𓍯𓂃this is a stray kids sfw acc. my requests are closed. my blog is a safe place for everyone to vent, ask for advice or simply talk about skz <3
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hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
hyunjin x photographer!reader. friends to lovers with so so much tension and pining. hyunjin is too pretty (yet again). suggestive in the end and reader is wearing a dress. inspired by Bathtub hyunjin.
thank you hyunjin yet again for being my eternal muse and inspiring this brainrot. wrote this while listening to All mine by plaza so.. please enjoy <333 feedback is highly appreciated 🫶🏻
Is it possible to drown in the depths of your emotions, until breathing becomes a forgotten process, one that eludes each one of your senses?
Yes, you believe, if standing before a vision of ethereal beauty, as you are now, all encapsulated within Hwang Hyunjin’s being.
The camera slightly shakes in your grasp as you linger by the threshold of the bathroom, eyeing Hyunjin’s silhouette submerged in the waters. He’s sitting inside the bathtub, fingers running through his raven locks, awaiting your return.
He doesn’t seem to notice your presence, nor do you wish him to. Instead, you remain silent by the door, allowing yourself a few seconds to savor the intoxicating aura he exudes.
See, he isn’t doing anything particular, nor is he adorned in anything enticing— a simple white shirt and matching linen pants. And yet, his presence fills the air, compelling oxygen particles to flee from your being, leaving you transfixed, unable to do anything but gaze at him.
“I can feel you staring,” he remarks casually, his eyes still drawn before him as he leans back, tapping the edge of the tub with his ring-clad fingers.
Your heart pulses against your ribs, a dance that the organ knows intimately by now, one that Hyunjin alone can orchestrate. It isn’t the first time he’s had this effect on you, it is a familiar territory you first breached when Minho introduced you to him.
Hyunjin is a friend, but his hands find your waist more times than deemed platonic, and you like his touch much more than you’d like to admit.
“I'm assessing my subject, you know?” A faint grin dances upon your lips as you approach the bathtub. Hyunjin is doing you a favor— you just booked your first photography gig, and your client only has one condition: to shoot it in a bathtub. You wanted to translate your vision to life beforehand, and Hyunjin volunteered to help you.
“And how do I look?” he inquires, his smile a sugary dream that coaxes forth his left dimple. You place your camera gently on the countertop, bending down to inspect him up close.
His eyelids glisten with the golden glitter you delicately applied earlier. His skin is dewy, glistening underneath the warm lightning, and his lips drip crimson, courtesy of the cherry chapstick you carefully tapped into place.
There is always a myriad of visions that come to your mind when you think of Hyunjin— a blazing fire where each flame surges higher towards the heavens, a burning dance of passion and confidence; or a delicate red rose standing resilient in an empty field, vulnerable yet unwavering in its strength.
And now, you see a siren, beckoning mortals with a voice of beauty, ensnaring them with its hypnotic allure, much like he captivates you in this moment.
“You look nice,” you settle on saying, and he playfully pouts, his thumb grazing against your wrist lightly, akin to the delicate flutter of a butterfly's wing. “That's it? You never compliment me properly.”
“Someone’s gotta keep your ego in check,” you shrug, grabbing a dozen of roses and scattering them all around his body. You nod, satisfied with the outcome, finally retrieving your camera.
“Let's start with a simple shot, look at the camera, as you would when seducing someone.”
Instead of looking at the lens, Hyunjin's gaze finds yours first. With a deliberate slowness, his eyes trace the contours of your form, sending delicious shivers down your spine. His pupils dilate, his gaze darkens, before he reluctantly tears his eyes away, finally shifting his focus to the camera.
it takes you a few beats longer to find your voice once again.
“Hold still, one… two… three,” you murmur, capturing a few shots, pausing for a few seconds to admire the warmth of the light bouncing off his honeyed skin. “Perfect.”
“Me or the picture?” he teases, a mischievous glint in his eyes, and you roll yours in response.
“The photographer.”
“You’re right, you're perfect,” he replies simply, and you're momentarily taken aback, your eyes widening slightly. He notices, a small smile playing on his lips as you grab his hand to adjust his pose.
“You aren't allowed to speak anymore,” you declare, guiding his index finger to his lips while his head rests on his other curled fist. He grins, before his expression morphs into a smoldering gaze, one that blankets your skin in hues of red from its sheer intensity.
