#me @ me: stop adding voluntary shit to your plate!

[teenwerewoofs]

fell down the bookbinding/ficbinding rabbit hole two weeks ago, told myself to not just go all-in right off the bat (especially because i have a lot going on right now + the rest of this year!!), bought a kit to test out the process before fully committing, and i now have two large orders of materials arriving next week and have finished typesetting two fics and am about to start my third 😐

[taexual]

HOLIC - 45 | jb x reader

pairing: Im Jaebum x Reader

genre: enemies to lovers au | roommate au

warnings: fluffy start with some angst for dessert

words: 4.6k

disclaimer: i do not own the gif, please let me know if it belongs to you, so i can give proper credit

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“I now it’s Sunday and it’s a sad day for everyone everywhere but I also know you don’t have to work on Monday, so there’s no reason for you to sulk,” Jaebum insisted, knocking on the door of your bedroom the next day, “I don’t know what to do to get you out of your room, so I’ve ordered pizza. A few pizzas, actually. Too many to eat on my own, so, please come out so I wouldn’t have to waste food.”

You’d been holed up inside the entire day – and this certainly wasn’t the first time Jaebum tried to get you to come out, God bless him – politely refusing every offer he’d made through the closed door of your room, but you knew you weren’t being fair. You knew you had to go out and explain what was going on with you, eventually. Hiding was just temporary and, honestly, childish.

So, after another tirade of knocking from a very determined Jaebum, you walked out of your room, obviously surprising him as he jumped back as soon as the door opened.

“Shit, I didn’t think that’d work,” he gasped, smiling in spite of himself. It’d only been a day since he’s last seen you and already he was displaying a poor impulse control around you.

You shrugged your shoulders. “Can’t let that food go to waste.”

“Right, well, come on,” he took your hand – even though he only considered gentle coaxing to get you to come to the kitchen, now that he saw you, he was afraid you’d sneak back into your bedroom if he didn’t physically pull you out of it the next second – and dragged you towards the empty living room area. “I don’t know what happened but—”

“Jaebum—”

“No, don’t,” he stopped you. “I get it. Sharing our problems with each other is something we’ve been doing since we moved in together, even though it wasn’t always strictly voluntary. But sometimes, it takes time to deal with certain things, so I’m not going to push you to tell me what’s bothering you if you’re not done processing it yourself.”

“No,” you shook your head. “I am done. I’m done with... with everything, really. These photography events? I’m not going to do them. I won’t—”

“Oh. Are you sure that’s the right choice?”

You sighed. “Yeah. I am.”

“Is that why you were—”

“No, I was trying to fade into oblivion because of how long it took me to get here. Because of how long it took me to make the right choice,” you swallowed. “Listen, I ran into Jackson last night and I have to tell you something. I—”

The doorbell rang, cutting you off at the very peak of your courage. You could almost physically feel the levels of your bravery recede as soon as Jaebum asked you to wait for “just a moment” and went to greet the delivery boy with your pizzas. You didn’t feel that hungry all of a sudden.

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Jaebum called out after the delivery boy left. The two cardboard boxes of pizza in his hands limited his ability to maneuver so you went over to help him lock the door. “How about we don’t talk about any of the philosophical right choices anymore, hmm? I’m afraid I’m losing you to, like, Kant. Or Freud. Or—”

You laughed at this, following him to the kitchen and picking up some plates from the cupboards while he unboxed the pizzas.

“No, I’m far from that level of thought,” you replied and then turned around to face him. “But okay. That’s fair. I won’t do that anymore.”

“Oh, don’t think it’s because I don’t want you to talk to me—”

“No, I understand. I’m not giving you any answers, anyway. You’re probably sick of me.”

“Only a little,” he teased and then laughed at your grimace. “You should go find a movie we can watch later. I’ll try to figure out why they didn’t include any of the sauces I’ve ordered.”

You raised your eyebrows, leaning closer to check the boxes he’d opened. “There are no sauces?”

“No, they’re here,” he said, suddenly locating the three small containers of sauce, all stuffed into the corner of one pizza box. “It’s all good. Go. Oh—what was it that you wanted to tell me?”

You had already managed to take three steps in the direction of your room when you stopped, turning around. “Hmm?”

“About Jackson?” Jaebum clarified, ripping the cover of one of the cardboard boxes to make it easier to transport it to his room. “You were saying something and then the doorbell—”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” you felt your skin shiver. Your courage to confess the truth about everything left with the pizza delivery boy. “I—well, it’s nothing important, really. I just saw him the other day at, uh, one of the exhibitions I’ve gone to, so, that was a surprise.”

