If one were to ask why you were so terrified of going to the dentist, you could spend hours going on and on about how scary the feeling of the dentist drilling your teeth.

You knew they were doing it for your own good and how it's part of their job. But you couldn't helped it! Not when you were able to hear and feel the vibrations running down your body, from head to toe.

You disliked the feeling of having two to four equipments shoved into your mouth, forcing you to open it as wide as possible so they wouldn't sliced your sensitive gum on accident. You had to squeeze your eyes shut whenever you went to an appointment, which only further enhanced the sensation of feeling them doing god-knows-what on your poor teeth.

The last time you went for one was five years ago. Five years of actively avoiding going to the dentist. Five years of treating it like it's some sort of contagious virus. Five years of doing everything you can to come up with pathetic, flimsy and creative excuses whenever your mother proposed going to the dentist.

It was easy when you were still a college student, able to use your academics and club activities to defend yourself, telling her you didn't have the time to slot in an appointment. But when you graduated, you didn't have any means of weapon anymore, leaving you defenseless and acting like a sitting duck.

Much to your disappointment, your mother reacted faster than you expected. You were in your room, doomscrolling away on your phone, utterly bored out of your mind when she barged in without knocking, causing you to jump, yelping when the device landed squarely on your nose.

"Mom! What the hell!?" You exclaimed, rubbing your sore nose as you glared at her.

She ignored your outburst, a determined look on her face. "Get dressed, (Name). We're going to the dental for an appointment."

You groaned the moment you heard that, sinking into your bed. "But mom, I told you that I don't need it."

She clicked her tongue in disapproval. "I don't care what you have to say. Just get up and you better be dressed in the next five minutes or I'm dragging you out of the house myself."

You shivered, knowing how strict your mother can be when she's threatening you. Thus, you were left with no choice but to oblige—getting out of bed, throwing on more appropriate clothes. Although, how appropriate can you be when you're only going to a dentist appointment, where the dental is just a fifteen minutes drive away?

You settled on an oversized faded graphics shirt with a pair of pants. It wasn't too lazy nor was it too much, perfectly resting in the middle. Once you were done, you headed down to the living room, where your mother was waiting. She looked up, clearly pleased to see you and got up from the couch, sliding her phone into her bag.

"Good, you're ready. Let's go, the sooner we do this, the sooner you'd be done," she said, opening the door and stepped out, leaving you following her hot on her heels with a resigned sigh as you accepted your fate.

~

You were already shaking the moment you got into the car, which only got even worse once you arrived at the dental.

Your mother entered confidently, greeting the receptionist—a woman looking to be in her late 30s, cheerfully, like she wasn't responsible for your current state. The two chatted like they were old friends while you sat on the couch, fiddling with your trembling hands to distract yourself.

You let your eyes drift about, taking in the surroundings—the countless impressive certificates framed and hanged on the wall on your right. Every certificate had the same name—Nishimura Riki. You knew studying dental isn't a smooth-sailing process nor was it easy by any means, which meant that whoever this Riki person is, has to be extremely smart and gifted.

"…ed that you managed to convince your daughter to come over today," the woman told your mother in a hushed tone.

You strained your ears, trying to eavesdrop on their conversation while they paid you no mind, oblivious.

Your mother chuckled. "I had to threaten her or else we won't be here today. Is Dr. Nishimura in today? I haven't seen or heard his voice."

"Oh, he's running a little late. But don't worry, you can sit and wa—"

Ding.

The bell above the front door chimed, announcing the arrival of another person. At this, the receptionist paused mid-sentence, turning to the door from where she sat and she sent a friendly, professional smile to the newcomer.

"Ah, there he is. Speak of the devil."

Out of sheer curiosity, you turned to the entrance and your mind malfunctioned.

He's tall, tall enough to command the room without even trying. The man was dressed in black from head to toe with a pristine white coat donned over it, a takeaway cup of iced coffee and a pair of black-framed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He pushed it up with his left index finger mindlessly, like it's a reflex rather than an instinct, flashing the receptionist an apologetic smile.

"Sorry I'm late. Traffic was worse than I expected," he said, voice low and smooth and it flowed across the clinic effortlessly.

You barely heard anything, unable to tear your eyes away from the sight before you as you drank in every tiny detail, committing it to your memory. Pitch-black hair that's slightly tousled—either from the morning breeze, him rushing over or him running his hand through it. A sharp and elongated nose. A pair of kissable, full and thick lips.

No fucking way…

Your breath hitched, unaware of how you're clenching your fists with your nails digging into your palms. You didn't have to think twice, easily admitting that the man standing by the entrance is downright the most handsome man you've seen in your entire life.

"Dr. Nishimura, good morning. I see you're late as always," the receptionist greeted sarcastically.

Your pulse stuttered, eyes widening slightly when you heard his name. That's Dr. Nishimura? The very same dentist your mother had been insisting on bringing you to? You expected someone else—a middle-aged man with gray hair and a bald spot visible.

You didn't expect this—for the dentist to be this good-looking and dangerous for your sanity and heart. Speaking of your heart, it slammed against your ribcage when he glanced around the waiting room, even though there was no one else but you seated on the couch, before his gaze landed on your figure.

It took all of you to not flinched when you locked eyes with him. It was only for a second before he ventured further into the clinic, disappearing after rounding a corner. Your shoulders sagged with relief the moment he was gone, able to breathe properly without feeling suffocated.

Maybe, just maybe, you might find going to the dentist a little more tolerable now.

~

"(Name)? You may enter now. Dr. Nishimura is ready to see you," the woman seated by the high-rise receptionist counter informed you.

You nodded, standing from the couch, only to pause when you realized your mother remained seated, showing no signs of following you. At your bemused look, she waved you off with a dismissive flick of her wrist, shooing you away like you're some sort of persistent, annoying fly. Even though she's the reason why you're here in the first place.

"You can handle it yourself. You're a big girl now, I'll be here waiting when you're done," she said.

You swallowed, heart pounding in your chest when it hits you—that you'd be alone in the room with the man who oozes sex appeal. The thought of being in the same room and breathing in the same air space made your hands trembled like fallen leaves. Still, you didn't want to do anything that could lead to you being kicked out.

Not to mention, your mother is with you too. You can only imagined she won't have a positive reaction if she finds out your attraction to the dentist.

With that, you plastered a what you hoped was an assuring smile before heading to the one and only opened door after rounding a corner. A young-looking woman greeted you once she spotted you lingering by the doorframe awkwardly, hesitant on entering.

"Good afternoon! You must be (Name), right?" She greeted and you nodded, not trusting in your voice.

She gestured to the dental chair in front of her, her left hand holding an equipment. "You can place your things on the chair on your right and sit whenever you're ready. We'll begin once the dentist is here."

Right, you don't see him anywhere and a part of you felt disappointed while another part felt relieved.

Disappointed that you won't be able to see him just yet. Relieved that it won't be just the two of you, saving you from the sheer awkwardness. You did as you were told—placing your things down on the chair before getting onto the long dental chair, feeling the smooth surface beneath your skin.

You leaned against it, accepting the shielded sunglasses to protect your eyes from the blaring light which will be turned on in a short while. Your breath stuttered when someone tall entered your vision and you were grateful you had slipped the sunglasses on, the dark and tinted frames allowing you to shamelessly stare at him.

The man was no longer wearing his previous outfit, now dressed in the standard navy-blue scrubs with a mask covering the bottom half of his face. His hands were covered in a pair of white, disposable gloves. You sworn drool nearly trickled down your chin at how the thin, tight material was wrapped around his long, slender fingers, wondering how it'd feel shoved down your throat or into your cu—

"Let's see… (Full Name), twenty-five and…" He spoke up, voice deep and smooth, effectively snapping you out of your trance, only for his voice to trail off as he stared at the iPad held in his left hand, eyebrows furrowed.

"And what?" You asked, feeling anxious and nervous.

His lips curled up in an amused smirk. The sight of it shouldn't have made your stomach somersaulted, but it did, much to your horror and embarrassment. His eyes flicked up, locking with yours. Despite the tinted frames hiding your eyes, his gaze was sharp enough to burn through them, making you feel exposed.

"You haven't gone for an appointment since you were thirteen?" He drawled, faint mischief seeping into his voice, sending shivers down your spine.

Your face and cheeks flushed. "I didn't have the time for it."

The look the older man gave you said he doesn't believed your words. "Oh? Is that so? What could you possibly be busy with when you were thirteen?"

You opened and closed your mouth, unable to come up with a response. Seeing you struggling earned a chuckle from him, the sound sending heat pooling in the depth of your stomach. Riki handed the iPad back to the younger woman—who you assumed it must be his assistant.

"In any case, you're here for a regular check-up. So don't worry, you won't feel any pain," he said, not looking at you as he examined the stainless steel equipments laid out on the doctor's cart.

The woman moved to your left side, clipping a light, turquoise-colored paper towel around your neck loosely. You shifted, readjusting your position and felt the upper section of the chair leaning backward, the motion taking you along as well. You clenched your fists that rested by your sides, heart pounding against your ribcage as you sensed a presence behind you.

Through the frames of the sunglasses, Riki's head popped into your view, his hair hovering over his eyes but it did nothing to hide his piercing, focused gaze. You visibly flinched when he gently tapped your chin with his gloved right fingers.

"Come on, open wide for me," he murmured.

And god, you couldn't blamed anyone else but you and your mind for going off-track and for thinking of something else entirely. Something that involved him using you to chase his pleasure. Still, you complied because you wanted to be good for him. After all, who wouldn't want to be good for a handsome-looking man like Riki himself?

He squinted his eyes, switching on the light, causing you to squeeze your eyes shut out of instinct, only for you to reopen them when you remembered you're wearing the sunglasses. You felt something cold, small and metallic inside your mouth. Riki started off with a physical exam of your entire mouth, using the small mirror to check around your teeth and gums while gently tugging your lips up, forcing you to further widen your mouth.

The woman remained on standby, inserting a equipment into your mouth. You heard a faint sucking sound and assumed it's used to suck up your saliva, so you won't choked on it during the treatment.

It's nerve-wrecking, to say the least.

It felt like you're a patient laying on the surgery table, ready to be operated. Except in this case, it's more upfront and you're wide awake.

You forced yourself to look everywhere but the dentist himself, who's inspecting every inch and cavern, without leaving any minor or major area unseen. After what felt like forever, he was done and removed the small mirror from your mouth.

"Good news, your teeth looks fine but since you haven't been to a dentist for ten years, there's lots of plaque and tartar along your gum lines. It has swollen up but it'd be back to normal once I'm done," he reported, summarizing his findings.

You blinked, knowing there's a catch behind it. "And what's the bad news?"

"You have to come back six months later for a follow-up."

Well, that wasn't what you're expecting. If anything, that's supposed to be the good news. You won't mind coming back for the second time to be near him. You swallowed, shoving the unnecessary and distracting thoughts out of your mind, not wanting to leave a wrong impression on him.

"..Alright, I'll talk to my mom later," you answered.

Riki hummed, not saying anything else—an unspoken sign to end the conversation. You were disappointed, as you wanted to talk and interact with him more but you knew time wasn't on your side. Not when your mother was waiting for you outside.

You opened your mouth again when he wheeled back to his previous position, closing your eyes to let him start on the treatment.

~

"You looked different."

You blinked at your friend's sudden words, which sounded more like a statement than anything else. The two of you—you and Ningning, were having lunch at a cafe situated in the neighborhood. You're close with her, treating her like the sister you never have and vice versa. Even your families have been introduced to each other.

"What are you talking about?" You asked, leaning forward to sip your iced drink from the straw provided.

Ningning arched an brow, eyes never leaving your face. "Not appearance wise. More like…" Her voice trailed off, squinting her eyes as she scanned you with her intense gaze, tearing down the invisible walls you built around yourself, "are you in love?"

You choked on your drink. The cold, sweet liquid went down the wrong pipe and you repeatedly whacked your own chest, bursting into a coughing fit. Ningning made no move to help you, glued to her seat and a triumphant smirk stretched across her face.

"So I was right," she declared.

You flipped her off. "No, you're not. Don't get too arrogant, Ningning. You're being delusional."

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah right. I've known you for five years, (Name). I can tell when someone managed to catch your attention. So, spill it. Tell me everything."

You hesitated. "…I went to a dental appointment yesterday."

As you expected, the girl's eyes widened until they nearly popped out of its sockets. "What!? I thought you're afraid of the dentist!"

"Not so loud!" You hissed, eyes darting left and right when a few customers glanced your way at her sudden outburst. "My mom forced me to go and I couldn't say no anymore."

Ningning nodded, giving you her fullest attention.

You chewed on your bottom lip. "And the dentist is…"

"Is?" She echoed, getting impatient. "Come on, spit it out already."

You waved your hands about, making random gestures. "And he's hot."

A brief silence.

Different emotions flickered across her face. Surprise, realization followed by acceptance with a hint of mischief. She leaned forward, elbows digging into the edge of the table with her hands cupping her own face.

"So, that's why you went there. You wanted to see him," she drawled, eyes glowing with mischief as she shot you a knowing look.

Your cheeks flushed and you rushed to defend yourself. "I didn't know he's working there in the first place."

Ningning snorted, not believing you. "Right, and pigs can fly. Anyway, what are you planning on doing now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb. Are you gonna try to slide into his pants or what?"

You choked on air. "Ningning!"

"I'm trying to help you out here," she pointed out, unfazed with how absurd the idea sounded, "I'm assuming he's older than you and that's even better. Older guys is more experienced than guys our age. They know how to make you beg, cry and sq—"

You reached across the table, slapping your hand over her mouth, silencing her mid-sentence. However, it didn't last long when something wet and slimey touched your palm, drawing a strangled shriek from you as you dropped your hand, wiping it on the napkin provided.

"You're disgusting," you complained.

"God forbid a girl from wanting her friend to get laid," she retorted.

You sighed, leaning into your seat. "I'm going back for a second appointment since I haven't been to a dental for a while."

Ningning snickered. "Do you really believe that? Girl, I think he just wanna see you again."

You kicked her in the shins under the table. "Stop being an enabler and try giving me some helpful advice."

She raised an brow. "Are you sure you want me to do that?"

You paused. "…No."

"That's what I thought. Time to put our brains to good use and come up with a plan to get into your hot dentist's pants!" She exclaimed, overjoyed for some reason as she clasped her hands together.

"I'm starting to regret this…"

~

Even though Riki told you to visit six months later, you found yourself in the dental three months later—three months earlier than the mentioned time period. If the past you were to see your current self—seated on the small couch of the dental's waiting area, you're certain your past self would have fainted on the spot or assumed they were hallucinating.

This time round, your mother wasn't available to accompany you, due to her being at work as it was a weekday, much to your relief. After all, you weren't just here for a simple follow-up. No, you're here to seduce him, hoping to catch him when he lowered his guard, like you're the bait and he's a fish swimming about in the ocean.

You worn something simple at first glance but if someone were to take a closer look, they'd be able to notice the minor efforts you put in—the way you opted for a miniskirt rather than pants, even though you're practically shivering from the freezing temperature being blasted from the overhead air-conditioner. The way you put on light makeup to make yourself looked presentable. It wasn't over the top but it's enough to make people do a double-take. The way you put in effort in your hair and appearance was more than enough to tell anyone what you're planning and your unspoken intentions.

The receptionist—who you weren't sure whether she's oblivious or pretending to not notice anything, peered at you over the edge of the counter.

"(Name)? You can enter now. Dr. Nishimura is ready to see you."

It's almost embarrassing and comical with how you jumped up from the couch, perking up at the mention of the dentist's name. You forced yourself to walk as per usual instead of skipping to the room, where the man was already waiting for you. Your breath hitched when you realized the woman from before was nowhere to be seen, clearing your throat once you arrived.

Riki raised his head, showing off his signature (and deadly) black-framed glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose. Surprise flickered across his face at the sight of you before it was gone once he blinked. He lowered the iPad he's holding in his right hand, eyes darting between the screen and your face, like he's trying to connect the dots together.

"Didn't I tell you to come back six months later? Why are you back so soon?" He asked.

You have a feeling he knew the reason why you're back. Not to mention, the way he scanned you from head to toe—taking in your appearance followed by his eyes darkening a shade didn't go unnoticed. Satisfaction curled around your frame, pleased to know whatever you're wearing and how you looked has an effect on him.

"My teeth's hurting so I thought I'd dropped by for you to check on it," you answered innocently.

Riki eyed you, trying to figure out whether it's worth calling you out for lying to his face. Only for him to rethink his decision. He merely sighed and gestured to the empty dental chair before him.

"Fine, lay down and I'll take a look at it."

At that, you fully stepped into the room and laid on the chair. Your body flinched when he inched close to you as he clipped the paper towel around your neck. Shivers ran down your spine at the light, fleeting sensation of his fingers grazing your skin. You weren't sure whether it was done on purpose or intentionally. But, there's a small part of you that wished it was the latter.

You slipped on the tinted sunglasses that was handed to you, straining your ears to hear him moving about as he prepared the necessary equipment, followed by the snapping of disposable gloves as he slipped it on. You sworn you saw something silver glimmered under the overhead lights but it was gone when you blinked.

Riki wheeled himself over, spreading his legs slightly and you obediently opened your mouth, allowing him to examine the insides.

Even though this was your second time, you still weren't used to the weird, uncomfortable feeling of having something small and round poking around your gums and the back of your teeth, causing you to squirm about on the chair.

"Stop moving. I might end up accidentally hurt you," he murmured, voice soft but firm enough for his words to come off as a warning.

And fuck, you hated how you're already dripping between your legs. You can only prayed that it won't leave a visible wet spot behind, or you won't know how to face him afterwards.

Riki was oblivious to the countless thoughts running through your mind. He narrowed his eyes, faint wrinkles forming as he focused on the task at hand—checking every inch of your mouth.

When he was done with his inspection, he said nothing, wordlessly pulling the small mirror out of your mouth and wheeled himself to your left side. Riki stepped on something, refilling the new, empty plastic cup with water as you pushed yourself up, leaning over to gargle and rinse. You can feel his eyes fixated on the back of your head the entire time, the room filled with awkward and thick silence, until he broke it.

"You're not exactly good at being subtle," he commented, his gaze never leaving your face.

Your cheeks flushed. "What are you talking about?"

Riki chuckled. "Your teeth showed no signs of it hurting and it looks perfectly fine to me. If I were you, I'd tell the truth rather than lying."

You mentally cursed yourself for being such a fool, thinking you were able to trick him. You clenched your hands that rested on your lap, unsure of what to say. The dentist, on the other hand, didn't move. He simply waited patiently, like he has all the time in the world.

You plucked up the remains of your courage, lifting your eyes to meet his. "I think you're really hot and I want you."

Silence.

Well fuck, I didn't mean to say that.

A wave of remorse and embarrassment hits you the moment those words left your mouth. You felt warm, flustered with the bold words and confession. You were about to say something—that you're joking or how you didn't mean it when Riki reacted.

He chuckled, like this was the most hilarious thing in the world. Like nothing else he experienced can compare to this. The man stretched out his legs, showing off how long his limbs were as a cocky smirk took over his handsome face.

"Oh? I didn't take you as the bold type, but I guess you can never judge a book by its cover," he commented, amusement dripping in his voice.

You made a strangled sound. "I-I didn't mean to. I'm so—"

He paid your stuttering no mind, raising his free, gloved right hand, using two fingers to make the simple yet attractive gesture.

"Come here," he demanded, voice steady and even.

Anticipation and excitement pumped through your veins at his words and you weren't going to let this rare opportunity go to waste. You got off the chair, walking towards him, noting how he spread his legs wider so you're standing in the middle.

Riki had to tilt his head up to meet your gaze. You almost gasped out loud when he hooked an arm around your waist, tugging you down until you're awkwardly straddling his lap, hands on his broad, firm shoulders to brace yourself.

Your breath hitched, stomach flipping at the feeling of his arm around your waist, his touch burning through the thin layers of your clothes. He shamelessly scanned you, practically undressing you with his eyes, making you clenched down on nothing. You flinched, teeth sinking into your bottom lip when Riki moved his arm lower and lower, until it slid under the skirt.

His hand was warm, touch rough but gentle at the same time as he caressed your skin lazily and slowly, clearing taking his time in riling you up—

Smack!

You jolted on the spot at the sudden, strong and quick pain from his hand smacking your left asscheek. Your nails dug into the fabric of his blue scrubs, unable to face him and averted your eyes to the side. However, he wasn't pleased with your avoidance, considering how he reached out to grip your chin, tight enough to draw a pained whimper as he forcefully turned your head forward, forcing you to face him.

"Don't look away from me, doll. You wanted this, don't you?" He murmured, thumb stroking along your jawline. "Dressing like a slut and begging to be fucked. How would your parents act if they find out how you're willing to do anything for an older man?"

You made a pathetic, soft sound at his crude words that's mixed with mockery. It's a dangerous combo, dangerous enough for you to be dripping, panties getting soaked with your arousal.

"P-Please, sir," you begged, earning a low groan from him.

"Fuck, get on your knees for me, doll," he instructed, giving your asscheek one strong, absolute squeeze before you dropped, sinking to your knees.

You knew what he wanted you to do and you wasted no time—hooking your fingers over the hem of his pants, pulling it down until it landed around his ankles, leaving him in a pair of black Chrome Hearts boxer. You swallowed, mouth watering at the visible tent, poking against his right inner thigh.

Your eyes flicked up, waiting for his permission—which was easily granted to you with him nodding his head. His boxer came off, having the same fate as the pants.

You had to jerk your head back to avoid getting slapped when his cock sprung free from its restraints. It stood upright, tall and smug. The big, fat mushroomy tip have turned a ferocious shade of red—a sign of neglection. A bead of precum rested on the tip, glistening under the lights.

"Fuck," he hissed, thighs twitching when you wrapped your hand around his cock, fingers barely touching. The thought of that sliding into you made chewed on your cheek, desperately craving for it.

Looking at him all innocently, you leaned forward to give a kitten lick to the tip, collecting the bead of precum with your tongue, making a lewd and slow display of you spreading it across your lips without breaking eye contact.

Riki's eyes darkened a shade, his jaw twitching. You squeaked when he shot out his left hand, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanked your head forward, causing his cock to slide up your face until it touched your hairline.

"You think you're in control just because I ask you to suck my cock?" He sneered, pulling your head back, smirking at the wide, pleading and teary gaze you're giving him.

"Do it properly or you won't get anything," he warned you.

"Sorry…"

You winced when he pulled your head further back. "Sorry what?"

You gulped, knowing you're already leaking like a fucking faucet. "Sorry, sir…"

"Good girl."

What the fuck.

The sound you made was something you didn't know you're capable of. Riki made a mental note, tucking your reaction aside for future purpose. You leaned forward, taking him into your mouth with your hand holding the base, slackening your jaw and hiding your teeth with your lips, not wanting to accidentally hurt him.

Riki watched, heavily breathing as inch after inch of his cock disappeared into your mouth until he's hitting the back of your throat. He cursed under his breath, able to feel how warm and tight your cavern was.

You were surprised when he moved his hand down, tucking a few stray strands of hair behind your left ear. The action was tender and sweet—a huge contrast to how he was behaving a few minutes ago.

You began moving, bobbing your head back and forth, leaving visible spit behind on his warm, thick cock. You used your hand to touch the areas you couldn't reached, ensuring not to leave anywhere untouched. Riki groaned, tilting his head back, showing off his Adam's Apple that moved up and down vigorously.

A low series of sounds slipped from his lips—groans, grunts and cursing. You weren't aware his voice could go even deeper, deep enough for your brain to melt. Determined to make him break and fall apart, you pulled away with a loud "pop", snapping a string of saliva into half and trailed the visible, protruding veins along the sides of his cock.

At the same time, you moved to fondle with his heavy balls. Poor thing seemed to be on the verge of exploding with how it's full of thick, rich cum. It's messy and filthy—you sucking him off with drool trickling down your chin and landing either on the floor or your skirt. The thought of someone potentially walking in stirred further arousal in your stomach.

You gagged when Riki gave an experimental thrust into your mouth without warning. Your reaction only spurred him on, allowing him to fuck your mouth, using you like a fleshlight and a toy. Like you're nothing more than a tool for him to seek his own pleasure. You sat there—on your knees between his legs, looking pretty like a trophy wife.

"Shit, so fuckin' good for me, aren't you?" He moaned, voice low and raspy.

You couldn't helped it, hand sliding between your legs and pushed your soaked panties aside and touched yourself—fingers collecting your slick followed by circling your own clit. The sensation made your eyes rolled back, moaning around his cock. The vibrations traversed down the length of his cock, drawing a long moan from the man.

But it wasn't enough. Your fingers weren't making the cut, too short to reach deeper. You needed more. Something longer, thicker and bigger.

It didn't take him long to figure out what you're doing. When he caught up, he laughed—low and degrading.

"Touching yourself when you're sucking me off? Needy little girl, can't even wait for five minutes," he mocked.

You made a muffled sound, showing no signs of stopping as you continued fucking yourself with it, stretching your entrance as more slick dripped down your fingers.

"You'll let me cum in your mouth, right? Gonna swallow all of it and behave for me? Gonna show me how good you can be?" He asked, bringing his head back up to gaze down at you.

You couldn't speak, not when your lips was stretched wide around the thick grith of his cock. You can only rapidly blinked your eyes, making a muffled sound that's similar to you saying "yes, yes, yes." Riki huffed, amused at your obedience. His thrusts grew sloppy and his moans get louder, like he doesn't care that they are in his workplace, doing something as scandalous behind his wife's back.

How could he care when someone—a girl younger than him, was willing to do anything for him? He wasn't blind to how you looked at him the moment you first saw him. How you were fidgeting on the spot with your mother beside you, the older woman oblivious to what her daughter was up to. Riki knew it's only a matter of time before you reached your limit, but he didn't expect it to be this quick.

Not that he's against it.

He didn't warn you, simply cumming down your throat as he painted it in the shade of his cum. You gagged, throat constricting around his cock, ensuring to swallow every droplet, not letting any go to waste. Riki went limp in the chair, panting unsteadily and you took that as your sign to pull back, wincing at how sore your jaw was from the rough treatment.

Your lips was red, puffy and swollen. You remained where you were, resting your chin on his right knee while waiting for his instruction, like the good and obedient dog you are. Riki patted his lap twice, catching the way your eyes lit up. You scrambled to your feet, settling yourself on his strong, muscular thighs—like a queen sitting on her rightful throne.

Riki hissed when his eyes darted down, seeing your pussy glistening under the bright overhead lights. He pressed his thumb over your clit, savoring the choked moan you let out, eyes fluttering shut at the mere contact.

"Sensitive," he noted, twisting his thumb in a slow clockwise motion, dark and hooded eyes never leaving your face, taking in every micro-expressions you made—clamping your swollen lips shut, eyes squeezed shut and breathing through your nose.

"C-Can't," you choked out, squirming and thrashing about on his lap, like you weren't sure you wanted to push or pull him closer.