“Look at me this time,” you instruct, and he nods obediently, directing his gaze towards you. Though your eyes remain fixed on the lens, you can sense the intensity of his gaze piercing through you—suddenly, the white dress you're wearing feels too sheer to contain the flames ignited by his stare.
“Mm,” you hum in approval as you look at the result. A sweet realization washes over you as you notice the subtle shift in his gaze— does he know his eyes unconsciously soften when they land on you?
With each click of the camera, your nerves dissipate, replaced by a growing confidence as each shot turns out exquisitely. They look worthy of gracing billboards worldwide, a privilege of working with a model as beautiful as him, one who portrays emotions as if they were crafted solely for him to feel.
“Good, let's try an overhead shot now,” you instruct, slinging the camera strap around your neck before climbing into the bathtub, legs on either side of his body. You’re hovering over him as he gazes up at you, his fluttering eyelashes echoing the erratic beat of your heart.
Your eyes briefly trace the contours of his now-translucent white shirt, a veil that delicately clings to his form, accentuating the sculpted lines of his physique—the arc of his v-line melding seamlessly into the fabric of his trousers. He possesses the body of a masterful dancer, a muse Michelangelo himself would have revered.
“Take off your shirt,” you suddenly request, and though your words are met with a quirked eyebrow, he obliges effortlessly. With a fluid motion, he peels the garment from his frame, sending it sailing across the bathroom's expanse.
“Good?” he questions but you remain silent because words have suddenly become beyond your grasp. Your client's request for a portrait suddenly feels inadequate and you almost itch to cancel it, because you know it won't exude the same beauty as Hyunjin’s. For each fiber of his being flusters you, makes you hyper aware of your every pulse point and how they all come together to chant Hyunjin’s name.
“Look up at me as you lean back,” you finally say, positioning the camera directly above his head. With each click, your heartbeat speeds up even more at the sight— collarbones and arms bathed in the play of light and shadow, his long, wet hair cascading over broad shoulders, and worse of all, a faint smirk that graces his placid face, as if he's aware of how breathtaking he looks in this moment.
“Should I do this?” he asks, picking up a rose and brushing its dewy petals against his lips. You swallow hard, nodding meekly before swiftly capturing a few more frames.
Emotions twist you into a peculiar being, yearning for your very soul to liquefy, transforming into the water droplets adorning the rose's petals, longing to caress Hyunjin’s lips too.
Hyunjin suddenly straightens his posture, hands coming to rest gently on your calves, fingers dancing along the hems of your dress with a delicate touch.
“How’d I do? Do I look good for you?” he asks and your knees weaken beneath you, his words rendering you a merciless leaf, swayed by the fiery winds he commands, with his words, with his touch, with his eyes, all solely on you.
“For me?” you echo, and he nods, his hand moving languidly up and down your leg, pausing delicately at your knee.
“Mm. You're the only one I want to impress.”
Your response escapes your being breathlessly. “And why is that?”
“Didn't you ask me not to speak?” he grins, running a hand through his hair. Swiftly, you place your camera on the counter before kneeling down, your thighs now brushing against his own.
“Speak,” you command, and in an instant, he seizes your waist, drawing your body close until you're straddling him, legs enveloping his middle.
“Say it again,” he whispers, and you thread your fingers through the strands of his hair, gently tugging at the edges until his head tilts back, exposing the expanse of his neck.
“I said…” you trail off, leaning in until your nose grazes the warmth of his skin.
Being this close to Hyunjin isn't unfamiliar to you; your interactions have always teetered on the brink of almost-kisses, your bodies drawn together like magnets, two halves of an orange yearning to reunite.
Yet, this moment feels different, much more fateful, as if the universe has granted you one final opportunity—to finally ignite in passion or perish into ash.
“Tell me. I want to know,” you urge, your voice a whisper against his skin, laden with unspoken desires.
“Because... I like you a lot. So much that you're the only one I think of all day. And I want you to like me too. I feel like I need it to breathe.”
His response catches you off guard with its vulnerability, the intimacy it drapes on this moment. The water envelops your intertwined bodies as your hands find solace atop his chest, his rapid heartbeat seeping into your palm.
“I always forget how to breathe around you,” you confess, a sheepish smile gracing your lips. The grin that blooms on his face is radiant, casting a glow on the room that cannot be replicated by artificial lighting.
