#ronverse

Minho: Did something

Minho: If anything happened

Minho: Are you worried over finals?

Minho: Those papers are no match for you. Don’t stress over it too much

Minho: Changbin won’t say it to you, but he’s

Minho: Changbin is pouting about the song you wouldn’t listen to. Put him out of his misery, would you? He’s been working on it for months

Minho: Have you eaten?

Minho: You haven’t been spamming me with pictures lately

Minho: Did what Felix said scare you? Nothing has to change. We’ll wait for you

Minho: I know things have been

Minho: You don’t need to tell me, but

Minho: [Image of a cat, seemingly asleep sitting up.] This looks just like you.

Minho: I think Hannie needs

Minho: Hannie’s rut is coming up. He can get kind of

Minho: Hannie’s rut is coming up. He isn’t feeling great. If he could hear from you

Minho: Han’s rut is over. He should be back to normal now. Did he

Minho: Are you eating well?

Minho: I’m here whenever you’re

Minho: I’ll come straight to you if you

Minho: I had the same kinds of banchan you made me at the hotel today. Catering. None of them tasted right.

Minho: I had the same kinds of banchan you made me at the hotel today. There was a lot of vinegar in the

Minho: I’ll bribe you for your banchan recipe. This hotel room has a kitchen, so

Minho: Is it all of us? Or just one?

Minho: Is it me?

Minho: I’m not the best at advice. But if

Minho: Are you still working on that last book I sent you? Did your reading speed slow so much the moment you graduated?

Minho: Yah, if you really hate the book that much, then

Minho: I know you don’t like nonfiction. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. Next time, I

Minho: Seungmin’s voice cracked during sound check today. I’m telling you, since I know he won’t.

Minho: Seungmin said

Minho: Am I supposed to just act normal? Is that what you want?

Minho: Do you need space?

Minho: Is this enough space?

Minho: Today Jeongin said

Minho: Today I

Minho: It’s been a month since I’ve heard your voice

Minho: I saw a movie you’d like. Hyunjin

Minho: I saw a movie I think you’d like. It was pretty scary. I wrote the name down for you.

Minho: I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want

Minho: I looked up the name of the flower you asked me about, around when we first met. It was a naengi plant. I’m sorry I never told you.

Minho: Are you eating well?

The little girl is named Sage, and she’s eighteen months old. When she walks she takes these great, lunging steps, like she’s already setting pace for an adult body — but she’s tiny, just this little bitsy version of her mom, who stands next to her, ready to steady her whenever she stumbles.

She has a clip in her hair that looks like a ladybug, and an adorable little green sundress. When she sees Chan and his budding sunburn, she points and loudly shouts what in retrospect is an approximation of ‘strawberry’. When Chan positively beams at her, she squints at him suspiciously, then scuttles a half-step back to her mom, burying her face in her skirt.

You and Chan make easy conversation with Sage’s mom on and off as you wait for your iced latte — and occasionally, when she deigns to grace you with her attention, Sage herself. She speaks well for her age but she’s still an infant, so it takes a bit of doing. Sage continues to narrow her eyes at both you and Chan, even huffing imperiously, whenever you ask her to repeat herself.

“Sorry about her,” her mom laughs, petting her head and reclipping her hair at the same time, keeping her bangs away from her face. “She’s been really into movie villains lately. She likes Maleficent more than Aurora.”

That’s adorable. “That’s adorable,” you say, in a direct brain-to-mouth moment — earning another glare from Sage. This time, one of her little eyebrows twitches, like she’s trying to raise it.

Honestly, you’re barely even looking at Chan throughout the short interaction, too busy melting to pay attention. Chan is paying attention, though — watching your face, your expressions, the way you melt when Sage waves to you on her way out the door.

“Bye bye!” she calls.

