author's note: hi guys, my name is farrow, just to introduce myself to you all! i'm not new to writing, but i am new to writing for this group/fandom! i had a lot of fun writing this, that's probably why it became so long to be truthful, so i hope you guys enjoy reading this just as much, or even more haha. i was really debating on when to make my txt blog or if i should even create one (since i have been trying to be more offline these days) but i wanted to release this fic for my ult's bday real bad, lol, instead of just keeping it on my computer for only me after getting all the words out onto page. btw this part one of two. the next part will come out in around week (because i’m not ai and I can’t write 20k words in one night unfortunately). as a small spoiler, just know that the smut will be heavy, filthy, and long. also, i chose to split the fic because i was afraid it would crash everyone’s apps when they tried to read it due to the length. i just wanted to finish off by saying: please leave him birthday wishes on weverse and other socials, our baby ningdungie deserves the world ♥︎ oh also if you guys could please give me feedback on this fic whether through asks, replies, or reblogs, i would really appreciate it! i guess i would just love a sign to see if i should write more txt fics ha.

The last thing you want to do after a long day of back to back Thursday meetings is make small talk with your direct manager about the forced corporate retreat taking place over the weekend that was disguised as a “team-building workshop.” Yet here you were, finding yourself cornered in the breakroom, swirling a flimsy wooden stirrer into the paper cup holding your lukewarm Earl Grey tea that you had accidentally dumped too much honey into. 

Your manager sighs, beside you, long and theatrical. The breakroom, for all its intents and purposes, with its aspirational signage and sad, fake succulents is not a very good place to rest or unwind. The countertops are stacked with half-clean dishes and there are multi-colored passive-aggressive Post-Its targeting those that keep leaving oat milk out and stealing other people’s food littering the door of the refrigerator. The rickety dishwasher hums like it’s preparing for takeoff, and someone’s tuna pasta is dying a slow, pungent death in the microwave which hasn’t been cleaned since last month. And because of its proximity to the copy room, you can hear the whir of printers, rattling through reams of paper, spitting out copious stacks of memos and project proposals which everyone will spend 15 seconds flipping through while drinking their morning coffee or bored out of their minds at some all-hands-on-deck meeting and then never look at again.

Sakura, your manager is looking down at her Samsung tablet. Her frown deepens as she scrolls, manicured nail tapping the screen with enough force to qualify as abuse. “They changed the plan again,” she mutters darkly, her voice pitched just loud enough to hint that she will make sure that someone suffers for it. She’s five seconds away from hurling the device into a wall, much to the displeasure of Taehyun Kang, you’re sure, who runs the IT department like a warship under siege and treats every cracked screen and ruined device like an act of treason. “Now I have to bring the whiteboards and the workshop packets. I told them I couldn’t take anyone in the backseat if they made me take more supplies in my car.”

You don’t really need her to explain. Ever since she bought her C-Class with her Q1 bonus, Sakura’s been treating that Mercedes like a fragile newborn that was one scuff away from throwing her into an existential crisis. Nothing goes in the backseat unless it’s leather-approved or warranty-protected. The moment she mentioned “supplies,” you knew your chance at a carpool died.

You glance at her, offering a polite nod that you hope communicates both understanding and a desperate desire for this conversation to be over. It feels muggy in here and you are starting to feel dizzy from too many workers stuffed into one conference room sized mega breakroom. You can already start to feel your silk blouse clinging to your lower back, the faint tackiness of sweat blooming beneath your bra. You hope it’s not visible in the front or you will have to walk cross-armed the entire way back to safety. The last thing you need is to end the work day with visible sweat stains which you’re sure will make the sales department, you share your office floor with, leer at you. Alphas can show up in polo shirts, flex their biceps after an hour long lunch at the golf course, and croak out jokes but an omega with a wrinkled blouse that’s darkened from sweat? That’s just another HR debacle waiting to happen. “She seduced me,” you can already hear the pathetic alphas whining their excuses. Of course they don’t know that you are an omega but you’ve seen enough betas harassed by them too to know that it won’t end well for you either way.

“I was gonna say you could ride with me,” she continues, slightly distracted; she’s already switched tabs to the itinerary, eyes flicking across hotel check-ins and team-building breakout sessions with names like Trusting Your Cubicle Buddy and Synergy Sprints. “But I don’t think there’s space unless you want to sit under half a dozen tote bags in the passenger seat and a case of Celsius under your feet.”

“That’s alright,” you say, a little too quickly. “I’m fine driving myself.”

You deeply regret everything about this moment. The honey in your tea has congealed into a thick, viscous glistening blob at the bottom of the cup, entirely unappetizing. Your toes are throbbing inside your Chanel pointed slingbacks which you chose at 7 a.m. when you still believed you could manifest confidence by dressing like someone who had it together. Worst of all, you’re starting to sweat again, and you’re almost positive you can smell yourself—just barely, just underneath the blockers, but enough to make you spiral as you pretend to pay enough attention to Sakura to not raise any red flags. This is ridiculous; they said that they would fix the third floor central air system last Tuesday. Moreover, you’d used half a bottle of scent-masking spray this morning and layered two brands for a contingency measure but nothing works against an omega trying to slip under the radar like central air failure and the triple-digit misery of a late-summer heatwave. 

Sakura hands you an unopened bottle of water fresh from the cooler, “I talked to Soobin and he said apparently the HVAC guys are going to be coming in this weekend to work on the air conditioning while everyone’s gone upstate for the work thing,” she offers, like that’s supposed to help you now. “But where was I? Oh yes! I think Jake’s car has room for you. He and his team said they were taking his Rivian for the extra leg space. Alphas,” she scoffed, “I guess they need it.”

The sales team that Jake was a part of was led by Jungwon and was made up of seven otherworldly handsome, but truly awful alphas. Alphas only made up 20% of the population but they were constantly given leadership and client-facing roles in the corporate world. They just radiated aura and confidence. You’d rather walk barefoot on hot pavement than get stuck in an enclosed space with a bunch of post-fraternity alphas bragging about their elite university MBAs, expensive luxury penthouses, and all the other unnecessary things they spent ridiculous amounts of money on for six straight hours. What a truly awful way for them to compare dick sizes and how masculine, alpha, they were. There isn’t enough scent blocker in the world. Not for them. And definitely not for you. 

Abandoning your tea, which you think it’s destined for the trash bin at this point, you instead reach for the water bottle, twisting the lid just to keep your hands moving. You imagine sitting between two overconfident alphas in beige summer blazers, surrounded by heavy Dior Sauvage cologne and unsolicited takes on the stock market and their Robinhood portfolios. Alphas yelling about their fantasy football team lineups in the backseat, arguing about Travis Kelce and Joe Burrow. Someone eventually making a shitty joke about omegas being overly sensitive to people getting road rage or being susceptible to heatstroke. Them probably just bringing down the mood with bad vibes, assuming, of course, that you were a beta, and should stop defending omegas and to ‘lighten up’ a bit.

“No, really,” you say again, voice sharper now. “I’ll drive myself.”

There’s a finality to it, a sharp unquestionable edge that even Sakura knows better than to push against.

Sakura shrugs, already back to her tablet; she’s fervently swiping through a slide deck about the morning brunch food options from the looks of it. “Alright,” she says. “Safe drive.”

With that, you pivot towards the sink to first dump your tea before throwing the paper cup in the bin. Your heels click against the tiles as you cross the hallway toward the elevators, shoulders stiff, scalp prickling from the heat, slightly damp. Your head is already an organized chaos of thoughts, as you consider the fact that you still haven’t started packing for the trip or written down the rules for your cousin Yuna to take care of your grumpy maine coon kitty. 

You therefore cannot be blamed for not paying attention to the person who got into the elevator after you, whose presence you had dismissed until he starts loudly clearing his throat next to you.

You look up, a frown marring your face, “Something wrong Huening?” The words are said distastefully, pointedly hinting at your annoyance. You’re not exactly short for an omega, which is why no one ever seems to realize that you are one but of course it’s nothing compared to the towering hulking alpha next to you, forcing you to strain your neck to meet his gaze. 

“Are you driving to the retreat?” Kai Huening asks politely, looking down at you owlishly behind his circular spectacles which are sliding down his, you scowl, perfect Roman nose. 

“Why?” you ask, apparently full of aggression this fine Thursday afternoon, “Afraid I’m gonna invoice daddy the gas mileage?” You can feel the irritation bubbling just beneath your skin now, prickly and hot and irrational—except maybe it’s not irrational. You know what? You’ve just decided that it’s completely, deeply rational. Where does he get off on bothering you while you’re slowly melting from the heat waiting for the clock to strike 5 p.m.

Kai blinks at you, chocolate brown eyes flashing in confusion, the mole underneath his left eyebrow standing out against the stark paleness of his skin, his dark overgrown bangs falling forward, “Y/N you should always be asking the company for reimbursement for anything you have to pay for related to work.”

“Why then?” You’re looking at him discerningly and absolutely do not appreciate how he looks so put together and refreshed in his dark gray slacks and light blue button down. He’s even wearing a flattering slate gray sweater vest and doesn’t seem affected by the late summer heat at all. No sweat stains. No signs of heatstroke. Not even a wrinkle out of place. He looks cool. Calm. Like the humidity doesn’t touch him. Like being an alpha has its own internal A/C setting.

It’s offensive, really.

You’re actively dampening under multiple layers of silk, scent blockers, and aluminum deodorant, while he’s standing there like he just stepped out of the promotional campaign for Uniqlo’s end of summer catalog. Personally, you think to yourself with a delicate sniff, you’re more partial to J. Crew. 

Kai, leans back against the elevator wall, a hand thrown lazily into his slacks’ pocket in a move that is both smooth yet casual, like this is a normal conversation between two coworkers, like you haven’t been pointedly avoiding him for the last twenty-four months. The two moles above his upper lip, framing it on both sides, draw your attention as his lips split in a small assured smile and he says, “Can’t I ask you about your travel plans Y/N? We’re something like friends. Anyways, the planning committee has been acting like a bunch of screaming chickens with their heads cut off, so I can’t help but worry that people do have concrete travel arrangements in place.”

“There’s that leadership your daddy’s so proud of!” Wow. You are mean today. Surprising even yourself. But what were you supposed to do? Acknowledge his comment about you two being friends instead?

“Yeah right. Not quite so,” Kai cackles, his eyes slipping shut for a moment, letting out a shriek of chortles, laughing like you guys are in on a joke together instead of you trying to attack him, for no reason that you can justify—well. It’s fine, you just won’t think about that. “But I’ll let him know your opinion on it.”

The elevator hums around you, soft and mechanical. You cross your arms too tightly and immediately regret it as the sweat under your armpits begins to trickle again.

You don’t know what to do with the fact that he doesn’t fight back. That he chuckles away verbal attacks, doesn’t even acknowledge your bite, sharp as it is, and keeps standing in front of you anyway without any sense of self-preservation. Is it because he’s an alpha, you wonder bitterly, does he truly have nothing to fear from you?

You’re not sure what to do with the part of you that wants him to push back.

“You’ve got that weird finance bro carpool, right?” you ask, trying to seem interested but you are just about tapped out of your ability to tolerate human interactions today. It’s Thursday. Meetings always get masspiled for Thursday so that Fridays can be light, with you all getting out after lunch as Summer Fridays were in effect. You were in enough strategy huddles and check ins today that if Kai doesn't end this conversation soon, you might do something drastic that you will both regret. You reach across him, pointedly tapping the elevator button like it’ll speed up your exit, denying the inevitable truth that you were both headed to the same floor and that he could just follow you to your office. 

“Mm, yeah right. Hardly,” Kai grumbles, shifting his weight as he readjusts his leaning pose against the brushed steel wall slightly, “I was meant to carpool with Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, and Taehyun, but of course Beomgyu tells me I suddenly can’t come.”

You arch a perfectly threaded and laminated eyebrow, hoping you look poised and unaffected by the heat, “He kicked you out?”

“Something about ‘too many extroverts and not enough aux cords,’” he says dryly. “Yeonjun offered to force Beomgyu to sit in the trunk to make it work, but I don't want to risk his wrath after he gets thwarted.”

“Great news,” you shoot back, maliciously. “I hear Jake’s looking for one more person to fill out his car.”

Kai narrows his eyes at you, “You want me to sit behind Riki? He’s as tall as Soobin.”

“You were going to be in a car with Tall x Together, what difference does it make?” You shrug, still furiously tapping at the elevator down button, it’s like muscle memory, you can’t make yourself stop. Tall x Together was what the other workers liked to call Kai and his band of nerds at Huening Corp. Five giant men who were gangly and only the slightest bit awkward but also kind, hardworking, and handsome. Even you can admit that much.

Kai suddenly covers your hand with his, pausing your rapid presses to the elevator buttons. His palm is warm, steady, and large enough to make the elevator buttons vanish beneath both of your fingers. His nails are shiny, like they get buffed regularly; they’re neatly trimmed, or had been filed, and there’s no dirt or grim underneath the nailbeds. The sudden contact jolts through you like static electricity. “I am pretty sure I got kicked out of the ‘Tall x Together’ car for my height, Y/N,” he murmurs, his voice low and even.

You still, hardly even daring to breathe.

He’s too close to you, almost caging you in between his body and the buttons. He doesn’t seem bothered by the proximity like you are, even though you know he knows. Kai suddenly adjusts the strap of his laptop bag, which you hadn’t noticed until now. But it’s all you can focus on now, the black utility type bag dangling off one shoulder and then his hard torso, together becoming the two sides of the triangle boxing you in. He gulps and your eyes snag on the scent receptor half hidden by the collar of his shirt, at the mole on his neck that looks like it’s begging to be kissed, or nibbled.

You shift slightly, trying not to let it show how much his heat is affecting you. But your scent blockers were already working overtime, and now you’re sweating under periwinkle silk and a thorough cross examination, the heavy unyielding weight of being perceived.

And then he looks at you—properly, this time, you mean. Head slightly tilted, expression entirely unreadable, lips parted and you can see his teeth peek out. The bottom ones are completely straight but the top ones are slightly crooked, loping down in a curve. He was always losing or misplacing his retainer in college; you can't help but wonder if he’s completely given up on it these days. You observe his bangs falling a little too low over his brow again, nearly hiding the way he watches you through those dark espresso bean colored eyes. Like he’s thinking. Calculating.

“I’ll just go ahead and say it. Can-I-accompany-you-on-your-drive?” he asks, words stumbling into each other as he speaks fast, like he’s afraid he will forget the words if he doesn’t get them out in a rush. 

You blink up at him, a deer trapped in front of headlights, “What?”

Kai sighs like he’s steeling himself to say the words again; not frustrated, not exactly, but like he’s bracing for impact, for what he thinks in his head is probably the inevitable rejection, “Can I—”

“No I heard you,” you interrupt, “I just…Why?”

His answer is immediate. 

“Because I was hoping you had space,” he says simply.

You blink… again.

“What?”

“In your car,” he clarifies, voice even, patient and unfrustrated by your lack of rapid comprehension, “If you’re driving, I’d like to ride with you.”

There’s a pause. Not long. Maybe two seconds, possibly three. But in that time, the overhead lights flicker slightly, and you realize with a quiet, crawling horror that you can smell him now. It hits you slowly at first. Familiar, but still making you feel off-kilter. It’s muted under his cologne which just smells like crisp cotton and expensive detergent that probably promised him that he would smell like a mountain after the rain in its tagline, but you can smell his pheromones. He smells like a woody boozy mix of cedarwood and spiced bourbon. A rich, slow-burning concoction that smells a little too warm for August, just a bit too heady for the summer, slightly out of place. And as you involuntarily inhale deeply, against your will, tempted by his captivating alpha scent, you smell something that surprisingly comes across like the sugary syrupy scent of a juicy, perfect for harvest, peach. 

Your breath catches. It’s subtle. The kind of sweetness you want to paint on your tongue and lips, suck on and savor. Not floral, not artificial… just fresh ripened fruit, sun-warmed, easily bruised, prime for picking. You want to bite down on him. 

You inhale again, even more deeply. You don’t mean to. But your body betrays you before your brain can issue the opposing command.

It’s faint. Controlled. Nothing so forward that it would get him reported. Nothing about it is overtly aggressive, there’s no dominance spike, no flare of scent that would earn a side-eye from HR. But it’s there: clean heat, cedarwood and bourbon, something sharp and sweet curling at the edges of your awareness.

You wonder if it’s always been there, tucked under the abrasive clean scent of linen and alkalic soap, and you had just stopped noticing, or if he’s slipped up somehow and your heightened omega senses, primed for awareness of alphas, had finally picked it up.

You step half a pace back, just a fraction. Not enough to make it obvious. Just enough to breathe again.

“Why would I let you do that?” you ask when you are finally back in control; your voice is quieter now. Not soft. Just… tempered.

“We’ve known each other since college,” Kai says. “I don’t bite.”

You nearly laugh, but it comes out harsh, raspy. Your throat is dry. You fumble with the water bottle from Sakura, fingers scrambling over the cap, struggling to open it until he takes it from your hand and undos the cap for you in a smooth effortless move before handing you back the bottle. You drink too fast. The water’s cold, but not enough, a few drops escape the corner of your mouth and trail down your chin, dampening the neckline of your blouse. You swipe at it quickly, pretending not to notice his eyes tracking the movement. “That’s exactly what someone who bites would say.”

