What you didn't know — what you couldn’t have known was that it wasn’t real. The flush you felt in your skin was real. The sticky sweat that spread over your bed sheets when you tossed and turned was real. The heat of it; the perceptible and tactile fire that spread through your veins felt so physical and solid, you had no way of knowing that this wasn’t real. 

Slim fingers. 

Fleshy thighs. 

Hip bones beneath well worn denim. 

Buttons popping with the barest of effort. 

And the lips. Oh God, the softness of those lips as they traveled over your very hot skin. You could feel it all. 

You never saw his face; you hadn’t needed to. You could smell him everywhere. You knew who this was. You’d know him with your eyes blinded; you’d know him anywhere.

At first you turned away. At first you resisted, but as the fire spread through you, you found yourself turning into him, searching for him, seeking out that connection to fuel the heat.

Why was this happening? Why did you rejoice in it? The longing and the desire had simply become too much for you to deny and now you were the one pulling him into you. You were the one who wrapped your legs around that slim waist and constricted and those sounds from his chest they were...they were…

Those sounds from his mouth, they were—

Screaming.

Laughing.

‘AH HA HA HA AH — YES!’ Rough staccato laughter; so, so loud — so damn loud, it ripped and it tore at your mind and it yanked you up so roughly; up so fast you felt your entire body shaking if not completely falling apart with the speed at which you were pulled. 

You opened your eyes into pitch blackness. Your vision took only a second to adjust and you could make out the sliver of dim light from the street lamp outside that peeked through the very top of your curtains. 

On your nightstand, pale yellow squared numbers taunted you with 03:42 AM and covering your entire body where you laid on your once so welcoming bed was your bunched up and sweaty comforter. It was heavy. It was everywhere. You felt suffocated by it. Why was it so hard to breathe?

Your comforter. You purchased it because it was pretty. It fit in perfectly with your room decor and it was pale in color enough that the brightly colored stuffed animals you set atop stood out and complimented the subtle pattern. It made you feel at home. 

It used to make you feel at home. Now it was making you feel a very different sort of way. Hot and sweaty and flushed all over and now, very mad about all of it. 

You could still feel that shaking deep inside your chest and you laid your palm over your forehead to feel for a fever. You swear you could feel the tremble happening inside, though it was fading now, you were sure you still felt that shaking inside of your body. 

It was beginning to settle.

You felt another rumble, paired with a loud booming sound that vibrated and shook your wall. The glass of your window quaked and the pale yellow numbers on your nightstand danced in your vision. 

‘HAHAHA! I got you !’

03:44 AM

Speakers. Surround sound. Heavy bass. An impressive system at any other time of the day when the sun was out. But right now? When you had been peacefully asleep; when you had been dreaming? Earth shattering booms. Deafening shouts of victory from the idiot with every new explosion that rattled your bones. 

You sat up and the comforter stuck to your sweaty skin. It wasn’t even hot in this room, yet this thing clung to you like it was coated in glue. Nearly four in the ing morning. 

You had to work tomorrow. It was the one day a month when you were required to report to the office in person for the staff meeting. And here you were being ripped awake by such a disturbing commotion and goddammit this blanket was hot. 

This … thing. 

This thing that brought with it images of him and images of, oh god, images of his fingertips and his lips and his, oh god, oh no. No, please not that. Anything but that. Of all the things that were absolutely off limits. Of all the situations that could never happen. Horror. An overwhelming horror; it tasted of shame.

No, no, no, no. 

How could this have happened? How could those images be burning into the backs of your eyes? The more your overtired mind tried to make sense of it, the less sense this made. You looked down at the blanket, searching for answers. 

Had something about this blanket been ruined? 

Was it’s once comforting and innocent essence somehow completely changed on a molecular level and was it now….tainted forever? Because of him? Because of what he brought into your room and depravedly rubbed all over it? 

You pushed it away with both hands reaching you pushed and pushed until it sunk down off the foot of your bed and the cool air blew over your hot bare legs. Even the cool air did little to calm the irritation you felt all over your body. It did nothing to cool you off. Your legs were made of pure fire. 

He did this. You were sure of it. He brought this evil on you. And now with his room shaking howling laughter you were wide awake and angry at almost 4 am when you had work in the morning; you had to be worth a damn in the morning. 

You were up on angry legs with rage pushing you forward and you reached down for the blanket that you didn't even want in your room anymore for all it represented. You hauled it with both hands and took two steps forward toward your closed bedroom door when your forward progress took a quick and southward dive and you fell, tripped up by the wretched blanket when you stepped on a corner instead of on your soft rug. 

You could feel the burn on your kneecaps where you collided with the hard floor. You could feel a sting on your left knee that hit the hardest but burned into the carpet and you grunted through the pain to quickly lift yourself back up and gather every other bit of hanging blanket securely inside your arms. 

The trek through the living room at such an ungodly hour when every living breathing cell in your body would have rather been asleep felt absolutely crazed. You reached his door, turned the knob just enough for the latch to disengage and with your entire being hurled that motherer open and sent it flying. 

Oh and it flew. It hit the wall and bounced back hard, bouncing back quickly against your arms that held on securely to the blanket. The noise was shocking. It was a vindicating battle cry. 

The commotion startled him. His hands were on the keyboard and a pair of headphones atop of his head and for WHAT, you could hear every single thing happening on his screen in mind deafening stereo surround sound filling up the whole room. You could hear it clearly from your own room and from inside this room it sounded like you were living inside of the subwoofers themselves. 

Your rage was somehow louder and it made him spin toward the motion and sound of you at his doorway with a shriek of surprise. His eyes were saucers and his mouth flew open; an unchewed bite of some pink sausage fell out and bounced off his knee onto the floor below his sock covered feet and he was only screaming for a second before he was cursing. 

“. Jesus. . Ohh my God, ing Hell, oh my heart. Oh it hurts. Oh Christ I’m dying.”  He was clutching at his chest. His headphones, the useless things slipped off his head and toppled down his shoulder following the sausage chunk and you could see them fall all the way down to the floor. The cord, which had not been plugged in quickly followed and pooled into a puddle at his feet. 

“Do you have any idea ... what time it is?” Your voice sounded foreign to your ears. Had you always sounded so burly? You felt like an angry mountain lion ready to go in for the kill. 

His eyes were closed up tight and he inhaled a deep breath before cracking them open to look at you through the heavy panicked breaths. 

“Ohhh,” he moaned as his breathing calmed and the shock faded with each slow breath he took. “Ohhhhh,” he repeated softer, to himself. 

“Ohhh…” this time he was looking at you and his eyebrows furrowed together as he did it. “Oh—whoa, whoa, whoa, you look….super ing crazy right now. What is happening?” 

His hands were up in confusion; in defense, and you were moving forward taking the stupid blanket and roughly shoving it toward him you hurled it right at his face and watched it hit as hard as a soft cottony blanket could manage to hit — it was more of a gentle nudge really, and then it fell down, taking his stupid glasses off his face and burrying them somewhere within the fluff where the blanket fell. 

He was too confused to catch it. He had absolutely no idea what he had done to defile and destroy the sacred sanctity of your sleep. 

He had no idea. 

“What are you doing with this? Why are you doing this? Why are you giving me your blanket? Where are your pants? Is your leg bleeding? Tell me what is happening!” 

“You!” You hurled a finger up and pointed it in his face. His eyes widened, crossed to look at the finger that clearly accused him of something just off the end of his nose and then looked back into your face in utter confusion. 

“You—“ you inhaled to survive and your mouth hung open as the words, the accusations you had for him, the truth of what he had done to you, what he really hadn’t done, but what you were certain you felt happening in your sleep, in that dream, those words they stopped entirely as you looked at his face. His very real face, the very real pink cheeks and confused eyes of your roommate Byun Baekhyun who had absolutely no idea that you had just been disturbed during and then disturbed by a vivid and confusing dream about him. 

Oh god. 

You couldn’t say that. 

You would rather be dead right here than say those words with your own mouth.

This had never happened before. He was a real person, you had never experienced a dream like that involving a real person. Not someone you knew like you knew Baekhyun. Not someone you lived with and had to keep on living with. The more you replayed the words that refused to come out of your mouth inside your head the more your sanity slowly returned to your mind. 

“Your headphones are not plugged in.” You shook your finger in his face. Using every bit of anger you had built up on the walk across the living room, every bit of uncomfortable sweaty stinging ick you felt all over your whole body about the whole thing and you shot those death lasers out of your eyeballs and you focused them right on his face, right there in the center of his stupid forehead. That’s where you put it. That’s where you glared and that’s where you wished every little bit of comeuppance that he had coming to him would land. Right there on that head. 

