His attention, however, had drifted completely away from the taunting voice and his head tilted ever so slightly.

His uncovered eyes narrowed and you seen that look before. It was the same expression he wore seconds before dismantling a curse. “Yunho….” He didn’t answer as the demon continued speaking, amused by the silence. “What is it, Jeong Yunho? Have you finally accepted that this is where your story ends? How disappointing. I expected one of the strongest sorcerers alive to entertain me a little longer.” Nothing. Yunho wasn’t listening anymore. His breathing slowed. The frantic movements of his eyes ceased one by one until they locked onto a single point somewhere beneath the floorboards.

The walls… the cursed energy… everything else blurred. “There you are.” The words barely left his lips and you followed his gaze. “What?” A slow smile spread across his face. Not the one he’d worn in the ballroom. Not the teasing grin he’d aimed at you all day. This one belonged to one of the strongest sorcerers alive. “Got him.” The demon’s laughter faltered as Yunho turned toward you, excitement replacing every trace of strain that had weighed on him since removing his sunglasses. His eyes burned with unmistakable certainty now, locked onto yours as he gave one sharp nod toward the floor beneath your feet. “Below us.”

You didn’t hesitate. Not for another second. Your free hand lifted and the hallway around you suddenly fell unnaturally still. The air thickened as cursed energy flooded your body, gathering first around your fingertips before racing violently up your arm. A soft pink glow bloomed beneath your skin, growing brighter with every passing heartbeat until ribbons of rose colored energy spiraled around your wrist like living smoke. The figures watching from the hotel rooms didn’t move as the demon screeched. “No.” Its voice lost its amusement for the first time. “You stay where I put you.”

Your eyes narrowed. “So much for our honeymoon.” Your fingers curled into a fist and the hallway exploded. A deafening crack split the hotel from end to end as telekinetic force erupted beneath your feet, a massive pillar of shimmering pink energy punching straight through polished hardwood, concrete, steel beams, and everything hidden beneath them. The elegant corridor disintegrated in an instant, marble shattering into clouds of glittering debris while chandeliers tore free from the ceiling as the floor disappeared and let gravity take over.

You and Yunho dropped together through the collapsing levels of the hotel. One floor. Then another. The ballroom flashed past in a blur of screaming guests whose perfect smiles finally twisted into grotesque masks before dissolving into black smoke. Another level. Hotel rooms ripped apart around you. Rotting wallpaper. Bones hidden inside walls. Endless corridors folding inward like paper. Another level. The illusion was dying. Every glamorous surface peeled away to reveal decades of decay underneath. The hotel shrieked. Not the demon but the building itself. It sounded almost alive.

Chunks of concrete rained around the two of you as you continued falling through collapsing floors, Yunho reaching out instinctively to catch your wrist before another burst of your telekinetic energy blasted through the final layer of reinforced foundation and everything stopped. You landed hard in a cavernous underground chamber buried beneath the hotel and silence followed until a slow, wet breath echoed through the darkness. The basement stretched for what looked like hundreds of feet in every direction, its stone walls almost completely consumed by pulsating black flesh. Thick roots of cursed energy climbed every pillar before disappearing into the ceiling above, feeding directly into the hotel itself.

Thousands… No. Tens of thousands…. of human faces protruded from the walls, mouths hanging open in silent screams as though they’d been swallowed whole by the living structure and at the center of it all something moved. Massive. Hideous. Its body seemed incapable of deciding on a single shape, limbs forming and dissolving into one another beneath layers of glistening black flesh. Six elongated arms dragged across the stone floor while dozens of yellow eyes blinked independently across what might once have been a face. Its ribcage split open with every breath, revealing rows upon rows of jagged teeth that extended impossibly deep into its body. Thick cords of cursed energy connected it directly to every wall, every ceiling, every inch of the hotel above.

It smiled and the faces trapped inside the walls smiled with it. “So…” the demon rumbled, its voice no longer elegant or playful but deep enough to shake dust from the ceiling. “You found me.” For several long seconds nobody moved. Then Yunho rolled one shoulder lazily and cracked his neck, his grin returning. “Huh. I’ve got to admit,” Yunho said, shoving both hands into the pockets of his tailored suit as though he’d merely wandered into the wrong restaurant instead of confronting the source of the cursed hotel, “I was expecting something a little uglier.”

The chamber fell silent as you looked sideways at him. “A little uglier?” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah.” His eyes drifted back toward the monster. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You’ve got kind of a… melted furniture thing going on.”

The demon’s dozens of eyes twitched. “I am older than your civilization.”

“I can tell.”

“You mock me?”

“I’m trying to figure out which end I’m supposed to hit.”

One of the creature’s enormous claws slammed into the stone floor hard enough to fracture it. “I built this prison.”

“Mhm.”

“I devoured kings.”

“Good for you.”

“I have consumed sorcerers for centuries.”

Yunho tilted his head. “Still couldn’t build a better face?”

The demon roared. The entire basement shook violently as chunks of stone rained from the ceiling. Then the it’s massive body tore itself free from the web of cursed energy anchoring it to the walls, every one of its grotesque limbs crashing into the stone with enough force to shake the entire underground chamber. The faces embedded throughout the walls screamed in unison as thick cords of black energy snapped free behind it, lashing through the air like living whips. Dust billowed upward in suffocating clouds, swallowing the creature’s lower half while dozens of yellow eyes fixed on the two of you with unmistakable hunger. Then it lunged.

The chamber exploded into motion and Yunho met it head on. His cocky grin vanished the instant the first claw came down, replaced by the frightening focus that had earned him his reputation. He slipped beneath the creature’s strike with impossible speed, the stone where he’d been standing erupting into a crater as the demon’s arm slammed into the ground. Before the dust had even settled, he was already moving again, cursed energy surging around him in brilliant waves as he drove a devastating strike into the creature’s side, the impact thundering through the chamber.

The demon staggered. Not from pain but from surprise. “You…” it snarled, twisting several of its heads toward him at once. “you strike harder than the others.” Yunho flashed it an infuriating smile as he landed lightly several yards away. “You’ll have to be more specific. There’ve been a lot of others.” It roared and that single distraction was all you needed. Both hands swept upward, pink telekinetic energy bursting from your palms in shimmering ribbons that wrapped themselves around several broken stone pillars scattered throughout the chamber. The ground trembled beneath your feet as each pillar ripped free from the earth, hovering weightlessly for the briefest instant before hurtling toward the demon like missiles. One. Two. Three.

Each struck with enough force to fracture bone and stone alike. The first shattered against its shoulder. The second drove directly into its chest, splintering thick layers of black armor before exploding into fragments. The third smashed one of its elongated arms clean off and the severed limb hit the ground with a sickening thud making the demon shriek in fury. Black tendrils erupted from the wound almost instantly, writhing across the floor before weaving themselves into a new arm.

“Great,” you muttered under your breath. “It regenerates.”

“I noticed,” Yunho called back, ducking beneath another massive swipe that demolished an entire section of wall behind him. “Aim for something important.”

“I was hoping that was important.”

“So was I.”

The creature surged between the two of you, forcing you apart with a violent sweep of its enormous body. Stone pillars collapsed. Chunks of the ceiling rained downward. The cursed energy feeding through the chamber intensified until every breath carried the metallic taste of blood. Yunho attacked again from the left and you struck from the right. The rhythm came naturally. It always had. Neither of you needed commands. Years of fighting side by side had carved silent instincts into muscle memory. Every time Yunho forced the demon’s attention toward himself, you punished its exposed flank. Every time it turned toward you, Yunho appeared seemingly out of nowhere to drive it back again.

The monster grew angrier. Sloppier. Its attacks became wilder, fueled by rage instead of precision. And that was exactly when it changed tactics. One enormous arm slammed into the ground between you and Yunho, sending a shockwave racing through the chamber and the floor split apart. You lost your footing for only a moment, just long enough for a second arm to shoot through the dust with terrifying speed. Its claws wrapped around your waist before you could fully recover, lifting you effortlessly into the air. Your breath escaped in a sharp gasp as the creature hauled you toward its enormous face.

“Y/N!” Yunho was already moving. He launched himself across the collapsing chamber without hesitation, cursed energy exploding beneath his feet as the distance between you disappeared almost instantly and the demon laughed. A deep, wet sound that reverberated through every wall. “I think…” it purred, tightening its grip just enough to keep you pinned, “I shall eat her first.” Its countless eyes shifted toward Yunho. “Since you clearly…” Its smile widened. “won’t do it yourself.”

The words landed like a blade and Yunho’s expression changed. Oh, a demon with sex jokes. How original. “Trust me…” he said just loud enough that only he could hear as the monster opened its enormous jaws. Rows upon rows of jagged teeth unfolded as the chamber seemed to darken around you. “when we get out of here…” Yunho reached. Still too far. “I’ll do more than that.”

Its grip tightened and you stopped struggling. Instead… you smiled and the demon hesitated only for an instant. “Got you,” you whispered and both of your hands came together. Pink light erupted between your palms. A concentrated sphere of telekinetic force compressed so tightly the surrounding air screamed around it and the demon’s eyes widened as the blast detonated and the explosion lit the underground chamber in brilliant rose colored light as pure telekinetic force erupted directly into the creature’s face. The impact tore through flesh, shattered bone, and ripped half its skull apart in a violent spray of black cursed matter. One entire side of its grotesque head simply… vanished and the demon screamed as its grip loosened and dropped you.

Before you could hit the ground, strong arms caught you around the waist. Yunho. He barely looked at you as his eyes remained fixed on the writhing monster collapsing backward as black energy poured uncontrollably from the catastrophic wound. “This is it,” he said and you nodded, twisting in his hold just enough to place your feet beneath you again. “Finish it.” He stepped forward, cursed energy gathering around him in impossible amounts, the air bending under its weight as the pressure became almost unbearable. Cracks spread beneath his shoes, racing across the stone floor in every direction while the surviving walls trembled violently around him.

The demon tried to regenerate but the wound refused. Your blast had done exactly what it needed to. It had exposed the core. Hidden deep within the ruined half of its skull, a pulsating mass of condensed cursed energy struggled desperately to rebuild itself and Yunho smiled. “I found you.” His hand lifted and the chamber erupted. Light engulfed everything. The curse’s scream echoed through the foundation of the hotel as Yunho’s technique crashed into the exposed core with overwhelming force. The mass of cursed energy shattered instantly, splintering into thousands of fragments before dissolving into nothingness. The demon’s body froze and every remaining eye stared blankly ahead as the cords anchoring it to the walls snapped one by one. Then the entire creature began to crumble.

Its enormous body collapsed into drifting black ash that scattered through the chamber before dissolving into the air entirely. Silence followed. Deep and absolute as somewhere far above them the hotel groaned. The walls stopped breathing. The countless faces trapped within the stone smiled one final time before fading peacefully into the rock as the illusion had broken and the Kurogane Hotel was finally letting go. Above you, the cursed energy feeding the hotel unraveled in shimmering strands, drifting upward toward the ceiling before evaporating into nothingness. The illusion died with remarkable speed. The elegant ballroom. The endless hallways. The Imperial Suite. The guests trapped in their eternal celebration. Everything vanished.

