part viii: bodyguard!felix x reader
masterlist.
PART I ; PART II ; PART III ; PART IV ; PART V ; PART VI ; PART VII ; PART VIII ;
Your father hires an inconspicuous bodyguard to accompany you at school and supervise you at home. What seems like an innocuous change in routine eventually spirals into a forbidden romance that grows more passionate over the years.
pairing: lee felix/reader content info: smut. violence. parental abuse. situations of intense peril overall. forced proximity. enemies2lovers. angst with eventual happy ending. (chapter word count; 13,800 words)
chapter warnings: the usual dynamics and abuse history. reader is harassed at a bar by a handsy man. some fighting. unprotected sex. BDSM dynamics (dom!felix/sub!reader, sadism, masochism, rope bondage, spanking, belting, fear kink).
-
You sleep through most of the afternoon, waking in that bleary, purple hour where evening is unexpectedly creeping into the day. Felix is not in the room, though the evidence of your lovemaking remains in the mess of your shared bed. There is also a tender ache between your thighs but it does not register as pain, or at least not as bad. It is proof of pleasure.
You touch yourself there, still sleepy but still wanting.
You listen for Felix. He is talking in the other room, on the phone with your father. You slip out of bed and dig around for a shirt, because you don’t want to distract Felix too bad while he is reporting.
A conversation with your father will no doubt cool him down, more effective than a douse of ice water, but you will not abandon him to that cold. Never again.
You wait in the corridor, listening as he mentions your missed class but lying about you having a stomach flu. He claims he made you rest because you have an important exam in a few days. He also claims you argued with him, which is convincingly in character for you, but naturally he won this supposed argument so your father has ‘nothing to worry about’.
You grin, biting your bottom lip, as tender from loving as the rest of you.
Felix ends the call. After a moment, he sighs and says, “I know you’re there.”
You turn the corner. Felix is sitting in the middle of the couch, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. His hair is partially pulled back, a lazy half-bun with the rest in a messy sweep around his neck. The collar of the shirt does not hide the love bite on his throat, twin to your own.
Despite his frown, he is sitting with his legs apart, and light sweatpants do very little for hiding anything inside them. He clears his throat but doesn’t close his legs, just cocks an eyebrow when you meet his gaze.
You blink oh-so innocently.
“You made me sound like such a good girl,” you say. “Even I almost believed it.”
You can see the amusement tugging at his lips. He pushes his tongue into his cheek.
“Mmm…” His low voice comes softly. “But you are a good girl. When you want to be.”
“When I’m made to be, you mean,” you say.
You hold his gaze as you approach. He plays the professional, watching you with a detachment that contradicts the thickening bulge in his sweats. Your desire is even more obvious, in your eyes and face and the sway of your body.
You put your hands on his knees and bend over, the collar of your shirt swooping low. Still, he looks into your eyes and no where else. A conversation happens there, beneath the surface of your words. You have often read each other like a book.
Come with me, you say, and though he does not move, though his body and eyes are rooted, he lets a little fondness run through the fissures of his usual mask. He finally looks at your lips.
“Do you tell them?” you ask. You get down on your knees, face at level with his open thighs. “When they ask how you get me to behave, how you seem to do it so easily when so many tried and failed…”
He says your name, darkly coloured with promise. You both know where this is leading.
It is not just about the kneeling or the pouting, but that this is you, who has never willingly knelt for even the most dangerous of men. And when you rest your head on his knee, you are thinking about that, about how it is only for him, exactly as he is. How he knows every possible way his body could be used to hurt someone. How he runs a gentle hand across your hair.
“Sweetheart,” he says.
“Do you tell them how you win our arguments?” you ask, flicking your gaze from between his legs to his face. “Or do you leave out the part where you shut me up with your dick in my mouth?”
His hand drifts down your face and he holds your chin, lifts your head. He furrows his brow as if he, too, is completely innocent.
“Shut you up?” he asks. He presses two fingers at your lips in a patient request. You open your mouth and take him to the knuckle. “That doesn’t sound right.” He lets you tease him, lets you swirl your tongue around his fingers. He looks at those fingers as he slides them out between your lips and back in again. “You weren’t quiet this afternoon,” he says. “Mmm, the opposite even, I think, don’t you?”
You give him your best glare, to which he laughs, a little huff of amusement.
“You can hate me,” he says, “if it makes you feel better.”
He stands and takes his fingers with him, so you chase him with pursed lips. Your breath catches when he grabs the back of your neck, stopping your pursuit, holding you firmly, safely.
He smiles down at you with that too-sweet, too-innocent smile. His other hand unties the band of his sweats.
You swallow. Your heart is thumping, an excited and pleasurable thrum you feel right down to the core of you. You blink up at him as the waistband comes loose so he can roll the material down, his dick hard and springing up, his hand as firm on the back of your neck.
You smile.
“Make me,” you say.
He smiles back.
“Don’t have to,” he says. “You’ll do what I say. Now come on. Be a good girl and open your mouth.”
He is right, that it takes nothing more than that. You want him too badly to even pretend to refuse, your lips parting in an open kiss that welcomes him to enjoy you as much as you are enjoying yourself.
Though he plays along, Felix is naturally restrained. Even when assuming the semblance of total control, he holds himself in a type of bondage, his body tense and breath ragged.
You make a showy mess of your wet mouth and stick out your tongue.
“Is that it?” you ask. “I don’t think you would any arguments like that—”
He laughs and shakes his head. He hesitates only a moment before taking your face in his hands and fucking himself back into your open mouth.
It gets you hot and wet, how he hands himself over to you, how he trusts you with the pleasure he is always so reluctant to accept. You give it to him and more, until your jaw is sore and your face is wet with tears.
He touches you there, looking down at you with the sort of reverence that usually comes from the person kneeling. He cups your face and tilts it up, looking at you affectionately even while stroking his dick right beside your cheek.
You glance there out of the corner of your eye, then bat your eyelashes up at him.
“I hate you,” you say, and it makes him come in a streak on your wet cheek.
It is stupidly hot, but Felix being Felix apologizes anyway.
When he reaches for you, you lean away. His gaze is wary, watching as you swipe a finger over your cheek then lick that finger clean. There is very little evidence left on your face, but you gather what remains and put your fingers back in your mouth, giggling as he huffs but surrenders to a smile. He reaches again but you dodge his hand.
You wonder if he is also remembering your first night together: how he chased you to stop you from petulantly shoving things in your mouth, how you were the hot-tempered girl you are pretending to be now, how he was the dutiful soldier already in over his head because of that girl.
You think he does remember, because you understand each other with one glance.
You run and he chases you. He vaults the couch and sweeps you into his arms before you can get too far.
When Felix truly applies himself, you stand no chance of escaping, so every little squirm and wiggle is something he grants you.
Right now, he concedes no ground. He locks you in his arms, your back to his front, and marches you right up to the window.
It is a mirror on the outside and, even if it was not, you are too high up for anyone to see anything but a spec in the glass. Still, there is a thrilling moment when you feel like you are standing on top of the whole city, where everyone can see you, where they can see him, his hand slipping under your shirt as you plant your palms on the glass.
“That’s it,” he says, nudging your feet apart with a little kick.
Your breath is already fogging the glass by the time he touches you. He makes an even more guttural sound than you, pressing his forehead to your shoulder as he rubs his fingers through all that wet desire.
His hair is more dishevelled now, wisps falling from the knot. You unravel just as quickly, quicker even, riding the rhythm he sets with his hand.
His arm is around your neck, cradling you close, and his other hand is inside you. You press against him and come to the soft sound he makes, to his breath hitting your neck, to everything intimate between you.
His touch gentles but not stop. You realize he does not intend to stop, that he is slowly working you towards another orgasm. You whimper and wriggle in his grip, but you also push desperately onto his hand.
