No body | Jungkook Dark Romance - Cherry Red (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1643278022-no-body-jungkook-dark-romance-cherry-redutm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=TessaGrey9
Cherry has never wanted to be loved. She has only ever wanted no body.
Not freedom. Not forgiveness. Just the impossible absence of skin.
Jungkook mistakes her distance for mystery. She mistakes his gaze for another thing that will eventually consume her.
Between them, nights become a language of money, silence, tenderness, and violence - until a single choice erases the meaning of everything that came before.
Look at Me - JJK [Part 0 - Prologue] (Free Chapter)
✨ Patreon Exclusive Series ✨
Pairing: Biker, Best friend Jungkook X Best friend, fem Reader
Theme: best friends to lovers au, idiots to lovers au, mutual pining au.
Summary: You have watched Jungkook grow up alongside yourself. You have watched him transform into the heartthrob he is today from the shy kid who would push your swing without you having to ask him. And you have fallen in love with him sometime in the middle. So when he reveals he is interested in your colleague, and asks your permission to pursue her - you find yourself torn between his happiness and the selfishness of having him all to yourself. Will Jungkook really never look at you the way you look at him? will he never?
Warnings: tiny angst, a lot of friendly romance.
A/N: This is a Patreon exclusive series updating every Friday. This is a free chapter, the rest of the series will be updated on Patreon only.
Chapters: -
Prologue - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16 - Epilogue
It has always been one of your wishes to ride a bike during a thunderstorm.
Yes, it’s diabolical - you are aware, but being a human being with an innate thirst for unique experiences - you are almost helpless about the wishes that spring in your heart every now and then.
You are helpless about fulfilling them as well. Well, not helpless but reluctant. Just because you have a ton of different wishes added to your not-so-secret bucket list, does not mean you will have to check them off.
They are a source of your dream, your fantasies - the fabrication of a far-off feeling.
However, your wishes are treated very differently and importantly by your best friend - to him those are missions and he has taken the responsibility of achieving them one by one like collecting dragon balls.
And that is exactly what brings you here right now, perched behind him on his bike as he drives through the drizzle on the empty roads of a dormant Seoul.
Your biking gear is sitting tight on your skin. The cold bite of the wet night air can hardly get past the thick later. The helmet is doing its job in protecting your face and head from the rain.
It feels like a dream. No - not only because you are getting to live a fantasy, but also because you are riding behind Jungkook, your best friend, and (ta-da, surprise!) the love of your life.
No, this is not the first time you are riding with him. He has been your reliable ride when you are far too late to trust the public transport and Seoul’s traffic. But there’s something different about riding behind him, wearing a biking gear he specifically customized for you (oh hello????) and racing through the deserted streets of Seoul as the thunder rambles in the sky, as the rain makes its way to pronounce the chill in the night air even more.
There’s something new about your body pressing on Jungkook, him driving the bike at 120 and having no set destination, no set schedule - it’s just you, Jungkook and a wish that is soon to be checked off from the list.
Your heart thrumps in your chest as Jungkook takes a sharp turn, bending the bike in a way that your knee almost touches the asphalt. But there is a gap of a few inches, you know you have nothing to be afraid of.
“Just hold me tight, stick to me and don’t be afraid.” Jungkook has said when you hopped onto the bike, there was that specific smile on his face that is reserved only for the closest people.
You smiled in return and held him tight. So, even though your heart is beating a little too fast right now, you know you are safe.
The drizzle has transformed into a full-fledged rain somewhere in the middle. And it’s making the navigation work a little tough for Jungkook.
He slows the bike down as soon as a bus stop is within sight, in order to stop and wait for the rain to dull a bit.
The gear being waterproof, the rain was only able to batter against the leather of it. Not even a droplet could slip past the armor.
“You okay? All dry?” Jungkook asks upon taking off his helmet.
“Yup!” popping the ‘p’ for an extra effect, you run a hand through your hair. As you expected the ends are soaking wet. Trying to pat them dry, you retrieve your handkerchief from your fanny pack.
“Me too please.” Jungkook chimes in. When you turn your face to look at him, you find him bowing his head towards you like an adorable puppy wanting to be petted.
A fondness spreads across your chest like sunshine after persistent bad weather. Taking your handkerchief to his mop off black hair, you start running the cloth through his head.
Getting playful with each other is the second nature of you two, so after a while of mopping his head seriously, you start patting a little too hard.
“Stop! Stop!” Jungkook holds your hands while giggling. His giggle mimics the sound of a mountain steam skirting through a pile of peddles, ringing against their smooth surface. Your own giggle breaks past the fine press of your lips. Jungkook takes your wrist hostage as a punishment for bothering him earlier.
The pull is immediate and unexpected. Your best friend’s wide open-mouthed smile melts into a more private one as he involuntarily brings you closer to him. His eyes are stuck on yours as if someone has put him in a spell.
There’s something in his gaze, something unusual, something that makes you wonder, makes you a fool. You gulp, neck heating up at a rapid pace. For a moment you wonder if he is going to lean down and do what you have been wanting him to do for so long now. You wonder if he is going to give you a taste of his lips.
A thunder splits the sky in half right at that moment. Jungkook’s face lights up with the mystic purplish light. Another thunder rambles, but this one is inside your own heart.
The wants, desires, and needs mold into one shape - the shape of Jeon Jungkook himself. If he doesn’t kiss you - you are going to that yourself. You can think about the consequences later on.
“You know I love you, right?” He asks, quiet and soft. The spell brakes. Oh… what were you even thinking.
“Of course, I am your best friend after all.” The words crack your heart a little. How you wish he loved you… but not just as his best friend, not just as the girl who grew up with him, not just as the friend who saw him at his worst and his best. How you wish he loved you back, just like you love him with your whole being.
Something flashes in his eyes. It’s an emotion you can’t put a name to. It’s gone even before you can trace and analyze it.
“Yeah, right.” he looks away, stares at the road. You can tell the mood has shifted by an inch. But why, you don’t know.
“Uh- the rain has stopped. Let’s go back?” your best friend asks, looking at you again. His usual bunny smile, bright eyes are back on his pretty face.
“Sure.” you nod along.
As you sit behind him and continue the ride, you feel a sudden burning in your ribcage.
Loving Jungkook is so easy. So easy that once you fell, you didn’t know how to stop. And you don’t want to stop, not now, not ever.
That raises a question though - what will happen if someday you have no other choice but to sacrifice your feelings?
What will happen when this comfortable bubble around you and him bursts into a thousand little droplets and the air carries them far, far away from you?
What will happen when the pact of keeping love life away from this precious friendship is broken and you have to face the fear of seeing Jungkook with someone else?
What will happen then?
You don’t want to know. Not now. Not anytime soon.
Thirsty (Vampire BTS x Reader) - Bonus Chapter 3: Yoongi and You (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/944788328-thirsty-vampire-bts-x-reader-bonus-chapter-3?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=kittenandducks He placed torturously slow, sweet kisses all over her neck before biting into her skin. We all watched in complete silence, one you could hear a pin drop in, but not because of the act, we were almost used to that, but because of the girl's breathless moans of bliss that echoed off the walls as he devoured her blood. "People are trapped in history, And history is trapped in them. Do you really think you have the guts to destroy me?".
Oneshot
⤷ part 2 of 'between books and cigarettes', read part one <here>
↬ whenever the sky gets too heavy, whenever you feel like you're drowning, just remember, you don't ever have to carry it alone ⁺‧₊˚°⋆
Pairing: Jungkook x Female!Reader
Summary: As finals approach, the golden boy, Jeon Jungkook, finds himself dangerously close to his breaking point under a mountain of sheer stress, only to be caught by the one girl who holds his universe together, reminding him that he never has to carry the sky alone.
Genre/Tags: university au, romance, slight angst, fluff, so much fluff, established relationship, hurt/comfort, a very burnout and very clingy jungkook
Word Count: 11.5k
Warnings: severe academic burnout, heavy stress, near-fainting and dizziness (pls lmk if i missed any)
Notes: first of all, yes, this is a part 2 of 'between books and cigarettes', but it is not a direct sequel, and both can be read as standalones, they're just set between the same couple a few months apart! And yes ik I said this would be out in like a week but as soon as I started writing this I just couldn't stop. I wrote this when I was taking a break from a very angsty fic I'm working on and the fluff of this was just calling out to me. I loved writing this, omg it's just so cutesy and pure. Idk if I'm more jealous of yn or jk here... ugh me when???? The academic burnout was also really interesting to write, reminded of my own academic stresses. Please please please take care of urselves <3 I also genuinely got so hungry writing the cooking scene I could practically taste it oml....
Requested By: @poetryrosee
╰› fanfic masterlist
The ticking of the library clock doesn't sound like time passing anymore; it sounds like a mechanical countdown, a rhythmic, metal heartbeat mocking the finite number of hours left in his day.
Jungkook doesn't lift his eyes from the sprawling ocean of paper covering the desk. His fingers, ink-stained at the knuckles and stiff from six consecutive hours of drafting appellate briefs, tightly grip a highlighter. The neon yellow ink bleeds across the crisp pages of his Intellectual Property casebook, sharp, unblinking, and precise. He can do this. He has always been able to do this. He is Jeon Jungkook: the fourth-year prodigy, the Vice President of the Student Council, the foundation of the Debate Society, and a legal research assistant for a rather prestigious corporate firm in the city. His track record is an untouchable monument of straight A’s and flawless execution.
But as the first week of May relentlessly bleeds into the second, the boundaries between his carefully compartmentalised lives begin to dangerously blur, fraying at the edges like an old rope under too much tension.
The pressure doesn't hit him all at once in a grand, cinematic wave. There is no sudden, dramatic panic attack, no hyperventilating over his desk, no theatrical breakdown that would give him an excuse to stop. Instead, the stress manifests as a quiet, heavy sediment settling deep into his bones, layer by layer, compressing his spine until every breath feels tightly contained.
It starts with the calendar. His life has become a ruthless, colour-coded grid of absolute zero flexibility, a prison of his own high-achieving making.
08:00 - 10:00: Comprehensive lectures on international copyright law, where his professor deliberately calls on him for the most complex analyses because “Jeon always has the definitive answer.”
10:15 - 12:30: The Student Council chambers. As VP, the structural and financial logistics of the upcoming spring graduation gala fall squarely on his shoulders. He sits through endless, exhausting arguments about budget discrepancies, sign-offs, and administrative red tape, his signature required on twenty different documents before he can even think about leaving the room.
13:00 - 16:00: His role at the firm. It’s supposed to be part-time, but the senior partners treat him like a full-time associate, handing him stacks of archival case files to cross-reference until his vision goes fuzzy and the legal jargon begins to swim behind his eyelids.
16:30 - 19:30: The dead quiet of the library, where he tries to cram three semesters' worth of legal philosophy into his aching brain for his upcoming final exam.
20:00 onward: The dark, endless void of corporate internship portals. He sits in the dim light of his laptop screen, rewriting his cover letters for the twentieth time, tweaking every single sentence to ensure his perfection transfers seamlessly onto a PDF that a recruiter might look at for six seconds.
By the third week of May, the days lose their names entirely. They are no longer Mondays or Thursdays; they are simply measured by the number of empty espresso cups cluttering his nightstand, the mounting pile of laundry in the corner of his bedroom, and the permanent, burning ache right behind his eyes. He is pushing through on pure, unadulterated willpower. His body is a high-performance machine, driving at maximum speed through a fog, consciously ignoring the check-engine light blinking violently in the back of his mind. He doesn't have the luxury of time to check up on himself. He doesn't ask himself how he’s doing, if his chest feels too tight, or whether his hands are shaking slightly when he reaches for his coffee. If he pauses for even a second to evaluate his own state, the momentum will break. And Jungkook knows that if he lets the momentum break, the entire mountain he’s balancing will collapse on top of him.
But the absolute worst part of the crunch isn't the physical exhaustion, or the burning eyes, or the legal briefs, or the impending doom that is his exams, which determine the trajectory of his life. It’s the silence.
He hasn't seen you in six days. Truly seen you. Almost a week. Not just a passing, frantic glimpse across the bustling quad between classes, or a synchronised, tired nod through the glass of the library corridor, but you. He hasn't held you. He hasn't buried his face in the crook of your neck to let your clean, familiar warmth wash away the sterile smell of old paper and high-voltage library electricity.
During a five-minute transition between a gruelling council disciplinary meeting and a mock trial review session, Jungkook slumps against the cold brick wall of the hallway and pulls out his phone. His lock screen is a candid photo he took of you in his apartment months ago: your dark hair messy from sleep, your eyes soft, crinkled, and laughing as you pulled his oversized navy hoodie over your face to shield yourself from his camera lens.
Looking at it causes a physical, hollow ache to bloom right in the centre of his chest. It’s a cold, vacuum-like emptiness that leaves him feeling entirely winded.
You [10:14]: good luck with the council meeting, Kook! Don't forget to drink water. I'm heading to my prose seminar now, love you <3
Jungkook [12:13]: Thank you, sweetheart. Love you more. I'll try to drop by your dorm tonight after the library closes
Except he didn’t drop by. He couldn’t. A senior professor cornered him about a late-stage dissertation revision at around 20:30, dragging him into an empty office to debate legal precedents until his head throbbed. He had stood outside your dorm building in the dark, staring up at your fourth-floor window. It was dark. And he was too terrifyingly protective of your peace and your own exam schedule; he couldn't bring himself to wake you up. He couldn't let you see him like this: pale, frayed, and running entirely on empty.
He walks back to his apartment alone, feeling a strange, bitter paradox. He is constantly surrounded by people. Professors who heap praise on his endurance, younger council members who look at him with wide, expectant eyes for immediate answers, and his classmates who treat his flawless GPA as an unshakeable inevitability. He is the golden boy in the centre of a crowded room, a pillar of success, yet he has never felt more completely isolated.
By the time he finally drags his heavy feet back to his own block at nearly one in the morning, his body is trembling with fatigue. Without your warmth anchoring him, without the sweet quiet of your presence to silence the chaos of his mind, his life feels like a beautifully constructed, expensive machine operating in a total vacuum.
By the final week before the exams officially commence, the passing of time becomes a blur of physical degradation. The low-grade warning through his muscles has turned into a constant, heavy throbbing. His fluffy dark hair has grown out significantly past his ears, curling untamed and messy down the back of his neck because a twenty-minute trip to the barber feels like a reckless waste of time he should be spending on his dissertation. His skin is pale under the harsh fluorescent lights of the library, and his breathing is shallow from the sheer volume of stale, recirculated air he’s been inhaling for weeks.
He can handle it. He repeats the mantra to himself like a lifeline as he shuffles a new stack of corporate law printouts into his bag, his movements slow, heavy, and mechanical. He is Jeon Jungkook. He doesn't drop the ball. He doesn't fail. But as he stands in his room, cool, damp air curling around him from the open window of his bedroom, his vision gives a tiny dark flicker at the very edges, a subtle, quiet warning from his body that the machine is rapidly running out of fuel, and the ground beneath his feet is beginning to sway.
The campus air feels suffocatingly thick, buzzing with the high-voltage panic of thousands of students cramming for final exams, but your own second-year Literature syllabus is the furthest thing from your mind. You are supposed to be drowning in Old English prose translations and structural theories, yet every single word on your notebook pages keeps reshaping itself into his name.
You miss him so much it feels like a literal, physical ache right beneath your ribs. It has been over a week since you last felt the secure weight of his arms locking around your waist, days since you heard his voice without the flat, tinny distortion of a phone speaker. You know he is absolutely drowning over in the Law block—swamped with his vice-president duties, firm deadlines, and corporate applications—and a wave of love completely overrides your own exhaustion. Your boy spends every single day trying to hold the sky up for you; it’s your turn to take care of him.
Before heading to his building, you take a deliberate detour to the small, upscale leather boutique just off the campus quad. Your fingers tremble slightly against your wallet as you count out the money you’ve meticulously saved up from your private tutoring sessions over the last few months. You are buying the one thing he has been secretly eyeing for nearly a semester: a heavy, vintage Italian leather folio case, beautifully embossed, meant to organise his complex legal briefs and fountain pens. You still remember the exact look in his dark doe eyes when he pointed it out through the shop window last winter, his face lighting up like a child's before he checked his watch, muttered about an upcoming student council budget crisis, and dragged you away, completely tossing it to the back of his mind. He never spends time or money on himself when he can spend it making you feel like a princess.
Holding the securely wrapped, heavy gift bag tightly against your chest like a shield against the chilly spring rain, you cross the quad, your heart fluttering with a nervous, incredibly eager anticipation. When you reach his apartment block, the butterflies in your stomach go wild. You pull out the silver spare key he had pressed into your palm a year ago with such fierce, ceremonial pride, sliding it into the lock with a quiet, familiar click.
You push the heavy wood door open, expecting the warm, delicious scent of fresh espresso and his woodsy cologne, but you are instantly met with a heavy, dead silence.
The apartment is entirely dark. The kitchen counters are empty, and the living room is cast in deep, long shadows. It feels cold, carrying the stagnant weight of absolute burnout. Jungkook’s usual meticulous, orderly nature is completely absent. His expensive dress shoes are kicked off haphazardly by the entryway, his necktie is dumped carelessly on the floorboards, and his heavy laptop bag is slumped against the wall like a discarded weight. The only sign of life in the entire place is a single, sharp bar of pale golden light cutting across the dark hallway from his slightly cracked bedroom door.
You slip off your boots and tiptoe down the hall, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You peer through the crack of the door, and the sight makes your breath instantly catch in your throat.