“Oh, well, I’ve already told you he’s been off doing work for his family,” he said. “Did you get to talk to him? You should have given him a kick in the ass for me, by the way – I’ve been trying to reach him non-stop the whole morning today and he hasn’t even bothered to read my texts.”

“No, I—” you started to say and then, for the briefest of moments—that you truly despised yourself for later—you felt relieved to hear him say that. The last time you saw Jackson, he wasn’t exactly accommodating to your wish to stall a bit more before you finally came clean to Jaebum. “I-I haven’t talked to him much. Just said hi, had a quick chat and that’s all.”

“Hm,” Jaebum only nodded, now more preoccupied with the logistics of the boxes he had to carry to his room. “He said he’s coming back tomorrow afternoon so I guess I’ll ambush him then.”

You chuckled at this – more out of politeness than anything else – and returned to your room to pick your laptop up. As always, your designated spot for watching movies and eating junk food was his bedroom, not yours, so you headed over there, all while attempting to come to terms with the fact that, by tomorrow afternoon, Jaebum had to learn about the details of your contract with Jiho’s gallery. It felt like Jackson was purposefully giving you this much time to gather all the necessary courage.

Jaebum joined you in the room another few moments later, which didn’t give you nearly enough time to set your mind straight, but, then again, he could have stayed back in the kitchen for the entire night and that still wouldn’t have been enough time for you to get yourself together.

“I had this frustrating dream last night,” Jaebum confessed as he plopped down on his bed. You leaned over to help him with the elaborate arrangement of the pizza, the sauces, the laptop, and his own body – his large bed felt so much smaller now. “I was stuck in some sort of a box – honestly, it felt like a casket to me – that kept moving and I—”

“Like an elevator?” you asked.

“No—well, yeah, I guess kind of like an elevator,” he said and then added, “of nightmares. Anyway, it kept moving in this spinning motion and every time the door opened, the box was upside down and above a huge precipice. So, if I wanted to get out of it, I had to very literally jump to my death. But if I stayed inside, I just wouldn’t stop spiraling until I eventually passed out from vertigo or something.”

“Huh,” you reached for a slice of pizza. “Maybe that’s a metaphor for what’s going on in your life right now? Like, you’re taking this big risk by quitting your secure job at the radio station to focus on singing instead. That is kind of like taking a leap out of a haphazard elevator.”

Jaebum scoffed. “So, my life was a haphazard elevator and now I’m about to die?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. And who’s to say you’d have died if you’d jumped out of that elevator?”

“Well, I don’t think there are many people who have survived a twenty-meter drop straight down a precipice,” he dead-panned, picking a slice of pizza up.

“I’m just saying,” you mumbled with your mouth full of food and then stopped to finish chewing. “It’s a dream. Anything can happen in dreams.”

Dipping his slice into the sauce, he considered this and then sighed. “Maybe it is a metaphor. About fear.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, but I don’t mean anything specific. Just fear in general.”

You paused again – the chewing was suddenly part of the conversation – before asking, “what are you afraid of?”

“I’m… Well, lots of things,” he said and then proceeded to count on his fingers, “death. Deep water. Those vintage porcelain—”

That sounded too much like he was purposefully avoiding answering your question and you shook your head, wiping the corners of your mouth with your fingers.

“Okay, I get that,” you stopped him. “I meant right now. Are you doing anything you’re afraid of? Aside from starting a whole new period of your life, I mean.”

Jaebum hesitated – obviously, the fear he was feeling right now wasn’t caused by any of the things he’d just mentioned – but covered it up by stuffing the remaining slice of pizza into his mouth. He took his sweet time chewing it.

“Y-yeah, but I’m not afraid of that new period,” he said finally, wiping the grease from his fingers onto his pants. You gave him a disapproving look – which he promptly ignored – as he tried to explain, “I’m just nervous about it, I guess. Excited, too. But, generally, I’m not afraid of that. There are just… these little things I’m afraid of.”

“Such as..?” you encouraged.

“I’m working on this song,” Jaebum said, avoiding your eyes as he reached for another slice.

You felt your skin break out in goosebumps – your body reacted before your mind could –  and it took you a second to understand why. Then, Jackson mentioning that Jaebum had been writing a song about you returned to your memory with an overwhelming flash. Although you didn’t know if Jaebum was talking about the same song right now, suddenly you forgot how to chew and swallowed the piece of pizza you’d bitten off whole.

You coughed, clearing your throat before you asked, “w-what kind of song?”

