SUMMARY -> everyone knows choi seungcheol, captain of the football team, has been trying to get into your (the head cheerleader's) pants for the entire semester. you make him wait, and wait, and wait. until he doesn't.
WORDS -> approx. 15k
WARNINGS -> choi seungcheol x female reader, university au, football player choi seungcheol, cheerleader reader, top seungcheol, wet & messy, rough sex, unprotected sex, face slapping, spanking, multiple orgasms, light drug use, reader gets wrecked while wearing a skirt, crying, size kink
- requested [no]
seungcheol is more than aware that he's a little bit of a cliche. star quarterback of the football team, frat boy, a little bit of a playboy. add in the fact that he's spent the entire semester pining over the head cheerleader into the mix and he's basically the embodiment of a romcom trope.
but he doesn't mind much: life is good. the only real issue is that he's been trying (and failing. desperately failing) to get in said head cheerleader's pants for the better part of the last four months and he's just about ready to crawl out of his skin.
but it's fine. he's fine.
he's three or five drinks deep already at one of the last house parties of the year. the semester is winding down to prepare for spring break, as most students are already done with their finals and just sticking around for the last football game coming up next week. seungcheol has been stretched so thin between studying and practice for the past few weeks that he's not in much of a partying mood, so rather than being at the center of the room like he usually is, he's kicked back on the couch by the back door nursing a drink, mingyu sitting on the arm next to him as they quietly chat below the music pounding through the room.
"staring at the door won't make her come any faster," mingyu says, elbowing seungcheol in the ribs. he pushes the little marble-swirled pipe pinched between his fingers under seungcheol's nose, twisting it. "relax. smoke with me."
"who said i'm waiting for her?" seungcheol says into his red solo cup, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. he knows mingyu isn't buying it. "i don't care if she comes or not."
"so you're saying if y/n were to walk through that door right now you wouldn't be over there in ten seconds flat pushing a drink into her hand and trying to take her up to your room?" mingyu rolls his eyes, fishing a lighter out of his pocket. "yeah, i'll believe that when i see it."
seungcheol is about to talk back when a commotion across the room catches his attention. a small group is arriving, filtering in one by one, faces seungcheol definitely recognizes. his heart rate spikes and he cranes his neck the tiniest bit, hoping mingyu doesn't notice.
"ah," mingyu says, bringing the pipe to his lips and sparking the lighter up. "there she is."
it's amazing how you manage to demand the attention of the room at large the second you enter. faces turn to you like flowers toward the sun and you glow under the attention, smiling sweetly and greeting the people around you with hugs and waving the lollipop clutched in your hand excitedly at those who yell your name from deeper into the room. it takes you a second to weave through the throng of people but once seungcheol can see you properly his mouth instantly goes dry— you're wearing all black from head to toe, sinfully tight miniskirt with stockings disappearing into your high boots. a loose shirt just barely brushes your waistband, exposing a little peek of skin just above your belt that seungcheol's eyes linger on for a few seconds too long.
"hey, earth to seungcheol," mingyu says right in his ear, startling him. "stop drooling over y/n for two seconds and answer my question."
"didn't hear you," seungcheol mumbles. you run your fingers through your hair, the rings on your fingers catching the light. your hair is getting even longer, now, and seungcheol thinks it suits you. to be fair though, just about anything would suit you so there's really no point in having a preference. "what'd you say?"
mingyu exhales a thick cloud of milky smoke into the air right in front of seungcheol's eyes but it doesn't stop him from watching as some poor fuck practically falls to his knees in front of you with a drink in his hand. you accept it with a sweet smile that curls your eyes, leaning into the boy's space and toeing the heel of your boot into the carpet. seungcheol ignores the little spark of jealousy that roars to life in his chest, tearing his eyes away. he focuses on the little pipe in mingyu's hand. "nah, not in the mood tonight."
"suit yourself." mingyu shrugs.
you are laughing at something the little call-boy is whispering to you, throwing your head back in a way that makes the glitter smeared high on your cheeks glint under the low light. he wrinkles his nose, draining the rest of his drink.
"based on the way she's still the only thing you seem to be able to focus on i'm gonna guess you still haven't gotten into her pants yet?" mingyu muses.
seungcheol shoots mingyu a look. "trust me, if i had then you and the entire campus would know already. i plan on putting it on a billboard when it finally happens."
"why don't you go talk to her, then? it's not like you to give up."
seungcheol sighs, leaning back into the couch. "what do you want me to do? throw myself at her like the rest of the room is doing?" he gestures at you, who now has the attention of some guy giggling and cracking jokes. it makes him snort; good luck with that, sweetheart. "i'm not desperate."
"are you sure? because i kinda recall you spending every single party this year doing exactly what they're all doing."
"i mean i'm not gonna throw myself at her right now," seungcheol almost whines. "i'm trying something new. shut up."
"ah, the make her come to you method." mingyu nods. "solid."
"so you think she even knows i'm here?"
"seungcheol, you live here."
"maybe i should—"
"oh look, she's headed this way now!" mingyu says, tapping seungcheol excitedly on the shoulder.
seungcheol's eyes snap back to the last place he saw you. you're still standing in the same spot, twisting the bright pink sucker between your fingers and nodding enthusiastically to the guy whispering something in your ear. "no she's n—"
"hey, y/n!" mingyu shouts, reaching up to wave his hand up high in the air. you startle and jerk your head up, searching the crowd for the source of the voice before you spot mingyu and smile, wiggling your fingers in their direction. your eyes snap to seungcheol for a split second and they instantly narrow, making a chill shoot up and down his spine.
"i'm going to fucking kill you," seungcheol says, watching you say goodbye to your friends and start to pick through the crowd on the way over to them.
"okay, hurry, act natural. she's almost here." mingyu pauses, side-eyeing seungcheol. "actually, y/n is so used to you looking at her like that it would be weirder if you tried being normal. you're good."
seungcheol is this close to chewing mingyu out but then you are right in front of him, one hand cocked on your waist and the other carding through your hair at your temple. you look... bored, in a way, like you don't want to be standing there right now, and for some reason you giving him that look, like, instantly turns him on.
"hey," you say, twirling the candy between your fingers. "what are you two doing all the way back here?" you raise yours eyebrows at seungcheol. "you're usually the first one doing keg stands in the middle of the living room."
"seungcheol is just so exhausted,” mingyu pipes up. “you know, it's not easy being the star football player. quarterback and captain. not only that but did you know he's been on the dean's list for the past three semesters? if that's not the kind of quality you want from a long-term partner or even a casual hookup then i don't know what is. in fact—"
"okay!" seungcheol almost shouts, making mingyu snap his mouth shut with a devilish little grin. seungcheol has no idea why he keeps him around. "just tired. practice has been crazy with the big game coming up. you know."
"mm," you hum in agreement. the cheerleading squad works just as hard if not harder than the football team. you share a field during practice, in fact. seungcheol is all too aware of that. "you two smoking?"
"yeah, get in here," mingyu says, passing the pipe and lighter over to you who accepts it happily.
"thank you," you singsong. you turn your attention back to seungcheol. "mind if i have a seat?"
"oh, yeah, yeah. sorry." seungcheol hadn't realized how rude he's being, spread out in the middle of the loveseat leaving nowhere for you to sit down. he's just about to move over to make room when you smile sweetly, stepping forward until your knees are pressed together and then sinking one into the the couch between the arm and seungcheol's thigh, slinging the other over his lap and settling down.
"best seat in the house," you say, eyes boring into seungcheol's. he vaguely registers mingyu snickering at his left, most likely because he must look like a deer in the headlights right now but he doesn't care. having you on his lap is basically the best-case scenario of any situation he could ever find himself in.
"my bed is more comfortable," seungcheol blurts.
mingyu chokes. "alright, that's my cue to leave," he says. "you two can keep that bowl." he slides off the arm of the couch and disappears into the crowd, leaving only you and seungcheol in your own little world.
you giggle, letting your head loll onto his shoulder. you squeeze your knees a little bit around seungcheol's thighs and shift forward until your crotch is just a hair's breath away from seungcheol's zipper. the proximity has seungcheol feeling dizzy and mentally praying that his dick doesn't get the memo embarrass him.
"maybe i'll find out someday," you say airily, but seungcheol knows it's all talk. he's been playing this game with you for far too long.
"you gonna smoke that?" seungcheol says, mostly for something to say. his words crack around the dryness in his throat and he glances at his empty solo cup on the end table next to the couch, really needing another drink right about now, but he's sure as hell not going to make you move to go make another.
"let's share it, yeah?" you say. you bring the pipe to your mouth and wrap your lips around it, sparking the flame to life low in the bowl and inhaling deeply, holding it in your lungs.
seungcheol hadn't really wanted to smoke tonight but what you want you get as far as he's concerned. he starts to reach for the pipe, expecting you to hand it over, but you shake your head and smile, a little wisp of smoke escaping the corner of your lips. you bring your hand to seungcheol's cheek, the back of your knuckle brushing his jaw pressing your thumb on seungcheol's lower lip, urging him to part them.
it takes seungcheol a second to register what you want him to do. you just raise your eyebrows, adding a little more pressure to your touch until your thumb nail dips into the wet part of seungcheol's mouth.
seungcheol finally gets the memo and parts his lips the rest of the way, tipping his head back to inhale, drinking every curl of smoke from your lips into his own lungs. he can feel the heat from his mouth, the two of you so close together he can almost feel your lips brushing. he has to resist the urge to chase it— you keep your eyes on him, half-lidded and already a little bit hazy from drinks, probably from drinking with your friends before heading over to the party. you look like pure sex.
god, seungcheol has never wanted anyone or anything more in his life.
you don't pull back even once seungcheol has exhaled all the smoke. in fact you've somehow gotten closer— your knees press into his waist, the swell of your ass sitting somewhere near where his cock has started stirring, pressing uncomfortably against his zipper. the weight of you in his lap is almost torture but you are only making it worse with the way you're looking at him, gaze dark and sultry. like you want him just as much as seungcheol wants you.
the voice in the back of his head, the rational part of seungcheol (if there's even such a thing when he has you in his lap) reminds him that this is just what you do. this push-and-pull, will-they-or-won't-they, absolutely torturous test of patience and sanity.
you both have a pretty long history; the football team and cheerleading squad usually practice at the same time, and from the moment you stepped on that field seungcheol has been enamored with you. it would be nearly impossible to not be— you're very distracting, the way you prance around in your crop tops and little skirts rolled down low on your hips to make them even shorter than they're supposed to be, much to the dismay of seungcheol's concentration but to the delight of basically every other part of him.
the first time you had tangled your hands together and dragged seungcheol behind the bleachers after practice was only a short couple of weeks into the semester. you'd let seungcheol push you into the fence and slot his knee between your legs, had let him lick hotly into your mouth and tug on your hair until you were both panting and worked up, a flush high on your cheeks. but just as seungcheol was about to suggest you head back to the frat house only a short walk away, you had pulled back, tugging at the hem of your painfully short top and sliding your tongue over your kiss-swollen lips.
that was fun, you'd said. maybe we can finish this next time?
it became somewhat of an unspoken routine between you. every once in a while— only every couple of weeks, really, by no means a regular thing— you would be extra distracting during practice, would somehow always be... doing something that seungcheol would deem a hazard to his health, from stretching until you were nearly bent in half, tying your shoelaces, and— on one particularly excruciating day— doing a full split with your eyes on seungcheol the whole time, lips curled in a way that was far too innocent to not be intentional.
but no matter how much seungcheol wanted to, your little meetups never progressed any further than making out. every single time, just as seungcheol was starting to get really wound up, you would pull away, tell him you had to go, and leave.
needless to say, outside of football and studying there's little that seungcheol has been able to think about outside of you, you and you.
he hasn't even slept with anyone since he and you have started whatever thing you've gotten into. he did once, had picked up some girl who’d been trying to get in his pants for weeks. he ended up fucking her face down with her head pressed into the pillow, trying (and failing) to imagine that it was you trembling underneath him instead.
it didn't work, not even a little bit. if anything it only made him more frustrated, knowing that the only thing that would sate his appetite is a taste of you yourself.
it's excruciating.
you know it, too. it's clear in the way you're looking at him right now, the way you dart your tongue out against the end of the pipe before sliding it between your lips, keeping your eyes on seungcheol the entire time you light up the second half of the bowl and inhale before repeating the motion from before, dipping your head down to exhale the smoke directly into seungcheol's lungs.
he hadn't expected it to turn into a kiss; the second the last bit of smoke curls out from your mouth you push down the few inches to press your lips together, tongue sliding hotly over seungcheol's bottom lip and hands winding around his neck to wrap in his hair. seungcheol responds to it immediately, doesn't even have to think about it before his hands are on your thighs and he's tilting his head to give you better access, meeting your tongue in the space between your lips. you taste like vodka and the strawberry lollipop you'd been sucking on. he's already long associated the taste of artificial strawberry with kissing you, to the point where a few weeks ago his friend had offered him a pink starburst and the second he ate it he'd popped a boner and had to head back to the frat house in shame.
you pull away for air, panting in the pretty way you do against seungcheol's lips as you look at him through your eyelashes. seungcheol runs his hand down your thigh and his hand feels on something smooth— he hadn't realized before that you are wearing a pair of sheer stockings.
"you've been working so hard," you breathe. you massage the pads of your fingers into seungcheol's shoulders, working at the tense muscles there. "maybe there's somewhere we can go to release a little tension, mm? blow off some steam?"
"yeah?" seungcheol asks, hazy. he toys with the edge of your little skirt and you arch your back, pressing your cunt against seungcheol's zipper, making him hiss through his teeth.
"yeah." you parrot. you lean forward to ghost your lips over seungcheol's earlobe, hair brushing featherlight against his temple. "how about you show me where your room is?"
seungcheol shivers— he turns his head and noses against your cheek until you turn your head to meet him, brushing your lips just barely, sweet strawberry and liquor mingling in the shared space. his cock throbs in his jeans and he knows you are close enough that you can feel it, the swell of your ass full-on pressed over it. with a mischievous smirk you grind your hips down, just barely, painfully slow, eyes going dark. seungcheol is vaguely aware that you're both in a room full of people but he can't find himself in it to care if you're giving them a show, too overwhelmed by the feeling of you pressing in on every single one of his senses. you're so fucking intoxicating, even more so than the alcohol and weed coursing through his veins.
he slides his hands under your thighs, standing up and bringing you with him. you giggle, wrapping your legs around seungcheol's waist and winding your arms around his neck. there's dozens of eyes on you both when you make your way through the small crowd at the back of the house and up the stairs leading to the bedrooms, but he doesn't give a fuck about what kind of things people are saying about you. there’s already enough rumors talking about how you both must be hooking up— if anything seungcheol is praying that after tonight there might actually be some truth to them.
it’s a miracle and a half that seungcheol manages to not stumble and fall on his ass on the way up the stairs. once you reach the landing where there's much less prying eyes and attention on you, you immediately surge forward, grabbing a handful of seungcheol's shirt to drag the collar away from his neck, dipping your head to trace his collarbone with your tongue before sucking a bruise just above it. seungcheol shivers at the thought of having your marks on him, hidden just below where everyone will be able to see them— one little slip of his shirt will reveal the tender bruise blooming beneath it.
which— that's not something you've ever done before, marking each other— you drag your lips over it and then pull back to admire it with hazy eyes, a pleased little smile curling the corner of your lips. within seconds you have your arms back around seungcheol's neck and you're sucking his earlobe into your mouth, laving your tongue over the shell of his ear and working your hips up against seungcheol's lower hips, the press of his cock unmistakably hard even trapped under his too-tight jeans.
"this one?" you gasp against his ear, breath rolling cold over the damp skin. seungcheol nods, letting you reach down and grab the handle before seungcheol kicks the bottom of the door to let you in, spinning to push you up against it to slam it shut the second you're inside. you unwind your legs from seungcheol's waist and drop to the ground, immediately pushing up on your tiptoes to bring your lips together in another kiss, wet and messy and tense with the promise of more to come.
kissing you is like the most addicting drug he's even taken— he thinks he'd never stop if he didn't have to. he gets lost in the feel of it, the way you flick your tongue in the downright filthy way that never fails to make seungcheol's toes curl, mind immediately going to how it would feel for you to do that against the head of his cock.
seungcheol slots his thigh between your legs in the way he always does, pressing hard— you mewl, throwing your head back and curling your hand into hairs at the base of seungcheol's hair. and this is the way it always starts, the game you never finish playing.
seungcheol licks a fat stripe up the side of your neck before grazing his teeth over your jawline, every little whine he drags from your saliva-slick lips jolting straight to his groin.
"what's it gonna take, huh?" seungcheol mumbles into your skin, sealing the words with the slide of his tongue, tasting salt and perfume clinging to your skin. he slips his fingers underneath the stockings straining around your thigh, hitching your leg up around him to give him better access to roll your hips together. "what's it gonna take for you to let me fuck you?"
"thought you loved the chase," you pant, hands sliding to seungcheol's shoulders for leverage, pushing the collar of his shirt down to expose the golden, sweat-damp line of his neck. "what happened to taking your time?"
"you're a fucking tease is what happened." seungcheol finds your lips again, crashing them together in a messy, wet kiss laced with intent. you let him lick into your mouth, easy, pliant; you like to act like you're in control but seungcheol can see how quickly you fall apart under his hands, is dying to see how much you shake and writhe when split open on his cock. he shivers at the visual, a mess of precum dampening the front of his boxers.
"am i teasing you right now?" your voice doesn't lose the mischievous lilt even as you grind down on seungcheol's clothed cock, words punctuated by filthy little moans that have seungcheol going fucking crazy. "seems like you have me exactly where you want me."
seungcheol groans, not even able to think of a witty response. he just wants so badly it hurts — he grips harder around the stockings, pulling you impossibly closer. his other hand drops to your hip, fingers sliding up under your top to trace the line of skin above your waistband. heat starts to pool behind his lower body already, embarrassingly worked up from just this with all the past context of you edging him over and over again across the last semester. he's always prided himself on his stamina, never thinking he was the type to come in his pants from dry humping like a dog in heat, but then again he didn't think a lot of things were possible before he met you.
your kiss turns sloppier, more desperate; your lips are all puffy and swollen under his and seungcheol pulls back to trace them with the rigid tip of his tongue. your eyes are both half-lidded and glassy and you stare at each other as you roll your hips, panting in the shared space between you.
you've never gone any further than this, and seungcheol is already dreading the second you decide it's time for you to call it quits. seungcheol is so close he can practically taste his release on the tip of his tongue. he tries to tell himself it's different this time; you had told him you were coming up here to release some tension. you're in seungcheol's room, alone, with no risk of being caught or facing awkward walk of shame back home if you get a little messy. but part of him is already thinking ahead to the way you alway pull away, running your hands through your messy hair and flashing a sweet little swollen-lipped smile with a sorry, i have to get home, let's finish this next time?
you are needy tonight, though. you don't show any signs of stopping, much to seungcheol's delight; you drag your lips down from his neck to his shoulder, leaving a slick trail of saliva, sucking another bruise into seungcheol's skin. you hiss through your teeth and cool the spot when seungcheol jerks harshly on the stocking to hitch you up even higher, forcing you up on the tiptoes of your high boots and wrapping your leg around his waist. seungcheol is grinding down onto you at a feverish pace, now, chasing his release, panting loudly in the room over the thundering boom of the bass outside. he's close, so, so close, and even if he doesn't get to fuck you he still wants to be able to come with you pressed up against you, the the strawberry scent on his nose and the salt of your sweat on his tongue.
"you're so fucking flexible," seungcheol growls, pressing your foreheads together.
"i'm a cheerleader," you gasp cheekily. there's a high red flush on your cheeks and you look so fucking wrecked— his cock drools another flood of precum and the string in his belly tightens nearly to snapping. "i can bend a hell of a lot more than this.”
"oh yeah?" seungcheol slips his fingers from where they're resting on your bare waist and circles them around to your stomach, brushing through the thin panties you're wearing disappearing down into the waistband of your skirt. he thumbs at it, hesitating, asking— no, begging for permission.
you hum, deliberating. seungcheol's cock physically hurts with how bad he wants you, and the longer he stares at you the more he's torturing himself with wondering how you must look naked, your athletic cheerleader body and your thighs that he wants wrapped around his head more than he wants to be alive.
"how about we make a deal?" you say suddenly, your hazy eyes gaining some clarity, a flicker of mischief. you loosen your grip on seungcheol's hair, pressing gently against his chest in a way that makes seungcheol instantly still his hips. he has to hold back an actual sob, is fully prepared to get on his knees and beg if he has to. at this point he doesn't even care about getting himself off, he just wants you any way he can have you. he'd be happy to eat you out, let you cum out on his tongue, let you ride his face. just the thought of having your legs spread over his lips has his mouth filling with saliva and he ruts his hips forward, biting back an involuntary moan.
"anything," seungcheol answers after a little bit too long. "anything you want."
you giggle but it's different from the way you usually sound, low and sultry rather than pitched high with playfulness. you drag your nails over seungcheol's cheek before tracing your thumb nail over his bottom lip, pausing.
"win the game this weekend. if you do, come find me after. i'll have a surprise for you."
seungcheol blinks. he's so blindsided he doesn't even know what to say. "the game?"
"mmm." you pull away, gently tugging at seungcheol's wrist to make him unwind his hand from around the stockings on your thigh. he hadn't realized how tightly he was holding it until he lets go— his hand hurts. he flexes it a few times, wincing, and then smooths it down the front of his shirt, wrinkled and damp with sweat.
"y/n," seungcheol groans. he lets his head crash back against the wall, eyes fluttering shut. he's so frustrated and worked up he feels like he might start whining and begging any second, has half a mind to shove his hand down the front of his pants and get himself off. "what did i ever do to you to deserve this level of torture?"
you giggle. there's a pressure on his jaw and when he opens his eyes it's your hand gripping it as you lean closer, lips brushing his earlobe.
"you didn't do anything to me, frat boy," you say sweetly, sliding your palm down his jaw and loosely letting your fingers loop around the thickest part of his neck. the rings on your fingers are shockingly cool against his overheated skin. "not yet, anyway."
you pull away all too quickly, stepping to the side and wrapping your hand around seungcheol's door knob, pulling it open. the thundering bass of the party downstairs roars to life, but right before you leave you fish in your purse to produce a brand new strawberry lollipop, taking a second to unwrap it before slipping it into your mouth. you push the wrapper into seungcheol's hand, curling his fingers closed, and then you slip through the door.
the room is draped in muffled sound again when the door snaps shut. seungcheol stares down at the pink wrapper in his hand before wadding it up in frustration, tossing it on his dresser before pulling his shirt over his head as he heads toward the bathroom to take a cold shower, no longer interested in the party.
one thing is for sure: he's going to win that game even if it kills him.
the next week of practice is hell on earth.
you are always there, like no matter where seungcheol turns you're doing some kind of obscene stretching in your tiny little skirt and crop top that shows way more skin than necessary. in fact, seungcheol is ninety-nine percent sure that you are wearing less clothing than usual on purpose just to make seungcheol miserable. it certainly wouldn't be out of character.
his coach and teammates actually get so frustrated with him that they start getting on his case about being distracted when the big game is coming up soon. if you weren't head cheerleader for the very team seungcheol plays for then he'd almost think you're trying to make sure their rivals win rather than them.
his frat throws parties almost every single night leading up to spring break, taking advantage of everyone making it through finals and having a lot of free time. seungcheol is so exhausted he's not really in the mood to party but he still sits downstairs every single night, nursing a drink while he waits for you to arrive.
you don't.
every day after practice he sticks around a little later than usual until both the football team and cheerleaders have left the field, taking extra time to pack his stuff up in the hopes that you will take pity on him and drag him behind the bleachers like you would sometimes do.
you don't.
in a few moments of desperation he actually shoots you a text, something he doesn't often do. he asks what you're doing that night, if you still have finals (and if you need a study partner) thinking maybe if he can get a conversation going then maybe you will hang out with him. you don't even have to do anything. he just wants to be around you. you have to at least reply, right?
you don't.
seungcheol wants to gnaw off his own arm.
thoughts of you consume him nearly every second of every hour of every day: you in your skimpy little practice outfits. you in your tight miniskirt with your stockings. you underneath him, skin slicked with sweat and lips bitten red, mewling and panting as seungcheol opens you up. he wonders if the pretty pink flush you wear high on your cheeks when you get worked up extends down to your chest, wonders which parts of your body are the most sensitive.
it's usually at night when his thoughts wander to the last one, after he's already tried (and failed) to sleep with increasing levels of frustration. it usually ends with him licking a stripe up his palm and shoving his hand down the front of his joggers, jerking his cock fast and hard with the image of you stretching in your little skirt at the forefront of his mind.
it's a very difficult time for him.
but, of course, other than you the biggest thing on his mind is the game. it's going to be a big one, the biggest his school has had in years— they're playing against their longtime rival school, and whichever team wins this year's final game will go down in college football history. seungcheol might even be able to get an offer to go pro off this game alone if he manages to play well and network properly afterward. he would literally be set for life.
no pressure or anything.
three days before the big game, their coach calls their final practice and the team goes out for a big dinner of steak and lobster with the liquor flowing freely on the team coordinator's tab. it's supposed to be an event to build team bonds or something like that, but really it's just an excuse for them to try and drink away the nerves that threaten to consume them knowing one of the most important games of their lives is coming up soon. seungcheol is feeling particularly antsy, knowing that being the star player and quarterback means much of that pressure sits directly on his shoulders.
he's a little tipsy but not uncomfortably so when they finish, and so he decides to walk back to the frat house afterward in an attempt to blow off some steam. but he quickly regrets his decision about halfway through when he realizes how chilly it is, the crisp spring air piercing through the thin material of his simple joggers and letterman jacket thrown over a thin t-shirt from his gym bag.
but then a banner flashes over the top of his phone screen, his text tone blaring a shrill beep that echoes over the abandoned street he's walking down. when he sees who it's from, his skin instantly heats up, mouth going dry.
y/n: hey there frat boy
y/n: got a minute?
seungcheol: for you?
seungcheol: a minute, an hour, as long as you want
y/n: oh yeah? well that's convenient for me
y/n: nervous about the big game?
y/n: i've heard there's a lot at stake
seungcheol: i wonder where you heard that
y/n: ha
y/n: i was talking about the actual stakes, not about ours
y/n: but while we're on the subject, that's actually why i decided to text you this evening :)
seungcheol fumbles his phone and nearly drops it when he reads your last text. his body has an instant reaction to the words, blood pumping like lava and rushing straight down to his groin. aside from loaded glances across the football field, seungcheol hasn't had any interaction with you for the better part of the week and then you come out of nowhere with all this.
classic y/n, honestly. always keeping him on his toes.
seungcheol: oh yeah?
seungcheol: are you finally gonna tell me what the surprise is when we win?
y/n: oh i see
y/n: when you win, not if
y/n: confident
seungcheol: are you hoping we don't win, y/n?
y/n: ha
y/n: if that's what you want to think
y/n: but back to what i was saying before...
y/n: i'm not going to tell you what you get when you win
seungcheol groans. he should have known you were just teasing him some more. it was too good to be true.
but then his text tone rings out again and he glances down at the message.
y/n: how about i show you instead?
seungcheol: fuck y/n
seungcheol: you already know my answer
you don't respond for an excruciatingly long period of time. so long, in fact, that seungcheol makes it all the way back to the frat house before you answer at all, obsessively checking his phone every few seconds the entire time he walks. and, okay, maybe he was walking a little bit faster than he was a few minutes ago, but he doesn't think anyone would blame him for that.
once he gets upstairs and into his room he locks the door behind him, and rather than his usual routine of stripping off his clothes and hopping immediately in the shower he beelines for his bed and sits on the end of it, staring at his phone screen while he anxiously taps his fingers over the back of it.
he's starting to think you aren't going to text him at all when his screen finally lights up with a new message.
y/n: sorry about the wait
seungcheol: i think this the first time you've apologized for making me wait
seungcheol: progress
y/n: quick response
y/n: someone's eager
y/n: where are you right now?
seungcheol: sitting on my bed
y/n: perfect
y/n: you've been so patient for me i thought you deserved a little reward
y/n: and maybe something that will help you relax before the big game
before seungcheol can respond something flashes over the top of his screen.
photo from y/n!
he immediately taps the banner without any hesitation, but he realizes immediately that he probably should have taken a minute to brace himself for what it contains. because the second he lays his eyes on the picture he's pretty sure he actually blacks out for the first ten seconds of the twenty second timer. the picture is of you from behind taken in a mirror— you're bent over a desk so only your lower half is visible, bare feet curled into the carpet. but the most important, dizzying thing about the photo is what's hanging down over your thighs— just barely covering the swell of your ass is a little pleated skirt that seungcheol recognizes as the girls' cheer uniform.
seungcheol immediately scrambles to pull his joggers down, tucking them under his balls and hissing when he wraps his ice cold hand around his hot, heavy cock. he nearly drops his phone in his haste to replay the photo, thumbing through the precum drooling through his slit as he takes his time admiring it for his second look. there's the faintest peek of your asscheeks from below the skirt, and though seungcheol has seen your ass in your shorts at practice actually seeing a tease of the bare skin has him drooling, pumping his cock a few times with his fist before the picture inevitably ends and the screen goes black again.
y/n: you replayed
y/n: i take it that means you liked my little gift?
seungcheol: that was a little gift?
seungcheol: fuck y/n you're so
seungcheol: are you wearing that right now?
y/n: yep!
y/n: i got all dressed up just for you
y/n: should i wear this on saturday after the game? oh, or maybe during the game would be more fun? unless you think that would be too distracting while you play?
seungcheol: god you're driving me crazy
y/n: oh, i know
y/n: isn't that the point?
y/n: show me
seungcheol: show you?
y/n: i want to see what i do to you
seungcheol switches back over to camera with shaky hands, idly pumping his cock a few more times. the visual of you in the skirt is still fresh in his mind, so burned into him that he thinks it's all he's going to be able to think about for the rest of his life. not that it would be the most horrible thing in the world. he takes a few photos before settling on one of him taken from the front, cock gripped in his hand with precum messily smeared over the tip.
y/n has opened your photo!
y/n has replayed your photo!
seungcheol: now who's the one replaying?
y/n: i was taken by surprise
y/n: if i'd known you have such a huge cock maybe i would have let you fuck me sooner
seungcheol: both of us know that's a lie
y/n: what can i do, i like to tease
y/n: and i haven't seen you complaining about it
seungcheol: i have, in fact, been very loudly and frequently complaining about it
y/n: i know your type, seungcheol
y/n: once you get what you want you get bored
y/n: the thrill is all in the chase
y/n: am i wrong?
and… you aren't exactly wrong, seungcheol does have a reputation on campus for being a fuckboy, and he’s definitely been known to jump around and have a lot of partners rather than having a solid arrangement with just one person. but it isn’t necessarily because he likes the chase, more that he hasn’t really found someone that catches his interest for more than a few hookups. he’s not opposed to commitment, he just hasn’t found a reason to commit. there’s a difference, he thinks. subtle, but there.
seungcheol: you’re different
he hits send before he has time to think about the implications of his message. it’s a very bizarre moment of clarity: he’s sitting there with his cock in his hand while having some sort of realization about how he feels about you. because, sure, the ridiculous sexual tension you have between you is the thing that connects you, but seungcheol can’t help but feel like there’s something else there. like maybe if he were able to pick it apart, to remove the lust from the equation and really focus on his thoughts there’s some more complexity behind the reasons he’s so hung up on you that extend beyond just she’s hot and i want to fuck her. there’s something there that makes you different, that makes seungcheol want to pursue you to the point where he hasn’t given up or had any other sexual partners even after months of getting nowhere. with anyone else, seungcheol would have gotten bored and given up a long time ago.
y/n: that’s cute, but it’s not going to get you in my pants any faster
y/n: you’ve been patient for this long, you can wait a little longer
y/n: but!
y/n: since you’ve been so patient, i have a little parting gift
y/n: wanna see?
seungcheol is sort of reeling from his semi-coherent realization but he’s also still ridiculously horny and he thinks maybe a little bit of post-nut clarity will give him more room to think about things. or at least that’s what he tells himself when he types his next message.
seungcheol: fuck, yes
photo from y/n!
it’s a similar angle as the first photo but the camera is dropped a little lower and your back is a little more arched— the lower half of your ass is completely exposed, now, fat and perky all at once, probably the most perfect fucking thing seungcheol has ever seen in his entire life. he starts stroking his cock in earnest, already so worked up from the teasing and the last picture that he can feel himself getting close embarrassingly fast— but then he notices something he hadn’t been able to see before, a little flash of pink peeking out from under the hem of your skirt.
he brings the phone closer to his face so he can see it more clearly, and sure enough there is something there: nestled between your cheeks is the tip of a shiny pink dildo, the skin around your hole slick and wet.
seungcheol bites his fist to stop himself from crying out as he comes hard all over his hand, hips jolting off the bed with the force of it— he comes an obscene amount, so much it drips all over his hand and onto his navel, some of it even splattered over his knee.
it takes him a second to come down from his orgasm but once he does he realizes with a jolt that he’d disappeared even though he saw you sending him texts while he was finishing himself off. he lurches for his phone, which had fallen onto the carpet near his feet at some point during the last minute or so.
y/n: i’ll take your disappearance as a good thing
y/n: i’m going to bed
y/n: glad you enjoyed the sneak peek
y/n: can’t wait for saturday
y/n: hope you win :)
seungcheol: oh trust me
seungcheol: i’m gonna win
they lose.
seungcheol honestly hadn’t really considered this outcome: for some reason he just assumed they would win, had thought that everything was already spelled out in the stars or something and he was destined to win this game and get everything he wanted. he was going to secure an offer to go pro before even entering his senior year and walk out of the stadium with you on his arm and his name in the college football history books.
it’s a low low.
he isn’t really sure how to deal with it.
his team tries to stay in high spirits but naturally most of them are very disappointed. there’s a lot of we’ll get them next time and it’s okay, seungcheol, you still have one more year, knowing this defeat probably hits him the hardest.
seungcheol had purposefully forced himself to not focus on you during the game, not even spending halftime watching the cheerleaders do their routine even though he’d wanted to see it because he knew how hard they worked on it. he figured there would be lots of videos that he could watch later, and the risk of getting distracted was too high. so the first time he sees you for the entire evening is after the game ends when most of his team has already headed back to their dorms and apartments to finish packing their things, preparing to head back home for the break until fall rolls around again and they’d come back and do it all over again, most of them for the last time.
he catches your eyes across the field and gets a pained, apologetic smile and wave in return. it’s different from the way you usually look at him and something about it kind of hurts, realizing that you probably don’t have any interest in him anymore now that he let his entire school down. which, realistically he knows it’s kind of dramatic to think that way because his team still had a record-breaking season culminating in a very closely tied game against their biggest rivals which is an accomplishment in and of itself, but he can’t help but feel like really dropped the ball and failed in a huge way.
mingyu treats him to dinner before dropping him back off at the frat house. he isn’t heading back home for a few more days still because his parents are on vacation and he’d rather stay here with the few friends who live around campus during the summer than sit around in an empty house, especially when he’s already feeling pretty low.
when he arrives his friend is sitting on the couch with his nose in a book, typical for him, but the second seungcheol opens the door he gives him a pained smile similar to the one you had given him.
“sorry about the game,” he says. “next year will be better. don’t beat yourself up too much.”
seungcheol winces, waving him off in a way that he hopes isn’t rude.
“i’m fine, don’t worry about it,” he says, trudging up the staircase with his gym bag slung over his shoulder. he’d already showered the game off in the locker room and put his football uniform in his bag, choosing to throw on a simple long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of black joggers for the walk back home. at some point he thinks he lost his letterman jacket, almost positive he’d taken it to the game with him, but he probably just left it at home in his haste to leave earlier that morning.
“i’m sure you’ll find a way to distract yourself,” his friend says airily. the statement strikes seungcheol as odd because there’s definitely not anything fun to do in this city during the summer— everything revolves around college life and as such the bars and restaurants are all boring and empty at this time of year. it’s really depressing. maybe he’ll catch up on some of the video games he’s been neglecting in favor of studies and sports.
he cracks his door open and kicks his shoes off, dropping his gym bag on top of them, flipping on his light and heading toward the bed so he can lay there for a while and contemplate his life choices or something.
but when the light flickers on he stops dead in his tracks, lips parting in surprise.
“hey there, frat boy.”
you look like you stepped straight out of his most frantic fantasies: you're sitting on the edge of seungcheol's bed with your legs delicately crossed at the knee, the short, barely-there plaid cheerleading skirt sitting high up on your waist under a white crop top, the hem just barely brushing the tops of your thighs. but what really gets seungcheol, what really makes his skin heat up and his mouth go dry is the fact that his own letterman jacket is hanging low around your shoulders, so big on your dainty little frame that it nearly swallows you up. the sleeves bunch around your hands, the only visible part being the tips of your tiny fingers gripping your signature lollipop stick, candy sliding slick over your lips.
“i,” seungcheol says.
“i know we had a deal,” you say, words slow and unhurried. you uncross your legs and slide one foot underneath yourself, dropping the hand not holding the lollipop down to your thigh wrapped with your usual stockings. the letterman jacket slides further off your shoulder, skin catching the soft light from seungcheol's lamp. “but i thought maybe you’ve already suffered enough. maybe i can help cheer you up?”
seungcheol blinks at you. he sort of thinks maybe he’s having some sort of extremely elaborate fever dream. did he get sick? did he get hit by a car on his way home? if he knew this was what awaited him in the afterlife maybe he wouldn’t have been so afraid of his own mortality.
the strawberry lollipop clinks against your teeth when you slide it over your cheek, cocking your head. a lock of hair falls over your eyes.
“so?” you ask. “what are you waiting for?”
seungcheol doesn't need to be told twice. he surges forward, tugging his t-shirt over his head and tossing it in the corner of his room.
“god, i’ve been thinking about this for months,” seungcheol rasps just before he crashes your lips together with enough force to push you back on the bed, caging your smaller frame with his larger one. you giggle into the kiss, winding your arms around his neck and parting your lips easily to slide your tongues together. the sweet strawberry candy on your tongue bursts to life, making seungcheol salivate and turning the kiss messier, wetter; he drags his saliva-slick lips down to your jaw, nipping at it with his teeth before soothing it with his tongue. “gonna make you wish you never made me wait.”
you arch your back into a pretty curve, making the skirt ride up higher over your thighs. seungcheol slides his hands down your body, dipping under the letterman jacket to trace your waist before roaming down to your thighs, pausing to toy with the hem of your skirt as he explores every inch of exposed skin above your shirt with his tongue. even as long as he’s been waiting he still wants to take his time, wants to savor you— wants to commit the way you feel and taste to memory until it’s burned into his tongue, wants to worship you the way you deserve to be.
“ah, seungcheol,” you gasp, huffing when seungcheol nips at your collarbone. “feels good.”
the fact that you are letting seungcheol touch you like this, giving him the privilege, is something seungcheol refuses to take for granted.
“i’ll make you feel so good, baby,” seungcheol gasps, pushing his hand up into your shirt, rolling your nipple between the pads of his fingers. you gasp, arching up off the bed, hair fanning prettily over the sheets like a halo around your head. “whatever you want me to do, i’ll do it. anything.”
“oh yeah?” the smile on your lips shines through in your tone. “do you wanna know why i made you wait for so long, seungcheol?”
“we’ve gone over this,” seungcheol mumbles into your skin. he pushes the crop top further up your chest to expose both nipples, soft and pink, hardening under the chill of the air conditioner. “because you wanted me to go fucking crazy.”
“you’re not— ah, fuck—” you mewl like a kitten when seungcheol attaches his lips to your nipple and sucks, a high sweet noise that jolts straight down to his cock. “you’re not completely wrong.”
seungcheol pulls off to switch to the other nipple, taking a second to admire his handiwork. your nipple is all hard and wet, puffy and red from his mouth. you look so fucking pretty when you're a little messed up. “not completely ?”
“i wanted to make you— ah, fuck, flick your tongue like that again— wanted to make you snap,” you admit, hissing through your teeth when seungcheol grazes his teeth over the sensitive bud. “wanted to make sure you were s-so worked up that when you can finally have me you’d fucking ruin me.”
seungcheol groans, pulling off your nipple with a little pop and a smear of saliva and sliding his hands down to your waist, admiring how dainty your frame is, the way seungcheol's hands are so big on you that he can wrap his hands almost all the way around. he imagines how it would feel to hold you like that up off the bed while he's fucking into you.
“i’ll ruin you.” seungcheol says, dragging his eyes down to admire the way the skirt falls down over your thighs, the pretty black stockings against your flawless skin. it’s a promise, words loaded with confidence. “i’ll fuck you until you beg me to stop— gonna make you think about me every time you try to walk for days.”
“fuck.” you shiver, your hands twitch against the bedsheets, curling your hands around the cuffs of seungcheol's letterman jacket. “your cock is so fucking big— been thinking about it so much.” you wrap one of your legs around seungcheol's back, sliding your socked foot over his waist. “i fucked myself with my thickest toy and imagined it was you— plugged myself up with it afterward and sent you those pictures while my cunt was still all messy with cum.”
seungcheol is fucking dizzy with your words, dragging his eyes all over your body and admiring the view as he does, feeling like he’s entered some kind of alternate reality where he’s the luckiest man alive. you are a vision, prettier than aphrodite, something that belongs in a museum— he’s delighted to find out that the pretty pink flush that sits high up on your cheeks extends all the way down to your chest and even colors your elbows and knees.
“i feel like i’m dreaming,” seungcheol admits out loud before his mouth catches up to his brain.
“you’re not,” you promise, lifting a hand to drag your nails over seungcheol's neck before pausing to press your thumb against his pulse point. you smile devilishly when you feel how fast seungcheol's heart is beating, flicking your tongue out to wet your lips. “you know, you can stare at me all night if you want, but the least you can do is let me suck your cock while you do it.”
“oh.” seungcheol squeezes his hands around your waist, pulling back the slightest bit. he realizes he’s been staring for what is probably an absurdly long amount of time, and once he comes back to himself it’s like everything floods back to him at once— the warmness of your skin under his hands, the way his cock is already sitting hard and heavy between his legs, the front of his joggers damp with precum. “yeah. fuck, come here— get on your knees.”
you let seungcheol pull you up off the mattress by your waist, setting you delicately on the floor where you sit prettily on your heels and fold your hands in your lap, cocking your head and watching as seungcheol arranges himself at the foot of the bed— you're impatient, though, already clawing at the waistband of seungcheol's sweats the second he’s sitting.
his cock springs free with a wet slap against his belly. you lick your lips, eyes widening as you take it in, dripping with awe and reverence and want, the pink flush on your cheeks darkening. you don’t hesitate to push forward, circling your fingers around the thickest part at the base of his cock.
seungcheol gasps, hips jerking up off the bed— it’s the first time you have touched him like this and it’s more of a shock to his system than he realized it would be, grounding him back in reality. It’s the first taste of this is really fucking happening that he’s gotten so far, the feeling of your warm hand wrapped around his length.
“you’re even bigger in person,” you whine. seungcheol realizes with a groan that your small hand can hardly even wrap all the way around his cock, fingers barely meeting even when you stretch them. “god, i want you to fuck me so bad. nothing’s ever big enough for me, even my biggest toys— i like it when it hurts, wanna be split apart.”
“you’re gonna kill me,” seungcheol gasps. he watches as you play with the precum oozing from his slit, pulling your fingers away to let it stretch in thin, sticky strands that you smear around his cockhead, pumping it a few times to aid the slide of your palm.
“just as long as you don’t die before you fuck me we’re good,” you tease and seungcheol swats you on the arm, earning him a giggle.
“thought you were the one who wanted to get the show on the road and suck me off,” seungcheol says, pushing his hips up into your fist. “i wanna see how pretty your lips look stretched out over my cock.”
you hum like you're deliberating; you press your chest to the end of the bed and angles seungcheol's cock down to smear the head over your lips, coating them in milky white. the first press of your velvety lips has seungcheol hissing, cock jerking in your hand and drooling more precum onto your face that dribbles down the corner of your mouth and down your chin.
“i want you to make me,” you say, pouting. when you speak the thin strands of seungcheol's precum stretch obscenely between your lips and seungcheol bites his lip, heart leaping up into his throat. you are so fucking hot he isn’t sure how he’s going to survive tonight. Maybe he won’t. “i told you i want you to snap. i want you to force my head down, fuck my throat, ruin me. i don’t want you to be gentle, i don’t want you to be kind, i want you to fuck me like a slut.”
god, you are a fucking wet dream as a person. and if you want seungcheol to snap, that’s exactly what he’ll do. you deserve to get fucked the way you need, the way you deserve.
he grips a hand in your hair close to the scalp, so hard you hiss at the burn. your eyes roll back in your head and you actually look relaxed, lighter, like seungcheol is finally giving you what you want. you make a pretty, high-pitched sound, letting your lips drop open so seungcheol can force your head down on his cock, pushing you halfway down on it in one motion. it makes you nearly choke but you take seungcheol's cock like a champ, relaxing your throat so you don’t choke, suffocated moans creeping up your throat and vibrating your mouth in a way that has seungcheol gasping and tightening his grip in your hair.
“is this what you wanted?” he feels the strain of your head frantically trying to nod, held still by seungcheol's firm grip on your hair. he pushes you down even deeper, inch by inch, letting you adjust to the slide until your mouth is fully seated on his cock, strawberry lips stretched around the base and a mess of drool and precum dripping messily down your chin and over seungcheol's balls. “to choke on my cock? for me to force you to choke on my cock? to have all your filthy little holes stretched open and stuffed full?”
“mm,” you moan around his cock in frantic agreement, all you can do with your mouth full of cock. you fist your hand in seungcheol's sweats until your knuckles are white. you're straining against seungcheol's hand to try to force your head down even more.
“fucking cockslut,” seungcheol says and you moan, tightening your grip on seungcheol's sweats. “only been sucking me off for a few minutes and you already want me to fuck your throat? is that what you want, baby?”
your eyes flash up to his. they’re pleading.
i want you to snap. i want you to ruin me. i want you to fuck me like a slut.
seungcheol forces your head down until your nose is pressed into the neatly trimmed patch of hair at the base of his cock and you full-on gag, squeezing the tip of his cock in a way that makes seungcheol cry out and toss his head back. your mouth is so fucking wet, hot, the back of your throat small and tight. you take it so well, gagging and swallowing down the precum that drips from seungcheol's slit while also controlling the pressure of your lips and sliding the flat of your tongue up and down the shaft to add pressure.
you untangle your hand from seungcheol's sweats and slip it between his legs to cup his balls, gently rolling them over your palm and between your fingers. you're still looking up at seungcheol with your eyes, lashes threaded with tears that are starting to well up and drip down the apples of your cheeks from your throat being fucked. you look so pretty gagging on his cock that seungcheol can’t even believe you're real.
his first orgasm is already coming on quickly so he picks up his pace, chasing release— he knows it’s a little early to come but he wants to take the edge off fast so he can recover quickly and fuck you the way you deserve to be fucked later— he picks up the pace, planting his feet on the floor and working his hips up to fuck your throat faster, holding your head still. the noises filling the room are straight up obscene, the slick sloppy slide of his cock pushing into your pliant mouth and the wet gagging every time he hits the back of your throat— seungcheol's gasps and groans, loud and rhythmic. his hand is fisted in the back of your hair so hard it must hurt but you look so blissed and fucked out like having seungcheol's cock forced down your throat is the only thing you've ever wanted, little moans vibrating through your chest that don’t have a chance to escape with the brutal pace of seungcheol's cock fucking into your mouth.
tears start full-on running down your cheeks, tinged with the slight grey of your mascara. you're a fucking vision.
“gonna c-come,” seungcheol gasps, shuddering. “where do you want me to come, baby? down your throat?”
you pinch seungcheol's thigh to signal him to pull out and seungcheol instantly lets go of your hair, letting you pull himself off with an obscene pop and a huge gasp that sucks all the air out of the room. seungcheol is worried for a second that he’d taken it too far and hurt you but you don’t even miss a beat before you're leaning forward, angling with your mouth open wide under seungcheol's cock and your tongue sticking out.
“on my face,” you gasp. “on my face, hurry, please—”
seungcheol takes himself in his hand and jerks his cock with quick, short strokes, grunting as he feels the heat pool in his groin and then snap— and he’s coming, drenching your tongue and chin in creamy white. you are moaning like you're the one coming, tears still streaming down your face and hands fisted into the hem of your skirt.
“tastes so good,” you say. your voice is cracked and broken from abuse. “god, so fucking good.”
once seungcheol has milked himself of every drop of his release he pushes his softening cock against your lips, smearing it through his own release before dragging it up to the apples of your cheeks, wiping away the grey tear tracks. you wait patiently as he does it, mouth still hanging open with seungcheol's cum pooled on your tongue, eyes wide and unblinking. the second seungcheol shoves his cock back in your mouth you shiver around it, lapping up seungcheol's release tinged with your own tears.
you crawl up onto seungcheol's lap, pushing your finger against his bottom lip just like you had the night you'd shotgunned at the frat party— seungcheol parts them easily and then you are hovering over him, dripping his cum mixed with your tears into his mouth. it’s salty and bitter but tinged with the candied strawberry sweetness of your mouth— it’s so fucking dirty it has seungcheol's cock already stirring back to attention. seungcheol surges up and presses your lips together, tongues meeting messily in the center and twisting around the cum and tears, passing between each other before swallowing it all down.
“are you even real, huh?” seungcheol asks when you pull away, dragging his fingers through the mess on your chin and then dropping his hands to your thighs, pushing up under your skirt and letting the fabric pool around his wrists. “wanna fuck you so bad.”
“please,” you say, squeezing your knees around seungcheol's thighs.
“but first, want you to ride my face until i get hard again.” he strokes his fingers over your thighs, tender, gentle. “gonna make you come riding my tongue and then i’ll fuck you open until you’re screaming on my cock like a messy slut.”
you shiver, already nodding your head and frantically pushing at seungcheol's shoulders to lay him flat on his back. you climb up over his chest, planting your knees on either side of seungcheol's arms. your cunt is only inches from his face like this, giving seungcheol a perfect view up your skirt— you've made a mess of yourself, wetness dripping down from your hole.
“i must have saved a galaxy in my past life,” seungcheol muses out loud, making you giggle. he grips the back of your thighs to pull you up closer to his face and you squeal in surprise, falling forward and planting your palms into the mattress. he slides his hands up the back of your thighs and cups your cheeks, groaning at how the fat, pillowy globes of your ass fit so perfectly in his palms. he spreads your cheeks apart, revealing the same pastel pink dildo that had been nestled between your cunt in the photos you had sent him the other night.
seungcheol flicks at the end of the dildo, ripping a gasp from your chest. “already fingered myself open for you,” you admit. “d-did it on your bed before you came home— thought about everything i wanted you to do to me but didn’t let myself come.”
“what did you think about?” seungcheol asks, pinching the end of the dildo between his fingers and twisting it. you shudder, knees slipping over the sheets.
“thought about this.” you say, panting. “thought about riding y-your face, and then you bending me over and fucking me from behind while you called me a whore.”
“you are a whore,” seungcheol says easily and the reaction you have to it is instant, the way your thighs are rubbing against each other against your skirt and you gasp and shiver, gripping at the sheets. “you know what whores do?”
“w-what?”
“ride my tongue until you come.” seungcheol pulls the dildo an inch out and then plunges it deeper, fucking it into your slicked hole. “if you can do that, then i’ll fuck you just like you imagined.”
you inhale deeply and then exhale shaky. “yeah,” you gasp. “fuck, yeah, okay.”
seungcheol idly plays with the dildo for a few more seconds until you huff in frustration, trying to pull up to force seungcheol to pull the dildo out of your hole. “stop teasing me,” you whine.
“payback.” seungcheol replies cheekily, making you roll your eyes. but he's not about to make either of you wait much longer, not with how long he’s been fantasizing about having you sitting on his face.
your hole flutters around nothing when he finally slides the dildo loose. your wetness oozes from inside of your hole and drips onto seungcheol's bottom lip— it smells sweet so he darts his tongue out to taste it.
you taste like fucking strawberry.
he tosses the dildo aside, shoving his hands up under your skirt to grip your thighs and force you down onto your face. you sink onto his mouth like you're meant to sit there, lining your cunt up with seungcheol's mouth and grinding down on it. the first lick of seungcheol's tongue against your cunt has you gasping and mewling already, a sweet sound that echoes off the walls.
if fucking your throat was a religious experience this is somehow even better; you are so fucking loud in the way you show pleasure, so responsive to everything seungcheol does— he curls his tongue to run his tongue around your hole and then slides in as deep as he can go without aid from his fingers. you tremble, grinding your hips down in small circles, chasing the hot, wet feeling of seungcheol's tongue.
“seungcheol, seungcheol, seungcheol.” you are chanting, so far gone— your fingers scramble for purchase against the bedsheets. “deeper, more, please.”
seungcheol spreads your cheeks wider, rubbing his thumb against your entrance and pushing the tip of his thumb in next to his tongue, opening you up so he can push his tongue deeper inside. you moan desperately, working your hips faster— you grind down on seungcheol's tongue, babbling— yes, just like that, just like that— fuck so wet, so hot, so fucking good.
your knees squeeze seungcheol's head, shaking and trembling like you're trying to crush it. you push up off your hands to sit straight up on seungcheol's face, the letterman jacket falling full off your shoulders and pooling around your hands that you curl into the hem of your skirt as you grind down on seungcheol's tongue and fingers around dry sobs. you're breathtaking from this angle— well, you are breathtaking from any angle but you're particularly striking like this, the sheen of sweat on your bare shoulders and stomach shining under the golden light of seungcheol's lamp.
“wanna come so bad.” you arch your back as seungcheol drags his tongue down your hole, chest rising and falling with long, labored breaths. “can’t come like this, seungcheol, please, need you to fill my cunt—”
seungcheol hooks his fingers around the stockings on your thigh and tugs on it, making you spread your legs wider and sink even further down on his face until seungcheol can hardly even breathe, a silent way of telling you if you want to come then ride my face harder. and you full-on whine, loud and high pitched, thighs shaking violently like you're struggling to even hold yourself upright anymore. you tangle your hands into your own hair and tugs at the strands in frustration, working your hips messier, more frantically— it’s so wet, so messy, your wetness mixed with saliva coating the entire lower half of seungcheol's face.
you're chasing, chasing, chasing — seungcheol presses his thumb deeper, all the way up to the curve of his hand, stroking and massaging your walls as he works his tongue deeper in beside it.
“oh, fuck—” you suddenly shout. “i’m— i’m right there. right there— please, please, i just need a little more, just a little more — something, anything.” you're babbling, rhythm faltering in your panic, your desperation to get off. you curl your hands in seungcheol's hair and forces his head up as you fuck down onto his face, gasping, pleading, messy sobbing—
and then finally you're coming with a shout, back arching in a curve that looks almost painful, cunt spurting white that hits your skirt and drips down onto seungcheol's face. your bitten lips are open in a silent scream, eyes screwed shut, hole clenching around seungcheol's tongue as you ride it out, babbling a mixture of seungcheol's name mixed with curses.
seungcheol lets you come down before he folds your legs back to push you off his face, tossing you back on the bed in a way that makes you bounce, eyes post-orgasm blissed and hazy. seungcheol's been ready for round two for what feels like forever, cock hard and heavy between his legs. you press your thighs together, smearing the mess of saliva and cum between them, watching as seungcheol reaches down to pump his cock a few times.
“oh,” you say, words slurred. you light up suddenly when you realize what’s happening, eyeing seungcheol's cock with interest. “finally gonna fuck me?”
seungcheol doesn’t even answer, just climbs over your body and parts your legs with his knee, shoving your skirt up over your thighs. he gathers some of the mess dripping from your hole and uses it to slick himself up, lining his hips up and pressing his cockhead against your puffy, swollen entrance.
you squirm, already trying to fuck yourself down on seungcheol's cock the second you feel him press up against you— seungcheol is fucking baffled at how insatiable you are, already desperate to get fucked not even two minutes after you had just come— you're babbling again already, fuck me, fuck me, god I’ve been wanting this so bad, fill me up
seungcheol pushes all the way in to the hilt in one swift motion— your entire body tenses from the stretch, a line appearing between your eyebrows and your abdomen tensing from the burn— seungcheol waits a second to let you adjust, moving his hips in smooth circles to help you get used to the stretch.
“god, you’re so fucking big, fill me up so good — ah, no one has ever filled me like this before—” you gasp. “move, please, fuck me.”
seungcheol pulls out slowly and then slams back in with the lewd slap of his balls against your ass. you cry out, digging your nails into seungcheol's sweat-slicked shoulders to hold yourself steady so seungcheol can pick up the pace, fucking into you over and over, each ripping a string of pretty sounds and swears from your mouth, like music to seungcheol's ears.
“you’re so fucking tight around my cock,” seungcheol groans. “fucking incredible, how are you even real.”
he pushes his hands to the back of your thighs and practically folds you in half, using the stockings around your thigh to hold your ass up off the bed to fuck even deeper. he can tell when he angles his hips just right and hits your weak spot because you start full-on squealing, eyes rolling into the back of your head and fingers twisting into the bedsheets so hard you rip them off the corners of the mattress.
“feel so full,” your voice sounds hazy, like you're on another planet. “j-just a little more and i’m gonna— fuck, gonna come again—”
“already?” seungcheol asks, picking up the pace until he’s fucking into you almost brutally, hitting your spot full-on with every slam of his hips. “you really are a fucking slut, already came on my tongue and now my cock— how greedy are you? how many times are you gonna come before you’re fucking satisfied?”
you toss your head back when seungcheol slams into you particularly hard, pushing you halfway up the bed; you slap a hand over your mouth to muffle your cries but seungcheol growls, ripping it away and pinning it over your head
“let me hear every noise i fuck out of you,”
“s-seungcheol can you please— can you—”
“can i?” seungcheol is prepared to do whatever the fuck you want at this point. anything.
“hit me,” you gasp quickly, as if you're embarrassed to even breathe the words to life. “fucking— please. slap me, i’m so so so close, fucking slap me—”
seungcheol hesitates for a second but he sees the look in your eyes, so desperate, pleading, needing it— he draws his hand back and slaps you full on the cheek, not hard enough to leave a mark but just enough to make you gasp, eyes flying wide.
“like that?”
“n-no, harder.” you are squirming as you whine. “hit me harder. hard enough to leave a mark, make it hurt.”
“alright. okay, ah— fuck, y/n,” seungcheol pants. he brings his hand down again, slapping you hard enough to jerk your face to the side, leaving a faint pink mark on your cheek with a crisp sound that rings out into the room.
“yes!’ your spine goes rigid and your hole clenches around seungcheol's cock. “yes, yes, j-just like that— ‘m so close.”
“still not coming for me? even when i’m slapping you around like a fucking whore?” seungcheol winds his arm back and slaps you again, and again, and you sob as your body goes taut before you start trembling and shaking, tears streaming down your cheeks as you come untouched for the second time, cum flooding from your cunt in thick ropes that shoot up to your chest, covering the hem of seungcheol's jacket and draping over the pleats in your skirt.
your cunt is still wet, puffy and so swollen it looks like it must hurt with how badly it wants to be touched.
seungcheol pulls out before you even finish riding out your orgasm and you panic, scrambling against the sheets. “w-wait, don’t wanna be empty,” you gasp. “put it back, keep fucking me.”
“shh, baby, i’m not done with you yet,” seungcheol promises. he dips his head to press your lips together in a kiss, probably too gentle and tender for all you're doing right now, but even despite everything seungcheol wants you to know you're appreciated, being cared for. “flip over.”
your eyes are shiny when you pull away from the kiss and you nod, rolling over onto your stomach. seungcheol slides off the back of the bed and plants his feet on the ground, pulling you by the calves to the end of the bed and bending you over the edge, pressing a hand down on the small of your back to keep you steady as he slides his cock back inside.
“fuck, look at you,” seungcheol says when he slides in. “came twice already and you’re still greedy for more. insatiable little cumslut.”
he pulls out and slams back in, your sloppy hole sucking him in like you were made to take his cock. you shake from oversensitivity but still take his cock so well, socked toes scrambling against the carpet for purchase but not finding from the way seungcheol is holding you up against the bed. he fucks into your hole, watching the way the hem of the skirt bounces against the thickest part of your ass every time he snaps his hips forward.
"fill me," you gasp, so far gone, drooling onto the bed below. "when are you g-gonna fill me up?”
"soon, baby. you're gonna look so pretty all filled up with my cum," seungcheol says, punctuating his words with harsh slams of his hips that make your ass jiggle. "i'm gonna fill you up so good it spills out of your hole and drips all down your thighs, making you look just like the messy little slut you are."
"oh— fuck, seungcheol," you say weakly. your voice is raspy from overuse but still has the pretty, cheerful lilt to it that it always does. seungcheol bites down on his lip and groans, jerking his hips forward as he slides his hands further up your thighs, under the skirt, letting the fabric pool over his wrists. "s-so big — god, your cock is so perfect, fucking made for me, fucking spoiling me with it."
seungcheol strokes his thumbs over your ass as he fucks into you, mesmerized by how pretty you look underneath him, back curved into a perfect arch, your messy hair damp with sweat and mussed from seungcheol's fingers. "i'll make sure my cock is the only thing you can think about when you get off, how's that sound? gonna fuck you so good, so deep, that i ruin you for anything and anyone else."
"already have," you pant. "n-no one can fuck me like this, only you seungcheol, o-only you, mmh— god, when are you gonna come inside me? i n-need it, i want you to fill me so bad, wanna be full and dripping and warm."
“messy little cumslut,” seungcheol rasps. he slaps you full on the fattest part of your ass and you jerk in surprise before moaning, pressing your forehead down into the mattress. a pretty pink mark in the shape of seungcheol's hand blooms against your skin.
“yeah,” you breathe. “fucking love it, can’t wait to feel you come inside.”
a few more thrusts and seungcheol can feel his release creeping up fast— he digs the pads of his fingers into the meat of your ass, focusing on the sight of the little pleated skirt and the overwhelmed tremble of your legs, and before long he’s coming with a shout, spilling hot and deep into your hole and fucking it into you until you have milked him clean of every drop.
the noises you make as you come are filthy— you're mewling, gasping, begging for more— "please, seungcheol, want more, feels s-so good, so hot, ‘m so full.”
the second seungcheol finishes coming he slips his cock out, earning a whine from you— you're grinding against the mattress, chasing another orgasm with your forehead pressed into the sheets, weakly murmuring seungcheol's name and senseless pleas. seungcheol drops to the ground and spreads your ass, watching the way his cum is already slowly leaking out of your hole, rolling down your inner thigh.
he laps up the drop, tracing the path up to your puffy, abused hole, so messy and wet. you gasp when you feel the first press seungcheol's tongue against your cunt, licking his own release out of you.
"o-oh, seungcheol, that's—" you tremble, grinding your cunt against the mattress. "that's f-filthy, fuck."
seungcheol reaches around your cunt with his fingers, rubbing your cunt slowly as he eats you out, swallowing down every drop of his own cum. your shoulders drop in relief at finally having your neglected cunt touched, fucking into seungcheol's fingers to chase your final orgasm. you come quickly, whimpering weakly as your spent swollen cunt dribbles a pathetic amount of cum onto seungcheol's fingers.
seungcheol pulls himself to his feet and you try to follow suit but the second you stand your knees buckle and you nearly collapse.
“hey, hey, are you okay?” seungcheol asks, catching you around the waist and straightening you up. he gently sets you on the end of the bed but you wince at the pressure on your abused hole, shifting your weight onto your hip instead.
“mm,” you hum in agreement. your eyes are still a little hazy but you don’t look upset, just still far gone. “was so good. thank you.”
seungcheol laughs. “i should be the one thanking you,” he says, settling on the bed next to you. he puts his hand under your thigh to help take some of the pressure off where it hurts. “that was… god, i don’t even have words for it, it was amazing.”
“i was good?” you ask.
“you were perfect.”
you smile, humming contentedly. "i’m tired.”
“why don’t you get cleaned up. i’ll strip the sheets and then we can go to bed, okay? you deserve to get some rest.”
you agree so seungcheol gets to work— he fills the tub in the bathroom and helps ease you into it, filling it with soaps and bath bombs that you pick out yourself (after some mild teasing about why he has such an expansive bath product collection— seungcheol just likes to smell good, okay?) and then he gathers up the filthy clothes and bedsheets and throws them in the wash, grabbing a new set to re-make the bed.
he’s just finished cleaning himself up in the downstairs bathroom and is picking out some clothes from his drawers for you to put on when the bathroom door creaks open and you poke your head out— your skin is scrubbed clean and your hair is damp, a towel wrapped around your body.
“hey,” you say, a little quietly. you seem so much smaller and vulnerable than you usually do and something about it makes warmth flood into seungcheol's chest, stomach fluttering at how domestic it feels for you to be showering in his ensuite. “what are you doing?”
“grabbing you some clothes,” seungcheol says. he gathers up the long-sleeved t-shirt and sweats he’d found and sets them into your arms. “they’ll probably be too big for you, sorry, but they’ll do for now.”
you stare down at them, tongue poked in your cheek. seungcheol can’t help but feel like there’s something wrong and a little wave of anxiety spikes through him, feeling like maybe he did something wrong. had he been too rough with you? had he taken advantage of you somehow? he doesn’t really have much experience with having sex that rough but he knows an important part of it is making sure your partner is taken care of afterward and he wonders if maybe he didn’t do a good job— even though he was planning on cuddling you once you got in bed and making sure you were okay. was he supposed to do it sooner?
you don’t seem to notice his anxiety, dipping back into the bathroom to pull seungcheol's clothes on and re-emerging a minute later, rubbing your damp hair with the towel that was just around your body.
seungcheol is still sort of panicking. “is everything okay?”
“oh, yeah, yeah.” you drape the damp towel over the back of seungcheol's desk chair and then look across the room. “where are my clothes?”
“i threw them in the wash.”
“oh. well, i can come back and get them tomorrow morning, then, i’ll be staying on campus for a few more days.”
seungcheol blinks at you. “you’re leaving?”
you seem taken aback. “yeah?”
“oh.”
you cock your head to the side. “you were acting like i was acting weird but i'm pretty sure you’re the one who’s actually acting weird. what’s wrong?”
“i just uh.” seungcheol pauses. he wonders if you staying the night was a ridiculous expectation. after all, your relationship up until now has been nothing but the promise of sex, definitely not talking or cuddling in seungcheol's bed. you will probably think he’s weird and overstepping boundaries for even suggesting it. “i thought maybe you were going to stay.”
you blink a few times. you seem genuinely taken aback, but definitely not upset. a range of emotions crosses your face but then, finally, a smile curls the corners of your lips.
“you want me to stay?”
“of course i do. we had a great time and i thought we could, uh—”
“cuddle?” you step toward him, your smile curling impossible wider. “talk all night? watch movies?”
seungcheol can feel his cheeks heat up. “actually… yes?”
“huh.” you stop in front of seungcheol, looping your arms over his shoulders. “never pegged you as the romantic type.”
“i’m not? i just, uh.” he swallows down the lump in his throat. “you make me want to be.”
your eyes glitter— you push up on your tiptoes and brush a slight kiss against his lips, mint on your breath. for once you don’t smell like strawberries— you smell like seungcheol. and as much as seungcheol has grown to like the way you taste, the way you smell— he decides he likes it very, very much.
“i think you might make me want to be, too.”
you do spend the night. and then you spend the next night, and the next night after that. it’s amazing how well you both get along when you actually talk instead of dry humping behind the football field, and seungcheol is kinda mad at himself for being so hung up on getting in your pants that he never actually tried to get to know you.
(not that he still doesn't try to get in your pants. the only difference now is that he actually succeeds).
in seungcheol's senior year, his team crushes their rivals in the final game of the season with a landslide victory, earning his name a place in the college football history books and on a contract for a pro team with an offer that makes his head spin.
the best part about the victory, though, is the way you come streaking across the field the moment the game ends, eyes curled with the force of your bright, beaming smile. you leap into seungcheol's arms, crashing your lips together in a kiss that says you did it, you fucking did it, i’m so proud of you.
so yeah, seungcheol might be a little bit of a cliche: captain of the football team dating the head cheerleader. but he doesn’t mind: life is good.
𓅪 synopsis: do you ever truly forget a person? even those whom you have specifically paid to be removed from your mind? no matter how hard some try, some people can never be forgotten because the love and the hurt can be found in even the smallest things. memories easily triggered by nothing more than running your fingers through the grains of sand on the beach where you met, not once but twice.
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wc: 58.2k (omfg im sorry) ✶ warnings: fem!reader, angst, romance, bit of a science fiction au, memory loss, soulmate trope ish, depression, mentions of pregnancy, miscarriage, postpartum depression, talks about grief and loss, mentions of blood, multiple smut scenes, bulge kink, size kink, breast play, oral (f!rec), no protection, no pull out mention, lots of kissing, marking, scratching, fingering, multiple orgasms, crying during sex, handjob, im so sorry if i forgot some >< pls let me know if i need to add anything <3
ོ ⸝⸝⸝ now playing: back to me- the marías
an: i wrote this to make myself cry and im so sorry about that. this is based off the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, most of the movie is spent going through memories and this is a bit of my interpretation of that, although not as heavily as the movie does it. I don't know if it comes off too well here but I hope you enjoy this fic nonetheless <333 i worked really hard on this and it means a lot to me, kinda like my baby it took nearly as long to get it out from start to finish >< thank you so much to @beomiracles @heesmiles and @hyukascampfire for cheering me on for the last half of this fic it would have taken me a year to get this out if not for her and thank you so so so so much to @heejamas and @dawngyu for reading the first half of this fic when it was still happy and sunshine >< ✶ [m.list] [playlist]
He didn't know why he had come. Hands digging into the sand, the grains slipping between his fingers as he tried to recount the moments leading up to the train ride. His bed had been cold even with him in it, curled under the covers with a pounding in his head mimicking the repetitive slamming of a door somewhere down the corridor. The headache was not one that would lead to him calling out of work, and yet he was sitting on a beach in Montauk.
The surf crashing in its constant lullaby drowned out the line of Soobin's questioning. The chill of the last freeze was working its way throughout his body, enough to make him focus only on how red his nose must look, cold enough to fall off without him even noticing. There was still snow on the beach, pushed into the half melted piles around the worn down, sun bleached steps. The sky a hazy blue, only found in the winter months, grey and hidden behind a smokescreen of clouds blocking out any sun.
At first, he had not seen you standing right at the edge of the water. Scarf wrapped round and round, half shielding your face from the sea breeze. Your coat was a size too big, bunching around your wrists, fingers curled in your pockets, numb without gloves.
There had been an ache in your heart the moment you had woken up, hand curled in your pillow, wishing it was the strands of a lover's hair to run through absentmindedly. The thought had been trapped in your mind for a week, seen somewhere or read in a book you shouldn't have been flipping through during your shift at work. But it was persistent, continuously on a loop, your humming mixed with the gentle touch as if you could lull your imaginary love interest to sleep with nothing more than the brush of your fingerprints along their scalp.
It had never interested you to find someone to serenade, someone to comfort. But it had interested you to find that soft song here on the beach, the wind picking up enough to caress your cheek like the brush of a loving backhand. There had been little to do so far upstate except come here and stare at the shore while trying to find why you felt so hollow.
When you had told your roommate about taking the trip upstate, it had been nothing more than a passing sentence. “Montauk?” The word had sounded bitter coming from Kai, like the little beach town had personally hurt him in some way. “Why do you want to go there?” He had been distracted enough to spill his coffee, the counter covered, so you tried to explain whatever it was you were feeling.
“Yeah, I don't know why I just feel this need to go to the beach today.” You had shaken your head, “Don't wait up, I don't have to be into work till the afternoon tomorrow, and I might get dinner out there.”
“You want to take the last train out of Montauk?...” he had let the question linger in the air as if you were missing the context of something so clearly written out for everyone but you to see. For well over a week, it had been like this: Kai with his careful words punctuated with his scrunched brows as he watched you go about your daily life. It made the days feel like a cup at the edge of a counter, his worried looks only making it seem like you were one wrong move from shattering the glass with a careless brush of your sleeve.
“You make it sound like I suggested we should rob a bank and not look at a lighthouse on my day off,” you tried to laugh past it, shrugging on your coat that felt as if it had gotten a size too big in nothing more than a week. You toed on your shoes, hand bracing yourself on the handle of the door as Kai cursed, looking for a rag to clean up his mess, his eyes jumping back up to you like he was worried he missed your exit. It made you pause, brows scrunching. “Is something wrong?”
The question had been weighing heavily on your tongue since the first sight of Kai and his hollow eyes watching you. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, working on assignments, worrying over calls on his phone like someone was sick and he needed updates on their wellbeing. You had known him for years, longer than you knew any of your other friends. This was him after long nights of studying in his college dorm, only coming out for dinner after begging for him to take a break. This was not the smart, sensible Kai who went about starting his first year at his new job right with a neatly arranged sleep schedule.
“What?” he looked caught, playing dumb enough to make you push away from the subject. You would ask again if he kept it up because with the reaction he had now, it felt as if he was desperately trying to hide whatever it was until he fixed it. You would give him time, you would give him space until he was drowning and reaching out for your hand.
“Nothing,” you shook your head, “you can come if you want, I know the first train in, last train out, isn't really for you, especially in the winter, but it could be fun. We don't even have to stay all day,” the offer was a calming olive branch but Kai only looked away.
“I have work, why don't we go next weekend? We can take Yeonjun, and maybe it will be a bit warmer.” he was already fiddling with his phone, “I can ask him-”
“No, don't do that, we can still go next weekend, but I really feel like I have to go today, I don't even know how to explain it. I didn't realize living in the city would make me miss the beach so much.” Because your fingers ached to run through sand like they would run through hair, but it was impossible to say that to him, “And don't bother Yeonjun, he's been here all week, I'm sure he needs a bit of time away from seeing our faces.”
Like clockwork, Yeonjun had found time to spend with the two of you since last Saturday. He would be at the door, twisting the lock with the key Kai had gifted him the second you two had moved, so that someone would have the spare. In hand, he had your favorite warm drink from the shop right next to his place, his eyes scanning for Kai as he hung his coat. You wonder if he had sensed the change in him just as easily as you had. Their soft whispers in the living room lingered in the air when you rounded the corner to collect Yeonjun's kind gift.
But he had not come this morning with his to-go cup offering, and maybe that was because Kai was busy just as you needed to be. “I'll be fine. I'll text you when I'm on the train.” You go through the door before he can get the last word, closing it as you tell him. “Both ways!”
It wasn't until you were already on the train that Yeonjun called, phone tucked to your ear, voice low so the one other passenger wouldn't be bothered too much. “I could have called out, you know I love the little lighthouse, and the beach when it's cold,”
“No, you have been stuck at my apartment longer than your own. I'm sure your home office missed you just as much as your work office did.” Your knees were tucked up against the seat in front of you, arm slung across your stomach. “And the beach will be there next week.”
“I know, just call me if it gets too lonely, okay?” But tucked in between the way he said it was the undercurrent of worry, easily passed over if you hadn't known Yeonjun for years. Because as he tried to brush it off as casual, the glass was still right there on the edge of the counter, even if you weren't in the room. “Call me for anything.”
And almost as soon as you had hung up with Yeonjun, your mother called, the singsong tone echoing in the train as it pulled to a stop. You tucked the phone against your ear, hurrying off to the platform. The wind kissed along your cheeks, your lashes fluttering as you turned against the oncoming sea breeze. “Why are you taking solo trips all the way out to Montauk? It's not even the season for it.”
“Mom-” either one of your friends could have told her, your money placed right over Kai's name.
“No, you should have gone with someone, what if-”
“I'm fine, god. Why is everyone worrying over a train ride? It's not like I’ve never been out here alone, and hardly anyone ever comes out here anyway. Hell, only one other person was on the train with me,” the other lone passenger already headed out in the direction of the beach.
“I'm just worried, what if-”
“I'm fine, I'll text you just as well as Kai when I'm headed back, I'll even send you a picture of the lighthouse.” You shoved your free hand into your coat pocket, fingers already tingling from the cold, balling the digits into a fist, trying to keep the warmth tucked into the space for as long as you could. “I'll call you when I get back if that works to clear your mind.” It was the only way to soothe her enough to let you off the line.
The calls played in your head for only as long as it took you to get to the edge of the water. The lapping rhythm of the surf is enough to make your eyelids heavy. It didn't matter how long it had been since you stood on the edge of the sea; its soft song never ceased to intertwine with your circadian rhythm. And whatever longing you had been feeling was slowly washing away with the tide, pulling the ache in your fingers away until it was lost to the only place that could make you feel whole.
Closing your eyes, you let the wind coming off the water rustle your coat, tug at your red scarf. And like an unfurling ribbon, it went blowing behind you, your shocked gasp at the sudden kiss of cold on your lips more surprising than the way the scarf twisted in the air.
Soobin had been halfway to standing, hand at the back of his thigh, brushing away the sand, just about to leave, when he watched you stumble to rush after the windswept fabric. It was hurtling towards him, unravelling a string of events that would last longer than a lifetime.
He caught the scarf before it could slip by him, your shoes kicking up the sand behind you, as you slowed to a stop from your running, awkward laugh mixed in with his nervous smile. “Sorry, I didn't even realize I hadn't tied it right.”
“It's okay,” he passed it back to you, warmth from his gloved hands already seeping into your greedy skin from nothing more than a brush. “I’ve lost a fair bit of scarves to the wind here, umbrellas, and I think a pair of shoes once.”
“You took the train home barefoot?” You only made the assumption he wasn't from around here because of the shared train ride, the only other passenger stuck to hear your conversation with Yeonjun, and maybe even the one with your mom if he cared enough.
“I still had my socks but not my dignity,” he smiled enough to show the round crater dimple punctuating his cheek like a statement of cuteness, his hair caught in the wind on his brow, easily tossed and pushed aside, begging to let your fingers run through to fix. “So, might as well come to the rescue and return this to you.”
It was a moment, fleeting, and yet unmistakable: “Do I know you?” You were trying to place his face, his build, rifling through your memory looking for spaces that would seem to fit him in, and yet you came back with nothing at all. All except that ache in your fingers. “Or do you shop at the bookstore off of 6th Ave?”
Soobin was caught on your face long enough to get stumped on the question, trying and failing to picture you sitting behind the counter at the checkout, trying again for the counter at the shared coffee shop in the same building. “I do, but I d-” but he couldn't quite place his finger on it; he knew he would never be able to forget a face like yours, and it nagged him to no end when he looked at the dip of your nose and knew he had only just dreamt of a shape so similar.
“That must be it, I see so many people from all around New York, or even all the states,” you wound your scarf back around your neck, tucking the end into your coat. “You should come by next Friday, we are having this huge sale on hardbacks, although if you live far, it probably wouldn't be good to carry all of them through the city,”
“Good to know, I'm only a block over, so it's no big deal,” he felt himself flushing, cheeks and ears red over a casual conversation. Because in everything in him, he wanted to keep talking to you, and it made him embarrassed to feel this crush sink in, in nothing more than a second of easy going. He hadn't had a crush in a long time, not one that suddenly made his stomach twist in that all too familiar way; it wasn't a feeling one forgot often.
“Great, if you stop by my checkout kiosk, I'll give you a discount, a ‘save my scarf savings,’” you giggled, smile hidden, and Soobin wanted nothing more than to catch it with his eyes at least once.
He had never felt brave, not enough to step up to girls and ask questions, never brave enough to rush for the door before it shut just so that he could squeeze in on the ride up a crowded elevator. He preferred to take the long way, hoping that one day he would stumble upon a girl while she took that same trip, but it was never in his mind to reach out first. But now, with you standing here, the two of you the only ones on a beach that felt healing, he asked a question he had never predicted coming from his lips, even on the most confident of days. “Do you want to get lunch with me?”
You watched the way the wind ruffled his hair again, blowing back and exposing his forehead, only to sweep along his temples. And for a moment, there was an inkling of jealousy threaded through the sight because you wanted to be the one to do it at least once. “Of course, I know this little sandwich shop right past the last lighthouse, and I also know how to get us up to the top of said lighthouse to eat if you want.”
Soobin didn't feel a hint of discomfort at the idea. Spending a moment alone with a pretty girl over the water would have made his palms sweat, but with you? He hung onto the invitation like a token of some new beginning he wanted to keep in a jar. “Okay,” the words on the edge of some whispered hope, worried if he spoke too much, too loud, you'd slip away as easily as your scarf had.
There was something easy about the way the two of you fit side by side. As if your footsteps were on top of each other instead of behind you, leaving trails of your passing only a few inches away from the other. Your hands shoved down into your coat pockets, chin tucked as you looked at him, both of you caught on features of the other's face as if you were still looking for something. Because never in your life had you believed what was read in books, that people fall in love with nothing more than a glance, catching sight of something in the other person without having ever spoken a word to them, and just knowing.
Standing here sharing names felt like a rerun of a life you didn't know if you had lived before. Everything was so easy that time slipped away, crunched and forgotten like leaves fallen and blown away until it was only just the two of you sitting on that train back to New York.
You hadn't sat right next to each other, one seat in front of him, leaning over the back of it, peering over the edge like a child caught in her crush. You didn't want to waste too much of a good thing, greedy on the best of days, but not when it felt like if you ran out of him, you'd feel nearly as empty as you had just that morning.
The two of you had spent the whole day together, piecing a life together from all the past things until they made one person you hadn't yet discovered. And you stumbled to understand everything about him, hands pushing back the layers of him, reading the book of him cover to cover, starting with his order at the sandwich shop, all the way to his fear of slipping from the salt rusted bars keeping the two of you from falling over the side of the lighthouse into the sand.
“It feels like I've known you forever,” your fingers aching, the sentiment bubbling up slowly until it was overflowing from your lips, once, twice, a third time, sitting right there in front of him on the train home, wishing that the day wouldn't end so fast. “Is that weird?”
You were slightly lifted, looking down on him in his seat, his stare caught between a look of awe and understanding. And maybe that's what it was, that look of his round brown eyes, drawing lines along your body that had never felt so seen before. Because he only blinked back at you with a lazy grin, the kind that was only there because they didn't know it was, the kind people ask why you're smiling, wanting a taste of that carefree tilt to their lips. “No, not weird at all,”
And he wasn't lying, the pounding in his head was gone, replaced by your giggle, a bell versus that constant slamming of a door he found himself waking up to and not for. “I feel the same way,”
Neither of you knew that it had not been the first time you had met. And neither of you knew it wasn’t the first time you had reached out with steady hands and pushed his hair back and behind his ears, threading through the strands like a memory. That ache satisfied and ignited something that would make it impossible to go out because it had already been kindling, waiting to turn roaring. Only neither of you knew how easily it had been close to being snuffed out entirely after a blow strong enough to leave a candle flickering in half smoke and half desperation.
Because it had been on a beach in Montauk that the two of you had met all those years ago, a summer bustling with people, shoeless and down on dignity, Soobin had stumbled into your life. Your laugh caught him as easily as he had your scarf. Your eyes pinned to his wiggling toes, trying to shake the sand from the fibers of his socks with little progress being made. “They sell sandals right on the edge of the beach, right next to the beach houses.”
“I just think my friends are hiding my shoes from me, they will give them back eventually or i hope so at least.” because Beomgyu had taken them right off of him, tugging on his legs until he could free the shoes while ignoring Soobins shouting, Taehyun holding him down from twisting too much as Beomgyu did the dirty work. But it had been a while since he had seen either of them, too busy mingling with the rest of the summer crowd to care about Soobin and his shoes.
“Well, if they don't, just think of my suggestion,” and it would have been the end right there if it hadn't been that Yeonjun and Taehyun went to the same gym, or even if Kai hadn't shared a mandatory study schedule with beomgyu. The pairs of them suggested taking the last train out, to just stay long enough to watch the sunset over the water, to sit along the sand for as long as it took to watch the families make their ways home to the beach houses littering the shore off in the opposite direction of the lighthouses so neatly waiting at the rocky cliffsides.
No one had brought entertainment, the food had long since been eaten, and Soobin's shoes were found to make excellent toys to kick around between the boys like a makeshift ball. And it had been there where he had found the only courage he had needed to talk to you, no long path, no avoidance, just casual as you watched the way the sky went from a blue primary hue, to pink orangesicle, to a dusty salted dreamscape. Because as the boys played, the two of you started a fire, sat around the embers with knees touching and souls twisting. Talking long enough for the two of you to forget you had come with others and not alone, with only one another.
The two of you dragged behind as you walked, Soobin's shoes in hand, wet and dripping from the final kick, sending them all the way into the ocean, enough so that Yeonjun went in the still sun-warmed water to catch them before they could be lost to the tide. But he didn't even care that he was trekking in sand after him on the train, not when the two of you sat knee to knee, thigh to thigh as you listed your favorite novels. All stocked on the shelves back at your apartment, on the shelves at your job, just waiting for Soobin to buy and find one more chapter of you that he had yet to discover.
And when the train pulled into the station, he had been distracted enough to truly lose his sneakers, left under the seat; he wished he could have spent all night so long as it led to him talking more with you about nothing and everything. And when you two were supposed to split, waving goodbye to new friends and old ones, neither of you wanted to let go.
With Beomgyu on one side, teasing him, and Taehyun on the other, telling Soobin he should have given you his number, he looked back at you across the street looking back at him. And it didn't matter if he looked like a madman, he turned back, hand cupping his mouth as he shouted across that nearly empty New York street right at the head of the subway stairs, “Do you work tomorrow?”
The question had pulled everyone to a stop, your face heating up, not caring if Yeonjun and Kai joked over the clear crush you had formed over a single beach trip, “On Monday! You'll visit me, right?”
“I wouldn't miss it!” Not when he had found someone so interesting he forgot himself enough to shout into the busy city just to catch one more line with you. And while both of you left in the opposite direction, you still wore identical, hazy, love-struck, love-sick smiles all the way home.
It had been instant then, and it was instant now. The unfurrowing of your life lines not crossing once, but twice, when the two of you had done everything in your power to forget one another.
The treatment had been offered as a last ditch effort to pull your relationship out of a sinking ship. A lifeline tossed into the water, thrashing with unrelenting emotions, drowning the both of you until the waves were too high and too heavy to fight. But it had not been like that at first; your ship was just sailing, and the masts were heavy and strong with each gust of wind heading your way. No low going self-implosion waiting on your horizon. At least not just yet.
Because at the start of it all, on that Monday morning, Soobin had called in sick, faked a strained voice with the aid of his sleep-ridden one, and made sure to secure the full day without a blink of an eye. He didn't know when you started your shift, if it was in the afternoon or even at night; all he knew was that he would be there waiting to be checked out with your favorite novel tucked in the crook of his elbow.
He hadn't gotten your number, and distance made the heart grow fonder, so the only replay in his mind was the way you made him laugh and the way he wanted to see you laughing right along with him. And when he arrived, you hadn’t been in sight, the checkout counters bare of people, just as the rest of the store. His languid stroll only made him take in the place as you might have seen it. The towering light washed wooden shelves holding far too many books to not make the place feel cramped in the best way possible. Ladders sitting at the edge of each aisle waited, and he wondered how often you must have had to climb up one for a customer scared to reach a height they hadn't been expecting for a paperback.
And as he rounded that last corner, he ran into you with your apron on, the bookstore logo tattooed on the front in delicate green stitching above the neatly done black of your name. “You came,” your voice hooking him in the way it was just so easily said, an exhale that he had been waiting to feel the second he saw you again. Because it had been a bit like holding his breath. His anxious mind worked to ask him the question: Was she really like how he remembered her, or was it just the salt and the sand influencing his mind?
But it hadn't been the beach, not when you stood so vividly alive there, just as you had sitting next to him on the shore and the train. “I told you I wouldn't miss it,” because anything he had been feeling washed away, and he was just a boy in a store flirting with a girl he felt like he had known for a lifetime.
Soobin had followed you around for your shift, watching you stock the shelves, letting you talk through a book you liked, telling him the plot, the setting, the hook, line, and sinker. He didn't need to speak, didn't feel the need to interject about himself when it was so easy and intoxicating to soak up all the knowledge you laid out before him. Your dislikes were wrapped up neatly in the nonfiction section, and your likes were presented right before him in every little microexpression as you read him the opening paragraph of the one book he had come in searching for.
And when customers came over to speak to you, asking questions, checking out, Soobin stumbled around, busying himself with sorting his feelings as if they hadn't just dumped on him like a bucket of ice cold water. He had never liked someone so instantly, so intensely, so much so that he cataloged your favorite drink from the cafe without a second thought, promised himself to try it if he couldn't kiss the flavor from your lips one day.
And when it was the end of your shift, he was your last customer; he slid the book over the counter with a smile permanently tuned onto his face. “Just the one?” your easy act as if you hadn't spent the whole time talking together, working to make him chuckle.
“Yeah, I heard this great review of it,” the scan of the barcode mingled with your giggle.
“Did you? They must have excellent taste,” you were sitting down, looking up at him, the receipt printing before you tugged it free, taking a pen and writing out your number right on the bottom with a little heart written next to that girl from Montauk. You tucked it into the book, sliding it over to him, breaking the spell of your joking with, “Will you wait for me until I clock out? I mean, you don't have to, I know you spent nearly all day with m-”
“I wouldn't want to spend it anywhere else. I know a great cafe near my place, if you want to get a late lunch?” he had blushed, cheeks and ears a kissable pink as you nodded yes. Because neither of you wanted the day to end, holding onto whatever you could so that the time wouldn't pass like it had that first day. So when your late lunch ended, the two of you walked around the park, sat at the benches looking out over the fountain, and talked like you would never run out of things to say before it was growing dark, and you both had to find a way home.
The air had been cold, dropping to a point that even the dense city couldn't keep out the wind, and you linked your arm in his, taking a step closer so that every few feet the two of you nearly stepped on one another. “So you wanted to be a…”
“Singer,” Soobin shook his hair out at the confession, your fingers drumming along his bicep, reminding him how close the two of you stood. “I know it's a bit embarrassing, but if I could do anything at all besides you know being an accountant, I think I'd be a performer,”
“I think we have to go out to karaoke for our next date.” It had been a slip of words, one he caught and held onto without letting go.
“Next date?” he had taken you right up the stairs, standing outside your apartment door with the front light glowing and golden washing down on you, putting you on the spot. You felt hot all over, face pressing into his arm like it would hide your slip up and yet it didn't matter because you wanted all your cards on the table; you wanted him to see every facet of your mind, even for a blinding second.
“Forget I said anything embarrassing, okay?” You dug around in your pocket for your keys, “and call me after your mind has been erased of my misstep.”
But Soobin didn't care, not when the slip up made him feel seen. He had felt blind, looking for any reason that you might like him enough to keep this up, whatever it was, but he knew he didn't want to be just friends. And finding out now that you weren't viewing him in that way fixed his stomach, unraveling all the knots when his mind had been leading him down a path of self-destruction and irrationalization. “Next time we can see a movie, eat, get drinks, and then karaoke.”
You had looked over at him, smiling, trying and failing to keep it away, tipping down at the edges as you nodded, “Okay,” the soft whisper so hopeful it hurt. You had just opened the door, the handle caught in your hand, as the sound of Kai's laughter rang out into the night, the faint sound of the video game filling in all the space in the hall. " And next time, kiss me before you leave.”
Soobin couldn't help but look down at your lips, eyes flickering from your mouth and back up the slope of your nose to make sure he had heard you right. His nod so shy he felt his palms sweat. It was one thing you had loved so much about him, the way he made it feel like you were the only person who had ever or could ever make him feel this way. The awkward cuteness he found himself wearing so often would trail around the two of you, with every brush of your hand, every kiss, and every word. You watched his throat bob, his mind working so fast he didn't have time to question if it was the wrong thing to do before he was leaning in.
It was a short kiss, his lips meeting yours just enough so that his mind could catch up with what he had done, so he tried to pull away. But you had let go of the doorknob, hand sliding up the front of his sweater in a way that left him aching for more, and you gave it to him, pulling him right back to your mouth and clearing his worries. Because you wanted him just as desperately as he wanted you. The small touches, the gentle laughs, and all the words you could fit between the two of you. Kissing only clarified both of your emotions, made it known that whatever was blooming would be diligently taken care of until it was a packed garden buzzing with life and understanding.
And when Soobin left and went home, he replayed the way your fingers had found their home right to the back of his neck, threading through his hair and tugging him closer. He lay in bed with the echoing of that feeling sinking into his bones like a shot of something he should have never taken, for it was the worst kind of thing to find yourself addicted to. It had only been two days of knowing each other, a few more of knowing of each other, and yet he wanted nothing more than to wrap you in his arms and tuck himself as close as he could, to feel the hum of your words on your neck as he pressed his face against your pulse.
It was instantly recognized when you closed your door behind you after that first kiss. Kai looked over at you standing in the entry, caught in that webbing only a crush could tug you into, with your fingers ghosting over your bottom lip, trying and failing to mimic the feeling of his mouth on yours, so you could aid the replay. Your names mixed in with the rhythmic teasing of the words, sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g, your hands covering your face because you couldn't help the smile at the sing-song tilt to Kai's voice.
Soobin had texted that next morning, setting a song for your ringtone, putting a heart next to your name, and deleting it again because he felt silly and like you weren't quite his just yet. But in every sense, the two of you belonged together, even if not visible to the two of you, it was impossible to deny from an outside perspective.
He worked late, woke up earlier, and had little time for himself, but he would make time for you. Before, when he would come home, loosening his tie, he'd kick off his shoes and stretch out on the couch to watch whatever he had been playing to pass the time, or even load a quick game on a weekend that he didn't have to leave the comfort of his home for. Now he was thinking of ways to blend you in without feeling like it was too much too soon. But you didn't mind any of it, taking the opportunities as they came.
So the two of you spent time grocery shopping, Soobin pushing the cart, following you down every aisle, even the ones you didn't need to spend time down, only to spend more time together, just talking and giggling as you went. He carried the bags upstairs, only making you take the bread and eggs even when you complained that you could handle more, while still making time to hold the door open for you when you made it up. Trusting you with the keys and still reaching around you to push it open.
You would sit on his kitchen counter, watching him move around, placing everything away, talking about the way he had empty walls and hardly any furniture. “You live like a college student with your first paycheck,” and when Soobin pulled open his cabinet, he pulled out a single mug and asked you if you wanted tea. “You only have one mug! How are we supposed to enjoy tea together?”
“Well, I didn't think I'd have a pretty girl over who would need her own mug, but I'm more than willing to give her mine,”
He smiled to show his dimples, cute teeth on display when you muttered, “Next date we have to go pick up a picture frame or two, and another mug.”
“I was thinking we could go back out to Montauk for the fireworks show this Friday, but only if you wanted to, or we could do something else, anything you want.” His rambling and pink cheeks only made you nod. Your laugh easing his nerves.
“We can do anything, and I love the beach, there is something about the sea that you can just never forget about, like I think I'll always remember the way the sand feels between my fingers." You held your hand out, spreading each digit in front of you, peeking between them before he reached out, lacing his fingers with yours, the width of his palm eating up your own, the pads of his fingertips soft along the back of your hand.
He had stepped into your space, right between your legs, equal height, sitting up on the counter, looking at each other, remembering your kiss, and wishing you had never stopped kissing him. His free hand rested next to your thigh, his eyes trained on your lips before he leaned in, stopping so close that the two of you brushed noses. So close that it felt easy to confess even something as small as a grain of sand, “You remind me so much of the sea.” Your hand not intertwined with his now threading through his hair, right at the back of his neck, just as he had remembered and prayed for to happen again. Your words whispered so close to his mouth that he could swallow them down and keep them tucked to his heart. “Like you’ll be impossible to forget,”
You had spoken out his exact thoughts, written them out between the two of you just before he kissed you again and again. And it never needed to be more, both of you following the ease with which the relationship was taking you. Breathing so easily, even when you pulled away and knew it was okay, felt that a kiss could be something that wasn't scary and added questions, but something shared because you wanted to, needed to.
That night had been spent on his couch watching movies and playing games, falling asleep and leaning on his shoulder, waking up to his arms around you holding you just as close as you had held him.
Neither of you had asked your friends to come out to Montauk that second time, taking the trip on one of the busiest trains that went out that time of year. With Soobin carrying your picnic basket out and you with the blanket rolled and tucked under your arm, ready to be placed on the sand amongst the families who made it a yearly thing to come out to see the fireworks. It didn't matter that you had only just met, not when you fit so closely that there was no need to stretch out your arms and ask for distance.
Both of you eating and playing a card game, the deck loosely held down by stones collected from the sand so they wouldn't blow away. The world went on around you two. The giggling of the kids being chased by their parents rang out in the salt soaked air, the sun just setting out over the water, as people started their bonfire, getting ready to roast marshmallows, to sit back and enjoy their prepared food and carefully grilled barbecue.
And when the show started, you both sat side by side, thigh to thigh, leaning back on your hands just enough to see the dark night sky bursting with colors. Red and yellow, raining down and casting threads of illumination on the pretty features of Soobin's face. Your eyes traced the shape of his nose, the dip of his dimple, the catch in his smile as he looked up in awe.
Looking at him left no room for questions; if this was a glimpse into a life you could have, you wanted it, reached out with greedy fingers, and begged never to lose. And neither of you felt like letting go just yet, not when the two of you could spend most of your time out on the beach in silence. Picnic left to find the quieter side of the sand.
It was only just up from the crowd that the row of spaced out beach houses rested. Right amongst the long sun lightened blades of grass swaying in the salty breeze. Linking arms, the two of you looked up at the two stories, half lit with families who had turned in early.
“I wonder if people live here year round, if they listen to the sea even in the winter,” you questioned as Soobin's warmth cut through the thin fabric of his jacket, soaking into you and making it easier to speak without thought.
“I don't know if the houses right on the beach are built for much snow. I'm sure they have a hard time keeping all the sand out.”
“It's kinda sad for them to just stay empty,” out over the water, the lighthouse shines, the slow circle of the beam easy to follow from any distance. You're sure that even a lighthouse keeper would find it lonely to spend their days on a cold beach in January compared to nights like this in July. “Imagine all the snow on the beach, that alone feels kinda magical, just to be left empty…”
“You would live in a house like this year round?” The question had set him thinking, picturing a life with you right here on the beach where you met, the sand building in the corner by the front door, watching the water from the porch, sharing a cup of coffee with the mug you had picked out for such occasions so early on in the relationship where it should have been a suggestion to slow down.
But it didn't feel like either of you was moving fast. For a second, it felt as if the blurred edges you had held around relationships had sharpened with a clarity you would have never known, less you met Soobin that day. The suggestion of slowness felt like wading through water instead of swimming through it. If he wanted you to spend time wrapped up in his arms at his place, you wouldn't stop him from asking with a waving yellow flag.
Being with him felt like being in the center of a high school gymnasium dance floor, blue iridescent streamers hanging from the rafters and swaying in a rhythm that mimicked your shy steps on the linoleum. The glowing mirrorball reflecting spots of incandescent light over the two of you, framing you in a world alone where you felt giddy enough to be even asked to share this dance. Soobin was wrapped up in a shyness that did not show inexperience but willingness to learn with a faint hint of worry about messing things up when they felt so fragile. It was that softness that pulled you in, and it was the confidence that you had in him that sent him stumbling right in after you down that rabbit hole of this uncharted relationship.
He didn't care if it felt too soon to just sit and think about you and him sharing a house, dancing in the kitchen, sharing a bed, inviting all your friends over just because you wanted to bask in the giddy glow he was radiating. Being a hopeless romantic felt suffocating on the worst of days, enough so that he had tricked himself into believing he was a skeptic, putting distance between his heart and his sleeve in fear of a stray swing of a backhand that would take years to recover from. He kept his place bare, buried himself in his work, and prayed to stumble on love, and he had gotten what he had wanted.
Everything he had been looking for was standing right at the edge of those sand-covered stairs, your head tilted into his bicep as you hummed in question. “I could see it, and I think I’d love to live right here, quiet in the winter, warm in the summer, seagulls as pets.”
The last line was enough to catch him unexpectedly, giggle genuine and lasting. “Seagulls? They would probably wake us up like roosters do on farms,”
“Built in alarm clocks, maybe we would become morning people? Watching the sunrise as the waves hit the rocks by the lighthouse,”
“As much as I would pray it would be warm, I'm sure the mornings and nights would be a bit chilly. I'd want to spend as much time curled up in bed as I could, snuggling for hours.” Soobin had pulled you in closer, his nose dipping to your ear as he said it, burying his face into your neck at the suggestion. The tickling of his lashes and soft lips made you laugh.
It had been the first night you had spent in his bed, the train coming in late enough for you to worry about him walking all that way back to his place alone. His persistent talk of him sleeping on the couch shut down over and over again. “It's your bed, if anything, I should be the one-”
“I'd never make you sleep on the couch,” he seemed appalled by the suggestion, pushing the door to his room open to reveal the half-made bed, still sleep wrinkled with half the duvet pulled to the side. “Here,” he had pulled out his pajamas from his neatly folded clothes in his dresser, “you can take anything you want to wear to sleep, and the bed is yours.”