Jungkook is standing by his chest of drawers, clearly trying to change out of his formal university clothes, but he has completely frozen in place. His white shirt is half-unbuttoned, revealing the tight, stressed muscles of his chest, and his head is hanging incredibly low, his eyes closed as if his neck can no longer support the weight of his thoughts.
Suddenly, his entire massive frame gives a violent, heavy sway. His eyelids flutter wildly, his face losing every single drop of its usual healthy, golden colour as a wave of dizziness washes over him. His knees visibly buckle beneath his broad build, his hand blindly reaching out to grip the edge of the wooden dresser, his knuckles turning stark white as he begins to list dangerously to the side, completely losing his balance.
"Jungkook!"
The panic spikes hot and violent in your chest. You toss the leather gift bag onto his bed, your body moving on pure, raw survival instinct as you lunge across the bedroom floor.
You reach him just as his body completely gives way to gravity. Shoving your smaller hands directly under his arms, you wedge your shoulder right under his ribs, bracing your feet against the hardwood to absorb the sudden, dead-weight slump of his massive chest. You strain under his size, your muscles locking as you fiercely hold him upright, steadying his swaying frame against your own, refusing to let him hit the ground.
"Jungkook! Hey, look at me! I've got you, baby, I've got you," you cry out, your voice a sharp, worried whisper breaking the heavy quiet of the room.
He lets out a low, ragged gasp, his chest heaving violently against your shoulder as his heavy eyelids slowly, painfully flutter open. His dark doe eyes are blown out, glassy, and entirely unfocused as they wander blankly around the room before finally landing on your face. He blinks once, twice, a thick, heavy daze clouding his features. Slowly, as if he can't quite believe what he's seeing, a faint smile tugs at the corner of his lips. He weakly lifts his large, warm hands to clasp at your waist, leaning his forehead down until it rests directly against yours, his breath hot and uneven against your mouth.
"Y/N...?" he murmurs. His voice is a broken, sandpaper rasp, entirely stripped of its usual deep velvet register. He nuzzles his nose against yours in a slow, adorable, sleepy gesture, his eyelashes brushing your cheek. "Am I... am I dreaming? My brain finally snapped. I'm hallucinating my sweet girl because I missed her too much..."
You let out a sharp, breathless huff, your heart still pounding in a frantic rhythm from the near-miss, but you can't help the small, affectionate smile tugging at your lips. "You're not hallucinating, you absolute idiot. If I hadn't walked through that door, you would have eaten the hardwood floor. Are you okay?"
"Best dream ever," he mumbles shamelessly, completely ignoring your question as he buries his face deeply into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent with a sweet, desperate possessiveness. He lets his entire weight slump into you, his long arms wrapping around your back like a giant, clingy koala. "Don't wake me up yet. Let me stay right here. You smell like home."
The initial relief of catching him quickly evaporates, replaced by a cold and deeply protective anger. The sheer neglect of his own body makes your throat tighten. He’s running himself into the ground, and you love him too much to let him do it. You firmly place your palms flat against his broad chest, pushing him back with enough force to make him sit heavily on the edge of the mattress.
You step back, crossing your arms tightly over your chest, your expression turning completely serious as you look down at him with a stern, unyielding authority.
"Jeon Jungkook, look at me right now," you say, your voice dropping into a flat, dead-serious register.
Jungkook blinks up at you from the edge of the bed, his head tilting slightly to the side, completely caught off guard by the sharp edge in your tone. His overgrown, fluffy dark hair falls into his eyes, making him look incredibly young and vulnerable.
"When was the last time you ate a real meal?" you demand, gesturing sharply around his room. "When was the last time you slept for more than three hours? Look at your nightstand, it's a literal graveyard of empty espresso cups and energy drink cans! You are a human being, Jungkook, not a machine, and you almost passed out cold right in front of me! How could you do this to yourself? You have completely stopped checking up on yourself, and it's not okay. You can't just ignore your own health!"
As the scolding leaves your lips, the confident, untouchable golden boy of the university completely shatters right before your eyes.
Jungkook’s dark eyes go incredibly wide, like a little puppy being harshly scolded for a mistake he didn't realise he was making. His broad shoulders instantly collapse inward, making his massive frame look suddenly small and fragile. His soft, pink bottom lip juts out into a raw, trembling pout, and a thick, devastating gloss of unshed tears suddenly floods his bloodshot eyes, making them shine like glass under the warm bedroom lamp. The sheer thought that he has caused you panic—that he has made his favourite person genuinely angry and worried—completely breaks his remaining defences.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. His voice cracks heavily on the vowels, a tiny, pathetic sound that makes your heart instantly fracture into a thousand pieces. A heavy tear escapes his lower lash line, tracing a slow, damp path down his pale cheek. He drops his head, his hands gripping his thighs as his chest heaves with quiet, shallow, shaky breaths. "I'm sorry, Y/N... I didn't mean to make you mad. I just... the council budget was completely falling apart, and the partners at the firm kept adding files to my desk, and the legal philosophy final is on Tuesday..."
He lets out a shaky, trembling sob, his shoulders shuddering as he looks up at you through a thick veil of tears, his expression pure, agonising vulnerability. "I just wanted to force myself to finish everything early so I could be completely free for you. I didn't want to carry any stress when I finally got to see you. I wanted to be perfect for you, and now I've ruined it. I've made you upset because I'm a mess and I can't handle it."
Every single ounce of your anger vanishes into thin air, completely dissolved by the raw, melting sweetness of the boy weeping on the edge of his bed.
You instantly drop to your knees on the floor between his thighs, your hands coming up to gently cradle his warm, tear-stained cheeks. Your thumbs move in soft, frantic, and deeply tender sweeps, wiping away the dampness as you force him to look into your eyes, your own voice turning incredibly soft, thick with a deep, emotional warmth.
"Oh, baby, no," you coo softly, leaning in until your foreheads are touching again, your breath mingling. "Hey, look at me, my love. You haven't ruined anything, Kook. You could never, ever ruin us. I am not mad at you for being stressed."
Jungkook lets out a small, hitching sniffle, his nose turning a faint, adorable shade of pink. His large hands come up to wrap tightly around your wrists, holding your palms firmly against his face as if he’s scared that you’ll pull away if he lets go. He leans his weight into your touch, closing his eyes as a soft, shaky breath escapes his lips.
"I'm upset because I love you, and it scares me to see you push yourself to the point of collapse," you whisper, your fingers sliding up into his fluffy, overgrown dark curls, gently massaging the base of his skull to release the tension. "You don't have to be a superhero all the time, Jungkook. You don't have to be the perfect golden boy for me. You should have reached out to me. Even if I was buried in my own Literature essays, even if we were both busy... we are a team. We are in this together. You are my boyfriend, and you don't have to carry the entire universe on your shoulders by yourself. You're allowed to be tired. You're allowed to lean on me."
Jungkook lets out a raw, emotional little groan, his defences completely collapsing at your words. He lunges forward, sliding right off the edge of the bed and crashing into your space on the floor. He buries his face directly into the soft warmth of your neck, his arms locking around your waist with a desperate, crushing grip, pulling your smaller frame so tightly against his chest that you can feel the rapid pounding of his heart against your own ribs.
He holds you so tight it’s almost breathless, his entire body trembling as he seeks your comfort. He begins to press a flurry of tiny, trembling kisses along your jawline, your cheek, and beneath your ear, making you let out a tiny, tearful giggle.
"I missed you so much," he mumbles into your skin, his voice thick and completely unravelled. He pulls back just an inch, his glassy doe eyes searching yours, his pout returning in full force. "Don't leave tonight. Please? You have to stay and hold me. I need my Y/N cuddles, or my brain won't work tomorrow."
"I'm not going anywhere, you giant baby," you whisper affectionally, crinkling your nose at him. You lean forward and press a soft, lingering kiss to his pouty lips, then to the tip of his nose, and finally to both of his watery eyes. "I'm staying right here."
Jungkook lets out a small, happy sound against your mouth, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he pulls you up onto the mattress with him. He crawls under the heavy duvet, dragging you right along with him until you are completely enveloped in the blankets. Limbs completely tied together to the point where you can’t make out where his start and yours end.
Your fingers find their way back into his fluffy, long hair, gently carding through the dark strands, tracing the soft curls at the nape of his neck. Jungkook lets out a long, deeply content sigh, completely relaxed for the first time in weeks.
"Look on the bed," you whisper softly, pointing a small finger toward the beautifully wrapped boutique bag sitting on the mattress. "I brought you a little surprise. To celebrate surviving the prep month."
Jungkook lifts his heavy head slightly, blinking at the elegant bag, and then looks at you with wide, sparkling doe eyes. "A present? For me?"
"Yes, for you," you smile warmly, reaching up to gently bop his nose. "Go on, open it. No guessing allowed."
Curiosity completely overriding his fatigue for a brief moment, Jungkook carefully shifts his weight, his long, ink-stained fingers reaching over to pull the boutique bag into his lap. He handles the delicate wrapping with a surprising amount of gentle care, untying the satin ribbon and parting the crisp tissue paper. The moment the paper falls away, the rich, distinct aroma of high-grade, vintage Italian leather fills the small space between you and the duvet. He slides the beautifully embossed folio case out into the warm lamplight.
His breath hitches. He recognises it instantly—the exact case he had stared at through a shop window five months ago, the one he had completely forgotten about the second a law school crisis demanded his attention.
But he barely looks at the object in his hands. He glances at it just long enough for the realisation to click in his tired brain, and then he completely sets it aside, letting the expensive leather slide carelessly onto the mattress. His gaze snaps right back to your face, his bloodshot eyes filling to the very brim with a brand-new, incredibly deep and devastating wave of pure emotional devotion.
"You remembered that?" he whispers, his voice cracking raw on the vowels. "From all the way back in the winter? When I only pointed at it for a second?"
"Of course I did," you murmur softly, your heart swelling as you reach out to caress his cheek. "I remember every single thing you say, Kook."
A heavy, trembling tear escapes his lower lash line, his soft bottom lip jutting out into an adorable, vulnerable pout as the sheer weight of your love completely overwhelms him. He lunges forward, sliding his large hands securely around your waist, burying his face in the crook of your neck as his shoulders shudder with a soft, emotional heave.
"I'm going to be better," he mumbles desperately into your skin, his grip tightening around your ribs as if he’s trying to fuse his body with yours. "I promise I'll be better for you, sweetheart. I'll manage my time, I'll remember to eat, I'll be a better boyfriend... I won't let myself run on empty and scare you like this ever again. I'll do better."
You let out a soft, incredibly tender sigh, the absolute melting sweetness of his words making your own eyes prickle with tears. You slide your hands up into his thick, fluffy, overgrown dark curls, gently cradling the back of his head and rocking him softly against your chest.
"Hey, look at me," you murmur, pulling back just enough to force him to look at you through his thick, wet lashes. You wipe the dampness from his cheeks with the pads of your thumbs, your voice thick with warmth. "You don't have to be better, Kook. You're already the most incredible, loving boyfriend I could ever ask for. You don't have to be a perfect, flawless machine to deserve my love."
You lean forward, pressing a long, lingering, velvet-soft kiss to his pouty lips, before resting your forehead against his.
"You don't have to change a single thing," you whisper into the quiet space between you. "Just remember that I'm here. Whenever the sky gets too heavy, whenever you feel like you're drowning, just remember to look at me. I'm right here, and you don't ever have to carry it alone."
The relief washes over him like a wave, completely dissolving the final remnants of his academic stress. Jungkook lets out a soft, breathless sound, and a beautiful, radiant smile finally breaks across his face. He leans up, capturing your lips in a devastatingly sweet kiss that tastes of rain and pure, unadulterated adoration, a silent promise sealed between your mouths.
When he finally pulls away, he buries his face right back into the warm crook of your neck, his grip around your waist tightening into a secure, protective hold. "I love you so much, Y/N," he murmurs, his voice dropping into a thick, sleep-slurred register. "So, so much."
"I love you too, Jungkook," you whisper, smiling against his temple. But just as the heavy, profound silence settles over the room, a violent, ungodly rumble echoes from his midsection, a growl so loud it practically vibrates against your own ribs. Jungkook stiffens instantly. He freezes like a statue, his entire broad back locking up as his face stays buried in your neck. For three agonising seconds, he refuses to move, clearly praying that the laws of physics will bend and allow you to believe the sound came from literally anywhere else.
The intense emotional atmosphere shatters in an instant. You burst out laughing, nudging his shoulder, while Jungkook lets out a pathetic, embarrassed whine into your skin. "Was that..." you start, your voice trembling as a massive, unstoppable wave of amusement bubbles up in your throat. "...was that the constitutional framework of the university collapsing, or are you actually just hollow inside?"
"It was a legal objection," Jungkook whines piteously into your collarbone. His ears are already turning a bright, furious shade of crimson that clashes spectacularly with his damp, dark hair. He nuzzles deeper, refusing to show his face. "An involuntary motion filed by my digestive tract. Ignore it. Strike it from the record."
"Motion denied, counsellor," you laugh loudly, your hands coming up to firmly shove his heavy shoulders back. You slide out from beneath his massive, uncoordinated limbs and stand up, pointing an authoritative finger down at him. "The emotional hour is officially suspended. Look at you, you're basically a walking skeleton wrapped in muscles. Let's go eat. We need to get some actual fuel into you before you literally wither away into a tragic legal footnote."
To say that Jungkook is a needy assistant is an insult to needy assistants everywhere. He does not simply walk into the kitchen with you; he attaches himself to your spine like a giant, highly advanced human backpack.
The moment you stand at the small counter, his large, solid frame materialises behind you. His long, muscular arms loop securely around your waist, his hands locking together over your stomach, and he drops his chin into the hollow of your shoulder. Every single time you try to shift your weight to reach the refrigerator or grab a cutting board, you are forced to drag his entire 70-something-kilogram dead-weight frame across the floor, his thick cotton socks sliding uselessly against the floorboards.
"Jungkook, seriously, I am holding a very sharp knife," you giggle-scold, trying to maintain your balance as you reach for a bundle of spring onions. His fluffy, overgrown bangs tickle your jawline, and his warm, slow breaths blow directly against your neck. "You are a literal safety hazard right now. Go sit at the island. Go read a brief. Do anything that doesn't involve being glued to my vertebrae."
"Can't," he mumbles, his voice a thick, low rumble that echoes right through your collarbone. He closes his eyes, tightening his grip around your waist just a fraction, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind you that he could easily lift you off your feet if he wanted to. "The gravity in this kitchen is broken, Y/N. If I let go of my anchor, I am going to float right out the window. For legal and medical reasons, I have to remain securely attached right here to my girlfriend."
"You are a fourth-year law student and the Vice President of the Student Council," you snark, leaning back against his broad chest for a brief second to absorb his dizzying warmth. "Where is the logic, Jeon?"
"Brain has been temporarily replaced by garlic cravings and affection," he whispers, shifting his head to press a slow, wet, and utterly obnoxious kiss directly against the side of your neck, making you shriek and twist away from his mouth. "Cook, please. Your backpack is starving."
You let out a helpless huff, shaking your head as you turn your attention back to the stove. Since he refuses to unclamp his arms, you adapt, working within the tight radius of his embrace.
You set to work on making his absolute, undisputed favourite comfort meal: a heavily upgraded, ungodly spicy, garlic ramen.
With Jungkook's chin permanently glued to your shoulder, you turn on the stove and drizzle a generous amount of sesame oil into the deep stone pot. The moment the oil shimmers, you drop in a massive, aggressive spoonful of minced garlic and a heavy shake of coarse red chilli flakes. The kitchen instantly explodes with a rich, fragrant aroma—the sharp, savoury sting of toasted garlic and the smoky heat of the pepper curling up in lazy steam clouds. Behind you, Jungkook lets out a low, involuntary whimper of pure anticipation; his stomach lets out another warning rumble.
"See? The backpack approves," he murmurs.
You pour in the water, bringing it to a rolling, violent boil before breaking the instant noodle bricks into the pot. As the noodles soften, you stir in the deep, savoury spice packet, dropping the heat down to a steady simmer. But you don't stop there. You reach around his large hands to open the fridge, grabbing cheese and an egg, then move to the chopping board for a handful of freshly chopped spring onions.
Right at the last minute, you grate the cheese onto the noodles, watching it melt instantly into a thick, creamy blanket. You scatter the green onions across the top, and then, with absolute precision, you crack the egg directly in the centre, leaving the bright yellow yolk completely whole and runny, glistening in the centre of the crimson, bubbling broth.
"Holy shit," Jungkook whispers against your ear, his doe eyes wide and completely hypnotised by the pot. "You are a culinary genius. Marry me. Forget the degree, let’s run away and elope."
"Eat your food first, prodigy," you tease, carefully transferring the steaming pot over to a wooden trivet on the living room coffee table.
The moment his arms finally unclamp, Jungkook drops onto the sofa like a massive oak tree being felled. He doesn't even wait for the broth to stop bubbling; he grabs his chopsticks with a terrifying, single-minded intensity that entirely confirms your suspicion: the golden boy hasn't eaten a real, solid meal in days.
He buries his face in the steam, pulling up a massive tangle of cheesy, spicy noodles. He eats with a chaotic, completely ungraceful hunger, his mouth turning a bright, vivid shade of red from the intense chilli broth. You sit beside him on the floor, your legs crossed, your chin resting on your palm as you watch him with a mixture of profound affection and mild judgment.
"Slow down, tiger," you laugh softly, reaching over to hand him a tall, sweating glass of ice water. "The noodles aren't going to run away. Neither am I. Take a breath."
He swallows a massive mouthful, his throat bobbing as he instantly downs half the ice water in one desperate gulp. A dark drop of spicy broth catches on his lower lip, and a faint, beautifully healthy flush is finally, mercifully returning to his pale cheeks. He looks over at you through his long, thick lashes, his expression one of absolute, pure adoration.