“If you forget how to breathe, I'll give you all my oxygen,” he promises, his thumb tracing gently across your cheekbones. You see the sun in his smile, feel its warmth in his words that burn you. “I think it always belonged to you anyway,” he murmurs, his lips hovering tantalizingly close to yours. “I think... I wanna give you back what's yours. Would you let me, pretty?” he asks, his voice a tender plea.
And amidst all the planets you know and the countless universes that may exist, you cannot fathom a single one where your answer would be anything but yes.
“Please,” you whisper, and his lips crash against yours in a fervent dance.
Your lips part before swiftly meeting again, and you close your eyes, surrendering to a world where all your senses converge to breathe Hyunjin in—your hands exploring the contours of his chest, your mouth savoring the sweetness of his lips infused with your cherry chapstick, your nose inhaling his scent, a delicate blend of vanilla and tobacco pulling you into a dizzying dance, your ears catching the gentle rhythm of his breaths and the faint thud of his heartbeat, all resonating within you.
And you don't need your eyes to see Hyunjin; he's indelibly etched behind your eyelids from all the time you've spent admiring him before.
“Fuck,” he whispers as he draws back, “I should have kissed you much sooner.”
“Mm?” you grin, intertwining your hands behind his neck, “Was it that good?”
“You have no idea what you do to me, do you?”
“Then show me,” you grin, a playful glint in your eyes.
His gaze sparkles with mischief, his lips curling into a self-assured smirk, his hands finding your waist once more. Breathing is not necessary if it gives you Hyunjin in the end.
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
omg, sahar… my love—this was so earth shattering, lovely and tragic. leave it to you to write something full of emotions, the yearning and the pain as well as the abundant happiness at the end. it was really so fantastic, i would say i can’t believe it, but if course i can,,, you are capable of writing the stars into prose.
there were so many beautiful passages in this work, but these were my favorite <3
“hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
“he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.”
coming from you MY GINGER poetry incarnate I COULD CRY!!!! you know that every compliment of yours is stored in a special place in my heart.. thank you a million times i love you and MISSED YOU SO DEARLY 🥹🥹❣️❣️
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
I FINALLY had the time to read this. You don't even know how I craved to pick this fic up, but I was buried under piles of study material and chemistry lectures that needed catching up on 😭
But now I'm here! I've read it and OH MY FUCKING GODDDD WHAAATTTT
Sahar, seriously, how do you do this?? You truly create magic with your words. Everything feels so raw and so vivid. I swear. Like the yearning travels from text to me, it's like I can feel it all. You paint such a beautiful world, so real and so vivid
The longing just radiates off Hyunjin. Not only in the way he thinks or feels, but also the small moments - the fact that at the start it says the days are like a blur and time passes fast (it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes.) but then later Hyunjin notices every detail of his love. The jewelry she wears, the way clothes flow on her and even where her gaze sits. If that isn't the definition of true love and being seen, then I don't know what is. I can only imagine how through the haze of alcohol and fleeting time, all he can see is her - because all of his attention is on her, all he can think of is her. And how he is overcome by jealousy when she kisses Jeongin. It's like he is yearning incarnate!!! I felt like his heart was on the eddge of bursting, poor guy
AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE CONFESSION. God it's the most beautiful thing I've ever read. She is his universe, and everything about him is dedicated to her. He is overflowing with love. And I love it so bad
And the ending?? From "the lights are dim." to "it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim. it is luminous." I fear it is a case of fated soulmates. He has someone who lights up his world;;; that is the most beautiful thought ever
I honestly can't express just how much I truly love this this amazingly beautiful drabble!! You are one of a kind writer. You manage to transport all the feelings from your piece to readers' souls
I'll have you know I'll be thinking of this for a looooong time now. I feel that winter became just a bit more light because I read this. Thank you so much for sharing this piece
you seriously don’t know how much this means to me.. 🥺 i felt so discouraged when i posted this but when i saw your reblog i swear my heart did a little backflip!!!! it means so much to me that you’d leave such a thoughtful, detailed feedback SERIOUSLY thank you from the bottom of my heart ❣️
thank YOUUU for appreciating the yearning, i wanted this hyune to be a yearning down bad loser (affectionate) BRING BACK MEN THAT YEARN!!! also thank you for noticing the details omg yes his world is literally zeroed down to her.. i wrote this but me WHENNNN?!@/0@,!¥]£~!
