Gangster!Jungkook x Med Student!Reader | gang/mafia AU | fluff, violence, slow burn?, angst, mature themes,
Status: on going
Rating: 18+
Banner and mood board: @bangtanloverboys
Beta reader: @punkisnotdead2318
Summary: You are a med student in a city where crime runs rampant. One day, you save Jeon Jungkook’s life, not knowing that he is one of the most powerful crime lord's heir. And you have just joined the No Harm List. But a lifetime of protection is more dangerous than it seems.
your world crumbles when you're forced into a marriage with jeon jungkook, a man whose commanding presence terrifies you, reminding you of your father's cruelty. Yet beneath his coldness, jungkook’s unexpected kindness stirs a spark of hope, making you question everything you fear. Your life together starts—an emotional journey of two hearts seeking comfort, healing and a chance at love.
pairing — dom!jungkook x sub!femreader
genre — arranged marriage au, forced marriage, marriage of convenience, age gap, reader is of age, forbidden love, forced proximity, enemies to friends to lovers, grumpy x sunshine, rich ceo!jungkook, shy!reader, virgin!reader, poor!reader, obsession and possessive love, pining, slow burn, contrast of worlds, romance, drama, lots of angst, smut, fluff
warnings/tags — 18+, protective!jungkook, distress and grief, panic attack, guilt and self-blame, comfort and healing, mentions of past trauma, slight details of past violence, tension filled moments, isolation, confused feelings, trust building, bonding, consent and respect, descriptions of period cramps and menstruation, sexual fantasies, lots of touching and closeness, massage, mutual desire and arousal, the way he takes care for her in this chapter ugh
wc — 9.3k
series m. list | main m. list
────୨ৎ────
The morning light streamed through the curtains of jungkook's bedroom, casting a soft glow across the room.
You stirred your body heavy with the remnants of sleep, a contented hum slipping past your lips as you nestled deeper into the cozy cocoon.
It felt like a rare moment of peace from the trouble of your life and you let yourself bask in it.
Your body relaxed in a way it hadn’t been in years.
Your cheek pressed against something solid and warm and you instinctively curled closer, your arms wrapping around it.
Seeking more of that soothing warmth.
The rhythmic beat of a heartbeat echoed in your ears and strong arms tightened around your waist, pulling you closer with a protective insistence.
Grounding you.
Your mind still foggy with sleep, didn't register it at first but as your eyes fluttered open, a sharp gasp escaped your lips.
Your heart jolted, realization crashing over you.
You were in jungkook's arms, your body pressed against his broad chest as you took in the sight of him.
jungkook was still asleep, his face peaceful.
His dark hair fell loosely over his forehead, his sharp jawline that was usually clenched was relaxed and he breathed evenly.
The constant frown that was always etched into his features during the day was gone, replaced by an almost boyish look that made him look younger.
Less burdened.
His arm draped over you, his fingers splayed across your lower back holding you as if he feared you might slip away.
Like he might lose you.
Your legs were tangled with his, your thigh brushing against the hard muscle of his.
The intimacy of this situation sent a jolt through you, your cheeks burning as you realized where you were.
Not in the guest room but in his bed, the one meant for you as his wife.
A space you swore to never enter.
Memories of the previous night flooded back vividly—the party, the encounter with david whose touch made your skin crawl.
And jungkook's protective fury, his presence a shield for you.
Then came the parts that made you breathless.
The dance, your bodies pressed close, his hands on your hips guiding you through the music as you completely lose yourself.
The hungry kiss that followed ignited a fire inside you you'd never known.
The car ride—his hands roaming but never crossing the line you had set.
Then his bedroom where a haze of restless grinding took place.
Drawing needy moans from your lips at the sensations you'd never felt before.
But the sudden memory of your father's voice and your mother's cries had shattered it all.
You'd pushed him away and he'd stopped instantly, his apologies instant despite nothing being his fault.
His arms around you as he held you through the night whispering sweet words, lulling you enough to fall asleep on him.
Your cheeks flush deeper now, a mix of embarrassment and lingering desire coursing through you as you realized your panties were still damp from last night.
A reminder of how your body had responded to him.
In ways that both thrilled and terrified you.
The way his clothed cock had pressed between your legs, spreading your lips and teasing your clit through the thin fabric of your panties.
It had been intoxicating.
Overwhelming.
And even now it made you react and you pressed your thighs together to stop it.
It barely helped.
You shifted slightly, but it only pressed you closer to him and you let out a surprised noise as you felt his hardness poking against your thigh.
The contact made your breath hitch and you froze, afraid to wake him.
Your heart ached as you studied him, the man who'd turned your world upside down.
You'd sworn to never trust anyone especially not jungkook, yet here you were having slept soundly in his arms.
The best sleep you'd had in years, even after a panic attack that had revealed your past scars.
He'd never pushed, never demanded and only gave what you allowed last night.
His selflessness and his restraint—it was everything you'd thought impossible in a man.
He wasn’t your father.
He wasn't the predator you feared.
He was jungkook.
A man who'd confessed his love, who'd sacrificed his own comfort to give you space.
Who held you through your pain, gave you space and respect and didn’t take any advantage without expecting anything in return.
Your chest tightens.
You'd judged him so harshly and hated him, yet he'd proven himself again and again because he saw you not as a possession but as a person.
You knew one thing for sure.
The walls around your heart and the barrier it held was slowly crumbling, it scared you more than anything.
His masculine scent surrounded you, intensified by his oversized black t-shirt you wore.
His arm still heavy across your back, his fingers gripping you and you tried to move away a bit but it caused his hardness to rub close to your panties.
It draws a low unconscious rumble from his throat, sending a shiver through you as you feel your clit throbbing in response.
You couldn’t let yourself get lost in this.
Not now.
You looked at him again, memorizing his features—he was so handsome but it was more than that.
It was the vulnerability he showed in sleep.
This was the first time you'd slept together in the same bed… and it felt more right than it ever had
It didn’t repulse you—it felt like home.
Your thoughts were all over the place.
You needed to move to clear your head and to escape his closeness before it overwhelmed you completely.
Before you gave in and crawled right back in his arms.
Slowly you began to untangle yourself from his arms careful to avoid waking him, his grip loosening reluctantly as you slipped free.
The loss of his warmth was immediate and sharp, like stepping out of a warm bath and into a cold room.
A strange hurt in you for leaving him behind but you stood.
The cool air raising goosebumps on your skin.
Your throat was parched and you decided to go downstairs for water, also desperately needing a moment to breathe.
To process everything.
You walked to the door and glanced back at him, his hand now resting over his head and your eyes welled with tears.
You didn’t know why but guilt and affection were all over you.
Quietly you slipped out of the room, the door closing behind you as you descended down the stairs.
You assumed the kitchen would be empty, expecting mrs. kim's absence to continue as it had the past few days due to her personal matters.
As you rounded the corner into the kitchen, you startled at the sight before you.
mrs. kim stood at the counter, her hands arranging a tray of pancakes.
Her bright smile caught you off guard.
“Good morning, mrs. jeon.”
The title for the first time didn’t make you flinch—a shift within you that you didn't register.
But as her eyes lingered on you looking at you with a knowing glint, you became acutely aware of your presence.
Only wearing jungkook's t-shirt and the neckline slipping enough to reveal the hickeys on your throat and collarbone.
Marks of last night's passion.
You squirmed shame on your expression as you fumbled, tugging at the shirt trying to cover the marks.
But it only slipped further, exposing more of the purple bruises.
“Oh, I—I didn’t mean to…” you stammered.
Your hands moving uselessly as you tried to cover yourself and the realization that mrs. kim had likely seen you emerge from jungkook's room.
Especially in this condition.
Your stomach knotted and you felt exposed as if your private moments were laid bare.
mrs. kim's smile softened holding no judgement, only a quiet understanding.
She didn’t pry and didn’t comment on the marks or your disheveled state, knowing the boundaries of her role but she was happy.
For whatever progress you and jungkook made in the relationship.
“Breakfast is ready. You should sit.”
She changed the topic as if she sensed your discomfort and didn't wanna draw too much attention to it.
You nodded, still clutching the shirt as you moved to the table.
Your hands fidgeting, unsure of what to do with yourself under her gaze.
Before you could reach for the glass of water you came for.
You heard heavy footsteps, a familiar sound that made your pulse quicken.
jungkook appeared in the doorway, his commanding presence filling the space looking intimidating even as he just woke up.
His sharp eyes locked onto you immediately and for a moment, time seemed to freeze.
He'd woken to an empty bed and panic gripped him.
He thought of the dance, the kisses, your body pressed against his and your trust as you slept in his arms was nothing but a cruel dream
The fear had driven him from the bed as he rushed downstairs, desperate to confirm you were real.
That the desire you’d shared wasn’t a fragment of his longing.
Seeing you now standing in the kitchen wearing his t-shirt, your neck covered with hickeys he'd left.
Relief filled him.
The marks on your skin were his, a claim he hadn’t meant to make so visibly and the sight stirred a desperate heat in him.
Your averted your gaze and the way you couldn’t meet his eyes told him you were still mortified.
It pained him.
His heart clenching at the thought that you might regret letting him in.
“Good morning, mr. jeon.”
jungkook nodded acknowledging as mrs. kim greeted him.
“Can you give us a moment, please?”
jungkook politely requested.
mrs. kim nodded as she wiped her hands on her apron and stepped out, leaving a charged silence in her wake.
You exhaled but it did little to ease the tension in your chest because jungkook's dark eyes fixed on you.
Your skin prickled.
You stood there clutching the edge of the counter, your heart pounding as he took a step closer.
The distance between you invisible, along with thoughts of last night hanging in the air with unspoken words.
He stopped a few feet away as he took in your anxious state and the way you tugged at his shirt trying to hide the marks he knew he'd left.
He reached out his fingers brushing a strand of hair from your face, tucking it behind your ear and the feel of his touch made your eyes flutter.
“You okay?”
His voice low and laced with concern, the same voice that had soothed you through your panic last night.
You nodded, your throat tight.
Unable to form words.
“I’m fine.” you managed.
Your voice barely above a whisper, fighting with the effort to sound composed.
“Are you sure?” he pressed
His eyes searching yours.
He didn’t ask why you’d left his bed, didn’t push for answers he knew you weren’t ready to give but the absence of you beside him had cut deeper than he’d admit.
He wanted to pull you close but he held back.
“I’m sorry.” he said.
Even though he's said it probably a hundred times since last night and he looks down, guilt etched in every line of his face.
“For last night. I shouldn’t have… I hate that I scared you. I never meant to make you feel unsafe.”
His words sincere and they hit you hard.
You shook your head, your eyes glassy.
“Please don’t apologize.” you whisper.
You stepped closer despite yourself.
“It makes me feel worse. It wasn’t your fault. I w—wanted it until..”
You trailed off unable to say more, because you didn’t need to he understood anyways.
His hands hovering as if he wanted to touch you but was unsure if he should.
“I’ll always feel guilty.” he growls lowly.
His gaze meets yours.
“For marrying you without your consent. For putting you in this position. For every moment you’ve felt scared because of me.”
He blamed himself still for everything.
“No…” you swallowed
Your heart ached at his confessions.
“How can I take that guilt away?” you asked honestly.
The question carried a desperate need to erase his pain and to make him understand that you no longer hated him.
No longer blamed him.
A flash of something so fierce took over his expression that it stole your breath.
He wanted to say it—to tell you that you could love him and be his wife in truth.
Not just an agreement forced by the circumstances.
He wanted you to choose him to let him be your man, he so badly wanted to cherish you and erase the trauma your father had left behind.
But the words caught in his throat since they were too risky.
And he feared they'd push you further away.
“You don’t have to.” he insisted.
A faint smile tugged at his lips though it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Just let me be here for you. That’s enough.”
His hands lifted then brushed against your cheek slowly, a shiver running down your spine at the touch.
You leaned into it just for a moment as you savored the safety only his touch seemed to offer.
You both stood like that for a while and you felt the air thicken more and more.
You could see it in his eyes now by the heat swirling there that he was remembering what happened last night, the way you moaned his name.
His thumb caressed your cheek, his gaze dropping to your lips which parted for him.
You felt the instant pull.
Your hands instinctively rested on his chest, feeling the thud of his heart match yours.
You were so close, breathing the same air and for a second you thought he might kiss you and that you would let him if he did.
You wanted to feel his lips and his taste again.
But you were not ready for it, scared that you would make a fool of yourself again so you turned away your head.
“I need a shower.”
You rushed out an excuse as you stepped back.
You were about to lose yourself in him once again.
Needed him in ways that felt dangerous especially after everything you believed about men and yourself.
He awakens something inside you.
jungkook nods clearing his throat, getting out of the trance himself.
“You should.”
His voice steady but rough.
“I’ll get ready for the office meanwhile since it’s late anyways.”
He paused eyes never leaving your form, as if he could never get enough of you in his t-shirt and marked by him.
You nodded shakily.
He turned then walked away.
You stood alone in the kitchen, your hands trembling.
You wanted to run after him to say something, anything but something always held you back.
You didn’t know what.
You composed yourself before walking back to your room, sealing yourself into the temporary sanctuary.
Your heart a wild rhythm with emotions that had followed you from the kitchen and the almost kiss.
You'd pulled away not because you didn’t want it but because you wanted it too much.
You crossed the room and walked to the bathroom, entering inside before locking the door.
You stepped toward the large mirror above the sink and froze at the sight of your reflection.
The woman staring back was both familiar and foreign, there was a glow in your face, your eyes dazed.
Your face flushed with the remnants of your encounter with jungkook.
Your eyes wide with uncertainty as your gaze dropped to your neck and a yelp escaped your lips.
The skin there was covered with several red and purple hickeys that trailed from just below your ear to your collarbone.
Every time you looked at the marks it felt like you belonged to him.
Only him.
You reached up, your fingers tracing the mark on the sensitive skin a faint string present.
Your pussy ached with a need you’d never known before as a virgin, you weren’t aware one could feel so much.
One could yearn so badly for the other's touch.
You stepped closer to the mirror, the marks were too prominent now.
Your fingers paused at one particularly dark mark near your throat.
And you closed your eyes as if you could still feel his lips there—his breath hot, teeth grazing your skin and then using his tongue against it.
They didn't feel like a violation, they felt like a choice you'd made and allowed.
It had felt so right in that moment to let him in and touch you in ways.
But now the weight of it pressed against your chest.
You opened your eyes meeting your reflection's gaze, your brows peaking at the center and a shuddery breath left you before you turned away from the mirror.
Unable to face yourself any longer.
And stripped off the t-shirt, letting it fall to the floor and you unhooked your bra and peeled off your panties, the fabric sticky from last night's arousal.
A whimper leaves you unknowingly as you discard your panties—the sight of them too much.
You stepped into the shower and turned on the hot spray, instantly soothing your strained body.
You tilted your head back and as the water ran over you, your thoughts spiraled all over the place.
jungkook made you feel like his entire world.
You couldn’t trust him fully when your past was still a big part of you.
Couldn’t trust this change.
But you couldn’t forget the way he made you feel so alive.
You'd never felt this way and it shook you to the core.
You stayed in the shower longer than necessary.
You turned off the water and stepped out, wrapping yourself in a towel and dried yourself off before getting dressed in simple clothes.
The morning had been too much and you needed the normalcy back.
Follow the same routine you were used to.
You slipped out of the guest room and headed downstairs, expecting to spend some time with bam.
jungkook usually is always gone to his office by this hour so you were relieved and also disappointed.
Because a small part of you still wanted him around.
To your surprise he stood in the dining room now dressed up for work, wearing a grey tailored suit and his hair in a man bun.
His tie however hung loose around his neck and you remembered the day you'd fixed it for him.
His eyes met yours as he turned, sensing your approach and you froze in your spot.
He stepped closer, bending down slightly so his chest leveled with you.
His eyes soft and silently asking.
And you understood immediately.
Your heart pounded as you stepped forward and reached for his tie and you focused on the task, trying to ignore his breath against your forehead.
And the faint scent of his cologne—smoke and something uniquely him—filling your senses
jungkook watched you, he knew how to tie his own tie and had done it countless times before but this moment was about you.
The way you chose to be close to him.
It was a small act but to him it was everything—a crumb of devotion he’d cherish—and that is why he’d pretend to not be able to fix his tie so that he’d have you close.
Have you care for him.
He knew he was being selfish but he’d do it every time just so you’d give him a little piece of you.
He stood still barely breathing, not wanting to break the spell.
His eyes tracing your features.
He can never get tired of admiring you.
You finished your fingers grazing the knot, fixing it as you felt the hard planes of muscle beneath his shirt.
Your hands slid down his chest and you realized that the gesture was like a wife tending to her husband.
You pulled back quickly, your cheeks red.
jungkook's hand moved, cupping your cheek and you looked at him with wide eyes.
He leaned down and his lips pressed a delicate kiss to your forehead and you felt the kiss in every fiber of your being.
Your eyes closing at it.
“Take care of yourself and if you need anything, call me. I mean it.”
You nodded, your bottom lip quivering as he stepped back, his eyes holding yours for a moment longer then turned.
The door closed behind him as he left for the office.
You stood there rooted, your hand touching the place where his lips had been.
“What are you doing to me, jungkook?”
You whispered to yourself shakily, trying to steady your breathing and to prepare yourself for whatever came next.
Knowing that with jungkook every moment was a step into the unknown, pulling you toward a future you weren’t ready to face.
۶ৎ
In the afternoon you were in the indoor garden basking in the lush greenery and the sweet fragrance of white lilies along with other planted flowers.
You sat on a cushioned bench, a novel open on your lap.
bam lay sprawled beside you, his heavy head resting comfortably against your thigh.
Tethering you.
You read aloud, going through the story for bam as if he could understand every word.
“And then she stood at the edge of the cliff, knowing she had to choose—trust him or run. What do you think she should do, bamie?” you asked.
Pausing to glance down at him as he tilted his head and let out a throaty bark, his tail wagging lazily.
You smiled and scratched behind his ears.
“You’re right. She's braver than that. She will face it.” you murmur.
You return to the book, your voice rose as you continued as if telling a bedtime story to a child.
Reading to bam had become a habit, something you loved a lot.
The garden and bam's presence were like a haven from your complicated feelings about everything.
Especially jungkook.
You'd always been maternal, it occurred from seeing your mother care for you as a child to you caring for your mother when she was too sick to care for herself.
And with a bam, you were a natural.
“She’s going to be okay, bam.” you say.
Closing the book briefly to stroke his head, your fingers tracing the lines of his face
He nudged your hand with his wet nose and you giggled before leaning back against the bench and opening the book again.
The next chapter unfolded and the heroine's courage was tested by a betrayal as you lost yourself in the story.
bam shifted his body, relaxed but alert as if he sensed your emotions through your voice.
You asked him questions between paragraphs and laughed.
“Do you think she’ll forgive him, bam? or should she walk away?”
His soft whine was your answer and you nodded as if he'd given you profound advice.
Your heart gave a small twist thinking of jungkook.
Not like the villain in the story but the man who'd adored you so consumingly
“You’re such a good boy.”
You praised bam.
A sudden rustle of leaves broke your focus and you looked up, your heart skipping a beat as you saw jungkook.
He leaned against a pillar, a cigarette between his fingers as he exhaled smoke.
His suit jacket gone and his white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the top.
Revealing fragments of his chest as his eyes fixed on you with a mix of emotions.
He'd been there for a while you realized, watching you read to bam.
Your head ducked immediately, surprise and self consciousness overcoming you.
You hadn’t thought he’d be home so early.
Not when his days were usually taken by the demands of his company.
He tossed the cigarette away and stepped forward.
“You’re home early.” you whisper quietly.
As you straightened suddenly too aware of how you looked right now—your hair in a loose braid, your top slightly wrinkled from sitting so long.
“Yeah.” he rasped.
The corner of his lips tugging slightly.
“Rough day. Needed a break.”
His heart had clenched at the sight of you so motherly with bam, it was everything he'd never had growing up.
He’d stood there while you were distracted, imagining you as a mother and the thought was bittersweet.
You deserved a life filled with happiness and a loving partner and one day you'd have children with that man.
Ae knew it might never be with him.
The pain was sharp but your happiness was his priority even if it meant letting you go one day.
Even if you choose another man.
He shook his head, trying to get out of his thoughts and focus on you instead.
“Can I sit?” he asked.
Gesturing to the bench almost carefully since he didn’t want to disrupt your personal time.
You nodded scooting over a bit, your fingers tightening around the book.
bam's head lifted, his eyes lighting up as he saw his owner and he jumped off your lap, tail wagging furiously as he rushed to jungkook.
Licking his hands with unrestrained joy.
You grinned, the bond jungkook and bam shared melted you into a puddle.
“bam really thinks you’re his dad.”
jungkook chuckled lowly as he scratched bam's ears and he sat beside you, close enough for you to feel the heat of his body.
bam settled between you as if claiming you both.
jungkook's eyes met yours almost intensely.
“He thinks you’re his mom too.” he gruffs out.
His words sink into yours, your stomach knotting at what his words implied—a future you couldn’t yet imagine.
You wanted to protest but the rawness in his gaze held you.
You swallowed, changing the subject to ease the tension.
“How was your day?” you asked.
He leaned back, his shoulder brushing yours and he began talking—about a difficult client and the way his office felt too suffocating today.
And you found yourself listening, really listening as he shared the details of his world.
You also told him about your day at the bookstore and about a new shipment of novels that had arrived.
Almost starting to ramble excitedly as you described a rare first edition book you'd found.
His eyes never left your face as you talked, asking questions that showed he cared.
And you realized no one had ever listened to you like this, not about the small things.
The passions that lit you up.
Your father had always made fun of or shut off the idea about them instantly, making you feel small about it.
“Tell me about your book.”
He nods to the novel in your lap.
“What’s it about?”
You hesitated but he was encouraging.
Free of judgment.
“It’s about a woman who’s trying to find her place in the world.” you say softly.
“She’s been betrayed but she keeps going, keeps fighting. It’s… inspiring.”
He hums, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Sounds like you.”
You blushed at the comparison, biting your lower lip as you looked down.
“Keep reading.” he urged.
“You don’t have to stop because I’m here.”
You shook your head, embarrassed.
“It’s silly reading aloud like that… um, I just do it randomly—"
He tipped your chin up, cutting off your words and forces you to meet his eyes.
“It’s not silly. It's you. I want you to be yourself around me, okay?”
His words reassured you and you timidly started, but your voice quivered at first and slowly became normal.
The story coming alive in the space.
He listened his elbow resting on the bench, body angled toward you.
His attention never wavering.
The afternoon soon started fading the light darkening as you read, halting sometimes to answer questions jungkook asked.
Sometimes you both fell silent but the silence wasn’t awkward at all, it was comfortable.
Almost peaceful.
You talked about small things.
He talked about the way bam always stole socks from the laundry.
“He’s got a whole collection under my couch.”
jungkook's voice amused and you laughed heartily, picturing the situation.
“Guess we should confront him about his crimes.” you teased
jungkook rumbles out a snicker, his eyes crinkling.
The conversations flowed effortlessly but it soon shifted to something serious, almost sad as you shared stories about your childhood.
He shared a story about a childhood dog that used to follow him everywhere in the orphanage.
“I wasn’t allowed to keep him.”
He says quietly.
“They didn’t always care about what I wanted… eventually I decided to adopt bam when I had my own place.”
You nodded realizing how much he adored animals just like you did and how similar both your lives were.
jungkook didn’t share about that day he saw you at the diner for the first time, feeding your meal to that little one while you were starving.
But he'd tell you about it.
One day.
When it was the right time.
You reached out as you squeezed his hand briefly before pulling back, surprised at your own boldness.
He looked at your hand then at you, a wounded look in his eyes at the way you pulled away so quickly as if afraid to touch him.
But he didn’t comment on it.
“Read some more.” he mutters.
But the spell broke when jungkook's phone rang, the loud sound cutting through the calm.
He glanced at the screen, brows furrowing.
“work.”
He says before standing, voice apologetic.
“I have to take this. I’ll be back.”
You nodded, your heart sinking slightly as he stepped away, his broad shoulders disappearing.
You leaned back as bam shifted to rest his head on your thigh again and you felt the rare serenity settling over you.
jungkook’s ability to make you feel seen without judgment had made a place in your heart and you didn’t know what to do with that.
Only that it was there.
Like a warm blanket around you.
۶ৎ
The few weeks that followed were a transformation of fragile moments that bonded and drew you and jungkook closer.
Each morning the same ritual would take place.
jungkook would wait for you in his bedroom or on the staircase, his tie undone.
Wanting you to fix it for him.
Some days he’d call for you.
“y/n, can you help me with this?”
Other days you'd approach him on your own, your stomach fluttering as you step closer to him.
The act intimate.
Domestic.
Every day you would smooth your hand over his chest and he’d bend down, giving you that forehead kiss that would have you feeling giddy the entire day.
Your fingers trembled less each day when touching him.
jungkook's heart raced each time you touched him and at the fact that you would willingly go to him.
Breakfasts and dinners were also often shared together in the dining room.
A space of connection.
Some mornings you'd sit across from him, both of you eating breakfast and sharing small talk.
Other times you'd eat in silence, yet it was cozy as if you both were a couple who didn’t need words.
The eyes did all the speaking.
You didn’t realize how much husband and wife like you’d become but jungkook did.
This was all he ever wanted even as he braced for the day you might leave.
You’d taken to making him coffee some mornings or also when he’s working in his study.
The exact way you had it.
He looked forward to it, a smile against his lips when you handed him the mug, his fingers brushing against yours.
Sending a spark through you.
“You’re spoiling me.” he teased.
You shake your head bashfully.
“It’s just coffee.” you defended.
jungkook savored it, growing used to the taste not because he liked coffee but because it was from you.
But overthinking always threw you off the questions that all these were fake and jungkook would show his true colors.
But the more time you spent with him, the more the doubt faded.
jungkook noticed it all.
He saw the way you relaxed around him, the way your eyes softened when you spoke to him.
That you didn’t flinch at his touch anymore.
He also used excuses to be near you—spending extra time during meals, asking about your day or suggesting to go for a walk with him and bam.
Or have you read beside him.
He held it all close to him.
The weeks passed like that with precious trust and care and though you didn’t acknowledge it.
It felt like love in its quietest form.
۶ৎ
Today it was different, almost like the entire universe was set on making you suffer as you lay on the bed, curling into a tight ball.
Your body ached with its usual torment, signaling the arrival of your period.
It felt like a knife was twisting in your lower abdomen.
It reminded you of the days you'd spent hiding in your father's house where periods were kept secret.
If he saw you resting or neglecting chores during that time of the month, his temper would flare badly.
Sometimes he’d even hit you, calling you a pathetic weakling.
So you’ve learned to isolate yourself to endure your pain silently so you don’t face his wrath.
The habit still didn’t leave you even in here.
You buried your face in the pillow, dampening the fabric with your tears as nausea grips you as well.
The cramps relentless, each one sharper than the last.
You hadn’t left the room all morning, the thought of facing anyone or jungkook was unbearable.
So you isolated yourself inside the room where you could disappear.
mrs. kim's knock came mid morning.
“Dear breakfast is ready. Come eat something.”
She insisted, concern in her tone but you couldn’t bring yourself to respond with anything but a weak whisper.
“I’m not hungry.”
Your voice muffled.
But she knocked again.
“You need to eat, love. It’s important.”
You shook your head against the pillow, knowing she couldn’t see.
“I’m fine really. Just… not hungry.” you repeated.
The thought of food made you want to puke and you didn’t wanna sit at the dining table pretending to be okay.
mrs. kim lingered but she eventually left, leaving you alone again.
Your knees draw to your chest as you let out an exhale.
You knew jungkook had stocked the bathroom with pads and tampons.
Delivered through mrs. kim and had stunned you when you first discovered it.
The cramps were too bad, each one pulling you into misery that made your vision blur.
A sob escaping your lips.
You felt weak and shameful from everything.
Hours passed like that though you barely noticed.
You'd always handled this alone even at the bookstore, where you'd work through cramps, forcing smiles for customers while your body screamed.
You winced as another cramp tore through you, your breath catching in a choked cry.
The nausea was worse now, it made your head spin and you pressed your face deeper into the pillow.
You didn’t hear the knock at first but it came again, followed by jungkook’s urgent voice.
“Hey it’s me. Can I come in?”
You froze your heart jumping and you stayed silent, squeezing your eyes shut, hoping he'd assume you were asleep and leave.
jungkook waited outside your door, his jaw clenched with a gnawing unease that something was wrong.
He’d given you space but the silence from your room was too heavy.
And he couldn’t stay away.
He pushed the door open, his eyes immediately finding you curled on the bed, your face glistening with tears and he stopped short.
The sight was a punch to his gut with anger overcoming his senses at the pain you were enduring but decided not to seek help.
He crossed the room in swift strides as he knelt beside you, his large hand hovered not wanting to startle you.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
His dark eyes scanning your face.
Right then another sharp cramp twisted your stomach, making you hiss your hands clutching your stomach.
“You didn’t eat. You haven’t left the room. Talk to me.”
He was authoritative but he was also pleading for you to let him in so he can help you.
“I’m just… unwell.” you whispered.
You didn’t wanna admit it, you didn’t want to mention that you were on your period no matter what.
You didn’t wanna disgust him.
jungkook's gaze soon softened as he saw the way you held your stomach, the discomfort clear in your face.
“You’re on your period, aren’t you?”
It was not a question but an acknowledgment, carefully worded to avoid making you feel exposed.
You nodded cheeks burning, the vulnerability of the moment making your throat tighten.
You wished you could disappear.
He stood, his movements quick but purposeful and returned with a tray—water, a bowl of soup and painkillers.
“Eat a little, then take this.”
He orders yet there was a tenderness there
You shook your head, nausea and pain dulling your appetite.
“I’m not hungry.”
You protested weakly but his stern gaze silenced you, eyes narrowing slightly.
You didn’t have the strength to challenge him.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress dipped under his weight and he picked up a spoonful of soup, holding it to your lips.
“Just a little.” he urged.
His voice softer now coaxing, you relented parting your lips, letting him feed you.
He was patient, eyes never leaving yours.
After a few bites he handed you the water and a painkiller.
“Sleep now.” he whispers.
Tucking the blanket around you.
“The medicine will help soon.”
He stood beside you, not leaving your space for a bit and after a while the medicine dulled the pain slightly but the cramps returned again with a force.
Your hands fisted the sheets, an uncontrollable wail escaping your lips as you writhed in pain.
You bit your lip trying to stifle it as you were confused because the medicine always helped but today it didn’t ease anything at all.
It was useless.
And you prayed in your mind for it to stop, you were already embarrassed and you didn’t wanna burden him further.
“It’s worse, isn’t it?” jungkook asked.
He noticed always of course, as he walked closer to you.
You nodded, tears falling freely now.
Too exhausted to hide them.
He knelt again, his hand caressing the skin of your shoulder.
He just wanted to lessen your pain in some way.
He hated everything in the world that caused you pain.
It made him fume enough to break something.
“Alright… listen to me. I can try something but only if you're okay with it.” he said cautiously.
Each word measured to ensure you felt safe.
The pain was unbearable and you nodded quickly, desperate to take it away.
You trusted him to not hurt you.
He stood moving to the bathroom and returned with a small bottle of massage oil, the scent of lavender wafting as he opened it.
He sat on the bed.
“Lift your shirt for me.”
His eyes remained fixed on yours, wanting to assure you that he wouldn’t you.
He just wanted to soothe you if you allowed him.
You hesitated, heart pounding at the idea of exposing even just a little skin but you slowly lifted the hem of your shirt.
The cool air against your bare skin makes your breath hitch.
jungkook poured a small amount of oil into his palms, rubbing them together to warm it, his eyes locked on your face not on your exposed skin.
To avoid making you feel awkward.
“Are you sure?” he whispers
You nod slowly.
“Tell me if it’s too much.”
His oil coated hands gently pressed against your lower stomach and he started a slow circular motion.
The pressure was perfect, firm enough to ease the cramping as his fingers moved with precision.
The relief was immediate, a sigh escaping your lips as the tension in your stomach began to loosen.
His hands traced patterns over your skin, the warmth of his palms seeping into you.
You closed your eyes, your body arching slightly.
The sensation almost euphoric after hours of agony.
“feels good.” you breathe
The relief made you unaware of how your tone shifted, shyness leaving you as you just focused on his hands.
jungkook's breath caught, his hands pausing at your noise for a second before continuing despite the heat in his veins.
“jungkook… yes.” you murmur.
An almost moan leaves you and it sends his cock twitching in his jeans.
It was too close to the noises you made that night when his body had been pressed against yours, your high pitched whines filling his ears.
He knew nothing about this moment being sexual but he couldn’t help the way his body reacted.
He watched your expression change as the pain gave way to pleasure, your lips parting slightly.
You panted.
His mind drifted, wondering how you'd look under different circumstances—how you'd respond if his hands touched you where you were most sensitive.
If it would draw those same moans from you or even more.
He pushed the thoughts away, nostrils flaring as his hands never faltered in their work over your stomach.
Pressing slightly deeper on places that made you respond to him, the way your thighs shifted slightly as your hands pulled at the bedsheets.
The oil making his fingers glide easily.
He cursed himself for having such explicit thoughts about you.
He still remembers the way he felt your breasts against his chest countless times and the way you allowed him to feel them.
He could still feel their weight and your hard nipples even from the barrier of your clothes that night.
And he knew the exact way to touch them to make you react.
Now he could see them again, pebbled into two hard peaks beneath the loose shirt, with no bra to hide them since you skipped wearing one because your breasts hurt.
He would’ve died a happy man if it meant the last thing he did was touch his wife and make her feel good.
He was rock hard and his other hand fisted tightly, knuckles whitening.
“Is it helping?” he rasps
His voice rougher than he intended because of the struggle he was going through.
“mhmm, yes.”
You almost purred, your eyes half lidded.
The sound went straight to his groin despite his efforts to stay composed, to keep this about your comfort and not his needs.
He hated himself for wanting more.
But he was a mad man.
He wanted to touch you more, to slide his hands up to brush his thumbs over your hardened nipples to see if you'd gasp and keen for him.
If you'd seek him as well and ask him to take you.
If you'd bite your lower lip and give him those needy eyes that spoke more than words ever can.
He imagined parting your thighs, slipping his fingers beneath your panties, finding your wet pussy and then he wants you to beg for more.
He wants to see your hips grind towards him, taking as much as you wanted.
He was torturing himself and his throbbing length ached against the confinement of his jeans.
Fighting to be free.
He grinded his teeth, taking deep breaths to calm down.
You didn’t notice his struggle, lost in the sensation, your eyes closing as you felt languid.
The cramps were still there but it felt distant now.
“ohh... there.” you huffed.
His hands shifted to press where you wanted him.
“Here?” he husks.
You hummed, your teary eyes meeting his and you almost squeaked at the way he watched you so closely.
His eyes black pools, a muscle in his jaw is ticking and you look away immediately, a shiver going through you.
You felt nervous but he helped distract you.
He continued the massage as he looked at how relaxed and beautiful you looked.
He noticed the faint sheen of sweat on your forehead and the way your lips parted to produce such wanton noises.
And it took every ounce of control to not lean down and kiss you rough, to taste the sounds you were making.
As the minutes passed the frown from your face disappeared, your breath deepening into a contended exhaustion.
Your eyes fluttered as you sank further into the mattress.
Sleep pulling at you.
jungkook kept his hands moving until he was sure that you were fully soothed and that you were deep in sleep.
He watched you sated, the tension gone now.
Only then did he slow his hands, caressing a bit longer before pulling away so he wouldn't wake you.
He stood, his gaze falling to the sheet beneath you where there was a small bloodstain because you leaked.
It didn’t faze him—nothing about you could.
He grabbed a clean towel and laid it beneath you, lifting your hips slightly to avoid disturbing you.
He then removed the stained sheets and kept them away for cleaning.
All these felt almost natural to him though he never does the laundry, but he’d clean them for you.
His heart swelled as he looked down at you with a mix of love and frustration.
He wanted to be the one to break your habit of hiding, to make you see that you didn’t need to isolate yourself.
Not from him.
His body was still strained with pent up need to release but he wouldn’t touch himself.
Not now.
Not when his focus was you.
He’d given in that day in the shower but he wouldn’t repeat his mistake when you overrode everything.
His need to protect you was stronger than his lust.
Stronger than everything and anything.
۶ৎ
As you slept soundly, jungkook spent the last hour researching on his phone after cleaning the sheets.
He dived into articles and other information about menstruation, determined to understand every bit of your hardships.
He'd never had a woman in his life during her period and had never needed to know how to care for one but he knew the basics of what women went through.
He wanted to educate himself in depth about it.
He believed every man should know how to care for those they loved during such times.
The massage was something he had guessed, hoping that it would help you and when he saw that it actually did.
He was filled with instant pride.
Now he wanted to do more to ensure you never go through this alone.
Not under his watch.
He stood and moved to the balcony, his phone in hand as he scrolled through online stores ordering an array of items.
He ordered the dark chocolate balls he’d noticed you nibble on during late night reading sessions, bags of sour candies and other snacks he’d found after researching what women usually liked during this time.
He also knew you sometimes craved something light when your appetite was low.
He added extra pads and tampons even though several were stocked in your bathroom but he wanted to be certain you'd never run out.
Then he found a high quality heating pad and ordered it as well, using his black card to pay for everything.
The big amount not even making him bulge.
He also marked your period dates on his phone's calendar, calculating based on today and setting reminders for the future.
He’d be ready even if you didn’t tell him because he was determined to break your shame and silence about such normal stuff.
Quietly he slipped out of the room when the delivery arrived and back in your room, he placed the heating pad gently against your stomach.
Hoping to ease you even while you slept.
He kept the snacks and chocolates on the nightstand and he looked at everything.
Feeling satisfied.
Because from now on he'd make sure you knew you could lean on him.
That your pain was his to share as well.
Hours later you blinked your eyes open the room now dark, your hands going to the heating pad as you felt its pressure against your stomach.
You stirred, noticing the towel beneath you and looked at the bloodstain.
You also saw the absence of the sheets.
Which hinted at one thing—jungkook had cleaned the sheets, handling them without a word.
No one ever cared for you during periods.
You'd always handled it alone.
You sat up slowly, your eyes falling on the nightstand where you looked at the snacks that waited and tears pricked your eyes.
Not from your cramps but from an overwhelming wave of emotion
You were in disbelief because of the man who'd done so much without expecting anything in return.
jungkook was restless about looking after you and you felt valued and not a burden.
Your bottom lip quivered as you tried to not cry once again and decided to change yourself with a new pad and fresh pants.
As you sat on the bed, a knock sounded at the door.
“c—come in.” you stuttered.
jungkook entered looking at you with concern, his hair slightly tousled as if he'd been running his hands through it.
“How are you feeling now? any better?” he asked.
“Do you need anything else?”
You shook your head, looking down at your lap as a tear leaves you.
“Thank you.” you whimper.
“For… everything. The heating pads, the snacks, the sheets…”
Your voice cracked as a suppressed sob left you.
“Why did you wash them? you didn’t have to.”
He shushed you, his hand reaching out to wipe your tears away as he pressed a kiss against the corner of your lips.
“Because you needed it.” he says simply.
“You don’t have to go through this alone, not anymore.”
It makes you cry harder.
Men like him weren’t supposed to exist.
Not in the world you'd known where men only abused and hurt women.
“I’m sorry.” you hiccup.
“I didn’t mean to—to hide. I just… I’m not used to this.”
His eyes narrowed at the way life had taught you to expect so little.
When you deserved the world.
You deserved to be cared for, not just today.
But always.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
He paused, his hand still on your cheek brushing away another tear.
“You’ve been through enough. You don’t have to hide your pain, not from me. If you're hurting or if you need something—tell me. I’m here, I want to be here.”
Your tears slowed as his words settled somewhere deep inside you.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You keep doing so much and I don’t deserve it.”
His brows peaked as a pained look took over his face.
“Don’t say that.”
He says fiercely.
“You deserve everything. More than I can ever give you.”
He sits beside you on the bed and pulls you into his arms, wanting to lighten the mood.
“So I was thinking.” he started.
Though a slight tremor was under his voice.
“Maybe we can go on a small vacation. To the maldives?”
Your eyes widened—the maldives, a dream you'd forever had but never thought you'd have the luck to visit.
jungkook got the idea from reading your diary, your deepest wishes and he'd seen you always working too much on the bookstore.
Or your mother's illness always keeping you stressed and every other chaos in your life.
So he wanted you to take a break.
Somewhere you could just enjoy yourself.
“You’ve never been on a vacation, have you?” he asked.
You didn't meet his eyes, which answered his question.
“It might help with everything going on. Just a short trip to clear your mind.”
You shook your head quickly.
“You’re busy.” you protest.
“With your office and company, you can’t just leave.”
He chuckled deeply.
“I own the company.”
A playful edge in his voice.
“I can take time off whenever I want. It's just a week and we can come back anytime if you need to. I think it’d be good for you.”
His eyes searched for yours, hopeful.
“Please let me do this for you..”
Your mind raced.
He'd already done so much—paid your mother's bills and everything you'd ever need and a vacation felt like too much.
Another debt you couldn’t repay, especially when it meant spending his money and his time.
But his eyes held no expectation only a desire to see you smile, to give you a piece of what you always dreamt of.
“No need to answer me now. Just think about it hm?”
He cups your face one last time before he stands up and walks to the door and you just know you can’t deny him, not when he looks at you like that.
So you immediately made your decision.
“Wait!”
jungkook stopped and turned to look at you.
“I’ll go.” you whisper.
His face instantly lit up as he smiles as if you'd given him the most precious thing in the world.
And it almost steals your breath.
Because happiness looks good on him as well.
“I’ll book the tickets for next week.”
His voice tinged with excitement.
“Rest now, okay? and eat.”
He pointed to the snacks.
“I’ll be downstairs.”
You nodded, feeling giddy and a giggle left you as he left.
You picked up the ice cream he'd left for you and took a bite, humming at the deliciousness.
A vacation to the maldives... a dreamy look took over you and you basically wanted to squeal like a child.
You thought of the week ahead, imagining the beach and the warm sands.
The time you'll spent with jungkook.
And a part of you wondered what it would mean for you both.
Just a few days of vacation wouldn’t hurt right?
Little did you know that this trip would shift the bond you'd formed with him into something deeper.
your world crumbles when you're forced into a marriage with jeon jungkook, a man whose commanding presence terrifies you, reminding you of your father's cruelty. Yet beneath his coldness, jungkook’s unexpected kindness stirs a spark of hope, making you question everything you fear. Your life together starts—an emotional journey of two hearts seeking comfort, healing and a chance at love.
pairing — dom!jungkook x sub!femreader
genre — arranged marriage au, forced marriage, marriage of convenience, age gap, reader is of age, forbidden love, forced proximity, enemies to friends to lovers, grumpy x sunshine, rich ceo!jungkook, shy!reader, virgin!reader, poor!reader, obsession and possessive love, pining, slow burn, contrast of worlds, romance, drama, lots of angst, fluff
warnings/tags — 18+, explicit smut, protective!jungkook, angry!jungkook, trauma, trust issues, several crying scenes, detailed violence, jungkook beats up her father finally yass, mental health struggles, fear and distress, solo masturbation, sexual fantasies, rough making out, drinking alcohol and smoking as coping mechanism, isolation, power dynamics, anger, guilt, self-blame, argument, miscommunication, confrontation
wc — 8.9k
series m. list | main m. list
────୨ৎ────
It had been exactly seven days since that stormy night, the one where thunder shook the mansion and your heart.
And jungkook sat by your bed in a chair, dark eyes watching you with a tenderness you hadn’t expected.
You could still picture him there, his hair loose from his usual man bun, wearing simple clothes and just looking so… human.
He'd stayed awake all night keeping his promise of safety and you knew he did because when you woke up in the morning after having the best sleep of your life.
He was still there looking at you.
Bags under his eyes from not sleeping
His deep voice soothed your panic with words you hadn’t wanted to hear but couldn’t forget.
“You’re safe here.”
That night had cracked something in you and now as you lay in bed in the dim morning light, you couldn’t shake the confusion it left behind.
It made you question everything you believed about him.
And that uncertainty scared you.
You didn’t wanna feel any warmth towards him and didn’t want to see him as anything other than the monster you’d thought him to be.
It was easier to hate him.
To hold onto the fear that had kept you safe all these years, the fear that had kept men at a distance.
Your father's cruelty had taught you that men were dangerous, that love was a trap and jungkook with his wealth and power seemed the embodiment of that danger.
But what if you were wrong?
You breathed shakily.
You didn’t wanna think about it.
You stood, bare feet hitting the floor and dressed for the day with the new collection of clothes you had.
Provided by jungkook, of course.
Today you decided you would visit your mother.
You needed to see her, to hold her hand, to remind yourself why you were enduring this nightmare.
You grabbed the new phone he'd given you and headed downstairs, your heart pounding with every step.
mrs. kim was in the kitchen as she prepared breakfast. Her face lit up when she saw you.
Her smile warm and maternal.
“Good morning, dear.” she said.
“The driver’s ready whenever you are. He is waiting outside.”
You nodded, throat tight with emotion since you’ve already told her you’re going out.
mrs. kim had become a small comfort in this strange new life, her kindness constantly reminding you of your mother.
You didn’t wanna talk, didn’t wanna linger in this house that felt like a prison so you murmured a quick thank you and stepped outside.
The black mercedes waited for you outside, one of the few many cars jungkook owned. The driver opened the door for you, his expression professional but not unkind.
You slid into the back seat and stared out the window as the car pulled away.
Your mother was your everything, the only one who had dreamed of a better life for you.
The thought of her in that hospital bed, her face almost lifeless made your chest ache.
You prayed she was still fighting.
You needed her to wake up, needed her to tell you it would be okay.
Needed her to free you from this marriage
But deep down you knew she couldn’t and the truth hurt.
۶ৎ
The hospital was filled with the scent of antiseptic as you navigated the familiar corridors, passing doctors and patients.
You always hated visiting hospitals since you were a kid, it was a place of life and death and you felt like you were walking between the two.
Your mother's room was quiet.
The only sound was the beep of the heart monitor. She lay in the bed, her face pale, her hair—so like yours but with greyness from her age—spread across the pillow.
You held her hand in yours and you could still feel the warmth.
That she was there.
That she didn’t leave you.
Several memories flooded back—her reading you bedtime stories, her promises of a future where you could be anything you wanted.
“I’m here, mom.” you whisper.
Tears welling in your eyes.
“I’m doing this for you. Please don’t leave me.”
You sat there for what felt like hours, your heart heavy until the nurse entered. She was a kind woman and she usually took care of your mother.
She looked at you, eyes soft with empathy.
She checked the chart and offered you a small smile.
“She’s stable.” she nods.
“No changes but she’s holding on. And don’t worry about the bills—they’ve been paid including advances for the next few months.”
The words hit you, your breath catching in your throat as you stared at her.
“What?” you whisper.
Trembling with confusion.
“Who paid? I didn’t…”
The nurse hesitated, eyes flickering with uncertainty as if she wasn’t sure how much to reveal.
“He didn’t give his name.” she said cautiously.
“But he was tall and intimidating and wore a suit. Came in a few days ago and took care of everything—paid in full, no questions asked.”
Your heart stopped.
jungkook.
It could only be him.
The description was unmistakable—that authority he always had that made people shrink in his presence.
Your father would never pay in advance and would never care enough to ensure your mother's care was secure for months.
You'd heard this before the first time you'd called the hospital and you'd assumed it was your father, perhaps using the money he'd gained from your marriage.
But this—this was a deliberate move far beyond your father that it could only be jungkook.
Your hands trembled, fingers digging into your palms as hot anger surged through you at the audacity of him.
You didn’t need his pity.
Didn’t need his money.
He was involving himself in your life and in your mother's life without your consent or permission as if you were incapable of handling it yourself.
Your vision blurred with tears of rage.
He thought he could control you, thought he could act like he was some god and make you grateful.
This was a limit crossing.
You didn’t say anything when he was giving you things under his house but now he went as far as to assert his wealth on your mother.
Your personal life.
You weren’t some helpless girl who needed his money to survive.
You were here for your mother, not because you wanted his help, not because you needed him.
The idea that he saw you as weak, as someone to be pitied made your blood boil.
You stood, your legs shaky.
“Thank you.”
You thanked the nurse, voice taut with barely contained emotion and she nodded, sensing your distress but not pressing further.
You kissed your mother's forehead and whispered.
“I’ll be back soon, mom. I promise.”
Then you left the room, heart racing with anger that led you forward.
You walked back to the car.
You didn’t need jungkook to swoop in and fix your life.
You were capable and had always been capable with your part time job at the bookstore, saving every penny for your mother's care.
You'd endured your father's abuse, your mother's illness and the loss of your dreams, all without anyone's help.
And now jungkook thought he could buy your gratitude.
Thought he could throw his money around.
It felt like a power play, a way to keep you tethered to him, to make you feel like you owed him.
The thought of his smugness, his belief that he was doing you a favor made you want to scream.
He wasn’t your savior.
He wasn’t your hero.
He was the man who'd married you without your consent, who trapped you in his life and now he was trying to manipulate you, lull you to him with his wealth.
You'd find a way to pay for her care yourself even if it meant working yourself to the bone.
You didn’t need his false kindness.
۶ৎ
The mansion came into view and you stepped out of the car.
You heard noises from inside jungkook's study—a low rasp and the clink of glass.
He was home and you weren’t going to hold back.
You were done being the scared, quiet girl who let men control her life.
You stormed toward the study, ready to confront the man who thought he could buy you.
Without hesitation you gripped the handle, fingers shaking with adrenaline and threw the door open with such force that it banged against the wall.
The room was simple but luxurious, lined with bookshelves, with a massive desk in the center and a single window casting afternoon light across the space.
jungkook sat behind the desk, a king in his territory, posture relaxed but commanding.
He held a glass of whiskey in his hand, eyes fixed on his laptop.
He was in a black suit and the top buttons of his shirt undone, revealing a glimpse of his chest and his hair in a man bun with a few strands escaping it.
His rugged look made your heart stutter despite your anger.
His dark eyes snapped to you the moment the door crashed open, widening in surprise before narrowing into a piercing gaze that seemed to see straight through you.
The intensity of his stare made your breath catch but you refused to back down even though his presence always stirred fear.
He set the whiskey glass down with a clink and leaned back in his chair.
The movement was slow but you could see the tension in his jaw and the slight tightening of his lips as if he was bracing himself for what was to come.
This was the first time you'd sought him out since the stormy night a week ago when he'd sat by your bed.
The memory of his gentleness then clashed with the fury you felt now, overwhelming you with emotions.
“What do you want from me?” you demanded.
Your voice trembling.
You took a step forward, closing the distance between you, your small frame almost tiny compared to his towering frame as he rose from his chair.
He was so tall, so imposing, his broad shoulders filling the same space, his eyes never leaving yours.
The air between you crackled with tension.
Your anger meeting his unreadable calm.
“Why are you doing this? paying for my mother's bills, giving me all these things? w—what do you think you're proving, huh? that you’re some hero and I should be grateful?”
jungkook's jaw tightened, eyes flashing with anger and something deeper.
Something that looked almost like hurt.
He stepped around the desk, stopping a few feet from you, his hands at his sides, curling slightly as he stopped the urge to clench them.
“I’m doing what needs to be done.” he says lowly.
But there was an edge to it and the words were measured.
They only fueled your anger, sounding like an excuse.
A justification for his invasion.
You laughed harshly as you looked at him barely react.
“What needs to be done?” you spat
Your voice rising as you gestured wildly at him.
“You think you can just throw your money to fix everything? you think I need your pity? I don't need you, jungkook! I don’t need your money, your clothes, your phone or your house!”
You pause, taking a shaky breath.
“I’m only here because of my mother because I have no choice but you—you act like you’re doing me a favor like you can save me! you're not! you’re just like him!”
The accusation hung in the air, your chest heaving as you glared at him.
You’d never spoken to anyone like this, never unleashed the full force of anger but you’ve had enough.
All your emotions were bursting out now.
Not holding back.
jungkook's eyes darkened, his expression shifting to something dangerous as he stepped closer, knuckles whitening.
“You think I’m like him?”
He almost growls.
“You think I want to control you? to hurt you? you don’t know a damn thing about me, y/n.”
You didn’t back down though your heart pounded with the intensity of the moment.
You stepped forward, closing the gap until you were standing right in front of him, your head tucked back to meet his gaze.
His towering body causing goosebumps all over your skin.
“Then why are you doing this?” you shouted.
Tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.
“Why are you paying for my mother’s bills? why are you giving me all these things I didn’t ask for? you think you can buy me and make me forget that you forced me into this marriage?”
A sob left you.
“You didn’t even care about what I wanted and now you’re here acting like this. What exactly do you want, jungkook? to make me accept you as my husband because I'll never, never! you're just waiting for the right moment to show who you really are!”
Your words came out unstoppable, each one a release of pain and fear you'd carried for years.
Now directed at the man before you.
Your voice shook, tears spilling down your cheeks.
Your hands balled into fists, bottom lip quivering.
You'd never stood up to a man, especially not one as intimidating as jungkook but the betrayal was too much.
You saw your father in every gesture, every act of kindness, convinced it was a lie.
A manipulation to trap you further.
jungkook's patience and the cold, quiet demeanor he'd maintained since the wedding shattered.
His eyes blazed and you could see a muscle twitching in his jaw.
He moved towards you, his steps slow but purposeful.
Like a predator closing in on its prey.
You backed away instinctively, heart thudding as fear overcame your senses.
Your back hitting the wall.
His large frame covered everything else until all you could see was him, his hands slammed against the wall on either side of your head.
Caging you in.
The sound of his palms was sharp and the movement made you gasp, your body bracing for something.
Pain or a strike you didn’t know.
But the raw emotion in his eyes said something else.
“Do you think I wanted this?” he grunts.
His face inches away from yours, eyes boring into you, his breath warm and tinged with whiskey brushing against your lips.
The proximity was too much, his scent—smoke, cologne and something uniquely him—filling your senses.
Making it hard to think.
“Do you think I knew you didn’t want this marriage?”
His voice trembled not with weakness but with a fury that matched your own.
Catching you off guard.
You opened your mouth to respond, to hurl another accusation but his closeness stole your words.
Your lips parted as his gaze held yours.
His hands pressed harder against the wall, the muscles in his arms tensing under his shirt.
His body so close you could feel the heat radiating from him.
“Your father came to me.” he continued.
“He sent me that damn letter that said that you wanted this. I saw you that day at your house, y/n and he told me you agreed that you were ready for this marriage. I thought—fuck I thought you wanted me too.”
He looks away before meeting your eyes again, his breaths harsh.
“Do you have any idea what that felt like? to find out you were forced? that you hate me?”
Your eyes widened as his words sank in, each one barely registering to your mind.
He didn’t know.
He hadn’t known your father had lied and had forced you.
Had sold you like a property.
The realization hits you, your anger faltering replaced by shock and guilt.
Your tears falling fast, chest heaving with pants as you processed the truth.
“You… you didn’t know?” you whisper brokenly.
“No, I didn’t fucking know!” he snapped.
You flinch as you press your lips together to hold in a sob.
His hands stayed on the wall but his body leaned closer, his face so near you could see the depths of his dark eyes, the pain etched into every line of his face.
“And you never gave me a chance to explain, did you? you assumed I was just like your father. You think I don’t feel anything? that I don’t care?”
“I married you, y/n because I wanted you, because you made me feel something for the first time in years. I wanted to protect you, to give you everything and now I'm the one paying for your father's lies.”
Each of his words tearing down the walls you'd built around your heart with hatred.
He was hurt just like you.
Trapped in this marriage by deception.
You shook your head as you cried and pushed against his chest, your fists weak against his solid, strong frame.
“Then why don’t you let me go?” you hiccuped.
Your punches landing without force on his chest, a desperate release of your misery.
“Stop pitying me! stop paying for my mother, stop giving me things and stop acting like you care! I don’t want this, I don’t want you!”
Your fists pounded against him.
Your sobs are loud and broken, body shaking with a mix of anger and sadness.
“Why are you doing this? why are you keeping me here when you know I hate you?!”
You were lost in your emotions.
Your hands gripping his suit, bunching the fabric as you hit him, not even realizing what you were doing.
Driven by the chaos inside you.
jungkook's restraint faded completely.
He grabbed your wrists, his grip firm but not painful, stopping your small hits and pulled you impossibly close, other hand wrapping around your waist as your body pressed against his.
You squeaked, your hands fisting his suit to steady yourself.
Both your breaths mingling in the small space between you.
His face was so close, lips almost brushing yours, his eyes burning with anger and something else that made your heart race, making your body heat in a way you didn’t understand.
“Because I fucking love.” he growls.
The words tore from him like a confession he hadn’t meant to make.
“That’s why.”
The world stopped.
You shuddered as his words echoed in your mind.
Love.
He loved you.
You couldn’t process it.
Before you could respond, his lips crashed into yours.
The kiss was angry, desperate and consuming.
It wasn’t a gentle peck like the wedding day, it was… a release of everything you both held back
His mouth was hungry and tongue demanding, coaxing whimpers and moans from you as you struggled to keep up.
Your hands gripped his suit, his hair pulling him closer, body betraying your mind as you kissed him back.
Your lips moving against his with a desperation you didn’t recognize.
You forgot about everything except him and this kiss.
His tongue explored your mouth, tasting the salt of your tears and the sweetness of your lip balm.
And he hissed the primal sound vibrating through you.
Making your knees weak.
Your breasts pressed against his chest, the friction making your nipples harden until they ached.
You felt his bulge hard and insistent against your hip.
Feeling his desire as a shiver runs down your spine.
The kiss was messy, all teeth and tongue, a clash of anger and need.
You couldn’t stop.
Didn’t want to.
Even as your mind screamed this was wrong.
Your fingers tangled in his hair, pulling at the strands and he groaned into your mouth, his hands tightening on your waist, your hips, wherever he could reach.
As if he couldn’t let go.
The kiss went on for long minutes, time losing meaning, your breaths ragged and lips swollen from the intensity.
You pulled back finally, gasping for air.
Your body trembling in his arms.
Your lips tingled, cheeks wet with fresh tears and you clung to him, your body still pressed onto him, his grip on your waist not loosening.
He looked at you, eyes dark with desire and hurt, his breaths uneven.
His thumb brushing your cheek, wiping away a tear that has fallen.
“Don’t cry.”
The words a plea.
“I can’t stand it.”
You stared at him.
The kiss, his confession, the truth about your father—it was all too much.
Too overwhelming.
“I’m sorry.” he rasps finally.
His eyes searching yours for something you couldn’t give.
He didn’t know if he was apologizing for kissing you or for all the pain you’ve gone through since he came into your life.
He stepped back, his hands falling away leaving a coldness behind that you didn’t expect.
He turned to leave, not saying anything else, the door closing behind him.
You stood there, your body shaking, lips still tingling.
Your heart jumping out of your chest as you tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Your legs were still weak but you didn’t think twice and fled to the guest room.
Your safe place.
And leaned against the door, letting out a choked sob as you were being undone.
From his words.
His kiss.
And the despair you both shared.
۶ৎ
jungkook stood by the window, broad shoulders hunched, a glass of whiskey in his hand.
The bottle on the nightstand was nearly empty.
jungkook was a man accustomed to controlling his life, crafted from strength and precision but tonight that control was slipping.
With the memory of your tears, your words and that kiss in his study.
The argument replayed in his mind relentlessly.
Your accusation—that he was just like your abusive and cruel father—had cut deeper than he'd ever admit.
He'd known you disliked him and had felt the weight of your hatred since the wedding night but hearing it again had shattered something inside him.
He took a long drag of his cigarette, his brows furrowed as he blew out the smoke harshly.
He loved you.
The confession had slipped out in a moment of vulnerability, a truth he'd buried deep, hoping to shield it from your rejection.
He never experienced it or believed in it but since the day you came into his life, he couldn’t stop himself.
He felt for you what he never felt for anyone.
And having you live under his protection in his house, especially with the moments spent with you has only made him sure of what his heart wanted.
Saying it aloud though, had been a mistake, one that left him exposed and raw.
Your response—the kiss, hungry and desperate—had ignited a fire in him he couldn’t ignore.
He could still feel your lips soft and quivering, the taste of your lips mingling with the sweetness of your mouth.
Your body pressed against his, hands clutching at his chest, your soft needy noises—he'd wanted to consume you, to lose himself in you and to take more.
But he held back.
Knowing you weren’t ready, knowing you might never be.
The way his erection pressed against you made his jaw clench with anger and shame at himself.
Along with a need he couldn’t deny.
He crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, setting down the glass and ran a hand through his loose hair, tugging at the strands in frustration.
The whiskey burned his throat as he took another sip, the alcohol doing little to dull the ache in his chest.
He paced the room, his mind filled with thoughts and conflicting emotions.
He wanted to protect you, to erase every scar your father had left but he was also a part of everything you went through.
He'd been selfish.
He should've known and asked himself if you wanted him before the marriage and now it's too late.
You hate him and think he trapped you in a way you'll never escape.
The room felt too small, too confining and he moved to the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him.
He stripped off his suit jacket, tossing it onto the counter and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the hard planes of his chest, the muscles honed by years of work.
His body tense with unspent energy.
He turned on the shower, the water hissing as it hit the tiles, steam rising and fogging the mirror.
Stepping under the spray, he let the hot water cascade over him, soaking his hair, the strands clinging to his neck and shoulders.
The heat was a small comfort, easing the tension in his muscles but doing nothing to quiet his mind.
He leaned his forehead against the cool tile, his hands braced against the wall, water streaming down his broad back, tracing the lines of his muscles.
He felt broken.
Undone by a girl who hated him but who'd kissed him with a desperation that matched his own.
His eyes drifted downward and he cursed under his breath.
His cock was hard, throbbing and refused to relent.
The evidence of his desire undeniable.
He didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to give in to the need that confused him but the memory of you was too vivid.
Your lips swollen from his kiss, the soft curve of your breasts, the way you'd gasped into his mouth.
It was driving him wild.
He fisted his cock, his grip tight, a low groan escaping his lips as the sensation hit him.
The water poured over him hotly, amplifying every touch, every stroke.
He pumped slowly at first, hand sliding along his length, the precum mixing with the water, slicking his movements.
His mind making up images of you automatically—your flushed face, lips trembling, the way you'd looked that day you'd bumped into him wet and wrapped in a towel.
Your cleavage exposed, skin glistening.
He hated himself for it, for wanting you but he couldn’t stop.
His strokes grew faster, his grip tightening, breaths coming in short, ragged pants.
He thought of the kiss, the way you'd kissed him back, your hands in his hair, body molding into his.
He imagined what it would be like to have you here under the water with him, legs wrapped around his waist, taking his cock, your shy moans echoing in the bathroom.
“Fuck.” he mutters roughly.
His hips started thrusting into his hand as the pleasure builds, his cock twitching, the head swollen and sensitive.
He pictured you on your knees, your lips around him, eyes looking up at him with something other than hatred—desire, trust.
Love…
The fantasy pushed him closer, his hands moving frantically now, pumping himself, the sound of the strokes lost in the rush of water.
He snarls, his head tilting back, the water streaming over his face as his hips buck, chasing the release.
Needing it.
Hating it.
Your name slipped from his lips in a breathless whisper as he came.
Hot spurts of his release landed on the tile in front of him, spilling over his hand, washed away by the water and leaving him trembling.
His chest rising and falling quickly.
He stood there, the water still pouring over him, his hand braced against the wall, body spent but his mind no clearer.
The orgasm had been intense but it left him hollow, the guilt and shame even heavier now and he couldn’t shake it off.
He'd violated your image and used it to sate his desire.
And it made him feel like every bit of the monster you believed him to be.
He turned off the shower and grabbed a towel, drying himself roughly.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror—hair wet and disheveled, eyes red rimmed, jaw tight with self loathing.
He wrapped the towel around his waist, his cock finally soft but still half hard.
The ache in his chest unrelenting.
He returned to the bedroom, the whiskey bottle calling to him but he ignored it, sinking onto the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
The kiss had changed everything and nothing.
You were still his wife, still here without your willingness and he was still the man who loved you.
Knowing you might never love him back.
He thought of your tears, the way you'd sobbed in his study and his heart clenched.
He hated your pain and hated that he'd caused it.
Even unintentionally.
If he could take it all away, he would even if it meant erasing himself from your life.
The thought was a new kind of unexpected pain but he pushed it down, focusing on his resolve to protect you.
To make things right.
He lit another cigarette and exhaled, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling. He took another drag and thought of your father.
The man who'd broken you, who'd lied to him.
Anger flared hot and consuming, his free hand clenching into a fist.
He stood pacing again, the cigarette dangling from his lips. He couldn’t stay still, couldn’t let the anger fester.
He needed to act—to do something, anything to make this right.
The idea of confronting your father got to him, he'd find him and make him pay for what he'd done.
For every tear you'd shed, every scar he'd left.
The thought was reckless and unsafe but it gave him purpose, a way to unleash the rage and guilt that threatened to fully get to him.
He grabbed his phone.
His fingers hovered over the screen, tempted to call his driver and to head to your home now in the middle of the night.
But he stopped himself, knowing it would only hurt you more, knowing you needed him to be steady, not a man driven by vengeance.
He set the phone down, his hand shaking and poured himself a glass of whiskey and took a sip instead.
He'd wait, bide his time but he wouldn't forget.
Your father would answer for his sins and jungkook would make sure of it.
The night stretched on.
He didn’t sleep.
He couldn’t.
The bed was too empty, too cold without you even though the sarcasm made him chuckle bitterly because all his life no one slept beside him.
No one was important enough to him.
But your presence in his life suddenly showed how lonely he was.
He stood by the window, the whiskey bottle now empty and watched the sky.
Your taste and kiss still clinging in his mouth.
The cigarette fell from his fingers, falling on the floor and he didn’t move to pick it up, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
His face hardening.
He'd face your father, face the truth and he'd do it for you, for the girl who'd cracked his stone heart.
Because you deserved it.
۶ৎ
The days following the explosive confrontation in jungkook's study were suffocating. It was so silent inside the room and your thoughts were too loud.
You woke up each morning with a heaviness in your chest, the memory of jungkook's confession and the rough kiss that followed were etched into your brain like a brand.
You were afraid of the girl who had kissed him back, who had clung to him in a moment of weakness.
Her anger and fear crumbling under his emotions.
You stayed in the guest room as much as possible, emerging only for necessities—meals and going to the library.
And brief moments with bam whose warm presence was the only thing that kept you grounded, comforting you as he followed you from room to room.
His eyes watched you with a loyalty like he watched jungkook, though you refused to acknowledge it.
You'd sit on the bed, bam resting his head on your lap and run your fingers through his fur, his soft whines a balm to your constricting heart.
You talked to him, voice low and trembling, confessing fears you couldn’t say aloud to anyone else.
Fears of jungkook.
Of yourself.
Of the life you were in.
mrs. kim was a constant as well. She moved through the mansion and every morning she'd knock softly on your door, her voice gentle as she announced breakfast, lunch or dinner.
The dining room table was always set with care—meals according to your tastes as if someone had studied your preferences with attention.
You knew it was jungkook's doing, though mrs. kim never said so.
“It’s no trouble, dear.” she’d say warmly.
“You need to eat.”
You'd nod, throat tight and force yourself to take a few bites, the food tasting like nothing despite its deliciousness and quality.
You ate because you had to.
You saw how hard she worked and you always made sure to thank her genuinely for everything she did for you.
“You’re too kind.” you’d say.
Your cheeks flushing as she waved off your gratitude.
“It’s my job, dear.” she replied.
But there was a warmth in her eyes that made you feel seen.
You always saw questions in her gaze though, even though she never pried or asked anything about you and jungkook.
The quiet hope in her gaze that things might change after everything she told you about him that day, about what kind of man he was and what he did for her family.
You couldn’t bring yourself to tell her the truth—that you were biding your time waiting for your mother to recover so you could leave.
That you could never see jungkook as a husband even if his actions suggested otherwise
You stopped resisting the things that appeared daily for you.
The books were the hardest to ignore because they made you believe that he remembered when you told him that you liked reading.
The day when he first came to see you in your house
And you had no idea of the purpose of his visit.
They were there waiting on the shelf in the guest room, calling for you. You'd read late into the night, bam curled beside you, the words in the book a temporary escape from overthinking.
You'd trace the covers of the book, wondering if jungkook had held them, if he'd thought of you as he selected them.
The thought made your heart ache with something soft… you didn’t know what.
You avoided jungkook at all costs, your heart racing at the thought of seeing him. He was barely there in his own home.
His presence felt but rarely seen.
You'd hear the faint sound of his car pulling into the driveway at night, sometimes occasional murmurs of his deep voice.
But he never approached you, never forced his way into your space.
It was as if he'd drawn an invisible line after that kiss, respecting your need for distance.
His absence was both a relief and a source of unease.
You wondered what he was thinking, if he was angry and whether the kiss had changed him as it had changed you.
Apart from visiting the library for your work, you also visited your mother since she makes you feel less alone.
Talking to her takes a burden off your chest and you whisper promises to her that you aren’t sure you can keep.
The driver would wait outside, his reports going back to jungkook though you didn’t know it.
jungkook tracked all your movements, not out of control but out of a need to ensure your safety, a need he couldn’t explain even to himself.
He'd sit in his office late at night listening to the driver's updates, his heart heavy with the knowledge that you were still hurting.
If he could, he'd take away all the pain caused by the illness of your mother.
But he couldn’t.
All he could provide was his support and money, ensuring that she gets well soon and that sadness from deep within your soul goes away.
You'd sit awake late at night in bed, not being able to sleep, thinking of jungkook, of his dark eyes and of the pain that was etched in his features that day.
And pushed the thoughts away.
You didn’t want to feel for him and didn’t want him as anything but the man who’d taken away your freedom.
But that argument—him also being betrayed like you—the books, the food, the care that came even after he kn.ew that you despised him.
Was cracking your resolve
You'd cry sometimes into the pillow, your heart twisting at the realization that you might have misjudged him.
That he might not be the monster you feared.
But you couldn’t let go of your anger, couldn’t forgive the marriage.
And most importantly.
Couldn’t ignore the small warmth and the flush of your cheeks every time you thought of him.
۶ৎ
jungkook's anger has been simmering for days mostly from your tears, your pain and your father's lies.
Even though he didn’t approach you every night, he'd hear your sobs from the closed room.
The way you isolated yourself.
He could do nothing but just listen, feeling like a sorry excuse of a man when he wanted to wipe your tears away himself.
Give you all the happiness the world has to offer.
But he couldn’t break another line, especially after that kiss in his study.
He couldn’t hold back anymore, couldn’t take it anymore today and couldn’t bear the thought of you suffering because of a man who’d hurt you long before jungkook came into the picture.
He drove to your old home himself, the decaying, almost breaking apart apartment.
The air was thick with the smell of stale beer and neglect.
jungkook walked to the door, his hands already bruised from the hours at the gym.
Punching bags was a habit he used to take his anger out but tonight that anger had a target.
He pounded on the door loudly.
Your father opened it after a moment, his frame swaying, eyes bloodshot from the drugs he was probably snorting, from the money he got after he sold his daughter.
The man's face paled at the sight of jungkook towering over him, his dark eyes wild and blinded with fury.
“M—Mr. Jeon.”
Your father stammered.
His voice slurred as he gripped the doorframe.
“What are you doing here?”
jungkook didn’t answer, his fist connecting to your father’s jaw in a quick, brutal motion as the older man stumbled back.
Crashing into a table, bottles of alcohol clattering to the floor.
“You lied to me.” jungkook growled lowly.
A dangerous rumble that seemed to shiver the entire room along with the pathetic man in front of him.
He stepped inside, closing the door with a loud slam, his presence dominating the cramped space.
“You told me she wanted this marriage, that she agreed. You forced her, you bastard and you broke her.”
Your father scrambled to his feet, blood trickling from his split lip, his eyes wide with fear.
“S—She’s just a girl.” he spat.
His voice shaking with fear.
“You got what you wanted, didn’t you? a pretty little thing to warm your bed. Use her up, she’s nothing anyways.”
jungkook's vision went red, his control snapping. He grabbed your father by the collar, slamming him against the wall.
The wall cracking under the force.
“Don’t you fucking speak about her like that!” he roared.
His fists striking your father's face again and again, blood splattering everywhere.
“She’s everything, you hear me?”
jungkook grabbed his face, squeezing hard, making sure he listened.
“She deserves love, respect and everything you never gave her. You don’t get to speak her name, you don’t even get to get near her life anymore. I'll give her what you couldn't and I'll make sure not even your shadow falls on her again.”
Your father coughed out blood, his face a mess of blood and bruises.
His body slumping.
“You can’t do this.” he gasped weakly.
“She’s my daughter—”
Your father wasn’t scared of losing you but he was scared of losing the money he’d get from your marriage and that angered jungkook even more.
His hands twitching to take his life this instant.
“She’s mine to protect.” jungkook rasps.
His voice cold and final.
jungkook punched again, his head snapping back, eyes rolling.
“She and her mother—they’re my responsibility now, not yours. You stay the fuck away from them. If you contact her and... if you breathe a word of this to anyone”
jungkook makes direct eye contact with him, his jaw ticking.
“I’ll come back and I’ll kill you myself. Slowly. You’ll feel every moment of the pain you caused her and her mother all these years.”
He dropped your father, letting him collapse in his own heap of blood.
jungkook stood over him.
His chest heaving, his fists clenched and blood dripped from his knuckles.
He wanted to keep going, to unleash every ounce of rage for what this man had done to you but he stopped himself.
For the sake of you.
He turned and left, the door slamming behind him.
He drove back to the mansion, his hands gripping the steering wheel, mind full of anger and guilt.
He'd done what he had to.
But he knew he could never tell you.
He could never let you see this side of him.
He didn’t want your hatred and didn’t want you to fear him more than you already did.
But he'd protect you no matter the cost, even if it meant carrying this secret alone.
۶ৎ
You sat on the plush leather couch, downstairs in the living room, small frame curled into itself, legs tucked beneath you.
bam slept beside you, head resting on his paws, his soft snores anchoring you in the quiet late night.
You hadn’t been able to sleep, your thoughts all over the place.
The front door suddenly opened with a heavy thud, the sound making you sit upright.
bam lifted his head, ears perked, a low growl rumbling in his throat before he relaxed, recognizing his owner.
jungkook stepped inside, his suit rumpled as if he'd been through a battle and his hair messy with several strands escaping from his signature man bun.
His hands that were usually so steady were bruised and bloodied.
The sight sends a jolt of shock through you.
He paused in the doorway, his gaze locking onto you and for a moment the world seemed to fade.
Leaving just the two of you, unspoken words in the air.
“It’s late, why haven’t you slept?” he asked.
But you could sense that behind his words he was carrying something else that he held back.
You swallowed, your throat tight, eyes drawn to his bruised knuckles.
The sight brought back memories—the argument in his study, the kiss that had shaken you to the core, the hurt in his eyes when you'd accused him of being like your father.
For the first time you felt a pang of concern, a need to know he was okay.
Though you didn’t understand why.
“Are you okay?” you asked
Your voice small and unsure.
The words foreign on your tongue, it was the first time you'd shown him any care and the tenderness of it made your cheeks burn.
jungkook's eyes widened slightly before his expression hardened again, guarding whatever he felt.
“I’m fine.”
His tone clipped, offering no explanation for the blood on his hands and the bruises.
You knew he was hiding something but the thought of pushing him and risking his anger made your stomach twist.
He didn’t want you to know what he’d done and didn’t want to deepen the distance between you.
He stood there, tall frame imposing yet strangely hesitant, his gaze searching yours as if trying to figure out the shift in you.
The silence went on, both your eyes locked heavily, charged with something electric.
You could see the fatigue in him, the way his shoulders were hunched slightly.
He broke the silence first.
“How are you feeling y/n and what do you want? be honest with me.”
He asked, almost pleading.
You looked down, fingers twisting nervously in your lap, his question pressing on you.
Your heart pounded with fear and grief for the life you’d never wanted.
No matter what, you didn’t want this.
You wanted freedom.
You still do.
You took a deep breath, steeling yourself and met his dark eyes, your voice trembling.
“I don’t want this marriage.” you breathe.
You paused, your heart squeezing painfully and added softer, almost to yourself.
“I want a divorce.”
The words hung in the air and it seemed to suck all the light that was present, only leaving behind tension.
jungkook's face remained stoic but his eyes betrayed him—raw agony in their depths, a flicker of them beneath his cold exterior.
His jaw clenched and for a moment you remained still, fearing his reaction.
That he might react badly.
But he didn’t.
He stood there, hands still at his sides, his bruised knuckles fisted from whatever he'd done tonight.
Inside he was breaking, your words a knife to his heart that he'd only recently discovered he had after having you.
He loved you.
Had admitted that in a moment of weakness and now you were asking to leave him, to break the bond he'd vowed to keep.
Your happiness was his priority more than his own.
“I’ll give you whatever you want.” he says finally.
“That’s my promise.”
He paused, his eyes searching yours and added.
“But I have one condition.”
Your heart raced, mind jumping to the worst—a control, force the kind of demands your father would have made.
You braced yourself, hands clenching on the couch waiting for the trap you were sure was coming.
“What?” you whispered, barely audible..
Your eyes wide.
“You stay here in my house until your mother recovers.”
His gaze not leaving yours.
“I’ll pay for her treatment to ensure she gets the best care. You won't go back to your father, you won't face his abuse again. Once she's well, you can take any decision you want—divorce, leaving, anything. But until then, you stay here where you’re safe.”
The words stunned you, breath catching in your throat.
You'd expected control manipulation but this—this was protection offered without strings, without the expectation of anything in return.
Tears welled in your eyes, unstoppable, your heart aching at the sincerity in his eyes.
You wanted to refuse, to assert your independence, to prove you didn’t need him.
“I can manage.” you shook.
Tears spilling down your cheeks
“I can stay somewhere else, jungkook. I can't repay you… not with that much money”
His expression softened a bit but still carried a quiet intensity that made you pause.
“You can repay me by staying.”
His eyes locked on yours, willing you to understand.
“Let me do this, y/n. Your father made your life hell and I—I married you without your consent. In your eyes I’m no better than him, am I?”
A broken whimper leaves you at his words.
“I know I fucked up but let me make this right. Let me protect you and your mother. You don’t owe me anything.”
The tears came faster now, your chest heaving as his words sank in.
He saw himself like the cause of your pain.
As guilty as your father.
You wanted to scream that it wasn’t his fault, that he hadn’t known but the words were stuck in your throat, choked by your own emotions.
You looked into his eyes, feeling your own heart crack.
Why was he doing this? what would he get by doing this?
Nothing other than heartbreak and his own loss.
Yet he was willing to do it for you.
He wasn’t your father, not even close but the fear you’d carried for so long held you back and kept you from admitting it.
“I don’t wanna be a burden.”
Your hands tremble in your lap.
“I—I don’t want to owe you my life.”
“You’re not a burden.”
He says fiercely.
“You’re my wife, y/n whether you want to be or not. I made vows to you, to protect you and to cherish you and I meant every word. Even if you hate me even if you walk away, I'll keep those vows. You and your mother are my responsibility now not because I pity you but because I—”
He stopped, his voice catching, jaw tightening as he fought to keep his emotions in check.
“Because I care. Let me do this. Let me keep you safe.”
You stared at him, a sob leaving your lips, your heart tangled with guilt.
You wanted to fight him to push him away but his words, his sincerity made it hard for you to breathe.
You nodded slowly, your voice gone, agreeing to stay not because you wanted to but because you saw the truth in his eyes.
He wasn’t doing this to control you but to protect you.
To right a wrong he felt responsible for.
Even though he shouldn’t
jungkook exhaled, relief in his face, his shoulders sagging slightly.
He took a step back, his bruised hands flexing, the wedding ring on his finger catching the light, reminding you of your own wedding ring that you hadn’t worn since the wedding and kept tucked away in a drawer.
Like it was trash.
But the sight of his ring on him sent a pang through you.
He turned to leave but paused at the doorway, his back to you.
“You should never fear me.”
His voice low, each word a promise.
“I’m not him, y/n. I’ll never be him. This is your home now and I'll keep you safe even if it's from a distance. I won’t touch you and won’t do anything without your consent.”
His eyes met yours.
“But I need you to know that I married you and I’ll fulfill my duty as a husband.”
Your lips parted, your hands clutching the fabric of your shirt, heart breaking into small pieces.
Duty. Responsibility. Care.
They were foreign concepts your father had never understood and you took in a shuddery breath.
“jungkook.” you started.
But he shook his head, cutting you off.
“Go to bed.” he says gently.
The commanding tone present.
“It’s late. You should get some sleep.”
He didn’t wait for a response, his footsteps echoing as he walked away, leaving you alone in the living room.
You sat there frozen, your breaths shaky, tears falling silently.
bam stirred, nuzzling your hand and you clung to him, your fingers burying in his fur as sobs broke free.
The wedding ring on jungkook's finger haunted you, a symbol of a bond and relationship you'd never accepted but he still honored.
Still wore that ring, never took it off as if it was something precious.
Even though it was meaningless to you.
You hadn’t ever worn your ring, never claimed it just as you hadn’t accepted him as your husband.
But his words, his promises, his love—they shattered the image you'd built of him.
You thought of him as a monster, a manipulator, a man like your father but he was none of those things.
He was a man carrying his own scars and yet trying to protect you in a way no one ever had.
You cried, your sobs muffled into bam's fur.
You'd been wrong about him.
So wrong
And the realization had you gasping for breath.
He wasn't manipulating you, wasn’t using his money to control you or keep you trapped.
He was trying to give you what no man in your life ever gave you.
What your own father failed to give you.
Safety, care and a life free from pain.
The marriage, the kiss, the argument, his confession of love—they all swirled in your mind, leaving you lost.
You didn’t know what you felt.
Didn’t know what came next.
But one thing was clear: jungkook wasn’t the enemy you’d made him out to be.
your world crumbles when you're forced into a marriage with jeon jungkook, a man whose commanding presence terrifies you, reminding you of your father's cruelty. Yet beneath his coldness, jungkook’s unexpected kindness stirs a spark of hope, making you question everything you fear. Your life together starts—an emotional journey of two hearts seeking comfort, healing and a chance at love.
pairing — dom!jungkook x sub!femreader
genre — arranged marriage au, forced marriage, marriage of convenience, age gap, reader is of age, forbidden love, forced proximity, enemies to friends to lovers, grumpy x sunshine, rich ceo!jungkook, shy!reader, virgin!reader, poor!reader, obsession and possessive love, pining, slow burn, contrast of worlds, romance, drama, lots of angst, fluff
warnings/tags — 18+, protective!jungkook, possessive!jungkook, trauma and panic attack, several crying scenes, isolation, domestic drama, tension, hurt and comfort, jungkook's dog bam makes an appearance (their bonding is so cute ugh), healing, trust issues, mentions of past abuse, power imbalance, mild sexual feelings and desires, manipulation, guilt and self-hatred, quiet acts of kindness from jungkook, miscommunication, argument
wc — 12.3k
a/n — hope y'all enjoy this chapter! let me know your thoughts <3
series m. list | main m. list
────୨ৎ────
The heavy air pressed against your skin as you stirred awake on the hardwood floor, faint light seeped through the curtains, casting a glow across the room.
Your body ached with a throbbing pain on your shoulders and waist from curling into a tight ball on the cold floor through the night.
In a cramped position.
Your muscles protested as you shifted. your eyes swollen from the tears you'd shed until you fell asleep and your body felt heavy from the residue of your grief.
Your throat dry and raw from the sobs.
You lay still for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling in silence.
The events of the previous night flooded back—your confrontation with jungkook, the words you'd told him, each one laced with years of pent up fear and anger.
You'd called him a monster, accused him of buying you and said he was like your father.
The memory of your own voice, sharp and rude for the first time, sent a shiver through you. You'd never raised your voice to a man before.
Never dared to.
Growing up you'd learned to stay small, to stay quiet in order to avoid your fathers anger.
But with jungkook something had snapped and the words had come out, controlled by the terror of being trapped in a marriage you didn’t choose.
He hadn’t yelled back and hadn’t raised a hand like your father would have.
Instead he stood there, dark eyes unreadable, his cigarette burning between his fingers.
The image of him in the white shirt, faint scent of smoke clinging to him, lingered in your mind.
Unsettling you.
He hadn’t hit you and hadn’t even raised his voice but the fear of what he might do now gnawed at you.
What if he'd been holding back last night? his patience was just him pretending?
What if today he'd show the cruelty you'd always expected from men like him?
Your father has taught you to brace for the worst and jungkook with his intimidating presence seemed like the kind of man who could destroy you with a single word.
You pushed yourself up slowly, wincing as your muscles protested.
You stood, legs shaky and caught sight of yourself in the mirror—skin pale, eyes red rimmed and hair tangled in knots.
You looked fragile and on the verge of breaking.
The sight of you welled tears in your eyes again because it reminded you of your mother.
But you blinked them back, refusing to let them fall. You had to be strong, you had to survive this for her.
After all, she was the only reason you were here, the only reason you hadn’t run.
The room felt too big, too empty and you felt out of place in jungkook's world.
This wasn’t your home—it was a prison that you paid for with your freedom.
What would jungkook do now? would he punish you?
Would he demand obedience like your father always had?
All your overthinking felt suffocating and you sank back onto the floor, your knees pulled to your chest, trying to ground yourself against your thoughts.
You remembered the way jungkook had looked at you, his eyes dark but not angry, his hands still.
It confused you.
Your father would have lashed out but jungkook had just stood there, letting you scream, letting you hate him.
Your stomach knotted with guilt.
You didn’t wanna feel guilt—you didn’t owe him anything.
He'd married you without your consent and had taken you from your life.
Yet the way he’d stayed calm and the way he hadn’t touched you caused you to doubt.
You pushed the thought away, refusing to acknowledge it.
Men like him didn’t change, they waited, they manipulated and then they struck.
You'd seen it your whole life.
You need to move, to do something but the thought of leaving the safety of this room or facing jeon jungkook made your heart race.
You stayed there frozen, mind hazy until the ache in your body forced you to stand again.
You couldn’t stay on the floor forever.
You had to face the day, face him and face the life you'd been forced into.
You had to step forward.
You slowly walked to the attached bathroom and it was really different than the one you were used to at home.
The glossy tiles and the modern things made it look like it belonged in a luxury hotel.
The space large and you felt small and out of place in here.
You shuffled inside closing the door, the thin dress you'd worn since the wedding clinging to your skin stiffly with sweat and tears.
You stood in front of the sink, turning on the faucet and splashed your face with water, the coldness making you gasp.
You did it again and again as if you could wash away the pain and the memory of last night.
To pull you back from the state of dizziness.
You stripped off your dress after that, letting it fall to the floor and kicked it aside, not wanting to look at it.
Your body felt exposed and vulnerable as you stood in your panties only.
You avoided the mirror now, not wanting to see the curves that had always made you self conscious.
You’d never felt comfortable in your body, not when it drew attention you didn’t want.
You stepped in the glass shower and turned the knob as warm water poured over you like rainfall.
You didn’t have access to this in your home, the water was always cold, so this felt foreign.
You stood under it, letting it cascade over your body, the warmth seeping into your sore body.
The water was a momentary comfort as you tilted your head back, letting it soak your hair.
The shampoo and conditioner on the shelf were expensive, you could recognize that just by looking at the bottles.
You poured a small amount of shampoo into your palm and worked it through your hair, the foam forming the scent sweet as you rinsed it slowly.
You used the conditioner next, its creamy texture smoothing your hair, making it feel softer than it had in years.
You stood under the water for a long time, longer than necessary, letting the shower drown out all your thoughts.
jungkook was powerful—his wealth, his presence—but he hadn’t hurt you.
Not yet.
He was playing a game, you told yourself.
He was waiting and when he would finally react, it would be worse than anything your father had done.
You turned off the shower.
Stepping out, you wrapped yourself in a plush towel you found and you clutched it tightly to your chest.
You wiped the fog from the mirror with your hand, revealing your flushed face. Even though you looked better, the haunted look in your eyes was still there.
Along with the fear.
You didn’t wanna go out but you had to.
You took a deep breath, steadying yourself.
You needed to check on your mother, needed to know she was okay.
Your mothers life depended on you and you didn’t know what the day would bring but you couldn’t stay here hiding like a scared child.
You stood in the center of the room drying your hair with trembling hands and that’s when the sharp knock on the door jolted you.
Your fingers tightened around the towel around yourself as you stared at the door, frozen.
Another knock, firmer this time and your pulse quickened.
It had to be Jungkook.
He'd come to demand an apology to punish you for your behavior from last night.
Badly.
The thought of his wrath made your knees weak but the knocking persisted, not aggressive but insistent.
You couldn’t hide forever.
If you ignored him, it might make things worse and might provoke the anger you were certain was simmering beneath his coldness.
Swallowing hard, you forced your feet to move.
Your hand shook as it hovered over the doorknob as you took a deep breath, bracing yourself for facing him.
With a final surge of courage, you turned the knob and pulled the door open.
Your body tense, ready to flinch.
To your shock, it wasn’t jungkook.
A woman stood in the hallway, she was in her fifties from what you thought by looking at her appearance. Her dark hair with silver strands was pulled in a bun and her face was softened by wrinkles.
She wore a simple black uniform but her smile was genuine.
She looked at you with concern but there was a kindness in her gaze that made your chest thud with something you couldn’t name—relief that it wasn’t jungkook.
“Good morning, mrs. jeon.” she said
Her voice held a maternal warmth that unsettled you.
The title—mrs. jeon—hits you with disgust reminding you of the marriage you'd been forced into once again.
A name you'd never accept as your own.
Her smile didn’t falter though as you didn’t speak.
“You can call me mrs. kim.” she continued
“I’m the housekeeper here. I cook, clean and keep things running for mr. jeon. He asked me to bring you these.”
She extended her arms, offering a stack of neatly folded clothes.
You stared at them, throat tightening.
It was a collection of clothes that you usually wore but the only difference was that the fabrics looked impossibly luxurious.
The kind you'd only ever seen in shop windows.
And just by looking at the top item, you could tell that it was worth more than a months rent at your father's apartment.
Your distrust of jungkook's intentions kept you rooted in place.
“I don’t need these.” you said bitterly.
Barely masking the tremor beneath it.
You were sure that this was another way for jungkook to assert his dominance over you to make you feel indebted to him.
Your father had done the same, giving you small things only to use them on you later on to guilt trip you or taunt you.
You wouldn’t fall for it again.
mrs. kim's eyes softened.
“They’re just clothes, dear.” she says gently.
Not pushing you.
“You need something fresh to wear, don’t you?”
She didn’t mention how jungkook had picked these out himself, thinking you’d like them and that they’d suit you.
The idea of jungkook choosing these clothes—knowing your size, your preferences—sent a chill down your spine.
It felt invasive.
He'd reached out and learned about your personal life without permission.
How did he know anyways?
Had he been watching you?
Studying you?
Your fingers tightened around the towel, knuckles white.
mrs. kim noticed your hesitance but she didn’t argue further, she simply held out the clothes, her expression patient.
“You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.” she smiles.
“But you can’t stay in that towel all day, can you? just take them for now. You can decide later.”
Your eyes darted between her and the clothes.
You had nothing else to wear—the dress you wore last night was crumpled and sweaty.
You had to give up your pride, your refusal to accept anything from jungkook.
Reluctantly you reached out and took the stack, heart racing.
“Thank you.” you muttered.
Your eyes fixed on the floor, you couldn’t let her see the shame and fear in your eyes.
Accepting the clothes felt like accepting jungkook's control and you hated it, hated him along with yourself for being so powerless.
mrs. kim nodded with a grin.
“Breakfast is ready downstairs when you’re ready. Take your time, dear. No need to rush.”
She turned to leave and you closed the door behind her, the lock snapping shut.
You stood there for a moment clutching the clothes to your chest. These clothes were his doing, another reminder that you were in his house and bound to him in ways you couldn’t escape.
You set the clothes on the bed and picked a sweater, it was beautiful, perfect even and exactly what you'd have chosen for yourself.
And that made it worse.
The thought of wearing his gifts and his money touching your skin made you feel like a doll dressed up for his liking.
But you had no choice.
With a heavy sigh, you picked up the sweater, a skirt and dressed slowly, the clothing fitting you perfectly like it had been tailored just for you.
You resented how good they felt, how they made you feel cared for when you knew it was a lie.
jungkook wasn’t kind.
He couldn’t be.
Men like him—powerful and in control—never was.
You pushed your damp hair behind your ears as you looked at the door.
You didn’t wanna go downstairs, you didn’t want to face the possibility of seeing jungkook.
But you needed to call the hospital and that need outweighed your fear.
At least for now.
You opened the door and walked down the staircase, heart pounding as you looked at your feet because you thought if you looked up, you'd see jungkook.
The air was filled with the scent of food and your stomach growled since you were hungry but you pushed it down, refusing to give in to jungkook's offerings again.
You didn’t want his food, his clothes or his pity.
You didn’t want anything from him.
You reached the dining table and looked at the table which was set with a feast that made your breath catch—an array of dishes.
Every possible breakfast item one could think of, along with bowls of fresh fruits and homemade pastries and croissants.
It was overwhelming and in excess.
You’ve probably never seen so much food at once in your life where you could barely have a meal in a day.
mrs. kim appeared, wiping her hands on her apron.
“mr. jeon wasn’t sure what you liked.” she chuckled.
“So he asked me to make a bit of everything. Please sit down.”
You stood frozen, your eyes scanning the table, stomach twisting with hunger.
And disgust.
At his ability to control every aspect of your life
You laughed mockingly, the sound startling her.
“What is this, a bribe? does he think he can buy me with his fake kindness?”
You whispered under your breath but mrs. kim heard you anyway.
Her smile faltered.
“It’s just breakfast, dear.” she says soothingly.
“You need to eat. You look like you haven’t had a proper meal in days.”
You refused to admit her words, you'd gone hungry before and survived without eating for a whole day.
This feast was nothing but a show, a way for jungkook to flaunt his wealth.
“I’m not hungry.” you lied.
Though your stomach betrayed you with another grumble.
“I just need a phone. Can you please give me that? I need to make a call.”
A desperation in your voice
Her eyes softened with sympathy but she reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a brand new smartphone.
“mr. jeon left this for you before he went to his office.”
You stared at the phone, heart sinking. It was a much updated top model phone than the old one you used before with a cracked screen.
You wanted to throw it across the room and scream that you didn’t want this.
But you needed to call the hospital, you needed to hear that your mother was still alive, still fighting so you grabbed the phone, taking it.
You exhaled shakily with unshed tears, you felt dirty for giving up but your mother was important and you couldn’t risk her.
“Fine.” you sign.
“But I’m not eating.”
mrs. kim frowned as she studied you.
“You need to eat, mrs. jeon.”
Her voice almost pleading.
“mr. jeon won’t be happy if you don’t. He was very clear about it.”
The mention of jungkook's displeasure frightened you but you were too angry and hurt to care.
“Tell him to fuck off.” you snapped.
The words burst out before you could stop them.
Her eyes widened, mouth parting in shock because no one spoke about jungkook like that—not in this house, not in his world.
The curse was a word you never dared to utter before but your tongue was loosened from all the emotions you felt.
Since last night.
“I don’t care what he wants.” you added.
“I’m not his puppet.”
You turned to leave but her words stopped you.
“I’ll let you be.” she said quietly.
“But the foods there when you change your mind.”
You went back to the guest room, the phone clutched in your hand.
You slammed the door shut and leaned against the door, chest heaving. You dialed the hospital's number that was already saved.
You realized that all your saved contacts were here.
But you didn’t pay much attention to it as you waited for the line to connect, wanting to hear that your mother was okay.
The nurse picked up, confirming your mother was stable but still in a coma, all her expenses covered.
You furrowed your brows, assuming it was your father using the money from your marriage and the thought made you sick.
But you were grateful.
You hung up relieved and tossed the phone on the bed before sitting down on the edge of the bed, your knees tucked against your chest.
You sat there for a long time, the room quiet except for the distant clatter of dishes from the kitchen downstairs, where mrs. kim was likely preparing another meal you had no intention of eating.
Your mind too heavy with the thoughts of your mother, your father and the man who now was your husband.
The silence was shattered by a soft bark outside the door, your breath catched.
The bark came again, followed by the scratch of paws against the door.
Your first instinct was fear—because this place is very unknown—but your animal loving heart won against everything.
You stood and approached the door.
If you ever saw a little one, you had to follow and you still remembered the puppy from outside the diner that day whom you fed.
And your heart felt so happy, the last moment of happiness before it got snatched from you and you needed that closure again.
Their pure souls too good for this tainted world.
You opened the door slightly and peered out.
A large, dark brown doberman stood there, his eyes sharp and his ears perked as he tilted his head to look at you.
He was an intimidating tall dog, nothing like the little puppies you were used to, he was the kind of dog that could tear through anyone without hesitation.
Your breath hitched and you stepped back but then he moved, stepping forward with a soft whine.
His nose sniffing the air as if trying to understand you.
He didn't growl or bare his teeth, instead he lowered his head slightly.
“Hey buddy.” you coo.
You knelt slowly, keeping your movements slow not wanting to startle him.
You looked at his collar and you read the name etched into it.
“bam”
jungkook's dog.
Of course the dog belonged to him, another innocent soul for him to control.
But bam's eyes were soft, almost pleading and when he stepped closer, his nose brushing against your hand, you felt a small warmth.
His tongue darting out, licking your fingers and you couldn’t help but giggle.
“bam, huh?” you murmur.
You reached out hesitatingly then gently scratched behind his ears and he leaned closer to your touch, his eyes half closing in contentment.
The weight of the day—the tears, the anger—seemed to lift just for a moment as you sat there with him.
“You’re not so scary, are you?”
bam responded with a happy huff, his tail wagging enthusiastically now.
You sat cross legged on the floor, letting bam settle beside you. He was big, his head leveling with your shoulder when he sat up.
But there was a gentleness in him that surprised you.
You'd expect a dog like this to be cold and scary like his owner but bam was different.
He nudged your hand whenever you stopped petting him, his wet nose making you laugh, the sound making you gasp.
It had been so long since you'd laughed since you'd felt anything other than agony.
“You’re a good boy.” you hummed.
“I bet you don’t even know how cruel your owner is.”
bam tilted his head as if listening and you found yourself talking to him.
“My mom’s sick, you know.” you whimper.
Your fingers tracing patterns on his collar
“She’s the only one I have. My dad… he's awful. He sold me to jungkook like I’m some kind of thing.”
“And now I’m here stuck and I don’t know what to do.”
Your voice cracked, eyes glistening with tears but you didn’t stop.
bam listened, his eyes fixed on you and it felt like he understood, like he was the only one in this house who did.
You told him about your dreams of escaping this and building a life where you could be free. You told him about the fear you felt every time you thought of jungkook.
The way his presence made your heart thud with something you couldn’t name.
Hours passed like this.
bam stayed beside you, head resting on your lap and he showed that you weren’t entirely alone after all.
You let out a sigh as he closed his eyes under your pets.
“You’re lucky.” you whisper.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid all the time.”