"You don't understand," he says, his raspy velvet voice slightly breathless from the heat. "This is not just ramen. This is a spiritual intervention. My soul is physically re-entering my body with every bite. I can feel my brain cells turning back on."
"Good," you smile, reaching out with a napkin to gently dab the stray drop of broth from his lip. "Because I need those law student brain cells fully functioning for our post-food recovery protocol."
Once the pot is completely scraped clean—to the point where you’re pretty sure he licked the edges when you weren’t looking—you slide back onto the deep, plush couch cushions. You straighten your legs out and gently pat your denim-clad thighs.
"Alright," you murmur softly. "Come here. Lean back."
Jungkook doesn't need to be told twice. He lets out a long, deeply satisfied groan, twisting his large body around and dropping his upper body until his head sinks heavily into your lap. He lies flat on his stomach along the length of the sofa, looking up at you, his long legs dangling off the opposite armrest.
Your hands come up instinctively, your fingertips sinking deep into his thick, fluffy dark hair. You begin to give him a slow, deep, and methodical scalp massage, your fingers moving in firm, rhythmic circles. Your thumbs trace the tight, agonising knots of pure stress locked at the very base of his skull, right where his neck meets his broad shoulders from days of staring down at heavy law textbooks. Your fingers then slip under the collar of his shirt, adding the same pressure to his shoulders and his upper back.
Jungkook’s eyes flutter shut almost instantly. A low, deep, and vibrating hum of pure, unadulterated bliss rumbles from his chest, his entire massive frame going completely limp against the sofa cushions beneath you. The absolute quiet of his apartment wraps around the two of you like a heavy blanket, insulating you from the frantic campus outside.
"Mmh," he slurs, his raspy voice laced with an intense, sleepy comfort. He reaches up blindly, his large, warm hand searching the air until his long fingers capture one of your wrists, gently drawing your knuckles down to his lips to press a soft, lingering kiss against your skin. "Keep doing that, and I am going to literally merge with this furniture. I'm going to become a permanent structural fixture of this apartment."
"I'll have to pay rent for you then," you murmur softly, a deep, emotional warmth settling into your ribs as you gently card your fingers through his soft, dark curls again. "You've grown it out so much, Kook. It’s getting wild."
"No time," he mumbles, his breath warming your thigh through your jeans. He opens his dark doe eyes, looking up at you from your lap, his gaze losing its sleepy glaze for a split second, replaced by a sudden seriousness. He squeezes your wrist. "I mean it, Y/N... your presence is holding me so tight right now. These past weeks, I felt like I was completely spinning out of orbit. Like I was running a race in a room with no oxygen. I only kept my legs moving because I knew you'd be waiting at the finish line."
"I am always at the finish line, Jungkook," you say softly, your voice thick as you look down at his beautiful, tired features. "You never, ever have to doubt that. No matter how busy we get, no matter how heavy the syllabus is... I’m always right here."
A large smile slowly breaks across his handsome face, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that sweet, boyish way you love so much. But then, a familiar, entirely shameless glint flashes in the dark depths of his pupils.
Before you can even register the sudden shift in his energy, Jungkook lifts his upper body out of pure muscle memory. He uses his arms to shift upwards until he is lying entirely, squarely on top of your front, pinning your smaller frame flat against the deep couch cushions.
"Jungkook!" you gasp, a sharp, breathless laugh ripping from your throat as his broad chest completely crushes the air out of your lungs.
He doesn't care in the slightest. He buries his face directly into the soft, warm hollow of your chest, his arms locking around your lower back like unyielding iron bands, trapping your arms and legs completely beneath his heavy, solid weight. He shifts his hips slightly, settling his massive build comfortably over yours, completely making himself at home.
"Kook, you are an absolute giant," you giggle frantically, your pinned hands weakly swatting at the broad, hard expanse of his shoulder blades as his nose nuzzles playfully against your ribs through the fabric of your plain tee. "I cannot breathe! I am being crushed. This is corporate manslaughter."
"I am not suffocating you," he mumbles shamelessly, his voice completely muffled by your clothes, his warm lips brushing directly against your skin through the cotton fabric as he speaks. He shifts his weight again, a cheeky, highly suggestive tone bleeding into his sleepy rasp. "I am simply exercising my human right to a premium, high-quality weighted blanket. It's a medical necessity for my recovery."
"You're heavy!" you shriek, a bright, booming laugh escaping your lips as a furious, vivid pink flush instantly covers your cheeks and neck. You try to wiggle your hips to slide out from under his lower half, but he just lets out a low, rumbling chuckle against your ribs, his grip tightening playfully around your waist, utterly unmovable.
"Besides," he continues cheekily, lifting his head just an inch so his chin rests on your breastbone. He looks up at you with a wide, boxy, and incredibly smug grin, his eyes sparkling with pure mischief. "I am just checking your vitals, sweetheart. For health purposes. And wow... your heartbeat is running incredibly fast right now. I think my physical needs are suddenly making a miraculous, late-night recovery. I feel very re-energised down here. The garlic must have stimulated my system."
"Jeon Jungkook! You were literally almost unconscious ten minutes ago!" you shriek, your face burning hot as you swat the back of his neck, though you are laughing so hard your chest is shaking beneath him. "You are absolutely unbelievable!"
"I was dying," he corrects shamelessly, his smile blindingly beautiful and soft in the dim, amber light of the living room. He leans up further, his soft, warm lips capturing yours in a slow, deep, and devastatingly playful kiss that entirely silences your laughter. He tastes faintly of the garlic spice and the fresh ice water, his mouth warm and heavy against yours, turning the chaotic crack of the moment into a deep, dizzying pool of pure adoration.
When he finally pulls back, he doesn't let go. He drops his heavy head right back down into the crook of your neck, his long arms remaining securely locked around your waist, his entire body going completely, entirely limp as the final remnants of his energy vanish.
"Go to sleep, Kook," you whisper affectionately, your hands coming up to softly cradle the back of his head, your fingers gently playing with the dark, fluffy curls at his nape.
"Yes, ma'am," he murmurs sleepily into your skin, his grip relaxing into a warm, protective hold that anchors you both to the sofa.
Within seconds, his breathing slows into a deep, heavy, and perfectly rhythmic pattern. His chaotic world completely evaporates into the quiet dark. You continue to softly stroke his fluffy hair, humming a gentle, familiar melody into the warm space of the room, holding your golden boy safe and warm against your chest as he finally drifts off into a deep, dreamless sleep, entirely anchored by your side.
The humanities library is notoriously ancient, smelling of vanilla-scented decaying paper, wood polish, and the quiet despair of arts majors. The desks are long, creaky oak structures with green-shaded banker's lamps that cast dramatic shadows over your copy of Old English Elegies.
And right across from you sits a massive, structural problem.
Jeon Jungkook does not fit in the humanities building. His broad shoulders require him to sit at a slight angle, and his long legs are currently a menace beneath the narrow wooden table. He is supposed to be reading a text on international maritime law, but for the past twenty minutes, he has been conducting a highly coordinated campaign of psychological warfare against your ankles.
First, it’s a gentle, absentminded nudge of his socked foot against your shin. You ignore it, shifting your legs to the left.
Then, his foot follows you. A slow, rhythmic tapping of his big toe against the side of your sneaker.
You glare at him over the top of your literature anthology. Jungkook doesn't look up. His long, fluffy curls are falling into his eyes, his reading glasses perched precariously on the bridge of his nose, his expression the picture of absolute, pristine academic focus. If anyone else looked at him, they would think he was solving a global legal crisis.
You reach under the table and sharply kick his shin.
Thump.
Jungkook’s eyes snap up behind his lenses. His brow twitches. A slow, incredibly dangerous boxy grin spreads across his lips. He slowly lowers his highlighter, places his palms flat on his heavy textbook, and leans forward across the narrow desk, his voice a barely audible whisper that cuts through the room's dead silence.
"Assaulting a future officer of the court," he murmurs cheekily, his doe eyes sparkling with mischief. "That’s a class-A misdemeanour, sweetheart. I could sue you for emotional damages."
"You're invading my sovereign territory under this desk, counsellor," you whisper back sharply, leaning in so the librarian won't launch a textbook at your head. "Keep your giant limbs on your side of the oak, or I will write a scathing satirical poem about your law brief."
"Oh, a threat of literary defamation? Bold."
Suddenly, you feel a warm, heavy sensation under the table. Before you can react, Jungkook utilises his athletic reflexes to hook his ankles behind your calves, entirely trapping your legs between his. He exerts just enough pressure to drag your feet completely across the divider line, pinning your sneakers securely against his own.
"There," he murmurs smoothly, leaning back in his creaking wooden chair, a look of smug, absolute triumph on his face as he picks his highlighter back up. "Sovereign territory officially annexed. Go back to your poetry, Y/N. Your feet belong to the Law faculty now."
You try to yank your legs back, but his hold is like a set of vice grips. You let out a breathless, defeated huff, your face burning hot with a mixture of amusement and fluster, forced to finish your translations while completely anchored to his lower half for the next three hours.
It is nearly two in the morning on a Thursday, and the exam stress has officially caused Jungkook’s brilliant, high-achieving brain to temporarily detach from reality.
He is suffering from a manic, late-night burst of hyper-focus before his Legal Ethics final. He has dragged your small desk chair into the centre of your cramped dorm room, unzipped his hoodie so it hangs off one shoulder, and is currently pacing the floorboards with a frantic, theatrical intensity that would make a Shakespearean actor weep.
"Members of the jury," Jungkook announces dramatically, gesturing with a plastic spoon toward your double bed.
You are sitting cross-legged on the mattress, a mug of chamomile tea in your hands, watching the performance with wide, utterly bewildered eyes. Lined up neatly along your pillows is the "jury" he has meticulously constructed: a large plush frog, a disgruntled-looking teddy bear, and a stuffed pink octopus.
"I ask you to look at the evidence!" Jungkook proclaims, his voice booming with a rich, commanding eloquence that is entirely too grand for a nine-by-nine university room. He stops pacing, pointing the spoon directly at the teddy bear. "The prosecution claims that my client intentionally withheld information regarding the corporate merger. But I ask you—how can a man bound by the absolute sanctity of attorney-client privilege break his oath? Look at his face! Is that the face of a corporate fraudster?!"
The teddy bear stares back, blank and fuzzy.
"Jungkook," you interrupt softly, hiding your face behind your tea mug as your shoulders shake with laughter. "The defence rests. The bear looks completely unconvinced by your rhetoric. I think he’s leaning toward a guilty verdict."
Jungkook stops dead in his tracks. He drops his arm, his dramatic stance instantly collapsing into a soft, exaggeratedly offended pout. He stalks over to the edge of your bed, dropping heavily to his knees on the floorboards right in front of you. He rests his chin flat against your knee, looking up at you through his long, overgrown bangs, his big, wide doe eyes shining with pure fatigue and silliness.
"The jury is biased against me," he whines softly, his bottom lip jutting out into that adorable, familiar pout. He reaches up, his large hand wrapping around your wrist, gently pulling your hand down so he can nuzzle his cheek into your warm palm. "Sweetheart, tell the bear to stop judging me. My closing statement was flawless. I used three different Latin phrases."
"It was a magnificent performance, baby," you coo affectionally, your fingers instantly sinking into his curls, gently scratching his scalp. "The frog was visibly moved. I think he’s ready to acquit."
Jungkook lets out a low, vibrating hum of pure, sleepy satisfaction under your touch, closing his eyes as he completely relaxes against your leg. "Good. If I fail this ethics exam, I’m becoming a professional stuffed-animal defence lawyer. You can be my legal secretary."
"I have a Literature degree to finish, Jeon. I am not typing up briefs for a plush octopus."
"Heresy," he mumbles against your jeans, his arms wrapping lazily around your thighs as he prepares to use your floor as a secondary bed. "I’ll pay you in kisses. High conversion rate. Very lucrative."
The Law School library is not just a building; it is a sacred, terrifying cathedral of absolute, suffocating silence. It is governed by ancient, hawk-eyed librarians who look like they personally witnessed the drafting of the Magna Carta, and the unwritten rule here is simple: making a sound is a first-class ticket to immediate social exile. The air is heavy with the scent of leather bindings, old paper, and the high-voltage anxiety of a hundred students staring down a future of bar exams.
You sit in a semi-private, study carrel near the back, your fingers hovering over your laptop keyboard as you desperately try to map out a structural timeline for your medieval spec-fic module. You are entirely focused, your brow furrowed into a tight line of academic panic.
And right across from you sits a professional menace.
Jeon Jungkook is supposed to be studying a massive, dry, leather-bound casebook on Constitutional Law Amendments. He looks the part of the pristine law prodigy: his white button-down shirt is perfectly crisp, a pair of elegant, silver-rimmed reading glasses is perched on the high bridge of his nose, and his long, fluffy dark curls are tucked neatly behind his ears. To anyone else, he is a picture of untouchable, elite concentration.
But you know better. You can feel the heat of his intense gaze burning right through the glass divider. He hasn't read a single line on his page in twenty minutes. Instead, he is uncapping his expensive fountain pen—the one you just bought him—with a slow, deliberate click of his tongue.
A tiny, bright neon-pink square enters your peripheral vision.
His long, elegant hand, veins prominent against his golden skin, slides a sticky note directly over the top corner of your laptop screen. You blink, your fingers freezing over the keys, and look down. Written in his sharp, slanted handwriting is a single sentence:
Your jawline looks really pretty when you're judging nineteenth-century literature. It’s making it physically impossible for me to focus on the Supreme Court. Let me kiss it.
You choke on your own saliva, a soft, involuntary squeak escaping your throat. You instantly clap a hand over your mouth, your heart hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against your ribs as you scan the immediate area, terrified that a librarian heard you. Your ears are suddenly burning, a furious, vivid pink flush creeping rapidly up your neck.
You glare at him across the divider. Jungkook doesn't even blink. He is staring intensely at page 402, his jaw tight, his expression entirely stoic and professional. The only giveaway is the faint, nearly imperceptible twitch at the corner of his plush lips.
Snatching a black gel pen, you furiously scribble a reply on the bottom of the square and slide it back across the smooth wood.
We are in the library, Kook. People are trying to pass finals. Stop being a menace and read your amendments before I ban you from my dorm room.
Not even thirty seconds pass before another pink square slides effortlessly into your space, positioned right over your cursor so you can't ignore it.
Amendments are boring. You are not. And your ears are currently turning the exact shade of this sticky note, sweetheart. It’s adorable. Look at me.
You bite your lower lip, determined to ignore him. You stare fixedly at your document, typing out a completely nonsensical sentence just to keep your hands moving. Your face is so hot you’re convinced steam is about to rise from your cheeks.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. The sound of his pen is a quiet torture in the silent room.
A third note slides across. This time, it hits your knuckles.
Stop biting your lip like that. That’s my job. If you do it one more time, I am going to stand up, walk around this divider, and kiss you right in front of that librarian who looks like she's about to drop dead any second now. Five seconds. One... two...
Your head snaps up. You glare at him over the top of the divider, your eyes wide with a mixture of frantic fluster and disbelief. Jungkook is already waiting for you. He slowly lowers his casebook, letting it rest on the desk, and slides his reading glasses down to the very tip of his nose. He looks at you over the silver frames, his dark doe eyes entirely dark, heavy, and melting with a dangerous, suggestive warmth that completely robs the oxygen from your lungs. He slowly, deliberately raises one eyebrow, a tiny, devastatingly smug smile playing on his mouth. He is completely shameless. He knows exactly what he is doing to you.
You crumble the sticky note into a tight ball and toss it directly at his nose. It bounces harmlessly off his cheek and lands on his open textbook. Jungkook lets out a low, barely audible vibration through his broad chest, his shoulders shaking with a quiet, delighted laugh.
But he isn't done.
Before you can pull your gaze away and retreat back into your essay, you feel a sudden shift beneath the table. Jungkook shifts his long legs, his knees brushing against yours, and then his large, warm hand slides directly under the table.
He doesn't reach for your hand. Instead, his heavy, burning palm settles squarely over your bare knee, his long fingers splaying out across your skin.
You let out a sharp, breathless gasp, your entire spine going completely rigid against the wooden chair. Your eyes widen to the size of saucers. You frantically look under the desk, then back up at him, your heart pounding so hard you are certain he can hear it.
Jungkook’s face is the picture of absolute innocence. He has picked his book back up, his eyes scanning the legal text as if he were a model citizen. But under the table, his hand is alive. His thumb begins to move in slow, mesmerising circles against the soft skin of your thigh, his palm radiating a heat that turns your entire brain into absolute mush.
You frantically grab a fresh green sticky note, your hand trembling so violently the ink smears as you write:
TAKE YOUR HAND OFF MY LEG JEON JUNGKOOK EVERYONE CAN SEE US.
You shove it under his nose. He doesn't even look down. He just reaches out with his left hand, grabs his pen, and writes a reply on the exact same note without even breaking his reading rhythm, sliding it back to you with a casual flick of his wrist.
No one can see under the table, sweetheart. The frosted glass protects us. And your skin is so incredibly soft today. Let me keep it there, or I promise you my hand is going to start wandering much, much higher.
You read the words and completely lose the ability to speak. A deep, dizzying wave of flutters crashes over you, your stomach doing a violent, acrobatic flip. You look at him, your lips parted in a silent, defeated wheeze, completely at the mercy of his sweet, terrifying obsession. You are a literature major, a girl who handles thousands of words a day, but right now, under the heavy weight of his touch and his gaze, you are completely illiterate.