omg thank you u dont know how much i struggled with the ending i felt that the kiss was meh compared to the buildup BUT THIS MAKES ME FEEL SM BETTER!!!!!!! i seriously appreciate you 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I LOVE YOU thank you i’m less inclined to leave because of you seriously
hyunjin x reader. f2l. (un)requited love. angry love confession, nye’s setting and a pinch (or three) of angst because well it’s me!!!!!! also hyunjin is down bad as he should be! bring back men that YEARN! 🔥
a.n: i haven’t written anything in an eternity so this is rusty and not much. but i rlly rlly wanted to post still. i really am trying to be back so please leave me your thoughts because that’s the biggest motivation ever. i love you guys. thank you to those of you who waited ❣️also thank YOU to @hwajin FOR GIVING ME THIS IDEA,,,, U ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE U!!!!!!!!!!
the lights are dim.
dim enough for hyunjin not to recognize the blur of people passing by after his sixth shot into the night. he isn’t a heavy drinker, usually. but it’s new year’s eve—the marker of a new year and the closing of one already slipping away. hyunjin has never dealt well with the passage of time. nostalgia always finds him when the clock strikes midnight, fingers tightening around his throat like thorny vines.
it doesn’t help that he struggles to remember the details of his days– hours melding into one another like abstract paintstrokes. and that is precisely why he writes—everything, every small and mundane moment. they’re all pressed between the pages of his leather notebook. every word a screaming proof that he was here, that he existed.
hyunjin has commemorated two hundred and eighty-five additional days in the passing year. and somehow, in all of them, he found something to write about you.
the lights are dim, and hyunjin is tipsy now, swaying gently with the music as he leans against the kitchen counter. his white shirt hangs open at the collar, his cross necklace an oasis against his burning skin. sweat beads roll down his temple, heat pooling in his chest before spilling everywhere at once. he’s sure jisung has the heater turned up too high in his tiny apartment. or maybe it’s the rush of blood that swells at the mere symphony of you. maybe it’s his heart thudding to the memory of your perfume—the nerves, the damp palms that only ever betray him when you’re near.
and you are always near.
near, but never close. unattainable—like a mirage to a parched man, there only to taunt him, to remind him of what he craves and cannot have. you are hyunjin’s friend, but he wants more. no, needs more. no, yearns, dies, and is reborn for more.
the lights are dim, but somehow he can still see you. your silhouette, your shadow stretched against the white walls. the curve of your body, silk fabric moving like water when you walk. gold necklaces resting against your skin, fingers curling around the rim of your glass, eyeshadow glittering like scattered stars.
you’re here, yes, but you’re not looking at him. you’re smiling at jeongin instead, your hand dangerously close to his. hyunjin likes jeongin, he does, but the sight of him beside you feels like a knife lodged deep in the hollows of his ribs.
“come on, we’re playing truth and dare.”
hyunjin doesn’t know who grabs his hand, who pushes him into a makeshift circle on the floor. he scrunches his brows, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to quiet the buzzing in his head. an impossible task, it seems, that is until he opens his eyes and he finds you right across from him.
everything goes quiet for a moment.
you hold his gaze as you adjust your legs, draping someone’s sweater over your lap. you smile softly, saccharine, almost imperceptible, like a shared secret between the both of you. then you blink away, and the moment is gone, yet seared into hyunjin’s very atoms. he feels it then, the sudden, overwhelming urge to sob at your feet—to beg for a few seconds more. a minute, if he’s allowed to be greedy. just a little longer of you looking at him.
hyunjin doesn’t pay attention to who the bottle lands on. he sees from the side of his eye a blur of people laughing, then kissing, someone taking off their shirt, hollers and whistles at questions too outrageous if not for the alcohol streaming through everyone’s bloodstream. he cracks a smile here and then, half-heartedly laughs at jisung’s raunchy comment, but that is all he can muster in his state. not because he’s tipsy, drunk rather, but because his heart is bleeding, staining the eggshell tiles with a crimson that cannot be scrubbed away. and no one seems to notice.
then, the bottle lands on you.
and a millisecond later, it finds him.
hyunjin feels like he’s been electrocuted– jolted awake by a force grander than life. you meet his eyes and the noise of the room zeroes down to one sound– the air sucked away from his chest, the slight exhale you release in tandem.
fuck.
“kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
hyunjin moves on autopilot, grabbing your hand and pulling you into the closest empty room. he can hear screams trailing behind him, but he pays them no mind. you don’t seem to protest either, your hand never wilting in his.
“it’s quieter here,” he says as he closes the door.