Kai inhales sharply; there’s a not unnoteworthy pause. He then beams, the first real smile of his that you’ve seen in months. And you know it’s real because of how his lips are slightly downturned in a small but steady grin. It’s the familiar sight of his unique upside down smile that you had almost forgotten. The one that’s so contagious that you can feel the corners of your own mouth lifting up. “Then I’ll wear a muzzle. You leaving at seven?”

“You’re assuming I said yes.”

“You didn’t say no.”

You glare. This fucking guy. Retort, “You don’t even know where I live.”

“Then pick me up,” he says, like it’s nothing. Like it’s normal. Like he hasn’t just casually inserted himself into your personal space and bulldozed his way into wrecking the rest of your afternoon. Sure, the conversation will end when you two get off the elevator, but you’ll be thinking about it forever. The entire night. Tomorrow morning. Maybe the whole weekend at the retreat. “I’ll get us coffee. You still like the stuff from that Yemeni place. Yeah, right?”

You freeze.

You hadn't been there in months. Not since early spring. Not since the last time you'd been too tired to make breakfast before work and ended up grabbing a cardamom and rose iced latte and a pistachio date pastry, the kind you used to split with him in college, when you two had early mornings where you had to set up events together for the club you both were officers in or for your shared major’s department. 

Why did he notice that? Or was it worse than that? He hadn't noticed you with your little latte in March but had rather remembered your order from college. Your time at undergrad had only overlapped for two years: his first two with your last two. Why did he remember that still?

You glance at him now: tall and annoyingly put-together, maddeningly composed, and still half-hiding behind those messy bangs and that unfazed self-assured measured cadence to his voice. He had traded his oversized hoodies and ripped baggy denim for well tailored slacks and form fitting buttoned shirts but his hair remained slightly too long like he didn’t want to look cookie cutter and corporate. You wondered if he still had dark circles around his eyes, looking as though he was cosplaying a helpless raccoon that was in over his head. Was he sleeping well? Or had he gotten better at skincare and applying concealer over the years?

The elevator finally dings, letting you both know that escape is finally coming.

He walks out without looking back, headed to work on debugging some issue or another you were sure. 

You hesitate. A one beat pause, then a two beat pause. Your mouth moves before your brain can stop it before the third.

“Wait,” you blurt out, confused on how you were meant to contact him. You didn’t want to ask to trade numbers. “Send me your address on Slack. Or… or, whatever.” You try to finish off in a way that sounds casual. As it was, you were going to head straight into the ladies room when he disappeared from view and then spend the next fifteen minutes screaming into the palms of your hands, your well-manicured nails lightly dimpling into your cheeks.

Kai nods. “Yeah, right. Sure.” 

He then pauses, almost like he doesn’t want the conversation to end. Like he wants to stay longer with you in this moment. This confuses you. Wasn’t he rushing to get out of the elevator? Or was that just a facade to show you how cool and confident he was. Alpha of the Year.

“Don’t be nervous, Y/N,” he says, voice soft.

His gaze lingers on you. Unreadable. Unbearable.

“It’s just me.”

You’re sitting bleary-eyed in the driver’s seat of your car at 6:51 a.m. the next morning, forehead resting against the gray and black steering wheel while the engine hums quietly beneath you. You raise your head to shoot a tired glare full of heat towards the brownstone townhouse across the street. The early August sky is still that pale, washed-out blue that falsely promises cooler temperatures, but you already know that 10 minutes outside is enough to make you start sweating. Your body disagrees with the concept of time; it insists that it’s still the middle of the night, not almost seven in the morning. In fact, in 29 minutes, it would be the normal time that you usually get up at to get ready for work. You are starting to think that waking up two hours and twenty minutes earlier than usual is really messing with you. You briefly contemplate murder—his, your own—it doesn’t matter.

You had slept like hell. The kind of restless, shallow half-sleep where your brain insisted on reminding you of all the things you still had to do before you left Friday morning or things you could be forgetting to pack. Your electric toothbrush. Your special shampoo and conditioner full of peptides that promised you things like ionic bonding and deep cuticle repair. Cute but work-appropriate pajamas, just in case, if you have to trek outside your hotel room in the middle of the night. Chargers for every work and personal device you need to bring. The very concepts of dignity and professionalism. You did do one very last minute sweep before leaving the apartment, but you’re still convinced something vital is sitting on your kitchen counter right now, mocking you.

To be in front of Kai’s home by 7 a.m., you had to wake up at 5 a.m. Your alarm? That bone chilling default ringtone that Apple has. It horrifyingly shatters your sleep and peace every morning. You now associate the sound with trauma. Your skull still feels fragile even though it’s been almost two hours since you heard that alarm and woke up from terror and there is a hostile pressure behind your left eye socket trying to do you in. Your back aches from how you slept, or rather didn’t as your night was spent mostly tossing and turning after frantically finally packing at 2 a.m. And your first thought, even before your eyes had opened, was: I hate him.

In any case, you woke up at five and stared at the ceiling for a brief six minutes before reluctantly getting up to shower and get ready. 

By 5:15 a.m., you were standing in front of your bathroom mirror, attempting to resuscitate your hair with a Dyson Airwrap and a multitude of prayers but the humidity had other plans. It didn’t want to let you leave the house with a perfectly sleek blowout that would make Kai Huening stop and stare at you awestruck. Unfortunately, your hair had started curling at the temples no matter how many passes you made with the Dyson hair tool before you were forced to give up.

Thus, by 5:30 a.m., you had moved on to doing your makeup. You had been committed to achieving the no-makeup makeup look that the Tiktok influencers flooding your FYP swore by. The Hourglass concealer you bought? Creasing under your eyes and around your smile lines almost instantly. The Ilia mascara? Despite promising to be a tubing mascara, you had been starting to bore resemblance to the sleep-deprived racoon you used to compare Kai to in undergrad. Your lips? Overlined with Charlotte Tilbury and sticky with a supposedly mauve Rhode lip peptide that refused to show any pigment no matter how much you layered. You were almost tempted to wash it all off and give up. And did. If anything, letting Kai think that you were one of those omegas that didn’t try to look good for alphas was a good thing. 

By 6:05 a.m., with the help of some Bare Minerals powder foundation and a dark cherry red Fenty gloss, you had been ready to seize the day—and repack your Victoria’s Secret duffle bag. It had come free with your massive For Love & Lemons purchase and it was truly gargantuan with tons of pockets and endless space for everything that you had to bring. It fit basically all that you needed for the weekend: two sets of business professional clothes, some less formal but still nice clothes for other events, a set of workout clothes, pajamas, and delicates in a packing cube, three pairs of shoes in draw string pouches: kitten heels, practical sneakers, and slides for the hotel, your work laptop, personal iPad, various wires and plugs, a very necessary 60oz reusable water bottle, and of course all the snacks you would need for sustenance during a 6 hour car ride. You had your work bag/purse filled with anything else you could possibly need, but you still found yourself frantically pacing your kitchen trying to wrack your brain and cursing as you tried to think of anything else you could possibly need. Your ginger cat, Clementino, had hissed at you, watching your trek with squinted eyes. He resented being awake so early in the day. That makes two of us buddy, you had thought. You had eyed the note you left for Yuna under your fruit basket, dimly noting that you needed to finish your clementines, the citrus not the cat, before they shriveled up and turned into calcified stone fruit. 

Now, parked across the street from his townhouse (which by the way, his choice in residence had completely surprised you since you either expected him to still be living in the Huening family home or some highrise luxury apartment like the other corporate alpha bros) there was nothing left to do but to open up your phone and check the message that Kai had sent you. 

You sigh, unenthused to make that next step. Your phone is currently face-down on the passenger seat, screen dark, but the memory of last night’s text sits heavy in your mind. That message wasn’t even at the top of your Slack private messaging tab. No. It was in your SMS app. At 9:43 p.m. the night before you had received a text message from an unknown number. The chat bubbles had been green. Kai had always sworn his allegiance to Samsung, even in undergrad. You weren’t surprised to see he was staying loyal to them, four years later.

304-814-2002: hey it’s kai. see you at 7 :) this is my address below ⬇️  304-814-2002: 553 hhm road…

You had had a minor meltdown when you had gotten that message last night.

First of all: an unsaved number??? Sure you were expecting Slack but even if he somehow got your number from the employee directory (assuming it got deleted off his phone any time in the past four years through various software updates and device upgrades), why was it a different number from the one he had had in college? 

Meanwhile, you had stayed faithful to the same number since your parents got you your first cellphone in middle school. 

You had stared at it for ten straight minutes last night before muttering an anxious repeated, “No. No, no, no, no,” into the empty silence of your living room, while pacing like you were being chased.

Why did he always have the leg up?

Why did he always have to make his move before you could counter it?

Why did he always have to make it seem like it was no big deal? Like it was nothing. Like you were the only one spiraling. The one who was unfairly overreacting.

You had planned for a Slack message. Something innocuous, predictable. You’d even entertained the idea that maybe he’d forget to send it entirely since you had remembered how he would constantly get distracted back in college and had a seemingly short attention span. But no. Not only did you not get to send the first message and thus get to dictate the tone of the conversation, didn't even get the advantage of pretending that you were somehow doing him a huge favor, but he had somehow had your number.

How? How did he get it? How long had he had it? Was it back from college? You two had really only ever talked through Discord or Instagram/Snapchat DMs back in the day. Maybe the occasional group chat ping if you were working the same event. Did he try to find it from the information the company had on file for you? Did he pull it from the company directory? Did he ask Bahiyyih to look you up in the HR system? And if so, when did he look you up? When he had started at Huening Corp. two years ago or was it sometime more recent???

This man was always destroying your peace.

Your car is idling, the engine’s low vibration buzzing faintly through the steering wheel. Your windows are cracked a little bit, just enough to let in the early morning air; it’s still cool, but the sticky promise of future heavier humidity and higher temperatures clings to it. However, it’s not bad enough that you have to turn on the A/C yet.

The digital clock on your dash blinks once to update the time and now reads 6:58 a.m. 

You still haven’t messaged him. 

You wonder if he’s going to suddenly materialize at exactly 7:00 a.m.; just appear from the ether and scare the hell out of you with a knock on the driver’s side window.

You don’t have to wait for long. 

The brownstone’s front door swings open, and there he is, stepping onto the landing like it’s a stage that he’s reluctantly gotten used to, the central platform for him to be admired by jogging college students and moms pushing their babies’ strollers in the morning before the sun has had its chance to get any higher in the sky.

He’s got an oversized black leather jacket on that makes him look imposingly broad. It screams ALPHA to your ovaries. You tell your delicate omega sensibilities to shut the fuck up. It has a hood, but it’s down; instead, a dark baseball cap sits low on his head, holding back most of his messy hair. Kai has impossibly straight hair but it always looks like it's lost a war with a fine tooth comb. His bangs are pushed off his forehead, and you have the ridiculous thought that you prefer him this way with nothing shadowing his beautiful magnetic brown eyes, when there’s nothing for him to hide behind.

The second thing you notice: he’s not carrying luggage. Not even a duffel. No coffee for himself. Just a clear plastic cup where a milky beige brown liquid, dried rose petals, clumped cardamom powder and tons of small blocks of nugget ice resides, the condensation beading down the side, and what looks like a plush Jellycat creature of some sort dangling casually from his other hand its brightly colored feet swaying with each step he takes as he bounds down the stairs of the walk up. 

He… he bewilders you. 

At seven, right on the dot, your phone alarm goes off with a sharp trill, making you flinch. You had set it earlier to remind you to stay on schedule. The sound slices through the quiet street and carries across the distance to him. It causes Kai’s head to turn sharply. And then he’s looking across the street, his eyes pinpointing your car, as he makes direct eye contact with you. You freeze against it. Just for a second. The morning air feels warmer, heavier.

You two stare each other down in a silent face off, his brown eyes boring into yours, until the snooze alarm kicks in and you’re able to fumble it to shut off.

You lift your right hand and gesture the clear, unmistakable universal sign: come here. The male has the audacity to shake his head. 

Your brows pull together. What the actual fuck? You narrow your eyes, trying to signal to him with sharper movements that you are not playing around: come here. 

Another shake of his head. And then—the audacity—he mirrors you. Tilts his chin, curls his long fingers, and beckons for you to come to him.

You glare at him from behind the wheel, completely thrown by this silent war of wills playing out across the street like some ridiculous pantomime.

Then he holds up one finger—wait—and pulls his phone out from his back pocket. He slides it unlocked and presumably calls you. A second later you get your confirmation, your dashboard lighting up with an incoming call from that same unsaved number. You should probably save it. But if you saved it now it would probably be as That Asshole Huening (Kai). You press the answer button and aided by Bluetooth, his voice floods the inside of your car through the speaker system, warm and unhurried in the early morning quiet.

“Good morning, Y/N,” Kai’s voice comes through loudly, it’s smooth, light, and entirely too awake for seven in the morning. “Could you please get out of your car and come over here?”

“No,” you retort quickly. You don’t even hesitate. “You come here.” You pause, narrowing your eyes as you look over at him through the side window. Wait. Does he need help? “Do you need me to carry something?”

There’s a small hum on the line, like he’s amused by the question: the omega asking to help the alpha with manual labor. “Hmm? Yeah, right. No, not quite. I just think it’s better if we take my car.”

“If you wanted to take your car, why did you bother me about going together?” you snap, stubborn in a way that feels almost childish, even to you.

“Come on, Y/N,” Kai coaxes, his voice as warm as honey but with a thread of quiet insistence beneath its timber. Unfortunately for him, you were on a no honey kick. You had given it up. Yesterday. A very recent development sure, but one you would be able to stick to. Probably. “Does that make sense to you? Let’s save the planet. Be more fuel efficient. Let’s take my car.”

“Why?” you demand. “It’s not a Prius or something, is it? A fucking Tesla?” You utter that last word like a slur.

“Well,” admits Kai, sounding a bit offended, “No. It’s a Lexus hybrid.”

You squint across the street at him. Why is he doing this to you? Aren’t your cars made with the same parts? They’re just sold with different labels at widely contrasting price points. “Mine’s a Toyota hybrid. What difference does it make?”

“The difference,” he says without missing a beat, “is that I don’t think you trust me to drive your car, and I don’t want you driving six hours in your decade-old Camry just to be stubborn.”

It’s not the words that get you, but rather it’s the way he says them. Calm. Certain. Like he’s not asking you, he’s telling you, but making you feel like you’ve still got the choice. Like he will let you drive your ancient car for six hours to make a point. Like he will let you turn your car around, drive back to your apartment, feign an illness and dodge Sakura’s calls and messages all weekend long about why you are missing the work trip if you truly don't want to get into his car.

You sigh, stretching it out as long as humanly possible, making it loud and long-suffering enough that he has to hear it over the Bluetooth. You know the vocal fry is getting to him, you can see his ears turning red even with 24 feet in between you two, “Fine. I’ll turn around and park on your side of the street. Give me a moment.”

“You can keep your car in my garage,” Kai says, like it’s the most reasonable suggestion in the world. And perhaps it is. But you don’t like how everything he says just… makes sense. Agreeable alpha. Overdramatic omega. You don’t like how this is playing out and making you look.

In response, you hang the phone up, stabbing the end call button with enough aggression that you hope he can see from across the street. For good measure you throw up your middle finger at him and then do up your cracked open windows before you make your U-turn. 

His townhouse shares a wall with its neighbor, ivy curling over the sandstone blocks, but to the right there’s a small, single-car garage that’s empty and just wide enough for your Camry. Kai is leaning against the open garage door, one black leg of his tapered terry cloth joggers crossed at the ankle over the other, like he’s been there long enough to settle into the position. Can he chill? It took you maybe, and you are being generous, maybe two minutes. As you move your car forward into his driveway, he walks up to you with your coffee and the plushie (you still don’t know why he has that). 

“Y/N, wait,” he says, stopping beside your door. “Let’s move your stuff to my car, and then I’ll back yours into the garage.”

“I could make it in,” you grumble, “I learned to drive in New York city.”

“Well sure,” Kai nods, deadpan, a half smirk hiking up the left side of his face, “But why risk it? Gotta keep that Camry going for another ten years, yeah?”

“You fucking asshole.” You scowl, but it comes out more like a mutter. “Sure, why not,” you add, even though what you actually want is to drive your apparently prehistoric car straight into the side of his house.

He moves to open your door for you, stepping back just barely enough to give you enough space to squeeze out of your car. In fact, when you step out, you brush against his leather jacket, warm from his body's heat. He, blessingly, doesn’t comment on it as he hands you both your cardamon rose latte and the plush, which turned out to be a penguin.

“For you,” he says easily, the moles above his upper lip glinting when he grins, “Pastries are in my car. I thought they’d keep warm better there. What do you need me to carry?”

You stiffen. 

The question hangs between you two unanswered.

Because now you can smell him.

You can smell him even more clearly today. It’s so strong, fragrant, as it floods your nostrils. Cedarwood. Cinnamon spiced bourbon. And underneath, peach—that damned peach note; sweet, warm, digging its talons in as it clings to the edge of your senses, holding your tattered self-control within its grasp. Does he not put on as much scent blocker when he’s not going into work? Or is it you? Are you the problem? Are you attuned to him like an embarrassing omega who has imprinted on an alpha and can now hone into his scent with razor sharp focus regardless of how much effort he goes into to mask it. 