Realising he has completely broken your defences, Jungkook finally relents, but only slightly. He slides his hand down from your thigh, his fingers trailing a burning path along your calf before he securely captures your trembling hand under the desk.
He draws your hand over to his side of the divider, keeping it hidden beneath the dark wooden framework. He lifts your hand to his mouth, his dark eyes locking onto yours over the silver rims of his glasses, and he presses a lingering kiss directly into the centre of your palm. Then against your inner wrist, his lips warm and soft against your racing pulse.
He squeezes your fingers tightly, locking his hand with yours and anchoring you to his side, before finally returning to his law amendments with a thoroughly satisfied, radiant smile.
Across the wide aisle of the library, you catch a brief glimpse of Serena sitting at a computer terminal, looking over at your carrel with a tight, envious line to her mouth. But as you look back at your laptop screen, your hand completely enveloped in Jungkook's warm, unyielding grip under the table, the last remnants of the universe vanish. Your face is still burning hot, and your heart is still racing from his teasing, but you have never felt more unshakeable. You lean back in your chair, a soft, breathless smile taking over your lips, completely content to let the golden boy of the university hold you captive in the dark quiet of the library.
It is three in the morning on the day before his final presentation and your final essay submission. The apartment is entirely dark save for a single floor lamp casting a warm, buttery circle of amber light over the living room rug.
You are both too exhausted to sit at the desks anymore, so you have moved the pillows and duvets completely onto the floorboards. You are sitting back-to-back in the centre of the rug, your spine pressed firmly against his broad, solid back, your bodies acting as a mutual, balancing support system in the dead of night.
The silence is thick, deep, and peaceful. The only sounds are the soft rustle of him turning a page and the rhythmic clicking of your laptop keys.
"Hey," Jungkook’s raspy voice breaks the quiet, his deep velvet tone vibrating directly through your spine where your backs meet.
"Mmh?" you murmur.
"Lean back completely," he instructs softly.
You comply, relaxing your muscles and letting your full weight drop back against him. Jungkook shifts slightly, absorbing your smaller frame against his powerful back, completely holding you up without a single complaint. He tilts his head back, his soft, overgrown dark curls brushing against the top of your head.
"Are you tired, sweetheart?" he whispers.
"Exhausted," you admit honestly, your eyes heavy. "But we're almost there, Kook. Just two more days."
"Yeah," he murmurs, a soft, incredibly tender smile audible in his voice. He reaches back blindly, his large hand finding your thigh, gently patting it through the heavy duvet. "Just two more days. And then I’m locking you in this apartment and sleeping for forty-eight hours straight with my head on your chest."
You let out a soft, emotional little chuckle, your heart swelling with an absolute, pure sense of security. The frantic, high-voltage academic world outside these walls doesn't matter. The metrics, the grades, the pressure, all of it is just noise. Inside this small circle of limelight, you are just two tired students holding each other up in the dark, surviving as an unbreakable unit.
"It's a deal, Jeon," you whisper into the quiet room, leaning deeper into his warmth as the clock ticks forward toward the dawn.
The digital display board in the grand, high-ceilinged lobby of the Law Faculty is surrounded by a dense, suffocating crowd of anxious students, but Jungkook doesn't even need to fight his way to the front to read the text. The sudden, collective shift in the room’s atmosphere—the quiet, respectful murmurs of his name drifting through the sea of sharp blazers—tells him everything he needs to know before his eyes even scan the screen.
Rank 1: Jeon Jungkook.
Untouchable. Unmovable. Holding his absolute first-place position exactly like he has every single semester of his university life.
The moment he turns away from the board, the praise from his professors is immediate and resounding. Professor Kang and Professor Davison catch him near the marble stairwell, offering firm, heavy pats on his broad shoulders and speaking in proud, elevated tones about his future in the corporate legal sector. Jungkook bows at the perfect, respectful angle, a polite, practised smile gracing his handsome features. He plays the part of the flawless campus prodigy with an effortless grace, but beneath his calm exterior, his dark eyes keep darting toward the heavy glass exit doors. He is entirely checked out. The grades are just a formality; his heart has already sprinted across the quad to a completely different faculty block.
"Jeon." An administrative assistant cuts through the crowd of congratulatory classmates, tapping him on the arm politely. "The Principal has requested your presence in his office before you leave campus."
Jungkook suppresses a sigh, nodding smoothly. "Of course. Thank you."
The executive suite of the university administration block is a grand, carpeted sanctuary smelling of expensive mahogany, leather bindings, and old wealth. The Principal, a notoriously stern, highly respected scholar who rarely interacts with undergraduates, is standing behind his desk, but the moment Jungkook steps through the door, the older man’s face breaks into a wide, genuinely affectionate smile.
"Jeon, come in. Sit down," the Principal says, walking forward to offer a firm, lingering handshake.
Jungkook sits, his posture perfectly straight, his new leather folio case resting securely on his lap.
"I wanted to congratulate you personally," the Principal says, leaning back against his desk, looking at Jungkook with immense professional pride. "You have completed your Bachelors with flying colours, topping the entire senior tier. But more than that, I want to thank you. For the last four years, you have carried the absolute best reputation of this institution wherever you went—whether on the debate stage, in the theatre showcase, or in your leadership on the student council. You are the definition of an excellent student, Jeon. A true credit to our university."
"Thank you, sir," Jungkook says softly, a humble, genuine flush rising to his cheeks. "I just did what I could."
The Principal nods, his expression turning slightly serious as he drops his hands into his pockets, offering a piece of heavy, grounding elder advice. "And your best is remarkable. But remember, the bachelor’s degree was just the foundation. The Master's track next term is a completely different beast. The metrics are harsher, the independent research is brutal, and the competition changes entirely. Don't let your past success make you complacent, Jeon. Be prepared to work even harder and continue to do this university proud. I expect nothing less than absolute brilliance from you in graduate school."
"I won't let you down, sir. I'll be ready," Jungkook promises, bowing respectfully before finally being dismissed.
The exact moment the heavy double doors of the administration block click shut behind him, Jungkook lets out a long, liberating breath that pushes the final remnants of legal terminology out of his lungs. He sheds the rigid, suffocating skin of the campus "golden boy" with every single stride he takes across the concrete.
He doesn't care about the Master's track right now. He doesn't care about the Principal's expectations. He walks briskly past the law buildings, past the science labs, heading straight for the older, ivy-covered stone arches of the humanities quad; the section of the campus where he usually finds himself, the only place where his world actually makes sense.
He spots you instantly.
You are sitting on the edge of the old stone fountain; a bright white folder of results clutched tightly in your lap. There is absolutely no shadow in your posture today, no hiding beneath his oversized hoodie, no lingering trace of the quiet, toxic rot Serena had tried to poison your mind with months ago. The warm afternoon sunlight catches the dark strands of your hair, and the moment your eyes lock onto his tall frame across the grass, your entire face lights up with the widest, most radiant, and utterly confident grin he has ever seen on you.
"Jungkook!"
You bolt from the stone bench, sprinting across the lawn with an energy that makes his heart do a violent, ecstatic flip inside his ribs.
Jungkook doesn't even hesitate. He drops his expensive leather folio case directly onto the grass, stepping forward and opening his broad arms just wide enough to catch the sudden, beautiful hurricane of your body hitting his chest. You launch yourself at him, your legs practically leaving the ground as you latch onto him like a lifeline, your arms throwing themselves securely around his neck.
Jungkook lets out a loud, booming, and completely uninhibited laugh—a sound of sheer glee that rings across the quiet courtyard. He hooks his arms under your thighs and around your lower back, lifting your frame entirely off the concrete and spinning you around in a wild, dizzying circle under the sun, completely unbothered by the dozens of literature students watching them from the benches.
"I've got you," he breathes, his voice a deep, joyful velvet as he finally stops spinning, though he refuses to set you down completely. He keeps you pressed flush against his chest, his large hands anchoring your waist to his heartbeat. "Look at that smile. Tell me everything, sweetheart."
You pull your head back just an inch, your hands firmly gripping the collar of his shirt, your eyes sparkling with a fierce, beautiful pride. "I did it!" you tell him, your voice bursting with a newfound, unshakeable confidence. "I passed every single module with upper-class marks, Kook! My Beowulf analysis got an A+! I did really, really well this term!" You lean up on your tiptoes, your grin turning playfully competitive as you tap his chest. "I’m warning you right now. Next term, I’m topping the entire Literature group. I’m going to get first place and make you so proud of me."
Jungkook’s breath hitches sharply in his throat. The absolute, devastating depth of his love for you hits him like a tidal wave, thick, heavy, and hot behind his eyelids. He doesn't care about his own perfect GPA or the Principal's praise. He reaches up, his large, warm hands cradling your jawline with fierce, protective tenderness, and leans down to capture your lips in a firm, profoundly sweet kiss. It is a kiss full of relief, adoration, and absolute devotion, completely consuming your mouth until you are breathless beneath him.
When he finally pulls away just a millimetre, he keeps his thumbs smoothing over your flushing cheekbones, his dark doe eyes boring into yours with an intense, raw seriousness that completely silences the ambient noise of the campus around you.
"Y/N, look at me," he whispers, his voice thick with an unyielding emotion. "Listen to me very carefully. You already make me prouder than any grade or first-place ranking ever could. I am completely, utterly proud of you in this exact second, just for being who you are."
He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners in that sweetly obsessed way that belongs only to you. "You drafted that essay beautifully because your mind is amazing. But all you ever need to do is your absolute best for you, because you love the literature. Don't you ever dare compare your marks to anyone or try to catch up to anyone else. You don't need to work yourself to death just to earn my pride, sweetheart. Whether you top the class or get the lowest mark on the board... I am always, always going to be the proudest man on this campus to stand next to you. I love you for your soul, not a piece of paper."
The sweetness of his speech hangs beautifully in the warm air between you. You blink up at him through your long lashes, your lips parted softly as his words sink deep into your chest, completely validating every ounce of effort you put into the term.
But then, a tiny, familiar, and highly mischievous spark suddenly ignites in your eyes. A playful, entirely sarcastic smirk tugs at the corner of your lips, and you reach up, your fingers gently twisting one of his long, fluffy dark curls around your finger.
"Oh, really?" you tease softly, your voice dripping with sweet irony. "No need to work myself to death? Wow. That's a very beautiful, very grounding piece of advice, counsellor... kind of like the exact advice someone else needed a few months ago when they literally almost ate the hardwood floor of their bedroom from pure exhaustion."
Jungkook freezes.
His dark doe eyes go completely wide, his jaw dropping open slightly as he gets caught dead right in his own hypocrisy. The smooth, untouchable prodigy completely vanishes, replaced by a flustered, red-eared boy. A rich, vivid blush immediately colours his cheeks and neck, and he lets out a low, deeply embarrassed chuckle.
"That... that was different," he mumbles weakly, his confidence entirely evaporating as he drops his heavy forehead down to rest directly against your shoulder with a defeated groan, hiding his face from your laughing gaze. His long arms tighten around your lower back, pulling your waist impossibly closer against him to cover his embarrassment. "That was a temporary glitch in my operating system. It doesn't count."
"It completely counts, Jeon!" you shriek, a bright, beautiful laugh ripping from your throat as you wrap your arms tightly around his neck, your fingers softly weaving themselves through his hair. "You're a hypocrite!"
"I'm a recovered hypocrite," he mumbles sleepily into your skin, a vibrant, happy smile spreading across his face against your neck as your laughter echoes warmly through the humanities quad. He holds you tight, his heart beating a steady, peaceful rhythm against yours under the summer sun, entirely, beautifully content to let his little literature major run circles around him for the rest of his life.
↬ he is still your peace, you are still his anchor, and together, in the soft, unbroken quiet of the dark, you will learn how to begin again 𓏲 ๋࣭ ࣪˖✮⋆˙
Pairing: Yoongi x Female!Reader
Summary: The quiet sanctuary of a three-year marriage is shifted by a surprise pregnancy, offering a beautiful glimpse into a new, unlocked future, far away from the bright lights of Yoongi’s chaotic world. That is, until an unforeseen tragedy leaves the two navigating a deafening silence that threatens to shatter the foundation they built together.
Warnings: panic attacks, pregnancy loss, miscarriage, blood, grief, mourning, guilt, medical trauma, hospital, physical pain (pls lmk if i have missed any)
Notes: the way i had to keep starting and stopping when writing this because i kept getting teary-eyed omds. it was really interesting and challenging to write something like this as i haven't before so i hope you enjoy it <3
Requested By: @lalalunasstuff
╰› fanfic masterlist
The bathroom is entirely too bright. The harsh, clinical glare of the lights bounces off the porcelain and the chrome, piercing your eyes and exposing every corner of the room with merciless clarity. You sit frozen on the very edge of the stone tub; you can feel the cold of it even through your sweatpants, keeping you in place. You stare at the small plastic stick resting in your hands as if it were a bomb just waiting to go off, a piece of live ammunition that has quietly dismantled your entire reality in the span of a mere three minutes.
It stares back, taunting you.
Two pink lines. Dark. Definite. Unmistakable.
A suffocating wave crashes over you from behind, hitting you with the force of a tidal wave and knocking the air clean out of your chest. Your breath catches sharply in your throat, trapping a half-formed gasp. The walls of the bathroom feel like they are actively constricting, pressing inward to trap you here. Your heart slams against your ribs, generating an erratic rhythm that vibrates all the way up to your jaw, making your ears ring with an all-too-familiar, high-pitched, deafening buzz.
Pregnant.
The word feels like acid in the back of your mouth. It echoes, heavy and terrifying.
The room begins to tilt, the horizon blurring as you feel your chest tighten so fiercely it feels like an iron band is being cranked shut around your lungs. You try to inhale, desperate for oxygen, but your throat feels entirely closed. You can only draw in microscopic, ragged sips of air. A cold, clammy sweat breaks out across the back of your neck and the palms of your hands, making your skin feel frozen yet burning all at once
Your mind spirals instantly to Yoongi.
He isn't a regular husband. He doesn't have a standard 9-to-5 where he leaves his work at the office. Min Yoongi is a global icon, a musical titan whose name is carried on the lips of millions across the world. For three years of marriage, you have quietly walked a tightrope alongside him, navigating the relentless, exhausting whirlwind of his reality. You have lived through the brutal world tours where he leaves his soul on a stage every night, the gruelling comeback preparations that reduce his sleep to a handful of hours on a studio couch, the 16-hour days locked inside the dark walls of the Genius Lab, and the constant, suffocating paranoia of media scrutiny.
You love him with a depth that terrifies you, but in the years of building a life in the shadows, the two of you have never explicitly talked about having kids, or more importantly, when. There was never time. You were always just trying to survive the current schedule, always trying to protect the fragile sanctuary you had built together.
His schedule is already breaking him, a dark, insidious voice whispers in your head, feeding the panic until it grows claws. Look at him. He’s already running on empty, pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into a microphone just to hold the weight of his career. Now there's a massive stadium tour looming. Rehearsals start in days. How can he handle a baby? What if he thinks this will ruin everything that he sacrificed his youth to build? What if he looks at you and gets mad? What if he looks at this child and just feels trapped by a duty he never asked for?
The hyperventilation catches up to you completely. Your vision begins to tunnel, the edges turning a fuzzy, dangerous grey. Black dots dance across your sight like ash. Your leg bounces uncontrollably before weakness invades your limbs, and you drop your head heavily between your knees, sliding down the side of the tub till you hit the floor. Your hands are shaking so violently that you can barely grip your own hair to anchor yourself. You feel like you are drowning in dry air, spinning out of control into a void of pure terror.
Stop. You command yourself.
The word rises from somewhere deep within your gut, sharp and sudden, slicing through the thick panic with a stubborn, fierce grit. You squeeze your eyes shut, forcing your consciousness away from the terrifying future and bringing it back to the present.
Breathe. Come on, you can do it, breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four.
You draw in a ragged, trembling breath, forcing your stubborn lungs to expand against the phantom weight on your chest. You count the seconds in your head, focusing entirely on the numbers. You pull your hands from your hair and press your palms flat against the tiles of the floor, letting the frigid temperature shock your system, grounding your racing thoughts.
Look at everything you’ve handled. Look at who you are.
You haven't spent the last three years being fragile. You have kept a high-profile marriage entirely under the radar of millions of invasive eyes, weathering the loneliness of six-month world tours without a single complaint, holding down the fort in an empty apartment while he was across the globe creating masterpieces. You have smiled through the anxiety of internet rumours, handled the heavy weight of his exhausting lifestyle, and remained his absolute safe haven through sheer resilience. You are not weak. You are a pillar. You can handle two pink lines on a piece of plastic. You are absolutely not going to break down over a blessing, even if it feels like the most terrifying thing you’ve ever faced.
Slowly, mercifully, the dark spots recede from your vision. The dizzy tilt of the bathroom rights itself. Your breathing evens out into a steady, controlled rhythm, though your heart still thumps heavily, a dull ache behind your breastbone.
You lift your head and look back at the counter. The fear doesn't magically disappear—it hovers over you, heavy and thick—but the paralysing grip of the panic attack is gone. Your strength is back, even if it's trembling.
Wiping a stray tear from your cheek with the back of an unsteady hand, you reach out and pick up the plastic test. It feels heavier now, loaded with the weight of an uncertain future. Terrified of throwing a wrench into the fragile gears of Yoongi's current schedule, you swallow the lump of anxiety in your throat. You stand up, slip quietly out of the bright bathroom, and walk into the dim, quiet stillness of your shared bedroom.
Holding your breath, you open your closet door, reach into the very back of the bottom drawer, and slide the test deep beneath a thick stack of sweaters. You close the drawer, leaving the life-altering secret buried in the dark, the echo of your racing heart the only sound breaking the silence of the room.
