Lacy Euphoria

His Favorite Girl/Part Two: Becoming Real to Him

Originally published on AO3.

🔞 Adults 18+. MDNI. Fictional fanwork using names fictitiously for entertainment. Not real, endorsed, affiliated, or a claim of real events. All romantic and sexual content is between consenting adults. Please consume fiction with media literacy intact.

You try to give Wynter normal.

That is the lie you tell yourself while you sit across from her in a corner booth at a small brunch place with too many plants hanging from the ceiling and sunlight cutting clean squares across the table. The room smells like coffee, butter, citrus, and expensive flowers arranged in small glass jars. Her sunglasses are pushed up into her hair. Your phone is face up beside your water glass, exactly where it is supposed to be, and hers is somewhere in her bag because she has always been better at pretending the world can wait.

For a while, it almost works.

You let her talk about the drummer without flinching. She tells you, with too much pride and not enough shame, that he texts like a man who has never been told no by anyone with a pulse, and you laugh into your coffee because she says it with her mouth curved around the straw, one eyebrow lifted, like she is daring the entire restaurant to ask why she looks so pleased with herself. She asks if your eggs are cold because you keep pushing them around instead of eating them, and when you tell her you are building suspense, she reaches across the table and steals a potato from your plate.

This is what you missed while hiding. Not the simplicity, because nothing with Wynter has ever been simple. The shorthand. The way she can wound you and feed you in the same hour. The way her foot hooks lightly around your ankle beneath the table as if her body knows how to keep you close even when her mouth is still deciding what you deserve.

Then the song changes.

It is not “Cash Money.” That would be too obvious, too cruel, too perfectly timed for a life that has never been polite enough to warn you before embarrassing you. It is another track from the same night, something with the same dark bassline, the same heavy pulse, the same kind of voice slipping through the restaurant speakers low enough that nobody else seems to notice. But your body notices before your mind can protect you from it.

Your hand stills around the fork.

Your throat tightens.

The booth, the plants, the coffee, the warmth of Wynter’s foot against your ankle, all of it shifts around the sudden memory of Mingi onstage with sweat at his throat and hunger in his eyes, looking out into a room full of people like the line was meant for everyone until it landed on you.

Wynter stops chewing.

You know she sees it. You know before you even look at her because your body has become a traitor with excellent timing. You force your fingers to move, cut into your eggs like they have personally offended you, and try to return to the moment too quickly.

She lets you try.

That is worse.

She watches you for three full seconds, then reaches for her coffee, stirring nothing into it because she only wants something to do with her hand. “There he is,” she says, quiet enough that the people at the next table will not hear.

You look up too fast. “He is not here.”

“I know.” She takes a sip, eyes never leaving your face. “That is the problem.”

The fork rests uselessly in your hand. “I did not mean to do that.”

“To miss him?” she asks, setting the cup down with care. “Or to let me see it?”

Your face warms. “Both.”

Her mouth tightens, but it is not anger. Not exactly. It is the ache of someone watching the truth happen in real time and deciding not to punish you for proving her right. Beneath the table, her foot stays around your ankle. She could pull away. She does not.

“I am not asking you to stop wanting him,” she says, dragging one finger through the condensation on her water glass. “I am asking you to stop leaving me alone with it when you do.”

The room keeps moving around you. Forks against plates. Someone laughing near the window. The song slipping into another track. Your phone still face up beside your glass, blank and silent because Mingi is not even the one who interrupted this. Your own longing did that for him.

“I do not know how to want him in front of you without making you feel smaller,” you say.

“Then stop trying to make it invisible.” Her voice does not rise. It does not have to. “I don’t do that with the drummer. I tell you everything about him. You can do the same about him too.”

You stare at her, and the simplicity of it makes your chest hurt. “I miss him.”

Her eyes flicker. There it is. The hurt. The real one. Not jealousy in the easy, ugly way people like to flatten things. Something more complicated, because she loves you enough to hear the truth and human enough for the truth to sting.

“Good,” she says after a moment, and the word is rough around the edges. “That sounded like you.”

“I am sorry.”

“I know.” She reaches for another potato from your plate, because apparently emotional devastation does not affect her appetite. “Eat something before you go.”

You blink. “Before I go where?”

She gives you a look so tired and sharp it almost feels like home. “Do not insult me after I just gave a very moving speech about invisible things.”

Your stomach flips. “You want me to go to him?”

“No,” she says, easy and matter-of-fact, like she’s correcting something small instead of rewriting the whole moment. “I just want you to stop sitting here pretending you are not counting the minutes until you can. There is a difference.”

You look down at the table, at your phone, at the reflection of light on the screen. “I do not want to leave you.”

“You already left for a second when the song changed.” Her foot tightens once around your ankle before she lets go. “At least this way, you can come back honestly.”