Riki hummed, his right hand holding you firmly, locking you in place. The cool surface of his wedding ring pressed into your skin, through the fabric of your clothes, causing your body to break out into goosebumps.

"Can't?" He repeated, having the time of his life watching you struggle to no vain. "I thought you'd be better than her, but I guess I was wrong."

Now, your mind was clouded with lust, barely sane enough to comprehend his words but that doesn't mean you weren't quick enough to connect the dots—his glowing wedding ring and the usage of the word 'her'. You should feel guilty or ashamed of yourself for going after a older, married man but you didn't care.

Why should you, when he looked at you with nothing but raw, unfiltered desire?

The dentist clicked his tongue, teasingly pushing his thumb into your fat pussy lips, so close but yet so far. The light, sudden intrusion drew a whimper from you but before you could do anything, he was quick to pull his hand out, earning a disappointed sound of protest. Riki brought his thumb—the very same thumb covered in your slick, to his lips and licked it up, without breaking eye contact.

Your breath hitched at his bold, lewd action, cunt practically begging to be filled. Riki looked over your shoulder, cursing under his breath when he noticed the time.

"You should get going. I have another appointment soon," he said, wiping his thumb on his pants, pretending nothing happened. Like he didn't have you sucking him off or straddling his lap a few seconds ago.

You blinked, bemused and still trying to calm down after the high. Most importantly, you didn't even get to cum yet!

"What? But what about me?"

Riki smirked, gripping your chin with his hand. "Bad girls like you don't get to cum just yet. I'll see you next time."

You left the dental in a daze. And if you tried to cum with the combined help of your measly fingers and useless toys, then that's nobody business but yours.

~

"You're doing it again."

You paused, in the midst of chewing your fried chicken. You're in Ningning's house, seated by the dining table with a box of fried chicken and four bottles of soju. Two were already empty, one was half-full while the final bottle was still sealed tightly. Your friend didn't break eye contact, raising an brow as she looked at you over the rim of her cup.

"You have that look on your face," she commented, "the kind of look where you've done something and you're not telling me."

You gulped, feeling exposed with how accurate she is. But then again, she wasn't your close friend for nothing, with how she's able to read you like an opened book. You knew better than to hide from her, considering how persistent she can be—bugging you until you give her an answer that satisfies her.

You swallowed after chewing thoroughly. "I went over last week and something happened."

That got her interest and she sat up. "Oh? What is it?"

You leaned back in your seat, now sitting in a cross-legged position. "…I suck him off."

"You what!?"

"Calm down!"

Your friend shot you an incredulous look. "Are you even hearing yourself? How do you want me to calm down when you just told me that you sucked him off? Where did you do it?"

Your brief hesitation was enough for her to let out a scandalous gasp, a hand covering her mouth as she stared at you with wide eyes.

"No way… you did it in the dental room…"

You groaned, wishing a hole will magically appeared so it can swallowed you whole and hide you from the world. "Ningning, please…"

Your friend brushed off your words, practically vibrating on the spot from the jaw-dropping news. "This is insane! I'm proud of you though."

"Not helping."

Ningning's eyes lit up and she leaned forward a little. "So, how was it? Was he good?"

You paused, a few scenes flashing in your mind and your cheeks flushed red, uncrossing your legs to rub your thighs together. "Yeah, he's good. Better than the hook-ups I had before."

She whistled. "Damn, that's impressive. Are you gonna see him again?"

You fiddled with your fingers. "He said he'll see me next time."

Your friend nodded firmly, like that have confirmed everything. "Yeah, he definitely wants you. Is he taken?"

Your heart dropped at her question, remembering a certain word he said. A word that acted like a harsh reminder of the real reality and the inerasable sin you have committed.

"…Yeah, he's married," you answered, opting to stare at a random spot of the table.

"He's married!?" She yelled at the top of her lungs. "What the hell? I feel like it's my fault for pushing you to do this."

You snapped your head up, surprised by her words. "What? No, it's not your fault. You didn't know he's married. If anything, it's mine. I'm the one who should take responsibility for this."

Ningning stared at you before sighing. "What do you plan to do now?"

"I don't know, just avoid him for as long as I can," you replied, shrugging your shoulders.

She gave you an unreadable look, like she knew something you don't and clasped her hands together. "Let's move on, shall we? These bottles ain't gonna finish by themselves."

~

It seemed like you can only avoid him for so long.

You have gone two months without stepping foot into the dental—making a new record for yourself. You spent your free time hanging out with Ningning, taking long walks and so on, doing everything and anything to keep yourself occupied. However, no matter what you do or where you were, your mind kept drifting back to Riki.

You could still remember the faint musky smell invading your mouth, the weight of his cock on your tongue, how your jaw muscles were sore afterwards, how sticky and soaked your underwear was and how you couldn't walked in a straight line afterwards. You hated how your mind kept replaying a certain moment, over and over like a broken cycle.

The moment when he touched you with his thumb. You've seen how long his fingers were—probably able to reach deeper places, able to stretch you out with ease before he fucks you until you see stars.

You were in your bed, watching a random show on your iPad while your mom was away for work, leaving you alone at home when your phone's ringtone went off. Not tearing your eyes away from the screen, you stretched your right hand out to pick up the device, accepting the call without checking the screen and placed it on speaker mode.

"Hello?"

"You're avoiding me, aren't you?"

You nearly dropped your phone when a familiar deep, low voice spoke up, disrupting your short moment of peace and quiet. You knew who it was immediately. How could you not when the source of the voice had been haunting you, be it whether you're asleep or awake. You swallowed, no longer paying attention to the show as it continued playing.

"…Who's this?" You asked, your heart hammering against your ribcage.

A chuckle. "Don't tell me you've forgotten who I am."

You tightened your grip on your phone. "How did you get my number?"

"From the system. But I'm not here to talk about that. Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna come to this address tonight, alone," he instructed.

You scoffed. "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

"Oh? I have retrieved the footage of that day. Imagine how my wife'll react if she finds out."

You frowned, pushing yourself up to lean against your pillow. "Are you blackmailing me?"

Riki hummed on the other line. "So what if I am? If my memory serves me right, you were the one that wanted something to happen and I was going with the flow."

You stared at your phone, an incredulous look settling on your face. "You can't be serious right now. How was I supposed to know you're married?"

"Maybe you should've checked properly before making your move," he drawled, clearly relaxed while you're fuming on the spot, "don't be stupid, (Name). If you don't show up, I'm sending the footage to your mother."

You spluttered. "You—!"

Before you could finish your sentence, he had hung up, leaving you staring at your phone like it had committed a grave sin. You should do something—tell your mother or asked Ningning for advice. You should do the right thing by going to the authorities, to file a report but a small part of you hesitated. You hated how your body was giving the opposite reaction of your mind—demanding for you to go, to see him and let him touched you.

As much as you hated it, you're already drunk on his touch and you want more.

Bzzt, bzzt.

You snapped out of your train of thoughts, looking at your phone to see an unknown number sending you an address. No greetings and nothing else. Just the address—simple and straightforward. You didn't tap on it, staring at it like it will magically vanished on its own if you stared hard enough.

Sighing, you got out of bed and went to change, having made up your mind as you mentally prepared yourself for what's to come.

~

Five hours later, you found yourself standing in front of a seemingly empty house. You double-checked, confirming you're at the correct place before knocking on the closed, oak door with your right fist, pointedly ignoring how your hand was trembling.

Knock, knock.

You picked up the sound of approaching footsteps before it opened from the other side, revealing none other than Riki himself—the culprit responsible for your inner conflict.

You couldn't helped it—eyes scanning him from head to toe as you drank in the sight before you. This is the first time you've seen Riki out of his working hours and he's dressed in a simple black hoodie, the hood tugged down and a pair of gray sweatpants hanging dangerously low around his hips.

You sworn you saw something red just a few centimeters above the hem of his sweatpants before it was hidden from your view again. A pointed cough forced you to look up, locking eyes with him and when he gave you a knowing, dark look, you knew you were caught red-handed.

"See something you like?" He purred, voice low and velvety smooth.

Clearing your throat, you crossed your arms and stood your ground. "You wished. I'm here to tell you that I'm not gonna do anything with you."

Riki paid you no mind, shamelessly checking you out. His heated gaze lingered longer than usual on your exposed, unblemished skin of your legs. Your stomach betrayed you, doing a somersault when he licked his bottom lip, the pinkish tip of his tongue poking out briefly before it was gone when you blinked.

"Sure, whatever you say," he replied, moving aside, "wanna come in?"

You glared at him. "Are you deaf or something? Did you not hear what I said?"

Riki huffed. He stepped forward, closing the distance with one large stride until he's directly in front of you, close enough for you to get a faint whiff of his cologne.

"Don't be a brat, doll. Get inside or I'll make you," he warned you.

You boldly tilted your chin up, a defiant look glowing in your eyes. "Make me."

Riki clicked his tongue. One moment you're standing outside his home and the next moment, you're forcefully dragged inside. You gasped, air punched out of your lungs when your back collided with the door, closing it from your combined weight as he kissed you. The kiss was rough, violent and demanding.

He didn't care about your comfort or discomfort, using his stronger and larger frame to pin you against the door, leaving you helplessly sandwiched. You had to tilt your head back, your neck muscles starting to ache but you ignored it. You choked out a whimper when he bit down on your lips, hard enough to draw blood.

The metallic taste filled your mouth and you parted your lips when he ran his tongue along the seam of your lips, granting him access. Your lack of resistance earned a low hum of approval from him, the sound sending vibrations down your body and heat pooling in your stomach.

"You talk too much for someone who's insistent on stopping this," he murmured.

"Shut up. Less talking and more moving," you retorted, yelping in pain when he yanked your hair back until the column of your neck was fully exposed.

Riki chuckled, his warm and minty breath grazing your lips. "So demanding. What happened to you not wanting to anything with me, hm? You say that but this."

He paused, his left hand sliding down your body, only for him to cup your clothed pussy. His palm covered the area between your legs entirely, applying a little force to touch your clit through the thin fabric of your pants and underwear. The sudden contact ripped a whimper from you, unable to hold it back.

"This is more honest than you," he continued, drawing his head back to take in your flushed expression, his hair falling over his forehead.

"Fuck you," you hissed, your voice wavering at the end and it didn't go unnoticed by him. Of course it didn't.

Riki said nothing, hooking his arm around your waist and easily flung you over his shoulder. You squeaked, flailing your limbs about like a wild, frantic chicken. You whacked him repeatedly with your clenched fists but it was futile. To him, your attacks felt like nothing, like there's no weight in it.

"Stop! Put me down!" You shrieked.

Smack!

You stilled at the sharp, stinging pain on your right asscheek. Your cheeks and ears turned red, mortified when you can feel more slick trickling down your inner thighs. You stopped fighting, surrendering to your fate while he carried you like you're a sack of potatoes. You heard a door being pushed open before he closed it with his feet.

You were tossed onto silky soft sheets, hair fanning out beneath your head with Riki hovering over you—one hand on the side of your head while the other held onto your waist, his touch firm and possessive. He didn't do anything, letting his eyes rake down your figure, taking his time in appreciating the breathtaking view before him.

You, on the other hand, squirmed about on the sheets, feeling shy, timid and nervous. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" He asked, sliding his thumb beneath your shirt, tracing random patterns on your skin, leaving his warm touch behind.

You involuntarily shivered. "..Like you've thought about this."

A glint glimmered in his eyes. "Of course I have. You don't know how long I've waited for this, waiting for you to show up, only to see someone else instead. I couldn't stop thinking about it, how good you were to me, how pretty you looked on your knees and how delicious the sounds you made."

You swallowed, momentarily taken aback at the sincerity in his voice and how serious he was. Riki continued, his gaze unblinking and unwavering, voice lowering slightly, like he's tell you a sacred secret.

"You don't know how many times I rewatched the footage, wishing it was your mouth instead of my hand, how she couldn't compare to you. How it doesn't feel right with her. How I wished it was you instead."

The more he spoke, the lower his hand traveled. You didn't register him pulling your pants down, until you felt cool air kissing your bare legs. You watched with bated breath as Riki scooted off the bed, sinking to his knees on the floor.

You made a startled sound when he tugged you forward with one hand wrapped around your right ankle until your lower half hovered in the air, both legs hoisted over his broad, firm shoulders.

The man buried his face between your legs, directly into your pussy. No words could described the amount of embarrassment you felt when he greedily inhaled your scent, like it's some sort of drug. You parted your lips, about to say something, only for your voice to give up when he licked a slow, fat stripe up your pussy, through your underwear.

"Oh fuck," you moaned, eyes rolling up to the back of your head. You gripped and twisted the sheets beneath your palm while the other blindly reached down to tug on his pitch-black hair.

Riki moaned, the sound muffled as it sent vibrations down your legs, making you twitched in his vice-like grip. He traced the outline of your cunt with his tongue, further soaking the already soaked fabric, teasing you for a few minutes until you're nothing but a flustered, trembling mess.

"R-Riki, please.." You begged oh so sweetly for him.

And god, the way his name rolled off your tongue so prettily nearly made him cum right there and then. He never knew hearing his own name from someone else's mouth could be this arousing. He hummed, further spreading your legs apart, like he wants to be buried between them forever, until his last dying breath.

"Please what, doll? Be a good girl and use your words, tell me what you want," he purred, voice lowering an octave.

You sobbed, hips jerking forward as he tugged your underwear into the middle, revealing parts of your dripping, glistening pussy. Riki watched with fascination at how your pussy lips clamped onto your underwear, refusing to let it go. He played with you for a while—twisting and tugging the fabric against your clit, mesmerized with how you rocked your hips against it, yearning for more.

Smack!

You flinched, making a hoarse, strangled sound when he delivered a light but powerful slap directly on your cunt. You attempted to close your legs but he held you down, fingers digging into the meat of your thigh.

"Time's ticking, sweetheart. I don't have all day, unless you want my wife to see you dripping for a married man," he taunted you.

You whimpered, tears prickling your eyes as it blurred your vision slightly. "T-Touch me."

"Touch you? But I'm already touching you," he teased, his hand never stopping as he continued his action, watching how you're struggling to form a coherent sentence.

He's so mean that it's starting to piss you off but there's a sick, twisted part of you that actually liked it. Like how he's acting innocent when deep down, he knew what you want and he isn't afraid of making you begged for it. Plucking up the remains of your courage, you reached out to grab his hand and brought it to where you ached for him.

You gave him your best doe-like impression, similar to the one you did in the dental room. "Wan' you to touch me here, please, sir?"

Riki's breath hitched, cock twitching against the loose restraints of his sweatpants. He doesn't have to look down to know he's already leaking, soiling his own pants. He groaned, the sound low, deep and guttural, like you've already ruined him, even when he hasn't done much yet.

He wasted no time in jumping into action—pulling your underwear down your legs and flung it aside, fully revealing your pussy to him. He dived in like a man on a mission, all tongue and spit as he ate you out with determination. It's messy and nasty, saliva dripping down his chin as he alternated between fast, kitten licks and flat, long stripes against your cunt.

You couldn't recognized the kind of sounds you were making, similar to a pornstar. Your mind spun, unable to focus on anything else but Riki's hot, slimey and rough tongue rapidly licking up your pussy, like a famished man. His mouth moved a little lower, locating your entrance with ease. You jolted when he collected your slick with two fingers before slowly pushing them into your entrance.

The sudden intrusion made you arched your back off the bed, nails scrapping against his scalp as he poked and stretched his fingers in a scissors-like motion. You were right—his fingers felt way better than your own or any of the sex toys you owned. They were long, slender and thick that it made you feel full, even if you haven't taken his cock yet.

"Fuck!"

You cried out when his fingers curled against your g-spot, forcing you to squeeze your eyes shut. Having found your sensitive spot, Riki put the newly-discovered information to good use. He pumped his fingers in and out of you, creating a lewd squelch sounds that echoed among the four walls of the bedroom.

"C-Close, hngh," you panted.

Riki hummed, pushing his face deeper until the tip of his nose brushed against your clit peeking out of the hood. You took that as your sign to grind against the small surface, rocking your hips against it greedily and clumsily, feeling the all-too familiar of a pressure building in your stomach. You didn't get to warn him, cumming with your entire might. Your walls convulsed around his fingers as you reached your climax.

The man didn't slow down or stop. He continued eating you through your orgasm, not caring how sensitive you were. He lapped up your newly-produced slick like it's cow's milk, not wanting to let a single drop go to waste. It's only when you weakly pulled at his hair was when he finally relented, moving back to let you catch your breath.

Your pulse jumped at the sight of him—his lower half was covered in your slick. His thick and plump lips looked even more swollen than before. Riki pushed himself up and you got the message, scooting further up the bed, watching with anticipation coursing through your veins as he made quick work of his clothes.

They were removed one by one until he's nude. Your eyes locked in on the red kiss mark tattoo above his right hipbone, finding it more attractive than it should be. Riki hovered over you, throwing your legs around his waist. You watched, gulping nervously as he wrapped a hand around himself and slowly stroked his cock, spreading the leaking precum around it.

He aligned himself against your entrance, rubbing the tip against your puffy folds, collecting the remaining slick. Riki didn't push in, eyes flicking up to yours. When you nodded, he moved, pushing his tip beyond your folds. You squeezed your eyes shut, teeth sinking into your lip, feeling yourself being stretched impossibly wide until it's borderline painful.

It felt like centuries when he bottomed out, letting you adjust to the thick grith of his cock. The pain eventually subsided, replaced by a numbing, consistent feeling. You felt every ridge grazing against your gummy walls, how they helplessly fluttered around him, sucking him in.

"Fuck, you're so tight," he hissed, his breathing uneven, jaw muscles twitching while fighting against the tempting urge to pound into you until the bed breaks.

You reached out, wrapping your arms around his neck to bring him down. He met you in the middle, capturing your lips in a sweet, slow passionate kiss that lasted for just a few seconds, resting his forehead against yours.

"You can move," you mumbled.

At that, Riki set a rough, brutal pace. It sent your body moving up and down vigorously. In a desperate need to see your entire body, he pushed your shirt up, fumbling to remove your bra but somehow managed to do, freeing your breasts. Your nipples hardened immediately, pink and pebbled.

He ducked, sealing his lips around your left nipple, sucking on it like a newborn baby. You cried out, pushing your chest further into his mouth with your legs locked around his waist, letting him rearranged your insides to the shape of his cock. You threw your head back, moaning and whimpering at the intoxicating feeling of his cock sliding in and out of your gaping entrance.

It's powerful, his heavy and cum-filled balls smacking against your asscheeks with every thrust. You sworn he's hitting even deeper—a feat you didn't know was possible in the first place.

Your mouth dropped open when he shifted a little, easily locating the one delicate spot hidden between your walls, the tip ruthlessly abusing the same spot, over and over as it drew more and louder moans from you.

"Too much, ngh," you sobbed, scratching your nails down his back, leaving burning red lines behind, like a physical claim.

Riki mockingly laughed against your wet, hardened nipple. "Too much? You're squeezing me so tight I can barely move."

You couldn't keep up with it—his rapid pace, his hips slapping against yours and his mouth attacking every inch of skin, leaving it either wet or marked up. You could barely breathed, having to breathe through your opened mouth than your nose. You outright sobbed when Riki snaked his hand down to rub your clit, timing it at the same pace as his thrusts.

Your thighs trembled like fallen leaves, feeling a second climax coming. "Riki—fuck, g-gonna cum, please."

"Yeah? Cum for me, doll."

All it took was for him to give a rough, fierce pinch to your clit for you to tip over the edge. Your body shook from the strong intensity of your orgasm, walls violently fluttering around his cock as transparent liquid sprayed everywhere. Some landed on your sweaty, intertwined bodies while some landed on the sheets.

Riki didn't slow down, fucking you through your orgasm, turning a deaf ear to your sobs and pleas for him to stop. He was quick to follow, delivering one final and long thrust, burying himself to the root and spilled deep inside of you, pumping you full of his cum, thick and hot. Your walls convulsed weakly, trying to milk him dry as you laid there, letting him do as he pleased.

You pushed at his chest, trying to shove him away but he pinned them above your head. He slowly rolled his hips against yours, pushing his cum deeper into you while savoring the breathless moan you let out—

ni-ki genuinely gets into sex so much that he’s exhausted at the end, but not nearly as much as you are. he’ll drag himself up off the bed eventually once his heart stops pounding dramatically in his chest, but it’s usually just to lug his heavy limbs to the bathroom. he grabs a washcloth or wipe and will clean you up gently (sometimes too gently and he’ll leave some fluids somewhere that just get nastily sticky overnight but oh well) but after that, nothing else is game until the morning.

he definitely crashes hard once that simple thing is taken care of and you’ve got to wriggle out of his hold to go pee before you fall asleep, but he’s a very good cuddler, that’s for sure. every part of him is pressed to you as you sleep, and it honestly makes the full clean up in the morning a lot more anticipated because of how sticky the two of you still are with sweat when you wake up to an alarm or the morning sun.

but yeah, the shower the morning after is incredible and he claims it’s life changing every single time. well only because he gets to wash your tits and squeeze your ass,  and you wash his hair like he loves.

ni-ki just can’t help his exhaustion and it’s his own fault, but he still tries to make as much of an effort as he can to give you aftercare before the two of you are off to dreamland. he does his best and you’re okay with that, especially with the princess treatment you get before he’s done with you.

⭑.ᐟ b = body part (favorite of theirs and their partner)

ni-ki’s favorite body part of his is his abdomen, specifically his abs and rib area where he’s got his side tattoo and kiss mark tattoo. he’s got an obsession with how it looks in the mirror when he’s shirtless and standing there after a shower, and hey, you love everything about him, but the abs and tattoos get you too.

he’s caught you drooling over the toned muscle and ink before, and it’s certainly not the last time he’ll see that from you. in fact, he’s even offered to let you ride his abs before, one plush thigh surrounding the ink on his right side and the other on his bare left ribcage. god it was an experience for the both of you too. the flexed ridges offered such a great thing to grind up against and every roll of your hips made your eyes roll back as sparks of pleasure exploded in your stomach.

ni-ki absolutely loved it and his own eyes were rolling back watching you. it was a sight to behold and he even came in his pants with how aroused he was at providing you pleasure and just watching as the hard work he’d put in his physique paid off in a way he’d never pictured before you entered his life.

and yes it’s quite obvious, but ni-ki is an ass man and will be until he dies. it’s nothing but obvious with the way he touches the members’ butts so why would he pass up getting to squeeze your cute ass whenever he wants.

it’s just so bouncy and bubbly and he loves it. like he loves it to the point that it’ll be the first body part he’ll kiss after your clothes come off in his room during the beginning of an intense night. and don’t even get him started on when he fucks you in doggy style and can smack your ass freely as the spanking sounds mix with those of wet skin slapping where you two are connected. he’ll even feel you up in public sometimes, just absolutely craving the feeling of touching that supple skin almost like a stress toy. if it wasn’t weird and his hyungs didn’t call him out for it, he’d stick his hand in your butt pockets and hold you there instead of holding his hand.

⭑.ᐟ c = cum (anything to do with cum basically)

oh boy, ni-ki is definitely one of those men who can absolutely just shoot rope after rope of cum for what feels like forever after his orgasm starts. it surprised you when you gave him head for the first time and you had to pull off before you choked on all of his spend, the last few long spurts landing across your cheekbones and neck. some even ended up in your hair, which you forced him to help you wash it out after. that was one of the rare few times that he’s ever actually showered right after any sexual activities because after one or two orgasms unless he’s full of energy, he’s so drained he can hardly get up.

and of course since he’s absolutely an ass man, he loves cumming across your ass if he feels like pulling out or if you make him on your extremely fertile but horny days of your cycle. if not, he does really enjoy cumming inside but it does kinda make a mess, he will admit that.

he also likes seeing you slightly covered in his release after it dries since sometimes he’ll be too tired to get up and clean up with you. it’s almost like a little bit of a brand that he can leave on you, which he’s especially reminded of when he finally cleans the dried streaks off you but they leave a little residue.

⭑.ᐟ d = dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory)

secretly, ni-ki loves to show his skills off to other people, let it be from your noises as he plows into you or the members actually seeing him roughly fuck you during the few times you two have been walked in on accidentally. there’s just something about it. it’s not quite an exhibitionism kink but it’s more of a prideful thing that he likes to make sure people know sometimes.

those hotel rooms next to his when he’s snuck you in after a long concert have often complained about the noise but he could care less. the company’s used to it at this point and has given up on telling him to quiet down  because they know he’s rebellious about it and loves to defy them as much as he can when it comes to that.

he doesn’t really get off to making you make your noises loud enough for other people to hear, but he’s definitely blown his load early multiple times by thinking about how loud he’s able to make you because he can make you feel just that good.

⭑.ᐟ e = experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they're doing?)

ni-ki’s learned a lot of what he knows from videos, not from actual women. he’s only had one or two bodies before you, and he doesn’t plan on having any more if you ask him. you’re just too perfect of a girlfriend, inside and out of the bedroom, for him to ever want to break up and find a new girl to satisfy him.

his first time was with another idol his age. both she and him did it together as sort of just a way to get their virginities out of the way so they could say they’d at least done something. they’re still cordial to each other during music show appearances and the end of year award show interactions, but they’re not really close other than that. yes it was awkward and boring and not that pleasurable to be honest, but it was out of their kindness for each other and that’s what it was about.

he’s had maybe one more experience like that, but ni-ki much preferred to just get himself off before you came into his life. it’s just so much more risky to hook up with people, whether it’s another idol or not, and he got even more satisfaction from his own hand and some decent porn so why take the risk.

⭑.ᐟ f = favorite position (this goes without saying)

like i said above, ni-ki’s favorite position is one hundred percent doggy style. he’ll always love getting to stare right at your gorgeously plump ass as he pounds into you, and don’t even get him started about when you arch your back in that position too.

especially when you drop to your elbows and press your tits into the bed while doing this position, ni-ki never fails to blow his load a whole lot faster than he would in any other position. it’s just such a good sight he can’t resist.

and ni-ki swears, the first time that you fucked doggy style, he’s never come harder ever in his entire life. his eyes rolled back and there were spots all in his vision and everything. plus he was shaking like a leaf and whining like a husky the whole time during his orgasm.

⭑.ᐟ g = goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

ni-ki doesn’t tend to be very lighthearted during sex. it’s all very passionate and energetic in almost a rough way at times, but he’s very much locked in to the feelings of arousal and attraction, so he won’t just start laughing or crack a joke in the middle of sex, that’s for sure.

however, he is still the type to chuckle a bit at the beginning if the two of you start off with tussling around in the bed as you trade kisses and dodge around some of them. those are always fun ways to start off a couple of hours in bed with him. it always ends in a more fun night full of pleasure for the both of you only with less bruises from his hands and more hickeys on your neck.