“they’re childish,” you chuckle lowly, and he nods.
“yeah, it’s a stupid game.”
stupid. so stupid. because now, all hyunjin can think of is your lips on his, you inhaling his soul with every kiss, shattering his heart and stitching it all over again. pulling away only to meet, again, and again, and again, until he learns your taste, memorizes the sound of your breaths and their cadence.
stupid. stupid. stupid.
“what are you thinking of?” you ask, giggling slightly.
he’s too dumbfounded to respond. too drunk for this. he shouldn’t have had that last shot, or the three ones that preceded it. maybe then he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself in front of you. maybe then, he’d be able to tell you that he has fantasized about kissing you for months on end. of holding your hands. of painting you. of taking walks with you. and living. he has fantasized a lot about finally living, with you. for you.
his lips part to speak, yet close again. he moves one foot towards you, then backs up against the door. he’s hesitant, his hands are itching, his vocal cords unfolding and tightening to the shape of your name.
“you know, we don’t have to do this.” you suddenly say. your voice is high-pitched, and your next words come out in a sped-up manner, as if someone is chasing after you and you’re trying to run away.
from him, perhaps.
“here,” you hastily run your hands through his hair, ruffling his blonde strands. he’s motionless as your thumb smudges your ruby lipstick, then trails over the corner of his mouth. “it looks like we kissed, right? this will save us the teasing! ready to go?” you say, too hurried to even wait for his answer.
and then you leave.
the room is suddenly freezing. he should ask jisung to turn up the heater.
hyunjin has loved you the moment he saw you, exactly a year ago. it wasn’t love, per se. but his soul had recognized you. a blind man seeing the light for the first time, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon– a succession of irreversible acts, ones that time cannot take back, cannot erode. he has known you and he couldn't possibly go back to a world where he hasn’t.
he couldn’t understand your reaction, as he stood before the door left ajar, waiting for him to follow. did you hate the thought of kissing him so much? did you want to kiss someone else? were you cursed? like the ebb and flow of the sea, the rise and setting of the sun, the sea and sky, to exist so painstakingly close yet never meet as one.
the ensuing hour passes through hyunjin in silence. his mind is a raging battlefield, every thought of you akin to stepping on an unsuspecting mine. Midnight strikes then, and along it, his death, pronounced by your lips and jeongin’s moving against one another.
you’re kissing jeongin. or he is kissing you. he doesn’t know, doesn’t dare to think of it for a minute more. it’s a short kiss. it did not last for more than three seconds. but it was three seconds too long, enough to strip hyunjin from the very act of breathing, for his being to be held up not by a spine but a blazing fire.
perhaps he looks as distraught as he feels because when your eyes meet his, your eyebrows scrunch in worry. and you look so beautiful, as your eyes soften, as the light catches against your pupils. he’s jealous of it, jealous of whatever reflects upon you, touches you, becomes one with you. he’s jealous as you pull away from jeongin. he’s jealous as you step towards him and he retracts back– as if in a dance where the only outcome is you him away from you.
it’s too much.
hyunjin finds himself outside in a shirt that is too thin and dread coiled at the pit of his stomach. he wishes to run away from this feverish skin that has entrapped him, from this heart that has turned you into a home and refuses to vacate.
“hyunjin!” you shout, and he freezes in place, unaware of what to do, what to say, how to act. he doesn’t dare turn back to face you, nor does he wish to speak to you. because to speak would mean to pretend that he wasn’t hurt, and he was far too exhausted for that charade to keep up.
“hyunjin, what’s wrong?”
your voice speaking his name acts like a spell, forcing his body to tilt towards you, like a flower searching for the sun. even in the blaze of his sadness, he still closes his eyes for a second, savors the way his name drips from your tongue. it always feels different when you speak of it, sweeter, sacred even, as if you’re infusing a piece of your soul into the syllables.
“i…” he trails off, eyes darting everywhere but at you. how can one confess a year-long secret? how can he speak of a love that has taken root within his soul, entwined so deeply with his being? where flowers bloom at the mention of your name, wilt at your absence, follow the seasons of you.
“hyunjin, i’m worried about you,” you speak softly, searching his eyes. “you’ve been acting distant all night, did you... did you have too much to drink?”
“no, I…” his voice chokes up, and his hands dart to his face, shielding himself away from you, and your kind gaze that will never turn into a loving one. he feels so pathetic, tearing up in front of you and not being able to speak of it. he wants to blame it on the alcohol, he wants the earth to split in half and swallow him whole. he thinks it’s cruel– that he loves you so much, and yet you do not know of it. he’ll give you some of his love if that’s what it takes. he’ll survive off of scraps of your adoration.