The door creaked open and you tensed, hand stilling on bam's head.
It was mrs. kim.
“mrs. jeon? you really should eat something. mr. jeon doesn’t like it when his instructions are ignored.”
You bristled, jaw tightening.
You didn’t care about any of his bullshit.
“I’m used to going hungry. I’ve done it before and I have no problem doing it again.”
You looked down at bam, who was watching you and you scoffed.
“I’m not eating his food.”
You told bam as if he could understand.
“I don’t want anything from him.”
But your stomach growled louder this time and bam nudged your hand as if urging you to reconsider.
You shook your head stubbornly.
“I’ll be fine.”
You said more to yourself.
But as you sat there, you felt hope.
Maybe, just maybe.
You could survive this place if only because of this unexpected friend who'd found you in your darkest moment.
You suddenly heard the sound of the front door slamming, pulling you out of your thoughts as your heart jumped, pounding so hard you could feel it in your ears.
It was him.
jungkook was home.
The realization caused you dread as you curled onto the dog.
You hadn’t seen him since last night, since you’d screamed at him and you couldn’t help but think of the worst possible things he could do now.
The sound of heavy footsteps grew louder as you clutched your sweater, your breath uneven.
bam stirred, lifting his head as he sensed the approaching presence.
You wanted to lock the door again but you knew it was pointless.
The footsteps stopped just outside the door and you braced yourself, mind racing with images of your father's rage that followed with pain.
You expected jungkook to do the same.
The door opened without a knock as his towering figure filled the space, his tailored black suit accentuating his muscular body.
You squirmed under his gaze as his jaw tightened and his expression—anger, yes but something else too, something you couldn’t read.
“Why haven’t you eaten?” he asked lowly
There was a sharp edge to it.
You gulped, voice trapped with fear.
“I wasn’t hungry.” you mutter.
But it carried a stubbornness.
You kept your eyes on bam, avoiding his gaze, your hands stroking the dog's fur to ground yourself.
You didn’t want to look at him and didn’t wanna see the anger you were sure was there.
His eyes narrowed, frustration crossing his face.
He stepped into the room, his presence filling the space, making you feel smaller.
You tensed but then his gaze shifted, landing on bam who was still curled in your lap, his head resting against your thigh.
jungkook's expression changed to surprise, softening the hard lines of his face as a brow lifted slightly.
Bam doesn’t like anyone but him.
And yet…
jungkook studied you with an intensity that caused you goosebumps.
He took another step closer and you flinched as his hands clenched into fists at your reaction.
“You need to eat.” he says.
Voice calm now but still carrying the commanding tone.
“Go downstairs. Now.”
The words sparked something inside you. You'd spend your life swallowing your anger but with jungkook it was different.
He wasn’t your father.
But he was the man who'd married you against your will.
You couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“I’d rather starve.” you snapped.
Tears spilling down your cheeks.
“Stop pretending you care! you don’t get to act like you’re some savior when you’re the reason I’m here trapped in this marriage!”
Your voice cracked on the last word, chest heaving with sobs. The dog whined softly, sensing your distress and pressed close, his nose nudging your arm.
You were shaking and you expected jungkook to yell to prove you right about him.
To teach you a lesson for disrespecting him.
But he didn’t.
He stood there, eyes fixed on you with something even he couldn’t explain, anger in them for the tears you shed.
He disliked your distress.
He didn’t want that.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.” he rasps.
You didn’t believe him.
Couldn’t.
“Stop lying.” you hissed.
“Y—you’re just like him. You'll hurt me, control me and make my life hell. I know men like you—”
“Enough.”
His one word cut off your words, cold but not cruel.
“You will eat, y/n. If I have to force you, I will.”
The finality of his words shook you and you felt your stubbornness crumble under his authority.
You were scared, body trembling as you stood, bam sliding off your lap and going to jungkook.
You wiped your tears with the back of your hand and followed him downstairs.
You didn’t want to obey.
Didn’t wanna give him the satisfaction.
But you were exhausted with hunger and you didn’t want to piss him off more, even though you didn’t understand why he cared if you ate or starved.
What does he get by doing this?
You looked at the dining table now set with a fresh spread of new food—lunch of course, but a variety of them just like breakfast.
Way too many options.
jungkook gestured to the table, eyes still fixed on you.
“Eat what you like.” he whispers.
There was a warmth beneath his words.
You sat, hands shaking as you picked up a spoon.
jungkook moved to the other side of the room, leaning against the wall as he lit a cigarette.
The smell of tobacco filled the room as he watched you, his eyes never leaving your small frame.
You felt exposed and embarrassed under his gaze but you had no choice so you took a small bite of rice.
It was delicious.
You had to admit that, it was not the stale food you were used to but each bite showed exactly how little control you had in your life.
You felt like a doll that he could command.
bam padded over and settled at your feet, his warm body pressing against your legs. You glanced down, a small smile tugging at your lips as you reached down to pet him.
jungkook's eyes softened at the sight, pride and possessiveness crossing his face as he watched bam's loyalty shift to you.
He's never done that with anyone else, not even the staff because the doberman was a grumpy dog and he scared off several people.
But his behavior towards you shifted in such a short time.
It shocked him.
You ate slowly, your stomach too knotted to handle much but jungkook didn’t move, didn’t speak and just watched.
Making sure you ate enough.
In his mind he was thinking of everything that happened—your father’s lies, the forced marriage.
The pain you’ve carried for years.
He wanted to find your father to make him pay for what he'd done.
The thought of that man threatening your mother's life and selling you like you were nothing made jungkook's blood boil.
He imagined wrapping his hands around your father's throat, watching the life drain from his eyes but he pushed the thought down, smoking faster now.
He couldn’t do that.
Not yet.
Your mother was sick and any move against your father would hurt you more and that was the last thing he wanted.
He hadn’t slept last night, pacing his room, the image of your tear streaked face burned into his mind.
He'd been angry—at your father, at himself.
At the world that had let you suffer
He'd been lied to, told you'd agreed to the marriage and the guilt pressed on him.
He'd wanted you since that day outside the restaurant when he'd seen you feed that puppy, your sad eyes awakening something inside him he didn't understand.
He'd thought you wanted this.
Wanted him.
But now he knew the truth and it changed everything.
He couldn’t confront your father yet, couldn’t risk pushing you further away.
But when the time came, he'd make sure that man suffered for every tear you'd shed.
Watching you now, he felt the urge to shield you from the world that had hurt you.
You were so fragile yet so fierce, at least you showed him emotions, even if it was anger.
It infuriated him.
He wanted to tell you he wasn’t like your father, that he’d never hurt you but he knew you wouldn’t believe him.
Not now.
So he stood there, eyes tracing the curve of your face and the way your hands trailed as you ate.
He'd make sure you were taken care of whether you liked it or not.
“You need to eat more.” he said suddenly.
“You look frail.”
You froze, your spoon halfway to your mouth, eyes flicking up to meet his for the first time.
There was no anger in his gaze, only concern and it made your heart stutter.
“I’m fine.” you protested.
“I know how to take care of myself.”
“Do you?” he questions.
“You’ve been starving yourself for years. I’m not blind, y/n.”
Your cheeks flush with anger.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough.” he grumbles.
A glare in his face.
“I know that you’re not going to let yourself waste away in my house. Eat.”
You hated how he made you feel—small and powerless but also strangely cared for.
You took another bite and jungkook watched satisfaction present.
He wanted to say more, to tell you he'd paid for your mother's treatments that he'd make sure she was taken care of.
But he didn’t.
He knew you wouldn’t believe him and knew your trust had been shattered long before he’d even entered your life.
So he stayed silent, looking at you and the way you fought to hold onto your strength despite everything.
He'd wait for you to see him, to understand that he wasn't your father and that he'd protect you.
Even if you hated him.
You finished eating, stomach full but heart heavy.
You stood avoiding his gaze and moved to leave, bam trailing behind you.
“Wait.”
His voice stopped you in your tracks.
He stepped closer, his tall shadow falling over you, making you shiver at the proximity.
He pulled a black card from his pocket and held it out.
“Use this if you need anything. Clothes, food whatever you want.”
You stared at the card, your hands balling into fists.
“I don’t want your money.”
His eyes hardened but his voice remained firm.
“Take it, y/n. You’re my wife.”
The word “wife” made your lips part in surprise.
You wanted to refuse to throw the card in his face but his stern gaze pinned you in place, his authority undeniable.
“You’re not gonna live like you’re still in that hellhole with your father.”
His words make your breath shake as you reluctantly take the card, your fingers brushing against his calloused ones, sending a jolt through you.
You didn’t say anything else as you turned away and hurried back to the guest room, even if you accepted his card, you would never use it.
No matter what.
jungkook watched you go, his fists balling as his cigarette burned in his hand.
Your ignorance cut him deeper than he'd expected.
But he wouldn’t stop even if you fought him every step of the way.
But for now he'd give you space, let you hate him and let you heal.
He'd wait.
Because you were worth it even if you didn’t know it yet
۶ৎ
A few days passed and you'd mostly stay in the room, it was your own haven from everything that's been going on outside.
A barrier from the reality of your new life.
You kept the door closed and locked even though every corner of the house carried traces of him that made your chest tighten even when he was nowhere to be seen.
You confined yourself to the guest room as much as possible, only going out when necessary.
The phone jungkook had given sat on the dresser and you would use it sometimes to hear the nurses updates about your mother.
You'd call almost every day and hear the same thing again—that she was still in a coma—and you'd hang up and curl onto yourself on the bed.
You'd try to distract yourself because everything you're going through makes you exhausted.
mrs. kim, the housekeeper became your only companion in the house, her presence kind and motherly.
And you’ve started liking her.
She'd knock softly on your door and leave trays of carefully prepared food outside and the portions were generous, you could sense her care in every dish.
At first you resisted eating, refusing to accept it but then you realized that jungkook will make another appearance like that day and force you to eat.
So you stopped resisting, not wanting to see him again.
You'd sit on the bed eating slowly and you hated how the food nourished you.
The comfort it brought to your starving body.
But you ate because you had to, at least for your mother.
You'd always thank mrs. kim politely.
“Thank you, mrs. kim.”
She'd nod and smile warmly.
“You’re welcome, mrs. jeon.” she'd reply.
The title felt weird and you didn’t want her calling you that but you never corrected her even though the urge was there.
You weren’t mrs. jeon—never.
You were y/n, your own self.
You didn’t belong to anyone.
You appreciated how mrs. kim never pried, never commented on the fact that you and jungkook slept in separate rooms despite being married.
Barely spoke or lived like strangers under the same roof.
You found yourself warming up to her despite still being distant because you couldn’t fully trust anyone.
After being betrayed several times in life.
Your interactions with jungkook were almost nonexistent, the last time you did was when he made you eat that day.
You avoided him, staying in the guest room or slipping out to the garden when you knew he was at the office.
The garden was a comfortable place and you'd sit on a stone bench, bam at your side pressed against your leg as you petted him absentmindedly.
bam had become your best friend during this time, you and jungkook were the only ones he'd warmed up to.
You'd always talk to him and he'd always listen, his tail wagging and you'd feel good that not everything in this house was cold or threatening.
You would even feed him sometimes with the huge collection of dog food that was exclusively for him.
That softened your heart even just a bit because of how far jungkook goes for his bam.
How he cares for his dog.
jungkook for his part, maintained a careful distance.
He was gone most days as he buried himself in work and his absence felt like a relief to you.
Allowed you to move through the house without the constant thought that you'd run into him.
When he was home, you'd hear him and his steps but he'd mostly be in his study, his deep voice a low murmur on a phone call and the clink of a glass as he poured whiskey.
But he never sought you out, never knocked on your door or demanded anything from you.
It was as if he understood..
And he chose to give you space.
You didn’t trust it or anything because you thought he was hiding his true intentions like your father, waiting for the right moment.
Yet jungkook's actions were nothing like that but you refused to acknowledge that.
The wardrobe in your bedroom was filled with fresh clothes always in your size and style and you'd wear them reluctantly.
The fridge always stocked with your favorite snacks—some of them you mentioned your liking to mrs. kim in a rare moment.
You didn’t know jungkook was behind it and didn’t know he’d overheard the conversations or paid attention to your habits.
He ensured you had everything you needed even a small stack of books that appeared on the shelf.
Because you loved reading.
All delivered by mrs. kim.
jungkook's silent attempt to make you feel at home.
۶ৎ
One evening you went to the kitchen a bit hungry and the sight stopped you as you saw the food on the table and you thought mrs. kim left it since she usually was the one who cooks.
But the food felt too personal and different… like it was made by someone else.
You ate, not knowing jungkook had cooked it himself, his hands moving with a care he'd never shown anyone directly.
He never cooked for anyone but he did for you.
He'd left before you came down, not wanting to pressure you and he knew that you wouldn’t touch the food if you knew he was the one who cooked it.
Your routine fell into a rhythm.
You'd spend your days reading, playing with bam or staring out the window in your room, dreaming of the life outside.
You stopped resisting the gifts from jungkook because you couldn’t afford to fight everything by yourself and you just needed to wait till your mother got well.
But you never let yourself forget that this is a cage and you didn’t want this.
Soon being in the house all day became suffocating, and you missed your job at the bookstore.
It was more than a job—it was your escape, your dream and you loved working there.
You needed it.
Needed the normalcy and the independence of earning, even if it’s a small income but you could still contribute it to your mother’s bills.
You couldn’t rely on your father, couldn’t trust him to keep his promises, not after he’d sold you to jungkook without a second thought.
The thought of your father and how he didn’t even check on you even once after marriage hurt you more than you expected.
A small part of you hoped he'd care.
That he’d call to see if you were okay, but he hadn’t—maybe he never cared at all.
You were just a burden.
۶ৎ
The next morning you went down willingly, knowing jungkook would be there and found him in the kitchen.
He stood by the counter wearing a navy blue suit, his hair pulled into his usual man bun, a few strands loose.
His brows furrowed in a glare as he focused on his phone, likely checking updates of his work.
You hesitated in the doorway, your heart racing, hands twisting together.
You'd avoided him for days and now facing him, being the first one to approach him made your chest cave.
“uhm…” you started.
Your voice trembles as you forced yourself to step forward and you felt his gaze on you immediately but you didn’t make direct eye contact.
“I wanna go back to my job at the bookstore. I can't leave it. It’s… it’s important to me.”
You looked at him briefly, his eyes meeting yours, unreadable.
For a moment he said nothing and you braced yourself for rejection.
Expecting him to demand you stay, to control you like your father had controlled your mother
Your father had never allowed her freedom.
And you feared jungkook would do the same.
But his expression softened a bit as he set his phone down.
“You can go.” he states.
The dominating tone still there.
“But you’ll take my car and driver. For safety”
You blinked, stunned, the air leaving your lungs.
“You’re… okay with it?” you asked
It was too easy, too kind because your father would’ve laughed and told you a woman’s place was in the home serving her husband.
“I won’t stop you from doing what you love.”
“But you’ll be safe. No considerations on that.”
He left no room for argument.
You nodded slowly, reluctant but relieved.
His agreement threw you off, contradicting the image you'd built of him as a cold, controlling man.
“Okay.”
You paused before saying
“Thank you.”
You never thanked him for anything before but you couldn’t hold back this time and you hated yourself for it.
He nodded once, eyes holding yours, then turned back to his phone without another word.
You walked back to the guest room confused.
He was being kind but you didn’t know if it was genuine and you couldn’t let your guard down.
You couldn’t let yourself be fooled by his generosity.
At the bookstore later that day, the familiar scent of paper and dust made you feel better.
Your coworkers, a small group of women who'd become your friends, noticed the ring on your finger and asked about your marriage, giggling among themselves.
“It’s… fine.” you lied.
Your smile forced.
You didn’t want their pity and didn’t want to admit that you were trapped in a marriage you hadn’t chosen.
You worked quietly shelving books and helping customers but your heart wasn’t in it.
The joy you’d once found in the bookstore felt distant because of the pressure of what you’ve been going through.
jungkook on the other hand never questioned where you went, though he knew every detail.
His driver, a stoic man, reported about all your movements to him—trips to the library and to the hospital to sit by your mother's bedside, your small frame hunched as you held her hand.
Whispering to her even though she couldn’t respond.
jungkook didn’t ask for specifics and didn’t want to intrude but he needed to know you were safe and okay.
He'd instruct his driver to stay close, to ensure no harm came to you and the driver obeyed without question since he's very loyal to jungkook.
jungkook’s protectiveness was a vow one he’d made on your wedding and he meant it.
After seeing your swollen eyes and trembling lips, he couldn’t help it.
And how now he's also one reason for your tears.
He didn’t understand why you stirred something in him, why your pain cut deeper than his own.
But he just knew… he couldn’t let you go.
Your hatred was a constant ache in his chest.
He knew you saw him as a monster like your father and it gnawed at him.
He'd spent his life building walls around his heart against a world that had abandoned him as a child.
Left him to fend for himself in foster homes that offered no warmth.
But you’d slipped through those walls like a much needed light. He didn’t deserve a girl whose selflessness had awakened something in him that was long dead.
You’d changed something in him—something soft, dangerous—and he didn’t know what to do.
But he just knew he couldn’t see you broken.
He didn’t know if it was love, he didn’t believe in such things or ever experienced it.
But it was something.
That bound him to you.
In a way he couldn’t explain.
You had started noticing the differences between jungkook and your father, how he abused your mother and controlled every aspect of her life.
jungkook, for all his coldness, hadn’t done that.
He'd given you space and freedom, even agreeing to let you return to your bookstore job without hesitation.
But you refused to soften.
Because he'd trapped you and no amount of kindness could erase that.
۶ৎ
The afternoon sun cast shadows across the floor of the polished kitchen.
You stood by the island, mrs. kim beside you stirring a pot at the stove.
You'd offered to help her cook not because you felt obligated but because the guest room has started feeling too much.
Its walls closing in with every hour you spend alone with your thoughts.
mrs. kim had welcomed your help with a warm smile and handed you a cutting board and a pile of vegetables so you set to work.
Slicing vegetables as it helped distract you from overthinking.
The kitchen felt warm not just because of the stove but also from her presence that made you feel less alone.
You'd really started appreciating her.
You found yourself opening up, if only slightly.
“It must be hard working for jungkook.”
You say almost casually but still with bitterness present.
“He’s so cold and rude. Doesn’t seem like he cares about anyone.”
She paused, her spoon stilling in the pot as she turned to look at you, her eyes had a depth of understanding that caught you off guard.
“mr. jeon isn’t like that.” she says.
Even though she didn’t sound overly defensive
“He can be stern, yes… but only when it's necessary. He's not a bad person, mrs. jeon.”
You scoffed, shaking your head as you diced an onion sharper than necessary.
“He’s not as nice as you think he is.” you add.
“Men like him… they're all the same. They act kind until they get what they want, and then…” you trailed off.
Your throat tightening with memories of your father and how badly he would react when he was drunk or even in general.
mrs. kim wiped her hands on her apron and faced you fully.
“I’ve worked for mr. Jeon for years.”
“He’s not perfect but he’s not what you think. You know what he did once?”
You looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
“He pays me well more than I ever expected. When my youngest child was sick and needed surgery we couldn’t afford, he covered it without a second thought. Didn’t even ask for anything in return. Just told me to take care of my family.”
You paused your knife hovering, her words made your stomach flutter along with a doubt about the assumptions you made about jungkook.
You didn’t want to believe her but the sincerity in her voice and the way her eyes softened when she spoke of him made it hard for you.
“That doesn’t mean he’s good.” you said quietly.
She didn’t reply right away, her gaze lingering on you.
“I don’t want to pry into your marriage.” she said carefully.
“That’s between you and him. But I've seen a lot in my years and I can tell you this...”
“mr. jeon lost more than most, his trust, his parents and his chance at a normal life. He's built so much wealth from the ground to protect himself but that doesn’t mean he's heartless. He’s worth a chance.”
“Not because he’s your husband but because he’s a man who’s trying even if he doesn’t always know how.”
You looked away, a shaky breath leaving you as you resumed chopping, wanting the tears that had welled in your eyes to go away.
You didn’t want to admit how much her words affected you.
Her words hit a nerve, especially the story about her son.
“I don’t see him that way.” you grit out.
“That’s up to you,” she says simply.
“But people aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes they surprise you.”
You didn’t respond, focusing instead on the task at hand.
The conversation, though, didn’t leave your mind.
You didn’t know that jungkook hadn’t known about your forced marriage but the idea that he might be more.
That he might have a heart beneath all this…
You shook your head, focusing on helping mrs. kim plate the food, trying to bury the doubt she'd planted.
۶ৎ
One morning you wandered into the kitchen barefoot and stopped at the sight of a coffee maker on the counter. It was a new model, along with a whole collection of your favorite coffee packets.
You stared at it, heart skipping a beat.
You hadn’t had coffee in days and it wasn’t present in his house anyways because you’ve heard from mrs. kim that jungkook disliked coffee.
So what is this doing here?
Coffee was one of the small joys in your life and you approached the machine cautiously, you didn’t wanna use it, not knowing the purpose of this.
Maybe jungkook bought it for a staff…? Or did he have a recent liking for coffee?
Obviously he wouldn’t know you loved coffee so much and go out of his way to buy one for you specifically… right?
You brewed a cup and sipped, closing your eyes and savoring it.
For a moment you were just y/n, not jungkook's wife but just a girl with a cup of coffee.
You didn’t know jungkook was watching from the hallway, he stood there, his suit already on for the day.
Your grin, the genuine one you let out, hit him right on the chest.
He'd chosen the coffee maker himself and had spent hours researching your tastes, wanting to give you something that would make you happy.
Even if you'd never know it was from him.
For you.
You laughed as bam approached and you fed him some of the chicken left boiled for him.
He was jungkook's dog but he was yours now too and the thought brought a strange loving feeling.
That you relished in.
Sometimes you'd curl up on the couch and lose yourself in a book.
jungkook watched you sometimes when you thought you were alone.
He'd stand in the doorway of the study, dark eyes tracing the way your face brightened, your lips curving slightly.
You were so beautiful to him…
Your innocence, everything, captivated him.
It made him possessive of you.
He'd turn away before you noticed.
Every day he asked mrs. kim the same questions as he stood in the kitchen.
“How is she doing today? did she eat well?”
mrs. kim would nod, giving honest answers that yes you would eat, but not a lot. You're quiet and well, you're managing.
He'd nod back with a nonchalant hum but inside he was noticing every detail, the way you looked healthier, your skin less pale.
The rich, healthy foods he ensured were always provided helped you and it gave him a quiet satisfaction.
Even if you'd never thank him.
He didn’t need your gratitude, he needed you to be whole.
Get everything that you never got in your life.
You noticed the changes in yourself too, though you hated to admit it, your clothes fit better and your body felt strong.
You'd always been weak from hunger and stress but now you looked less frail, your curves fuller.
You still refused to use the black card jungkook had given you, the one he'd pressed into your hand with a stern look.
You used your own money earned from your bookstore job for anything you needed, determined to maintain some semblance of independence.
You hated being too dependent on him.
The card sat untouched in a drawer.
Meanwhile, jungkook’s feelings for you grew with every passing day, an obsession he couldn’t shake.
A girl who hated him had become the center of his world.
He thought of you constantly—at his office, during meetings and even in the quiet of his own room, which was supposed to be yours as well after marrying him but it wasn’t.
Never would be.
He had too many questions about your life, about everything but you were already hurting and hating him and demanding too much will push you further away.
He didn’t know how to fix it.
So he did what he could—small gestures, quiet care, hoping one day you'd see him for who he was.
Not who you feared he'd be
You, on the other hand, hated how everything made you feel cared for when you were supposed to see jungkook as the enemy and you'd sit and eat in silence at the dining table.
Your eyes fixed on your plate, avoiding the empty chair where jungkook might sit if he were home.
jungkook was out most days and you didn’t understand why he stayed away.
Didn’t believe it was out of respect.
You'd spend time with bam, who you've accepted as your little baby.
“You get it, don’t you bamie?”
You pout as you scratch behind his ears.
“You’re stuck here too but you make it better.”
He'd nudge your hand then, jungkook would watch all those moments from his study window when you'd spend time in the garden with bam, playing with him.
Watching you laugh as bam chased a butterfly—that rare moment of joy you let out.
He wanted to reach out, to cross the distance between you two but your words from the wedding night still echoed in his mind—"you're just like him. I’ll never expect you”
So he did what he could.
jungkook's care extended always as time went by.
He'd instructed mrs. kim to ensure you had everything you needed—every snack, everything you craved but were too shy to ask for.
When you'd find a new warm blanket in the guest room, perfect for cuddling with bam, you'd thank mrs. kim, assuming it was her thoughtfulness.
She'd smile, her eyes knowing but never correct you.
jungkook’s orders were clear: give what you need to make you comfortable, but don’t push or intrude.
۶ৎ
Today you emerged from the bathroom, your body wrapped in a towel and it was a short one, barely meeting at your chest but you didn’t have any extra towel.
Your hair still wet from the shower, dripped water as you adjusted the towel, ensuring it stayed secure.
You went out of the room to grab a piece of your clothing that bam had probably playfully brought out with his teeth while playing.
You moved quickly, grabbing it, intending to slip back into the guest room before anyone could see you in such a state.
Your mind was preoccupied and you were so focused on reaching the safety of your room that you didn’t hear the sound of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction.
jungkook walked with his phone in his hand as he typed a quick message to his assistant.
He was distracted, dark eyes fixed on the screen, unaware of you.
You collided into him, stumbling as your foot caught the edge of a rug.
The towel slipped slightly, exposing your cleavage as you gripped it tightly against your breasts while the other instinctively grabbed at his suit to steady yourself.
You gasped, your fingers curling onto his suit, heart lurching as you realized who you'd bumped into.
jungkook's hand shot out immediately, his large hand wrapping around your upper arms to keep you from falling.
The warmth of his touch was unsettling against your bare skin as you froze, catching your breath.
Your cheeks pinked with embarrassment as you stood there exposed and vulnerable, the towel your only shield.
jungkook's eyes widened briefly in surprise as he registered the situation.
His gaze locked onto your face, avoiding the way your body was almost bare.
The intensity of his stare made your stomach flutter, a mix of fear and a strange warmth unsettled you.
You were still holding onto him and could feel his strong, muscular figure.
His teeth clenched, a muscle ticking as he fought to maintain control.
He was acutely aware of your closeness, the way your breasts pressed against his chest.
The way your small frame seemed even more delicate, his grip on your arms was careful not to bruise but enough to keep you upright.
“Sorry.” you breathe.
You tugged the towel tighter around yourself, your eyes burning with shame as it exposed your cleavage anyways.
You felt exposed not just physically but emotionally as if this moment had taken away the walls you'd built to protect yourself.
You wanted to disappear, to retreat to the guest room and hide from his piercing gaze.
The idea of him seeing you like this made your heart race.
“It’s okay.”
A deep rumble leaves him.
He released your arms slowly, his hands hovering for a moment as if unsure whether to steady you further or step back entirely.
“You alright?”
You nodded quickly, still avoiding his eyes, your cheeks flushed deeply.
“I—I’m fine.”
Your voice trembled as you took a small step back, putting distance.
The towel felt flimsier than ever and you crossed one arm over your chest but that only made your breasts pop out more and jungkook cleared his throat before looking away.
He didn’t wanna make you uncomfortable.
You smoothed your wet hair back nervously, he made it impossible to breathe and you can still feel his touch from when he steadied you.
jungkook's eyes remained fixed on your face. He didn’t let his gaze drop and didn’t allow himself to linger on your curves or the way the towel hugged your frame.
But the effort was hard, hands clenching at the sides as he fought the desire that coursed through him.
You were breathtaking even in this unguarded moment—your flushed cheeks, wide eyes, the way your damp hair clung to your skin.
It stirred something primal in him, a need he hadn’t felt in years but he pushed it down, his jaw clenching harder.
He wasn’t your father.
Wasn’t the kind of man who’d take advantage of your vulnerability
He was your husband.
He'd promised himself he'd protect you even from himself and he meant it.
“Be careful.” he said deeply.
He stepped to the side, giving you space to pass, his posture rigid.
His eyes followed you briefly—a flicker of guilt and maybe longing passing through them before he turned his gaze to the floor, giving you the privacy you so clearly needed.
You nodded again.
Exhaling, you hurried past him, your bare feet moving quickly towards the guest room.
The door clicked shut behind you and you leaned against it, heart pounding.
Your mind racing with his touch, his voice and his restraint.
It also sparked the memories of the wedding when he kissed you.
Barely a kiss, just a peck… but so respectful.
As if he knew you weren’t ready.
He hadn’t looked at you the way you’d feared, he hadn’t leered or made you feel like an object.
Since the wedding night, not once did he ever force you or touch you without consent.
Your thoughts were all over the place.
jungkook hadn’t.
He respected you and kept his eyes on your face. It didn’t fit the image of the cold, controlling man you’d convinced yourself he was.
You hated how he made you feel.
Hated him.
You tried to process what happened, your body reacting on its own and you felt a faint throb between your legs that you tried to conceal by pressing your thighs together.
Though it only worsened it.
You shuddered, you’ve never felt such feelings before and you didn’t wanna dwell on them so you went to change your clothes.
Hoping it would help to outrun your thoughts.
The way you bumped into him in the hallway had shifted something.
However small.
And you weren’t ready to face what it meant.
jungkook still stood in the hallway for a moment longer, heart racing with the unfamiliar heat in his veins.
Seeing you wet and flushed had tested his control.
He'd wanted to pull you closer to feel the warm wetness of your skin under his hands and to erase the fear in your eyes with his touch.
But he hadn’t.
Because he wanted to be the man you needed him to be.
The effort had left him shaken, body tensed as he felt his cock harden under his pants and let out a low growl.
Adjusting himself.
Because it's been forever since a woman made him react.
He turned, heading toward the staircase.
He needed to get to the office and needed the distraction of work.
Anything to keep the image of you off his mind.
۶ৎ
That day late at midnight
You couldn’t sleep.
Thunder rumbled so hard it shook the windows, sending tremors through you.
It was raining heavily.
You sat huddled on the bed, your knees drawn tightly to your chest as if you could make yourself smaller.
Panic clawed at your chest.
Each thunder was a reminder of your childhood, of nights spent hiding in your closet as your father's voice echoed through the house.
The sound triggered memories you'd tried to forget—your mother's cries and the crack of a hand against skin, your own tears as you prayed for it to stop.
Whenever it rained, your father wouldn’t be able to go out and his temper would always be high so he’d yell and beat up your mother.
That’s why you hated rain and blamed the weather for it.
Now alone in this unfamiliar house, married to a man you feared only increased it.
You felt like a child again, small and powerless.
Your hands trembled.
Your breath came in short gasps and a sob broke free uncontrollably.
The panic attack taking hold of you.
You pressed your palms to your ears trying to block out the thunder but it was no use.
The noise was everywhere.
The weight of it all—your forced marriage, your lost dreams and your mother's illness—crushed over you and you wailed harder, body shaking.
You covered your mouth trying to not let any noises out, not wanting jungkook to hear.
You felt so alone.
You couldn’t do this anymore.
A small knock on the door cut through your sobs, startling you as your body tensed, staring at the closed door.
It was jungkook—you were sure of it.
No one was home except him now.
The thought made your panic spike, thinking of his dark eyes and anger from being disturbed by your pathetic cries.
What if he found your crying annoying and was angry?
What if he thought you were weak and a burden?
And throws you out of the house in this weather?
You tried to swallow your sobs to pull yourself together but the thunder crashed again and you flinched, a whimper escaping your lips.
“y/n?”
jungkook's voice came through the door, concerned.
It wasn’t the cold, commanding tone you’d expected, the one that he’d used when he’d ordered you to eat.
“Are you okay?”
You wiped at your face and tried to steady your voice.
“I’m fine.”
But the words came out shaky, barely audible.
Another thunder shook the house and you gasped loudly.
“I’m sorry I—I didn’t mean to…”
You started speaking as the door creaked open and jungkook stepped inside.
He was dressed casually, which was a rare sight that you haven’t seen—a black t-shirt hugging his muscular chest and sweatpants hanging low on his hips.
His dark hair loose and slightly messy, free from its usual man bun.
His presence was overwhelming even in the dark.
His eyes usually so unreadable, held worry in them as they landed on you curled on the bed, your face glistening with tears.
“Don’t apologize.” he says gently.
He closed the door behind him.
“It’s just a storm. You’re safe here.”
You shook your head, hands clutching your knees tighter, you didn’t want him here and his pity or any of his fakeness.
But you couldn’t bring yourself to tell him to go away.
His expression shifted, dark eyes softening.
He took a step closer then stopped as if aware of how his presence might intimidate you.
“You’re not alone.” he rasps.
“I’m here. I’ll stay if you want me to.”
You hesitated, your fear of him warring with the desperate need for comfort.
He was the last person you wanted to rely on but in that moment with the storm outside and your heart jumping out of your chest, his presence felt like a lifeline.
A tether to something solid.
You swallowed hard.
“Okay.” you sniffled.
jungkook nodded, his movements careful as he pulled the single chair from the corner of the room and set it beside your bed, keeping a distance.
He sat, his posture relaxed but alert, his hands resting on his thighs as he noticed how your panic attack was still there.
“Breathe with me.”
His deep voice almost soothing.
“In and out. Slow. Like this.”
He inhaled deeply, his chest rising and exhaled, his eyes never leaving yours.
You tried to follow, your breaths shaky and fast but his steady gaze kept you going.
Inhale exhale, inhale exhale.
The rain and thunder still went on but it seemed farther away now, his voice overtaking your attention.
“You’re doing good.”
He encouraged you.
“Just keep breathing. The storm will pass.”
You nodded, your hands loosening their grip on your knees.
The panic was still there but less overwhelming with him here.
You didn’t understand why he was doing this.
Why he cared.
He was supposed to be cold, cruel.
But this man sitting quietly in the dim light, eyes soft and voice steady was nothing like the monster you'd imagined.
But you clung to the comfort he offered, too desperate to push it away.
“You’re stronger than you think.”
He said after a moment.
“You’ve been through a lot, y/n. I see it in your eyes, but you're still here, still fighting… that’s not weakness. That’s a strength most people don’t have.”
His words hit you and you stared at him, your eyes wide, tears still clinging to your lashes.
“You don’t know me.” you defended.
“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“I don’t.” he admits.
His eyes not leaving yours
“But I see you. I see how you carry it, how you don’t let it break you. You’re not alone, not tonight.”
“I’m here and I’m not going anywhere until you’re okay.”
You wanted to argue to tell him he was wrong that you were broken and weak.
That you'd been broken for years.
But the sincerity in his voice stopped you.
For the first time you saw him not as the man who’d married you against your will but as someone trying to help.
Someone who saw your pain and didn’t turn away.
The thunder crashed again and you squeaked, grabbing the bedsheets.
“Listen to me, it’s okay.” he coaxes you.
“Just focus on me. The storm can't touch you here, not while I'm here.”
Your breaths evened out, the panic fading slowly. You leaned back against the headboard, body exhausted from crying.
From fighting the fear.
jungkook stayed silent, his eyes watching you carefully not with judgement but with a patience that made your chest ache.
You didn’t understand him.
Didn’t want to.
But in that moment you forgot you hated him, forgot you feared him.
He was just a man sitting there offering you safety when you'd only ever known chaos during storms like this.
Your mother had been the only one to comfort you during rain like this.
Now jungkook was here and it felt both wrong and right.
“Try to rest.” he whispers.
“I’ll stay right here. You don’t have to be afraid.”
You didn’t respond, throat too tight with emotion and you slid down the bed, pulling the blanket over yourself.
The rain was slowing and your eyes grew heavy, tiredness pulling you under.
As you drifted off, you felt safety and a warmth you hadn’t expected.
jungkook's presence lulled you to sleep, your breath evening out, body relaxing for the first time that night.
Maybe the first time ever.
jungkook watched you, his heart squeezing in his chest.
You looked so small.
Your face streaked with dried tears, lips parted as you slept.
The t-shirt you wore loose and slightly oversized hugged your curves in a way that made his nostrils flare, his eyes catching the outline of your body before he forced himself to look away.
He got flashbacks from the morning when you crashed into him and everything was taking a toll on him, hands tightening on his thighs.
You were beautiful, heartbreakingly so.
He noticed the faint outline of your nipples through the fabric, hard and pebbled and his body reacted despite his efforts to stay in control.
He turned his gaze to the floor, he wouldn’t let himself think of you that way, not when you were so vulnerable.
Cursing himself for the thoughts he couldn’t stop.
As if the universe itself was set on testing his patience today.
He didn’t sleep, his eyes returning to you again and again. You made soft noises in your sleep, small whimpers that broke his heart.
He wanted to reach out to smooth the crease between your brows and erase the frown.
He couldn’t believe that you had let him stay so near you yet so far but at least it was small steps that you were comfortable around him to let him stay.
A small part of him was grateful that you'd let him stay that you'd fallen asleep with him there.
It was a small trust, one he didn’t deserve but he clung to it.
When he heard you crying from his room, he rushed not even thinking twice.
He wanted to pull you in his arms and hold you tight when he saw you shaking so bad, wipe your tears away with his thumbs and whisper words of comfort to you.
Hold you against his chest as if he could protect you from the world.
But he knew that wasn't possible.
Carefully he leaned forward, his fingers brushing a strand of hair from your cheek slowly so as not to wake you.
Your skin was soft and warm.
The contact felt electric.
He pulled back and he suddenly needed a cigarette. He wanted to smoke to distract himself but he didn’t want to disturb you so he didn’t.
For the first time valuing someone else’s comfort that wasn’t his.
He knew you saw him as nothing but a captor.
He'd married you because you made him feel for the first time but now he wondered if he'd made a mistake, if you'd be better off without him.
Because you deserved all the good things in the world.
If he’d known, he told himself, he would’ve helped you, would’ve paid for your mother’s treatment and given you freedom.
Even if it meant not marrying you, even if it meant hurting himself more.
Only if he knew.
Only if he didn’t believe the bastard of your father.
He sat there all night, awake, his body still.
The storm soon stopped, the rain softening but he didn’t move.
He watched you memorizing all your features closely.
He'd prove you everything.
And most importantly.
He'd wait as long as it took to earn your trust, to show you he wasn't what you thought he was.
But for now he'd sit as a guardian for you in the dark.
Watching over you as you slept.
And promising himself that just like this he’ll be watching over you for the rest of his life.
a criminal's obsession with a shy medical student starts a passionate mix of desire and darkness. As their worlds collide, secrets get exposed and possession turns into love. In a world filled with betrayal and the weight of their own pasts, can they find a way to survive together? or will their twisted bond ultimately destroy them both?
pairing — criminal dom!jungkook x student sub!femreader
genre — criminal au, dark romance, forbidden attraction, enemies to lovers, murderer!jungkook, stalker!jungkook, innocent shy!reader, virgin!reader, medical student!reader, violence, stalking and obsession, contrast of worlds, crime, thriller, smut, lots of angst, fluff
warnings/tags — 18+, grief, intense heartbreak and longing, loss of a loved one, abandonment and betrayal, detailed violence, descriptions of physical fights, mentions of blood and injury, obsession and possessiveness, he gets several tattoos for her as a symbol of his love, destroying several things, delusion, self-harm, binge drinking alcohol and smoking as a coping mechanism, isolation, tears and vulnerability, trauma, sexual fantasies, mentions of masturbation (not detailed), sexual longing and desperation, boxing, near death experience
wc — 6.3k
series m. list | main m. list
────୨ৎ────
The morning crept into jungkooks cabin, warm light casting across the bed where he lay, his body heavy with warmth.
His arm reached out, expecting your bare body beside him but his fingers brushed against the other side and only found cold empty space.
The absence of your naked body—soft and pliant along with the scent of your arousal—hit him almost too hard, his heart lurching.
His breath caught sharply as his eyes snapped open, panic in them.
The room still carried your presence along with your scent, but you were gone.
He sat up, chest heaving, the tattoo of your name over his heart seemed to burn.
The silence was too loud, devoid of your soft sleepy hums and your gentle breaths.
His gaze darted frantically, taking in his surroundings—some of your plush toys that had softened his brutal existence were missing from the shelf.
Some of your books the ones you usually read late at night while laying on his chest were no longer there, along with some of your products that were in the nightstand.
“No.” he whispers.
His voice a low rasp trembling with disbelief.
He stumbled from the bed, bare feet hitting the floor.
His hands tore through the room searching for any trace of you.
The drawer where you kept your clothes along with the nighties that he loved so much—those flimsy, sheer ones that clung to your curves—was gone.
One of his hoodies that you wear almost always was gone.
His own despair felt too much.
“Where are you?” he growls.
His voice rose in a plea in the empty air.
Rage erupted very soon as he felt the fire in his veins, forgetting every rational thought in that moment.
He roared, an animalistic sound that shook the cabin's walls.
“No!” he bellowed.
His words came out in a sob that he refused to acknowledge.
He couldn’t control himself.
Anger overtaking him
His hands destroying everything in his path, any pieces of you that you left behind—he grabbed the mug you loved, shattering it against the wall.
The fairy lights he'd strung above the bed because he knew you loved them, their glow holding too many memories of you were ripped down, snapping them.
The brown teddy bear, his latest gift to you that you left behind, only taking his first ever gifted pink bear with you, stared at him with its lifeless eyes as he tore out its stuffing.
He turned to the mirror, his reflection a crazy man—eyes black with fury, hair wild as his sweaty chest heaved.
He smashed his fist right into it.
The glass breaks and shards cut his knuckles as blood dripped onto the floor.
“Why did you leave me?” he screams.
The words tore from his chest in anguish.
He punched the wall again and again.
The pain nothing, a fleeting sting compared to the one in his chest at the knowledge that you'd chosen to leave.
To rip yourself from his world.
His knuckles bled, even more blood pooling on the ground.
His hands were going numb now but he didn’t stop.
Couldn’t stop.
The cabin was a mess, every broken object that belonged to you was torn but they barely dimmed his anger.
Everything was a reminder of you.
Because you were in his very soul.
“Why?”
He roars again.
Sinking to his knees, his bloodied hands grip his hair, pulling until his scalp burned, breaths coming out harshly.
You were his petal, his girl, the only softness in a world that had turned him into a criminal.
You'd cracked open his stone heart and made him feel something for the first time.
And now you'd taken it with you, leaving him empty, bleeding and ruined.
The betrayal of it tightened his chest with every heartbeat and he clawed at his chest as if he could pull out the pain.
His voice broke into a sound of misery and he pressed his forehead to the floor.
His gut churned, a sick uncertainty settling in—you were gone for good, your choice now done and final.
He saw you in his mind still from last night when he had you in his arms when you were his—your eyes wide, body trembling under him as your lips quivered, your pussy clenching around his cock.
Your moans he'd never hear again.
The thought twisting his wound deeper and he screamed once more, voice shattering as he felt his heart breaking into pieces.
He stumbled to his feet, blood dripping, his emotions a mix of rage and hurt.
“I’ll find you, petal. I’ll tear the world apart.”
“You’re mine and I’ll never let you go.”
He swore, voice venomous.
The promise would forever bind him to you and he stepped outside, bloodied fists clenched, his need would be there until he had you back.
Or until it consumed him entirely.
۶ৎ
His eyes once sharp with predatory focus, were wild now as he moved through the city, darting to every corner searching for a trace of you.
He reached your apartment.
He used the key and stepped inside.
The air hits him first—your warm floral scent that had grounded him once was gone, replaced by abandonment.
His heart ached, it seemed as if you'd taken his soul with you.
The couch where you'd once curled up with a book, while he watched you read, feeling peace in doing that was empty and then when he moved to the bedroom, he almost broke.
It was filled with too many memories spent together, with the ones when their relationship was just building, the days when he'd stalk you.
The day he made you his in that very bed, took your virginity.
Became the first man to touch you.
He growled.
“Where the fuck are you?!”
He grabbed the small table by your bed in haste where you'd kept your journals and hurled it against the wall.
The lamp followed next, its glass shattering.
He sank on the bed, his hand shaking as he lit a cigarette, inhaling the smoke, his hand still dripping with blood that he didn’t bother to check on.
“Please… I need you.” he whispered.
The word was foreign to a man who'd never begged for anything.
“You don’t get to leave me.”
His face hardened, he didn’t want to waste a single second before he began his hunt and he knew the city well—anything could be a potential clue.
Each face a suspect.
He called every contact.
“Find her.”
He snarled into the phone, his grip so tight the device creaked.
“I don’t care who you have to kill. Find her or you're dead.”
The man on the other end stammered, promising things but jungkook hung up, his patience barely there.
He stormed to find every lowlife that he thought knew something, his knife pressed to throats, eyes blazing with anger.
“Where is she?” he rasps.
“Speak or I’ll fucking kill you.”
But no one knew.
No one had seen you and it felt like slowly as time went by, you were slipping through his fingers even more.
His fists were in constant use, breaking noses by punching them, the sound of the crunch of bones a satisfaction to him.
He pinned a man to the wall, choking him enough to turn his face purple.
“You know something.” he hissed lowly.
His cigarette smoke blowing into the mans face.
“You’ve seen her or something. Tell me.”
The man choked as he shook his head and jungkook's knife plunged into his stomach, a scream tearing from his throat.
“Nothing?”
jungkook spat, twisting the knife deeper.
“Then you’re useless.”
He left the man slumped alive but broken.
The nights turned into days.
He stood on a rooftop looking down at the city below, its lights not giving away any places where you could be.
He lit another cigarette, body trembling from barely eating or drinking these past few days.
He was having mixed feelings—anger at you for leaving him, for breaking him and at himself for letting you become his weakness.
All his life he'd been betrayed, but this one hurt him so much it felt like he was bleeding every day.
He just wanted to desperately see you, touch you and hear your voice.
Hearing those sweet giggles would be enough to light up his day.
He was going crazy with all his assumptions that you were gone forever, that his gut was right and nothing could bring you back.
That you left him.
Just like everyone in his life.
“I’ll find you.” he murmurs.
He promised, eyes burning with tears he refused to shed.
“And when I do, you’ll never leave me again.”
He turned into the night after that, his heart shattering, thinking that he was just chasing a ghost that he will never get.
۶ৎ
A week had passed since you'd vanished, each day cutting into him deeper.
He was no longer a man.
But a beast.
Full of rage and torment.
jungkook's hands were raw, the skin split and oozing from countless punches and they throbbed with every clench of his fists, which he barely registered.
He smoked incessantly.
Each drag burned his throat but it did nothing to fill the void or the empty place in his heart where you once and forever will reside.
Your hair tie, a black one with a small pink bow was around his wrist, its delicate texture helping him.
Anchoring him in order to find you along with the ones that were in his apartment.
He'd sometimes run his calloused fingers over it—the faint scent of your shampoo still clinging to it enough to keep him grounded.
He moved constantly, his eyes intense, jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached.
In every corner, resided the screams of men who knew nothing of you and were killed by him or his knife.
Each cut a question, each scream an answer he didn’t want.
One night he was in a bar drinking away desperately that’s when he saw a man that he didn’t even know, but he had lost his mind.
Nothing made sense other than finding you.
Getting you back.
jungkook cornered him, pinning him to the wall.
He growled, his breath smelling of the alcohol he'd been drinking, eyes burning with a madness that even made the man tremble.
“Speak.”
The man sobbed, voice a whine for mercy.
“I don’t know! I swear!”
jungkook laughed, the sound hollow and crushed his head against the wall hard enough to crack it.
“Wrong answer.” jungkook scoffs.
The blood splattered all over the wall and jungkook in the process but it felt like a fleeting comfort against his anger.
His kills were not for pleasure but for survival, each death an attempt to fill the space you'd left.
He alone would take a group of three men, their brave facade crumbling under his gaze.
“You took her.”
He accused, voice dripping with anger.
They denied it, their voice trembling but it was already gone under jungkook's fists and knives.
The metallic scent of blood always there.
Like it was his own smell now.
“Petal…” he breathes.
His muscles taut, heart pounding with ache. He could barely sleep, sometimes taking sleeping pills, hoping that once he slept his mind would erase your thoughts.
But even dreams were haunted by you—your soft smile, the way your pussy clenched around his fingers, his cock like you were made for him.
He'd wake up with a hard on, his chest tight and sometimes he'd scream.
“Why did you leave me?”
He barely felt alive anymore.
He couldn’t do this, couldn’t live without you.
“Come back to me, baby. I’m nothing without you.”
He shook as he fisted one of your dresses in his hands that you didn’t take with you.
He'd shut all his windows and doors, hoping that your smell wouldn’t leave his place, obsessively trying to keep all parts of you inside.
He knew he was going crazy.
He was a monster, but without you he was a monster without cause.
His rage would soon devour him whole, leaving nothing behind.
Because no matter how much he killed or shed blood, it offered no answers, no traces of you and with each passing day, his hope was fading.
And his heart blackened further.
۶ৎ
The new city you now lived in was very different, with busy streets.
Your small apartment was in a quiet corner of this unfamiliar world.
As you attempted for a fresh start.
You lived with a roommate and the air inside the apartment carried a faint scent of her perfume, a stark contrast to the cigarettes and musk that you were once used to.
Your roommate was a gentle girl and she was kind, easygoing and most importantly, she respected your privacy.
Never asked questions about the sadness in your eyes and you were grateful, though her warmth only deepened the ache for the man you'd left behind.
You worked part time at a hospital where you assisted doctors with the patients and occasional practice.
The work was grounding.
It was tethering to your dream of becoming a doctor though your studies remained on hold, your textbooks gathering dust on the box you kept under your bed.
Being busy with work drowned out your thoughts—almost.
At lunch you'd sit in the break room, not being able to eat, your eyes distant as you imagined jungkook's dark gaze across from you, his smirk there.
Stalking you, keeping an eye on you just like the old times.
But that’s when the reality hits you hard and you realize that you left everything behind.
The nights were your undoing.
When everything was quiet and your roommates soft snores drifted to you from the other room.
You were alone with your longing and pain.
Your bedsheets tangled from your restless tossing, not being able to sleep.
You'd curl into yourself, clutching jungkooks hoodie that you wore around yourself, his scent now faded from it no matter how much you tried to hold onto it.
You'd bury your face in it, inhaling deeply, only smelling the salt of your own tears and nothing of him.
You missed him with a ferocity that felt like someone was hurting you physically.
The pain unbearable.
You hoped he moved on that he'd returned to his life of no weakness.
But you knew you never would.
jungkook was the only man, the only one who ever saw you, ever made you feel alive and despite everything,
You loved him so much.
You'd lie awake, body trembling with need, your mind replaying every moment with him—the way his calloused fingers traced your skin, the heat of his mouth, the way he claimed you in a way that felt like worship.
You missed his voice, rough and commanding yet gentle for you, calling you sweet nicknames, whispering “petal”
You missed his tattoos, especially the one with your name over his heart, a vow you'd never forget.
Every memory hurt and you'd sob, tears soaking into the fabric, your body shaking.
As you fought the urge to run back to him, to fall into his arms and let his darkness consume you once again.
You couldn’t look at pink roses anymore, avoiding them in flower shops, always reminding you of his gifts, his obsession.
You'd see them sometimes in vases at the hospital and your heart would lurch, eyes burning as you turned away.
You knew you'd never move on.
Never let go.
jungkook was a part of your heart that you'd carry forever.
You loved him in the darkest way, a love that destroyed and you'd live with the pain and longing because it was all you had left of him.
Every night you'd cry, body aching for him, his touch.
Your heart whispering his name.
For a man that can never be yours.
۶ৎ
A month without you had turned him into someone unrecognizable.
A man who'd once held you, claimed you and loved you in his twisted way.
His cabin, once softened by you was now nothing like it.
He was more muscular now, his body sculpted from endless hours of lifting weights, punching bags and fighting, where blood and pain were his only companions.
His hair was longer, rugged and falling into his eyes and his body had scars all over—some fresh and some old—each one from his fights and kills that he had done to forget his pain.
But none could touch the wound in his heart.
His body now also adorned with several new tattoos. On his left arm he got a small rose that showed the beauty of the pain you'd left behind, some thorns he'd gotten around his wrist were a reminder that loving you was misery itself.
On his chest beside the tattoo of your name, a petal unfurled, symbolizing the innocence you'd brought into his world and the way his heart was incomplete without you.
The ink was fresh, the skin still tender and the pain of the needle was a sweet distraction from you.
Each tattoo was a mark that you were still his even if you fled, even if you'd shattered him.
He was just surviving.
Cigarette butts piled up just like his regrets, he'd lie awake at night imagining your body beside him as he watches you sleep.
He fought in illegal rings sometimes.
He tried to not kill after going almost crazy with violence after you left because soon he remembered you'd begged him to stop and that you'd left him for this very reason.
And he didn’t want to lose himself in it once again.
Even though the urge to kill clawed at his insides, he honored your wish.
By getting more tattoos, hoping the pain would distract him and constant hard workouts that left him trembling.
He wanted to be better.
A man who you could love without fear but the effort was a tough task and he tried always but he realized how it's now too late.
You're gone forever.
He kept some of your belongings that he didn’t destroy in a fury, keeping them like his precious belongings.
He once found a single pink rose in your apartment, its petal brittle but intact from one of the nights he'd left them for you and you kept it safely in the drawer of your study desk.
A note you'd written for him—'don't forget to eat jungkook'—was folded in his wallet, the ink smudged from his thumb tracing the words.
Like your handwriting could bring you back.
He'd sit in the dark, the rose in one hand, the note in the other, his eyes burning with unshed tears.
Your memories were a torment and they were so vivid in his eyes. He saw you in your pretty dresses and skirts that you'd wear, the fabric clinging to your curves, your full breasts straining, nipples hard.
The curve of your ass a temptation he'd barely resisted.
He remembered you in his hoodies, the fabric swallowing your frame, your shy smile as you tugged at the sleeves, your scent mixing with his.
Your eyes always wide, looking at him with trust and need.
And he hated himself because he took it all away.
He missed your soft and tentative voice calling his name, your gasps when he kissed you and your laughter when he surprised you with a gift.
He craved your touch, your small fingers on his scars, lips kissing them as you made him feel human.
Wanted, loved.
But he was angry, so damn angry at you.
He thought of finding you, locking you in his cabin, chaining you to him and wrecking your cunt until you begged for mercy until you were his forever.
He imagined filling you, getting you pregnant and tying you to him with a child so that you could never leave him.
The twisted fantasy made his cock throb.
The nights when he would fist his cock, thinking of you, his groans loud and broken, chest heaving while his tears fell.
The release he got felt dull, the memories of you burning brighter than the pleasure ever could.
Guilt and longing in his heart.
The fantasies would soon be gone, replaced with the need to be a man you could return to without fear.
He wanted to be gentle, to love you softly, to give you the world without blood.
Without violence.
But the ache of your absence kept dragging him back into the darkness but he tried controlling himself because he promised.
That he'd be worthy even if it killed him.
“I’m trying, petal. I’m trying so fucking hard for you...”
His voice trembled as he closed his eyes, your face the only thing keeping him alive.
He went to places that felt alien to him.
Job interviews were his battle now, his tattoos hidden under his formal clothing, a button up shirt that felt itchy against his scarred skin.
He sat across from hiring managers, his voice low, forcing it into a gentleness.
“I’m reliable,” he’d say.
His jaw tight but his eyes betrayed him—wild, haunted, searching for you in every face.
The scent of the office choked him because he wasn’t used to it at all.
His hands, rough from fights, still injured, fidgeted in his lap, itching to break something to feel the familiar crunch of bone instead of this suffocating normalcy.
One interview for a loading job annoyed him to his limits.
The manager made jungkook want to smash his face against the table.
“Do you have any experience?”
He asked.
“Yeah.”
He mutters, trying to keep the growl at bay.
“I’ve carried heavier things than boxes.”
The man raised an eyebrow in amusement, and jungkook's rage surged so fast that he couldn’t contain it.
He stood up, fisting the man's collar as his smirk faded, a look of horror taking its place.
jungkook grits his teeth, his hands shaking with the urge to twist his neck but he didn’t, instead pushing him off.
He left with his fists aching to hit someone.
Another attempt.
“Reliable?” he laughed bitterly.
“I’d burn this city to find her and you’re asking if I can stock screws?”
He looked in the eye of the man as he leaned forward, his breaths harsh.
“No? then don’t waste my fucking time.”
He kicked the desk along with the man sitting across from him, not caring about it at all and the security guards needed to come to drag him out.
Each attempt of his at normal jobs were failing.
He felt helpless because he couldn’t do it.
It felt like he was failing you.
His diary was a new habit born from a memory of you perched on his couch.
“Writing your feelings helps.”
You said with bright eyes and he smirked, amused by the cliche, his lips curling as he lit a cigarette.
“Sure, petal.”
He'd teased but your words had gotten to him deep now in the lonely nights when his anger and tears soaked the pages.
The diary was worn at the edges from his tight grip and some pages were stained with the alcohol he'd drink.
He wrote everything he had in his heart.
'I fucking hate this. You're gone and I'm breaking petal. I never cried—not when my parents left, not when I starved or almost bled to death. But you—you ruined me. I love you, oh god I love you. I didn't believe in it, I thought it was for the weak people but you made it real. Every day without you, I'm dying baby. I'm trying to be better, to be the man you'd want but it's hard. I want to kill to break but I don’t because you asked me not to. I see you everywhere. I'd crawl on my knees, beg and bleed for you—anything to have you back. You’re my everything and I’m nothing without you…'
'Gave another interview today baby, and another failure. They don’t get it like you do. They talk about schedules and obedience like any of it matters when you're not here. I wanted to smash their faces and make them feel this pain but I walked away. For you. I have your hairband around my wrist. I touch it when I want to break. It smells like you or maybe I'm imagining it but it's all I have. I love you so much it hurts… I'd trade my life for one more day with you, one more night to hold you. I'm sorry I scared you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t enough and couldn’t be the man you wanted. I’m sorry I was so fucking selfish to my sweet girl.'
'Saw a man today buying his girlfriend roses, pink like the ones you loved and I broke. I can't look at them without seeing you, your small hands holding them, your cheeks pink when I left them for you. I'm trying to be good petal, I promise but it's killing me. I haven’t killed because you wanted me to. But the urge is there always and I fight it for you. I'd live for you and give you every damn thing you want. Just come back.. please.. please'
Writing helped him even for a bit, and he'd clutch the diary, tears falling.
“I love you, petal.”
He lets out a shaky exhale, the words unreal to him but true—a confession he'd never spoken until you.
“You changed me, you made me feel it but now I’ve lost you.”
He'd scream into the night, drunk after drinking nonstop.
“I love you! do you hear me? I fucking love you!” he screams.
His words reduced to a broken cry.
The words felt like they belonged to you, like you were meant to hear them and he clung to the hope that somewhere you felt them too.
He kept your incomplete bucket list, some of them completed by him when you were still his.
He completed it obsessively now, buying rare books, the unique snacks you’ve wanted but couldn’t afford to buy and some dresses you wanted.
He stored them in his cabin having joy in the delusion that you'd return, that you'd walk through the door, your happy giggles filling the silence.
“It’s for you my baby.”
He'd murmur, arranging the items on the shelf, his fingers lingering.
“All of it. I’ll keep it safe until you’re back.”
He'd fall to his knees, his head bowed.
He wasn’t a man who was scared of anything, not even death.
But he's terrified of living without you.
His love was madness.
He poured it into every act, every word and every breath of his.
He was a monster, a criminal but for you he will be anything—a gentleman, a lover.
Yet he was failing every day.
۶ৎ
The air was filled with the smell of sweat and blood, clinging to jungkooks skin as he stood in the underground boxing ring.
The arena was dark yet full of chaos from the audience, their shouts a chant.
jungkook's upper body was bare and sweaty, his knuckles wrapped in blood stained tape and his hair falling messily over his eyes.
Matted with sweat and the weight of a month without you.
More than a month.
More than thirty days of agony.
He was unrecognizable with muscles, new tattoos and from smoking all day, not caring about his health, his fists bruised from punching walls, bags and anything that could absorb his rage.
Without killing.
The offer to fight had come like a lifeline, a chance to get his pain out into something useful.
The payment would be good enough to complete more of your bucket list—everything you ever dreamed of or thought of.
None of it was for him, every cent was a prayer for your return, a way to keep you alive in his world.
Even though he was getting more delusional as days passed by.
He'd agreed without hesitation, itching for violence, the fight was a chance to prove he could still feel something other than the ache of your absence.
His opponent was a hulk, his face a map of scars, eyes cold.
The bell rang, signaling the start of the fight.
jungkook moved with ease, his fists a blur, each punch releasing the fury that had consumed him since you left.
The crowd roared but he heard nothing and saw nothing.
His opponent suddenly landed a sharp blow to his jaw and blood filled jungkooks mouth but he didn’t even flinch.
He welcomed the pain, let it ground him and let it remind him that he was still alive and fighting.
“Get up, you bastard!” the opponent snarled.
As he circled jungkook, his fists raised.
“Or are you too busy crying over that little bitch you lost?”
jungkook's vision went red, a primal rage surging through him.
He lunged, his fist connecting with the mans nose. Blood sprayed as the crowd cheered louder but jungkook's mind was elsewhere.
This man had the audacity to talk about you.
He wanted to kill him.
No.
Torture him to death.
“Don’t you fucking talk about her.” he growls.
“You don’t even get to say her name!”
The fight was brutal.
jungkook's muscles strained, his breaths coming out in ragged gasps.
He was winning, his skill unmatched to the man and his opponent was staggering under the force of his punches.
But then suddenly it hit him—a wave of despair so quick that it stole his breath.
You were gone, truly gone.
No amount of blood, no amount of pain would bring you back, no matter how many fights he won.
You deserved better—a gentle man, a kind one not a monster who'd cage you like him, who'd ruin you like he ruined his life.
It was a good thing you were gone far away from him.
The thought tightened around his heart and his arms faltered, dropping to his sides.
“Giving up already, huh?” the man sneered.
His fists slammed into jungkook's cheek, the impact almost blurring his vision.
Blood trickled down his face, pooling at his collarbone but jungkook didn’t move, didn’t fight back.
He stood there, his body willingly taking all the hits.
He deserved each of it for failing you, for letting you slip away.
The crowd screamed louder but he only saw you in his mind—his pretty girl, his innocent little petal whom he ruined so badly.
“Baby…” he rasps.
His voice lost in the chaos.
Another punch, this time to his ribs and he staggered, his knees buckling. The hit burned with pain but was distant.
“You’re pathetic.”
The man spat, laughing mockingly.
His fist connecting into jungkook's head, blood spraying everywhere. the world tilting.
jungkook fell down, his body giving up.
He could’ve gotten up, could’ve won but he didn’t want to.
He wanted this and needed to drown in this. His opponent loomed over him, fists nonstop, each blow felt like it was breaking his very bones.
His soul.
Blood pooled beneath him.
His vision blurring, a sick bloody grin curved in his lips, your name a whisper on his lips.
Maybe this is it, he thought.
Maybe he’ll finally be free.
The world was spinning, the crowd's screams distant, his body limp and his chest heaved as he struggled to breathe.
He blacked out.
His last thought of you—your smile, your warmth, the love he'd never believed in but felt with every fiber of his being.
And let it consume him.
His smile lingered even as the darkness claimed him.
Maybe finally he'd find peace.
۶ৎ
You were in the hospital.
Walking through the corridors, the exhaustion of a long shift pressing on your shoulders.
You gripped a clipboard from the last patient's chart and talked with another surgeon.
The day had been relentless and tiring but suddenly a noise interrupted your words with the doctor.
Nurses shouted and a voice barked.
“Male, late twenties, critical. He’s bleeding a lot, pulse barely there!”
Your heart thudded as your stomach knotted with dread.
You didn’t know why but your feet moved before your mind could catch up, running to the scene.
The emergency bay was filled with doctors barking orders and nurses as you pushed through the crowd, your breaths shaky.
And then you saw him.
jungkook.
He lay on the stretcher and all you saw was a broken man covered in blood and injuries.
His chest barely rose, each breath he was taking felt shallow as if the life itself was slipping away.
Blood soaked the sheets beneath him from the gashes on his face, his arms and his torso.
His skin was pale and his face swollen, bruised. His lips split, blood crusting at the corner.
One eye was swollen shut, the other half open, unseeing. The gaze that you'd once lost yourself in was now numb with pain and near death.
His rough, calloused hands that had touched you with tenderness now lay limp.
You froze, your clipboard slipping from your hands and clattering to the floor with a loud thud.
The loud pounding of your heart was the only sound you could hear, the chaos and the shouts of the doctors fading.
A sob made its way up your throat, raw and unstoppable.
Tears spilled down your cheeks as your bottom lip quivered.
Your knees buckled and you gripped the edge of a nearby table, knuckles whitening as you prevented yourself from collapsing.
“jungkook.” you whispered brokenly.
You couldn’t speak yet that one word carried thousands of unsaid words.
Your eyes roamed his body, looking at every wound.
His chest stuttered, the rise and fall almost not there and you choked on a scream.
Your hand flying to your mouth trying to stifle the sound.
He was dying—your jungkook, the man who claimed and loved you in his obsessive way, was slipping away.
And you were just standing watching him unravel.
You stumbled forward, hands reaching for him, not caring about the nurses shouting at you or trying to move you away.
“No, no, no.” you wailed.
Your voice rising, cracking with desperation
“You can’t leave me, jungkook. Not like this please, please!”
You shouted as the nurses glanced at you with pity in their eyes but you didn’t care. You leaned over him, your tears falling onto his chest.
Your fingers hovering over his face, afraid to touch.
Afraid to hurt him more.
His skin was cold, a stark contrast to the warmth he always held and you gasped.
“I’m here.”
Your voice was shaking as you spoke to him, hoping he could hear.
“I’m right here, jungkook. I’m right here.” you whimpered.
You looked at the changes in his body, his new tattoos and how broken he looked.
All because of you.
You hated yourself.
You cried harder, body shaking, your hands finally setting on his arm, careful of his wounds.
“I—I’m so sorry.” you gasped.
Your vision blurring from your tears.
“It’s all my fault. You fought for me and I ran, please… I need you!”
He couldn’t leave you.
This time he'll go where you couldn’t follow.
No no, he couldn’t.
The monitors beeped and you hiccuped, your eyes snapping to the screen. His pulse was fading, weakening and the doctors surged forward, pushing you back, making you thrash as you choked on a sob.
“We’re losing him.” one shouted.
And you screamed a sound so raw it ached your throat, your hands clawing at the air as a nurse held you back, her grip tight.
“No!” you panted.
You chanted his name continuously along with pleas, shouting with every ounce of your being as if you could drag him back.
Your body shook, heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst.
The doctors worked needles piercing his skin but you saw only him—his broken body, his life fading, the man who'd both terrified you and saved you.
You sank to your knees.
Your hands covering your face, your sobs wracking your body.
“I love you.” you whisper like a mantra.
Wanting him to listen, wanting him to hold his strength for the sake of you.
Fight when he wanted to give up the life he lived with you.
“I love you, jungkook. Come back to me!”
The monitors faltered, the beep slowing and you looked up, your breath catching as your heart stopped.
His chest stilled, the line on the screen flattening and you wailed again as the doctors fought, their voices desperate.
You felt numb, your ears ringing.
The room spun, everything blurring as you felt your consciousness slipping.
You clung to the hope that was barely there, that fragile hope that he could hear you, that he'd fight, that he'd live.
For you.
For the love you both nearly lost.
But all you saw was his life disappearing before your eyes.
⮞ Chapter Nine: Like Iron Man
Pairing: Jungkook x Reader
Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only
Word Count: 9.5k+
Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves.
Warnings: Strong Language, Trauma, Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, strong female characters are everywhere, launching into space in a toaster oven with a tarp on it, lots of stakes in this one, horrible safety culture, NOSA should honestly be sued for how botched all of this was, "family" reunion, bomb making, EVERYONE is getting fired, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything...
A/N: Goodbye M6-117.
prev || masterlist || next
The NOSA campus had never seen anything like it.
Even from a kilometer out, the perimeter was packed. People leaned against barricades and each other, huddled in clusters under floodlights bright enough to wash the stars from the sky. The night, if it could still be called that, was drowned in artificial daylight—spotlights from media towers, camera flashes from a thousand news crews, lens-flares from civilian drones hovering in place like mechanical fireflies.
The crowd stretched for blocks. Families with children on their shoulders. Retired engineers in old NOSA polos. College students wrapped in space agency flags. All of them waiting—silent now, or murmuring in low, expectant voices. Most watched the massive Jumbotrons mounted along the walls, where every second of telemetry, every heartbeat from the Starfire, was being broadcast in real time. Or close enough.
Inside the gates, the chaos was no less intense, just better organized. The lawns around the main complex were a grid of satellite trucks, news tents, interview stations, and temporary barricades. It looked like a music festival for a world that had stopped needing music. The buzz of conversation, of nerves and theory and speculation, filled the air like static. You could feel the tension in the soles of your feet.
“Y/L/N RESCUE MISSION”—the headline repeated on every screen. Beneath it, a stream of live feeds: camera angles inside Starfire’s command deck, raw footage of the launch vehicle back on M6-117, and endless shots of mission engineers working inside NOSA’s own nerve center.
It had the atmosphere of a global broadcast event, but the stakes felt heavier than spectacle. There was no backup plan. No one else coming. It was this or nothing.
In the observation gallery above Mission Control, the tone was different—quieter, but no less charged. The room sat high above the main floor, separated by thick soundproof glass and a subtle line of recessed lighting. A few dozen seats were arranged in staggered rows. Most were filled.
Some guests were dignitaries, political envoys, government liaisons. Others were agency veterans or invited family. No one talked much. Every pair of eyes was focused on the wall of screens below.
At the front of the gallery, Yoongi stood at the glass, his hands tucked into his pockets. He hadn’t spoken in nearly fifteen minutes. Not since the MAV ignition timer passed the T-60 mark. His reflection in the glass looked calm. It wasn’t.
Beside him, Mateo stood like a coiled spring—arms crossed tightly, one boot tapping silently against the floor. His jaw was tight, eyes fixed on the main feed: a wide-angle shot of the MAV, barely visible in the amber haze of M6-117’s dusk light. The tarp-covered nose fluttered faintly in the breeze. The image looked unreal.
A few steps away, Alice shifted her weight for the tenth time in as many minutes. She couldn’t keep still. Her jacket sleeves were bunched at her wrists, one hand fidgeting with the hem of her cuff.
She stared out over the glass, her voice low. “If something goes wrong... what can Mission Control do?”
Mateo didn’t turn. His eyes stayed locked on the MAV telemetry feed, where the fuel lines were just beginning to pressurize.
“Nothing,” he said. Blunt. Final. “We can’t do anything.”
Alice turned to look at him. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “Twelve light-minutes out. Every command we send, every word we speak, takes twelve minutes to get there. Another twelve to hear the response. The launch sequence is automated. Remote override is already locked. Once she pushes ignition, we’re out of the loop.”
He exhaled, slow and controlled. “The launch takes twelve minutes. We won’t even get confirmation until it’s already over.”
The silence that followed was cold. Not angry. Just still.
Alice looked back at the feed. Her hands had gone still.
“She’s really alone,” she said quietly.
Mateo nodded once. “The loneliest human being in the system.”
She wanted to ask him if this was a good idea. If it should’ve gone differently. But there was no point. The plan wasn’t theoretical anymore. The preparations were over. They had crossed the point of no return days ago.
And it wasn’t just them watching.
Outside, the crowd was still growing. Across the world—cities, schools, military bases, public squares—people gathered around screens. Governments had lifted firewalls. Feeds were open in every major language. There were kids on rooftops in Seoul and nurses watching from break rooms in São Paulo. An entire generation had come of age watching people like Y/N step into the unknown, and now the world held its breath to see if she would make it back.
Alice hesitated. Then asked, quietly, “Are we sure we want to be broadcasting this? If something goes wrong—”
Mateo finally turned. His eyes met hers—sharp, dark, and unwavering.
“Yes,” he said.
It wasn’t said for debate. It was said because it was true.
“She signed up for this. We all did. We don’t get to hide it now.”
He looked back down at the floor below, at the engineers, the specialists, the people sweating through every line of code, every telemetry update, every heartbeat.
“She deserves for the world to see what it looks like when someone says yes to an impossible thing. Whether it works or not.”
Alice looked down again, her throat tight.
Then the comms feed crackled to life.
“Fuel pressure green,” Valencia’s voice said, smooth and precise over the open line. “Oxidizer stable. Thermal spread within margins.”
Every head in the room turned toward the console.
Onscreen, the MAV’s internal systems lit up in sequence, lines of green text confirming status. The ship looked small, too small for what it had to do.
Yoongi spoke for the first time.
“Here we go.”
And below them, on the fractured surface of a red world, the countdown continued.
On Taurus 1, the city didn’t sleep.
Not tonight.
From the upper skyrails to the narrow alleys around Old Harbor, people had gathered in thick knots along sidewalks, rooftops, train platforms—anywhere with a clear view of the public display boards. Giant screens mounted at intersections flickered and glowed, their live feeds broadcasting the MAV telemetry like gospel. The air hummed with a low static of voices and distant music, the scent of food stalls clinging to warm air vented from cafes and transport hubs.
No one moved much. Conversations were hushed. The entire city had turned its face toward the sky, or the screens, or both—gathered under the soft yellow light of a hundred thousand advertisements that, for once, had all been silenced.
The mission feed had taken over everything.
Val’s voice cut through the background noise—steady, calm, practiced. A voice people had come to trust not because it was flashy, but because it didn’t flinch.
“Engine alignment confirmed. No deviation. Guidance lock acquired.”
The words echoed out from rooftop speakers, tunnel intercoms, even the handhelds of passersby. In a place usually driven by speed and noise and business, it was the quiet that stood out now. Even the traffic had slowed.
On the north side of the city, at the junction plaza near Station Six, a child perched on their father’s shoulders asked a question no one could quite answer: Is she scared?
The father didn’t respond right away. Just kept his eyes on the screen, jaw clenched, fingers curled tight around the kid’s legs.
Across the sea, thousands of kilometers away, the cold had arrived early in Capital City.
It was well below freezing in Palace Square, and still the crowds came. Blankets wrapped tight around shoulders, gloves shoved into pockets already warmed by heat packs. The vapor of breath rose in small white clouds, shared between strangers standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the towering faces of state buildings and lighted monuments.
No one was talking.
The massive curved screen suspended above the plaza showed a grainy image of the MAV on M6-117—dust curling around its base, canvas shivering at the nose. To anyone unfamiliar, it looked unfinished, even broken. But the people here knew what they were looking at. They knew that stripped-down shell was all that stood between a stranded woman and the vacuum of space.
A flicker of telemetry updated in the corner of the screen.
“Communications five by five,” Val confirmed, her voice broadcast through hidden speakers tucked into the stone architecture. “Telemetry stable. NAV sync clean.”
A ripple went through the crowd. Not a cheer, not yet—but a collective exhale. A small signal that things were still holding together. That the silence from the planet below was expected, not ominous.
Down in the center of the square, an elderly woman gripped her cane tighter. She remembered a time when humanity barely had satellites, let alone interplanetary relays. When communication was limited to voices over radios, not faces on screens. She watched the numbers tick by with quiet reverence, lips moving soundlessly with each update.
In the background, cameras captured everything. News crews stood behind makeshift barricades. Their anchors didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The images told the story better than words could—millions gathered across continents, all facing the same direction, watching the same thing.
This wasn’t politics. This wasn’t entertainment.
This was a moment.
From the outposts on Europa’s ice fields to the orbital towers over Aguerra Prime, from Earth’s equatorial cities to the research hubs in high desert plateaus, the signal threaded its way through cables, satellites, relay drones and fiber. The delay was small, but the wait still felt immense.
And the voice—Val’s voice—was the only thing filling that space.
“Power distribution is stable across all systems… Primary tanks at ninety-eight percent… Environmental seals remain intact.”
The woman had been on countless missions, but her tone never changed. She didn’t hype. She didn’t understate. She just gave the truth, and that was all anyone wanted.
In a small apartment above a grocery stand in southern Calisto City, a woman sat on the floor with her back against a radiator, hands folded under her chin. She wasn’t watching the screen so much as listening—eyes closed, letting the familiar cadence of Val’s voice wrap around her like a blanket.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought: She’s going to make it. She has to.
Because failure didn’t feel like an option anymore. Not here. Not now. Not with the whole world bearing witness.
And even if it was—
Even if it could all go sideways—
People had still come.
They came to see courage. They came to see proof that someone, somewhere, was still willing to take the kind of risk that didn’t come with guarantees. Not for money. Not for glory.
Just because it was right.
Because someone had to try.
The universe held its breath.
Inside the Starfire’s flight deck, Jimin sat motionless in the command chair. His posture was straight, composed, but his fingers betrayed him—curled tight around the edge of the console, knuckles just beginning to pale. The overhead lighting was low, throwing soft shadows across the brushed metal panels and illuminating the subdued glow of the displays. Every screen around him pulsed with movement: vector plots, fuel flow readouts, ascent modeling, thermal stress predictions. The MAV's telemetry scrolled in tight bands of green text.
The air in the flight deck had taken on a different quality—thinner, almost reverent. The kind of silence found in hospitals before surgery or courtrooms just before a verdict. There wasn’t much to say anymore. Nothing to debate. Every variable had been checked. Every contingency rehearsed. Everything now came down to what they could no longer touch.
Jimin exhaled slowly and leaned forward just enough to bring his hands back over the controls. His eyes scanned the readouts again, even though he already knew what they said.
MAV systems nominal. Engine tanks stable. Remote link active. T-minus 2:05 and counting.
Jimin closed his eyes for a single heartbeat.
Just long enough to draw a line between simulation and reality.
This wasn’t training. This wasn’t rehearsal. This was it—the launch. The intercept. The final phase of a mission that had mutated over time into something personal, something unspeakably heavy. It had started with a disaster. A disappearance. The loss of the H-G. And then—somehow, impossibly—not a death.
Jimin opened his eyes. The screens were still there. The MAV’s signal solid. The countdown ticking in blue at the top-right corner of the main panel. He reached out and keyed the comms open, his fingers steady, his voice measured.
“Two minutes, Y/L/N,” he said. “How’re you holding up down there?”
The line crackled softly, the signal traveling across satellites and space, rebounding off relays stationed in orbit over a planet with no name beyond its catalog number.
In the MAV, Y/N sat strapped into a frame of aluminum and bolted steel, wires running overhead in exposed bundles. The EVA suit compressed slightly around her shoulders and chest as she shifted, pressure equalizing. She wasn’t in a cockpit so much as a box—jury-rigged, stripped down, sealed with reinforced tarp and trust. Her gloved hands rested on the straps that held her to the hull. There were no controls in front of her. No windows.
Koah was flying it from orbit.
Her job was to stay alive.
The voice in her ear was clear. Familiar. Unmistakable.
Y/N blinked once, swallowed hard, and let her head tilt slightly back against the padding behind her helmet. Her reply came after a pause. Not because she didn’t have an answer, but because she needed the moment to believe that this wasn’t just a voice in her head.
“It’s good to hear you, Commander,” she said quietly.
Jimin blinked against the burn in his eyes. He didn’t let it take him.
“Likewise, Doc,” he replied. His voice was steady, but not rigid. A softness sat underneath it. Something real. “You ready?”
Y/N’s eyes flicked upward, as if she could see through the canvas dome overhead. She stared at the riveted seams—the makeshift patchwork of layered thermal tarp, epoxy sealant, and internal scaffolding that shouldn’t have worked.
But it had held.
She exhaled slowly. Not out of fear. Just... the weight of it all.
“I’m ready,” she said. “I’m really ready to come home.”
Her voice cracked just a little on home, and she bit it back, jaw clenched. She hadn’t cried since Sol 64. Not really. But hearing his voice—knowing they were up there, waiting—cut through whatever armor she’d built to survive this place.
“Thanks,” she added, quieter now. “For coming to get me.”
Jimin didn’t answer right away. Just watched the readouts, his throat tight.
“You’ve got a hell of a ride ahead of you,” he said finally. “Eleven, maybe twelve G’s. You black out, don’t panic. Nguyen’s got the stick.”
There was a long enough pause on the other end that for a second he thought the signal dropped—until she spoke again, drier now.
“Tell that asshole no barrel rolls.”
He huffed out something like a laugh, short and tight. Even now, she still had that edge to her.
“All right,” he said, fingers moving across the panel in front of him. “Stand by for final call.”
He toggled to internal comms. “CAPCOM.”
“Go,” Val replied. Sharp. Focused. No hesitation.
“Remote command.”
Koah didn’t even look up, just flexed his fingers once and leaned toward the control interface. “Remote is go.”
“Recovery?”
Down in Airlock 2, Hoseok checked his MMU pack again. The power display glowed a steady green. His tether was locked, rigged to a reinforced anchor point. He stared through the small viewport at the empty space beyond.
“Recovery go.”
“Secondary recovery.”
“Go,” Armin said, clipped and sure, one hand already braced against the airlock frame.
Jimin’s eyes returned to the main screen. The MAV sat alone on the dusty plain of M6-117, surrounded by wind-blown tracks and the long shadow of the rising sun. From orbit it looked like a relic—something half-buried, forgotten.
But it was enough.
He keyed the last channel.
“Pilot.”
Static. Then her voice, sharp again. Controlled.
“Go.”
Jimin leaned in and pressed the command sequence.
The ignition protocol loaded in less than a second.
“Remote throttle engaged,” Koah said. His voice was tight now. All business. No jokes.
Jimin sat back, hands laced together in his lap.
“Copy all,” he said, voice low but firm. “Initiate burn in ten.”
There was no final speech. No dramatics. Just numbers and signal strength and the trust they’d placed in each other long before this moment.
The MAV’s engine bell flared on the screen—dull red at first, then blinding white.
Jimin’s voice came again, barely above a whisper.
“Let’s bring French Fry home.”
Across Earth, and far beyond, the world watched.
On Aguerra Prime, crowds packed the city cores and lunar domes, eyes turned to public screens suspended above skyline intersections and carved into rock facades. In New York, traffic came to a crawl as pedestrians spilled into the street, unmoving, faces lit by the blue glow of the feed flickering across Times Square’s massive displays. The buildings around them blinked in time with telemetry overlays.
No one spoke. Even the news anchors had gone quiet.
From orbit to surface, from time zones to colonies, from palaces to tenement rooftops—the entire human footprint held its breath.
And then, her voice.
“See you in a few, Commander.”
It wasn’t loud. Wasn’t triumphant. But it was enough.
Cheers erupted in the streets. Not wild celebration, but something sharper, more reverent. A wave of relief laced with awe. Like witnessing history claw its way forward by sheer will.
Inside Mission Control, Yoongi stood above the floor, hands folded behind his back, shoulders rigid. Through the glass below, the control room thrummed with quiet motion. Dozens of personnel hunched over their stations, focused, motionless, disciplined. No one flinched. This wasn’t the part where anyone could afford to.
Jimin’s voice came over the comms. Measured. Familiar.
“Mission Control, this is Starfire Actual. We are go for launch. Proceeding on schedule. Ten seconds to burn… mark.”
On Starfire’s flight deck, Koah’s hands moved like water over the guidance array. Calm. Precise.
“Main engines start.”
The countdown was a drumbeat. Eight. Seven. Six.
“Mooring clamps released,” Val called, her voice tight but focused. There was no wasted tone. No room for nerves.
“Five seconds, French,” Jimin warned, his voice now only for her. “Hang on.”
Inside the MAV, Y/N’s fingers tightened around the sides of her seat frame—there were no proper handholds. The EVA suit pressed in at every angle. The inner hull rattled under tension. She looked up once, just once, at the canvas patch stretched across what used to be a pressurized nose cone.
It fluttered slightly in the wind.
No going back.
“Four... three... two... one...”
The launch struck like a fist.
The MAV surged upward, a violent lurch that slammed Y/N against the harness with brutal force. Her teeth clenched hard enough to ache. Her vision blurred almost immediately, and the noise—the sound—was nothing like she’d trained for. Not clean. Not linear. It was raw, like metal trying to tear itself apart.
The G-forces built fast, more than her body could manage. Her chest compressed. Her vision narrowed. Her thoughts splintered.
The canvas above her groaned, then tore.
A flap of synthetic material snapped free, yanked away by the pressure difference, and vanished into the sky. Her view opened—to a sliver of black and rising red horizon—before she had time to register it.
And then her world went gray.
“Velocity seven-forty-one meters per second. Altitude thirteen-fifty meters,” Val called out. Her tone was tight now, not from fear, but from sheer control.
“That’s too low,” Jimin snapped. “We’re not gaining fast enough.”
“I know!” Koah shot back, knuckles white on the controls. “It’s underpowered, I’m fighting drag!”
In the MAV, Y/N didn’t hear them. Her consciousness danced at the edge, fraying like thread. Her fingers twitched once. Her heartbeat pounded in her skull, then slowed. Her last clear thought was the sky.
The stars weren’t just stars anymore.
They were clean. Sharp. Unreachable.
She blinked once.
Then everything went dark.
On Starfire’s flight deck, the numbers kept climbing.
“Main shutdown in three... two... one. Shutdown confirmed.”
The cabin trembled faintly as the relay synced. Jimin didn’t speak yet. He waited. He always waited, just in case—just long enough for something to go wrong.
“Back to auto-guidance,” Koah said, almost to himself. “Confirm shutdown complete. Signal holding.”
Jimin leaned over the nav display, eyes locked on the MAV’s marker. “Y/N?” he said, voice low but direct. “Do you read?”
Silence.
Val was already glancing back over her shoulder. She didn’t need to say it.
“She’s probably out,” Hoseok said from Airlock 2. His tone wasn’t casual—it was informed. Clinical. But not detached. “Twelve Gs minimum. That’s enough to knock her unconscious for at least a minute.”
Jimin nodded. It wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t failure. Not yet.
“Copy that,” he said, steadying his voice. “Keep watching her vitals.”
Val’s eyes flicked across the telemetry. “Pings are coming in. Altitude’s stabilizing.”
Jimin leaned in closer.
“What’s the intercept velocity?”
Val hesitated. Then: “Eleven meters per second.”
Jimin didn’t have to ask.
Hoseok’s voice crackled over comms. “I can make that work.”
But before anyone could breathe again, Val went still. Her fingers froze mid-keystroke.
She stared at the newest numbers coming in.
Her voice was thin now. Controlled, but shaken.
“…distance at intercept will be sixty-eight kilometers.”
The words didn’t land immediately.
Then Hoseok’s voice, low and incredulous: “Did you say sixty-eight kilometers?”
Koah turned from his station, the color draining from his face.
“Oh my god.”
Everything went quiet.
Then Jimin snapped into motion.
“Keep it together,” he barked. “Work the problem. Nguyen—do we have any fuel in the MAV?”
“Negative,” Koah replied without delay, already double-checking. “OMS was pulled to cut weight. There’s nothing left.”
Jimin didn’t blink.
He pivoted sharply toward Val, who was already deep in the numbers.
“Then we go to her,” he said. His voice left no room for interpretation. “Talk to me.”
Val’s eyes stayed locked on the data, her fingers flying over the console. She didn’t hesitate.
“Time to intercept: thirty-nine minutes, twelve seconds,” she said.
Jimin nodded once. That was the window. That was the clock now.
He began to pace, just two short steps in either direction, mind moving faster than his body ever could. His gaze jumped to the thrust control parameters. An idea started forming.
“What if we realign the attitude thrusters? Push toward her. Cut the distance manually.”
Koah hesitated. Not because he doubted the idea, but because it came with a cost.
“Depends how much attitude fuel we want left for return navigation,” he said. “Use too much now and we compromise our ability to reorient later.”
Jimin's eyes locked on him. “How much do you need for reentry?”
Koah was already running the mental math, his fingers tapping quick calculations against his thigh.
“Minimum? Twenty percent.”
Jimin turned to Cruz. “Do it. Use seventy-five point five of what’s left.”
Cruz was already on it. Her hands flew over her controls like they were extensions of her own thoughts.
“Burning now.”
Val’s eyes darted across the new values. “Intercept range now zero,” she confirmed. Then a pause, her brow creasing. “But relative velocity is climbing. Forty-two meters per second.”
Jimin didn’t flinch. “Then we have thirty-nine minutes to figure out how to slow down.” He turned to Koah. “Light it up.”
Outside, the attitude thrusters hissed to life. The Starfire tipped, adjusted, and settled into a new trajectory. The maneuver was subtle from within, but its implications were massive.
Inside the MAV, Y/N stirred.
Her eyelids fluttered. Then pain. Her chest throbbed, ribs stabbing with each breath. She shifted and regretted it immediately. The harness had cut into her side during ascent, and now every part of her body screamed.
She opened her eyes. The curved blue-white limb of M6-117 arced beneath her. The stars beyond it were clean, sharp, endless. Her head swam.
The planet looked peaceful. Beautiful, even. But it didn’t matter.
With a wheezing breath, she lifted one gloved hand and extended her middle finger toward the viewport. “Fuck you, M6,” she rasped.
It helped.
Her hand found the comms panel. She keyed the line with fingers that didn’t feel entirely her own.
“MAV to Starfire,” she croaked.
On the flight deck, Jimin straightened. The voice was garbled, barely legible, but it was hers.
“Affirmative, Commander,” came the reply. Dry. Thin. Alive.
Jimin exhaled for the first time in a minute. “What’s your status?”
“Chest hurts. Pretty sure I cracked something.” A pause. “You?”
A smile tugged at the corner of Jimin’s mouth. “We’re making our way to you. Launch didn’t go entirely to plan.”
“No shit,” she muttered. “Canvas blew off halfway through.”
Val confirmed with a nod. “That tracks.”
A beat. Then her voice again, quieter now. “How bad is it, Commander?”
Jimin hesitated. Then: “Intercept range is zero. But relative velocity—forty-two meters per second.”
Silence.
Then, over the comms, Y/N's voice returned. Flat. Dry. Blunt as ever.
"Well. Shit."
On the Starfire's flight deck, the quiet that followed wasn't the stunned kind. It was the focused kind—a collective exhale that reminded them all the window hadn't closed. Not yet.
The faint tapping of keys filled the room, background to the controlled chaos of data flowing faster than thought.
Then: "Commander?"
Jimin turned toward the console. "Go ahead."
Y/N's voice came back steadier now, but laced with something unspoken. A tension undercut by humor, desperation, maybe both.
"If I poke a hole in my EVA glove," she said, tone far too casual, "the escaping air should act like thrust, right?"
Val looked up, startled. "She's joking."
Jimin didn’t respond right away. He waited.
"I mean, I could aim with my arm," Y/N continued, deadpan. "Micro-course correction. Little puffs of Iron Man.”
Jimin let his eyes close for a breath, then reopened them.
"You wouldn't have control. No vector stability. You're gambling with a half-second burn and zero forgiveness."
"All true," Y/N said.
A pause.
Then, delighted: "But I’d get to fly like Iron Man."
Cruz let out a groan. Val visibly resisted the urge to smack something. Koah muttered, "We should've left her on that rock."
Jimin sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. "You're not flying like Iron Man, Y/N."
She didn’t answer right away, but he could hear her smiling.
Despite everything, Jimin laughed—just once, just enough to let the tension crack. Around him, the room eased half a degree. Even Koah glanced up, eyes lighter than a second before.
Then something shifted in Jimin's posture.
His head tilted. His brows drew together, just slightly.
And then he straightened.
"Maybe... it’s not the worst idea."
Koah’s head snapped up. "No. It is. It’s the worst idea ever pitched in this room. And I’ve heard you pitch bad ones."
Jimin ignored him. "Not her part," he clarified quickly, gesturing in the air. "But the concept. Using controlled decompression for thrust."
Val blinked, processing. The room quieted again, this time differently—expectant.
Jimin’s voice sharpened. "Nguyen, get Zimmermann's station up."
Koah didn’t argue this time. He keyed into the data interface. "It's up. What are we running?"
"I need to know what happens if we blow the VAL."
Val froze.
Koah stared.
The air seemed to still.
"You want to open the vehicular airlock?" Koah asked, incredulous.
"It'll kick us forward," Jimin said evenly.
"And maybe shear the nose off the ship in the process," Koah replied. "Not to mention evacuating every molecule of atmosphere we have."
"We seal the bridge and reactor," Jimin said. "The rest goes vacuo. We survive it."
Koah opened his mouth again but stopped, running mental checks. His fingers tapped at speed.
"We still can’t steer it," he said finally. "Same problem. No directional control."
Jimin countered, “We don’t need to steer. The VAL is in the nose. We point the nose at her, then blow it. That’s our push."
Koah stared at the data now pouring in.
"A full breach at the VAL gives us... twenty-nine meters per second in retro."
Val leaned in. Her voice was almost a whisper. "That brings intercept down to thirteen meters per second."
Jimin nodded. "Jung, you hearing this?"
From Airlock 2, Hoseok replied. Calm. Steady. "Loud and clear, Commander."
On the flight deck, tension knotted tight.
Koah shook his head slowly. "How do we open the airlock doors remotely? There's no mechanism. Someone has to be inside."
Jimin didn’t pause. He scanned the room and zeroed in.
"Zimmermann."
Armin's voice came in, clear. "Go ahead."
Jimin keyed his mic. "Take your suit off."
There was a pause. Then, more slowly:
"Say again, Commander?"
"You’re coming back in to make a bomb."
There was static.
Then, from the MAV:
"Did you just say bomb?"
Y/N’s voice, sharper now, carried clear indignation. "You guys are making a bomb without me?"
Back in Airlock 2, Armin's voice came through the comms with the kind of tight restraint that only barely held back the obvious. "Commander... I feel like I should mention that setting off an explosive device on a spacecraft is, objectively, a terrible idea."
No one disagreed. But no one argued, either.
Jimin didn’t flinch. He nodded once, his voice firm. "Copy that. Can you do it?"
There was a pause, a slow exhale, the kind you give before stepping off a ledge. Then:
"Ja. I can."
It wasn’t bravado. It was acceptance. And it was final.
At NOSA Mission Control, chaos erupted.
Consoles lit up. Voices rose over each other. The phrase "breach the VAL" passed from headset to headset like a shockwave.
Jimin's voice cut through the noise like a scalpel. "Houston, be advised: we are initiating a deliberate VAL breach to produce thrust."
Mateo, sitting at his console, stared like he’d misheard. His coffee mug tipped over, unnoticed, a dark smear crawling across the surface.
"Did he just say breach the VAL?"
Nobody answered. They were too busy shouting.
Back on the Starfire, Jimin gave no time for panic to root.
"Jung," he barked, already moving. "Suit stays on. Meet Cruz at Airlock 1. We’ll open the outer hatch. I need you to place the charge on the inner VAL door."
Hoseok responded instantly. "Copy. Moving."
"Once it's placed, crawl back to Airlock 2 via the hull."
"Understood."
Inside the MAV, Y/N gripped a twisted piece of console framing, her knuckles bone-white.
Her voice cracked across the line. "Commander, I can’t let you do this. I’m ready to punch the suit. Let’s go with the Iron Man plan."
"Absolutely not," Jimin said without missing a beat.
She hesitated.
When she spoke again, it was softer. There was a raw edge in her voice that hadn’t been there before.
"Thing is... I want to be the only one in the memorials. Just me. I earned that. You stay alive."
There was a pause. A long one.
Then Jimin came back, cool as ever. "Oh. Well. If you put it like that..."
You could almost hear him looking at the nonexistent camera.
"Hang on, just checking my shoulder patch—yep, still says Commander. So shut up."
Y/N muttered something through the comms.
Jimin raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"
"Smart ass."
"Heard that."
In the forward prep bay, Armin worked fast. His hands were steady, methodical. A beaker clinked as he set it down. He tapped sugar into it like it was a recipe—not an improvised explosive.
He drilled the stopper. Ran wire through. Sealed the threads. His foot tapped a steady rhythm against the deck—nerves or calculation, no one could say.
Val arrived just as he was finishing the setup. She took one look and exhaled sharply.
"Bomb?"
He didn’t even glance up. "Bomb. One kilo of sugar in pure O2 releases over 16 million joules. We don’t need much. This will do."
He poured a controlled stream of liquid oxygen into the beaker. It hissed softly. Precise. Calm.
Val blinked. "That’s... eight times a stick of dynamite."
"Yes," Armin said, still focused. "That’s why I’m using less than half a kilo."
He twisted the wire leads clean, stripped them down, and twisted them to bare copper. Held them up. "Can you run this to a lighting panel?"
Val reached for the leads with a small grin. "You are terrifyingly good at this."
Armin offered the faintest shrug. "We all have hobbies."
Out in the Vehicular Airlock, Hoseok stood in full EVA gear, breathing slow and steady, watching the countdown tick by on his suit HUD. The silence of the chamber was suffocating, broken only by the faint hiss of his oxygen flow. Val crouched beside him at the access panel, hands moving with mechanical precision as she stripped wires and connected the last leads to Armin’s improvised explosive.
There wasn’t room for doubt now. No room for nerves.
"Make sure you're not still here when it goes off," Val said, voice level but tense. Her tone had an edge of affection wrapped in warning. She didn’t look up from the panel as she spoke, but her eyes flicked briefly toward the timer. "If you’re still inside when this blows, I swear I’ll haunt your ass."
Hoseok nodded once, accepting the charge she handed him with both hands. He double-checked the wiring, verifying it by feel and muscle memory more than sight. Then he turned to go.
Val reached out, gripping his arm through the suit. Their eyes met through the visor. For a beat, everything else faded.
Then she leaned in and tapped her lips gently against his helmet.
"Be careful," she said. Her voice was low, almost tender. "And don’t tell anyone I did that."
A small smile ghosted across Hoseok's face. "Not a word."
The inner hatch sealed behind him with a hiss. Val exhaled slowly and turned back to her console, her expression shifting into one of sheer focus.
Hoseok made his way along the hull, hands gripping the external rails with measured certainty. Every move was deliberate. The ship groaned beneath him, metal protesting the torque of its slight realignment, but his breathing stayed even. The VAL door came into view. A dark line of reinforced seams. Waiting.
He anchored himself with one tether and affixed the device to the frame, checking each contact. No errors. No drift.
"Bomb is set," he said calmly into the comm. "Returning to Airlock 2."
Inside the flight deck, the tension wound tighter. Koah's voice came through with urgency. "Running updated intercept numbers. Even with ideal thrust vector, we’re still wide."
Val answered. "Two hundred sixty meters. She’ll miss the docking field completely."
Jimin didn’t curse. He just turned and walked. No explanation, no hesitation.
"Commander?" Koah called after him.
But Jimin was already out the hatch.
By the time he reached Airlock 2, Hoseok was halfway out of his MMU. Jimin was already sealing his own helmet.
"Intercept's out of reach," Jimin said, voice clipped. "I’m going untethered."
Hoseok froze. "Sir, let me go. I’m already out. I can do it."
"I know you can," Jimin replied, voice sharp. "But I’m not risking you. That’s an order."
Hoseok met his eyes, jaw set. There was no convincing him. Just acceptance.
"Understood."
Jimin tapped his comm. "Cruz, countdown to detonation?"
Val’s voice was taut. "Fifteen seconds."
Jimin stepped into position at the outer hatch.
"We do love a dramatic exit," he murmured.