The breath you take does not feel big enough. “What does honestly mean here?”

“It means you text him in front of me. It means you do not make me drag the truth out of your face. It means when you come back, you do not float through my door pretending you were not somewhere that touched you. It means we are in an open relationship, whether you say his name out loud or not, and you do not get to act like this is something strange just because you have been hiding him behind privacy. I already know now.” She reaches for her sunglasses and pulls them down from her hair, hiding her eyes before the sentence can cost her too much. “And it means he does not get to be careless just because I am being generous.”

“He will not.”

“I know he will not.” She looks toward the window, jaw tight. “That is the irritating part.”

You almost laugh, but it comes out too soft. You pick up the phone with both hands like it weighs more than it should, and you text Mingi before courage can dissolve into guilt. You tell him you miss him. You tell him you are with Wynter, that she knows you are texting, that you are not sneaking away from her. You ask if he is alone.

The reply comes while Wynter is tearing a napkin into careful little pieces beside her plate.

Yes. Are you okay?

You show her the screen without being asked. She reads it, then nods toward your thumbs. “Answer him.”

You type that you are okay, just not doing a good job pretending you do not want to see him, and Wynter makes a sound that is half laugh, half pain. “Very poetic. Very annoying. Send it.”

You send it.

His answer comes fast enough to make your pulse jump. He tells you to come if you can do it without hurting her. He tells you not to come if leaving her feels like a lie. He tells you he wants you badly enough to be honest about both.

Wynter reads that one too. For a second, she says nothing. Then she pushes your plate closer to you with two fingers. “I hate him a little.”

“No, you do not.”

“I said a little.” Her voice is dry, but her mouth trembles before she steadies it. “Eat the potatoes.”

You eat the potatoes because arguing feels like the wrong kind of stupid. She pays half the bill even though you argue, rolls her eyes when you offer to walk her to her car, and lets you do it anyway. Outside, the air is warm and bright, rude in its indifference. She stands beside her car with one hand on the door and looks at you for a long moment through the tint of her sunglasses.

“You can miss him,” she says, quieter now that the street noise gives her somewhere to hide the softness. “You can want him. I am not asking you to amputate yourself for my comfort.”

Your throat closes.

“But when you come back to me,” she continues, reaching up to smooth her thumb beneath your eye, “come back with your whole face on. Do not make me greet the ghost version of you.”

You catch her wrist before she can pull away, pressing your mouth to her palm. “I love you.”

“I know.” Her thumb rests against your cheek. “Try like it.”

The words hurt because they are familiar and because she means them differently this time. You nod, and she lets you hold her hand one second longer before she gets in the car. She does not slam the door. She does not peel away like the street owes her drama. She checks her mirrors, puts on her seatbelt, and drives off like a woman choosing control because the alternative is breaking where you can see.

Only after her car disappears do you text Mingi that you are coming.

He sends you the address of the studio instead of the house.

That does something to you.

The house would have meant privacy. A bed. Morning rooms and breakfast light and the dangerous softness of domestic fantasy. The studio means work, restraint, soundproof walls, a place where public hunger gets made into something polished enough for strangers to consume. It means he has chosen somewhere private enough to hold you but not so intimate that it pretends this is simple.

By the time you arrive, your body feels like a live wire under your skin.

He opens the side door before you knock twice, one hand braced high on the frame, hair pushed back like he has been dragging his fingers through it. He is dressed too casually for the effect he has on you, dark pants, soft shirt, chain resting against his collarbone, eyes already on your mouth before he forces them back to your face.

For one second, neither of you speaks.

The hallway behind him is quiet. Dim. The kind of quiet that feels expensive because someone paid for the world not to interrupt it. You stand close enough to smell his cologne, clean skin, something warm underneath that makes your body remember every room of his house at once.

“You came,” he says, voice low.

“You told me to only come if it was honest.”

His jaw shifts. “Was it?”

You nod, though the answer shakes on the way out. “She knew I was coming.”

His eyes close for half a second. Relief crosses his face so quickly that it almost looks like pain. “Good.”

The word breaks something in the air between you. He steps back to let you in, but you barely make it past the door before he turns the lock and reaches for you. Not roughly. Not carelessly. He takes your face in both hands and stops with his mouth a breath from yours, eyes searching, always searching, always making permission feel like part of the hunger instead of a pause from it.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.

You answer by gripping his shirt and pulling him down.

The kiss is not careful after that. It is everything careful has been holding back. His mouth opens over yours with a sound that travels straight through your stomach, one hand sliding from your face to the back of your neck while the other finds your waist and pulls you against him. He kisses like he has been rationing himself and finally lost count, deep and hungry, tongue dragging against yours until your back meets the wall beside the door and your hands are in his hair.

“I missed you,” he says against your mouth, and the words come out rough enough to scrape.