A rush of cold air swept through the ruins as reality violently corrected itself. The polished marble beneath your feet fractured into broken concrete. Velvet wallpaper became mold stained plaster. Crystal chandeliers rusted away into collapsed metal frames hanging from exposed beams. Even the impossible nighttime sky beyond the windows shattered like glass, revealing the gray afternoon that had never actually disappeared. The sensation washed over both of you in an instant. The tailored suit vanished from Yunho’s frame, replaced once more by his familiar black high collared uniform. His sunglasses, lost somewhere inside the illusion, settled comfortably back onto the bridge of his nose as though they’d never left.

You looked down at yourself. The champagne colored gown was gone. In its place were your combat boots, your black uniform, your cursed tool strapped securely against your thigh once more and you let out a slow breath. “Definitely not going to miss that dress.” Yunho glanced sideways. “You looked good in it.” You gave him a flat look. “I’m choosing to ignore that.”

“You usually do.”

Despite yourself… you smiled.

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The walk back through the remains of the hotel was almost unnervingly quiet. Without the curse sustaining it, Kurogane looked exactly as it had before decades of disappearances. Rotten floorboards sagged beneath every step, sunlight streamed through shattered windows, and vines crawled unchecked across crumbling walls. There were no smiling guests. No music. No laughter. Only silence.

Outside the barrier, the waiting Auxiliary Managers who must of showed up sometime while the two of you were still trapped, looked up the moment the shimmering curtain dissolved around the building. One of them nearly dropped his clipboard. “The barrier…” Another stared at the hotel behind you. “It collapsed…” They all looked toward Yunho. Then toward you. Neither of you looked particularly worse for wear. Dirty. Covered in dust. Exhausted but alive.

Yunho shoved both hands into his pockets as though he’d merely returned from grocery shopping instead of dismantling a cursed hotel. “Building’s clear.”

You nodded once. “The curse is gone.”

For several seconds nobody spoke. Then the entire group seemed to exhale simultaneously. One manager laughed in pure relief before immediately covering his mouth. Another bowed so deeply you worried he might not stand back up. “We’ll notify Headquarters immediately.”

Nearly an hour later, the familiar halls of Tokyo Jujutsu Headquarters welcomed the two of you back beneath the city. Word had spread before you’d even reached the briefing room. Sorcerers paused in conversations as you passed. Several first years openly stared. One instructor looked up from a stack of reports with visible relief. The briefing room itself fell almost completely silent the moment the doors slid open and the department head rose from his chair. “Well?”

You exchanged one brief glance with Yunho as he gestured toward you. “Ladies first.” You rolled your eyes. “It’s done. The hotel’s gone,” you continued, setting the mission folder onto the conference table with a quiet thud. “The curse originated beneath the foundation. We destroyed the core.”

One of the instructors frowned. “Casualties?”

“The demon.”

A few quiet laughs rippled through the room as another instructor looked between the two of you. “Any complications?”

You and Yunho answered at exactly the same time. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

Several knowing looks passed around the room. One older sorcerer leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know whether to believe that answer.”

“You shouldn’t,” Yunho replied immediately and you elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “Don’t encourage them.”

“I’m being honest. You almost got eaten.”

“I didn’t.”

“You were about to.”

“I had a plan.”

“You absolutely did not.”

“I would’ve thought of one.”

“You were improvising.”

“I improvise brilliantly.”

The room relaxed almost instantly as the tension that had gripped Headquarters since the assignment finally broke as instructors began discussing recovery teams and investigators were dispatched to the now harmless hotel. You, meanwhile were finished. Absolutely finished. You stretched one sore shoulder. “If nobody needs me…” Several heads turned toward you. “I’m going home.” The department head nodded. “You’ve earned the rest.”

“I intend to take it.” You started toward the door before pausing just long enough to look back over your shoulder. “It’s been a very long day.”

“Amen,” someone muttered from the back of the room as you sighed dramatically.

“I’m taking the hottest bath known to mankind… and if anyone calls me before tomorrow… I’m pretending I died with the hotel.” A few people laughed. Even the department head smiled. “Enjoy your evening.”

“I fully intend to.” With one final wave over your shoulder, you stepped out into the hallway, already imagining steaming water, absolute silence, and not thinking about cursed hotels, demons… or the kiss you’d shared with Yunho. Unfortunately for you leaning casually against the wall just outside the briefing room, hands tucked into his pockets and sunglasses hiding what you could already tell was an entirely too smug expression, Yunho waited until the doors slid shut behind you before speaking. “So….”

You didn’t stop walking. “No.”

“I haven’t asked anything yet.”

“I know you.”

“I was just wondering…” He effortlessly fell into step beside you. “if that hot bath is strictly a one person invitation.” You groaned loud enough for several passing sorcerers to turn their heads. “I knew I should’ve let the demon keep you.”

His laugh echoed down the hallway. Warm. Cocky and entirely alive. Exactly the way you’d secretly hoped it would be.

═════════ ═════════ ═════════

Your apartment had never felt quieter. It was a modest place tucked away on the west side of Tokyo, far enough from Headquarters that you could almost convince yourself the world of curses didn’t exist once the door shut behind you. Tonight, however, even the silence felt earned. The hot bath had lasted nearly an hour. Every ache left over from the hotel had finally begun to loosen beneath the steam, leaving your muscles pleasantly heavy as you wandered barefoot through the apartment. Your hair was still damp, cool droplets occasionally slipping down the back of your neck, and the only thing you’d bothered pulling on afterward was an oversized black sleep shirt that hung comfortably past the tops of your thighs.

For the first time all day you were comfortable. Your phone sat in your hand while you leaned against the kitchen counter, thumb lazily scrolling through takeout options. “Ramen…” You frowned. “No.” You’d had ramen with Yunho. Bad idea. “Burgers…” Another scroll. “Too greasy.” Chinese? Pizza? Curry? You sighed dramatically, dropping your head back toward the ceiling. “Why is choosing food harder than exorcising demons?”

Almost as though the universe had heard you… a knock echoed through the apartment. Once. Twice. And your shoulders slumped. “Oh, come on…” You looked toward the front door with immediate suspicion. “If that’s Headquarters…” Another knock. “I’m pretending I don’t exist.” Grumbling under your breath, you padded across the apartment and unlocked the door, already preparing whatever annoyed speech you intended to deliver but the words died before they ever reached your mouth.

Yunho stood on the other side. Not in his uniform. Not looking like the strongest sorcerer in Japan. Just… Him. His platinum hair was slightly tousled, as though he’d run a hand through it several times on the walk over. The familiar black framed sunglasses rested comfortably on his face again, but everything else was different. Instead of the rigid high collared uniform you were so accustomed to seeing, he wore a simple black long sleeved henley with the sleeves casually pushed to his forearms and loose black pants.

Your eyes lingered a second longer than they should have and he noticed. Of course he did. “What are you…”

“I went home…” He interrupted so quietly it caught you off guard. His usual confidence wasn’t gone. Just… Tempered. “I showered. I was gonna get ramen…” He smiled to himself. “Then I kept walking.”

Your heartbeat slowed. “Walking?”

“I ended up here.” Silence settled between you as you searched his face, expecting the teasing grin that always arrived before one of his ridiculous comments. But it never came. Instead, he looked strangely thoughtful. Almost nervous. “Then…” he continued, adjusting his glasses almost absently, “I kept thinking.” Your pulse quickened. “About what?”

He laughed softly. “The hotel. The demon.”

“It said a lot of things.”

“It did.”

“Most of them were complete garbage.”

“It also…” His gaze lifted fully to yours. “was right about one thing.” Your heart thudded heavily against your ribs. “Right about what?” He stepped forward. Only one step and you stepped backward. The apartment door remaining open behind him. You hadn’t even realized you were giving him room until he crossed the threshold. He towered over you now, not deliberately, simply because he always had. The hallway light behind him cast soft shadows across the apartment while the scent of rain and clean laundry clung faintly to his clothes. Neither of you spoke for several seconds. Then Yunho reached behind himself without looking and the apartment door clicked quietly shut.

“How us wanting each other…” he said, his voice low enough that it barely carried across the narrow entryway as he took another step and you matched it with another backward one. “is intoxicating.” Your back brushed lightly against the wall. There was nowhere else to go. Your breathing had become noticeably slower. “So…” you managed after a moment, forcing far more composure into your voice than you actually felt, “…you walked all the way over here to tell me a demon made one good observation?”

A smile finally tugged at the corner of his mouth. “No.”

“What then?”

“I came…” His eyes searched yours through the lenses of his glasses. “because all the way home, I kept trying to convince myself it was only the demon talking.” He let out a quiet breath. “It would’ve been easier.” Your fingers curled unconsciously against the wall. “And?”

“And I couldn’t. I kept thinking about before we ever walked into that hotel.” He smiled faintly. “The coffee you always steal from my desk.

“I don’t steal it.”

“You absolutely steal it.”

“You leave it unattended.”

“You specifically wait until I turn around.”

“It builds character.”

He chuckled. “I kept thinking about every argument we’ve ever had.”

“You mean all nine hundred of them?”

“Approximately.”

“And?”

“And…” His expression softened in a way you’d never seen before. “None of them were really about what we were arguing over.”

You swallowed. “I know.” Those two words surprised both of you. Your own eyes widened slightly.

“So you know too.”

You laughed once under your breath, shaking your head. “I knew long before today.”

“Then why…” His voice trailed off. “Why keep pretending?” You looked down briefly before meeting his eyes again. “Because hating you…” A tiny smile found your lips. “has been easier.”

He nodded slowly. “I know.” The apartment suddenly felt impossibly small. “I’ve wanted you,” Yunho admitted quietly, “for… longer than I’d like to admit.” A laugh escaped you despite yourself. “You’re terrible at timing.”

“I know.”

Maybe it was the demon. Or the hotel. Both maybe. Whatever it was however made the tension between you finally snapped. Yunho moved fast, pinning you hard against the wall, his mouth claiming yours in a deep, hungry kiss. His hands gripped your thighs, lifting you up so your legs wrap around his waist so he could hold you there effortlessly, pressing his body into yours while his lips trailed down your neck, sucking and biting at the sensitive skin. A low chuckle rumbled from his chest when he slid one hand under your shirt, fingers brushing over your breast. “He said he’d eat you because I wouldn’t…" he murmured against your throat smirking. "Like I wouldn’t take that as a challenge."

He hands you his glasses, keeping you balanced against the wall with one strong arm. “Hold these for me.” As soon as you grab them he sinks to his knees, draping your legs over his shoulders, mouth finding your pussy through the thin fabric of your panties, kissing and breathing hot against the damp spot. Your head hit the back of the wall and his glasses slipped from your hand as his teeth caught the edge of your panties and tugged them aside before his tongue plunged straight into you. “Fuck…” your hands flew to his hair, gripping to hold on.

