Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Warnings:- Mentions of Suicidal thoughts, self harm, Alcohol, Sexual content, swearing, Kissing, friends get into violence for each other and that's it ig
────୨ৎ──── Set at SNU, and other places, all of them are lowkey losers, banter, swearing, dih jokes
✨ dividers used in smau series by @/uzmacchiato
Prev | masterlist | next
────୨ৎ──── 01. GETTING ON MY NERVES
《Entering The chat window》
《𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝑴𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉!》
«𝑫𝒂𝑩𝒐𝒏𝒈𝑫𝒂𝑩𝒂𝒏𝒈»
《𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝑷𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑭𝒐𝒐𝒅!》
《𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙩》
《𝙉𝙤/╶ 𝙔𝙚𝙨》
《𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝑳𝒆𝒇𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒕!》
《𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒅 𝑴𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉!》
. «𝑹𝒊𝒛𝒛𝒛𝒚𝑳𝒆𝒆»
《𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝑰𝒄𝒆𝑪𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 !》
《𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙩》
《𝙉𝙤/╶ 𝙔𝙚𝙨》
《𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝑳𝒆𝒇𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒕!》
《𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒓𝒅 𝑴𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉!》
«Theotron»
《You both hate ungrateful Brats!》
《𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙥𝙩 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙩?》
《𝙉𝙤/╶ 𝙔𝙚𝙨》
🍀 So finally we start with Theo! It's actually my first time doing a smau and first time writing on Tumblr so if there are any template errors, please let me know as I idk much about the features here 😊
Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Warnings:- Mentions of Suicidal thoughts, self harm, Alcohol, Sexual content, swearing, Kissing, friends get into violence for each other and that's it ig
────୨ৎ──── Set at SNU, and other places, all of them are lowkey losers, banter, swearing, dih jokes
✨ dividers used in smau series by @/uzmacchiato
ᯓ★ prev | masterlist | next
────୨ৎ─── 00. IT'S AN APP?
It was a normal saturday morning, nothing special except for a shit ton of medical assignments given to the med students at SNU and unfortunately, Y/N was one of those unlucky students.
After going for hours on an assignment and a lecture on the musculoskeletal system, she decided to go scroll on her phone for a while when suddenly a pop up advertisement follows up.
Pop up ad: Tired of being alone? Tired of missing all the action? We can guess by your eyebags.
Y/N:- what the fuck? Can they see me right now?!
Pop up ad:- Try Fuckboy Hotline today! A place where fun knows no bounds and action is never missing, meet hot people from around the world!
Y/N:- no way they named the app THAT
Pop up ad:- Try today or fullfill your wildest desires ^_^
Y/N was about to scroll past the ad but something made her stop and just stare at the ad like a hawk.
It kinda looks safe so... Why not give it a try? Besides everything is boring in her life right now anyways. It won't hurt to try.... Right?
『𝓐𝓹𝓹 𝓢𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓮』
《𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝 - 𝙁𝙪𝙘𝙠𝙗𝙤𝙮 𝙃𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚》
《𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙁𝙪𝙘𝙠𝙗𝙤𝙮 𝙃𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚?》
Y/N:- The name of the app is itself horrifying.... Might as well just jump into this shit
Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Warnings:- Mentions of Suicidal thoughts, self harm, Alcohol, Sexual content, swearing, Kissing, friends get into violence for each other and that's it ig
────୨ৎ──── Set at SNU, and other places, all of them are lowkey losers, banter, swearing, dih jokes
dividers used in smau series are by @/uzmacchiato
𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑭𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑺 - PART 1 | PART 2
Theo:- Taeyang, Music major at SNU, friends with keeho, tired of keeho
Jiung:- Doesn't know how he ended up on the app, Music production major at SNU
Intak:- Dance Major at SNU, a flirt by nature
Shota:- Exchange student at SNU, Dance major, Y/N's favourite
Jongseob:- Music Major at SNU, a genius, famous as hell
Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Warnings:- Mentions of Suicidal thoughts, self harm, Alcohol, Sexual content, swearing, Kissing, friends get into violence for each other and that's it ig
────୨ৎ──── Set at SNU, and other places, all of them are lowkey losers, banter, swearing, dih jokes
────୨ৎ──── 𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑭𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑺 PART1 | PART 2
Y/N:- A medicine student at SNUCM, tired of life, elder sister syndrome
Raven:- Owns the New pet cafe in the city and is in love with cats
Keeho:- A Singing Major at SNU and is friends with Theo
Synopsis:- "Fuckboy Hotline", the name itself explains everything but what happens when your phone's algorithm forces you to install and see what the hype is all about regarding this bizarre app, and maybe find some people worth talking to
Warnings:- Mentions of Suicidal thoughts, self harm, Alcohol, Sexual content, swearing, Kissing, friends get into violence for each other and that's it ig
It's a fic inspired by another fic I read a long long time ago so enjoy and shoutout to the actual author
| Masterlist |
Spoiler:- "It's LITERALLY Fuckboy Hotline and you expect me to not ask for a tit pic?"
So after reading a lot of fics on Tumblr and being inspired by them, thanks to the amazing writers! I kinda lowkey wanna write my own social media au here..... Hehe.... So....
synopsis ▸ the crown prince has many duties; one of which is to marry not for himself, but for his kingdom. but the woman he’s being betrothed to is one he can’t stand. you have always known that your sole duty as princess is to marry a man who will bring prosperity to your country. but what happens when that man is the same boy who sowed the seeds of disdain since you were mere children? a realist and an idealist. an arrogant prince and a stubborn princess. because when did that ever bode well for anyone?
δ — nsfw (mdni), slow burn, hurt/comfort, angst, arranged marriage, enemies to lovers, childhood nemeses, jealousy, oblivious mutual pining, everyone makes a cameo, blood, implied abuse, power dynamics, smut, unprotected sex, hate sex, oral (f. rec), degradation, power play, manhandling
♪ salt and the sea - the lumineers
ᯓ an — so happy to see you guys have been enjoying the first instalment so far :’) it’s been such a wild ride writing this, hope you love it as much as lily and i do!
READ ACT I HERE / SERIES MASTERLIST
It really did feel like you’ve gone right back to square one after that. Taeyang becomes evasive again and he doesn’t show up to any of your sessions for the next week.
You try not to feel too disappointed but it’s hard now that your sessions become you just going through the motions once again. While he hadn’t been joining all of them, the few that he did brought a new challenge besides just the task at hand. It was almost… fun. Which isn’t a word you thought you’d ever associate with him.
But his words still linger in your mind, telling you to “know your place” and it reminds you that he’s better off distant if he’s just going to keep treating you that way. So you push aside any thoughts of him as you go through your week with the help of the Choi Princess and the guard attached to her hip, Shota.
But something nags at your heart when it starts to feel as though Taeyang has simply disappeared. You think he’d just fallen back to his old habits, but there’s a feeling deep in your chest that worries otherwise, leading you to seek him out late at night one day.
You tell yourself you’re seeking him out to put him in his place for speaking to you that way.
But when you make it to the doors of his bedroom, all you can do is stand there fidgeting. You’ve never been here before, and the idea of stepping in through these bounds is an intimidating one. It feels intimate in a way you’re not sure you’re ready to explore.
But it’s late and he’s not in his office, so he can only be here and you’re sure he’s not asleep yet. He never is at this time. And that nagging feeling in your head refuses to let this go unless you quell your worries.
With a steadying breath, you raise your fist and gently knock.
It’s silent for long enough that you do think he actually has gone to sleep. But just as you’re about to step away, you hear his voice, thin and subdued. “Come in.”
You hesitate again when your hands reach the knobs. But with another deep breath, you push them open.
Nothing could have prepared you for the sight of Taeyang sitting in his bed, bare of a shirt, bloodied and bruised.
The breath knocks out of your lungs. Your eyes follow down the trail of welts along his muscled skin—some split open with blood seeping through—with purpling splotches scattered throughout, all the way to the bruised knuckles trembling around a roll of bandages.
His movements falter when he looks up to see that it's you, and your gaze lifts to the bloody lip and the large bruise at his cheekbone.
Your eyes meet, and the moment freezes over.
Breaking unspoken bounds is the last of your concern as you take the step into his room and let the doors fall shut behind you.
You drift over to him with slow steps while your eyes try to process the state he’s in. Taeyang only watches you with guarded eyes as you close the distance.
“I thought you were Intak,” he admits quietly. His voice is rough and hesitant. Weak.
Your heart thuds in your chest. A million questions run through your brain. But the only thing that your instinct tells you to do is to help him.
You gently pry the bandages from his loose hands that he relinquishes without a fight.
“Let me,” you whisper, because the moment feels far too delicate for anything louder.
You expect him to turn you away, to tell you he can take care of it—whatever this is—himself. The dim light of the lamp at his bedside reveals nothing but his usual indifference.
But he lowers his gaze from you and nods.
You don’t waste time. You rush into his bathroom to scour anything you can—a handcloth, a bowl of warm water, salve for cuts—before you make it back to where he remains sitting in the same spot you’d found him, tense and unmoving.
He remains still and pliant as you work to gently dab off any blood and apply the salve. His skin is warm under your touch and you can feel his heartbeat, a quick and unsteady rhythm. It stays silent between you as you wrap the open skin on his chest and arms.
But there’s a war in your mind with possibilities of what could have happened, who could have hurt him. Did he get into a fight with someone? Was he attacked? Did he—
“I can hear you thinking.”
You snap out of your thoughts, blinking your gaze up to his. His head is tilted up to watch you where you stand before him. There’s a tiny, lifeless smile on his lips.
You swallow around the tightness in your throat and turn your focus to his injured hand cradled in his lap. It’s only his left one that’s bruised, his right remaining clean and untouched.
You reach down with shaky hands to lift his battered one in your own. The skin along the knuckles are split open and scabbed over, a gruesome sight. You trace your thumb gently along the outside of the bruise, wondering if it was born from him punching something he shouldn’t have or…
You don’t let your mind travel to unsightly depths.
You hold his hand in your left and carve out some salve from the jar with your right, smoothing it gently over the skin before unravelling some bandage. Your hand holds his all the while, never once detaching, as if the tether between you was needed for… well you don't know what. You just know you don’t want to let go, not right now.
A distant part of you notes how delicate his hands really are, not too large to fit comfortably into yours.
“What happened?” You finally allow yourself to ask.
You let the silence persist, giving him the time to gather himself, as you wrap the bandage around his knuckles. When he finally speaks, it’s quiet.
“I tried to do as you said,” he murmurs. “To push back against my father when I didn’t agree with something.”
Your movements falter at the admission, your eyes snapping up to see him watching your hands work his.
The bitter laugh that escapes his lips feels like a sudden sting in your heart. “Look where that got me.”
It all makes sense. His need to follow the rules set by his father, to bide to his every word. It must have been in fear of this. And there you were, treating him like just some spoiled, prickly prince who called himself helpless for pity.
How could you be so wrong about a person? He had taken the weight of your words and carried them with him willingly, going so far as to heed to them. Or try to.
The sudden guilt that sits in your chest feels too big for your ribs to contain. How naive you were to think things would be so easy for him. To think some harsh words from you would rewire years of habit and submission beaten into him.
“But,” he says, breaking off your miserable train of thought. His fingers tighten just a fraction around yours; you didn’t realize it had started shaking. “It felt good.” His eyes remain on your locked hands, his thumb pressing just slightly into your palm. “To not just follow blindly. To… think for myself.”
His eyes lift up to yours and you feel yourself still against his gaze.
Here lies this man, a shell of one, under your hands with eyes that carry more burden than a man of twenty should bear. You think you can start to see through it—the armour that he’d built up over the years that has rusted to his flesh, unforgiving.
In this light, soft golden and vulnerable, he looks entirely like a different person. One that you can understand.
He was just another person who had the misfortune of having to bury himself away for his kingdom.
It takes great effort to break away from his gaze to settle it on the bruise at his cheekbone. He watches intently as you lift your free hand and let your finger brush against the darkening skin, stalling for another moment as you search for the courage to speak again.
“Hard to believe you listened to me,” you breathe. The words are meant to be light, but your voice shakes with the weight of your emotion.
Your heart nearly stops when he presses into your touch, his eyes fluttering shut. An overwhelming sense of emotion swells in your chest as he seeks out the warmth of your skin, turning his face to nuzzle into your palm.
He takes a deep breath that you feel against your wrist when he lets it back out.
You let your palm meld against him, thumb tucking against the crevice between his nose and his cheek. His hair cascades onto his forehead as his head tilts down and you’re struck with the urge to brush it back. But you can’t bring yourself to pull your hand that remains in his grasp.
Instead, you just watch him. You watch the way his brows furrow in concentration, like he’s doing everything to memorize the warmth of your touch as if it’s a temporary thing. You watch the way his throat bobs around a tight swallow, like he’s pushing down the emotion in him. You watch the way that some of that emotion seeps through anyway in the form of a crystal drop in the corner of his eye.
“I’m not usually this weak,” he murmurs, lips brushing against the heel of your palm. It sets a fire alight beneath your skin.
“You aren’t,” you answer easily. “Any weak person would not live a day in your shoes.”
His eyes flutter open, warm and dark like dampened soil after rain, carrying depths that you fear you may find yourself sinking into.
And you can’t help but want to.
The silence feels exposing, like it's giving way for his prying gaze to rip through all of your barriers and seek out hidden truths behind your eyes you’re not even sure you’re keeping.
The lack of distance between you becomes apparent. You realize how close you really are, his knees brushing against the sides of your legs where you stand, your face merely inches above his. It feels so much like the night of your engagement—having him this close to—and yet it’s different in every way.
The soft breath that leaves you is traitorous when his eyes fall to your lips. And the distance somehow feels tighter even though you haven't moved. Threadbare, where you can feel the ghost of his breath brush against you.
Your eyes drop to his lips, the split skin on the plush of his lower one and the blood that pools between the cracked crevices. They beckon you closer.
Instead, you step away.
“You should get some sleep,” you tell him. The disappointment that flashes across his face is apparent, but you try to make nothing of it. He’s quick to seal it away. “I can send the healer up in the morning to check on you. I’ll be discreet.”
He doesn’t speak as he watches you gather your meager tools and bring them back to his bathroom. When you step back out, he’s pushed up against his headboard, head leaned back. The strange urge to tuck him under his blankets ambushes you, but you push it away and stride across the room towards his doors.
Just as you reach for the handles, his voice cuts in.
“Princess.”
You stop, but you don’t turn around. You feel his gaze pierce into the back of your hair.
“Don’t let my defeat fuel your ego,” he tells you, light and airy.
You look over your shoulder at him, at the lazy smile on his lips, the tilt of his head rolled to the side, the hair brushing over his peering eyes.
You mirror his smile. “I’d hardly call it a defeat.”
A shift, momentous and present, manifests in the week that follows. Things have changed between you two. To give more space between the tension for something more, relieved of any of the suffocation that came with being in his presence.
He still remains with his duties while you return to your tasks for the wedding. But he’s no longer a ghost. In fact, you run into him more often than you’d think with him still entirely dedicated to his duties, whether he’s passing through halls by where you’re set up for the day or stopping by the kitchen when you’ve gone to make your own tea.
You share more gazes than you do words, ones that are laden with a tension that you’re not sure what to make of.
But you don’t disrupt his work and neither does he attempt to belittle you. You’ve formed an unspoken truce.
Things are finally peaceful, you’d say.
𓆩⟡𓆪
Until you come home one day with two bloodied people at your sides and Taeyang nearly has a heart attack right there in the foyer in front of a Duke.
Taeyang doesn’t even take notice of who’s at your side, far more affected than you seem to be, as he pushes past the Duke and beelines right over to you.
He stops in front of you, hands rising to reach over but he stops himself at the last second and shoves them back at his sides.
“What happened?” He snaps instead, nevermind that you look perfectly at ease.
He sees the hesitation in your eyes, the shock colouring them at his brutish tone.
The person to your right cuts in and only then does Taeyang realize it’s your sister. “Rebels, Your Highness.”
His blood chills when he sees the state that she’s in; wearing more blood than she is clothes. She must notice the panic on his face because she quickly interjects.
“Not mine,” she says, glancing to her left. “A close call, but gladly we had the best of the best to protect us.”
Intak, stationed at your other side, blushes and shuffles on his feet, averting his gaze.
He’s relieved to hear that, but he still can’t help but worry of the worst. His eyes turn back to you and scan you from head to toe, frantic to search for any evidence that you’re affected. “Are you hurt?”
You shake your head. “No. I had a trusty guard at my side,” you say before turning to Intak and giving him a warm smile. “Isn’t that right?”
Intak’s eyes flit past you, landing on your sister for a quick second before they move onto Taeyang. “I only served my duty to protect the Q—Her Highness,” he says, bowing his head to Taeyang.
Taeyang’s brows furrow at the formal display, unusual coming from his friend but he nods regardless. His worries are rather occupied by you and the fact that you don’t seem a bit of the distress that Taeyang feels.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” you add with a quick bow. “I have duties at hand.”
You brush past him but Taeyang doesn’t let you go far before he grabs your arm and halts you in your path. But when you turn to him, brows raised in question, he can’t figure out what he was even meaning for.
“Yes?” You prod and he just stares, gaping like a fish.
“You were attacked,” he says stiffly.
“...Yes. It’s been established.”
Taeyang feels the familiar rise of irritation he experiences whenever he’s with you. But the difference is, it’s not at you. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He just knows that you were nearly hurt, it could’ve been plenty worse, and he wasn’t there to stop it.
What kind of a husband was he?
He jolts at the thought, dropping your arm and nearly flinching away from you.
“I—” He starts, then stops when his voice cracks. “Excuse me.”
He makes his quick escape out of the foyer. Tries to, because he can’t run from the feelings that conflict his heart.
He knows it’s an awful game to start evading you again. It starts to become apparent to him that the distance might become a necessary third party in your relationship and it’s no one’s fault but his.
He just can’t help it. Ever since that day when you’d sent his heart into turmoil and confusion, that’s all he can feel every time he sees you. He doesn’t understand why his heart nearly gave out or why he felt ready to burn the entire kingdom down in search of the bastards who’d nearly gotten to you.
The dirty looks you give him at the few dinners that he attends lets him know you’re not happy with his sudden change in behaviour. But if only you knew all his dilemmas were because of you.
It doesn’t help that the necklace he had commissioned for you turns up missing. He’s been so caught up in you that he doesn’t even know, or even bother to understand, how it happened. All he knows is that he sent his sister to have it picked up, that she was nearly robbed of it in town, and that it made it to the castle grounds before it completely vanished. He doesn’t let it show but it only adds to his long list of reasons to spiral.
He thinks his inner turmoil is just that—inner.
Though with the suspect glances that Keeho starts to give him whenever you come up makes him think he’s not being as subtle as he’d like to be.
Whatever it is, he needs the space to figure it out so his brain doesn’t go mad whenever he enters your vicinity. So, for the next week, he lets the distance grow.
And apparently, his healer friend finds herself in a similar spot with his brother.
“Why must things be more complicated than they need to be?” She huffs. She drops her chin over her folded arms atop the balcony railing, staring out over the horizon morosely.
“It’s not complicated,” Taeyang corrects, twirling the teacup in his hands. The breeze feels nice under the summer sun. But it does nothing to soothe away his burdensome woes, and neither does the lush greens of the forest below their tall station. “I’m simply keeping my distance from her to keep my head on right. It doesn’t take much from her to throw it askew.”
She only laughs at his misery. “How ironic,” she muses, words dripping with sarcasm.
He places his teacup on the tiny plate perched atop the railing, turning to her with a raised brow. “What?”
He watches her sigh dramatically and tilt her head up to stare at the heavens. “You’re trying to push away,” she states, before looking at him with a solemn gaze he’s not used to seeing from her. “And I’m trying to get closer.”
Taeyang feels his chest twinge with sympathy. He’s watched her pine after Jiung for years now, only to have him dismiss her despite his own feelings for her.