He shushes you soothingly, his arm holding you steady when your knees start to tremble. He eases you both down, on your knees, never ceasing his touching.
You come even harder the second time, throwing your head back onto his shoulder.
He kisses your face then slows down and finally stops his touching. He cups his hand over your pussy with a sort of possessiveness. Then he sighs with satisfaction, his breath waking goosebumps along your skin.
“That’s my girl,” he says, a soft murmur.
It is only for you, a secret whisper spoken right into your ear. You look down at the city beneath you, sprawling as far as the eye can see, all the way to the where to the last rays of sunlight peek over the horizon. An entire world.
You touch a hand to the glass. He kisses your neck and your eyes close. You imagine falling into that big open world, secure in his protective hold.
You let yourself relax in his arms. You release a breath you did not realize you had been holding.
-
The next few semesters pass in a blur of similar dreams and desires. It is just you and Felix in the middle of everything, in and out of a dangerous world, escaping to a haven of your own design.
You do not know where the times goes, but weeks turn to months. Semesters come and go. Another graduation looms on the not-so-distant horizon. Somehow, you feel as ill-equipped for the world as you did when you were a teenager.
So much has changed and so much has stayed the same. When it is just you and Felix in that apartment, you feel free to safely exist. You lives are mired in trouble and trauma but you grow comfortably into your weird, grown-up selves. You might even say you are happy to be who you are, appreciating the good days because of the bad ones.
But beyond graduation is the looming threat of a permanent return to your father’s house and the life he has planned for you.
You are spending the weekend there, in your old bedroom, because of a few events your father wants you to attend. After just one day in his house, you revert to all your anxious teenage habits. It worries Felix when you withdraw like that, when you get snippy and cold, though he knows you well enough to understand.
You look at him now, on the opposite side of this huge bed, far away because you are not alone in this house. The space feels bigger than you remember. Terror forms its usual death grip on your heart. You wonder how you were ever so reckless with your safety, with his safety. Felix is the bodyguard but you would do anything to keep him safe.
You slide a little closer, then a little more. The cadence of his breathing changes as he wakes, always a light sleeper, though he does not open his eyes.
You brush some hair off his face. He leans into your touch and you smile despite everything. You stroke his cheek and feel your sorrows melt with his soft exhale.
“Rest,” he says in a deep voice rough with sleep.
You continue to stroke your thumb over his cheek, just looking at his face. His roots are getting dark again and his freckles are more pronounced in the blue dark of this bedroom. You admire his profile, the slope of his nose, his lips, and you find yourself overcome with affection and desire.
“Sweetheart,” he whispers, catching your hand when it slides down his neck. “Not now.”
His admonition makes sense. You have only been here a day. You will be back in the apartment in a few more. An apartment with privacy and protection, where you can touch each other without any consequences. There is no reason to put yourselves in jeopardy here, tonight.
Maybe you do remember how and why you were so reckless as a child, stealing back whatever parts of your life you could, whenever you could, however you could. You should be allowed to touch who you want when you want. You should be allowed to live in your own body.
You want to feel alive, and you feel most alive when you act in defiance of all the rules that would restrain you, when you face down danger in your path and steal back your heart from that death grip.
“Felix,” you say. Then, in a softer hush, you whisper, “Baby.”
It catches his breath as it always does, such a simple endearment, so common, like he is just a boy and you’re just his girl. You are certain if you slide your hand lower, you will find him already getting hard just from hearing it.
“Please,” you whisper.
“This is crazy,” he whispers, eyes still closed, tightly now, like he can make the rest of the world disappear by not looking at it.
“I’ve always been crazy,” you say. “You like me anyway.”
He finally opens his eyes. He looks at you and your heart skips beats, and you wonder if that gaze will ever cease to make your heart race this way. Years and years and years of sharing this bed, and you still feel warm and dreamy when he strokes the pad of his thumb across your knuckles.
“Hmm, doesn’t matter how I feel, yeah?” he says. “You hate me no matter what.”
His tone is light and teasing. It is your usual innuendo. The game you always play.
You do not want to play any games tonight. Tears prickle in your eyes as you look at him, as those words cross his lips. You want so badly to say what you really mean, but your emotion gets the best of you and the words never cross your lips.
His brow furrows when he realizes you are struggling with something. He touches your face, turning it towards him to look at you more closely. A tear slips down your cheek and he wipes it away.
“Felix,” you say. You shake your head. You clasp his hand to your cheek. “Make love to me.”
You cannot help but laugh at the look on his face. Very little surprises him, a consummate professional in all appearances, and he is good at absorbing his own shock and moving on. But he looks physically stunned, eyes wide and mouth open, words caught in a cluster on his tongue.
When you laugh, it snaps him out of his daze. His face softens, expression fond if not a little morose.
“This is, uhh…” He clears his throat, shakes his head. “Stupid.”
“I don’t care,” you say.
It is the truth. You are suddenly completely apathetic to everything beyond the bedroom door. You don’t care if they catch you. You don’t care if they hurt you. You don’t even care if they kill you. That dark thought has you reaching desperately for the only source of light and life in the room.
You wrap your arms around Felix. You hold his shoulders and kiss his face, lining your body up against his. When you kiss below his jaw, he makes a soft sound of surrender. His hand slides up the back of your shirt, rests between your shoulder blades and holds you, firmly, as he looks at you then kisses you.
Your eyes close and you kiss him back. They stay closed, even when the kiss deepens, when he licks into your mouth, when he catches your sigh with a bruising press of his lips. You let yourself fall into the sublime haze of desire, not looking but feeling.
He puts you on your back and holds himself above you. You are already breathing hard. You tug on his shirt so he leans back and whips it off. Then you are touching his bare shoulder, his back, dragging your nails down his backside and feeling him shiver against you.
His open mouth is hot against your throat, wet on your chest through your shirt, then under it. You tug it off and over your head, leaving it spilled on the pillow beside you, then your arms are around him and your legs are spreading to fit his hips. You are both fumbling with the last of your clothes when he gasps against your throat and mumbles something like, “We don’t have—we can’t—”
Some distant, logical part of your brain knows he means protection. After the first coming together, you’ve been careful in all your intimate moments. But sense and logic are far from your mind right now.
Once you are both completely naked and free, you wrap around him and pull him to you. He comes to you with another surrendering sigh.
Your eyes have been closed for so long, and the physical sensations have been so strong, that you very literally see stars when he is finally inside you.
He instinctively covers your mouth when you make too loud a sound. You grab that hand and lace your fingers, then rest it beside your head. He covers your mouth with his, gathering your other hand so both are pushed into the mattress on either side of your head. He is so close, his whole body pressed to yours, that you think he must be deeper inside you than ever before.
His hips roll against yours with a slow sensuality, one sometimes lacking in your more desperate couplings. It all feels so good that you genuinely believe you could die happy if you died right now.
He makes another soft noise that sounds like a question. You answer with a gentle moan of your own, a squeeze of your fingers between his, and a clenching between your thighs that has his whole hard body going soft and tender in seconds. He comes inside you and maybe that should wake you up and cause alarm, but it doesn’t. The room just gets quieter, your heart thumping against his all the while. He holds himself above you for a few breathless seconds then lets go.
You hold him against you, hands separating so you can slide them along his arms and up into his hair. His face rests in the crook of your neck and shoulder.
Maybe you should feel more concern for your circumstance. But you are not really worried.
Tomorrow, you will attend another party, you will smile, you will dance with someone your father pushes your way.
A few days later, you will convince your father to let you take birth control, claiming it is to manage your irregular and too-heavy period flows. He will be as immature as ever and quickly agree, anything to end a conversation he finds too awkward to navigate.
You and Felix will go back to your apartment. You will study for tests and drink coffee and write essays. You will count the days to graduation.