It was only after you changed that he finally let you convince him to get between the sheets. The white duvet pulled up to your chin as you rolled your eyes at his suggestion of making you uncomfortable. “I've never felt more comfortable with a person before,” you reached out, taking his hand just to trace the lines of his palm, his fingers twitching from the sensitivity, curling around your own. “I've never been so happy to have met someone,”
The swell of that feeling sat in your chest, not heavy but whole. You slid closer to him, sinking into the dip in the bed his body made, until it would take effort to pull away. His arms were a comforting weight around your body as you lay your head on his chest, tucked under his chin to hear his heartbeat, the erratic rhythm of it making you smile. And you had fallen asleep that first night in his bed, listening to the way his heart slowly started to even out, his body relaxing just as well as yours, melting into one another, tangled legs and syncing breaths.
It had been easy to fit into each other's lives, your friend group getting along enough to spend every other weekend out together at one of your apartments, although your shared place with Kai became a closet as you spent most of your off time over at Soobin's. Within the year of you two being together, you had hung up frames, bought mugs, and shopped for groceries with your things mixed in the cart, Soobin reaching for them without thinking twice.
The six of you crammed into Soobin's tiny living room, the couch only big enough for two and a half. Hence, you wedged yourself into his lap, his arms wrapped around you, the younger three boys sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, while Yeonjun sat focused on the tv next to Soobin and you. Video game controllers taking turns between four of you at a time. It was all you ever needed on a weekend, time slipping past until in that soft, comforting way that made you realize that maybe these little things were all you needed to feel content.
The summer had come in a wave of heat, Soobin, and you were making it out to Montauk for the fireworks just as you had the year before, taking the last train back without the question of where you would spend the night. Pulling open the drawer he had cleared for your things, only to pick one of his shirts to wear time and time again to bed.
There was no loss of that shyness Soobin held seeing you in his bed, no loss of that admiration that you wanted to spend your free time wrapped up in him, with him. He would spend a million mornings watching your eyes open, your first instinct to kiss at his neck, the soft brush of your lips making the corner of his mouth tip up like you had found the button to his happiness right against his adam's apple, his pulse point.
He would shuffle out of bed after you, rubbing sleep from his eyes, watching you in the mirror as you brushed your teeth, his hands over your body begging you to just call out, stay back with him in bed so he wasn't so lonely on his day off. You had tried to fix your work schedule to align with his, taking shifts so that you both worked the same, so that you didn't have to resist his pleas, the temptation so easy when he was this warm.
“Stay with me,” his mouth right at your ear, as you rubbed your moisturizer onto your face, his hands slipping under the shirt you had just put on for work, thumbs running soft circles over the skin of your stomach. “I'd make it worth it,” he'd whisper, his fingers just slipping into the waistband of your jeans, tracing along the thin fabric of your panties.
It was nearly impossible to pull away from him, his promises always fulfilled, his words of encouragement and praise filling his small bedroom with each pass of his skilled fingers. Your work clothes carefully tugged off, forgotten on the floor, and not picked up until the next day because you would inevitably get up again at noon after falling right back asleep in his arms. You didn't care if you walked around his apartment in nearly nothing, his shirt taken off his back and given to you, his grey sweatpants low on his hips as he made you both a mug of tea.
You'd sit on the counter like that first time, blowing the steam from your mug that he had picked out for you that first week of being together, one extra in the cabinet for when his mom came over for a visit. Soobin between your legs looking over his own cup with his dark hair a mess from either sleep or your fingers.
And on days when you needed to resist, he would walk you all the way to your job, kiss you, and leave only to come back half an hour later with a cup of coffee, order memorized since that first day, a muffin picked from the display case because he knew you needed something to eat. He would sit in the coffee shop with his laptop, playing games or reading, following you around as you stocked books to plan weekends with the boys. “It's going to snow next week, we could go out to Montauk and sit at the lighthouse drinking hot chocolate,”
“Your birthday is next weekend, don't you want to spend it with everyone?” You had already planned to pick up his cake, the boys saying they would come over with their gifts and games.
“I kinda wanted to rent a place out there, spend it with my favorite person, in our favorite place,” he blushed as he said it, pursing his lips as if he let too much slip, as if the two of you hadn't made it any more clear that you were obsessed with each other. But he couldn't help himself, every passing day he found more that he didn't know about you, more to discover because knowing each other a year wasn't enough when he wanted a lifetime of birthdays spent in bed with you on a cold beach, kissing warmth back into each other with every passing day of new discovered knowledge. “Too much?”
“No,” you let the word out on a short, breathy laugh, “we can do anything you want, you're never too much,” you couldn't kiss him then, not while the store was half full of regulars as you reach up to put a book on the shelf but you want to, felt it calling to you whenever it was that he let that boyish shyness show. “Just let me know if I should invite everyone, even if it's only for a few hours.”
“Yeah, we can do breakfast at that spot right by the apartment, pancakes with a candle in it, that kinda thing, then we take the train out together, I don't really care, I just want you to be there.”
“Of course I'll be there, you act as if I don't basically live at your place.” You couldn't remember the last time you slept alone there. You had made quick visits to see Kai and pick up loose items you hadn't realized hadn't made it over to Soobin's. You still paid rent, and Kai said he'd never kick you out because he would always give you a place to stay, rent or no rent. The only reason he couldn't keep you from paying was because you had the account information to submit your half when it was due. And when the time came that you did officially move in with Soobin, it was never a big transition. Kai kept your room just as it was, your sheets still on the bed, your boxes still in the closet.
“I know,” he shrugged, shoulder to his ear, cheeky smile showing his dimple you found yourself kissing almost too often. “I just like to hear you say it.”
You booked your weekend stay on the beach even if it was going to snow, and changed the plans with the boys so they could catch him before the train ride out of the city. That Friday morning, the six of you packed yourselves into one booth, ordering a table's worth of food, plates clinking from the amount. You had packed a bag's worth of loose birthday candles, enough for every year you were celebrating him being alive. His stack of pancakes punctured with a rainbow of candles, the lighter you had brought going slowly as you tried to light each one, Yeonjun leaning over the table to help take one fast melting candle around to the others, trying not to get wax all over and failing.
Happy birthday was sung loud enough for people to join in over their morning coffee, clapping as Soobin shyly blew out his candles, hiding his face in your neck when the boys didn't stop singing and started to harmonize. “Make them stop,” his laugh caught right against your collarbone.
And when the two of you left to catch your train, you sat in the same seats you always did, right in the middle with Soobin sacrificing the window seat so that you could get the best view, even on his birthday. Your weekend bag was packed together and tossed over his shoulder as he held your hand while you got off. The snow had not started to fall, but would come in the night just as the forecast had stated. Both of you bundled up in your coats, walking close together until you were almost stepping over each other.
“Look at that,” the rental right at the edge of the sand, overlooking the slice of beach just in sight of the lighthouse. The place is big with five rooms, a house made to host people on the summer weekends like the one you had met on. “The street is empty, all except our place.” The road right at the back of the houses void of any cars, even the trash bins are all pulled in and kept away from any blowing winds.
“It's why I could get us the best price at the best place, the beach is private and blocked off just for us.” Even if no one was there, it felt special and all your own, cut away from the city, from everything but your love.
You had picked up the keys where you had been told they would be, fiddling with the lock, trying to get your fingers to steady with the wind pinching them enough to leave them trembling. Tossing your bag down right next to the entrance, not caring about anything else besides making it out to see the sunset over the water before it was too late. Soobin wraps his arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his chest, to warm both of you up.
With only the sound of the water, you both sat down in the sand, seagulls gone and the lighthouse making its rounds as the night started to dip to a faded grey, sun caught behind the clouds, so there was only the outline of light along the shore. Soobin kissed the top of your head, keeping his cheek right there over the spot as if that would keep it ingrained into the memory you were both creating.
“I love you.” The words were easy the first time, and so now, when you speak them, it's natural enough not to even be felt slipping from your lips. But the impact is felt just the same, a weight that keeps you grounded instead of suffocated, because he never pushed away your feelings and always responded the same way with “I love you more,” a fight he would die on the hill of each time you shook your head and declared you loved him more.
And even there in the open, he laid you down on the sand, the warmth of his body pressed against yours through the layers of fabric separating you, his hand hot against your skin as he slipped it under your sweater, holding your side. Your fingers cold as you twisted them in his hair, your head thrown back while he kissed along the column of your throat, muttering between each peck, “I need to get you a scarf,” his nose bumped right behind your ear, smelling your perfume, the trail his mouth made turning cold when he pulled away to find your lips again.
He'd have you right on the sand if he wasn’t worried about you getting sick from being out in the cold for so long. So he pulled you up, helping to brush the sand away from your coat before you giggled, giving him one last quick kiss to his cheek before taking off towards the house, “race you!”
It was harder to run in the sand, your feet slipping and heavy to pull up with each footfall. Soobin was right on your heels, laughing and calling out your name as you shrugged off your coat even while the snow had started its dusting. The second you had reached the long walkway up back to the house, the sunbleached wood creaking under you, you dropped your jacket, knowing he'd bend down to get it, giving you time to beat him even with his long legs.
And it was exactly what he did, “not fair!” his laugh trailing through the frosting air, salted with the fast falling flakes of snow. You were already tugging off your sweater as soon as you got to the door, pushing it open because neither of you had cared enough to lock it when it was a ghost town. But before you could step foot inside, his hand, now cold, landed against your stomach, pulling you back against him. “Nope, not this time,” his face icy from the wind pressing into your neck until you shrieked from the shock of it.
You had turned in his hold, wrapping your arms around his neck, trying to pull him into your warmth as much as possible. And he let you, cold hands slipping along your bare back, fingers dancing along the clasp of your bra, teasing you with the idea of him unfastening it. Your nose bumped against his, “I win,” your words brushing long his lips, catching in his laugh.
“You cheated.” His tone was dipped in a hazy mix of lust and love-sick desire. His eyelids heavy; body so close to melting into yours.
“I was only making it easier for you, skipping a bit of the undressing.” You pushed your hands into his coat, giving him the hint to take it off, sliding down along the toasty fabric of his sweater until you could slip under the hem.
His stomach flexed under the ghosting of your fingertips, his lips light as they kissed over your jaw, following the line up to your ear as he whispered, “But that's half the fun." His soft inhale of your perfume made him close his eyes, “like unwrapping a present.”
He did want to pull away, not even to undress himself, half rumpled coat caught in the crook of his elbows, sweater pushed half up his stomach, jeans low on his hips, the band of his underwear hugging him just right. You could see it all over him, that desperation kissed along his creased brow, the look of a man who would go to the ends of the earth for one glimpse of you, even if it was through the mist of a heavy mirage.
So when you led him up the stairs, he followed, stumbling all the way after you, stopping at the door to watch the way you fell back on the neatly made bed, sitting up on your elbows. It was a memory that was tattooed into his mind, the way you spilled out on the sheets for him. You took up all the space in his mind, so much so that if anyone walked into the room of his brain you would be the first person they turned to see, that image of you in the sand, in the sheets of this bed, or his own, hung up on the wall like a recall of every good time the two of you shared.
Soobin dropped his coat, grabbing the back collar of his sweater to tug it over his head, not caring where any of it landed when the straps of your bra were slipping from your shoulders, just barely keeping the thin material in place over your chest. “God, I love you so fucking much,” the words bubbling up out of his lips like a confession he hadn't felt slip, his voice dropping into a needy groan as you rolled your hips.
“Prove it,” your chin lifted, smile biting into him as he sank to his knees at the edge of the bed, his hands sliding up your thighs, fingers curling around the waistband of your jeans, already unzipped and unbuttoned, showing the fine lace of your panties. He would be right at the foot of the bed till the end of time, proving his love, his desperation, his devotion, to you if you had asked.
He was slow to drag the fabric down your legs, your hips lifting to help him get it off of you. Placing one of your ankles on his shoulder, he kissed your calf, trailing up your skin as you leaned forward to brush his hair back from his brow. He wanted to take his time on you, spend all night pulling every little sound he could from the depths of your soul, make you just as flushed and flustered as he always felt when wrapped up in you. And you would let him, your thighs widening slightly just for him to nip at the soft plushness of them.
Your quiet whimpering encouraged him, his cheek pressed to your leg, he reached out to press his thumb over your clit, circling just enough to make your head roll back. “How could someone be this perfect?” and it was the raw honest curiosity in the question that made your heart flutter. The look he casts on you leaves no room for you to be shy. He would not take any head shakes of contention, not when you were already trying to push your hips closer to his fingers, wanting him as thoroughly as he wanted you.
He did not stop his teasing, the slow circles building you up at just the pace he wanted before he pulled away. Your whine was short-lived when he slipped his fingers right into you, smiling at the way your lashes fluttered for him. You tried to close your knees at the feeling, but he had wedged himself perfectly to keep you spread, one arm wrapped around the underside of your leg propped up on his shoulder.
Your eyes screw shut when his mouth falls down to your clit, kissing so softly like a thank you. His hum of approval at your gasp runs along your spine. He leisurely keeps his fingers pumping into you, kisses soft and barely there, content with making you messier, taking his time. There is no room for embarrassment with how wet you are, your hips trying to chase his mouth, needing more pressure, needing more attention.
The desperation is written out in the way you pull him forward, hand cupping the back of his head until you can feel his grin teasing you. He does not make you wait long, your orgasm so close to the surface with his lips greedy to please you, sucking and toys with your clit, fingers building up their speed before he curls them. The pressure makes your thighs tremble around him, your body too weak to keep up, you fall back, arching off the bed with a low whine cumming as he hums against your clit.
Your chest rises and falls with each breath you try to grasp, your hand leaving his head to place over your heart, feeling the way it beats erratically behind your ribs. He kisses back up your leg, leaning his cheek on your knee, watching the way you are nearly spilling out of your bra, face flushed, with your cunt still fluttering around his fingers, he keeps in place to draw out your high. “You're so pretty like this, just a mess over me.”
Soobin's lips are kissably reddened now as he leans down, blowing cool air along your pussy glistening with aerosol, your body jolts at the stimulation barely provided and proving your sensitivity. You're whining at the pout of his face, at the feeling of simultaneously being filled but not enough. His name is drawn out on a whisper as your hips pick back up their grinding, chasing another orgasm as if you had even recovered from the first. “More, please, I need more,” the words just above a whisper.
“More?” It's the tilt to his head that does it, his examination of your body laid out, not cynical but teasing, “Do you think I'll even fit?” he reaches out with his free hand, sliding up your side, pressing down on your pelvis, “Could you take all of me?”
You don't even care if you've had sex before, that he's asked these same questions and got the same answer. Your body was made for him, and yet the words always made you weak in the knees, mind going fuzzy, body aching to have him as deep as he could go. “Please.”
Your whispered plea was a direct line to his cock, already leaking beads of pre-cum and straining in his jeans. He had tried hard to last, to keep his mind, his hips grinding against the edge of the mattress, looking for some form of relief and finding little. He pulled his hands from you, loved the way you sounded as you pulled your knees in together while he stood.
He groaned deep in his throat at the taste of you, cleaning off your wetness from his fingers before undoing his belt, the clinking of the metal making you sit up. You watched the way he slowly undid his button, the outline of him devastatingly mouth-watering as he pushed his jeans down his waist. You reached behind you to unhook your bra, tossing the fabric as he freed himself.
You had never gotten over the size of him, not when the sight provoked your body to clench around nothing, your mind wondering exactly how he did manage to fit. The length of him twitching in his hand as he loosely tugs, your eyes following the movement until you're squirming, watching the way his thumb swirls along his tip. You instinctively widen your legs at the sight, free hand not twisted in the sheets, reaching up to pinch at your nipple, drawing his eyes right where you wanted him.
He can't help himself from climbing on top of you, pushing your hands away to cup your breasts, and peppering kisses along the thin skin. He drags his teeth down to your pebbled nipples, biting and tugging on them until you're whining under him, hips working against his because he's so close to slipping right into you with his cock pressed flush against your cunt. But he doesn't care, not when he's leaving marks along your skin, kissing up your chest until he's back to your lips.
Leaning up, he has his cock laid against your stomach, the length of him high enough to reach your belly button, “look at how deep I'll be in you,” his words a mix of awe and lust as you reach up to twist your fingers in his hair. And when he finally presses into you, he catches your gasp right in his mouth, swallowing it down as he resists pushing in too fast. He can only go as far as the tip before he has to pull back out to try again, taking his time when you're whining at the sheer stretch you feel when he inches in so slowly.
You're clenching around him, trembling and needing him closer. His groan pressed right to your ear when he finally bottoms out, free hand falling to your hip to try and get you to stay still so your body can adjust. “Fucking perfect,” he's muttering, kissing behind your ear as you say his name, lost in a dreamy haze as you melt for him. But your impatience is building the longer he just stays still, his hair held tight in your hands as you attempt to move your hips, but he had you pinned against the mattress under his weight, until you’re desperate enough to beg with tears building at the corners of your eyes.
It's when he finally moves that has you clawing at him, nails scratching down his back enough to leave red marks along his skin. He goes so slow at first, dragging his hips back so that you feel the veins of him, feel the way he just leaves his tip in before he's pushing right back in, building up a pace that leaves you right on the edge of insanity.
Your gasp is twisted into a shocked moan when he moves his hand from your hip and presses down on your pelvis, your body seizing around him while he applies pressure to the bulge of his cock inside you, “you feel that?” but you can't answer, mind a mess, words spilling from you incoherently while you tighten around him, “made just for me,” his voice throaty as he says it against your neck, kissing along the mark he'd made.
He's intoxicated by the way you react, hips dragging just right so that he can feel the way he's bumping just the right spot to make you tremble. Because you're shaking under him, legs widening before he reaches down further to circle at your clit. “Wait,” you're gasping because you can feel the knot in your stomach tightening to the point of breakage, so close to coming undone that you want him closer to keep you together because you know the second you cum, you’ll be falling apart, melting into the mattress without hope.
But Soobin is lost, drowning in the ocean of his desire, finding it harder to keep his moans at bay, lips greedy as they taste the vibrations of your whimpers along your throat. Addicted to the way your body feels against his, the way you draw out the rawest form of himself. And the words bubble up without him realizing what he's saying, the question, demand, plea falling out as he keeps up his pace, hips lulling you to your cresting orgasm, bodies chasing their highs without shame.
“Marry me,” he gasps, breath fanning over your ear.
You almost don't catch it, the words washing over you but not sticking until he says it again, “marry me,” the desperation laced between each syllable. You pull him closer, his hand once holding him up now falling to your leg, dragging up the back of it before hooking behind your knee to stretch you wider, allowing his hips to sink deeper.
The slight change of angle sends a ripple of pressure through your body, cunt fluttering around him before you're cumming, nails digging into his back, body trembling as he lays his weight on you. The rumbling of his moans pressed right against you as he buries his face into your neck, following right along with you as he cums. His stuttering hips stop as he presses in deep, so much farther now like this, spilling his warm cum into you in hot spurts.
He doesn't pull out as he kisses along your skin, a fine layer of sweat coating both of your bodies. And it's between the heavy breathing that he slowly pumps into you again, your soft whine at the slight overstimulation making him chuckle. He pulls back, hand dropping your leg as he finally pulls out, dipping his nose to yours, kissing away your whimper when you feel the warm gush of your combined release spill out after his absence.
You push your fingers into his hair, tucking the strands behind his ear. His cheeks flushed when he put his forehead to yours, kissing the tip of your nose. Soobin was clingy in the best of ways, trying to catch the pattern of your breathing to line up with his. His lips to your pulse, counting each flutter of your heartbeat as if it were a prayer he would have to recite later by memory. And as much as he would love to lie in your arms, melting into one on top of the duvet, he never missed cleaning you up.
And it was only when he pulled away that you started to think about what he had said. The words came back the second that he had flicked on the glowing white lights of the bathroom, like it had only taken that one bulb to turn on for you to finally realize what he had said in the heat of the moment. Marry me. Whispered like a confession instead of a plea, as if he had already known your answer, because you knew exactly how the two of you felt about each other. There was no doubt in your mind, at least not until he wasn't in the room.
He had kissed you, held you, and walked off, leaving you on the sheets with those words hanging in the air, in the light now shining directly onto your relationship. You were caught in your own thinking when he came back with a warm rag, his hand soft on your legs to pull you out of your mind. “You okay?” His question was soft, just for the two of you, a welcome reprieve from the way you turned those words over again and again; marry me, marry me, marry me.
It was not the idea of marrying him that had thrown you off, but how he had not instantly brought it back up. Soobin was a shy mess of emotions most of the time, questioning himself and if he was ‘too much’ in the relationship, unless he was grasping out at avoidance, hoping and praying you hadn't heard him. And it was that which had caught you in the webbing of worry. That maybe, just maybe, he hadn't meant to say it at all, or maybe he had and was worried about how you would take it.
You didn't know how to say it, bring it up only for him to get flustered, enough so that he confessed your deepest worry. The one where he hadn't meant it, the one where he said it was in a moment of weakness, that he didn't want to marry you, and the words had just slipped out.
“I'm okay,” you tried to blink away your thoughts, shake your head ‘yes,’ but all you seemed to be able to do was shake your head ‘no.’
But Soobin could see the lie for what it was. The cover-up was a half done job of deception as he cleaned you up and kissed your skin again like an apology. “Are you sure? Was I too much?”
He stood there, brows pulled together, looking at you with his puppy dog worry, his trip to the bathroom giving him the time to pull on his underwear, leaving you feeling exposed only because you felt like confessing your line of thinking was going to have you set out before the two of you, raw. “No, never,” and it was the truth because it was in that moment that you realized even if it would break your heart to know he didn't want to marry you, you would still swallow it down to be with him.
You looked past him to the pile of clothes on the floor, his eyes following until he picked up his sweater, the discarded lace panties still tucked in with your jeans. He picked them up, tugged his sweater over your head, and gave you the space to pull yourself together a bit. It felt so much more intimate letting him watch you pull on your underwear than letting him take them off.
His sweater was still warm from his skin, bringing you comfort to drop the question down between the two of you before you could take it back. “Did you mean it?” The four words tossed out on the bed like a spilled glass of wine, soaking into the air until it was thick with your worry and his confusion. You bit your inner lip, absentmindedly picking at your nails avoiding looking at him like it would be written on his face before he had a moment to hide what he really meant.
“What?” he was caught, not in the way you had been worried about, but in genuine puzzlement over the question itself, and that way you looked on the verge of tears, ready to shatter with his next words like stones on a carefully cleaned glasshouse.
“When you…” The words stuck in your throat, lost in your lungs, dying on what felt to be your last breath, “When you said marry me, did you mean it?”
You looked up, facing your fear with a shovel in hand to bury his rejection deep, the moment you saw the truth written out, even if it didn't match his soft words, to try and cover it up. But he did not look panicked or pitiful, like you had already painted your mind to believe he would be. No, he looked caught, a boy, a mess of innocence who had been asked to explain why in his dreams he reached out for desires unimaginable.
Because he had not realized he had said the thoughts on his mind, tucked a confession in between passion and pleasure like it was a bookmark between pages of a moment, and not a moment he should have written an entirely different story of. And now you were looking at him like it tore you apart to ask, the words a steel blade to his careful plans. He had planned it all out, thought about it the whole train ride over, a whole week, a month, even the moments you had spent right there out on the beach that day you two had met, because he had been sure then, and he was so sure now.
And he had ruined it with loose lips and a mind made of mush because he couldn't help himself when it came to you, and he didn't know how to apologize for ruining his grand proposal without even having realized he had let the words slip in the first place. “Of course I meant it, i-i-” he was hot all over, from his ears down to his neck, hand jumping to his hair to calm himself because this wasn't the way it was supposed to be, not here but on the beach where you two had met, in the snow, together on the lonely sand made less lonely when you had each other.
“Soobin-” because now, watching the way he was panicking, stumbling to find the words to fix the moment, you felt silly for worrying, silly for bringing it up because you should have known, and you did, it was only your fear blurring your sanity.
“No baby, I'm so sorry, I didn't even realize I said it, of course you would freak out, and I just walked off like it was nothing-” he was pacing, thinking over only the few passing minutes after the two of you were done, and analyzing them, “fuck and I said it twice,”
And you couldn't help but laugh, the sound a bubble holding all your pent up fear until it popped, dissipating as he looked at you and chuckled all the same because it was silly and something only he seemingly could have done. “It's okay,” you giggled, nerves settling down, now ready to shake yourself for negative thoughts when he had never done anything to make you doubt him. “Truly, Soobin, it's okay.”
But he pouts no less, sinking to his knees at the edge of the bed as if he hadn't just been there, pressing his face into your bare thighs to try and quell his embarrassment. His arms wrap around your waist as he mutters against your skin, “I wanted it to be a surprise.” You're caught in your place, looking down at him, your hand in his hair, scratching along his scalp in the same way you used to lull him to sleep on late nights.
As much as you had thought about him not wanting to marry you, it hadn't crossed your mind that he had wanted to do it then, that if he had meant to say it, it had only been in practice but not a question for you to answer any time soon. “What?”
He turned his cheek, looking up at you with his chin on your knee, before sitting back on his heels at the look on your face. Because you were searching again for something he couldn't quite decipher, eyes flickering over the bridge of his nose like you were full of disbelief.
The plan had been the beach, nothing fancier than the waves and sand, the lighthouse right on the hilltop, with the snow all around. Him on his knee, awkwardly stumbling through a speech while sinking under his weight, blinking to keep the hair from his eyes. He could see it like it had always been meant to happen, like a memory he had uncovered and needed to replay. But it didn't matter where he did it when all he wanted was to spend it confessing the truth of his love to you, because he couldn’t keep it in, and here was perfect all the same.
“I even got you a ring,” he leaned over, reaching out on the floor for his coat, fumbling in the pockets for the little velvet box he had been carrying around for far longer than he cared to admit, trying to build up the courage.
He was trembling, your gasp making him nervous in ways he had never expected. He knew how scary it would have been to ask you, but the words had already slipped out, and even in knowing you would more than likely say yes, he still had a devil on his shoulder saying otherwise. But it was laying himself bare before you that made his stomach twist in knots, not because he didn't trust you but because he was worried that he loved you too much, that you would look at him and see someone clingy in the worst ways, over emotional and searching for your love in a crowded room of passing affections.
“I was thinking a lot about what I would say and realized I'm not very good with words,” he said with a short chuckle, trying to laugh off the tremor in his voice. It took a moment for him to look up at you, your fingers curled in the hem of his sweater, the one he had pulled onto you to try and find some way to bring you comfort.
Now, you have tears in your eyes. Vision blurry as you looked down on him, dressed in nothing but his underwear, hair a mess of tousled strands, with shaking hands and stammering words. “I wanted to ask you in the place that I first realized I wanted to marry you, the place I knew you were the one. It's kinda silly to be scared now because even if I knew that first day that you would be the only one I could see myself buying a ring for, it's impossible not to be. Because I love you with everything in me. I love my friends, my family, my bed, and still, I never realized love, real love, felt like this. And I feel it in a new way when I'm with you, I read books, I watched movies, I saw how my parents were with each other, and I wanted affection, but I didn't think much of it past just being an emotion people shared,”
“But when I met you, I felt so seen. I didn't have a crush; those words feel so childish because my love for you, my feelings for you, are bigger than anything I can pinpoint in the world. When I say you're made for me, I don't mean it in a possessive way, I mean it in a, I was put on this earth to love you, kinda way. Because when I'm with you, when I'm not, I ache. I think about how lucky I am to have you when you're here, and burn when you're not, and it feels bigger than the both of us, and that is scary, but also very comforting because it only tells me that you are the one,”
“My life didn't feel like it had started until I met you, and I can't think of any other person whom I would rather spend the rest of my life with because you are mine, someone i would never be able to forget, someone i want to spend hours with on this beach, sipping tea, and reading books, sleeping in with, and loving forever, doing exactly what i know i was put here for. So I'll ask again, properly this time, will you marry me?”
He opened the little box, the ring perfect and hardly seen through your tears as you nodded, not caring how you looked and just needing to be closer to him. There was no space at the foot of the bed, but you found a way to wedge yourself into it when you threw your arms around him, face pressed into his neck, the words still on your lips as you said them again and again, “yes, a million times yes,”
The grin he had plastered on his face hurt his cheeks, dimpled, and stuck with the swell of his happiness. Neither of you cared that you were on the floor, your hand shaking just as badly as his had been, and it only made him bite back a giddy laugh. Because he was slipping the ring he had picked so long ago onto your finger, twisting the silver band until it rested just right to place the diamond on display. He kissed your still trembling fingers right along your knuckles before pulling you back in to hold.
It felt a bit surreal the next morning when the sun was filtering in through the gauzy curtains. The diamond caught the light as you held your hand up in front of you, the smile heavy on your lips, Soobin’s body curved into yours, still sleeping soundlessly. You wanted to tell everyone, call up Kai just to gush about the moment, and spill the details of the love confession you had been waiting a lifetime for. Nothing felt half full, not now, not when it was so fresh in your mind.
“Do you like it?” Soobin’s sleep ridden voice caught you, his nose still tucked into your neck, his soft yawn pressed to your collarbone.
“I love it.” It didn't matter what the ring had looked like, not when you hadn't expected to ever be given one in the first place. You couldn't turn away from it, your eyes catching it with every passing moment after he had slipped it onto your finger. While you poured coffee, brushed your teeth, and pushed Soobin’s hair back behind his ears, you couldn’t stop yourself from thinking back to him, his words.
It made the house feel all your own, the two of you fitting in like testing the future life you would both share. And even when you made it back into the city, cut from the sea and salt stained air, your happiness followed after the two of you, bled into the monotonous parts of your day. His voice echoed in your mind while you stocked books at work, ‘you are the one,’ replaying over and over, your heart aching to get back home to him, even if it had only been a few passing hours since you had last seen him.
There had been love before, but there was something keenly different about coming back with a ring. Your friends who had known you two at the very start even looked on with softer eyes, truly happy smiles, while you shared over late night takeout, still wedged onto Soobin’s couch, holding your hand out to Yeonjun, giggling like you had shared your crush had slipped a note into your locker and not slipped a ring onto your finger.
“You two are disgustingly perfect for each other,” Beomgyu had joked, his teasing smile turning into something sappy, “I'm really happy for you two.”
It had been so good to bask in the light of your love, to think about what it would look like to see Soobin at the end of a long aisle. It had been easy to ask questions lying in bed late at night, your fingers grazing his cheek as the two of you whispered about wedding plans, flowers, tables, chairs, dresses, and friends. But each night that hazy state of readiness slipped from just a feeling into a blurry question of when.
It had been slow, a passing of time that felt natural to share while engaged, the planning light, dates set and passed without much worry when you were both busy and didn't make things set in stone. It didn't scare you, and neither of you pushed to plan past the late night dreams and pillow talk. And even when the ring had been sitting on your finger for longer than a year with no plans made, you didn't let it bother you.
Or you tried not to.
Soobin did not love you any less, neither of you felt any different, but the weight of the ring began to feel heavy when every new question was swept under a rug you hadn't seen being placed right at the front door of your relationship. You could shrug it off just as easily as it was to brush anything away from your mind, waving your hand at the light teasing remarks made by your friends, coworkers. But each passing word was a stone hitting against your ribs until it was hard not to see the bruising starting to bloom.
“Do you guys just not have a date in mind?” Kai had asked when it was just the two of you out.
“Not really,” you didn't want to look up from the rack of clothes you were distracting yourself with, mindlessly pushing each hanger aside without looking at the shirts.
“Are you…nervous about marrying him?” The question traveled along your skin like a bug you were trying fast to swat away.
“No-it's not- we just never really talk about it,” you felt weird to say it aloud, to confess something you were holding in when you felt it to be small. Because it would be a lie to say you hadn't been thinking about the passing time, that each month that went by, where you talked less about a wedding and slipped back into boyfriend and girlfriend and not fiancés, pained you.
But it felt small because Soobin was seemingly happy with the wait, happy to sit in a still frame instead of moving color. And nothing was wrong, you had not fought, you had not felt him pull away, it was just stagnant, a ring but with no follow through. You didn't want to seem greedy, you had a man, a devastatingly devoted man who kissed you every morning on the cheek after making you a cup of coffee, who followed you around like a love sick puppy, made time and space for you in his day not because you had asked but because he had confessed to not being able to live without you.
But it brought you right back to that feeling in the bed, the one where you sat and told yourself it was okay to swallow down his not wanting more, just so that you had enough of him. You had felt in some way that he had slipped up with his question, caught him too soon, and now, with plans half made, you could not help but think again about him not being ready. And that was okay, you knew it was, you loved him more than a marriage, but it didn't stop you from aching.
“You don't talk about it? Like ever?” You didn't have to look up to know his brows were scrunched, his slight frown working on his lips to pull you to backtrack.
“Well, kinda, I bring it up occasionally, and he always says, ‘we don't have to be married just yet to be in love, we just are,’ and it's very sweet, and he kisses me, and you know I get distracted, and it's just a cycle.” but even that feels like running, the truth heavy on your heels as you lie, “and it's not that big of a deal, he's right, we love each other, we’re just playing by ear,”
“So married…five years after the engagement is likely? Asking so I can possibly get a week off of work and not just a sneaky sick day,” but Kai's joke misses its landing, the words a piano on a string, hanging over your head with no room for you to move away.
Five years was a long time, and you were already struggling with the one year long engagement as it was, and each day, Soobin made it less clear on his direction with the casual wave of his relaxed words. While he was stretching out in the room of your relationship, you felt the walls moving in, not all at once, not enough for you to see, but it was as if the ring had moved every piece of furniture one inch over and you kept almost missing the your seat each time you tried to sit down next to him. You could get used to the room again, you're sure of it, but in five years with no wedding, you're sure the walls would be tight.
The conversation followed you all the way home, like the words had been stones you were forced to swallow, and now they turned in your stomach. Each passing second you sat alone on the couch waiting for Soobin to get back. You had tried to busy yourself, showering until the water ran cold, brushing your teeth once, twice, tugging on Soobin's sweater, trying and failing to calm your racing mind because he wasn't there to quell it.
There had been cracks already spider webbing along the windows of the little glass house you kept neatly placed around your relationship. Each one starting from your own worries, easy to ignore when no one else talked about it, but the conversation with Kai had only turned you to look at the glass, run your finger along the seam, and question if you were really okay.
And you weren't. The more you pressed that bruise, you thought you would get used to the pain, but you couldn't, and you knew well enough that it was wrong to sit in silence and leave Soobin in the dark. He had done nothing wrong, and you knew, telling him, asking him the questions directly on why the two of you were waiting would only help and not hurt.
But keeping it in would hurt. Every time he made those small comments, as if you were already married felt like a reminder that you weren’t. So you talked yourself into it, paced the living room, sat down on the couch, and stood right back up to pace again. It was how Soobin had found you biting at the skin around your nails halfway to standing when he kicked off his shoes. “You okay, baby?” He dropped his bag, suit still neatly pressed even after spending all day at the office, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose.
“I-” it had hit you then, the twisting nausea once mistaken for worry over a conversation long coming, now sinking into something swift and unforgiving. Your mouth filled with saliva, your feet carried you to the bathroom before you fell to your knees to throw up.
It was fast and upsetting enough to bring tears to the corners of your eyes. The back of your hand wiped at your mouth, Soobin's hand soft and warm on your back as he rubbed soothing circles, your first instinct to whine, “No, you can't watch me be sick.”
“It's okay, in sickness and in health, right? You can’t scare me off that easily,” and although the words are supposed to make you feel better, they only serve as a reminder of why you were pacing in the first place. Because it felt a bit like unintentional teasing, like you were right on the cusp of knowing the joke but not being able to fully digest it. But it was only in your mind, because Soobin cared enough to buy you a ring, to profess his love, over and over again.
You shouldn't worry, the statement repeated in your mind until it was nearly a reality. It shouldn’t matter if you got married within the year or the next five; it only matters if he loves you. And he does, enough so that he kisses your sweaty temple, and helps you stand on wobbly legs to lean against the sink while he preps your toothbrush so you can feel clean again. How could you wallow in your insecurity when he's done everything to show you he loves you, married or not? Wasn’t it greedy to beg him for a wedding when he had done everything he could to love you right?
And while you rinsed out your mouth, he kept his hand on your lower back, keeping you steady, watching you in the mirror as you brushed away the tears you had been building. “Were you feeling bad all day?”
“No,” at least not enough to get sick over, “it just hit me all of a sudden, I don’t know, I've never felt like that before, at least not without having something bad to eat first,” you sat at the lip of the tub, fingers pressed lightly into your eyes, mind working over the last things you had eaten.
“Maybe you're just getting sick, you've been sleeping in a lot lately, like when you got the flu.” Soobin got down on his knees in front of you, hands sliding up your thighs, rubbing in warmth with the pads of his thumbs, “I could go and get you some medicine, something to settle your stomach if it's still feeling upset,”
You let out a weak whine, pained over your line of thinking for hours, twisting you into knots when Soobin hadn't even brought a ribbon into the equation. You wanted to kick yourself. “No, you just got home, I don't want you to have to go back out.” You dropped your hands down to his, the bathroom light catching the diamond on your finger, “It's probably just my period coming, I'll be fine.”
He was looking up at you, brows knit in his gentle concern, ready to go out even after a long day, just to make sure you were okay, and you were worrying about him setting a date. You felt sick, but only because he was too sweet for you and your worrying mind. “I don't mind the trip, it's right on the cor-”
“No, not tonight, I'm feeling a bit better, it was just a wave of nausea, no need to worry,” you threaded your fingers into his hair, messing up the neat style he tried to keep for work. “Thank you,”
He rolled his eyes, playful and annoying, “Don’t thank me,” he sat up straighter, leaning in, “just give me my welcome home kiss, you missed it earlier,” but you turned your cheek, his lips falling to your jaw.
“No, I’ll get you sick-” but it didn't stop him, his lips falling again and again onto your cheek, down the bridge of your nose, right on the edge of your mouth.
“You just told me you felt better,” he said between each peck, his smile felt along your skin while you wrapped your arms around him, letting him pull you into the circle of his arms. “And a little sickness isn't going to gross me out when I love my girlfriend,”
Girlfriend. The word hit you as bittersweetly as honey flavored cough syrup, but you swallowed it down anyway because he cared to share it with you. And when he kissed you, you kissed him back, pushing past his work blazer and helping to unbutton and untuck his shirt. Not caring that you had already showered when he pulled you in after him, letting him scrub away your worries, kiss them away from your water drop speckled shoulders.
And when both of you were done, dried and laid out on the couch, waiting for the takeout order you had sent in, you couldn’t even remember why you had been worried in the first place. But it wasn't until you opened the takeaway box filled with rice that your nausea came back, the wave of it making your head feel light on your shoulders, with a chill down your spine.
Soobin had been next to you on the couch, chopsticks holding his next bite of food up, his cheeks already stuffed as he watched you run back to the bathroom.
You hardly had anything left to throw up in your system, but it didn't stop your body from tying. And when Soobin's hand was back to rubbing comfort between your shoulder blades, you wanted to cry again. “No, go back to eat, don't worry-”
“No, it doesn't bother me, let me take care of you.” Each word pulled the tears right from you, your emotions overwhelmed with having thrown up, feeling like a little kid at the edge of their bed, needing someone, but not knowing how to call out for them. “It's okay, baby.” he kissed the tear on your cheekbone, “I'll go get you something, okay? I'll be quick,”
It was only after you were done brushing your teeth again for the fourth time that you realized there was another possibility, Soobin pressing a swift goodbye kiss to your temple, already having his coat shrugged on to head out, when you reached out for him. “Could you pick up a pregnancy test?” You’d have gone with him if the word hadn’t made your limbs feel numb all over again, “just to make sure.”
“Okay,” he breathed the word out, let it hang on his lips like he was still trying to understand what you had asked him, but he could see the slight twinge of panic on you and didn't want to freak you out. “And I'll get crackers cause you still need to eat something,” he kissed you again, right at the crease of your worrying brow, “it's okay, I'll be right back, and we'll be fine.”
You watched the door close behind him, your hands shaking as you twisted them together, tugging on your fingers as if that could pull your anxiety fright from them. You could picture the way the two of you had been curled in the sheets, his whispered kisses pressed to the shell of your ear as he hummed, “I don't want anything to change.” you don't know why you picked that memory of all of them to think of while sitting at the edge of your shared bed waiting for him to come back.
Soobin's panic was not felt until he stood right in front of the rows of pregnancy tests, the pink, blue, and white boxes all lined up, warping his emotions into something masquerading as confusion, as if his body knew that's what he needed to lean into instead of worry. He had been here before with you, in well over two years of being together, you had experienced a pregnancy scare twice over, but never had you been sick before making the call to just pick one up just because. Never had you looked up at him like you almost knew the answer.
So he grabbed an array of boxes, all the colors, all the types, single packs and triple, carrying them to check out, watching them get scanned, and coming to terms with what he was feeling. Thought about how it would be to see any of the tests read negative, how it would be to find that it read positive. And it was only when he reached the door of your shared place and knew that in some way he would find himself sad to have you read out that it was negative, and when he pushed open the door to see you worrying, he wondered if you would feel the opposite. Because now while you turned the tests upside down on the bathroom counter, he couldn't help thinking about a baby with your smile, a small, dimpled cheek so easy to kiss when they giggled a laugh made from your love.
Both of you sat with your backs against the bathtub, your body half spilled onto his as he rested his chin atop your head, his cheek falling to your hair as you laid your hand against his stomach, counting his breaths instead of the seconds passing. “We will be okay,” he muttered, his hopeful smile trying to curve on his lips, but he didn't want to give too much away without knowing how you felt.
You were biting at the skin on your inner lip, thinking over all the outcomes, wanting more but fearing it was too much, because it was less about how you were currently feeling and how you would feel. That same game of chicken was playing out just like it had been in that bed in Montauk when he had asked you to marry him. And when you started to think about a baby, a real one with his kind eyes behind dark lashes, you couldn't stop yourself from seeing them in his arms.
But your stomach still hurt, the unknown origin muddling up your thoughts until the alarm you had set went off like someone had pulled a cord on your back to set your hands back to trembling, cupped in Soobins as he kissed along your knuckles, right against the ring he had put there with a promise to love you like he was made to.
He stood behind you, hand heavy on your hip as you lifted the first test, watching you in the mirror as you turned it over, your hand jumping to your mouth as you looked at the little pink plus sign, you reached back out, turning over each test you had decided to take, each one coming back with the same reading. You looked up at him, feeling flushed all over, both of you with tears in your eyes, and for only a second, you were worried, but that was washed away the moment he smiled, his laugh like a child's, pure and uncontrollable.
You two didn't need words, his kisses coming fast, his arms wrapped around your waist, spinning you around as you both giggled, your toes touching the ground only making you breathe out a sigh of shocked disbelief, that test still in your hands as Soobin guided it closer to his eyes. All teeth and dimples when he looked back at you, “God, I fucking love you,” and he was back to kissing you, his soft lips feeling like a thank you, like a confession, his cheeks wet as he started to cry, leaning his forehead on yours when he needed a breath, his palm falling right down to your stomach, his smile watery with his tears.
And you were crying too, crying more so when he got down before you, pushing up the sweater you wore, kissing right under your belly button, your fingers threading through his hair as he whispered right against your skin, “and I'm going to love you so, so, much,”
It didn't feel real for only as long as it took you two to make it to your appointment. The three days of waiting since the test felt as if they went by too slowly, the bubble of your joy encasing the two of you as you vibrated with your happiness. You didn't imagine it to be so hard to keep the positive test a secret, both of you deciding to wait at least until after you had seen the scans. But that first call with Kai felt like walking on a tight rope.
You had rushed to put the phone down, too worried that it would just jump from you in between casual conversation about the next time the boys would come over for dinner. Your hand fell to your stomach instinctively, even if you hadn't been showing since you were hardly far along. There wasn't even bloating, just the occasional nausea and heavy sleeping, missing alarms, and whining every time Soobin reminded you that you had to wake up with the sun.
But you had kept the secret just as well as he had, sealing your lips until you walked into the doctor's office. Soobin had called in to come in a bit later to work, your appointment made for your day off. Both of you sat in your seats in the waiting room, his knee bumping yours as he leaned closer to watch you fill out the forms needed. Your pen hesitates over the emergency contact information, wondering if you should check the little box for husband/spouse, or check the one for boyfriend/partner, under Soobin's name.
When you turned in the papers, it had been only a few minutes before they called the two of you back, the ultrasound room half dark with the soft lights from the machines and monitors. There had been little nerves until you were lying down in the bed, the paper crinkling under each movement you made, Soobin sitting on the stool next to you, holding your hand and bringing it up to kiss your knuckles.
In the half-lit room, it felt easier to confess, “I'm nervous,” when it was the two of you, your fingers toying with his, looking for anything to focus on besides your racing pulse.
“We’re okay and we are going to be okay.” his smile was a balm, his gaze falling over you in a way he had never once looked at you before. Your relationship was a ball of clay slowly being worked into new shapes as each day passed with this new information, as your body worked to grow a little physical form of your love. “I'm actually really excited right now, I feel like I just drank a tub's worth of coffee,” it would explain the way his leg bounced erratically, the thrum of it bumping against the bed like the hum of a car.
“You did have two cups this morning,” you chuckled, soaking in his excitement to try and mask your nerves.
“And I'm really excited to tell my mom,” he whispered like it was a secret, his smile eating at your heart, kissing your soul. “The boys too, I'm really excited to tell them. I've been fighting to keep it in, ignoring everyone.”
“I guess I am a little excited about that,” he kissed your hand again, keeping it in his grasp when the doctor came in, her soft smile and cheerful voice reflected in her words of congratulations.
It wasn't until she had placed the cold gel over your pelvis that she asked the question, “Married?” She had tilted her head as she said it, pulling out the wand for the scan, free hand working to click the keys on her keyboard to get started.
“Nearly,” Soobin had smiled, lifting your intertwined fingers to show off your ring. The word pressed like a weight on your chest, heart skipping a single beat, but there was little time for you to wallow in your insecurity when the doctor placed the wand to your skin, and the echo of waves filled the room around you.
Because that's what it had sounded like, the surf crashing in, pulling you into reality. The doctor's voice was a hum of sound, washed out and faded in the back of your mind as you listened in on the rhythmic swell of the ocean, “Congratulations, your baby has a very strong heartbeat,” she turned the monitor to face the two of you, finger extended out to point at the fuzzy black and white screen, “and here they are, about the size of a little sugar pea,”
It was your gentle sob that broke from you that made you realize the two of you were sitting silent, listening in on the sound of your love like someone had bottled that very moment on the beach, Soobin's toes wiggling and your laugh catching him enough to make him blush right there on the edge of the water where he had confessed his love and you found happiness.
And now both of you were crying, Soobin's laugh pressed to your knuckles, his eyes caught on the screen just as yours were, wet with joy you hadn't known would feel so sunsoaked in the bed of a hospital you'd never been to before. Nothing felt more important than that moment; nothing had felt more real. You wanted to reach down to lay the flat of your palm over the spot you knew them to be, to confess how scared you were, but never scared enough not to tell them how much you love them and would love them.
“They're so perfect,” Soobin sniffled, laughing at himself but not caring because he never knew exactly how happy he could be; how proud he could be for something as little as a heartbeat, but it wasn't little, it was a blanket wrapping around him, and instead of smothering, it was healing.
His fingers trembled as he held the printouts of the scans, the echo of their heartbeat tattooed along his skull. He had thought his life had changed seeing the test, holding you in his arms, telling you everything would work out, but he had been wrong. He had not known what it would be like to have his life truly changed.
Meeting you had felt as if everything was falling into place, like the two of you had always been a picture, and the years together had been the frame around you. But hearing the heartbeat of your baby, seeing them even as small as a little pea, had painted your picture in vivid color.
He loved you because it was the most natural part of himself; if he knew nothing, he at least knew that. Loving your baby was fixing parts of him he hadn't even known needed tending, not because they needed fixing, but just because they could. He cried on the phone with his mom, kissed you like he never wanted to stop, and texted the boys to meet you guys for dinner in the city.
And there in the circular booth of a restaurant that the six of you frequented too often, you shared the news. Held the little sonogram photos up, the golden lights reflecting off the glossy paper, but not enough to obscure the image.
Kai nearly choked on his drink, setting it back down on the table as he tried to clear his throat. Taehyun reached out for the pictures with wide eyes, needing a closer look, shocked into silence. Beomgyu gasped, mouth open in a soft O, leaning in to look at the pictures now in Taehyun's hands. And Yeonjun, sitting right next to you, pulled you into a hug. His warmth triggers your eyes to water, his kind words making the tears spill, “Congratulations,” and says for you to hear and no one else, “you're going to be the best mom.”
You sit back, cleaning at your eyes, laughing like he hadn't plucked his fingers along your heart strings to hum out the single line you wanted desperately to hear. It felt so hard to brush off all the emotions you were feeling as some kind of hormones when all you could picture in your head was spending the rest of your life friends with these very people, good men who would love your child like they were their own, singing songs, playing games.
It didn't matter how you changed because they would be there, giggling on the floor of your living room, spending nights together as a family none of you knew you had been searching for. And now it was only expanding, a seat opening up for a baby you all already loved more than you could form words for. It didn't matter about rings, promises, or distance, when all you needed was late nights like this where you sat at a table laughing over Yeonjun's cheeks being stuffed, and Beomgyus' tearful jokes. Nights where both Soobin and Kai bumped their heads on low doorways and tried to play it off. And nights where Taehyun and you watched laughing from the sidelines.
And tonight, when everyone went their separate ways at the base of the stairs at the subway station, they each held you a little longer when they hugged you goodbye, as if they were letting their comfort seep into your bloodstream just for the little added heartbeat that sounded like the ocean.
You hung the sonogram pictures up on the fridge, next to film strips of you and Soobin kissing cheeks at the aquarium, of Soobin and the boys all trying to mash themselves into one photobooth. And when the two of you had an off day, you stood in the kitchen, your favorite mug pressed to your lips as you looked at the little black and white photos. Soobin coming up behind you, hands warm and slipping under his shirt that you wore, palms heavy against your stomach like a hug. “Spend the day with me?”
“Did you imagine I had other plans on the schedule?” You melted into him, your head leaning right onto his shoulder.
“I just like to hear that you want to spend the day with me,” he kissed right along your temple, letting his lips ghost over the spot as he muttered, “preferably at the beach.”
Both of you knew it was always an option for the two of you, the train ride never one you felt like took too much time when you had the sand and sea waiting at the other end. So you packed a bag just for the day, sat knee to knee on the train, holding hands, watching the city disappear as you both made up fake baby names to see who could get the other to laugh first.
“I like the name rutabaga,” your lips fighting to break into a smile, Soobin's dimples fighting against the soft swell of his cheeks.
“Ruta-” he couldn’t help but laugh, losing as his teeth tried to sink into his bottom lip, “what even- how do you even spell that-”
“It's a vegetable,” you're giggling, the two of you trying to keep it down, your happiness sounding louder in the silent train car. “You seem to like to call them food names.”
“Only because the baby book we got says that right now they are the size of a blueberry, that's a cute name, baby blueberry.” It had been one of the first things he had picked up after walking you to work, slipping the small stack of baby books he had found on the counter. Every morning with his tea, he would sit down and flip through them, content with reading you quotes as you curled up next to him.
“That is cute,” you leaned back in your seat, hand over the button of your jeans, “little baby blueberry,”
And when the train pulled into the station, you walked hand in hand all the way down to the surf, following the same path you took time and time again. It was early enough for the sky to be washed in a grey blue haze, tipped in golden yellow where the sun tried to peek through the cover of the clouds. The lighthouse came closer and closer into view as you walked past the front of the beach houses, half empty and half full, as people started to come down for the early season.
Sitting right at the end of the row of houses was a single house with a sign in the yard, half tucked into its own space, being so far off from the others. Soobin tugged you to a stop, his hands clammy with nerves that you passed off as the warming weather.
He found it a bit embarrassing to still stumble into shyness around you, like he was still who he was before he met you, looking to impress you because he wanted all your attention. He would follow you till the end of the world with his puppy dog stare, circling around your head like a halo he had placed there. For a long time, he had planned this all out, longer than his plan to marry you; it felt like a package deal, like the house and the wedding were wrapped up together with a bow that would only be placed with your answering yes to his coming questions.
When he had proposed, it had been easy to see what he wanted next, to focus on the plans he had seen that second time on the beach when you had watched the fireworks and talked about the snow. Everything was working out, the listing for the house going up only days after the two of you had gone home from the proposal. He had debated it a lot, thought about your work and his, what it would be like truly to live out by the sea.
He wondered if it had only been a dream, something you joked about but never truly wanted, or worse, if you never truly wanted it with him, but you had said yes to his ring, said yes to life with him. So he had put in a bid on the house, looked into his savings, and wondered if it was a mistake or something you would both look back on with happiness.
And then he heard the baby's heartbeat, like a wave on the shore, the final sign telling him that dreams came true every day if you reached out for them and caught them like falling stars. Sometimes they slipped through fingers, and others they landed right in the palm of your hand, and all you had to do was hold on through the ride. So he held on, took the opportunity to look into buying the house, and now here he was with you.
It was on the same strip of beach as the one you had rented on his birthday. The long wooden walkway leading down to the sand, sun-bleached and surrounded by wispy, uncut grass. A wrap around porch already with a built-in swinging bench. The windows bare of curtains, the empty rooms waiting for all of the things you had packed away in your old room at Kais' apartment, all the things you both had picked up for Soobin's place. The two stories would hold the three of you, the baby's room already picked out, overlooking the lighthouse sitting on the cliff, just far enough to not wash the room in light all night long.
He had walked the place only once before putting in his bid, and saw his life playing out right between those walls, the hardwood creaking on the stairs enough to give the house character he was ready to remember.
His hand fell to the back of his neck, fingers trying to calm him in the way you did as he blushed, sharing what he had done. “I wanted to wait to tell you until it was all official. I wanted it to be a wedding gift, and now it's more of a…I don't know,” he tried to laugh, his lips pursing for a second as he looked at your face for confirmation that he wasn't overstepping, as if you hadn’t been dreaming of moments like this with him. “I want you to like it, and if you don't, we can always find a new place, you know, or stay in the apartment, find a bigger one in the city if you want.”
He took your shocked silence as denial, his rambling mouth working to find some way to redeem himself when he didn't need it at all, “my job said they could transfer me out here and i looked into schools and they all seem really good, they even have a after school program that takes them out for swim lessons in the warmer months. And I know that's a long time off, but I thought it would be good to look into and I know it's hectic in the summertime with tourists, but the house has enough rooms to invite the guys or family over and-”
You laughed, watery and unmistakably happy.
“Do you hate it?” because you were tearing up, looking up at him with eyes unreadable to him.
“You bought me a house on the beach where we met,” you whispered, trying to hold in as much as you could without spilling out in front of him like a bag of gems on a table. “How could I ever hate it when I love you so, so, so much?”
“Was it too much?” he reached out for you, thumb on your cheek, brushing along your skin, fingers pressed right under your ear.
“No, you're never too much,” because you didn't feel like you deserved a love like this, not when he made it so easy to love him, so easy to let yourself be loved in return. In a past life, you must have paid all your dues, worked day and night to finally make peace for this version of yourself, and you felt like your luck was running out. That one step to reach for more would break you in two instead of bending you. But if you had spent all your hard work to have someone like Soobin next to you, loving you, you had no reason to ask for more.
To live right there with the sea, with your little heartbeat, and the love of your life, you'd spend a million more lifetimes working to pay off whatever debt you must have been building. He took you to the front door, watching you as you looked around with wide eyes, hand squeezing his as you looked at all the empty space. A fireplace unlit, a wall of windows, a kitchen fit for holidays, and bedrooms made for life.
He had waited to sign the papers until you had seen the house, sharing the place in both of your names, keys hanging next to keychains you had bought at a gift shop down the street years ago. And only a week later you began packing, late nights spent deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Your names were written on boxes carried down the steps by the boys who had helped you guys. A truck rented that was large enough to fit your whole life in without you ever realizing how you had far too little and seemingly too much stuff.
The air is a mix of curse words and laughter, none of them letting you lift a thing, leaving you to tell them where to place boxes. The struggle of getting the mattress up the stairs was worse than when they had gotten it down the apartment's stairs. Taehyun and Yeonjun on either end, one always trying to go faster than the other, and neither of them listening to beomgyu, who insisted over and over again that Yeonjun was one misstep away from tripping and falling backward.
But Beomgyu was already lying out on the couch they had brought in earlier, leaning up on his elbows to shout from the living room as you and Kai unboxed the dinnerware in the kitchen. Soobin was laughing, the echo of the sound heard from all the way upstairs as he told them where to place the mattress. It was one of the last things that needed to be done; the sun only just started to set when you all decided to stay out on the beach.
Taehyun and you stayed back in the kitchen while the rest of them found something to kick around for a game. Earlier, you had paused in the day to pick up things for lunch and dinner just for the day, now you cut up the fruits they had picked, Taehyun happy to take up cooking the rest of the food. He hummed softly under his breath, the echo of the sizzling and chopping the soundtrack of your evening, before he asked without even looking up, “Are you happy?”
The question was not one that was full of concern but genuine curiosity, like he was only asking because he could see it on you. “I'm very happy,” because it was the truth, like you had been captured in a snow globe, only nothing could have shaken you to disrupt the image.
“I'm glad, I'm happy for you, I'm happy for him.” he left no room for anything else but his honesty, like he knew what it meant to you.
“Thank you for everything, the move, and bringing him to Montauk randomly one summer day.”
“Oh, don't thank me for that, any of it, I'm sure in some way you would have met and I would still be moving you two in here, maybe a little bit off from this timeline, but eventually. You two were made for each other,” he transferred his food onto plates as he said it, like it was something he didn't have to think twice about. “Should we call them in or just take it out there?”
“Let's take it out.” So you did, you carried the sides and fruits, setting them down on the beach towel you had put out with a few water bottles for them.
All of you sat down in the sand, knee to knee, listening to the waves like your little heartbeat was right there with you, the boys flushed from running around, eating like they hadn't had a feast for lunch. They all decided to stay until the morning, the lot of them driving the truck back to the city to drop it off. They asked about your new job at the little shop in town, and you told them about how you were going to miss the bookstore in the city, how your coworkers teared up and promised you always had your spot back if you changed your mind, but they knew it was falling on deaf ears.
Kai joked about being sad that his roommate was moving out, even though you hadn't spent a night at your old apartment in years. The six of you leaned back in the sand until the wind off the water started to feel a bit too chilly, your shiver felt in Soobin's arms as he held you. “Okay, let's go in; the boys have something to show you.”
“Me?” You press your hand to your chest, shocked that the night wasn't ending. And even when they took you upstairs to your little heartbeat's room, you didn't realize what you were seeing. You had believed it to be empty, your shopping not having been done just yet. But there, right under the little window looking out to the lighthouse, was a white wooden crib, a mobile of stars hanging down over the center of it like they had known your whole world needed the view of what they would look like in your eyes.
They all turned to you, holding their breath for your reaction, smiling when you pouted, “You guys just like to see me cry, huh?”
“Do you like it?” Kai looked at you so hopefully, his boyish smile breaking out as you nodded, “I love it so much.”
“We researched to find the best one,” Taehyun clarified, “even the mattress and sheets.”
“It was a bitch to build, I pinched three of my fingers,” Yeonjun said, holding up his hand, the tips of three slightly pinker than the others.
“It was only so hard to build because he couldn't follow directions,” Beomgyu interjects. He throws his arm around your shoulder, tugging you into the safe space of his side, like he knew you needed someone there to hold you even for a second, “But don't cry, we even checked to make sure it was eventually done right, Taehyun tested it out.”
“You put Taehyun in the crib?” You giggled at the thought, wiping at your cheeks even when you felt as if you had a million more tears to shed.
“He is baby sized,” Beomgyu shrugs, only feeling brave enough to say it with you blocking him from Taehyun's swift hit.
“We are only a few centimeters off from each other; you act like I'm on the floor in comparison.” he rolls his eyes.
“Thank you guys, truly this is perfect,” but it doesn't feel like enough, like no thank you will even make up for all the good things they have put into your life. And when they go home the next morning, you ache to watch them go, to see them waving goodbye from the driveway of your new life. You had told Soobin to make it a point to invite them often, to tell them never to think they are not welcome over, because you would miss not having easy access to weeknight laughs over video games and takeout.
If you had known what was coming, you wonder if you would have told him you wanted to stay in the city. But there was no way of knowing, not when your last days of happiness were spent wrapped up in Soobin, the two of you lying out on the beach, falling asleep under the sun, half hidden by the umbrella you had set out.
You listened to the sound of the waves like you were back in that ultrasound room listening to your little heartbeat. Your love for both your baby and Soobin was so sun-warmed that it soaked into you as you rested on the beach towels you had spent so long rolling into the perfect position to sit up, slightly elevated. Soobin lying sprawled between your legs, arms circling your waist, his ear pressed to your barely there bump as if the sea was their lifeline, your fingertips tracing hearts and stars on his sun-kissed back, warm and lulling him to sleep when you moved on to threading your fingers into his hair.
This was to be your life, happy and quiet on the beach, humming as the sun set over the horizon. Days spent with Soobin's lips on your skin, reminiscing about the time you went skinny dipping, the time when he had kissed you under the sprinkling snow, and yelled across the streets of New York to ask you when you worked next.
You had spent those first three months of your pregnancy happy. With Soobin's lips pressed to just under your belly button, whispering to your baby like they would talk back, pressing his ear to that barely there swell and humming in response like he already knew their answers. The two of you unpacking slowly because you will have enough time later since you planned on spending a lifetime raising your family between those walls.
Every kiss to your ring finger felt more like a promise and not a placeholder. You couldn't find it in yourself to stress over a wedding when everything was already falling into place. Because he had done what you wanted, he was committed to you, wedding or no wedding. Your baby would grow up loved, and that's all you truly needed.
But that morning, you had felt the first faint undercurrent of pain.
You wonder if you should have known what was coming. That hazy calm before the storm wrapped around you, blinding you enough so that you ignored that first unsteady sway of the boat you sailed on. Only a day away from four months, the first morning you had woken up with the sun and not after it, Soobin still curled around you in bed instead of being the first one awake, trying to sneak away to get ready for work without waking you. The window had been left open just a bit to let in the fresh air, the gauzy white curtains you had picked out blowing in the soft breeze coming off the water. You watched the way the sun filtered in, catching the specks of dust in the air, and listened to the way the surf hit the shore and how the seagulls chirped.
Soobin nuzzled in close to you, pressed his nose right to your pulse point, humming low and content with the warmth of the bed, your body. You didn't need to be up until midday when you and Soobin had plans to grab lunch with Beomgyu and his family. The lot of them renting a house down the road from your own, spending the weekend capturing what had captured you after your first train ride out to the beach.
It was just warm enough for tourists to start pouring in; the tables of every restaurant and café were packed full. But you all had grabbed your food to-go and found a spot near the docks to watch the boats take off.
All of it felt normal, easy, happy, no twinge of foreshadowing staining the edges of your picture. Not even when you waved goodbye to Beomgyu and his family as they walked in the opposite direction from your home and towards the lighthouse. Soobin kissed your head, your hands interlocked, swinging between you two while you held your shoes in your free hands, feet digging into the sand with each step, making you go slower as you watched the water.
“It feels like I'm exactly where I want to be, like I could die right now, I'm just…happy,” Soobin mutters when you're back in bed that night, looking at you in the moonlight with eyes shining, tracing the planes of your face like he was feeling them under his fingertips, following the slop of your nose, the curve of your bottom lip. “I love you so much,” like a prayer said in a confessional, whispered as if it were caught in candlelight and hope. “Nothing could ever change that.”
You had fallen asleep happy, a vase filled with water, a tapestry yet to unravel. And there, the moment you had let hide behind your ignorance, danced to life with one careless glass-shattering swoop, unweaving your endearing dreams.
It had been the sound of the faucet that woke him, the deafening rush of it like an omen whispered off the wind. His stomach had fallen, sinking down in a sea of worry over nothing more than faintly warm sheets, like everything had been fine only a few fleeting minutes ago. His arm was still under your pillow, body curved around the shape of you, except there was nothing but a few spots of blood where you should have been.
The yellowing light from under the bathroom door washed over the carpet, mingling with the moonlight. And even now, Soobin can't help but question that if he would have known what was waiting for him, would he have been able to respond differently. Mold the part of himself that fell into unwavering silence and devotion into something that could have made you stay, that could have brought you back to him.
But he could not undo the past, only erase it, and if there was anything he had wanted to erase, it was that pain; the agony of his loss, yours. And yet down deep inside of himself, he must have remembered that moment, almost as clearly as he had remembered the first time you had met, with his feet sinking into the sand, his heart on his sleeve, and the sea sounding like a lifeline, like a memory, like hope.
He would have fallen to his knees for you then, just as he did there on the bathroom floor, speckled with red and tears, your hands trembling like a caught moth between his, your ring cutting into his palm as you mixed your water-stained words, the cocktail like a shot to his nervous system. “It hurts.”
“It's okay, it's going to be okay-” but he hadn't known if that was true, the words feeling like a lie as they sank to the floor, his arms pulling you in as if that would stop the bleeding, stop the hurt. He would have done anything to take it away, shell-shocked into action, your phone turned downward on the tile as if it had slipped from your hands the moment you had noticed all the blood. He reached out for it, keeping you against him as you cried, tears pressed into his chest as he dialed the only number he could think of when you see that much blood.
He had held you until the paramedics came, his hands trembling while they told him the same things that he had just said to you, as if he were the one breaking apart. He's sure he must have been, that everything was sinking under his skin, but he didn't feel the effects, not just yet, because of the shock of it all. Because there were strangers in his house, dressed up in navy blue, soothing voices slipping right past him when he watched them carry you out, and he was there following after, trying to keep up, his shoes not even half on.
It wasn't until they pulled into the hospital's drop-off lane that he realized he hadn't even closed the door, hadn't even grabbed his keys. All he could see was your hand, so small in his, loosening your grip, the gradual release like an unraveling he wasn't ready to face. “Most of her bleeding has stopped,” the paramedic had said, the line supposed to bring some relief, but all he could feel was that ache, his mouth dry.
And he watched the way your eyes kept shut, squeezed instead of softened by some kind of merciful sleep, tears slipping down your cheeks from the corners as you bite your bottom lip to keep in the sound.
For years, the two of you had kept your relationship like a ball of clay, every new thing learned like a thumb pressed into the piece, molding the two of you into shape, unfired and easily worked. But that night had been a fire, burning and solidifying the two of you into place. If it had been a careless hand, smushing the relationship into a new shape, he's sure the two of you could have made it out.
But when they pulled you into your own private room, the lights a blinding contrast to the rest of the night, half hidden in shadow, they wheeled in an ultrasound monitor and even without the sound turned on, you both knew your ocean wave heartbeat was gone.
Left alone in your room to decide on next steps, the silence weighed heavier than the rush of your sobbing that soon broke. Awful chest-wracking sobs that tried to fill up the emptiness, tried to cover the sound of the roaring fire hardening the two of you into something that could only shatter instead of dent and take new shape.
He held you through the blaze, tried to stay a rock that would not break down, would not cry, not when you needed strength, not when you needed him.
“I'm so sorry.” Your words, drowning around a sadness he could not masterfully describe, were a bat to the glass house of his dreams, swung with no intent to hurt anyone, not even him. And yet they were a gut punch, a soul-leveling whispered statement.
The soft voice of the nurse explained over and over about how there was nothing that could have prevented what happened, nothing that could have been undone. There, they had looked at you, hands clasped in front of them, voice as soft as the look they gave, as if their gaze would add more weight to the crumbling structure above you.
Your hand rested in his, your fingers cleaned by a sweet nurse while his stayed red, your blood drying under his nails. And the only thing that came to his mind was the way the door to the house had stayed open, leaving room for more strangers to come in without knowing the scene they would step into. The undoing of your world before their feet in a way he wasn't ready to revisit so soon.
While the nurse prepped you for overnight monitoring, hooking you up and taking your vitals, he stepped just outside the door, thumbs working fast to solve any problem he could reach for, anything easily obtainable, your phone the only one he had taken in the rush of it all.
The screen had cracked during the drop, the fracture cutting across the background you had picked out of the two of you on the beach, a clumsy phone taken by Kai. Soobin's eyes had been squeezed shut, all teeth and dimples as he laughed, your lips pressed to his cheek.
He couldn't look at himself happy, not then, not when before it had felt like a mirror, and now it only felt like a lie. So he scrolled through your contacts, Beomgyu's name flashed across the screen, his silly face a welcome reprieve, and for the first time that night, Soobin felt his chin wobble. Looking at his friend even in a picture was a constant he needed then, and as the numbers on the call started to tick by, he lifted the shaking phone to his ear.
“Are you okay?” Beomgyu’s voice was a deep rumbling of worry and sleep, and in his mind, Soobin could see the way his brows must have been pulled together, his hand pushing his hair back as he looked at the time, too late in the night or too early in the morning. And then it was Soobin's voice instead of your own.
“I'm-” he hadn't said it in the room with you; instead, he had let it hold his tongue down until it felt solid in place. And now it choked out of him, the force of it moving him forward, “im so sorry,” he tried to hold the tears back, wanted to stay the stoic partner who didn't crumble but the second he had heard Beomgyu’s panic it washed over him almost as if someone had pushed him off the pier after tying a boulder around his waist, he couldn't swim to the surface of his sanity, not now when he was being dragged down by his sadness, his mouth opening but filling with water, with tears.
“Soobin? What happened- what's wrong- where's-” and somewhere in a house on the beach, Beomgyu sat up in his bed and listened to his best friend sob over the phone as if he had his heart ripped out of his chest.
He was trying to wipe his tears, but his crying felt like bleeding, uncontrollable, and he couldn't find the strength in himself to stop it, not when it was this bad, when it hurt this much all at once. “She lost- we lost the baby,” his lips moved on their own, the corners turning down, quivering as he tried to catch his breath, his free hand covering his eyes, pressing into them as if that could stop the spilling.
The words were a blade, cutting across his back, his chest, into his heart, burning and leaving him choking on the ash. He was trying so hard to calm the shaking, to stop the feeling of thrashing happening inside of him. But it was inevitable, the pain, the heartache.
Dreams had not felt real to him as a child, you, had been the person to show him they could become a reality, your laugh was the soundtrack to dreams he never knew he had, your touch making them bloom alive under his skin, and before they had never felt so tangible but now, now he knew the consequences of being so deeply in love with something, someone, some idea, hope. Because this ripped him apart, split him down the middle, and burned.
He sobbed, cried out like he was ready to spill his guts, the sounds feeling so deep within him they might as well have, the tears coming from some reserve he never knew was buried so deep. And beomgyu let him, he listened, he muttered into the hollow of Soobin's chest over and over again that, “it's going to be okay,” the nurses had said it, but he couldn't believe it, it went in one ear and out the other. But here with his best friend at his ear, his brother, he could swallow it down; he had to, for you.
“I'm getting dressed, I can be there in five minutes-” he could hear beomgyu on the other end, shuffling around, climbing out of bed, tugging on his hair as he did when he looked for something.
“No, no, I um- I called because I-i left the front door open, i-” he didn't know how to put into words that he didn't want to lose anymore, not tonight, not today. He sniffled, reigning himself in, his hand sliding along a deck as he tried to pull himself from the ocean, or at least hold on until the tide started to pull back out. “I just need you to lock up, and clothes, I-i don't have any clothes and I'm-” but his chin wobbled again, the tears that had been slowing now trying to wash back up his throat as he looked down at his stained shirt.
“I'll be there, I promise.” he didn't need to say anything else, not when he could hear the war between each breath that soobin was taking, feel it in the way his fingertips had gone numb at the sound of his sorrow. He knew his friend, knew he was trying to pull himself back together even if he had to be on strings to do so. “I love you guys.”
Soobin's teeth bit hard into his lip, the pressure heavy as his throat constricted, his breath held as if that would keep his sob back. He waited until he could handle opening his mouth without it reading the sound of a wound he didn't think would be closed for a long time, “thank you,”
And when the call was over, soobin returned to your room, face flushed a deep red, the corners of his nose, the tips of his ears, the edges of his lips, the rimming of his lashes, and you couldn't hold yourself together. He came to your bed, your hand, tapped over with the IV they had set up, curled into his, clinging with little strength. He didn't care that he probably shouldn't climb into the bed with you, but he did anyway.
He held you, your face flush against his neck, damp with your tears as you spilled out a fraction of your mourning. You didn't speak; there was no need, not even when he got up to collect the overnight bag from Beomgyu.
Soobin could find no other words besides thank you, but it did not feel like enough, not when this was no light thing, but he knew beomgyu would have brushed it off. He would have gone to the ends of the earth for the two of you without question; this was no different, no thanks needed. But soobin knew he could not stay, not when he knew having beomgyu see you like this was not anything you would have wanted. So he left, understanding and with a hug that did nothing but fracture the glass further.
Making quick work of changing, soobin made it back just as the doctors were coming in for another check-up, clipboards in their hands. soobin sat down in the chair that he was expected to spend the rest of the night in, pulling your fingers back to his, he held tight.
“We so very sorry for your loss,” the words hardened something within him, the weight of them tightening his understanding of how his future would look, it didn't matter if it took months, or years for him to grow around the pain, these words would still linger in the backs of so many peoples minds, his friends minds, his own. There would be before this moment, and there would be after. He had seen it faintly in beomgyu when he had hugged him, and now he saw it written across the doctor's faces as they explained how they could make the transition easier.
“Over the last few years, a new type of recovery treatment has been offered here at the hospital. It's minimally invasive and painless, only offered to those who have gone through tragedies such as your own. We know the pain is fresh, and the decision does not have to be made today. Because of the magnitude of your loss and grief, we offer both partners the opportunity to undergo the procedure. But I'll let Dr. Howard explain exactly what it is,”
With that, the second doctor stepped closer to the bed you lay on, the machines beeping into the silence left between the spaces of melancholy. “Hello, this is quite a horrible time to meet, and I am very sorry for your loss.”
Your fingers twitched in Soobin’s at the words, as if you too could feel the weight of the albatross being placed around your neck. “I specialize in the neurological field that targets memory. Through my many years of working with retrieving memory, we have found the very root of how they have been erased in the first place. This led to the memory erasure procedure we are offering the both of you now. It is entirely painless and leaves almost no trace at all that it has been completed; it happens right at home after a single visit to the office.”
“No,” it was instant, almost as raw and true as your tears had been, immediate, and the strongest thing you had said in hours. “I don't want- just no.” because they were offering it to erase the sound of the very thing you had held inside you, not just the sound of the waves but the outline of a dream you never wanted to live without, even when it felt as if it had slipped from your fingers in nothing more than a few hours.
It was too fresh, too painful, but you knew you needed to feel the pain, needed to know that the agony you were going through physically and mentally was because they were real, your baby had been real, they had been an amalgamation of your years spent in Soobin’s arms, an amalgamation of your love for each other. You would not wave it away as if it were nothing more than what it actually was. You would sit, you would wallow, and you would feel their loss, because it was the only thing you had left of them.
“You do not have to decide now, we only come to offer some reprieve in this trying time-” and in a flash, you felt it, red hot anger, it cut through your sorrow sharper than any scalpel they could ever wield.
“Get out- go-” you shook your head, hand shaking in Soobin’s as he tried to clear the air, his face still red but tearless as you silently shed your own at the thought of these people taking anything from your mind.
“We are very sorry-”
“Get out!” it tore through you as if you were as fragile as a piece of paper, ripped from somewhere deep between your ribs, your lips trembling as you tried to hold onto the tears, because as soon as the fire was raging, it was just as quickly snuffed out. As if it had been the last cry for help you could give before it was all over, the last breath.
Neither of the doctors stayed; they apologized once, twice, and left as quickly as they had come. Soobin did not stop them, did not speak up, and there your relationship began to mummify.
It did not happen all at once, but slowly, achingly wrapped up in the emotions you were feeling all the way home, sitting in the back of a cab with your head leaning on Soobin’s shoulder. Your hand resting over your stomach as it had before, the paperwork scattered in the seat next to you, a pamphlet for the memory erasure procedure ripped in two.
The two of you returned to an empty house, made emptier now that you were ghosts of the people you were before leaving that night. Beomgyu had made sure to pack a set of your keys into the bag of clothes he had brought for the two of you. Soobin, carrying the papers, the bag, the keys, unlocked the door for you, letting you step in first.
But you could make it in no more than the doorway, not when you knew what was waiting upstairs, the unmade bed, the bloodied floor, the nursery. You felt your head shake, your eyes squeezing shut as you swallowed down the new wave of tears as they crashed down on the shore of your resolve. “I can't-” it was too much, too soon. Because something in your heart was dried up, wrung tight in a fist that was too strong to be anyone's but your own anguish’s. Here, back in the house you had built and filled with dreams was like walking into a coffin, and going upstairs would only shut the lid.
Soobin's hand was heavy as it pressed to your lower back, warm and flat against you, trying to guide you forward through the mist clogging up the interior. “Here,” he didn't care as he dropped everything down at the doorway, he let it spill, and pulled you to the couch.
Neither of you would know until later that beomgyu had taken the time to change your sheets, stripped the bed you would not want to lie in for days after your return. The bathroom was scrubbed clean when he had not needed to do so. He had come back and cleaned because he knew what it would mean to walk back into this house and see the mess.
So you lay on the couch, soobin flush on his back, holding you against his chest, your hands making fists in his shirt, fingertips just brushing your pulse to remind you that you were alive. Because lying there had never felt more surreal, your body swaying in your mind, the couch a boat on a sea you could not hear anymore.
And maybe that's why you couldn't hear it, because there was no sea at all, just a mountain of sand, so fine it did not brush your cheeks. The wind, his lungs pressed to your ear, the only sound you heard as your world hollowed and echoed the hum of your emptiness back at you, and that one line you had heard soobin speak.
“She lost- we lost the baby,” whimpered from lips trying too hard to keep in sobs.
You wished to reach out at the anger you had felt at the thought of erasing the memory of your happiness. Hold onto it as strongly as a balloon string in the gusting wind, pull it into you so that for one moment it would not be this ache but a fire. Something that cleaned and crackled, spit sparks instead of feeling like a pit that had opened up at the bottom of your feet.
There was no curiosity as you fell down into the darkness, no light looking down on you. It was just nothingness. An empty black void that had no floor. Because as the time passed, as you lay out on the couch, with or without soobin, you looked up at the ceiling and wondered what it would be like to stand and bark instead of cry.
But as you curled into the cushion, the emptiness pressed down like a blanket, comforted you like the hand soobin had pressed on your back when you had walked in. There was no warmth to it, but it was constant, weighty, and easy.
There was no struggle to get up when you did not try; you could stay right there on the couch with no one's company but your own, and shed your incessant tears. That first week, you had learned crying was as easy as breathing, as forgettable if you did not think too hard about it. It happened, and there was no stopping it, not unless you paid attention.
Not until soobin came and wiped at your cheek, his sweater sleeve wet as he sat next to where you had found yourself stuck, melted into the threading. He did not speak, not into the silence that had taken over; he simply helped you to sit up and wrapped his arms around you, held the back of your head as you pressed your face into the soft spot where his throat met his shoulder. You could not find it in yourself to hug him back, arms limp around his waist.
You had been prepared to feel sadness, swallowing that thought down like a mouthful of salt water when you were asked if you wanted your memory erased. The pain would be better than forgetting, but you had not prepared for the way the pain had turned into emptiness. Into nothing at all.
“You should change,” he whispered, the suggestion written down on a list of things you should have done, knew you would have to do eventually, but felt too daunting to do just yet.
The sound of his voice, patient and soft, made your fingers curl into his sweater, as if the words had been the key to getting a small reaction out of you. The thought of getting up, of pushing your limbs farther than the bathroom, made you shake your head. “I don't want to go upstairs,” it was muffled but true, “not right now.”
He did not press, not when you were all bruise, purple, and far from yellowing. He stood, let you fall back to the only safe space in the house, and rest. In the night, he tucked himself behind you as he would in bed and slept, his lips at the back of your neck, his breath like a kiss that helped lull you to sleep that you would not find yourself out of until well into the next day.
Every morning you woke on the couch, your eyes opened to the dust dancing in the pale light, the sky grey, the sea churning. You would follow the trail of it, looking for something to bring you back into the beam, something that made you feel anything like yourself before. But even with the heat of the sun on your skin, there was nothing that could have made you want to climb up the stairs.
You were a knot, braided of twine, fraying around the tension, unkept and struggling to make tea in a mug you had picked out when you thought love would always be enough to make it through anything. You let the ceramic burn your fingers as you cupped your hands through the handle, did not jump when the heat scorched your tongue, or the roof of your mouth.
Tea was all you could keep down, chewing too difficult when your jaw felt locked from your grief, stilled too because soobin had gone silent, in the wake of your depression. He would hum in wordless greeting, kiss your cheek, and change the bedding on the make-shift safe space he held you in.
The couch was the only space in your house that looked any different, a divot made from the hours of rest, a collection of empty mugs scattering the coffee table, a sweater thrown over the armrest where you kept your pillow. Everything else had stayed perfectly the same, frozen and as cold as you felt when you looked upon it.
And that was the cruelest part. That everything moved on as if your world had not fallen apart right there in the bathroom upstairs. That every dream had not been misshapen, that every star you wished on had not blinked out as quickly as flicking off a light switch, when your whole life you had been reminded that the stars shone for you and your happiness. And now this house was a time capsule of your dream now lost, your ring a reminder, and your bed upstairs a collection of memories far too sharp around the edges to touch with your still healing flesh on display.
But you tried, picked yourself up at the small suggestions that soobin made, even when it felt as if it took everything in you. Because how are you supposed to tell the one person who had seemingly stitched you back to life when you hadn't felt like needing fixing that you were nothing more than an open wound that was hemorrhaging the moment you walked past the threshold of your doorway? That there wasn't enough needle and thread to cover the damage that had been inflicted by no one other than yourself. He could try to blot away the blood, pack the site, and place his tourniquet, but it was no use when you felt this far gone.
He had called out of work for you, his gentle voice rough around the edges as he talked to your new boss. The call ending was a vacuum seal to the room, sucking all the air out until you felt the film tightening around your skin. He called his job next, muttered dates and apologies like either of you had anything to be sorry for.
The sweater he had helped you put on, a day ago? Two days? Softened with wear, the laundry detergent scent of your bed, worn away each time the cuff of your wrist brushed clean your tears. The mugs, a mix-matched collection of the years you had spent together, sat, molding at the hollow of them where you couldn't swallow down the last dregs of your pretending.
You could tell him you just needed a bit more time; it was true, but after every utterance of it, where you felt worse instead of better, it felt more like a lie. And as the time went on, days blurred into something like condensation on the outside of a cold glass, you wondered how long he would be able to handle you like this.
A shell of the person you once were for him, someone who was trying to claw their way out of the darkness, but found that, as thick as it might have felt around them, it was made out of nothing tangible, nothing that could have let you sink your hooks in as deeply as it had sunk its claws into you.
He did not show it, did not say it; he kissed your temple, held his lips there, and muttered an ‘I love you’ like a prayer. Like his faith in you would pull you both from the wreckage in time, the ocean thrashing, your nails digging into the hull, refusing to leave because the building of it had been special, your initials carved into the mast. For him, you surfaced, face just out of the water, enough to try and trick yourself into normality.
So you answered the calls on your phone, even when they hurt, and accepted Kai's invitation to lunch. Soobin's careful stare followed you as you changed in the laundry room, still too much for you to make it up to your bedroom, his reminder of how he could come with, call out again from work, hold your hand on the train ride into the city.
Your refusal had been soft and insistent, he had taken care of you like he was piecing together a puzzle someone had carelessly swept off the table. Taking his time and letting the two of you breathe through your grief in their own separate, silent ways, but he was yet to find that you were missing pieces that once had been the center of your picture.
And instead of letting him know, instead of telling him, you took the train, and the second you saw Huening waiting right at the end of the station, you fell apart.
As soon as the doors had opened and you saw your best friend's downward smile, you knew you wouldn't be able to handle it anymore. Shoulders heavy, sagging under the pressure you had felt keeping them up on the ride, your meek smile dipping down as your chin wobbled, you couldn't hold in the tears again.
Limbs weak, he pulled you into his hug, warm and all enveloping, he didn't complain as people split around the two of you right at the doors, like you were standing stones in a stream that roared too loud, too fast. He didn't tell you to stop soiling his shirt while you sobbed into him; he carried the weight of your body as you melted into your sadness.
“You're so strong,” he muttered, like it wasn't a lie you threw at yourself to convince you to make it out here in the first place. He said it like he believed it, and you couldn't take it anymore. You pulled away from him, fingers rough against your cheeks, pushing at your skin to clean away the mess you were leaving.
“I'm sorry.” It had been the only words that surfaced when you looked at anyone but yourself. You bit your lip hard enough to stop it shaking, holding your breath to keep your lungs from struggling. The pain scratched at your throat, rang in your ears like the sound of nails on a door, paint flaking, and wood chipping.
“Don't.” Kai would never demand anything from you, but he drew the line here at you pretending, apologizing. “I wanted to see you, not a lie, you have nothing to be sorry about,” he wrapped his arm around your shoulder, tucking you into his armpit, and taking off some of the weight of walking.
It wasn't far to the spot you two liked to go, a place that felt safe when it had been there well before your dreams started to change into something that looked a lot like the house out on the beach in Montauk. Here, on the street where the rain soaked into the scuffed, cracked pavement, underfoot, you realized how little you had thought about the senses you couldn't feel. Before, in the house, you had thought it was just the sea, but as the train took off, the tracks sounded faint, the rain did not have its same smell, the horns honking as you crossed the street you used to live on took far too long to reach your ears.
If you had surfaced as well as you wanted everyone to believe, it would not have felt like this. This was you gasping for breath from lips pursed so the water covering your ears still wouldn't slip into your mouth like it desperately tried to. And for a moment, with Kai, you didn't have to keep your arms moving, thrashing under the waves to keep your body up, because he understood you without sitting in the same room.
He was not in the water like soobin was. Kai could reach out without also trying to keep himself afloat.
He would let you cry until your ribs hurt, shake until your bones had gone loose under your skin, and you didn't feel the pressure of having to stop so soon, to realign yourself so that your spine was strong enough to carry the weight of Soobin’s grief too. And it made you feel guilty. Devastatingly so, because you wanted to be strong, to hold him as he held you, and yet all you could do was crumble in front of him.
Here at the cafe of your past, sitting across from Kai, who pressed his knee to yours under the table to remind you of his presence. You could ignore how the scent of coffee did not make you giddy with morning anticipation, how the grinding of the beans, the chatter of the patrons, giggling of the students studying in the corner all sounded dull, traveling under water to meet your ears too late for you to care if someone called your name for your order.
Kai brings your tea over, places it in the circle of your hands resting on the table, and sits in the silence with you, unbroken as you watch the steam rise from your cup. “You're allowed to not be okay.”
And you wonder if he can see the guilt that's clawing up your throat like smoke from a house still burning even after it's sunk to the bottom of the ocean. If, after every attempt at speaking, the evidence is tattooed all the way down to the pit of you.
Blinking, you shake your head, looking anywhere but at his kindness, “No, no, it's not that, it's just-” you circle your fingers around the paper cup, missing the cardboard cupholder that's supposed to keep the heat away. You let the burn numb your hands, distract you from the stuttering, let it ground you enough to spit out the one thing you couldn't find the strength to say when out on the sand. “How can I move on when everything has changed? How do I make it better when I was the one who broke it in the first place? How do you just get back up after this?” and you're not looking for answers, just an outlet that isn't the inside of your own skull, you bite back the tears, “how do I go on when I did this to us?”
“You didn't do anything wrong, it was nothing you did-”
“I know- I know that, but the aftermath, it feels like I'm the one who's holding on, like I can't let go. And he's never asked me to. God, we don't even talk, and I think that's always what it is, my mouth feels too heavy to say anything when I see him, and he’s looking at me like he still loves me, and I don't- I don’t love me. Because I don't know who I am right now, I don't know anything, I just know I'm not who I was, who he loved before, and I'm worried,”
“Worried he won't love you anymore?” he said it like it was hard to swallow, as if he, too, could see that first time the two of you sat on the train together, blushing and giggling like you had known each other a lifetime.
“Worried that I made the wrong decision,” your voice cracks at the confession, split down the middle like a broken heart drawn on blue-lined paper. “Back at the hospital, they told me about this memory thing, that they could take away the loss, and I just- I couldn't. They wanted me to just give it all up, like it would be easy, they made it seem easy, like the loss wasn't something that needed to be remembered, as if it wasn't the only thing I had left of us before I-” your voice gave out, flatlined as you imagined all that blood.
Kai reached out for your hands, twisted his fingers between yours, and pulled you back up for air. “Nothing about this is easy, for either of you, and it's okay to go back and want to redo things-”
“But that's just the thing, I still don't want to forget them, even when it hurts, but it feels like…” like it might as well be the only path you have left to take, like the tunnel you're falling down is already taking you there, because there is no pinprick of light, just darkness. “I don't know,” you look to the glass window next to you, your face reflected, distant and only faintly familiar.
Kai doesn't try to force it out of you, and it's exactly why you knew you needed to do this, have this conversation, sit here in a space that didn't feel like the kitchen at a wake for a funeral you should have never attended. “And soobin? Did he say he wanted to forget?”
“No, we didn’t talk about it,” he had picked up the papers from the floor after that first day, put them away somewhere you couldn't see, and didn't say anything but I love you. “And that's just it, if I forgot, maybe I could be the person I can see him waiting for. Because that's what he's doing, he's waiting for me to be okay when instead I'm just rotting from the inside out, and he doesn’t deserve that, it makes me hate myself.”
Your tears patter down on the hardwood table like the rain on the asphalt road outside. You feel the drip of them from your chin, but you don't clear them, don't care about hiding as kai looks in on the mess you've made. “I love him, but I can't love him, not in the way he deserves, not right now, and it feels like I'm just empty. And I know soon, when I can't even make it up the stairs after months of this, that he will know and he will be too nice to leave me.”
Because all your dreams had turned to nightmares, the only thing that came to mind was the way it would look as he walked out the door. You wanted it to hurt, wondered if then you would feel it as sharp as a knife twisting in your stomach, or if you would have been too far gone. You let everything hang between the two of you now, let it hurt you and be just as unforgivable and inconceivable as you knew it should have been.
“You lost your baby, you're grieving,” and you know he's right, but it doesn't sink in; you won't let it.
“We, we lost our baby, but I'm the one who is making us lose everything else. I can't think about the house, the ring,” you lift your hand from his, your ring feels looser now, turning around your knuckle until it bit into your palm when you curled your fist to feel your nails dig into your flesh. “I was happy, this all made me so happy, and now all I can think about is how he got us that house to fill with life, and I've done nothing but lie on that couch dead.”
“And what would forgetting get you?” The line was a coin you turned over in your head night after night since making it back from the hospital. Soobin's lips just brushing the hair at the back of your neck, enough to remind you he was there, so close you wondered when it would hit you that the cavern you felt between you two was internal.
“It would be easier for him,” but you couldn't stop thinking about how it would be no easy thing to walk in, remembering the dreams you had of holding your baby, a baby you had not yet picked a name for, but knew you loved more than life itself, and leave with nothing, not even a scar. Your lips trembled, “it wouldn't feel like this,”
Because if it hurt, so much so that it felt like you were a black hole, it meant that you had loved them, and it was the love you didn't want to forget. Didn't want to clear out the nursery beomgyu had painted, giggling as he put paint in soobins hair; didn't want to hide the crib the boys had built and gifted to you that first night. You didn't want to forget the way their heartbeat had sounded like the ocean, how soobin had cried and held you, kissed your skin like a promise.
But the sea had stopped making a sound in your empty house, and maybe it was far easier to forget that love than drown yourself in the pit of the sadness it left behind.
You knew Kai could see it, like an outfit you wore, no matter how well you tried to dress yourself up, clean around the edges, comb your hair, brush your teeth, that sadness was still written over you like a red pen to a paper you had spent far too long on to get such low marks. He did not turn away from the sight; he drank it in, having you in front of him, he memorized the divots under your eyes, dark and shadowed by a pain he knew he had little understanding of. All he knew was that your grief was clinging to you like a second skin, bleeding into your soul, and all he could do was be there.
“I think that if you choose to forget, it won't be because you don't love them but because you loved them so much,” his voice was low, solid, and present, “and you have every right to want to hold onto that love, and every right to want to go back to the way things were. But please, please, know that no matter what path you decide, I'll be here for you,”
Your shoulders slumped, your chin turned to the ceiling as you tried to blink away the glass in your eyes, “I know,” you whispered it because it never would have been able to come out any louder than that. “And I want to try, I'm trying to get back on track so that I don't have to decide, so that I don't- I don't want,” and there before you, you dropped your one fear, the one thing that you were fighting with yourself over and over again, "I don't want to lose him like i lost our baby, its killing me, and losing him, it would be too much, i dont think i would ever recover,”
Kai nodded, his frown of understanding enough for you to stop the conversation dead in its tracks. “Small steps, I want to get better, I'll try,”
And when you were headed home, Kai walked you to the train station instead of down the block where your old bed was still made, kept neat behind the door Kai always left open just for you. He held you, and this time, you kept the tears down, clinging to him as if that was the equivalent of a thank you. “Here,” he took your hand, wrapping your fingers around the gift, not letting you give it back. “You will always have a place with me, no matter what happens, forgetting or not, I will never turn you away,”
He kissed the top of your head and sent you off. Your body slumped in your seat when you unfurled your hand to reveal a silver key, your old apartment number stamped into the side, half rubbed smooth from the years it had spent in your purse, pocket, hand. You had given it back to him when he was on the ride home from unloading your life in Montauk, months ago, and now you wished the gesture didn't feel like a step backward instead of forward. But a lifeline was a lifeline at the end of the day, no matter what turmoil it stirred inside of you.
And when you got home, soobin still gone at work, you climbed the stairs. Your hand gripping the banister hard enough to crack your knuckles, you stood looking at the half open door to your bedroom, building the courage to cross the threshold you had been struggling with since you had returned home that night.
It was small, but it was enough, and you were so, so tired.
So you peeled off your clothes and fell into bed, under the duvet, between the sheets that had been unused since Beomgyu had changed them those months ago. You looked up at the ceiling, feeling the weight of the day start to settle over you. The conversation had been enough to get you to this point, to the bed you had feared, but it was a bandage, not a scab, over the wound you had been carrying.
Without thinking, just as you had the second you had known you were sharing your body, you placed your hand right below your belly button and let yourself cry. No need to hide or to feel ashamed, as you thought about how far along you would have been, how you would have known if you were going to be having a boy or a girl. You would have stayed up late at night with soobin, genuine names slipping from your lips, whispered with question marks between the ones you giggled just to poke fun at each other.
It hurt to think, but you forced it onto yourself, broke the bone again so that it would be able to heal straight. “I miss you,” you whisper out into the empty room, and you don't know who it's for, yourself, soobin, your baby. All you know is that it's true and all-encompassing.
You sob, horribly, painfully, until you're curling in around yourself, face pressed into pillows that don't smell like him, like you, holding yourself with limbs too phantom to keep you from spilling between the cracks.
It's Soobin’s soft hand on your back that wakes you. He drags his palm across your shoulder blades, fingers brushing the soft skin on the back of your neck. “I didn't mean to wake you.” The room was washed in moonlight, his shadow thrown across your body like a blanket. He was dressed down, out of his work uniform, and cleanly washed, his hair still dripping as he climbed in next to you.
He did not ask about the room change, just pulled you in as he had on the couch, and held you until you fell back asleep.
It was your first attempt at pulling yourself back up; the rest was found in going back to work, in stepping on the tiles of your bathroom as you got ready without picturing the way the speckles of blood had looked like ink underfoot. Instead, you avoided the ground, watched yourself as you smoothed your moisturizer over your cheeks, applied cream on the dark circles under your eyes to try and lessen the contrast of the bruises your insomnia was blooming against the soft skin.
Soobin sat at the edge of the bed, his gaze following each of your movements, watching you in the way one watched a storm roll in over the sea, helpless and accepting. But he did not follow you in as he once had, no soft pleads of you to call out when all he wanted you to do was find some form of normality again.
Neither of you acknowledged the way it once had been, how he would hang off your shoulder, trying to peel off your clothes when you were trying to tug them on. His soft kisses peppering down your neck like a promise of more to come if you just stayed. His lips tasted like honey from tea he had brewed freshly for you, like love you didn't know would grow stagnant.
If you thought too much about it, felt it all at once, you'd have stayed, not because of him, not because he had asked, but because he hadn’t. You would finally wrap him in your arms instead of letting them lie limp around him each night.
You wanted that, to kiss him and not think about how it felt like a reminder of times when it made your stomach light up with anticipation, joy, like little fireflies flickering in tandem with each peck. And maybe that's what you're missing when you leave for work. A kiss from him that feels less like something he does because he's worried, but because he wants to kiss you from nothing more than desire.
“Call me if it's…” too much, you can see it in the way he waves at it, scared to say it out loud. Like if he utters the words, they will become real.
“It's okay, I think it's what I've been missing,” but it's not; it's a lie. What was missing was so much larger than work, and falling into it like he had was not something you thought would fill the space, but was well worth the try.
“I still want to know about your day,” you were standing in the kitchen, looking up at him as he brushed your cheek, holding your gaze as if he could catch what you were feeling in his hands and help you mold it into something else, something that would be easier to carry if you shared the weight of it.
But you smiled, as best as you could make it, like pretending would let it bleed into you and help. You did it for him, for what you were worried about losing, and he smiled back. Something small and fractured, nothing big enough to show his soft dimples that hadn't been seen in months. It made you waver, sway in your step when he leaned down and kissed you just soft enough to make you see how you weren't yet whole again, both of you still two ghosts in an empty house.
You were determined as you walked out to use the time away to recharge, to soak up your pretending of normality and calmness so that when you got home, it would almost feel real. The little bookstore with its sunbleached wooden bookshelves and creaking floorboards was a welcome space to try and heal in.
But it had only just passed an hour in when you felt the filter you tried to hold up over yourself begin to wane. It had not been what you believed would have broken you down. The mothers with their children sitting around the little toy lighthouse under the strings of fairylights, reading and giggling over books you had set up.
No, it had been your coworker, sitting at the checkout desk, her whisper picked up over the small shop as she tried to hold back the sounds of her happiness. She was talking to a boy, who leaned over the edge of the counter as he listened to her every last word. His dark hair was shaggy in his eyes as she leaned in, bumping her nose to his.
It was easier to ignore something you had never felt but dreamed of than it was to watch something you had before slip away. You had not planned to cry, you had found that in this last week, you had gone dry, that the nothingness had taken the well and drained it out as it had your emotions. It was what had made the decision easy to call your boss and tell them you could handle a day shift. No worry that if you thought too long and hard about everything that you would burst like a water balloon thrown right at the pavement.
But seeing some excerpt of your life before had your throat tightening, your swallow thick and hard to choke down as you busied yourself with stocking books you had no intention of reading or looking into, as you once would have. Now it was just a monotonous routine, a performance you went through while you counted down the hours until you could leave.
You did not cry on the walk home, not even when you curled yourself up on the couch as you had that first day you had gotten back, the throw pillow tucked against your chest as if it could replace soobin and his gentle breathing. But you were rocking on the boat alone this time.
If going into work had been to rebuild yourself in some kind of peace, it had done the opposite; it had only been a reminder of how much you had changed, how much your relationship had changed. Maybe in time, it would have been something that would have thinned, worn down into a shape that was completely different than the way you had started.
But it would have been after years, not months, not a single night. You would have lived out your dreams, married, in your house, wrapped up in him, in your bed, kissing like love instead of routine. It's what you dreamt of before he finally got home, his hand on your back as it always was. “Let's go upstairs,” as if he could see the backsliding you were doing down the hill you had been playing at climbing and he was coming in to help you back up the small progress you had made.
So you followed him, and as if he knew your dreams, remembered just as well as you had the morning spent with him, his hands all over, slipping into the waistband of your pants, along your sides as he pushed your shirt free from your body, undressing you. He mimicked the movements, helped you not into bed but into the shower, the warmth of the water fogging up the glass of the mirror until it was easier to play that this was the past and not a reenactment of it.
This was easier, lying against him as he washed you, scrubbed you new because you were not strong enough to do it. His lips on your shoulder, speckled with droplets of water, his fingers scrawled across your stomach as he let you curve into his chest, held you as if he had always been made to, but you just happened to find yourself in separate drawers until now.
And you cried, let the water beat down on you, let it cover your cheeks like the tears spilling because it had been a drought, and today it rained, memories and dreams like falling stars that did not bring wishes but mourning anew. Soobin could see it, worried over it the second he saw you curled back up on the sofa, the indent mimicking the shape of you, worn away and not made for you like he was.
He cleaned you, and didn't bother about cleaning himself when you needed it more. He dressed you in nothing but his old shirt and your underwear, the same as he had seen you waking up in for years, and laid you down in the bed as he had in the sand, holding you to him, twining your legs with his like a loose braid.
