“I can’t believe you’re doing this again.”

“What thing?”

“That thing again!”

“Kyungsoo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He leaned back on his seat and crossed his arms over his chest after putting the movie on pause, leaving the main character frozen on the screen with a very stupid expression on his face.

“I’ve told you and I’ve tried to teach you so many times!” He said with a sigh. “Isn’t there anything that looks wrong to you?”

She looked around the room blankly before noticing his raised eyebrows and his gazed fixed in her plate. She realized what was bugging him right in the moment she lowered her eyes to look at her food.

“Are you serious?” Her voice sounded more high-pitched than usual.

“I’ve taught you many times how to do it!”

“I don’t need you to teach me how to eat a damn burrito, Kyungsoo!”

“But if you folded it correctly, you wouldn’t have the filling everywhere in the plate. If you folded the down part of the tortilla first like…” He sat up and tried to reach for her food, but she grabbed the plate first so he couldn’t reach it.

“Didn’t your mama tell you not to play with food? Especially if it’s not your food? Besides, what gives you the right to think my way of folding it is wrong and yours is right, uh?”

He ignored her raised eyebrow and deadpanned her.

“I make barely any mess and you have food everywhere, that’s how I know.”

She shrugged, and still holding her plate far from her boyfriend’s reach, she took a bite out of her messily wrapped burrito.

“It’s not like it’s your turn to do the dishes anyway,” she smiled with superiority.

******

“I think it’s the third time we cross this specific traffic circle…”

His sigh was very audible in the limited space inside the car.

“I swear to you this time I looked up the route before leaving.”

“Yeah, but that’s no use if you don’t follow the directions!”

She could swear this happened every time he wanted to drive them somewhere he’d never been before. After some time driving, he decided the directions the GPS navigator weren’t correct and therefore, he started taking the ways that seemed the most convenient to his own criteria.

“What’s even the point of all this fine technology your super job allows you to buy if you won’t pay attention to it!?”

“But we should’ve arrived already, I don’t know what’s the problem…” Kyungsoo looked at the next sign in confusion, as none of the names where the one he was looking for. “Google maps said we’d be there in an hour and a half, and we’ve been here for two hours already…”

“Maybe it has something to do with the time you were supposed to turn left but turned right instead. Just maybe, but who knows…”

She looked out of the window in annoyance as Kyungsoo stopped the car in the side of the road.

“Get down. It’s your turn to drive now.”

******

“Kyungsoo,” she left her book open upside down over her bed side table and turned around to face his boyfriend.

He was looking at the TV on the other side of the room as he frantically pressed the buttons on his controller, but it was obvious his character would not live much longer. She pulled from his sleeve to attract his attention, which made him finally lose all concentration and left his character to die in a quite gruesome way while he looked in defeat with a frown on his forehead.

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry you lost”

“I was already loosing before you stepped in.” Kyungsoo turned off the TV and laid down in the bed, which was the moment she used to cuddle closer to his boyfriend and lean her head over his shoulder.

“What did you want to talk about then?” He asked as he wrapped his arm around her.

“I was thinking about the names I’d give my children.”

“Oh. That’s…early. Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah! It is! I didn’t mean that, I was just wondering.”

“Oh, okay.” He smiled down at her. “I’d like to have my children with you.”

She smiled and pressed a quick peck in his full lips.

“So what were the conclusions?”

“You’re going to laugh if I tell you.”

“Give it a try, you may be surprised.”

“I like Romeo if it’s a boy and Ophelia if it’s a girl…”

Kyungsoo stayed silent for the next minute, looking down at his own bare feet.

“My love, I know you adore your Shakespeare, but you can’t name our children like that.”

“Why not?” She sat up on the bed with outrage in her face. “Those are classical and very beautiful names. David Beckham’s son is called Romeo.”

“But Beckham is a celebrity, he can get away with that kind of stuff.”

“Do Kyungsoo, you are a celebrity as well.”

“I know, but I’ve never been so extravagant!”

Silence fell down once again in the room as they were both lost in their own thoughts.