Your own wave is a smaller movement than Sage’s full-body arm swing; you just twist your hand at the wrist, more princess than villain. “Bye bye,” you say, soft enough that you wouldn’t think Sage could hear it, if you didn’t watch her smile brighten in the moment before she turns away.

The shop has not paused in the slightest, very much a chain coffee shop on a hot summer day in a busy part of Sydney. But it feels very quiet, for some reason. Longing lunges through you — little hands twisted in a skirt, little bangs brushed away from an expectantly tilted head. Motherhood and childhood both in a light you’ve never considered it. You stare at the closed door, then turn to fix your puppy eyes on Chan.

“I want one,” you say plainly.

Chan smiles so wide his eyes turn into nothing but the thick line of his lashes. “Okay,” he says easily, and then, “Just one?”

You talk about it the whole walk back to the beach, palms freezing from your untouched drinks. “She was so cute,” you say, sounding almost angry with the force of it, cuteness aggression hitting you hard. “Like a steamed bun. Like pudding.”

Chan hums in that way that means he’s going to say something that will either be very charming or annoy you immensely. Or both.

“Ours would be cuter,” he says. Latter category, then. Insulting little Sage is unforgivable.

But when you turn to him, mouth already open, he’s ready — so that you spin into his finger, poking yourself in the cheek. “After all,” he says, smiling that smile again — broad, flushed, so happy it just pours out of him, like an overflowing cup, “they would look like you.”

Your teeth clack together when your mouth closes. Chan snickers, lovestruck and stupid on it, leaning in to kiss your temple.

You try begging for a baby with the full expectation that Chan will say no — because he’s busy, and they’re on tour again next year, and he has one billion songs lined up to release, and whatever other reason. Except it doesn’t go according to plan, because he keeps just saying, “Yes,” and, “Okay,” and “When? Right now?”

When Minho comes back from collecting sea shells, he can’t even grab an otter pop before he’s distracted by the sight of you smacking Chan mock-irritated across the arm. Chan giggles, then grabs your wrist. You smack him with the other. He grabs that one, too.

“What did he do this time?” Minho asks, settling down next to you with a content sigh. There’s sand all up his legs like sugar on a doughnut, rubbing abrasive against your calves.

Despite implicitly being on your side, when Chan hands Minho your wrists, he takes them without question. You stick your tongue out at him, ignoring the way his eyebrow goes up. Traitor.

“She wants a baby,” Chan says instead of answering the question, voice thick with amusement and something else that makes you shudder, knees knocking together.

Or trying to knock together. Chan’s freshly-freed hands get between them before they manage, fingers behind your knee, thumbs just barely sinking into your thigh. When you glare at him, he sticks his tongue out at you, just like you’d just done to Minho.

Minho, who chokes on his popsicle. “Oh?” he asks, recovering quick, that same syrupy-rich mix of a laugh and something headier on his tongue.

You stick your tongue out at him again. This time, he tries to grab it, salt and sand on his fingers, the three of you play-wrestling as much as is vaguely socially acceptable on a public beach before decorum wins out.

All of your boys have been regaled about your chance encounter by the time you’re making your way home, drained from the sunshine and time difference. All have been told, too — with wiggling eyebrows, if it’s from Minho, or very smugly, if it’s from Chan — that you said you wanted a baby. Reactions varied; for instance, Hyunjin tripped over his feet. Felix squawked, then whipped toward you: “Really?” Jeongin had just stared at you, eyes wide, then darkening, further and further.

There’s no time for them to bombard you tonight, though — because when you get back to Chan’s family’s house, his parents have dinner ready. You take your first opportunity to spirit away with his mom that you get. Over your shoulder, you stick out your tongue at Minho one last time, because tomorrow’s consequences are of zero concern to you today.

Chan’s mom asks over dinner, with the whole table watching, when you’re planning to have kids, her eyes wide and enthusiastic. “You could stay here, with me,” she offers, ignoring Chan’s complaints (“Mooooom…”) across the table, “or I could go stay with you. Wherever it is, I’ll help you.”