“Wha?” He said and his stupid pink lips frowned downward into a pout. Against your will, you watched them as they moved and then quickly focused your pointing anger back up onto the center of his forehead. It took a lot. 

He was looking down at his feet and reached through the big fluffy blanket that covered him from the waist down to the floor to find the headphones that had landed somewhere within it all.

He pulled them up and kept pulling, following the cord until he reached the end and he held the male end of his headphones with his fingertips as he looked down at them with a scoff and a small laugh. 

“Oh ,” he chuckled to himself, “huh...would you look at that?” As if absolutely nothing at all mattered in the world and this was just a humorous little hiccup in his day. At 4 am on a work day. 

The audacity of the man. The absolute shameless audacity. 

“Would you look at that?!?” The volume of your own voice surprised you. You screamed it. Right at the top of your lungs and he jumped in his seat, closed his eyes up tight and clutched at his chest again with a pained wince on that face. Immediately after you’d done it you felt a pang inside. Was your anger really caused by being awoken? What were you really so damn mad about here? 

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered to himself when his eyes opened again. 

Then he directed them at you with his eyebrows furrowed and that glare right on your face.

“Jesus. Christ. Woman.” he half spoke again with his eyes on you and his face pointing directly at yours with each new word he spoke. You felt unjustly rebuked. The seriousness on his voice closed up your gaping mouth and you pulled your head back. Part of you wanted to grab his hair and pull it, demanding reparations and apologies and justice for his many 4 AM crimes against you. 

“I mean...Jesus. Christ.” His head nodded to emphasize just how ridiculous he was now finding your current outburst and you felt the heaviness deep inside your arms as you sagged on your feet and wanted to give up your fight against gravity. Part of you knew you were justified in your outrage. How could you be losing this fight so easily to him? Maybe...maybe you were just tired. 

“I’m just...so tired, Baek.” Your complaint came out as a sad little whine and your head fell back as you closed up your eyes. Suddenly feeling like you could drop right here at his feet and sleep curled up in your wretched comforter. 

He must have gotten up. You could feel his arms on your shoulders and you were steered somewhere within his room. Your legs didn’t feel like moving but there were some calming circles being rubbed on your back that felt too nice to resist. 

“I’ll turn it off, Bug. You can sleep, I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“I was sleeping so nicely.” You mumbled and you were in a bed that didn’t smell like you. “I was dreaming.” All at once the memory and that smell brought back a strange yet familiar feeling. 

“Was it a good dream?” His voice sounded far away. 

“Mhmm,” you hummed and you let yourself drift. You let yourself curl into the mattress that you were laid over and gave in to an unimaginable comfort that pulled you under too easily. 

If he had any more questions you did not know, but something called your sleepy mind back for one more word. Something asked perhaps. You couldn’t be sure what it was, only your single word response slipped from your lips. 

“You,” you told the questions, before disappearing entirely.

Your alarm clock was ringing. It was a sufferingly familiar sound that could rip you awake from the deepest sleeps. Today it sounded far away, but that tune was so ingrained into your mind that you immediately opened your eyes and stuck a hand out to look for your phone to stop it. 

Only your hand reached and found nothing. You moved further and bumped against something hard like a table that should not have been there. 

“Mmm,” a soft moan sounded out from somewhere below and when you finally opened your eyes and searched your ceiling, the layout was definitely different.

This was not your room. 

This was not your bed. 

“Don't you work today?” You followed the sound of his voice and found it coming from somewhere curled up on the floor beside the bed underneath your comforter. The one you’d abandoned last night. The memories flooded in an instant. 

“Yeah. I’m getting up. You can have your bed back, Peanut.” 

Peeling back his blankets for a quick escape you saw your own bare shins; knees; thighs; all the way up to your underwear. You’d fallen asleep with only a t-shirt on last night. But there was a new addition. You saw a flesh colored bandage stuck to your knee with a brown-red stain in the center of the gauze pad. You paused to look down at it, a thousand conflicting inclinations running through you in a single breath and not a spare minute to dwell on any of them because your alarm was still ringing and Baekhyun had turned over and peeked his face out from under your blanket.

You could not explain the urgency to leave. You freely loitered near him and around him co