#jun is 2 for 2 with sea fics on this blog rn. poor guy

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[wjh] taking chances

wen junhui (svt) x reader - wc. 2.1k - genre: angst ish, ex somethings to current somethings (you'll see) - warnings: some cursing i think

you know water. you know how it churns and groans into a storm. how it’s calm on a cool, spring day. how it calls one to it, to watch and be lost in the ebb and flow of the waves. you know water. and it’s because you know water that you know when it’s time to return to it.

jun watches you take your first steps into what used to be home. you watch your feet as they take each of the steps before the entryway, one by one. slowly. you pause before opening the door, hand hovering just above the doorknob that’s so familiar to you both. 

“you don’t have to do this, you know.” you tell him abruptly. it’s just a couple bags. i can take it from here.”

jun watches you closely as you say it. the way your lips turn down and voice gets breathier at the end of each sentence, as if the words are losing their steam halfway between your throat and your mouth. your hair looks the same as it did when you moved away. your eyes are a couple years older, but still hold the sunlight the way they did when you guys were 14. for a quiet, blissful moment, jun lets himself believe that you haven’t changed. that you’re still the you that left your sleepy hometown for university. still the you that told jun maybe the two of you could try again whenever you got back. the same you that said nothing when he asked if you even plan on coming back. he looks for the scar you got when you were younger, playing volleyball on the beach after school. he can’t find it.

he clears his throat. things have changed. 

“i don’t mind.” is all he says before you open the door home. 

—

he sees you again at the bonfire that night, a tradition in your hometown to signify the start of summer that always falls on the first friday in may. a small thing for locals to enjoy before the town is overrun with tourists and the beautiful beaches are filled with strangers at every turn. 

you’re talking to jihoon, catching up and showing him something on your phone. you look like an entirely different person than the one he left this morning. earlier, your entire face was tight and scrunched up, the way it always did during exams. but now, you look calmed, relaxed, jaw finally unclenched and shoulders down. jihoon says something to make you laugh, and jun can hear the sound all the way from the other side of the fire, over soonyoung’s yells at chan and over his own heart. the bonfire flashes in his face, chan yells back at soonyoung, and you’re left with a smile. jun feels a warm rush run from his head to his arms. he swallows it down with a gulp of his drink. 

you catch his eyes across the beach, eyebrows raising a tiny bit and drink lifted to him. a small hello thrown across the chaos of the bonfire and all your friends. his feet are leading him towards you before he can even think to stop them. 

“hey.” you smile, clinking your bottle against his cup. 

“hi.” he returns, taking another sip.

“i think i’ve officially said hi to everyone now.” you declare, staring out at the group. jun wonders what must be running through your mind right now. are you thinking of the friends you made at university? are you wishing it was them here with you right now instead of him? 

but then you watch jeonghan and wonwoo race across the beach followed by them arguing whether jeonghan cheated or not, and say, “i missed this.”

you wave away the smoke that drifts over from the fire and tap your index finger against the neck of your beer. jun says, “me too.”

the two of you stand there for a while. you watching the fire grow. jun watching you. he’s instantly transported back to your last bonfire here. the one right after graduation, during which you found out that you got into a university a thousand miles away. jun wishes he had the foresight to be happy for you, to recognize that you got into your dream program at your dream school. he wishes he had celebrated with you, with everyone, relished in the bittersweet knowledge that this would be your last bonfire together like this. but jun hadn’t. instead, jun took you aside and told you that school would be hard, too hard maybe. that maybe you should reconsider. maybe you should be like the ones before and go to a university close enough to home to visit every other weekend. and underneath the million reasons he gave you to not go was the confession that he had been holding back since the start of that year, a wildcard that maybe you saw coming or maybe you didn’t. either way, when he finally told you how much he liked you, how he had for so long, you didn’t say it back. you didn’t even acknowledge any of the bullshit reasons he gave before. instead, you kissed him softly, an overwhelmingly high school press of lips together, and told him, you’re sorry. not now, but maybe later.

you catch him staring. is it later now?

"what?" you ask with a laugh.

jun shakes his head quickly. “no, nothing. just…” he lets out a breath, averting his eyes from your questioning gaze. “we really missed you while you were gone.” 

you roll your eyes. “you act like i’m the only one that left home. seungkwan and minghao also moved away.”