Yunho was determined to take his time. Licking slow and deliberately, dragging the flat of his tongue over your folds, circling your clit, then thrusting his tongue back inside, feeling you clench at him. Your fingers tangling in his hair, gripping tighter as he fucks you with his mouth, sucking and lapping until your thighs start shaking. The wet sounds filling the apartment as your moans grow louder, hips rocking against his face until the first orgasm crashes through you and you come loud, crying out, thighs clamping around his head while he keeps licking you through every pulse. “Yunho… please….”

You yank him back up, legs falling from his waist as your mouth crashes to his, tasting yourself on his tongue with a satisfying whimper as the two of you stumble toward the living room, lips locked, hands grabbing at clothes. You shove him down onto the couch and drop to your knees between his legs making Yunho laugh softly when you yank at his pants. "All you have to do is ask, baby." You send him a glare before yanking his pants down and freeing his dick, wrapping your fingers around the thick length, letting it twitch under your touch, already hard and leaking.

You lean in and drag your tongue along the underside, slow and teasing, loving how it jumps for you, tracing every vein, swirl around the head, then finally taking him into your mouth. The taste of him spreads over your tongue as you suck him deeper, letting him thrust gently into your throat while your hands stroke what doesn’t fit. “Shit….” Yunho groans because he wants to last but it’s you…. the woman he’s wanted for far too long right now gagging on him, drool pooling at the corners of your mouth….

He pulls you off, hauling you up for another bruising kiss. “I need to be inside you…” Your shirt comes off fast and Yunho’s mouth latches onto your breasts, sucking one nipple while his hand kneads the other, biting and sucking marks into the soft flesh, leaving dark hickeys across your chest as you tug his shirt off next, the two of you moving onto the couch.

You straddle him, reaching down to line him up with your soaked pussy. The stretch is intense as you sink down, taking every inch until he’s buried deep inside you and you cry out as Yunho groans, hands gripping your hips. “Fuck, that’s it. Take it all. My good girl." His praise makes you clench hard around him as you start riding him, rolling your hips slow at first, then faster, hands bracing on his chest. Every downward stroke drags his dick against that perfect spot inside you.

Pleasure builds fast. Your breathing turns ragged as Yunho watches your face, eyes dark with possession. “Look at you, riding me like you can’t get enough. You trying to make this pussy mine…” His words push you over. “It already is….” You squirt hard around him, soaking his lap and the couch. Your thighs shake and Yunho doesn’t stop. He thrusts up into you, pounding through your orgasm, making it last before he flips you.

You end up bent over the couch cushions, ass up and his hand comes down in three sharp spanks that make you moan. “Of course you like that.” He grins, spanking you again before he slams back inside you, thrusts harder and deeper than before. The couch creaking under the force as one of his arms hooks under your stomach to hold you up when your arms start to give out. Then you feel him move his hand. Two of his fingers push in alongside his dick, stretching you even wider.

The fullness is overwhelming and you scream out his name, coming again, walls clenching around both his dick and fingers but Yunho keeps thrusting through it until you’re trembling and dripping and only then does he pull out, gently, kissing down your spine. "I got you," he murmurs, turning you onto your back and letting your legs wrap around his waist as he sinks back into you. “Look at me," Yunho orders softly. "Don’t look away."

His thrusts start slow again, building steadily. Each one dragging along your sensitive and overstimulated walls. “Don’t ever avoid me like today again. You’re mine. Say it." Your mouth opens but only broken sounds come out. The pleasure is too much. All that comes out is desperate babbling. “Y… Yunho… fuck… so deep… yours… please…"

He smiles, possessive and tender all at once. "That’s my girl. Taking me so well. This pussy belongs to me. Come on, baby. You’ve got one more in you. Come with me." His pace picks up again. The eye contact never breaking as your hands clutch at his shoulders. Every thrust punching a moan from your throat. “Come for me," he growls. "Now."

You shatter together. Your orgasm ripping through you while Yunho buries himself to the hilt and fills you, hot pulses of cum flooding deep as he keeps thrusting slowly through both your highs, making sure every drop stays inside and your legs stay locked around him. He leans down, forehead pressing to yours, still holding your gaze, now ruined and all his. “Good girl," he whispers between heavy breaths. "So fucking perfect. And all mine."

═════════ ═════════ ═════════

A week had changed absolutely everything. And somehow… Absolutely nothing. The arguments were still there. The sarcasm. The constant need to prove the other wrong. The petty competitions over who finished paperwork faster, who made the better coffee, who had the higher curse count that month. None of that had changed.

The only difference was… Now, when Headquarters watched the two of you bicker across the briefing room, someone quietly collected money from the instructors who’d insisted the relationship would mellow you both out. It hadn’t. If anything… It had made the arguments worse. Because now they ended with stolen smiles instead of slammed doors.

Now Yunho knew exactly how to get underneath your skin. And you knew exactly how to get underneath his. It was infuriating. Wonderful. And entirely exhausting.

“Absolutely not.” Your voice echoed through the underground parking garage beneath Headquarters as you followed several steps behind Yunho toward his car that he barely ever you come to realize used, the fresh mission file rolled tightly in your hand. “We’re not walking through the front entrance.”

He clicked his key, the black sports car chirping quietly as its lights flashed. “It’s a nightclub.”

“Exactly.”

“So?”

“So there’s one entrance.”

“There are six.”

“There are six exits.”

He looked over his shoulder. “There are also six entrances.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I genuinely don’t.”

“You never genuinely don’t.”

“I really don’t.”

You let out an exaggerated sigh. “The demon knows we’re coming.”

“It probably does.”

“So we don’t announce ourselves.”

“We’re sorcerers.”

“We’re investigators.”

“We’re exterminators.”

“We’re dramatic.”

“We are not dramatic.”

He stopped walking and slowly turned, raising one eyebrow above the edge of his sunglasses. “You blasted through five floors of a haunted hotel.”

“That was tactical.”

“And this will be too.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “I can’t believe I date you.” The grin that spread across his face was almost insufferably pleased. “You adore me.”

“I tolerate you.”

“You have lived in my apartment three nights this week.”

“Temporary arrangement.”

“My toothbrush is next to yours.”

“Coincidence.”

“You stole three of my shirts.”

“They’re comfortable.”

“They’re mine.”

“They’re ours now.”

He laughed. “There she is.”

“What?”

“My girlfriend.”

“I was just proving a point.”

“You were.”

“You don’t have to sound so smug.”

“I absolutely do.” He opened the passenger door for you with a ridiculous little flourish and you stared at it. Then at him. “Show off.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’ve called you worse.”

“This morning.”

“You deserved it.”

“I probably did.”

You climbed into the car anyway and twenty minutes later neon lights painted the rain slick streets in electric blues and deep reds. Music pulsed from somewhere inside the nightclub, the bass vibrating faintly beneath your boots as the two of you stood across the street watching a line of people disappear through the entrance. The sign overhead flickering: ECLIPSE.

According to Headquarters… Three disappearances. Seven hospitalized. One Special Grade curse masquerading as the club’s owner. You sighed, studying the building. “Still think the front door’s stupid?”

“Yep.”

“You realize if everyone starts screaming….”

“They’ll scream anyway.”

“They might not.”

“They definitely will.”

“You always underestimate civilians.”

“You always overestimate subtlety.”

“I have subtlety.”

“You once introduced yourself to a curse.”

“It felt polite.”

“You said….”

He held up one finger. “Hi. My name’s Jeong Yunho. I’m here to ruin your evening.’”

“You practiced that.”

“I absolutely practiced that.”

A helpless laugh escaped you. “You are unbelievable.”

“I’ve heard.” He reached up, adjusting the bridge of his sunglasses before looking toward the nightclub one last time. “So…” He asked casually. “front door?”

You groaned. “I still hate this plan.”

“I know.”

“I still think you’re wrong.”

“I know.”

“I still think you’re an idiot.”

“I know.” You folded your arms, pretending not to notice the tiny smile threatening the corner of your mouth. “I hate you.” His grin was immediate and warm. And entirely too confident. “No…” He stepped closer, cupping your face for the briefest moment, and stole a quick kiss that was soft enough to make your annoyance dissolve before you could stop it before pulling back and nudging his sunglasses higher onto the bridge of his nose with one finger, the familiar cocky smile settling back into place as though he’d just won another argument. “you don’t.” Before you could answer, he turned and sauntered toward the nightclub entrance, hands already disappearing into his pockets like he owned the place. You watched him go and shook your head, smiling to yourself. “No,” you murmured under your breath before following after him.

“I really don’t.”

═════════ ═════════ ═════════

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the entire lot goes dead silent, tools clattering to the floor as heads turn. they know yeosang's bike is basically sacred and off-limits, and they were waiting for the explosion.

you hear boots crunch on the gravel, and you don't need to look up to know it's yeosang.

he stops right in front of the bike, and you finally meet his eyes. he scans your body, the way your legs part over the seat, skirt riding up slightly.

yeosang steps closer, long fingers sliding over yours, adjusting your grips on the handlebars, pressing your palms into the right spots as his thumbs brush over your knuckles.

"comfy?" he asks, voice low and deep, sending sparks straight between your legs. some prospects let out low whistles, as the two of you remain in your bubble.

your cheeks burn as you nod, biting your lip, "yeah.. it's really comfortable."

a faint smirk falls on his lips as he swings a leg over the bike behind you, his chest pressing to your back and his arms cage you in, gripping the handlebars outside your hands.

"good," he murmurs against your ear, breath warm, "you look good on my bike."

the engine roars to life beneath the two of you, making a gasp fall from your lips as yeosang revs it once. he pulls out of the lot, keeping you tucked tightly against him, the wind making your eyes water.

yeosang pulls around to the back roads, down a dirt path lined with trees, slowing at a small clearing. he kills the engine, hands resting over yours again, stroking your knuckles softly.

"did you think i'd get mad at you?" he asks, chuckling softly.

you turn your head slightly, observing his side profile, "i mean.. you get mad at everyone else.."

"they're not you," he whispers, brushing his lips against your jaw. one hand leaves the handlebars to slide down your side, gripping your hip to pull you back harder against him and you can already feel him hardening through his jeans. "nobody touches her.. but you can ride anything of mine you want."

you shift on the seat, pressing back into him, pulling a groan from his throat as he nips at your neck before he kisses the spot he bit, soothing it with his tongue. his free hand slips under the hem of your skirt, fingers tracing up your inner thigh until they brush the edge of your panties.

your breath hitches as he presses two fingers against your clothed slit, rubbing firm circles in the fabric, making a whimper fall from your lips.

yeosang lifts you effortlessly, turning you around so you're facing him, pulling your legs over his thighs on the stationary bike. his hands grip your ass, kneading the soft flesh as he pulls you against the bulge in his jeans. you grind against him instinctively, the rough denim dragging over your damp panties.

his mouth crashes into yours, tongue sliding in easily, causing you to moan into the kiss. your hands thread through his hair, tugging enough to pull a growl from his chest. he breaks away to trail bites down your throat, sucking marks into your skin so everyone knows you're his.