“He’s still being evasive?” He asks, frowning. “I thought he’d get over it by now.”
She huffs, standing straight to kick her heel mindlessly against the ground, like she was taking it out on it instead of Jiung. “He’s convinced that nothing will cure him. But it doesn’t matter what he says. He can try to push me away all he wants but that won’t stop me from trying to find a cure.”
He admires her determination to her craft, envies it almost. He just hopes it will fix whatever is wrong with his brother.
“It’s just annoying how stubborn and idiotic it is,” she grouses.
He scoffs. Stubborn is something he’s becoming very acquainted with as of late. “I know a thing or two about that. I’m practically marrying stubborn.”
Taeyang can feel her disappointed glare from a mile away, nevermind a few feet.
“Are you blind?” She asks bluntly, and Taeyang bristles back. “Stubborn runs in the Choi blood. You’re just mad you’re marrying yourself.”
It’s ridiculous enough to make him laugh, maybe for the first time in the days since he’d last talked to you in the foyer when he almost found out what it was like to have a stroke.
“You’re not the first one to have said something like that.”
“So you realize its truth, right?”
He reaches over to shove her by the shoulder. “Whatever.”
She swats back in instinct, laughing. “Seriously, Taeyang,” she starts, the mirth in her tone dying away to something more serious. “You know that pushing her away won’t do anything, right? Jiung’s doing it and maybe her feelings towards you aren’t like what I feel for Jiung but…” She frowns. “It’s not a good feeling. Especially not from someone who’s important to you.”
The sight of her downcast eyes and the sound of her sullen voice makes Taeyang’s resolve almost crumble. Almost.
But instead of facing that shifting feeling in his chest, he redirects his focus.
“Hey,” he says gently, reaching for her elbow to pull her into his space. “Jiung’s just scared, you know that?”
She doesn’t meet his eye, opting to stare at his chest as she wraps her arms protectively around herself. “I know,” she mumbles. She sounds small. She reminds him a little bit of his sister, just a tad less gremlin-like.
He smiles fondly. “So don’t let go of him.”
When she finally looks up at him, it's with tears in her eyes.
He reaches up to brush away the little droplet that escapes. “I know you’ll mend him. In more ways than one.”
He’s not sure if he’s convincing her or himself—he has to believe that Jiung’s condition will get better, otherwise…
He snaps himself out of that train of thought, shaking his head. “Just have some patience,” he continues, clearing his throat of the rising emotion. “You know how he is. He needs to come to things on his own terms.”
She takes a deep breath, blinking away her tears. “You’re right,” she mumbles. There’s a long pause before she adds a quick, “You’re pretty helpful when you’re not being a stubborn ass.”
Taeyang goes to swipe her on the head but she swiftly dodges and embraces him instead, giggling.
“Thanks,” she muffles into his chest, her arms tightening around his torso. He holds back his grunt of pain. “You could learn a thing or two from yourself about your own little problem.”
He snorts, wrapping his arms around her shoulders before digging his chin atop her head, hard enough to make her wince. “My own little problem is more complicated than that.”
A movement in his peripherals catches his gaze. He turns his head to see the tail end of an emerald dress disappear down the hallway from the balcony.
He recognizes it as one of yours, and his heart twists with the reminder of just how delicate it all is.
He lets out a sigh, his arms loosening around his friend. “Much more complicated.”
𓆩⟡𓆪
Taeyang starts to realize that maybe he should have listened to the healer, that maybe he let the distance grow a little too far between you for the next few days when he sees Keeho start to hover around you much too frequently and much too familiarly.
Keeho has started to accompany you to your daily chores. Beyond that, he’s started conversing with you like it's nothing at the dining table, and whenever Taeyang hears your voice chiming around the corner, sending his heart array, Keeho’s nasally one follows right after. He hates that he’s been hovering around to simply keep watch, only driving himself more mad whenever he hears Keeho’s ridiculous jokes getting that laugh out of you.
An absurd surge of fury pierces through him to see you that way for someone else, and his brother no less.
Suddenly, Taeyang’s duties become the last of his worries. Instead, he makes the time to accompany you to your duties so you wouldn’t have to deal with Keeho. Surely, you’d prefer him over his oaf of a brother.
But he starts to doubt his beliefs when the first thing you do is frown at him when he enters the parlor where you’re set up with a string quartet. Taeyang nearly throws a fit.
“Taeyang?” Four. “Keeho was supposed to accompany me.”
He doesn’t hide his scowl as he walks closer to where you are. “Well it’s me. Disappointed?”
You narrow your eyes, frown shifting to an annoyed pout. “Aren’t you busy?”
Taeyang can’t really say that he is without having to explain that he ditched everything to make time for this, so he just snaps at you to, “Just be grateful for it.”
The session commences tensely, every song grating his ears, but at least he’s suffering it with you.
He thinks it's enough to beat the pest that is Keeho away.
He realizes how wrong he was when he walks too late into the kitchen for the cake tasting, out of breath from darting across the castle to make it in time. Because there was Keeho, lifting a small bit of red velvet cake with his grimy little fingers for you. You’re smiling as you lean in to take the piece on your tongue, practically licking his fingers clean off.
Taeyang sees white.
It only gets worse. Keeho swipes the cream smeared at the corner of your lips and has the nerve to tongue it off, all while leering right into your flustered gaze with that sleazy smile of his.
All Taeyang can do is stand there, chest heaving for an entirely new reason, as you ogle his brother while he murmurs something about how it, “Tastes so sweet.”
A sudden crash pierces through the horrible moment—a maid shattering a glass bowl at the other end of the kitchen, but Taeyang can’t find it in him to worry about that.
“Keeho,” Taeyang says, far too calmly for what he’s really feeling. “I need you in my office.”
He doesn’t wait for a response before he turns and leaves.
The way to his office remains quiet except for the clacks of Keeho’s boots prancing after him a little ways behind. Even his walk sounds arrogant, each click only stoking the flames of Taeyang’s ire.
As soon as the doors shut behind Keeho, all of Taeyang’s composure drops at once.
“What the hell was that?” He seethes, whirling around to face Keeho who stands there with his cocksure smile, hands folded behind his back.
He shrugs innocently. “What was what, brother?”
Taeyang’s eyes narrow. “You know what. Defiling your Queen out there in the open like that?”
“Woah,” Keeho scoffs, brows rising in shock at the pure anger seeping through Taeyang’s words. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? I was just feeding her cake.”
“Don’t play coy with me, Keeho,” he growls slowly, stepping forward but Keeho only grins.
“I’m not playing, brother,” he says casually. “You were too busy. You can’t blame me for keeping her company while you’re gone, can you? We might have to get used to it anyways, if this is how it’s going to be.” Keeho’s grin widens wolfishly and it only makes Taeyang’s stomach twist further into a knot. “I mean, when she’s all lonely and you’re working, it’s only fair if I get to—”
Taeyang can’t bear to hear him finish that thought. He doesn’t even realize what he’s done until he feels the ache left behind in his knuckles and Keeho’s head is snapped to the side as a violent red blooms across his cheek.
When it sinks in what he’s done, Taeyang can only stare at Keeho.
Dread follows slowly after the realization. He’s never once raised a hand at his brothers, a vow he made to himself over years of being submitted to his father’s fury. And here he was, hurting his own little brother over—over what, over you?
Keeho stares back, hand cradling his jaw. “Taeyang, I—”
“Get out,” Theo says quietly, lowering his shaky fist.
He’s not angry anymore. He can’t be, when all he can do is question his sanity. What are you doing to him?
The answer doesn’t hit him until later that night, when he’s perched atop his balcony that oversees the gardens where you’re lounging around with Jiung, Jongseob, Keeho, his younger sister and her guard.
He watches the way you laugh with them, play with them, poke and rib at them like they’re your own. And he realizes, with an aching heart, that you fit right into his home. Maybe more than he ever has.
Is this what he’s been missing out on all this time? You’ve been here for a bit over a measly month and yet you’re more at ease with his own family than he ever was.
You’ve never been the problem. You’ve never been the spoiled, snobbish, above-anyone-else princess he’s made you out to be. Clearly, you make well with everyone but him. That only speaks to his character, not yours.
And it’s not just you. He’s managed to push everyone else in his family away because of his own ego, his own self-importance. He’s always had a knack for self-destruction. He just didn’t realize how much until it was laid out in front of him.
Taeyang finds himself wondering what it would be like to have his own family with you. Would it be just like this, laughter and late-night garden getaways? Or would he ruin that too?
When you look up and catch his watchful gaze only to return it with a glare, he realizes that he wants nothing more than the version of you that his family has. The version of you that he wants for himself.
He just needs to work for it.
𓆩⟡𓆪
You’re not sure what’s changed. When Keeho told you what had gone down, you thought Taeyang finally lost it.
But it seems the opposite. Or maybe he’s reached a new level of insanity.
Because three weeks before the day of the wedding, on the morning of your birthday, you wake up to a bouquet of your favourite flowers. You think it’s from your sister, but when you read the neat cursive on the tiny card tucked away in the petals, you nearly lose it yourself.
I can see why they’re your favourite. They remind me of you. I’ll be sure to stay far away from them.
Your Arrogant Prince
The smile that pulls at your lips is immediate and against your will. It’s hard to believe he’d remember your offhanded comment from that day of flower picking, but it’s more likely he must have just asked your sister.
You pick up the bouquet, note its lousy arrangement, and realize with a fond heart that he must have fixed it together himself.
But you’re quick to fan the flames. It will take more than one lousy bouquet for him to make up for his fair-weather tendencies. But that doesn’t stop you from depositing the flowers in a vase and leaving them at your bedside.
When you make your way down, you find the dining table filled to the brim with all your favourite foods. And, besides the regular cast, Taeyang sits at the head of the table for the first breakfast in many days.
He bids you good morning before anyone else can, taking not only you, but the others by surprise. You think it’s just a special thing, saved for your birthday, but the treatment continues through the following week and what you once thought was a gimmick might actually turn out to be effort.
It becomes even more obvious when you’re bombarded by maids at various hours of the day, tending to your every need.
During your jewelry arranging session, one of them approaches you with the tea that you like, just the way you like it.
You instantly lighten at the familiar aroma, setting aside the tray of jewels on your lap to lean forward and breathe it in.
“How did you know this is the one I like?” You ask, practically beaming. “I don’t recall telling the staff here.”
The maid bows her head before stepping back. “It was a request from the Crown Prince, Your Highness.”
Your smile drops, shock raising your brows instead. How did he know?
You lift your eyes back up to her. “Is he also the reason I have an army of maids at my disposal at every hour of the day?”
The maid smiles sheepishly. “Yes, Your Highness. He’s asked us to make sure you have everything you need to make your days easier.”
Your lips rise into a slow smile. If this is how he seeks repentance, you can’t find it in yourself to complain.
𓆩⟡𓆪
The wedding is a little over two weeks away, and while the chaos is up to everyone’s necks, you manage to stave an early evening away for yourself to ease off all the stress. Well, Taeyang had a part in that—arranging with the staff to give you a needed day off.
The bow is a familiar weight under your hand, an old one, but not forgotten. You can’t remember the last time you’d felt mentally stable enough to think about anything but your impending doom. But with your impending doom feeling less like impending doom recently, you finally get a break.
You pull the arrow back, aim with a breath, then let them go in tandem.
It hits a few inches from the centre.
You figured you’d be a little rusty but with an hour of practice, you should be back to par.
You draw another arrow, taking your time to fix your aim. Just as you’re about to let go, a voice catches you by surprise and the arrow goes flying astray.
You curse, whipping around to glare at Taeyang.
“Really?” You huff at the smirk on his face as he approaches. “You couldn’t have waited until after I took the shot.”
“If you were good enough you would have gotten it,” he retorts easily, looking over at the target. “I didn’t know you did archery.”
He's casual today, with a white button down and brown slacks. His hair is pushed back messily with stray tresses fluttering over his face in the wind.
You tear your gaze away just as he turns back to you. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” you state, walking back to the quiver you’d left on ground by an oak tree.
You hear him trail after you on the rustling grass, moving to lean against the tree with his hands in his pockets as he watches you fall into position with another arrow.
You can feel his eyes on your figure. His leering has gotten less and less inconspicuous in the past week and as aggravating as it may feel at times, you can’t say you don’t enjoy the attention.
“I’ve never had much time to pick up such hobbies,” you hear him say as you adjust your aim.
You relax and lower the bow, looking at him over your shoulder. His eyes flick up to meet yours as you do and you’re a little taken aback at how fitting he appears with the windswept look. It’s times like this that remind you your misfortune isn’t so vastly great as you’d initially deemed it.
“Would you like to try?” You offer without much thought. You add hastily, “Instead of just standing there and leering like a creep.”
He smiles as he straightens and saunters up to you. “Can’t a man admire his wife?”
You ignore the familiar set of butterflies that he’s been letting loose in your stomach for the past days.
“I’m not your wife,” you correct him, shoving the bow in his hands.
“Yet.”
You roll your eyes as you shove him to position and he lets himself be pushed with a laugh.
You nearly stumble over yourself as you move to stand behind him. His laugh still takes you back, a sound you’re so unused to but has become a part of your routine with him recently. It’s not an unwelcome change.
He takes a breath and stares at the target for a calculating second. “Looks easy,” he mutters quietly. “I just have to pretend that it's Keeho’s head.”
Your stomach twists, cheeks burning at the reminder of your little… plan with Keeho that had practically gone up in flames. It seems that Taeyang still doesn’t know the truth behind it.
“About that,” you start, and Taeyang looks over his shoulder at you, a little startled like he hadn’t expected you to hear. You fumble for an explanation under his inquisitive gaze. “I just wanted to make you upset. And Keeho wanted to make his maid jealous so we—” You bite your tongue, cursing yourself for letting Keeho’s secret slip.
But Taeyang doesn’t seem to care about that. His lips pull up into a winning grin, like a cat with his canary. “You wanted to make me jealous,” he surmises, much to your dismay.
That’s one way to put it. But there was no way that you’d admit something like that. And it’s not as if he’s completely innocent of that crime either.
You scoff, turning your cheek to him. “As if you didn’t start it first.”
You don’t have to look at him to feel his puzzled gaze on the side of your face.
You roll your eyes, turning back to him with narrowed eyes. “Unless you like to cozy up with all your healers?”
Realization dawns on his face, lips parting in a small ‘o’. “Well,” he starts, standing straighter. “Only the ones I’ve been friends with since childhood. Especially the ones that seek advice from me about their feelings for my brother.”
Your cheeks instantly heat up. Now that you really think about it, you have seen Jiung hovering around the healer one too many times, enough to give you the grounds to question whether it was just for health checkups.
You dig your teeth into your lip, glancing up to see Taeyang watching you with a fond little smile. “I didn’t know you were worried about that.”
“I wasn’t,” you say stubbornly, avoiding his twinkling gaze. You push at his shoulder, hoping the blush on your cheek isn’t as intense as it feels. “You know nothing. Now shoot.”
He laughs again, turning his attention back to the target with a shake of his head.
The line of his shoulders straightens with newfound ardor as he lifts the bow. He’s clumsy as he handles it, hooking the arrow with no finesse, and you have to keep yourself from laughing at his utter cluelessness. But a stifled snicker passes through anyway and his expression quickly sours as he glares at you over his shoulder.
“Instead of just standing there, aren’t you supposed to help me?”
It’s your turn to grin now. “Why would I?” You tease. “It’s so much more entertaining to watch you figure it out yourself.”
His glare deepens. “You’re a terrible teacher.”
“I never claimed to be a good one,” you remark with a smile and Taeyang’s glare melts away to the soft smile you’re slowly becoming fond of. You linger on it for a moment too long before you catch yourself. “Let me.”
You step behind him and raise your hand to his back, hesitating for just a second before you press it flat between the notches of his broad shoulders, placing pressure to straighten his stature. The touch, even through the layer of fabric, feels all too encompassing.
Taeyang takes a breath, a little too sharp to be normal.
“You have terrible posture,” you mumble.
He exhales, keeping his eyes strictly on the target. “So I’ve been told.”
Your arms come around to take his elbows between light fingers to adjust his arms as you start off on an explanation of the angles to hold his stance at. Taeyang stays far too silent, and you start to question whether he’s even listening.
You peer over his shoulder at the grip he has on the bow and the thought of reaching out to adjust his hands takes you back to that night in his bedroom. The purple along the knuckles of his left has faded to a shadowed lilac now, but the thought of touching him there again feels daunting.
“Loosen your grip on the bow,” you tell him. It’s not on purpose that your breath brushes against his neck, but you’re not against the visible effect it has on him in the form of gooseflesh that rises on his skin.
He swallows, adjusting his grip on the wood. “Like that?”
“Hm. Could be better.” You eye his hand around the nock of the arrow. “That one’s worse, it’s too tight. Loosen and hold it between your thumb and side of your index.”
He follows, or tries to, but the arrow still sits uneasy in his hand.
“Not quite.”
He tries again, but it still falls short.
He turns his head to peer down his nose at you. You try not to feel his gaze on you like a physical weight, but he makes it difficult. “Apologies, dear, but you may have to do it for me.”
You look up at him, expecting it to be another one of his artful attempts at flirtation, but the way he looks at you is only intense. Wanting.
It’s you who’s affected now, and you can’t help but to give in to his plea.
You tear your eyes from him to reach over and let your hand cover his on the bow. You falter at the tingles that rise beneath your skin before quickly reeling yourself together and adjusting his grip. You move on with haste, reaching around him to adjust his hold on the nock.
All while you try to keep your breaths intact with his gaze fixed on you, persistent and prying in the proximity.
“There,” you tell him and hope that pushes his attention back to the task at hand.
But his gaze lingers, like it mourns having to look away before he finally does.
With a steadying—albeit shaky—breath, he pulls the arrow back and releases.
You’re too caught up in his profile to see whether he’s hit the target. But with the way his face lights up and the bright grin that pulls on his lips, you think he must have hit somewhere in the centre.
Only to turn and see that he’s hit the block, sure, but outside of the circle entirely.
“I did it!” He cheers.
You blink. “You did something.”
But when he laughs, bright and airy and like he’s conquered a nation, you think it doesn’t matter at all if he gets to laugh like this.
𓆩⟡𓆪
It’s one week until the wedding and Taeyang is sure you’re just about near losing your mind.
And it’s evident as such when you barge your way into his office again, crying, “I am going crazy!”
Taeyang looks up from his papers to see you practically heaving with your vexation, cheeks flushed and hair unruly. He gets the ridiculous urge to go over and smooth the strands out of your face.
Instead, he sits up straight in his chair. “And you’re just realizing this?”
You bristle at that, turning your glare to him. “Not like that,” you snap, then start pacing around the floor of his office, arms flailing wildly as you commence your timely ramble. It’s a familiar sight, now that you’ve come in here just to pace and complain before promptly leaving in a huff.
“They pull me away from teatime—mind you I’d already been running around all morning like a headless chicken—to ask me to pick out cutlery of all things—”
“Sounds awful,” he chimes in drily, but you ignore him.
“—so I make my choice and then it’s oh are you sure?” You mock in a high, nasally voice. “We suggest sterling actually, and then she goes on and on and on about quality differences that I truly could not give a single damn about!”
His lips quirk up at the passion with which you tell your grievances. He stands from his chair and starts strolling his way to you. “How dare she?” He asks, but you’re too caught up in your flurry of ire to notice him closing in.
“Right?!” You cry with a toss of your arms in the air. You turn to watch outside the window when he stops a foot behind you. “So what even is the point of me being there? If you’re such an expert, you choose. I couldn’t care less at this point, Taeyang—“ five, he counts in his head, “—let’s just get married in rags. Let’s do it in the stables for all I care. I'm done. I am simply—”
He takes hold of your elbow and pulls you to him, cutting you off. You yelp and nearly topple over but his grip on you is sturdy enough to keep you upright. Your eyes are wide and questioning as they stare up at him.