It is a Tuesday evening, and by some miracle, Yoongi drags himself through the front door before midnight. He doesn't look like an international superstar right now; he looks like your exhausted husband. He sheds his heavy black trench coat, leaving him in an oversized, faded band tee, his dark hair dishevelled and sticking out in wild tufts from wearing a beanie all day.
He walks straight into the kitchen where you are standing by the stove. Without saying a word, he steps right into your space, burying his face in the crook of your neck. His strong arms wrap securely around your waist, pulling you flush against him. He lets out a long, shuddering sigh, his entire body going limp against yours as he drinks in your familiar scent.
"God, I missed you," Yoongi rasps, his voice deep, gravelly, and rough from spending the last twelve hours vocal-directing in the studio. He presses a soft, lingering kiss to the sensitive skin just below your ear, making you shiver. "My brain was turning to mush. All I could think about during the last meeting was coming home to my wife."
Your heart swells, a sweet, aching warmth blooming in your chest. You turn around in his embrace, framing his pale face with your hands. He has dark circles under his eyes, but the moment he looks at you, his expression softens into pure, unadulterated tenderness. You guide him to the kitchen island and place a steaming bowl of homemade stew in front of him.
He eats quietly, a contented hum escaping him as you sit on the barstool right next to him, gently running your fingers through his soft hair. It is so peaceful, so deeply intimate. You watch the rhythmic movement of his jaw, the slight, relaxed slouch of his shoulders.
Now. Just tell him, you think. You can do it. Just say the words.
You swallow hard, your knuckles turning white as you grip your glass of water. "Yoongi?"
"Hmm?" He looks up, pausing with his spoon halfway to his mouth. His heavy-lidded eyes are entirely open, attentive, and filled with a soft focus.
"I... um..." Your throat suddenly closes up. Your eyes drop to the faint strain in his neck, the slight tremor in his hand from sheer physical fatigue. Tomorrow, his gruelling eight-hour choreography rehearsals start for the upcoming tour. The words freeze on your tongue. The fear of disrupting this hard-earned peace, of adding a massive life-altering variable to his bursting idol schedule, completely paralyses you. "...I forgot to get some of that ginger tea. I'll get it tomorrow."
Yoongi lets out a low chuckle, the corners of his eyes crinkling beautifully. He reaches to take your hand and rubs his thumb over your knuckles. "Don't stress about it, sweetheart. I'll get some on the way back tomorrow. Just sit with me."
Soon. You think. I'll tell him soon.
The next time you try, it's on a Thursday night, dragging well past two in the morning. The steady drumming of rain against the living room windows is the only sound breaking the silence of the apartment. You sit on the floor by the coffee table, a heating pad in your lap and a fresh cup of hot tea resting nearby. You are waiting. You are always waiting these days, but tonight, the weight of the hidden plastic stick in your closet feels like a physical anchor pulling you under.
The electronic lock on the front door finally clicks, a weary chime that signals his return.
Yoongi steps into the entryway, and your heart aches at the sheer sight of him. He doesn’t just look tired; he looks entirely hollowed out. His black hair is damp with sweat, clinging to his forehead beneath a crumpled bucket hat. He is wearing an oversized, fleece-lined hoodie, his shoulders slumped forward in a sharp posture of defeat. Today was a ten-hour run-through of the new album's choreographies—brutal, high-impact routines designed for stadium energy—and it has clearly taken every single ounce of life he had to give.
He kicks off his shoes with a heavy, dragging sigh, his joints practically popping in the quiet apartment. When he looks up and sees you sitting there under the dim light of the lamp, a faint, incredibly weary look of relief washes over his face.
"Babe," he rasps, his voice a low, gravelly friction that tells you he’s been shouting over loudspeakers and backing tracks all day. "You shouldn't have stayed up."
"I wanted to," you say softly, your voice steady despite the sudden, familiar fluttering of anxiety in your stomach. You stand up. Okay. You can do this. It's only Yoongi. He loves you more than anything.
You don't let your own fear show. Instead, you walk over to him, take his heavy leather duffel bag from his hand, and set it aside.
Yoongi doesn't even have the energy to walk to the bedroom. He collapses straight onto the living room rug, propping his back against the base of the sofa and letting his head drop back with a groan. His eyes close instantly. You sit down cross-legged right beside him, opening a fresh jar of anti-inflammatory muscle rub. The sharp, medicinal scent of menthol fills the air as you scoop some onto your palms, rubbing your hands together to warm the cream before pressing them gently against the tense, locked muscles of his neck and shoulders.
Yoongi lets out a deep, guttural sigh, his entire body shuddering beneath your touch. "God, your hands are a miracle," he mumbles, his head tilting back into your palms, completely surrendering his weight to you. "My knees are completely shot today. The performance director made us run the bridge seven times in a row. I felt like my lungs were going to explode."
You massage the tight knots in his shoulders, your thumbs working with a rhythmic, heavy pressure. Every line of his face speaks of the crushing burden he carries as a producer and an idol. He is bearing the expectations of millions of fans, the financial pressure of a massive label, and his own unforgiving perfectionism.
And right now, tucked beneath your skin, a tiny secret is growing.
Just say it, you tell yourself, your jaw tightening as you stare at the dark crown of his hair. You can’t keep hiding this from your husband. He has a right to know. Just open your mouth and tell him he’s going to be a father.
You swallow the thick lump of nerves in your throat. You draw in a deep, hidden breath, stabilising your heart rate. "Yoongi?"
"Yeah, babe?" he murmurs, his eyes still closed, a relaxed, soft smile tugging at the corner of his lips purely because you are touching him.
"I need to tell you something. Something important." The words leave your lips, quiet but clear. Your heart begins to race, that familiar bird fluttering against your ribs again.
Yoongi hums, his eyelids fluttering open slowly. He turns his head, looking up at you from his spot against the couch. His eyes are heavy with an exhaustion that goes bone-deep, his pale skin shadowed by the dim light. Before he can ask what it is, he lets out a dry, humourless laugh, rubbing a hand over his face.
"Man, I hope it's good news," Yoongi sighs, his voice dropping into a vulnerable register that makes your blood run cold. "Because if anything else gets added to my plate right now, I think my head might actually split open. The label just added three more broadcast appearances to the comeback week, and the producers in LA are messing up the final master for track four. If this comeback isn't perfect, Y/N... if anything goes wrong now, with the stakes this high for the tour... I don't know what I'd do. I'm completely at my limit."
The words hit you like a physical blow to the sternum.
The confession dies instantly in your throat, freezing into ice. You look at the deep, dark circles bruising the skin under his eyes. You look at the slight tremor in his fingers from pure physical depletion. The terrifying vision of his world collapsing under the weight of an unplanned, life-altering pregnancy flashes before your eyes. If you tell him now, he won't sleep. He will look at you with stress. He will worry about your safety, about the fans finding out, about how to be a father while living out of a suitcase on a global stadium tour. He is at his limit, and you refuse to be the thing that breaks him.
Your strength reasserts itself, but this time, it forces you to lock the secret away even deeper, shielding him from the burden. You swallow the truth, forcing a soft, reassuring smile onto your lips, though your chest aches with a heavy, hollow pain.
"It is good news," you lie smoothly, your voice a gentle balm as you lean down and press a soft, lingering kiss to his warm forehead. You slide your hands down to cup his cheeks, your thumbs smoothing over his cheekbones. "I was just going to say that the agency called earlier. They approved your request for a four-day break right after the promotion cycle ends. You’re going to get to rest."
Yoongi’s eyes widen slightly, a genuine, breathless laugh escaping him. The relief that washes over his face is so palpable, so immense, that it makes your heart break a little bit more inside your chest. He reaches up, wrapping his large, warm hands over yours, pulling your palms to his lips to press a deep kiss into your skin.
"Thank God," Yoongi breathes, closing his eyes again as he pulls you down until you are lying against his chest on the living room floor. He wraps his arms securely around your waist, burying his face in your hair. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Y/N. You're the only peace I have in this chaotic life."
You hold him back, your fingers gripping the fabric of his hoodie tightly as you stare blankly at the dark window, the rain pouring down outside. You press your cheek against his racing heart, keeping the silent tears from falling, carrying the heavy weight of your shared future entirely on your own shoulders for just a little longer.
Three weeks pass. Three weeks of carrying this secret entirely on your own. Morning sickness has kicked in, and you have become a master of hiding the dry heaving, but you cannot hide the emotional distance. You are quiet, anxious, and jumpy.
And Yoongi has absolutely noticed.
It is a Friday night. Yoongi walks into the living room, completely ignoring his heavy studio bag, leaving it slumped by the door. He walks straight over to the couch where you are curled up into a tiny ball, staring blankly at the TV screen.
Without a word, he sits down next to you, scooping you up effortlessly and pulling you directly onto his lap. You stiffen slightly, your instincts screaming to hide, but Yoongi doesn't let go. He wraps his large, warm hands around your arms, rubbing them gently up and down, before shifting to cup your cheek. His dark eyes swim with profound worry and a quiet, heavy concern.
"Hey," he murmurs, his voice incredibly soft, laced with a raw, genuine fear that hits you right in the chest. "Look at me, babe. Please."
You force your eyes up to meet his. He looks so understanding, so entirely devoted to you after three years of marriage, that it makes your chest tighten past the breaking point.
"You’ve been somewhere else for weeks," Yoongi whispers, his thumb gently wiping away a tear that you didn't even realise had fallen down your cheek. He leans forward, resting his forehead firmly against yours, his breath warm against your lips. "Talk to me. Did I do something? Are you unhappy? Whatever it is, we can fix it. Just please don't shut me out."
Hearing the slight crack in his raw voice breaks the final dam holding you back. You let out a ragged, choked sob, burying your face in the crook of his neck as you break down crying completely. Yoongi immediately holds you tighter, his arms locking around you like armour, rocking you back and forth on his lap. He whispers a litany of "I've got you," and "It's okay, sweetheart, I'm here," into your hair, his hand gently patting your back.
Still crying, you grab his wrist, your fingers digging into his skin. You cannot say the words. Your voice is completely gone.
You guide him out of the living room and into the bedroom, pulling him by the hand. Yoongi follows you silently, his brow furrowed in deep concern. You walk over to your closet, reach into the very back of the sweater drawer, and pull out the small box where you have hidden the positive tests.
With shaking hands, you turn around and hold the box out to him.
Yoongi looks at the box, then up at your tear-stained face, sheer confusion lacing his own. Slowly, carefully, he takes it from your hands and pops the lid open.
The moment his eyes land on the multiple positive test results, they go wide—his quiet, intense demeanour completely shattering. He freezes, his mouth parting slightly as he stares at the distinct pink lines. The silence stretches for three seconds, five seconds, ten seconds.
Seeing his utter shock, your worst fears flare up. Your inner strength deserts you, and you immediately shrink back into yourself, crossing your arms over your chest and pulling your shoulders inward, instinctively trying to make yourself look as small as possible to brace for a negative reaction as silent tears continue to roll down your cheeks.
Yoongi looks up from the box and catches your movement. His expression instantly softens into utter confusion, followed quickly by deep heartbreak. "Baby? Why are you holding yourself like that? Are—are you scared of me?" He lets out in a whisper, almost like he can't believe it. He drops the box and moves to hold onto your arms, rubbing them up and down whilst he cranes his head to be almost level with yours.
"I... I wasn't sure if you wanted them yet," you sob out, the words tumbling out of you in a panicked, incoherent rush. "With your career, and the comeback, and the tour... we never talked about it, and your schedule is already breaking you, and I thought it was too early and you'd get mad or stressed—"
"Oh, my God, no. Y/N, look at me."
Yoongi doesn't even let you finish the sentence. He lunges forward, catching you in a fierce, desperate hug. He pulls you so tightly against his hard chest that you can feel the frantic, rapid thumping of his heart beating in sync with yours. He rests one arm around you, the other on the back of your head. Both hands move in soothing motions.
"No, no, no, babe, how could you think that?" Yoongi gasps, his own voice cracking as thick tears finally spill over his dark eyelashes, wetting your shoulder. He pulls back just enough to frame your face with his warm hands, his thumbs frantically wiping your cheeks as he rains loving, desperate kisses all over your forehead, your eyelids, your nose, and finally your lips. "Fuck the tour, fuck the comeback. None of that matters compared to this. I could never, ever be mad at you for this. Never."
"You're not disappointed?" you whisper, sniffing loudly, looking at him through blurry vision.
"Disappointed?!" Yoongi lets out a watery, breathless laugh, a radiant gummy smile breaking across his face. His eyes shine with sheer happiness. "I'm ecstatic. I'm so incredibly happy, babe. I love you so much. I've wanted this, I've wanted a family with you for so long, I was just always afraid to ask because of my lifestyle."
To prove his words, Yoongi slowly sinks onto his knees right there on the bedroom floor. He wraps his strong arms completely around your waist, burying his face directly against your still-flat stomach. He presses a warm, lingering kiss right through the fabric of your shirt, his shoulders shaking slightly as he cries tears of absolute relief and joy.
"Hi, baby," Yoongi whispers softly against your skin, his large hands gently splaying across your stomach as if protecting the most fragile thing in the universe. He looks up at you, his face a beautiful, tear-stained mess, his smile completely taking over his features. "We're going to be parents, babe. I'm right here. I'm going to take care of both of you, I promise."
The sun hasn’t even broken through the curtains when the familiar, violent wave of nausea hits you. You bolt from the bed, throwing yourself onto the cold bathroom tile just in time to empty your stomach into the toilet.
Within seconds, the heavy, comforting warmth of Yoongi’s presence is right behind you. He doesn't care that he only got two hours of sleep after a late-night recording session. His large, warm hands immediately gather your hair, pulling it gently away from your face, while his other hand rubs soothing, heavy circles into your back.
"I’ve got you, sweetheart," he murmurs, his voice thick with sleep but laced with absolute devotion.
When the dry heaving finally stops, he flushes the toilet for you and gently wipes your mouth and forehead with a damp, cool washcloth. He carefully lifts you up, carrying you back to bed as if you are made of glass. He tucks you under the duvet, slips a piece of ginger candy into your mouth, and presses a lingering kiss to your temple. "Just breathe, princess. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
You sit anxiously on the examination table, the thin sanitary paper crinkling loudly beneath you with every nervous shift of your weight. The dim, clinical room smells faintly of rubbing alcohol, a sterile environment that makes you feel slightly on edge. The OB/GYN squeezes a generous dollop of gel onto your lower stomach. It's shockingly cold, making you gasp softly and tense up as it slicks across your skin.
Yoongi is sitting in the plastic chair squeezed right next to the table, and the moment you flinch from the cold, his hand clamps around yours.
He is wearing his usual low-profile uniform—a black bucket hat pulled low to shield his face, a dark, oversized hoodie, and a black medical mask pulled down just beneath his chin. For three years of marriage, you’ve watched this man command stadium stages with absolute, unyielding stoicism, projecting an aura of effortless cool that leaves millions breathless. But right now, stripped of the stage lights, he looks like a terrified, nervous kid. His jaw is set tight, and he is squeezing your fingers so hard that your knuckles are turning white and your hand is going practically numb. You can feel the rapid, frantic beat of his pulse pulsing right through his palm.
"Just breathe, babe," he whispers, though it sounds more like a reminder for himself than for you. You internally chuckle at the thought, but it grounds you.
The OB/GYN smiles reassuringly, dimming the overhead lights before grabbing the transducer. The static hum of the machine fills the quiet room as she presses the plastic probe into the cold gel, gliding it slowly across your abdomen. You find yourself holding your breath, your eyes locking onto the dark monitor. The sheer gravity of this moment makes your throat tighten with a sudden, overwhelming vulnerability.
The black-and-white screen flickers, shifting through static and grey shadows until the doctor stops her hand, angling the probe slightly. A tiny, blurry, pulsing pixel appears right in the centre of the screen, swimming in the darkness.
"There it is," the doctor says, her voice incredibly gentle. "There’s your baby. And let’s listen to the heartbeat."
She presses a button on the console. A second of static cuts through the air, and then, suddenly, a rapid, thunderous thump-thump-thump-thump completely fills the room.
It is the loudest, most beautiful sound you have ever heard in your life. It echoes off the sterile walls, fast and fierce, sounding exactly like a galloping horse racing through a storm. It is a cadence of pure, undeniable life.
You look over at Yoongi, and your heart melts completely, shattering under the weight of pure love. His mouth is slightly open, his breath hitching audibly in his throat. His sharp eyes go glassy, capturing the monitor's ambient glow before a heavy wave of tears instantly wells up and spills over his pale cheeks. He doesn't even bother to wipe them away. The man who spends his entire life meticulously crafting masterpieces in a dark studio is completely undone by a single, erratic audio frequency.
As if in slow motion, Yoongi lifts your trembling hand to his face. He presses his lips firmly against your knuckles, kissing them repeatedly, his hot tears soaking into your skin. His eyes never leave the screen, staring at that tiny blinking pixel as if it were the centre of the entire universe.
"That's ours," he whispers, a broken, breathless laugh escaping his lips as a fresh sob catches in his throat. He squeezes your hand, leaning closer until his forehead rests against the edge of your mattress. "Look at our baby, Y/N. God, just look at it. That's our baby."
It is three in the morning, and you are staring wide awake at the ceiling, your stomach aggressively demanding ramen and vanilla ice cream. Together.
You glance at Yoongi, who is snoring softly beside you. He had a gruelling 10-hour dance practice today, and his joints are aching. Knowing how much pressure he is under, you swallow your craving and sigh softly as you try to roll over and go back to sleep.
But the shift in the mattress wakes him. Yoongi blinks through the darkness, immediately reaching for you. "Babe? What’s wrong? Do you feel sick?"