“It’s—it’s something I’ve been writing for a while,” he replied, completely forgetting the sauce as he took a bite of his pizza. At this point, his mind was already so far from this room that the food seemed tasteless to him anyway.

“And you’re afraid of it?” you asked since, obviously, it was hard for him to keep talking on his own.

“I… yeah,” he said. “Sort of. That sounds stupid, I get it, but—”

“It doesn’t,” you disagreed. “You’re creating something. It’s normal to be worried about it.”

“No, but I can live with worries,” he said, groaning as he put his half-eaten slice of pizza on an empty plate he’d brought. “I can’t explain what I mean. And—actually—maybe that’s exactly where the problem – or, well, the fear – lies in. I’m just… I’m scared I won’t be able to put it all into words and it won’t come out right. The song, I mean. And, sometimes, I’m scared that the song won’t come out at all. O-or, if it will, it won’t do very well.”

You squinted your eyes as you listened to him speak, trying to figure out if “the song” was a metaphor for something much deeper of if this particular song really meant so much to him. It could have also been both, of course.

“Well,” you said slowly, “do you want the song to come out?”

“I do. Of course, I do.”

“Then it will,” you said.

“Right. But what if it doesn’t do well?” he repeated himself.

“That’s not possible,” you declared. “You hate abstractions, so the song is obviously going to be about something that people can relate to with ease. People usually like things they don’t have to try hard to understand. They enjoy songs that hit close to home.”

“It’s… it’s a song about this sort of one-in-a-lifetime experience, though,” Jaebum admitted. “I’m not sure if there are many people that will actually be able to relate to it.”

“Well, even if they can’t relate, that doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy it,” you said, your hands freezing even though there was a fire blazing inside of you. “What is the song about?”

“Well… it’s a personal song,” Jaebum said. The less specific he was, the more inclined you were to believe that this was the same song Jackson had mentioned and, consequently, the less oxygen there seemed to be in the room. You couldn’t stop thinking about the possible lyrics of the song.

“Okay,” you said, hoping your voice wasn’t shaking too obviously. “How much have you written? Can I hear it?”

Jaebum looked down, the abundance of thoughts in his mind – what a ridiculous contrast to the one, lonely thought that kept rotating around your mind like a loose tumbleweed in the wild wild west – making it difficult for him to find an answer to your question. He hadn’t lied to you when he said he was worried about the song not doing well – that part was true. And he also worried about it being misunderstood, that was true as well. But the thing that he was the most afraid of was the thing he couldn’t tell you about because it was hidden inside of said song.

He’d told you he focused on the most prominent emotion he was feeling when he wrote song lyrics and, this time, he tried to put all of his fear into this song. These fears – or, rather, just this one fear, in particular – had been bothering him for quite a while now: first, he had been afraid to get close to you, but after he had, he was suddenly afraid to fall in love with you. And now that he had, he was afraid to lose you.

His biggest fear was always you, and, simultaneously, it was also the absence of you. It would have surprised exactly no one to know that the song about the leading emotion he was feeling, was also a song about you.

“That’s another thing I’m afraid of,” Jaebum said after what felt like forever but was, really, no more than a minute. It was still not enough time for him to find a proper way to express himself – which was something that you could relate to.

“What? Me, hearing it?” you asked, confused.

He exhaled, nodding. “Yeah.”

“You shouldn’t be,” you said in a quiet voice, hating the uncertainty behind your words. “I love everything that you do. But I get it. You can play it to me when you’re ready.”

Even though Jaebum didn’t respond with anything – just looked at you – his eyes burned with all that he wanted you to know and, deep down, you felt like you understood him perfectly. Frankly, you were afraid of all the same things and, sometimes, finding the right words – however obvious they were – to express yourself and to cause that fear to dissipate, didn’t come easy. You knew that better than anyone as you procrastinated on the confession of truth – yet again – out of fear of disrupting the Sunday night bliss.

Finally, long after the pizza was finished and the movie – and the sequel that you couldn’t stop yourselves from watching – was completed, you and Jaebum started to stretch. Laying in one spot and barely breathing could have easily mummified a person. Jaebum yawned, stretching his hands above his head, and then turned to you.

“Can I tell you something?” he said, his eyes red and hazy from the intense staring at the computer screen.

“Of course,” you replied, his yawn contagious. “Anything.”

He sat up before continuing, the bones somewhere in his spine cracking uncomfortably.

“I thought…” he started to say and felt himself run into a brick wall inside of his mind. He’d tried to find the right way to say this all throughout the night – not wanting to scare you but also not wanting to seem like a pathetic loser, either – but actually opening his mouth to speak still wielded no good results. “No, you know what? Nevermind. It’s dumb.”