With how close you are, he notices the flush on your cheeks deepen.
“Are you done?” He asks, his voice far too fond for his liking. But recently, anything he says or does around you is out of his control.
You blink up at him, seeming a little struck. “...Yes.”
“Good,” he says. Then he starts pulling you out of his office. “Come along.”
There’s a little resistance against his hold as you stumble after him. “Where are you taking me?!”
“You will see,” is all he says.
“If this is a scheme to just mess with me more, I swear—“
He moves his hand down to your wrist and yanks you forward to walk alongside him. “Hush. Just follow.”
You settle down, but you don’t shut up, opting to huff and puff under your breath about how “controlling” he is. He only listens with a tiny smile as he carries down the marble floors.
The room he brings you to is in an area you’ve never wandered to before and it feels a little… ghostly.
It’s dark. It feels cold.
Taeyang strides across the room to the large window that sits on the other end. When he pulls apart the curtains, the sun spills in and sets everything alight.
The walls are a mix of gold and white that glow seraphically with the sun. There’s paintings hung on them of flowers and gardens and natural landscapes. Tarps are draped over all the pieces of furniture that sit dormant.
Something about this room feels like it's trapped in time. Untouched. You wonder how many years.
“This is where my mother spent most of her time.”
Taeyang’s voice pulls your focus to where he leans against the rim of the window, the sun against him like a celestial backlight.
There’s a distant look in his eyes as they trace the walls. “I didn’t get to spend much time here with the others…” He pauses. He must mean his brothers and his sister. “I come here now when I need to get away. People don’t usually come here. Well, Jongseob does.”
The knowledge of this space, the weight that it carries, makes you feel like an intruder. “You didn’t have to bring me here.”
He looks at you for a thoughtful moment before he nods his head to his side, beckoning you to the empty space by the window.
When you join him, you both stay in silent contemplation. It’s not uncomfortable. It’s soothing, rather.
“Jongseob was in here the most,” he recalls quietly. “Jiung was here whenever he wasn’t busy. Keeho was always the detached type and my sister was more independent. She hated being coddled. But Jongseob always clung to her.” The tiny smile that sits on his lips is distant and a little sorrowed. “She favoured him. And I was…”
“Busy being a King?” You finish for him and he breathes a short laugh.
“Yeah. Too busy for her.” His smile fades, expression clouding with a darkness that doesn’t sit right with the sunlit room. “I had no time to be her son.”
The heavy look in his eye settles like a physical weight in your own chest.
“That’s not true,” you insist. “I don’t remember much of her, but I recall she always looked at you fondly. She was a loving person.”
His eyes cast lower, head tilting down so his hair curtains his face. “But with no one to love her right.”
The guilt he must feel needs no other explanation. You lift your hand to brush his hair back, catching sight of the remnants of his tears that he blinks quickly away. He turns to you at the touch, lifting his melancholy eyes to you.
“She knew—knows,” you correct yourself. “She knows you love her. You were just… misfortunate enough to not get the chance to show her. But Jongseob did.”
He tries to turn away but you grab hold of his chin, firm yet gentle. Though he doesn’t look at you, lowering his gaze as a furrow sets between his brows.
“It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” You ask him quietly. “That he got to love her enough for both of you?”
His eyes fall completely shut, lips pressing tighter to smother the tremble. You watch him as he breathes, reels his emotions in, and opens his eyes to you.
“I’ve—” He starts, then pauses when his voice shakes. He swallows hard before trying again. “I’ve never thought about it that way before.”
You let your hand fall, fisting it in your lap to ease away the tingles left beneath your skin. “That’s what I’ve always been here for, I suppose.” You smile at the question in his eyes. “To challenge you, Taeyang.”
You expect him to fire back with something of his own but he only gets this sickeningly soft look on his face. One that would normally unsettle you.
But it is a little intimidating so you turn your gaze away. “What is it?”
“You’ve called me by my name six times now.”
Confusion. And then shock. You whip back around to him, eyes shot open wide. “You’ve been keeping track?”
He simply shrugs like it was a normal revelation, like announcing a shift in the weather. “I like the way it sounds on your tongue,” he states, and you feel your stomach twist. It twists further when he tilts his head just so, the corner of his lips lifting. “Say it again?”
A furious heat rises on your cheeks, but you can’t find it in yourself to deny him. Maybe it’s the vulnerability remaining from the moments just prior. “Taeyang, you’re being ridiculous.”
His smile pulls wider as he pushes himself fully up to his feet. “Seven,” he counts. “Again.”
You straighten out of instinct, crossing your arms as you try to tame your fluster. “No, Taeyang,” you grumble at his demand, turning your gaze out the window.
You try to ignore him in your peripherals as he moves closer, but his voice right beside your ear makes it difficult. “Eight.”
He takes your chin in his hand to make you face him, a shiver climbing up your spine when your eyes meet his. They’re set alight to molten honey by the sun. His skin fares just as tantalizing, a golden dew.
“Again.”
You watch as his smile fades into something softer. His eyes seem lost as they watch you.
You let out a quiet, shuddering breath. “Taeyang?”
“Nine,” he answers. His thumb lifts, brushing against the plush of your lip. His body leans into you, eyes falling lower.
You don’t need the command. You give into him without it.
“Taeyang,” you whisper.
“Ten,” he whispers back, then seals his lips over yours.
It’s warm and soft, everything that your relationship with Taeyang is not. And you find yourself lulled into it, hand finding his chest as his slides up to your cheek.
You falter at the flutter of his fingertips brushing against your heated skin, pushing back your stray locks.
He groans softly when your fingers dig into his shirt and he surges forward, pressing insistently against your lips. You lift on your toes to push back with the same fervour, moving in tandem with him.
His heart pounds beneath your palm. Yours is a wreckage of its own.
It’s a simple kiss, but it’s enough to make your shackled walls come crumbling down.
“Sister! There you— oh…”
The warmth tears away in a single moment as you jump from the kiss, Taeyang stumbling back on his own. You turn away from him, trying to reel your wild heart in, and your cheeks burn even hotter at the sinking realization of what’s just happened.
You hear your sister’s heels slowly step away, the doors creaking as she starts to draw them shut. “I can come back—”
“No!” Taeyang interjects quickly, clearing his throat when his voice cracks. “What did you need?”
“It’s a bit of a personal matter but—”
“Coming!” You chime, turning and quickly rushing to your sister’s side while pointedly keeping your panicked gaze off of her baffled one. You don’t dare look back at Taeyang.
“Wait, you don’t have to come with me! I can just—” she tries to insist but you ignore her, looping your arm around hers to tug her, and you, away from this treacherous moment while mentally preparing yourself from the barrage of questions your sister is sure to have for you.
Taeyang just stands there helplessly, watching you fade away, with his mind in a storm and fire at his fingertips.
𓆩⟡𓆪
This game seems endless; traipsing around each other.
After that happened—Taeyang can’t even bring himself to name what happened—things have taken a turn for the awkward. Eye contact is avoided at all costs at dinner, if he even decides to show up. Conversations are kept nonexistent. He simply nods at you to acknowledge your presence to which you only divert from.
It’s safe to say that neither of you know how to act accordingly with what happened. He’s not sure what the protocol is and it leaves him feeling astray. You surely feel the same if your avoidant behaviour is anything to go by.
It keeps him up at night. The ghost of your lips pressing against his, the soft breaths he pulled out of you, your hand searing heat against his racing chest. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s back beside the window with his heart in his hand.
It’s all he can think of when he sees you. And it throws him so far off course from reality, pulls his focus so far out of his grasp, that he does everything he can to avoid having to face it, even if it means evading you.
He’s not even sure what it is, and he’s not sure he wants to know. He doesn’t want to know what it is that makes his heart lurch whenever it comes to anything remotely related to you. He figures it’s better left untouched and locked away.
But it’s hard to avoid it completely when everything becomes about you with the wedding only a few days away.
To make things worse, the gift he bought for you still hasn’t turned up.
His sister barging in with problems of her own (involving her guard, no less) doesn’t help either, and as much as he appreciates the reconciliation, it only adds to his long list of headaches to tackle.
Then to make things even worse, Intak comes to him with the petrifying news that a second attempt at your life has been made by a rebel, and the guilt he’d been carrying for the past two months heightens tenfold.
It’s safe to say that the days leading up to the wedding, he spends them on edge. And it doesn’t help that he hasn’t been in contact with you in any way. With preparations at all time high and you being pulled this way and that, he can’t even attempt to speak with you if he even grew the courage for it.
But the night before the wedding, Taeyang reaches his limits. Everything feels like it’s falling apart and the worst part is that it is all out of his hand. And he hates feeling helpless.
He needs something, anything, to put his mind at ease. And with a startling realization, he finds that you have become the source for it that he yearns for.
So he musters the meager bits of courage he has left in him and makes his way to your bedroom. He knows it's improper to see his bride the night before the wedding but many things about this betrothal have been anything but proper. Surely, you wouldn’t mind.
He starts to think otherwise when he pushes the door open to see you staring at yourself in the mirror, completely still and devoid of emotion.
“Princess?” He asks, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. When your eyes snap up to meet his through the mirror, wide and stormy, he feels dread pool in his gut. “Are you alright?”
A laugh escapes you, short and devoid of any mirth. “Alright?” You repeat in a disbelieving whisper. “How can I be alright, Your Highness?”
Your Highness. Not Taeyang.
He tastes poison in his mouth at the idea of you calling him anything other than his name now. It feels like you’ve just erased him; the him that he’s shown you the past few weeks.
He doesn’t understand. Has the kiss pushed you away? Did it make you realize that you didn’t want him that way? His heart twists at the thought and he wishes with a ravenous desperation that it was anything but that.
If only he knew, it was the opposite. You wanted him with a force so great that it terrified you. This was the last thing you wished for, especially after vowing to yourself you would never fall for these men’s games. Falling for Taeyang means falling at the hand of the crown, and with that, it means submission. It means losing yourself. And that is the farthest thing from what you want.
“What do you mean?”
You hate that his voice sounds so genuinely concerned. This is exactly how he’s played you, isn’t it? By playing the part to get you to lower your defenses.
The familiar bitter tang rises up your throat. “It means,” you start, voice tight. “How can I be alright knowing that I’m marrying you?”
You watch through the glass as Taeyang’s eyes widen. The moment stills as you stare at each other, letting the weight of your words sink in.
Then his eyes sharpen, expression hardening into the familiar fury that you’re used to from him. The anger that only you seem to bring out in him. The anger you’ll be submitted to for the rest of your life.
“I thought we were okay,” he says, even still doing his best to reel his emotions in. “What the hell is your problem now?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then make me,” he snaps.
You whip around to face him. “Make you?” You ask, exasperated already.
His anger feels more real now that you face it with your own two eyes and it's heavy enough to make you falter, too overwhelmed with your own emotions already. But you stand your ground regardless.
“If you couldn’t understand all this time, how can I make you now?” Your chest heaves, the fear that's been growing inside you, faded in the recent days but surely there, rising to the surface all at once. “You’ll never understand the fear of being tied down to a man and becoming nothing more than a wife.” Your voice, and your breaths, rise with each sharpened word. “I have no identity, Taeyang. I have no purpose! If I marry you, I will never have one. That is my problem. Do you understand now?”
His jaw grits, brows furrowed over cutting eyes that reflect your own fury back. “No, I don’t,” he answers, taking a step forward. “You should be grateful, if anything. You’re getting everything a woman can ask for and you still choose to sing your woes about things that don’t matter.”
“Don’t matter?” You whisper in disbelief. The laugh that leaves you is abrupt and sharp. “You can dress this up as opportunity and prosperity all you want, Prince,” you spit the word, nevermind the disrespect. “I am getting everything but my own name. I am becoming yours. Don’t you realize how twisted that is? This… ceremony is to relieve my father of my burden in the name of a truce. It's not a wedding.” You pause, your throat tightening around your words. “It’s not love.”
Taeyang steps back, like the words had physically blown him. His expression crumbles away to a shock etched with what could be pain. But you can’t recognize it past your own.
Instead, you take a step forward, driving the knife deeper. “There have been two attacks on my life now,” you recount, hands quivering at your sides. “Your people do not want me and I have to live in that fear for the rest of my life. I’ve been almost killed twice now and you couldn’t even protect me! And you’re supposed to be my King? My husband?”
Taeyang’s eyes, now ridden with guilt, fall away from you.
You only want to hurt him more. You want him to feel a fraction of what it is that you’re feeling.
“Forget the people,” you scoff. “You can barely even stand me.” His gaze snaps back up to you but you don’t give him the space to counter. “You have hated me your whole life. And I’m supposed to believe you changed your mind about me in, what, two months? You don’t care about me. How can I be alright marrying you knowing that?”
Taeyang’s eyes flash, and you’re not sure what it is about those words, but they trigger something primal in him. “Watch what you’re saying,” he seethes.
You can only shake your head, stepping back when you feel a familiar sting in your eyes. “This won’t work. Is this how we’re supposed to live? Mercurial—okay to not okay. Make peace one day then mess it all up the next, whether it's your fault or mine. I can’t do it.” The tears well heavily but you don’t let them fall. “We’ll be miserable.”
“Then we’ll spend a lifetime being miserable!” He snaps. His chest is heaving, fueled with the intensity that returns to his gaze. “But we’ll do it together. You’re marrying me, whether you like it or not.”
“Like hell I’ll marry a man who can’t make up his mind! Who doesn’t care.”
The air shifts, and the fire in his eye isn’t simple anger. It’s rage.
He steps forward. You step back. “I don’t care?” He asks in a quiet that pierces you harder than anything loud would. He doesn’t stop, invading your space and closing in every time you step back. “I have spent weeks trying to prove to you that I care. I care, princess, I always have.”
You shake your head, still scrambling back as he closes in on you. “It doesn’t matter if you just say it.” Your voice wavers, the last of your defenses a weary thing, overwhelmed by his sudden force.
He only persists, a slow, almost terrifying grin curling on his lips. “Is that so?”
You gasp when your back hits the wall.
He stands right before you, his heaving chest nearly pressed to yours, looking down at you with eyes a wild storm of anger, desperation, and something more.
His hand grasps your jaw, tilting your face up to his, and you feel trapped.
Your body betrays you; because despite it all, you want nothing more than to stay trapped like this. You want his fingers to dig in deeper, to leave a claim on your flesh.
He leans down, his nose barely brushing yours as he breathes the words right over your lips. “I’ll show you just how much I care so you won’t dare insinuate anything like that ever again.”
The tremble that crawls down your body leaves you feeling breathless. With him so close, your desire for him becomes impossible to ignore. You want to stop hiding from it. You want to give in to it.
The way Taeyang looks at you makes it apparent he wants nothing more than to pull you under.
And pull, he does.
The kiss is all teeth and tongue, storm and fire, an unforgiving push and pull. His hands feel like they’re everywhere, a trail of heat from your hair to your waist to your hips, pressing your back into the wall as he melds himself against you.
His fingers feel as if they’re clawing their way to carve space for him. And you let him, but not without a fight of your own.
Your hand digs into his hair insistently, soft between your fingers as you pull. The groan he lets out into your lips is rough and from the depths of his lungs.
The part of his lips gives you the chance to lick your way into his mouth in search for claim, claim that he fights with his own tongue.
You push against his hold with the force of your entire body, but he overpowers you, grabbing your hips to drive you right back into the wall.
He tears his lips from you but it’s only for a breathless moment before he presses them back to yours, but not for a kiss.
“I despise you,” he whispers against your lips, shaky and harsh. One of his hands slides up your back, finding the zipper of your dress, his other hand pulling your hips flush against him. You gasp when you feel the hard pressure of his arousal against you. “I despise the way you have crawled into every crevice of my mind.” You shiver as he tugs the zipper down, leaving you vulnerable to the cold brush of air against your back. “I despise the way you leave me defenceless.” He pushes you again, hard enough that you feel the wood digging in through the material of your corset. He burrows his face into your neck, breathing you in. “I despise you,” he whispers against your skin, leaving a thread of electricity as he glides his mouth from your neck up to your chin. He digs his teeth into your flesh and you whimper at the shards of pain, head falling back with a thump against the wall. “I despise the way you drive me absolutely mad.”
His tongue drags up the cut of your jaw to trace the shell of your ear, fingers clawing into the shoulders of your dress.
The words spill into your ear, whispered in reverence, as he tears the dress off your body. “I despise everything about you.”
Only your corset holds you together from crumbling into pieces from just his words alone. He stays buried against the side of your hair, unrelenting, and you realize that you’re on uneven grounds.
“Is that what you’re calling it?” You ask. You despise the thought of going down without a fight. So you dig your hands into the cotton of his shirt, pulling him forward as if there was any space to be closed between you. Your head tilts back to peer at him while he meets your gaze down his nose. His eyes are dark, consumed by lust and fury. “Hatred?”
The curl of his lips, the very smirk that would at one point urge you to pull out your hair, makes you want to find out all the ways you can smother it.
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Princess.”
You grit your jaw, pulling at his shirt hard enough for the buttons to go flying but that’s the last of your worries when you’re met with the smooth expanse of his toned chest, unmarred from the scars you’d last seen him with.
You force your eyes back up to meet his. “Then what is it?”
His hand comes up to grasp your jaw again, not gently.
“Obsession.”
When his lips find yours again, they don’t pull easily. His teeth dig into your lip hard enough to draw blood, but he only chases it away with his tongue.
His fingers are desperate yet clumsy as they search to undo your corset, but it’s a helpless attempt.
He curses against your lips as he aimlessly tugs at it, impatience drawing higher with each second. “This wretched thing,” he hisses. “Take it off.”
The command makes your head spin, but your instinct is to fight it.
“Maybe I should have given you that lesson you asked for all those weeks ago,” you mock, and he shuts you up by tugging your hair back and using your gasp to push his tongue back into your mouth.
The whimper you let out is swallowed right up, and with shaky fingers you undo your corset, letting it pool at your ankles with your dress.
He hauls you up like you weigh nothing, muscles shifting under your clawing hands as he brings you to your bed. The kiss breaks when he drops you down unceremoniously, and you scramble to gather yourself, lifting up on your elbows and folding your legs to give you some form of cover.
But it’s not enough cover from his prying eyes as he drinks in your figure without barriers, and the fire in them only burns hotter.
He tilts his head, messy hair falling over his brows and that smirk finding its way back to his lips. It’s infuriating how much it only adds to the heat pooling between your hips.
“Hiding?” He asks you.
You scowl, your eyes falling to the prominent hardness pressing against his slacks. “For someone who despises me, you sure seem desperate.”
His response is to prop his knee against the edge of the bed and reach forward for your legs. You yelp at the sudden pull as he handles you onto your back, pushing your legs apart with his hands under your knees.
Your face burns with fire as his eyes catch onto the arousal that's pooled between your legs, slick and wanting.
He clicks his tongue. “I don’t think you’re in any place to speak, Princess,” he drawls, trailing a hand down to swipe two fingers between your slick. The pressure, momentary and barely there, is still enough to have you gasp and swallow back a moan. The intensity in his gaze only turns manic as it climbs up your heaving body and rests on your face. “All that talk about how you can’t stand me and yet here you are, dripping for me.”
You drop your head back to evade meeting his gaze in favour of the ceiling. “Was this your plan?” You bite. “To drive me to the point where I can’t tell lust from anger?”
But he finds his way back to your view, climbing over to cage you between his arms. “It worked, didn’t it?” His smile is cocky as he hovers over you, like he’s already won this battle.
“Perhaps,” you hum, letting a smile crawl onto your own lips. “You wouldn’t be the first, though.”
His expression immediately falls into a possessive fury that almost makes you give in. Submit. But he needs to learn that won’t be easy.
His harsh hand finds your jaw again. You hold back your wince, not wanting to give him any bit of kindling.