Inside the cockpit, Armin pulled his harness tight. Koah was already strapped in, eyes darting between velocity plots and range estimates. His knuckles were white against the control board.
Val monitored the panel. Her voice rang out like a steady drumbeat.
"Ten seconds."
Koah muttered to himself. "Everyone hates rockets until they’re out of options."
"Five. Four. Three."
Jimin, floating at the threshold, gave the hull one last look.
"Brace."
"Two. One. Activating Panel 41."
A deep, muffled thud rolled through the Starfire like distant thunder. Not sound exactly—there was no air in space to carry it—but the force made itself known. The hull shuddered, groaned. Lights flickered. Loose gear trembled in its racks.
Then came the real shock.
The VAL blew.
A controlled detonation, precise and brutal, sheared the airlock open and instantly vented thousands of cubic meters of atmosphere into vacuum. The entire ship jerked backward with the force of it, like a train car hit from behind. A deep vibration passed through the frame, through the floor, through every rib and brace and bolt. It knocked Koah’s stylus clean out of his hand. Armin’s chair jolted sideways before his harness caught him. Val clenched her jaw and rode it out, eyes glued to the numbers spilling down her screen.
“Bridge seal’s holding,” she confirmed tightly, voice clipped. “Pressure integrity green. No hull breaches on aft or secondary decks.”
“Damage?” Jimin’s voice came through the comms, taut but level.
Val didn’t glance up. “Don’t care. Not yet. Relative velocity?”
A beat passed as telemetry recalculated.
“...Twelve meters per second.”
Jimin didn’t answer right away. Somewhere down in Airlock 2, recovering from the blast wave, he steadied himself, got his bearings. Then his voice came again.
“Copy.”
He knew what that meant. Twelve meters per second wasn’t survivable. Not for a drifting MAV capsule with no maneuvering thrusters, no OMS, no way to brake. Not for a rescue mission balanced this delicately on the knife’s edge.
There was no choice.
He locked his boots to the airlock grid, checked his line, and shoved off.
And just like that, Commander Jimin of the NOSA Starfire was flying.
He drifted into space with the practiced control of a man who had trained for this, but never expected to actually do it. The blackness opened in front of him—huge, endless, and filled with nothing but stars and one tumbling, half-functional MAV pod moving just a little too fast to catch.
His target.
“Three-twelve meters?!” Y/N’s voice came sharp and raw through the comms, her voice rising in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You guys have got to stop measuring these distances in football fields. I’m not an orbital wide receiver!”
Jimin grimaced behind his visor. “Visual on MAV. Frenchie, you’re still out of reach. I’m closing, but... I’m not going to make it in time.”
A pause.
Inside the MAV, Y/N’s eyes locked on the Commander’s approaching form—still too distant. Still too slow. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears, feel the raw ache in her chest from the G-force. Her ribs throbbed. Her vision swam. But somewhere under the pain, she knew what she had to do.
Her voice came low but clear. “Commander.”
“I see you,” Jimin answered, urgency seeping into his tone now. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Too late.
Y/N unstrapped the harness.
Her fingers found the jagged shard of paneling she’d kept since the cabin decompression—sharp enough to pierce composite. Her breath caught. This was the part no one had trained her for.
She took one last breath.
And stabbed her suit.
The hiss was immediate. A sharp, explosive burst of air ripped out of the tiny hole near her forearm. It didn’t tear her apart, didn’t rip the arm off like a cartoon. But it shoved her—hard. She rocketed forward, air gushing past her helmet in a screaming roar. The force pressed her back in the suit like a punch to the chest. Her limbs trembled.
But she was moving.
“Jesus Christ, Frenchie!” Val’s voice snapped through the channel.
“I said I got this!” Y/N barked back. She twisted her wrist, angling the suit, nudging her path toward Jimin.
The gap narrowed.
Inside the flight deck, Val’s hands moved in a blur, feeding telemetry to both of them. “Relative closing velocity… 5.4 meters per second. Declining. Twenty-eight meters to contact.”
Jimin adjusted his MMU, one burst at a time, smooth and controlled. His pulse hammered in his throat. His breathing slowed to stay focused.
“Five meters per second,” Val updated. “Twenty meters.”
“Adjusting…” Jimin’s voice barely registered above a whisper.
Koah leaned over the console, white-knuckled, tracking their positions in real time. “C’mon…”
“Four-point-three,” Val called. “Four-point-oh. Distance: fifteen.”
Below them, the planet turned slowly. Its burnished red hue cast long reflections on their EVA suits, the light catching on every scuff, every scar.
“Eight meters,” Jimin’s voice crackled through the comms, low and calm, but clipped at the edges with strain.
He reached out, fingers extended through the thick press of his glove, closing the gap between them one meter at a time.
“Six,” he said.
Y/N blinked hard behind her visor. Her eyes stung—part windburn, part tears, part adrenaline tearing through her like a lightning strike that wouldn’t end. She was trembling, though whether it was from cold or exhaustion or raw emotion, she couldn’t tell.
“Four meters.”
The world seemed to hold its breath.
“Contact,” she murmured, the word barely audible.
Their hands met in the vacuum.
His glove locked around hers, firm and unyielding. The jolt spun them slightly off-axis. They drifted together, a slow tumble in the dark. Jimin adjusted with practiced precision, a single controlled burst from his MMU. The movement steadied them—brought them face to face, visor to visor, until their helmets bumped softly.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
She didn’t answer right away. Couldn’t. The relief hit her like decompression—sudden, overwhelming, silent. Her heart pounded so loud she was sure it was leaking into the comms. And when she looked at him—really looked—her breath caught.
Jimin. Real. Alive. Close enough to touch. The first human face she’d seen in what felt like a lifetime. His presence shattered the isolation that had wrapped itself around her bones. For a long moment, she just stared at him, eyes wide, heart aching.
Then, laughter bubbled out of her—ragged, broken, but real. A laugh of disbelief. Of survival. Of something like joy.
“You were right,” she said, her voice cracking. “About not working for Marshall.”
Jimin’s brow lifted in surprise. “Oh yeah?”
“Guy had terrible taste in music.”
His laugh—quiet and genuine—filtered through the comms. That soft, human sound broke something in her and mended it at the same time.
“I told you,” he said, grinning. “No one should be allowed to play yacht rock during critical ops.”
Their boots connected, magnetically latching to stabilize. He was still holding her hand, and she didn’t let go.
At Mission Control, the moment contact was confirmed, silence exploded into chaos. A wave of sound crashed through the control room—a crescendo of cheers, gasps, sobs. Years of calculations, failures, and sleepless nights had built to this single, miraculous connection. And now, it had happened.
People leapt from their chairs. Engineers shouted and hugged, some spinning in circles, others frozen in disbelief. The weight of relief—of impossible odds defied—hit them like gravity finally turned back on.
In one corner, a systems analyst wept openly, his face in his hands. Beside him, a propulsion tech laughed so hard she doubled over. All around them, joy unfolded like a chain reaction, uncontained and raw.
From the overhead speakers, Jimin’s voice rang clear, calm despite everything:
“I got her.”
And that was it. The phrase that set the world ablaze.
Across the globe, the news spread like solar flare.
In cafés and living rooms and subway stations, screens lit up with the headline: Y/N Rescued. Starfire Mission: Success.
On Earth, people poured into the streets. Flags waved. Strangers embraced. Horns blared in traffic and fireworks erupted in cities that hadn’t planned any celebration, but lit the skies anyway.
In the heart of Capital City on Aguerran Prime, the response was seismic. Giant screens lit up skyscrapers, projecting the image of two astronauts suspended against the cosmos. The crowd erupted. Music blared from rooftops. It was New Year’s, the Olympics, and a national holiday rolled into one—but better. This wasn’t just a celebration of survival. It was proof that the universe, in all its vast indifference, had blinked—just long enough for them to pull off a miracle.
On Taurus 1, cheers echoed through stone corridors older than Earth itself. In a quiet square in an old district, an elderly man who had once worked on early EVA suits cried openly as the footage played. A group of children surrounded him, pointing at the stars on screen and clapping with wild abandon.
In that moment, the universe felt smaller. Gentler. More connected than it had ever been.
Aboard the Starfire, the airlock sequence initiated with a soft, mechanical hiss.
Inside, the silence returned—but it was not empty. It pulsed with tension.
Jimin guided Y/N through the process step by step, his movements sharp, deliberate. His breathing was shallow now, not from exertion, but from the staggering realization of what they’d just done.
Y/N’s body sagged in his grip. Her limbs moved sluggishly, her face pale behind the helmet. The EVA suit had kept her alive, but it hadn’t protected her from fatigue. Her pulse fluttered at her throat like a trapped bird.
“Jung, prep the med bay,” Jimin called into the comms, his voice clipped but steady. “We’re bringing her in. Everyone else—Airlock Two.”
On the flight deck, Koah, Val, and Armin didn’t wait for the full order to come through. As soon as Jimin’s voice cut across the comm—“She’s in. Inner seal holding.”—they were already moving.
No discussion. No gear. Just instinct.
They took off down the corridor at a dead sprint, boots thudding hard against the metal flooring, echoing through the narrow ship like heartbeats too big for their chests. The corridors blurred past in streaks of cold steel and overhead lighting. Turn, straightaway, turn again. They knew the route by muscle memory, but this time it felt longer—like space itself had stretched the halls.
At the last junction, Val nearly slid into the bulkhead, catching herself with a palm against the wall before pushing off again. Koah was just ahead, eyes locked forward. Armin, quieter than the others but just as fast, matched them stride for stride. No one said anything.
There was nothing left to say until they saw her.
They reached the observation deck seconds later and slammed to a halt in unison, chests heaving, adrenaline crashing hard through their veins. The reinforced glass fogged instantly from their breath, still cooling from the run.
Beyond it, the airlock lit pale blue. The outer door had sealed. And suspended inside, between the void and safety, was Y/N.
Jimin held her upright, one arm braced tight around her torso. Her limbs dangled like a marionette cut from its strings—slack, heavy, unmoving. But her helmet display still flickered. Her vitals were registering. She was breathing.
Val’s hand smacked the glass without thinking—an involuntary, almost desperate gesture—fingers splayed wide as if she could reach through. Her knuckles turned white.
Armin didn’t move. His face had gone hollow, lips parted, a flicker of disbelief tugging at the corner of his mouth. Not joy. Not yet. Just the raw, suspended terror that this might still go sideways.
Koah leaned forward slowly, lowering his head until his forehead touched the glass. He closed his eyes, let out a single, unsteady breath.
No one spoke.
They didn’t have to.
She was here.
The inner airlock door opened with a soft thunk as pressure equalized, followed by the gentle hiss of recirculating air. The lights adjusted.
Y/N’s knees buckled the second the seal completed. Her body gave out with no ceremony, no warning—just a complete surrender to gravity and fatigue. Jimin caught her under the arms and eased her down, kneeling with her as she folded into him.
Her head lolled forward. Face pale, lips dry. Her skin had that faint, paper-thin translucency that came from months of low oxygen and high stress. She looked... hollow. But she was there.
Alive.
The door to the chamber slid open, and the trio spilled in fast, voices colliding with the walls in breathless urgency.
“Y/N—hey—hey, we’ve got you—”
“Jesus, hold her head—”
“Is she conscious?”
They knelt around her, crowding close without hesitation. Their hands moved with focus but reverence—steady but careful. They took the weight of her body like it was something sacred, every movement precise. Koah slipped an arm under her shoulders. Armin supported her back. Val reached for the clasps of her helmet, fingers fumbling before settling into rhythm.
“She’s heavier than she looks,” Armin muttered, not complaining, just surprised. His voice was thick, caught somewhere between awe and grief.
“She’s got months of trauma packed in there,” Val said, her voice tight. “That stuff weighs a ton.”
Y/N stirred.
It was barely more than a twitch—a flutter of her eyelids and the softest, cracked breath—but they all froze.
Then she spoke.
“Hi, guys.”
The words rasped out like sandpaper, rough-edged and barely above a whisper. Her lips curved into the ghost of a smile—lopsided, exhausted, but unmistakably hers.
Koah choked on a laugh that turned almost immediately into a sound dangerously close to a sob. Val looked away quickly, blinking hard. Armin just shook his head like he couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, hey, French Fry,” Val said after a pause, her voice quivering. “Been a while.”
Koah sniffed and offered a crooked grin. “Yeah. What, you get lost?”
Y/N tilted her head slowly, her eyes barely able to stay open. “Just took the scenic route.”
Val managed a weak laugh. “Scenic route through hell.”
“Pretty much.”
Armin, still kneeling, reached to loosen the helmet collar. It gave way with a hiss, and as he eased it off, an invisible wall broke.
The smell hit instantly.
“Oh, damn—” Armin recoiled, covering his face with the crook of his arm. “God, Y/N…”
“Yeah,” Koah coughed, grimacing. “That’s... that’s not human. That’s a whole new element.”
Y/N winced, but even that looked like too much effort. “Didn’t exactly pack perfume,” she said, her voice hoarse but holding steady.
Val waved a hand in front of her nose, her expression torn between disgust and laughter. “Y/N, we love you, but... you smell like dead ambition and despair.”
“That’s fair.” Y/N let her head fall back into Koah’s shoulder. “Been marinating in my own failure for eighteen months.”
For a beat, the chamber filled with the sound of tired, grateful laughter. Not joyous. Not yet. But real.
Then something in her expression changed—just slightly. The edges softened, the humor falling away like ash from a burned-out log.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
They went still again.
Y/N’s eyes glistened. “I shouldn’t have left. Not like that. Not for a contract. Not for... them.”
No jokes this time. No sarcasm. Just silence.
Val leaned in first, slipping her arm around Y/N’s shoulders, pressing her forehead to the side of her helmet.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “You’re here now.”
Koah followed, wrapping an arm around both of them.
Armin didn’t hesitate. He leaned in too, awkward but firm, his hand resting over hers where it trembled in her lap.
They held her like that—clumsy, off-balance, elbows in the wrong places and armor pressing too hard against ribs—but none of it mattered.
She was back.
He crouched low behind the twisted trunk of a wind-battered pine, its bark scarred by years of storms. The sharp scent of crushed needles filled his lungs, grounding him. Around his shoulders hung a makeshift cloak, frayed at the hem and stiff with dirt and sweat. It barely kept the cold out, but it was enough. His beard scratched against the collar as he shifted, eyes locked on the clearing ahead.
Jungkook didn’t move. Not even to breathe. The air was still, and in that stillness, time stretched. He didn’t know how long he’d been tracking the deer—an hour? Maybe more. Up here in the mountains, the days bled into each other, a fog of wind, hunger, and silence. He hadn’t spoken to another person in weeks. Not since crossing the ridgeline from the valley, leaving the last trace of civilization behind.
His hair had grown long, knotted in places from nights spent sleeping with his head against tree trunks or curled in shallow caves. If anyone saw him now—mud-caked, eyes sharp from vigilance and wear—he doubted they’d recognize him as the man he used to be. That boy was long gone, buried beneath layers of calloused muscle and survival instinct.
The deer stepped cautiously into view, its ears twitching, nostrils flaring at the wind. It was young. Slender. Beautiful, even. Part of him hesitated, a quiet flicker of guilt threading through his chest. But hunger spoke louder.
He raised the bow slowly, breath held. His fingers, stiff from the cold, found the worn fletching of the arrow and drew it back until the tension hummed along the string. His eyes narrowed.
Then—release.
The arrow struck with a dull, final thud. The deer jolted, stumbled a few feet, then dropped. The forest held its breath.
Jungkook stood, lowered the bow, and approached carefully. The deer’s chest rose once, then stopped. He knelt beside it, placed a hand on its flank.
“Thank you,” he murmured, almost unconsciously.
He reached for the knife at his side, quick and practiced, and ended what was left of its pain.
Then—he heard it.
Not in the trees. Not behind him. In him.
At first, it was barely more than a breath of wind in his ear. So faint he thought it was the trees whispering, the way they sometimes did when the weather turned.
But then it came again. Clearer.
“Where did you get your eyes?”
He went still, the knife frozen in his grip.
His body tensed. He scanned the woods—but there was no movement, no footprints, no shadows slipping through the branches. Just the quiet hush of pines and the fresh silence of the kill.
Then again—closer this time.
“Where did you get your eyes?”
It wasn’t a voice made of sound. Not really. It didn’t vibrate the air; it vibrated him. Deep in his bones. Deep in the part of his mind that still remembered how to fear things he couldn’t see.
Jungkook staggered back a step, hand instinctively reaching for the blade at his belt.
“Who’s there?” he asked, voice low and raw.
Silence.
“Where did you get your eyes?”
A memory dressed as a voice. He could almost hear the lit of her voice, her scowl, smell her sweat while he was restrained.
His throat tightened. He felt the world stutter.
And then the forest melted.
Suddenly, he wasn’t in the trees. He was back in the flickering fluorescent corridor of Butcher Bay.
The air reeked of sweat and disinfectant, the distant clang of a cell door echoing off concrete walls. He could feel the texture of it under his boots—the grimed, cracked floor, the grit that never left no matter how many times it was mopped. Chains rattled somewhere behind him.
The lights overhead flickered once.
He blinked.
He was standing outside Block 9, back pressed to the cool stone wall, just as he had so many times before. He remembered the voices in the dark, the muttered threats, the laughter with no warmth. He remembered him—the preacher.
Tall. Steady. A flicker of something in his eyes that nobody could quite name. He spoke rarely, but when he did, people listened. He wasn’t like the others.
The preacher had told him once, in a whisper beneath the noise: “Eyes are a gift. Use them like you earned them.”
Jungkook had never asked what he meant. He hadn’t dared.
But now, standing in the memory, he understood.
The forest returned in a blink.
Jungkook swayed slightly, the weight of it still pressing against his chest. The deer lay still, the blood soaking into the damp earth beneath it. The wind had shifted—cooler now. Carried the smell of rain and something older. He closed his eyes, drawing in a lungful of pine, trying to clear the scent of stone and steel from his mind.
His hand trembled slightly as he cleaned the blade.
Whatever that voice had been—memory, madness, something else—it had stirred something he’d tried hard to bury. Butcher Bay wasn’t gone. It hadn’t faded. It just waited in the cracks, ready to bleed through.
He slung the deer over his shoulders with a grunt. The weight wasn’t unbearable, but it was more than just meat. It was a reminder. Of hunger. Of survival. Of debts not quite paid.
He turned back toward camp.
Each step forward was a small act of defiance. Against the memories. Against the fear. Against the question that still echoed in the dark corners of his thoughts.
Where did you get your eyes?
He didn’t answer this time.
He just kept walking, boots crunching softly over the forest floor, until the trees swallowed him again—one man beneath the vast canopy, hunted by memories but still, somehow, moving forward.
⮞ Chapter Eight: SOL 320
Pairing: Jungkook x Reader
Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only
Word Count: 17.1k+
Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves.
Warnings: Strong Language, Blood, Trauma, Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, terraforming, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, new characters, body image issues, scars, strong female characters are everywhere, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything...
A/N: Will she make it or not?
prev || masterlist || next
Inside the sealed cocoon of the Speculor, the rest of M6-117 faded to a low hum.
Y/N adjusted the volume dial on the rover’s console with a gloved hand, tuning the half-busted stereo with the care of someone who’d done this ritual a hundred times before. The speakers crackled, fought her for a second, then gave in. David Bowie’s “Starman” poured into the cabin—grainy, warbled around the edges, but intact. The first familiar notes stretched through the air like a warm thread pulling taut.
She leaned back in her seat and let the music fill the empty space around her. It wasn’t loud. Just enough to soften the edges.
Seven months.
That was how long it had been since the mission trajectory changed—since NOSA had quietly shifted from contingency to possibility, and finally, to planning. Seven months since she’d stopped thinking about dying here and started thinking—cautiously, carefully—about leaving.
Now it was close. The actual launch was days away, maybe less, and Y/N was almost too tired to process what that meant. She’d expected emotion, something big and cinematic, but mostly she just felt blank. Not numb. Just emptied out. Worn smooth by repetition.
In that time, she’d spoken with CAPCOM every day—lagged, distorted, half a minute behind real conversation. Still, it was something. The Starfire crew’s updates. Mateo’s cautious optimism. April’s careful questions, always logged, always transcribed. They’d become part of the routine. A strange kind of company.
Inside the Speculor, the air was dry and recycled, the temperature cranked just high enough to keep the frost at bay. Her gloved fingers twisted the volume knob on the console. Static at first, then the music settled into clarity: Starman, again. The same bootleg copy she’d looped more times than she could count. Bowie’s voice filled the cabin, staticky and familiar.
She let her head lean against the side panel for a moment, just listening. The song didn’t feel triumphant anymore—not like it had that first week after contact—but it still felt right. Like a rhythm she could breathe to. Something just hers.
Beyond the windshield, M6-117 spread out in all directions. A quiet, unforgiving ocean of red dust and fractured rock. Nothing moved except wind and memory. No birds, no trees, no clouds. Just light—too much of it—poured from twin suns that hovered low on the horizon like sullen watchmen. The shadows they cast were long and doubled, stretching at awkward angles.
The land looked ancient. Like it had been waiting a long time to be seen.
The Speculor groaned under her as it crawled up a slope she knew by heart. She’d rerouted this leg of the journey after last week’s storm took out the northern ridge. Her notes were accurate. They always were now. She didn’t have room for error.
The rover’s suspension—rigged together with leftover couplings and patched metal—complained as it dipped into a shallow trough. She adjusted the throttle gently. The vibrations traveled through the seat and into her spine.
“There’s a starman… waiting in the sky…”
She didn’t sing along. Her throat was cracked from the dry air, and her voice didn’t sound like her own anymore. But she tapped her fingers against the throttle in time with the chorus.
Some things became ritual. The song. The route. The moment right before she checked the nav screen, pretending she didn’t already know what it would say.
Battery: nominal. O2: green. Power margins: close, but acceptable.
Everything holding, for now.
The route she followed traced along the eastern lip of Sundermere Basin, skirting the high plateau where thermal anomalies had been pinging weak but persistent signals. She’d flagged it a week ago. Maybe residual power from a buried unit. Maybe nothing. But “maybe” was enough to justify the trip. Any task was better than sitting still, waiting for time to pass.
Because the truth was, after seven months, she’d gotten very good at surviving.
She’d fixed the antenna four times. Rebuilt the filtration unit twice. Repaired the rover’s lateral drive with nothing but a welding arc, spare bolts, and one of her own belt loops. She’d catalogued every sample she could reach. Updated the entire geological substrate map for the quadrant. Even completed two of Oslo’s abandoned mineral tests, down to the data formatting.
She’d done it all mostly to keep her mind from slipping.
Being alone hadn’t turned out to be the worst part. Not exactly. It was quieter than she’d feared, but not in the way people imagined. Not peaceful. There were no clean silences, no meditative stillness. It was crowded in its own way—crowded with memories, with thoughts that looped and snagged and repeated themselves until they lost shape. Some nights, lying on her bunk in the Hab, she’d listen to the wind battering against the canvas wall and pretend it wasn’t real. Pretend she was back in the deep quiet of space, where nothing moved unless you told it to.
She hadn’t cried in months. Not because she didn’t want to. Because crying felt indulgent, like something you did when there was room for it. And she didn’t have that luxury. There was always something to fix, something to check, something to prepare. Emotion was a liability. She couldn’t afford to dissolve—not when she had to be ready to get off this rock the moment the window opened.
And now, finally, they were close.
Close enough that NOSA had started using language she hadn’t heard in over a year—terms like maneuver window and vector drift allowance showing up again in the reports. The tone of the transmissions had shifted, too. Koah’s voice had taken on a subtle urgency. He sounded focused. And hopeful.
That part scared her more than anything.
The rover crested the rise with a long, slow groan. She tightened her grip on the controls, steadying the frame as dust curled up from the tires and blurred the windows. Beyond the glass, a new stretch of Martian terrain unfolded—deep ochre and rusted red, horizon layered with jagged ridgelines that looked like broken bones under the hard light of the twin suns. Shadows stretched in every direction, stark and sharp-edged.
She didn’t speak. Not yet.
In her mind, she’d pictured rescue countless times. She’d let herself imagine the roar of thrusters, a hull breaking through atmosphere like a second sunrise, the sound of someone—anyone—saying her name over comms. Something cinematic. Big. Emotional. Deserved.
Instead, it had come in pieces. Quiet, unremarkable pieces. Data packets. Checklist confirmations. Engineering logs buried in jargon.
And now she was preparing to launch herself into orbit in a vessel that was never meant for a second use. A stripped-down ascent vehicle rebuilt out of scavenged parts and crossed fingers. One shot. That was it. The math didn’t leave room for mistakes. If she missed the intercept by even a second—or came in too hot, or caught the wrong wind shear—it was over. They wouldn’t be able to course correct. She’d drift, and Starfire would keep moving, and it would be no one’s fault.
She could hear that knowledge in the way Koah paused at the end of every transmission. In the way Mateo no longer filled the gaps with empty reassurances.
They knew.
But she also knew this: if it failed—if she didn’t make it—they’d still try to bring her home. She believed that. Her body, her suit, the black box of sensor data she’d logged with religious devotion. They wouldn’t leave her here to vanish under the sand. They’d find a way to retrieve her, even if it took years.
There was something oddly calming about that.
She reached for her water tube and took a long sip, swallowing slowly as her eyes drifted to the sky through the rover’s sloped windshield. The upper atmosphere shimmered faintly, copper-hued and blinding at the edges. Too bright to be beautiful. Too dry to feel real. There was something about it that always looked fake to her—like a badly rendered simulation of sky instead of the real thing.
Somewhere above that sky, Starfire was moving into position.
Somewhere, someone she hadn’t touched in over a year was punching burn times into a nav system and checking the margin for intercept.
She tapped the screen to bring up her next waypoint. A new line of coordinates blinked back at her, hovering like a challenge. This stretch would take her closer to the MAV site. She knew the route by now—every rock, every soft patch of sand that could tangle a wheel or throw her off-course. It wasn’t a road. It wasn’t even a path. Just something she’d made up as she went.
Outside, a dust devil spun briefly to life, danced across the basin, then collapsed into stillness.
She watched it for a long moment, then blinked and let her breath go slow.
“Almost over,” she said. Not a wish. Not a hope. Just a fact.
She adjusted the throttle, checked her oxygen levels, and logged the next coordinates.
And then she drove on, toward the place where everything would either begin again—or end clean.
Far above the scorched horizon of M6-117, past the reach of its sulfur-tinged winds and the shifting red haze that rolled endlessly across its broken terrain, the Iris-2 probe slipped free from its booster with a silence only space could provide.
There was no flare, no echo. Just the faint tremor of separation—a soft pulse through the clamps, a subtle release of inertia. One moment the booster held it; the next, it was drifting on its own, untethered, alive with purpose.
It had taken seven months to reach this moment. Seven months since Y/N’s first garbled transmission managed to claw its way out of the storm-battered surface and into NOSA’s deep-space relay. Seven months of restructured flight plans, emergency committee briefings, late-night simulations, and orbital trajectory scrubs. Seven months of wondering if they were already too late.
But now—now it was real.
Koah Nguyen leaned in over the Starfire’s flight deck interface, his back rigid, shoulders braced like a sprinter in the blocks. The booster telemetry had already zeroed. Now it was just Iris—free, exposed, and on approach. The margin for error was thin. Technically, the docking could’ve been automated. But Koah didn’t trust automation when the numbers were this tight, and when the payload was carrying a woman who hadn’t heard another voice in nearly a year.
His fingers hovered above the haptic interface. Every subtle shift of thruster power, every microdegree of drift correction—it was all on him now.
“Velocity differential .0025,” came Cruz’s voice through comms. “Approach vector within limit.”
“Still too fast,” Koah murmured, mostly to himself.
He nudged the left lateral thruster with a feather-light tap, correcting the probe’s arc. A flick of a button dampened yaw drift. The image feed from the hull camera refreshed, showing Iris-2 gliding in slow, steady increments—like a needle threading an invisible eye.
Behind him, Commander Jimin Park stood at a respectful distance, arms crossed, a silent sentinel. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. This was Koah’s op. But he was there, steady as gravity, watching the same numbers tick past. Ready, if needed.
Inside the airlock prep chamber, silence reigned. No chatter. No alarm bells. Just the deep, consistent hum of ship systems and the soft tap of Koah’s inputs.
“Switching to visual,” Koah said. He pulled the camera feed into full resolution, bringing Iris-2 into clearer focus.
The probe was sleek and small, more skeletal than anything designed for people. Its primary hull shimmered under the binary light of the two suns, panels catching the harsh white-blue glare in sharp angles. It was close now. Too close for hesitation.
Koah swallowed. “Clamp arms deployed.”
Onscreen, the Starfire’s docking arms extended like the limbs of some patient, mechanical insect—open, waiting.
“Approach… good,” Cruz said, breath tight. “Hold your line.”
Koah’s eyes flicked to the distance meter. Ten meters. Seven.
His voice dropped. “Five… three… steady…”
Then, softly: a clack. Followed by a second, heavier thunk as the magnetic locks triggered and the alignment ports sealed.
A tiny green light blinked alive on the deck screen. Docking complete.
For a beat, Koah didn’t move. He stared at the light, at the clean diagnostics flickering to confirm: pressure seals holding. Hull connection stable. No deviation in thermal equilibrium.
Then, finally, he exhaled—and leaned back, dragging a hand across his face.
“…Alright,” he said, voice low but calm. “We’re on.”
Jimin let out a quiet breath of relief, his lips twitching into the first real smile Koah had seen from him all day.
“That was smooth,” he said. “Stupid smooth.”
Koah allowed himself a small smile. “If it wasn’t, I’d never live it down. Not with Bao watching.”
Jimin chuckled. “No pressure.”
Koah didn’t respond right away. He was already leaning into his terminal, posture tight with focus as his eyes moved steadily across the rows of readouts. Internal diagnostics were holding—so far. Docking pressure looked clean. Hull temperatures stable. Battery output nominal.
The Iris-2 probe was more than a delivery system. It was a lifeline. It carried compressed rations—enough for a six-week extension if she rationed aggressively. Oxygen scrubber refills, thermal patch kits, reentry stabilizers for the MAV, a replacement navcore chip for the flight interface. Things no human should’ve had to live without this long.
And buried in the center supply bay, packed deliberately between a vacuum-sealed cluster of electrolyte gel tubes and a bag of freeze-dried vegetables labeled "PASTA—MAYBE" in Val’s handwriting, was something smaller. A note. Handwritten. Folded and secured with a strip of recycled polymer tape.
Koah hadn’t asked what it said.
He hadn’t wanted to know.
It wasn’t cowardice. Not exactly. More like self-preservation. Valencia Cruz had been the most unwavering presence in his life outside of this ship—and one of the most unpredictable. They’d worked together for four years now. Long missions. Endless briefings. Inside jokes and midnight coffee rants and more engineering arguments than he could count.
For most of that time, she’d been engaged to a man who’d never set foot in orbit. That ended months ago. Quietly. Without explanation. And he hadn’t asked. Not because he didn’t want to know. But because when it came to Val, timing was everything—and pushing was how you got shut out. When she was ready, she’d tell him.
And maybe—if they were lucky—he could open her letter in front of her and see what happened next.
“Telemetry check in ninety seconds,” Koah said, eyes flicking to the countdown icon in the corner of the screen. His voice was steady again, pulled back into rhythm.
Jimin was already there. He shifted slightly at his own station, fingers dancing across a field of translucent data. Orbital maps, storm models, launch windows—each one another layer of the puzzle.
“Sundermere’s heating up faster than expected,” he said, not looking away from the screen. “Atmospheric shear’s rising. We’ll be inside the corridor for twenty minutes. Maybe less.”
Koah gave a small nod. “She has to be ready to launch the second we clear.”
Jimin paused. Then said it like it didn’t need to be said. “She will be.”
Koah didn’t answer. Not with words. His gaze moved to the monitor again—one of the external cams feeding a constant image of the probe, now firmly docked beneath the Starfire’s main cargo cradle. It looked small compared to the bulk of the ship. Delicate. Temporary. But there was power in it. And purpose.
And inside, packed with quiet care, was everything that might keep one woman alive long enough to come home.
He tapped through the flight logic menus, making sure the data packets were queued correctly. Command chains, safety interrupts, hardware checks.
They were ready.
She would be ready.
The MAV on the surface had only ever been designed for one ascent. A precise launch, a short burn, and a controlled interception at low orbit. What they were asking it to do now—what Y/N was being asked to pull off with half a crew’s worth of gear, an aging suit, and the worst terrain in NOSA’s catalog—was borderline absurd.
And yet.
She hadn’t quit. Not once. Not in the footage. Not in the comm logs. Not in the whispered scraps of signal that crawled through the storms.
She was still there. Still building. Still thinking five steps ahead. Still surviving.
Koah leaned forward again, hands steady as he keyed in the final approach command.
Inside Airlock 3, the world was stripped down to essentials—light, metal, breath.
Hoseok floated just off the deck, his boots loosely hooked into the restraints, waist tether coiled at his side. The overhead lights cast a hard gleam across his visor, blurring his reflection into a ghost hovering behind the HUD readouts. His EVA suit was snug but familiar, worn in all the right places, and silent now but for the low hiss of life support in his ears.
Just ahead of him, suspended in the docking corridor, the Iris-2 probe waited—sleek, burnished, and utterly still. It hovered inches from the port like it belonged there, though everyone on the ship knew better. This part wasn’t automated. This part relied on human hands.
He exhaled through his nose, steady and slow, eyes narrowing on the alignment grid overlaying his screen. No error margin. No wobble. No alarm tones. A clean approach.
“Five degrees counterclockwise,” Cruz said in his ear. Her voice was flat and even, but Hoseok had worked with her long enough to hear the strain buried under the calm. Not fear—focus. Like she was holding her breath through her teeth.
“Copy,” he replied, reaching for the guide arm. His gloved fingers curled around the control joint with practiced ease.
The movement was subtle. Delicate. A feather’s weight of torque to rotate the probe just a hair to the left. The probe responded with elegant grace, drifting that final fraction into perfect alignment.
A small vent of nitrogen hissed from the attitude jets—barely audible, barely visible—but it was enough.
In the observation alcove just beyond the airlock, Cruz leaned forward against the glass. She didn’t speak. Her fingertips tapped out an unconscious rhythm against the edge of the display—counting maybe, or praying. Her eyes were locked on the seal point. Her other hand clenched tight around the metal railing in front of her, as though she could muscle the docking into place just by willing it.
They all knew what was riding on this. Iris-2 wasn’t just carrying spare parts and food pouches. It held the only atmospheric sweep array that could scan Sundermere before the stormfront made landfall. If it missed, if they lost sync, the window closed—and so did their shot at recovering Y/N.
Outside, the planet rolled beneath them. M6-117, red and raw, broken by tectonics and stripped bare by wind. The storm was visible from this altitude now—like a bruise spreading across the horizon.
Hoseok leaned into his final adjustment. His wrist flicked, just slightly. Then—
Click.
The probe settled into the collar. The magnetic latches extended from the Starfire’s hull, reached out like fingers, and grabbed hold.
A deeper thud followed—one that vibrated faintly through Hoseok’s suit.
Seal engaged.
Green lights blinked across his HUD in rapid sequence: docking clamps secured, pressure gradient stabilized, power sync initialized.
Still floating, still tethered, Hoseok stayed perfectly still and let the final status pass.
“All green,” he said, voice low. Measured. “We’re locked in.”
For a beat, there was nothing.
Then Val let out a breath like she’d been holding it for hours. Her hand slid from the railing, her shoulders dropping as tension drained out of her in one long wave.
“Thank God,” she whispered. “Nice work, Hobi.”
His mouth twitched in the closest thing to a smile the helmet cam could pick up. “You were a great audience.”
“I was trying not to pass out.”
“Appreciated.”
From down the corridor, someone whistled—a short, sharp note that turned into a wave of claps and shoulder pats from the nearby crew. No whooping. No shouting. Just the kind of shared relief that came from people too tired to celebrate but too proud not to show it.
Even Koah, the most seasoned engineer, let himself breathe.
Val wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her jumpsuit. “We’re officially online. I’ll initiate payload unlock.”
“On your signal,” Hoseok said, already unfastening the tether and reaching for the interior bulkhead grips.
A voice crackled in over comms. Koah, dry and efficient, but with a faint lift at the edge of it.
“Good seal. Get the diagnostics rolling. We’re up against Sundermere’s last pass in six hours. That sweep data needs to be live before then.”
“Understood,” Val answered. “We’re already on it.”
The pressure in the room eased, just a fraction. The tension didn’t vanish—it never did—but it reshaped itself into forward momentum. They had the probe. They had time, if only barely. Now it was just a matter of moving fast enough to make it count.
Hoseok floated back from the hatch and turned his head just enough to see the curve of the planet out the small viewport behind him.
It didn’t look like a place anyone could survive.
But Y/N was still down there, somewhere in that rusted wasteland, defying every expectation.
The suns of M6-117 hung low in the bleached-orange sky, casting long, rust-colored shadows across the desert. The planet didn’t just look lifeless—it felt it. Wind tore across the endless dunes in soundless sheets, carrying with it a fine red dust that settled into every crack, every crevice. It was a world built from silence and scorched stone, unforgiving and unchanging.
But she had changed.
Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor of what was once the main operations hub—now little more than a cracked shell stitched together with thermal blankets, sealant foam, and salvaged wiring. The walls creaked under the strain of too many pressure shifts. Sunlight leaked through patched seams, casting jagged lines of gold across the dust-caked floor. Inside, the air was dry, metallic, and heavy with the scent of old wiring and recycled oxygen.
She adjusted the angle of the camera, then sat back, letting it focus. Her face filled the frame: leaner than it used to be, the softness worn away by hunger, exposure, and time. Her eyes were sharp now—not hard exactly, but watchful. Alert in a way that came from sleeping with one ear open and always knowing how many hours of oxygen she had left. Her hair was wild, hanging in uneven waves to her collarbone, tangled in places where she’d given up trying to tame it.
The corners of her lips twitched up into a crooked smile. “So,” she said, her voice scratchy from days of silence but steady, “I’ve been thinking about space law. You ever hear of the Treaty of New Hope?”
She let the question hang for a moment. Outside, the wind howled against the Hab’s patched outer shell.
“It’s this old international agreement—was supposed to prevent exactly the kind of thing I’m about to do. Basically, no planet or government can lay claim to any celestial body beyond its own solar system unless they’ve got approval from a special council. Sounds bureaucratic as hell, right?” She reached over, picked up a wrench, then set it down with a quiet clink on the table beside her. “And yet, here we are.”
She gestured loosely around the space. “M6-117? Technically, it's unclaimed. That makes it... international waters. A lawless sandbox floating in the middle of nowhere.”
The camera feed jumped to an exterior shot. Her two speculors stood side by side, their once-pristine frames warped and beaten. Speculor One bore the scorched wreckage of Prometheus’s stabilizer fin bolted onto its chassis like some kind of makeshift figurehead. Speculor Two had been transformed into a mobile life-support depot—tubes, solar panels, and crates of salvaged supplies lashed down with webbing, its interior barely holding together.
It looked more like a junkyard on treads than a research vehicle. But it moved. And in a place like this, movement meant survival.
Y/N leaned in closer to the lens. “Technically, NOSA still owns the Hab. Aguerra Prime funds it, insures it, claims jurisdiction over it. But the moment I walk out that airlock?” She pointed over her shoulder. “I’m in the wild. No flag, no oversight. Just me, a couple of Frankensteined rovers, and a whole lot of empty red sand.”
She exhaled slowly, looking off-camera for a moment before glancing back. “And that brings me to today’s little project.”
Her expression shifted—something between excitement and resolve. “There’s a Helion Nexus lander at the edge of Sundermere Basin. It was part of a failed recon drop a few years back. Long story short: it’s still out there. Mostly intact. And I’m going to take it.”
She said it plainly.
“Not borrow it. Not radio in for authorization. I’m going to walk up to it, override the lockout codes, and take control. And technically... that makes me a pirate.”
There was a beat of silence after she said it. The word just hung there, lingering in the dry air of the Hab like a joke no one had laughed at yet.
Pirate.
It sounded ridiculous. Out of place. Like something out of an old holo-serial—leather jackets, glowing blades, dramatic standoffs on the hull of a freighter. She almost laughed at how far from that image she really was.
She exhaled through her nose and let the smallest smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “I always thought space pirates had flashy ships, called each other by code names, maybe carried sidearms they didn’t know how to use,” she muttered, her voice quiet, worn at the edges. “Turns out, all you really need is a wrench, a patched-up suit, and no one left to stop you.”
The Hab groaned as if in reply, the metal frame straining under the pressure difference outside. A gust of wind smacked the outer wall with a dull, thudding resonance. Something metal—a panel, maybe a loose strut—clattered loose in the corridor behind her. It struck the floor with a single, hollow bang and then went still.
She didn’t even blink. Not anymore.
“Y/N Y/L/N,” she said quietly, almost like she was testing the sound of it. “Space pirate.”
Her voice wasn’t proud, not really. There was no grandeur in it—just tired honesty. The title fit, in its own twisted way. No one had granted her authority. No one was watching. Whatever rules had once existed out here had dissolved the moment the resupply missions stopped.
She stared past the camera lens, her gaze drifting toward nothing in particular. Maybe out the small port window, maybe into memory. The expression on her face changed—just slightly. A softening around the mouth, a release of the tension in her brow. The guard she wore like armor seemed to ease, just for a moment.
It had been a long time since she’d let herself feel anything.
She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d smiled like this—really smiled. Maybe it was back when the comms were still up and she’d trade messages with Earth. Maybe it was before the storm fried the signal tower and left her to rebuild the antenna with parts scavenged from broken rovers. Or maybe it was even earlier—before she started counting the days not by dates, but by how many liters of filtered water she had left, how many oxygen canisters she had to seal by hand.
Back then, there had been routines. Schedules. Hope.
Now? Now there was just this strange quiet. And the freedom that came with having absolutely nothing left to lose.
She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, wasn’t quite a sigh. “Honestly,” she said, more to herself than to the camera, “it’s better than a Nobel.”
It was a joke, sort of. She’d once dreamed of those things—awards, recognition, her name in journals and press conferences and history books. It had all felt so important. Necessary. Now, it seemed absurd. What was a prize compared to surviving six months alone on a planet no one was coming back to?
She leaned back slowly, her shoulders brushing against the cold metal of the Hab’s rear wall. Her eyes drifted around the space—at the tangled wires stuffed into ceiling panels, at the insulation duct-taped to the window seams, at the corner where the water recycler had leaked for three days before she managed to reroute the flow with plastic tubing and sheer guesswork.
The Hab looked like hell. Worn down. Held together by nothing more than willpower and the leftover scraps of a better plan. But somehow... it had become hers. A shelter. A prison. A home.
And as ridiculous as it was, she felt a twinge of sadness settle in her chest at the thought of leaving it behind.
Not enough to stop her, of course. She had somewhere to be. Something to take. But still—she hadn’t expected to feel anything when she finally walked away.
She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the soft whine of the fans, the hum of the power cells she’d rebuilt twice now. The Hab breathed like something alive. Flawed. Fragile. Just like her.
When she opened her eyes again, her voice was quieter. “Guess I’m gonna miss this place after all.”
Then she stood, grabbed her helmet, and reached for the hatch controls.
The airlock hissed.
And just like that, the pirate stepped into the desert.
The last day in the Hab didn’t feel like a goodbye. Not at first.
It felt... disjointed. Like she was moving through someone else’s memory. The edges of things were too sharp. The air too still. Everything was quiet in the way things are just before they disappear. Y/N moved slowly through the cramped living quarters, half-expecting someone else to emerge from behind one of the bulkheads. But of course, there was no one. There hadn’t been anyone in a long time.
She sat on the edge of her bunk, knees drawn up, one foot resting on the makeshift water crate she’d repurposed as a stool. The cold metal handle of her razor pressed against her palm as she tilted the blade, dragging it carefully along her calf. The skin prickled in protest. The act was mundane, almost absurd. Shaving. On her last day. On a dead planet. She hadn’t touched the razor in weeks. Months, maybe. There hadn’t been a point. But today, somehow, there was.
It wasn’t about vanity. There was no one here to notice if she was clean-shaven or covered in patchy stubble. She wasn’t doing it for an audience. She wasn’t doing it for NASA, or NOSA, or anyone watching from Aguerra Prime. She wasn’t even sure the cameras still worked. This was for her.
It was the movement, the familiarity. The echo of Earth routines. A way of reminding her body that she was still human. That she still existed in a way that wasn’t only about surviving.
The razor made soft, whispering strokes along her thigh, and she worked in silence, methodically. She checked her arms next, running her fingers over the fine hairs that had gone unnoticed for too long. The action was precise, mechanical. Muscle memory from a world that felt galaxies away. The kind of world with mirrors, and warm running water, and idle mornings where grooming was just a part of the day—not an act of defiance against desolation.
When she was done, she rinsed the razor in a shallow tin of recycled water and set it down with care on the tiny metal shelf beside the sink. Her fingers lingered on it for a moment longer than necessary, like it might vanish if she looked away.
She moved on.
The Hab was barely holding together, but she still walked its length like a steward. Every corner bore the marks of her time here—scorch marks from the battery incident, a tear in the flooring she’d sealed with epoxy and hope, the scratched notes she’d carved into the bulkhead with a screwdriver when the pen ink dried up. She paused at the stack of crates where she’d stored what remained of her research—dozens of boxes sealed in vacuum wrap, carefully labeled in her blocky handwriting.
Some labels were purely scientific. “Regolith Core B12.” “Atmospheric Trace: Western Quadrant.” Others bore the weight of her humor, dry and necessary. One in particular made her huff a quiet laugh through her nose: "Das Soil Samples."
She shook her head. God, that’s stupid. But it had kept her sane on nights when the storm screamed outside, and the Hab felt like it might fold in on itself. It had been just her and the sound of the wind, and her own voice narrating nonsense to the camera because silence had become unbearable.
Each box she packed felt like tucking away a piece of her life. Data. Debris. Documentation. It wasn’t just science—it was evidence she had been here. That this had all happened. That she hadn’t imagined it.
By the time the final crate clicked into place, a strange calm had settled in her chest. Not relief. Not even closure. Just... quiet acceptance.
She suited up with practiced efficiency. The MAV suit was stiff, but familiar. She knew the feel of every joint, every seal. As she clicked her gloves into place, she glanced around the Hab one last time. The lights flickered as she powered down the systems one by one. Air filtration. Oxygen cycling. Communications—already long dead. She hesitated at the heaters, watching the indicator lights blink out like stars snuffed from a night sky.
And then the lights dimmed for good. The whir of machinery faded into silence.
The Hab was still.
She stood in the airlock for a long while before cycling it open. The suit insulated her from the raw bite of the planet’s thin atmosphere, but she still felt the temperature drop. The sun hung low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the red, cracked terrain. The dust stirred under her boots as she stepped out. The wind was nothing more than a whisper here, but it carried weight—a dry breath from a planet that had been waiting four and a half billion years for someone to hear it.
She turned once, looking back at the Hab—its patched panels, its makeshift antenna straining upward.
“Thanks for keeping me alive,” she murmured, her voice muffled inside the helmet.
She made her way across the stretch of dust toward the speculors. Speculor 2 sat half-buried in windblown grit, holding the last of the rations and samples. She secured the final crate with practiced hands. Among the bland, utility labels, one box caught her eye: "Goodbye, M6." Just black marker on a storage lid, but it hit harder than it should have.
She lingered over it. Let it settle. Then climbed into Speculor 1 and powered up the system.
The familiar hum vibrated through her boots. The engine engaged with a low, steady growl, and the treads rolled forward, carving a new path through the empty landscape. She didn’t look back.
She didn’t have to.
The Hab was done. It had been her shelter, her cage, her sanctuary. But it wasn’t hers anymore. Now, it belonged to the silence again.
The terrain ahead was endless. Red and cracked and ancient. As the vehicle crawled across the dust, Y/N watched the ground roll past beneath her, and for the first time in months, she felt something like purpose return.
She stopped the speculor near a shallow rise and stepped out. Her boots pressed into the soil, leaving fresh imprints where no human had ever stood.
She looked down at her feet. “Step outside the speculor?” she said, the words dry in her throat. “First girl to be here.”
The hill was steep, but she climbed it anyway. The suit resisted her movements, each step a deliberate struggle, but it was worth it. At the summit, she paused and looked back.
Nothing. Just dust and sky.
“Climb that hill?” she whispered. “First girl to do that, too.”
The loneliness hit her harder up here, maybe because the view was so vast. It swallowed her. The wind blew gently against her helmet, like the planet was breathing around her. She rested one gloved hand against a jagged rock and stood still for a long while.
Above her, the smaller sun hung low—soft and bluish, casting a pale glow over the land. She’d named it “Bubble.” It reminded her of Earth somehow. Fragile. Distant. Constant. It was always there, tracking her through the days and nights like a silent guardian.
She stared at it for a while, letting the strange comfort of its light settle over her.
“I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet,” she thought. The words felt like they belonged in a history book. But they were just hers.
No crowds. No cameras. Just the sound of her own breath, the press of the suit, and the impossible stretch of a world that had never known life.
She was the first. And she was alone.
The speculor’s solar panels were out, angled toward the faint sun, drinking in what little energy Hexundecia had to offer. The motors had gone quiet, the systems at rest, the caravan still and grounded for the next recharge cycle. Out here, time didn’t pass with the urgency of a ticking clock—it stretched and drifted, wide and open like the desert around her.
Y/N sat a few meters from the vehicle, suited up and leaned against a slab of fractured basalt that jutted from the earth like a half-buried monument. Her knees were drawn up loosely, arms resting on them, hands relaxed. The pressurized joints of her suit creaked softly when she moved, but for the most part, she didn’t. She simply sat there, head tilted back, eyes closed behind her visor.
The sounds were minimal. The low hiss of her rebreather. The occasional chirp from her suit’s diagnostics. Farther off, the gentle ticking of the speculor’s cooling systems. It was white noise to her now—background ambience that had faded into familiarity. What she focused on wasn’t sound at all, but presence.
The planet stretched in every direction, its reddish soil and dust-coated rock formations glowing faintly under the soft light of the smaller sun she’d dubbed Bubble. The sun’s blue-tinged glow bled across the ridgelines, casting long shadows that shifted almost imperceptibly as the hours passed. It was beautiful, in a way that didn't care whether anyone saw it or not.
She inhaled, slowly, deliberately. The oxygen from her suit system was clean, filtered, cool against her throat. It wasn’t fresh—nothing here was—but it was breathable. Reliable. She’d come to appreciate that more than she ever had back home. You learn not to take air for granted when it’s something you have to ration.
There were no thoughts of mission logs or data packets or next-stage objectives just now. No status checks. No timelines. Just her. Her, the suit, and the silent gravity of a world that had never known the touch of human life until her boots cracked the crust.
This planet wasn’t lifeless. Not really. It breathed in its own way—slowly, deeply. It had its own rhythms: the rise and fall of light, the cycle of wind carving its signature across stone, the whisper of ancient minerals shifting beneath the surface. It had been here long before she arrived. It would be here long after she was gone.
And yet, for this moment, it was hers.
She opened her eyes, and the horizon blurred in heat shimmer. There was a strange peace in knowing how small she really was. Not irrelevant—just tiny, and in the best possible way. There was no audience here. No live feed. No applause. Just the quiet realization that this... this was what exploration really looked like. Not flag-planting or dramatic speeches. Just being here. Alive. Observing. Bearing witness.
She let her helmet rest back against the rock behind her and murmured, more to the suit than herself, “Still beats the office.”
The sun shifted a fraction, casting a new shape across the dust. Y/N sat in silence, absorbing it all. This was the kind of stillness you only found when the nearest person was 40 million kilometers away.
The speculor rattled gently as it picked its way along the ragged rim of Marth Crater. Even with its stabilized suspension, every jagged rock and uneven slope sent a tremble through the metal frame. Inside, Y/N sat with her boots planted and hands on the console, watching the terrain roll by. The sun had dipped lower now, painting everything in muted tones of burnt sienna and faded rust.
The landscape was a frozen sea of iron-rich dunes, crumbling cliffs, and wind-shaped ridges. To anyone else, it might’ve looked like a wasteland. To her, it was a kind of poetry—brutal, ancient, and honest.
The lights in Mission Control were dimmed to reduce eye strain, but the room still hummed with quiet focus. A soft, bluish glow came from the wall of screens lining the front of the command floor, each of them tracking some fragment of a much bigger picture—system vitals, solar intake graphs, environmental stats, satellite relays. But the one April watched most closely was centered on a single blinking dot, creeping steadily across the digital topography of M6-117.
She leaned in closer, forearms resting on the edge of her console, her eyes narrowed behind the thin-framed glasses perched on her nose. The arc of telemetry traced the slow, deliberate curve of Y/N’s path around Marth Crater. One rover. One person. A single line of movement on a planet that had otherwise never known life.
It was a small signal on a massive canvas, but it was moving. That was enough.
April’s fingers moved across the touchscreen with practiced precision. She pulled up the diagnostics feed and ran a quick check—battery health, suit vitals, cabin pressure. No red flags. No anomalies. Everything looked clean.
So far.
Beside her, Mateo stood with a half-empty mug of coffee in one hand and the other shoved into the pocket of his jacket. He hadn't taken a sip in at least fifteen minutes. The drink had gone tepid a long time ago, but he kept holding it like he might remember to drink it eventually.
His eyes flicked toward April’s screen. “How’s she doing?”
“Still on schedule,” April said without looking away. “She shut down at eleven-hundred local, angled the solar arrays by about twenty-two degrees. Charging’s underway now.”
Mateo tilted his head. “Vitals?”
“She’s stable. Oxygen levels are good. Hydration’s down a little, but within threshold. Pulse is resting at seventy-nine.” She glanced at the biometric overlay, frowning slightly at the uptick in cortisol, then dismissed it. “No spikes. Nothing that says she’s in distress.”
He nodded slowly. “Holding it together.”
April finally leaned back, stretching her shoulders with a soft crack of tension, then gave a dry little smile. “She sent a message this morning. Said she wants us to start addressing her as Captain Blondebeard.”
Mateo blinked. “Wait—what?”
“She said since M6-117 isn’t under any planetary jurisdiction, it technically counts as international waters,” April said, arching an eyebrow. “She’s invoking salvage law. Claimed if she makes it to the Nexus site and gets the lander operational, it counts as a lawful prize.”
Mateo stared at her for a second, then huffed a short laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not,” she said, already pulling up the message thread. “‘Henceforth,’” she read aloud with mock seriousness, “‘I am to be recognized in all official comms as Captain Blondebeard of the Free Hexundecian Territory. Long live the Republic.’”
He gave a low whistle, the kind that said that’s insane, but I get it. “That woman has officially been out there too long.”
“She’s coping,” April said, quieter now. “Making jokes, building little myths around herself. It’s how she keeps her head straight. I’d be more worried if she wasn’t doing that.”
Mateo sipped his coffee and grimaced. “Cold,” he muttered, then gestured toward her screen. “Solar efficiency?”
“Still solid. Panels are at full capacity. We might see a dip after nightfall, but she has a reserve buffer if things slow down.” She flicked through the energy graph, tracking the intake curve. “She’s pacing herself. Four-hour drives, long recharge windows. It’s working.”
He nodded again, tapping his thumbnail against the side of the mug. “She’s about halfway to Nexus Five, right?”
“Just past the midpoint now,” April said. “Three clicks out from the rough terrain at the edge of the basin.”
Mateo leaned forward slightly, squinting at the updated satellite overlay. The crater’s rim was jagged, uneven—sections of it scattered with sharp ridges and loose shale deposits. The kind of terrain that could break an axle if you weren’t careful. “That’s going to be a tight run.”
“She knows,” April said, her voice steady. “She’s seen the topographic scans. She’ll take her time.”
Mateo exhaled, slow. “Still,” he said, more to himself than her, “she’s out there. Just... one person. Alone.”
“Alone,” April repeated, a bit softer now. The word felt heavy every time they said it.
They both watched the blinking signal for a moment. It moved at the slow, deliberate pace of someone with nowhere else to be—and all the time in the universe to get there.
“She’s going to be fine,” April said at last.
Mateo didn’t answer. Not because he disagreed, but because there wasn’t anything more to say.
They just stood there, side by side in the dim light of the command center, watching that little dot crawl its way across an alien world—quietly willing it forward.
Out on M6-117, the speculor crept forward, one cautious meter at a time.
Y/N sat at the helm, her gloved fingers hovering just above the control panel, ready to correct if the suspension caught on something unexpected. The terrain ahead was uneven—loose shale sloping downward into a shallow depression, just steep enough to be unnerving. Beyond it, a low ridge cut across the horizon like the edge of a broken plate, and she couldn’t see what waited on the other side.
She leaned in slightly, squinting through the viewport. The external cameras confirmed what her gut already told her: unstable ground. Could be a minor inconvenience, or it could be the kind of problem that ended her progress for good.
Still, she pressed on.
Not recklessly. Not out of impatience. Just... forward.
There was no deadline here. No finish line. No one waiting at the other end with banners or applause. But each meter gained was one more mark on a world no one had ever touched. The simple act of moving through it felt important. Not just survival. Something deeper.
She adjusted the throttle slightly and the speculor responded with a low hum, its wheels biting into the dust with steady determination.
Out the side viewport, the solar panels caught a glint of Bubble’s soft light—the smaller of the two suns that loomed over this planet like a pale sentinel. It was low in the sky now, casting long, diffuse shadows across the red dust, turning every ridge and rock into sculpture. She paused for a moment to watch it.
Always there. Bubble had become a strange kind of compass for her—a reference point in a world that offered few.
“This is your captain,” she murmured, mostly to herself, lips curling faintly into a crooked smile. “Course laid in. Planetfall... ongoing.”
Her voice crackled through the helmet’s mic, but no one responded. She didn’t expect them to.
She toggled the next waypoint, and the speculor rolled ahead with its usual quiet determination, the tracks crunching softly over dust and fractured rock.
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was warm and dry, thanks to the internal regulators still holding steady. The hum of electronics was a constant backdrop—cooling fans, battery feedback, and the subtle rhythm of the environmental system circulating air. After months, the mechanical noises had become comforting, almost like breathing.
Her own breathing was slow and measured. The suit’s monitors recorded everything—oxygen levels, hydration, core temperature—but it was the old pilot instinct that kept her tuned in. Feel the road. Listen to the machine. Watch for patterns.
Outside, the wind had picked up. Dust skittered across the surface in short, chaotic gusts. The external sensors detected a minor pressure drop—nothing serious, just the planet reminding her that it was still indifferent to her presence.
Y/N kept one hand lightly resting on the control yoke, the other hovering near the manual override. She didn’t need to steer constantly; the speculor handled most of the navigation itself. But she preferred to stay alert, to feel connected to the movement of the machine beneath her. Autonomy was great. Awareness was better.
Her eyes tracked the outline of the cliffs ahead—Marth Crater rising in jagged, broken layers, throwing long shadows that danced across the red earth as the sun moved. The geology here fascinated her in a quiet, persistent way. There were ridges that looked like wave crests frozen mid-motion, deep gashes in the rock that hinted at ancient violence. Once, she might have stopped to take more samples, but today was about distance. Efficiency.
Still, it was beautiful in its own way—harsh, yes, but undeniably beautiful.
As the rover climbed a shallow slope, she allowed herself a brief mental detour. Not memories exactly, just echoes.
Mission Control. The soft rustle of bodies leaning over keyboards. The hum of ventilation systems. April’s voice on comms—precise, calm. Mateo muttering about stale coffee. People who couldn’t see her, but still cared. Still watched.
And then there was Captain Blondebeard—the half-joke she’d tossed into the void weeks ago, a silly placeholder to make the isolation feel less heavy. It had stuck, somehow. Maybe because they all needed it—something a little ridiculous to hold onto amid the silence.
She smiled at the thought, just briefly, and shook her head. “Captain Blondebeard,” she muttered. “Defender of dust. Ruler of red rocks.”
No audience. Just her and the rattling hum of the speculor.
She checked the diagnostics again. Solar intake: optimal. Battery: 92%. Environmental systems: nominal. No signs of mechanical stress. For now, everything was working.
That meant she could keep going.
The next waypoint lit up on the map—marked with a dull amber glow. Just over the ridge. She exhaled slowly, letting the air hiss softly through the suit’s filters, then leaned forward and tapped the throttle. The rover surged forward a little harder this time, climbing the incline with a low growl.
Dust kicked up behind her. The sky stretched pale and infinite above.
Mateo barely had time to sit before a heavy binder slammed onto his desk with enough force to rattle his coffee. The mug wobbled, then steadied. He glanced up with a sigh, already bracing himself.
Marco stood across from him, posture too casual, arms folded like he was trying not to smile. There was a spark in his eyes—half brilliance, half mania—the kind that made engineers dangerous in the best possible way.
“You’re not going to like this,” Marco said. No preamble. Just straight into it.
Mateo raised an eyebrow, flipping open the first page of the binder. “Why does that always seem to be your opening line?”
“Because I’m usually right.”
Mateo didn’t respond. He just scanned the schematic diagrams on the first few pages—wiring, load calculations, modular systems torn down to their bones. It looked like someone had disassembled the MAV with a crowbar and a grudge.
In the corner of the room, Creed stood with his arms crossed, expression unreadable. Always the measured one. Where Marco was all spark and adrenaline, Creed was the one you sent in to keep the reactor from melting down.
“The problem,” Creed said, stepping forward, “is velocity. More specifically, intercept velocity.”
He tapped the tablet in his hand, bringing up a holographic projection of the M6-117 Ascent Vehicle—its sleek body now marked in red and yellow overlays. Next to it, a ghostly outline of the Starfire hung in orbital trajectory. The gap between them wasn’t just spatial. It was mathematical.
“The MAV is rated to hit 7.8 kilometers per second at peak ascent,” Creed explained. “The Starfire’s intercept window requires at least 9.2. And we can’t dip the Starfire lower. Not without burning half the return fuel and risking re-entry on a compromised arc.”
Mateo leaned back slowly, processing. “So… the MAV needs to go faster. But it can’t. Not as is.”
Marco stepped in again, voice animated now. “Exactly. So we make it lighter.”
Mateo looked up. “How much lighter?”
“Five thousand kilograms.”
There was a long silence.
Mateo let out a low breath, staring at the screen. “You’re serious.”
Marco nodded. “Dead serious. But don’t worry. We’ve already found two-thirds of it. The MAV was originally specced for six passengers. Y/N’s solo, so that’s an immediate thousand kilos—crew support systems, internal seating, storage compartments.”
“Fair enough,” Mateo said cautiously. “What else?”
“We’re pulling the scientific payload,” Marco added. “Soil, core samples, atmospheric sensors. All of it. It’s dead weight now.”
“That’s another... what? 500?”
“More like six-fifty. Then we strip internal comms—no need for multi-band systems. She won’t be piloting anyway.”
Mateo frowned. “What do you mean she won’t be piloting?”
Creed stepped in again, quiet and calm. “Nguyen’s going to fly the MAV from orbit.”
Mateo blinked. “You’re talking about a fully remote-controlled launch? With a human on board?”
“It’s been done in simulations,” Creed said. “The theory is solid. Remote guidance with live telemetry. As long as we maintain lock from Starfire, we can get her into intercept range. There’s a latency window, but it’s manageable.”
Marco waved that part off. “Honestly, it simplifies things. If she’s not flying, we can rip out the cockpit interface. Panels, redundant circuits, glass—gone. Another 400 kilos easy.”
Mateo’s jaw worked. “She’s going up in a vehicle with no controls, no backup comms, and no seats.”
“Correct,” Marco said brightly. “Also, no airlock.”
That stopped him.
“I’m sorry—what?”
Marco walked over to a scale model of the MAV sitting on the table, casually popping off the nose section like he was dismantling a toy. “The nose airlock’s nearly 400 kilos by itself. Hull Panel 19 adds another 200. And those windows?” He plucked one off the model. “Decorative. Total waste of mass.”
Mateo stared at the half-gutted model. “You’re launching her into space with a hole in the front of the ship?”
“Not a hole,” Marco said quickly. “A reinforced pressure barrier made from Hab-grade canvas. Layered, sealed, and structurally supported with internal cross-bracing.”
Mateo was silent for a long beat. “So... a tarp.”
Marco smiled. “A flight-tested environmental membrane.”
Creed, to his credit, didn’t flinch. “The structural integrity holds up at altitude. Once she clears the atmospheric drag—which on M6 is minimal—it’s all vacuum. The canvas doesn’t need to withstand pressure from the outside, just keep the inside pressurized.”
Mateo shook his head slowly. “And this is the plan you’re bringing me. After thirty years of aerospace development and risk management protocols, this is what we’ve come to.”
Marco shrugged. “You want to get her home or not?”
Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “You didn’t even get to the worst part yet, did you?”
Creed hesitated. “Well...”
“Oh, come on,” Mateo muttered.
Marco dropped back into a chair opposite him and spun the model slowly in his hands. “We’ll need to pre-load her EVA suit with everything she needs. She won’t be able to access the cabin once it launches. No movement. No cabin pressure.”
Mateo looked up, eyes narrowing. “So if something goes wrong—”
“She’s dead,” Marco said plainly. “But if we don’t do this at all? She’s also dead.”
The room went quiet again.
The logic was brutal. But clean.
Mateo stood in silence at the wide observation window overlooking the control bay. Rows of terminals blinked below, casting soft glows onto the operators’ faces. The quiet hum of the operations floor, the muted rustle of people moving through data, speaking in low tones—it all felt distant. His eyes tracked the orbital map, projected across the far wall. One small blue marker labeled Starfire. Another in orange: Y/L/N – MAV Prep.
Just two dots, drifting across the edge of a planet no one had ever intended to be a rescue site.
He didn’t speak. Not right away.
Behind him, Creed stood with arms folded, still, waiting. Marco was halfway through unscrewing the cap of a protein bar, but had forgotten about it, caught in the quiet tension that had settled over the room.
Then Mateo inhaled slowly and spoke without turning.
“Start building the launch profile. I want a complete risk breakdown—every failure mode, every backup system we’re cutting, and how long we think that tarp will hold under load. Flight surgeon and engineering get briefed at sixteen hundred. No exceptions.”
The wrapper crinkled, finally splitting under Marco’s thumb with a soft snap. The faint smell of synthetic peanut butter wafted out, but he barely noticed—already hunched over the console, typing fast, his mind three steps ahead.
“Copy that,” he mumbled, not looking up, already pulling up the MAV’s mass budget and internal schematics.
Creed stood off to the side, more deliberate. He pulled out his tablet, fingers tapping rhythmically as he opened a clean modeling slate and began sketching out the updated launch profile. No one needed to ask if he was running simulations—he always was.
Mateo stayed still.
He stood at the edge of the room, eyes fixed on the massive screen on the far wall—Earth to the left, M6-117 hanging silent and red to the right. Two markers moved in parallel arcs above it: Starfire, already in decaying orbit, and the blinking orange dot that marked the MAV’s last position. Y/L/N – Ready Hold. It hadn’t moved in six hours.
His reflection stared back at him in the dark glass, half-obscured by the flight data.
“And someone get her on comms,” he said finally, his voice level, clipped.
Marco glanced over his shoulder. “You want to tell her?”
Mateo turned slowly, just enough to meet his gaze. The expression on his face wasn’t one of authority or resolve. Not entirely. It was the look of someone who was doing the math—risk versus time, life versus chance—and coming up short on both columns.
“No,” he said. “I want to ask her if she’s willing to launch into orbit under a tarp and a prayer.”
Then he walked out.
The hall outside the planning bay was quiet, sterile, and dimly lit. A few staff moved briskly from station to station, heads down, focused. No one stopped him. He crossed the length of the control floor with long strides, ignoring the buzz of conversation and telemetry chatter around him.
NOSA Mission Control was housed in the heart of the Aguerra Prime complex—underground, shielded, secure. It was built like a vault, and today it felt like one. A place built to preserve life, now trying desperately to save just one.
He stepped into the comms wing and paused for a second in the threshold of April’s unit. She was already hunched forward, scanning her screen, lips pressed into a hard line. Her hair was pulled back into a quick knot, and the half-empty thermos beside her keyboard said she’d been at this since before dawn.
April glanced up as she felt him approach. “I already sent the initial uplink,” she said. “Low-band width, direct ping. She’s on reply hold.”
“She read it?”
A nod. “I think so. Just one line so far.”
Mateo exhaled. “I need you to be straight with her.”
April’s brow creased slightly. “She already knows we’re scraping the bottom of the playbook. You want me to sugarcoat it?”
“No,” Mateo said, stepping around to lean beside her console. “The opposite.”
She studied him. There was something in his face she hadn’t seen before—not panic. Not resolve either. Something heavier. A tiredness that came from trying to beat physics with ingenuity and spreadsheets.
“I want you to tell her exactly what we’re doing,” he continued. “The canvas patch. The missing control panels. That she’ll be sealed into a pressure suit with no way to pilot the MAV, no physical interface, no real fallback.”
April leaned back slowly. “That’s a hell of a sell.”
“I know.” He looked at the screen again. A message was still blinking in the inbound queue. “But I need her to say yes on her own. No pressure. No angle. She deserves that.”
April turned back toward the console, jaw set. “She’ll ask why we’re even considering this.”
“Because it’s the only window she has.” Mateo’s voice was quiet now, almost too soft to hear. “The Starfire won’t last another full orbit at that altitude. If we miss the next intercept burn, we’re not getting a second chance.”
April’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. “So what happens if she says no?”
“Then we stop,” Mateo said. “We scrub the launch, pull Nguyen back into safe orbit, and pray the resupply launch next month doesn’t get delayed again.”
April didn’t move for a moment. Then she sighed, rolled her shoulders, and cracked her knuckles.
“Alright,” she murmured. “Let’s ask the girl if she wants to fly a missile wrapped in tent canvas.”
Mateo let out the smallest laugh, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll be on the floor.”
He turned to go, but April caught him just before he crossed the door.
“Mateo,” she said, quietly. He paused.
“She trusts you,” she added. “You know that, right?”
He nodded once, without turning around. “That’s why I’m not the one asking.”
Back at her console, April read the message again.
Are you fucking kidding me?
There was no punctuation. No follow-up. No emoji. Nothing to signal tone. Just those five words.
She stared at them for a long moment, then leaned forward, her fingers moving carefully across the keys as she began to compose her response.
She typed, paused, deleted, retyped.
We know how insane it sounds. You don’t have to do this. There’s no protocol for this kind of ask. But if you say yes, we’ll make it work. And if you say no, we’ll find another way. No one’s giving up on you.
She hesitated again, then added:
But we need your answer soon.
April hit Send, then leaned back in her chair, rubbing a hand across her forehead. The cursor blinked on the screen, waiting for a reply.
Y/N stood just outside the MAV, the wind tugging at the loose ends of her suit hood and streaks of red dust whispering past her boots. The Helion Nexus site was empty—eerily so. The dunes stretched out in every direction like a sea frozen mid-tide, the early evening light casting the terrain in muted copper tones. She stared straight into the lens of her camera, visor up, her eyes locked onto the feed as if the people on the other side could feel the weight of her stare.
She wasn’t smiling.
She hadn’t smiled much in days.
But her expression now—that flat, tight-lipped calm—wasn’t anger. It was disbelief. Controlled, deliberate disbelief.
“This,” she said, after a long pause, her voice dry and low, “is what we’ve come to.”
The wind rattled against the MAV’s lower hull behind her. One of the loose external thermal blankets snapped like a sail.
“I read the specs,” she continued, shifting her weight slightly, eyes still locked on the camera. “And for the record, yes, I understand the mission parameters. I understand the orbital window. I understand why this launch has to happen now or not at all. I get it.”
She took a breath, steadying herself, and then—just barely—she let a flicker of something wry creep into her voice.
“What I don’t get,” she said, “is how we went from 'cutting-edge escape system' to... ‘canvas and sheer fucking luck.’”
She shook her head slowly, almost laughing—but it didn’t come out that way. Not quite.
“They’re calling it the ‘lightweight launch revision.’” She looked off for a second, as if picturing the phrase on a government memo. “Translation? We’re stripping everything non-essential. Seats, insulation, pressure seals. Controls. Windows.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Because who needs windows when you’re flying into orbit at nine-point-two klicks per second?”
Another gust of wind swept through. The MAV loomed behind her—tall, white, sterile. Unwelcoming. It looked like a machine built for six. Not one.
She glanced at it, then turned back to the camera.
“So here’s the plan,” she said, more quietly now. “They’re going to fly this thing remotely from orbit. I’ll be inside. Not piloting. Not navigating. Just... sealed in a suit, strapped in tight, and praying Koah doesn’t sneeze while he’s on the joystick.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, but again, it wasn’t quite a smile. It was more like disbelief wrapping itself in the thinnest layer of humor to keep from cracking.
“There’s no cockpit. No redundancy. And the nose panel?” She paused. “Gone. We're replacing it with three layers of Hab canvas and a reinforced support frame. Which, to be clear, I stitched together yesterday with thermal glue and what used to be my sleeping bag.”
She stepped toward the camera now, voice still level, but her eyes sharper.
“I am, effectively, going to space in a sealed tin can with no front door. And the part they seem most excited about?” She leaned in slightly, as if sharing something private.
“I’ll be the fastest human being in recorded history.”
She let the words hang in the air for a moment. The absurdity of it settled around her like the Hexundecian dust clinging to her boots.
“I guess that’s supposed to be the upside,” she added. “A footnote for the textbooks. My name next to some velocity record no one will remember.”
She folded her arms, staring past the camera now, into the nothingness stretching beyond the ridge.
“But I didn’t come here for records,” she said. “And I sure as hell didn’t come here to die wrapped in duct tape and space-grade nylon.”
She paused, and then finally, something shifted in her expression. Not quite resolve. Something messier. Acceptance, maybe. Something that resembled courage, if courage wasn’t always so clean.
“But I did come here to finish what I started.”
She didn’t bother to say more. She didn’t sign off.
She just reached out and shut off the camera.
The MAV’s outer shell still looked intact—at least from a distance—but the closer she got, the more the damage and modifications became apparent. One panel had been pried off to make room for the external fuel purge; another was half-covered with what looked like insulation tape. The “canvas” they were so excited about was already prepped in a neatly folded stack near the nose—thin, reinforced, flexible, held together by thermal gluing agents she’d tested twice already, just to be sure it wouldn’t split during ascent.
She stood at the base of the ladder for a moment, helmet tucked under her arm, toolkit heavy in her other hand.
Up close, the MAV looked nothing like the sleek, composite-shelled ascent vehicles she had trained in back on Aguerra Prime. The ones in the simulations had been graceful—modular, insulated, and precisely engineered to cradle human beings through the brute violence of launch. They’d had padding and ergonomic seats, clean touchscreen interfaces, carbon-slick handholds designed for comfort under G-force compression. Everything had a place. Everything made sense.
This one didn’t. Not anymore.
This MAV had been stripped bare.
It stood squat and pale under the low red sun, a skeleton of what it had once been. The heat shielding was intact, but the skin panels rattled softly in the wind. Most of the insulation had been ripped out for mass reduction. There were exposed wiring bundles at the base of the hull, sealed hastily with patch tape and thermal epoxy. The side hatch was propped open with a metal brace that should’ve been part of the original ladder assembly, but even that had been cannibalized and reattached by hand, joints imperfect and scorched.
She stood at the base of it now, helmet off, toolkit in one hand, the other resting against the first rung of the ladder. The sunlight caught on her visor, throwing a dull amber reflection across the metal. She glanced up at the hatch. It looked like a mouth. Black inside, open. Waiting.
Y/N took a slow breath and climbed.
The rungs flexed slightly under her boots. The structure moaned—just a little—as she pulled herself up and stepped inside.
The air inside was still and heavy. Not from lack of oxygen—the filters were operational, barely—but from disuse. It smelled of cold metal and polymer outgassing. The kind of dry, stale odor that got into your nostrils and stuck there. It was like stepping into the bones of a machine that had forgotten it was ever meant to hold a person.
The interior was gutted.
No seats.
No panels.
No foam padding, no modular cabin walls, no interface displays.
The cockpit was nothing more than a narrow chamber of exposed beams and equipment housings now. Every surface that could be removed had been. The floor plating was gone. The wall paneling too. Even the soft sealant around the window apertures had been stripped away—there were no windows left to seal.
There was just metal, wiring, the occasional warning sticker half-peeled off, and the sound of her own breathing as she stepped deeper into the vehicle.
She crouched by the side wall and set the toolkit down. The foam inside was worn and cracked, and the latch had started to loosen weeks ago, but it still held. She unclipped the wrench—carbon-steel, standard hex-head—and got to work.
The first bolt came loose with a metallic groan. Then the next.
The remaining seats hadn’t been designed for easy removal. They were bolted directly into the structural base—six of them, each one reinforced to handle launch stress and vibration. It took her nearly an hour to pull the first one free. She had to brace herself against the bulkhead, digging in with the heels of her boots, twisting the tool with both hands until her wrists ached. When the last bolt finally came free, the seat tumbled awkwardly to the side. She grabbed it, shoved it toward the hatch, then crawled over to the edge and pushed.
It hit the ground outside with a muffled thud, sending a puff of dust into the air.
One seat down. Five to go.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t even look at it. Just moved to the next one.
Every minute was precious now. The launch window was fixed. The Starfire would pass into final intercept in twenty-two hours. Koah’s orbital drift correction had already been executed. Once the line closed, it wouldn’t reopen for another 18 days—and there was no chance the MAV would survive that long in its current condition. Not with the limited onboard power. Not with what little she had left to eat. And not with the storm systems brewing again on the eastern ridge.
Another bolt. Another pop. Another seat came free.
She shoved it toward the hatch, muscles burning. It was heavier than it looked.
Outside, the wind had begun to pick up—more sand drifting across the horizon, loose pebbles bouncing softly against the MAV’s hull. Every few seconds, the gusts made the outer structure creak. It sounded like the ship was breathing. Or groaning.
Y/N pulled her suit collar down, wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of one wrist. It clung there—salt and dust and heat.
She turned back to the third chair.
The wrench slipped once, barking her knuckles on the raw edge of the bolt. She hissed, shook her hand out, and went back in.
No complaints. No curses. Just movement.
She didn’t bother checking the comms feed. There wouldn’t be any new messages from April for at least another hour. The distance, the relay lag, the signal decay—it all meant she was on her own now. No lifeline. No hand-holding. No updates.
Just her, and the wrench, and the cold echo of metal against metal.
By the time the last seat came free, her shoulders were burning, and the back of her neck throbbed with tension. She dropped the final chair out through the hatch and leaned back on her heels, staring at the empty space she’d cleared.
The MAV was down nearly four hundred kilos already, by her rough count. Another couple hundred from the stripped wiring. Maybe more, depending on what else she could cut before the systems started to protest.
She turned to the forward cockpit interface.
The main control assembly was still mounted to the wall where the pilot’s seat had been. The screen was dark. Inactive. Most of the data routing had already been disconnected from the ship’s mainframe—April and Koah had walked her through the shutoff protocol the night before.
Still, it looked wrong, somehow. Like it still thought it was meant to be used.
She studied it for a second. Then reached forward and began to dismantle it.
One panel at a time.
She took no pleasure in it. There was no thrill, no rush of rebellion or recklessness. Just the cold understanding that it had to go. Every ounce she stripped now was one less kilo for the rockets to lift.
The screen popped free after two minutes. The control column took another five. She snipped the cabling with wire cutters, bundled it into a rough coil, and set it aside. It would make a decent handhold if she needed one during launch.
The MAV was quieter now.
Hollow.
The wind outside had picked up into a steady moan, the dust slapping against the outer skin in brief, muted bursts. Occasionally, she heard something shift on the landing struts—some subtle tension in the way the wind pressed against the upright body of the vehicle.
Y/N sat back, leaning against one of the inner support beams. Her shoulders were soaked through. The EVA undersuit clung to her, the cooling pads barely keeping up with the heat she was generating. Her breath echoed in the silence.
She let herself rest there for a moment. Not sleep. Just stillness. Just one minute of stillness.
She looked up at the interior of the MAV. It didn’t look like a spacecraft anymore.
It looked like an escape pod built in a garage.
She reached for her comm tablet. The screen lit up, the signal flickering once before stabilizing.
No new messages.
She flipped open the reply channel anyway and typed with slow, deliberate fingers.
Interior’s stripped. Control interface removed. All six seats gone. Pressure barrier is still holding. Will install final harness next. Wind’s picking up. If this thing doesn’t fall apart, I’ll be ready to light it when the crew is. Tell Koah I hope he remembers how to fly blind. Because this ship’s not going to hold my hand.
She hit send, then turned off the display.
By the time she stepped outside again, the light had shifted. The sun—low and pale-blue on this side of the planet—was dragging the long shadows of the MAV across the dust. It cast the stripped-down vehicle in stark relief: every exposed rib, every bolt she hadn’t had time to replace, every scar left from the dismantling process. The ground was littered with the remnants—seat brackets, cracked insulation, lengths of coiled cable, and one final wrench she hadn’t bothered to bring back inside.
Her arms ached. Her back felt like it had been through a hydraulic press. There was a raw spot under her left elbow where the EVA suit padding had bunched up during one of the anchor installs, and her hands were trembling with the aftershock of muscle fatigue, the kind that didn’t fully hit you until the job was done. Her visor was streaked with fine red grit, the kind that clung to everything, the kind you’d still find in your boots six months after you’d left the planet.
The MAV loomed behind her—unfinished, exposed. It looked less like a spacecraft now and more like something welded together out of salvage parts in the middle of a desert. The kind of machine desperate people might have built after the end of the world. Everything extraneous had been pulled: life-support subsystems, insulation, windows, comm redundancies. Even the pilot’s control column had been replaced with a blank wall and a data plug tied directly into its core systems.
There was no illusion left. No polish. No design elegance. It wasn’t a vehicle anymore. It was a shell. A slingshot with just enough thrust to throw her back into orbit—if the math held.
Y/N stood in the silence and stared up at it.
And for a long time, she didn’t move.
Wind brushed past her legs, carrying dust across the flat expanse of the launch site. The air was so thin it barely had weight, but it was just enough to make the suit’s outer fabric shift against her skin. She flexed her fingers once, twice, trying to ease the burn in her knuckles. She felt tired all the way through. Not sleepy—just... used up.
She reached down into her toolkit, fumbled past a spare patch kit, a pair of stripped fasteners, until her fingers closed around the compact speaker unit. She hesitated, just for a second, then pulled it free.
She rubbed a tired thumb across the surface of the speaker, clearing a streak of dust from the side panel. The LED took a second to respond, then blinked on—soft and green, like it was waking from a long nap. The speaker had been through a lot. It had fallen off shelves during storms, been buried under equipment, and once—briefly—served as a weight to keep down an emergency tarp in a wind event. It wasn’t meant to last this long, but like everything else out here, it had adapted.
No ceremony. No speech. No last rites.
Just habit.
She tapped through the tracklist, muscle memory guiding her. Most of the audio files were practical: suit diagnostics, training walkthroughs, comms recordings she’d archived months ago. But tucked near the bottom of the directory was a small folder labeled simply Misc—leftovers from a data transfer, probably. A few compressed files, an outdated playlist from her tablet. Nothing she’d listened to in weeks.
She hovered over one of them.
It was a dumb choice. Something absurdly out of step with the dry, red world around her. Upbeat to the point of satire. But that was kind of the point. When you were about to launch yourself into orbit in a ship held together by glue, canvas, and a few good intentions, irony wasn’t just a luxury—it was armor.
She tapped Play.
The speaker chirped once, then crackled. And then came the unmistakable first notes of Waterloo.
The music was grainy, a little warped at the high end, like it was playing from inside a tin can—which, technically, it was. But it was there. Real. Loud enough to carry.
Y/N let out a small, involuntary snort. Not quite a laugh—she was too wrung out for that—but something close. A dry, exhausted sound that cracked in her throat before it fully formed.
“Of course,” she muttered, barely audible over the hiss of her suit. “Why the hell not.”
She turned her face to the sound, let it roll over her like a warm breeze. The melody skipped slightly as the speaker rebuffered, then found its footing again. It echoed out over the flats, skipping across dunes and bouncing faintly against the far wall of the crater.
It sounded completely ridiculous.
She could only imagine what it might look like from above—the MAV standing like some stripped-down monument to desperation, half-disassembled, with ABBA blaring into the Martian dusk. But she didn’t care. No one was watching. No one was here.
Except the camera.
The old Hab cam had been hauled out from storage that morning and mounted onto the tripod she’d built from three scavenged rover legs. It had taken three tries to get it to stand upright in the wind. The joints were loose and she hadn’t been able to stabilize the footing without wedging a rock beneath it. The lens was scratched at the corners, fogged with grit. But the recording light was on. That was enough.
She turned to face it.
Her visor was up, streaked with a smear of red dust she hadn’t bothered to clean. Her face was drawn, jaw tight, sweat-matted hair sticking out from under the edge of her helmet ring. There was a tiredness in her eyes that couldn’t be faked. The kind that didn’t come from a single long day—but from all of them.
And still—after everything—she found something like a smile.
Not much. Just a flicker. A small, human thing that tugged briefly at the edge of her mouth and vanished again.
She looked into the lens and said, quietly, “If this is how it ends... I’m at least going out with a beat.”
She didn’t stay to dramatize the moment. There was nothing left to say. No pithy sendoff. No final look back. She adjusted the straps on her suit, flexed her sore fingers once, and turned toward the MAV.
The music kept playing behind her as she walked. Her boots crunched over loose grit, and the wind swept her footprints away almost as quickly as she made them. The speaker fought to keep up, the chorus jumping slightly with every gust, but it held. Just barely.
She reached the base of the ladder and stopped, one hand resting on the rung.
The MAV loomed above her like a relic. The tarp covering the nose cone flapped gently in the breeze, held in place by thermal glue, epoxy seals, and a prayer. The hull creaked faintly as the wind pushed against it. She’d sealed the hatch an hour ago and double-checked the pressure rings, but she still felt that pinch of doubt in the back of her throat. The kind that whispered what if it doesn’t hold?
She didn’t answer it.
Instead, she climbed.
Her arms protested the movement, joints tight and sore, but she moved deliberately. One step. Then another. By the time she reached the top, the sun had slipped closer to the horizon, the shadows stretching long behind her like threads pulled from the sky.
She placed her hand on the outer hatch and paused. Not to deliver a final line. Not to think of Earth. Just to breathe.
The MAV groaned softly under her weight.
The tarp held.
She ducked inside.
The music continued for a few more seconds outside—one final chorus warbling faintly through the thin Hexundecian air—before the speaker choked on a memory buffer and went silent.
She heard the cut from inside the MAV. A sudden, brittle silence where the absurdity had been.
She blinked. Then, after a long pause, she let out a sound halfway between a breath and a laugh.
“Figures,” she said, voice echoing faintly in the hollow chamber. “Survived a year out here. Dies right when I need it.”
She eased herself down into the harness. Felt the straps bite into her suit. Tensed her shoulders, then relaxed them.
Outside, the wind kept blowing. Inside, the MAV was quiet. And for the first time in a long while, everything was still.
Koah’s jaw was clenched tight, his shoulders stiff, his fingers working furiously over the simulated flight controls. A soft sheen of sweat glistened along his temple, and the soft hum of the Starfire’s artificial gravity system did nothing to mask the rising sound of his own pulse in his ears.
Then—red.
COLLISION WITH TERRAIN.
The alert flashed across the screen with an abrupt, terminal finality. The simulator screen froze, the MAV’s virtual ascent freezing mid-frame as the telemetry dipped off its plotted trajectory and straight into the surface of M6-117.
Koah swore under his breath, leaning back and scrubbing a hand through his hair.
Val, standing behind him with arms crossed and a silent kind of patience, finally spoke.
“Well. That’s one way to kill her.”
Koah didn’t turn around. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Val cocked an eyebrow. “You grazed the ridge by sixty meters and still lost control.”
“I misjudged the crosswind,” Koah muttered, already rebooting the program. “There’s a lateral shear the moment she clears the crater’s upper edge. I didn’t compensate fast enough.”
“You didn’t compensate at all.”
Koah didn’t argue. He just started again.
Across the room, Jimin was watching quietly. Always watching. His arms were folded, a tablet resting against his hip. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched the new simulation load in—silent desert terrain unfolding on the screen, the crude profile of the MAV climbing into view.
Then, calmly: “Run it again.”
Koah gave a tight nod, jaw grinding. “Already on it.”
No one said it aloud, but they all knew: he wasn’t just practicing for a sim anymore. The next time he guided the MAV, it wouldn’t be theoretical. Y/N would be inside. And if he screwed it up—if he overcorrected or waited a half-second too long—he wouldn’t be watching a failure animation.
He’d be watching her die.
Far below the slow arc of Starfire’s orbit, deep in the wind-scoured silence of M6-117, Y/N wasn’t thinking about flight paths or burn trajectories. She wasn’t thinking about orbital windows or the terrifying precision of a rendezvous 200 kilometers above her head.
She was thinking about the last bolt.
The MAV no longer resembled a spacecraft—at least not in the traditional sense. Its body had been stripped to the skeleton, gutted of everything not absolutely essential to flight. The clean panels, the instrument clusters, the ergonomic chairs—all gone. Dismantled. Ejected. Abandoned in neat or not-so-neat piles outside the hatch. The floor was bare save for hardpoints and wiring channels, some of which she’d rerouted by hand. Others she’d torn out completely, judging them expendable.
Anything that didn’t help her leave this planet was dead weight. And dead weight didn’t fly.
Inside the airlock, the carnage was undeniable: bundles of severed cables coiled like veins, seat frames stacked like broken bones, polycarbonate display shells cracked and tossed against the far wall. Her makeshift bin overflowed, and the overflow had started to scatter—bits and pieces rolling down the slope toward the edge of the launch pad in lazy arcs. To anyone else, it would’ve looked like the wreckage of a crash. But it wasn’t. It was controlled destruction.
Intentional.
Necessary.
Y/N leaned back against the inner hatch rim, trying to catch her breath. She’d been working for hours without pause, and her body was registering its protest in every possible language: throbbing shoulders, forearms trembling from tension, joints stiff with grit and fatigue. The wrench in her hand felt heavier than it had any right to. Her grip had started to falter an hour ago. She kept working anyway.
Her gloves were caked in rust-red dust, fraying at the fingers. Her right thumb was raw—no skin left on the pad, the fabric beneath damp and tacky. Every time she flexed the joint, it stung like fire, but she didn’t have time to think about that now.
She looked down at what was left: the forward access collar—what had once housed the MAV’s primary nose airlock. The interface was compromised. She’d known that for days, ever since she first checked the weld seams and found stress fractures spidering out from the lower ring. The airlock itself had always been heavy, armored to resist high-speed debris during ascent. But now it was just another liability—too much mass, too many structural risks. And completely useless.
It had to go.
She dropped to one knee with a hiss of effort. The joint in her suit pinched, and her back seized as she twisted awkwardly to brace herself. The fasteners weren’t difficult, not anymore. Four had already been loosened days ago during prep. Only two remained, and the metal was corroded enough to complain with every turn.
She grit her teeth and leaned into it.
The first bolt groaned, spun twice, then popped loose with a sudden give that nearly threw her off balance. She planted a hand against the inner bulkhead to steady herself, breathing hard through her nose.
The second bolt was more stubborn. It refused to move at first, stuck tight by a decade of cold and pressure and the fine silicate dust that wormed its way into everything on this planet. She repositioned the wrench, dug her boots into the deck, and hauled.
One turn. Two.
Then—snap.
The final bolt sheared away. The access collar sagged, shifted, and with a dull metallic pop, it tore loose from the surrounding frame. For a heartbeat, it hovered there—still clinging to its old shape, its old function.
Then it dropped.
The mass of it caught a gust of wind as it fell. The panel spun as it tumbled, crashing to the ground with a heavy, final thunk that reverberated across the dry surface. The noise wasn’t loud, not really. But in a world so quiet, so still, it felt seismic.
Y/N stepped back automatically, too fast, and her knees buckled.
Her legs simply gave out.
She hit the ground sideways, dust puffing up in a loose swirl around her, the wrench slipping from her hand and bouncing once before it landed beside her in the dirt.
She lay there, unmoving for a long moment, face turned to the sky.
Her pulse was in her ears. Her arms refused to lift.
Everything ached.
She could feel the crust of sweat drying beneath her undersuit, her body swaddled in fatigue and grime and the kind of exhaustion that made the idea of standing again feel almost hypothetical.
She didn’t bother trying to sit up.
Instead, she tilted her head back just enough to see the MAV above her, its patched-together body silhouetted against the dimming sky. The canvas at the nose—once her sleeping tarp, now layered and bonded with thermal glue—fluttered slightly at the edges. It held.
Somehow, it held.
The whole thing looked absurd. Makeshift. Unbelievably fragile.
But it was all she had.
She let out a sound. It wasn’t quite a laugh—too hollow, too dry—but it came from somewhere near the part of her that used to have the energy for humor.
Her gaze drifted sideways, to where the old speaker still sat on the ground a few meters away, half-buried in dust. It had been playing earlier—something upbeat and ridiculous, a holdover from her playlist of songs she’d used to fill the Hab with noise when the silence became too loud.
She hoped Waterloo had been the last thing it played. That felt appropriate somehow. Too bad.
She closed her eyes, her breath coming in slow, shallow pulls.
“Finally facing my Waterloo,” she murmured.
Her voice didn’t carry far. The helmet mic was off. The camera wasn’t rolling. There was no audience this time. No log entry. No flight team monitoring her vitals.
It was just her.
Just the dust, and the ship she’d rebuilt by hand, and the infinite silence of an alien world that didn’t care whether she lived or died.
The wrench lay beside her, forgotten.
And for a while, Y/N didn’t move at all.
Onboard Starfire, the mood had shifted.
Gone was the casual rhythm of deep space routine. No idle chatter, no coffee mugs clinking against console rails, no playlist humming through the speakers. The rec deck had been empty for hours. Everyone had drifted toward the core of the ship—the main operations bay—drawn there by necessity, by duty, by the quiet pull of something heavier than protocol.
The gravity was steady, calibrated to Earth-norm, but it still felt like the floor had tilted slightly. Like something was waiting.
Overhead, the orbital burn countdown ticked down in cold blue digits.
Jimin stood at the forward console, his hands braced against the reinforced edge, leaning slightly as if anchoring himself. The navigation display glowed in front of him, lines arcing across the interface: the MAV’s projected trajectory, the intercept corridor, and Starfire’s adjusted orbital path. Three bodies, four variables, one window.
The final window.
Behind him, the others moved in quiet coordination.
Cruz was already seated at Systems Two, hunched over a terminal, rerouting power protocols through the MAV telemetry relay. Her fingers moved fast, practiced. Efficient. There was no margin left for error. Anything they didn’t handle before launch would have to be handled mid-flight—and there were too many unknowns between now and then to trust in mid-flight.
“Nguyen’s got full remote,” Jimin said, his tone even but clipped, his eyes not leaving the screen. “Cruz, you’ll manage override routing from Bay Two. Keep a hard link to the MAV all the way through primary burn.”
“Copy,” Val replied, not looking up. “I’m tying in emergency telemetry now. One-minute intervals on the backup ping. It’ll lag by three seconds on the fallback line.”
“We’ll take it,” Jimin said.
He turned, scanning the rest of the crew.
“Hoseok. Armin. Airlock Two. You’ll be suiting up once we hit the two-minute mark before MAV ignition. Tether lines stay deployed. Outer door stays open.”
Armin nodded once, already halfway through checklist sync. “Lines are staged and calibrated. Anchor’s clipped. The MMU packs are charged.”
“Good.”
Hoseok leaned forward, his tablet on his lap, ascent data scrolling in a slow, inevitable stream. His brow furrowed as he traced the curve of the launch.
“She’s going to hit twelve Gs during the climb,” he said, voice low. “She’ll black out somewhere between eleven and twelve if the suit’s not aligned perfectly. Even if she doesn’t lose consciousness, she’s going to be borderline hypoxic by engine cutoff. Muscle tremors, potential cerebral edema, disorientation.”
Hoseok met his gaze. “You’re assuming she’s still conscious when we dock.”
“I’m assuming she’s alive,” Jimin said.
Hoseok nodded once, accepting the weight of it.
“We’ve got a 214-meter tether,” he said. “I’ll be in the MMU. If we hold her velocity at five meters per second or lower, I can intercept manually. Any faster, and it’s going to feel like jumping onto a moving train. With no brakes.”
Jimin shifted his attention back to the trajectory map. The MAV’s projected arc skated along the edge of the capture envelope. Tight. Risky.
“And if she’s coming in hot?”
Hoseok didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quiet. Not afraid. Just honest.
“Then I miss. Or I grab and get pulled. Or we both spin. Worst case, we bounce off the line and watch her drift out into space.”
Another silence.
Jimin exhaled through his nose, measured and slow. “Engine cutoff gives us a 52-minute window before intercept. That’s our margin. Cruz will give you live telemetry as soon as thrust cuts. Until then, you’re just watching the clock.”
He turned to Armin.
“You’re backup. Stay tethered. If anything goes wrong, you stabilize and pull him back. No solo retrievals. No free-floating. You don’t follow unless he’s secured.”
Jimin finally stepped away from the console, circling toward the center of the room where the rest of the crew had settled in. Koah stood near the wall, pale but steady, his hands tucked under his arms. His eyes were fixed on the simulator feed looping in the corner screen—replaying the MAV’s predicted trajectory frame by frame.
“You ready, Nguyen?” Jimin asked.
Koah nodded slowly. “Ready or not, I’ll fly it.”
“You’ll fly it.”
There was no encouragement in Jimin’s tone. No pep talk. Just fact.
He looked around the room one last time.
Cruz, fingers still moving. Hoseok, pulling on his gloves. Armin, checking O2 flow levels. Koah, staring at the screen like he could will the outcome into submission.
They were tired. Stretched thin.
But they were here. Focused. Professional.
Jimin straightened.
“One shot,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got. We do this clean. No improvising. No ad-libbing. Stick to the numbers.”
A pause.
“Let’s bring her home.”
Inside the pop-up shelter, the air felt heavy despite the pressure regulators still holding steady. Not hot. Not thin. Just dense in the way quiet places get when they've been silent for too long. The fabric walls rustled faintly in the wind, a soft, steady whisper that only made the silence inside more absolute.
Y/N sat cross-legged on the floor, the knees of her suit stained from weeks of kneeling, crawling, wrenching, fixing. Her back pressed against the outer curve of the tent wall, the thin material bowing slightly behind her. It wasn’t a real shelter—just the emergency module meant for temporary use while a permanent hab was being assembled. She’d been using it on and off for weeks now. Long enough that it had started to feel like her shadow.
The floor beneath her was a layer of insulation fabric over packed dirt, the dust already seeping through at the edges. She barely noticed anymore.
In her lap, she held a ration pack.
Foil-wrapped. Worn soft at the edges. The printed label had faded in the sun, but she could still make out the marker she’d scrawled across it months ago, back when she'd still thought labeling it would be funny, or maybe meaningful.
GOODBYE, M6.
She hadn’t meant to save it this long. At the time, it was just something she did—something to help her hold onto a timeline. A plan. Something resembling control.