"been thinking about fucking you since i saw you on her," he admits, voice gravelly as one hand pushes your panties aside, fingers gliding through your slick folds, "so wet already. all from sitting on my bike with me?"

"yes," you breathe, rocking against his hand. yeosang slips two fingers inside you without warning, curling them to hit that spot inside you that makes your vision blur.

he pumps them slowly, thumb circling your clit in teasing little circles. yeosang's other hand works open his belt and jeans, freeing his cock, hard and leaking. you wrap your hand around him, stroking him from base to head, enough to make yeosang hiss and buck into your fist.

"on the bike," he commands, lifting you higher to line himself up with your entrance, the head of cock nudging against it, "ride me right here."

you sink down onto him inch by inch, stretching you open until your ass meets his thighs, groans falling from both your lips.

yeosang's hands grip your hips hard enough to bruise as he grinds against you, "fuck.. so tight.. made for me."

his hand guides you up and down on his cock, and he thrusts up to meet your rhythm. he yanks your top down, mouth latching onto one nipple and sucking hard while the other pinches the other. you arch into him, allowing his cock to slip deeper into you.

"yeosang- oh god, right there-" you whimper, grinding into him.

he switches sides, biting gently before soothing with his tongue. one hand slides back to your ass, spreading you wider as he fucks into you harder. the other slips between you, rubbing your clit in time with is thrusts.

"cum on my cock," he growls against your skin, "let me feel you."

you shatter with a cry, walls pulsing around him as you soak his lap and the leather seat of his bike. yeosang keeps thrusting through it, chasing his own release.

he flips you suddenly, bending you over the tank of the bike, your chest pressing against the metal as he slams into you from behind. one hand fists in your hair, the other reaching around to rub your clit again, pushing you toward a second orgasm.

you clench around him as he buries himself to the hilt, cumming with a guttural groan, filling you up in hot ropes. yeosang falls over you, chest pressing to your back as he presses soft kisses to your shoulder.

"easy, baby," he murmurs against your neck, one hand stroking up your thigh as the other smooths your skirt down, "you did so good for me."

you sigh as you melt into him, head tipping back onto his shoulder. yeosang reaches into his jacket, pulling out a small cloth, wiping between your legs where his cum is starting to leak out.

"still comfy?" he asks with a faint smile, adjusting you so you're nestled against him again, legs draped over his.

Hongjoong had waited long enough.

He had spent about little over three months without touching himself in any way, not since he had gotten that Prince Arthur piercing on his dick. It had taken around a month to heal. A whole month through which his only outlet was letting you ride his face until he’d cum from having you fuck yourself into his mouth and nothing else. He had been so eager too, tongue out and sweats lowered to his thighs, ready to let himself cum in his stomach.

He had learnt how to work his fingers on you with expertise, never getting tired of how they felt inside you. He’d drag them in and out of you while letting his hard dick rub at your bare thigh, making himself cum just telling you about how he couldn’t wait to have it inside you, staining your skin and bedsheets. You'd scold him at that, like you didn’t get horny knowing he was ruining them with just the thought of you. Like you hadn’t ruined all your panties thinking about it too.

But then, when the time had finally arrived, tragedy had struck: a world tour.

Now, Hongjoong hadn’t planned that one. Or at least hadn’t really thought that it’d be a problem. He could find someone on tour. Someone lucky enough to be the one to feel it for the first time. But he couldn’t do that now.

“What are you thinking about?”

You had been lying on the bed, sheets pilling between your bare legs that lazily intertwined with his. Hongjoong rested the side of his face over the pillow next to you. His eyes had gotten lost on some spot on your face, but you could tell he was somewhere far, far away. Wherever he had been, you could see your question bringing him back to you. He shook his head slightly, his fingers carefully pulling a strand of hair away from your face.

“Nothing”

But he had known. He had been thinking about how it had to be you. It could only ever be you.

And so when he realized the tour would interfere with both of your plans, he had started to prepare himself to endure three months of not seeing you. Not touching you. God, the thought was driving him insane.

“You don’t... uhm...”

You had tried to ease his worry, but shame was making the words pile at the base of your throat. The thing was, Hongjoong and you hadn’t really spoken about what was going on. Sure, he had pretty much made himself at home between your legs, mapped every part of your body trying to saciate his thirst, untouched himself. But you didn’t want him to think you thought you were exclusive, in case he didn’t feel that way. You didn’t want to tell him to have his fun somewhere else either, afraid he might think you didn’t love him. Because you did.

“You don’t need to... I know you promised to use it with me for the first time but, well, I think... uhm, I understand. If it’s too much”

“What do you mean?”

“If it becomes too much to bear while you are there” god, the thought itself made you sick. You swallowed it loudly “I understand if you sleep with someone else on tour”

It had been a bit of a improper conversation to have at a coffee shop early in the afternoon, but that had been one of the only and very few free moments Hongjoong had had to offer you. He had been too busy between practice, meetings, and more practice. He had sat across you in a beanie, most definitely hiding hair he hadn’t had the chance to wash in a few days. Basic practice clothes that smelled faintly of sweat and his own particular scent, always so tantalizing when he’d hug you in an efusive greeting after days of not seeing you. You couldn’t do much more, not in public. And with him not being able to move too far away from the studio, it had been like this for the last couple days leading to the tour. He had looked tired and yet so happy to see you even if for just a moment. After you had spoken those words though, he looked even more gaunt than you had ever seen him.

“Why would you tell me that?” it’s all he asked, and you felt yourself become small.

He sounded disappointed.

“Just in case you falter? I don’t know. I don’t want you to feel bad if you change your mind when you are over there"

“Do you think I’m going to?”

“No? I don’t-- We haven’t really spoken about where this is going or what page we are on” you had felt the heat crawl up your neck, embarrassed and also scared that he was staring at you like that “And I know you have a lot of pent-up frustration, and you know... you are always talking about the clubs and events you go to and the pretty fans you see and all that”

His anger disippated, watching you making yourself crawl into yourself in front of him, pushing through the shame of bringing those memories to him. Had he told you about these? When you were suprssing your feelings for him, did he really sit there and tell you about other women? Had you looked so sad as you did now, despite how hard you were trying not to?

“I don’t want anyone but you. Not now, not after I fulfilled my promise. Not ever”

That shut you up. You felt his hand rest on top of yours, brown eyes never leaving yours. They were tranquil, honest. You figured yours might be a bit glassy. It had been enough to ease your worries and ease his heart. Had he left you there with those thoughts for three months, he wouldn't have been able to forgive himself.

The kiss before the night he was supposed to be driven to the airport with the rest of the members had taken place behind their dorm building. Whatever excuse he had given to sneak out he hadn’t told you. He had held you against the wall, your back arched and your arms around his neck. It had been hungry and heated when he had gotten a hold of you, but it hadn’t been until the pace had slowed down, lips barely brushing against each other in a teasing rhythm, that he had felt himself get hard against you.

“Does it not hurt anymore?”

He shook his head, his tongue gliding left and right through your bottom lip as he did so. He kissed and sucked on it softly, savoring you.

“It’s ready for you”

“I can tell”

You giggled against his lips, and the sound echoed in his ears. It'd made his heart skip a beat, warmth spreading through his chest and all over his body. God, he could take you there and then. Not even out of lust, he just needed you closer. Impossibly closer. He dropped his head and buried it in the crook of your neck, the small beads of sweat on his forehead wetting your skin. There were so many things he wanted to say: I miss you. I need you. I love you.

They all pressed against his ribcage, suffocating him. He let out a deep sigh, trying to ease his breathing. Compose himself. You caressed his hair, a little dry from the recent bleaching, and he hummed against your shoulder.

“I wish you could come with me”

“It’ll be so worth it when you come back”

“Is not just about that. You know is not just about that” he lifted his head and his eyes settled on yours, the light of a nearby lampost swimming faintly on his blown pupils “You know, right?”

Your hands caressed the soft skin of his neck and found their place at both sides of his face, cupping it with the utmost care.

“I do”

You did, the affection piercing through you as overwhelming as exhilarating.

The two months the tour had lasted had been the most agonizing Hongjoong had ever experienced. The good news was, he could touch himself now. You had both agreed upon it, even if he had wanted to deny himself that privilege. You had insisted that he wouldn’t be able to help it, and would eventually feel bad about it if he forced that rule on himself. With a little caveat to satisfy the both of you.

That was the reason why Hongjoong had asked for the single room for himself this time around, no one having any reason to deny him. That’s why he was propping his phone in different places, finding the best angles to show you all he wanted you, and only you to see. You had received so many videos all the way through it.

In some he had propped the phone against his laptop that rested on the bed between his legs, open and eager. He had stroked himself, small steel piercing glinting under the hotel room light over his pink tip, eyes a bit lost somewhere behind the phone. He had told you he had had your pictures open on the laptop screen.

“Not even a scandalous one” he had texted.

“Just one of you smiling”

“I miss it so much”

He had folded a pillow in front of him, his pretty pale ass up in the air as he thrusted into it. You could see him dragging his tongue through the pillowcase, moaning and biting into it every time he buried his cock against the soft fabric. He had his phone to the side, so you could see him in all fours pathetically humping his own pillow, laptop open to his side playing the recording he had made while he fingered you in the backseat of his car. He had made many other since then, too.

He had a video you had taken when you were abusing his pretty mouth, fucking yourself on his tongue. It was shaky and frantic, and he could see his own cloudy eyes rolling back. He was embarrassed of how loud his moans had been, even when muffled under the delicious weight of your whole body over his mouth.

God, he had even let you play with his asshole. It had been one of these times he was so desperate he had almost fucked you with his freshly pierced dick, all health risks be damned. Then he had felt your wandering hand, and he had lifted his face from were it had been buried on your chest, sucking at your tits. Your eyes had shot him a question.

“Does it feel good?”

And he had nodded faintly. Unsure of his answer, you had done it again, slowly and carefully. He dragged his clothed dick against your leg, and that had been it. He had let you patiently and teasingly draw circles around it while messily making out with you, moaning into your mouth when you’d press your pinky finger against it. It hadn’t gone farther than that, but he had made a mental note of it. Put it aside for some other time when you both had the time, and the means, and the lube. He’d do anything. He’d do everything, as long as it was with you. No one else could touch him like you did.

Not even himself, no matter how much he squeezed himself in front of that camera. Face flat against the bed, lazily fucking himself into his own hand thinking of you. You zoomed into the video, his eyes closed, messy hair and face red. His eyebrows knit together as another whiny moan left his mouth. He looked so embarrassed when he stood up, planting his ass on his calves, staring at the mess he’d done. His hands completely covered in the proof of his nasty antics: sheets ruined, sweaty, threads of cum all over it. His bed. Where he had to sleep. He looked so shy when he got up from the bed and cut the video off.

“You look so cute” you had texted the next day after you’ve had time to watch it.

“That’s all?”