⭑.ᐟ h = hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

ni-ki tends to give off more carefree vibes, so he probably only trims the hair down there instead of completely shaving or waxing it off. he thinks it’s honestly kind of a waste of his time that he could be spending dancing or doing something with you.

speaking of dancing, he’s also honestly worried that shaving or waxing down there would rub up against his pants and make his skin all irritated and screw up his artistry and all, so that’s also one of his real life reasons that he doesn’t do much other than clean it up a bit every little while. he won’t tell you that he’s too lazy for it but he’d definitely do more if you asked him to get rid of it.

thankfully you haven’t said anything about it so he can just go on with what he’s been doing for years regarding his hair down there, and in turn he really doesn’t care what you do with your bush either. you do prefer to be a little more cleaned up, but that’s also so that you can feel the sensations even better when he’s down between your legs, licking at your core like there’s no tomorrow. it also helps that you like feeling more bare and looking smooth when it comes time for summer and the tiny little bikinis that you wear to the private pool of the dorm building that ni-ki lives in.

⭑.ᐟ i = intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

ni-ki is still pretty young, so he’s not the most intimate compared to passionate and rough. the horny part of his brain tends to take over during any kind of sexual activities that take place between the two of you, but he still treats you well and gives you plenty of orgasms like you deserve. you’re his girl, but he’s not like jay where he treats you like a princess for every second and acts like you might break and you’re super fragile.

all the sweet talk and stuff like that really just doesn’t seem like ni-ki during the deed, but he will whisper some sweet things in your ear during aftercare if he can. he’s a nonchalant gentleman in the streets and a horny freak in the sheets.

⭑.ᐟ j = jack off (how often do they get themselves off? do they jerk off when you're not there?)

you’ve actually asked him if he’s ever gotten a blister on his dick with the way he used to talk about jerking off before he had you. like the man would be jerking it rough and dry twice a day, sometimes even more depending on his free time. yes, he did have lube but ni-ki’s far too into it by the time he’d use it and he leaks enough precum to be just barely avoiding getting any painful sores on his dick from constantly tugging on it.

and yes, he will absolutely still get himself off if he’s off on a tour and you can’t come with him. in fact he’s got a set time every night for you two to call and make yourselves feel good to each other doing so on video call. if you can’t make it, he’s got a whole contingency plan too. there are plenty of pictures, videos, and audios that you two have sexted to each other that he can also get himself off to.

⭑.ᐟ k = kink (one or more of their kinks)

first of all, the man loves to spank you because obvious reasons. that ass jiggles in the most satisfyingly arousing way and makes him cum faster than most anything. if his phone is dead while he’s away, he’ll just close his eyes and think of that ass and he’ll cum in literally less than two minutes. shhh don’t tell anyone but sometimes he’ll even just make you shake it in front of him and then he’ll end up spraying his seed all over the plump, bouncy flesh moments later.

ni-ki also has a bit of a phone sex kink. it means that he can see you all exposed, the sights only for him live, even when he’s halfway across the world from you. sure it’s a very good way for him to release the constant tension and arousal that he gets even when you’re not there, but it only serves as a warm up for the reunion sex when he finally comes back home to you.

also, he most definitely has an audio kink. hearing those sweet little moans come out of your mouth makes him so hard and just fuels his pride and ego even more at being able to satisfy you in an almost overcompensating way. it just tells people that he knows what he’s doing and you feel good, which is his exact mission as a horny boyfriend other than fucking you and having his own pleasure.

⭑.ᐟ l = location (favorite places to do it)

ni-ki can be considered one of the more traditional types of people that loves to fuck in his bedroom in the actual bed, but don’t mistake him for being vanilla when it comes to locations. he’ll fuck you standing up against the wall in his bedroom or even in the shower too. also, the members don’t know this but you two have definitely fucked on the couch in the living room and in the hallway while they were all gone.

for the most part, he enjoys keeping you to himself and locked away in his room, but it’s the noise of it all that he likes to show off no matter if the two of you are kept away from view with the closed and locked door. the bed makes it a lot more comfortable of a place to do numerous positions and round after round, but the other places are fun and enjoyable for you two if it’s just a round or two and then you move off to the comfy bed.

⭑.ᐟ m = motivation (what turns them on/gets them going?)

in general, you’re just a huge turn on for ni-ki because, duh, you’re his hot, attractive girlfriend. however, what attracts him the most about you is your ass obviously. he loves watching it and then getting to touch it, and then by that time he’s already gone, pulsing as his dick fills out to full hardness wherever you two may be.

and then of course when the two of you are going at it, your noises really get him even more turned on (if that’s even possible). the little whimpers and moans that you let out that keep getting louder and louder as he continues to play with you and then when he finally starts thrusting into you make the knot in his stomach so much tighter and his balls draw up so much quicker. he never fails to cum hard and fast with your cute noises.

⭑.ᐟ n = no (something they wouldn't do; turn offs)

considering how much he loves your noises, ni-ki doesn’t like the idea of choking you or using a gag. he wouldn’t be able to hear any of your pretty sounds, and that’s one of his favorite parts of sex (although sex is his favorite in general). also, when it comes to choking you, he’d be more worried that he’d hurt you than aroused. he’s just a lot bigger than you and his strength is a lot at times, and he’d be scared that he’d lose his careful control with his hand(s) around your neck and hurt you more than simply try a new kink.

⭑.ᐟ o = oral (preference in giving/receiving, skill, etc.)

this man absolutely loves oral, almost as much as your ass even. it’s honestly super hard for him to pick whether or not he likes giving or receiving more since he loves the sight of you sucking his dick, on your knees for him as your mouth stretches wide to accommodate his girth, but he also loves hearing those pretty noises in the background of him slurping up all of the arousal and spit that drips from your pussy when he eats you out. 

one thing’s for sure, he’s definitely a head pusher. he’ll even hold your hair back for you in a makeshift ponytail as you go down on him, but don’t mistake that sweetness for him going gentle on you. he’ll straight up fuck your throat and moan and groan at the sound of your gags and gurgles around his dick and he loves it. he’s pretty well endowed too, but you’re used to his size now and can even deepthroat him for a little while before coming back up for a big gasp of air and some coughs from the rough treatment. let’s just say he didn’t last long at all when you did that for the first time.

ni-ki’s insanely talented at giving head for someone that’s only been with two girls before you, and he likes to claim that it’s natural but you know he studied a lot of porn before you two made that step in your relationship to finally become intimate with one another. (he doesn’t exactly remember admitting such, but it was when he was slightly drunk and loose-lipped from several bottles of soju). seriously, you get concerned that he’s going to run out of air down there with the way he keeps himself pressed up against your pussy for what seems like so many minutes at a time, but it’s hard to focus on that when he’s constantly flicking his tongue against your clit and then licking downwards and thrusting the muscle into your soaking wet core. god he was blessed with his oral talents because there’s no way any normal person could make your eyes roll back that much just from getting eaten out.

⭑.ᐟ p = pace (are they fast and rough? or slow and sensual? etc.)

ni-ki is not the sensual type and he’s not going to take things slow, that’s for sure. the second he sinks all the way into you, you know you’re about to get swiftly fucked into the mattress. his patience is very low once his dick has been all the way in your glisteningly wet pussy, and he’s going to set a very passionate pace at which he thrusts into you. he tried to go slow and make things all romantic and drawn out once but he gave up after like five thrusts since it really wasn’t doing that much for either of you. you both love a quick paced fuck and really are used to nothing else.

⭑.ᐟ q = quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

theoretically, ni-ki would love a good quickie but it’s just too short, as the name implies. yes, he could make that round quick since you never fail to make him cum easily for the most part, but he would not want to stop after just one round. he’s got way too much energy and horniness to get out to stop after just one or two orgasms for the both of you, so he’d be just getting started. the two of you can go round after round, night after night, so this wouldn’t exactly pan out well unless you had at least a few hours to spare.

⭑.ᐟ r = risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

he’d be pretty game to experiment with some new things, especially when they involve you and sex (which duh of course so yes absolutely). for anything purely exhibitionist or just plain nasty, he definitely wouldn’t bring it up or want to try it and same for you, but other than that he’d be open to a lot of new things to try out.

ahem, for instance anal play while he fucks you. uh yes please. or even spanking with different toys that would mark up that gorgeous ass of yours and say that he did it to you and you loved it.

⭑.ᐟ s = stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

his stamina is genuinely insane but you do a pretty good job of keeping up with him. like seriously the man can go for hours upon hours without getting tired thanks to the years of dancing and the stamina that it has given him in turn. he won’t get tired after hours of dancing plus hours of fucking. your personal record for rounds is like seven or eight but that was after an adrenaline filled night when the boys won the daesang at one of the biggest k-pop award shows in asia. on a regular night after ni-ki gets home from work or random rehearsals, you average about four rounds give or take.

however, you’re genuinely so attractive to him that he can bust a nut in anywhere from five minutes to thirty minutes. those rounds where he tries to hold it for longer really impress both him and you because you tend to make each other cum fairly quickly, but a lot of times after another.

⭑.ᐟ t = toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

ni-ki doesn’t actually own any toys and he hasn’t anytime in his life so far. he’s always been seen as the baby to his members until when the two of you started getting a little more careless to when you were vocal while fucking around the dorm or any hotels that they’re all staying at. he just never had the correct timing to get any, plus he always felt like what he did for himself or for you was working without having to buy a toy to help.

he does think that it might be a bit fun to experiment with some toys like a paddle or cock ring or even a vibrator for you in the future, but right now he’s pretty satisfied with his sex life without them. (all he would have to do though is walk right next door to heeseung’s room and the older man would surely have something to share, that’s for sure).

⭑.ᐟ u = unfair (how much they like to tease)

in a perfect world, ni-ki would love to tease you some to work you up before the foreplay and fucking even started, but he is not the patient saint he is in his dreams of playing with you. he just gets far too worked up far too quickly and if he doesn’t get his dick in your hole quick enough, his cock will tell his brain that it’s going to fall off without being in that warm, wet heaven of your pussy.

but if he was at least somewhat patient, he’d love to just blow on your clit and folds as he gently teased his fingers around your core, teasing you with his light touch as he watched your hole clench and leak slick as you begged him for more and more. honestly he could probably cum in his pants just at the sight and sound of that.

⭑.ᐟ v = volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

ni-ki can actually be pretty loud, but he doesn’t realize it until the hyungs or you mention it. he lets out deep, breathy moans that turn into higher-pitched, airy whines as he gets closer and closer to cumming, and you love those noises so much. in fact, they fuel the noises that you let out, which is what he’s only paying attention to. he certainly contributes to the noise complaints that you get, but he absolutely wants your noises to be the start of the show whether or not that’s actually true based on what can be heard outside of the room.

⭑.ᐟ w = wild card (a random thing about them)

once, ni-ki had been considering asking heeseung to have a threesome with you two. he’d heard quite a few things about how talented he was and wanted to use that to make you feel even more pleasure than he could give, but you talked him out of it since it was becoming an obsession of his that turned his thoughts against his incredible pleasuring skills instead. you told him that you could talk about it later, when ni-ki was more self-confident in himself and less selfless about his pleasure because you wanted him to want it for himself too, not just you.

⭑.ᐟ x = x-ray (let's see what's going on in those pants...how big are they?)

as they say, with height comes big dick and ni-ki is definitely a human embodiment of it. he’s around eight inches hard (20 cm for the metric people) and he’s pretty girthy too, although the length is what outdoes most other dicks. it’s a pretty big stretch for you still, even after a year and a half of being intimate with one another, but he’s just the right size to make the stretch oh so worth it. you’re often sore after a night with him, but it’s a good sore left from feeling so full and satisfied from him.

⭑.ᐟ y = yearning (how high is their sex drive? how often do they wanna do it?)

if this man could have sex with you twice a day every day, multiple rounds every time, he would. he is just that pent up and horny and he loves your body and you so so much. you are his stress relief and intimate partner and he would rather have nobody else. if you didn’t want to fuck, he’d respect your boundaries and tuck you into bed or send you on your way wherever you had to go, but you bet he’d be jerking it in the shower for at least thirty minutes after doing that.

⭑.ᐟ z = zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

he can fall asleep pretty quickly after you two wrap up the hours of sex that you love to have during the late evening, but that’s because it’s also how he purposefully tires himself out and makes the both of you feel so pleasured and satisfied at the same time. ni-ki does his best to stay awake at least to give you some aftercare like getting up and grabbing a damp cloth to clean you up in between your legs and getting you up sometimes to make sure you go pee and avoid any UTIs, but otherwise he’s out as soon as he gets the chance to lay back and snuggle up with you. he doesn’t mind at all the sticky sweat that’s cooling on your bodies since you two always shower it off in the morning, so nothing keeps him from falling into slumber once the little bit of aftercare he knows he needs to give you is done.

♯ divider credits ⋮ @diviniyae - scalloped washi tape dividers, @starrliqhtt - line dividers

© seungsoftly 2026 please do not copy, repost, or translate

You leaned against the dark green table, staring glumly at your friend across the room who had ditched you to talk to some guy twenty minutes ago, promising she was “just getting his number.” You watched your friend laugh loudly, placing her hand on his shoulder, her red lipstick bright in the dim bar light. 

Yeah, she wasn’t coming back any time soon.

The cue was smooth and hard between your fingers as you lifted it back into position, and you bent low as you aimed at the cue ball, trying for the same green six. 

Deep breath, two. Pull back, aim. Shoot.

This one was closer. It actually hit the six, but instead of hitting it in—somehow—it knocked it to the side, causing it to spin loosely along the table until it came to a slow stop.

You groaned, leaning heavily on your pool cue as you stared at the evil ball. “How can I be so bad?” You muttered. 

“For starters, your bridge is terrible.”

A voice sounded behind you, and you whirled around to find a man leaning against the railing on the stairs leading down to the pool area, a smirk on his face. He was gorgeous: tan skin, blonde hair, a black button-up shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, revealing lean forearms and slender fingers that twitched slightly at the ends—as if he was used to fidgeting with something that wasn’t there. His pants were black too, making him look like an elegant shadow beside the brightness of his hair.

You blinked. “My bridge?”

He walked down the steps, his silver necklace brushing against his exposed collarbone. “Your bridge, the way you make a base for the cue with your hand. It’s unsteady; you’ll never shoot straight if you don’t have a firm base.” He grabbed another pool cue from the wall and leaned over the table, placing the hardwood between his thumb and index finger. He moved it slightly, and you watched as the cue moved forward, not even a little wobbly.

“See?” He said. He moved around the table and hit the cue ball toward the orange five on the other side of the table, sinking it into the pocket.

When he did it, it looked like the easiest thing in the world. 

“Now you try.” He nodded at the cue still gripped between your fingers, a strand of his blonde hair falling out of its slicked-back style. 

You sucked in your bottom lip, feeling heat creeping up your neck. You had no interest in embarrassing yourself in front of some hot guy, but he was looking at you intently, clearly determined to help you. There was no backing out.

You picked up your cue and leaned down, aiming for the blue two in front of the side pocket. You tried to copy his hand placement, sliding the smooth wood between your fingers. It felt a bit more stable, but as you shot, the cue wobbled to the side, making the ball spin off course.

“Better,” he said. He moved towards you and motioned for you to get in position, and when you did, you felt him behind you, his body a warm pillar as he leaned over you. He put his arms on either side of you, guiding your hands with his own. His fingers brushed your knuckles as he shifted them against the green turf, and you felt your entire body heating up at the proximity. 

“Like…this.” His hot breath bloomed against your neck. “Move the cue around, feel the difference.”

You pushed the cue as if you were hitting a ball, and your eyes widened at how much better it felt. The pole felt controlled, precise, completely different from the shaky awkwardness of before.

“Wow,” you said, “that’s…a lot better.”

The man hadn’t moved from behind you; he only retracted his arms, letting you position the cue freely. He leaned against the table. “No problem, try it out.”

You picked up the cue ball and placed it in front of your nemesis: the green six. You lowered your head, recreating the same steady bridge with your hand he had shown you. Same ritual: deep breath, two, pull back, shoot. 

The white ball hit the green six squarely in the center with a satisfying clack, sending it flying into the corner pocket. 

You gasped, “I did it!”

The man chuckled. “There you go, see? You’re not bad.”

You smiled, meeting his eyes. “Without you, I am.”

He nodded, smiling slightly, and the expression made your stomach flutter. “Happy to be of service.”

You shifted on your feet, looking around and noticing that the two of you were the only ones in the pool area, quiet, except for the distant bar chatter echoing in the dim greenish glow.

“So…you come here often?” You asked, hating the cheesy line the second you said it.

But he seemed to like it, because he laughed, crossing his arms as he leaned against the table, and you noticed the silver glint of his watch on his wrist. It looked expensive. “Yeah, I’m here pretty often.” 

“You got a name?”

He smiled. “I do, it’s Jay.”

“I’m y/n.”

“Pleasure,” Jay said. “Are you here alone?”

“Oh no, my friend is here.” You gestured at the bar, where your friend was, and you coughed when you noticed she and the guy had started an intense makeout session, not noticing the bartender shooting them dirty looks.

Jay smirked. “Seems like she’s having more fun than you are.”

You scoffed. “I’m used to it; she’s always been more…social. But I’m having a perfectly good time working on my pool game.”

“Oh yeah, it seemed like it was going really well.” His eyes ran down your figure—so fast you almost missed it—but it was enough to make you hyperaware of how your black halter top fit around your neck. Suddenly constrictive as a thin layer of sweat coated your hands. 

You shrugged. “I would have figured it out.”

“Oh, so should I leave? Give you more space to ‘figure it out?’” 

You laughed softly, your cheeks hot. “I guess you’re sort of helpful, besides…there’s space.”

Jay’s eyes darted around the vacant tables. “I guess there is.”

You stared at each other, a tension settling in the air that made your skin prickle.

“You know, if you really want to get better…I could teach you.” Jay said after a moment.

Your eyes widened. “Really?”

He smiled, running a hand through his blonde hair. “Yeah, I’ve been told I have some skills, so if you want to be uh—” he glanced at your friend at the bar, still locking lips with the guy, “—social, you could come by tomorrow, and I’ll teach you.”

“Here?”

Jay chuckled. “Yeah, why? Are these tables not to your liking?”

Your heart was beating out of your chest, his tan skin almost glowing in the warm light, and the way he looked at you was making it hard to speak straight. “N-no, they’re really nice; it’s one of the nicest bars I’ve been to actually.”

“Great, does 9 pm work?”

You couldn’t stop yourself from glancing at his lips. “Sounds good.”

He noticed, his eyes darkening slightly. “Perfect.”

Just then, your friend came bounding down the stairs, face flushed and hair messy. “Hey, sorry about that, I got distracted.” She glanced at Jay, and one look at his dark clothes and blonde hair and her entire face changed. “Oh, hello, do you two know each other?”

You shook your head. “No, we just met; this is Jay.”

“Jay…” She flicked her hair over her shoulder, smiling sweetly. “Where have you been hiding?”

Jay chuckled, and you rolled your eyes. “Alright, I think it’s time to call it for the night.” You grabbed your friend's hand and started walking towards the stairs. “It was nice meeting you, Jay.”

He nodded, his unfairly bright smile finding its way back to his lips. “Likewise, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Your friend asked, looking between you, “What’s tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry about it,” you whispered, dragging her away, the smile on your face so wide it almost hurt. 

The next night, you walked into the bar wearing a black sheer top over a jean skirt, your heart beating out of your chest with nerves.

All day you’d been thinking of him: the way his eyes ran down your figure, the way his breath felt on your neck, and how you weren’t quite sure you were going to be able to make it through a whole night with him.

Now, as the familiar lights washed over you and the low sounds of laughter wafted through the room, you felt a new wave of fear rip through you, creating a full-body shiver. What if he stood you up? What if he was a weirdo? What if he turned out to be a serial killer? Or the favorite anxiety thought: What if you hallucinated him?

You walked in and awkwardly shuffled towards the pool tables, glancing over the side of the railing as you searched for a flash of his blonde hair. But you only spotted a couple of college guys and a pair of tough-looking older men wearing leather jackets, bright-colored patches adorning every inch.

You checked your watch. 8:59

Maybe you were too on time? You tended to arrive at places earlier than people expected you, much to many of your friends' annoyance. “10:00 means 10:15 y/n; you just say it earlier because everyone’s always late!”

You were never late.

You fiddled with your purse, glancing between the bar and the pool tables, debating between ordering a drink and warming up with a few ball hits to make yourself look a little less bad in front of Jay. 

Then a hand rested on your back.

You jumped, turning to find Jay looking down at you, dressed in a casual black long-sleeved shirt and jeans, a smile already on his face. “You’re right on time.”

You smiled back, your skin tingling from his hand on your back. “I thought I was early.”

“Nothing wrong with being early, just means more time for our lesson.” He smirked, “Come on, it’s a bit crowded out here; I got a table in the back.”

“The back?” You asked, eyebrows raised. “I thought this was the only room.”

“For most people, but you’re my guest.” He started walking away, motioning for you to follow.

You hesitated, looking over at the public tables that were now full, the place bustling with activity. You knew you shouldn’t go somewhere private with some guy you barely knew, but Jay felt so safe, so steady, and before you could think too hard, you were walking after him. 

He moved through the room seamlessly, and you tilted your head when you saw the bartender nod at him.

Jay led you to a dark wooden door at the back of the room, and your eyes widened when you saw the large white sign on the door adorned with bold black letters: PRIVATE, DO NOT ENTER. 

He opened it and motioned for you to go ahead of him.

You stared at him. “Do you…work here?”

He chuckled, looking between you and the door. “y/n, I’m the owner.”

Your eyes widened like saucers. “What?”

He leaned against the threshold, brushing a hand through his hair, peering into the bar behind you. “Yeah, the whole place is mine. Does that change anything?”

“N-no, I’m just-” You laughed. “-I thought you were a normal guy.”

He smiled, and his eyes dropped to your lips. “I don’t think we’re so different.”

You felt your cheeks erupt with heat, and you looked through the open door, finding a dark set of stairs. “Well, I’m very curious to see the owner’s private table.”

“Lead the way.”

You walked up the stairs, finding a matching wooden door at the top—dark and slightly foreboding. You opened it. “Whoa.”

It was a studio apartment, complete with a small kitchen along one wall, a bed tucked in the corner next to a wide window, and a room off to one side leading to a bathroom. Your eyes scanned over a small collection of guitars propped in one corner, the colors bright and glossy against the dark wood of the floor and walls. A TV sat facing the bed, surrounded by a bookshelf decorated with a collection of pictures and trophies. 

But the crown jewel of the room was the pool table. 

It stood in the center, the felt bright green, the base of the table a wood so dark it was basically black. The pockets were polished silver, the collection of pool cues on the wall pristine and orderly. You had never thought of pool tables as particularly attractive before, but this one was changing your mind. 

Jay walked to the sink. “Drink?”

You tore your eyes away from the table and back to him. “Oh, sure.”

“I’ve got it all: beer, wine, scotch…pick your poison.”

You smiled. “Wine sounds nice.”

He nodded to himself. “I’ve got just the bottle.”

Within a few minutes, you were each holding a wine glass, Jay leaning against the massive table as he arranged the balls in the triangular rack.

You eyed the trophies on the bookshelf, a golden eight ball perched on one of them. “You weren’t lying about having skills.”

“Most of them are from my college days; I bet you’ll be beating me by the end of the night.”

You snorted. “I highly doubt that.”

“I’ve been told I’m a great teacher.”

“No one’s that good.” You said.

His rich laugh rumbled deep in his throat. “Oh, I am.”

You took a sip of your wine. “Alright, I expect to be a pool master by the time I go to sleep tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He set his glass down and grabbed a pool cue, aiming at the cue ball. “Now, lesson one…”

Jay led you through a myriad of tips and tricks, first demonstrating, then watching on the side with his arms crossed as you bent over the table to take your shot. You felt his eyes on you constantly, drifting from your finger bridge all the way down your back. He wasn’t trying to hide it; he was flirty in the most disarming way possible: subtle with words, but explicit with touch.

Every time he walked by you when he was positioning for a better shot, he’d go much closer than necessary, letting his arm brush yours. Sometimes, he’d even gently place his hands on your shoulders, moving you to the side, his fingers tracing down your skin. 

When it was your turn, he stood right next to you, murmuring instructions with his deep voice, his hip almost pressed against yours.

You tried to focus on the game, because you really did want to be a good student, but every time he spoke, you shivered, and every time his eyes met yours, you momentarily stopped breathing. 

You were truly fighting for your life.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. So much worse.

Jay was in the middle of pouring your third glass of wine, and you were desperately trying to focus on aiming your shot instead of staring at the way his fingers caressed the bottle when he spoke—so casual it sent a chill down your spine.

“How about we up the stakes?”

You stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” he said, “...that every time one of us pockets a ball, the other one takes off a piece of clothing.”

You stared at him blankly, your brain struggling to decide if you just heard him right.

He handed you your wine glass. “Just a suggestion.”

You took it numbly, inhaling sharply when his fingers brushed yours. 

He smiled.

You blinked and took a breath. “That seems…highly one-sided given your-” you glanced at his trophy case, “-achievements.”

He chuckled, the sound going straight between your legs. “I’ll go easy on you.”

“Is this what you meant when you said you were a good teacher?”

“Maybe.”

You watched as Jay arranged the colored balls into the rack, now painfully aware of the way his muscles flexed under his shirt and the way the tendon in his neck shifted beneath his skin. You clenched your thighs together, the tension in the room alone enough to build the pressure in your core. 

He placed the cue ball across from the triangle and broke the cluster in a scattering of colors. One went in: stripes.

“Alright, solids, you’re up.”

You approached the table, running through every piece of advice Jay had ever given you: stable bridge, hit the bottom if you want a stop, the top if you want a follow, be confident, follow through…You aimed at the red seven, ignored the feeling of Jay’s eyes on your face, and shot.

The ball rolled sadly past your target and hit the side of the table with a disappointing thump.

You sighed, half-relieved and half-disappointed. You were fairly certain your accuracy would tank the second Jay’s chest hit cool air. 

Jay didn’t say anything, just moved behind you, his hand ghosting over the small of your back as he walked to the other side of the table. He bent down with the accuracy of a pro, his brows furrowed and one of his eyes partially shut as he aimed.

You held your breath as time seemed to slow.

His arm moved, and you watched as the striped orange ball hit the table and banked into a side pocket: an incredible shot.

“Was that supposed to be ‘going easy?’” You asked, your face red. The room suddenly felt very hot.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “To be fair, that was pretty lucky.”

You fiddled with the edge of your top. “So…do you get to choose the clothing?”

He leaned against the table, looking you up and down slowly, his eyes trailing fire over your skin. “I’ll let you choose.”

You thought for a second, brushing your fingers over the rough fabric of your jean skirt and the thin material of your sheer top. You glanced up and smirked when you saw Jay watching your every movement. You bent down and unzipped the side of your black leather boots before tugging them off your feet. You stood up, both boots clenched between your fingers, and dropped them with a satisfying thud.

Jay let out a short laugh at your triumphant expression, his tongue flicking out over his lips. “You want to play it that way?”

“What? Wouldn’t want to go too fast.”

He sighed. “I was looking forward to seeing you in nothing but boots, though.”

You blushed. “Maybe I’ll put them back on later.”