She turned the pack slowly in her hands, thumb grazing the corner seam, feeling the slight give in the foil where it had crinkled. She could remember labeling it. She’d been tired even then, but not like this. Not spent. Not stripped to the nerve.
She had thought she’d open it on her last day here. Maybe even in orbit, on the way back. That it’d be part of a ritual. A small victory meal. A full-circle moment.
Instead, she was on the floor of a half-collapsed tent, staring down at a meal that hadn’t changed, even though everything else had.
Her fingers hesitated on the tear notch.
It was a stupid thing to hesitate over.
But still, she did.
Not because of what was inside. Just... because once she opened it, there’d be nothing else left to mark the moment. No more lines between before and after. Just the long blur of now.
She broke the seal with a jerk.
The foil hissed and gave. The sound was too loud in the confined space, and she winced instinctively, though she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like anyone could hear her.
She stared down at the contents for a long time. Rehydrated rice. Some kind of protein paste. Technically flavored, but she’d stopped believing the labels weeks ago. Food wasn’t about enjoyment out here. It was function. And now, even that was ceremonial.
She took the first bite without thinking. It was automatic. A routine. Chew. Swallow. The texture was soft and faintly gritty, like every other meal. It filled her mouth with the memory of nothing. No comfort. No warmth. Just fuel. The bland kind.
She kept eating, mechanically. Chewing slower with each bite.
She didn’t want it. She wasn’t hungry. But there was a gravity to finishing it now, to not leaving it half-eaten like so many others. If she was going to say goodbye to this place, she’d do it clean.
The name on the packet felt like a joke now. Goodbye, M6.
As if a single meal could contain all that. As if the act of opening it, eating it, could somehow make peace with everything this place had taken.
The dust storms. The silence. The endless repairs. The isolation so thick it had begun to feel like part of her own skin.
She glanced around the tent. It had held up better than she’d expected, all things considered. One corner had a slow leak that never quite sealed, and the interior fabric was stained along the floor seam from some leak weeks ago that had never quite dried. Her helmet sat nearby, a faint film of red dust still clinging to the visor.
There was no light here, not really. Just the pale wash from the tablet screen on standby mode across from her, casting a soft glow over her boots and the half-empty water pouch at her side.
There were no clocks anymore. Not physical ones, at least. Just the countdown in her head. The one that had started ticking the moment the mission shifted from survival to escape.
She took another bite. Slower this time. Her jaw moved like it was made of something heavier than bone.
How long had it been since she’d last spoken to someone face to face? Since someone had looked at her and not through a camera feed? The last message from April had been clipped like all messages from the girl were.
We’re locked in. Launch is yours. Be safe.
That was hours ago.
Possibly longer. Y/N had long since stopped being able to tell the passage of time on this planet. She did not even know if the days on her camera were correct. She would not know until she was on the Starfire, truly, if she'd been out here for over a year.
Y/N swallowed the last bite, feeling the dense weight of it settle in her stomach. It sat like lead. Not unpleasant. Just... full. In that way things only feel full when you know there’s nothing else coming.
She held the empty foil pouch in both hands for a moment. Then flattened it. Folded it once. Then again. The label was barely visible now. Just a faint smudge of black ink against silver.
She placed it carefully beside her helmet.
She leaned back against the wall of the tent and let her eyes close for a moment. She didn’t sleep. Didn’t even try. Just let her mind rest against the quiet.
The wind rattled faintly outside. The fabric creaked. Somewhere deep in the MAV’s systems—now half a kilometer away—the flight prep sequence was probably already ticking through a checklist.
She’d get up soon. She’d suit up. She’d climb inside that gutted, patched-together vehicle, and trust it to hold long enough to throw her into the sky.
But for now, she stayed where she was. Just a woman in a tent, finishing her last meal on a planet that never welcomed her.
She looked at the empty ration pack one last time.
“Goodbye,” she said quietly. Not to the food. Not to the tent.
summary: it started with noise complaints and eye rolls, now you’re climbing his fire escape and making out on his bedroom floor.
content: smut (mdni) + fluff ♡ 2783 words
isla's notes: a big cheers (with pizza or not) to a very special girl out there—here's to hoping your day is as bright as you, my love! i love you ♡ and im with you til the end.
IT STARTED WITH a wall.
Not a metaphorical one... though, sure, you had plenty of those. No, this was a very literal, very paper-thin, godforsaken wall between your office and Jungkook’s studio.
He’s not even a bad musician. That’s the worst part. The tracks he works on are good, sometimes brilliant, but not when you’re trying to hit a novel deadline and a five-piece rock band is shaking your filing cabinet with an aggressive bass drop.
You fought, at first. A lot. Passive-aggressively, then full-blown yelling. One time you left a signed copy of your latest book with a note that read “For your ears, since you clearly have no taste in soundproofing.” He responded by playing a demo on loop titled “Writer’s Block.” It was just thirty minutes of typewriter sounds and the occasional scream.
But here’s the thing: enemies are only enemies when you don’t really know them. Then one day, his studio flooded and someone had to share their WiFi and space while the flooring got redone. That someone, tragically, was you.
And he was... human. Funny. Weirdly intuitive. Insufferably hot. The kind of hot that makes you reevaluate your type mid-sentence.
Weeks passed. He started bringing coffee. You started defending his stupid beats. One night, you both ended up at the same open mic night and accidentally-on-purpose sat together the whole time.
Now you’re here. Tipsy on cheap cocktails after a friend’s party, walking toward his apartment, giggling like idiots. And somewhere along the line, the wall between you—literal and not—fell away.
“Okay, but hear me out,” Jungkook says, wobbling slightly as he skips backward in front of you, hands animated in the warm blur of city night. His black oversized bomber jacket flaps open with the movement, revealing a sliver of soft, golden skin and the worn waistband of jeans he’s clearly had forever. “This pizza place? Will alter the trajectory of your taste buds.”
You roll your eyes, half-laughing. You had to, just to keep your brain from short-circuiting. The streets are quiet now, washed in orange glow from overhead lamps, the world that had been loud and dizzy with party people now humming low and quiet. “You said that about the Thai place and I spent twenty-four hours regretting my life choices.”
“Okay, yes, but that one was a heat miscalculation. You have the spice tolerance of a Victorian child.”
You side-eye him as you walk, kicking at a loose rock. “I’ve literally eaten ghost pepper wings on a dare.”
He tilts his head, mock offended. “You also made me scrape chili flakes off your slice last week.”
“I was hungover,” you snap. “And ok, perhaps also emotionally vulnerable.”
He grins, slowing beside you again, the laughter settling into something softer. The kind of ease that only arrives at 12:47 a.m. when your feet are sore, your head’s fuzzy, and your company is Jungkook—who smells like citrus shampoo and rain-drenched concrete.
He stops suddenly, holding his hand up like he’s taking an oath. “This time, I swear on Namjoon’s vinyl collection.”
You freeze mid-step, eyes going wide. “That’s blasphemy,” you whisper, scandalized.
“Totally,” he agrees, bunny teeth flashing in a grin that does irreparable damage to your judgment.
“You have no fucking clue to what blasphemy means do you?” you try to manage the adoration oozing from your eyes with very little success. You can only hope he just sees it as you being completely drunk.
Jungkook sways a bit, laughs through his nose, then grins wider. “No. Sounds nice though!”
And just like that, you find yourself laughing uncontrollably while following him across a crosswalk and into a sleepy, blinking pizza shop that looks like it’s closed but isn’t.
The guy behind the counter doesn’t even look surprised to see Jungkook. He leans in, slaps palms with him over the register like they’re in a secret club, and you stand off to the side, arms crossed, watching the interaction with something that might be fondness or envy.
“Two slices of the good stuff, Yoongiihh!” Jungkook says funnily, pointing at a half-empty tray of bubbling mozzarella and burnt-edge crusts. “And extra napkins, please. We’re messy eaters.”
“We?” you mouth behind him, eyebrows raised.
He glances over his shoulder and smirks. “You especially.”
The clerk, Yoongi, stifles a laugh and passes over a white paper box.
You’re still bickering about him not letting you pay as you step onto the gravel alley behind his building, where the fire escape twists upward into the dark like something out of a noir film. The metal is cold, sharp, glittering faintly under the streetlights. The kind of climb that feels vaguely illegal. The pizza box is tucked between you and Jungkook’s chest now, shared like a secret.
He glances up at the ladder after frowning and tucking his phone back into his jeans. “Jimin locked the bottom latch, again.”
You stop contemplating opening the box to snatch a clandestine slice for yourself. “And this matters because…?”
He turns toward you, grinning like he’s about to unveil a heist. “We’re going up the old-fashioned way.”
Your eyes widen. “Oh, hell no.”
“The fire escape,” he confirms.
“For fucks sake, JK,” you mutter. “Is this a setup? Are you trying to murder me and keep the pizza for yourself?”
He laughs, that low rasp that always hits you too low in the gut. “If I were gonna murder you, it would be for your fancy gamer keyboard, not the pizza.”
You stare up at the rickety thing. “Do I look like someone who climbs structures in a midi dress and birkenstocks?”
He’s already got one foot on the lower rung. “You look like someone who’d complain the entire time and then act smug at the top.” when you don’t mention moving, he snatches the pizza box from your hands. “Come on,” he coaxes, “You even have a slit in your dress. Great mobility. Ok fine, I promise not to look up your—”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll push you off the moment we reach the top.”
Jungkook grins like he wants you to try.
You glare, but your heart is thudding a little faster, and it’s not because of the climb.
When you reach for the first rung, your foot slips. A second later, you feel his hand on your waist.
Firm. Warm. Electric.
“I got you,” he says softly, right behind you, breath grazing your ear.
You freeze. Not because you’re afraid but because your brain has been thrown off a cliff. His palm doesn’t leave. In fact, it tightens just slightly, as if making sure you’re there, real, grounded. His fingers are splayed just above your hip, and the contact, simple as it is, lights you up like a struck match.
You nod once, then keep going.
But that touch... his skin on yours, through a thin layer of your favorite black dress, it doesn’t leave your memory, not even as you step through the open window into his bedroom.
His room smells like him.
Not in an obvious, cologne-heavy way, but something lived-in and layered. A little diffuser, some bergamot, hints of laundry soap and cedar. The lamp with a bandana on top in the corner casts a dim orange glow across the hardwood floor and the chaos of his space. Cords snaking under a desk, notebooks left open, a hoodie flung across the back of a chair.
It’s intimate. Personal.
It’s also, apparently, your new dining area.
He kicks aside a Hello Kitty plushie you start wondering where he got from, and then gestures for you to sit. You drop down onto a pillow by the wall, and he follows suit, setting the pizza box between you like a peace offering.
When your thighs touch, it’s casual. When they stay touching, it’s not.
“Cheers,” he says, holding up a slice like it’s champagne. You clink crusts. The cheese stretches dangerously between you both before snapping back.
You try to focus on the pizza. You really do.
But he’s watching you again. Like you’re the story he doesn’t want to stop reading.
And you feel it, down to your stomach, where butterflies seem to fly rampant. The way your breathing shifts, the heat that’s crawling up your neck, the fact that your thigh is still pressed to his and now you can feel the way he flexes it when he shifts.
He wipes a bit of sauce off his lip. You watch his tongue catch the rest.
It’s fine.
Totally fine.
Except then he leans back, resting his inked arm on the mattress behind him, and looks over.
“Do you ever think about us?”
The words hit like a piano falling from the third floor.
You blink. “Us?”
“I mean... yeah.” His voice is quieter now. The buzzed, post-party haze has faded into something slower. “We weren’t exactly supposed to like each other… I think.”
You snort. “We used to actively not.”
“I still have that post-it you left taped to the wall.”
You smirk. “Which one?”
“All of the ragy ones like ‘I’ll impale you with your drumsticks’.” He chuckles, eyes trailed to the window. “But then... I dunno. I started looking forward to your threats.”
You glance down at your hands. “If we are in a sharing moment, well... I think I hated how much I liked hearing you sing.”
Silence blooms. He shifts closer. Your hands brush. You don’t pull away.
“You have something...” he murmurs, reaching out to brush the corner of your mouth. His thumb lingers there.
You hold your breath.
And he doesn’t move.
Jungkook just looks at you, and in his starry eyes there’s that same soft ache you’ve seen when he listens to a song he’s trying not to fall in love with.
You exhale. “Are you going to kiss me or—”
He does.
It’s not gentle.
Not sweet like once or twice you imagined as you caught yourself fantasizing what he’d do, how he’d be.
It’s a storm breaking loose, all noise and heat and weeks of tension crashing down in a single, breathless second.
Jungkook’s hands are on your face, your neck, then your waist, gripping tight like he needs the contact or he’ll come undone. Your fingers thread into his thick hair instead, pulling just enough to make him groan into your mouth.
The kiss deepens, slower now, but heavier. He tastes like pizza and whiskey and something uniquely Jungkook—warm and just slightly out of control.
You climb into his lap without thinking. He lets out a moan that punches straight through your stomach and down. Your dress rides up thanks to the flowy slit on your left leg, and his fingers curl into your hips, dragging you flush against him.
You gasp when you feel him hard beneath you.
He kisses you harder for it. His tongue sliding against yours with the slow, sinful certainty of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.
Your hands move on instinct, pushing his jacket off, dragging your nails across the warm skin of his neck. He shivers.
He pulls back for air, forehead against yours. “You’re unreal,” he whispers. “You feel,” he closes his eyes, biting the soft spot by your year, tugging on your hips as you roll them instinctively against his hard-on. “God, you feel fucking unreal.”
You smile, dazed, kissing him again, and it’s slower, much slower—exploratory, indulgent. His mouth moves to your jaw, your neck, tongue teasing just below your ear again. Your breath stutters, and he groans when you arch into him.
His hands slide further under your dress, bunching it as they go. Fingertips skate over your ribs, reverent.
“Please tell me you’re not that drunk,” he murmurs against your neck, tongue flipping, teeth rasping. “That you know exactly what you’re doing to me right now- Please.”
But your hands are already on his shirt, tugging it over his head. Your answer is your body—your mouth on his collarbone, your fingers at the waistband of his jeans.
He tilts his head back, fingers on the verge of bruising you like he’s going to run out of time.
Like this, you, were something he’d earned the right to want and is terrified he might still lose.
“Fuck,” he breathes against your skin, right before his hands slide from your thighs to your hips, spinning you slightly, and walking you back until your knees hit the edge of the rug. You barely have time to laugh before you are on the floor. Your back skimming the cool wood, his weight settling over you.
The way he moves feels more like instinct than choreography. Raw, imperfect, real.
He doesn’t undress you so much as he tears you apart.
Your dress is gone, flung to the side. His sneakers hit the floor with a muted thud. He kisses down your chest like he’d been dying to. Like he is memorizing you by mouth alone. When he reaches behind you to unhook your bra, his hand is shaking.
“I’ve thought about this,” he whispers, teeth grazing the top of your breast. “So many times.”
“Good,” you tug at his locks, arching.
Your fingers claw at his belt, jerking it loose with more desperation than grace. He sucks in a breath when your hand slides inside, wrapping around him, hot and heavy and so hard it makes your thighs clench.
“I swear to God,” he growls, “if you keep doing that, I’m gonna—”
“Then do something about it,” you whisper, biting and sucking his bottom lip.
That was all it took.
He drags your panties off with rough, impatient hands, mouth returning to yours with a new kind of hunger. The kind that leaves bruises. The kind that unravels.
You gasp at the cold air on your skin, then gasp again when his fingers slip between your legs, groaning when he feels how ready you are.
“Jesus,” he mutters. “You’re so wet, baby.”
You tug at his waistband, wordless now.
He strips the last of his clothes, kneels between your thighs, and for one heartbeat, just one, he hovers.
Eyes locked.
Breaths heavy.
Everything suspended.
Then he pushes into you with one long, deep thrust, and you see stars.
“Jungkook—” you gasp, clutching his arms. “Oh– Fuck,”
The stretch, the heat, the fullness... he fills you like he belongs there. Like this is the only way your bodies are ever supposed to fit.
“Ah, yes, right there,” you moan, rolling into him. “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”
He groans, low and guttural, rocking into you with slow, deep strokes. “You feel so good—fuck, you feel so fucking good.”
Your hands grip his back, nails scoring lines down his spine. “Harder,” you pant. “Just like that, oh—”
“Look at me,” he growls, hips snapping harder into yours. “I want to watch you.”
You do.
The slap of skin fills the room. Your gasps turn to throaty moans. You are unraveling beneath him, clinging to his shoulders, your legs lock around his waist, each thrust tearing another piece of you open.
“God, you’re so fucking perfect,” he mutters against your mouth, kissing you deep and messy. “Ah, fuck.”
He swallows your moans, his pace relentless now. And when your body seize around him, pleasure tearing through you like lightning, you cry out his name like a vow.
“Jungkook,” you choke, trembling. “I’m— I’m coming—”
He curses, thrusts once more, deep and shuddering, and then he is spilling into you with a broken sound against your throat, collapsing on top of you in a mess of sweat and tangled limbs, your bodies still connected, your breaths shared.
You lay there together on the floor, sticky and undone, the air thick with everything that hadn’t been said, but was felt anyway.
He doesn’t speak for a while.
Just kisses your shoulder, your cheekbone, your jaw, like he can’t stop touching you.
And then he pulls back slightly, only enough to look at you. And look, he does.
Like you are the only thing he can see with those starry eyes of his. Like he wants to memorize you again.
Jungkook’s fingers tangle slowly through your hair, brushing it off your face, soft and slow, over and over, like it calms him just to touch you.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” he whispers, kissing the edge of your mouth, and then again, this time catching your bottom lip between his teeth. Gentle, possessive, drunk on you.
“Shut up,” you chuckle, unable to not press closer to his warmth.
Eventually, he nudges your nose with his. “You’re never gonna win another argument, by the way. You know that, right?”
You laugh, breathless. “That’s what you think, loser.”
And when he kisses you again, it isn’t about lust.
It is about every late night. Every fight. Every inch of space you’d carved into each other just to finally land here.
⮞ Chapter Seven: Fuck Bureaucracy
Pairing: Jungkook x Reader
Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only
Word Count: 19.7k+
Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves.
Warnings: Strong Language, Blood, Trauma, Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, terraforming, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, new characters, body image issues, scars, strong female characters are everywhere, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything...
A/N: I love a good rescue mission...
prev || masterlist || next
The reds of M6-117 bled across the sky like a bruise stretching over the horizon. It was technically morning—though nothing about this place felt like morning. There were no birds, no blue sky, no dew on the ground. Just heat rising in slow, merciless waves under the low twin suns. No relief, only exposure.
Y/N stood outside the Hab, boots sunk halfway into the grit. The wind had died down for now, but the silence was heavier than any storm. Her suit was streaked with dirt, pockmarked with patches—each one a story she hadn’t had the time or energy to write down. The visor on her helmet caught the early light at an angle, throwing a warped reflection of the landscape behind her. She didn’t look back at it.
She tilted her head slightly, as if trying to decide whether she was ready to say it out loud. Then she pressed the comm.
“Jim.”
Her voice came through the static-soft channel, low and almost hesitant, like she was still practicing the sentence inside her own skull. The word hung there a moment, delicate and unfinished.
“I need you to do something for me.”
She paused, pressing a gloved hand against the seam of her thigh like grounding herself might make it easier.
“If I don’t make it—and I’m not saying I won’t, just… if—I need you to talk to them. Please.”
She looked down, eyes tracking the trail of her own footprints half-blown smooth by last night’s wind.
“They shouldn’t hear about me from a news brief. Or a stranger reading a script. That’s not how this ends.”
Her voice cracked slightly, but she didn’t stop. If anything, it made her steadier. There was no emotion she hadn’t already felt out here—fear, grief, anger, numbness—and now they all just circled each other like orbiting moons.
“Helion Prime was the beginning of everything. I was seventeen. Terrified. Stupid in the ways you’re only allowed to be when you’re too new to know better. And they were so proud. I used to think they were just being polite, but they meant it. Every article—they printed them all. Even the blurry ones where I was just in the background fixing a panel.”
She exhaled slowly, eyes drifting to the nearby speculor—its chassis sand-swept and sunburnt. Her reflection blinked back at her in distorted glass.
“Flight school at twenty. I met you there. I remember the day I brought you home,” She smiled faintly, remembering. “They adored you. God, I think Aunt Rose made you cookies the second day she met you. They never had to pretend with you. You were family before we ever said the word out loud.”
A beat.
“They didn’t even hesitate to move across the galaxy to be near us. Packed up their entire lives and settled on a rainy colony world, even though Aunt Rose hates humidity and mold and missing her morning paper. You remember how mad she was when she realized Aguerra didn’t even have paper delivery?”
Her voice grew quieter then, the smile fading as her posture straightened slightly.
“If something happens, I need you to go to them. Sit down. Look them in the eye. Don’t tell them about this place. Don’t describe the suits and the patch kits and the way the sun burns through the walls at midday. They don’t need to know that. Talk about Starfire. Tell them how much I loved that ship. How much I loved what we did. That was the happiest I’ve ever been, Jim. Not just in space. Anywhere.”
She shifted her weight slightly, boots crunching against dry ground.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she said. “There’s no good way to tell people their niece died millions of miles from home. But if it has to happen, they need to hear it from someone who knew me beyond the title. Who saw me here, with the work and the grime and the joy of it all.”
Her voice caught on the next breath. She didn’t try to hide it—there was no one out here to impress. Just the comm channel, the open stretch of dead horizon, and a sky that never blinked.
She steadied herself.
“And tell Uma…” Her voice cracked, unraveling mid-sentence. She blinked hard, trying to keep her eyes clear, but it was already too late. They were glassy now, fogging over with grief she hadn’t allowed herself to feel until this exact second.
“Tell her I love her. Tell her I’m sorry.”
The words came out rough. Honest. And too small for everything they meant.
“I wanted to be there,” she continued, slower now, like each syllable cost her something. “I wanted to help pick paint colors, argue over names no one would use. Hold her hand when she panicked over something tiny and hormonal and beautiful.”
She let out a shaky laugh—just one—but it didn’t stay.
“I wanted to sit in the nursery with her. Feel the baby kick. Help build furniture we’d curse at and pretend we knew how to fix. Babysit. Fall asleep on the couch watching movies we’d already seen. Spoil the kid. Sneak them candy behind your backs.”
She looked up, eyes squinting against the sharp white glare of the twin suns climbing higher above the dunes. Her voice dropped to a whisper, quieter than the wind curling at her feet.
“If I made it home… that baby would already be walking.”
She didn’t need to explain it. The heartbreak sat there on its own, fully formed.
Silence followed, but it wasn’t empty. It was full of everything she couldn’t bring herself to name. All the stolen time. All the pieces of a life she was still trying to carry, even as the weight of this planet pulled harder at her every day.
When she spoke again, it was softer. But there was no wobble left.
“I’m not giving up. Don’t think for a second that I am.”
Her eyes locked on the far line of the horizon. The sky shimmered, heat warping the edge of everything.
“I’ve made it through things that should’ve killed me,” she said. “But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that hoping for the best only works when you’re also planning for the worst. I’m not making a goodbye message. I’m covering my bases. That’s all.”
She reached up, adjusted the mic on her collar, and took a steadying breath.
“If it comes to that—if I don’t make it back—tell them I didn’t die out here just trying to hang on. Tell them I chose this. That I wanted to be out here. That I believed in what we were building. That I gave it everything I had.”
She paused, her fingers brushing the spot near her hip where the suit had been patched again and again. The fabric there felt thinner, no matter how many times she reinforced it.
“Not because I was brave. Not because I was reckless. But because I believed in it. All of it. And because I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”
Her voice dipped to almost nothing.
“Tell them I’m okay with that.”
A pause.
“Even if they’re not.”
The wind picked up again, pulling at the hem of the thermal shielding she’d bolted down earlier that morning. It flapped once, soft and tired, like the Hab itself was exhaling beside her.
Y/N stood there a little while longer, watching the light stretch across the red landscape. The suns climbed, and the shadows pulled behind her like anchors.
She didn’t speak again.
Eventually, she turned. The gravel shifted beneath her boots, crunching softly with each step. The Hab loomed ahead, patched and battered and still standing—like her.
She walked back toward the airlock.
The Taurus Interplanetary Commission headquarters stood like a blade of glass and steel against the deep blue atmosphere of Taurus I. It was the kind of place built to make a statement—an architectural flex that said humanity didn’t just belong in space; it was starting to understand how to make it beautiful.
Inside, the halls buzzed with quiet, measured urgency. Footsteps on polished floors. Low voices in corners. The occasional murmur of comms traffic spilling from open doors. On a wide display screen in the atrium, NOSA’s press conference played in real time. Yoongi and Mateo sat at the table, looking like they hadn’t slept in days. Probably because they hadn’t.
“We substituted the standard ration bricks with high-density protein cubes,” Mateo was explaining, his voice steady but dry with exhaustion. “What we didn’t account for was the behavior of those cubes under heavy thrust. Combined with lateral vibration during ascent, the protein packs liquefied and shifted the weight distribution. That’s what destabilized the payload.”
The reporters pounced.
“Why wasn’t this caught during final inspection?”
Yoongi leaned forward, face unreadable. “We didn’t have time.”
The room stirred with low, anxious chatter.
“You skipped the inspections?” one reporter asked, voice sharp.
“Yes,” Yoongi said. Flat. Unapologetic. “We had a fourteen-minute window. If we’d missed it, we wouldn’t have another chance for months. And she doesn’t have that kind of time.”
The broadcast continued, but in a quiet corner office ten floors above, the volume had already been muted.
André Batista stood near the window, his hands tucked into the pockets of his tailored jacket. His gaze drifted from the screen to the man seated behind the desk.
“She’s not going to make it,” André said finally, his voice low but certain. Not cruel. Just honest.
Gunther Apinya didn’t look up right away. He was scanning a data packet, fingers idly flipping through the pages until André stepped forward and placed a second folder in front of him.
“Maybe not,” André allowed. “But maybe she does. Take a look.”
Gunther opened it.
Charts. Numbers. A schematic of the Argo booster system, overlaid with a proposed injection path—M-344/G orbit. Deep burn. Minimal gravity assist. Fast and dirty.
“You ran this through engineering?” Gunther asked, already knowing the answer.
“They ran it twice. If we launch in forty-eight hours, it’ll reach her in time.” André crossed his arms. “With margin.”
Gunther frowned. “Why hasn’t NOSA reached out to us?”
“They don’t know we can help,” André said simply. “That booster tech is still classified under Coalition R&D. There are maybe twelve people outside this building who even know it exists.”
Gunther leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. “So what you’re saying is... if we do nothing, no one would ever know we had the capability.”
André nodded once. “That’s right.”
They sat in silence, the air between them thick with implication. Out the window, the twin suns of Taurus I were setting low, turning the glass gold.
Gunther finally spoke, his voice quiet but firm. “And if we help?”
“We burn a booster we can’t replace. Argo gets delayed. Possibly scrapped.”
Silence again. This time, longer.
Gunther stared at the file. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink.
Then he closed the folder slowly, the soft click of the binder echoing in the quiet office.
“This doesn’t go through governments,” he said. “No public release. No diplomatic channels.”
André raised an eyebrow. “You want backchannel?”
“I want scientists,” Gunther replied. “Just us. Just them. No politics. No medals. If this works, the world never needs to know.”
André didn’t smile, but something in his shoulders eased. “I’ll make the call.”
As he stepped out of the room, Gunther turned back to the muted broadcast. Mateo was still speaking, trying to explain the loss without flinching. Yoongi sat beside him, unmoving, his eyes shadowed but clear.
The lights in Yoongi’s office were dim, the windows tinted against the rising glare of Aguerra’s twin suns. A half-empty mug of cold coffee sat forgotten on the edge of his desk, the ring it left behind now drying into the paper below. Across from him, the comms unit glowed faintly, casting a soft blue hue over the scattered reports and schematics that hadn’t been touched in hours.
He didn’t speak. Not yet.
The voice on the other end was calm, precise—measured in that way only career scientists and seasoned negotiators knew how to be. It laid out the terms cleanly: launch access, limited telemetry sharing, classified propulsion specs kept under lock. No governments. No press. Just a backdoor lifeline.
Yoongi sat motionless in his chair, head tilted back against the cushion, eyes closed. Not from sleep—he hadn’t slept in over thirty hours—but to block everything else out. The ache in his shoulders. The sting behind his eyes. The pressure that had been building in his chest since the probe failed.
But now, there it was.
Help.
Unexpected. Improbable. Quietly offered from a corner of the galaxy where he hadn’t dared hope.
He almost didn’t trust it at first. Then the voice repeated the final clause, politely, waiting for acknowledgment.
Yoongi blinked. Straightened.
He didn’t reach for a pen. Didn’t take a breath to buy himself time. He already knew the answer.
His voice, when it came, was low—rough from disuse—but steady.
“Yes,” he said. “We accept.”
And as he leaned forward, elbows braced on the desk, the hum of the line settled into silence. A silence that, for the first time in days, didn’t feel like failure pressing in from all sides. It felt like motion. Like the beginning of something.
He let the weight of it settle.
Then he picked up the stylus and got back to work.
At Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s primary assembly bay, the air was thick with fatigue, sweat, and the faint chemical tang of solder and composite dust. Half-finished components were stacked on worktables. Coffee cups littered the corners of schematics. No one had slept enough. No one was planning to, either.
Marco stood at the whiteboard, sleeves rolled to the elbows, marker already in hand. His hair stuck up in uneven tufts like he’d run his fingers through it too many times, and the stubble on his jaw was well into Day Three territory. Behind him, the whir of ventilation fans and toolkits hummed over the low murmur of keyboards and data feeds.
“Okay,” he said, voice sharper than usual—not angry, just wired. Focused. Running on pure adrenaline. “Thanks to some unexpected friends on Taurus 1, we’ve got one more shot at this.”
He turned and started writing fast, the marker squeaking against the board as he sketched out the basic launch trajectory and burn profile. The numbers came from muscle memory now.
“We built Iris in sixty-three days,” he went on, turning back to face the room. “And for the record? That should’ve been impossible. But we did it. You did it. Every subsystem, every weld, every last calibration. You made it happen.”
He held up the marker like a baton. “Now we do it again.”
The engineers and analysts around him exchanged tired looks. There were bags under everyone’s eyes, a few still wearing the same clothes from the day before. But no one objected. No one moved to say no.
Marco raised an eyebrow, as if daring someone to tell him it couldn’t be done.
“We don’t get sixty-three days this time,” he said. “We get twenty-eight. Twenty-eight days to design, fabricate, test, and launch a completely reconfigured payload. Lighter. Faster. Hotter burn. Different booster.”
He tapped the board with the marker, underlining a series of projected dates.
“And we’re going to do it. Because the alternative is watching someone die knowing we could’ve helped. I’m not interested in being a footnote in that story.”
The room had gone quiet—no arguments, no complaints. Just the subtle shift of people straightening in their seats, tightening ponytails, finishing cold coffee. The kind of stillness that came just before a storm.
Marco exhaled, stepped back, and dropped the marker into the tray.
“We don’t get to fail this time,” he said, softer now. “We get to try. That’s the gift. So let’s move.”
Someone from the propulsion team stood up and headed toward the assembly corridor. A software lead muttered something about patching a new thermal profile and started typing. A tech from avionics walked out without a word, already pulling up wiring schematics on a tablet.
Marco watched them go, then turned back to the board.
The numbers weren’t beautiful. But they were possible.
The hum of NOSA’s supercomputer lab was the kind of ambient noise that most people didn’t notice anymore. But Dean Marblemaw had always liked it—the low whirr of a machine thinking faster than he ever could, the air conditioners clicking rhythmically to keep it from melting down under its own brilliance.
He sat alone at the far terminal, sleeves pushed up, fingers moving fast over the keys. The numbers flowed like music—data sets, burn windows, orbital maps all converging into something strange. And then, suddenly, something true.
He stopped. Blinked.
Ran it again.
Same result.
Dean leaned back slowly, a grin spreading across his face like he couldn’t stop it if he tried. The kind of grin that had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with the pure, breathless thrill of seeing the impossible become real.
"Holy shit," he whispered, half-laughing.
He snatched the pages from the printer—charts, calculations, a half-scribbled orbital solution that shouldn't work but absolutely did—and bolted for the door.
The halls of NOSA blurred past him. He wasn’t built for running—skinny and long-legged in a way that always looked vaguely winded—but he didn’t stop. Security glanced up as he passed. A junior engineer did a double take. He didn’t care.
By the time he reached Mateo’s office, his heart was pounding and his shirt clung to his back. He didn’t knock.
He flung the door open hard enough that it bounced off the stopper, startling Mateo, who was in the middle of a call, headset pressed to one ear, tablet in the other hand.
Dean didn’t waste time.
“You should hang up the phone.”
Mateo blinked at him, thrown completely off balance. “I’m sorry, who the hell are you?”
“Dean Marblemaw. Astrodynamics. Floor six.” He stepped forward, still out of breath. “And seriously—you need to hang up the phone right now.”
Mateo held up a finger, eyes narrowing. “I’ll call you back,” he said into the headset, voice sharp with suspicion. He ended the call and set the tablet aside. “This better be worth it.”
Dean didn’t respond. He dropped a folder onto the desk and shoved it across the surface, sending a half-full coffee mug wobbling to the edge.
“Read this.”
Mateo didn’t move. Not at first. He studied Dean’s face—sweaty, flushed, buzzing with something like adrenaline—and then picked up the packet.
As he read, the frown that had settled into Mateo’s forehead deepened. Then stilled. His eyes jumped back up to Dean’s.
“This trajectory’s not viable.”
“It wasn’t,” Dean said, chest still heaving. “Until I ran the residual vectors on the second flyby sequence and—look, I can’t explain it fast. But it works. The window’s narrow, but it’s there. We can reach her.”
Mateo glanced back at the numbers, flipping to the second page. He did the math in his head. Then again.
His chair creaked as he leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
“You're absolutely sure?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything that wasn’t caffeine dependency or gravitational constants.” Dean grinned, breath finally evening out. “Dr.Gomez, we can get a new payload there faster than we thought. If we burn on this vector, we shave thirty-one days off the injection arc. Thirty-one. That’s the difference between watching her die and watching her walk away.”
Mateo didn’t waste time. He was already punching the intercom.
“April,” he said, calm but urgent. “I need mission planning in my office. Now. Tell them it’s about Project Elrond.”
Across the room, Dean dropped into a chair, still riding the high of the math he’d just scrawled across four pages and a whiteboard. He grinned, breathless.
“I told you to hang up the phone,” he said.
Mateo didn’t respond. He was staring at the file in front of him, not reading it, just letting the numbers sink in like they were burning through the paper and into his chest.
They had something they hadn’t had in days.
Hope.
Alice stepped into the conference room mid-scroll, still reading from her phone. “Okay, seriously—what the hell is ‘Project Elrond’?”
Mateo didn’t look up from his tablet. “Had to give it a name.”
She stopped just inside the door. “Elrond?”
From the far corner, Creed looked up, brow arched. “Council of Elrond. Lord of the Rings.”
Alice blinked. “Why do Earth people always name critical operations after fantasy books? Is it a cultural compulsion? Or just a lack of imagination?”
Marco, legs stretched out, gave a quiet laugh. “It’s the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring. World-saving stuff.”
“That doesn’t make it better,” she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Am I even supposed to know what that means? How old is that book?”
The door opened again, and Yoongi walked in with a coffee in one hand and his usual unreadable calm. “If this is a Project Elrond, I want my codename to be Glorfindel.”
Alice didn’t miss a beat. “This is why I hate working with Earthlings.”
Creed grinned at Yoongi. “You don’t even know what this meeting’s about, do you?”
Yoongi took a seat and set his coffee down with care. “I assumed it had to be important if Matt called us all in here so urgently.”
Mateo looked up at last and slid a tablet across the table toward Dean. “Show them.”
Dean nodded, suddenly serious. His energy had been buzzing all morning, barely contained, but now it focused. He stood, pulled a few random objects from the table—a stapler, a mug, a stylus—and laid them out with quiet purpose.
“I can get Starfire back to M6-117,” he said. “By Sol 320.”
The air shifted. Heads turned. Every unspoken thought hit the same wall: That’s impossible.
Creed narrowed his eyes. “Say that again.”
“Five-six-one,” Dean repeated. “It’s tight. But I’ve run the numbers three times. The trajectory holds.”
Yoongi leaned forward, fingers steepled. “How?”
Dean didn’t sit. He held up the stapler. “This is Starfire, inbound toward Earth. They’re supposed to decelerate soon, prep for orbit. But what if they don’t? What if we tell them to skip the braking burn and use M6’s gravity instead?”
He swung the stapler in a wide arc toward Yoongi’s mug. “They slingshot. Pick up velocity, not lose it. We intercept the Argo probe on the way through. Resupply mid-sling.”
“With what?” Alice asked.
“Food. Fuel. Life support modules,” Mateo said. “Whatever we can get packed into the probe before it meets them.”
Dean pointed with the stylus. “After resupply, they make the burn straight back to M6-117. But there’s no time to decelerate. It’s a flyby.”
Alice frowned. “That’s useless unless—”
“Unless Y/N meets them in orbit,” Dean said. “MAV launch. She matches trajectory and speed, intercepts them mid-pass, and they haul ass home.”
The table was silent. Not confused—calculating. Each mind tracking the feasibility, the mechanics, the margin of error.
Dean took a breath. “It’s all there. The math checks out.”
Yoongi sat back slowly. “Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Leave the room.”
Dean’s face fell. “Wait, what?”
“You’re done for now,” Yoongi said quietly. “We need to talk.”
Dean hesitated, looked around the room, then gathered his notes and walked out. The door clicked behind him.
Yoongi turned to Mateo. “Is he right?”
Mateo gave a slow nod. “His math’s clean. No gaps in the logic. If the Argo resupply works—and if Y/N can get the MAV off the ground—it’s viable.”
Alice’s brow furrowed. “So what’s the tradeoff?”
Mateo didn’t pause. “We only have one Argo. We use it to resupply Starfire, or we send it to Y/N directly with enough food to keep her alive until Helion Nexus arrives.”
Alice leaned back, thinking. “No backup?”
“No second probe. No margin,” Creed said. “We built one. We launched one. That’s it.”
“And what about the crew?” she asked. “What does this add to their mission?”
Mateo looked her in the eye. “Three hundred twenty days.”
Creed didn’t hesitate. “They’ll do it. All of them. You don’t even have to ask.”
“That’s the point,” Mateo said. “We don’t want to ask. Jimin shouldn’t have to carry this decision.”
Alice blinked. “Commander Park.”
Creed nodded. “Her family. Her former commander. If we put it in front of him, it’s over. He’ll say yes, and we all know it.”
Yoongi exhaled, his gaze shifting to the ceiling for a moment. “Can the ship make it?”
Mateo nodded. “It was built for extended missions. All five Nexus launches. It can handle the time.”
“And if anything fails out there?”
Mateo didn’t blink. “Then we lose all of them.”
Marco’s voice was soft but clear. “So it’s a question of one life… or six.”
The words hung in the room like smoke.
No one spoke.
Then slowly, every head turned to Yoongi.
He didn’t rush. Just sat there, staring at the table, eyes distant. The room was quiet except for the quiet hum of the vent overhead and the faint ticking of the wall clock.
After a long pause, he said, “We still have a safe way to bring five people home. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
Creed’s hands curled into fists on the table. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“Let them make that decision.”
Yoongi didn’t answer.
“We’re going with option one,” he said.
Creed stood. Slowly. The chair scraped sharply against the floor as he pushed it back.
He held Yoongi’s gaze, jaw tight.
“You goddamn coward,” And he walked out.
The airlock sealed behind her with a low hiss—routine, automated, impersonal. Y/N didn’t look back.
She stepped onto the dusty ground with the same slow, measured movements that had come to define her. Not fatigue exactly—she was long past the point of real exhaustion. This was inertia. Survival-mode autopilot. Her boots dragged slightly with each step, her gait uneven from the ache in her hip that hadn’t gone away since the last hard fall.
The brush in her hand was stiff, its bristles worn down to the point of uselessness. She’d meant to replace it weeks ago, but every time she thought about digging through the storage crates, she ran out of momentum. So the brush stayed. Dull, frayed, familiar.
Ahead, the solar panels stretched in a broken line across the plateau—dust-caked, half-buried in places, their surfaces dull under the constant pale light. Cleaning them had become a ritual. Not for efficiency anymore. Not for system optimization. Just something to do. A reason to put on the suit. A reason to move.
She reached the edge of the first panel and lifted the brush.
Then stopped.
Her hand hovered midair, fingers locked around the handle. For a moment she just stared, unmoving, her helmet visor reflecting a warped image of herself against the glassy surface of the panel.
She let the brush fall.
It landed with a soft thunk against the dust and lay still. The sound barely registered. Even the wind felt half-asleep, carrying only the faintest rasp of fine sand.
She stood there, breathing slow, not entirely sure what she was waiting for.
Then, without making a conscious decision, she turned and walked. Not toward the Hab. Not toward the rover. Toward the low ridge that curved beyond the eastern edge of the old settlement site—the one she visited sometimes when the air inside got too heavy.
Her spot.
The only place that felt slightly other on a planet that never changed.
The slope was gentle, but it took effort. Her suit was already too warm, the sun already high. She climbed anyway, boots crunching against loose rock, the incline chewing at her thighs. At the top, she sank down, legs folding beneath her with a graceless drop, and sat.
Not to rest.
Not to think.
Just to stop.
Below her, the empty valley stretched endlessly in all directions. The remnants of Colony 212’s initial outpost lay half-swallowed by dust—crumpled scaffolding, shattered survey drones, the twisted frame of a greenhouse torn apart by a windstorm before she’d even landed here.
The suns were low now. Three pale coins bleeding sideways light across the ridgeline, elongating shadows until the rocks themselves looked like reaching hands. She closed her eyes.
And stayed that way.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer. She lost track.
By the time she opened them again, the sky had changed. The suns were climbing again—merciless, blinding—and the world had gone from dim orange to stark, clinical white. Her suit’s internal alarm chirped, then escalated to a shrill beep.
TEMP WARNING: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT UNSAFE.
She silenced it with a few taps.
Her throat felt dry. She didn’t feel like moving.
She didn’t want to go back to the Hab. Not yet.
And that was when something caught her eye—just a flicker of light in the dust. A glint. Not bright. Just out of place enough to make her turn her head.
Near her boot, half-buried in grit, was something metallic.
She crouched automatically, fingers brushing the sand aside. The object revealed itself slowly—a long, slender drill shaft, pitted with corrosion but unmistakably familiar. A specimen drill, the kind issued during the early survey missions.
She stared at it, frowning.
It hadn’t been there the last time she climbed this hill. At least, not visibly. The storms must’ve uncovered it, shaken it loose from whatever shallow grave had hidden it all these years.
She turned it over in her hands. The serial tag was mostly scrubbed, but she recognized the build—an older model, standard during the early M6 surface ops. Pre-colonization. The drill tip was blunted. A few of the threads were stripped. But it still had weight.
Her eyes followed a faint line in the sand—tracks, barely visible. The kind only time and wind could etch. They led toward a jagged rock formation nearby, one she’d passed a dozen times without looking twice.
She stood and followed the line.
Near the base of the rock, holes had been drilled—precise, methodical, in a pattern meant for core sampling. But they were shallow. Incomplete. As if the mission that had started here had been cut off mid-execution.
Y/N crouched again and ran her gloved fingers across the markings. The ridges were still sharp. It hadn’t eroded completely. She paused, hand resting against the surface.
It didn’t feel like just another piece of equipment forgotten by some long-dead operation. It felt… interrupted.
She sat back on her heels, the drill resting across her lap.
The low hum of NOSA Mission Control ticked along at its usual pace—monitors blinking, quiet conversations traded in clipped tones, the soft churn of machines doing what they were built to do. Underneath it all, that familiar background drone: the sound of systems keeping time in space.
But at April Borne’s console, none of it registered.
She sat forward in her chair, posture tight, eyes fixed on the center screen like it might flinch. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to react, but frozen for the moment. Around her, the world moved in quiet circuits. At her station, the world had narrowed to one: M6-117.
Three displays surrounded her, each showing a different slice of telemetry—orbital drift, atmospheric density, biosuit vitals. She moved between them with ease, toggling overlays, tracking sensor shifts in real time. She wasn’t new anymore. She’d learned what mattered.
But one feed didn’t change.
Front and center: the live camera stream from an orbital relay, trained on a wide plateau. The camera wasn’t automated. April had locked it manually an hour ago. She didn’t want the feed to lose her.
On-screen, a single figure moved slowly across the dust-blasted landscape. An EVA suit, patched and sand-worn, its silhouette tiny in the frame. Step. Pause. Step. Pause.
April didn’t say anything for a while. Just watched.
Then, softly, without looking up, she spoke.
“She’s been out almost all day.”
Behind her, Mateo Gomez stood with his arms crossed, his weight shifting like he couldn’t quite settle. His jaw was tight, eyes glued to the same image. He looked tired in a way that didn’t come from lack of sleep—like his body had forgotten how to let go of tension.
“How many EVAs is that now?” he asked.
April flicked through a tab on the side screen. “Four, officially. Five if you count the solar sweep she did this morning.”
On the feed, Y/N’s figure came to a stop. She bent slightly, adjusted something in her hand, then continued walking—three hundred meters, give or take—before stopping again.
Then again. And again. Same rhythm. Same intervals.
“There’s a pattern,” April said, frowning slightly. “Three hundred-meter increments. Always the same distance between stops.”
“Survey work?” Mateo leaned in. “Did JPL send her updated collection coordinates?”
April shook her head, already checking. “No new packets. I ran a log scan—no inbound data. No flagged instructions. She hasn’t even acknowledged our system pings in four days.”
“So it’s all her,” Mateo murmured.
April nodded once. “She’s marking positions. Deliberate spacing, consistent timing. She’s not scavenging. She’s building something.”
The screen to her left pinged. A soft alert. April’s eyes snapped to it.
“Hold on,” she said. “We just got a packet through the Speculor relay.”
She brought it up quickly, hands moving across the keyboard with purpose. The data decrypted smoothly. It wasn’t a distress call. Not even a voice memo.
He stared at the screen for a second. “That’s Oslo’s grid.”
April looked up. “You mean—Colony 212? The geo-mineral mapping project?”
Mateo nodded slowly, as if the pieces were clicking together in real time. “Yeah. Oslo’s team was testing local substrate cohesion. Seeing if the regolith could be mixed and cured into load-bearing material. That data was supposed to drive long-term construction models for outposts. But the Eclipse hit before they finished.”
He leaned closer, eyes narrowing at the screen. “And that number… she’s not guessing. That’s the actual designation. Oslo ran a radial grid—six hundred meters across, three hundred between sample paths.”
April quickly overlaid the coordinates from Y/N’s EVAs onto a legacy terrain map. The grid snapped into place, translucent lines lacing across the dusty plateau.
It was nearly identical.
“Oh my god,” April whispered. “She’s not just collecting. She’s replicating the test grid. Exactly.”
Mateo stood still, like he was watching something sacred.
“She’s not just surviving,” he said quietly. “She’s continuing the mission.”
Y/N’s figure had stopped again, kneeling in the red dust. Her hands moved with slow precision, sealing something into a container—probably a drill sample, maybe a substrate core. There was no rush. No panic.
Just focus.
Purpose.
April sat back slowly, her eyes still fixed on the screen. “She picked up where they left off.”
“She must’ve found Oslo’s notes,” Mateo said. “Maybe from the wreck. Maybe from one of the old surface drives. It doesn’t matter. She’s finishing the work.”
“No,” April said softly. “She’s continuing it.”
The room shifted around them. Not louder—just heavier. The kind of silence that settles when something meaningful happens and no one wants to interrupt it.
On the feed, Y/N stood again. Adjusted her grip on a sampling tube. Walked three hundred more meters. Stopped. Crouched.
She was following a dead man’s path.
She was finishing what history had abandoned.
Mateo exhaled. His voice came out hoarse.
“She’s doing the science.”
April didn’t respond at first. She just kept watching.
Then she leaned forward, eyes bright behind tired lashes.
“That’s not what we expected her to do,” she said. “After the crash. After everything. I thought—honestly? I thought she’d hunker down. Try to stay warm. Make peace with the end.”
“She was never built for that,” Mateo said. “She’s a problem-solver. If she couldn’t be rescued, she’d figure out how to be useful.”
He watched her take another knee, dig gently into the ground.
“That girl is a fucking superstar,” he murmured. “Even when no one’s watching.”
And for the first time in days, the tension in Mission Control eased—not with certainty, but with clarity.
April’s screen updated again—new readings, a fresh transmission of spectrographic data. She sat up straighter, readying the next pass.
Across the room, techs leaned in a little closer. Conversations quieted. Chairs scooted forward.
Because for all the things they didn’t know yet—how to bring her home, how to explain what she was doing, how to protect her legacy—they understood one thing now:
She hadn’t stopped.
She had found a reason to keep going.
The Hab was silent, save for the steady, rhythmic scrape of stone on ceramic.
Y/N sat at the experiment table, hunched over, sleeves rolled back to the elbows of her pressure-rated thermal undersuit. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency, knuckles red and chapped, nails bitten down to the quick. She brought the pestle down again—firm but controlled—grinding the coarse sediment sample into something closer to a usable grain. Not powder. Not paste. Just enough to test. Just enough to keep going.
The makeshift chem kit in front of her was stained with dust and old reactions, once-white trays now tinged with rust-colored residue. Glassware clinked softly as she shifted her weight. The solvent vial sloshed—half-full, if she was generous.
This part of the job wasn’t hard. Not physically. But it demanded a kind of patience that only survival had taught her. The precision of it gave her something to anchor to. A routine. A reason to move from one hour into the next.
She didn’t look up when she started talking. She didn’t need to. The camera, mounted across the room, was already rolling. It had been for hours. Most days, it was easier to pretend someone was watching. Even if she knew better.
“They evac’d eighteen sols into a thirty-one-sol mission,” she said quietly, the words emerging through a clenched jaw. “Eighteen. That’s how long Colony 212 lasted before everything went sideways. Which means they only got thirteen sols of science logged. Thirteen days.”
Her hand moved without pause—sample bag to mortar, pressure, grind, transfer to the tray. Repeat.
“For each of them,” she added, her voice lower now. “That’s what they left behind.”
She reached for a second tray—one marked with Oslo’s original numbering system, the labels half-scratched out, rewritten in her own handwriting. Neat. Slanted. A little messy in the corners, but legible. Human.
“Commander Oslo,” she said, almost conversationally. “You get the easy one. Mineral bonding profiles, structural cohesion. Hard science. Repeatable tests. The kind of thing even someone half-awake with a hangover can finish.”
She paused, adding a few drops of reactive solution. It fizzed faintly, curling steam against the inside of the tray cover.
“I hope your afterlife’s better than your last moments on this rock,” she muttered. “I really do.”
She glanced up, just briefly, toward the camera. Her mouth curved into something like a smile—thin, ironic, but not cruel.
“Jung, listen. I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t understand chemolithotrophic detection. Not really. I read your notes three times and still couldn’t tell if you were looking for life or just bored. But I’m trying, okay? I’m running the tests.”
Her gaze flicked to the far side of the workbench, where a row of empty sample tubes waited to be filled.
“And Cruz,” she said, her voice lifting a notch with mock solemnity, “I know you didn’t like it when I touched the ChemCam. You made that very clear. Well. Guess what?”
She reached for the unit, brushing it with the back of her hand like a cat knocking something off a shelf.
“I’m touching the ChemCam. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Zero consequences. Viva la anarchy.”
The joke landed quietly, with a faint shake of her head.
She kept working, transferring notes from a test strip to her master log—an old ration box she’d flattened and drawn a grid on in marker. Real paper. Real pen. The graphite snapped halfway through a sentence, and she calmly flipped to a pencil stub with a taped-on eraser.
“Zimmermann,” she said, a little more gently now, “I made a cataloging system. It's rough, but it works. I’m calling it ‘Das Core Samples,’ because I figured you’d like the pun. You know. For the Fatherland.”
She didn’t laugh at her own joke, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Nguyen…” She paused. “I still don’t know what you did. Seriously. I looked it up. Your title said ‘systems integration and adaptive redundancy.’ Which—I think means... backup stuff? No clue. I hope someone back home got your job title translated before your plaque was engraved.”
The words hung in the air, but there was no venom in them. Just tired affection. The kind you had for coworkers you never really knew but still missed when they were gone.
She turned back to the test rack, sorting the samples into clean, labeled sleeves. Every move was methodical, deliberate. She wasn’t rushing. She wasn’t wasting time either.
“I’m trying to keep everything organized,” she said after a while. Her voice was softer now. “Documented. Archived. I know it’s not exactly my strength.”
She wiped the corner of her eye with the back of one hand, smudging a line of dust across her cheek.
“But I want it to make sense,” she added. “In case... someone comes later.”
She reached across the table for a clean data tag and etched the next code into it with the edge of her multitool. Her hands didn’t tremble.
“Maybe someone will teach it in class one day. ‘The Frenchie Syllabus.’” She let the words linger, then smiled—a real one, this time. “Intro to Improvised Civil Engineering: How to Build a Bathtub Using NOSA Tubing and an Old RTG.”
Her smile faded just slightly, but her voice remained steady.
“Intermediate Cuisine: How to Cook a Potato Six Thousand Ways. Advanced Chemistry: How to Make Water Out of Rocket Fuel. Maybe don’t blow yourselves up like I did.”
She looked back at the camera.
Then, wordlessly, turned back to her samples and kept working.
The Starfire was quiet, save for the soft whir of filtered air and the constant, almost imperceptible hum of the ship’s primary drive coils in idle mode. The kind of silence that didn’t just surround you—it settled in. Wore into your bones over time.
Armin Zimmermann sat alone at the aft systems console, strapped into the harness more out of habit than necessity. His diagnostics had finished a full ten minutes ago, but he hadn’t moved. The screen in front of him still blinked its green confirmation lights in time with his pulse.
He scrolled absently through his inbox, expecting the usual: systems logs from JPL, status updates from mission ops, the occasional joke from Jung or Cruz buried in the metadata of a routine check.
But then his eyes landed on a message that didn’t fit.
Subject: Unsere Kinder.
He stared at it.
Our children.
Armin frowned. It wasn’t a phrase Kelly would normally use. They didn’t speak German with each other much—not anymore. His wife preferred English, and emails were usually short, efficient. News from Earth. Photos of their daughter. No riddles.
He hesitated, then clicked.
The body of the email was empty. No text. No signature. Just a single attachment: a .txt file, small and unassuming.
He tapped it open.
The screen populated instantly—lines of symbols, not quite random but not immediately readable either. Mathematical notations, directional headings, numbers too specific to be coincidence and too disorganized to be deliberate.
A sharp edge settled in his chest.
He stared at the file, heart rate rising. The longer he looked, the more his instincts screamed that this wasn’t a mistake or spam or a misdirected file.
This was a message.
Armin unstrapped, pushed off the console wall, and glided through the corridor with practiced, weightless ease. The ship was familiar under his palms—every panel, every joint, every slight bump in the composite wall plating. The kind of familiarity that only came with months in orbit, where even silence had a pattern.
He found Valencia Cruz in the ship’s rotating gym module, her strides steady on the curved track. The artificial gravity was low—just enough to make cardio unpleasant, just low enough to make injuries dangerous. She was in the zone, sweat on her brow, earbuds in.
Armin tapped the console by the entrance. The door hissed open.
Val looked up, spotted him, and slowed. “You okay?” she asked, voice breathless.
“I have a problem,” Armin said.
She stopped the treadmill, wiped her face with a towel, and stepped out of the rotation ring. “You don’t usually say that unless something’s on fire.”
He handed her the tablet. “My wife sent this. At least, it says it’s from her.”
Val took it, leaning against the bulkhead. She swiped through the file. Her brow furrowed. “It’s not an image,” she muttered. “Not corrupted either. It’s a clean text file. Plain ASCII.”
She tapped to expand the lines. The screen filled with patterns. Coordinates. Variables. Formulas layered between what looked like navigation flags and arcane mission notations.
“This isn’t random,” she said, more to herself now. “These look like… course headings. Vectors. And this—this might be delta-v tables?”
Armin nodded slowly. “I thought so too.”
Val looked up. “Any idea what it’s for?”
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes scanned the data again, fingers brushing over the screen like he was trying to feel the meaning in the numbers.
Then his voice caught—quiet, clipped. “Here. This is a reference to the Marblemaw Maneuver. It’s a theoretical slingshot burn. Dean published a paper on it two years ago, but I think I’m the only person who actually read it.”
“You’re saying this is from Dean?”
He shook his head. “No. But someone used his math. Dean wouldn’t be able to get clearance to send this. Has to be a big guy at NOSA, but that still doesn’t explain why it was sent to you from Kelly’s inbox.”
Val’s eyebrows drew together as she focused on one line that stood out, bolded in a sea of plain text.
SOL 320.
They both stared at it.
The number hit Armin like a punch to the gut. He reached for the wall to steady himself, the zero-g making him sway.
“Oh mein Gott,” he whispered.
Val stared at the screen, then at him.
“You think it’s about her.”
He nodded once.
Val didn’t look up from the screen. Her fingers were already moving, copying the data into her private log and running checksum validations. Not to confirm the file’s source—she already knew it wasn’t junk—but to stabilize it. There was a chance it could disappear as quickly as it came.
Armin hovered for a second, his jaw tight. Then he pushed off the bulkhead and turned toward the main corridor. “I’m getting the others.”
Val nodded without taking her eyes off the text. “I’ll see what else I can pull from it.”
Val was still at the terminal, but now her fingers hovered just above the screen, not typing—just staring. She’d parsed most of the file. Enough to know what it was. Enough to feel her chest go tight with the implications.
She heard the others enter before she turned—Armin, Jung, Nguyen, each one quieter than the last. No one cracked a joke. No one asked for coffee.
Jimin Park wasn’t with them yet.
Val looked up, then at Armin. “You told him?”
“He was on the call deck talking to Uma,” Armin said. “He’s coming.”
She nodded once, then sat back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. The data still glowed on the screen—numbers, coordinates, trajectory math, and the name SOL 320, burned in bold near the top like it was written in blood.
Nguyen broke the silence first. “It’s real?”
Val glanced at him. “Yes. It’s real.”
“And it was sent to Zimmermann,” Hoseok said, quietly. “Not to JPL. Not to Command.”
“To his wife,” Armin said. “Piggybacked on a family message. They slipped it into the attachment buffer.”
Hoseok gave a low whistle. “That’s a hell of a risk.”
Val didn’t smile. “Which means it’s got to be important. So, it’s a Park call.”
The hatch behind them opened with a pneumatic hiss.
Commander Jimin Park stepped into the room, still in his flight jacket, headset looped around his neck. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes scanned the crew immediately, clocking the tension, the way no one made room for small talk.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Val stood. “You need to see this, sir.”
She didn’t say more. Didn’t try to explain. Just stepped aside and offered him her seat at the console. Her tone wasn’t dismissive—it was deliberate. This wasn’t hers to carry.
Jimin sat slowly, glanced at her, then down at the data on-screen.
He started reading.
The others didn’t interrupt.
For a long moment, the only sound was the soft hum of ship systems, the occasional shift of a boot against the deck. Jimin scrolled slowly, eyes narrowing as the math unfurled in layers—positioning burns, delta-v margins, fuel requirements, time dilation calculations.
Then came the header again:
SOL 320.
He froze there, staring.
Val leaned on the back of the chair, her voice low. “It’s a maneuver. Based on Dean Marblemaw’s original slingshot paper, but adapted for our current trajectory. It uses the neighboring planet’s gravity to redirect us back to M6-117. No braking. No orbit insertion. Just one burn, a flyby intercept… and Y/N has to meet us mid-course using the MAV.”
Jimin sat back slowly, his hands resting on the armrests, gaze distant now.
The others watched him. No one pushed. No one dared.
Val broke the silence, her voice softer than before. “I didn’t want to be the one to say it, Commander. This... it’s not a decision for any of us to make. Not really.”
He looked up at her.
“I trust you,” she said.
The room held still as he looked at each of them in turn. Jung. Nguyen. Armin. Val.
They all waited for him to speak—not out of deference to rank, but because they knew what this meant. Y/N wasn’t just a crewmate. She wasn’t just a scientist on another rock.
She was his family.
And now she was a question hanging in space.
After a moment, he leaned forward, shoulders stiff with the gravity of it all.
“Get me everything,” he said. “Engine specs, margin of error, fuel thresholds. We don’t move unless we know it can be done.”
Val nodded once. “Yes, sir.”
He stood slowly, gaze still on the screen.
“And we keep this off Command until I say otherwise.”
“Of course, sir,” She grinned.
The crew of the Starfire sat around the narrow rec table, their knees brushing beneath it, shoulders hunched closer than comfort allowed. The lights overhead were dimmed, low power mode humming softly through the ship’s systems like a second heartbeat. Empty ration wrappers floated lazily in the corner, caught in the stagnant air.
The ship’s artificial gravity drum wasn’t active tonight. No one felt like turning it on. No one felt like pretending.
Jimin leaned forward, elbows resting on the scratched tabletop, fingers loosely laced. His voice was steady, if a little hoarse from speaking too long in the too-thin air.
“And assuming the burn goes clean, the maneuver takes us into a solar flyby, past Earth. The intercept brings us home in... 211 days after rendezvous,” he said. “Give or take.”
Silence followed. The crew looked at one another, the numbers hanging there like frost on the walls. No one moved. The weight of what he’d said hadn’t settled. It was still drifting, still searching for a place to land.
Koah broke the stillness first, his voice hesitant. “That would actually work?”
Jimin nodded. “The math’s sound. I ran it with Armin. Val checked the burn window against the latest telemetry. The fuel reserves are tight, but within margins.”
Koah rubbed a hand over his face, then let it drop to the table. “That’s wild,” he muttered. “It’s brilliant.”
Armin, who hadn’t spoken since they sat down, leaned forward. “It is brilliant. And it wasn’t mine.”
He looked up. “Whoever sent that file knew our vector. They built a burn profile around our exact rotation, our real-time acceleration data. It’s too specific to be theoretical.”
Hoseok Jung exhaled hard, his arms folded across his chest. “Okay. But why the encrypted file? Why send it to you and not Command?”
Jimin looked at him. “Because NOSA already said no.”
He let the silence hold a second longer before continuing. “They weighed the risks and made their choice. Rescue her later, not now. Safer for us, statistically. But someone disagreed. Someone back home—someone with access—wanted us to have another option.”
“So we’d be overriding the chain of command,” Koah said, brows knitting. “Making a decision they explicitly rejected.”
“Yes,” Jimin said. “If we do this,” he continued, “we’ll force their hand. They’d have no choice but to send the supply probe to intercept us on the return arc. If they don’t, we starve. But they will. Because the alternative is letting six astronauts die on a public feed, live and slow.”
Koah leaned back, eyes locked on the ceiling. The metal above him was marked with signatures—names from Nexus I and II, left like chalk on a wall before graduation. Most of them were still alive.
This would make sure of it.
“Are we doing it?” Valencia asked finally. Her voice was calm, but there was something brittle at the edge of it. She looked tired. They all did.
Jimin shook his head. “It’s not my call.”
Koah blinked. “You’re the commander.”
“I am,” Jimin said. “Which means I know when something is beyond the scope of command. This isn’t a mission deviation. This is a mutiny.”
The word hung in the room like static.
He let it sit before continuing, his voice low. “You need to understand what this is. If we commit and the maneuver fails, we’ll burn too much fuel to get back. If we miss the MAV intercept, we lose the rendezvous and she dies. If we miss the unnamed planet’s gravity corridor by half a degree, we spiral off-course for good. And even if we pull it off... it adds 213 days to our mission clock.”
He paused. Let the numbers soak in.
“213 more days in space. No resupply planned. No re-entry window guaranteed. Something breaks—something simple, something stupid, like a heat exchanger or a water recycler—and we die out here.”
No one moved.
“And even if we don’t die,” he added, “some of us are military. Koah and I would face court-martial. The rest of you? You’d never fly again.”
A long beat passed.
Then Koah gave a crooked smile. “Yeah, I figured.” He looked at Jimin. “You really think I care about flight status after this? Frenchie’s out there alone.”
“She’d die,” Armin said quietly.
Koah nodded. “Then yeah. I’m in.”
“Don’t rush it,” Jimin warned. “This is the kind of decision that doesn’t come off your record. Ever.”
Koah met his gaze. “Then I’ll make it count.”
Hoseok tapped a finger against the table, then looked up. “We can’t ignore it. If there’s a shot—hell, if there’s even a chance she’s alive—we take it. We’re not leaving her out there.”
Jimin turned to Val. She hadn’t spoken. She’d just been watching him.
Of all of them, she looked the most conflicted—not reluctant, just... aware. Her eyes were sharp, calculating. And scared, in a way only someone with full knowledge of the risk could be.
“Val,” Jimin said.
She exhaled slowly. Ran a thumb along the edge of the table. Then finally, she nodded.
“One condition,” she said. “We finish the math. Every inch of it. No gaps. No ‘close enough.’ We run this thing until it bleeds numbers.”
Jimin gave a slow, sure nod. “Agreed.”
Val looked around the room—at the faces of the people she’d flown with, laughed with, broken with—and when her gaze came back to Jimin’s, her voice was clear.
“Let’s go get her.”
Brendan Hatch sat slouched at the front console in Mission Control, elbows on the desk, one hand wrapped loosely around a paper cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. The graveyard shift was always the same—quiet, steady, unremarkable. Background hum from systems, low chatter from telemetry and comms, a few tired engineers trading stories in hushed tones. It was routine, predictable.
That’s why he liked it.
He took a slow sip and winced. The coffee tasted like rust and burnt toast.
The voice in his headset broke the calm.
“Flight, CAPCOM.”
Brendan straightened a bit, instinct overriding fatigue. “Go ahead, CAPCOM.”
“We’ve got a... strange ping from Starfire. Unscheduled update, came in just now. One-line transmission.”
Brendan set the cup down. “One line? What kind of line?”
There was a pause on the other end, and when the CAPCOM spoke again, their voice held a note Brendan didn’t like. Hesitation.
“No system flags, no distress codes. Just this: ‘Houston, be advised. Dean Marblemaw is a steely-eyed missile man.’ That’s the whole message.”
Brendan blinked.
He turned slowly toward Guidance, who was already swiveling in his seat with a raised brow.
“Dean who?”
“Not a clue,” CAPCOM replied. “Checked personnel. Checked payload specialists. No one onboard Starfire by that name.”
Brendan opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t get the chance.
Alarms screamed to life.
First one console, then another—flashing red across telemetry, guidance, propulsion. The hum of the room shattered. Chairs scraped, voices rose. The quiet rhythm of Mission Control was gone in an instant, replaced by controlled chaos.
Brendan shot to his feet. “Guidance, report!”
“Flight, Starfire’s orbital vector just shifted,” came the answer, fast and clipped. “They’ve made a burn. Large. Coordinated.”
Brendan’s gut tightened. “Drift?”
“Negative. No drift. This wasn’t passive. They changed trajectory. On purpose.”
“What’s the delta?”
“Twenty-seven point eight one two degrees. Relative to prior flight path.”
Brendan swore softly under his breath, jaw clenched. “CAPCOM, get them on comms. Ask what the hell they’re doing.”
“They’re not responding, Flight. Not acknowledging the transmission request.”
“Jesus Christ,” Brendan muttered. “Guidance, time to irreversible course commit?”
“Working on it.”
“Telemetry,” he snapped, turning toward the woman two rows back. “Any chance this is instrumentation error? False reading?”
“No, Flight,” she replied, already typing. “Confirmed from both uplink satellites. This is real-time. The burn profile is clean. Intentional.”
Brendan ran a hand over his face, pushing back the throb that had started behind his eyes.
“Flight,” CAPCOM again. “Still no response from Starfire. No autopilot anomaly. Manual controls engaged. This is them.”
For a moment, no one said anything.
Then the propulsion tech let out a breath. “It’s a slingshot.”
Brendan turned to him. “What?”
“The numbers. It’s not a decel. It’s a gravity-assist prep burn.”
He turned back to his console, pulling up the star map. The trajectory arced not toward Earth, but around it—shaving close, building speed.
“They’re not coming home,” the tech said. “They’re slingshotting Earth. Back out. Somewhere else.”
A long silence stretched.
Brendan leaned over the comm desk, both palms flat against the surface, heart pounding.
“CAPCOM,” he said quietly. “Ping orbital intelligence. I want a full trajectory model. And tell me when that slingshot window locks.”
“Aye, Flight.”
“Guidance,” he said, turning again, “when exactly did this maneuver begin?”
“Timestamped at 03:46:18 GMT. Four minutes ago.”
Brendan stared at the screen. The arc was unmistakable now. Clean. Purposeful. A new course already emerging.
He knew what that meant.
He didn’t know how, or why—but this wasn’t a malfunction.
This was intent.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered. “They’ve gone rogue.”
He took a deep breath and leaned into his mic.
“Somebody,” he said, “find out who Dean Marblemaw is—and why the hell he’s hijacked my spaceship.”
The early light bled through the windows of NOSA’s executive floor in thin, fractured lines—cold and silver, like the morning hadn’t quite committed to warmth. The city beyond the glass was still quiet, tucked beneath fog and the hush of anticipation.
Yoongi stood at the far end of his office, unmoving, hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular—just the smear of light creeping across the skyline. His reflection hovered faintly in the glass, superimposed over the world below like a ghost watching from orbit.
Behind him, the door opened. Footsteps, then a pause.
He didn’t turn.
Creed Summers stood just inside, shoulders squared, silent.
For a moment, neither man spoke. The only sound was the low hum of systems on standby, the distant rattle of a cleaning cart down the hall. That, and the heavy, aching silence of two people carrying the weight of a decision too big for either of them alone.
Finally, Yoongi’s voice broke the stillness.
“Alice goes before the press at nine,” he said, still watching the horizon. “We’ll confirm that we’re supporting Starfire’s new trajectory. Official line is that it was planned. Contingency strategy.”
Creed nodded once. “It’s the right move. Optics, morale. Damage control.”
Yoongi turned, slowly.
He looked tired—not just physically. There was something deeper in the lines around his mouth, the set of his shoulders. Not a man who lacked conviction, but one who had been forced to weigh too many impossible things for too long.
“You may have killed them,” he said.
Creed didn’t flinch, but his face didn’t harden either. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, still and steady. “They made the call.”
Yoongi stepped closer, stopping just behind his desk, fingers brushing against the edge as if grounding himself. “You fed them the math. You knew what they’d do.”
“I gave them information,” Creed said evenly. “That’s all. The choice was theirs.”
Yoongi’s jaw tightened. “Don’t split hairs. We both know what a team does when you give them a mission and a reason.”
A beat of silence.
Then Yoongi’s voice dropped—quieter, rawer. “You know how fragile this whole damn thing is?”
He looked at Creed now—not as an adversary. As a man trying to hold up a building while the ground cracked beneath it.
“The public, the funding, the next three missions that haven’t even left the floor. I’ve got three senators on the line every day, asking why we haven’t pulled the plug. Why we didn’t bring them home sooner. Why we let her stay behind. Every time someone dies up there—even when it’s the right call—people turn their backs on us. And every time we get lucky, they forget the odds. They stop listening to the numbers. The margin disappears.”
Creed didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.
Yoongi exhaled, slow and steady, like it physically hurt to say what came next.
“I’m not here to play politics,” he said. “I’m here to keep the program alive. So the people who come next still have something to reach for. I’ve fought tooth and nail to hold this place together—not for power, not for legacy. For continuity. Because once it breaks—once people stop believing we’re worth the risk—it’s gone. And it doesn’t come back.”
Creed’s voice was soft. “She’s not a statistic.”
“I know,” Yoongi said, almost too quickly.
It surprised them both—how fast the words came.
He looked away, swallowing once, then slowly sat at the edge of the desk.
“She’s not a number, Creed. I know who she is. I remember her interview. She had this… fierce optimism. Asked me if she’d be allowed to ‘fix things’ if they broke, or if we’d just tell her to wait for a maintenance bot. She was so sure she could outsmart anything.”
Creed’s posture eased, just slightly. “She kind of has.”
Yoongi let out a low breath that might’ve been a laugh, or something close. “Yeah. I know. I read every log. Every data stream. Every piece of cobbled-together engineering magic she’s pulled off in the dirt. She shouldn’t have lasted two weeks.”
“And yet she’s finishing the colony’s science logs,” Creed said. “Using a frying pan, duct tape, a shitty old drill, and radioactive decay.”
“She’s alive,” Yoongi said, like it was a secret.
“She’s alive,” Creed echoed.
The silence that followed was different now. Heavier, but not hostile. Just honest.
Yoongi stood again, walking back toward the window. The city below was waking. Headlines would be firing up soon. Half the world already knew. By the time Alice hit the podium, the story would be out of their hands.
He stared out at the light for a long moment.
Then, without turning, he said, quietly, “God, I hope you’re right.”
Creed said nothing.
After a few more seconds, Yoongi added, “When this is over, you’ll submit your resignation.”
There was no venom in it. Just gravity. Consequence. A toll paid in silence.
Creed nodded. “I figured.”
Yoongi turned back to him.
“Bring them home,” he said.
Creed gave a small nod—tight, respectful—and left the room without another word.
Yoongi stayed where he was, one hand resting lightly against the windowpane. The sun had climbed a little higher, casting long, sharp shadows across his office.
The sun crawled over the horizon like it was dragging its feet, casting deep red light across the wind-carved ridges of Sundermere Basin. As it climbed, the basin seemed to ignite—rust, gold, and copper spilling across the plain. Heat shimmered early in the day on M6-117. It didn’t build; it simply arrived.
The stillness of the planet, as always, was total. Except for the faint, rhythmic sound of drilling.
Inside the Hab, Y/N sat hunched over her cluttered experiment table, still in her half-unzipped EVA suit. Her hair stuck to the sweat along her temples, her undershirt damp across her spine. A dozen open containers surrounded her—rock samples, rusted tool bits, a half-smashed solar converter she was trying to rewire with salvaged cabling. Her shoulders ached. Everything ached.
The camera blinked red, and she gave it a weary smile.
“Here’s your daily crash course in logistics,” she said, voice hoarse but steady. “Every Nexus mission requires a minimum of three years of presupplies. Fuel, food, oxygen, parts. You don’t pack that kind of bulk on launch day—you land it ahead of time.”
She gestured vaguely to the map that blinked on her tablet. “Which is why the MAV for Nexus-4 is already parked in Sundermere Basin. It got here almost a year before I did. Or... was supposed to.” Her smile faded for just a second. “Anyway. There it is. Waiting.”
Her eyes flicked down to the numbers on the screen—distance, resource counts, route projections. She swallowed, then looked back up.
“The plan is simple,” she said, not even pretending to believe it. “I drive 3,200 kilometers across a planet that actively wants me dead. I bring my oxygenator, my water reclaimer, my atmospheric regulator, my food, my tools, my radiation gear—everything that lets me keep breathing. I install it all into a vehicle I’ve never tested, in conditions it was never prepped for. Then, right as the Starfire passes overhead at orbital velocity, I launch and pray I don’t miss the window.”
She paused, letting that settle. Then gave a dry, lopsided grin.
“Okay, yeah. It sounds insane. But also kind of awesome, right?”
She sat back in her chair, stretching out her sore arms. Her elbow knocked over a tin of screws, which rattled across the table and clattered to the floor. She didn’t bother picking them up.
“Of course,” she added, “that’s future Y/N’s problem.”
Her tone darkened, not bitter, but quieter.
“Right now I’ve got two hundred sols and change to figure out how to convert this glorified golf cart into a spacecraft support vehicle. NOSA’s running the numbers, trying to make miracles happen, but so far the best advice I’ve gotten from Earth has been... and I quote... ‘Drill holes in the roof of your rover and hit it with a rock.’”
She smiled again, brighter this time, then glanced down at the metal plates stacked beside her. “So. Guess that’s what I’m doing today.”
She didn’t log off. She just stood, rolled her shoulders, and got to work.
Later, outside, the three suns were already high in the sky. The light was sharp, clinical. There was no softness here—not from the light, not from the wind, not from the planet. The surface heat rippled like liquid, and the rover baked under it.
Y/N stood on the roof of Speculor-2, bracing her boots against the support bars, a modified drill in her hands. The metal screamed beneath each puncture. The holes didn’t need to be pretty—just precise. Dozens of them, arranged in a ring, traced with chalk from a broken filter cap. Her gloves were stiff with dust. Sweat ran down her back inside the suit, soaking the inner lining.
When she finished the last hole, she set the drill aside and pulled a flathead screwdriver from the pouch at her hip. Then, the rock. She’d chosen it carefully. It had a good weight to it.
The first strike dented the panel. The second left a visible imprint. She kept going.
Each blow echoed through the stillness like a challenge. It was absurd and it was necessary. And it was all she had.
Inside the Hab, the cooler hummed. The lights flickered briefly as she walked in, peeling the top half of the suit from her body. She drank a pouch of electrolyte gel, gagged, then sat down at the small kitchen table, slowly chewing on a cold potato.
One by one, she laid out ration pouches in a line and began marking them in thick black Sharpie.
Departure.
Birthday.
Last Meal.
She hesitated over the final pouch, then wrote something smaller.
If I Don’t Make It.
She capped the marker and sat back, staring at the row.
There was no drama in her expression. Just focus. Acceptance. She’d been past fear for a while now.
Far above the surface, the Starfire had completed its burn. Its course now locked. A ship the size of a small city turned with impossible grace, cutting through the darkness in complete silence. Its panels flared softly in the starlight as it adjusted position, beginning its long arc toward rendezvous.
The engines cooled. The crew settled. Somewhere, someone was running simulations.
But down below, on a world that had tried to kill her a dozen different ways, Y/N was still moving. Still patching. Still planning.
She pulled her notepad back toward her and began sketching the adapter plate that would bridge the MAV’s cockpit to the supply lines from the rover. The drawing was shaky—her fingers cramped—but she kept going.
It was still absurd.
But not impossible.
The video booth on the Starfire wasn’t much more than a glorified storage locker. No insulation, no privacy to speak of—just a narrow alcove welded into the comms deck, with walls so thin you could hear the ship groan during its thermal cycles. A single chair, bolted to the floor. A screen about the size of a dinner tray. That was it.
But to Commander Jimin Park, it had become a kind of chapel.
He came here when he couldn’t sleep. When the silence of the corridors felt too big. When the ship's humming nerves and quiet voices became too much and too little all at once.
Now, he sat forward in the dim light, hands folded tightly between his knees, staring at the flickering terminal as it made contact.
The screen blinked once, twice—and then steadied.
Uma appeared.
Backlit by the warm kitchen glow of their apartment on Aguerra Prime. She stood in front of the counter, arms folded across her chest, her silhouette unmistakable. Behind her, the sky beyond the window was still black. Early morning. That fragile hour before the city started breathing again.
Her golden hair was pulled into a messy knot—loose, a little unkempt, wisps of it curling around her face. No makeup. Her eyes were puffy, like she hadn’t slept much. Like she’d maybe cried in the bathroom and then come back out without pretending it hadn’t happened.
Jimin stared at her a moment longer than he meant to. He drank her in like she might vanish if he blinked too hard.
But when she spoke, there was no softness in her voice.
“Five hundred and thirty-three days.”
It wasn’t a greeting. It wasn’t even anger, not really. It was the kind of flat, sharp-edged fact that cut deeper than yelling ever could.
“You added five hundred and thirty-three days to your mission,” she said. “And you didn’t even call first.”
He didn’t flinch. He’d had this conversation a hundred times in his head. None of them made it easier.
“I know,” he said, quiet. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head—not in disbelief. That stage had passed. This was something colder. A sadness so layered it had started calcifying into sarcasm.
“Did you even think about us? Me? Hana?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Do you even remember how old she’ll be when you get back?”
He didn’t look away. “Almost five.”
“She’ll barely remember you,” Uma said. Her voice cracked slightly on the word remember, but she pushed through it.
“I know.”
Her arms tightened across her stomach. He could see it—how hard she was trying not to let herself break, not here, not on a grainy video call with a six-second delay.
“You’re signing up for seven more months of silence,” she said. “When I went through IVF. When I was pregnant. While I give birth. While I recover. While our daughter goes to her first day of school and asks why the other kids’ dads come to pick them up. And all she’s got is a photograph and a voice memo from orbit.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, just to breathe. The silence stretched, broken only by the faint hum of the Starfire behind him.
“I know,” he said again, voice low. “You’re right.”
“You think I care about being right?” she snapped, and then immediately softened, as if the sharpness had drained what little strength she had left.
Her hand came up slowly to her face, like she hadn’t even noticed it moving. She rubbed at her temple with the heel of her palm, as if trying to smooth out the ache that had settled behind her eyes. Then her hand dropped to her belly.
“I had contractions yesterday,” she said.
Jimin’s breath caught, barely audible over the low hum of the booth’s systems. His whole body stilled. Only his eyes moved—searching hers across the grainy feed like he might read something more, something urgent.
Uma didn’t give him time to respond.
“I was alone,” she said. “Scared.”
Her voice didn’t tremble. She said it with the kind of flat honesty that came after a long night of holding yourself together.
“I called my parents,” she added, more quietly now. “They won’t make it in time. Customs delays—they’re stuck off-world until next week. Rose and Sean are staying with me through the delivery, which is… fine. Really. They’ve been amazing.”
She paused, and for a moment, her eyes softened—but not toward comfort. Toward grief.
“But they’re not you, Chim.”
She looked down, hand still resting on her belly. Her other arm wrapped around her midsection like she was trying to hold something in, or maybe keep something out. When she looked back up at him, the bravado had cracked wide open. What remained was raw and quiet and impossibly human.
“I didn’t want to meet our son without you.”
Jimin leaned in slowly, like he could close the light-years between them with body language alone. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Swallowed hard. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough-edged and barely steady.
“You’re not alone,” he said. “You’re meeting him in a world where I already love him more than I ever thought I could love anyone. That has to count for something. I know it’s not the same. God, Uma, I know it’s not. But it’s true.”
His voice caught, and he pushed past it. “Rose and Sean—listen, they’ll take care of you like you’re theirs. I made sure of that before I left. I should’ve told you sooner. I should’ve done a lot of things sooner.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I’m so sorry I’m not there with you.”
Uma turned away, just slightly, dabbing at her face with the sleeve of her sweater. Not hiding the tears—just trying to stay upright through them.
“I called him Riker,” she said after a pause. “I know we were still deciding. I know we said we’d wait. But it felt right. Last night I was reading those baby books Quinn gave me, and I whispered it to him. And he kicked.”
Jimin’s throat clenched. He didn’t trust himself to say anything at first.
“Riker,” he repeated finally, like he was testing the word in his mouth for the first time. “Yeah. That’s his name.”
She smiled—small, real. Her chin trembled.
“He looks like you,” she said. “From the scans. Same nose. It’s hard to get clear pictures because he keeps tossing and turning, but I just know just like I knew Hana would.”
“I wanted to be the first one to hold him,” Jimin said, voice low.
Uma nodded. “Then get your ass home.”
He chuckled, breathless. “Working on it.”
He leaned in even closer, his hand hovering near the edge of the console like he might reach through it. “I’ll come home to you, Uma. I swear to you. I’ll crawl back if I have to.”
“I believe you,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Her hand came up again, touching the screen gently. Jimin mirrored the gesture. Their fingertips aligned through the glass—no warmth, no pressure. Just the image. Just the intention.
A silence settled between them. Not empty. Just full of the things that didn’t need to be said aloud. Years of late nights. Early mornings. Fights. Laughter. Hana’s first steps. The quiet promise of a life they were still trying to build.
Then Jimin spoke again, more carefully now.
“She’s like my sister,” he said. “I know that’s not in the job description. I know it wasn’t supposed to matter. But I made the call. I stayed. I would do it again.”
Uma pulled back slightly, sitting straighter. Her arms folded across her chest. The tears were drying, but her eyes stayed hard, focused.
“You think I don’t understand why you did it?”
He didn’t answer. He knew better than to try.
“I do,” she said. “But you didn’t tell me. You didn’t even give me a choice. I had to find out from a system ping that you were extending your mission—seven more months, just dropped into my inbox like a goddamn package delivery.”
She shook her head. “You’re going to miss your son being born, Jimin.”
Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
He leaned in again, pressing his palm to the console like it might carry the weight of what he wanted to say.
“You would’ve told me to go,” he said, quiet. “If I’d asked.”
“Of course I would’ve. But you didn’t ask. That’s the part that hurts.”
He nodded once, slowly. “Then be furious. Be as mad as you want. I’ll take it all. I just…” He swallowed again. “Please don’t stop talking to me.”
Uma stared at him for a long time.
Her face didn’t shift. Not right away. Her arms were still crossed, her jaw still tight, and for a moment, Jimin wondered if she was even going to say anything. Then she exhaled—long, controlled—and the line of her shoulders softened. Just slightly. Not in surrender, but in recognition.
That quiet, painful kind of understanding that only happens between people who know each other too well to lie.
“Goddamn it, Chim,” she muttered, voice low. “You’d better bring her back.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not entirely. But it wasn’t anger either. It was something deeper. Something closer to faith. The kind that could only survive if you’d been through fire together and still chose to look each other in the eye.
Jimin’s shoulders sagged, just a little. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough to let some of the weight slip off his chest for the first time in days.
“That’s the plan,” he said.
Uma didn’t respond right away. She just reached forward again, her hand finding the edge of the screen. This time, her fingers trembled.
Jimin mirrored her instinctively, pressing his palm to the glass. Their hands aligned—pixels and pressure, no warmth, no real contact—but it was the closest thing they had to touch.
They stayed like that, neither speaking. The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was full—of late-night talks and shared routines, of old fights and quiet reconciliations, of watching their daughter sleep between them on the couch and arguing about whose turn it was to clean out the recycling chute.
It was the silence of people who knew how to sit in each other’s pain.
Finally, Uma spoke. Her voice was quieter now, but not small. It was steady. Honest.
“Bring my favorite sister-in-law home.”
Jimin’s lip twitched. He gave a tired smile that almost—almost—reached his eyes.
“She’s your only sister-in-law.”
Uma rolled her eyes, that familiar flicker of fire slipping back in. “Whatever, Orphan Annie. That just makes the title easier to maintain. Don’t get cocky.”
He laughed. Really laughed. It came from somewhere deep in his chest, cracking through the weariness like sunlight through storm clouds. The kind of laugh that reminded him what it felt like to be more than just a uniform and a mission file.
Uma smiled too, but it faded quickly, replaced by something gentler. Something sad.
“I should go,” she said, glancing off-screen. “Hana’s about to wake up, and I don’t think our connection is going to last long enough for her to talk to you. It’d break her heart if she only got a few seconds.”
Jimin’s smile faltered. He nodded, slow. “She still asking?”
“Every morning,” Uma said. “She stands at the window and asks when the stars are going to give you back.”
His chest tightened. “What do you tell her?”
Uma’s voice was soft, but firm. “I tell her the stars are just slow. Like her dad.”
Jimin chuckled under his breath. “Exactly like her dad.”
Uma glanced down, brushing something off her lap, then looked back at the screen. “She still sleeps with that stupid plush helmet you gave her.”
“She named it Captain Helmet, right?”
“Lieutenant Helmet,” Uma corrected. “She demoted it last week for insubordination.”
Jimin barked another laugh, “That tracks.”
In the corner of the screen, a red light started to blink—connection timer winding down.
Neither of them said anything right away. They both knew what that light meant. They both knew how these calls ended.
“I love you,” Uma said.
“I love you,” Jimin said, the words catching at the edges of his throat.
The screen flickered.
Then it went dark.
The booth filled with the soft hum of life support again. A steady pulse of recycled air, a low mechanical whisper—just enough to remind Jimin he was back on the ship. Back in the silence.
He didn’t move.
Not for a while.
He just sat there, one hand still resting against the blank screen, the echo of Uma’s voice lingering in his chest. He had hoped Hana would be there today. She would’ve made him feel better about this whole thing.
Eventually, he stood. Adjusted his collar. Wiped his face with the back of his hand.
Then he turned and stepped out into the corridor, the weight of two promises—one to his wife, one to Y/N—pulling him forward.
Because there was work to be done.
The lab at JPL was immaculate—sterile white walls, overhead lights humming in quiet synchrony, and the kind of chill in the air that came from both temperature control and high stakes. But beneath that pristine order, the room buzzed with pressure. Not the loud, chaotic kind. The quiet kind. The kind that built slowly and wrapped around your ribs.
Marco Navarro stood near the central bay, arms folded tightly across his chest, posture stiff. He looked like a man trying very hard not to look tired. The sleeves of his button-down were rolled up just past his elbows, exposing forearms marked by the fine lines of someone who hadn’t left the building in days. His dark eyes were locked on the Iris 2 Probe as it hovered, cradled by a suspension rig, waiting to be sealed for launch logistics.
All around him, his team moved with quiet precision. Engineers in cleanroom suits adjusted clamps and rechecked fittings. Two techs hovered over a tablet, reviewing structural readings. A third was halfway through a final checklist on the containment shell. Every movement was practiced, deliberate. No one raised their voice. No one had to.
But the tension in the room was palpable.
Across the lab, three representatives from TIC—the Terran Interplanetary Commission—stood just beyond the boundary line in sealed protective suits, their presence as subtle as a shadow, but twice as heavy. No one spoke to them. They didn’t speak either. They just watched. Silently, intently. The government’s eyes on borrowed ground.
Marco didn’t acknowledge them directly. Not yet. He leaned in toward one of his senior engineers, muttering a question under his breath.
“Telemetry package confirmed?”
The engineer, a red-haired woman with tired eyes and half a protein bar tucked behind her monitor, nodded once. “Final sync cleared at 0637. No transmission lag. We’re clean.”
Marco gave a curt nod, but his eyes stayed on the probe.
Iris 2 wasn’t just a machine. Not anymore. It was memory and responsibility and proof of intent—of everything NOSA, JPL, and TIC had promised and failed to deliver the first time. This probe wasn’t just about reaching M6-117. It was about reaching her.
He could feel the weight of it—of the quiet desperation stitched into the calculations, of the late-night redesigns, of the emergency approvals rushed through by Parliament in the wake of the satellite feed leaks. Every bolt on that chassis felt like a plea.
Just hold together.
Just get there.
Just give us a chance to make this right.
He exhaled through his nose and finally let himself glance at the TIC observers. One of them—a younger woman, likely an analyst based on the blue badge—caught his gaze. She gave a small nod. Not approval. Not encouragement. Just acknowledgment. That subtle gesture that said, We’re all in the same trench now.
Marco returned the nod, just as restrained. No words exchanged, but the message passed cleanly between them.
They both knew what was riding on Iris 2.
This wasn't a test flight. It wasn’t a publicity mission. It was a lifeline.
Every update they’d received from NOSA over the past three days—Y/N’s position tracking, the sample uploads, the EVA logs—had shifted the gravity of the operation. Iris 2 wasn’t going to M6-117 just to drop instruments and wave a flag. It was going to confirm the unthinkable. That someone had survived. That someone was still fighting.
Marco turned back toward the rig. The final clamps had been set. The outer seal was being lowered into place with a slow mechanical hiss, locking the probe inside its carbon-frame shipping cradle. Once it left this room, it would be transferred to a high-altitude payload facility for thermal calibration. After that, it was Helion’s problem.
But right now, in this room, it was still his.
“Double-check the seal redundancies,” he said to no one in particular. “Don’t assume the checklist is enough. I want a visual on every damn latch.”
Someone murmured an acknowledgment and peeled off toward the capsule with a scanner.
Behind him, the lead TIC official stepped forward slightly, crossing the line for the first time. She was older than the others, with silver streaks in her hair and a face that looked carved from patience. She didn’t interrupt. Just waited.
Marco finally turned to her.
“We’ll have full system redundancy locked before the truck arrives,” he said. “We’ve tripled the diagnostics on this model.”
She nodded, arms at her sides. “Good. Because we don’t get another shot at this.”
He didn’t argue. They both knew it was true.
“You’ve seen the EVA logs?” he asked.
“All of them.”
“And?”
The woman hesitated—just for a beat. “I’ve seen a lot of missions,” she said. “A lot of accidents. A lot of breakdowns. But I’ve never seen anyone doing what she’s doing. Not after that long. Not with no support.”
Marco’s jaw tightened, but his voice was calm when he answered.
“She was always that kind of astronaut. Doesn’t do things halfway.”
The woman looked at him, gaze sharp. “Let’s hope the rest of us can keep up.”
Then she stepped back behind the line again, her presence receding without a sound.
Marco stayed where he was, hands on his hips, eyes back on the crate now that the final lock had engaged. The engineers were already moving to sign off the handover forms, but he lingered.
Because once this box was gone, once the probe left his care, everything became chance.
The video booth on the Starfire was barely bigger than a walk-in closet, but Armin Zimmermann didn’t mind. In zero-G, everything felt a little more spacious anyway. He floated cross-legged, tucked into the narrow padded frame like he’d been born for it, the soft blue glow of the console casting gentle light over his face.
The screen flickered, adjusted—and then settled. Kelly appeared, clear as ever.
Her hair was pulled back in a low, effortless bun, and she wore a navy wool sweater he recognized from their last trip to Bremen. Even over the feed, she looked sharp. Steady. So completely herself. She sat at her parents’ kitchen table—he recognized the striped ceramic sugar jar by her elbow—and behind her, soft daylight filtered in through a tall, arched window. Earthlight.
Home.
“I found it at the flea market,” she said, lifting something into view with a sly grin. “Original pressing.”
Armin squinted, then let out a short, delighted gasp.
“No!”
Kelly held it closer to the camera, and there it was—Abba’s Greatest Hits, 1973. The white cover with the floating heads, perfectly preserved, the plastic sleeve only slightly scuffed.
“You’re joking!” Armin’s voice leapt, thick with his Aguerra-tinged German accent. “Kelly—that’s impossible to get! People have been trying to fake that cover since the ‘90s!”
“I triple-checked it,” she said, clearly proud. “Even the spine’s intact. The guy selling it said he bought it new in Malmö and barely played it. I think he was a bit heartbroken to let it go.”
Armin laughed, clapping his hands once in midair, the motion sending him spinning slightly in the seat harness. “Of course he was! If I had that, I wouldn’t let it leave my sight.”
Kelly smiled, and for a second, her posture relaxed. She looked at him like she had in the early years—before deployment cycles, before kids, before so many late nights spent on opposite sides of space.
“I got it for you,” she said simply. “I figured it’d help you hang on, for a few more months.”
He pressed a hand to his chest, mock-theatrical. “My heart,” he said dramatically. “You’ve stolen it again.”
“You never had a chance,” she replied, grinning.
Then a voice cut in from offscreen.
“Papa! Papa, look!”
A blur of motion darted behind Kelly’s chair. Max—age five and wild as ever—climbed up into her lap, shoving something toward the camera. A small toy spaceship made of interlocking blocks.
“I made this for you!” he shouted.
“Ohhh!” Armin’s face lit up. “Is that the Starfire? Wait—Max, did you get the airlock module right?”
“I did!” Max said proudly, twisting the top off to show him. “And this part detaches for landings!”
Kelly made a quiet oof as he squirmed in her lap. “Max, careful—you’re knocking the camera.”
“Sorry!”
Another voice called out from behind them—more composed.
“Felix, come say hi to Papa,” Kelly said over her shoulder.
A moment later, Felix stepped into view, his gangly arms wrapped around Marta’s middle with the kind of awkward, determined grip that came from practice and not quite enough upper body strength. He was seven now—taller, thinner, all knees and elbows. His hair was sticking up in the back like he’d just rolled off the couch.
“She’s getting heavy,” he announced, not complaining so much as stating a fact.
Marta let out a soft babble in response, followed immediately by a hiccup. Her round cheeks flushed with effort as she spotted the screen—and then her entire face lit up. She reached out toward Armin with both hands, fingers splayed, drool trailing from her chin to the sleeve of Felix’s shirt.
“Ach Gott,” Armin murmured, smiling so wide it wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “Look at her. She’s so big now.”
Kelly adjusted the angle slightly to center them all, then tilted the camera down to keep Marta in frame as Felix shifted her to his hip with a grunt. “She’s cutting teeth,” she said. “We’re up at least twice a night now. Last night she bit my finger and started laughing like a little villain.”
“I wish I could be there for it,” Armin said, the humor still in his voice but something heavier behind it now. “Even the screaming. I’d take the 3 a.m. crying and diaper explosions if it meant I could hold her.”
Kelly looked down at Marta, brushing a bit of hair from her forehead. “She misses you. They all do. But… I’m really glad you were here when she was born. I keep thinking about that. It mattered. Even if it was just one week, it mattered.”
Armin nodded, slowly. “Min didn’t have to approve the delay. I know that.”
“He did,” she said softly. “And I think it meant a lot. To all of us. Uma’s been struggling more than she says—Jimin missing Riker’s birth really hit her. I told her it would be okay. That it doesn’t change how much they love each other, how close he’ll be to that baby. I mean, you missed Felix’s birth.”
“And look at him,” Armin said, watching as Felix leaned against the kitchen doorframe now, absentmindedly rocking Marta as she gnawed on the edge of his hoodie string. “Still thinks I’m the coolest person alive.”
“He wrote an essay about you for school,” Kelly said, with a faint smile. “Said his papa works in space and is braver than a lion, but also better at cooking noodles.”
Armin laughed, chest tight. “Better than a lion at cooking noodles. High praise.”
“Max added that you once stopped an alien invasion. With a rock.”
“An Aguerra rock, no less. Very powerful stuff.”
“Apparently.”
A blur darted across the screen again. Max had returned, spaceship model still clutched in one hand, his curls bouncing with each step. “Papa! Did you see the antenna? Look, it turns—” He twisted it aggressively, and one piece popped off, bouncing out of frame.
“Oh no—wait—where’d it go?” he muttered, diving under the table.
Armin grinned, shaking his head. “Are you still fighting space pirates?”
“Every day!” Max’s voice called from under the table. “But they’re scared of me now.”
“Good,” Armin said. “Because they should be. With that ship, they don’t stand a chance.”
Kelly checked the screen corner. “We’ve got three minutes.”
Armin sat up straighter, trying to squeeze every second out of it. “How’s Earth?”
“Busy. Loud. But it’s good to see everyone. My mom’s still convinced Aguerra air has too little oxygen, despite never setting foot there.”
“I miss her house,” he said. “And her strudel.”
“She’s still mad that you like it more than mine.”
“She’s not wrong. Yours is… dense.”
Kelly gasped, mock-offended. “Rude.”
“I say it with love.”
“You’re lucky you’re in space.”
Marta began to fuss again, a tired cry cutting through the moment. Felix bounced her gently, but she was already twisting, trying to wriggle free.
“I’ll get her down,” he said, disappearing down the hallway.
Max had reappeared, one hand clutching a bent antenna triumphantly.
And then it was just the two of them again.
“You holding up?” Kelly asked, her voice quieter now.
Armin hesitated, but then nodded. “I’m okay. Mission’s a lot, but the team’s solid. Yoongi’s keeping the pressure focused. Mateo’s... well, he’s still Mateo. And Jimin’s trying to keep it together.”