Normally, you think this would put you on edge, the assumption of you having children, the assumption that you would need help — but you really like Chan’s mom, and you saw a very cute baby today. “That’s very kind,” you say instead of pushing back, smiling hesitantly, ignoring the way your boys watch your reaction with laser-focus. “Thank you.”

There isn’t enough space for all of you to stay here, though you get the privilege. Chan does too, though it was a near thing, having to win at rock-paper-scissors for the right to his own room.

Maybe it shouldn’t surprise you, then, when an arm catches you around the waist as you’re making your way back from brushing your teeth. Even in the dark, you barely startle, tilting your head back to find Chan there, grinning at you, his finger held to his mouth — Quiet.

“What are you doing?” you giggle, trying to keep your voice down as he tugs you into his room.

Chan pins you to the door the moment it closes, holding your waist tight, pushing his leg between your thighs. He kisses you and you melt into it in an instant, still muffling laughs into his mouth even as his hands slip under your shirt.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he murmurs without pulling it away, just as pleased and smug and lovestruck as he’s been for hours. His hand lays possessively over your lower stomach, fingers tucked under the waistband of your shorts. “I thought you wanted a baby.”

It wouldn’t be now; you both know it wouldn’t be now. You’re on birth control, anyway. But—

He kisses you again, and you pull away just enough to ask, teasing, “You want to be a daddy?”

He hates the feeling of you being upset with him. He hates not knowing where you are and what you’re doing, not getting photo updates of your day, the silly little things that make your voice jolt up and your fingers tack extra exclamation marks onto your words: skylines and flowers and paw prints stamped wet on concrete; funny signs outside street stalls and children’s drawings on the subway wall, hastily scrubbed at by some desperate parent’s hand. Descriptions of things: overheard jokes, the smell of fresh bread, a story your friend had told you. Long, rambling thoughts about your classes that go way over his head, shifting into English like you don’t even think about it, like your thumb is always hovering over the ‘change keyboard’ button.

You didn’t used to look or listen; you’d told him yourself, during your first real conversation. He didn’t think too hard about it at the time; you’d never seemed like the most observant person, and there’s nothing wrong with just trying to get from one place to another, really. But you’ve been so much happier since you’ve started keeping your eyes open — and you’ve sent him more and more texts as a result, too, and more and more photos, letting him scroll through your scattered messages in between schedules like the morning paper.

But now you’re upset with him — with all of them, because they’re all at fault — and when he goes to check anyway, he finds your chat just as he left it, his own words staring back at him like an accusation.

Call me, he tells you, turned into an echo by his constant rereads, checking to see if you’ve opened it yet. Please.

Pathetic, he thinks, washing out his cup. He’s sure you’re being constantly inundated with messages from the others, anyway. He isn’t going to add to the burden of that, not knowing your disposition, not when a missed text from your roommate had made you wince when you were at his apartment months ago.

Still, his thumb lingers over the keyboard when he checks his messages again. Frustrated, he throws his phone on the couch, locks himself in the bathroom, and takes a shower so hot it makes his head spin.

He can’t be in there longer than ten minutes. In that time, he misses two of your calls.

It doesn’t even register at first. Minho blinks at the screen once, twice, three times, fresh out of the shower, towel wrapped around his neck, clothes half-on. Then, he scrambles.

You don’t pick up when he calls — so he tries again, then again. Holds off a while, pacing to Jisung’s room — then picks up that scent again in the hall that marks himself as a lightning rod and their apartment as an imminently burning field, and retreats. Calls you again — nothing. Opens your chat — nothing. Hovers over the keyboard, uncertain, before finally typing out the only things running through his head in an impulsive rush: What happened? Where are you? Are you okay?

No answer. Minho grabs a jacket and trades his house slippers for shoes, keys held tight in hand. Then he changes them back, pacing the living room, wet hair dripping onto his t-shirt.