He walked closer, smiling slightly when he saw you visibly tense. He stopped when your chests were almost touching. “I’ll look forward to it. Your turn.”

The game continued for what felt like hours as the tension grew and the amount of wine in the bottle shrank. Jay was going anything but easy, and you attributed it to the way his eyes darkened every time you revealed another patch of skin, aching for the next reveal. At this point, you were down to nothing but your bra and panties, your feet bare against the cool hardwood floor. Jay’s eyes were everywhere, settling on the curve of your back and the rise of your ass every time you bent over the table. 

You were starting to enjoy the way you were tormenting him and began to do some teasing of your own. You’d prop your elbow on the table during his turn, standing low so your tits were directly in his field of view. You put your chin in your hand and pouted your lip like you were bored, biting your lip whenever he glanced up.

It worked, because he started to miss, groaning softly whenever the ball uselessly hit just next to the pocket. Then he’d look up at you like you were a rock in his shoe and flex his hand like he was restraining himself, his eyes dark.

Meanwhile, you’d somehow managed to pocket two balls, which earned you a devilish smirk that made your knees weak and Jay’s shirt and shoes. 

When he first took off the black fabric, revealing lean muscle and golden skin, you’d missed your next two shots, unable to focus on anything besides how badly you wanted to trace your fingers up his chest. Jay just stood there and smiled, adjusting his pants so they revealed the top of his V-line. 

You downed the rest of your wine in one gulp.

Then Jay made another shot.

He chuckled.

He made another one.

Jay leaned on his pool cue, gaze darting over you.

Your pussy had been throbbing ever since you took your boots off, and the way he stared at you now was making your brain stall. There was nothing left you could use to draw out the inevitable, nothing to stop you from being left completely bare.

“Does this mean I lose?”

His tongue darted out. “Technically, yes.”

“So what now?”

Slowly, he started walking towards you, watching the way you clenched your thighs the closer he got. You were leaning against the table, and he stopped right in front of you, leaning his pool cue to the side, never once taking his eyes off of you.

He lowered his hand so the tips of his fingers brushed your waist, making your skin shiver. 

“Now, either you take them off…or me.”

Your breath grew shallow as his hand drifted up to tease the edge of your bra, his other hand resting on your hip. He moved closer so his bare stomach was pressed against yours, and the shock it sent up your spine felt so good you had to resist pulling him closer.

“Go ahead.” Your voice wavered on the last syllable, as his hand squeezed your thigh and your pussy clenched around nothing. 

He smirked. “It was a good game; better luck next time.” His hand slid behind you and unclipped your bra with one hand, pulling it off you and tossing it onto the pool table.

You sighed as your breasts hit cool air, his eyes immediately dropping to your hardened nipples. He ran his thumb over one, groaning softly when you exhaled, arching away from him as you pressed your back against the table. 

With his other hand, Jay hooked his finger into your panties and dragged them down, immediately grabbing your thighs and lifting you onto the table. You gasped, hands gripping his shoulders to steady yourself. 

He looked up at you now, his lips parted as short breaths escaped them, roving over your naked body like you were a feast he didn’t know where to begin. You let your hands wander to the back of his neck and up into his hair, the blondish silver locks pooling over your fingers in soft waves.

“Fuck,” he said, “you’re gorgeous. I mean, I knew you would be, but fuck.”

You giggled. “So was this your plan all along?”

He smiled, running another finger over your nipple, making you whimper. “Not in this much detail, but…I wanted you from the moment I saw you holding the pool cue like you were seconds away from splitting it in half.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist, tugging him closer. “So you’re saying the secret is walking around bars looking clueless?”

He leaned his forehead against yours. “No, only my bar, and only in front of me.”

Then he kissed you—hard—scraping his teeth along your bottom lip as his hand clutched the back of your neck. You groaned into his mouth, parting your lips around his tongue as your hands gripped his hair, holding him against you. 

Jay’s other hand went to your hip, fingers digging into the skin with the same intensity he had gripping the pool cue. He pulled you even closer, and you gasped when you felt his hard length straining against your core from inside his pants. 

He smiled against your lips and purposely moved against you, sending shivers down your back as your clit brushed his bulge. 

“You want it?” He started kissing down your jaw. “Want me to lay you out on this table and fuck you till you can’t think?” His voice was deep and breathy in your ear, heightening the pressure building low and hot between your legs. It was shocking how much your body craved him, the hours of tension creating a primal need that rallied in your body like a disease. Every sound was disarming, every touch debilitating.

“I need you so bad, Jay.” You sighed. You thought of the pool cue drifting over his fingers, how they were long and precise and so insanely torturous the way they teased you. “I want your fingers inside me.”

His lips stopped against your neck. “Say it again.”

“Jay,” you whined, looking down where your core was still pressed against his crotch. “Need to feel those talented hands all over me.” You smiled. “Your customer has a request; wouldn’t want me to leave a bad review now, would you?”

He chuckled darkly, the sound like blood red wine flowing through your veins. “Well, we couldn’t have that.”

He swept his arm behind you, clearing some of the stray balls before pushing you onto your back. He placed his hands on either side of you, leaning over until you were completely trapped under him, his blonde hair falling into his face as he looked down. “They say the customer is always right.” He leaned down even further until his lips were brushing your ear. “But you might regret it.”

Your heart was beating in rapid bursts, excitement and desire making your thoughts race in drunken flashes that were only intensified by the wine. “I’m a big girl, Jay.”

Jay kissed the corner of your mouth, suddenly tender as one of his hands traced your waist. “Then remember big girls don’t cry, y/n.”

A finger plunged into you, making you arch against the table at the sudden penetration. A broken moan spilled out of your mouth, and Jay muffled it with his lips, humming in pleasure as your body jerked and bucked against his hand. His tongue tangled with yours in an obscene dance, the wet sound of your mouths and his finger pumping into your pussy creating a cacophony of filthy sounds echoing through the large room. 

His thumb landed on your clit, rubbing hard, slow circles that made your brain short-circuit. You whimpered into his mouth, begging for more through the only part of your body that wasn’t being pressed against the table: your hands. You pulled at his hair and dug your fingers into his scalp, a rush of pleasure going straight to your head when he groaned and trembled under your touch.

Jay added another finger, making you pull away as your head tilted against the table at the stretch, a loud moan slipping from your lips. 

You felt him smile against your skin as he moved lower and took one of your nipples into his mouth, sucking and lapping at the hardened bud as if he was starving. 

“Jay! Holy fuck. It feels so good.” You gasped, biting your lip to stop the collection of moans buffering in your throat, ready to spill out like a song.

A low sound that felt like a purr vibrated deep in his chest, and in one agonizing moment, he stepped back completely, his fingers withdrawing from the warmth of your pussy and leaving behind a sad emptiness.

“Noo,” you whined. You propped yourself up on your elbows, finding Jay staring at you with his usual smirk. His hair was a mess, the bare skin of his chest flushed, his eyes dark and foggy with need—and you thought that the sight of him now would haunt your dreams for the rest of your life.

“Sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t let you cum till I’m inside you.” He undid the button of his jeans and pulled them down along with his boxers, letting his hard and dripping cock spring free.

Your mouth watered instantly, and your walls grasped uselessly at nothing. You clenched your thighs together, and Jay moved, grabbing your knees and pulling your legs apart. He kissed your kneecap. “Keep them open for me, ok? Wanna see how bad you need me.”

You bit your tongue, watching with glazed eyes as he kissed his way up your thigh, the pressure almost unbearable. 

He met your eyes, and without looking away, licked a stripe through your folds.

“Fuck!” You moaned, gritting your teeth as you resisted the urge to grind on his tongue. He made a gentle swirl around your clit, and a sound came out of you that you didn’t know you could make. Jay was still looking at you, total devotion on his face as he took in every clench of your jaw and parting of your lips. 

He stopped and stood up, leaning towards your face and kissing your cheeks softly. “You’re crying, baby, and I’m not even inside you yet. Don’t you remember what I said?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Big girls don’t cry.”

He smiled. “That’s right, so show me you can take it.”

You kissed him softly. “Please, Jay, I’ll be good.”

Jay searched your face, taking in your flushed cheeks and smeared mascara, looking at him like he was the earth and you were the moon. He nodded once. He shifted his hips. His hands moved to your waist.

His head pressed against your entrance. 

You inhaled sharply, gripping his shoulders and staring down at the place where your bodies were about to meet. 

He pushed inside, and the stretch had you leaning over his shoulder, holding onto him like a pillar, his hot skin the only thing grounding you as your walls huddled around him. 

You groaned in unison as he went deeper, and he kissed your neck, swirling gentle, rhythmic circles until he bottomed out with a satisfied sigh.

You sat there for a moment, breaths mingling. Your face buried in his neck, and his in your hair, both just basking in the way your bodies meshed together.

Then, he moved.

The friction was exquisite, the ridges of his cock rubbing against your smooth walls in dizzying strokes that had you moaning into his neck. You scraped your nails down Jay’s back, and you heard him curse into your hair, his thrusts speeding up. 

The pool table shook slightly under you, the balls rattling on the surface with every move of Jay’s hips. You pulled back and ran your lips up his jaw until he pulled back and met you in the middle, his lips capturing yours in a desperate kiss as he started to thrust into you harder and deeper.

He sucked on your bottom lip, smiling when you clutched at his hair and wrapped your legs around his waist, hands running down his arms as you tried to touch every inch of him. He dragged you even closer by the hips, groaning when his dick started slamming against your cervix, the sound of skin slapping together filling the room. 

The pressure in your body was a coil tightened to its limit, making every movement brutal as your body begged for release. You kissed Jay harder, moaning into his mouth and rocking against him as you chased your climax.

Jay’s breaths turned ragged as you moved in time with him, maddeningly turned on by the way you clutched at him as if he were the ground beneath your feet. “y/n,” he groaned between kisses. “Let me cum inside, please.”

You nodded against his mouth, almost too delirious for words. “Yes,” you choked.

He groaned and pulled away from your mouth with a wet pop as he started thrusting into you rapidly, looking down and watching himself disappear inside you.

“God, you’re perfect, you’re mine, you’re all mine.” Jay gasped.

You looked down too, the image combined with the filthy sounds of your meshing bodies sending a jolt of pleasure down your back. You felt your climax building, rising in a crescendo of ecstasy. “Jay, I’m cumming!”

The squelching sounds of your juices around his cock got louder, blending with the high-pitched moan that ripped from your throat when your orgasm hit you.

Your vision blurred, and you braced yourself with one hand on Jay’s chest, grinding in time with the waves of pleasure as your climax ran its course.

Jay followed right after, moaning as your pussy clamped down and milked him dry, his hot seed spilling inside of you in spurts. He slowed his thrusts, his eyes fluttering closed as his own orgasm heightened and subsided. He tilted his head against your shoulder, breathing heavily, occasionally placing kisses along your sweaty collarbone. 

You massaged his scalp, letting his silky hair brush over your fingers, basking in the heavy silence of Jay’s apartment, only broken by your soft pants. 

You sat there for a few moments, processing. Then Jay slowly slipped out of you, drawing soft groans from each of you as you finally came apart. He kissed you softly and whispered against your lips. “You were amazing.”

You smirked. “At pool? Or…?”

He laughed. “Your game could use some work, but lucky for you, I’m always open to more lessons.”

“Well, now that I know your…teaching methods, I’d be happy to come back.”

Jay started kissing down your neck. “Good, next time we can work on your break. His mouth went between your breasts, trailing down to your stomach. “Or…” He stopped below your belly button, a new wave of heat already pooling between your legs. “The way you break under my tongue.”

“Tomorrow?” You asked, breath already uneven.

He smiled before disappearing between your legs. “Right now.”

Taglist: @kristynaaah @heeddungi @every-w @iouven @enhniki1009 @cherryluvssss @abby1009poosay @yunki02 @lac4ygal @rikicoolpuma @k3nza @enhtt

"Jake Sim?" you said.

"He's the best tutor I have. Top of the class last semester. Top of the class now.

You knew Jake Sim. Well, you didn't know him. You knew of him. Everyone did. The guy who showed up to every party with a new girl and left with whoever he wanted. The guy who never raised his voice but always got the last word. The guy who'd held a door open for you once and looked at you like he was already bored.

"He's a fuckboy," you said not thinking she heard.

Professor Lee didn't blink. "He's also the only reason six people are passing this class right now. You start Monday. His schedule is at the bottom."

You walked out of that office with your 38 percent and a new low.

Karina and Giselle were waiting for you outside, perched on a bench, phones in hand, looking like they'd been there for hours.

"Your face says disaster," Karina said.

"I have a tutor."

"Okay?"

"Jake Sim."

Giselle's head snapped up. "Jake Sim?"

"Unfortunately."

Karina burst out laughing. "The Jake Sim?"

"Yes."

"The one who went through three sororities in one semester?"

"Yes."

"The one who corrected Sunghoon's drink order at a party and then made out with his date an hour later?"

"Karina." you screamed.

"I'm just saying!" She was grinning now. "Damn. Not Jake."

"I know."

"But also..." Giselle tilted her head. "Damn. Jake is kinda hot."

"I don't care if he's hot. He's a walking red flag with good bone structure."

"And he's your tutor." Karina wiped a tear from her eye. "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"I'm going to fail."

You sat down between them and put your head in your hands. "He's going to be insufferable. You know he's going to be insufferable. He's going to sit there with that stupid smirk and explain basic statistics like I'm a child and I'm going to have to pretend I don't want to throw my textbook at his head."

"Or," Giselle said, "you could just let him be hot and enjoy the view."

"I'm not going to enjoy anything."

"You've never even talked to him."

"I don't need to talk to him to know I hate him."

Karina patted your back. "That's the spirit."

Jake was mid-bite into his sandwich when Sunghoon kicked his foot under the table.

"You got assigned a tutoring student?"

Jake chewed. Swallowed. "Yeah."

"Who?"

"Does it matter?"

Jay leaned forward. "It matters cause we are nosy."

Heeseung was already scrolling through his phone. "Professor Lee's class? She sent out the list this morning."

Jake took another bite. He'd seen the name. He'd read it twice. He'd spent maybe longer than necessary staring at it.

He knew who you were. Everyone did. The girl who walked into parties like she owned them. The girl who never asked for help. The girl who'd looked at him just once across a crowded room, and then looked away like he wasn't worth a second glance.

"You're being weird," Jungwon said from the end of the table.

"I'm not being weird."

"You're not talking. That's weird for you."

Jake set his sandwich down. "It's Y/N."

Silence.

Then Sunghoon choked on his drink.

"The one who told Professor Kim to his face that his lecture was boring?"

"That's her."

Jay whistled. "She needs a tutor? I thought she had everything figured out."

"Apparently not."

Jungwon shrugged. "She's going to hate it."

"She's going to hate me."

"Probably."

Jake thought about that. Thought about your face the one time you'd looked at him. You hadn't smiled. Hadn't blushed. Hadn't done any of the things girls usually did when they looked at him.

You'd just looked. And then you'd walked away.

"I don't know," Heeseung said slowly. "She's hot. Like, really hot. Independent. People come to her for help. This might be interesting."

"Interesting how?" Jake asked.

"I don't know. Just... interesting. She's not going to fall all over you like everyone else does."

Jake picked up his sandwich. "I'm not trying to make her fall all over me."

"Sure you're not."

"I'm just tutoring her. That's it."

Sunghoon snorted. "Famous last words."

Jake didn't respond. But he couldn't stop thinking about your name on that paper.

Y/N.

He wondered if you'd text him first or if he'd have to reach out.

He wondered if you'd show up on Monday with that same look on your face like you had nothing to prove to anyone.

He wondered what it would take to make you look at him twice.

Three days before your first session, Karina dragged you to a party.

"I need to get out," she said.

"You need to get out. I need to study."

"No babes you need to drink."

The party was at some guy's house you didn't catch the name to and you didn't care. The music was too loud, the cups were sticky, and within twenty minutes, you'd lost Karina to the dance floor and Giselle to a guy who looked like he played club sports.

You were on your third drink when you saw him.

Jake.

He was on a couch in the corner, and there was a girl in his lap.

Not sitting next to him. Not leaning against him. Fully in his lap, her legs draped over his thigh, her lips hovering near his ear. His hand was on her waist. He wasn't kissing her but it was clearly heading there.

You recognized the girl. Wonyoung. She was in your psych class. She'd spent the entire semester batting her eyelashes at every guy within a ten foot radius.

Of course it was Wonyoung.

You looked away. Drank. Looked back.

His hand had moved lower.

"Ew," you said to no one.

Karina appeared at your elbow. "What?"

"Jake Sim. With the one and only."

Karina followed your gaze. "Oh. Yeah. That's Wonyoung. She's been trying to get his attention for weeks."

"He's letting her."

"That's what he does." Karina shrugged. "He's always like that. A different girl every week. Sometimes every night. It's his whole thing."

"His whole thing is gross."

"His whole thing is effective. Look at her. She's practically melting."

You took another drink. "I have to let him teach me statistics."

"Poor you."

"I'm serious. How am I supposed to sit across from someone who acts like that?"

"You could try not staring at him."

"Shut up."

Karina grabbed your hand. "Come on. You're too sober. We're dancing."

She pulled you onto the floor. The music shifted something with a bass you could feel in your chest. You let yourself move. Let yourself forget about the F and the tutoring and the way Jake's hand had looked on Wonyoung's waist.

A guy found you. Tall. Dark hair. Cute in a forgettable way. He smiled at you and you smiled back because why not, and then his hands were on your hips and you were dancing with him.

It was fine. It was nothing.

But across the room, someone was watching.

"She's here," Sunghoon said.

Jake didn't have to ask who. He'd seen you the second you walked in. The way the room shifted when you entered. The way people looked at you like you were the main character and they were just extras.

"Yeah," Jake said. "I saw her."

Wonyoung was still in his lap. He'd forgotten she was there until she shifted and pressed closer. He should focus on her. She was pretty. She was interested. She was easy.

But his eyes kept finding you.

You were dancing with some guy now. Some random guy who'd probably never talked to you before tonight. His hands were on your hips. You were laughing at something he said.

"Why is she dancing with him?" Jake asked.

Sunghoon looked. "Because she's at a party? Because he asked? Why do you care?"

"I don't."

"You're staring."

"I'm observing."

"Heeseung called it." Jay appeared on Jake's other side. "He said you'd be interested."

"I'm not interested."

"You've looked at her twelve times in the last ten minutes."

Jake pulled his eyes away. Wonyoung was looking at him expectantly. He'd missed something she'd said.

"Sorry," he said. "What?"

"I asked if you wanted to go somewhere quieter."

The implication was clear. A month ago, he would have said yes. A week ago, he would have said yes. But tonight, for some reason, the word stuck in his throat.

"I have an early class," he said.

Wonyoung's face flickered. "Oh."

She didn't look convinced, but she got off his lap. Walked away without looking back.

Sunghoon raised his eyebrows. "You just let her go."

"She's not going anywhere."

"She's going to find someone else."

"Good for her."

Jake stood up. He needed water. Or air. Or something that wasn't watching you dance with someone else.

He pushed through the crowd toward the back of the house. The hallway was quieter. The bathroom door was cracked open, light spilling out.

He was about to walk past when you stepped out.

You nearly collided with his chest.

"Oh-" You looked up. Your eyes were glassy. You were tipsy. Maybe more than tipsy. "You."

"Me."

"I was just thinking about you."

"Good things?"

"I was thinking about how much I don't want to see you on Monday."

Jake leaned against the wall. Arms crossed. Calm. "That's funny. I was thinking about how much I'm looking forward to it."

"You're lying."

"I don't lie."

"Everyone lies."

"Not me." He tilted his head. "You're drunk."

"I'm tipsy. There's a difference."

"You're going to be hungover on Monday."

"I'm going to be fine on Monday."

"We'll see."

You stepped closer. Pointed a finger at his chest. "You're my teacher now. That's so weird."

"I'm your tutor. Not your teacher."

"Same thing."

"Different thing."

"You're correcting me already?" Your eyes narrowed. "We haven't even started."

"I'm just preparing you."

"For what?"

"For me."

You stared at him. He stared back.

"I hate you," you said.

Jake smiled. Slow. "Monday. Library. Third floor. Seven o'clock. Don't be late."

"I'm never late."

"You were late to Professor Kim's lecture three times last semester."

Your mouth opened. Closed. "How do you know that?"

"I pay attention."

You blinked at him. Then you shook your head and pushed past him, stumbling slightly on your way back to the party.

Jake watched you go.

He was definitely looking forward to Monday.

You showed up at 6:58 because you weren't going to give him the satisfaction of being late.

The library was mostly empty on a Monday night. Third floor was silent except for the hum of the vending machine and the squeak of your shoes on the floor.

Jake was already there. Of course he was.

He was sitting at a table near the window, laptop open, textbook out, pens lined up perfectly. He looked up when you approached.

"You're early," he said.

"I'm on time."

He gestured to the chair across from him. "Sit down."

You sat. Dropped your bag on the floor. Crossed your arms.

"So." He closed his laptop. "Show me your exam."

"No."

"I can help you by explaining why you failed."

Your jaw tightened. "I didn't fail. I got a 38. That's not technically failing. That's... adjacent to failing."

"38 is failing."

"It's a soft fail."

"There's no such thing."

"There is if I say there is."

Jake leaned back in his chair. Studied you. "You're going to be difficult, aren't you?"

"I'm not difficult. I'm particular."

"Same thing, different font."

You almost smiled. Almost. "Fine." You pulled the exam out of your bag and slid it across the table. "There. Happy?"

He picked it up. Read it. Didn't react. "Okay," he said. "Here's the problem. You don't know how to study."

"I know how to study."

"You know how to memorize things the night before and hope for the best. That's not studying."

"It's worked so far."

"Has it?" He held up the exam. "Because this looks like your luck ran out."

You opened your mouth. Closed it.

"Here's how this is going to work," he said. "You're going to stop pretending you're too good for this. I'm going to stop pretending you're not smart. And we're both going to get through this without killing each other."

"That last part isn't guaranteed."

He almost smiled. "Deal."

He stood up. Walked to the whiteboard the library kept in the corner. Picked up a marker.

"Come here."

You didn't move.

"I'm not going to bite." He looked over his shoulder. "Unless you want me to."

"Enough with the games Sim."

"Then come here so I can actually teach you something."

You stood up. Walked to the whiteboard. Stood as far away from him as possible while still being able to see.

He drew a curve. Labeled it. Started explaining. And he was good at it.

Not condescending. Not slow. Just clear. He asked questions and waited for answers. He didn't fill the silence when you were thinking. He let you struggle until you got it.

A hour in, you understood p-values.

"This shouldn't make sense."

"But it does."

He capped the marker. "Same time Wednesday."

"Yeah."

"Try not to be so angry next time."

"I'm not angry. You grabbed your bag. Walked toward the stairs.

"Hey," he called. You turned.

Jake was leaning against the whiteboard, arms crossed. "You're not stupid. You just don't like being bad at things. There's a difference."

"That's like the second time you've said that."

"Because you keep needing to hear it."

You left. But you thought about it the whole walk home.

The sessions blurred together. Two weeks. Four sessions. Then six.

You stopped fighting it somewhere around session three. Not because you'd given up but because you'd started to actually get it. The material made sense when Jake explained it. He had a way of breaking things down that didn't make you feel like an idiot.

He was still cocky. Still insufferable. Still looked at you like he knew something you didn't.

But you weren't snapping at him anymore. You were learning.

"You're different," Karina said one day at lunch.

"I'm not different."

"You smiled at your phone. Three times. In a row."

"I was looking at memes."

"You were texting Jake."

"I was texting Jake about homework." You threw a fry at her.

Giselle watched the exchange with amusement. "She's not wrong. You've been in a good mood lately."

"I'm in a normal mood."

"You failed a midterm and you're being tutored by a fuckboy. You should be miserable."

"Maybe I've accepted my fate."

You were mid-bite into your sandwich when a shadow fell over the table.

"Hey."

You looked up. Jake was standing there. Holding your jacket.

The jacket you'd left at his apartment two days ago after a session that ran late. The jacket you'd completely forgotten about until this exact moment.

"You left this," he said. "You keep leaving things at my place."

"I don't do it on purpose."

"Sure you don't."

He set the jacket on the table. His fingers brushed yours. Too long to be accidental.

Everyone was watching. Not just Karina and Giselle, who had both gone completely still. But the tables around you. The people walking past. The girl at the fountain who'd been trying to get Jake's attention for weeks.

Wonyoung. She was standing near your table, coffee in hand, eyes locked on you. On the jacket. On the way Jake was looking at you.

"Thanks," you said, pulling the jacket toward you.

"See you Thursday," Jake said. He walked away.

The second he was out of earshot, Karina slammed her hands on the table and screamed.

"What the fuck was that!?"

"Nothing."

"That was not nothing. That was something. He brought you your jacket. He remembered your jacket. He came to find you to give you your jacket."

"He's polite."

"He's not polite. He's a fuckboy. Fuckboys don't return jackets. They keep them as trophies."

Giselle was staring at you. "You've been to his apartment."

"For tutoring."

"You're lying."

"I'm not"

"Y/N." Karina grabbed your wrist. "Look at me. Are you sleeping with him?"

"No!"

"Are you going to sleep with him?"

"I don't- I haven't- I don't know."

Karina and Giselle exchanged a look.

"Oh my God," Giselle whispered. "She likes him."

"I don't like him."

"You like him."

"I tolerate him."

Across the courtyard, Wonyoung was still watching.

She found you after class two days later.

You were walking across campus, earbuds in, not paying attention, when a hand grabbed your arm.

You spun around. Wonyoung.

"What the hell?" you said, pulling your arm back.

"Sorry." She didn't look sorry. "I need to talk to you."

"About?"

"Jake."

You sighed. "I don't have time for this."

"It'll take two minutes."

You looked at her. She was smaller than you remembered. Prettier, too, in a polished, intentional way. Her nails were done. Her hair was curled. She looked like she'd stepped out of a magazine.

"Fine," you said. "Talk."

"What's going on with you and Jake?"

"Nothing."

"He brought you your jacket."

"He's my tutor. He was being nice."

Wonyoung's eyes narrowed. "Jake isn't nice."

"Then why do you want him so badly?"

The question caught her off guard. Her composure cracked, just slightly.

"I've been trying to get his attention for months," she said. "Months. And he's never looked at me the way he looks at you."

You didn't know what to say to that.

"I'm not trying to be mean," Wonyoung continued. "I just want to know. Are you together? Is that a thing?"

"We're not together."

"But you want to be."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

She stepped back. Crossed her arms. "Fine. Whatever. Just... don't waste him. If you're not serious about him, let him go."

"I don't think Jake Sim is the kind of guy you need to protect."

"Maybe not." Wonyoung turned to walk away. Then stopped. "But you're not the only one who sees something in him."

She left.

You stood there for a long moment.

Then you pulled out your phone.

You: Some girl just cornered me about you.

Jake: Which one?

You: Wonyoung.

Jake: Ah.