“I know.”

He pulls back just enough to look at you, breathing hard. “No. I missed you. I have been trying to be good about it, and I hated every second.”

The laugh that leaves you breaks into a gasp when his mouth moves to your neck. “I missed you too.”

His hand tightens at your waist, but he does not move lower yet. Even with his mouth at your throat and his body hard against yours, he holds himself on the edge of the question. “And her?”

Your eyes burn because he asks. Because he remembers. Because the thing making this complicated is also the thing making him harder to walk away from. “She is hurt,” you say, fingers twisting in his shirt. “But she told me to stop disappearing when I want you.”

He lifts his head, eyes dark and serious now. “Then do not disappear.”

“I am right here.”

“With me,” he says, thumb dragging along your jaw. “And still honest with her.”

The words undo the last of your restraint. You kiss him hard, and this time when his hands move, they move with purpose. He walks you backward down the narrow hall toward the studio room, kissing you between steps, catching you when your heel clips the edge of the rug, laughing once against your mouth before the sound turns into something lower.

The studio door closes behind you with a soft seal that makes the silence feel intentional.

There is a couch against one wall, a console glowing with muted lights, a microphone behind glass, cables coiled neatly near the floor. Work lives here. Discipline lives here. So does the kind of restraint that looks holy until it snaps.

He snaps first.

He pulls you back into him before you can take in the room, hands sliding beneath your shirt, palms hot against your skin. “Tell me to slow down,” he says against your mouth, even as his fingers find the clasp of your bra.

“Do not slow down.”

His breath leaves him hard. “Say it again.”

“Do not slow down.”

The clasp gives beneath his fingers. Your shirt follows, then his, fabric dropped somewhere between the door and the couch while his mouth returns to your throat, your shoulder, the top of your breast. He does not worship slowly today. He does not tease like there is time to waste. He kisses you like missing you made him angry at every wall between you, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, hands learning your body again as if the memory was not enough to survive on.

You reach for his belt, and his hips press forward before he catches himself. “Wait,” he says, voice wrecked, hand closing over yours.

You go still immediately. “What?”

His forehead drops to yours. “I need to hear you say you are not using me to outrun what hurts.”

The question should cool the room.

It does not.

It makes you want him worse because he could have ignored the wound and still had your body. He does not. He stands there half undressed, breathing hard, hard under your hand, and still asks where your heart is before taking what your body is offering.

“I am not outrunning it,” you say, touching his face. “I am inside it. I want you anyway.”

His eyes search yours for another beat, then his control breaks in a quieter, more dangerous way. “Then I need you on that couch.”

You move before the shiver finishes traveling through you.

He follows, lowering you onto the cushions and coming down over you with one knee between your thighs. The couch is leather, cool beneath your back, and his body is hot above you, all restrained strength and shaking hands. He kisses down your chest, takes one nipple into his mouth while his hand works open your pants, and the first brush of his fingers beneath your underwear makes your hips lift hard enough to make him curse against your skin.

“You are already wet,” he says, voice low, not smug, almost ruined.

“I told you I missed you.”

He looks up at you from between your breasts, eyes dark. “I am going to remember you said that.”

“You remember everything.”

“Only what matters,” he says, and slides his hand between your thighs.

Your head falls back against the couch as his fingers part you, slow for only a second before need overtakes patience. He touches your clit with the kind of pressure that makes your whole body jerk, then lowers his mouth to your stomach while his fingers work you in tight circles. You grip his shoulder, nails pressing in, and he watches your face like he is trying to memorize the exact moment relief becomes pleasure.

“Look at me,” he says, and because it is him, because he asks like staying present is not optional, you do.

His fingers slide lower, gathering wetness, then push inside you two at once. The stretch punches a sound out of you, and his jaw tightens as your body pulls him in. He moves slowly at first, thumb circling your clit while his fingers curl deep, and every stroke feels like an apology neither of you can say without ruining the rhythm.

“You feel like you have been waiting,” he says, voice rough.

“I have.”

“So have I.”

He kisses you then, swallowing the sound you make when his fingers move faster. His body presses yours into the couch, his chain cold against your chest, his breath hot in your mouth. You can feel how hard he is through the fabric still between you, and when you reach down again, he lets you this time. Your palm closes around him through his pants, and the sound that leaves him is enough to make your thighs shake.

He pulls his fingers from you only long enough to strip you bare from the waist down. His pants follow, then the rest of what separates him from you, and the sight of him standing between your open thighs makes the whole room tilt. He reaches for protection from a drawer near the couch, hands steady only because he forces them to be, and you watch him roll it on with your heart beating in places it has no business beating.

When he comes back over you, he does not push in right away. He braces one hand beside your head, the other on your thigh, and looks at you like the room is asking a question.

“Yes,” you say before he can.