You’ve gone quiet long enough for him to notice. His brows draw together, dark eyes searching your face.

You blurt out, “Nothing. I just have my duffle bag and work bag. I can do it.”

“Yeah right. Of course you could,” Kai says smoothly. “But why should you when you have someone to do it for you?”

And then says lighter, but still leaving no room for argument, “Drink your coffee, Y/N.”

You take a sip before you even register moving your hand up to your mouth, the aromatic rose and cardamom blooming across your tongue, the cup cool and sweating in your hold. It’s only after you swallow that you realize, as you lick absentmindedly at your lips: you didn’t think when he gave you the command, you didn’t push back. You just… did it. This… is extremely unlike you. 

“Where’s your car?” you ask, already lifting the cup for another drink.

Kai nods toward the curb. “It’s parked against the sidewalk, right out front.”

You glance past him and spot it; it’s a dark green sedan, paint gleaming even in the early morning’s small tendrils of light. Pearlescent. Luxurious. New. No wonder he didn’t want to take your car. Is everyone suddenly upgrading? Maybe you should talk to his sister Lea about how you deserve a bigger promotion this year or you’re walking straight into Minatozaki Inc. Jake has a Rivian. Sakura has a Mercedes. Kai has what looks like is a Lexus in the next year’s model if the glinting four digit number on the trunk of the car gives any indication. 

With a huff you hit the trunk button on your keys to let the latch pop open. 

Kai moves past you without hesitation now that his hands are free, heading straight for the back of your car, grabbing your ebony colored knock-off Polène Cyme workbag from the yellow app. This doesn’t raise any eyebrows. It shouldn’t. You do research before buying your fakes. He wouldn’t be able to tell. But his eyes do widen comically when grabbing your powder pink VS branded dufflebag. Typical. All men think the same. Just because of the brand name, you think. It’s just a duffle. Unless he’s thinking about what’s inside it. Pity, because he will never be seeing you wear any of it. 

He doesn’t comment but just takes the lead, striding towards his sedan with easy confidence. He opens the rear passenger door and sets your bags neatly beside his silver Rimowa carry-on and that same damned laptop bag that had boxed you in yesterday in the elevator, trapped between him and the wall. Amazingly, he also has a heavy duty backpack that looks like it was originally meant for backpacking across Europe and a tote bag so full of snacks and prepackaged beverages that it looks like he’s preparing for a week in the wilderness.

“You realize we are going to be gone for only two days,” you say, peering over his shoulder, cautiously avoiding physical contact as you attempt to look into the backseat past his over six-foot frame. “Why do you have so much stuff?”

“I just think it’s good to be prepared, Y/N,” he replies, calm and matter-of-fact, like this is a perfectly normal amount of luggage for a forty-eight-hour trip. Then, without missing a beat: “Now, would you like to sit in the passenger seat and hand me your keys so I can park your car in the garage, or would you prefer to watch me while I’m in your car?”

“Obviously the second,” you grouse, crossing your arms, “How is this even a question?”

“You could stand to trust me a little, you know,” Kai mumbles, taking off his cap as he says it.

You watch as he gives his head a quick shake, messy dark hair falling forward before he roughly finger-combs it back. It’s an imperfect fix as a few strands fall loose again almost immediately but he doesn’t seem to care at the moment. The cap goes back on in a practiced motion, brim pulled low.

You ignore what he said. Choosing not to answer. Instead, you hold out your keys.

As he reaches out to grab them, your fingers brush his, cool against your skin, almost startling in the muggy August morning. The contrast sends a quick shiver up your arm before you can stop it. You pull your hand back too fast, stuffing it into your Lululemon relaxed fit jacket pocket in a hurry like the action will erase the moment that had just passed.

Kai doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he does and chooses not to comment, which somehow feels both better and yet worse.

He ambles toward the driver’s side of your car with the long-legged, loose-hipped gait of someone who knows they look good in motion. It’s the kind of walk that would suit a model (or an F1 driver stepping out for a race, given that he’s heading towards your Camry).

Sliding into your driver’s seat, he pauses to adjust it to accommodate for his height before he can start the car and you just know you will find it annoying to set the car back to right when you both arrive again at his house on Monday afternoon. You’re even grumbling about it now under your breath but you hope he can’t hear you since he’s currently doing what he thinks is a favor for you. 

The engine turns over with an easy purr. He drives like he does everything else: steady, controlled, and maddeningly confident. You’re loath to admit it, but he’s a good driver, although it probably is better for you that he is, considering the way he all but declared he’d be handling most, if not all, of the driving for your joint six-hour excursion. 

The garage is a snug fit for your Camry, but he guides it in with one hand on the wheel, leaving enough space on both sides to open the doors without issue. And he’s even left room behind the car, not backing it up so far that you can’t get to the trunk if you need it. It’s irritatingly competent.

He’s whistling by the time he gets out, a bright, precise sound reminding you that he has nearly perfect pitch, tugging at your memories of the past. “Ready to go? I’ll get your door.”

And with that, a short moment and a dozen steps later, you’re in his car.

The first thing that hits you is his scent; it’s stronger here, saturated into the space like it belongs as much to the interior as the leather and clean detailing do. Personally, you think he doesn't even need car fresheners, distressingly enough. Crisp cedarwood, rich spiced bourbon, that maddening sharp bite of tangy peach underneath. It’s utterly poignant. Not only filling up the space, but surrounding you, saturating you in his scent. It engulfs your lungs, winding into your chest before you can stop it. It settles on top of your skin, trying to burrow inside you, seeping into your veins. His scent is so strong. It furiously attempts to draw you in, ensnare you. You can feel it begging to let you be drenched with it. It’s futilely trying to sink its claws into you, all without you even being physically scented. Yet somehow you're still afraid that it will succeed. That you will exit the car in six hours, wearing his scent on your skin like he owns you. 

Trying to distract yourself, you set your iced latte down next to his in the cup holder, your fingers brushing against the wetness covering both cups, your fingertips drawing designs on the layers of condensation before you withdraw. Moving on, you rest the penguin plush he’d given you on your lap like a makeshift shield. This penguin can't protect you. It's a fool's endeavor. You clear your throat trying to look as though you are busy and glance back down at the central console, noting that he got a Sana’ani iced coffee with no cream. 

Finally when you can’t avoid him anymore, you look up. Gazing up at him, wide-eyed and nervous. The door to the passenger’s side is still open and he hasn’t moved away from it. He’s still there, just tall enough to block off the light from hitting your eyes. Watching you. Not impatient. Just… present.

Your throat goes dry. “Is everything—” you have to swallow, “—Is everything alright?”

“Just checking if you need my help adjusting your seat or getting your belt on before I settle in,” Kai murmurs, voice low enough that the sound comes across as a pleasant rumbling before it settles in your ribs. Just below your heart. Making your abdomen ache. 

“No, I—I’m okay,” you whisper; your voice comes out softer than intended.

He nods once, like that’s enough, as if that's all he needed to verify, but he still does a quick sweep, making sure your dangling sleeves risking getting caught in the door are safely put away from harm’s way, that your unzipped gray Lululemon jacket that's half falling off your body isn’t hanging out the door, and that you’re tucked entirely into the space, comfortable, before he closes it with a quiet, deliberate click.

You watch him walk around the hood to the driver’s side, the morning light highlighting the tendons of his neck muscles as they disappear into his leather jacket. The car suddenly feels warmer, heavier, as if it knows what’s about to happen.

This is it. The next six hours of your life. Trapped in a car with the alpha you’ve avoided for the last twenty-four months at work—longer, if you count the years since graduation when you didn’t speak to him at all. Four years.

The gentle hum of the Lexus fills the silence between them, pleasant and steady. Kai had only bought it a month ago. He’s never been the biggest car enthusiast. That’s always been more of his younger sister Hiyyih’s thing with her sky blue monstrosity. And besides, a sports car would be highly impractical. He can’t be seen taking a Ferrari into work, not when his coworkers already side-eye him and mutter “Nepo Baby” about him under their breaths. Thanks Dad—that alpha announcement on his first day was super necessary. Really helpful in making his colleagues like him.

Fortunately the traffic is light, as they travel down the streets for now. The stoplights seem to be taking a while but he doesn’t feel pressed for time. They’re not expecting anyone to do anything at the hotel the company had booked until the welcome dinner. People would all be getting in at different times and were encouraged to explore the city and go out to town for their earlier meals. C-Suite had all gotten plane tickets together. They couldn’t be bothered with a six hour drive. But Kai didn’t mind; he didn’t like taking plane rides for in-state trips. And he was kind of jealous of all the camaraderie between the different cohorts and departmental teams as they were planning their drives. He had even been part of one until he had had to tell his friends that he had made other travel arrangements.

You were angled toward the window, your relatively short hair catching stray beams of sunlight. Your hair looked like it did most mornings when you got in at work: your collarbone and shoulderblade grazing locks arranged in a sleek blowout. However, it looked like today your hair was losing the battle against the August humidity, the silky locks curling up and showing a little frizz at your temple and nape. Kai swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Your short hair—in all honesty—your everything, had fundamentally rewired his body and changed his brain’s chemistry from the first moment he had laid eyes on you six years ago. You were the reason that he liked women with short hair; he just liked you. He looked for you everywhere, in everything. Because he couldn’t have you.

His throat is too dry. He doesn’t know how to start a conversation with you. You were in his car but he can’t make a fucking move. He reaches for his coffee cup, his eyes still on the road. The fragrant cardamom flavor makes his taste buds sing but is hardly effective in lubricating his throat. 

He chances a look at you. Your latte is balanced in your left hand, hugged towards your chest. You absently hold the penguin plush with your right hand, not really paying attention to it but keeping a tight enough grip so that it wouldn’t get jostled and dislodged during the drive. You haven’t moved it. That’s something. He’s going to take it as something.

He goes back to keeping his eyes on the road, but his head’s already playing back the morning like he’s reviewing Real Madrid football match footage with Taehyun. Every step had been deliberate from the moment that he had regained consciousness this morning. 

He had gotten up at dawn before the alarm could steal another five minutes from him, showered, shaved, stared into the mirror until he could decide between having his hair meticulously slicked back or keeping it soft and fluffy with his bangs down. Having his hair back made him look like the kind of alpha his dad wanted, but maybe you were into those types of alphas. He had seen Jake and even Sunghoon hovering around you during work. He had even heard you laugh at something Heesung had said. But bangs down felt safer, It was usually his go to. He didn’t like cutting his front hair too short, always liked the coverage it provided when he felt too seen—too perceived. In the end he decided to tuck his half dry hair under a cap where it would be hidden and not be as distracting. A sensory nightmare that could ruin his focus while he drives.

The penguin had been the toughest choice. Sitting on his desk last night, it looked ridiculous: much too soft, much too obvious, much too much. He hadn’t scented it though he had been tempted. That would have been an awful faux pas; you probably would have thrown it out. But he had bought it because you had been rubbing your temple more frequently these days. It was like every day you were going into work, only half-functioning. And you seemed prone to migraines, had a shorter tolerance for deadlines and delays. Your skin had even started to take on a paler, more sallow tone like you were not getting enough sun or sleep.

Plushies had always been his go-to for comfort for most of his life; when it came to his long nights coding, when he was losing a ranked match in Valorant or tilting in League, there was always something fuzzy within arm’s reach. He would bury his face in the softness of a plushie and scream his frustrations out, the sound muffled by their fluff. He would even use them in the place of pillows occasionally; his bed in undergrad had been half buried under different plush animals and characters of various sizes. And sometimes he still hugged them in his sleep, lonely as he was, without any romantic partner in his life. His work and obsession with you took up all of the attention and time he would have otherwise spared on a lover. 

He had agonized over whether you would think that it was childish or not. If you would just ditch it in his car or at the hotel reception, discarding it at the first chance you got. He had thrown it into the side pocket of his laptop bag anyway after a small enough risk/reward analysis. Either he would see you smile or he would take another stab to his heart. It was fine. He could take it. His heart was strong enough to withstand it. Big enough for loving and caring about you, even if you ignored him and his attempts to woo you.

It was pure luck—or perhaps just good timing—that he had caught you in the breakroom with Sakura yesterday. Hearing you say that you would drive yourself had rang every alarm bell in his head. He didn’t want you to be a lone driver on the vast and scary highways driving for six hours straight. You would only have truck drivers for company on those roads. What if you got into trouble? The cell service could be spotty sometimes, especially when the highways got to the higher elevations. Or worse, Jake and his Rivian full of cocky, attractive alphas were all just waiting for a chance like that. He couldn’t take it if they had found out about your predicament and offered you a ride. He had heard them talk about you and other women at the office enough times with comments like:

“Even if she’s a beta, I bet I could get her to act like an omega in bed.” “She’s pretty enough for me to date, even if I am an alpha.”

His grip tightens on the wheel. Those guys are the kings of great first impressions: beautiful, charismatic, and quick-witted. But they weren’t his kind of people. They were like sharks in the water, circling around prey, waiting to devour anyone they saw as weak. They were better suited for relationships with other alphas or the aggressive beta that could hold her own. You were too good for them. They would take your confidence and self worth and crush it beneath their heels. You were… everything. You were strong. You were proud. You were… defiant and brave. But unfortunately there were just some alphas who just didn’t respect omegas. They didn’t actually respect anyone but other alphas who conformed to the norms like them. Even Kai was constantly getting ribbing from them. They were the type of alphas who would test an omega just to see how far they could go until they could break one and make her heel. And then she would become their picture perfect Stepford wife or the type of trophy girlfriend that everyone admired but didn’t want to take the place of. 

So he had stepped in before Sakura could suggest anything else. With a casual voice, hinting at friendly history and no bad blood, and there wasn’t, not on his side, he had uttered:

“We’ve known each other since college. I don’t bite.”

He had talked about practicality. Fuel efficiency. Just enough to make it seem like no big deal. You had almost said no. Were hovering around the cusp of a rejection. He had sensed it. But he had been so desperate. He now wonders if you had picked up on the undercurrent of urgency coming from him. In that moment, he had almost been tempted to do a bad thing; to use his dad to reassign you to something and tell you that you weren’t needed at the work retreat. But that would have been the absolute worst thing he could have done in that situation. 

But in the end you hadn’t refused, and in his book, a door that isn’t locked is much easier to coax open.

Now here they are, twenty minutes into a drive that will take a full quarter of the day. You are still quiet, but he’s made his peace with it. It gives him time to think, to plan his next move since conversation was always tricky with you, even in college. You always had your guard up. He never understood it back when he had thought you were a beta and you had thought the same of him, but now he gets it. He knows how to manage you. If he pushes too hard, you will retreat, understandably; but if he leaves you with too much space and you would settle into silence, making it your armor until he becomes too anxious to disrupt your repose.

He takes the next lane change slowly, thinking about how to chip away at the distance between you two without making you suspicious. In his video games, this would be the part where he would build his party’s trust if he was playing with new people—small interactions, shared resources, little boosts that add up by the time the real fight hits.

Well better now then ever, he supposes. Kai clears his throat, more to test the waters than because he needs to; he had done it yesterday and been rewarded with you snarkily snapping at him, addressing him by his last name. If it isn’t broken…

“Did you eat breakfast?” He had eaten a small full fat yogurt that was imported from France or something. He had no idea. His mom had signed him up for grocery delivery. The yogurt had been all the sustenance he needed before making the drive to pick up coffee and pastries for you. 

Your eyes don’t leave the window; he guesses you are steadfastly trying to avoid eye contact with him. Or maybe he’s disrupting your attempts at disassociation. “Latte,” you say finally, likely feeling the heat of his gaze on your nape, raising the cup just enough for him to see it in his periphery.

Two beats pass between his question and your answer. Enough time for him to count; it was enough time for him to overthink about why you didn’t look at him when you said it.

“Mhm.” He makes a noise that he hopes comes across as thoughtful yet casual. Nonchalant. He can be a nonchalant king. He can. He’s not being sus at all. “Yeah. Right. And here I was hoping that you’d tell me you actually consumed something more… solid. You’re looking a little bit…peckish,” He lets his gaze flick over quickly, cataloguing the darkness underneath your eyes, the way your hand seems to waver around the cup, which isn’t the least bit heavy. “…like a Victorian invalid. Suffering from consumption. Or like the undead. I don’t suppose you’ve taken up practicing vampirism recently, have you, Y/N? Not sure which one fits your ‘Everything is Tuberculosis’ vibe more.”

That earns him a sideways look, pointed but not cold. He internally files away that your mouth doesn’t twitch up at the corner. No smile. Not yet. But it had taken you a bit to hit him with that glance. You had considered his words. The pause had been long enough that he knew you had at least thought he was being clever, even if you didn’t find it funny enough to dignify with a response. You sip your drink instead of answering, and he can’t tell if it’s your attempt at a dismissal or just poor deflection.

He lets the silence sit, waiting to see if you’ll fill it—three, four, five seconds, he taps it out on the steering wheel—bites back a smile when he sees you readjust your posture clearly irked by his motions, he then gestures at the central display of the car. “Alright. Music’s yours. Whatever you want. You can log into Apple Music if you want if you don’t want to use my Spotify.”

There’s the pause he was expecting. He can almost hear you thinking—no, actually he can. You have the cutest habit of hissing under your breath when you think, verbalizing things to yourself. You turn to look at him like he’s offered you his life’s savings or added you to his townhouse’s title. “You’re just… handing it over? No curated Kai playlist? No ‘we’re starting with track one and we don’t hit shuffle’ speech?”

He keeps his eyes on the road, but he’s hyper-aware of your gaze now, cascading over his skin. He’s never been as bad as you’re making him sound. It’s an exaggeration, honest. But he likes your barbs; he always has. It’s always been a sign of how comfortable you are with a person. Otherwise, you would just keep all your comments to yourself. “The road’s long,” he says, shrugging like it costs him nothing, because newsflash, it doesn’t. “You can choose.”

“Wow.” You shake your head, and for a half-second he thinks there’s a smile starting to peek out. It’s almost like how it used to be between you two. “You’ve gotten reasonable since university. Where’s the guy who threatened to hold my ears hostage to hostile heavy metal if I ever slipped Ayesha Erotica into the playlist again. You said I was ruining your perfectly curated Spotify sound profile.”

The ease with which you are replying to him makes him think that you’ve almost convinced himself that he’s forgotten. But you’re wrong. He hasn’t. He just doesn't want it to overshadow your interactions with him. He wants you to stop being uncomfortable with him. He wants you to realize that it doesn’t matter to him, at least not in the way that you might think that it would.

The thought drops him backward into the past before he can stop it. He hopes you don’t realize what’s running through his mind as you hook your phone up to his carplay, fiddling with the screen to make sure it’s not affecting the navigation he had projected on there, before you turned up the volume and let the sound of Arctic Monkeys flood the sedan.

The University Campus Health Center. Your last semester. His second year. The last interaction he had with you. And then you graduated. Always on his mind as the girl who got away. And then he didn’t get to see you again until his first day working at his family’s company as a full time employee.

He had been there for allergy medication, his hay fever had been going crazy as the winter changed into spring, leaning against the wall with his ticket, playing Cooking Mania on his phone. The place had smelled like heavy lemon disinfectant and the somehow strangely sterile smell of the drip coffee seeping in from the machine in the corner. You were at the counter, only one arm of your mustard yellow Kånken backpack slung over a shoulder, your voice pitched low as the pharmacy tech handed over a white stapled paper bag. He hadn’t meant to look, but his eyes caught the words before his brain could look away:

Rhea: Omega Heat Management Suppressants. Extra Strength. 500 µg.

He hates himself for being able to read the words. His actions had ruined everything. He had just had to have his contacts out that day due to how much his eyes had been watering from his allergies, and the strong prescription of his glasses had picked up the words, crystal clear.

He remembers the crinkle of the bag when you shifted it in your hands. The tiny crease in between your brows as you had read over the instructions on the thick 15 page pamphlet the tech had provided that had all of the information on your medication. And then your phone had rang.

You had tucked it between your ear and shoulder, blue ballpoint pen still in hand from signing off that you had received your prescription, and whoever was on the other end didn’t bother with discretion, the voice so loud that Kai could make it out, standing five feet away from you:

“Hey, Y/N, before you start taking those, I really think that you should maybe just try hiring someone. You can get a professional alpha. It’s safer than suppressing. That can fuck up your cycle for ages.”

He remembers every second of that moment in the health center: the way his fingers tightened around his phone, the time running out on his game, making him lose one of his lives. He can still recall the exact shade of white green the digital queue screen was flashing. The way you had instantly folded into yourself, your frame becoming smaller, almost disappearing under your yellow backpack and pale purple knit cardigan. He remembers how he had to take several breaths to calm himself down. How he had to bite the inside of his cheek until it bled and he could taste the iron just so he didn’t just lose all sense of self and accost you, offering himself up as your willing tribute. 

Then you turned. Saw him. And he knew you knew.

Your face had gone still. There had been no movement in your eyes, you didn’t blink, your gaze hadn’t darted away. You stared at him blank-faced, nodded as you uttered just a single, clipped “Hey,” passing him, downplaying the moment with heightened, forced casualness but also moving quickly to get away. He’d replayed it in his head later and had determined that he had done the right thing in retrospect when he didn’t say hi back, just stared at you absently like he hadn’t heard anything, noticed anything. That he had been still absorbed in the game on his phone. 

He had told himself it was respect that kept him from saying anything. The truth was uglier: he didn’t want you to think he was the kind of alpha who took advantage when someone was vulnerable. And so he did nothing. Let you walk away. Let graduation come up without another word between you two.

And now four years later, he’s here, driving you north with a penguin plush in your lap and that latte in your hand, trying to make up for every word he didn’t say back then.

You’re still holding the cup close, like a shield. He notices your knuckles ease around it with each sip, the slight dip of your head towards the small opening. Your face has more color now but not enough for him to stop worrying. He lets the music conversation go for now. Instead, he will bring up the pastries. It will make him feel better. He needs to see you eat something. And if you don’t want a pastry, which is probably cold and hard by now, he’s going to make an emergency stop at the first shoulder he sees and dig through his tote bag full of snacks. He’ll even take you eating a bunch of sugary jelly gummy candy.

“Pastry now or later?” Kai asks, pitching the suggestion like he doesn’t already know which answer he wants from you. “There’s your usual: the pistachio date scones, but I also got an orange blossom and cream cheese danish pastry, some Dubai chocolate croissants, and two slices of cake: rose milk cake and lavender honeycomb cheesecake.”

You glance down at the latte in your hand, thumb rolling along the edge of the order sticker, the hard edge of your pale blue painted nail digging under to work the slip of paper off little by little. “Later.” 

It makes Kai narrow his eyes; he gave you a whole smorgasbord of filling delectable options, and he knows you have a penchant for sweet things like him, but there was still that split second of hesitation before you went ahead with your denial. It’s enough for his brain to start running scenarios. Was it because you weren’t hungry? Or because you didn’t want to eat something he brought you? Or was it because you’d already decided to ration your own bag of snacks so you wouldn’t “owe” him anything beyond this morning’s drive?

“Company policy for road trips says you have to eat at least one every 50 miles,” he urges, voice light, but not fully being able to hide the hurt he was feeling. “It’s in the handbook, look it up.”

“That’s not a thing,” you respond, trailing your eyes across the landscape of his side profile, mentally logging every mole, every line, the shadow of his stubble starting to creep in already.

“Could be,” he says, grinning faintly. His ears are starting to get warmer, as each second passes with your gaze still on him. “I’m in a position to make it one. I am a Huening. Got my name on the building. Or maybe… these are just the rules for those who are passengers in my car.”

You scoff, turning your face to shoot him a glare. Fuck, you’re so pretty, the thought comes into his mind, entirely unbidden. “I knew—I just knew you were going to make this trip a pain in my ass.”

Kai manages to hold his tongue; he would love nothing more than to be a pain in your ass. But you’re skittish, and prickly. He needs to cajole and coax you into compliancy first. 

He flicks a glance in the rearview mirror, checking the brown handled paper bag wedged against his Rimowa carry-on. Still looks like it’s been keeping the pastries in a decent condition. He’s seen you go to the Yemeni cafe on Friday mornings and ask for their unsold baked goods from the previous day. You weren’t that picky when it came to a sweet treat or how old it was if you could get it for a good deal. In this case it would be free, since Kai had paid for it.

You don’t look toward the backseat. Don’t even make the slightest shift in your seat. He decides to adjust your A/C vent, angling it toward you so the air now blasted directly into your profile. Your lashes caught the early light slanting through the windshield. Long without mascara; you were always using some kind of lash serum to grow them. A subtle swipe of a beige-gold toned eyeshadow across your eyelids. He doesn't think that you are wearing much makeup. Or if you were, because you had always been talented at it, he’s sure it’s some seamless application where you had melted the layers together until they looked like they were the skin that you had been blessed to be born with. 

​​“If you’re not eating because you don’t have anything to wash it down with,” Kai says suddenly, breaking the silence with a tone he hopes comes across as almost too relaxed, “I’ve got water. Cold, even. Straight from the Sub-Zero fridge.”

Your forehead wrinkles and you rattle the dried rose petals in your almost empty coffee cup just to have something to do with your hand. “That’s not—”

Before you can finish, he is already reaching one long muscled arm back towards the pastries, shoulder rolling with the effort, the brim of his cap dipping to the right as he glances over to the back seat. His fingers brush the edge of the bag but don’t quite hook onto anything. “It’s fine, I can—” he makes a short, muffled grunt that could have been a laugh, or just a shriek from mild frustration. He just knows that you will interrupt him if he gives it enough time. You hated seeing incompetency. You were so easy to rage-bait. No wonder why people never thought you were an omega. He’s seen alphas with more chill than you. Case in point: him. 

He can feel your eyes on him as you watch him strain for another couple of seconds before exhaling sharply. “Fine, fine. I’ll get the damned pastries and the water.”

A quiet “hah” escapes him, soft enough that it could have been amusement or satisfaction, before he shifted his elbow out of your way.

You twist in your seat to grab them yourself, legging covered knees brushing the edge of the center console. The movement brings you close enough to him that your shoulder grazes his bicep, and he has to keep himself from involuntarily flexing. It’s barely a touch. In all honesty, it is the kind of contact anyone else might have missed, but it is enough for his focus to stutter for a fraction of a second. His jaw twitches, the corner of his mouth ticking up like he’s just remembered something that bothered him.

And in that moment, his senses pick up the faintest, shifting edge of your scent.

Bright citrus—citron, maybe bergamot, perhaps lime—cutting cleanly through the warmth of roses underneath, and something deeper, rounder, like vanilla or tonka just starting to caramelize. It is subtle, controlled, yet not as muffled as he was used to it being. He doesn’t know when he has ever picked up anything from you other than the lightest most delicate yet sharp citrus zest note. The fact that he can smell anything else in your scent is concerning to put it mildly.

He adjusts the A/C vent again, this time the one on the driver’s side, pretending it needed a new angle. And maybe it does. He lets the cold air brush over his face and upper body, breathes in to buy himself a second to steady his grip on the wheel, and get his control back under wraps.

By the time you drop back into your seat with the water bottle, once again tucking the penguin back onto your lap, you are acting like nothing had happened. You crack the cap off, take a long drink, and say, likely to change the topic, “Still working in back end, right? Or is what you do considered full stack?”

Kai’s long fingers flex once on the wheel, he has a pianist’s hands, and then he taps his thumb along the seam of the leather, a quiet rhythmic fidget before he answers. “Still in back end,” he said, throwing you a sideways glance under the brim of his baseball cap. “Still making sure the systems don’t set themselves on fire.”

You hum, eyes on the road ahead. Your coffee cup has finally been abandoned to the central cup holder. Your right hand has a new object to grip and caress: your newfound water bottle.

“And your sisters? Is it strange having to work with them?”

He smiles at that, it’s small, lopsided, tilting to the right, and gives a tiny snort before answering. He supposes the question is fair but he’s been forced to spend his summers interning at Huening Corp. since high school. He and his sisters would always be the youngest workers. They had banded together, a familial unit of solidarity against the sharp stings and barbs from talented college students who resented their ties to the company. “S’not weird working with them. Lea barely has time to yell at me between board meetings, and Hiyyih’s in HR, which means she likes to communicate through emails. Everything has to be documented when it comes to her.”

The corner of your mouth curves, just enough for him to catch your faint grin, and his brows lift in quiet acknowledgment. He shifts in his seat, rolling his shoulders once as he is able to finally loosen up for the first time on this drive.

You trap the water bottle in between your thighs; he tries to ignore the way they tense under your clinging heather gray leggings and tries to instead focus on your words: “So… you were supposed to ride with your friends, right? The other Tall x Together guys?”

He’s sure you catch his mouth twitching as his eyes crinkle, “So you’re one of those,” he murmurs.

“One of those?” you sound absolutely affronted, roughly squeezing the penguin plush distractedly.

“I didn’t know you were a fan, Y/N.”

“I’m not!” you splutter, “Wow, I’ll never pretend to care about you and ask questions with that attitude, Kai.”

Kai sings, his voice light and airy, teasing you, “Yeah. Right. It’s just I can’t help but wonder who started that nickname.” His heart is happy; you finally stopped calling him Huening.

You give him a slow look, totally offended. You look like a tiny angry chick that’s just hatched from the egg and is absolutely pissed off to discover that it’s alive. “You think it was me?”

“I think you have the kind of personality that would feign innocence while setting that kind of nickname loose into the wild.” His tone is light, mischievous, but there is a glint in his brown eyes as he waits for your response..

You cough as you futilely try to continue the conversation, take back control of it before it goes completely off the walls, “So, who actually kicked you out of the car? Was it really Beomgyu or is that just something you said so you didn’t have to suffer being in someone’s car that smells like unwashed gym clothes.”

“Beomgyu,” he agrees easily, drumming his fingers against the driver’s door, lightly tapping the pads of his fingers against the buttons, wondering if some fresh air would do the two of you some good instead, “Claimed I was too tall. Which—”

“—makes zero sense in a group where Soobin exists,” you finish for him.

This earns you a quick laugh, uproariously loud, bright, and unrestrained, the kind that slips out before he could decide what version of his laugh to use. Oh god, he would never live it down if he accidentally frog-croaked in front of you or cackled like a decrepit kobold.“Exactly.”

You grace him with a small upturn of your lips. “Soobin, Beomgyu, Yeonjun… they’re all going up together, then?”

He hums a confirmation, but his brows become furrowed. He shifts his weight in the seat as one hand flicking the brim of his cap. He wants to brush his bangs out with his hand, let it cover his face. He has to hold back on the habit, though; he can’t block his vision with his hair when he’s driving. His eyesight is already bad enough as it is. “You know who you’re quite pointedly not asking about?”

You glance at him, looking like you have absolutely no idea where he’s going with this. 

“Taehyun,” he mentions, grinning widely, letting all his teeth show like the Cheshire cat. “The guy who spends half his day rescuing your manager from IT disasters. And you, while you’re busy pretending you don’t need help.”

“Taehyun’s fine. Sakura just likes arguing with him,” you grumble as you roll your eyes. 

“Mhm. Yeah right,” Kai agrees easily, adjusting your A/C vent again; and there was no reason for it except that it gave him an excuse to subtly lean into your space. You glance at him like you are battling with yourself on whether or not you should tell him to fuck off. When you say nothing, he continues, “But what about you? You're still juggling three projects at once?”

“Something like that,” you reply, voice just clipped enough to signal to him that you wouldn’t be discussing your job with someone related to the CEO. Someone who had his last name on the company’s logo. 

He doesn’t push but his grip on the wheel tightens, thumb clawing at the seam of the leather as he tries to manage his facial expressions to not throw your guard up. How can he convince you that he’s not like that? In fact, where you are concerned, he’s an open book. He has no ulterior motives. 

Except fuck he does. Okay he has one ulterior motive. But only because you put the thought into his head. 

It’s the way you were asking about Soobin, Beomgyu, and Yeonjun. It’s still gnawing at him. The way you’d said their names in that almost fond way, with that casual ease like they’d earned the right to it. It sits wrong in his chest, in fact, it sits quite like a pebble in his shoe. Irritating. Impossible to ignore.

He knows what people see in them. They’re loud, magnetic, and made for being looked at. The kind of alphas who never had to learn how to work for anyone’s attention. They’re his friends. But they’re different from him. He doesn’t think they had ever struggled with feeling like their second gender was a misclassification. He knows it’s not. He knows he was meant to be an alpha. It’s just the way everyone makes him feel about being one. Like he’s not good enough. He can’t ever quite measure up to people’s expectations of him.

He reaches for his coffee, taking a slow sip, willing himself to let the thought go and that’s when it happens again; your scent, sharper this time. The citrus is brighter, almost fizzy in the warm air, and the rose has gone a little heavier, more oud-y, twining with the tonka bean in a way that makes his pulse become erratic, skipping a beat. He forces his jaw to unclench, breathing slowly like he’s just out of sorts after being cooped in the car for an hour and half. Like he just needs to get some oxygen into his system.

But your scent is… Dangerous. Distracting.

He needs to focus on something else, desperately. “Pass me the danish?” he almost begs, a doleful wail.

You turn your head. Your hair swishes, hitting his neck, almost curling towards his scent receptor, the end of the strands stroking his skin in a lover’s caress, and he captures another sniff of your scent. He curses internally. 

“You can’t grab it yourself?”

“I’m driving,” he says, leaning into the pitiful note like he’s auditioning for a drama, his voice tilting upward, just shy of a whine, as he adds in a charismatic, soft smile for good measure. “My hands are busy. What if we hit a pothole and I die because I was trying to reach for the pastry?”

You blink at him, unimpressed. “So dramatic.”

“Deadly serious,” he insists, eyes flicking from the road to you, just long enough to contort his lips into an exaggerated pout. And then he reveals his secret weapon, turning the smile up a notch. It's not the blinding corporate one he uses in photos, but the slow, lopsided grin you used to see in college, the one he doesn’t let everyone have. “Please?,” his voice takes on a childish tone, “I’m so hungry. You can’t say no to a man in distress. I’m still growing. I need nourishment. Im so hungry I could die.”

You let out a long plaintive sigh. As you twist toward the backseat again, your shoulder brushes against his arm more fully this time as you fish the bag out. It’s a fleeting touch, but enough to send another ripple of heat searing through his chest. He swears he can feel the imprint of it even after you’ve already pulled away.

“Here,” you say flatly, the wax covered paper crinkles in your hand before you drop it into his lap.

He makes a loud delighted noise, like you’ve just handed him a gift instead of something he bought himself. “Look at us. Cooperative travel partners. And you, hand-delivering me food. You’re spoiling me already. I feel like it would be even better if you fed it to me directly but I digress.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet,” he says around a grin, tearing off a piece of the danish and holding it up in your direction, “You still helped me. Want a bite? It’s good. Like… might be better than your scones good.”

You glare, but you take it anyway, if only to shut him up. He’s smug about it for the next ten miles.

When Kai finally speaks again, licking away a bit of cream cheese from the corner of his lips, his voice is mild, almost conversational, “Do you still end up working with the sales team much?”

It’s an easy enough question on the surface, and one he’s glad that you don’t immediately bristle at. “Sometimes,” you say after a beat. And he’s left wondering if you’re dissecting and analyzing his words and actions the way he is with yours.

He hums like it’s just small talk, but the sound comes off a touch too gravelly, even to his own ears. Sometimes, his mind slots in the faces automatically: Jake with that easy charm that all the support staff adores, Sunghoon’s smirk that makes half the office go stupid, Jay’s piercing gaze that makes it feel like you are the only person in the world when he shifts his focus to a person. He doesn’t like thinking about any of them in your orbit for too long.

“Bet they love having you on their projects,” he says lightly, one corner of his mouth tilting down; he’s making himself sad. “You make them look good.” He’s proud of your accomplishments even if he hates who you collaborate with. 

“That’s one way to put it,” you murmur, gaze still on the road.

He drums his fingers against the wheel in a slow rhythm, trying to keep it together, but there’s a tightness sitting under his ribs. When your gaze shifts to his fingers, he forces himself to stop. He’s got to stop tapping his fingers to fill the space when the conversation lags. He can’t jig his leg instead. He doesn’t want the car to go careening off to the side. It doesn’t help that the scent in the car feels thicker now; the citrus tanginess of it transforms just enough toward something warm and sweet to make the back of his neck crawl with shivers. It’s doing terrible damage to his focus. 

He flicks his eyes toward you, catching the way you worry the edge of the bottle between your teeth for a second before taking another sip of water. “I guess Jake’s still running point on the big accounts?”

“Mmhmm.”

“And Sunghoon?” The name comes out sharper than he intended.

You glance at him, eyes narrowing like you’re trying to figure out what his angle is. “He’s chill.”

Kai nods, but it’s more for himself than you. Chill. He keeps his gaze ahead, jaw working as he attempts to unclench his teeth before he softens his voice again. “If they give you too much trouble, you know you can call me, right?”

It earns him a faint scoff, but you don’t outright reject it.

He lets that be the win. For now.

He allows the conversation to drop, letting the low hum of the tires on the highway fill the space for a beat. Outside, the early light has gone from a washed-out gray blue to a cloudless bright azure, heat already shimmering off the asphalt.

An hour in, he notices you’ve shifted your position for the third time in as many minutes: one knee bending, then stretching out, then the heel of your foot, encased in a slate and ivory New Balance, tapping faintly against the rubber floor mat. Your fingers dig into the poor penguin’s soft rump before you move it away from you and reach up to twist your hair into a knot, baring the back of your neck.

He tries not to stare. Your silky shiny hair slips out of the bun almost instantly, earning a groan from you. You seem aggravated by the spiky ends of your strands tickling your nape. Your skin seems irritated at your scent glands; a bit swollen and pink. He swears he can see your pulse throbbing at that junction where your ear touches your jaw. It’s doing crazy things to him, having you in his car, bearing your neck to him. 

The citrus-rose-tonka in the air also seems stronger now. Or maybe, that’s just the A/C pushing it toward him. It’s distracting in a way that makes his attention snag, like getting an ear worm from an awful song’s chorus. He tells himself it’s nothing. You always smell good. That’s not new. Well, it’s kind of new. He usually just smells your perfume or hair products. He can usually never smell you underneath.

What else is new is the way you keep tugging at the collar of your T-shirt, rolling your shoulders like the white cotton fabric is bothering you.

“You good over there?” he asks, aiming for unbothered but hearing the edge in his own voice.

“Fine,” you say, a touch too quickly. You’re looking out the passenger window like the scenery suddenly got more interesting. Then, he catches you suddenly reaching for your phone which you had on the charging station. Ouch. Thus far, he had been able to keep you from going on your phone and cutting him out. But now, you’re holding your phone like armor. The lines of your arm and hand, sharp and rigid. 

“Something wrong?” he asks. His voice sounds crisper, more gritty. 

“No—I. I just need to make sure my cousin fed my cat his breakfast,” you sound strangely breathless, pulling the collar of your shirt from your neck again.

Kai lets it go, but when you’re on your phone, switching between the apps and swiping around, he notices you’re not on the messaging app. What are you looking at? From what he can glean, it just looks like a gardening app for plants. He thinks he saw cute cartoon icons of seedlings and small sprouting buds. 

You’re only on the app for a few seconds. Your expression darkening as you look at the various herbage. You bite your bottom lip, worrying it, as you reluctantly close the app and make your phone screen go black before returning it to the port.

“Everything good with your cat?” Kai asks.

“Um,” you pause, looking slightly panicked like you hadn’t expected him to follow up on that. “Yeah it’s fine. She just fed him the wrong brand. She used the food that I usually give him when he’s feeling under the weather. Not his daily one.”

Wow, Kai thinks, you’re good at lying. But he’ll let it go. After all, he suspects that you are the one feeling under the weather and not your cat, which may or may not exist. 

He lets out a soft sound of acquiescence and glances at the clock. “We’re coming up on a good resting point. We can get out, stretch our legs. Use the restrooms. Want something else from the bag before it’s all crumbs?”

You shake your head, but there’s the faintest crease between your brows, like you’re debating something.

He tsks under his breath before deciding to push his luck. “Don’t want one of the cakes? Or maybe a croissant if you prefer. I’ll even let you pick first and take whatever is left.” His tone is light, teasing. But he watches you carefully, the way you don’t quite meet his eyes when you answer.

“Not hungry. Really.”

It’s such a simple refusal, but it lands wrong. His grip on the wheel tightens, his other hand flicking the A/C vent toward you again. The scent swirls in the small space, caustic now, cloying. He swallows against the sudden dryness of his throat, his tongue darting against the roof of his mouth.

Something’s off. He can feel it.

The next six miles go by slowly. You guys have hit traffic unexpectedly. It’s taking you guys 28 minutes to crawl forward half a mile. 

Even worse, Kai’s instinct was right.

Something is wrong.

He knows it before he’s even fully conscious of why. There are needles under his skin; there’s a restless coil deep in his gut. The steady thrum of the tires under them now feels louder, the sensation drawing in a headache, he feels slightly dizzy like he’s got a mild bout of motion sickness, and his grip on the wheel tenses a fraction tighter than before. Every few seconds, his thumb nail digs into the seam in the leather as he’s trying to ground himself, but nothing helps; his nerves are wracked. He feels like he’s tapdancing on a live wire.

You’re not doing anything out of the ordinary. Not really. Just sitting there, your body angled slightly toward the window, gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the blur of hills, small mountains, and asphalt. But he notices the way your hair has fallen loose over your shoulders again, hiding your throat from view the best it can, the way you hook a finger under the collar of your plain T-shirt to pull it away from your skin for half a second before letting it fall back into place. He catches how your thighs tense when you shift your legs, how your hand rests on one knee, thumb brushing idly against the heather gray fabric there.

And then there’s the scent.

It’s not just more poignant; it’s different. The crisp zinginess of the citrus zest is still there, but the rose is fuller now, lush and warm, with the tonka bean roping through it. It threads into the cooled air pumping from the vents, moves through the cabin in slow waves until his every inhale is laced with it.

He tells himself it’s nothing. That the A/C just carried more of it toward him, that the cabin’s too small for him not to notice. You’re fine. He’s just overly aware of you. Fine-tuned to every shift of your body. Zeroing in on your scent, like the thirsting alpha that he is. 

And yet, he’s never reacted like this to you before. Not in college. Not at work—

The Lexus feels claustrophobic. His chest feels tighter than it should. His pulse ticks faster, a steady beat behind his ears. That low-level mild irritation he’d been nursing about Jay and the other members of the sales team shifts into something heavier, more primal. His brain keeps pushing the same unwelcome flashes of scenes at him: you in this seat, flushed, breath hitching, your sweat revealing your bra and the toned lines of your stomach through your white T-shirt; of you on a bed in some quiet, locked-away room where no one could knock or call or walk in, hips undulating under the covers. Somewhere no one else could smell you. Somewhere only he could.

The intrusive thoughts make his shoulders tense. He rolls them once, twice, but it doesn’t shake the heat crawling up the back of his neck. He pants out a breath. Maybe he should stop inhaling through his nose. 

Don’t go there. Not now.

You cross your legs, and his peripheral vision catches the movement, his eyes wanting to lock in on that hidden crevice between your thighs. It makes his grip tighten just a little bit more. It feels as though the air inside the car has gotten thicker, so dense with your scent and nothing else. The pleasant hum of the engine suddenly too loud and grinding, the world outside too overwhelming, crashing into his senses.

He flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror, like that might help reset his brain. But the scent’s still here. You’re still here. And the primal part of him, the one he’s kept leashed for years, is wide awake now, teeth bared, waiting.

He prays for his sake that this is just an overreaction on his part. Wistful musings. Who knows what will happen to you both if he lets his alpha senses take control of the ship.

Kai groans, staring at the red line suddenly highlighting your route. The view outside the windshield reflects the traffic the navigation noted on the smartscreen. The highway has slowed to barely moving, each car inching forward in fits and tiny starts. The lanes are packed tight, walls of metal locking everyone in on all sides. It’s the kind of traffic that makes whatever is happening inside the car feel infinitely worse. The air is thicker, heavier, like the inside of the cabin is its own sealed ecosystem, every molecule saturated with your scent.

You shift in your seat. It’s small at first, a roll of your shoulders, a tug at the gray hem of your oversized Lululemon jacket, but his gaze catches on every movement. The thin fabric of your leggings constricts over the curve of your thigh as you adjust, and for a half-second, the citrus-rose-tonka in the air heightens, richer. It hits him like a dam that just burst, letting out an explosive current of water.

Kai keeps one hand clamped on the wheel, the other curling loosely against his own thigh. The urge to do something—anything—is almost unbearable. He could lower the window for air, but the thought of letting your scent spill out into the open makes his jaw clench as he grits his teeth. Out there, anyone could catch a whiff of it traveling through the air, as they sit trapped bumper to bumper. He feels possessive about it. And in a traffic jam, he doesn’t want every alpha within a two mile radius hone into whatever is happening with you. 

“Almost there,” he manages, his voice a little strident, definitely raspier than before. “There’s a rest stop in about… seven miles.” He doesn’t mention how long seven miles will take at this pace.

You murmur an acknowledgment, tugging your jacket sleeves low on your arms, covering your hands and wrists, your gray legging covered calves press together, and he can’t stop his eyes from honing into that part where your thighs meet. His pulse jumps in his throat. He’s hyper-aware of how little space is between you two. Every inch you shift, every twist and turn of your body you make shoves your scent closer to him, almost assaulting his senses.

The urge to reach over, to clamp his hand around your thigh and keep you still, to feel the heat radiating from your skin, have his fingers dip into your center, is so powerful he has to glance away and focus on the brake lights glowing ahead. You ask something then, striving for laid-back, missing it almost completely, “Aren’t you hot in that leather jacket of yours?”

It’s an innocent question. Would be in any other situation but he knows you’re just asking as a distraction. In his head, it’s tangled with everything else: the way your voice dips at the end, the faint flush of your cheeks, your swollen scent glands at the base of your throat, the sheen of sweat across your collarbone and sternum where your T-shirt dips low. He swallows, hard.

‘Not as hot as you,’ he almost says, a bit too easily, too honestly. Too flirty, though; and you’re too unwell to receive it well right now. So he bites it back, defaulting to a small shrug. An offhanded, “I’m alright.”

Alright is a lie. This doesn’t make any sense. He’s tightly strung, half-feral, and he can feel every beat of his heart, furiously pounding in his chest, the rush of his blood coursing through his head, his ears burning up, his throat tightening as he feels like he can’t breathe. And you are completely unaware, or trying to act like you are, just making it all worse. Every fidget, every slow inhale, every shift of your thighs has him imagining pulling over, doing something to you that he’s not sure that you’ve ever let any other alpha do. Staking his claim, keeping you underneath him until the scent softens, mixes with his own, and the world feels safe enough for him to share you again.

Stop getting distracted with your fantasies, Kai, he admonishes himself internally.

He makes himself blink, like it’ll clear it out of his head. The tightness in his chest. The fire flickering under his skin. The whisper in the back of his mind that says you’re starting your heat.

No. No. You're not.

You can’t be.

You’ve been on suppressants since… well, since that spring. He remembers the prescription in your hand, the way your shoulders had gone rigid when you realized he’d read the label. What he had heard on the phone call. He doesn’t think that you would have stopped. And if you had, this was very dangerous for you both. 

So maybe it’s just him. Maybe he’s the problem. Maybe being stuck this close to you, in an airtight cabin for the last two, almost two and a half, hours, is enough to trick his brain into conjuring up what it wants most.

His fingers tighten on the wheel, white-knuckling it. Yeah, that’s all it is. Wishful thinking. Some caveman part of him that’s desperate for you to need an alpha—to need him—and to have you look at him like he’s the only one who can pull you through it.

He sneaks a look at you again. You’re still staring straight ahead, posture stiffly set, your mouth drawn into that stubborn little upside down curve you get when you’ve decided ignoring him is the fastest way to survive a situation. Except your lashes are heavier now, blinking slower. Your fingers are twitching on your thigh like you’re resisting the urge to fidget again.

His jaw tightens, a muscle jumps in his cheek. He doesn’t ask if you’re okay, no longer trusting his voice to come out steady, but he keeps stealing glances at you between looks towards the lanes of unmoving cars. You look… decidedly not fine. Definitely not great. And you’re still not looking at him.

Seven miles, he reminds himself. If the traffic gods show mercy, they’ll be off the highway before either of you combust.

He shifts in his seat, his joggers sticking to the leather a little bit, and forces his attention on the cars ahead. If he focuses on driving, on the brake lights and lane changes, he can pretend the air in here isn’t thick with you. Pretend he’s not imagining every possible way this could go wrong—and every way it could go exactly the way he’s dreamed about for years.

A mile and a half later, the silence starts to grate. It’s not comfortable anymore.This is brittle. Tense. Every passing minute stretches long and unbearable between you two, and he hates not knowing if you’re just tired… or if he’s right.

He clears his throat, drumming a hectic, uneven rhythm on the steering wheel. “So…” His voice is almost too casual, and it annoys him. “You, uh, ever been to that rest stop before? They’ve got this diner there. I think you’d like it. It serves these really good chicken fried steaks with gravy.”

Nothing. Not even a curious glance his way.

“Y/N,” he tries again, letting your name sit in the air, harsher than he intended. “You’re really quiet. Starting to freak me out here. Cough twice if you’re still conscious.”

That earns him a slow turn of your head, your eyes narrowing just slightly. But you look like you’re squinting against the sun rather than glaring at the alpha who is annoying you. “I’m fine,” you say, but the words are a little too flat, the pitch a little too low.

His stomach twists itself into knots. A ‘fine’ from you is never fine. He knows your tells, knows how you’ll bite back anything that might make you seem like you need help. He’s seen it at work, watched you as you shouldered more than your share just to keep from owing anyone.

He hums like he believes you, but he doesn’t. “Good. Because if you pass out in my car, I’m stopping at the next shoulder and drawing on your face with a Sharpie. Soobin told me to pack a bunch of office supplies. Expo markers and shit. I am not bluffing.”

The corner of your mouth twitches, just barely. A win, small as it is.

Still, he keeps talking, because the sound of his own voice, tense and ringing as it is, is still better than him hearing his heartbeat echoing in his ears like he just ran two marathons back to back. “You know,” he says lightly, “We could’ve been making great time separately, if Beomgyu hadn’t decided I was too tall to sit in his car. The whole trip, ruined by one guy’s insecurities about leg room.”

That earns him a faint huff, something that could be considered almost a laugh. “You would have been miserable with them.”

Abso-fucking-lutely. The image of you crammed into the backseat with Jake or Heesung, probably not Jungwon or Sunoo though, still claws at him, and the tidal wave of possessiveness that follows is harsh enough to sting. If he had chosen to go with his friends, you would’ve been in a Rivian with seven alphas while going into heat. Or a false heat. Whatever this madness is. He grips the wheel tighter, eyes locked on the sea of brake lights ahead.

“You’re probably right,” he says. “Still… better you as my dependable travel companion than them.”

He should leave it there, let the conversation die before he says something that tips too much. But his fingers are already loosening on the wheel, his right hand sliding down, resting closer to the console than it needs to be. Closer to you.

It’s not a conscious action. It’s the same pull he’s been feeling since you got in his car. It’s some stupid, magnetic gravity that has no business existing when you’re not sending him any signs. But the warmth radiating from your side seeps into him, and before he can register it, his fingers inch toward the empty space between you two.

What the hell are you doing?

His own voice in his head is sharp, frantic. 

Keep your hands to yourself. You’re not—this isn’t—

He snatches his hand away, snaps his grip back to the wheel, fingers straining hard against the metal covered in  leather. The A/C hums in the silence, pushing cool air over his knuckles, but it’s doing nothing for the smoldering heat trapped in his gut. Wound tightly like a vise. 

You shift in your seat, adjusting your jacket, and the faintest trace of your scent unfurls into the air: soft and layered, citrus-bright at the edges, wrapped around that rose warmth and the sweeter gourmand underneath. It brushes over him in ripples, subtle enough that any sane alpha would ignore it. Or maybe only an alpha who hasn’t been breathing it in for two hours straight could ignore it. He used to think his self-control was legendary. Unshakable. That he was unflappable. Then came you, he supposes. This cursed work trip. 

He tells himself it’s not what he thinks. You’re on suppressants. You’ve been on suppressants for years. Maybe it’s just the car, or the heat outside, or that you’ve been stuck here with him too long. Does this make any sense??? Of course it doesn’t. But he has no choice but to attempt to accept it.

But when your fingers start flexing against the seam of your leggings again in those small, compulsive movements that bunch the fabric and ease it again, his eyes catch on them. It’s not just restless energy; your pulse is jumping visibly at the hollow of your wrist, your jacket sleeve has moved away, no longer covering it. The fine skin over your scent gland has flushed to a deeper pink, and even from here he can feel the faintest bit of warmth radiating off of it. His own scent glands give a low, answering thrum, an involuntary pulse at the base of his neck that sends heat crawling down his spine. It’s a reflex centuries old, the kind that makes every nerve in his hand ache to close over yours, thumb brushing that gland until you’re still. He wants to hold. To anchor. To stake his claim—

No. Four miles. Just make it four more miles.

The four miles might as well be forty.

The highway is at a standstill now, cars idling, packed in like sardines, under the thick weight of late-morning heat. Kai drops the speed down until they’re just inching forward, the low rumble of the engine and the muted whoosh of the cold air from the vents the only sounds in the vehicle.

It should be fine. Just a few more minutes. But the air inside has changed again, becoming even denser, heavier, more saturated with you. That subtle blend of citrus and rose has deepened, wrapped itself around something warmer, sweeter. Richer. Fuller. Tonka and vanilla twisting around each other. It clings to the back of his throat; he fears that he might choke on it.

He takes a slow inhale before he can stop himself. Then another, deeper, until he can almost taste it. Swallows hard. His tongue flicks over his upper lip and then lower lip without thinking, chasing something that isn’t there.

And that’s when it hits. Low and brutal, a deep jab in his gut that makes the heat flood straight down until it’s a heavy, aching weight between his legs. Blood rushes fast, making the thick press of his shaft strain against the confinement of his black joggers. The seatbelt feels restrictive now, too tight across his chest, pinning him in like it’s saving him from hard braking, a minor collision. His seat seems suddenly too small, the edges pressing into his hips. He has his thighs spread as far apart as the driver’s side will allow, before his leg is obstructed by the center console and gear shift, just to make room for the insistent throb. Sweat pools at his hairline then trails along his temple, dripping down. The leather underneath him clings to his ass, heat pooling to where his body’s trapped in place. Every slow agonizing bump of the road makes him shift against the swell, makes the tension spike until his jaw aches from clenching against it. He’s big enough that even with the accommodating terry cloth fabric of his joggers, he’s running out of space. That there’s nowhere for it to go—just a trapped, pulsing heat straining against the fabric. He feels caged, every instinct clawing for space, for relief, for you. He swears under his breath, his groan guttural and low, and chances the quickest sideways glance at you.

Please don’t look down. Please don’t look at my lap.

It turns into a steady loop in his head, a desperate mantra he can’t shut off. You’ve got your gaze fixed straight ahead, eyes following the sluggish creep of the automotives out front, and for now, that’s saving him.

But his mind is betraying him—flashing images of leaning across the console, of closing that last gap between you, of seeing what you’d do if he just made a move. The primal part of him doesn’t even want to entertain a guess. It’s too much of a temptation.

Kai’s grip on the wheel tightens until the tendons in his hands stick out like thick cords, there’s a dull ache pulsing through his forearms. He forces his eyes to stay pinned straight ahead, even as he can feel them dilate, counting the mile markers, trusting them to keep him steady and on task. Four miles turns to three.

You shift in your seat causing the diagonal strap of your seatbelt to slide across your chest, settling between the two plump mounds of your breasts easily. Kai dimly wonders if you feel as hindered and constricted by the seatbelt as he does. He gets the answer to his question a moment later when you huff under your breath, pushing the penguin off your lap with a scowl, letting it drop by your feet, and then pulling the seatbelt away from your body with your now free hand. Your rapid movements push another surge of your scent into the air, even more pronounced now. It’s thicker, heavier, clinging to his mouth until every breath tastes faintly of you. The air in the cabin feels viscous, humid, like he could reach out and touch it with his hands, feel it on his fingertips.

And the worst part? His body’s already moving toward it, perpetually shifted towards the right, breathing in deeper, pulling more in. That shameful, primal part of him, the part he’s spent years training into obedience, is starting to hope he’s right about what it means.

But he promises if you don’t look at his lap, he’ll steel himself and try to stop catching glimpses of yours. Trying to theorize if the gray fabric has gotten darker in color between your thighs due to your rising body temperature and sweat or if its… what he wants it to be.

Three miles. The rest stop sign flashes green out in front, but your scent is the thickest it’s been all day, saturating every surface of the car cabin, clinging to everything inside. Kai swears it’s in the air vents, laced in with the recycled A/C air, like it’s decided to haunt him. It’s in his mouth when he swallows, his tongue darting against his lips as if he could catch the taste of it there. It’s deep in his nostrils. Kai even feels like it’s seeping into him. Doesn’t know if his scent will ever smell the same again, or if it will always smell like a mixture of yours and his together.

The muscles in his hands pulse with each heartbeat, veins popping as he forces them to stay wrapped around the wheel. He keeps both hands on the wheel. Has to. His wrists ache from the angle, but it’s safer than letting them wander into dangerous territory. Because the part of him that isn’t a rational, decent human being is thinking about what would happen if he just went ahead and touched you, in all the ways that he wanted to. Every bump in the road makes the leather slip beneath his palms, slickened as it is with a faint layer of sweat, and the smallest of tremors runs through his fingers. His mind keeps feeding him the most vulgar impulses but he smothers each one before it can become reality. He squeezes the wheel instead, hard enough that the leather creaks, and tells himself to get a grip. The seat feels smaller, the cabin tighter, every inch of him aware that if he lets go even once, he won’t stop. He has to keep his cool. For your sake.

Your head is tipped toward the passenger window now, cheek resting against your knuckles like you’re trying to ground yourself. You haven’t said anything in a while. Not since that last sad attempt at conversation, and he doesn’t like how pale you’ve gone beneath your glowy skincare and sunscreen. How your breaths keep halting and stuttering, shallow and restless, like your lungs can no longer regulate themselves.

He shifts just enough to sneak a better glimpse of you. Your knees are drawn a fraction tighter than before, your left hand worrying the sleeve of your gray jacket until the seam frays under your pale blue manicured nails. A tell. Maybe a warning for him.

You are not doing so good.

The GPS chimes about the rest stop ahead, but he doesn’t even pretend to care. His thumb flicks the blinker on, the other hand darting down to the console to cancel the route and reroute, two taps, a slide, done. Closest motel, one-point-two miles. He keeps the volume on low so you won’t hear the robotic voice confirm it.

He tells himself it’s not about him. That it’s not about the way his pulse has been hammering against the inside of his throat since you first leaned over to grab the pastries and brushed against his bicep. That it’s not about the way every mile has wound his nerves tighter.

No. This is about you.

If you’re slipping toward heat, even with suppressants. And yeah, his brain keeps insisting you’re still on them. Even though a logical part of him knows that would mean that you would have been on heat suppressants for four straight years which is just… straight up reckless and dangerous. Which just completely doesn’t make any sense. Then you need to be somewhere safe. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere with four walls and a locked door where random trucker alphas can’t sniff you out and aggressively pursue you. Where bored betas on road trips can’t offer you Slim Jims and make unsubtle dick jokes, turning your heat into a mockery. Somewhere you can ride it out comfortably and without risk.

His knuckles flex on the wheel. He drags in another breath through his nose before he can stop himself. It’s a mistake.

Citrus first as always, the top note: blinding, harsh, almost effervescent. Then the rose, the lush kind, the expensive kind, not the sad grocery store wilting bouquet kind. And under it: soft and warm, tonka bean, so sweet, so rich, he wants to lap at your skin for a direct hit. A direct taste.

He forces his eyes back to the road. Forces his voice into something calm when he says, “We’ll take a quick break soon.”

It’s not a lie.

He just doesn’t add that the break won’t be at the rest stop.

─..009.force.───

"Where do you think you're going, huh?" Taehyun huffs as you pull yourself away from him by your grip on the headboard.

His hands wrap around your hips with a bruising force and yank you back down, right back onto his cock. He stays there, buried inside of you, while he slots his lips against yours; his passionate kiss only returned halfway because you can hardly breathe.

"Can't take anymore," you mumble against him — being met with the opposite of what you ask for. He starts sliding in and out of you again. Leisurely pace making your brain tingle. "F-fuck... stop, Hyun," you gasp breathlessly; all of the remaining air in your lungs being fucked right out of you when he ups his pace quickly.

Stop is not your safe word. So he all but ignores you.

That look in your glossy eyes is familiar, it pulls a smirk onto his lips. It tells him you're having the time of your life even as you kick your feet and whine about it being too much.

"Fuck," he curses airily, grabbing at your waist as you clench around him tightly. "You always feel so good when you don't want it," he teases, grin widening as you slap at his chest weakly; fisting up the fabric of his tank top.

You want it. You want it so bad. And he's hardwired to give you what you want. He lives to please you — and he lives to see you fight against him and get absolutely nowhere. It's a win-win, really.

"W-" He groans as you kick away from him, panting as you sit up to try and scoot away. "Do I look like I'm done, angel? Get the fuck over here and let me fill you up."

"N-ah!" You squeal as he yanks you back down to the middle of the bed by your ankles. No trouble at all to pull you around like a ragdoll.

He throws your legs up, his arm wrapped up under your knees and pining you into the meanest mating press known to man. Your knees press into the bed by either side of your torso, your muscles burning but you can't think about it even a little bit because he's shoving himself as deep as humanly possible in the very next second.

"Holy fuck, baby!" You scream while grabbing at his hair to ground yourself, "stop, stop, stop, m'gonna cum!"

"Are you? Hm~?" He chuckles, panting and moaning lowly as you pull at his hair, "yeah, you are, you love it when I force my cum into your pussy~"

You can barely move, hardly think, not to mention breathe with him crushing you to the mattress like he is as he pummels you. One thing you can do, though — you cum.

All over him, waves of arousal coming with the intense pulses of your cunt around him; wet, lewd shlicks growing louder. Even more so when his cum joins the mess.

The warmth of it paired with the primal moans he spills into your open mouth makes you short circuit; eyes rolling back into your head and fingers gripping his dyed hair tightly as you wail. "Fu-fucking fuck!"

He stills deep inside of you for a moment, letting loose your legs to bring his hands up and cup your face as you tremble beneath him. "Shhh," he coos with a smile, pressing his forehead against yours as he pulls out; cum dribbling onto the sheets.

Looking between your bodies to watch, he strokes your cheekbones gently with his thumbs. "I bet your greedy little cunt wants another load..." He hums; testing the waters and feeling out where you are, how you're feeling.

"No way in hell." You smile dizzily, unable to help yourself, "you're too rough, Hyun, I w-"

If you would have said 'I'm done', he'd've respected that. But anything other than that means you want to keep going.

He sits up on his knees, smile to match your own as he slaps your thigh. Holding his hand over the stinging skin, he brings the other to your wetness, swiping his fingers against your clit quickly and sending all kinds of mixed, delicious signals to your brain.

"Ah! Ah! Ah!"

"Gonna cum, babe?"

"No!" You say all too quickly. Brain frazzled and body overworked.

"Yeah~" He laughs, knowing you like the back of his hand. "Yeah, you are."

"Can't- I can't," despite yourself; your back is arching, your legs are trembling again, toes curling. "Cumming!"

As soon as you feel the intense, nearly painful release in the tips of your fingers — he pulls away. You cry out, only getting to kick your legs a few times before he's throwing you around.

Landing flat onto your stomach, he pulls your hips up and slams into you; starting a merciless rhythm.

"You ffffucking jerk!" You scream into the messy sheets, digging your nails into the fabric.

"What?" He laughs breathlessly, dragging you along his cock roughly, "you don't want it anyway, what's it matter how I fuck you?"

"Oh- oh, I'm gonna k-kill you," you stutter, laughing along with him before the sound is replaced with high and unstable moans as he pulls you up by the back of your neck. All while his hips slap against your ass, he presses a hand down on your pelvis; making you both feel as he rearranges your insides to fit him perfectly.

"If you remember you're even mad," he groans into your ear while bringing his arm around your throat, squeezing just hard enough to make your brain get a bit more fuzzy. "I know just how to make my girl lose her mind. I'm going to force all the thoughts out of your head until it's nothing but me and my cock."

You would like that very much, and by the way you drip around him — he knows it. He knows it anyway.

It's perfect. You like being forced, and he likes forcing you.

"Goddamn-" He hisses, tightening his arm around your throat as you clench around him. Head pressed to your shoulder as you grab onto his arm, "did you just fucking cum?"

"Y-yeah!" You squeal, nails biting into his skin. You don't think you can take any more pleasure. But you're going to make yourself do it anyway because it feels beyond euphoric to let your brain leave your body. To let your boyfriend use you and force you into whatever positions he prefers that day.

It brings you pleasure beyond the physical to switch your thoughts off and allow your boyfriend to handle you however he wants. Because even when he's supposed to be using you for selfish reasons, his fingers are slipping down to your clit.

Making you cum over and over again until it's physically impossible to do it again.

Forcing you to let him drown you in orgasmic bliss until you really do forget that you're 'mad'. You forget you're supposed to be fighting him, because how could you want to fight this?

He forces you to cum so much, so hard, that you become nothing but a puddle of exposed nerves, clinging to him like your life depends on it — just how he likes you at the end of a long day.

You don't even know when he stopped, all you know is that his arms are wrapped around you tightly and you're in an entirely new position.

Blinking a few times, you realize where you are and relax completely into his arms. You don't know how many times he made you cum, or how — it doesn't matter. Because he was the one to do it.

Completely wrecked, sore in every muscle you have, sticky with sweat; you lay against his chest as you both breathe heavily.

"You in there, angel?" He hums, rubbing your head softly as his arm wraps around your shoulders.

"Think so."

He laughs, your head bouncing lightly with the movement before he leans and pecks your lips. "I'll have to use a little more force next time then~"

Taehyun never said I love you like a normal person.

He said it through tasks, timing, and attention. Always quietly folding the world around you so you never had to ask for anything. And you’d let him.

Truthfully, you couldn’t remember the last time you’d lifted a finger in his presence. You were independent when you met him—fiercely so. The kind of person who didn’t trust anyone to do things as well as you could, let alone take care of you. But Taehyun had a way of gently dismantling those walls, brick by quiet brick, until your hands were empty and your burdens shared.

There were meals cooked after long days where you both came home tired and frayed, only he wouldn’t let you touch the stove. Instead, he’d kiss your forehead and force you to sit pretty on the counter so he had a nice view while he worked. And when you were done eating? You wouldn’t dare attempt to help clean up. Not unless you wanted your hands swatted away and Taehyun sprinting upstairs to run you a bath, insisting you “go soak and relax, baby, I’ll join you soon.”

You’d never forget coming home from that terrible day, still raw from an argument with your best friend, and finding the apartment spotless, your clothes folded neatly on the bed, and a bottle of wine breathing on the counter beside your favorite takeout. No questions asked.

You couldn’t even recall the last time you carried your own purse. Traveling? He always found a way to juggle both suitcases without complaint, leaving your hands completely free.

And it wasn’t just the grand gestures. It was in the subtleties. The way his eyes always flicked toward you, searching for anything you might need. How he’d bring you water without being asked. Fix a squeaky cabinet at one in the morning because it annoyed you once. Rearranged his already busy schedule for yours, because stress on your shoulders was unbearable to him.

Not to mention in bed. God, the pillow princess he’d turned you into. Taehyun was as eager to please as he was allergic to being on the receiving end. The concept of letting you take care of him was laughable, sacrilegious, even. He never let you, not once. As if your love was something he didn’t need to feel. Only something he was born to give.

He never asked or expected. He only gave, and gave, and gave. But tonight, you decided to try anyway.

There he was now, creeping into the kitchen to make you a snack because he’d heard your stomach rumble while the two of you curled up in bed mid-movie. When you reached for him, questioning why he paused the TV, he only smiled softly, kissed your temple, and slipped out from under the covers.

For a moment, you lay in the dark listening: the clinking of metal, the click of the stove, the crinkle of packaging. Soon, the savory scent of your favorite instant ramen drifted down the hallway. It pulled you from bed like a thread tied to your chest. And the moment you step into the kitchen, your heart nearly stops.

He’s shirtless, facing away from you as he stirs the pot. The warm overhead light carves golden lines down his back. His shoulder blades shifting with every movement. Sweatpants hang low on his narrow hips, the waistband tugging slightly down on one side. He’s completely unaware of how devastating he looks, and that only makes it worse.

You swallow, mouth watering—and not just because of the ramen.

A few more steps forward and you're wrapping your arms around his torso from behind. Taehyun jumps, slightly startled, then relaxes into your touch with a smile. He sets the chopsticks aside and folds his arms over yours in a welcoming gesture.

"Hi baby," he hums with contentment.

"Hi," you smile into his skin, cheek pressed to the expanse of his back. "Smells good." A soft sigh leaves your lips, warm breath brushing his bare shoulder.

Goosebumps rise across his skin. He can feel the shape of you—your nipples faintly brushing through the thin fabric of your t-shirt, your hips pressing gently to his. He knows without looking that you’re wearing nothing underneath but panties.

Still, he doesn’t move. He lets you hold him. But you? You’re already planning to do more than hold.

Your arms tighten, lips beginning to brush his back. You feel the tremor that runs through him, the tension pooling just beneath his skin. And still, he doesn’t pull away.

You trail your fingers along the firm plane of his stomach carefully, until your palms rest flat over the waistband of his sweats. You don’t dip beneath just yet, instead holding him there like he’s yours to touch.

He draws a controlled breath through his nose. “Baby…” he warns gently, voice catching in his throat.

“I know,” you whisper. “Just... let me.”

You turn him around by the hips, and Taehyun allows it, chest rising now with more visible effort. He leans back slightly against the counter perpendicular to the stove, arms going loose at his sides like he’s trying to prove something to himself and to you. But his eyes are already dark, focused on your mouth intently.

You press a kiss to his sternum. He gulps hard. Another kiss to the edge of his collarbone. And then, finally, you tilt your face up and catch his mouth with yours.

It starts sweet, nothing but melted sugar and warmth. His lips move slowly, savoring the feeling as he holds himself back.

But then your hands slip to the sides of his neck, pulling him deeper, angling his head how you want him. Your tongue drags against his with hot need. You kiss like you’ve forgotten what patience even means.

Taehyun moans softly against your lips, involuntarily. You feel his knees bend slightly, as if his whole body wants to follow yours.

You pull back, just enough to murmur, “Sit for me.”

Before he can question it, you gently push him toward the chair at the kitchen table.

He stumbles back a step and halts. His brows twitch with uncertainty. You watch the flicker in his expression: a flash of confusion and resistance. He’s never been the one sitting like this. He doesn’t really know how.

But you step forward, crowding him slowly, guiding him with your hands on his waist like you’re offering him something for once instead of taking. The backs of his legs hit the chair.

You don’t force him down, you just press lightly. He lets out a breath and finally sits.

For a second, Taehyun looks bewitched by you in the most gorgeous way. Hair tousled, chest rising and falling too fast, mouth pink and kiss-bitten. His hands clutch the edge of the seat like it’s anchoring him to the earth. Because he really might float away if he doesn’t hold on.

You climb into his lap with reverence, legs folding around him, your hands smoothing over his shoulders. His skin is flushed. His cock presses hard against you through the thin fabric of his sweats, and the friction alone has him sighing like he’s seconds from losing composure.

You kiss him again, filthier this time. Your hips roll forward, just enough to force a strangled noise from him.

“Let me take care of you for once,” you whisper into his mouth.

Your hand snakes its way down Taehyun’s abdomen. He’s so tense it’s almost laughable. He’s fighting within himself, wanting so bad to give in. But it felt unnatural.

“Baby… you don’t have to.”

His eyes are wired shut when he speaks. You don’t even grace him with a response. He sits there, feeling useless, feeling you place your lips in all the right places across his neck and jaw, fingers finding their way to cutely snake into his sweatpants.

But all he can think about is how you’re probably soaked under those panties. How you must be clenching around nothing, begging to be touched. You must want to be cared for, and oh how he wanted it to be him doing it. Suddenly, he can’t get the idea of you whining and cumming at his manipulation out of his mind.

That’s when the panic sets it.

Taehyun huffs, a sharp and frustrated sound that floods your ears, before gripping your waist so suddenly it makes you yelp. His eyes snap open, blown wide with want. So much want it nearly breaks you.

“I can’t,” he says hoarsely. “You don’t get it—I can’t.”

He lifts you with too much ease, standing abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. Your legs tighten around him out of instinct. He presses your back to the kitchen table, firm but not rough, breathing hard. His forehead falls against yours.

“I’ll lose my mind if I don’t touch you the way I need to.” His voice is a growl now, trembling with restraint. “You don’t get to make me feel good and expect me to just sit here. That’s not how this works. That’s never been how this works.”

You see it all over him—how badly he wants the pleasure you’re offering, and how violently it clashes with the way he’s wired to love. It’s sexy, yes, but it’s also so deeply revealing you feel it split something open inside you. It's not that he doesn't want it. It's that he simply can't compute it.

His hands roam. One cups your jaw, the other sliding beneath your thighs. He’s already rolling his hips into you, chasing friction like it’s air.

“You’re not supposed to take care of me,” he hisses against your neck. “That’s not—what I’m made for.”

You gasp as his mouth finds the edge of your collarbone, biting gently. His grip on your waist tightens, and just like that, the control is back in his hands.

He rises slightly, pushing your shirt up over your chest to see all of you. Nipples flushed pink and hard with need, black underwear that he picked out already soaked and hugging the outline of your folds. He stares unashamedly like he always does. His hands are rough, tracing you from your ribs to your thighs as if reacquainting himself with your body.

"If I stop giving... and I let you give, it’s like I’ve failed you," he mutters, eyes glazed over with lustful thoughts of you.

While he's too busy eye-fucking you, you take your chance. You sit up slightly, just enough to reach for his cheek, grazing it softly.

“You haven’t failed anything. You love me so well. Let me love you back.” You attempt to bargain.

You rise further, closing the gap between you with a slow kiss, your legs looping around his waist to tug him closer, ankles locked. But he catches your wrist mid-motion, grinning softly, already seeing through your plan. Of course you’d try to flip the script.

But he can't take it anymore, not with your bodies this close. The food sizzles on the stove, but he doesn't care. His desire to serve takes over.

He scoops your thighs into his arms and drags you to the edge of the table, then drops to his knees. Your legs fall open over his shoulders. A breathy moan slips from his lips as he drinks in the new view—now eye level with your dripping cunt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I need to. Please—just let me.”

Your soaked panties cling to you obscenely, a clear outline of want pressed against black lace. He hums low in his chest, the sound nearly guttural.

Taehyun presses a kiss to your inner thigh, then another, this one open-mouthed and wet, teeth grazing just enough to make you mewl. His fingers dig into the meat of your thighs to anchor himself.

He moans just from the scent of you. “Fuck." His voice is muffled, lost in the heat between your legs. “So wet.”

“Oh my god-“ You gasp as his tongue presses flat against the soaked crotch of your panties. Taehyun doesn't bother pulling them aside. No, that would be too simple. He’s decided you’re getting ruined like this: his mouth taking you through the fabric, letting every flick of his tongue sink through cotton and lace to where you need him most, and it works.

Your hips are arching up into him. But he’s relentless, hands sliding up to hold you still, palms splayed across your chest.

“Stay still,” his voice vibrated against you. “Let me do this right.”

He licks you long and slow, savoring the way your arousal has soaked through and made the panties cling to you like a second skin. Every pass of his tongue has your thighs trembling, your hands reaching blindly for something to hold.

You fist his hair. Taehyun groans—really groans—like your fingers pulling at his scalp could make him cum untouched. He presses his face deeper between your legs, nuzzling the soaked fabric as if inhaling you could give him life.

His tongue finds your clit. Even through the damp cotton, it sends a bolt of pleasure tearing through your spine. Your back arches and a cry escapes you. He hums again, pleased, adjusting the angle so he can suck gently, just enough pressure to make your vision blur.

“That’s it, baby,” he inhales deeply. “Give it to me. Let me have all of it.” He exhales just as deeply.

You don’t know if he’s talking about your moans, your pussy, your entire fucking soul, but you let him have it. Maybe this was your way of giving to him.

Taehyun keeps eating, savoring, and drinking you in through the delicate fabric until it's useless and he’s so hard in his sweatpants he could cry. One of his hands leaves your hip to slip between his legs, palming himself through the fabric just for a second, just enough to breathe again.

Then his mouth drags lower, tongue teasing the spot just beneath your entrance through the sheer fabric before returning to your clit. You're writhing now, moaning like a confession, your thighs trying to close in around his head but he won’t let them.

“You're almost there, aren't you?” His voice is noticeably ruined. “Cum for me. I want to feel you shake on my tongue.”

He licks harder, and you shatter.

Your orgasm hits like a wave. Crashing and sweeping through your entire body until your hands fall from his hair and you’re barely able to breathe, whimpering his name over and over.

Still, he doesn’t stop, not until your hips twitch from overstimulation and your whines turn into helpless little pleas for him to end it. Only then does he pull back, panting, chin glistening, and your panties practically glued to you.

He looks up at you like he’s blessed. This is the only thing he’s ever prayed to.

“Better?” he asks, voice hoarse, lips curled into the faintest, self-satisfied smirk.

You're so busy coming down from your orgasm, about to respond, that you don’t even realize he’s stripped you. Your soaked panties gone along with his boxers and sweatpants, discarded somewhere on the kitchen table.

When you glance down, he’s already between your thighs again, his cock hard against your leg. You’re still catching your breath, body trembling from your orgasm, but his hands are already moving.

He lifts one leg, then the other, hooking the backs of your knees over the crooks of his elbows like he's done plenty of times before. His chest brushes yours, folding you in half on the table, breath warm against your skin as he lines himself up.

“Let me give you more,” he murmurs, every syllable soaking with need. “Let me stay inside you until you forget your own name.”

Then he’s pushing in devastatingly deep. Your breath stutters, your head tilting back as he sinks you down onto him inch by inch. His grip tightens around your thighs, holding you to him while your body opens for him completely.

You can feel every inch of Taehyun. But it’s not just the fullness that makes you a whimpering mess, it’s the way he’s holding you there, pinned to the surface.

“Fuck,” Taehyun exhales, eyes fluttering shut. “You feel—Jesus.”

Your hands reach to grip his neck as he starts to move. Each thrust is so expertly precise. The slow drag out, the firmer press in. His rhythm is just right, but his breath is ragged. You cling to the edge of the table and to him, legs still lifted, knees trembling slightly where they’re slung over his arms.

Taehyun's hands grip your body in a way they've never held you before. And he groans every time he bottoms out inside you.

The kitchen is filled with the slick, inappropriate sound of him moving inside you. The quiet hiss of the stove behind you both now forgotten, noodles cooking past perfect. The smell of ramen and sex drifts through the air.

“Taehyun!” you gasp, head tipping back. This is his favorite view of you.

“Yeah?” he pants, not stopping once. “Say it again.”

You do. Over and over. Not just his name, but everything. What he feels like, how he fucks you, how he makes you feel like no one else ever has. You don’t know what you’re saying anymore. Only that it pours out of you in moans and broken whines.

You feel it building again, this time too fast and way too strong. Your body tenses around him.

He must feel it too, because he drops your legs from his elbows and folds you close, hips never faltering as he hooks his arms around your waist and lifts you clean off the table. You gasp in surprise, clutching his shoulders.

Now it’s chest to chest, his forehead against yours, your legs wrapped tight around his hips. Your nails score his back as he fucks you suspended in the air.

“Come on, baby,” he pleads, voice cracked as he slams you down onto his cock. “Give it to me one more time.”

You shatter for the second time in your little kitchen. This one rips through you harder than before. You cry out, whole body shaking and convulsing around him, just the way he likes.

“Fuckfuckfuck—fuck,” he hisses, every muscle in his body going rigid as he drives into you one last time and cums harder than ever. His hips falter, then still as he pushes in as deep as possible, moaning into your mouth as he buries himself to the hilt.

Silence slowly follows. Beautiful, comfortable silence.

Taehyun doesn’t pull out of you right away. He lowers both of you down slowly, your back landing softly against the now-cleared table. His cheek rests against your thigh, damp with sweat, lips parted as he catches his breath. His arms are still around your waist. You brush a hand through his hair, looking down at him.

“One day, I’ll make you let me take care of you.” You can't help but smile.

He half-laughs and murmurs back, “I'll die trying to stop you.”

You feel the slight ache in his words. Because behind them, you worry Taehyun thinks he’s unworthy of being taken care of by you. That’s the part that guts you.

You sit up just slightly, shifting your weight until you're able to reach the stove. The ramen is still there, now slightly burnt at the edges, thick with overcooked noodles. Laughing quietly, you dish some into a bowl, scooping a bite with your chopsticks and blowing to cool it down. When you turn back and offer it to him, he almost hesitates.

But eventually Taehyun lets you. He opens his mouth, and you feed him. He chews, swallows, then drops his forehead into your neck with a sigh so deep as he relaxes into your warmth.

This is the kind of peace he’s never allowed himself. But tonight, just for a moment, he does for you.

tags: @bunnysoonie @zznblr @another-lemon-tree @gyudollies @beomgyusluver @dawngyu @boba-beom @taebatu @simpforseoho @beestvng @yyeonbinn @chubichubs @jooyeonsvape @txt-thelmi @zorange13 @jellyyjn @frenziedpiratetrap @gardnhee @txtsdoll @annovaz @morguebounddoll @melmochii @yunhorights @saccharinezennie @gyutaepie @313hwa @tyuncloudreamy @ijustwannareadstuff20 @bamtor1sss @iyoonjh

and all of this, of course, is completely and absolutely:

not true.

it's exactly what you seem to think in that pretty little head of yours, though, as taehyun often observes; it's quite cute actually, he thinks.

"out of all the guys i could like, why does it have to be the one guy in my life who would draft me onto his football team if he had one?" he'd overheard you complaining to yeonjun one day.

(sorry, but trust me, sweetheart - you wouldn't even make it past tryouts, he'd thought afterwards upon fighting back a laugh and an endeared little grin.)

oh, if only you knew.

if only you knew the steady breaths he has to take whenever you stand so temptingly close to him; or how many filthy images he has to shake out of his mind when he's helping you with your workouts; or that annoying little shadow called jealousy that he has to push down when you smile so sweetly at a man that isn't him.

taehyun is a man of self control, and a man who would do anything for the people that he loves — which means that no matter how much he'd enjoy changing your mind about what exactly you assume he perceives you as, he knows for the sake of your friendship that he can't.

and so he doesn't.

but oh, you wish that he would.

taehyun is quite good at keeping his feelings in check, to the point where you're convinced at this point that if you were to strut naked across the room in front of him, he wouldn't even pay you any mind;

pft, you scoff at your own silly thought, as if something so ridiculous would ever happen. (…well....)

today you've decided that you're getting real tired of your own pining and yearning and eyes that shoot hearts like confetti every time your best friend walks into the room —

you pout at the sight of yourself reflected on the open camera screen of your phone as the self-timer counts down yet again. this has become quite the routine of yours.

body bare save for the lacy lingerie that doesn’t cover much of anything as you perch at the edge of your bed, posing so prettily, so sensually, just the way you imagine taehyun would like; just more photos to add to the naughty little album in your camera roll that you wish you could send to him but know that you never will.

there was a time where you used to try testing the waters a bit, some flirting here, a fleeting touch or two there. but you'd quickly learned how pointless it was. after all, a brick wall is never gonna flirt back.

you sigh. it's time to get going anyway; speak of the devil, he'll be here to pick you up in 20 minutes.

~

taehyun can see in his peripheral the way you keep glancing at him from the passenger seat of his car.

as usual, he maintains an even expression. "excited to see me or something?"

his lips quirk as you jump in your seat a little, quickly looking forwards and crossing your arms as you grumble, "you wish. i just saw you like two days ago."

he merely hums in acknowledgment, which gets you even more grumbly — ("no fair that i can never get a reaction out of you! why is it always me?!" you'd wailed in defeat one time after a failed attempt to get him back, your cheeks flushed pink and pretty).

taehyun smiles.

when he soon pulls up outside your friend's apartment building that you’d needed to drop something off at first on the way to yeonjun’s, he decides to be nice as he asks,

"where was that new cat café you wanted to go to? we can stop there before meeting the guys."

bingo. the smile that lights up your face is exactly what he was looking for as your previous pout melts away and you gasp, "really?! okay wait, i took a screenshot of their instagram page the other day, you can check and put the address in! i'll be super super quick!"

he bites back a laugh as you shove your phone into his hands and excitedly rush out of the car.

"5 minutes tops or i'm going without you!" he calls out the window, to which you shriek and scurry away even faster.

he grins to himself, shaking his head as you disappear into the building and he turns to click open your camera roll.

"alright, cat café, where are............ you."

taehyun feels as if a lightning rod has just shot straight through his entire body.

his muscles tense. all his breath escapes him in a rush.

you...

the sight of you is what greets him through the screen...

you,

completely naked.

it's like his skin is consumed by fire as his eyes roam across the rows of pictures in the album you'd left open; most taken on your bed, some in the shower at the gym that you both go to together, some where you’re donned in sets of delicious lingerie — his eyes widening and pants tightening when he even spots one from his own room, your skirt hiked up in the reflection of his full-length mirror as your panties dangle cheekily from one finger, leaving the delicious curve of your ass on full display.

when did she even take that??

he scrolls, and he's barely hanging on by a thread as his best friend who's supposed to stay his best friend poses so irresistibly pretty from the screen; his cock is so hard that it's painful as your big innocent eyes look up at him in complete contrast to the lewd position that you'd put yourself in.

god, the positions he wants to put you in...

alright, reel it in, kang taehyun. this can't go anywhere. you have to take it to the grave. you’ve gotta think about the friendship. you’ll just pretend you didn't see it. you’ll act aloof like you always do.

but every single ounce of self control that taehyun has spent so long holding together finally crashes down around him like a breaking dam when his gaze lands on the name of the album at the top of the screen.