You: That's all you have to say?

Jake: She's harmless.

You: She wants you.

Jake: A lot of people want me.

You: Cocky.

Jake: Honest.

You: Same thing.

Jake: Different font.

You almost smiled.

Jake: See you Thursday.

You: See you Thursday.

You brought it up during your next session.

Not on purpose. It just slipped out.

"So Wonyoung," you said, not looking up from your notebook.

Jake didn't look up either. "What about her?"

"You two have history?"

"Define history."

"I saw her at that party cuddled up with you."

He paused. Then set his pen down. "That was before we started tutoring."

"So?"

"So, nothing. She was there. I was there. It didn't mean anything."

"It looked like it meant something."

Jake leaned back in his chair. Studied you. "Are you jealous?"

"I'm not jealous."

"Your face is red." Jake smiled. Slow. "You're jealous."

"I'm not jealous. I'm... curious."

"About my romantic history?"

"About whether you're going to keep doing that while you're supposed to be tutoring me."

"Would it bother you if I did?"

You looked at him. Really looked."Yes," you said.

The word hung in the air.

Jake didn't smile. Didn't tease. He just looked at you, and something shifted in his expression. Something softer.

"Good," he said.

"Good?"

"Good that it would bother you." He picked up his pen. "It would bother me too. If it were the other way around."

You didn't know what to say to that. So you looked back down at your notebook and pretended to study.

But you could feel him watching you. And for the first time, you didn't hate it.

It happened after a late session.

You'd been studying for three hours. Your brain was fried. Your eyes were tired. And Jake had been looking at you all night like you were something he wanted to eat.

"You're staring," you said.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"About how you bite your lip when you're concentrating."

Your pen stopped moving.

"Don't," you said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't say things like that."

"Why not?"

"Because we're supposed to be studying."

"We've been studying for three hours. Take a break."

"I don't need a break."

"You do." He stood up. Walked around the table. Leaned against it, right next to your chair. "You've been tensing your shoulders for the last hour. You haven't blinked in thirty seconds. You need a break."

"I need to pass this class."

"You will. But tonight you need to relax."

You looked up at him. He was close. Too close.

"And how do you suggest I do that?"

Jake's hand came up to your face. Slow. Deliberate. His thumb brushed your lower lip. "Let me," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I want to."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you need."

You should have said no. You should have packed your bag and walked out and gone home and thought about this in the morning. Instead, you kissed him.

It wasn't soft. It wasn't tentative. It was hungry and frustrated and tasted like every argument you'd been having for weeks. His hands were in your hair. Your hands were on his chest. He pulled you up from the chair and pressed you against the table.

"There she is," he murmured against your mouth.

"Shut up."

"Make me."

You kissed him harder.

He laughed. Then his hands were under your shirt and your hands were in his hair and you had never wanted anyone the way you wanted him right now.

"Bedroom," he said.

"Yeah."

He took your hand.

His bedroom was dark. The sheets were rumpled. It smelled like him, clean, with something underneath that you couldn't name. He pushed the door closed and turned to look at you.

"Last chance," he said.

"For what?"

"To change your mind."

"I'm not going to change my mind."

He kissed you again. Slower this time. His hands slid under your shirt, palms flat against your ribs, thumbs brushing the underside of your bra. You gasped against his mouth.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"I want you to stop talking."

"That's not how this works." He pulled back. Looked at you. His eyes were dark. Serious. "I need to hear you say it."

"Say what?"

"Say you want this. Say you want me. Not because you're stressed. Not because of the tutoring. Because you've been thinking about this as much as I have."

Your heart was pounding.

"How do you know I've been thinking about it?"

"Because you're here. Because you kissed me first. Because you're looking at me right now like you want to climb inside my skin." He tilted his head. "Am I wrong?"

You grabbed his shirt and pulled him close.

"I want you," you said against his mouth. "I've wanted you since the party. Since the first session. Since you said good girl like it meant something."

"It meant something."

"Then show me."

He took his time. Unhurried. Every touch deliberate. Every kiss slower than the last. You tried to rush him. You grabbed at his belt, tugged at his shirt, tried to flip him over. He caught your wrists. Held them above your head.

"Not yet," he said. Voice low. Firm.

"Jake-"

"I've been waiting for this." His lips brushed your ear. "I'm not going to rush. You're not going to rush. You're going to take what I give you. Understood?"

You glared at him. "You're not the boss of me."

"Tonight I am."

"That's cute."

He squeezed your wrists. Not hard. Just enough. "You want to test me? Go ahead. But you're not going to win."

"You're insufferable."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

He smiled. Then he released your wrists and his mouth was on your neck, your collarbone, lower. He kissed down your stomach, your hips, your thighs. He took his time there too, mouthing at the sensitive skin, breathing hot against you.

"You're so tense," he murmured.

"I'm not tense."

"You're shaking."

"I'm cold."

"You're not cold."

He looked up at you. Held your gaze. Then he lowered his mouth where you wanted him most.

You gasped. Your hands flew to his hair.

"That's it," he said against you. "Hold on."

He worked you slowly, deliberately, watching your face the whole time. Every time you got close, he pulled back. Every time you whined, he smiled.

"Please," you finally said.

"Please what?"

"Please don't stop."

"Good girl."

He didn't stop.

His mouth was everywhere tongue flat against you, then pointed, then circling exactly where you needed him most. He groaned against your skin like he was the one getting pleased, like tasting you was his reward, not yours. His hands pinned your hips down when you tried to squirm away, holding you open for him, taking his time. He wasn't in a rush. He wanted to watch you fall apart.

When you came, you came hard, back arching off the bed, his name falling out of your mouth like a prayer. He didn't let you recover. He kissed up your body, slow and lazy, like he had all the time in the world.

You reached for him, pulled him up, tried to flip him onto his back.

He didn't move.

"Not yet," he said.

"Jake-"

"You think we're done?" He pressed his forehead to yours. His breath was hot. His voice was low. "We're just getting started."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

He smiled. Slow. Dangerous.

"Pop quiz."

You blinked. "What?"

He pulled back. Sat up on his knees. Looked down at you spread out beneath him flushed, wet, still shaking from your orgasm.

"You've been learning a lot in our sessions," he said. "But I want to make sure you're paying attention."

"To statistics?"

"To me."

He reached for his belt. Unbuckled it slowly. Pulled it free from the loops.

"This is a different kind of lesson," he said. "But the rules are the same. I ask a question. You answer. If you get it right, you get rewarded."

"And if I get it wrong?"

He folded the belt in half. Tapped it against his palm.

"You get punished."

You moaned, your stomach flipped. Heat pooled low in your belly.

"What kind of questions?"

"We'll start easy." He leaned down, kissed your neck, bit softly at your collarbone. "What's the formula for a confidence interval?"

"You're joking."

"I never joke about education."

You stared at him. He stared back. His eyes were dark. Serious. Waiting.

"Sample mean," you said slowly, "plus or minus the critical value times the standard error."

"Good job."

He kissed you. Deep. Rewarding. His hand slid between your legs, fingers finding you already wet, already ready.

"That's one," he said against your mouth. "Want another?"

"Yes."

"Then pay attention."

He flipped you onto your stomach. Pulled your hips up. The belt was still in his hand.

"What's a Type I error?" he asked.

"False positive," you said quickly. "Rejecting a true null hypothesis."

"Good."

He pushed into you from behind. No warning. No slow build. Just full, deep, stretching you open. You cried out, fingers gripping the sheets.

"Jake- fuck"

"That's one point." He pulled out almost all the way. Held there. "What's a Type II error?"

You couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. He was barely inside you, just the tip, and you could feel yourself clenching around nothing.

"Jake, please-"

"Wrong answer."

The belt came down on your ass. Not hard enough to bruise. Hard enough to sting. You gasped.

"Type II error," he said calmly. "False negative. Failing to reject a false null hypothesis." He pushed back in, slow, torturous. "Try again."

"Type II-" You couldn't focus. He was moving now, shallow thrusts, not enough. "Type II is false negative-"

"Full sentence."

"Type II error is failing to reject- fuck- failing to reject a false null hypothesis."

"Good fucking girl."

He snapped his hips forward. Hard. Deep. You moaned into the pillow.

"You want another question?"

"Yes Jakey please"

"What's the difference between a one-tailed and a two-tailed test?"

You knew this. But he was fucking you now, really fucking you, and every thrust pushed the answer further out of your brain.

"A one-tailed-" He hit a spot that made your vision white out. "A one-tailed tests in one direction- two-tailed tests both-"

"Both what?"

"Both directions-"

"And when do you use each?"

"I don't- fuck, Jake- I can't-"

The belt came down again. Harder this time.

"Incorrect," he said. His voice was colder now. Disappointed. "You're not even trying."

"I am trying-"

"You're distracted." He pulled out. Flipped you onto your back. Stared down at you. "You're so fucked out you can't even answer basic questions."

Your face burned. From the sex. From the shame. From the way he was looking at you.

"I'm sorry," you whispered.

"Sorry isn't good enough."

He grabbed your chin. Forced you to look at him.

"You wanted this. You wanted me. Now you're going to take what I give you and you're going to earn it."

"Yes Jake"

"Shut up."

He pushed back inside you. Harder than before. Faster. His hand closed around your throat not squeezing, just holding, just reminding you who was in charge.

"I've been patient," he said, fucking you with each word. "I've been nice. I've let you be bratty and difficult and act like you're too good for this. But right now? Right now you're just a girl on her back, taking my cock because she can't handle a few simple questions."

Your eyes watered. From the sting. From the heat. From the way his words were making you feel things you didn't want to name.

"Say it," he said.

"Say what-"

"Say you're mine. Right now. In this bed. You're fucking mine."

"Mmm I'm yours-"

"Louder."

"I'm yours Jake, all yours."

He kissed you. Bruising. Claiming. His hand moved from your throat to your hair, pulling, tilting your head back.

"One more question," he said. "Get it right and I'll let you cum."

"Okay-"

"What's the probability that I'm going to stop until you've cum at least three more times?"

You blinked at him.

"That's not a real question-"

"Wrong answer."

He pulled out. Flipped you over again. Pulled your hips up and drove back in, one hand fisted in your hair, the other gripping your hip hard enough to leave marks.

You came without warning. Without permission. Your body just broke, clenching around him, sobbing into the pillow.

He didn't stop.

"That's one," he said. "Two more to go."

"Jake- I can't-"

"You can. And you fucking will slut."

He fucked you through it. Through the oversensitivity, through the tears, through the way your arms gave out and your face pressed into the mattress.

When you came again, it was on his command. His voice in your ear. And your body obeyed.

"You're learning," he said.

He pulled out. Rolled you onto your back one last time. Stared down at you all wrecked, crying, completely undone.

"One more," he said.

"Fuck I can't-"

"You can."

He pushed back inside you. Slow this time. Gentle. His thumb found your clit and circled softly, coaxing, not demanding.

"Look at me," he said.

You looked at him.

His face was different now. Softer. His eyes were dark but not cold. He pulled you on top of him while watching you like you were something precious.

"Cum for me," he said quietly. "One more time. Nice and slow."

You came apart rolling your hips, letting it wash over you. He followed right after, buried deep, forehead pressed to yours.

Neither of you moved.

His hand came up to your face. Wiped your tears.

"You did good," he said.

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

"No," you agreed. "I don't."

He pulled out. Pulled you against his chest. Wrapped his arms around you.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asked.

"For tutoring?"

"For whatever you want."

You laughed. It came out weak.

"Yeah," you said. "Same time tomorrow."

After that first night, something shifted.

Not dramatically. Not with words or labels or awkward conversations. It just happened. Slowly. Naturally.

Tutoring sessions still happened. Twice a week, sometimes three times. Jake still explained statistics with that infuriating calm, and you still rolled your eyes and snapped at him when he got too cocky. But now, when the session ended, you didn't leave right away.

The first time you stayed, it was because you were tired. Really tired. You'd been up late studying for a different exam, and when Jake finished explaining p-values for the third time, you put your head down on the table and didn't pick it back up.

"You can't sleep here," he said.

"I'm not sleeping. I'm resting my eyes."

"You're snoring."

"I don't snore."

"You're snoring right now."

You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. He was smiling with a shine to his eyes.

"Come on," he said. "The couch is more comfortable."

That was the first night you fell asleep on his couch. He threw a blanket over you and sat on the floor next to you, grading papers by the light of his laptop. When you woke up at 2 AM, he was asleep sitting up, head tilted back, mouth slightly open.

You should have gone home.

You didn't.

You pulled him down onto the couch next to you, and he wrapped an arm around you without waking up, and you fell back asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.

After that, it became a thing.

Some nights you slept together the real kind, the messy kind, the kind that left you breathless and sore and smiling into the dark. Other nights you just watched movies. He liked action. You liked horror. You compromised on thrillers and spent most of the time arguing about the plot.

He made you popcorn on the stove, not the microwave, because he was "not a savage." You made fun of him for it. Then you ate three servings.

You never talked about what you were.

Not once.

You were tutoring. You were sleeping together. You were cuddling on his couch at 1 AM, his fingers tracing patterns on your arm, your head on his chest.

But you weren't together.

Or maybe you were. Neither of you said it.

Karina asked. Of course she did.

"So," she said one day at lunch, "are you guys like... together together?"

"I don't know."

"How do you not know?"

"Because we haven't talked about it."

"You've slept together multiple times."

"I'm aware."

"You cuddle?"

"...Yes."

"You text him good morning?"

"That's private."

"That's a yes." Karina leaned back. "You're together. You just haven't admitted it yet."

"We're not not together."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means I don't know what it means."

Giselle snorted. "That's the most non answer I've ever heard."

But they weren't wrong. Something had changed. You felt it every time Jake looked at you. Every time his hand found yours under the table. Every time he said good night like he meant stay.

You just didn't know how to name it.

Neither did he.

Jake's friends noticed before he did.

Or maybe they noticed first. He'd been different lately. Softer. He laughed more. He checked his phone more. He left parties early without explanation.

"You're whipped," Sunghoon said.

"I'm not whipped."

"You left Jay's party at 10 PM because she texted you."

"I was tired."

"You've never been tired at parties."

Jake didn't have an answer for that.

They were at their usual table on campus, halfway through lunch. Jay was picking at his food. Heeseung was scrolling on his phone.

"So," Jay said, "are you going to ask her out or what?"

"We're already... doing things."

"Doing things isn't dating."

"We watch movies."

"That's not dating either."

"We sleep together."

Jay raised his eyebrows. "Okay, that's closer. But still not dating."

Jake ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what we are."

"Then ask her."

"It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

Because he was scared. Because he'd never done this before. Because every time he looked at you, he felt something he couldn't name, and naming it made it real, and real meant he could lose it.

"Because," he said.

"Great reason."

Heeseung looked up from his phone. "You like her."

"I know I like her."

"Then do something about it."

Jake was quiet for a moment. Then he stood up.

"Where are you going?" Sunghoon asked.

"To find her. She has class in twenty minutes. I'm going to walk with her."

Jay cheered. "That's adorable."

"Shut up."

"You're blushing."

"I'm not blushing."

Jake flipped him off and walked away.

Behind him, he heard Sunghoon say, "Told you. Whipped."

He didn't turn around.

You were sitting on a bench near the science building, Karina on one side and Giselle on the other, when the topic of Jake came up.

It always came up lately.

"So," Karina said, kicking your foot, "have you guys talked about it yet?"

"Talked about what?"

"About what you are."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know what to say."

Giselle leaned in. "You could start with 'I like you.'"

"I don't even know if he wants that."

Karina stared at you. "Are you serious?"

"What?"

"He cuddles you. He makes you popcorn. He walked you home in the rain last week. He looks at you like you hung the moon."

"He looks at everyone like that."

"He absolutely does not. I've seen him look at other girls. He looks at them like he's deciding what to order for dinner. He looks at you like he's already eaten and he's still hungry."

Giselle nodded. "She's right. He's down bad."

"He's not down bad."

"He texted you good morning every day for two weeks."

You laughed. "You guys are insane."

"We're realistic. You're the one who's in denial."

"Fine. Maybe I like him."

"Maybe?"

"Okay. I like him."

"And?" Karina prompted.

"And... I don't know what to do about it."

"You could start by not hiding it."

"I'm not hiding it."

"You literally just whispered 'I like him' like it was a secret."

"It's not a secret."

"Then say it louder."

"I like him," you said, normal volume.

"Louder."

"I like him!"

"And?"

"I like Jake Sim!."

"And?"

"And I want him to be my boyfriend!."

The words echoed across the courtyard.

You froze.

Because standing ten feet away, right at the edge of the path, was Jake.

He had his hands in his pockets. His head was tilted. And he was smiling.

"Is that so?" he asked.

Your face went red. Karina and Giselle dissolved into giggles behind you.

"Jake-" you started.

"I like you too, by the way." He walked closer. Stopped in front of you. "And I want to be your boyfriend."

"You heard that?"

"Everyone heard that."

You looked around. A few people were staring. Someone was openly filming.

"Oh my God."

"Yeah." Jake was still smiling. "So. Boyfriend?"

"Shut up."

"Is that a yes?"

"It's a shut up."

"I'll take that as a yes."

He leaned down and kissed you. Right there. In front of everyone. Karina whooped. Giselle clapped.

When he pulled back, your face was somehow even redder.

"I hate you," you said.

"No, you don't."

"You're right," you agreed.

"Good. Now walk me to class."

"You walk me to class."

He laughed. Took your hand. Pulled you up from the bench.

"See you later," he said to Karina and Giselle.

You didn't look back. Jake's hand was warm in yours.

"So," he said. "Boyfriend."

"Don't push it."

"Too late. I'm pushing it."

"You're insufferable."

"Your insufferable boyfriend."

You stopped walking. Looked at him.

"My boyfriend," you said.

"Yeah."

"Like, officially?"

"Like officially."

You kissed him again. Quick. Soft.

"Wow that was easy hmm okay," you said.

"Okay?"

"Okay, boyfriend."

He grinned.

"Now walk me to class," you said.

"Yes, ma'am."

He didn't let go of your hand the whole way.

You were exhausted.

Not because you hadn't slept. You had. But you'd slept with Jake, which meant you'd stayed up late talking, then not talking, then talking again. By the time you actually fell asleep, it was almost 3 AM.

Now you were in Professor Lee's lecture, and your eyelids were winning the war.

You rested your head on your hand. Blinked. Blinked again.

Your eyes closed.

"You're falling asleep," a voice whispered.

Jake. He was sitting next to you. He'd started sitting next to you in every class you shared, which was three. He said it was "strategic." You said it was "clingy."

"I'm not falling asleep," you murmured. "I'm resting my eyes."Your head slipped off your hand. You caught yourself just before it hit the desk.

Jake laughed quietly.

"Go away," you mumbled.

"No."

"Then let me sleep."

"You can't sleep in class."

"Watch me."

You put your head down on the desk. Your eyes closed. The professor's voice faded into background noise.

You were almost there. Almost asleep.

Then you felt it.

Jake's hand on your thigh.

You didn't move. Didn't react. Maybe he was just...

His hand slid higher. Your eyes opened.

"Jake," you whispered.

"Shh."

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping you awake."

"This isn't keeping me awake."

His fingers found the button of your jeans. Your breath caught.

"Stop," you whispered.

"Do you want me to stop?"

You didn't answer. He took that as a no.

Jake's fingers worked the button of your jeans open. Slow. Deliberate. Like he had all the time in the world.

You should have stopped him.

You were in class. In the third row. Professor Lee was ten feet away, droning on about statistical significance. There were people on either side of you. People behind you. People who could look up at any moment and see exactly what was happening.

You should have stopped him.

You didn't.

His hand slipped inside your jeans. Past the waistband of your underwear. His fingers were warm, fingertips rough against your skin, and he moved with the confidence of someone who already knew exactly where to touch.

"You're wet," he murmured, so quiet only you could hear.

"Jake."

"You've been thinking about this?"

"No."

"Liar."

His finger circled your clit. Once. Twice. You bit your lip to keep from making a sound.

"Look at me," he said.

You turned your head. His eyes were dark. Focused. That stupid smirk was gone, replaced by something hungrier.

"Don't make a sound," he said.

"I won't."

He slid a finger inside you.

Your hand flew to your mouth. You pressed your knuckles against your lips, breathing hard through your nose. The professor kept talking. No one looked back. No one knew.

Except Jake.

He added a second finger. Curled them. Hit a spot that made your vision blur.

"Jake," you breathed.

"Shh."

"Someone's going to see."

"Then you'd better be quiet love."

He pumped his fingers slowly, deliberately, watching your face the whole time. His thumb pressed against your clit with every thrust. You were gripping the edge of the desk so hard your knuckles were white.

"So tight," he murmured. "You're going to cum already?"

"No."

"You're close. I can feel it."

"You can't-"

"I can feel everything." He leaned closer. His lips brushed your ear. "I can feel how much you want this. How much you want me. You're dripping down my fingers princess."

Your face burned. Your body burned. Everything burned.

"Please," you whispered.

"Please what?"

"Please don't stop."

He didn't.

His fingers moved faster. Harder. His thumb pressed down. You were shaking, legs trembling under the desk, teeth sinking into your knuckle to muffle the sounds.

"That's it," he whispered. "Cum for me. Right here. In class. With everyone watching."

It ripped through you, sudden and violent, your back arching, your eyes squeezing shut. You bit down so hard on your hand you left marks. Jake's fingers kept moving, working you through it, prolonging it until you were nothing but static.

When you finally opened your eyes, he was smiling.

"I hate you."

"You just came on my fingers in the middle of class."You're going to thank me later."

He pulled his hand out of your jeans. Slowly. Deliberately. And then still watching you he brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them clean.

One by one.

His eyes never left yours. You forgot how to breathe.

"Jake," you said. Your voice came out strangled.

"Yeah?"

"We need to leave."

"Class isn't over."

"I don't care."

"You don't?"

"No."

You stood up. Grabbed your bag. Your legs were still shaking. Jake watched you with that infuriating calm, like he knew exactly what was coming next.

"Y/N," he said.

"Get up Jake."

"Where are we going?"

"Bathroom. Janitor's closet. Your car. I don't care. Get up."

He stood. Sling his bag over his shoulder. His hand found the small of your back as you walked toward the door. Professor Lee didn't even look up.

The second you were in the hallway, you grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward the stairwell.

"Impatient," he said.

"Shut up."

"You dragged me out of class."

"Shut up."

"You must really want-"

You pushed him against the wall of the stairwell and kissed him. Hard. His hands went to your waist. Yours went to his belt.

"Someone could come in," he said against your mouth.

"Then you'd better be quiet."

He laughed. "Learning from me?"

"You started it in class."

"I was keeping you awake."

"You think you're funny," you said while dropping to your knees.

Jake's breath hitched.

"Oh," he said.

"Yeah. Oh."

Your hands found his belt. Unbuckled it. Pulled it open. His jeans came next, then his boxers, and he was already hard, already leaking, already looking down at you like he couldn't believe this was happening.

"You've been thinking about this," you said.

"Every day."

"Every session?"

"Every single one."

You wrapped your hand around him. Stroked once. Twice. He groaned, head falling back against the wall.

"Shh," you said. "Be quiet."

"You be quiet."

"I'm not the one who's going to make noise."

"You're about to be."

You leaned forward. Took him in your mouth.

His hand flew to your hair. Not pushing. Just holding. Just feeling.

You started slow. Teasing. Tongue flat against the underside, then pointed, then circling the tip. He tasted like salt and soap and something else you couldn't name.

"Jesus," he breathed.

You pulled off. Looked up at him.

"If I can be quiet during class," you said, "you can be quiet in a stairwell."

"That's different-"

His grip tightened in your hair. "You're evil," he said.

"You like it."

"I hate it."

"No, you don't."

You took him again. Deeper this time. He groaned, low and rough, and you felt it in your chest.

You set a rhythm. Slow. Deliberate. Every time he got close to the edge, you pulled back. Let him cool down. Started again.

He was a mess in your hands. Leaning against the wall, head back, jaw slack, breathing in short, sharp gasps.

"You're killing me," he whispered.

You took him deeper. Swallowed around him. His hips jerked.

"Fuck-"

A door opened above you.

Footsteps. Echoing down the stairs.

Someone was coming.

Jake's eyes flew open. He reached for your shoulders, tried to pull you off.

"Stop," he whispered. "Someone's-"

You didn't stop.

"Y/N-"

You looked up at him. Didn't let go. Didn't slow down.

His face was going through all kinds of emotions. Fear and pleasure and something darker, something hungrier. He was frozen, torn between pushing you away and holding you there.

The footsteps got closer.

Jake clamped a hand over his own mouth.

You smiled around him.

The footsteps passed. A door opened. Closed.

Silence.

Jake pulled you off by your hair. Not hard. Just enough.

"You didn't stop," he said.

"And?"

His eyes were black. His chest was heaving.

"You're going to regret that," he said.

"No, I'm not."

He grabbed you by the jaw and pressed you against the wall, back to concrete, his body flush against your chest.

"You think you're in control," he said into your ear.

"I know I am."

"You're not."

His hand fisted in your hair. Tilted your head back.

"Open," he said.

You opened your mouth.

He pushed inside. Not gentle. Not slow. Rough and deep and exactly what you'd been waiting for.

"You wanted to play," he said, thrusting into your mouth. "Now you're going to finish what you started."

His hand held you in place. His hips snapped forward. He fucked your mouth like he'd been holding back the whole time and he had finally snapped.

You gagged. Tears pricked your eyes. You didn't pull away.

"That's it," he groaned. "That's my girl."

He was messy. Sloppy. Spit dripped down your chin. He didn't care. Neither did you.

"I'm close," he said. "You're going to take all of it like a champ right?"

You looked up at him. Nodded as best you could.

He came with a choked sound, buried deep in your throat, and you swallowed everything. Didn't miss a drop.

He pulled out. Stepped back to admire you.

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. Looked up at him.

He was wrecked. Hair a mess. Chest still heaving. Looking at you like you'd just ruined him for anyone else.

"Good girl," he said, voice hoarse.

You stood up. Fixed your clothes. Fixed his.

"We're going to be late for class," you said.

"I don't care."

"You should care. You're a tutor."

"I'm your tutor." He kissed you. Soft this time. Almost sweet. He took your hand. Led you back toward the door.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asked.

"Same stairwell?"

"Same stairwell."

You laughed. Pushed the door open.

The hallway was empty.

No one knew what had just happened.

That was the best part, it was yours and Jakes dirty secret.

Parties weren't your thing anymore. Or maybe they were, but you'd rather be on Jake's couch, wrapped in his hoodie, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on your skin while some terrible action movie played in the background.

But Jake had asked.

"Come with me," he'd said, tugging on the sleeve of his black button down. The one that made your brain short-circuit.

"Why?"

"Because I want to show you off."

"You want to show me off?"

"Yeah." He said it like it was obvious. "You're hot. I'm hot. We're hot together. People should know."

So now you were here.

The music was loud enough to feel in your teeth, and the lights were low enough that you could pretend no one was staring.