Right now, you laugh. It is soft and carefree. It catches when he slides out of you, but it returns when he looks at you with a quirked eyebrow. But his regard is a tender one. You stroke his face and he kisses your palm, then he swoops down and kisses your nose and cheeks and just under your chin.
I’m alive, you think. In your father’s house, disobeying all his rules. He has tried so hard to kill you, to break you down into pieces that he can rebuild, the way he does with any malfunctioning piece of industry tech. And he has failed. Despite his best efforts, despite his money and power and influence over what seems like the whole world, you are alive.
You concede that maybe with your problems and imperfections, there is not much more to boast, but being alive is all that matters.
Felix kisses you. You think about the childish fairy tales that your father and grandfather ensured never took root in your mind. If you were like them, you would not believe in magic kisses or true love or saving grace.
You kiss Felix back.
-
“Can you ride a motorcycle?” you ask.
Felix, who is concentrating so you do not fall off your bicycle, briefly flicks his gaze up to you. You lose your balance and swerve, but he is quick to catch the handlebar and steer you straight. His hands hover around you as he walks alongside where you peddle.
“I can do anything,” he says but absently, too focussed on watching you.
You snort and your amusement almost derails you again. You correct your wobble with a little jerk of the handles.
“Cocky,” you say. “I’ll have to see it to believe it.”
Felix laughs. He holds the handle and guides you around a corner in the path.
“Maybe I should learn to ride a motorcycle,” you say with absolutely no sincerity. “I’m sure my father would loooove that, don’t you think?”
Felix levels you with a predictably dry regard. You giggle maniacally which causes you to swerve again.
He steers you forward with a quick yank. He cannot help but smile at your cheesy grin.
“How about you learn to ride a regular bike first, hmm?” he says.
“It’s not my fault,” you say, wobbling again. “It’s the wind.”
“Mhm.”
“It is!”
It is a rather blustery day, all grey skies and swift winds. Felix almost lost his favourite beanie, so now it is yanked tight and low over his head so you can hardly see a wisp of hair. You are similarly bundled in a hoodie, the strings drawn comically tight around your face so it would stop blowing off. Felix keeps snickering when he looks at you, but it just makes you giggle back at him.
The university has bicycles for rent to cross campus. Though you usually walk, today you thought it would be fun to try, even if you did immediately disprove the old adage about memory and bike riding.
You have not ridden a bike since childhood. You were not allowed to use it outside because your father was concerned the wheels would carry you away too quickly, that something could happen before your nanny and guards caught up. You were only allowed to ride your bike in the gym, which got very boring very fast, so you never bothered with it. The only other time you sat on a bike was the few times you sat on the handlebars when Jisung rode his bike around.
The memory comes so suddenly, a snapshot of a moment you did realize you remembered so vividly. His goofy laughter sings through your memory, your own delighted shrieks as he sped down a slope and scared himself more than you.
It makes you a little sullen. After years, it seems ridiculous that you should still be so hung-up on an adolescent friendship, especially with so much more to occupy your mind. But then, you suppose it was not just any friendship. The Han Jisungs of the world are few and far between. You were lucky to know him while you did. Without him, you doubt you would have ever gotten on a bike again.
Without him, you doubt you would have ever done much of anything but curl into an empty husk of a person.
Instead, you are soft and smiling when Felix touches your back. He notices the change in your disposition and looks at you with concern, and it does not trigger frustration nor do you flinch from his touch. You just smile and steady your handlebars.
“Just silly stuff,” you say with a shake of your head. “Sometimes I sat on Jisung’s bike while he drove us around. Just… thinking about him, I guess.”
“Mm.” Felix nods, understanding. He holds the handle to help keep you steady but he looks ahead, sighing into the wind. “It’s not silly. Your friendship was important,” Felix says. “Though, uhh, I definitely wouldn’t trust Jisung behind the wheels of a motorcycle.”
You laugh at the image of Jisung on a motorbike when that poor boy would sweat just from speeding down a hill.
“No,” you say. “Definitely not for him.”
Of course, maybe that is not true anymore. You are picturing a teenage boy, but Jisung will be as grown as you now. Who knows what he looks like or what he enjoys, what he fears or wants anymore.
Romantic intimacy holds its own special felicity, but it is still different from the gentle affection of friendship. Your heart pangs with the ache of missing him, of years passed apart, of your first ever friend now potentially being as unrecognizable to you as any stranger.
“I just hope he’s happy,” you say, feeling it so strongly you cannot keep it yourself. But then, that was always the way with Jisung, to have liked him so much that you cannot help but let it spill out of you, consciously or not. You’re kinder for having known him. You know how to joke and be goofy and make Felix smile.
“Me too,” Felix says. “He was… well, sort of my friend too. In a way.”
“He was,” you say. “I guess he was the first friend for us both—whoa!”
You make a playful swipe at his shoulder and it makes you lose your balance again. Felix fortunately catches you with those lightning-fast reflexes, holding you up while your bike hits the pavement. There is some stumbling while you try to stand, tangled up with the bike, and nearly yank him down with you.
Eventually you step out. Felix brushes off your shoulders and pats down your arms, as if inspecting for injuries.
“I’m fine,” you say, at the same time Felix says, “He wasn’t.”
“Huh?” You blink at him. “Who wasn’t what?”
“Jisung,” Felix says, a little exasperated. “He wasn’t my first fr—” He cuts himself off when he meets your eye, frowning instead. He tugs on the string of your hoodie so your already tight lacing gets a little snugger. “I’m not talking about this while you look like that,” he intones dryly.
Before you can even open your mouth to protest or ask more, he picks up the bike and swings onto the seat for himself.
“Come on,” he says, patting the handlebars. “I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
You are not exactly a spritely adolescent anymore, but you manage to get yourself perched up on the handlebars. Felix is a better driver than Jisung, faster too, and you find yourself laughing into the wind from the thrill of it. When you reach the campus café, Felix is smiling too, and your previous conversation is forgotten for the time being.
You park the bike in one of the rental receptacles then enter the café. The warmth inside is a balm after the chill. You take off your hood and breathe in deeply, satisfied. Felix rubs your back as he walks you up to the counter to order.
You are waiting for your order when you hear your name. You lift your head, smiling when you see the friendly, dimpled grin of a class-mate, Yang Jeongin. He is a year younger than you but academically advanced so you have shared a few classes over the years. He is a very sweet boy, but you have kept your distance given what happened to the last very sweet boy you befriended.
“Jeongin, hi!” you say.
“Hi, what’s up?” he says. “Have you started any of your final projects? I’m already drowning.”
His big smile and wheezy laugh is disarming in its boyish charm, though you know Felix has his guard up as always. You are still not expecting to feel a proprietary touch settle low on your back, subtle but possessive, and it makes your stomach flip.
It is not really necessary anyway. Jeongin is genuinely just being friendly. He even invites you and Felix to sit with him and his friend, Seungmin, and talk about some readings.
Instinct almost propels you to blurt your usual reply, a polite dismissal or vague promise of a next time that never comes. Friendships don’t end well. You know that.
But Jisung is on your mind, not just the bad but the good. You find yourself agreeing, then you find yourself sitting at a table with two class-mates, having a normal conversation about school and exams and some silly, gossipy campus rumours. You laugh and drink, and Felix does too.
You touch his knee briefly. He touches your hand under the table.
You leave the café feeling lighter, a bounce in your step that has Felix smiling affectionately at you.
“I do have to tell your father something,” Felix reminds you. “If he found out you were seeing people and I said nothing—”
“Ughhhh, clock out for two seconds,” you say. To be extra annoying, you reach out and yank his beanie down over his face. “Just tell him I’m studying with some people. It’s for the benefit of my education, so I can be his perfect and dazzling heir, since I am such a well behaved little girl now, all thanks to the dutiful care and guidance of my oh-so competent bodyguard. See? No big deal.”