“Big talk for someone who’s letting me defile her before the wedding,” he spits.
“Again,” you strain and his fingers only dig harder. “Wouldn’t be the first.”
All at once the heat of his body is ripped off of you. You don’t get a chance to centre yourself before you’re being flipped onto your stomach, ragged around like a doll. You’re hauled by your hips up onto your knees and before you can protest at the humiliating position, you feel the weight of his body press against your back.
He buries his face into your hair and snarls the words right into your ear. “Then it’ll damn well be the last.”
You turn your head to snipe but he only takes the chance to crash his lips into yours, hand locking your jaw in place while the other pins your fist into the sheets.
It doesn’t matter how hard you try to fight it—your body gives into the kiss far before your mind does.
He pulls from the kiss, but as soon as he does, you feel his hips press flush against yours. And you feel it— the achingly sweet press of his hardness against your core, a pressure so good it tears a moan from your mouth.
He rolls his hips against you once more just to hear your sweet sounds, groaning at the pressure himself.
“What are you doing to me?” He mutters, quiet enough that you think it wasn’t meant for you to hear.
He buries his face into your hair again and presses his lips to the back of your neck. He trails down, leaving hot, wet kisses down the expanse of your spine, the heat of his body leading down.
You move to turn but his hands are quick to grab onto your hips, pinning you in place. You push against his hold, a question forming on your tongue but it quickly dies away when you feel the heat of his mouth against your cunt.
You gasp as he drags the flat of his tongue along your folds, the feeling foreign and strange and hot.
But it seems to affect Taeyang the same that it affects you, if the deep groan that he lets out against your fluttering skin tells anything. “You talk so sour but you taste so sweet,” he breathes, and you feel it against your swollen bud that throbs for more.
You want to look, want to watch him as he starts to devour you whole, lapping at you like a starved man who’s found salvation in the midst of a drought. Instead, you bury your face into the sheets and let them soak up your moans.
It’s head-spinning, the way he traces the tip of his tongue through every crevice of you, mapping out your anatomy. The way he circles your entrance and dips in just so to leave you wanting more before he drags down to flick against your pulsing clit.
You try to push against him in search for more, to feel more, to feel him deeper. But his hands hold you still as he takes his time with you, to pull you undone thread by thread until you’re left quivering on the brink.
“T-Taeyang,” you plead, and you hate that you do. But you’re on the precipice and you want nothing more than down.
You regret it when he stops completely, shaking with the loss of stimulation.
“Say that again,” he commands, and your body seizes up again, your instinct for defiance treading through.
You only bury your head further into your arms, biting your tongue.
The silence stretches too long for his liking.
He’s off of you in a second, and before you know it, you're on your back again.
He hovers over you, eyes dark and manic with want.
“Say. It. Again.”
It only makes you want to defy more.
The smile that curls on your lips lights a dangerous thing inside of him. You see it in his eyes as he pulls back, in the furrow of his brows, the set of his lips, and the slow, careful way he rids himself of his slacks.
Your smile fades to nothing when you catch sight of him. The sheer size of him has a panic seizing through your body and yet the heat between your legs burns hotter all the same.
He takes himself in his hand, pearly beads of his arousal gathering at the scarlet tip. Instinct presses your legs shut but he catches your thigh with his free hand, prying you open as he settles in the space between your legs.
“You see what you do to me?” He asks you, and your eyes snap back up to his face.
You’re adamant as you keep your gaze fixed up, the sight of him becoming too overwhelming to hold.
He leans forward, hovering over your body with his free hand bracing beside your head. “Do you think this would happen if I didn’t care?”
The words you sparred with just moments ago all come rushing back at once. You’re reminded of all your grievances, and the crack in his hardened expression tells you he notices.
“I’d hardly call this proof,” you grit, though the thought that you can bring him to this state of undone, that you can pry away the composure of a well controlled Prince, feels like a victory of your own. A small one, but a victory nonetheless.
His face flashes with irritation. “Then what would you call this?”
“I’d call this nothing at all.”
He clicks his tongue, scowling. “Stubborn as always,” he grits, then retaliates by pushing the head of his cock against your clit, relishing in the sudden moan that it pulls from you. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”
You press your mouth shut to smother the noises that threaten to spill out of you as he drags himself through your folds, not pushing in, but doing everything to leave you wanting it.
“Say my name,” he asks, settling the tip of himself against your entrance.
You want to cave, just to soothe your body’s cravings, but your pride holds itself high.
“No.”
You expect him to get angry. To snap at you again.
But he drops his forehead against you and laughs.
You watch the smile that blooms on his lips, strained but fond and completely unexpected. “Your ego knows no bounds, does it, Princess?”
The sudden shift confuses you. But past that, a warmth spreads in your chest. The pressure of his head against yours, the heat of his body above yours—it doesn’t feel demanding. Not with the way he looks down at you now, his misplaced anger nowhere to be found. Only want. No, need. For you.
You swallow down the emotion that threatens to climb up your throat. “I fear you shouldn’t be one to pass judgement on that,” you say through your shaky breaths, and his smile mellows out to something softer.
“Say my name,” he says again, but this time it’s a plea. “Even if it’s for the last time… Please.”
Your heart lurches in your chest. You’re not sure what it is, but something about his plea sounds final. And he’s never one to beg.
His eyes fall shut as he swallows down a breath. “Please,” he whispers, tucking his nose against yours. “Let me have you just this once.”
When he looks at you again, it’s with that same softness that he’d looked at you with in his bedroom, and then again before he’d kissed you. It’s that same vulnerability that makes you want to tear down your walls then build them back up after making space for him.
Here he is, the man who never begs, yearning for you, before you, at his most vulnerable.
In this moment, you can’t remember what it is that you’d feared.
It falls from your lips as just a tremor of a breath.
“Taeyang.”
But it hits him like a storm.
His breath gives like he’s relieved of a burden, shuddering through his body.
You feel him drag against your folds again until the tip of him catches against your entrance and you hold your breath tight.
Yet he doesn’t press in.
“Again,” he whispers, and you give in without question.
“Taeyang.”
He pushes in, and even if he stops at just the tip, it feels all encompassing.
You gasp at the pressure and pain that sears through you at the intrusion, your hands scrambling to find purchase against his back.
His head drops against your shoulder as his body shudders at the feeling of you, so warm and so tight around just a fraction of him. The arm he had propped beside you winds around your shoulders to hold your head in a cradle against him.
And he just holds you, lets you adjust to him as he breathes into your neck, the sounds piercing against the silent night.
“Again,” he murmurs, but it’s merely a question.
I’m ready. Are you?
You answer when you are, when the pain fades into an ache that craves for more.
“‘Yang…” You whimper, because that’s all you can muster.
He shudders again, before he turns to press his lips against your ear and pushes.
Consumed—your breath and your body, and slowly, your heart.
That’s the only way you can describe how it feels.
It feels like fire and ice, like a storm and its eye, the way he fits inside you. Like the space inside of you has always been carved just for him. Like he was made just to fit within you.
He moves only when you call his name again, a soft, “Yangie,” that makes him press a kiss against your shoulder before he lifts himself up and rocks into you.
He kisses away the salt on your cheeks that you taste against his lips when he kisses you.
But the kiss is barely a kiss. It's a languid press of lips, another point of connection as the gentle rocking picks up to a steady pace, one that has your nails digging into his flesh at the barrage of sensation.
Everything that you expected it to be—rough and taking and dominating—it’s the opposite. He’s giving, he’s giving himself to you with a care that you’ve never felt before.
His hand roams your body, present and soothing and worshipping. His lips whisper sweet nothings, a hum of your name between strings of nonsensical rambling that you’re not even sure he can make sense of. His moans are whines threaded with each of his breaths, desperate as he chases the heat inside of you with movements that get hastier and graceless with each moment that passes.
But all you can focus on is his eyes—the devotion swimming behind his pleasure. It’s not lust. This isn’t just a chase for another victory.
It’s a confession. Proof that he cares. That he feels just as you do, vulnerable and in love and scared.
And it fuels the heat inside of you all the more.
“Taeyang,” you gasp, your body seizing up as he drives you towards the precipice once more.
His eyes flutter as he tries desperately to keep himself grounded to the moment and not lose himself completely to the sensation.
“With me,” he pants, sliding his hand down your body to hold your hip, firm and grounding. “Fall with me.”
And fall you do, when he holds your hips down and drives into you with a desperate fervour, one that has you both crashing down in tandem.
You cry out his name as the waves collide in you, your arms tightening around his shoulders, and he presses his face into your neck to bury his own call of your name.
The moments after are still. He remains buried in your neck, his slowly easing breaths soothing over your heated skin while you lie there in your afterglow.
You’re not sure how long it lasts until his voice rings in the delicate air, hushed and rough.
“Marry me.”
It takes you off guard. You can only lay still in your confusion.
When you don’t respond, he lifts his head and places it against yours, hazy eyes peering down at you.
“Marry me,” he repeats. Another plea.
You flounder for a moment more, the implications lost on you. “Are you… asking me?”
He gives a bare thing of a nod, a slight movement of his head against yours. The hand not wrapped around you feathers up your body to press against your cheek.
“You can say no,” he tells you quietly. Hesitantly, like he doesn’t want to give you the option. “Say no, and I’ll let you disappear. Take your sister—sorry, guard. I won’t say a thing.”
The words don’t process as easily as you’d like. Part of you believes it's all a trick, a scheme to catch you in the act of something treacherous to hold over you for the rest of your life.
But with the way he looks at you, like he’s hanging on to catch the words from your lips right as they fall, makes you believe otherwise.
“You’re giving me a choice?” You ask, because nothing ever comes this easy for you.
He swallows, the pad of his thumb brushing against the corner of your eye to catch the tear before it can fall.
“I can’t love you right if you don’t want it,” he whispers. “If I’m going to love you, I want to do it right.”
It feels like the closest thing to salvation. A devotion you’ve been expected of your whole life, but instead it’s here being given to you.
“Let me love you,” he begs when you remain silent. His own fear makes way with the water in his eyes, a parallel to your own just an hour ago.
Still buried inside of you, connected to you in every sense of the word, he asks you again.
“Marry me.”
𓆩⟡𓆪
Taeyang had never felt so scared.
In that moment, vulnerable before you in a way he’s never been with anyone before, with the fear that he might lose you for good.
The set of jewels sits heavily in his hands, the one he had specially arranged for you, now back in his possession. Even past the stress it’s given him, even past what he had to give up in turn for it, all he can think of is that he can place it upon your neck tonight as your husband.
He places it carefully back in its case and takes a heavy breath.
“Nervous?”
Taeyang jumps, whipping to his left to face Jiung at his doors with wild eyes.
Jiung scrunches his face apologetically as he approaches. “Apologies. Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, glancing down at the case.
“But you did,” Taeyang bites back pettily, handing the case to Jiung.
Jiung takes it with careful hands but his eyes don’t leave Taeyang’s face. “You’re evading my question.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
There’s a palpable silence as he feels Jiung’s eyes bore into the side of his head.
“Something happened,” Jiung observes and Taeyang’s shoulders slump.
He doesn’t even get upset like he normally would with how easily Jiung reads him. Instead, a small smile spreads on his lips. “I’ve been getting that a lot recently.”
Jiung, ever the emphatic, gasps. “I see!”
Taeyang rolls his eyes when he catches sight of the sunny grin on Jiung’s lips.
“Silence,” he intercepts as soon as Jiung’s mouth opens to spew more nonsense. “If I’m correct, I’m not the only one guilty of romantic epiphanies as of late.”
That shuts Jiung right up as a furious flush rises on his cheeks, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “It seems that it’s been a prosperous month for love.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Jiung points out and Taeyang curses his brother for being one to never let things go.
“I am,” he answers, because admitting things has been feeling easier now. He supposes he has you to thank for that. “But…” He evades his brother’s eye, straightening his shoulders in an attempt to regain his composure. “I think that might be a good thing, right? It means I care.”
There’s a thoughtful look in Jiung’s gaze as he watches Taeyang, and Taeyang feels like shrinking under it. Despite being older, Jiung has a way of making him feel as though he was the younger one. It’s something Taeyang is grateful for no matter how much he grouses about it—to have someone to fall back on when he feels out of his own depth.
“She’s changed you,” Jiung finally says and Taeyang bristles.
“I wouldn’t say changed. Battered up maybe but—”
“Deny it all you want, brother,” Jiung chuckles, patting him a little too hard on the back and making his body jerk forward. “You can’t escape the truth anymore. You’re marrying it.”
Despite his ego, Taeyang grins at the thought.
Jiung’s smile softens, which makes Taeyang brace for the words to come when he catches it.
“Mother would be proud to see the man you’ve become today.”
He swallows, his smile faltering as his gaze falls to the marble floors. While he would normally deny the idea of that, he finds that it’s becoming easier to believe such a thing.
“And I’m sure she would be ecstatic to know who you’re marrying,” Jiung adds, very unnecessarily, with another one of his cheesy grins.
Taeyang groans, tossing his head back as a laugh clambers through regardless. His mother had spent the grueling hours of the carriage rides back home after visits to your kingdom listening to his tantrums over you. Remembering the knowing smiles she would give him, he thinks maybe she wouldn’t be so surprised to see how things turned out.
“You wouldn’t be wrong,” he mumbles with a smile to the ceiling. He pretends it reaches up to the heavens.
“Speaking of, shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
The headache of having already shooed away several servants presses against his temples again, and Taeyang sighs.
“I will,” he says as he glances at the clock. Six hours until the ceremony commences. Plenty of time for him to make a pitstop. “After I make a quick visit.”
𓆩⟡𓆪
“You’re different.”
You glance to your right at your sister, because you can’t move any more with hands invading your hair and your face from every which way. “What are you talking about?”
The way she eyes you over with a narrowed scrutiny has you squirming in your seat, only to be gently reprimanded by the hair stylist to remain still.
She hums as she leans back in her chair with a calculating look.
You fluster under her eye, like she’s unravelling your secrets with just a look. “Stop that.”
“It seemed to have happened overnight,” she wonders aloud but before she can continue, her eyes catch on something over your shoulder. “Oh, what does he want now?”
You hear commotion behind you as a maid hastily cries, “Your Highness, you shouldn’t be here!”
“It’s improper to see her until the wedding!” Another one laments.
You push away the hands at your face and turn in your chair to see a handful of maids inching a misplaced Taeyang back towards the door, but Taeyang simply looks past them with a grin pointed at you.
“That’s alright, I’ve already seen plenty,” he states, and you quickly shoot up to your feet.
“Taeyang!” You hiss as you hurry up to him, pushing past the maids. His grin only widens.
You’re in a simple slip dress, so you’re not completely indecent, but you still feel a little too exposed for your liking to be seen in such a disheveled state with your hair and makeup only half done.
“What are you doing here?!” You ask, disgruntled as you try to push him towards the door but he doesn’t budge.
He only leans forward and you have to lean away despite the way your body seeks his warmth. There are too many eyes. “Is it such a crime for me to want to see you?”
You hear a few gasps sounding from the maids which only makes you want to crawl away. Perhaps into his arms.
Caught up in your fluster, you don’t realize the name slip as you start to push him towards the door again. “You’ll see me plenty later, Yangie, now go.”
As soon as the word processes, you freeze. And with his grin somehow pulling even wider and the giggles of your maids becoming even more pronounced, you realize you definitely want to crawl away.
He leans forward again, and you lean away again. “Yangie?”
You dare not meet his eye, glaring at his chin instead. “I knew I shouldn’t have said yes,” you grouse.
His lighthearted demeanor immediately drops. He straightens, fixing you with a hard look. “Don’t kid about that.”
But the shift in his behaviour leaves you grinning at how quickly his composure seems to drop now. “Oh? I see your defenses are already weak.”
He scowls at you, but you can tell it isn’t one of malice. “You’ve spent your whole life scouring for my weak points. It’s only natural that you find some.”
You purse your lips to smother your teasing smile, crossing your arms as you lean forward this time. “It doesn’t help that I’m your biggest one, does it?”
You meant for it to be a light-hearted remark with no real heft.
But the way he smiles tells you otherwise. “I’m just surprised it took you this long to figure it out.”
The flutter in your chest takes you by surprise, and the fawning and giggling that your maids do at your sides does nothing to help.
You hope there’s enough makeup on you to hide your blush as you start to forcefully shove him back towards the door. “Goodbye.”
He huffs but he finally gives under the push of your palms, simply watching you as you shut the doors on his face.
The silence that remains is deafening and you repent under it with your hands against the door and your head dropped between your shoulders.
“Ah,” you hear your sister say, and you don’t even have to look at her to tell that she’s grinning. “I see.”
𓆩⟡𓆪
The new ring around your finger feels nothing like a shackle. It sits around there like a tangible bond, tied with the hope that you feel now with Taeyang standing beside you as your husband, as your to-be-King.
When you bow together to address the crowd, you do it with your hand in his.
When he takes you down the aisle as azalea petals flurry down from the skies, you follow him with your hand in his.
When he pulls you into your dance, beaming at you like the sun lives in his smile, you fall in step with your hand in his—a point of contact that never once detaches as he leads you with a grace much more delicate than your first.
When he presses his forehead to yours, pulls you in with a hand on your waist and the other in yours, you tell yourself it’s a connection you won’t sever.
𓆩⟡𓆪
The night air soothes your heated skin, a welcome reprieve from the hours of celebration.
Everything turned out perfectly. Your hard work had paid off, and it felt all the more satisfying knowing that it was because of you, and Taeyang, that the finest details came together to paint such a beguiling night.
“Ditching me already?”
You scoff when you hear the question, leaning forward against the balcony rails as you peer up at the stars. You hear his footsteps approaching from behind you.
“I’ve already suffered a lifetime of you,” you state. “I’m just preparing for another one.”
You try to suppress the shiver that passes up your spine when his hand brushes against your lower back. Even through the thick fabric of your dress, the touch feels charged.
“Always so dramatic,” he murmurs before he presses himself against your back.
You find yourself leaning into the heat of his body, placing your back to his chest as a smile tugs at your lips. “Can’t handle it?”
“I’ve handled it so far,” he chuckles above your ear, arms winding around your waist. “I deserve an award.”
You roll your eyes, knocking your elbow to his torso and he grunts at the impact.
“Mean,” he grumbles and you laugh.
You remember the night of the engagement and how on this very balcony, you’d heard Taeyang declare his plan to evade you for your entire marriage. You couldn’t be more happy with how things turned out.
“Your aunt was right about you,” you hum without much thought, recalling that unexpected ambush.
“What about?”
“The trick to you was to just pester you until you caved.”
You giggle when he pinches your side lightly.
“Pester me you did. I thought I would go mad.” There’s a short pause before you feel his smile against your hair. “You still drive me mad.”
You all but melt at the admission, burrowing further into his arms, and he accepts you with a tighter hold.
The moment goes silent, comfortable and in peace. Until—
“Why is your guard kissing my knight?”
You blink at the sudden question, then turn your head to where he’s looking.
There, on the courtyard below the balcony you’re on, is your sister and Intak wrapped up in quite the… intimate embrace.
You let out a breath of relief then look away to give them their privacy. “Finally,” you sigh, a little prided in the idea that your talk with your sister had finally pushed them to the final stretch.
“Finally?” Taeyang asks, puzzled.
You tilt your head back to look at him. “Don’t tell me you had no clue.”
He only stares down at you with blank eyes, brows furrowed.
You snort, turning back to the skies. “You’re clueless.”
He sputters, winding up for an argument but then seems to think better of it. Instead he digs his chin into your head with a little more force than necessary, huffing, “I’m not clueless.”
The pout in his voice makes you laugh, which in turn makes his arms tighten around you.
“Hey,” he says after another silent moment. “Let’s leave.”
You turn in his arms, looking up at him with your brows raised. “Ditch our wedding?”
