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doomhands-jr · 2 years ago

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The Choreographer -- Pt 16.

The Final Chapter.

Pairings: Jungkook x Reader, Yoongi x Reader

Summary:

You were the assistant choreographer for BTS tasked with taking over for the lead while on tour. You'd sacrificed everything for this job, and you didn't want to risk it, but the temptation has proved to be too sweet.

Now you have to juggle the social, physical, and emotional consequences of your affairs. Jealousy between the members, social isolation, and potential feelings? No, that last one was not something you'd allow. You already had enough on your plate. You had to squash that down. But feelings demand to be felt. And you cannot run away forever.

________

How I dumped all my trauma into a single fanfic

Masterlist A/N: It's here! The final chapter! I can't believe it's taken so long, but honestly it was a journey for me too. Please let me know your thoughts at the end. Did you like how it ended, or would you have preferred something else? As always, thanks to everyone who has stuck with this story, even when they had to wait months between chapters. I appreciate each and every single one of you and I hope I did this story justice. Without further ado, _____

Jungkook kept his distance.

It had been a month since you’d left. You couldn’t remember a more difficult month. During the first few days, several people had tried to contact you. Hoseok tried first, then Namjoon and Jin. All to ask if you were okay. It was kind of them, but the messages sat in your inbox for weeks, unanswered. You’d asked Yoongi to pass on the message that you were fine, but you needed to take some time to yourself, which he did, dutifully.

Jimin reached out last week to tell you that he was sorry for anything he did that may have contributed. To him, you said honestly that you appreciated him reaching out, but you had no hard feelings towards him. He tried to ask you how you were, but you stopped responding.

How were you?

You supposed you were okay, in that you knew you were coping with everything the best you could and you were being as kind to yourself as possible, but at the same time, were you okay? What did okay mean?

You were surviving. And there was something to be said for that, but holy hell, were you in a lot of pain. Everything hurt, both physically and metaphorically. Your muscles were starting to atrophy. Your body was stiff from having spent the last month on the couch, and you didn’t have any plans in the near future to get off it. Your energy was at zero. You could do nothing. Accomplish nothing. Some days, even feeding yourself seemed almost impossible. Ramen and spoons of peanut butter were just about all you could make for yourself.

Most of the time, you’d order out. The containers piled up and you had no energy to clean them. No energy to wash yourself or your clothes. You felt horrible every time you had to leave the house because you knew how you must have smelled.

Worst of all, this was literally the best you could do. When you cried, you couldn’t tell if it was because you were processing what had happened, or because you felt completely incapable of pulling yourself together.

You remembered all the times you’d judged others for walking around looking unkempt, or for not getting up and working out, or for eating too much junk food, and here you were, doing all those things.

You wish you’d been a kinder person. Your whole life, you thought you’d been so nice. So holier-than-thou, but you’d actually just been an asshole.

No. You weren’t entirely an asshole. Yes, you had your struggles, but you’ve also achieved a lot, especially considering where you’d come from. Neither of your parents had shown up for you the way they should have, and you’ve had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps your entire life.

That had to count for something.

Yes, you’ve made your mistakes. Your moral compass hasn’t always pointed North, but god damn it, you were trying, and you had to give yourself credit for that.

And even though you weren’t capable of fixing everything right away, you knew you were going to try.

“Slow, measurable steps,” you told yourself. And you got up off the couch to fetch a spoon of peanut butter.

_____

From: Son

Sent: March 7th:

I don’t know what you’re going through, but I know it must have been bad for you to leave like this. Can you talk to me about what happened? I feel like it was my fault for putting you in that situation.

We don’t have to talk about what happened if you’re not ready. Just let me know if you’re okay. We’re friends first, colleagues second. Remember that.

The email had been sitting in your inbox for the last three weeks, gathering dust. Today, you were determined to respond. You’d typed up several half-responses before deleting them, finally settling on something simple.

Son,

I’m okay. Thanks for checking in. And thank you for everything else.

In time,

Rookie.

You’d forgotten the name he’d given you when you first started your internship, but it popped into your head as soon as you went to sign off. He’d only used it for a couple of months before he switched to your given name, but it was his way of establishing a rapport. At the time, it felt like teasing, but you realized eventually that it was his way of making you feel included.

You wished you could tell him more. You weren’t ready to talk about it. You hoped he’d understand.

It was Son. He’d give you the time you needed.

----

That was the last anyone other than Yoongi had tried to contact you. On the one hand, you were happy they respected your boundaries, but on the other hand, you missed them. Even if you couldn’t respond right now, knowing they cared enough to reach out had been comforting.

You got it, though. You didn’t have the capacity to be a good friend to them, or to anyone at the moment. And it was you who had walked out on them. That probably hurt a lot. They had every right to be angry with you for the way you had acted, and frankly, the thought that they might be angry with you motivated you to get better.

Rebuilding these friendships was going to have to be your responsibility. And you were determined to get make it right.

As soon as you made things right with yourself.

-------

*BZZZZZZZ*

The sound only half-registered in your sleep state, briefly rousing you before you fell back into deep slumber.

*BZZZZZZZZ*

It rang a second time, this time fully registering. You scrubbed a palm over your face and threw the blanket off you, simultaneously knocking last night’s empty takeout box off your couch and on to the floor to join the rest.

“Who is it?” you asked over the intercom.

“Yoongi. Let me up.” You pressed the button to unlock the front door, eager to see him but wholly unprepared for company. Groggy, you slumped over to your armchair, which held a pile of your clothes. Picking up a bathrobe to sniff it and determine it was clean enough, you wrapped it around yourself and tied it snugly in the middle.

Your apartment was in a very sorry state, you observed. You’d already been aware of that, but you were looking at it with a new lens, now that you had company.

Sheesh.

Take-out boxes littered the floor, the coffee table, and the sofa. Empty wine bottles and plastic cups were strewn about—clothes, tissues, candy wrappers, bags of chips, and an open jar of peanut butter with the spoon sticking out. Not to mention the layer of dust that had been gathering on almost every surface.

You heard a knock on the door.

“Just a minute!” You called, rushing to gather up as much of the trash as you could and stuff it into a bag. It was a mild improvement, but only just.

It had been almost three months since you’d last seen Yoongi. He’d visited once after coming back from the last leg of the tour, but shortly after, he embarked on a “creativity journey,” he called it. He’d been traveling around, looking for inspiration for his music and collaborating with artists all over the world.

You opened the door and greeted him with a hug.

He wrinkled his nose after pulling away. “Really?” you said. “I thought for sure this was clean.”

“I don’t think you can smell yourself anymore, babe.”

“Fair enough,” you said. “I don’t think I have anything clean. Mind if I do laundry while you visit.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

You grabbed a trash bag (all of your laundry baskets were already full) and started picking out the highest priority items. Sweatpants, hoodies, and underwear were the main articles, but you threw in a towel as well.

You should probably shower, too, while you’re at it.

“How long can you stay?” you asked.

“I’m free all day.”

“Awesome. How was the trip?”

“You know? I expected it to involve a lot of writing music, but it was actually the opposite.”

“Oh?” you asked, gathering up more items to take to the laundry room downstairs.

“Yeah,” he said, following you around as you picked at and sniffed different clothes around your living room. The bag was already pretty full, but you wanted to make the most of this load. “I mostly just ate, rested, and hung out with other musicians. I don’t think I finished a single track while I was there, other than the few collaborations I did.”

"I actually love that for you," you said, opening the door and walking down the hall. Yoongi followed, his energy bright.

“Weirdly, it was just what I needed.”

He continued to tell you about his trip as you threw the load of laundry in and proceeded back upstairs. He’d gone to the US to visit some of the artists he’d previously collaborated with, catch a few NBA games, and visit some of the landscapes, his favorite having been the Grand Canyon.

“It’s huge!” he exclaimed. “I mean, I knew it’d be huge, but like, you can’t even fathom how big it is until you see it in person.”

“I’m so happy for you, Yoongi,” you said, and meant it. “Keep me company while I shower?” you asked.

“Oh?” he asked, eyebrows disappearing up into his hair.

“Not like that.”

“Oh.”

He followed you into the bathroom, kindly not commenting on the soap scum stains on your sinks and the pile of dirty underwear in the corner and took a seat on the lid of the toilet, while you got in the shower and removed your bathrobe, dropping it on the floor on the other side of the curtain before turning the water on.

“Hungry?” you asked as you struggled to find the right temperature.

“I was until I saw the state of your apartment.”

You opened the shower curtain and flicked some water at him.

“Fair enough. Want me to order something while you shower?”

“Something with pork belly please?” you called out as you began to shampoo your hair, noticing just how many knots were in it. You really needed to stop falling asleep with your hair in a bun. It was getting harder and harder to untangle and the breakage was now significant.

For some reason, self-care tasks became much easier with Yoongi around. Things that seemed almost impossible on your own were suddenly within your grasp in his company; you were grateful for his presence, though you tried hard not to become too dependent on him. It wasn’t fair to him, after all.

“Ordered,” he said. “Should be here in thirty minutes.” “Thank you,” you said, now trying in vain to comb conditioner through your mats. “When did you get back?” you asked.

“A few weeks ago,” he said.

“Really?” you asked, surprised that you hadn’t heard from him. “How have things been at the house? Also could you hand me the comb on the sink over there?”

“Complicated,” he said. You heard him rifling through the assortment of brushes and ointments sprawled around the edges of your sink until his hand appeared through the curtain, holding a wide-toothed comb.

“Thanks. Go on.”

“Well, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Why? What’s up?” you asked. The comb continued to stick in your hair. At this rate, you’d have to cut your hair short to get rid of all the damage.

“Well, as you know, things are still tense within the group. A lot of us aren’t talking to each other.”

“I actually didn’t know that,” you said, finally managing to comb through the biggest knot. You placed the comb back on the shelf and switched over to scrubbing your body with the loofah, hoping to give the conditioner some time to work.

“Really? I thought I told you.”

“We didn’t talk much about the group when you were here last. I think I was still avoiding the subject.”

“Oh, well are you still or can we talk about it now?” he asked. You heard a faint trickling sound coming from outside the shower.

“Are you pissing right now?”

“Yeah.”

You rolled your eyes, unable to hold back a smile at just how comfortable the two of you had become.

“Don’t get it on the seat.”

“What and ruin your pristine bathroom?” he said.

“Ass. Anyway, yeah I suppose we can talk about it now. I’ve had enough time. Just don’t say his name.”

“Noted. So everyone’s all weird around each other now.”

“What exactly happened after I left?”

“After you walked out, Namjoon called you-know-who out in the hallway to talk privately. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it must have been bad because he came back in with his tail between his legs and he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. Only talked to Joon for the rest of the tour.” “Damn,” you said. It was cathartic to hear that he had at least some degree of shame. You just wished you could have heard what Namjoon said to him.

“Yeah. Then he asked to talk to both Tae and Jia privately, and they came back looking pretty similar to Jun—I mean you-know-who. He must have given them a real tongue lashing.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Then he talked to me.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d that go?”

“It…,” he began, “…wasn’t exactly the best moment of the tour.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at how delicately he phrased it. “Go on,” you said, scrubbing at your scalp. The conditioner had done a decent job of masking some of the damage, but you’d have to visit a salon at some point to truly fix it. Another item on the long list of things you needed to take care of.

“He was angry with me for not communicating how I was truly feeling about everything. He said he’d have gladly stood up to the label and advocated for me if I would have said something to him. And if they still didn’t listen, he would have helped me find an appropriate way of coping. Or at least help cover for us if that’s what we needed to do. And he was disappointed that I didn’t trust him enough to care about what I was going through.”

“Fuck,” you said, turning off the water.

“Yeah.”

“Hey could you hand me the towel hanging on the door?”

He did, handing it to you through the curtain without looking. For some reason, you were feeling a bit more shame about being naked around him than you had in the past. Wrapping yourself up in the towel, you stepped out of the shower and truly looked at him for the first time since he’d arrived.

He looked so tired.

“How are you holding up?” you asked.

He shrugged.

“Anything I can do?”

“Honestly just your company would be great.”

“That I can do.”

You toweled off in your room and changed into a sweater you’d found in the back of your closet and a pair of sweatpants that you’d only worn a couple of times. Yoongi accompanied you while you finished your laundry and worked on tidying up your apartment. He relaxed on the couch, smoking a joint you’d given him and watching mindless reality television until the food arrived, when you took a break and sat next to him, exhausted from all the effort you’d spent, but grateful for Yoongi’s presence.

“Thank you for coming over,” you said, taking the first bite of noodles. “And for not judging me. And honestly, for everything else you’ve done. I don’t know how I’d get through this without you.” You finished the rest of your sentence with your mouth half-full of food. Yoongi had the kindness not to comment on it.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, taking a bite of his own. “I needed to get away from the dorms. It was nice to have somewhere to go that wasn’t my studio.”

You both ate in relative silence, save for slurping noises and the occasional clearing of a throat. Once your hunger had been sated, you turned on the couch to face him and leaned your head against the back, once again taking him in.

“What?” he asked when he noticed you staring.

“Do you think sleeping together was a mistake?”

“Wow, you’re just gonna hit me with that out of nowhere.”

“Loaded question, I know,” you said, biting back a grin. “Humor me?”

He sighed, contemplating his answer.

“No? I mean, there definitely were consequences to it. And Namjoon was right. I should have talked to him about what was going on. But at the end of the day, I still really wanted to do it. And, for some godforsaken reason, I still think I benefitted from it more than I suffered.”

“I feel that way too,” you said, grateful that he shared the sentiment. “I regret how I went about it, but I don’t think I regret doing it. I loved every second.”

“Even though it ruined things with…him?”

You barked a bitter laugh, which dissipated into a sigh. “I think things were ruined with him from the moment they started.”

“What makes you say that?”

“We were just kids,” you said. “Or at least it feels like we were. Neither of us was mature enough to enter into a sexual relationship. We handled it so poorly.”

“That may be true, but then again, you grew a lot through the experience. Sometimes you have to figure out what not to do before you can go about things the right way.”

“Maybe,” you said. “I still struggle to feel at peace with it.”

Yoongi was silent for a moment. “Do you miss him?”

You nodded, unable to speak as the words caught in your throat. You didn’t want to miss him. And you didn’t want to acknowledge that you missed him, but you did.

Your eyes stung with the grief. “It’s okay to miss him,” he said.

“It hurts,” you said.

“I know, baby. I know,” he said.

You reached your hand out. Yoongi took it and pulled you into a bear hug. You couldn’t help the sob that left your mouth and got muffled in his chest.

“Shhhh. It’s okay,” he said, rocking you back and forth, kissing the top of your head.

You needed this. It was impossible for you to get through all of it alone. And perhaps you weren’t meant to. Perhaps connection was the missing piece. The thing that gave you the energy you needed to heal. You’d been so alone for so long, and while Jungkook had satisfied the physical need of skinship, he couldn’t offer the connection that you really needed. Neither could Jimin. Or Jia. Or Colin. Or any of the other people who’d had access to your body. It was something only Yoongi had given you so far. And maybe, in a way, Son. Though his connection had been an energetic one rather than physical.

Conflicting needs are hard. Everyone has needs that they're trying to get met. Sometimes those needs don't align. Sometimes we look for the wrong people to meet them.

The company needed to make money and keep a clean image. Son needed to take care of his mother. Jungkook needed to feel secure. Jimin needed to feel good enough. Yoongi needed to feel heard. You needed to heal.

It’s great when things work out and everybody gets their needs met—but life doesn’t always work out that way. And sometimes the process of getting one’s needs met is messy and painful. Sometimes you have to hurt someone else in order to take care of yourself.

But people heal. We grow. We learn from our mistakes and find better ways to get our needs met. We're never the bad guy forever. And every once in a while, we get it right. We cause more good than harm. We help someone heal from their wounds, rather than cause them. When that happens, there's a purpose to the pain. A reason to keep healing. Love blossoms where wounds existed, and eventually, with time, they don't hurt so much anymore.

_____

Son looked as if he’d seen a miracle.

“You came.”

“Of course I came. I’d never let you do this alone. Though from the looks of it, you wouldn’t have had to.” You gestured out the window to the full parking lot. People were still clearing out a full twenty minutes after the service ended.

He hugged you with as much strength as he could muster, and you hugged him back just as tightly.

“Can you stay? I want to catch up.”

“Absolutely.”

You had sat in the back row and watched as Son gave a heartfelt eulogy honoring his mother’s life. The funeral was beautiful. Everybody you’d worked with from the past had showed up to support Son as he gave tribute to his mother’s life.

Afterwards, you all went back to his mother’s house and drank together like old times. Son got entirely too drunk while going through photos and ended up bawling his eyes out while the group gathered around him. He ended up passing out on the couch not too long after. You stayed the night to make sure he was okay, having been the only one to not partake so heavily. You’d quit drinking about a month ago, deciding it was time to get healthy.

The next morning, Son made breakfast while you helped clean up after everyone. It felt almost like you were freshly graduated again, interning at Son’s old company before he’d been hired at the record label.

“This feels familiar,” Son said, echoing your thoughts. You laughed, continuing to shove empty beer bottles and solo cups into the black trash bag you were holding.

“Old habits die hard, I guess.”

“I missed you.”

He said it softly into the pan of eggs he was frying up. Almost too soft for you to catch, but you did.

“I missed you too. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

He stopped frying to look up at you.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You really want to know?”

“I do.”

The time had come to tell him your story, and you did. You relayed absolutely everything. From your father’s affair with your childhood dance teacher, to your mother’s disapproval of your career choice and subsequent excommunication of you, to the incident with your professor. And then to the events of the tour (which you censored a bit. He didn’t need to hear absolutely everything.) And then why you left. Son listened intently, nodding where appropriate and giving you the focus you needed to get through the story.

“I’m sorry for leaving,” you finally said. “I just couldn’t handle that environment anymore. I had to get away for my own mental health.”

“Don’t feel sorry. You had every right to leave. I’m sorry for asking so much of you without giving you enough preparation. Ideally, your first tour would have been alongside me. You’d have been able to watch how I operate for the first few weeks before slowly taking on more responsibility. It wasn’t fair to just shove you out there like that.”

“You had such a valid reason though,” you said. “I wanted you to be able to take care of her. She needed that. And so did you.”

He nodded. You saw in him an echo of the grief you’d only just learned how to process.

“Thank you for giving me that time. I’m so sorry that it came at such a cost,” he said.

“I grew through it.”

You sat in comfortable companionship for a few moments before Son turned to you.

“About your professor…,”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you said, brushing the memory away as soon as it arose.

“Can we?” he asked, grabbing one of your hands and holding it in his. The gesture was so sincere that you couldn’t help but humor him.

“I don’t want you to think that you somehow weren’t good enough to get that internship based on skill alone. That man conned you. And last I knew, he was dismissed from the university for having done the same thing to another student.”

You hadn’t kept up with any university news, wanting to leave the memory behind you, but this was an unexpected turn of events. You couldn’t say you were surprised to hear that he’d done it to other students, but it hadn’t occurred to you to come forward about his behavior. You were relieved to hear that others had, and that he’d faced consequences. Still, you were ready to put the memory behind you.

“I guess…I always knew that I had some level of skill, because you took me on as your assistant even after the internship, but I had always wondered if it was just because we were friends.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “I mean, I definitely enjoyed having your personality around, but I wouldn’t have offered you the job if you didn’t also have the skill.”

Son’s words meant a lot to you, but you still couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss over everything. It wasn’t fair that you were robbed of the joy of having made it based on your hard work and dedication. You were ever afforded the confidence. Your position was always tainted with the bitter knowledge that you’d done things you weren’t proud of to get there.

“You know,” he began, hesitant about his next few words, “your old spot is still open for you. If you want it, that is. I’d love it if you came back.”

His words were tangibly hopeful, and the offer was tempting. It would be nice to get back on good terms with everyone you’d left. Still, you knew your answer.

“Son,” you said, heaving a sigh. “I can’t go back. I appreciate the offer, but I just don’t think it’s the right fit for me anymore.”

“Ahh, I suppose you’re right,” he responded. “Worth a shot.”

“I’d still like to stay in touch though. Maybe work on some independent projects together.”

He offered up the best smile he could muster under the circumstances. “You know I’m always down for a collab. Just say the word.”

“I’d like that.”

He turned again towards you. “What will you do now?”

“I have a few things I want to work on.”

-----

Your feet fell to the pavement with heavy thuds. The air burned your lungs. Your ankles were sore and unstable, aching from the extra weight they weren’t used to carrying.

It had been a year since you’d left the company, and this was the first time you’d worked up the energy to go for a run. Almost immediately, you were out of breath. Your limbs no longer worked together the way they had before. They were stretched, as if the threads that had once held you tightly together at your seams had been pulled loose.

You were a stranger to this body.

You slowed down to a light jog. It had been less than five minutes and you were already sweating.

This had never happened to you. You’d always had expert control over your body and its movements. The solid connection between your mind and your muscles was something you’d taken so much for granted that you never even knew it was possible to lose.

Energy had once flowed throughout your body, all the way to your fingers and toes, but you couldn’t feel it anymore. Your movements were sloppy. Your pace was inconsistent, like your body was short circuiting.

This was going to be harder than you thought.

You stopped your movements altogether.

This was the part of healing nobody told you about. You didn’t have the luxury of running in private, so you had to settle for letting out a silent scream. Going through the motions was a trick you’d only recently learned.

You turned around. Your body wasn’t ready to run yet, so you’d have to deal with just walking.

You took one step. And another. Eventually, you found the pace for your body.

So this was rehabilitation.

-------

A month later, you signed up for a gym membership. It had become clear during several ineffectual runs that your body had completely atrophied after spending over a year on the sofa eating nothing but takeout and ramen.

You started with your legs. You were wobbly in your joints and your balance was all over the place. On top of that, you now had almost forty extra pounds you were carrying around.

Rebuilding your strength was slow, but it was also a necessary step if you ever hoped to get your strength back. You were tired of being tired and you knew that the only way to attain energy was to earn it.

On top of that, you were nearing the end of your savings and had to find a job soon or else you’d be kicked out, and you were in no state to work.

Working out became your primary form of meditation. It was a way for you to connect with yourself on a deeper level than you had in a long time.

You had a feeling that this kind of solitude, while painful, may be the best thing for you. You’d spent the year before chasing attention, never once questioning where the craving had come from. Clearly you had some sort of neglection wound from your parents, but superficial sexual attention wasn’t going to fix that. That’s why you kept chasing even after receiving it. It had provided a temporary dopamine hit, but never addressed the root of the problem.

It wasn’t until you had begun paying high-quality attention to yourself that you even became aware of this.

The root of the problem, you thought, as you strained your leg muscles under the weights and stood up, was that you neglected yourself.

------

“I think I was taught to,” you said.

You sat across from a middle-aged woman wearing a cream-colored sweater and thin-framed glasses. She held a clipboard and a pen in hand and scrawled down a note.

“Who do you think taught you to do that?”

“My parents, for one.”

This was your second therapy appointment. You called and scheduled the first once the gym alone was no longer enough to keep the spiraling thoughts at bay.

“What did they do?”

“Well, my dad abandoned us for that dance teacher, and then when that happened, my mother just couldn’t keep it together. It felt like every conversation we had was just an opportunity for her to complain about what my father did. I had to stop talking to her after a while.”

“So she forced you to be her confidant and emotional support system when you were a child, while simultaneously neglecting your own needs.”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. It’s possible she just wanted to connect over the fact that he had abandoned both of us, and expected me to be just as angry as she was.”

“Were you?” she asked.

“At first. But after a while I was just tired. I wanted to move on with my life, but she stayed stuck in the past.”

“So you had to fend for yourself.” It was a statement, rather than a question.

“Yeah.”

“What do you think that girl needs to hear right now? If she were with us in the room?” You thought about that for a moment. What would you have wanted your mother to say?

“I guess, I’m sorry that he left us. That wasn’t fair, but I’m going to make sure we have a good life regardless.”

She smiled and nodded. “Good. That’s what I want to hear. Now is that a promise you’re intending to keep?”

“Yes,” you said firmly. “What do you need to do?”

“I need to make amends with the people I’ve hurt.”

-------

“I guess I was just blindsided by everything, you know? I wish you could have confided in me. I don’t know why you didn’t.”

Hoseok sat across from you, teacup in hand, a look of sincerity in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Hoseok,” you said. “I don’t know why I did the things I did. I judged myself so heavily for what I was doing, and I guess I was just afraid you’d judge me too.”

He grabbed your hand. "I'd like to think I've proven myself to be better than that."

“You have,” you said. “And if I had my head on straight, I would have known that from the start. I just. I don’t know. I didn’t want to disappoint you. And in doing that, I ended up disappointing everyone, myself included.”

Hoseok looked at you with the utmost sympathy. “Please come back. I miss you. We all miss you.”

“Hoseok…,”

“I know,” he said, “It’s just that I really miss having you around. I know things got weird and you got hurt, but you and I had so much fun together. Not everybody enjoys dance the way you and I do, and I miss having your energy around. Plus, we’ve all grown so much since you left. Even Jungkook has been working on himself.”

Your heart shot to your throat at the mention of his name.

“Sorry,” he said when he caught you wincing.

You wanted to ask more questions about him, but couldn’t bring yourself to do it. Apparently, that specific wound remained open. “I can’t,” you said. “That’s just not who I am anymore. But we can still hang out and collab sometimes. Just for fun.”

He sighed and nodded. “Promise me you won’t go another year and a half without talking to me?”

“I promise. I’m sorry I took so long. I needed time, but I’ve finally got my head on straight.”

“Doubtful, knowing you,” he teased and you had to smile. “What will you do now?”

“Well,” you began.

------

You entered in the combination the owner had given you. The keypad lit up green and the lock released with an audible “click.”

There was a small foyer with a desk and a short hallway ahead. At the end of the hallway, a restroom on the right, and to the left, a wide open space.

You removed your street shoes and padded across the hardwood, dropping your gym bag on the far corner next to the stereo system. After connecting your phone, you pulled up one of your old playlists and hit ‘select.’ The music echoed through the empty space and you made your way to the center.

Your body was tired and slow. Some of your joints were still stiff and calcified, but your workouts have helped loosen them up. Still, you needed to be extra thorough with your warmup routine and easy on your ankles. You’d lost a fair bit of weight, but you still had about twenty extra pounds weighing your movements down. Some of the fat had been converted to new muscle, though.

Son had put you in touch with the owner of a local dance studio. He’d worked with her on previous projects and gave you a good reference. She agreed to let you rent out the space a few times a week for a very reasonable price (you had a sneaking suspicion Son had something to do with that, too).

The savings you’d built up before you quit had all but run dry. It had been eighteen months of living off ramen noodles and paying your electric bill and rent in installments, but you’d survived. Occasionally, you’d try to pay a bill only to find out that it had already been paid for.

Yoongi swore up and down that he hadn’t done anything, but you had a hard time believing that, considering he knew how much you were struggling and he regularly pressured you into accepting charity, often citing that he had more money than he could ever hope to spend. You were far too proud to accept his donations openly, but you were still grateful for every single utility bill he went behind your back to cover.

Your savings and his generosity had allowed you the time and space you needed in order to heal and get back on your feet. It was time to return dance floor.

You were rusty, but it wouldn’t take long for you to build your basic skills back up. Soon enough, you’d be able to start offering classes.

“Just like riding a bike,” you whispered to yourself as you pushed up off the floor and swung your legs overhead in an aerial. The landing was clumsy and it hurt your knees, but it was a landing, nonetheless.

You could work with that.

-------

Three years later.

“Five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and down, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.”

You clapped as you counted.