"No, no, I'm okay," you whisper quickly, feeling guilty. "Go back to sleep."
He sits up, rubbing his eyes, his voice a deep rumble. "You're hungry, aren't you? What do you want?"
"Yoongi, it's fine. It's just a weird craving, and it's way too late, and you're tired from practice, it's fine—"
"Hey." Yoongi cuts you off, his tone shifting into something fiercely protective. He cups your face, his eyes dead serious even in the dark. "Don't you dare hide it from me. I don't care about being tired. I will drive across Seoul right now, I'll find a 24-hour convenience store, and I'll do whatever it takes. You're carrying my child, for God's sake, Y/N. Let me take care of you."
The sheer intensity of his love makes your chest ache in the best way. You softly tell him what you want, and within ten minutes, he has a heavy hoodie on, kissing your forehead as he grabs his car keys with a tired but deeply contented grin.
The living room of your apartment is completely buried under a wave of familiar chaos. Takeout containers litter the coffee table, laughter bounces off the walls, and the ambient noise is loud enough to wake the neighbours. After a brutal two-week stretch of non-stop dance rehearsals, the guys have finally been granted a single night off, and they chose to spend it piling into your home.
You stand by the kitchen island, laughing as Jin and Jungkook loudly bicker over who gets the last piece of fried chicken. You are in your element, playing the role of the unflinching hostess to seven grown men who act like teenagers the second they step through your door. Even after all these years, this loud, chaotic brotherhood never fails to warm your chest.
Suddenly, a pair of warm, pale hands slides around your waist from behind.
Yoongi presses his chest against your back, his chin resting securely on your shoulder. He doesn’t care that five seconds ago he was sitting on the couch arguing with Namjoon about track arrangements; his internal compass always pulls him back to you. His hands splay flat against your lower stomach, his fingers sifting slightly through the fabric of your oversized sweater. He has been hyper-protective since you told him, a quiet, fierce guard dog who refuses to let you out of his sight.
"Are you tired?" he whispers in his gravelly, low voice, his breath fanning across your neck. "Your ankles sore? I can make them leave."
You let out a soft chuckle, covering his hands with yours. "Yoongi, they just got here. I’m fine. A few hours of hosting your brothers isn't going to break me."
He hums, but he doesn't pull his hands away from your belly. He catches your eye in the reflection of the microwave door, a soft, conspiratorial glint in his feline eyes. "Let's tell them. Before Hoseok tries to pour me a shot of whiskey."
You take a deep breath, your heart fluttering with a sudden, beautiful rush of excitement. You nod.
Yoongi lets go of your waist, takes your hand firmly in his, and guides you into the centre of the living room. He clears his throat, a sharp, authoritative sound that instantly cuts through the noise. The guys blink, looking up from their various spots on the couch and the floor.
"Listen up," Yoongi says, his voice steady, though you can feel the slight, nervous tremor in his palm as he squeezes your fingers. He doesn't waste time with a grand speech. He just looks down at you, a blinding, radiant gummy smile breaking across his pale face, and states it cleanly. "Y/N is pregnant. We’re having a baby."
The silence that hits the room is absolute, heavy, and instantaneous.
For two entire seconds, it feels like the collective brains of seven global superstars completely short-circuit. Namjoon freezes mid-sip, a splash of cola dripping off his bottom lip. Jungkook’s chopsticks hover an inch from his open mouth, a piece of pickled radish slipping out of his grip and dropping back onto the plate with a dull thud. Jin’s windshield-wiper laugh cuts off mid-syllable, his eyes widening to the size of saucers. Nobody breathes. Nobody moves. They just stare at the two of you as if you’ve suddenly started speaking an alien language.
Then, the apartment completely explodes.
"What?!" Jin shrieks first, slamming his hands onto his knees as he bolts upright. "Yah! Min Yoongi! Are you serious? You? A father? You can barely wake up before noon on a weekend, and you're making a whole human?!"
"I wake up perfectly fine, shut up," Yoongi fires back defensively, though his gummy smile only grows wider.
Hoseok lets out a loud, high-pitched scream of pure, unadulterated joy, throwing his hands in the air and lunging off the sofa. He sprints across the room, completely bypassing Yoongi to wrap you in a massive, warm, careful hug, vibrating with excitement. "Oh my God! A baby! I’m going to be an uncle! A real uncle! We have to celebrate! Wait, no alcohol for Y/N—someone get her water!"
"Hold on, hold on!" Jungkook shouts, his doe eyes practically bulging out of his skull. He drops his chopsticks entirely, jumping on the spot like an eager puppy. "A mini-Min Yoongi? Or a mini-Y/N? Oh my God, I’m definitely the favourite uncle. I'm going to teach them how to lift weights before they can even walk. I can carry the baby and the stroller at the same time!"
"A baby needs love and gentle care, not a gym partner, you muscle-head!" Jimin interjects loudly, shoving Jungkook out of the way. His sweet eye-smile is fully on display, though his eyes are already blinking back sudden, emotional tears. He gently takes your hands, his voice dropping into a soft, choked-up register. "Y/N, congratulations. Truly. Please tell me I'm the primary babysitter. Don't let Jungkook near the nursery, he'll turn the crib into a squat rack."
"Excuse me, I clearly have the most sophisticated taste here," Taehyung chimes in, his boxy smile radiant as his fingers already fly across his phone screen. "I’m buying the baby a tiny leather jacket. No, wait, a tiny designer trench coat. They’re going to be the most stylish kid in Seoul, I swear. We're going to art galleries together."
"Hey! Back off, I'm the oldest, I get to choose the first outfit!" Jin yells over the din, gesturing wildly. He walks over, his eyes incredibly soft despite his loud voice, and pats his younger brother's head with deep affection. "Look at you, Min Yoongi. A father. I still remember when you were a teenager sleeping on a studio floor, and now you're going to be changing diapers. I'm getting old. Are you gonna rap the lullabies in a minor key?"
"I am a brilliant lyricist, my lullabies will be masterpieces," Yoongi retorts, his chest puffing out playfully.
Namjoon stands up, a massive, dimpled smile breaking across his face. He looks incredibly proud as he walks over to clap Yoongi heavily on the shoulder. "Wow. Three years of marriage and now this. A whole new chapter. I'm just worried about you analysing the structural integrity of the baby wipes before you use them."
"I'll have you know I've already researched the best organic brands," Yoongi mutters, though his voice is thick with a rising wave of emotion.
You stand in the centre of the room, completely surrounded by an overwhelming fortress of love, loud bickering, and pure, chaotic love. The boys are already arguing over who gets to hold the baby first, who will be the most responsible caretaker, and whether the baby will inherit Yoongi's fierce scowl or your bright energy. The initial fear you carried for weeks evaporates completely under the sheer warmth of their reactions. These aren't just global superstars; this is your family. This is the village that is going to help raise your child.
Yoongi pulls you back tightly against his side, his arm wrapping securely around your shoulders. He looks at his members, his eyes swimming with a deep, fiercely protective love as he presses a sweet kiss right to the crown of your head.
"You guys can argue all you want," Yoongi warns playfully, his voice cracking slightly with the weight of his happiness. "But yeah. We're having a baby."
It's a rare, blessed night off during your second month of pregnancy. Yoongi had strictly told his management that he was completely unavailable after 6:00 PM, refusing to compromise.
He drives you out past the neon lights of Seoul, up into the quiet, secluded hills where the city noise fades into nothing but the sound of crickets and the wind through the trees. He parks the car in a hidden clearing, opening the trunk to pull out a massive, plush duvet and a mountain of thick pillows.
Now, the two of you are lying side by side on the blanket under a vast, dark sky blanketed with brilliant, shimmering stars. The air is cool, but Yoongi has you tucked securely against his side, his arm acting as your pillow while a heavy blanket covers you both. His fingers are tracing slow, mindless patterns over your stomach, where a tiny, barely-there swell is beginning to form.
"Look at that one," Yoongi whispers into the darkness, pointing up at a particularly bright star. "That’s going to be our little one's star."
You smile, leaning your head heavily against his shoulder. "Do you think it's a boy or a girl?"
"I don't care, as long as they have your laugh," he murmurs softly, turning his head to press a warm kiss to your temple. He sighs, a deeply contented sound that warms your skin. "When the tour is over, I'm taking a long hiatus, Y/N. I don't care what the label says. I want to be there for every single doctor's appointment, every weird midnight craving. I want to build the crib myself. I want to watch them crawl across our living room floor. Say their first words. Take their first steps…"
He shifts, rolling onto his side so he can look down at you in the starlight. His eyes are incredibly soft, filled with a peaceful, dreamy look you rarely see when he's bogged down by work.
"In a few years, we'll buy that house in the countryside we always talk about," Yoongi says, his voice a low, comforting melody in the quiet night. "The one with the big garden. We'll build a swing set. I'll teach them how to play the piano. We're going to give them such a beautiful life, babe. Just you, me, and our baby."
You reach up, tangling your fingers in his hair, pulling him down into a soft, slow kiss that tastes of sweet promises and a future that feels so beautifully close you can almost touch it.
The peace of that starry night is violently ripped away just three days later.
It happens on a suffocatingly hot Thursday afternoon. You are sitting on the living room couch when a sudden, violently sharp cramp rips through your lower abdomen, so intense it takes your breath away and forces a gasp from your lips. Shaking, a cold dread instantly pooling in your chest, you rush to the bathroom. The moment you look down, your entire world grinds to a halt.
Bright, heavy, unmistakable red blood.
Panic, cold and completely suffocating, seizes your throat. You call Yoongi, your hands trembling so violently you almost drop the phone. The moment he answers, your voice breaks into choked, terrified sobs. "Yoongi... Yoongi, help me, please. Something is wrong. There's—there's blood."
On the other end of the line, you hear a massive commotion. Yoongi is in the middle of a high-stakes, final title-track choreography review with the entire performance team and senior label executives. But the moment your broken cry hits his ears, the idol persona vanishes. You hear his chair screech violently against the floor, his voice slicing through the studio with a sharp, terrifying, thunderous authority: "Stop the music. Clear the room. I'm leaving. Now." Before anyone can even utter a word of protest, the line goes dead.
The world is a jarring, terrifying blur of shrill siren wails and flashing red lights. You are lying on the narrow, hard stretcher in the back of the ambulance, the vehicle swaying violently as it navigates the chaotic Seoul traffic at breakneck speed. The paramedics are talking right over your head, their voices low and urgent as they exchange rapid medical jargon, checking your vitals and adjusting the oxygen mask over your face.
You try to focus on their faces, on the rhythm of the sirens, on anything outside of your own body, but you are spiralling completely out of control.
The physical pain in your lower abdomen is a sharp, twisting blade, but the mental torture is a thousand times worse. Your mind is a vicious vortex. All your strength is fracturing into dust under the sheer weight of your terror.
Not like this, you think, your hands trembling so violently you can barely press them against the damp fabric of your sweatpants. Please, God, not like this.
Just days ago, you were lying on a blanket under a universe of stars, listening to Yoongi weave a beautiful, quiet tapestry of your future. You could still hear the warmth of his voice promising a house in the countryside, a swing set, piano lessons, and a lifetime of protected peace. Now, the contrast is suffocating. You are trapped in a sterile, metal box, drowning in the scent of antiseptic, completely alone.
The ambulance screeches to a halt at the ER bay, and the back doors fly open. The rushing movement starts again. The wheels of the stretcher clicking furiously against the linoleum floor, the hospital hallway's bright, harsh ceiling lights passing over you like dizzying streaks of white. You are wheeled into a small, curtained triage cubicle, and suddenly, the paramedics vanish, replaced by an ER nurse who hooks you up to monitors that beep too loudly, too frantically.
And then, they leave you for a moment to page the OB-GYN on call.
The sudden silence behind the fabric curtain is loud enough to split your head open. You sit propped up on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and the spiral turns into a suffocating avalanche.
Your breathing hitches, turning into shallow, panicked gasps as you pull the oxygen mask away from your face. Your chest tightens so fiercely that you feel like you are being crushed by an invisible weight. The guilt you fought off weeks ago breaks through your defences with a vengeance.
Did I do this? The insidious voice screams in your head, making your eyes sting with hot, furious tears. Did I ruin it? I panicked too much in the beginning. I stayed up too late waiting for him. I stressed about his idol schedule, I worried about the fans, and I let myself get overwhelmed. My body is failing. I couldn't even keep our baby safe for three months.
The monitor beside the bed registers your skyrocketing heart rate, its beeping turning into a frantic, continuous whine. You grip the metal rails of the hospital bed, your knuckles white, your teeth chattering from pure shock and cold dread. You look desperately at the gap in the curtain.
Where is he?
You know he’s coming. You know, the second he heard your voice, he tore through the label executives. But the terrifying possibility of him walking in, only to find everything gone, makes you want to crawl out of your own skin. You are terrified of the silence that might be waiting for you on the ultrasound screen. You are terrified of seeing the light die in your husband's eyes.
"Yoongi," you sob out into the empty, sterile cubicle, your voice small, broken, and utterly stripped of the grit that usually keeps you standing. You pull your knees up to your chest, curling into a tight, shivering ball on the scratchy hospital sheet, completely swallowed by the terrifying, lonely darkness of the spiral, praying desperately for his footsteps to shatter the silence.
Thirty minutes later, the heavy fabric curtain of the triage cubicle is ripped back with a violent, jarring screech of metal rings.
Yoongi bursts into the room.
He looks entirely unrecognisable, stripped completely of the polished, untouchable idol persona that the world knows. He is still in his sweat-drenched dance clothes—a damp, oversized black t-shirt and loose track pants—and his hair is a chaotic, plastered mess against his forehead from where his beanie had been ripped off. But it is his face that makes your breath catch in your throat. He is entirely pale, his skin a ghostly, translucent white that bleeds out all the colour from his lips. His eyes are wide, dark, and swimming with a raw, unchecked terror that goes bone-deep.
He doesn't say a single word. He doesn't look at the monitors, he doesn't look at the nurses, and he doesn't care about the world outside that curtain. His eyes lock onto your shivering form, and in three frantic, stumbling strides, he is at the side of your bed.
He lunges forward, throwing his upper body over yours and pulling you fiercely into his arms. He clutches you against his chest with a desperate, crushing intensity, his hands burying deep into the fabric of your oversized hoodie as if he is trying to physically pull you back from the edge of a cliff. The moment his chest presses against yours, you feel it: a violent, uncontrollable shudder. His entire massive frame is shaking like a leaf caught in a gale, his heart hammering against your collarbone in a terrifying, erratic rhythm. He just holds you, burying his face in your hair, his breath hitching over and over again as he tries to anchor his own spiralling mind. "I'm here, baby. I'm here," he murmurs, followed by a kiss to the top of your head. And it's enough to bring you back from the cliff edge.
The agonising suspense in the room reaches a suffocating peak when the heavy wheels of the ultrasound machine rattle into the cubicle. The doctor follows, her expression tight and solemn, carrying an aura that makes the air in the room completely unbreathable. The overhead lights are dimmed, plunging the space into a shadowy twilight, save for the harsh, blue-white glow of the monitor.
The doctor speaks in quiet, hushed tones, apologising gently as she squirts the ultrasound gel onto your lower stomach. The slick fluid feels horrifyingly cold against your skin, a cruel, mocking contrast to the warm starlight of the hill just days ago.
Yoongi slowly shifts, refusing to untangle his lower body from yours. He sits on the edge of the mattress, his face just inches from yours. His large, pale hand slides back into yours, his fingers locking between yours in a grip so fiercely, painfully tight that your knuckles turn entirely white and your fingers begin to ache. You welcome the pain. You cling to it because it is the only real thing left in the room. His eyes are fixed on your face, his jaw clenching so hard the muscle ticks beneath his pale skin, his thumb frantically tracing back and forth over the back of your hand.
You force your eyes away from him, turning your gaze to the black-and-white monitor. Your eyes burn with hot, unshed tears, blurring the screen as the doctor presses the plastic transducer firmly into the gel and glides it slowly across your abdomen.
Please, your mind begs, the voice small, broken, and desperate. Please, just let us hear the horse. Just let us hear the galloping horse.
The doctor moves the probe, angling it deeper into your pelvis. The static grey shadows shift on the screen, and then, the tiny, familiar shape of your baby swims into view.
But there is no motion.
The doctor pauses her hand, her thumb clicking a button on the console to activate the audio monitor. She dials the volume knob all the way up.
But there is only silence. A deafening silence that rushes into the room like a vacuum, swallowing every ounce of oxygen. The speakers don't erupt into that rapid cadence of life. They only hiss with a low, empty white noise—a flat, mechanical static that sounds like a dead wire. The tiny pixel on the screen is completely, utterly still. There is no rhythmic flicker. There is no heartbeat. The galloping horse has stopped running.
"I'm so incredibly sorry," the doctor whispers softly, her voice heavy with a profound, crackling sympathy that cuts straight through the static. She doesn't keep looking at the screen; she gently lifts the probe, wiping the gel from your skin with a towel, and reaches over to turn off the monitor, plunging the room back into darkness. "There is no longer a fetal heartbeat. You’ve suffered a miscarriage.” She pauses. “I'll give you both some time alone."
The heavy click of the machine powering down echoes like a gunshot. The doctor steps away, pulling the fabric curtain shut behind her, leaving the two of you in the absolute vacuum of the cubicle.
And then, the world completely shatters into a million jagged, unrecoverable pieces.