“Romeo is more or less acceptable, but Ophelia…”

“What?”

“It’s a super ugly name.”

“Oh my god, how dare you! She’s one of my favourite characters! She’s portrayed in a very skilful way and…”

“I know, I’m not questioning Shakespeare ability. It’s just the name, it’s awful!”

She crossed her arms and huffed, looking like a three year old who had had a toy taken away.

“Besides, think about it this way. Things are already hard enough for kids at schools, we don’t want to give other kids reasons to pick on them, right?”

“Maybe the other parents should teach their kids that picking on people is plain wrong.”

“We agree on that, love.” He grabbed one of her hands to kiss it. “But that’s not something that can be fixed in such short time, so it’s kind of our responsibility to shield our kids, right?”

“I guess.”

“Come on,” he pulled from her arm to make her lay down again. “I’m sure there’s plenty of more normal names that you love as well.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I love your name.” He smiled at her.

“I do not agree with repetition of names inside the same household. Imagine you’d call out my name one day and both of us answered at the same time. Too confusing.”

“You think too much.” He answered as he started kissing the back of her neck. “In my opinion, you need me to help you relax…”

She giggled and reached out to the side to turn off the light.

Some time later, his voice filled the room again.

“Was this all just wondering or was it your twisted way of telling me you’re pregnant?”

“Geez, Kyungsoo, you’re the one who needs to relax now!”

******

“Did you eat them?” Kyungsoo shook the open bag of bugles in front of his girlfriend, who diverted her attention from the screen of her laptop for a secong.

“Ah, yeah. I was super hungry when I got home earlier.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s just a bag of bugles, it’s no big deal. There are still some left, you can eat those.”

He grunted all the way back to his spot in the sofa.

“I can believe it.”

His voice filled with dismay caught her attention and made her look away from her work again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything is wrong!”

“Quit playing, Kyungsoo!”

He slowly raised his hands to show her. Each finger had a bugle perfectly fitting around the tip of it, making it look as if he was wearing very long and spiky, orange fake nails. It would have been a perfect manicure had it not been for the last finger, the pinky finger of his left hand, which was empty.

“I can’t believe you ate everything and didn’t even leave enough for my witch nails.” He looked at her with tears that threatened to fall from his eyes. This seemed very alarming until she remembered he was an actor too. “I don’t know if I’m even going to be able to forgive you for this affront.”

She laughed as he lowered his head and started fake crying.

“I swear you’re such a kid sometimes.”

She stood up from her spot and sat back down next to him, took his right hand and brought it to , so she could catch the chip from his right pinky finger, as he looked on.

“Now they’re even. You can pretend this witch just has four fingers.” Before going back to her writing, she kissed his lips. “Don’t you worry, baby, I’ll get you one of the big bags tomorrow.”

******

“I know you’re dying to say something.”

Kyungsoo was sitting on the kitchen countertop, moving his legs rhythmically and observing as she struggled with the ingredients and quantities. The atmosphere in the kitchen was very hot, because she had turned the oven on half an hour ago, despite not actually having anything inside to roast. Her hair had been pulled up in a bun, but there were droplets of sweat in her forehead and along her neck.

Last night at dinner time she had complained about some aspect of the cooking Kyungsoo was usually the one in charge of, which had led to almost an hour of bickering that ended up in her having to cook for the whole next day. He had put up stoically with the burnt toasts at breakfast time and had been lucky at lunch, as her mother had invited them for the day. But at dinner time there was no escaping for her, and he had been biting down his tongue to avoid criticising her ways in the kitchen. Rather, the lack of them.

“Come one,” she teased. “What am I doing wrong?”

She smiled sweetly at her.

“That’s way too much kimchi for two.”

“I thought you liked kimchi.”

“I do and I can take a good amount of it, but it’s going to melt your mouth off.”

“You’re exaggerating. It’ll be fine.”

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he shrugged.

Later, after they had set the table and were sitting down in their spot, they both took the first bite at the same time. They chewed in silence for a minute and raised their eyes up to smile at each other. They’d already eaten half of the plates when Kyungsoo spoke again.