Kelly’s expression shifted slightly. Concern.
“Any word on Fry?”
Armin’s smile faded, but it didn’t vanish. He was good at carrying the hard things lightly.
“No updates yet,” he said. “But she’s out there. Been fixing things, and managed to finish an old colony’s mission. Sick off of eating potatoes, perhaps. I know I would be and I get paste in a tube for breakfast.”
Kelly nodded slowly, eyes drifting toward the edge of the screen like she was picturing Y/N on that silent, brutal planet. “She’s always been stubborn.”
“She’s not stubborn,” Armin said. “She’s relentless. There’s a difference.”
The countdown blinked red now—less than a minute.
Kelly reached toward the screen, her fingers brushing the camera frame like she could close the distance through intention alone. “I’ll play the record for the kids when we’re home. Felix already sings Waterloo in the bath.”
Armin laughed, low and fond. “He’ll be a star.”
“Like his papa.”
He looked at her—really looked. The creases near her eyes, the calm strength in her voice, the soft exhaustion of someone doing too much but never complaining.
“I love you,” he said, quiet but clear.
Kelly smiled, eyes glistening, but she didn’t blink. “I love you more.”
The feed stuttered—just for a heartbeat—then steadied.
“Tell Max he’s getting an upgrade module,” Armin added, right as the screen blinked to black. “I’ll build it with him. When I’m back.”
And then the connection dropped.
Armin didn’t move.
He floated in the quiet for a moment, hands loose at his sides, the echo of laughter and baby babble still ringing in his ears. The hum of the ship crept back in—soft, familiar, indifferent.
He pressed one palm gently against the screen.
“I’ll get there,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll come home.”
Then he pushed off the booth wall, slow and weightless, and drifted back toward the corridor. Toward duty. Toward something unfinished.
A father. A husband. A chemist. Still tethered to three children, a kitchen on Earth, and a vinyl record waiting to be played.
The launch pad shimmered under the relentless Aguerra Prime sun, the air rippling above the scorched concrete like a mirage. From a distance, it looked almost peaceful—the tall form of the Iris 2 Probe standing poised against the deep blue sky, its titanium shell gleaming with clean, sharp edges. But the closer you got, the more you felt it: the pressure humming through every cable, every socketed bolt, every word passed between engineers like it might snap if spoken too loud.
The booster tower rose behind it like a steel spine, support arms still locked around the probe’s flanks. Sunlight glared off the reflective plating, flashing across visors and toolboxes as teams moved in tight formation around the base. They moved with the synchronicity of people who didn’t have time to second-guess themselves—every motion honed by thousands of hours of prep. Check. Recheck. Confirm. Sign off.
It wasn’t chaos. But it wasn’t calm either. It was the electric stillness before the sprint.
Off to the side of the pad, in the limited shade beneath a modular control tent, Taurus Flight Director Isla Reinhardt stood with her arms tucked behind her back, her body language composed but taut. The sharp lines of her white jumpsuit caught the sun, unwrinkled despite the heat. In front of her, Creed was gesturing—tight, controlled movements, but unmistakably frustrated.
“This entire sequence is backwards,” Creed said, low enough to keep it out of the general comms traffic, but not hiding the edge in his voice. “You’re running a TIC stack from twenty years ago. We’ve updated every protocol since Nexus One, and we haven’t done command layer locking that way since Apollo 27.”
The translator, standing just to the side of them, repeated the statement in clipped, neutral tones—softening the delivery but preserving the structure. Creed didn’t look at the translator. He didn’t need to. His eyes were locked on Isla, waiting.
Her jaw flexed once, just barely.
“We’re following a mandate from oversight,” she replied. “The redundancy needs to clear from the top line of remote interface down. You want to override that, you take it up with Parliament.”
“I’ve tried,” Creed said. “They sent me you.”
That earned him a sharp look, but she didn’t flinch.
A few meters behind them, André Batista leaned against one of the static barriers, arms folded, expression unreadable behind his reflective shades. He was a fixture here—part liaison, part architect, part political shield. He didn’t often speak unless something needed settling. So far, he hadn’t moved.
Beside him, Yoongi Min stood with one hand tucked into his flight jacket pocket, the other holding a data slate he wasn’t reading. His stance was relaxed, but his eyes tracked everything. The two men locked eyes for a moment.
André tilted his head slightly.
Yoongi gave the barest shrug. Not my circus.
The translator cleared her throat gently as Creed fired off another quiet barrage of concerns, this time about sensor lag and latency curve risk over a long-range transmission relay. Isla didn’t interrupt—she simply let him speak, waiting for the break. When it came, she replied in a tone so calm it almost felt detached.
“We’re under a transparency clause,” she said. “TIC’s name is on this. I don’t care how things were done at NOSA. If something goes wrong on this flight, it’s ours to explain, not yours. That’s the trade-off for funding.”
Creed’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t about funding. It’s about surviving the mission long enough to justify the launch.”
There was silence. Not long. Just long enough for the weight of it to land. The translator didn’t repeat that one.
André stepped forward finally, pushing off the barrier. “We need to stop playing jurisdictional chess. The probe is loaded. The window is locked. We’re hours out, and every one of you has skin in the game.” He looked between them, then directly at Isla. “Let’s not waste the time we’re running out of.”
He turned to Yoongi next. “Where are we on the confirmation pings?”
“Telemetry’s stable. We’ve got three handshake confirms from Iris and two from the booster package. Final burn path data’s syncing now.” He glanced at Creed. “She’s gonna fly, Summers.”
Creed didn’t argue. He just exhaled, rubbed the back of his neck once, and stepped away from the argument like someone carefully placing a grenade down before walking away.
Yoongi looked after him for a beat longer than necessary. Then he turned to Isla. “He’s not wrong about the sequence logic. But you’re not wrong about politics.”
“Funny how those things rarely line up,” she muttered.
In the background, the launch pad hissed as cooling vapor rolled down from the upper stacks. A ground tech called out a ten-minute marker in clipped Standard. The wind shifted slightly, bringing with it the tang of scorched ozone and oil.
They all turned toward the pad, eyes tracking the silhouette of the Iris 2.
Y/N stood crouched atop the curved hull of Speculor 2, bracing herself against the relentless wind. The gusts came in rhythmic pulses, sharp and slicing, carrying fine, metallic-red grit that embedded itself in every seam, every fold of her suit. It was the kind of wind that didn’t scream—but pressed. Pushed. Like the planet itself wanted her gone.
Her boots, magnetized to the surface, clicked softly as she adjusted her stance. Above her, the sky was the same hazy slate it had been for weeks—never quite light, never quite dark, the perpetual dusk of Hexundecia’s upper atmosphere. Out here, there was no sound but the filtered rasp of her breath inside the helmet and the occasional groan of the rover shifting in the wind.
She worked quickly, but carefully—gloved hands moving with practiced intent as she secured the last edge of the pop tent onto the roof. It didn’t look like much: an awkward dome of salvaged thermal mylar, structural flex-canvas, and about three rolls of industrial adhesive. The seams were patchy, the shape slightly asymmetrical, and the fabric still bore the faint burn marks from its previous life as an emergency airlock tarp.
But it was what she had. What she’d built.
She ran a final bead of sealant along the base, then tugged at the corners, checking for give. None. Good. The fabric trembled under her fingers, sensitive to even the subtlest shifts in pressure.
"Okay," she muttered, her voice low and clipped, more to herself than the recorder feed. "Let’s see if you can hold your breath.”
She flipped the switch on the manual pressurization system—an old NOSA rig she’d retooled for small-space inflation. It hummed, then clicked. A second later, the tent shuddered and began to rise, inflating with slow, uneven breaths. The canvas bulged awkwardly at first, then snapped into shape, the internal frame locking into place with a faint metallic pop.
Y/N held perfectly still, watching. Waiting. Her pulse ticked in her ears, louder than she liked.
The tent swelled outward slightly under pressure, flexed, then settled.
No tearing. No hissing. No collapse.
She exhaled, breath fogging briefly on the inside of her faceplate.
"Okay," she whispered, this time with something closer to relief. “Okay.”
She stepped back, letting the winds howl around her as she took in the strange structure she’d created. Ugly as hell. But airtight—for now. It would hold a pocket of warmth. Let her eat. Sleep. Think. Survive a little longer.
The pop tent wasn’t a permanent solution, and she knew it. It was a stopgap. One she’d have to check every few hours for signs of structural fatigue, thermal drift, or microtears. But compared to sleeping half-curled in the rover’s cargo hold, it was a goddamn luxury suite.
She climbed back down, boots thunking lightly as they disengaged from the magnetized hull, and dropped into the main chamber of the rover. Inside, it was dim and cramped—stale air, the scent of worn insulation, and the ever-present tang of iron dust.
She peeled off her gloves with slow care, flexing her fingers. They were stiff and pale, the skin rubbed raw in places where the liner seams never quite sat right. Her breath slowed. The adrenaline was ebbing now, the rush of getting something done giving way to the quieter dread of everything else still ahead.
This had taken four sols to rig.
She had, maybe, twelve more before the storm cycle shifted and buried the area in sand thick enough to compromise everything. And if her estimates were right—and she prayed they were—there was a chance, however slim, that a satellite would be sweeping near this quadrant by then.
She had to make the tent visible. Reflective. Irrationally bright.
She’d started sewing strips of spare mylar to the outer shell two nights ago, in the dark, with a thermal needle and frozen fingers. She had four more to add. Maybe five.
Outside, the wind surged again—louder this time. Something heavy thudded against the side of the rover. Probably a loose panel from the old dig site. She didn’t jump. She was past jumping.
Instead, she reached for her patch kit and a folded sheet of mylar she’d scavenged from the side panel of an old solar collector. Then she stood.
One seam at a time.
That’s how she lived now.
Not by the week. Not by the day. Not even by the hour.
Seam by seam. Breath by breath.
At the NOSA headquarters, Mateo and his team of engineers were deep in the throes of their own technical challenges. They surrounded a mirrored setup of Y/N’s speculor, trying to replicate her conditions as closely as possible. The engineers were methodical in their work, carefully testing and retesting, but their efforts were proving difficult. One of the engineers scratched his head as he tried to fit the bulky Oxygenator into the cramped confines of the pop tent, muttering under his breath as he juggled the components.
“Maybe if we angle it this way…” Mateo began, but before he could finish his thought, the unit tipped over, causing a flurry of activity as the engineers scrambled to adjust the pieces. Mateo sighed, his patience wearing thin, but his tone remained steady. “Okay. Again.”
Koah floated just above the rail of the comms bay, one hand anchored to a support bar, the other tapping a short sequence into the feed control. The connection took a few seconds longer than usual—just long enough to make his pulse tick a little faster.
Then the screen lit up, and there they were.
Quynh, all sharp cheekbones and soft eyes, with her long hair twisted into a lazy bun at the top of her head. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch in their apartment back on Aguerra Prime, barefoot, a wrench in one hand and their two-year-old son Bao sprawled sideways across her lap, talking a mile a minute.
“There he is!” Quynh grinned, tossing the wrench into a tray beside her. “Koah, your son is trying to dismantle the toaster because he thinks it’s a spaceship.”
“It is a spaceship,” Bao declared, his little face popping up toward the camera with unfiltered joy. “Papa! Look! Toaster engine!”
Koah laughed, the sound echoing softly in the confined booth. “That’s classified technology, buddy. You can’t just reverse-engineer domestic appliances for launch.”
Bao let out a squeal of delight, bouncing in Quynh’s lap.
“You’re supposed to say hi, not initiate tech theft,” Quynh muttered playfully, nudging him with her chin.
“Watch this,” Koah said with a grin, pushing off the far wall in one smooth motion.
He floated through the zero-G space like a swimmer in slow motion, tucking into a controlled spin. His body twisted mid-air, knees drawn in, one hand flaring out for style points. He rotated once, then shifted momentum and drifted cleanly into the partial-grav buffer near the edge of the booth, landing with a soft thud on the deck.
Bao shrieked with laughter, clutching his belly. “AGAIN!”
Koah beamed. “You’re lucky your dad’s a certified space ninja.”
“You’re lucky you married a woman who finds space ninjas hot,” Quynh said dryly.
Koah barked a laugh. “No lies detected.”
He dropped back into a crouch and leaned closer to the screen, chin propped on his hands as he took them both in—his son’s wild curls and jam-streaked shirt, the familiar line of Quynh’s collarbone just visible under a worn tank top she’d probably stolen from him in college.
“You look good,” he said softly, his smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Exhausted. But good.”
“So do you,” Quynh said. “Very heroic. Very floaty.”
“Bao,” Koah said in a mock-whisper, “how’s Mama holding up without Papa’s superior wrench skills?”
Bao squinted at him. “Mama says you make mess. Mama say she fix.”
Koah clutched his chest like he’d been shot. “Traitor!”
Quynh smirked. “He’s observant.”
They all laughed—an easy, looping rhythm that Koah could’ve stayed inside forever.
Then Quynh tilted her head, the light from the screen catching in the curve of her cheekbone. The warmth in her face didn’t disappear, but it shifted—something sharpened beneath it.
“I’ve been asking around,” she said, her voice quieter now. “About her. About what’s happening. No one’s talking.”
Koah’s smile dimmed at the edges. Not gone, just more cautious now. “You mean Fry?”
She nodded, brushing a hand through Bao’s curls as he leaned heavily against her shoulder. “I know Creed Summers went behind Yoongi’s back. That much I pulled out of one of the payload guys during a lunch break. But past that?” She shrugged. “Even Ives won’t say anything. And you know she usually cracks if you wave a coffee pod in her direction.”
Koah let out a slow breath and rubbed the back of his neck, like he was trying to knead the tension out of it. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It’s… complicated.”
“Complicated like top-level-clearance complicated?”
He hesitated, eyes flicking away for just a second. “Complicated like… you’d be obsessed with the engineering, and then terrified once you realized what it actually meant.”
Quynh’s expression didn’t change, but her posture shifted. She leaned forward a little, Bao still clinging to her like a sleepy barnacle.
“I don’t need you to break protocol,” she said, not accusing, just honest. “I know how it works. But I don’t want you sleepwalking into something you can’t walk out of.”
Koah looked at her, really looked, and felt that familiar pull in his chest—the one that reminded him exactly why he chose to stay. Why he said yes, when every other instinct told him no.
Even now, with everything spinning tighter by the day, she wasn’t asking him to come home. She was telling him to be smart. And that was love too.
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he said, voice steady. “I promise.”
Quynh’s mouth curved into a half-smile. “Good. Because I may be the only one in the support chat who thinks you staying up there is the coolest thing ever.”
Koah chuckled. “The other wives still mad?”
“They’re... coping. Uma’s pissed. Understandably. Kelly pretends she’s fine, but the boys are taking it harder. Max asked if he could build a space elevator to bring Armin home.”
Koah smiled at that, the kind of smile that knew exactly what being missed felt like. “And you?”
Quynh rolled her eyes. “I’m over here bragging to anyone who’ll listen that my husband is doing deep-space diagnostics with a toothbrush and a busted coolant valve. Like some kind of orbital MacGyver.”
“Technically,” Koah said with mock formality, “it was a toothbrush and a strip of thermal tape. I have standards.”
Bao perked up. “Papa is best!”
Koah grinned, eyes sparkling. “Damn right he is. And you, Bao Bean, are the best little sidekick in the galaxy.”
“Are you bringing robot?” Bao asked suddenly, sitting upright in his mother’s lap. “You promised robot!”
“I remember,” Koah said, nodding solemnly. “And not just one—two robots. One for you, and one for Mama.”
Quynh raised a brow. “Oh yeah? What does mine run on? Flattery and caffeine?”
“Logic circuits, emotional resilience, and a coffee reservoir with built-in sarcasm,” Koah replied. “Basically… you in droid form.”
She laughed, the sound bright and short and familiar. “Flawless design.”
The screen flashed—two-minute warning, pulsing red in the corner.
Koah’s chest tightened the way it always did near the end of a call. He hated this part. Not just the goodbye, but the slow slide into silence.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he said, quieter now.
Quynh reached toward the camera, her fingers brushing close to the lens. “We’re good,” she said. “We’re here. And we’re proud of you.”
His throat tightened, but he didn’t let it show. “Give Bao a kiss for me?”
Before she could answer, Bao leaned forward, pressing his entire face against the screen. “MUAH!”
Koah mimed catching it, then tucked it into his pocket. “Straight to the cryo logs. Archived forever.”
Another blink—sixty seconds.
“I love you,” Quynh said, voice steady, full of everything she didn’t have time to say.
“I love you more,” Koah answered. Then added, “When I get back—”
“You’ll finish fixing the toaster?” she cut in, smirking.
“I’ll launch the toaster,” he said. “With a fusion drive and retractable wings.”
Quynh laughed, even as the feed flickered one last time.
The screen went dark.
Koah stayed there, suspended in the weightless booth, his hands still hovering near the edge of the console like he could will her image back. Then, slowly, he let go, pushing off the wall with practiced ease.
Back at the launch site, the first rumble came low—almost imperceptible at first, like a distant storm building beneath the concrete.
Then the pad lit up.
A towering column of fire and sound erupted beneath the Argo as its engines roared to life, white-hot exhaust curling around the flame trenches in thick plumes of smoke. The shockwave hit a split second later—rolling through the observation stands, rattling steel fixtures, and thudding deep into every chest on the platform like a second heartbeat.
It was a controlled violence—raw, precise, beautiful.
The Argo began to rise.
Slowly at first, as if testing the air, then faster—cutting through the sky in a clean, perfect arc. The hull gleamed gold in the afternoon light, the sun catching along its flank as it punched upward past the clouds, trailing a pillar of heat and vapor that tore the sky in two.
A wave of cheers broke across the launch complex. Technicians and engineers who’d been stiff with focus a moment earlier now stood shouting, hugging, clapping each other on the back. Some laughed. Some just stared, mouths parted in disbelief, as if they couldn’t quite believe it was finally happening. Others wiped at their eyes with sleeves and tried to pretend it was the sunlight.
Yoongi Min stood just off-center from the crowd, shoulders square, arms crossed, but there was a softness to his expression that hadn’t been there minutes before—like a coil had finally loosened in his chest. Next to him, Creed Summers was grinning, not wide, but sharp—relief mixed with the residue of pressure. His tie was still half-loose from the argument earlier, but now he extended a hand to Yoongi.
Yoongi hesitated, then took it.
Not warmly. Not with forgiveness. But with acknowledgment.
“Well,” Creed said, low enough for only Yoongi to hear, “we didn’t blow up the planet. That’s a win.”
Yoongi didn’t smile. But he didn’t pull away either.
“Telemetry looks clean,” someone called from a nearby terminal. “Guidance holding steady. No drift on the main stack.”
Across the pad, André Batista stood a few paces back from the crowd, hands in his pockets, sunglasses reflecting the disappearing silhouette of the rocket. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The quiet, satisfied nod he gave said enough. He had seen a hundred launches in his lifetime. This one mattered.
Marco stood a few steps off the platform edge, jaw clenched but eyes tracking the ascent with laser focus. The Iris-2 probe was up there now—every circuit, every algorithm, every delicate sensor array tucked into the Argo’s belly like a secret whispered across the stars. It wasn’t just equipment to him. It was purpose.
As the rocket disappeared past the clouds, only the vapor trail remained—fading into the blue, curling in on itself like a final signature on a hard-fought page.
Yoongi finally exhaled and turned to face the rest of the team. His voice was steady when he spoke, but his words carried the weight of months.
“Mission clock starts now,” he said.
Creed nodded once, then turned toward the ops tent, already scanning his tablet.
The cheering had begun to taper off. Reality was returning in steps. There were check-ins to process. Booster separations to confirm. A thousand things that could still go wrong.
But in that brief window—between fire and silence—everyone stood a little taller.
⮞ Chapter Seven: Fuck Bureaucracy
Pairing: Jungkook x Reader
Other Tags: Convict!Jungkook, Escaped Prisoner!Jungkook, Piolet!Reader, Captain!Reader, Holyman!Namjoon, Boss!Yoongi, Commander!Jimin, Astronaut!Jimin, Doctor!Hoseok, Astronaut!Hoseok
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Suspense, Strangers to Enemies to ???, Slow Burn, LOTS of Angst, Light Fluff, Eventual Smut, Third Person POV, 18+ Only
Word Count: 19.7k+
Summary: When a deep space transporter crash-lands on a barren planet illuminated by three relentless suns, survival becomes the only priority for the stranded passengers, including resourceful pilot Y/N Y/L/N, mystic Namjoon Kim, lawman Taemin Lee, and enigmatic convict Jungkook Jeon. As they scour the hostile terrain for supplies and a way to escape, Y/N uncovers a terrifying truth: every 22 years, the planet is plunged into total darkness during an eclipse, awakening swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating creatures. Forced into a fragile alliance, the survivors must face not only the deadly predators but also their own mistrust and secrets. For Y/N, the growing tension with Jungkook—both a threat and a reluctant ally—raises the stakes even higher, as the battle to escape becomes one for survival against the darkness both around them and within themselves.
Warnings: Strong Language, Blood, Trauma, Smart Character Choices, This is all angst and action and that's pretty much it, Reader is a bad ass, Survivor Woman is back baby, terraforming, some mental health issues, survivor's guilt, lots of talking to herself, and recording it, because she'll lose her mind otherwise, fixing things, intergalatical politics, new characters, body image issues, scars, strong female characters are everywhere, cynical humor, bad science language, honestly all of this has probably had the worst science and basis ever, I researched a lot I promise, let me know if I missed anything...
A/N: I love a good rescue mission...
prev || masterlist || next
The reds of M6-117 bled across the sky like a bruise stretching over the horizon. It was technically morning—though nothing about this place felt like morning. There were no birds, no blue sky, no dew on the ground. Just heat rising in slow, merciless waves under the low twin suns. No relief, only exposure.
Y/N stood outside the Hab, boots sunk halfway into the grit. The wind had died down for now, but the silence was heavier than any storm. Her suit was streaked with dirt, pockmarked with patches—each one a story she hadn’t had the time or energy to write down. The visor on her helmet caught the early light at an angle, throwing a warped reflection of the landscape behind her. She didn’t look back at it.
She tilted her head slightly, as if trying to decide whether she was ready to say it out loud. Then she pressed the comm.
“Jim.”
Her voice came through the static-soft channel, low and almost hesitant, like she was still practicing the sentence inside her own skull. The word hung there a moment, delicate and unfinished.
“I need you to do something for me.”
She paused, pressing a gloved hand against the seam of her thigh like grounding herself might make it easier.
“If I don’t make it—and I’m not saying I won’t, just… if—I need you to talk to them. Please.”
She looked down, eyes tracking the trail of her own footprints half-blown smooth by last night’s wind.
“They shouldn’t hear about me from a news brief. Or a stranger reading a script. That’s not how this ends.”
Her voice cracked slightly, but she didn’t stop. If anything, it made her steadier. There was no emotion she hadn’t already felt out here—fear, grief, anger, numbness—and now they all just circled each other like orbiting moons.
“Helion Prime was the beginning of everything. I was seventeen. Terrified. Stupid in the ways you’re only allowed to be when you’re too new to know better. And they were so proud. I used to think they were just being polite, but they meant it. Every article—they printed them all. Even the blurry ones where I was just in the background fixing a panel.”
She exhaled slowly, eyes drifting to the nearby speculor—its chassis sand-swept and sunburnt. Her reflection blinked back at her in distorted glass.
“Flight school at twenty. I met you there. I remember the day I brought you home,” She smiled faintly, remembering. “They adored you. God, I think Aunt Rose made you cookies the second day she met you. They never had to pretend with you. You were family before we ever said the word out loud.”
A beat.
“They didn’t even hesitate to move across the galaxy to be near us. Packed up their entire lives and settled on a rainy colony world, even though Aunt Rose hates humidity and mold and missing her morning paper. You remember how mad she was when she realized Aguerra didn’t even have paper delivery?”
Her voice grew quieter then, the smile fading as her posture straightened slightly.
“If something happens, I need you to go to them. Sit down. Look them in the eye. Don’t tell them about this place. Don’t describe the suits and the patch kits and the way the sun burns through the walls at midday. They don’t need to know that. Talk about Starfire. Tell them how much I loved that ship. How much I loved what we did. That was the happiest I’ve ever been, Jim. Not just in space. Anywhere.”
She shifted her weight slightly, boots crunching against dry ground.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she said. “There’s no good way to tell people their niece died millions of miles from home. But if it has to happen, they need to hear it from someone who knew me beyond the title. Who saw me here, with the work and the grime and the joy of it all.”
Her voice caught on the next breath. She didn’t try to hide it—there was no one out here to impress. Just the comm channel, the open stretch of dead horizon, and a sky that never blinked.
She steadied herself.
“And tell Uma…” Her voice cracked, unraveling mid-sentence. She blinked hard, trying to keep her eyes clear, but it was already too late. They were glassy now, fogging over with grief she hadn’t allowed herself to feel until this exact second.
“Tell her I love her. Tell her I’m sorry.”
The words came out rough. Honest. And too small for everything they meant.
“I wanted to be there,” she continued, slower now, like each syllable cost her something. “I wanted to help pick paint colors, argue over names no one would use. Hold her hand when she panicked over something tiny and hormonal and beautiful.”
She let out a shaky laugh—just one—but it didn’t stay.
“I wanted to sit in the nursery with her. Feel the baby kick. Help build furniture we’d curse at and pretend we knew how to fix. Babysit. Fall asleep on the couch watching movies we’d already seen. Spoil the kid. Sneak them candy behind your backs.”
She looked up, eyes squinting against the sharp white glare of the twin suns climbing higher above the dunes. Her voice dropped to a whisper, quieter than the wind curling at her feet.
“If I made it home… that baby would already be walking.”
She didn’t need to explain it. The heartbreak sat there on its own, fully formed.
Silence followed, but it wasn’t empty. It was full of everything she couldn’t bring herself to name. All the stolen time. All the pieces of a life she was still trying to carry, even as the weight of this planet pulled harder at her every day.
When she spoke again, it was softer. But there was no wobble left.
“I’m not giving up. Don’t think for a second that I am.”
Her eyes locked on the far line of the horizon. The sky shimmered, heat warping the edge of everything.
“I’ve made it through things that should’ve killed me,” she said. “But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that hoping for the best only works when you’re also planning for the worst. I’m not making a goodbye message. I’m covering my bases. That’s all.”
She reached up, adjusted the mic on her collar, and took a steadying breath.
“If it comes to that—if I don’t make it back—tell them I didn’t die out here just trying to hang on. Tell them I chose this. That I wanted to be out here. That I believed in what we were building. That I gave it everything I had.”
She paused, her fingers brushing the spot near her hip where the suit had been patched again and again. The fabric there felt thinner, no matter how many times she reinforced it.
“Not because I was brave. Not because I was reckless. But because I believed in it. All of it. And because I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”
Her voice dipped to almost nothing.
“Tell them I’m okay with that.”
A pause.
“Even if they’re not.”
The wind picked up again, pulling at the hem of the thermal shielding she’d bolted down earlier that morning. It flapped once, soft and tired, like the Hab itself was exhaling beside her.
Y/N stood there a little while longer, watching the light stretch across the red landscape. The suns climbed, and the shadows pulled behind her like anchors.
She didn’t speak again.
Eventually, she turned. The gravel shifted beneath her boots, crunching softly with each step. The Hab loomed ahead, patched and battered and still standing—like her.
She walked back toward the airlock.
The Taurus Interplanetary Commission headquarters stood like a blade of glass and steel against the deep blue atmosphere of Taurus I. It was the kind of place built to make a statement—an architectural flex that said humanity didn’t just belong in space; it was starting to understand how to make it beautiful.
Inside, the halls buzzed with quiet, measured urgency. Footsteps on polished floors. Low voices in corners. The occasional murmur of comms traffic spilling from open doors. On a wide display screen in the atrium, NOSA’s press conference played in real time. Yoongi and Mateo sat at the table, looking like they hadn’t slept in days. Probably because they hadn’t.
“We substituted the standard ration bricks with high-density protein cubes,” Mateo was explaining, his voice steady but dry with exhaustion. “What we didn’t account for was the behavior of those cubes under heavy thrust. Combined with lateral vibration during ascent, the protein packs liquefied and shifted the weight distribution. That’s what destabilized the payload.”
The reporters pounced.
“Why wasn’t this caught during final inspection?”
Yoongi leaned forward, face unreadable. “We didn’t have time.”
The room stirred with low, anxious chatter.
“You skipped the inspections?” one reporter asked, voice sharp.
“Yes,” Yoongi said. Flat. Unapologetic. “We had a fourteen-minute window. If we’d missed it, we wouldn’t have another chance for months. And she doesn’t have that kind of time.”
The broadcast continued, but in a quiet corner office ten floors above, the volume had already been muted.
André Batista stood near the window, his hands tucked into the pockets of his tailored jacket. His gaze drifted from the screen to the man seated behind the desk.
“She’s not going to make it,” André said finally, his voice low but certain. Not cruel. Just honest.
Gunther Apinya didn’t look up right away. He was scanning a data packet, fingers idly flipping through the pages until André stepped forward and placed a second folder in front of him.
“Maybe not,” André allowed. “But maybe she does. Take a look.”
Gunther opened it.
Charts. Numbers. A schematic of the Argo booster system, overlaid with a proposed injection path—M-344/G orbit. Deep burn. Minimal gravity assist. Fast and dirty.
“You ran this through engineering?” Gunther asked, already knowing the answer.
“They ran it twice. If we launch in forty-eight hours, it’ll reach her in time.” André crossed his arms. “With margin.”
Gunther frowned. “Why hasn’t NOSA reached out to us?”
“They don’t know we can help,” André said simply. “That booster tech is still classified under Coalition R&D. There are maybe twelve people outside this building who even know it exists.”
Gunther leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. “So what you’re saying is... if we do nothing, no one would ever know we had the capability.”
André nodded once. “That’s right.”
They sat in silence, the air between them thick with implication. Out the window, the twin suns of Taurus I were setting low, turning the glass gold.
Gunther finally spoke, his voice quiet but firm. “And if we help?”
“We burn a booster we can’t replace. Argo gets delayed. Possibly scrapped.”
Silence again. This time, longer.
Gunther stared at the file. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink.
Then he closed the folder slowly, the soft click of the binder echoing in the quiet office.
“This doesn’t go through governments,” he said. “No public release. No diplomatic channels.”
André raised an eyebrow. “You want backchannel?”
“I want scientists,” Gunther replied. “Just us. Just them. No politics. No medals. If this works, the world never needs to know.”
André didn’t smile, but something in his shoulders eased. “I’ll make the call.”
As he stepped out of the room, Gunther turned back to the muted broadcast. Mateo was still speaking, trying to explain the loss without flinching. Yoongi sat beside him, unmoving, his eyes shadowed but clear.
The lights in Yoongi’s office were dim, the windows tinted against the rising glare of Aguerra’s twin suns. A half-empty mug of cold coffee sat forgotten on the edge of his desk, the ring it left behind now drying into the paper below. Across from him, the comms unit glowed faintly, casting a soft blue hue over the scattered reports and schematics that hadn’t been touched in hours.
He didn’t speak. Not yet.
The voice on the other end was calm, precise—measured in that way only career scientists and seasoned negotiators knew how to be. It laid out the terms cleanly: launch access, limited telemetry sharing, classified propulsion specs kept under lock. No governments. No press. Just a backdoor lifeline.
Yoongi sat motionless in his chair, head tilted back against the cushion, eyes closed. Not from sleep—he hadn’t slept in over thirty hours—but to block everything else out. The ache in his shoulders. The sting behind his eyes. The pressure that had been building in his chest since the probe failed.
But now, there it was.
Help.
Unexpected. Improbable. Quietly offered from a corner of the galaxy where he hadn’t dared hope.
He almost didn’t trust it at first. Then the voice repeated the final clause, politely, waiting for acknowledgment.
Yoongi blinked. Straightened.
He didn’t reach for a pen. Didn’t take a breath to buy himself time. He already knew the answer.
His voice, when it came, was low—rough from disuse—but steady.
“Yes,” he said. “We accept.”
And as he leaned forward, elbows braced on the desk, the hum of the line settled into silence. A silence that, for the first time in days, didn’t feel like failure pressing in from all sides. It felt like motion. Like the beginning of something.
He let the weight of it settle.
Then he picked up the stylus and got back to work.
At Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s primary assembly bay, the air was thick with fatigue, sweat, and the faint chemical tang of solder and composite dust. Half-finished components were stacked on worktables. Coffee cups littered the corners of schematics. No one had slept enough. No one was planning to, either.
Marco stood at the whiteboard, sleeves rolled to the elbows, marker already in hand. His hair stuck up in uneven tufts like he’d run his fingers through it too many times, and the stubble on his jaw was well into Day Three territory. Behind him, the whir of ventilation fans and toolkits hummed over the low murmur of keyboards and data feeds.
“Okay,” he said, voice sharper than usual—not angry, just wired. Focused. Running on pure adrenaline. “Thanks to some unexpected friends on Taurus 1, we’ve got one more shot at this.”
He turned and started writing fast, the marker squeaking against the board as he sketched out the basic launch trajectory and burn profile. The numbers came from muscle memory now.
“We built Iris in sixty-three days,” he went on, turning back to face the room. “And for the record? That should’ve been impossible. But we did it. You did it. Every subsystem, every weld, every last calibration. You made it happen.”
He held up the marker like a baton. “Now we do it again.”
The engineers and analysts around him exchanged tired looks. There were bags under everyone’s eyes, a few still wearing the same clothes from the day before. But no one objected. No one moved to say no.
Marco raised an eyebrow, as if daring someone to tell him it couldn’t be done.
“We don’t get sixty-three days this time,” he said. “We get twenty-eight. Twenty-eight days to design, fabricate, test, and launch a completely reconfigured payload. Lighter. Faster. Hotter burn. Different booster.”
He tapped the board with the marker, underlining a series of projected dates.
“And we’re going to do it. Because the alternative is watching someone die knowing we could’ve helped. I’m not interested in being a footnote in that story.”
The room had gone quiet—no arguments, no complaints. Just the subtle shift of people straightening in their seats, tightening ponytails, finishing cold coffee. The kind of stillness that came just before a storm.
Marco exhaled, stepped back, and dropped the marker into the tray.
“We don’t get to fail this time,” he said, softer now. “We get to try. That’s the gift. So let’s move.”
Someone from the propulsion team stood up and headed toward the assembly corridor. A software lead muttered something about patching a new thermal profile and started typing. A tech from avionics walked out without a word, already pulling up wiring schematics on a tablet.
Marco watched them go, then turned back to the board.
The numbers weren’t beautiful. But they were possible.
The hum of NOSA’s supercomputer lab was the kind of ambient noise that most people didn’t notice anymore. But Dean Marblemaw had always liked it—the low whirr of a machine thinking faster than he ever could, the air conditioners clicking rhythmically to keep it from melting down under its own brilliance.
He sat alone at the far terminal, sleeves pushed up, fingers moving fast over the keys. The numbers flowed like music—data sets, burn windows, orbital maps all converging into something strange. And then, suddenly, something true.
He stopped. Blinked.
Ran it again.
Same result.
Dean leaned back slowly, a grin spreading across his face like he couldn’t stop it if he tried. The kind of grin that had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with the pure, breathless thrill of seeing the impossible become real.
"Holy shit," he whispered, half-laughing.
He snatched the pages from the printer—charts, calculations, a half-scribbled orbital solution that shouldn't work but absolutely did—and bolted for the door.
The halls of NOSA blurred past him. He wasn’t built for running—skinny and long-legged in a way that always looked vaguely winded—but he didn’t stop. Security glanced up as he passed. A junior engineer did a double take. He didn’t care.
By the time he reached Mateo’s office, his heart was pounding and his shirt clung to his back. He didn’t knock.
He flung the door open hard enough that it bounced off the stopper, startling Mateo, who was in the middle of a call, headset pressed to one ear, tablet in the other hand.
Dean didn’t waste time.
“You should hang up the phone.”
Mateo blinked at him, thrown completely off balance. “I’m sorry, who the hell are you?”
“Dean Marblemaw. Astrodynamics. Floor six.” He stepped forward, still out of breath. “And seriously—you need to hang up the phone right now.”
Mateo held up a finger, eyes narrowing. “I’ll call you back,” he said into the headset, voice sharp with suspicion. He ended the call and set the tablet aside. “This better be worth it.”
Dean didn’t respond. He dropped a folder onto the desk and shoved it across the surface, sending a half-full coffee mug wobbling to the edge.
“Read this.”
Mateo didn’t move. Not at first. He studied Dean’s face—sweaty, flushed, buzzing with something like adrenaline—and then picked up the packet.
As he read, the frown that had settled into Mateo’s forehead deepened. Then stilled. His eyes jumped back up to Dean’s.
“This trajectory’s not viable.”
“It wasn’t,” Dean said, chest still heaving. “Until I ran the residual vectors on the second flyby sequence and—look, I can’t explain it fast. But it works. The window’s narrow, but it’s there. We can reach her.”
Mateo glanced back at the numbers, flipping to the second page. He did the math in his head. Then again.
His chair creaked as he leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
“You're absolutely sure?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything that wasn’t caffeine dependency or gravitational constants.” Dean grinned, breath finally evening out. “Dr.Gomez, we can get a new payload there faster than we thought. If we burn on this vector, we shave thirty-one days off the injection arc. Thirty-one. That’s the difference between watching her die and watching her walk away.”
Mateo didn’t waste time. He was already punching the intercom.
“April,” he said, calm but urgent. “I need mission planning in my office. Now. Tell them it’s about Project Elrond.”
Across the room, Dean dropped into a chair, still riding the high of the math he’d just scrawled across four pages and a whiteboard. He grinned, breathless.
“I told you to hang up the phone,” he said.
Mateo didn’t respond. He was staring at the file in front of him, not reading it, just letting the numbers sink in like they were burning through the paper and into his chest.
They had something they hadn’t had in days.
Hope.
Alice stepped into the conference room mid-scroll, still reading from her phone. “Okay, seriously—what the hell is ‘Project Elrond’?”
Mateo didn’t look up from his tablet. “Had to give it a name.”
She stopped just inside the door. “Elrond?”
From the far corner, Creed looked up, brow arched. “Council of Elrond. Lord of the Rings.”
Alice blinked. “Why do Earth people always name critical operations after fantasy books? Is it a cultural compulsion? Or just a lack of imagination?”
Marco, legs stretched out, gave a quiet laugh. “It’s the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring. World-saving stuff.”
“That doesn’t make it better,” she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Am I even supposed to know what that means? How old is that book?”
The door opened again, and Yoongi walked in with a coffee in one hand and his usual unreadable calm. “If this is a Project Elrond, I want my codename to be Glorfindel.”
Alice didn’t miss a beat. “This is why I hate working with Earthlings.”
Creed grinned at Yoongi. “You don’t even know what this meeting’s about, do you?”
Yoongi took a seat and set his coffee down with care. “I assumed it had to be important if Matt called us all in here so urgently.”
Mateo looked up at last and slid a tablet across the table toward Dean. “Show them.”
Dean nodded, suddenly serious. His energy had been buzzing all morning, barely contained, but now it focused. He stood, pulled a few random objects from the table—a stapler, a mug, a stylus—and laid them out with quiet purpose.
“I can get Starfire back to M6-117,” he said. “By Sol 320.”
The air shifted. Heads turned. Every unspoken thought hit the same wall: That’s impossible.
Creed narrowed his eyes. “Say that again.”
“Five-six-one,” Dean repeated. “It’s tight. But I’ve run the numbers three times. The trajectory holds.”
Yoongi leaned forward, fingers steepled. “How?”
Dean didn’t sit. He held up the stapler. “This is Starfire, inbound toward Earth. They’re supposed to decelerate soon, prep for orbit. But what if they don’t? What if we tell them to skip the braking burn and use M6’s gravity instead?”
He swung the stapler in a wide arc toward Yoongi’s mug. “They slingshot. Pick up velocity, not lose it. We intercept the Argo probe on the way through. Resupply mid-sling.”
“With what?” Alice asked.
“Food. Fuel. Life support modules,” Mateo said. “Whatever we can get packed into the probe before it meets them.”
Dean pointed with the stylus. “After resupply, they make the burn straight back to M6-117. But there’s no time to decelerate. It’s a flyby.”
Alice frowned. “That’s useless unless—”
“Unless Y/N meets them in orbit,” Dean said. “MAV launch. She matches trajectory and speed, intercepts them mid-pass, and they haul ass home.”
The table was silent. Not confused—calculating. Each mind tracking the feasibility, the mechanics, the margin of error.
Dean took a breath. “It’s all there. The math checks out.”
Yoongi sat back slowly. “Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Leave the room.”
Dean’s face fell. “Wait, what?”
“You’re done for now,” Yoongi said quietly. “We need to talk.”
Dean hesitated, looked around the room, then gathered his notes and walked out. The door clicked behind him.
Yoongi turned to Mateo. “Is he right?”
Mateo gave a slow nod. “His math’s clean. No gaps in the logic. If the Argo resupply works—and if Y/N can get the MAV off the ground—it’s viable.”
Alice’s brow furrowed. “So what’s the tradeoff?”
Mateo didn’t pause. “We only have one Argo. We use it to resupply Starfire, or we send it to Y/N directly with enough food to keep her alive until Helion Nexus arrives.”
Alice leaned back, thinking. “No backup?”
“No second probe. No margin,” Creed said. “We built one. We launched one. That’s it.”
“And what about the crew?” she asked. “What does this add to their mission?”
Mateo looked her in the eye. “Three hundred twenty days.”
Creed didn’t hesitate. “They’ll do it. All of them. You don’t even have to ask.”
“That’s the point,” Mateo said. “We don’t want to ask. Jimin shouldn’t have to carry this decision.”
Alice blinked. “Commander Park.”
Creed nodded. “Her family. Her former commander. If we put it in front of him, it’s over. He’ll say yes, and we all know it.”
Yoongi exhaled, his gaze shifting to the ceiling for a moment. “Can the ship make it?”
Mateo nodded. “It was built for extended missions. All five Nexus launches. It can handle the time.”
“And if anything fails out there?”
Mateo didn’t blink. “Then we lose all of them.”
Marco’s voice was soft but clear. “So it’s a question of one life… or six.”
The words hung in the room like smoke.
No one spoke.
Then slowly, every head turned to Yoongi.
He didn’t rush. Just sat there, staring at the table, eyes distant. The room was quiet except for the quiet hum of the vent overhead and the faint ticking of the wall clock.
After a long pause, he said, “We still have a safe way to bring five people home. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
Creed’s hands curled into fists on the table. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“Let them make that decision.”
Yoongi didn’t answer.
“We’re going with option one,” he said.
Creed stood. Slowly. The chair scraped sharply against the floor as he pushed it back.
He held Yoongi’s gaze, jaw tight.
“You goddamn coward,” And he walked out.
The airlock sealed behind her with a low hiss—routine, automated, impersonal. Y/N didn’t look back.
She stepped onto the dusty ground with the same slow, measured movements that had come to define her. Not fatigue exactly—she was long past the point of real exhaustion. This was inertia. Survival-mode autopilot. Her boots dragged slightly with each step, her gait uneven from the ache in her hip that hadn’t gone away since the last hard fall.
The brush in her hand was stiff, its bristles worn down to the point of uselessness. She’d meant to replace it weeks ago, but every time she thought about digging through the storage crates, she ran out of momentum. So the brush stayed. Dull, frayed, familiar.
Ahead, the solar panels stretched in a broken line across the plateau—dust-caked, half-buried in places, their surfaces dull under the constant pale light. Cleaning them had become a ritual. Not for efficiency anymore. Not for system optimization. Just something to do. A reason to put on the suit. A reason to move.
She reached the edge of the first panel and lifted the brush.
Then stopped.
Her hand hovered midair, fingers locked around the handle. For a moment she just stared, unmoving, her helmet visor reflecting a warped image of herself against the glassy surface of the panel.
She let the brush fall.
It landed with a soft thunk against the dust and lay still. The sound barely registered. Even the wind felt half-asleep, carrying only the faintest rasp of fine sand.
She stood there, breathing slow, not entirely sure what she was waiting for.
Then, without making a conscious decision, she turned and walked. Not toward the Hab. Not toward the rover. Toward the low ridge that curved beyond the eastern edge of the old settlement site—the one she visited sometimes when the air inside got too heavy.
Her spot.
The only place that felt slightly other on a planet that never changed.
The slope was gentle, but it took effort. Her suit was already too warm, the sun already high. She climbed anyway, boots crunching against loose rock, the incline chewing at her thighs. At the top, she sank down, legs folding beneath her with a graceless drop, and sat.
Not to rest.
Not to think.
Just to stop.
Below her, the empty valley stretched endlessly in all directions. The remnants of Colony 212’s initial outpost lay half-swallowed by dust—crumpled scaffolding, shattered survey drones, the twisted frame of a greenhouse torn apart by a windstorm before she’d even landed here.
The suns were low now. Three pale coins bleeding sideways light across the ridgeline, elongating shadows until the rocks themselves looked like reaching hands. She closed her eyes.
And stayed that way.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer. She lost track.
By the time she opened them again, the sky had changed. The suns were climbing again—merciless, blinding—and the world had gone from dim orange to stark, clinical white. Her suit’s internal alarm chirped, then escalated to a shrill beep.
TEMP WARNING: EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT UNSAFE.
She silenced it with a few taps.
Her throat felt dry. She didn’t feel like moving.
She didn’t want to go back to the Hab. Not yet.
And that was when something caught her eye—just a flicker of light in the dust. A glint. Not bright. Just out of place enough to make her turn her head.
Near her boot, half-buried in grit, was something metallic.
She crouched automatically, fingers brushing the sand aside. The object revealed itself slowly—a long, slender drill shaft, pitted with corrosion but unmistakably familiar. A specimen drill, the kind issued during the early survey missions.
She stared at it, frowning.
It hadn’t been there the last time she climbed this hill. At least, not visibly. The storms must’ve uncovered it, shaken it loose from whatever shallow grave had hidden it all these years.
She turned it over in her hands. The serial tag was mostly scrubbed, but she recognized the build—an older model, standard during the early M6 surface ops. Pre-colonization. The drill tip was blunted. A few of the threads were stripped. But it still had weight.
Her eyes followed a faint line in the sand—tracks, barely visible. The kind only time and wind could etch. They led toward a jagged rock formation nearby, one she’d passed a dozen times without looking twice.
She stood and followed the line.
Near the base of the rock, holes had been drilled—precise, methodical, in a pattern meant for core sampling. But they were shallow. Incomplete. As if the mission that had started here had been cut off mid-execution.
Y/N crouched again and ran her gloved fingers across the markings. The ridges were still sharp. It hadn’t eroded completely. She paused, hand resting against the surface.
It didn’t feel like just another piece of equipment forgotten by some long-dead operation. It felt… interrupted.
She sat back on her heels, the drill resting across her lap.
The low hum of NOSA Mission Control ticked along at its usual pace—monitors blinking, quiet conversations traded in clipped tones, the soft churn of machines doing what they were built to do. Underneath it all, that familiar background drone: the sound of systems keeping time in space.
But at April Borne’s console, none of it registered.
She sat forward in her chair, posture tight, eyes fixed on the center screen like it might flinch. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to react, but frozen for the moment. Around her, the world moved in quiet circuits. At her station, the world had narrowed to one: M6-117.
Three displays surrounded her, each showing a different slice of telemetry—orbital drift, atmospheric density, biosuit vitals. She moved between them with ease, toggling overlays, tracking sensor shifts in real time. She wasn’t new anymore. She’d learned what mattered.
But one feed didn’t change.
Front and center: the live camera stream from an orbital relay, trained on a wide plateau. The camera wasn’t automated. April had locked it manually an hour ago. She didn’t want the feed to lose her.
On-screen, a single figure moved slowly across the dust-blasted landscape. An EVA suit, patched and sand-worn, its silhouette tiny in the frame. Step. Pause. Step. Pause.
April didn’t say anything for a while. Just watched.
Then, softly, without looking up, she spoke.
“She’s been out almost all day.”
Behind her, Mateo Gomez stood with his arms crossed, his weight shifting like he couldn’t quite settle. His jaw was tight, eyes glued to the same image. He looked tired in a way that didn’t come from lack of sleep—like his body had forgotten how to let go of tension.
“How many EVAs is that now?” he asked.
April flicked through a tab on the side screen. “Four, officially. Five if you count the solar sweep she did this morning.”
On the feed, Y/N’s figure came to a stop. She bent slightly, adjusted something in her hand, then continued walking—three hundred meters, give or take—before stopping again.
Then again. And again. Same rhythm. Same intervals.
“There’s a pattern,” April said, frowning slightly. “Three hundred-meter increments. Always the same distance between stops.”
“Survey work?” Mateo leaned in. “Did JPL send her updated collection coordinates?”
April shook her head, already checking. “No new packets. I ran a log scan—no inbound data. No flagged instructions. She hasn’t even acknowledged our system pings in four days.”
“So it’s all her,” Mateo murmured.
April nodded once. “She’s marking positions. Deliberate spacing, consistent timing. She’s not scavenging. She’s building something.”
The screen to her left pinged. A soft alert. April’s eyes snapped to it.
“Hold on,” she said. “We just got a packet through the Speculor relay.”
She brought it up quickly, hands moving across the keyboard with purpose. The data decrypted smoothly. It wasn’t a distress call. Not even a voice memo.
He stared at the screen for a second. “That’s Oslo’s grid.”
April looked up. “You mean—Colony 212? The geo-mineral mapping project?”
Mateo nodded slowly, as if the pieces were clicking together in real time. “Yeah. Oslo’s team was testing local substrate cohesion. Seeing if the regolith could be mixed and cured into load-bearing material. That data was supposed to drive long-term construction models for outposts. But the Eclipse hit before they finished.”
He leaned closer, eyes narrowing at the screen. “And that number… she’s not guessing. That’s the actual designation. Oslo ran a radial grid—six hundred meters across, three hundred between sample paths.”
April quickly overlaid the coordinates from Y/N’s EVAs onto a legacy terrain map. The grid snapped into place, translucent lines lacing across the dusty plateau.
It was nearly identical.
“Oh my god,” April whispered. “She’s not just collecting. She’s replicating the test grid. Exactly.”
Mateo stood still, like he was watching something sacred.
“She’s not just surviving,” he said quietly. “She’s continuing the mission.”
Y/N’s figure had stopped again, kneeling in the red dust. Her hands moved with slow precision, sealing something into a container—probably a drill sample, maybe a substrate core. There was no rush. No panic.
Just focus.
Purpose.
April sat back slowly, her eyes still fixed on the screen. “She picked up where they left off.”
“She must’ve found Oslo’s notes,” Mateo said. “Maybe from the wreck. Maybe from one of the old surface drives. It doesn’t matter. She’s finishing the work.”
“No,” April said softly. “She’s continuing it.”
The room shifted around them. Not louder—just heavier. The kind of silence that settles when something meaningful happens and no one wants to interrupt it.
On the feed, Y/N stood again. Adjusted her grip on a sampling tube. Walked three hundred more meters. Stopped. Crouched.
She was following a dead man’s path.
She was finishing what history had abandoned.
Mateo exhaled. His voice came out hoarse.
“She’s doing the science.”
April didn’t respond at first. She just kept watching.
Then she leaned forward, eyes bright behind tired lashes.
“That’s not what we expected her to do,” she said. “After the crash. After everything. I thought—honestly? I thought she’d hunker down. Try to stay warm. Make peace with the end.”
“She was never built for that,” Mateo said. “She’s a problem-solver. If she couldn’t be rescued, she’d figure out how to be useful.”
He watched her take another knee, dig gently into the ground.
“That girl is a fucking superstar,” he murmured. “Even when no one’s watching.”
And for the first time in days, the tension in Mission Control eased—not with certainty, but with clarity.
April’s screen updated again—new readings, a fresh transmission of spectrographic data. She sat up straighter, readying the next pass.
Across the room, techs leaned in a little closer. Conversations quieted. Chairs scooted forward.
Because for all the things they didn’t know yet—how to bring her home, how to explain what she was doing, how to protect her legacy—they understood one thing now:
She hadn’t stopped.
She had found a reason to keep going.
The Hab was silent, save for the steady, rhythmic scrape of stone on ceramic.
Y/N sat at the experiment table, hunched over, sleeves rolled back to the elbows of her pressure-rated thermal undersuit. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency, knuckles red and chapped, nails bitten down to the quick. She brought the pestle down again—firm but controlled—grinding the coarse sediment sample into something closer to a usable grain. Not powder. Not paste. Just enough to test. Just enough to keep going.
The makeshift chem kit in front of her was stained with dust and old reactions, once-white trays now tinged with rust-colored residue. Glassware clinked softly as she shifted her weight. The solvent vial sloshed—half-full, if she was generous.
This part of the job wasn’t hard. Not physically. But it demanded a kind of patience that only survival had taught her. The precision of it gave her something to anchor to. A routine. A reason to move from one hour into the next.
She didn’t look up when she started talking. She didn’t need to. The camera, mounted across the room, was already rolling. It had been for hours. Most days, it was easier to pretend someone was watching. Even if she knew better.
“They evac’d eighteen sols into a thirty-one-sol mission,” she said quietly, the words emerging through a clenched jaw. “Eighteen. That’s how long Colony 212 lasted before everything went sideways. Which means they only got thirteen sols of science logged. Thirteen days.”
Her hand moved without pause—sample bag to mortar, pressure, grind, transfer to the tray. Repeat.
“For each of them,” she added, her voice lower now. “That’s what they left behind.”
She reached for a second tray—one marked with Oslo’s original numbering system, the labels half-scratched out, rewritten in her own handwriting. Neat. Slanted. A little messy in the corners, but legible. Human.
“Commander Oslo,” she said, almost conversationally. “You get the easy one. Mineral bonding profiles, structural cohesion. Hard science. Repeatable tests. The kind of thing even someone half-awake with a hangover can finish.”
She paused, adding a few drops of reactive solution. It fizzed faintly, curling steam against the inside of the tray cover.
“I hope your afterlife’s better than your last moments on this rock,” she muttered. “I really do.”
She glanced up, just briefly, toward the camera. Her mouth curved into something like a smile—thin, ironic, but not cruel.
“Jung, listen. I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t understand chemolithotrophic detection. Not really. I read your notes three times and still couldn’t tell if you were looking for life or just bored. But I’m trying, okay? I’m running the tests.”
Her gaze flicked to the far side of the workbench, where a row of empty sample tubes waited to be filled.
“And Cruz,” she said, her voice lifting a notch with mock solemnity, “I know you didn’t like it when I touched the ChemCam. You made that very clear. Well. Guess what?”
She reached for the unit, brushing it with the back of her hand like a cat knocking something off a shelf.
“I’m touching the ChemCam. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Zero consequences. Viva la anarchy.”
The joke landed quietly, with a faint shake of her head.
She kept working, transferring notes from a test strip to her master log—an old ration box she’d flattened and drawn a grid on in marker. Real paper. Real pen. The graphite snapped halfway through a sentence, and she calmly flipped to a pencil stub with a taped-on eraser.
“Zimmermann,” she said, a little more gently now, “I made a cataloging system. It's rough, but it works. I’m calling it ‘Das Core Samples,’ because I figured you’d like the pun. You know. For the Fatherland.”
She didn’t laugh at her own joke, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Nguyen…” She paused. “I still don’t know what you did. Seriously. I looked it up. Your title said ‘systems integration and adaptive redundancy.’ Which—I think means... backup stuff? No clue. I hope someone back home got your job title translated before your plaque was engraved.”
The words hung in the air, but there was no venom in them. Just tired affection. The kind you had for coworkers you never really knew but still missed when they were gone.
She turned back to the test rack, sorting the samples into clean, labeled sleeves. Every move was methodical, deliberate. She wasn’t rushing. She wasn’t wasting time either.
“I’m trying to keep everything organized,” she said after a while. Her voice was softer now. “Documented. Archived. I know it’s not exactly my strength.”
She wiped the corner of her eye with the back of one hand, smudging a line of dust across her cheek.
“But I want it to make sense,” she added. “In case... someone comes later.”
She reached across the table for a clean data tag and etched the next code into it with the edge of her multitool. Her hands didn’t tremble.
“Maybe someone will teach it in class one day. ‘The Frenchie Syllabus.’” She let the words linger, then smiled—a real one, this time. “Intro to Improvised Civil Engineering: How to Build a Bathtub Using NOSA Tubing and an Old RTG.”
Her smile faded just slightly, but her voice remained steady.
“Intermediate Cuisine: How to Cook a Potato Six Thousand Ways. Advanced Chemistry: How to Make Water Out of Rocket Fuel. Maybe don’t blow yourselves up like I did.”
She looked back at the camera.
Then, wordlessly, turned back to her samples and kept working.
The Starfire was quiet, save for the soft whir of filtered air and the constant, almost imperceptible hum of the ship’s primary drive coils in idle mode. The kind of silence that didn’t just surround you—it settled in. Wore into your bones over time.
Armin Zimmermann sat alone at the aft systems console, strapped into the harness more out of habit than necessity. His diagnostics had finished a full ten minutes ago, but he hadn’t moved. The screen in front of him still blinked its green confirmation lights in time with his pulse.
He scrolled absently through his inbox, expecting the usual: systems logs from JPL, status updates from mission ops, the occasional joke from Jung or Cruz buried in the metadata of a routine check.
But then his eyes landed on a message that didn’t fit.
Subject: Unsere Kinder.
He stared at it.
Our children.
Armin frowned. It wasn’t a phrase Kelly would normally use. They didn’t speak German with each other much—not anymore. His wife preferred English, and emails were usually short, efficient. News from Earth. Photos of their daughter. No riddles.
He hesitated, then clicked.
The body of the email was empty. No text. No signature. Just a single attachment: a .txt file, small and unassuming.
He tapped it open.
The screen populated instantly—lines of symbols, not quite random but not immediately readable either. Mathematical notations, directional headings, numbers too specific to be coincidence and too disorganized to be deliberate.
A sharp edge settled in his chest.
He stared at the file, heart rate rising. The longer he looked, the more his instincts screamed that this wasn’t a mistake or spam or a misdirected file.
This was a message.
Armin unstrapped, pushed off the console wall, and glided through the corridor with practiced, weightless ease. The ship was familiar under his palms—every panel, every joint, every slight bump in the composite wall plating. The kind of familiarity that only came with months in orbit, where even silence had a pattern.
He found Valencia Cruz in the ship’s rotating gym module, her strides steady on the curved track. The artificial gravity was low—just enough to make cardio unpleasant, just low enough to make injuries dangerous. She was in the zone, sweat on her brow, earbuds in.
Armin tapped the console by the entrance. The door hissed open.
Val looked up, spotted him, and slowed. “You okay?” she asked, voice breathless.
“I have a problem,” Armin said.
She stopped the treadmill, wiped her face with a towel, and stepped out of the rotation ring. “You don’t usually say that unless something’s on fire.”
He handed her the tablet. “My wife sent this. At least, it says it’s from her.”
Val took it, leaning against the bulkhead. She swiped through the file. Her brow furrowed. “It’s not an image,” she muttered. “Not corrupted either. It’s a clean text file. Plain ASCII.”
She tapped to expand the lines. The screen filled with patterns. Coordinates. Variables. Formulas layered between what looked like navigation flags and arcane mission notations.
“This isn’t random,” she said, more to herself now. “These look like… course headings. Vectors. And this—this might be delta-v tables?”
Armin nodded slowly. “I thought so too.”
Val looked up. “Any idea what it’s for?”
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes scanned the data again, fingers brushing over the screen like he was trying to feel the meaning in the numbers.
Then his voice caught—quiet, clipped. “Here. This is a reference to the Marblemaw Maneuver. It’s a theoretical slingshot burn. Dean published a paper on it two years ago, but I think I’m the only person who actually read it.”
“You’re saying this is from Dean?”
He shook his head. “No. But someone used his math. Dean wouldn’t be able to get clearance to send this. Has to be a big guy at NOSA, but that still doesn’t explain why it was sent to you from Kelly’s inbox.”
Val’s eyebrows drew together as she focused on one line that stood out, bolded in a sea of plain text.
SOL 320.
They both stared at it.
The number hit Armin like a punch to the gut. He reached for the wall to steady himself, the zero-g making him sway.
“Oh mein Gott,” he whispered.
Val stared at the screen, then at him.
“You think it’s about her.”
He nodded once.
Val didn’t look up from the screen. Her fingers were already moving, copying the data into her private log and running checksum validations. Not to confirm the file’s source—she already knew it wasn’t junk—but to stabilize it. There was a chance it could disappear as quickly as it came.
Armin hovered for a second, his jaw tight. Then he pushed off the bulkhead and turned toward the main corridor. “I’m getting the others.”
Val nodded without taking her eyes off the text. “I’ll see what else I can pull from it.”
Val was still at the terminal, but now her fingers hovered just above the screen, not typing—just staring. She’d parsed most of the file. Enough to know what it was. Enough to feel her chest go tight with the implications.
She heard the others enter before she turned—Armin, Jung, Nguyen, each one quieter than the last. No one cracked a joke. No one asked for coffee.
Jimin Park wasn’t with them yet.
Val looked up, then at Armin. “You told him?”
“He was on the call deck talking to Uma,” Armin said. “He’s coming.”
She nodded once, then sat back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. The data still glowed on the screen—numbers, coordinates, trajectory math, and the name SOL 320, burned in bold near the top like it was written in blood.
Nguyen broke the silence first. “It’s real?”
Val glanced at him. “Yes. It’s real.”
“And it was sent to Zimmermann,” Hoseok said, quietly. “Not to JPL. Not to Command.”
“To his wife,” Armin said. “Piggybacked on a family message. They slipped it into the attachment buffer.”
Hoseok gave a low whistle. “That’s a hell of a risk.”
Val didn’t smile. “Which means it’s got to be important. So, it’s a Park call.”
The hatch behind them opened with a pneumatic hiss.
Commander Jimin Park stepped into the room, still in his flight jacket, headset looped around his neck. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes scanned the crew immediately, clocking the tension, the way no one made room for small talk.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Val stood. “You need to see this, sir.”
She didn’t say more. Didn’t try to explain. Just stepped aside and offered him her seat at the console. Her tone wasn’t dismissive—it was deliberate. This wasn’t hers to carry.
Jimin sat slowly, glanced at her, then down at the data on-screen.
He started reading.
The others didn’t interrupt.
For a long moment, the only sound was the soft hum of ship systems, the occasional shift of a boot against the deck. Jimin scrolled slowly, eyes narrowing as the math unfurled in layers—positioning burns, delta-v margins, fuel requirements, time dilation calculations.
Then came the header again:
SOL 320.
He froze there, staring.
Val leaned on the back of the chair, her voice low. “It’s a maneuver. Based on Dean Marblemaw’s original slingshot paper, but adapted for our current trajectory. It uses the neighboring planet’s gravity to redirect us back to M6-117. No braking. No orbit insertion. Just one burn, a flyby intercept… and Y/N has to meet us mid-course using the MAV.”
Jimin sat back slowly, his hands resting on the armrests, gaze distant now.
The others watched him. No one pushed. No one dared.
Val broke the silence, her voice softer than before. “I didn’t want to be the one to say it, Commander. This... it’s not a decision for any of us to make. Not really.”
He looked up at her.
“I trust you,” she said.
The room held still as he looked at each of them in turn. Jung. Nguyen. Armin. Val.
They all waited for him to speak—not out of deference to rank, but because they knew what this meant. Y/N wasn’t just a crewmate. She wasn’t just a scientist on another rock.
She was his family.
And now she was a question hanging in space.
After a moment, he leaned forward, shoulders stiff with the gravity of it all.
“Get me everything,” he said. “Engine specs, margin of error, fuel thresholds. We don’t move unless we know it can be done.”
Val nodded once. “Yes, sir.”
He stood slowly, gaze still on the screen.
“And we keep this off Command until I say otherwise.”
“Of course, sir,” She grinned.
The crew of the Starfire sat around the narrow rec table, their knees brushing beneath it, shoulders hunched closer than comfort allowed. The lights overhead were dimmed, low power mode humming softly through the ship’s systems like a second heartbeat. Empty ration wrappers floated lazily in the corner, caught in the stagnant air.
The ship’s artificial gravity drum wasn’t active tonight. No one felt like turning it on. No one felt like pretending.
Jimin leaned forward, elbows resting on the scratched tabletop, fingers loosely laced. His voice was steady, if a little hoarse from speaking too long in the too-thin air.
“And assuming the burn goes clean, the maneuver takes us into a solar flyby, past Earth. The intercept brings us home in... 211 days after rendezvous,” he said. “Give or take.”
Silence followed. The crew looked at one another, the numbers hanging there like frost on the walls. No one moved. The weight of what he’d said hadn’t settled. It was still drifting, still searching for a place to land.
Koah broke the stillness first, his voice hesitant. “That would actually work?”
Jimin nodded. “The math’s sound. I ran it with Armin. Val checked the burn window against the latest telemetry. The fuel reserves are tight, but within margins.”
Koah rubbed a hand over his face, then let it drop to the table. “That’s wild,” he muttered. “It’s brilliant.”
Armin, who hadn’t spoken since they sat down, leaned forward. “It is brilliant. And it wasn’t mine.”
He looked up. “Whoever sent that file knew our vector. They built a burn profile around our exact rotation, our real-time acceleration data. It’s too specific to be theoretical.”
Hoseok Jung exhaled hard, his arms folded across his chest. “Okay. But why the encrypted file? Why send it to you and not Command?”
Jimin looked at him. “Because NOSA already said no.”
He let the silence hold a second longer before continuing. “They weighed the risks and made their choice. Rescue her later, not now. Safer for us, statistically. But someone disagreed. Someone back home—someone with access—wanted us to have another option.”
“So we’d be overriding the chain of command,” Koah said, brows knitting. “Making a decision they explicitly rejected.”
“Yes,” Jimin said. “If we do this,” he continued, “we’ll force their hand. They’d have no choice but to send the supply probe to intercept us on the return arc. If they don’t, we starve. But they will. Because the alternative is letting six astronauts die on a public feed, live and slow.”
Koah leaned back, eyes locked on the ceiling. The metal above him was marked with signatures—names from Nexus I and II, left like chalk on a wall before graduation. Most of them were still alive.
This would make sure of it.
“Are we doing it?” Valencia asked finally. Her voice was calm, but there was something brittle at the edge of it. She looked tired. They all did.
Jimin shook his head. “It’s not my call.”
Koah blinked. “You’re the commander.”
“I am,” Jimin said. “Which means I know when something is beyond the scope of command. This isn’t a mission deviation. This is a mutiny.”
The word hung in the room like static.
He let it sit before continuing, his voice low. “You need to understand what this is. If we commit and the maneuver fails, we’ll burn too much fuel to get back. If we miss the MAV intercept, we lose the rendezvous and she dies. If we miss the unnamed planet’s gravity corridor by half a degree, we spiral off-course for good. And even if we pull it off... it adds 213 days to our mission clock.”
He paused. Let the numbers soak in.
“213 more days in space. No resupply planned. No re-entry window guaranteed. Something breaks—something simple, something stupid, like a heat exchanger or a water recycler—and we die out here.”
No one moved.
“And even if we don’t die,” he added, “some of us are military. Koah and I would face court-martial. The rest of you? You’d never fly again.”
A long beat passed.
Then Koah gave a crooked smile. “Yeah, I figured.” He looked at Jimin. “You really think I care about flight status after this? Frenchie’s out there alone.”
“She’d die,” Armin said quietly.
Koah nodded. “Then yeah. I’m in.”
“Don’t rush it,” Jimin warned. “This is the kind of decision that doesn’t come off your record. Ever.”
Koah met his gaze. “Then I’ll make it count.”
Hoseok tapped a finger against the table, then looked up. “We can’t ignore it. If there’s a shot—hell, if there’s even a chance she’s alive—we take it. We’re not leaving her out there.”
Jimin turned to Val. She hadn’t spoken. She’d just been watching him.
Of all of them, she looked the most conflicted—not reluctant, just... aware. Her eyes were sharp, calculating. And scared, in a way only someone with full knowledge of the risk could be.
“Val,” Jimin said.
She exhaled slowly. Ran a thumb along the edge of the table. Then finally, she nodded.
“One condition,” she said. “We finish the math. Every inch of it. No gaps. No ‘close enough.’ We run this thing until it bleeds numbers.”
Jimin gave a slow, sure nod. “Agreed.”
Val looked around the room—at the faces of the people she’d flown with, laughed with, broken with—and when her gaze came back to Jimin’s, her voice was clear.
“Let’s go get her.”
Brendan Hatch sat slouched at the front console in Mission Control, elbows on the desk, one hand wrapped loosely around a paper cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. The graveyard shift was always the same—quiet, steady, unremarkable. Background hum from systems, low chatter from telemetry and comms, a few tired engineers trading stories in hushed tones. It was routine, predictable.
That’s why he liked it.
He took a slow sip and winced. The coffee tasted like rust and burnt toast.
The voice in his headset broke the calm.
“Flight, CAPCOM.”
Brendan straightened a bit, instinct overriding fatigue. “Go ahead, CAPCOM.”
“We’ve got a... strange ping from Starfire. Unscheduled update, came in just now. One-line transmission.”
Brendan set the cup down. “One line? What kind of line?”
There was a pause on the other end, and when the CAPCOM spoke again, their voice held a note Brendan didn’t like. Hesitation.
“No system flags, no distress codes. Just this: ‘Houston, be advised. Dean Marblemaw is a steely-eyed missile man.’ That’s the whole message.”
Brendan blinked.
He turned slowly toward Guidance, who was already swiveling in his seat with a raised brow.
“Dean who?”
“Not a clue,” CAPCOM replied. “Checked personnel. Checked payload specialists. No one onboard Starfire by that name.”
Brendan opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t get the chance.
Alarms screamed to life.
First one console, then another—flashing red across telemetry, guidance, propulsion. The hum of the room shattered. Chairs scraped, voices rose. The quiet rhythm of Mission Control was gone in an instant, replaced by controlled chaos.
Brendan shot to his feet. “Guidance, report!”
“Flight, Starfire’s orbital vector just shifted,” came the answer, fast and clipped. “They’ve made a burn. Large. Coordinated.”
Brendan’s gut tightened. “Drift?”
“Negative. No drift. This wasn’t passive. They changed trajectory. On purpose.”
“What’s the delta?”
“Twenty-seven point eight one two degrees. Relative to prior flight path.”
Brendan swore softly under his breath, jaw clenched. “CAPCOM, get them on comms. Ask what the hell they’re doing.”
“They’re not responding, Flight. Not acknowledging the transmission request.”
“Jesus Christ,” Brendan muttered. “Guidance, time to irreversible course commit?”
“Working on it.”
“Telemetry,” he snapped, turning toward the woman two rows back. “Any chance this is instrumentation error? False reading?”
“No, Flight,” she replied, already typing. “Confirmed from both uplink satellites. This is real-time. The burn profile is clean. Intentional.”
Brendan ran a hand over his face, pushing back the throb that had started behind his eyes.
“Flight,” CAPCOM again. “Still no response from Starfire. No autopilot anomaly. Manual controls engaged. This is them.”
For a moment, no one said anything.
Then the propulsion tech let out a breath. “It’s a slingshot.”
Brendan turned to him. “What?”
“The numbers. It’s not a decel. It’s a gravity-assist prep burn.”
He turned back to his console, pulling up the star map. The trajectory arced not toward Earth, but around it—shaving close, building speed.
“They’re not coming home,” the tech said. “They’re slingshotting Earth. Back out. Somewhere else.”
A long silence stretched.
Brendan leaned over the comm desk, both palms flat against the surface, heart pounding.
“CAPCOM,” he said quietly. “Ping orbital intelligence. I want a full trajectory model. And tell me when that slingshot window locks.”
“Aye, Flight.”
“Guidance,” he said, turning again, “when exactly did this maneuver begin?”
“Timestamped at 03:46:18 GMT. Four minutes ago.”
Brendan stared at the screen. The arc was unmistakable now. Clean. Purposeful. A new course already emerging.
He knew what that meant.
He didn’t know how, or why—but this wasn’t a malfunction.
This was intent.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered. “They’ve gone rogue.”
He took a deep breath and leaned into his mic.
“Somebody,” he said, “find out who Dean Marblemaw is—and why the hell he’s hijacked my spaceship.”
The early light bled through the windows of NOSA’s executive floor in thin, fractured lines—cold and silver, like the morning hadn’t quite committed to warmth. The city beyond the glass was still quiet, tucked beneath fog and the hush of anticipation.
Yoongi stood at the far end of his office, unmoving, hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular—just the smear of light creeping across the skyline. His reflection hovered faintly in the glass, superimposed over the world below like a ghost watching from orbit.
Behind him, the door opened. Footsteps, then a pause.
He didn’t turn.
Creed Summers stood just inside, shoulders squared, silent.
For a moment, neither man spoke. The only sound was the low hum of systems on standby, the distant rattle of a cleaning cart down the hall. That, and the heavy, aching silence of two people carrying the weight of a decision too big for either of them alone.
Finally, Yoongi’s voice broke the stillness.
“Alice goes before the press at nine,” he said, still watching the horizon. “We’ll confirm that we’re supporting Starfire’s new trajectory. Official line is that it was planned. Contingency strategy.”
Creed nodded once. “It’s the right move. Optics, morale. Damage control.”
Yoongi turned, slowly.
He looked tired—not just physically. There was something deeper in the lines around his mouth, the set of his shoulders. Not a man who lacked conviction, but one who had been forced to weigh too many impossible things for too long.
“You may have killed them,” he said.
Creed didn’t flinch, but his face didn’t harden either. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, still and steady. “They made the call.”
Yoongi stepped closer, stopping just behind his desk, fingers brushing against the edge as if grounding himself. “You fed them the math. You knew what they’d do.”
“I gave them information,” Creed said evenly. “That’s all. The choice was theirs.”
Yoongi’s jaw tightened. “Don’t split hairs. We both know what a team does when you give them a mission and a reason.”
A beat of silence.
Then Yoongi’s voice dropped—quieter, rawer. “You know how fragile this whole damn thing is?”
He looked at Creed now—not as an adversary. As a man trying to hold up a building while the ground cracked beneath it.
“The public, the funding, the next three missions that haven’t even left the floor. I’ve got three senators on the line every day, asking why we haven’t pulled the plug. Why we didn’t bring them home sooner. Why we let her stay behind. Every time someone dies up there—even when it’s the right call—people turn their backs on us. And every time we get lucky, they forget the odds. They stop listening to the numbers. The margin disappears.”
Creed didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.
Yoongi exhaled, slow and steady, like it physically hurt to say what came next.
“I’m not here to play politics,” he said. “I’m here to keep the program alive. So the people who come next still have something to reach for. I’ve fought tooth and nail to hold this place together—not for power, not for legacy. For continuity. Because once it breaks—once people stop believing we’re worth the risk—it’s gone. And it doesn’t come back.”
Creed’s voice was soft. “She’s not a statistic.”
“I know,” Yoongi said, almost too quickly.
It surprised them both—how fast the words came.
He looked away, swallowing once, then slowly sat at the edge of the desk.
“She’s not a number, Creed. I know who she is. I remember her interview. She had this… fierce optimism. Asked me if she’d be allowed to ‘fix things’ if they broke, or if we’d just tell her to wait for a maintenance bot. She was so sure she could outsmart anything.”
Creed’s posture eased, just slightly. “She kind of has.”
Yoongi let out a low breath that might’ve been a laugh, or something close. “Yeah. I know. I read every log. Every data stream. Every piece of cobbled-together engineering magic she’s pulled off in the dirt. She shouldn’t have lasted two weeks.”
“And yet she’s finishing the colony’s science logs,” Creed said. “Using a frying pan, duct tape, a shitty old drill, and radioactive decay.”
“She’s alive,” Yoongi said, like it was a secret.
“She’s alive,” Creed echoed.
The silence that followed was different now. Heavier, but not hostile. Just honest.
Yoongi stood again, walking back toward the window. The city below was waking. Headlines would be firing up soon. Half the world already knew. By the time Alice hit the podium, the story would be out of their hands.
He stared out at the light for a long moment.
Then, without turning, he said, quietly, “God, I hope you’re right.”
Creed said nothing.
After a few more seconds, Yoongi added, “When this is over, you’ll submit your resignation.”
There was no venom in it. Just gravity. Consequence. A toll paid in silence.
Creed nodded. “I figured.”
Yoongi turned back to him.
“Bring them home,” he said.
Creed gave a small nod—tight, respectful—and left the room without another word.
Yoongi stayed where he was, one hand resting lightly against the windowpane. The sun had climbed a little higher, casting long, sharp shadows across his office.
The sun crawled over the horizon like it was dragging its feet, casting deep red light across the wind-carved ridges of Sundermere Basin. As it climbed, the basin seemed to ignite—rust, gold, and copper spilling across the plain. Heat shimmered early in the day on M6-117. It didn’t build; it simply arrived.
The stillness of the planet, as always, was total. Except for the faint, rhythmic sound of drilling.
Inside the Hab, Y/N sat hunched over her cluttered experiment table, still in her half-unzipped EVA suit. Her hair stuck to the sweat along her temples, her undershirt damp across her spine. A dozen open containers surrounded her—rock samples, rusted tool bits, a half-smashed solar converter she was trying to rewire with salvaged cabling. Her shoulders ached. Everything ached.
The camera blinked red, and she gave it a weary smile.
“Here’s your daily crash course in logistics,” she said, voice hoarse but steady. “Every Nexus mission requires a minimum of three years of presupplies. Fuel, food, oxygen, parts. You don’t pack that kind of bulk on launch day—you land it ahead of time.”
She gestured vaguely to the map that blinked on her tablet. “Which is why the MAV for Nexus-4 is already parked in Sundermere Basin. It got here almost a year before I did. Or... was supposed to.” Her smile faded for just a second. “Anyway. There it is. Waiting.”
Her eyes flicked down to the numbers on the screen—distance, resource counts, route projections. She swallowed, then looked back up.
“The plan is simple,” she said, not even pretending to believe it. “I drive 3,200 kilometers across a planet that actively wants me dead. I bring my oxygenator, my water reclaimer, my atmospheric regulator, my food, my tools, my radiation gear—everything that lets me keep breathing. I install it all into a vehicle I’ve never tested, in conditions it was never prepped for. Then, right as the Starfire passes overhead at orbital velocity, I launch and pray I don’t miss the window.”
She paused, letting that settle. Then gave a dry, lopsided grin.
“Okay, yeah. It sounds insane. But also kind of awesome, right?”
She sat back in her chair, stretching out her sore arms. Her elbow knocked over a tin of screws, which rattled across the table and clattered to the floor. She didn’t bother picking them up.
“Of course,” she added, “that’s future Y/N’s problem.”
Her tone darkened, not bitter, but quieter.
“Right now I’ve got two hundred sols and change to figure out how to convert this glorified golf cart into a spacecraft support vehicle. NOSA’s running the numbers, trying to make miracles happen, but so far the best advice I’ve gotten from Earth has been... and I quote... ‘Drill holes in the roof of your rover and hit it with a rock.’”
She smiled again, brighter this time, then glanced down at the metal plates stacked beside her. “So. Guess that’s what I’m doing today.”
She didn’t log off. She just stood, rolled her shoulders, and got to work.
Later, outside, the three suns were already high in the sky. The light was sharp, clinical. There was no softness here—not from the light, not from the wind, not from the planet. The surface heat rippled like liquid, and the rover baked under it.
Y/N stood on the roof of Speculor-2, bracing her boots against the support bars, a modified drill in her hands. The metal screamed beneath each puncture. The holes didn’t need to be pretty—just precise. Dozens of them, arranged in a ring, traced with chalk from a broken filter cap. Her gloves were stiff with dust. Sweat ran down her back inside the suit, soaking the inner lining.
When she finished the last hole, she set the drill aside and pulled a flathead screwdriver from the pouch at her hip. Then, the rock. She’d chosen it carefully. It had a good weight to it.
The first strike dented the panel. The second left a visible imprint. She kept going.
Each blow echoed through the stillness like a challenge. It was absurd and it was necessary. And it was all she had.
Inside the Hab, the cooler hummed. The lights flickered briefly as she walked in, peeling the top half of the suit from her body. She drank a pouch of electrolyte gel, gagged, then sat down at the small kitchen table, slowly chewing on a cold potato.
One by one, she laid out ration pouches in a line and began marking them in thick black Sharpie.
Departure.
Birthday.
Last Meal.
She hesitated over the final pouch, then wrote something smaller.
If I Don’t Make It.
She capped the marker and sat back, staring at the row.
There was no drama in her expression. Just focus. Acceptance. She’d been past fear for a while now.
Far above the surface, the Starfire had completed its burn. Its course now locked. A ship the size of a small city turned with impossible grace, cutting through the darkness in complete silence. Its panels flared softly in the starlight as it adjusted position, beginning its long arc toward rendezvous.
The engines cooled. The crew settled. Somewhere, someone was running simulations.
But down below, on a world that had tried to kill her a dozen different ways, Y/N was still moving. Still patching. Still planning.
She pulled her notepad back toward her and began sketching the adapter plate that would bridge the MAV’s cockpit to the supply lines from the rover. The drawing was shaky—her fingers cramped—but she kept going.
It was still absurd.
But not impossible.
The video booth on the Starfire wasn’t much more than a glorified storage locker. No insulation, no privacy to speak of—just a narrow alcove welded into the comms deck, with walls so thin you could hear the ship groan during its thermal cycles. A single chair, bolted to the floor. A screen about the size of a dinner tray. That was it.
But to Commander Jimin Park, it had become a kind of chapel.
He came here when he couldn’t sleep. When the silence of the corridors felt too big. When the ship's humming nerves and quiet voices became too much and too little all at once.
Now, he sat forward in the dim light, hands folded tightly between his knees, staring at the flickering terminal as it made contact.
The screen blinked once, twice—and then steadied.
Uma appeared.
Backlit by the warm kitchen glow of their apartment on Aguerra Prime. She stood in front of the counter, arms folded across her chest, her silhouette unmistakable. Behind her, the sky beyond the window was still black. Early morning. That fragile hour before the city started breathing again.
Her golden hair was pulled into a messy knot—loose, a little unkempt, wisps of it curling around her face. No makeup. Her eyes were puffy, like she hadn’t slept much. Like she’d maybe cried in the bathroom and then come back out without pretending it hadn’t happened.
Jimin stared at her a moment longer than he meant to. He drank her in like she might vanish if he blinked too hard.
But when she spoke, there was no softness in her voice.
“Five hundred and thirty-three days.”
It wasn’t a greeting. It wasn’t even anger, not really. It was the kind of flat, sharp-edged fact that cut deeper than yelling ever could.
“You added five hundred and thirty-three days to your mission,” she said. “And you didn’t even call first.”
He didn’t flinch. He’d had this conversation a hundred times in his head. None of them made it easier.
“I know,” he said, quiet. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head—not in disbelief. That stage had passed. This was something colder. A sadness so layered it had started calcifying into sarcasm.
“Did you even think about us? Me? Hana?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Do you even remember how old she’ll be when you get back?”
He didn’t look away. “Almost five.”
“She’ll barely remember you,” Uma said. Her voice cracked slightly on the word remember, but she pushed through it.
“I know.”
Her arms tightened across her stomach. He could see it—how hard she was trying not to let herself break, not here, not on a grainy video call with a six-second delay.
“You’re signing up for seven more months of silence,” she said. “When I went through IVF. When I was pregnant. While I give birth. While I recover. While our daughter goes to her first day of school and asks why the other kids’ dads come to pick them up. And all she’s got is a photograph and a voice memo from orbit.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, just to breathe. The silence stretched, broken only by the faint hum of the Starfire behind him.
“I know,” he said again, voice low. “You’re right.”
“You think I care about being right?” she snapped, and then immediately softened, as if the sharpness had drained what little strength she had left.
Her hand came up slowly to her face, like she hadn’t even noticed it moving. She rubbed at her temple with the heel of her palm, as if trying to smooth out the ache that had settled behind her eyes. Then her hand dropped to her belly.
“I had contractions yesterday,” she said.
Jimin’s breath caught, barely audible over the low hum of the booth’s systems. His whole body stilled. Only his eyes moved—searching hers across the grainy feed like he might read something more, something urgent.
Uma didn’t give him time to respond.
“I was alone,” she said. “Scared.”
Her voice didn’t tremble. She said it with the kind of flat honesty that came after a long night of holding yourself together.
“I called my parents,” she added, more quietly now. “They won’t make it in time. Customs delays—they’re stuck off-world until next week. Rose and Sean are staying with me through the delivery, which is… fine. Really. They’ve been amazing.”
She paused, and for a moment, her eyes softened—but not toward comfort. Toward grief.
“But they’re not you, Chim.”
She looked down, hand still resting on her belly. Her other arm wrapped around her midsection like she was trying to hold something in, or maybe keep something out. When she looked back up at him, the bravado had cracked wide open. What remained was raw and quiet and impossibly human.
“I didn’t want to meet our son without you.”
Jimin leaned in slowly, like he could close the light-years between them with body language alone. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Swallowed hard. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough-edged and barely steady.
“You’re not alone,” he said. “You’re meeting him in a world where I already love him more than I ever thought I could love anyone. That has to count for something. I know it’s not the same. God, Uma, I know it’s not. But it’s true.”
His voice caught, and he pushed past it. “Rose and Sean—listen, they’ll take care of you like you’re theirs. I made sure of that before I left. I should’ve told you sooner. I should’ve done a lot of things sooner.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I’m so sorry I’m not there with you.”
Uma turned away, just slightly, dabbing at her face with the sleeve of her sweater. Not hiding the tears—just trying to stay upright through them.
“I called him Riker,” she said after a pause. “I know we were still deciding. I know we said we’d wait. But it felt right. Last night I was reading those baby books Quinn gave me, and I whispered it to him. And he kicked.”
Jimin’s throat clenched. He didn’t trust himself to say anything at first.
“Riker,” he repeated finally, like he was testing the word in his mouth for the first time. “Yeah. That’s his name.”
She smiled—small, real. Her chin trembled.
“He looks like you,” she said. “From the scans. Same nose. It’s hard to get clear pictures because he keeps tossing and turning, but I just know just like I knew Hana would.”
“I wanted to be the first one to hold him,” Jimin said, voice low.
Uma nodded. “Then get your ass home.”
He chuckled, breathless. “Working on it.”
He leaned in even closer, his hand hovering near the edge of the console like he might reach through it. “I’ll come home to you, Uma. I swear to you. I’ll crawl back if I have to.”
“I believe you,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Her hand came up again, touching the screen gently. Jimin mirrored the gesture. Their fingertips aligned through the glass—no warmth, no pressure. Just the image. Just the intention.
A silence settled between them. Not empty. Just full of the things that didn’t need to be said aloud. Years of late nights. Early mornings. Fights. Laughter. Hana’s first steps. The quiet promise of a life they were still trying to build.
Then Jimin spoke again, more carefully now.
“She’s like my sister,” he said. “I know that’s not in the job description. I know it wasn’t supposed to matter. But I made the call. I stayed. I would do it again.”
Uma pulled back slightly, sitting straighter. Her arms folded across her chest. The tears were drying, but her eyes stayed hard, focused.
“You think I don’t understand why you did it?”
He didn’t answer. He knew better than to try.
“I do,” she said. “But you didn’t tell me. You didn’t even give me a choice. I had to find out from a system ping that you were extending your mission—seven more months, just dropped into my inbox like a goddamn package delivery.”
She shook her head. “You’re going to miss your son being born, Jimin.”
Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
He leaned in again, pressing his palm to the console like it might carry the weight of what he wanted to say.
“You would’ve told me to go,” he said, quiet. “If I’d asked.”
“Of course I would’ve. But you didn’t ask. That’s the part that hurts.”
He nodded once, slowly. “Then be furious. Be as mad as you want. I’ll take it all. I just…” He swallowed again. “Please don’t stop talking to me.”
Uma stared at him for a long time.
Her face didn’t shift. Not right away. Her arms were still crossed, her jaw still tight, and for a moment, Jimin wondered if she was even going to say anything. Then she exhaled—long, controlled—and the line of her shoulders softened. Just slightly. Not in surrender, but in recognition.
That quiet, painful kind of understanding that only happens between people who know each other too well to lie.
“Goddamn it, Chim,” she muttered, voice low. “You’d better bring her back.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not entirely. But it wasn’t anger either. It was something deeper. Something closer to faith. The kind that could only survive if you’d been through fire together and still chose to look each other in the eye.
Jimin’s shoulders sagged, just a little. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough to let some of the weight slip off his chest for the first time in days.
“That’s the plan,” he said.
Uma didn’t respond right away. She just reached forward again, her hand finding the edge of the screen. This time, her fingers trembled.
Jimin mirrored her instinctively, pressing his palm to the glass. Their hands aligned—pixels and pressure, no warmth, no real contact—but it was the closest thing they had to touch.
They stayed like that, neither speaking. The silence between them wasn’t empty. It was full—of late-night talks and shared routines, of old fights and quiet reconciliations, of watching their daughter sleep between them on the couch and arguing about whose turn it was to clean out the recycling chute.
It was the silence of people who knew how to sit in each other’s pain.
Finally, Uma spoke. Her voice was quieter now, but not small. It was steady. Honest.
“Bring my favorite sister-in-law home.”
Jimin’s lip twitched. He gave a tired smile that almost—almost—reached his eyes.
“She’s your only sister-in-law.”
Uma rolled her eyes, that familiar flicker of fire slipping back in. “Whatever, Orphan Annie. That just makes the title easier to maintain. Don’t get cocky.”
He laughed. Really laughed. It came from somewhere deep in his chest, cracking through the weariness like sunlight through storm clouds. The kind of laugh that reminded him what it felt like to be more than just a uniform and a mission file.
Uma smiled too, but it faded quickly, replaced by something gentler. Something sad.
“I should go,” she said, glancing off-screen. “Hana’s about to wake up, and I don’t think our connection is going to last long enough for her to talk to you. It’d break her heart if she only got a few seconds.”
Jimin’s smile faltered. He nodded, slow. “She still asking?”
“Every morning,” Uma said. “She stands at the window and asks when the stars are going to give you back.”
His chest tightened. “What do you tell her?”
Uma’s voice was soft, but firm. “I tell her the stars are just slow. Like her dad.”
Jimin chuckled under his breath. “Exactly like her dad.”
Uma glanced down, brushing something off her lap, then looked back at the screen. “She still sleeps with that stupid plush helmet you gave her.”
“She named it Captain Helmet, right?”
“Lieutenant Helmet,” Uma corrected. “She demoted it last week for insubordination.”
Jimin barked another laugh, “That tracks.”
In the corner of the screen, a red light started to blink—connection timer winding down.
Neither of them said anything right away. They both knew what that light meant. They both knew how these calls ended.
“I love you,” Uma said.
“I love you,” Jimin said, the words catching at the edges of his throat.
The screen flickered.
Then it went dark.
The booth filled with the soft hum of life support again. A steady pulse of recycled air, a low mechanical whisper—just enough to remind Jimin he was back on the ship. Back in the silence.
He didn’t move.
Not for a while.
He just sat there, one hand still resting against the blank screen, the echo of Uma’s voice lingering in his chest. He had hoped Hana would be there today. She would’ve made him feel better about this whole thing.
Eventually, he stood. Adjusted his collar. Wiped his face with the back of his hand.
Then he turned and stepped out into the corridor, the weight of two promises—one to his wife, one to Y/N—pulling him forward.
Because there was work to be done.
The lab at JPL was immaculate—sterile white walls, overhead lights humming in quiet synchrony, and the kind of chill in the air that came from both temperature control and high stakes. But beneath that pristine order, the room buzzed with pressure. Not the loud, chaotic kind. The quiet kind. The kind that built slowly and wrapped around your ribs.
Marco Navarro stood near the central bay, arms folded tightly across his chest, posture stiff. He looked like a man trying very hard not to look tired. The sleeves of his button-down were rolled up just past his elbows, exposing forearms marked by the fine lines of someone who hadn’t left the building in days. His dark eyes were locked on the Iris 2 Probe as it hovered, cradled by a suspension rig, waiting to be sealed for launch logistics.
All around him, his team moved with quiet precision. Engineers in cleanroom suits adjusted clamps and rechecked fittings. Two techs hovered over a tablet, reviewing structural readings. A third was halfway through a final checklist on the containment shell. Every movement was practiced, deliberate. No one raised their voice. No one had to.
But the tension in the room was palpable.
Across the lab, three representatives from TIC—the Terran Interplanetary Commission—stood just beyond the boundary line in sealed protective suits, their presence as subtle as a shadow, but twice as heavy. No one spoke to them. They didn’t speak either. They just watched. Silently, intently. The government’s eyes on borrowed ground.
Marco didn’t acknowledge them directly. Not yet. He leaned in toward one of his senior engineers, muttering a question under his breath.
“Telemetry package confirmed?”
The engineer, a red-haired woman with tired eyes and half a protein bar tucked behind her monitor, nodded once. “Final sync cleared at 0637. No transmission lag. We’re clean.”
Marco gave a curt nod, but his eyes stayed on the probe.
Iris 2 wasn’t just a machine. Not anymore. It was memory and responsibility and proof of intent—of everything NOSA, JPL, and TIC had promised and failed to deliver the first time. This probe wasn’t just about reaching M6-117. It was about reaching her.
He could feel the weight of it—of the quiet desperation stitched into the calculations, of the late-night redesigns, of the emergency approvals rushed through by Parliament in the wake of the satellite feed leaks. Every bolt on that chassis felt like a plea.
Just hold together.
Just get there.
Just give us a chance to make this right.
He exhaled through his nose and finally let himself glance at the TIC observers. One of them—a younger woman, likely an analyst based on the blue badge—caught his gaze. She gave a small nod. Not approval. Not encouragement. Just acknowledgment. That subtle gesture that said, We’re all in the same trench now.
Marco returned the nod, just as restrained. No words exchanged, but the message passed cleanly between them.
They both knew what was riding on Iris 2.
This wasn't a test flight. It wasn’t a publicity mission. It was a lifeline.
Every update they’d received from NOSA over the past three days—Y/N’s position tracking, the sample uploads, the EVA logs—had shifted the gravity of the operation. Iris 2 wasn’t going to M6-117 just to drop instruments and wave a flag. It was going to confirm the unthinkable. That someone had survived. That someone was still fighting.
Marco turned back toward the rig. The final clamps had been set. The outer seal was being lowered into place with a slow mechanical hiss, locking the probe inside its carbon-frame shipping cradle. Once it left this room, it would be transferred to a high-altitude payload facility for thermal calibration. After that, it was Helion’s problem.
But right now, in this room, it was still his.
“Double-check the seal redundancies,” he said to no one in particular. “Don’t assume the checklist is enough. I want a visual on every damn latch.”
Someone murmured an acknowledgment and peeled off toward the capsule with a scanner.
Behind him, the lead TIC official stepped forward slightly, crossing the line for the first time. She was older than the others, with silver streaks in her hair and a face that looked carved from patience. She didn’t interrupt. Just waited.
Marco finally turned to her.
“We’ll have full system redundancy locked before the truck arrives,” he said. “We’ve tripled the diagnostics on this model.”
She nodded, arms at her sides. “Good. Because we don’t get another shot at this.”
He didn’t argue. They both knew it was true.
“You’ve seen the EVA logs?” he asked.
“All of them.”
“And?”
The woman hesitated—just for a beat. “I’ve seen a lot of missions,” she said. “A lot of accidents. A lot of breakdowns. But I’ve never seen anyone doing what she’s doing. Not after that long. Not with no support.”
Marco’s jaw tightened, but his voice was calm when he answered.
“She was always that kind of astronaut. Doesn’t do things halfway.”
The woman looked at him, gaze sharp. “Let’s hope the rest of us can keep up.”
Then she stepped back behind the line again, her presence receding without a sound.
Marco stayed where he was, hands on his hips, eyes back on the crate now that the final lock had engaged. The engineers were already moving to sign off the handover forms, but he lingered.
Because once this box was gone, once the probe left his care, everything became chance.
The video booth on the Starfire was barely bigger than a walk-in closet, but Armin Zimmermann didn’t mind. In zero-G, everything felt a little more spacious anyway. He floated cross-legged, tucked into the narrow padded frame like he’d been born for it, the soft blue glow of the console casting gentle light over his face.
The screen flickered, adjusted—and then settled. Kelly appeared, clear as ever.
Her hair was pulled back in a low, effortless bun, and she wore a navy wool sweater he recognized from their last trip to Bremen. Even over the feed, she looked sharp. Steady. So completely herself. She sat at her parents’ kitchen table—he recognized the striped ceramic sugar jar by her elbow—and behind her, soft daylight filtered in through a tall, arched window. Earthlight.
Home.
“I found it at the flea market,” she said, lifting something into view with a sly grin. “Original pressing.”
Armin squinted, then let out a short, delighted gasp.
“No!”
Kelly held it closer to the camera, and there it was—Abba’s Greatest Hits, 1973. The white cover with the floating heads, perfectly preserved, the plastic sleeve only slightly scuffed.
“You’re joking!” Armin’s voice leapt, thick with his Aguerra-tinged German accent. “Kelly—that’s impossible to get! People have been trying to fake that cover since the ‘90s!”
“I triple-checked it,” she said, clearly proud. “Even the spine’s intact. The guy selling it said he bought it new in Malmö and barely played it. I think he was a bit heartbroken to let it go.”
Armin laughed, clapping his hands once in midair, the motion sending him spinning slightly in the seat harness. “Of course he was! If I had that, I wouldn’t let it leave my sight.”
Kelly smiled, and for a second, her posture relaxed. She looked at him like she had in the early years—before deployment cycles, before kids, before so many late nights spent on opposite sides of space.
“I got it for you,” she said simply. “I figured it’d help you hang on, for a few more months.”
He pressed a hand to his chest, mock-theatrical. “My heart,” he said dramatically. “You’ve stolen it again.”
“You never had a chance,” she replied, grinning.
Then a voice cut in from offscreen.
“Papa! Papa, look!”
A blur of motion darted behind Kelly’s chair. Max—age five and wild as ever—climbed up into her lap, shoving something toward the camera. A small toy spaceship made of interlocking blocks.
“I made this for you!” he shouted.
“Ohhh!” Armin’s face lit up. “Is that the Starfire? Wait—Max, did you get the airlock module right?”
“I did!” Max said proudly, twisting the top off to show him. “And this part detaches for landings!”
Kelly made a quiet oof as he squirmed in her lap. “Max, careful—you’re knocking the camera.”
“Sorry!”
Another voice called out from behind them—more composed.
“Felix, come say hi to Papa,” Kelly said over her shoulder.
A moment later, Felix stepped into view, his gangly arms wrapped around Marta’s middle with the kind of awkward, determined grip that came from practice and not quite enough upper body strength. He was seven now—taller, thinner, all knees and elbows. His hair was sticking up in the back like he’d just rolled off the couch.
“She’s getting heavy,” he announced, not complaining so much as stating a fact.