The shock wears off, and the reality of the silence hits you in the chest like a physical blow. A raw, guttural scream of pure, unadulterated grief tears itself from the very depths of your throat. It’s a sound so broken it doesn't even sound like it belongs to you. You rip your hand from Yoongi's grip and bury your face in your palms, your entire upper body slamming forward onto your knees. You break down completely, your ribs racking with violent, uncontainable sobs that pull at the phantom empty space inside your lower belly. You weep for the house in the countryside, you weep for the swing set, you weep for the piano lessons that will never happen, your tears soaking through your fingers.
At your side, Min Yoongi breaks completely.
The stoic leader, the unflinching artist, the man who holds the weight of a global empire on his shoulders, vanishes entirely, leaving behind nothing but a broken husband and a grieving father. A loud, choked sob rips past his lips, a raw, wounded sound that hits the quiet air. He throws his arms back around you, lunging forward to pull your violently trembling body flush against his chest once more.
He buries his face deeply into the crook of your neck, his large hands gripping your back so tightly it bruises. His shoulders shake violently, racking with heavy, broken, silent tears that instantly soak completely through the thin cotton of your hospital gown, burning hot against your bare skin. He holds you with a terrifying, desperate strength, as if he is trying to squeeze the broken pieces of your reality back together, trying to absorb the blinding agony radiating out of you. He grips you like a drowning man clutching a lifeline, his own heart shattering into dust in the quiet darkness as he rocks his grieving wife, weeping for the universe you just lost.
The apartment feels entirely too large and suffocatingly quiet when you return home the next day. The silence weighs down on your chest like a block of concrete, making every breath a chore. You sit on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the floor, wrapped completely in Yoongi’s oversized black studio hoodie. The sleeves cover your hands, but nothing can cover the hollow emptiness stretching inside your womb.
As the hours tick away, the grief mutates into something dark, ugly, and toxic inside your mind. The inner strength you usually pride yourself on feels entirely eroded, leaving behind nothing but a raw, gaping wound of insecurity.
"I'm sorry," you whisper into the empty bedroom, your voice cracking, tears dripping off your chin onto the fabric of the hoodie. "I'm so sorry."
Yoongi walks into the room carrying a mug of warm herbal tea. He hasn't left your side for a single second, his own eyes bloodshot, his face pale and worn. The moment he hears your whispered apology and sees your slumped, broken posture, his heart bleeds. He sets the mug down on the nightstand and immediately crawls onto the bed behind you. He wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you tightly back against his chest, tucking his chin over your shoulder.
"Why are you apologising, babe?" he whispers against your ear, his voice thick, raw, and completely wrecked from crying. "You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for, my love."
"I do," you sob out, the toxic thoughts finally spilling past your lips as you turn around in his arms to face him, your heart bleeding out. You look into his swollen eyes, your voice rising in a panicked, heartbroken pitch. "I wasn't good enough, Yoongi. Your schedule is so crazy, and you were so happy, and you were dreaming about the future... and my body... my body isn't even good at making babies. I couldn't keep our baby safe. I couldn't give you the family you wanted. I ruined it. I'm not good enough for you."
"Hey! Look at me. Look at me right now," Yoongi commands, his voice dropping into a fierce, unyielding register.
He grips your face in his large, warm hands, his fingers firm but incredibly gentle against your jaw, forcing your wild, tear-filled eyes to meet his. His eyes are swimming with a fresh wave of tears, but his gaze is filled with an absolute, undeniable intensity that demands to be heard.
"Don't you dare say that about yourself," Yoongi chokes out, a heavy tear spilling over his eyelashes and tracking down his pale cheek. "Don't you dare blame your beautiful body. This was a tragedy, Y/N. It is a horrible, heartbreaking, unfair tragedy, but it is not your fault. You did not ruin anything. You are the most perfect, incredible, resilient woman in the world, and you did absolutely nothing wrong. Do you hear me? Nothing."
"But the baby—"
"I love our baby, and I am grieving our baby with every single piece of my soul," Yoongi says, his voice cracking completely as a sob escapes him. He presses his forehead firmly against yours, closing his eyes as his tears mingle with yours on your cheeks. "But I love you more. I married you, Y/N. Not a future child. You. For three years, you have been my anchor, my sanity, my absolute entire world. We can try again, if that's what you want. And if we never try again, if it's just you and me in that countryside house forever, that is also a perfect life to me. You are more than enough. You are everything I will ever need, and you never have to be sorry for something you didn't do."
The raw honesty in his voice pierces through the thick layer of guilt in your mind. You let out a broken cry, wrapping your arms around his neck, and Yoongi pulls you down onto the mattress with him.
He tucks you securely under the heavy, warm duvet, pulling the blankets up to your chin. He wraps his entire body around yours like a protective shield, tangling his legs with yours so tightly that there is no space left between you. Yoongi slides his large, warm hand underneath the fabric of the hoodie, splaying his palm completely flat against your bare, aching lower stomach. He doesn't do it to feel for a baby anymore; he does it to anchor you to the earth, pouring his warmth, his love, and his healing energy directly into your skin.
He holds you through the long, dark hours of the evening, never letting go. He kisses away every fresh tear that falls, whispering sweet, soft, grounding praises into your hair. He tells you how strong you are, how much he adores you, and how you are going to heal together, day by day.
As the night deepens, the heavy, frantic sobs finally begin to fade, replaced by quiet, exhausted breaths. You close your eyes, listening to the steady, rhythmic beating of Yoongi's heart beneath your cheek.
"I've got you, babe," Yoongi murmurs softly into the quiet room, his lips pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the crown of your head as his hand gently strokes your stomach. "We're going to take all the time we need. We will always have each other."
Days go by. Then weeks. Then months. The dark does not stay sharp forever; eventually, it softens into something you can breathe through.
Outside your apartment, the city of Seoul continues its relentless, indifferent hum, illuminated by millions of artificial lights that try to drown out the night. But inside the quiet sanctuary of your room, the only rhythm that matters is the slow, steady rise and fall of Yoongi’s chest against your back, and the heavy, grounding thump of his heartbeat beneath your palm.
Yes, the galloping horse in the static has gone quiet, leaving behind a vast, echoing space. But over time, you learn that true strength isn't about refusing to break. It is about letting the pieces fall, knowing that the hands holding you are entirely devoted to helping you gather them back up.
Three years of marriage have taught you how to survive the noise of the world, but in this quiet room, you learn how to survive the silence.
Yoongi doesn't venture far from you for a while. He remains the protective anchor you know him as, holding you fast against the current of your grief. He doesn't offer empty words or hollow promises to fix what cannot be mended by human hands. Instead, he just breathes with you, inhaling your sorrow, exhaling his unyielding devotion, making sure you know that you are not drowning alone.
Somewhere, far beyond the smog of the city, high up in the clear, hidden hills where you once lay on a plush blanket, a single star burns a little brighter in the velvet dark. It is no longer a destination, but a lighthouse; a quiet, eternal monument to a love that changed shape, but never truly died.
You close your eyes, letting the phantom weight in your chest ease just a fraction as you press closer into his warmth. The future you imagined has fractured, but as Yoongi draws you tighter against his heart, whispering your name into the shadows like a sacred vow, you realise the foundation hasn't moved an inch. The house in the countryside may be quiet for now, but the universe you built together remains entirely intact. He is still your peace, you are still his anchor, and together, in the soft, unbroken quiet of the dark, you will learn how to begin again.
Summary: Jungkook, a mere sailor, crosses paths with a mermaid. Forced to work together, they must navigate a world where her kind are the hunted, and his are the hunters. Will they bridge the deadly divide, or will the law of the tides destroy them both?
╰› fic masterlist
The wind roars in your ears whilst a terrifying, weightless vacuum, lasting a single suspended second, surrounds you before gravity finally kicks in to reclaim you. In other words, you are falling. Fifty feet of empty, fog-choked air twists around your torso before you hit the harbour surface.
The impact with the ocean feels like crashing directly into a stone wall. The breath is violently driven from your lungs, and all you can see is a wall of white water and churning foam which expands around you. But the moment the dark saltwater completely engulfs your flesh, you can feel the transformation take place. That dormant magic slumbering deep within your blood is triggered almost instantly.
It's s a violent, seamless rip of anatomy. Beneath the surface, out of sight from the world, your human legs dissolve. Muscles tear and fuse, bones snap and realign in a split-second flash of agonising yet familiar evolution as your scaled tail completely tears through the fabric of your wet trousers. The heavy weight of gravity vanishes, replaced by the weightless, thunderous power of the deep. You notice the transformation is lighter, though, less like you're being put through a grinder and more like a fluid motion out of pure muscle memory.
Through the cloud of bubbles and sinking warehouse debris, you force your eyes open. The saltwater doesn't sting; it clarifies. Above you, the midnight water is illuminated by sharp streaks of light. Crossbow bolts from Vance's guards zip through the surface like falling stars.
Then, you see him.
Jungkook is sinking. The sheer physical shock of the fifty-foot drop, combined with his already sliced, bleeding arm and battered ribs, has completely compromised his system. The impact has knocked the wind right out of him. He is totally blind and disoriented in the pitch-black harbour, his limbs flailing weakly as he struggles to figure out which way is up, a dark cloud of crimson blood trailing from his forearm.
Okay, yes. You get that he's injured, you're not an idiot, nor completely cold-hearted, a little part of you cares and all, but come on, the guy's a sailor, but the second he touches water, he just becomes dead-weight. Seriously? For a navy boy, his personal hydrodynamic properties are roughly on par with a sack of wet bricks. I’ve seen barnacle-encrusted timber with better buoyancy than this guy.
Okay. Focus Now.
You don't think. You flare your tail, slicing through the dark current with terrifying, unnatural speed. You pass a sinking cargo crate, your arm shooting out to grab Jungkook firmly by the collar of his torn jacket.
With a powerful, rhythmic sweep of your tail, you drag him downward, away from the surface and the whistling crossfire. He can't see a single thing in the murky, midnight depths. All his waterlogged brain registers is an unyielding force dragging him, lord knows where, and rocketing him through the coastal currents at a speed no human could ever achieve. You steer him through the blackness of the harbour, cutting through the tide until the lights of Marlow’s wharves fade into the distance.
Nearly two miles down the jagged coastline, far from the wharves' perimeter, you find a secluded, rocky bank hidden beneath the towering shadows of the high cliffs.
Using the last reserves of your strength, you haul Jungkook’s frame out of the surf first. You aggressively shove his broad shoulders up onto the muddy sand, ensuring his head is well clear of the lapping waves. The moment his torso is secure on dry land, you violently drag your own lower half out of the water, bracing yourself for the reverse toll.
You dig your fingernails deep into the wet mud, your jaw clenching hard, your teeth aching as your tail splits down the centre. Scales dissolve away into the sand like burning ash, and human bones snap back into place. You gasp for dry air, trembling slightly from the sheer physical exhaustion as you frantically pull the ruined, wet fabric of your trousers back over your newly formed, shaking legs.
Beside you, Jungkook suddenly convulses. He rolls onto his side, hacking and coughing violently as he spews a massive amount of saltwater onto the sand. He draws in a long, ragged, wheezing breath, his large chest heaving under his soaked shirt.
He blinks against the moonlight, rubbing his burning eyes as he slowly forces himself up onto his elbows. He looks around the dark, isolated cove, then turns his gaze directly to you. He is shivering, his skin pale, his dark eyes wide with total, unadulterated bewilderment.
"What... what the hell was that?" he gasps out, his voice raw and gravelly. He stares at you, his tactical mind desperately trying to calculate the physics of what just happened. "How did we get here? We were at the… the guards were firing... and then something grabbed me. I felt... I felt like I was being dragged by a damn naval frigate. How the hell did you pull me across the entire harbour?"
He doesn't wait for you to answer; the frantic machinery of his brain is already spinning out of control as he tries to connect the dots. "No. Wait. It doesn't make sense. The velocity required to clear that channel in under a few minutes is impossible for anyone, let alone you…" The gears in his mind continue to turn "And back at the fish market, your wrist, it did something. And Madame Laeruda said something to you—" His breath catches as his dark eyes lock onto yours with a terrifyingly sharp focus.
The dots are floating in front of him, but his mind just cannot connect them. He can see the other side, but it's shrouded in fog, and the bridge to it is too unstable, twisting and breaking beneath his feet. But before he can say another word, you cut in.
"Are you entirely delusional from blood loss, or are you just naturally this ungrateful, Ace?" you snap right back. Your voice shakes from the residual pain of the transformation, but you force an aggressive attitude into your posture, clutching your leather satchel tightly against your chest. "I didn't pull you anywhere! You know, for someone who works for the King, you really are just a half-wit. An idiot. A complete, total, reckless idiot! What the hell were you thinking, jumping a what—fifty-foot drop into a pitch-black harbour without a plan? You think that because you wear a fancy uniform, you're entirely invincible? You don't know the first thing about these waters!" You exclaim, hands waiving frantically as you move to stand, towering over him to emphasise your words.
You step closer, the adrenaline making you blind to the weight of your own words. "Oh, and the second we hit the water, we got caught in a massive, localised undercurrent. A rip tide. Ever heard of them, sailor boy? It dragged both of us through the deep channel before spitting us out on this bank. I barely managed to keep a grip on your jacket, so you didn't sink like the anchor you are. You're supposed to be this golden boy, but you're just a massive, bleeding liability who almost got us both killed! You are completely useless to your crew if you're rotting at the bottom of a trench, if they aren't already dead."
You unload onto him, anger fuelled by your own defeats, fears, and annoyance, and unfortunately, he's the only one out here for miles who has to end up on the receiving end of your breakdown.
The words slice through the night air, hitting Jungkook with the physical force of a cannon line.
He freezes, his mouth slamming shut as his dark eyes widen, a sudden, devastating stillness paralysing his features. The cocky armour he wears so effortlessly completely shatters, leaving his raw expressions entirely exposed under the cold moonlight.
Your words have unknowingly driven a jagged blade directly into his deepest, most bleeding insecurity. Useless.
Behind the mask he wears, the decorated tiles, and the arrogance he displays to outsiders, he's still that quiet, anxious boy standing on that rain-slicked deck of his first royal warship, trying to prove himself, trying to fit in, trying to make his captain proud. He loves his crew with a fierce, consuming devotion that borders on insanity—they aren't just crewmates, they're family.
And he had watched them get taken. He had watched his ship drift off without him, and he hadn't been strong enough to stop it.
Now, caked in mud, bleeding out from a basic knife wound, and entirely dependent on a mysterious, furious girl to drag his heavy frame out of the surf, the crushing realisation that he is failing them completely locks up his chest. He doesn't want to be a burden. He just desperately wants to be useful enough to bring his men home. Hearing you call him a liability makes him feel smaller than the dirt beneath his fingernails.
Slowly, the defensive fire drains completely from his expression, replaced by a quiet, exhausting hollow that makes your stomach instantly twist with regret.
Jungkook narrows his eyes, staring at you through the dark fog, his shoulders drop with a heavy, defeated sigh. He looks down at his soaked clothes, then at your shivering frame. His fingers trace the spot on his finger that his ring once occupied. Missing the familiar weight. Another thing close to him he lost. That he failed to protect.
"A rip tide," he mutters sceptically, his voice dropping into a quiet, hollow murmur as he runs a wet, trembling hand through his dark hair. "Right. Lucky us."
"Yes, lucky us," you hiss, though the venom in your voice slightly falters as you look down at him, slightly regretting your words but pride preventing you from taking them back. "Now stop interrogating the ocean and move your legs. We can't stay here."
The heavy, crushing silence that follows is thick with the damp maritime fog and the unspoken weight of your words. It wraps around you both like a suffocating shroud as you leave the bank behind. Jungkook doesn't offer a single witty comeback. He doesn't whistle a jaunty navy tune, he doesn't flash his dimpled smirk, and he completely omits his usual arsenal of irritating nicknames. The sudden, absolute absence of his typical insufferable energy makes the dark path feel entirely too vast and hostile. The only sound echoing through the towering pines is the rhythmic crunch of damp needles beneath your boots and the shallow, ragged catch of his breath.
Unlike your previous trek through the winding alleys of Marlow, where he had shamelessly leaned his entire weight onto your shoulder, Jungkook now deliberately keeps his distance. He marches half a step ahead of you, his broad shoulders rigidly squared beneath his shredded jacket. He stumbles over twisting tree roots and grits his teeth through the obvious, throbbing pain in his side, but he refuses to reach out. He is a man physically forcing his body to play the part of an unbreakable soldier, desperate to prove he isn't the "bleeding liability" you just accused him of being.
Under the pale shards of moonlight cutting through the dense canopy, you can see the dark, fresh patches of crimson rapidly blooming through his makeshift linen bandage, dripping slowly down to his knuckles. A knot of unvarnished guilt begins to tighten in your throat; your defensive lie had driven a jagged stake right into a deeply buried nerve, and watching him fracture in stubborn silence is infinitely worse than his loud arrogance.
The gradient of the cliffside sharpens brutally, the dirt path dissolving into a treacherous vertical wall of wet shale, loose gravel, and crumbling earth. Jungkook pauses for a fraction of a second, his chest heaving as he evaluates the incline. He reaches out with his uninjured arm, trying to hoist his heavy frame up over a jagged stone ledge by anchoring his weight to a thick, low-hanging pine branch.
But his body has hit its absolute limit.
The wet mud slips beneath his bare heel, and the pine branch cracks sharply under his massive weight. Jungkook’s footing gives way entirely on the loose rock, his equilibrium shattering as he begins to tumble backwards into the shadow-drenched ravine, his bad arm instinctively twisting to brace for a violent impact.