“true.” he admits, at which you let out a small ‘thank you’ under your breath. “but you were the first.”

and there’s something in the way jun says it that makes your lips part, readying to say something in response, but nothing comes out. you gulp down whatever you really wanted to say and replace it with a quiet. “well, i’m back now.”

jun squints at you, remembering how badly you wanted to leave at the end of high school, remembering how upset you were this morning at the reality of being back. jun doesn’t stop to think of it another way. he doesn’t stop to conjure up some other reason for the way you were acting this morning versus how you seem to be now. instead, he gives it the same one he gave himself 4 years ago to answer why you left–”but you hate this place.”

your entire body is visibly taken aback by the question, or maybe the bluntness of it. and when jun sees the way your face contorts into something akin to offense, he finds himself wanting to chase after the reckless words and shove them back inside his stomach. 4 years later and jun still doesn’t know which words are the right ones to say. 4 years later and he still resents you for leaving.

you never get to answer the question. instead, joshua appears quoting a line from twilight and dragging you away complaining that you hadn’t come to say hi to him yet. 

you watch jun as you walk off, sourly muttering, “i guess i forgot one.”

the only thing jun can think of then is how selfishly he stole the smile from your face. 

—

jun doesn't really talk to anyone else for the rest of the bonfire. he teeters around the edge only conversing if someone else initiates it first and watching you converse happily with everyone else. he turns his gaze away from you and to the sea. he watches the water crumble against the sand and crawl back into the ocean, over and over again. there’s comfort in the image and in the sound. it’s why his family moved here . it’s why every summer tourists flock here and stay for months complaining of the day they must inevitably go back. all jun’s life, he’s only known people to enter. enter his life, his space, his routine. and when you left for university, it was the first time in his life that someone had left. 

“hey,” seokmin says, sitting down next to jun in the sand, “look at this.”

seokmin hands jun an old photograph. it was hardly a very sentimental photo, rather an old class picture from when jun was either 10 or 12. one of those forced smiles and terribly timed pictures every class was forced to take once a year. at the time of this picture, jun was friends with soonyoung and no one else. but on the other side of the class stands you and wonwoo. best friends at this age. that makes him smile. 

he looks up to thank seokmin, who is already gone, dancing with mingyu to some song blasting through the speakers. 

jun goes back to the picture, enraptured in a life that used to be his. when he does looks up, he finds himself face to face with you. 

“can i sit?” you ask casually. like you guys haven’t been in this weird stalemate for the past four years. he nods, and you do.  

you point to jihoon in the old school photograph, snickering, “god, look at his hair.” 

jun takes a good look at it, laughing at the bowl haircut, complete with a gravity defying cowlick in the back. “i don’t know how his parents let him leave the house like that.”

you point out some other classmates, asking what they’ve been up to. jun fills you in on all of them. but eventually, you run out of classmates, and the picture starts to feel like another reminder of what could have been instead of what is. jun chooses to look back at the water.

“do you still surf?” you ask him quietly. 

“not really.” he answers, biting back the memory of trying to teach you at 15. 

“jun.” you say with a voice that forces him to finally look your way. he does, and he feels as stupidly enamored as he did at 17. “i know you don’t understand why i left, but i don't hate this place. i never…” you gulp, looking for the words in the air between you and him. you find it in the photograph still nestled in his hands. “how could i hate it here?” you say, gesturing to 10 year old you, “this is my home.”

“tell me again then,” jun begins, wondering inwardly if he should even be speaking anymore, “why you had to leave it so bad?”

you shake your head. “i had a chance i had to take.”

jun doesn’t say anything back. you place a hand on his knee. 

“i hate that leaving made it so weird between us.”

jun stares at your hand on his knee silently. 

“i want us to go back to the way we were.”

you scoot closer to him. he shivers.

“don’t you?”

suddenly, he can feel your breath hitting the base of his neck. his entire body is frozen in place, watching your eyes flutter shut, watching his lips hover beside yours. 

finally, he gets the massive kick in the gut he needs to ask, “why’d you come back?”

you meet his eyes, and there’s a million subliminal messages in them when you say, “there was one more chance i wanted to take.”

the confession is a spell, compelling jun to let you kiss him and allowing himself to kiss you back. and this kiss, in stark contrast to the one you both shared at your last bonfire, has nothing high school about it. it’s four years of wanting and longing crushed into a tangle of tongue and lips. it’s biting and breathless. you pull at his knee. he grabs the back of your neck. 

when you do finally pull away, you’re smiling again. jun is too. you keep your face right next to his, breathing him in, taking him in for all his wrong words and bitterness. 

somewhere in the back of his mind, jun knows that he’d always let you have him like this. and beneath that, buried under the rush of the kiss, he knows that you won’t want him like this for long. he knows he’s only a blip of a hometown romance in a life that’s foreign to him and has been since the moment you left. 

but that doesn’t stop him from drinking you in, pulling your face back to his and letting his tongue run over your teeth. it doesn’t stop him from giving himself up to you over and over again. 

jun is just another chance for you to take. and as long as it’s there, he prays you take it.