“I’d have cleaned them up with my tongue”

“Thank you”

“No need”

“I slept in the couch. I feel bad for the cleaning lady, though”

Some days he couldn’t even be bothered to record for you, no matter how much he wanted to show you. He’d get lost looking through videos, some he was completely incapable of looking away from. That one of him sliding his pierced cock through your pussy, a personal favorite of yours too. It had felt so good, the feeling of it hard and so hot rubbing against your clit, pressing against your entrance. It was so wrong, you both knew you were crazy enough to try and put it in. Every time it'd press against your cunt you’d moan in protest, the little frown on your face actually making him want to push forward even more. It was disgusting really, how much you both had made out of it. The slick spread all over your pussy had made it easy for his his cock to glide through you, Hongjoong’s precum leaking from his tip making the sound slicker, obscene.

He had held it still while you thrust your hips in the air, rubbing yourself against it, making sure his pretty tip touched your clit perfectly on the way down every single time. He had thought of marrying you in that position, stupid thought. It had made him shudder, his orgasm suddenly dangerously close. He had held your waist against the bed one more time, his other hand stroking himself at a quick pace as the tip dragged against your folds.

“Please?” he had asked.

You knew what he had meant, and you had obliged every single time.

His body shook, and he pressed his tip against your entrance before he came. It was the closest he could get to it, and he loved the sight: your hungry pussy, covered in his cum dripping down and into the couch. He had taken a second to breathe, engrossed in the sight in front of him. He looked almost enamoured.

“Are you gonna clean it up?” you had teased, his hungry eyes, still blown going from your pussy, to your eyes, back down. He had fallen on his knees on the floor, hands on your knees and face dropping to your core. You had stopped him, your palm pressing against his forehead in an almost comical manner. You both exchanged a look “That’s not what I--” you started, before you realized his stare wasn’t changing, the grip on your knees never softening. You swallowed, a small whimper falling from your puffy lips when you had seen him drag his tongue over your pussy with determination, his dazed eyes never leaving yours until he had cleaned you all up from his own mess.

Hongjoong had come back on a Wednesday morning, and he sent you the room number the moment he had booked it. He had insisted on going to a hotel instead of your apartment.

“I don’t want you to get any complaints from the neighbours” he had said, and he had been so serious about it too.

It was big, luxurious, and way more expensive than your mind could have started to comprehend. It was that sort of hotel, the kind that had a big, fancy guy at the front stopping you from coming in until you had shown him the reservation. It made you think about Hongjoong, about how things were before he debuted. He was on a league of his own now, and you were along for the ride.

It had never made you feel as small as it did now, inside the elevator and speaking the floor number to the lady so she can press it for you. It feels wrong somehow, being in a place like this, meeting your global superstar secret boyfriend at a hotel you could never afford a night at without sacrificing two months of salary. Inadequate. That's the word you are looking for.

You text Hongjoong the moment you let your back fall onto the absurdily huge bed. He texts back right away.

“I’ll be there in twenty”

He must be so tired, you think, and yet he still wants to see you. Do you really deserve that? It feels so wrong for you to be lying here, and you can't help but fiddle with your fingers while you wait. Why does it have to be like this? Why do you have to be like that? Months waiting for this and the moment you get here you are, what exactly? Scared? Sad? About what? You could tell how much he loved you three months ago. Isn’t that good enough? Wouldn’t he be so upset if he walked through that door and saw you like this?

You hear the door open when your face is still between your hands, splashing water on it to calm yourself down. You can't tell if he has arrived surprisingly quickly or if you have lost track of time. You hear his voice call your name from the entrance and your heart leaps from your chest. You dry your face and discard the towel on top of the faucet, running into the main room to jump into his arms. You feel yourself soften and melt against him. The touch of his hoodie against your nose, the familiar feeling of his arms around you, the small kisses he was peppering through your hair. You sniffle and he parts from you. His eyes search yours, worried with reddish, dark circles around them.

“What’s wrong?”

You shake your head, you really don’t even know yourself.

“I’m not sure” it scares him the way to say it, how is he supposed to help you? “It’s just... overwhelming?"

“What is?”

“You” you panic “Us. This. In a good way, is just” the grip of your hands tighten on his shoulders, hoping he understands you want him close, that he won’t misunderstand “I’ve never felt this much before. It’s a bit scary”

You let out a breathy laugh. Hongjoong brings a hand to caress your cheek.

“We don't have to do it today”

You scoff at that “Are you kidding?”

He doesn’t laugh.

“I can wait forever” he says “I can wait forever for you”

You take in his reddish eyes, the small break-outs in his skin, the dullness of it. The way he stands in front of you with little strength to stand up. You caress his cheek, and his eyes flutter close for a second.

“You look so tired” you whisper into his lips “Come here”

You walk him towards the bed, take his shoes off when he sits down on the edge. He watches you kneel in front of him, pulling them off, socks too, placing them neatly next to the bed.

"Wait" he says in a low voice, a bit broken.

He asks you to get up by tugging at the sleeves of your sweater. He remains seated and his hands roam to your lower back in a gentle hug. He looks up at you, and you can understand what he wants without a word. You bent down slightly.

"Sorry" you say against his lips "I forgot the most important part"

You place a soft kiss on his lips. They are a bit chapped, rough against yours. He exhales deeply, and you can feel some invisible weight lift from his shoulders. His grip on your back, his lips, it all softens. Your fingers softly scratch underneath his jaw, earning yourself a shudder. You part his lips with yours, gently but a bit demanding. It's always the sweet moments that do the most for both of you. The slow kisses, the ghostly touches, the sound of your lips parting and tongues dragging against each other at an agonizing slow pace. His hands lift the hem of your sweater and you let him slip it ouf of you. He's pleased to find out you are not wearing a bra. You feel his shaky breath on your exposed chest, making goosebumps spread through it even before his lips start leaving wet, open mouthed kisses on your skin. He palms your ass through your jeans, and you so generiously unzip them and take them off before you venture downwards again, bare knees against the carpet now.

His hand find its way to your head in a generous pat, fingers caressing your scalp in gratitude. You look up at him and he feels a chill down his spine, it makes him straighten on his seat. Your hands go up and down his legs a few times before you grab at the waistband of his sweats, and he eagerly lifts his hips before you have time to ask for permission. You pull them down, leaving him on his probably overpriced plain t-shirt and underwear. You can see the outline of it, half hard pressing against the fabric. It’s like a gift on a Christmas morning, the wait to open it as sweet as what’s inside. Your hands softly knead at his thighs, massaging the tired muscles underneath.

“You’ve worked so hard”

You kiss the inside of his thigh. Short, sweet kisses over the soft flesh. You feel him open his legs wider and you smile against his skin. You get closer, letting your nose nudge at his bulge, enjoying the way he sighs in anticipation. You look up at him, and the sight of him above you, pupils blown despite the tiredness on his body has you pushing your knees further apart.

“Are you ready?” you ask playfully, and he nods.

Your fingers sneak past the elastic of his boxers, and you pull them all the way down, throwing them somewhere in the floor. It’s not the first time you’ve seen it, but it’s the first time that you can touch it freely. Hongjoong sucks in a shallow breath when your fingers curl around it, it escapes in a wanton moan when you kiss the metal piece decorating his red rip. It feels cold in contrast to the heat of his member. The taste of salt and sweat on your tongue as you drag it from to base to the tip makes you moan, and you feel his hips buck when you suck at it. Your lips wrap around the tip, playfully circling it with your tongue a few times before taking it deeper inside your mouth. Hongjoong’s hand grabs onto your hair, it stings. It feels so good, too. The moan it draws from your throat reverberates on his cock, and he can’t help but to push himself deeper inside you, making you gag.

“Sorry” he says, his voice faint.

You pull him out of your mouth with a sweet, nasty pop before your eyes look up at him.

“You taste so good, you know that?”

A sound like a whimper comes out of him as he smiles at you with cloudy eyes. He loves the way your hand softly caresses at his thigh.

“Yeah?”

You nod, still stroking him, making sure to rub your thumb over the piercing when you reach the tip. The action draws a shaky breath from him, and it takes everything in you to not choke yourself on it on purpose. Some other time. Not now. You need to take him sweetly into your mouth, flattening your tongue against his cock and taking him in at the most torturous pace. You can’t help but to moan all the way down, the subtle outline of his veins against your tongue, the cute noises coming from Hongjoong above you as he tries to not fuck your face making you open your legs wider against the soft carpet.

“Stop, stop” Hongjoong gently pushes you away from him, and the way your brows knit over your pretty eyes as you look up at him makes him feel guilty “Or I’ll finish”

Your bottom lip protrudes in a slight pout, but you comply. You stand up, and he backs himself until his back is against the headboard, eyes never leaving your body.

“We can’t let that happen” you crawl towards him, knees sinking in the mattres and caging him underneath you “You need to cum inside”

A pathetic moan rips through Hongjoong's throat and his nails dig on the fat of your hips where he has anchored himself. He pulls you towards him, a bit roughly.

”Are you sure?”

“I don’t want you to do it anyhwere else. You are never cumming anywhere else” you murmur against his temple with a soft kiss, and he understands. The possessiveness, the promise, the leash round his neck. He’s okay with it. All of it “Want to see it go in?”

Hongjoong nods, his hair tickling at your neck and chest. He's panting just by watching you align yourself with him. You are both familiar with the feeling of his tip pressing against your entrance, having tortured each other multiple times by doing just that. The moment you start lowering yourself onto his lenght though, your breath hitches and so does his. Despite how much he wants to witness it going in, his eyes close the moment he feels his tip getting sucked in by your hungry, welcoming pussy. It's wet, and tight and so warm around him, his brain is shuting down any sense that isn't touch, comitting the feeling to memory. The initial resistance is barely there, and the unfamiliar feeling of his piercing dragging inside your walls causes you to let out a surprised moan, making your hips halt.

“Okay?” he pants.

You nod, reassuring him. Your face is already so red when you look down at him, and the way your chest heaves up and down so close to his face making his mouth water.

“It feels different”

He's not really listening. His mouth opens and sucks at your nipple with a moan.

“Good?” he asks with his lips pressed against your sternum before dragging his tongue all over your breast, playing with the soft flesh of it.

Your hand goes to his neck, gently pushing at it until he lets go of your tits and looks at you. His eyes, open and glossy and pleading look at you with so much adoration, so much desperation.

“You feel so fucking good” you almost cry "You are not even in yet"

A low moan dies at his throat, but you can feel it where your hand is still gently choking him. You sink lower, moaning into each other's mouth at how easily you bottom out, his cock practically slipping inside. He fills you up so perfectly, hot and hard and you can still feel the small piece pressing against your inside, deliciously poking at your walls. It’s making you delirious, you can feel the heat breaking through your body like a fever. You can see it in Hongjoong too, his chest and cheeks flaring red like a rash.

“Can you feel it?” he asks, pressing his palm against your lower stomach like he's trying to feel it too.

You bit your lip and nod, savoring the feeling and clenching around him to give him a taste.