Your fingers holding his shirt, smelling like him, your nose running up the slope of his neck as you pulled yourself impossibly closer, wedging yourself against him until all you could think about was the way he felt so strong, so comforting.
It had been so long since you had kissed over his pulse, lips just grazing his skin. It happened, once, twice, where you let yourself lean into wanting him just as you had before it all. You held him, body once stiff, melting into the shape of someone you once were, who you wanted to be again.
And you kissed him, trailing up his throat, to his jaw, the edge of his mouth, where he gasped, not questioning the sudden surge of need, as you tangled your legs in his, rolled your hips closer to him, fingers curling in his hair like a memory.
His body reacted instantly, hot and alive, unfurled as he met you halfway, pushing as you pulled. And when he kissed you, he did not jump back from the way you went from soft pecks, finding your footing, to a full on devouring. Something had been sparked, like an ember tossed from a car wreck, catching in a grassy field, lighting and raging.
You pulled on his hair, moaning into his mouth when his leg brushed against a spot of you that had long since been forgotten. He swallowed your whimpers, matched them when you rolled on top of him, straddling his waist. It was new and yet all so familiar to find the spots of your waist he had held before, his fingers digging into your thighs, pulling you down flush against him.
Your hands rested on his chest, pushing yourself up to catch your breath, to reel in your mind at what exactly you were doing. There, the two of you froze, looking at one another, washed in the moonlight, the sound of your restless breathing the only thing filling the room besides the rushing of blood in your ears.
Soobin lay under you, lips kiss-reddened, hair a mess of inky strands on the pillow, spilling along the threads, his thumbs working circles into your hips, not coaxing but remembering. It was with a painfully fragile look in his eyes that he ran down your body. And for a moment, you almost pulled away, snuffed out the fire like one blows out a candle, but you leaned back down, ghosting your lips over his until he tilted his chin and pulled you in for the kiss you wanted desperately.
He pulled himself up, meeting you as he leaned back against the headboard, his open mouthed kisses finding the landmarks they had missed for so long: the soft spot where your jaw met the edge of your ear, the thump of your heart pressed to his lips, your collar bone, and the hollow it left at the base of your neck.
You were greedy with your touch, limbs now revitalized for this one mission of exploring him the same as you had before, flipping through the pages of a book you had thought was lost as you pulled off your shirt, your arms wrapping around his neck, fingers dragging through the fine strands of hair at the back of his head. Your body arched into his as he dragged his nose down your chest, between your cleavage, and kissed at your sternum as you rolled your hips against his, still clothed at the waist and yet never feeling more exposed.
His hands reached around you, holding you close, his fingers outspread along the expanse of your back, the warmth of them all encompassing, dragging down your spine until you were trembling for him. And you hadn’t even noticed that you were crying, silent tears that caught in the pale, glowing light. Didn't notice until soobin pulled away, cupping your cheek. “Baby,”
And it broke you, your lips finding a pout until you couldn’t hold in the sob anymore, you fell forward, burying your face into his neck, clinging to him as he held you. “I'm sorry,” you tried, when you pulled away, shaking your head as you cleared your tears, “I'm fine,” but the words were watery, mixed in with your sniffle as you threaded your fingers back into his hair.
“We don't have to,” he whispered, his hands holding you still on his lap, running up and down your sides, warming you, telling you it was all okay when it was the last thing you felt.
“I want to,” you bit at your lip, trying to stop the way your chin was wobbling. You didn't know if it was a lie or not; you wanted him, you wanted normality, you wanted this moment, you wanted to remember who you were before, but you couldn't have it without tears, without some kind of ache.
“I want you,” you whispered it, looking into his eyes so he knew that, at the very least, was what you felt in your heart.
“I just want to lay here with you, okay?” and you couldn't tell if it was pity or guilt he was feeling, couldn't read this look smoothed between his brows because you could hardly understand your own emotions. All you knew was that it made you cry. The tears followed a trail down your skin, dotting along his shirt, before he cleared them away. “I just want you to come back to me, nothing more, nothing less.”
But you were here, right in front of him, hollow but not in a way that you thought would ever be filled. But you nodded nonetheless, letting him pull you back into his chest, rolling the two of you into your place in bed, the blankets pulled up into place as he kissed the top of your head.
“I love you,” as soft as a first breath, a first kiss, a heartbeat.
And you were broken, ground down to dust, sprinkled like sand, like ashes.
The next day, you called out of work, watched soobin as he got ready, while you stayed in bed, your face pressed into the pillow on his side, looking out the window, half open, watching the surf crash down on the sand. He leaned over the bed and kissed your shoulder as a goodbye, and when he came back, he found you had not moved, and you didn't even realize the sky had gone just as dark as you felt.
He washed himself, slid into the space you had kept for him, and did it all over again in the morning. Only this time, he pulled you to sit, handing you a cup of tea he had made, and cringed when you grabbed the mug around its base and not the handle. He sat until you finished it, and left without a kiss.
There on the nightstand, your collection grew, a new mug for every year you two had spent together, piled up, haphazardly stacked, spoons still glazed with honey, stuck to the hardwood. The bottle of your prenatal vitamins was wedged between the wall and the back of the drawers when you had knocked it over that second night in bed.
The window stayed open to circulate the air into the room, the curtains catching in the breeze, as you watched over and over again how the sea rose and fell without a sound. The silence of it was as loud as your relationship had become.
It hurt, somewhere distantly inside of you, the shape of it circling around the center of you like razor wire. But it wasn't enough to pull you up. All you could think about was how much you wanted to do things, but the energy that would be needed was wasted there.
As you lay, as you let yourself be, you could see the way the only energy you had left was resting like a fine layer of water where your joints met the bed, like you were a glass on its side, still clinging to something but not enough for a mouthful if picked up and swallowed down. You wouldn't have even noticed if the ocean had swallowed you whole.
It's how Yeonjun found you, the spare key you had gifted him so long ago, finally in use after not hearing from you for well over a month. You hadn't even heard the front door open, didn't hear him climbing the stairs, but even if you had, it would have been brushed off as Soobin coming home from work, your perception of time lost.
“Hey,” he said it just from the doorway, your back still turned from him, but you knew his voice, could recognize it anywhere. He had come around when you had been stuck on the couch, but you had turned him away, not wanting him to see you like that. And even if this was much worse, you didn't really care anymore.
You rolled to your side, looking at him with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat, his face giving nothing away as he looked at the mess your room had become, even when you hardly got up to dirty it. The laundry was piled in the closet, spilling from the hamper so that the door didn't shut, the nightstands with their graves, the sheets just as mussed as your hair, and the sweater you had not changed out of in a week.
The house had become a tomb, stuck in place everywhere except the kitchen and your bedroom. Not one made out of stone, but one of molding mugs, dried tea bags, and silence that sank to the bottom of the floor like deadweight, suffocated and consuming. The dishes piled up, the rack of shoes next to the door empty, the contents spilled out, the mail stacked up next to the bowl of keys collecting dust.
And you, Ophelia in her river, just at the surface of yourself, drowning in clothes now too heavy around your bones. Eyes bruised, pale, and sunken around every soft curve you had possessed nearly a year ago. “I didn't know you were coming.” You didn't even move to sit up.
“I know, you didn't answer my calls.” he pulled out his phone, holding it to give him something to do besides worry, even if it was all his body was doing.
“Sorry,” and he knew you meant it, even when it was said so weakly.
“Don't be, I get to see the beach now, it's been a while,” he stepped in, crossing the threshold into the stale air even with the window open, sitting at the edge of the bed, reaching out for your hand, laying as limp as a flower cut too soon from its stem, fingers curled as if you were just starting to unfurl them. “You're cold,” he whispered, mostly to himself, thumb gently rubbing curled on the back of your hand. “It's colder in here than outside.”
“It's going to snow soon,” you sniffled, pushing yourself up, pulling your hand from his because it felt all too revealing. You pressed your fingers into your eyes, yawning as you stretched your legs out in front of you.
You knew the grey skies and seagulls' departure for what it was, the seasons changing, the crowds leaving.
“Do you remember the summer we spent two days here and I got that horrible sunburn?” he laughed at the memory, and you couldn't help but give the smallest chuckle because you did remember that summer. The one right before you had met soobin, yeonjun had been pink and red all over, sitting up from a nap on the beach and groaning as he realized his grave mistake.
“You laid yourself on the tile floor in the airbnb's kitchen and curled up like a shrimp someone dropped, even your ears were burned.” You pulled your knees up, hugging them closer to your body as yeonjun nodded, smiling at himself, at the fun you had somewhere not far from his house now.
“Kai had to cover me in that slimy off-brand aloe gel we found, and it only took two days for my skin to look like a lizard's,” he had gone back to your shared lecture with sunglasses on just to try and draw attention away from the way his nose had started to peel. You and Kai had picked on him for months after, hanging the picture of him on the floor on the fridge. “You told me that the next year we should come when it snows, that you prefer the less crowded beach in the colder months.”
“Yeah,” the two of you had made it out to the beach, too late in the day to spend much time just watching the water. You had sat in the sand, bundled in your coats, watching them string lights on the long walkway leading up to the lighthouse. The sea had been loud, crashing into every sentence you shared, the wind strong enough to turn Yeonjun's ears just as pink as they had been with his burn.
You can't even remember the last time you set foot on the sand, or the last time was that you made it past the doorway of your room. Yeonjun doesn't ask you to go, not out loud, but somehow you both end up there, right at the end of your winding pathway leading down to the sand, grey instead of its lemon-rine color it holds in the summer.
Yeonjun had helped you put on your coat, now somehow too big for you, bunching around your wrists as you curled your hands into fists in your pockets. Your scarf was still loosely hanging around the collar, the same one soobin had gotten you after proposing, bright and red like the string he had whispered was wrapped around your pinky and his.
And there the sea sat, calm, lulling back and forth, slow enough to drag its sound out until it was stretched thin enough for you to talk. “Stop looking at me like that,” because his stare was heavy when he believed you wouldn't notice, weighty on your shoulders as you kept your eyes locked somewhere in the distance, where the waves broke the grey horizon with its white rolling foam.
“Like what?” but he said it like he knew, because it was obvious, he had carried your mugs down to the kitchen sink even though you had protested, embarrassed all that once seeing them in his arms, even if he wasn't judging you.
“Like you're worried about me,” the wind cut in across your face, your lips pursed as you looked down at your shoes, dark against the sun-withered wood speckled with sand, and yet you still didn't take the final step out onto the beach just yet.
“I am,” he doesn't even try to deny it, as he steps in front of you, sinking in the sand, bending to catch your eyes, following them even when you try to look away. “How could I not be? Look at you,” it's not accusatory, it's laced with concern, pulled tight around ribs that were finding it hard to take a deep breath. “You don't-, you’re not-, I am worried.”
He let it hang between you two, looked right into your eyes as he said it, so you knew, so he could watch you swallow the bitter pill of it down. And still, even when you knew, felt it as deeply as the chill kissing the tip of your nose, you wanted to lie. “I just need time,”
Yeonjun huffed, a sound that was more sarcastic than humorous, “time,” he nodded, biting back anything else he wanted to say, before he just let it go. You could see the battle, watched as he gave up, shoulders sagging, pursing his lips as he turned away from you. “I miss you,”
It sounds so close to the way soobin had said it, I just want you to come back to me, as if you weren't standing right there before them. “I'm right here,” you had wanted to say it there in the dark, shout it out at the sea, at him, at the mirror.
“Yeah.” yeonjun sniffled, his knuckle coming up to rub at his cheek, “I know, just buried.”
“I'm trying,” but you hadn't been, not after the one day of work, a week ago? Two? They had been calling more than you had to ask for time off. You could feel that panic, somewhere flickering in the back of your mind, when you saw their number appear on the screen of your phone, but talking felt too much like teaching a lecture on something you only had an hour to learn beforehand.
Nothing around the house was done, soobin went to work for longer and longer, and the days stretched like an elastic band that had lost its shape. “It's just a lot. I'm working on it. What do you want from me? To take up meditation? Hot yoga? Join a book club for depressed housewives? If you can even call me that.” It had been the most you had spoken in one go, the deflection like a hiss from a cat backed into a corner, too scared to realize this might be someone who wouldn't hurt but heal.
“I just want you to be honest, not with me, fine, whatever, but with yourself.” Your jaw hurt, teeth grinding as you shook your head, your heel dug into the wood, and slid on the sand as you looked back up at the house.
The window of the nursery was shut, the mobile stuck frozen in place as if it had been painted against the glass. Your bedroom window open, the gauzy curtain pulled by the call of the wind rippling like a white flag in the air. “You want honesty?” Your throat was tight, pulled in on itself as you squeezed out the words you needed to say, “i hate who ive become, i hate that i cant feel like i use to, that im numb, and it makes me feel so guilty because he- he still loves me, or i hope so, and that hope makes me feel worse, because he shouldn’t,”
Yeonjun stays quiet, lets you sit with your confession between you two because he's not judging, he's grieving. “This isn't the end all.”
You look back out at the water, to the dark, wet sand where the tide meets the shore. “Like I said, I'm trying,”
The two of you stood out there for far longer than you had expected, shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching, but enough for you to feel the warmth of him. And when you both made it back to the house, yeonjun picked through your fridge, the eclectic array of foods had been bought by soobin on short trips to the store on the way home from work. But it was enough for yeonjun to piece together a meal for the two of you to sit and share.
He cleaned after himself even after your protesting, washing every dish in the sink, stacking the ceramic plates and cutlery like Jenga blocks, playing at his own private game he was positive he would win after convincing you to shower.
And when you were clean, your hair still wet, Yeonjun kissed your head, scuffing over the spot with his coat sleeve as if he were cleaning a window, a joke he found funny every single time he did it. Your smile was slow but genuine; his was melancholy-tinted at the edges. “Don't stay a stranger,”
“I won't,” although neither of you knew if it was true or not, but it was enough. He left to catch a late train back into the city, looking over his shoulder at you when the door was closed.
It was only the next morning that you found yourself up early, far earlier than soobin, who slept soundlessly on his back, one arm tucked under your head like a pillow, when you opened your eyes. His chest rose and fell, and you mourned to feel so far away from him.
Without waking him, you made your way downstairs, following the same monotonous routine that felt easiest on days like this. Filling the tea kettle, you set it on the stove, clicking once, twice, on the burner until it caught with its flame.
The mugs all sat in the dish rack, half emptied in your attempt to keep up with the boost Yeonjun’s visit had brought you. And when the phone rang, you answered, knowing it was your boss, knowing you didn't feel up to going to work, and yet still you felt dejected when she muttered a soft, “We're really sorry, but it's just not working out, if we need an extra set of hands in the busy season we will give you a call, but for now it's just not the right fit anymore. I'm sorry.”
“No, it's okay, I understand,” because you did, wholeheartedly, you had called out more times than you had been in the building itself. Most times, you hadn't even called, and you were new, not like how you had kept the same job in the city for years, the seniority and friendships giving more grace.
You should have seen it coming, smelled it out when the calls kept coming and you didn't pick up, the denial written off as anything else but what it actually was.
The first mug to fall had been an accident. The brush of your sleeve as you placed your phone down had sent it toppling. The tea bag pressed under the broken ceramic. The watercolor painting of the lighthouse cracked in two, severed in a diagonal, like a sword had been wielded right through the memory.
The little Montauk slogan found on hats, shirts, and coffee mugs is kept in perfect view. The catchy little joke because the beach was right at the very tip of New York's east end, just dipping into the Atlantic Ocean.
at the end. Montauk, NY.
You had picked it up on your first solo trip out together, where you kissed his cheek over and over again as if you could spare the touches like grains of sand, giggling as you held the mug up for soobin, “so at the end of the day, you always have a mug to share,” he had smiled, dimples and teeth, nose scrunching when he pulled a hat onto your head with the same saying. Singing softly, “With youuu.” as if you had left off the last bit of your sentence and he needed to fill it in, just clarifying that he only wanted to share coffee with you, and only you.
Time still stood, like an oncoming car had flashed its brights in your eyes as you crossed a road you shouldn't have been traveling down. You read the line over and over again, at the end, as if someone had carved it into the bathroom tile upstairs the second the first drops of blood had appeared.
You didn't move to clean it, but instead reached out for the drying rack, picking up the next souvenir from a past too muddy for you to dig through. The logo of the bookstore you had worked at in the city was tattooed on the base, a chip already at the foot of the mug. You had picked it up the first time his mom had come to visit, the first time she had held your hand and told you how happy she could see he was.
And this time, you let it fall to the floor deliberately, relishing in the shattering, the sound like an exhale. Because as you picked up the next one, throwing it down, hard enough for the ceramic shards to spray along the tile like spilling beads from a bracelet ripped from a wrist, you could finally breathe, force out all the air in your lungs until you picked up the next mug.
The creamy white porcelain, one half to a whole set, a gift from Taehyun, silly his & hers mugs he had found soon after your engagement announcement. They had been sweet, painted with hearts, and the final ones to be thrown, cracking and splitting like bone, brittle and built on a promise you felt had been for a girl you didn't know anymore.
Left in the rack, a navy blue mug, bare of any inscription at all, the same mug that had been in the cabinet of Soobin’s apartment when you first met. The lone survivor of the massacre you had never seen coming until it was too late. And there, scattered on the floor, a mosaic of memories lost too soon, swept off the counter in a fit that tried to mask itself as rage but wasn’t close to it at all.
This had been a lapse, not in judgment but in your play at healing. And you had never been a good actor, because as much as you tried to hold it back, suck down gulps of air to avoid the shake in your resolve, you couldn't hide from the tears. “No, no, no,” the single syllable repeated like a prayer, a plea, a spell, as you fell to knees far too weak to rest on an altar made of fragmented dreams and vows.
You swept the mess with the side of your hand, trying to collect the fragments, not feeling them cut along your palm, into your pinky finger. But the burn traveled up to your elbow, your whine mixing in with the whistle of the tea kettle, screaming and screaming, continuously ringing in ears that had blocked out anything but the echo of their own sorrow.
Soobin rushed down the stairs, disheveled, hair an inky mess, as he slid to a stop at the sight of you, bent, bloody fingers curled around a fractured half of your Montauk mug, pulled to your stomach, as if it would pull you back together while you swept the shards of glass up with your free bare hand.
For a second, he froze, stuck, still half asleep as he had been that night, the whistling kettle mimicking the ring in his ears before he hurried to push at the pot from the burner, his hiss at the heat from the metal quick before he kneeled down with you. “Stop-”
He swept up your hand, thin shards of the ceramic digging into his skin as he cupped yours, your head shaking, as he moved to catch the large piece you had been reaching for. “Soobin-” but it was too late, his hand brushed at just the right angle, the burn of it as instant as the kettles had been. And there along his lifeline, blood bloomed.
“Fuck-” he sucked in the word, his fist closing instinctively over the wound.
“I-” but you didn't know what to say, how to apologize for so much destruction. There was no word for how sorry you were, not just over the mugs, or spilled blood that now dotted the floor like a cruel retelling of your mutual ruination, but for everything.
He didn't let you continue; he pulled you away from the kitchen and the shattered relationship you both had bled on the tile. Standing behind you, he cupped your hands over the running sink in the downstairs restroom. Peeled your fingers back away from the single piece you clung to like he would an orange, letting the shard of your past clink to the base of the blood-spotted bowl like a lost baby tooth that you would never get back.
With care, he held your hands under the warm stream, brushed his thumbs over the length of your fingers, letting the pink water wash over the saying you had never associated with pain until now, at the end. Montauk, NY.
There he waited until the water had gone cold, gone clear, and pulled away.
You could hear him sweeping up the mess, the glass clinking against the dustpan loud like the grinding of cars sliding against the on-ramp rail. And in the mirror, your reflection only showed you in grey, speckles of blood over your sweater. It's how you found yourself in the closet. The door pushed open just enough so that you could step into the mess of the laundry.
Your foot sank into it, and the light flicked on as you looked at the half-empty hangers. The mess of the drawers was half pulled open, as if you and soobin had been in a rush to collect the necessities and leave as fast as possible. It didn't matter what sweater you pulled out to replace the one you wore so long as it did its job. You added to the pile on the floor, kicking at it as if that would help.
Half hidden, a pale white box was tucked into Soobin’s dresser, the emptying of his shirts from his collection revealing it just enough to catch your eye. Nearly the size of a shoe box, only flatter, was the hidden archive of that very day.
It was almost as if it had been calling you, laid out just right in your line of sight when you were thinking about it the most. Because when you push back the lid, the ripped pamphlet is waiting at the top of your discharge papers. The Memory Erasure Procedure, as done by Dr. Howard M.
The tear had almost underlined the name, all while cutting the grassy background of a sunny field in two. A picture of how your days could be if you just went and cleared away all the bad memories, or so they wanted it to appear.
You picked up the second half of it, the slogan making your jaw ache, restoring peace & renewing clarity. It had hurt you, hand still trembling in the back of the cab, but steady enough to know you hadn't wanted it. It had been your instinct to deny it, to go against the way your body, your mind, wanted to grieve, felt too unnatural to dig around in someone's head for memories that didn’t hurt.
But they did hurt; they broke something inside you to look back on, if you lay in bed and thought too long about the sand, Soobin’s ear pressed to your belly, your laugh, his. It was all enough to have you crushed far longer than you had intended the memory to leave you.
You had been holding onto them still, waiting for the moment when they would clear up, when the haze around them was not poisonous to breathe in, waiting for the part in the play when you knew it would end happily. Only it was months later, nearly a year later, and you weren't better, no incline on your health but a downward spiral that was never ending, as if you had been sucked down the drain and hadn't yet fallen into the lake just yet.
And that's the bit you were holding on to, the just yet, you were waiting for the moment of clarity to come on its own, the internal peace that would work its way into the spaces that had collected dust and echoed your silence back at you. But whatever hill you had been climbing was steep, steep enough to burn your calves and lock them in place, freezing you in time so that when the landslide came, it swept you back to the bottom and buried you under the rubble, and now you were too tired to dig yourself out from the mess.
There had been hope that someone would come and help, but it was given up when they had attempted, and you found that there was a certain comfort in the darkness, one that was familiar because it was coming from deep within your bones, as if somewhere inside you, that instinct of an animal knowing its time was near had taken over. You had circled your spot like a vulture did its prey, and laid down and sank deeper into the reprieve.
You could see the end, felt it with every absence of a kiss on your cheek when soobin left for work, where he had called for extra hours outside of the house he had built on the very dreams and memories they had offered to erase.
Your thumb ran over the list of benefits they provided: Reduced symptoms of grief, trauma, or anxiety, Improved mood and emotional stability, Enhanced ability to form new, healthy attachments.
It shouldn't have felt so gutting. The list was like a sharp knife that completed the evisceration. And you knew it was everything you should have wanted, for yourself, for him. How easy they made it seem, painless, no scars, just spots in your mind that you couldn't fill in. days and moments that would be replaced like most insignificant moments in life were, you would know you had lived that day but it would be written off as having done what you always did, not anything life altering enough to be forgotten.
At the first mention, it had made you angry, your snap as loud as a whip, as fractured as the mugs you had just thrown down, and yet now even that memory had been eaten by the emptiness. And now all you sat with was guilt.
If there had been time to think, talk it through, maybe the two of you could have been saved. Mourned and let it shred you to ribbons, and then find yourself awake in bed braided anew. But you had let yourself, your relationship, your dreams, rot at the bottom of a sea that never stopped churning. And soobin had fought the waves, carried you as best as he could, but you could see how tired it was making him to love you.
And how could he not be tried? As much as Kai and Yeonjun could tell you otherwise, they did not live in your skin, did not sleep in the same bed as him and wonder how life for him would be so much easier without you in it. It kept you up, not just the lost dreams but the torment of knowing you were the problem. He could get up, brush his teeth, comb his hair, get dressed, work, and what could you do? What had you done?
The seedlings of the separation had been set early, maybe even before the loss, maybe in the thin stretch of the years between the engagement and the wedding that never came. Maybe your rose colored glasses had been too thick, too pink, too red, for you to see the signs. You had picked over that scab so often that the wound would never heal, and this, who you had become, had only stitched the skin in the opposite direction, flayed instead of healed.
He waits, patient, and as hopeful as the boy who had waited until Monday rolled around so he could see you again at your job. And as of right now, it feels like he will be waiting a lifetime because you don't have a breadcrumb trail leading back to the girl you used to be.
If time could heal all wounds, how could it not also create them? He would wait, he would stay, he would watch you, love you until it was only because he remembered that he once had, not because he did. You would suck the life out of him, you already had, even if you were the only person who could see it, admit it. And you couldn't let him do that.
Couldn't let him sit and love you, couldn’t let him sit and wait for someone who knew they were too far gone, who had stitched their shared loss into their skin and wore it like a tattoo, and let it scream out into the silence. Couldn't let him pour himself empty into your glass that was riddled with fractures.
If you love him, really, truly, deeply loved him, you would give him the only thing you had left inside you, worth anything at all; your ability to let go. The opportunity to move on without having you there to hold him back.
There was no fight left in you when you made the decision; your mind was set, and even that didn't evoke anything else besides sadness.
You dropped the pamphlet, placing the lid back onto the box, and neatly closed the drawer. Soobin was still in the kitchen when you made it down the stairs. He didn't question when you pulled on your coat, your shoes forgotten as you walked out in nothing but socks onto the deck.
The tide was pulled back, showing the rippled, dark, wet sand. The line was distinct and cut across the expanse of your eyeline like someone had taken scissors to the sea and the shore. The air was just cold enough so that every exhale was like a puff of smoke, fanning out in front of you like a lost soul, curling around the edges of your lips like a goodbye kiss.
“It's going to snow.” You didn't move at the sound of his voice, low and falling down your back like rain. Gingerly, he wrapped your dropped scarf around your shoulders, the brightest thing against the cloudy backdrop and your dark coats.
You tilt your chin towards the sky, frosted pale blue, just bright enough to let you know somewhere the sun is hidden under all the layers of white sheet clouds. Icy and bitter, the wind burns your cheeks until soobin blocks the gust, stepping next to you.
It's enough to bring the tears forward, the building of them catching on the edges of your lashes, not quite falling as he hums,” I don't even remember the last time I came out here to see the beach.”
Neither of you had to say why, not with the rise and fall of the waves, the cawing of the seagulls gone for the season, the boats pulled in with the water this choppy. It was just the sound of the sea, even the lighthouse stood abandoned, the row of houses a graveyard of wood and glass. For all you knew, it could have been just the two of you out this far off the end of the Long Island peninsula.
“Soobin, I’m-” he can hear the weaver in your voice, in the way it gets caught in the cold and freezes in the wind.
“Don't,” no matter what it was that you were going to say, he knew he didn't want to hear it, couldn't swallow it down when being out on the beach felt as close as he had been to you in months. Your hands, pushed into your pockets, left just enough room for soobin to link his arm with yours. “Walk with me?”
Neither of you had your shoes on, and neither of you cared. The walk down was slow, and you leaned into him, his warmth. And this time, you didn't stop right where the wood dipped into the sand, but stepped out, let the grains slip around your feet, and watched how soobin wiggled his socked toes.
You wanted to tell him, explain how you couldn't do this anymore, but when you opened your mouth, all that came out was a short, breathy laugh. Because he was here, still, pulling your scarf around you, blocking the cold, striking memories like you would a match, and despite the wind, you were willing to cup your hand around the flame so it wouldn't go out, not just yet.
Dropping your head to his arm, you let yourself go and whispered, “I love you,” because it was true; despite all else, you knew that.
“I love you more,” said like it was the start of a song you hadn't heard in forever but knew all the words, felt it in your fingertips, and sang along to every bittersweet nostalgic note. It hurt that you had almost forgotten it, almost as badly as you knew it would be to forget the color of his eyes. “So, so, much more,”
You turned your nose into his coat sleeve, breathed in the scent of him deep enough to let it catch in your lungs, and held the air until you were sure you wouldn't burst into tears. “No, I love you more,” and even with your voice weak, it was a declaration, a vow, an oath. A vocal snapshot collected from all the flickering facets of your past together, where you had said the words between kisses, moans, and casual goodbyes.
The two of you let the silence settle, the sea pushing back at it with its rise and fall, the waves sounding like the turning page of a book caught at its edge, the kind you had to check to make sure it wasn't ripped by the end. And you wondered if he, too, was thinking of your shared heartbeat, if it was at the shell of his ear like a whisper of a past you only thought of when the ghosts hummed late at night.
“I lost my job.” You didn't need to say anything else, not when you both knew it was coming eventually. But you had needed to fill the space with something other than the creeping memory of the silent ultrasound.
He lifted his free hand, letting it cup your cheek, not turning your head away from his arm but resting. “There are hundreds of jobs out there for when you're ready.”
Your lashes were soft against your cheeks, forehead heavy against his arm, before you reached up to take his hand, as you pulled away just enough to look up at his already expectant face.
He was so pretty, even in sadness, the cupid's bow of his lip, still slightly parted, ready to tell you no, because he knew what was coming, it was written all over you. You were looking up at him like you were tracing over every last feature of him, trailing the pen across his eyebrows, following his lash line, painting the exact shade of brown his eyes were. “Stop,” he shook his head, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip, holding himself back from saying it any louder.
“I think it would be better if I went back to the city,” his fingers curled around yours as he twisted his lips into a pout carved out of denial.
“No-,” because he knew you meant alone, without him.
“Just for-,” he didn't let you lie, he pressed his lips to yours, drinking down your words, pulling them away from you as if it would make it any better.
The kiss was soft, testing as the first one had been, and when he pulled away, his nose bumped yours, and he was flushed. Cheeks a shade of pink you had imagined was lost with the version of yourself that had been pulled from under your ribs. He looked as if he were worried he had startled you, as if he had accidentally caught an animal in hands that had only meant to feed it. As if you had just told him they sold shoes right at the end of the street.
The wind rustled his hair, brushed it along his temples, and pushed the strands back to expose his forehead. And for a small moment, you mourned that you would never be back here with your fingers in his hair, your jealousy of the wind making your hand twitch. If it was going to be the last time, one last memory, you might as well just sink into it until you drowned.
You lifted just enough to crash your lips against his, unlinking your arms with his so that you could thread your fingers into his hair, leaning into the familiar give of his mouth and the curve of his body. He wrapped you up in him, tugging you closer as your scarf brushed your cheeks as it fluttered from the breeze you couldn't feel when he was so warm.
He kisses you like there was no time lost, as if you never stopped pulling that soft shyness from deep within him, as if you were cracking him open, splitting him right down the middle so that he could make room for you to share his space. He wanted all of you, in any way you gave it to him, in this love disguised as lust, and even in sadness.
Neither of you knew how you had found yourselves in the sand, your cold fingers at the base of his neck, his lips on the edge of your mouth, sliding down your jaw, his nose cold as he dragged it down your throat. He whimpered into your skin when you dragged a hand down the front of his chest, gasping when you slipped your hand into the hem of his shirt.
You felt each breath under your fingertips, his stomach flexing as he rolled you onto your back. You matched him with every kiss, every push, as you widened your legs, memorizing him with every sense you could. Because he smelled like the day you had shared a bed for the first time, where he laid next to you as stiff as a board, blinking up at the ceiling as you linked your hand in his. And his breath caught just as it had the first time the two of you had made out on his couch. His body shuddered above you when you kissed under his ear.
Neither of you had to speak, not when you could read every I love you, between touches and heartbeats, like a eulogy, so focused on holding onto the moment, tattooing it along your skin as he dragged his hand down your side and pushed up your sweater just enough to feel your skin against his. Your breaths mingling in the cold air, puffing out like mist, like lost promises, lost time.
He didn't let the chill reach out for you, letting his open coat block most of the wind, his body doing the rest as he rolled his hips against yours. And he didn't stop you when you reached down to the button on his jeans, unzipping them just enough for you to slip into the waistband of his underwear. He moaned into your mouth when you wrapped your hand around him softly. You swallowed the sound down, held it in your lungs.
It had been so long since either of you had been so close in this way, past the shower and the attempt in the bed that felt empty even with you in it. He hummed against your pulse, his open-mouthed kiss caught against your skin when you let yourself get lost in the familiar motion of drawing out his desire. You had been here before, just like this, with his hand sliding down your side until his fingers pushed past your panties and could circle sweetly over your clit.
He’d kissed salt and sun from your skin, blushed just the same as he did now, not from the cold but from your touch, greedy to feel more as he rolled his hips into your hand. Mimicking your slow movements, he soaked in every soft sound you made, pushing his fingers into you, pressing the heel of his palm in place for you to grind.
It didn't matter how long it had been, not when you had spent years learning every little thing about each other, enough so that you knew that this last attempt at memorization was futile. Still, it wasn't because you wanted a last goodbye but because you needed it, and he deserved it. So you whispered the word into his mouth, “please,” as if begging him to ask you to stay instead of begging for more.
It didn't matter that you were on the beach, the very one you had met, or that it was winter, just as you dreamt of spending with him. You let him push your pants down, let him melt into you, keep you pressed against your coat, the sand. You gasped at the heat of him, the stretch, the familiarity.
Your hands, still sore from your cuts, made from memories too sharp, burned as you tangled your fingers into his hair, his face pressed firmly to your neck as he let himself be surrounded by you. The two of you in a world alone, wrapped up in your affection, your lust, the nostalgia.
There was no rush; every movement, careful and deep, threaded with memory, so close as if neither of you could stand to be apart. He held you, kissed the salt on your skin from his tears away, as he had the salt from the sea. Not caring about crying when you were so close to slipping away from him. He knew it, felt it between every breathy whimper the two of you shared. This was different than the last time you two had tried; he had felt you grasping at him desperately, trying to hold on, find purchase on him as if it would have been able to pull you from the water.
This time, here now, he knew you were letting yourself go, breathing him in as if he was the last bit of air you would ever swallow down before your lungs stopped trying behind ribs too bruised from chest-wracking sobs. And he was greedy, he wanted you, even like this, in any way he could, because he loved you, loves you, had never stopped, and he never thought he would, and he was just as willing to give everything up for one more moment.
His tears caught on the hollow of your throat, sliding down your skin like an undone necklace, his lips finding your jaw, catching your moans when he finally pulled his mouth back to yours. He held you as you trembled, coming undone for him one last time, his weight keeping you in place as he reached a high too bittersweet and yet blisteringly vehement.
And he didn't ask you to stay, not when he clung to you as if he was moments away from waving you off to a plane he was too late to grab a ticket on. You were as close as you could get, legs wrapped around him, arms locked around his neck, his nose pressed to your cheek, his browbone slotted into the hollow of your eye as he whispered against your skin like a ghost would into an unsuspecting ear, “Do you remember when I called out for you in the street?”
His hands slid under you, between the sand and your coat, fingers tucked against the warm spots where the two of you met chest to chest. And you can see him back at the beginning, shoeless, one hand shoved deep into his pocket, the free one cupped around his mouth as he yelled into the night, the streetlights shining down like golden sunrays, his hair a mess, his expectant smile, his dimples.
And just as the snow began to fall, in small, fragile puffs that melted on your cheeks and clung to his hair, you whispered, “I remember everything.”
“That was the day I knew you were the love of my life,” and he held you as he had on the couch, as he had the moment he could finally wrap his arms around you for the first time. kissed you just as he dreamed he would while taking sips of coffee from paper cups he picked up from your job, just to get a taste of your lips. And the two of you lay in the sand like a swaying boat on a sea gone dry.
His letting go and your running was a mutual mercy.
This is what you repeated when you stood at the train station, your ticket the only one printed for the empty ride. The scarf tied around your neck felt heavy on your shoulders, your nose tucked into the fabric as if that would convince you in some way he would still be with you. Because his hands had been so soft as they wrapped you up as if you were a gift he had been all too excited for, peeling back the paper the day before he was supposed to open it, careful to make sure no one would know he had sneaked a peek. As if he were hopeful you would still be there in the morning, still his, even if you were in the city, even if you weren’t in your shared bed.
The scarf felt like a name tag, one you wouldn't throw away, but tuck into the back of the closet like you would a receipt between pages of a book for safekeeping. The color is like a burning reminder of him, and as you try to keep the wind from your cheeks, you're flooded with memories of how he smells, what it was like to press your face into the fabric of his sweater, his pillow.
The heel of your palms are numb, nails pinched against your skin, jaw aching as your teeth rattle, grind, the pressure holding in each trembling breath that wants to turn into a weak whine. You focused on the feeling of your closed eyes, how your lashes felt heavy with unshed tears you refused to let go of, not willing to look up at the way the snow fell on the beach with increasing speed since leaving the sand.
It fell like rain, sheets and sheets of the flanks swirling in the air under the streetlamps lined up on the edge of the platform you stood on alone. Your world felt like a salt shaker, taken in a careless fist over a boiling pot, too casual with the flicking of a wrist that never intended the harm it was causing with one simple movement. Every inhale with closed eyes and aching hands made you sway, like you were the tide and he was your moon, beckoning you with slowness and promises you had to push against like waves at the edge of the rocky cliffs the lighthouses sat on.
There was no Shakespearean end, no half-written tragedy uncovered with your closing of the door behind you, only silence. And when the train pulled in, tugging on the red end of your scarf with its arrival, you couldn't help but follow the line of its direction. He would be sitting on the back porch watching the snow exactly where you left him, the sea loud enough to cover the sound of your leaving, because to him it swallowed even the silence.
You looked back because somewhere deep down you wanted him to be running back up the side of the hill, flushed red, socks slipping in the sand and snow, begging you to come home even if it was a house that hadn't been a home for far too long. There was no reason to be disappointed not to see him there; you had done nothing but ruin, nothing but lie stagnant like water at the bottom of a covered well, no stone he could throw at windows or like pennies mimicking wishes could change that.
He did not come, he did not beg, and you did not stay, no matter how much either of you wanted to do the opposite. You climbed the short steps into the belly of the empty rain, let the seat right by the door swallow you down, and waited for the memories to chew you, to spit you out on the streets of New York. because behind you, the ghosts of the past sat giggling, sharing book recommendations to blushing boys who lost their shoes, who whispered funny baby names just to see you smile, who kissed you under every bridge you passed.
You let the ghosts leech off your sadness, a final gift as if that would make them stay longer than you would ever know. Feeding their memory so that even when you forgot, they would sit here, haunting the very train you took to fall in love.
There was no reason to push any of the thoughts away, not when you had so little time to dwell on them. You had only one thing in your pocket besides your phone and key ring, the half-ripped pamphlet with the number to Dr. Howard's office.
As much as it said it would not hurt, you wondered if you would know, somewhere deep down, that something was missing in you. You had not known exactly how vast and empty you could feel, not until this wave of depression, and if that could be hidden, would the memory of him be tucked away somewhere? Folded down over and over like a piece of paper or burned to ashes?
Loving soobin would leave a scar, even if they said it would be unnoticeable. There was no amount of perfected surgery or magic that could pull him away from your being unmarked. In the fine wedding of your heartstrings, his fingerprint was etched; you had not known it, not until he looked up at you with his boyish smile and eyes warm enough to feel like nostalgia. It was not something they could erase, not entirely, because it was a part of you far longer than you had known him.
It would not be easy to erase him when he was woven too deeply into the threads of your tapestry. You knew it as soon as you stepped off the train and looked out at the road, packed with cars leading to places you never envisioned going, with people you never cared to meet. His question hangs in the air like a knife on a string. Do you remember when I called out for you in the street? Here you had been just a girl, and you learned that heartbeats had wings, ones that were made of wax and beat for boys who felt like the summer sun on bare shoulders.
You ran, not caring about the stares, face scrunched to keep back the tears because it felt all too real now, three hours away from him. Your coat was too heavy, too warm, suffocating when it wasn't snowing in the city just yet. Every step down your old street, up the stairs to your apartment shared with a life before him felt heavy, weighted with iron tied around your ankles.
You had not called Kai, not when you had only thought about soobin and his hands, his last breaths puffed into your lungs as if it would reanimate you. It had slipped your mind to ask if it was okay to run to him when you were looking for someone to tell you it was okay, that it would all work out no matter what you chose to do.
Instead, you had picked up the key that Kai had turned into your palm, and fell into the familiarity of coming back to your shared apartment as if it was another day after class, or work, only now your hands were shaking, trembling enough to miss each attempt to fit the key into the lock.
Everything was overstimulating: the flickering overhead light down the hall, the sweat now making its way down the back of your neck from so many layers of clothes, the tears that blurred everything around you and made your throat tighten enough to feel like a hand had replaced your scarf. “Fuck,” you blurted the word, moments before the door pulled open.
Kai stood bathed in the golden light from the lamp in the far corner, still dressed down in his pajamas, hair a frizzy mess, eyebrows pulled in concern at the very sight of you being at his doorstep. “Kai,” his name was a sob, like the bubbling sound from a stopper being pulled from a tub's drain.
He pulled you into him, tucked your face into his chest, and held you while you fell apart, the gentle swaying of his body allowing you to spill out. It didn't matter how or why you showed up, he would take you in just as he said he would. You let him pull you in past the door, and as soon as he let you go to shut it, you ripped off your scarf, shedding your coat, your shoes. Your hands wiped at your cheeks, knuckles digging into your eye sockets to force yourself to stop the incessant tears.
You wanted to sound clear, to make it known that this was a decision made from reason and not one made from wallowing, even if it was all that was written over you.
Holding your breath, you looked around at the space you once shared, now tinted with the years of Kai having been alone. The small touches you had placed over it were still there, only added to. He kept the hooks by the front door, still half filled haphazardly with his winter coats, your jacket placed right where he always kept the spot open for guests. Your scarf slipped to the floor, even after he had taken the time to make sure it would stay in place, the red fabric like a pool of blood at the entryway.
He still used the blanket you kept on the back of the sofa; the pillows never switched out, even as they started to flatten over the years. The coffee table was picked out for its color and price when the two of you had scraped by for cash to spend on to have somewhere to eat besides standing in the kitchen. He had added to the collection of photos on the fridge, replacing the magnets you had taken with you to the house in Montauk with his own memories.
Your old bedroom door was closed, right across the living room from Kais, the door half open to show where he must have climbed out of bed on his off day to let you in.
Life had gone on, yours, his, even if it felt familiar, it felt distant. As if you were stepping back into your childhood bedroom after the first year of college, no ghosts but dusty reminders of what you had grown into. The bittersweet nostalgia felt cold around its middle like a reheated meal you hadn't let do a full turn in the microwave. And there on the side table, a picture frame of your friend group, Kai’s sisters, all sitting around the living room on his birthday, crammed onto the small two-seater couch, smiling for the camera. Soobin's face was pressed into your cheek, his eyes scrunched in a laugh because you were fighting hard to get away from the way his lashes had been tickling you.
You had only been able to call Kai for his birthday this year, promising him that in a week you would make it up to him when you felt less under the weather, even when both of you knew you weren't fighting a cold.
It was the picture that pushed you to say why you had come to, “I can't do it anymore,” and even if all you felt was shame to come out with the confession, you were shocked to find relief in between every syllable. “I thought when I saw you in the city that I would be okay, that eventually I would get better, that somewhere there would be a light at the end of the tunnel, and I just hadn't found it yet, but it’s taking so fucking long,”
And he knows what you mean, the realization not something that he thought was shocking when he could hear it in your voice after every call, knew it when yeonjun had gone and came back with red-rimmed eyes after the train ride home. “It's so much, and I lost my job, and I don't even really care about it, and I think that's the thing. I know how I would have reacted before, and now not even feeling a hint of that? Every emotion is so far away, and I can't do it anymore. I can't sit there and make him suffer through it with me when I don't think there will be any end to it, not unless I forget what happened.”
“Did you talk to him about it? Have you told him-”
“What is there to tell? I know exactly how he will react. I love him so so much, I can't hide that, because that's all there is, that's what's left, but it's so hard to act on, to be who I was for him before when I first started to love him, who i was when we first moved into the house because now im just empty, and he still would love me and when he couldn't anymore, because one day he will see what I've done to us, he will still stay and let himself be brought down by me because that's who he is thats that he does,” you fall to the couch, elbows heavy on your knees as you lean your face into your hands.
“You didn't do anything wrong, none of this is your fault-”
“I know that, somewhere deep down, I'm sure I know it, but we are losing everything. I lost my job, I lost my feelings, we lost…we lost our baby,” you whisper the end of the sentence, and you're sure it's the first time you've said it allowed. Soobin had been the one to make the calls to your family, to your friends, you had replayed the sound of his voice, growing cold with each pass of condolences and weak thank yous, over and over again in your head until it was all you could hear.
You should have been there with him, at his side, leaning on him as he leaned on you, carrying the weight of the truth so that it was spread between you two instead of sinking you both. But you had been just as silent as he had grown. Let him sit with the heavy words from people who didn't really know you two, their comfort like bullets to glass, far too cracked to do anything but shatter. Everything happens for a reason. You can have another one, move on by bringing in happiness, showing that the spark is still there, and you can still be happy…
It was all bullshit. You had heard it in the distance, and you hadn't given him any outlet to talk it through, both of you shell-shocked, knowing it was meant well, and yet it did anything but soothe your hearts. And maybe that's also why you were running, some selfish part of you was embarrassed about who you had become for him, a partner who did not know how to help with his grief, had not tried. Your mother had told you that it was natural and not something you should beat yourself up about. But it was so hard not to throw fists at a mirror that now only showed the parts of yourself that you hated.
You had tried, but it felt so lackluster in comparison to what he had done for you, how he had made attempts and had been met with a brick wall, and still did not give up, even if it was silent. He was waiting for you so that you could build new dreams together, build yourselves back up, and work through your feelings in healthy ways that would help process your grief.
But it was so easy to get stuck, so easy to think about what was gone, what had gone wrong, and still he waited loving you even when you didn't anymore.
“I'm drowning, fully, and I don't know how to help it, but I know this,” you pull out the pamphlet, place it down on the table before you, letting kai take the half ripped sheet, “every time I think about picking myself back up to live out the dreams we had set out for us im right back down in my bed. Because once I think about it, all I can see is how easy it was for it to be taken away from us, how easy it was for the wave to come and knock me on my ass. There was no fighting it. I'm trying, but I can't do it anymore, not when I see him and what I did to him. I'm not the girl he proposed to, not the one he fell in love with anymore. We hadn't gotten married in all the time it took before I got pregnant, years, it took the thought of having a baby for him to talk about it again, for us to move out of the city, and now that's all gone.”
“And I don't know why I'm so caught up in that dream being lost, why I can't get out of bed, why I can't let him love me. That's why I can't let him suffer anymore, because at the end of the day, I wouldn't want to marry me either, I wouldn't want to be saddled with someone who crumbles instead of snaps, he deserves so much better than whatever I have to offer, and I can't do this anymore. I try, Kai, that's that part, this is me giving it 100% and I want to give so much less, I feel it, weighing me down, it keeps me in bed, it keeps me from forgiving myself for what I did-” you’re bleeding tears, they coat every words and shaking breath as you lay out every thing that had been plaguing you.
Your last moment on the beach had pulled a thread from you, anchored it to the sand and sea, and as you ran, you unraveled. That fine red sting pulling taut as you spoke without fear because you needed Kai to know why you were doing this, you needed someone to know it was out of love, just as well as it was selfishness.
The couch dipped next to you, his weight drawing you closer to him before he wrapped you in his arms. And without knowing it, your shoulders sank involuntarily at the realization that it was not soobin pulling you into his sweater, but Kai. “You didn't do anything wrong,”
“But I did! It was me, it was my body, it was my baby, it was my life, and I ruined it. I can't do this anymore, I can’t sit here and feel this anymore, and I love him so much, so much it hurts, it rips at me, it kills me and I cant lose him not like I lost our baby, and I’d rather forget it all then wait for him to realize im the cause, that im everything I know I am, I can't do that to him, I can't hurt him anymore than I already have and I don't want to forget him but I have to, I need to, for him,”
“You don't have to, you could go to therapy, stay here for a bit, give it a week, a month, time.” His hand, warm and heavy, soothes circles over your back, grasps at ways to calm you. But your mind is made up.
You were always back in that hospital bed, screaming to be left alone, avoiding the one thing that maybe could have kept all this pain away in the first place. So quick, so simple, like knocking off all the dinnerware from a table, but you had been worried about the mess, concerned about collecting the pieces of broken glass like scattered bones grown from wombs of memories, that you had rejected everything besides grief. And now everything was laced with regret, and all you wanted was the first option.
All you wanted was painlessness. It was the only dream rattling around in a heart made up and dressed like a tomb.
Kai knew it, you both did. His attempts at convincing you otherwise were lost, and when he called yeonjun and left the two of you alone in the apartment, he knew it too. Saw it in the way you had begged to sleep on the couch, scared to find yourself in a bed that you had shared with soobin only a few times, the mattress far too short and his legs too long, having to curl up into you like the perfect excuse to hold you tighter.
Instead, you lie on the couch as you would in your own home. Yeonjun didn't even speak up. He sat with you, your feet resting on his lap, his coffee cup, too cold for winter, dripped onto his numbing hand as the ice slowly melted enough for him to ask, “Are you sure?”
You had already made the appointment for that day, making Kai promise that he wouldn't tell Soobin, that he wouldn't tell anyone besides Yeonjun.
The office had asked for memorabilia from your relationship, one item that had significant enough meaning to keep soobin right at the forefront of your mind. You had nothing more than the clothes you had come with and your engagement ring. Your fingers curled, but you did not take it off, not yet, not until they asked you for it, not until the last moment.
Yeonjun had promised to pick up the rest of your things in time from soobin, swearing to keep the secret even when you could see it on him that he didn't want to. You could only tack it to the list of reasons why you felt so guilty, your one choice of not erasing your memory sooner rippled the waters enough to affect everyone around you. If you could go back, you would. You had been closest to the shore then, closest to soobin, to your baby, to the life you had dreamed of.
“I'm sure.” Even if it was heavy like a lie on your tongue, weighing the statement down with some resonance of truth, you carried it all the way to your appointment.
Yeonjun held the door open to the sterile office space, the walls grey and peeling, tacked up with inspirational posters every few feet like a color bandaid on a scraped knee, too small to cover all the damage, but pretty enough for its job.
It was nothing like the hospitals you had been to before, more like a dentist's office, the few seats already filled with people holding boxes and photo albums like driftwood on a thrashing sea, they prayed would calm soon. It was a small building with no more than three rooms in the back, faint elevator music covering the soft, muffled voices behind the thin walls.
“Good morning,” the receptionist smiled, the brightest person in the room, the sunny disposition shining down on the wilted flowers we all found ourselves being once we had decided this was the only option. “Appointment?”
For a second, your throat had tightened up, as if tears would come instead of words; spill with a desperation that read more like a plea than a declaration. You swallowed, hands tightening on the hold you had on your coat, tugged off from your shoulders to use as a blanket between you and the realization of what this all meant.
It was Yeonjun who spoke up for you, nodding and taking the clipboard, papers, and pen with his pursed smile, the one he used for work and bad days. He led you to the only two free seats together, waiting for you to sit so that he could make sure you weren't running. He wouldn't stop you if you did. You're sure it would make him happy to leave here with you, intact but not whole, but the rawest form of you that there would be before bits of you were picked out like fruit from a cake.
He passed the clipboard over, set the pen in your hand, and watched as you filled out your name. It was the only thing you could do to distract yourself, list out the basic information about you that had nothing to do with soobin, no, that wouldn't happen until later, until at least the second page of forms, where you would have to list out your explanation of why you were here in the first place.
The stinging in your eyes was like someone was blowing air right along your lash line, your blinking only working for so long before you were finding it hard to read the checkmark boxes asking who you had brought along with you to take you home. It was only a little reminder of Soobin, of a time when you had been happy enough that the anxiety was eaten away at the edges like ends of books you had stacked on your shelf; spouse/partner.
It had been so simple then, when your problems had been nothing more than cold feet worries and not soul-crushing silence, but even now you can't help but want him right here with you, pressing his knee into yours, his legs too long for the chair so he needed to spill closer to yours, when really all he wanted was to be closer to you, touching you. His laugh lit up the silent room, echoing as he joked about the posters, eyes going wide when your name was called, like he had been caught by a teacher for passing notes.
The pen slipped from your fingers, falling before you had even realized you had been crying so openly. Yeonjun bent and picked it back up without much thought, held it out for you on the flat of his palm like an invitation, one to take or one to leave. He'd walk out with you if you asked, you kept reminding yourself over and over about it, and still you couldn't stop now, not here.
But it didn't feel real until they pulled you back without him, your lifeline slipping between your fingers with lightning speed at a rate you couldn't catch, but you could feel the burn of. The chair, much like that of a dentist’s, was cold and squeaky, the pleather not worn down or softened by any number of people who had come and shared this very seat. The lights dimmed like the ultrasound room you had shared with soobin by your side, a screen pulled up right in front of you just the same.
Your knuckles ached, the grip you held on your coat too tight as you bit back the wave of fresh tears threatening, the questions rising from somewhere deep you didn't want to look down into. If you went back, pulled away now, and ran all the way to the waiting bed you made for the two of you, neither of you would survive.
You could go, let him tuck you in close to him, whisper that everything would be alright when you both knew it wouldn't. You could convince yourself that he was telling the truth long enough to make it feel real, even for a night.
But what were you running back to? An empty house, gutted clean with the cracked porcelain made from memories you found so easy now to throw away, or so it seems. The ocean singing its mocking tune that you couldn't quite hear unless you were thrown into the deep end, haunted by the sounds of heartbeats and I love yous.
There he would be sitting, waiting for you to drag him under the tide that had spit you out like weathered driftwood that hadn't touched the sand long enough to remember just what it had been grounded to before it snapped and drifted out into a sea it had never seen coming. He would wake next to you, in the house you had turned into a crypt, and place the last mug of tea down on your nightstand like he would flowers right at the edge of your grave. Whisper so soft like he would blow you out like a candle if he spoke too loud, kiss your temple like the cold headset they now laid against your skin.
The dry acidic tang of the rubbing alcohol they used to clean at the edge of your brows burned your nose. Gentle fingers making sure the headset, icy and awakening, was set right into place, the drone of the doctor's voice coming in waves, painless, simple, all you have to do is remember for one last time.
Your ring, the one he kissed at your knuckles while in bed, in the sand, slipped from your finger, placed, clinking like the tines of a fork on a glass of champagne for a wedding the ring never saw, on a silver tray just a foot away from you to look at and picture him as if he wasn't always on the forefront of your mind. Hands now empty, lay so neatly against your coat in your lap, as if forcing yourself not to curl them into fists would help distract you from what you were doing. And when they told you to close your eyes, you let your lids fall heavy, let yourself get lost in the memories, in poison you had slipped in the well to tell yourself that this was the right way, the only way.
The machine hummed low next to you, the buzz of it like the beating of a moth's wings, like the littered kisses he'd pepper along your hairline.
“Baby?” his nose nuzzled against your ear, so close it almost felt real, his voice a memory of a time you had been just on the verge of waking, tucked under the sheets in his apartment, his hands a heavy weight against skin worn into sleep-ridden bliss. “Stay with me?”
You had lived this moment, heard him whisper over and over again the one thing you had been waiting for him to ask when you were laid out in the sand, when the snow began to fall. You had turned in his arms, legs tangling with his, pressing your face into the warm spot at the base of his neck, nose dipping into the hollow of his throat as you pulled him in closer. “Ask me again,”
“Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me…” the words faded out, slowly until you couldn't even hear what was being said, only the rumbling from your own throat as you rolled out of an empty bed for work. The heater had been turned off late into the night, Kai and his plans to save money on the electricity, leaving both of you to sleep bundled up under layers of blankets, wrapped around you like arms.
You rubbed the sleep from your eyes, cringing at the overhead light from the bulb right over the checkout counter, a stack of books waiting for stickers at your side, as your jaw ached from the stretch of your yawn. He laughed, the kind that you knew his dimples would show through, teeth just caught at the bottom of his lip, “sleeping on the job?”
He placed a mug, steaming with tea, on the smooth wood, as if it were on your kitchen counter, not the register. Distantly, you can remember that you had lost a job, cried over it until you had broken something that had hurt instead of healed. But here right now, soobin was leaning over the checkout, bending to kiss the tip of your nose as you rolled your eyes, “you kept me up all night.” he had been humming in the kitchen, clinking plates, mugs, making something late at night because you had craved it.
“They kept you up all night.” You couldn't help but smile, hand falling to the waistband of your jeans, only fitting snug enough to make it seem like you hadn't changed overnight. “How are my girls doing now besides being tired?”
“Girls? Our baby is the size of a pea, and you're just picking a girl just because?” You tilted your head, looking up at him like some lovesick, love-struck fool, mid shift. But he was blushing, flushed pink, his smile turned downward as if he was trying too hard not to act caught detailing dreams you hadn't yet shared while tucked in bed at night.
“I'm happy with whoever they end up being, so long as they are healthy, but when I think about you holding our baby, I see you and her, and she smiles like you.” he was just pulling in to kiss you, taste the edge of your happiness caught on your lips, when someone cleared their throat.
You were caught frozen, distracted enough to spill the paper cup of tea you had grabbed at the beginning of your shift right over the edge to splash on your shoes. The customer waiting in the spot you had just been looking at, lost in some daydream you can't remember, passing you a book about whales, the familiar lighthouse out in the distance, just at the edge of your periphery as you ground your reality, listening to the echo of the waves on the shore. The water just reached the tips of your shoes, threatening to soak your socks if you didn't take a step back. “Do you remember our first time out here? Together when we walked on the beach?”
“Like the back of my hand,” you had held it out for him, showing him the smooth expanse of skin, fingers spreading before he caught them in his, intertwining them like yarn woven to make a blanket, a sweater, before he pulled your knuckles up to kiss. You had no ring then, not until the next time you went out to Montauk together for his birthday. But for now, it was you and him, caught in the snowglobe left unshaken, just a picture of a memory now being cleaned of dust bunnies dressed in the shape of him.
“Can we stay here?” Your heart was picking up speed, beating to the rhythm of your steps as you ran, feet dragged down from the sand slipping into your boots, clinging to your socks. Laughing as he chased you, bent to pick up your coat, your dropped sweater as you pushed open the door of your home.
Not a house, but your home, with its creaking floorboards and open windows, the fridge covered in magnets, the sonogram picture hung right next to the filmstrips, every mug stacked in the dish rack. And soobin is standing in the kitchen with your baby on his hip.
This was something close to a memory, the dream you had caught in your hands that first night in your bed after taking a million pregnancy tests. sick and yet too happy to care as he kissed your skin, explored your body in ways he never had before, fingers drawing shapes of hearts and whispered names like first laughs made in cribs that birthed fairies like stars blinking alight in the sky.
He called out your name, a question on the edge of his lips as he looked over his shoulder at you, one hand holding a spoon as he stirred the pot he had boiling, bouncing the baby with their dark hair, giggling as the bubbles rose and popped, the floor a sticky mess as you stepped into the kitchen. The sweet powdery smell of baby lotion mixed with the salted air from the sea breeze. “Listen to how happy she is,”
Your breath stilled, frozen in the moment, the weight of your dream so close to the feeling of holding her in your arms, not quite able to see her face but seeing the swell of her dimpled cheek as soobin bent to press his face into her neck, blowing a raspberry just to hear her squeal.
In your dream, you had met them in the middle, brushed your fingers into your daughter's hair, and listened to the happy babbling. But now the image blurred out of focus, as if you had drawn them with ink and not the starlight the dream had been made of. Dipping the parchment into the water now swirling around your feet, the colors running, the ink bleeding, dripping like blood on tile, in the sink, until the water ran clean.
Your throat was tightening, mouth opening, gasping as you watched your empty house fill with the sea, water rising, the hollow halls purged clean of anything but salt, and you. The rush was loud, like a dumping waterfall off a cliff, the hum heard even under the water as the riptide pulled you in. Spit out into reality as you surfaced, the offices dimmed lights a stark reminder of what exactly was happening, what was being lost.
It was only at the dripping of your tears off your chin that you realized why you felt as if you had broken through the surf. “No-no- not that one-” the words sounded so loud, so desperate like closing fists and prayers. The memory of your proposal crashing into you at the sight of your ring sitting on the metal tray.
“I even got you a ring.” his trembling hands cupped the little velvet box, his laugh so shy, the tremor in his voice carrying over your bones, sinking into your joints and building you up at the realization that this was exactly where you had wanted to be. Happy and lovesick, right at the end, on a bed in Montauk. Eyes burning, hazy with tears that welled up just at your lashline like they did now.
His voice was echoing around you, the words left when the sight of him, the feel of him, was slowly slipping away behind your tears. “I was put on this earth to love you, kinda way. Because when I'm with you, when I'm not, I ache. I think about how lucky I am to have you when you're here, and burn when you're not, and it feels bigger than the both of us, and that is scary, but also very comforting because it only tells me that you are the one,” like a church choir sitting in the rafters, he went on, your body remembering the motions, how he pulled you in, how he kissed you.
You reached out fingers digging into your coat, tight enough to bruise knuckles, crack skin, as you cried, because now everything felt wrong, you didn't know how, didn't know why, but it felt so wrong to erase wanting this boy who was blushing before you as you leaned against your apartment door. “And next time, kiss me before you leave,” you were saying it, but somewhere distantly your mouth could only form the words, “no- not this one, let me keep just this one-”
Soobin was looking down at your lips, his throat bobbing with his forced swallow, his mind working so fast he didn't have time to question if it was the wrong thing to do before he was leaning in, reaching for something you couldn't remember if you had ever had before. It was all too short, so shy like sitting under a playground slide, the woodchips digging into your palms the way your nails did as you clawed to hold onto this one thing.
Because your hand was sliding up his sweater, drawing him in closer like you were nothing more than the only person in the world who could bring him to his knees. His lashes fluttered, hazy and drunk off the feeling of you curling your fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, wanting him just as desperately as he wanted you; every small touch, gentle laugh, so you pulled him in for one last kiss.
Your eyes were heavy and raw, blinking open in the golden, dimmed office, lips buzzing as if you had only just been kissed, the salt of your tears bittersweet on your tongue. Your knuckles creaked, stiff and aching like you had them curled around a steering wheel for hours on a road trip. Nothing was pointing out why the crescent-shaped indents from your nails were burned in like a gruesome engraving into your palms.
But somewhere right on the edge of your vision, you could tell something was off. Inside, there was a space so vast and full of seawater that there must have been something lurking underneath. You were a corked ship in a bottle, snuffed, and filled with echoes, but hollow while seemingly being told you were complete.
“All done!” the doctor clapped behind you as the nurse lifted the headpiece from your temples. “Your scans are all clear, and it looks like you are free to go.”
But it must not have been right, there was something you wanted to ask, found it right at the tip of your tongue, and yet you couldn't imagine what it was that you were forgetting. Your thumb swept over the indents your nails had left, counting: one, two, three, four, over and over as the nurse wheeled away an empty metal tray that had been sitting in front of you.
There was nothing you could ask, nothing you knew how to pin down, when all you felt was empty.
ོ ⸝⸝⸝
It was easier to imagine you were still in the house, somewhere in another room, late to bed as if you had a long shift and an early morning. He would sleep because you had sent up to the room to warm the sheets, promised you'd make it up before he closed his eyes, and yet you never did.
He left the bed wrinkled, the covers just pulled back on your side, just as you had left it that morning that he woke to find you a mess on the floor of the kitchen. Your sweater still thrown over the foot, dotted with blood gone dry, left out from his meticulous tasks he had set out to do while you were gone.
The list had been long, and there was dust collecting around every corner of the house. He started with the ceiling fans, pulling a ladder from the garage left by the previous owners, climbing up with no worry of falling off with no one spotting him. You would have laughed at how he climbed far too high, bending back at an awkward angle once he realized he could hardly do anything with his head pressed flush against the rooftop.
But he didn't find it funny, his jaw ticked, tight as he imagined it, angry at the way his reality was working up. The dust falling like the snow had over the sand; like ashes over the grave the couch had become the first time you had come home from the hospital.
He vacuumed, the house silent instead of full of the music you would play loud enough to sing over the violent hum of the hover. The windows were open, the cold puffing in through the curtains pulled back, his coat and sweater on as if this was all he could get, the heater turned off when it was just him, and since he wasn't keeping you warm.
He washed every dish in the sink, the single mug, carried down load after load of laundry, separated them by color, by delicacy, and made the laundry room his oasis. You had always dumped the warm clothes on him while he sat on the couch playing games. The fabric softener's scent flooded his senses before you jumped on him, pulling him as close as you could get him, not caring if he lost his game when he felt so cozy like this.
You would sit watching him play over a voice call with Beomgyu and Kai, folding everything into piles that he would carry with him upstairs to put away after you had fallen asleep, curled up. It was how you had done it at the apartment and the start of your lives right at the edge of the sea.
He didn't want to sit back on the sofa and think about how you had tucked your feet under his thigh on the colder nights, holding up socks to see which pair went together when they were seemingly all the same. So instead, he stood folding clothes straight from the dryer, precise with his technique, taking his time until the light in the dryer went off and all the clothes had grown cold.
He mopped baseboards, fixed squeaky doors, and repainted the porch swing blue. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that it had been two weeks and you had not called him, had not texted him, had not breathed a single thought in his direction.
Maybe it was better. Something that you truly did need, you had spent so many years together, nearly every day and every night had been in the same bed, the same house, with words shared over the phone, or between shared air.
Like a bone snapped in half, his life had fallen into two distinct pieces: you on one end and him on the other. And maybe to you this was a rebreak so that you could heal properly, and it was taking a lot longer than the first time the injury had occurred. Hastily plastered over in hopes that it would all be alright, but the splint had done nothing but make the two of you heal in a shape he had never seen before, close to the real thing but not quite right.
He told himself over and over that you just needed time, more than he could give you when he was right there; he would wait in the same bed, on the same beach, far away, or close by, but he would wait. If it were the last thing he would do, it would be done, and he would clean the house, go over every little thing that had been set askew, and place it right so it made it easy.
But with each thing he cleaned, each thing he fixed, you were still gone, and the house was cold and just as empty as it had been before you left.
It pushed him to the beach, to sit out in the snow, not feeling the wind on his face, but feeling the way it threaded through his hair like your fingers would. The boats would be out, rare now that there was hardly anything to catch, but to watch the whales as they came by chasing warmer waters. The lighthouse would shine its light in its constant circle, going round and round as he told Taehyun not to worry about coming over, that he was busy enough.
“Just for the weekend,” he wasn't trying to push; Taehyun was only giving him the option, showing that he was on his side as if there were sides at all. But it felt wrong to have someone else come into his space when you weren't there.
Any other time, he would have been okay to have him over, but Soobin had left the door open for you and no one else. He was waiting for you to walk in next. Even if he wanted to see his friend, even if he knew it was okay to show you were grieving someone alive or dead, he still wanted to do it alone, and now that the house was clean, he wanted to do it alone on the beach.
It was the closest place he felt to you when you weren't here, the last place he had held you, kissed you, told you he loves you. He could lie in the bed all day, smell you on the sheets he had neglected in his cleaning, see the spots of your blood on the sweater, and still it would not be as close as he felt with you right in the sand.
It was the first place he knew you would go if you came back, right to the edge of the shore, looking out over the water with him, reaching out and sticking your hand in his pocket to grasp his, twisting your cold fingers into his warm ones, leaning your head against his shoulder without saying a word because there was no need to. He wanted that back, needed that back, and this was where he could imagine it best.
Looking up at the house felt like looking at a closed book, as if someone had written the ending as soon as you had left, and now he was here with the only copy. He couldn't stand it.
He wanted to run to the city, scratch at the door of Kai’s apartment, and beg you to let him stay, to make a home right there like you had before, when everything felt easy, when everything was better. He’d sell the house, put all the money back into a studio with windows looking out at the park, or a townhouse, a brownstone, anything you wanted, so long as you let him stay.
Because all he wanted to do was have you back, whole or not, and maybe that was selfish, maybe he was greedy, but it's all he ever felt after one taste of your love. Living three hours away now felt like torture; a few blocks like it had been at the start would be enough for him, enough to relearn each other. Trace fingers over all the new scars and grooves that had been carved into skin far too weak to realize the damage that would come with playing at happiness.
He wanted you back, in any amount he could get, and he'd change just about everything to get it. Because he had never stopped loving you, he had not come to any grand conclusion that he wanted to stay separated once you had pulled away. If anything, it had made it so clear that he could not do it alone, and he could not spend any more time waiting when it was eating him alive.
He was angry, far too angry at himself, at the situation, at the damn house and its mocking bedrooms painted to hold cribs and wedding photos. Now it was a dusty shelf, cleared of dust he supposed, but still a mausoleum of all the dreams that he had let slip right past him.
Letting the sea drown out his thoughts helped, but only so much; he was raging on the inside, thrashing around searching for meaning in the middle of an ocean that had been searched thoroughly enough to have nothing left for him. He let the cold burn, slip past his coat, gnaw on the parts of him that had been left out to dry after the sea had gone stagnant with your leaving.
It was never anger at you, always at himself, for his silence, but every time he had opened his mouth, nothing had come out. The words were stacking up inside him, shifting around with every movement, every dusting, every fake smile he walked in with when going to work. He was not okay, not entirely when you were here, but now it felt so much worse. With you, he could hold onto something that he knew was right, and without you, all he could think was a list of things that needed to be done, what he should have done differently.
It had only been a few days after you had left that he came out to the beach on a grey day like this, his navy blue mug in hand, spilling as he stepped out onto the sand. Standing in the kitchen, smelling chemically cleaned, he had made it out and stood where he does now. Picturing himself in his mind standing behind you as you slept on the couch.
He had wanted to say something, anything, to make it better, if there was a way that he could make it better. But he had stayed silent, shedding his work shirt, and climbing in behind you, holding you because it's all he could think to do. What was there to say to someone you had let down?
Without thinking, he had thrown his mug into the sea, tossed it like he would a stone, and it had flown, heavy and smooth, tea a ripple in the air before hitting the dark water and sinking without a sound. It had only taken him a second before he had rushed in after it.
The water had been cold, soaking into his clothes, his coat suddenly heavy enough to keep him down, his eyes burning from the salt, his mouth flooded as he gasped at the icy shock of the needle pricks digging into his neck and hands. It had not been hard to find the mug, to turn it upside down, feet dragging in the sand as he walked out of the ocean on a day far too cold to be this wet.
Pressing his thumb into the ceramic hard enough to hurt, he sank to the sand, not caring anymore if he was too close to the water's edge. He let the tide come in, watched the way the sand darkened, and poured away from him, sinking him lower and lower.
You would have laughed at him, a blush creeping on his cheeks at the sound, instead of how they only turned red now because of the cold. He pushed his free hand into his eyes until the world went white and then red, into black. He laid back, snow still pushed back on the shore where the tide couldn't melt it. It didn't even affect him when it slipped down the back of his collar. All he did was laugh, sharp and cutting, splitting him in two at how ridiculous he was being.
He had thought of selling the house then; it's the same thought he had now, dry and more of a sound mind than he had been so soon after you had left. Now he just watched the lighthouse, the beam spinning, guiding ghost ships that would never find their way past the rough waves; relentless in their search.
Maybe that's what he had become, someone who sat still and waited, silent, or maybe it hurt him to admit that's all he's ever been. Burning as the lighthouse did, stuck circling for someone that had already seemed to vanish from view without him seeing it. But he had seen it, felt the way you had slipped away from him, and he had been holding onto the remnants, the house, when he should have followed, run after you, and helped patch up the relationship that had been wrecked, and he had been too stunned to help before.
It's why he found himself back in the city. Getting off a train that led to you, standing in front of your old apartment, counting each of his breaths as if it would finally give him the courage to step up and knock on the door he remembered so well.
He had whispered his speech to himself on the train ride, pacing back and forth at the station before it pulled in. A love confession tied up in promises and pleas, apologies and vows. What felt like a lifetime ago, he had spilled out before you, speaking without thinking truths he had not found fully formed until they left his lips.
It had been the most honest telling of his emotions that he had shared, and even when he felt as if he was going to be sick, he had said what he knew to the deepest part of himself. You were made for him, the one person whom he had been put on this earth to love, to ache for. And it ruined him, pulled him apart at the seams to be so far from you, to sit there amongst your things and know you weren't coming back.
He had sensed it when you had kissed him in the sand, one final time before you ran, and he hadn't run after you, even when everything in him was telling him to go after you.
But that would have been selfish, he knew; you needed time and space. He knew it when you came back from visiting Kai and seemed revitalized, or as much as you could be at the time. It had made him jealous, the snake of it twisting around his insides for only as long as it took him to realize how anything to make you better was worth it.
This was like that, this was as if he was standing, watching his friends talk about memories he wasn't privy to, happy they had a good time, and yet trying to find his own space to fit into. He wanted nothing more than for you to be happy, to find a routine that helped you get out of bed, even if it looked different without him. But it didn't stop the feeling of guilt, as if he wasn't enough to help, hadn't been the one who could, even after promising everything he was and had to you.
He wanted to see you happy when you opened the door, even if it was a different kind of happiness that he had not been able to provide, but it wouldn't burn any less, and it was something he would never confess to anyone, not even you. It was something he would have to learn to get over, and for now, he avoided that pain with more distractions.
The city was so much louder than he remembered it: the car horns, the lovers yelling in the street, the shuffling of his own feet against the concrete as he walked down the familiar road to your old job. He hated to admit that it made him feel so small, hated the echoing mock of it all, asking him what exactly he thought he was doing here.
But he needed time, something to give him a warm up to seeing you again, in whatever state you would be in when he intruded on your well deserved seclusion. So he picked the one spot he remembered you best, the neutral middle ground outside of your place or his.
The bookstore had not changed much since the last time he had picked you up here. The shelves were stacked high, with books littering the tables and carts yet to be put away, the coffee shop's buttery desserts and bittersweet coffee filling the air with warmth and fresh baked memories. You had talked about wanting to bottle the scent: books, coffee, and cinnamon, something to light when at home, tucked together on the couch with no plans.
He stood in line, this time not looking back at the checkout counter you would have been waiting for him at. His smile plastered on his face as you made silly faces at him or blew him kisses. He would pretend to catch them, unashamed of the people around him watching his display of obsession. He had walked into your orbit, and he would stay as long as he could, circling you like a moon, round and round, never dizzy.
But now your ghost was waiting at the edge of his periphery, the memory like a haunting, your air kisses jaw breaking sucker punches if he looked too long at something he had let burn too bright. So instead, he focuses on the chalkboard menu even when he knows he's ordering the same thing he always orders. The same cup of coffee taste that he had kissed off your lips so many times before.
He practiced how exactly he would pass it to you in his mind. Where he would place it, whether you were in the living room, your bedroom, or the one opening the door for him. He stood in line, blushing as if you were looking up to him then, and not just a figment of his imagination, a mix of who you were at the house in Montauk and who you had been living in your apartment when everything had been fresh and new.
You'd lean against the door, not quite letting him in. This sad, resigned look falling away to the faintest smile, the kind that warmed his cheeks and twisted a hand around his heart. He would let you pull it free from his ribs, let you yell at him to leave, go back to the beach, wait. He would let you pull him in, hand twisting in the fabric of his sweater as he pressed his forehead to yours, shyly breathing out that he couldn't stay away any longer, couldn't keep himself from seeing you.
He was a tornado of emotions, ribbons tied tight over his insides, guts made into knots at the idea of you pushing him away. He would sell the house, move back to the city, start over, fresh like scar tissue, anything, even if it hurt.
The barista called out his name, messily written on the side of two takeaway cups when he heard it.
Your laugh, bubbly and alive.
If there had been a moment to haunt him, it should not have been now, not when he was so close to seeing you. Not when you had not run through the halls of his dreams, or down the sand dunes covered in sand after him as he jumped into the winter water. You should have been there, even if you were just a laugh he had imagined hearing. This felt cruel but not artificial. Because deep down he knew he could never forget the way your laugh had sounded, anywhere, caught in the wind, at his neck, pressed into his skin, his lips, and most certainly here between the stacks of books where you had spent so much time trying to keep it down when he told you jokes that weren't even fun.
It shocked him still, limbs prickling over as they had when he went in after the most trivial mug you guys shared. He feared turning around to find a stranger who had the same laugh, although he didn't think it was possible, and that's what made it so much worse. He knew exactly how you had sounded, had captured the sound in his mouth and swallowed it down, answered to it over the phone with his own laugh, played the soundtrack in his dreams because he knew.
And when it came again, it echoed in his ears, over the coffee grinder, over the honking cars in the stress, and even over the sound of his own racing heart. Because it was beating wildly in his chest, both hands fisting coffees, the sea of people parting around him as he stood looking down at his feet, as if he looked back, he would know there would be an angel waiting, frozen in stone just as him, but there.
“I'll call you after my shift ends,” it was small, something he had heard too many times when he had been late at work and you had early off. He remembered the way you would tease him about lying in his bed with him gone, rolled up in the blankets half dressed, waiting for him. He’d groan, beg the universe for more time off, or at least schedules that lined up, and still he would wait for your call on your walk to his place, standing outside his work building on a break just to stay on the phone after your shift had ended so he knew you made it home safe.
“Stop worrying, you act like I haven't had this job and the exact same walk back to the apartment before.” and again you chuckle, “Okay, I'm hanging up now, Kai, byeee, stop worrying about me pleaseee,” and he turned around, fully to see across the short path it was to the checkout where he had found you so many times before just like this. Two coffees in hand and a prayer that no one else would walk up to disturb the two of you for the whole shift, so he could stay perched right there talking your ear off as if he had nothing better to do because he didn't.
He didn't know exactly what to expect when seeing you again, at least not here, not when he had been planning everything in his head about seeing you in the apartment, laughing or not, but here it felt as if he had walked into a spider web, caught like the fly on the way he saw himself as now.
You turned off your phone, placing it face down next to the register as you pulled a stack of books over for you to place stickers on. It had been one of your favorite things to do, meticulous in your work as you lined up barcodes and numbers with the spine.
And he couldn't help himself but admit you did look better, fuller, as if you were finally taking meals at the right times, eyes less sleepless but still slightly hollow from the months of late nights and long days.
It scared him to think he had not grown at all in his time apart, that you would see someone stuck in a past you had run from and did not care to turn back to. He had done nothing but clean, and even that had been in silence, no pondering besides the questions of what he could have done differently, and the anger. He felt nothing now but panic that he would not live up to whatever it was that had helped you.
Worried that you were growing separately and not intertwined as you had been before. And it was okay, maybe the two of you had been too codependent, maybe it was good to find yourselves away from one another. But he still felt as if he hadn't found anything at all. He had done nothing but keep everything the same, silently waiting to orbit his moon again.
He squashed his fears, takeaway cups burning into his hands because he forgot the paper sleeves at the sound of your happiness, and he walked up to the counter.
You did not look up at first, and he took the time to follow the shape of your nose, how it dipped and led to your lips, pulled between your teeth as you lined your sticker, concentrated on the task to not notice him. Not until he whispered a weak, “hey,”
It had taken almost everything in him to say, his heart bleeding on his sleeve as you looked up, your eyes, the ones he knew so well, passing over him, and this time without a spark of realization for who was standing in front of you. “Hi, how can I help you, sir?”
Soobin gave a humorless chuckle, dry and brittle enough to crack a bit of the ice inside him. Maybe it would have been different if you had looked as he remembered, or if you had said it with the light in your eyes that you got from joking with him, or even if it didn't gut him to truly realize that he really had done nothing but wallow while you grew.
But as the time stretched where he did nothing but look at you without speaking, he realized there was no recognition in your eyes. This was a look you gave to customers who truly did come to the counter to ask for help, your questioning, “Sir?” echoing around him before he opened his mouth like a fish out of water.
He wasn't even angry, shocked that he must have looked so different, just as you did as time passed, but it had been two weeks, nothing long enough to forget, and yet you didn't even get the glint he saw at the edge of your eyes when you turned your attention to him. He had seen it even at your lowest, memorized the look as if he had been a light you couldn't turn away from and chose to look at head-on.
Now there was nothing. Not a single glint, no teasing, no anything. Just a girl who had gone off and left him bleeding because it was better than bleeding out right next to him. Maybe he had been pulling you down, and he hadn't even noticed. Every talk he had with himself over these past two weeks had been right; you had been right to leave because he truly hadn't been enough for you. And he knew it must have been the truth seeing you here like this.
“I forgot what I was going to say.” And as his world was falling apart, you smiled the same as you did on the beach in Montauk, when he didn't know you, and you didn't know him, and your laugh grabbed him in its hold just the same. Saying, “They sell sandals right on the edge of the beach, right next to the beach houses,” instead of, “If you remember it, just let me know, I'll be here all day.”
He felt himself nod, chin making the motion as he turned on a foot too numb to know where it was going, and he left. Pushed past the door with his back so that he could catch on glance at you, not even turning to watch him leave, your head dipped to place the next sticker on the spine of a book he would never read.
His hands were trembling, following the pattern of the earthquake he was experiencing as his hands clammed too tight over the cups he had picked up, one for you, one for him, now crushed, coffee spilling over the backs of his hands like a caress’ he’d brush over your cheeks. The scalding hot liquid bleeding into the cuffs of his coat before he let the cups fall to the concrete floor, splattering like paint onto his shoes, the street.
Eyes burning, he knew how he must look, fighting back tears, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot as he gasped silently for air. His chest tightened with every step he took, air scratching down his throat as he reached into his pocket for his phone, for something to ground him as he was running away. Fingers numb and far too slippery, he dialed the only person who would give him a straight answer.
Kai had been avoiding his calls, texting back hours later with the same line, She's doing okay, I'll let you know if anything changes. But it seems he had lied, you had changed right before his eyes, and he hadn't found it important enough to mention. ‘Okay’ seemed to mean something internally different to him than it did to Soobin. This was better than okay; seeing you like this was when you was so much better was devastatingly bittersweet. You did not look as you did coming home from your job in Montauk; this was a new look, refined and aged as if your healing had taken no time, and his had stayed still open, frozen.
He was happy and yet torn apart. Yeonjun could hear it over the phone, the shocked gasping mixed with the swift humiliation that he knew would come, “I just saw- I um-” he was breaking down, walking so fast, weaving between the walkers on the street, avoiding bicyclists, and honking cars. He didn't know where he was going, paying no attention to street signs but needing to bring back the distance as if that would help fix him too, give him the sight you had gained living back out here.
“Soobin-” he didn't know what to say, didn’t know how to even when he had known it would come eventually.
“She acted like she didn’t even know me,” he was crying now, tears hot on his cheeks, his hand pressing too hard into his skin to push them away.
There was no need to be angry, not now, not at you. He knew this is what was best, this is what was needed for you, the relationship but it didnt hurt any less to see you happy without him, sitting at your old job like the world had moved on and he had been there on the beach waiting for you to dock your boat at the edge of the clif you had planned to build your life together.
He was cracking open again, as if seeing you had snapped him, and now everything was spilling out, raw and unfiltered as he went, “she just- God, she just looked right past me, she didn’t see me like she does, she just smiled,” he laughed something broken and ugly, wet with his tears, voice slick with the sound, “was i that bad? Had I been that bad? Did I not see it? Did I not have it in me enough for her to stick around to not act like she doesn't know me anymore? Or have I changed that much not having her with me? Have I been that different?”
Soobin walked right into someone, tilting and running into the wall from the collision, “Watch it!” he didn't even register the stinging of his shoulder, moving forward without any plans.
“Where are you?” Yeonjun stood on the other end of the line, pulling on his jacket and grabbing his keys. He had witnessed you falling apart and didn't enjoy hearing your other half melting away.
“I don’t know,” he was crossing street after street, not caring if the light was green to walk or not, he didn't even know the direction, just away from what felt close to shame. You hadn’t even been wearing his ring.
“Meet me at the diner near your old place, the one we had your birthday at before you moved,” he was nodding like Yeonjun could see, looking up at the street signs now having something to do, someone to explain, a direction to go besides home to a house he had cleaned till he saw bleached bone and faded memories. “Stay on the line, I'll be there in ten.”
Neither of them talked as they made their way, the clash of sound from Yeonjun’s side of the phone mixing with Soobin’s as he made it into the only empty booth in the otherwise full diner.
It was the one in the far back, the same one he had sat at for his birthday, only now it was him, clutching the plastic casing of his phone with white knuckles, and fighting back tears as the fresh sleet started to rain down against the window behind him. The low hushed mumbling of the other patrons felt like bees in a hive, buzzing over his skin, tingling behind his ears at the spot you loved to kiss when tucked into bed against him.
There was no hiding from yeonjun when he came, hair wet and sticking to his temples before he pushed it back, shaking from the cold after getting caught in the frozen rain. Soobin was hot all over, but he knew his body must have felt it somewhere that he was dripping, his breaths had come out in puffs of smoke, the city blurring around him as he made it in, the neon sign fuzzing out around the edges telling him he had arrived.
He had not tried to wipe his eyes, not anymore as he sat back, replaying your words coated in professionalism, “how can i help you, sir?” it felt like a knife he couldn't quite pull out, one he didn't know if he had placed there himself or if you did.
“She looked right at me and pretended to not even know me,”
Yeonjun had nothing to say, his jaw tight, cracking under the pressure of his teeth as he tried to hold in the confession he knew soobin deserved. Kai had promised not to tell but yeonjun never did, he had promised to look out for him, not keep secrets. And now soobin was a crumbling house, the roof ripped off in the storm, folding in on itself with splintering wood and curses.
“Shes better now, or looks it… she looks happy, she's laughing,” he sniffled, lips turned down as he tried to hold in the sob waiting to break through, "happier than she was with me,” it had been all he wanted, for you to find some way back to him, to be okay.
You had not broken up with him, you had taken the ring, left all your things, made it seem as if you would be right back, the bed still unmade, your sweater thrown over the edge, his heart still in your palms. He wanted you to find yourself, to know that it was okay to grieve in any way you needed but he hadn't seen you pushing him away, hadn't seen this cruel ending coming, and maybe that's what had been the final stab. Knowing that whatever you had found, he could not find with you, had not been a part of some plan that was out there in your healing, instead, he was this: a boy sitting in a diner where he once wished for a life with you on candles weak enough to snap under careless fingers.
“I wanted her to be happy, to smile again, to laugh,” and he felt evil for wishing anything different, not if he was the one who had been bringing you down. “I just didn't think she would act as if she didn't know me. I should have run after her, but that's stupid because she wasn't doing well; she needed this, she didn't need me. But it hurts so fucking much to realize that,”
“Wanting her to be okay doesn't change the fact that it would hurt like hell to be without her.” Yeonjun took a breath, using the clinking of the plates from the bar seats to push in further. You were his friend first, but it would kill you to be in his place; it would kill you to know that just as Kai and Yeonjun tried to convince you of his love that he did feel the loss of you just as deeply as you would have felt his. “Soobin, she's not acting.”
His face felt tight, the confusion settling in for as long as it took for yeonjun to continue, to mutter the name of the procedure as if it hadn't been on his mind. It had been the one thing that had brought back so much emotion into you in the last few months, your anger sharp and instant, so vivid in comparison to the way you had hollowed out for him. He knew exactly why you had done it, what had pushed you over the edge to get to this point.
“I thought I was…I don't know why I thought I was ever going to be enough.” The words caught on his trembling lips, his sob soft like a last breath, the confession taking everything in him, his last little hope that he had over everything. Because he understood exactly what it all meant, “I should have known, I should have seen it coming,”
Yeonjun opened his mouth, but soobin did not stop; he kept going, spilling out as if the knife had finally been pulled and it was taking all the blood from his body, every word that was left of him. “I would have changed. I didn't know how, but I could have learned. I cleaned the house. I would have sold the damn thing; it doesn't mean anything without her. I would have done anything. Instead, I just stood around and watched her bleed out in front of me without saying a damn thing and thought it was love, and I deserve it- I promised so much and I wasted it all- Even through my grief, I tried,”
“Stop it- she didn't do it because you weren't enough-”
“You can't tell me it wasn't one of the reasons- I was content, pushing through the day and letting us try and heal around each other, and I didn't even see, I mean I saw- but I hoped I would be enough, even if we were apart, even if it took us time, I hoped she would come back to me.”
“She loved you, down to the last second, I know she did, and she didn't do it because she didn't, she did it because she loved so much. I know she wanted to be more for you, to do more, and she felt this was the only way, and I'm so sorry,” Yeonjun looked down at the table, his eyes following the soft circles decorating the wood, sanded down to be something useful. He had kept to himself for a long while after you had come back to Kai's apartment from Montauk, sobbing, hollowed out with the only sign of life being that aching sound he would never get out of his head. He knows Soobin had tried; you had told him enough for him to see it, but that wasn't the poison that had been put in the well. “But love is not just about showing up, it's about showing yourself, and I don't think she's been herself for a long, long time,”
And soobin didn't think he had either. Not since he lost you and you hadn't slipped through his fingers two weeks ago, it had been the moment he had woken up alone in a bed dotted with blood in the space you should have filled.
He took the train back to the house out in Montauk, no more home than a museum, walked past the front door and around to the back, the moon hanging heavy in the sky, the stars hidden behind clouds painted over their canvas. He walked down the creaking wooden sun-bleached path to the sand, his jaw just as set as his mind was when he pulled his phone out to call Beomgyu.
Answering on the first ring, he cautioned his name, “Soobin?”
“I need you to tell me what I'm doing is right, even if it's wrong,” he could hear Beomgyu’s shuffling on the other end, sitting up in bed, on his sofa. “Just lie to me,” and maybe he called Beomgyu because he knew he wouldn’t.
“Today I went to see her, and I heard her laugh. Like a genuine one, the kind that makes you want to laugh with her, the kind that I love so much and haven’t heard in forever,” he bit on his inner lip, hard enough until it bled, before he continued, “and the second I heard it, I knew I'd ruin it, just by being there,” he whispered it, said it aloud because he didn't have you who would have known what he was feeling with a single look.
“And then Yeonjun told me that she…she erased everything, and I feel so selfish,” he had thought it over on the train, just as you must have when you left and he didn't run after you. And he would have, he wanted to, but had beaten himself down into the sand just hoping that you would ask him to come with, that you would turn back around and chase him with the realization that you needed him just as badly as he needed you.
Only now he felt as if he was holding onto the corpse of your relationship, clutching you to his chest, every memory a compression on a chest long since done rising and falling, every plea was a breath past lips that did not wish to breathe any longer. Keeping his memories now after knowing what you had done to survive felt like desecration, and he knows himself.
If he kept on to everything, he would die; it would poison him to know that he couldn't run to the city to find you, to confess his love over and over, even if you didn't know him. He was selfish when it came to you, and he hated it about himself, and he didn't want to ruin your happiness to find a taste of what had been. He saw what the memories had done to you, what they had done to him, and it was not anything he ever wanted to you to feel ever again. Forgetting would be a mutual mercy for you both. I final goodbye that did not tease him with the possibility of messing up the one thing you had wanted. Peace.
“If I did the same, it would be like meeting her halfway, carrying the rest of the burden to bury, because I don't think I can live knowing I had everything I ever wanted and all I needed to do was go to New York to try and get it back. I’d ruin everything again, and I hate how badly I want to do it anyways, even when I know it's wrong. If i dont erase her, ill still be imagining her laughing as I dust the house I got for us, I’d dream she was just in the living room and I fell asleep too early for her to see her climb in the bed after me, I’d jump into the water and search for her until I drowned. I'd never give her up, not when I needed to, not when I knew the result of letting her walk away the first time. I would have never let her leave, Beomgyu, I’d take it back, I’d run after her, I’d do it all over again because I love her, I love her, I love-”
And for the first time Beomgyu spoke, soft and unwilling to hide the pain he felt for his friends, “do you really think that's love?” anything was better than nothing at all, years of your relationship would be gone in an instant, and maybe it was better than pain, maybe anything was better than that, but he’d like to hope somewhere out there you two would find each other, work it out without having to erase the love.
His throat closed, but he forced the words out anyway, “I think it’s the only thing I have left to give her,”
Soobin sat with the phone in his hand until he watched the sun start to rise, long after the call had ended with Beomgyu, who promised to take care of the house, sell it with all its furniture that you had picked out, help him move back into the city, and take him to the inevitable appointment.
He was ashamed to say he felt closest to you sitting in the office chair, his one item to bring forth your memory tucked against the healing scar across the lifeline on his palm. A single folded receipt that he had saved under a fridge magnet, your handwriting tattooed along his veins, your number, the one he almost called every night, right on the bottom with a little heart written next to that girl from Montauk.
You had been that girl, and so, so much more to him. And when they pushed back his hair with their gloved fingers, it made him cringe to know he would not remember the feel of your hands twisting the fine strands of his hair until he fell asleep.
He wondered if you had been scared or relieved to sit back against the unforgiving pleather of the chair. If the stink of the alcohol pad and the buzzing of the headpiece made you just as sick as he felt. Queasy enough to close your eyes and fall back into a memory you had not visited in so long it felt like coming home.
“We will be okay,” he had been optimistic, leaning against the bathtub, your body spilling onto his as he silently hoped for the pregnancy tests to read positive because all he could see was a baby with your smile, echoing your laugh. Walking into a bedroom on the beach, with you leaning back against the headboard, your baby laying on your chest, and him climbing in after you.
Every warm sheet wrapped around you, only for his eyes to open to find he was asleep on a bed swaying in the middle of the ocean, cold and empty, your ring, the one he kissed at your knuckles waiting on the pillow, the one he leaned down to press his face into until he couldn't breathe.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” your fingers in his hair, scratching down his bare back, lips kissing his shoulders, right at the nape of his neck, he turned over, pulling you into him, pressing his face into your collar, into your warmth. “I should be able to sleep in on my birthday.” your laugh alive, and for him and not a room full of people you didn't know, even ones you had chosen to forget.
“But if you sleep in, I won't be able to give you my gift,” and he rolled onto you, followed the same trail of kisses he repeated until he knew in another life, every spot would turn into a freckle, a vivid mark of his love left for him to find time and time again throughout every lifetime. He caught your words on his lips, your moans in his mouth, your laugh right against his ribs. His hands digging into the sheets, the sand, his nose drawing along your chin until you pushed him, rolled him onto his back, sitting above him like the sun.
He closed his eyes for only a second, and you were gone, and he was alone again, sitting up as he gasped, half naked in the snow, his boxers cold, his socks wet. “Oh god, you fell.” Your laugh doubled you over, shivering and pale as you wrapped your arms around your middle. He did not remember whose idea it was to go nearly skinny dipping mid January in the ocean, the snow thick on every guardrail, the wind cutting against his wet skin. “Hard.”
You had run up to him, let him pull you down with him, screeching at the cold waves lapping at the shore, his lips turning blue as the two of you grabbed all your clothes, running back to the rental beach house to climb into the tub, the hot water raining down as he peeled off your bra, soaked your hair with the steaming showerhead. The rush of the sound was loud like the passing train outside his childhood bedroom window.
The same window that faced out to the tracks, his bed, still made with his old high school navy blue sheets, nestled against the wall where you examined every photo he had pinned up. He had never had a girl in his bed before, not that one, not anyone he loved as much as you. “You have stars on the ceiling,” the sticky faded green stars, still holding on to the white popcorn of the roof. He had flipped off the switch, let them glow for themselves as you lay back against his only pillow, making room for him to climb in next to you, close enough so both of you were slightly hanging off either edge.
“My mom put them up for me, said I have stars on my baby mobile, and they helped me go to sleep.” Your knuckle had brushed the back of his hand until he stiffened, blushing in the dark of his room as if you two hadn’t kissed, as if you hadn’t just met his mom, and said I love you.
You had slipped your hand into his, looking up at the green stars as if you were lying in the grass on a warm summer's day, sharing first love confessions, and he couldn't help himself but say into the night, “I wish we had met when we were kids, but I still don't think that's enough time to love you the way I was made to,”
And somewhere down the hall, he had heard the phone ring, his mother's voice interrupting the moment as she yelled out for him to pick up the landline for her. But before he could roll away, you had tightened your hand in his, pressing a whisper to his ear like a kiss, “There's never enough time, so make sure you stay with me.”
“Wait-” he wanted to a redo of this one, to not let the words morph into a lie so far down the line, his hands, sweaty against the armrests of the chairs, slipped as he tried to get a better grip to sit up with, a nurse pressing him down softly muttered behind her mask, “we are almost done,”
And as he leaned back into you, the phone still ringing, like the warning bell of a disaster waiting to happen he whispered back, “I promise I'll stay, I’d run after you, I don't think I'd ever just be able to watch you leave,”
He shook his head, hard enough for the head piece to jostle, the nurse rushing to place it back as he reached for the phone in his memories, answering with a lovesick smile warped onto his lips when he saw your name appear on the caller ID, a white heart at the end as if he could mimic the one you had drawn for him on the receipt he kept pinned to his fridge.
“We made it to the end,” he could hear the smile in your voice, right over the sound of Yeonjun and Kai bickering in the back. On the yearly trip the three of you took out to Montauk, the first weekend you would be spending without an excuse to see Soobin, even if it had only been a month since you had met.
“You say it so hauntingly,” he sat on his couch, leaning back, trying to imagine you curled up right next to him, looking up with that specific shine you got in your eyes that made him feel like the only person in the world.
“Hauntingly beautiful, I hope, since it just so happens to be the spot we will be telling our friends we met at,” he had wondered if this was what the honeymoon phase was, or if this would be the rest of his life, giddy to pick up the phone when you called, aching to have you right next to him. He knew you had meant your families. Your friends, and his had been teasing the two of you for the entirety of the month when you came back to your separate apartments with grins wide enough to make anyone wonder what had gotten into you.
“Right at the end?”
“Right at the end.” You echoed back, “We should get a mug for your place that has that on it, something for me to drink out of.”
“You drink out of my mug just fine,” he could see you sitting on his kitchen counter, blowing the steam of your tea into his face, your bottom lip flush against the navy porcelain as you tried to convince yourself the too hot mug was ready to be sipped from. He’d take it from you so you wouldn't burn the roof of your mouth, again, and kiss you just because he couldn't help himself, your lips so warm he couldn't help but pull you in again and again.
“But I want to share tea, not watch you sip on a glass of cold water, while I get hot water,” you had brought it up every time you came over, and he wanted to hold out longer, listen to you beg to spend time with him even if it was just to share tea and fold the laundry you had brought over to his place and his in unit washer and dryer.
“Fine, next time we go out there together, we can pick up a mug, maybe make it a tradition,” you cheered over the phone, happy, and he even ventured to guess, in love, even if it was new, it had felt like he had known you a lifetime.
“I miss you.” It had only been four hours then, or maybe even in his memories, he knew that he would be sitting in that chair, missing you for a lot longer than he ever wanted to.
“You dooo?” You had stepped outside, so close to the surf he could hear the sound of the waves like a heartbeat.
“I do.”
You gasped, hand over your heart, or maybe wrapped around his, “You know that basically makes us married now?”
“Does it?” and he was a blushing mess, smiling in his empty apartment, dimples hurting his cheeks, teeth digging into his bottom lip.
“Uh-huh, so now you have to make plans to join me and see the place where we are going to spend the rest of our lives,” the waves crashed, and he could almost see the lighthouse, golden like the light he knew your love bled.
“In the place we met?”
“The very same,” he could see it written out on the mug, knew it was the place he'd propose to you, even if in that moment he felt as if the two of you were already married, your pinkies tied together with an invisible red string, winding round and round the two of you, pulling you in together until the end of time.
“I do miss you… a lot,” and he couldn't tell if he had said it allowed, like he was repeating the lines of his favorite movie, or if it was an echo of a past he was now desperately regretting letting go of. He imagined your face looking up at him, his eyes tracing the slope of your nose, catching on your lips right before he pulled you in for a kiss, your eyes recognizing him in every shade of your life, even past this.
“I guess you’ll just have to come over and meet me in Montauk.”
an: this fic is heavy and i found it very cathartic for me to write it. ive never lost a child but its been something thats haunted my nightmares for years. i channeled a lot of my own fears into this fic as well as making it an outlet to talk about the toll depression can take on a person. ive been there and i would never wish that upon anyone. i know its not much but either way just know im always open to talking <333 thank you so much for taking the time to read this fic. and shoutout to anyone who read this on mobile, if you scrolled out and still read it i love you so bad and im so sorry- ⸝⸝⸝
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kim sunwoo x reader (gn)
wc: 10k
warnings: cursing, heavy alcohol usage and often in an unhealthy way, one mention of blood (a terrible case of largely irrelevant side characters, an attempt at writing song lyrics, switching pov’s without any real indication, story existing in a vacuum of time and space loosely based off of 70s usa)
synopsis → The Numbers are a band well on their way to commercial success with Sunwoo as the dreamy front man, Changmin on drums, Jacob on guitar, Juyeon on bass, and Kevin on keys. But all that changes the second you step into the studio to record “Begin Again” with them. The song is an instant hit, launching you from a singer-songwriter nobody to the biggest new name in music and catapulting the Numbers into a larger limelight than they’ve ever been in before. So with the entire country singing your song, the pressure is on for you and the Numbers to create an entire album that lives up to their expectations. But while pressure builds, something akin to feelings for the front man builds with it.
You go to knock again on the door, heavy footsteps and heavier breaths, but just as soon as your knuckles make contact with the heavy wood, the door swings open.