“hyune… come on,” you smile sweetly, your hands softly sliding against his. “you know you can tell me anything.”
“can you really be this blind?” he chuckles dryly, his eyes watering as he gazes at you. he sees you through a blurry haze, your eyes widening, your cheeks blushing like a blossoming rose.
“can i really tell you everything? would you really stomach it if i told you how much i think about you? how much i long for you? that all my waking thoughts are about you? would you look at me then? would you still say my name? would you?” he’s growing frantic, searching your eyes, perched at the precipice of your soul, waiting for something, anything.
“because i love you. i love you. god, i love you so much and it’s killing me and breathing life into me at once.” he takes your hand and places it atop his wildly beating heart. “here. i feel it all here. do you understand? do you feel it? my heart beating, it’s doing it all for you.”
he waits for the earth to fold on itself, for lightning to strike, for you to leave, and for his world to end with your retreating steps.
but you stay. and his hand is suddenly on top of your heart. and it is beating just as wildly as his.
“hyunjin, you idiot,” you grin like the sun through your tears, “i know, of course i know, because that is what i feel too.”
“what… what are you saying?”
“i love you. god, of course i love you. but i never-” your voice breaks, “i never dared to imagine you’d feel the same about me.”
“you love me?” he asks incredulously. he couldn’t believe it. did the universe wake up and decide that it would hand him his salvation on a golden platter?
“yes.”
“say it again.”
“i love you.”
he’s smiling like a fool, the ache in his heart fades away like darkness before morning’s light.
“again.”
“i love you hyunjin. it’s you, i’ve always loved you.”
“god,” he suddenly grabs you, twirling you around as his giggles scatter everywhere like the stars twinkling above him. his wounds are carried away by the wind, stitched by the sound of your laughter. his soul is but a supernova— reborn again at your hands.
“why.. why wouldn’t you tell me before?” he breathes out, forehead softly pressed against yours.
“because you are… you. this unattainable galaxy that a little star cannot possibly impress.”
“me? who am i but someone who loves you?” he asks so earnestly, so truthfully, his entire heart brought bare to you, that your feet can only waver, knees buckling down at the weight of what was in front of you all along. your only anchor is found in his hands cupping your cheeks, in his eyes that seem to only have space for your reflection.
“oh, what about.. what about jeongin?” he suddenly asks, voice soft, almost guilty for still daring to think of the flicker of a candlelight before the sun.
“jeongin likes seungmin.” you giggle sheepishly, “we just did it because none of us got the kiss we wanted tonight.”
“oh?” he grows cheeky, his hand sliding down your jaw, thumb caressing the corner of your lips with a tenderness that makes you dizzy. “whose kiss did you want?”
“yours.”
he’s a breath away from you. his nose nearly brushing yours. you speak of your love so softly, so assuredly, that every word melts away all of his doubts, like seafoam surrendering to rocky shore. “can i give you what you wanted, then?”
“please,” you exhale and he brushes his lips against yours. tentatively, as if testing the waters knowing that the current would pull him underneath anyway. his patience burns thin then. he imagines that this is what Icarus felt before the sun— the aching, unbearable urge to surrender himself to the warmth, even if it scathes his skin and bones in the end. but you don’t. your lips only grow sweeter beneath his, a constellation of everything he has ever loved, your hands on the nape of his neck driving him to the edge of derilium. he grows urgent and pressing, not with hunger, but a desire to be as close to you as physically possible. to be sucked into your orbit with no way out.
but you are mere mortals, a truth that hyunjin resents in the moment as he is forced to part from you. yet you are still there, cheeks ablaze and eyes glossed over. “i’ve never felt this alive before,” you confess with a light giggle.
his smile grows shier. “me too.”
“you are freezing,” you grin, rubbing your nose against his. “let’s go inside.”
“can we stay here for a minute more? please. i just need a moment more with you.”
you nod, and his lips find your forehead, pressing a lingering kiss there, his lips still tingling from when he last kissed you. his hands slide around your back, drawing you in for a hug, shielding you from the cold. thought he doesn't need to. you are warmth incarnate, a small sun cupped in human form, light glowing from your soul, bathing everything around you.
it is thanks to you that the night is no longer dim.