Marta let out a soft babble in response, followed immediately by a hiccup. Her round cheeks flushed with effort as she spotted the screen—and then her entire face lit up. She reached out toward Armin with both hands, fingers splayed, drool trailing from her chin to the sleeve of Felix’s shirt.
“Ach Gott,” Armin murmured, smiling so wide it wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “Look at her. She’s so big now.”
Kelly adjusted the angle slightly to center them all, then tilted the camera down to keep Marta in frame as Felix shifted her to his hip with a grunt. “She’s cutting teeth,” she said. “We’re up at least twice a night now. Last night she bit my finger and started laughing like a little villain.”
“I wish I could be there for it,” Armin said, the humor still in his voice but something heavier behind it now. “Even the screaming. I’d take the 3 a.m. crying and diaper explosions if it meant I could hold her.”
Kelly looked down at Marta, brushing a bit of hair from her forehead. “She misses you. They all do. But… I’m really glad you were here when she was born. I keep thinking about that. It mattered. Even if it was just one week, it mattered.”
Armin nodded, slowly. “Min didn’t have to approve the delay. I know that.”
“He did,” she said softly. “And I think it meant a lot. To all of us. Uma’s been struggling more than she says—Jimin missing Riker’s birth really hit her. I told her it would be okay. That it doesn’t change how much they love each other, how close he’ll be to that baby. I mean, you missed Felix’s birth.”
“And look at him,” Armin said, watching as Felix leaned against the kitchen doorframe now, absentmindedly rocking Marta as she gnawed on the edge of his hoodie string. “Still thinks I’m the coolest person alive.”
“He wrote an essay about you for school,” Kelly said, with a faint smile. “Said his papa works in space and is braver than a lion, but also better at cooking noodles.”
Armin laughed, chest tight. “Better than a lion at cooking noodles. High praise.”
“Max added that you once stopped an alien invasion. With a rock.”
“An Aguerra rock, no less. Very powerful stuff.”
“Apparently.”
A blur darted across the screen again. Max had returned, spaceship model still clutched in one hand, his curls bouncing with each step. “Papa! Did you see the antenna? Look, it turns—” He twisted it aggressively, and one piece popped off, bouncing out of frame.
“Oh no—wait—where’d it go?” he muttered, diving under the table.
Armin grinned, shaking his head. “Are you still fighting space pirates?”
“Every day!” Max’s voice called from under the table. “But they’re scared of me now.”
“Good,” Armin said. “Because they should be. With that ship, they don’t stand a chance.”
Kelly checked the screen corner. “We’ve got three minutes.”
Armin sat up straighter, trying to squeeze every second out of it. “How’s Earth?”
“Busy. Loud. But it’s good to see everyone. My mom’s still convinced Aguerra air has too little oxygen, despite never setting foot there.”
“I miss her house,” he said. “And her strudel.”
“She’s still mad that you like it more than mine.”
“She’s not wrong. Yours is… dense.”
Kelly gasped, mock-offended. “Rude.”
“I say it with love.”
“You’re lucky you’re in space.”
Marta began to fuss again, a tired cry cutting through the moment. Felix bounced her gently, but she was already twisting, trying to wriggle free.
“I’ll get her down,” he said, disappearing down the hallway.
Max had reappeared, one hand clutching a bent antenna triumphantly.
And then it was just the two of them again.
“You holding up?” Kelly asked, her voice quieter now.
Armin hesitated, but then nodded. “I’m okay. Mission’s a lot, but the team’s solid. Yoongi’s keeping the pressure focused. Mateo’s... well, he’s still Mateo. And Jimin’s trying to keep it together.”
Kelly’s expression shifted slightly. Concern.
“Any word on Fry?”
Armin’s smile faded, but it didn’t vanish. He was good at carrying the hard things lightly.
“No updates yet,” he said. “But she’s out there. Been fixing things, and managed to finish an old colony’s mission. Sick off of eating potatoes, perhaps. I know I would be and I get paste in a tube for breakfast.”
Kelly nodded slowly, eyes drifting toward the edge of the screen like she was picturing Y/N on that silent, brutal planet. “She’s always been stubborn.”
“She’s not stubborn,” Armin said. “She’s relentless. There’s a difference.”
The countdown blinked red now—less than a minute.
Kelly reached toward the screen, her fingers brushing the camera frame like she could close the distance through intention alone. “I’ll play the record for the kids when we’re home. Felix already sings Waterloo in the bath.”
Armin laughed, low and fond. “He’ll be a star.”
“Like his papa.”
He looked at her—really looked. The creases near her eyes, the calm strength in her voice, the soft exhaustion of someone doing too much but never complaining.
“I love you,” he said, quiet but clear.
Kelly smiled, eyes glistening, but she didn’t blink. “I love you more.”
The feed stuttered—just for a heartbeat—then steadied.
“Tell Max he’s getting an upgrade module,” Armin added, right as the screen blinked to black. “I’ll build it with him. When I’m back.”
And then the connection dropped.
Armin didn’t move.
He floated in the quiet for a moment, hands loose at his sides, the echo of laughter and baby babble still ringing in his ears. The hum of the ship crept back in—soft, familiar, indifferent.
He pressed one palm gently against the screen.
“I’ll get there,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll come home.”
Then he pushed off the booth wall, slow and weightless, and drifted back toward the corridor. Toward duty. Toward something unfinished.
A father. A husband. A chemist. Still tethered to three children, a kitchen on Earth, and a vinyl record waiting to be played.
The launch pad shimmered under the relentless Aguerra Prime sun, the air rippling above the scorched concrete like a mirage. From a distance, it looked almost peaceful—the tall form of the Iris 2 Probe standing poised against the deep blue sky, its titanium shell gleaming with clean, sharp edges. But the closer you got, the more you felt it: the pressure humming through every cable, every socketed bolt, every word passed between engineers like it might snap if spoken too loud.
The booster tower rose behind it like a steel spine, support arms still locked around the probe’s flanks. Sunlight glared off the reflective plating, flashing across visors and toolboxes as teams moved in tight formation around the base. They moved with the synchronicity of people who didn’t have time to second-guess themselves—every motion honed by thousands of hours of prep. Check. Recheck. Confirm. Sign off.
It wasn’t chaos. But it wasn’t calm either. It was the electric stillness before the sprint.
Off to the side of the pad, in the limited shade beneath a modular control tent, Taurus Flight Director Isla Reinhardt stood with her arms tucked behind her back, her body language composed but taut. The sharp lines of her white jumpsuit caught the sun, unwrinkled despite the heat. In front of her, Creed was gesturing—tight, controlled movements, but unmistakably frustrated.
“This entire sequence is backwards,” Creed said, low enough to keep it out of the general comms traffic, but not hiding the edge in his voice. “You’re running a TIC stack from twenty years ago. We’ve updated every protocol since Nexus One, and we haven’t done command layer locking that way since Apollo 27.”
The translator, standing just to the side of them, repeated the statement in clipped, neutral tones—softening the delivery but preserving the structure. Creed didn’t look at the translator. He didn’t need to. His eyes were locked on Isla, waiting.
Her jaw flexed once, just barely.
“We’re following a mandate from oversight,” she replied. “The redundancy needs to clear from the top line of remote interface down. You want to override that, you take it up with Parliament.”
“I’ve tried,” Creed said. “They sent me you.”
That earned him a sharp look, but she didn’t flinch.
A few meters behind them, André Batista leaned against one of the static barriers, arms folded, expression unreadable behind his reflective shades. He was a fixture here—part liaison, part architect, part political shield. He didn’t often speak unless something needed settling. So far, he hadn’t moved.
Beside him, Yoongi Min stood with one hand tucked into his flight jacket pocket, the other holding a data slate he wasn’t reading. His stance was relaxed, but his eyes tracked everything. The two men locked eyes for a moment.
André tilted his head slightly.
Yoongi gave the barest shrug. Not my circus.
The translator cleared her throat gently as Creed fired off another quiet barrage of concerns, this time about sensor lag and latency curve risk over a long-range transmission relay. Isla didn’t interrupt—she simply let him speak, waiting for the break. When it came, she replied in a tone so calm it almost felt detached.
“We’re under a transparency clause,” she said. “TIC’s name is on this. I don’t care how things were done at NOSA. If something goes wrong on this flight, it’s ours to explain, not yours. That’s the trade-off for funding.”
Creed’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t about funding. It’s about surviving the mission long enough to justify the launch.”
There was silence. Not long. Just long enough for the weight of it to land. The translator didn’t repeat that one.
André stepped forward finally, pushing off the barrier. “We need to stop playing jurisdictional chess. The probe is loaded. The window is locked. We’re hours out, and every one of you has skin in the game.” He looked between them, then directly at Isla. “Let’s not waste the time we’re running out of.”
He turned to Yoongi next. “Where are we on the confirmation pings?”
“Telemetry’s stable. We’ve got three handshake confirms from Iris and two from the booster package. Final burn path data’s syncing now.” He glanced at Creed. “She’s gonna fly, Summers.”
Creed didn’t argue. He just exhaled, rubbed the back of his neck once, and stepped away from the argument like someone carefully placing a grenade down before walking away.
Yoongi looked after him for a beat longer than necessary. Then he turned to Isla. “He’s not wrong about the sequence logic. But you’re not wrong about politics.”
“Funny how those things rarely line up,” she muttered.
In the background, the launch pad hissed as cooling vapor rolled down from the upper stacks. A ground tech called out a ten-minute marker in clipped Standard. The wind shifted slightly, bringing with it the tang of scorched ozone and oil.
They all turned toward the pad, eyes tracking the silhouette of the Iris 2.
Y/N stood crouched atop the curved hull of Speculor 2, bracing herself against the relentless wind. The gusts came in rhythmic pulses, sharp and slicing, carrying fine, metallic-red grit that embedded itself in every seam, every fold of her suit. It was the kind of wind that didn’t scream—but pressed. Pushed. Like the planet itself wanted her gone.
Her boots, magnetized to the surface, clicked softly as she adjusted her stance. Above her, the sky was the same hazy slate it had been for weeks—never quite light, never quite dark, the perpetual dusk of Hexundecia’s upper atmosphere. Out here, there was no sound but the filtered rasp of her breath inside the helmet and the occasional groan of the rover shifting in the wind.
She worked quickly, but carefully—gloved hands moving with practiced intent as she secured the last edge of the pop tent onto the roof. It didn’t look like much: an awkward dome of salvaged thermal mylar, structural flex-canvas, and about three rolls of industrial adhesive. The seams were patchy, the shape slightly asymmetrical, and the fabric still bore the faint burn marks from its previous life as an emergency airlock tarp.
But it was what she had. What she’d built.
She ran a final bead of sealant along the base, then tugged at the corners, checking for give. None. Good. The fabric trembled under her fingers, sensitive to even the subtlest shifts in pressure.
"Okay," she muttered, her voice low and clipped, more to herself than the recorder feed. "Let’s see if you can hold your breath.”
She flipped the switch on the manual pressurization system—an old NOSA rig she’d retooled for small-space inflation. It hummed, then clicked. A second later, the tent shuddered and began to rise, inflating with slow, uneven breaths. The canvas bulged awkwardly at first, then snapped into shape, the internal frame locking into place with a faint metallic pop.
Y/N held perfectly still, watching. Waiting. Her pulse ticked in her ears, louder than she liked.
The tent swelled outward slightly under pressure, flexed, then settled.
No tearing. No hissing. No collapse.
She exhaled, breath fogging briefly on the inside of her faceplate.
"Okay," she whispered, this time with something closer to relief. “Okay.”
She stepped back, letting the winds howl around her as she took in the strange structure she’d created. Ugly as hell. But airtight—for now. It would hold a pocket of warmth. Let her eat. Sleep. Think. Survive a little longer.
The pop tent wasn’t a permanent solution, and she knew it. It was a stopgap. One she’d have to check every few hours for signs of structural fatigue, thermal drift, or microtears. But compared to sleeping half-curled in the rover’s cargo hold, it was a goddamn luxury suite.
She climbed back down, boots thunking lightly as they disengaged from the magnetized hull, and dropped into the main chamber of the rover. Inside, it was dim and cramped—stale air, the scent of worn insulation, and the ever-present tang of iron dust.
She peeled off her gloves with slow care, flexing her fingers. They were stiff and pale, the skin rubbed raw in places where the liner seams never quite sat right. Her breath slowed. The adrenaline was ebbing now, the rush of getting something done giving way to the quieter dread of everything else still ahead.
This had taken four sols to rig.
She had, maybe, twelve more before the storm cycle shifted and buried the area in sand thick enough to compromise everything. And if her estimates were right—and she prayed they were—there was a chance, however slim, that a satellite would be sweeping near this quadrant by then.
She had to make the tent visible. Reflective. Irrationally bright.
She’d started sewing strips of spare mylar to the outer shell two nights ago, in the dark, with a thermal needle and frozen fingers. She had four more to add. Maybe five.
Outside, the wind surged again—louder this time. Something heavy thudded against the side of the rover. Probably a loose panel from the old dig site. She didn’t jump. She was past jumping.
Instead, she reached for her patch kit and a folded sheet of mylar she’d scavenged from the side panel of an old solar collector. Then she stood.
One seam at a time.
That’s how she lived now.
Not by the week. Not by the day. Not even by the hour.
Seam by seam. Breath by breath.
At the NOSA headquarters, Mateo and his team of engineers were deep in the throes of their own technical challenges. They surrounded a mirrored setup of Y/N’s speculor, trying to replicate her conditions as closely as possible. The engineers were methodical in their work, carefully testing and retesting, but their efforts were proving difficult. One of the engineers scratched his head as he tried to fit the bulky Oxygenator into the cramped confines of the pop tent, muttering under his breath as he juggled the components.
“Maybe if we angle it this way…” Mateo began, but before he could finish his thought, the unit tipped over, causing a flurry of activity as the engineers scrambled to adjust the pieces. Mateo sighed, his patience wearing thin, but his tone remained steady. “Okay. Again.”
Koah floated just above the rail of the comms bay, one hand anchored to a support bar, the other tapping a short sequence into the feed control. The connection took a few seconds longer than usual—just long enough to make his pulse tick a little faster.
Then the screen lit up, and there they were.
Quynh, all sharp cheekbones and soft eyes, with her long hair twisted into a lazy bun at the top of her head. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch in their apartment back on Aguerra Prime, barefoot, a wrench in one hand and their two-year-old son Bao sprawled sideways across her lap, talking a mile a minute.
“There he is!” Quynh grinned, tossing the wrench into a tray beside her. “Koah, your son is trying to dismantle the toaster because he thinks it’s a spaceship.”
“It is a spaceship,” Bao declared, his little face popping up toward the camera with unfiltered joy. “Papa! Look! Toaster engine!”
Koah laughed, the sound echoing softly in the confined booth. “That’s classified technology, buddy. You can’t just reverse-engineer domestic appliances for launch.”
Bao let out a squeal of delight, bouncing in Quynh’s lap.
“You’re supposed to say hi, not initiate tech theft,” Quynh muttered playfully, nudging him with her chin.
“Watch this,” Koah said with a grin, pushing off the far wall in one smooth motion.
He floated through the zero-G space like a swimmer in slow motion, tucking into a controlled spin. His body twisted mid-air, knees drawn in, one hand flaring out for style points. He rotated once, then shifted momentum and drifted cleanly into the partial-grav buffer near the edge of the booth, landing with a soft thud on the deck.
Bao shrieked with laughter, clutching his belly. “AGAIN!”
Koah beamed. “You’re lucky your dad’s a certified space ninja.”
“You’re lucky you married a woman who finds space ninjas hot,” Quynh said dryly.
Koah barked a laugh. “No lies detected.”
He dropped back into a crouch and leaned closer to the screen, chin propped on his hands as he took them both in—his son’s wild curls and jam-streaked shirt, the familiar line of Quynh’s collarbone just visible under a worn tank top she’d probably stolen from him in college.
“You look good,” he said softly, his smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Exhausted. But good.”
“So do you,” Quynh said. “Very heroic. Very floaty.”
“Bao,” Koah said in a mock-whisper, “how’s Mama holding up without Papa’s superior wrench skills?”
Bao squinted at him. “Mama says you make mess. Mama say she fix.”
Koah clutched his chest like he’d been shot. “Traitor!”
Quynh smirked. “He’s observant.”
They all laughed—an easy, looping rhythm that Koah could’ve stayed inside forever.
Then Quynh tilted her head, the light from the screen catching in the curve of her cheekbone. The warmth in her face didn’t disappear, but it shifted—something sharpened beneath it.
“I’ve been asking around,” she said, her voice quieter now. “About her. About what’s happening. No one’s talking.”
Koah’s smile dimmed at the edges. Not gone, just more cautious now. “You mean Fry?”
She nodded, brushing a hand through Bao’s curls as he leaned heavily against her shoulder. “I know Creed Summers went behind Yoongi’s back. That much I pulled out of one of the payload guys during a lunch break. But past that?” She shrugged. “Even Ives won’t say anything. And you know she usually cracks if you wave a coffee pod in her direction.”
Koah let out a slow breath and rubbed the back of his neck, like he was trying to knead the tension out of it. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It’s… complicated.”
“Complicated like top-level-clearance complicated?”
He hesitated, eyes flicking away for just a second. “Complicated like… you’d be obsessed with the engineering, and then terrified once you realized what it actually meant.”
Quynh’s expression didn’t change, but her posture shifted. She leaned forward a little, Bao still clinging to her like a sleepy barnacle.
“I don’t need you to break protocol,” she said, not accusing, just honest. “I know how it works. But I don’t want you sleepwalking into something you can’t walk out of.”
Koah looked at her, really looked, and felt that familiar pull in his chest—the one that reminded him exactly why he chose to stay. Why he said yes, when every other instinct told him no.
Even now, with everything spinning tighter by the day, she wasn’t asking him to come home. She was telling him to be smart. And that was love too.
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he said, voice steady. “I promise.”
Quynh’s mouth curved into a half-smile. “Good. Because I may be the only one in the support chat who thinks you staying up there is the coolest thing ever.”
Koah chuckled. “The other wives still mad?”
“They’re... coping. Uma’s pissed. Understandably. Kelly pretends she’s fine, but the boys are taking it harder. Max asked if he could build a space elevator to bring Armin home.”
Koah smiled at that, the kind of smile that knew exactly what being missed felt like. “And you?”
Quynh rolled her eyes. “I’m over here bragging to anyone who’ll listen that my husband is doing deep-space diagnostics with a toothbrush and a busted coolant valve. Like some kind of orbital MacGyver.”
“Technically,” Koah said with mock formality, “it was a toothbrush and a strip of thermal tape. I have standards.”
Bao perked up. “Papa is best!”
Koah grinned, eyes sparkling. “Damn right he is. And you, Bao Bean, are the best little sidekick in the galaxy.”
“Are you bringing robot?” Bao asked suddenly, sitting upright in his mother’s lap. “You promised robot!”
“I remember,” Koah said, nodding solemnly. “And not just one—two robots. One for you, and one for Mama.”
Quynh raised a brow. “Oh yeah? What does mine run on? Flattery and caffeine?”
“Logic circuits, emotional resilience, and a coffee reservoir with built-in sarcasm,” Koah replied. “Basically… you in droid form.”
She laughed, the sound bright and short and familiar. “Flawless design.”
The screen flashed—two-minute warning, pulsing red in the corner.
Koah’s chest tightened the way it always did near the end of a call. He hated this part. Not just the goodbye, but the slow slide into silence.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he said, quieter now.
Quynh reached toward the camera, her fingers brushing close to the lens. “We’re good,” she said. “We’re here. And we’re proud of you.”
His throat tightened, but he didn’t let it show. “Give Bao a kiss for me?”
Before she could answer, Bao leaned forward, pressing his entire face against the screen. “MUAH!”
Koah mimed catching it, then tucked it into his pocket. “Straight to the cryo logs. Archived forever.”
Another blink—sixty seconds.
“I love you,” Quynh said, voice steady, full of everything she didn’t have time to say.
“I love you more,” Koah answered. Then added, “When I get back—”
“You’ll finish fixing the toaster?” she cut in, smirking.
“I’ll launch the toaster,” he said. “With a fusion drive and retractable wings.”
Quynh laughed, even as the feed flickered one last time.
The screen went dark.
Koah stayed there, suspended in the weightless booth, his hands still hovering near the edge of the console like he could will her image back. Then, slowly, he let go, pushing off the wall with practiced ease.
Back at the launch site, the first rumble came low—almost imperceptible at first, like a distant storm building beneath the concrete.
Then the pad lit up.
A towering column of fire and sound erupted beneath the Argo as its engines roared to life, white-hot exhaust curling around the flame trenches in thick plumes of smoke. The shockwave hit a split second later—rolling through the observation stands, rattling steel fixtures, and thudding deep into every chest on the platform like a second heartbeat.
It was a controlled violence—raw, precise, beautiful.
The Argo began to rise.
Slowly at first, as if testing the air, then faster—cutting through the sky in a clean, perfect arc. The hull gleamed gold in the afternoon light, the sun catching along its flank as it punched upward past the clouds, trailing a pillar of heat and vapor that tore the sky in two.
A wave of cheers broke across the launch complex. Technicians and engineers who’d been stiff with focus a moment earlier now stood shouting, hugging, clapping each other on the back. Some laughed. Some just stared, mouths parted in disbelief, as if they couldn’t quite believe it was finally happening. Others wiped at their eyes with sleeves and tried to pretend it was the sunlight.
Yoongi Min stood just off-center from the crowd, shoulders square, arms crossed, but there was a softness to his expression that hadn’t been there minutes before—like a coil had finally loosened in his chest. Next to him, Creed Summers was grinning, not wide, but sharp—relief mixed with the residue of pressure. His tie was still half-loose from the argument earlier, but now he extended a hand to Yoongi.
Yoongi hesitated, then took it.
Not warmly. Not with forgiveness. But with acknowledgment.
“Well,” Creed said, low enough for only Yoongi to hear, “we didn’t blow up the planet. That’s a win.”
Yoongi didn’t smile. But he didn’t pull away either.
“Telemetry looks clean,” someone called from a nearby terminal. “Guidance holding steady. No drift on the main stack.”
Across the pad, André Batista stood a few paces back from the crowd, hands in his pockets, sunglasses reflecting the disappearing silhouette of the rocket. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The quiet, satisfied nod he gave said enough. He had seen a hundred launches in his lifetime. This one mattered.
Marco stood a few steps off the platform edge, jaw clenched but eyes tracking the ascent with laser focus. The Iris-2 probe was up there now—every circuit, every algorithm, every delicate sensor array tucked into the Argo’s belly like a secret whispered across the stars. It wasn’t just equipment to him. It was purpose.
As the rocket disappeared past the clouds, only the vapor trail remained—fading into the blue, curling in on itself like a final signature on a hard-fought page.
Yoongi finally exhaled and turned to face the rest of the team. His voice was steady when he spoke, but his words carried the weight of months.
“Mission clock starts now,” he said.
Creed nodded once, then turned toward the ops tent, already scanning his tablet.
The cheering had begun to taper off. Reality was returning in steps. There were check-ins to process. Booster separations to confirm. A thousand things that could still go wrong.
But in that brief window—between fire and silence—everyone stood a little taller.
"Waking up in his bed should feel like victory, but all you can think about are those pill bottles on his nightstand."
next | index
⚔ chapter details ⚔
word count: 9,5k
content: morning vulnerability and insomnia revelations, elevator sexual tension that goes nowhere, council meeting drama with heated arguments, mission prep with jessi's weapons expertise, undercover outfits that make jeon stare, AD's suspicious surveillance knowledge, and the calm before infiltrating mdf territory
☠ author's note ☠
As a European, I have absolutely no clue about guns so let's hope my research was decent and their weapons actually make sense ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) If any gun enthusiasts are reading this and I've somehow made a sniper rifle that shoots rainbows, just... pretend it's for the plot.
ANYWAY THE BIG DAY IS FINALLY HERE!!! Next chapter is THE MISSION and are we excited??? Because I AMMMMM!!! I've been building up to this for literal months and my chaotic little writer brain is VIBRATING with anticipation!
Jeon + motorbike = HOT AS HELL 🥵 Like sir, you're already dangerous enough, did you really need to add vehicular competence to your list of attractive qualities? RUDE.
Also Jessi is so mother mommy mama I love her! I mean, I say that about every single one of my characters, don't I? But what can I do—they're all so complex in my opinion! I have to really put myself in their position in every single scene and think genuinely about how they would react. Because one thing is how I WANT them to react, and another is how they would REALISTICALLY react, you know? Keeping those two aligned is harder than it looks, trust me!
Anyway ramble ramble ramble shut up Kiki we don't care—I KNOW BUT I'M THE AUTHOR so you're gonna read my rambling because I said so! I don't write 8k words per chapter to have my feelings dismissed! Y'all gonna put up with me whether you like it or not (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Thanks for reading as always, love y'all! Now buckle up because things are about to get SPICY!
⚔ socials ⚔
read on ao3
read on wattpad
tumblr/twitter: @jungkoode
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎.
The obnoxious blaring of Jeon's alarm tears through the quiet morning.
It's 6 AM—that weird time when everything feels kind of hazy and unreal, like the world hasn't quite decided if it's night or day yet.
His phone keeps buzzing against the nightstand, screen lighting up like a strobe light.
You're barely awake, caught in that fuzzy space between sleep and consciousness. Jeon's sprawled half on top of you, which should probably be uncomfortable but... isn't. His arm's thrown over your waist in this weirdly soft way that doesn't match his usual don't-touch-me vibe. You can feel his chest rising and falling against your back, his breath warm on your neck.
For a second, you think about waking him up. But he looks so p̶e̶a̶c̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ different when he's sleeping—none of that cold, distant Chief of Tactical stuff.
Just a guy who really needs some rest.
"Jeon," you try anyway, voice coming out all scratchy from sleep. "Your alarm."
He makes this grunt that might be words but definitely isn't, face pressed against your skin. Instead of getting up, he actually pulls you closer, burying his face in the pillow like if he ignores the alarm hard enough, it'll give up and go away.
"Jeon, come on. Get it." You nudge him with your elbow because that fucking alarm is driving you insane. It just keeps going and going, like some kind of electronic torture device.
He lets out this long-suffering groan that perfectly captures the eternal struggle between wanting to sleep and having actual responsibilities.
His hand flops around looking for his phone, movements all clumsy in that way people only get when they're not really awake yet. When he finally finds it, he misses the screen completely on his first try.
"Fuck off," he mumbles—definitely talking to the phone, not you. The woodsy scent of his skin mixed with mint from his breath fills your lungs.
After what feels like forever (but is probably like, ten seconds), blessed silence falls over the room.
Jeon just tosses his phone somewhere (hopefully not off the bed) and immediately curls back around you like some kind of clingy octopus. His body's radiating heat like a furnace, and he's definitely not planning on letting you go anytime soon.
His aura wraps around you like summer rain, all soft and warm, making your head spin in the best way.
(You're starting to think maybe he's not a morning person.)
"Five more minutes," he mumbles, voice all rough and sleepy like some kid who doesn't want to go to school.
You can't help but smirk.
Who would've thought the terrifying Chief of Tactical was such a baby in the morning?
"Five more minutes, and you'll be the one explaining to the Council why you're late." You poke his side. "Good luck with that."
"What council?" He sounds like he's halfway to dreamland already.
"Council of 9, dumbass. You know, that super important reunion about tonight's mission?"
His only response is this little grunt before his breathing starts evening out again.
Oh no. Not happening.
You kick him under the sheets—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to be annoying. He flinches and makes this annoyed clicking sound with his tongue.
Finally, with this dramatic sigh that you can feel rumble through his chest, he gives in. His body peels away from yours like it's physically painful for him to move.
"Fine, fine," he grumbles, surrendering to reality.
When he sits up, cold air rushes in where his body heat used to be. You both kind of... linger there on the edge of his bed.
You watch him rub his face, trying to wake up properly. It's kind of fascinating, seeing him switch from s̶o̶f̶t̶ sleepy Jungkook back to Jeon, the cold and distant Chief of Tactical.
Another yawn catches you as you sit up, letting the sheets pool around your waist. You blink, trying to clear the sleep from your eyes, when something on Jeon's bedside table catches your attention.
Oh.
There's a whole fucking pharmacy there.
Your eyes scan over the labels—hypnotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, sleeping pills. The kind of cocktail someone needs when sleep doesn't come naturally anymore.
It hits different now, remembering all those times you've seen him in the cafeteria at ass o'clock in the morning. Always with that black coffee, those dark circles under his eyes that you thought were just part of his whole intimidating Chief of Tactical thing.
(Turns out even the great Jeon Jungkook has trouble sleeping.)
You can't help but wonder what keeps him up at night. What kind of memories play on repeat in his head when everything goes quiet.
Sure, being a gang leader comes with its own baggage—the violence, the paranoia, always having to watch your back.
But something tells you there's more to it. Things that left marks deeper than the little scar on his cheek. The kind of stuff that makes someone stock up on enough sedatives to knock out a horse.
Your eyes fix on this one bottle of hypnotics that's already half empty. Something in your chest tightens at the sight, but you quickly squash that feeling down.
The last thing Jeon needs is your p̶i̶t̶y̶ concern.
You know how this works. Show any weakness in Kkangpae, and you might as well paint a target on your back. The gang's full of sharks, always circling, always waiting for someone to bleed in the water.
So you bite back all the questions building up in your throat. Push down that weird urge to reach out, to try and make it better somehow.
Whatever demons Jeon's fighting, they're his to deal with.
You've got your own role to play here, and playing therapist isn't it. Some things just stay broken, and some nights just stay sleepless.
And some things are not yours to fix, even if some part of you wants to.
"You ready?" Jeon asks, already heading for the door without waiting to hear if you actually are.
You follow him out with a quiet sigh, but your mind's still stuck on all those pill bottles.
On what they might mean.
On all the nights he probably spends staring at his ceiling, fighting whatever demons keep him up.
The common areas in his wing of the Assassination Division are empty this early.
Your footsteps echo through the halls as you make your way to the elevator, where Jeon leans against the wall like he's got all day. He crosses his arms over his chest, getting lost in whatever thoughts are running through that complicated head of his.
When he doesn't move to actually do anything, you have to remind him that not everyone has his fancy Chief clearance level.
"You gonna scan your card or what?" You wave vaguely at the scanner. "You know mine won't work up here."
The corner of his mouth twitches up—just barely—like he's annoyed at himself for forgetting.
He pulls out his access card without a word and taps it against the scanner. The light blinks green, and the elevator starts moving.
While you're waiting, your brain decides to dig up this random memory from weeks ago.
That night Jeon showed up at your door out of nowhere, demanding his jacket back. You hadn't thought about it then, but now...
"Hey," you turn to look at him, "how did you get on my floor that night? To get your jacket back?" The question hits you out of nowhere. "Our cards don't work on each other's floors."
His eyes go wide for a split second—clearly not expecting that question. He just stares at you for a moment, lips parted like he's trying to figure out what to say. Then his gaze darts away and he rubs the back of his neck, which is basically a flashing neon sign that says busted.
(This should be interesting.)
"I, uh..." Jeon starts, looking at you then quickly away. He's actually struggling for words, which is new.
His fingers tap against his thigh in this nervous rhythm you've never seen before. Just when you think he's going to leave you hanging, he lets out this tiny sigh, shoulders dropping just a bit.
"I asked AD for temporary access."
Wait. What?
"And he... just gave it to you? Just like that?"
You narrow your eyes because something's not adding up here.
You've seen how these two interact—or don't interact, more like it. The way Jeon basically disappears whenever AD shows up, and how AD looks at him like he's personally offended his entire bloodline.
Sure, AD glares at everyone (especially J-Hope), but with Jeon? That's a whole different level of hate.
(Not that it's any of your business what's going on there.)
"Told him I needed my jacket back."
The elevator keeps moving down, and the silence between you gets kind of heavy. Something about how weirdly hesitant Jeon's being makes your curiosity spike. Part of you knows you should probably drop it, but...
"So, your card worked the whole night?" You try to sound casual about it, but there's definitely some skepticism bleeding through.
"Yeah." He finally meets your eyes again. "Clearance passes usually last for 24 hours."
You nod slowly, filing that information away.
"But didn't AD find it weird? The time stamp would show you came in at 3 AM and didn't leave until..." You trail off, remembering exactly why he stayed so long.
Jeon's eyes snap to yours, and something flashes across his face too quick to read before he looks away. The crease between his brows gets deeper as the silence stretches out.
"I don't think he actually checks the access logs that closely," he says finally. "At least he hasn't mentioned anything about the, uh, timeframe."
You think about that for a second. It seems weird that AD, of all people, wouldn't keep tabs on security access. But maybe Jeon's right—maybe AD doesn't actually monitor that stuff.
Then you remember something.
That day after the pool training, you saw AD in the elevator with Kazuha. He'd told you both to "be careful."
Was that his cryptic way of saying he knew exactly what went down that night?
The elevator dings, cutting through your thoughts.
Jeon pushes off the wall, giving you this little nod to go in first. You step inside, and the last thing you see is his back and this lazy wave goodbye before the doors slide shut.
Anyway, something tells you AD knows way more than he lets on.
You’d never been in The Council room until now.
And it’s… Well, it’s weird. Tense today.
Everyone's taking their usual spots around this stupidly long table, and RM's at the head of it like always, looking every bit the Supreme Commander he is.
"Thanks for coming, everyone." His voice carries that authority that makes even the most stubborn chiefs shut up and listen.
Well, almost everyone.
"I don't even see why I have to be here when you're all so set on leaving me out of it." V's practically radiating annoyance.
Moon gives him that patient look he reserves for when someone's being difficult. "This mission affects the entire gang. That's why we need the whole Council present."
"But I'm not even part of it." V throws his feet up on the table like the dramatic bitch he is, crossing his arms. "So why do I have to sit through all this bullshit?"
"You listen because shared knowledge makes us stronger." RM's eyes sweep around the table, meeting everyone's gaze—even yours. "Unity isn't just about standing together. It's about thinking as one."
V rolls his eyes so hard you're surprised they don't get stuck. "Yeah, yeah, I get the whole 'one gang' thing. But do I really need every fucking detail?"
"Details matter." Jeon's voice cuts through the tension. "MDF isn't some amateur operation. One tiny blind spot and we're fucked."
"It's a goddamn snake pit we're walking into." J-Hope waves his hands around like he's trying to grab invisible dangers out of the air. "We all need to know what kind of poison we might be dealing with."
JM leans forward, all serious despite his usually gentle demeanor. "That hideout's a maze. You two need more than just a way in—you need a solid plan to get the fuck out of there."
"Exactly." RM's sighs. "This intel could change everything. We do this right, we take out one of their major operations."
Flower, who's been watching everything with that calculating look of hers, finally speaks up. "And V, whether you like it or not, this meeting is what keeps your men at the docks from getting caught with their pants down while we're focused on this mission."
V scoffs, but you can see him actually considering her words.
Jessi stops lounging in her chair like this is some kind of casual meetup.
"Alright, cut the bullshit. What's the actual plan here, RM?" She leans forward, all business now. "And it better be good."
The room goes quiet—that heavy kind of quiet that makes your skin prickle.
RM stands up, and you can feel the weight of what's coming.
This isn't just another mission briefing. This is you and Jeon walking straight into MDF territory.
No pressure.
RM clears his throat, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him.
"Here's how it's going to work," he starts, voice authoritative. "Jeon and Y/N are going undercover. We've got IDs that'll get them through MDF's front door."
The word 'undercover' makes your stomach do this weird flip thing. Jeon shifts slightly beside you, his presence weirdly reassuring for someone who's usually about as comforting as a loaded gun.
"They'll play it as traders," RM continues, spreading out this map that looks like someone went crazy with a red marker. "Fresh faces trying to make it big enough to catch MDF's attention."
Jeon nods, watching AD's finger trace some path on the map. "What about their security? Cameras?"
"System loops every three hours," AD says, sounding bored but you know that's just his thing. "We're setting up a distraction. At 23:00, when the loop starts, they'll get a power surge. Six minutes of blind spots."
"Six minutes?" Jessi raises an eyebrow. "That's cutting it real fucking close."
"We can handle it." Jeon sounds so sure it actually makes you believe him. "Had worse timeframes before."
"That's your window to find the server room and plant the bug." RM points to some spot deep in what looks like a maze. "AD will be in your ear the whole time."
"And when shit inevitably goes sideways?" V asks, and despite how pissy he's been about being left out, you can hear actual braincells there.
"You'll be armed," RM says simply. "But this is about getting in and out quiet. No firefights."
"Right, because stealth missions should totally go to Mr. Shoot-Everything-From-A-Mile-Away instead of, oh, I don't know, the actual Chief of Stealth?" V's voice drips sarcasm.
"V." JM's cuts in. "Enough."
V grunts but actually shuts up, which is kind of impressive. You've never seen anyone else get him to back down that easily.
Flower leans forward, and the room suddenly feels a bit colder. The map spread out on the table looks like some kind of twisted treasure map, except instead of X marking the spot, there's about fifty different ways this whole thing could go wrong.
"Alright, here's the deal," she says, getting straight to the point like always. "You need to be interesting enough to catch their attention, but not so interesting they get suspicious. Think you can handle that?"
She looks right at you, and you can feel the weight of what she's asking.
"Y/N, you're our front person here. While everyone's busy watching you sweet-talk them about money and deals, Jeon's gonna be doing the actual work." Her lips curve into this knowing smile. "Keep them focused on the profit. Rich assholes love talking about money."
Great. No pressure or anything. Just gotta be charming enough to distract an entire criminal organization while your... whatever Jeon is sneaks around their base. Easy peasy.
Flower turns to Jeon next, and her expression goes all business.
"You're playing backup dancer on this one. Stay in the background, watch everything, and when AD hits them with that power surge? That's your window. Get the bug planted without anyone noticing."
The room goes quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Everyone's thinking the same thing—one tiny mistake and this whole plan goes up in smoke.
"Remember," Flower says, voice serious, "this isn't about showing off. It's about getting in, getting it done, and getting out without anyone realizing what happened."
"And more importantly," RM cuts in, giving you and Jeon a look, "don't fucking die. The intel's not worth either of you."
"What about communication?" you ask, because there's one pretty big hole in this plan. "We can't exactly text each other in there."
"Subvocals," AD doesn't look up from his laptop, but his voice carries that bored confidence that means he knows exactly what he's talking about. "Basically fancy mics that pick up whispers. We'll hear everything, but you two can talk without anyone else noticing. Plus, we'll feed you intel as we get it. Just keep it quiet and you'll be fine."
V lets out this little laugh, eyes twinkling like he knows something no one else does. "Sure putting a lot of faith in luck here, aren't we?"
"Luck's got nothing to do with it." RM's interjects. "This is about being prepared, being skilled, and getting shit done. Don't forget who we are. What Kkangpae stands for."
The room goes quiet again. Then, he continues speaking:
"Once you get that bug planted and grab whatever intel you can, you get out. We're not starting a war. Not yet."
Then Jeon turns to look at you, all Chief-of-Tactical mode.
Stormy.
"We split up as soon as we're inside," he says, voice gone all hard and professional. "Cover more ground, draw less attention."
"Yeah, no." You don't even hesitate to shut that down. The plan's crystal clear in your head. "We stick together, follow the script. Only split when the power goes out. That's the signal."
He scoffs—actually scoffs—and crosses his arms. "You really think playing follow-the-leader's gonna work that long? We're wasting time the second we walk in. Better to improvise early."
"We're not there to improvise," you snap back, getting annoyed now. The air's starting to feel like a brewing thunderstorm. "We have a plan for a fucking reason, Jeon. The power surge is our cover. Until then, you're stuck with me."
His jaw does that tightening thing it does when someone challenges him.
Chief or not, you're not backing down on this.
"A package deal that screams 'we're obviously here to fuck shit up'." He's practically radiating frustration. "Splitting up makes more sense. It's tactical."
"It's reckless," you cut in, meeting his intensity head-on. "Since when do we pick 'making sense' over actually being smart about this? We split up before the power cut, and we're basically painting targets on our backs."
You can feel everyone in the room watching this verbal sparring match in slight disbelief.
"You're not fucking listening—" Jeon leans into your space.
"Because what you're saying is bullshit," you snap back, refusing to be intimidated even though he's practically looming over you. "We go in toge—"
"Too risky. We split up, maximize our—"
"—chances of getting our asses caught!" You talk right over him, blood rushing hot in your veins. "We stick to the fucking pla—"
"Which is basically asking to get pinched if we're joined at the hip," he fires back, and god, his voice shouldn't sound that hot when he's being this infuriating.
"Oh, and you think going rogue is the ans—"
"It's called thinking on your feet, sunshine. Maybe try it some—"
"Save the condescending shit," you cut in, sharp enough to draw blood. "We're not there to show—"
"—that we're fucking amateurs!" He's almost growling now, and the sound does things to you that you really don't want to examine.
Your voices keep rising, cutting each other off in this heated back-and-forth that's starting to feel less like an argument and more like foreplay.
"Enough." RM's voice drops like a bucket of cold water.
You and Jeon both shut up instantly, turning to face him like scolded kids.
The whole room goes dead quiet, everyone waiting to see how the Supreme Commander's going to handle this.
"Y/N's right," RM cuts in, voice carrying that don't-fuck-with-me tone whilst his eyes bounce between you and Jeon as he speaks. "We made this plan accounting for every possible fuck-up. You go in together, no improvising. The power surge is your cue. Until then, you're just a couple of traders looking to make a deal. We can't afford any slip-ups."
The way he says it leaves no room for argument. You can see Jeon's shoulders drop just a tiny bit, like he's accepting defeat but doesn't want to show it.
"Got it," you nod, trying to look all professional and shit.
Like you didn't just get into a verbal sparring match with your Chief in front of the whole Council.
Jeon takes a second, then gives this little nod that looks like it physically pains him.
"Understood," he echoes, finally looking at you.
And so there’s this weird moment where you're both just... staring at each other; as if calling a truce without actually saying anything.
As RM dismisses everyone, you feel that rush of adrenaline from arguing start to fade. Your shoulders relax, and you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding.
Right. This whole mission is riding on you and Jeon not fucking it up by going off-script.
You can feel Jeon next to you, his whole vibe changing. He's still got that unreadable expression, but he doesn't look ready to fight anymore.
Before you can make your grand exit, Jessi's voice cuts through the room, making both of you plant your feet on the ground.
"Don't worry, you two. All that sexual tension will make for some hot angry fucking after the mission." She winks at you both like she just said something clever instead of mortifying.
"That's not—we're not—" You start sputtering like an idiot, feeling your face go red.
"Ridiculous," Jeon snaps at the same time, scowling like Jessi just insulted his sniper skills or something.
Jessi just smirks, looking way too pleased with herself. "Whatever you say, lovebirds. Just come by my division after lunch. Gotta get you kitted out for this little adventure."
You open your mouth to tell her exactly where she can shove her assumptions, but she keeps talking.
"AD's gonna set up your access, so don't be late!" And with that, she struts out of the room like she owns the place.
You take a deep breath, trying to get your shit together.
Without a word, you and Jeon turn to leave.
There's still a ton of prep to do for this mission, and you'd rather face MDF unarmed than spend another second in this room with everyone's eyes on you.
The elevator feels way too empty when it’s only you and Jeon in it.
Trapped in a metal box after whatever that disaster of a Council meeting was.
The silence feels heavy, like all that heated arguing is still buzzing in the air.
You stand there trying to look casual, watching the floor numbers tick down like they're the most interesting thing you've ever seen.
But you can't help noticing how Jeon's jaw is doing that clenching thing again, his lips pressed together so tight they're practically disappearing. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and his whole body's radiating tension like a coiled spring.
The silence is driving you insane.
So of course, before your brain can stop your mouth, you blurt out: "Just so we're clear, we are not having hot angry sex after this mission."
Great going girl. 10/10.
Jeon's head snaps toward you so fast you're worried he might get whiplash. One eyebrow shoots up in surprise, but then—oh—his expression shifts into that infuriating smirk.
"Aw, you sound disappointed," he says, voice dropping into that low, teasing register that definitely doesn't make your stomach flip.
You scoff, rolling your eyes as dramatically as possible. "Yeah, like I was last night."
"Excuse me?" The look of pure indignation on his face is actually priceless. "Pretty sure I had you begging."
"Begging?" You let out a laugh. "More like pointing out how fucking slow you were being."
You're going for casual disinterest, but the memories from last night keep trying to make your face heat up.
He actually laughs at that—this sharp, sudden sound that bounces off the elevator walls.
"Oh, is that what we're calling it now? Because I remember it more like... payback. For all that teasing." His eyes drop to your ass for a second. "Bending over until I couldn't take it anymore..."
You cross your arms, leaning back against the wall like this conversation isn't affecting you at all.
"That wasn't teasing. That was strategic mission preparation." You can't help the sly smile that creeps onto your face. "Besides, you're the one who changed the sleeping arrangement to fucking."
"A strategic move, huh?" His mouth does that little twitch that means he's trying not to smile. "Well, it fucking worked."
"Yeah, you broke so easily." You roll your eyes, but you can feel yourself starting to smile too. "Just for sex"
"Pretty damn good sex, if I might add." He says it like he's stating the weather, but that smirk is getting bigger.
Before you can even process what's happening, his hand shoots out to the elevator panel. The emergency stop button makes this loud clicking sound, and the whole thing jerks to a halt with this deep rumble that you feel in your bones.
Suddenly the space feels way too small, and all you can hear is your own breathing getting heavier.
Yeah. Yeah, he’s stopped the fucking elevator.
"What the actual fuck, Jeon?" You try to sound annoyed, but the words get stuck in your throat because he's moving into your space like he owns it, like he has every right to be this close.
Then you're trapped between his arms and the cold elevator wall, and fuck—the way he's looking at you makes you feel naked already.
Your heart's going crazy in your chest, completely betraying how irritated you're pretending to be. Heat starts pooling between your legs, and it's honestly embarrassing how quickly your body responds to him.
"We can't—" Your voice comes out all breathy and pathetic. "We can't do this here."
The smile he gives you is pure sin as he leans in closer, close enough that you can feel his breath on your skin, static wrapping around you, making it hard to think straight.
"Why not?"
"Because we're in a fucking elevator—"
"No cameras." He cuts you off like he's been waiting for this excuse.
You try to swallow but your throat's gone dry. Your sling feels itchy against your skin, probably because your whole body's remembering what happened last night.
"People are gonna notice if the elevator's stuck—"
"Maintenance issue." He says it so fast you know he's thought about this before.
"Jeon—" You start to argue, but then his eyes drop to your mouth and your brain just... stops working.
You know you should push him away. That's what any sane person would do. But there's something about Jeon that makes your brain stop working right—like a magnet pulling you in no matter how hard you try to resist. Every cell in your body is screaming at you to just grab him and kiss him already.
Right when you're about to say fuck it and give in, he pulls back.
And the look in his eyes? Pure evil, like he knows exactly what he's doing to you.
"Sunshine," he practically purrs, voice gone all low and rough in a way that makes heat pool in your stomach, "you're too eager."
The elevator dings, saving you from doing something stupid.
He steps out onto his floor without another word, that infuriating smirk still plastered on his face like he just won something.
You slump against the wall the second the doors close, letting out this huge breath you didn't even realize you were holding
As the elevator keeps moving, the whole thing feels kind of surreal—like maybe you imagined him pressing you up against the wall and looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive.
But the way your skin's still tingling tells you it definitely happened.
When the doors open on your floor, it's like stepping back into the real world.
One where you need to figure out what the hell to tell Yunjin about where you've been all night. She's way too perceptive for her own good, and she definitely noticed you didn't come to your room to sleep.
You walk to your room trying to come up with something believable.
Maybe you were up all night studying mission plans? Or got restless and went wandering around the common areas?
Your brain's still kind of fuzzy from having Jeon all up in your space, which isn't helping with the whole creative lying thing.
But when you push open your door, Yunjin spins around like she's been caught doing something wrong. Her eyes are all wide and guilty, and before you can even open your mouth to make up some excuse about where you've been, she starts talking.
"Okay, before you give me shit for not sleeping here last night—" The words come tumbling out of her like she can't get them out fast enough. "You won't believe what happened. I was just gonna have a few drinks with V, you know, just to chill..."
Well. You surely didn't expect that.
You stand there trying to process the flood of information Yunjin's dumping on you. She's so caught up in her story she doesn't even notice your brain short-circuiting.
"And I know we said to stay away from V's whole... thing, but fuck—" She's practically vibrating with excitement. "We've been dancing around each other for weeks, and last night was just—"
"Yunjin, hold up." You raise a hand to stop her word-vomit. "Are you telling me you spent the night with V? Like, you and V actually—"
You don't finish the sentence because honestly, you don't need to. The implication is heavy enough to sink a ship.
She bites her lip and nods, looking somewhere between guilty and smug.
"Yeah, we fucked..." Her voice trails off before picking right back up. "And let me tell you, it was good. Like, he's not even into all that scary shit everyone thinks he is? But his chaotic energy definitely carries over to bed, god, if you only knew—"
You can't help the snort spreading across your face.
Here you were worrying about how to explain your own night away, and Yunjin's gone and done the exact same thing.
There's something kind of poetic about both of you getting tangled up with people you definitely shouldn't be touching.
A laugh bubbles up in your throat. "Okay, spare me the details. But I'm glad you had fun with your psychopath."
"It was actually really nice?" She's got this dreamy look that would be cute if she wasn't talking about the gang's resident knife enthusiast. "I know we said getting involved with him was a bad idea, but..."
She shrugs, looking almost shy.
"Sometimes you can't help who you want to climb like a tree."
You nod because fuck—isn't that the truth? Your body's still kind of sore from climbing your own dangerous tree last night.
Quick thinking has you saying, "I had an early Council meeting about the mission."
It's not exactly a lie. You did have a meeting. The fact that you came straight from Jeon's bed to it is just... details.
Yunjin seems to buy it, but then her eyes narrow and this little smirk appears on her face.
"Speaking of details... that shirt looks a bit big on you." She eyes the obviously oversized fabric. "Almost like it belongs to someone else. Someone tall, maybe? Tattooed?"
Heat creeps up your neck as you tug at the shirt that definitely belongs to Jeon.
"It's just comfortable," you mutter, but even you don't believe that weak excuse.
"Sure it is." Yunjin's laugh is rather a sneer. "Tell Jeon I said hi."
She throws you a wink and you roll your eyes, but you can't quite fight the smile tugging at your lips.
At least you're not the only one fucking a chief.
The scanner actually flashes green when you swipe your card, which is weird.
Usually you only get access to the Seduction floor and common areas, but apparently Jessi wasn't kidding about AD setting up clearance to her realm for you.
You hit the button for the 9th floor and watch the numbers tick up.
The doors slide open to a completely different vibe from what you're used to.
Gone is all that minimalist tech stuff from AD's floor or the sterile efficiency of Assassination.
The Weapons Division looks exactly like what it is—a place that deals in death. The lights are dim, pipes running everywhere like exposed veins, and the floor's just straight-up concrete. No fancy finishes here.
You've maybe been here like, three times? And every visit feels like stepping into some alternate universe inside Kkangpae's castle. The contrast between this and your division's sleek aesthetic is wild.
"Well, well, look who we have here!"
The voice booms through the hallway, making you jump.
You turn to find this huge guy with a green mullet heading your way, covered in neck tattoos that probably tell some interesting stories. You're pretty sure his name is Jae? He's Jessi's second-in-command, but you've barely exchanged two words with him before.
Not that you'd know it from how he grins at you like you're old friends.
"Jessi's waiting on you," he says, slapping your back hard enough to make you stumble forward. (What is it with these Weapons Division people and casual violence?) "Come on, can't keep the boss lady hanging."
You follow Mullet Man through these massive double doors and holy shit—the weapons depot is huge. The ceiling's so high it's got actual walkways crisscrossing it, leading to what looks like storage units. Every table is packed with enough firepower to start a small war: rifles, handguns, knives, stuff you don't even have names for.
Jessi's off to one side, checking out this fancy-looking automatic rifle like she's shopping for groceries. Her fiery aura fills the space with heating energy.
When she spots you, those red lips curl into this knowing smirk that makes you kind of nervous.
"Right on time," she says, putting down the gun like it's no big deal. "Now we just gotta wait for lover boy to complete the set."
Jae throws up this exaggerated salute and swaggers off, leaving you perched on a nearby stool while Jessi's aura dances around like actual flames.
Jessi leans back against one of the weapon-covered tables, arms crossed and this knowing look in her eyes that makes you kind of nervous.
"That was quite the show this morning. Never seen Jeon actually engage like that before."
"What do you mean?" You frown, thinking about how often Jeon and V are at each other's throats. "He fights with V all the time."
"Nah, that's different." She shakes her head, red hair swaying. "When he fights with V, it's all explosions and death threats. Pure chaos."
Her hands make this exaggerated boom motion.
"But this morning? That was like... verbal foreplay. He was actually in there with you, giving as good as he got."
You think about that for a second.
Now that she mentions it, Jeon does usually just... shut down when other people try to argue with him. Goes all cold and distant, like he can't be bothered to even engage.
But this morning he was right there with you, matching your energy blow for blow.
"Huh." The realization hits you harder than it probably should. "He's not usually much for back-and-forth, is he?"
"That's what I'm saying!" Jessi looks way too pleased with herself. "That emotionally constipated asshole usually keeps everyone at a distance. But you?" She wiggles her eyebrows in this ridiculous way. "Something's different..."
Your face heats up because fuck—she's not wrong. But you are absolutely not having this conversation right now.
"So anyway," you say quickly, probably not as smooth as you think, "what kind of gear are we talking about here?"
Jessi's smirk says she knows exactly what you're doing, but she lets it slide.
Instead, she turns to this impressive spread of weapons and gadgets laid out on the table. Some of them look deadly enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
"Only the best for our star infiltration team," she says, sounding like a proud mom showing off her kid's artwork. "Let's talk comm units first..."
Then, you catch it.
That woodsy, pine scent that clings to him like his leather jacket.
You don’t even need to turn around to know it’s him.
Jeon appears in the doorway looking unfairly good in his all-black everything, like some kind of high-fashion assassin.
When his eyes find you and Jessi, one eyebrow goes up.
"Starting without me?" His voice is dry as desert.
"Look who finally decided to show up." Jessi's teasing, but then her expression turns into something more devious. "I was just telling your partner here how I've never seen you get so fired up before. Something about her really pushes your buttons, huh?"
You kind of want to melt into the concrete floor. Leave it to Jessi to stir shit up just because she can.
But Jeon just shrugs, cool as ever.
"Just discussing strategy." His voice gives absolutely nothing away, which is honestly impressive considering how heated he got earlier.
Jessi looks kind of disappointed that she couldn't get a reaction out of him. Classic Jeon, refusing to take the bait. She lets out this dramatic sigh and turns back to all the gear spread out on the table.
"Well, now that his highness has graced us with his presence," she says, standing up with that natural grace she has, "let's get you both looking the part. Can't have you walking into MDF territory looking like gang members, can we?"
You follow her through the rows of weapons and equipment. It's kind of amazing how she knows exactly where everything is in this massive space. Her energy is contagious—she's clearly in her element here, surrounded by all these tools of destruction.
The weapons depot starts feeling less like an armory and more like some underground fashion studio as you walk deeper in.
Because of course, procurement doesn’t only mean weapons and human resource.
Apparently, it also means Jessi has a pass to turn a room full of deadly weapons into her personal styling space.
There's this sectioned-off area that looks like a makeshift dressing room, complete with different fabrics hanging everywhere.
"Over here, Jeon." Jessi's voice has that tone that means she's already planning something. She looks him up and down like she's mentally redesigning his whole outfit.
Jeon follows her, trying to look like he's not into it, but you can see the interest in his eyes. You hang back a bit, kind of enjoying watching him get the Jessi treatment.
Jessi starts pulling stuff from these racks that look like someone couldn't decide if they were making tactical gear or runway fashion. Every piece somehow manages to be both bulletproof and stupidly stylish.
First up for Jeon: this black suit that catches the light in a way that's definitely not standard issue.
"Put this on," she tells him, shoving the suit in his hands. "It's reinforced—won't stop a bullet, but a knife won't get through."
He disappears behind this makeshift changing screen, and you're definitely not counting the seconds until he comes back out.
When he does, though... fuck.
The suit fits him like it was painted on, showing off all those muscles you're way too familiar with now. The jacket makes his shoulders look even broader, and the pants are doing criminal things to his legs. He looks like he walked straight out of some high-end assassin movie.
"You could probably kill someone just by walking into a room looking like that," you say before you can stop yourself. Your voice definitely doesn't sound as casual as you meant it to.
The smug bastard actually smirks at that. "Wouldn't be the first time."
But Jessi's not having it. She shakes her head, looking at him like an artist who's not quite happy with their work.
"Too polished. We need dangerous, not James Bond. Try this instead."
She pulls out this whole new look: leather jacket that probably costs more than anything you own (which is not much), deep maroon shirt that's somehow both simple and expensive-looking, and black jeans that you just know are going to be trouble.
When he steps out this time, his whole aura shifts.
The leather sits on his shoulders like it belongs there, and that hint of maroon under all the black just... works.
He looks like someone who could sweet-talk his way into a deal and then burn the whole place down if it goes wrong.
"Now that's more like it," Jessi says, looking satisfied. "Says 'I do business, but I also do crime' in all the right ways."
You find yourself nodding along because damn.
He looks exactly like what a high-level arms dealer should look—dangerous enough to take seriously, stylish enough to have clearly made money doing it.
Jeon catches you staring and raises an eyebrow, like he's asking what you think. You give him a small nod because what else can you do? He looks f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ good.
Really good.
Jessi rummages through another rack and pulls out this long-sleeved black shirt.
"Here, put this under the jacket. The fabric's breathable but bulletproof-adjacent. Won't stop a direct hit, but it'll give you a fighting chance."
Jeon shrugs off the leather jacket and slips the shirt on. It's thin but looks sturdy—perfect for someone who might need to move fast or fight their way out of trouble.
Jessi finally steps back, eyeing him like she's inspecting a weapon.
"Not bad. Looks casual enough that no one'll think twice, but you can actually move in it." She hands him back the leather jacket. "Try it all together."
You try to look professional while he puts the jacket back on over the maroon shirt and black base layer, but fuck—the whole ensemble is perfect.
The layers somehow make him look even more dangerous, like he could either charm you or kill you and you wouldn't know which until it was too late.
While Jeon and Jessi get into some deep discussion about fabric weights and mobility ranges, you're kind of amazed at how much thought goes into this.
It's not just picking out nice clothes—every piece has to tell the right story without saying a word.
One wrong detail and the whole cover's blown.
The attention to detail is actually impressive. Jessi knows exactly how to make someone look dangerous but approachable, wealthy but not flashy.
In this world, the wrong outfit can get you killed as quick as the wrong word.
You watch them fine-tune every detail, fascinated by how each adjustment shapes the character Jeon's going to play. And then… The final touch.This plain black watch that probably has fifteen different ways to kill someone. Jeon checks it over with that focused look he gets when he's handling weapons.
"Nice," is all he says, strapping it on.
Standing there in his perfectly crafted outfit, Jeon looks like he was born to play this role. Then Jessi turns to you with this wicked gleam in her eyes that makes your stomach drop.
"Your turn, beautiful," she says, gesturing at another rack of clothes. "Let's make you look expensive but deadly."
Something tells you this is going to be way more complicated than just picking out a nice dress.
You step forward to check out what Jessi's picked out, and damn—she really knows what she's doing. Every piece looks like it was chosen to tell a specific story about who you're supposed to be for this mission.
First up is this skin-tight dress that practically screams ‘honey trap.’ Jessi takes one look and tosses it aside with a muttered "too fucking obvious."
Then there's this whole secretary fantasy thing with a high-necked blouse and pencil skirt, but that gets vetoed too. ("Can't fight for shit in that.")
Then she hands you this black button-up that feels expensive as hell, paired with these tailored pants that feel way too nice to the touch. The fabric's got that perfect balance—soft enough to feel good but sturdy enough to take a beating if things go south.
When you slip into it, something shifts. The shirt fits in all the right places, making you feel d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶o̶u̶s̶ powerful. And the pants? They let you move like you might need to throw down at any second, which, considering it's MDF territory you're heading into, isn't exactly unlikely.
You step out to get Jessi's opinion.
And catch Jeon straight-up staring at your ass.
You’re not surprised.
When you meet his eyes, he looks away so fast it's actually kind of funny, pressing his lips together like he's trying not to smile. He looks like a kid who just got caught stealing cookies, and something about that expression makes you bite back a smile of your own.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," Jessi says, looking you over with that critical eye of hers. "You look like someone who could either make a deal or break some kneecaps. Perfect."
The outfit's actually making you feel kind of invincible. (The fact that it got Mr. Perfect Sniper all flustered doesn't hurt either.) You do a little turn, testing how it moves. Everything feels right—professional enough to be taken seriously, but with enough edge to remind people you're not someone to fuck with.
"Hold up," Jessi says suddenly, her eyes getting that dangerous glint that usually means trouble. "Got one more thing. Don't move."
She strides off into her weapons paradise, leaving you standing there wondering what else she could possibly have planned.
You definitely don't check if Jeon's still watching.
(Okay, that's a lie. You totally do.)
The button-up fits you like it was made for you—professional enough to command respect but with just enough something to make heads turn. You're fiddling with the collar when you notice it's buttoned kind of low. Like, maybe too low for a serious arms deal. But before you can decide whether to fix it, Jeon's suddenly right there in your space.
"Let me," he says, voice gone all low and rough (molten lava in your stomach)
His fingers brush against your skin as he does up that one button over your chest, and fuck—that tiny touch has your brain stuttering a bit.
Probably because your body remembers what those fingers can do.
When you look up at him (because of course he's using his height to loom over you like the smug bastard he is), his eyes are dark enough to drown in.
The little gleam swimming in them tells you he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you say, trying to sound annoyed even though you can feel yourself starting to smile.
"Immensely." He says; and his voice is pure sin wrapped in amusement.
He just keeps staring at you with this intensity that makes it hard to breathe, like he's thinking about all the ways he could mess up your perfectly put-together outfit.
Then Jessi bursts back in, completely ruining the moment.
"Found it!" She's waving around this black blazer like she just discovered buried treasure.
Jeon steps back, but not before giving you one last look that promises later. That little smirk is still playing on his lips as Jessi throws the blazer over your shoulders like she's putting the final touch on a masterpiece.
While Jessi goes over the tech specs of your gear, you sneak another look at Jeon. That heated playfulness from earlier is gone, replaced by that laser-focused look he gets when he's in Chief mode.
But there's still this... tension hanging in the air between you, like neither of you has quite forgotten what almost happened in that elevator.
Jessi then looks you both up and down with this satisfied smirk, like an artist admiring her masterpiece.
You have to admit, she knows what she's doing—the outfits are perfect for your cover, walking that line between dangerous and professional.
"Now for the fun part," she says, suddenly all business. "Let's get you two properly armed."
She leads you deeper into her weapons paradise, stopping at what looks like a plain wall. But when she presses her hand against this hidden scanner, the whole thing comes alive with soft beeps and whirs. A keypad appears, and Jessi punches in some code faster than you can follow.
The wall basically transforms, splitting open to reveal these massive hidden cabinets that look straight out of a spy movie.
Inside is enough firepower to start (or end) a small war, all arranged with the kind of precision that would make Jeon proud.
You've seen weapons before—kind of comes with the whole gang thing—but this is different.
Every gun, knife, and thing-you-don't-even-have-a-name-for gleams under the lights like they're on display in some very deadly museum.
"For when things get up close and personal," Jessi says, picking up this compact black handgun, "you'll want this beauty."
She hands you a Glock 26, and fuck—it's heavier than it looks.
"Small enough to hide, big enough to make someone regret their life choices."
Then she turns to Jeon with a different gun. "You get the Sig P226. More range, more punch. You can hang back and give her cover while she works her magic up close."
Jeon takes the gun and with a flick of his wrist, he expertly checks the chamber and magazine. You can't understand why your brain thinks that's hot, but the little nod he gives tells you Jessi picked right.
She keeps pulling out more gear—silencers that look way too professional, extra magazines, these holsters that probably cost more than your monthly pay. Then come the knives, small enough to hide pretty much anywhere but sharp enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
Jessi's whole vibe changes as she finishes arming you up. "These aren't just fancy accessories. Every time you pull one of these, you're making a choice that could end someone—maybe even yourself."
The weight of what she's saying hits different when you're actually holding deadly weapons. Her eyes lock onto yours, and you can tell she's trusting you not to fuck this up.
"One more thing," she says, pulling this fancy-looking gadget from a drawer. "Multi-tool kit. Has everything from basic lock picks to a mini torch. Trust me, you'll want options when shit hits the fan."
She hands it to Jeon, who clips it to his belt with practiced ease. (Of course he knows exactly what to do with it—guy probably has a whole collection of spy gear at home.)
Jessi takes a step back, giving you both this final once-over that feels kind of like a proud mom sending her kids off to prom.
(If prom involved infiltrating a rival gang's hideout.)
"You're good to go. Just remember—get in, do the job, get out. Don't try to be heroes."
Her words stick with you as you follow her out of the weapons room.
You walk through another set of doors to find a…
Holy shit. The garage is massive.
It's like walking into some billionaire's private car collection, except every vehicle probably has hidden gun compartments or something.
So Jessi's definitely got a thing for cars. There's everything from flashy Lamborghinis to those huge Bentleys that scream ‘I’m rich and probably dangerous.’ Motorcycles, sports cars, even some vehicles that look straight-up bulletproof—all lined up like some very deadly candy shop.
You're starting to think maybe the weapons aren't even Jessi's favorite toys.
Jessi leads you through her collection of cars like a proud mom showing off her kids' trophies. She stops at this black Lamborghini that looks expensive enough to make your eyes water. The lights bounce off its surface like it's made of pure money.
"This baby right here?" She runs her hand over the hood like she's petting a cat. "Zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. Makes people's heads turn so fast they get whiplash."
Then she drags you over to this Bentley that screams old money.
"And this beauty? When you need people to think you've got more dollars than sense." The inside looks like someone skinned a whole herd of very expensive cows and covered it in fancy wood.
"We're taking my bike."
Jeon's voice cuts through Jessi's car tour sharply.
He says it like it's already decided, which—knowing him—it probably is.
Jessi whips around to look at him, and fuck—her fiery aura actually flares up like she's about to burst into flames.
"Are you kidding me? Look at these beauties!" She waves at her collection. "They're begging for some action!"
But Jeon just shakes his head. "Bike's more maneuverable. Better control. Makes more sense for what we need."
"Ugh, fine." Jessi throws one last longing look at the Lamborghini like she's saying goodbye to a child. "But I swear to god, one of these days I'm getting your ass in one of these cars."
The little smirk Jeon gives her actually looks kind of fond. "Keep dreaming."
So you follow him to another part of the garage where his bike's parked.
It's this sleek, black monster of a machine that somehow manages to look both subtle and dangerous—kind of like its owner. The thing practically radiates power, but in that quiet way that says it doesn't need to show off.
Jessi watches Jeon check over the bike with this resigned look.
He runs his hands over the handlebars, checking everything with the kind of attention to detail you'd expect from someone who regularly makes impossible shots from a mile away.
"At least you take care of my presents," she mutters, but there's no real heat in it.
Jeon just nods, swinging his leg over the bike like he was born to ride it. When he turns to look at you, his face has gone all serious again.
"You good?"
You nod, feeling your heart start picking up speed.
This is really happening.
Jessi steps back, smiles, and then just waves you two off, not before adding something else.
"Watch your asses out there. And remember—you need backup, we're just a call away."
goal: 490 notes !!
if you’ve enjoyed this chapter please consider buying me a coffee!! ☕️ ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
"Waking up in his bed should feel like victory, but all you can think about are those pill bottles on his nightstand."
next | index
⚔ chapter details ⚔
word count: 9,5k
content: morning vulnerability and insomnia revelations, elevator sexual tension that goes nowhere, council meeting drama with heated arguments, mission prep with jessi's weapons expertise, undercover outfits that make jeon stare, AD's suspicious surveillance knowledge, and the calm before infiltrating mdf territory
☠ author's note ☠
As a European, I have absolutely no clue about guns so let's hope my research was decent and their weapons actually make sense ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) If any gun enthusiasts are reading this and I've somehow made a sniper rifle that shoots rainbows, just... pretend it's for the plot.
ANYWAY THE BIG DAY IS FINALLY HERE!!! Next chapter is THE MISSION and are we excited??? Because I AMMMMM!!! I've been building up to this for literal months and my chaotic little writer brain is VIBRATING with anticipation!
Jeon + motorbike = HOT AS HELL 🥵 Like sir, you're already dangerous enough, did you really need to add vehicular competence to your list of attractive qualities? RUDE.
Also Jessi is so mother mommy mama I love her! I mean, I say that about every single one of my characters, don't I? But what can I do—they're all so complex in my opinion! I have to really put myself in their position in every single scene and think genuinely about how they would react. Because one thing is how I WANT them to react, and another is how they would REALISTICALLY react, you know? Keeping those two aligned is harder than it looks, trust me!
Anyway ramble ramble ramble shut up Kiki we don't care—I KNOW BUT I'M THE AUTHOR so you're gonna read my rambling because I said so! I don't write 8k words per chapter to have my feelings dismissed! Y'all gonna put up with me whether you like it or not (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Thanks for reading as always, love y'all! Now buckle up because things are about to get SPICY!
⚔ socials ⚔
read on ao3
read on wattpad
tumblr/twitter: @jungkoode
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎.
The obnoxious blaring of Jeon's alarm tears through the quiet morning.
It's 6 AM—that weird time when everything feels kind of hazy and unreal, like the world hasn't quite decided if it's night or day yet.
His phone keeps buzzing against the nightstand, screen lighting up like a strobe light.
You're barely awake, caught in that fuzzy space between sleep and consciousness. Jeon's sprawled half on top of you, which should probably be uncomfortable but... isn't. His arm's thrown over your waist in this weirdly soft way that doesn't match his usual don't-touch-me vibe. You can feel his chest rising and falling against your back, his breath warm on your neck.
For a second, you think about waking him up. But he looks so p̶e̶a̶c̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ different when he's sleeping—none of that cold, distant Chief of Tactical stuff.
Just a guy who really needs some rest.
"Jeon," you try anyway, voice coming out all scratchy from sleep. "Your alarm."
He makes this grunt that might be words but definitely isn't, face pressed against your skin. Instead of getting up, he actually pulls you closer, burying his face in the pillow like if he ignores the alarm hard enough, it'll give up and go away.
"Jeon, come on. Get it." You nudge him with your elbow because that fucking alarm is driving you insane. It just keeps going and going, like some kind of electronic torture device.
He lets out this long-suffering groan that perfectly captures the eternal struggle between wanting to sleep and having actual responsibilities.
His hand flops around looking for his phone, movements all clumsy in that way people only get when they're not really awake yet. When he finally finds it, he misses the screen completely on his first try.
"Fuck off," he mumbles—definitely talking to the phone, not you. The woodsy scent of his skin mixed with mint from his breath fills your lungs.
After what feels like forever (but is probably like, ten seconds), blessed silence falls over the room.
Jeon just tosses his phone somewhere (hopefully not off the bed) and immediately curls back around you like some kind of clingy octopus. His body's radiating heat like a furnace, and he's definitely not planning on letting you go anytime soon.
His aura wraps around you like summer rain, all soft and warm, making your head spin in the best way.
(You're starting to think maybe he's not a morning person.)
"Five more minutes," he mumbles, voice all rough and sleepy like some kid who doesn't want to go to school.
You can't help but smirk.
Who would've thought the terrifying Chief of Tactical was such a baby in the morning?
"Five more minutes, and you'll be the one explaining to the Council why you're late." You poke his side. "Good luck with that."
"What council?" He sounds like he's halfway to dreamland already.
"Council of 9, dumbass. You know, that super important reunion about tonight's mission?"
His only response is this little grunt before his breathing starts evening out again.
Oh no. Not happening.
You kick him under the sheets—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to be annoying. He flinches and makes this annoyed clicking sound with his tongue.
Finally, with this dramatic sigh that you can feel rumble through his chest, he gives in. His body peels away from yours like it's physically painful for him to move.
"Fine, fine," he grumbles, surrendering to reality.
When he sits up, cold air rushes in where his body heat used to be. You both kind of... linger there on the edge of his bed.
You watch him rub his face, trying to wake up properly. It's kind of fascinating, seeing him switch from s̶o̶f̶t̶ sleepy Jungkook back to Jeon, the cold and distant Chief of Tactical.
Another yawn catches you as you sit up, letting the sheets pool around your waist. You blink, trying to clear the sleep from your eyes, when something on Jeon's bedside table catches your attention.
Oh.
There's a whole fucking pharmacy there.
Your eyes scan over the labels—hypnotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, sleeping pills. The kind of cocktail someone needs when sleep doesn't come naturally anymore.
It hits different now, remembering all those times you've seen him in the cafeteria at ass o'clock in the morning. Always with that black coffee, those dark circles under his eyes that you thought were just part of his whole intimidating Chief of Tactical thing.
(Turns out even the great Jeon Jungkook has trouble sleeping.)
You can't help but wonder what keeps him up at night. What kind of memories play on repeat in his head when everything goes quiet.
Sure, being a gang leader comes with its own baggage—the violence, the paranoia, always having to watch your back.
But something tells you there's more to it. Things that left marks deeper than the little scar on his cheek. The kind of stuff that makes someone stock up on enough sedatives to knock out a horse.
Your eyes fix on this one bottle of hypnotics that's already half empty. Something in your chest tightens at the sight, but you quickly squash that feeling down.
The last thing Jeon needs is your p̶i̶t̶y̶ concern.
You know how this works. Show any weakness in Kkangpae, and you might as well paint a target on your back. The gang's full of sharks, always circling, always waiting for someone to bleed in the water.
So you bite back all the questions building up in your throat. Push down that weird urge to reach out, to try and make it better somehow.
Whatever demons Jeon's fighting, they're his to deal with.
You've got your own role to play here, and playing therapist isn't it. Some things just stay broken, and some nights just stay sleepless.
And some things are not yours to fix, even if some part of you wants to.
"You ready?" Jeon asks, already heading for the door without waiting to hear if you actually are.
You follow him out with a quiet sigh, but your mind's still stuck on all those pill bottles.
On what they might mean.
On all the nights he probably spends staring at his ceiling, fighting whatever demons keep him up.
The common areas in his wing of the Assassination Division are empty this early.
Your footsteps echo through the halls as you make your way to the elevator, where Jeon leans against the wall like he's got all day. He crosses his arms over his chest, getting lost in whatever thoughts are running through that complicated head of his.
When he doesn't move to actually do anything, you have to remind him that not everyone has his fancy Chief clearance level.
"You gonna scan your card or what?" You wave vaguely at the scanner. "You know mine won't work up here."
The corner of his mouth twitches up—just barely—like he's annoyed at himself for forgetting.
He pulls out his access card without a word and taps it against the scanner. The light blinks green, and the elevator starts moving.
While you're waiting, your brain decides to dig up this random memory from weeks ago.
That night Jeon showed up at your door out of nowhere, demanding his jacket back. You hadn't thought about it then, but now...
"Hey," you turn to look at him, "how did you get on my floor that night? To get your jacket back?" The question hits you out of nowhere. "Our cards don't work on each other's floors."
His eyes go wide for a split second—clearly not expecting that question. He just stares at you for a moment, lips parted like he's trying to figure out what to say. Then his gaze darts away and he rubs the back of his neck, which is basically a flashing neon sign that says busted.
(This should be interesting.)
"I, uh..." Jeon starts, looking at you then quickly away. He's actually struggling for words, which is new.
His fingers tap against his thigh in this nervous rhythm you've never seen before. Just when you think he's going to leave you hanging, he lets out this tiny sigh, shoulders dropping just a bit.
"I asked AD for temporary access."
Wait. What?
"And he... just gave it to you? Just like that?"
You narrow your eyes because something's not adding up here.
You've seen how these two interact—or don't interact, more like it. The way Jeon basically disappears whenever AD shows up, and how AD looks at him like he's personally offended his entire bloodline.
Sure, AD glares at everyone (especially J-Hope), but with Jeon? That's a whole different level of hate.
(Not that it's any of your business what's going on there.)
"Told him I needed my jacket back."
The elevator keeps moving down, and the silence between you gets kind of heavy. Something about how weirdly hesitant Jeon's being makes your curiosity spike. Part of you knows you should probably drop it, but...
"So, your card worked the whole night?" You try to sound casual about it, but there's definitely some skepticism bleeding through.
"Yeah." He finally meets your eyes again. "Clearance passes usually last for 24 hours."
You nod slowly, filing that information away.
"But didn't AD find it weird? The time stamp would show you came in at 3 AM and didn't leave until..." You trail off, remembering exactly why he stayed so long.
Jeon's eyes snap to yours, and something flashes across his face too quick to read before he looks away. The crease between his brows gets deeper as the silence stretches out.
"I don't think he actually checks the access logs that closely," he says finally. "At least he hasn't mentioned anything about the, uh, timeframe."
You think about that for a second. It seems weird that AD, of all people, wouldn't keep tabs on security access. But maybe Jeon's right—maybe AD doesn't actually monitor that stuff.
Then you remember something.
That day after the pool training, you saw AD in the elevator with Kazuha. He'd told you both to "be careful."
Was that his cryptic way of saying he knew exactly what went down that night?
The elevator dings, cutting through your thoughts.
Jeon pushes off the wall, giving you this little nod to go in first. You step inside, and the last thing you see is his back and this lazy wave goodbye before the doors slide shut.
Anyway, something tells you AD knows way more than he lets on.
You’d never been in The Council room until now.
And it’s… Well, it’s weird. Tense today.
Everyone's taking their usual spots around this stupidly long table, and RM's at the head of it like always, looking every bit the Supreme Commander he is.
"Thanks for coming, everyone." His voice carries that authority that makes even the most stubborn chiefs shut up and listen.
Well, almost everyone.
"I don't even see why I have to be here when you're all so set on leaving me out of it." V's practically radiating annoyance.
Moon gives him that patient look he reserves for when someone's being difficult. "This mission affects the entire gang. That's why we need the whole Council present."
"But I'm not even part of it." V throws his feet up on the table like the dramatic bitch he is, crossing his arms. "So why do I have to sit through all this bullshit?"
"You listen because shared knowledge makes us stronger." RM's eyes sweep around the table, meeting everyone's gaze—even yours. "Unity isn't just about standing together. It's about thinking as one."
V rolls his eyes so hard you're surprised they don't get stuck. "Yeah, yeah, I get the whole 'one gang' thing. But do I really need every fucking detail?"
"Details matter." Jeon's voice cuts through the tension. "MDF isn't some amateur operation. One tiny blind spot and we're fucked."
"It's a goddamn snake pit we're walking into." J-Hope waves his hands around like he's trying to grab invisible dangers out of the air. "We all need to know what kind of poison we might be dealing with."
JM leans forward, all serious despite his usually gentle demeanor. "That hideout's a maze. You two need more than just a way in—you need a solid plan to get the fuck out of there."
"Exactly." RM's sighs. "This intel could change everything. We do this right, we take out one of their major operations."
Flower, who's been watching everything with that calculating look of hers, finally speaks up. "And V, whether you like it or not, this meeting is what keeps your men at the docks from getting caught with their pants down while we're focused on this mission."
V scoffs, but you can see him actually considering her words.
Jessi stops lounging in her chair like this is some kind of casual meetup.
"Alright, cut the bullshit. What's the actual plan here, RM?" She leans forward, all business now. "And it better be good."
The room goes quiet—that heavy kind of quiet that makes your skin prickle.
RM stands up, and you can feel the weight of what's coming.
This isn't just another mission briefing. This is you and Jeon walking straight into MDF territory.
No pressure.
RM clears his throat, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him.
"Here's how it's going to work," he starts, voice authoritative. "Jeon and Y/N are going undercover. We've got IDs that'll get them through MDF's front door."
The word 'undercover' makes your stomach do this weird flip thing. Jeon shifts slightly beside you, his presence weirdly reassuring for someone who's usually about as comforting as a loaded gun.
"They'll play it as traders," RM continues, spreading out this map that looks like someone went crazy with a red marker. "Fresh faces trying to make it big enough to catch MDF's attention."
Jeon nods, watching AD's finger trace some path on the map. "What about their security? Cameras?"
"System loops every three hours," AD says, sounding bored but you know that's just his thing. "We're setting up a distraction. At 23:00, when the loop starts, they'll get a power surge. Six minutes of blind spots."
"Six minutes?" Jessi raises an eyebrow. "That's cutting it real fucking close."
"We can handle it." Jeon sounds so sure it actually makes you believe him. "Had worse timeframes before."
"That's your window to find the server room and plant the bug." RM points to some spot deep in what looks like a maze. "AD will be in your ear the whole time."
"And when shit inevitably goes sideways?" V asks, and despite how pissy he's been about being left out, you can hear actual braincells there.
"You'll be armed," RM says simply. "But this is about getting in and out quiet. No firefights."
"Right, because stealth missions should totally go to Mr. Shoot-Everything-From-A-Mile-Away instead of, oh, I don't know, the actual Chief of Stealth?" V's voice drips sarcasm.
"V." JM's cuts in. "Enough."
V grunts but actually shuts up, which is kind of impressive. You've never seen anyone else get him to back down that easily.
Flower leans forward, and the room suddenly feels a bit colder. The map spread out on the table looks like some kind of twisted treasure map, except instead of X marking the spot, there's about fifty different ways this whole thing could go wrong.
"Alright, here's the deal," she says, getting straight to the point like always. "You need to be interesting enough to catch their attention, but not so interesting they get suspicious. Think you can handle that?"
She looks right at you, and you can feel the weight of what she's asking.
"Y/N, you're our front person here. While everyone's busy watching you sweet-talk them about money and deals, Jeon's gonna be doing the actual work." Her lips curve into this knowing smile. "Keep them focused on the profit. Rich assholes love talking about money."
Great. No pressure or anything. Just gotta be charming enough to distract an entire criminal organization while your... whatever Jeon is sneaks around their base. Easy peasy.
Flower turns to Jeon next, and her expression goes all business.
"You're playing backup dancer on this one. Stay in the background, watch everything, and when AD hits them with that power surge? That's your window. Get the bug planted without anyone noticing."
The room goes quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Everyone's thinking the same thing—one tiny mistake and this whole plan goes up in smoke.
"Remember," Flower says, voice serious, "this isn't about showing off. It's about getting in, getting it done, and getting out without anyone realizing what happened."
"And more importantly," RM cuts in, giving you and Jeon a look, "don't fucking die. The intel's not worth either of you."
"What about communication?" you ask, because there's one pretty big hole in this plan. "We can't exactly text each other in there."
"Subvocals," AD doesn't look up from his laptop, but his voice carries that bored confidence that means he knows exactly what he's talking about. "Basically fancy mics that pick up whispers. We'll hear everything, but you two can talk without anyone else noticing. Plus, we'll feed you intel as we get it. Just keep it quiet and you'll be fine."
V lets out this little laugh, eyes twinkling like he knows something no one else does. "Sure putting a lot of faith in luck here, aren't we?"
"Luck's got nothing to do with it." RM's interjects. "This is about being prepared, being skilled, and getting shit done. Don't forget who we are. What Kkangpae stands for."
The room goes quiet again. Then, he continues speaking:
"Once you get that bug planted and grab whatever intel you can, you get out. We're not starting a war. Not yet."
Then Jeon turns to look at you, all Chief-of-Tactical mode.
Stormy.
"We split up as soon as we're inside," he says, voice gone all hard and professional. "Cover more ground, draw less attention."
"Yeah, no." You don't even hesitate to shut that down. The plan's crystal clear in your head. "We stick together, follow the script. Only split when the power goes out. That's the signal."
He scoffs—actually scoffs—and crosses his arms. "You really think playing follow-the-leader's gonna work that long? We're wasting time the second we walk in. Better to improvise early."
"We're not there to improvise," you snap back, getting annoyed now. The air's starting to feel like a brewing thunderstorm. "We have a plan for a fucking reason, Jeon. The power surge is our cover. Until then, you're stuck with me."
His jaw does that tightening thing it does when someone challenges him.
Chief or not, you're not backing down on this.
"A package deal that screams 'we're obviously here to fuck shit up'." He's practically radiating frustration. "Splitting up makes more sense. It's tactical."
"It's reckless," you cut in, meeting his intensity head-on. "Since when do we pick 'making sense' over actually being smart about this? We split up before the power cut, and we're basically painting targets on our backs."
You can feel everyone in the room watching this verbal sparring match in slight disbelief.
"You're not fucking listening—" Jeon leans into your space.
"Because what you're saying is bullshit," you snap back, refusing to be intimidated even though he's practically looming over you. "We go in toge—"
"Too risky. We split up, maximize our—"
"—chances of getting our asses caught!" You talk right over him, blood rushing hot in your veins. "We stick to the fucking pla—"
"Which is basically asking to get pinched if we're joined at the hip," he fires back, and god, his voice shouldn't sound that hot when he's being this infuriating.
"Oh, and you think going rogue is the ans—"
"It's called thinking on your feet, sunshine. Maybe try it some—"
"Save the condescending shit," you cut in, sharp enough to draw blood. "We're not there to show—"
"—that we're fucking amateurs!" He's almost growling now, and the sound does things to you that you really don't want to examine.
Your voices keep rising, cutting each other off in this heated back-and-forth that's starting to feel less like an argument and more like foreplay.
"Enough." RM's voice drops like a bucket of cold water.
You and Jeon both shut up instantly, turning to face him like scolded kids.
The whole room goes dead quiet, everyone waiting to see how the Supreme Commander's going to handle this.
"Y/N's right," RM cuts in, voice carrying that don't-fuck-with-me tone whilst his eyes bounce between you and Jeon as he speaks. "We made this plan accounting for every possible fuck-up. You go in together, no improvising. The power surge is your cue. Until then, you're just a couple of traders looking to make a deal. We can't afford any slip-ups."
The way he says it leaves no room for argument. You can see Jeon's shoulders drop just a tiny bit, like he's accepting defeat but doesn't want to show it.
"Got it," you nod, trying to look all professional and shit.
Like you didn't just get into a verbal sparring match with your Chief in front of the whole Council.
Jeon takes a second, then gives this little nod that looks like it physically pains him.
"Understood," he echoes, finally looking at you.
And so there’s this weird moment where you're both just... staring at each other; as if calling a truce without actually saying anything.
As RM dismisses everyone, you feel that rush of adrenaline from arguing start to fade. Your shoulders relax, and you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding.
Right. This whole mission is riding on you and Jeon not fucking it up by going off-script.
You can feel Jeon next to you, his whole vibe changing. He's still got that unreadable expression, but he doesn't look ready to fight anymore.
Before you can make your grand exit, Jessi's voice cuts through the room, making both of you plant your feet on the ground.
"Don't worry, you two. All that sexual tension will make for some hot angry fucking after the mission." She winks at you both like she just said something clever instead of mortifying.
"That's not—we're not—" You start sputtering like an idiot, feeling your face go red.
"Ridiculous," Jeon snaps at the same time, scowling like Jessi just insulted his sniper skills or something.
Jessi just smirks, looking way too pleased with herself. "Whatever you say, lovebirds. Just come by my division after lunch. Gotta get you kitted out for this little adventure."
You open your mouth to tell her exactly where she can shove her assumptions, but she keeps talking.
"AD's gonna set up your access, so don't be late!" And with that, she struts out of the room like she owns the place.
You take a deep breath, trying to get your shit together.
Without a word, you and Jeon turn to leave.
There's still a ton of prep to do for this mission, and you'd rather face MDF unarmed than spend another second in this room with everyone's eyes on you.
The elevator feels way too empty when it’s only you and Jeon in it.
Trapped in a metal box after whatever that disaster of a Council meeting was.
The silence feels heavy, like all that heated arguing is still buzzing in the air.
You stand there trying to look casual, watching the floor numbers tick down like they're the most interesting thing you've ever seen.
But you can't help noticing how Jeon's jaw is doing that clenching thing again, his lips pressed together so tight they're practically disappearing. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and his whole body's radiating tension like a coiled spring.
The silence is driving you insane.
So of course, before your brain can stop your mouth, you blurt out: "Just so we're clear, we are not having hot angry sex after this mission."
Great going girl. 10/10.
Jeon's head snaps toward you so fast you're worried he might get whiplash. One eyebrow shoots up in surprise, but then—oh—his expression shifts into that infuriating smirk.
"Aw, you sound disappointed," he says, voice dropping into that low, teasing register that definitely doesn't make your stomach flip.
You scoff, rolling your eyes as dramatically as possible. "Yeah, like I was last night."
"Excuse me?" The look of pure indignation on his face is actually priceless. "Pretty sure I had you begging."
"Begging?" You let out a laugh. "More like pointing out how fucking slow you were being."
You're going for casual disinterest, but the memories from last night keep trying to make your face heat up.
He actually laughs at that—this sharp, sudden sound that bounces off the elevator walls.
"Oh, is that what we're calling it now? Because I remember it more like... payback. For all that teasing." His eyes drop to your ass for a second. "Bending over until I couldn't take it anymore..."
You cross your arms, leaning back against the wall like this conversation isn't affecting you at all.
"That wasn't teasing. That was strategic mission preparation." You can't help the sly smile that creeps onto your face. "Besides, you're the one who changed the sleeping arrangement to fucking."
"A strategic move, huh?" His mouth does that little twitch that means he's trying not to smile. "Well, it fucking worked."
"Yeah, you broke so easily." You roll your eyes, but you can feel yourself starting to smile too. "Just for sex"
"Pretty damn good sex, if I might add." He says it like he's stating the weather, but that smirk is getting bigger.
Before you can even process what's happening, his hand shoots out to the elevator panel. The emergency stop button makes this loud clicking sound, and the whole thing jerks to a halt with this deep rumble that you feel in your bones.
Suddenly the space feels way too small, and all you can hear is your own breathing getting heavier.
Yeah. Yeah, he’s stopped the fucking elevator.
"What the actual fuck, Jeon?" You try to sound annoyed, but the words get stuck in your throat because he's moving into your space like he owns it, like he has every right to be this close.
Then you're trapped between his arms and the cold elevator wall, and fuck—the way he's looking at you makes you feel naked already.
Your heart's going crazy in your chest, completely betraying how irritated you're pretending to be. Heat starts pooling between your legs, and it's honestly embarrassing how quickly your body responds to him.
"We can't—" Your voice comes out all breathy and pathetic. "We can't do this here."
The smile he gives you is pure sin as he leans in closer, close enough that you can feel his breath on your skin, static wrapping around you, making it hard to think straight.
"Why not?"
"Because we're in a fucking elevator—"
"No cameras." He cuts you off like he's been waiting for this excuse.
You try to swallow but your throat's gone dry. Your sling feels itchy against your skin, probably because your whole body's remembering what happened last night.
"People are gonna notice if the elevator's stuck—"
"Maintenance issue." He says it so fast you know he's thought about this before.
"Jeon—" You start to argue, but then his eyes drop to your mouth and your brain just... stops working.
You know you should push him away. That's what any sane person would do. But there's something about Jeon that makes your brain stop working right—like a magnet pulling you in no matter how hard you try to resist. Every cell in your body is screaming at you to just grab him and kiss him already.
Right when you're about to say fuck it and give in, he pulls back.
And the look in his eyes? Pure evil, like he knows exactly what he's doing to you.
"Sunshine," he practically purrs, voice gone all low and rough in a way that makes heat pool in your stomach, "you're too eager."
The elevator dings, saving you from doing something stupid.
He steps out onto his floor without another word, that infuriating smirk still plastered on his face like he just won something.
You slump against the wall the second the doors close, letting out this huge breath you didn't even realize you were holding
As the elevator keeps moving, the whole thing feels kind of surreal—like maybe you imagined him pressing you up against the wall and looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive.
But the way your skin's still tingling tells you it definitely happened.
When the doors open on your floor, it's like stepping back into the real world.
One where you need to figure out what the hell to tell Yunjin about where you've been all night. She's way too perceptive for her own good, and she definitely noticed you didn't come to your room to sleep.
You walk to your room trying to come up with something believable.
Maybe you were up all night studying mission plans? Or got restless and went wandering around the common areas?
Your brain's still kind of fuzzy from having Jeon all up in your space, which isn't helping with the whole creative lying thing.
But when you push open your door, Yunjin spins around like she's been caught doing something wrong. Her eyes are all wide and guilty, and before you can even open your mouth to make up some excuse about where you've been, she starts talking.
"Okay, before you give me shit for not sleeping here last night—" The words come tumbling out of her like she can't get them out fast enough. "You won't believe what happened. I was just gonna have a few drinks with V, you know, just to chill..."
Well. You surely didn't expect that.
You stand there trying to process the flood of information Yunjin's dumping on you. She's so caught up in her story she doesn't even notice your brain short-circuiting.
"And I know we said to stay away from V's whole... thing, but fuck—" She's practically vibrating with excitement. "We've been dancing around each other for weeks, and last night was just—"
"Yunjin, hold up." You raise a hand to stop her word-vomit. "Are you telling me you spent the night with V? Like, you and V actually—"
You don't finish the sentence because honestly, you don't need to. The implication is heavy enough to sink a ship.
She bites her lip and nods, looking somewhere between guilty and smug.
"Yeah, we fucked..." Her voice trails off before picking right back up. "And let me tell you, it was good. Like, he's not even into all that scary shit everyone thinks he is? But his chaotic energy definitely carries over to bed, god, if you only knew—"
You can't help the snort spreading across your face.
Here you were worrying about how to explain your own night away, and Yunjin's gone and done the exact same thing.
There's something kind of poetic about both of you getting tangled up with people you definitely shouldn't be touching.
A laugh bubbles up in your throat. "Okay, spare me the details. But I'm glad you had fun with your psychopath."
"It was actually really nice?" She's got this dreamy look that would be cute if she wasn't talking about the gang's resident knife enthusiast. "I know we said getting involved with him was a bad idea, but..."
She shrugs, looking almost shy.
"Sometimes you can't help who you want to climb like a tree."
You nod because fuck—isn't that the truth? Your body's still kind of sore from climbing your own dangerous tree last night.
Quick thinking has you saying, "I had an early Council meeting about the mission."
It's not exactly a lie. You did have a meeting. The fact that you came straight from Jeon's bed to it is just... details.
Yunjin seems to buy it, but then her eyes narrow and this little smirk appears on her face.
"Speaking of details... that shirt looks a bit big on you." She eyes the obviously oversized fabric. "Almost like it belongs to someone else. Someone tall, maybe? Tattooed?"
Heat creeps up your neck as you tug at the shirt that definitely belongs to Jeon.
"It's just comfortable," you mutter, but even you don't believe that weak excuse.
"Sure it is." Yunjin's laugh is rather a sneer. "Tell Jeon I said hi."
She throws you a wink and you roll your eyes, but you can't quite fight the smile tugging at your lips.
At least you're not the only one fucking a chief.
The scanner actually flashes green when you swipe your card, which is weird.
Usually you only get access to the Seduction floor and common areas, but apparently Jessi wasn't kidding about AD setting up clearance to her realm for you.
You hit the button for the 9th floor and watch the numbers tick up.
The doors slide open to a completely different vibe from what you're used to.
Gone is all that minimalist tech stuff from AD's floor or the sterile efficiency of Assassination.
The Weapons Division looks exactly like what it is—a place that deals in death. The lights are dim, pipes running everywhere like exposed veins, and the floor's just straight-up concrete. No fancy finishes here.
You've maybe been here like, three times? And every visit feels like stepping into some alternate universe inside Kkangpae's castle. The contrast between this and your division's sleek aesthetic is wild.
"Well, well, look who we have here!"
The voice booms through the hallway, making you jump.
You turn to find this huge guy with a green mullet heading your way, covered in neck tattoos that probably tell some interesting stories. You're pretty sure his name is Jae? He's Jessi's second-in-command, but you've barely exchanged two words with him before.
Not that you'd know it from how he grins at you like you're old friends.
"Jessi's waiting on you," he says, slapping your back hard enough to make you stumble forward. (What is it with these Weapons Division people and casual violence?) "Come on, can't keep the boss lady hanging."
You follow Mullet Man through these massive double doors and holy shit—the weapons depot is huge. The ceiling's so high it's got actual walkways crisscrossing it, leading to what looks like storage units. Every table is packed with enough firepower to start a small war: rifles, handguns, knives, stuff you don't even have names for.
Jessi's off to one side, checking out this fancy-looking automatic rifle like she's shopping for groceries. Her fiery aura fills the space with heating energy.
When she spots you, those red lips curl into this knowing smirk that makes you kind of nervous.
"Right on time," she says, putting down the gun like it's no big deal. "Now we just gotta wait for lover boy to complete the set."
Jae throws up this exaggerated salute and swaggers off, leaving you perched on a nearby stool while Jessi's aura dances around like actual flames.
Jessi leans back against one of the weapon-covered tables, arms crossed and this knowing look in her eyes that makes you kind of nervous.
"That was quite the show this morning. Never seen Jeon actually engage like that before."
"What do you mean?" You frown, thinking about how often Jeon and V are at each other's throats. "He fights with V all the time."
"Nah, that's different." She shakes her head, red hair swaying. "When he fights with V, it's all explosions and death threats. Pure chaos."
Her hands make this exaggerated boom motion.
"But this morning? That was like... verbal foreplay. He was actually in there with you, giving as good as he got."
You think about that for a second.
Now that she mentions it, Jeon does usually just... shut down when other people try to argue with him. Goes all cold and distant, like he can't be bothered to even engage.
But this morning he was right there with you, matching your energy blow for blow.
"Huh." The realization hits you harder than it probably should. "He's not usually much for back-and-forth, is he?"
"That's what I'm saying!" Jessi looks way too pleased with herself. "That emotionally constipated asshole usually keeps everyone at a distance. But you?" She wiggles her eyebrows in this ridiculous way. "Something's different..."
Your face heats up because fuck—she's not wrong. But you are absolutely not having this conversation right now.
"So anyway," you say quickly, probably not as smooth as you think, "what kind of gear are we talking about here?"
Jessi's smirk says she knows exactly what you're doing, but she lets it slide.
Instead, she turns to this impressive spread of weapons and gadgets laid out on the table. Some of them look deadly enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
"Only the best for our star infiltration team," she says, sounding like a proud mom showing off her kid's artwork. "Let's talk comm units first..."
Then, you catch it.
That woodsy, pine scent that clings to him like his leather jacket.
You don’t even need to turn around to know it’s him.
Jeon appears in the doorway looking unfairly good in his all-black everything, like some kind of high-fashion assassin.
When his eyes find you and Jessi, one eyebrow goes up.
"Starting without me?" His voice is dry as desert.
"Look who finally decided to show up." Jessi's teasing, but then her expression turns into something more devious. "I was just telling your partner here how I've never seen you get so fired up before. Something about her really pushes your buttons, huh?"
You kind of want to melt into the concrete floor. Leave it to Jessi to stir shit up just because she can.
But Jeon just shrugs, cool as ever.
"Just discussing strategy." His voice gives absolutely nothing away, which is honestly impressive considering how heated he got earlier.