Not for the first time, he wishes you had meant it when you asked if you should always share your location with him. Not for the first time, he wishes he’d said yes, that he’d said anything, instead of just watching the way your uneasy smile had slipped and stumbled on your face.

The pack is a mess; everyone is a mess. Half of them have been locking themselves away and the other half can’t stop pacing, and no one knows how to settle the feeling kicking at all of them: the protective, placating nature of an alpha turned shrill and piercing with nowhere to go, having failed to protect and failed to placate. Minho still feels like he can taste a wisp of your scent behind his teeth, not enough to satiate but just enough to drive him mad, echoing, Mate, mate, mate— But you aren’t his, and you aren’t here, and you won’t fucking call him back.

Minho goes for a drive just to settle the feeling. He finds himself on your street without even realizing how much time had passed, staring at any lit-up window and wondering if it’s you.

When he does snap back into the present, he all but lunges for his phone, so quickly he picks up his foot without meaning to, unparked car lurching. But even though some time has passed — his screen lights up, and there’s no answer.

He supposes he deserves this. He hadn’t wanted to go along with any of this but he’d done it anyway, and now he’s paying the price for his compliance. Still, he holds onto his phone like a lifeline, opening your chat just to stare at his own words all over again.

It isn’t because he doesn’t like it. He likes to feel useful and he likes when people need him; he likes the feeling of someone seeking him out, asking him for something they couldn’t get anywhere else. That feeling of exclusivity, of being special — only Hyunjin does that move right, or only Hyunjin would know that trivia bite. Or, when the exclusivity isn’t there, the element of choice: someone else could do this, and maybe they could even do it better, but for whatever reason, it was Hyunjin they went to in the end. Even barring choice, there’s desperation, and that’s it’s own kind of appealing, in an opaque, murky way he doesn’t completely understand: Jisung looking up at him wide-eyed and unsure because no one else is around to drive him and he still doesn’t quite know how to ask, his hand fisted in Hyunjin’s sleeve. Chan calling him in the middle of the night because he had too many words in his head and Jeongin is already asleep, voice dragging rough over things he would never want Hyunjin to hear, not in daylight. There’s something satisfying about it, collecting these pieces of the people he loves, existing in their heads even when he isn’t physically there.

Hyunjin likes to be needed; he just isn’t good at it, not like the others. Minho has the practice and Changbin has the give; Seungmin has that sense, that intuitive flicker. Felix has the eagerness: pulling tissues out of nowhere before anyone has asked, bringing drinks and snacks that they’re all too full or tired to eat. A boundless level of care, bouncing around, knocking things over — sweets that don’t get eaten, tissues that are never used.

And, of course, they’re all alphas. They all want to be needed; it’s hardwired into them, the desire to earn their place in the pack. Hyunjin is no exception to that. It puts a sort of careful balance into even their pack, lacking a formal hierarchy though it may be: to give or take or allow too much is threatening. It shouldn’t be; it is. It sets his hackles to rise, and his pride to sting, and competition to bubble up inside him until he can taste it behind his teeth — because there’s always that instinctive part of him that marks his packmates as his rivals, and the sweet things they do for one another as a stage. Who can provide the best. Who’s the most capable. Who deserves it the most.

Until recently, that ‘it’ to be deserved was nebulous. Some sense of respect, maybe. Or something more internal: something to quell that pervasive voice inside him that tells him there’s no inherent reason for anyone to keep him around.

And then there was you. And that changed things.

Hyunjin isn’t a caretaker — except now he fantasizes about things he never used to think about. Brushing your hair. Dressing you. Feeding you, straight from his hand, his fingers to the pretty seam of your lips. He remembers when you had fed him, once: the berry-burst in his mouth, crisp and sweet just like your scent; the subservient way he’d had to bend his head to get what he wanted. Maybe even more than that, the way you looked at him: eyes wide, mouth popped, a pretty little oh he wanted to push his tongue into.