Felix fixes his beanie and shakes his head at you, but he still smiling.
“I think you and the rest of the world have, hmm, a different idea of no big deal,” he says. “You know, your extremely powerful father for one… and how he might, uhh, ruin our lives…?”
You shrug.
“Win some, lose some,” you say, to which Felix laughs and rubs his face in disbelief.
Although some days the power of your father and the world under the thumb seems insurmountable, some days all you can do is sigh in the face of it. Today feels like one of those days. You are so often frightened or sad or just downright despondent. Sometimes, the pendulum swings back the other way, and all you can do is laugh.
You do so now, pulling your hood up and tightening the string around your face again.
“Don’t worry, bodyguard,” you say with an exaggerated, innocent flutter of your eyelashes. “I trust you to keep me out of trouble.”
-
“Oh, you are gonna get me in so much trouble,” you say.
Seungmin laughs.
A few weeks have passed in which you have tentatively befriended Jeongin and Seungmin. Jeongin is all smiles and wheezy laughter, with a biting wit that catches both you and Felix off guard. You can tell Felix enjoys his companionship, even beyond the superficial college-boy role he plays. And not just because Jeongin is something of a gamer and Felix not-so secretly likes having a go at whatever hand console Jeongin keeps on him.
You quite like Seungmin. He is more soft-spoken until he has an opinion to vocalize, at which point there is no escaping his somewhat scathing commentary. His frankness reminds you a little of Hyunjin, just without any showmanship or embellishment. With Seungmin, what you see is what you get. He’s smart and funny and playful, and you like listening to him talk about the readings and his family and all the general shenanigans of an ordinary life.
Felix has told your father they are study partners, which is not an outright lie as all of your interactions have taken place on campus. You have stayed away from parties and clubs and private spaces, so there has been nothing tangible to protest.
But today certainly straddles that line.
After class, the four of you went to your usual campus café. With a major project due at the start of next week, you have been swamped with work.
It was after a few hours and several coffees that Jeongin suggested a break. There are a couple bars around the sprawling campus. Felix was a little hesitant but your pout was as effective as ever in persuading him.
The bar is a cozy one, packed wall-to-wall with noisy students seeking downtime. There is no way anything insane would transpire in here.
Other than Kim Seungmin.
“What, you can’t leave your boyfriend for a second?” Seungmin says, but with no animosity, smiling his big puppy grin. He exhales and shakes his head, eyebrows lifted in faux exasperation. “That sucks for you, wow.”
“First of all, he’s not my boyfriend,” you say. You look over at Felix who is standing at a pinball machine with Jeongin. His eyes keep darting over to you even though you are not that far away. The game is just a few steps from the couch where you and Seungmin sit.
Felix smiles. He is in his favourite black beanie, some ripped black jeans, and a crisp white coat, wisps of blonde hair falling over his freckled face. He looks like such a guy, just a casual university senior, slouching against the wall with hands in his pockets, chatting with his friend and his eyes on his smiling girlfriend. It certainly looks as simple as that. Your heart does not know the difference.
He looks away for a moment because Jeongin says something. Felix laughs. The room is loud so you do not hear him, but you know that laugh so well, the low drop and happy rumble. His eyes crinkle with delight. Your heart skips beats like a little girl with a crush starting all over again.
“Right,” Seungmin says, looking between you and Felix. “Sure.”
You punch Seungmin playfully on the arm.
“Stop,” you say. “We’re just friends.”
It is for the best you maintain that as your cover story. It would be far too convoluted to pretend to be together while being together but lying about being together and—
No. It is for the best that no one ever suspects, that everyone assumes you are close friends or room-mates and nothing more. Not an inkling of your true dynamic.
No one needs to know you woke before your alarm this morning, that you kissed Felix awake, planting soft kisses on his face until he smiled. That you teased him and kissed him and finally bit his shoulder, a playful step too far, so he gathered you in his arms and kissed you breathless. That he stretched out behind you, that he pulled back your thigh with a strong grip and kissed your neck. That he fucked you long and slow until you were gasping and wriggling in his arms. That he made you come mere minutes before your alarm. That he then made a professional call to your father about the week’s plans and the pompous, foolish, awful man was none the wiser.
You look his way. Felix winks then looks down at the game again.
Seungmin clears his throat and you look at him with all the innocence you can muster. He just laughs.
“Uh-huh,” Seungmin says. “Well, does he know you’re just friends? I mean, seriously, watch this—”
Seungmin slings his arm over the back of the couch, not quite around your shoulders but close nonetheless. He leans in ever so slightly and Felix looks over as if on cue. He would never cause a scene without due cause, and, besides, you doubt he seriously considers Seungmin a threat, but he instinctively shifts into guard mode.
It sends Seungmin into peels of laughter. You thump him on the leg.
“Ahaha,” Seungmin says, but lowers his arm. “Fine, I’ll go get drinks all alone so your super good friend doesn’t pop a vein if you come with me.”
You hide your face in your hands and shake your head while Seungmin laughs. He gives you a pat on the back before rising and pushing his way through the crowd to get to the bar counter.
Felix watches him go then looks at you. You smile at him reassuringly, waving a hand, non-committal.
Your stomach does a little flip when his sharp stare softens to something more intimate, something just for you. Years ago, you worried those glances and touches would be addicting, and you were right. It is more intoxicating than anything in a glass. Headier than the atmosphere of the bar. You are flushed with warmth in seconds, the packed heat of the bar keeping that warmth at a simmer.
You have always desperately chased highs and adrenaline, whatever form they took, good or bad. When Felix looks away, you crave the thrill of his determined attention, so you stand and step behind the couch. He looks up as quickly, like you knew he would, standing straight and taking his hands out of his pockets.
You truly do not go far. You have no intention of running, of making him follow, of making him worry. You would not do that to him. While you are certain no one would try anything in a place as public as a campus bar, you nonetheless will not play completely stupid games. You only mean to catch his eye so you can level with him a teasing smirk of your own.
But then someone grabs your arm and yanks. The unexpected touch and the forcefulness triggers a swift panic, your eyes swimming with the shapes of shuffling bodies, your ears slurring what sound like a friendly enough sentence – someone asking if you are in a certain class with him.
“I think I’ve seen you,” he says, still gripping your arm. He smells as drunk as he sounds. Harmless, or maybe not, given the bruising strength of his touch. Drunken stupidity can be as dangerous as conniving intention. “But you always got that little lap dog hanging around, cutie,” he says. “Can’t get within a foot of you without him in the way—”
Said lap dog manifests without delay. The man is taller but he is no match for Felix who comes up behind him and yanks on his collar.
Felix pulls the man over backwards to stare him down. He says, “Hands. Off. Now.”
The man lets go but with a stupid, futile struggle, shoving you so hard that you hit the woman behind you and topple her drink.
In less than a second, the man is on the ground, people shrieking and stepping back when he falls. Felix steps over him to reach you, catching your hand and touching the side of your face.
“You all right?” he asks.
Everything happened so fast that you hardly know what to say. Instinctively, you throw your arms around his neck to be closer to him. He hugs you back as fiercely, murmuring words of comfort that get muffled in your shoulder.
His senses are sharper than yours. He knows the man is up and he turns in time to catch the clumsy punch the guy throws his way. Felix does not show off, even though he could probably lay the guy low a second time. He just pushes the hand away.
This nonchalant rejection seems to anger the man more than a direct hit. He is embarrassed and his stupor only encourages retaliation. His buddies are trying to pull him back now, failing to lead him off.
The man looks at you, red from both exertion and embarrassment, and says with a snarl in his upper lip, “Should keep that dog on a leash.”
Splash.
It takes a second for everyone to realize what just happened. The man is as startled as you, standing stock still with something dripping down his face.
You all look over to Seungmin who is standing there with a half-empty glass.