The longer he hesitated before speaking, the more your curiosity was taking the best of you.

“Hey, come on,” you encouraged. “Tell me.”

“No, it’s stupid, really, I just—”

“You got me all excited now! Tell me,” you insisted.

Figuring that this might happen, Jaebum sighed in defeat. “Fine. I… I thought you might have done something.”

Although you were not at all sure what he was hinting at, your heart still seemed to drop right into the pit of anxiety brewing at the bottom of your stomach.

“What?” you asked. “What do you mean? What have I done?”

He was shaking his head as soon as you started to speak, realizing now that he should have started with something else. Point-blank accusations rarely ever ended well and he felt like the one he had thrown at you was beyond stupid. Yet, for some reason, he still wanted to talk to you about this.

“No, it’s just—the way you’ve been acting, you know?” he tried to say, smiling for more effect. Although, the only effect his smile had was a great increase in your levels of anxiety. “Like, I know I said I don’t want you to philosophize about anything anymore but… all of this secrecy and these half-answers you’ve been giving me whenever I asked you about how your exhibition was going… I just thought you dropped it or something and were too afraid to tell me.”

You weren’t expecting him not to notice your behavior at all – he was far too perceptive for that – but, somehow, you’d naively hoped he wouldn’t bring it up.

“The exhibition?” you clarified, caught off guard. “N-no, I haven’t dropped it. That’s still… well, I hope it’s still happening.”

“Okay. I mean, don’t get offended or anything, I’m just being paranoid,” he said and then, with a nonchalant chuckle, added, “but I really thought you either dropped the exhibition, or… or you actually did have to sleep with someone to get it.”

Finally, you looked up from the hole that you’ve dug for yourself by omitting the truth from him, and realized how deep it was. You could barely see the surface anymore.

“W-where did you even—” you tried to ask but Jaebum jumped in to explain himself.

“It’s because of that conversation we had the other day,” he said. “When you asked me how far I was willing to go in order to—”

Suddenly panicking because, apparently, you’d let Jaebum come to some shocking conclusions—that weren’t all that far from the truth—without meaning to, you waved your hands in dismissal and tried to cut in.

“Oh, no, I was just—”

“Yeah, I told you it was stupid,” he spoke over you, his warm gaze trying to calm you down, albeit unsuccessfully. The raw ends of your nerves were flickering with anxious electricity. “I was just worried about you. I want to know what’s going on. You’ve been with me every step of the way, you know the names of everyone at my agency, basically. I want to be the same for you. But, forget it, I’m just being dumb.”

He stopped talking and, although no more than five seconds could have passed before you opened your mouth to speak, it felt like you could have counted to a million and back in the time that neither of you spoke. The silence was so thick with all the things you haven’t told him – and were, evidently, about to spill – that you could barely breathe, let alone find a way to soften the blow you were about to strike Jaebum with.

You started, your throat hurting with every word, “you’re not being dumb. There’s…. There actually is something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you a while ago.”

The electricity from your body seemed to transfer onto his as Jaebum’s face paled all of a sudden. “Oh, wow.”

“What?”

He grasped his chest over his shirt. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“What?” you gasped, frowning. “W-why?”

“Carry on!” he encouraged abruptly. “You can’t just start a sentence like that a-and with this… this expression on your face. You look like you’re about to tell me you’ve found a basement with a hundred rotting bodies inside of it and you’ve been trying to find a way to bring them all back to life.”

“No, it’s not that,” you shook your head, far too nervous to acknowledge how ludicrous that statement sounded or even joke about how he obviously thought you were cosplaying as Frankenstein on the side. “It’s—it’s nothing serious, really. I’m blowing this way out of proportion and I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell you, I just—”

“Out with it, please,” he pleaded. “My poor heart.”

You were absolutely driving him out of his mind – and body, by the looks of it; he looked like he was ready to astral project into three different dimensions at the same time – but you simply could not find the right words. In fact, you didn’t think such words even existed anymore – it was far too late to let Jaebum know about Jiho slowly and convince him that it wasn’t a big deal.

“Right, right, sorry,” you said and then cleared your throat. “Well, erm, see, the person who ended up contacting me—the, uh, the agent from the gallery we’ve been to? It’s… it’s actually someone I know.”