But it isn’t just that: tongues and flesh or an excuse to see you naked or his hand in a fist in your hair. There’s something else.

The dream tonight is a sweet one: bright and glowy, something soft cresting from a CD player he doesn’t own in real life. They’re in your room, the one he’d had such a hand in decorating, but the proportions aren’t quite right: your vanity chair is too big, so much that Hyunjin has to help you hop onto it. The distance between the bathroom and the balcony is all wrong.

But you’re there, and you’re beautiful, and Hyunjin doesn’t care about any of that. He adjusts you on the chair like you’re a little wooden doll, and you sink right into his arms with a pleased little hum, letting him move you here and there.

In the dream, Kkami appears on your lap — a little too big, just like the chair, the black and white of his fur blanketing your thighs. You have Hyunjin’s t-shirt on — or maybe his robe, the one he accidentally stole from a hotel last year and never told anyone about, an unused fugitive hiding in the back of his drawers. Maybe it’s both, the robe layered over the t-shirt. All he knows is that under Kkami, your legs are bare, and he’s barely even looking.

Your scrunchie is on his wrist. Then he starts braiding bits of your hair — little princess braids, like the kind he watched a Youtube video on — and that scrunchie turns into a normal hair tie, more appropriately sized for the task. Your hair is so soft. You tell him it’s tangled, that there’s a knot on the back of your neck you can’t get out. He works it with a brush; it comes away too easily.

In the dream, you tell him you’re hungry, and he brings you hand-in-hand to the kitchen and peels you an orange. In the dream, you stop in the middle of the hallway — “Oppa, I’m tired,” you complain, stomping your foot, and he carries you to the kitchen instead with his lips to your temple. In the dream, you never even step foot in the hallway; you tell him you’re hungry, and food just appears beside you. In the mirror, he watches your lips pop open, eyes locking with his, already expecting his hand there to feed you.

When he wakes, the first thing he thinks is that he wants you. He wants you here, next to him. He wants to feed you. He wants to do your hair.

He wants to take care of you — in every way, always. The obvious ones, of course: your taste on his tongue, your thighs shaking around his ears. Then the other obvious ones, in the other direction — you holding onto his sleeve, asking for a ride; you calling him in the middle of the night.

He wants to dress you. He wants to pick you up. He wants to kiss your tears away. He wants to buy you things. He wants to wipe some food from your lip and then lick his thumb, the way alpha love interests always do in the movies.

He wants to bow his head to you — eager, subservient, your fingers in his mouth. He wants to hold you down. He wants you to need him until you drown in it, until the only thing in your head is his name, until you’re stupid on him. He wants to empty you out, then fill you up.

And he isn’t a caretaker. Hyunjin doesn’t get brooding and moralistic about it the way Seungmin and Jisung do, but he still knows this feeling is too selfish for that. It isn’t the desire to nurture, but to consume. He knows that.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it.

“I was listening to that song you sent me on repeat all day,” you tell him on the phone later: nighttime for you, late morning for him. “I feel like you’re my only source of new music these days, honestly.”

You sigh, playfully dispirited. In Hyunjin’s chest, his heart is pounding.

It’s nice to be special. Even if you can’t be special, it’s nice to be chosen — the way you’d chosen him for this, trading songs back and forth like they aren’t all crazy about music and crazier about you, like they wouldn’t all grovel for the chance. And even if you can’t be chosen — because there are always more places for you to find new songs, outside of him, if you looked — it’s nice to be needed. Desperation, appealing even when reluctant: a sigh in your voice. Your fingers curling in his sleeve.

He just wants to exist to you when he isn’t there. It’s all he wants.

Good, he thinks, in response to the statement he’s still too tongue-tied to answer. Then, more viciously: Don’t listen to anything else; you don’t need it. Just listen to what I send you; just need me. I’ll send you another song; I’ll write you another song; I’ll write you a million songs. Do you have a playlist of me, like I do of you? I need you to need me. Need me. Need me. Need me.