But they were staring.

Because you walked in with Jake's hand on your lower back, his fingers pressed into the curve of your waist, and everyone noticed.

That's Jake's girl.

Damn, they look good together.

You danced with Jake. You drank something sweet that he handed you. You met his friends properly met them, not just the passing introductions from before.

"I'm going to grab a drink. You want one?"

"Yeah. Same thing."

"Be right back."

He disappeared into the crowd.

That's when she found you.

"You think you're so special."

You turned. Wonyoung.

She was standing a few feet away, drink in hand, eyes sharp. She looked good she always looked good but there was something brittle about her tonight. Something desperate.

"Wonyoung," you said.

"Don't say my name like you know me."

"I don't know you. That's the point."

She stepped closer. "You think you've won."

"I'm not playing a game."

She stepped closer. Close enough that you could smell her perfume. "He's going to get bored of you," she said. "He gets bored of everyone. You're not special. You're just the one who said no first. That's all this is. A challenge. Once he wins, he'll move on."

"You already tried that line."

"Because it's true."

"It's not."

"How do you know?"

You tilted your head. "Because I'm here. And you're not."

Her face twisted. "You're such a bitch."

"And you're obsessed with my boyfriend. Which one's worse?"

"You're not even-"

"I'm not even what? His girlfriend?" You smiled. "I am. He asked. I said yes. Sorry you had to find out like this."

Wonyoung's face went red. Then white. Then red again.

"You're lying." She looked like she wanted to throw her drink in your face. You almost wished she would. At least then you'd have an excuse.

But before she could move, a hand landed on your waist. Jake.

"I leave for five minutes," he said, voice calm, "and you're already causing trouble."

"I'm not causing anything. She started it."

Jake looked at Wonyoung. His expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes went cold.

"Wonyoung," he said. "We've talked about this."

"Have we?" She laughed. "You've been ignoring me for weeks. You don't return my texts. You don't even look at me anymore."

"Because I have nothing to say to you."

"You had plenty to say before."

"That was before." He stepped closer to you. His hand stayed on your waist. "Before her."

Wonyoung's eyes flicked to you. Filled with something ugly.

"I'm going to say this once," Jake said. "Stay away from her. Stay away from me. If I hear about you coming near her again, talking to her, texting her, even looking at her I'm going to make sure everyone knows exactly what you've been doing."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Wonyoung stared at him. Then at you. Then back at him.

"I loved you," she whispered.

"No." Jake shook his head. "You wanted to win me. There's a difference."

She didn't respond instead she turned and walked away.

Jake's hand was still on your waist. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, she's not worth my energy."

He watched your face for a long moment. Looking for cracks. Finding none. You let the silence stretch. Let your heartbeat slow. Then you looked up at him.

"I've been meaning to tell you something."

"I got a 95 on the test."

Jake blinked. "What?"

"The exam. The one you've been tutoring me for. 95 percent."

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

"Show me."

You pulled out your phone. Opened the grade portal. Turned the screen toward him.

95. Right there. Jake stared at it. Then at you. Then back at the screen.

"You did that," he said.

"We did that."

"No." He shook his head. "You did that. I just explained things. You did the work."

"Jake-"

"95 percent." He was smiling now. The one that made your chest ache. "That's my girl."

Your face went warm. "Don't."

"My girl with the 95."

"Jake."

"My girl who's going to pass the class with flying colors because she's smarter than she gives herself credit for."

"Okay, okayyyy"

"My girl."

He kissed you.

Not hard. Not desperate. Soft. Slow. Like he was memorizing the shape of your mouth. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

"I'm proud of you," he said. "Like, really proud."

"I know."

"Like, I'm going to tell everyone how proud I am."

"Please don't."

"Too late. I'm already texting Sunghoon."

"Jake!"

He was already typing. Grinning. You laughed. Hit his chest. He caught your hand and held it.

"Same time tomorrow?"

You looked at him. The cocky tutor who'd gotten under your skin. The guy who remembered your coffee order and mopped on Mondays and looked at you like you were the only person in the room.

"Yeah," you said. "Same time tomorrow."

He kissed you again. And the party kept playing.

But neither of you noticed.

The order came the way all orders did — not in words, not in sound, but in the particular quality of the light. A shift in the gold of it. A direction embedded in the warmth the way iron is embedded in rock — not placed there, not added, but of it, native and irrefutable. He had felt it ten thousand times before, or a hundred thousand, or a number that made both figures meaningless. The light moved and he moved with it. That was the whole of his existence, distilled: the light moved, and he followed.

He had never questioned it. That was the truth he would turn over later, in the long unmeasured dark of his falling — that he had never, in all that incomprehensible span of time, questioned. Not once. He had gone where he was sent. He had done what was asked. He had been, above all and before all, obedient.

But he had also watched. That was his particular nature, the quality that distinguished him from the others, though he had never been told as much — he simply knew it the way he knew the names of stars. He watched. He learned the specific tremor of a human hand when fear moved through it. He learned the sound grief made when a person believed themselves entirely alone — that low, animal register, nothing like the weeping done for an audience. He had watched ten thousand years of human life unspool beneath him like a river seen from a very great height, and he had catalogued it all, and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. It was not his place to feel. It was his place to serve.

The man they sent him to destroy was kneeling in a field of winter wheat. Praying. Of all the things he might have been doing in the last moments of his life — praying, hands laced together on his thighs so tightly the knuckles had gone the colour of bone, head bowed, lips moving in the particular quiet rhythm of a man who had done this every morning of his life and intended to go on doing it.

Praying to the very God who had signed his death. Because he did not know. He could not have known. The sin assigned to him was not a sin he had chosen — it was a circumstance, a thing that had happened to him the way weather happened, the way drought happened, indifferent to his character or his goodness or the particular devotion with which he pressed his hands together every morning in a field of winter wheat.

Riki stood at the edge of that field for a long time. The light pressed. It has been decided. Go. He thought about obedience. He thought about the word — the weight of it, the comfort of it, the way it had functioned as a kind of home for as long as he had existed. He thought about the man’s hands. He thought about the word mercy, which he had heard humans use for ten thousand years, which he had categorised and filed and never once applied to himself, because what would it mean for something like him to be merciful? He was an instrument. Instruments did not choose.

He looked at the man in the wheat. He put the judgment down. There was no drama in it. No declaration, no rebellion dressed up in bright colours. He simply — set it aside. The way you set down a tool you have decided, quietly and finally, not to use. And then he stood at the edge of the field with empty hands and waited to learn what that decision cost.

The answer came immediately. The light went out. Not gently. Not the way light fades at the end of a day, slow and amber and resigned. It left him the way a river leaves a riverbed in drought — all at once, and completely, and with a terrible indifference to what it left behind. Everything he had been, the vastness of it, the certainty, the sense of being held by something larger than himself — gone. Between one breath and the next. And then the wings, which went last, which was the worst of it by a measure he had no language for. The tearing began at the joint and finished somewhere interior, somewhere that had no name in any anatomy, somewhere that would ache for the rest of whatever he now was.

He had not known, until he lost them, how entirely he had lived in them. He fell for a long time after that. Or no time at all. He was no longer made of the stuff that could tell the difference.

The desert was red. That was the first coherent thing — the colour of the earth beneath his cheek, a deep arterial red, the kind of red that looked like something had bled into it long ago and the land had simply kept the stain. He lay with his face against it and breathed, which was new, which was strange, which his body insisted upon with a stubbornness that left no room for argument. In and out. In and out. The sun pressed down on the back of his neck like a hand.

His back was agony. The scarring — already scarring, already sealing over in the graceless way of mortal wounds — pulled across his shoulder blades every time his lungs expanded. He lay still and breathed anyway because there was nothing else to do.

He was thirsty. The indignity of it was almost impressive. That this body, this small and breakable and sweat-damp thing he now inhabited, would announce its needs so plainly, so without shame. Water, it said. Water and shade and rest. As though he were a horse. As though he were a field that needed rain.

He got up eventually, because lying in the dirt was not a solution to anything. The land around him was vast and red and smelled of sage and something beneath sage — something mineral, something that had been here before people had names for things and would be here long after. Scrub brush. A sky so blue it looked painted. The silence of a place that had never been required to be quiet for anyone, because no one came here to need quiet. It simply was.

He walked. He had always known where to walk before. The not-knowing was its own particular weight, something he carried in his chest alongside the ache of the absence of wings, and he did not examine it too closely. He simply walked, because the alternative was to stop, and stopping felt like a kind of surrender he was not prepared to make. The trail appeared the way things in deserts appeared — gradually, then all at once. A thin pale line worn into the rock by boots and time and the particular human insistence on going places. It led upward. He followed it because upward was instinct, still, even now, even stripped of everything that had made upward meaningful.

He did not make it far. His legs — unaccustomed, unreliable, apparently bearing some kind of grudge — buckled without much warning. He went down hard on the rock, gravel opening the skin of his palms, his back igniting with fresh complaint. He lay on the trail in the full weight of the afternoon and looked up at the sky and thought, with the detached clarity of something that had recently lost the ability to feel sorry for itself, that this was probably fitting. He closed his eyes.

Boots on rock. Light, practised, the sound of someone who knew every loose stone on this trail by memory. Then shadow — a mercy, small and immediate — falling across him, and the soft sharp sound of breath caught in surprise. He opened his eyes. You stood over him with a canteen in one hand and the particular expression of someone who had gone out expecting solitude and found instead a problem. Wide-eyed. Mouth soft with surprise. Your hair was coming loose from its braid in pieces, strands of it lifting in the dry hot wind, and there was red dust on your cheekbone and a worn canvas pack on your back and your boots were the boots of someone who covered ground in them regularly, scuffed pale at the toe.

You looked at him the way he had looked at the man in the wheat field. With your whole attention. Taking stock. Then something in your face settled — not resolved exactly, but decided — and you crouched down to his level and said, in a voice that was careful and unhurried, the voice of someone who had learned that stillness was its own kind of language: “You’re hurt bad.”

He said, “Yes.” His voice came out strange to his own ears — too much in it, or too little, calibrated for a register this body didn’t quite have the range for. He cleared his throat. Tried again. “I am aware.” Something moved in your expression. Not quite amusement. Something more careful than that. “Can you walk if I help you?”

“I believe so.” “Alright then.” You stood, resettled the pack on your shoulders, and got an arm under his before he had processed that you intended to. The warmth of you was — startling. Simply that. The solid, living warmth of a human body against his side, entirely unguarded, offered without hesitation to a stranger bleeding on a trail. He did not know what to do with it. He filed it somewhere new. Somewhere without a label yet.

“There’s a farm,” you said, already moving, already taking some of his weight with a matter-of-fact ease that suggested this was not the first time you had managed something heavier than you looked like you could. “Not far. My daddy’ll —” A pause, brief, weighted with something he couldn’t yet read. “There’s a farm. We’ll get you seen to.” “That is —” He searched for the right word, unused to needing to search. “That is very kind.”

You made a small sound that wasn’t quite agreement. Looked out at the trail ahead rather than at him. “Don’t go thanking me yet,” you said quietly. “Let’s just get you down first.” The desert stretched below, red and enormous and indifferent, and you walked him out of it as the sun began its long descent, the sky going amber at the edges, your shoulder steady under his arm and your voice low when you spoke — about the footing, about the path, about nearly there now, careful here, there’s a loose bit — talking him down the mountain the way you might talk something wild back from the edge of a very high place.

He let you. It was, he would think later, the first mercy anyone had shown him in longer than he could measure. He did not yet know he was about to walk into a house that needed some of its own.

The farmhouse sat low against the land like it was trying not to be noticed. That was the first thing Riki observed about it — not its size, not its condition, though both were notable, but the particular quality of its relationship to the earth around it. Most structures built by human hands reached, in some small way. Aspired to verticality. This one did not. It hunkered. It pressed itself into the red dirt as though it had learned, over long years, that drawing attention was not in its interest.

The wood of it had gone grey with weather. The porch listed slightly to the left. A barn stood some distance behind the house, in marginally better repair, and a vegetable garden occupied a patch of ground to the east, fenced against rabbits with wire so mended it was more repair than original. Practical. Relentless. The garden of someone who could not afford to let things die.

You had not spoken much on the walk down. Neither had he. The silence between you was not uncomfortable — it had a texture to it, a kind of mutual accommodation, each of you making room for the other’s quiet without requiring explanation. He had noticed that about you already. You did not fill silence for the sake of filling it. “Home,” you said, when the farmhouse came into view. The word came out level. No particular warmth in it, no particular coldness. Just — identification. This is the place. This is what it is. He filed that too.

The sun was low by the time you came down off the trail, the sky doing something extraordinary in shades of copper and rose that he observed with the distant part of himself that still catalogued beauty out of long habit, even now, even diminished. Your shadow stretched long ahead of you across the dust. His own shadow, beside it, was a strange thing to look at. He had not had a shadow before. You brought him to the porch and settled him against the railing with a care that was businesslike rather than tender — efficient, practised, the movements of someone accustomed to managing things on their own. Sit here. Don’t move. I’ll get water. You went inside without waiting for his acknowledgment, the screen door swinging shut behind you with a sound like a small argument.

He sat. He breathed. He looked at the land. Nevada in the last light of day was a different thing entirely from Nevada at noon. The harshness of it softened without becoming gentle — it was still vast, still indifferent, still the kind of landscape that would kill you without malice if you made the wrong decision. But the light turned it amber, turned the red rock gold, turned the scrub brush into something that almost glittered. It was beautiful the way difficult things were beautiful. Uncompromisingly. Without apology. He was looking at it when the door opened.

Not you. He knew that before he turned — the weight of the footfall was different, heavier, the particular tread of a man who had decided long ago that the ground owed him something. The man who came through the door was tall, broad through the shoulders, with the weathered look of someone the sun had worked on for decades and the eyes of someone who had decided, also long ago, what things were and saw no reason to revise his conclusions. He looked at Riki. Riki looked back.

The man’s gaze moved over him the way a hand moves over a fence line — checking for weakness, for threat, cataloguing. Then it moved to the blood dried rust-brown on Riki’s shirt, the state of his hands, the particular stillness of him, and whatever calculation was happening behind those eyes resolved into something that was not welcome but was not yet refusal. “Found him on the Hartley trail,” you said, appearing in the doorway behind your father with a tin cup of water and a cloth that had seen better decades. “He was down. Couldn’t leave him.”

Your father said nothing for a moment. Let the silence do something with its weight. “Couldn’t leave him,” he repeated, finally. His voice was the voice of a man who had learned that repetition was a kind of pressure. Low. Even. The tone of someone who had never needed to raise his voice because other methods worked just as well. “No sir,” you said. Your own voice had changed. Not much — you were careful, clearly practised at careful — but enough. A fraction quieter. A fraction smaller. The way a candle dims in a room where the window has been opened.

He noticed. He noticed the way you held the cup and the cloth with both hands, occupying your hands. He noticed the precise distance you maintained from your father in the doorway — not touching, never quite touching. He noticed the way your eyes moved to Riki briefly, checking, and then back to your father, and the particular quality of that check — not seeking reassurance, not quite. Something more complex. Something he did not yet have enough information to name. “He’ll need somewhere to sleep,” you said. “Just until he’s fit to travel. The barn —”

“I know where he’ll sleep,” your father said. Still that same measured quiet. “I make the decisions about this house.” “Yes sir.” A pause in which several things that were not words were exchanged. Then your father looked at Riki again, and something shifted in the assessment — still wary, but recalculating. “You well enough to work?” he asked.

Riki considered the question honestly. His back was a sustained misery. His hands were lacerated. He was thirsty in a way the cup of water you were holding was not going to resolve. He was also, he was discovering, possessed of a stubbornness that had apparently survived the fall intact, because the answer that came out of him was: “I am.”

Your father made a sound that was not quite satisfied and not quite dismissive. Somewhere in between. A sound that reserved judgment while implying judgment had already been made. “Barn,” he said. “You sleep in the barn. You earn your keep or you move on.” “That is agreeable,” Riki said.

Your father looked at him for one moment longer — something faintly unsettled in it, the look of a man who has heard a perfectly ordinary sentence and cannot explain why it struck him as odd — and then he went back inside. The door did not slam. That was almost worse, somehow. The deliberate quiet of it.

You let out a breath so small it was barely a breath at all. Then you crossed to the railing and crouched in front of him and held out the cup. “Drink,” you said. Back to that other voice now — the trail voice, the one that was unhurried and direct and entirely your own. As though the version of you that existed in the doorway with your father was a coat you put on and took off. He drank. The water was warm and tasted of the tin and was the best thing he had consumed in — he did not know how long. He drained the cup.

Something moved in your expression. Almost a smile. Not quite. “I’m going to look at your back,” you said. “There’s something wrong with it. I could feel it when we were walking.” He went still. “You don’t have to tell me how,” you said, already matter-of-fact, already reaching for the hem of his shirt with a clinical efficiency that suggested you were not going to make this strange if he didn’t. “I’m not asking. I just need to see what I’m working with.”

He thought about the scars. The twin masses of them, the raised and ruined topography of what had been taken. He thought about what they looked like to human eyes — whether they would frighten you, whether they would make you ask questions he could not answer truthfully without revealing things he was not certain you should know. He looked at your face. Your expression was open and patient and entirely without agenda, the face of someone who had asked a practical question and was waiting for a practical answer, the face of someone who was very good at waiting.

“Very well,” he said. You were quiet for a long moment when you saw them. He did not look at your face. He looked at the last of the light on the Nevada flats and felt the careful, impersonal touch of your hands at the edges of the scarring — not recoiling, not pressing, simply — present. “Does it pain you?” you asked. Quiet. “Yes,” he said. “Though less than it did.”

“Alright.” You exhaled slowly through your nose. Something in it that was not pity — something more careful than pity, something that took the fact of his pain and simply acknowledged it, made room for it, did not try to fix it into something more manageable. “I’ll bring salve. And something to eat, when he’s —” A beat. “When supper’s done.” When he’s settled, you had been going to say. When he can’t see.

He did not say that he had understood. He simply nodded. You stood, collecting your cloth and your empty cup, and you looked at him once more with that level, considering gaze — taking stock the way you had on the trail, the way that felt less like scrutiny than like a kind of serious attention, the kind usually reserved for things that mattered. “What do I call you?” you asked.

He thought about his true name. The sound of it, the weight of it, a thing made of frequencies this body’s throat could not reproduce and this body’s ears could not properly hear. A name that belonged to something he was no longer. “Riki,” he said. It was not his name. It was the closest this mouth could come to something that had once been his, worn down to something human-sized, something that fit.

You nodded like that was sufficient, like names were practical things and you had been given enough of one to work with. “I’ll be back directly,” you said. You went inside. The screen door said its small argumentative piece behind you. The Nevada dark was coming in from the east, slow and purple and enormous, swallowing the last of the copper sky, and Riki sat on the listing porch of a grey-weathered house and listened to the silence of a place that had learned to be very quiet, and understood, with a clarity that had nothing to do with any power he had lost, that he had not walked into a house.

He had walked into a situation. And for the first time since the field of winter wheat, he felt something that was not grief and not confusion but something altogether more purposeful settle into the empty place where his wings had been. He was not certain yet what to call it. He suspected it was anger.

—

He did not sleep. This was not, he was discovering, unusual for him. Sleep was a thing this body was capable of in theory — he had felt the edges of it, that soft dissolution, the way consciousness went loose and unheld at the end of the previous night — but had not yet managed to fall fully into. He lay in the barn on a bedroll you had brought out without being asked, a folded quilt on top of it that smelled of cedar and something floral and faintly of you, and he looked up at the rafters and listened to the dark.

The horses knew he was there. They had known from the moment he crossed the threshold, both of them moving to the far end of their stalls with that particular animal precision that had nothing to do with thought and everything to do with the part of a creature that existed below thought. They were not panicking. They had made their assessment — strange, strange, not right — and had simply relocated themselves as far from him as the barn permitted and were pretending, with great determination, that he did not exist. He found this quietly respectful. He did the same for them.

The barn settled around him as the night went on, its old wood contracting in the cool, making small sounds of adjustment. An owl worked somewhere outside. The wind came off the flats and pushed at the walls and moved on, indifferent, the way wind in Nevada moved — not around things but through them, or past them, without acknowledgment. He thought about the way your voice changed in doorways. He was still thinking about it when the sky began to go pale at the edges.

You were already up when he came out. The surprise was his own — he had assumed, given the hour, that the farmhouse would still be dark and closed, and had half-formed a plan to be useful in some visible, unobtrusive way before anyone emerged to direct him. Instead he found you at the pump beside the house in the grey pre-dawn, working the handle with the mechanical patience of someone who had done this ten thousand mornings and would do it ten thousand more, filling a bucket without ceremony or complaint, your hair still in its night braid, your feet in unlaced boots. You looked up when you heard him. “You’re up early,” you said. Not accusatory. Just noting.

“I did not sleep particularly well,” he said, which was true enough. You looked at him for a moment with that level morning gaze — assessing, the way you seemed to assess most things, with a seriousness that was not unfriendly but did not soften the looking. Then you held out the bucket. “Chickens first,” you said. “Then I’ll show you the rest.” He took the bucket.

The chickens were housed in a low wire run behind the barn, twelve of them, with the collective opinion of Riki that the horses had expressed but considerably less restraint about voicing it. They scattered when he approached, a brief furious explosion of feathers and complaint, and then regrouped at the far end of the run and regarded him with the specific hostility of creatures that had decided something was wrong without being able to articulate what. He crouched and waited. After a moment, one hen — bolder than the others, or perhaps simply more curious — picked her way back toward him with the exaggerated caution of someone pretending they are not doing what they are doing. She got within a foot of him and stopped.

He held very still. She pecked at the ground near his boot. Then at his boot. Then she looked up at him with one orange eye and made a sound of uncertain conclusion and walked away. “Huh,” you said, from behind him. He stood and found you leaning against the fence post with the empty bucket in your hand and an expression he had not seen on you yet — something lighter than your usual register, surprised out of you, unguarded in a way that lasted only a moment before you collected it back. “They don’t like strangers,” you said.

“I gathered.” “They don’t much like anybody,” you amended. “But they especially don’t like strangers.” “I have been informed,” he said, “that I am unusual.”

The corner of your mouth moved. Almost. You turned away before it could become something more, and he watched you go and filed the almost-smile in the same place as the canteen warmth and the cedar quilt and the version of your voice that was entirely your own.

The day’s work was plain and it was relentless. He understood, by midmorning, the particular arithmetic of this farm — the way every task connected to every other task, the way the whole enterprise was held together less by prosperity than by the sheer refusal to let anything fail. The fence line needed mending in three places. The roof of the barn had a compromise along the eastern edge that wanted attention before the weather turned. The well mechanism was original and complained loudly about it. These were not the problems of a farm that was thriving. These were the problems of a farm that was enduring.

He worked. His back made its protests known and he ignored them with the same focused attention he had once applied to the light. The physical labour was strange — the way his muscles heated and tired, the way sweat gathered at his collar, the way thirst came back reliably every hour with the persistence of a creditor — but not unmanageable. There was something in it, even. Something in the simple physics of a fence post driven into red dirt, the satisfying solidity of a thing made more sound than it had been.

Your father watched him from a distance for most of the morning. Riki was aware of this the way he was aware of weather — peripherally, constantly, without looking directly at it. The man had a way of occupying space that was its own kind of statement. He stood at the edge of things. He observed. He did not offer assistance or instruction, which told Riki that the watching was not supervisory. It was something else. Assessment, perhaps. Or the particular vigilance of a man deciding whether a new variable in his environment was a threat or a resource. He had not yet decided, Riki thought, which was more useful to be.

You moved through your own work with an efficiency that was almost architectural — each task slotted precisely into the available time, no motion wasted, no pause taken that wasn’t functional. You cooked and you mended and you hauled water and you did it all with the same quiet matter-of-factness you had applied to hauling him off a trail, and at no point did you look like you expected acknowledgment for any of it. At noon you brought him water without being asked.

He was at the fence line, his shirt damp through, the Nevada sun doing its particular best overhead. You came across the flat ground with two cups and handed him one and stood beside him and drank yours and looked out at the middle distance and said nothing. He drank. “How’s your back?” you asked, eventually. “Improved,” he said. “The salve was effective.”

You nodded. Kept looking at the distance. “You don’t have to tell me where you came from,” you said. Quiet, and even, and with the care of someone constructing a sentence they have thought about before saying. “Or what happened to you. That’s your own business.” He looked at the side of your face. The dust on your cheekbone again — different dust today, paler, from the flour you had been working with this morning. The loose strand of hair at your temple moving in the slight noon breeze. “That is generous,” he said.

“It’s practical,” you said, with a slight correction in your tone that was not unkind. “People don’t tell you things when you push. They tell you things when they’re ready.” He considered this. “You speak as though from experience.” A pause. Brief, but present. “I speak as someone who lives here,” you said, and left it at that.

He did not push. He understood, now, the patience of that sentence — the way it answered him and closed the door at the same time with such practised ease that the closing of the door was almost invisible. You had been doing that for a long time. Opening just enough. No further. He handed you the empty cup and turned back to the fence. “Thank you,” he said. “For the water. And for — “ He paused, searching, unused still to the narrowness of this language, the way it made him reach for things and come up short. “For the previous evening. You were not required to do any of it.” You were quiet for a moment. “No,” you agreed. “I wasn’t.”

And then you walked back across the flat ground toward the house, and he watched you go, and the sun was enormous overhead and the land was red in every direction and somewhere behind him your father was still watching from the edge of things, and Riki drove another post into the Nevada dirt and felt that purposeful thing in his chest settle deeper. Not anger, he revised. Not exactly.

Something older than anger. Something that had been in him even before the fall — that quality that had made him stop at the edge of a field of winter wheat and put down what he had been sent to carry. The inability, when it came to it, to walk away from something that was not right. He picked up the hammer. He kept working.

It was late afternoon, the heat finally relenting by degrees, when he heard it. He was at the barn, seeing to a loose board on the eastern wall, when the sound came from inside the house — low, and brief, and with a quality to it he identified immediately and completely, because he had catalogued it ten thousand years of watching human lives and he knew exactly what it was.

The sound a person made when something hurt them and they had learned not to make noise about it. He went very still. The air around him changed. He felt it before he registered it consciously — that familiar internal shift, the power in him waking from its uneasy dormancy, the pressure dropping around him in a radius that made the horses shift in their stalls and the chickens go abruptly, completely silent.

He stood with the hammer in his hand and the board half-fixed and every part of him oriented toward the house. A long moment passed. Then the back door opened and you came out with a basket of washing and went to the line without looking at him and began to hang it with the same flat efficiency you applied to everything, and your movements were fine — deliberate, controlled — and you did not look at him.

He looked at you. At the way you held your left arm slightly differently than your right. He set the hammer down on the top of the fence rail. Carefully. Quietly. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth and he looked at the chickens, who had gone back to their pecking, and he looked at the sky, which was going that extraordinary copper again, and he did not go to the house, because he did not yet know enough, and acting without knowing enough was how things got worse rather than better.