The sly grin that curls on his lips ignites a fire in you akin to the one from the night before. “I can think of better things to do.”
𓆩⟡𓆪
When you step into your new room, a massive area brimmed with the finest furniture and practically doused in rose petals, you almost tuck tail and run.
But when you step back, you hit Taeyang’s chest.
“Oh…” He trails off. He moves past you to take it all in with his sweeping eyes. “Their effort sure shows.”
You breathe a quiet laugh, taking in the myriad of lit candles that border on the lines of a fire hazard.
The silence that follows is a little stilted. Awkward. You both know what to expect and although it’s… already been done, it still feels different.
You suddenly feel crowded under your garments and jewels, so you figure you’ll start with that.
“Excuse me,” you mumble to Taeyang before taking off to where the vanities are set.
You stand before the full mirror as you start to work off the jewelry adorning your body piece by piece.
Your hands are a little shaky and you know you’re stalling, but Taeyang gives you your space as he busies himself with something at the other end of the room.
You expect your nerves to be remnants of what you were feeling just the night before. But something deep in you has found a peace that you’re still grappling to get used to.
Maybe the change was too sudden. Shouldn’t you feel a little apprehensive? How quickly can you really learn to trust someone? Did it all build up too quickly? Is it even—
“I can hear you thinking.”
You look up from your bangles to meet Taeyang’s eyes in the mirror as he approaches you from behind.
He’d rid his coat, leaving him in a silk button shirt that sits taut over his body. His hands are folded behind his back and there’s a tiny, restrained smile on his lips.
You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, giving him a small smile of your own as you unclasp the bracelet around your wrist and place it on the vanity.
“Sorry,” you say, looking down to undo the last bracelet.
But his arms get in the way of your vision and before you can protest, you feel something cold and heavy against your clavicles.
Your eyes snap up to the mirror as Taeyang binds a necklace to you, an intricate piece of garnets and emeralds. The embossing is familiar to the vines of your own family’s royal crest winded around the garnets, along with the sharp swirls akin to the North’s crest around the emeralds. A fusion of your two homes.
Your hand comes up to the necklace, fingers tracing the elegant designs as you stare at the glimmering jewels in awe.
“You wouldn’t believe the drama I’ve had over this damn necklace,” Taeyang says lightly behind you. But he watches you carefully, eyes shifting between the necklace and your face.
“Do I even want to know?” You ask him after a moment as a slow smile rises to your lips, just to keep him on his toes a little longer.
He gives you a hesitant smile of his own. “Probably not now,” he answers meekly.
Your smile widens at the pleading look he fixes you with when you say nothing more.
“It’s beautiful,” you tell him, and the tension leaves his body at once. “I love it.”
He glares playfully at you, clicking his tongue. “Your mischief will get you in trouble one of these days,” he tells you, his hands falling to wrap around your waist.
Your eyes meet his through the mirror again before dropping to the cunning smile that plays on his lips. “I highly doubt that, if you have anything to do with it.”
As if to spite your words, his hand comes up to grasp the zipper of your dress. “Why’s that?” He asks you, voice dropping to a provocative lilt.
You hold your breath as he drags the zipper down, painfully slow to either give you the grace of a choice or keep you on edge.
You swallow at the brush of cold air against your back. There’s no corset to protect you this time. “I don’t think you have the power here.”
You shudder when his knuckles trace down your spine, the touch feeling like nothing more than a gentle breeze. But it’s enough to leave you feeling winded.
You expect him to dispute it, to claim for his hand over you. But you should have learned by now where his priorities lie.
Because when you turn to face him, he simply drops to his knees.
“You’re right,” he says, and he looks up at you with a devotion that takes your breath. “I surrender myself to you.”
please leave your thoughts below!! it would make my day <3
SERIES MASTERLIST
a collaborative event by @jiuchip & @liliesonthego
♡ summary: this night is flawless, don't you let it go / i'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone / i'll spend forever wondering if you knew / i was enchanted to meet you
♡ word count: 2,599 words
♡ a/n: it's been so long since i sat down properly to write!! this is partially inspired by my cousin's wedding (except there were no single men for me hmph) hope you enjoy reading <33
//
“you’ve got to meet him, trust me. he’s a little taller than you, dresses well, nice smile, and he’s kind, loves animals…”
“sis, hold still!” you playfully scold her between fits of laughter, fingers nimbly dancing across her shoulders as you adjust the soft fabric of her dress. “we’re here to celebrate you, so quit talking about me.”
“but y/n, i really have a good feeling about this. he even volunteers at the animal shelters on –”
“that’s enough.” you reprimand her, lips forced into a tight line. “if you keep talking and moving like that your veil might just fall off your big head.”
a sharp rap at the door signals the arrival of keeho, the best man. he steps in, cream-coloured suit crisp and blonde hair impeccably styled to complete the look.
“isn’t it bad luck to see the bride so early?” your elder sister wonders aloud.
“i bring nothing but good luck and blessings, sissy.” keeho retorts, unable to resist the temptation of teasing her, even on her wedding day. “besides, i’m a busy man! i play on both teams today – and don’t forget, under all those layers of white, you’re still my baby cousin.”
you move aside as your sister lands a playful punch on his shoulder, causing him to double over in fake agony.
“that’s great, now do that again – standing up.” the photographer, who you almost forget exists, calls from the corner.
amongst the shutter of flashes and lightning-fast instructions, the two pose for several photos in the shelter of your sister’s wedding bedroom.
“oh, y/n.”
keeho’s voice brings you out of your trance. you woke up early that morning – way too early by your standards, just to get your makeup done. even after two cups of coffee, the constant photography and bridesmaid duties were tiring you out.
“have you met jiung yet?”
you roll your eyes and sigh. “not you too! did you put him up to this?”
your sister lets a giggle slip past her lips as she poses yet again.
“actually, it was all my idea, cuz. so don’t forget to quote me in your vows and name your first child after me, got it?”
you almost land a kick to his shin, but he dodges just in time.
“hey! no touching the suit!”
and so, the rest of the morning continues in a blur of whites and flashes – the soft rustle of dresses, the flurry of laughter, a flicker of the camera. through choreographed scenes and age-old traditions, a cautious curiosity about your potential suitor bubbles quietly in your chest.
it’s not until later in the afternoon that you meet jiung for this first time.
under the sweltering sun, the four groomsmen stand valiantly next to the fountain, preparing themselves for the groom’s first look with the bride. you’re certain that all of them are wearing identical, meticulously tailored suits – and probably shared the same pot of hair gel – yet for some reason, jiung shines the brightest.
with his shy demeanour and low laughter, his soft gestures and quiet confidence, you feel drawn towards him. the afternoon continues, a blur of countless photos, traditions, and endless games. the two of you stand next to the bride and groom, moving in perfect synchrony, ready at their beck and call. whether it’s a loose strand of hair or a stray bead of sweat, you move before the words even leave their lips.
it’s not until the bridal party breaks for a late lunch that you get the opportunity to sit down and take a breather.
“here,” a voice, smooth as the finest silk, says as a small electronic fan emerges from the corner of your eye.
“thank you,” you mumble, suddenly shy. you’re never like this, usually warm and friendly towards new people, but for some reason this jiung guy has thrown you off guard.
“don’t mention it,” he says, reaching towards his bento box, eagerly digging into the food.
the two of you sit in comfortable silence as all around you, the chatter lowers to a comfortable hum. it’s around three hours til showtime, and while most of the work is done, there’s still a whole evening and afterparty ahead of you.
“do you like egg yolks, by any chance?” you ask sheepishly, glancing towards jiung. at the end of the table, you know that your cousin and her future husband are conducting a similar exchange.
“as a matter of fact, i do.”
wordlessly, you carve out the hard boiled egg yolk and gift it to him, biting back a laugh.
“while a lot of people think that egg yolks are unhealthy due to its high cholesterol content, they’re also rich in vitamins A, B, D, E, and K, and they’re a good source of protein, iron, and –” jiung stops midsentence, wincing while rubbing his calf.
from across the table, keeho shoots him a pointed look.
“sorry,” jiung apologises, ears turning an alarming shade of red. “i’m really into nutritional science. and most sciences, really.”
“that’s alright.” you giggle. “i know it’s good for you, but egg yolks taste like dry concrete to me.”
“i mean, that’s valid.” he nods vigorously. “that’s like spinach for me, i can’t stand the nasty aftertaste.”
“really?” you sit up straighter. “spinach is my favourite, and it also has heaps of iron.”
a swap ensues, and the two of you make small talk over mouthfuls of food.
keeho watches until he feels the visceral need to puke at your antics. with a huge sigh, he mutters something about taking a nap before slipping away. “nerds,” he grumbles under his breath.
//
“okay, we don’t have much time so let’s just take it from the top. ready? a one, a two, and a three!”
the bridal party huddles around a high-top table as one of the bridesmaids gives everyone a crash course in choreographed dance for the evening entrance.
it is nothing short of a disaster, with the boys all seemingly possessing two left feet. but thankfully, what they lacked in skill, they made up for in enthusiasm and energy.
across from you, jiung’s brows scrunch adorably as he studies the bridesmaid’s moves with great care. a small pang stirs in your chest – unjustified, no doubt, because who are you to feel jealous over a man who you just met a few hours ago?
“guys, we have to get ready!” one of the assistants come around to fetch you.
it’s showtime.
you swallow your bubbling nerves and make your way to the hall in a single file. quickly, the group organises itself into pairs.
somehow, you end up next to jiung.
in the back of your mind, you feel relief flood through your veins, along with a touch of anxiety – both at the prospect of being so close to him, but also at the very real risk of making a complete fool of yourself in front of your extended family and your sister’s social circle.
in front of you, keeho turns around and winks.
that bastard.
“all good to go?” jiung’s voice speaks into your ear – not too close, yet close enough for goosebumps to rise along your skin.
the emcee’s voice blasts through the speakers, cheerily welcoming everyone to the festivities. the crowd listens, laughing softly at the jokes and introductions – the official start of the night.
“yeah,” you reply belatedly, breathless.
“i’m sure it’ll be fine. what’s the worst that could happen?”
“i bring dishonour to my family?”
jiung laughs, and the sound is bright, like windchimes twinkling in an early spring breeze. you wish it were the first, but not the last time you hear it.
keeho’s booming voice cuts through before he gets a chance to reply. “let’s do this, guys! don’t forget to shake those hips!”
jiung looks at you expectantly, and like a scene from a movie, the rest of the world fades away. he offers you his arm and a warm smile, and you feel your limbs go soft.
“let’s give a warm welcome to the bridal party!”
as the crowd applauds, you walk down the aisle, hand in hand with jiung. the music blasts through the speakers, an addictive beat playing as the group gets into formation.
muscle memory kicks in and you move your body to the beat, trying your best to copy the bridesmaid in front of you. a few cheers burst through the crowd, lifting the energy, and a well-timed twerk by keeho gets everyone laughing.
just as the music is about to end, jiung grabs your hand and freestyles a quick twirl.
the crowd erupts – and you’re left staring straight into his molten, chocolatey eyes.
“woohoo! the bridal party, everybody! i think it’s safe to say that the party has officially started! those dance moves, man – what a way to blow the house down!”
as you find your seat with your family and the rest of the evening’s program continues, your eyes can’t help but to gravitate towards jiung.
“y/n,” keeho’s voice comes out as a rushed whisper, his tone urgent. “stop staring at jiung and help me out here – my palms are sweating.”
your eyes are about to roll to the back of your head when you suddenly remember that keeho has the behemoth task of delivering the best man speech – well, better him than you, you muse. “the crowd will love you, trust me.”
“yeah but, i don’t know whether the jokes are aunty-appropriate, if you catch my drift, and –”
“yoon keeho.” you speak firmly, your palm resting on his shoulder. “there’s no one better for this than you. you’re gonna do a great job, just take a few deep breaths and go out there and be yourself.”
the two of you clench your fists in a “fighting!!” stance and you do your best to hype him up.
from across the hall, jiung watches keenly, eyes twinkling with mirth and a playful smirk on his lips.
sure enough, keeho smashes the speech and everyone – both your mum and his – is clutching their stomachs in uncontrollable laughter.
as the night rolls on, you keep finding yourself within jiung’s orbit. him passing you a plate and spooning food onto it at the buffet tables, sitting across from you as you play games in front of a cheering crowd, or just meeting each other’s eye across the sea of heads as fireworks glimmer across the sky.
you have to give it to your sister. you watched how she slowly descended into a ball of stress and madness whilst planning the wedding over the past few months – yet all the late nights, frantic phone calls and endless decisions have culminated in an unforgettable day celebrating the two of them.
as the two of you linger around the instant noodle station – a mainstay of the wedding’s afterparty – you turn towards your sister, watching her as she watches her dream come to life before her very eyes.
your heart surges with love and hope. “you’re beautiful, sis. you deserve this.”
she turns to you, eyes glistening with fresh tears. she’s already done so much crying today, but somehow this quiet moment with you feels justified. her teary eyes bore into yours as she utters softly, “so do you, y/n.”
you smile, and she goes back to staring at the crowd – a mixture of her found-family from school, all the way through to university, work, and hobbies, all mingling together and moving as one body to the tunes of the group’s afterparty spotify playlist.
you do the same, following her line of sight, and settle on jiung.
she nudges you, then. “you deserve to be seen too, and to be happy.” your sister murmurs earnestly. “i know you always say you’re fine on your own, but it’s nice to have someone to share these moments with.”
you nudge her back playfully. while your sister understands and empathises with your independent lifestyle more than anyone else, she also has your best interests at heart.
“i don’t even know him that well but he seems… nice.” you pause, searching for the right words. “warm, and responsible, too. and a bit of a dork.”
the two of you watch as jiung and keeho pull the groom and a few others into a group hug before cheering and jumping around in circles.
“theo is the same,” your sister replies with a quiet sigh, but her gaze says it all – gentle and loving as she watches her husband coerce the group into an unsynchronised robot dance.
liquor flows from bottle to glasses and bowls of noodles make their rounds from hand to hand. amid the haze of laughter and light, you and jiung find yourselves next to each other once more, close enough to feel his warmth against you.
“having fun?” he wonders aloud, body moving sporadically to the tune of ‘staying alive’.
you pretend to think about this, hands moving in a classic dance move – cleaning the windows and changing the lightbulbs. “a solid eight out of ten.”
“what are you taking two points away for? there were fireworks, y/n.” he counters with feigned disbelief. “not to mention the food was amazing and the chocolate cake was absolutely delicious. don’t tell your sister but i demolished two and a half plates of it.”
“i doubt she’d mind.” you shake your head, bursting into a fit of giggles. “well, i’m taking one point away because none of my songs have been played yet!”
“valid – that’s a crime!”
“and,” you breathe, unsure whether to wear your heart on your sleeve like this, but you think, to hell with it. what better place to find love than in a gathering intended to celebrate it? “you haven’t invited me to dance with you yet.”
jiung throws his head back in laughter. you watch dizzyingly as his adam’s apple bobs along his throat. “y/n,” he begins, and your skin tingles with anticipation. “i believe that’s hardly anyone’s fault but mine, and for that, i owe you an apology. in fact, i think they’ve been trying really hard to set us up.”
in pure comedic timing, you look across to the groomsmen’s circle, the group cheering and whooping for their best friend, only to quiet down when they feel your eyes on them. they look away sheepishly.
you inch closer towards him, emboldened by his confession. like a scene from a movie, someone brushes past from behind you, causing you to stumble forwards slightly – straight into his open arms.
he holds you tenderly; gently, as though you’re made of glass. his eyes, alight with cautious curiosity and concealed amusement, stare back at yours, and you feel it again: that feeling of the world peeling away, leaving only you, in his arms, in this fleeting moment.
you wrap your arms around his neck, as his palms caress your waist, thumbs rubbing circles against your skin.
for a moment, it’s quiet.
and then the next song plays, and it’s the song you’ve been waiting all night for. enchanted. the perfect word to describe how you feel as you gaze into his eyes, only to find your reflection in the warmth of his brown orbs, staring right back at you.
“so, is that a ten out of ten then?” he whispers, voice low, meant for your ears alone.
“hmm, still missing half a point. maybe if you kiss me, it’d be flawless.”
he didn’t miss a beat, capturing your lips in a slow, unhurried dance before the end of the first chorus.
and all you could think of is how you wish the night would never end.
If only you knew how absolutely horrible it would feel being the only female in a boy group.
pairing: idol!ot6 x idol!reader (maybe some theo x reader??)
genre: angst, hurt/no comfort(?)
warnings: just straight up angst
a/n: guys be honest did i eat or did i eat? (there won’t be a part two to this because i don’t know what to write plus i like the shitty ending😜 Edit: there will be a part two soon dw🤞
Edit #2: yeah i dont see pt 2 coming anytime soon)
Sometimes it hit you hardest when nothing was happening at all. When the dorm was quiet, when the boys were out or asleep, and you were left alone with your own thoughts. Those were the moments when it felt like everything pressed down on you at once.
Being the only girl in a boy group wasn’t some dream the way people made it sound. It was isolating. It was lonely. It was exhausting. You knew what people thought of you, you saw it every single day. The way fans sneered at your name, called you useless, said you were a distraction, a liability. The way other idols stared when you walked past with the boys, like you were some kind of scandal waiting to happen. You hated the distance everyone kept, the way no one dared to get too close to you, just in case. As if even standing near you might spark rumors you didn’t have the strength to deal with.
You thought about before debut sometimes, how naive you were. How you thought you were walking into something beautiful. When they told you you’d meet the other members, you pictured six girls who would become your sisters, your closest friends. But when you opened that door, it was six boys who froze when they saw you. You could still remember the air in that room, the awkward smiles, the stiffness in their voices when they introduced themselves. They tried to be nice, and maybe they really did mean it, but you weren’t blind. You caught the glances they shared when they thought you weren’t looking. You heard the whispers you weren’t supposed to hear.
“She’s really in the group?”
“Why would they put her here?”
You leaned back on your bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to breathe past the heaviness in your chest. You hated it. You hated how much it mattered to you, how much it hurt, how much you still wished to belong when every sign pointed to the fact that you never really would.
The seven of you sat down like always, the same arrangement that never changed. Jiung, Intak, and Keeho in the front, their energy filling the space effortlessly, while you sat in the back row with Theo, Jongseob, and Soul. You always ended up a little further away, not on purpose, but not exactly by accident either.
The interview started off light, fun questions bouncing from one member to the next. Everyone laughed and joked around. Jiung cracked his usual puns, Keeho’s loud laugh filled the room, and even Soul broke character enough to let out a few sarcastic remarks that made the others grin. The atmosphere was easy, warm, and for a while, you just let it wash over you.
But there wasn’t a single question for you. Just like always.
You sat still, hands in your lap until you gave into the familiar habit of picking at your cuticle. The sting of skin tearing was sharp, grounding, but you didn’t stop. You stared straight ahead, zoning out, letting the chatter and laughter blur into background noise. The tiniest bead of blood welled up on your thumb, but no one noticed. Nobody ever did.
“Now, my next question is for Y/N!” the interviewer finally said, his tone bright as he flipped through his notes.
Your head turned slightly, eyebrows raised, though you didn’t really expect anything good. You never did.
“How does it feel like to be the least biased in a group?” he asked with a polite smile, like the question wasn’t a knife he had just casually twisted into your chest.
There was a silence. A pause that stretched just long enough for you to feel it in your bones. The members didn’t jump in. No one corrected him, no one said a word. It was just you and the question, heavy in the air.
You leaned back in your chair, let out a small sigh, and forced a smile that felt thin on your face. “Um… I don’t really mind it. I know that even though I’m not the favourite, I still have people who love me.”
The interviewer nodded, satisfied with your answer, and quickly moved on. Just like that, it was over.
Your thumb was dripping now, blood trailing down the side of your hand and staining the inside of your sleeve. You pressed your fist tight against your leg to hide it, the ache buzzing beneath your skin.