“If you keep pretending your mouth is not burning like hell you’re going to have smoke coming out of your ears.”

“Oh my god,” was her only response before she jumped off the chair and run to the kitchen to take big gulps out of the milk bottle.

She came back to him with the bottle on one hand and taking bites of a piece of bread she was holding in the other. Meanwhile, Kyungsoo was still eating normally.

“I don’t get what went wrong…” she managed to let out with full of bread.

“Did you follow the recipe I gave you?”

“I did, but…”

“Are you sure?”

“Kyungsoo, I am! I can read a simple recipe!”

“I’d double check, just in case…” he answered calmly.

When she came back again from the kitchen after having taken a second look at the recipe, her eyes were down and she was pouting. The vision of her defeat made Kyungsoo chuckle.

“I messed up the amount of kimchi with the amount of onion, which was next in the list. I can’t believe it…”

“I know.”

“How are you still eating that? It’s unedible!”

“I like spicy foods.”

“So does that mean I win?”

Kyungsoo’s lips looked a bit more swollen than usual when he wiped his mouth with the napkin.

“Let’s call it a draw. You’re unable to follow a recipe, but I enjoyed the result either way.”

She sat on his knees and put her arms around his neck, happily.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to celebrate!” He raised his finger to stop her before she could even start. “And you can’t complain about my food anymore. You have to admit all my stuff is just better than this.”

******

“Sit down here and wait for me, okay? I won’t take very long!”

It had been a couple of very intense weeks for Kyungsoo at work, full of rehearsals and recordings, he even had to spend some days traveling with the group for a TV program shooting in Japan. She was eager for him to come back so they could spend some time together and she had prepared accordingly. She had moved the big armchair that usually dwelled in the living room to their bed room, which looked more organized than usual. She had lighted up some scented candles, so the lightning in the room was dim and warm and the air smelled floral and fresh.

She stepped into the bathroom next to their bedroom, where she was keeping a bag with the impulse buy she had made that same morning at a lingerie shop. She took off her clothes and slipped into the lacy ensemble; put on perfume in strategic spots, so he could perceive the scent but not taste it by accident; and applied a shade of red lipstick that complimented her skin. She knew how arousing it was for him to see the marks of her kisses scattered all over his body. After messing her hair just a little bit more and taking a deep breath, she came out of the bathroom and walked up quietly to the back of the armchair, whispering whatever nasty words came to her mind in that moment.

She circled the armchair to face his boyfriend, smiling, and to find him there, the exact same position she had placed him in, asleep like a log.

“Kyungsoo!” She grabbed one of the smaller pillows and threw it at his face. “I can’t believe you fell asleep! What did I do all this for?”

Kyungsoo woke up with a confused expression in his face and looked around the room before rubbing his eyes. When he came to his senses, he found his rather upset girlfriend sitting down at the end of the bed, all her features pointing down.

“Oh, my love, I’m so sorry.” He kneeled down between her legs to hug her and put his head down over her s. “I’m sorry I fell asleep, it’s just been very long days and I was very tired.”

“I wanted to surprise you…” she said on the verge of tears.

“I know, I’m sorry. So so sorry.” He apologized profusely as he laid her down on the bed and started leaving soft kisses all over her cleavage and belly. “I was dying to be here, back home with you. You’re so y, you’re driving me crazy.” He stopped to let his eyes roam all over her body. “Are those new? I don’t remember them.”

She nodded with a small smile on her lips.

“It’s beautiful and fits you perfectly. Please, wear it often. But you know I like you even more when you’re not wearing anything at all.”

She laughed loudly and wrapped her legs around his waist.

“You’re good at sweet-talking,” she said before pushing to take him off her so she could straddle his hips on the top. “But that doesn’t pay for the fact that you fell asleep. I’m going to have to punish you.” Now it was her kissing down his body and nibbling at his earlobe, making him squirm. “I love you either way.”

“I love you too.” His hands were caressing all her skin until she made him stop by pinning them both over his head. “And I’ll take any punishment you consider necessary.”