“Good,” he says finally, in the first second when his motor functions recover but his impulse control doesn’t. Then, before he can spill his guts all over you: “I’ll send you more. Whenever you want.”

It sounds the way you like him: eager, sweet, nonthreatening. Not too heavy. He can tell it lands right, because you laugh that one laugh of yours — the one that means you aren’t taking him seriously, and you like it that way.

“Let me send you one first,” you say, that laugh lingering on the edge of your voice, bright and glowy. “We’re trading, right? Equivalent exchange.”

It doesn’t have to be. Hyunjin would give you anything and the reward would be giving it to you; if you gave him something in return, he would keep it like a token, but it isn’t an equal trade. He wants to peel an orange for you just to peel an orange for you. He wants to shrink you down until you need him to put you places. He wants you to need him — desperately, debilitatingly, until it almost hurts to be without him. Until it does hurt.

“Okay,” he says instead of that, “I’m waiting.” And you laugh that laugh again — bright, glowy, not at all taking him seriously.

That night he dreams he has your ankles and wrists tied up in sweet little ribbons. You’re smiling at him in the mirror. Something soft crests from a CD player he doesn’t own in real life, tucked into the corner past his periphery.

That’s the situation you find yourself in now, too: curled up into a ball in the nest, burying your face in Chan’s thigh like it isn’t already pitch-dark in here, the discarded ice roller lying at your side. It hurts, terribly: a throbbing, stabbing, overwhelming pain, like your skull is going to explode, like your head will come rolling right off your neck. You can’t think; you can’t even breathe. It feels like your whole life is this, and is always going to be this. You nuzzle your face harder into Chan’s sweatpants, lashes wet with tears.

You’re no stranger to a mix of pain and pleasure — but there’s nothing about this particular flavor of pain that makes you want to go anywhere near sex. You can’t even imagine feeling good in this state, much less coming — even if you’ve done it before, and even if you know that you’ll do it again. It just feels… impossible. Insurmountable. You curl your body up tighter, nails digging into your palms.

Like he can sense that motion, Chan wiggles his body down until he’s lying in the nest beside you. His hand cups the back of your head, fingers twining through your hair, and you flinch at even that — then relax into it when he starts massaging your head, practiced and gentle, mindful not to press to hard or tangle your hair.

Naturally, your boys know the cure, too. Some of them are too delicate to push you too much in this state, even with your well-established safe words, even with your prior play that follows the same through-line. Some of them push, but in a different way: begging, lips jutting, eyes tearing up, playing at manipulative more than directly forceful: I can’t bear it; I can’t. Please, please let me help.

Sometimes, you cave, as weak to requests as ever. Sometimes you don’t, and they pin you down anyway, following the script for scenes like this. Sometimes you don’t, and they deliberate and drag their feet, then find someone who will pin you down.

And now here you are, with Chan.

Chan doesn’t push all at once. He rubs your head, then your temples, then the hinge of your jaw. Then your neck, hard enough for you to fall limp into his shoulder, eyelids fluttering. By the time his hand is traveling down your body, you’re starting to drift asleep, in spite of the pounding pain in your head.

Then he touches bare skin, where your shirt is riding up — and you freeze.

“No,” you say immediately, mixed dread and relief already flooding through you — because you can’t, you know you can’t, it hurts too bad to even consider; but you also know you can, and you have, and you will. “No way. Hurts too bad.”

“I know, baby,” Chan says simply, one arm tightening around your shoulders as he slips under the waistband of your shorts. “I know.”

You don’t always fight; sometimes you hold back, depending on who’s with you, because fighting in this context, when you’re this upset and in this much pain, will make them flinch and waver. There’s a fun kind of play-fighting and there’s a fun kind of play-forcing and they all like to indulge in it one way or another, but the acceptable context changes for each of them: who’s willing to play when you’re drunk and who’s willing to play when you’re screaming, who will take a knee to the ribs and who will scare you frozen and still greedily drink in the aroused honey of your scent.