But he picked the hammer back up and he held it, and he did not put it down again until supper was called.

The barn was dark by the time you came. He heard you before he saw you — the soft unlatch of the door, the particular hesitation of someone who has decided to do something and is still deciding, right up until the moment they do it. A sliver of lamplight preceded you, warm and unsteady, and then you came through the door with the lamp in one hand and a plate in the other and you looked at him sitting up in the bedroll and you said, by way of explanation: “I saved you supper.”

He had not been given supper. He had noted this without comment, the way he noted most things about this house — quietly, and completely, and without letting the noting show on his face. “That was not necessary,” he said. “I know,” you said, which seemed to be your answer to most things that were offered in the register of obligation. You crossed the barn and set the plate down on the top of the nearest stall rail and then you looked around, briefly, for somewhere to be, and settled on a upturned crate a few feet from his bedroll and sat on it and set the lamp on the ground between you.

The horses regarded you with considerably more charity than they had managed for Riki. The bolder one — a bay mare with an opinion about most things — stretched her nose over the stall door in your direction and you reached up without looking and scratched between her eyes with the automatic ease of long habit. “That’s Clementine,” you said. “The other one’s Job.” “Job,” he repeated. “Daddy named him.” A pause that had a particular texture to it. “He has a sense of humour about suffering.”

Riki looked at you. You were looking at the lamp. Your left arm, he noted, was resting in your lap rather than propped at the elbow the way your right was. Protecting it without meaning to, or meaning to so consistently it had stopped being a decision. “Eat,” you said, without looking up. “Before it goes cold.”

He reached for the plate. Beans and cornbread, simple and adequate, and he ate it the way he was learning to eat — with the genuine animal attention of a body that had requirements and was no longer above having them. You watched the lamp and scratched Clementine’s nose and said nothing for a while, which was its own kind of conversation. “How long have you been here?” he asked, eventually. “On this land.” “Always,” you said. “Born here. Mama too, until she wasn’t.” You said it plainly, the way you said most things — not inviting sympathy, not deflecting it, simply stating the fact as a fact. “Just us since I was nine.”

“I am sorry,” he said. You looked at him then. Briefly, assessing, as though checking whether he meant it. Whatever you found seemed to satisfy you. You looked back at the lamp. “It was a long time ago,” you said. “That does not always make a thing smaller.”

A beat of quiet. Clementine withdrew her nose and lost interest and went back to her hay. Outside the barn the Nevada night was doing what Nevada nights did — going enormous and cold and very clear, the stars coming out in their thousands, indifferent and magnificent. “No,” you agreed, softly. “It doesn’t.”

He set the empty plate on the ground and looked at his own hands — the cuts from the trail already healed more than they should have been, another thing to be careful about, another thing to manage. He laced his fingers together and considered the lamp between you and thought about ten thousand years of watching people talk to each other, all those conversations he had catalogued from a very great height, and how entirely different it was to be in one.

“Your arm,” he said. Quiet, and even, leaving space around the words. You went still. Not a flinch — you were too controlled for flinching, he was learning — but a stillness that had a quality of decision in it. Whether to acknowledge or to redirect. You looked at him. “I walked into the door of the pantry,” you said. Steady. Practised.

He held your gaze and said nothing. The silence did what silences sometimes did, in his experience — it made room for something that wouldn’t fit through a smaller opening. Your jaw shifted. Something moved behind your eyes, some internal negotiation he was not privy to, and then you looked down at your left arm in your lap and back up at him and you said, very quietly: “He has a temper.”

Four words. Flat, and sparse, and carrying the weight of nine years of just us. “Yes,” Riki said. “I am aware.” Something in your face changed at that — at the acknowledgment, perhaps, or at the lack of surprise in it, the lack of the particular uncomfortable scrambling that people sometimes did when a thing they had said quietly turned out to have been heard. He did not scramble. He simply — received it. Made room for it. The way you made room for silences.

You looked at him for a long moment. “You noticed,” you said. Not quite a question. “I notice most things,” he said. “Most people don’t.” You said it without bitterness, which was almost worse than if you had said it with bitterness. Simply an observation. A thing that was true and had been true for long enough that you had stopped expecting otherwise. “I am not,” he said, carefully, “most people.”

Your mouth did the thing again — that movement at the corner, the almost-smile, the one that lasted only a moment before you thought better of it. But this time you did not look away. You let him see it, brief as it was, and something about that felt like a different kind of door opening. Smaller than the other one. More deliberate. “No,” you said. “I don’t suppose you are.”

The lamp guttered slightly in a draft from the barn wall and you both looked at it and it steadied and you looked back at each other and the moment resettled itself into something quieter. “Ki,” you said, and then stopped. He waited.

Your brow pulled together faintly, that look of someone who has said something before they have decided to say it. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from. Riki’s —” You shook your head slightly. “It’s fine. Never mind.” “Ki,” he said. You looked at him. “You may call me that,” he said. “If it suits you.”

The something behind your eyes again — that careful interior movement, weighing. Then, so quietly he might have missed it if he were less than he was: “It suits me.”

Clementine made a noise of vague equine commentary from her stall. Job ignored everything, as was apparently his nature. The lamp sat between you on the dirt floor of the barn and the night pressed at the walls and you sat on your upturned crate with your left arm in your lap and looked at him with those eyes that catalogued things, and he looked back at you, and the silence this time was not the silence of two people who had run out of things to say. It was the silence of two people who had said enough for now.

“I should go back in,” you said, eventually. You stood, collecting the lamp, and reached down for the plate. “Leave it,” he said. “I will return it in the morning.” You straightened. Looked at him once more in the lamplight, that level considering look, and he looked back at you and did not look away, and whatever was being communicated in that exchange was not a thing that needed words and both of you seemed to understand that. “Goodnight, Ki,” you said.

Something in him — something that had been falling, or wandering, or simply enduring the very long process of learning what it was to be this diminished and groundless thing — settled, incrementally, at the sound of it. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” he said. The word came out without deliberation. Natural, and certain, the way things were certain when they were simply true. He watched you absorb it — the slight pause before the door, the almost imperceptible shift in your shoulders — and then you went out and the lamplight went with you and the barn was dark again.

He lay back on the bedroll. He looked at the rafters. He thought about the sound your voice made when it was only yours — unhurried and direct and entirely unguarded — and he thought about a left arm held carefully in a lap, and he thought about nine years of just us in a house that had learned to be quiet, and he thought about a field of winter wheat and the thing that had lived in him then, the thing he had not had a name for until he was standing empty-handed in the aftermath of it. He had a name for it now. He had always been capable of mercy. He was discovering he was also capable of something considerably less patient.

—

Three days passed. Then four. Then five. The farm absorbed him the way dry ground absorbed rain — completely, and without ceremony, closing over the fact of him as though he had always been there. He learned the fence line and the well mechanism and the particular temperament of each of the twelve hens. He learned that Job, despite his name, was not actually long-suffering — he was simply quiet about his grievances until he wasn’t, at which point he expressed them comprehensively. He learned that Clementine would work beautifully for anyone who asked her nicely and would make their life very difficult if they didn’t, which he respected.

He learned the shape of your days. The pre-dawn pump. The chickens. The kitchen, then the garden, then whatever the farm required, then the kitchen again. The way you moved through all of it with that relentless quiet competence, never hurrying, never stopping, the whole of it held together by the sheer consistency of your attention. He learned that you hummed sometimes, when you thought no one could hear. Low and tuneless and entirely unconscious, the sound of someone whose mind had gone somewhere else while their hands stayed busy. He never said anything about it. He simply noted it, and filed it, and found that he listened for it.

Your father watched. Your father always watched. But the watching had shifted slightly in character — less assessment now, more the surveillance of a man who has made his calculation and is waiting to see if the numbers hold. Riki was useful. Riki worked. Riki did not ask questions or make demands or give your father any obvious reason for the unease that lived, apparently permanently, behind his eyes whenever he looked at him. Riki was also, he was increasingly certain, the only reason your father had not escalated in five days. He did not examine this too closely. He simply noted it, the way he noted everything, and kept working, and waited.

On the sixth morning you appeared at the barn door while he was seeing to Job’s hooves with a bridle in your hand and an expression that was as close to tentative as he had seen on you. “Daddy’s gone to town,” you said. “He won’t be back until evening.” He straightened. “I thought —” You looked at the bridle. Back at him. “I could show you some of the land. If you wanted. There’s more to it than what you’ve seen. The orchard especially.” Something in your voice was carefully casual in a way that meant it wasn’t casual at all. “You don’t have to.”

“I would like that very much,” he said. The almost-smile. Present and then collected, but he was getting faster at catching it. You rode Clementine. This seemed correct, somehow — you and the bay mare had the relationship of two creatures who had come to a long and mutual understanding, and Clementine moved under you with none of the difficulty she occasionally manufactured for other people, her ears forward, her stride easy. You sat a horse the way you did most things: without fuss, without performance, simply and completely.

He walked beside you. You had offered him Job, with the diplomatic neutrality of someone who was not certain how the offer would land, and he had declined with equal diplomacy. Job had expressed his relief by looking in another direction. They had reached an understanding. The land opened up beyond the farmstead in a way that the farmstead itself obscured — flatter than the trail, wider, the red earth giving way in places to pale grass and the occasional determined tree. The sky was enormous overhead, the particular blue of a Nevada morning before the heat had fully committed, and the air smelled of sage and something floral he couldn’t immediately identify.

“The orchard’s my favourite part,” you said, after a while. “Mama planted it. Apple trees mostly, one pear that never does much of anything.” You paused. “She said if you were going to be somewhere a long time you ought to plant something that would outlast you.” He looked up at you on the horse. The morning light was doing something specific to your face — catching the line of your cheekbone, the loose strand of hair at your temple. “She sounds like she was wise,” he said.

“She was practical,” you said. “I think sometimes they’re the same thing.” He considered this. “I think sometimes they are.” Clementine picked her way along the track and he walked beside her left shoulder and the distance between his height and yours on horseback put you almost at eye level with each other, which he found he appreciated — not having to calibrate the angle of conversation, not having to adjust. Simply side by side, the way the trail had made you, the first time.

“Ki,” you said. “Mm.” “How long are you going to stay?” He was quiet for a moment. The question was plain and it deserved a plain answer, and he had been turning the plain answer over for several days without finding a way to make it smaller. “Not long,” he said. “I do not — belong to any one place. I am not certain I ever will again.” He paused. “I am sorry. I recognise that is not a satisfying answer.” You looked at the track ahead. “No,” you said. “But it’s an honest one.” A beat. “I understand it, I think. Some people aren’t built for staying.”

“It is not a preference,” he said. “It is a — circumstance. There are things I have lost that made staying possible.” He glanced up at you. “I do not say this to be sorrowful. Only to be truthful with you.” You absorbed this with the particular quiet of someone who is listening completely. “I understand,” you said. And then, softer: “I’m glad you’re here now.” He looked at the track. “As am I,” he said. “Sweetheart.”

The orchard was a green and improbable thing in the middle of all that red. Eight apple trees in two rows, old enough that the bark had gone deeply furrowed, their branches spreading wide and low and laden with fruit not quite ripe — another few weeks yet, you said, but close. The pear tree stood at the end of the row in the slightly martyred way of a tree that had been asked to produce in difficult conditions and was doing its dignified best. You slid down from Clementine and looped her reins over a low branch and she began to investigate the grass with the focused enthusiasm of an animal who had been waiting for exactly this opportunity.

“Here,” you said, reaching up into the nearest tree and working an apple free from the branch — smaller than it would be at peak, still a deep green at the stem. You tossed it to him. He caught it. “Not quite ready,” you said, pulling one for yourself, “but they’re good now. Tart.”

He bit into it. It was tart — sharp and clean and cold in a way that surprised him, given the heat. He ate it and watched you do the same, standing in the narrow shade of the apple tree with the Nevada morning around you and Clementine moving through the grass and the pear tree presiding over everything with quiet dignity.

“Did she bring these trees here?” he asked. “Your mother.” “Carried the saplings from her own mother’s farm when she married.” You turned the apple in your hand. “Three days in a wagon. She wrapped the roots in wet cloth and checked on them every hour.” You smiled — not the almost-smile, a real one, brief and unguarded, aimed at the middle distance. “Daddy thought she was ridiculous. She told him some things were worth being ridiculous about.” He looked at your profile. The smile fading back into its usual careful lines. “She was right,” he said.

You looked at him. He was not certain, afterward, what made him do it — whether it was the smile or the apple trees or the particular quality of the light in this green and improbable place, or whether it was simply that it was the most natural thing, in that moment, in the way that true things sometimes arrived without announcement. He stepped close and pressed his mouth to your cheek. Not long. Not complicated. Simply — there, and warm, and certain.

He stepped back. You stood very still. Your hand with the apple in it had stopped moving. Your eyes, when you turned to look at him, were wide and very clear, and there was colour in your face, high on the cheekbones, that had nothing to do with the sun. He looked back at you with the particular steadiness of someone who is not going to apologise for a thing they meant. “Ki,” you said. Very quietly. “Yes,” he said.

A long moment in which several things were considered and none of them were said, and both of you seemed to understand that this too was sufficient. Then Clementine, with the timing of an animal entirely without sentiment, lifted her head from the grass and blew a long breath through her nose and looked at both of you with profound disinterest.

You laughed. He had not heard you laugh before. It was brief and soft and entirely real, surprised out of you by the horse, and it was the best sound he had catalogued in ten thousand years or however long it had been, and he thought he would remember it past the point where he could remember anything else.

That night you came to the barn again. No plate this time. No pretence of a reason. You simply came, and sat on your upturned crate, and he sat up in his bedroll, and the lamp went between you on the dirt floor, and you talked. About the farm. About the town half a day’s ride away, its general store and its church and its doctor who was also the barber, who you had not seen in two years because your father saw no reason for it. About your mother’s apple trees and your mother’s hands, which had been like yours, practical and capable, and the particular grief of inheriting someone’s hands without being able to tell them you had. He listened. He asked questions when questions were useful and was quiet when quiet was useful and when you paused he did not rush to fill it.

You asked him, at some point, where he had come from. He said: very far away. You asked if there was anyone there who missed him. He considered the true answer to this, which was complex, and gave you the simple one. “No,” he said. “Not anymore.” You looked at him. “I’m sorry,” you said. “Do not be,” he said. “I made a choice. I would make it again.” “What choice?”

He looked at the lamp. At the way the flame moved in the draft, small and persistent, unwilling to go out. “To refuse to do something that was wrong,” he said. “Even when I had been asked to do it by someone I had always obeyed.” A long quiet. “That took courage,” you said. “It took —” He paused. “I am not certain it was courage. I am not certain I calculated the cost before I paid it. I simply — could not. Some things, when you are standing in front of them, admit no other response.”

You were looking at him with that full attention, that serious and complete regard, and he looked back at you, and the lamp burned between you, and outside the Nevada night was enormous and cold and blazing with stars. “I understand that,” you said, quietly. “I think I do.” He thought about a left arm held in a lap. About a voice that changed in doorways. About nine years of just us and what that cost, paid daily, without complaint, without anyone to acknowledge the paying. “I know,” he said.

You stayed another hour. Maybe two. Time had not fully resolved itself for him yet — it still moved strangely, catching and pooling, running thin in places. But whatever measure it was, it was not enough, and when you finally stood and took the lamp and said goodnight he watched the light go with the particular feeling of someone watching something good move away from them and knowing, with a clarity that had nothing comfortable in it, that they cannot keep it. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” he said. “Goodnight, Ki,” you said. And then the dark, and the rafters, and the sound of his own breathing, which was still new enough to notice.

He lay in the cedar-smelling dark and looked at nothing and thought about apple trees planted by women who understood that some things were worth being ridiculous about. He thought he was beginning to understand that too.

—

It happened on a Tuesday. He knew this because you had told him, some nights ago in the barn, that Tuesdays were the worst — that your father came back from town on Tuesdays with the particular mood that town produced in him, something compounded of other men’s opinions and the price of things and whatever he had found at the bottom of whatever he had been drinking. You had said it matter-of-factly, the way you said most things, and he had filed it and said nothing and had been watching Tuesdays since.

This Tuesday your father came back two hours earlier than usual. Riki was at the well when he heard the horse. He straightened and watched your father come up the track with the specific quality of stillness that preceded bad weather — not loud, not yet, but carrying it, the way the air carried rain before rain arrived. Your father dismounted without looking at him. Took the horse to the barn without speaking. The set of his shoulders said everything his mouth was not yet saying. Riki set down the bucket.

He did not go inside. He had no cause to go inside. He stood at the well and he waited and he listened to the land, which had gone very quiet in the particular way it went quiet sometimes — the chickens off their scratching, Clementine still in her stall, even the wind seeming to hold itself. The sound, when it came, was brief.

A voice raised — your father’s, low and controlled, which was worse than shouting, he had learned, because controlled meant deliberate — and then something that was not a voice, something that had no register in language, that lived below language, and he was already moving before he had decided to move. The kitchen door. He did not burst through it. He opened it the way you opened things in this house — without drama, without announcement — and he stood in the doorway and he looked.

Your father stood at the far end of the kitchen. You stood nearer to the window, one hand braced on the table, your head down, your hair loose from its braid and falling forward. The posture of someone absorbing something. Waiting for it to be over.

Your father looked at Riki. Riki looked at your father. And the air in the kitchen changed. He felt it leave him before he could stop it — that interior shift, the power waking from its dormancy with the sudden and total alertness of something that had been waiting for a reason. The pressure dropped. The lamp on the table guttered. The window glass made a sound like it was being pressed from the outside. The temperature fell by degrees that had nothing to do with the weather. He had not moved. He was standing in the doorway with his hands at his sides and his face entirely still and he had not moved, but the kitchen felt like the moment before lightning, and every animal on the property knew it, and your father knew it, and from the way your head had come up slowly, carefully, you knew it too.

Your father’s face went through several things in quick succession. Then it went to something Riki recognised, because he had catalogued it ten thousand times in ten thousand human faces. Fear.

Not the performed kind. The real kind. The kind that lived in the body before the mind had caught up, that moved in the hands and the jaw and the particular way a man’s weight shifted backward without him meaning it to. Your father said nothing. Riki said nothing. The lamp steadied. The pressure did not lift entirely — he could feel it still, that live and uncontrolled thing in him, wanting — but he held it. Barely. The way you held a door shut in a high wind. With everything available to him.

“I believe,” he said, very quietly, very evenly, “that supper needs seeing to.” It was not what he meant. It was not close to what he meant. But it was the sentence that fit inside the doorway without breaking anything irreparable, and he said it the way he had once delivered divine directives — with a certainty so complete it did not require volume. Your father picked up his hat from the table. He walked past Riki through the door without looking at him. His footsteps crossed the porch. The barn door opened and shut.

The kitchen was very quiet. You had not moved from the table. Your hand was still braced on it, your head no longer down but not quite up either, your hair in your face. He could hear you breathing — measured, controlled, the breathing of someone who has learned to regulate themselves through force of will alone. He came into the kitchen.

He did not go to you immediately. He went to the lamp and turned it up and then he stood a few feet from you and waited, the way you waited for things — with patience, and without agenda. After a moment you straightened. Pushed the hair from your face. And you looked at him, and he looked at you, and whatever had just happened was present in the space between you in its full dimensions, undiminished. “Ki,” you said. Very quiet. “Yes,” he said.

“What was that.” Not quite a question. The tone of someone who had seen something they did not have a category for. “I would prefer,” he said carefully, “to discuss it later. Are you hurt?” Something moved in your face at the directness of it. At being asked plainly. “I’m alright,” you said. He looked at you. At the specific way you were holding yourself. “I would like to believe that,” he said. “I am finding it somewhat difficult.”

Your jaw shifted. You looked at the table. Then, quietly, with the care of someone setting something fragile down: “My arm again.” He exhaled slowly through his nose. “Come to the barn later,” he said. “When he’s settled.”

You looked up at him. “Ki —” “Please,” he said. The word came out with more in it than he intended — not a request, exactly, or not only that. Something more unguarded. Something that had been accumulating across five days of watching you move through this house and compress yourself smaller and absorb things that should not have to be absorbed. You held his gaze for a long moment. Then you nodded.

He was sitting in the barn doorway when you came. Late — later than usual, the farm long dark, the stars doing their extravagant Nevada best overhead. You came across the flat ground with the lamp low and your coat pulled around you and you looked tired in a way that was not only the tiredness of a long day. The tiredness of a long time. He moved to let you through.

You sat on the crate and he sat across from you on an upturned bucket and you were quiet for a while, which he allowed. Clementine observed you from her stall. Job was asleep, or pretending to be. “Show me,” he said, finally. Gentle. You pushed your sleeve back. He looked at your arm. He had seen worse — had catalogued far worse, from a very great height, across a very long time — but the knowledge of that did nothing useful here, in a barn in Nevada, looking at evidence of something done deliberately to you by someone who had decided they had the right. He looked at it and felt that thing in him again, that live and uncontrolled thing, and breathed through it, and held it.

He reached out and took your arm very carefully in both hands. You went still. Watching his face. He was not thinking about what he was doing — not precisely. He was operating on something below thought, something that had survived the fall intact the way instinct survives most things. He felt the warmth move through his palms, slow and unsteady, the power in him fraying at the edges as it always did — but present. Still present. He held it as long as he could, which was not long enough, and then he released your arm and sat back and felt the effort of it in the spaces between his ribs.

You looked at your arm. Then you looked at him. “Ki,” you said. Barely a sound. “Do not,” he said, quietly, “ask me to explain that. Not tonight.” A long silence in which you visibly decided not to push. That practised restraint of yours, that ability to make room. He was grateful for it. He was not certain he had the words tonight, and what words he did have were not adequate to the thing. “Does it still hurt?” he asked.

You looked at your arm. Flexed your fingers slowly. “No,” you said, with a wondering quality that he did not examine. “No, it doesn’t.” He nodded. You looked at him with those eyes — that full and serious attention — and he looked back at you and did not look away and the lamp burned between you and outside the Nevada night was all stars and cold and the enormous indifferent dark. “Ki,” you said again. Softer.

“Yes, sweetheart.” “What are you?” He looked at you. You held his gaze with a steadiness that told him you had been building to this question for some time — not impulsively, not from fear. From the same seriousness with which you approached everything. You wanted to know. You were asking because you trusted him enough to ask. He thought about his true name. About the field of winter wheat. About the gold leaving him all at once, and the wings going last, and the long unmeasured fall into red Nevada dirt. “Something that was cast out,” he said. “For refusing to do what was wrong.”

You were quiet. “Are you dangerous?” you asked. He considered the truth of that. The full complicated truth of it — the unstable power, the thing in him that had made the kitchen glass flex in its frame, the fact of what he was capable of when he felt something strongly enough. “Not to you,” he said. It was the most honest answer he had.

You looked at him for a long time. Then you leaned forward from your crate, closing the distance between you, and you took his face in both your hands — your capable, practical hands, your mother’s hands — and you held it the way you held things that mattered, carefully and without apology, and you looked at him from very close and said:

“I trust you.” He closed his eyes. The barn was warm and smelled of cedar and horse and the faint sweetness of apple from the orchard, and your hands were on his face, and he was something cast out and diminished and still fundamentally unresolved, and none of that mattered, in this moment, at all. He turned his head.

His mouth found the corner of yours. Not quite — not yet, careful, giving you the space to decide — the barest brush, a question rather than an answer. He felt your breath change against his cheek.

“Ki,” you whispered. “Tell me to stop,” he said, very quietly. “And I will stop.” You didn’t. His mouth found yours.

It was — not like anything he had catalogued. Not like anything in ten thousand years of watching humans love each other from a very great height. It was immediate and warm and entirely real, and you kissed him back with the same directness you brought to everything, your hands still on his face, his own hands coming up to find your waist, and the lamp burned and the horses slept and outside the Nevada stars did their ancient indifferent work. He pulled back eventually. Not far. Your foreheads together, both of you breathing, the space between you warm. “I have to tell you something,” he said. “Tomorrow,” you said. Firm and quiet and entirely certain. “Tell me tomorrow.”

He looked at you. You looked back at him, close enough that he could see the lamp reflected in your eyes, and your expression was open and decided and unafraid, the expression of someone who has chosen a thing and is not going to be talked out of it tonight. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

You stayed another hour. Neither of you spoke much. You sat close on the upturned crate and he sat close on the bucket and your shoulders touched and that was sufficient, and when you finally left he watched the lamp go the way he always did — with the feeling of something good moving away — but differently now. With the knowledge that it was coming back. He lay in the dark and looked at the rafters. He thought about tomorrow.

He thought about all the things tomorrow contained, all the things that would need to be said and decided and reckoned with — your father, and the farm, and the fact of what he was, and the fact that he had said not long in an apple orchard and had meant it and was no longer certain what meaning it cost him. He thought about your hands on his face. He thought: some things, when you are standing in front of them, admit no other response. He slept, for the first time.

—

He was at the pump when you came out. Earlier than usual — the sky still that deep pre-dawn blue, not yet committed to morning, the stars fading at the edges but present still overhead. You came through the back door with your coat on over your nightgown and your feet in your unlaced boots and your hair down, loose around your shoulders, and you looked at him across the yard with an expression he had not seen on you before.

Open. Unguarded in a way that had nothing careful in it. The face of someone who had slept and woken and found the previous night still true. He let go of the pump handle. You crossed the yard. You stopped in front of him and looked up at him and he looked down at you and the blue pre-dawn light was doing something specific to your face, to the particular quality of your eyes in it, and he thought about ten thousand years of cataloguing beautiful things from a very great height and how none of it had prepared him for this. For the way beauty looked from inside it.

“You said tomorrow,” you said. Quiet. “I did.” “It’s tomorrow.” “It is.” You waited. Patient, the way you were patient — completely, without performance. He took a breath. He told you everything.

Not all at once — it came in pieces, and you received each piece the way you received most things, with that full and serious attention, making room. He told you about the light, and what it meant when it moved. He told you about the order and the field of winter wheat and the man kneeling in it who had done nothing to deserve what had been decided for him. He told you about putting the judgment down and what happened after — the gold leaving, the wings going last, the long fall into red Nevada dirt.

He told you about the scars. He told you about the power — the way it lived in him now, fraying and unstable, the way it woke when he felt things strongly. He told you about the kitchen, the lamp guttering, the glass flexing, the thing in him that had wanted and that he had held, barely, with everything available to him. He told you he did not know how long he had been fallen. That time moved differently for him still, catching and pooling, running thin in places. That not long in the orchard had been the truth as he understood it, which was also not the whole truth, which was that he had not wanted it to be true at all.

You sat on the porch step while he told you and you looked at your hands in your lap and then at the horizon and then at him, and you did not interrupt and you did not flinch and when he finally ran out of words and went quiet you were quiet too, for a long moment. Then you said: “Show me.” He looked at you. “Your back,” you said. “Show me. Properly. In the light.”