"I can feel it all the way, it touches me so good"

Your words make Hongjoong grab at your hair and push you towards him in a hungry kiss with a low groan. Your pussy can't help but clench around him when his tongue disgustingly sucks at yours. One hand fists at your hair, pressing your face against his so he can push his tongue deep inside your mouth, almost as if he's trying to fuck your throat with it. It's suffocating: the way your moans choke on his tongue, your mixed drool falling from your joined lips down your chins. It's got your pussy spasming. Hongjoong lets go and you gasp for air, a few threads of saliva linking your abused lips. The sight of you like that has him moaning loudly, the sound obscenely reverberating through the walls in the otherwise silent room.

God, you haven't even started to move yet.

When he feels your hips lift, his gaze immediately goes down, eyes trained on the way his dick goes back inside, sliding inside your pussy with a noise so sinful that a breathy, laughter-like moan escapes him. You back your hips down to the base, rolling them in a way that has you both grabbing at each other, nails digging into flesh without much care. His skin feels warm to the touch, already sweaty. Your hips have found their pace, rolling and dragging with the only thought of wanting his piercing to hit that sweet spot inside, never wanting to let it go. Hongjoong’s dick is buried deep inside, his pubic hair rubbing against your clit ever so slightly with every desperate roll of your hips. You fuck him at a frantic pace, making sure to moan right into his ear. You know how much he loves that.

You feel Hongjoong’s hands prompting you to slide up, but you bury your head on his neck with a shake.

“No” you whine “I need it inside” Hongjoong’s dick twitches at your words, and it makes you violently clench around it with a pathetic moan. You don't want to drag it out, not even one bit. You want the feeling of his piercing deep inside, deliciously rubbing against your insides over and over again “It feels so good, it feels so so s-good”

“I want to watch it go in again” he pleads, hands despairingly grabbing at your hips. You feel obliged to give him what he wants.

You lift your hips, but his bliss in interrupted when he feels his dick pulling out of you. The way his nails dig into your flesh hurts, his desperate grip and scared, confused eyes softening your heart. You want to give him all he wants. Forever. He can take whatever he needs. You lie in front of him, propping yourself on your forearms to look at him through your open, inviting legs. He doesn’t know where to stare. Your pretty face and puppy-like eyes, or your pussy full on display to him, desperate.

He crawls to you like a madman, the sight making him forget what his original wish was. Hongjoong wastes no time getting on his stomach and burying his tongue in your soaked cunt, the fricition of the sheet against his dick prompting him to rut against them. You moan in surprise, the delicious wet feeling of his tonge pressing at your entrance making your toes curl.

"It tastes so much better like this" he says, his fingers toying with your pussy and spreading it wide for him "It tastes so much better when it's fucked"

You whimper at his words, at the way he rubs at your clit the way he has learned to. He’s inside you in one swift, desperate thrust, like he might die if he's not inside you. He feels like he might. Hongjoong gets back to his senses when you kiss him softly, as if bringing him down to earth. He's panting over you, a few loose strands of hair covering his pretty, glassy eyes. You caress his scalp, tugging a bit.

“You said you wanted to look at it”

He nods, like he just remembered. Both your eyes fall in between you two. Hongjoong parts your knees before his hands move to the back of your thighs. He pulls out slowly, mouth watering at the slick covering his cock. He waits until he can see the piercing pop up, the head is almost out when you protest.

“Put it back in”

You push your hips, and he wants to ruin you so badly. The head goes back in, the yet unfamiliar feeling of the metal dragging at your walls making your face twist in a way that has Hongjoong losing control and putting it all the way in. He presses as hard and deep as possible, bending your knees against your chest so hard you can feel them cramping. It draws a loud moan from you, almost like a yelp.

“Is that okay?” he asks, worried.

You make eye contact, and you say nothing else. Your arms come to hold onto the back of his neck, bringing him close to you, burying your heads in each other's necks.

“Deeper” you demand.

“It can’t go deeper”

“I want it” you almost cry. You know he’s right, you know that, and yet “Please?” you beg.

He can’t deny it. Even if you ask him the impossible, he’ll give it to you. He’ll find a way.

He lets his weight do the job, pushing your knees almost next to your ears. His hipbones dig onto your ass as he tries to push into you impossibly deep.

“Fucking... heaven” he breaks into a moan.

“Do I feel good?” you ask, out of your mind.

Hongjoong laughs, genuinely. He has lost his mind too. It’s the way you clench around him. The warmth, the tightness, your body against his, your voice echoing in his head. The moment his hips start dragging against yours he knows he's gone.

“I don’t want to cum” he says it like he’s stopping himself from doing so at that very moment, begging himself not to “I want to stay like this-- keep ah-- keep fucking you” he drags his hips against you, never letting himself pull out too much “Cum inside you” he pants “Over and over again. Forever”

Your moans have started to sound like cries. He had been right about doing this at a hotel. If it had been your apartment, or anywhere else, someone might have called the cops. You can feel how damp the sheets are underneath, you have made such a mess already. The sound gives it away: wet, loud, embarrassing. With Hongjoong never pulling away, the pressure never eases. His piercing digging into the perfect spot over and over again, you keep clenching around him.

”Fuck me” you cry “I need you to fuck me”

He hears you, and he obeys.

“I have to put out a bit for that” he apologizes against your ear.

“No!” you stupidly hold harder onto him.

“-'m sorry”

He parts from you, grabbing your arms and unlocking them from his neck with more ease than he expected. He presses both your wrists against the soft bed before gently asking you with a soft touch to lay on your stomach. You obey with a whimper, anticipation making your damp thighs tremble.

You prop your ass up, but with a gentle hand he presses down on your tailbone to where your clit graces the satin sheets. He exhales with a shaky breath, like he can’t believe he gets to do this finally. This is how he has always wanted to do it. All the times he had fantasized about bending you over and humping you like a dog were finally coming true. That’s all he is and deserves to be to you. A pathetic bitch you allow to fuck you, because you are so kind and sweet to him like this. His hands knead at the flesh of your ass with reverence, his mouth open and letting out quiet, barely audible whimpers. He pushes your cheeks apart, eyes set on the way your pussy comes into view, waiting for him to fill it up. Your lips part with some difficulty, the slick and precum making them stick together. Hongjoong thinks it looks so pretty, red and swollend and fucked like that.

Your hands fist into the sheets when he puts his whole length inside, the throaty whine he lets out earning another clenching around his hard cock. He watches it go in slowly, and realizing how much he's drooling he lets his spit fall to where your cunt is sucking his cock in with almost a mind of his own.

He presses his palms on the small of your back, hips bucking and dragging against your ass every time he pounds his cock deep inside you. He needs to close his eyes to not cum. The way you are moaning, the screams muffled by the pillows. The sound his hips make against your ass mixing with that of your leaking pussy getting abused over and over again. The way your hands are blindly reaching backwards, attempting to get a hold on him. It’s already doing too much.

“No” he groans, you feel his forehead press against your shoulder. His pace falters, but it never stops. The weight of his whole body on you and his cock buried deep inside you is making you drool onto the bed “I’m going to cum”

He’s apologetic, yet his hips never halt. He can’t control himself, not when you feel like this.

“Cum inside me”

“Don’t say that” he begs.

“I want it inside, please”

He cries into your ear, loud and pathetic. You are familiar with that sound by then, the way his body trembles and stiffens. You are not familiar with the warm feeling of hot threads of cum pressed deep inside your cunt, but you welcome it with a string of whimpers. You clench around him over and over again, ripping moans against your ear from him every single time as he unloads inside you.

“I’m sorry” he says, it breaks your heart.

"It's okay, it’s oaky” He feels you shift and start getting up, and he worries for a second while his mind is still cloudy. He gets to a sitting position, and when you feel him slipping out you desperately grab onto him, hands on his thigh “No, don’t get out!”

A bit lost and still riding his high, Hongjoong lets you handle him, lying on his back and with his head almost hanging from the edge. Truth is, you don’t care, and neither does he when he sees how you start riding him again without ever pulling out. His cock is too sensitive, the piercing definitely working his magic on him as well. It makes his hands pull at his hair as he watches your pretty ass grinding against him, his cum spilling from your cunt and onto the base of his cock with the most disgusting noises he’s ever heard. He watches you ride it with his mouth open, the overstimulation making his hands shake where they try to settle on your waist. You use his cock to fuck yourself on it, nails digging on the bedsheets as you frantically slam your ass against his hips. He lets you use him, his head hanging from the bed with an euphoric glint in his eyes as he stares up at the ceiling, tears of pleasure dangling at the corners of his eyes. The bed shakes with the violent, hysterical way you fuck him until you cum, loud and shameful and so in love with him.

He finds strength to push himself up, kneeling behind you with his arms lazily embracing your waist as his head rests on your shoulder, leaving open-mouthed kisses while you try to catch your breath.

“I love you” he mutters against your ear “please” he begs, not sure as to what for.

Whatever it is, you’ll give it to him.

“I love you too”

--

Boyfriend!mingi who always asks for consent on everything, even if it’s just to hold your hand or kiss your forehead.

Boyfriend!mingi who buys matching jewelry of each of your initials, not for a claiming purpose. But simply to show off the world that he has the best girl in the world.

Boyfriend!mingi who always reassures you that your virginity isn’t an issue for him and that he won’t pressure you into things just because he wants to.

Boyfriend!mingi who comes home from work just to lay on top of you for cuddles, his large hands slipping under your shirt for maximum closeness.

Boyfriend!mingi who always triple checks with you that even a make out session is okay, even if you were the one who initiated it.

Boyfriend!mingi who likes to spend the hours you lay next to each other reminding you that you’re more than just a body to him and he’s not just dating you to gain your virginity. He genuinely wants to spend the rest of his life with you.

— “Are you sure? Like are really sure you want to?” “I don’t know, Ming…” “That’s okay, baby. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Boyfriend!mingi who clears his schedule just because you said you wanted to try tonight. He’ll have everything prepared before nine o’clock.

Boyfriend!mingi who starts out slow and sweet, undressing you piece by piece, followed by kisses to each inch of your body exposed to him.

Boyfriend!mingi who looks up at you for the okay, burying his face in between your thighs when given the green light. Moaning against your clit as his tongue swirled around it.

Boyfriend!mingi who slips one finger inside you to see if you’re ready enough, pressing kisses to your inner thighs when he hears you gasping from the intrusion.

Boyfriend!mingi who slips a condom on before gently pressing his tip against your entrance, whispering ‘are you sure, baby? We can stop right here..’ before slipping himself deeper inside you.

Boyfriend!mingi who give gentle, shallow strokes to not hurt you more than you already were. But it was enough to make you cum quickly, which was not his ideal. But he liked knowing he made you feel good.

She covers her mouth with one hand, chocolate brows tying together above wide eyes. “Oh my god. You’re— do you have any idea what people are saying about you?” You nod, timid, body still tight. She rips her hand from her mouth while putting the pieces together, “How fucking long— I don’t even understand— you don’t sing.” 