Jessi looks kind of disappointed that she couldn't get a reaction out of him. Classic Jeon, refusing to take the bait. She lets out this dramatic sigh and turns back to all the gear spread out on the table.
"Well, now that his highness has graced us with his presence," she says, standing up with that natural grace she has, "let's get you both looking the part. Can't have you walking into MDF territory looking like gang members, can we?"
You follow her through the rows of weapons and equipment. It's kind of amazing how she knows exactly where everything is in this massive space. Her energy is contagious—she's clearly in her element here, surrounded by all these tools of destruction.
The weapons depot starts feeling less like an armory and more like some underground fashion studio as you walk deeper in.
Because of course, procurement doesn’t only mean weapons and human resource.
Apparently, it also means Jessi has a pass to turn a room full of deadly weapons into her personal styling space.
There's this sectioned-off area that looks like a makeshift dressing room, complete with different fabrics hanging everywhere.
"Over here, Jeon." Jessi's voice has that tone that means she's already planning something. She looks him up and down like she's mentally redesigning his whole outfit.
Jeon follows her, trying to look like he's not into it, but you can see the interest in his eyes. You hang back a bit, kind of enjoying watching him get the Jessi treatment.
Jessi starts pulling stuff from these racks that look like someone couldn't decide if they were making tactical gear or runway fashion. Every piece somehow manages to be both bulletproof and stupidly stylish.
First up for Jeon: this black suit that catches the light in a way that's definitely not standard issue.
"Put this on," she tells him, shoving the suit in his hands. "It's reinforced—won't stop a bullet, but a knife won't get through."
He disappears behind this makeshift changing screen, and you're definitely not counting the seconds until he comes back out.
When he does, though... fuck.
The suit fits him like it was painted on, showing off all those muscles you're way too familiar with now. The jacket makes his shoulders look even broader, and the pants are doing criminal things to his legs. He looks like he walked straight out of some high-end assassin movie.
"You could probably kill someone just by walking into a room looking like that," you say before you can stop yourself. Your voice definitely doesn't sound as casual as you meant it to.
The smug bastard actually smirks at that. "Wouldn't be the first time."
But Jessi's not having it. She shakes her head, looking at him like an artist who's not quite happy with their work.
"Too polished. We need dangerous, not James Bond. Try this instead."
She pulls out this whole new look: leather jacket that probably costs more than anything you own (which is not much), deep maroon shirt that's somehow both simple and expensive-looking, and black jeans that you just know are going to be trouble.
When he steps out this time, his whole aura shifts.
The leather sits on his shoulders like it belongs there, and that hint of maroon under all the black just... works.
He looks like someone who could sweet-talk his way into a deal and then burn the whole place down if it goes wrong.
"Now that's more like it," Jessi says, looking satisfied. "Says 'I do business, but I also do crime' in all the right ways."
You find yourself nodding along because damn.
He looks exactly like what a high-level arms dealer should look—dangerous enough to take seriously, stylish enough to have clearly made money doing it.
Jeon catches you staring and raises an eyebrow, like he's asking what you think. You give him a small nod because what else can you do? He looks f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ good.
Really good.
Jessi rummages through another rack and pulls out this long-sleeved black shirt.
"Here, put this under the jacket. The fabric's breathable but bulletproof-adjacent. Won't stop a direct hit, but it'll give you a fighting chance."
Jeon shrugs off the leather jacket and slips the shirt on. It's thin but looks sturdy—perfect for someone who might need to move fast or fight their way out of trouble.
Jessi finally steps back, eyeing him like she's inspecting a weapon.
"Not bad. Looks casual enough that no one'll think twice, but you can actually move in it." She hands him back the leather jacket. "Try it all together."
You try to look professional while he puts the jacket back on over the maroon shirt and black base layer, but fuck—the whole ensemble is perfect.
The layers somehow make him look even more dangerous, like he could either charm you or kill you and you wouldn't know which until it was too late.
While Jeon and Jessi get into some deep discussion about fabric weights and mobility ranges, you're kind of amazed at how much thought goes into this.
It's not just picking out nice clothes—every piece has to tell the right story without saying a word.
One wrong detail and the whole cover's blown.
The attention to detail is actually impressive. Jessi knows exactly how to make someone look dangerous but approachable, wealthy but not flashy.
In this world, the wrong outfit can get you killed as quick as the wrong word.
You watch them fine-tune every detail, fascinated by how each adjustment shapes the character Jeon's going to play. And then… The final touch.This plain black watch that probably has fifteen different ways to kill someone. Jeon checks it over with that focused look he gets when he's handling weapons.
"Nice," is all he says, strapping it on.
Standing there in his perfectly crafted outfit, Jeon looks like he was born to play this role. Then Jessi turns to you with this wicked gleam in her eyes that makes your stomach drop.
"Your turn, beautiful," she says, gesturing at another rack of clothes. "Let's make you look expensive but deadly."
Something tells you this is going to be way more complicated than just picking out a nice dress.
You step forward to check out what Jessi's picked out, and damn—she really knows what she's doing. Every piece looks like it was chosen to tell a specific story about who you're supposed to be for this mission.
First up is this skin-tight dress that practically screams ‘honey trap.’ Jessi takes one look and tosses it aside with a muttered "too fucking obvious."
Then there's this whole secretary fantasy thing with a high-necked blouse and pencil skirt, but that gets vetoed too. ("Can't fight for shit in that.")
Then she hands you this black button-up that feels expensive as hell, paired with these tailored pants that feel way too nice to the touch. The fabric's got that perfect balance—soft enough to feel good but sturdy enough to take a beating if things go south.
When you slip into it, something shifts. The shirt fits in all the right places, making you feel d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶o̶u̶s̶ powerful. And the pants? They let you move like you might need to throw down at any second, which, considering it's MDF territory you're heading into, isn't exactly unlikely.
You step out to get Jessi's opinion.
And catch Jeon straight-up staring at your ass.
You’re not surprised.
When you meet his eyes, he looks away so fast it's actually kind of funny, pressing his lips together like he's trying not to smile. He looks like a kid who just got caught stealing cookies, and something about that expression makes you bite back a smile of your own.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," Jessi says, looking you over with that critical eye of hers. "You look like someone who could either make a deal or break some kneecaps. Perfect."
The outfit's actually making you feel kind of invincible. (The fact that it got Mr. Perfect Sniper all flustered doesn't hurt either.) You do a little turn, testing how it moves. Everything feels right—professional enough to be taken seriously, but with enough edge to remind people you're not someone to fuck with.
"Hold up," Jessi says suddenly, her eyes getting that dangerous glint that usually means trouble. "Got one more thing. Don't move."
She strides off into her weapons paradise, leaving you standing there wondering what else she could possibly have planned.
You definitely don't check if Jeon's still watching.
(Okay, that's a lie. You totally do.)
The button-up fits you like it was made for you—professional enough to command respect but with just enough something to make heads turn. You're fiddling with the collar when you notice it's buttoned kind of low. Like, maybe too low for a serious arms deal. But before you can decide whether to fix it, Jeon's suddenly right there in your space.
"Let me," he says, voice gone all low and rough (molten lava in your stomach)
His fingers brush against your skin as he does up that one button over your chest, and fuck—that tiny touch has your brain stuttering a bit.
Probably because your body remembers what those fingers can do.
When you look up at him (because of course he's using his height to loom over you like the smug bastard he is), his eyes are dark enough to drown in.
The little gleam swimming in them tells you he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you say, trying to sound annoyed even though you can feel yourself starting to smile.
"Immensely." He says; and his voice is pure sin wrapped in amusement.
He just keeps staring at you with this intensity that makes it hard to breathe, like he's thinking about all the ways he could mess up your perfectly put-together outfit.
Then Jessi bursts back in, completely ruining the moment.
"Found it!" She's waving around this black blazer like she just discovered buried treasure.
Jeon steps back, but not before giving you one last look that promises later. That little smirk is still playing on his lips as Jessi throws the blazer over your shoulders like she's putting the final touch on a masterpiece.
While Jessi goes over the tech specs of your gear, you sneak another look at Jeon. That heated playfulness from earlier is gone, replaced by that laser-focused look he gets when he's in Chief mode.
But there's still this... tension hanging in the air between you, like neither of you has quite forgotten what almost happened in that elevator.
Jessi then looks you both up and down with this satisfied smirk, like an artist admiring her masterpiece.
You have to admit, she knows what she's doing—the outfits are perfect for your cover, walking that line between dangerous and professional.
"Now for the fun part," she says, suddenly all business. "Let's get you two properly armed."
She leads you deeper into her weapons paradise, stopping at what looks like a plain wall. But when she presses her hand against this hidden scanner, the whole thing comes alive with soft beeps and whirs. A keypad appears, and Jessi punches in some code faster than you can follow.
The wall basically transforms, splitting open to reveal these massive hidden cabinets that look straight out of a spy movie.
Inside is enough firepower to start (or end) a small war, all arranged with the kind of precision that would make Jeon proud.
You've seen weapons before—kind of comes with the whole gang thing—but this is different.
Every gun, knife, and thing-you-don't-even-have-a-name-for gleams under the lights like they're on display in some very deadly museum.
"For when things get up close and personal," Jessi says, picking up this compact black handgun, "you'll want this beauty."
She hands you a Glock 26, and fuck—it's heavier than it looks.
"Small enough to hide, big enough to make someone regret their life choices."
Then she turns to Jeon with a different gun. "You get the Sig P226. More range, more punch. You can hang back and give her cover while she works her magic up close."
Jeon takes the gun and with a flick of his wrist, he expertly checks the chamber and magazine. You can't understand why your brain thinks that's hot, but the little nod he gives tells you Jessi picked right.
She keeps pulling out more gear—silencers that look way too professional, extra magazines, these holsters that probably cost more than your monthly pay. Then come the knives, small enough to hide pretty much anywhere but sharp enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
Jessi's whole vibe changes as she finishes arming you up. "These aren't just fancy accessories. Every time you pull one of these, you're making a choice that could end someone—maybe even yourself."
The weight of what she's saying hits different when you're actually holding deadly weapons. Her eyes lock onto yours, and you can tell she's trusting you not to fuck this up.
"One more thing," she says, pulling this fancy-looking gadget from a drawer. "Multi-tool kit. Has everything from basic lock picks to a mini torch. Trust me, you'll want options when shit hits the fan."
She hands it to Jeon, who clips it to his belt with practiced ease. (Of course he knows exactly what to do with it—guy probably has a whole collection of spy gear at home.)
Jessi takes a step back, giving you both this final once-over that feels kind of like a proud mom sending her kids off to prom.
(If prom involved infiltrating a rival gang's hideout.)
"You're good to go. Just remember—get in, do the job, get out. Don't try to be heroes."
Her words stick with you as you follow her out of the weapons room.
You walk through another set of doors to find a…
Holy shit. The garage is massive.
It's like walking into some billionaire's private car collection, except every vehicle probably has hidden gun compartments or something.
So Jessi's definitely got a thing for cars. There's everything from flashy Lamborghinis to those huge Bentleys that scream ‘I’m rich and probably dangerous.’ Motorcycles, sports cars, even some vehicles that look straight-up bulletproof—all lined up like some very deadly candy shop.
You're starting to think maybe the weapons aren't even Jessi's favorite toys.
Jessi leads you through her collection of cars like a proud mom showing off her kids' trophies. She stops at this black Lamborghini that looks expensive enough to make your eyes water. The lights bounce off its surface like it's made of pure money.
"This baby right here?" She runs her hand over the hood like she's petting a cat. "Zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. Makes people's heads turn so fast they get whiplash."
Then she drags you over to this Bentley that screams old money.
"And this beauty? When you need people to think you've got more dollars than sense." The inside looks like someone skinned a whole herd of very expensive cows and covered it in fancy wood.
"We're taking my bike."
Jeon's voice cuts through Jessi's car tour sharply.
He says it like it's already decided, which—knowing him—it probably is.
Jessi whips around to look at him, and fuck—her fiery aura actually flares up like she's about to burst into flames.
"Are you kidding me? Look at these beauties!" She waves at her collection. "They're begging for some action!"
But Jeon just shakes his head. "Bike's more maneuverable. Better control. Makes more sense for what we need."
"Ugh, fine." Jessi throws one last longing look at the Lamborghini like she's saying goodbye to a child. "But I swear to god, one of these days I'm getting your ass in one of these cars."
The little smirk Jeon gives her actually looks kind of fond. "Keep dreaming."
So you follow him to another part of the garage where his bike's parked.
It's this sleek, black monster of a machine that somehow manages to look both subtle and dangerous—kind of like its owner. The thing practically radiates power, but in that quiet way that says it doesn't need to show off.
Jessi watches Jeon check over the bike with this resigned look.
He runs his hands over the handlebars, checking everything with the kind of attention to detail you'd expect from someone who regularly makes impossible shots from a mile away.
"At least you take care of my presents," she mutters, but there's no real heat in it.
Jeon just nods, swinging his leg over the bike like he was born to ride it. When he turns to look at you, his face has gone all serious again.
"You good?"
You nod, feeling your heart start picking up speed.
This is really happening.
Jessi steps back, smiles, and then just waves you two off, not before adding something else.
"Watch your asses out there. And remember—you need backup, we're just a call away."
goal: 490 notes !!
if you’ve enjoyed this chapter please consider buying me a coffee!! ☕️ ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
"Waking up in his bed should feel like victory, but all you can think about are those pill bottles on his nightstand."
next | index
⚔ chapter details ⚔
word count: 9,5k
content: morning vulnerability and insomnia revelations, elevator sexual tension that goes nowhere, council meeting drama with heated arguments, mission prep with jessi's weapons expertise, undercover outfits that make jeon stare, AD's suspicious surveillance knowledge, and the calm before infiltrating mdf territory
☠ author's note ☠
As a European, I have absolutely no clue about guns so let's hope my research was decent and their weapons actually make sense ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) If any gun enthusiasts are reading this and I've somehow made a sniper rifle that shoots rainbows, just... pretend it's for the plot.
ANYWAY THE BIG DAY IS FINALLY HERE!!! Next chapter is THE MISSION and are we excited??? Because I AMMMMM!!! I've been building up to this for literal months and my chaotic little writer brain is VIBRATING with anticipation!
Jeon + motorbike = HOT AS HELL 🥵 Like sir, you're already dangerous enough, did you really need to add vehicular competence to your list of attractive qualities? RUDE.
Also Jessi is so mother mommy mama I love her! I mean, I say that about every single one of my characters, don't I? But what can I do—they're all so complex in my opinion! I have to really put myself in their position in every single scene and think genuinely about how they would react. Because one thing is how I WANT them to react, and another is how they would REALISTICALLY react, you know? Keeping those two aligned is harder than it looks, trust me!
Anyway ramble ramble ramble shut up Kiki we don't care—I KNOW BUT I'M THE AUTHOR so you're gonna read my rambling because I said so! I don't write 8k words per chapter to have my feelings dismissed! Y'all gonna put up with me whether you like it or not (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Thanks for reading as always, love y'all! Now buckle up because things are about to get SPICY!
⚔ socials ⚔
read on ao3
read on wattpad
tumblr/twitter: @jungkoode
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎.
The obnoxious blaring of Jeon's alarm tears through the quiet morning.
It's 6 AM—that weird time when everything feels kind of hazy and unreal, like the world hasn't quite decided if it's night or day yet.
His phone keeps buzzing against the nightstand, screen lighting up like a strobe light.
You're barely awake, caught in that fuzzy space between sleep and consciousness. Jeon's sprawled half on top of you, which should probably be uncomfortable but... isn't. His arm's thrown over your waist in this weirdly soft way that doesn't match his usual don't-touch-me vibe. You can feel his chest rising and falling against your back, his breath warm on your neck.
For a second, you think about waking him up. But he looks so p̶e̶a̶c̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ different when he's sleeping—none of that cold, distant Chief of Tactical stuff.
Just a guy who really needs some rest.
"Jeon," you try anyway, voice coming out all scratchy from sleep. "Your alarm."
He makes this grunt that might be words but definitely isn't, face pressed against your skin. Instead of getting up, he actually pulls you closer, burying his face in the pillow like if he ignores the alarm hard enough, it'll give up and go away.
"Jeon, come on. Get it." You nudge him with your elbow because that fucking alarm is driving you insane. It just keeps going and going, like some kind of electronic torture device.
He lets out this long-suffering groan that perfectly captures the eternal struggle between wanting to sleep and having actual responsibilities.
His hand flops around looking for his phone, movements all clumsy in that way people only get when they're not really awake yet. When he finally finds it, he misses the screen completely on his first try.
"Fuck off," he mumbles—definitely talking to the phone, not you. The woodsy scent of his skin mixed with mint from his breath fills your lungs.
After what feels like forever (but is probably like, ten seconds), blessed silence falls over the room.
Jeon just tosses his phone somewhere (hopefully not off the bed) and immediately curls back around you like some kind of clingy octopus. His body's radiating heat like a furnace, and he's definitely not planning on letting you go anytime soon.
His aura wraps around you like summer rain, all soft and warm, making your head spin in the best way.
(You're starting to think maybe he's not a morning person.)
"Five more minutes," he mumbles, voice all rough and sleepy like some kid who doesn't want to go to school.
You can't help but smirk.
Who would've thought the terrifying Chief of Tactical was such a baby in the morning?
"Five more minutes, and you'll be the one explaining to the Council why you're late." You poke his side. "Good luck with that."
"What council?" He sounds like he's halfway to dreamland already.
"Council of 9, dumbass. You know, that super important reunion about tonight's mission?"
His only response is this little grunt before his breathing starts evening out again.
Oh no. Not happening.
You kick him under the sheets—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to be annoying. He flinches and makes this annoyed clicking sound with his tongue.
Finally, with this dramatic sigh that you can feel rumble through his chest, he gives in. His body peels away from yours like it's physically painful for him to move.
"Fine, fine," he grumbles, surrendering to reality.
When he sits up, cold air rushes in where his body heat used to be. You both kind of... linger there on the edge of his bed.
You watch him rub his face, trying to wake up properly. It's kind of fascinating, seeing him switch from s̶o̶f̶t̶ sleepy Jungkook back to Jeon, the cold and distant Chief of Tactical.
Another yawn catches you as you sit up, letting the sheets pool around your waist. You blink, trying to clear the sleep from your eyes, when something on Jeon's bedside table catches your attention.
Oh.
There's a whole fucking pharmacy there.
Your eyes scan over the labels—hypnotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, sleeping pills. The kind of cocktail someone needs when sleep doesn't come naturally anymore.
It hits different now, remembering all those times you've seen him in the cafeteria at ass o'clock in the morning. Always with that black coffee, those dark circles under his eyes that you thought were just part of his whole intimidating Chief of Tactical thing.
(Turns out even the great Jeon Jungkook has trouble sleeping.)
You can't help but wonder what keeps him up at night. What kind of memories play on repeat in his head when everything goes quiet.
Sure, being a gang leader comes with its own baggage—the violence, the paranoia, always having to watch your back.
But something tells you there's more to it. Things that left marks deeper than the little scar on his cheek. The kind of stuff that makes someone stock up on enough sedatives to knock out a horse.
Your eyes fix on this one bottle of hypnotics that's already half empty. Something in your chest tightens at the sight, but you quickly squash that feeling down.
The last thing Jeon needs is your p̶i̶t̶y̶ concern.
You know how this works. Show any weakness in Kkangpae, and you might as well paint a target on your back. The gang's full of sharks, always circling, always waiting for someone to bleed in the water.
So you bite back all the questions building up in your throat. Push down that weird urge to reach out, to try and make it better somehow.
Whatever demons Jeon's fighting, they're his to deal with.
You've got your own role to play here, and playing therapist isn't it. Some things just stay broken, and some nights just stay sleepless.
And some things are not yours to fix, even if some part of you wants to.
"You ready?" Jeon asks, already heading for the door without waiting to hear if you actually are.
You follow him out with a quiet sigh, but your mind's still stuck on all those pill bottles.
On what they might mean.
On all the nights he probably spends staring at his ceiling, fighting whatever demons keep him up.
The common areas in his wing of the Assassination Division are empty this early.
Your footsteps echo through the halls as you make your way to the elevator, where Jeon leans against the wall like he's got all day. He crosses his arms over his chest, getting lost in whatever thoughts are running through that complicated head of his.
When he doesn't move to actually do anything, you have to remind him that not everyone has his fancy Chief clearance level.
"You gonna scan your card or what?" You wave vaguely at the scanner. "You know mine won't work up here."
The corner of his mouth twitches up—just barely—like he's annoyed at himself for forgetting.
He pulls out his access card without a word and taps it against the scanner. The light blinks green, and the elevator starts moving.
While you're waiting, your brain decides to dig up this random memory from weeks ago.
That night Jeon showed up at your door out of nowhere, demanding his jacket back. You hadn't thought about it then, but now...
"Hey," you turn to look at him, "how did you get on my floor that night? To get your jacket back?" The question hits you out of nowhere. "Our cards don't work on each other's floors."
His eyes go wide for a split second—clearly not expecting that question. He just stares at you for a moment, lips parted like he's trying to figure out what to say. Then his gaze darts away and he rubs the back of his neck, which is basically a flashing neon sign that says busted.
(This should be interesting.)
"I, uh..." Jeon starts, looking at you then quickly away. He's actually struggling for words, which is new.
His fingers tap against his thigh in this nervous rhythm you've never seen before. Just when you think he's going to leave you hanging, he lets out this tiny sigh, shoulders dropping just a bit.
"I asked AD for temporary access."
Wait. What?
"And he... just gave it to you? Just like that?"
You narrow your eyes because something's not adding up here.
You've seen how these two interact—or don't interact, more like it. The way Jeon basically disappears whenever AD shows up, and how AD looks at him like he's personally offended his entire bloodline.
Sure, AD glares at everyone (especially J-Hope), but with Jeon? That's a whole different level of hate.
(Not that it's any of your business what's going on there.)
"Told him I needed my jacket back."
The elevator keeps moving down, and the silence between you gets kind of heavy. Something about how weirdly hesitant Jeon's being makes your curiosity spike. Part of you knows you should probably drop it, but...
"So, your card worked the whole night?" You try to sound casual about it, but there's definitely some skepticism bleeding through.
"Yeah." He finally meets your eyes again. "Clearance passes usually last for 24 hours."
You nod slowly, filing that information away.
"But didn't AD find it weird? The time stamp would show you came in at 3 AM and didn't leave until..." You trail off, remembering exactly why he stayed so long.
Jeon's eyes snap to yours, and something flashes across his face too quick to read before he looks away. The crease between his brows gets deeper as the silence stretches out.
"I don't think he actually checks the access logs that closely," he says finally. "At least he hasn't mentioned anything about the, uh, timeframe."
You think about that for a second. It seems weird that AD, of all people, wouldn't keep tabs on security access. But maybe Jeon's right—maybe AD doesn't actually monitor that stuff.
Then you remember something.
That day after the pool training, you saw AD in the elevator with Kazuha. He'd told you both to "be careful."
Was that his cryptic way of saying he knew exactly what went down that night?
The elevator dings, cutting through your thoughts.
Jeon pushes off the wall, giving you this little nod to go in first. You step inside, and the last thing you see is his back and this lazy wave goodbye before the doors slide shut.
Anyway, something tells you AD knows way more than he lets on.
You’d never been in The Council room until now.
And it’s… Well, it’s weird. Tense today.
Everyone's taking their usual spots around this stupidly long table, and RM's at the head of it like always, looking every bit the Supreme Commander he is.
"Thanks for coming, everyone." His voice carries that authority that makes even the most stubborn chiefs shut up and listen.
Well, almost everyone.
"I don't even see why I have to be here when you're all so set on leaving me out of it." V's practically radiating annoyance.
Moon gives him that patient look he reserves for when someone's being difficult. "This mission affects the entire gang. That's why we need the whole Council present."
"But I'm not even part of it." V throws his feet up on the table like the dramatic bitch he is, crossing his arms. "So why do I have to sit through all this bullshit?"
"You listen because shared knowledge makes us stronger." RM's eyes sweep around the table, meeting everyone's gaze—even yours. "Unity isn't just about standing together. It's about thinking as one."
V rolls his eyes so hard you're surprised they don't get stuck. "Yeah, yeah, I get the whole 'one gang' thing. But do I really need every fucking detail?"
"Details matter." Jeon's voice cuts through the tension. "MDF isn't some amateur operation. One tiny blind spot and we're fucked."
"It's a goddamn snake pit we're walking into." J-Hope waves his hands around like he's trying to grab invisible dangers out of the air. "We all need to know what kind of poison we might be dealing with."
JM leans forward, all serious despite his usually gentle demeanor. "That hideout's a maze. You two need more than just a way in—you need a solid plan to get the fuck out of there."
"Exactly." RM's sighs. "This intel could change everything. We do this right, we take out one of their major operations."
Flower, who's been watching everything with that calculating look of hers, finally speaks up. "And V, whether you like it or not, this meeting is what keeps your men at the docks from getting caught with their pants down while we're focused on this mission."
V scoffs, but you can see him actually considering her words.
Jessi stops lounging in her chair like this is some kind of casual meetup.
"Alright, cut the bullshit. What's the actual plan here, RM?" She leans forward, all business now. "And it better be good."
The room goes quiet—that heavy kind of quiet that makes your skin prickle.
RM stands up, and you can feel the weight of what's coming.
This isn't just another mission briefing. This is you and Jeon walking straight into MDF territory.
No pressure.
RM clears his throat, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him.
"Here's how it's going to work," he starts, voice authoritative. "Jeon and Y/N are going undercover. We've got IDs that'll get them through MDF's front door."
The word 'undercover' makes your stomach do this weird flip thing. Jeon shifts slightly beside you, his presence weirdly reassuring for someone who's usually about as comforting as a loaded gun.
"They'll play it as traders," RM continues, spreading out this map that looks like someone went crazy with a red marker. "Fresh faces trying to make it big enough to catch MDF's attention."
Jeon nods, watching AD's finger trace some path on the map. "What about their security? Cameras?"
"System loops every three hours," AD says, sounding bored but you know that's just his thing. "We're setting up a distraction. At 23:00, when the loop starts, they'll get a power surge. Six minutes of blind spots."
"Six minutes?" Jessi raises an eyebrow. "That's cutting it real fucking close."
"We can handle it." Jeon sounds so sure it actually makes you believe him. "Had worse timeframes before."
"That's your window to find the server room and plant the bug." RM points to some spot deep in what looks like a maze. "AD will be in your ear the whole time."
"And when shit inevitably goes sideways?" V asks, and despite how pissy he's been about being left out, you can hear actual braincells there.
"You'll be armed," RM says simply. "But this is about getting in and out quiet. No firefights."
"Right, because stealth missions should totally go to Mr. Shoot-Everything-From-A-Mile-Away instead of, oh, I don't know, the actual Chief of Stealth?" V's voice drips sarcasm.
"V." JM's cuts in. "Enough."
V grunts but actually shuts up, which is kind of impressive. You've never seen anyone else get him to back down that easily.
Flower leans forward, and the room suddenly feels a bit colder. The map spread out on the table looks like some kind of twisted treasure map, except instead of X marking the spot, there's about fifty different ways this whole thing could go wrong.
"Alright, here's the deal," she says, getting straight to the point like always. "You need to be interesting enough to catch their attention, but not so interesting they get suspicious. Think you can handle that?"
She looks right at you, and you can feel the weight of what she's asking.
"Y/N, you're our front person here. While everyone's busy watching you sweet-talk them about money and deals, Jeon's gonna be doing the actual work." Her lips curve into this knowing smile. "Keep them focused on the profit. Rich assholes love talking about money."
Great. No pressure or anything. Just gotta be charming enough to distract an entire criminal organization while your... whatever Jeon is sneaks around their base. Easy peasy.
Flower turns to Jeon next, and her expression goes all business.
"You're playing backup dancer on this one. Stay in the background, watch everything, and when AD hits them with that power surge? That's your window. Get the bug planted without anyone noticing."
The room goes quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Everyone's thinking the same thing—one tiny mistake and this whole plan goes up in smoke.
"Remember," Flower says, voice serious, "this isn't about showing off. It's about getting in, getting it done, and getting out without anyone realizing what happened."
"And more importantly," RM cuts in, giving you and Jeon a look, "don't fucking die. The intel's not worth either of you."
"What about communication?" you ask, because there's one pretty big hole in this plan. "We can't exactly text each other in there."
"Subvocals," AD doesn't look up from his laptop, but his voice carries that bored confidence that means he knows exactly what he's talking about. "Basically fancy mics that pick up whispers. We'll hear everything, but you two can talk without anyone else noticing. Plus, we'll feed you intel as we get it. Just keep it quiet and you'll be fine."
V lets out this little laugh, eyes twinkling like he knows something no one else does. "Sure putting a lot of faith in luck here, aren't we?"
"Luck's got nothing to do with it." RM's interjects. "This is about being prepared, being skilled, and getting shit done. Don't forget who we are. What Kkangpae stands for."
The room goes quiet again. Then, he continues speaking:
"Once you get that bug planted and grab whatever intel you can, you get out. We're not starting a war. Not yet."
Then Jeon turns to look at you, all Chief-of-Tactical mode.
Stormy.
"We split up as soon as we're inside," he says, voice gone all hard and professional. "Cover more ground, draw less attention."
"Yeah, no." You don't even hesitate to shut that down. The plan's crystal clear in your head. "We stick together, follow the script. Only split when the power goes out. That's the signal."
He scoffs—actually scoffs—and crosses his arms. "You really think playing follow-the-leader's gonna work that long? We're wasting time the second we walk in. Better to improvise early."
"We're not there to improvise," you snap back, getting annoyed now. The air's starting to feel like a brewing thunderstorm. "We have a plan for a fucking reason, Jeon. The power surge is our cover. Until then, you're stuck with me."
His jaw does that tightening thing it does when someone challenges him.
Chief or not, you're not backing down on this.
"A package deal that screams 'we're obviously here to fuck shit up'." He's practically radiating frustration. "Splitting up makes more sense. It's tactical."
"It's reckless," you cut in, meeting his intensity head-on. "Since when do we pick 'making sense' over actually being smart about this? We split up before the power cut, and we're basically painting targets on our backs."
You can feel everyone in the room watching this verbal sparring match in slight disbelief.
"You're not fucking listening—" Jeon leans into your space.
"Because what you're saying is bullshit," you snap back, refusing to be intimidated even though he's practically looming over you. "We go in toge—"
"Too risky. We split up, maximize our—"
"—chances of getting our asses caught!" You talk right over him, blood rushing hot in your veins. "We stick to the fucking pla—"
"Which is basically asking to get pinched if we're joined at the hip," he fires back, and god, his voice shouldn't sound that hot when he's being this infuriating.
"Oh, and you think going rogue is the ans—"
"It's called thinking on your feet, sunshine. Maybe try it some—"
"Save the condescending shit," you cut in, sharp enough to draw blood. "We're not there to show—"
"—that we're fucking amateurs!" He's almost growling now, and the sound does things to you that you really don't want to examine.
Your voices keep rising, cutting each other off in this heated back-and-forth that's starting to feel less like an argument and more like foreplay.
"Enough." RM's voice drops like a bucket of cold water.
You and Jeon both shut up instantly, turning to face him like scolded kids.
The whole room goes dead quiet, everyone waiting to see how the Supreme Commander's going to handle this.
"Y/N's right," RM cuts in, voice carrying that don't-fuck-with-me tone whilst his eyes bounce between you and Jeon as he speaks. "We made this plan accounting for every possible fuck-up. You go in together, no improvising. The power surge is your cue. Until then, you're just a couple of traders looking to make a deal. We can't afford any slip-ups."
The way he says it leaves no room for argument. You can see Jeon's shoulders drop just a tiny bit, like he's accepting defeat but doesn't want to show it.
"Got it," you nod, trying to look all professional and shit.
Like you didn't just get into a verbal sparring match with your Chief in front of the whole Council.
Jeon takes a second, then gives this little nod that looks like it physically pains him.
"Understood," he echoes, finally looking at you.
And so there’s this weird moment where you're both just... staring at each other; as if calling a truce without actually saying anything.
As RM dismisses everyone, you feel that rush of adrenaline from arguing start to fade. Your shoulders relax, and you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding.
Right. This whole mission is riding on you and Jeon not fucking it up by going off-script.
You can feel Jeon next to you, his whole vibe changing. He's still got that unreadable expression, but he doesn't look ready to fight anymore.
Before you can make your grand exit, Jessi's voice cuts through the room, making both of you plant your feet on the ground.
"Don't worry, you two. All that sexual tension will make for some hot angry fucking after the mission." She winks at you both like she just said something clever instead of mortifying.
"That's not—we're not—" You start sputtering like an idiot, feeling your face go red.
"Ridiculous," Jeon snaps at the same time, scowling like Jessi just insulted his sniper skills or something.
Jessi just smirks, looking way too pleased with herself. "Whatever you say, lovebirds. Just come by my division after lunch. Gotta get you kitted out for this little adventure."
You open your mouth to tell her exactly where she can shove her assumptions, but she keeps talking.
"AD's gonna set up your access, so don't be late!" And with that, she struts out of the room like she owns the place.
You take a deep breath, trying to get your shit together.
Without a word, you and Jeon turn to leave.
There's still a ton of prep to do for this mission, and you'd rather face MDF unarmed than spend another second in this room with everyone's eyes on you.
The elevator feels way too empty when it’s only you and Jeon in it.
Trapped in a metal box after whatever that disaster of a Council meeting was.
The silence feels heavy, like all that heated arguing is still buzzing in the air.
You stand there trying to look casual, watching the floor numbers tick down like they're the most interesting thing you've ever seen.
But you can't help noticing how Jeon's jaw is doing that clenching thing again, his lips pressed together so tight they're practically disappearing. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and his whole body's radiating tension like a coiled spring.
The silence is driving you insane.
So of course, before your brain can stop your mouth, you blurt out: "Just so we're clear, we are not having hot angry sex after this mission."
Great going girl. 10/10.
Jeon's head snaps toward you so fast you're worried he might get whiplash. One eyebrow shoots up in surprise, but then—oh—his expression shifts into that infuriating smirk.
"Aw, you sound disappointed," he says, voice dropping into that low, teasing register that definitely doesn't make your stomach flip.
You scoff, rolling your eyes as dramatically as possible. "Yeah, like I was last night."
"Excuse me?" The look of pure indignation on his face is actually priceless. "Pretty sure I had you begging."
"Begging?" You let out a laugh. "More like pointing out how fucking slow you were being."
You're going for casual disinterest, but the memories from last night keep trying to make your face heat up.
He actually laughs at that—this sharp, sudden sound that bounces off the elevator walls.
"Oh, is that what we're calling it now? Because I remember it more like... payback. For all that teasing." His eyes drop to your ass for a second. "Bending over until I couldn't take it anymore..."
You cross your arms, leaning back against the wall like this conversation isn't affecting you at all.
"That wasn't teasing. That was strategic mission preparation." You can't help the sly smile that creeps onto your face. "Besides, you're the one who changed the sleeping arrangement to fucking."
"A strategic move, huh?" His mouth does that little twitch that means he's trying not to smile. "Well, it fucking worked."
"Yeah, you broke so easily." You roll your eyes, but you can feel yourself starting to smile too. "Just for sex"
"Pretty damn good sex, if I might add." He says it like he's stating the weather, but that smirk is getting bigger.
Before you can even process what's happening, his hand shoots out to the elevator panel. The emergency stop button makes this loud clicking sound, and the whole thing jerks to a halt with this deep rumble that you feel in your bones.
Suddenly the space feels way too small, and all you can hear is your own breathing getting heavier.
Yeah. Yeah, he’s stopped the fucking elevator.
"What the actual fuck, Jeon?" You try to sound annoyed, but the words get stuck in your throat because he's moving into your space like he owns it, like he has every right to be this close.
Then you're trapped between his arms and the cold elevator wall, and fuck—the way he's looking at you makes you feel naked already.
Your heart's going crazy in your chest, completely betraying how irritated you're pretending to be. Heat starts pooling between your legs, and it's honestly embarrassing how quickly your body responds to him.
"We can't—" Your voice comes out all breathy and pathetic. "We can't do this here."
The smile he gives you is pure sin as he leans in closer, close enough that you can feel his breath on your skin, static wrapping around you, making it hard to think straight.
"Why not?"
"Because we're in a fucking elevator—"
"No cameras." He cuts you off like he's been waiting for this excuse.
You try to swallow but your throat's gone dry. Your sling feels itchy against your skin, probably because your whole body's remembering what happened last night.
"People are gonna notice if the elevator's stuck—"
"Maintenance issue." He says it so fast you know he's thought about this before.
"Jeon—" You start to argue, but then his eyes drop to your mouth and your brain just... stops working.
You know you should push him away. That's what any sane person would do. But there's something about Jeon that makes your brain stop working right—like a magnet pulling you in no matter how hard you try to resist. Every cell in your body is screaming at you to just grab him and kiss him already.
Right when you're about to say fuck it and give in, he pulls back.
And the look in his eyes? Pure evil, like he knows exactly what he's doing to you.
"Sunshine," he practically purrs, voice gone all low and rough in a way that makes heat pool in your stomach, "you're too eager."
The elevator dings, saving you from doing something stupid.
He steps out onto his floor without another word, that infuriating smirk still plastered on his face like he just won something.
You slump against the wall the second the doors close, letting out this huge breath you didn't even realize you were holding
As the elevator keeps moving, the whole thing feels kind of surreal—like maybe you imagined him pressing you up against the wall and looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive.
But the way your skin's still tingling tells you it definitely happened.
When the doors open on your floor, it's like stepping back into the real world.
One where you need to figure out what the hell to tell Yunjin about where you've been all night. She's way too perceptive for her own good, and she definitely noticed you didn't come to your room to sleep.
You walk to your room trying to come up with something believable.
Maybe you were up all night studying mission plans? Or got restless and went wandering around the common areas?
Your brain's still kind of fuzzy from having Jeon all up in your space, which isn't helping with the whole creative lying thing.
But when you push open your door, Yunjin spins around like she's been caught doing something wrong. Her eyes are all wide and guilty, and before you can even open your mouth to make up some excuse about where you've been, she starts talking.
"Okay, before you give me shit for not sleeping here last night—" The words come tumbling out of her like she can't get them out fast enough. "You won't believe what happened. I was just gonna have a few drinks with V, you know, just to chill..."
Well. You surely didn't expect that.
You stand there trying to process the flood of information Yunjin's dumping on you. She's so caught up in her story she doesn't even notice your brain short-circuiting.
"And I know we said to stay away from V's whole... thing, but fuck—" She's practically vibrating with excitement. "We've been dancing around each other for weeks, and last night was just—"
"Yunjin, hold up." You raise a hand to stop her word-vomit. "Are you telling me you spent the night with V? Like, you and V actually—"
You don't finish the sentence because honestly, you don't need to. The implication is heavy enough to sink a ship.
She bites her lip and nods, looking somewhere between guilty and smug.
"Yeah, we fucked..." Her voice trails off before picking right back up. "And let me tell you, it was good. Like, he's not even into all that scary shit everyone thinks he is? But his chaotic energy definitely carries over to bed, god, if you only knew—"
You can't help the snort spreading across your face.
Here you were worrying about how to explain your own night away, and Yunjin's gone and done the exact same thing.
There's something kind of poetic about both of you getting tangled up with people you definitely shouldn't be touching.
A laugh bubbles up in your throat. "Okay, spare me the details. But I'm glad you had fun with your psychopath."
"It was actually really nice?" She's got this dreamy look that would be cute if she wasn't talking about the gang's resident knife enthusiast. "I know we said getting involved with him was a bad idea, but..."
She shrugs, looking almost shy.
"Sometimes you can't help who you want to climb like a tree."
You nod because fuck—isn't that the truth? Your body's still kind of sore from climbing your own dangerous tree last night.
Quick thinking has you saying, "I had an early Council meeting about the mission."
It's not exactly a lie. You did have a meeting. The fact that you came straight from Jeon's bed to it is just... details.
Yunjin seems to buy it, but then her eyes narrow and this little smirk appears on her face.
"Speaking of details... that shirt looks a bit big on you." She eyes the obviously oversized fabric. "Almost like it belongs to someone else. Someone tall, maybe? Tattooed?"
Heat creeps up your neck as you tug at the shirt that definitely belongs to Jeon.
"It's just comfortable," you mutter, but even you don't believe that weak excuse.
"Sure it is." Yunjin's laugh is rather a sneer. "Tell Jeon I said hi."
She throws you a wink and you roll your eyes, but you can't quite fight the smile tugging at your lips.
At least you're not the only one fucking a chief.
The scanner actually flashes green when you swipe your card, which is weird.
Usually you only get access to the Seduction floor and common areas, but apparently Jessi wasn't kidding about AD setting up clearance to her realm for you.
You hit the button for the 9th floor and watch the numbers tick up.
The doors slide open to a completely different vibe from what you're used to.
Gone is all that minimalist tech stuff from AD's floor or the sterile efficiency of Assassination.
The Weapons Division looks exactly like what it is—a place that deals in death. The lights are dim, pipes running everywhere like exposed veins, and the floor's just straight-up concrete. No fancy finishes here.
You've maybe been here like, three times? And every visit feels like stepping into some alternate universe inside Kkangpae's castle. The contrast between this and your division's sleek aesthetic is wild.
"Well, well, look who we have here!"
The voice booms through the hallway, making you jump.
You turn to find this huge guy with a green mullet heading your way, covered in neck tattoos that probably tell some interesting stories. You're pretty sure his name is Jae? He's Jessi's second-in-command, but you've barely exchanged two words with him before.
Not that you'd know it from how he grins at you like you're old friends.
"Jessi's waiting on you," he says, slapping your back hard enough to make you stumble forward. (What is it with these Weapons Division people and casual violence?) "Come on, can't keep the boss lady hanging."
You follow Mullet Man through these massive double doors and holy shit—the weapons depot is huge. The ceiling's so high it's got actual walkways crisscrossing it, leading to what looks like storage units. Every table is packed with enough firepower to start a small war: rifles, handguns, knives, stuff you don't even have names for.
Jessi's off to one side, checking out this fancy-looking automatic rifle like she's shopping for groceries. Her fiery aura fills the space with heating energy.
When she spots you, those red lips curl into this knowing smirk that makes you kind of nervous.
"Right on time," she says, putting down the gun like it's no big deal. "Now we just gotta wait for lover boy to complete the set."
Jae throws up this exaggerated salute and swaggers off, leaving you perched on a nearby stool while Jessi's aura dances around like actual flames.
Jessi leans back against one of the weapon-covered tables, arms crossed and this knowing look in her eyes that makes you kind of nervous.
"That was quite the show this morning. Never seen Jeon actually engage like that before."
"What do you mean?" You frown, thinking about how often Jeon and V are at each other's throats. "He fights with V all the time."
"Nah, that's different." She shakes her head, red hair swaying. "When he fights with V, it's all explosions and death threats. Pure chaos."
Her hands make this exaggerated boom motion.
"But this morning? That was like... verbal foreplay. He was actually in there with you, giving as good as he got."
You think about that for a second.
Now that she mentions it, Jeon does usually just... shut down when other people try to argue with him. Goes all cold and distant, like he can't be bothered to even engage.
But this morning he was right there with you, matching your energy blow for blow.
"Huh." The realization hits you harder than it probably should. "He's not usually much for back-and-forth, is he?"
"That's what I'm saying!" Jessi looks way too pleased with herself. "That emotionally constipated asshole usually keeps everyone at a distance. But you?" She wiggles her eyebrows in this ridiculous way. "Something's different..."
Your face heats up because fuck—she's not wrong. But you are absolutely not having this conversation right now.
"So anyway," you say quickly, probably not as smooth as you think, "what kind of gear are we talking about here?"
Jessi's smirk says she knows exactly what you're doing, but she lets it slide.
Instead, she turns to this impressive spread of weapons and gadgets laid out on the table. Some of them look deadly enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
"Only the best for our star infiltration team," she says, sounding like a proud mom showing off her kid's artwork. "Let's talk comm units first..."
Then, you catch it.
That woodsy, pine scent that clings to him like his leather jacket.
You don’t even need to turn around to know it’s him.
Jeon appears in the doorway looking unfairly good in his all-black everything, like some kind of high-fashion assassin.
When his eyes find you and Jessi, one eyebrow goes up.
"Starting without me?" His voice is dry as desert.
"Look who finally decided to show up." Jessi's teasing, but then her expression turns into something more devious. "I was just telling your partner here how I've never seen you get so fired up before. Something about her really pushes your buttons, huh?"
You kind of want to melt into the concrete floor. Leave it to Jessi to stir shit up just because she can.
But Jeon just shrugs, cool as ever.
"Just discussing strategy." His voice gives absolutely nothing away, which is honestly impressive considering how heated he got earlier.
Jessi looks kind of disappointed that she couldn't get a reaction out of him. Classic Jeon, refusing to take the bait. She lets out this dramatic sigh and turns back to all the gear spread out on the table.
"Well, now that his highness has graced us with his presence," she says, standing up with that natural grace she has, "let's get you both looking the part. Can't have you walking into MDF territory looking like gang members, can we?"
You follow her through the rows of weapons and equipment. It's kind of amazing how she knows exactly where everything is in this massive space. Her energy is contagious—she's clearly in her element here, surrounded by all these tools of destruction.
The weapons depot starts feeling less like an armory and more like some underground fashion studio as you walk deeper in.
Because of course, procurement doesn’t only mean weapons and human resource.
Apparently, it also means Jessi has a pass to turn a room full of deadly weapons into her personal styling space.
There's this sectioned-off area that looks like a makeshift dressing room, complete with different fabrics hanging everywhere.
"Over here, Jeon." Jessi's voice has that tone that means she's already planning something. She looks him up and down like she's mentally redesigning his whole outfit.
Jeon follows her, trying to look like he's not into it, but you can see the interest in his eyes. You hang back a bit, kind of enjoying watching him get the Jessi treatment.
Jessi starts pulling stuff from these racks that look like someone couldn't decide if they were making tactical gear or runway fashion. Every piece somehow manages to be both bulletproof and stupidly stylish.
First up for Jeon: this black suit that catches the light in a way that's definitely not standard issue.
"Put this on," she tells him, shoving the suit in his hands. "It's reinforced—won't stop a bullet, but a knife won't get through."
He disappears behind this makeshift changing screen, and you're definitely not counting the seconds until he comes back out.
When he does, though... fuck.
The suit fits him like it was painted on, showing off all those muscles you're way too familiar with now. The jacket makes his shoulders look even broader, and the pants are doing criminal things to his legs. He looks like he walked straight out of some high-end assassin movie.
"You could probably kill someone just by walking into a room looking like that," you say before you can stop yourself. Your voice definitely doesn't sound as casual as you meant it to.
The smug bastard actually smirks at that. "Wouldn't be the first time."
But Jessi's not having it. She shakes her head, looking at him like an artist who's not quite happy with their work.
"Too polished. We need dangerous, not James Bond. Try this instead."
She pulls out this whole new look: leather jacket that probably costs more than anything you own (which is not much), deep maroon shirt that's somehow both simple and expensive-looking, and black jeans that you just know are going to be trouble.
When he steps out this time, his whole aura shifts.
The leather sits on his shoulders like it belongs there, and that hint of maroon under all the black just... works.
He looks like someone who could sweet-talk his way into a deal and then burn the whole place down if it goes wrong.
"Now that's more like it," Jessi says, looking satisfied. "Says 'I do business, but I also do crime' in all the right ways."
You find yourself nodding along because damn.
He looks exactly like what a high-level arms dealer should look—dangerous enough to take seriously, stylish enough to have clearly made money doing it.
Jeon catches you staring and raises an eyebrow, like he's asking what you think. You give him a small nod because what else can you do? He looks f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ good.
Really good.
Jessi rummages through another rack and pulls out this long-sleeved black shirt.
"Here, put this under the jacket. The fabric's breathable but bulletproof-adjacent. Won't stop a direct hit, but it'll give you a fighting chance."
Jeon shrugs off the leather jacket and slips the shirt on. It's thin but looks sturdy—perfect for someone who might need to move fast or fight their way out of trouble.
Jessi finally steps back, eyeing him like she's inspecting a weapon.
"Not bad. Looks casual enough that no one'll think twice, but you can actually move in it." She hands him back the leather jacket. "Try it all together."
You try to look professional while he puts the jacket back on over the maroon shirt and black base layer, but fuck—the whole ensemble is perfect.
The layers somehow make him look even more dangerous, like he could either charm you or kill you and you wouldn't know which until it was too late.
While Jeon and Jessi get into some deep discussion about fabric weights and mobility ranges, you're kind of amazed at how much thought goes into this.
It's not just picking out nice clothes—every piece has to tell the right story without saying a word.
One wrong detail and the whole cover's blown.
The attention to detail is actually impressive. Jessi knows exactly how to make someone look dangerous but approachable, wealthy but not flashy.
In this world, the wrong outfit can get you killed as quick as the wrong word.
You watch them fine-tune every detail, fascinated by how each adjustment shapes the character Jeon's going to play. And then… The final touch.This plain black watch that probably has fifteen different ways to kill someone. Jeon checks it over with that focused look he gets when he's handling weapons.
"Nice," is all he says, strapping it on.
Standing there in his perfectly crafted outfit, Jeon looks like he was born to play this role. Then Jessi turns to you with this wicked gleam in her eyes that makes your stomach drop.
"Your turn, beautiful," she says, gesturing at another rack of clothes. "Let's make you look expensive but deadly."
Something tells you this is going to be way more complicated than just picking out a nice dress.
You step forward to check out what Jessi's picked out, and damn—she really knows what she's doing. Every piece looks like it was chosen to tell a specific story about who you're supposed to be for this mission.
First up is this skin-tight dress that practically screams ‘honey trap.’ Jessi takes one look and tosses it aside with a muttered "too fucking obvious."
Then there's this whole secretary fantasy thing with a high-necked blouse and pencil skirt, but that gets vetoed too. ("Can't fight for shit in that.")
Then she hands you this black button-up that feels expensive as hell, paired with these tailored pants that feel way too nice to the touch. The fabric's got that perfect balance—soft enough to feel good but sturdy enough to take a beating if things go south.
When you slip into it, something shifts. The shirt fits in all the right places, making you feel d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶o̶u̶s̶ powerful. And the pants? They let you move like you might need to throw down at any second, which, considering it's MDF territory you're heading into, isn't exactly unlikely.
You step out to get Jessi's opinion.
And catch Jeon straight-up staring at your ass.
You’re not surprised.
When you meet his eyes, he looks away so fast it's actually kind of funny, pressing his lips together like he's trying not to smile. He looks like a kid who just got caught stealing cookies, and something about that expression makes you bite back a smile of your own.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," Jessi says, looking you over with that critical eye of hers. "You look like someone who could either make a deal or break some kneecaps. Perfect."
The outfit's actually making you feel kind of invincible. (The fact that it got Mr. Perfect Sniper all flustered doesn't hurt either.) You do a little turn, testing how it moves. Everything feels right—professional enough to be taken seriously, but with enough edge to remind people you're not someone to fuck with.
"Hold up," Jessi says suddenly, her eyes getting that dangerous glint that usually means trouble. "Got one more thing. Don't move."
She strides off into her weapons paradise, leaving you standing there wondering what else she could possibly have planned.
You definitely don't check if Jeon's still watching.
(Okay, that's a lie. You totally do.)
The button-up fits you like it was made for you—professional enough to command respect but with just enough something to make heads turn. You're fiddling with the collar when you notice it's buttoned kind of low. Like, maybe too low for a serious arms deal. But before you can decide whether to fix it, Jeon's suddenly right there in your space.
"Let me," he says, voice gone all low and rough (molten lava in your stomach)
His fingers brush against your skin as he does up that one button over your chest, and fuck—that tiny touch has your brain stuttering a bit.
Probably because your body remembers what those fingers can do.
When you look up at him (because of course he's using his height to loom over you like the smug bastard he is), his eyes are dark enough to drown in.
The little gleam swimming in them tells you he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you say, trying to sound annoyed even though you can feel yourself starting to smile.
"Immensely." He says; and his voice is pure sin wrapped in amusement.
He just keeps staring at you with this intensity that makes it hard to breathe, like he's thinking about all the ways he could mess up your perfectly put-together outfit.
Then Jessi bursts back in, completely ruining the moment.
"Found it!" She's waving around this black blazer like she just discovered buried treasure.
Jeon steps back, but not before giving you one last look that promises later. That little smirk is still playing on his lips as Jessi throws the blazer over your shoulders like she's putting the final touch on a masterpiece.
While Jessi goes over the tech specs of your gear, you sneak another look at Jeon. That heated playfulness from earlier is gone, replaced by that laser-focused look he gets when he's in Chief mode.
But there's still this... tension hanging in the air between you, like neither of you has quite forgotten what almost happened in that elevator.
Jessi then looks you both up and down with this satisfied smirk, like an artist admiring her masterpiece.
You have to admit, she knows what she's doing—the outfits are perfect for your cover, walking that line between dangerous and professional.
"Now for the fun part," she says, suddenly all business. "Let's get you two properly armed."
She leads you deeper into her weapons paradise, stopping at what looks like a plain wall. But when she presses her hand against this hidden scanner, the whole thing comes alive with soft beeps and whirs. A keypad appears, and Jessi punches in some code faster than you can follow.
The wall basically transforms, splitting open to reveal these massive hidden cabinets that look straight out of a spy movie.
Inside is enough firepower to start (or end) a small war, all arranged with the kind of precision that would make Jeon proud.
You've seen weapons before—kind of comes with the whole gang thing—but this is different.
Every gun, knife, and thing-you-don't-even-have-a-name-for gleams under the lights like they're on display in some very deadly museum.
"For when things get up close and personal," Jessi says, picking up this compact black handgun, "you'll want this beauty."
She hands you a Glock 26, and fuck—it's heavier than it looks.
"Small enough to hide, big enough to make someone regret their life choices."
Then she turns to Jeon with a different gun. "You get the Sig P226. More range, more punch. You can hang back and give her cover while she works her magic up close."
Jeon takes the gun and with a flick of his wrist, he expertly checks the chamber and magazine. You can't understand why your brain thinks that's hot, but the little nod he gives tells you Jessi picked right.
She keeps pulling out more gear—silencers that look way too professional, extra magazines, these holsters that probably cost more than your monthly pay. Then come the knives, small enough to hide pretty much anywhere but sharp enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
Jessi's whole vibe changes as she finishes arming you up. "These aren't just fancy accessories. Every time you pull one of these, you're making a choice that could end someone—maybe even yourself."
The weight of what she's saying hits different when you're actually holding deadly weapons. Her eyes lock onto yours, and you can tell she's trusting you not to fuck this up.
"One more thing," she says, pulling this fancy-looking gadget from a drawer. "Multi-tool kit. Has everything from basic lock picks to a mini torch. Trust me, you'll want options when shit hits the fan."
She hands it to Jeon, who clips it to his belt with practiced ease. (Of course he knows exactly what to do with it—guy probably has a whole collection of spy gear at home.)
Jessi takes a step back, giving you both this final once-over that feels kind of like a proud mom sending her kids off to prom.
(If prom involved infiltrating a rival gang's hideout.)
"You're good to go. Just remember—get in, do the job, get out. Don't try to be heroes."
Her words stick with you as you follow her out of the weapons room.
You walk through another set of doors to find a…
Holy shit. The garage is massive.
It's like walking into some billionaire's private car collection, except every vehicle probably has hidden gun compartments or something.
So Jessi's definitely got a thing for cars. There's everything from flashy Lamborghinis to those huge Bentleys that scream ‘I’m rich and probably dangerous.’ Motorcycles, sports cars, even some vehicles that look straight-up bulletproof—all lined up like some very deadly candy shop.
You're starting to think maybe the weapons aren't even Jessi's favorite toys.
Jessi leads you through her collection of cars like a proud mom showing off her kids' trophies. She stops at this black Lamborghini that looks expensive enough to make your eyes water. The lights bounce off its surface like it's made of pure money.
"This baby right here?" She runs her hand over the hood like she's petting a cat. "Zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. Makes people's heads turn so fast they get whiplash."
Then she drags you over to this Bentley that screams old money.
"And this beauty? When you need people to think you've got more dollars than sense." The inside looks like someone skinned a whole herd of very expensive cows and covered it in fancy wood.
"We're taking my bike."
Jeon's voice cuts through Jessi's car tour sharply.
He says it like it's already decided, which—knowing him—it probably is.
Jessi whips around to look at him, and fuck—her fiery aura actually flares up like she's about to burst into flames.
"Are you kidding me? Look at these beauties!" She waves at her collection. "They're begging for some action!"
But Jeon just shakes his head. "Bike's more maneuverable. Better control. Makes more sense for what we need."
"Ugh, fine." Jessi throws one last longing look at the Lamborghini like she's saying goodbye to a child. "But I swear to god, one of these days I'm getting your ass in one of these cars."
The little smirk Jeon gives her actually looks kind of fond. "Keep dreaming."
So you follow him to another part of the garage where his bike's parked.
It's this sleek, black monster of a machine that somehow manages to look both subtle and dangerous—kind of like its owner. The thing practically radiates power, but in that quiet way that says it doesn't need to show off.
Jessi watches Jeon check over the bike with this resigned look.
He runs his hands over the handlebars, checking everything with the kind of attention to detail you'd expect from someone who regularly makes impossible shots from a mile away.
"At least you take care of my presents," she mutters, but there's no real heat in it.
Jeon just nods, swinging his leg over the bike like he was born to ride it. When he turns to look at you, his face has gone all serious again.
"You good?"
You nod, feeling your heart start picking up speed.
This is really happening.
Jessi steps back, smiles, and then just waves you two off, not before adding something else.
"Watch your asses out there. And remember—you need backup, we're just a call away."
goal: 490 notes !!
if you’ve enjoyed this chapter please consider buying me a coffee!! ☕️ ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
"Waking up in his bed should feel like victory, but all you can think about are those pill bottles on his nightstand."
next | index
⚔ chapter details ⚔
word count: 9,5k
content: morning vulnerability and insomnia revelations, elevator sexual tension that goes nowhere, council meeting drama with heated arguments, mission prep with jessi's weapons expertise, undercover outfits that make jeon stare, AD's suspicious surveillance knowledge, and the calm before infiltrating mdf territory
☠ author's note ☠
As a European, I have absolutely no clue about guns so let's hope my research was decent and their weapons actually make sense ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) If any gun enthusiasts are reading this and I've somehow made a sniper rifle that shoots rainbows, just... pretend it's for the plot.
ANYWAY THE BIG DAY IS FINALLY HERE!!! Next chapter is THE MISSION and are we excited??? Because I AMMMMM!!! I've been building up to this for literal months and my chaotic little writer brain is VIBRATING with anticipation!
Jeon + motorbike = HOT AS HELL 🥵 Like sir, you're already dangerous enough, did you really need to add vehicular competence to your list of attractive qualities? RUDE.
Also Jessi is so mother mommy mama I love her! I mean, I say that about every single one of my characters, don't I? But what can I do—they're all so complex in my opinion! I have to really put myself in their position in every single scene and think genuinely about how they would react. Because one thing is how I WANT them to react, and another is how they would REALISTICALLY react, you know? Keeping those two aligned is harder than it looks, trust me!
Anyway ramble ramble ramble shut up Kiki we don't care—I KNOW BUT I'M THE AUTHOR so you're gonna read my rambling because I said so! I don't write 8k words per chapter to have my feelings dismissed! Y'all gonna put up with me whether you like it or not (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Thanks for reading as always, love y'all! Now buckle up because things are about to get SPICY!
⚔ socials ⚔
read on ao3
read on wattpad
tumblr/twitter: @jungkoode
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎.
The obnoxious blaring of Jeon's alarm tears through the quiet morning.
It's 6 AM—that weird time when everything feels kind of hazy and unreal, like the world hasn't quite decided if it's night or day yet.
His phone keeps buzzing against the nightstand, screen lighting up like a strobe light.
You're barely awake, caught in that fuzzy space between sleep and consciousness. Jeon's sprawled half on top of you, which should probably be uncomfortable but... isn't. His arm's thrown over your waist in this weirdly soft way that doesn't match his usual don't-touch-me vibe. You can feel his chest rising and falling against your back, his breath warm on your neck.
For a second, you think about waking him up. But he looks so p̶e̶a̶c̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ different when he's sleeping—none of that cold, distant Chief of Tactical stuff.
Just a guy who really needs some rest.
"Jeon," you try anyway, voice coming out all scratchy from sleep. "Your alarm."
He makes this grunt that might be words but definitely isn't, face pressed against your skin. Instead of getting up, he actually pulls you closer, burying his face in the pillow like if he ignores the alarm hard enough, it'll give up and go away.
"Jeon, come on. Get it." You nudge him with your elbow because that fucking alarm is driving you insane. It just keeps going and going, like some kind of electronic torture device.
He lets out this long-suffering groan that perfectly captures the eternal struggle between wanting to sleep and having actual responsibilities.
His hand flops around looking for his phone, movements all clumsy in that way people only get when they're not really awake yet. When he finally finds it, he misses the screen completely on his first try.
"Fuck off," he mumbles—definitely talking to the phone, not you. The woodsy scent of his skin mixed with mint from his breath fills your lungs.
After what feels like forever (but is probably like, ten seconds), blessed silence falls over the room.
Jeon just tosses his phone somewhere (hopefully not off the bed) and immediately curls back around you like some kind of clingy octopus. His body's radiating heat like a furnace, and he's definitely not planning on letting you go anytime soon.
His aura wraps around you like summer rain, all soft and warm, making your head spin in the best way.
(You're starting to think maybe he's not a morning person.)
"Five more minutes," he mumbles, voice all rough and sleepy like some kid who doesn't want to go to school.
You can't help but smirk.
Who would've thought the terrifying Chief of Tactical was such a baby in the morning?
"Five more minutes, and you'll be the one explaining to the Council why you're late." You poke his side. "Good luck with that."
"What council?" He sounds like he's halfway to dreamland already.
"Council of 9, dumbass. You know, that super important reunion about tonight's mission?"
His only response is this little grunt before his breathing starts evening out again.
Oh no. Not happening.
You kick him under the sheets—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to be annoying. He flinches and makes this annoyed clicking sound with his tongue.
Finally, with this dramatic sigh that you can feel rumble through his chest, he gives in. His body peels away from yours like it's physically painful for him to move.
"Fine, fine," he grumbles, surrendering to reality.
When he sits up, cold air rushes in where his body heat used to be. You both kind of... linger there on the edge of his bed.
You watch him rub his face, trying to wake up properly. It's kind of fascinating, seeing him switch from s̶o̶f̶t̶ sleepy Jungkook back to Jeon, the cold and distant Chief of Tactical.
Another yawn catches you as you sit up, letting the sheets pool around your waist. You blink, trying to clear the sleep from your eyes, when something on Jeon's bedside table catches your attention.
Oh.
There's a whole fucking pharmacy there.
Your eyes scan over the labels—hypnotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, sleeping pills. The kind of cocktail someone needs when sleep doesn't come naturally anymore.
It hits different now, remembering all those times you've seen him in the cafeteria at ass o'clock in the morning. Always with that black coffee, those dark circles under his eyes that you thought were just part of his whole intimidating Chief of Tactical thing.
(Turns out even the great Jeon Jungkook has trouble sleeping.)
You can't help but wonder what keeps him up at night. What kind of memories play on repeat in his head when everything goes quiet.
Sure, being a gang leader comes with its own baggage—the violence, the paranoia, always having to watch your back.
But something tells you there's more to it. Things that left marks deeper than the little scar on his cheek. The kind of stuff that makes someone stock up on enough sedatives to knock out a horse.
Your eyes fix on this one bottle of hypnotics that's already half empty. Something in your chest tightens at the sight, but you quickly squash that feeling down.
The last thing Jeon needs is your p̶i̶t̶y̶ concern.
You know how this works. Show any weakness in Kkangpae, and you might as well paint a target on your back. The gang's full of sharks, always circling, always waiting for someone to bleed in the water.
So you bite back all the questions building up in your throat. Push down that weird urge to reach out, to try and make it better somehow.
Whatever demons Jeon's fighting, they're his to deal with.
You've got your own role to play here, and playing therapist isn't it. Some things just stay broken, and some nights just stay sleepless.
And some things are not yours to fix, even if some part of you wants to.
"You ready?" Jeon asks, already heading for the door without waiting to hear if you actually are.
You follow him out with a quiet sigh, but your mind's still stuck on all those pill bottles.
On what they might mean.
On all the nights he probably spends staring at his ceiling, fighting whatever demons keep him up.
The common areas in his wing of the Assassination Division are empty this early.
Your footsteps echo through the halls as you make your way to the elevator, where Jeon leans against the wall like he's got all day. He crosses his arms over his chest, getting lost in whatever thoughts are running through that complicated head of his.
When he doesn't move to actually do anything, you have to remind him that not everyone has his fancy Chief clearance level.
"You gonna scan your card or what?" You wave vaguely at the scanner. "You know mine won't work up here."
The corner of his mouth twitches up—just barely—like he's annoyed at himself for forgetting.
He pulls out his access card without a word and taps it against the scanner. The light blinks green, and the elevator starts moving.
While you're waiting, your brain decides to dig up this random memory from weeks ago.
That night Jeon showed up at your door out of nowhere, demanding his jacket back. You hadn't thought about it then, but now...
"Hey," you turn to look at him, "how did you get on my floor that night? To get your jacket back?" The question hits you out of nowhere. "Our cards don't work on each other's floors."
His eyes go wide for a split second—clearly not expecting that question. He just stares at you for a moment, lips parted like he's trying to figure out what to say. Then his gaze darts away and he rubs the back of his neck, which is basically a flashing neon sign that says busted.
(This should be interesting.)
"I, uh..." Jeon starts, looking at you then quickly away. He's actually struggling for words, which is new.
His fingers tap against his thigh in this nervous rhythm you've never seen before. Just when you think he's going to leave you hanging, he lets out this tiny sigh, shoulders dropping just a bit.
"I asked AD for temporary access."
Wait. What?
"And he... just gave it to you? Just like that?"
You narrow your eyes because something's not adding up here.
You've seen how these two interact—or don't interact, more like it. The way Jeon basically disappears whenever AD shows up, and how AD looks at him like he's personally offended his entire bloodline.
Sure, AD glares at everyone (especially J-Hope), but with Jeon? That's a whole different level of hate.
(Not that it's any of your business what's going on there.)
"Told him I needed my jacket back."
The elevator keeps moving down, and the silence between you gets kind of heavy. Something about how weirdly hesitant Jeon's being makes your curiosity spike. Part of you knows you should probably drop it, but...
"So, your card worked the whole night?" You try to sound casual about it, but there's definitely some skepticism bleeding through.
"Yeah." He finally meets your eyes again. "Clearance passes usually last for 24 hours."
You nod slowly, filing that information away.
"But didn't AD find it weird? The time stamp would show you came in at 3 AM and didn't leave until..." You trail off, remembering exactly why he stayed so long.
Jeon's eyes snap to yours, and something flashes across his face too quick to read before he looks away. The crease between his brows gets deeper as the silence stretches out.
"I don't think he actually checks the access logs that closely," he says finally. "At least he hasn't mentioned anything about the, uh, timeframe."
You think about that for a second. It seems weird that AD, of all people, wouldn't keep tabs on security access. But maybe Jeon's right—maybe AD doesn't actually monitor that stuff.
Then you remember something.
That day after the pool training, you saw AD in the elevator with Kazuha. He'd told you both to "be careful."
Was that his cryptic way of saying he knew exactly what went down that night?
The elevator dings, cutting through your thoughts.
Jeon pushes off the wall, giving you this little nod to go in first. You step inside, and the last thing you see is his back and this lazy wave goodbye before the doors slide shut.
Anyway, something tells you AD knows way more than he lets on.
You’d never been in The Council room until now.
And it’s… Well, it’s weird. Tense today.
Everyone's taking their usual spots around this stupidly long table, and RM's at the head of it like always, looking every bit the Supreme Commander he is.
"Thanks for coming, everyone." His voice carries that authority that makes even the most stubborn chiefs shut up and listen.
Well, almost everyone.
"I don't even see why I have to be here when you're all so set on leaving me out of it." V's practically radiating annoyance.
Moon gives him that patient look he reserves for when someone's being difficult. "This mission affects the entire gang. That's why we need the whole Council present."
"But I'm not even part of it." V throws his feet up on the table like the dramatic bitch he is, crossing his arms. "So why do I have to sit through all this bullshit?"
"You listen because shared knowledge makes us stronger." RM's eyes sweep around the table, meeting everyone's gaze—even yours. "Unity isn't just about standing together. It's about thinking as one."
V rolls his eyes so hard you're surprised they don't get stuck. "Yeah, yeah, I get the whole 'one gang' thing. But do I really need every fucking detail?"
"Details matter." Jeon's voice cuts through the tension. "MDF isn't some amateur operation. One tiny blind spot and we're fucked."
"It's a goddamn snake pit we're walking into." J-Hope waves his hands around like he's trying to grab invisible dangers out of the air. "We all need to know what kind of poison we might be dealing with."
JM leans forward, all serious despite his usually gentle demeanor. "That hideout's a maze. You two need more than just a way in—you need a solid plan to get the fuck out of there."
"Exactly." RM's sighs. "This intel could change everything. We do this right, we take out one of their major operations."
Flower, who's been watching everything with that calculating look of hers, finally speaks up. "And V, whether you like it or not, this meeting is what keeps your men at the docks from getting caught with their pants down while we're focused on this mission."
V scoffs, but you can see him actually considering her words.
Jessi stops lounging in her chair like this is some kind of casual meetup.
"Alright, cut the bullshit. What's the actual plan here, RM?" She leans forward, all business now. "And it better be good."
The room goes quiet—that heavy kind of quiet that makes your skin prickle.
RM stands up, and you can feel the weight of what's coming.
This isn't just another mission briefing. This is you and Jeon walking straight into MDF territory.
No pressure.
RM clears his throat, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him.
"Here's how it's going to work," he starts, voice authoritative. "Jeon and Y/N are going undercover. We've got IDs that'll get them through MDF's front door."
The word 'undercover' makes your stomach do this weird flip thing. Jeon shifts slightly beside you, his presence weirdly reassuring for someone who's usually about as comforting as a loaded gun.
"They'll play it as traders," RM continues, spreading out this map that looks like someone went crazy with a red marker. "Fresh faces trying to make it big enough to catch MDF's attention."
Jeon nods, watching AD's finger trace some path on the map. "What about their security? Cameras?"
"System loops every three hours," AD says, sounding bored but you know that's just his thing. "We're setting up a distraction. At 23:00, when the loop starts, they'll get a power surge. Six minutes of blind spots."
"Six minutes?" Jessi raises an eyebrow. "That's cutting it real fucking close."
"We can handle it." Jeon sounds so sure it actually makes you believe him. "Had worse timeframes before."
"That's your window to find the server room and plant the bug." RM points to some spot deep in what looks like a maze. "AD will be in your ear the whole time."
"And when shit inevitably goes sideways?" V asks, and despite how pissy he's been about being left out, you can hear actual braincells there.
"You'll be armed," RM says simply. "But this is about getting in and out quiet. No firefights."
"Right, because stealth missions should totally go to Mr. Shoot-Everything-From-A-Mile-Away instead of, oh, I don't know, the actual Chief of Stealth?" V's voice drips sarcasm.
"V." JM's cuts in. "Enough."
V grunts but actually shuts up, which is kind of impressive. You've never seen anyone else get him to back down that easily.
Flower leans forward, and the room suddenly feels a bit colder. The map spread out on the table looks like some kind of twisted treasure map, except instead of X marking the spot, there's about fifty different ways this whole thing could go wrong.
"Alright, here's the deal," she says, getting straight to the point like always. "You need to be interesting enough to catch their attention, but not so interesting they get suspicious. Think you can handle that?"
She looks right at you, and you can feel the weight of what she's asking.
"Y/N, you're our front person here. While everyone's busy watching you sweet-talk them about money and deals, Jeon's gonna be doing the actual work." Her lips curve into this knowing smile. "Keep them focused on the profit. Rich assholes love talking about money."
Great. No pressure or anything. Just gotta be charming enough to distract an entire criminal organization while your... whatever Jeon is sneaks around their base. Easy peasy.
Flower turns to Jeon next, and her expression goes all business.
"You're playing backup dancer on this one. Stay in the background, watch everything, and when AD hits them with that power surge? That's your window. Get the bug planted without anyone noticing."
The room goes quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Everyone's thinking the same thing—one tiny mistake and this whole plan goes up in smoke.
"Remember," Flower says, voice serious, "this isn't about showing off. It's about getting in, getting it done, and getting out without anyone realizing what happened."
"And more importantly," RM cuts in, giving you and Jeon a look, "don't fucking die. The intel's not worth either of you."
"What about communication?" you ask, because there's one pretty big hole in this plan. "We can't exactly text each other in there."
"Subvocals," AD doesn't look up from his laptop, but his voice carries that bored confidence that means he knows exactly what he's talking about. "Basically fancy mics that pick up whispers. We'll hear everything, but you two can talk without anyone else noticing. Plus, we'll feed you intel as we get it. Just keep it quiet and you'll be fine."
V lets out this little laugh, eyes twinkling like he knows something no one else does. "Sure putting a lot of faith in luck here, aren't we?"
"Luck's got nothing to do with it." RM's interjects. "This is about being prepared, being skilled, and getting shit done. Don't forget who we are. What Kkangpae stands for."
The room goes quiet again. Then, he continues speaking:
"Once you get that bug planted and grab whatever intel you can, you get out. We're not starting a war. Not yet."
Then Jeon turns to look at you, all Chief-of-Tactical mode.
Stormy.
"We split up as soon as we're inside," he says, voice gone all hard and professional. "Cover more ground, draw less attention."
"Yeah, no." You don't even hesitate to shut that down. The plan's crystal clear in your head. "We stick together, follow the script. Only split when the power goes out. That's the signal."
He scoffs—actually scoffs—and crosses his arms. "You really think playing follow-the-leader's gonna work that long? We're wasting time the second we walk in. Better to improvise early."
"We're not there to improvise," you snap back, getting annoyed now. The air's starting to feel like a brewing thunderstorm. "We have a plan for a fucking reason, Jeon. The power surge is our cover. Until then, you're stuck with me."
His jaw does that tightening thing it does when someone challenges him.
Chief or not, you're not backing down on this.
"A package deal that screams 'we're obviously here to fuck shit up'." He's practically radiating frustration. "Splitting up makes more sense. It's tactical."
"It's reckless," you cut in, meeting his intensity head-on. "Since when do we pick 'making sense' over actually being smart about this? We split up before the power cut, and we're basically painting targets on our backs."
You can feel everyone in the room watching this verbal sparring match in slight disbelief.
"You're not fucking listening—" Jeon leans into your space.
"Because what you're saying is bullshit," you snap back, refusing to be intimidated even though he's practically looming over you. "We go in toge—"
"Too risky. We split up, maximize our—"
"—chances of getting our asses caught!" You talk right over him, blood rushing hot in your veins. "We stick to the fucking pla—"
"Which is basically asking to get pinched if we're joined at the hip," he fires back, and god, his voice shouldn't sound that hot when he's being this infuriating.
"Oh, and you think going rogue is the ans—"
"It's called thinking on your feet, sunshine. Maybe try it some—"
"Save the condescending shit," you cut in, sharp enough to draw blood. "We're not there to show—"
"—that we're fucking amateurs!" He's almost growling now, and the sound does things to you that you really don't want to examine.
Your voices keep rising, cutting each other off in this heated back-and-forth that's starting to feel less like an argument and more like foreplay.
"Enough." RM's voice drops like a bucket of cold water.
You and Jeon both shut up instantly, turning to face him like scolded kids.
The whole room goes dead quiet, everyone waiting to see how the Supreme Commander's going to handle this.
"Y/N's right," RM cuts in, voice carrying that don't-fuck-with-me tone whilst his eyes bounce between you and Jeon as he speaks. "We made this plan accounting for every possible fuck-up. You go in together, no improvising. The power surge is your cue. Until then, you're just a couple of traders looking to make a deal. We can't afford any slip-ups."
The way he says it leaves no room for argument. You can see Jeon's shoulders drop just a tiny bit, like he's accepting defeat but doesn't want to show it.
"Got it," you nod, trying to look all professional and shit.
Like you didn't just get into a verbal sparring match with your Chief in front of the whole Council.
Jeon takes a second, then gives this little nod that looks like it physically pains him.
"Understood," he echoes, finally looking at you.
And so there’s this weird moment where you're both just... staring at each other; as if calling a truce without actually saying anything.
As RM dismisses everyone, you feel that rush of adrenaline from arguing start to fade. Your shoulders relax, and you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding.
Right. This whole mission is riding on you and Jeon not fucking it up by going off-script.
You can feel Jeon next to you, his whole vibe changing. He's still got that unreadable expression, but he doesn't look ready to fight anymore.
Before you can make your grand exit, Jessi's voice cuts through the room, making both of you plant your feet on the ground.
"Don't worry, you two. All that sexual tension will make for some hot angry fucking after the mission." She winks at you both like she just said something clever instead of mortifying.
"That's not—we're not—" You start sputtering like an idiot, feeling your face go red.
"Ridiculous," Jeon snaps at the same time, scowling like Jessi just insulted his sniper skills or something.
Jessi just smirks, looking way too pleased with herself. "Whatever you say, lovebirds. Just come by my division after lunch. Gotta get you kitted out for this little adventure."
You open your mouth to tell her exactly where she can shove her assumptions, but she keeps talking.
"AD's gonna set up your access, so don't be late!" And with that, she struts out of the room like she owns the place.
You take a deep breath, trying to get your shit together.
Without a word, you and Jeon turn to leave.
There's still a ton of prep to do for this mission, and you'd rather face MDF unarmed than spend another second in this room with everyone's eyes on you.
The elevator feels way too empty when it’s only you and Jeon in it.
Trapped in a metal box after whatever that disaster of a Council meeting was.
The silence feels heavy, like all that heated arguing is still buzzing in the air.
You stand there trying to look casual, watching the floor numbers tick down like they're the most interesting thing you've ever seen.
But you can't help noticing how Jeon's jaw is doing that clenching thing again, his lips pressed together so tight they're practically disappearing. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and his whole body's radiating tension like a coiled spring.
The silence is driving you insane.
So of course, before your brain can stop your mouth, you blurt out: "Just so we're clear, we are not having hot angry sex after this mission."
Great going girl. 10/10.
Jeon's head snaps toward you so fast you're worried he might get whiplash. One eyebrow shoots up in surprise, but then—oh—his expression shifts into that infuriating smirk.
"Aw, you sound disappointed," he says, voice dropping into that low, teasing register that definitely doesn't make your stomach flip.
You scoff, rolling your eyes as dramatically as possible. "Yeah, like I was last night."
"Excuse me?" The look of pure indignation on his face is actually priceless. "Pretty sure I had you begging."
"Begging?" You let out a laugh. "More like pointing out how fucking slow you were being."
You're going for casual disinterest, but the memories from last night keep trying to make your face heat up.
He actually laughs at that—this sharp, sudden sound that bounces off the elevator walls.
"Oh, is that what we're calling it now? Because I remember it more like... payback. For all that teasing." His eyes drop to your ass for a second. "Bending over until I couldn't take it anymore..."
You cross your arms, leaning back against the wall like this conversation isn't affecting you at all.
"That wasn't teasing. That was strategic mission preparation." You can't help the sly smile that creeps onto your face. "Besides, you're the one who changed the sleeping arrangement to fucking."
"A strategic move, huh?" His mouth does that little twitch that means he's trying not to smile. "Well, it fucking worked."
"Yeah, you broke so easily." You roll your eyes, but you can feel yourself starting to smile too. "Just for sex"
"Pretty damn good sex, if I might add." He says it like he's stating the weather, but that smirk is getting bigger.
Before you can even process what's happening, his hand shoots out to the elevator panel. The emergency stop button makes this loud clicking sound, and the whole thing jerks to a halt with this deep rumble that you feel in your bones.
Suddenly the space feels way too small, and all you can hear is your own breathing getting heavier.
Yeah. Yeah, he’s stopped the fucking elevator.
"What the actual fuck, Jeon?" You try to sound annoyed, but the words get stuck in your throat because he's moving into your space like he owns it, like he has every right to be this close.
Then you're trapped between his arms and the cold elevator wall, and fuck—the way he's looking at you makes you feel naked already.
Your heart's going crazy in your chest, completely betraying how irritated you're pretending to be. Heat starts pooling between your legs, and it's honestly embarrassing how quickly your body responds to him.
"We can't—" Your voice comes out all breathy and pathetic. "We can't do this here."
The smile he gives you is pure sin as he leans in closer, close enough that you can feel his breath on your skin, static wrapping around you, making it hard to think straight.
"Why not?"
"Because we're in a fucking elevator—"
"No cameras." He cuts you off like he's been waiting for this excuse.
You try to swallow but your throat's gone dry. Your sling feels itchy against your skin, probably because your whole body's remembering what happened last night.
"People are gonna notice if the elevator's stuck—"
"Maintenance issue." He says it so fast you know he's thought about this before.
"Jeon—" You start to argue, but then his eyes drop to your mouth and your brain just... stops working.
You know you should push him away. That's what any sane person would do. But there's something about Jeon that makes your brain stop working right—like a magnet pulling you in no matter how hard you try to resist. Every cell in your body is screaming at you to just grab him and kiss him already.
Right when you're about to say fuck it and give in, he pulls back.
And the look in his eyes? Pure evil, like he knows exactly what he's doing to you.
"Sunshine," he practically purrs, voice gone all low and rough in a way that makes heat pool in your stomach, "you're too eager."
The elevator dings, saving you from doing something stupid.
He steps out onto his floor without another word, that infuriating smirk still plastered on his face like he just won something.
You slump against the wall the second the doors close, letting out this huge breath you didn't even realize you were holding
As the elevator keeps moving, the whole thing feels kind of surreal—like maybe you imagined him pressing you up against the wall and looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive.
But the way your skin's still tingling tells you it definitely happened.
When the doors open on your floor, it's like stepping back into the real world.
One where you need to figure out what the hell to tell Yunjin about where you've been all night. She's way too perceptive for her own good, and she definitely noticed you didn't come to your room to sleep.
You walk to your room trying to come up with something believable.
Maybe you were up all night studying mission plans? Or got restless and went wandering around the common areas?
Your brain's still kind of fuzzy from having Jeon all up in your space, which isn't helping with the whole creative lying thing.
But when you push open your door, Yunjin spins around like she's been caught doing something wrong. Her eyes are all wide and guilty, and before you can even open your mouth to make up some excuse about where you've been, she starts talking.
"Okay, before you give me shit for not sleeping here last night—" The words come tumbling out of her like she can't get them out fast enough. "You won't believe what happened. I was just gonna have a few drinks with V, you know, just to chill..."
Well. You surely didn't expect that.
You stand there trying to process the flood of information Yunjin's dumping on you. She's so caught up in her story she doesn't even notice your brain short-circuiting.
"And I know we said to stay away from V's whole... thing, but fuck—" She's practically vibrating with excitement. "We've been dancing around each other for weeks, and last night was just—"
"Yunjin, hold up." You raise a hand to stop her word-vomit. "Are you telling me you spent the night with V? Like, you and V actually—"
You don't finish the sentence because honestly, you don't need to. The implication is heavy enough to sink a ship.
She bites her lip and nods, looking somewhere between guilty and smug.
"Yeah, we fucked..." Her voice trails off before picking right back up. "And let me tell you, it was good. Like, he's not even into all that scary shit everyone thinks he is? But his chaotic energy definitely carries over to bed, god, if you only knew—"
You can't help the snort spreading across your face.
Here you were worrying about how to explain your own night away, and Yunjin's gone and done the exact same thing.
There's something kind of poetic about both of you getting tangled up with people you definitely shouldn't be touching.
A laugh bubbles up in your throat. "Okay, spare me the details. But I'm glad you had fun with your psychopath."
"It was actually really nice?" She's got this dreamy look that would be cute if she wasn't talking about the gang's resident knife enthusiast. "I know we said getting involved with him was a bad idea, but..."
She shrugs, looking almost shy.
"Sometimes you can't help who you want to climb like a tree."
You nod because fuck—isn't that the truth? Your body's still kind of sore from climbing your own dangerous tree last night.
Quick thinking has you saying, "I had an early Council meeting about the mission."
It's not exactly a lie. You did have a meeting. The fact that you came straight from Jeon's bed to it is just... details.
Yunjin seems to buy it, but then her eyes narrow and this little smirk appears on her face.
"Speaking of details... that shirt looks a bit big on you." She eyes the obviously oversized fabric. "Almost like it belongs to someone else. Someone tall, maybe? Tattooed?"
Heat creeps up your neck as you tug at the shirt that definitely belongs to Jeon.
"It's just comfortable," you mutter, but even you don't believe that weak excuse.
"Sure it is." Yunjin's laugh is rather a sneer. "Tell Jeon I said hi."
She throws you a wink and you roll your eyes, but you can't quite fight the smile tugging at your lips.
At least you're not the only one fucking a chief.
The scanner actually flashes green when you swipe your card, which is weird.
Usually you only get access to the Seduction floor and common areas, but apparently Jessi wasn't kidding about AD setting up clearance to her realm for you.
You hit the button for the 9th floor and watch the numbers tick up.
The doors slide open to a completely different vibe from what you're used to.
Gone is all that minimalist tech stuff from AD's floor or the sterile efficiency of Assassination.
The Weapons Division looks exactly like what it is—a place that deals in death. The lights are dim, pipes running everywhere like exposed veins, and the floor's just straight-up concrete. No fancy finishes here.
You've maybe been here like, three times? And every visit feels like stepping into some alternate universe inside Kkangpae's castle. The contrast between this and your division's sleek aesthetic is wild.
"Well, well, look who we have here!"
The voice booms through the hallway, making you jump.
You turn to find this huge guy with a green mullet heading your way, covered in neck tattoos that probably tell some interesting stories. You're pretty sure his name is Jae? He's Jessi's second-in-command, but you've barely exchanged two words with him before.
Not that you'd know it from how he grins at you like you're old friends.
"Jessi's waiting on you," he says, slapping your back hard enough to make you stumble forward. (What is it with these Weapons Division people and casual violence?) "Come on, can't keep the boss lady hanging."
You follow Mullet Man through these massive double doors and holy shit—the weapons depot is huge. The ceiling's so high it's got actual walkways crisscrossing it, leading to what looks like storage units. Every table is packed with enough firepower to start a small war: rifles, handguns, knives, stuff you don't even have names for.
Jessi's off to one side, checking out this fancy-looking automatic rifle like she's shopping for groceries. Her fiery aura fills the space with heating energy.
When she spots you, those red lips curl into this knowing smirk that makes you kind of nervous.
"Right on time," she says, putting down the gun like it's no big deal. "Now we just gotta wait for lover boy to complete the set."
Jae throws up this exaggerated salute and swaggers off, leaving you perched on a nearby stool while Jessi's aura dances around like actual flames.
Jessi leans back against one of the weapon-covered tables, arms crossed and this knowing look in her eyes that makes you kind of nervous.
"That was quite the show this morning. Never seen Jeon actually engage like that before."
"What do you mean?" You frown, thinking about how often Jeon and V are at each other's throats. "He fights with V all the time."
"Nah, that's different." She shakes her head, red hair swaying. "When he fights with V, it's all explosions and death threats. Pure chaos."
Her hands make this exaggerated boom motion.
"But this morning? That was like... verbal foreplay. He was actually in there with you, giving as good as he got."
You think about that for a second.
Now that she mentions it, Jeon does usually just... shut down when other people try to argue with him. Goes all cold and distant, like he can't be bothered to even engage.
But this morning he was right there with you, matching your energy blow for blow.
"Huh." The realization hits you harder than it probably should. "He's not usually much for back-and-forth, is he?"
"That's what I'm saying!" Jessi looks way too pleased with herself. "That emotionally constipated asshole usually keeps everyone at a distance. But you?" She wiggles her eyebrows in this ridiculous way. "Something's different..."
Your face heats up because fuck—she's not wrong. But you are absolutely not having this conversation right now.
"So anyway," you say quickly, probably not as smooth as you think, "what kind of gear are we talking about here?"
Jessi's smirk says she knows exactly what you're doing, but she lets it slide.
Instead, she turns to this impressive spread of weapons and gadgets laid out on the table. Some of them look deadly enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
"Only the best for our star infiltration team," she says, sounding like a proud mom showing off her kid's artwork. "Let's talk comm units first..."
Then, you catch it.
That woodsy, pine scent that clings to him like his leather jacket.
You don’t even need to turn around to know it’s him.
Jeon appears in the doorway looking unfairly good in his all-black everything, like some kind of high-fashion assassin.
When his eyes find you and Jessi, one eyebrow goes up.
"Starting without me?" His voice is dry as desert.
"Look who finally decided to show up." Jessi's teasing, but then her expression turns into something more devious. "I was just telling your partner here how I've never seen you get so fired up before. Something about her really pushes your buttons, huh?"
You kind of want to melt into the concrete floor. Leave it to Jessi to stir shit up just because she can.
But Jeon just shrugs, cool as ever.
"Just discussing strategy." His voice gives absolutely nothing away, which is honestly impressive considering how heated he got earlier.
Jessi looks kind of disappointed that she couldn't get a reaction out of him. Classic Jeon, refusing to take the bait. She lets out this dramatic sigh and turns back to all the gear spread out on the table.
"Well, now that his highness has graced us with his presence," she says, standing up with that natural grace she has, "let's get you both looking the part. Can't have you walking into MDF territory looking like gang members, can we?"
You follow her through the rows of weapons and equipment. It's kind of amazing how she knows exactly where everything is in this massive space. Her energy is contagious—she's clearly in her element here, surrounded by all these tools of destruction.
The weapons depot starts feeling less like an armory and more like some underground fashion studio as you walk deeper in.
Because of course, procurement doesn’t only mean weapons and human resource.
Apparently, it also means Jessi has a pass to turn a room full of deadly weapons into her personal styling space.
There's this sectioned-off area that looks like a makeshift dressing room, complete with different fabrics hanging everywhere.
"Over here, Jeon." Jessi's voice has that tone that means she's already planning something. She looks him up and down like she's mentally redesigning his whole outfit.
Jeon follows her, trying to look like he's not into it, but you can see the interest in his eyes. You hang back a bit, kind of enjoying watching him get the Jessi treatment.
Jessi starts pulling stuff from these racks that look like someone couldn't decide if they were making tactical gear or runway fashion. Every piece somehow manages to be both bulletproof and stupidly stylish.
First up for Jeon: this black suit that catches the light in a way that's definitely not standard issue.
"Put this on," she tells him, shoving the suit in his hands. "It's reinforced—won't stop a bullet, but a knife won't get through."
He disappears behind this makeshift changing screen, and you're definitely not counting the seconds until he comes back out.
When he does, though... fuck.
The suit fits him like it was painted on, showing off all those muscles you're way too familiar with now. The jacket makes his shoulders look even broader, and the pants are doing criminal things to his legs. He looks like he walked straight out of some high-end assassin movie.
"You could probably kill someone just by walking into a room looking like that," you say before you can stop yourself. Your voice definitely doesn't sound as casual as you meant it to.
The smug bastard actually smirks at that. "Wouldn't be the first time."
But Jessi's not having it. She shakes her head, looking at him like an artist who's not quite happy with their work.
"Too polished. We need dangerous, not James Bond. Try this instead."
She pulls out this whole new look: leather jacket that probably costs more than anything you own (which is not much), deep maroon shirt that's somehow both simple and expensive-looking, and black jeans that you just know are going to be trouble.
When he steps out this time, his whole aura shifts.
The leather sits on his shoulders like it belongs there, and that hint of maroon under all the black just... works.
He looks like someone who could sweet-talk his way into a deal and then burn the whole place down if it goes wrong.
"Now that's more like it," Jessi says, looking satisfied. "Says 'I do business, but I also do crime' in all the right ways."
You find yourself nodding along because damn.
He looks exactly like what a high-level arms dealer should look—dangerous enough to take seriously, stylish enough to have clearly made money doing it.
Jeon catches you staring and raises an eyebrow, like he's asking what you think. You give him a small nod because what else can you do? He looks f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ good.
Really good.
Jessi rummages through another rack and pulls out this long-sleeved black shirt.
"Here, put this under the jacket. The fabric's breathable but bulletproof-adjacent. Won't stop a direct hit, but it'll give you a fighting chance."
Jeon shrugs off the leather jacket and slips the shirt on. It's thin but looks sturdy—perfect for someone who might need to move fast or fight their way out of trouble.
Jessi finally steps back, eyeing him like she's inspecting a weapon.
"Not bad. Looks casual enough that no one'll think twice, but you can actually move in it." She hands him back the leather jacket. "Try it all together."
You try to look professional while he puts the jacket back on over the maroon shirt and black base layer, but fuck—the whole ensemble is perfect.
The layers somehow make him look even more dangerous, like he could either charm you or kill you and you wouldn't know which until it was too late.
While Jeon and Jessi get into some deep discussion about fabric weights and mobility ranges, you're kind of amazed at how much thought goes into this.
It's not just picking out nice clothes—every piece has to tell the right story without saying a word.
One wrong detail and the whole cover's blown.
The attention to detail is actually impressive. Jessi knows exactly how to make someone look dangerous but approachable, wealthy but not flashy.
In this world, the wrong outfit can get you killed as quick as the wrong word.
You watch them fine-tune every detail, fascinated by how each adjustment shapes the character Jeon's going to play. And then… The final touch.This plain black watch that probably has fifteen different ways to kill someone. Jeon checks it over with that focused look he gets when he's handling weapons.
"Nice," is all he says, strapping it on.
Standing there in his perfectly crafted outfit, Jeon looks like he was born to play this role. Then Jessi turns to you with this wicked gleam in her eyes that makes your stomach drop.
"Your turn, beautiful," she says, gesturing at another rack of clothes. "Let's make you look expensive but deadly."
Something tells you this is going to be way more complicated than just picking out a nice dress.
You step forward to check out what Jessi's picked out, and damn—she really knows what she's doing. Every piece looks like it was chosen to tell a specific story about who you're supposed to be for this mission.
First up is this skin-tight dress that practically screams ‘honey trap.’ Jessi takes one look and tosses it aside with a muttered "too fucking obvious."
Then there's this whole secretary fantasy thing with a high-necked blouse and pencil skirt, but that gets vetoed too. ("Can't fight for shit in that.")
Then she hands you this black button-up that feels expensive as hell, paired with these tailored pants that feel way too nice to the touch. The fabric's got that perfect balance—soft enough to feel good but sturdy enough to take a beating if things go south.
When you slip into it, something shifts. The shirt fits in all the right places, making you feel d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶o̶u̶s̶ powerful. And the pants? They let you move like you might need to throw down at any second, which, considering it's MDF territory you're heading into, isn't exactly unlikely.
You step out to get Jessi's opinion.
And catch Jeon straight-up staring at your ass.
You’re not surprised.
When you meet his eyes, he looks away so fast it's actually kind of funny, pressing his lips together like he's trying not to smile. He looks like a kid who just got caught stealing cookies, and something about that expression makes you bite back a smile of your own.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," Jessi says, looking you over with that critical eye of hers. "You look like someone who could either make a deal or break some kneecaps. Perfect."
The outfit's actually making you feel kind of invincible. (The fact that it got Mr. Perfect Sniper all flustered doesn't hurt either.) You do a little turn, testing how it moves. Everything feels right—professional enough to be taken seriously, but with enough edge to remind people you're not someone to fuck with.
"Hold up," Jessi says suddenly, her eyes getting that dangerous glint that usually means trouble. "Got one more thing. Don't move."
She strides off into her weapons paradise, leaving you standing there wondering what else she could possibly have planned.
You definitely don't check if Jeon's still watching.
(Okay, that's a lie. You totally do.)
The button-up fits you like it was made for you—professional enough to command respect but with just enough something to make heads turn. You're fiddling with the collar when you notice it's buttoned kind of low. Like, maybe too low for a serious arms deal. But before you can decide whether to fix it, Jeon's suddenly right there in your space.
"Let me," he says, voice gone all low and rough (molten lava in your stomach)
His fingers brush against your skin as he does up that one button over your chest, and fuck—that tiny touch has your brain stuttering a bit.
Probably because your body remembers what those fingers can do.
When you look up at him (because of course he's using his height to loom over you like the smug bastard he is), his eyes are dark enough to drown in.
The little gleam swimming in them tells you he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you say, trying to sound annoyed even though you can feel yourself starting to smile.
"Immensely." He says; and his voice is pure sin wrapped in amusement.
He just keeps staring at you with this intensity that makes it hard to breathe, like he's thinking about all the ways he could mess up your perfectly put-together outfit.
Then Jessi bursts back in, completely ruining the moment.
"Found it!" She's waving around this black blazer like she just discovered buried treasure.
Jeon steps back, but not before giving you one last look that promises later. That little smirk is still playing on his lips as Jessi throws the blazer over your shoulders like she's putting the final touch on a masterpiece.
While Jessi goes over the tech specs of your gear, you sneak another look at Jeon. That heated playfulness from earlier is gone, replaced by that laser-focused look he gets when he's in Chief mode.
But there's still this... tension hanging in the air between you, like neither of you has quite forgotten what almost happened in that elevator.
Jessi then looks you both up and down with this satisfied smirk, like an artist admiring her masterpiece.
You have to admit, she knows what she's doing—the outfits are perfect for your cover, walking that line between dangerous and professional.
"Now for the fun part," she says, suddenly all business. "Let's get you two properly armed."
She leads you deeper into her weapons paradise, stopping at what looks like a plain wall. But when she presses her hand against this hidden scanner, the whole thing comes alive with soft beeps and whirs. A keypad appears, and Jessi punches in some code faster than you can follow.
The wall basically transforms, splitting open to reveal these massive hidden cabinets that look straight out of a spy movie.
Inside is enough firepower to start (or end) a small war, all arranged with the kind of precision that would make Jeon proud.
You've seen weapons before—kind of comes with the whole gang thing—but this is different.
Every gun, knife, and thing-you-don't-even-have-a-name-for gleams under the lights like they're on display in some very deadly museum.
"For when things get up close and personal," Jessi says, picking up this compact black handgun, "you'll want this beauty."
She hands you a Glock 26, and fuck—it's heavier than it looks.
"Small enough to hide, big enough to make someone regret their life choices."
Then she turns to Jeon with a different gun. "You get the Sig P226. More range, more punch. You can hang back and give her cover while she works her magic up close."
Jeon takes the gun and with a flick of his wrist, he expertly checks the chamber and magazine. You can't understand why your brain thinks that's hot, but the little nod he gives tells you Jessi picked right.
She keeps pulling out more gear—silencers that look way too professional, extra magazines, these holsters that probably cost more than your monthly pay. Then come the knives, small enough to hide pretty much anywhere but sharp enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
Jessi's whole vibe changes as she finishes arming you up. "These aren't just fancy accessories. Every time you pull one of these, you're making a choice that could end someone—maybe even yourself."
The weight of what she's saying hits different when you're actually holding deadly weapons. Her eyes lock onto yours, and you can tell she's trusting you not to fuck this up.