He understood what you were asking. Not for proof — you had not asked for proof, you had listened to everything with the same gravity you brought to things that were simply true. You were asking because you wanted to see it. Because you did not want to look away from the parts of him that had cost him something. He turned. He pulled his shirt over his head. The morning light, coming now in earnest at the horizon, fell across his back. He heard you stand from the step. Heard you cross the distance. Felt the particular warmth of you close behind him, and then your hands — your careful, capable hands — resting lightly on either side of the scarring. Not pressing. Just — present. “It must have been unbearable,” you said. Low.

“Yes,” he said. “It was.” “And you’d do it again.” “Yes.” Your hands stayed where they were. He felt you press your forehead gently between your hands, against the space between his shoulder blades, and he closed his eyes and stood very still and felt the simple animal warmth of it move through him like the water had moved through dry ground. “Ki,” you said. Muffled against his back. “Yes, sweetheart.”

“I think I love you.” He went entirely still. “I know that’s —” Your voice was careful now, the care of someone saying something for the first time that they have only ever read about. “I know that’s a large thing to say. I’m not — I’ve never said it before. I’ve read about it. In my mother’s books. I didn’t know if I’d recognise it.” A pause. “I recognise it.” He turned.

You looked up at him. High colour in your face, and your chin up, and your eyes entirely steady — not performing the courage of it, simply having it, the way you had everything, plainly and without fuss. He cupped your face in both hands. “Sweetheart,” he said. Very quietly. “You don’t have to say it back,” you said, immediately. “I’m not —”

“I love you,” he said. You stopped. He looked at you. At the particular expression moving across your face — something he had no prior catalogue entry for, something that was not quite disbelief and not quite joy and was perhaps both of those things failing to contain each other. “You —” “I have watched human beings love each other,” he said, “for longer than I can measure. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like, now, which I did not before.” He brushed his thumb across your cheekbone. “It feels like this.”

You made a sound that was not quite a word. Then you reached up and you kissed him. Not like the night before — not a question, not careful. This was an answer, full and certain, your hands in his shirt and his arms going around you and the Nevada morning arriving in amber and rose around you, and it was the most completely real thing he had experienced since the fall, and he thought, distantly, that if this was what was available down here, in this diminished and groundless and entirely unpredictable human life — then he understood, finally, what he had chosen. He would choose it again.

Your father came home at noon. He came around the side of the house and found you at the porch, sitting on the step with a book in your lap that you were not reading, and Riki beside you on the step, close enough that your shoulders touched, his forearms on his knees, both of you looking at the middle distance with the specific quality of two people who have recently found each other and are still adjusting to the finding.

Your father stopped. The look on his face went through its familiar sequence — assessment, calculation, conclusion — but faster this time, and landing somewhere that made the hair on the back of Riki’s neck resolve into something alert. “Inside,” your father said. To you. Only to you. You stood. The book closed in your hands. Riki stood with you, and your father looked at him with a look that said: this does not include you, and Riki looked back with a look that said: I am aware.

You went inside. The screen door shut. Riki stood on the porch and listened to the land and kept his hands very still at his sides and breathed, slowly, in and out, and held the thing in him that wanted with everything he had, because the time was not now, because he did not yet know enough, because acting without knowing enough was how things got worse.

He went back to the fence line. He worked until the sun went low. He did not hear anything from the house. This was not reassurance. He had learned, in his time here, that the absence of sound meant nothing in a house that had learned to be quiet. He worked and he listened and he held himself ready in the way that something trained for ten thousand years to act does not stop being ready, even diminished, even fallen, even here.

Supper was not called. The lamp in the kitchen went out early. He sat in the barn doorway and watched the dark house and waited. It was past midnight when he heard you. He knew the sound. Not the first sound — that was too quiet, the controlled register of your father’s voice through walls, the specific low evenness of a man who had learned that control was its own kind of violence. That Riki had heard before. He held himself and breathed and waited.

It was the second sound that moved him. A crack — flat and immediate and unmistakable, the sound of a hand meeting a face with force, and then the sound that followed it, which was you, which was the sound of someone who had been trying not to make noise and had been hit hard enough that the trying failed. Not a scream. Something more broken than a scream — a cry wrenched from somewhere involuntary, somewhere below the careful management you applied to everything, and then the sound of something hitting the floor.

Then your father’s voice again. Still controlled. Still low. Explaining something, in the tone of a man who believes he is owed explanation’s reception, while somewhere on the floor of that dark house you absorbed it. Then the sound of it happening again. Riki stood.

He went to the window first. What he saw: you on the floor of your room, one arm braced under you, trying to get up. Your face turned away from him, hair loose and fallen forward. Your father standing over you with his belt in his hand and the expression of a man entirely convinced of his own righteousness, which was the most dangerous kind of man, Riki had learned — not the ones who knew they were wrong and did it anyway, but the ones who had built a complete architecture of justification and lived inside it without windows. He went to the back door.

He did not go to your father’s room. He went to yours, and he opened the door, and he came in, and he crouched beside you on the floor where you had put yourself in the corner the way small animals put themselves in corners — making yourself as small as possible, which was the most unbearable thing, that you had learned this — and he put his hands on your face and he made you look at him. Your face.

He looked at it and held everything in him still with a precision that cost him more than anything had cost him since the fall. “Look at me,” he said. Quiet and even. “Look at me, sweetheart. Are you with me?” You looked at him. Your eyes found his. “Ki?” You said, broken in the middle. “Yes,” he said. “It’s me. I’ve got you.” I’ve got you — your words, from the trail, the first ones, and he meant them the same way you had meant them, completely and without reservation. “Can you stand?” You could. Barely, and with his hands on you, but you could.

He took you to the barn. He settled you on the bedroll with the cedar quilt around your shoulders and he crouched in front of you and he looked at your face again and the thing in him was not fraying now. It was not unstable. It had resolved into something very clear and very still, the stillness of a decision made completely. “Stay here,” he said. You looked at him. At his face, at whatever was in it that had no human register. “Ki —”

“Stay here,” he said again. “Do not come in. Whatever you hear — do not come in.” “What are you going to do.” He looked at you. He did not answer. He did not need to. The answer was in his face and you could read it, he knew you could — you who catalogued things, you who paid attention, you who had looked at him from the very beginning with that serious and complete regard.

“Ki,” you said. Very quietly. “I know,” he said. He stood. He pressed his mouth to your forehead, your temple, the corner of your eye. He held your face in his hands one more moment and looked at you and you looked back at him and the lamp burned between you for the last time in this configuration, and then he put it down and he turned and he walked back to the house.

Your father was in the kitchen. He had not gone back to bed — he was at the table with a glass and his bible open in front of him, which Riki observed with a clarity that had no heat in it. The heat had burned off entirely on the walk across the yard. What was left was something much older and much colder than heat, something that had existed in him before he had a name for it, that had been in his hands in a field of winter wheat and had made a decision and had never, in the long unmeasured time since, doubted that decision. He came through the door. Your father looked up.

And Riki looked at him — and did not speak, and did not move, and simply let what he was rise to the surface of him completely and without management, without the careful containment of the kitchen two days ago, without the held door in a high wind. He let it come. The lamp went out.

Not guttered — extinguished, as though the air itself had decided it was no longer necessary. The temperature in the kitchen dropped so severely that your father’s breath became visible, a pale ghost of it in the sudden dark, and the glass on the table cracked cleanly down the middle and the bible’s pages turned without wind, all of them, to the end. Your father did not stand. Something had communicated to his body, below the level of thought, that standing would not help. Riki crossed the kitchen.

He did it slowly. There was no need to do it otherwise. Your father pressed back against his chair and made a sound that had no language in it, the sound of a creature that has encountered something outside the category of things it knows how to respond to, and Riki looked at him with eyes that were not, in this moment, entirely the eyes he wore in the daylight — and he was very calm, and very certain, and he put his hand on your father’s chest, and he was not long about it.

It was not cruel. He was not, had never been, cruel. He had been made for judgment, once — true judgment, the kind that weighed carefully and arrived at precision, not the kind your father had practiced in this house for nine years with a belt and a bible and a voice kept deliberately low. He knew the difference. He had always known the difference. It was the knowing that had cost him everything and he did not regret it, standing in this dark kitchen, not for a single part of a second. He stayed until it was finished.

Then he stood in the dark for a moment, in the silence of a house that had learned to be quiet and was now quiet for a different reason, and he breathed, in and out, and he let the thing in him recede back to its fraying dormant place. He walked back across the yard. He came through the barn door. The lamp caught him in pieces — his hands first, then his shirt, the dark stain of it. His face, which was entirely still, which had the quality of something that has passed through a very great heat and come out the other side resolved. His eyes, which found yours immediately and did not look away.

He stopped a few feet from you. You looked at him. At all of it, in the lamplight, without flinching. You looked at him the way you had looked at his scars in the morning light — because you did not want to look away from the parts of him that had cost him something.

He had done this before. In a different form, in a different age. He had been made for it, once. But he had never done it for this — for someone sitting in a barn in Nevada with a cedar quilt around her shoulders and her mother’s capable hands and nine years of just us and an almost-smile that he intended to spend a very long time coaxing into something less careful. “Ki,” you said. Your voice was steady. He had not known what your voice would be and it was steady, and something in him came fully to rest at the sound of it.

“Yes,” he said. You stood. The quilt fell from your shoulders. You crossed to him and you took his face in your hands — the way you had in the barn two nights ago, that careful and unapologetic hold — and you looked at him from very close. “You’re beautiful,” you said. He looked at you. At the absolute sincerity of it, the plainness of it, the way you said it the way you said everything — directly, and without fuss, and meaning it completely.

Something broke open in him. Not badly. The way ground breaks open in spring — to let something through. You kissed him. He kissed you back with everything he had, which was not what he’d had before the fall, which was less and more complicated and fraying at the edges, and it was enough, it was more than enough, it was the most enough anything had ever been.

You took very little. Your mother’s books. A change of clothes. The small tin of money you had kept in the flour jar for nine years because you had always known, in the way people know things they do not say aloud, that there would come a morning when you would need it. He saddled Clementine. Job watched this process with the air of an animal that had opinions but had decided, on this particular occasion, to keep them to himself.

The sky was going grey at the east when you came out of the house for the last time. You stood on the porch for a moment — not long, a breath, the specific pause of someone saying goodbye to something that was never really home — and then you stepped off it and crossed the yard and he held Clementine while you mounted and then he handed you the reins and you looked down at him. “Are you going to walk again?” you said. The almost-smile, present and real, and he looked at it and thought: there it is.

“I find I prefer it,” he said. “It gives me something to look at.” The colour came into your face, high on the cheekbones. He took Clementine’s bridle and he began to walk, and she walked with him, and you rode above him in the early morning with the Nevada land going gold around you and the sky opening up ahead in every colour it had, and he walked and looked at the horizon and felt the sun on his face, which was new enough still to notice, which he hoped would always be new enough to notice.

“Ki,” you said, from above him. “Yes, sweetheart.” “Where are we going?” He looked out at the land. At the vast and red and indifferent and quietly magnificent land, all that open sky above it, all that possibility in the distance. “Away from here,” he said. “And then — wherever you like.”

You were quiet for a moment. “I’ve never chosen before,” you said. Wondering, slightly. The voice of someone holding something new, testing the weight of it. “I know,” he said. “You have time.” The sun came fully over the horizon. Nevada went gold. Clementine walked on, and you rode, and he walked beside you with his face in the light and his hands at his sides and the scars on his back that had stopped hurting, finally, or had not stopped hurting but had become the kind of hurt that was also the shape of a choice he would make again and again and again —

And the road ahead was open. And you were on it. And that was enough. That was everything.

You're straddling him now, knees on either side of his thighs, the thin fabric of your stage skirt riding up your legs. His hands rest on your hips, thumbs tracing lazy circles through the material, but he's not gripping. Not guiding. He's waiting. He always waits for you.

"You're staring," you murmur, looping your arms around his neck.

"Can you blame me?" His voice is low, a little breathless. "You looked so good on stage tonight, noona."

There it is. That word. Delivered with a smile that's just shy of teasing, eyes glittering with amusement. He knows exactly what he's doing.

You roll your eyes. "Don't start."

"Start what?" His thumbs press a little deeper into your hips, while giving you puppy eyes. "I'm just complimenting you. You're older, you're wiser, you're sooo experienced. I should respect you."

"You're mocking me."

"I would never." He leans forward, his lips brushing the curve of your jaw. "Respect your elders, right, noona?"

Your fingers tighten in his hair. You should correct him. But his mouth is trailing down your neck now, soft and warm, and he's still murmuring that word against your skin like a prayer.

Noona. Noona. Noona.

"You're insufferable," you manage, but your voice comes out shakier than you intended.

He pulls back just enough to look at you, and that teasing glint is still there, but underneath it is something hungrier. "You love it."

"I hate it."

"Liar." He nips at your bottom lip. "You get so wet every time I say it. I can feel you through your panties, noona."

Heat floods your cheeks. He's right. You hate how much you love it, hate the way your body reacts every single time that word leaves his mouth. But you'll never admit it. Not to him.

"You're so full of yourself."

"Stop acting like you don’t love it." His hands slide down to grip your ass, pulling you tighter against him. You can feel how hard he is through his pants, and the contact makes you both gasp. "See? You can't even pretend anymore."

"Shut up, Jake."

You crash your mouth against his, kissing him hard and deep, and he groans into it like he's been waiting. His tongue slides against yours, messy and desperate, and his hands roam your body like he's trying to memorize every curve. He's always like this sweet and obedient until you give him an inch, and then he's everywhere.

But you're still in control. You pull back first, leaving him chasing your lips with a whine.

"Take off your pants," you say.

He scrambles to obey, lifting his hips to shove his pants down his thighs, boxers following. His cock springs free, flushed and leaking, and you watch him squirm under your gaze.

"You're staring," he says mimicking you from earlier with a shaky laugh in his voice.

"Can you blame me?" You reach down and wrap your hand around him, watching his head fall back against the chair. "You're so pretty like this, Jake. All desperate and whiny."

"I'm not whiny-"

You squeeze gently. He whines.

"Not whiny at all," you agree, smiling. "You're gonna listen to what I say right?"

He nods, eyes blown wide.

You shift off his lap, only to reposition each other on a nearby couch. You climb over him again, swinging your leg over his head until you're facing his lower body and straddling his face. He gets the idea immediately. His hands grab your thighs, pulling you down until your center hovers just above his mouth.

"Wait," you say, and he freezes.

You lean forward, lowering yourself until your mouth is level with his cock. When your breath hits his skin he shudders beneath you.

"You eat me out. I'll suck you off. And if you're good-" you drag your tongue up the length of him just once, just enough to make him whimper " maybe I'll let you cum."

"Fuck," he breathes. "Noona, you're going to kill me."

"Probably." You wrap your lips around the tip and suck gently. "Now shut up and get to work."

He doesn't need to be told twice.

His mouth finds you immediately, tongue parting your folds with an eagerness that makes your hips buck forward. He's messy about it he always has been, too hungry to be neat but he knows exactly where to put his tongue. He laps at your clit in broad strokes, then sucks gently, then does it again, and you have to pull off his cock just to gasp for air.

"Fuck, Jakey-"

He hums against you in response, the vibration shooting up your spine, and you can feel him smiling. That smug little shit.

You retaliate by taking him deeper, swallowing him down until your nose presses against his pelvis. He chokes on a moan, his hips jerking up, and his rhythm falters for just a second before he doubles down.

But then he pauses. His mouth leaves you, and you feel his breath hot against your inner thigh.

"You know what would make this better?" he asks, voice thick.

You lift your head just enough to glare at him over your shoulder. "If you stopped talking?"

"If you admitted you love when I call you noona." You can hear the grin in his voice. "Say it. Just once. 'Jake, I love when you call me noona.'"

"I will bite you."

"That's not a no."

You drop your head back down and take him in your mouth again, hoping to shut him up. He groans, hips stuttering, but he's not done.

"That's not how this works, noona," he says, and the word is muffled because he's burying his face back between your legs, but you still hear it.

His tongue finds your clit again, and this time he's relentless fast and firm and exactly how you like it. Your legs start to shake. Your mouth goes slack around his cock.

"There she is," he murmurs against you. "There's my good girl. You gonna cum for me, noona? Gonna soak my face and pretend you hate me?"

You want to tell him to shut up. You want to pull his hair and remind him who's in charge. But you're so close, so fucking close, and his tongue is doing that thing and his hands are gripping your thighs so tight they'll bruise and he's still saying it, noona noona noona like a fucking mantra.

You cum with his name on your tongue, except it comes out wrong, comes out shaky and desperate and exactly what he wanted to hear.

He moans against you through it, drinking you down, and when you finally go limp above him he pulls his mouth away just long enough to say, "See? I knew you loved it."

You hate him. You hate him so much.

But he's still hard and leaking against your lips, and you took it upon yourself to finish what you started.

You crawl off him and he sits up. Both of you are a mess. His hair is sticking up in twenty directions. His chest is covered in sweat and spit. His eyes are glazed over, lips swollen, cheeks flushed.

You're not much better.

But you're also not done with him.

You settle back between his thighs, fingers tracing lazily along his hip, feeling the way his muscles jump under your touch. He's watching you with those desperate hazy eyes, already trembling again just from the anticipation.

You don't say anything. You just look at him really look at him and let the silence stretch until he can't take it anymore.

"Noona?" His voice cracks. It's small. Fragile. Nothing like the teasing tone from earlier. His lower lip trembles and his eyes are glassy, wet at the corners. He's holding back tears. "Noona, did I- did I not do good?"

Your heart falters.

"I did everything you said," he continues, voice wobbling. "I was good. I didn't complain. I let you- I let you do whatever you wanted. You said if I was good I could-" He stops, swallows hard, and a single tear slips down his cheek. "You said I could cum, noona. You promised."

He's whining now, high and desperate, hips twitching like he can't help chasing friction. His cock is still hard, flushed red, leaking against his stomach. He looks wrecked. Completely wrecked.

"Please," he whispers. "Please, noona. I'll be better. I'll be so much better. Just tell me what I did wrong and I'll fix it. I'll do anything. Just please don't- don't leave me like this."

His hands reach for you but stop halfway, remembering he's not allowed to touch without permission. Instead they fall back against the couch, fingers curling into the fabric like he needs something to hold onto.

"Did I not make you feel good?" His voice breaks on the last word. "I thought- I thought made you feel good. You made a mess all over me and you kept saying my name and I thought you were happy. I thought I was doing good."

Another tear falls. Then another.

He's not even trying to hide it anymore.

Your thumbs brush away his tears, slow and gentle, as you lean in until your forehead touches his.

"Hey," you whisper. "Hey, look at me."

His glassy eyes meet yours, wet and scared and so vulnerable it makes your chest ache.

"You did so good," you say softly, firmly, like you need him to hear it and understand. "So fucking good, Jake."

He sniffles, lower lip still trembling. "But I-"

"Shhh." You shake your head, thumbs still stroking his cheekbones. "You were perfect. You did everything I asked. You let me have you however I wanted. You're being good I like it a lot."

A shaky breath escapes him.

"I'm not leaving you like anything," you continue, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I'm right here. I've got you. You're my good boy, okay? My good, pretty boy who did everything right."

He blinks, more tears spilling over. "Then why did you stop?"

You smile softly, kissing the other corner of his mouth. "Because I wanted to look at you. Because you're perfect everything about you is and I wanted to remember every second of it."

A broken sound leaves his throat.

"You want to cum, baby?" you ask, lips brushing against his.

He nods frantically, hands still fisted in the couch fabric, still obeying even now. "Please, noona. Please im so needy for you, just wanna feel you."

"You will," you promise, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes.

He gets shy at the thought of it and tries to hide his smile.

"That's my boy," you whisper, and you lean down to kiss him soft and slow and full of everything you can't say. He melts into it, tears wet against your cheeks, and when you finally pull away, his eyes are still glassy but the panic is gone.

He doesn't hesitate. "I need you so bad. I've been thinking about you all day. All week. Every time I see you I just want to -" He cuts himself off with a shuddering breath as you squeeze gently.

"You just want to what?"

"I want to be inside you," he admits, voice barely above a whisper. "I want- I want to make you feel good too. I want to make you cum so hard you forget your own name. Please, noona. Please let me."

You hold his wrists against the back of the couch. His hips buck up involuntarily, grinding against you and it's a mess. His leaking pre cum mixes with yours, both of you still slick and sticky from before, Jake's own spit still wet on your skin. The slide is filthy, and you can feel him growing hard again beneath you, pressing between your swollen folds.

You roll your hips slowly, watching his face contort with pleasure.

"Does that feel good?"

"Yes. Fuck, yes, noona it feels so fucking good," he gasps. "Noona, please-"

You keep moving, slow and torturous, and his eyes roll back. His fingers curl into fists above his head but he doesn't lower them, doesn't try to touch you. He's being so good. So obedient.

"You're going to cum like this just from a little grinding," you tell him. "Like a teenage boy. And you're going to thank me for it."

He moans, loud, and you press your hand over his mouth.

"Quiet. Someone could hear."

His eyes widen. His hips stutter. The thought of getting caught, of someone walking past and hearing him fall apart for you it pushes him closer. You can feel it in the way his body tenses, the way his breathing goes ragged against your palm.

"Imagine if a staff member walked in right now," you whisper in his ear. "Imagine if they saw you like this. Their precious Jake. Begging. Whining. About to cum because his noona told him to."

Thats all it takes.

His whole body goes rigid, his mouth opening in a silent cry against your hand, his hips jerking up into you as he spills in the space between the both of you. You watch his face the whole time, drinking in every expression, every twitch, every broken sound he can't quite hold back.

When it's over, he slumps against the couch out of breath, wrists going limp in your grip. His face is flushed, his eyes are wet, and he looks completely wrecked.

Beautiful.

You release his wrists and cup his face in both hands, tilting his head up.

"You did so good," you murmur. "Such a good boy for me."

He leans into your touch, eyes fluttering closed. "Noona..."

"I know." You kiss his forehead softly. "I know."

He's still hard. You can feel it. One orgasm isn't enough for him and you have no intention of stopping here.

"You can touch," you tell him.

His hands fly to your waist immediately, gripping tight, like he's afraid you'll disappear. But you grab his wrists and guide them higher, up to your chest, pressing his palms flat against your breasts.

"Here," you say softly. "I want you here."

He doesn't need to be told twice. His fingers curl around the soft flesh, thumbs brushing over your nipples, and you shiver at the contact. He's learning by watching your face, paying attention to what makes your breath catch. When he circles his thumb around one nipple, your hips jerk forward involuntarily, grinding against his length again.

"Yeah," you breathe. "Just like that."

He gains confidence, squeezing and kneading, pinching lightly just to watch you gasp. Your head falls back and you let him play. Let him explore. His touch is worshipping, desperate, like he's trying to memorize every inch of you.

"Noona," he whines, hips bucking up. "Please. I need- I need you so bad."

You look down at him wrecked, hard, completely at your mercy and you feel a surge of affection so strong it almost hurts.

"I know, baby." You lean forward, bracing your hands on either side of his head, and let your tits brush against his chest. He tries to chase your mouth but you pull back just out of reach. "Tell me what you want."

"You," he gasps. "Just you. Always you."

"That's not specific enough."

His fingers dig into your hips, desperate. "I want you to ride me. I want to be inside you. I want to feel you cum around me. Please, noona. Please."

You reward him by lowering yourself just enough for the tip of him to press against your entrance. He moans, loud and broken, and his head falls back against the couch.

"Say it again," you whisper.

"Noona," he breathes. "My noona. Please tell me you love it. Please tell me you love when I call you that."

You sink down just an inch.

"I love it," you admit, voice barely above a whisper. "I love when you call me noona. I love the way it sounds coming from your mouth. I love how desperate you get.

A sob catches in his throat.

"I love it, Jake. I love when my good boy calls me noona."

You sink down fully, taking all of him in one slow, steady motion, and the sound he makes is inhuman. His back arches off the couch, mouth open in a silent scream, and you feel him throbbing inside you immediately.

You don't move at first. You just sit there, full of him, watching him come undone beneath you.

"Spit," you say suddenly.

His eyes flutter open, hazy with pleasure. "What?"

"Spit in my mouth."

Something dark flashes across his face. He reaches up, fingers trembling, and gathers saliva in his mouth. Then you lean down, lips parting, and he lets it fall from his lips to yours, warm and wet and obscene. You catch it on your tongue, moan at the taste of him, and then you lean back up and let it drip from your mouth down onto his chest.

"Again," you whisper.

He does it again. And again. Each time more desperate, more sloppy, until both of you are covered in spit and sweat and the evidence of how badly you want each other.

Then you start to move.

You ride him slow at first, which has him gasping your name. His hands find your tits again, playing with them, pinching and pulling until you're crying out above him. Every flick of his thumb sends a jolt through your body, makes you clench around him, makes him moan.

"Harder," he begs. "Please, noona, harder. I can take it. I'll take whatever you give me."

So you give him more. You bounce on his cock, fast and brutal, letting him watch the way your tits move with every thrust. His mouth waters. You can see it. He reaches up and spits directly onto your chest this time, watching his saliva drip down your skin, and you moan so loud you're sure someone could hear.

"Do you love it?" he gasps, thrusting up to meet you. "Do you love when I call you noona?"

"Yes," you cry out. "Yes, I love it, I love it so much-"

"Fuck- you're so fucking hot, say it again."

"I love it Jakey."

He grips your hips, flipping you both over so he's on top, and the sudden change in position makes you gasp. He doesn't enter you again, not yet. Instead he hovers over you, one hand braced beside your head, the other reaching down to guide himself through your soaked folds.

"You love being my noona," he says, and it's not a question anymore. It's a statement. "You love that I'm younger and you love that I make you feel this good."

"Yes." You're nodding frantically, beyond caring about pride. "Yes, Jake, yes-"

He pushes inside you in one sharp thrust and your vision goes white.

He fucks you hard no slow pace, no more teasing. Just desperate, animalistic rhythm, his hips slamming into yours, his mouth hovering over your chest. He spits on your nipples, watches the saliva glisten, then lowers his mouth to suck them clean. His tongue swirls around each peak, teeth grazing sensitive skin, and you're clawing at his back, leaving marks you know will last for days.

"Cum for me," he growls against your breast. "Cum on my cock, noona. Want to feel you squeeze me. Want you to soak me."

Your orgasm crashes over you without warning, your back arching off the couch, a scream tearing from your throat. You clamp down around him so tight he can barely move, but he keeps thrusting anyway chasing his own release, desperate and sloppy and perfect.

"Noona," he chants, thrusting erratically now. "Noona, noona, noona-"

His hips stutter, his eyes roll back, and he spills inside you with a broken cry of a mix of your name and noona.

He collapses onto your chest, both of you shaking, both of you soaked in sweat and spit and each other.

For a long moment, neither of you speak.

Then he lifts his head, chin resting on your chest, and gives you that familiar teasing smile but softer now, edges blurred by exhaustion and satisfaction.

"Love you, noona," he whispers.

You laugh, weak and breathless, and run your fingers through his sweaty hair.

"Love you too, loser."