“Uh… Woof I guess?” Seungmin says, then throws the rest of his drink on him.
The guy staggers towards Seungmin who backs up rapidly. Then Jeongin literally flies in between them and takes a swing at the guy. It completely misses and he smacks his hand on a stool, but it is enough for the man to back up. He must decide that the odds of three-on-one are not in his favour so he finally abandons course, shaking his head as he stalks off with his friends.
“Yeah, yeah, walk away,” Seungmin says as menacingly as Seungmin possibly can, which is not much, especially with Jeongin doubled over beside him. He is shaking out his hand, his face contorted with pain from hitting the stool. “Are you okay?” Seungmin asks.
“Yeah, I’m—” Jeongin starts.
“Not you, dumbass,” Seungmin says. “Go apologize to that chair you assaulted. I’m talking to her.” He looks at you with a tilt of his head.
You nod, letting Felix tuck you under his arm. He rubs your arm soothingly, up and down, and it helps ground you.
“Just happened really fast,” you say. “Startled me, you know…”
“The guy was a jerk,” Seungmin says.
Felix scoffs. His eyes follow the retreating figure. “No kidding,” he says.
“I just wanna go home,” you say.
Your panic ebbs and the hurricane inside you settles.
You touch Felix’s chest. His heart is beating fast with adrenaline. Your breath catches when he looks at you, tendrils of frustration radiating off him. Yet despite the aura of energy, he looks composed, hair neat across his forehead, beanie in place. His jacket is slightly rucked up the arm, but otherwise he is in perfect command of himself.
Your heart dances its bewildered little dance.
His hand drops to your hip and he tugs you close. He exhales through his nose, your eyes drawn to his closed mouth.
You think you must be drunk despite not touching a drop of liquor. How else to explain the physical sensations inside you, so contradictory to your heart and mind? Your soul could never, ever abide by violence or true possessive domination, not with your history and upbringing.
But perhaps it is that, the naturally contradictory nature of its manifestation in Felix. Made by violence, but not made of it. You feel safe because his careful touches and gentle glances do not come from the same blithe, civilian naivete of your sweet friends. It comes from all the violence and control that he rises above.
He holds you and you are safe, protected.
You say goodbye to your friends and Felix calls the car. You wait outside together in the light of a streetlamp. The cool night air dwindles what remains of his adrenaline, though his heart picks up when you step closer, when you press your face to his neck and sigh.
“I’m sorry,” you say.
“You did nothing wrong,” he says, cupping your cheek and lifting your face. His thumb strokes your cheek, down along your jaw. He looks into your eyes and smiles. “You were just standing there. He shouldn’t have grabbed you. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” you say. You look down and his hand falls away from your face. You fiddle with the zipper of his jacket then drag it down a couple inches. “I’m just really sorry.”
He is silent for a moment, his back a little stiffer. You think he catches the tone in your voice because his hand drifts a little lower, resting on the base of your spine.
“I see,” he says, voice lower. “Even though Jeongin did all the work hitting that stool—?”
The unexpected joke in a sultry exchange makes you snort with laughter. The sound surprises Felix who laughs so hard he almost falls over. You give him a little shove, shaking your head.
“All right, all right,” he says, patting your back. “Behave. The car is coming.”
“I always behave,” you say with a swish of your coat, stomping ahead of him to the approaching sedan.
You sit in silence for part of the journey, quiet even with the partition up. Felix has an elbow resting on the window sill, temple pressed to his fist as he stares at the passing streetlights.
“Are you mad?” you ask in your coldest tone.
He looks at you out of the corner of his eye, dimple flashing with an aborted smile. “I’m never mad,” he says. “I’m a professional.”
“Right,” you say. You slide across the seat to be closer to him but he puts up his hand, stopping you.
“I know it’s a limo, but seatbelt, yeah?” he says. You do not miss the patronizing tone.
“You gonna make me?” you ask. You grab his hand and lower it, looking at him with your smokiest gaze.
His tongue jabs into his cheek as he looks at your hands, palms touching, fingers lacing. He appears contemplative, beyond your little game. You give his hand a gentle squeeze. His eyes meet yours.
“I never want to hurt you,” he says, low even though no one can hear you back here. “You know that, yeah? You know I— I never knew how to want or not want something. I would never—”
“I know, Felix,” you say.
I love you too.
It sits on the tip of your tongue. You very nearly say it in that same low voice.
He lowers your hand to your lap, his palm to your knuckles as he cups your thigh and squeezes. Once, twice, three times. He taps on your knee three times then guides you to do the same. You are a bit bemused until he says, “If you want to talk to me, then…” Three more touches.
“I see,” you say, hot beneath the skin of your cheeks and throat, your heart a thunderous thing. “You expect to shut my mouth then?” You blink at him too cutely.
“I expect you to apologize properly,” he says.
He catches your face before you can spit a rejoinder. It steals your breath. He holds your face steady in his hand, jaw pinched, mouth shut, his eyes burning into the side of your face.
“You answer to me,” he says sternly. “You think you’re sorry, yeah? Then you’re going to apologize. Properly. Quietly. Obediently. Now nod for me. You understand.”
You do not nod. You look at him out of the corner of your eye. His lips break into a smile.
“Ah,” he says. “I see.”
And he does. He has always seen to the depths of you. Just as you have always seen beneath his surface smiles.
The driver sees nothing but a professional on payroll, exchanging an evening pleasantry before Felix escorts you into the apartment building. The greeter nods at you, you nod back. Felix marches you into the elevator and stands politely at your side, hands in his pockets.
You lean on opposite walls of the elevator. He takes off the beanie and tucks it in his pocket. Then he runs his fingers through his hair, fluffing the fair strands. Eventually he meets your gaze. You stare at each other, a silent exchange of thought and anticipation.
In the apartment, he does his security check. You take your time drifting toward the bedroom, wiping off your lipstick, dropping your coat in the middle of the doorway. He scoops it up as he enters behind you, tutting while he brushes it off.
“No respect,” he says but lightly, teasingly.
He walks right past you and drapes the coat neatly over the back of your computer chair. There, he stands with his back to you, unzipping and discarding his own jacket. It leaves him in a black t-shirt and his ripped black jeans, plus those heavy regulation army boots. He is a sharp streak of black shadow, all at odds with his light hair and sweet freckled face as he turns to look at you.
You stand across the bedroom from each other. Your heart is going a mile a minute as he looks you over. You hardly know why the roving glance affects you so deeply. He has seen you in a hundred variations of dressed and undressed. Checking you out in your jeans and t-shirt should hardly warrant a herd of butterflies in your belly.
But it does. Your skin feels alight as he looks at you, assessing you like a target. When his dark eyes flick up to meet yours, he is not smiling. He exhales. His shoulders are tense, his body hard.
“Take off your clothes,” he says.
You expected some deviance from routine given your flirtations, but that is still quite different. You often undress each other, or you provoke him by stripping, flustering him into surrender. He is not flustered now, his stare cold and ungiving as he waits expectantly for you to obey.
Your fingers flutter at your side. Your lips part with a breath.
“Um,” you say, voice rough with arousal in a way you cannot hide. It is hard to fake an affronted feeling, though it is not hard to look nervous. “Excuse me?”
“Everything,” Felix says. “Off. Now.”
You scoff, suffusing the worst of your jitters into the sound. You feign a cocky tilt of your head, hands on your hips as you say, “I don’t think you’re in position to give me orders. If my daddy knew—”
He lifts his knee only infinitesimally but when his foot slams down there is a knife in his hand.
He flicks some hair out of his hair and smiles, perky, just like Felix.
“Off,” he says. “Or I take it off.”
What should be a flicker of fear is a font of pure desire, sharp in your belly and hot between your legs. You look at the knife then his cool smile, the crinkle of pleasure in the corners of his eyes, the pretty fall of his hair. He flips the knife over his knuckles, around and around, smoothly, thoughtlessly.