Chanhee looks disappointed. “You were going to knock again, weren’t you?”
You roll your eyes, pushing him aside and going straight for the marble bar cart you know sits in the sitting room off the formal dining area.
“You know you really have to work on your patience.” He says to you from the foyer, voice already sounding a bit far away. You always forget how big acclaimed-music-producer Chanhee's house is. Although, you think, staring at the array of top shelf liquor arranged neatly on the bar cart, mansion is probably a more apt word for it.
You pour yourself a glass of whiskey.
Chanhee joins you in the room once you’ve already taken a seat in one of the brown leather arm chairs.
“How many glasses is that?”
You scoff. “I have a show at the Roxy after this.”
He hums, flicking the square paper in his hand.
You sit up slightly. “What is that?” Chanhee takes the paper over to the record player in the opposite corner of the room. He slips a clean black record out of the manilla slip and carefully places it into position. It doesn’t take long for the gentle hum of the record spinning around the platter to fill the room.
God, I love music. You think to yourself sitting back slightly in the armchair and allowing your eyes to shut.
“I want you to listen to this.” You hear Chanhee say, followed by the small pop of the decanter being opened and the quiet trickle and crack of liquor falling over ice. The sound of a bass overtakes the room. It’s somehow… gentle.
“Who’s it by?”
Chanhee doesn’t answer at first. You hear him sit down in the armchair next to yours while drums fill in the spaces of the songs and a guitar starts to hum along. And the sound that comes from the record player next–in all honesty, you don’t think Chanhee could have prepared you for. It’s a man’s voice, polished, in a way that you just know he’s been doing this for a while. His whole life maybe. There’s this rough, almost growly quality that amps the song up even more, and yet, simultaneously, his voice glides over the lyrics like honey spilling over the side of its jar. There’s so much depth in every note he hits. You don’t know if you’ve ever heard a voice–a sound–quite like this.
“Who is this?” You ask again once the first chorus comes to a close, opening your eyes and taking a proper look at Chanhee. He looks mildly amused.
“Have you heard of the Numbers?”
Sunwoo hurries into the studio from the car, guitar in one hand and lyrics in the other, fully expecting to get chewed out by his producer. “Chanhee, I’m so sorry. There was tra-”
Sunwoo stops in his tracks. The control room is empty. He steps back into the doorway and rereads the signage. He has the right room, so then… where is everybody?
“Sunwoo,” he hears a voice call for him from the recording stage. It’s Changmin, waving him inside and pointing at you. You smile at him, give him a nod of sorts. His eyes dart to Chanhee, giving him a look that says, who the fuck is that?
He walks into the recording booth hesitantly.
“Hey.” Chanhee says casually. “I don’t think you guys have met yet.”
You stand and approach him, sticking out your hand. Sunwoo just looks at it.
“The label thinks you guys would sound good on one track and want you to try recording ‘Begin Again’ together.”
He ignores your outstretched hand and looks straight at Chanhee. “Can we speak privately?”
—
Sunwoo had assumed he’d be the one getting chewed out in the studio today. Oh, how things have changed. He’s worked so hard on this song. More time and effort than he’s ever put in any of the band’s songs that came out before it. He can’t believe Chanhee would allow anyone else to try and taint it. “Begin Again” is his song. And he’ll be damned if he’s not the only one singing it.
Sunwoo’s ready to say all of this, but, “Before you say anything,” Chanhee doesn’t even let him speak, “I know how you feel about this. But the decision came from above me, okay. The Number’s last album didn’t do as well as the label hoped. They think another voice in the band could shake things up. And who knows, “Chanhee continues with a shrug that only makes Sunwoo fume more, “maybe this could be what you guys have been missing.”
Sunwoo cannot believe what he’s hearing. “We aren’t missing anything.”
“Don’t be dense.” Chanhee pans with a sideways stare. “I know you guys are good. I know you guys are gonna be big, but the rest of the world needs some convincing. Just try this, okay? This could be it.”
Sunwoo just shakes his head.
“I scouted them out myself. They’re a good singer and even better writer-”
“Writer?” Sunwoo nearly screams, arms flying to point at you through the control room window where the two boys are talking. “You want them to write on the song too?”
“They have a couple of…” Chanhee sighs, choosing his next word with extra precaution, “revisions.”
“Fuck that, Chanhee. I wrote a great song. It–”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You wrote a good song.” Chanhee refutes, matter-of-factly. “You wrote a good song, and they,” he points at you, “they made it a great one.”
Sunwoo is speechless.
“Here.” Chanhee pushes a piece of torn notebook paper into his hands.
If Sunwoo wasn’t so aware of the line Chanhee was drawing, he would’ve pushed harder, but at the end of the day, Chanhee is his boss and his lifeline in this business. If Chanhee says so, really says so, then there’s not much Sunwoo can do to fight it. Sunwoo is stubborn, but he’s not a fool looking to waste his own breath. He looks back into the recording stage. The band looks happy chatting to each other. And you, well, you’re staring at him.
A red light flashes on the sound board beneath him. “Talk over the changes.” Chanhee says to the band and you through the intercom. “We record in ten minutes.”
—
“It’s nice to meet you,” you say to Sunwoo sitting on the stool in front of the second mic. Sunwoo’s never even seen a studio setup with two mics before. He swallows a scoff. “Chanhee showed me the song the other day, and your voice it—“
“What does this line mean?” Sunwoo cuts in, taking his seat on the stool next to yours. “I changed my heart. I morphed my mind. You don’t have the right to tell me I didn’t try.”
Your face drops immediately. “Are you serious?”
Sunwoo raises a brow–a challenge.
You let out a breath of pure disbelief, focusing your gaze just above his head, and hands starting to make motions in the air. “It’s about changing yourself to be with someone. It’s about them never acknowledging that.”
“That’s not what this song is about.”
You give him a pointed look. “What do you think the song is about?”
It’s his turn for the disbelief. “What do I think the song I wrote is about?” You don’t falter, not even for a second. Sunwoo grasps at the words, mouth agape. “It’s about redemption.”
“That’s too easy.”
“How is that too easy?”
“Look,” you huff, mouth opening and closing like you can’t decide what it is you want to say. You end up reaching your arm out, palm open like you want a fucking hi-five or something. In the back of his mind, Sunwoo wonders if you’re still waiting for the handshake he never gave. “Give me your original lyrics.”
He does, you snatch the paper keeping your eyes on him for a second too long before finding whatever it was that you were looking for. “Right here,” you say, finger pointing at the tattered paper and eyes darting back and forth between him and his lyrics. Your face lights up. You look like you're holding back a smile. You look… excited. “Here, in the bridge you wrote: take me home, welcome me on those familiar roads, embrace me in your arms, oh please, tell me I still belong.”
“What about it?” Sunwoo asks, almost forgetting that he’s upset at Chanhee for this whole arrangement, nearly forgetting that he’s supposed to not be accepting any of your revisions because for the first time in so long, he’s able to really talk to someone about his lyrics.
You look up at him fully, and almost sadly, you say, “You really don’t get it, do you?” Sunwoo looks down at the lyrics you gave him, scanning them again. Funnily enough, that line is the only one of his you’ve kept.
“The song’s not about redemption,” you tell him. “It’s about guilt.”
—
Sunwoo, you, and the band end up recording your version of the song. It’s a good song. It’s still his melody, his hook, and his bridge, but almost none of the lyrics are his. Just like that, “Begin Again” becomes as much your song as it is his. If he wasn’t so angry at Chanhee, maybe he would’ve had the mind to notice how good you sound singing it.
Kim Sunwoo is an asshole.
That you learned in the recording studio with him and haven’t been able to get out of your head since. Unfortunately, he’s got one hell of a voice and gift for creating a good melody. And him and Chanhee together in the studio, god, they’re magic. You went out and purchased The Number’s previous record after you recorded “Begin Again”. You haven’t stopped listening to it since.
It’s one day when you’re working a shift at the diner that you start humming the song playing over the speaker while grabbing an order from the kitchen. You don’t even think twice about it. That is until you make it right in front of the table whose orders you’re holding and start to hear your own voice.
You nearly drop the four plates of burgers.
You rush over to the jukebox, not believing your ears, not believing that your voice, your words, your song is playing for the entire diner to hear.
And there, right at the bottom it reads: “Begin Again” by the Numbers ft. you
“Holy shit.”
The desert wasn’t too far from home, but it could not have been more different. There was so much nothing for as far as your eyes could see. There was dust everywhere, all over the place, sifting up through the air and in your lungs. How are you supposed to sing like this?
You hear the bands’ voices come up from behind you.
“Hey,” Sunwoo says, coming up next to you and resting an arm on the same wood railing as you. “How are you feeling?”
“Great.” You answer truthfully. You could barely believe it when you got the call from Chanhee saying that they wanted you to play the festival along with the Numbers. Although, considering that your song is playing on every radio station, it probably shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was.
The crowd roars as the previous artist says his goodbye.
“Have you ever played for a crowd like this?”
“Nope.”
He nods slowly. “It’s a lot. The first time especially, for sure. But just go with it, and uh,” he smiles, towards the ground, “it’s a lot of fun once you get past the nerves of it all.”
You look at him, battling against the grimace forming on your face. “Is this pep talk for me or for you? Cause I’m fine.”
His smile disappears when he sees your face. You must’ve lost the battle.
He inhales sharply. “‘Begin Again’ is last. Come out after I introduce you.”
You nod, and he joins the rest of his band.
The crowd cheers when they get on stage. The first song starts with a familiar guitar riff and the pound of the drums, followed by the crowd going ballistic. You’ve been playing on stage for a while now, but only ever in small clubs with small crowds. You’ve never seen a crowd like this, and it makes you ecstatic.
You hear Sunwoo sing the final words of the song and Kevin play the final chords. And you don’t know if its the crowd or the shot of vodka you took during the bridge or the fucking look Sunwoo gives you, but something, something, makes you forget what Sunwoo said about waiting and walk right onto that stage.
Jacob and Juyeon look confused. Sunwoo looks vaguely pissed. Kevin and Changmin barely notice. But you don’t register any of that. All you can think as you walk onto that stage, grin flashing and arms up in the air is: this crowd was fucking waiting for me.
You step up to your mic and wait until the crowd quiets down. You introduce “Begin Again” as a song you wrote. The crowd erupts. You look over at Sunwoo, smiling, no–grinning, loving how annoyed he looks. Juyeon doesn’t miss a beat, starting the song immediately. Your body moves on its own, dancing to the song, belting out each note, and loving every second of it. It’s sometime during the second verse, the one Sunwoo sings alone, that you notice how entranced he is. His eyes are half closed, and his fingers fly across his guitar like he’s not even thinking about it. He smiles at the crowd. You think you hear someone faint. He looks your way then, right before the pre-chorus, smiling still as if he wasn’t just glaring at you. It hits you almost instantly: nothing else matters to him right now. He’s in it, like really in it, and the only thing he seems to care about is putting on a good show. He’s loving this as much as you are, and maybe that’s enough to prove that you and Kim Sunwoo are more alike than either of you think.
You leave your mic stand and start dancing towards him. His entire body turns towards you, waiting for you, his eyes following. You meet right in front of his mic just as the chorus begins. And you’re left with no choice but to stand next to him, singing into the same mic with your faces so close you can feel every ragged breath he takes, see the sweat rolling off his hair, and hear the blood pumping through his veins. Take me home. You both sing with your entire chest. Welcome me on those familiar roads. You see him turn his head to face you. You mirror the motion, and sing the next line looking right into his eyes. Embrace me in your arms. Have his eyes always been this big? Oh please, tell me I still belong. And of course it’s this line you’re singing to each other like this. Of course it’s the one line in the entire song that you didn’t actually write and the one line he did.
The chorus ends, and you slowly back away from his mic and move back towards yours. He rips away on his guitar, fingers still flying like it’s the easiest thing, all while never taking his eyes off you. Staring at you like he found something. Staring at you like it’s only you and him on that stage.
You don’t even remember the song ending.
Music flows through Northside Tavern. A jazz band is playing today, and the piano player keeps making eyes at you.
“I heard the show over the weekend went well.” Chanhee says into your ear. You just nod. “And that the label really liked what you did with the song.”
You laugh. “Not just the label. The whole country liked it.” You give one last look to the pianist, before turning to Chanhee fully. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but I have a number one single.”
You head over to the bar and ask for an old-fashioned.
“Not just you.” Chanhee yells behind you to be heard over the cheers after the band’s last song.
You pivot. “Excuse me?”
“It wasn’t just you.” Chanhee flags down the bartender, orders a scotch, neat. “It was the Numbers too.”
The bartender slides over three drinks.
You lean in over the counter. “We only ordered two.”
Wordlessly, the bartender points to the other side of the bar. The piano player holds up their drink. Chanhee grabs his drink, and you grab the remaining two. You lift them both up towards the pianist who gives you a rather charming smile, and then take a simultaneous sip from the straws of both drinks. You taste your old-fashioned and what seems to be a margarita.
You and Chanhee make your way over to a booth.
“What I wanted to say,” Chanhee continues, “is that the label likes you with the band, and they want you to make an album with them.”
“An album?” You suck in your bottom lip, feeling a sudden rush from all the alcohol. An album is exactly what you’ve been pushing and working so damn hard for. So then why does this feel bittersweet?
“I think this is going to be a good thing.” Chanhee tells you sincerely, eyes softening. “You and Sunwoo…” he hesitates for a moment. You hate when he chooses his words like this, picking out the bad ones and testing out all the others. But perhaps you only hate it so much because you lack the ability to do it yourself. “You guys work.”
You take another long double sip of your drinks, squinting at Chanhee skeptically. “What did Sunwoo say?”
Chanhee’s mouth parts. There. There it fucking is. Running your tongue over your top set of teeth, you say, “you haven’t asked him yet, have you?”
“No, we haven’t asked him yet–”
“I can’t believe this.”
“–but the rest of the band is already on board, and we all thought it’d be smarter if you agreed before we asked him.”
You tilt your head slightly. You thought Chanhee knew you better than this. “I’m not saying anything until he does.”
“Be honest with yourself here,” Chanhee says seriously, pushing his drink to the side and leaning forward, “it’s no secret that you and Sunwoo don’t get along. And I get it; I really do. But I know you see it.”
You cross your arms over your chest. “See what?”
“Most people in this business spend their entire lives looking for what he and you found during the ‘Begin Again’ sessions and again on the stage at the festival. And most people fail. Don’t throw that away over whatever bullshit he gave you when you first met. Don’t throw away the chance you’ve been waiting for because of that. You guys belong together. Focus on that.”
You don’t say anything after Chanhee finishes his little speech. Instead you reach for your drinks and finish them both in one long, prolonged sip. You ignore his annoyed ‘tsk’.
Putting the empty glasses down and to the side, you nod up at him, pursing your lips. “Are you done?”
He takes a long, final swig of his drink. “Yes.”
“Ask Sunwoo first.” You pull out your wallet and drop a couple bills on the table. “Then, you can call me.”
Today is already off to a bad start.
Sunwoo had come into the studio ready to record and knock out at least 2 or 3 songs off the album today, but then Juyeon wanted to talk about the album’s direction and Changmin wanted to request everyone to add as many drum parts as possible.
And it’s as he’s listening to Kevin and Changmin argue about the addition of piano solos, that you walk into the studio.
Chanhee welcomes you with a hug. Eric, the sound engineer, offers to make you tea. Meanwhile, Sunwoo can’t understand why you deserve any kindness at this moment. Your session started an hour ago.
“You’re late.” Sunwoo says, bringing the rest of the band to notice your arrival.
You look at him with a smile, gesturing to the two boys who were just arguing. “Doesn’t really look like I missed anything.”
“We were talking about the album’s direction.” Juyeon says from behind Sunwoo.
You nod, putting down your stuff and taking a seat. “Okay, shoot.”
Sunwoo puts his hands up. “Well since we’re talking about it. I’ve been working on a couple songs, and,” he hesitates, pulling out a couple sheets of paper that Chanhee helped him print and handing them out, “I think I might have something good that we can build the rest of the album off of.”
Everyone takes a moment to read. Sunwoo watches the room carefully. Jacob clears his throat. Kevin plays a loose note.
Your voice is the first that comes out of the silence. “Are you serious?”
He whips his head around. “What?”
“‘Will you still love me when I’m old? Will you still love me when I’m proud.’” You read aloud, before shoving the paper back towards him, that mocking smile still plastered on your face. “I’m not singing that.”
He scoffs, tongue swiping at his lips. “Why not? They’re good songs.”
You shrug. “They’re cheesy.”
“You haven't even read the whole thing.”
“I’ve read enough.”
“Are–are you… is this–I mean, like, you…” Sunwoo only knows one thing for sure right now: you might be the most insufferable person he’s ever met. “Chanhee!”
“Okay, you know what,” Chanhee’s voice comes through the intercom. You both turn towards it. “How about you two go home and figure out some way to work together instead of wasting my studio time. Write one song, just one, together, and the rest of us can go from there tomorrow.”
He slips a curse between a breath.
“Okay?”
You and Sunwoo look back at each other. It’s you who speaks first this time. “That’s fine with me.”
—
It’s a nice day out today. The sun shines through big clouds. There’s a nice breeze, and the roadways are empty. You’re sitting in the passenger seat humming something he can’t hear over the wind while Sunwoo drives. In all honesty, he doesn’t even know where he’s heading, but it might be the first time he's felt some semblance of peace with you around.
The announcer on the radio station introduces the next song. Sunwoo turns it up and sings alongside Kim Younghoon’s voice. You stop humming.
“You like this song?” You ask.
He quickly glances at you. “Yeah, who doesn’t.” The song was insanely popular a year or two ago. If you didn’t like it at first, you heard it enough on the radio and in every store until you did. Although, it doesn’t actually take anyone very many listens to fall in love with it. Unfortunately, the rest of Kim Younghoon’s songs never quite lived up to this one.
“I wrote this song.” You say to him, as if it’s the most simple thing.
“Oh, really?” Sunwoo replies with a chuckle. “You worked with Kim Younghoon?”
“Well, not all of it, but the melody and most of the lyrics, yes.” You tell him seriously, like you haven’t even registered that he thought you were joking. “I mean, worked is a strong word, but we did date for a bit.”
Sunwoo stops at a red light and spends it staring you in disbelief.
“Come on,” you say after a moment, “you really think Kim Younghoon wrote this song?”
Sunwoo listens to it again: They could never get it out of their heads. Like a scene on repeat. Like a mountain falling. Something unforgettable, but forgotten still. Something like you. Someone like me.
And instantly, it clicks–of course you wrote this song. Of course it’s the case that Kim Younghoon’s best song and one of Sunwoo’s favorites was written by none other than you.
He looks over at you while at another light. Your head leans back against the car seat, and your arm hangs over the edge of the open window. You don’t look like you’re enjoying listening to the song even if you are the one that wrote it. In fact, you look mildly annoyed, nose scrunched while inspecting your nail beds, teeth grinding.
Sunwoo changes the station thinking: why’d you let him take it?
Before he can really think about it any further, you sit up in your seat and point at the next light.
“Turn right up there. I know a place.”
—
When you had said that you knew a place, Sunwoo imagined that it’d be a coffee shop or an empty bar or anything other than the middle of the woods sitting on the rocks along a stream.
Although, he must give you credit: the setting you’ve taken him to is beautiful. There are birds humming and life strumming all around you. The water is a blistering blue that glistens and shines in the sunlight streaming through the trees like a million coins falling from the sky. The water has a small current running through it, and it beats against the rocks lightly, like the lightest, most gentle drum beat. The breeze is nice and cool on Sunwoo’s skin, sifting through his hair and past his limbs. And maybe the best part is how all around him, on every single side, he’s surrounded by green.
It would have been perfect, if not for the fact that you and him have been here for two hours and still have absolutely nothing.
“Okay,” you relent, after he turns down another one of your ideas for a song, “how about this melody?”
You start humming one of the worst melodies Sunwoo’s ever heard in his life.
“Absolutely not.”
You grunt frustrated, arms falling through the air. Your head follows suit, settling in your hands, face buried from his view.
“Why’d you even say yes to this?” You snap, looking up at him after a moment, brows furrowed and hands gesturing vaguely in the air. “If you have no intention of taking any idea I give you seriously, why did you say yes to this?”
“I didn’t.” Sunwoo reminds you. “Neither of us did. Chanhee kicked us out of the studio.”
“I don’t mean that.” You flare. “I mean letting me in to do this album with the Numbers. Why’d you agree to it?”
There’s a change in the wind. A sudden quietness that must be attributed to some insect dying. Sunwoo hadn’t expected you to ask this. He hadn’t even expected you to think it.
“It wasn’t…” he starts, looking for the words in the space between you and him. He looks up at you, hoping to find them there. Instead he finds hope in them.
Sunwoo has been in this exact spot before–sitting in front of someone that wants to believe in him and is asking him to give them a reason. He’s seen this before, and he has no interest in repeating his past mistakes. He sees no need to add you to the list of people he’s disappointed. With a short laugh, he says, “You know what, let’s just get back to writing.”
“Fuck that.” You respond immediately, grabbing at his guitar.
“What are you–”
“No. Fuck that.” You repeat, successfully pushing his guitar off his lap. “If this is going to work, you have to at least pretend like you trust me. Song writing isn’t just strumming on your guitar all day and hoping for the best. It’s vulnerability, and it’s pouring your heart and soul and life into something and praying that someone out there feels the same way. That’s what ‘Begin Again’ was. And every single person who listened and liked that song and every single person who sang with us at the festival is saying that they feel the same way. So, what are you so afraid of? Why do you feel like you can’t trust me?”
Sunwoo gulps. “Which question should I answer first?”
You inhale slowly. “The latter.”
Sunwoo just shakes his head. “I don’t know you.”
“Ask me then.” You say desperately, like it should have been obvious to him, “whatever it is that you want to know just ask it.”
Sunwoo nods. In truth, there’s a million questions he wants to ask you about everything, but at this moment, all those questions sink to the bottom of his mind and only one rises to the top and travels to the tip of his tongue. “Why’d you let Kim Younghoon take credit for that song?”
You lean back slightly at his questions. Looking away from him and towards the murky waters before answering. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t always like this.” You tell him, laughing lightly. “I used to let guys like you walk all over me.”
His heart jumps into his throat. He’s barely able to choke out a, “guys like me?”
You nod, still refusing to meet his eyes. “Guys who don’t believe that I have what it takes.”
“I never said that.”
“But you showed me.”
“When?”
You look at him then, squinting. He hopes what you see is genuineness. He asked the question sincerely. “When you were so quick and ready to dismiss my changes to the lyrics during the ‘Begin Again’ takes. When you let me join your band on this album, and then expected me to sing an entire record full of songs that mean nothing to me. I’m a songwriter, Sunwoo. It’s the one thing about me that no one can take.”
Something between intrigue and malice slips in behind his tongue. “So what can people take?”
You shake your head, smiling ever so slightly. “My turn. What are you so afraid of?”
Sunwoo inhales sharply. “Well, I’m afraid of dying and of heights and–”
“Stop that.” You cut in, like you really mean it. “Why are you so afraid to say what you really think?”
He sucks in his bottom lip, shrugging. “‘Begin Again’ was your song more than it was mine. What if people don’t like what I have to say? What if they can’t relate and just think I’m fucked up and crazy?”
Your eyes soften, and your smile lines deepen. It takes a moment for him to register that you're smiling, really smiling, at him. He’s never known a smile could feel so inviting.
“But what if they do?”
Sunwoo takes a moment to think about what you’ve said. And in that moment, whatever insect had died gets resurrected, returning to nature’s hum, filling his ears. Sunwoo looks all around him. The hum of life, the beat of water, the tune of leaves falling. He’s surrounded not just by nature and greenery, but also by music. And it’s erupting from every corner of these woods.
His eyes finally land on you.
“I think I found our melody.”
When you come into the studio the next day, the song is done. You went to sleep humming it still and running through the lyrics over and over again in your head.
“Let us sing it for you first,” Sunwoo suggests to the rest of the band with Chanhee listening in from the control room. “And whenever you feel like you got it, just hop in with what you think works, and we can refine and shape it from there.”
You watch the rest of the band as Sunwoo explains it. Juyeon looks shocked, but excited. Changmin looks proud. And you can’t really read what the other two are thinking.
“Chanhee, are we good?” Sunwoo asks, turning around to the window into the control room.
“Whenever you’re ready.” Chanhee replies, voice filtering in through the intercom. You nod. Sunwoo nods. The rest of the band nods. Chanhee presses a couple buttons and says, “This is ‘Can You See Me’.”
Sunwoo starts playing the chords he found yesterday. You’re not sure why or how but it reminds you of those woods. His voice starts singing the first line of the song. You close your eyes and take it in. You join him for the chorus, singing alongside his voice feeling the words flow. It’s Kevin that joins you two first, playing a couple loose notes, testing things out. By the end of the chorus, he’s found it, playing a little more confidently and adding a whole new level of depth to the song. A depth that makes you feel like you’ve only ever known two colors your whole life and in a matter of seconds Kevin added in a third. Jacob joins in next, as your voice takes over for the second verse, playing off what Sunwoo was playing but making it his own. Sunwoo goes over to where Changmin’s sitting and says something to him in his ear. Changmin nods. Sunwoo goes over to Juyeon, but Juyeon shakes his head, already starting to play something. Sunwoo heads back to his mic right before the second chorus starts. You turn and sing the last line of the pre-chorus to him
And I know that you never trusted me.
He joins you for the chorus, singing back.
Can you see me standing from there?
And can you see the blood on my hands?
If I give you all of the parts to my heart,
Will you care that I’ve been scarred and stitched up?
Changmin starts playing then, the drums filling in the last thing the song needed. You listen to the rest of the band play and marvel at how insanely talented they all are to pick up and play something that actually works after only a minute of hearing it. The song needs polishing, yes, but it’s got a good sound and it’s heading in the right direction.
You don’t take your eyes off Sunwoo, and he doesn’t take his eyes off you. And for the remainder of the song, you sing to each other.
The song ends. The last one playing is Kevin. And for a couple seconds, no one says anything.
It’s Chanhee’s voice that comes out of the silence first. “I’m a fucking genius.”
You smile at Sunwoo. He smiles back.
After recording and polishing ‘Can You See Me’, you and Sunwoo fall into a song-making rhythm of sorts.
(We don’t always have it perfect.)
“I feel like this lyric in ‘Puzzle Pieces’ doesn’t fit.” You say to Sunwoo, before muttering the lyric outloud. “It’s too shy. I don’t know. I just think it’s missing the mark a little bit, don’t you think?”
Sunwoo groans tiredly. “God, I can’t think about this anymore. Can we take a break? Go get some food or something?”
“Yes, but before we do, do you think ‘I see us standing in the distance’ or ‘I see you standing in the distance’ works better here?”
Sunwoo just stands ignoring your question and muttering ‘no’ repeatedly.
You follow, running after him and begging him to listen.
(Boy, do we fight.)
“I think there should be more drums in the hook.” Sunwoo announces after the third run through.
“Why?”
His eyes widen, sarcastically. “Because there should be.”
“Don’t do that.” You scoff, used to his antics. “Answer the question: why?”
He sighs, resting his hands on his hips. “It’s missing something. The song still feels empty. I mean, the lyrics allude to a love that’s blooming and growing between two individuals, but nothing behind the lyrics build up with it. There’s almost a disconnect between the words and the music.”
“I disagree.”
He scoffs. “All that for–”
“I think it works just fine without the drums, and if you add the drums it’ll become more suspenseful. The song is supposed to feel like falling.”
He shakes his head. “It’s supposed to feel like butterflies.”
“It’s supposed to feel like peace.”
(Sometimes you win.)
“Let’s vote.” Sunwoo suggests. “If you’re for the drums, raise your hand.”
Only Changmin (the drummer), does.
(Sometimes you lose.)
Chanhee presses the red button on the sound board, announcing to the recording stage, “Take 3 of Aurora. Sunwoo, try softening your voice a little for this one.”
“Chanhee, can we just try one take with me in it?” You ask him. “I think even if I were just singing a harmony or in the background of the bridge, it would add so much.”
“No.” Chanhee says, scribbling something down in his notebook. “I’m with Sunwoo on this one.”
“Chanhee, you haven’t even heard my–”
“This song doesn’t need your voice.”
(But sometimes, we get it just right and fit like the last two puzzle pieces.)
“No,” you say, shaking your head as Jacob and Juyeon finish off the last chords of the song, “It needs to sound murkier.”
Jacob, Kevin, Changmin, and Juyeon just stare at you blankly.
“Less cymbals, Changmin.” Sunwoo says over the speaker from the control room. “And Juyeon, ride out the low tones more.”
You turn and see him. He catches your eyes, smiling slightly, reassuring you. Like he gets you.
From behind you, you hear Kevin lightheartedly mutter, “since when do they have their own language?”
Jacob and Changmin laugh, but you barely notice because you see him. You see the way his brows furrow when he’s thinking. You see the way he sticks out his tongue when he’s focused. You see all of it.
And for a moment, he sees you. All of you. And he doesn’t turn away from it.
Today’s songwriting session quickly turned into a field trip from the studio to grab food which then turned into you leading Sunwoo’s car to the beach. You and Sunwoo sit on a stone ledge, right where the sand begins, 20 paces away from the ocean. Between you sits leftover fries and your untouched song notebook. You watch the sun dip into the sea and listen to the waves crash over and over again. The wind pushes furiously, tossing his hair to the side and pushes his head away from it. It just so happens that away from the wind means towards you.
“So,” you begin, popping a fry in your mouth and dusting the salt off your hands, “when are you going to answer my question of why you let me in the band?”
Sunwoo figured this question was coming. He’s been avoiding answering it. “You really want to know?”
You look at him sincerely. “Yes.”
Sunwoo looks out to the water. “After our first album, Chanhee prepared a tour for us. It was this tiny tour, not even big enough for a tour manager. We played in the smallest venues with okay-sized crowds. I mean, it was barely a tour, really more of a way to get our name out there. And after the northern leg of it, I…” Sunwoo closes his eyes and sees moments from that tour flash behind his lids: strobe lights, bodies in bed, empty glasses, and negative pockets. Sometimes memories can feel like nightmares. “I was just in a really, really, bad place. By the time we were halfway down the east coast, I was barely even able to play. Chanhee saved me then. He saved my fucking life. But he had to cancel the rest of the tour in that process. The rest of the band, man, they couldn’t even stand the sight of my face. Juyeon especially. It was Chanhee who ended up being the one to convince them to let me back in. I owe Chanhee my entire livelihood and my life. So when he asked what I thought about you joining the band for this album and when I saw how badly he wanted it to happen, I owed it to him to say yes.”
It’s been so long since he’s recounted that story, even to himself. It doesn’t hurt as much as it once did. That knowledge surprises him.
“Where are you now?” You ask suddenly, pulling him out of his head.
He turns to you. “What?”
“If you were in a bad place then, where are you now?”
The wind quiets for a moment; he feels a warmth overtake him in its absence. “Someplace better.”
He looks down, not even noticing the smile growing on his face, and catches sight of your notebook. He points at it, asking, “may I?”
You look down at it as well, grabbing another fry. “Sure.”
He flips through the pages of your notebook. The first half isn’t even songs. It’s snippets, words, singular sentences taking up an entire page. It’s only halfway through the book that it actually turns into something that could be called songwriting. He asks you about it.
“Ah, that’s when I met Chanhee.” You tell him, smiling fondly. Sunwoo puts the notebook down and waits for you to explain. “Before him, I had songs, but they weren’t real songs, you know? They were just some combination of all the snippets and sentences I had written down. But then Chanhee heard me play at the Eastern, and said that I had a good voice. He asked if he could give me his card so that we could talk more, and I said that I wasn’t interested in people who only saw me for my voice and walked away.”
“You’re insane.” Sunwoo mutters, baffled. He remembers the chance encounter he had with Chanhee right after he and the band moved down here to make a name for themselves. He remembers how hard he begged for the same chance Chanhee offered to you so simply. “So, how’d you end up working with him then?”
“He found me again at the diner I used to work at after that. I told him I still wasn’t interested, and he asked if I had written the song I played that night at the Eastern. I said yes, and he said that he was only interested in my voice because my songs weren’t there yet.”
Sunwoo chuckles. “So he’s always been an asshole then?”
“Oh yeah.” You nod, mirroring the sound. “He was an asshole about it, but he was right. And it was the first time that someone believed in me enough to think that I could be better. That is what made me want to try and write a song that would make him see that I’m as good of a songwriter as I am a singer. I spent a lot of time working and got out one good song. I sang it all across the strip. He finally saw me play again at Ben’s Garage. I let him sign me after that.”
“What was that song about?”
Your lips do this half frown thing that makes Sunwoo want to peer inside your brain and figure out exactly where it came from. “It was about what all songs are about.”
“Which is?”
You look at him like it’s obvious. “Love.”
It feels like a shot of sunlight through his veins.
Sunwoo drives you back home after the beach. You had gotten nothing done in terms of the album, but you felt happy, and you felt free. You watch him from the corner of your eye. You’ve only known each other for some months now, but it feels like so much longer. You’ve told him more about yourself and your past than anyone else you’ve met in your adult life. You’ve told him your deepest worries and darkest secrets, and he never turned away from you, not once. Instead he took your insecurities and turned them into beautiful melodies. He turned all your doubts into celebrations of hope. And he did it for you.
Suddenly, it no longer feels like you only met him when you recorded ‘Begin Again’ together. Suddenly, it feels like you’ve known him since you were a teenager and like you’ve been in love with him ever since. Your palms start to sweat. Your heart sinks past your lungs. Is it all those goddamn fries or him that’s making your stomach turn?
He turns onto your street. This is it, you think to yourself. He’s everything I’ve been waiting for.
He walks you to your door, and you stand facing each other on your porch.
“This was nice.” You tell him, taking another step towards him.
“It was.” He mumbles, a lazy smile on his face.
You take another step towards him. He doesn’t move back. His mouth parts. You watch his lips, trace them with your gaze. You think about what it would feel like to kiss them.
“Do you want to come in for a bit?” The words come flying out of your mouth involuntarily. You barely register that you’ve said them. They didn’t come from your mind but from a tiny spot deep in your gut where the urge to take another step towards him lies. You give into that urge without thinking twice about it. You’re closer to him than you’ve been in months. The last time you were this close being that moment on stage during the ‘Begin Again’ performance. You’re surprised you remember that. His breaths then were ragged, uneven. His breaths now are barely there, like he isn’t even breathing. You can smell the mint he popped in his mouth when you left from the beach. You can smell whatever perfume he must’ve sprayed on his neck this morning.
And you’re so wholly aware of the fact that his eyes are looking at your lips.
He turns away from you and glances at your door, saying, “I should go.”
You feel something in your chest sink and sink and sink.
“I’ll see you in the studio tomorrow.” He continues. “We still gotta help Kevin figure out his part for ‘Puzzle Pieces’.”
And with that he’s off, and you’re left standing on the porch alone wondering how someone can look at you like that and then just leave. You look down by your feet and see your heart sitting there, next to your shoes. You leave it there and head it inside.
The next day, Chanhee cancels your studio time without explanation and reschedules you and the band for the following day.
When that day finally does come, Sunwoo doesn’t show up on time to help you and Kevin figure out the right notes to play for the song you wrote together like he said. Instead, he stumbles into the studio late with a song in his hand wearing the same clothes he wore with you at the beach. And that alone, feels like a betrayal of some sort.
“What’s it about?” Jacob asks.
He looks around the room, excited. “It’s about my new partner.”
You feel the urge to vomit all over the recording stage.
—
Luca, it turns out, is Sunwoo’s partner’s name. Sunwoo had brought them into the studio a week after they started dating, and they’ve been coming routinely ever since. As much as you hate it and as much as it makes your heart bend and break, Sunwoo looks really, genuinely happy with Luca. You wonder if he ever looked like that with you.
You really wish you hated Luca, but you don’t. They’re actually quite nice and get along with the whole band so easily. They even make friends with Chanhee. You thought they might be a distraction to Sunwoo while writing and recording, but Sunwoo is more focused and productive and creative than ever. The song he wrote right after meeting Luca is good, like stupidly good. There isn’t a single word in it that needs changing.
With your help, Sunwoo writes another song about them, called ‘Light of My Life.’ It’s while writing that song that you find out that Luca was never a stranger, and that day after the beach was not their first meeting. It’s Changmin who tells you how Luca is from their hometown and how Sunwoo and Luca used to date.
The day that you record ‘Light of My Life’ Luca is also in the studio, sitting in the control room and laughing at something with Eric.
You light up my life even when it’s dark. You both sing together. It’s an acoustic song; only Jacob stands behind you guys strumming the chords on his guitar. The rest of the band didn’t even come in today. You color my world even when I’m feeling blue. You glance over at Sunwoo. He isn’t looking your way. He’s looking at Luca through the control room window. When I’m with you, I never feel alone. You think about the times when he used to look at you while recording. When you hold me, baby, I feel at home. Luca looks back at Sunwoo. It hits you how beautiful they are, with dyed silver hair and slender face. You don’t blame Sunwoo for writing such a beautiful song about them. You don’t blame yourself for helping him. I can’t believe this has happened to me. Right before the next line, Sunwoo finally finally turns and looks at you. I feel alive because of you.
Sunwoo turns back to the control room. Sunwoo wrote this song for Luca, but he wasn’t the only writer on this song, and so, for the rest of the song, you wonder who the hell you wrote this song for?
—
A tune comes to you while you drive home that night. You scribble down a couple lyrics in your notebook as soon as you walk in your door.
Silver hair. Silver skin. Sliver of my heart you took with him.
Jacob throws a party that weekend. A housewarming for the house he bought with the ‘Begin Again’ checks. Stepping in through the foyer, you question whether you should be buying a house too. You forget that thought by the time you reach the drinks table.
After your hellos to the rest of the band and all the small talk with people Jacob wanted to introduce you to, you end up standing alone in his backyard, sloshing around the dark liquid in your cup. Truthfully, you’ve barely left your apartment all week. You hadn’t been in the mood for a party. But it’s nice out here. The air is fresh and crisp. The lights, which Changmin and Juyeon enthusiastically and drunkenly told you they helped put up, are warm but not too bright. You imagine you’ll stay out here for the rest of the party.
“Hi,” you hear a voice say from behind you. You turn around only to find Luca. You hope your face doesn’t betray you when you greet them back. “What are you doing out here?”
You gulp down a bitter sip of your drink. “Just wanted some quiet.”
“Same. Kevin started doing karaoke again.”
“Oof.” You groan sympathetically. “Already?”
They nod with a laugh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen all of them.”
You like Luca. You really do. It’s just taken you until now to realize that you don’t really know them apart from small talk in the studio and the two songs Sunwoo wrote about them. “When did you move down here from your guys’ hometown?”
“Oh.” Their chin juts out a bit. “I moved down with the band actually.”
You don’t hide the surprise on your face.
“I take it no one told you that then.” Luca chuckles darkly. You shake your head. “Uh, well, yeah,” they continue, shoving their free hand into their pocket, “Sunwoo and I started dating right when the band formed. I used to do the photography for them. And when they proposed moving out here, I thought I ought to come with. And I did.” They gulp their drink. “It was good for a while. Really fun in the beginning. But then I got my job taking pictures for the paper, and they were doing the album. And well,” Luca looks at you like you already know what their about to say. “It already wasn’t really working anymore by the time the album was finished. And then they went on tour…”
They leave that part blank. But based on what you heard from Sunwoo about that first tour, you can piece together what might’ve happened. You question whether Luca left that empty to spare Sunwoo or to spare themself. Then you question how they knew you knew about it.
“Oh.” Is all you say. You don’t ask about when they encountered each other again. You don’t want to hear it.
“You know,” Luca begins again, “I actually used to watch you play at the Tabernacle.”
You groan immediately. You only ever played at the Tabernacle when you first started. You cringe thinking about what you might’ve sang on stage in front of them. “Oh my god. I’m so embarrassed to even think about those days.”
“No! Don’t be!” They reassure, kindly. “You were really good. I especially liked that one song that went like… The days were wide open, as far as the eye could see.”
Your heart nearly soars straight out of your body. You had forgotten about this song. You used to love it dearly. You join Sunwoo’s partner for the second line.
The world was mine to take, but I’ve never been good at accepting things.
“You and the band together,” Luca says a moment after you both stop singing, “it’s magical, don’t get me wrong, but that song,” they smile at you, “it’s a damn good song.”
You can’t help but smile back. “Thank you.”
“Sunwool showed me a couple of the songs from the album.” Luca mentions, and it instantly and heartbreakingly reminds you who you’re talking to. “They’re amazing. They’re so good and real and raw that it almost makes me wonder…” their voice tapers off, losing the sound to a small exhale that appears as if it was meant to be a laugh, “Nevermind.”
“What?” You poke, instinctively leaning in towards them.
They meet your eyes, creases running along their forehead and frown lines more prominent than ever. “It almost makes me wonder if there was something between you both.”
You swallow, pointing at your chest. Your voice comes out raspy without you meaning for it to. “Me and Sunwoo?”
They nod. “Yeah, I mean the lyrics in ‘Begin Again’—“
“That song’s not about me. Or about him.” You defend. “We didn’t even know each other when we wrote that.”
“What about ‘Can You See Me’?”
Your breath catches. Truthfully, you answer, “I don’t know what that song’s about.”
—
When you get home that night, you finish the song you started writing about Sunwoo and Luca.
When you breathe in his lips, do you think of mine? What kind of songs were we making? Were they all lies?
“What’s it called?” The question comes from Changmin.
You look up from the paper in your hands filled with the lyrics you had completed over the weekend and after Jacob’s party. You notice he looks sad. You turn your gaze to Juyeon. You can’t really tell what he’s thinking at that moment.
“Uhm–I don’t know. I haven’t thought of a title yet.”
Sunwoo walks in then. “What are you guys talking about?” He asks, setting down his stuff. Then, more to himself than to you guys, he murmurs, “And where are Kevin and Jacob?”
Changmin and Juyeon don’t say anything. Instead, when Sunwoo asks what you’re doing, they both look at you. You imagine even if Kevin and Jacob were here, they’d do the same. Have you really been this transparent? At what point did they put together all the pieces?
You hand Sunwoo the song. You have no idea what his reaction will be.
He just nods, like he has no idea what the song is about. Like he doesn’t see his name and Luca’s scribbled in the margins.
“Call it ‘Silver Lies’.” He says.
Juyeon makes a noise. “Call it ‘Silver Linings’.”
“Vote on it?” Sunwoo proposes.
“No.” You look at Juyeon. He stares back at you. Something unspoken lies in the space between. “We’ll call it ‘Silver Linings’.”
A party rages around you. Flashing teeth and flashing lights. Another drink, another riff. You don’t even know where you are right now. You remember coming home after working on ‘Silver Linings’; you remember wanting to forget your own mind. This is the only way you know how.
You don’t even know how long it’s been.
This is what you do know: You’re sitting by a pool. Your feet are wet. You haven’t been this drunk since your 18th birthday. Kim Sunwoo is standing across the pool from you.
Your face breaks out in a smile. Sober you will regret that. Sober you will also regret how your first thought is that he looks beautiful. You’ll regret the fact that you finally, drunkenly but honestly, admit to yourself how pretty you think he is, how you’ve thought so since your first time hearing him sing, and how you’ve been so painfully aware of it ever since.
You let yourself fall in the water. Head sinking for a moment, before breaking the surface again. Floating on your back, you start humming the melody to ‘Silver Linings’ in your head.
Silver hair. Silver skin. Sliver of my heart you took with him.
You can’t tell if it’s the chlorine or something more pathetic that burns the corner of your eyes and runs down the side of your cheeks.
You feel something tug on your arm. The sudden jolt makes you lose your balance, falling beneath the water. You’re so fucking wasted you forget if you even know how to swim; you almost forget to not breathe.
You feel a pair of arms pull you up and hold your head above the surface. You know who they belong to. It strikes you in the back of your mind that this is the first time you’ve been touched by him. So maybe that’s why you relish in the feel of his arms around your waist and the way his hand grips at your hip.
He looks at you like you’re filth. Just as all your partners before him did. First they’re sweet and charming, but it always ends like this. In their arms, simultaneously wanting to be far away and fighting the urge to beg: love me, please.
Even if he wasn’t your partner, even if all he was was a hope and a ‘what if’.
You barely even register it when you say, “you're just like the rest of them.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He rages back, not even acknowledging what you said.
“Nothing.” You tell him, smiling, wishing like hell that you believed it.
“You missed our studio time. We were supposed to record ‘Silver Linings’.” He fumes at you. “Do you know what time it is? Do you even know what day it is?”
“Do you know how much of a fucking mood kill you can be?” You bite back.
“What are you on?” He looks repulsed. You hate it. Hate the way that you showed him your whole heart and that he still looks at you like this.
Seething, you say, “What do you think?”
And that—that is what breaks him. What makes him lose his shit and start screaming.
“Chanhee is fuming at us!”
You barely notice it. Instead, you repeat in your head the words to the one song you truly, wholeheartedly wrote for him.
“The record label isn’t going to let this slide, you do realize that, don’t you?”
When you breathe in his lips, do you think of mine?
“You wasted an entire day of recording!”
What kind of songs were we making?
“No.” You say finally, voice coming out quiet. It sounds so misplaced and so wrong next to all the yelling between you two. “We wasted so much more than that.”
Were they all lies?
For the first time since you’ve seen him tonight, he doesn’t say anything back. He just stares at you, like he can see straight through. The party continues all around you. It never stopped. It never quieted down. And yet, it somehow feels like you and him are the only ones in this pool. Like you’re stuck in time. Like you’ve created your own world with him and that’s where you’ve retreated to now.
“Was any of it real?” You ask before you can stop the words. You hate how pathetic you sound. You hate how desperate it all is.
All he says before leaving you in the water alone is: “I’m with Luca now.”
He splashes water in your face on his way out.
a/n: originally posted as a svt fic, but lowk feels like it fits sunwoo even better. not proof read very thoroughly so pls lemme know if you noticed any mistakes lol
reading thread just like the good ol' days (and hi shawna!)
i was checking my fic rec blog and tried to recall if i read this before (bc i could have sworn i did since i LOVEE daisy jones and the six) but clearly i haven't so im here now
the way sunwoo's genius on this song revived a jaded y/n in that short snippet and chanhee just knows
first meeting angsty yummy ugh yes i can so visualize the book and the show but also your spin on this?! amazing
held my breath throughout that first performance knowing what y/n was going to do.. so thrilling
the push and pull! the push and pull!
im sorry you should have seen my jaw drop when luca came into the picture because whattgefuck
I SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING
why was i surprised like this is literally the plot
WAS ANY OF IT REAL?
im deceased actually
oh man im hurting
WHYDID IT END THERE PLEASE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
if it's not already obvious, i absolutely loved this by the way
kim sunwoo x reader (gn)
wc: 10k
warnings: cursing, heavy alcohol usage and often in an unhealthy way, one mention of blood (a terrible case of largely irrelevant side characters, an attempt at writing song lyrics, switching pov’s without any real indication, story existing in a vacuum of time and space loosely based off of 70s usa)
synopsis → The Numbers are a band well on their way to commercial success with Sunwoo as the dreamy front man, Changmin on drums, Jacob on guitar, Juyeon on bass, and Kevin on keys. But all that changes the second you step into the studio to record “Begin Again” with them. The song is an instant hit, launching you from a singer-songwriter nobody to the biggest new name in music and catapulting the Numbers into a larger limelight than they’ve ever been in before. So with the entire country singing your song, the pressure is on for you and the Numbers to create an entire album that lives up to their expectations. But while pressure builds, something akin to feelings for the front man builds with it.
You go to knock again on the door, heavy footsteps and heavier breaths, but just as soon as your knuckles make contact with the heavy wood, the door swings open.
Chanhee looks disappointed. “You were going to knock again, weren’t you?”
You roll your eyes, pushing him aside and going straight for the marble bar cart you know sits in the sitting room off the formal dining area.
“You know you really have to work on your patience.” He says to you from the foyer, voice already sounding a bit far away. You always forget how big acclaimed-music-producer Chanhee's house is. Although, you think, staring at the array of top shelf liquor arranged neatly on the bar cart, mansion is probably a more apt word for it.
You pour yourself a glass of whiskey.
Chanhee joins you in the room once you’ve already taken a seat in one of the brown leather arm chairs.
“How many glasses is that?”
You scoff. “I have a show at the Roxy after this.”
He hums, flicking the square paper in his hand.
You sit up slightly. “What is that?” Chanhee takes the paper over to the record player in the opposite corner of the room. He slips a clean black record out of the manilla slip and carefully places it into position. It doesn’t take long for the gentle hum of the record spinning around the platter to fill the room.
God, I love music. You think to yourself sitting back slightly in the armchair and allowing your eyes to shut.
“I want you to listen to this.” You hear Chanhee say, followed by the small pop of the decanter being opened and the quiet trickle and crack of liquor falling over ice. The sound of a bass overtakes the room. It’s somehow… gentle.
“Who’s it by?”
Chanhee doesn’t answer at first. You hear him sit down in the armchair next to yours while drums fill in the spaces of the songs and a guitar starts to hum along. And the sound that comes from the record player next–in all honesty, you don’t think Chanhee could have prepared you for. It’s a man’s voice, polished, in a way that you just know he’s been doing this for a while. His whole life maybe. There’s this rough, almost growly quality that amps the song up even more, and yet, simultaneously, his voice glides over the lyrics like honey spilling over the side of its jar. There’s so much depth in every note he hits. You don’t know if you’ve ever heard a voice–a sound–quite like this.
“Who is this?” You ask again once the first chorus comes to a close, opening your eyes and taking a proper look at Chanhee. He looks mildly amused.
“Have you heard of the Numbers?”
Sunwoo hurries into the studio from the car, guitar in one hand and lyrics in the other, fully expecting to get chewed out by his producer. “Chanhee, I’m so sorry. There was tra-”
Sunwoo stops in his tracks. The control room is empty. He steps back into the doorway and rereads the signage. He has the right room, so then… where is everybody?
“Sunwoo,” he hears a voice call for him from the recording stage. It’s Changmin, waving him inside and pointing at you. You smile at him, give him a nod of sorts. His eyes dart to Chanhee, giving him a look that says, who the fuck is that?
He walks into the recording booth hesitantly.
“Hey.” Chanhee says casually. “I don’t think you guys have met yet.”
You stand and approach him, sticking out your hand. Sunwoo just looks at it.
“The label thinks you guys would sound good on one track and want you to try recording ‘Begin Again’ together.”
He ignores your outstretched hand and looks straight at Chanhee. “Can we speak privately?”
—
Sunwoo had assumed he’d be the one getting chewed out in the studio today. Oh, how things have changed. He’s worked so hard on this song. More time and effort than he’s ever put in any of the band’s songs that came out before it. He can’t believe Chanhee would allow anyone else to try and taint it. “Begin Again” is his song. And he’ll be damned if he’s not the only one singing it.
Sunwoo’s ready to say all of this, but, “Before you say anything,” Chanhee doesn’t even let him speak, “I know how you feel about this. But the decision came from above me, okay. The Number’s last album didn’t do as well as the label hoped. They think another voice in the band could shake things up. And who knows, “Chanhee continues with a shrug that only makes Sunwoo fume more, “maybe this could be what you guys have been missing.”
Sunwoo cannot believe what he’s hearing. “We aren’t missing anything.”
“Don’t be dense.” Chanhee pans with a sideways stare. “I know you guys are good. I know you guys are gonna be big, but the rest of the world needs some convincing. Just try this, okay? This could be it.”
Sunwoo just shakes his head.
“I scouted them out myself. They’re a good singer and even better writer-”
“Writer?” Sunwoo nearly screams, arms flying to point at you through the control room window where the two boys are talking. “You want them to write on the song too?”
“They have a couple of…” Chanhee sighs, choosing his next word with extra precaution, “revisions.”
“Fuck that, Chanhee. I wrote a great song. It–”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You wrote a good song.” Chanhee refutes, matter-of-factly. “You wrote a good song, and they,” he points at you, “they made it a great one.”
Sunwoo is speechless.
“Here.” Chanhee pushes a piece of torn notebook paper into his hands.
If Sunwoo wasn’t so aware of the line Chanhee was drawing, he would’ve pushed harder, but at the end of the day, Chanhee is his boss and his lifeline in this business. If Chanhee says so, really says so, then there’s not much Sunwoo can do to fight it. Sunwoo is stubborn, but he’s not a fool looking to waste his own breath. He looks back into the recording stage. The band looks happy chatting to each other. And you, well, you’re staring at him.
A red light flashes on the sound board beneath him. “Talk over the changes.” Chanhee says to the band and you through the intercom. “We record in ten minutes.”
—
“It’s nice to meet you,” you say to Sunwoo sitting on the stool in front of the second mic. Sunwoo’s never even seen a studio setup with two mics before. He swallows a scoff. “Chanhee showed me the song the other day, and your voice it—“
“What does this line mean?” Sunwoo cuts in, taking his seat on the stool next to yours. “I changed my heart. I morphed my mind. You don’t have the right to tell me I didn’t try.”
Your face drops immediately. “Are you serious?”
Sunwoo raises a brow–a challenge.
You let out a breath of pure disbelief, focusing your gaze just above his head, and hands starting to make motions in the air. “It’s about changing yourself to be with someone. It’s about them never acknowledging that.”
“That’s not what this song is about.”
You give him a pointed look. “What do you think the song is about?”
It’s his turn for the disbelief. “What do I think the song I wrote is about?” You don’t falter, not even for a second. Sunwoo grasps at the words, mouth agape. “It’s about redemption.”
“That’s too easy.”
“How is that too easy?”
“Look,” you huff, mouth opening and closing like you can’t decide what it is you want to say. You end up reaching your arm out, palm open like you want a fucking hi-five or something. In the back of his mind, Sunwoo wonders if you’re still waiting for the handshake he never gave. “Give me your original lyrics.”
He does, you snatch the paper keeping your eyes on him for a second too long before finding whatever it was that you were looking for. “Right here,” you say, finger pointing at the tattered paper and eyes darting back and forth between him and his lyrics. Your face lights up. You look like you're holding back a smile. You look… excited. “Here, in the bridge you wrote: take me home, welcome me on those familiar roads, embrace me in your arms, oh please, tell me I still belong.”
“What about it?” Sunwoo asks, almost forgetting that he’s upset at Chanhee for this whole arrangement, nearly forgetting that he’s supposed to not be accepting any of your revisions because for the first time in so long, he’s able to really talk to someone about his lyrics.
You look up at him fully, and almost sadly, you say, “You really don’t get it, do you?” Sunwoo looks down at the lyrics you gave him, scanning them again. Funnily enough, that line is the only one of his you’ve kept.
“The song’s not about redemption,” you tell him. “It’s about guilt.”
—
Sunwoo, you, and the band end up recording your version of the song. It’s a good song. It’s still his melody, his hook, and his bridge, but almost none of the lyrics are his. Just like that, “Begin Again” becomes as much your song as it is his. If he wasn’t so angry at Chanhee, maybe he would’ve had the mind to notice how good you sound singing it.
Kim Sunwoo is an asshole.
That you learned in the recording studio with him and haven’t been able to get out of your head since. Unfortunately, he’s got one hell of a voice and gift for creating a good melody. And him and Chanhee together in the studio, god, they’re magic. You went out and purchased The Number’s previous record after you recorded “Begin Again”. You haven’t stopped listening to it since.
It’s one day when you’re working a shift at the diner that you start humming the song playing over the speaker while grabbing an order from the kitchen. You don’t even think twice about it. That is until you make it right in front of the table whose orders you’re holding and start to hear your own voice.
You nearly drop the four plates of burgers.
You rush over to the jukebox, not believing your ears, not believing that your voice, your words, your song is playing for the entire diner to hear.
And there, right at the bottom it reads: “Begin Again” by the Numbers ft. you
“Holy shit.”
The desert wasn’t too far from home, but it could not have been more different. There was so much nothing for as far as your eyes could see. There was dust everywhere, all over the place, sifting up through the air and in your lungs. How are you supposed to sing like this?
You hear the bands’ voices come up from behind you.
“Hey,” Sunwoo says, coming up next to you and resting an arm on the same wood railing as you. “How are you feeling?”
“Great.” You answer truthfully. You could barely believe it when you got the call from Chanhee saying that they wanted you to play the festival along with the Numbers. Although, considering that your song is playing on every radio station, it probably shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was.
The crowd roars as the previous artist says his goodbye.
“Have you ever played for a crowd like this?”
“Nope.”
He nods slowly. “It’s a lot. The first time especially, for sure. But just go with it, and uh,” he smiles, towards the ground, “it’s a lot of fun once you get past the nerves of it all.”
You look at him, battling against the grimace forming on your face. “Is this pep talk for me or for you? Cause I’m fine.”
His smile disappears when he sees your face. You must’ve lost the battle.
He inhales sharply. “‘Begin Again’ is last. Come out after I introduce you.”
You nod, and he joins the rest of his band.
The crowd cheers when they get on stage. The first song starts with a familiar guitar riff and the pound of the drums, followed by the crowd going ballistic. You’ve been playing on stage for a while now, but only ever in small clubs with small crowds. You’ve never seen a crowd like this, and it makes you ecstatic.
You hear Sunwoo sing the final words of the song and Kevin play the final chords. And you don’t know if its the crowd or the shot of vodka you took during the bridge or the fucking look Sunwoo gives you, but something, something, makes you forget what Sunwoo said about waiting and walk right onto that stage.
Jacob and Juyeon look confused. Sunwoo looks vaguely pissed. Kevin and Changmin barely notice. But you don’t register any of that. All you can think as you walk onto that stage, grin flashing and arms up in the air is: this crowd was fucking waiting for me.
You step up to your mic and wait until the crowd quiets down. You introduce “Begin Again” as a song you wrote. The crowd erupts. You look over at Sunwoo, smiling, no–grinning, loving how annoyed he looks. Juyeon doesn’t miss a beat, starting the song immediately. Your body moves on its own, dancing to the song, belting out each note, and loving every second of it. It’s sometime during the second verse, the one Sunwoo sings alone, that you notice how entranced he is. His eyes are half closed, and his fingers fly across his guitar like he’s not even thinking about it. He smiles at the crowd. You think you hear someone faint. He looks your way then, right before the pre-chorus, smiling still as if he wasn’t just glaring at you. It hits you almost instantly: nothing else matters to him right now. He’s in it, like really in it, and the only thing he seems to care about is putting on a good show. He’s loving this as much as you are, and maybe that’s enough to prove that you and Kim Sunwoo are more alike than either of you think.
You leave your mic stand and start dancing towards him. His entire body turns towards you, waiting for you, his eyes following. You meet right in front of his mic just as the chorus begins. And you’re left with no choice but to stand next to him, singing into the same mic with your faces so close you can feel every ragged breath he takes, see the sweat rolling off his hair, and hear the blood pumping through his veins. Take me home. You both sing with your entire chest. Welcome me on those familiar roads. You see him turn his head to face you. You mirror the motion, and sing the next line looking right into his eyes. Embrace me in your arms. Have his eyes always been this big? Oh please, tell me I still belong. And of course it’s this line you’re singing to each other like this. Of course it’s the one line in the entire song that you didn’t actually write and the one line he did.
The chorus ends, and you slowly back away from his mic and move back towards yours. He rips away on his guitar, fingers still flying like it’s the easiest thing, all while never taking his eyes off you. Staring at you like he found something. Staring at you like it’s only you and him on that stage.
You don’t even remember the song ending.
Music flows through Northside Tavern. A jazz band is playing today, and the piano player keeps making eyes at you.
“I heard the show over the weekend went well.” Chanhee says into your ear. You just nod. “And that the label really liked what you did with the song.”
You laugh. “Not just the label. The whole country liked it.” You give one last look to the pianist, before turning to Chanhee fully. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but I have a number one single.”
You head over to the bar and ask for an old-fashioned.
“Not just you.” Chanhee yells behind you to be heard over the cheers after the band’s last song.
You pivot. “Excuse me?”
“It wasn’t just you.” Chanhee flags down the bartender, orders a scotch, neat. “It was the Numbers too.”
The bartender slides over three drinks.
You lean in over the counter. “We only ordered two.”
Wordlessly, the bartender points to the other side of the bar. The piano player holds up their drink. Chanhee grabs his drink, and you grab the remaining two. You lift them both up towards the pianist who gives you a rather charming smile, and then take a simultaneous sip from the straws of both drinks. You taste your old-fashioned and what seems to be a margarita.
You and Chanhee make your way over to a booth.
“What I wanted to say,” Chanhee continues, “is that the label likes you with the band, and they want you to make an album with them.”
“An album?” You suck in your bottom lip, feeling a sudden rush from all the alcohol. An album is exactly what you’ve been pushing and working so damn hard for. So then why does this feel bittersweet?
“I think this is going to be a good thing.” Chanhee tells you sincerely, eyes softening. “You and Sunwoo…” he hesitates for a moment. You hate when he chooses his words like this, picking out the bad ones and testing out all the others. But perhaps you only hate it so much because you lack the ability to do it yourself. “You guys work.”
You take another long double sip of your drinks, squinting at Chanhee skeptically. “What did Sunwoo say?”
Chanhee’s mouth parts. There. There it fucking is. Running your tongue over your top set of teeth, you say, “you haven’t asked him yet, have you?”
“No, we haven’t asked him yet–”
“I can’t believe this.”
“–but the rest of the band is already on board, and we all thought it’d be smarter if you agreed before we asked him.”
You tilt your head slightly. You thought Chanhee knew you better than this. “I’m not saying anything until he does.”
“Be honest with yourself here,” Chanhee says seriously, pushing his drink to the side and leaning forward, “it’s no secret that you and Sunwoo don’t get along. And I get it; I really do. But I know you see it.”
You cross your arms over your chest. “See what?”
“Most people in this business spend their entire lives looking for what he and you found during the ‘Begin Again’ sessions and again on the stage at the festival. And most people fail. Don’t throw that away over whatever bullshit he gave you when you first met. Don’t throw away the chance you’ve been waiting for because of that. You guys belong together. Focus on that.”
You don’t say anything after Chanhee finishes his little speech. Instead you reach for your drinks and finish them both in one long, prolonged sip. You ignore his annoyed ‘tsk’.
Putting the empty glasses down and to the side, you nod up at him, pursing your lips. “Are you done?”
He takes a long, final swig of his drink. “Yes.”
“Ask Sunwoo first.” You pull out your wallet and drop a couple bills on the table. “Then, you can call me.”
Today is already off to a bad start.
Sunwoo had come into the studio ready to record and knock out at least 2 or 3 songs off the album today, but then Juyeon wanted to talk about the album’s direction and Changmin wanted to request everyone to add as many drum parts as possible.
And it’s as he’s listening to Kevin and Changmin argue about the addition of piano solos, that you walk into the studio.
Chanhee welcomes you with a hug. Eric, the sound engineer, offers to make you tea. Meanwhile, Sunwoo can’t understand why you deserve any kindness at this moment. Your session started an hour ago.
“You’re late.” Sunwoo says, bringing the rest of the band to notice your arrival.
You look at him with a smile, gesturing to the two boys who were just arguing. “Doesn’t really look like I missed anything.”
“We were talking about the album’s direction.” Juyeon says from behind Sunwoo.
You nod, putting down your stuff and taking a seat. “Okay, shoot.”
Sunwoo puts his hands up. “Well since we’re talking about it. I’ve been working on a couple songs, and,” he hesitates, pulling out a couple sheets of paper that Chanhee helped him print and handing them out, “I think I might have something good that we can build the rest of the album off of.”
Everyone takes a moment to read. Sunwoo watches the room carefully. Jacob clears his throat. Kevin plays a loose note.
Your voice is the first that comes out of the silence. “Are you serious?”
He whips his head around. “What?”
“‘Will you still love me when I’m old? Will you still love me when I’m proud.’” You read aloud, before shoving the paper back towards him, that mocking smile still plastered on your face. “I’m not singing that.”
He scoffs, tongue swiping at his lips. “Why not? They’re good songs.”
You shrug. “They’re cheesy.”
“You haven't even read the whole thing.”
“I’ve read enough.”
“Are–are you… is this–I mean, like, you…” Sunwoo only knows one thing for sure right now: you might be the most insufferable person he’s ever met. “Chanhee!”
“Okay, you know what,” Chanhee’s voice comes through the intercom. You both turn towards it. “How about you two go home and figure out some way to work together instead of wasting my studio time. Write one song, just one, together, and the rest of us can go from there tomorrow.”
He slips a curse between a breath.
“Okay?”
You and Sunwoo look back at each other. It’s you who speaks first this time. “That’s fine with me.”
—
It’s a nice day out today. The sun shines through big clouds. There’s a nice breeze, and the roadways are empty. You’re sitting in the passenger seat humming something he can’t hear over the wind while Sunwoo drives. In all honesty, he doesn’t even know where he’s heading, but it might be the first time he's felt some semblance of peace with you around.
The announcer on the radio station introduces the next song. Sunwoo turns it up and sings alongside Kim Younghoon’s voice. You stop humming.
“You like this song?” You ask.
He quickly glances at you. “Yeah, who doesn’t.” The song was insanely popular a year or two ago. If you didn’t like it at first, you heard it enough on the radio and in every store until you did. Although, it doesn’t actually take anyone very many listens to fall in love with it. Unfortunately, the rest of Kim Younghoon’s songs never quite lived up to this one.
“I wrote this song.” You say to him, as if it’s the most simple thing.
“Oh, really?” Sunwoo replies with a chuckle. “You worked with Kim Younghoon?”
“Well, not all of it, but the melody and most of the lyrics, yes.” You tell him seriously, like you haven’t even registered that he thought you were joking. “I mean, worked is a strong word, but we did date for a bit.”
Sunwoo stops at a red light and spends it staring you in disbelief.
“Come on,” you say after a moment, “you really think Kim Younghoon wrote this song?”
Sunwoo listens to it again: They could never get it out of their heads. Like a scene on repeat. Like a mountain falling. Something unforgettable, but forgotten still. Something like you. Someone like me.
And instantly, it clicks–of course you wrote this song. Of course it’s the case that Kim Younghoon’s best song and one of Sunwoo’s favorites was written by none other than you.
He looks over at you while at another light. Your head leans back against the car seat, and your arm hangs over the edge of the open window. You don’t look like you’re enjoying listening to the song even if you are the one that wrote it. In fact, you look mildly annoyed, nose scrunched while inspecting your nail beds, teeth grinding.
Sunwoo changes the station thinking: why’d you let him take it?
Before he can really think about it any further, you sit up in your seat and point at the next light.
“Turn right up there. I know a place.”
—
When you had said that you knew a place, Sunwoo imagined that it’d be a coffee shop or an empty bar or anything other than the middle of the woods sitting on the rocks along a stream.
Although, he must give you credit: the setting you’ve taken him to is beautiful. There are birds humming and life strumming all around you. The water is a blistering blue that glistens and shines in the sunlight streaming through the trees like a million coins falling from the sky. The water has a small current running through it, and it beats against the rocks lightly, like the lightest, most gentle drum beat. The breeze is nice and cool on Sunwoo’s skin, sifting through his hair and past his limbs. And maybe the best part is how all around him, on every single side, he’s surrounded by green.
It would have been perfect, if not for the fact that you and him have been here for two hours and still have absolutely nothing.
“Okay,” you relent, after he turns down another one of your ideas for a song, “how about this melody?”
You start humming one of the worst melodies Sunwoo’s ever heard in his life.
“Absolutely not.”
You grunt frustrated, arms falling through the air. Your head follows suit, settling in your hands, face buried from his view.
“Why’d you even say yes to this?” You snap, looking up at him after a moment, brows furrowed and hands gesturing vaguely in the air. “If you have no intention of taking any idea I give you seriously, why did you say yes to this?”
“I didn’t.” Sunwoo reminds you. “Neither of us did. Chanhee kicked us out of the studio.”
“I don’t mean that.” You flare. “I mean letting me in to do this album with the Numbers. Why’d you agree to it?”
There’s a change in the wind. A sudden quietness that must be attributed to some insect dying. Sunwoo hadn’t expected you to ask this. He hadn’t even expected you to think it.
“It wasn’t…” he starts, looking for the words in the space between you and him. He looks up at you, hoping to find them there. Instead he finds hope in them.
Sunwoo has been in this exact spot before–sitting in front of someone that wants to believe in him and is asking him to give them a reason. He’s seen this before, and he has no interest in repeating his past mistakes. He sees no need to add you to the list of people he’s disappointed. With a short laugh, he says, “You know what, let’s just get back to writing.”
“Fuck that.” You respond immediately, grabbing at his guitar.
“What are you–”
“No. Fuck that.” You repeat, successfully pushing his guitar off his lap. “If this is going to work, you have to at least pretend like you trust me. Song writing isn’t just strumming on your guitar all day and hoping for the best. It’s vulnerability, and it’s pouring your heart and soul and life into something and praying that someone out there feels the same way. That’s what ‘Begin Again’ was. And every single person who listened and liked that song and every single person who sang with us at the festival is saying that they feel the same way. So, what are you so afraid of? Why do you feel like you can’t trust me?”
Sunwoo gulps. “Which question should I answer first?”
You inhale slowly. “The latter.”
Sunwoo just shakes his head. “I don’t know you.”
“Ask me then.” You say desperately, like it should have been obvious to him, “whatever it is that you want to know just ask it.”
Sunwoo nods. In truth, there’s a million questions he wants to ask you about everything, but at this moment, all those questions sink to the bottom of his mind and only one rises to the top and travels to the tip of his tongue. “Why’d you let Kim Younghoon take credit for that song?”
You lean back slightly at his questions. Looking away from him and towards the murky waters before answering. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t always like this.” You tell him, laughing lightly. “I used to let guys like you walk all over me.”
His heart jumps into his throat. He’s barely able to choke out a, “guys like me?”
You nod, still refusing to meet his eyes. “Guys who don’t believe that I have what it takes.”
“I never said that.”
“But you showed me.”
“When?”
You look at him then, squinting. He hopes what you see is genuineness. He asked the question sincerely. “When you were so quick and ready to dismiss my changes to the lyrics during the ‘Begin Again’ takes. When you let me join your band on this album, and then expected me to sing an entire record full of songs that mean nothing to me. I’m a songwriter, Sunwoo. It’s the one thing about me that no one can take.”
Something between intrigue and malice slips in behind his tongue. “So what can people take?”
You shake your head, smiling ever so slightly. “My turn. What are you so afraid of?”
Sunwoo inhales sharply. “Well, I’m afraid of dying and of heights and–”
“Stop that.” You cut in, like you really mean it. “Why are you so afraid to say what you really think?”
He sucks in his bottom lip, shrugging. “‘Begin Again’ was your song more than it was mine. What if people don’t like what I have to say? What if they can’t relate and just think I’m fucked up and crazy?”
Your eyes soften, and your smile lines deepen. It takes a moment for him to register that you're smiling, really smiling, at him. He’s never known a smile could feel so inviting.
“But what if they do?”
Sunwoo takes a moment to think about what you’ve said. And in that moment, whatever insect had died gets resurrected, returning to nature’s hum, filling his ears. Sunwoo looks all around him. The hum of life, the beat of water, the tune of leaves falling. He’s surrounded not just by nature and greenery, but also by music. And it’s erupting from every corner of these woods.
His eyes finally land on you.
“I think I found our melody.”
When you come into the studio the next day, the song is done. You went to sleep humming it still and running through the lyrics over and over again in your head.
“Let us sing it for you first,” Sunwoo suggests to the rest of the band with Chanhee listening in from the control room. “And whenever you feel like you got it, just hop in with what you think works, and we can refine and shape it from there.”
You watch the rest of the band as Sunwoo explains it. Juyeon looks shocked, but excited. Changmin looks proud. And you can’t really read what the other two are thinking.
“Chanhee, are we good?” Sunwoo asks, turning around to the window into the control room.
“Whenever you’re ready.” Chanhee replies, voice filtering in through the intercom. You nod. Sunwoo nods. The rest of the band nods. Chanhee presses a couple buttons and says, “This is ‘Can You See Me’.”
Sunwoo starts playing the chords he found yesterday. You’re not sure why or how but it reminds you of those woods. His voice starts singing the first line of the song. You close your eyes and take it in. You join him for the chorus, singing alongside his voice feeling the words flow. It’s Kevin that joins you two first, playing a couple loose notes, testing things out. By the end of the chorus, he’s found it, playing a little more confidently and adding a whole new level of depth to the song. A depth that makes you feel like you’ve only ever known two colors your whole life and in a matter of seconds Kevin added in a third. Jacob joins in next, as your voice takes over for the second verse, playing off what Sunwoo was playing but making it his own. Sunwoo goes over to where Changmin’s sitting and says something to him in his ear. Changmin nods. Sunwoo goes over to Juyeon, but Juyeon shakes his head, already starting to play something. Sunwoo heads back to his mic right before the second chorus starts. You turn and sing the last line of the pre-chorus to him
And I know that you never trusted me.
He joins you for the chorus, singing back.
Can you see me standing from there?
And can you see the blood on my hands?
If I give you all of the parts to my heart,
Will you care that I’ve been scarred and stitched up?
Changmin starts playing then, the drums filling in the last thing the song needed. You listen to the rest of the band play and marvel at how insanely talented they all are to pick up and play something that actually works after only a minute of hearing it. The song needs polishing, yes, but it’s got a good sound and it’s heading in the right direction.
You don’t take your eyes off Sunwoo, and he doesn’t take his eyes off you. And for the remainder of the song, you sing to each other.
The song ends. The last one playing is Kevin. And for a couple seconds, no one says anything.
It’s Chanhee’s voice that comes out of the silence first. “I’m a fucking genius.”
You smile at Sunwoo. He smiles back.
After recording and polishing ‘Can You See Me’, you and Sunwoo fall into a song-making rhythm of sorts.
(We don’t always have it perfect.)
“I feel like this lyric in ‘Puzzle Pieces’ doesn’t fit.” You say to Sunwoo, before muttering the lyric outloud. “It’s too shy. I don’t know. I just think it’s missing the mark a little bit, don’t you think?”
Sunwoo groans tiredly. “God, I can’t think about this anymore. Can we take a break? Go get some food or something?”
“Yes, but before we do, do you think ‘I see us standing in the distance’ or ‘I see you standing in the distance’ works better here?”
Sunwoo just stands ignoring your question and muttering ‘no’ repeatedly.
You follow, running after him and begging him to listen.
(Boy, do we fight.)
“I think there should be more drums in the hook.” Sunwoo announces after the third run through.
“Why?”
His eyes widen, sarcastically. “Because there should be.”
“Don’t do that.” You scoff, used to his antics. “Answer the question: why?”
He sighs, resting his hands on his hips. “It’s missing something. The song still feels empty. I mean, the lyrics allude to a love that’s blooming and growing between two individuals, but nothing behind the lyrics build up with it. There’s almost a disconnect between the words and the music.”
“I disagree.”
He scoffs. “All that for–”
“I think it works just fine without the drums, and if you add the drums it’ll become more suspenseful. The song is supposed to feel like falling.”
He shakes his head. “It’s supposed to feel like butterflies.”
“It’s supposed to feel like peace.”
(Sometimes you win.)
“Let’s vote.” Sunwoo suggests. “If you’re for the drums, raise your hand.”
Only Changmin (the drummer), does.
(Sometimes you lose.)
Chanhee presses the red button on the sound board, announcing to the recording stage, “Take 3 of Aurora. Sunwoo, try softening your voice a little for this one.”
“Chanhee, can we just try one take with me in it?” You ask him. “I think even if I were just singing a harmony or in the background of the bridge, it would add so much.”
“No.” Chanhee says, scribbling something down in his notebook. “I’m with Sunwoo on this one.”
“Chanhee, you haven’t even heard my–”
“This song doesn’t need your voice.”
(But sometimes, we get it just right and fit like the last two puzzle pieces.)
“No,” you say, shaking your head as Jacob and Juyeon finish off the last chords of the song, “It needs to sound murkier.”
Jacob, Kevin, Changmin, and Juyeon just stare at you blankly.
“Less cymbals, Changmin.” Sunwoo says over the speaker from the control room. “And Juyeon, ride out the low tones more.”
You turn and see him. He catches your eyes, smiling slightly, reassuring you. Like he gets you.
From behind you, you hear Kevin lightheartedly mutter, “since when do they have their own language?”
Jacob and Changmin laugh, but you barely notice because you see him. You see the way his brows furrow when he’s thinking. You see the way he sticks out his tongue when he’s focused. You see all of it.
And for a moment, he sees you. All of you. And he doesn’t turn away from it.
Today’s songwriting session quickly turned into a field trip from the studio to grab food which then turned into you leading Sunwoo’s car to the beach. You and Sunwoo sit on a stone ledge, right where the sand begins, 20 paces away from the ocean. Between you sits leftover fries and your untouched song notebook. You watch the sun dip into the sea and listen to the waves crash over and over again. The wind pushes furiously, tossing his hair to the side and pushes his head away from it. It just so happens that away from the wind means towards you.
“So,” you begin, popping a fry in your mouth and dusting the salt off your hands, “when are you going to answer my question of why you let me in the band?”
Sunwoo figured this question was coming. He’s been avoiding answering it. “You really want to know?”
You look at him sincerely. “Yes.”
Sunwoo looks out to the water. “After our first album, Chanhee prepared a tour for us. It was this tiny tour, not even big enough for a tour manager. We played in the smallest venues with okay-sized crowds. I mean, it was barely a tour, really more of a way to get our name out there. And after the northern leg of it, I…” Sunwoo closes his eyes and sees moments from that tour flash behind his lids: strobe lights, bodies in bed, empty glasses, and negative pockets. Sometimes memories can feel like nightmares. “I was just in a really, really, bad place. By the time we were halfway down the east coast, I was barely even able to play. Chanhee saved me then. He saved my fucking life. But he had to cancel the rest of the tour in that process. The rest of the band, man, they couldn’t even stand the sight of my face. Juyeon especially. It was Chanhee who ended up being the one to convince them to let me back in. I owe Chanhee my entire livelihood and my life. So when he asked what I thought about you joining the band for this album and when I saw how badly he wanted it to happen, I owed it to him to say yes.”
It’s been so long since he’s recounted that story, even to himself. It doesn’t hurt as much as it once did. That knowledge surprises him.
“Where are you now?” You ask suddenly, pulling him out of his head.
He turns to you. “What?”
“If you were in a bad place then, where are you now?”
The wind quiets for a moment; he feels a warmth overtake him in its absence. “Someplace better.”
He looks down, not even noticing the smile growing on his face, and catches sight of your notebook. He points at it, asking, “may I?”
You look down at it as well, grabbing another fry. “Sure.”
He flips through the pages of your notebook. The first half isn’t even songs. It’s snippets, words, singular sentences taking up an entire page. It’s only halfway through the book that it actually turns into something that could be called songwriting. He asks you about it.
“Ah, that’s when I met Chanhee.” You tell him, smiling fondly. Sunwoo puts the notebook down and waits for you to explain. “Before him, I had songs, but they weren’t real songs, you know? They were just some combination of all the snippets and sentences I had written down. But then Chanhee heard me play at the Eastern, and said that I had a good voice. He asked if he could give me his card so that we could talk more, and I said that I wasn’t interested in people who only saw me for my voice and walked away.”
“You’re insane.” Sunwoo mutters, baffled. He remembers the chance encounter he had with Chanhee right after he and the band moved down here to make a name for themselves. He remembers how hard he begged for the same chance Chanhee offered to you so simply. “So, how’d you end up working with him then?”
“He found me again at the diner I used to work at after that. I told him I still wasn’t interested, and he asked if I had written the song I played that night at the Eastern. I said yes, and he said that he was only interested in my voice because my songs weren’t there yet.”
Sunwoo chuckles. “So he’s always been an asshole then?”
“Oh yeah.” You nod, mirroring the sound. “He was an asshole about it, but he was right. And it was the first time that someone believed in me enough to think that I could be better. That is what made me want to try and write a song that would make him see that I’m as good of a songwriter as I am a singer. I spent a lot of time working and got out one good song. I sang it all across the strip. He finally saw me play again at Ben’s Garage. I let him sign me after that.”
“What was that song about?”
Your lips do this half frown thing that makes Sunwoo want to peer inside your brain and figure out exactly where it came from. “It was about what all songs are about.”
“Which is?”
You look at him like it’s obvious. “Love.”
It feels like a shot of sunlight through his veins.
Sunwoo drives you back home after the beach. You had gotten nothing done in terms of the album, but you felt happy, and you felt free. You watch him from the corner of your eye. You’ve only known each other for some months now, but it feels like so much longer. You’ve told him more about yourself and your past than anyone else you’ve met in your adult life. You’ve told him your deepest worries and darkest secrets, and he never turned away from you, not once. Instead he took your insecurities and turned them into beautiful melodies. He turned all your doubts into celebrations of hope. And he did it for you.
Suddenly, it no longer feels like you only met him when you recorded ‘Begin Again’ together. Suddenly, it feels like you’ve known him since you were a teenager and like you’ve been in love with him ever since. Your palms start to sweat. Your heart sinks past your lungs. Is it all those goddamn fries or him that’s making your stomach turn?
He turns onto your street. This is it, you think to yourself. He’s everything I’ve been waiting for.
He walks you to your door, and you stand facing each other on your porch.
“This was nice.” You tell him, taking another step towards him.
“It was.” He mumbles, a lazy smile on his face.
You take another step towards him. He doesn’t move back. His mouth parts. You watch his lips, trace them with your gaze. You think about what it would feel like to kiss them.
“Do you want to come in for a bit?” The words come flying out of your mouth involuntarily. You barely register that you’ve said them. They didn’t come from your mind but from a tiny spot deep in your gut where the urge to take another step towards him lies. You give into that urge without thinking twice about it. You’re closer to him than you’ve been in months. The last time you were this close being that moment on stage during the ‘Begin Again’ performance. You’re surprised you remember that. His breaths then were ragged, uneven. His breaths now are barely there, like he isn’t even breathing. You can smell the mint he popped in his mouth when you left from the beach. You can smell whatever perfume he must’ve sprayed on his neck this morning.
And you’re so wholly aware of the fact that his eyes are looking at your lips.
He turns away from you and glances at your door, saying, “I should go.”
You feel something in your chest sink and sink and sink.
“I’ll see you in the studio tomorrow.” He continues. “We still gotta help Kevin figure out his part for ‘Puzzle Pieces’.”
And with that he’s off, and you’re left standing on the porch alone wondering how someone can look at you like that and then just leave. You look down by your feet and see your heart sitting there, next to your shoes. You leave it there and head it inside.
The next day, Chanhee cancels your studio time without explanation and reschedules you and the band for the following day.
When that day finally does come, Sunwoo doesn’t show up on time to help you and Kevin figure out the right notes to play for the song you wrote together like he said. Instead, he stumbles into the studio late with a song in his hand wearing the same clothes he wore with you at the beach. And that alone, feels like a betrayal of some sort.
“What’s it about?” Jacob asks.
He looks around the room, excited. “It’s about my new partner.”
You feel the urge to vomit all over the recording stage.
—
Luca, it turns out, is Sunwoo’s partner’s name. Sunwoo had brought them into the studio a week after they started dating, and they’ve been coming routinely ever since. As much as you hate it and as much as it makes your heart bend and break, Sunwoo looks really, genuinely happy with Luca. You wonder if he ever looked like that with you.
You really wish you hated Luca, but you don’t. They’re actually quite nice and get along with the whole band so easily. They even make friends with Chanhee. You thought they might be a distraction to Sunwoo while writing and recording, but Sunwoo is more focused and productive and creative than ever. The song he wrote right after meeting Luca is good, like stupidly good. There isn’t a single word in it that needs changing.
With your help, Sunwoo writes another song about them, called ‘Light of My Life.’ It’s while writing that song that you find out that Luca was never a stranger, and that day after the beach was not their first meeting. It’s Changmin who tells you how Luca is from their hometown and how Sunwoo and Luca used to date.
The day that you record ‘Light of My Life’ Luca is also in the studio, sitting in the control room and laughing at something with Eric.
You light up my life even when it’s dark. You both sing together. It’s an acoustic song; only Jacob stands behind you guys strumming the chords on his guitar. The rest of the band didn’t even come in today. You color my world even when I’m feeling blue. You glance over at Sunwoo. He isn’t looking your way. He’s looking at Luca through the control room window. When I’m with you, I never feel alone. You think about the times when he used to look at you while recording. When you hold me, baby, I feel at home. Luca looks back at Sunwoo. It hits you how beautiful they are, with dyed silver hair and slender face. You don’t blame Sunwoo for writing such a beautiful song about them. You don’t blame yourself for helping him. I can’t believe this has happened to me. Right before the next line, Sunwoo finally finally turns and looks at you. I feel alive because of you.
Sunwoo turns back to the control room. Sunwoo wrote this song for Luca, but he wasn’t the only writer on this song, and so, for the rest of the song, you wonder who the hell you wrote this song for?
—
A tune comes to you while you drive home that night. You scribble down a couple lyrics in your notebook as soon as you walk in your door.
Silver hair. Silver skin. Sliver of my heart you took with him.
Jacob throws a party that weekend. A housewarming for the house he bought with the ‘Begin Again’ checks. Stepping in through the foyer, you question whether you should be buying a house too. You forget that thought by the time you reach the drinks table.
After your hellos to the rest of the band and all the small talk with people Jacob wanted to introduce you to, you end up standing alone in his backyard, sloshing around the dark liquid in your cup. Truthfully, you’ve barely left your apartment all week. You hadn’t been in the mood for a party. But it’s nice out here. The air is fresh and crisp. The lights, which Changmin and Juyeon enthusiastically and drunkenly told you they helped put up, are warm but not too bright. You imagine you’ll stay out here for the rest of the party.
“Hi,” you hear a voice say from behind you. You turn around only to find Luca. You hope your face doesn’t betray you when you greet them back. “What are you doing out here?”
You gulp down a bitter sip of your drink. “Just wanted some quiet.”
“Same. Kevin started doing karaoke again.”
“Oof.” You groan sympathetically. “Already?”
They nod with a laugh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen all of them.”
You like Luca. You really do. It’s just taken you until now to realize that you don’t really know them apart from small talk in the studio and the two songs Sunwoo wrote about them. “When did you move down here from your guys’ hometown?”
“Oh.” Their chin juts out a bit. “I moved down with the band actually.”
You don’t hide the surprise on your face.
“I take it no one told you that then.” Luca chuckles darkly. You shake your head. “Uh, well, yeah,” they continue, shoving their free hand into their pocket, “Sunwoo and I started dating right when the band formed. I used to do the photography for them. And when they proposed moving out here, I thought I ought to come with. And I did.” They gulp their drink. “It was good for a while. Really fun in the beginning. But then I got my job taking pictures for the paper, and they were doing the album. And well,” Luca looks at you like you already know what their about to say. “It already wasn’t really working anymore by the time the album was finished. And then they went on tour…”
They leave that part blank. But based on what you heard from Sunwoo about that first tour, you can piece together what might’ve happened. You question whether Luca left that empty to spare Sunwoo or to spare themself. Then you question how they knew you knew about it.
“Oh.” Is all you say. You don’t ask about when they encountered each other again. You don’t want to hear it.
“You know,” Luca begins again, “I actually used to watch you play at the Tabernacle.”
You groan immediately. You only ever played at the Tabernacle when you first started. You cringe thinking about what you might’ve sang on stage in front of them. “Oh my god. I’m so embarrassed to even think about those days.”
“No! Don’t be!” They reassure, kindly. “You were really good. I especially liked that one song that went like… The days were wide open, as far as the eye could see.”
Your heart nearly soars straight out of your body. You had forgotten about this song. You used to love it dearly. You join Sunwoo’s partner for the second line.
The world was mine to take, but I’ve never been good at accepting things.
“You and the band together,” Luca says a moment after you both stop singing, “it’s magical, don’t get me wrong, but that song,” they smile at you, “it’s a damn good song.”
You can’t help but smile back. “Thank you.”
“Sunwool showed me a couple of the songs from the album.” Luca mentions, and it instantly and heartbreakingly reminds you who you’re talking to. “They’re amazing. They’re so good and real and raw that it almost makes me wonder…” their voice tapers off, losing the sound to a small exhale that appears as if it was meant to be a laugh, “Nevermind.”
“What?” You poke, instinctively leaning in towards them.
They meet your eyes, creases running along their forehead and frown lines more prominent than ever. “It almost makes me wonder if there was something between you both.”
You swallow, pointing at your chest. Your voice comes out raspy without you meaning for it to. “Me and Sunwoo?”
They nod. “Yeah, I mean the lyrics in ‘Begin Again’—“
“That song’s not about me. Or about him.” You defend. “We didn’t even know each other when we wrote that.”
“What about ‘Can You See Me’?”
Your breath catches. Truthfully, you answer, “I don’t know what that song’s about.”
—
When you get home that night, you finish the song you started writing about Sunwoo and Luca.
When you breathe in his lips, do you think of mine? What kind of songs were we making? Were they all lies?
“What’s it called?” The question comes from Changmin.
You look up from the paper in your hands filled with the lyrics you had completed over the weekend and after Jacob’s party. You notice he looks sad. You turn your gaze to Juyeon. You can’t really tell what he’s thinking at that moment.
“Uhm–I don’t know. I haven’t thought of a title yet.”
Sunwoo walks in then. “What are you guys talking about?” He asks, setting down his stuff. Then, more to himself than to you guys, he murmurs, “And where are Kevin and Jacob?”
Changmin and Juyeon don’t say anything. Instead, when Sunwoo asks what you’re doing, they both look at you. You imagine even if Kevin and Jacob were here, they’d do the same. Have you really been this transparent? At what point did they put together all the pieces?
You hand Sunwoo the song. You have no idea what his reaction will be.
He just nods, like he has no idea what the song is about. Like he doesn’t see his name and Luca’s scribbled in the margins.
“Call it ‘Silver Lies’.” He says.
Juyeon makes a noise. “Call it ‘Silver Linings’.”
“Vote on it?” Sunwoo proposes.
“No.” You look at Juyeon. He stares back at you. Something unspoken lies in the space between. “We’ll call it ‘Silver Linings’.”
A party rages around you. Flashing teeth and flashing lights. Another drink, another riff. You don’t even know where you are right now. You remember coming home after working on ‘Silver Linings’; you remember wanting to forget your own mind. This is the only way you know how.
You don’t even know how long it’s been.
This is what you do know: You’re sitting by a pool. Your feet are wet. You haven’t been this drunk since your 18th birthday. Kim Sunwoo is standing across the pool from you.
Your face breaks out in a smile. Sober you will regret that. Sober you will also regret how your first thought is that he looks beautiful. You’ll regret the fact that you finally, drunkenly but honestly, admit to yourself how pretty you think he is, how you’ve thought so since your first time hearing him sing, and how you’ve been so painfully aware of it ever since.
You let yourself fall in the water. Head sinking for a moment, before breaking the surface again. Floating on your back, you start humming the melody to ‘Silver Linings’ in your head.
Silver hair. Silver skin. Sliver of my heart you took with him.
You can’t tell if it’s the chlorine or something more pathetic that burns the corner of your eyes and runs down the side of your cheeks.
You feel something tug on your arm. The sudden jolt makes you lose your balance, falling beneath the water. You’re so fucking wasted you forget if you even know how to swim; you almost forget to not breathe.
You feel a pair of arms pull you up and hold your head above the surface. You know who they belong to. It strikes you in the back of your mind that this is the first time you’ve been touched by him. So maybe that’s why you relish in the feel of his arms around your waist and the way his hand grips at your hip.
He looks at you like you’re filth. Just as all your partners before him did. First they’re sweet and charming, but it always ends like this. In their arms, simultaneously wanting to be far away and fighting the urge to beg: love me, please.
Even if he wasn’t your partner, even if all he was was a hope and a ‘what if’.
You barely even register it when you say, “you're just like the rest of them.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He rages back, not even acknowledging what you said.
“Nothing.” You tell him, smiling, wishing like hell that you believed it.
“You missed our studio time. We were supposed to record ‘Silver Linings’.” He fumes at you. “Do you know what time it is? Do you even know what day it is?”
“Do you know how much of a fucking mood kill you can be?” You bite back.
“What are you on?” He looks repulsed. You hate it. Hate the way that you showed him your whole heart and that he still looks at you like this.
Seething, you say, “What do you think?”
And that—that is what breaks him. What makes him lose his shit and start screaming.
“Chanhee is fuming at us!”
You barely notice it. Instead, you repeat in your head the words to the one song you truly, wholeheartedly wrote for him.
“The record label isn’t going to let this slide, you do realize that, don’t you?”
When you breathe in his lips, do you think of mine?
“You wasted an entire day of recording!”
What kind of songs were we making?
“No.” You say finally, voice coming out quiet. It sounds so misplaced and so wrong next to all the yelling between you two. “We wasted so much more than that.”
Were they all lies?
For the first time since you’ve seen him tonight, he doesn’t say anything back. He just stares at you, like he can see straight through. The party continues all around you. It never stopped. It never quieted down. And yet, it somehow feels like you and him are the only ones in this pool. Like you’re stuck in time. Like you’ve created your own world with him and that’s where you’ve retreated to now.
“Was any of it real?” You ask before you can stop the words. You hate how pathetic you sound. You hate how desperate it all is.
All he says before leaving you in the water alone is: “I’m with Luca now.”
He splashes water in your face on his way out.
a/n: originally posted as a svt fic, but lowk feels like it fits sunwoo even better. not proof read very thoroughly so pls lemme know if you noticed any mistakes lol
reading thread just like the good ol' days (and hi shawna!)
i was checking my fic rec blog and tried to recall if i read this before (bc i could have sworn i did since i LOVEE daisy jones and the six) but clearly i haven't so im here now
the way sunwoo's genius on this song revived a jaded y/n in that short snippet and chanhee just knows
first meeting angsty yummy ugh yes i can so visualize the book and the show but also your spin on this?! amazing
held my breath throughout that first performance knowing what y/n was going to do.. so thrilling
the push and pull! the push and pull!
im sorry you should have seen my jaw drop when luca came into the picture because whattgefuck
I SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING
why was i surprised like this is literally the plot
WAS ANY OF IT REAL?
im deceased actually
oh man im hurting
WHYDID IT END THERE PLEASE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
if it's not already obvious, i absolutely loved this by the way
synopsis -> a dirty little secret. that’s what you and hendery have always been. your houses are bound by years of rivalry and resentment, an unwritten rule that makes what you do even more intoxicating. because behind closed doors — no one can fuck you the way hendery does. but with graduation looming and secrecy becoming harder to maintain, the question becomes impossible to ignore: will you finally defy the rivalry and admit what’s been burning between you all along, or will you keep pretending this forbidden situationship was never anything more than just fun?
warnings: guaranteeing a love story that will make you want to throw your phone across the room >.< pet name unlocked: baobei, slightly toxic! we got a fearful-avoidant in our hands, lots of kissing for two people who aren’t supposed to be kissing, definition of push-pull, hendery’s being lead on a string but it’s exactly where he wants to be!, more than one y/n in one room, a double confession!, +18, crude humor, language, parties, drinking, smut! lots of unprotected sex, rough sex! slight! choking, slight! biting, ass-slapping, fucking with a ghostface mask on, glove play?, riding, doggy-style, car sex, bathroom sex, bathtub sex, drunk sex, oral (both m+f), fingering!!!, handjob (simultaneously), nipple-play, slight exhibitionism, in the movie theater and in a classroom, hendery is a dom!!!!, a posted sex tape kinda, crying mid hookup, mentions of: porn, silly sex stories
an: happy valentine’s day! i always intended for the first loverboy story to come out on valentine’s day but never got around to do that cause of my own writing insecurities. so…releasing this today feels like a full circle for me. anyway, the third installment of loverboy wayv is finally yours! i hope you like it! this came out angstier than i planned but i also think they’re one of the sweetest couples in the series. i had a lot of fun writing them <3 alexa play mastermind by taylor swift for hendery! btw, hendery has dark hair for like 90% of this story but the blonde will make an appearance! have fun reading! as always, i will be patiently waiting for your reactions! - with love, c.
🥟 OCTOBER 31 - BARBIE AND GHOSTFACE 🥟
the thumping bass from the dream fraternity’s house party still pounds in your veins like a second heartbeat as you drag hendery through the shadowed alleys, his grip on your hand ironclad and familiar. this isn’t the first time you’ve sneaked him into your sorority house — far from it.
over the past years, these midnight invasions have become your ritual, a dangerous dance of rivalry and raw need that started with a drunken hookup and escalated into something neither of you can quit. your barbie dress, pink and scandalously short, clings to your curves, crumpled from all the grinding on the dance floor while his ghostface mask stays locked in place like a forbidden promise. tequila burns warm in your belly, loosening inhibitions, making this crime feel inevitable. graduation whispers in the distance, a ticking clock on this secret situationship. but tonight, with the halloween chaos as cover, you can’t resist pulling him closer to the fire. you know the layout by heart now — the side door that creaks just so to the hallway shadows where he’s pressed you against the wall some time before. your sisters are out cold or still partying elsewhere, oblivious to the enemy crossing the threshold once again. you fumble the doorknob, heart slamming as you both slip inside, the door shutting behind you. up the stairs, two at a time, his hand already trailing up your thigh, gloved fingers brushing the edge of your panties like he owns the path.
“baobei, you’re gonna get us caught one of these nights,” he mutters through his mask, voice husky and low, but there’s no real warning in it — just that possessive thrill that mirrors your own. you’ve heard it before, in this same dim corridor, right before he pinned you last time and left you limping to class. you could almost see his smirk under the mask.
you lock your bedroom door before shoving him back against it, the wood rattling under the force, “not if you keep quiet,” you shoot back, breathless. the mask’s blank eyes stare down, anonymous yet intimately known, heightening the rush of it all. your stilettos dig into the carpet as you press in, yanking at his shirt, but he reverses it in a blur — spinning you so your back hits the door with a thud that echoes your pulse. the sting radiates, sharp and exhilarating, a spark to the ache building between your legs, body arching towards his touch.
hendery doesn’t waste time — his gloved hands hike your dress roughly, bunching it at your waist. with a swift tug, he shreds your panties, the fabric giving way like it has on previous visits, leaving you exposed and dripping, “so wet already,” he growls, thrusting two leather-clad fingers straight into your core, a deep penetration that stretches you wide. you keen, the intrusion rough, his palm slapping against you as he pumps fast, curling to hit that spot he’s mapped out. the glove’s texture drags inside, amplifying every twist, your wall fluttering around his digits, your cries bouncing off the walls, too loud for the thin barriers, so he firmly slaps his free hand over your mouth, muffling but not cruel, his thumb stroking your cheek in a subtle soothe .
“shhh—someone might hear us,” he whispers, thumb flicking your clit in tight circles that makes your hips jerk. you’ve relived that close call in fantasises since, the fear twisting into fuel. now, you bite the glove, moaning into it, eyes rolling back, nails raking down his arms as he adds a third finger, scissoring to open you further, the burn blending with slick heat — but he knows your limits, honed from these stolen nights. when your legs tremble, he shifts, withdrawing his fingers and wedging a thigh between yours to hold you up, that quiet care slipping though his dominance. in one fluid motion, he hauls you from the door, flinging you onto the bed face-down, the impact jarring your breasts against the sheets, you scramble to your knees and elbows, ass up instinctively, already knowing what’s coming. you hear the sound of his zipper, cock lining up to your entrance — then he slams in, thrusting in one brutal drive that punches the air from your lungs, biting your lip down so hard you could almost taste blood, your pussy clenching greedily around the girth.
“fuck, baobei, still so goddamn tight every time,” he rasps, mask tilting as he grips your hips, bruises forming under his hold. he starts thrusting, hips crashing forward, each one rocking you deeper into the mattress, the bedframe creaking in protest — a sound you’ve learned to muffle with pillows on quieter nights.
you push back, meeting the force, the slap of skin on skin filling the room like a dirty symphony, “harder—fuck me like you mean it,” you gasp, voice, raw, the words spilling from the edge of too many suppressed secrets. he gives you what you want, leaning over your back, one arm banding your waist to anchor you as he pounds relentlessly, cock dragging out to the tip before spearing back in, hitting deep enough to spark stars. his gloved hand snakes down, pinching your clit between his fingers, rolling it with precision that builds the coil tight, attuned to your every quiver. sweat beads on your skin, his free hand tangling in your hair, pulling to arch your spine.
“feel so fucking good, baobei—,” he groans, thrusts turning wilder, erratic, faster and faster and before you know it, the pressure mounts over and you come undone, eyes rolled back, gasping, pussy convulsing in fierce pulses, squeezing his length like a vice, a choked sob escaping as waves crash through you. he follows seconds later, not bothering to pull out, just a guttural groan as he thrusts deep and erupts thick ropes of cum jetting into you, coating your insides hot and full. he grinds through the pulses, ensuring every drop stays buried, his cum overflowing out to slick your thighs as he collapses over you, both of you panting.
only then does the mask come off, flung to the floor with a clatter, as he tries to catch his breath, face flushed and open, pressing soft, wet kisses to your shoulder blade. the aftershock ripple through your body, his cock softening but not slipping free, a warm anchor in the haze of spent pleasure. you shift slightly, feeling the sticky evidence of his release trickle between your thighs but neither of you moves to separate. hendery’s breath fans your ear, steadying, his fingers drawing absentminded circles on your skin.
the house beyond your doors hum faintly — distant laughter, the occasional door slam, but it’s all white nose, a reminder that this night stretches on. everyone’s too wrapped up in their own chaos, partying hard, stumbling home drunk, or tangled in sheets with hookups of their own. no one’s listening. no one’s watching. with a low hum of determination, you roll your hips experimentally, drawing a sharp inhale from him as you push up on your elbows.