Nobody saw. Nobody cared. Of course they didn’t.
The papers in your hands crinkled as you kept flipping through them, eyes scanning over the lyrics again and again as if maybe you’d missed something. But you hadn’t. Three minutes of music, and your voice appeared only once. One sentence, tucked between everyone else’s parts, so quick it would almost go unnoticed. Even Soul, who didn’t like singing and hardly ever fought for more, had longer lines than you.
Your chest felt tight as you slowly walked over to Keeho. He sat on a chair with his legs crossed, scribbling notes in the margins of his page. Jiung was only a little further down, softly murmuring through his own lines, so you kept your voice low, almost whispering.
“Hey, Keeho?”
He hummed, not looking up at first.
“Do you think I could get more lines?” you asked, gripping the papers a little tighter.
For a moment, there was only silence. Then he finally looked up, brows furrowed, confusion clear in his eyes like you’d just asked him something ridiculous. “Why?”
You blinked, feeling heat rise in your face. “Because I only have like… one sentence.”
Keeho leaned back in his chair, the slightest shrug in his shoulders as his expression stayed flat. “Yeah, that’s enough for you. We all feel like you don’t need any more lines than that.”
The words hit like a punch. You swallowed hard, fighting the urge to let it show. Normally you would have dropped it right there, but this time the weight of it was too much. It was absurd. You weren’t even really in the song.
“But it’s like I’m not even part of the—”
Jiung’s voice cut you off, sharp and impatient. “Oh my god, that’s enough, Y/N. We can’t change everything last minute just for you.” His eyes didn’t even lift from the paper in his hands.
You froze, staring at him for a long moment. Something in you deflated all at once. Your shoulders slumped as you let out the tiniest breath. “Okay, I’m sorry.” The words slipped out quieter than you meant, almost swallowed by the hum of equipment in the studio.
You turned and walked away, footsteps heavy even though no one looked up. No one asked if you were alright. No one called after you.
The sound of the boys practicing their lines filled the studio again, voices layering together in ways that excluded you completely. And as the door shut behind you, the silence in your chest was louder than all of it.
The sun was bright, the kind of blinding light that made the grass look greener than usual, and everyone around you was buzzing with excitement. Another Harmony Forest episode. Another chance to laugh and play for the cameras.
They announced the rules, splitting everyone into two teams. Three on one side, four on the other. It was supposed to be fun, silly even, playing volleyball without arms against the staff. The boys immediately jumped into action, already grouping themselves up before you even moved.
Intak, Jongseob, and Jiung ran to each other with loud laughs, bumping shoulders and hyping themselves up. Keeho, Theo, and Soul naturally gravitated together, already talking strategy with grins tugging at their faces.
You stayed where you were, eyes down on the grass, fingers tugging at a loose thread on your shirt. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t try. You didn’t bother. When you finally lifted your gaze, every eye was on you. The staff. The camera crew. The boys. Everyone was staring, waiting for you to choose a side.
And you saw it, clear as day. The looks on the boys’ faces. Not hope that you’d join them, not excitement. No, it was the kind of hope that begged silently: please don’t pick us. Please don’t ruin the balance we already made. Please don’t make this harder.
Your chest tightened, but you forced a breath, the kind that came out sounding more like defeat than anything else. “I’ll just be in charge of the scores, or whatever. I’m not really athletic.” Your voice carried just enough for the cameras to catch.
You stood and walked toward the little table where the score sheet and marker were waiting, sitting down on the chair like it was always meant to be yours. The staff gave small nods, moving on like it wasn’t strange. Like it wasn’t heavy.
Keeho, Soul, and Theo trailed over to you, settling around the table instead of on the court. You could feel the unspoken relief from everyone else, like things had been neatly solved. Jiung, Jongseob, and Intak cheered as they were chosen to play first, laughter spilling into the open field.
You sat with the pen in your hand, the paper in front of you, but none of it mattered. Your eyes followed the game, but you weren’t really watching. All you could feel was that familiar ache in your chest.
This was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to be family. But here you were, keeping score like you were nothing more than an extra.
And you hated it.
It was one of those days where the thought of quitting pressed heavier on your chest than usual. The kind of day where you couldn’t see a future in this anymore, where the hate felt louder than the music itself. And of course, it was a fansign event.
You hated fansigns. The fake smiles, the pretending, the sitting across from people who looked you in the eyes while asking cruel questions they thought were harmless. “Are you dating any of the members?” “How does it feel to be the most hated?” “Why are you still in the group if you never even speak or get lines?” You’d heard them all before, over and over, until the words etched themselves into your bones.
You waved goodbye to one of those fans, your polite smile slipping the second they walked away. Your hand ached from signing albums that probably weren’t even meant for you, and your throat felt tight from swallowing down every insult.
The next person stepped forward and for the first time in so long, something shifted. She was stunning, her dark skin glowing beneath the harsh lights, her afro dyed a soft baby pink that made your heart skip. Pink. Your favorite color. The color you’d never told anyone about.
“Oh my God, hi! I love your hair!” The words burst out before you could stop them, and this time your smile wasn’t fake. It was real, wide, alive. She radiated something warm, something good.
Her hands trembled as she pushed the album forward, and you noticed immediately. You gently took her hands in yours, giving them the softest squeeze to calm her down. Her breath hitched, her shoulders loosened just slightly.
“R-Really?” she stammered, eyes wide.
“Yes! Pink is my favorite color!” you answered, your voice bubbling with excitement you hadn’t felt in months.
That was all it took. Her lips curled into the brightest smile, the kind that made her whole face light up. “I came here specifically for you. You saved me in many ways. I was in such a dark place a few months ago. I thought I had no one, nothing left. Then I stumbled on TikTok, on a screen recording of your Weverse live. You weren’t even doing much, you were just talking, but you felt so genuine. You looked so kind. Like someone who would sit and listen without ever judging. And from that moment, I wanted to keep living, just so I could support you.”
Her voice trembled, tears shining in her eyes. She gripped your hands tighter. “It breaks my heart to see all the hate you get. You don’t deserve any of it. You’re talented, and you’re beautiful, and you’re the reason I didn’t give up. Please don’t ever think you’re alone. Because you’re not. You have me. And you have so many others, even if they’re quiet.”
By the time she finished, your jaw had gone slack. Tears blurred your vision, hot and heavy, spilling before you could stop them. Your chest heaved with a shaky breath. No one had ever said anything like that to you before. Not once.
The girl let out a tiny, watery giggle, like she was embarrassed by her own words. “I also bought you this.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper and a small box.
You opened the paper first, gasping as you unfolded a hyper-realistic drawing of yourself, every detail captured perfectly. “Oh, this is amazing! Thank you so much!” you gushed, smiling wide through your tears.
Then you opened the box. Inside was a delicate necklace, simple but beautiful, and your throat closed up all over again. “Thank you so much, gorgeous. This really means a lot to me.” Your voice cracked, but your smile stayed, and for once, it was genuine.
The staff leaned over, reminding her to move along, and she reluctantly nodded, squeezing your hand one last time before sliding down the table toward Theo. He glanced at her, then at you, catching the tears still wet on your cheeks. And then, to your shock, he smiled.
Your heart stumbled at the sight. None of the boys had ever smiled at you like that, not for no reason. You didn’t know what to do with it.
By the end of the fansign, your energy was drained, but for once, not entirely in a bad way. You carried that girl’s words with you like a shield. Her smile replayed in your mind. Her pink hair, her warmth. It had been a reminder you desperately needed: you weren’t as invisible as they made you feel.
Back in the black van, all seven of you collapsed into your seats. It was late, the city lights blurring past outside the tinted windows. You caught yourself smiling faintly, something you hadn’t done in a while, and of course, the boys noticed.
“What’s up with you?” Keeho asked, brows furrowed like your happiness was suspicious.
You blinked, caught off guard. “Hm? Oh, nothing. I just met this nice fan today.”
“What did they say?” Jiung asked, curiosity lacing his voice.
You hesitated, then admitted, “She told me about how I saved her when she was at her lowest, and some other things. It really touched me.” You felt your cheeks warm, the memory flooding your chest again.
But Jongseob scoffed, shaking his head. “Y/n, that’s like… a normal fan interaction. Calm down.” His laugh was sharp, the kind that sliced straight through you.
Your smile crumbled. You shrank back into your seat, shoulders curling as you forced out a sigh. You stared down at your hands in your lap, silent. The joy from earlier drained away in seconds, replaced by that heavy ache you’d been carrying for years.
Can’t you ever be happy without them ruining it?
You lifted your eyes, and there he was. Theo, staring at you from across the van. His expression unreadable, but intense. Almost like he was seeing something for the first time. Almost like he was finally thinking.
You rolled your eyes and looked back down. What, did he suddenly realize the way you’d been treated five years into debut? Yeah, okay. Too little, too late.
Your dorm room was quiet except for the faint muffled sounds of laughter coming from down the hall. You already knew what it was without checking. Keeho, Jiung, and Jongseob had gone live on Weverse from Keeho’s room. Their voices carried easily, even through the thin walls, loud and bright and carefree.
You lay in bed, phone in hand, watching the livestream play out on your screen. They were answering fan questions, cracking jokes, making fun of weird comments and teasing each other the way they always did. They looked happy. So natural together. So… whole.
A small pang of jealousy tugged at your chest, but you brushed it away quickly. You were used to that feeling. It had followed you like a shadow for years, always there whenever you caught yourself wishing you fit into their world as easily as they fit into each other’s.
Keeho squinted at the screen, reading something aloud. “Soul or Y/N?” he asked, voice playful.
Without even a pause, he turned toward Soul and wrapped his arms around him, pressing exaggerated kisses to his cheek while Jiung burst into his signature loud laugh. Soul pushed him off, his face twisting in mock disgust, but everyone was still laughing. Everyone except you.
He didn’t even hesitate. He didn’t even have to think about it.
And then the comments started pouring in. Faster than you could scroll.
“Lmfao does anyone ACTUALLY like y/n?”
“pls she’s like a ghost💀 literally no one knows anything about her”
“no like why tf is she still in the group if she does quite literally NOTHING??”
“embarrassing for her lol even her own members don’t like her”
Each line felt like another cut. You stared at the words until your vision blurred, trying to pretend they weren’t already tattooed across your mind.
What were you really doing here? Why were you still putting yourself through this? If you left, you’d be free. You’d be happy. The fans would be happy. The boys would be happy. Everyone would finally get what they wanted.
So why hadn’t you left?
Your hand shook as you shut off your phone, placing it on the bedside table. The room fell silent again, except for the soft sound of your own breathing breaking apart. Fresh, warm tears spilled down your cheeks as you curled onto your side, facing the wall. You pressed your face into the pillow, but you didn’t bother muffling it this time. Quiet sobs filled the space anyway.
It was only a few minutes later when there was a knock on your door.
You froze. No one ever knocked on your door. They never came looking for you. They always ignored you.
“Y/N? Are you asleep?” Theo’s voice floated through the wood softly.
You held your breath, forcing silence. Maybe if you didn’t answer, he’d leave.
But the door creaked open anyway. You heard his footsteps cross the room, then felt the dip of the mattress as he lay down on the other side of your bed. He stayed on his back, staring up at the ceiling, the quiet between you stretching out.
After a while, he spoke. His voice was low, steady, but there was something fragile underneath it.
“You usually sleep at three in the morning because you’re always crying.”
He paused.
“I can always hear you. Every night.”
Your breath hitched, your chest tightening, but you refused to turn toward him.
“It’s only one now,” he continued quietly. “So I know you’re not asleep.”
Silence pressed heavy again.
“I know you saw the live,” Theo said. “I know you’re being treated horribly.”
Another pause. You could hear the way he swallowed before he kept going.
“I know you hate us. And I know you hate that you made the decision to become an idol.”
Your fingers curled into the sheets.
“I’ve always noticed you,” he whispered. “I’ve noticed the way you pick at your cuticles until they bleed whenever you’re uncomfortable during interviews.”
A sharp sting rose in your chest.
“I know your voice is absolutely mesmerizing. But the others… they don’t give you the lines you deserve.”
Your throat burned, tears building again.
“I know you’re amazing at sports. Football. Volleyball. But you chose to sit on the sidelines. You kept score just so you wouldn’t disappoint us.”
Your breath came out shaky.
“I know the fans are cruel. Disrespectful. Disgusting. And I know how much it hurts.”
The silence this time stretched so long you thought he might be done. But then he said, softer than before,
“I saw all of it. And I never said anything. And for that, I’m truly sorry.”
You didn’t move. You didn’t speak.
You didn’t even know what to say. Your body trembled with the weight of it. Because if he knew, then you weren’t invisible. You were seen. Every scar, every wound, every time you broke. You were seen.
And yet not once had he tried to help you.
What the hell were you supposed to do with that?
His footsteps retreated slowly, and the door clicked shut behind him.
That was when the dam broke. You buried your face in the pillow and let out sob after sob, muffling them until your throat ached, until your body shook with the force of it.
Because it was one thing to be invisible.
It was another to know you had been seen all along, and left to suffer anyway.
𐙚You were the school’s sunshine; always seen skipping around with the widest smile anyone has ever seen. Taeyang, meanwhile, was always seen walking around with either a bruised face or bruised knuckles — sometimes even both. Whats everyone’s reaction to the two polar opposites of the school slowly starting to get closer?
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PART 1
You were sitting in history class, humming softly while going over your neat, color-coded notes. History wasn’t your strong suit, so you tried to reread everything whenever you had a chance.
When Professor Hwang finally walked in, the room went silent. Everyone stood up to greet him, and he waved a hand lazily, mumbling something that sounded like a greeting.
“Alright,” he said, dragging out the word. “Report cards are coming up, but I can’t give you grades because I don’t remember any of your names.”
Jiwoo, in the seat right in front of you, snorted loudly, and Hana elbowed her under the desk.
Professor Hwang continued, “And I know none of you would study for a real exam, so instead, I’m giving you a group project.” He paused, let it sink in, then added, “It’s worth a hundred percent of your grade.”
The reaction was instant. The entire class exploded into groans and complaints. Jiwoo and Hana were yelling at the top of their lungs while you just sat there, quietly flipping a page in your notes. It wasn’t like a project scared you. In fact, you fully believed a project was better than an exam.
After everyone ran out of breath, Professor Hwang started listing group names. Eventually, only you, Jiwoo, and Hana were left, so you shrugged, assuming the three of you lucked out.
“And the last group… Jiwoo, Hana, Y/N… and Taeyang.”
The room fell so quiet you swore you could hear someone swallow. Every head turned toward your group. Jiwoo and Hana whipped around like they’d been personally attacked.
“Are you serious?” Hana snapped, slamming her palms on her desk. “Choi Taeyang? Really?”
“What kind of punishment is this?” Jiwoo added loudly. “Do you want us to fail?”
Professor Hwang pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please. I’m running on two hours of sleep and almost no will to live. Sit down.”
You barely had time to blink before you heard a chair scrape beside you. Taeyang dropped into the seat next to yours, legs spread out, taking up more space than necessary. He smelled like smoke, but you didn’t wrinkle your nose or flinch. It wasn’t your business.
Jiwoo and Hana glared at him like he’d personally ruined their lives. Taeyang glared back with twice the intensity.
“I don’t bite,” he said flatly.
Hana scoffed. “Everyone knows how you bit that guy in ninth grade.”
Taeyang rolled his eyes, and you turned toward him with your usual bright smile.
“I’m Y/N! Nice to meet you.” You held out your hand, waiting.
He looked at it, then at you, then turned away without a single word.
You opened your mouth to try again, but Jiwoo shot you a warning glare. “Don’t talk to him, Y/N. Seriously.”
Your smile faltered, just a little, before you forced it back. You happened to catch Taeyang looking at you from the corner of his eye, but the moment you smiled at him, he rolled his eyes again and stared straight ahead.
When class ended, Taeyang shot out of his seat and headed for the door. You immediately scrambled up, stuffing your notebook into your bag before running after him.
“Hey, wait!” You reached out and grabbed his wrist.
He stopped, jaw tightening as he turned to you. “What?”
You looked up at him like he hadn’t just snapped at you. “Can I get your number? I need to make a group chat.”
“No.” He tugged his arm, trying to leave, but you held on stubbornly.
“But you have to be in it,” you said. “Otherwise how are we supposed to meet and work on the project?”
“I don’t care about the project.”
You blinked. “But… it’s a hundred percent of your grade. Do you want to fail history?”
He didn’t answer. He just turned to keep walking, so you let go long enough to dig through your bag for a sticky note. You scribbled your number on it as quickly as you could, nearly tripping as you ran to catch up.
“Hey! Hold on a second!” You grabbed his sleeve this time.
He whipped around, eyes narrowed. “What do you keep pulling me for?”
You pushed the sticky note into his hand. “My number. Please text me so I can add you to the group chat. It would suck if you failed.”
Without waiting for a response, you gave him one more cheerful smile, turned on your heel, and skipped back toward Jiwoo and Hana.
Both of them were glaring at Taeyang like he was the villain of their story, and Taeyang just stared down at the sticky note in his hand, expression unreadable, before crumpling it a little between his fingers and shoving it in his pocket with a roll of his eyes.
The cafeteria was loud like always, a mix of shouting, laughter, and trays slamming that somehow faded into background noise for you. You sat with your usual chocolate milk, poking the paper straw through the tiny hole before bringing it to your lips. You were humming without even noticing, swinging your feet lightly under the table while Jiwoo and Hana bickered about something pointless again.
“No, I’m telling you that was definitely Minji’s pencil,” Hana said.
“It literally had my name carved into it,” Jiwoo snapped back.
“It could’ve been another Jiwoo.”
“Who else is named Jiwoo in this school, Hana?”
You kept humming, nodding along even though you weren’t listening.
Taeyang passed your table, shooting you a quick side eye like you’d personally offended him by existing. You froze mid-sip, eyes lighting up. You lifted your hand in a big wave, smiling at him like he was a friend and not the school’s resident hurricane.
He scoffed loud enough for your table to hear and rolled his eyes before continuing on.
You didn’t seem bothered. You just popped the straw back into your mouth and started sipping again, happy as ever.
“Y/N.” Jiwoo said your name in a tone she usually saved for lectures.
You blinked up at her, startled. “Hm?”
Both of them stared at you like you’d grown a second head. Hana sighed dramatically. “Oh, you sweet little marshmallow.”
Your brows furrowed. “What?”
“Look,” Jiwoo said, leaning forward. “We know you want to see the good in literally every living creature, but Taeyang doesn’t have any good. None. Zero. He’s like… all fists. All violence. Some people are just not fixable.”
You frowned, confused. “But… in middle school you two used to get suspended every other week. You were always in fights. Everyone was scared of you. And, not trying to be mean, but a lot of people didn’t like you.”
They both froze.
Hana made a face. “Okay? And what does that have to do with anything?”
You smiled innocently. “Well, even though everyone saw you as violent troublemakers, I still gave you a chance. And I got to know who you really were. So why can’t Taeyang be the same?”
Jiwoo opened her mouth to respond but nothing came out. Hana stared at you like you’d suddenly become very complicated.
Before either of them could try again, a loud crash echoed from behind you. The cafeteria suddenly shifted, voices rising. Chairs screeched against the floor.
You twisted around in your seat.
A few tables away, Taeyang was squared off with another guy. They were nose to nose, both yelling so loudly you could hear the rage from your table. Then the other guy must’ve said something truly horrible, because Taeyang was fuming.
He grabbed one of the metal food trays, and swung it straight into the guy’s head.
The guy dropped instantly.
Taeyang didn’t stop. He followed him down, straddling him, fists slamming again and again. Blood splattered with every punch. From the guy’s face. From Taeyang’s knuckles. People backed away, some screaming, others filming.