You step out of your shoes and kick them aside. Your jitters are back, excited and jumpy, prickling under your skin as you lift your shirt over your head and toss that aside too.
“Neatly,” he says, with a tsk, tsk tsk. “Don’t make a mess. Daddy wouldn’t like that, would he?”
“Bastard,” you say, flushed with the admonition. It also makes you a little giddy. There is real power and real evil out there, and it is utterly meaningless in the face of everything between you and Felix. It is a punchline. It is an inside joke. The only thing that holds any real power is his gaze, his voice, his hands.
Your eyes, your sigh, your obedience. It makes him blush, despite his relative position of power, watching you neatly fold your shirt and place it on the bedside table. You remove your jeans and fold those too.
When you look at him, he points the knife to your underclothes, a mute statement: yes, I mean those too. So you take off your bra and place it on the table, flushed and hasty and embarrassed and excited. You slip off your panties and crumple them. You miss the table and they fall to the floor, and Felix points to it with the knife.
“Pick it up,” he says.
You do, quickly, putting it on the pile then stepping away. You cross your arms, only a little chilled, mostly hot under his gaze.
“Good,” he says. “Very good.”
With a flick of his wrist, the knife is swiftly embedded in your desk behind him. He does not even look back.
You jump. It makes your heart beat even faster, stomach tied up in anticipatory knots, desperate to unravel as he approaches you with a slow, predatory stroll.
He circles you. His fingertips brush your side, sending a shiver shooting up your spine. He takes a pillow off the bed and puts it on the floor.
You stand with your back to him, arms still crossed. He touches the middle of your back, walks his fingers gently up your spine until he is holding the back of your neck, pulling you into him, your naked body against his clothed one.
“Get on your knees,” he says. You swear his voice is even deeper than usual. “Sweetheart.”
You cannot think of a snarky reply, not even when he steps back and you can breathe again. You just look at him over your shoulder and make a show of rolling your eyes. He tips his head, regarding you as if oh-so confused by your petulance.
He stands while you kneel. You sit back on your heels and hum to yourself as if bored.
He ignores that, pointing to bed and saying, “Face there, not me.”
You look at him with genuine confusion, once more surprised by his direction, but you do as told. You kneel facing the bed. He gets down on one knee beside you, cups the back of your head and guides you up, off your heels.
“Up, up, up,” he says in too jovial of a tone, so frustratingly Felix. “Hands up here.” He pats the bed with his other hand until you uncross your arms and place them where directed. “That’s it,” he says. “Just like that, sweetheart.”
He stands, leaving you kneeling at the bedside, upright, arms in front of you. Kneeling like a penitent in prayer at their bedside. You look over your shoulder at him, wearing your best and bitchiest expression. There is an irrevocable challenge in your eyes.
Clink.
Your eyes drop to his belt, to the swift flick of leather and metal over his hands as he opens it. He is unhurried, sliding it free of its loops.
But then he does not discard it. He folds it over his hand. Once, twice, three times.
He tips his head. He holds up three fingers, a question.
He knows the significance here. He knows how your insides unravel at the sight of that belt hooked around his fist.
You know he would stop if you said so. If you said the word three, if you held up three fingers, if you tapped three times or did anything else to speak to him. He has given you a voice in every form.
He is standing over you, at once a personification of your pains and fears, and also he is none of them. This does not feel the way it did back then, unwilling and tortured and harmed.
He loves you. And he is trapped with you, and he is carving out holes in the world with you. He is handing you back your life, if only pieces, however he can. You are not a scared little girl under him. You are in control of that pendulum of emotion. There is no power in the things that once scared you. It is a punchline. An inside joke.
You smile at him.
He gets down on one knee again, squeezes the nape of your neck then runs his hand down your spine. Your back arches under his touch, breath staggering into gasps even though all he does is caress you skin.
You jump when he smacks the soft curve of your ass, just the flat of his palm on your skin, but already you are tingling head to toe with pleasure.
“I am responsible for you, yeah?” he says, and smacks you there again. “That means you are mine. You don’t run off, you don’t play games. You do what I say.”
“Or what?” you say, voice already breathy. “You’ll beat me up like you did that brute in the bar?”
You can hear him adjusting the belt, flipping it around his hand for a better grip.
“You liked that, didn’t you?” he asks. “Does it get your pussy wet, watching me hurt them for you?”
You don’t get a chance to answer. Your voice is a feathery-light sound, piercing a gasp when he brings that strip of leather down against your backside.
You squirm. You are already so, so wet.
“Hmm?” he asks, and does it again, a stinging, hot line across your skin. “Is that how it is?”
“I hate you,” you say. You are gripping the blanket, nails digging in. Your back arches at another strike, chest pushing into the bedding.
“Awww…” he says, careless. “Yeah… I know.”
You must be wriggling too much because Felix pins you down with his free hand, your cheek pressed to the blanket. He adjusts his position for a better reach.
“I know, sweetheart,” he says, and snaps the belt across your skin. This one makes you cry out. “I know exactly how you feel about me.”
You cry turns to a watery whine, shaking when he gently sweeps his fingertips across your smarting backside. Your breath snags when he leans in close, breath ghosting your skin.
“I know,” he says. “Because it gets my dick hard. Oh? What’s that? Did that scare you?” He hits you again. “You wanna tell your daddy? Tell him how you’re all wet because your mean bodyguard got a little too, mmm, rough with you?”
He kisses the middle of your back and you shiver.
“Mmm,” he says. “No. You’re not going to do that, are you? You’re going to stay right… here…” He leans back and snaps his wrist again, patting you when the belt sears your skin and you cry out again. “That’s it. You’re gonna take it until you apologize—”
“I’m sorry,” you say, even while tilting your hips, seeking more from him. You can feel how wet you are when you squish your thighs together, hot and slick between them. “I really am.”
“Oh?” he says. “For what?”
“Uhhh—” It turns to another yelp when he hits you again. “F-for disobeying y-you.”
“Why is that bad, sweetheart?”
“B-because—” You don’t even cry out when he does it again. This sound is a pure moan, roughly exhaled into the bed. “Because you’re in charge,” you say breathlessly, voice on the cusp of a sob. You can feel your knees starting to shake. “Y-you’re in charge of me.”
“Am I?”
You hear the belt unravel, the clink of the metal as it hits the floor. He touches you with his bare hand, smoothing his palm over your warm, smarting skin. Every inch of you quivers with the tingling aftershock of the soft touch.
“Yes,” you say. “I’m—I’m yours, Felix.”
There is a moment of quiet when all he does it touch you, gently, a caress across your stinging skin. Your whole body reacts to him, the slightest brush sending floods of heat shooting through you.
He traces a circle on your backside, pinches the warm skin. It makes that sob spill over your lips.
“Say it again,” he says, his voice lower, only just above a whisper.
“I’m yours,” you say just as softly. A tear spills onto the blanket.
“My name.”
“Felix,” you say. “My bodyguard.”
“Yes,” he says, still in that soft voice. He slips his hand down between your legs and you rear up, spreading your thighs, eager to feel him. “I am, aren’t I?” He hardly needs to touch you to feel how wet you are. Just a surface touch wets his fingers with your desire, a slow stroke that makes your knees shake again. “I’m good at it, aren’t I?” he says, and takes his hand back. “At guarding this body. Hmm?”
Another tear spills out. You nod, breathing hard into the blanket.
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat.
He stands up and you lift your head, blinking up at him with big, wet eyes. You can see how hard he is, obscenely bulging behind his fly. It makes your mouth water, makes you press your cheek into the blanket as you stare at him wantingly.
“If I’m not going to hit you,” he says, “then what am I going to do with you?”