But it feels good to fight, when it hurts this bad — and with Chan, with your Channie, you can. You push and claw and kick and bite and he holds you down with that indulgent glint in his eye until you’re winded and sore, his handprints stamped into your skin and his warning nips scattered all over your body.

By the time he makes it between your legs, you’re too tired to do more than fist your hand in his hair. Your head hurts so bad, you just want it to stop hurting — but it also hurts so bad that it frightens you, that you stiffen and draw your knees up when Chan gets your panties off of you, that you’re not even wet in spite of the wrestling and the context and the way Chan pumps his comforting, familiar scent into the air.

At some point, Chan took his shirt off. Even in the dark, you can see where your teeth and claws sunk into his pale skin, all reds and pinks. He bruises so easily, too; maybe tomorrow, you’ll find some purple on him. Maybe in a few more days, some yellow. A whole rainbow of colors you already know he’ll wear proudly, strutting around shirtless all pleased while the rest of the pack admires what he was able to do for and to you.

For the first time today, since you woke up with this miserable fucking headache — arousal starts to simmer in your gut.

“I don’t think I can,” you say anyway, meaning it and not meaning it, so twisted up with pain that you don’t even know what you mean. “It just— It isn’t going to work this time. It can’t. Channie.”

The last word is indignant, because Chan isn’t even listening — just nuzzling your inner thigh as he shifts your legs over his shoulders, his breath hot on your pussy. You feel so stupid, in just your stolen t-shirt; nothing about this is sexy at all; you’re in so much pain—

Chan pats your leg, reassuring and dismissive. “It’ll work,” he says plainly, and opens his mouth.

You kick him when he first gets his tongue on you, heels knocking into his shoulders. He holds you still until you’re too tired to struggle, mouth working all the while.

In spite of the certainty of the words, it’s a slow climb, punctuated and haunted by the throbbing pain in your head — and you’ve never been very patient. You just— It isn’t supposed to be this hard. It isn’t fun; it’s so frustrating. It isn’t going to work; you want it to work; you hate wanting that, because it isn’t going to happen. Chan is just wasting your and his time.

Despite that, your voice when you speak is breathy, the way it gets when you’re worked up. “Channie.”

He hums, right against your clit. You jolt, knees trying to press together behind his neck so that you’re at risk of squeezing his head until he forces your legs open again.

“I don’t,” you start, stumbling over the words, frustrated and confused and upset and wanting, tears in your eyes and hands fisting in the blankets, “I can’t— I want—”

You cut yourself off, thin and fragile. Chan peeks at you from between your legs, big eyes under long lashes under messy, war-torn bangs, then surfaces enough to speak. Without direct stimulation, something slips infuriatingly away from you. It takes you a moment to realize it was a building orgasm after all, despite all your assertions to the contrary.

“I’ll do whatever you want, baby,” Chan says, watching your face with that same amused, indulgent, worn-ragged drawl he’s had since he stuck his hand in your sleep shorts. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”

His fingers prod your pussy, wet and pliable already from his mouth; you feel them swipe through your slick, rubbing it into his skin, then coming back to linger at your entrance. When you jolt, he smiles.

It feels good to fight, and your Channie always lets you. You swallow before saying, weakly, “Then stop.”

Chan pauses just a half-second — but there’s no safeword. Somehow, he doesn’t look very surprised.

“Anything but that,” he laughs, kissing your thigh — before shoving two fingers inside you and curling, hard.

There’s nothing to it, at first. Chan is on the couch with his laptop in front of him, some dream-hazy version of some work he has to do swirling and spinning on the screen. You’re on the floor, elbows propped up on the coffee table, legs folded underneath you. There’s a clip in your hair: gold, shiny, the one he hasn’t worked up the nerve to give you yet.