Your instincts override your pride before your brain can even process the danger. You lunge forward, your human legs moving with a sudden, frantic burst of desperation. You plunge your hands through the opening of his torn jacket, your fingers clamping securely around his waist, and slam your front flush against his broad back. Digging your boots into the slick mud, you brace your weight against a heavy mossy boulder, using your own momentum to act as a physical brake, pinning his heavy frame against the cliffside so he doesn't crash down the ridge
For a single, suspended second, the universe shrinks down to the space between your ribs. You stay frozen like that in the dark: you holding him tightly from behind, your fingers buried deep into the damp, firm muscle of his waist, your face pressed flat between his broad shoulder blades. You can feel the intense, radiating heat of his skin through the wet fabric, and the frantic, wild hammering of his heart echoes directly against your own palms.
Then, Jungkook violently tenses.
With a sharp, sudden movement born out of pure, frustrated pride, he wrenches himself out of your grip. He stumbles a step away, his back hitting the stone face of the cliff as he creates a cold, immediate distance between you. He looks down at you through the wet fringe of his hair, his chest heaving frantically as his dark eyes burn with a raw, exhausted frustration.
"Careful, Angel," he spits out, his voice a low, biting rasp that vibrates through the quiet woods. It isn't loud, blind anger, but rather the stinging snark of a boy who hates being perceived as weak. "You shouldn't get too close to the cargo. Wouldn't want my pathetic, dead weight to drag your superior intellect down into the mud. I'd hate to be a further anchor on your evening when you're clearly doing just fine without me."
"Jungkook, stop it," you mutter sharply, your hands still hovering empty in the cold air where his waist had just been.
"Stop what?" he retorts, a bitter, humourless smile touching his lips as he tightly crosses his arms over his chest, shielding his bleeding forearm from your view. "I'm just agreeing with your assessment. You're entirely right. I'm a massive, bleeding liability who almost got us killed because I didn't calculate a basic warehouse ambush. So go ahead. Don't let a useless, half-drowned navy boy slow down your march to the city."
You stand in the middle of the narrow path, the sharp sight of his pale, shivering frame and the quiet, hollow look in his eyes making the guilt in your chest turn suffocatingly heavy. You don't do apologies. In the deep trenches of the reef, an apology was a sign of fatal vulnerability; you’ve never had to navigate the fragile, hurting ego of a human soldier, and your tongue feels clumsy and heavy as you try to force the words past your lips.
"I... I didn't mean it like that," you say, your voice dropping its venomous edge, turning quiet and remarkably strained. You look down at the muddy roots near your boots because looking at his broken expression is entirely too difficult. You take a slow, steadying breath, forcing the stiff, prickly thorns of your pride to bend just a fraction. "Ace..."
Jungkook doesn't move, but his gaze fixes on you, silent and unyielding.
"I shouldn't have called you that," you force the words out, your fingers twisting nervously into the leather strap of your satchel. "A liability. You clearly aren't one, considering you threw yourself in front of a blade to keep me from getting my throat slit. I just... I panicked, and I was angry at the situation, and I took it out on you. I hit the easiest target I could find. You're an insufferable, arrogant idiot, Jungkook... but you are not useless. You're the only reason I'm not in a cell right now."
It is a terribly clunky, remarkably bad apology, heavily wrapped in insults and your usual defensive armour, but it is entirely, undeniably sincere.
Jungkook stays perfectly still against the stone wall, the cold wind rustling the leaves above. He studies your averted face for a long beat, his eyes scanning the tension of your shoulders. The heavy silence stretches until you're certain he's going to reject you entirely.
Slowly, the hard, defensive lines of his jaw begin to relax. A soft, incredibly faint huff escapes his lips—a tiny, genuine ghost of his usual amused chuckle—and the icy distance in his dark eyes melts back into something tired, warm, and comforting.
"A panicked defence mechanism, hm?" he murmurs, his voice losing its biting rasp as he slowly extends his uninjured arm back toward you, a quiet, reluctant truce offered in the silver moonlight. "Is that what we're calling your spectacular bedside manner? You really know how to soothe a wounded soldier's vanity, Angel. First, you call me a corpse-in-waiting, and then you call me an insufferable idiot."
"I am merely maintaining an accurate assessment of your personality," you huff, a small, involuntary breath of relief escaping your lips as you step into his space. You carefully slide his heavy, uninjured arm over your shoulders, your grip around his waist remarkably tight and supportive this time. "Now shut up. If you bleed to death on this path, Barnaby isn't going to give me my ball gown."
"Ah, of course. The dress," he whispers sleepily, letting out a long, exhausted sigh as he finally allows his massive weight to ease completely against your side, his chin resting comfortably near the crook of your neck. "Good to know my survival is directly tied to high-society fashion."
With the fragile truce secured, you guide his shuffling steps through the final, dense stretch of briars. The treeline finally breaks, revealing a foggy, overgrown clearing just as the low, sagging silhouette of the abandoned woodcutter’s shack materialises in the shadows. The wooden door hangs crookedly on a single rusted hinge, and the roof is heavily overgrown with wild ivy. Good enough to stay for the night, though. You shove the crooked wooden door open with your boot, hauling his shivering frame inside.
The interior is cast in deep, dusty shadows. It is sparse and empty, and freezing. But it will do for tonight. But as your eyes adjust to the dim moonlight filtering through the cracked window, your heart stops.
Against the far wall sits a single, narrow wooden cot with a thin, fraying straw mattress.
One bed.
You freeze in the centre of the room, staring at the pathetic little cot. "You have got to be kidding me," you whisper under your breath.
Jungkook looks from the cot to you, a sudden, tired smirk playing on his lips despite his pale skin. "Well, Angel... looks like Marlow’s luxury accommodations have let us down again."
By the time midnight settles over the cliffside, the reality of the situation becomes unavoidable. The air inside the shack is bitterly cold, and you are both still damp. Jungkook has managed to find a rusted iron bucket to sit on, his back resting against the wooden wall as he carefully holds his freshly bandaged arm.
"Take the bed," Jungkook says flatly, his voice low and steady in the quiet room. "You need the rest. I'll take the floor."
You snap your head toward him, your eyes narrowing in the dark. "I am not taking the bed out of your pathetic sense of gentlemanly charity, Ace. Look at yourself. You're pale as a ghost, you've lost half your blood, and your ribs are covered in bruises. You take the bed."
"I am a trained soldier of the royal fleet," he retorts, a stubborn, defensive edge creeping into his tone as he juts his jaw out. "I've slept on iron decks during winter gales. A wooden floor is practically a luxury. Take the damn mattress, Angel."
"I don't need your pity!" you fire back, crossing your arms aggressively. "I am perfectly capable of surviving a night on the floor. I don't need a fragile navy boy sacrificing his comfort just because he thinks I'm helpless."
Jungkook lets out a long, irritated breath, rubbing his temples with his uninjured hand. "You are infuriatingly stubborn, do you know that? Fine. If you're going to make this a matter of pride, we make it fair. We play a game."
You blink, caught off guard. "A game?"
"Yes. A game," he clarifies, reaching down into his pocket. He pulls out a small, tarnished brass button he swiped from his torn uniform sleeve. He puts both hands behind his back, his shoulders shifting slightly in the dark as he moves. "Simple rules. I hide the button in one of my fists. You guess which one. If you guess correctly, you get the bed, and you can't complain about it because you won it fair and square. If you lose, I get the bed. Deal?"
You narrow your eyes, analysing his face for any trickery. "Deal. Hide it."
Jungkook shifts his shoulders again behind his back. When he brings his hands forward, he extends two clenched, tanned fists toward you.
You step closer, your eyes tracking his knuckles. You pride yourself on your sharp vision, and you instantly notice a glaring flaw in his defence. On his left fist, his grip is slightly loose—just enough that a tiny, glittering sliver of the brass button is visibly peeking through the gap between his fingers.
A smug, deeply satisfied grin cuts across your face. Idiot, you think. Elite tactician, and he can't even hide a button properly.
"Left," you say triumphantly, pointing a finger directly at his loose fist. "Open it."
Jungkook pauses for a fraction of a second, a look of mild surprise crossing his face before he slowly opens his left palm. There, resting perfectly in the centre, is the brass button.
"Well," he sighs dramatically, shaking his head in mock defeat as he drops his hand. "Looks like luck's on your side. The bed is yours."
You let out a victorious, mocking chuckle, completely missing the soft, subtle smile playing on Jungkook's lips as he turns away. You have absolutely no idea that, behind his back, he had deliberately loosened his grip, ensuring the button would catch the moonlight just enough for you to see it. He knew exactly how stubborn you were, and he knew it was the only way to get you onto that mattress without an argument.
"Enjoy the hardwood, Ace," you tease, tossing yourself onto the scratchy straw mattress with a satisfied huff.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Angel," he murmurs, clearing a small patch of dust from the floorboards, leaning his massive shoulders against the wall, and closing his eyes.
Hours pass, and the temperature inside the dilapidated structure plummets brutally. The wind howls through the gaps in the rotted roof, carrying the bitter chill of the high cliffs. You toss and turn on the narrow cot, pulling the thin, fraying wool blanket up to your chin, but sleep refuses to claim you. Every time you close your eyes, the stinging memory of your argument with Kyra resurfaces.
How you wish you could've left things on a better note. How you wish you knew how she was doing, how the others were doing,
The guilt eats at your stomach like acid. You open your eyes in defeat; it's clear that sleep doesn't wish to embrace you tonight. You look across the dark room toward the floor. Jungkook is entirely still, but the moonlight cutting through the cracked window reveals the tense, rigid line of his jaw even in sleep. He is still fighting a battle, even when unconscious.
Suddenly, the quiet of the room is violently shattered.
A harsh, violently choked gasp rips from Jungkook’s throat. You snap your head toward the floor, your pulse instantly skyrocketing.
He is thrashing. His massive frame is convulsing against the wooden crate, his head rolling frantically from side to side as his knuckles turn white, his fingers clawing ruthlessly into the dusty floorboards. A thick, suffocating coat of cold sweat gleams on his forehead, his skin turning a terrifyingly pale, ghostly shade under the silver moonlight. His breathing has turned frantic, a desperate wheeze—the sound of a man running out of air.
"No... wait..." Jungkook groans, his voice a strained pitch that sounds completely broken, stripped of every ounce of his usual confidence. "Miller... get them out... the lower hold is filling... open the hatches!" You hear him mumble.
He violently jerks his left arm, the reckless motion sharply tearing at the fresh alleyway wound. Dark blood begins to seep through the clean white linen, but he doesn't even feel it. He is entirely trapped inside a horrific, living memory. In his mind, the black harbour water is rushing over the deck of his splintering warship. He can hear the muffled, frantic screams of his men echoing from the locked iron holds beneath his feet, their fingers clawing uselessly at the iron grates as the weight of the sea drags them into the black abyss. He reaches out, but his limbs feel like lead, paralysed as Kallinos’s flagship sails away into the fog, leaving him alone in the graveyard of his own failure.
"Jungkook!" you whisper sharply, throwing the wool blanket aside. You scramble off the cot, your bare feet hitting the freezing floorboards as you drop to your knees in the dust right beside him. "Jungkook, wake up!" You shake him. Nothing. You shake him harder, almost considering giving him a slap to the cheek.
He finally lets out a raw, broken cry, his entire body convulsing as his eyes fly open. He sits up with violent, chaotic force, nearly colliding with your face as his chest heaves frantically, gasping for air like a drowning man breaking the surface of the tide. He looks completely blind, his dark eyes wide and wild with a devastating, untamed terror that does something to your heart. He doesn't see the woodcutter's shack; he is still staring at the phantom waves crashing over his sinking ship.
"Hey, look at me," you say, your voice completely stripped of its defensive thorns, turning incredibly soft and urgent. Disregarding every boundary you've spent days building, you reach out, your hands clamping firmly onto his trembling, uninjured shoulder. "Jungkook, look at me. You're not on the ship. The water isn't there. You're safe."
The sharp, solid reality of your voice cuts through the phantom roaring of the ocean in his ears. Jungkook blinks rapidly, the terror in his eyes slowly fracturing as his gaze focuses on your face under the silver moonlight. The unbreakable, arrogant navy soldier has completely ceased to exist. Sitting before you in the dust is a hollow, deeply traumatised boy, shivering violently from the sheer, crushing weight of his survivor's guilt.
Suddenly, his large, trembling hand shoots out, wrapping fiercely around your wrist. He clings to you with a desperate, white-knuckled grip, his fingers digging into your skin as if you are the only solid line keeping him from slipping back into the dark tide.
"They're... they're still down there, Angel," he chokes out, his voice cracking, a raw, bleeding vulnerability exposing itself entirely. He lowers his head, his body collapsing forward as his forehead drops heavily against the curve of your shoulder. His chest heaves with a silent, agonising sob that shakes his entire frame. "I couldn't open the iron hatches. The chain was jammed. I watched the water take the glass... I watched it fill up. I'm supposed to be there for them. I'm supposed to bring them home... and I just left them there to drown."
A profound, aching sadness twists your stomach, pulling tightly at the centre of your chest. You look at the span of his shoulders, now shaking helplessly against your neck, and the unyielding protective nature of the deep rises up within you. You don't say anything insulting. You don't mock his weakness or call him a liability.
Slowly, gently, you slide your arms around his torso, pulling his heavy frame flush against your chest. You bury your fingers into the damp, messy fringe of his hair, holding him tightly against you as you rock him back and forth in the quiet room, offering your own body as a shield against his ghosts.
"You didn't leave them, Jungkook," you murmur softly, your voice a steady, golden anchor in the dark. "Kallinos took them because he's a coward who strikes from the shadows. You are going to get them home, Jungkook." You say exactly what he needs to hear.
Jungkook lets out a ragged, shivering breath against your skin, his grip around your waist tightening with a desperate fervour, as if he's trying to bury himself inside your warmth. The intense, radiating heat of his body mixes with the freezing air of the shack, his rapid, chaotic heartbeat slowly, gradually stabilising as it mimics the steady, calm rhythm of yours.
For a long time, neither of you moves. The silence of the forest returns to the shack, but it feels different now—less like a prison and more like a sanctuary. Jungkook's breathing finally softens, his forehead resting gently against your collarbone as his fingers loosen slightly against your shirt.
He slowly lifts his head from your shoulder, his dark eyes locking onto yours from mere inches away. The silver moonlight catches the damp tracks of tears on his sharp cheekbones, his gaze heavy, raw, and completely captivated by the fierce focus in your eyes. He looks at you as if you are the shore he has been searching for his entire life.
"Don't go back to the floor," you whisper before your brain can stop the words, your fingers still lingering softly in the dark strands of his hair. "The boards are freezing, and you're going to ruin my bandage again. Stay with me."
Jungkook searches your face for a long, quiet second. "Are—are you sure?" His eyes wide, stars painting them.
"I'm not asking, I'm telling you."
A faint, deeply grateful softness touches his lips as the ghost of his dimpled smirk tries to return. "So, you're ordering me, captain?" he rasps out, his voice incredibly low and thick with emotion.
"Yes," you huff softly, tilting your chin up. "And Navy soldiers are supposed to follow protocol. Move."
"Yes, ma'am," he whispers.
You pull him up onto the narrow cot, sliding beneath the thin, scratchy wool blanket together. The tight, suffocating space forces his broad chest completely flush against your front, his long legs tangling with yours beneath the fabric. You manoeuvre yourself onto your back so he can rest his head on your chest. Your hands find his hair again, smoothing out strands and occasionally adding just a little pressure to his scalp. Jungkook wraps his uninjured arm securely around your waist, pulling your smaller frame tightly into him, burying his face further into you.
The proximity is intoxicating, entirely too close and completely charged with a quiet, electric gravity that makes your pulse race. But as his deep, even breaths begin to warm your skin, the suffocating restrictions of the land vanish entirely. Wrapped in his unyielding hold, the ghosts of the deep finally leave the shack, and you both drift into a deep, absolute sleep.
The first shards of morning sunlight cut brutally through the cracked glass window of the shack, illuminating the swirling dust motes in beams of bright gold. The bitter chill of the morning still hangs in the corners of the room, but beneath the thin wool blanket, the narrow cot is an absolute furnace of trapped heat.
Jungkook wakes up first.
His eyelids flutter open, his instincts instantly trying to orient his surroundings. The phantom roaring of the sinking ship is gone, replaced by the quiet, rhythmic sighing of the wind outside. But as he tries to shift his weight, he realises he is completely, inextricably pinned.
You are curled entirely flush against his side. Your head is nestled perfectly into the warm crook of his shoulder, your face buried in him. One of your hands is still loosely tangled in the fabric near his chest, anchoring him to you, while his arm is securely draped over your waist, holding your smaller frame tight against his torso. Legs are a chaotic, tangled mess beneath the heavy wool.
Jungkook freezes, his breath catching sharply in his throat as a hot, violent flush of crimson creeps up his neck.
He doesn't move a single muscle, terrified that even a deep breath will wake you. From this close, without your razor-sharp words shielding you, you look entirely different. He stares down at your soft features, his dark eyes tracing the quiet rise and fall of your chest.
An unfamiliar, deeply aching warmth expands behind his ribs as he thinks about the previous night. The fierce, untouchable "Angel" who spent days snapping at his heels had completely dissolved when he shattered. You had held him while he choked on his own grief. Your fingers had been so remarkably gentle in his hair, and your voice—usually caked in sarcasm—had been a steady, unyielding promise in the dark. It is a breathtaking, terrifying contrast to your usual prickly character.
Before he can think about it anymore, you stir.
Your eyelashes flutter against his shoulder, a soft, sleepy groan escaping your lips as your nose brushes against his collarbone. Jungkook’s heart violently hammers against his ribs. He watches as your eyes slowly blink open, glazed with sleep, staring blankly at his chest for one, two, three seconds.
Until absolute, horrifying realisation hits you.
The soft morning haze vanishes from your eyes in a split second. