Whatever makes you happy...

It's not bad—state-of-the-art, as far as these things go. Hyunjoo University Medical Center has claimed the top spot among Korea's teaching hospitals five years running, with buckets of funding and endless charity galas to show for it, and that means private sleeping stalls. Plush mattresses. Closets that you get to keep for an entire year, with doors that lock. Fancy skincare products in the bathroom (which you still have to share with the dozen other surgical residents, to be clear, but it's an upgrade nonetheless).

Still, something about it depresses you. You still pay rent on the pathetic gosiwon two blocks away, but you spend every interminable, waking hour in this place as is. You know this place better than you know your childhood home, having traversed every inch of it in your orthopedic sneakers. You've touched every gurney, stopped inside every single med/surg room for pre-op rounds. Sat in every operating gallery to witness surgeries, with the reverence of a new believer in church. You swear that your skin has taken on a grayish tint in your years here from the lack of sun, a regrettable development that no amount of Vitamin C serum can reverse.

Anyway—every time you lie down to sleep at night, eyes dry and heels throbbing, you're not sure you'll make it to see the next day. And if you're going to die, you sure as hell won't be doing it in an on-call room. Mere feet away from the attendings' lounge, where you're certain your superiors congregate each morning and conspire to make your life as hellish as humanly possible.

So, you won’t sleep in here…. But that doesn’t mean you'll let the privacy locks and memory foam mattresses and clean sheets go to waste.

“You know, I have slept here before. It really isn’t that—“

You clap a hand over Wonwoo's—Dr. Jeon's—mouth, eyes going wide. "Shut up," you hiss, back pressed against the door.

He grins against your palm. Pulls your hand away. "Oh, relax. No one's rolling up here at seven in the morning. Everyone's on rounds.”

"Yeah, and I've got ten minutes before Dr. Oh comes looking for me. Better make it quick."

You don't need to tell Wonwoo twice. He leans down to capture your mouth in his. Hungry. Raw. The minty bite of hospital-issued mouthwash works its way onto your tongue. The remnants of acrid drip coffee from the communal break room makes its way onto his.

It's not fair, really. Both of you have been up all night, monitoring ICU patients and finishing up post-op notes over the graveyard shift, but he manages to come out of it looking unscathed. No dark circles under his eyes, skin as milky and poreless as ever. You reach up and run your fingers through his hair, hoping to mess it up a little—purely out of spite. 

You tug, he moans, and then he's spinning you around, fingers digging into your mint scrubs, walking you backward toward one of the sleeping cubicles. Admittedly, they're a positive development. Even if the twin bed is laughably narrow, just large enough to accommodate his lanky frame—the two of you maneuver around each other, giggling, before you settle on his thighs encasing yours and your back sinking into the mattress.

"You know," you whisper, tugging on the hem of his teal scrub top, "I used to think it was so dirty."

Wonwoo obliges, pulling off his shirt in one fluid motion. Adjusts his glasses, bends his head down to fumble with the knot on his pants. "What? Me? Give me a break, you can only shower so many times on a seventy-two-hour—"

"No," you sigh, slipping out of your own top, and then your bra. "Doing this. Having sex in an on-call room. I used to respect the sanctity of medicine, you know. Used to treat this place like a place of worship. Now you've gone and defiled it. You've ruined my innocence."

He doesn't speak for a moment, just blinking at you. It takes you half a second to realize what he's looking at, and then you roll your eyes.

"What are you, twelve?"

"Sorry." He swallows, catching his thumbs on your nipples, and you press your lips together to trap a moan. "They're just—you just have, like, really great boobs."

"Wonwoo.”

He leans down, stripped completely bare. Pure Wonwoo. So much Wonwoo, you think you'll drown in it. "I mean it." He kisses you sweetly. Murmurs against your mouth, "you're beautiful," and you fight not to choke on your own breath. 

Funny, you think, letting him breathe your air, letting his hands press cool patterns into your skin, everywhere, all over. You can't imagine what would possess him to call you beautiful, because he's heartbreakingly angelic. A sharp, cutting beauty. An intimidating kind, but beauty all the same. 

You're glad you stuck around long enough to see the warmth in it. Glad that, among all the residents and attendings vying for his attention, haggling their way onto his service and into his Alzheimer's research lab, he fell for you—chose you, the resident who drew his name out of a cup on day one.

Felt inevitable, almost. Cosmically destined.

It doesn't take long for him to work his fingers into you. Doesn't take long because you've been aching for him all night, watching him check in on his patients with his characteristic patience, walk around the hospital with his white coat straining over his broad shoulders. In fact, you've been made acutely aware of the absence of him inside of you. (Occupational hazard, you suppose.) There's zero resistance to the intrusion, blinding sparks flying instantly from his touch. 

Wonwoo groans, your slick coating his fingers. "So fucking wet," he sighs. He curls them up, presses right where he needs to, hits the spot that crushes the breath right out of your lungs. Except—

"No time," you decide, pressing a kiss to the side of his mouth. "Need you inside."

"Really."

"Yes, really. In case you've forgotten, I am a completely disposable cog in the machine." You reach down, work the curve of your palm over his semi. "Not to mention Dr. Oh has it out for me."

He pouts, just a little bit. He might as well have punched a hole through your ribs and macerated your heart—your pathetic, fluttering heart—the way it ruins you. "You shouldn't even be on Dr. Oh's service this week. You should be on mine."

You take his now-hard cock and align it with your opening. "Don't go neglecting the virtues of a well-rounded medical education, Dr. Jeon."

He starts to press into you. Slower than usual, because he hasn't prepared you the way he wants to. 

God, he's big. Third-leg big. Bad porno big. Your breath catches, pain pulsing at the stretch, and he freezes. 

"Too much?" he whispers, tracing his finger over your cheek.

This. This is what gets you, at the end of the day: To so many people in this building, you're doctor. You break your neck bending over a patient's open brain, cramp your hands clutching surgical instruments, scrub your skin until it cracks like arid earth. You flew through college, then medical school, like this: sacrificing pieces of your body to the altar of success, cutting away parts of yourself until there wasn't anything left to keep. There are an infinite number of people whose needs supersede yours. Without realizing it, you’ve become an expert at forgoing sleep. At skipping meals. At saying yes when you ache to say no.

Here, though, in Wonwoo's arms... you're a glass ornament. A rosebud. To him, you're a treasure to be handled with care. Second to no one.

You shake your head. "Keep going. Mmh—I'm good."

He kisses you, over and over, as he slips inside of you. His way of easing you, dissipating the residual tension locking your muscles in place. Slowly, slowly, and then all at once he fits himself to the hilt, broken breath fanning across your neck.

"You know," he murmurs, his tenor rippling through your skin, "I have a glioblastoma resection later today. You can scrub in, if you're free."

Whatever sick, deeply unwell surgery junkie is living inside of you and chewing holes in your brain takes over, because the next thing you know you're clenching. Hard. The resulting pressure draws the sweetest groan from Wonwoo. A sound that catapults you to a new dimension, one you want to hear forever.

"Fuck," he rasps. "Don't tell me the idea of a fatal brain tumor turns you on."

"Potentially fatal," you murmur, wiggling your hips, and you feel the way his limbs go taut—straining to hold himself back. "Not if you have anything to say about it."

"Oh, baby. I love it when you talk dirty to me."

Your cackle is cut short by a gasp as he pulls back, then thrusts back in—a movement so swift that it knocks the breath right out of you, sends shockwaves down to your toes. He pauses for the briefest second, examining your features, and then does it again. And again. And again.

"Oh, yes," you whine, when he bends his head to tongue at your nipple, sucking the pearl of it into his mouth. Your hands fly up of their own volition to twist into his hair, chest heaving, desperate for oxygen. "Oh, fuck, Wonwoo—"

Mouth occupied, Wonwoo responds with a pleased hum, his hand coming up to thumb at your neglected breast. The flames burst from you, spark up from your core and light up everywhere your body meets his, the drag of his cock so dizzying it drives you to delirium.

"Faster," you choke, locking your ankles at the base of his spine. "Faster, Wonwoo, please—"

“It’s going to be an awake craniotomy.” He presses the words into your sternum, into the hollow between your collarbones, into the spot behind your ear. God, his voice. It finds every bit of emptiness inside you, fills it with honey. “Patient’s going to be talking to us the whole time.”

You clench again, mostly to tease, and he emits a noise somewhere between a groan and a chuckle.

“Freak,” he mutters. Affectionately.

“Just eager to learn, Doctor. Oh, shit—“

“Close?” he asks. Doesn’t have to. He’s been inside you enough to know your tells—the dig of your nails into his shoulders, the way your breath hitches for longer like you’ve forgotten how to exhale—but you nod anyway.

“I’m—god, oh god, I’m—“

“I’ve got you, baby.” He drops his hand to where your bodies meet and finds your clit with ease. Starts thumbing at it, and the stars melt in your lower belly. All the heat and light in the world pull together inside of you, building and intensifying, until you have no choice but to burst with it. 

So you do. You let go, legs shaking, whimpering his name like it’s the only word you’ve ever known, and it might as well be. You’re cold, always cold because the hospital runs its air conditioning on full blast, but in this moment you’re impossibly warm. Sweat beading at your hairline, sticking your body to your lover’s.

Wonwoo groans at the sensation of your cunt pulsing around him, at the flash of pain when your nails dig into his skin. He’s a masochist like that—has to be, has to relish in the pain. He wouldn’t have been able to endure med school and residency and boards and fellowship otherwise. 

You pull him down against you, press breathless kisses to his jawline. “Gonna come for me?” you mumble, dragging your nails down his back. 

You hope they’ll leave a mark. You hope that, when he’s changing his scrubs in the attendings’ lounge, people will see. That people will know he belongs to someone, even if the someone they’re imagining isn’t you. 

Anyway. The added lick of heat on his shoulder blades pulls Wonwoo toward the edge. He shudders against you, can’t even find the words to speak. Lets out a pathetic, shattered moan when he comes, warmth spilling into and out of you, and it feels so euphoric—so perfect—that it almost makes you come again.