Teachers rushed in, but it took three of them to rip Taeyang off the guy. Even then he was still yelling, trying to lunge back as they dragged him out of the cafeteria. Two other teachers knelt down beside the guy, who wasn’t moving at all.
You stared, eyes wide, straw still in your mouth but forgotten.
The moment Taeyang was dragged away and the unconscious boy was carried out, Hana slowly turned toward you, raising an eyebrow.
“So,” she said. “You were saying?”
You blinked once, twice. Your lips pressed together before your smile returned, small but steady.
“I stand by what I said.”
You got up, picked up your bag, and walked toward the exit like nothing had happened. You had class to get to.
All day long, the school buzzed like a beehive that had been kicked. Everyone had something to say about the fight. Every hallway you walked through, someone was whispering about Taeyang’s latest meltdown, showing a blurry video on their phone, or swearing they knew exactly what the other guy said to set him off. None of them actually knew, but that never stopped gossip from growing legs.
By lunchtime, the videos were already posted online. Some people replayed them over and over like they were watching a highlight reel. Others whispered things like he needed to be expelled or locked up. A few cheered him on. Most just watched for entertainment.
But you sat there, feeling this strange heaviness in your chest. You knew you shouldn’t feel bad. He smashed someone’s face in until teachers had to tear him away. He scared half the cafeteria. But still… something in your gut kept tugging at you. Something telling you that maybe, deep inside that usually-angry exterior, there was something softer. Something kind. People just didn’t bother to look for it.
Everyone was misunderstood in your eyes. Everyone deserved a chance.
Which was how you ended up skipping your next class, sitting on the plastic chair outside the principal’s office with a mini first aid kit resting on your lap. Your legs swung beneath the seat as you hummed quietly, the sound echoing a little in the empty hallway.
After what felt like forever, the office door clicked open.
Taeyang stepped out, looking pissed off and exhausted at the same time. When he saw you sitting there, his shoulders immediately dropped like he knew you were going to be trouble.
“What the hell do you want from me?” he muttered, voice low and irritated.
Your eyes went straight to his hands. His knuckles were covered in dried blood and already blooming with fresh bruises. You stood up, holding the little first aid kit between your palms like an offering.
“This should help your hands,” you said gently.
Taeyang froze for a second. He looked at you like you’d just spoken in another language.
Then he scoffed and brushed past you roughly. “I don’t want your help.”
You let out a soft breath and followed behind him at your usual calm pace.
“They’re gonna get infected,” you said, not raising your voice, not annoyed.
He didn’t even turn around. “Fuck off.”
You couldn’t help the tiny smile that tugged your lips up.
“You wanna go home and have your parents see your hands like that? Better to wrap them up before they get worse.”
That stopped him.
He turned sharply, eyes cold and warning. “Don’t talk about my parents.”
You didn’t flinch. You just raised the first aid kit again with a small, hopeful smile.
Taeyang stared at you for a long moment, jaw tight, before snatching it from your hands like you were forcing him at gunpoint. But he didn’t storm off right away.
You brightened immediately. You didn’t say anything—just flashed him a warm look before turning to walk away.
“Uh…”
You stopped mid-step and looked back over your shoulder. “Yeah?”
He shifted awkwardly, holding the first aid kit like he didn’t know what to do with it. “I don’t know how to do this. Wrap… whatever.”
You laughed lightly. “I can help you. If that’s okay.”
He seemed to fight an invisible battle in his head before letting out an annoyed exhale. “Fine. But not here.”
You did a little victory cheer in your head, then jogged after him as he led the way.
Soon you were both sitting behind the school on the pavement, where the concrete was warm from the sun. Your thighs brushed every time one of you moved. You hummed without thinking while carefully cleaning the dried blood from his knuckles, then wrapping them in soft gauze.
Taeyang was quiet until suddenly he tensed.
“Hey. Where’d you hear that song?” His voice was sharp, almost defensive.
You blinked and looked up. “What song?”
“The one you were humming just now.”
“Oh.” You smiled shyly. “I never realise when I hum. But I heard it outside the gym. Someone goes in there after school and plays guitar. They always lock the doors, so I sit outside and draw. I like listening to them. Sometimes I leave them sketches.”
A faint blush warmed your cheeks at the confession.
For a split second, Taeyang’s eyes widened. Then he forced his expression back to normal.
“You know who it is?”
“Nope.” You popped the p.
You finished wrapping his knuckles and leaned back a little. “All done.”
He lifted his hands, studying them like he wasn’t sure how to feel about the neat white bandages.
You stood up and brushed the dust off your skirt. “So… think about texting me, okay? It’d be good for you to try socialising a little.”
Taeyang glared at you from where he sat. You giggled, completely immune to it, and started skipping away.
Every glare he gave you, every scoff, every insult, none of it scared you off. And the fact he let you take care of him at all was all the proof you needed.
You were right about him.
The next three days felt strangely quiet without Taeyang’s constant presence looming somewhere in the background. No heavy footsteps echoing down the hall, no annoyed grunts when someone bumped into him, no messy bruised knuckles tapping on desks. For the first day, you were honestly worried. Maybe he’d gotten hurt. Maybe he took off because his hands were infected after all. Maybe he hated you for being persistent.
But then the rumor mill kicked in like it always did.
Word spread quickly that he’d been suspended for the fight. Everyone had an opinion. Some said he got what he deserved. Others said the other guy provoked him first. A few people claimed they saw blood on the cafeteria wall like it was some urban legend being passed on.
You mostly just felt sad.
And what made it worse was that the guitar music in the gym stopped too. No strumming. No soft melodies echoing under the door. No reason to sit on the bench and draw while humming. Whoever played the guitar was gone, and Taeyang was gone, and the school felt a little emptier for it.
But on the fourth morning, everything snapped back into color.
You walked into history class, still half asleep, and froze mid-step when your eyes landed on the back row.
Taeyang was there with his head down and passed out cold.
You squealed quietly, almost dropping your binder, and rushed straight to the empty chair beside him like a kid spotting their favorite cartoon character in public. Jiwoo and Hana didn’t even try to hide their horror. They shared the same wide-eyed glance and shook their heads at you.
You ignored them completely.
You grabbed Taeyang’s shoulder and shook him hard. He shot upright like he’d been jolted with electricity, arm raised, ready to swing at whoever woke him.
When he saw it was you, he clicked his tongue and dropped his arm onto the desk.
“Leave me alone,” he muttered before burying his face in his folded arms again.
“But I haven’t seen you in forever. How are your hands?” You giggled, immediately grabbing one of his arms and tugging his hand toward you. You were stronger than you looked, because he grunted and nearly toppled off the desk.
“You fucking—” He cut himself off when you gave him a warning look.
He sucked in a breath. “They’re better.”
“When’d you take the bandages off?” you asked, gently turning his hand. The bruises were still there, but the cuts had closed up nicely.
“This morning.” He snatched his hand back like you’d burned him.
You beamed at him. “Good! So, anyway, I’ve accepted the fact that you’ll never text me about the project, sooo…”
You dug around in your backpack while he watched with clear suspicion.
When you finally pulled out the paper, it looked like something straight out of a study-themed Instagram page. Pink and purple markers, neat bullet points, little stars doodled in the corners. You handed it to him proudly.
He took it like it was contaminated.
“What the hell is this?” He held it by the very corner, thumb and index finger barely touching it.
“You don’t have to do anything for the presentation,” you explained, smiling brightly. “Just memorize a few dates and what happened during each one. I picked the easiest ones.”
He stared at the notes, then at you. “It’s pink.”
“Well, duh! Pink is amazing.” You giggled.
He didn’t even blink. “Do you get a lower grade if I don’t participate?”
“Well… no.” You pouted. “But you’ll fail the class. And I’d feel awful if you failed while being in my group.”
He kept staring at the sheet for a moment before sighing long and deep. He shoved the paper into his bag like it offended him.
“You care too much about people,” he muttered.
You shrugged, cheeks warm. “That’s just how my mom raised me.”
“Go away now.” He flicked his fingers at you like you were a fly buzzing in his face.
You gasped dramatically. “But I thought we were bonding.”
“I don’t bond with anyone. Go sit with your insane friends,” he grumbled, glaring over your shoulder at Jiwoo and Hana, who were absolutely glaring right back at him.
You leaned forward, lowering your voice playfully. “Okay. But, just saying… if you three stopped hating each other, you’d be great friends.”
Before he could respond, you reached out and booped his nose.
He immediately slapped your hand away, scowling so hard it could’ve cracked the desk. You just laughed and skipped toward Jiwoo and Hana.
The moment you sat on the desk behind them, Hana grabbed your arms. “Y/N, you crazy idiot! Did he hit you? Did he shove you?”
“What? No.” You waved her off. “It’s progress.”
Jiwoo opened her mouth to lecture you, but that was when Professor Hwang stumbled into the classroom, yawning loudly enough for everyone to hear.
You hid a smile behind your hand.
Progress was progress.
Lunchtime felt like a reward after surviving the morning, so you grabbed a tray and started piling it with everything you liked. You added your favourite chocolate milk last, obviously, because no meal was complete without it. You hummed to yourself as you skipped between tables, trying to spot Hana and Jiwoo. For some reason, they were nowhere in sight. You checked the usual corner, the table near the windows, even the one they sometimes used when they were in a bad mood. Nothing.
While spinning around to check again, your eyes caught someone sitting alone at one of the back tables. Taeyang. He was hunched over his phone, completely absorbed in whatever he was scrolling through. You didn’t even hesitate. You practically bounced over and plopped down in front of him.
He looked up, saw your face, and groaned like you had just ruined his entire week. His head fell back for a second before he leveled a tired glare at you.
“Why are you everywhere?” he muttered like the universe was personally targeting him.
He started to push his chair back, clearly ready to relocate anywhere else, but you grabbed his tie before he could even get half a step away. It wasn’t tied properly, so it slipped in your hand, but it was enough to yank him right back into his seat.
His glare sharpened like they could cut glass.
Your smile only widened.
“We’re friends now, Theo.”
He stared at you so blankly that for a second you thought maybe he didn’t even understand what language you were speaking. Then his eyebrow twitched. “Who the fuck is Theo?”
You beamed. “You. Obviously. It suits you.”
“If you call me that again, you’re getting punched.”
You snorted into your food. “Anyway,” you said, waving off the threat like it was background noise, “where’s your tray?” It only hit you then that he didn’t have any food in front of him. Actually, thinking back, you realised you hardly ever saw him with food at lunch. The only time was when he weaponised a tray and smashed it that guy’s skull.
He stared at you like he was debating whether to lie or just bite your hand. “I’m not hungry.”
Right on cue, his stomach growled so loudly that you actually jumped a little. His ears flushed bright red while your jaw dropped.
“Theo,” you said, scandalised.
He glared harder. “Stop calling me that.”
You clicked your tongue at him and stood up, already annoyed. “Wait here. And keep rolling your eyes at me. See what happens.” You gave his head a little shove as punctuation.
He jerked his head back toward you like he couldn’t believe you actually touched him. You ignored the look and marched straight to the food counter, grabbing another tray. You filled it with food he might actually eat. Nothing too weird, nothing too healthy, plus an extra chocolate milk because you were convinced he’d like it if he just stopped pretending to hate joy.
You came back humming, set the tray down in front of him like a waiter, and sat back down to your own food.
He looked up from his phone, saw what you’d done, and practically shouted. “What the hell? Take it back! I’m not paying for that!”
You raised an eyebrow. “I’ll pay. Just eat. You’re literally starving yourself.” You took a casual bite of your own food like the discussion was already over.
Taeyang stared at the tray like it might explode. You didn’t give him time to think. “Here,” you said, grabbing the chocolate milk from his tray and shoving the straw through the little hole before handing it to him. “Try this. It’s amazing.”
He looked at the milk, then at you, then at the milk again. Very slowly, he raised it and took a sip.
His eyebrows lifted before he could stop himself.
You grinned triumphantly. “Right? Good, huh?”
He dropped back into his usual scowl almost instantly and set the milk down way too aggressively. “No. It’s terrible. Go away.”
You burst out laughing, and even though he tried to ignore you, you caught the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Progress.
The walk home was quiet in the best way. You had your headphones in, your playlist shuffling through all your comfort songs, and the late afternoon breeze kept tugging at your skirt. It felt peaceful, one of those moments where nothing dramatic was happening and you could finally breathe.
But as you walked, something about your skirt pocket kept feeling… wrong. The fabric felt bunched up or twisted somehow, and you sighed, assuming it had just gotten wrinkled after a full day of running around school. You slipped your hand inside to smooth it out.
Your fingers brushed against something soft. Soft and silky.
You slowed down, confused, and pulled it out.
You frowned at the sight of the boys uniform tie hanging from your fingers. Dark, smooth, definitely not yours. You stared at it for a long second before your brain finally clicked.
Right. The lunch table. You yanking him back down by his tie like he weighed nothing. You tugging it so hard it practically fell off his neck. You must have shoved it in your pocket without thinking.
Heat rushed to your cheeks as you remembered the whole thing. You smiled to yourself, feeling ridiculous but also weirdly happy. Taeyang probably hadn’t even noticed it was gone until he got home and realised he looked like a delinquent on the run.
You tucked the tie safely back into your pocket and kept walking. Tomorrow, you’d give it back. And honestly, you should probably teach him how to tie it properly because the thing was always hanging off his neck like he’d fought it in a dark alley.
The next morning at school, you spotted him at his locker. He had one hand braced against the metal door, looking annoyed at life, the universe, and everything in between. Perfect timing.
You marched right up and slammed his locker door shut.
The bang echoed and he flinched hard, whipping around with his fist half raised before he froze at the sight of you.
He groaned like his soul was leaving his body. “Fuck my life.”
“Good morning to you too,” you said cheerfully. “You smell like cigarettes. Is that what you had for breakfast?”
He let out a sarcastic little laugh that absolutely promised murder. “What do you want this time?”
You reached into your pocket. “I accidentally stole your tie yesterday.”
His eyes flicked down to your hand, then back up to your face. “Okay, thief.” He snatched it away so quickly he nearly smacked you in the process.
You watched him fumble with it for a few seconds, trying and failing to look like he knew what he was doing. His hands were stiff, awkward, completely clueless.
You grinned. “Let me help you.”
He jerked back immediately. “Do not touch me.”
“Oh, stop trying to push me away. You’re stuck with me now, Theo.” Your tone softened without you meaning for it to. You stepped closer, gently taking the tie from his hand. He let you, even if he looked like someone had just threatened him with affection.
He stood very still as you looped the tie around his collar, eyes fixed on you like you were performing some kind of forbidden magic. His cheeks slowly turned red, which he kept trying to hide by looking anywhere except your face.
You tightened the knot neatly, smoothed it down, and tapped your palms lightly on his chest. “There. Perfect.”
You stepped back, satisfied with your work. “I’ll see you in history. And get ready, because I’m not letting you shoo me off to Hana and Jiwoo this time.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why not? They’re your best friends.”
You laughed. “They’re both skipping today. So you, my dear Theo, are stuck with me for the whole school day.”
His face twisted in absolute devastation.
You gave him a little wave before walking off. He groaned loudly behind you, the sound echoing down the hall like a man accepting his tragic fate, and trudged toward class, already regretting every life decision that led him to this moment.
You spent the entire day together, even if Taeyang refused to admit that was what you were doing. After every class, you hunted him down like some determined little puppy, and every time he spotted you coming, he swore under his breath. But neither of you took it seriously. You knew he didn’t mean the things he said, and he knew you were too stubborn to leave him alone anyway.
People definitely noticed. They whispered behind their hands or stared openly as you walked past. It didn’t make sense to them. You, the school’s resident sunshine, glued to the side of Choi Taeyang of all people. You were gentle and soft-spoken and carried bandaids in your bag. He was the guy who’d recently sent someone to the hospital and looked like he was permanently three seconds away from committing another crime. Nobody could make the math add up.
You didn’t care. Taeyang cared even less.
He’d slipped into the bathroom for what he called a “small break,” which was just his way of saying he needed a smoke so he didn’t strangle someone. You leaned against the wall outside, scrolling on your phone and humming quietly.
Then a shadow blocked your light. You looked up, expecting Taeyang, but instead, Minho stood there, arms crossed and a scowl already in place.
Your stomach dropped a little. “Hello, Minho.” You kept your voice soft, polite, neutral. No need to poke a bear.
He raised a brow, jaw tightening. “So let me get this straight. You cut me off for being toxic and aggressive, but now you’re hanging out with Taeyang, who’s even worse? Makes perfect sense.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm.
You blinked, stunned. You hadn’t talked in literal years. This was his grand comeback?
“You’re reaching,” you said, already feeling your patience thin. “Theo is nothing like you.”
He scoffed. “Theo is what we’re calling him now? Cute.”
“No. Theo is what I’m calling him,” you corrected. “And I’ve been doing great since I cut you off. Don’t ruin that now.”
Minho’s glare sharpened. “I don’t get it, Y/N. This is Choi Taeyang. He put someone in the hospital last week. That dude still isn’t conscious. His parents didn’t even recognise him when they visited. And you’re defending him?”
“Obviously he had a reason,” you said, shrugging. “That guy provoked him.”
Minho looked horrified. “Do you even know what happened?”
“Minho,” you sighed, folding your arms. “What are you doing? Seriously. Move on. It’s been years. You wrecked our friendship. Leave me and Taeyang alone.”
He opened his mouth to argue again, but the bathroom door squeaked open behind you.
Without turning, you knew Taeyang was there. The smell of cigarettes and the faint trace of his cologne wrapped around you instantly. He stepped closer, hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes dark and unreadable.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Minho paled immediately. “No,” he said quickly.
“Then get going.” Taeyang didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
Minho nodded so fast it almost looked comedic and hurried off down the hallway.
As soon as he was out of sight, you let out a breath you didn’t realise you’d been holding. Then you reached into your bag and pulled out your favourite vanilla body mist.
Before Taeyang could say anything, you started spraying him with it.
He flinched back. “What the hell—stop! What are you doing?”
“You smell like cigarettes,” you said, not missing a beat. “And not the hot, mysterious kind. The gross kind.”
He snatched the bottle out of your hand. “Why does this smell like a bakery exploded?”
“Because it’s vanilla,” you said, grabbing it right back and shoving it into your bag before he could throw it across the hall. “And you stink.”
Taeyang glared at you like you’d personally offended his ancestors. You just smiled at him, completely unfazed, and he muttered curses under his breath that didn’t scare you one bit.
School was finally over for the day, and you were already bouncing on your feet, ready to say goodbye to Taeyang so he could disappear into whatever alleyway he usually climbed into. But before you could even open your mouth, he spoke first.
“Which way is your house?” he asked, tone flat but eyes sharp on you.
You blinked, caught off guard. “Uh… that way?” You pointed to the right side of the street, brows raised.
He nodded once. “Mine too.” Then he just started walking.
You stood frozen for a few seconds before the grin slowly spread across your face. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, Mr. Theo,” you teased as you jogged to catch up.
“Soft over what? I’m just walking home,” he said, glaring at you from the corner of his eye. But the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
That tiny smirk made your heart somersault. He was cracking. You were winning.
The walk home was a weird mix of your nonstop rambling and his usual grunts, curses, and occasional shoves when you accidentally brushed his arm or bumped his shoulder. But he didn’t tell you to shut up. Not really. And he didn’t walk three steps ahead like you expected.
When you reached your house, you did what you always did and stretched up to boop his nose.
He slapped your hand away instantly, scowling, and you skipped inside with a giggle. You were definitely winning.
The next morning, Taeyang was standing outside the school entrance, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved in his pockets like some brooding protagonist in a drama. The second he saw you, he pushed himself off the wall and walked through the doors with the speed of someone pretending to not wait for someone.
You sprinted after him and threw your arms around his shoulders from behind. “Goodmorning!” you sang.
He shoved you off like you were a mosquito. “No touching,” he growled.