"One more thing," she says, pulling this fancy-looking gadget from a drawer. "Multi-tool kit. Has everything from basic lock picks to a mini torch. Trust me, you'll want options when shit hits the fan."
She hands it to Jeon, who clips it to his belt with practiced ease. (Of course he knows exactly what to do with it—guy probably has a whole collection of spy gear at home.)
Jessi takes a step back, giving you both this final once-over that feels kind of like a proud mom sending her kids off to prom.
(If prom involved infiltrating a rival gang's hideout.)
"You're good to go. Just remember—get in, do the job, get out. Don't try to be heroes."
Her words stick with you as you follow her out of the weapons room.
You walk through another set of doors to find a…
Holy shit. The garage is massive.
It's like walking into some billionaire's private car collection, except every vehicle probably has hidden gun compartments or something.
So Jessi's definitely got a thing for cars. There's everything from flashy Lamborghinis to those huge Bentleys that scream ‘I’m rich and probably dangerous.’ Motorcycles, sports cars, even some vehicles that look straight-up bulletproof—all lined up like some very deadly candy shop.
You're starting to think maybe the weapons aren't even Jessi's favorite toys.
Jessi leads you through her collection of cars like a proud mom showing off her kids' trophies. She stops at this black Lamborghini that looks expensive enough to make your eyes water. The lights bounce off its surface like it's made of pure money.
"This baby right here?" She runs her hand over the hood like she's petting a cat. "Zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. Makes people's heads turn so fast they get whiplash."
Then she drags you over to this Bentley that screams old money.
"And this beauty? When you need people to think you've got more dollars than sense." The inside looks like someone skinned a whole herd of very expensive cows and covered it in fancy wood.
"We're taking my bike."
Jeon's voice cuts through Jessi's car tour sharply.
He says it like it's already decided, which—knowing him—it probably is.
Jessi whips around to look at him, and fuck—her fiery aura actually flares up like she's about to burst into flames.
"Are you kidding me? Look at these beauties!" She waves at her collection. "They're begging for some action!"
But Jeon just shakes his head. "Bike's more maneuverable. Better control. Makes more sense for what we need."
"Ugh, fine." Jessi throws one last longing look at the Lamborghini like she's saying goodbye to a child. "But I swear to god, one of these days I'm getting your ass in one of these cars."
The little smirk Jeon gives her actually looks kind of fond. "Keep dreaming."
So you follow him to another part of the garage where his bike's parked.
It's this sleek, black monster of a machine that somehow manages to look both subtle and dangerous—kind of like its owner. The thing practically radiates power, but in that quiet way that says it doesn't need to show off.
Jessi watches Jeon check over the bike with this resigned look.
He runs his hands over the handlebars, checking everything with the kind of attention to detail you'd expect from someone who regularly makes impossible shots from a mile away.
"At least you take care of my presents," she mutters, but there's no real heat in it.
Jeon just nods, swinging his leg over the bike like he was born to ride it. When he turns to look at you, his face has gone all serious again.
"You good?"
You nod, feeling your heart start picking up speed.
This is really happening.
Jessi steps back, smiles, and then just waves you two off, not before adding something else.
"Watch your asses out there. And remember—you need backup, we're just a call away."
goal: 490 notes !!
if you’ve enjoyed this chapter please consider buying me a coffee!! ☕️ ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
"Waking up in his bed should feel like victory, but all you can think about are those pill bottles on his nightstand."
next | index
⚔ chapter details ⚔
word count: 9,5k
content: morning vulnerability and insomnia revelations, elevator sexual tension that goes nowhere, council meeting drama with heated arguments, mission prep with jessi's weapons expertise, undercover outfits that make jeon stare, AD's suspicious surveillance knowledge, and the calm before infiltrating mdf territory
☠ author's note ☠
As a European, I have absolutely no clue about guns so let's hope my research was decent and their weapons actually make sense ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) If any gun enthusiasts are reading this and I've somehow made a sniper rifle that shoots rainbows, just... pretend it's for the plot.
ANYWAY THE BIG DAY IS FINALLY HERE!!! Next chapter is THE MISSION and are we excited??? Because I AMMMMM!!! I've been building up to this for literal months and my chaotic little writer brain is VIBRATING with anticipation!
Jeon + motorbike = HOT AS HELL 🥵 Like sir, you're already dangerous enough, did you really need to add vehicular competence to your list of attractive qualities? RUDE.
Also Jessi is so mother mommy mama I love her! I mean, I say that about every single one of my characters, don't I? But what can I do—they're all so complex in my opinion! I have to really put myself in their position in every single scene and think genuinely about how they would react. Because one thing is how I WANT them to react, and another is how they would REALISTICALLY react, you know? Keeping those two aligned is harder than it looks, trust me!
Anyway ramble ramble ramble shut up Kiki we don't care—I KNOW BUT I'M THE AUTHOR so you're gonna read my rambling because I said so! I don't write 8k words per chapter to have my feelings dismissed! Y'all gonna put up with me whether you like it or not (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Thanks for reading as always, love y'all! Now buckle up because things are about to get SPICY!
⚔ socials ⚔
read on ao3
read on wattpad
tumblr/twitter: @jungkoode
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎.
The obnoxious blaring of Jeon's alarm tears through the quiet morning.
It's 6 AM—that weird time when everything feels kind of hazy and unreal, like the world hasn't quite decided if it's night or day yet.
His phone keeps buzzing against the nightstand, screen lighting up like a strobe light.
You're barely awake, caught in that fuzzy space between sleep and consciousness. Jeon's sprawled half on top of you, which should probably be uncomfortable but... isn't. His arm's thrown over your waist in this weirdly soft way that doesn't match his usual don't-touch-me vibe. You can feel his chest rising and falling against your back, his breath warm on your neck.
For a second, you think about waking him up. But he looks so p̶e̶a̶c̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ different when he's sleeping—none of that cold, distant Chief of Tactical stuff.
Just a guy who really needs some rest.
"Jeon," you try anyway, voice coming out all scratchy from sleep. "Your alarm."
He makes this grunt that might be words but definitely isn't, face pressed against your skin. Instead of getting up, he actually pulls you closer, burying his face in the pillow like if he ignores the alarm hard enough, it'll give up and go away.
"Jeon, come on. Get it." You nudge him with your elbow because that fucking alarm is driving you insane. It just keeps going and going, like some kind of electronic torture device.
He lets out this long-suffering groan that perfectly captures the eternal struggle between wanting to sleep and having actual responsibilities.
His hand flops around looking for his phone, movements all clumsy in that way people only get when they're not really awake yet. When he finally finds it, he misses the screen completely on his first try.
"Fuck off," he mumbles—definitely talking to the phone, not you. The woodsy scent of his skin mixed with mint from his breath fills your lungs.
After what feels like forever (but is probably like, ten seconds), blessed silence falls over the room.
Jeon just tosses his phone somewhere (hopefully not off the bed) and immediately curls back around you like some kind of clingy octopus. His body's radiating heat like a furnace, and he's definitely not planning on letting you go anytime soon.
His aura wraps around you like summer rain, all soft and warm, making your head spin in the best way.
(You're starting to think maybe he's not a morning person.)
"Five more minutes," he mumbles, voice all rough and sleepy like some kid who doesn't want to go to school.
You can't help but smirk.
Who would've thought the terrifying Chief of Tactical was such a baby in the morning?
"Five more minutes, and you'll be the one explaining to the Council why you're late." You poke his side. "Good luck with that."
"What council?" He sounds like he's halfway to dreamland already.
"Council of 9, dumbass. You know, that super important reunion about tonight's mission?"
His only response is this little grunt before his breathing starts evening out again.
Oh no. Not happening.
You kick him under the sheets—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to be annoying. He flinches and makes this annoyed clicking sound with his tongue.
Finally, with this dramatic sigh that you can feel rumble through his chest, he gives in. His body peels away from yours like it's physically painful for him to move.
"Fine, fine," he grumbles, surrendering to reality.
When he sits up, cold air rushes in where his body heat used to be. You both kind of... linger there on the edge of his bed.
You watch him rub his face, trying to wake up properly. It's kind of fascinating, seeing him switch from s̶o̶f̶t̶ sleepy Jungkook back to Jeon, the cold and distant Chief of Tactical.
Another yawn catches you as you sit up, letting the sheets pool around your waist. You blink, trying to clear the sleep from your eyes, when something on Jeon's bedside table catches your attention.
Oh.
There's a whole fucking pharmacy there.
Your eyes scan over the labels—hypnotics, sedatives, tranquilizers, sleeping pills. The kind of cocktail someone needs when sleep doesn't come naturally anymore.
It hits different now, remembering all those times you've seen him in the cafeteria at ass o'clock in the morning. Always with that black coffee, those dark circles under his eyes that you thought were just part of his whole intimidating Chief of Tactical thing.
(Turns out even the great Jeon Jungkook has trouble sleeping.)
You can't help but wonder what keeps him up at night. What kind of memories play on repeat in his head when everything goes quiet.
Sure, being a gang leader comes with its own baggage—the violence, the paranoia, always having to watch your back.
But something tells you there's more to it. Things that left marks deeper than the little scar on his cheek. The kind of stuff that makes someone stock up on enough sedatives to knock out a horse.
Your eyes fix on this one bottle of hypnotics that's already half empty. Something in your chest tightens at the sight, but you quickly squash that feeling down.
The last thing Jeon needs is your p̶i̶t̶y̶ concern.
You know how this works. Show any weakness in Kkangpae, and you might as well paint a target on your back. The gang's full of sharks, always circling, always waiting for someone to bleed in the water.
So you bite back all the questions building up in your throat. Push down that weird urge to reach out, to try and make it better somehow.
Whatever demons Jeon's fighting, they're his to deal with.
You've got your own role to play here, and playing therapist isn't it. Some things just stay broken, and some nights just stay sleepless.
And some things are not yours to fix, even if some part of you wants to.
"You ready?" Jeon asks, already heading for the door without waiting to hear if you actually are.
You follow him out with a quiet sigh, but your mind's still stuck on all those pill bottles.
On what they might mean.
On all the nights he probably spends staring at his ceiling, fighting whatever demons keep him up.
The common areas in his wing of the Assassination Division are empty this early.
Your footsteps echo through the halls as you make your way to the elevator, where Jeon leans against the wall like he's got all day. He crosses his arms over his chest, getting lost in whatever thoughts are running through that complicated head of his.
When he doesn't move to actually do anything, you have to remind him that not everyone has his fancy Chief clearance level.
"You gonna scan your card or what?" You wave vaguely at the scanner. "You know mine won't work up here."
The corner of his mouth twitches up—just barely—like he's annoyed at himself for forgetting.
He pulls out his access card without a word and taps it against the scanner. The light blinks green, and the elevator starts moving.
While you're waiting, your brain decides to dig up this random memory from weeks ago.
That night Jeon showed up at your door out of nowhere, demanding his jacket back. You hadn't thought about it then, but now...
"Hey," you turn to look at him, "how did you get on my floor that night? To get your jacket back?" The question hits you out of nowhere. "Our cards don't work on each other's floors."
His eyes go wide for a split second—clearly not expecting that question. He just stares at you for a moment, lips parted like he's trying to figure out what to say. Then his gaze darts away and he rubs the back of his neck, which is basically a flashing neon sign that says busted.
(This should be interesting.)
"I, uh..." Jeon starts, looking at you then quickly away. He's actually struggling for words, which is new.
His fingers tap against his thigh in this nervous rhythm you've never seen before. Just when you think he's going to leave you hanging, he lets out this tiny sigh, shoulders dropping just a bit.
"I asked AD for temporary access."
Wait. What?
"And he... just gave it to you? Just like that?"
You narrow your eyes because something's not adding up here.
You've seen how these two interact—or don't interact, more like it. The way Jeon basically disappears whenever AD shows up, and how AD looks at him like he's personally offended his entire bloodline.
Sure, AD glares at everyone (especially J-Hope), but with Jeon? That's a whole different level of hate.
(Not that it's any of your business what's going on there.)
"Told him I needed my jacket back."
The elevator keeps moving down, and the silence between you gets kind of heavy. Something about how weirdly hesitant Jeon's being makes your curiosity spike. Part of you knows you should probably drop it, but...
"So, your card worked the whole night?" You try to sound casual about it, but there's definitely some skepticism bleeding through.
"Yeah." He finally meets your eyes again. "Clearance passes usually last for 24 hours."
You nod slowly, filing that information away.
"But didn't AD find it weird? The time stamp would show you came in at 3 AM and didn't leave until..." You trail off, remembering exactly why he stayed so long.
Jeon's eyes snap to yours, and something flashes across his face too quick to read before he looks away. The crease between his brows gets deeper as the silence stretches out.
"I don't think he actually checks the access logs that closely," he says finally. "At least he hasn't mentioned anything about the, uh, timeframe."
You think about that for a second. It seems weird that AD, of all people, wouldn't keep tabs on security access. But maybe Jeon's right—maybe AD doesn't actually monitor that stuff.
Then you remember something.
That day after the pool training, you saw AD in the elevator with Kazuha. He'd told you both to "be careful."
Was that his cryptic way of saying he knew exactly what went down that night?
The elevator dings, cutting through your thoughts.
Jeon pushes off the wall, giving you this little nod to go in first. You step inside, and the last thing you see is his back and this lazy wave goodbye before the doors slide shut.
Anyway, something tells you AD knows way more than he lets on.
You’d never been in The Council room until now.
And it’s… Well, it’s weird. Tense today.
Everyone's taking their usual spots around this stupidly long table, and RM's at the head of it like always, looking every bit the Supreme Commander he is.
"Thanks for coming, everyone." His voice carries that authority that makes even the most stubborn chiefs shut up and listen.
Well, almost everyone.
"I don't even see why I have to be here when you're all so set on leaving me out of it." V's practically radiating annoyance.
Moon gives him that patient look he reserves for when someone's being difficult. "This mission affects the entire gang. That's why we need the whole Council present."
"But I'm not even part of it." V throws his feet up on the table like the dramatic bitch he is, crossing his arms. "So why do I have to sit through all this bullshit?"
"You listen because shared knowledge makes us stronger." RM's eyes sweep around the table, meeting everyone's gaze—even yours. "Unity isn't just about standing together. It's about thinking as one."
V rolls his eyes so hard you're surprised they don't get stuck. "Yeah, yeah, I get the whole 'one gang' thing. But do I really need every fucking detail?"
"Details matter." Jeon's voice cuts through the tension. "MDF isn't some amateur operation. One tiny blind spot and we're fucked."
"It's a goddamn snake pit we're walking into." J-Hope waves his hands around like he's trying to grab invisible dangers out of the air. "We all need to know what kind of poison we might be dealing with."
JM leans forward, all serious despite his usually gentle demeanor. "That hideout's a maze. You two need more than just a way in—you need a solid plan to get the fuck out of there."
"Exactly." RM's sighs. "This intel could change everything. We do this right, we take out one of their major operations."
Flower, who's been watching everything with that calculating look of hers, finally speaks up. "And V, whether you like it or not, this meeting is what keeps your men at the docks from getting caught with their pants down while we're focused on this mission."
V scoffs, but you can see him actually considering her words.
Jessi stops lounging in her chair like this is some kind of casual meetup.
"Alright, cut the bullshit. What's the actual plan here, RM?" She leans forward, all business now. "And it better be good."
The room goes quiet—that heavy kind of quiet that makes your skin prickle.
RM stands up, and you can feel the weight of what's coming.
This isn't just another mission briefing. This is you and Jeon walking straight into MDF territory.
No pressure.
RM clears his throat, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him.
"Here's how it's going to work," he starts, voice authoritative. "Jeon and Y/N are going undercover. We've got IDs that'll get them through MDF's front door."
The word 'undercover' makes your stomach do this weird flip thing. Jeon shifts slightly beside you, his presence weirdly reassuring for someone who's usually about as comforting as a loaded gun.
"They'll play it as traders," RM continues, spreading out this map that looks like someone went crazy with a red marker. "Fresh faces trying to make it big enough to catch MDF's attention."
Jeon nods, watching AD's finger trace some path on the map. "What about their security? Cameras?"
"System loops every three hours," AD says, sounding bored but you know that's just his thing. "We're setting up a distraction. At 23:00, when the loop starts, they'll get a power surge. Six minutes of blind spots."
"Six minutes?" Jessi raises an eyebrow. "That's cutting it real fucking close."
"We can handle it." Jeon sounds so sure it actually makes you believe him. "Had worse timeframes before."
"That's your window to find the server room and plant the bug." RM points to some spot deep in what looks like a maze. "AD will be in your ear the whole time."
"And when shit inevitably goes sideways?" V asks, and despite how pissy he's been about being left out, you can hear actual braincells there.
"You'll be armed," RM says simply. "But this is about getting in and out quiet. No firefights."
"Right, because stealth missions should totally go to Mr. Shoot-Everything-From-A-Mile-Away instead of, oh, I don't know, the actual Chief of Stealth?" V's voice drips sarcasm.
"V." JM's cuts in. "Enough."
V grunts but actually shuts up, which is kind of impressive. You've never seen anyone else get him to back down that easily.
Flower leans forward, and the room suddenly feels a bit colder. The map spread out on the table looks like some kind of twisted treasure map, except instead of X marking the spot, there's about fifty different ways this whole thing could go wrong.
"Alright, here's the deal," she says, getting straight to the point like always. "You need to be interesting enough to catch their attention, but not so interesting they get suspicious. Think you can handle that?"
She looks right at you, and you can feel the weight of what she's asking.
"Y/N, you're our front person here. While everyone's busy watching you sweet-talk them about money and deals, Jeon's gonna be doing the actual work." Her lips curve into this knowing smile. "Keep them focused on the profit. Rich assholes love talking about money."
Great. No pressure or anything. Just gotta be charming enough to distract an entire criminal organization while your... whatever Jeon is sneaks around their base. Easy peasy.
Flower turns to Jeon next, and her expression goes all business.
"You're playing backup dancer on this one. Stay in the background, watch everything, and when AD hits them with that power surge? That's your window. Get the bug planted without anyone noticing."
The room goes quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
Everyone's thinking the same thing—one tiny mistake and this whole plan goes up in smoke.
"Remember," Flower says, voice serious, "this isn't about showing off. It's about getting in, getting it done, and getting out without anyone realizing what happened."
"And more importantly," RM cuts in, giving you and Jeon a look, "don't fucking die. The intel's not worth either of you."
"What about communication?" you ask, because there's one pretty big hole in this plan. "We can't exactly text each other in there."
"Subvocals," AD doesn't look up from his laptop, but his voice carries that bored confidence that means he knows exactly what he's talking about. "Basically fancy mics that pick up whispers. We'll hear everything, but you two can talk without anyone else noticing. Plus, we'll feed you intel as we get it. Just keep it quiet and you'll be fine."
V lets out this little laugh, eyes twinkling like he knows something no one else does. "Sure putting a lot of faith in luck here, aren't we?"
"Luck's got nothing to do with it." RM's interjects. "This is about being prepared, being skilled, and getting shit done. Don't forget who we are. What Kkangpae stands for."
The room goes quiet again. Then, he continues speaking:
"Once you get that bug planted and grab whatever intel you can, you get out. We're not starting a war. Not yet."
Then Jeon turns to look at you, all Chief-of-Tactical mode.
Stormy.
"We split up as soon as we're inside," he says, voice gone all hard and professional. "Cover more ground, draw less attention."
"Yeah, no." You don't even hesitate to shut that down. The plan's crystal clear in your head. "We stick together, follow the script. Only split when the power goes out. That's the signal."
He scoffs—actually scoffs—and crosses his arms. "You really think playing follow-the-leader's gonna work that long? We're wasting time the second we walk in. Better to improvise early."
"We're not there to improvise," you snap back, getting annoyed now. The air's starting to feel like a brewing thunderstorm. "We have a plan for a fucking reason, Jeon. The power surge is our cover. Until then, you're stuck with me."
His jaw does that tightening thing it does when someone challenges him.
Chief or not, you're not backing down on this.
"A package deal that screams 'we're obviously here to fuck shit up'." He's practically radiating frustration. "Splitting up makes more sense. It's tactical."
"It's reckless," you cut in, meeting his intensity head-on. "Since when do we pick 'making sense' over actually being smart about this? We split up before the power cut, and we're basically painting targets on our backs."
You can feel everyone in the room watching this verbal sparring match in slight disbelief.
"You're not fucking listening—" Jeon leans into your space.
"Because what you're saying is bullshit," you snap back, refusing to be intimidated even though he's practically looming over you. "We go in toge—"
"Too risky. We split up, maximize our—"
"—chances of getting our asses caught!" You talk right over him, blood rushing hot in your veins. "We stick to the fucking pla—"
"Which is basically asking to get pinched if we're joined at the hip," he fires back, and god, his voice shouldn't sound that hot when he's being this infuriating.
"Oh, and you think going rogue is the ans—"
"It's called thinking on your feet, sunshine. Maybe try it some—"
"Save the condescending shit," you cut in, sharp enough to draw blood. "We're not there to show—"
"—that we're fucking amateurs!" He's almost growling now, and the sound does things to you that you really don't want to examine.
Your voices keep rising, cutting each other off in this heated back-and-forth that's starting to feel less like an argument and more like foreplay.
"Enough." RM's voice drops like a bucket of cold water.
You and Jeon both shut up instantly, turning to face him like scolded kids.
The whole room goes dead quiet, everyone waiting to see how the Supreme Commander's going to handle this.
"Y/N's right," RM cuts in, voice carrying that don't-fuck-with-me tone whilst his eyes bounce between you and Jeon as he speaks. "We made this plan accounting for every possible fuck-up. You go in together, no improvising. The power surge is your cue. Until then, you're just a couple of traders looking to make a deal. We can't afford any slip-ups."
The way he says it leaves no room for argument. You can see Jeon's shoulders drop just a tiny bit, like he's accepting defeat but doesn't want to show it.
"Got it," you nod, trying to look all professional and shit.
Like you didn't just get into a verbal sparring match with your Chief in front of the whole Council.
Jeon takes a second, then gives this little nod that looks like it physically pains him.
"Understood," he echoes, finally looking at you.
And so there’s this weird moment where you're both just... staring at each other; as if calling a truce without actually saying anything.
As RM dismisses everyone, you feel that rush of adrenaline from arguing start to fade. Your shoulders relax, and you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding.
Right. This whole mission is riding on you and Jeon not fucking it up by going off-script.
You can feel Jeon next to you, his whole vibe changing. He's still got that unreadable expression, but he doesn't look ready to fight anymore.
Before you can make your grand exit, Jessi's voice cuts through the room, making both of you plant your feet on the ground.
"Don't worry, you two. All that sexual tension will make for some hot angry fucking after the mission." She winks at you both like she just said something clever instead of mortifying.
"That's not—we're not—" You start sputtering like an idiot, feeling your face go red.
"Ridiculous," Jeon snaps at the same time, scowling like Jessi just insulted his sniper skills or something.
Jessi just smirks, looking way too pleased with herself. "Whatever you say, lovebirds. Just come by my division after lunch. Gotta get you kitted out for this little adventure."
You open your mouth to tell her exactly where she can shove her assumptions, but she keeps talking.
"AD's gonna set up your access, so don't be late!" And with that, she struts out of the room like she owns the place.
You take a deep breath, trying to get your shit together.
Without a word, you and Jeon turn to leave.
There's still a ton of prep to do for this mission, and you'd rather face MDF unarmed than spend another second in this room with everyone's eyes on you.
The elevator feels way too empty when it’s only you and Jeon in it.
Trapped in a metal box after whatever that disaster of a Council meeting was.
The silence feels heavy, like all that heated arguing is still buzzing in the air.
You stand there trying to look casual, watching the floor numbers tick down like they're the most interesting thing you've ever seen.
But you can't help noticing how Jeon's jaw is doing that clenching thing again, his lips pressed together so tight they're practically disappearing. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and his whole body's radiating tension like a coiled spring.
The silence is driving you insane.
So of course, before your brain can stop your mouth, you blurt out: "Just so we're clear, we are not having hot angry sex after this mission."
Great going girl. 10/10.
Jeon's head snaps toward you so fast you're worried he might get whiplash. One eyebrow shoots up in surprise, but then—oh—his expression shifts into that infuriating smirk.
"Aw, you sound disappointed," he says, voice dropping into that low, teasing register that definitely doesn't make your stomach flip.
You scoff, rolling your eyes as dramatically as possible. "Yeah, like I was last night."
"Excuse me?" The look of pure indignation on his face is actually priceless. "Pretty sure I had you begging."
"Begging?" You let out a laugh. "More like pointing out how fucking slow you were being."
You're going for casual disinterest, but the memories from last night keep trying to make your face heat up.
He actually laughs at that—this sharp, sudden sound that bounces off the elevator walls.
"Oh, is that what we're calling it now? Because I remember it more like... payback. For all that teasing." His eyes drop to your ass for a second. "Bending over until I couldn't take it anymore..."
You cross your arms, leaning back against the wall like this conversation isn't affecting you at all.
"That wasn't teasing. That was strategic mission preparation." You can't help the sly smile that creeps onto your face. "Besides, you're the one who changed the sleeping arrangement to fucking."
"A strategic move, huh?" His mouth does that little twitch that means he's trying not to smile. "Well, it fucking worked."
"Yeah, you broke so easily." You roll your eyes, but you can feel yourself starting to smile too. "Just for sex"
"Pretty damn good sex, if I might add." He says it like he's stating the weather, but that smirk is getting bigger.
Before you can even process what's happening, his hand shoots out to the elevator panel. The emergency stop button makes this loud clicking sound, and the whole thing jerks to a halt with this deep rumble that you feel in your bones.
Suddenly the space feels way too small, and all you can hear is your own breathing getting heavier.
Yeah. Yeah, he’s stopped the fucking elevator.
"What the actual fuck, Jeon?" You try to sound annoyed, but the words get stuck in your throat because he's moving into your space like he owns it, like he has every right to be this close.
Then you're trapped between his arms and the cold elevator wall, and fuck—the way he's looking at you makes you feel naked already.
Your heart's going crazy in your chest, completely betraying how irritated you're pretending to be. Heat starts pooling between your legs, and it's honestly embarrassing how quickly your body responds to him.
"We can't—" Your voice comes out all breathy and pathetic. "We can't do this here."
The smile he gives you is pure sin as he leans in closer, close enough that you can feel his breath on your skin, static wrapping around you, making it hard to think straight.
"Why not?"
"Because we're in a fucking elevator—"
"No cameras." He cuts you off like he's been waiting for this excuse.
You try to swallow but your throat's gone dry. Your sling feels itchy against your skin, probably because your whole body's remembering what happened last night.
"People are gonna notice if the elevator's stuck—"
"Maintenance issue." He says it so fast you know he's thought about this before.
"Jeon—" You start to argue, but then his eyes drop to your mouth and your brain just... stops working.
You know you should push him away. That's what any sane person would do. But there's something about Jeon that makes your brain stop working right—like a magnet pulling you in no matter how hard you try to resist. Every cell in your body is screaming at you to just grab him and kiss him already.
Right when you're about to say fuck it and give in, he pulls back.
And the look in his eyes? Pure evil, like he knows exactly what he's doing to you.
"Sunshine," he practically purrs, voice gone all low and rough in a way that makes heat pool in your stomach, "you're too eager."
The elevator dings, saving you from doing something stupid.
He steps out onto his floor without another word, that infuriating smirk still plastered on his face like he just won something.
You slump against the wall the second the doors close, letting out this huge breath you didn't even realize you were holding
As the elevator keeps moving, the whole thing feels kind of surreal—like maybe you imagined him pressing you up against the wall and looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive.
But the way your skin's still tingling tells you it definitely happened.
When the doors open on your floor, it's like stepping back into the real world.
One where you need to figure out what the hell to tell Yunjin about where you've been all night. She's way too perceptive for her own good, and she definitely noticed you didn't come to your room to sleep.
You walk to your room trying to come up with something believable.
Maybe you were up all night studying mission plans? Or got restless and went wandering around the common areas?
Your brain's still kind of fuzzy from having Jeon all up in your space, which isn't helping with the whole creative lying thing.
But when you push open your door, Yunjin spins around like she's been caught doing something wrong. Her eyes are all wide and guilty, and before you can even open your mouth to make up some excuse about where you've been, she starts talking.
"Okay, before you give me shit for not sleeping here last night—" The words come tumbling out of her like she can't get them out fast enough. "You won't believe what happened. I was just gonna have a few drinks with V, you know, just to chill..."
Well. You surely didn't expect that.
You stand there trying to process the flood of information Yunjin's dumping on you. She's so caught up in her story she doesn't even notice your brain short-circuiting.
"And I know we said to stay away from V's whole... thing, but fuck—" She's practically vibrating with excitement. "We've been dancing around each other for weeks, and last night was just—"
"Yunjin, hold up." You raise a hand to stop her word-vomit. "Are you telling me you spent the night with V? Like, you and V actually—"
You don't finish the sentence because honestly, you don't need to. The implication is heavy enough to sink a ship.
She bites her lip and nods, looking somewhere between guilty and smug.
"Yeah, we fucked..." Her voice trails off before picking right back up. "And let me tell you, it was good. Like, he's not even into all that scary shit everyone thinks he is? But his chaotic energy definitely carries over to bed, god, if you only knew—"
You can't help the snort spreading across your face.
Here you were worrying about how to explain your own night away, and Yunjin's gone and done the exact same thing.
There's something kind of poetic about both of you getting tangled up with people you definitely shouldn't be touching.
A laugh bubbles up in your throat. "Okay, spare me the details. But I'm glad you had fun with your psychopath."
"It was actually really nice?" She's got this dreamy look that would be cute if she wasn't talking about the gang's resident knife enthusiast. "I know we said getting involved with him was a bad idea, but..."
She shrugs, looking almost shy.
"Sometimes you can't help who you want to climb like a tree."
You nod because fuck—isn't that the truth? Your body's still kind of sore from climbing your own dangerous tree last night.
Quick thinking has you saying, "I had an early Council meeting about the mission."
It's not exactly a lie. You did have a meeting. The fact that you came straight from Jeon's bed to it is just... details.
Yunjin seems to buy it, but then her eyes narrow and this little smirk appears on her face.
"Speaking of details... that shirt looks a bit big on you." She eyes the obviously oversized fabric. "Almost like it belongs to someone else. Someone tall, maybe? Tattooed?"
Heat creeps up your neck as you tug at the shirt that definitely belongs to Jeon.
"It's just comfortable," you mutter, but even you don't believe that weak excuse.
"Sure it is." Yunjin's laugh is rather a sneer. "Tell Jeon I said hi."
She throws you a wink and you roll your eyes, but you can't quite fight the smile tugging at your lips.
At least you're not the only one fucking a chief.
The scanner actually flashes green when you swipe your card, which is weird.
Usually you only get access to the Seduction floor and common areas, but apparently Jessi wasn't kidding about AD setting up clearance to her realm for you.
You hit the button for the 9th floor and watch the numbers tick up.
The doors slide open to a completely different vibe from what you're used to.
Gone is all that minimalist tech stuff from AD's floor or the sterile efficiency of Assassination.
The Weapons Division looks exactly like what it is—a place that deals in death. The lights are dim, pipes running everywhere like exposed veins, and the floor's just straight-up concrete. No fancy finishes here.
You've maybe been here like, three times? And every visit feels like stepping into some alternate universe inside Kkangpae's castle. The contrast between this and your division's sleek aesthetic is wild.
"Well, well, look who we have here!"
The voice booms through the hallway, making you jump.
You turn to find this huge guy with a green mullet heading your way, covered in neck tattoos that probably tell some interesting stories. You're pretty sure his name is Jae? He's Jessi's second-in-command, but you've barely exchanged two words with him before.
Not that you'd know it from how he grins at you like you're old friends.
"Jessi's waiting on you," he says, slapping your back hard enough to make you stumble forward. (What is it with these Weapons Division people and casual violence?) "Come on, can't keep the boss lady hanging."
You follow Mullet Man through these massive double doors and holy shit—the weapons depot is huge. The ceiling's so high it's got actual walkways crisscrossing it, leading to what looks like storage units. Every table is packed with enough firepower to start a small war: rifles, handguns, knives, stuff you don't even have names for.
Jessi's off to one side, checking out this fancy-looking automatic rifle like she's shopping for groceries. Her fiery aura fills the space with heating energy.
When she spots you, those red lips curl into this knowing smirk that makes you kind of nervous.
"Right on time," she says, putting down the gun like it's no big deal. "Now we just gotta wait for lover boy to complete the set."
Jae throws up this exaggerated salute and swaggers off, leaving you perched on a nearby stool while Jessi's aura dances around like actual flames.
Jessi leans back against one of the weapon-covered tables, arms crossed and this knowing look in her eyes that makes you kind of nervous.
"That was quite the show this morning. Never seen Jeon actually engage like that before."
"What do you mean?" You frown, thinking about how often Jeon and V are at each other's throats. "He fights with V all the time."
"Nah, that's different." She shakes her head, red hair swaying. "When he fights with V, it's all explosions and death threats. Pure chaos."
Her hands make this exaggerated boom motion.
"But this morning? That was like... verbal foreplay. He was actually in there with you, giving as good as he got."
You think about that for a second.
Now that she mentions it, Jeon does usually just... shut down when other people try to argue with him. Goes all cold and distant, like he can't be bothered to even engage.
But this morning he was right there with you, matching your energy blow for blow.
"Huh." The realization hits you harder than it probably should. "He's not usually much for back-and-forth, is he?"
"That's what I'm saying!" Jessi looks way too pleased with herself. "That emotionally constipated asshole usually keeps everyone at a distance. But you?" She wiggles her eyebrows in this ridiculous way. "Something's different..."
Your face heats up because fuck—she's not wrong. But you are absolutely not having this conversation right now.
"So anyway," you say quickly, probably not as smooth as you think, "what kind of gear are we talking about here?"
Jessi's smirk says she knows exactly what you're doing, but she lets it slide.
Instead, she turns to this impressive spread of weapons and gadgets laid out on the table. Some of them look deadly enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
"Only the best for our star infiltration team," she says, sounding like a proud mom showing off her kid's artwork. "Let's talk comm units first..."
Then, you catch it.
That woodsy, pine scent that clings to him like his leather jacket.
You don’t even need to turn around to know it’s him.
Jeon appears in the doorway looking unfairly good in his all-black everything, like some kind of high-fashion assassin.
When his eyes find you and Jessi, one eyebrow goes up.
"Starting without me?" His voice is dry as desert.
"Look who finally decided to show up." Jessi's teasing, but then her expression turns into something more devious. "I was just telling your partner here how I've never seen you get so fired up before. Something about her really pushes your buttons, huh?"
You kind of want to melt into the concrete floor. Leave it to Jessi to stir shit up just because she can.
But Jeon just shrugs, cool as ever.
"Just discussing strategy." His voice gives absolutely nothing away, which is honestly impressive considering how heated he got earlier.
Jessi looks kind of disappointed that she couldn't get a reaction out of him. Classic Jeon, refusing to take the bait. She lets out this dramatic sigh and turns back to all the gear spread out on the table.
"Well, now that his highness has graced us with his presence," she says, standing up with that natural grace she has, "let's get you both looking the part. Can't have you walking into MDF territory looking like gang members, can we?"
You follow her through the rows of weapons and equipment. It's kind of amazing how she knows exactly where everything is in this massive space. Her energy is contagious—she's clearly in her element here, surrounded by all these tools of destruction.
The weapons depot starts feeling less like an armory and more like some underground fashion studio as you walk deeper in.
Because of course, procurement doesn’t only mean weapons and human resource.
Apparently, it also means Jessi has a pass to turn a room full of deadly weapons into her personal styling space.
There's this sectioned-off area that looks like a makeshift dressing room, complete with different fabrics hanging everywhere.
"Over here, Jeon." Jessi's voice has that tone that means she's already planning something. She looks him up and down like she's mentally redesigning his whole outfit.
Jeon follows her, trying to look like he's not into it, but you can see the interest in his eyes. You hang back a bit, kind of enjoying watching him get the Jessi treatment.
Jessi starts pulling stuff from these racks that look like someone couldn't decide if they were making tactical gear or runway fashion. Every piece somehow manages to be both bulletproof and stupidly stylish.
First up for Jeon: this black suit that catches the light in a way that's definitely not standard issue.
"Put this on," she tells him, shoving the suit in his hands. "It's reinforced—won't stop a bullet, but a knife won't get through."
He disappears behind this makeshift changing screen, and you're definitely not counting the seconds until he comes back out.
When he does, though... fuck.
The suit fits him like it was painted on, showing off all those muscles you're way too familiar with now. The jacket makes his shoulders look even broader, and the pants are doing criminal things to his legs. He looks like he walked straight out of some high-end assassin movie.
"You could probably kill someone just by walking into a room looking like that," you say before you can stop yourself. Your voice definitely doesn't sound as casual as you meant it to.
The smug bastard actually smirks at that. "Wouldn't be the first time."
But Jessi's not having it. She shakes her head, looking at him like an artist who's not quite happy with their work.
"Too polished. We need dangerous, not James Bond. Try this instead."
She pulls out this whole new look: leather jacket that probably costs more than anything you own (which is not much), deep maroon shirt that's somehow both simple and expensive-looking, and black jeans that you just know are going to be trouble.
When he steps out this time, his whole aura shifts.
The leather sits on his shoulders like it belongs there, and that hint of maroon under all the black just... works.
He looks like someone who could sweet-talk his way into a deal and then burn the whole place down if it goes wrong.
"Now that's more like it," Jessi says, looking satisfied. "Says 'I do business, but I also do crime' in all the right ways."
You find yourself nodding along because damn.
He looks exactly like what a high-level arms dealer should look—dangerous enough to take seriously, stylish enough to have clearly made money doing it.
Jeon catches you staring and raises an eyebrow, like he's asking what you think. You give him a small nod because what else can you do? He looks f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ good.
Really good.
Jessi rummages through another rack and pulls out this long-sleeved black shirt.
"Here, put this under the jacket. The fabric's breathable but bulletproof-adjacent. Won't stop a direct hit, but it'll give you a fighting chance."
Jeon shrugs off the leather jacket and slips the shirt on. It's thin but looks sturdy—perfect for someone who might need to move fast or fight their way out of trouble.
Jessi finally steps back, eyeing him like she's inspecting a weapon.
"Not bad. Looks casual enough that no one'll think twice, but you can actually move in it." She hands him back the leather jacket. "Try it all together."
You try to look professional while he puts the jacket back on over the maroon shirt and black base layer, but fuck—the whole ensemble is perfect.
The layers somehow make him look even more dangerous, like he could either charm you or kill you and you wouldn't know which until it was too late.
While Jeon and Jessi get into some deep discussion about fabric weights and mobility ranges, you're kind of amazed at how much thought goes into this.
It's not just picking out nice clothes—every piece has to tell the right story without saying a word.
One wrong detail and the whole cover's blown.
The attention to detail is actually impressive. Jessi knows exactly how to make someone look dangerous but approachable, wealthy but not flashy.
In this world, the wrong outfit can get you killed as quick as the wrong word.
You watch them fine-tune every detail, fascinated by how each adjustment shapes the character Jeon's going to play. And then… The final touch.This plain black watch that probably has fifteen different ways to kill someone. Jeon checks it over with that focused look he gets when he's handling weapons.
"Nice," is all he says, strapping it on.
Standing there in his perfectly crafted outfit, Jeon looks like he was born to play this role. Then Jessi turns to you with this wicked gleam in her eyes that makes your stomach drop.
"Your turn, beautiful," she says, gesturing at another rack of clothes. "Let's make you look expensive but deadly."
Something tells you this is going to be way more complicated than just picking out a nice dress.
You step forward to check out what Jessi's picked out, and damn—she really knows what she's doing. Every piece looks like it was chosen to tell a specific story about who you're supposed to be for this mission.
First up is this skin-tight dress that practically screams ‘honey trap.’ Jessi takes one look and tosses it aside with a muttered "too fucking obvious."
Then there's this whole secretary fantasy thing with a high-necked blouse and pencil skirt, but that gets vetoed too. ("Can't fight for shit in that.")
Then she hands you this black button-up that feels expensive as hell, paired with these tailored pants that feel way too nice to the touch. The fabric's got that perfect balance—soft enough to feel good but sturdy enough to take a beating if things go south.
When you slip into it, something shifts. The shirt fits in all the right places, making you feel d̶a̶n̶g̶e̶r̶o̶u̶s̶ powerful. And the pants? They let you move like you might need to throw down at any second, which, considering it's MDF territory you're heading into, isn't exactly unlikely.
You step out to get Jessi's opinion.
And catch Jeon straight-up staring at your ass.
You’re not surprised.
When you meet his eyes, he looks away so fast it's actually kind of funny, pressing his lips together like he's trying not to smile. He looks like a kid who just got caught stealing cookies, and something about that expression makes you bite back a smile of your own.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," Jessi says, looking you over with that critical eye of hers. "You look like someone who could either make a deal or break some kneecaps. Perfect."
The outfit's actually making you feel kind of invincible. (The fact that it got Mr. Perfect Sniper all flustered doesn't hurt either.) You do a little turn, testing how it moves. Everything feels right—professional enough to be taken seriously, but with enough edge to remind people you're not someone to fuck with.
"Hold up," Jessi says suddenly, her eyes getting that dangerous glint that usually means trouble. "Got one more thing. Don't move."
She strides off into her weapons paradise, leaving you standing there wondering what else she could possibly have planned.
You definitely don't check if Jeon's still watching.
(Okay, that's a lie. You totally do.)
The button-up fits you like it was made for you—professional enough to command respect but with just enough something to make heads turn. You're fiddling with the collar when you notice it's buttoned kind of low. Like, maybe too low for a serious arms deal. But before you can decide whether to fix it, Jeon's suddenly right there in your space.
"Let me," he says, voice gone all low and rough (molten lava in your stomach)
His fingers brush against your skin as he does up that one button over your chest, and fuck—that tiny touch has your brain stuttering a bit.
Probably because your body remembers what those fingers can do.
When you look up at him (because of course he's using his height to loom over you like the smug bastard he is), his eyes are dark enough to drown in.
The little gleam swimming in them tells you he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you say, trying to sound annoyed even though you can feel yourself starting to smile.
"Immensely." He says; and his voice is pure sin wrapped in amusement.
He just keeps staring at you with this intensity that makes it hard to breathe, like he's thinking about all the ways he could mess up your perfectly put-together outfit.
Then Jessi bursts back in, completely ruining the moment.
"Found it!" She's waving around this black blazer like she just discovered buried treasure.
Jeon steps back, but not before giving you one last look that promises later. That little smirk is still playing on his lips as Jessi throws the blazer over your shoulders like she's putting the final touch on a masterpiece.
While Jessi goes over the tech specs of your gear, you sneak another look at Jeon. That heated playfulness from earlier is gone, replaced by that laser-focused look he gets when he's in Chief mode.
But there's still this... tension hanging in the air between you, like neither of you has quite forgotten what almost happened in that elevator.
Jessi then looks you both up and down with this satisfied smirk, like an artist admiring her masterpiece.
You have to admit, she knows what she's doing—the outfits are perfect for your cover, walking that line between dangerous and professional.
"Now for the fun part," she says, suddenly all business. "Let's get you two properly armed."
She leads you deeper into her weapons paradise, stopping at what looks like a plain wall. But when she presses her hand against this hidden scanner, the whole thing comes alive with soft beeps and whirs. A keypad appears, and Jessi punches in some code faster than you can follow.
The wall basically transforms, splitting open to reveal these massive hidden cabinets that look straight out of a spy movie.
Inside is enough firepower to start (or end) a small war, all arranged with the kind of precision that would make Jeon proud.
You've seen weapons before—kind of comes with the whole gang thing—but this is different.
Every gun, knife, and thing-you-don't-even-have-a-name-for gleams under the lights like they're on display in some very deadly museum.
"For when things get up close and personal," Jessi says, picking up this compact black handgun, "you'll want this beauty."
She hands you a Glock 26, and fuck—it's heavier than it looks.
"Small enough to hide, big enough to make someone regret their life choices."
Then she turns to Jeon with a different gun. "You get the Sig P226. More range, more punch. You can hang back and give her cover while she works her magic up close."
Jeon takes the gun and with a flick of his wrist, he expertly checks the chamber and magazine. You can't understand why your brain thinks that's hot, but the little nod he gives tells you Jessi picked right.
She keeps pulling out more gear—silencers that look way too professional, extra magazines, these holsters that probably cost more than your monthly pay. Then come the knives, small enough to hide pretty much anywhere but sharp enough to make you nervous just looking at them.
Jessi's whole vibe changes as she finishes arming you up. "These aren't just fancy accessories. Every time you pull one of these, you're making a choice that could end someone—maybe even yourself."
The weight of what she's saying hits different when you're actually holding deadly weapons. Her eyes lock onto yours, and you can tell she's trusting you not to fuck this up.
"One more thing," she says, pulling this fancy-looking gadget from a drawer. "Multi-tool kit. Has everything from basic lock picks to a mini torch. Trust me, you'll want options when shit hits the fan."
She hands it to Jeon, who clips it to his belt with practiced ease. (Of course he knows exactly what to do with it—guy probably has a whole collection of spy gear at home.)
Jessi takes a step back, giving you both this final once-over that feels kind of like a proud mom sending her kids off to prom.
(If prom involved infiltrating a rival gang's hideout.)
"You're good to go. Just remember—get in, do the job, get out. Don't try to be heroes."
Her words stick with you as you follow her out of the weapons room.
You walk through another set of doors to find a…
Holy shit. The garage is massive.
It's like walking into some billionaire's private car collection, except every vehicle probably has hidden gun compartments or something.
So Jessi's definitely got a thing for cars. There's everything from flashy Lamborghinis to those huge Bentleys that scream ‘I’m rich and probably dangerous.’ Motorcycles, sports cars, even some vehicles that look straight-up bulletproof—all lined up like some very deadly candy shop.
You're starting to think maybe the weapons aren't even Jessi's favorite toys.
Jessi leads you through her collection of cars like a proud mom showing off her kids' trophies. She stops at this black Lamborghini that looks expensive enough to make your eyes water. The lights bounce off its surface like it's made of pure money.
"This baby right here?" She runs her hand over the hood like she's petting a cat. "Zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. Makes people's heads turn so fast they get whiplash."
Then she drags you over to this Bentley that screams old money.
"And this beauty? When you need people to think you've got more dollars than sense." The inside looks like someone skinned a whole herd of very expensive cows and covered it in fancy wood.
"We're taking my bike."
Jeon's voice cuts through Jessi's car tour sharply.
He says it like it's already decided, which—knowing him—it probably is.
Jessi whips around to look at him, and fuck—her fiery aura actually flares up like she's about to burst into flames.
"Are you kidding me? Look at these beauties!" She waves at her collection. "They're begging for some action!"
But Jeon just shakes his head. "Bike's more maneuverable. Better control. Makes more sense for what we need."
"Ugh, fine." Jessi throws one last longing look at the Lamborghini like she's saying goodbye to a child. "But I swear to god, one of these days I'm getting your ass in one of these cars."
The little smirk Jeon gives her actually looks kind of fond. "Keep dreaming."
So you follow him to another part of the garage where his bike's parked.
It's this sleek, black monster of a machine that somehow manages to look both subtle and dangerous—kind of like its owner. The thing practically radiates power, but in that quiet way that says it doesn't need to show off.
Jessi watches Jeon check over the bike with this resigned look.
He runs his hands over the handlebars, checking everything with the kind of attention to detail you'd expect from someone who regularly makes impossible shots from a mile away.
"At least you take care of my presents," she mutters, but there's no real heat in it.
Jeon just nods, swinging his leg over the bike like he was born to ride it. When he turns to look at you, his face has gone all serious again.
"You good?"
You nod, feeling your heart start picking up speed.
This is really happening.
Jessi steps back, smiles, and then just waves you two off, not before adding something else.
"Watch your asses out there. And remember—you need backup, we're just a call away."
goal: 490 notes !!
if you’ve enjoyed this chapter please consider buying me a coffee!! ☕️ ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
"You didn’t expect Jungkook’s birthday to end with soft talks about Mayer, thunderstorms and stupid craft projects. And yet, here you are."
next | index
⋆｡°✩ chapter details ✩°｡⋆
word count: 9.5k
content: delayed gifts, hand brushing, subtle comfort, emotional hypervigilance, miscommunication, clashing attachment styles, slow understanding, quiet intimacy, unexpected softness, bittersweet memories, trauma-informed reactions, symbolic objects, real conversations, familial grief undertones, perceptive but clueless boys, warmth in small gestures, psychological contrast, vulnerability denial, casual closeness, accidental meaning, rain metaphors.
Kiki Nation’s official discussion thread for FMU 23
✧ author's note ✧
This chapter made me feel some type of way, and not in the thirst-posting way for once (shocking, I know). There’s a softness to it that snuck up on me. Like I sat down to write what I thought would be a moment of transition, and ended up face-planting into the kind of quiet, delicate intimacy that’s so often overlooked both in fiction and real life. So here I am, feeling dumb and raw and tender over two forks.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Chapter 21, specifically that hand-touch moment—how subtle it was, and how I never explicitly addressed it in the narration because I didn’t want to. That’s the thing with psychologically driven writing: you’re not meant to be spoon-fed emotional meaning. You’re supposed to notice the tiny things. The almosts. The unspoken. The instinctive kindness that isn’t necessarily romantic, but still manages to get under your skin. That’s what that subway touch was. Not Jungkook being in love. Not a declaration. Just him, in his purest, most unaware form—being soft. Gentle. Deeply perceptive in a way that hurts because it’s so unconscious.
And that’s what this whole chapter is circling around. It’s not about a confession. It’s not even about clarity. It’s about conflict—internal, relational, unintentional conflict between people who are shaped by opposite emotional mechanisms.
Jungkook isn’t emotionally open, but he acts open because he’s thoughtful. Reader is emotionally hyperaware, but she reacts closed-off, because she’s scared and guarded. He acts without thinking deeply about it. She thinks deeply and then doesn’t act. They miss each other again and again not because they don’t care, but because their blueprints don’t match. And yet—they try. Or maybe, they accidentally try. And isn’t that so real?
One of them touches without thinking. The other flinches while overthinking. One gives a gift like it’s nothing. The other interprets it like it’s everything. They’re both right. They’re both wrong. That tension? That’s the story.
This chapter doesn’t show love blooming. It shows understanding struggling to sprout in barren soil.
They have so much ahead of them, so many versions of themselves they haven’t grown into yet. This moment is not culmination—it’s foundation. It matters. It matters more than if they’d just fucked again. Because emotional timing? Matters. And this wasn’t the time for sex. It was the time for emotionally loaded shit I can’t name because you haven’t read the chapter yet, but is now haunting me forever.
Read slow. Read deep. Look for the invisible thread. That’s where the truth is.
⋆｡°✩ read on✩°｡⋆
ao3
wattpad
Walking back into the karaoke room feels like entering a different dimension—one where rooftop confessions and ex-girlfriend confrontations don't exist.
The noise hits you first, a wall of sound that's almost physical in its intensity. Hobi is mid-Mariah, belting out a note that should probably be classified as a war crime, while Ryan and Seth egg him on with increasingly chaotic dance moves. Tessa's doubled over laughing on the couch next to Diana, both of them recording the spectacle on their phones. Yeji and Irya are engaged in what appears to be a heated debate with Jimin over whether Britney or Christina had the better 90s catalog. Yoongi watches it all from his corner seat, expression caught somewhere between amusement and exhaustion.
"Holy shit, he's alive!" Kevin shouts when Jungkook steps through the doorway.
The room erupts in cheers and catcalls, like they're welcoming a returning champion rather than someone who disappeared for half an hour.
"Dude, we thought you fell in," David calls out, raising his drink in salute. "World's longest bathroom break."
"Nah, he was definitely sneaking in a Clash Royale marathon," Kevin argues, tossing an empty cup that Jungkook easily dodges. "Probably hiding in a stall like a true gamer."
"You wish your stats were as good as mine," Jungkook fires back, slipping effortlessly into the friendly banter like he wasn't just having some kind of existential crisis on the rooftop.
It's impressive, really—the way he can flip that switch, become this version of himself that fits perfectly into the chaos around him.
While everyone's attention is focused on Jungkook's triumphant return, Taehyung makes a beeline for Yoongi and Hobi, who've gravitated toward each other in a corner of the room.
You're not trying to eavesdrop, exactly, but you happen to be standing close enough to hear the urgent whisper:
"He was on the roof."
The effect is immediate. Both Yoongi and Hobi snap their heads toward Taehyung, their expressions shifting so quickly it's almost comical—except there's nothing funny about the naked fear that flashes across their faces.
"It wasn't like that!" Jungkook interrupts, appearing beside them with surprising speed. His voice is a harsh whisper-shout, barely audible over the music but intense enough to make all three of his friends freeze. "I just needed air. Seriously."
"Bro..." Yoongi's voice is low, the single syllable carrying more weight than it should.
"Jungkook, you know how that looks to us," Hobi says, softer but no less serious.
"I know. I'm sorry," Jungkook runs a hand through his hair, a gesture you're starting to recognize as his nervous tic. "But it wasn't... that. I swear. I just went there to think."
"After seeing her?" Taehyung presses, still tense.
"Yeah," Jungkook admits, "but it wasn't—look, can we not do this right now? It's fine. I'm fine."
There's clearly more to whatever ‘it’ is—something significant enough to make three grown men look like they've seen a ghost.
But Jungkook's expression makes it clear the discussion is over, at least for now.
You should probably stop pretending to be fascinated by the karaoke song list and move away before they realize you're listening.
But before you can, Jungkook abruptly changes the subject, his voice rising to a cheerful pitch that sounds slightly forced.
"Alright, alright!" He claps his hands together, turning to face the room. "So... birthday gifts for the birthday boy?"
The tension shatters as the crowd erupts in excited chatter. Seth whoops loudly, and someone (Ryan, you think) starts an off-key rendition of ‘For He's A Jolly Good Fellow’ that quickly derails into chaos. Jungkook's shoulders visibly relax as the attention shifts from whatever just happened to the much safer territory of presents.
One by one, people approach with gifts—some wrapped beautifully, others clearly hastily stuffed into whatever bag was available.
Taehyung goes first, handing over a sleek black box tied with a simple red ribbon.
"Don't make it weird," he warns as Jungkook takes it.
Inside is what appears to be a ridiculously expensive camera lens. You don't know enough about photography to identify it, but based on the way Jungkook's eyes widen and his mouth forms a perfect ‘o,’ it's something significant.
"Dude," he breathes, lifting it carefully like it might shatter. "This is—holy shit, Tae."
"Yeah, well." Taehyung shrugs, but you catch the pleased smile he tries to hide. "You've been whining about needing a better wide-angle for your urban shots, so."
Jungkook looks genuinely moved, holding the lens like it's made of gold. "I can't believe you remembered."
"I always remember," Taehyung says simply, and the way he says it that makes you think he means more than just camera preferences.
Hobi goes next, presenting a sleek box containing what looks like high-end wireless headphones.
“For all those late-night production sessions," he explains with a grin. "So we don't have to hear your trash music taste through the walls anymore."
"You love my music, asshole," Jungkook laughs, already testing them out.
"I love peace more," Hobi retorts, but he's beaming as Jungkook gives an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Yoongi's gift is less physical—a card containing what appears to be a voucher for studio time.
“Booked you sixteen hours at Blueline," he says with characteristic understatement. "For that soundtrack project you mentioned."
Jungkook looks up from the card, something like disbelief crossing his face. "Dude, Blueline is impossible to get into. How did you—"
"I know people," Yoongi shrugs. "Just don't waste it making crap."
"I would never disrespect the temple," Jungkook promises solemnly, pressing the card to his heart with mock reverence.
The gift-giving continues, a parade of thoughtful items that speak to genuine friendship: rare vinyl records, vintage film books, an artisan coffee setup that makes Jungkook actually bounce with excitement.
It's sweet, really—seeing him surrounded by people who clearly know him well, who've put thought into what he'd like.
And then it hits you.
Fuck.
The Mayer vinyl. Sitting on your dresser at home, still in its brown paper wrapping from that record store in Williamsburg.
Because okay, first of all—who brings a fragile vinyl record to MOMA and then a karaoke bar?
You simply had no way of bringing it without raising suspicions.
And maybe asking Yoongi for help bringing it over would’ve made it look like you cared, so.
The gifts are winding down, and Jungkook is making his rounds, thanking everyone with what seems like genuine gratitude. He looks happier now, more relaxed—whatever happened with Mia and on the rooftop temporarily forgotten in the warmth of celebration.
You're contemplating whether you should make up some excuse about your gift when suddenly he's right there, appearing in your peripheral vision like he materialized out of thin air.
"So," he says, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as he leans just a bit too close. "Where's my present, Pyx?"
The nickname rolls off his tongue, familiar enough now that you've stopped rolling your eyes every time he uses it. (Mostly.)
"At home," you admit, trying to sound casual and not like someone who completely failed at basic gift logistics.
"Oh?"
His lips purse, fighting back what's clearly a smirk.
The glint in his eye is positively dangerous.
"At home?"
Your cheeks heat up against your will.
“Not—I don't mean it like that," you stammer, realizing too late how your answer could be interpreted. "I mean I literally left it at the apartment. It wouldn't fit in my bag."
"Big gift, huh?" he murmurs, leaning even closer. His breath brushes your ear, warm and smelling faintly of vanilla. "I'm intrigued."
"It's just a thing," you say lamely. "Nothing special."
"I'd honestly be happy with the other interpretation, for the record," he continues like you haven't spoken, voice dropping to a register that should be illegal in public spaces.
"In your dreams," you scoff, but it comes out weaker than intended.
"Every night," he confirms, that infuriating smirk spreading across his face now. "Detailed, technicolor dreams. Sometimes you even—"
"Boundaries, Rogue," you cut him off, pressing a finger against his lips. "We're in public."
"That didn't stop you earlier," he whispers, gaze flicking to your lips for the briefest second. "On the roof?"
"That was different."
"Different how?"
"We were alone then."
"We could be alone again," he suggests, voice casual but eyes anything but. "Plenty of dark corners in this building."
"You're incorrigible."
"You like it."
Before you can come up with a suitably cutting response, Ryan's voice cuts through the general noise of the room: "Yo, I'm gonna crash out! It's getting late!"
The announcement triggers a cascade of similar declarations.
Suddenly people are gathering coats, exchanging final birthday wishes, making plans to meet up later in the week. The energy in the room shifts from celebration to conclusion, that particular lull that comes at the end of a good night.
As people begin filing out, Seth materializes beside you, a confident smile plastered across his face that probably works on most girls but just makes you want to step back a foot or three.
"So," he says, leaning in close enough that you can smell the tequila on his breath, "I was thinking I should get your number. You know, to hang out sometime."
"Uhhh," you stall, searching for a polite rejection. "No thanks."
His smile doesn't falter. If anything, it widens.
“Come on, we had fun tonight, right? Just give me your number. I promise I'll only use it for emergencies." He winks, like this is some clever line that's going to change your mind.
"I said no thanks," you repeat, firmer this time.
"Don't be like that," he persists, stepping even closer. "Just your number. What's the big deal?"
You're about to tell him exactly what the big deal is when Jungkook appears at your side, his expression suddenly hard.
"Bro," he says, annoyance coloring his tone, "can't you see she ain't interested?"
Seth blinks, looking between you and Jungkook. "I'm just asking for her number, man. No harm in that."
"Except she already said no. Twice." Jungkook's tone is still light, but there's an edge to it now. "So maybe take the hint?"
For a moment, Seth looks like he might argue. Then he sighs, holding up his hands in mock surrender.
"Fine, whatever. Your loss," he adds, with a final glance your way before merging back into the departing crowd.
"How is that your friend?" you ask once he's safely out of earshot, genuinely baffled that someone like Jungkook would hang out with such a persistent creep.
"He isn't, technically," Jungkook shrugs, watching Seth's retreating back with a slightly disgusted look. "He's Ryan's friend, who sometimes hangs out with Ryan, and so with us too. Definitely not my pick for the squad."
"Thank god for small mercies," you mutter, and he laughs, the tension from the Seth encounter dissipating as quickly as it arrived.
Jungkook steps back from you, that heated moment dissipating as he slips back into social host mode. You watch as he makes his rounds, thanking everyone for coming, accepting final hugs and handshakes. He's good at this—making each person feel individually appreciated, remembered.
It's a side of him you are staring to recognize more and more often.
When he reaches Tessa, you notice how his posture softens slightly. He says something that makes her laugh, tucking that perfect auburn hair behind her ear in a gesture that's both shy and flirtatious.
"You need a ride?" he asks her, and you barely manage to overhear. "I can call an Uber."
"No need," she smiles, gesturing toward Diana. "We're sharing a car. Diana lives just a few blocks from me."
"Good," he nods, looking genuinely relieved. "Text when you get home safe?"
It's sweet, the way he's concerned for her safety. Not what you'd expect from the guy who leaves his dirty dishes in the sink for days and thinks changing the toilet paper roll is optional.
But then again, tonight has been full of surprises when it comes to Jungkook.
"Will do," Tessa promises, then hesitates before leaning in to give him a quick hug. "Happy birthday, Jungkook."
You watch them, something jittery settling in your chest.
His lucky ass might actually score someone genuinely nice and put-together, who seems to actually like him beyond just his face and body.
Good for him.
Good for her, even, if she can't see that she's way out of his league.
Ten minutes later, the room has mostly cleared. Only your strange merged group remains—Yeji and Irya saying their goodbyes to Jimin by the door, while Taehyung, Hobi, Yoongi, Jungkook, and you linger in a loose circle near the couches.
"Subway?" Yoongi asks, addressing both you and Jungkook with his usual economy of words.
Jungkook nods, glancing at his phone. "Still running for another hour."
"I'll walk with you guys to the station," Taehyung offers, but Jungkook shakes his head.
"Nah, you're uptown. That's the opposite direction."
"I don't mind."
"I'm fine, Tae," Jungkook says firmly, and there's a weight to the words that seems to carry a conversation from earlier. "Really."
Taehyung doesn't look convinced, but after a moment of silent communication, he relents. "Text me when you get home."
"Yes, mom."
"I'm serious."
"I know," Jungkook's tone softens. "I will."
The farewells are quick after that—Hobi heading uptown with Taehyung, Jimin walking Yeji and Irya to their car, and the three of you—you, Jungkook, and Yoongi—making your way toward the subway station that will take you back to your shared apartment.
It feels like you've been gone for days rather than hours—like the person who left the apartment this morning for her first day at Barnes & Noble somehow isn't quite the same one heading home now.
But that's a thought for another time, when your head isn't fuzzy with tequila and your feet aren't aching from standing half the night.
For now, you just follow your roommates through the city streets toward the subway station, the quiet between you comfortable in a way it hasn't been before.
The subway car at this hour is practically abandoned—just a few night owls and the occasional service worker scattered across the seats like human tumbleweeds.
Yoongi claims a seat by the door, immediately slipping his AirPods exactly like someone who's perfected the art of social avoidance. Within seconds, his head is tilted back against the subway wall, eyes closed.
Either he's fallen asleep that quickly, or he's just really committed to pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist.
Jungkook drops into the seat beside him, legs splayed wide in that uniquely male way that screams ‘my balls need their own zip code.’ You take the spot next to him, trying to claim whatever minimal space is left.
Like seriously? There are literally twenty empty seats.
You nudge your knee pointedly against his. "Do you mind?"
"Wha?" He glances down, genuinely confused.
"The manspreading, bro," you gesture at his legs. "You're taking up enough space for three people."
He grins, completely unashamed. "I need to air out the jewels."
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" You swat his arm, genuinely annoyed. "That's exactly the problem with guys like you. Public space isn't designed for your testicle ventilation system."
"Guys like me?" He raises an eyebrow, still smirking but at least looking slightly less smug.
"Yes. Guys who think their comfort is more important than the space of everyone around them." You're on a roll now, the combination of lingering tequila and genuine irritation fueling your feminist rant. "Women are literally conditioned to take up as little space as possible, to cross our legs, to fold ourselves into tiny spaces, while men just spread out like they own the world. It's literally a physical manifestation of patriarchal entitlement."
His smirk fades slightly, replaced by something closer to actual consideration.
He glances down at his legs, then at the way you've automatically tucked yours together to accommodate his sprawl.
"Shit, I sound like a TikTok right now, don't I?" you mutter.
"No, no," he says, actually shifting his legs together. "You're not wrong. I didn't really think about it that way."
Wait. What?
"You're just saying that because it's your birthday and you think you get a free pass," you say suspiciously.
"No, I actually get it," he says, looking strangely thoughtful. "My mom used to call me out for the same shit. Called it 'man space disease.' Said my dad had it too."
And now you don't know what to do with yourself.
Because what the actual fuck?
How are you supposed to maintain righteous irritation when he just... listens? Takes criticism? Brings up his mom in a way that makes him seem like an actual human person with a past and stuff?
Goddammit. Now you can't even properly be mad at him, which somehow makes you even more annoyed.
"Anyway," you say, desperate to change the subject before you lose all moral high ground. "Happy birthday again or whatever."
"Thanks," he says, and then adds, "for everything. The museum was actually cool. Didn't know you had taste, Phee."
"I'm literally an English major."
"Yeah, but that just means you read boring-ass books from dead white guys."
"That's... not what English degrees are about," you sputter. "And I bet 90% of your film classes are just Scorsese and Tarantino circle jerks."
He laughs, a genuine sound that echoes in the empty subway car. "Fuck, you got me there. Though Tarantino is—"
"If you say 'ahead of his time,' I will push you onto the tracks at the next stop."
"I was gonna say overrated, actually. Everyone loses their mind over Pulp Fiction, but honestly? Mid."
You blink, genuinely surprised. "Okay, that's the most correct opinion you've ever had."
"I have tons of correct opinions. You just never ask me about them."
"Sure, like your opinion that coffee is better than tea?"
"Because it is!"
"That whole statement is a crime, is what it is."
He scoffs, rolls his eyes, and leans back, conversation over because he’s clearly not arguing over this.
So the subway rattles on, the rhythmic clacking of wheels against track filling the silence.
Your thoughts drift to earlier tonight—to that moment on the first subway ride when his hand had brushed against yours.
Just a whisper of contact, his pinky grazing yours on the metal bar.
Why did he do that? What was the deal with that?
The question nags at you, an itch you can't scratch. Not because it matters in any deep way—obviously it doesn't—but because puzzling out Jungkook's behavior is becoming something of a hobby.
A frustrating, often pointless hobby, but still.
"Hey," you say before you can talk yourself out of it. "Question for you."
He turns toward you, eyebrows raised slightly. "Shoot."
"Earlier, on the subway..." You hesitate, suddenly feeling stupid for bringing it up. "You kind of touched my hand on the bar? What was that about?"
"Huh?" He looks genuinely confused for a moment, then recognition dawns. "Oh! That."
He says it so casually, like it wasn't something worth remembering. Which it isn't. Obviously.
"I just noticed you had a panic attack this morning," he continues, his tone matter-of-fact. "In my room."
"What?" Your voice comes out sharper than intended, surprise making your pulse quicken. "How did you—"
"I passed by and heard your breathing," he explains, shrugging like this is a completely normal thing to say. "But I didn't want to intrude. Since it's something very personal and knowing you..."
He looks to the side as he gestures vaguely.
"Well, I don't think you'd have appreciated me barging in, so I just went back to cooking my super pancakes."
You stare at him, dumbfounded.
Who… Who the fuck is this dude? When did Jungkook develop this thoughtful, considerate side? Is he possessed? Should you be checking for pod people?
"So on the subway," he continues, oblivious to your internal crisis, "I dunno, I felt you had off vibes, and—"
"Again with the vibes?" You can't help but interject.
He laughs, the sound sharp and genuine. "Bro, you had this face like the sad hamster meme and I couldn't take it. That's why I brushed your hand. Reassurance, y'know?"
"The... sad hamster meme?" you repeat, incredulous.
He whips out his phone, types something, then shows you the screen: a round-faced hamster looking depressed as hell, its tiny eyes radiating existential despair.
"That's not—I don't look like that!" you protest.
"You literally did. One hundred percent emotional support hamster energy."
"I will actually murder you in your sleep."
His expression shifts, something vulnerable flickering across his features.
"My mom—"
He cuts himself off, suddenly looking down at his lap.
But somehow, he decides to continue.
"My mom used to do that for me, so I thought it might help. The hand thing. Not calling you a hamster," he clarifies quickly. "Just a small touch when I was stressed. Sorry if it was weird."
Oh.
"No, no, it wasn't weird," you say quickly.
The image of a younger Jungkook, being comforted by his mother with small touches, is annoyingly humanizing.
Couldn't he just stay a two-dimensional asshole? Would make life so much simpler.
"No?" He looks up, searching your face.
"...No." You clear your throat, trying to regain your footing. "It's kind of nice, actually. That you're this attentive."
You clear your throat then; but it’s like the air is getting stuck in your throat at the sudden sincerity of this conversation.
So you can't help adding: "I guess. Could've apply it to the household, you know? Like maybe notice when the trash needs taking out?"
He snorts at that, the weird moment breaking; and you couldn’t be happier.
“One step at a time, Pyx. One step at a time."
"So your observational skills only work when it comes to me having panic attacks, not when the dishes need doing?"
"I have selective observation abilities," he admits with a grin. "Like a very specific superpower."
"World's shittiest X-Man," you mutter. "'I'm Emotional Support Man. I can tell when you're sad but can't locate the broom.'"
He laughs, harder this time. "Fuck, that's actually my brand. Can I put that in my Instagram bio?"
"Only if you credit me."
"Deal."
The subway lurches around a corner, and you both sway with the movement. You catch Yoongi cracking one eye open, glancing at you both before apparently deciding you're not interesting enough to stay awake for and closing it again.
"So like, you must be psyched about the studio time from Yoongi," you say, genuinely curious about this part of Jungkook's life that you know almost nothing about.
"Dude, you have no idea. Blueline is like..." he gestures expansively, searching for the right words, "it's basically where half the top-charting albums from last year were produced. Their equipment is insane. Sixteen hours there is worth like, a month in a regular studio."
"And he just... got that for you? Just like that?"
"Yoongi knows people," Jungkook says, with a hint of pride. "He's lowkey connected as fuck in the music scene. Doesn't talk about it much, but he's got production credits on some tracks that went viral last year."
"Wait, seriously? Yoongi? Our Yoongi? The guy who speaks like four words a day?"
"That's his whole strategy," Jungkook whispers dramatically, leaning closer like he's sharing state secrets. "The less he says, the more people think he's some kind of genius."
"Is it working?" you ask, also whispering despite yourself.
He grins. "I mean, he got me sixteen hours at Blueline, so yeah, I'd say it's working pretty well."
"What are you gonna do there?"
"I'm scoring a short film by this director I know. Nothing major, just like a fifteen-minute thing, but I've been wanting to experiment with this sound for a while—like lo-fi beats but with some orchestral elements mixed in. Kind of a vibe Jonny Greenwood meets Nujabes thing, if that makes sense?"
It doesn't, really, but the way his eyes light up as he talks about it is surprisingly engaging.
Cute.
Because that’s Jungkook when he talks about something he cares deeply about. He just… gestures as he explains, hands moving expressively, and his entire demeanor changes.
"That's actually really cool," you admit before you can stop yourself.
"Yeah?" He looks genuinely pleased by your approval, which is weird. Since when does he care what you think? "You should come by sometime. Check it out."
"I didn't know you were into all that," you say, genuinely curious now. "The music stuff, I mean. I knew about the film major, but..."
"I'm a man of many talents, Phee," he says with an exaggerated wink that makes you roll your eyes.
"Okay, and we're back to you being insufferable. That was a nice five-minute break."
He laughs, not at all offended. "Can't let you get too comfortable. Gotta keep you on your toes."
The subway announcement system announces your stop is next.
Yoongi's eyes open immediately, like he has some kind of sixth sense for exactly when to wake up. He removes his AirPods, tucking them into his pocket as he stands.
"You coming?" he asks, directing the question to both of you but somehow making it sound like he couldn't care less either way.
"Yeah, yeah," Jungkook says, already standing.
He offers you a hand up, the gesture casual but unexpected.
You hesitate for just a second before taking it, letting him pull you to your feet. His hand is warm, the calluses from guitar playing rough against your palm. And then he drops it as soon as you're standing, no lingering, no loaded moment. Just a simple courtesy.
But it’s the normal, everyday nature of the gesture that throws you.
Like this is just what you do now—casual, friendly touches that mean nothing beyond basic human interaction.
The subway slows as it approaches your stop, and you grab the pole to steady yourself, pushing this strange new dynamic to the back of your mind to examine later.
When you're alone.
And preferably sober.
You've never heard Griffin meow that loudly outside of dinner time, and even then, it's not this fucking dramatic.
The elevator doors have barely slid open when the unholy feline screeching hits your ears—a sound that could only be described as a cat being simultaneously vacuumed and baptized against its will.
"What the fuck?" you mutter, already picking up your pace toward the apartment door.
Jungkook's reaction is instantaneous. One second he's trudging beside you, still talking about some obscure music producer, and the next he's bolting down the hallway like someone lit his ass on fire.
"Griffin!" His voice carries genuine panic as he fumbles with his keys, hands suddenly clumsy with urgency.
You follow right behind him, though your motivations are decidedly less noble.
The building has a strict no-pets policy, and the last thing you need is to get evicted because Jungkook's furry contraband is having a meltdown at 1 AM.
"Jesus Christ, let me do it," you hiss, shoving at his hands. "You're gonna wake up the whole floor."
"I got it, I got it," he insists, still struggling with the lock as Griffin continues his banshee impression on the other side of the door.
"Clearly you don't got it," you argue, trying to wrestle the keys from his grip. "You're making it worse!"
"Can you just—will you just—give me a second—"
You're both so busy fighting over the keys that neither of you notices Yoongi until he's physically shoving both of you aside with surprisingly pointy elbows.
"Move," he grunts, extracting his own key and long since given up on expecting basic competence from either of you.
The lock clicks open, and the door swings wide just in time for an orange blur to come rocketing out into the hallway.
Griffin shoots between your legs like he's auditioning for some Usain Bolt competition (but make it feline), though to no avail, because Jungkook's reflexes are impressively fast.
Three quick strides and he's scooping the cat up, cradling him against his chest.
"Hey, hey, buddy, what's wrong?" he murmurs, immediately checking the cat for injuries. "You okay? What happened?"
Griffin, now safely ensconced in Jungkook's arms, has miraculously stopped his caterwauling and is instead purring loud enough to vibrate the hallway.
The little shit.
"Oh my god, Jungkook, tell your cat to shut the fuck up," you hiss, glancing nervously toward neighboring doors. "You know the neighbors are gonna snitch if he keeps that up."
"No they won't," he says with the confidence of someone who's never faced consequences for anything in his life. "They all love me."
You blink. "You know all the neighbors?"
He just shrugs, already carrying Griffin back into the apartment like the entire dramatic episode never happened.
Yoongi, having completed his sole contribution to the crisis, is already disappearing into his bedroom, door clicking shut behind him with a finality that says ‘do not disturb under penalty of death.’
You stand awkwardly in the entryway, fidgeting with your keys, suddenly hyperaware that you're alone with Jungkook for the first time since... whatever that moment on the rooftop was.
He snorts, still cradling Griffin like a baby.
"So where's my gift?"
Of course. Of course he couldn't just let it go. Had to make things weird and awkward because god forbid Jungkook let any interaction proceed without maximum discomfort.
You grunt noncommittally and trudge to your bedroom, pointedly closing the door behind you.
There, sitting innocently on your dresser, is the crumpled paper bag from the flea market.
Inside is the stupid vinyl record you'd impulsively bought for fifteen bucks because it had "John Mayer" on it and you vaguely remembered Jungkook had a vinyl wall with what looked like Mayer albums.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now, you're not so sure.
But it's not like you have any alternatives, and you did promise him a gift, so...
You grab the bag and head back out, careful not to make eye contact. You have no idea why you're suddenly nervous about this. It's just a vinyl. Probably one he already has. No big deal either way.
"Here," you say, thrusting the paper bag toward him.
He quirks an eyebrow, clearly puzzled by the plainness of your offering.
What was he expecting? A fucking gift-wrapped Ferrari?
He sets Griffin down carefully on the armchair before taking the bag from you. The cat immediately curls into a perfect circle, clearly untroubled by whatever had sent him into hysterics five minutes ago.
Jungkook pulls the vinyl from the bag with deliberate slowness, like he's trying to extend the suspense. A small smile forms on his lips when he sees it's a record, but then—
His face contorts into an expression you can't begin to interpret.
It's like watching someone cycle through all five stages of grief in under five seconds, ending on some emotion that looks like he might either laugh hysterically or have a stroke.
Your stomach drops. Fuck. You knew it. He already has it. Or worse, he hates this album.
Great going, genius. You had one job.
"Nix," he starts, his voice strangled.
"It's fine," you interject quickly, already looking away and biting your lip. "I mean, if you already—"
"Phoenix."
Something in the way he says your nickname—your full nickname, not the shortened version—makes you reluctantly look back at him.
He's not... mad. Or disgusted. Or disappointed.
If anything, he looks... stunned?
His eyes are practically twinkling, like you just handed him the fucking Holy Grail instead of a dusty old record.
"Where the fuck..." he starts, then shakes his head slightly. "Where the fuck did you get this, Nix?"
You blink, caught off guard by his reaction.
"I—a girl has her secrets," you mumble, because no way in hell are you admitting you found it in a five-dollar bin at a flea market.
"This is Inside Wants Out," he says, staring at the record like it might vanish if he blinks.
"Yup. That's what it says," you confirm, pointing unnecessarily at the album title clearly printed on the cover.
Like, yeah. Thanks for confirming he can read. At least he’s not that stupid.
"It's John Mayer, right...? I thought... I mean since your whole vinyl wall is mostly—"
"This is Inside Wants Out," he repeats, more emphatically this time, like you're not getting the significance.
You nod slowly. "Yeah... I heard you the first time."
"Do you know how hard it is to get this shit, Nix?" His eyes are still wide with disbelief. "This is a collector's item."
Oh.
Oh wow.
Oh fuck.
You didn't mean to give him something with actual significance. You were just trying to not completely fail at basic gift-giving. But now he's looking at you like you just casually handed him a winning lottery ticket, and you have no idea how to respond.
"I mean... I knew you'd appreciate it," you lie smoothly, like you totally knew what you were doing. "You seem like the type to be into the rare stuff."
His eyes narrow slightly, like he's not entirely buying your sudden expertise in John Mayer collectibles, but he's too excited about the record to push it.
"It was his first EP," he explains, still handling the vinyl like it might explode. "Self-released in '99, before he got signed. There were only like a thousand copies ever pressed, and they never reissued it on vinyl."
"Oh," you say eloquently. "Cool."
"Cool?"
He laughs, the sound both incredulous and delighted.
"Nix, this thing goes for like three hundred dollars on eBay if you can even find one. How did you—" He cuts himself off, shaking his head again. "You know what, never mind. I don't even want to know. Just... thank you."
Three hundred dollars?
You almost choke. The grimy old man at the flea market had sold it to you for fifteen bucks, and even then, you'd thought you were overpaying.
Holy shit. You accidentally gave Jungkook the perfect gift.
You're still processing this bizarre turn of events when he does something even more unexpected. He steps forward and hugs you—a quick, one-armed embrace that's over almost before it begins, but still manages to short-circuit your brain for a solid three seconds.
"Seriously," he says, already stepping back. "This is... thank you."
"I—yeah, of course," you manage, still off-balance from the sudden contact. "Happy birthday or whatever."
He grins, already carefully examining the record sleeve for any damage.
"Or whatever," he echoes, but there's no mockery in it.
Just warmth.
A warmth that makes something in your chest twist in a way you don't want to examine too closely.
Jungkook flips the vinyl over in his hands, tracing the track listing with his finger.
"I started collecting his stuff in high school," he says, voice softer than usual. "Everyone gives him shit, you know? Like he's this basic white dude music or whatever."
"Isn't he, though?" You can't help asking, even as you drift closer to the couch instead of retreating to your room like you'd planned.
He looks up at you, expression caught between offense and amusement. "That's what everyone thinks. But his guitar work? Seriously underrated. The guy's technically insane."
You perch on the arm of the couch, watching as he continues examining the record.
“So you're into him for the... technical aspects?"
"Partly." Jungkook shrugs, a small smile playing at his lips. "But honestly? His music just hits sometimes, you know? Like when you're driving at night with the windows down, or when you just need to chill and not think for a while."
"Didn't take you for the introspective type."
"There's a lot you don't know about me, Phee," he says, but it's not a challenge or a flirtation. Just a simple statement of fact.
"Like what?"
He looks surprised you asked, like he expected you to roll your eyes and walk away.
After a moment's hesitation, he gestures toward his bedroom.
“I've got every vinyl he's released. Started with Continuum when I was fifteen..." He trails off, then shakes his head slightly. "Anyway, been collecting ever since."
You’re not sure whether he wants you to ask, or doesn’t want to overshare. So to play it safe, you don’t dig.
Instead, you find yourself saying, "My dad's obsessed with him."
Now it's your turn to be surprised—by your own admission. Because you hadn't planned to share that.
Jungkook's eyebrows lift. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," you confirm, suddenly interested in a loose thread on your sleeve. "Used to play his albums constantly during gardening weekends. My mom would pretend to hate it, but I'd catch her humming along when she thought no one was listening."
"Gardening weekends?"
"Mandatory family bonding," you explain, the memory both distant and vivid. "Every other Saturday in spring and summer. Dad would handle the heavy stuff, Mom did the flowers, and I was on weed duty."
"Weed duty," Jungkook repeats, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Like, you grew pot with your parents? Damn, Nix, I had you all wrong."
You roll your eyes, but you're fighting a smile too. "Garden weeds, dumbass. The actual nuisance plants."
"So what? You'd all be out there pulling weeds while John Mayer serenaded you from a boombox?"
"Something like that," you say, the mental image so accurate it catches you off guard. "How'd you know about the boombox?"
"Dads and boomboxes go together like peanut butter and jelly," he says with authority. "It's basic dad culture."
"Fair point." You hesitate, then add, "He had this super old one. Battery-operated, because the garden was too far from the house for an extension cord. The sound quality was garbage, but he refused to upgrade. Said it had 'character.'"
Jungkook smiles at that, a genuine one that reaches his eyes. "Sounds like my kind of guy."
"You'd hate each other," you say automatically, but then consider it. "Actually, no. You'd probably bond over guitar shit and expensive coffee, and it would be absolutely insufferable for everyone else."
"I'm great with parents," he protests. "They love me."
"That's because they don't have to live with you."
He gasps in offense. "What? Come on, living with me is the best experience ever.”
"So now ‘best experience ever’ is you eating my leftovers and folding your briefs on the entrance table?”
"And mind-blowing sex," he adds, because of course he does. "Don't forget that part."
"And we're done here," you announce, standing up from the couch arm.
"Wait," he says, surprising you again. "What was your favorite song? From those gardening days, I mean."
You pause, considering whether to answer. It feels oddly personal, sharing music taste with Jungkook. More intimate somehow than the physical stuff you've done together.
But he's looking at you with genuine curiosity, still cradling the vinyl you gave him like it's something precious, and you find yourself responding before you can overthink it.
"'Slow Dancing in a Burning Room,'" you admit, the memory rising unbidden. "Not off that album, obviously, but it was on Continuum."
“Really? I wouldn't have pegged you for that one."
"Well, I wasn't exactly vibing with the lyrics at age ten," you say, defensive without knowing why. "It just... reminds me of my mom."
"Your mom was into songs about dysfunctional relationships?"
"No, dumbass."
You take a breath, weighing whether to elaborate.
Fuck it.
“There was this one time, we were gardening, and it started raining—like, suddenly pouring. Dad ran inside with the boombox, but Mom just... stayed out there. And I did too."
Jungkook's watching you intently now, the vinyl temporarily forgotten in his hands.
"That song was playing right before the rain started," you continue, eyes fixed on that loose thread again. "And when Dad got inside, he must have put the song on again inside the house, because we could hear it through the open windows. Mom just... started dancing. In the rain. And she pulled me in, and we were spinning around like idiots, getting completely soaked, while Dad watched from the porch and pretended to be embarrassed by us."
You risk a glance at Jungkook and find him smiling softly.
"What?" you demand.
"Nothing," he says, but his smile doesn't fade. "Just... that's a really good memory. I like that it wasn't some deep angsty reason. Just your mom being cool."
"She wasn't always," you say before you can stop yourself. "Cool, I mean. But she had her moments."
A comfortable silence falls between you, the kind you didn't think was possible with Jungkook. He's still looking at you with that soft expression, and you find yourself continuing without really meaning to.
“Anyway,” you say, desperate to lighten the sudden heaviness between you. “I like sad songs and thunderstorms. Shocking revelation about the English major, I know.”
His mouth curves into a smile, but it’s gentler than his usual smirk.
“I know you like thunderstorms.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” he nods, setting the vinyl aside with careful hands. “Remember the first time we hooked up in this apartment? There was a storm outside.”
“How do you remember that?”
He shrugs, casual, unbothered.
Like it doesn’t cost him anything at all to reveal he keeps details in mind or cares.
“You were curled up in that bean bag by the window, watching the rain like it was telling you secrets. All broody and intense. Very on-brand.”
“I wasn’t broody,” you protest automatically.
“You were staring at a lightning storm. The only way you could’ve been broodier is if you were wearing fingerless gloves and listening to The Cure.”
You throw a decorative pillow at his head, which he catches easily. “Fuck off, I don’t even own fingerless gloves.”
“Yet,” he adds with a grin. “There’s still time, though. Hot Topic’s having a sale.”
You flip him off, but you’re smiling despite yourself.
“I just like storms, okay? They’re… honest.”
“Honest?” He raises an eyebrow, looking genuinely curious.
You struggle to articulate something you’ve never had to put into words before.
“Yeah, like… they don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. They’re loud and chaotic and messy, and they don’t apologize for it.”
“Huh,” he says, tilting his head slightly. “Never thought about it like that.”
“Plus,” you add, tone deliberately lighter, “they smell good.”
“Yeah I guess they do,” he agrees, and for some reason, this tiny point of connection feels significant.
“You smell like rain,” you say, the words slipping out before your brain can catch up with your mouth.
“Huh?” he looks at you, confusion replacing his easy smile.
“I mean,” you backtrack, suddenly feeling stupid, “you’re always saying I smell like vanilla and stuff. And you really like vanilla, right? With your vanilla extract flask or whatever. Well, you smell like rain. At least to me. I really like rain. That’s all.”
There’s a moment of silence, just long enough for you to start mentally calculating how quickly you could fake your own death and flee the country.
“I smell like rain,” he repeats, expression unreadable.
“It’s not a big deal,” you say quickly. “Just an observation. Like how Yoongi smells like coffee and disappointment.”
He laughs at that, breaking the weird tension. “That’s… oddly accurate.”
“I’m very accurate,” you say with mock seriousness. “My superpower.”
And… why exactly are you quoting him? That’s exactly what he said in the subway.
And you said it without thinking.
“Well,” he says, not catching onto that or at least not making it about that; leaning back into the couch cushions, “for what it’s worth, I’m glad I don’t smell like disappointment. Rain is definitely the better option.”
“Don’t get too excited. I didn’t say you smell good,” you lie, because of course he smells good, the bastard. “Just like rain.”
“Uh-huh.” His smile is knowing, infuriating. “You literally just said you really like rain, though.”
“I changed my mind. Rain is overrated.”
“Sounds fake, but okay.”
Griffin chooses that moment to stretch dramatically on the armchair, reminding you both of his presence. The cat yawns widely, showing tiny needle teeth, before resettling into an even tighter ball.
“Anyway,” you say, seizing the opportunity to change the subject, “your cat is still a menace, even if he has good timing.”
“The best timing,” Jungkook agrees, reaching over to scratch behind Griffin’s ears. “Though I still don’t know what set him off earlier.”
“Maybe he sensed a disturbance in the force.”
“Maybe he just missed me,” Jungkook suggests, and the sad thing is, he’s probably right. Griffin is ridiculously attached to him, like some kind of orange, furry shadow.
“Cats don’t miss people,” you argue, just to be contrary. “They’re cold-blooded killers who tolerate humans because we operate can openers.”
“Griffin misses me,” he insists, stroking the cat’s back. “Don’t you, buddy? Tell Phoenix how much you missed your dad.”
Griffin blinks slowly in response, which Jungkook apparently interprets as agreement.
“See? He says he was devastated by my absence.”
“He says he’s plotting to kill us both in our sleep,” you counter.
“Nah, he only does that to people who don’t bring him treats. Speaking of which…” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small packet of cat treats, shaking a few onto his palm.
Griffin is suddenly wide awake, lunging for the offering with surprising agility for a creature that was seemingly comatose two seconds ago.
“You carry cat treats in your pocket?” you ask, incredulous. “To a club? To a karaoke bar?”
“Always be prepared,” he says solemnly, as if quoting some ancient cat-owner wisdom. “Besides, Griffin can sense when I don’t have them.”
“Your relationship with this cat is genuinely concerning.”
“Says the person who talks to him when she thinks no one’s listening.” He smirks at your surprised expression. “Yeah, I’ve heard you. ‘Who’s a little murder machine? Is it you? Yes it is.’”
You feel your cheeks warm. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You baby-talk my cat, Phoenix. Just admit it.”
“I do not baby-talk—”
Your phone chimes with a text notification, cutting off what would have undoubtedly been a brilliant denial.
You move towards the entryway, where you'd left your purse on the table, and reach to look for your phone, when suddenly—
Oh.
The DIY bracelets. Right.
You'd left them at the shop at first for that contribution project Ash had talked about, but then... something had pinched at you when Jungkook mentioned having one similar as a kid.
How it reminded him of his mom.
And now that you're talking about mourning a mom that you still have alive, because the mom from your memories often differs from the one who exists now... it feels like the right moment. Like maybe these stupid friendship bracelets aren't just arts and crafts bullshit but something that might actually mean something.
Fuck, that's corny. You're being corny right now. This is what happens when you let your guard down for five seconds around Jungkook—suddenly you're having feelings and shit. Gross.
But your fingers are already closing around the bracelets.
You're impulsive like that. Always have been. Jump first, think later. It's gotten you into trouble more times than you can count, but occasionally—very occasionally—it works out.
You slip them into your fist, hiding them behind your back as you walk slowly toward Jungkook. He's still standing there, watching you with that half-curious, half-amused expression that makes you want to simultaneously punch him and—
"Hmm? What's up, Phoenix?" he asks, eyebrows lifting slightly when he notices your hands hidden behind your back.
"Nothing," you say, too quickly.
His eyes narrow, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.
“What's that?" He takes a step closer, trying to peek around you. "You hiding something?"
"No," you lie, taking a step back. "Mind your business."
"You're being weird," he says, his smirk widening into a full-on grin. "What is it? A love letter? Secret diary? Embarrassing photos of you in middle school with braces?"
"I never had braces," you retort, still backing up as he advances. "And it's nothing, so back off."
"If it's nothing, why are you hiding it?" He lunges suddenly, trying to grab at your hands, but you twist away, nearly knocking over a lamp in the process.
"Jungkook, I swear to god—"
"Come on, just show me!" He's laughing now, the asshole, clearly enjoying your discomfort. "What's so secret that you can't—"
He makes another grab, and this time his fingers catch your wrist. You try to pull away, but he's stronger than you, the jerk, and before you can stop him, he's pried your fingers open.
The bracelets fall into his palm.
His laughter cuts off abruptly.
He stares down at them, then back up at you, his expression shifting to something you can't quite read.
His eyes go all soft and wide, like some anime character or something, and it makes your forsaken insides twist.
"How?" he asks, voice quieter than before. "I thought we left these at the shop."
You look to the side, feeling heat crawl up your neck.
This is so fucking embarrassing.
It's just bracelets.
Stupid, childish bracelets that shouldn't mean anything.
"When I came back to get my phone, I..." You trail off, not sure how to explain without sounding like a complete sap. "I saw them and I just..."
You shut up, because what are you supposed to say? That you couldn't stand the thought of leaving them behind? That something about his face when he talked about his mom's bracelet made you want to give him this small piece of today?
He seems to understand anyway, nodding slowly as he looks down at the bracelets again.
"Thanks," he says, and it's so genuine it makes you uncomfortable.
He holds them for a moment longer, then asks, "Can I?" gesturing toward your wrist.
You extend your arm automatically, then realize what he's doing as he fumbles with the clasp of the Phoenix bracelet.
"No, let me wear the Rogue one," you say quickly.
He pauses, brows furrowing. "But I am Rogue."
"Well, you said you didn't want to wear a bracelet calling you 'Rogue,'" you point out, "so... might as well wear the Rogue one myself and you wear the Phoenix one."
A slow smile spreads across his face, like what you've just said makes perfect sense instead of being the most backward logic ever.
And with a soft, delicate breath he says:
“Deal."
His fingers brush against your skin as he fastens the Rogue bracelet around your wrist. You try not to react, but your pulse quickens traitorously beneath his fingertips.
When he's done, you take the Phoenix bracelet from him, gesturing for his wrist. He extends it without hesitation, and you're struck by how much larger his hand is than yours, how warm his skin feels beneath your fingers as you fumble with the clasp.
"There," you say, pulling away quickly once it's secured. "Now we're even."
"Even," he echoes, looking down at the bracelet on his wrist, the fiery beads catching the light. "I guess we are."
You stare at the bracelet on your wrist for a few seconds, the beads catching the dim light of your apartment living room. Your eyes flicker up to his wrist—he's doing the same thing, turning his arm slightly to inspect his newly acquired accessory like he's never seen a fucking bracelet before.
His eyes catch yours, and you can't help asking, "You gonna wear it?"
He rotates his wrist, watching how the beads interact with the light.
“Maybe." The corner of his mouth twitches. "I don't know, does it fit my vibe?"
Is he serious right now?
You deadpan him, staring straight into his eyes without blinking.
He can't help but snort, his shoulders shaking slightly. "That's a no, then?"
"Whatever," you say, waving your hand dismissively. "You don't need to wear it. It's a silly thing anyway."
And it is. Just a stupid arts and crafts project you made while trying to keep him busy for his birthday party.
No big deal if he tosses it in a drawer and forgets about it. Literally could not care less.
"Nah, it's cool," he says, examining it again. "Kind of tacky, but in a fun way."
He looks back at you when you stare in silence too long.
"What about you?"
"Huh?" You blink, caught off-guard.
"Are you gonna wear yours?" He gestures toward your wrist with his chin.
"I don't know." You twist the beads around your wrist, acting like you're still deciding. "It's not like I want people to know I have friendship bracelet gay shit with you."
He snorts, rolling his eyes. "Right, I had forgotten what I'm gonna say when people ask what 'PHOENIX' means."
Your eyes flicker back to him, side-eyeing him suspiciously. "What would you say?"
"Maybe I should tell them it's from my roommate," he says, tapping his chin in mock thoughtfulness. "Who rose from the ashes and all that. Like some kind of angry, book-obsessed firebird."
"Don't you dare talk about me like that!" You immediately shove at his shoulder, scowling. "Oh my god."
He sidesteps your attack, continuing, "—into this majestic creature who's deep down probably not plotting to murder me in my sleep—"
"I swear to god," you lunge at him again, "if you say that cringy shit about me to anyone—"
"—and who secretly loves making friendship bracelets—"
"I will end you," you threaten, trying to grab his arm while he deftly avoids your attempts. The audacity of this asshole. "I will literally smother you with a pillow."
"—and wearing them too!" He's full-on laughing now, dodging around the coffee table. "The bracelet represents how we've evolved from mortal enemies to... slightly less mortal enemies."
"That's it." You grab a throw pillow from the couch and hurl it at his head. "You're dead to me."
He catches the pillow easily, still grinning like an idiot. "Aw, come on, Nix. Embrace your phoenix identity. Like the bird, you too have emerged from—"
"If you say 'ashes' one more time," you threaten, grabbing another pillow, "I will personally ensure you become some."
"Violent," he comments, raising his eyebrows. "And after I accepted your little craft project."
"It's not a—"
You start to protest, then stop yourself.
What the hell would you call it?
"Whatever. It's just a bracelet."
"A bracelet of tolerance," he suggests, his eyes dancing with amusement. "At best."
"Exactly," you say, oddly annoyed that he's stolen your line. "A bracelet of 'you're still annoying as fuck but occasionally tolerable.'"
"A bracelet of 'we haven't killed each other yet, which is honestly impressive,'" he offers.
"A bracelet of 'the apartment lease says I can't legally push you off the balcony,'" you suggest.
He laughs, running a hand through his hair. "Cool. I'll take it."
"Don't make it weird," you mutter, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with the direction this conversation has taken. Why is he being almost... nice? "It's just a stupid bracelet I accidentally made while you were trying to avoid talking about your Instagram."
"Right," he nods, tapping the beads against the table. "Just like how you 'accidentally' bought me a super rare vinyl."
"Shut up."
"Never," he says, shifting Griffin to make room on the armchair. "So, this means you're warming up to me, huh? All it took was some karaoke and a rooftop heart-to-heart."
"I already told you we'll see," you remind him, rolling your eyes. "Don't push it, Rogue."
"Fine, fine," he holds up his hands in surrender. "Just saying, the evidence is mounting."
"What evidence?"
He starts counting off on his fingers. "One, you made me a bracelet. Two, you bought me a vinyl. Three, you didn't ditch me at my own birthday thing. Four, you haven't tried to poison my coffee in at least three days."
"That you know of," you counter, but you can feel the corner of your mouth twitching traitorously.
"See? You're not even denying it," he says, pointing at you triumphantly. "Face it, Phee. You tolerate me."
"The bare minimum bar for human interaction. Congratulations."
Griffin chooses that moment to let out a pathetically dramatic meow, clearly offended that he's no longer the center of attention.
"Someone's jealous," Jungkook immediately turns to scratch his cat under the chin. "Don't worry, G, you'll always be my number one roommate."
You roll your eyes. "Great, I've been demoted behind the cat."
"He doesn't leave wet teabags in the sink," Jungkook points out.
"He literally shits in a box in our bathroom."
"Yeah, but at least he covers it up."
"I'm not having this argument," you declare, standing up from the couch. It's late, you're tired, and this whole day has been weird enough already. "I'm going to bed."
"Night, Nix," he says, voice softer than his usual teasing tone.
"Night, Rogue," you reply, hesitating for just a moment too long before adding, "Happy birthday. Again."
He smiles—that same genuine smile from before. "Thanks. For everything."
"Don't get used to it," you warn, already backing toward your bedroom. "Tomorrow I go back to hating your guts."
"Looking forward to it," he calls after you, and you can hear the grin in his voice.
You close your bedroom door a bit harder than necessary, but you're smiling as you do it. And if your fingers brush against the beads on your wrist as you change into your pajamas, well, that's nobody's business but yours.
It's just a bracelet. Whatever.
goal: 650 notes. can’t believe how quickly kiki nation got the goals back, you guys are amazing and unhinged. 😭❤️🩹
if you liked this chapter, please consider buying me a coffee!! ♡'･ᴗ･'♡ https://ko-fi.com/jungkoode