— t ♡

his cock jumps.

fucking hell, these are for me.

when you skip your way back to the car minutes later, you don't notice at first how firmly he's gripping the steering wheel or the fact that he isn’t even looking at you, remaining staring straight ahead as you climb back into the passenger side.

you don't notice — that is, until your phone catches your eye, set neatly on the middle console with your worst nightmare staring right back up at you from the screen.

it feels as though a bucket of ice water has crash landed down on your head (both the water and the bucket) as you realize what happened.

but you barely even have the time to panic or react or beg for mercy, or perhaps for a lobotomy on you both, before taehyun is asking you:

"back seat or my place?"

his voice is so calm that you almost don't process his words. your thoughts buffer as you pause.

"wh... what?" you breathe.

that's when he finally turns his head to look at you, and the intensity of the hunger swimming in his stare is enough to leave you even more winded than you already were before as a familiar feeling stirs between your legs and your thighs clamp together of their own accord.

"back seat," he repeats slowly, "or my place?"

you swallow hard.

this.. t-this is... he means.…

your head is reeling, and dumbly you stammer back, "w-what about the guys..?" as if the plans with your friends really matter anymore in a moment like this.

fuck the guys. fuck the cat café. taehyun has already decided: he’s done holding back from what he wants, and what he wants is to make you his.

you blink at him wide-eyed as he leans towards you slightly in his seat, his voice low and assertive as he replies,

"we're not going."

he taps your phone as if to draw your attention back to it. as if it should be obvious.

"so, you choose." your eyes fly back up to his —

"where do you want me to fuck you?"

your lower belly explodes with heat as an electric shiver rolls down your spine, and you swear that this is the best day of your entire fucking life as you see the promise that flickers in his eyes.

maybe you won't be finding yourself on the football team after all.

──────────────────────

— taglist: @razsberrie, @saejinniestar, @hyukalyptus, @florestalio, @beomiracles, @kiss4baku, @kejingken, @hyukascampfire, @cherr4es, @stawmerry, @choikanghuening, @dawngyu, @soo-blue, @paradigms13

and all of this, of course, is completely and absolutely:

not true.

it's exactly what you seem to think in that pretty little head of yours, though, as taehyun often observes; it's quite cute actually, he thinks.

"out of all the guys i could like, why does it have to be the one guy in my life who would draft me onto his football team if he had one?" he'd overheard you complaining to yeonjun one day.

(sorry, but trust me, sweetheart - you wouldn't even make it past tryouts, he'd thought afterwards upon fighting back a laugh and an endeared little grin.)

oh, if only you knew.

if only you knew the steady breaths he has to take whenever you stand so temptingly close to him; or how many filthy images he has to shake out of his mind when he's helping you with your workouts; or that annoying little shadow called jealousy that he has to push down when you smile so sweetly at a man that isn't him.

taehyun is a man of self control, and a man who would do anything for the people that he loves — which means that no matter how much he'd enjoy changing your mind about what exactly you assume he perceives you as, he knows for the sake of your friendship that he can't.

and so he doesn't.

but oh, you wish that he would.

taehyun is quite good at keeping his feelings in check, to the point where you're convinced at this point that if you were to strut naked across the room in front of him, he wouldn't even pay you any mind;

pft, you scoff at your own silly thought, as if something so ridiculous would ever happen. (…well....)

today you've decided that you're getting real tired of your own pining and yearning and eyes that shoot hearts like confetti every time your best friend walks into the room —

you pout at the sight of yourself reflected on the open camera screen of your phone as the self-timer counts down yet again. this has become quite the routine of yours.

body bare save for the lacy lingerie that doesn’t cover much of anything as you perch at the edge of your bed, posing so prettily, so sensually, just the way you imagine taehyun would like; just more photos to add to the naughty little album in your camera roll that you wish you could send to him but know that you never will.

there was a time where you used to try testing the waters a bit, some flirting here, a fleeting touch or two there. but you'd quickly learned how pointless it was. after all, a brick wall is never gonna flirt back.

you sigh. it's time to get going anyway; speak of the devil, he'll be here to pick you up in 20 minutes.

~

taehyun can see in his peripheral the way you keep glancing at him from the passenger seat of his car.

as usual, he maintains an even expression. "excited to see me or something?"

his lips quirk as you jump in your seat a little, quickly looking forwards and crossing your arms as you grumble, "you wish. i just saw you like two days ago."

he merely hums in acknowledgment, which gets you even more grumbly — ("no fair that i can never get a reaction out of you! why is it always me?!" you'd wailed in defeat one time after a failed attempt to get him back, your cheeks flushed pink and pretty).

taehyun smiles.

when he soon pulls up outside your friend's apartment building that you’d needed to drop something off at first on the way to yeonjun’s, he decides to be nice as he asks,

"where was that new cat café you wanted to go to? we can stop there before meeting the guys."

bingo. the smile that lights up your face is exactly what he was looking for as your previous pout melts away and you gasp, "really?! okay wait, i took a screenshot of their instagram page the other day, you can check and put the address in! i'll be super super quick!"

he bites back a laugh as you shove your phone into his hands and excitedly rush out of the car.

"5 minutes tops or i'm going without you!" he calls out the window, to which you shriek and scurry away even faster.

he grins to himself, shaking his head as you disappear into the building and he turns to click open your camera roll.

"alright, cat café, where are............ you."

taehyun feels as if a lightning rod has just shot straight through his entire body.

his muscles tense. all his breath escapes him in a rush.

you...

the sight of you is what greets him through the screen...

you,

completely naked.

it's like his skin is consumed by fire as his eyes roam across the rows of pictures in the album you'd left open; most taken on your bed, some in the shower at the gym that you both go to together, some where you’re donned in sets of delicious lingerie — his eyes widening and pants tightening when he even spots one from his own room, your skirt hiked up in the reflection of his full-length mirror as your panties dangle cheekily from one finger, leaving the delicious curve of your ass on full display.

when did she even take that??

he scrolls, and he's barely hanging on by a thread as his best friend who's supposed to stay his best friend poses so irresistibly pretty from the screen; his cock is so hard that it's painful as your big innocent eyes look up at him in complete contrast to the lewd position that you'd put yourself in.

god, the positions he wants to put you in...

alright, reel it in, kang taehyun. this can't go anywhere. you have to take it to the grave. you’ve gotta think about the friendship. you’ll just pretend you didn't see it. you’ll act aloof like you always do.

but every single ounce of self control that taehyun has spent so long holding together finally crashes down around him like a breaking dam when his gaze lands on the name of the album at the top of the screen.

— t ♡

his cock jumps.

fucking hell, these are for me.

when you skip your way back to the car minutes later, you don't notice at first how firmly he's gripping the steering wheel or the fact that he isn’t even looking at you, remaining staring straight ahead as you climb back into the passenger side.

you don't notice — that is, until your phone catches your eye, set neatly on the middle console with your worst nightmare staring right back up at you from the screen.

it feels as though a bucket of ice water has crash landed down on your head (both the water and the bucket) as you realize what happened.

but you barely even have the time to panic or react or beg for mercy, or perhaps for a lobotomy on you both, before taehyun is asking you:

"back seat or my place?"

his voice is so calm that you almost don't process his words. your thoughts buffer as you pause.

"wh... what?" you breathe.

that's when he finally turns his head to look at you, and the intensity of the hunger swimming in his stare is enough to leave you even more winded than you already were before as a familiar feeling stirs between your legs and your thighs clamp together of their own accord.

"back seat," he repeats slowly, "or my place?"

you swallow hard.

this.. t-this is... he means.…

your head is reeling, and dumbly you stammer back, "w-what about the guys..?" as if the plans with your friends really matter anymore in a moment like this.

fuck the guys. fuck the cat café. taehyun has already decided: he’s done holding back from what he wants, and what he wants is to make you his.

you blink at him wide-eyed as he leans towards you slightly in his seat, his voice low and assertive as he replies,

"we're not going."

he taps your phone as if to draw your attention back to it. as if it should be obvious.

"so, you choose." your eyes fly back up to his —

"where do you want me to fuck you?"

your lower belly explodes with heat as an electric shiver rolls down your spine, and you swear that this is the best day of your entire fucking life as you see the promise that flickers in his eyes.

maybe you won't be finding yourself on the football team after all.

──────────────────────

— taglist: @razsberrie, @saejinniestar, @hyukalyptus, @florestalio, @beomiracles, @kiss4baku, @kejingken, @hyukascampfire, @cherr4es, @stawmerry, @choikanghuening, @dawngyu, @soo-blue, @paradigms13

when kai asked for a movie night with you, you expected the cuddling. you expected the way he’d pull you into his lap and keep his arms wrapped around you. you even expected the occasional peck of his soft lips against your skin, but you weren’t prepared for his kisses to land on your neck instead of your cheek. it surprises you, but it’s innocent enough to ignore for a while. he doesn’t linger very long, just planting a few small kisses along your pulse point.

you’re able to calm down after a minute, adjusting to your best friend’s newfound interest in your neck. he keeps his head rested against your shoulder, the warm skin of his cheek heating you up. he’s calm and quiet every time he speaks up, making one-off comments about the movie that you only respond to sometimes. with him leaning on you like this, you can feel the vibrations from his voice rumbling against you.

you start dozing off at some point, too relaxed to bother keeping your eyes open, letting your body go lax against kai’s. the slow rhythm of his hands drawing up and down your body helps you drift off; his innocent, soft touches have always comforted you.

“you tired?” he asks, voice low. he entertains himself with the soft skin of your thigh, gently grazing his fingers against it. it sends a shiver down your spine.

“yeah,” you answer, and even you can hear the slow, sleepy lilt in your response. you feel kai’s lips pull into a small smile before he’s pecking your shoulder carefully.

“do you want me to take you to bed?”

you hum, considering his offer, but you don’t feel like moving around. the second you hit your mattress, you’ll probably lose all your drowsiness. “no, i’m comfortable,” you say.

kai giggles, “okay.” he places his hands on your waist and maneuvers you until you’re facing him instead of the television. it’s easy to move you around when you’re so relaxed, just letting him do whatever he wants. you blink at him slowly, taking in his soft features under the dim lights. he looks angelic. you think you tell him that, but you’re only half-awake and can’t really think well.

he brings his face back into your neck, nosing up the column of your throat languidly. a hand on your thigh gently urges you closer, pressing you further into him until you’re chest-to-chest. he keeps his head buried against you, and his affection nearly drowns you. in your sleepy daze, you accept his actions happily, feeling nothing but cherished by your best friend.

the moment builds up so slowly that it barely hits you when he places a hot, open-mouthed kiss to your skin, right under your jaw. the heat of his mouth feels like heaven against you, and you can’t bring yourself to push him away, too comfortable and content to deny his touches. he drags his lips a little further down, sucking lightly against your neck, taking just a small taste of you.

there’s a heat building inside you now, a growing need that you only register when it’s too late. you’re too far into the moment, too entranced by the feeling to pull away. you let him do as he pleases with your pliant body, indulging in the slow, firm drag of his hands over your sides and the glide of his warm tongue against your flesh.

he kisses all over your skin like he needs to keep you warm, humming pleasantly as he brings his mouth to your shoulder. his fingers dip ever so slightly under your shirt, resting on your bare skin, a faint tickle against your waist. his teeth just barely scrape against your skin, and a tiny mewl slips out of you before you can think about controlling yourself.

he pulls his lips off you after that, face flushing red like he’s the one who made the embarrassing noise. cool air hits the saliva trail kai left on your neck, and suddenly you’re missing the heat of his mouth. your stomach’s still twisted up in knots, all worked up from kai’s relentless attention.

“i’m sorry,” he finally says, hands slipping out from under your shirt. his touch lands on your upper thighs instead, just below your hips. you try hard to push down the arousal that pools in your gut, fearing the possibility of making a fool of yourself even more than you already have.

“it’s okay,” you reply meekly. you can’t tell if the silence that fills the room is tense because it’s awkward or because everything feels so intimate. you have to put in a conscious effort to not let your hips buck against his, still perched on his lap. it’s only now that you realize how hard kai’s gotten beneath you, a prominent tent in his pants. you ignore it for both his sake and your own.

“w-we should stop,” he stutters out, loosening the hold he has on you like he’s ready to let you go. you tighten your legs around his, not wanting him to pry you off. this is stupid, and you know you should just go to bed, but you fear what will happen when you finally let the moment fall.

“yeah…” you agree quietly, even though your actions don’t match your words. you stay right where you are, and your eyes betray you when they dart down to his lips. they’re pink and coated with his saliva, and it doesn’t help you simmer down at all. you only feel more restless. his hands find your hips, holding you still against him. it seems like neither of you are willing to pull away.

his gaze flits behind you for a moment. “the movie’s over,” he says.

you hum and nod. it’s quiet for a few seconds as you think of what to say to fill the silence. “it was pretty good,” you say, making boring, meaningless conversation. you’re not thinking about the movie at all.

“yeah, it was,” he agrees. it’s almost like you can see the restraint he’s summoning upon himself to not pounce on you.

nothing seems to dissipate the tension in the air. you’re stuck staring at each other, and it’s like you’re both waiting for the other to make a move. his hands drift a little lower, sprawling out on your thighs. his large palms engulf your flesh so easily. you gulp.

your hands ease themselves onto kai’s chest, ignoring how firm and strong he feels under you. you only put your hands there to ground yourself. you’re only doing this to keep yourself sane. that’s what you’re telling yourself, at least.

“you got anything to do tomorrow?” you ask, voice shaky as you try to keep your tone casual. his fingertips inch up your thighs to breach into your shorts, slight enough to not need to mention it.

“no,” he answers a little breathlessly. your hands trail up until they’re resting around his neck. it would be easy to pull him in for a kiss like this, but you don’t think about that.

“me either,” you say, whispering now. you feel your heart pounding in your chest. there’s a pulse in your core, too, but you promised yourself you’d ignore that. you barely feel able to breathe.

kai’s eyes fall to your lips. you take the opportunity to let your gaze fall to his own, admiring the rosy swell once again. his hands tighten against you in a way that’s barely noticeable, but since you’re so attuned to every little thing happening, you catch it easily.

you find each other’s eyes again at the same time, and mercy finds you both then—you pull into each other hungrily, lips colliding like you can’t bear another second apart. he moans into your mouth, working against you like he needs to swallow you whole. you’re just as desperate as him, hands scrunching up into the fabric of his shirt as you push your tongue into his mouth.

he doesn’t part for a second, not daring to let up on his kiss, and you let him consume you completely. your mind is spinning, and all you can think about is how incredible his mouth is. he kisses like that’s what he was put on earth to do, diving into your mouth like he needs to taste you to survive.

you whine when his palm meets your clothed center, rubbing against your cunt like he knows how hard you’ve been holding back. you grind against his hand unabashedly, possessed by the need to sink into the pleasure he gives you. your hand travels down his torso until you’re palming the bulge in his pants. you work your hand over him in the same rhythm he rubs his fingers against you, calculated and needy.

you’re panting into his mouth now, leaving it wide open for him to swirl his tongue into. your legs clamp around his hand, feeling yourself nearing your peak, and you can’t stop whimpering and moaning. you feel pathetic, you feel like some bitch in heat, but kai seems to absolutely love it.

he pulls away from your mouth to praise you, “pretty. pretty girl. fuck, i really want you.”

you’re entranced by how swollen his lips have become, looking all the more sinful, making your cunt gush pathetically. your stomach tenses up, orgasm approaching quickly, and kai bucks his hips up into your hand. he seems to be getting close too.

“kai, need to cum, please, need it,” you moan, and he doesn’t let up on his rhythm against your core. you almost feel like crying. you can taste your high as it approaches, chasing it by grinding your hips against him faster.

“yeah, let go, cum for me,” he says, sounding just as broken and pathetic as you. your climax hits you like sweet relief, leaving you crying out as kai helps you make a mess of your panties. you feels kai’s dick twitch beneath your palm as you ride out your high, and you jerk your hand over him greedily until he’s spent and spilling his load into his pants. he throws his head back with a deep moan, thrusting up against you until he’s coming back down.

you’re exhausted, sinking against him and leaning into his chest. you don’t even have the energy to talk about the line you just crossed with him. he doesn’t speak up either, only running his hand down your back as he catches his breath.

a few minutes pass, and you think he might be asleep. the rise and fall of his chest is steady, and it almost lulls you into slumber as well. you’d be perfectly content laying in his arms and resting here, but you feel too gross and sweaty to stay. you let a few peaceful minutes pass before slowly prying yourself from kai’s hold—not without his sleepy refusals to let you go—and head off to go shower.

you don’t know if you should go back to the couch with him, or if you should lay in bed and give yourselves some space. you stay in the shower longer than you need to, not wanting to make any decisions that’s going to alter the course of your friendship with kai. you groan; you should’ve thought of that before hooking up with him. you lean your head against the shower wall, shutting your eyes tight. rationality only comes to you at the worst times.