He stays inside of you for a moment, unmoving. The two of you exist in a bubble, the thinnest swirls of soap and water separating you from disease and sterilized tools and patients shouting for painkillers. The hard edge of his glasses digs into your temple, but you don’t mind. Not when he’s like this—all vulnerable, the competent, razor-sharp, highly sought-after Dr. Jeon nowhere to be found. 

In this moment, he’s just Wonwoo. Your Wonwoo. The Wonwoo who kisses you every chance he gets. Who looks at you like you’re a miracle he never expected.

Your phone buzzes against the nightstand, and the bubble bursts. The hard edges of your case pummel the wood before you have a chance to grab it.

“Fuck. It’s Hyojin.” You sit straight up, shoving him aside, and scramble out of bed. Cum trickles down your thigh—you look up, panicking, but Wonwoo’s already holding out a tissue with one hand and your underwear with the other.

“Four PM,” he reminds you, digging around in the tangle of sheets for his own scrubs. “Don’t be late.”

“I won’t,” you promise. You turn toward the door, tugging the neck of your scrub top down over your head. “See you then!”

“Wait.”

You turn back, anxiety buzzing in your veins, then crack a smile. He’s sitting on the edge of the mattress, shirtless and forlorn. Hair sticking out in all directions, glasses askew, that pout poking out again. “Yes?” you ask innocently. Just to make him say it.

“You’re forgetting something.”

A goodbye kiss. One last bit of minty mouthwash, and then you’re flying out the door to your first patient, the heat of his mouth still lingering on yours.

Wonwoo had been in love with you for as long as he could remember.

__________________________________________

PREVIEW

The first time he saw you, you were tucked in a quiet corner of the library, completely lost in a book called Twisted Love. He wasn’t one for romance novels—never cared for all that drama and longing. But something about the way your lips curled into a shy smile... the way your fingers held the pages like they were sacred… it did something to him.

So much so, that he went out that very night and bought Twisted Love. Not because he suddenly found romance interesting—but because he needed to know. What made you giggle like that? What made your cheeks flush and your eyes shine like you were living the story?

Needless to say, he got his answers.

The next day, Wonwoo sat a little closer.

Far enough that you wouldn’t notice him, but close enough that he could admire you without restraint.

He saw you again—outside the library this time, laughing at the canteen table with your two friends. Fixing their hair, straightening their collars, brushing crumbs off their shirts like a natural instinct. You weren’t just kind—you radiated care. The kind that didn’t need attention or validation. It was just… you.

Then he saw you outside the Department of Fashion. That’s when it clicked—you were a fashion major. Of course you were. He should’ve known just by the way you dressed. You weren’t trying to fit in with some aesthetic. You were the aesthetic.

Corset top cinched to perfection, low-rise jeans hanging loose like they had a story to tell, rhinestone belt catching the sun with every sway of your hips. A tiny white handbag dangled off your wrist like it belonged in a Bratz doll commercial. Chunky bangles, silver chains, and a cross pendant resting just above your collarbone—all screaming Y2K in the boldest, baddest way. You didn’t just walk across campus—you strutted. Like the whole sidewalk was your runway.

He caught a glimpse of you at the café near campus too. And he wasn’t the only one watching. Boys stared at you like you were the answer to their prayers. And it wasn’t just lust—it was reverence. Admiration. That rare kind that went quiet when it saw something real.

The way you walked. The way you talked. The way you treated everyone with respect—even the boy from your class who shyly confessed his feelings, and whom you let down so gently, he still smiled afterward.

It wasn’t just admiration anymore.

They were falling.

Just like Wonwoo had already fallen.

And then he saw you again.

In his apartment.

Perched delicately on the edge of his couch—the one he collapsed onto after long nights of overthinking you. You sat there like you belonged, casually reapplying your Summer Fridays lip gloss, the same one he knew you kept in every purse. The scent hit him before the realization did—vanilla, coconut, you.

His breath caught.

And then—footsteps.

Heavy, unhurried.

Wonwoo’s ears started ringing. It was like everything around him dropped into slow motion. The hum of the fridge, the distant traffic outside, even his heartbeat—it all faded under the weight of what he knew was about to happen, but prayed wouldn’t.

Mingyu walked out of the kitchen, smiling like the world was simple. A bottle of wine in one hand, two glasses clinking in the other.

He wasn’t even looking at Wonwoo when he spoke.

“Oh, Wonwoo hyung…”

That voice. So casual. So unaware.

You stood up beside the couch, lip gloss freshly applied, that same soft glow on your face. You looked radiant. You looked happy. You looked like you belonged—with someone who wasn’t him.

Mingyu stepped closer, smiled, so oblivious.

“Meet my girlfriend,” he said. "Y/n"

.

.

.

And just like that, the air was knocked out of Wonwoo’s lungs.

You turned toward him, smile gentle, completely unaware of the storm behind his eyes.

And all he could do… was stand there. Silent. Shattered. Smiling back, because what else could he do?

_______