“Someone you know?” Jaebum frowned. He’d been expecting a huge revelation that was going to blow his mind and he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with what you’ve told him. His nerves wouldn’t let you explain, however, as he burst into a tirade of confused questions, “what, like a professor from college or something? Are you saying this is some sort of photographer-version of insider trading? Do you think they only invited you to meet with them because they know you? Because, let me tell you right now, that’s not—”

“No, Jaebum,” you stopped him. “It’s Jiho.”

One impossibly loud heart beat later, Jaebum blinked his eyes and shut his mouth. “Hmm?”

“That agent,” you clarified, your voice fading. “T-the person responsible for my exhibition. It’s Jiho. I-I’ve been working with him.”

He stared at you and you swore you’ve never been more scared of anything in your life like you were scared—petrified, really—of the utterly blank look in his eyes. You usually struggled with reading his emotions but, at the very least, you knew there were emotions to look for. Right now you couldn’t find a single one.

“I didn’t tell you sooner because I was afraid of your reaction,” you chose to add after a yet another ridiculously long pause.

“Why?” Jaebum asked. There was a change to his voice and the room got unbearably chilly. “What did you think I was going to do?”

“I don’t know. I know you don’t like him and I just—I know it’s nothing, I was just nervous,” words spilled out of your mouth as you focused on how vulnerable his empty eyes made you feel. You had no guesses about what he was going to do or say next. “A-and I didn’t want to ruin your mood when everything with your career seemed to be going so well.”

“W-why would that ruin my mood?” he shrugged his shoulders. The nonchalant act he was putting on was so incredibly transparent, you could almost taste the bitterness on his tongue.

“Well, you know,” you said, all of the excuses you’ve come up with had escaped you. “It’s, uh… I had to go to these events with him. For publicity. Like I’ve told you.”

“Ah,” Jaebum nodded, slowly sitting up and taking his feet off the bed. “So, you’ve been fake-dating Jiho is what you’re saying.”

You’ve been blessed with never having to experience standing at gunpoint before. But sitting right here and telling Jaebum all that you should have told him days ago, felt an awful lot like talking in front of a loaded sniper. And now that he’d gotten up, you thought you could see his finger approach the trigger.

“I—” you started to say but Jaebum interrupted.

“And you didn’t tell me because you were afraid of my reaction,” he repeated, heading for the door.

You lowered your head as a half-nod. “Y-yes, I didn’t want—w-where are you going?”

He didn’t stop crossing the hallway as he called out in an eerily calm tone, “just to get a drink.”

“A drink? We have—Jaebum?” you leaped off the bed when he still didn’t stop and ran after him, making sure to keep a respectable amount of distance between you two. Not because he scared you when he was like this but because you felt like he didn’t want you that close right now. “Jaebum, please.”

His voice was like static when he spoke – no signs of what he was feeling whatsoever.

“Please what?” he said. “I’m getting water.”

He really was and, even though you could still remember watching him reach for the glasses on the top shelf of the cabinet the very first time you’ve had breakfast together, now you realized you’ve never seen the strained muscles of his back look so menacing.

“No, but I can see the way your muscles are clenched. You look like you want to punch… something,” you pointed out quietly.

“I do not,” he replied with his back turned to you as he turned the tap on, not bothering to switch it to cold water, and poured some into his glass. He took a sip but it looked like he couldn’t taste anything.

“Jaebum—”

“So, these events, then,” Jaebum turned around, putting the glass down so vehemently, you thought it was going to crack. “How many of them have you gone on with him as your date?”

Your teeth grazed against your tongue as you swallowed.

“He wasn’t my—n-not many, just a few, really,” you said, trying desperately to find something else to add to make this sound less awful. “But I’m not doing them anymore. I told him so. I gave him an ultimatum.”

“And Jackson,” Jaebum concluded, remembering what you’ve mentioned earlier. “You ran into him while you were out with Jiho, yeah?”

“I-I—”

He was already walking past you before you could reply, dropping his coldest sentence yet, “I have to go.”

You wanted to grab his hand and stop him but, sensing your intentions, he crossed his arms before he quickened his pace towards his coat, hanging in the hallway.

“Go?” you asked, almost running after him. “Go where? It’s—”

“I have to go,” he repeated sternly, not wasting his time to even glance at you as he tossed his coat over his shoulders, not bothering with the sleeves.

“Jaebum—let me explain, it’s really not a big deal,” you pleaded, the hopeless tone in your voice doing nothing but making him reach for the handle of the door faster. “Jaebum, it’s—Jaebum!”

He slammed the door shut before the last syllable of his name could pass your lips. In the dreadful silence that he left in his wake, you realized that his smell, that had comforted you every day for months that you’ve lived here, and your heart, that had, really, been his all along, had left the apartment with him.

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