“I don’t sing,” you repeat, still whispering because you don’t trust your voice at any other volume. 

Still holding onto the back of the couch, she lowers herself until she’s sitting on her calves, eyes still wide, jaw still slacked. She looks up at you and there’s a ghost of a frown on her lips, her voice shaky as she realizes, “You lied to me.” 

“I didn’t lie,” you’re quick to defend. “I just didn’t tell you.” 

Your name falls from her lips coated in disappointment. “You deliberately kept it from me.”

Disappointment is worse than anger. “I kept it from everyone, Jen.” 

“I’m not everyone!” she nearly whimpers, her voice cracking, strained. “This is a whole side of you I don’t know, this is— this is like a whole half of you that I know nothing about! Do you know how many episodes I listened to before I even recognized your voice?” 

Your bottom lip quivers, jaw hinged tight. Her words are like an arrow through your fucking chest. 

“I only realized because you told a story about me. I recognized my own story on my best friend’s secret fucking podcast,” she doesn’t move as she seethes, like she’s frozen in place, too. Your heart wrenches with guilt. “Don’t you think maybe you should have asked me, maybe run it past me that this exists before posting my story online?” 

You’re nodding, fumbling over your words. “I’m sorry, that’s why it’s anonymous—”

“I don’t care!” she yells, standing up off the couch. “I know it’s me, and now I know it’s you.” 

Panic surges through you with force. “Please— Jen, please don’t tell anyone.” 

She stares at you, arms flat at her sides, face twisted in heartbreak. You almost open your mouth again, ready to beg, but she cuts it off by asking, “You don’t trust me, do you?” 

You shake your head. “Of course I—”

Her voice raises again, “You didn’t trust me with your secret, and now you don’t trust me to keep it. You think I’d expose you after you created an entire double life based on fucking anonymity?” 

A double life. Is that really what Unscripted is? A different half of you? Another person detached from yourself, your own personality? Is anything about her, you? Is anything about you, her?

You try a step forward. “I trust you, Jen. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice cracks again, shoulders slumping, face going round. This is so much fucking worse than anger. The sadness, the disappointment… She feels betrayed. 

Your lips part, a strained, guilty noise forcing its way through. You can’t form any words, you don’t know what the fuck you could possibly say to make any of this better. 

Words you’ve said too often lately, you find them inside you again, “I don’t know.”

Now, it just sounds pathetic. A sorry fucking excuse for lying to, for hurting your best friend, your roommate, your sister. But you don’t have a reason; you knew she wouldn’t judge you, you knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, and yet you still didn’t tell her. You don’t know why. 

“You don’t know?” she repeats, like she didn’t hear you the first time. “You’ve spent months strategically hiding this from me, and you don’t know why?” 

Your lips quiver, eyes stinging, chest growing tight. She sees it, but she holds her ground, “Were you ever going to tell me?” 

You don’t trust your voice, so you shake your head. You could have gone your entire life without anyone knowing you’re the face behind the name, the voice behind the stories, the advice, the vulgarity. Tears fall. 

She shakes her head like she can’t choose which words she wants to say first. She looks at the floor. “We live together, we share everything. You know everything about me.” She looks up again, nose twitching with what you’re sure is tears trapped in her chest, “You trusted hundreds— maybe thousands of people with personal, sensitive information I don’t know about you. How is that fair?” 

“They don’t know who I am, Jen,” you blurt, your voice coated in a cry. You still haven’t moved from the door, there’s too much space between you, and it feels wider with each exchange. 

“I do!” she finally shouts, pointing at her chest, a single tear falling down her cheek. “I know you and I fucking love you, what are you so scared of? That I’m not going to love you anymore because you make up stories on a podcast?”

“I don’t make them up,” your voice drops in defense. “They’re all true, at least a piece of them is, even if they didn’t happen to me.” 

She laughs, but it’s hollow, you can hear the congestion in her sinuses. “That’s what you took from that? You think I’m calling you a liar?” 

“No—”

“Do you even understand why I’m upset?” she shouts, patience thinning. “We’ve known each other for years! I thought I knew you down to the fucking bone, and you hid something this— this huge from me. This is huge, the episode you posted today, everyone is talking about it!” 

“I know!” you shout back, taking another step forward. “I know they’re talking about it and I’m terrified! I didn’t mean for this to happen—”

“Who are they?” Her voice is suddenly calm again as she brings the heel of her palm up to her nose. “I know the tall one is Yunho, who’s the other one?” 

You pause, heart dropping. You don’t want to tell her. You have no choice but to fucking tell her. You think your heart might fall out of your ass fully as you mumble, “Wooyoung.” 

She blinks at you. “Wooyoung? Like, Jung Wooyoung? Black hair? Whore? The one I’ve slept with? That Jung Wooyoung?” Embarrassed, terrified of what her response will be, all you can do is nod. Her palms hit her forehead as she circles the coffee table, pacing. She stops again when she’s facing you, piecing it together, “So Tall is Yunho, PMO is Wooyoung. You asked Wooyoung for sex advice about Yunho because you had sex with Wooyoung.”

“No,” you answer with certainty. “I haven’t had sex with Wooyoung.”

“What?” Her hands find her forehead again. “You said you trust him, that he knows you or whatever. Fuck, I fucking knew something was weird with you two at the Penny. What the fuck did you do?” 

You look down at his hoodie still on your body, you remember everything you said to him fifteen fucking minutes ago. What did you do? Too much. Too much to come back from. 

Yunjin looks too, apparently. “Whose hoodie is that?” Your head snaps up, mouth going dry. “I recognize that fucking hoodie, he– what did you do?” 

As if it’s instinct, you drop your shit at the small table beside the door and rip the fucking hoodie over your head, throwing it to the floor like it’s on fire. It feels criminal to be wearing it, like he’s in the room with you, sharing your defeat. She watches it fall to the floor then looks back at you, then to the hoodie again like she’s buffering, trying to put pieces that you still haven’t given her together.

“Why him?” she mutters from across the room. “Why does he know you? Why does he get to know things I don’t?” 

“He doesn’t know about Unscripted,” you mutter just as quietly, chest rising and falling with every single nerve beneath your skin. 

“We’ll circle back to Unscripted,” she’s quick to fire back. “Trust me. Right now, I want you to tell me why Jung Wooyoung knows things about you that I don’t.”

You hate the words that you swear you can taste now, “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” she argues, voice edged with frustration. “Tell me. Or is this something else you can’t trust me with?” 

“I don’t fucking know!” your voice raises, strained because you fucking mean it. “I don’t tell him anything, I asked him for advice about Yeonjun and now he knows things about me. I don’t sit down and tell him my fucking secrets, he just— when he says things about me, they’re right.”

“It started with Yeonjun?” Her eyes widen, hands flying to her roots again. “What the fuck? How long has this– I don’t even know what the fuck to call it. When did you hook up?” 

“The night you took me out to get over Yeonjun,” you answer without a second thought. “He found out– whatever, we hooked up in a random bedroom. We didn’t have sex, though.”

Her brows are knitted together. “Then what did you do?”

“I– he– did you listen to the episode about overstimulation?”

Her face drops. “That was him?” 

You nod, bringing your hands up to rub at your face, the words falling from your lips like water now, “That was right before Yunho, and like, literally right before Yunho. And since Yunho, him and I have been weird until I asked him for advice at the Penny, now we’re normal again and he picked me up from work because my car died and then he took me to a batting cage and a diner and then I told him I want to kiss him–”

“What?” she interrupts you, blinking rapidly. “What? Tonight?”

Your voice heightens in pitch, “Like, maybe fifteen minutes ago?” 

“What the fuck,” her palm covers her mouth again. “What the fuck?”

“I didn’t kiss him,” you whisper, cheeks heating all over again. “He said he couldn’t do that to Yunho.”

“Wooyoung said no,” she repeats like she can’t fucking believe it. You nod. “I can’t believe you were the one– since I’ve met you– what the fuck is going on?” 

“Wooyoung!” you finally yell. “Ever since I met him my life has been derailed. He knows me, but the more he knows me the less I know me, like he can see through me, I- I can’t explain it.” 

She gets quiet before she says your name, it sounds pitiful, like she feels bad for you. Your stomach fucking hurts. 

“Come sit down,” she says calmly, pointing to the couch. 

You blink at her, “Jen–”

“Sit down or I swear to god,” she cuts you off, voice stern. You jump into movement, feet carrying you toward the couch as she commands, “You’re telling me everything and you’re going to be honest.”

You’re nervous as you sit on the farthest cushion, knees pinned together, fingers curling into the plush beneath you. “What about Unscripted?” 

“I didn’t forget about it,” she sits on the other side of the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest. “But my best friend who has always been in a committed relationship is acting really out of character right now and I need to know why.”

You run your fingers through your hair as you sink into the couch, your heart split in two. But you tell her, you tell her every single detail, from the night you met Wooyoung to the night you brought Yunho home to what happened before you walked through the door to your apartment. 

“Do you remember the night you found out about Yeonjun? The basket?” she asks when you finally finish, as if she’s been sitting on the question. You nod. “I asked you if he saw you, if he made you feel special.” 

“He didn’t, he never did, I know that–”

“He seems like he does,” she dips her chin. “Wooyoung.”

“Yunho sees me,” you argue. “Yunho is good to me. I’m fucked up for wanting Wooyoung like that.”

“No you’re not,” she quickly argues. “I mean, I don’t think you’re fucked up. It's instinct. You were together the whole night, it makes sense.”

Your voice goes quiet, “He was right, though.”

“Yes, and you didn’t kiss him,” her upper body moves like she’s telling you the obvious. “You didn’t act on the impulse.” 

“Because he stopped me,” you laugh a little on the words. “If he had kissed me, I would have fucked him, Jen.” Yunjin stays quiet, thinking, chewing on her bottom lip. Your head dips backward, “Fuck, I should tell him, shouldn’t I?” 

“Yunho?” She asks. 

“Yes,” you sigh. “It’s not fair if he’s committed to me and that’s all it takes for me to jump some other guy’s bones.” 

Yunjin snorts, “I don’t think this is just some other guy, babe, but I get what you’re saying.” Her lips scrunch to one side, “Do you even want to be committed to Yunho? Do you want to be committed to anyone right now?” 

Your chest feels hollow. “I don’t know.” She nods like she was expecting that answer. “Isn’t that bad?” You lean forward a little. “I don’t– that’s not me.”

“Why can’t it be you?” She shrugs. “You’ve been in a relationship for almost all of your adult life, you don’t even know what it means to fuck around.”

“I don’t want to fuck around–”

“You sure?” she teases, a playful smile on her lips. “It sounds to me like you’re dying to fuck around, especially with Woo–”

“What’s he like?” you cut her off. Purposely. “In bed. Is it valid that everyone wants him?” 

Her lips scrunch again, “Hate to break it to you, but yeah. Absolutely. Like, two-hundred percent–”

“Okay,” you cut her off again. “I get it.” 

“This is all I wanted, by the way,” her voice is low again, serious.