You only laughed. “This is progress. If I hugged you like that two days ago, you would’ve slammed me straight into a locker.”
He shot you a glare that wasn’t nearly as intimidating as he thought. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out something small.
A pink handmade bracelet.
“This is yours, right?” he asked.
Confused, you looked down at your wrist, and yep, it was gone. You gasped softly, taking it from him and sliding it back onto your wrist. “It is! Where did you find it?”
“I found it on the road when walking back,” he said casually, shrugging. “It must’ve slipped off.”
You froze. Completely froze.
Your face burned instantly, the flush creeping up your neck and ears. “Walking… back?” you asked, voice small and shocked.
Taeyang frowned. “Yeah? Why do you look like that?”
“You said your house was near mine,” you said, eyes wide. “So why were you… walking back?”
The realisation hit you like a truck, and Taeyang could see it in your eyes.
His whole expression dropped. “I was… uh…” He cleared his throat aggressively. “It’s too fucking early for this shit,” he muttered, turning on his heel and storming off like he could outrun his own embarrassment.
You stood there frozen for a whole three seconds before breaking into the brightest smile ever. Then you bolted after him.
“You big baby!” you yelled as you jumped onto his back, arms looping around his shoulders and legs wrapping around his waist.
He nearly dropped dead on the spot. His hands shot to your thighs automatically to keep you from falling. “Get the fuck off me!”
“What’s the magic word?” you teased, tightening your arms around him.
“Get the fuck off me now,” he snapped.
“Nope! That’s not it,” you laughed, tossing your head back.
His grip on your thighs tightened in warning. “I swear, if you don’t get off right now, I’m slamming you into the wall.”
“You’re the one gripping my thighs,” you said sweetly. “You’re gonna leave bruises.”
He instantly dropped his hands like you’d burned him. His entire neck and ears turned red.
You slid off his back, landing easily on your feet. Without another word, he spun around and stalked off toward class, muttering curses so violently you could practically see smoke rising from his hair.
You, meanwhile, stood there smiling like a lovesick idiot before skipping off toward Chemistry class, humming your favorite tune and replaying the entire morning in your head.
Summary: Every night you meet Jiung in dreams, certain he’s just a figment of your imagination. But when a rainy afternoon leads you into a quiet music shop, you find him there—real, and just as stunned to see you.
Word count: 2,020
You had gotten used to it.
The way every night, when you closed your eyes, the world shifted.
Sometimes you woke in fields of tall grass, the stars overhead brighter than any you’d ever seen in real life. Other nights it was a glowing train station, endless tracks stretching into fog. Once, it was a city of glass buildings, light refracting in ways you knew couldn’t exist.
But always—always—he was there.
You didn’t know his name. You never asked, and he never told. It didn’t matter. In those dreamscapes, you belonged to each other without needing the details. His voice, low and warm, always met you first. His laugh carried through places that shouldn’t exist. His smile made the strangest corners of your mind feel like home.
And when you woke? You remembered less than you wanted—his face blurred at the edges, his words slipping away like sand through your fingers. But the feeling stayed.
Every morning, you carried him with you in the hollow of your chest.
You’d tried to explain it once, years ago, to a friend.
“I think I’m… dreaming of someone real,” you’d said, heat prickling your cheeks. “Like… I meet the same person every night.”
Your friend had laughed kindly, patting your shoulder. “That’s called a recurring dream. Means your brain is attached to the comfort. Nothing more.”
So you stopped telling people.
Because maybe they were right. Maybe he wasn’t real. Maybe you had invented him because your subconscious was lonely.
And yet… every night, there he was. And every night, the bond deepened. You trusted him more than anyone you knew in your waking life. You’d shared secrets in those dreams you could never say out loud. He belonged to you—even if he was just a figment.
It was raining the day everything changed.
You ducked into a narrow little music shop you’d never noticed before, just to escape the downpour. The bell over the door jingled, and warm air smelling faintly of polished wood and old strings wrapped around you.
It was quiet inside, the kind of stillness that felt sacred. Rows of instruments lined the walls—guitars, violins, keyboards—each holding a story.
And then you heard it.
A voice.
Low. Warm. Familiar in a way that made your chest ache.
Someone was humming near the back, testing a guitar, fingers strumming soft chords that seemed to vibrate right into your bones. You froze, every nerve in your body tightening. Because you knew that sound.
You’d fallen asleep to that voice in a hundred impossible places.
Your breath stuttered as you walked deeper into the shop, drawn to the melody like a tether you couldn’t fight.
And then you saw him.
Head bowed slightly as he adjusted the strings. Hair falling into his eyes. A black hoodie pulled over broad shoulders. He looked up absently—just a flicker of movement—and then his gaze locked on yours.
The world stopped.
It wasn’t recognition like seeing a stranger you vaguely remembered. It was deeper. Immediate. A jolt in your ribs like lightning splitting the sky. His eyes widened, and in that single moment you knew:
He saw you.
Not just now, in the music shop. But always. In dreams. In the fields, the stations, the cities of glass.
His lips parted. A whisper tumbled out, shaky and stunned.
“You’re real.”
Your knees nearly gave out. The room spun. You gripped the edge of a nearby keyboard just to steady yourself.
“You—” Your voice cracked. “It’s you.”
The guitar slipped from his hands, dangling from its strap. He was already stepping toward you, eyes searching your face like he didn’t dare blink.
“I thought I was crazy,” he admitted, voice rough. “Every night… you were there. I thought—” He exhaled, almost laughing in disbelief. “I thought my mind made you up.”
You shook your head quickly, words tumbling out before you could stop them. “No. Me too. I thought the same thing. But it was you. It was always you.”
The space between you closed like it had been waiting forever.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke. You just stared, memorizing the edges of a face you’d only half-remembered every morning until now. Seeing him in color, in life, felt like being reborn.
Finally, he smiled. Small. Shaky. Devastating.
“I should tell you my name,” he said softly, almost sheepish. “Jiung.”
You swallowed hard, your own name catching in your throat as you gave it to him. Hearing it on his lips seconds later felt like music.
You sat together on two stools in the corner of the shop, a half-forgotten guitar resting against Jiung’s leg.
It was awkward at first—two strangers who weren’t strangers at all. You didn’t know his favorite color, but you knew the exact sound of his laugh. He didn’t know what you studied, but he’d held your hand as you danced through glass cities.
Every silence filled itself. Every look lingered too long.
“I don’t know how this is possible,” you whispered, finally daring to look straight at him.
Jiung tilted his head, eyes soft. “I don’t either. But… I don’t care.”
You blinked at him.
“Do you?” he asked, earnest and a little vulnerable. “Care how? Or do you just… know it’s right?”
Your chest tightened. Because yes, that was exactly it.
You nodded. “I just know.”
And Jiung let out a breathy laugh of relief, like he’d been holding it in for years.
That night, you dreamt again.
The field. The tall grass swaying under endless stars. But when you turned, heart hammering, Jiung was already there—just like always. Except this time, the memory of the music shop clung to you. The feel of his real presence, his real voice.
“You were there today,” you whispered, almost in awe.
He smiled, reaching for your hand the way he always did here. “And you were too.”
His fingers were warm against yours. But for the first time, you weren’t sure if you’d wake up with that comfort fading. Because now, you knew you could find him outside of sleep.
You belonged to each other. In dreams. In waking. In every place in between.
Over the next weeks, you met in both worlds.
At night, you wandered impossible landscapes together, laughing like you always had. But during the day, you explored reality—coffee shops, quiet parks, late-night walks through the city.
Sometimes, Jiung would study your face with a tenderness that made your stomach flip. “You don’t fade anymore,” he said once, voice thick. “In dreams, I always woke up trying to remember you. But now… I don’t have to. You’re here.”
And sometimes, when you caught his hand across a café table, you’d whisper back, “You’re real.” Just to remind yourself. Just to believe it again and again.
Because after years of thinking you’d invented him, it was still a miracle every time he smiled at you like you were the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen.
One evening, in a quiet moment before closing time at the music shop, Jiung leaned against the counter, guitar case at his feet.
“You know,” he said lightly, though his eyes shone serious, “I used to think dreams were an escape. Something you wake up from and forget. But with you…” He trailed off, swallowing. “With you, I don’t want to wake up. Ever.”
Your throat tightened.
So you reached for his hand—here, in the waking world—and squeezed. “Then don’t,” you whispered. “Don’t wake up. Just… stay.”
And Jiung smiled the way he always did in dreams. The way he did in reality now too.
Like you were his beginning and his end.
Like he had known you forever.
Like you were never meant to be anything but real.
Hiiii I love your work!!! Can I please request a Jiung fic where he accidentally hits the reader's boobs hard and feels so guilty that he spends the rest of the day cuddling or something really similar to aftercare
pairing: Jiung x reader
warnings: phantom pain for everybody with boobs, funny accident, domestic fluff, comfort, some angst and conflict
The golden hour light filtered through the curtains of the apartment, casting a warm glow over the table you had spent the last hour decorating. It was your two-year anniversary with Jiung, and everything was, in theory, perfect. The steak was resting, the candles were flickering, and the playlist—curated meticulously by Jiung himself—was humming softly in the background.
Jiung stood by the kitchen island, looking devastatingly handsome in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He held a chilled bottle of expensive Champagne like it was a trophy.
"Alright," he announced, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Time for the finishing touch."
You leaned against the doorframe, crossing your arms over your chest. You knew Jiung. You knew his clumsiness was often masked by his sheer confidence and stage presence. This was a man who could execute complex choreography flawlessly but occasionally tripped over his own feet while walking to the fridge.
"Jiung," you said, your voice laced with skepticism. "Do you actually know how to do that? Maybe we should just use a towel? Or, you know, let me do it?"
Jiung let out a bright, melodic laugh, waving off your concern with a flick of his wrist. "Please, have a little faith in your man. I’ve seen the staff do it a thousand times. It’s all about the pressure and the angle. I’m a professional."
"Famous last words," you muttered, though a smile tugged at your lips.
"Watch and learn," he joked, flashing you that signature dimpled grin. He began peeling away the foil with unnecessary flair. "I’ll have the glasses filled before you can even finish doubting me."
You took a step closer, curious but cautious. Jiung gripped the base of the bottle and placed his thumb over the wire cage. He didn't use a towel. He didn't even point it away from the general vicinity of the living room. He was leaning into the "cool boyfriend" persona a bit too hard.
He started to twist the bottle, his face scrunched in concentration. "See? It’s coming. Just a little... bit... more..."
The "pop" didn't sound like a celebratory toast. It sounded like a gunshot.
The cork didn't fly toward the ceiling or the empty corner of the room. Instead, propelled by the built-up carbonation of a bottle that had perhaps been handled a bit too enthusiastically, it became a heat-seeking missile.
Thwack.
The projectile hit you square in the center of your left breast with a sickening thud.
The air left your lungs in a sharp gasp. For a split second, there was only the sound of the champagne foaming over the top of the bottle and Jiung’s triumphant, "Ha! Told you!"
Then, the pain blossomed—a sharp, stinging throb that radiated across your chest.
"FUCK!" you yelled, doubling over. "Ow! Oh my god, Jiung!"
Jiung’s smile vanished instantly. He didn't even bother to catch the overflowing foam, setting the bottle down haphazardly on the counter as he rushed toward you. "Wait, what happened? Did it hit the glass? Did it—"
"It hit my boob!" you shrieked, clutching your chest with both hands. You winced, tears of genuine, stinging pain pricking your eyes. "You sniper! You absolute menace! I cannot afford for these to get any smaller, Jiung! They're under attack!"
Jiung stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw dropping. His eyes went wide, darting from your face to where your hands were protectively covering yourself. "It... it hit you there?"
"Yes, there!" you snapped, turning away from him and pacing a small circle, clutching yourself. "It’s throbbing! It’s going to bruise! Why would you point it at me? I told you! I literally told you!"
"I didn't point it at you!" he protested, his voice rising in a mix of panic and utter confusion. He hovered behind you, his hands twitching as if he wanted to reach out but wasn't sure if he was allowed to touch the "crime scene." "I thought I was aiming at the wall! Are you okay? Do I need to get ice? Should I call a doctor? Can a cork cause internal damage?"
"It’s a blunt force trauma to the chest, Jiung!" you groaned, turning back to him with a glare.
He looked genuinely horrified, his lip wobbling slightly in a pout of pure guilt. "I’m so sorry. Oh my god, I’m the worst. Let me see—no, don't let me see, I mean—let me help? Is it red?"
You let out a frustrated huff and softly punched him in the shoulder with your free hand. "You're an idiot. Fuck!"
Jiung took the punch, nodding solemnly. "I deserve that. I deserve a hundred of those. I’m a failure of a boyfriend. Our anniversary is ruined by my lack of ballistics knowledge."
He stepped closer, wrapping his arms gingerly around your shoulders, trying to peer down at your face. He was being so sincere, so incredibly worried, that the tension started to leak out of the room.
But then, the silence stretched a second too long.
You heard it before you saw it. A tiny, muffled sound. A "pfft" that definitely didn't come from the champagne bottle.
You looked up. Jiung was biting his lower lip so hard it was turning white. His nostrils were flaring, and his eyes were crinkling at the corners.
The small bubble of laughter that had threatened to surface died instantly, replaced by a sharp, cold prickle of genuine irritation. The pain in your chest wasn’t fading; if anything, it was sharpening into a dull, rhythmic throb that made your skin feel too tight.
You looked at Jiung. He was still vibrating with that suppressed, shaky energy, his hand over his mouth, his eyes bright with the kind of amusement he usually reserved for watching funny fail videos on his phone. But this wasn’t a video. It was you.
"Is it really that funny to you?" you asked. Your voice wasn't loud, but the flat, icy tone cut through his giggles like a blade.
Jiung’s expression faltered. He straightened up, his hands dropping to his sides. "Wait, no—babe, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—"
"I’m standing here in actual pain," you snapped, your voice trembling with a mix of hurt and anger. You clutched your chest tighter, the stinging sensation making you feel vulnerable and ridiculous all at once. "I told you I was worried. I told you to be careful. And your first instinct is to laugh at me while I’m hurting?"
"I wasn't laughing at you hurting," Jiung said quickly, reaching out to touch your arm. "It was just the shock of it, and the thing you said about—"
"I don't care what I said!" you yelled, flinching away from his touch. The movement sent another jolt of pain through your chest, and you winced, fresh tears of frustration springing to your eyes. "It hurts, Jiung. A lot. And you’re standing there acting like it’s a comedy skit."
The mood in the room didn't just shift; it plummeted. The romantic candlelight now felt mocking, and the scent of the steak cooling on the table made your stomach turn. Jiung looked like he’d been slapped. The color drained from his face, replaced by a look of sheer, panicked regret.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice thick with realization. "I'm so sorry. I’m an idiot. I was just trying to lighten the—"
"I don't want to hear it right now," you interrupted. You couldn't look at him—not at his pouty lip or his worried eyes. You felt stupid, standing there in your nice anniversary dress, holding your boob like a wounded bird.
Without another word, you turned on your heel and marched toward the hallway.
"Wait, where are you going?" Jiung called out, his footsteps shuffling tentatively behind you. "Let me help, let me get you some ice—"
"Stay there," you barked over your shoulder, not slowing down. "I want to be alone for a minute."
"But it's our anniversary," he said, his voice small and cracking.
"Great job celebrating it," you threw back.
You reached the bathroom and stepped inside, swinging the door shut with a firm, echoing thud. You clicked the lock into place—a sharp, final sound that felt like an exclamation point.
Leaning your forehead against the cool wood of the door, you finally let out a shaky breath. You could hear him hovering on the other side, the floorboards creaking under his weight. He didn't knock, but you knew he was standing right there, probably staring at the handle with a heart full of guilt.
You walked over to the mirror and carefully peeled back the fabric of your dress. Just as you thought: a bright red, circular welt was already forming, right where the cork had made impact. It looked angry.
The silence of the bathroom felt heavy. Outside, you heard the faint sound of a chair scraping against the floor and then nothing but the low hum of the refrigerator. You sat down on the edge of the bathtub, resting your face in your hands. You knew you’d eventually go back out, and you knew he didn't mean to be cruel, but right now, the throb in your chest was the only thing you wanted to listen to.
The bedroom was dim, the only light creeping in from the hallway through the door you’d left slightly ajar. You were curled on your side, buried under the duvet, staring blankly at the wall. The physical pain had subsided into a dull, hot ache, but the sting of the situation—the ruined dinner, the laughter, the sheer absurdity of it all—still felt heavy in your gut.
The door creaked open just a few inches wider. A sliver of light cut across the carpet, followed by the soft, hesitant sound of Jiung’s footsteps. He was moving as if the floor were made of glass.
"Heyyyy," he whispered, his voice barely audible.
You didn't turn around. You just pulled the blanket a little higher.
"I brought peace offerings," he said softly.
He shuffled closer until he was standing by the edge of the bed. You felt the mattress sink slightly as he sat down on the very edge, keeping a respectful distance. In one hand, he held a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a thin kitchen towel; in the other, a steaming mug of hot cocoa, the scent of chocolate and toasted marshmallows drifting toward you.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked, his eyes searching the back of your head for any sign of forgiveness.
"No," you muttered into your pillow. "It's still throbbing. And I think it has a heartbeat of its own now."
Jiung let out a soft, pained exhale. "I am so, so sorry. Seriously. I’m a total moron. I thought I was being cool and I ended up being a literal hazard to your health." He leaned in a bit, extending the mug. "I made it extra sweet. Just the way you like it."
The smell was intoxicating, and your resolve began to crumble. You rolled over slowly, propping yourself up on one elbow. You looked at the cocoa, then at Jiung. He looked completely pathetic—his hair was messy, his eyes were wide and filled with genuine remorse, and he was holding that ice pack like a sacred relic.
Your anger, which had felt so sharp in the kitchen, began to evaporate into a weary sigh. You reached out and took the mug. "Thank you."
"Can I...?" He gestured toward the ice pack.
You hesitated for a second before nodding. Jiung moved closer, crawling onto the bed with exaggerated care. He reached out, his hand steady but gentle, and placed the cold pack over the injured area, making sure not to press too hard. The shock of the cold made you hiss, but after a moment, the numbing sensation brought a wave of much-needed relief.
"Better?" he asked, his face inches from yours.
"A little," you admitted, taking a sip of the cocoa. It was perfect.
Jiung didn't pull away. He leaned forward and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead, then another to your cheek. "I really didn't mean to laugh. It was just the shock of the sound. I felt like such a jerk the second the door closed."
He looked at you, his expression earnest. "Tell me what I have to do. What can I do so you won't stay mad at me? Anything. I’ll do the dishes for a month. I’ll buy you that bag you wanted. Just tell me."
You looked at him, a mischievous spark finally returning to your eyes despite the ache. "Well... since you essentially attacked me... I think it’s only fair if I get a free shot at your balls."
Jiung’s entire body recoiled, his eyes bulging as he instinctively moved his hand to cover his lap. "The balls?! No! Anything but the legacy! I have a career! I have to dance!"
You let out a genuine laugh then, the sound finally breaking the last of the tension. "I'm only kidding."
He let out a massive sigh of relief, slumping against the headboard next to you. "Thank god."
He leaned down, catching your lips in a deep, loving kiss that tasted like chocolate and forgiveness. When he pulled back, his hand moved to the edge of the ice pack. He replaced the cold bag with his warm palm, his fingers moving in slow, rhythmic circles over your chest, being incredibly mindful of the sensitivity.
"I mean it," he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, protective tone. "I'll take better care of you from now on. No more flying corks. I’ll be the official protector of the girls."
"You better be," you whispered, leaning your head on his shoulder. "Because next time, I’m not choosing the cocoa. I’m choosing the kick."
Jiung laughed, a soft, sweet sound this time, and kissed the top of your head. "Understood. Happy anniversary, my brave, wounded soldier."