His thumb presses at his zipper and he smiles, dimpled and cheeky, and slowly tugs it down. Your knees finally surrender and you sit again, slumped against the bed and reaching between your legs.
“Uh-uh-uh—” he says, diving down to catch your arm.
You groan, wriggling while he scoops you up and deposits you on the bed as easily as tossing a pillow. You shuffle around, making some pitiful blubbery noises as you lay on your sore backside. You rest your head on a pillow, breathing hard, so aware of your body in a way you have never felt before.
Felix takes off his boots while you settle yourself. Then he gets on the bed and kneels at your feet, a vision of sin in his black clothes with his flushed face and heady, dark eyes. He wets his lips, leaves his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth as he looks at you like a meal offered to a starving man.
“Hold the headboard, sweetheart,” he says, nodding above you.
You do not look away from him, reaching back to grip one of the bars in the headboard. Though your legs are pressed together, you feel the exposure of the vulnerable position, throbbing everywhere he looks at you.
Your breath gets ragged when he moves closer. He takes a pillow, ripping it out of its case and tossing the cushion aside. He flips the soft material of the pillowcase around his fist until it makes a long line like a soft rope.
Then your hands are bound to the headboard. His fingers curl around yours, showing you how to tap, how to talk to him. It registers, even if he immediately distracts you with a wandering hand, slipping down your body to touch and fondle.
Then he is back at your feet, grabbing your ankles and sliding up, up, up until his hands are hooked under your knees and he can spread you open to him.
Your hips buck, your back arches, legs shaking in his steady hold. You are so open to him that it makes you whimper and close your eyes.
They open again when you feel his mouth between your legs, his teasing abruptly finished as he dives in with full commitment. You cry out in relief, with utter ecstasy, noisier than you have ever been as he licks and sucks and strokes. You twitch when he nips at your thighs, when he slips his tongue inside you, when he licks back up then tortures the source of your pent-up need, again and again until you are crying out and coming hard on his tongue.
He lets you finish, takes over that peak and beyond. He lowers your trembling legs, lets you wrap them around his hips. You make a horrible mess of his pants, you are sure, grinding up against the hard material.
“Shhh, shh, shh,” he says, reaching past you to the bedside table.
You hardly have a second to look before he is shoving your balled up panties in your mouth.
“That’s it,” he says, kissing down your neck. “That’s a good girl. Don’t need to think, yeah?”
He sits back on his heels and finally unzips all the way. He shuffles his pants and boxers down past his hips. He smiles, then pushes your legs against you so are nearly folded in half.
“Just—” he says with a soft grunt, pushing at the soft, wet heat of you, so easily sliding inside. “Just—need—to—take it.”
And you do, moaning helplessly into your gag, still sore from your earlier punishment but all that sensation mingling with everything hard and sweet and good between your thighs. Your eyes close and you let yourself float, feeling as he hits all those soft places inside you that make your body keen. When you come again, it is just from that, and a stream of euphoric tears follow as you wrap him between your legs and bring him over the edge with you.
“God,” he says, dropping every trace of his persona, sounding near tears himself as he comes inside you. “God—fucking—You. Oh, sweetheart. Jesus. I—”
His brain sounds as mushy as yours, maybe only marginally smarter because he takes out your gag and releases you from your bondage.
Your arms fall limp around your head and you hum sweetly, literal music moving through you as your whole body aches with pleasant aftershocks.
“We gotta clean you up,” he says softly, from somewhere, stroking your sweaty skin. “And I wanna take care of where I used the—”
“Felix,” you murmur, “if you don’t get over here and kiss me stupid, then I’m gonna take a turn with the belt.”
He laughs, then you feel him stretched out beside you, his arms circling you. You roll into his embrace, throwing your leg around his hip and snuggling into him.
“You still hate me, yeah?” he says after a moment, though how he expects any coherency when he is massaging down your arm like that, you do not know.
But you nod, kissing his chest.
“Of course, you’re my bodyguard,” you say.
You sigh when he smooths his hand over your backside, tenderly caressing the sore skin.
“Yes,” he says. “Always.”
-
It sounds almost ridiculous to say, but he honestly fucked you so good that you feel like a new woman.
You have a little skip in your step – or maybe it’s a limp – for the next couple days, and it’s cute how it flusters him in the daylight because he knows the cause.
In the mood for a full cleansing, you get the idea to clean out your closet. You toss things around left and right, sorting donations and garbage and pieces you forgot you owned.
You are elbow deep in a pile of old sweaters when your fingers curl around something soft. You yank it out of the pile, hidden away at the very back of your closet. You wonder what it is and why you have not been wearing it when it is so soft—
Peppy music is blaring out of your speakers, your disposition cheery and pleasant as can be. It all gets a little fuzzy when you unfold the sweater and realize it is Jisung’s hoodie, the one he gave you that last night you left his house.
You and Felix are meeting Jeongin and Seungmin after class today, a usual coffee at your usual café while you do the finishing touches on your semester project. Having friends and a lover and a future you can almost see, can almost imagine controlling if only in your own special way, makes you realize how far you have come.
Things have changed. You have changed. You have forgotten a lot about high school. You don’t really remember faces, or the things that had you stressed, or half the arguments with your father. You were obsessed with Lee Minho for years but, frankly, you can hardly remember what he looked like.
But you touch the hoodie and you can feel your best friend, solid as if he was still sitting beside you. When you lift it to your chest, you swear you can faintly smell the lingering trace of him, that boyish body spray that was probably baked into everything he owned but that you stopped noticing because you were around him so much.
It is the smell that overwhelms you. In a matter of moments, your face is buried in the hoodie and you are crying, and you don’t know if it’s because you’re happy or because you’re not.
Felix comes running, stumbling to a stop in your closet door and looking at you with alarm.
“Sweetheart?” he says, crouching down beside you. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” you say, because you don’t know what to say. You lift your head and look at him, face streaked with tears. He wipes them immediately, a gentle back and forth, soothing you until your crying is just a mere hiccup. “I’m sorry,” you say, wiping your face on your sleeve. “I don’t know why I still get so worked up.”
“About what?” Felix asks.
You open the hoodie and recognition lights up in his eyes.
“Jisung,” he says.
“You recognize it?” you say, a bit surprised.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, and looks at you with a dimpled grin. “You were wearing this the first night we—”
“Right,” you say with a watery giggle.
You look back down and sniffle some more, blinking back another onslaught of tears. You run your hand over the material while Felix rubs a soothing circle on your back.
“Why is it so hard to let go?” you ask softly. “When I have people here, now... When I have a future and…” You trail off, voice breaking. You wipe your face again.
“I don’t know,” Felix says, sounding as morose. His gaze wanders. You can see his own mental space shift as he goes somewhere far away. “I guess…” He rubs the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “One person can’t, uh, really replace another, I guess. And he was your friend. It’s different.” He swallows. “You can’t just let go of love. Not… not easily.”
“I guess not,” you say. You trace a circle on the material with your thumb. You sigh. “I should get ready for school.”
“Yeah,” Felix says, voice breaking too. He clears his throat and stands. “Do you need anything?”
You shake your head, hugging the hoodie to your chest and staring straight ahead.
“No,” you say softly. “Thank you, Felix.”
You are a little too distracted with your own thoughts and grief to notice his own solemn disposition. He does not hold it against you, though, as you are distracted for the rest of the day. The cause is reasonable enough.
You are sitting in the library with Felix and your friends, working on your project but distracted, when you lift your head and spot the library computers.
You have not looked for Jisung anywhere, not online or in person, far too terrified your father would find out and track him down and kill him. You remember his rage. You know how serious he was.
But that seems far away now, not the same nightmarish terror that haunted your every shaking step. Now you are staring at the campus computers with a more calculating air. You realize there is no way to trace any searches back to you if they are made on a public server.
Felix looks up when you stand, shooting you a questioning look. You just point to the computers and he nods, slouching back in his seat again.