Your brows tie together. “Huh?”

“With Yeonjun, when you finally let me in I felt like I understood you a little better. I love you, I want to know all of the things that make you, you.” 

You frown, heart cracking in two all fucking over again. “I’m sorry, Jen.” 

“And just to reassure you, I won’t tell anyone that you’re Unscripted,” she sits up a little, pushing herself up by the cushions. “But I will say that the more you say, the easier it is to connect you. How the fuck do you even sound like that? You barely sound like yourself.” 

“I tweak it a little,” you grin. “Just a pinch, and it’s worked for me so far.” After another pause, your face rounds out as you say, “Thank you for keeping my secret. I’ll be more careful.”

“Sannie would lose his fucking mind if he knew,” she shakes her head, laughing a little. “Like, lose his fucking mind. Yunho, too. How do you keep a straight face?”

You shrug. “I do what I have to.” 

“Scary,” her head tilts away from you. “You’re scary.” 

“Prepared,” you correct her, holding up a finger. “If you’re gonna keep your identity a secret, you have to be prepared to defend that secret with your life.” Her eyes thin out, and your returning smile is coy. “My bad. I'm referring to everyone else now.” 

The sun is fucking hot. Morning sun is different from evening sun, the air feels clearer, drier, the UV feels ripe, especially if there’s no breeze. There’s not a lick of wind brushing past you as you skip from your stairs into Yunho’s car, heart beating a mile a fucking minute, the sun stripping you as raw as you feel.

Yunjin knows, and she doesn’t hate you. Yunjin knows, and she still loves you. It should be enough to have you feeling on top of the world, relieved, light. But it’s not enough, and you don’t feel even the slightest bit relieved, because there’s more. You almost don’t believe that you have problems bigger than someone finding out you’re Unscripted, at one point you didn’t think it was possible. 

You give him your cheek when you get into his car, but he doesn’t back from it, he doesn’t mind at all. He presses his lips softly into your skin, “Morning, sunshine.”

You can barely muster a smile. “Morning,” you mutter, giving him a one-over. Blonde hair pushed back, comfortable clothes on his body, that sliver of skin out to play like it always fucking is. Damn. 

“Do you want to get coffee or something before we go?” he asks, already reversing his car out of the parking space right in front of your apartment. 

You shake your head, hands sitting politely in your lap, “No, I’m okay. I had coffee already.”

“O-kay,” he hums, pulling out of your development, onto the main road. He looks at you from his peripherals as he asks, “Are you mad at me for not answering last night?”

“What?” you ask, abruptly. “No, oh my god, of course not.”

“Just checking,” he says casually, his head shaking a little. The silence you fall back into is palpable. You’re acting weird. You’re acting fucking guilty and you know it. You try to relax, stretching out your legs, your arms, you try to let your body deflate into his passenger seat. You think you might look like a drunk baby instead, trying to take up as much space as you can.

The drive seems infinitely longer than it usually is because you can’t get your head on straight. You’re paranoid, guilty, you know Yunho can feel that there’s something off but you can’t bring yourself to fucking speak. 

Hey, just so you know, I wanted to kiss Wooyoung last night.

Before you do this favor for me, I want to tell you that I wanted to fuck your friend last night.

You shouldn’t have ever entered exclusivity with me because I’m a fucking mess.

You sigh. He feels it as he pulls into the parking lot of the gym, parking his car in the spot right next to your car. You think of last night, Wooyoung in this exact parking space, you screaming at him to unlock the door under a blanket of rain. 

You never deserved Yunho to begin with.

“Can I ask you something?” Yunho asks, turning his key in the ignition, engine going dead. You nod, sitting up a little, heart knocking against your breastplate. “Did you submit a story to Unscripted?”

You blink. “What?”

He tugs on the handle of his door, climbing out of the driver’s seat. You do the same, keeping your eyes on him the entire time. He talks as he walks up to your car, popping the hood, “Her newest episode is going viral, and it just… sounds familiar.”

You lean your backside up against the passenger side door, “How does it sound familiar?”

He ducks to give you a flat stare around your car’s hood. “Mister Tall and Dominant? Asked him to be more dominant, and he did it as soon as she brought it up?”

You reach for ignorance, at least for a little while longer. “That could be anyone, Yunho. Why do you think it’s you?”

“Because the other guy is Wooyoung,” he says, bringing his attention back under the hood. You feel like your fucking world has been swept from under your feet. How does he know that? What does he know? How is the conclusion that you submitted something to Unscripted, and not that you’re fucking Unscripted?

“He–” you start, already stumbling over your words. “Are you crazy?”

“He told me you asked him for advice, sunshine,” he sing-songs from under your hood. “He told me about last night, too. The batting cages, the diner. Can you grab the bag from my backseat?”

You’re on autopilot as you grab what looks like a black toolbox– tool bag from his backseat, talking as you lay it over the side of your car, in reach for him to go through it. “What else did he tell you?”

Yunho looks up at you. “What else is there to say?”

“Nothing,” you answer immediately. “There’s nothing else. Do you know what’s wrong with my car?”

“Not yet,” he shakes his head, lips scrunching to one side. “I’m gonna try to jump it. Do you know how to jump a car?” You shake your head no, and he smacks his teeth. “We’re fixing that today.”

He digs into the toolbag, grabbing what looks like a power bank, two thick cables. He holds them up to you, “Red and black.” You nod, moving beside him so you can see what he sees. He points into the guts of your car, “That’s your battery.”

You lean forward a little, and he lowers his finger so you can see exactly what he’s pointing at. “Plus sign, red cable,” he explains, then hands the cable-clamp thingy to you. Your brows furrow. “Attach it,” he says like you’ve done this a million fucking times.

“I’m not gonna blow up my car, right?” you ask, holding the cable-clamp thing like it’s an explosive. 

He laughs, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t let that happen, baby.”

You squeeze the clamp, attaching it where he showed you. You look up at him for reassurance, “Is that okay?”

“Perfect,” he says, then holds up the black clamp.

You pop a brow, “Negative?”

“Close,” his head tilts as he sticks the clamp somewhere else in the guts of your car. “Ground point, unpainted piece of metal or a part of the engine so you don’t blow your car up.”

Your lips make the shape before you say the word, “Oh.”

“Try to start it for me,” he says, and you nod, grabbing your keys from his car before slotting yourself in your own driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition. The dash lights up, but the only sound your car makes is a big fat fucking click. 

“One more time,” you hear him over the hood, so you try again. You’re going to hear the clicking in your fucking dreams tonight. You deflate, groaning as he gathers the cables back into his bag, closing the hood. “This is out of my area of expertise, I fear.”

Your top lip lifts, “But you’re Handy Manny.”

He throws the bag back in his backseat, “Sorry, sunshine. I’ll call a tow truck for you.”

You don’t answer because he’s already in fix-it-mode, his phone in his hand, pacing with the other hand on his hip up on the curb while you watch from your driver’s seat. It’s unbearably hot, but you’re too guilty to care. You just let him teach you how to jump a fucking car while you tried to kiss his friend last night. 

You tilt your head, watching him. He turns, meeting your eye through the pocket between your windshield and your open door, eyes focused. It’s unbearable. You blurt, “I tried to kiss Wooyoung last night.”

He holds up a finger. Your jaw drops. He points to his ear and mouths I’m on the phone.

“Hi, yeah, I need a tow, please,” he looks up at the sky as he speaks, and you actually genuinely wish you could fucking disappear. You sink further into the seat, running your hands over your face, into your hair, knees spreading. You wish your brain wasn’t so fucking complicated. You wish you never tried to fuck Yeonjun in Wooyoung’s bedroom. 

“Sorry, they’ll be here within the hour,” he says, sounding refreshed as he hangs over your open door, arms crossed over the top of it. “So, you tried to kiss Wooyoung?”

You lower your hands, face blank. “Yes, last night.”

“Hm,” his head tilts. “He left that part out.”

“He said no,” you’re immediately defending him, defending yourself through him. “I didn’t kiss him.”

“But you wanted to,” his brows furrow from above the door. 

You look at your lap, guilty. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” he says simply. 

Your head snaps upward, brows tied together. “Okay?”

He shrugs. “Do you want me to be mad at you?”

“Kinda,” you shrug, bewildered at the answer. “We’re exclusive and I tried to fuck your friend.”

His brows raise, “You said kiss.”

“I did say kiss,” your lips tighten. “I meant kiss.”

He watches you for a second, eyes dancing to the floorboard beneath you, your steering wheel, the pile of shit in your passenger seat. Finally, he asks, “Do you still want to be exclusive?”

You speak before you can think, “I like you, Yun–”

He grins. “Not what I asked.”

Your lips flatten. “I don’t know.”

He nods, “Okay.”

“Oh my god,” you gruff out, the heels of your palms finding your bare eyes. “Can you please say something else?”

He huffs a laugh, “What do you want me to say? We aren’t dating, we’re exclusively sleeping together.”

“I know,” you basically whine. “But what happens if we aren’t? I like you.”

“I like you, too,” he nods. “It’s not like I’m going to hate you forever if we aren’t exclusive, sunshine. Did you think I’d throw a fit? Call you a cheater?”

Even Unscripted is a fucking cheater. The tips of your ears run hot, “Yeah, kinda.”

He walks around the car door, bending down into his calves beside the floorboard. “I didn’t start this thinking we were gonna get married. You’ve had four boyfriends in total in your entire life. I like you, but I’m not the type to stop someone from doing what they want to do.”

“But you–” you argue. “You’re not hurt at all?”

His head tilts, exposing his teeth in a way that says well, maybe. “I wouldn’t say hurt, but I wouldn’t say I’m emotionless, either. Mingi will be excited.”

Your jaw drops, a punched laugh escaping you. “You’re thinking about Mingi right now?”

He grins, “I think about Mingi often.”

“Have you ever been exclusive with him?” Yunho makes a show of shaking his head no. You deflate into your seat again, “I don’t understand that. Sleeping with someone without having… attachments. The security that they’re into you.”

His brows furrow, “Isn’t sleeping with someone confirmation enough that they like you?”

“No,” you answer quickly. “I mean, like, they’ll wake up tomorrow and still like you.”

“Have sexual attraction and romantic attraction always gone hand-in-hand with you?” he asks, and it’s honest. You nod. His face flattens out. “Have you ever wanted to fuck someone just to fuck them?”

Your lips scrunch as you look up at the roof of your car, thinking. You’re shaking your head as you respond, “No.”

He pops a brow, “Really?”

“No!” you say through a laugh. “I mean it. You know I’ve only had sex with long-term boyfriends, you’re the only exception.”

“And I’m flattered, but you’ve never seen someone walking down the street and just wanted to bang ‘em? Didn’t even want to learn their name?”

“No,” you say with a little more certainty. “The romantic aspect… It's part of it for me. The attraction.”

“So you have to really like someone in order to fuck them?” he asks, clarifying. You nod. His brows furrow, “But you don’t have to date them in order to fuck them.”