“not done yet, huh?” he murmurs, voice roughened by exertion but his eyes spark with that familiar hunger when you meet his gaze over your shoulder. you don’t answer with words, instead you turn your head, pressing your lips to his in a brief makeout session before you pull his semi-hard length out of you with a wet slide that makes you both shiver. the loss aches but it’s temporary as you push him onto the other side of your bed. he lands on his back with a soft grunt as you straddle his hips, his cock twitching back to life already. your hands find the hem of his black shirt first, bunching the fabric up his torso, exposing the lean planes of his abdomen, the faint sheen of sweat catching the dim light from your bedside lamp. he lifts his arms without protest, letting you yank it over his head and toss it aside, your fingers immediately tracing the ridges of his chest, nails scraping lightly over his nipples until they harden under your touch.
“eager tonight,” he teases but there’s no mockery, just that heated appreciation as you work lower, completely tugging his jeans and boxers off in one pull. his cock lies heavy against his thigh, glistening from your combined mess, already thickening as blood rushes back.
“we can’t waste the night,” you smirk, earning a quiet chuckle from him. you kick off your heels, the carpet muffling the thud, then you positioned yourself over him, knees bracketing his hips as you grip his shaft at the base, guiding the swollen head back to your entrance. he’s slick with your arousal and his own cum, easing the way as you sink down slowly, inch by inch, both of you groaning at the renewed stretch. your pussy, still tender and swollen from before, clenches around him immediately, the sensitivity making every vein and ridge feel amplified, a delicious burn that borders on too much.
squat style, you rise up on the balls of your feet, hands braced on his thighs for balance and you start to move. it’s deliberate, unhurried, lifting until just the tip remains inside then dropping back with a controlled roll of your hips. the pace is slower now, savoring the friction, each descent pulling a quiet hiss from his lips. hendery watches you through half-lidded eyes, a smirk curling his mouth as he folds his arms, hands lacing behind his head — the picture of relaxed indulgence. his gaze roams your body unabashedly, from the way your thighs flex with each bounce to the flushed curve of your breasts straining against the low neckline or your dress. reaching up lazily, he hooks two fingers into the stretchy fabric and tugs it down, your tits spilling free, bouncing with your rhythm, nipples hardening as the cool air hits. he doesn't grab or maul — just admires, eyes darkening as they fix on the jiggle, loving the way they sway with every squat.
“god, you’re beautiful,” he says, voice low and gravelly, eyes fixed on you as if committing the sight to memory. the words send a fresh gush of heat through you, your walls squeezing around his cock in response and you pick up the tempo just a fraction. sensitivity lingers like an echo, your clit throbbing with each grind, overstimulated but craving more while he shifts beneath you, hips bucking up shallowly to meet your drops, careful not to overwhelm. it’s intimate this way — face to face, his smirk softening into something almost reverent when your eyes lock.
you lean forward, palms sliding up to his shoulders, changing the angle so he hits deeper, a spark of that earlier roughness flickering as you clench deliberately around him, “you fuck me so well,” you whisper, breath hitching, “i can never get enough.” your admission makes him growl in response, finally pulling off his gloves and cupping your breasts, wanting to feel you skin to skin as his thumb circles your nipple in slow drags that match your pace.
the room feels smaller, the world outside irrelevant as you build toward another peak, bodies syncing in this unhurried dance, “take what you need — i’ve got all night for you,” he breathes, the hidden sweetness threading through the lust. the coil in your core winds tighter with each drop, the slick slide of him filling you over and over sending sparks up your spine. hendery’s thumb flicks your nipple harder now, rolling it between his fingers until you arch into the touch, a whimper escaping your lips. but the distance between your faces feels like too much barrier, the air charged with unspoken need. you lean forward, hair cascading over one shoulder as your lips hover inches from his.
“kiss me,” you demand breathlessly, voice husky from the exertion, and he doesn’t hesitate — his hand slides from your breasts to the nape of your neck, pulling you down until your mouths crash together in a searing, open-mouthed kiss. it’s messy and desperate from the start, tongues tangling immediately as you taste the salt of his skin mixed with the faint remnants of tequila from the party. you keep riding him through it, your clit rubbing against his pubic bone, his cock dragging along your inner walls, hitting that spot that makes your toes curl. saliva slicks your chins, breaths mingling in hot pants between clashes of teeth and lips.
“fuck, baobei—i could do this all night,” he murmurs against your lips, the words punctuated by a sharp suck on your tongue that has you moaning into him. his fingers tangle in your hair, angling your head to deepen the kiss, tongues dueling in a rhythm that matches your hips, slow and teasing. the burn in your thighs intensifies with every rise and fall, muscles quivering from the effort of riding him, your rhythm faltering.
hendery senses it immediately — his hands slide from your hair to your ass, thumbs pressing into the flesh as he breaks the kiss, breath hot against your swollen lips. his eyes lock onto yours, dark and knowing, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth beneath the intensity, “want me to take over?” he asks, voice low and gravelly, laced with the possessive edge that makes your core clench around him.
“yes please, hendery—please—fuck me,” you beg without hesitation, the words tumbling out in a desperate whine, body already surrendering control as you slow your movements, hovering above him with his shaft buried deep. you don’t have to tell him twice — his grip tightens on your ass, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise and flips the dynamic with a powerful upward thrust, bottoming out and making you cry out. his hips snap up relentlessly, each drive pounding into your soaked pussy. you collapse forward, head dropping to his shoulder, forehead pressing against the sweat-slick of his neck as waves of sensation crash over you. your moans spill freely into his ear, raw and unrestrained, high-pitched gasps and whimpers that echo the slap of his balls against your ass with every thrust.
hendery grunts in response, the sounds rumbling deep from his chest right against your cheek, guttural and primal as he fucks up into you, “that’s it baobei — take my cock like it’s all yours,” he growls between thrusts, his voice strained. the room fills with the wet, obscene sounds of your bodies colliding, hitting that deep spot over and over. your nails rake down his back, clinging to him, your moans turning into sobs of pleasure that vibrate against his skin, “fuck, so wet for me —squeezing my dick so tight—” his words spurring you both toward the edge. you feel him swell even thicker inside you, his rhythm faltering just a fraction as he chases his release.
“fuck—hendery, i’m gonna come—” it hits you first, the coil snapping with a force that rips a scream from your throat, muffled as you bite down on his shoulder, your orgasm crashing over you, walls clamping down hard on his cock, juices gushing around him. hendery fights the urge to groan, hissing at the pain. he follows seconds later, his grunts turning into a grunt of your name as he buries himself to the root again, hips bucking erratically, cum flooding your pussy, the warmth spreading deep inside as you both ride out the waves, bodies locked together in shuddering bliss.
🥟 NOVEMBER 1 - I WAS WATCHING PORN! 🥟
the first rays of morning light filter through the curtains of your sorority bedroom. you’re still wrapped in the remnants of last night’s passion — your pink barbie dress hiked up around your waist, the fabric rumpled but intact since neither of you had the energy to strip it off completely. hendery’s body presses warm and solid against your back, his arms looped securely around your middle, holding you close in sleep, his chest rising and falling steadily, breath tickling the nape of your neck, both of you utterly spent from the hours of relentless fucking that left your muscles sore and your mind blissfully blank. the two of you obviously didn’t stop at two rounds.
a sharp knock at the door shatters the quiet, jolting you from the depths of slumber, “y/n! are you up?” the voice bright and insistent — yuna, one of the pinks, your sorority sister, with her endless bubbly energy even after a wild halloween party. you groan low in your throat, eyelids fluttering open as reality crashes in. hendery’s still here, naked in your bed, the ghostface mask discarded on the floor amidst his scattered clothes. panic surges through you like ice water. if anyone finds out about your secret with the rival frat, it’ll blow everything wide open.
you twist slightly, nudging his arm, “hendery,” you whisper urgently, shaking his shoulder. he stirs with a deep, rumbling groan, his grip tightening instinctively before his eyes crack open, bleary and confused. “shhh—keep quiet,” you hiss, glancing toward the door as another knock echoes, “yuna’s right outside. you have to hide–now!” his brows furrow in sleepy protest but he nods, rolling away as you scramble out of bed, snatching up his clothes and that damn mask. you shove them into his arms, then push him toward the closet with frantic hands on his bare back. he stumbles in, shooting you a half-amused, half-annoyed glare over his shoulder before you slide the door shut just as yuna calls out again.
“y/n, i can hear you moving around in there.”
“just give me a second!” you yell back, voice pitched higher than usual as you yank your dress down over your thighs, smoothing it out with trembling fingers. thank fuck you hadn’t bothered undressing fully last night. heart pounding, you crack the door open.
yuna stands there in her matching pink pajamas, hair tousled from the night before yet still looking so effortlessly pretty, eyeing you with a curious tilt of her head, “you look…wrecked. were you talking to someone?”
“no?” the word comes out too defensive, your cheeks flushing as you step aside to let her in, praying hendery stays silent. she brushes past you, her gaze sweeping the room like a detective on a mission, a teasing sparkle in her eyes, “i swear, i heard another voice. come on, spill — who’d you hook up with last night? tell me all the deets!”
“no one,” you blurt, the lie tasting bitter on your tongue as you cross your arms, trying to look casual. yuna spins around, confusion creasing her brow, “no one?! what do you mean, no one?! halloween’s always the hookup capital!”
you shrug, forcing nonchalance while your pulse races, “i was too drunk…passed out early — who’d you hook up with?” her face lights up, clearly excited now that the attention has been directed at her, the interrogation forgotten for a moment.
“yunho.”
“the one who always has that cowboy hat on?” you ask, latching onto the topic like a lifeline.
“yep. and let me tell you…i rode that cowboy all night long,” she wiggles her eyebrows, a proud smirk on her face and you both dissolve into laughter, the sound a brief release of tension until — a muffled thump echoes from your closet.
“what was that?” yuna freezes, head snapping toward the sound. your stomach drops, “probably just one of my heels tumbling around, you know how it is in there — closet’s a disaster.”
she raises a brow, skepticism written all over her face as she takes a step closer, “hmmm, you sure you were alone last night?”
“so sure, why?”
“i could’ve sworn i heard talking…like, voices,” she’s inching toward the closet now, hand reaching for the handle, and desperation claws at you. you burst out with the first excuse that pops into your head —
“I WAS WATCHING PORN!”
yuna halts mid-step, turning back with wide eyes that quickly crinkle in amusement, “porn?”
“yeah,” you ramble, cheeks burning hotter, “this is what i get for not hooking up with anyone last night — woke up way too horny and had to take matters into my own hands.”
yuna bursts out laughing, shaking her head as she backs toward the door, “understandable. anyways, girl, i just wanted to say it’s time to clean up the house, it’s a mess downstairs. sorry for interrupting your…session,” she winks, clearly buying your excuse. you force out a laugh, waving her off, “i’ll be there in a few minutes, let me just change.”
“okie, take your time,” she says with a grin, finally slipping out into the hallway. you lock the door behind her with a soft click, leaning against it as a relieved sigh escapes your lips, the tension draining from your body like air from a balloon. from the closet, comes a faint rustle and you can almost hear hendery’s muffled chuckle. you slide your closet door open with a soft creak, hendery tumbling out in a heap of limbs and rumpled clothes, dark hair tousled and a wide, amused grin displayed on his face. his eyes lock onto yours with that signature spark of mischief and before you can say a word, he reaches up, snagging your wrist and yanking you down onto his lap as he settles back against the closet wall. his bare thighs are warm under you, his half-hard cock twitching against your ass through the thin barrier of your dress.
“watching porn, huh?” he whispers, lips brushing your ear, voice low and teasing to avoid carrying through the thin walls.
“shut up,” you mutter, cheeks heating as you swat his chest, “i panicked…she almost found you.” he chuckles softly the sound vibrating through his chest into yours, before his arms band around your thighs. in one smooth motion, he stands, lifting you effortlessly with him. your legs wrap around his hips on instinct as he carries you the few steps to the bed and eases you down onto the mattress, the sheets still warm from your bodies. he drops to his knees at the edge, strong hands parting your legs as he settles between them, pushing your dress up to expose you. your fingers tangle in his hair, tugging lightly as the mix of nerves and renewed heat floods you, “what are you doing?”
“finishing your session,” he murmurs, sending you a wink as his thumb traced the edge of your folds, “can’t leave my girl when she’s too horny.”
“i’m not your girl, hendery,” you protest, though your voice wavers, hips already shifting towards his touch.
“shhh,” he husks, nipping at your inner thigh, “i’m busy.”
“you need to go,” you protest, the words lacking conviction as your body betrays you, legs spreading wider.
“after this,” he promises, breath hot against your skin. he hooks one arm under your knee, lifting it to spread you wider, then dives in without warning — tongue flat and firm as it drags up your slit, lapping at the mix of your arousal and his dried cum, a high-pitched whine slipping from your lips, “keep quiet for me, baobei.” the command sends a jolt straight to you and you bite your lip hard to stifle the gasp. he knows your body like a code he’s memorized — starting with broad, hungry licks that cover every inch, sucking your folds into his mouth before zeroing in on that spot just below your clit that makes your toes curl. his free hand grips your hip, holding you steady as you buck, while his tongue flicks rapid and precise, circling the swollen nub before plunging inside you, fucking you with his tongue in short, insistent thrusts.
“fuck—” you whimper, voice muffled against your palm as you clamp a hand over your mouth. the pleasure builds fast — too fast. his mouth relentless, sucking hard on your clit now, teeth grazing just enough to sting, then soothing with wet, open-mouthed kisses. your thighs quake around his head, trying to close but he pins them with his shoulder, humming against you. the vibration shoots sparks up your spine, the coil ready to snap, your pussy clenching around nothing when he adds two fingers, curling them deep to hit that ridge inside you over and over. faster and faster. quiet. god. you have to stay quiet. yuna’s probably just down the hall and the house is stirring with sisters cleaning up. but his pace is brutal, expert, tongue sucking on your clit in a rhythm that has you gasping, fingers pumping slick and fast. the wet sounds of his mouth devouring you fill the room, obscene and loud in the morning hush and you fight the urge to moan his name, hips bucking as the orgasm crashes over you, body seizing, pussy spasming around his fingers as you cum hard. he licks you through it, swallowing every drop until you’re trembling, oversensitive and panting into your hand.
he pulls back, lips shiny and swollen, wiping his chin with the back of his hand as he looks up at you with a satisfied smirk, “that’s my girl,” he whispers, voice dark and teasing, “now…about getting me out of here…”
you catch your breath, legs still jelly from the aftershocks as you push up your elbows to glare down at him, “go through my window,” you say, nodding toward the one across the room, curtains half-drawn against the morning light.
hendery laughs, low and rumbling as he rises from between your thighs, “yeah, yeah, i know my way around,” he straightens, grabbing his discarded pants from your closet and stepping into them with quick efficiency. his shirt follows, tugged over his head in one smooth pull, muscles flexing under the thin material. you watch from the bed, pulling your dress down over your sticky thighs, heart still racing from the risk and the rush. he crosses back to you, leaning down to capture your lips in one last, lingering kiss, hands cupping your face with that unexpected gentleness. it’s soft, almost sweet, a stark contrast to the frenzy of last night’s activities. he pulls back, grabbing the ghostface mask and slipping it over his head, the eyes staring back at you with playful intent.
“call me,” he murmurs, voice muffled but clearly teasing. with that, he moves to the window, shoving it open wider. the drop to the ground below is a solid 15 feet, your room being on the second floor, a height enough to make anyone else hesitate, but not him — he swings one leg over the sill, testing the drainpipe snaking down the house wall like it’s an old friend. a final glance your way, that masked face tilting in amusement and then he’s gone. dropping down with the grace of someone who’s done this more than a dozen times, landing soft on the grass below. he straightens, brushes off his knees and vanishes around the corner of the house, leaving you alone, the secret humming in your veins like a promise of more trouble to come.
you linger in the bed for a moment longer, the sheets cool against your skin now, the echo of hendery’s departure still buzzing in your chest. with a deep breath, you get up, stepping into your private bathroom and changing into a cute pink crop top with its matching pajama shorts, fingers running through your tangled hair. a quick glance in the mirror shows your cheeks still flushed, lips swollen from kisses and more. but you force a casual smile — nothing a splash of water and some lip gloss can’t fix. composed, or at least close enough, you slip on your slippers and head downstairs, the house already alive with the clatter of cleanup and gossip.
the living room is a whirlwind of mess, confetti and cups scattered like battlefield remnants. your sorority sisters, better known as, the pinks, are all scattered around, each tackling a corner with varying degrees of enthusiasm. yuna’s on vacuum duty, her ponytail swinging as she sucks up stray glitter from the carpet, humming some pop tune under her breath. natty’s in the kitchen, stacking red solo cups by the sink, sophia wipes down the coffee table. winter’s folding discarded jackets by the couch. yeji’s on trash patrol and ryujin blasts a playlist from her phone, the bass thumping low enough to keep the energy up without waking the neighbors. you grab a broom from the corner and start sweeping, blending right in like you weren’t just tangled up in the sheets upstairs with the enemy, “morning, girls,” you call out lightly, earning a chorus of good morning’s back. no one bats an eye at your late arrival, everyone dealing with their own halloween hangovers.
the girl talk ignites almost immediately, as natural as breathing. yuna straightens from the vacuum, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, directing her attention to natty, “okay–who was that guy you vanished with last night? the one dressed like timmy turner? i bet you granted all his wishes.”
natty bursted out in soft giggles, “he definitely went poof!” earning a chorus of giggles from the room.
sophia chimes in, tossing a rag over shoulder like a bartender, “mine was a disaster, he was dressed like mask, that whole green guy, and was really into character…it was terrifying how much teeth he used,” the room erupts into quiet giggles, ryujin doubling over, “i told you not to hook up with kevin on halloween night.” the stories continue to bounce around, laughter turning into shocked gasps and high-fives, the air thick with that post-party camaraderie. you listen, chiming in with a vague, “nothing too crazy for me — just some flirting that died off before it can even start,” your heart pounding a little at the lie, the thrill of your own hidden night burning under your skin.
🥟 NOVEMBER 2 - WAYV VS. THE PINKS 🥟
the next morning hits hendery like a freight train, his body heavy from the marathon of yesterday. he shuffles into the wayv kitchen, rubbing the back of his neck, the scent of stale coffee and burnt toast already thick in the air. sunlight slices through the windows, empty beer cans and half-eaten pizza slices still littered the countertops and there, in one of the chairs by the kitchen table, yangyang’s got his girlfriend, teddy, on his lap, lips locked in that sloppy, unapologetic way that screams they’ve been at it for minutes. hendery’s stomach turn — not from jealousy, exactly, but from the blatant PDA in their grimy domain.
“gross,” he mutters, loud enough to shatter their bubble. they spring apart like guilty teens, yangyang’s cheeks flushed under his messy bangs, teddy smoothing her shirt with a grin as she takes the seat next to her boyfriend instead. the younger boy shoots him an amused look, leaning back in the chair with his arm draped over teddy’s shoulder, “you’re just bitter you can’t make out with your girl whenever and wherever you want.”
hendery scoffs, yanking open the fridge door for a cold energy drink, “please, i don’t have a girl.” the words come out sharper than intended but he plays it cool, popping the drink open with a hiss.
teddy arches a brow, crossing her arms as she hops on the counter’s edge, swinging her legs, “mhm, you’re still denying having a thing with the pinks sorority leader, huh?”
he ignores her, taking a long swig to buy time, the fizzy burn grounding him, “where’s dejun?” he asks, steering the conversation like a pro, eyes scanning the room as if the guy might pop out from behind the toaster. yangyang shrugs, snagging a piece of cold pizza from one of the boxes, “i don’t know, probably still with the girl he left halloween with. saw him sneak off with that teacher costume chick—looked pretty intense.”
teddy isn’t done though, her voice cutting through like a knife, “why don’t you just break that stupid unwritten rule and go for it? it’s our last year. you’re the frat leader. no one’s gonna kick you out over a crush.”
hendery rolls his eyes, slamming the fridge shut a bit too hard, “god, you’re annoying today.”
“hey, don’t talk to my girlfriend like that,” yangyang fires back but there’s a teasing smirk tugging at his lips as he grabs the nearest thing, a slightly bruised banana from the counter, and chucks it at hendery’s head. his reflexes kick in, snatching it mid-air and peeling it open with a mock salute. the kitchen falls into easy laughter, the tension dissolving into their usual rhythm but hendery’s mind drifts, the banana forgotten in his hand — he’s asked himself the same thing over and over again. he’s asked you the same questions over and over again. the two of you never coming to an agreement. that rule — it’s like a ghost that won’t die, clinging to the walls of both houses long after the architects left.
🥢 three years ago. freshman year. august 26th's initiation.
the air on campus crackled with fresh energy and unspoken hierarchies. hendery remembers it vividly – the wayv frat house buzzing with new pledges, jackson wang, front and center, like some untouchable frat god with that effortless charisma that made underclassmen hang on his every word. he ruled with a mix of charm and iron fist, his parties legendary, his glare enough to shut down any bullshit.
and right across the street, in the sorority row was jennie kim, the pinks leader — fierce, unyielding, her dark eyes slicing through crowds like she owned the night. she was a legend in her own right, the kind of leader who turned whispers into roars.
their rivalry started long before you both have even stepped into nctu. stories has it that it started small — a spilled drink at a mixer, a stolen sign from their yard which eventually escalated into a full blown sabotage. jackson’s crew tp’d jennie’s house, she retaliated by spiking their punch with laxatives. pranks turned personal. they couldn’t stand each other. jackson calling her a “control freak with a vendetta,” jennie firing back that he was a “cocky prick hiding behind his bros.” the rivalry poisoned everything, turning neutral ground into no-man’s-land.
“stay away” – the only rule you’d hear during freshman initiation night and that warning worked like a charm. for years, everyone stayed away. the houses operated in parallel universes, eyes averted, tensions simmering but never boiling over into personal entanglements. jackson and jennie kept their distance, even going as far as moving houses just so they wouldn’t see each other — until they graduated that same year, off to bigger worlds leaving the rule lingering behind like bad graffiti. no one enforced it anymore, not really, but the fear struck, a shadow over every stolen glance.
both houses coexisted now, parties blending without incident, yet that unspoken barrier held firm, a relic haunting hookups and what-ifs. until….
🥢 two years ago. sophomore year. september 24th’s drunken mistake.
by sophomore year, hendery had risen to lead wayv as a sophomore while you were commanding the pinks with the same unshakeable poise jennie once had. and then that night came — at a massive off-campus rager where the booze flowed like water and the music pounded through the walls — that’s when everything cracked. the year’s wildest rager yet. red cups overflowed, the air thick with the haze of smoke, sweat, and the sharp tang of spilled liquor. as the newly inducted leader of the pinks, you carried jennie’s legacy like a crown of thorns. across the room, hendery owned the space with that cocky swagger, his crew hyping him up as he poured shots. it started innocently enough, a taunt tossed across the crowded kitchen like a grenade. you were rallying the pinks, laughing off the chaos when hendery approached, two shots in hand, his eyes locking on yours with that infuriating smirk, “heard you’re holding down jennie’s front now. cute. but let’s be real — jackson ran circles around her. wayv’s always been the real power here.”
you cock a brow, snatching one of the shots from him, downing it in a single burn that lit your throat on fire, “jackson? please. he was all flash, no substance. jennie built something solid…unlike your frat’s parade of egos.” the words hung sharp, the old rivalry flaring despite it not being yours to inherit. but as new leaders, the stay away rule pressed down hard, demanding you defend your ground.
hendery’s laugh was low, challenging, as he poured another round, “big talk from the pink princess. prove it. shots — loser admits their house sucks,” his gaze dared you, the crowd around you starting to notice, cheers rippling out. you grabbed the glass, clinking it against his, “you’re an asshole,” matching the smirk on his lips.
the first few went down easy, tequila burning smooth, banter flying fast. “jackson would've crushed this,” he shot back after the third, wiping his mouth, “he knew how to lead without the drama.”
“jennie taught us loyalty, not your frat’s cheap tricks,” you fired back, slamming the fourth, the room tilting just a bit. the competition heated up — fifth, sixth, seventh shot — neither backing down, the alcohol fueling the spat.
laughter turned to jabs, voices rising over the music, “admit it, pinks are just jennie’s leftovers,” he mocked, eight shot in hand, his cheeks flushed.
“ninth says wayv’s a bunch of dick riders for jackson,” you countered, the liquor buzzing hot in your veins, making his proximity feel hot. by the tenth, the world blurred at the edges, shots lined up like soldiers, the crowds chanting, “shots! shots! shots!” as you both refused to yield. his hand brushed yours while pouring the next, a spark jumping, but you shoved it down, focusing on the burn — eleventh, twelfth — the room spun, laughter slurring into something heavier.
“you’re tough, i’ll give you that,” he admitted, voice rough, a little slurred, leaning closer as you both steadied against the counter. by this time everyone else was too drunk to pay any attention to your competition, opting to go dancing instead, “—but jackson–”
“fuck jackson,” you snapped, grabbing his collar, the words tumbling out too loud, “and fuck you for thinking i’m a leftover when you’re just a jackson wannabe.”
and there it is — that fire in your voice, that blaze in your eyes, pulling him in like a magnet. he’d always harbored a tiny crush on you, watching from afar during freshman year, drawn to that sharp edge you wielded like a weapon. now, with the alcohol loosening everything, you were so close, your breath mingling with his, warm and tequila-scented against his lips. his hand came up, fingers brushing your wrist where you gripped his shirt, not pulling away but holding you there, the air between you thickening like smoke.
“is that how you see it?” he murmured, his free hand sliding to the small of your back, thumb pressing just enough to make your pulse jump, “or is this just an excuse to get in my face?”
you didn’t back down, your grip tightening, bodies inches apart, the heat from his chest seeping through your top, “maybe i just want you to shut up for once. prove you’re all talk,” you’re voice dropped, challenging, eyes flicking to his mouth before snapping back up, the proximity making your skin prickle.
his smirk deepened, eyes darkening as he leaned in, noses almost brushing, “careful what you wish for, i might just take that as an invitation.” the words hung heavy, his breath ghosting your lips, the tension coiling tighter, simmering and unspoken, until it snapped — he yanked you forward by the waist, crashing his mouth against yours in a bruising kiss that tasted of tequila and defiance. the world blurred to the crush of his lips, rough and demanding, his tongue pushing past your teeth without asking. you froze for a split second before you let the alcohol in your system make you match him beat for beat, hand fisting his shirt as you kissed back fiercely. his fingers dug into your hips, pulling you so tight your bodies molded.
he broke it first, pulling back just enough to grin, lips swollen and slick, his eyes locked on yours with that unyielding mischief. without a word, you let him drag you into the bathroom, stumbling after him, pulse racing, head spinning from the shots and the sudden heat, trying to process the reckless spark that had just ignited in front of half the party — thankfully they were all just as drunk as you to give a damn. he shoved open the bathroom door, pulling you inside and slamming it shut. the lock clicked, sealing you both away from prying stares, the cramped space instantly feeling smaller.
“what the hell was that?!” you demanded, trying to process what just happened, voice breathless as you spun around shoving at his chest while your heart hammered in yours. he just smirked wider, leaning on the bathroom door, amused, “don’t act like you weren’t giving me the eyes all night.” you stared at him then, the door at his back, his smirk still curling his lips, that dark glint in his eyes pulling you under. the rivalry, the shots, the public dare — it all twisted into something hotter, undeniable….
“fuck it.”
you whispered, more to yourself than him, before lunging forward, grabbing his collar and yanking him down to your lips, erasing the world outside, tongues tangling in a wet, frantic clash, his hands immediately roaming — gripping your waist, squeezing your ass, pulling you impossibly close until you moaned into him. you pushed him back against sink, nail raking his shoulders, biting his lower lip hard enough to make him hiss and thrust his hips forward, his erection grinding against your core. the kiss turned sloppy, breaths ragged, saliva mixing, tasting the lingering bite of tequila and pure desire. he spun you suddenly, pinning you to cool tile wall, his knee wedging between your legs to press against your aching pussy, the friction sending sparks up your spine.
“knew you’d cave in eventually—pinks can’t resist a real challenge like this,” he growled against your neck, teeth scraping skin before latching onto your collarbone, sucking a mark that would bruise by morning. you arched into him, hands diving into his hair, tugging until he groaned, the sound vibrating through you.
“less gloating, more touching,” you panted, yanking his shirt up to rake your nails down his abs, feeling them flex under your fingers. he shoved your skirt higher, fingers hooking into your panties, ripping them down your thighs in one rough pull. the air hit your slick folds and you gasped as he suddenly dropped to his knees, mouth diving in without warning, tongue flattening against your clit, as he ate sloppily, lapping broad and hungry licks, before plunging inside you, fucking you with it in deep, insistent strokes.
your head thunked back against the wall, legs spreading wider as pleasure coiled tight, his hands gripping your ass to hold you open, nose bumping your clit with each thrust, “you’re so pretty like this,” he muttered, voice muffled, sucking your folds into his mouth and grazing with teeth, the edge of pain making you buck. you ground down, riding his face, fingers twisting in his hair as the pressure built, fast and merciless, your thighs quivering around his ears — but he pulled back too soon, standing with a wicked grin, wiping his mouth as he freed his cock, hard and throbbing, veins pulsing under your gaze, pre-cum beading at the tip. the sight made your mouth water but he didn’t give you time to drop. instead, he lifted one of your legs to hook over his hip, lining up the bare head against your dripping your entrance.
“gonna fuck that attitude out of you,” he rasped, too drunk to think about grabbing a condom from his wallet, the haze of alcohol making protection the last thing on his mind as he entered in one brutal thrusts, stretching you wide, filling every inch with his hot, bare length. you cried out, the sound echoing off the tiles, nails digging into his back as he started pounding, hips snapping with raw force. no barrier between you, just skin on skin, the slick drag of his cock pulling at your walls with each withdrawal then slamming back in to hit that deep spot that made your vision blur.
“harder hendery—prove to me why jackson chose you,” you snarled, clenching around him deliberately and he laughed, dark and breathless, one hand bracing the wall as he railed you faster, the other coming up to wrap around your neck, choking you just enough to make your head spin. sweat slicked your skin, breaths mingling in hot pants, the room filling with the wet sounds of skin meeting skin, the tequila buzzing in your veins, loosening every inhibition, making you push back against him greedily, chasing the burn. he captured your mouth again, swallowing your moans as his tongue mimicked the thrust of his hips, teeth nipping your lips until they swelled.
then, with no warning, he dropped your leg to spin you around, bending you over the counter so you faced the foggy mirror — your reflection flushed and wild, lips parted on gasps, his eyes locked on you with that feral intensity as he thrust back in from behind. the new angle drove him deeper, his tip nudging your cervix with every plunge, making you keen and scrabble for purchase on the edge of the sink, anything to help keep you grounded.
“you love this—fucking me when you know you’re not supposed to,” he grunted, one hand fisting your hair to arch your back, the other sliding between your legs to rub your clit in tight, furious circles, fingers slick with your juices, “you want to scream my name, don’t you? want everyone in this party to know you’re fucking the enemy.”
the pleasure spiked sharp and unrelenting you couldn’t even manage a snarky remark, your pussy fluttering wildly around him as the orgasm ripped through you hard and fast, eyes rolled back, lips parted, walls spasming in rhythmic pulses that dragged a guttural curse from his throat. you bit down on your lip to muffle the scream, body shaking, but he didn’t stop — he kept fucking you through it with relentless snaps, prolonging the waves until you were a trembling mess. his rhythm started faltering, breaths turning to ragged pants as his own release built, cock swelling impossibly thicker inside you, “fuck—gonna cum,” he warned through gritted teeth, the alcohol-fueled haze making him pull out at the last second, fisting his slick length as hot ropes of cum erupted across your ass, sliding down to your thighs, marking your skin in sticky white streaks, hips jerking with each spurt until he was spent, chest heaving as he smeared the last drops over your swelling hole.
you sagged against the counter, catching your breaths, the air thick with the musky scent of sex and sweat, aftershocks tingling through your limbs. he grabbed a wad of paper towels, wiping you down roughly but almost tenderly, his eyes meeting yours in the mirror — defiance and satisfaction warring in the charged silence. and in this moment you both realized — this was the best fuck either of you had ever had — raw, electric, shattering every tension this rivalry had built and yet, also fueling the fire, the addictive pull now impossible to deny.
you both cleaned up quickly, clothes askew, the evidence of your recklessness vanishing under hurried swiped, “this never happens again — no more crossing lines like this,” you said, firmly, voice edged with the lie you both knew it was.
“yeah, one time mistake to settle the score — won’t touch a pink again,” he agreed, though his eyes said otherwise, that smirk flickering back as he adjusted his shirt, the words tying back to the feud even in denial. you stormed out separately. him first, slipping in the crowd like nothing happened, then you, minutes later, heart still pounding, the sticky remnants a secret reminder between your thighs. but deep down, you knew promises like that were made to be shattered, the spark between you now a full-blown inferno waiting to rage.
🥢 back to present day.
“earth to hendery! you good, man?” yangyang claps him on the shoulder, the echo of that bathroom door slamming shut two years ago fading into the hum of the fridge, the weight of it all pressing in.
hendery leans against the sink, crossing his arms, the cool edge of porcelain biting into his back, “look, i’ve tried reasoning with her,” he admits, voice low but steady like he’s confessing to a crime he can’t quit, “she’s got this wall up — says the rule’s there for a reason. she doesn’t want to cross it, not openly. that it will only make things….complicated.”
teddy tilts her head, chewing thoughtfully before swallowing, “i guess that makes sense…unlike you guys, she’s actually lived the sorority up to its name — the pinks aren’t just pretty faces, y/n’s turned them into a force. no wonder she’s playing it safe.”
yangyang whips around to face her, brows furrowed in mock outrage, a little offended for his brother, “hey, that’s not nice.”
“what?” teddy shoots back, unfazed, her eyes sparkling with that playful mischief as she swings her legs again, “it’s true. you guys have what, a couple unknown losers in your frat? everyone knows the dream parties are where it’s at while wayv has turned into some kind of nerd convention.”
yangyang’s eyes narrow at his girlfriend, a grin splitting his face as he lunges forward, fingers digging into her sides with relentless precision. she squeals, twisting away on the counter, her laughter echoing off the tiled walls, “oh, you think you’re so funny?” he taunts playfully, hands relentless as he poke at her ribs, making her double over and kick her legs in protest. “yang! stop–get off!!” she gasps between giggles, swatting at his arms but her protests only fuel him. in one swift move, yangyang scoops her up off the counter, hoisting her over his shoulder like she weighs nothing. “time to teach you some respect for the nerds,” he declares, marching towards the stairs with her dangling and still laughing, her fists pounding lightly against his spine. the kitchen door swings shut behind them with a creak, their footsteps thumping up the steps, fading into muffled banter and the occasional squeal.
hendery watches them go, the sudden silence settling over the room like a heavy blanket. maybe it was jealousy. who knows. he sinks into the nearest chair and stares at the half eaten banana on the table, mocking him. his mind drifts back to you — your fierce eyes, the way your body arched under him, all heat and hidden pleas. the rule lands between you like a chain, unbreakable in your mind even as it chokes him. graduation is coming up and what then? does it all end with you, too? do you both pretend none of the sneaking around happened and just go on your separate ways? like you two have never crossed paths? like he doesn’t have your body mapped out? or your moans memorized like a song he’d choose to play over and over again? he runs a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply, the kitchen’s fluorescent hum the only company left in the quiet morning light.
🥟 NOVEMBER 15 - DO YOU LIKE MY NAILS? 🥟
almost two weeks later — you finally called. and like a lovesick puppy, hendery was at your side in seconds. now, you’re on your knees, between his legs, in the driver’s seat of his car, parked somewhere between the nail salon and the university, hand stroking his cock while your lips hover teasingly close.
“do you like my nails?,” you asked with that tiny pout on your lips, barely visible, but something he’s noticed throughout the years. he inspects the fresh white tips that’s currently wrapped around his member, his hand tangling through your hair, pulling lightly. he sucks in a breath, “they’re nice…but i do like the pink ones you had last week more.”
you smile up at him, always loving his attention to detail, “yeah?,” you say pressing kisses to his tip between breaths, “i like the way the white looks around your dick though,” you throw back playfully, starting to suck soft kisses on the side of his shaft, eyes looking up at him innocently. your tongue flicks out, tracing the vein along the underside, tasting the salt of his skin as you take the head into your mouth, sucking gently at first.
he chuckles, “well, i can’t argue with that,” his fingers tightening in your hair, guiding you without force, hips twitching upward as you hollow your cheeks and slide down further, enveloping more of his length. the car’s confined space makes it more intimate, your knees pressing into the floor mat, body angled between his spread thighs, barely any room to move. you bob your head slowly, savoring the moment, lips stretching around him, saliva pooling and dripping down to coat your fingers where they pump the base in rhythm. your french tipped nails gleam in the low light as they twist lightly, adding friction while your mouth works the upper half, sucking, licking, swirling your tongue over the sensitive slit to lap up the pre-cum that leaks steadily. he groans low, the sound rumbling from his chest, eyes locked on your face, watching your lips glide up and down his cock, your eyes closed like you were in a state of bliss. he’s obsessed.
“baobei, fuck,” he mutters, voice rough, thumb brushing your cheek as you take him deeper, “you’re killing me here…feels so damn good.”
you pull off just enough to murmur against his skin, “yeah? tell me how much you like it when i’m in charge,” your hand keeps stroking, firm and teasing, thumb circling the head.
he chuckles breathlessly, head falling back against the seat for a second before his gaze snaps back to you, dark and needy, “love it. you know i do.” you smirk, taking him in again, relaxing your throat to swallow around him. the sounds of his ragged breaths mixing with your muffled hums of pleasure fill the car. you’re faster now, head bobbing with purpose, cheeks hollowing as you suck harder, loving how he melts under your control, his usual dominance flipped on its head.
“fuck,” he pants, fingers flexing in your hair, “don’t stop.” you hum around him in response, the vibration making his thighs quake. you glance up through your lashes, seeing the way his chest heaves, completely at your mercy. it turns you on even more, knowing he’s putty in your hands — these rare moments where he lets you wreck him for once instead of the other way around. your free hand slides up to cup his balls, rolling them gently while your mouth takes him deep, gagging slightly when he hits the back of your throat, but you push through, eyes watering as you deepthroat him, nose brushing his pelvis.
“baobei, you’re gonna make me lose it,” he groans, voice cracking, hips rolling up instinctively but slowing when you squeeze his thigh in warning — your show, your rules. grinning at how wrecked he sounds, you suck with fervor now, hand pumping the base in quick twists. his abs tense under you, body arching as the pleasure coil tight. “shit—just like that— please,” he pants, voice breaking on a moan when you hum around him again, the vibration shooting straight through him. you speed up, mouth and hand working in tandem, drool trailing down your chin, messy and hot. “fuck–i’m—” his grip tightens in your hair, hips bucking as he cums, hot spurts flooding your mouth, coating your tongue. you swallow around him, milking every drop with slow, deliberate sucks, watching the way his eyelids flutter close, mouth parted in bliss as you prolong his orgasm until he’s shuddering.
pulling off with a pop, you lick your lips clean, then lean up to kiss him softly, sharing the lingering taste. hendery cups your face, leading you up into his lap for a deeper embrace, his arms wrapping around you in the afterglow, “you’re amazing, you know that?” he whispers against your hair, that hidden sweetness surfacing as he holds you close, still catching his breath from how thoroughly you’d unraveled him.
“i know,” you reply playfully. hendery rolls his eyes, a grin on his lips, before he kisses you again, tongue slipping past to tangle with yours. you moan softly into his mouth, fingers threading through his hair to tug him nearer. his lips move hungrily against yours, the makeout heating up fast. one hand cups the back of your neck, holding you steady, the other roaming down to squeeze your hip, grinding you lightly against his sensitive cock. you melt into it for a moment, lost in his kisses, but reality nags at the edge of your mind. with a gasp, you pull back, cheeks flushed, lips swollen and glistening, “hendery, i can’t today…need to get back…i have a meeting with the girls,” you murmur between breathy moans, his mouth already trailing hot kisses along your jaw, down to your neck where he sucks a mark just below your ear, easy enough to hide with your hair.
he hums against your skin, vibrations sending shivers down your spine, his teeth grazing your collarbone as he nips lightly, “i’ll make it quick, you know i can,” he whispers, voice low and rough, lips brushing everywhere — your pulse point, the hollow of your throat, the swell of your breast peeking from your top. you smirk playfully, heat already pooling low in your belly because damn, he really can wreck you in record time. the temptation wins out, your resolve crumbling under his touch. “all fours, in the back, come on,” he says with a grin, eyes dark with promise and mischief. you both share a laugh, the sound light in the steamy confines, breaking the tension just enough to make it fun. you don’t waste another second, hopping over the console into the backseat, hendery chuckling and giving your ass a playful slap before your knees sinks into the leather as you position yourself on all fours, ass up, skirt hiked around your waist. he tugs his pants back up just enough to cover himself before stepping out of the car and circling around to the back door. the cool air rushes in briefly as he climbs in behind you, door slamming shut, sealing you both in privacy again. thank god for his tinted windows. his hands are on you immediately, yanking your panties down to your thighs, exposing your soaked pussy to the air.
“look at you — already dripping for me,” he growls, thumb parting your folds to tease your clit, circling it roughly before dipping inside to feel your wetness.
you arch your back, pushing against his hand with a whine, “hurry the fuck up,” you tease, glancing over your shoulder to see him shoving his jeans down again, his cock springing free, hard and ready despite just cumming.
“watch that mouth,” he grunts, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head back sharply, forcing you to meet his intense gaze, “or i’ll drag this on longer than it needs to be.” his voice is low and rough, dripping with authority as he lines up his bare cock against your entrance. you’ve ditched condoms months ago. he’d made it clear — no more barriers between you. nothing beats the raw feel of skin on skin, his thick shaft sliding directly into your heat without anything dulling the sensation.
he grips your hips with bruising force, nails digging in as he thrusts in with one brutal snap of his hips, burying himself balls deep, “fuck you’re tight,” he growled, arching your spine as he drove deeper, his other palm cracking against your ass in sharp, possessive slaps that left red marks blooming on your skin. he knows you like it like this — rough, fast, hard. the pleasure showed as you moaned loudly, your body trembling under his relentless movements. he leaned over you, chest pressing to your back, teeth grazing your shoulder before biting down, not gentle, marking you as his in a way that thrilled and claimed, “take it all,” he demanded, voice husky against your ear, his free hand snaking around to rub rough circles on your clit, forcing your pleasure to come quicker and quicker.
your fingers claw at the seat, body jolting with ever thrusts, breasts bouncing under your top, “hendery—fuck, yes, harder,” you gasp, clenching around him, the pressure building fast in your core. he obliges, driving deeper, the head of his cock hitting that spot inside you over and over, sparks exploding behind your eyes. sweat beads on your skin, the scent of sex thick in the air, his free hand smacks your ass again, harder this time, the jolt making you tighten around him, “gonna cum inside you, fill this pussy up,” he groans, voice strained, thrusts turning erratic yet still controlled.
“oh my god—hendery–,” you clenched around him, walls fluttering, your moans a babbling mess, but he didn’t let up, fucking you harder, faster, the car rocking to his brutal rhythm. your arms buckled, face pressing into the seat as waves of ecstasy built incredibly quick. he hauled you up by your waist, making you feel every inch as he bottomed out, “cum for me, be my good girl and cum.”
the dominance in his tone, the way he controlled your body like it was made for him — it all pushed you over the edge. you came with a cry, screaming his name, body trembling, pussy spasming around his bare cock as he groaned deep, thrusts turning erratic, “that’s it—fuck, yes,” he snarled, burying himself to the hilt and flooding you with hot spurts, creaming your insides as his own hips stutter. he collapses over you briefly, chest heaving against your back, cock twitching as he pumps the last of his load into you. then he pulls out slow, watching his cum leak from your fucked-out hole, a satisfied smirk on his face, "quick enough?" he teases, helping you sit up, both of you laughing breathlessly in the afterglow before he reached for the tissues he kept in his console, cleaning you up in that hidden sweetness he saved for you.
🥢
hendery pulls up around the corner from the sorority house, far enough away that no prying eyes will spot the wayv frat leader’s car. the engine hums as you unbuckle, turning to face him. leaning in, you press a quick peck to his lips, soft and lingering just a second longer than necessary, “thanks for picking me up from the salon,” you murmur, your voice light, nails, those fresh white tips, trailing lightly down his arm. he kisses you back, cupping your cheek with his palm, thumb stroking your jaw, “anytime,” he replies, eyes holding yours with that intense gaze that always makes your stomach flip, a feeling you push away every time.
“i’ll call you,” you whisper against his lips, stealing one last kiss, deeper this time, tongues brushing briefly before you pull away, heart racing. with a final wink, you hop out of the car, shutting the door softly behind you. your hips sway as you walk the rest of the way, skirt swishing against your legs, the faint ache between your thighs a delicious reminder of him.
hendery watches from the driver’s seat, fingers tightening on the wheel as your figure retreats into the shadows of the street, disappearing around the bend toward the house. he exhales slowly, running a hand through his hair, the emptiness hitting him like it always does — how much longer can he do this? hide you? hide whatever the hell this situationship is? the thought gnaws at him, sharp and unrelenting, as he shifts into drive and pulls away.
🥟 NOVEMBER 22 - FUN. 🥟
it takes another week for you to reach out to him. classes dragged on, meetings blurred into one another and by the time sunday rolled around, campus was a ghost town, most students nursing hangovers or escaping the stress.
baobei: meet me at the usual classroom.
baobei: need you…
and just like that, hendery shows up without a word, locking the door behind him before pinning you against the desk, his fingers plunged into your soaked pussy, curling just right to hit that spot that emptied your mind. you gripped the edge of the wooden desk, your skirt hiked up around your waist, panties shoved aside as he worked you over with ruthless precision, “fuck, hendery,” you moaned, watching the way his digits disappeared into your heat, in and out, “just like that—god, that feel’s so good–” you chased the heat, hips bucking up to meet his fingers while his thumb circled your clit, fast and unrelenting, the wet sounds echoing in the empty room.
hendery didn’t know why he kept doing this — running to you in a heartbeat as soon as you call out his name like he was some sort of dog waiting for his owner, especially when you’ve been leading him on a string, refusing to label whatever this is. he could argue the sex was just too good, the way your tight heat gripped him until he couldn’t hold back, flooding you with his cum in raw, skin on skin bliss. but that was bullshit. he was too far gone, had been ever since that night in august.
🥢 three months ago. august 31. the broken air conditioner, shrek 2, and dumplings.
the two of you had just finished fucking, your bodies slick with sweat on his rumpled sheets. the wayv house was quiet, the air conditioner humming faintly, a mercy compared to the oven back at yours. it was just the start of the final year, and somehow the maintenance department completely overlooked your sorority house.
“god, it’s still so fucking hot over there,” you complained. the pinks house felt like a steam room, the broken unit leaving everyone irritable and sticky. you dreaded going back, even for a shower.
hendery rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand, his gaze lingering on the curve of your ass, a hand settling on your waist, pulling you closer, “just sleep over. no one has to know. stay here with me,” and when he sees the hesitation in your face, he continues, “it’s better than roasting alive.”
the thought of sleeping in the humid night was enough to make you lose your bearings, “fine. but if anyone finds out, you’re the one explaining.” you grabbed the remote from his nightstand, flopping onto the bed and scrolling through netflix as he watched you contently scroll through his home page, “what do you want to watch?”
he shrugged, joining you and pulling you against his chest, “pick whatever, i’m good.”
you settled on shrek 2 — the perfect unwind. as the movie kicked off, you couldn’t help it, quoting lines under your breath at first, then full-on reciting with exaggerated voices. by the time the drive thru scene came along, you were in full swing, changing your voice to fit each character “you force me to do something i really don’t want to do” *gasps* “where are we?” “well, hi there welcome to friar’s fat boy, may i take your order?” “my diet is ruined! i hope you’re happy…er…okay. two renaissance wraps, no mayo…chili ring,” “i’ll have the medieval meal.” “yeah, one medieval meal and harold…curly fries?”...
hendery’s laughter rumbled through his chest, vibrating against your back, “you know, when you’re not in full girlboss, lawyer mode, i’m-that-bitch energy, you’re just…adorable,” he whispered by your ear.
you squinted up at him from where you lay nestled in his arms, “don’t make me regret this.”
he laughed harder, the sound rich and unfiltered, “i’m just saying, you’re like really precious and…cute. a tiny little darling.”
your glare sharpened, though your lips twitched, shrek 2 forgotten in the background, “hendery.”
still chuckling, he persisted, his thumb brushing your jaw, “there’s a word for it in chinese,” you raised a brow, curiosity piqued, “baobei.”
you blinked, tilting your head, “that sounds like a type of dumpling.”
his laughter erupted again, full and genuine as he reached over and squeezed your cheek — annoyingly, lovingly, pinching just enough to make you swat at his hand, “it kinda fits, don’t you think? my little precious dumpling. soft, sweet…and stuffed full tonight,” he winks playfully.
“you’re ridiculous,” you rolled your eyes then. but you couldn’t hide the smile as you snuggled closer, the movie playing on.
🥢 back to present day.
that nickname lingered, weaving into your secrets, turning stolen nights into something you both craved beyond the physical. and now, three months later, it was why he couldn’t stop.
he shoved your skirt higher and yanked your panties down your thighs, leaving them tangled in your ankles, you kicked them off impatiently, spreading your legs wide in invitation, your core still throbbing from the aftershocks of your first orgasm. hendery stepped between your thighs, his jeans already undone, cock springing free. he’d been hard since he walked in, the outline straining against his zipper the whole time he fingered you. he gripped your hips, pulling you to the edge, the head of his cock nudging your slick entrance, “you ready?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question, more a growl of anticipation. you nodded, biting your lip, hands fisting his shirt as he thrust in with one sharp snap of his hips.
“fuck,” you gasped, the stretch burning sweet as he filled you completely. your walls fluttered around his length, still sensitive from your climax, every inch of him dragging against your nerves. he pulled back almost all the way before slamming back in, the desk creaking under the force, your ass sliding against the surface with each pounding thrust. his hands dug into your thighs, spreading you wider, holding you open as he fucked you deep.
“god, i fucking love this,” he grunted, leaning down to capture your mouth in a messy kiss, tongues tangled, teeth nipping, his breath hot against your lips as he drove into you over and over again. one hand slid up to cup your breast through your top, thumb flicking your hardened nipple, sending tingles straight to your core. you arched into him, pulling him closer, urging him on, the risk of it all only heightening the thrill. he broke the kiss to trail bites down your neck, sucking marks that you’d learn how to hide, his pace never slowing, “tell me you need this,” he demanded between thrusts, voiced edged with that vulnerability he only let slip in these stolen moments, “need me inside you like this.”
“i do,” you whimpered, wrapping your legs around his waist to pull him deeper, “need you so much—fuck, hendery–need you all the time–” his hips snapped faster, cock hitting just the way you like it. sweat beaded on his forehead, dripping onto your collarbone as he chased his own release, the tension in his body winding like a spring.
“baobei,” he groaned, burning his face in your neck, thrusts turning erratic and with a final, deep shove, he came, marking you from the inside out. the sensation tipped you over again, your second orgasm ripping through you as you clenched around his throbbing length. he stayed inside, both of you panting in the aftermath, his weight a grounding press against you.
you both lingered for a moment longer, his cock softening inside you, the warmth of his cum leaking out as he finally pulled away with a reluctant groan. hendery helped you down from the desk, his touch gentle now, fingers brushing your thighs as you steadied yourself on wobbly legs. you straightened your skirt, smoothing it over your hips while he tucked himself back into his jeans. you grabbed the wipes you kept in your purse, cleaning up the mess between your thighs, ran your finger through your hair to tame the wild strands and wiped at the smudged remnants of your lip gloss. he adjusted his shirt, buttoning it properly, eyes flicking to the door every few seconds.
“that was…intense,” you said, forcing a light laugh, “think the desk is okay? we might need to warn it next time,” you shot him a playful wink, easing into your usual banter, the one that kept things fun and uncomplicated. but hendery didn’t laugh. he leaned against one of the nearby tables, arms crossed over his chest, staring at the floor with a distant expression. his jaw was set, that post-orgasm glow fading into something heavier, more introspective. you paused, sensing the shift.
“is everything okay?” you asked, stepping closer.
“yeah, why?” he replied quickly, his voice clipped, eyes lifting to meet yours but not quite holding the gaze.
“you’re quieter than usual,” you pointed out, tilting your head. the hendery you knew would be cracking a joke by now, maybe pulling you in for one more kiss before you both snuck out.
“it’s nothing,” he waved off, pushing away from the table slightly, but his shoulders remained tense.
“i don’t believe you. tell me what’s wrong,” you said, standing in front of him now, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. your hand hovered near his arm, wanting to touch but holding back.
he let out a breath, long and heavy, his hands finding your waist almost instinctively. his fingers splayed across the fabric of your skirt, rubbing up and down in slow, soothing strokes that sent a different kind of warmth through you, “it’s just…what are we doing?”
you looked at him, blinking up at his serious expression, “well, we just had mindblowing sex,” you replied, still trying to keep it playful, a small smile tugging at your lips.
“y/n — i’m serious,” he cut you off, his tone sharpening just enough to wipe the humor away, “we’re not sleeping with other people and we’re not officially seeing each other too, so…what are we?”
you lost your smile, the words hitting like a splash of cold water. you couldn’t exactly call him your friend — he was your rival, or at least he had been, back when the lines between wayv and the pinks were drawn in stone. but he wasn’t really that anymore either, not after all the stolen nights and whispered secrets.
“hendery, come on, i’m not having this conversation again.” this isn't the first time he’s brought this up. “we already agreed that we’re just having fun.”
“is it still that though? just fun?,” he looked at you, waiting, his dark eyes searching yours with an intensity that made your chest tighten.
“yes.” you said finally, the words feeling flimsy even as they left your mouth. he stopped rubbing at your waist and you immediately missed the comfort it provided as he pulled his hands away, stepping back just an inch.
“right…just fun,” he muttered, the word laced with a bitterness that stung.
“oh come on, what do you want me to say?” you said suddenly defensive, crossing your arms.
“i just want you to be honest,” hendery replied, his voice steady but edged with frustration.
“well, that’s my truth,” you said stubbornly, holding his gaze even as doubt flickered in your own mind. the silence stretched between you, thick and suffocating, the playfulness you’d clung to crumbling under the weight of his gaze. hendery’s eyes, usually so sharp with mischief or desire, softened with something raw — hurt, maybe, or resignation. it twisted something deep in your chest, a pang you weren’t ready to name.
he ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply, his posture slumping against the table as if the fight had drained out of him, “well…i don’t think i want to have just fun anymore,” he said, his voice low, laced with a vulnerability that made your breath catch.
“what are you saying?” you asked, your heart pounding erratically, the classroom suddenly feeling too small, the walls closing in on the fragile bubble you’d built around this — whatever this was.
“you’ve made it pretty clear this isn’t going anywhere,” he replied, his tone steady but edged with pain, “so let’s just stop wasting each other’s time—”
“hendery—” you tried to butt in, your voice cracking slightly, desperation creeping in as the ground shifted beneath you.
“i’d like to see other people,” he continued, not letting you interrupt, his words slicing through the air like a knife, “we’re graduating soon. i need to start thinking about my future and let’s face it, y/n. we don’t have one.”
the words landed like a punch to the gut, stealing the air from your lungs. you could feel your heart break, a sharp, aching fracture you didn’t want to acknowledge — not after you’d spent months convincing yourself this meant nothing, that it was just stolen moments and nothing more. but the lie tasted bitter now, the denial crumbling as tears pricked at the back of your eyes. your throat tightened, emotions warring inside you — anger, fear, a desperate longing you’d buried deep all falling into one word…
“fine,” you said firmly, forcing your stoic face back on, the mask you wore so well. unreadable, unflinching, even as your insides twisted in agony.
“okay…” hendery nods slowly, “…after three years, we just…end like this,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, the weight of the rivalry — the taunts, the tension, the slow burn that led to this — crushing him visibly. his eyes searched yours, pleading for something, anything, to salvage the wreckage. you wanted to stop it, to take back every word, every deflection. to grab his shirt and pull him close, to admit that fun had become so much more. but fear, that stubborn shield, held you back. instead, you delivered the final blow, like an arrow shooting through both of your hearts.
“there’s nothing to end when it never even began.”
he sighed, a deep, weary sound that echoed through your own hidden turmoil, his shoulders sagging, “don’t be that cruel.”
you just stepped away, the distance between you feeling vast and irreversible, your legs heavy as you turned toward the door, “i hope you find whatever future it is you want,” you said, your voice steady despite the storm raging inside, before finally walking away, the click of the door behind you sealing the fracture.
🥟 NOVEMBER 23 - NOTHING. 🥟
the morning light filters through the thin curtains of your room as you lie there, staring at the ceiling, the events of yesterday replaying in an endless loop that twists your gut tighter with each pass. hendery’s words echo relentlessly, the echo of his voice cracking just enough to betray the pain he was trying to hide replaying in your head like a curse. and you, with your sharp retort, there’s nothing to end when it never even began – god, why did you say that? it felt like armor at the time but now it just aches, a self-inflicted wound festering in the quiet.
your phone sits silent on the nightstand, no texts, no calls. part of you waits for one anyway, some sign that he didn’t mean it, that the three years of stolen glances, heated arguments and even hotter nights weren’t as disposable as you both pretended. but the screen stays dark, mocking your turmoil.
two months ago, everything seemed so contained. you both laid it out the second it felt like this was starting to get serious — just fun, nothing more. no strings, no futures, no breaking the rivalry’s invisible chains. how did it unravel so fast? now this, whatever “this” was, feels like it’s bleeding out on the floor.
you roll over, burying your face in the pillow. tears prick at your eyes, hot and unwelcomed but you blink them back. no, you won’t cry over this. you insisted it meant nothing, built walls around your heart with every deflection, grew your pride as high as a tower. yet here you are, heart splintered, replaying not just yesterday but the moment you thought you both had an agreement.
🥢 two months ago. september 27. birthday-eve.
the cinema is dimly lit, the forgotten indie flick droning on about lost love or whatever — background noise to the real show unfolding in the back row. you’d orchestrated this perfectly — empty seats, no prying eyes. it was the day before hendery’s birthday and you’d told yourself it was just another “session.” a way to unwind without the labels that could shatter everything. no date, no romance. just the two of you, tangled in the plush seats, his hands roaming your sides as your lips met in a slow, heated kiss. he pulls back first, his breath warm against your skin, trailing soft kisses down your neck that send shivers through you.
“baobei,” he murmurs, voice husky with that teasing lilt he knows drives you wild, “are you sure this isn’t a date?” his words hang playful but there’s a fracture of truth beneath them, a quiet hope flickering in his dark eyes as he nips at your collarbone. you can feel the weight of it, the way he’s been teasing boundaries lately — lingering touches after sex, questions about your day that veer too close to caring, the nickname that you let slide every time because you secretly adored it.
“of course not,” you reply, forcing a laugh to keep things light, your fingers threading through his hair to pull him back in for another kiss but he resists just enough, hovering there, his lips brushing yours in a ghost of contact.
“come on,” he presses, his hand sliding up your thigh under the hem of your skirt, thumb tracing lazy circles that make your pulse quicken, “movie theater, just us, tomorrow’s my birthday…smells like a date to me,” his grin is cocky, but his gaze searches yours, probing for more than the usual banter.
you shift in the seat, the leather creaking softly and capture his lower lip between your teeth, nipping to distract him, “it’s a hookup with perks,” you say when you release him, voice breathy but firm, “birthday eve fun. don’t overthink it, hendery.”
he chuckles low, the sound vibrating against your chest as he leans in again, but theres a pause, a moment where his hand stills on your leg, “what if i want to overthink it? we’ve been doing this for years now — sneaking around, breaking every rule in the book. the rivalry’s bullshit, baobei. why not make it real?”
your heart stutters at that, the vulnerability in his tone cracking your resolve. it’s tempting, so damn tempting, to let it be more. but the warnings echo — jackson and jennie’s fallout, the unwritten code that could destroy your house if you’re caught. and deeper still, something you refuse to acknowledge…your own fear. what if it crashes and burns, leaving nothing but ashes?
“no,” you say softly, cupping his face to hold his gaze, “we can’t. you know why. the frats, the sorority — it’ll be a mess. and us? we’re good like this. fun. no drama, no expectations.”
he searches your eyes, jaw tightening slightly, but then he nods, because at the end of the day — he’ll take whatever you can give.
“fun, huh? alright, just fun it is,” his hand resumes its path, slipping higher, fingers brushing the edge of your panties in a way that reignites the heat between you, “but if that’s the deal, we stick to it. no almost-dates, no getting soft on me.”
“agreed,” you whisper against his lips, even as a tiny voice inside whispers doubts, “just for fun. nothing more.” sealing it with a kiss, your lips crashing into his with renewed hunger, tongues tangling in a messy, desperate rhythm that drowns out the movie’s murmur. hendery’s hand sliding fully under your skirt now, fingers hooking the edge of your panties and yanking them aside. you gasp into his mouth as he presses two fingers against your slick folds, parting them with a slow, deliberate stroke that makes your leg part wider involuntarily.
“you’re already so wet for me,” he groans against your lips, voice rough and low, eyes half lidded with lust, “this what you planned for my birthday eve?”
you nod, breathless, your hand fumbling with his belt buckle in retaliation. the metal clinks softly in the quiet theater and you pop the button on his jeans, zipping it down as you reach inside, his cock already hard and throbbing against your palm. you wrap your fingers around the thick shaft, stroking from base to tip with a firm grip that draws a hiss from him.
“yeah,” you murmur, nipping at his jawline, your thumb circling the bead of pre-cum at his head, “planned to make you come so hard you forget all that date bullshit.”
he chuckles darkly, thrusting his fingers deeper into your pussy, curling them just right to hit that spot he knows you like. you clench around him, walls tightening as he pumps in and out, his palm grinding against your clit with every curl.
you match his pace, stroking him up and down, “shit, your hand feels too good,” he pants, forehead pressed to yours, his free hand gripping your thigh to spread you wider, “faster,” he pleads just as he changed the rhythm of his fingers. you moan in response, obeying, twisting your wrist to make him groan louder, wanting him to cum before you do. he seems to have the same idea, retaliating by scissoring his fingers inside you, stretching your pussy with a burn that borders on pain, but you love it, grinding down to take more.
your makeout turns frantic, lips bruising as you continue kissing and sucking on his tongue. saliva slicks your chins, breaths coming in hot bursts between kisses, “hendery,” you whine, pumping him harder, your nails digging into his shoulder, “you—fuck—right there, don’t stop.”
“not stopping until you cum first,” he growls, curling his fingers deeper, making you cry out into his mouth. he silences you with another kiss, tongue mimicking the thrust of his fingers, while you jerk him off with relentless speed, feeling him swell even thicker in your grip.
but he was always going to win this — he always does.
you reached the edge first, your walls clamping down, slick and greedy, as his thumb flicks over your clit in rapid, insistent swiped that make your thighs tremble against his hand, “come on, baobei,” he rasps into your mouth, tongue sweeping in to claim yours again, “let go for me, want to feel you squeeze my fingers when you cum,” his voice is a gravelly command, breath hot against your lips, and sends a fresh wave of heat flooding through you.
you whimper, the sound muffled by his mouth as your hand go slack in his boxers for a bit, your release completely taking over, “fuck—hendery—” you gasp, the soul snapping pleasure exploding outward in sharp, shuddering waves. your pussy convulses around him, gushing over his knuckles as you cum hard, body seizing with the intensity of it. your hand squeezing his cock tighter to keep you grounded.
he groans, watching your face twist in ecstasy, “that’s it—so fucking beautiful when you fall apart,” he captures your lips again, softer this time but no less hungry as your breaths mingle in the dim light. your orgasm leaves you boneless, but you don’t let up on him, resuming the firm pumps along his shaft, thumb teasing the sensitive underside of his head. he’s rock hard in your grip, hips snapping into your touch.
he breaks the kiss with a sharp gasp, nipping at your shoulder, “gonna cum—shit, you’re gonna make me cum so hard,” his body tenses, muscles coiling like a spring and with a guttural curse, hendery shudders, cock jerking wildly as he erupts in his boxers, his sticky cum coating your fingers.
“fuck,” he pants, slumping against you, his chest heaving as the last pulses fade. he kisses you lazily now, all heat and satisfaction. your hand slows, squeezing out the final drops and he shivers at the overstimulation, a soft laugh escaping him. slowly, you pull your hand out of his boxers, cum coats your fingers and palm, thick and warm and without breaking eye contact, you bring it to your lips. your tongue darts out, licking a broad stripe across your palm, tasting the salty bitterness of him as you suck each finger clean one by one. your eyes tease him the whole time, half-lidded and playful, watching his gaze darken with fresh hunger.
hendery’s breath catches, his hand reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, eyes dark but tender, “can’t get enough of you.”
and just to bring two of you back into this crashing reality, you smirk playfully, “that was fun… wasn't it?”
🥢 back to present day.
your bedroom bursts open without a knock, slamming against the wall with enough force to rattle your desk lamp and shatter your daydream. in tumble yuna, natty, sophia, ryujin, winter and yeji — a whirlwind of wide eyes, tangled hair and barely contained chaos, their energy sucking the air from the room like a vacuum.
“YOU!” they shout in unison, voices overlapping in a screech that pierces the air and sends your heart into overdrive.
you bolt upright, heart slamming into your ribs, sheets pooling around your waist, “what? did i leave the curler on again?” your voice comes out sharper than intended, laced with tremors you can’t hide, pulse racing as you scan their faces, trying to read where this situation is heading. natty’s mouth agape in shock, sophia’s hands planted firmly on her hips, yuna already yanking out her phone like it’s a loaded gun pointed right at you. your mind spins. did someone die? is the house on fire? what the hell could warrant this invasion?
“YOU HOOKED UP WITH WAYV’S LEADER?!” winter blurts it first, her cheeks flushed pink, with a mix of disbelief and thrill, while yeji nods quickly beside her, eyes wide as saucers.
the air around you crashes, heavy and suffocating, like the walls are closing in, compressing your chest until you can barely breath. your stomach plummets, cold sweat prickling your skin, nausea rising in your throat. “what?” it’s barely a whisper, denial bubbling up even as pure dread coils tight in your gut, twisting like a knife. this can’t be happening. not now.
not when it was already over.
yuna doesn’t hesitate — she shoves her phone right in your face, the screen inches from your nose, bright and unforgiving. there it is — a blurry photo, snapped through the classroom door’s narrow window. you could barely tell who it was but you knew — it was you, skirt bunched at your waist, legs spread wide on the desk, hendery’s body pressed between them, his hand vanished under the fabric, your lips connected. the angle catches the raw intensity — his shoulders tense and flexed, your fingers digging into his shirt, the unmistakable grind of hips that screams everything forbidden and reckless. and if it wasn’t for the gravity of the situation crashing over you like a tidal wave, you might've paused to appreciate how utterly hot the two of you looked in that frozen moment. but right now, all you can think is….
shit. shit, shit, shit.
your blood runs cold, vision tunneling on that damning image until the edges blur. how? who? the campus was practically empty that afternoon, the door locked tight — it was supposed to be safe, a stolen hour away from the world, from the eyes that could destroy everything you’ve built. but now…it’s viral isn’t? bouncing through group chats, igniting the powder keg of campus gossip like a match to gasoline. the pinks and wayv rivalry slams into your mind like a freight train — the unwritten rules carved into the stone of tradition, years of bad blood from jackson and jennie’s era, the feud that haunted every mixer, every glance like a malevolent shadow. your presidency, your reputation, the sorority’s spotless image — it's all crumbling in that single snapshot. expulsion? humiliation? the girls turning on you? your breath hitches, hands trembling as you clutch the sheets, the room spinning in a haze of panic.
“th-that’s ai? deepfake or something?” you stammer, your voice cracking like fragile glass, leaning back as if distance could erase the evidence.
yuna snatches the phone back with a scoff, “girl, that’s hendery—full on railing you against the desk!” ryujin elbows her, but her eyes gleam with that gossip-fueled thrill, “we saw it pop up in the campus confessions anon account, ‘pinks leader gets fucked by wayv prez—rivalry over?’ has like fifty reactions already, fire and shock emojis everywhere.”
natty finally snaps out of her wide-eyed stupor, flopping onto the foot of your bed with a dramatic sigh that does nothing to ease the vise around your lungs, “okay, but spill—how long has this been going on? you’ve been ice queen to those frat boys since day one.” her tone isn’t sharp, it’s probing, eager, like she’s starving for the plot twists that got you here.
sophia slides in next to her, crossing her legs and leaning forward with a grin that’s starting to form, “yeah, we need details! was it as hot and as intense as it looks?,” she’s excited now, the initial shock melting into curiosity, her laughter bubbling up like this is just another tea time.
your mind is a storm — visions of the sorority board calling an emergency meeting, whispers in the halls labeling you a traitor, hendery’s face twisted in regret as the fallout hits him too. but as you force yourself to look around, really look, their faces aren’t masks of betrayal or anger. winter’s biting her lip to stifle a smile, not a scowl. yeji’s scrolling through her own phone with a soft chuckle. even yuna’s pacing has slowed to an excited little bounce on her toes, her eyes sparkling with mischief rather than malice. they’re not storming on you. they’re…thrilled? your chest tightens further, confusion warring with the terror but the edges of the panic start to fray, just a little, as the reality seeps in.
ryujin catches your eye, her smirk softening into something almost supportive, “come on, we’re not gonna bite. this is prime drama. but hendery? total iconic move. start from the beginning—when did it start?”
yuna’s leaning in now, phone still clutched like a trophy, her voice pitching up with hunger for more, realization dawning upon her, “oh my god! it was his voice i heard after halloween! holy shit! give us the tea—”
“wait,” you cut her off, your voice still shaking but gaining a thread of steel, the words tumbling out as the panic crests and begins to recede, like a wave pulling back from the shore, “—you guys aren’t upset?” your eyes dart between them, searching for the crack, the hidden judgment, but finding none — just expectant faces and shared glances.
“why would we be?” winter says simply, tilting her head with a raised brow, as if the question itself is absurd. she reaches over to squeeze your knee reassuringly, her touch grounding you further.
“they’re the enemy,” you blurt, the old mantra rising like reflex, your heart still thudding but slower now, the cold sweat cooling on your skin, “i mean, jennie practically cemented it in our heads — wayv is nothing but bad news, we need to stay on top. this could tank everything.”
yuna just giggles, a light, bubbly sound that cuts through the remnants of your dread like sunlight through fog, “yeah, three years ago…when we were freshies scrambling to fit in.”
you nod slowly, the motion mechanical, your mind catching up, “yeah….why are you giggling?” you say cautiously, voice softening as you sit up straighter.
“because that was three years ago, y/n,” yuna replies, plopping down beside sophia with a grin that lights up the room, “you’ve been the leader since sophomore year. you’ve managed to turn our house into the number one sorority on campus — parties that pack, philanthropy that gets us in the papers, sisters who’d die for each other. you mean to tell me you can’t change a few rules? unofficial rules, by the way. jennie’s ghost isn’t running this show anymore — you are and you have been.”
the words hit like a gentle slap, rippling through your panic until dissolves entirely, leaving clarity in its wake. that’s when it sinks in, deep and undeniable — this feud, it’s all been in your head. a self-imposed cage you built brick by brick, chasing perfection, desperate to be the next jennie but better, untouchable, flawless. you didn’t even realize you’d already surpassed her, topped the rankings, forged a legacy that stands on its own.
the girls are watching you, their expressions a mix of patience and pride, no trace of the anger you’d braced for. relief floods you, warm and expansive, easing the knot in your chest until you can finally breathe.
but then something else gnaws at you. something deeper. this whole rivalry. it’s been your mask, hasn’t? because admitting how useless, how outdated it all is, forces you to confront the rest — the thing you’ve buried under checklists and goals. and even now, as quiet resolve settles in, you still can’t find it in yourself to admit the truth. so you don’t.
the words tumble out of you like a dream breaking, fragile and unbidden, carrying the weight of almost three years’ worth of buried secrets, “okay–okay, uhm, it started sophomore year…” your voice wavers at first, a hesitant thread in the charged silence of the room, but as the confession gains momentum, it pulls you under, forcing you to relive every stolen glance, every heated clash that blurred the line between hate and hunger. you start from the very beginning, the night of that infamous rager where you first hooked up, gasps rippling through the room as you recount it, “no way—that long ago?” natty comments, hanging on every detail, while ryujin whispers a shocked, “holy shit,” under her breath. but you keep going, the floodgates open now, each memory spilling out. every secret hookup reveal draws them closer, eyes wide and sparkling with vicarious thrill. the room alive with oohs and aahs, the initial shock long dissolved into pure, unfiltered glee.
finally, you trail off, the weight of it all settling back in, the air humming with anticipation. “damn, i need a cold shower after all that. hendery’s got game, huh? no wonder you kept going back,” sophia comments with a smirk, making the room burst out in harmonized giggles.
yuna, ever the instigator, tilts her head, eyes with and gleaming with that insatiable curiosity, “and now? what are you guys now?”
the question lands like a punch, stealing your breath. your chest tightens, heart squeezing in your chest as the truth surges up — unwanted, insistent, a warmth that terrifies you with its depth. hendery isn’t just a hookup or a rival you fuck to spite the rules. he’s the one you call when you need someone there, who traces lazy patterns on your back after sex, who looks at you like you’re the only thing grounding him in the chaos. you’ve fallen, hard and irrevocably but admitting it? that would crack the facade you’ve clung to. the ironclad control of a leader who plans every move, who doesn’t let messy emotions derail the path to perfection. love is a wildcard. a disruption to the sorority’s rise, your future, everything you’ve armored yourself against. it’s vulnerability wrapped in ecstasy, and you can’t — won’t — let it in. not out loud. not when saying it makes it real, strips away the denial that’s kept you safe.
you suck in a breath, the lie forming on your tongue like ash, bitter and choking. it burns as it escapes, a shield you raise even as your heart rebels, the reluctance a heavy anchor, refusing to voice the more that pulses beneath the surface, keeping hendery boxed as a fling, a secret thrill, anything but the love that’s rewriting your rules.
“nothing.”
🥟 NOVEMBER 24 - THE I.T. MAJOR 🥟
hendery gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary, the city lights blurring into streaks as he looped through empty streets for the umpteenth time. yesterday had stretched into an endless haze of asphalt and exhaust, driving around the city, his mind replaying every jagged word from your “breakup” like a scratched record. you’d drawn the line — sharp, final, no room for negotiation. things were over. and he had to swallow that bitter pill, convince himself it was all just a fleeting high. that the nights he’d spent tracing the curve of your shoulder blades, committing to memory the way your lashes fluttered in sleep, the soft hum of your breathing syncing with his — none of it was real. couldn’t be. just a dream he needs to wake up from.
by the time he pulled into the wayv frat house driveway, dawn was cracking the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purples. his muscles screamed for a hot shower, his eyelids heavy with a kind of exhaustion that sank into bones. he just wanted to crash, let sleep erase the mess in his head. the front door creaked open to the low murmur of voices from the living room, and he paused, debating a stealthy detour upstairs.
too late.
“dude, where have you been?” dejun’s voice cut through first, casual but laced with that nosy edge. he was sprawled on the worn couch, his new girlfriend, honey, tucked against his side. yangyang and teddy occupied the armchair opposite, her legs draped over his lap like it was the most natural throne in the world. hendery almost rolled his eyes at the sight of the couples around him.
“out,” he muttered, kicking the door shut behind him. he didn’t stop, aiming for the stairs, but dejun’s voice stops him.
“out where?” dejun pressed, sitting up a fraction.
hendery’s brows furrowed, irritation flaring hot in his chest. he was already on edge, the day’s ghost clawing at him and this interrogation was the last straw. “since when do i have to report to you?” he snapped, voice low and edged with frustration. his temples throbbed. pissy didn’t even begin to cover it. he was a live wire, frayed and sparking.
dejun waved off the attitude like it was smoke, unfazed, “since this,” he said, snatching his phone from the coffee table and tossing it across the room. it arched through, landing with a soft thud in hendery’s palm. he glanced down and the image hit him like a freight train — the blurry but unmistakable shot of him and you in that goddamn classroom. the angle screamed voyeur, captured through the door’s tiny window like some pervert’s trophy. his head nearly exploded, blood roaring in his ears as rage boiled up, white-hot and blinding. but beneath the fury, a sharper pang twisted — not his pride stinging, but the violation of you. a woman navigating this cutthroat campus jungle already stacked against her, posted like this for every creep to devour? the thought ignited a fresh inferno in his gut, his fists clenching until his knuckles whitened. because no one — no fucking one — gets to strip away dignity like that, especially not from someone he cared about. the anger surged, a tidal wave crashing over the breakup’s ache, turning his vision red.
“what the fuck?!” hendery’s roar echoed off the walls, phone trembling in his fist, “where did you get this?!”
teddy leaned forward, her eyes sharp with sympathy, “i saw it in campus confessions. it’s blowing up—everyone's talking.”
seething didn’t begin to describe the storm churning inside him. his vision tunnels, jaw clenched so tight it ached, “who the fuck posted this?!” he demanded, voice cracking like thunder, though even as the words left his mouth, he knew it didn’t matter. the culprit? some faceless coward hiding behind anonymity. what mattered was getting the image off the internet, shielding you from the fallout, the whispers, the judgments, the way it’d cling to your reputation like tar.
“anonymous account,” yangyang said, tone even but watchful, one arm looped protectively around teddy’s waist, “no trace yet, but it’s got comments for days. people are speculating it's you and the pinks leader — wild guesses about the rivalry and all that drama.”
hendery wasn’t hearing it. the words blurred into static, his pulse hammering a war drum. he couldn’t process the exposure, the violation. not now, not with the fresh wound of losing you still bleeding — but he could act. snatching the phone tighter, he bolted for the stairs, ignoring dejun’s half-hearted, “hey, wait, my phone–”
his bedroom door slammed shut behind him, the lock clicking with finality. he paced the cluttered space before dropping into his desk chair, the phone’s glow casting harsh shadows on his face. IT major perks – he’d navigated digital minefields before, scrubbed traces for the frat’s less than legal escapades. this wasn’t about revenge. it was protection. yours. he didn’t give a damn about the poster, their identity could rot in obscurity. but you? he wouldn’t let the stain follow you.
fingers flying across the screen, he pulled up a vpn, layered in proxies for good measure and dove into the app’s backend through a backdoor he’d bookmarked ages ago. he bypassed the anonymity, zeroing in on the post’s root, but the upload path was sloppy, routed through campus wi-fi with a timestamp that screamed yesterday afternoon. no need to chase the ghost, he targeted the source. a few commands later, he scripted a quiet deletion — pull the image, wipe out the comments, flag it as spam to bury. within minutes, the thread vanished from public view. screenshots might linger in private chats but the main post was gone. like it never even existed at all.
🥟 NOVEMBER 25 - I CARE. 🥟
it’s midnight when a sharp tap rattles your window, jolting you from the rumpled sheets – you could recognize those taps anywhere, the rhythm he’d perfected over stolen nights like some secret code. you slide out of bed, making your way to your window sill, peering through the sheer curtains, and there he is — hendery, crouched on the roof like some midnight phantom, his hoodie pulled low, eyes locked on yours with that piercing intensity that always unravels your defenses. you hesitate, fingers hovering over the latch, pulse quickening. the girls know now, sure, and half the university’s probably buzzing with blurry speculation from that damn photo. but without confirmation, the secret stays yours.
you flip the lock and slide the window up, the night air rushing in cool and crisp, “what are you doing here?” you whisper, voice barely threading the silence, glancing over your shoulder at the closed door. he doesn’t answer right away, just hauls himself though the opening with practiced grace, his shoulders brushing the frame as he straightens in your space. the scent of him hits you — stirring a warmth you’d shoved deep down. he scans your face, concern etching lines around his eyes, the same eyes that had burned into yours just two days ago during that gut-wrenching talk in that god damn cursed classroom, when he’d pushed for an end to this undefined mess, for both of you to see other people, like the future wasn’t a tangled knot of what-ifs.
“are you okay?” he murmurs, keeping his voice low, stepping closer until the heat of him crowds the cool air between you, “you didn’t call and it’s been two days since–,”
“why would i call?” you cut him off, sharper than intended, crossing your arms like a barrier. your tone’s ice, the stone-cold facade you’ve perfected over years, of hiding this pull toward him behind rivalry barbs and perfect smiles.
he stares, brows knitting in that perplexed furrow you know too well, like you’re a puzzle he’s mapped a hundred times but still can’t quite solve, “what do you mean?” he says, voice dropping even lower, laced with frustration, “we got posted, y/n, i thought you would be freaking out.”
you shrug, turning away to perch on the edge of your bed, the mattress dipping under your weight. the room feels smaller with him in it, posters of campus events and sorority pins on the walls closing in, “i was,” you admit, keeping it clipped, “but i had my girls for that. and the post got taken down anyway, so whatever. lucky me.”
his jaw clenches, a muscle ticking there, but he doesn't spill that it was him. you knew, though. right in the middle of you and the girls huddled over laptops earlier today, plotting damage control with frantic whispers and half-baked ideas, it vanished — poof, scrubbed like it never existed. only one person had the skills and the drive to pull that off without a trace. only one person cared enough. the one who'd always guarded your secrets fiercer than his own.
“yeah, lucky,” he echoes, but his eyes search yours, probing the walls you’ve rebuilt in 48 hours. the weight of the past two days crashes over him like a wave he can’t outrun — no sleep since you stormed out of that classroom, his words about endings things echoing in his skull, twisting into regrets that kept him up and now he’s just…tired, bone-deep sad, the world tilting at the edges, dizziness pulling at him like gravity’s gone rogue. he closes his eyes, trying to steady himself against the windowframe, breath shallow.
you watch him, the silence stretching too long, a full minute ticking by in the dim lamplight. his face is pale, almost ghostly under the hoodie’s shadow, and he’s swaying just enough to make your stomach knot. worry flickers through your guarded walls, “hendery…are you okay?” you murmur, stepping closer, voice softer than the ice you’d wielded moments ago.
“yeah–i just–uhm—” his words slur, legs buckling as he stumbles forward, nearly crumbling to the floor. you’re faster. instincts kicking in — your arms wrap around his waist, catching his solid frame before he hits the ground, his weight leaning into you heavy and warm.
“okay–uhm–let’s sit down,” you guide him toward the bed, one arm firm around his back, the other steadying him. he nods weakly, letting you lead, collapsing onto the mattress with a soft exhale. your hands lifts to his forehead, palm pressing against fever hot skin, “hendery, you’re burning up.”
“i just need—i just need to sleep it off,” he sighs, the words heavy, like they’re dragged from somewhere deep, his eyelids dropping as exhaustion pulls at him.
“okay, but…let’s take this off first,” you tug at the hem of his hoodie and he shifts, lifting his arms without protest, letting you peel the fabric away. underneath, his t-shirt clings slightly to his skin from the night’s chill, revealing the tense lines of his shoulders, the subtle sheen of sweat. he already seems a fraction looser, tension easing as the cool air hits him. you ease him back, propping pillows behind his head, but as you turn toward the door — his hand shoots out, fingers closing gently around your wrist. his grip is loose, weak, but insistent.
“where are you going?” he asks, voice soft and raw, eyes cracking open just enough to meet yours, vulnerable in a way that cracks something in your chest — your fierce rival, reduced to this quiet plea.
“i’m just gonna get you some medicine,” you say, hovering, caught between practicality and the pull of his touch.
“i-i don’t need that…just stay here…please,” his thumb brushes your skin, a small, unconscious stroke that narrows the world to just the two of you.
you hesitated, his plea hanging in the air like a fragile thread but practicality wins out over the ache in your chest, “don’t be stubborn, i’ll be quick,” you say firmly, gently prying your wrist from his grasp before he can protest further. he murmurs something incoherent, eyes already fluttering shut, but you don’t linger, slipping out of the room and down the kitchen. your hands move swiftly — grabbing the bottle of painkillers, the digital thermometer from the drawer and a clean washcloth. you run the cloth under cool water, wringing it out just enough to dampen it. the house is quiet, your sorority sisters likely out or asleep, the late hour muffling everything beyond the soft patter of water. back in your room in under three minutes, you find him the same as you left — propped against the pillows, chest rising and falling in shallow rhythms, his face still flushed with fever. he stirs slightly at your return, cracking one eye open, “told you…quick,” you murmur with a faint smile, setting the items on the nightstand before perching on the bed’s edge.
first, the thermometer — you slip it under his armpit with careful instruction, holding him steady — his temperature isn’t dangerously high, but enough to confirm he's pushed himself too far. “here, take these,” you say, shaking out two pills into your palm and offering them with a glass of water. he complies without argument this time, swallowing them down with a grimace, the cool liquid seeming to ease him a fraction. the wet cloth comes next. you fold it neatly and press it to his forehead, the chill drawing a soft sigh from his lips as it soaks up the heat radiating from his skin. his eyes meet yours briefly, gratitude flickering in their depths amid the exhaustion, before you trail the cloth down to his neck, dabbing gently at the damp collar of his shirt, “better?” you ask quietly, your free hand resting on his arm, thumb mirroring his earlier stroke in a subconscious echo. he nods, the tension in his shoulders melting as the coolness spreads, his breathing deepening into something steadier. the silence between you isn't the charged standoff from before, it's softer now, laced with an intimacy you've both danced around for months — the sharp edges dulled by this simple act of care. minutes stretch into a quiet rhythm, his eyelids growing heavier with each pass of the cloth, the painkillers kicking in to blunt the fever's edge. finally, his hand finds yours again, fingers intertwining loosely as sleep claims him fully, breathing evening out, body going lax against the mattress. you watch for a moment longer, the weight of the past two days settling over you both like a shared blanket, before tucking the covers around him and settling back, unwilling to leave him alone.
🥢
the clock ticked to 4am, the room hushed, broken only by the distant hum of the campus outside. hendery’s eyes flutter open, his body heavy but the fever’s grip loosened, the painkillers weaving a dull calm through his veins. the first thing he registers is the cloth on his forehead, cool and damp, as if you’ just wrung it out anew, the chill seeping into his skin. he blinks slowly, piecing together the fragments — your careful hands, the worry in your eyes, the softness in your tone that rarely comes out, the way you took care of him without a word of complaint. his gaze shifts to you beside him, curled on the edge of the bed, your breathing steady and even, lashes fanned against your cheeks, utterly spent from the day’s chaos. a soft pang twists in his chest. he shouldn’t be here right now. things were over.
careful not to wake you, he reaches up and peels the cloth away, setting it aside on the nightstand. the bed dips slightly under his movement, but you don’t stir. emboldened by the quiet, he turns fully toward you, his free hand hovering for a beat before descending, tucking your hair away. his fingers trace the curve of your cheek, feather-light, following the soft line down to the swell of your lower lip. he memorizes it all, the faint freckle, the way your mouth parts just a fraction in sleep. his touch lingers there, thumb brushing softly, a shiver running through him that’s got nothing to do with the fever. he sighs, the sound ragged in the silence, his voice barely above a breath, “what are you doing to me, baobei?”
the words hang there, his eyes tracing your face like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he looks away. the rivalry, the leaked photo, the wall you’ve both built — it all feels distant in the stolen hour, reduced to the simple ache of wanting more than stolen moments. he doesn’t pull back, his hand settling against your jaw instead, thumb stroking idly as if to anchor himself. the air thickens with unspoken things, the kind that could shatter the fragile peace if either of you dares to voice them fully.
you shift then, a subtle murmur escaping your lips as consciousness tugs at the edges, your eyes cracking open to meet his in the low light. surprise flickers across your features, followed by that guarded warmth you reserve just for him — the one that says you’re here, even if admitting it out loud terrifies you. “hendery,” you whisper, voice husky from sleep, your hand instinctively covering his on your cheek, “how are you feeling?”
he doesn’t answer right away, just holds your gaze, the corner of his mouth twitching into a tired half-smile, “better. because of you.” his fingers tighten slightly, drawing you closer without demand, the intimacy of the moment wrapping around you both like the sheets tangled at your waist. the fever’s haze lingers in his eyes, but so does something deeper, rawer, a quiet confession in the way he leans in, as if testing whether you’ll pull away or let the walls crack just a little more.
“was it you?” you ask, voice a quiet hush, “the one who took down the photo?” the question hanging in the room.
hendery’s eyes hold yours, steady, unguarded. he nods once, the admission slipping out in a quiet murmur, “yeah.”
“why? you couldn’t even see your face in it,” the words come out softer than intended, laced with the confusion that’s been churning since the post vanished like smoke.
his palm stays warm against your cheek, thumb tracing a slow, absent circle along your skin. he exhales, the sound ragged but honest, “because i care about you.” no hesitation, just the raw truth, delivered like a secret he’s been carrying too long. you search his eyes then, tilting your head just enough to catch the flicker of light in them, hunting for any shadow of deception or doubt. but there’s nothing hidden there — only the soft glow of the clock reflecting back at you, your own wide-eyed surprise staring from his irises like a mirror. it disarms you, this vulnerability in the dead of the night and before you can overthink it, you lean in, pressing your lips to his in a kiss that’s gentle, tentative, a brush of warmth against the uncertainty.
he responds right away, his hand snaking around your waist, drawing you nearer , until your bodies align under the covers. the kiss deepens unhurriedly, lips moving in a lazy rhythm. no rush, no demands, just the slow exploration of breaths mingling, tongues touching lightly — the familiarity of him.
you feel the heat building beneath the surface, a slow simmer that pulls you deeper into him, your body shifting to straddle his hips under the thin sheet. his arm tightens around your waist, guiding you closer without urgency, the press of his chest against yours steady and warm. your hands roam down his sides, tracing the lines of his ribs, feeling the faint tremor in his muscles from exhaustion or need, you can’t tell. he mirrors you, palms gliding up your back, bunching the fabric of your shirt at the hem.
the tension heats up, lips parting wider, tongues sliding together in languid strokes, each movement deliberate, savoring the taste and the closeness. a soft sigh escapes you as his fingers dip under your shirt, brushing the bare skin of your lower back, sending a shiver that makes you arch into him. the air thickens with unspoken want. you break the kiss just long enough to tug your shirt over your head, letting it fall to the floor. his eyes darken as they take you in, bare from the waist up, but he doesn’t rush, his hand cup your breast instead, thumb circling your nipple, peaking under his touch, the sensation drawing a gasp from your lips. you lean into him again, capturing his mouth while your fingers work at the waistband of his sweats, pushing them down his hips. he lifts slightly to help, kicking them off along with his boxers, his cock springing free. the sheet slips away as you shed your own shorts and panties, skin meeting skin now, the contact electric yet restrained.
he rolls you beneath him in one fluid motion, settling between your legs, his weight a comforting press that makes your heart race. no words pass between you, afraid it could break the fragile silence, the room filling only with the sound of your shared breaths, ragged and syncing. his hand trails down your body, fingers parting your folds to find you already slick, circling your clit with light pressure that builds the ache steadily. you nod against his shoulder, urging him on silently, and he positions himself at your entrance, the tip of his cock nudging against you. he pushes in slowly, inch by inch, stretching you open with a deliberate slide that has you clenching around him, the fullness overwhelming in its gentleness.
this is nothing like the frantic, bruising pace you both crave usually — where he’d pin you down, chasing release with raw intensity. right now, he rocks into you unhurriedly, hips rolling in deep, measured strokes that grind against your clit with each pass. your legs wrap around his waist, heels digging into his back to pull him closer but he maintains the rhythm, savoring the drag of his cock along your walls, the way your pussy grips him like it never wants to let go. his forehead rests against yours, eyes locked in the dark, vulnerability raw in the way he watches you, unspoken emotions flickering — care, fear, longing all tangled in the hidden depths you’ve both guarded. you meet his thrusts, hips lifting to take him deeper, nails scraping lightly down his spine, the connection building layer by layer. the coil tightens in your core, pleasure unfurling slowly, intimately, his hand slipping between you to rub your clit in tandem with his movements. sweat beads on his skin, mixing with yours, bodies sliding together in this tender rhythm.
you feel it cresting, the wave different this time — not a crash, but a deep, enveloping release born from the emotions you’ve buried. he senses it too, his pace faltering just enough to deepen, cock pulsing inside you as you shatter together, fluttering around him as he spills hot and deep, filling you. the orgasm rolls through you both in waves, silent except for the muffled gasps against each other’s necks, the vulnerability building you tighter than any rough encounter ever could.
the aftershocks fade slowly, your bodies still joined in the quiet intimacy. you cling to him, breaths evening out in tandem, the vulnerability hanging heavy in the air like a shared secret finally unveiled. no rush to pull away, no teasing words to shatter the moment — just the steady thrum of his heartbeat against your chest, syncing with yours in a rhythm that feels like home. you let yourself sink into it, this fragile world where fear doesn't claw at your edges, where the wall you’ve built around your heart crack just enough to let him in. your fingers trace lazy patterns along his back and he responds with a soft nuzzle into your neck, lips brushing your pulse point in silent gratitude. the weight of him on top of you is grounding, not confining. he rolls to the side eventually, taking you with him, his arm draping over your waist to keep you flush against his front. you curl into the curve of his body, leg hooking over his hip, your head tucking under his chin as if you’ve always fit this way.
the cool cloth from earlier lies forgotten on the nightstand, the room dim and hushed except for the faint rhythm of your breathing. exhaustion tugs at you both, the kind born from more than just physical release — it’s the unraveling of guarded emotions, the quiet surrender to what you’ve both felt but never named. sleep claims you first, your eyelids growing heavy as you pressed a light kiss to his collarbone, inhaling the familiar scent of him mingled with the musk of your shared passion. he murmurs something incoherent, too soft to catch, his hand stroking your hair in slow, soothing passes. the dreams pull you under together, peaceful and untroubled, wrapped in the safety of his arms — a rare truce in the storm of your complicated lives, where for tonight, at least, you can let yourself have this.
🥢
the sunlight filters through your curtains, it’s noon now, the world outside buzzing faintly with campus life, but in here, time has stretched lazy and indulgent. you’ve slept deeper than you have in days, the exhaustion of secrets and scandals pulling you under like a tide. but now, as awareness creeps back, so does the sharp edge of regret.
you’re turned away from him, facing the wall, your mind replaying the night in fragments. it shouldn’t have happened. sleeping with him again, letting the walls crumble just because he was vulnerable, because you were too. the photo’s gone, the fever’s broken and whatever fragile bridge you crossed in the dark can’t hold under the light of day. your chest tightens at the thought, pride and fear twisting into a knot you can’t untangle.
behind you, the mattress dips as hendery stirs, his breathing shifting from deep sleep to wakefulness. without a word, he scoots closer, his arm slipping around your waist with easy familiarity, pulling you back against his chest. his lips find the curve of your shoulder, pressing soft, lingering kisses there, warm and unhurried, “good morning,” he hums, voice rough with sleep but laced with contentment, his breath fanning across your skin. it’s so tempting to melt into it, to let his touch erase the doubts swirling in your head, to pretend this could be something simple and right. his hand rests flatly against your stomach, fingers splaying possessively, and for a heartbeat, you almost turn, almost let yourself get lost in him again.
but you don’t. the cold reality snaps back and you sit up abruptly, the sheets pooling around your hips. you swing your legs off the bed, reaching for your discarded shirt on the floor, pulling it over your head quickly, the fabric cool against your bare skin. the distance you create feels like armor, necessary and immediate. he senses the shift instantly, his arm falling away as he props himself up one one elbow, watching you with a furrow in his brow, “what’s wrong?” his tone is cautious, the post sleep haze clearing into concern, eyes searching your profile.
you refuse to meet his gaze, staring at the wall instead, your voice steady but clipped, “you took down the photo, i took care of you…we’re even…you know the way out.” the words hang in the air, final and cutting. before you can take a single step, his hand curls around your wrist, firm but not bruising, anchoring you in place.
“no. i’m not leaving until we talk about this.” his voice is low, edged with that quiet determination that always unravels you. you scoff, twisting your arm free with a sharp yank, “there’s nothing to talk about,” arms crossing over your chest like a shield.
“god damn it, why do you keep pulling away from me?” frustration cracks through his tone, volume rising just enough to fill the room, the sheets rustling as he sits up fully.
“because i can’t give you what you want!,” the words burst out annoyed, sharper than you intended, your pulse hammering in your ears.
“and what is it, that you think i want?” he challenges, his voice steadying but you can hear the undercurrent of hurt.
“a relationship,” you spit it like it’s poison, eyes sharp. he sighs, heavy and resigned, the sound pulling at something deep in your gut. you push on before he can interrupt, words tumbling faster, “i don’t know why you keep doing this, you and i both know you could get into a relationship tomorrow, there’s a ton of girls who would—”
“because i don’t want one if it isn’t with you!,” he roars, the volume startling you into silence, his chest heaving as he leans forward. his eyes lock onto yours now, wide and raw, no mask left, “waking up together, taking care of each other, the sex, the fights, all of it! — i only want all of that…if it’s with you.”
it takes you a moment, the confession hanging like smoke, thick and suffocating. your throat tightens, heart stuttering against your ribs, “well…we want very different things.”
“do we?” he’s not convinced, tilting his head, voice dropping softer, probing.
“yes. we do.” you say, firmer this time, forcing conviction into your tone, willing yourself to believe it too, “i’m not a relationship type of girl, hendery. i just want to have fun, see the world…i’m not ready to settle down or—”
“bullshit, y/n, we haven’t been sleeping with other people for almost a year now,” he cuts you off, not accepting the lame excuse. who’s to say you couldn’t have fun together? see the world together?
“why does labeling what this actually is scare you so badly?”
you freeze, the question slicing through your defenses like a knife. the room feels smaller, the air heavier, your mind races. a year of this push-pull, of pretending it’s casual when your body knows better, craves him in ways that terrify you.
“it doesn’t scare me,” you lie, voice quieter now, stepping back, “it’s just…reality. i like my life the way it is. controlled. fun. no strings.”
he doesn’t buy it, “controlled? is that what you call sneaking around, lying to everyone — including yourself? we’ve been exclusive without saying it, y/n. and now you’re running away because…what? you’re afraid it’ll change if we name it?”
your breath hitches, eyes stinging with the truth you won’t voice. afraid? yeah, terrified. of losing the high of the chase, of him seeing the mess under your armor, afraid of wanting this — him — so badly, it hurts. afraid you’ll lose yourself in him. and afraid that once he gets what he wants, he’ll get bored and walk away.
“you don’t get it,” you murmur, finally meeting his eyes, the vulnerability from last night echoing back at you, “if we do this, if we label it, what happens when it falls apart? i can’t…i won’t be that girl who gets her heart broken.”
hendery’s expression softens, frustration melting into something aching, “what if it doesn’t fall apart?”
“it will.” you say it like a verdict, arms tightening around yourself.
“how are you so sure?” he asks, voice gentle but insistent.
“because every relationship falls apart, hendery…eventually.” you reply, the words tasting bitter as they leave your lips. you’ve seen it happen all around you — with your friends who swore they were in love, only to end up crying on your shoulder, shattered. to your divorced parents, their once-whispered promises turning into slammed doors and custody battles that left scars you still feel. even in your own relationships in the past, the ones that started with fireworks and faded into indifference or betrayal. it never works out. not for people like you, wired for control.
he shakes his head slowly, eyes searching yours like he’s trying to unearth the roots of your doubt, “not every one. not ours, if we fight for it.”
“i don’t want to,” you reply, the words slipping out like a confession, heavy and final. your voice is barely above a whisper but they land like a blow, echoing in the quiet room. silence takes over, thick and suffocating, wrapping around you both. his eyes still searching yours, the warmth fading as realization dawns, hurt flickering there, raw and unguarded. you can’t look at him anymore, the weight of it all pressing down until your chest feels like it might cave in. it all feels like a cruel tease now, a glimpse of something you’re too scared to hold onto.
“find yourself a nice girl, hendery,” you say, the words tasting like ash on your tongue. you turn away before he can respond, before the plea in his eyes can break you completely. your feet carry you across the room, slipping into your bathroom and clicking the door shut behind you, twisting the lock with a sharp snap. the sound echoes, jolting through the stillness. this was it. the final goodbye. leaning against the sink, you stare at your reflection in the mirror, eyes red-rimmed and shadowed, the armor you’ve rebuilt already creaking at the edges. outside, hendery sits up, confusion turning to pain as the reality sinks in. no more stolen nights, no more heated arguments that end in tangled sheets. just the echo of what could have been, slipping away like smoke.