You feel a little queasy, maybe from the tumultuous feelings of the day. Maybe plain worry. Until now, you could pretend Jisung was fine, but what if he isn’t? God, what if your father went after him anyway? What if something else happened? What if he got worse after you left him on that hospital bed? You are sick with the thought.
The world needs him. You need him. Even far away, even without seeing or touching him, because your friendship does not require that. It can be words on a page, tucked away in a yearbook that you read on your worst days when you need a reason to keep fighting.
And so you search. You find results faster than you thought. It turns out Jisung has been writing music. He is very underground and indie, it seems. He does not have a huge collection of followers, but his artistry has stirred interest nonetheless. You find his social media profiles without much struggle, as well as his soundcloud and professional profiles. It looks like he works part time at a grocery store while making music.
You click through his profiles, smiling at some of his goofy pictures and videos. There are some click-bait short videos with dramatic fonts slashed over his face, saying things like GIRLFRIEND DRAMA!! and GAY RIVALS??
You click on a couple. It’s just videos where he talks to the camera, but he’s so funny that it feels like miniature stand-up routines. Some of these videos get more views than his music.
It looks like he had a girlfriend for a while, then a boyfriend, which is probably not too surprising when you remember he was obsessed with Hyunjin.
He says exactly that in his video, laughing as he runs his hands through his hair, black-painted nails stark against the lighter dyed locks.
“Yeah…” he says, laughing awkwardly, “Turns out most people don’t have an arch-nemesis that occupies their every thought in their horny teenage years. Who knew, right?”
The comment sections are all a bit chaotic, as comment sections are often a no-man’s land of anarchy, but it feeds the algorithm so he lets the public run amok. It does not seem to ruffle his feathers.
You scroll until you see a video with the words BEST FRIEND? It is the only video where he turned the comments off.
You are not sure what you are expecting. It has been years. This video could be about anyone. He has more friends, quite a lot by the look of it.
His video starts with that very message.
“I know it’s hard to believe since I am, like, so insanely beautiful and funny and popular and talented now,” he says with a goofy drawl, grinning at the camera, “but I used to be like… the loser. Not even a loser, no way, man, I’m an overachiever. I mean the loser. I did not have any friends but, like, I didn’t even have any enemies either, like what’s a guy got to do to get bullied around here? I was just, you know, kinda invisible I guess… Hard to believe I developed issues and became an online clout-chaser like whoo-hoo…”
You shake your head, smiling in spite of yourself. The Jisung on camera is wearing glasses, his hair longer than you remember. His shoulders are broader and he looks good, healthy.
He rubs his shoulder as he gazes past the camera, looking wistful.
“I had one friend, though, eventually,” he says. “I used to think she was kinda scary but, also, to be fair, I thought everything was scary back then haha… I mean, not haha, you know I was… It was rough. I was like ready to end it all, man… Times were hard! Teenage angst, you know, nothing like it! But she, uh…”
He looks at the camera and it makes your spine straighten. This was posted a year ago. He is not actually talking to you, but for a moment he feels present.
“She was really good at seeing people,” he says. “I think, maybe, that’s because she wanted for someone to see her too. But, like, that’s hard to ask for… And even harder to accept when you finally have it. She would run away just as fast as she would want attention, haha. But at the same time… You know, she got it. She got me. We got each other. Until then, neither of us had ever really—you know, we didn’t really have good families and stuff, we didn’t have friends. I talk about firsts a lot, and, you know, every one makes a deal out of their first kiss and their first lay and stuff but like… Your first friend...”
You pause the video for a second, blinking so you don’t cry in the library. You briefly glance at Felix, Jeongin, and Seungmin. Jeongin has predictably strayed from his studies, showing Felix something on his hand console. Seungmin throws a pencil at them.
You smile then look back at the screen, hitting play.
“It changes you, you know?” Jisung says. “Especially at that age, you know, when you’re growing and stuff… You kinda learn from each other. Even though we super different, in some ways we were the same, and I think I still… um, carry her with me. It sounds cheesy but it’s true. I was a stupid softy but her…! She never took anyone’s shit! And I got better at that, and I think it was because of her. We, um, we didn’t exactly have a falling out— Life just— Sometimes life isn’t fair. And she was… she was kinda in a bad spot. And at the time I felt like I let her down, because I couldn’t get her out. Of course, now I’m like, yo, we were both kids, haha, how the fuck was I gonna do that anyway… And before we said goodbye, you know, she told me I did save her, and I didn’t really know what she meant at the time. But when I realized how much of her was still with me all the time, every day, how much she taught me to get me where I am today… I got it. I still wish I could have done more, but I get it. And I mean, um, hey, if you’re out there—”
You are startled into greater attention when he looks directly in the eye of the camera. You realize he is speaking to you, across space and time, as surely as a scribble in your yearbook or a laugh in your memory.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever see this,” he says. “But I, uh, I told you once a best friend promise is forever. Ten years, twenty years, fifty years, you know… hit me up. But, um, even if you don’t… even if you can’t…”
He takes a breath and shakes his shoulders, wiggling like he would do when he was trying not to cry. He exhales and smiles. You can see all the emotion behind that smile, grief and hope alike.
“I just hope you’re happy,” he says. “I am. And that’s partly because of you. So if you ever need a reason, or an excuse, or whatever to be happy… This is it. Thank you for… for everything I guess. I loved you so much that it made me love the whole world just because you were in it. So I don’t need anything else from you, but if you could be happy for me… Yeah. That, uh, that would be good.”
He pauses, purses his lips, then he laughs a very watery laugh.
“Okay!” he says. “I’m gonna go cry now like a big baby. Love you all! Bye! See you next time. Oh yeah, stream Volcano! Bye!”
You end up laughing through your tears, Jisung being so incredibly Jisung. You glance back at Felix and your friends, watching them try to keep their laughter down as they snicker over something in Jeongin’s game. Seungmin has his big puppy grin on and Jeongin’s dimple are so deep as glee pours off him.
Felix looks so delighted and carefree, his whole face glowing like it was touched by a drop of sunshine.
You want this.
Now. Always.
Oh, Jisung, you think to yourself. How many times are you going to save me?
You open a new window and make a profile on the website. Fortunately, Jisung allows private messages from accounts he does not follow. You just hope he clicks on the message despite the blank profile. You cannot have anything public that would give you away in any capacity.
But you open the private message and you write, and you hope it reaches him, even after you have closed the window and walked away, head high with your purpose and a newfound determination to fulfill his only wish for you.
-
To the bestest most awesome boy in the world, from the bestest most awesome girl in the world.
I think I have that whole note memorized by now. I don’t know you even remember these words, but it was how you started your message in my yearbook.
I know it’s been a long time but I wanted to reach out. My situation hasn’t really changed, so it’s still not safe to see you properly, which is why I’m messaging this way. I’m sorry for that. But I saw your video where you said you were happy, and I just wanted to say how glad I am. You deserve the world, Jisungie. I hope you know how much it loves you back. How much I love you back.
I have friends and even a boyfriend now. I don’t think I would have any of it if not for you. I think I am starting to be happy, but truth be told I don’t really know what that is supposed to feel or look like. But I think I am starting to understand. I think I know what I have to do.
I’m going to get out. I am going to get my love out too. I have been waiting and wallowing, but I’m not going to do that anymore. I want to be happy, whatever that looks like.
Thank you for saving me when you did. Now it’s time for me to save myself.
You also gave me the world and I love it a little more everyday. I hope someday soon I can see more of it. If I’m lucky, maybe I will see you too, but even if we never meet face-to-face again, know I carry you with me too. A best friend promise is a forever promise, right?
Take care, Jisung. Keep fighting. Be happy.
Love,
Your best friend.
Now and always.
♡
this made me cry. Legit.