You’re not looking at him. There’s an unguarded, sleepy cast to your features, eyes barely open, blinking vaguely in the direction of the television. Chan glances at it, but it’s the same indistinct dream-blur as his laptop; nothing about it sticks. Nothing registers.

Instead, his eyes go back to you, like they never left. You’re technically upright, but it’s a near thing. If you fall asleep there, you’ll get a crick in your neck, a soreness in your back. Chan knows from experience.

If this were real, Chan would hesitate to call out to you anyway. If he said anything, you’d wake up, maybe to take up some task they never asked of you, like that time you sorted through and discarded the old food in their fridge while they were all asleep. Or maybe, if he was lucky, you’d just slink off to your own room to sleep properly — peaceful, but alone. Away from him.

But this isn’t real, so he doesn’t hesitate. “Baby,” he says, soft enough not to startle, but hard enough to catch your attention, arousal burning in the dregs of his voice as he stares at the bare skin of your legs, the way you obediently turn to face him. “You can’t sleep there, little one. C’mere.”

He never put his laptop away but it’s gone anyway by the time you groggily right yourself. Instead of standing, you stay down on your knees, shuffling towards him, so that when he reaches for you, he almost holds your whole weight in his arms as he gets you onto his lap.

In real life, you’re skittish — every touch something to settle into one by one, every interaction a potential catalyst for disaster. But in the dream you hum, going limp as he adjusts you on his lap. When his fingers dip between your legs, he finds you bare and dripping — and you don’t even startle, not even when he pushes your lips apart, slick collecting in a pool on his palm.

He doesn’t get undressed — but suddenly his cock is out, and he’s sinking it inside you. Already, his knot is half-blown, the impossible made possible through the syrupy stick of unconscious — and though waking-Chan has thought long and hard about how it’s been a minute for you, about how you’re hesitant about going all the way, about how he’ll need to take you nice and slow and easy, you open for him like you’re made to do it, lips parted in a long, choked-off moan.

The top of his knot nudges against you, and you tighten, thighs jerking in his hold. You’re bare, suddenly — and Chan watches the way sweat glistens across your chest as you heave for breath like he’s been fucking you for hours, his lip caught between his teeth.

He’s going to tie you to him, hold you there, come inside you until you can’t breathe around it. And when his knot deflates, he’ll just fuck you until it’s ready for you all over again, and then he’ll do it again, and again, and—

“Big,” you say, jerking against his chest, fingers dancing down to trace the swell of his knot; he has to consciously stop himself from bucking further into you. “I don’t know if…”

It isn’t an objection, not with the way you glance at him: shy and earnest, begging for reassurance with your eyes, your body limp against his chest. Chan cups your cheek, and you sink into his palm; he kisses your nose, and you giggle, fluttering around him at the same time in a way that takes his breath away.

“You can,” he says simply: measured, steady, solid enough for you to sink into. “Be a good girl for daddy.”

The thing about you is that you are a good girl. You nod, your hair tickling his cheek, and he shifts so that your weight pushes you down onto his cock, and there’s that electrifying moment when his knot pushes and pushes and then pops, right past the thickest part, until it’s so easy to get inside you, like it belongs there, like it’s always belonged there—

And then Chan wakes up, face buried in his pillow, knot pressing urgently between his hips and his mattress.

The first groan out of his waking mouth is borderline-pornographic. Even as he ruts into the bedding for some semblance of relief, Chan is picking up his phone, checking for an alarm, running through his schedule in his head—

Your name pops up before he can even get to the clock: a text, simple and normal, nothing dirty. Even so, Chan gives up just like that, flopping onto his back and yanking his sweats down his hips so as to more easily fist his cock.

Daddy, he imagines you saying — breathy, blown out, unguarded, clinging to him like he’s your lifeline, like you need him to live. Daddy, daddy, daddy—