🥟 DECEMBER 5 - SUNGCHAN 🥟
it’s been ten days since you last saw him. and you’ve spent every single one busying yourself, pretending nothing heavy is weighing on your heart, focusing your energy on your classes and the girls instead. tonight though, you plan to forget. and so you’re here, at the riize fraternity, looking for some fun.
“well, if it isn’t the pink’s princess…i haven’t seen you around in a while,” you turn towards the voice — jung sungchan, the perfect distraction.
“sungchan! exactly who i was looking for,” you smirk, sipping your drink.
“hmm,” he chuckles, “you disappeared for a while there,” he clicks his tongue, stepping closer, “thought ms. pink finally found herself a boyfriend.”
you roll your eyes, closing the distance between you, “don’t be ridiculous, you know i’m not the relationship type,” you respond.
he raises a brow, “i dont know…everyone’s been falling in love lately, i’m starting to wonder what all the appeal is.”
“and what? miss out on all this fun?,” you tease, pointing towards the party.
he laughs then, “you’re right, this is too fun to let go.”
you smirk at his response, “you gonna fuck me or not, jung?”
sungchan’s laugh rumbles low in his chest, his eyes darkening with interest as he sets his own drink aside, the party pulsing around you, “bold as ever,” he says, his voice dropping to match yours, one hand reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear. his fingers linger, tracing down your jawline with a touch thats’s firm yet unhurried. it’s nothing ike the magnetic pull you’ve been avoiding, just a straightforward heat that promises release without the mess of emotions, “lead the way, i’m game if you are.”
you smirk in response, grabbing his wrist and pulling him through the party. the stairs are crammed with people but you weave past them until you reached his room, the faint glow of a lava lamp casting orange hues across the unmade bed and scattered clothes. you push inside first, the door clicking shut behind you with a finality that drowns out the party’s roar to a muffled hum.
sungchan doesn’t waste time, his lips crashing against yours the moment the door clicked shut, hungry and insistent, his hands roaming your sides with that familiar confidence. you kissed him back, desperate for distraction, your fingers tangling in his shirt as your back hits his door. it was supposed to be easy — flirt, forget, move on from the ache hendery had left gnawing at you for the past ten days.
but as sungchan’s tongue slipped into your mouth, deepening the kiss, something twisted wrong in your chest. his body pressed close, solid and warm, but it wasn’t the right kind of heat. you could taste the beer on his breath, feel the rough scrape of his calloused fingers, and it all felt…off. too aggressive, too impersonal, lacking the teasing spark that made your skin hum in a way only hendery could. you pushed the thought down, arching into him anyway, letting the makeout drag on, heavy and wet kisses that left your lips swollen and your breath ragged.
sungchan’s hands slid lower, gripping your hips before one dipped between your thighs, fingers brushing the edge of your skirt. he broke the kiss just enough to murmur against your neck, “fuck, you’re hot tonight,” his voice rough with want. you nodded, half hearted, as he tugged at the fabric, his palm pressing flat against your inner thigh. the room spun a little from the alcohol and the intensity but when his fingers finally grazed the cotton of your panties, rubbing slow circles over the thin barrier, the wrongness of it all hit you like ice water — this wasn’t him. this wasn’t what you needed. tears welled up unbidden, hot and sudden, spilling over as a sob caught in your throat.
“wait–stop,” you gasped, the words tumbling out as you broke the contact, hands flying up to push at his chest.
sungchan froze, eyes widening in confusion as he pulled back fully, spotting the tears right away, “uhm, are you okay?” his awkwardness hangs in the air like a fog, the usual confidence cracking as the makeout’s heat evaporated, his flirtatious smirk fading into uncertainty, “y/n? did i do something wrong?” he runs a hand through his hair, shifting uncomfortably, clearly out of his depth — this isn’t the easy, no-strings fun he signed up for.
you’re no better. you shook your head, walking around him to sit on the edge of his bed before letting the vulnerability crash over you like a wave. crying? you? it’s not your thing. not ever. especially not mid-hookup with some guy. the tears feel foreign, stinging as they track down your cheeks, and you swipe at them furiously with the back of your hand, smearing mascara into dark streaks. sungchan watched you crumble, staring like he’d stumbled into a minefield.
“sorry, i don’t know what’s wrong with me,” you mutter, voice thick and wobbly, the words tumbling out before you can stop them. the tears keep falling anyway, hot and relentless, and you scrub harder at your face, desperate to erase the evidence, “we can continue if you want.” it’s a stupid offer, born from embarrassment and the need to salvage something normal from this mess.
sungchan lets out a nervous laugh, the sound forced and too loud in the quiet room, rubbing the back of his neck as he glances away, then back at you like he’s debating bolting, “i’m not fucking you while you’re a mess, y/n… come on, what’s wrong?” his tone tries for casual, but it lands flat, laced with unease. he’s not used to this, peeling back layers when all he wanted was a quick release. the bed dips as he takes a seat next to you, not touching you, just hovering like he’s afraid you’ll shatter.
the question cracks the dam wide open. your breath hitches, and before you can clamp it down, the words spill out in a broken whisper, “i miss him…”
it’s the truth you’ve been running from, raw and aching. the admission hangs heavy, your shoulders slumping as fresh sobs bubble up. missing hendery wasn’t just an ache anymore — it was a void. and trying to fill it with this felt like betrayal. to yourself. to whatever messy thing you two had.
sungchan freezes for a beat, his awkward hovering turning into something almost thoughtful as he processes your confession. he pats your back, once, twice, like he’s trying to make this less of a sex-fueled disaster and more of a...comforting conversation? the idea feels ridiculous, but there he is, settling back beside you with a sigh, his broad shoulders slumping as he glances at you.
“so you did get yourself a boyfriend?” he tries to start lightly, his voice pitching up at the end like he’s testing the waters, not sure if he’s about to step on a landmine.
you shake your head, sniffling as you hug your knees tighter, “no — i don’t know, we never labeled it,” you admit, the words tasting bitter, like admitting defeat.
“why not?” he says, tilting his head, genuine curiosity flickering in his eyes behind the playboy facade.
you let out a watery laugh, wiping your nose on the back of your hand, “c’mon, jung, you’re really asking me that when you’re the school’s number one playboy?” it comes out sharper than intended, a deflection wrapped in truth — sungchan, with his endless parade of hookups and zero commitments, lecturing you on labels? the irony twists in your gut.
he winces but doesn’t back down, chuckling softly as he runs a hand over his face, “fair point. but hear me out…labels or no labels, if you’re crying over him when we’re about to fuck, that’s not casual. that’s real. so why keep pretending it’s not?”
“because you and i both know labels are no fun,” you sigh, the words tumbling out like a flimsy shield, your last-ditch effort to cling to whatever scraps of pride you have left. it’s a dumb excuse and you know it the second it leaves your lips. the air in the room feels heavier now, thick with the scent of regret and the distant thump of music downstairs mocking your unraveling composure.
sungchan arches a brow, his chuckle fading into a more serious tilt of his mouth, his eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that surprises you, none of the cocky persona from earlier, just straightforward scrutiny, “well, you definitely don’t look like you’re having fun right now either, so what’s it gonna be?” he says, his voice low and even, like he’s laying out a challenge rather than pushing for pity. you swallow hard, the lump in your throat making it tough to breathe steadily. part of you wants to bolt and flee back to the chaos of the party where emotions don’t have to be dissected like this. but another part — the one that’s been buried under layers of denial for months — feels cracked open, exposed under his gaze.
“i... i don’t know,” you murmur finally, your voice cracking as fresh tears prick at your eyes. you swipe them away angrily, hating how vulnerable it makes you look, “he wants more. labels, commitment, the whole thing. but what if it crashes and burns? i’ve built everything else in my life so carefully — the sorority, my grades, the image. falling into something i can’t control?... it’d wreck me.”
sungchan nods slowly, absorbing your words without interrupting, his fingers drumming lightly on his knee like he’s piecing together a puzzle, “look, i get the fear. hell, i avoid that shit like the plague. but if he’s worth the tears, maybe it’s time to stop running. or at least talk to him without the walls up.” he pauses, a small smirk tugging at his lips to lighten the mood, “and hey, if it goes south, you know where to find me for a rebound. no judgments.”
his offer hangs there, half-joking, but it eases the knot in your stomach just a fraction. you manage a weak laugh. this unexpected heart-to-heart feels like a turning point, raw and real in a way you didn’t expect…from sungchan of all people.
the room quiets for a moment. sungchan doesn’t push further, just giving you space without making it feel you’re a burden. it’s oddly considerate. you exhale shakily, the tears slowing to a trickly, “thanks,” you mutter, glancing sideways at him, “for not making this weirder than it already is.”
he shrugs, that smirk returning but softer now, “what are friends for? or whatever we are. besides, i’d rather you cry on my shoulder than leave my room crying, god knows i can’t take another negative hit to my reputation.”
a genuine chuckle escapes you this time, breaking the tension. but underneath it, the ache for hendery lingers, sharper now that it’s been named aloud. labels or not, the truth stares back at you — you’re in too deep to keep pretending this was nothing.
the silence stretches heavy but not uncomfortable, until you break it with a quiet resolve, “i have to go do something,” you say, your voice steadier than you feel, already shifting toward the edge of the bed.
sungchan looks at you, amusement flickering in his eyes, “ahhh, another one lost to love,” he jokes, his tone light but knowing.
you ignore him, a small smile tugging at your lips as you stand and smooth your skirt, “i’ll tell you all about the appeal later,” you tease, glancing back at him with a wink that feels more genuine than flirtatious now.
he laughs, a rumbling sound that fills the room, chasing away the last remnants of awkwardness, “get out of here…and for the love of god, stop breaking poor hendery’s heart.”
you stop in your tracks, turning sharply to face him, your heart skipping a beat, “wait, you knew?”
sunghcan shrugs, casual as ever, but there’s a glint of mischief in his expression, “the two of you weren’t very subtle.”
he stands then, unfolding his long frame with ease and moves to open his door for you, “and he might have gotten too drunk on a boys’ trip and spilled the beans….but you didn’t hear that from me,” he winks, giving you a gentle push out into the hallway. you laugh, the image of hendery slurring confessions over cheap beer hitting you like a warm wave, making the knot in your chest loosen just a fraction, “thanks, sungchan,” you say one last time, sincere and soft, before turning toward the stairs.
the party pulses around you as you weave through the crowd, the bass thumping like a heartbeat urging you onward. outside, the night air bites at your skin, crisp and clarifying, the campus paths lit by scattered streetlamps. your steps quicken, determination settling in your bones — no more hiding, no more excuses, no more halfways.
the wayv house isn’t far, just a couple of houses down, it’s windows glowing faintly against the dark. you’re done letting fear call the shots. it’s time to fix this, to claim what’s yours, to get your man back.
🥟 DECEMBER 6 - THE ONE YOU ALMOST LOVED 🥟
it’s past midnight when you raise your fist and knock — three sharps that echo louder than you expected. the door swings open almost immediately, revealing yangyang’s familiar face, his eyes narrowing in confusion before twisting into a teasing, menacing smirk, an amused glint in his eye like he’s caught you. the pink’s leader showing up at their doorstep unannounced. priceless.
“i need to talk to hendery,” you say, skipping pleasantries, your voice cutting through the cold.
the boy leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms with a lazy shrug, “he’s not here,” yangyang replies, his tone laced with that mischievous edge he loves to wield, stirring the pot, testing boundaries just for fun.
“where is he?” you press, ignoring the bite in his words.
“why should i tell you?” he shrugs again, broader this time, his grin sharpening like he’s enjoying the standoff a little too much.
from inside, a voice calls out, soft and curious, “yang, who is it—oh hey, y/n,” his girlfriend appears behind him, padding over from the living room in fuzzy socks, her eyes widening in surprise even though she matches yangyang’s amused smile, like she’s in on the same inside joke, though hers feels warmer, less barbed.
“hey,” you say, shifting your weight, the desperation creeping in despite your efforts to hold it back, “i need to know where hendery is.”
teddy’s expression softens, the amusement fading into something almost apologetic as she glances at yangyang, who still looks mildly entertained. she steps forward, gently nudging her boyfriend aside, “he just left for winter break,” she says, her voice carrying that apologetic note.
you open your mouth to ask more — winter break? already?? his finals just wrapped up yesterday. you didn’t think he’d bolt so fast. before you can say anything else, yangyang breaks the silence, glancing past you and toward the crowd of fellow students silently beginning to form.
“dude, you got a fanclub out there,” he points out, catching their stares and letting out a low chuckle, “careful, or this turns into tomorrow’s headline.” your eyes draw back to the porch across the street for a split second, a flicker of annoyance running through you at the shadows shifting there, phones glinting faintly under the streetlamp. whatever they're whispering about doesn't matter, it's white noise, irrelevant to the knot twisting in your gut. you brush it off, your focus laser-sharp on the one thing that does.
“when did he leave, exactly?” you ask, your voice steadier than you feel, the words coming out with urgency.
yangyang’s smirk hasn’t faded, if anything, it’s grown, like he finds this all so entertaining. teddy shoots him a warning look, then softens towards you again, “like, an hour ago? he packed up right after dinner, said he needed to clear his head. didn’t say much else.
“but if you text him i’m sure he’ll respond. he’s not the type to ghost anyone on purpose,” yangyang adds, showing a bit of mercy, knowing well enough how much hendery needed this too.
an hour ago. the words echo in your mind, pulling you under like a current you can't fight. winter break — three full weeks. days bleeding into nights without his voice, without the way his hand fits against the small of your back in stolen moments, without the sharp edge of his gaze cutting through your defenses.
texting him feels wrong. too impersonal for the weight of what you need to say. “i love you” typed out on a screen? it loses something vital, stripped of your voice cracking on the words, of the vulnerability in your eyes when you finally let it out. you've hidden behind screens before, late-night messages that led to heated meetups but never this. confessions like this deserve face-to-face, the risk of his rejection hitting like a punch you can brace for, not some digital echo that he can ignore or dismiss with a thumbs-up emoji or a glaring read receipt.
your fingers twitch toward your phone in your pocket, but you hold back, the reluctance twisting tighter. what if he reads it wrong? what if it pushes him further away, into whatever headspace he's fleeing to? what if he uses the time to really think, to decide the mess of you isn't worth it?
teddy watches you closely, her concern etching faint lines on her forehead, “you okay? you look like you're spiraling.”
yangyang leans against the porch railing, arms crossed, his teasing edge dulled by the moment, “yeah, spill it. what's got you chasing him down like this? not just finals stress, right?” you shake your head, swallowing the lump in your throat until it burns all the way down. the air feels heavier now, thick enough that every breath scrapes against your lungs. somewhere down the street people are laughing, a door slams, music hums faintly from a passing car — but it all sounds impossibly far away, like you’re already separated from the world by a sheet of glass.
three weeks. the number echoes inside you, hollow and cruel. too long to wait. long enough for memories to soften, for habits to disappear, for someone to learn how to live without you. so many things can happen in three weeks. you can lose him in three weeks.
your vision blurs as tears gather, clinging stubbornly to your lashes. the ache has rooted itself too deep, spreading quietly through your chest like cracks through fragile porcelain. maybe this is how it was always supposed to end — not with a dramatic goodbye, not with anger loud enough to justify the pain, but with the slow, unbearable realization that you deserved this. you let the fear control you. every soft moment made you uneasy, every promise sounded too fragile to believe. you braced yourself for heartbreak long before it ever arrived, mistaking distance for protection. and somewhere along the way, that fear twisted into something uglier — the inevitable fear of losing him.
so you wrote this ending yourself.
you pushed him away when he tried to come closer. made jokes where confessions should have been. you watched the hurt flicker across his face and told yourself it was necessary, that it was better to wound him now than let him see how terrified you were of needing him. you made him feel small when all he ever did was make space for you. your chest tightens at the memory of his patience. the way he waited through your silences. the way he looked at you like you were something worth staying for. and still, you taught him how to leave. if love was a language, he spoke it fluently. you were the one who kept pretending you couldn’t understand.
now you wonder if three weeks is enough time for him to forget the sound of your laugh. if he’ll stop reaching for his phone when something reminds him of you. if one day he’ll meet someone who doesn’t flinch when he offers his heart — someone who takes it gently instead of questioning why it was given at all.
the thought hollows you out.
but then — cutting through the haze like a lifeline, the low rumble of a familiar engine growls to life down the block. your breath catches. for a moment you think you imagined it, that your grief has begun conjuring ghosts. but the sound grows louder, unmistakable — uneven in that tiny way you once teased him about, a rhythm you memorized from too many midnight drives where neither of you wanted to be the first to say goodnight. your head snaps up. your heart slams violently against your ribs, so hard it almost hurts. headlights pierce the dusk, sweeping across the porch and flooding everything in white gold. shadows scatter. time stutters — it’s him.
hendery’s car rolls forward slowly, almost cautiously, before pulling up to the curb right in front of the house. for a second, you can’t move. hope rises so suddenly it feels dangerous, tangling with the fear still coiled inside you. your fingers curl into your sleeves as if bracing for impact.
the engine idles. each second stretches thin, fragile enough to snap. you realize then, with startling clarity, that loving him was never the thing you were most afraid of. it was realizing — too late — that he was the one place your restless heart had ever felt like resting.
the driver’s door clicks open. and your heart, traitorous and trembling, dares to hope he hasn’t given up on you yet.
hendery steps out of the car slowly, the door shutting with a dull, final thud that seems to echo far louder than it should, keys dangling loosely from his fingers, shoulders rising and falling as he takes a breath of the cold night air. he looks tired. not the kind of tired sleep can fix — something quieter, heavier. like the last ten days have pressed themselves into the slope of his posture. the porch light spills across him, and that’s when you see it. his hair. blonde. not the soft brown you used to card your fingers through when he fell asleep beside you. this shade is brighter, colder — unfamiliar in a way that makes your chest ache..
he turns toward the house, shoving his keys into his pocket as he starts up the walkway that leads to the frat house. he doesn’t see you at first. he’s halfway to the steps when something — maybe the way you forgot how to breathe, maybe the fragile sound of your shoe shifting against the wood — makes him glance up. he freezes. completely.
“y/n?” your name leaves his mouth softer than you expected, threaded with disbelief, “what are you–” he starts, voice low, but he trails off when he sees your face, the unshed tears glistening, the way your hands twist together at your sides. his expression shifts, the hardness in his features cracking just a fraction, “you okay?”
you open your mouth. nothing comes out. your brain scrambles desperately for something — an explanation, a joke, anything that doesn’t expose the raw panic beating inside your ribs. instead, the first thing you notice slips past your lips.
“your hair is blonde,” you lift a shaky hand, pointing uselessly, as if he might not know.
he blinks, reaching up to touch the strands self-consciously, a faint, wry smile tugging at his lips that doesn’t reach his eyes, “uh… yeah,” he says, voice uneven. “figured i needed a change.”
of course he did. ten days is enough time for someone to start becoming a stranger.
you nod quickly, swallowing against the tightness in your throat, “change is good…” the words sound hollow even to you.
his brows pull together, confusion flickering across his face. he looks around once, almost like he’s checking if this is some kind of trick his exhausted mind is playing on him. you ended things ten days ago. ten days since you told him this couldn’t happen anymore. ten days since you forced your voice not to shake while you said he deserved a nice girl. ten days since you watched his expression close off, watched him nod like he understood. so why are you here now? before he can ask, before you can lose your nerve entirely, the words tear out of you.
“im sorry!”
they’re louder than you meant them to be, cracking in the middle. hendery’s eyebrow lifts slowly, surprise flashing across his features. that’s when he notices the crowd. shadows shifting. of course they’re watching. this university thrives on gossip, on half-heard drama and new to the list — unexpected porch confessions.
his expression tightens instantly, instinct kicking in. even now, even after everything, he’s worrying about you. about your name. about the whispers that could follow you tomorrow. he walks toward you, closing the distance in long, steady strides. the closer he gets, the harder it is to breathe. you forgot how tall he feels when he’s right in front of you, how his presence alone rearranges the air.
“let’s talk inside,” he murmurs, voice low. “you must be freezing.” you hadn’t even noticed the cold until he said it. now your fingers throb, numb and stiff. his hand finds your wrist. soft. careful. like you might still shatter if he holds too tight. it would be so easy to let him lead you inside — back into warmth, into privacy, into the dangerous familiarity of being close to him again. but panic spikes through you. if you step into that house, you’re afraid you’ll fall right back into the version of yourselves that never quite survived the daylight.
and so you pull back. “no.”
the word is quiet, but it stops him immediately. his hand loosens, though he doesn’t drop your wrist right away. he searches your face, eyes moving quickly like he’s trying to solve something impossible.
“no?” he repeats softly.
your throat burns, “if we go inside… i might lose the courage to say this.”
something shifts in his expression then — the confusion softening into something more cautious. almost guarded. you force yourself to meet his eyes. they’re still the same. that’s the worst part.
“i didn’t come here to hide,” you whisper, voice trembling, “i did enough hiding for both of us.”
“these ten days…” you inhale shakily. “i kept telling myself i did the right thing. that pushing you away was protecting us,” a tear slips down before you can stop it. hendery doesn’t move. doesn’t speak. he just watches you with an intensity that makes your chest ache, “— i thought if i ended it first, it wouldn’t hurt as much when you eventually left,” you admit, “so i left first” your laugh breaks halfway out, fragile and wet, “turns out it hurts anyway.”
his jaw tightens. you see it — the pain in his eyes.
“i told you to find a nice girl,” you continue, voice barely steady now, “but the truth is… the idea of you loving someone else makes it hard to breathe.” your chest rises sharply, and suddenly the words start coming faster — months of restraint cracking all at once, “i’m tired, hendery,” you whisper, shaking your head. “i’m tired of hiding behind walls. i’m tired of pretending i’m okay with all the secrets, with acting like you don’t matter when you matter more than anything.”
and then your voice breaks completely.
“i love you.”
the confession trembles in the cold air. you look straight into his brown eyes and for the first time, you don’t shrink. your next words come louder. steadier. fierce in a way that surprises even you.
“i don’t care who hears,” you say, tears streaming freely now, “i don’t care if we’re the face of campus confessions tomorrow — hendery, i’m in love with you.”
the night seems to split open around the words. a curtain shifts. someone inside audibly gasps. but you don’t look away from him. not this time.
“i was using the rivalry as an excuse but the truth is i was scared of how much you mattered,” you continue, voice trembling but unstoppable now, “scared that one day you’d wake up and realize i wasn’t worth it,” your chest shudders, the porch light humming faintly above you.
“i don’t want three weeks to pass for us to become strangers. i don’t want ten days to turn into forever,” your fingers curl into your palms, “i know i don’t deserve it… but if there’s even a small part of you that still cares—”
your voice collapses. you swallow hard. your walls stripped bare.
“please don’t let me be the one you almost loved.”
hendery goes completely still. even the night seems to hold its breath. the silence stretches so thin you’re afraid it might slice you open. his eyes search your face, not quickly, not carelessly, but like he’s memorizing it. like he’s checking for cracks, for hesitation, for any sign you might disappear again if he reaches for you.
“i forgot my phone,” he exhales. slow. shaky. “—and i would never forgive myself if you called and i missed it,” he steps closer. once. twice. until the space between you dissolves completely. your ears perk up at his words, your heart beating so loudly you swear this whole block could hear it.
“if we do this…” his voice is quieter now, rough around the edges, like it had to fight its way out of his chest, “then you have to promise you’ll call me.” your heart stutters, “—not just once a week,” he continues, a fragile smile tugging at his mouth, “or when you suddenly remember i exist.”
the ache behind the joke nearly undoes you. you nod immediately, tears spilling faster, “i promise.”
he studies you for another second, like he needs to see the vow settle into your bones. then he steps even closer — close enough that the tips of your shoes touch, “and you have to promise you’ll tell me when you’re scared,” he says softly, “that you won’t shut me out… that you won’t decide for both of us that it’s over before i even know something’s wrong.”
“i promise,” you whisper again, more certain this time, “no more running.”
something in his shoulders loosens at that — a tension he’s probably been carrying since the night you walked away. slowly, almost reverently, he lifts his hands. his palms are warm against your freezing cheeks. his thumbs brush beneath your eyes, wiping away tears you hadn’t realized were still falling. the touch is impossibly gentle, like he’s afraid too much pressure might break the moment. you lean into it without thinking. home. that’s what it feels like. he looks into your eyes then, really looks, and whatever he finds there makes his own soften.
“i’m going to do what i’ve been wanting to do since the first day i met you,” he murmurs. your breath catches. you don’t even get the chance to ask what he means — he kisses you. right there. no hesitation. no more hiding. just the sudden warmth of his lips against yours, firm and certain, like he’s been holding this back for far too long. for a split second your brain goes completely blank — shock, relief, love crashing into each other all at once — and then you’re kissing him back with everything you have. your fingers clutch the front of his jacket, pulling him closer as if he could vanish. he doesn’t. his arm slides around your waist instead, anchoring you against him. somewhere behind you, the front door flies open.
“FINALLY!” cheers erupt from behind you. whistles. someone actually claps. another voice yells, “ABOUT TIME, HENDERY!”
but the noise fades into nothing compared to the way his hand tightens slightly at your back. he’s the one who breaks it first, though he doesn’t go far. his forehead rests against yours, his breath mingles with yours. and then, softer than anything you’ve ever heard—
“i tried so hard not to,” he whispers, breath warm against your lips, “i told myself you didn’t want me the way i wanted you…that if i just gave you space, eventually my heart would get the hint.” his eyes search yours, glassy under the porch light, “but every morning i still reached for my phone wanting to hear your voice,” he admits quietly, his thumb pressing gently into your cheek, “i don’t think there’s ever been a version of me where i wasn’t already falling for you.” he leans closer, the tip of his nose brushing yours before he finally says it, slow, certain, like a promise he plans to keep for the rest of his life.
“i love you…not quietly, not secretly, not only when it’s fun,” he murmurs, “i love you in the loud, terrifying, ruin-me kind of way.”
a tear slips down your temple and he catches if before it falls, “i loved you when you pushed me away,” he continues softly, “i loved you when you told me to find someone else, even though there has never been anyone else for me,” his voice wavers then, just slightly, “—i think…i’ve been yours since the first day you looked at me like i mattered.” he exhales a small, disbelieving laugh, shaking his head, “so yeah,” he whispers, eyes melting into yours, “i love you. hopelessly. ridiculously. completely.”
the words settle into you slowly, like warmth thawing something that had been frozen for far too long. for a moment, you can only stare at him. because all this time you though loving him meant chaos, something overwhelming, something destined to slip through your fingers. but standing here now, held so gently in his hands, it feels like the safest thing you’ve ever known. and suddenly — you can breathe. really breathe. like your lungs are finally remembering what air is supposed to feel like.
a trembling laugh escapes you before it wavers into something dangerously close to a sob. hendery’s smile — that familiar, heart-aching smile you were terrified you might never see directed at you again. it was all that you needed.
“are you still going home early for winter break?” you ask quietly, the question slipping out before you can stop it, a small part of you still afraid something might pull him away now that you’ve finally found your way back to each other.
he lets out a small laugh, the sound warm against your skin, and pulls you impossibly closer, “nah,” he says easily, “i think i’d much rather spend time with my girl.”
my girl. your heart reacts instantly — one loud, embarrassing thud that makes you grip his jacket just a little tighter. he notices. of course he does. his smile deepens before he leans down again, kissing you once. twice. then again, softer this time — like he’s savoring it now that he finally can. and under the porch light, surrounded by noise and laughter and the messy witness of everyone you were once so afraid of…you realize something steady and certain. you didn’t just come here to confess. you came here to stop being afraid of a love that was never asking you to be anything — except brave enough to stay.
🥟 DECEMBER 7 - WHAT ARE WE? 🥟
morning arrives quietly, pale winter light spilling through the curtains, painting the room in soft gold, the kind that makes everything feel slower, gentler, untouched by the noise of the world outside. for a moment, you don’t remember where you are. then you feel it — warmth at your back, steady breathing against your neck, a hand loosely curled into the fabric of your (his) shirt like even in sleep, he refused to let you drift too far.
memory rushes in all at once — the porch, the confession, the way he kissed you with no care for the world. last night plays through your mind in quiet fragments. his arms around you, lips brushing in feather-light kisses, the low drone of some movie neither of you paid much attention to. you talked for hours — about the things you’d both been too scared to say before, about the ten miserable days apart, about what this meant now. somewhere between serious cofessions and laughing over the dumbest things, the exhaustion finally caught up. you fell asleep mid-conversation, cheek pressed to his chest, his lips in your hair.
your phone suddenly erupts against the quiet, notifications coming through ping after ping. you groan immediately, eyes squeezing shut. the last thing you want is to wake him — he looks so peaceful, dark lashes fanned against his cheeks, blonde hair tousled from sleep. carefully, you reach over, grabbing the phone, squinting at the screen’s notifications, so many that your phone almost looks possessed. group chats exploding, missed calls, tags, voice notes. you open the messages from the girls first.
yuna: *video attachment*
yuna: WHAT KDRAMA IS THIS?!
winter: OH MY GOD 😱😱😱
natty: what are you guys saying omg the camera man had ONE job
sophia: can we send this to that girl on tiktok that does lip-readings!!!!!
yeji: i THINK THEY SAID I LOVE YOU??????
ryujin: Y/N CALL US RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW
the messages continued and you can’t help but let out a soft chuckle at their silly antics. you tap the video and there it is — slightly grainy, clearly filmed from the house across. you, tearful and shaking, hendery stepping closer, then the kiss.
the news traveled fast. of course it did. you’re halfway through typing a reply when a strong arm snakes around your waist, pulling you back against his chest without even opening his eyes, instinct guiding the movement. his nose brushes lazily against your shoulder before he presses a soft, absentminded kiss there. your heart reacting with a traitorous little flip.
“baobei…” his voice is husky with sleep, barely formed, “it’s only…7 a.m.,” he squints toward the clock.
you twist slightly to glance at him, a smile tugging at your lips, “sorry,” you whisper, “my phone was going crazy, the girls are all freaking out,” you set the phone face down, not quite ready to dive into the frenzy.
he lets out a low, sleepy laugh, the sound vibrating gently against your back, “are they giving you a hard time?” there’s a protective edge to the question, even half-asleep, like he’s already gearing up to defend you from any stray negativity.
you shake your head, leaning into his touch, the tension from the notifications easing under the solid weight of him, “no,” you admit with a soft smile, “they never did,” you trace the arm wrapped securely around you, “it was all in my head.”
hendery goes quiet at that, just listening, enveloping your hand in his, “good,” he murmurs, “would’ve fought them if they did.”
you huff out a small laugh, the sound light and relieved, “you are not fighting my girls.”
he laughs behind you, a muffled chuckle as you turn carefully in his arms. the moment you face him, he immediately tucks you closer, forehead nearly bumping yours. his hair is a soft mess, blonde strands falling into eyes still heavy with sleep. he looks unfairly beautiful like this. his gaze drifts over your face slowly, like he’s confirming you’re real — that last night wasn’t something his lonely heart invented.
“good morning,” he whispers. the word feels strangely intimate, wrapping around the space like a promise. you smile, the expression easy and true, “good morning.”
for a moment, neither of you moves, suspended in the warmth of tangled sheets and lingering closeness. then his brows knit together slightly, a flicker of uncertainty shadowing his features, “...you’re still here.”
you blink, caught off guard by the quiet vulnerability threading through his tone, “where else would i be?” he studies you for another second, eyes searching yours with intensity, before something warm spreads across his expression — relief so quiet it almost hurts to witness.
“just checking,” he says lightly, “half expected to wake up and realize i dreamt the whole thing.”
your hand slides down his arm, warm, solid, very real and with no warning, you squeeze, harder than necessary, a playful pinch to ground him in the moment.
“ow–!,” hendery jerks slightly, eyes widening before he breaks into laughter, the sound bubbling up unrestrained and bright, “what was that for?!”
you grin, completely unapologetic, the mischief chasing away any remnants of last night’s heavier emotions, “see, you’re not dreaming.”
that only makes him laugh harder, the sound echoing softly off his bedroom walls, shoulders loosening as the laughter spills out of him, open and unguarded in a boyish way that makes your chest ache with fondness.
his laughter fages into a soft exhale as he looks at you again, something gentler settling in his eyes, “good,” he whispers. then, still adorably half-asleep, his voice dropping even lower with a shy edge, “because i really like waking up with you in my bed.”
the words wrap around you like a gentle embrace, his eyes holding yours with a softness that mkes the morning feel timeless. you lean in, pressing a light kiss to the corner of his mouth, tasting the remnants of sleep and sweetness on his lips. he hums contentedly, his hand coming up to cup your cheek, thumb tracing your jawline in lazy circles, drawing out the moment as if neither of you wants the world to intrude just yet.
but the day whispers reminders through the curtains, the light growing a touch brighter. reluctantly, you pull back just enough to meet his gaze, “as much as i would love to stay here all day, i still have my last final exam later,” your voice soft and laced with affection, lips pouting, “and i really need to start getting ready,” you yawn, the stretch pulling at your limbs as you sit up slowly, sheets pooling around your waist.
hendery sits up with you, his body syncing to yours without effort, the mattress dipping under his weight. his gaze sharpens, drifting to your shoulders where the muscles bunch tight. without a word, his hands settle there, fingers pressing in with gentle, knowing pressure, kneading the knots in slow, deliberate circles that unravel the tightness thread by thread. you hum in contentment, eyes fluttering shut as warmth spreads from your shoulders down your spine, his touch chasing away the morning's edges. it’s more than relief — it's him, reading you like always, making space for you to breathe.
“mind if i use your shower?” you ask, voice soft, reluctant to shatter the quiet.
he pauses, thumbs lingering on a stubborn spot, a spark lighting in his eyes as he leans in closer, breath warm against your neck, “i have a better idea,” he says, winking with that playful glint.
before you can ask, he's sliding out of bed, his grey sweatpants hanging low on his hips, the fabric hugging his frame just right. he pads toward the bathroom, the door swinging open to the cool tile expanse and that deep, inviting tub you've noticed before. the faucet turns with a creak, water rushing in steady and soothing, steam rising as he adds a capful of his cedarwood bath oil, bubbles foaming lazily across the surface, the scent earthy and calming filling the air.
he dips a hand in to test the temperature, adjusting the tap until it's perfect — warm enough to melt away the chill, not scalding. a fresh towel is pulled from his closet, placed on the counter with care. satisfied, he turns to head back out, respecting the boundaries even now. but as he reaches the doorway, a quiet urge rises in you — the want to stretch this closeness, to keep him near in the haze of the morning, “wait,” you call, voice steady despite the flutter in your chest. you stand, “join me?”
he smiles in response as you slip into the tub first, the water enveloping you, bubbles parting around your skin as you settle in. the steam curls lazily in the air, carrying that cedarwood scent that clings to everything of his. hendery follows moments later, the water sloshing gently as he eases in behind you, his legs framing yours. you lean into him, back pressing flush against his chest, skin meeting skin in a seamless contact that feels like warmth. his arms wrap around your waist, pulling you closer until there's no space left between you, just the steady rise and fall of his breathing syncing with yours. his chin rests lightly on your shoulder, light stubble grazing your skin in a faint, ticklish rasp, his breath warm against your ear. you tilt your head just enough to nuzzle into the side of his neck, inhaling the clean, soapy freshness of him, your fingers tracing idle loops along his forearm draped across your stomach. he holds you like that for what feels like forever, content in the silence, his thumbs stroking slow, soothing arcs over your thighs. the tension from earlier melts away completely, replaced by this effortless peace, as if the bath is washing away more than just the night's remnants.
“there’s still something we haven’t talked about,” hendery starts finally, his voice a low murmur that vibrates through his chest into yours, gentle but laced with that underlying seriousness he gets when he's been mulling something over.
you shift slightly in his hold, glancing sideways at his profile, the steam softening the edges of his features, “what is it?” you ask, keeping your tone light, though a flicker of curiosity stirs in your chest.
he pauses, lips brushing your shoulder in a feather-light kiss before he speaks, “what are we?”
your eyes widen a fraction, surprise rippling through you like the water disturbed by your subtle movement. after last night's confessions, it's almost comical that he'd need to voice it. but then understanding settles in, warm and empathetic. you've turned him down before, danced around labels like they were live wires, leaving him to wonder if this time is different. he needs the words, straight from you, to chase away the ghosts of those past hesitations.
a soft smile curves your lips as you turn in the tub, water swirling around you in gentle waves. you turn carefully until you're facing him, knees bracketing his hips, straddling his lap with your hands resting on his shoulders for balance. droplets cling to his lashes, his blonde hair darkened and slicked back from the damp, making his eyes seem even more intense, more yours.
“hendery,” you say, voice tender, laced with the affection that's been building for so long, “will you be my boyfriend?”
he lets out a deep, rumbling laugh that echoes off the tiled walls, his head tilting back against the tub's edge with pure delight, adam's apple bobbing as the sound spills out unrestrained.
“no,” he says, still chuckling, his hands sliding up to steady your waist, fingers splaying wide and warm.
“what do you mean no??” you exclaim, feigning outrage as you lean back a touch, brows furrowing in mock betrayal. your heart races with playful shock, but before you can fully pull away, his grip tightens just enough to keep you close.
“i wanted to be the one to ask you,” he explains, his laughter fading into a grin that's all boyish charm and sparkling eyes, the kind that crinkles the corners and makes your stomach flip. he ducks his head to press a quick, wet kiss to your collarbone, as if to punctuate the confession, earning a surprised giggle from you.
“okay… then ask me now,” you tease, arching a brow as you lean in closer, your noses nearly brushing, the steam wrapping around you both like a secret.
he shakes his head stubbornly, that mischievous glint in his eyes refusing to dim, even as his hands trace lazy patterns along your sides, sending little shivers through the warmth, “nah,” he drawls, voice dropping to a playful whisper, “where’s the fun in that? no surprise, no big romantic moment…not as cool as your porch confession,” he says, clearly teasing you.
you burst into laughter, the sound mingling with his, light and free as it fills the bathroom. “you’re annoying,” you murmur, but there's no heat in it, only fondness overflowing as you cup his face, thumbs sweeping over his cheeks.
“don’t worry, i won’t make you wait too long,” he whispers, leaning into your touch, pressing a soft kiss to your palm, eyes softening — the unspoken promise that this is real and worth every delayed surprise.
your laughter fades into a shared smile, the kind that lingers in the air, pulling you both closer without a word. you lean in first, pressing your lips to his in a soft, unhurried kiss, tasting the faint soap on his mouth. his hands slide up your back, fingers holding you steady as he kisses back, gentle at first — lips brushing, parting just enough for a quiet sigh to escape. it’s innocent, like rediscovering each other.
but the heat has been building since last night and now — its boiling over. his grip tightens on your hips, yanking you flush against him, the kiss turning rougher, teeth clashing, tongues tangling.
“god, i love you,” he rasps against your lips, voice already wrecked, his cock jerking hard against your thigh, swelling thick and insistent in the hot water. you whimper into him, nails scraping down his chest as you grind on his shaft, feeling every inch of him pulse with need.
“i love you too — fuck, hendery — need you inside me,” you breathe, the words spilling out raw and desperate, your pussy aching as you straddle him wider, sliding along his length with deliberate friction. he bucks up sharply, the tip of his dick catching your clit, sending sparks through you.
“then take it, baobei — i’m all yours,” he demands, hands clamping on your ass, helping you lift and sink down, sliding yourself on his cock in one brutal drop. the stretch burns so good, filling you completely, and you both gasp at the same time, savoring the moment for a second before you start bouncing, slowly at first, his cock pounding deep, hitting that spot that makes your vision blur.
“keep squeezing me — just like that,” he groans against your collarbone, before diving down to suck on your nipple, tongue drawing circles around the peak in slow strokes earning a moan from you. you thread your fingers through his wet hair, pulling him impossibly closer as you grind harder, circling your hips to drag his cock against your walls. he switches sides, sucking the other nipple into his mouth with patience, rolling it between his teeth.
“mine — all mine,” he murmurs hotly against your skin, the words fueling the frenzy, making you bounce harder and harder, faster and faster, waves crashing against the tub’s edges and spilling out in a growing flood across the tiled bathroom floor.
“wait..” pause for a bit, his cock still throbbing inside you as you glance down at the mess — the puddle spreading rapidly, soaking his mat and creeping toward the door, “we’re making a mess,” you say breathlessly, half-laughing, half-concerned, your body still humming from the rhythm you’d built.
hendery just chuckles low and rough, his hands firm on your hips as he pulls you back in for a deep, possessive kiss, swallowing your protest with his tongue, “i’ll clean it up, don’t worry about it,” he whispers against your lips, eyes gleaming with that playful fire you adore, before his grip tightens again, “now,” he says, littering kisses down your neck to your collarbone, “where were we?” he teases, looking up at you as he sucks another love mark on your breast.
you don't need more encouragement, the brief pause only heightening the urgency as you bounce with renewed ferocity, slamming down onto his cock as he thrusts up to meet you. the water churns wildly now, more of it sloshing over the sides with every brutal collision of your bodies, the wet slaps of skin echoing off the walls amidst your shared moans. his hands cup your tits roughly as he leans in, mouth descending on one nipple with a hungry growl. he sucks harder now, pulling the sensitive bud between his lips and flicking his tongue over it relentlessly.
“fuck — you’re perfect,” he pants. the intensity builds like a storm, water flooding the floor unchecked, but all you care about is the way you can feel him — everywhere. not just physically.
“i’m close,” you moan, grinding down to take him deeper, pleasure coiling tight as more water cascade out. neither of you slows, the mess only amps up the raw edge, your bodies slick and sliding together in the frenzy.
“come for me, baobei — say my name, let everyone know who’s making you feel this good,” he urges, voice thick with love and lust, his hips pistoning up to drive his cock relentlessly. the words tip you over, your orgasm crashing through you like the water around you, pussy spasming around him as you scream his name.
“that’s my girl — so fucking beautiful,” he growls, tucking your hair behing your ear as he pulls you in for an open mouthed kiss, his own release taking over as you gasp into each other’s mouths, breaths ragged. his bathroom is a complete disaster — but in this moment, wrapped in his arms with water lapping at your skin, it's the most perfect mess you've ever made together.
🥢
the weight of your final exam lifts as you step out into the campus quad, your purse slung over one shoulder, the late afternoon buzz of relieved students filling the air. laughter echoes from cluster of friends reuniting, some collapsing onto the grass in exhaustion, others already planning post-finals celebrations. but then a voice cuts through all the chatter — your name. loud and clear. ringing in the air.
heads turn like dominoes, conversations halting mid-sentence. you freeze, heart skipping, scanning the quad until your gaze locks on him — hendery stands a few yards away, effortlessly magnetic, a boquet of pink roses clutched in one hand. the soft petals’ color a perfect match of that offhand comment you made months ago. your favorite flower, mentioned in passing, never expecting it to stick. but there he is, holding them like he’s been planning this all day, his smile wide and unapologetic.
eyes meet yours from all sides — the dream boys scattered around with their flawless girlfriends, the riize crew clustered near the wall, sungchan mid-laugh with shotaro until he spots the scene, the wav guys with their girls lounging on benches, yangyang nudging xiaojun with a knowing grin, outright staring like they paid for front-row seats. random students pausing their walks to watch, whispers already starting. and your sorority sisters? already filming with bubbly smiles on their faces. the quad feels like a spotlight.
your gaze returns to him and he straightens when your eyes meet, a slow smile spreading across his face — the kind that always used to mean trouble for you. now it just makes your heart race. he strides over, closing the distance with that confident ease, completely unbothered by the audience. if anything, he looks faintly amused by it.
as he gets closer, his eyes sparkle with mischief, “told you i won’t make you wait too long,” he says, voice low but carrying just enough for the nearest onlookers to lean in, his wink sealing the tease.
“you’re insane,” you let out a breathless laugh as he slips the bouquet into your hands, his fingers brushing yours deliberately, lingering a beat longer than necessary.
“for you? yeah, probably,” then, with that signature cool tilt to his head, he steps even closer, voice dropping to a husky murmur meant just for you, “i’m afraid im going to outdo your porch confession.”
you chuckle smugly, leaning in until your lips nearly brush his ear, “i’d like to see you try.”
his smile shifts, that mischievous glint in his eyes deepening into something softer, more intense, pulling you in like gravity. the crowd’s murmurs fade into a distant hum, the world shrinking to the intimate bubble between you two. hendery takes one slow step back, just enough to hold your eyes fully, his expression a canvas of quiet intensity and then he starts —
“from the first time i saw you freshman year, all fire and unyielding grace, i was done for,” he confesses, your eyes widening slightly at the new information, “and when you grabbed me by that collar that sophomore night, i knew — you were always going to be mine.”
his hands find your waist then, pulling you closer, the roses nestling softly between your bodies, “junior year, i started waiting for your calls, that ringtone became my favorite sound,” he smirks, both of you knowing damn well what all those calls were for.
his eyes get’s serious again, “but it wasn’t until you started reciting the entirety of shrek 2 was when i realized — i would listen to you quote every single one of your favorite movies for the rest of my life, every quirky detail, every passionate rant.”
“you’ve been the most maddening person i’ve ever met,” he adds, arching a brow in that way that draws a smile form you, “you challenged me, argued with me, drove me to edge of sanity….and somehow, you became the safest place i know, the one place i feel like i can just be me.”
“you saw through every layer of me from day one,” he presses on, his voice steady but laced with emotion, “somewhere amid the rivalries, the stolen late nights and all the almosts… i fell in love with you.”
“so,” he says, a teasing lilt creeping back in to lighten the weight, “will you stop making me tell people i don’t have girl — and be my girlfriend?” the words carry now, clear and bold for everyone to hear. his eyes search yours, hopeful and steady, the bouquet warm in your grasp, petals soft as the promise in his gaze.
your heart swells in your chest, a rush of warmth flooding through ayou as his confessions hang in the air, raw and real, every guarded corner of your soul cracking open in sweet surrender.
“i’ll settle for a truce,” you say, your voice teasing despite the lump rising in your throat, a smile breaking across your face as you fight the sting in your eyes, “i’d love to be your girlfriend,” you add, reaching out for a handshake.
his hand slide into yours, firm and warm, but instead of shaking it, he tugs you forward with a girn that lights up his feautures, drawing you into his space. the bouqet presses beween you as he leans in, capturing your lips in a kiss that’s both playful and profound — soft at first, then deepening with the weight of everything unsaid. a tear slips down your cheek, warm against your skin as you melt into him.
around you, the quad explodes into cheers, the crowd’s energy hyped. your sorority sisters shriek with delight, phones held high to catch every second, the dream boys whoop and clap, their girlfriends joining in with wide smiles. sungchan’s booming laugh cuts through, shotaro yelling something encouraging and from the wayv group, yangyang puts a fist up as xiaojun flashes a thumbs-up. even the scattered onlookers get swept up, applause rippling out as whispers turn to full support. and in that moment, with his lips on yours, it’s all a distant echo — your focus locked on him, the start of something real and yours.
ᥫ᭡. the end.
ー
18+ only | watch at your own risk | contains mature content
an: anddddddd we’re done! *bows* i hope you enjoyed the last of the wayv trio! i loved writing these two! i also hope the flashbacks weren’t confusing!!!! i decided to write it this way because starting chronologically with this couple’s relationship would’ve been sooooo slowburn and probably so long so i decided to just focus on the now and give you guys insight to their relationship throughout the years :D! it’s a different style but i liked it lol. thank you for having so much fun on the loverboy roller coaster with me! i always have such a great time writing these (when im not deep in writer’s block). i hope you guys continue to reread these stories over and over again! and never stop letting me know it too <3333333 i have so much gratitude and love for all of you! thank you for your time! this is the last of the loverboys ♥️ (for now). and since it’s the last i packed on the links ;))) have fun with those, you freaks! (said with adoration). don’t forget to let me know what you’re thinking!
p.s. i couldn’t end this series without a jackson wang party could i? like are you truly a fanfic writer if he isn’t mentioned at least once? :3
ᥫ᭡. likes, reblogs and comments are not required but is very appreciated.
ᥫ᭡. if you enjoy this series and would like to show extra love and support. my ko-fi is open <3
SYNOPSIS all you want is to be seen and loved by your future husband, two of the very things park jongseong has no idea about. but through unspoken protection and warm tension, jongseong lets himself love again.
OR, jongseong falls for you when a series of events pushes you both closer
GENRE arranged marriage au, angst, fluff, hurt & comfort, ‘she fell first but he fell harder’ vibe (?) slowburn-ish
PAIRING cold fiance! park jongseong x female! reader ( ft. other characters )
WARNINGS mention of bruises and fighting, alcohol, arguments, skinship, kissing, underlying misogyny ( not from jay ), crying, alcohol mention and use
WORDCOUNT 19.5k words / 19,557 words
AUTHORS NOTE hey precious readers! i would like to start this special message by an apology because one i am posting this a month late and two this is my first ever long fic. so you know the drill, i havent quite mastered to flow of long fics, so im sorry in advance if there is any type of mistakes in the story TT that being said, i chose a pretty easy topic to work with this time, so im hoping you guys will like it! arranged marriage aus and jay is definitely one of my fav combos, and i hope it delivered it well >< please enjoy and happy reading :3
FEEDBACKS AND REBLOGS ARE VERY APPRECIATED
PARK JONGSEONG HAS NEVER KISSED YOU.
Maybe you have never even felt his touch, the mere sensation of fingers brushing innocently against each other was unknown to you.
And as you realise it, your chest tightens, and you dig your fingernails way too deep into your palms until they form little red crescents which burn. You realise he’d never seen you shed your tears as well, so you keep them at bay, praying that it’ll be enough to hide the storm brewing inside you.
Park Jongseong is your fiancé, an arranged marriage. Bound to you by the weight of expectation, tradition, and a polished ring that sparkles mockingly on your finger.
To anyone else, you might seem like the perfect couple—well-dressed at formal dinners, walking side by side at events, exchanging polite smiles that barely reach your eyes. But behind closed doors, the gap between you feels insurmountable.
Sometimes during those boring and forced events, all you want to do is to pull Jongseong closer by his arm. You want him to look at you and smile, to hold you by the waist and kiss you, to at least, acknowledge your presence in a room.
But Park Jongseong is careful, too careful.
His words are measured, his actions restrained, as though every interaction is scripted. When he walks beside you, there’s always a polite distance, just enough to make it clear he’s near but never close enough to feel his warmth. Even when he hands you something—a pen, a glass of water—his fingers never brush yours.
It’s like he’s built an invisible wall between you, one that neither of you has dared to tear down.
“Ah—!” he winces in pain as you dab the medicated damp cotton a little too hard over his bruise on his cheeks.
“S-sorry, I had something on my mind,” you stutter, immediately discarding the cotton into a trashcan.
“Its fine,” Jongseong whispers.
“Wait let me see—” you reach your trembling, careful hand towards Jongseong’s bruise, in high hopes to cure it.
“Its okay I'm fine,” Jongseong reiterates, slapping your hand away in a hurried motion.
Ouch. Does he not want you touching him?
You gulp. The previous plaguing thoughts dawning over you once again. Doubt, insecurity and disturbance hurls at you at a threatening velocity once again, and you can feel yourself falling into a black void.
You gulp again, your throat suddenly dry, your fingers tightening around the edge of the bathroom sink. You wish you had something to hold onto, something solid or real. Because standing here, staring at your fiancé, you felt like you were slipping into something dark and unknown.
Jongseong sits on the marble countertop, his long legs spread apart, hands resting on either side of him like he was trying to keep himself steady. His crisp white dress shirt rumpled, the top buttons undone, revealing the faintest hint of a bruise blooming against his collarbone. His knuckles are scraped raw, his lip slightly swollen, and yet, god, yet he still looked unfairly handsome. Even now, even like this.
You wish he would just kiss you.
Just once.
Just so you could taste something other than this awful, gnawing suspicion twisting in your gut.
“How’d you hurt yourself?” you finally ask, your voice quiet but firm, pushing past the lump in your throat. The words feel too small in the vast space between you.
Jongseong exhales sharply through his nose, shifting where he sat, as if he suddenly found the countertop beneath him unbearably uncomfortable. He lifts a hand, raking it through his raven-black hair, the strands falling messily over his forehead. His dark eyes never met yours.
“Just fell first on my face,” he mutters, his voice tinged with forced nonchalance. “I was late to the office.”
The explanation is simple. Too simple. Like a script he had rehearsed and rewritten a thousand times before finally presenting it to you. His words echo in the cold, tiled room, but they lack weight. Lack of honesty.
Your fingers clench at the fabric of your sleeves as you nod slowly, pretending, for now, that you believed him. But the walls around you felt thinner, and the air between you was suffocating.
Because deep down, you know.
Jongseong is lying.
You nod slowly, trying to process his words, but they feel so hollow, so rehearsed. Jongseong doesn't even meet your eyes as he speaks, his gaze fixed on the tiled bathroom wall behind you.
“You should be more careful,” you sigh, ultimately rearranging all the medicines back to the first aid kit, with all your hopes of holding a long conversation with Jongseong slipping away into the trash can, “Its okay if you're late to office one day—”
“How'd you get this?” Jongseong mumbles, his hand was flying slowly towards you from your peripheral vision.
In a moment he stands up, easily towering over you. You can't dare to look in his eyes, so you settle yours at the loose buttons of his shirt. Your heart thumps faster as he moves in closer, a concerned yet bored tone in his voice.
And then it finally happens, the impact takes place. The rough, calloused yet gentle pads of his fingers touch the apple of your cheeks.
An electric shock runs through your veins— Park Jongseong touches your face.
“Uhm- I uh I was-” you stutter, unable to form a proper sentence.
“Weird,” Jongseong scoffs, retracting his hand. You wince at the absence of his touch, wishing it’d lasted longer. Jongseong continues, “we got hurt in the same place.”
Your breath hitches.
The warmth of his fingers lingered on your skin, even though the touch had been fleeting. Insignificant, maybe, to him. But to you? It was enough to leave your thoughts spiraling, to send your heart into a frenzied rhythm you couldn’t control.
Jongseong’s expression doesn’t change. It’s still composed, unreadable, but there was something else in his eyes now. Not warmth, not affection, but something bordering on curiosity. As if he were piecing together a puzzle, one he didn’t quite care enough to solve.
You force out a shaky breath, forcing yourself to meet his gaze. “It’s just a coincidence,” you mutter, lying through your teeth. Because, just like him, you aren’t being honest either.
Because your bruise wasn’t an accident.
And neither was his.
For a second, just a brief second, the two of you stand there in silence. The space between you feels suffocating, but not because of proximity. It was the weight of everything left unsaid. The doubts, the unspoken questions, the invisible wall that had existed from the very start.
You want to reach for him, to bridge the gap. To ask him what had really happened, to tell him you weren’t as blind as he might think. But the words die in your throat when Jongseong took a step back, like he had just realized he’d gotten too close.
“I should go,” he says flatly, rolling his shoulders as if shaking off some invisible burden. His hand brushes over his lip, pressing lightly against the swelling before he turns toward the door.
“Jongseong—”
He pauses. Just barely. Not enough to turn around, not enough to give you hope.
You clench your fists at your sides. “Be careful next time,” you finish, your voice softer, weaker than you wanted it to be.
There was a moment where you thought—hoped—he might say something back. But instead, he simply nods once before slipping out of the bathroom, leaving you standing there, alone with your own reflection.
Your fingers reach up, tracing the ghost of his touch on your cheek.
Park Jongseong had never kissed you.
And at this rate, you aren't sure if he ever will.
THE EVENING AIR BUZZES WITH CONVERSATION AND CLINKING GLASSES.
You sit rigidly at the long aok dining table, forcing a smile.
Jongseong is beside you, distant even in proximity, his fingers lightly tapping against the stem of his wine glass. You steal glances at him when you think he’s not looking, searching for any crack in his polished mask.
Across the table, your cousin Daisy leans forward, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
“So…” she begins loudly enough to catch everyone’s attention, “how’s the arranged love story going? Still playing house or have we upgraded to actual feelings yet?”
The table erupts into laughter. You stiffen, your heart dropping into your stomach.
You try to laugh along, but it comes out awkward and brittle.
“You know, busy schedules. Hard to plan our fairy tale ending around board meetings and conference calls.”
The words taste sour in your mouth.
You glance sideways at Jongseong, silently begging him with your eyes— Say something. Tell them it’s more. Tell them I’m more to you.
He simply chuckles, a soft, detached sound, and lifts his glass. The knot in your stomach tightens.
“Work always comes first,” he says, voice smooth, almost rehearsed.
There’s a pause. A small, hollow space opens inside your chest, which Jongseong manages to disturb.
Daisy snickers. “So romantic. Truly the love story of the century.”
Someone else jokes about putting bets on how long the marriage will last. More laughter, even more jokes. Insensitive and overlooking.
You feel your face heating up, but it's not embarrassment, it’s humiliation. And Jongseong, just sits there. Smiling politely, like he’s miles away.
You press your lips together tightly, stabbing your fork into a piece of roasted vegetable.
The moment passes, conversation flowing into safer topics, but your appetite is gone. All you can taste is the bitter disappointment.
As dessert is served, Jongseong’s phone vibrates on the table. He glances at it quickly, then tucks it away without a word. The tiny movement feels monumental. Another reminder that there's always somewhere else he'd rather be.
Finally, after what feels like hours, people start gathering their things, pulling on coats, exchanging hugs and goodbyes.
You and Jongseong step out into the chilly night. The cold air slaps your cheeks, a stark contrast to the stifling warmth inside.
You walk side by side in silence towards the car.
You can't hold it in any longer.
“Why didn’t you say anything back there?” you blurt, voice trembling despite your best effort to stay calm.
Jongseong stops walking. Turns to you slowly. His face is unreadable under the dim porch lights.
“About what?” he asks, feigning innocence. Oh, how you hate that face.
“About us,” you snap, your voice cracking under the weight of it all. “When they joked, when they implied we’re just business partners?”
He shrugs. “It was just a joke. Why give them more to gossip about?”
You stare at him, blinking rapidly to keep the sting of tears at bay. “Because it’s not just a joke to me.”
He exhales, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “You’re overthinking it, Y/n.”
You laugh bitterly. “Am I? Because it feels pretty real when you don’t even try to correct them. When you act like you’re fine with everyone believing this marriage is just some... some arrangement you’re tolerating.”
His jaw tightens. “What would you have wanted me to say? That we’re madly in love? That we’re inseparable? That I can’t breathe without you?” His voice is low, cutting. He snaps, “Would that have made you feel better? Lying to everyone?”
You flinch like he slapped you. The hurt pools behind your eyes.
“I don’t need you to lie,” you whisper. “I just—”
The words hang between you, heavy, fragile.
For a second, just a second, something flickers across his face. Regret? Guilt? You can't tell.
But just as quickly, he turns away, walking briskly to the car. “Let’s not do this here,” he says sharply. “It’s late.”
You stand there for a moment, heart pounding, watching his back retreat from you like a closing door.
When you finally move, your feet feel like lead. You climb into the passenger seat without a word. The ride back home is suffocating. Silent. A chasm grows wider with every passing streetlight.
You want to reach out, to grab his hand, to say something, anything, that will fix whatever's breaking between you.
But you’re too afraid you’re the only one who still wants to fix it.
So you stare out the window, watching your reflection blur against the passing night.
And beside you, Jongseong drives on, his hands tight on the wheel, his face carved in stone.
Park Jongseong is giving up, maybe you should too.
PARK JONGSEONG THOUGHT HIS TO BE WIFE HAD FORGOT HIS BIRTHDAY.
But then he reminds himself, all these months of carrying a diamond ring of mockery on his hand— a symbol of bondage, marriage —he had never felt the fleeting touch of his soon to be wife.
And so he doesn't bother to kiss her goodbye, maybe pull her closer by her waist, whisper something not so innocent in her ears to watch her face flush in enticement, and leave for work with the motivation to come back to his fiancé’s arms.
No. He does nothing.
Park Jongseong doesn't even take the day off and stays at home. He leaves in a hurry, first thing in the morning. He doesn’t like celebrating birthdays anyway, it’s just a year closer to his demise, nothing to like about it.
He packs his briefcase in silence as he steals one last glance of you, groaning lazily as you make your way to the washroom. Of course, you have your job too, and Jongseong expected even less. It’s just a birthday, nothing too much.
9:30 am, he reaches his office building.
The heir to the prestigious, Park Company. The weight of expectation hung in the air like a finely spun chandelier, too delicate to touch, too grand to ignore. After all, he wasn’t just any director. He was Park Jongseong. The upcoming CEO. The heir.
The revolving glass doors of the company building spun to a slow stop behind him. Jongseong adjusted the cuffs of his suit jacket, eyes half-lidded, movements precise. He could hear the echo of his polished shoes as he walked through the marble tiled lobby, his reflection following him in the towering glass panels.
“Good morning, Vice President,” several voices chorused as he passed, accompanied by clipped bows and tight smiles.
He gave them all the same nod. Unbothered. Distant.
The elevator doors open and steps out alone, the silence laying on him like a second skin. The floor is cool and quiet, save for the typical office noises. He reminds himself that it's just another day, just another date on the calendar which could be overlooked without any problem. His team gathers up to the front door, clapping and smiling at him. Some senior executives push a forced smile in front of their young boss, the juniors more enthusiastic about someone they fear athough Jongseong doesn’t know if theirs are forced or natural.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY JONGSEONG,” they all sing song as confetti pops out in the air and paper freckles of his least favourite colours flutter down on him.
A distant banner said: TO THE FUTURE CEO. He shrugs, a polite smile on his face.
Among the crowd he spots Sunghoon, his first cousin as he steps out with a jovial smile and hands still clapping. He was in line to be the CEO as well, before he put down the offer to be COO instead, saying he's not a natural leader like Jongseong is.
“To the youngest CEO our company has ever seen!” he exclaims to the crowd as he stands beside Jongseong, pulling him to an encouraging hug. “What?” he snickers, “don't like the celebration?”
“No, I love it,” Jongseong hopes his smile is not too fake looking as he faces his team, not all of them are happy to be here, some are bored and waiting for their shift to be over. He sighs, “thank you guys for this, it means a lot to me.”
A celebration follows, and Jongseong does what is needed. A polite tight lipped smile, respectful bows and a small speech. Said the expected words. Cut the cake, nodded through small talk, and endured hugs from coworkers who’d never even dared to speak to him before today.
When noon rolls around, someone chirps, “We ordered lunch in! Come eat with us, Vice President Park!”
But Jongseong shakes his head.
“I’ll stay in,” he says, voice as smooth as glass. “I have calls to take.”
He turns, walks into his office, and shuts the door behind him.
Silence falls like a blanket. The cheers and loud noises quickly fade as the second Jongseong pulls the door close to his office, making slow and steady steps to his chair. He sits down on it, sighing as he lets out a shaky breath.
Birthday.
The word still rolls bitterly in his mind, not festive, not celebratory—just sharp edged and cold. A reminder of time ticking forward, dragging him further into a life that never felt like his own. A year older, a year deeper into expectations that weren’t his to begin with. The title. The company. The marriage.
He remembers the uncomfortable tight-fitting tuxedos, blinding camera flashes, tight lipped smiles of relatives he didn’t know and as usual, a script.
A script he had to learn every year, which is now installed in his brain. Jongseong just has to open his mouth and utter the same, mechanical and monotonous words in front of everyone as his parents would reassure him after, of how well he did, how well he behaved. And before he even knew it, birthdays meant nothing to him.
But then again, it was made cold and unbearable to him by the world. By his parents.
“Whatever,” he sighs and shrugs his blazer off him. And just as he’s about to throw it on his desk, he notices something.
A lunch box, covered neatly in pink satin cloth. A small note on top.
Jongseong doesn’t want to make assumptions, but he does anyway. What if it's from you? What if you really remembered his birthday? With a gulp, he steers his chair closer to his desk and picks up the lunch box, opening his cloth and reading the note in his hands, holding it up close.
Hope you like it. Happy birthday Jongseong, from y/n.
His breath falters, you remember.
His name in your handwriting. A little crooked, like you were in a rush, or were nervous. His throat tightens as he peels the lid off the top container.
And the scent hits him instantly.
Curry.
Rich, warm, and spiced exactly the way he likes it. Not the kind served at expensive restaurants with dainty portions, but the real kind. Homemade. The kind that sticks to your ribs. The kind that reminds him of chilly weekends in Seattle when he was small enough to sit on the kitchen counter, swinging his legs while his grandmother stirred the pot.
Something coils in his chest.
Carefully, he lifts the second container. The rice is shaped into a perfect flat surface. Neatly pressed, fluffy, hot. And across it—seaweed sheet, hand-cut with meticulous patience—spells out three letters.
JAY
Jongseong feels his heartbeat faltering. He winces as his offices’ air conditioning hits the bruise on his cheeks. He carefully sets the curry down on his table, before gaping at the rice again.
It indeed spells, JAY.
He scoffs at this weird feeling. The more he stares at it the more his heart burns and coils.
Only his grandmother had ever called him that. Not his father. Not his mother. No one in the stiff, lacquered halls of his youth had bothered to learn the name that made him feel… human. Small. Loved.
And now here it was. Cut delicately in seaweed. Sitting quietly in a box on his birthday.
By you.
“You’re really not going to join us for lunch?” Sunghoon barges in his office, striding towards Jongseong's desk.
Jongseong hurriedly tries to close the lunchbox, but it’s too late. Sunghoon’s eyes have already zeroed in on it like a hawk spotting prey.
“Is that curry?” Sunghoon gasps, leaning over the desk like an excited child. “Oh my god, it smells amazing. Who got you that? Is it from that expensive place across the street? Is that seaweed spelling your name? That’s so cute—”
“Get your hands away from it,” Jongseong snaps, dragging the lunchbox closer to his chest like it’s a newborn baby he’s sworn to protect with his life.
Sunghoon’s hand freezes mid-reach. His eyebrows shoot up.
“Wow. Wow. Possessive much?”
“This is mine,” Jongseong mutters defensively, clutching the lunchbox tighter. “You guys have a whole lunch downstairs. Go eat that.”
“But that’s communal food,” Sunghoon whines, poking the air toward the lunchbox. “This looks special. Homemade. You should share. It’s what Grandma Jay would’ve wanted.”
Jongseong glares at him.
“Grandma Jay would’ve wanted you to mind your own business.”
Sunghoon snickers, undeterred, and tries to lunge for a bite. Jongseong immediately swivels his chair away, putting his entire body between Sunghoon and the precious lunch like a shield.
“Jesus, you’re like a dragon hoarding treasure,” Sunghoon laughs, hands on his hips. “You’re gonna die alone with that lunchbox in your arms.”
“Good,” Jongseong says without missing a beat. “But I'm not going to share.”
Sunghoon makes one last dramatic, fake sob attack at the lunchbox. Jongseong kicks at him under the desk until he stumbles back, defeated.
Grumbling, Sunghoon heads for the door, shooting Jongseong a betrayed look over his shoulder.
“You’ve changed, man,” he says dramatically. “Fame, fortune… personalized seaweed letters. You’re not the same Jongseong I knew.”
Jongseong just smirks to himself as the door swings shut again.
Finally, blessed peace.
He opens the lunchbox once more, the smell of curry filling the room, and the sight of your careful seaweed letters warming a space inside him he didn’t even know was still hollow.
A dull sting pulses along his cheek as he chews, and his hand drifts to the bruise you both pretended not to see. He clicks his tongue, annoyed. Coincidence, he tells himself. Nothing more. But the throbbing settles under his skin like a reminder—of you, of your quiet lies, of his own.
But this time, when he takes the first bite, he laughs under his breath.
YOU DESERVED A BETTER GRATITUDE THAN A JUST SIMPLE THANK YOU.
Park Jongseong sighs as he stares at the window of his car, watching the raindrops race against each other. His fingers drum restlessly against the steering wheel, the soft patter of rain against metal filling the silence inside the car.
He leans back against the headrest, staring at the road.
“thank you for the lunch, y/n.” he said last night, “it was so delicious.”
He remembers the tension between your brows, how they knotted up gently and relaxed a second after. Disappointment. He was offhand, rushed and sudden with his words, not even looking into your eyes as he said how warm the meal was. So why wouldn’t you be disappointed? Jongseong remembers the way you rolled your shoulders back, a small sigh escaping you as if you had to physically push the disappointment out of your body, tuck it somewhere he wouldn’t notice.
“you’re welcome,” you said simply, unmuting the ignored show playing on the tv with a soft clenched jaw, which Jongseong wished he wouldn’t notice.
He knew that your welcome wasn’t genuine. And maybe he could’ve tried to find the stars in your eyes to make things better, maybe he shouldn’t overthink.
But he also remembers the way you took a second glance of him when he stood there like a robot, holding his almost empty briefcase in his hands, wanting to say something else than just a thank you.
Your eyes were cold then. Faint traces of tears sticking to your lashes, catching the soft glow of the overhead light as you looked at him like you were trying to read him one last time. He thought you would say something, maybe shout or scoff at his posture.
But nothing came out of your mouth except a tired sigh as you abandoned your discomfort and disappointment on the cold couch as you made your way towards the shared bedroom, agonizingly slow.
Maybe you had that pace intentionally, for him to call you back and say something real. Cause fuck, you remember his beloved nickname which was lost, you remember how he liked his curry, you remember him.
Lost in own thoughts, something interesting catches Jongseong’s eyes.
Is that you?
Jongseong gets startled at the sight. You, in this heavy and cold rain, trying to cross the road with your blazer above your head, which does nothing to keep you dry.
“Shit,” he curses under his breath, quickly starting his car as he drives across the road, stopping just beside the pavement.
“Y/n!” He shouts your name clear in the heavy rain, loud enough for you to turn around to his voice, “get in, you’re going to get sick!”
You pause mid-step at his voice, blinking through the rain as you turn to face him. The car idles beside the curb, headlights casting a pale glow across the drenched street. His figure leans across the seat, the passenger door wide open like a quiet plea.
But you stay rooted where you are, water soaking through your shoes, the cold seeping deeper beneath your skin. Your hands clench at your sides.
“I’m fine,” you call out, loud enough for him to hear but it’s tough at the edge, shaking, “go home, Jongseong—”
“Y/n please,” he pleads, although it doesn’t sound like one, “you’re soaking wet, just shut up and get in!”
“I’m- I’m fine,” you snap. You don’t want to get in the car just because he happens to see you and is inviting you to stay dry. That’s the only case, isn’t it? Jongseong is here by coincidence, he wouldn’t deliberately check your location to pick you up in this awful weather. Would he?
“I can go by myself, the rain is not too bad.”
You can hear him sigh, as he gets out of his car, slamming the door behind him.
“Get in,” he steps into the rain, the downpour immediately plastering his shirt to his skin, darkening the fabric, “You will fall sick, y/n. Get in the car.”
He steps even closer, his hair now sticking to his forehead by this insufferable rain as he narrows his eyes. “If you want to be sick so bad, do this another day.”
Your throat tightens. You want to scream at him, shake him, ask him why he always waits until things fall apart before showing up. Why he only steps into the rain once you’re already drenched.
But instead you force your chin up, press your lips into a tight smile as you gather your blazer tighter around yourself.
“Don’t act like you care if i’m sick, Jongseong,” you didn't want to say that, but do anyways.
He blinks. For a second, his expression falters. Barely. “Why not?,” he says quietly, almost like he’s confessing something he hadn’t intended to say aloud. But then his gaze hardens again, guarded. “You’re freezing, Y/N. Stop being stubborn.”
The wind blows past you both, cold and biting. You shiver, teeth clattering as you try to recover whatever warmth the soaked blazer has to give.
“I won’t go—”
“As much as I would love to argue with you right now,” Jongseong cuts off, standing so close that your hands could meet, “I can't let you get sick.”
Your lips part, another protest rising, but before you can speak, Jongseong’s fingers curl around your wrist, not harsh, but firm. His brows draw together, rain sliding down his temples, his lips a tight line.
“I said get in the car,” he repeats, lower this time. His voice carries an edge, not pleading, not begging—commanding. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
You glare at him, heart wrenching in the cold rain as it seeps into your work clothes.
“You only come when it’s convenient for you,” you try to hold it together.
He steps closer, raindrops sliding down the sharp lines of his face. “You think this is convenient for me?” he says bitterly, tone low, controlled. “You think standing here like an idiot in the rain for you is easy?”
The proximity hits you suddenly. He’s standing close, too close, as the rain damps his shirt next. Jongseong’s grip around your wrist tightens, indicating he’s not going back home without you in his car.
And somehow that warms you a bit in this coldness.
His eyes are direct, confronting as they try to soften into yours. Try, you can see it, how his eyebrows lift and slowly fall, trying to find the ease in the situation to gently pull you into the car with no trouble, with no one getting sick.
“Y/n…” he whispers your name, as if for the last time when he finally eases his brows, “get in the car. Please.”
You gulp at his seriousness, a droplet of rain rolls from his chin to fall on your cheeks. It’s cold, making you flinch.
“And if i don’t go?” you test the waters, voice trembling as you watch him roll back his shoulders.
“Then I’ll carry you,” he says without hesitation, his gaze hardening. “Don’t test me right now.”
Something in his tone makes your breath hitch. He’s not bluffing—you know that.
You swallow, lips pressing into a thin line as you hesitate, your pride warring with the exhaustion creeping into your bones. But just as another gust of wind leaves you shivering, your resolution breaks.
You look away first, “You are a very bad liar—”
Jongseong doesn’t speak, doesn’t smile or smirk or gloat. He just scoops you up before you can finish the sentence.
Your breath leaves you in a sharp gasp as Jongseong’s arm slides under your knees and the other wraps firmly around your back, pulling you against him. Your soaked blazer slips uselessly from your shoulders, rain immediately lashing against your skin, but his body blocks most of it. He’s solid, unyielding, warm in a way that makes your chest ache.
“Jongseong—!” you protest, instinctively gripping the front of his damp shirt. His name tears out of you softer than you intended.
“I warned you,” he mutters, jaw clenched as he turns toward the car. His grip tightens reflexively when you shift, as if afraid you’ll fall or run. “Stop fighting me.”
He reaches the car and nudges the passenger door open with his knee, maneuvering you inside with careful precision.
When he slides back into his seat, drenched and stoic, he doesn’t look at you immediately. Just stares ahead as the engine hums softly beneath the rain. And with that, he pulls the car into drive, headlights cutting through the downpour, his hand steady on the wheel even if everything else between you trembles on the edge of falling apart.
“Take this,” he says, reaching towards the backseat and grabbing his dry blazer, “you’ll be cold.”
“T-thanks,” you don’t argue much as your teeth clatter together, quickly draping the blazer over your damp clothes.
“Y-your clothes are soaked too,” you gulp, voice soft and nervous. You glance at Jongseong’s side profile as he drives, “you’ll get sick—”
“I’ll be fine,” he says, his voice low and steady, almost too calm, “I’m not the one shivering. And it’s just a little rain.”
“So much for the guy who didn’t let me walk home in the rain,” you giggle softly, hoping to elevate his mood but his expressions remain stoic, indifferent.
You pull the blazer tighter around yourself. It smells like him. espresso, cologne and ironically, like home.
“Thank you for—” you clear your throat, taking time to rethink your gratitude towards him when he himself barely shows it. He’s always words, one or two, never sentences like you. But at the end of the day, someone has to express something.
“Thank you for the blazer, and for picking me up anyways. I know you didn’t mean to and I’m sorry for being a nuisance—”
“You’re not a nuisance,” he admits, eyes still on the road. Your heart stops. “I’m not that big of a jerk to let my fiance come home with a fever.”
There’s a silence that stretches long and sharp, the rain outside tapping impatient fingers against the windows. You sink deeper into the passenger seat, your hands curling in your lap. His words aren’t romantic. They aren’t sweet. But they tear through something inside you, a part that’s been holding itself together with hope and delusion.
It’s the bare minimum. It’s something, and something is better than nothing. Right?
“Really?” you whisper, unsure if you really heard that right.
He nods slightly, still focused on the road ahead. “What’s there to question? If you don’t want me picking you up next time, just say so.”
Your heart tugs, this is coming from him. You don’t need anything more than this quiet ride, the shared space between you, the knowledge that he’s here. Whether it’s out of obligation or something deeper.
Jongseong reaches forward, turning on the car’s heating system inside.
“You can keep the blazer,” he mumbles.
You leave it here for now, basking into the silence with his cologne around you, questioning whether or not you really have space in his heart.
RAIN ALWAYS MAKES HIM SOFT.
Not in the obvious way. Not the cinematic way where he confesses or reaches for you or lets himself be held. It makes him quiet first—eyes lingering on windows, fingers tapping restlessly, shoulders drawn tight like he’s bracing for something unseen. You notice it the moment you step onto the rooftop, the smell of wet concrete clinging to your coat, droplets sliding down the glass doors behind you.
It’s Sunghoon’s birthday, technically, though no one is really treating it like one. You almost didn’t come. Long days at work, the quiet tension waiting for you at home. But Sunghoon had called, cheerful and insistent, saying it would be “good for everyone,” which usually meant good for Jongseong.
You arrive later than Jongseong and spot him near the bar, surrounded by men in expensive suits. Business partners, maybe friends, you don’t linger long enough to figure it out. After greeting Sunghoon and handing him a gift you picked up last minute, you drift toward the railing instead, letting the city stretch beneath you.
The air is cold. Damp. The kind that creeps under your skin.
He doesn’t see you at first.
Or maybe he does, and pretends he doesn’t. He stands with a glass in his hand, ice melting faster than he drinks it, head tilted just enough to listen without really engaging.
You watch him from the corner of your eyes. Careful, as he would have been. You watch the way his jaw tightens when someone laughs too loudly, his thumb rubs the rim of his glass over and over—a nervous habit he probably doesn’t realize he has. His jacket is off, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms.
He looks up suddenly, eyes catching you the first thing he looks at besides his drink, as if rehearsed.
You look away quickly. Ever since he rescued you from the rain, he’s gotten quieter. Maybe shy. You notice how quickly he looks away from your eyes, how he hums shakily in response to your soft thank yous, how his cheeks filled with color when you wore his blazer home, rain soaked and cold.
You hope none of that was your imagination.
Sunghoon’s laughter rings behind you, bright and careless, and you force a smile as someone hands you a drink. The rooftop is warm, string lights overhead, music low and conversation easy. You lean against the railing.
That’s when someone steps beside you.
“Didn’t think you’d make it,” a familiar voice says.
You turn. Sim Jaeyun—coworker, colleague, friend, whatever fits best these days. Casual clothes, sleeves pushed up, hair slightly messy like he doesn't care. He smiles easily.
“Neither did I,” you admit. “Long week.”
“You look tired.”
“You have no idea.”
He says your name gently. He asks about work, complains about his boss, makes you laugh with a stupid story about getting lost. At some point, without thinking, he brushes a strand of hair away from your face, fingers grazing your temple.
You don’t pull away.
You don’t notice the shift in the room.
But Jongseong does.
He notices the untouched drink, the way your sleeve keeps slipping, and he sure as hell notices someone else standing in front of you. Touching you. Smiling with you.
The sound around him dulls, like someone turned the volume down. He sees the touch, the way you tilt your head, the smile he doesn’t think he’s ever earned. Something hot and sharp coils in his chest.
He downs his drink.
“Vice President Park, what are your thoughts—”
He doesn’t hear it.
Another glass appears in his hand. He gulps it down. His throat burns.
The weather crawls under his skin. Anger blurs into something uglier, something dangerously close to fear.
Why are you smiling like that?
He tells himself it’s none of his business. He has no claim. You’re his fiancée by contract, not by touch, not by confession.
And yet his feet move before his thoughts catch up.
He doesn’t storm. He detaches himself from the circle, sets his glass down with too much force, and walks. Slow. Measured.
You feel it before you see him.
The air tightens. Jaeyun is mid sentence when your gaze flickers past his shoulder and lands on Jongseong.
He’s coming toward you.
Tie loosened. Hair disheveled. Jaw set hard. Alcohol makes him tipsy, but his intentions are clear.
Your heart stutters.
You straighten, fingers curling around your glass. Jaeyun notices, glances back.
“Uh,” he clears his throat. “Is that—”
Jongseong stops beside you.
Too close.
Close enough that you smell him—whiskey, rain, something bitter underneath. Close enough that his presence redraws the space.
“Vice President Park,” Jaeyun replies, straightening.
Jongseong’s gaze slides back to you. Lingers on your face, the loose strand by your temple, the slipping sleeve.
“Didn’t know you were coming,” he says to you. You swallow. “I told you earlier.”
He blinks, like he’s replaying the memory too late. “You did.” A beat of silence.
Jaeyun shifts, uncomfortable. “I was just keeping her company,” he says lightly, attempting to diffuse. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”
Jongseong hums low. His eyes don’t leave you.
“You don’t have to,” he says. Then, softer, but sharper. “I’ve got her. She’s taken.”
Your breath catches.
Jaeyun hesitates, glancing at you. You open your mouth, but Jongseong’s hand lifts first.
Not entirely touching you.
Hovering at the small of your back, close enough that you feel the heat through your dress. A careful, controlled claim.
“I’ll… grab another drink,” Jaeyun says. “Nice seeing you.”
When he leaves, the space collapses.
You’re alone with Jongseong.
Silence stretches, heavy with everything unsaid. He looks away first, dragging a hand through his hair, fingers trembling.
“I can— can talk better than him,” he hiccups.
“Seriously, how much did you drink?” he basically reeks of alcohol and slightly sways side to side as you guide him down the stairs to the empty hallway.
“Are you—,” your sentence is left unfinished a Jongseong cages you against the wall, shaking hands on each side of your head.
He’s close, too close. His eyes are red, unfocused, flickering between your eyes and your lips. His breath is warm but reeking of whiskey. His hands stay planted on the wall, shaking, fingers flexing like he’s reminding himself not to touch.
“You shouldn’t let—” he starts, then hiccups softly, the sound almost humiliating in how it breaks his authority. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, reopens them, tries again. “Let someone who is not your h-husband touch you like that.” The words come out crooked, slurred at the edges, but the intent behind them is painfully clear.
You stare at him, stunned, then a breathy laugh slips out despite yourself. “God,” you murmur, “you’re so drunk.” His brows knit together immediately, offended and wounded in the same breath.
“So what I’m— drunk?” he demands, swaying closer before catching himself, forehead knocking lightly against the wall beside your head. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Yes,” you say, heart thudding. “Jongseong. You did.” You lift your chin, meeting his gaze even as your voice trembles. “You’re not my husband. You’re only my fiancé. And I can have my own friends.”
For a second, something hollow flashes across his face. Then he laughs, short, disbelieving.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head too hard. “No one else w-would check the—” another hiccup, quieter this time, “—weather and deliberately get wet in the rain just to bring you home safe.”
The words hit you harder than you expect, sinking deep and slow, like cold seeping through fabric. For a moment, you can’t breathe properly. You remember the rain too well. The way you’d laughed it off, the way he hadn’t, how he’d checked the rain twice and still stepped outside without an umbrella, coat already darkening at the shoulders because you hated walking alone.
“I would do that,” he continues, voice lower now. “As your— fucking fiancé or husband. Not Jaeyun. Not— not anyone else.”
His hands leave the wall. They hover instead, uncertain, fingers twitching in the space near your waist like he’s begging himself for restraint. He leans in despite it, forehead nearly brushing yours, breath warm and unsteady against your cheek.
“I would do it in a heartbeat,” he whispers.
Your chest tightens, a quiet ache blooming behind your ribs, because no one else has ever noticed the weather for you, has ever overlooked their own comfort for yours, yet some voice in the back of your head insists that he's just drunk.
But the way he says it hurts worse than any confession.
“I didn’t like him,” he admits. “Near you.”
“Why?” you whisper.
He doesn’t answer right away. His hand comes up to his chest again, fingers pressing there like he’s trying to steady something beneath his ribs. His breathing is uneven now, shallow.
“Jongseong,” you say, alarm creeping in. “Are you okay?”
He nods too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“I’m fine,” he repeats.
But he isn’t.
You see it when you guide him to the parking lot, cold wind tugging at your hair. He leans too much on you, apologizing under his breath.
“Sorry—sorry, I’m— I’m heavy,” he mumbles, fumbling for the car keys before giving up and letting you take them from his shaking fingers.
“You’re drunk,” you say gently. “Not dying.” He huffs out a weak laugh. “Feels close enough.”
The drive home is quiet, wipers sweeping rhythmically. Jongseong slumps in the passenger seat, eyes fluttering close like he’s afraid of what happens if he lets them stay closed. His breathing evens out only when the car stops at red lights, like only motion keeps him awake.
At one point, he murmurs your name. Just once. Soft. Unconscious.
Your hands tighten on the steering wheel.
Getting him inside is harder than you expect. He insists he can walk, immediately proves he can’t, nearly folding until you hook an arm around his waist.
“Easy,” you murmur. “I’ve got you.”
“I know,” he says. “You always— always do.”
You ease him onto the bed. He collapses face first into the pillows. You tug off his shoes, straighten the blanket, careful not to linger.
When you turn away, it feels like stepping back from something fragile. You make it two steps toward the door.
His hand closes around your wrist. Not rough but enough to stop you.
“Don’t,” he murmurs, barely awake, eyes still closed. His grip tightens slightly, like his body knows what he wants even if his mind can’t form it. “Cold.”
He tugs again, weak but insistent, pulling you down to the edge of the bed. He shifts, arm draping around your waist, face pressing into your side like he’s searching for warmth.
“Rain,” he mumbles into your dress. “Hate it when you’re out in it.”
You freeze.
His words dissolve into half formed apologies, your name tangled with quiet plead. His breathing slows, forehead resting against your stomach like it’s the safest place he knows.
You don’t move.
Because for the first time, his softness isn’t guarded or conditional. It’s just him, clinging in his sleep like he trusts you not to disappear.
And you realize, with startling clarity, that rain doesn’t make him weak.
It makes him tell the truth.
YOU WONDER IF YOU CARE TOO MUCH SOMETIMES.
Because no matter what you do for Park Jongseong, it never feels like enough to quiet the ache that lives with you. Loving him feels like holding something fragile and priceless in your bare hands, knowing that even your gentlest grip might hurt him, knowing that letting go might destroy you both.
You care in a way that feels reckless. Although you do see the consequence of it, that has now finally for once, in your favour.
Jongseong doesn’t pull away after that night.
If anything, he does the opposite.
He lingers.
At first, it’s subtle enough that you convince yourself it’s coincidence. He waits for you in the mornings, jacket already in hand even when the forecast promises clear skies. He sits closer at the dining table, knee brushing yours beneath the polished surface, never once apologizing for the contact. When you move around the apartment, he follows. Not hovering, not watching, just present.
You tell yourself it’s temporary. That he doesn’t remember what he said. That the drunken softness was a one-time fracture.
After all, this whole thing is arranged, and you’ve managed to gaslight yourself into thinking this softness is just obligation wearing a kinder face. That this is him playing his part better now.
You repeat it like a rule. Like something that can keep you at bay.
But rules blur when he learns your steps.
He starts matching his pace to yours without realizing it. Slowing when you slow, pausing when you hesitate, turning back when you forget something even if it makes him late. When you sit on the couch, he chooses the space beside you instead of across the room. When you’re tired, he quietly rearranges his schedule around yours, meetings shifted, calls taken later, priorities subtly rewritten.
It’s never announced. Never even whispered.
It just happens.
And it scares you more than it comforts you. Because this is what you wanted, wasn’t it? For him to care, to notice, to stay. But now that it’s happening, it feels unfamiliar in your hands. It feels like obligation. Plain obligation.
Still, sometimes you catch him looking at you with something like relief. Other times, something closer to fear.
That’s when it starts to bleed through.
In the way his fingers tighten around your sleeve when you mention staying late at work. In the way his jaw sets when your phone lights up with unfamiliar names.
At night, he sleeps closer.
Not always touching, sometimes just angled toward you, arm thrown over the empty space between your bodies like he’s reserving it. Other nights, he curls into you without thinking, forehead pressed to your shoulder, breath steadying only once you’re there. When he stirs from whatever restless place his dreams take him, his hand finds you first. Barely there. But always you.
You start waking before him just to watch.
The way his brow smooths in sleep. The way his lips part slightly when he exhales. The faint tension that never fully leaves his body, even at rest. You notice the moments when his breathing stutters, when his hand presses briefly to his chest before settling again. So subtle you wonder if you imagined it.
You don’t ask, even when you know you should.
Instead, you slip out of bed quietly, careful not to disturb the way Jongseong’s arm lies over your hand, loose but deliberate, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear. You peel his fingers away one by one, apologizing in your head for a crime you haven’t committed yet, and pad toward the kitchen.
The apartment is still. Morning light spills softly through the curtains, pale and forgiving. You make coffee the way he likes it now, without thinking about when you memorized that detail. The realization only hits after the mug is already warming your palms.
You’re setting plates on the counter when the bedroom door opens.
Jongseong stands there, hair mussed, shirt half-buttoned, eyes heavy but searching. He looks relieved when he finds you in the kitchen, like something in his chest loosens at the sight.
“You’re up,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“So are you,” you reply.
He hums and drifts closer, leaning his shoulder against the counter beside you. He doesn’t say anything, just watches you move, each small action tracked like he’s afraid to miss it.
Sunlight catches the faint shadows beneath his eyes.
“You didn’t sleep well,” you say without thinking.
He stiffens for half a second, then shrugs. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
That alone feels like a confession.
The moment lingers too long, fragile, exposed. Jongseong seems to realize it too, because his shoulders tense, his gaze drops, and the softness retracts all at once.
“Schedule’s tight this week,” he says abruptly, voice clipped. “Might come home late.”
You nod, even though you know that’s not the reason the air has cooled.
Breakfast is quiet after that.
He sits across from you instead of beside you, answers short, eyes fixed anywhere but your face. When you pass him the toast, your fingers brush, and he flinches.
It’s barely noticeable.
But you notice.
You lift your mug, letting the warmth settle your nerves. The coffee tastes familiar, comforting in a way that makes your chest ache. You don’t realize he’s staring until he turns back to the counter and starts brewing coffee again.
“You already have one,” you say.
“I know.”
He pours it into a different mug. A plain one. You ask, very confused, “Why are you using a different cup?”
He pauses, then nods toward your hands. “Because you’re holding mine.”
You freeze, eyes dropping to the mug. His mug. Heat rushes to your face.
“I— I’m sorry,” you say quickly, already standing. “I didn’t realize—”
“Hey.” His voice is gentle. He steps closer, stopping you with a light touch to your wrist. “It’s fine.”
You look up at him, still braced.
“It’s just a cup,” he adds, softer.
Something in your chest loosens. “Isn’t it your favorite?” you murmur.
He pours milk into his coffee, hesitates, then adds a little more—your preference, not his. When he notices you watching, he clears his throat.
“I can share,” he says.
You smile, small and careful. This time, he doesn’t look away.
But to your luck, softness doesn’t last.
It creeps into the days quietly, settles into routines, hides in shared cups and matching steps. Until one evening, it snaps under the weight of everything neither of you is saying.
Jongseong comes home late.
You know it the moment the door opens, not because of the time, but because of the way it opens. Sharper. With a thud.
You’re on the couch, half curled into the corner with your laptop abandoned beside you, the apartment lit only by a lamp you forgot to turn off. You look up instinctively.
He doesn’t greet.
His tie is loosened, jacket still on, hair slightly damp like he washed his hands too aggressively and dragged his fingers through it afterward. His expression is shut tight, jaw clenched in a way that makes something in your chest tighten in response.
“You’re late,” you say. Not accusing. Just stating.
“I know,” he replies, cold.
He doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t take his jacket off. Just stands there like he hasn’t decided whether to stay or leave.
Something prickles.
“You said you’d text,” you add, softer now.
His eyes flick to yours. There’s irritation there, not fully directed at you, but sharp enough to cut.
“I was busy.”
The way he says it feels deliberate.
You close your laptop slowly. “You’ve been busy every night this week.”
Silence.
You stand as if to confront him. The distance between you shrinks without either of you meaning it to.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” you say, carefully. “But don’t shut me out either.”
His laugh is quiet. Humorless. “I’m not shutting you out.”
“You are,” you say, firmer now. “You come home exhausted, you won’t talk, you won’t let me ask if you’re okay—”
“I am okay,” he snaps.
The sharpness makes you flinch before you can stop yourself.
He sees it.
Something dark flashes across his face—regret, anger, fear, all tangled together.
“I didn’t mean—” He stops. Swallows. “You’re overthinking.”
The words land badly.
“You hate it when I watch you,” you say quietly. “But you hate it more when I stop.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
“You don’t get to psychoanalyze me,” he says. “You don’t know what it’s like—”
“Then tell me,” you cut in. Your voice shakes despite your effort. “Stop standing five steps away from me like I’m a stranger in my own house.”
That does it.
He crosses the space between you in three strides.
Too fast. Too close.
You barely have time to inhale before he’s there. Towering, breathing unevenly, the air between you charged and dangerous. His hands come up, bracing against the wall on either side of your head.
The sound it makes is soft.
The effect is not.
Your heart slams against your ribs. You can feel his warmth now, feel the tension vibrating off him, feel how hard he’s fighting himself. His face is inches from yours, so close you can see the faint pulse at his jaw, the way his eyes flicker down to your mouth before snapping back up.
“Don’t,” he says hoarsely. Not a command, but warning to himself.
“Don’t what?” you whisper, breath catching.
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He gulps, as if holding back very specific words. “Like I owe you something I can’t give.”
Your chest aches. “I’m not asking for anything.”
“Yes, you are,” he says, voice low, strained. “You ask just by standing there. By—” His breath stutters. “By caring.”
You don’t move.
You can feel his breath on your cheek. Warm. Unsteady. His lips are dangerously close now, close enough that the slightest tilt would end everything you’ve been holding apart.
“I can’t,” he whispers. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me to risk.”
“Then why are you here?” you ask, tears threatening. “Why do you come back to me every night if you’re so afraid?”
His eyes darken.
Because he wants to kiss you.
Because you can see it. The way his mouth softens, the way his body leans in despite his mind screaming no. His forehead dips, brushing yours. He gulps again, eyes glued to your lips. For half a second, you think he’s going to give in.
You think this is it.
Then he pulls back.
Abrupt. Violent in its restraint.
He steps away like he’s been burned, dragging a hand through his hair, breathing hard. He doesn’t look at you when he speaks again.
“I need air,” he says, voice rough. “I can’t do this tonight.”
He grabs his jacket off the chair, pauses at the door just long enough for you to think, hope, he might turn back.
He doesn’t.
The door closes behind him, leaving you alone in the charged silence, lips still tingling from a kiss that never happened, heart aching from how close he came.
And how far he ran.
PARK JONGSEONG SMOOTHENS HIS TIE IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR.
He does it twice. Then a third time. Slow, precise movements, like repetition might quiet the unease sitting low in his chest. The mirror reflects a version of him he knows how to wear, pose and pretend. The heir. The fiancé. The man who never falters.
Except his fingers hesitate at his collarbone.
Just for a fraction of a second.
He exhales, steadying himself, and reaches for his cufflinks. The room smells faintly of cologne and starch and something warmer beneath it. Home, he thinks, before he can stop himself.
The bedroom door opens softly behind him.
“Jongseong?”
Your voice.
He straightens instinctively, shoulders squaring before he turns around.
You stand there in the doorway, light spilling in behind you, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe.
The dress drapes over you like it was designed with patience, soft fabric, gentle lines, nothing loud. It doesn’t demand attention. It invites it. The kind that lingers. The kind that stays. Your hair falls neatly over your shoulders, collarbones catching the light, skin warm and real in a way that makes something twist uncomfortably in his chest.
You shift your weight, suddenly self conscious beneath his stare.
“So?” you ask, trying to sound casual. “How do I look?”
The question hangs between you.
Jongseong opens his mouth. But then closes it back.
His eyes trace you—too slow to be polite, too careful to be careless. He notices everything: the way the fabric settles at your waist, the slight dip at your collarbone, the way your hands fidget like you’re bracing for something. For him. Because of him.
Because the last thing he remembers clearly is your breath on his lips and the way he walked away like a coward.
“You look—” Jongseong gulps, the words getting stuck between his throat and his heart. His eyes dart away from your eyes and he opens his mouth again.
“You look—”
“Sir,” the driver’s voice cuts in from the hallway. Why, the perfect timing. “The car is ready.”
The moment collapses.
Jongseong nods once, grateful and irritated all at the same time. “We’ll be right there.”
The door closes again, leaving the words unsaid. You smile at him, understanding, and he hates himself for not being fast enough with his words
----
The family house is already alive when you arrive.
Laughter spills from the open doors. The clink of glasses. Familiar voices layered over one another in practiced warmth. Jongseong’s mother greets you first, eyes sharp and appraising, a practised smile.
“You look lovely,” she tells you, hands light on your shoulders. “Perfect.”
Jongseong’s father nods at him from across the room, just acknowledging his presence with his perfect wife. But he doesn’t come up to you both for once.
“Do you want to sit?” he asks quietly, leaning in just enough that no one else hears. His voice is neutral, but his shoulders are tense.
“I’m fine,” you reply. Then, after a beat, softer, “Are you?”
He exhales through his nose. “I will be.”
That’s not an answer.
You drift toward the window under the pretense of admiring the garden lights. Jongseong follows a moment later, stopping beside you.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” he murmurs, leaning a little closer to your ears.
You keep your eyes forward. “Which part?”
His jaw ticks. “All of it.”
“That’s convenient,” you say, not unkindly, just bored.
He glances at you then, eyes dark. “This isn’t the place.”
“No,” you agree, nodding. “It never is.”
Dinner starts shortly after. What is meant to be a family gathering feels like business meeting soon.
Everyone takes their seats, chairs pulled back in unison, napkins folded just so. Jongseong sits beside you, close enough that his knee brushes yours beneath the table, a small anchor in a room that already feels too large.
Conversation starts harmless.
Someone comments on the weather. Another praises the dishes. Jongseong’s uncle talks about a recent business acquisition, his voice carrying authority. You nod when appropriate, smile when addressed, keep your posture perfect.
But then the atmosphere shifts.
“So,” one of his aunts says, swirling her wine, eyes flicking to you with something like curiosity, “have you settled into married life yet?”
Not yet married, you want to say, You know that.
Instead, you smile. “We’re adjusting.”
She hums. “That’s good. It’s important to learn flexibility early. Especially for women.”
Another voice joins in, you don’t recognizethe face. “You still plan on working after the wedding, right? Or is this just, a phase?”
You open your mouth, then hesitate. Choose your words carefully. “I enjoy my work.”
“Of course,” someone else laughs lightly. “But family should always come first. Jongseong’s responsibilities are already immense.”
The implication lands quietly. You are not one of them.
You glance down at your plate, appetite gone. Your hands curl slightly in your lap, nails pressing into skin just enough to ground you.
“But it must be nice,” his cousin adds, smiling sweetly, “to have everything taken care of. Some people don’t realize how fortunate they are.”
Fortunate.
The word lands softly, almost politely—and still, it sinks its teeth into you. It curls somewhere behind your ribs, sharp and humiliating, because you know exactly what they mean by it. Not lucky. Not loved. Arranged. Chosen for you. Your hands rest neatly in your lap, fingers folded just right, posture perfect, because this is what fortune looks like from the outside.
You smile because you’re supposed to, because anything else would be impolite. Your chest tightens anyway. They don’t see the waiting, the wanting, the nights spent staring at a ceiling beside a man who won’t touch you. They don’t see how much of yourself you’ve learned to shrink just to fit into this version of “enough.”
You’re just another asset for them. A doll beside Jongseong.
Your eyes burn, vision blurring just slightly, and you lower your gaze before anyone notices. Because crying here would be unforgivable.
Jongseong’s fork stops moving.
It doesn’t clatter. He doesn’t drop it. He simply stills and puts it down.
He looks at you. Really looks this time.
The way your shoulders have gone rigid. The way your smile hasn’t quite reached your eyes. The way your head tips lower, lashes casting shadows over cheeks that are just a little too flushed, eyes shining with something dangerously close to tears.
“That’s enough,” Jongseong says.
The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut through the table cleanly, like a blade sliding between ribs.
Conversation falters. Glasses pause halfway to lips.
His aunt blinks. “Jongseong, we were just—”
“You were being disrespectful,” he interrupts, voice steady and controlled. His hand moves under the table, fingers brushing your knee once. “And you’re not going to continue.”
His cousin scoffs softly. “Oh, come on. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know exactly what you meant,” he says. His glare flicks across the table, sharp and unyielding. “And you don’t get to talk about her like she’s a convenience. Or something handed to me.”
The silence thickens.
His mother opens her mouth, but hesitates.
His father clears his throat. “Jongseong,” he says carefully, in a warning tone. “That’s enough. This is a family dinner.”
Jongseong turns to him slowly.
For a moment, his expression falters. Not with doubt, but with something older and buried.
“Just because you never said anything to defend Mom,” he says, voice low and shaking, “doesn’t mean I’ll do the same for my—”
He stops. Breathes shakily.