His mouth brushes yours. “Still yes?”

You wrap one leg around his hip and pull him closer. “Still yes.”

He enters you slowly enough to make you feel every inch, and the first stretch steals the breath from both of you. His forehead drops to yours. His eyes close. For a moment, he does not move at all. He just stays there, buried deep, shaking slightly over you like the effort not to lose himself is taking everything he has.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and the word sounds almost helpless.

You touch the back of his neck. “Move.”

He does.

The first thrust is careful. The second is not. He drives into you with a sound that breaks against your mouth, and your body opens around him so fast it almost scares you. The couch shifts beneath you. Your hands clutch at his back. His hips find a rhythm that is deep and hard and still somehow attentive, like even losing control has not made him stop listening.

“You feel so good,” he says against your jaw, voice ragged. “I thought about this too much.”

“About fucking me?”

“About being allowed to.” His hand slides under your thigh, lifting it higher around his waist, changing the angle until he hits something inside you that makes your mouth fall open. “About touching you and knowing you did not have to hide me to get here.”

That line breaks through the heat and lands somewhere deeper. Your eyes sting, but then he thrusts again, harder, and the feeling burns the thought apart before it can become tears. “Do not stop.”

“I am not stopping.” His mouth drags over yours. “Not unless you tell me to.”

You shake your head, clinging to him as he fucks you into the couch, each thrust pushing the air from your lungs, each drag back making your body chase him. He watches you between kisses, forehead damp, jaw tight, eyes dark with hunger and restraint fighting for the same space. One hand slips between you, his thumb finding your clit, and the added pressure makes your body seize around him.

“There,” he says, voice low and wrecked. “That is it.”

You hate how much you love when he hears your body before you can explain it. You hate how seen you feel with his cock inside you and his eyes on your face like every reaction matters. You hate that wanting him honestly does not make wanting him safer.

You come with your fingers locked behind his neck, your body tightening around him so hard his rhythm breaks. He curses into your mouth, thrusting through it, drawing the pleasure out until you are shaking beneath him and trying to say his name without letting it become too loud in a room built to catch sound.

He follows seconds later, hips driving deep, body going rigid over yours as he comes with his face pressed into your neck. The sound he makes is low and broken, almost your name, almost a confession, and his weight settles carefully afterward, not crushing you, just enough to make you feel held in the ruin.

For a while, neither of you moves.

The studio lights blink softly near the console. His breath warms the side of your throat. Your heart keeps racing beneath his chest, and somewhere beyond the soundproof door, the world keeps existing like it has any right to.

He lifts his head first, hair falling slightly into his eyes, mouth swollen from yours. His thumb brushes your cheek, and the tenderness after the urgency almost hurts more than the sex. “Are you okay?”

You nod, then remember what Wynter told you. Do not make people drag truth out of your face. “I am okay,” you say, voice rough. “I am also going to miss you worse now.”

Something in his expression softens and tightens at the same time. “Me too.”

“You said you would wait for me to reach out.”

“I will.”

“You say that like it is easy.”

“It is not.” He kisses you once, slow and careful now. “But I meant what I said. I do not want to be the reason you leave any room that still needs you in it.”

You close your eyes because hearing it in person is worse. Better. Both. “She said when I come back, I need to come back with my whole face on.”

His mouth curves faintly against your cheek. “She sounds terrifying.”

“She is.”

“Good,” he says, and when you open your eyes, he is looking at you seriously again. “Someone should be, if I get careless.”

You touch his jaw, thumb catching against the warmth of his skin. “Do not get careless.”

“I will try not to.”

“No,” you say, and your voice steadies because this part matters too much to let him turn it into something soft. “Do not.”

He holds your gaze, then nods once. “I will not.”

You believe him as much as you can believe anyone while still tangled naked beneath him in a studio that smells like sex, leather, and the faint metallic heat of equipment. It is not enough to fix anything. It is enough to leave with.

When you finally dress, he does not make it theatrical. He helps you find your shirt. He fixes the twisted strap at your shoulder. He kisses your temple, then stops himself before kissing you again because both of you know one more could become ten. At the door, he takes your hand and holds it between both of his.

“Text me when you get back to her,” he says.

You look at him. “Not home?”

“To her,” he says. “Wherever the truth is waiting.”

Your throat tightens. “Okay.”

He opens the door for you, and this time, leaving does not feel like sneaking out. It feels like carrying something hot in both hands and hoping you do not drop it before you learn how to hold it.

Outside, you sit in your car for a minute with your phone in your lap. You do not text Wynter a polished version. You do not send something clean enough to hide inside.

You type, “I saw him. I missed him. I am coming back with my whole face on.”

Her reply comes while you are still parked outside the studio, hands shaking around the phone.

“Good. Bring food.”

You laugh so hard it almost becomes crying, then start the car.