“Yes, Seul-ki , give it some attitude,” you shouted, praising one of the students who had shown significant improvement over the last several weeks. She’d started the class later than the rest of the women, but had picked up on it quickly. There was a determination within her that reminded you of past versions of yourself.

The music ended. The women hit their final pose. They were all very much amateurs and it showed in their dancing, but you had a special place in your heart for this particular class.

All of the other classes were paid. You taught children up through teens after school on weekdays, but Sunday afternoons were your favorite, because you got to give back to your community.

The class was made up of survivors of sexual abuse and harassment, and you teamed up with the local women’s services nonprofit and a few trauma-informed therapists to put together this class.

The goal was to help women reconnect with their bodies through movement. This was the second group of women you’d taught. The first class, while it had its growing pains, was such a success that it had garnered local attention and had been offered a grant from a few other agencies looking to get involved.

You’d already been approved for a business loan, and next week, you had a meeting scheduled with a real estate agent. You were about to begin the process of looking for properties to purchase. It was time to open your own studio.

“Okay, good work everyone. Remember, next week we’re off for the holiday, but we’ll be back the week after that. Enjoy your time!”

You said goodbye to each of the women individually, thanking them for coming and wishing them well as they cleared out.

Once they were gone, you sat in the middle of the floor and massaged your ankles. They’d never been the same since you took so much time off. You’d built up enough ankle strength over the past few years to support them most of the time, but every once in a while, you had to take some time to rest them or else they’d get inflamed again. You were glad you had the next week off.

Shuffling through your phone, you put on of your favorite playlist. You’d created it almost ten years ago, but each song reminded you of the early days of your dance career, when you and Son were at his old company, partying weekends away and never taking life too seriously.

You went through your post-dance stretching and cooldown routine, working on a few moves you wanted to incorporate into your Reconnection class after the break.

You were midway through the move when you looked up and saw a familiar figure leaning against the doorway, softly smiling at you.

Your heart leapt up to your throat. Fight-or-flight kicked in, and you immediately ran over to the speakers to turn the music down and give yourself a chance to catch your breath before turning back around.

“Hey,” he said when you finally did.

“Hey,” you echoed, voice coming out a little breathy. The space between the two of you stretched across the room, filled to the brim with words unspoken. The silence that fell was thick and heavy. Your skin prickled as hairs on your arm stood up.

He was different. More grown up. He had a lip ring now. Beneath his oversized black tee, you could see a full sleeve of tattoos. You knew he’d gotten them. It was impossible to avoid any mention of him in the news, but it was still jarring to see them in person.

“Uh…Yoongi said you’d be here.”

Why Yoongi wouldn’t give you a heads up about this was beyond you.

“Yeah, I, um. I teach a class.”

“I saw.” His voice softened with layers of humility it had never before held.

“Can I come in?” he asked. There was such hesitation in the question, like he was tip-toeing around a land mine. You supposed in a way, he was.

“Sure.”

Slowly he stepped forward.

“It’s a nice space. I read in the news you were offering—,”

“You're here," you interrupted.

"Um. Yeah."

You were still processing that fact. The words had come out of your mouth without you consciously choosing to speak them.

"I didn't expect you to be here," you continued, your brain only being capable of observing the obvious at that point.

"I...well, no. I suppose you wouldn't."

You were still registering his appearance. Had he always been this tall? Or was it just the boots he was wearing? He was in all-black, save for a dark gray beanie he wore on top of his head. You couldn't read his expression.

“I uh,” he said, clearly struggling with how to approach this. “I wanted to make amends, I guess.”

You blinked a few times.

"...And I guess that's probably not something you're—,"

“—Do you want a cup of tea? I have an electric kettle in the back,” you cut in.

He let out an audible breath of relief, face finally ligtening up into an expression you could read. “Sure.”

He followed you to a small break-room-slash-utility-closet in the back of the studio where you kept a stack of yoga mats, extra dance shoes, and all the cleaning and restock supplies you needed. It also had a small bistro table with two chairs, a microwave in the corner, and a tea kettle on top.

You busied yourself making tea, back turned towards him. It was still tough to look directly at him for more than a second or two, you found.

“How have you been?” you asked, looking down at your hands as they worked.

“I’ve been okay. You?” he said.

You finished filling the cup with hot water and turned back towards him.

“Feel free to sit,” you said, noticing he was still standing awkwardly in the doorway. He paused for a moment and then helped himself to a seat at the table. You set two cups of tea down in front of each seat.

“Sugar?” you asked.

“No thanks,” he said and waited for you to sit. When you finally did, you still found it hard to look at him and settled for staring into the cup between your hands.

“You were saying,” you said, hoping for him to take the lead.

“I had asked you how you were.”

“Oh. Right. You did. I guess I’ve been good? Better than I’ve been in a while, at least.”

“Good,” he said. You glanced up to him and caught a small smile on his lips. “I’m glad.”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s amazing what you’ve done in the last few years. I always knew you were a great dancer, but I didn’t realize you had such a philanthropic heart.”

You let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah. I suppose I didn’t know that about myself. The idea just kind of appeared out of nowhere, you know?”

He nodded, struggling to hide a smile. You felt a blush creep up on your cheeks.

“So,” he said.

“I saw you released a solo album.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “Did you listen to it.”

“Um. No, actually. Sorry.”

He chuckled. “No need to be.”

An awkward silence fell between the two of you once again.

“Jungkook, I—,”

“I’m sorry,” he cut you off.

“Okay,” you said.

“I just had to tell you. I hate the way I treated you. I hate the way I acted, and you never deserved any of that.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ve spent the last four years absolutely appalled with myself. I hate that I pushed you away, and that I lashed out at you, when you were just trying to figure things out, the same as the rest of us. I put so much pressure on you to fill a role in my life. You didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”

A rush of emotion hit you all at once and you hadn't realized just how much you'd been waiting to hear those words. You'd already come to terms with the idea that you'd never get an apology, and you were okay with it. Now that it was here, it was almost overwhelming, but you had to store that away for now, because you had something else to say.

“Jungkook, you weren’t the only one who messed up. We both did. I’m just as responsible for what happened as you are.”

“I don’t think that’s true. That last day, I treated you so much worse than you ever treated me. I had no right to say those things to you. It was despicable, and I am so ashamed. I’m sorry.”

His words were still sinking in.

"I mean, I slapped you."

"I deserved it."

"Debatable."

Truthfully, you’d dreamed about having this conversation with him for the last four years. You were never sure how it would go, but now that it was here, you weren't sure how to process it.

“Why now?”

He looked down at his teacup. When he spoke, his voice was strained.

“I’m leaving for my military service soon. I didn’t want to go without making amends.”

“How soon?” you asked.

“Next week.”

“Oh shit,” you said. He removed the gray beanie he’d been wearing to show a freshly shaved head. Now, looking at him was almost surreal. He barely looked like the same Jungkook.

"Yeah," he said.

"Are you scared?"

"Yes and no. I think it's time I had a challenge like this. It's been so long since I've had to do real grunt work. I could use it. And maybe I need a break from being famous. Just be another soldier in the ranks for a change. Just like everyone else."

He'd never be just like everyone else, but you didn't want to spoil this for him, so you held your tongue.

"If I told you I forgave you, would it help you go into this with a clear conscience?"

He chewed on his lip ring in an effort to hide his smile, but it didn't quite do the trick. "Yeah."

“Yeah. I mean, what you did wasn’t cool. It really hurt and I had a hard time getting over it. But at the same time, it was kind of the kick in pants I needed. I don’t know. It gave me a good enough reason to leave a toxic situation,” he grimaced as you said it, knowing he was partly at fault for its toxicity, “and I feel like I was able to really start living for myself after that. It sucked at the time, but it was a catalyst for a major chapter of growth.”

“So...does that mean there's no hard feelings?”

“Jungkook," you said "you broke my heart. That’s always going to sting a bit. But I’m not going to hold on to any resentment. I know you were acting from a place of pain.”

“I was,” he said. “And thank you for understanding that. I'm sorry for what I did when I was hurt, but I’ve been working on healing, for what it’s worth. Getting famous at such a young age affected me more than I realized. I won’t go into it now, but I know what you mean when you talk about a growth chapter. I’ve been kind of going through one of those myself.”

“I’m glad.”

The conversation trailed off, but you could tell there was something else on his mind by the way his tongue prodded at the inside of his cheek. It warmed you to know he still did that.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, sincerity on his tongue.

“Do you think, like when I get back from war,"

"You're not going to war, Jungkook," you deadpanned.

"You don't know that. War could break out at any time. You know they're running missile tests in the North."

Even if war did break out, they'd never put him on the front lines. He brings in too much money for the country, but you humored him. "Okay, sure. When you get back from war."

"When I get back from laying my life on the line in a very dangerous war for the sake of our country," he continued and you couldn't stop the smile that appeared on your face, "do you see a future where we could ever work on things? Or have I permanently messed up my chance?”

At that, you had to laugh. “Get back from your military service and we’ll talk.”

“Please? Another chance? I’d love to make it up to you. I could make it up to you before I leave, even.”

"Are you seriously trying to get laid right now?"

He smiled, bunny teeth sticking out and suddenly he looked like old Jungkook again. Your Jungkook. “I would never.”

“I cannot believe you! You are such a little shit,” you said in amusement. You got up to rinse your tea cup in the sink in an effort to shut the conversation down, but he followed you.

“One kiss,” he said. "I'll change your mind."

“Go away, Jungkook,” you said, snatching his half-finished tea from him.

“I could die! I could be killed on the battlefield!” he exclaimed, following you to where you stood.

“I would be grieving with the rest of the female population. I’d be first in line, even.”

“A hug then?” he said, catching you by the arm. Your skin burned where he touched and you almost dropped the cup you were holding. You forgot how affected you were by him.

You turned to face him. He was close now, staring down at you. His doe eyes held a familiar intensity that made your stomach flutter. "Please?" he said again, voice low and soft.

“Jungkook, I—,” you began.

The End.

#Jungkook x reader #Yoongi x reader #The choreographer #bts fanfic #Jungkook

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mxnzies · 2 years ago

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NPMD thoughts! (SPOILERS UNDER CUT)

oh my god. the jump in quality from the digital ticket to the actual edited version is INCREDIBLE. fucking LOVED the details of costumes, the set, the lighting, the writing on the panels... everything was fantastic! starkid has come such a long way and it was incredible to see the seats filled for the show in the edited version!!!

spoiler thoughts, would love to hear what other people thought! warning for rambling and a lot of caps and excessive punctuation since i can't control my emo-shuns after watching a starkid show, as always 🤪

i was really hoping for the boy jerri/girl jerri moment AND the coffee shop bloopers from the digital ticket to be in this one, but every performance is unique and i'm glad we got to experience the new hatchet-town cameos!

GERALD AND ZIGS AND MAN IN A HURRY (JEFF CAMEO!!!!!) MY BELOVEDS <3

speaking of, i hope the bonus features include bts from the night where the power went out!

high school is killing me is STUCK IN MY HEAD

dirty girl was so fucking good HD. INCREDIBLE

sadly i really wanted some wider shots, especially when everyone was onstage and particularly during the lords in black scene - though it was AMAZING to see the details up close since from the digital ticket we couldn't really see what was happening.

THE SCREAMING WHEN JON STARTED TALKING AS WIGGLY... ME TOO!!!

fucking ADORE the "show me your hands" theme playing with curt's cop, and the "inevitable" piano playing when paul and emma were in Beanies. THEY'RE SO CUTE but it makes me sad BUT FOREVER AND ALWAYS RIGHT <3

also the nightmare time theme during the interval!!!

one thing i really miss about these new starkid recordings is that we don't get the stage bows :( i would have absolutely loved if they did something akin to TGWDLM in black friday and NPMD, where the credits roll over the footage of the cast bowing and the claps! the bows at the end of a show are always so fun, it's a great moment of catharsis for everyone and seeing the cast smiling and happy is something i missed here. ESPECIALLY WITH THE ENERGY IN THE HOMECOMING DANCE

will can STEP ON ME as Max. he's so meta and plays the part so well! apparently the role was rumoured to possibly be Jeff's but I'm so glad Will was Max. we needed the fresh blood onstage in the hatchetverse!

it's so incredible Bryce was able to perform onstage and that Jae got a cameo! HELL YES TO THE NIGHTMARE TIME GANG <3

really wish bryce and kim had bigger roles in this musical, especially bryce as before the digital ticket came out starkid hyped her up so much on the socials. BUT SHE NAILED HER VOCALS and when everyone started screaming/applauding when she hit That Note!!!!! YES!!!!!!

love how we can make comments on the recording, seeing everyone so hyped about the show and loving the show is so affirming! i hope everyone who worked on the show is feeling the love!

i still don't really understand the barbeque monologues and feel they're a bit out of place, maybe because it's an american school musical thing?? but lauren fucking owned it!

kim screaming after ruth died. GET IT SLAY ME WITH YOUR RANGE MAAM

compared to my first impressions from the digital ticket, this is a huge step up. some songs were a bit hit or miss, but man i was crying at the end about peter and steph. love how, like the other two hatchetverse musicals, the ending note was fucked up! that being said tho i am keen for starkid to move onto another potential parody OR a new IP outside of the hatchetverse. i'm super keen to see what the future holds for the company! it's absolutely on my bucket list to watch a starkid show live now <3

#starkid #npmd #npmd spoilers #hatchetverse #hatchetfield #nerdy prudes must die #nerdy prudes spoilers

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straightguysdont2 · 23 hours ago

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since you’ve opened up your inbox… can Louis ever get out of/end babygate, or is he stuck in it forever? tysm

Ughhhhh I know we all wish he could but I don’t think it will end until hell takes satan on earth back (hope you’re picking up what I’m putting down) 👀👹👹 I think there’s also some more nefarious things going on bts that he can’t get out of. Louis when babygate is mentioned😹

#ask #anon #answered #harry #louis #larry #babygate

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fromtenthousandfeet · 1 year ago

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Thank you for this interesting discussion re Pdogg, Jimin's composing skills, and what made FACE work that is lacking in CTT and SGMB. And also for the Still Woozy clip. I hope you enjoy the concert!

You made me go look up those 70s singers...Jim Croce? Cat Stevens? The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald? Well, okay. Interesting.

I'm going to make an even stranger reference in defense of SMF, Pt2, specifically the repetition you mention. For me, there is mounting tension here...will he be set free or not?--that perhaps, they could have exploited more, via cues from the orchestra or some sort of added dynamic.

And here is the weird reference....Wagner's Tristan and Isolde's love duet Nacht die Liebe. This thing goes on FOREVER. And it's tense, because you're thinking, "Good God, just DO IT already!" And Wagner goes back to the familiar leifmotif over and over again. Btw, I think somewhere here there is the line "set us free from the world." Of course, they were talking about death, because they are ALWAYS talking about death.

Anyway, I saw this opera once and it's not like I'm a Wagner fan. But I never forgot that feeling of exasperated tension. And apparently, this opera has had a great influence on other composers for the last (nearly) 200 years. So no, I don't think Jimin or Pdogg were listening to Wagner or anything silly like that. But using repetition to create tension is not a new thing. It worked for me--and some others--but perhaps not for most people. Props to Jimin's team for trying something new, though.

I also don't agree about Face-Off and Alone--leave my babies alone!

;)

p.s. I don't expect you to publish this out-of-left-field comment, and that's okay with me. But if you are interested in hearing the source material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IjJXVY4j7U

I love this. Why do all roads seem to lead to German artists and thinkers when it comes to BTS? Rilke (not German but wrote in German, so he counts), Hesse, Jung (who was technically Swiss but still spoke German, so he counts, too), and now Wagner?!

Anyway, your point is well taken that repetition builds tension. The repetition in Set Me Free Pt. 2 was certainly a stylistic choice meant to build anticipation and the desperate hope for freedom at the conclusion of the song.

Alone has some measures that I would call down right uncomfortable to the ear, but again, I think that was a stylistic choice to drive home Jimin's sense of despair.

I'm glad Jimin experimented on FACE. I'm glad the songs are challenging. i love the narrative style of the entire album (shout out to Gordon Lightfoot and the Edmund Fitzgerald - you can't get much more narrative than that). It was a treat to have actual story telling rather than just a bunch of similar songs thrown together on a record.

The main issue is time. Why didn't Jimin have the time and opportunity to be writing and recording his original works all along? Now he's stuck cramming in as much as possible in a short period of time, learning how to write good music and express himself, without the benefit of time for self reflection and growth. I assume MUSE is geared towards commercial success. I may not like Jon Bellion much, but All Time Low is catchy as hell. Let's see what he does with Jimin's WHO. Maybe he will rein in the repetition and the high notes that I personally think are preventing Jimin from having a true hit with the GP.

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brittle-doughie · 3 years ago

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Face the Music! (B.A.D 4)

Requested by: @lil345 Insert bad guy vibes

“The name’s T.N.T! You’re looking at B.A.D 5’S main vocalist and explosive leader!”

“Call me HellHound, for I am the gatekeeper to HELL! I’m in charge of B.A.D 5’s choreography… that will change you FOREVER!”

“M-my name is ZZ Skull…! Make sure you pronounce the Z! I am the lead vocalist who fills the songs of B.A.D 5 with power!”

“Yaaay! Nice to meet you all! My name is MUSHY P.! My specialty is super fast rap! Hope you like our performance!”

Wizard was a little confused with their name of B.A.D 5…when there was only four of them onstage. So where was the last member-oh my god was you popping up from behind T.N.T a surprise to many. Gingerbrave and the others were completely flabbergasted at the sight of you being alongside the bad guys for this occasion! Strawberry was freaking out a little, did they corrupt you to the side of darkness?!

You gave your best devious laugh as you pulled out your instrument and played a quick tune!

You were Siren Serenade (or you can pick your own name :] ), the composer who makes sure the music is stuck within the heads of cookies until the end of their days. With the help of your fellow band mates, may the power of your music compel the audience!

The objective on the kingdom cookies were clear, save the BTS concert from getting thrashed and rescuing you from the grasp of darkness before it’s too late! Oh how you came to be in the band was told to them outright.

———————————————————————

Hearing about the BTS Cookies coming into the kingdom, you and your cookies wanted to make preparations for their arrival! You chuckled to yourself as you see just how excited the others were at getting to see them, they were pretty big fans if Wizard says tickets being sold out pretty quickly was any indication.

You were receiving the last few items off the train when you felt your vision go dark as you felt yourself getting dragged off from the loading area, the feeling of the stone beneath your feet become grass indicating the change in locale. You let out an oof as you felt something hit the back of your leg!

“Watch it, we can’t let a single bruise be left on their dough!”

“Pomegranate might get mad…”

“Hurry, before those cookies realize they’re gone!”

“She won’t be once Y/N Cookie joins us!”

Once you felt like the dragging came to a stop, you pulled off the sack over your head and wouldn’t you know it, it was the Cookies of Darkness of Werehound Brute, Red Velvet, Licorice, and Poison Mushroom Cookie.

They pretty much pleaded with you to join this little band they were creating and since you were quite the popular cookie, they figured that with your help, they can upstage the BTS Cookies and use the power of music to take over the world! Werehound was hyping up this idea so much as Mushroom tried to persuade you by having a lot of shroomies if you did this for them! Red Velvet did say it would make Dark Enchantress and Pomegranate happy if you took this offer, they’d have a lot of explaining to do if they fail. Seeing their faces in anticipation to your answer, even Red Velvet staring intently into your eyes, you let out a sigh.

God damn it, you always were a people’s pleaser

———————————————————————

Here you are with the B.A.D 5 in a competition against the BTS Cookies as you clashed with them throughout the concert. While your fellow members did the singing, you played your instrument to your heart’s content.

Brave and the audience felt bad about your defeats every time the BTS Cookies have bested you in musical combat, your talents were cool but to be stuck on the bad side meant unintentionally getting defeated onstage time and time again. You will admit that you were bummed out by the constant defeats, but you never gave up on the group, you guys had to win at some point!

Pomegranate was your manager and you will admit she pulled off the look quite well~ Pomegranate reminded you of the plan and stay focused, but..thanked you for the compliment with a red tint to her face.

When it came to failures, she was very clearly more light with you compared to the others, you did wonderfully with music, it’s just a shame the others couldn’t match the quality with their efforts, what a disappointment. She would make this apparent by directing her gaze towards your other BAD members and motioning you to the side for a second.

She found herself nodding off to your music as she watched on your performances. She wonders if you’ll sell your music on albums later. She needs to get herself and DE a copy.

Being the leader of the group, TNT was headstrong in the effort to upstage the BTS Cookies, you were all for it to make the big guy happy.

When he sprained his hand around the first duel, you tried to alleviate the pain by massaging it. He tried to shrug it off and say he was fine! He didn’t need no massage for his hand…but since you were offering…

When he needed the killer beats, he turned to you to do just that. TNT hearing your music made him pumped to just duke it out with the BTS Cookies already!

You comforted him after Pomegranate leaves after a cold exchange with her, telling him that it was all good, you guys might have mucked up this one, but he’ll emerge victorious in the end with his cool vocal skills! It did the trick into cheering him up right away!

When he couldn’t hold back his emotions after the song that he wrote himself, you quickly stopped playing to rush to his side as you tried to soothe him, ignoring the grumbling from the others. The resulting crushing hug from him as we weeped wasn’t comfortable, but if it made him feel better enough to continue, you gotta do what you gotta do!

Hellhound appreciated that you valued the efforts he and his cake hounds have done to give the performance they did. He in return complimented your musical talent, it was just the right tone he needed to really bring out the rhythm and passion of him and the cake hounds!

You cared for the Cake Hounds behind the scenes and after the performance with Hellhound, they did their best but you suppose it just wasn’t up to par in comparison to the BTS Cookies. Hellhound seeing you place a caring pet onto the hounds made him have a small smile to himself.

He does hope you join them after his whole concert thing, you’d make a great caretaker for the cake hounds.

He will not tolerate any backlash towards you as you were playing your role just fine, it was just the others that couldn’t keep up with your playing!

Don’t overexert yourself, Mushy P. Here have some water to help out with the strained rapping!

Constantly asks after every performance if you liked their rapping. The little cookie was quite good at it actually that..yes! You did find their skills as a fast singing rapper remarkable! It’s cute to see them joyous from your compliments.

You took up their offers for shroomies whenever they did after playing your tunes, they…actually sparked you to play more enthusiastically! Man, what were they putting in them?!

You headpatted the little one after a rough performance to help them out in any way. They were tired, but they let their appreciation be known by resting in your lap. After a duel with the BTS Cookies that ended in defeat, you could say Mushy earned it.

You had to reel him in whenever he got into arguments with the other BAD members over the defeats by the BTS. It took hugging him close to make him stutter like crazy and drop the fuss.

He wasn’t really sure of his stage name, ZZ Skull, but you thought it was a pretty cool name. Alright, ZZ wasn’t such a bad name after all if you liked it.

He practices his singing backstage, you just happened to be recording one of his sessions. It got really interesting when you noticed that the lyrics to this particular song was in reference to you. He chased after you and pleaded to delete the video as he bawled in embarrassment.

He valued your opinion on his performance, so once he finishes, he would lowkey ask if you enjoyed his singing. He pretends to casually accept your compliments, but on the inside, ZZ was hyped! You liked his singing, you liked it!

———————————————————————

Producer D.K.E.C announcement to the group to return back to headquarters only served to bring disarray to the 4 cookies. She ordered Pomegranate to do so and “bring Y/N Cookie with you” and she’ll excuse this utterly pathetic display of failure.

Now it was the audience’s turn to be brought into an uproar, those who thought it was just part of the performance were now doubting that if a direct threat to Y/N Cookie being taken from them was made known. Thank god the BTS Cookies were able to turn the tables on the situation around by telling your band mates to forget about the Producer or your manager! Forget about world domination and all that fancy stuff and just sing what you want to say!

That was your cue! You played your instrument and this time, your crew opened their hearts and sang from within!

ZZ Skull: Gettin’ this power wasn’t a breeze… Wrote a diary with my own tears… Misery and DISGRACE!

HellHound: Ya ain’t never seen a Cookie like me! Am I Cake Monster or Cookie! Naw!

MUSHY P.: Have some shroomies, have some shroomies! Why won’t y’all try some shroomies…

Siren Serenade (you): Go ahead and try to test us, we are never backing down, never letting up!

T.N.T: Stop pointin’ your fingers and dumpin’ the hate… I’m bad to the core, evil’s my fate!

T.N.T: I’m BORN TO BE BAD, VILLAIN 4 LIFE

youtube

To have the crowd actually enjoy the performance this time brought relief to you as you smiled to your fellow B.A.D members. It looks like your job here was done-

OOF! You were suddenly grabbed up into a hug by TNT as he swung you around joyous that you were able to settle the crowd with music that came from the heart. The others joined in shortly after, it was getting incredibly hard to breathe, but they were in the moment you guess. Pomegranate was grumbling in the background, how rude of them to just rush at you at once.

You’re taking a little break when you’re free…once you’re able to sneak off from your fellow band members…as well as the cheering audience who will likely flood you with asks for autographs.

What can you say, you’ve got your work cut out for you hehe.

#cookie run x reader #cookie run x you #cr x reader #crk x reader #cookie run kingdom x reader #cookie run #cookie run kingdom #poison mushroom cookie #red velvet cookie #choco werehound brute #licorice cookie #bad 4 #pomegranate cookie #fanfic

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gloster · 4 years ago

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FAVORITE FANFICS OF 2021

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

2020 was a constant hell on earth last year. 2021 seriously tried to take me out, especially in terms of burnout. I went through the WORST slump ever. A massive creative slump. A massive mental slump.

Hoping that 2022 will be a much kinder year. That's the only resolution/wish I have for the new year. A kinder year & for my creative slump to finally crack.

While this story was crappy in many ways, I still had things to help carry me through from BTS (obviously), anime, kdramas, and of course fanfics. Every year fanfic writers that are favorites to me or new to me come through with the content. Just blow me away with their storytelling and I always do this tradition because GODDAMNIT fanfic writers deserve their flowers too.

If you’re interested in past lists, here is the 2020's list, 2019′s list and 2018′s. If y’all are interested in doing your own fanfic favs of the year, please do so and tag me. Always on the hunt for new favs.

Without further ado, here are my favorite fanfics of 2021:

1). the beauty of futility by wbtrashking (tododeku) aka @wtkdigest

Summary: Todoroki Shouto is exhausted.

He's miserable, really. He's ready to give up, to tell his older sister goodbye, to stop fighting and just close his eyes forever.

But life isn't through with him. Izuku and his adopted daughter stumble upon Shouto in his darkest moments and show him that there's something worthwhile in the world. They show him that he's more than his depression; that he can laugh and love and be happy.

At age thirty, despite all the odds, Shouto finally figures out how to live.

I read this story only once, but the way it stuck to me, the number of times I shared around my friends who got into the tododeku ship, the number of times I keep thinking about it....it was that GOOD. That great. That amazing.

Shouto's exhaustion with life, with himself, and living in general hit so hard-and almost mirrored my own mental stage. And in comes in Izuku, the sweet beam that he is, doesn't cure him- thankfully it's not that kind of story. But he shows him that are hidden gems in everyday, with the help of Izuku's adorable adorable daughter.

That's another thing I love about this story: single dad Izuku with daughter Eri, a trope I NEED MORE OF. I also love the tenderness of the slowburn. Just read please. So so so good

2). I'll be your biggest kept secret and your biggest mistake by sascake aka @sascake (tododeku)

Summary: Devastated by his lack of a Quirk and pushed to the limit, fourteen-year-old Midoriya Izuku takes Bakugou's advice and jumps from the roof of their school.

Ten years later, pro hero Todoroki Shouto can't stop running into a vigilante hell-bent on saving people, going after every villain he comes across, and causing a conflict in Shouto like he's never felt before.