“—my wife.”
The words lands heavy. Your head snaps up to Jongseong, tears almost running down.
“She is not fortunate,” he continues, eyes never leaving his father’s. “She is capable. She is intelligent. And she does not owe anyone gratitude for being here.”
A pause.
“If you can’t respect that,” he finishes, “then this dinner is over.”
Your throat tightens painfully.
You stand before anyone can respond, chair scraping softly against the floor.
“Excuse me,” you say, voice thin but steady. “I need some air.”
You move before anyone can stop you.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor as you stand, the sound far too loud in the thick silence Jongseong has carved open. Your hands tremble, but your spine stays straight.
No one stops you. No one knows how.
You walk out before the tears can fall.
The hallway feels endless. Too bright. Too quiet. Your heels click too fast against the marble as you head toward the garage, breath coming shallow, chest tight like it’s caving in. You tell yourself not to cry. You’ve done this long enough. You can do this too.
You don’t hear him at first.
“Y/n—!”
Jongseong’s voice cuts through the space, urgent in a way you’ve never heard before. You turn just as your foot slips, heel catching awkwardly on the edge of the concrete ramp.
You twist your ankle, pain shooting up.
You gasp, stumbling forward, but arms catch you.
Strong. Jongseong absorbs you without hesitation, one arm braced around your waist, the other gripping your forearm.
“Shit—” he breathes, crouching instantly. “Don’t move.”
Your ankle throbs, hot and pulsing. You bite your lip hard, tears finally spilling over.
“I’m fine,” you whisper.
“No,” he says, “You’re not.”
He doesn’t ask for permission.
Jongseong lifts you into his arms. Your face presses briefly into his shoulder, the scent of his cologne grounding you despite everything.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, voice low and steady. “I won’t drop you.”
He carries you to the car, sets you down gently, buckles you in himself with shaking hands. When he slides into the driver’s seat, his jaw is tight, eyes dark with something fierce and protective.
Neither of you speak as he pulls out of the driveway.
The house disappears behind you.
THE APARTMENT IS QUIET WHEN YOU GET THERE.
Muted, like it’s holding its breath with you. Jongseong helps you inside without a word, arm firm around your waist, movements careful in a way that feels practiced and panicked all at once. He sits you down on the couch, kneeling immediately in front of you, jacket discarded somewhere behind him.
“Let me see,” he says, voice low.
You hesitate. “It’s probably not that bad—”
“Please,” he cuts in, gentler now. “Just… let me.”
He slips off your heel slowly, like he’s afraid even the air might hurt you. His hands are warm, steady despite the tension still living in his shoulders. When his fingers brush your ankle, you flinch.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs instantly, retreating. “I’ll be careful.”
He fetches the first aid kit, crouches again, and wraps your ankle with slow precision. His brows knit together, jaw tight, focus unwavering.
The silence stretches.
“You didn’t have to say that,” you whisper suddenly. “Back there.”
He doesn’t look up. “I did.”
“I could defend myself—”
“I know.” His hands pause. Then he looks at you. Really looks at you. “But I wanted to.”
Something in his expression fractures then. Eyebrows relaxes, shoulder dropping. His thumb lingers at your ankle a second too long, like he’s forming words.
You swallow. “You didn’t have to,” you say, even though part of you aches because he did. “Not against your family like that—”
“Yes,” he replies immediately. Too quickly. “I did.”
Your gaze drops to his hands, still hovering around your ankle, fingers warm and careful. He exhales through his nose, steadies himself, and resumes wrapping the bandage, slower now, like he’s afraid any sudden movement might make something crack.
“Maybe they were right,” you murmur, fidgeting with your fingers, warm agaisnt your lap. “About me being fortunate.”
His looks up, immediately. “Don’t.”
“It’s fine,” you add quickly, reflexive. “I’m used to it.”
That makes him stop again.
“No,” he says, quieter. “You shouldn’t be. They were wrong about everything.”
You laugh under your breath, bitter. “Jongseong—”
His thumb presses lightly into your ankle, apologetic and voice soft. “Does it hurt?” he asks.
“A little.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and you can’t tell what he’s apologizing for anymore.
“You didn’t push me,” you try. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“I should’ve been there faster.”
You look at him then. “You caught me.”
“Still,” he insists, a crease forming between his brows. “I should’ve—” He cuts himself off, breath hitching slightly. His hand shifts, pressing briefly to his own chest before he seems to realize you’re watching.
His hand lingers at his chest for half a second longer than necessary.
Then Jongseong straightens.
The shift is subtle but unmistakable. He rises to his full height, standing between your knees, close enough that your breath catches. From where you’re sitting on the counter, he feels impossibly tall, shoulders tense, frame rigid like he’s holding himself together by force alone.
You tilt your head up to look at him.
His expression is unreadable at first. Guarded. Then something in it gives way, like a crack spreading through glass that was never meant to be unbreakable. His jaw clenches. His eyes soften, dark and conflicted, flicking over your face as if he’s memorizing you again.
“I’m okay,” he says quietly.
You don’t answer.
Jongseong finishes securing the bandage. The movement puts him directly in front of you, close enough that his knees brush yours, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to meet his eyes.
He reaches up hesitantly, knuckles brushing your cheek. His thumb wipes at the corner of your eye before you even realize tears have slipped free.
“You’re crying,” he murmurs, voice rough.
You laugh weakly, giving up. “I think it just… caught up to me.”
His gaze lingers on your face, your red rimmed eyes, the tension in your jaw, the way you’re trying so hard to stay composed even now. Something in him gives way.
“I hate that they made you feel small,” he says quietly. “I hate that you let them.”
You swallow, looking down as if it solves something. “I didn’t want to cause trouble.”
“You didn’t,” he says, “They did.”
His hand stays on your cheek, warmer now, more certain. He uses his other thumb to brush under your other eye. Your heart thumps loud, you hate it and yet you crave it.
“You shouldn’t have to be strong all the time,” he adds. “Not here. Not with me.”
Your chest tightens. “Then why do you keep pulling away?”
The question is soft. Careful. It lands anyway.
His jaw flexes. He looks down at you, then away, then back again.
“Because if I don’t,” he says, voice dropping, “I won’t know how to keep this… contained.”
“Contained from what?”
“From wanting more,” he admits, voice shaking at its edges. “From wanting you.”
“Do you really want me?” you whisper louder than you meant to.
That’s all it takes.
He leans in slowly, as if giving you every chance to change your mind. His forehead brushes yours first, breath warm against your lips. You can feel the trembling tension in him.
When his lips finally meet yours, it’s soft.
Almost reverent.
The kiss is hesitant at first, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he presses too hard. His lips move against yours slowly, learning, relearning. When you sigh into it, his control fractures.
He kisses you deeper then, still gentle but unmistakably desperate, like he’s been starving quietly for too long. His hand slides up your back, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades, pulling you closer until there’s no space left to doubt what this is.
He trails a hot line from your lips down your jaw, then to the hollow under your ear, and you arch without realizing, breath hitching.
“Jongseong—” you whisper, when his mouth finds the tender skin at your neck. The sound breaks somewhere between his teeth and the small gasp that slips out of you trembles against his chest.
“I—” he says, voice swallowed by another kiss. “I’ve wanted—”
“Don’t,” you whisper, pleading, yet a part of you wants him to finish the sentence.
Between his kisses, your thoughts scatter and then narrow to an aching truth—you had wanted this for so long it almost hurts to finally have it.
You don’t know why, because you have always yearned for Jongseong’s warm touch. But right now, you can only hope that you won’t wake up from this.
He pauses, forehead against your temple, eyes dark and vulnerable. “I don’t know if I have the right to want,” he admits, so quiet you almost miss it. Then, louder, “But I do.”
His mouth finds your pulse at the base of your throat and presses, the kiss wet and demanding. Your hands go up, tangling in his hair at the nape of his neck, fingers threading through his strands as he deepens the kiss.
He lifts you without fussing and carries you towards the bedroom. The movement is fluid, as if he’s imagined this a thousand times and finally stepped into it. You wrap your legs around his hips instinctively.
“Careful,” you murmur, breathless, face burning up with shyness.
“I am,” he answers, voice low. “Always.”
He lays you down gently, not breaking the kiss until his forehead rests against yours and you both are dizzy with it. He leans over you lips roaming—down your throat, to the soft slope between collarbone and shoulder—leaving a trail of heated kisses like a map.
“Say my name,” he murmurs against your skin, “Call me Jay, please.”
“Jay,” you answer.
He lifts his head, mouth quirking into something close to a smile. “Good,” he says, and it’s a laugh with no humor.
Jongseong feels himself fading quietly, the way a man does when he’s held something back for too long. Every brush of your lips against his reminds him how close he is to losing the careful distance he built to survive
He’s terrified by how easy it is to forget everything else when you sigh against him, by how instinctively his body leans closer to you and the guilt eats him alive because he never allowed himself to touch you.
“Why didn’t you kiss me earlier?,” you say at one point, trying not to cry, awkward under the weight of his closeness.
“I’m sorry” he simply says, voice hoarse. “I was... scared.”
“Of what?”
He doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he brings his soft, wet lips to yours again, capturing you into another kiss.
MORNING ARRIVES QUIETLY.
The morning light slips in through the opaque curtains and fills the space in the bedroom. The city outside is awake, but your apartment isn’t, not really. It’s suspended in that soft in between where the night hasn’t fully let go yet.
You wake first.
For a few seconds, you don’t move. You just register. The warmth at your back. The steady rise and fall of his chest against you. His arm draped over your waist, heavy and protective, with his face nuzzled deep in your neck.
Last night comes back to you in fragments rather than a rush—his mouth at your neck, the way he carried you like something precious, the way his voice broke when you said his name. The way he held you afterward, forehead pressed to yours, breathing uneven but calm, like he’d finally stopped being cold.
You turn slowly, careful not to wake him.
Jongseong looks different in sleep.
Softer. Younger. His brows aren’t drawn together like they usually are, his mouth slack, lashes resting against his cheeks. There’s no heir, no expectation, no weight in the way he rests right now. Just a man who looks tired in a way that makes your chest ache.
Jongseong stirs when you shift slightly, his arm tightening instinctively around you. He hums, drowsy and half audible, and presses his lips to your hair without opening his eyes.
“Morning,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
You smile before you can stop yourself. “Morning.”
He opens his eyes slowly, dark lashes lifting, and for a split second you see it, his eye are actually soft this time. Then his expression even warms when he focuses on you.
“Did I wake you?” he asks quietly.
“No,” you whisper. “I was already up.”
He hums again, eyes drifting shut as he pulls you closer, forehead resting against yours. His breath is warm, steady. You can feel the way his body relaxes when you don’t pull away, when you fit into him like this is something practiced rather than new.
“Stay,” he murmurs, like it’s a reflex.
You smile, your hands resting against his chest, “I’m not going anywhere.”
That makes his eyes open again.
Something passes over his face. Relief, maybe, or something more fragile. His hand tightens at your waist just a little.
“You’re warm,” he says, almost distracted. “Did you sleep?”
“A little,” you admit. “You?”
He exhales softly, a sound that’s almost a laugh. “Better than I usually do.”
There’s a pause. Not an uncomfortable one. Just space.
He presses a kiss to your temple, then your cheek, unhurried. It feels different in the daylight. His thumb brushes gently under your eye.
“You’re staring,” you tease quietly.
“Let me,” he replies. “I don’t do it enough.”
Its crazy to think how only just a week ago, this softness intimacy with your own fiance was just a dream, something that you could only imagine. Back then, his touch felt like a concept rather than a reality, his warmth something you imagined in quiet moments before sleep, never something you expected to wake up to, wrapped in it.
Now he’s here, breathing against you, holding you as if he always did, as if he was never any cold to you.
Your chest aches with a cautious kind of hope, the kind that blooms slowly, afraid of being noticed, because part of you is still bracing for him to pull away, for the walls to rise again.
He presses another kiss to your forehead, lingering, like he’s memorizing the shape of you.
“I’ll make coffee,” he says finally. “Don’t move.”
You laugh softly. “I won’t. Promise.”
He disappears into the kitchen, barefoot and rumpled, sleeves pushed up, hair still tousled from sleep. The sight of him like this, unguarded and domestic, fills you with a warmth that almost hurts.
You sit up on the bed, glancing around the bedroom as you wait.
As the duvet cover pools around you, you can’t help but wonder how he must have felt last night, after sleeping with his back turned to you for months, after restricting your touch for months. You remember the way his voice trembled when you said his name, the way his breathing finally evened out only when you were tucked against him, and you realize he must have been carrying something heavy for a long time.
Maybe, just maybe, he was yearning for you the same way you were yearning for him.
And you let yourself believe that. You believe that mornings will be like this from now on. Soft and domestic. Romantic, even.
You glance around the bedroom as you wait, trying to find to pull you out of your thoughts.
That’s when you notice the folder.
Tucked beneath the edge of the coffee table, partially hidden, beige and unassuming. You wouldn’t have paid it any attention if not for the bold hospital logo printed across the corner.
Your stomach twists.
You tell yourself not to touch it. You really do.
But something twists in your gut, sharp and familiar, the same feeling you had when he pressed his hand to his chest last night. The same unease that’s been following him like a shadow for months.
You stand.
Your bare feet barely make a sound against the floor as you walk over. The folder is thin. You hesitate with your fingers resting against it, heart already racing like it knows what’s coming.
You pull the paper free.
Your eyes skim at first, unfocused.
The papers inside are neatly stacked, clipped together. Medical reports. Test results. Dates. Charts.
You scan the first page. And then the words blur.
Diagnosis: Atherosclerosis.
Your breath leaves you all at once, like someone punched it out of your chest.
Atherosclerosis, a condition in which plaque builds up inside your arteries, which overtime hardens narrows the arteries.
You read the other pages. Slower this time. Clinical language. Risk factors. Progression. Treatment plans that sound too careful, too conditional. Phrases like advanced, monitor closely, high risk.
Your fingers tremble as you keep reading, as if slowing down might somehow soften the meaning.
But it doesn’t.
Is this why he always kept you at an arms' distance? Why he always left you wondering for his love? Never touched you, or held or kissed only until last night? He doesn’t actually have limited time, does he?
A quiet, broken sound leaves your throat before you even realize you’re crying. You clamp a hand over your mouth, but it doesn’t help. Tears spill freely now, dropping onto the papers in dark, blurry spots. Your shoulders shake as you try to breathe through it, try to make sense of the hurricane hurling towards you.
Footsteps sound behind you.
“Coffee will be ready in—”
The sentence dies in his throat.
You hear it. The way his voice stops, the way the air shifts. You don’t look up. You can’t. You’re staring at the paper like it might rearrange itself into something less devastating if you keep looking.
“Y/n…” Jongseong says carefully, slowing down at the threshold of the bedroom.
When you finally lift your eyes, he’s frozen near the doorway, mug in hand, color draining from his face. His gaze drops from your tear streaked cheeks to the papers in your hands.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he says quietly.
The words land softly, but they split something open inside you.
Your fingers tighten around the papers, knuckles white, the thin sheets trembling with you. Your throat burns the moment you try to speak, like your body already knows what your heart is refusing to accept.
“H-how long?” you ask, the question barely holding together. It comes out thin. Fragile. Like if you press any harder, you’ll shatter completely.
He doesn’t answer.
That silence is worse than anything he could have said. It stretches heavy, filling the space between you until your chest feels too tight to breathe.
“How long, Jongseong?” you ask again, louder this time, tears spilling down without restraint. Your voice cracks right down the middle. “How long have you known?”
He sets the mug down slowly on the counter, like even that small sound might break you further. The coffee sloshes dangerously close to the rim, unnoticed. His shoulders rise and fall once, a controlled breath that looks rehearsed. Like he’s done this alone, over and over.
“A while,” he admits.
The words feel vague on purpose. Cowardly.
“A while?” you echo, disbelief laced with hurt. Your laugh is short and broken, more like a sob caught in reverse. “What does that even mean, Jongseong? Weeks? Months?”
His jaw tightens. He drags a hand through his hair, fingers shaking just enough that you notice. He looks away from you—toward the window, the wall, anywhere but your face.
“Years.”
The word drops into the room like a blade.
For a moment, everything goes quiet. Not muted, but gone. Like your ears are ringing after an explosion.
“Years?” you whisper, the syllable barely surviving your lips.
Your knees feel weak. Your chest aches so sharply it almost feels physical, like something is crushing your ribs from the inside. You clutch the papers harder, as if they might anchor you to the floor.
“You’ve been—” Your voice gives out. You swallow, forcing the words through tears. “You’ve been sick this whole time?”
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate. Too immediate. Like he’s tired of lying, or maybe tired of carrying it alone.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” The hurt finally spills into anger, your voice rising, shaking, raw. “You didn’t think I deserved to know?”
He turns back to you instantly, panic flashing across his face, all that carefully built composure cracking at the edges.
“That’s not—” he starts, stepping toward you.
“Then what was it?” you cut in, backing away without realizing it. Your chest heaves, every breath uneven. “What was all that distance? All those nights you wouldn’t touch me, wouldn’t even look at me?”
Your voice breaks again, softer now, more wounded than angry. Memories flood back uninvited, the cold space between you in bed, the way he always kept a careful inch of distance, the way his hands would clench like he wanted to reach for you and stopped himself.
“You made me feel unwanted,” you whisper. “Like I was asking for too much just by loving you.”
His face twists at that, pain cutting through his features so sharply it almost scares you.
“I was trying to protect you,” he says, voice strained. “I was trying to protect us.”
“By shutting me out?” you snap, tears blurring your vision. “By letting me think I wasn’t enough?”
“That’s not what it was,” he insists, stepping closer again. “I couldn’t— I didn’t know how to let you get attached when I don’t even know how long I—”
He stops himself.
Your heart stutters. “When you don’t know how long what?” you take a shaky breath in, “Why after all this time—”
“Because Im dying, okay?” Jongseong snaps.
The words don’t land right away.
They snatch the land away from right beneath your feet, and for a second you feel falling down. For a moment, all you can hear is your own heartbeat beating way too loud agaisnt your ribcage.
“What…?” Your lips move, but the sound barely comes out. “What did you say?”
He looks like he regrets it the instant the words leave him. Like they tore out of him without permission. His shoulders tense, jaw clenched so tightly you can see the muscle jump beneath his skin. His eyes are glossy. Hes not crying yet.
“I said I’m dying,” he repeats, quieter now. Hoarse, and you know that hurts him. “Eventually. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not this year. But it’s there. Hanging over everything.”
You shake your head slowly, as if that might undo it. As if disbelief alone could rewind time to ten minutes ago, when the world still made sense.
“No,” you whisper. “Don’t say that like it’s—like it’s already decided.”
He laughs under his breath, bitter and exhausted. “It kind of is.”
Your chest tightens painfully. “Then why are you standing here?” you demand, tears streaming freely now. “Why are you pretending this is just another argument we can talk through?”
“Because I didn’t want you living your life around a countdown,” he says, voice breaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “Because I didn’t want to be the reason you wake up one day alone, wondering why you stayed.”
You clutch the papers to your chest like they’re the only thing keeping you upright. “So you thought hurting me would be better?”
“I thought distancing myself would make it easier when I leave,” he says quietly.
“When you—” Your breath stutters. “When you what?”
“When I go away,” he admits. “Anytime, Y/n. My whole life is unsure. I don’t get guarantees. I don’t get to plan ten years ahead like everyone else.”
He drags a hand down his face, the movement slow, weary, like the mask is finally too heavy to hold up.
“I didn’t want this marriage,” he says suddenly, the confession sharp and honest. “I didn’t want a wife whom I can just leave behind.”
The words gut you.
“Then why did you agree?” you ask, voice small despite everything tearing through you. “Why stand there beside me, say vows you didn’t believe in?”
His eyes lift to yours then, and something raw breaks open in them.
“Because I didn’t know how not to,” he says. “Because everyone kept telling me it was the right thing. My family wanted stability. I—”
He stops. Swallows hard.
“Because part of me hoped I was wrong,” he finishes. “That maybe I’d get lucky. That maybe if I kept my distance, I could survive it without hurting you.”
Your chest feels like it’s caving in on itself.
You want to scream at him for keeping something this devastating from you, for deciding on your behalf what you could and couldn’t handle. You want to cry for the months you spent feeling unwanted, for the nights you lay beside him wondering what you’d done wrong, for every time you swallowed your need for affection because you thought you were asking for too much.
And beneath all of that, cutting deeper than the rest, is fear.
Your mind keeps replaying every small moment from the past days. The way he would sometimes pause mid-step, fingers pressing briefly to his chest before he noticed you watching. The exhaustion he tried to hide behind clipped answers and silence. He was living life on borrowed time. And now it all makes a horrifying kind of sense. The distance wasn’t indifference. It was fear. Fear of attachment. Fear of leaving you behind. Fear of loving you too much when he wasn’t sure how long he’d be allowed to.
Your hands shake as you clutch the papers, the thin sheets crumpling slightly under your grip. You don’t even notice. All you can feel is the way your chest feels too small for everything trying to live inside it at once.
Anger. Fear. Grief. Love.
Love, most of all.
You take a step toward him before you realize you’ve moved. Your legs feel unsteady, like they might give out at any second, but you keep going until you’re standing right in front of him. He looks braced, like he’s expecting you to push him away, to scream, to tell him you’re done.
Instead, your voice comes out broken and soft.
“So you decided for me,” you say. Not accusing. Just devastated. “You decided that I couldn’t love you through this. That I couldn’t stay.”
His jaw tightens. “I didn’t want you trapped.”
“I wasn’t trapped,” you whisper. “I was confused. I was lonely. I was wondering every day what I did wrong.”
That hits him harder than shouting ever could.
Jongseong’s shoulders sag, like something finally gives up holding itself together. He closes his eyes briefly, breath shuddering as it leaves him.
“I know,” he says hoarsely. “I know I hurt you.”
The word hangs in the air between you.
Dying.
It doesn’t sound real. It feels like a foreign language, like something meant for hospital rooms and strangers, not the man standing in front of you with his jaw clenched and his eyes shining like he’s trying not to break apart in front of you.
Your breath stutters. Your fingers loosen around the papers, and they slip from your grasp, fluttering to the floor.
“You—” Your voice comes out hoarse. You clear your throat, but it doesn’t help. “Don’t say it like that. Don’t say it so casually.”
Jongseong exhales sharply, like the word tore its way out of him. “I’m not being casual. I’m being honest for once.”
The room feels too small. The walls press in. You take a step toward him without even realizing it, your chest aching with something that feels too big to fit inside you.
“You really did decide a huge part of my life without asking me,” you whisper.
His gaze flickers to your lips and then back to your eyes, conflicted, raw. “Because it hurts more than anything to know I might leave you behind.”
The words knock the breath out of you.
“You already did,” you say softly. “Every time you made me doubt your love.”
His shoulders sag, like the fight drains out of him all at once. “I cared too much,” he admits. “That was the problem.”
You’re close enough now to feel the warmth of him, the tension vibrating through his body like a live wire. Your hand lifts on instinct, fingers brushing the fabric of his shirt at his chest. You feel his heart beneath it, beating hard and fast, like it’s trying to run from the truth too.
“You should’ve told me,” you say, your voice breaking. “I would’ve stayed. I would’ve chosen you anyway.”
His breath shudders. “I didn’t pity.”
“You really think that?” you say, tears blurring your vision. “It would’ve been love.”
That does it.
Something in his expression finally gives. The careful distance he’s kept for months collapses in a single moment. He reaches for you like he’s been holding himself back from doing it for far too long, one hand coming up to cradle your face, his thumb brushing under your eye where your tears spill over.
“Don’t say that,” he murmurs, voice low and unsteady. “If you say that, I won’t be able to pretend anymore.”
“Then don’t pretend,” you whisper. “Not with me.”
For a second, he just looks at you. Really looks at you. Like he’s memorizing every line of your face, every fragile breath you take.
Then he leans in.
The kiss isn’t gentle at first. It’s desperate, like all the words he’s swallowed are finally finding a way out through his mouth instead. His lips press into yours with a quiet, aching intensity, and you gasp against him before melting into it, your hands clutching at his shirt like you’re afraid he might disappear if you let go.
His breath mingles with yours, warm and uneven. The kiss deepens, not rushed but heavy, loaded with everything unsaid—regret, longing, fear, love. His hand slides from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, pulling you closer until there’s barely any space left between your bodies.
“God,” he exhales against your lips, the word breaking like a confession. “I shouldn’t—”
You don’t let him finish. You kiss him again, softer this time, slower, like you’re grounding him, reminding him that you’re real, that this moment is real. Your forehead rests against his when you finally pull back, breaths mingling, your noses brushing.
“I don’t care about anything,” you whisper. “I only care about you.”
His eyes search yours, dark and vulnerable in a way you’ve never seen before. His thumb brushes over your lower lip, lingering, like he’s fighting the urge to kiss you again and losing.
“You make this so hard,” he murmurs.
“Sorry” you reply quietly.
He lets out a breath that sounds like surrender. His forehead drops to yours, his eyes closing briefly as if he’s bracing himself for the weight of what he’s about to say next.
He opens his eyes then, and they’re wet now, shining dangerously. “I didn’t think I’d survive watching you look at me like this every day. Like I was your future.”
Your heart twists painfully.
“You are my future,” you say without thinking.
The words hang in the air, fragile and terrifying.
He shakes his head immediately. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?” you demand, voice cracking. “Because it scares you?”
“I can’t promise you anything,” he says sharply, desperation bleeding through his restraint. “I can’t promise you years. I can’t promise you safety. I can’t even promise you tomorrow.”
He gestures vaguely to his chest, frustration and fear tangled together. “My body could fail me at any point. I live knowing that. I didn’t want you living like that too.”
You step closer, until there’s barely any space left between you.
“I would’ve chosen it,” you whisper. “If you’d told me, I would’ve chosen you anyway.”
His breath stutters.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” you say fiercely. “Because I already did. Every night you turned away, every morning I woke up hoping you’d look at me differently. I stayed even when I didn’t understand why you were pulling away.”
Your voice softens, trembling. “Do you know how much it hurts to feel unwanted by the person you love?”
He winces like you’ve struck him.
“I never didn’t want you,” he says immediately. “God, Y/n, that was the problem.”
Silence falls again, thick and heavy.
You wipe at your tears with the back of your hand, inhaling shakily. “Then say it,” you challenge quietly. “Say what you were so afraid to say.”
He stares at you, chest rising and falling unevenly, like he’s standing at the edge of something irreversible.
“I was afraid,” he admits finally. “Afraid that if I let myself love you the way I wanted to, it would destroy me when I leave.”
“When you die?” you whisper, hating the word even as it leaves your mouth.
His face tightens, but he nods once.
Your knees feel weak again. You reach out instinctively, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, grounding yourself against him.
“And the wedding?” you ask suddenly, voice trembling with the weight of the question. “Will you— will you not—”
He doesn’t let you finish.
“I will marry you, Y/n.”
The certainty in his voice steals your breath.
He cups your face gently, thumbs brushing your cheeks where tears keep falling, like he’s memorizing the shape of you, like he’s afraid this might be taken from him too.
“I will marry you,” he repeats, softer now. “Not because I have to. Not because anyone expects me to. But because I want to. Loving you is the one thing in my life that feels real.”
Your lips tremble. “Then why were you pushing me away?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, voice breaking. “maybe because I have limited time.”
Something inside you shatters completely at that.
You press your forehead to his chest, listening to his heartbeat, strong and terrifying and precious all at once. Your tears soak into his shirt as you sob quietly, fingers gripping him like if you let go, he might disappear.
Jongseong wraps his arms around you tightly, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other firm at your waist. He holds you like he’s afraid the world might steal you away too.
“I didn’t want to give you a life full of hospitals and waiting rooms,” he murmurs into your hair, his palms caressing your back slowly. “I didn’t want to be the reason you’re scared all the time.”
You pull back just enough to look at him, eyes red and swollen. And then press your face against him again.
His breath catches.
“If I miss someone the most in this world,” he says suddenly, voice thick with emotion, “then it is my grandma.”
You still, listening.
“She wanted to see me grow up. Be successful. Be happy.” His lips tremble as he speaks. “She wanted to share her blessings with my future wife.”
He swallows hard. “But she couldn’t. She didn’t get to see any of it.”
Your heart aches as he continues, voice barely holding together.
“If she’d be here, you would love you,” Jongseong’s voice cracks, but he lets out a melancholic laugh through it. It cracks, brings water to his eyes.
He lets out a shaky breath, eyes dropping to look at you.
“I...” His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you, Y/n.”
Your chest tightens painfully.
“I love you,” he repeats, like he needs to hear himself say it. You bring your head up to see him again. A tear slips past his cheeks, enhancing his now flushed features. Jongseong’s breath hitches, “I’m sorry for being a bad fiancé, I’m sorry I made you doubt. But I love you, god, I do.”
A broken laugh slips out of you through your tears.
“I love you enough that it hurts,” he continues, pressing his forehead to yours. “And I should have said this sooner to you.”
You cup his face with both hands, thumbs brushing away the tears he’s finally letting fall.
“It’s okay,” you whisper, smiling through tears, “Just don't love me halfway anymore.”
He nods slowly, eyes closing as he leans into your touch. “Then stay,” he murmurs. “Even if it’s scary.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” you say, echoing your words from this morning, but now they carry weight. Promise. Choice.
He kisses you then. Again. Not desperate like last night. Not restrained like before. But full and trembling and honest, like he’s finally stopped running from the truth.
And when he holds you afterward, arms tight and protective, you don’t care about anything else in this world.
Park Jongseong has finally kissed you, heck, he's even holding you. And even if he can't do that forever, it’s all that you ever wished for.
EPILOGUE
The wedding does not feel like how weddings are described in stories.
There is no loud music spilling into the street, no crowd pressing in on every side, no overwhelming spectacle. It is small, intimate to the point of fragility, held in the quiet hall of an old heritage house on the outskirts of the city, where the windows are tall and the light filters in pale and gentle, as if even the sun is careful not to intrude too loudly on something this delicate.
Both your families wanted a huge crowd, too many heads to feed in the wedding; but much to their bad luck, Jongseong had stood his ground. He’d said it calmly, without raising his voice, without the sharp edge he used when he was tired or in pain. He didn’t want a stage. He didn’t want a day that felt like it belonged to everyone except the two of you. He wanted something small enough to breathe in. Something that wouldn’t exhaust him before the vows were even spoken, that would feel like yours.
So here you are.
The guest list is trimmed down to the people who matter, the people who know—at least partly—what this day costs him and what it means. There are no distant relatives you barely recognize, no business acquaintances pretending this is a celebration more than a formality.
Except Sunghoon brought in his whole friend group back from his college days, to which Jongseong knew he couldn’t say no to.
Your mother had argued, of course. His family had too. There were expectations. But Jongseong had only said, “Y/n doesn’t want crowds, and I want us to live our wedding day and not rehearse it.” And that had been the end of it.
The hall is simple. Old wood floors that creak softly under careful steps. White fabric draped along the walls. A narrow aisle lined with lilies that smell clean and faintly sweet. The kind of place that feels more like a promise.
You stand at the far end of the aisle, hands folded in front of you, trying to steady your breathing.
Your dress is lighter than you expected it to be, the fabric falling in soft lines instead of stiff layers. You wanted something you could move in. Something that wouldn’t weigh you down. Something that felt like you. The veil brushes your shoulders, and for a moment you close your eyes, just to take it in.
This is real.
When you open them, you see him.
Jongseong is already at the front, standing beside the officiant, posture straight but not rigid. He looks.fragile, in a way that makes your chest tighten. The suit fits him perfectly, but you can see the faint signs of fatigue he never quite manages to hide. The slight hollowness beneath his eyes. The careful way he holds himself, like he’s measuring his energy even now.
And still, when he looks at you, everything else falls away.
His expression changes the moment your eyes meet. The tension in his shoulders eases, just a little. His lips part, like he forgot to breathe for a second. There’s something raw there. Something open. Something that makes your throat ache.
You start walking.
Each step feels slow, because your body seems to understand the weight of this moment better than your mind does. The quiet hum of the room wraps around you. You’re vaguely aware of people watching, of soft movements, of the way the light catches in the tall windows, but mostly, there’s just him.
With every step, memories rise up uninvited.
The distance that used to sit between you like a wall. The silence. The nights you lay awake wondering what you had done wrong. The day you found the papers. The way his voice broke when he said he was dying. The way he looked at you like he was both terrified and relieved that you knew.
And then the nights after that. The long talks. The quiet understanding. The way he started reaching for you again, slowly, like he was relearning how to trust himself with your heart.
You stop in front of him.
Up close, you can see the way his hands are clasped together, fingers tight, knuckles pale. You can see the faint tremor in his breath. But you can also see the way his eyes soften when he looks at you, like you are the only steady thing in a world that keeps shifting under his feet.
For a moment, neither of you speak.
The officiant clears their throat gently and begins, their voice low and respectful, as if they, too, understand that this is not a day for grand speeches. The words drift around you—about love, about commitment, about choosing each other not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.
“In sickness and in health” lands heavier than the rest.
Your fingers twitch at your sides, and Jongseong notices. His gaze flickers to your hands, then back to your face, and he gives you the smallest nod. Like he’s reminding you. Like he’s reminding himself. We’re here. We’re still here.
When it’s your turn to speak, your heart is hammering so hard you’re afraid your voice will shake.
But when you look at him, really look at him, the words come out steadier than you expect.
His eyes shine, but he doesn’t look away.
When it’s his turn, he swallows hard before speaking.
“I spent a long time trying not to want this,” he admits. “I thought distance would protect you. I thought if I didn’t let you get too close, it would hurt less when…” He stops, breath catching, then continues more softly. “When I leave. I was wrong. All I did was waste time I could have spent loving you properly.”
His voice steadies, just a little.
“I can’t promise you forever. I wish I could. But I can promise you honesty. I can promise you every day I’m given. I can promise you that as long as I’m here, you won’t face anything alone.”
Your eyes burn, but you don’t look away.
When the rings are exchanged, his fingers linger around yours, like he’s afraid of letting go even for a second. When he leans in to kiss you, it’s gentle, unhurried. Not a performance. Not for the room. Just for you.
And when the officiant declares you married, there’s no thunderous applause. Just soft clapping. Warm smiles. A quiet, collective exhale.
The room exhales around you, a collective softening now that the vows have been spoken and the weight of them has settled into something real. There’s a quiet shuffle of movement as people begin to rise from their seats, the soft murmur of congratulations beginning to bloom through the hall. The light shifts as a cloud passes outside, turning the windows briefly dimmer, then bright again.
Jongseong’s hand is still wrapped around yours.
His palm is warm, his grip a little too tight, like he’s anchoring himself to the reality of this moment. You squeeze back, a silent reassurance, and he looks down at you with something fragile and bright in his eyes. Relief, maybe. Or disbelief that he’s actually here, standing beside you, that the day did not break apart before it could begin.
“You okay?” you whisper, leaning in so only he can hear.
He nods. “Yeah. Just… give me a second.”
You recognize the tone. The carefulness. The way he’s learned to pace himself, even in moments meant to be joyful. You don’t press. You just stay close, your shoulder brushing his arm, your presence a quiet support rather than a demand.
The officiant steps aside, offering you both a small, gentle smile. Someone from the back laughs softly—Sunghoon, probably—trying to cut through the heaviness with something familiar. Your mother wipes at her eyes, her expression torn between pride and worry. His family watches him closely, too closely, like they’re counting his breaths without realizing it.
You and Jongseong take a step forward together.
The motion is small, but you feel the shift in his balance immediately. It’s subtle, you feel it in the way his fingers tighten around yours, in the way his shoulder brushes yours a little harder than before.
“Jongseong?” you murmur.
“I’m fine,” he says automatically, the words practiced. He gives you a faint smile, the kind he uses when he doesn’t want to worry you. “Just stood up too fast.”
You search his face. The color has drained a little, leaving him paler than before. There’s a sheen of sweat at his temple that wasn’t there moments ago. Your chest tightens with a familiar, creeping fear.
“Do you want to sit for a bit?” you ask quietly. “We can—”
“I don’t want to sit,” he replies, more firmly than you expect, though his voice is still gentle. “I want to walk out with you. Just… slow, okay?”
So you walk slowly.
Each step is measured, careful. The old wood floor creaks beneath your feet, a soft, grounding sound. The lilies lining the aisle blur in your peripheral vision. You keep your attention on him, on the steady rise and fall of his chest.
His inner world feels loud in a way you can almost sense without him saying anything. There’s a stubborn pride in him, a refusal to let this moment be overshadowed by his body’s limits. He has fought for this day. He has insisted on being here, standing, choosing this with you. The thought of needing help, of letting weakness show in front of everyone, presses against something old in him.
And yet, even as he tries to hold himself together, there is a quieter fear threading through him. A whisper that this might be too much. That joy, even when it is gentle, still costs him something.
Your own thoughts are no less tangled.
Part of you is floating, still wrapped in the soft glow of being married, of hearing him say vows that felt like a promise against the dark. Another part of you is coiled tight with worry, hyper-aware of every change in his breathing, every slight falter in his step. Loving him has taught you this strange duality, how joy and fear can exist side by side, neither fully eclipsing the other.
You reach the middle of the aisle.
There’s a soft ripple of applause, gentle and restrained, as people make space for you to pass. Someone murmurs congratulations. Someone else whispers his name, concern threading through the sound. The room feels warmer than before, or maybe that’s just your nerves making everything feel too close.
Jongseong exhales, long and slow.
“I’m glad we did it like this,” he says under his breath. “Small. Quiet.”
You smile up at him, though your heart is beating too fast. “Me too.”
His gaze lingers on you, something tender and aching in it, like he’s trying to hold onto this exact version of you in this exact moment. Married. Here. Alive in front of him.
“You look…” he trails off, then shakes his head slightly, eyes glues on yours. “You look like something I don’t deserve.”
You start to protest, but the words die in your throat when you feel his grip falter.
It’s subtle at first, the tension in his fingers loosening, his hand slipping slightly in yours. His step stutters. His breath catches.
“Jongseong?” you say, louder now.
The room seems to tilt.
For a second, he’s still standing, eyes unfocused, like he didn’t expect this to happen now, of all times. His inner world fractures in that moment.
“I’m okay,” he tries to say, but the words come out wrong, thin and unconvincing.
Then his knees buckle.
The world lurches forward in a rush of motion and sound. You feel his weight shift suddenly, too heavy, too fast. Your grip tightens instinctively as you reach for him, calling his name as the room erupts into startled gasps, chairs scraping back, someone shouting for help.
Your arms wrap around him as he falls, your body bracing against the impact, heart slamming painfully against your ribs.
“Jongseong—!”
The lilies blur into white streaks at the edge of your vision. The quiet hall fractures into chaos, voices overlapping, footsteps rushing closer. You sink to the floor with him, cradling his head against your chest, your hands trembling as you search his face.
His eyes are half-lidded, breath shallow but there, still there. His brow is drawn, like he’s fighting to stay with you.
“Stay with me, please,” you whisper, the words pouring out like a plea. “A-Always” Jongseong breaths out.
Around you, the room is a blur of motion and worry, but your world has narrowed to the feel of his weight in your arms, the fragile warmth of his skin against yours, the uncertain rhythm of his breathing.
AUTHORS NOTE hello hello again! thank you so so much for reading this all the way and making it through here 💗 i decided for the ending to be open because making jay pass away would be too sad and i couldnt think of any other endings 😞 so for my angst ending haters, you can just pretend that the epilogue never happened!!! phew, its finished and i definitely took way more time than i should've, but like i was sooo confused on this one. anyways, please let me know how it was and reblog to support! see you in my next long fic 😛
⇢ synopsis : Although you share a friend group, you and Sunwoo have never been friends. Not even close. Between sharp words and colder stares, he's always been the last person you thought you could lean on.
But when the night shatters and the truth about your boyfriend cuts too deep, it's his voice you hear in the dark.
And suddenly, hating him isn't so simple anymore.
⤿ word count : 5.1k
⇢ pairings : kim sunwoo x reader
⇢ genre : angst/comfort
⇢ other tags : love/hate, a lot of hatred, no use of y/n, gender neutral reader insert, not exactly unrequited love, toxicity in a way, they're both miserable.
⇢ warnings : morally ambigous characters, swearing, mentions of cheating.
⤿ cross posted on ao3!
Standing near your friends in the living room of some guy you don’t really know, music pulses around you, but it feels distant, like you’re underwater. Laughter and chatter fill the space, but it’s hollow, artificial, a sharp contrast to the ache twisting in your chest. And then you see it again, your boyfriend, laughing a little too closely with someone else, lipstick smudged on both their faces, the look in their eyes unmistakable. Heat rises to their cheeks as cold spreads through your stomach. It’s real, you’ve been betrayed.
You turn back to your friends with hope that someone would catch what’s happening, all in vain. Seeming too distracted by this stupid conversation they’re having, no one notices the shift in your attitude. Suddenly it feels like nothing matters anymore, you’re lonely, so lonely that you can’t even notice how one of them has been watching you, too closely, like he’s been waiting for the moment you’d finally break. You never really notice him anyways, it’s not like you were friends, he’s too annoying, too mean, never showed you a hint of kindness, even though you’ve known him for a few years. He was your friends’ friend, not yours. He was just… there.
You move through the crowd without really seeing anyone, the warmth of the room only highlighting the cold clawing at your insides. Every joke, every sip of laughter, feels like salt on a wound you can’t heal. Finally, you hear Chanhee call out to you, voice full of concern, but you barely hear him.
The cold breeze hits like a slap the second the door swings behind, the muffled bass of the party thumps faintly through the walls. The night pressing down, dark and cold, wrapping around you like a cloak. The street is quiet, and for a moment you just let yourself breathe, letting the tears slip freely, cheeks streaked with the remnants of mascara on your lashes. Everything feels too sharp, too heavy. Your heartbreak, your anger, disbelief. You can’t even think straight, nor comprehend how quickly your world has twisted.
Of course it had to happen here. Of course you had to find out in the middle of a party, where every pair of eyes felt like they were on you. And of course it was him you ran into when you thought you’d gotten far enough to breathe. He was there, outside. Not talking, not saying a word yet, just standing, watching. His expression is unreadable at first, but there’s a tension in his shoulders, a tightness in his jaw that you don’t seem to notice.
And somehow, by just being there, he pulls you back from the edge of your own chaos, though you don’t know if it's comfort or confrontation you’re about to face.
“Didn’t think I’d catch you sneaking out like this.” His voice came sharp, too sharp, like he had been waiting to find you outside.
You couldn’t look at him, you just dug your nails into your sleeves. “Sunwoo seriously, don't start.”
He tilted his head, smirking like always, but it cracked, just slightly at the edges. “I’m not starting anything. I’m… checking.”
That answer made you snap towards him, eyes stinging, mouth twisting bitter. “Since when do you check on me?”
For once, he didn’t shoot back immediately. His hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders tense against the glow of the street lights. “Since now, I guess.”
You scoffed, turning back towards the road, away from the heat in his eyes. “You’re unbelievable. You spend all of your time finding new ways to piss me off, and the second I can’t even hold it together you suddenly care?” Your voice broke but you pushed through it. “Don’t play hero, not with me.”
His jaw clenched hard enough you heard the grind of his teeth. “You think I'm doing this for fun?”
“I should’ve seen it coming, I should’ve known.” You can’t stop the tears anymore, they pour down, warm. “Everything I trusted, everything I thought we had, it’s all bulshit! He fucking lied to me and I only have myself to blame, and I can’t even explain how much this hurts.” Your voice breaks again, and the cold night swallows the rest.
You look back at him, trying to figure out what kind of emotion you’re perceiving in his eyes. “And here you are too. Always so damn hard on me, always hating me for everything, and–”
He swears, running a hand down his face, frustrated. He shakes his head, “Stop talking like that.”
“Why? I thought you liked seeing me miserable.” You shot back, voice sharp, ugly with the tears you tried to hold in. He stepped closer before stopping himself, shaking head “You don’t get it.”
“Then explain it to me,” you snapped, anger bubbling up to hide the ache in your heart. “Explain why you act like you hate me until it’s convenient for you to swoop in. Why the fuck do you care right now?”
For a second, he looked like he might actually answer. His mouth opened, then closed, his tongue pressing against his cheek like the words were fighting their way out. Instead, he muttered, low, almost to himself. “Because I do.” The words don’t come clean, not fully, but they’re between anger, frustration, the care he can’t admit.
You blinked, thrown off, before shaking your head furiously “Don’t. Don’t twist this. I can’t.” Your breath hitched as tears finally spilled over, hot against the freezing air. “I can’t do this right now.” Looking up through the tears, the cold bites harder as he paces in front of you.
“I hate you.” You spit suddenly, shaking your head. “I hate everything about this night. I hate him, I hate myself for not seeing it happening, I hate you for standing here, for caring, for…”
“Good.” He snaps back. “Good, I hate it too. I hate that he got anywhere near you. I hate that you think any of this is your fault. I hate that I care enough to stand there and lose my mind over this.”
The silence after that is long, broken only by your ragged breaths, and the distant thump of the party. He’s staring, chest heaving, and for a fraction of a second, the sharpness of his hate mixes with something rawer. Something dangerous, soft and entirely unspoken.
He hands you his jacket, and you shove it at him without thinking. “Go back inside.” You mutter, still crying, still shivering. “Leave me alone.”
He doesn’t move, just stares. “Yeah… sure,” he says finally, voice tight. “Go ahead. Freeze your ass off. But I'm not going back there.”
You turn away from him, arms wrapping tighter around yourself like you were trying to hold the pieces of your heart together. Behind you, Sunwoo faintly mutters something you can’t hear over the wind, and then… silence. Just the cold night, the music, and the pounding of your own heart.
You can’t stop yourself. "I hate you,” you whisper again, the words trembling, raw. “I hate that you’re here. Fuck, i even hate that probably need you right now.”
He flinches at the last part, jaw tightening, hands clenching at his sides. “I hate you too.” He spits, voice low and harsh. “I hate you for making me do this. For standing there, broken and expecting me to… I don’t know… just do nothing?”
Tears sting your eyes, hot and relentless. “I hate you for leaving me with him. I hate that I came out there crying, and now I'm just yelling at you, and I–”
“Stop.” His voice is sudden, cutting through the chaos. “I wish I could just… fix this for you, I hate that you think that you’re the reason it happened.”
“I hate that you’re seeing me like this,” was the only thing you could say.
“I’m sick of hearing you blame yourself. I’m sick of it. He’s the one who’s wrong. Not you. Not for crying. Not for feeling. Not for anything.” A shiver shakes you, half from the cold and half from the intensity of his presence, furious and raw. You whisper, “I hate that you’re making me feel like I'm losing my mind even more.”
He opened his mouth, trying to voice out his thoughts, but he stopped abruptly. Jaw tight, breathing uneven, because the words he wants to say would ruin everything if he allowed them to come out.
You clutch your jacket tighter around your body, shaking, salty tears running to your lips. “I hate you so much.” you mumble again, softer this time, but it cuts through deeper. “I hate you for making me feel like I can’t even breathe without hating everything.”
He freezes, a tight exhale slipping through his teeth. “Yeah…” he mutters, voice rough, close to a whisper. “Yeah, me too.”
The wind swirls around you, biting and cold, and all at once the night feels like it’s pressing in from every side. You’re both trembling, not just from the cold, and neither of you can look away, neither of you can stop saying it. The hate, the fear, the unspoken… it’s all tangled together, impossible to separate.
Shivering more from the sting in your chest than the cold, the silence stretches. Sunwoo doesn’t move for a painfully long moment, he just watches. Then, slowly, he shifts, steps closer, though he keeps a careful distance. His voice comes out low, hesitant. “I… didn’t mean to–”
You flinch at the sudden sound cutting the silence, spinning slightly, but not enough to face him. “Of course you didn’t,” you mutter. “Everything’s your fault, huh?”
“No,” he snaps too quickly, then swallows .”Not… not everything.” His hands ball into fists again at his sides. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.”
You let out a humorless, shaky laugh. “Hurt me? You’ve been torturing me for months.”
“I know,” he admits quietly. “I know I've been a…” He pauses, voice cracking slightly. “... a jerk. But I–” He stops again, frustrated with himself, a frustration sharpened by the cold, by your silence, by everything he’s too stubborn to say.
You squeeze your jacket tightly, shoulder trembling. “Wow, big apology. Really fixing everything.”
He swears under his breath, and then, softer, he mutters: “I’m sorry. For… for being hard on you. For not noticing sooner. For letting him–”
“...Letting him what?” He doesn’t answer. It’s not a full apology. It’s not a confession. But it’s there, he’s admitting, in his own way, that he’s been wrong. That he cares more than he wants to. That the anger and sharpness, the hate he’s been throwing at you, is tangled up with something completely different.
You swallow, heart thudding. And for a moment, the world feels like it’s shrinking to the space between the two of you. The bitter wind, the dark night, the quiet thump of music inside. But the tension softens, just a fraction, the edge of hate still there, but it now tastes like a mix of something else. Something dangerous. Something that sounds like affection.
A moment of silence appears again, but this time it’s not empty. It’s heavy with all the words that were said and the ones neither of you can say. The wind bites through your clothes, the cold stinging like every misstep you’ve ever made, and yet, somehow, standing there doesn’t feel quite as suffocating.
He shifts again, his sneakers scraping against the pavement. “I didn’t mean to… make you feel like I was hating you.” You bite your lip, “Yeah, well. It sure felt like it.”
“I know,” he says. “I was an asshole. I’m still… I don’t know, I can’t figure it out. I just… hate seeing you like this” He swallows hard. “I hate everything about him being… him being the one who–”
“Stop. Just stop. You don’t get to make this about you. Or him. I already feel pathetic.” You manage to let these words out, half angry, half sobbing, twisting your hands in the folds of your jacket.
“God, stop blaming yourself.” His voice cracks like glass. He takes a step closer, and for a moment, you feel the weight of him there. His presence, solid and infuriating, pressing into the night. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and you didn’t deserve any of this.”
You blink through tears, shaking your head. “I hate that I thought I could just trust anyone. I hate that I let him in.” Your voice cracks as he responds, “Yeah, me too. I hate that I care this much.”
You want to look at him, you want to hate him for how much he sees you, for how much he knows, for how much he cares. And yet, you can’t. So you finally turn around, hesitating. His eyes are dark, restless and somehow, soft, in a way that doesn’t fit the rest of him. He steps closer again, close enough that you can feel the heat of him despite the cold breeze. “But… It's okay to be a mess. It’s okay to cry.” He swallows hard before continuing, “It’s okay to lean on me, even if you hate it.”
You blink, chest tight, “I don’t know if I can.”
“Then don’t.” He mutters sharply, although there’s something in his eyes, something soft, almost pleading. “Just don’t push me away. Not now. Not after all this.” You look down, letting out a desperate sigh, ashamed of your tears, your anger. “I just feel miserable.”
“I know that this is embarrassing in a way, and I hate that you think you have to hide it. I hate everything about this… but I don't hate you. Not really. Not like that”
These last words hang between you, fragile, strange. You’re both so close, even if neither of you moves. The walls you’d built, the hate, the sharp edges of every argument, they’re still there, but they’re softer now.
And then, almost without thinking, you step a fraction closer, trembling. He doesn’t move away. Neither of you speaks. You let your head drop slightly, and he hesitates, hands twitching at his sides. The world narrows to the two of you. The cold, the dark, the jagged space between space and words. And in that silence, in that moment, you realize something fragile and terrifying: maybe you don’t hate each other as much as you thought.
He exhales sharply, finally lowering his guard for a moment. “Do you… want a hug?” He asks softly, voice rough, awkward.
“...Yeah.”
In a slow, painful movement, you let him come closer. Arms wrap around you, not quite perfectly, trembling, but enough. Enough for both of you to feel it. The shared weight of everything that’s happened during this cold night. The anger, the embarrassment.
His arms tighten around you when your sobs turn into something harsher, rawer. Like you needed him to finally let go of the burden you’ve been carrying the whole night. It hits him then, how vulnerable you feel against him, how broken you are. How much he’s added to that weight. Every sharp word, every glare, every time he could’ve reached out but didn’t. It floods back in waves that choke him. He squeezes his eyes shut, swallowing down the guilt clawing its way up his throat.
“I shouldn’t have–” His voice cracks, burying his face in your hair as if hiding will make it easier to say. “God, I’ve been such an asshole to you.”
Clutching the fabric of his shirt like it’s the only thing keeping you grounded. “Don’t,” you whisper, “Don’t say that now. Please.”
He wanted to say more, he needed to, but he wasn’t strong enough. Not when you were falling apart in his own arms. He pulls back, just enough to see your tear-streaked face. His thumb almost lifts to wipe the wetness away, but he freezes, like he’s not sure if he has the right.
And then it happens. It’s not gentle, not clean. Just a slow press of lips against lips, soaked in tears and shaking hands. A kiss that’s less about desire and more about breaking. His mouth tastes like an apology, like regret, like everything he’s never said but always meant.
You kiss him back, because you’re drowning, because you need something, anything, to anchor yourself. The tears don’t stop. They smear across your skin, between your lips, making the kiss taste like grief. There’s no heat, no spark. It’s devastation dressed as closeness.
When you pull apart, breathless and ruined, he stares at your face like the sight of you might crush him. His hand lingers near your face, before he lets it fall. “I’m sorry.” He says, hoarse. The words digging a knife straight into your chest. “I shouldn’t have done that. Not when you’re like this.” Guilt tripping from every syllable escaping his soft lips.
His apology makes you feel worse. You crossed a line, you dragged him into this mess along with you. “It’s not your fault I just… I shouldn’t have–” You can’t finish, because no matter what you say, it will sound wrong.
The silence that follows is unbearable. The kiss still burns between you, like a wound that won’t close. It’s heavy, wrong and desperately right all at once. You both stand there for a moment, a quietness so thick you could choke on it. Neither of you knows what to say.
Finally, he clears his throat, low and rough. “We should get you out of the cold You’re freezing”
You laugh, but it comes out hollow, “Yeah. Like that’s what matters right now.” He doesn’t bite back this time. He just looks at you, tired, eyes rimmed red from his own held-back emotions. He shrugs off his jacket, tugging it around your shoulders without asking. The gesture is clumsy, almost too gentle compared to the harshness of this night.
Neither of you speaks as you walk back towards the dim glow of the house, your footsteps crunching over damp grass. The muffled bass of the party grows louder, voices spilling out into the night. For a second, it feels impossible. Like you’re going to step back into a world where none of this happened, where you’re supposed to laugh and pretend you didn’t just shatter outside.
He must feel it too, because when you reach the porch steps, he mutters, “You don’t have to go back in. I’ll get your things. We’ll leave.”
You don’t argue. You don’t want to face anyone, least of all the people who might mention your boyfriend’s name, his face, the reason your heart feels like it’s bleeding out. So you just nod, letting Sunwoo handle it.
Minutes later, you’re in his car, the silence heavier than the night air. You stare out the window, eyes burning, trying not to break again. He grips the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are slowly turning white. Every few seconds, he glances at you with parted lips, like he wants to say something but swallows it back.
When he pulls up in front of your place, the reality of being alone crashes over you. The thought of stepping into your room, of lying in your bed with the echoes of tonight pressing down on you, everything just makes your chest cave in.
So your voice comes out small, scared. “Can you… stay?”
He blinks, startled, and you rush to clarify, a burning feeling in your throat. “I just don't feel like being by myself tonight”
There’s a pause, so long you regret asking. But then he nods, quietly. “Yeah. I’ll stay.”
The door shuts behind you with a soft thud, the sound almost too loud in the thick quiet that follows. The faint hum of the city outside feels far away, like the world has been sealed off. You drop your bag near the wall and hesitate in the narrow entryway, hands shaking as you pull off your shoes. He doesn’t move, shoulders hunched like he’s debating whether to leave right back out of it.
“Do you want some water?” You ask like you’re on autopilot, searching for something normal to say or do, something that makes sense.
He shakes his head. “No, thanks.”
He follows you into your room like he’s not sure if he’s allowed, every step reluctant. Neither of you go for bed. Too personal. Instead, you just slide down against the nearest wall. The plaster feels cold at your back, his silence even colder.
He lingers in the doorway like he doesn’t belong, shifting on his feet before finally sliding down besides you. Sitting on the floor with a careful gap, like he doesn’t want to crowd you, to pressure you.
The silence settles heavy, pressing against your chest until you want to crawl out of your skin. You don’t look at him, you keep your eyes on your knees, hands gripping the fabric of your pants so tightly your knuckles ache.
He clears his throat once, then again, like he wants to speak but can’t find the strength to pour his heart out. An awkward silence stretches until it starts to hurt. Suddenly, your breath catches, tears spilling before you can’t try to stop them.
You try to be quiet, but the shaky sound of your breathing gives you away, the feeling of his presence breaking your heart. His head turns instantly. You swipe at your cheeks too late, muttering something under your breath, but it’s useless.
In this moment, the sight of you was enough to break him in half. His hand flexes against his knee, hovering like he wants to reach out. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
You laugh at his statement, the sound brittle. “You didn’t. I just can’t stop.”
That does it, his whole body stiffens, like he’s holding something back. And then you notice it. Just a flicker at first, his eyes red, the subtle quiver in his jaw. He’s crying. Silently. Tears falling without permission, not daring to look back at you, not daring to reach for you.
You pause, heart thudding. A part of you wants to turn away, the other wants to reach out to him. But another part, fearful and confused, doesn’t know if you should. He’s been cruel, sharp, distant. Did he really care? Was this just misplaced anger or something else?
When you finally turn, cautiously, you see him fully: lips pressed into a small, stubborn pout, tears silently streaming down his cheeks as he stares at his hands. Vulnerable. Helpless. And somehow… honest.
For a moment you’re unsure what to feel. Shock. Confusion. The ache of your own betrayal. The pulse of something unfamiliar, hidden under years of him being mean.
He doesn’t meet your eyes. He doesn’t speak. He lets himself be seen like this, without defense, and it’s terrifying.
You reach out, unsure. Your hands brush against his arm, then move around him, pulling him closer into an unsteady hug. He presses into you, weight and heat and all the pent-up tension collapsing against your chest. Holding him tighter, you’re unsure if you should be comforting or if you should pull away. You can feel the heat of his tears seeping through your clothes, and it hits you with a strange sharpness, the one that tells you that he’s always been hiding all of this.
Unexpectedly, a quiet, broken voice escapes him. Hesitant, almost fearful. “I don’t know how to be like this. How to care without making it worse.”
“You...care?” The word feels heavy on your tongue.
He doesn’t answer right away, like the words might break him if he says them. When he lifts his head slightly, he says in a whisper, almost ashamed, “I think I always have. And I hated it. I hated myself for feeling it, for the way it made me act. I just didn’t know how to show it properly. So I tried to push you away.”
Something shifts inside you. All the times he was cruel, sharp, distant. It starts to make sense. No excuses, no justifications. Just a reason. A terrible, messy, human reason.
“I thought you hated me, and I hated you too for that.”
“I hated that I loved you, how it made me feel every time I was near you. It wasn’t true hatred, just… everything I've never known how to say.”
The weight of his confession settles in your chest. It’s messy. Confusing. A betrayal of your expectations.
The room is quiet but alive with the sound of his silent sobs and your shallow breaths. You hold him anyway, because somehow it feels necessary. Because maybe, in this strange, chaotic moment, holding him is the only way to acknowledge that you’re both broken. And maybe, just maybe, beginning to heal together.
Eventually, your tears taper off, leaving streaks on both your cheeks. You pull back slightly, still holding him, and notice the tension in his shoulder easing just a little. For the first time today, it feels like you both are breathing without drowning.
“I’m sorry for making this about me.” His thumb drags lightly over your arm. “I wanted to be there for you. That was the whole point. I just don’t know how to do this without… losing control”
You shake your head softly, brushing a hand on his damp hair. “You didn’t make it worse. Not really. And it’s okay, you’re human. I guess I tend to forget that sometimes.”
You both settle in silence again, leaning against each other like the burden of tonight has finally decided to rest. Minutes seem like hours, with only the faint sound of your own steadying breaths. The room feels warmer, the ache in your chest a little lighter.
After a long time, he whispers, “I don’t want you to be alone tonight.”
You swallow, nodding into his shoulder. “Then don’t go.”
And he doesn’t.
Time blurs after that. You don’t move to the bed right away, you sit there until your bodies ache from the floor, until exhaustion weighs heavier than grief. When you finally drag yourself up, he follows without hesitation.
You don’t talk about where he’ll sleep. There’s no pretending, no awkward negotiation. You just climb onto the bed, pulling the blanket up, careful to keep a little space between the both of you. It should feel strange. It doesn’t.
He sits on one side of the bed, hands in his lap, eyes flicking to yours but never holding contact for too long. You try to close your eyes, but your brain won’t stop. You lie there in silence, staring at the ceiling, mind spinning with images of your cheating ‘boyfriend’, of the betrayal that crushed you and the dread of facing tomorrow. You don’t want to bother him. Don’t want to say anything wrong or pull him back into your chaos. So you stay still, quiet, pretending you’re fine even though every nerve in your body is screaming for connection.
But the stillness, the mere proximity of him, becomes unbearable. Your chest tightens. You need it, the closeness. The warmth. The brush of someone who actually sees you right now, without judgment, without anger. But you don’t know how to ask. How to reach it without messing up the fragile peace you’ve built.
Slowly, tentatively, you inch closer, careful not to intrude. The movement is shy, awkward, a question more than a statement. He notices immediately. The corner of his mouth twitches, his shoulders shift, and almost instinctively, he leans in too. The space between you shrinks, until there’s nothing but a thin layer of air and shared heat.
For a long moment, you just look at each other, trying to read the world in each other’s eyes. The exhaustion, the grief, the unspoken confessions, the hidden feelings. They’re all there, unmasked.
His hand twitches, fingers brushing over his own pants, testing the courage to reach for more. Slow, trembling, he lifts a hand, fingertips ghosting across your cheek. The touch is feather-light, deliberate, yearning, like he’s been holding it back for too long. His thumb traces a line down, brushing the corner of your jaw, then pauses, hovering in question.
You close your eyes at the contact, letting yourself be a little selfish in your need for warmth and comfort. Relief, warmth, the ache of longing, all wrapped up in one small gesture. And without thinking, without permission even, you lean a little more into him, the smallest whisper of a sigh escaping your lips.
He mirrors you, tilting his head, pressing closer. The brush of his fingers against your skin, the heat of his body so near, erase some of the sharp edges of the night, just a little. It’s tender, but also messy, like neither of you really knows the rules for this, how to ask, how to receive.
Neither of you speaks. Words feel impossible, inadequate for the tangled mess of sadness, anger, longing and relief swirling between you. His hands moves again, brushing strands of hair back from your temple, fingers lingering at the nape of your neck. The contact sends a shiver down your spine. You hesitate, unsure if you’re allowed to crave this closeness, unsure if it’s fair to let him see how much you need him when you’re still raw from betrayal.
He must feel it too, you catch his gaze, glassy and vulnerable, realizing he’s been carrying this need, this longing, for as long as you’ve known him. The faintest quiver of his lips betray his own uncertainty, and suddenly, the mask of cruelty that has cloaked him seems almost laughable in the face of his quiet, desperate need.
“Can I..?” His voice is a whisper, uncertain. His eyes don’t leave yours, seeking, asking permission he doesn’t have the words to frame properly.
You nod, voice catching in a breathless sigh. “Yes.”
It’s not a romantic “yes,” not yet. It’s just permission to be human, to need, to lean, to touch without pretense. Slowly, almost painfully, he moves closer until your bodies are pressed together. Your arms wrap around him, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. He presses back, a low, almost inaudible hum vibrating against your chest.
You feel his heart beating, strong and irregular, mirroring your own. You stay like his, letting the quiet stretch between you like a fragile thread neither of you wants to snap. Then, he tilts his head, brushing his lips against the corner of yours. Not a kiss that speaks love, but a soft whisper of intimacy. His fingers tighten slightly at the nape of your neck, anchoring you, as you close your eyes, clutching his shirt.
The kiss fades as quietly as it started. The quiet acknowledgement in his grip says everything: he’s there, he’s holding you, and right now, that’s enough. You allow yourself to rest. Even if it’s just a little, clinging to him like it’s the only lifeline you have.
Outside the room, the world continues, chaotic and loud. But in this small cocoon of shared vulnerability, the night finally feels… bearable.
“Sunwoo, you’re going to rip this one too, with the way you’re being right now.”
pairing » the boyz kim sunwoo x fem!reader
trope/au » fwb!au, non-idol au
genre » suggestive!! with a hint of fluff, whipped (and wild) sunwoo
word count; estimated reading time » 1112; ~5 mins
warnings (lmk if i missed anything!) » pda (quite a lot of it: kissing, making out etc), public suggestive touching, allusions to s*x, allusions to dom/sub dynamics, pet names...? (brat), sunwoo implied to be physically bigger than reader
navi/masterlist!! 🤍 the boyz masterlist 🤍 ateez song mingi ver. 🤍 nct na jaemin ver.
ofc i couldnt' leave sunwoo out of this mix!!
There’s always a fluttering feeling when shopping with Kim Sunwoo; even though this is the first time you're shopping with him. You and Sunwoo aren’t friends, and you're not dating either. Dancing in the middle of the line becomes really exhilarating over time. After he leaves kisses all over your skin and your pretty sounds trapped in the four walls securely, Sunwoo coaxes you for more, and takes care of you to a whole other level.
For sure, the aftercare would be on par with the side of him that only you properly knew. He would caress your skin with gentle swipes on the places that he had before with a different force. His lips would occasionally replace his fingertips, lulling you into deep rest for the rest of the night. Sunwoo’s frame would be stuck onto you for the rest of the night, the crook of your neck tickled with his exhales and snores.
The next day, Sunwoo wouldn’t leave your side just yet. He would also take you out the day after, or if busy, as soon as he could. Usually, it's just to grab a drink or have brunch. But this time, it's non-negotiable from the way he treated your favourite top last night. The poor boy pouts that the crease between your eyebrows has never truly faded since last night. He tries to reason with you, saying that he would buy multiple different ones to convey how apologetic his drive was last night, but he knew it was all in vain. Even though the person who gave your favourite top was no one but Sunwoo himself, you had a special attachment to it as the memories crept up and made your cheeks heat.
“I’m sorry,” Sunwoo repeats once again. His arms secure your figure to him, pushing your back to his chest. Light kisses land on the side of your head, and you playfully roll your eyes at the overused phrase in the last twenty-four hours. “How long are you going to be mad at me?”
You could tell that the pout is still plastered on his lips, but you had no intention of letting it leave. You’re no longer mad at him; in fact, you were never really mad. Yes, you were upset because the top was so pretty and fit any occasion, but you knew that he didn’t do it on purpose, and last night was divine in more ways than one. You continue to ignore his presence, only crossing your arms across your chest as you keep focus on the changing numbers on the top of the elevator.
When you’re faced with the correct floor, you step out with Sunwoo stumbling behind you. He still follows closely behind you, complimenting your choices for most, whilst twisting a dissatisfied look for others. There were occasions when you would slip a few chuckles at his comments, and Sunwoo swept your figure to his arms, pulling you into a kiss.
“Took you a while,” you mumble against his lips.
An amused eyebrow rises from the boy. “If you wanted me to kiss you a long time ago, you could’ve just not acted like a brat.”
Oh, he did not just say that in public. Sunwoo knows the effect that the nickname had on you, and the bustling environment only made adrenaline rush through your veins even more. If it wasn’t for his sturdy grip, you would’ve probably been kneeling on the floor, hands all over his lower body.
As a retaliation, your palm hits his chest, and you escape from his warmth to aimlessly walk around the rest of the clothing racks. You’re so flustered by the looming presence behind you that you started to take random clothes that you knew you would never buy. Unfortunately, Sunwoo’s effect on you is so obvious that he couldn’t help but push your buttons even more; literally.
It’s only when you stop at a wall away from the majority of the crowd that Sunwoo becomes more daring. Your attempt to draw a breath stops halfway when his palm follows the lines from behind your waist to the front. His index finger follows his thumb under his clothes, which you only realise you had on. The bottom button that secures your skin from the public is no more, followed by the button on top of it. The need to suppress a moan fills your mind, but you couldn’t help but at least groan and instinctively step backwards towards him. Your hips push against his own, and you wrap your hand around his wrist that continues their ministrations up your chest.
“Stay still,” he rasps beside your ear. A finger hooks itself under the underband of your bra, and you gasp at his attempt to let your chest free in the open space. “Should I do it?”
You’re left breathless, tilting your head down low and seeing Sunwoo’s palm against your increasingly heating skin. You left his question hanging, because in this dynamic between you and him, he has full control within the boundaries that you consented to. He stays still, taking in your beauty below him. A nose nudges against the side of your neck, and it doesn’t take you long to realise the passionate pressure along with occasional swipes to soothe your skin.
You thought you reached your limit some time ago, but you knew you finally reached it when he turned you around and claimed your lips properly. His hand extends to grab a random top. As if he had it all planned out, with all the restraints he has left, he pulls you into the closest fitting room, where, by luck, had no workers supervising. The stall made for one became too small with both of you inside, but it didn’t stop how his shirt hit the floor and the way his skin glistened with the orange light of the room.
“I took this in the moment, but I think it would fit you well.” Sunwoo hovers the new top in front of your body, smirking and licking his bottom lip at the sight. The rest of the fabric covering your body is ripped, and he dresses you in the still tagged fabric.
He makes himself comfortable on the stool in the corner of the room before pulling you to straddle his lap. “Sunwoo, you’re going to rip this one too, with the way you’re being right now.”
“Hm, I’ll just buy it then,” he hums uninterestingly, trying to contain his entire body from not rushing anything with you. “And I guess I’ll just have to buy a new one for you to change and me to rip then.”
navi/masterlist!! 🤍 the boyz masterlist 🤍 ateez song mingi ver. 🤍 nct na jaemin ver.
join the taglist here » @k-films @kflixnet @starlit-network @kstrucknet @blossomnet @haneul-and-clouds @sunlightwoo @dearly-somber @cuppasunu
SYNOPSIS: There’s only one reason why you’d call Hyunjae this late at night, and it was always because of your asshole boyfriend. He’s sick of it. And as your best friend, he knew he had to do something about it.
CONTENT WARNING: fingering, cheating!!, dacryphilia, biting, best friend lhj, he might be a bit obsessive and crazy, all the men in your life are red flags :(
WORD COUNT: 2.6k
A/N: sorry for the long wait! i didn’t like how my first draft turned out so i had to rewrite everything from start to finish </3. tbh, i feel like i couldve also done better with this one but I feel like I've been putting this off for too long sooo.. anw this isn't beta read!
P.S. this was supposed to be cute and sweet but i cant help it !! (is it obvious i have a type)
It’s two in the morning when Hyunjae wakes from the ringing of his phone. It was you calling, of course, and there’s only one reason why you’d call at this time. Despite his body’s unwillingness to move, he forces himself to sit up and reach for his phone on the nightstand.
“Hello?” he answers, groggy from sleep. His voice is rough and his throat feels parched, but he forces himself to speak.
“Jae…”
The tone of your voice told him all he had to know, confirming his earlier suspicions. It was your boyfriend again, what else would he expect? You probably saw that dick at a bar with another girl and you needed Hyunjae’s comfort as your best friend.
Again.
“Do you want me to come over?” He asks, already standing up from his bed and heading over to the door. Hyunjae hears your sniffles through the phone as he swipes his motorcycle keys off the kitchen counter, tossing a leather jacket over his figure and slipping his feet into his shoes.
“Please?”
Hyunjae finds you swaddled in blankets when he enters your room, eyes puffy as tears run down your face. Even when you’re like this — sad and crying, he can’t help but think how beautiful you still looked. With your long, pretty lashes wet from tears and your pink lips swollen and red from the constant biting — to Hyunjae, you looked almost perfect.
He almost wished you'd never have another good day in your life.
Gently, Hyunjae calls out your name, taking slow and steady steps over to your bed. You don’t make any sign of acknowledging him as he sits next to you, keeping his silence. He patiently waits for you to say something first, pulling you into a hug as you cry into his chest.
This occurrence was something like a routine for the both of you.
It came natural to him to come over to your place, see you cry, and to comfort you. It was the same old thing over and over again. But weirdly enough, Hyunjae didn’t mind. In fact, he quite liked this little arrangement — liked that he could see up close how your face beautifully contorted as you cried to him.
Call him crazy or sadistic, but the way tears rolled down your face had always turned him on. Hyunjae found it hot when you’d heave and the breath got stuck in your throat, almost as if you were choking. He likes when you cling to him, scratching his back and biceps as he whispered in your ear. It’s sick how he fantasizes about you when he gets home — stroking his cock to the little sounds you made when you cry, but is it really his fault when you were just... so cute?
If only it wasn’t your boyfriend that made you cry. If only it was him. If only he could make you cry of pleasure and pain.
“I-I saw him with someone else again… at a bar.” You mumble, eyes distant as your hands gripped Hyunjae’s shirt. Seeing as you’ve calmed down enough to talk, Hyunjae pulls you closer and lets you lay your head on his thigh, stroking your hair as you tell him whatever the fuck your boyfriend did wrong again. “It was a different girl from last time.”
“Of course it is. You never learn, don’t you?” It slips out of his mouth before he realizes, and it takes Hyunjae a minute to compose himself before he meets your eyes once again. Only when he sees the tears brimming the corners of your eyes did he recognize his mistake, quick to console you. “Wait, no. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” you cut him off with a sigh, “you’re right, Jae. I really never learn. No matter how many times he breaks my heart, I still come running back to him.”
You cover your eyes with your arm, too afraid to see what face Hyunjae was making at your confession. “Even now, I still miss him. I mean… he was my first, you know? A-and he treated me well.” Feeling shameful, you turn away from your best friend’s figure, cheeks red as you curl yourself into a ball. Despite how embarrassed you feel with admitting that fact to your best friend, it was true. Younghoon took all your firsts, from being your first boyfriend, first kiss, and to your first fuck.
He took all of it.
That’s why it hurt so much when you saw him with another girl the first time. After that incident, he started being hot and cold. Younghoon was confusing. If he wanted something from you, he’d be all sweet and clingy, like when the both of you were new lovers. But after that, he’d be cold again, and you’d catch him out somewhere with a woman clinging to his side.
It was pathetic that you still wanted him with how many times you’ve fought from catching him red-handed — pathetic that even if he already wanted to break up, you kept clinging to him like a leech.
“Is that it..?” Hyunjae whispers, and a beat passes before you could bring yourself to answer.
‘What do you mea—”
“Is that really the only reason? Because he’s good at sex? Baby, of course he is. He’s good ‘cause he fucks everyone!”
“Jae, of course it’s not just—”
“Shit!” Hyunjae runs a hand over his hair, tossing you into the middle of your bed as he slips himself in between your legs. He pins you under his arms, bangs falling over his eyes as he stares you down. As your cheeks flush a rosy red from the proximity, you can’t deny the heat that ran through your body from the way he manhandled you. This side of him was unfamiliar, something that you’ve never seen before, but despite that, you didn’t feel scared.
You felt excited.
But you know you should push him away.
So you put your palm on his chest, trying to push him away but he doesn’t budge.
“Don’t you know how many times I had to hold myself back from pouncing on you like this?” You feel his breath fan over your lips, so close that just one wrong move and your lips would meet. “Don’t you know how hard it was to control myself — to stop myself from pinning you to this bed and fucking you till I can’t tell night from day?”
Your breath hitches in your throat from Hyunjae’s sudden confession, shocked as you stared back at his hooded eyes swirling with want and lust. The feelings of nervousness and excitement pounded in your heart, quickly forgetting about what it is you were crying about. All that ran through your mind right now was the man in front of you and the way he looked at you as if he could devour you whole.
Hyunjae shifts his head to the side of your neck, nose tickling your skin as he inhales your scent. His knee shifts closer to your core, hands sliding up your waist and teasing just beneath your chest
When you feel his lips kiss along the shell of your ear, your breath hitches, spine tingling with anticipation. This feeling was all too new to you. Never in your whole two years with Younghoon did he ever make you feel this way — this zoo running rampant in your stomach, this heat spreading all throughout your body, and the wetness between your legs.
Yes, Younghoon turned you on, but he never got you this wet and wanting — never had your toes curling and fists clenching your bedsheets from just a kiss.
“Tell me you want me,” he whispers, “and I’ll give it to you. I’ll give all of myself to you.”
The warmth of his hand slipping under your shirt elicits a gasp from your lips as you instinctively put a hand between the both of you, but despite you pushing on his chest, Hyunjae doesn’t move an inch. His bangs fall over your face as he continues to stare you down with lust, eyes dark as he waits for a signal, itching to finally move his hand and touch you like he did in dreams.
Although he technically still had to hold back so as to not scare you off, Hyunjae was already happy that he was even given a chance. This kind of scenario was one he never even thought would be happening in real life. He was convinced that you'd never even take a glance his way when you were so blinded with your (soon-to-be) ex-boyfriend. But here he was now in reality, relishing the feel of your smooth skin under his fingertips.
Once you say yes, Hyunjae will make it his life’s mission to fuck you so thoroughly you’d forget you were even in a relationship in the first place. He’d do you so, so well that you’d want to be his instead.
It’s when his fingers slowly trace over the tattoo right under your left chest that you finally speak, out of breath as you pull him closer by his shirt. The temptation in his lips, the lust in his eyes, and the hint of desperation in his voice was all it took to entice you. Like a man at sea to a mermaid's song, he lured you in.
“Yes, please just — fuck! I want you, Jae. I want you so so ba—”
Hyunjae doesn’t give you a chance to finish your sentence when he smashes his lips onto yours, selfish in taking each of your breaths for himself. He lets his greed consume him, pouring all the years of longing for you into this first kiss.
Ever since the day he first laid eyes on you back in high school, he knew it was over for him — knew that he just had to have you. But that stupid fuck just had to step in and ruin everything with his playboy charm, and little ol’ you were just quick to fall for Younghoon’s tricks.
With each bite, kiss, and suck on your neck, Hyunjae lets his jealousy overflow, painting splotches of red, blue, and violet all over your skin. When you gasp in pain, squirming in discomfort, he doesn’t stop, blinded by his selfish desires. You should’ve known Hyunjae was a greedy man — should’ve known that if you let him, he’d take and take and take.
He’ll take all that you can give him until you were wholly his. Be it mind, body, heart, and soul.
As Hyunjae’s lips creep lower and lower, his slender fingers find purchase onto the waistband of your pajamas, making quick work of it as he tosses the garment somewhere in your room. He presses a kiss below your navel before capturing your lips once more, heedless in the way he bites your lip and lets his teeth clash with yours. It was a kiss that only knew how to consume — a kiss that held years of want and desperation.
Hyunjae was unkind with his ways, unfair when he cups your heat and presses his fingers over the wet spot on the fabric of your panties. The smirk on his face was undeniable, you feel it in the way the corner of his lips curl upward when he steals one last peck. You were so turned on by him that it was almost embarrassing. You shouldn’t even be doing this when you're still committed, but once again, Hyunjae steals your attention away when he pushes your panties to the side and inserts a finger. The sudden intrusion catches you off guard, an uncomfortable feeling settling in your stomach.
“W-wait, ah!” your eyes roll to the back of your head when he puts another in. The stretch makes you squirm, the feeling almost unfamiliar with how long it’s been since you’ve had something bigger than your fingers in. Hyunjae looks at you from underneath his lashes, observing the way you’d react from each press and thrust of his hand. It almost looks as if he’s in his own world, drunk on the image of you laying beneath him.
Hyunjae’s pace starts off slow, each push of his finger careful and calculated as if testing the waters. When he sees a good response, he continues and when he senses a bad reaction, he finds a better technique. This continuous push and pull and his attention to detail earns him the realization that you liked it deep. You liked it when he plunges his digits to the knuckles and when his fingers tease your clit — like when he whispers the dirtiest and most vile things in your ear.
“You like that? Like when I fuck you with my fingers on the bed you share with your boyfriend?” a devilish smile plasters itself on his face when he feels your walls throb around his fingers, surprised by what just came out of his mouth. “Bet you’ve thought of it when you have sex with him. Have you moaned my name in front of him before, baby? Come on, say my name.”
“J-Jaehyun…” you choke out, but he doesn’t seem satisfied. With mischief sparkling in his eyes, Hyunjae curls his finger upward in a beckoning motion, hitting that one specific spot deep inside you that sends electricity rushing through your body.
“That’s not what you call me, angel, you know that.” his breath tickles your ear, sending a shiver down your spine. “Call me by the name you gave me.”
“A-ah, Hyunjae!” satisfied, he quickened his pace, hitting that one good spot over and over again. In the span of minutes, Hyunjae already knew your body like the back of his hand. He knew what made you feel good, the right pace, the right pressure, and the right words to say to get you off.
You’d even go as far to say he knew you better than Younghoon ever did.
Hyunaje’s fingers curl ever so slightly every time he thrusts the length of his fingers in you, pressing on that gummy spot inside your walls. Each moan that he pulls from your lips had him feeling giddy, forcing him to bite his lip to hide the growing smirk on his face.
“So good to me, baby. You gonna come? Gonna come for me like a good girl?”
“Yes, yes, yes, fuck—Jae..!”
And with one last thrust, your climax comes to you in a flash of white light, back arching into your best friend’s chest as he rides out your high, fingers circling your clit and lips pressing gentle kisses over your collarbone. It takes a minute for you to settle down, but Hyunjae waits patiently, gently massaging your thighs and waist as he cooed sweet nothings in your ear.
In the corner of your eye, you see him take the two digits he used on you in his mouth, sucking off the fluids from his hand. The taste of you on his tongue elicits a groan from his throat, sending shivers down your spine.
“You good?” he asks, smoothing both his hands over your body, “We could stop here if you want—”
“No!” it’s the way Hyunjae jolts that you realize your overreaction, and if you weren’t already blushing from what happened earlier, then you are now. God, if only a hole could open from the ground and swallow you whole right now. This might just be the most embarrassing moment of your life!
To make it worse, Hyunjae wasn’t even saying anything, he’s only staring at you with eyes wide like saucers. “I-I mean no… Let’s keep going, please?”
you were just supposed to be his assistant, but at some point, you'd come to mean a lot more to him.
6.4k words (WHOOPS my hand slipped), technically s2l, fluff, angst if u squint, slight pining?, kissing, model stuff and first world problems 😔✨, like one curse word, barely proofread
a/n: istg it wasn't supposed to be like this ;-; it would have been longer but i got impatient </3
Choi Chanhee once made a girl cry because she had forgotten his phone in the car. In his defense, he hadn't gotten much shuteye the night prior, but Kevin liked to always remind him of that instance.
They said that was the first, true moment the tabloids began painting him in a new light.
'Choi Chanhee, Model-zilla, Hits the Streets of Paris for Fashion Week Once Again'. 'Choi Chanhee's Ex-assistants Come Forward with Shocking Experiences'. 'Satin or Silk: the Truth Behind New's Refusal to Wear Alexander McQueen'.
The last one didn't even make sense; Alexander McQueen only used silk, anyway, and Chanhee had walked in one of his shows a few years ago. Chanhee simply hadn't the time to pen the designer into his schedule since.
The one about assistants? Well, they were all entitled to free speech, but that didn't mean that he would spare them any mercy if they decided to blatantly lie about him. He could always trust Lee Sangyeon, his personal attorney, to take care of business, if and when any of his ex-employees decided that a good payout was comparable to spewing filth.
Then there was you.
Chanhee hadn't needed a new assistant in a little over half a year since you came along. Fresh out of university with a bachelor's in communication and punctuality, you waltzed into his life, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. You'd sat across from him, no-nonsense; he hired you right there. (He had not regretted it since. This was the last time he would let anyone but himself do the interview process.)
The best part about you was not that you always had his schedule memorized before he did, or that you appeared at his apartment before the car picked you both up with his favorite coffee order, or that you actually had decent taste in perfume—not… that he paid attention to what perfume you wore—but it was the fact that you could look him in the eye when he spoke to you, and you to him.
"—and you have a fitting with Chanel at five o'clock this evening right after that meeting with Maison Margiela about the perfume line. We'll have just enough time to—"
Wow, your eyes were pretty in this lighting, he thought. The two of you sat before the massive, floor-to-ceiling window in his penthouse apartment. The entire city laid sprawling at your feet while you sat across from each other at his breakfast table, eating blueberry muffins and drinking lattes.
And for some reason, all he could think about was how nice your hair looked again today, how brilliantly the shine in your eyes was from the sunlight, how impeccable your fashion sense was—even if it wasn't perfect, but that could easily be remedied. Chanhee would have to remind you to remind him to—
"Chanhee. Chanhee, are you listening to me?"
He snapped out with a flutter of his long eyelashes. He reached for his cup of coffee, delicately bringing it to his lips. "Hm? Of course, Maison and then Chanel. Did Changmin cancel our dinner or are we still on?"
A smirk pulled at the corner of his lips when he saw how your expression lightened knowing that he was paying attention. You idly stirred your latte around with a little silver spoon. "He says he's still good to go for tonight. Same place, same time."
A nod. "Good."
He nudged up the Prada sunglasses on his nose as he turned his head slightly to gaze out the open window. It was an awfully beautiful day out today. The sunlight was gentle, the skies were an azure wave of silk, sewn with clouds of white. "Yn, dearest, are we clear until the Maison meeting?"
You blinked. "Yes," you answered, checking your watch for the hour, "it's 10:32 right now."
"Mm, that gives us about five hours to refresh your wardrobe."
Your lips parted, and he smiled in amusement. There was something so adorable about your flustered state. "Excuse me?"
"Call it a little token of my appreciation," he sang, standing up from the table to deposit his empty plate and cup into the kitchen sink. "Could you call the driver to round the front?"
"Oh, uh, sure—"
"Thanks, love. I'll be back in a few," he called to you just as he disappeared into his bedroom to freshen up. You were left at the breakfast table, dumbfounded. You'd only ever gone shopping with Chanhee for him or for someone else. Not you. You were always on the clock when you were with him, and you figured he would probably take everything you bought today out of your paycheck, but…
You couldn't deny the flutter of excitement in your chest like the wings of a butterfly. This could either be the best thing that happened to you… or a complete shitshow.
There was something odd about walking into one of Chanhee's go-to leisure shopping stores—Dior—with the mindset that you were supposed to be shopping for yourself. Chanhee had asked the driver to pull up to the Dior storefront even as the regular paparazzi camped outside.
Your eyes gazed longingly at the Macy's across the mall.
Chanhee followed your gaze with a little scrunch of his nose. "Absolutely not," he clicked his tongue, dragging you out of the vehicle and to the sidewalk.
The press already dubbed you a "miracle" for being in his employ for longer than a day. But when they got shots of him literally hauling you into the Dior… you could imagine what they would all claim now. This was going to be a whole lot of cleanup, but you had learned after months of working with Chanhee that he was way tougher than he looked. He also didn't mind biting back.
When the two of you were safely stowed away within the guarded interior of Dior, you breathed easier.
Straightening, you greeted the staff members with a shallow bow, who did the same to both you and your boss.
Chanhee wiggled his fingers in silent greeting, then beelined for a white, quilted blazer on a mannequin. A worker scrambled after him to talk about the piece while another stuck by your side to make small conversation.
"How was your morning?" They asked you pleasantly.
"Oh, it was quite nice! How was yours?"
"Pretty quiet," they smiled. They were about to say something else when both of you were interrupted with Chanhee calling your name.
His eyes were pinned to you from over the rim of his sunglasses. Draped over his arm was a tapered coat of some sort, a dress, and… oh, god no. "Yn, come here."
You could already hear your wallet crying. "Chanhee, I literally cannot afford a single thing in here—"
He pressed a palm between your shoulder blades and steered you in the direction of the dressing rooms. "That's besides the point because I can afford them; that's what matters."
Surprise made your footing falter. "Huh?"
"Silly Yn-ie," he teased, "did you think I was gonna bring you all the way out here to not treat you?" Before you could say anything else, he was shoving the items into your arms, and your body into the grandiose space of the Dior dressing room. He winked over his glasses. "Now hurry and put them on. I wanna see!"
He ripped the curtain closed, and you stood there for a moment.
In your hands were the jacket, the dress, and a pair of shoes that probably cost you more than your entire bank account combined. You blew out a puff of air, just as you heard a staff member offer him a glass of champagne on the other side of the curtain.
"No getting out of this, Yn," you muttered to yourself, then began hanging everything up."
Chanhee was no stranger to the effect he had on people. In fact, he wielded it like a dagger. It was how he had gotten so far in this industry in the first place other than his immaculate good looks, of course. The face of an angel and an attitude of the devil—at least, that was what one article had said about him. He quite liked it, actually.
There was something wholly different about his effect on you as you stood beneath his scrutinizing, heated gaze, as you tried on piece upon piece. He loved being able to unabashedly stare at you, to take in your flustered expression as you did little spins for him in the outfit of choice. For once, you couldn't look him in the eye, and when you had done so once, it had been when his tongue darted out to wet his lips.
It wasn't just the champagne he was tasting.
It was the next morning when you appeared in his home at 7 o'clock sharp, as usual, but with a new accessory hanging off your arm. It was one of the more low-key purses he had bought you yesterday—and to be honest, it was actually one of his personal favorites. It was a Chanel one, of course, and it complimented your pant suit quite nicely.
"Morning," you chirped, handing him his cup of coffee as he stumbled out of his room in a silk robe and with a yawn widening his mouth.
Chanhee smiled at the sight of you, graciously accepting the coffee from you. He leaned against the countertop next to you. "Good morning," he murmured lowly, peering at you over the rim of the cup, taking a languid sip.
He sighed as the caffeine began working its magic. "How are you this morning, dearest? Have a good night?"
You had set your purse down on the island, then moved away from him only to go check his refrigerator to see if he needed anything restocked. Always so attentive. "I had a good night. How was dinner with Changmin?"
"Lovely," he said fondly. "I see you are putting my gifts to use." His fingers danced along the gold chain draped along one end of the quilted leather.
He swore your cheeks flushed, but then again, his eyes had never tricked him for a second. "Ah, yes. Thank you so much for yesterday, by the way." The fridge closed softly, and you grabbed an apple from the basket on the counter to wash and munch on. "I really don't know how I can repay you—"
Chanhee dismissed you immediately, his wrist flicking outward. "Pfft, none of that. I told you it was all a token of my affection," he grinned, propping his chin onto his palm across the island counter from you. "And gratitude," he added. "I don't say this to just anyone, Yn, and I don't buy just anyone all that stuff—but I did it because I appreciate you."
Your chewing slowed and you swallowed. "Oh."
He said it so easily. God, was he lucky to have met you.
Knowing he had successfully rendered you speechless once more, he laughed lightly, deciding to change the subject. "What's today's schedule like?"
You immediately straightened; this was something you knew like the back of your hand. It was much more up your alley.
As you ran him through his activities today, you failed to notice the difference in his posture, the softer smile on his face, and the way his eyes could not leave you for a moment, not even to drink his coffee.
Grueling was an understatement. Today had been one of the worst days of your working existence under Chanhee's employ. You'd endured rough days and nights before, but today, it seemed to have been hassle after hassle after hassle. You probably got around thirty-thousand steps by how much you ran around trying to find emergency kits and emergency outfits and running to the emergency dry cleaner's.
As much as the fashion world enthralled you, sometimes you wondered how anyone could survive it.
Chanhee was just as maxed out as you were by the end. It was maybe three in the morning by the time the two of you collapsed into the backseat of his driver's car. Streets were barren at this time in the ungodly hours of morning, and your joints ached every time you breathed.
Chanhee was quiet as well as he leaned his head back against the headrest to allow his body some rest. He just barely managed to get through that last shoot—clearly the directors had no clue what they were doing, he thought with a dead look in his eyes. That was how he felt—dead. If it hadn't been for you swooping in with a creative direction…
You were brilliant; that much he was certain of. Without you, that shoot might have dragged on for another couple of hours, or Chanhee would have just walked out. Usually, he had a good sense and eye for things, but with everything that happened today, for once, he didn't have the energy to yell or direct.
He needed to treat you to brunch tomorrow, if he was even able to wake up in time—
His inner thoughts halted when he felt a sudden weight fall upon his left shoulder. He froze up.
Your head had slumped onto his shoulder, eyes closed and no doubt deep asleep. Your bangs had fallen out from the bounds of your ponytail and draped across your face as you slept. He could smell the Miss Dior on you with this proximity.
Chanhee smiled to himself, taking his other hand and brushing the hair from your face and gently caressing your cheek. "Cute," he murmured.
By the time the car rolled to a stop in front of his complex, Chanhee had made a couple of executive decisions.
He lightly roused you from your sleep, cooing into your ear, "Come on, Yn-ie. Let's get you to bed, hm?"
You hummed, lifting your head from his shoulder with a yawn. You rubbed your eye with no care for the makeup smudging. "Chanhee? Why're you still here?"
Normally, the driver would drop Chanhee off first and then you, especially when it came to late nights like this. But… what… was happening?
Chanhee helped you out of the car, thanking the driver while mustering up a kind smile for him. "You're too tired, love. I'm taking you upstairs to my place."
"Wait, I can't—" but you weren't physically protesting; your body ached and ached and ached. But this was your boss, your employer. This wasn't professional.
"Yn, you're exhausted," he countered, buzzing into the building and helping you inside.
You couldn't argue with him anymore. You just wanted your face to hit a pillow and be out for the night. "Okay," you mumbled, letting him press your face into his shoulder on the ride up the elevator.
"Good girl," he sighed. He tilted his head back against the elevator wall, one arm wrapped around your middle and the other cradling the back of your head. Just a little longer, then the both of you could finally get some well-deserved rest.
You would argue you had seen Choi Chanhee at some of his best and worst moments. He was one of the most beautiful human beings on this planet, and yet, none of the prior moments could even compare to when you stumbled out of his bedroom to the sight of his back to you as he fried eggs and ladled waffle batter into the maker in the kitchen. He had a big T-shirt hanging from his lean frame, as well as a pair of loose pajama pants on, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he waited for everything to cook.
Even at ten in the morning, the light pink waves of his hair looked immaculately styled. You almost forgot he hadn't gotten a perm in awhile.
The panic of waking up in his sheets instead of yours had faded when you recalled your conversation with him just seven hours prior. He had managed to wrestle you into an extra set of sleepwear he just had lying around (Gucci, nonetheless), before he deposited you onto his bed, then promptly curled up outside on the living room couch.
You swallowed. Now what?
It was then that Chanhee turned around with an innocent look on his face. You watched as it melted into something softer at the sight of you. "Good morning, dearest," he beamed, "sleep well?"
Drowsiness lingered at the corners of your eyes, but you somehow managed a nod. "Yeah, how about you?" You asked him quietly. Actually, that had been some of the best sleep you'd ever had. Something about his sheets with high thread count and the smell of Chanhee lingering on everything. But you weren't just about to say that to him.
"Well enough," he replied. He waved you over. "Come sit; breakfast is almost ready."
Your eyes widened a smidge. That was for you? Now you really needed to go home. "Ah, I appreciate it, but I've practically overstayed my welcome—"
He sent you a look. "Yn, come have breakfast with me."
You caved. Because at this point, you'd already screwed yourself over. And breakfast really did smell nice; what was the difference between Chanhee making you breakfast and you bringing him breakfast from the café down the street?
(You didn't even want to go home, as much as your logical brain was trying to urge you towards.)
So the two of you breakfasted, and for a moment, you could forget, for once, that you were just supposed to be his assistant.
Some things changed after that morning, and Chanhee found himself getting you to stay over more and more often. Even if he had to come up with something stupid like "You haven't watched the 2001 New York Fashion Week rerun?" For some reason, you bought into all his excuses, and even though he knew it was probably because you were always attentive to his needs, a part of him liked to fantasize that you felt it, too.
The pull.
Something had shifted after that morning when he made you breakfast and the two of you ate together at the breakfast table. Sleep had lingered in your eyes, and your hair was a mess, but it was soft and beautiful and… he'd never been so in awe at someone's "I woke up like this" look.
His heart had leapt at the sight of you in those pajamas with that subtle pout to your lips.
God, he thought he might sweep you into his arms and kiss y—
"New. Chanhee. Choi Chanhee—"
He blinked, lifting his eyes from his menu to meet Changmin's. "Hm?"
Changmin wrinkled his nose at him, adjusting the sunglasses seated atop his head to hang from the collar of his dress shirt. (How it managed to hang with two buttons popped open, Chanhee chalked it up to fashion magic.) "You're awfully quiet today. What, tabloids finally shut you up?" He joked.
Chanhee rolled his eyes. "One of these days, I swear, they will render me speechless with their ridiculous delusions," he muttered airily, half-heartedly skimming the menu again.
He and Changmin were seated at their usual booth in their usual restaurant at their usual time. It was their weekly dinner together, something they had kept up since their university days in order to keep themselves grounded. They, of course, touched base with all of their university friends often, but the two of them were two peas in a pod. They even refused to let Sunwoo in on these weekly dinners specifically (something the younger friend was undoubtedly salty about).
Changmin could figure out when Chanhee was occupied with something other than the present. Usually, he was all up and out of his seat dealing out gossip or what torture he and you had been… oh.
Changmin cocked his head to the side, nostrils flaring slightly as he tried and failed to suppress a sly smile. "How's Yn these days?" He asked nonchalantly, lowering his eyes to the menu in front of him even though he always got the same thing every time.
To his credit, Chanhee didn't even react. "She's lovely as always. Why do you ask?"
"I dunno," Changmin drawled, "you haven't gushed about her like you usually do. I feel like you hang out with her more than me."
Chanhee raised a brow at his friend. "She's my assistant; of course I'm going to spend more time with her."
"Yeah, but—"
"And she's a lot more agreeable most of the time."
"Hey!"
Chanhee grinned in impish delight. "You asked."
Changmin sent him a stink eye, huffing as he raised his hand up to summon a waiter. "Yeah, whatever. Okay, but you literally refused to go out with me the other night, and when I texted Yn if you had a schedule, she said that you two were at home!"
That got his attention. Chanhee pursed his lips together, sheepishness peering through his smile. "In my defense, she hadn't seen New York Fashion Week in 2001."
"You hated that year, Chanhee."
"Exactly."
Changmin sighed to himself, and just as he was about to add on, a waiter came by to take their order. Once that was done, Changmin laced his fingers over the table and leveled his friend with a pointed look.
"Just admit that you like her."
Oh, Changmin. If only you could hear the rapid palpitations of his heart when you called him out like that. Chanhee blinked innocently. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he swallowed.
It wasn't even two days later that Chanhee had you staying a little later at his place, once again. There was something jazzy and vibey playing in the background, while Chanhee finished up plating dinner and rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. You were over at the small table by the window pouring wine into twin glasses, your hair pulled haphazardly out of your face (for the most part) with a pearl-studded claw clip from Chanhee's personal PR box.
(You blatantly refused, but he then reminded you that he couldn't even use the clip himself.)
Chanhee didn't often think about sharing his life with someone, but it was moments like these—moments when he heard you hum under your breath, moments when the two of you could laugh about the day over dinner, moments when you weren't just his assistant but someone closer—that he could indulge himself. He wasn't a very domestic person; since childhood, he dreamed of places far away from home, seeing sights and experiencing cultures… but if he could come home to you? And experience this every time?
Suddenly dinner was over, and you were collecting dirty dishware and glasses to bring to the sink to wash.
"Yn-ie, hey, I can wash those—"
"No, no! You made dinner; I am washing dishes," you asserted, pushing him away from the sink when he tried to come up to you.
Chanhee broke into a laugh, coming up behind you to set his hands on your shoulders and rub the upper parts of your arms. "Okay, okay. Thanks, love," he said. He didn't even think before he pressed a kiss to your cheek and walked off to go to the bathroom.
Your cheek tingled where his lips had been, and you turned the faucet on to drown out the thrumming of your heartbeat in your ears. What was happening?
You felt like you were floating on air as you hummed to the music and washed the dishes, with the ghost of Chanhee's lips left lingering on your cheek. It served as a reminder of your growing affections for him. This was dangerous, dangerous territory, and yet… it was thrilling. It was new, bold, and delectable. It was Chanhee, for goodness sake.
He was the man you saw crying drunkenly over a cat video on TikTok, the man who lended you Gucci pajamas and his bed for the night. He was on the face of every magazine cover, always excited when you could read his mind about a certain piece of clothing. Everyone in the world wanted to be him or be with him. He was so out of reach, yet right in front of you.
Maybe it was the wine making your head buzz with this wave of unmitigated sentimentality.
You finished up with the dishes, drying off your hands with the towel hanging on the oven door. Chanhee sang your name out from somewhere deep inside his bedroom, and you followed his voice to his location.
He was seated on the rug in the middle of his walk-in closet, the white LEDs washing you with light. It was a far cry from the darkness of his bedroom and the warmth from the kitchen. Chanhee patted the spot next to him on the carpet, where he had a smattering of PR gifts littering the floor around him.
Curious, you lowered yourself next to him. "Are we sorting through PR stuff?" You asked, already making a mental catalog of all the things he'd probably want to keep and the things he'd want to donate.
Chanhee hummed his dissent, rising onto his knees and shuffling over to you. Your eyes widened as he stopped close to you and you held your breath. He raised a pair of twin diamond drop earrings from Tiffany and Co to your earlobes, eyes narrowed in consideration.
"No," he muttered, dumping the earrings into their box, then digging out another.
You scrambled to delicately put the earrings back into their proper holdings. "Chanhee, what are we doing?"
"You—" Chanhee returned with a pair of sapphire earrings this time, performing the same ritual as before, but this time smiling, "—are going to sit still and look pretty for me. I am going through the PR stuff for anything nice."
"Anything nice?" You parroted in disbelief. It wasn't like he just threw a pair of diamond earrings into a box like it wasn't nice, or anything.
"I've never seen you in pearls before," he said offhandedly. From a black velvet bag, he withdrew a string of pearls clasped at the end in gold. His mouth parted in awe, and you suddenly thought of how cute he looked. Chanhee, oftentimes, was attractive and elegant and spellbinding—but this Chanhee was adorable.
He eyeballed it around your neck, then moved to clasp the collar onto you. He brushed the stray strands of hair away from the nape of your neck, gently grazing the pads of his fingers along the warm skin there. The action sent a shudder down your spine, and you were reminded of the cheek kiss from earlier.
"There," he murmured, coming back around to inspect you from the front. "Looks much better on you than it would on me."
You scoffed, reaching up to touch the cool pearls seated on your collarbone. "I disagree wholeheartedly."
He had turned around to go digging again, but the grin he threw over his shoulder at you was a certified heart stopper. "Then we'll just have to go get me a matching one."
"This is the last time I'm letting a company get me lunch," Chanhee grimaced as both you and he feverishly dabbed at the sauce splattered on his cream silk blouse.
One of the interns working on today's interview and shoot had come to deliver him his lunch when you noticed that the sauce lid on top was a dark red and not the usual light mayo Chanhee always requested beforehand. That, as well as the fact that the lid wasn't fastened all the way. Suffice to say that when you were about to point it out, said intern became flustered at Chanhee's side profile and spilled his lunch onto him.
You made sure to send the intern away before Chanhee could react.
"This was the Burberry one Haknyeonie got me," he whimpered in devastation as he took in the mess of dark brownish-red on his chest.
"Hey, it's okay. The cleaner I usually go to can fix it up," you said, biting your lip and assessing the situation. You gave a sigh, straightening, then swiping at the dampness on your forehead. "For now, you'll have to change into something else."
Chanhee pouted. "I promised I would wear this one for the interview…" He glanced back over at the clothing rack in the far corner of the dressing room at the dozens of options he had, as well as the backups you had brought, when all he wanted was to wear the shirt Haknyeon had given to him.
You wondered how long you had until the interview. You wondered how fast you could run to the dry cleaners and how fast they could fix this, if only to make that pout on Chanhee's face go away.
He pursed his lips. "I'll change into the YSL one," he resolved, standing from his vanity chair to go grab the YSL blouse from its garment bag. "Y'know," he said to you as he disappeared behind the changing divider, "we'll probably see something about this in the tabloids sometime tomorrow, depending on how bored the press people are."
You leaned back against the vanity counter, mentally noting the time. Hair and makeup would be here soon since the interview was set for half past noon. Chanhee would have to wait until afterwards before he could eat lunch. You frowned, "It wasn't your fault, Chanhee."
"I know." You saw him drape the dirtied Burberry blouse over the top of the divider and you walked over to take it down and inspect the damage yourself. "But it doesn't have to be my fault."
Unfortunately, he was right. The press would do anything for a juicy story, even if that meant twisting the facts just a little. You abhorred those stories; you always saw Chanhee's eyes glaze over like a shield at the "model-zilla" headlines, when in fact, it had little to do with Chanhee's "attitude". You wondered if someone would blow up his reaction to this out of proportion—he hadn't said anything to the intern before they ran out of the room in tears, but you supposed if you had spilled coffee on someone with as much name power as Chanhee, then you would also freak out.
"I'm sorry," you said quietly, leaning slightly against the divider. A weight sank into the pit of your gut; you felt pathetic. These were one of the few things you couldn't just fix for him.
You thought you felt him lean back against the divider on the other side. "Nothing to be sorry for, dearest. It's just a shirt."
It wasn't just a shirt. It wasn't just the tabloids.
Chanhee, being the professional he was, carried on through the interview and subsequent photoshoot with elegance and grace. He wasn't in a bad mood, save for the slight melancholy in his smile when the intern's superior came by to apologize profusely and offer to have the blouse dry-cleaned for him. Chanhee politely declined—he only trusted one person with his items.
When you and Chanhee finally made it back to his penthouse suite, the sun had disappeared into the seams of the horizon, hoisting a bejeweled night into the sky. Chanhee collapsed onto the couch face-first while you dropped everything on the floor by the door and made a beeline for the refrigerator.
"I'm making tea," you declared.
Chanhee raised his head slightly. "Me too please."
You got the electric kettle started and brought out two porcelain mugs. While you waited for the water to finish boiling, you fished your phone out of your pocket to check your messages to see if the dry cleaners had alerted you yet as to the status of the blouse. On the way back, you had swung by to get the shirt to the dry cleaners. Hopefully it would be done by tomorrow morning so you could go pick it up.
Chanhee shifted and adjusted his positioning on the couch. He sat upright, leaning his cheek against his fist. "Yn-ie."
"Hm?"
"I'm lonely over here."
You huffed air out of your nostrils in a silent chuckle, but obliged him and went over to the couch. He raised his arms up toward you, making grabby hands and pouting. "You're lonely?" You repeated in amusement, slotting yourself next to him and allowing him to curl into your side.
"Well, not anymore," he said into your shoulder.
The apartment filled with the sound of water bubbling on the stove and the muffled sounds of the city outside the window.
With nothing said, you could imagine for a second that this was not your job, but your life instead.
You felt him move a little, his arms wrapping around your stomach. "Thank you," he murmured, "for everything."
Your chest tightened. "Of course," you replied simply. Because doing all of this for him was as easy as breathing air now. Taking care of him had become as easy as breathing air. It was just that simple.
He was quiet again, fingers fidgeting with the cuffs of your blazer. Something lingered in his mind.
"Yn…" He slowly brought himself to sit up straight, one hand braced on the cushion space between your bodies and the other on the back of the couch. His face was so close—you could see the baby pink hairs falling in his eyes, the bits of glitter on his eyelids, the length of his lashes brushing his cheeks. But there was something wobbling, shimmering in his irises like the ripples in a pool of water. "I think we need to talk."
Your voice was trapped in your throat. He was going to fire you. He was going to tell you that all of it had been a lie. He was going to—stop. Stop freaking out. You knew him. You knew him better than what the people on the outside only claimed to know about him. You gulped. "Okay."
Chanhee brought his hand up toward your face, but instead stopped short, his hand dropping. He wet his lip, head ducking for a second before meeting your eyes again. "You know how much I appreciate everything you do for me, right?"
Oh no.
You nodded shallowly, hands clasped in your lap. "Mhm."
"And you know that I would rather hurt myself before ever hurting you?"
You didn't like where this was going. "Chanhee—"
His eyes shuddered. "Just—just listen for a second. I promise I'll let you speak, just… I just need to get this out."
"I can't really think straight," you croaked. His cologne—god his cologne. You would die suffocating in his cologne, but he was so close and yet so out of reach.
You thought you saw hurt flash across his face. "Oh. Uh, I'm sorry—" He was leaning back now, and you were internally hitting yourself. You'd never heard Choi Chanhee stutter before.
You resisted the urge to say "come back". Come back, where you could pretend that he was yours. Shit, this had gone too far. "Chanhee, I think I have to quit."
Alarm shot his eyes wide open. "What?"
"I can't keep working for you because I have feelings for you," you blurted, staring him straight in the eyes. "I have to quit because the feelings—the want—I have for you are so strong and precariously unprofessional. And I'm sorry, because this was the best job I could've ever gotten, but—"
Chanhee grabbed your face and crushed his mouth to yours, effectively shutting you up. Shock had you freezing, but it wasn't long before you held him close and let him wholly devour you.
When he pulled away, his forehead was pressed against yours, the space between your lips near nonexistent. His hands were still cupping the sides of your face and his breathing was slightly labored; all either of you could feel, hear, smell, taste were each other.
"I love you," he whispered, almost inaudibly you thought you'd imagined it. But then he said it again, "I love you", and everything…
Everything settled.
"How could you?" After all, you were just… you. It seemed impossible that someone as high as he was could love someone like you.
His reply was simple, paired with a sweet return to your lips. "How could I not?"
You stood outside the massive, sky-piercing high-rise of Vogue headquarters, your heart pounding in your ears and your fingers drumming nervously against the seam of your dress pants. In about twenty minutes, you would be in the topmost office of the building interviewing for a chance to become CEO Anna Wintour's newest personal assistant.
"Well?"
You glanced over to your left where Chanhee stepped beside you, asking the driver to make a loop around the building and meet him back here in a few minutes. His hair, freshly dyed a silken midnight black, had grown slightly to mullet-length; and this morning, he was clad in a pristine white suit set in a classy contrast. A pearl collar sat on his defined collarbones like it was a throne. Beautiful, as always.
There were reporters lurking around here somewhere. That definitely didn't make any of this better for you.
You released a breath. "I've got this, right?"
He passed you a gentle, yet teasing grin. "Hey, you survived me. How much worse can she be?"
That made you crack a smile.
The two of you stood side by side staring up at the building for a moment longer. After you had quit being his assistant to instead be accepted as his partner, you and Chanhee worked to find you a new gig. You received about a hundred dozen job offers from lesser brands and big names when they all heard you were leaving Chanhee's employ on good terms. Anyone who survived Chanhee, and left with a stellar recommendation letter, was a hot commodity.
Chanhee reached for your hand, squeezing your fingers slightly. "Breathe, darling. You'll be in and out and hired before you know it."
He turned you around so you faced him. His tongue stuck out between his lips as he adjusted the pearl necklace around your throat, then the lapels of your jacket. "Wow," he breathed out.
"Huh?" You hummed with a smile in your eyes.
"You still take my breath away."
A nervous laugh fell from your lips, and Chanhee swooped in to taste it—that, your laugh.
"I love you," he murmured against your mouth. Nevermind all the press and paparazzi, or Anna Wintour, or anyone. This was just you and him, even for a little. You could imagine the headlines, but that was the last thing on your mind right now.
Your tongue swiped over his bottom lip to catch the last bits of him. "I love you, too."
There was a cunning glint in his eyes, offset by the soft smile on his face. "Okay, this is it. Call me if you need anything."
You began walking toward the entrance backwards. "What if I need you?"
His smile widened. "I said call me, didn't I? Anytime, anywhere." I'm yours.
"wow, your eyes were pretty in this lighting" truly pulling this man just by treating him like a human being i am so for this
oh my god and he's generous????? shower you with gifts????? way to my heart
"his eye could not leave you for a moment, not even to drink his coffee..." oh my god ?? how whipped is this guy.... NOTHING can take my attention away from my coffee whew
GOOD GIRL
GOOD GIRL
okay im gonna chill... GOOD GIRL
have i mentioned dear/dearest is one of my fav petnames but bc it's so hard to pull off it's a little tricky (CHANHEE DEF PULLS IT OFF)
"just admit you like her" WHAT is with changmin and all tbz writers having him be the most perceptive smart characters who can see thru everyone... frankly he's the best one i agree
ALL THE NATURAL SKINSHIP IS GETTING TO ME FUCK I WANT A KISS ON THE CHEEK
OH MY GODDBJSBSBSBS OKAY WAIT THATS SUCH A PERFECT ENDING
bc yes chanhee understands how much more yn can reach outside of his influence but it also shows how much he cheers her on in every aspect, personally and professionally
the whole boss/assistant dynamic can only go so far when personal feelings are involved and having that end and preserving their budding romance is such a great way to wrap it up
AND CHANHEE THE GREAT MODEL MUSE RENDERED SPEECHLESS AND A STUTTERING MESS BY THE MOST WHOLESOME DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP EVER... perfection.
truly one of the most ohenomenal chanhee characterization i've had the honor to read and enjoy
haknyeon x you, exes to lovers au, fluff, angst, suggestive
[summary] everything reminds haknyeon of you; is there another chance to be together again?
[words] 8.7k
[warning] alcohol, drinking
[a/n] there’s always something sentimental about exes to lovers au when it comes to hak… i hope you like this! sorry i took so long on this;; let me know how you think of it, i put a lot of thought into it! thank you ♡
₊ ⊹☼ WORD COUNT: 18.0k
₊ ⊹☼ PAIRING: the boyz' lee juyeon x female reader
₊ ⊹☼ TAGS & WARNINGS: summer vacation!au, teeth-rotting fluff, no angst whatsoever nada, juyo having a crush, reader is a bit shy at first, no plot just y/nyeon hanging out and pining for each other, dialogue heavy, a scene making out and some kisses here and there, canadaz instigating together
₊ ⊹☼ SYNOPSIS: during your post-college-graduation crisis, you meet lee juyeon during a 3 week lake house vacation with your mutual friends. serendipity watches over you as you get entangled into a whirlwind summer romance.
₊ ⊹☼ NOTES: hyung line are all the same age in this as each other, 98 line as each other and maknae line as each other! idk how i wrote 18k words of juyeon pathetically crushing on y/n but here it is! also the female ocs in this fic have no relation to any idol irl or at least was not written with anyone in mind :-) this also feels like the wrong time to post a tbz fic but i'm desperate to get this out and i'm hoping and praying that the boyz can resolve their negotiations with ist and find a good home in their new label <3
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
Whoever said that university was supposed to be the best 4 years of your life didn't think about the implications of that phrase on deeply lost and terrified new grads. Sure, it was intended as an encouragement to try and enjoy your college years while you were in them, but now you're on the other side and all you can feel is... now what?
In hindsight, there was a reason that seniors spent practically the whole year panicking about what came next and applying to every internship, grad role and job listing that popped up, no matter how relevant. You too had participated to some degree but to no avail as you stand here with no employment or future education plans in mind.
Okay, so maybe going on a 3 week holiday as soon as you come out of graduation wasn't the best idea you've ever had, but technically, it wasn't even your idea. In fact, you had even rejected Kevin's invitation multiple times citing your need to job hunt in the city immediately, but he kept pestering and pestering and pestering that you eventually had to give in. The universe will reward you for at least trying to resist, right?
There were really many reasons to not go on this trip. The main one being that Kevin was the only person out of about 15 people you knew that were coming on this trip. You had met a few of his friends fleetingly before, but never long enough or often enough to form a proper friendship or relationship with them as you did with your junior year project partner turned friend. Another reason was that you were so painfully introverted and shy that meeting all these new people all at once with nowhere to run to or hide seemed like the perfect recipe for disaster. What were you going to do if it all went wrong?
Still, Kevin had managed to address all your worries and reassured you that his friends were very welcoming and aware not to overwhelm you too much.
"Remember Y/N, we're here to relax, have a good time and forget the worries of the real world," Kevin lectured you as the two of you entered the lake house together. He had been the one to organise this trip as he found the cabin slash mansion and then roped all of his friends into joining.
Chanhee and Changmin had slept the entire ride, so Kevin allocated them the job of hauling everything from the car into the house. The people pleaser in you was desperate to help, but Kevin maintained that staying up and entertaining him on the long drive up was enough and that the two boys deserved it for being so called lazy.
"There's 5 bedrooms, all with two double beds," Kevin recalled as he scoured the house, "We take the biggest room with the en-suite."
"We can sleep 20 people? Why didn't you invite more?" you plopped your bags onto the large sectional couch.
Kevin just shrugged and stepped away to investigate the documents on a table, "So we could have a bit more space. Plus, we didn't want to invite anyone else."
"Aw i'm honoured to have made the cut, Kev," you teased by nudging him on the shoulder.
He shot you an unimpressed glare, "Clearly not considering that you literally refused to come until two weeks ago."
"I'm here, aren't I?" you countered, running to the front door to hold it open as you saw the other two boys approaching with the miscellaneous things your group was assigned to pack. It mostly involved some activities like a karaoke machine, some boards and floaties for swimming and other things to keep you entertained.
Another group set to arrive later was assigned the food supplies, while the girls that were coming on the trip were in charge of drinks.
"How far away are the others?" Chanhee smiled at you appreciatively as you make their life a little easier. He set two bags down on the floor. Changmin hobbles behind him with overflowing arms, clearly not wanting to make more trips than necessary.
Kevin pulled out his phone and hummed as he checked on the drivers' locations, "Jacob's car is like only a few minutes behind. Sangyeon's car is like an hour behind and the girls won't be here for a couple of hours since Minseo had to do a morning shift at work so they left a bit late."
"Who's in Jacob's car?" you asked curiously, wondering who you were going to meet first. You'd met Jacob a few times before when you were a junior and he was always very nice to you despite not having spent an extended period of time together. However, you hadn't seen him in almost a year! Obviously you had been acquainted with Chanhee and Changmin now, but you'd only met them once before they climbed into Kevin's car for the long journey that they dozed through.
"I think Hak, Eric and Juyeon are with Jacob and Sunwoo, Younghoon and Hyunjae are with Sangyeon," Changmin listed off quickly, "Prepare yourself to meet Eric, seriously."
"Hopefully he's sleepy from the drive," Chanhee rolled his eyes playfully but fondly at the thought of their youngest friend.
While this was a graduation trip for the boys in your car and a few of the others, Kevin had still invited their friends of different ages. It was a nice way to escape the reality of adult life for those who had graduated the year before you and just a fun trip for the incoming seniors below you.
You've heard from Kevin that his friends had a vast range of personalities, which you expected considering there were 11 of them. The concept of opposites attract definitely applied to friendships too, which was how Kevin's bubbly and social self found you, a raging introvert.
By the time that Jacob's car roared into the pebble driveway, you had already unpacked your clothes in the closet that you were sharing with Jacob and Kevin- the only ones you knew and felt comfortable with. Kevin had decided to just throw his duffle onto the foot of the bed and will probably just dig out some outfits each day from the floor.
You heard commotion begin to rumble downstairs through your ajar door and fought an internal conflict whether to go down and make yourself known or have Kevin come and get you. By the end of it, they had made that decision for you when you hear multiple footsteps stomp up the creaky stairs.
"Y/N, how are you? It's good to see you again!" Jacob flashed you his signature sweet smile as he tapped on the door and opened it wider, "Can we come in?"
"Sure, it's your room too! It's also good to see you, Jacob," you replied, getting up from the edge of the bed where you were rummaging through your backpack.
"You must be the famous Y/N," someone with a boyish smile peeked from behind Jacob, "I'm Eric! Nice to finally meet you."
"Ah, I've heard lots about you!" you gave him a small but enthusiastic wave.
"And knowing Kevin, it was probably not nice things," Eric scoffed as he shot a glare over his shoulder in the direction of the staircase behind him. That was when both he and you noticed a tall boy lingering behind him.
Eric wrapped an arm around his shoulders and brought him forward, "And this is Juyeon-hyung."
Through his sleepy, lid-heavy eyes, Juyeon gave you a soft smile, "Hi, it's nice to meet you."
"Juyeon," you let the word ruminate in your mouth as to why his name sounded familiar until it comes to you, "Ah, you're one of the others who graduated, right?"
He nodded, letting his face relax into a small smile, "Yeah."
"Congratulations to you," you tell him.
"You too, Y/N," there's a softness to Juyeon's voice- a kind of kindness and sincerity that comes naturally. Whereas Eric's voice was immediately enthusiastic and upbeat, Juyeon was calmer and more demure.
Eric disappeared behind Juyeon and Jacob was unzipping his bag behind you on the bed he was sharing with Kevin. You point awkwardly to the bag that Juyeon was clutching in his hands, "Which room are you staying in?"
As if he just remembered he was carrying it, Juyeon's eyes snapped to his hold before he let out a soft 'ah!', "I'm rooming with Chanhee and Changmin. Do you know which room that is?"
If you recalled correctly, you did, "I think it's that one," you point to the door immediately behind him, just opposite of your room.
Juyeon gives you an appreciative nod and pushes the handle of his room open with his elbow, "Thanks Y/N. See you later."
"Bye Juyeon."
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
Over the rest of the first day, you settled yourself on the living room couch with Kevin playing a variety of card games and planning what you wanted to do on the trip while doing so. The others dipped in and out- Jacob joining when he finished unpacking and Changmin once he got tired of Chanhee beating him at table tennis outside.
Eric was stretched out on one of the other couches, soft snores coming out of his mouth after the drive exhausted him (and also the other passengers who he was 'entertaining'). You don't know where Juyeon disappeared to, but it was probably to replace Changmin as Chanhee's opponent.
The game of dobble was getting heated with Jacob's rare frustrated side coming out, as was teased by the other players. So far, Changmin had won the most games, but that was probably because he was the most willing to scream and snatch the card away. You, on the other hand, had miserably lost every single round.
But at least you were able to plan your meals over the game of snakes and ladders you played earlier.
Once Sangyeon's car arrived and you acquainted yourself with him, Younghoon and Sunwoo, you excused yourself from the game under the guise of being a very bad loser, which you were.
You hadn't checked out the back garden and it's various facilities yet, so you were intrigued considering that was one of the main reasons that Kevin booked this place.
"Hi Y/N, do you wanna play?" Chanhee waved to you as soon as he spotted you in between serves. Juyeon followed suit.
"Nah, I'll watch for now- I just wanted to check out the yard!" you gestured to the area.
You immediately noticed the large blue swimming pool that dominated most of the garden. There were lounge chairs and umbrellas strewn around it and a little enclosure with pool floats provided. There was a fire pit with outdoor chairs in the back corner and then a stretch of grass that was perfect for net games like foot volleyball or badminton. Chanhee and Juyeon were occupying the ping pong table, but you were also standing next to a pool table in the covered patio.
The lake you were staying at was located a short walk down some steps from the front of the house, so you could only see some hills and other houses from the back. It was definitely a nice atmosphere combined with the warm weather you were having and not a bad place to spend 3 weeks procrastinating your life.
You took a seat on the cushioned furniture under the patio, covering your eyes from the sun to watch the boys play. It seemed that Juyeon was overall better than Chanhee, but Chanhee could catch him out with fast balls and spinning balls.
It was entertaining to watch them for a while, your eyes moving either side to follow the ball. They were getting competitive with each other, bringing out their vicious sides, which was amusing to watch. Juyeon seemed like a collected person when you first met him, but like everyone else, he had a different side to him in situations so tense.
"I wanna play," you heard a voice ring behind you, "Let's play pairs?"
Sunwoo appeared from the woodwork and approached the table. Chanhee and Juyeon paused their game, claiming Juyeon as the winner before agreeing to the game.
"Y/N, play with us? Who do you wanna pair up with?"
"I'm not any good at ping pong, so whoever is unfortunate enough to have me then," you got up from your comfy position and stretched out.
"Hm, Sunwoo's not bad so Sunwoo can go with me and you can go with Juyeon since he won," Chanhee reasoned, bringing up the extra paddles from the ground.
You migrated to Juyeon's side, giving him a sheepish look, "I'm sorry, but we're going to lose."
Juyeon chuckled and shook his head, "You have to believe in yourself, Y/N. Here, watch me serve and then you can serve the first ball."
He positioned himself with his body open to you so you could see what he was doing. Juyeon carefully explained what he was going to do and demonstrated the serve. Sunwoo threw the ball back and it rolled over to you.
"You can do it," Juyeon encouraged as you readied your stance.
Taking a deep breath and not wanting to disappoint your partner, you mimicked his movements and jumped in elation when it went exactly where it should have gone. Juyeon cheered beside you, which quickly faded as Chanhee returned the ball to your side, only for it to bounce twice and then land at your feet.
Juyeon was giggling as you looked at him apologetically, "The serve was good, but now we have to work on your return."
"How about I serve and then you just return all of the balls while I stand behind you?" you countered teasingly, "This isn't much of a competition for them."
"Y/N, by the end of this trip, you're going to be a ping pong goddess," Juyeon said firmly, holding up the ball to you again.
Over the next while, you started improving with your skills with tips that the other boys showed you. Juyeon did end up having to carry your team, but you had some good moments too. You didn't expect to be so open to play with the guys, but if Kevin's friends were anything like Kevin, you should have known you would have got along great.
Eventually, some more of the boys decided to come out and play while they started preparing lunch inside with the ingredients they had brought, so you retreated back inside to join Kevin.
"Your friends are nice," you told him sincerely at the kitchen island as you watched Younghoon and Changmin open up endless packets of ramen.
"I told you they were," Kevin agreed.
You had known Kevin for a year and a half, first meeting him at the start of the second semester of junior year. While he had tried to get you to meet his friends multiple times, it just never worked out properly with your schedules all the way up to college graduation. You did want to meet them properly instead of fleeting introductions and goodbyes in the hallways or around campus, but it wasn't your fault that your timetable was absolutely rammed and you were too anti-social to attend any evening events.
However, he had told you enough stories about his friends that it really felt like you did actually know them. That's why meeting them for the first time was weird- you knew lots of things about each of them.
"I don't think me and Chanhee would have ever worked out though," you frowned as you remembered Kevin trying to get you to go on a blind date with him when you first met and got comfortable with each other.
"I see that now," Kevin huffed at his failed matchmaking, "You're both divas- hey!"
You held back a laugh as Kevin's stumbled on his stool from you pushing him, "Don't spread false rumours about me around your friends! They could get the wrong idea!"
"Honey, it's a fact," Kevin snorted, "Once they get to know you better, they'll see what I mean."
Your personality slowly but surely crept out the longer you knew someone, but you weren't sure that 3 weeks was enough time. Then again, it was 3 weeks of constantly seeing them and being forced to spend time with each other, all while doing activities that might just end up testing your will.
"How about Changmin, though?" Kevin tried to whisper lowly.
Said boy whipped his head around and gave Kevin a pointed look, "I'm right here, you know?"
"So? Anybody who I set up with Y/N would be lucky to have her," Kevin jeered to his friend.
From behind you, you hear a deep voice, "Who's being set up with Y/N?"
Juyeon takes the stool beside you, an orange manifesting in his hands that he began to peel. A small smirk flashed on Kevin's face that you did not miss, but Kevin leaned forward and placed his chin and his hand, "Why, are you interested?"
You shoved Kevin again, "You are so annoying. I'm sorry about him Juyeon."
"I'm used to it," Juyeon shrugged casually as he offered up a slice yo you, "Orange?"
You quickly refused and thanked him and he carried on eating the fruit beside you. He must have got bored of the game or wanted to supervise the lunch. You vaguely remember Kevin telling you that Juyeon was one of the better cooks in the group.
After a while of silently supervising the ramen station, the doorbell sounded through the house. Kevin raced to open the door and welcome the girls in.
You had never met them before as they were some of Chanhee and Changmin's friends, but Kevin reassured you that they were very nice girls that you probably would get along with. It's not even that you didn't have many friends of your own- Kevin was just the first to ask you to come on a trip and all of your friends were diving straight into their big-girl jobs.
"I'm guessing you're Y/N? I'm Minseo," a girl with short, cropped hair approached you cheerfully, "Stick with us whenever you get tired of these boys. They get old pretty quick."
Younghoon scoffed as he walked past with the big pot of ramen in his gloved hands to bring to the table, "You three are way more chaotic than us."
"Don't believe him," another one of the girls came over with a backpack that was making a clinking sound, "I'm Suyeon! And I have some of the drinks and Jiwon has the rest."
Suyeon has copper-red hair and piercing eyes, while Jiwon has mousy brown hair and tattoos on her exposed arms. They definitely have dancer builds, so you imagine that they first met Changmin through dance.
The boys take their turns saying their greetings to the girls and Juyeon calls in everybody outside as lunch was ready. Other than the ramen, Younghoon and Changmin had managed to whip up some side dishes from what they brought, so it wasn't a totally helpless lunch.
The table was just a large slab of polished wood on some legs with long benches around each side. It was a little bit of a squeeze to get all 15 of you around the table, but it wasn't totally horrible once everyone settled and stopped squirming.
You had Kevin to your right and Jacob to your left with Eric directly in front of you. The table was too broad, however, to be able to make meaningful conversations with those in front of you without shouting.
"Is there any activities you want to do, Y/N?" Jacob asked you.
You tried to recall the array of activities you saw outside when you pulled up to the house, "I want to row a boat out on the lake. I'm kind of scared of stuff like that. What about you?"
Jacob shrugged, "Nothing particular. I just want to relax after a full year working."
"How has that been anyway?"
He sighed defeatedly, "It's nice making money, but I definitely miss college. Don't let me scare you though."
"I'm terrified enough as it is, considering I don't have a job lined up," you tried to make it sound like it wasn't weighing you down, but Jacob seny you a sympathetic half-smile.
"Loads of people are in the same boat, Y/N. Don't worry about it, honestly. There's always something waiting for you," Jacob advised you softly, "Promise you'll try to enjoy this vacation before worrying about real life?"
"You sound like Kevin, Jacob," you stifled a chuckle, "I will try, I promise.
Your conversation with Jacob is cut short by Eric yelling at the elder to pass the water with his mouth full, followed by him being scolded by the others.
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
You don't even know what time it is when you wake up the next morning. It's well into summer so the sky is already bright and gives you no indication by the colour and you find that your phone is dead when you tried to check. Remembering that you brought your charger down after dinner while you all watched a movie in the lounge, you groaned at the thought of having to get up so early.
Soft snores were still escaping from Jacob and Kevin's bed, so you tiptoed out of the room, all while trying to brush through your tangled hair with your fingers. The house was so quiet that you definitely did not expect to see someone's back leaning over the kitchen counter while they sat on a stool.
At your footsteps, the mystery figure turned around with a surprised sound.
"Oh, Y/N. Good morning," Juyeon's voice was deep and still raspy this early, "What are you doing up?"
He was wiping his eyes with his fists bawled up and you resisted the urge to 'awh' at him as you fetched your charger from nearby, "I left this here last night and my phone died. I don't know what time it is, but why are you up so early?"
Juyeon shrugged, "I sometimes wake up early and I couldn't go back to sleep. I was going to make a coffee if you want one too?"
In your head, you weighed up the pros and cons of an early morning beverage. Something in you was screaming to go back into your bed and doze off the rest of the morning- something that will be robbed from you when you reach the real world- but at the same time, Juyeon was looking at you with his sleepy, cat-like eyes and red cheeks.
"Sure," you slid onto the stool beside his as he hopped off and made his way around to the kitchen side. There was only the whistling of the kettle for a while as Juyeon collated all the ingredients he needed and found the mugs in the cupboard. He only broke the silence to ask you if you took milk and sugar in your coffee.
You had zoned out so much that you didn't snap back into reality until he was sliding your coffee over to you and placing a plate full of French pastries between you as he took a seat. Gratefully, you pinched the croissant to curve your morning hunger.
"How did you find yesterday?" Juyeon began as he sipped on his drink.
"It was nice meeting everyone. I think I knew everyone's names anyway from Kevin talking about you all before and from his posts," you told him, "I'm still feeling shy, but it will just take time for me to get comfortable."
"I was the same when I first met everyone," Juyeon nodded, "We all came at different times since we're different ages, but I also get shy meeting new people, so I know how you feel. I'm glad that Kevin managed to convince you to come, though."
Your surprised look doesn't faze him, "Ah, really?"
Juyeon looked slightly more awake after a few sips of coffee as he smiles gently at you, "It's always nice to make a friend."
"Yeah," you agreed. Juyeon had a certain way of speaking that was just so comforting and he was quickly becoming one of Kevin's friends that you could see yourself being close to.
"Are you staying in the city after this?" he moved on casually.
Ah, the famous question. Your grimace told him everything he needed to know as you scrunched up your face, "I would like to, but that's T-B-D. It's gonna be stressful looking for a job after I get back from the trip- that's why I didn't want to come in the first place. But whatever. What about you?"
"I'm gonna be a dance teacher at a local studio," Juyeon told you, pride sparkling through the statement, "I'm excited about it, but my dream is to have my own studio one day, have a crew and work with some famous people."
You suddenly remembered something Kevin had told you once, "Ah, you majored in dance with Changmin, right?"
Juyeon nodded.
"Kevin took me to one of your showcases once this year, but I had to run out before I could meet you guys after," you recalled fondly, "You had a duet with Changmin and I remember being very, very impressed. I can't dance, so..."
He looks at you in surprise as you remembered it, "Oh, thank you for coming! And I really appreciate that. I'm going to miss those showcases, actually. They were always stressful leading up to them, but when I get to perform, it's the best feeling ever."
The lilt in his voice told you just how passionate he was when it came to dance. You wished that you had something you treasured dearly too, but you tried to remember Jacob's words from dinner- something will always be waiting for you.
"I'm gonna have to see you guys dance again at some point," you smiled, "I know Kevin said a lot of you guys do."
"What has Kevin told you about me?" Juyeon placed his chin on his palm, body leaning over towards you.
You paused for a minute, trying to recall all the facts you knew about Kevin's friend and trying to pick out the ones related to him, "He said you're the best cook in the group and that the world moves too fast for you. He said that you like nature too."
"Too? You do as well?" he asked curiously, "They say I'm slow, which they may be right."
"Yeah! I like taking walks and seeing the world," you affirmed, "I've never been to this part of the country, so I'm intrigued by the area. It looks so beautiful from what I saw on the drive up."
"We should definitely take walks together!" Juyeon suggested enthusiastically, "I don't know how many of the others will join, but it'll be fun."
Before you could agree with him despite how shy he was making you feel, Changmin's sleepy voice boomed out behind you, "Morning guys."
"Did we wake you up?" you asked him in concern.
Changmin shook his bed hair firmly, "Nope. Chanhee rolled over and started cuddling me."
"So you left him?" you teased.
"It got too warm," Changmin whined as he noticed your small breakfast spread, "Can I get a coffee too?"
"Hah, make it yourself," Juyeon huffed as he pointed out where the supplies were kept, "Did you know Y/N attended our showcase a few months ago? The one where we had the duet?"
Changmin laid out the items on the other side of the island and thought for a second before a eureka moment came to him, "Was that the one you had to leave early cause you had a date?"
You groaned at the thought, flopping your head in your hands on the table, "Oh, don't remind me! I can't believe Kevin told you."
Juyeon looked between the two of you, confusion splattered on his face, "Why, what happened?"
You shivered in your seat, "He was a dickhead. It was a blind date with one of my friends' boyfriend's frat brothers and it was so bad I had to actually tell him I wanted to leave."
"Oh, that bad?" Juyeon grimaced.
"He shamed me for ordering a proper meal, insinuated many, many times how he wanted to come over to my place after, picked up a call from one of his friends in the middle of it and then made me pay the whole bill when I said I wanted to leave and offered to split," you recounted, slightly more amused looking back on it now.
"That's really horrible, Y/N," Changmin offered as he stirred his drink.
"I'm used to bad dates now," you sighed in defeat, "I've never had any luck."
Juyeon made a noise of recognition from your side, "Have you gone on a lot of dates?"
"Mhm, my friends all found their partners pretty early on in college. I guess they just wanted me to have the same magical experience as them, so they'd always set me up on dates," you recalled your dating life through the past 4 years, "Actually, I went on a date with Jacob accidentally without knowing he was Kevin's friend before he graduated."
Changmin's eyes widened as he laughed in realisation and slapped the countertop, "I forgot that happened! That's so funny."
Juyeon pouted beside you, "Am I the only one that's never heard of any of this?"
"Maybe it's cause you holed yourself up the last two years in the practice room," Changmin replied sassily.
"Says you!" Juyeon turned to you, "How did your date with Cobie-hyung go?"
"I thought he was really sweet, but we decided not to go on a second date because he was graduating soon," you answered honestly, "He only did it as a favour to my friend when they worked on a project together."
"Oh, so you liked him?" Juyeon pressed on.
Your face reddened as you vehemently shook your head, "It's not like that! We just went on one date, that's all."
"Stop teasing poor Y/N," Changmin frowned from the other side, "It's like coming up to 8 now, so we should start making a proper breakfast for everyone."
You hadn't exactly established how you were going to do the cooking rota, but since you three were already down there, it wasn't a bad idea to get started. Juyeon agreed, hopping off the stool and rummaging the fridge for what they brought.
A grocery trip was definitely due with everyone, but for now, Juyeon's car had lugged along some ingredients from their college apartments that could be utilised.
"Can I be of any help?" you asked into the air as you watched Changmin check what was in each cupboard.
"Are you good at cooking, Y/N?" Juyeon quirked an eyebrow at you. You gave him an unsure look, to which he laughed and handed you a carton of eggs, "I guess I have a lot to teach you during this vacation, Y/N-ah."
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
You've always preferred the sunset to the sunrise. Maybe it's because you've seen far more sunsets in your lifetime, due to your previous displeasure of waking up early. Over the last few months with finals, though, you've gotten used to being up at the time the sun peaked through the horizon, even if it was because you hadn't slept yet.
The moment that Minseo noticed the first shades of pinks in the sky, she dragged the whole group out to the waterfront and you all were sprawled out on the ground, watching as the sun dipped down. There hasn't been a good sunset in the four days that you've been here, so you were excited for the first one with the group.
You were even almost confident enough to call them friends as you spent the past four days getting to know them through lunches and dinners, boardgames and pingpong and cooking and cleaning. They were all great people with impeccable sense of humour- you were glad to have come to the trip.
You perched Hyunjae's digital camera on your tucked knees as you examined the way the sky was transforming. Beside you, Kevin was sketching in his notebook.
It was getting late, nearing 8, and you had spent the whole day in the pool with everyone playing different games and lounging around. You all decided as a group that you would take the first week easy- no plans, just relaxing. After that was when you would jump into activities outside of the lake house. You were on the winning team of pool volleyball today, but had lost every chicken fight on top of Kevin's shoulders.
After dinner, you were all drying up when Minseo called everyone out. The air was still warm, but less aggressive than the sun beating down on your skin earlier in the day. There was a mild breeze that cut through the heat, making it more bearable to be outside.
Chanhee was sat on your other side, humming a song as he scrolled on his phone, meanwhile in front of you on the small hill, Jiwon and Suyeon were playing uno with Younghoon and Juyeon. You snapped a picture of them with the camera entrusted to you, which they didn't even notice.
"Jiwon has a crush on Younghoon," Chanhee whispered in your ear. You jumped in your spot, clutching the camera tight to your chest.
"Jesus, Chanhee. You scared me!" you scolded the smirking boy.
"Oops," he patted your head in apology, "Isn't it obvious though?"
You turned your head back to the group to examine. Now that you knew that, you could put meaning to the way that Jiwon was leaning her body towards Younghoon's and the way she clung onto every word he said and everything he did.
"Does Younghoon know?" you hummed.
"I think so, or he's pretending to be dense," Chanhee murmured, "I think he was waiting for Jiwon to graduate, so maybe something will happen on the trip. They've been friends since high school, but the girls are on the dance team with us."
"That's cute," you noted, "What about the other girls?"
"Minseo and Sangyeon dated for a few months, but nothing ever came of it and they stayed as friends," Chanhee recalled in a dropped voice, leaning his lips up to your ear due to Sangyeon's proximity, "But they don't like it when we make jokes about it. Suyeon's never showed interest in anyone but Eric used to have a crush on her. Not anymore, though. In my opinion, proximity can make people think they feel things."
"What, like being around someone can trick you into liking them? Isn't that how crushes and relationships work?" you turned your body to face Chanhee.
He cocked his head in thought, "Maybe, but sometimes people develop crushes for the sake of having crushes instead of actually liking someone. Like some people feel compelled to date someone or like someone because everyone else expects them to because they're close."
"That's..." you trailed off, trying to find the right word to say, "Interesting."
Chanhee lets out a small giggle and turns back to his phone, "It's just something I've thought about after seeing so much friendship group incest."
When you swivel your head back to the lake and the sky beyond it, you find Juyeon staring at you with a perplexed look. When he noticed that you were looking back, he raised his arm in a small wave. You return one back to him, a little confused why he was looking. Suyeon nudged his arm, directing his attention back to the game in front of him.
"Have you ever thought about dating Kevin?" Chanhee asked after a moment of silence.
Kevin beside you perked up at the sound of his name, the scratching of his pencil ceasing. You met his eye and chuckled, "I think we always knew that we'd be better off as friends."
"She's not my type," Kevin dropped in as a dig. You nudged him when you made sure his pencil wasn't touching the paper.
"What's your type, Y/N?" Chanhee pressed on, "If you don't mind me asking."
You thought about his question carefully, trying to pick out what was actually important to you instead of what you would list off to your friends when they would find blind date suitors.
"I just want someone I can be comfortable with and not have to put on an act," you told him simply, "It'd be nice if they'd have some of the same interests as me, but I want someone I can find comfort in. Someone not too energetic and just someone who can treat a girl right. It's not a big ask."
"What, that's it?"
You nodded sheepishly, "To be honest, I just want to find someone naturally- to have them come to me. I've appreciated being set up on dates, but I don't want to look too hard anymore."
"What about giving Jacob another shot?" Kevin quizzed suddenly.
You release a small laugh, "I think that ship has sailed, Kev."
Jacob was a few metres away, strumming on his guitar surrounded by the rest of your friends. There was something so lovely about Jacob, but past that, you don't think you could see a relationship with him.
"Hmm, Hyunjae? He's very nice," Chanhee offered up, a teasing tone in his voice.
You rolled your eyes at your companions, "Did you two not hear anything I said? I want it to happen naturally."
You suddenly get distracted by someone ooh'ing and ahh'ing loudly. When you look up, you're instantly met by the most vibrant sky you've seen in a long time. The sky is painted in shades of cotton candy pink and vivid oranges. It was one of those bright, golden sunsets, devoid of any moody colours.
Snapping a few pictures on the camera of your friends and their silhouettes against the sky, you stood up for a better view. Through the lens, you find Jiwon and Younghoon standing together, shoulder to shoulder as they peered up. You were so preoccupied by their figures that you missed Juyeon standing up, brushing himself off and walking over to you.
"Y/N, can I have the camera?" Juyeon appeared beside you, making you jump slightly.
"Oh yeah, sure," you carefully placed the camera in his palm, not wanting to be reckless with something that wasn't yours.
Juyeon smiled appreciatively, taking one step back behind you and holding it up, "Okay, smile!"
Your eyes widened in surprise as you shook your head, "Don't get me in it! It won't turn out nice."
Trying to escape, you ducked to the side of him, but he caught onto your wrist and gently manoeuvred you back to your original place. Juyeon gave you a pointed look, "Trust me, okay? Just smile. Say cheese!"
Sensing that you wouldn't be able to get him to back down, you indulged his request and smiled softly at the camera. The digital device looked so tiny in his large hands compared to how they looked in yours that it was almost comical. He had to fumble a little to find the button, but when he clicked it finally, you broke your pose.
Juyeon looked down at the screen as you came closer to see for yourself. He turned it towards you with a triumphant smile on his handsome features, "See? So pretty."
He's probably talking about the sunset.
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
On a morning you found yourself awake early again, you received a DM from one Lee Juyeon.
juyeon: i was about to go on a walk. care to join?
y/n: how did you know i was awake?
juyeon: i saw that you viewed my story i just uploaded :> will you come?
y/n: give me 10 minutes
When you tiptoed down the stairs at precisely 7:15AM, you found Juyeon squinting at you from the living room couch.
"Has anyone ever told you that you squint a lot?" you yawned out as you placed your shoes on the ground and slipped into them.
"I have terrible vision," Juyeon explained, "And before you ask, I don't have glasses because I cheated on my eye test."
You slapped your hand over your mouth to muffle the laughs coming out, "How is that even possible?"
Juyeon rolled his eyes playfully, "Yeah, yeah. I know!"
He stood up from his place on the couch and followed you out of the front door. With one of the spare keys, he locked the door behind him and joined your side.
"Do you even know what I look like?" you teased him.
He made you stop on the gravel track, placing his hands on your shoulders. Teasingly, he squinted his eyes at you before relaxing onto the heel of his foot, "Of course I do. I would never forget a pretty face like yours."
Shocked at his flirty remarks, you pushed against his shoulder with your hand, "You're too much, Lee Juyeon."
His laugh is melodic as he tried to catch up with your fast pace, "You should learn how to take compliments, Y/N."
"Yeah, but you're teasing me," you humphed in response.
"Maybe, but it's still a factual compliment!" Juyeon argued. You were embarrassed to know that your whole face and ears were probably lit up like a tomato right now from his words.
Instead of replying, you chose to steer the conversation away, "Do you even know where we're going?"
Juyeon shook his head, "I just thought we could follow this trail around the lake. It's a nice morning."
The air was crispy- not too hot, not too cold. Everything was pretty still, other than the few people you could see having coffee on their front decks at the other houses surrounding the river. All you could hear, though, was the chirping of the birds in nests nestled in the trees and the soft crunching of rocks and grass under your shoes.
You hadn't managed to walk around the lake with the others yet in the week you've been there already. Time was moving so fast and there was still so much left to do. You were intrigued by the flora surrounding the lake, so you were trying to find free time to explore- thankfully, Juyeon beat you to it.
"Look at those flowers," you murmured after a few minutes of walking. There were tufts of pink flowers by the water edge that you crouched down to investigate further.
You heard the shutter of a camera faster than you could see Juyeon taking a picture of you on the ground.
"Hey!" you pouted up at him, swatting at his hand, "Let me see!"
"No can do," Juyeon replied smugly, "For my eyes only."
You brushed off your legs and stretched up next to him to continue walking, "That's not fair! I'm in the photo!"
"Later," Juyeon hummed innocently, walking forward a bit faster.
He continued leading you around the lake for a while, just chatting about trivial things you could see. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his cargo shorts, eyes shaded from the sun with his cap. At one point, you spotted a paddling of ducks near the edge, so you dragged Juyeon down to crouch beside you as you took pictures of them.
"Look how small that one is!" you cooed, pointing to what seemed like a baby duck that was following behind its mother closely.
"And look how cute they are when they tuck their necks in," Juyeon reciprocated as he found a flock further away that seemed to be sleeping or resting on the water.
"I used to have a stream behind my house when I was young, so I've always loved ducks," you waft a blade of long grass in the direction of the ducks, hoping they'd come to you.
"That seems like a nice childhood," you could hear the gentle smile in his gentle voice, "What was your childhood like?"
Your eyes followed the animals splashing about in the water, amused as two of them started chasing each other, "Nothing special. My parents had ordinary jobs and I have an older brother and a younger sister, so I was stuck in the middle. I grew up just outside of the city we went to college in, so I got to visit them often. My life's not very exciting. What about you?"
Juyeon humphed in disagreement, "I'm sure that's not true. There's always something special about the mundane. I grew up not far from the city too. I have a little brother who's 4 years younger and he's kind of in his teen-angsty phase right now, so I'm staying away physically. I call home pretty often, though."
"My sister just got out of hers," you laughed in solidarity. You finally decided to leave the ducks alone as they changed course away from you, "We get along much better now."
The sun was rising higher in the sky as you reached the halfway point around the lake. At this point, you had probably been out together for 45 minutes, but no one was noticing your absence yet.
"I can't believe they're not awake yet," you murmured as you checked your notifications.
"Nah, Changmin and Chanhee were awake and reading webtoons in bed," Juyeon informed you, "I told them we were going on a walk."
"You didn't invite them?"
"There's no getting those two out so early for no reason. That one morning with Changmin was a fluke," Juyeon uttered, "Besides, it's nice just us two, right?"
His words send the butterflies in your stomach into a frenzy- he seems to have a way of doing that to you without even realising. You've spent a good amount of time with Juyeon on this trip, thinking that he was just taking you under his wing. Unfortunately for you, the man was drop dead gorgeous so it was hard not to feel giddy around him. Especially since he had such a way with words.
You have to remind yourself often that you were just friends. He treated everyone just like he treated you, right? Lee Juyeon was just a nice person.
"Right," you smile slightly, hiding your pink cheeks from him, but in turn getting blinded by the beams of light, "The sun's so bright."
Juyeon sighed beside you, "I should have told you to bring a hat."
You opened your mouth to reply, but you suddenly feel fabric encapsulating your head and the sun fade out behind the material of a cap- Juyeon's cap that he had taken off his own head and placed on yours.
"Oh, no, Juyeon. Keep the hat; the sun's gonna be in your eyes now," you moved to take it off, but he keeps his hand splayed on top of your head to prevent you from doing so.
"I'm taller than you, so the sun's hitting my face differently," he said to you sweetly.
You think he's lying, but if you've learned anything about Juyeon the past week, it's that he doesn't take no for an answer, "Thanks, Juyeon."
"You're welcome, Y/N-ie."
And if anybody noticed that you were wearing Juyeon's favourite cap when you arrived back to the house with a full spread of breakfast on the table, they certainly didn't say anything.
But when Jacob perched himself on the edge of your bed when you woke up from your post-breakfast nap, you knew you were in trouble from the mischievous yet apprehensive look on his face.
"What?" you groaned into the pillow that you smothered yourself with.
He waited for you to remove the pillow from your face before giving you a knowing look, "Kevin sent me."
"Why?"
"He's busy with Sunwoo and Hak," Jacob dismissed, "We want to know what's going on with you and Juyeon."
You sat up on the bed, looking at him incredulously, "What do you mean what's going on with me and Juyeon? Nothing."
Jacob frowned at what he thought was a blatant lie, "Don't think we haven't noticed you two have been spending a lot of time together recently. You two went out on a secret walk this morning alone."
"No one else was awake!" you protested, "None of you are morning people anyway!"
"You're not either, said Kevin," Jacob retorted.
"I'm trying to be," you huffed, "Besides, I've known the guy for one week. I'm not hiding a relationship from anyone."
"Yeah, but do you like him?" Jacob tacked on, "Kev wanted me to interrogate, so I am doing so."
"You're all so nosy," you murmured exasperatedly, "Juyeon is very nice; we're friends. Kevin would act this way no matter who I got close to."
"That might be true," Jacob nodded, "But I've never seen Juyeon act this way. He's normally pretty reserved when it comes to girls, but he's always approaching you first, looking out for you and considering you in things."
Your heart fluttered learning this new information about Juyeon, but you don't show it as you crossed your arms at Jacob with a disapproving glare, "Then take it up with Juyeon and not me."
"You know what'd be funny? To see if Juyeon will get jealous if anyone else gets close to you," Jacob tapped his chin in thought, "I've never, ever seen Juyeon jealous over a girl."
And as if the world was playing a hilarious, cruel prank on you, you heard Juyeon call your name as his feet padded up the stairs. He let out a sound of surprise when found your door ajar and Jacob sitting on your bed instead of his shared bed with Kevin.
Juyeon's eyes darted quickly between the two of you, with you still half-tucked under the sheets. His face kind-of hardened at the sight, but he quickly masked it with a half smile, "Hey, Y/N. I made you a smoothie to energise after our walk! Hi Cobie-hyung, what are you doing here?"
Jacob shot you a smug look, that you rolled your eyes subtly to, "I was just talking with Y/N. Is there something you need?"
Juyeon eyed him suspiciously, placing the cold glass on your side table. He didn't even reply when you thanked him, instead keeping an eye on Jacob, "Nah. Was it something private, though?"
"Hm, a bit," Jacob smirked. You were half a second away from shoving him off your bed for playing with Juyeon like this.
"Oh, okay. I'll go then. But we're about to go paddling in the lake so make sure you get ready soon," Juyeon backed down hesitantly and he turned his attention to you with a disarming smile, "You still have my hat, right, Y/N? Don't forget to bring that with you out. The sun's intense today."
As Juyeon left the room with the door wider than it was when he found it, Jacob rotated his body to you comically slow like he was in a movie.
"Shut it, Jacob."
He shook his head and released an angelic, teasing laugh, "That was next level, Y/N. I've never seen that man jealous let alone put on a territorial display!"
"Jacob!"
He put his hands up in surrender, "Fine, fine. I'm leaving too, but have a think, yeah? Don't want to let a guy as good as Juyo slip away."
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
There were multiple boats scattered around the lake-side. There were 15 of you, so it wasn't an even split into pairs, but some of the boys were more confident to go by themselves.
As expected, Jiwon and Younghoon were pushed together to pair up and they strapped on life jackets first before clambering onto a rocky paddle boat at the end of a dock. Sangyeon and Hyunjae got their own boats, while Chanhee and Changmin shared one together. Minseo and Suyeon climbed on after, meanwhile Sunwoo and Haknyeon paired up. Eric, ever the brave, slid into a boat by himself, but let out a scream when it wobbled immediately. Thankfully, the activities staff was still holding the boat to keep it from tipping.
That left you, Jacob, Kevin and Juyeon to decide how to configure yourselves and you could see the Canadians' meddling from a mile away.
"Dibs on Jacob!" Kevin slung his arm around his friend and ran off towards the dock, leaving you speechless with Juyeon.
He gazed at you with shiny eyes, "Guess it's us again?"
"Ha. Us. Again," you enunciated dumbfounded at how obvious Kevin and Jacob were being.
Juyeon didn't seem to note any of this as he casually tugged on your arm in the direction of the boats, "Come on. Let's go."
You were the last ones to put on your life jackets and when you looked out at the lake, you could see your friends had already ventured far into the water. Juyeon stepped into the shaking boat first, taking a seat at the far edge.
When you looked nervous about climbing on, Juyeon held out his hand towards you, "Be careful," he said, nonchalantly.
You held your breath as you took his large hand. Your hands looked like a kid's in his large hold, but the way he wrapped his fingers around your own and made you feel secure had you less wary of getting onto the boat.
When you finally were able to sit across from him, you released the breath and the staff had unhooked you from the dock. Juyeon clapped for you in pride.
"I've always wanted to do this," you admitted to him, watching the water ripple around you.
He quirked an eyebrow at you and held the oars in your direction. He was the one currently manoeuvring the two of you further into the water, "Oh, do you wanna steer, then?"
You took the two pieces of wood from his grasp and grinned at him lopsidedly, "Can't promise we won't capsize though."
He smirked at you from across the boat, "I can swim. Can you?"
Your terrified look had him laughing in stitches as he teased you, "I guess I'll be the one saving you from your own disaster, then."
You kissed your teeth playfully at him as you tried to get into a rhythm with the oars. It was actually harder than you thought to move the boat in a smooth motion due to the drag of the water, but Juyeon just watched you in amusement as he leant back on the boat. You appreciated that he wasn't trying to take over the second he realised you weren't any good at this.
"Y/N-ie!" you heard a voice shout to your left. You looked over to find Eric's lone boat coming towards you at full steam. You watched as his face contorted into panic, realising that he didn't know how to slow down his boat.
Before it could crash into you, Juyeon reached over and held you down on the boat by your shoulders. When Eric made impact, you rocked in your seat, but less than Juyeon who swayed in his mid-standing crouching position. You stabilised him by holding onto his arms with yours.
Juyeon jumped back once he realised the crash was over, cheeks pink as he felt your touch on his bare skin. He settled back into his seat, looking unimpressed at his younger friend.
"Eric," he scowled at the sheepish boy, "Be careful. You could have tipped us over."
"Sorry," Eric pulled his lips into an apologetic pout, "I just wanted to say hi."
"It's okay, Eric. We're safe," you laughed off the incident as you brushed your hair back into place. You had passed over the oars to Juyeon at this point as you conversed with the guilty tanned boy, "Are you enjoying it?"
Eric nodded happily, "It's so much fun! I could do this all day."
Your heart melted at his enthusiasm. Eric was definitely giving you younger brother vibes through this trip with his puppy-like energy.
Juyeon swatted the oar in his direction, "Go bother someone else, Youngjae."
You glared at your boat-mate, "Juyo, that's not very nice."
"He almost killed us, Y/N," Juyeon exaggerated dramatically as he pushed the nose of Eric's boat away from yours.
Eric clicked his tongue and shook his head, laughing under his breath, "Alright, alright, I get it, hyung. Sorry for almost killing you."
You watched in disbelief as Eric paddled away at the speed of lightning, now looking like he was about to crash again into Minseo and Suyeon's boat. Turning back to your partner, you shook your head at him.
"What? That was dangerous," Juyeon whined at your glare, "Anyway, you called me Juyo."
Your hands flew up to your mouth as you burned red at the slip up, "Oh sorry! I never asked if I could call you that. I just heard Jacob call you it earlier."
Juyeon flashed you a boyish grin as he paddled your boat away from where everyone had seemed to congregate, pushing at each other's boats, "I don't mind. You can call me Juyo; I like it," then his face morphed with something unrecognisable for a second, "What were you and Jacob talking about?"
Your eyes narrowed into slits as you examined the boy in front of you. Where he was confident meeting your eyes earlier, he was now looking at everywhere other than you. It had you thinking whether there was some truth in Jacob's words, but you definitely didn't want to get your hopes up.
"Didn't he say it was a bit private?" you tried to say nonchalantly. Juyeon began to nod like he didn't care much at all, but you just laughed at him, "I'm kidding. We weren't talking about anything specific. I don't know why he said it was private."
"Oh, so you're not dating?"
You gasped at the accusation, "Me and Jacob? Why would you think that?"
Juyeon shrugged as he continued to row steadily, "You guys spend a lot of time together. He was teaching you to play the guitar last night."
Ah, Juyeon must have noticed Jacob instructing you on the patio after you expressed interest in learning to play. You had thought that he was inside making dinner with the girls, but he must have stepped out or seen you in the reflection of the glass door.
You smiled coyly, "We spend a lot of time together, but we're not dating are we?"
You don't know where this bravery came from- you weren't usually so teasing to anyone you spoke to. However, being with Juyeon showed you a new, more playful side to yourself that knew how to be a bit less uptight and closed off.
Juyeon pressed his lips into a thin line, "Right. We're not."
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
Halfway through the trip, Minseo had the idea to have a fancy dinner out one day in the nearest town. She wanted to get dressed up and get properly ready, since most of the activities you'd been doing thus far either involved the water or getting sweaty in the sun. Because this wasn't in your itinerary, you and the three girls took their car out to shop for new dresses, while the boys searched their luggage for something appropriate.
You deduced that they didn't have anything to wear either when you bumped into Sangyeon, Younghoon, Haknyeon and Eric midway through the shopping trip with bags and bags occupying their hands. They must have been sent out by the others to buy shirts and slacks. While buying new outfits could be considered excessive, the pieces were always recyclable and appropriate for the real world that the graduates were about to go into and the working adults were already partaking in. The dresses on the other hand, were not so transferrable, but you just hoped that you'd find an occasion to use it again in. You didn't feel too guilty considering the four of you only delved into thrift and second hand shops to find your outfits for the mid-scale restaurant that Minseo found.
You got ready in the girls' room, spending more time with them since being around the boys 24/7 got tiring sometimes. They had been very welcoming to you through the past week and a half despite being a tight-knit trio already. They were also all graduated and figuring out their lives, but welcomed you into their group regardless. You could definitely see yourself keeping in touch with them after the trip ended, even if you ended up in a random city far away.
There was always something nice about getting ready with a group of friends. Jiwon had curled the back of your head while she rambled on about how Younghoon was taking his sweet time making a move on her, meanwhile Suyeon was painting pink varnish on Minseo's right hand. The four of you took pictures after cleaning up the inevitably messy room and sat cross-legged on the bed as you sent them to each other.
"Juyeon's gonna die when he sees you," Suyeon smirked as she airdropped a set of photos she had taken from you.
"Why does everyone keep thinking me and Juyeon have something going on? We're just friends," you muttered, swiping through the images.
The room fell into silence and you looked up to three disbelieving faces. Minseo rolled her eyes at you, "Be serious, Y/N. Juyeon is smitten with you."
You pressed your lips together to contain a cheesing smile. Suyeon nodded in agreement, "Don't forget we're on the dance team so we know him quite well. We've never seen him with a girl like this."
"Maybe he just kept it separate from dance."
"Then he was not seeing anyone because he was dedicated to that shit 24/7," Jiwon told you, "Trust us. He likes you."
You looked on apprehensively, "Guys, we just met. It's been a week and a half."
Minseo flopped back on the bed in exasperation, "Have you never heard of love at first sight? I feel like it's pretty common that crushes develop quite quickly, especially if you're spending all day and night with someone."
"Think of Love Island," Jiwon offered, glaring at you when you stifled a laugh, "They're locked in a villa together 24/7 and by day 3 they're married with kids making out by the pool. You're basically doing better than them!"
You giggle at her analogy, appreciating the girls trying to justify the growing affection you've developed for the sleepy-eyes boy the past few days, "Maybe, but even still, I'm not the type to make the first move at all. I still want to give it time."
Suyeon nodded in understanding, "That's fair. Don't worry though, you'll know your answer by how he reacts to you tonight. You're a literal smoke show, babe."
You side-hug her in thanks and return the compliment. Minseo pushed herself off the bed as she checked the phone, "The guys have already left. We should get going too."
Downstairs, the four of you strapped on your sandals and did a sweep of the house to make sure everyone had left and you didn't accidentally leave anyone behind. Jiwoo recalled a time to you about how after one dance show that everyone either attended or participated in, they were sorting out transport after the show and each car thought that another car was taking Sunwoo home. It resulted in Sangyeon having to turn the car around once they realised at the restaurant that Sunwoo wasn't there and a grudge that Sunwoo held for months afterwards.
When you reached the restaurant in town after a small drive, the boys had already been sat down for a few minutes. The server led you to an area where they had joined 3 tables together to accompany your large group. You could see the spaces they left in the middle for the four of you.
"Y/N," a soft voice called out for you as you reached the table. Juyeon stood up from his spot and pulled a chair out, "Hope you don't mind sitting next to me."
The girls let out some sounds of amusement behind you as they took their seats. Jiwon slid in to the sit between yours and Younghoon. With your body aflame, you returned a gracious smile, "Not at all, Juyo."
After you had sat down and greeted the other boys, you opened up the menu to confirm what you wanted despite checking it earlier. Everyone's attention had turned away from you, so Juyeon took it as an opportunity to lean closer and bring his lips up to your ear, hidden from view by the menus.
"You look beautiful, by the way," he murmured shyly.
Fighting the urge to just scream in glee and giddiness, you chewed on your bottom lip. Juyeon's hair was styled differently today with some of his hair being pushed back and away from his forehead when day-to-day, his hair fell into his eyes. He was wearing a plain button up with the top buttons undone and he had sprayed on a perfume that was completely intoxicating.
"You don't look too bad yourself," you whispered to him, masking the way your heart was racing just at the sight of him.
Juyeon returned a triumphant smile and moved back to look at his own menu. From beside you, Jiwon was practically vibrating in her seat from excitement.
"He's just being nice," you mouthed to her. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her best friend slash longstanding crush.
You were never much of a drinker in college. Sure, you partook in your fair share of college parties and bar hopping nights, but you wouldn't say that you were an expert in the matter. Your tolerance was okay, but as the dinner progressed, it seemed like a better and better idea to keep ordering more wine.
By the end of it, all non-drivers on the table were verging on tipsy, all while Kevin, Sangyeon, Minseo and Jacob watched in amusement. There hadn't been any more heart-swooning moments from Juyeon through the dinner, but just being sat in close proximity to him made you feel safe and warm.
When it was time to head back to the lake house, Sangyeon had proposed the idea of ending the night with lighting the fire outside. You had utilized it a few times already, so there was a reserve of wood and flammable materials in the corner waiting to be used. It was a clear and still night with a slight breeze, so it was perfect to light it up.
Thankfully, Sangyeon and Jacob being sober worked out as they could start the fire together without harm. You definitely didn't trust the stumbling Eric or mumbling Haknyeon to do it themselves. Even Hyunjae looked a bit out of it.
The fire was roaring strong as you perched yourself on one of the benches surrounding it. Every so often, Sangyeon was throwing a log into the flames and fanning it to keep it going. It wasn't too cold in the night, but the fire provided a blanketing warmth. You were all still in your 'fancy' outfits and everyone was taking photos at different spots in the back yard. Jacob had fetched his guitar and was strumming random melodies while Sunwoo and Chanhee sang along beside him.
To your left, you heard a click of a camera.
"Lee Juyeon, will you stop taking photos of me?" you mused as you found him with the camera up to his eyes.
He smiled softly, "What's wrong with wanting to remember this moment? You look beautiful."
Your eyes fluttered shut as his words tugged at your lips, "Juyeon..."
Juyeon let out a hearty laugh as he put the camera down and scooted closer to you on the bench, thighs pressing against each other, "I'm being too obvious, aren't I?"
Everyone else was far away enough from you to be able to hear, so you were less fearful of being subject to teasings if they heard this conversation.
You thought that the wine was giving you a bit too much liquid courage, "Keep it up and I might believe what our friends are telling me."
Juyeon's breath hitched, "And what are they telling you?"
Eyes closed, you felt Juyeon press his side more purposely against yours, "I don't wanna say," you mumbled.
"Oh come on, don't I have the right to know if it concerns me?" Juyeon retorted back, "Please?"
A burst of courage pumped through your veins, "They're saying you might have a crush."
Juyeon was silent for so long that you were afraid that if you opened your eyes, he'd have disappeared. Still, you felt the warmth of his body radiating to you. Your head was heavy, lolling in front of you while Juyeon formulated his words.
You opened your eyes to a blazing fire as Juyeon chuckled lowly beside you, "I might."
Your voice indicated the surprise you felt at his indirect confession, "You might?"
"I might," he repeated. You could hear the smile in his voice, "Hard not to."
You avoid looking at him as you find a stick on the ground and start poking the fire, "You develop crushes that quick?"
"What can I say? I've always been a hopeless romantic," Juyeon mused, stretching out his arm behind you to be able to lean on them as he shuffled in his seat.
"That's not what I've heard," you recalled the conversations you've had with his friends.
Juyeon gasped, "How much have they been talking to you about me?"
You chuckled, "You're all they can ever talk about with me, if I'm being honest."
Juyeon grumbled under his breath, "I'm gonna kill all of them!"
You paused for a moment, suddenly frowning at the orange flames, "Is this just the wine talking, Juyeon?"
He snapped his head towards you so suddenly that you do the same and finally meet his eyes. The flames reflecting back in his eyes and on his face cast a golden glow on his skin, "What? No! They might have given me the courage to say these things but I'd never deceive you."
You dropped your voice to a whisper, "Do you mean it? That you might have a crush?"
Juyeon giggled at your words as he reached up to your face and tucked your hair behind your ear. Oh, he was surely a hopeless romantic.
"Definitely."
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
When you woke up the next morning, your heart was already racing. It was the residual effects of the way Lee Juyeon made you feel the night before. While you couldn't talk much more after Kevin plopped down on the bench beside you causing you two to jump apart, you shared many knowing smiles throughout the night.
But it left more questions unanswered than answered. Despite that, you tried to push down the feelings of uncertainty to focus on the present.
Kevin and Jacob were already awake by the time that you emerged from under your sheets. They were both applying their skincare on the bed, a Youtube video playing on low volume near them.
"Morning sunshine," Kevin's voice was too teasing that you knew you were in for it, "How was your night with mister loverboy?"
"Kevin," you warned lowly, sending piercing glares in his direction. Jacob had stopped what he was doing to listen in.
"All I'm saying is that you two looked very comfy by the fire last night," he shrugged innocently, "Look, Juyeon's a great guy. Not sure why I didn't think to set him up with you, but you two go together well."
"Can't believe you thought Chanhee was a better option," Jacob snorted beside him. Kevin picked up his pillow and smacked his companion with it.
"Juyeon's great," you affirmed, "I just don't want to go too fast or anything since I don't even know where I'm gonna end up."
"Have you heard back from any of the jobs you've been applying for?" Kevin asked softly.
Every single day, at the end of the evening, you would open your laptop in bed and send applications for every new job listing you could find, even if they weren't related to your degree. Someone would have to take you, right?
You nodded slowly, "I have a few interviews in the city after we get back. I'm trying not to get my hopes up with any of them since I've done so many interviews this past year to no avail."
Kevin got up to your bed and gave you a squeeze, "You'll find something, okay? You're too good to let go of and all those companies were dumb to not have you."
"Thank you Kevin," you said sincerely.
"Now, get up! It's beach day!" Kevin yelped excitedly.
Although you were facing a very large lake, there was still something different about going to the beach, digging your toes in the sand and dipping into the ocean. The nearest nice beach was nearly an hour away, so you all agreed to try and get up and get ready early.
You took a lightning fast shower and packed your things into your bag. The boys had brought tents with them that you could use to get changed in once you got to the beach, so you just slipped on a sundress with sandals. You met the girls in their room and then planned to go down to Minseo's car. Although you rode over with Kevin, you were definitely enjoying the girls' presence and so moved yourself to their car by their insistence.
When you were at the top of the staircase, you felt an arm brush against yours and the weight of your tote bag disappearing as it was snatched out of your hand.
"Morning," Juyeon breathed, bringing his lips to the shell of your ear.
You jumped in your spot, clutching your chest in surprise, "Oh my God, Juyeon! You scared me! And I can take my bag."
Juyeon raced ahead a few steps to keep it out of your grasp, "It's no problem. Are you going in Minseo's car?"
"Mhm," you nodded as he opened the front door to find some of the other boys loading their things in. You waved good morning to each of them as you unlocked Minseo's car with the keys she entrusted to you. They were still packing their last bits.
Sangyeon bounded over from his car, eyeing you and Juyeon, "Hey, we only want to take 3 cars instead of 4 to the beach. We need another person in the girls' car."
Before Juyeon could open his mouth to volunteer, Younghoon had rushed over and stretched his arms over the both of you, wedging you apart, "And that's gonna be me. Sorry Juyo. Get Eric or Hak to switch with your girlfriend."
Both you and Juyeon let out a trapped, muffled sound of surprise at his comment and you kept your eyes down on the gravel to avoid showing everyone your flushed faces.
Younghoon's belly laugh echoed through the lake, "I'm just playing, guys. You should see your faces- ow! Juyeon!"
Juyeon smirked innocently, batting his eyelashes like he didn't just kick Younghoon in the shin. Sangyeon tutted like them like a disgruntled dad as he returned to his own car. Through his window, you could see Chanhee, Changmin and Sunwoo all already asleep in the back of the car while Hyunjae loaded heavy-looking coolers into the back.
Younghoon dashed inside, probably to help the girls with their items, leaving you and Juyeon looking at each other wide-eyes and shy.
"Sorry about him," Juyeon sheepishly said.
You waved him off with a dismissive hand, "Don't worry- I've got used to the teasing. How was your sleep?"
"I barely slept last night," he admitted, "I was overthinking. I wasn't too much last night, was I?"
You shook your head immediately, "No, no. Of course not. We didn't get to talk much last night, but honestly, you're good. We're on the same page, I think."
Juyeon fought the smile on his face, "We are?"
"Definitely," you echoed his words from the previous night with a teasing tone. You could practically see him folding into himself in shyness, but you just tugged at the hem of his shirt with a soft expression, "It's so early in the morning to be teased together by Jacob and Kevin if we go in the same car, so I'll just see you at the beach. Is that okay?"
Juyeon nodded affirmatively, "I agree. I'm just gonna pass out in the car anyway. Have a safe trip, pretty."
Your cheeks were permanently red around him, "You too, Juyeon."
When your car was finally on the road going at a constant speed, Minseo looked at you through the rearview mirror and sighed, "I've always wanted a summer romance."
You frowned slightly, "Do you think me and Juyeon will just be a summer thing?"
Minseo's mouth dropped agape as she rushed to collect herself, "No, no. I didn't mean that. I just meant I've always wanted to meet someone on vacation and make a relationship out of it. I think it's cute."
"Juyeon's not one for flings," Jiwon uttered beside you. She was squished in the middle seat between you and Younghoon, who was sleeping soundly with his head nested in her shoulder, "He's never had a girlfriend or a situationship through college. I don't know about high school, but I don't think Juyeon's the type to play around with girls."
"And he wears his heart on his sleeve. We've always been able to tell what he's feeling- if he's nervous, if he's mad or frustrated. He's such a sweet guy so we hope you can take care of him too," Suyeon added on from the passenger seat.
You nodded slowly at their heartfelt words, "I've realised that about him. He's very real."
"Did you guys confess to each other last night?" Minseo asked hesitantly, "You guys looked really close by the fire."
"Kevin said the same thing this morning," you chortled, "And kind-of, I guess? It was more of a half-confession."
"That's better than nothing," Suyeon hummed, "You guys should talk properly before we leave."
You agreed noiselessly as you thought about it. There was definitely something going on between you- that much was clear. You were a little nervous about it all after remembering what Chanee said to you about people developing feelings in close proximity, but you thought to yourself that that wasn't something to project onto yourself or onto Juyeon without proper deliberation.
You were also in close proximity with the other boys, but that didn't mean that you developed feelings for them either. You felt that you owed it to Juyeon who was brave enough to be so forward with his feelings to explore the relationship without prejudice.
Sure, it might get hard when you start working and living your lives again, but that was for future you who had experienced it to decide. You've let your fears stop you from many things in your life before, but whenever you're beside Juyeon, he makes you feel like you should throw out all those doubts and just enjoy the present moment with him.
You got so in your head during the car ride that you didn't even notice the car halting to a stop and the locks clicking open.
"We're here," Suyeon murmured softly, reaching from the front to gently shake Jiwon and Younghoon awake. She turned to you with an understanding look, "You okay, babe?"
"Yeah," you breathed out, "I'm just trying not to worry about it."
"Mhm," she smiled softly as Jiwon stretched awake beside you with a sleepy grunt.
The beach car park wasn't too far from the sand, so you all loaded your arms with the items from the trunk in order to set up camp for the day. It was blazing hot with the sun high up in the sky, so you were all sweating by the time you decided on a large enough spot on the beach. Thankfully, it wasn't too busy as it was a weekday, but there were still some people dotted around.
Jacob's car hadn't arrived yet since Kevin texted in the groupchat that they had to make a stop to let Eric go to the bathroom halfway through. Sangyeon's car was taking the coolers and the tents down to the beach and thankfully, the tents didn't require setting up other than anchoring them down in place with sandbags and everyone's belongings.
The group decided a few nights ago that you were going to do a barbecue on the beach after you swam for a bit, so Hyunjae and Younghoon were separating all the ingredients they had brought for that into a corner of the space. Sunwoo, Chanhee and Changmin had immediately ran away with a beach volleyball to play with away from the food.
You laid out a bunch of beach mats and picnic blankets, keeping them from blowing away by placing someone's bag on each of the corners. Suyeon and Jiwon were applying sunscreen on each other, having changed into their bikinis already, meanwhile you were waiting for Minseo to change in the second tent after you changed in the first one.
"I'm so hungry," Minseo grumbled as she dropped her bag of clothes on the mat and rummaged for the sunscreen.
"Me too, but we can't swim for a while if we eat," you reminded her. You had munched on a breakfast bar that Minseo kept stashed in her car at the start of the journey, but you had to wait to eat lunch or else going into the ocean wasn't a good idea. You don't actually know if that's a myth or not, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
She squeezed a dollop of cream into your hands that you lathered all over the areas you could reach and then turned your attention to each other to help get the spots missed. You let it seep into your skin first so it wouldn't get washed off as soon as you entered the ocean.
By the time you felt ready to go, Jacob's car had pulled up and you could hear them coming from a mile away thanks to the speaker in Eric's hand already booming music. They didn't have much in their cars, but you could see a donut inflatable around Juyeon's arms.
"Hi gorgeous," Juyeon smirked at you as he placed down the ring on the mat, "You look ready to jump into the sea."
"We've been waiting for a bit," you burrowed your toes into the golden, warm sand.
"Blame Eric. He didn't go to the bathroom before we left and then chugged a bottle of water," Juyeon rolled his eyes, "It's okay, I put on sun protection in the car."
You laughed at the visual that appeared suddenly in your head, "You guys were definitely rubbing sunscreen on each other's backs, right?"
He hid a guilty smile, "Maybe, maybe."
Mid-laugh, you were struck silent as Juyeon suddenly pulled his shirt off in one quick motion. The past week and a half that you'd been swimming in the pool, he'd been wearing a top. Sure when he was drenched, the fabric would cling to his skin and you could see the outline of his abs through them if you were looking (you definitely were not), but seeing him suddenly shirtless in front of you had your mouth gasping apart. The sun made his abs reflect golden honey and his muscly arms flexed as he pulled the shirt off.
Juyeon smirked at your reaction, "You're gonna catch flies, babe."
You snapped your mouth shut, scrunching your face in embarrassment as he chuckled at you. Trying to walk away from him, Juyeon just huffed and caught your bare waist with his large hands, pulling you back towards him, "Don't be shy, c'mere."
A passing Changmin gagged as he glared at you two, "Oh I'm gonna be sick. Get a room."
Chanhee, who was walking by his side and practically attached to his hip, huffed along, "They make me feel so single. It's so gross."
"Fuck off," Juyeon smiled innocently at his friends, who flipped him off without even sparing a glance at the two of you. He turned his attention back to you, "Sorry, is this too much?"
The sliver of skin he was touching was burning under his fingers, but you pushed down your usual reservedness, "I feel like exploding, but no, it's okay."
He bit at his plump lips, "You're so cute. Let's go swim?"
"I don't know if swim is the right word. I told you I can't swim. Maybe waddle is better," you reminded him at your inability.
Juyeon ahh'ed and picked up the inflatable, "Use this, then. Or hold onto me, yeah? I won't let you drown, promise."
He held up his pinky finger at you, which you wrapped your own around. But instead of breaking apart, Juyeon used it to tug at you towards the ocean. He started breaking out into a jog, catching you off guard, and you picked up your pace to run beside him.
When you reached the ocean, you were struggling to catch your breath from both laughing so hard and the sudden exercise he made you do. Thankfully, the sea was warm under the sun, so it wasn't an added shock to the system.
Juyeon helped slide the ring over your body so that you were in the middle of the donut hole and you paddled deeper into the ocean where your feet couldn't touch anymore. A few metres away from you, Haknyeon and Sunwoo were splashing at each other.
"This is nice, I like this," you told Juyeon happily, "I was kinda scared to go into the ocean."
Juyeon placed his hand on the ring, "Don't worry, I got you. Let's go a bit deeper, yeah?"
You let him push you along a bit further since his feet were still touching the sand at the bottom and when the water came up to his shoulders, he stopped and let you paddle around him in the donut. He watched in amusement as you giggled to yourself happily.
"So adorable," he murmured. After a few minutes, when he realised that there was no one near the two of you for a considerable distance, he reached his arm out to half your floatie.
"Mhm?" you quirked an eyebrow at him as he pulled you in closer.
"Do you trust me?" Juyeon began, eyes shining with mischief.
Your eyes widened as you gripped the float tight to your body, "Oh no. What is it?"
Juyeon chuckled and reached for your waist under the water. He tugged at you, but the float kept your bodies at a distance.
"Wrap your legs around me. I'm gonna take the float off you," he proposed slowly, watching your reaction.
"Juyeon," you drawled in fear, holding on even tighter.
"I won't let you drown, come on," he encouraged, "I'm still touching the ground."
Reluctantly, you moved your body as close as you could to him. The minute he felt your legs close around his torso, he flicked the float off over your head and pulled you in flush with his toned arms. Disregarded, the donut moved steadily with the waves.
"I told you," he murmured. You had got a bit surprised from the way he pulled you tight to his body, instinctively tucking your head into his neck and squealing. Juyeon rubbed at your back with his palm to reassure you.
This was definitely the closest that you'd been to Juyeon at all- actually, it was a major step up altogether. You think that you half-confessions you'd shared with each other had given him all the confidence and courage all at once.
"Is this okay?" Juyeon asked quietly as both of your hearts thumped against your chests strongly.
He had asked you that so much, just showing how much of a gentleman he truly was, never wanting to go further than you were comfortable with.
"Yeah," you hummed softly, pulling your head back to look at him. A gentle smile rested on his features as he gazed at you. Your back was turned away from the shore, "Are they looking?"
Juyeon craned his head around you and stifled a laugh, "They're trying to act like they're not. Do you care?"
You thought about it for a moment. To be honest, they all already knew; they were the ones pushing you together at every moment. You shook your head, "No."
Juyeon grinned, moving the hair that had floated to your face behind your ear. Your hands were preoccupied hanging on for dear life around his neck, so he took it as his obligation to help, "You're so beautiful, Y/N."
A lot of guys had told you that, especially on the blind dates you've been on. Whenever they said it, it never felt real and always just felt like they were saying it to get in your pants or as a gateway for you to owe them something. When Juyeon says it to you, his words drip with sincerity.
"Thank you," you mumbled shyly, moving your head back into his neck.
Your torsos were pressed against each other, so you could feel the rumble and vibration of his body as he laughed at your reaction. You tried to unbury yourself away from him, but his hand crept up to the back of your neck and kept you there, sending shivers down your spine. Your body shook in anticipation as the silence hung thick in the air.
"I'm just gonna say it," he breathed out shakily, "I really do like you, Y/N. I know we've only known each other 2 weeks, but I've really enjoyed spending time with you. You honestly have made me feel things I haven't before and I get excited to see you every morning. That's so cheesy, I know. If you do like me back, I don't want to ask you to be my girlfriend yet, but would you be down to keep getting to know each other and going on dates after this and seeing where it takes us?"
You're not sure if he kept your face buried into his skin for your benefit or his, since his voice was shaking as he spoke. You smiled into his neck, whispering confidently, "I like you too, Juyeon. Isn't it obvious?"
"Maybe, but I like that. I don't like playing games," Juyeon released his hold on the back of your neck and moved his arm back to your waist to keep you pressed against him.
"You've only been out of college a few weeks, how are you so mature already?" you playfully teased as you peered up at him.
Rolling he eyes, he squeezed at your waist, "I've always been mature. It's a shame we didn't meet earlier; now I feel like they were gate keeping you away from me."
"You were one of the last ones I had yet to meet," you revealed, "I had met everyone briefly other than you, the girls, Eric and Hak."
He bumped your forehead with his, "Best for last, right?"
"Definitely," you grinned.
"Okay, I dragged you out just to tell you all this, to be honest. Let's go back to everyone before I lose control and kiss you or something," Juyeon suddenly blurted, taking a few steps back to the shore with you still wrapped around him.
A surge of confidence had you squeezing your legs around him to stop him, "Who's stopping you?"
Juyeon's eyes widened in surprise as he chewed at his lip. Reluctantly, he dropped his voice and leaned in closer to you, "Are you sure?" His hot breath fanned over your lips.
He'd practically made all the first moves up until this point and you could see the honesty in his eyes. You figured you'd save him the trouble as you reached forward and pressed your lips against his.
He tasted a bit salty from when he had splashed the ocean water over his face and a bit like the orange Fanta he was drinking earlier when he got out of the car. Juyeon yelped in shock against your lips, but smiled into them as he applied more pressure and properly slotted his lips between yours.
You hadn't planned on actually making out with him in the middle of the ocean as your friends watched on in astonishment, but he captured your lips every time you pulled away slightly and licked at your bottom lip with his tongue. Your hold around his neck grew stronger as his grip on your waist grew tighter.
"Juyeon," you whispered against him when you came up for air.
"Don't blame me, this is your doing," he uttered each word between deep kisses. He wasn't kidding, he felt like he had lost control when it came to you and he couldn't bring himself to pull away from you. The gentle tide was bobbing the two of you up and down, but he kept his hold tight as he kept your lips attached and slotted his tongue into your mouth.
You indulged in him, deepening the kiss even more, "I'm really glad I met you, Juyeon," you panted.
This was enough to pull him away from you, keeping your foreheads pressed together, "Me too, Y/N. Me too."
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
So you didn't hear the end of it from your friends during the rest of the beach day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. It wasn't like you'd planned the impromptu make out session to be witnessed by 13 pairs of eyes, but honestly it's their fault for not looking away.
Juyeon also didn't hear the end of it from Sunwoo for letting his inflatable donut float away too far out of reach to retrieve. The younger boy forced him to send more money than it actually cost as compensation, but Juyeon believed it was totally worth it.
It was your final full day at the lake house and you haven't been able to peel Juyeon away from you for more than a couple minutes. In full honesty, you'd always wanted a boyfriend that clung to your side and kept you warm, safe and protected and he was definitely checking off all those boxes.
"Disgusting," Hak scoffed as he passed behind you on the couch. You were sitting sideways in Juyeon's lap, scrolling on your phone as he played against Hyunjae on a game you had never heard of. The competitor was sat far away from the two of you on a different couch across the living room.
"It's not my fault you're single," Juyeon clapped back without missing a beat.
Haknyeon groaned and ran away faster to the back yard. You'd already spent the morning outside- Juyeon had been making good on his promise to improve your table tennis skills this whole trip, but you definitely wouldn't consider yourself a ping pong goddess yet. Thankfully, there wasn't a time limit anymore for him to keep helping you improve.
In between rounds, Juyeon would pat your head and stroke your hair softly. You would turn to him and give a soft smile that he would return before Hyunjae loaded up the next game. You were just going through your emails, blocking out in your calendar all the interviews you had amassed from your applications over the three weeks. You were feeling more optimistic about returning to the world, even more so with new relationships and friendships making your life more exciting. You were also excited to see your college friends again; they were sulky about missing out seeing you become smitten with a man, but their teasing was never-ending anyway.
"Baby you can go join the others if you're bored," Juyeon murmured lowly as he kept his eyes on the flat screen TV. He was aggressively mashing the buttons on the controller and you actually had no idea if he knew what he was doing.
"I'm fine here," you assured him.
One thing that had changed since Juyeon confessed to you was the development of pet names. Juyeon adored calling you every pet name under the sun, no matter how shy or blushing they made you. Another thing was his clinginess; Juyeon barely touched you at all before you two bared your feelings and you had no idea how he kept that side of him under wraps. He was lucky that you indulged in each and every one of his quirks.
When Juyeon was by your side, he was either holding your hand, playing with your fingers or wrapping his entire, huge body around you. He was so much taller than you that he practically swamped you, but it made you feel so giddy. Now you knew the exact meaning of the honeymoon phase.
He showed you his affection previously through acts of service and he hasn't slowed down in that department since. In only a few days, he had committed himself to making you a morning beverage as soon as you woke up and making sure that you were warm when the nights became cooler or shaded when the sun was too hot. Sure, he may have a patch of sunburn on his back, but as long as you didn't, he was a-okay.
"You're quieter today. Are you sure everything's okay?" Juyeon hummed. Hyunjae was too busy screaming at the TV to hear anything you two were saying.
"I dunno. I'm excited to go back and explore us, but at the same time, I really, really don't want to leave," you squeezed your eyes shut with a deep breath, "I don't want anything to ruin what we have."
Juyeon's eyebrows pulled together in concern, but he dropped a comforting kiss on your shoulder to comfort you, "It might be different, which I know is scary, but that's the exciting part. It might be even better than this! We'll always have this summer together, but just give us a chance out there, yeah?"
"Of course, Juyo," you flopped your head into his chest and nuzzled yourself into his shirt, "I don't have any doubts about us, I promise. It's just that everything is so new."
"It's gonna be great, baby. I'm already planning all the dates I wanna take you on and all the things I wanna show you and everywhere I wanna eat with you and-"
Hyunjae let out a yelp of frustration as he lost the battle. You don't know how Juyeon was winning despite him rambling adorably to you.
Your lips curled into a smile at his blabbing and you cut him off by pressing your lips into his jawline. Juyeon mirrored your expression and craned his head to connect your lips together. Juyeon was definitely insatiable when it came to kissing.
"I thought the pining was bad, but this is much, much, much, much worse," Hyunjae cried out, throwing his controller on the seat beside him, "Do you two have no shame? Y/N, you were so shy in the beginning."
Your head was buried into Juyeon's neck as he wrapped his arms around you, game abandoned. Feet padded loudly on the hardwood floors as Kevin's voice sounded out, "Oh, she's only shy at first. Y/N is actually a menace."
"This is all kind of your doing, Kevin," you gestured to you and Juyeon.
Kevin bounded over and leaned down to squeeze the two of you in his arms, "And that's why I expect your first baby to be named after me! Kevin or Hyungseo, I'm not picky."
Juyeon scoffed at him and shoved him away, "Shut up, you didn't do anything. Don't give him credit, Y/N."
"You know I had to beg Y/N for three months straight to come, right?" Kevin deadpanned, "I definitely deserve thanks."
"Well it's definitely no thanks to you that I only met her now when you've known her for a year and a half!" Juyeon retorted passionately.
Kevin plopped down on the couch beside Juyeon, shoving away your feet that were perched up on them, "We had to physically drag you out of the dance studio if we wanted to hang out with you. You genuinely had a visceral reaction to the thought of leaving that basement."
Juyeon had been showing you videos of his choreographies the past few days and while he was incredibly innately talented, you also could see how much work he put into his craft. You were definitely very, very attracted to that side of him, not only for his talent but also for his dedication and persevering nature. He promised to teach you a few things about dance, but you told him not to get his hopes up in that department.
Juyeon couldn't argue with that one, so he just nuzzled his head into your body. You squealed at how adorable he was being, while the other boys around you audibly cringed in unison.
"Is it too late to back out of our tenancy agreement?" Changmin sighed, also taking a seat on the adjacent couch. Juyeon just threw a pillow at him that he caught and popped on his lap.
Both Juyeon and Changmin were employed by the dance studio to start after graduation. Since they'd been house mates for a couple of years already, it just made sense to continue living together at a place closer to the studio. Another reason why you'd never met Juyeon was that out of the batch of guys in your graduating class, only Kevin lived apart from them off-campus. Chanhee was left behind from the roommate situation after Juyeon and Changmin found a new place, but he quickly weaselled his way into convincing the incoming seniors Sunwoo, Haknyeon and Eric to live with him in a 4 bedroom house since he got a job at the university.
"Where are you gonna live by the way, Y/N?" Kevin asked curiously.
"My childhood home isn't that far, so I'll probably stay at home for a bit until I figure out everything. I'll probably get a place in town as soon as I can," you manifested to yourself, "I'm trying not to worry about it."
Juyeon gently ran his fingers through your hair, "Yeah, don't worry about it."
"You can sleep on mine and Jacob's couch if you ever need. We're gonna get a pull-out," Kevin grinned. He was giving up his solo, roommate-less life to move in with his fellow Canadian.
Juyeon gasped dramatically and trapped you in his arms, "No way is she sleeping on your couch! What if Cobie-hyung tries to steal her from me?"
Kevin reached over the couch and slapped Juyeon around the head playfully, "Stop being jealous that Y/N and Jacob went on a date before she even knew you existed."
You giggled at his pout and leaned into his hold, "Jacob has no chance against you."
A pained sound came from the direction of the back door, "Y/N! You wound me!"
"Why are you all just suddenly appearing when you're mentioned in the conversation?" you cried out exasperatedly as Jacob passed by the living room. He sent you a teasing wink, which Juyeon belatedly blocked by placing his hand in front of your face. You swatted at his hand, but he in turn just gripped your fingers in his hold.
Eventually, everyone congregated in the living room one by one. It was your last night together, so you all decided to just collate a bunch of food in the middle of the living room, put on some music and drink if you wanted to. Juyeon had volunteered to drive Kevin's car home since Kevin had a whole bottle of whiskey he was dying to finish, so you decided to stay sober with him so you could stay up on the drive without the effects of a hangover.
In the kitchen, you, Juyeon and Chanhee had prepared a bunch of snacks, ramen, meat and other food, meanwhile everyone dragged their pillows and duvets downstairs. You don't know if one big sleepover on the couches and hardwood floors was good for your bodies the night before a long drive home, but it seemed like the best idea at the moment.
It was amusing to watch everyone get drunk and recount their favourite memories from the trip, such as finally succeeding in ambushing Sunwoo to throw him in the pool. One of your own personal favourites was finally being consistently on the winning team of chicken fight in the pool once you convinced Juyeon to partner up with you. You deduced that Kevin was the problem in the pair.
When the night was dwindling down and everyone began to transition into a sleepy state, you changed the music to a calm Disney film that you could leave running in the background. Eric and Sunwoo were the first to knock out, snoring on one of the mattress they had hauled from their rooms. Two mattresses and a knocked out Hyunjae, Sangyeon, Minseo and Suyeon away, you were tucked under Juyeon's comforter and cuddling against his body. He had one arm under your head and the other draped over the top of you, his fingertips ghosting on your back. You were facing him, chin tilted up as you peppered silent kisses along the bottom half of his face and his neck.
"Are you sure you don't mind falling asleep next to me? I can move if you want," Juyeon mumbled sleepily, his eyelids heavy and closing involuntarily no matter how much he fought. Even in this state, he still put you and your comfort first.
"Thanks, Juyo. This is perfect, I promise," you cooed into his skin, "Let's go to sleep, yeah?"
"Mhm, goodnight my love," Juyeon's breathing eventually slowed down and became more steady as his heartbeat did the same. You matched his breathing and it wasn't long before you fell into dreamland with him, "See you in the morning."
"Goodnight, my Juyeon."
You never could have expected or anticipated just how much this trip that Kevin had pestered you to go on would change your life. Maybe your story with Juyeon was a whirlwind romance, but it was still just the start. You never could have foreseen the way the sweet boy with the cat-like sleepy eyes could unpick your heart and nestle himself in there. You never would have guessed you would find comfort and solace in someone like Lee Juyeon at such an uncertain time of your life.
And when he dropped you off at the doorstep of your parents' house at the end of the trip (it was definitely way too early for him to come inside), the searing kiss he left on your lips and the promise to see you the next day made you feel like meeting Lee Juyeon was your serendipitous fate - an accidental discovery, a happenstance you stumbled upon, but one that was inevitable in every way.
a/n: thank you thank you thank you for reading. find my masterlist here & all likes, comments, reblogs and feedback are so, so appreciated <3
in where, throughout your whole life, you try your best to not trouble anyone, but eric shows you it’s okay to do otherwise.
genre: angst, 1.3k words
note: reader is implied of having mental health issues, anxious attachment style and hyper-independency @deoboyznet
“i want to be troubled by you.”
the sky was pouring.
you sat under the bus stop, the shade above you doing little to stop the pelting rain. you wrapped your arms around yourself tightly, trying your best to keep yourself warm as the rain seeped through your clothes to no avail. you had no umbrella as you ran from your office building to the bus stop, the jacket that was supposed to keep you warm now becoming a liability.
it was late.
you had stayed back to finish up the preparation for tomorrow’s presentation, and you had urged your teammates to leave for home first. “i’ll take care of it,” you had said, when you assured them that it was okay for them to go home.
“don’t worry about me,” you had texted eric this evening when you told him that you were going to stay back for awhile to finish up.
but now, when you sat under the bus stop and the only noise was from the pouring rain and the constant vibrations from your phone from the fifth missed call tonight, you felt so guilty. but you couldn’t bear to pick it up.
you couldn’t bear to hear the worry in his voice.
because then he would ask you why you never picked up his calls, and you wouldn’t know how to answer. because is “i didn’t want to trouble you” a good enough answer?
after all, what’s wrong with taking the bus in the rain? what’s wrong with getting drenched if you didn’t need to ask for help?
in the end, you could do it yourself. like always. just a little hardship. just suffer a little. at least it was you.
or maybe, you didn’t want him to see you like this. weak. when your emotions got the better of you. when you are not thinking logically like you always do. when you feel broken. when you don’t feel ’fine’ anymore. like you always was. like you always is. because then you would be a liability. a burden.
and he had already a lot on his plate.
you sighed, pressing the silent button on your phone again as you checked the time.
what’s thirty more minutes out here in the cold anyways?
you cling to yourself even tighter, rubbing your arms as a futile attempt for warmth. your soaked jacket stuck even closer to you, as if it resented you for not going home. the rain didn’t look like it was going to stop anytime soon, and you tried your best to convince yourself that the chill was bearable.
you’ve had worse.
that was what you always told yourself.
you clenched your teeth as another shiver rattled through you.
your phone vibrated again.
eight missed calls.
you bit the inside of your cheek, willing yourself to not press the green button on your screen, to stop the tears from forming.
not now. not when you chose this.
you blinked when you saw a pair of headlights coming towards you but you told yourself that it was just a coincidence. that the driver wouldn’t stop.
but it did.
the car screeched to a halt right in front of the bus stop and the driver’s door flew open as he ran towards you. through the storm. as if he was rushing to find you.
you stared, wide-eyed, as eric came into view. his hair was drenched, his now soaked hoodie clinging to his frame and his breathing was ragged, as if he had been running instead of driving. his eyes locked onto yours, as if only you existed in his world.
“y/n,” he called out, his voice raw, frantic even. “what are you doing?”
you opened your mouth but closed it again, as every answer you thought of was too small, too selfish.
he kneeled in front of you, his warm hands cupping your cheeks. relief flooded his face as the initial adrenaline of finding you slowly wore off.
“you weren’t answering,” his voice cracked, and he closed his eyes for a second like it physically hurt him to say it. “i thought something happened. i was going insane.”
you found your voice again. “i’m sorry.” you whispered.
he shook his head. “no. don’t say that. just, why weren’t you picking up your phone?”
you hesitated. then quietly, honestly, you answered. “i didn’t want to trouble you.”
eric stared at you as if the words had physically punched him in the gut. his jaw clenched, a flash of anger, sadness and helplessness all at once.
“y/n,” he breathed. “you could be freezing out here. and you still think that calling me is a burden?”
you looked away, ashamed. “you’ve already so much going on and i thought… it’s just a little rain and i could get home okay.”
“you always think that.” he said bitterly, running a hand through his damp hair. “you always think that you have to go through it alone. handle it alone.”
you didn’t answer. didn’t refute. because you knew he was right.
“i’m not just here for the good days.” he said, gentler, softer now. “i’m here for all of it. even on the days you don’t feel like yourself. or the nights where you’re soaked to the bone and too scared to ask for help. i will be always here for you.”
he cupped your face again, gently tilting your chin up to look at him. “i want to be troubled by you. whether it’s 3a.m. in the morning, or by you. whether it’s 3 a.m. in the morning, or when you’ve had a long day and just need someone to sit beside you in silence.”
“i didn’t want you to see me like this.” you said, your voice barely above a whisper.
his thumbs lightly brushed over your cheeks, catching the rain, or maybe your tears. you couldn’t tell anymore.
“i would rather see you a thousand times like this than to never see you at all.”
you looked at him this time. really looked at him.
“i want to be the one you call when things feel too heavy.” he continued. “i want to be the one who shows up. not because i have to, but because i want to. and because i love you.”
your breath hitched. this boy, who always smiled too easily, who always wore his heart on his sleeve, who never made you feel like you were too much. and he still loved you. even after everything.
even after all the calls and texts left unanswered. even after all the times you pulled away. even after all the half-truths you told to protect him from your sadness, from the parts of you you couldn’t even bear to face yourself. even after the nights he waited up for a call that never came, or when you told him, “i’m just tired,” when really, actually, you were unraveling inside.
he still loved you.
he was here. rain-soaked. breathless. staring at you as if you were the only thing that mattered in the world. his world.
he pulled you into his arms, his warm body a stark contrast to yours. “i want everything that comes with loving you. the good days, the bad days, the quiet parts, the stormy nights, the messy, tired pieces you try to hide. all of it.”
and at the bottom of it all, there was no doubt in his voice. no hesitation. no pause.
you nodded, burying your face into his chest and inhaling his scent. warm, comfortable, safe.
“let’s go home before you catch a cold, okay?” he asked softly, gently guiding you towards his car.
the rain hadn’t stopped, but somehow it felt warmer now.
and maybe, that’s when it hit you. that love didn’t come in grand gestures. didn’t need to. sometimes it came packed with being soaking wet at a bus stop at the end of a long day and someone who refused to let you suffer alone in silence.
genre model au , stylist au , chanhee x fem!reader cw chanhee is a bit rude , implied enemies , not proofread wc 332 request yes note model chanhee *sighs dreamily* net @kstrucknet @deoboyznet
13:56 . . . “Don’t you think you’re getting a bit too close? Thought you were the most professional stylist the agency could offer,” Chanhee muttered, a certain bite in his tone that brushed you just the wrong way.
Your mind provided you with a snarky reply in an instant, but you held it back. Your boss would give you an earful if she caught word of you being rude to their favourite model.
Chanhee was extremely pretty, and almost every company wanted to book him for a shoot. Whether it was magazines wanting to feature him on the cover, jewelry stores launching a new line of thousand dollar rings, or top end couture fashion brands, he had dozens of deals with different companies. He was booked and busy, and unfortunately for you, your styling agency worked closely with him for every shoot.
You were adjusting the collar of his suit jacket when the snide remark slipped out of his mouth. It made you pause for a split second before you brushed it away. You weren’t going to allow him to get under your nerves again.
“I’m done. You can go to the set now,” you said monotonically, the boredom ever clear on your face. Your tongue buzzed with the impulse to ask him why he felt the need to specifically request you to style him each photoshoot. Why you were the one who had to execute his intricate makeup looks. Or why you had to bear his tactless remarks every time you were face to face.
He was so particular, and you hated that you had unwillingly become part of his routine. He managed to notice every little thing about you with one glance, and you were left defenseless although you tried to maintain the walls of your privacy.
Like always, he seemed to read the thoughts in your head with ease.
“Don’t you think you should be a little more grateful, Y/n?” he suggested slowly, crossing his arms. “I pay your entire salary.”
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