I am warning you right now if you are a Bakugo stan.....please proceed with caution. Mind you, the author does an incredible of not outright bashing bashing him, but she also does incredible job of showing just how severe Bakugo's words and actions deeply impacted Izuku.

Every year I always seem to find that one author who sucks me in with just one story and next thing I know, I become OBSESSED. And I do mean OBSESSED with their work. @sascake became that author to me. @littlenightdragon & I just PLOWED through mostly everything under their ao3 profile, and honestly I was debating whether I should name this or (possibly, maybe) falling for you which I also adored but something about this one just STUCK TO ME.

First of all, the way this felt like....it could be canon if things were differently. If Izuku's self doubt outweighed his inner strength and self worth. If Bakugo was twice as nasty with his words. If there was no All Might to come through and help him. Like me and @littlenightdragon couldn't stop thinking or talking about how this seriously could've been canon.

The relationship between Izuku and Shouto is just so breathtaking and at some points heartbreaking, watching them go from uneasy allies to commrades and more. We also have an incredible friendship between Izuku and Shinso that just so amazing to read-made me crave more stories featuring that platonic relationship. Not to mention this has to be one of the best vigilante Izuku stories I've read so far.

Just every single aspect of this story from the relationships, the dynamics, the scars of trauma both Izuku and Shouto carry are handled so incredibly well. Also, this story-along with every story by @sascake is addicting as hell, so there's that.

Honorable mentions:

(possibly, maybe) falling for you

you are my sweetest downfall

hit me with your sweet love, steal it with a kiss

3). home is the shape of your heart by unreemarkable (tododeku)

Summary: If this is a dream, Shouto doesn’t want to wake up.

[in which shouto gets back what he lost, and he's both better and worse off for it.]

In this story we have vampire Shouto and ghost Izuku. Those were the two elements that immediately drew me in, especially vampire Shouto. I walked into this thinking it was gonna be a haunted mansion story, but it ended up being so much more.

Yes, there is a haunted house element but we have so much more. We have a ghost who doesn't remember anything about his own life, much less what led to his death. And a vampire, who knows everything and the weight of it kills him.

This romance, this love story, reminded me a lot of Kaz x Inej from Six of Crows, where there is very limited physical touch but the love and care linked between these two is so palpable like a live wire. This romance is so so so tender, you just melt reading it. The pining, the pining, the wanting and the PINING. It hurts so much. It was so good, it hurt.

Also please check out the prequel that shows how this story begins, and still i will live here

4). Like Moth to Flame by magisterpavus (sheith)

Summary: When Keith tries to save his dying father by making a deal with the vampire lord who has terrified his village for centuries, he's prepared for sacrifice.

He's not prepared for Lord Shirogane.

Mags is a GOD. A god I say when it comes to sheith. When it comes to just raising the bar for good content & hot smut. And this story was a knock out.

First off, vampire Shiro. I've read stories with vampire sheith but I don't think I've come across one quite as snarky and lovable as this Shiro right here because WOW. I loved him so much. I also loved Keith, our determined human who's willing to do anything to help his ailing father, even if it means being under the thumb to this creature who haunts his village like a nightmare.

This is a very slowburn romance, but every chapter, every moment we see the two come closer is just so delicious. So well done.

Honorable mentions:

only while the sun shines

Desperate Measures

5). The Water's Fine series by @goldentruth813 (sheith)

Summary: Keith's lifeguard tower offers a stunning beach view, but nothing steals his breath like the handsome stranger who runs by every morning. A chance encounter with hot running guy—Shiro, he soon finds out—reveals he's kind as well as gorgeous, but Keith's afraid to make a move. That is, until Shiro's in trouble, and Keith finds himself over his head.

Before we start, massive massive congrats to @goldentruth813. For making a spot on this list for the 4th year in a row.

you had me tell me that *spoiler alert* I would be so invested in a mermaid's relationship with a human...I would have some questions. Yes, I am a Disney girl. Yes, I grew up with the Little Mermaid. Yes, I am EXCITED AS HELL to see Halle Bailey play Ariel in the live action movie, but mermaids were never my favorite like that. Leave to Janel to drop a story like this and have me become completely obsessed with it.

There are 3 stories tied to this series. Each one, the relationship just gets better & better. It has heavy pining, it has sweet & epic romantic moments, it has mating, it has soulmates, it has sugar daddy Shiro, and of course massive fluff.

Honorable mentions:

The Naked Roommate

rush (into my heart)

Sticker Me in Praise

6). Love Letters & Coffee Grounds by @jlaw1105 (clexa)

Summary: Lexa wasn't sure what it was that drew her into the little coffee shop on the corner. Maybe it was because it was less than a block away from the front door of her new building. Maybe it was because it wasn't a Starbucks or some other large chain coffee front that cared more about profit than the flavor of their beans. Maybe it was the warm air filled with the soft scent of coffee, chocolate and cinnamon. But likely, definitely, it was the defiant little corner of the store that loudly rebelled against the norm.

It was early November and everything around Lexa was filled with red and greens or whites and blues. It screamed of Christmas and Hanukkah. Of buying gifts and consumer driven profit. But the back corner of the coffee shop was filled with oranges and reds and browns with a rather large sign written in an angry scrawl that said "It's not even Thanksgiving yet, assholes!" There was just something about it that, to Lexa, felt poetically beautiful.

A Clexa Coffee Shop AU.

First off, place bets right now on who you think wrote that sign at the coffee shop. Secondly, yes, I deeply deeply fell in love with this coffee shop AU.

Obviously, at this point, almost every pairing to every fandom has gone through the cafe/ coffee shop AU. It may be a simple trope to come, a cliche to many, but there is a reason why that trope continues to thrive in fandom- and in storytelling in general. It's such a popular trope that I consider it to be your first steps into fanfics.

And the way @jlaw1105 did this and more is pure CHEF'S KISS. We have Lexa, a bestselling author to this popular sci-fi series, is suffering massive writer's block with the latest book. We have Clark, part-time barista, part-time artist, and part-time crush that quickly becomes muse & more to Lexa.

This was just so so so so fucking good. READ IT.

7). There's Something about Potter by slytherin_nette (drarry w/ fem-Harry)

Summary: There’s just something particularly strange about Aria Potter this year. Unfortunately, the new 8th year Slytherins are determined to find out exactly what everybody's favorite golden girl is hiding. Post-DH semi-AU Hogwarts. DMxfemHP.

There are so many tropes and things that can pull me into a good drarry story: veela and fem-Harry. Veela is my favorite creature trope to read with drarry. Anytime I see the word drarry, I JUMP. Also I love me some genderbenting, so if there's one that offers the Girl Who Lived, I am on board.

So imagine my great surprise & delight that I stumble onto a story that delivers both. Done none other than the great queen of fem-Harry, slytherin_nette. Like when I say queen, I mean QUEEN. Every fem-Harry x Draco story she does is just amazing. Just incredible. Always slaps, and this is one is no expectation.

In this story, taking place after 8th year, we have Aria Potter returning to Hogwarts after not just surviving the war but also coming into a secret inherrtiance. We have Draco trying to keep his head down and survive the year, while also reminsicing about the dream girl he meets during the summer. Thanks to a Housing switch up, the two collide and all that they got through together is so much fun to read.

Story is available both at ao3 and ff.net.

Also, while you're at it, please also check out more of slytherin_nette's fem-Harry stories. She has more on ffnet than ao3, but all of them are worth a read.

8). Werk It, Girl by stardropdream (sheith)

Summary: Keith is a contestant on Coran's Drag Race, competing to be the next Drag Superstar. Towards the end of the competition, the girls are given their weekly challenge: adopt a drag daughter into your drag house.

And in walks Shiro.

Working together in a competition is one thing, but Keith could never be prepared for everything that comes next.

CALLING ALL RUPAUL DRAG RACE FANS IN THE SHIETH COMMUNITY! THIS ONE'S FOR YOU

And even if you're not familiar with the show or a fan of it, I still think you'll have a good time with this show, I know I certainly did 😊😉

But then again anytime you read a story by stardropdream, you're always guaranteed a fun time. Okay, well actually some of her stories may include angst, but always a fun time at the end of it. And this was a fun, fun time.

I didn't realize how much I needed drag queen Keith x drag queen in training until now, so thank you Robin for that.

Honorable mentions:

In My Veins

We are Perfectly Okay

Body Without Sound

9). right besides me series by @storybookprincess (tododeku)

Summary: "For as long as Todoroki could remember, touch was something to be avoided. Dodging blows in his father’s relentless training or curling in on himself and covering his face to try to hide from the merciless punishment for whatever transgression he had committed this time, touch was always pain, plain and simple. After his mother left, he was never held or kissed. No one hugged him or stroked his hair. People touched him to hurt him."

Or, Todoroki gets a hug and his whole world shifts on its axis.

Oh. MY. DEAR. GOSH. Oh. My. Dear. Heart. Oh. My. Dear. Dear. Shouto. Oh. My Sweet. Sweet. Izuku. And my dear gosh....go to hell Endeavor & kick rocks.

As you can guess by the previous sentence, this story made me feel many things.

As you can guess by the summary of the first part of the story, ever so gently, the feels come on so hard, so rapid, and you have no choice but to let the feelings consume you. Then the sequel, quid pro quo, comes in and finishes you in the best way. It certainly did with me.

This beautiful relationship starts with a hug. This story has severely touch-straved Shouto just in awe by Izuku, who was the first person to touch him gently in such a long time. Which starts this achingly beautiful, heartfelt pining.

This story has to be one of the best Todoroki Shouto's POV stories I've read. This also featured one of the softest, softest tododeku relationships ever. I do recommend this as a starter fanfic if you're new to the tododeku ship like I was. It was one of the first tododeku stories I've read and I still think about it.

10). Sourdough by @academicdisaster24 (drarry)

Summary: Draco writes romance novels and doesn't leave his apartment much. Harry bakes bread and sells it to Draco. Draco is quite weird. Harry might like that.

Fair warning: you will CRAVE soughdough bread like crazy. I know I did. At some points while I was reading, I was seriously tempted to get some bread.

And you will CRAVE to have that sweetness that Draco finds with Harry in this story.

We have Draco as a reclusive historical romance writer trying to write & baker Harry downstairs distracting him with the delicious scent of fresh-baked bread.

I don't think enough words can praise this story. Can show enough it was. Other than speculator, achingly-sweet, and just everything.

Honorable mentions that I seriously wanted to add to the list but this post is already lengthy. All amazing, all greats reads by various writers y’all should check out:

on sight by @phaltu (sheith w/established relationship, happily married, and everyone thinking Keith is the horn dog when his sweet-faced husband is the real culprit

Ready Set Hut by Neyasochi (sheith, friends to lovers following them meeting at high school & bonding over FOOTBALL)

With Great Yawns and Stretching by sugar_screw (drarry, with Harry finding Malfoy isn't only redeemed but is the proud owner of a coffee shop. With cats)

Thirst and Devour by SashaDistan (izuku x shouto x bakugo x Kirishima poly fanfic; all 3 obsessed with Izuku & his sweet ass. SO SO SO SO HOT)

This Hungry Work (Give Me Some More) by @rayshippouuchiha (tododeku w/female Izuku; possessive & protective Todoroki, just goodness all around)

Almost, Not Quite, Us by xxjinchuurikixx (narusasu; ABO verse w/ doting alpha Naruto & feisty omega Sasuke deep in his heat & in need of assistance. SO GOOD).

And there you have, ladies, gents, & nonbinary babes. Thus concludes this year's list of my favorite fanfics of the year, including honorable mentions I had to shout out to. Mind you, there's so many more but this list is already long enough as it is.

To the writers who created these incredible stories. I applaud you. I thank you for creating and sharing these wonderful stories. Anyone interested in doing the tag, please do.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, GUYS

#favorite fanfics of the year #fanfic recs #drarry #drarry recs #drarry fanfics recs #sheith #sheith recs #sheith fanfic recs #tododeku #tododeku fanfic recs #tododeku recs #sasunaru #sasunaru recs #clexa #clexa rec

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dreamescapeswriting · 4 years ago

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BTS Reaction || Their Future Son Comes To See Them [Request]

A/N: Just reminds me of those tiktoks, “is that dad on the poster?” “WhIcH oNe Is It?” Different tropes for the guys since I want to try and see if you guys liked that

SEOKJIN: College Au

There was a flash of green light coming from behind one of the bookcases in the college library and Jin flinched turning to look over his shoulder to see a teenage boy coughing up a storm,

"You okay?" Jin asked as he slowly got up from his chair to help the boy, he turned to look at Jin and smiled brightly while jumping up and down on the spot.

"It worked!" He yelled out, earning a death glare from the librarian,

"It worked?" Jin questioned trying to look behind the case where the boy had emerged but there was nothing there that could explain the green flashing.

"So...Where is she?" Jin frowned at the question, looking around the library to see if the boy could have been speaking to anybody else but there was nobody besides Jin and the librarian there.

"...Who?"

"Mum! Where is she? I know you guys said you met in the library but I didn't think you meant it," Jin frowned even more as he stared over at his desk, rubbing his head. Maybe he'd just fallen asleep and this was some kind of weird dream he was having so he slowly made his way back to the desk and sat down.

"There she is!" The boy yelled out in excitement, sitting beside Jin as you entered the library, your head down in a book as you walked towards the table behind Jin completely ignoring him.

"I must have messed up the dates, I thought you said you and mum met today...I wanted to see it," Jin shook his head before turning to look at the boy.

"What are you talking about? Is this some kind of sick joke?" Jin had always had a crush on you, it was no secret amongst him and his friends so he figured this was their way of pranking him for it.

"Dad...No, I came from the future to see you...I wanted to watch you guys meet for the first time." Jin shook his head even more not believing it for a single second but then he heard you gasp in shock, his whole body turned to look at you as you clutched your finger.

"Paper cut," Jin walked over to you, cleaning up your finger while giving you a band-aid,

"I always come prepared," You laughed softly at him introducing yourself while your future son sat back and observed everything there was.

When Jin turned back to question the boy on who he really was he was gone and just like that he was talking to you about the book you were reading and what you were doing for the prom that was coming up.

YOONGI: Idol!Au

Yoongi stared at the boy that was sitting on his studio sofa,

"Oh sweet, you have these in the future too!" The boy yelled out reaching forward to take some of the sweets that were sitting in the middle of the coffee table in front of Yoongi's sofa,

"How- Did somebody let you in?" Yoongi could have sworn he hadn't heard the bell to his door go off to signal someone was coming into the room and he hadn't been working that hard on anything.

"No, I used my time machine, I wanted to see what you were doing today eighteen years ago...You grounded me so I just wanted to explore for a bit." Yoongi stared at the boy before shaking his head,

"I'm asleep. I just fell asleep because I'm working too hard." He mumbled to himself as he began turning back to the computer and working,

"If I was in your dreams how would I know the password to your computer and the fact that your crush is going to meet you in fifteen minutes." Yoongi's hand on the mouse tightened and the boy smirked,

"No one knows about my crush on Y/n," He grumbled turning to look back at the boy who was nodding,

"I do, in fact, mum knows she's just waiting for the right time to do something about it. She's still stuck on the whole, "It'll ruin our friendship" thing but you win her over in the end,"

"You keep saying, mum, who's your mum?" The door to Yoongi's office opened and you walked into the room with food in your hands,

"I bought lunch! I also stopped by your favourite coffee place and got your favourite snacks," You stopped speaking when you saw the boy on his sofa,

"I didn't know you had a friend-"

"I was just leaving, have fun." The boy got up and headed to the door, with your back to him he pointed at you and mouthed, "that's mum" to Yoongi before leaving the room with a giant smile on his face, Yoongi more confused than ever.

HOSEOK: Non!Idol AU

"You know, it would all go a lot smoother if you just spoke to her," A voice from behind Hoseok said making him jump, kneeing the table and spilling his drink all over the floor.

"What? S-Speak to who?" He stuttered out at the teenage boy that was now sitting in front of him while you came over to clean up the spilt drink.

"Her," The boy mumbled as you walked away to get some cleaning supplies,

"What are you talking about?" The boy sighed rolling his head back as he stared at the ceiling,

"Mum always said you were clueless when you were younger," He turned to look back at Hoseok who seemed even more confused than before.

"Talk to her, give her your number. She's sick of dropping you hints that you don't pick up on," Hoseok shook his head as he tried to think what the boy was talking about.

"You said mum said I was clueless...Do I know you?" The boy rolled his eyes,

"Ah, what the hell, you won't remember. I'm your son from the future...I came to tell you that mum was always sick of your taking your time on asking her out...So just do it," Hoseok blinked trying to decide if he had heard that sentence right or if he was just starting to lose his mind.

"She was really pretty at my age...Not that she's not beautiful you know in the future but dad...Seriously, take a shot before you lose-" He stopped speaking when you came back to the table,

"I'll just get this cleaned up, is there anything I can get you for you Hobi and your new little friend?" You turned to look at the boy and that was when you and Hoseok both noticed he was gone,

"Weird...I didn't hear the bell on the door," You frowned but Hoseok smiled at you,

"He must have had something to do, I didn't even know him...Do you maybe...Wanna hang out this weekend?" Your eyes lit up, you'd been dreaming of him asking you out for weeks.

"Sure, text me." You whispered, writing your number down on an order form and giving it to him before hopping back behind the counter.

NAMJOON: Book shop AU

"Isn't that like the fifth time you've been in there this week, mum is going to think you're insane," Namjoon jumped at the boy that was standing in front of him when he came out of the store. He looked too old to be your son but Namjoon stared at him,

"I didn't know Y/n had a son," Namjoon said to the boy who shook his head,

"She doesn't yet, you and her will have one in the future and that's me." Namjoon laughed loudly before covering his mouth as he saw people staring over at him with a look of confusion on their faces.

"What are you talking about?" The boy sighed leaning against the wall that was behind him,

"I know you'll never believe me but I'm your future son, you and Y/n end up together and you both end up very happy." Namjoon smiled at the thought of it, being with you. It had been his dream for the longest time since he had a huge crush on you but he never for a second thought that the boy in front of him would even be his future son.

"What makes you think I would believe-" He stopped speaking when there was a flash of green light and the boy was missing from where he had previously been standing.

"I need to get some sleep," Namjoon grumbled, walking off in the direction of the dorms.

JIMIN: Best Friends Sister

Jimin walked past your bedroom door to see a boy standing in the door,

"Oh...Are you Y/n's boyfriend?" He questioned as he felt jealously beginning to bubble inside of him at the thought of you having a boyfriend. Not that it was his business since you were Jin's younger sister and Jimin knew if he even tried to date you Jin would break every bone in his body.

"No, God no! She's my mum! Ew!" Jimin frowned wondering if it was some kind of joke that he wasn't understanding but the boy looked around the room.

"I came to see if you guys were together yet but I think I got the year wrong," He mumbled beginning to tap on a watch that was around his wrist,

"What are you talking about? Got the year wrong? Mum?" The boy let out an unimpressed loud groan.

"You and Y/n are my mum and dad...You guys will end up together, now if you'll excuse me-" He was cut off when a flash of green happened and Jimin was left in the room by himself.

"Jimin? What are you doing in my room?" Your voice came from behind him and he jumped, trying to think of an excuse.

TAEHYUNG: Idol AU

"You can't be shy forever, you have to speak at some point." Taehyung stared at the boy in front of him, claiming to be his son from the future. Taehyung didn't believe him of course, what kind of person would believe something like that?

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Taehyung mumbled, going back to working on the song he and Jimin were writing with one another,

"Mum is about to walk through the door, you'll compliment her clothes, she'll compliment your looks and then you'll get so sweaty and nervous you leave the room. That's how mum remembers it anyway," The door handle wiggled and Taehyung filled with dread at the thought of talking you the way that the boy explained it would go down.

"I'm joking. That's uncle Jimin, he'll go and get Mum in 3...2...1-"

"Y/N WAIT UP!" Taehyung's eyes widened as he realised the boy was telling him the truth, then he filled with joy as he realised he and you were finally going to be the ones to end up together...He just had to somehow pluck up the courage to talk to you properly without his heart combusting into a pile of ashes.

JUNGKOOK: Best friends Ex

"Whatever the boys are paying you, I'll pay you triple to leave me alone," Jungkook grumbled as the teenage boy sat on the end of his bed watching him closely then checking the date,

"Oh shit. It's the day Uncle Taehyung found out you loved Y/n...Don't worry dad, it works out...Taehyung forgives you for falling in love with her and he lets you be happy." Jungkook shook his head wanting all of this to go away. He'd confessed to Taehyung about his hidden feelings for you and it started a huge fight between the two of them about how they were supposed to be friends.

"You're just messing with me, it's Taehyung trying to get me back." He mumbled into the pillow but the boy sighed,

"If it was Taehyung getting me back how would I know the date you and mum get married, that my middle name is Tae - after my uncle and that you had a weird scar on your left thigh that you got about three weeks ago that you haven't told anyone about." Jungkook froze as he stared up at the boy,

"I gotta go, but just...Just believe you and mum will be together soon. I promise." With that the boy slowly began to vanish out of the room and Jungkook was left alone with his thoughts, thoughts of you and him finally being together and everyone being happy around you.

Tagline: @lyoongx @mitzwinchester @rjsmochii @kneel-begyourpardon @taestannie @innersooya @sw33tnight @sweeneyblue1 @agustdjoon @jin-from-the-block @acciocriativity @that-anxious-bisexual @mwitsmejk

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stormblessed95 · 4 years ago

Note

https://t.co/akAKnfXq03?amp=1

I'm not shipper but as jm fan i started to notice something different about him and jk relationship.so I believed that there's a possibility of them being a couple. as we now being in love or in relationship doesn't mean that it's certainly should stay forever. so i don't understand why most of the blogs in here diminishes any possibility of fight or breakup between them at certain points. plus no one considere the possibility of jk dating mijoo at some point. isn't that makes us like tkkrs who are stuck in the same period. and just to clarify I'm not insecure because there's nothing too be insecure about. 2 poeple could be in relationship or they just sames to be.all it's matter to me that they're happy with their partners. i just read this blog and started wonder why not one believes that jk could be dating this girl. sorry for my English and May long ask🙏💓.I send it to different bloggers to know other opinions

Hello anon. I debated a long time on if to answer this or not. Not because I have any insecurities or worries about it but simply because this was a horrible time for Jungkook. He was dragged to hell and back over and over again for absolutely no reason. It was horrible and sad and depressing. It's not a time period that should be revisited over so many times. But I'll answer it once and then never again, I'll say everything I want to say here and then move on. I won't post asks about it, agreeing or disagreeing because it's not a topic I want taking up space here. You can all feel however you want to feel about it, I just won't be posting any more posts on it. I hope you all understand.

So this was in Fall/Winter time of 2019, during their break. And honestly the ONLY reason people think they are dating is because Mijoo is a woman. It's an extremely heternormative view point to have. The reasons people state for believing them to be a couple all came out after CCTV footage was illegally shared. The reasons include the backhug footage that was leaked and them clinking their glasses together when they went out to eat. They also said it's because they both now have an eyebrow piercing. And because JKs tattoos look a lot like drawings she has posted (hint. She is a tattoo artist and JK got his tattoos done at her shop.... shocker there are some similarities there).

The back hug and drinks in question ^

This is EXTREMELY normal friend behavior. The only other evidence they could be dating is circumstance at best, including Mijoo receiving flowers everyone said were from JK but Mijoo said they weren't and were from a friend. Or the fact that she is also friends with some of the other 97 liners, who ya know.... also got tattoos from her shop.... crazy they could all just be friends? If THIS is what makes a relationship real then all of BTS are in a relationship with each other... and people who believe JK and Mijoo are right uo there with tkkrs. Both believe it regardless of the people involved saying it's not true. Except tkkrs have more intimate moments, hugs, kisses, and cuddles then anyone who thinks JK and Mijoo are a thing. Sooo honeslty the only thing that the Mijoo relationship has going for it is the fact that she is a woman. That's literally it. And if you don't see the problem with that, I don't know what to tell you.

I mean really. Even their back hug looks more friendly then the ones BTS engage in. You would be able to convince me of NamKook before you could convince me of Mijoo. Skinship and hugging is normal in Korea, regardless of gender. And again, BTS all together have more intimate looking hugs than the one they had together.

And even Mijoo has posted photos with her friends on her public Instagram with ANOTHER man backhugging her with his arms around her... again, looking more intimate than the one she had with JK. This is normal friend behavior.

And with them sitting at dinner clinking glasses? Have you never clicked glasses with a friend? Why does this mean they are dating? Other than the fact that they are a man and a woman sitting next to each other and having a good time? Especially because AGAIN we have more intimate actions between the members themselves regarding eating together and literally feeding each other. You could again convince me of OT7 poly before you could convince me of Mijoo.

Not to mention that Jikook had a very sweet late night hotel dinner date just the two of them, where they giggled and fed each other alone.... in a hotel room... and yet somehow because Mijoo is a woman, that makes it more believable. Lol

Not to mention, the dinner they had, that photo is cropped. JK was visiting family in Geoje during their break and ran into Mijoo and other friends there as well. They decided to all grab some food together. There were 6 other people with them at that table. They weren't even alone or acting cuddly. It wasn't a date. Statement issued by BH and Mijoos tattoo company about it below.

And then the very flimsy they both now have eyebrow piercings.... so do a million other people?? Lol and that's it as far as matching for them goes. Not only does BTS have similar piercings together as well (their ears) but they also share jewelry and have matching jewelry all together. Especially the maknae line. So if we believe this theory, I would again be convinced of a vminkook throuple before I would be convinced of Mijoo. A few examples, you could easily find hundreds though

And not to mention their red string soulmate bracelets that I'm pretty sure they ALL have but that TaeGi never take off and Jimin wears constantly and those 3 especially show theirs off. Soooo again, they try to use the couples matchy traditions but they don't match and BTS has her beat out in that area together as well.

They also mentioned Mijoo liking comments on Instagram saying that they support her if she is dating JK. But she was liking EVERY comment that was supportive during the influx of hate she was getting, even if it had nothing to do with JK. Anything she saw that was positive, she liked.

I'll also had super quick that the people who believed this the most, continued to bring it up and make theories about it were NOT koreans. It was C-ARMY. K-ARMY were all more pissed about the breach of privacy and disrespect shown to JK during this time. They let go of the possibility of them dating as soon as the rumors were denied because again, none of the theories and photo evidence has anything more than friendship vibes, especially for what it normal in Korea.

Soooo no, I don't think not believing they were ever anything more than friends makes me anything like taekookers being stuck in the same period. They just literally didn't do anything to indicate they were a couple. Everyone just lost their shit over the fact that they saw JK hanging out with a woman. Which is honestly really freaking dumb.

And I don't dismiss the idea of a fight or break up between Jikook simply because I don't want it to happen. I've discussed Manila and Rainy day here before and fully believe they have had many fights we don't know about. Fights are normal in even the healthiest and steadfast of relationships. I believe they are together and I don't think they have broken up because I think we would see a major dynamic shift between Jikook that I honestly just did and do not see. Right after the Mijoo scandal, JK had a car accident scandal. And then a few weeks after that they filmed Winter Package 2020, go watch that and see that Jikook seemed FINE. I even have a post up about that if you want to read it on my masterlist. I'm not dismissing it because I don't want to see it, I'm dismissing it because there is literally nothing to see.

I can of course be wrong. And anyone is of course free to disagree. But this is how I see it and I hate the way JK and Jimin were treated during this period in 2019. It's abhorrent. I am basing these opinions off a lot of facts and you can find plenty more information about this that isn't just from gossip rags but legit spottings and things the companies and JK/Mijoo have literally said themselves. Anyway, hope this helped you understand why i think the idea of them being together is just... not true and this makes sense to you and anyone else who reads it. I think they were simply friends, and I honestly doubt after the insanity that this scandal was, that they are still friends. At the very least, I know JK went to a new tattoo artist so who knows. I feel so bad for him during all this, it was awful. Anyway, topic closed. Everyone is free to believe whatever they want about this in the end. Hope this helped!

#jikook #kookmin #jungkook and mijoo scandal and why its a load of bullshark #ask #anon

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yoonia · 5 years ago

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About Time // Part 20

➬ Character | Jungkook x reader / Jimin x reader (feat. BTS)

↳ Type/Genre/words | Angst, Fluff, Alternate Universe (Time Travel!au/Time Leap!au, Soulmate!au), Eventual Smut / 18,5k words

↳ Prompts | “What if you find your soulmate… at the wrong time?” - Lauren Kate, Passion

↳ Summary | Be careful for what you wish for, because you may never know how to deal with them once it comes true. What would you do when your wish for a second chance actually came true? But was it really a fulfilled wish? Too many questions lie when it actually happened. Were they real memories? Or perhaps a part of a past life? Was it only a dream all along? Will everything be different this time?

↳ Ratings | Mature/+18 and up

↳ Warnings | mentions of alcoholism, mentions of cancer, (probably) inaccurate medical and law terms

↳ Author’s Note | This chapter took me forever to finish, but I’m glad that it’s finally out. I want to thank my girls, @randombtsprincessa and @softyoongiionly who have been hyping me out and yelling at me each time I came close to giving up and when I stop writing, and as always my second set of eyes, @theodea. I hope you’ll enjoy this one as we slowly unravel the story between our characters. Please make sure not to miss the second note at the end of the chapter. Thank you!

↳ ⤎ Previous Chapter | Series Index: About Time | Next Chapter ⇢

Song Companion | Shah - Can't Leave You | Oleg Byonic - Wait For You

—First life. St. Vincent’s Hospital, year 2027—

Subtle movements happening around me were the ones that had woken me up.

Whoever it was that had been moving around while I was still asleep, they had tried to do things stealthily, moving about carefully enough not to disturb my sleep.

But when a person had been stuck in one place for so long the way I did, their senses would easily become familiar to their surroundings the same way mine had. I didn’t need much to recognise the sounds that had been constantly happening around me, allowing me to identify the foreign ones when they appeared. I would be able to feel every movement, be it from any unanimated object or simply random movements that took place, and I could sense the changes in the air around me as it happened. So it was easy for me to catch their presence even before I had my eyes opened when they kept on moving, the low thud of their footsteps and the things they were moving around followed each move they made.

And then there were also the scents. It was his cologne that allowed me to recognise him without me seeing him. And it was a good thing too, because it allowed my heartbeat to settle down from its frantic pace and prevent me from waking up in fear, startled to find a random stranger invading my space.

I finally opened my eyes slowly. He was nothing but a blurry blob of a person moving around my room when I looked at him through my bleary eyes. The way he was still pacing back and forth around the bedside drawers told me that he had yet to realise that I was awake. So I continued watching him, blinking my eyes until the sight of him gradually grew clearer and I was finally able to see just what he was doing in my hospital room.

Of course, cleaning up my mess would be the first thing he would do the moment he got here, I wondered with a smile.

This man could never settle with a messy space. He could not even settle in patience without finding something to do, no matter how often he would complain or whine whenever he felt like he had been doing too many things at once.

I barely moved when Yoongi reached out to grab a bouquet of fresh flowers that had been left on top of the small table near the doorway. It looked new, and I had no recollection of seeing it before I fell asleep after my treatment this morning, so it must have arrived just a while ago. I saw Yoongi opening the card that came with it and tutted to himself, muttering low as he shook his head.

The moment I realised what he was saying, I could no longer stay silent. “Bastard? Did the sender really sign the card with that name?”

My voice seemed to startle Yoongi that he nearly jumped. He turned with his hand on his chest, looking almost ghastly grey that quickly faded when he chuckled. “Fucking hell, you scared me,” he said, tossing the flowers away. Though they only landed back not so gracefully on the table instead of into the trashcan placed on the floor right beside it, where he was probably aiming to throw them in before I caught him.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing myself up from the bed the best I could to sit upright while he handed me a glass of water and helped me drink. As I drank, my chest felt hollow. I had been in this place for too long that this simple gesture had become some sort of a routine. And that he had become so familiar with everything that he knew easily just what I needed. It made me feel relieved to have him with me, but I felt the guilt gnawing inside me just the same.

I hated feeling miserable and weak. And I hated it more to see the pitying look he gave me as he read me so easily. “Have you been here long?” I asked him before he ever had a chance to bring it up. Because there was no way he didn't notice it when he had grown used to my moods already. Thankfully, Yoongi had chosen not to say a thing about my condition and only shrugged.

“Not really,” he looked around, rubbing the back of his head as he followed my eyes to see the things he had been tidying up before I woke. “I wasn’t sure if it was alright to wake you up, so I tried to find some things to do while I waited. Sorry if I woke you up.”

I waved him off. “No, you didn’t. It’s just time for me to wake up. It’s almost lunchtime,” I told him, not that I was excited for lunch in any way. Not when I was not completely capable of eating properly. The blisters on my lips and inside my mouth had been increasing rapidly that I couldn’t taste anything without feeling pain. It had been coming and going, sometimes getting better after getting some vitamins or once I began drinking all those herb drinks Kara had been making for me. But whenever they came back, they always left me feeling miserable. And terribly hungry.

And hunger made me feel even more miserable.

If Yoongi had noticed the discomfort look I was making just by thinking about the food, he showed none of it. But he did scrunch his nose and gave a distasteful scoff. “You’re actually excited for the hospital food? Man, you’ve been here for too long.”

I scoffed. “Nope, I’m just excited for their pudding,” I said, without bothering to elaborate the fact that it would probably be the only thing I could manage to eat.

“Damn,” he said, shaking his head almost too dramatically. “I was hoping that I could steal your pudding while you eat.”

I knew that he was only trying to make me feel better, but that was enough to have me laughing. But only for a short while, because any kind of tension happening on my torso gave me pain. As I winced, my eyes fell on the flowers he left behind. It was not hard to recognise them. Jungkook had known me for a long time to remember just what kind of flowers I loved most, and he had gotten me the same kinds ever since we had been together.

Fresh white roses, mixed with a handful of blooming white baby’s breath—just like the ones I had in the flower bouquet that I carried on our wedding day—and with a simple white ribbon wrapped around the footstalks. He had known me well enough to know that I only enjoyed simple things, and it hurt to know that he still remembered everything to the T.

I didn’t really need to ask, but I could not help it. “Those flowers—Jungkook sent them, didn’t he?”

Yoongi clenched his jaw and nodded. “I heard that he’s making amends.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, he just promised to stay around. Be a friend,” I told him, to which he gave me a sceptical look through his eyes. “He wants to be involved but not so much to disturb my life or to get in the way of my recovery process.”

Yoongi started shaking his head. I knew that I didn’t have to explain things on Jungkook’s behalf or to defend him right in front of my friend. But what Yoongi did not know was that Jungkook was not the only one making amends. If he was willing to try and make peace with everything that had been going on, then I should do just the same. It was the only way I could do to let the pain of his betrayal go away and to be able to look at my future without any resentment of the past.

It may have been far too late for me to realise it, and I hated the fact that I needed Jimin there to open my eyes, but the only reason why I have yet to be able to move forward entirely had been due to my anger. Letting my resentment grow freely inside my chest would only blind me from the beautiful things waiting for me in the future.

That is, if there was still any hope for me out there.

“I was almost sure you’re going to forgive that son of a bitch again,” Yoongi finally said with a sigh.

“Oh, I have forgiven him.”

Yoongi sat back with a jolt. “What?”

Chuckling, I waved him off. “No, I meant to say that I have forgiven him, just so we could move on. It has been too exhausting to keep being angry. If he really meant it when he said he wanted us to be friends, that he wanted to support me, then I should stop being so hostile with him. It’s actually pretty relieving to not be angry with him all the time,” I explained, and Yoongi slowly relaxed, while I had to clench my teeth together at the memory of all those passing moments we have had where we were too busy battling each other instead of moving forward. “Not to mention, the last altercation he caused had hurt Jimin. I don’t think I would have any more to give if I’m going to continue fighting him.”

Yoongi sat in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. Sighing, he nodded his head after a while. “I still regretted not being here at the time to punch his face. Not to defend your boyfriend, but for stressing you out.”

I gave him a wry smile. Our relationship had always been a bit more cordial before this point, when we were just two people running a freelance business together. Back in college, he was nothing more but a stranger since we both ran with different crowds. He was more a part of Jungkook’s circle than he was in mine. But to have him on my side this time around, to have him as a part of my support system both as a friend and a second brother to me was gratifying.

“You haven’t been around much. I was starting to miss you,” I told him, making him chuckle. It was not a lie, I did miss him. His absence had never felt so strong before, but even with the overwhelming change happening in my life lately, I have missed his presence around me.

“And you really want me to believe that you actually have been thinking of me?” he jokingly asked me. “I thought you already have someone to keep you company. And I know that he’s been keeping you busy.” He said this while waggling his eyebrows, and I felt my face flushing with heat. He may not have fully supported my new relationship with Jimin at first, stating that I was risking my heart by being close to someone who was fighting the same battle as I was, but he seemed pretty okay with it now.

“What have you been up to?” I asked him. “Come on, tell me anything. I’m bored, and anxious.” Because the days were moving closer to the day for my surgery, was what I couldn’t tell him. Thinking about it only made me tremble in fear, so I tried to avoid bringing it up unless it was necessary. “Tell me that the world outside still exists.”

He gave a bitter chuckle. “Oh, the world outside still exists, all right,” he said, before he began updating me about everything that had been going on lately. Not everything in the world that I could keep up on my own through the news or the things I saw on the television, however, but the things around us that I had left behind. He updated on things regarding work, since I had left behind a bunch of unfinished projects on his hands when I got sick. I had tried my best to help him while I still could, until I had no more energy and he stopped bringing files on our projects to the hospital so he could stop me from trying to force myself to stay active.

Then he suddenly fell silent, just when I was asking him about what had been going on in his life. He looked a bit embarrassed for a moment, looking everywhere but my eyes until he finally took a deep breath and spoke.

“I’m seeing someone,” Yoongi finally admitted. “It’s new and nothing really serious yet, so Hoseok told me to take my time for myself with—you know.”

“No, I totally understand. I don’t ever want to be in the way for you or Hoseok on whatever is happening with your lives,” I told him, before realising something else. “Did you think I would say something about it? Is that why you never said anything to me at first? You know I wouldn’t, right? You’ve done so much for me. I already told you and my brother that I don’t want to have you both putting lives on hold for me. I know Hoseok is starting to.”

And I meant it. I have noticed it for a while but my brother had never wanted to talk about it. Hoseok was starting to look like he was stepping back from living his life, as he struggled to be there for me the entire time I was battling my illness, all while he was doing all he could to help me get out of my broken marriage completely unscathed.

Yoongi’s smile looked a bit sad when he looked at me. “I know you wouldn’t say anything bad. You’ve always been so great when it comes to dealing with my relationships. I think you’ve handled things better than I had,” he said with a chuckle. “As for Hoseok—He’s trying to make up for lost time. You know, for all those years he had made the mistake of cutting you off.”

Shaking my head, I refused to acknowledge it. “It wasn’t completely his fault,” I said, surprising even myself for knowing how I meant it. Through all those years we have lost contact, I did blame Hoseok for pushing me away and refusing to hear what I had to say. He was the one who had shunned me when I needed him the most, but that anger was gone now. Just like how I had forgiven my ex-husband, just how I had forgiven Kara and my father, and how I was just starting to forgive myself for all the horrible things which had happened between us in the past, I had forgiven my brother.

“Yet he still blames himself,” Yoongi said to me patiently, defending my brother. “He still thinks that he deserves to be punished for his ignorance in the past, for not being there for you until it was too late. He kept telling me how hard it has been for him to forget that fact how he had turned his back on you. That you had trusted him and he had only let you down. I think he instantly regretted it when it happened but he didn’t know just how to reach out to you again.”

“Until he met you.” I gave him a wry smile, while deep inside, I was grateful for the fact that my brother had somehow met Yoongi by chance and reached out to him so he could become the bridge between the two of us. Yoongi had no obligations to do any of that, but he did. And he had made it possible for the two of us to reconcile, even if it had come a bit too late.

An orderly interrupted our talk by entering the room with my lunch. Yoongi stood up to retrieve the tray and took his time to set up my meal for me. After a while, I couldn’t help it, I just had to ask, “Why do you take such good care of me? I mean, I’m happy that you are here and to have you as a friend and a second brother. But you’ve done a lot more. Not just for me, but for Hoseok too.”

Yoongi avoided my eyes when he returned to his seat. “Because I really care about you, ______. And you also did a lot for me when I needed help and people were turning their backs on me,” he finally said. His eyes were dark, and his pain was visible when he looked up at me. “Back then, you knew my secrets and still didn’t run away,” he said, while my memory brought me back to the past, when I had met him again after a quite some time, after he had become distant to most of the people we knew back in college. None of the people around us truly knew then that his friends had left him when things were hard for him, and I had chosen to become his friend at the time because I knew what it was like to lose everyone because of all the choices we made.

“I would never turn my back on you,” I told him, while he only gave me a bitter chuckle.

“Well, most people did. They always said it didn’t matter, but then they couldn’t look at me the same way again.”

I bit my lip when I remembered those days. Those final days before I finally left college, when people were whispering things on campus. Bad rumours had always been easy to travel quickly, especially when it came to a person like Yoongi. “Did people ever find out? I thought nobody ever clarified the rumours that had been going around at campus.”

He scoffed. “No, but it happened around the same time I began cutting back from classes and partying, so I guess people took it as a confirmation to them being true. And I had no point or a reason to deny it. Especially since when the truth finally came out, it didn’t really help much to make a difference in the situation.”

I reached out to him and grabbed his hand. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? It’s in the past and you have grown far from that. And you’ll have my back as long as you have me.”

Chuckling softly, Yoongi gave me a relieved smile as he gripped my hand tighter. “Good. Cause you’ll have mine as long as I can help it.”

My heart felt full and warm with the promise that we shared, but at the same time, I also felt the weight of guilt brewing inside my chest as I said those words to him. I was grateful and glad for our friendship and knowing that we would be there for each other no matter what cause, and I had meant every word I said. But I couldn’t help but wished that I had been able to do the same and keep my promise to someone else.

I still wished that I had been able to do the same to another person who I should have never turned my back on in the past.

—Present life. Year 2018—

Winter break had barely ended when I returned to campus at the beginning of the new year.

The cold breeze still felt so strong even though spring was right in the corner that I had to tighten my coat while I paced down the slippery sidewalk towards the rendezvous spot. Taehyung had to repeatedly look over his shoulder to make sure that I was still following him close behind and that I hadn’t slipped away without him noticing. It was partly my fault that he got worried. Simply because I kept refusing his help each time he tried to hold my hand as we walked down the icy sidewalk on our not so sufficient boots. But I also knew that he could barely hold his own, which had been the reason why I didn’t want to become a burden.

Not when I was supposed to be here to give him the support he needed.

I looked up to notice that we were getting close to the east side plaza, where the largest park in the campus’ vicinity was located and also where people were gathering for the event. Loud voices and excited chatters were heard just when we were coming up around the corner, while Taehyung’s gaze looked both amused and nervous when he looked over to me for the last time.

He waited for me right before we went there. This time, I reached out for his hand and held on tightly. “You okay?”

“Fine, just nerves,” he said, shrugging, acting like it was no big deal. But I knew him, both in this lifetime and in the previous one, enough to know that he was blanketing his emotions and thoughts from me. And yet, I only chose not to push him too much about it and tried to have him think of other things instead.

“Okay, now remind me again why we came all the way here? Classes won’t start until the end of the month,” I asked him, just when a series of laughter was heard from the plaza. “And why the hell did they choose to meet up out here anyway? It’s fucking cold.”

Taehyung chuckled as he watched me wrapped my arms around myself and tugged me to come and walk with him, huddling close to keep our bodies warm. “These people are volunteers who are interested to join the spring project. I heard that they wanted to gather as many volunteers as they could get before everyone gets swamped with classes and assignments,” he began talking as he guided the two of us to join the crowd.

As we came up to the plaza, the place had already been filled with students, all wrapped up in thick winter coats and sweaters, all rubbing their hands together to keep themselves warm. But everyone shared the same wide eyes and bright, excited faces as they waited for the event to start. Everyone was standing together, facing the stage at the center. I kept on watching the people around us as Taehyung led us to the middle ground, all while sharing everything there was to know about the event.

This project was held by the local social acts group formed by students from the Social Studies and Medical Faculty, with some of Taehyung’s seniors whom he had grown close to leading the group. They always held their annual community service to help children or elders in need, and Taehyung had been involved in them a few times through the past year that he had probably grown accustomed to all of this.

Most of the work that he had done had mostly involved children, since that had been his main interest for his studies. But early winter, he had joined the service to provide coals and firewoods for elders and poor families who lived in isolated areas. For the past year, Taehyung had enjoyed doing this service and charity work because it had made him happy, it had given him a purpose and new goals to achieve, while opening a way for his future career.

In a different lifetime, being involved with this cause had only served as a form of escape.

And it was what had brought him far, far away from me until the day the bridge between us finally burned for good. All driven from the hurt that I had caused him.

“What’s the goal for the spring project, then?” I asked him just when he found us an empty spot with the perfect view towards the stage. The cold didn’t feel as harsh now as we stood between these people, but Taehyung still wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me close to keep me warm.

“That’s what we’re all here for. The group always chooses their project from the ideas that they collect from their members or other volunteers, then chooses a captain to lead according to what kind of social service or charity they are doing. They haven’t decided what they were going to be working on this spring. Looking from all of these people gathering here, I’m guessing it’s going to be a big one. They’ve never had this many people being interested to join.”

“Maybe this is for the project that you wanted to sign up so badly before? The one they said they were going to send volunteers to the southern hemisphere?” I asked him, reminded of his wish to join the volunteer work that may give him a chance to travel to places while continuing his study.

Taehyung shook his head. “I don’t know. It could be. They haven’t really announced anything for that one either.”

I was about to say something, asking him more about this group and the organisation behind its cause, when a few people stepped up to the stage. One of the female leaders took the microphone and began to greet everyone who was present, applauding people who had come even in the cold. But I barely paid any attention to a word she said when I followed Taehyung’s gaze and saw him standing there with the other members of the volunteer group.

“There he is. Namjoon is always there with them. He’s been made captain on the last few projects that we’ve worked on,” he said, sounding almost distractedly as he watched Namjoon conversing with his friends on stage. I had to admit, the man really was attractive. His whole presence oozed confidence and his demeanour showed me that he was a smart man. Smart enough to be extremely persuasive. A dimple showed on his face when he smiled, and his laughter echoed through the stage, almost rivalling the MC’s voice as she continued to speak.

“Has he approached you yet?” I asked.

Taehyung shrugged. “He’s been a bit friendly, but that’s about it.”

“Is that why I’m here? To make sure that you would have someone to remind you to consider things before signing up?” I turn to look at him, waggling my brow to tease him a little.

This time, Taehyung turned to me and snickered. “Well, you know what they said. The only way for someone to avoid getting swayed by a handsome looking guy who happens to be an extremely persuasive man is to have your childhood crush standing right with you.”

“Whatever you say,” I said, chuckling as he tightened his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. Neither of us said a thing as we listened to the MC spoke, before she finally handed the microphone to Namjoon, who became the one to talk about the project and let the volunteers learn more about the system, the plans, and how to sign up.

We shared nothing more but a bittersweet feeling while we were entranced as we listened to Namjoon speak, holding each other the way we never could in another life we shared.

We didn’t only come here to admire this man or to only see what today was all about, but to simply find answers. To slowly connect the dots and put the puzzle pieces together to fill the blanks, just so we could lay down every part of that other lifetime for us to understand where did everything went wrong.

There had been parts of the past, faces and names of the people that had become a part of my previous life that I could not recall or draw from my jumbled memory so easily. I may have seen or felt their presence in those memories, but some of them had appeared in my dreams merely as blurry shadows, faceless figures, people whose voice only came to me as if they had been submerged underwater.

Kim Namjoon was one of the missing pieces of the puzzle that had caused a rift in my friendship with Taehyung in another lifetime. In my memory, he was nothing but a nameless shadow, one that I feared and hated almost as much as the painful parts I shared with Jungkook from the past life. It took Taehyung finding him to help me remember everything—who he was, what he had done, and everything that happened then—all the broken memories had been unravelled the day Taehyung had first introduced me to this man sometime last semester.

And the reminder of who he was had come in the right time, because he had already become a part of Taehyung’s life through these activities he had been involved in. Because just like how it happened in the past life, Kim Namjoon was the one who had convinced Taehyung to join their movement.

The only difference now was that Taehyung had me by his side. That Taehyung had not been wounded when they first met.

In the past life, Kim Namjoon had come into Taehyung’s life when Taehyung needed someone to look up to, when Taehyung needed a friend and guidance while I kept on pushing him away, leaving him in the blind and completely alone. In that part of our lives, the man had come in at the right time, right when my best friend was completely vulnerable. And he had eased his way in so easily, filling the void in Taehyung’s life, saying all the right words and showing all the right things to have Taehyung follow him wherever he would go. What had started as a good cause to give Taehyung a purpose in life, it had ended leading him to get involved with the bad crowd, to join the bad business that Namjoon was secretly building behind his gentle smile and manipulative ways of making people around him feel special.

Taehyung had loved him with his wounded heart, and he had given the man everything. Only to have Namjoon suck his heart and soul dry, before tossing him away once he was done with him.

And I was not there to catch him when he fell.

“So what do you think? Are you going to join this one?”

The gathering event had ended two hours ago, and now we were heading towards the coffee shop where I had been working part-time for the past few months. Taehyung had insisted to walk me there despite his dorm being located in the opposite direction, saying that he was worried that I would slip if I had gone alone. After all the trouble we had by walking through the icy road and the slippery sidewalks this morning, I had no reason to argue. And I also knew that he only wanted to spend some more time with me before he had to leave for his part-time job, so I just let him be.

Ever since we watched Namjoon’s speech, Taehyung had been left in a daze. He had always reacted this way whenever he saw Namjoon. I was never quite sure whether it was due to my warnings regarding the man or if he had truly developed some sort of a crush or perhaps grown the same hero worship that he had for the man the same way he did in the different lifetime.

“I’m not sure yet,” he finally said. “Even if the cause is going to be just around the city, I don’t think I can make it if they’re starting around the same time my classes are starting over.”

His reasoning had made complete sense. But deep down, I also knew that he was lying. He was conflicted. I could feel it. And he was trying so much to hold back from whatever it was that had been bothering him.

Once Namjoon was done with his speech and the event presentation on stage, he had come down to approach Taehyung while the other students had started lining up to join the cause. He had pulled us both to the side, persuading us personally.

“It wouldn’t be as tiring as the one we did last time. We’re only visiting some of the schools at the neighbouring towns. We’re going to give classes, lend some care for the kids, do some health check-up, while the group from the Engineering Faculty will be there to help with technicalities, like building new facilities or fix old structures that didn’t survive the winter,” Namjoon had told the both of us, pretty much summarising his own presentation on stage to make sure that he would point out all the compelling factors to appeal Taehyung. “You’ve always enjoyed working on any causes that involve children, so I’m sure this would be perfect for you. Not to mention, we’ll be getting extra credits for each movement we make this semester with the faculty supporting us through funds and getting us sponsors.”

I could tell that he was getting through to Taehyung when I saw my best friend watching him with wide eyes. But I had been focusing more on Namjoon, letting my own curiosity and wonder get to me. And for someone who appeared so open, so enticing, and one whose main job was to approach people, Kim Namjoon was hard to read.

My memories of him had been nothing but scraps. It had seemed that in my other life, I had no opportunity to know him in person as he was merely a part of Taehyung’s world once our friendship fell apart and we became worlds apart. This time, I had more opportunities to know this man in person. Still, the only things I had come to know about him had only come from Taehyung.

The only thing I knew about him was that he was a year senior from us, focusing on Medical Studies to become a neurosurgeon. He was a brilliant student, had always come with the highest grade in his year, and he had been active in great causes to help people.

None of that information had ever told us the reason why everything fell apart for Taehyung when they began doing all of their causes together. We only knew that in the past life, Taehyung had gone away with him to a place far away, never to return until everything had been much too late. We just never knew when and how, and I knew that this was the reason why Taehyung had been so afraid to take the risk.

“Remember what you said to me back then, before I met Jimin? Back when I was too scared to even go out and have fun?” I asked him as we continued to walk in silence. The coffee shop had appeared on sight, so I knew that this would be the only chance I could ever be able to say this.

“No, I don’t. What did I say?”

I turned to him. “You told me to be cautious, but not too cautious that I don’t get to live and enjoy the present,” I said. “I know you’re worried about the risk of getting close to him without knowing what exactly happened to you in the past after you got together with him, but I know that you enjoy doing these things. So just go for it. If you do it, I’ll be there to join you so you won’t have to be there alone.”

Taehyung smiled at me as he listened to my promises. I could tell that he was relieved to hear it. “You would?”

“Didn’t I promise that I would never let anything come between us? Not this time,” I told him, reminding him all the promises that I had made back then when we found out that one of the many reasons why our lives had fallen apart was because neither of us was there for the other.

I had made a promise that I would never let that happen again. That I would never let him stray away from my life. No matter what. In a different life, I may have left him to fend for himself. This life had to be different. This time, we had each other.

“Right, okay,” he said, nodding to himself while sighing deeply. The frown that he had carried with him ever since we left the campus’ plaza disappeared when he looked at me. In its place came a smile, and a pair of eyes so bright it made me believe that he would be able to conquer everything if he wanted to.

“Thanks for coming with me this morning,” he said, giving me a side hug as we continued our walk.

“You know I don’t mind it. We haven’t been spending too much time together lately,” I told him as I leaned to him.

For the past few months, both of us had been busy focusing on our own lives. While my relationship with Jimin was blossoming, Taehyung was busy tackling different challenges in his life. We haven’t been spending a lot of time with each other the way we used to aside from the time we spent when we went back to our hometown together during the holidays, yet another reason why I had wanted to do this with him.

Despite our busy lives, things had been completely different still.

At least this time, he was still there, and he had yet to disappear from my life. Even if we couldn’t see each other, all we needed to do was to pick up the phone and we would be there for each other even through the distance.

“We’re still on for tonight, right?” he asked me just as we arrived at the coffee shop.

“Absolutely. Are you picking me up here once my shift ends?”

“Yeah. I might stop by at the library to drop some books, but I’ll come to get you right after,” he said, before giving me a hug as he said goodbye.

“Alright then. See you later.”

I stood in front of the coffee shop for a while longer, watching him walk away until he disappeared right around the corner on his way to the daycare center he had been working at. The coffee shop wasn’t too crowded when I walked in, with the majority of the students had yet to return on campus after the long winter break.

But that soon changed the moment my shift began, right when the rush of the lunch hour started. Students and workers from the nearby offices came in, forming a long line only minutes after I had taken over the cashier. The rush lasted for a little over an hour, much shorter than the regular hustle that would no doubt begin the moment the next term started at the end of the month.

Even if I had been out and active since early morning, I served the patrons with a smile on my face. Before I knew it, the line of customer started to dwindle. By the time I served the last patron, my back was sore and my legs were tight, but something was telling me that I wasn’t supposed to take a break yet. So I stayed behind the counter while my co-worker for the day—the only one there since many of the other staff had yet to return from their holiday—turned to ask if he could take a quick break while there was no customer coming in.

“I’m going to take a quick smoke break, is that okay? We can switch once I’m back,” he said, already in the middle of untying his apron to avoid getting some smoke on it.

“Sure, no problem. I got it handled.”

I turned back to check on my phone once he was gone, taking my time to reply to some messages that I got from Jimin who was asking about my day and my plans for the night. I had just pressed the send button when the bell at the front door chimed behind me, but it took me a few seconds too long to put my phone away before a deep voice called out.

“Excuse me. Can I make an order?”

I turned around to greet the new customer. But the moment I saw him, my body went frozen stiff and my head began to spin.

I had never met this person before. And yet, I remembered him.

Each time I tried to reclaim my memories, there was a void where someone was supposed to be a part of. There was a presence that was constant in almost every part of my painful memories. Yet aside from everyone that I had remembered so far, this person had always been nothing but a shadow, a faceless entity that was there, but never completely solid.

But the moment I saw him standing there, right on the other side of the counter, waiting for me to take his orders, his face brought all the missing pieces together. All the blurry images I had been seeing in my dreams came to me in flashing moments, so quick, so random, but far more clearly than how they all had been. His face filled all of those empty voids. His face, his eyes, his small smile, they replaced the faceless man who had been there by my side through all of the hurt, through all of my journeys.

In those dreams, in those flashing memories that I had been getting, I could never see the face of the man who was holding my hand while I was fighting for my life. And at that moment, as I was looking straight into this customer’s eyes, his face was all I see being there by my side.

He was there.

He was always there.

“Um—hello?”

The man waved his hand right in front of my face with an amused look, snapping me right out of my stupor.

“Oh, uh—yes, hi. Sorry, what can I get you?” I questioned him, unable to hold back the nervous chuckle that came bubbling out. Thankfully, he only smiled.

“I’ll have a cup of espresso and a bagel,” he said, only after taking a moment perusing through the menu placed above the counter.

My fingers were shaking when I was placing his orders into the cashier machine, so I kept my eyes down to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake. “Right. To go?”

He hummed softly and looked around. “Um—no, I think I’ll take them here.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a moment to finish up his orders. “Thank you. You can take a seat or wait on the counter. We’ll call your name once your order is ready.”

“Yeah, okay. My name is—”

“Yoongi,” I blurted out before he could even finish. For some reason, just like how his face filled all the missing puzzle, his name just came into my head as if I had known him my whole life.

When I saw his eyebrows came up to his forehead, I knew then that he was just as surprised as I was. “What? Have we met?”

“Um, well—” I began to stutter while my brain seemed to just stop working indefinitely. So I only said the first thing I could think of as an excuse, “You’re pretty well known. I mean, my friends know you. I just suddenly remember your name.”

Well, at least that was not a complete lie. I was pretty sure that perhaps some of my friends would know him, and I did just remember his name.

He looked at me with a frown, not looking entirely convinced, but he said nothing of it when he handed me his cash to pay for his orders. “Right, well. That’s me. I’m Yoongi.”

“Of course,” I said, avoiding his gaze as I put his money in. “I’ll call you when your coffee is ready.”

His eyes lingered on me for a few seconds, filled with curiosity and probably a bunch of other questions, but he only nodded. “Thanks,” he said to me as he walked to the other side of the counter, leaving me feeling lightheaded.

Everything seemed to be colliding together right at the same time. The final missing pieces of the puzzle were coming to place one at a time. As if the whole universe was trying to shove everything to my face, though I really had no idea just what it was trying to tell me.

—Present life. Hot and Spicy Grill. Year 2018—

As promised, Taehyung had picked me up at work right the moment my shift was up.

There was nothing much to say between us as we drove away in his small city car from the coffee shop, since I was still trying to process the shock of having the unexpected meeting during work earlier while Taehyung seemed like he was having his own turmoil to deal with. He was silent during the drive, looking distracted but thankfully not enough to derail him from driving the car properly. But his silence had made it hard for me to question it when he suddenly started leading the car away from the campus grounds and he kept going further until the car entered the freeway.

It took a few turns before the sight around me changed, the suburbs getting further away behind us, when I finally grew wary and curious that I simply had to speak up. “Are you sure we’re still going to dinner? You’re not planning on kidnapping me, are you?”

Taehyung’s eyes grew wide before he chuckled. “Sorry, it’s a surprise,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t go crazy and take you to any place with no civilisation like what Jimin did.”

Smiling, I looked away from him when my face began to flush. I had told him once about the surprise trip that Jimin had taken me to—which I had to spill because I had completely forgotten to call him back that night after we had just parted way minutes before Jimin came to pick me up. I had told him about how Jimin planned out an outdoor picnic with a thousand stars above us and the view of the valley everywhere I looked, though I had to skip telling him about the ‘dessert’ Jimin gave me under the same stars which had sent me flying to heavenly bliss.

Judging from the sly smirk he was making now, I supposed he had made his own guess to what had happened on the date once the food was left forgotten.

As I looked out the window, I finally realised that he was right. He was not taking me towards the same area that Jimin had taken me to. On the outer lane of the freeway, I saw buildings and dense trees instead of hills and valleys. And to my relief, what I was seeing was the kind of trees I would normally see packed up in the city. The lanes were getting more and more packed with cars as we went further, so I wasn’t quite surprised to see him turning to the exit heading downtown.

“Sorry for the long trip,” he said. “I just found out about this place a while ago and wanted to check it out. I figured if I want to take anyone here to try it then it should be you since we haven’t done this for a while.”

“Aww—that’s so nice that you’re thinking of me. You are truly the best friend every girl needs. The man after my own heart. Or, in this case, stomach,” I teased him, earning his laugh.

It didn’t take much longer than fifteen minutes after we were out of the freeway before he pulled into a small spaced parking lot, and my gaze fell on the small restaurant that seemed like it had only opened pretty recently. “Is it a barbecue and grill place? Awesome!”

“Figured you’ll love it,” he said, turning the car engine off. “Let’s go before the place gets packed with the dinner crowd.”

It didn’t take us long to be seated. But Taehyung was right. Not too long after we made our orders, more and more people started coming in and the place was full within minutes.

“I hope this place is good. People keep talking about this place so I bet these people came from everywhere around the city. I don’t even doubt that we would see some familiar faces from campus,” Taehyung told me after taking a quick look around.

“I’m really hungry I can eat anything at this point,” I said, smiling at him. It really didn’t matter where we were or if the trip here had been worth it. It was spending the time with my best friend during all of the things that had been going on in our lives which I had been most excited about.

The tables around us had started grilling and Taehyung seemed giddy in his seat, looking excited as he looked at the meal with a deep longing in his eyes and he licked his lips at the roasted beef cooking beside us. This was something that I had missed, enjoying our time together and to see him loosening up. Each time we were together, I would look at him and wonder how we ever came apart.

How much different was it back then between us compared to us now? Would we still have this if I had never learned all the mistakes we made in the past life?

Taehyung was picking on the welcome snacks when I felt my phone vibrating in my bag. Remembering that I had promised Jimin to text him the moment Taehyung had succeeded in picking me up at work while he couldn’t, I pulled out the phone and smiled when I noticed that he had messaged me first.

From Jimin: Hey, babe. Are you out with Taehyung?

From Jimin: I’m taking a break atm and I thought about you. Hope he didn’t decide to steal you away from me :(

A smile came to my face as I was reading through his messages. I could picture him sitting down in the middle of his dance practice, all sweaty and breathless while he was typing these words. My heart jumped and it made me realise how much I missed him, even if we had only been apart for a day thanks to our schedules.

To Jimin: I’m safe. He’s not kidnapping me or whatever, but you did give him an idea of taking me far away from campus

From Jimin: Sorry, my bad :p

To Jimin: How’s practice?

From Jimin: These guys are relentless. I’ll probably wake up all sore and bruised tomorrow

To Jimin: But you love it

From Jimin: I do :)

To Jimin: What time will you be done?

From Jimin: We’re doing one more round of practice then I’ll be on my way home

Home. The way he had said it made my heart stir. Ever since we became official, Jimin had repeatedly asked me to move in with him. But I have yet to give an answer, thinking that perhaps things had been going on too fast. If there was anything that I learned from putting all the pieces from my other life together was that moving too fast could lead to a disaster.

Would I dare risk it and say yes? I knew that it was something that my previous self—the other ’me’—had wished for. I saw her dreams as some broken fragments of memories in my dreams, had even mistaken them as actual memories until I managed to decipher them as parts of imaginations instead, and many of those images had shown me various types of white picket fence houses. The settings and everything else around them would be a blurry mess and they had kept changing each time they came to me, but there had always been one part of it that had been consistent, an invariable factor from all of these dreams—Jimin.

“Is that Jimin?” Taehyung questioned me the moment he noticed the expressions I was making as I was messaging my boyfriend back, not realising that my mind had started to wander. “Is he still at practice?”

Putting away my phone, I smiled at him. “Yeah. That’s him. He was checking on me. Kinda. I told him that I’d be with you while he’s busy with his dance.”

Taehyung tilted his head. “Doesn’t he bring you to his practices?”

“No,” I said, snickering to myself when I remembered how adamant Jimin had been to stop me when I insisted to come to his practice. “Jimin said it’s better for me to just watch the actual performance. I think he’s still a bit embarrassed to show me all the process behind his work.”

Taehyung chuckled. Shaking his head, he only commented lightly, “He probably didn’t want you distracting him. Or worse, have his friends coming on to you while he’s busy dancing.”

I rolled my eyes at him. Both of us knew that Jimin had a bit of a jealousy streak, but not so much that it made me feel suffocated just to be with him, or to feel like I was constantly walking on eggshells. The only way he had been showing it was to playfully complain or he would sometimes poke fun on me, acting sulky but never too much.

There was only one person in this world who could tick him off the wrong way. And honestly, Jimin was not the only one who was against this same person.

Looking up at Taehyung, I realised that he had never been kind to each time Jungkook’s name was mentioned. Out of everyone in my life, he was the only person who knew why I had to stay away from Jungkook. He was the only one who had heard all the stories, everything that I remembered from the other ’me’ and all that I felt when the memories returned.

Just like how I was the only person who knew what would happen to both of us if we would ever make another mistake.

Taehyung glanced towards the table next to us one last time, growing impatient while he was completely oblivious to where my mind had been wandering to. Watching him like this reminded me of how distracted he had been when he first came to pick me up, suggesting that something must have happened to him between the moment when we parted ways to the time he came by at the coffee shop. I had been waiting for him to talk about it, only to have him constantly acting as if I had yet to notice his odd behaviour.

“So how was your day?” I finally asked him when his gaze turned blank and he was suddenly becoming more interested in the paper napkin which he had placed on his lap. “You haven’t told me much about your work and your trip to the library.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine.”

That got me raising my brows. It was becoming more obvious to me now that he was trying to avoid talking about it. “Really?”

Taehyung looked up to me, pressing his lips before he released a defeated sigh. “I hate you,” he said, catching me off guard before he suddenly chuckled. “I hate that I can never lie to you.”

Smiling to him, I merely shrugged my shoulders the way he often did. “We’ve been friends since forever. If there’s one person in this world who knows you better than yourself, it would be me,” I said teasingly, before I added, “Second to Hoseok. Sometimes I wonder if he’s secretly your brother, not mine.”

Taehyung chuckled at that. There was no lie that he had come to grow close to Hoseok as we grew up together. Our friendship had started from a play date held by our Moms that happened when we were kids, only because our houses were located in the same block and I was the only one in the neighbourhood who was at the same age as he was. Then our friendship grew in elementary school when we promised to have each other’s backs, and we stayed close as we kept on going to the same school, doing the same things together growing up, then he stayed with me when I got sick and while I was recovering in the hospital years ago. But, as a boy, he had looked up to Hoseok as if he was his own older brother, and Hoseok had taken a liking to him especially because he had always wanted a brother.

“True. Though he wouldn’t be subtle if he wants to know stuff about me. He’d probably be snapping at me—Come on! Spill!” Taehyung jokingly imitated Hoseok’s tone of voice, which made me laugh when I saw his face and I could actually imagine my brother’s voice coming out of him.

“Seriously, though. What is it?” I asked again before he ever had a chance to change the topic around and avoid answering your question. “You came to the coffee shop looking like someone had just hurt your dog. And you’ve been pretty quiet when you’re not talking about this place and the food.”

Once again, he pressed his lips together. “Nothing much, really,” he started, though he suddenly grew restless in his seat and he began to look away, finding it hard to look into my eyes. He suddenly seemed nervous, yet I still felt a hint of relief when I didn’t see any guilt in his eyes, it would probably be worse if he was hiding something big from me.

“It’s just—” he said, clearing his throat. “I stumbled upon Namjoon at the library earlier.”

“You did?”

Are you sure that he was not stalking you? —Was what I had originally wanted to say, but I kept them to myself.

Taehyung looked down briefly before facing me again. “Right, so—he kept on asking me to join the cause and the rest of their spring activities cause they needed more people. Then he started asking me about my classes, the professors I’ve gotten this semester, before he suddenly asked if we could grab a coffee sometime.”

I blinked. He had spoken so quickly during the last part of his sentence that I wasn’t sure if I was hearing things right until it finally clicked for me a few milliseconds too long. “He asked you to go out for coffee?” I asked, to which he nodded. “Like—casually? Or—”

“Like—he just literally said, ‘Hey, why don’t we grab some coffee sometime and talk more?’, in a friendly kind of way,” he said, imitating Namjoon’s voice in his own way.

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging sheepishly. “I was kind of shocked and he only patted me in the back and walked away.”

I blinked again. “Funny how he seems to insist having you around a lot,” I muttered, before looking at him suspiciously. “He even came to you this morning while the gathering was clearing up. And you said he wasn’t interested to make a move on you.”

The waiter came in just then to drop our drinks and Taehyung took his time to take a sip of his cold beer before answering, “I don’t know either. He didn’t seem like he even noticed me that much in the past year.”

“How did you feel about his offer then?”

He raised his brows. “How I felt? Well—I certainly didn’t have all the goosebumps, the fireworks, or my heart beating fast cause I have no jumbled memories mixing in between the good and the bad, so—”

“Hey, watch it—” I warned him while pointing a straw at him. “No, I’m just asking cause it seemed to bother you a little.”

“It’s not. It’s just—” he seemed to contemplate his answers for a moment, like he was trying to find the best way to explain his trail of thoughts even while he was having trouble understanding it himself.

“I guess I was just wondering, why me?” he finally said. “I mean, I kind of understand why he would be approaching me—another ’me’—in the alter life. It must have been compelling to come on to someone who seemed broken and lost and I had probably seen him as my saviour, the light of my life after the darkness, the white knight.”

His overly dramatic expression had you raising your brows. “He’s kind of a heartthrob too.”

“Yeah—” he hummed. “I won’t even deny the fact that he’s attractive. But normal me? This me? I wouldn’t have picked him as the type of guy I’d be dating if I would—” he stopped and started glancing around, as if he was afraid that someone might be listening in. “You know.”

And I did know what he was trying to tell me. For someone who had been open about his sexual preferences, he was still wary about the world around us, not too sure on how they would perceive him.

He leaned back on his seat when he added, “He seems so put together too. But after knowing what would have happened if I had just let things be, I can somehow look past his false act of composure and find him seem a bit unhinged.”

“Seriously?” I questioned him, laughing. “Unhinged? Have you been reading criminal fiction novels in your Psych classes?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

I laughed at him, but then stopped myself as I watched him closely. While a part of me was relieved that he believed me enough to tread things carefully, I was also feeling the guilt for allowing him to build his own boundaries by giving him all the warnings on what was supposed to be our future. Even though he was giving it the best he could, I still worried that he might not be living his life to the fullest potential just because he was afraid to make any decision that could lead to the end of our friendship.

Taehyung looked at me when I fell silent. “What? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Sighing, I had no choice but to share my thoughts on this. “Just wondering if I’ve made the right decision on letting you know about your supposed future. What if my memories had been wrong this whole time and it wasn’t Namjoon that I saw? What if he’s just a good guy with his mind on his good cause who happens to have an innocent crush on my best friend?”

Taehyung seemed to ponder on it briefly before shaking his head. “I’ve been talking shit and making long speeches about you risking things by not staying away from this dude who had supposedly ruined your life and your trust to other human beings—”

I rolled my eyes. “His name is Jungkook.”

But he continued on, ignoring me completely. “—so I’ve decided not to risk mine. Second chances, remember?”

His words made me stop. I bit my lip and nodded. “Second chances.”

Taehyung gave me a grim smile when he nodded back, but it also appeared to me that there was a huge weight being pulled away from his shoulders. As if being honest with each other had been freeing for him, something that I was feeling too.

Noticing that our meal order had yet to arrive at our table, Taehyung looked around and pushed himself out of his seat. “The food’s going to be here any minute but I’m going to need the restrooms. I’ll be right back,” he said, before he left his seat to make a quick run to the restrooms at the back.

I watched him leave just in time for my phone to vibrate in my hand. I looked down, opening the messaging app immediately for thinking that Jimin had texted some more before his practice would start again, only to stop when I saw Jungkook’s name flashing on the screen instead.

From Jungkook: Hey, I hope I’m not texting you with your boyfriend around :p

From Jungkook: It’s been a while since I’ve seen you at the pub

From Jungkook: Is everything okay?

Biting my lips, I looked over to where I saw Taehyung had disappeared to and breathed a sigh of relief that the message had come in while he was gone. Taehyung would have only needed to take one look at my face before he would start asking questions, including why I had been texting with Jungkook from time to time.

To Jungkook: everything’s fine

To Jungkook: Been a bit busy, that’s all. How are you?

From Jungkook: doing okay

From Jungkook: I’m finally back on campus and I just got my schedules at the pub. Will be performing on stage next Friday night

From Jungkook: Will you come?

I lowered the phone to my lap, having no idea how to respond. While most of our texts had been about keeping up with each other’s lives, there had been a few times when he would invite me to his show at the pub. I had only come to watch him a couple of times, most of them without even saying hello to him directly and leaving before giving him a chance to sit with me. I knew it was wrong to keep in touch and talk to him like this after what I had promised my best friend before, but it had not been easy for me to ignore him.

And he was not someone who would give up so easily either that ignoring his text messages was never a choice. Not when he would often try to find me or even call me until he could talk to me.

From Jungkook: ________?

Another message came in, letting me know that he was waiting for my response. Biting my lip, I pondered over the options. What was I supposed to say? And would he be happy to hear what my answers if I had refused to come?

And why on earth was I already wondering what clothes to wear for the night at the pub?

To Jungkook: Sorry

To Jungkook: I’ll try to be there. What time?

From Jungkook: the second stage of the night. 8 PM

From Jungkook: I’ll be waiting :)

Reading through his response, my stomach turned and my chest grew tight with guilt. There was no way out of this now. And I really had no idea what I was doing either, knowing that Friday night would be the night I would usually come to stay at Jimin’s place so we could spend the weekend together.

“Fuck,” I cursed at myself, before tossing my phone into my bag to avoid looking through his messages again.

The meal we ordered had just arrived at the table when Taehyung returned, with the waiter apologising to the two of us repeatedly about the long wait, explaining to us overwhelmed they were as the restaurant was a full house for the night. As Taehyung returned to his seat, the waiter walked away from our table, and my eyes were drawn to follow him as he weaved through the floor between the tables to return to the kitchen area.

That was when I saw him. His head bobbing over the other seated guests as he walked across the room until he found the table that seemed to have been reserved for him.

“What?” Taehyung questioned me when he noticed, his voice drawing my attention when I was still looking far away. “What is it?” he asked again when he got no answer, then he began looking around the seating area to find what I was looking at.

“I saw someone. From campus. Though it seems a bit odd that he had come all the way to this place to eat,” I said, disregarding the fact that it had been the same case for us since Taehyung and I had driven far to be there too. “There, he’s on the table at the corner. Wearing a black shirt and a black cap.”

He followed the direction I was subtly pointing to, taking a few seconds before his eyes grew with recognition when he finally found Yoongi at the other side of the restaurant.

“You know him?” he asked, raising his brows at me when he turned to me again. “I thought the only people you know on campus are just me, Jimin, and his cousin.”

“Ha, ha, funny,” I sneered at him while rolling my eyes while he enjoyed having been able to mock me about it. But then my eyes went back to his table, seeing Yoongi with another man who looked like him, but a bit older.

“He came to the coffee shop earlier today on my shift,” I told him, finding him looking at Yoongi again as if he wanted to make sure. “You know who he is?”

He turned back to you with wide eyes. “Min Yoongi? Everyone knows him. He’s pretty popular among the frat boys. He’s always leading his friends on the stuff they always organise in their frat houses, though he hasn’t really been in the scene that much lately.”

“And you have?”

He scoffed at me. “Hey, unlike you, I still have a reputation to uphold,” he teased me, snickering when I gave him a scowl. “My dorm mate gets invited to their parties a lot and I always go with him when I can.”

I looked over to Yoongi again, noticing the broody look that he was wearing even as he was chatting with his companion. His brother, more likely, since they looked pretty similar from this distance. Except that when Yoongi was wearing a dark shirt, his brother was wearing something lighter and a bit too formal for a grill house. “So, why hasn’t he been around?”

“Seems like he’s graduating this year, and rumours said he had already taken a job at his brother’s company so he no longer spends much time on campus unless necessary,” he explained slowly before he began glancing around warily the way he did previously. “But, um—there’s also this rumour going around.”

I snapped my head to look at him. “What kind of rumour?”

Taehyung took another quick glance at Yoongi before leaning closer so he could whisper, “Someone said they caught him kissing a TA. A male TA. It happened at a dorm party.”

My eyes grew instantly wide and I had to lean closer as I whispered angrily, “And people just—what? Stay away from him?”

Taehyung shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it seems like his friends are beginning to dwindle. I don’t think it’s because they’re afraid of the repercussions from sticking around or if it’s because there’s a possibility that he’s queer if the rumours are true, it’s just—” he swallowed hard, looking sympathetic as he glanced one more time towards Yoongi’s table before looking at me again, and I knew that the look he was giving me was there only due to the fact that he had once been in his shoes. “He’s been hiding this for so long, if it’s really true. Maybe they’re just pissed cause he’s been keeping a secret. You know how those frat boys are, they hold secrets like a treasure.”

They sure did.

Because according to one of my strongest memories of all, one of the biggest secrets that had been painful enough for me to remember from my past life was how Jungkook’s friends had also had a hand in hiding his sins from me.

Shaking my head, I chose to look away from Yoongi. “Still seems so stupid to just turn their backs on him like that just because of some rumours,” I wondered out loud, when the bitter truth of how he was left abandoned by the same people who were supposed to support him through it truly sunk in.

“It makes you think. Doesn’t it?” he asked me, though it sounded more like he was wondering out loud just like I was.

“About what?” I asked him.

“How you can’t always depend on others to stay in your life forever,” he said to me with an as-matter-factly tone, though it also sounded bitter, because he had experienced it too. Meeting his eyes, I was suddenly glad that I had been able to show him that he deserved the kind of support he needed too.

As we continued with our dinner, talking about all the silly and mundane things from our daily lives, I couldn’t shake the nagging thought still hanging in the back of my head. Too many coincidences happening on the same day. Right at that moment, just when I recounted that I had met Yoongi coincidentally twice in the same day after not being able to remember him for so long, something in my head clicked.

I just didn’t know what to do about it. And I had no idea how I could make it all possible to even happen.

—First life. St. Vincent’s Hospital, year 2027—

As the final weeks before the surgery slowly started creeping up on me, I was slowly becoming a complete nervous wreck.

The fact that I was having an on and off fever also did not help my case at all. I was feeling like crap, was constantly exhausted, without knowing if the reason I kept on falling asleep was due to the overwhelming dose of painkillers that still remained in my blood or if my body had succumbed to the lingering pain that had only been intensifying, as if the masses in my body knew that they were about to be torn to pieces and they were giving their last fight.

My family, which mainly included Hoseok and Kara with the additional help from Yoongi, had been coming and going to stay with me and nurse me whenever needed. I knew that they were trying to ease my mind by staying positive whenever they were around, lifting my spirit while distracting me with things that they knew would make me happy. They would do everything they could, from bringing me movies, books, sometimes food or snacks that I could take without breaking the doctors’ rules and ones that I could swallow easily, to telling me stories or life updates that would be able to stop me from thinking about all the negative things I was facing.

But as the days were coming closer to the day of the surgery, not a single thing could help ease my mind. It was then when I finally realised that the fear had never truly sunk in, and it was only then that my brain was finally processing the fact that I was about to face a high-risk procedure that—according to some of the things I had been reading while I was preparing for it—also had a high chance of failure. And every illusion that I had let itself grow inside my mind, the false hope and optimism shattered like a glass wall and I was faced with the reality that perhaps all of what I was about to go through would be nothing but a fruitless attempt of getting me out of my bind.

It was even worse because I also knew that the people around me were doing all they could to hide the fact that Jimin had been absent.

The emptiness I felt without him there had seemed like a void, a black hole that was growing larger inside me, as if it would be strong enough to swallow me from within. That was when I realised how much I needed him, and I could never imagine how life would be if I no longer had him by my side.

The last time I came to see him, he had been recovering from a long day of tests and treatments, and I had stayed in his room until he was feeling better, only after I had made sure that he was strong enough to go through the days without constantly being under watch.

Not too long after we parted ways, I was getting prepared for the surgery that I was no longer allowed to leave the room or to roam the hospital as freely as I had before. Though the reason why I had not been able to come and see him was not only due to the restrictions given to me, but also because my body had simply given up. I had no energy, and the pain was getting too unbearable as I was getting less painkillers to allow my body to take in more of my new meds.

The last time I saw him again was when I was under heavy medication. I was having a high fever that day and I heard his voice talking to my brother and the residing nurse to ask about my condition. I felt him holding my hand and kissing my forehead each time I woke up, barely able to speak, but seeing his face through my bleary eyes felt like a breath of fresh air. When I woke up feeling much better later that night, he was no longer there, but his warmth remained.

The only thing that had been making me worried was knowing that there had to be a reason why he had yet to come and visit me ever since. In other—more regular—days, he would appear in my room to each time I was unable to visit. He had also promised to stay by my side through this surgery, and yet, only a couple of days left and there was still no sign of him, letting me wondering if there was something wrong.

“I can check on him if you want,” Yoongi finally offered after noticing how anxious I had been the whole day. He must have caught me glancing towards the door even as we were sitting there, watching the movie playing from his laptop together. Perhaps he knew that my head had never been on the movie, just like it had always been.

I looked at him and sighed. “Could you?” I finally relented and asked him. “I asked Soyeon about him but she didn’t say much except that Jimin is still recovering. We text at night before bed, but he’d never answer when I ask how he’s doing.”

Yoongi simply nodded. “You know, it’d probably be easier if you guys just share a room together, huh?” he wryly said.

“I wish,” I chuckled, rolling my eyes before I realised just how tempting the idea had sounded. “Is something like that even possible though?”

Yoongi shrugged. “I’ve heard of family members or spouses with terminal illnesses being put together in the same room, but I don’t know if it’s possible on your case. I could have Hoseok or Kara to ask around. They’re the ones who are listed as your family.”

Shaking my head, I turned to look at the laptop again. “I don’t even know if Jimin would agree.”

“I’m sure he’s just as devastated as you are that he can’t come to see you.”

“You really think so?” I questioned him, finding him frowning when I looked up. “Thanks for trying to lift up my spirits. I feel like you’re treating me like I’m your teenage younger sister or something.”

Looking at me, Yoongi merely scoffed. “I never had any teenage younger sister to take care of so I wouldn’t know.”

When a visitor finally came by to my room later in the night, it was not Jimin.

Yoongi was putting his coat on to leave for the night after staying with me all day when Jungkook appeared in the doorway. There was another bouquet of white flowers in his hand—the same as the ones he had been sending me every day—and a deep scowl on his face when he exchanged gazes with Yoongi.

Yoongi clenched his jaw, obvious enough to show his dislike at Jungkook’s appearance. He didn’t even bother to greet my ex-husband as he turned to me. “Do you want me to stay a bit longer?”

I looked back and forth between them, only to have Jungkook looked away when I met his eyes, though his gaze softened just a little when he saw how uncomfortable I felt at the tension that was rising from them together. Sighing to myself, I could only choose to diffuse the situation by letting Yoongi go on his way.

“It’s okay. You have that date to go to and it won’t be long before Kara gets here anyway,” I told Yoongi, though it was clear that he didn’t exactly enjoy accepting my choice.

“You sure?” he asked again, to which I only nodded. He came to my bed while shaking his head, but he chose not to say a thing when he kissed my forehead aside from telling me to call him if I needed anything. “Promise me to let me know if anything happens.”

“I promise.”

He gave me a final nod before turning to the doorway, where Jungkook was still standing. Both of them stood facing each other for a few awkward seconds before Jungkook finally stepped aside to allow him to pass without saying a word to each other.

The moment Yoongi left, the air between us rippled into a different kind of tension. When it was only between him and Yoongi, all I could feel was their rage, their hostility against each other. But now, as Jungkook was making his way slowly towards the bed, there was a sense of awkwardness that grew between us.

Only a year ago, he was the only man that I had ever loved. Though our marriage was not perfect, he was still a huge part of me that I called home, no matter how lonely that ‘home’ would feel like at times. Tonight, it felt like he was a stranger. There was still a pull inside my chest that felt so tight I could hardly breathe, but it was not enough to have me opening my arms to welcome him with a warm embrace.

Jungkook looked around the room with a wry smile on his face. “You’ve kept the flowers,” he murmured softly as he saw all the white flowers that still remained, finding each one being kept in different vases in all sizes before looking back at me.

“Kara and my nurse, Soyeon, took care of them. If the boys had been the ones who received them, they’d end up somewhere else,” I told him with a chuckle, choosing not to tell him that there had been some that had only ended being tossed into the trash. Mostly on Yoongi’s doing, because Hoseok had always opted on passing them on to the other female nurses who had slowly grown into becoming his admirers.

Jungkook nodded as he listened, and I noticed that his grip on the bouquet had somehow tightened. “May I?” he asked, pointing at the empty chair next to my bed which Yoongi had been using all day.

“Sure,” I said, as I watched him take his seat.

“Here, these are for you,” he said to me as he handed the small bouquet of white roses to me, forcing me to peel my fingers away from the sheets that I had been clutching tightly ever since the moment he appeared at the door.

“Thank you,” I whispered. My fingers felt cold when I took the flowers from his hands. My skin crawled when our fingers touched. It was an odd feeling, when in the past, each of his gentle touches would be able to send my heart racing and my body would shudder in pleasure. It truly felt like he was no longer a part of me, as if the years we shared together had been a distant memory that was no longer mine.

I instantly pulled my hand away and kept the flowers on my lap. I didn’t miss the way he flinched when I avoided his touch, nor did I miss the look of hurt and disappointment that lingered in his eyes when he saw me clutching the flowers tightly on my lap, as if I was using them as a shield to protect me from him.

“How are you feeling?” he finally asked after a brief moment of silence. He cleared his throat and blushed when he noticed me looking up. “I, uh—I heard the surgery is in a couple of days.”

I nodded. “Two days,” I said, and my heartbeat accelerated almost immediately. He must have noticed it when my skin blanched, when the rush of panic came over me.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” I quickly told him. “It’s just that it feels surreal, dealing with it. I still haven’t completely wrapped my mind around it. It felt like a long time ago when I agreed to go through with it, so I’ve tried not to think about it too much. But then, suddenly it’s only days apart.”

Jungkook nodded as he tried to understand, and the concerned look on his face remained. “You’ll get through this just fine, I know it.”

I looked up, giving him a small smile. “How can you be so sure?”

Pressing his lips, Jungkook avoided my gaze for a moment. “Because you’re strong,” he finally said to me. “You’re always the stronger one between us. You’ve gotten through everything and still came out of it in one piece, whereas I could only burn things to dust and destroy everything I touched.”

Shaking my head, my words slipped out of me before I could stop them. “Not everything.”

His gaze found me, looking surprised to hear what I said, while I had to look away when once again all of the good memories that we had shared together went through my mind. My fingers clenched tighter around the flowers when I wondered just how everything fell into pieces, though what was left inside me was nothing but a numbing rage, when all the hurt he had given me had seized to give me pain since a long time ago.

Jungkook shifted in his seat, pulling my attention back to him. He was still avoiding my gaze, giving me a chance to finally take him all in. There were a lot of changes going on with him. He had always looked pristine, even when he was hiding his pain inside him. But there were also those moments in time, especially while we were battling for our divorce, when he looked terribly broken. He had stopped taking care of himself, leaving his hair constantly messy and his face looking dark and gloomy. I remembered seeing his eyes red and swollen, with deep, dark bags under them growing darker each time with all the sleepless nights he went through and all the drinking that he had resorted to just to escape from everything.

Now, he had looked much better, making good of his words to take care of himself while I was battling my own illness. His body had grown toned and broader, a sign that he had reserved back to working out and eating healthy again. His eyes were much brighter than how I had seen him last, as he had promised me time and time again that he would stop drinking so he could always be in his clear mind while he was supporting me. And then I caught the sight of his hair, looking thicker and longer as he styled them to the back of his head.

“You look good,” I said, making him look at me again. “Healthier. And you’ve kept your hair longer.”

He smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. “Not on purpose,” he admitted with a shrug. “I used to have my wife reminding me to go to the barbershop. Sometimes she would do it herself, have me sit down in the kitchen as she would cut my hair for me. Now, I can’t even decide what style of hair to choose for myself because I’d never know what would look good for me.”

I looked down just as my eyes started burning. There was nothing I could do to stop the tears from building up, threatening to flow like a river.

“Sorry, fuck—” I heard Jungkook’s voice cursing at himself before he leaned forward, catching my wrist and holding it gently in his hold. His thumb began rubbing gently on my skin and the dam of tears just broke apart. “I really need to learn how to shut up, but I just cannot help myself.”

I laughed nervously, though they came out with a round of sobbing when I continued crying. It took a moment before I calmed down. As much as I hated to admit it, the way he was softly holding my hand truly helped put myself together.

“I do miss you. That’s not a lie,” he whispered softly, meeting my eyes when I looked up. He reached out with his free hand, brushing my tears away. “You might not see it, but it feels so empty without you. I tried. I promise you, I have tried. Not to move on by seeing anyone else, because other women always remind me of you, but I try to live my life the best I could, to take care of myself the way you would do it for me, but nothing could fill up the empty space you left behind.”

Shaking my head, I tried to pull away from him. “Jungkook—”

His grip tightened, and he refused to let me go. “No, I’m not doing this to beg you to come back. I swear. I just want to tell you how I feel before I’d explode.”

Drawing a shaky breath, I tried my best to calm my heartbeat before I looked at him again. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

Jungkook looked at me for a moment longer then nodded his head. “Sure,” he said, before he proceeded in telling me things about what he had been doing lately. He made me laugh when he talked about meeting up with his friends, reuniting with his mates from college and spending the whole night playing pool.

“No, I didn’t drink,” he said to me when I asked him about it. “Been sober for almost six months now. There’s no way I can break that promise to you now,” he added, making me smile wider with relief brewing in my chest. “Eunwoo got a bit crazy though. Seconds after he agreed to join me on the next AA meeting, he ordered a full bottle of a 12 years-old Macallan and finished almost three-quarters of it on his own.”

“And the only thing you drank was Coke?”

Nodding his head, he smiled proudly. “Yes, Ma’am. I was on my best behaviour the whole night,” he said, and I felt instantly proud of him. The feeling was bittersweet, however, because I couldn’t stop wondering what our lives would have been like if he had as much control back then when we were together.

“I’m glad,” was all that I could say to him. “I’m happy to know that you’re living a better life.”

Pressing his lips together, he reached out to grab my hand. “And you are going to be there to continue watching me as I make better changes in my life, so you can witness me as I grow to be the man that you can feel proud of,” he said to me, and another set of tears escaped from me. Tightening his hold on my hand, he reached out to my chin and turned my face so I could look at him.

“Listen to me. You’re going to get through this, be stronger and healthier. I know you would. I know it’s scary, but I’m here. As much as I want to beg for you to come back to me, the only thing I need for you is to fight a good fight. We’ll get through this, and we will both have a much better life. We’ll watch each other as we both move on and find our happiness, to make the most of the rest of our lives, whether we’re doing it together or apart. Okay?”

At this point, I was a sobbing mess. The fear was still clawing from within. But his words gave me a new strength that I never knew I could still feel. It probably wouldn’t be enough to make sure that I could make it through, but it was enough to help me look at what was beyond me with a different kind of light.

As I looked into his eyes, I found a new kind of calmness that I had thought I had lost. What I saw in his eyes then would never be the same as what I had seen from him in the past, when he was the reason for me to carry on. But for now, this was more than enough. Taking one last deep, shaky breath, I looked straight into his eyes and nodded. I knew it was wrong to take comfort from the same man that had caused me a lot of pain, the same man that had also caused all the darkest times of my life.

But I knew that he was right and I needed to engulf myself in the comfort of his warmth just as long as I could find strength in them. No matter how scary it would be, I knew that I had to fight it. I needed to. And I had to survive through this no matter what.

“Okay.”

Jimin finally came to see me on the last day I had before the surgery.

It only took waking up to his smile to feel like I was coming alive again, even though I had to take a moment to make sure that I was not dreaming, that he was actually there.

I looked over his shoulder, noticing that the sky outside the window was still dark. the sun had barely come up, which meant that he came in way before the first round of nurses started. On the couch across the room, I saw Kara still deep in her sleep. She had come around the time Jungkook was ready to leave last night, and she had stayed all night to keep me company.

Out of everyone, Kara had been the one who would stay with me overnight. She has admitted once that she was worried that I would feel lonely should I ever wake up in the middle of the night without anyone by my side.

Another reason for her to stay was because of the memory we shared about my Mom. At one of the conversations that we have had where we talked about my mother, I had told her about the late-night phone calls that my Mom made while she was ill. Her eyes instantly lost their light, knowing that one of the many reasons why my mother had been left in the hospital all by herself during those times were because of her. Because my father had chosen to spend the night with his mistress instead of staying by my mother’s side.

“I would remember her whenever I think about you sleeping alone at night in this lousy hospital, afraid and lonely,” she said once after she had asked for a cot and an extra blanket for her to sleep in. “I won’t be able to sleep well at night when it happens. Take it as my redemption. I can’t change the past, but I sure as hell won’t let the same thing happen to you.”

Gentle kisses along my knuckles brought me back to the man sitting next to my bed. Jimin smiled at me when I looked at him. He had my hand in his grip, his lips pressing on my skin as he trailed soft kisses that sent delicate shivers through my body. His touches were enough to warm me up against the cold air conditioner blasting in the room.

“Morning, beautiful,” he whispered, making sure to keep it down so he wouldn’t wake Kara.

“Morning,” I answered him, still completely in a daze as I took in the sight of him. “You’re really here.”

His gaze softened as he gave me a wry smile. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to come and see you again,” he said, and only then did I realise that his voice was hoarse and weak, hidden in his whispers.

And then it took him pulling away for me to notice everything that I had missed—the wheelchair he was sitting on, the thinning hair under his beanie hat, the bags under his red-rimmed eyes, the sunken cheeks, the blisters on his lips—and my heart dropped.

“Jimin—” I choked, to which he quickly pressed a finger on my lips to stop me from talking.

“Sshh—I know, I look like hell,” he said, chuckling softly. Though the sound immediately turned into a set of coughs until he managed to take a deep breath and hold it in. “And I’ve been through hell.”

My eyes burned with tears, but I did all I could to stop them from falling. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from questioning him, “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone—”

“Because I didn’t want you to worry about me when you already have so much to worry about on yourself,” he said to me with a sad smile. “I asked the nurses to not tell you anything. I couldn’t leave my room and let you see me when I was at my worse. You need to focus on yourself, on what’s happening tomorrow. I should be the last thing in your mind to worry about.”

Shaking my head, I leaned towards him and let him took my hand in his once again. “It’s not fair.”

He smiled at me and said, “It’s only fair. I shouldn’t be in the way of your recovery.”

“You never were. I need you, and I want to be there to support you too.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here now. I’ve done all I could to get strong enough to be here today so I could see you,” he said, pulling my hand in his so he could place my palm on his cheek, giving me a chance to feel him. “You know that I will always be here to support you.”

“Always? Promise?” He only answered me with a nod of his head, but it was enough for now. “Can you stay here with me?”

Jimin glanced over his shoulder and tipped his head. “Will your guardian let me?”

I looked over to Kara’s sleeping form and smiled. “She has to.”

And indeed she did. Kara knew how much I had missed Jimin and how his presence helped make a lot of changes that she even let Jimin use the cot that she had neglected the night before so he could rest once in a while. Even the nurses had come to let Jimin take his medicines without him returning to his room.

“Told you that things would be easier if we had just been placed in the same room,” Jimin joked at Soyeon when she came into the room while shaking her head at him. His comment surprised me as I had never thought he would even consider it.

“You asked them for a room transfer?”

Jimin shrugged with a sheepish smile. “Hey, I tried. I’ve thought about it ever since you got sick from your trips down the halls at night to see me.”

I looked at him, not believing what I just heard. Never once in my mind I had considered it possible for us to share a room that I had pushed away every hope of making it happen. I was completely speechless that all I could do was hold his hand. It was Soyeon who spoke next, breaking the moment we were sharing.

“If you want, I can submit another request once you’ve gone through the surgery,” she said, while Jimin and I exchanged looks.

“Can you do that?”

Soyeon glanced at Kara who was now giving her a hopeful look and smiled. “I can ask your doctor to have permission for transfer,” she answered me with a wink.

“If Doctor Kim agrees, then it’ll leave only one last hurdle that might get in the way,” Jimin said, breaking whatever spell we were in before either one of us even had a chance to celebrate the possible good news.

“What is it?”

Jimin gave me a sad smile and said, “Your ex-husband.”

It was finally the day of the surgery.

Everyone had been here with me since this morning, waiting in the room with me. While my anxiety had peaked through the roof the day before, I was surprisingly calm ever since I had woken up this morning. Meanwhile, everyone else seemed to be on the edge since the moment I woke up and it even got worse when the nurse came in just one hour before I was supposed to be taken to the operating room, handing me the last medicine for the day.

The frown on Hoseok’s face kept on slipping out no matter how hard he tried to hide it behind his smile. Even the years that had passed during the period of time when we fell apart couldn’t change the fact that I knew my brother. That I would be able to catch on to his emotions so easily despite his efforts of hiding them from me.

He was not the only one who was restless, as Yoongi kept fidgeting in his seat. He had been silent all day, tension continued to roll out of his shoulders as he sat with Hoseok across the room.

As I was forbidden to consume any food or water, Kara found nothing to do to distract herself and she had opted to stay by my side. I had to respect her for trying her best to stay calm, though the moment she held my hand and she started praying for the two of us, it almost felt like I was the one calming her down until her fingers stopped shaking.

“It’ll be okay,” I finally said to her when she gave me yet another forced smile the moment our eyes met. But everyone in the room knew that I was speaking for all of us, especially myself, when I added, “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Jimin came to my room just when it was almost time for me to go. He came in on his wheelchair, with Nurse Soyeon pushing him into the room. Everyone instantly stepped aside to give us space, allowing Jimin to settle down next to the bed, where he took my hand to hold and he could lean in just close enough to give me a kiss.

“I’ll be here until the moment they come to pick you up,” he whispered to me between his gentle kisses, then gave me another promise before he pulled away, “And I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

After that moment, time seemed to stand still. Neither of my family dared to speak, afraid that any word they said would burst any bubble that we found ourselves in, to allow the reality to sink in and take over the serene feeling we were having. But they kept hovering around me, making sure that I was calm and ready, though I felt more numb than I was probably supposed to.

It wasn’t until the moment when Soyeon returned with another nurse from our floor, pushing a gurney into the room with the help of an orderly, when the silent tension in the room broke apart.

“It’s time,” Soyeon said to me with a calm voice that did nothing to stop my heartbeat from pacing rapidly in my chest. Jimin must have sensed the change in my mood, because he immediately pulled me to him and held me tight, whispering sweet words to calm me down.

“It’s okay, baby. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and focus on me,” he kept telling me, making sure that I followed his words until I was breathing calmly again.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I nodded at Soyeon after giving Jimin one last kiss and sending one last smile to my family.

As everyone stepped back and I was carefully transferred from the bed to the gurney, the numbness returned to me and I let myself to be engulfed in it. Even the pain that came piercing through my spine during the transfer couldn’t snap me out of it. The sense of calm felt even stronger as Jimin grabbed my hand and gave me one last squeeze only moments before the orderly began pushing me out of the room.

“I’ll come with you,” I heard Hoseok said, as if watching me leave the room had snapped him out of his trance and he quickly rushed to walk alongside the gurney as we left our family behind. The last thing I saw when I took one last glance was Yoongi placing his arm around Kara’s shoulders as she cried soundlessly, and Jimin smiling at me as he placed his palm over Kara’s hand that was resting on his shoulder.

The trip from my room towards the operating section on our floor felt like an eternity. I barely paid attention to our surroundings as we made a few turns down the hallways, focusing more on my breathing pattern as I kept myself calm, until I suddenly saw him standing not too far from the doorways leading to the operating area.

“Jungkook,” I called out to him as the gurney slowed down to a stop right where he was waiting for me. He nodded briefly at Hoseok before he turned to me, giving me a warm smile despite the way his eyes were watching me closely as if he was afraid I would disappear.

“You came,” I said, and he nodded.

“I decided I’d wait for you out here so you could have a moment with your family,” he told me, and my eyes moved to his hands, where I found yet another bouquet of white flowers, and his smile widened as he followed my gaze.

“These flowers will be waiting for you in your room to greet you once you return,” Jungkook said, before he leaned down, pressing his lips on my forehead as he whispered. “You’re going to be alright.”

His eyes were glassy with tears when he straightened up, but he forced himself to smile as he brushed gently at my cheek for one last time before he stepped back, allowing the gurney to pass. I kept my eyes on him until I could no longer see him, and Hoseok pulled my attention right before he had to let me go.

“We’ll be waiting for you out here,” he said to me while squeezing my shoulder gently. I could tell that he was trying his best not to cry in front of me, so I put on my brave face and smiled.

“Make sure to buy me some of my favourite ice creams when I come back, will you?”

He nodded and chuckled softly. “I’ll fill up the fridge with them for you.”

“Ready?”

The nurse that was going to assist the surgeons was the one I was not familiar with, but she was friendly and nice that I stayed calm despite the complicated preparations that would have scared me away. I already felt slightly intimidated just minutes ago, when I was pushed into this room with only strangers standing around me. But the thought of my family who would be waiting right outside those doors, and knowing that Dr. Kim would also be here to assist the procedure, all had done more than calm my nerves that all I had to do was wait until this moment would come.

“I’m going to put this mask on you. Just breathe in normally, and you will feel sleepy in no time. Just don’t panic, and focus on counting down or just think of good things, okay?”

“Okay,” I told her, nodding my head before I let her put the breathing mask on my face.

She gave me a smile that was hidden under her mask as I settled back down on the bed, while she carried on with the preparations, helping the surgeons and welcoming Dr. Kim as he came into my line of sight.

His voice was calm, but I barely paid attention to any word he said to me as he introduced the other doctors that had come in with him. I only responded with a nod to each time he spoke, until he instructed me to continue breathing as the only thing they needed to do was to wait until the anaesthetic drugs they had given me would take effect.

Everything around me seemed to move in slow motion afterwards. It felt as if I had left my body and I was watching things unfolding from the outside looking in. I followed the nurse’s instruction as I began breathing normally, taking deep breaths while counting down slowly, until I started to feel heavy with sleep. It didn’t take long until I finally gave in as there was never a fight in me to stop me from getting under, and I felt myself drifting away merely seconds after.

That was when everything happened.

They had all said that when you went under, your whole senses would not be able to tell you about anything happening around you, leaving you completely oblivious to what they were doing to your body.

That was not what seemed to be happening to me.

My senses were completely numb, but I was still there. I was still present. My body was no longer moving, but I was terribly aware. A thick blanket of darkness folded around me, cloaking me from the world that still existed around me. I had lost the ability to feel a thing. There was no pain, not a hint of the slightest of touches they made on me, but I knew they were all there.

My mind registered their presence in the form of shadows. Looming, hovering, moving around me while I was rooted as their center. I could feel their movements even through the fog of darkness, but I could feel none of their touch. I heard nothing but a steady hum, drowning me deeper into the darkness, though some of the voices I heard made it seem more like I was drowning underwater.

And then it happened, and suddenly, I could hear it all almost too clearly.

It started with a steady beep, before it began to rise, sounding louder by the second, and then it went faster. The humming sound around me began to rise as well, growing steadily intense. They sounded almost similar to voices of people shouting, only that everything was muffled, like everything was happening under the current of water. The beeping noise grew louder, breaking through the fog, and then louder, turning into an alarming sound as the shouting continued.

An odd feeling of chill washed over me.

And then everything went still.

Author’s note:

I’m sorry this took a long time, and I know that you must be hating me for that ending lol

Don’t worry, every single question you may have at the moment will be answered soon. We’re so close to the final chapters and I am terribly nervous about it, not going to lie. But, before we can finally get there, we’ll be having an extra chapter coming in the way.

Yes, your requests have been answered. We’ll be getting into Taehyung’s side of the story on the next chapter before we can find more answers to what had happened to all of them in the past.

Stay tuned for the next update. Thank you for all of your support!

276 notes · View notes

writersrealmbts · 4 years ago

Text

Diamond Tears and Little Wings: Part 4

Description: You’re a fairy, taken in by BTS. You need lots of love and care, otherwise your light will fade and you turn to stone. Between the seven of them, you should never feel unloved. Right?

Warnings: N/A

Posted: 01/28/2021

Tags: bts x reader, ot7

Angst/Fluff: 4,695 words

A/N: Well it’s been forever, and you guys wouldn’t let me forget about this so it’s done, I just have to pick when to post them. Hope you enjoy this update. And Imma say this once, ao3 is going to get more regular updates than tumblr.

You were in a cage.

It was not okay.

And they knew it too.

They were steaming mad when they saw it.

Dehumanizing.

But then, you weren’t actually human.

Jin, thankfully, was never completely kowtowed by the company. He made a good show of backing off, and pulling the other boys back to make them complacent.

Then the moment no one was paying attention he went over, pulling you out, hid you in his pocket and maybe bent the latch on the door so that it wouldn’t close properly.

He handed you off to Yoongi as soon as he could, and Yoongi hid you just in time for the staff to notice you weren’t in the cage and begin to question the others.

The boys kept slipping you to each other as they were inspected for you, but the staff never did find you, and the boys made a big deal out of them losing you.

You loved your boys.

Even if they were making you go through with this fansign appearance.

Tae made a big show of “finding” you just before they went out, then an even bigger fuss with taking you out with him instead of in a cage.

And apparently the staff knew what losing looked like, because they gave in.

So you were hiding in Taehyung’s pocket as they went out to greet their fans, with earplugs in as well as covering your poor ears because holy hell it was loud. While you waited for it to quiet down, you tried to stay completely still.

You could make out the staff explaining that you were there, requesting them to be respectful of noise since you were sound sensitive, but also that you were there because you’d gotten a fairy illness and had to be close to the boys for your health. Which you felt was pretty ironic considering they wanted to send you away if the fans didn’t accept you.

After a few events, Taehyung put his hand over the pocket you were hiding in, the signal he had told you earlier.

You took a few deep breaths, then stood, grabbing the edge of his pocket and peeking out.

No one noticed you at first, thankfully, allowing you to take in the large crowd, and the activity of the boys before you pulled yourself out of the pocket, fluttering up to his shoulder.

The fan in front of him noticed you first, eyes widening.

You squeaked as you slipped over the slope of his shoulder, grabbing the fabric so you wouldn’t fall all the way down and get squished, especially since he was so focused on the fan that he didn’t notice you falling.

You crawled back up his shirt, peering at the fan that was getting her album copy signed. She was cute.

They were all cute. But only because they loved your boys and supported your boys.

She asked something that you couldn’t make out due to the earplugs, but Taehyung grinned and looked at you on his shoulder, replying that you were shy.

You ducked back, climbing sideways until you were behind his head. Then you climbed up until you reached the collar, then his hair, giggling when he flinched ever so slightly at the feeling of you climbing into his hair. You wrinkled your nose at the stickiness from the styling products, then let go, fluttering back down to his shirt and wiping your hands off on his shirt.

A hand came over and rubbed Tae’s neck (almost squishing you, but hovering just long enough for you to get out of the way) then sort of lay out flat, inviting.

You smiled and climbed onto Jin’s hand, riding it over to him as he pretended to stretch—allowing you to hop onto his head (which had less product in it, thank goodness). You tucked yourself out of the way without messing up his hair. You made sure to be able to see everything outside.

There was definitely an increase in noise when you had been visible, but you weren’t certain whether it was due to something the boys did or because of you.

Everything was fine for a little while, then you felt Seokjin shake his head slightly. A couple seconds, or maybe minutes, later, his hand came up. Tense. Uneasy.

You stared at it, then extricated yourself and crawled on.

He passed you over to Yoongi.

Yoongi set you on the table, one finger caressing your hair. He showed you a note.

‘We had to bring you out. Stay close to us.’

You nodded, glad that he was guarding you from the sight of the fans for just a little longer, and kicked the note off of the table.

You made sure you looked okay in your little mirror, then looked up at him, nodding.

He nodded as well, hand moving away as he greeted the next fan in the line up.

You looked around, still a little overwhelmed by the crowd and the scrutiny. Finally you settled on sitting just out of the way between Yoongi and Hoseok and watching the fans pass by, noting the curious looks they gave you.

The whole situation was strange to you. It wasn’t like your presence added anything or took anything away from the event. Not in your mind. You were aware—more than aware—that your gender could be a point of criticism and unrest that could damage their careers.

But you were harmless…weren’t you?

The boys operated as though you weren’t there, focused on their fans. They were very discreet about taking care of you.

You took another deep breath, then pulled out the earplugs.

“She’s so tiny!”

“How cute!”

“Did you see her hiding in Jin’s hair?”

“Her peeking over Taehyung-oppa’s shoulder was so adorable!”

“She doesn’t belong there.”

You closed your eyes, frowning slightly at the bombardment of voices.

“She could ruin their career.”

“She’s too pretty.”

“Jimin-oppa is so handsome!”

“She better not be the kind that can change sizes.”

You wanted to hide. You knew the boys couldn’t hear the comments, their hearing wasn’t as sensitive as yours, but that didn’t mean the comments didn’t exist.

“She isn’t dressed very modestly either. I bet she’s their sl—”

“Oh my Gosh! Look at Jungkook! He’s so cute!”

“Oppa!”

You crawled over and pressed yourself against Yoongi’s elbow, overwhelmed and trying to get the earplugs back in.

His elbow moved and then his hand covered you protectively. He didn’t do anything else, just protected you while you stuffed your ears again. Lifted a finger to check on you, then removed his hand when you signaled you were okay.

You got up, looking around again, then fluttering up so you could look at the picture in the album that Yoongi had opened to.

An excellent picture of Yoongi.

You landed again, looking around, then running toward Hoseok to observe him, tripping when a sticker got stuck on your foot and shaking it to try and get it off, hopping and then falling.

You could hear Hoseok’s laugh, and he carefully picked you up, flicking the sticker off of your foot and then setting you back on the table.

He was talking more animatedly with the fan in front of him, laughing and signing the album in front of him with a genuine smile. He looked so nice when he smiled.

On his other side, Jimin was basically flirting with the fan in front of him. Goofing off, but Jimin was always showing himself. Always showing a touch of honesty in his actions. Opening himself up to things.

You worried about him, but you knew the other boys would always catch him if he fell.

They always caught each other. Supported each other, got each other to the therapist when needed, and held out until the other was well enough to continue without full support.

Where did you fit into that scheme?

You felt your wings droop. They said…they said that they cared about you, and their actions confirmed that. But did they really have time for you?

A finger poked your belly.

You looked up at Hoseok, then grabbed his finger and held onto it.

He lifted you up, peering at you with carefully veiled concern. “You okay, y/n?”

You shook your head.

He glanced at the others, then looked down the line, leaning forward and saying something to the others.

Jimin nodded, then reached over.

You glanced at Hoseok, then dropped into the waiting hand.

Jimin peeked at you, smiling momentarily, then passing you to the next waiting hand.

Jungkook took you carefully, bringing you up to his shirt pocket. “It’s okay.”

You nodded and crawled into the pocket, happy that all the boys with shirt pockets had stashed some of your blankets in them. You wrapped up, trying to calm yourself. Their preparation was just evidence of how much they cared for you. They got you houseplants and they were searching for a new dollhouse for you (you would have been happy with anything, but they were being very particular). They fed you when you couldn’t do it for yourself and took care of you when you were too floaty to do so yourself. They’d brought home dozens of flowering plants, imported different floral teas, got raw honey, brought you toys, made sure their pets didn’t eat you (you forgave Tannie, but man that was a close call), and made room in their hearts for you.

And they gave you kisses, sometimes. Jin was the most allowed to give you kisses, because his were simple and sweet and very quick. TaeTae had given you a couple pecks. Jimin didn’t dare kiss you yet after what happened last time. Hoseok was fond of placing kisses all over your face. Namjoon and Yoongi weren’t as physical with affection so you didn’t expect kisses, but Yoongi often held your hand or let you cuddle up to him. Namjoon liked sharing space with you, and often suggested books he thought you might like, it was his own sort of affection.

Then there was Jungkook.

He’d taken to carrying you around even when you were fine (you weren’t about to complain) and no matter your size.

You wrapped yourself tighter in the blanket, shivering as you battled the thoughts in your head.

Jungkook’s chest vibrated, speaking to the fans. His words weren’t clear to you, but it was lighthearted and happy.

So happy.

Did you really have any right to ruin their happiness with their fans?

But how much happiness would you be taking away if you left now?

You felt his chest move suddenly, like he had laughed or was startled or upset by something.

His fingers suddenly plucked you out of the pocket, gentle but stiff.

You winced and peeked out of the blanket, confused.

His face was tense, especially around his jaw, even though he was faking a smile.

You got the unspoken message. He was forced to pull you out. You needed to show yourself to the fans.

You huffed and wiggled out of the blanket, flying as fast as you could down the line to Namjoon, landing lightly before reaching him completely and walking the last few steps, flopping over his arm and then resting your head on your elbows, watching him interact with the fan. They seemed to be almost down with the signing part of their event.

You rode his arm as he moved it, gripping onto the sleep so you didn’t get thrown into the wall behind them.

There was an increase of noise and then both Namjoon and Taehyung were making sure you were okay.

You hopped off of his arm, sitting down cross-legged and facing the crowd. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

They definitely didn’t hear you, but both boys looked relieved that you were okay.

You sat there, observing the fans for a while. Your earplugs were great, but you could feel the rise and fall in the volume all through your body. You could feel someone bump the table, you would have those spots in front of your eyes for weeks from all of the flashing lights.

You had to make these people like you. Had to make them understand that you posed no threat to the boys. You had to show them that there was no way you could do anything that would be…detrimental to them.

It would help if you knew what those things were, though. Maybe you were detrimental to their career just by existing.

You wished, now, that the boys hadn’t divulged the fact that you were the kind that could change size. You had a feeling that it was the one thing that the fans could never get over.

Your only hope was if you could twist what they knew to be size-changing to your advantage. If you sized up, just a little. Maybe became a foot tall instead of three and a half inches, maybe they would accept that.

But that would depend on the managers insistence.

You could already feel the apologetic look Sejin was giving you.

It was enough to make you contemplate running (or flying) away. Getting as far away from that place as you could. Sparing yourself the trouble because they had already decided your fate and were just waiting for the cruel souls to confirm their judgement.

One year with a family.

That’s all you ever got.

You got up quickly and flew back down to Yoongi, staying close but out of his way. If you hadn’t thought the fans would get the wrong idea you would have just hidden under the table. You could easily evade all attempts you pull out out down there.

As it was, you amused yourself by making some of the stickers float and then stealing one of the extra pens (which was definitely bigger than you and you definitely used pixie dust on it) and finding something to write on—which someone provided in the back of a spare picture they had.

You set up a tic-tac-toe game on the back in one corner and pushed it up to the edge of the table, putting an O in the center and waiting for the next fan. Holding out the pen to her.

She blinked at you, eyes wide when she finally noticed, then she carefully took the pen and added an X before continuing to Seokjin.

You contemplated the thing, then added another O, nodding and waiting for the next fan that would acknowledge your existence.

Which was about three fans later.

It ended up a tie, and you started a new one, but ran out of their fans before the game could be completed.

You pouted a bit, but then the pen was being taken from behind.

You quickly released it and turned to see who was the perpetrator, only to see Yoongi peering at the tic-tac-toe game and then lightly brushing you aside so that he could make a move.

You bounced happily and put in an O, watching his fingers carefully as he debated where to put his X, then fluttering up in glee as he put it exactly where you wanted it. You had this game in the bag. Now, no matter where he put his X, you would still get three in a row.

The volume rose as you did a little victory dance, having thoroughly beat him.

You scurried over to Yoongi’s arm and hid behind it because what just happened.

He shook slightly, like he was laughing, as he picked you up carefully. He was grinning, and definitely laughing.

You tilted your head, curious about what was so funny, but not daring to take out the earplug.

Hoseok reached over and gently poked your head, also laughing.

Seokjin was talking into the microphone to the fans, standing up with the others.

Was the event almost over? Was that too good to be true?

Yoongi leaned in closer. “Go back to Taehyung’s pocket,” He told you, just loud enough for you to hear with the earplugs, but you also mostly read his lips because it was sound and vibrations and your mind’s translation of it was a little hazy, but his lips were clear.

You nodded, getting up and running off of his hand, flying straight for Taehyung, landing on his should and then sliding down his shirt and into the pocket—quickly burying yourself under the blankets instead of in them since that backfired earlier.

Tae patted the pocket once, then was busy talking and moving and maybe hiding in his pocket had been a poor life choice.

But his hand went over the pocket you were in, covering it in a very protective gesture.

You shrunk more, to maybe an inch, to try and escape what would happen next.

Tae’s breathing was slightly hasty, like he was trying hard not to lose control.

You teared up, but quickly tried to dash your tears away. You couldn’t cry in public. The boys had been very adamant on that, and worried, they said it would be dangerous for you if you did.

His hand moved away from the pocket slowly, then one of his fingers came in, simply waiting. A simple request that he knew you wouldn’t want to acquiesce.

You took a deep breath, then wrapped around the tip of his finger.

He carefully pulled you out, eyes wide at how tiny you were.

The other boys looked just as surprised and alarmed—all trying so hard to hide their emotions from the fans and pretend everything was peachy.

Tae looked up and then leaned over to talk into the microphone Jimin was holding, telling them something about being right back. Then he hurried back-stage and seemed to usher the staff away.

You grew back to your normal pixie height, looking up at him desperately.

He signaled for you to take the ear-plugs out.

You did, slowly.

“Little Wing…I know you don’t like it, and I know you know that we don’t like it…but they’re insisting that you show our fans your full size. You can change size back here…but….”

You looked down at his palm, then nodded.

He waited patiently as you calmed yourself a little and then changed sized, but with as small and scared as you were feeling you couldn’t get as big as you normally would. Your chin came just above his belly-button.

His hand softly stroked your hair. “I know how stressful this is.”

You met his gaze. “No matter what happens, they’re sending me away.”

His face became anguished, and he closed his eyes as though to regain some of his composure, pulling you into a loose hug. “We’ll turn the world upside down before we give up on you.”

You took a shaky breath and did your best to grow the last bit to your height, but you only managed a couple inches.

Tae kissed your forehead. “Come on, this is good enough.”

You hugged his arm, keeping on the side that would keep him in between you and the fans, absolutely petrified as he led you back out in front of the crowd. Doing your best to still hide because you didn’t like this one bit.

It got scarily quiet.

“Army, this is Y/n,” Jimin said in a soft tone, coming over to you. “She’s really shy, so this is a lot for her. She doesn’t like being in her big form in front of strangers.”

Jungkook rested a hand on your shoulder, giving it a very gently squeeze.

“Y/n, can you say something to Army?” Namjoon asked.

You couldn’t even breath, pinpointing every glare sent your way, and quickly shook your head, rapidly shrinking.

Jungkook scooped you up when you were the size of a toddler, holding onto you firmly. “Do you want to ride on my back?”

You nodded.

He set you on the table and turned around, letting you latch on and then changing the topic to something else like you weren’t hiding by hanging onto his back.

You started to panic when someone grabbed you, but then noticed it was Sejin, and let him take you back-stage. You finally relaxed a bit when you were in the waiting room back-stage and Sejin had shooed all of the staff from the room.

You found one of the boys sweatshirts and wiggled into it, cocooning yourself in the ultra-long sleeves and extra fabric and then curling into a ball on the couch.

You woke again when you were being carried, recognizing the comforting “shh” as Jimin’s and letting yourself drift off a little, barely recognizing that you had been brought into a vehicle.

Namjoon was cradling you when you woke up fully, back at the house. His hair looked freshly dried, and he was dressed in comfy clothing.

The other boys were slowly filtering back to the living room with food and drinks, all freshly showered.

Namjoon tightened his hold on you when he saw you were awake. “Hey, baby.”

You rubbed your eyes. “Hey. How long was I asleep?”

“Four hours,” Hoseok answered, plopping a kiss onto your forehead after moving the hood of the sweatshirt.

Your eyes widened slightly, but were too tired to do much more than that. “So we’ve already been back to the office and then home?”

Yoongi nodded. “It’s no wonder you slept, that was a highly stressful situation for you.

Hoseok didn't look happy. “What were they thinking, forcing you to size up like that? Forcing you into a situation like that?”

“Probably something along the lines of ‘oh, how convenient, a way to get rid of the annoying fairy that we only got them for good publicity’,” You answered.

All the boys looked angry after that.

You shrugged, unwrapping yourself and then sizing up some more, about the size you were earlier. “You know it’s true. Don’t tell me you don’t. The whole point of this is to get rid of me.”

“Why?!” Jimin snapped. “Why would they want to get rid of you? Things were fine!”

You looked up and met Namjoon’s troubled gaze. “The v-live you boys had. The night Jimin kissed me and I got loopy. Someone told the viewers that I could change size.”

Namjoon’s eyes widened slightly, and his jaw set in frustration. “Which makes it scandalous for you to be living with us.”

Yoongi looked like he might be sick. “I said it. Why did I say it?”

Jin rested a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it.

“It’s not your fault. It would have come out at some point or other,” You told them. “But it’s also because I do distract all of you. I’m a liability on many fronts. I have no doubt that they’re already arranging everything regarding me being taken away.”

Namjoon gently set you on the seat beside him, reaching for a bag beside the couch, not at all surprised while the others still seemed like they were processing it.

You waited, wondering what he had in the bag, but mostly waiting for the other boys to be ready for the rest of the conversation you knew had to happen. It was obvious, now that you looked back, that the staff were preparing to get rid of you.

“I got something for all of us. Had them made, actually,” Namjoon said quietly. “I was afraid that something like this might happen.”

That seemed to get the boys attention.

Namjoon pulled out little gift-boxes. Eight of them. Each one was carefully marked, but you weren’t sure what the marks meant. But he did, handing them out to each of you.

You held your box nervously.

“I wanted each of us to have something, to remind you that we love you, y/n. Especially when we’re busy with shows and tours. Because we already know you love us, and nothing could make us forget that.”

You opened the box, revealing a simple bracelet, with two inset diamond tears. Both microscopically engraved with itty bitty words that you couldn’t make out, only visible to you because, well, you were magic.

Namjoon grabbed his phone, turning on the flashlight and pulling the bracelet so the diamonds were over the light, projecting it onto the ceiling.

It had all of their names, and yours, and it said that they loved you forever. And it also had the BTS symbol with fairy wings in them.

You stared up at the ceiling in awe, then carefully took the bracelet. It was made of a magical material, one that would shrink and grow with you unlike most other metals. “This is fairy-made.”

He nodded, looking a little sheepish. “I figured with your tears it was best to go to a fairy for this work.”

You quickly looked around the room.

Tae had a similar bracelet to yours, that he was examining with tear-filled eyes.

Yoongi had a ring with black metal, and was already wearing it.

Jimin and Jin had a necklaces, both different than each other’s.

Hoseok had a different style of bracelet.

Namjoon had a ring that he was playing with, made with a lighter metal than Yoongi’s.

Jungkook had earrings, a stud and a dangling earring, and he was already switching them out.

Everyone was quiet, most of the boys staring at their gift and looking upset in some way.

“When they remove me…because this was a better home for me…my best home…they’ll have to lock away the memories. I’ll be able to keep my things, and the memories can be recovered, but unless I’m in a situation where I am as loved, or more loved, and equally as happy…I would need to return to you all if I remembered.” You carefully put on the bracelet. “It’s a hard process. And they’ll probably send me somewhere else, somewhere I won’t be…as likely to find you, or vice versa.

“Like a different city?” Jimin asked.

“Like a different country. It happens a lot. Fairies can speak whatever language they need.” You shrugged, not looking at them. Not able to bear their heartache as well as your own.

“We’ll find you. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world. We’ll find you,” Jungkook said quietly.

It was quiet again after that.

Then Jin cleared his throat. “Jungkook, help me pull the mattresses in here.”

They all got up to do something, whether it was helping Jin and Jungkook create a giant bed in the living room or getting ready for bed, or just trying to calm themselves by pretending to do something.

Tae was the first to come back to you, cuddling with you on the couch, comparing the bracelets. “I’m glad mine matches yours, but I wonder why hyung did that.”

You peeked up at him. “You were the one who found me.”

His eyes filled, and he leaned down, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips that you melted into.

Then the two of you stayed cuddled up while Hoseok directed the madness of making the bed.

Yoongi came over and cupped your face in his hands. “You know we’re not letting you go without a fight, right?”

You nodded, closing your eyes as he kissed your forehead—opening them when he softly kissed your lips.

Then you were cuddling up with all seven boys on the bed, trying not to cry because your mind kept saying, ‘This might be the last time’.

And Jimin’s shirt would definitely be ruined by your tears solidifying in his shirt, but you knew he wouldn’t complain as long as you didn’t mention his tears to the others.

Even Namjoon was crying, though, so you doubted any teasing would be happening.

Hoseok and Jin left, Hoseok’s sobs echoing down the hallway before they locked themselves in one of the rooms.

Yoongi sniffled and squeezed your hand.

Jungkook’s sniffles turned into snores.

And as you fell asleep, you felt the way Taehyung’s breaths shook his body, gently pressed against your back and wings.

–

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Masterlist - ot7 Masterpost

Tagging: @alex–awesome–22, @bryvada, @missmoxxiesworld @subzerobts @forvever-ddaeng @vividwoosan @mischiefmakerliesmith5 @beach-bitch-bitch-beach @minmeowmeowcuddles @kpopfictrash @castlewolfsbane @scatkpoptrash @knjhe @i-dont-even-know-fck

If you would like to be tagged: DTLW Taglist (Please make sure you can be tagged)

#fairy au #bts ot7 #bts ot7 x reader #ot7 x reader #fairy!reader #namjoon #jin #seokjin #yoongi #suga #hoseok #jhope #jimin #taehyung #v #jungkook

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kookiesjoonies · 5 years ago

Text

come home | myg.

another collab w/ my platonic soulmate, @ppersonna, abt bad hookups and how members of bts fix it n make you feel good. it took me awhile to get my part up, so i want to thank lindy for the millionth time for being so patient. i hope u all enjoy. read her part of this collab w/ jin here!

main pairing: min yoongi x reader (exes to lovers)

fic type: one shot

word count: 3.2k

genre: smut

warnings: language, mentions of smoking/nicotine, mentions of penetrative sex, dry humping, light dirty talk, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving), multiple orgasms, angst if you squint?, tiny amount of fluff (if i forgot any warnings, i apologize! i have been working on this over the course of a week or longer. if i missed anything major, let me know pls! xo)

summary: you just want to feel good. and seeing as how no one has been successful in making that happen for you, you go to the one person who never fails to get you off. who just so happens to be your ex boyfriend.

The last person in the world that Yoongi expected to be knocking on his door at eight o’ clock at night was you. You’d been broken up for over a year now, and sure, the two of you were on good terms. Hell, you even considered yourselves friends, but rarely ever did the two of you hang out or speak more than a few times a week through text messages.

So naturally, his first thought was that something was wrong. He was standing in the doorway, staring straight ahead at you, trying to read your face for any indication as to why you’d shown up at his house unannounced. Your expression was stoic, though, almost bored. Your hair was shorter though, he’d noticed. Had you gained weight? He couldn’t have been sure, but your thighs definitely appeared to be thicker, and your bra fuller than he remembered.

You caught him eyeing your cleavage and you rolled your eyes. Same old Yoongi, same old habits.

“Are you going to invite me inside?” You asked, arms crossed over your chest and effectively pushing your breasts up.

Yoongi was sure he would be drooling any moment now, and he hadn’t even heard a word you’d said. Fuck, he’d missed staring at you like this.

“Yoongi,” you reached a hand forward, pressing a freshly manicured finger underneath his chin and pointing it up toward your face, “my eyes are up here.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes, “And?”

You tilted your head to the side, eyebrows pushing together in annoyance, “Would you just move so I can come inside?”

He obliged, stepping away from the door frame and gesturing you, albeit dramatically, inside.

His house hadn’t changed much, but it definitely wasn’t as well kept as it was when you lived with him. The coffee table was cluttered with assorted take out boxes and half empty water bottles, and you never understood why he didn’t drink the entire bottle of water. It annoyed the piss out of you, and you were still convinced that was the only reason he did it.

Blankets and coats littered the sofa, throw pillows pushed off of the couch and onto the floor. You always hated when he did that. He claimed the pillows made the couch uncomfortable and hard to sit on, and you’d called him insane, telling him that the entire purpose of the pillows were to make it comfortable.

You were curious to see what his bedroom looked like. Well, you were mostly curious, and a tad bit frightened at the thought. Yoongi wasn’t a messy person, but he didn’t mind clutter. You, on the other hand, despised it.

Yoongi took note of the way your eyes danced around the room, taking everything surrounding you in.

“Yeah, it’s messy, I know.” His tone of voice shifted to one of nervousness. He was suddenly very aware that you we’re here, in the house the two of you used to share, for the first time in what felt like forever.

You sensed his awkwardness and turned your attention from the living room and into him, placing a hand gently around his bicep. He instantly relaxed under your touch. You always did know exactly what he needed and when he needed it. He still didn’t know how the fuck you managed to do that.

“I don’t care if it’s messy, Yoongi. I don’t live here anymore.”

“No, you don’t. Which brings me to ask, why are you here?”

“Actually,” you began, leaning against the back of his sofa as you slowly raked your eyes up and down his small frame, “I was wondering if you wanted to fuck.”

Your question clearly caught him off guard, his face immediately contorting into one of utter confusion. Eyes slightly widened, mouth agape.

“Hold on,” he shook his head, a poor attempt at collecting his thoughts as he tried to make sense of what you’d just proposed, “are you high?”

Was he serious? You rolled your eyes at him yet again, convinced they were going to get stuck in the back of your head.

“No, Yoongi. I am not high. I’m just horny, and want to fuck. Simple as that.”

He carded his long fingers through his hair, eyes focusing on yours and fully taking in your serious expression.

“You couldn’t find someone on tinder? I mean, not that I’m not flattered that you came all the way here, but. I’m just a bit confused.”

“I could’ve, yeah,” you nodded, “and I have, in the past. But I’m sick of bad hookups, I have to fake it half the time anyway. Nobody knows my body like you do. I just want to feel good, but if you don’t want to, or if it’s too weird then I can leave. No hard feelings.”

Yoongi took a minute to weigh out the pros and cons in his head. On one hand, he’d kill to be inside of you again. He’d had hookups of his own, sure, but none of them even came close to what you felt like. But on the other hand, you’d broken up for a reason. And this could complicate things.

Who was he to deny you, though? He never could, not when you were together, and he wasn’t about to start now. If all you wanted was to feel good, then goddammit, he was going to make sure that you did.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.”

Your eyes grew wider than quarters, and you stared at him in disbelief, “Really?”

“Were you expecting me to say no?”

“I don’t..” you paused, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was hoping you’d say yes.”

“Well,” he took a single step forward, hands easily falling down and onto your hips, “I did.”

All it took was the feeling of his hands on you to make your breath catch in your throat. It’d been over a year since he’d last touched you, his hands felt like they were burning your skin through your shirt. You stared up at him, eyes fixated on his as his mouth slowly crept down and onto yours.

It felt like sparks of electricity were coursing through your veins. Your body instantly reacted, legs jumping up and off of the ground to wrap around his waist. He was quick to catch you, hands cupping your ass to hold you up and pressed against him. His lips moved against yours easily, his tongue gliding into your mouth and wrapping around yours perfectly. Kissing you was muscle memory, he knew every crevice of your mouth, which moves of his tongue would have you wrecked.

He took advantage of that, lapping and twirling his tongue against yours in a way that had you moaning into the kiss. The vibrations going straight from his lips and down to his dick, and you could feel him hardening against your thigh. Your hands found their way into the dark hair at the nape of his neck and you twirled it around your fingers, all the while giving a quick swivel of your hips that had Yoongi groaning into your mouth.

He carried you away from the couch and down the hallway into his master bedroom, kicking the door closed with his foot once inside. He had your back pressed up against it instantaneously, grinding his hips up and into yours at a steady pace. You were holding onto his neck for dear life, letting out a whine as he hit your clit perfectly.

“Y-yoongi! Right there, oh my God, do that again.” You pleaded, and he happily obliged by thrusting his hips in the exact same way, causing you to cry out and bite down on your lower lip. If he kept this shit up, you’d be cumming in your pants.

His lips were attached to your neck now, attacking the skin there with sloppy kisses and occasional suction. You knew there would be bruises, but you couldn’t be bothered to give a single fuck. Your body was elated, you felt like you were floating. And all of it was from a fucking make out session and dry humping. You couldn’t even begin to imagine how you were going to feel once he was finally inside of you. The thought of it alone had you soaking wet, and you could feel how damp your panties had gotten, sure that your jeans were soon to follow suit.

His hips never slowed, in fact, they only sped up. You were bouncing against him now, attempting to gather even more friction than what he was giving you. His fingers curled and squeezed your ass, holding you still as he ruthlessly humped against your core.

“Gonna cum for me, huh? Right here? With your clothes still on?” He was nipping at your jawline now, and the sounds you were making sounded like you were trying to speak, but nothing you were saying was coherent.

“What was that?” he rolled his hips hard against your aching cunt, and you immediately saw black, “Words, baby. Or I’ll stop right now.”

You panicked, trying to muster up any sort of response that you could manage, even if you did sound completely fucking pitiful.

“Yes! Oh my god, yes.” You mewled, and one final jolt of his hips had you coming undone.

Your thighs contracted around him, shaking and attempting to pull him closer and keep him trapped between your legs. Your hands were tugging on his hair, burning his scalp and causing him to groan at the sensation. Cries of his name and a slew of fucked out curses made their way past your lips as you came, head knocking back against the wooden door.

Yoongi had pulled away from your neck so that he could watch you, his eyes darkening with want as he witnessed you lose yourself from just grinding alone. He thought you’d never looked sexier than you did right now. And all he could think about was how badly he wanted to clean up the mess he’d just made in between your legs.

“Let me eat you out.” His voice was rough, raspy, and hot. How could you say no to that?

You hadn’t even completely come down from your high yet, stars still circling above your head as you blinked rapidly in an attempt to get them to go away. But still, you nodded.

He was quick to drop to his knees after setting your feet and shaky legs back down onto the ground. Your fingers threaded through his hair, hips pushing forward and toward his mouth. You’d never wanted— no, needed his tongue against you so badly before. But you couldn’t help the breathy laugh that pushed out of your throat.

“What’s so funny?” Yoongi prompted, mumbling against the skin of your lower abdomen as he pressed wet kisses there.

You lightly twirled his hair around your index finger, a small sigh making its way through your lips as you felt him begin to undo the button a zipper on your pants.

The whole situation was fucking hilarious to you. You ever imagined you’d be here again, with Yoongi in general, let alone with his head between your legs. But that was too heavy of a conversation to have at the moment. You knew that if you said such things, he’d want to have a deep, touchy feely talk and all you were interested right now was him making you cum for the second time today.

So, you decided to play your laughter off, sounding as nonchalant as possible.

“Just find it funny that our bed is two feet away from us, yet you’re still going to eat me out while you’re on the floor.”

Yoongi had taken to ridding you of those god forsaken jeans, kissing from your knee up to the tops of your thigh. His actions coming to a still in the middle of your sentence.

“Our? bed?” He cocked an eyebrow, deep irises flickering up to look straight at you.

“Just habit, I guess.” you shrugged it off, but internally, you were kicking your own ass for making such a slip up, “Are you going to go down on me, or not?”

Yoongi couldn’t stop the roll of his eyes. This was so fucking like you, brushing off your true emotions and covering them up with something sexual. Had you forgotten he knew you better than anyone else in the world?

Still, you’d come to him for a reason. You wanted to feel good. He was determined to follow through with your wishes, but made a mental note to get you to tell him how you were feeling afterwards.

“You’re so fucking bossy.” He spat out the words, though they weren’t laced with any real venom. It was too playful, too Yoongi.

You were going to offer him a smart ass remark, a witty comeback on the very tip of your lips. However, the feel of his tongue dragging through your folds had you moaning instead.

His arms linked around the backs of your thighs to hold you in place, keeping your cunt pressed firmly against his face as he nudged your clit with his tongue. A small, barely there flick that had you whining in a high pitched fashion. Your eyes had screwed shut, hand tangled in his hair and pulling it from the root.

One of his hands moved from your legs so that he could hover his index finger over your entrance, circling around it and gathering up your wetness. He groaned at the feeling, at how absolutely fucking soaked you were for him. It was something he never, ever got tired of. And it was definitely something he’d grown to miss.

All at once, he was pulling your clit into his mouth. Teeth lightly grazing it before he took his time suckling on the bud, quick, exasperated whimpers coming out of your lips as he did so.

You offered him fucked out praises, telling him how good it felt, how badly you wanted more. His finger pushed into you, and your walls immediately squeezed around it. Once you’d loosened back up, he added his middle finger and slowly began to fuck into you.

Your mouth was left agape at the feeling, his tongue now swirling at a steady pace against your bundle of nerves. Your nails dug into his scalp, and you’d begun to shamelessly ride his face. He was loving every minute of it, every wanton noise that came out of your mouth.

“I—I need—,” you stuttered, unsure of exactly what it was that you needed from him, “God, Yoongi, please—”

Even when you didn’t know, he always seemed to. His long fingers curled inside of you, arching and pressing against that glorious spot that had you screaming out a line of curses.

He quickened the pace of his tongue up, the speed of it ruthless against your clit now. Your eyes were beginning to well up, and you were sure you’d never felt pleasure like this before. Not even from him. There was something about this time that made it feel like you were floating on cloud nine. And you never, ever wanted to come down. You wanted his head buried between your thighs for an eternity.

One more push of his fingers and lick of his tongue had you bucking your hips against his face, and you weren’t sure how he was managing to breathe. Your lower stomach was knotting, heat spreading from your core throughout your entire body as your orgasm washed over you. Both of your hands were in his hair now, gripping onto the soft strands of it with all of your might. You were squirming, trying to get closer to him, and away from him all at the same time.

Black dots were all that you could see, your head spinning and making you feel like you were floating off of the ground. Your chest was rising and falling rapidly as you attempted to catch your breath and regain your composure.

You groaned at the empty feeling as you felt Yoongi pull his fingers out of you, glancing down at him just in time to watch him insert the digits into his mouth and swallow your release. Your eyes rolled back at the sight, a huff leaving your lips.

“You’re going to be the death of me.” You joked, and he rewarded you with a chuckle as he stood up and pressed his lips to yours, pushing his tongue into your mouth with ease.

You could taste yourself on him, and that alone had you aroused again and ready for orgasm number three. And hopefully four and five. You could feel yourself growing wet again, and took the opportunity to grab one of his hands and bring it down and onto your soaked pussy.

He groaned into the kiss, tongue moving with more fervor, more hunger.

You were pulling back, and he was chasing your lips with his. You giggled at his actions, your fingers toying with the fine strands of his hair.

Without giving it a second thought, he was lifting you off of the ground again and taking quick strides toward the bed.

It seemed like the two of you had spent the better part of the night fucking. But by your fifth orgasm, you were too fucked out, and way too sensitive to do it again. You could barely walk, your legs the equivalent of Jell-O. Yoongi insisted over and over that you just spent the night with him, offering to take the couch if that would make you more comfortable.

“I just spent the last two hours with your dick buried inside of me,” you pointed out, “I think we can share a bed.”

He laughed as he laid beside of you, still completely naked and on full display for you.

“Touché.”

“I need a cigarette, but I can’t even walk to get them out of my jeans.” You groaned as you stared at your pants lying in front of the door, and you could hear Yoongi sighing beside of you.

“What?” You cocked an eyebrow, rolling onto your side so that you could face him.

“You know how I feel about you smoking. I wish you’d quit that shit.”

“Well,” you started, “at least you don’t have to smell it on a daily basis anymore. You know, since I don’t live here.”

“Eh,” he shrugged, turning over on his side to match your position, “kind of miss it.”

Your eyes slightly widened, and you were left speechless. Because what were you supposed to say to that?

Yoongi sighed, giving you a quick roll of his eyes.

“Come on, Y/n. What are we doing?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” You lied.

“You mean to tell me you don’t feel comfortable right now? Like we never stopped this in the first place? Never stopped.. us?” He studied your face as he waited for your answer, fingers instinctively reaching out to trail along the curve of your bare hip.

“Yoongi..” You sighed, unsure of what else to say. Because he was right. This felt normal. It felt right.

“Just come home.” His voice was sincere, his eyes soft and pleading as he looked at you.

Usually, this was the kind of big decision you’d have to think about, outweigh all of the pros and cons. But this time, you didn’t hesitate to respond. Because this was Yoongi, and he was home.

“Yeah,” you nodded, gently rubbing your thumb along the top of his cheek as you offered him a gentle smile, “okay.”

#yoongi #min yoongi #yoongi imagine #yoongi smut #bts #bts smut #bangtan #yoongi x you #yoongi x reader #yoongi x y/n #yoongi angst #yoongi fluff #bts scenarios #bts reactions #bts suga #suga imagine #min yoongi imagine

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evolmaze · 4 years ago

Text

not like this

summary - you go to a party ready to hang out with your friends, but your best friend has other ideas that involve you, a closet, seven minutes, and a close friend you swore you’d never tell

pairing - jin x reader ft. other members of bts and other o.c.s!

genre - fluff, angst | ftl!au, nonidol!au

word count - 5.0k words

warnings - mentions of drinking, otherwise nothing else!

a/n: this is totally inspired by that one episode of New Girl where Nick and Jess are stuck behind the door and Nick tells Jess that he doesn’t want kiss her, “not like this” hence the title lol. Not quite the same plotline, but was definitely my inspiration for it!

masterlist

You had always loved Saturday nights, the one day a week where you could literally do nothing all day and not feel guilty about it. The one night a week where you got to see most of your friends, hang out, and of course, get tipsy and play a bunch of stupid games; tonight was no different.

You had arrived at your friend Alexa’s house, a little late, and by the looks of it, you were the last to arrive. Your friend group wasn’t enormously big, just around six or so depending on the night, any more and things usually got out of hand. There was you, Alexa, your mutual friend Lia, and then the boys: Yoongi, Jin, and Namjoon. You all had become friends while in university, and you’re happy to say you were able to remain friends afterward. Sometimes the boys would bring their other friends, ones they had met through work, and tonight you were happy to see Jimin, Tae, Jungkook, and Hoseok here as well. You didn’t know them as well, but every time you hung with them, they had been nothing but kind. If you’re honest, the people you knew best here were Jin and Alexa, the three of you had lived in the same dorm freshman year, and since then, you had been inseparable.

“y/n!” Alexa called excitedly, crossing the room to greet you. “I was afraid you weren’t gonna make it!”

“Sorry,” you exclaimed, “Literally got halfway here and realized I had forgotten the chips!” she laughed, taking them from you, and setting them on the counter next to the taco dip; a classic staple in your university days. “I see everyone else is already here.” you mused, scanning the room.

“Yeah, don’t worry though, Jimin and Tae literally got here five minutes before you,” she laughed, and set a hand on your shoulder, slightly turning you towards the back of the room. “But he’s been here all night, asking me every couple minutes if I’ve heard from you,” she whispered, you were sure she was wiggling her eyebrows at you.

You looked across the room, and saw Jin, laughing with Hoseok and Jungkook. He hadn’t seen you yet, and selfishly you loved that you were able to stare at him carefree, taking in all the things you loved about him. You hadn’t seen him in a while, school kept you both busy, and with both of you working part time jobs, a couple weeks had gone by since your last hang out. God how you had missed him.

“You’re staring..” Alexa chuckled, as your best friend, and friend who had also known Jin the longest, she knew all about your crush on him. She was actually the one who called you out on it first, and from then on, she loved to tease you about it, but in all honesty, if she didn’t know, and wasn’t there for you to give advice or listen to you rant, you’re sure you would have gone insane by now.

“Ahhh, yeah,” you laughed nervously, tearing your view from him, and facing her. “God, it’s getting worse isn’t it?”

“Noooo,” she said, obviously lying, but you appreciated the false confidence. “Okay, maybe, but you’re in love, how else are you supposed to cope with that?”

“Oooh, I’d say drinking my sorrows away so I don’t have to think about how he’ll never like me back.” you laughed, grabbing a drink from the cooler. Alexa looked at you, concerned. “Lex I’m fine, seriously. I’ve come to terms with it, and at this point, he’s just a placeholder till I find someone new.”

“I’ve always said this, and I stand by it: Jin is so fucking stupid. Thick as a brick.”

“Yah!” he suddenly called from across the room. “Alexa are you talking shit?” you laughed, trying to figure out how much he heard.

“Absolutely not,” she said, looking towards you. “But y/n totally was!”

“Lex!” you yelled, embarrassed. You looked up, making eye contact with Jin, and his face lit up.

“y/n! Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” he said, coming over to you. Alexa winked and left to go talk to Lia. He came up to you, immediately crushing you in a hug. Your face was right up against his chest, you could smell his cologne, and god was it intoxicating.

“Sorry, I literally just got here!” you said, pulling your head back to look at him, he smiled down at you, his arms around your waist. You could stay like this forever.

“Hmmm, I suppose I can forgive you then.” he joked, slowly letting go of you, his fingers lingering a little too long. You tried your best to remain calm, and not think about the way it felt to be held by him. He cleared his throat, taking a slight step back, you looked at him expectantly. “Whatcha drinking?” he asked, and you held up your drink you had grabbed earlier. “Oh,” he laughed, ears turning red in embarrassment, and you grinned, god you loved this man.

----

The night had progressed rather smoothly, you were impressed. Usually, nights like this took a turn for the worst during a game of Pictionary, but so far, things had been fine! Everyone seemed to be having a great time, and you couldn’t have been happier. Currently, you all sat in a circle playing a childish game of never have I ever. You knew these were childish, but secretly you loved them, all the games you never got to play in high school cause you didn’t go to parties. Except instead of fingers down, everyone also took a shot. Currently, Jimin and Lia were tied for first place with each having nine out of ten fingers down. You only had four down, but it didn’t really matter.

“Never have I ever recreated the scene from titanic in front of the whole school only to realize Rose was played by my professor,” Tae snickered, looking directly at Jimin.

“Not fair,” he laughed, putting a finger down, and taking a shot. “That’s targeting!” everyone laughed, and Jimin grinned, taking a seat back down.

“Okay okay okay,” Alexa said suddenly, gathering everyone’s attention. “Let’s switch up the game, we’ve been playing this for an hour, and if Jimin has to take one more shot, I don’t want to be the one responsible for taking him to the hospital tonight.”

“I’m fine!” he laughed, and it was mildly true, everyone here seemed to have a pretty high tolerance, and being out of university, it seems the activities had mildly mellowed out. No excessive drinking tonight.

“Okay, what game are you thinking of Lex?” Lia asked, and Alexa paused before getting a thoughtful look on her face.

You watched as she looked towards you, a knowing glint in her eyes. “Since we’re on a roll with high school parties games, why not a fun couple rounds of seven minutes in heaven?” The group was split, some laughed in encouragement, while others, like yourself, seemed confused, you all were friends wouldn’t that be weird? “Okay wait, let me finish. We’ll switch up the rules so it’s not weird. The two people can go in there and decide what to do, kiss or take two shots each.”

You laughed, it seemed stupid still, but why the hell not? You were probably a little tipsy at this point, so why not indulge in this juvenile game. “How do we decide who goes in?” you asked.

“We’ll start with a random person to go in the closet, and then the group decides who goes in after them. But the catch is, the person alone in the closet has to face the wall so they cant see who comes in with them. So since they can’t see each other, in order to drink or kiss, they have to correctly guess who it is. Make sense?” Everyone nodded, and you eagerly awaited to see who was first.

“Who wants to go first?” Jimin asked, and the group went silent. “What about y/n?” you looked up, confused.

“Why me?” you questioned.

“Why not?” he questioned back, and you laughed.

“Okay fine,” you agreed, looking down at everyone as you stood up. “Alright, whichever one of you comes in, be ready to take shots!” everyone laughed, and you grinned, making eye contact with Alexa, that same stupid glint in her eye.

“Don’t sound so sure,” she laughed, and you blushed, quickly turning towards the closet. You opened the door, and entered, shutting it behind you. You wondered who they would send it, though with Alexa's knowing look you had a feeling it wasn't going to be good. It was a mystery how much time had passed by the time you heard the door open behind you.

“Hello mystery stranger,” you called, waiting for the door to shut again before turning around.

“You have seven minutes, y/n!” Alexa called, followed by a chorus of cheers. “Guess correctly and you can thank me later!”

You furrowed your eyebrows at that, that must have been a clue, right? “Hmm, how should I go about this, because I’m assuming you’re not allowed to speak, right? That’d make it too easy,” you pondered, and with no response from the person in front of you, you presumed you were right.

“Okay, I have an idea.” you declared, holding your hands out in front of you. “My hands are in front of you right now, grab one of them.” You waited patiently for them to do so, and soon enough you felt something hit the side of your hand. “That’s my hand, grab it.”

They grabbed your hand, and you immediately registered that they had large hands, long fingers, there was no way this was Lia or Lexa, they both had comically small hands. On second thought, so did Jimin, so that left the rest of the boys. “Here’s what I’m thinking, I’ll ask you a series of questions, and if the answer is yes then squeeze my hand once, if it’s no, then squeeze my hand twice. Make sense?”

One squeeze. “Okay, cool cool. Let’s see,” you pondered, trying to think of a question that would get the most people out at once. “Oh! Okay, do you have roommates?”

Two squeezes, “Okay, well that rules out Jungkook and Tae since they live together. Do you have a pet?”

Two squeezes again, “Well alright, then you’re not Namjoon or Yoongi either. So you’re either Hoseok or Jin.” you stalled for a second, wondering what the odds were that this was Jin in front of you. Alexa wouldn’t do that to you would she? Who are you kidding, she’s tipsy, of course, she would. Your heartbeat increased mildly at the possibility that this was Jin and the possibility that you two would kiss, but you knew deep down that if it was him, you’d rather just take shots because kissing him in this closet was not at all how you wanted to do it.

“Final question,” you said aloud, figuring out what you would ask. “Do you feel strongly about the financial crisis in Ecuador?” A laugh from the person in front of you confirmed your suspicions, it was Jin. Whenever the two of you were together and ran out of things to talk about, he would always ask you the most random of questions, that one is one of his favorites.

“I feel very strongly about it, almost as strongly as I feel about the American peanut butter famine of 1834,” he joked, and you laughed, it was such a dumb joke, but it got you every single time. It absolutely had nothing to do with him, and you thinking he was the funniest person alive, not at all.

The two of you quieted down, and you heard Jimin call for four minutes left. Suddenly, you remembered why you were here, and what you had to decide. “So,” you said, trying to decide how you were gonna get out of this. “How’s it going?”

“Oh you know, just grand,” he said, and you heard him shifting his weight from one foot to another. It was then that you also realized he was still holding your hand, cute. “You have a decision to make, don’t you?” he asked, and you blushed, thank god for the darkness of this closet.

“I think it’s a group consensus, no?” you asked.

Jin chuckled, and you felt his thumb run over your knuckles, your mind raced at the feeling. “I mean sure, but I’m cool with either.” You were pretty sure that you died of cardiac failure after he said that, there was no way he had just said that. “Plus the idea of taking two shots right now makes me wanna die,”

“Hmm, you did kinda suck at taking shots,” you joked, trying to ease your nerves, and he playfully swatted your shoulder. Your hand hung loosely at your side, and you took the moment to wipe the sweat off on your jeans. “So you’re cool with either? You’re sure?” you asked, your voice slightly panicky.

You sensed his arm moved as it wrapped around your waist, pulling you closer to him. You held your breath, what the fuck was going on. “I’m sure, are you?”

You felt your head get fuzzy and you weren’t sure if it was from the alcohol or the way you could feel each of his fingers as they rested on the small of your back, but you definitely weren’t sober anymore. “I don’t want to kiss you in the closet,” you said quickly, your hand instinctively balling into a fist. “Not like this.”

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly, a touch of hurt in his voice, your heart ached at the sound. “Would you rather take the shots?”

“No, no, no,” you said frantically, releasing his hand and taking a step back. Even though you knew this was low risk, you’d have to absolutely be blind to not understand the elephant in this closet with you two, you still felt terrified of rejection. “I-I can’t see you, I want to be able to see you.”

At that moment, the door flung open, the light from the outside streaming in, and all you saw was Jin’s face as he looked at you as if he had never seen you before. You wanted to cry, but instead, you pushed past him, and grabbed a bottle of peppermint schnapps off the counter, quickly downing two shots, before going out onto the porch. You absolutely needed some air.

The commotion from inside followed you faintly as you shut the door, everyone was confused, but drunk enough to move on rather quickly, sending Jungkook into the closet, before sending someone else in after him. You paid them no mind, too busy feeling sorry for yourself that even when the moment was perfect, you still found a way to ruin it for yourself. He had literally told you he wanted to kiss you, and you had ruined it with your stupid insecurities, go figure.

The sliding door opened and you looked up as he stepped out onto the porch, blanket in one hand, and two water bottles in the other. “Mind if I join you?” you said nothing, but nodded in response, and he offered you water, and you took it before he sat next to you. You watched out of the corner of your eye as he wrapped the blanket around him, and it was in that moment that you remembered it was November. Unconsciously, you pulled your knees up, wrapping your arms around them, wishing you had grabbed your jacket. “Here,” he said suddenly, opening up one side of his blanket cocoon. “We can share.”

You peered at him hesitantly, before opting in because even your pride was willing to leave for warmth. He wrapped the blanket around you both, and you moved closer to him in an attempt to get the blanket around the both of you completely. Aside from your shoes peeking out, the both of you were completely submerged, he must have found the biggest blanket in the apartment. You peered up at him and watched as he stared at the street before you, not thinking twice of it, you rested your head on his shoulder. “Jin, I’m sorry for freaking out earlier.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, looking down at you. “You were uncomfortable, I should have been more aware.”

“I wasn’t that uncomfortable,” you muttered, and he chuckled.

“y/n you were actually shaking at one point,” you laughed at that, he was right.

“Okay, fine, but I was only uncomfortable with the circumstances, not the idea behind them,” you paled when you realized what you said, but when Jin wrapped his arm around you, pulling you even closer to him, you relaxed a little.

“Oh so what you’re saying is that I didn’t need to take two shots?”

“Hmmm, maybe not,” you mused, and he laughed. “And neither did I.”

“So why did you?” he asked, the smile dropping from your face as you thought about how you were gonna explain this.

“Jin, I-” you said, your heart rate picking up with each passing moment; it was now or never. “I really like you, I have feelings for you so strong I feel like going crazy sometimes. I’m sure you already knew because Alexa has a big mouth, and I’m the least subtle person on the planet, but that’s why I took the shots.”

“You took the shots instead of kissing me because you like me?”

“Ah no,” you grumbled, getting stressed that he wasn’t getting it. “I took the shots because I didn’t want my first kiss to be in the dark, especially with you.”

“Ahhh, I see what you mean,” he said, a faint smile on his face. He looked down at you, and you felt all the air leave your body as you registered the look in his eyes. It was the exact same as yours had been earlier when you saw him. He had never looked at you like that, at least to your memory. He had, you had just never noticed.

“I just, I just want to be able to see you,” you said quietly, unable to move, stuck in the way he looked at you. “I’ve never kissed anyone before, and I don’t want to mess up.”

Jin grinned, “You can’t mess up, y/n.” he assured you, and you blushed.

“I don’t know, I’m pretty clumsy sometimes,” you pondered, you honestly had no idea how to do it, so chances were that you would mess it up. Jin was older than you, a year or so, and you’ve seen him with a number of girls, so you were pretty positive you were the inexperienced one in this pair.

“It’s pretty simple,” he mused, reaching up to tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear. “I could teach you.” Your heart skipped a beat at his sultry tone, he was absolutely gonna be the death of you. “I’m sure you’d be a quick learner.”

“I’m sure you’d be a good teacher,” you said, and his ears turned a nice shade of pink. You mentally grinned at your ability to fluster him, even in this frenzied state.

“So what do you say?” he asked, running his hand down your arm to grab your hand again. Goosebumps appeared in succession, as you realized where this was going. “Is it bright enough out here for you?”

“It’s perfect,” you whispered, grinning as he smiled at you. “You’re perfect, you know that right?”

“Says you,” he cooed, “You know how long I’ve waited for a moment like this? I like you so much, y/n, it actually drives me crazy how amazing and perfect you are.” You blushed deeply at that, unsure of how in the world you had ended up here, but hearing him say the things you had always wanted him to say made your heart race so fast you were sure you were dreaming.

“So what’s the first step?” you asked, trying to keep your voice calm as you wrapped your arm around his neck. He moved, so you were facing each other now, the blanket falling slightly. You unconsciously tangled his hair in your fingers. He closed his eyes, obviously enjoying whatever you were doing.

“Well you’re doing great so far,” he sighed, his tone breathless. “I was right, quick learner for sure.” you smirked, your fears long forgotten as you felt him lean into your touch. You had no idea that would have such an affect on him, you’d definitely remember that for later.

“What next?” you asked, and he opened his eyes. They were darker than before, and you were sure you were hallucinating. He wrapped both his arms around you, pulling you even closer. His face was inches from yours, if leaned forward you would bump noses.

“Well I’ll pull you close, close enough to kiss you of course,” he whispered, and you chuckled. “Then I’ll probably compliment you some more, telling you how much I like being around you, how beautiful you are, how long I’ve wanted to do this.” he paused, smiling at you. “Then I’ll lean in closer, and ask if you’re sure you want this.”

“And I’ll say that I do,” you said, “That I’ve wanted this for a long time, I was just too scared to say anything, how dumb was that, huh?”

You both chuckled at that, agreeing that you both had been so scared for no reason. “That’s good to hear,” he grinned, playing with the hem of your shirt. “Cause that’d be really awkward if you didn’t feel the same.”

“Oh I feel the same,” you said quickly. “Don’t even worry about that.”

He smiled at you for the millionth time that night, and even though you should have been used to it by now, you still felt like you were floating. “Well now I’m gonna lean forward, probably a little too slowly just to tease you, and maybe I’ll pause just in front of you,” he whispered, pausing with almost no room between your lips.

“And then?” you asked quietly, afraid to break the moment. “What should I do?”

“Whatever you feel like.”

You leaned forward, closing the gap between the two of you. His lips were as soft as you had imagined they would have been. You weren’t sure what to do once you two had touched, but you felt him move away before kissing you again, this time with more pressure. You hesitantly did the same, and you felt his grip on your tighten, so you must have been doing something right. He pulled away again, and you opened your eyes to see him grinning at you. He leaned forward so his mouth was by your ear.

“You're doing great,” he said, chills running down your spine. “You’re a natural.”

He kissed your cheek, before reconnecting your lips, you moved slowly, testing the waters on what you thought might work, gauging the success rate by how Jin reacted. You weren’t sure how much time had passed before you pulled away again, but you could see that his lips were red, and you imagined yours looked the same.

“You’re amazing,” you said, heart seizing at the way he looked at you, and it was in that moment that you knew things were going to be okay. “Definitely the best teacher I’ve ever had. I might need a few more lessons though.”

He smirked, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time for more lessons. It’ll cost you though,”

“What’s the price?” you mused, fingers dancing around his face, tracing the outline of his jaw, his ear, his collarbone.

“A date, with me, this weekend, at a restaurant of your choosing.”

You hummed, pretending to contemplate the idea, “I guess I can do that, but I charge too, ya know.”

“Oh yeah?” he taunted, curious what you were gonna say. “For what?”

You wanted to do something equally as romantic and sensual as him, but in that moment you were overcome with an urge to just hold onto him, to hug him. So you tightly wrapped yourself around him, stuffing your head into the crook of his neck. He returned your embrace immediately, slightly caught off guard by your change in tone, but welcomed it nevertheless. He ran his hands up and down you back as you took a deep breath. You turned your head towards him, tentatively placing a kiss on his neck. You felt him shiver slightly, the goosebumps rising on his skin. “For that,” you whispered, kissing his neck once more, before returning to your original embrace.

He wasn’t sure what had just happened, but somehow you had managed to be adorable and extremely hot within the span of seconds, and it was in that moment he realized you would be the death of him. He held you for a while, enjoying your embrace, enjoying the way you fiddle with the hair on the nape of his neck every so often, enjoying the way he was finally holding you the way he had always wanted to.

You couldn’t have asked for anything better than this, you were so happy, you couldn’t believe your luck. Time passed, and with each minute, intoxicated by his scent, you felt yourself growing tired, wordlessly, you dozed off, the alcohol tiredness finally taking effect, and it wasn’t until Alexa knocked on the door, did Jin realize what had happened, and how much time had passed.

She quietly opened the door, “Glad to see my efforts didn’t go to waste,” Jin grinned at her, pulling the blanket over your sleeping form.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Sorry I was so blind before, I owe you for what you did. If you hadn’t messaged me last week, I don’t think this ever would have happened.”

“No kidding, you both are scaredy cats, and we both know y/n never would have said anything, she liked you too much to risk it,” she said, and they chuckled. “Are you okay out here? It’s cold out here, things have calmed down inside, we’re watching a movie if you want to come back inside.”

“I’ll be in in a second,” he said. “Thank you again, Alexa, I owe you one.”

“Just put in a good word for me next time you and Jimin hang out, yeah?” she said shyly and Jin gasped.

“Really?” he asked, an excited look on his face.

“I don’t know, maybe, he’s cool, he’s handsome, those aren’t bad things.” she explained, a blush on her face, Jin wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she sighed. “Okay I’m going, don’t make me regret asking for that. See you in a bit.”

She shut the sliding door, and Jin looked down at you again, still in awe of what had happened. You shifted in your sleep, in an attempt to get more comfortable, you snuggled closer, if that was even possible. “So Jimin and Alexa, huh?” you whispered, causing Jin to jump at the sound of your voice.

“You’re awake?” he asked.

“Kinda,” you mused, “I heard the door open. I’m glad she said something, cause you’re both right, I never would have said anything, liked you too much.”

He smiled, a deep blush on his face. He wondered how long it would take for your words to have a lesser effect, he secretly hoped it would never come. “Do you want to go watch the movie? Or do you want to sleep?”

You contemplated your choices, “Let’s go say goodbye, and you can come over?” you lifted your head to gauge his expression. “Unless you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”

“No, no, no,” he assured you. “I’d love to come over.”

You smiled, and kissed him again before standing up. Jin followed you inside, grabbing your hand the first chance he got. Your friends all watched as you came in, and Namjoon was the first to congratulate you both.

“It’s about time you did something, Jin!” Yoongi nagged, and Jin let out a shout of protest. You laughed, making eye contact with Alexa. Thank you you mouthed to her, and she smiled, so genuine and full of love. You’re welcome she mouthed back, a knowing look on her face. Next to her, Jimin sat, and you wiggled your eyebrows at her as Jin grabbed your jackets. She blushed, and you grew excited at the new prospect of their relationship. Jimin grabbed her attention as he asked her a question, and you watched as he rested a hand on her thigh, you had never seen her so bubbly and excited, you made a mental note to ask her about it later. Jin returned to your side, handing you your coat. You bid farewell to everyone, and made your way to your car. The drive home was filled with compliments, loud singing to the radio, and plenty of kisses from Jin as you drove.

By the time you got to your apartment, you felt tired again, and you could tell Jin was finally falling victim to sleep as well. You grabbed some of his old sweats that you had stolen from your dresser, and handed them to him. You shamelessly watched as he undressed, slipping on the sweatpants, but opting out of the sweatshirt. This wasn’t the first time you had seen him shirtless, but it was certainly the first time you hadn’t looked away when he looked at you. Wordlessly, you smiled at him and stripped yourself of your shirt and bottoms. He felt his stare and you turned to take off your bra and put on an old t-shirt. You pulled on some shorts, and turned back to face him, he was laying on your bed, arms behind his head, his muscles on full display. You blushed at the sight, climbing into bed next to him, immediately leaning into his touch as he pulled you onto his chest. You felt it rise and fall with each breath he took, it was incredibly calming.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, tilting your jaw up to kiss you. Your legs went weak at the feeling, and you laid your hand on his chest. “So so beautiful, I’m so lucky.”

“Says you, world wide handsome,” you joked, and he laughed. Things were gonna be just fine, you could feel it.

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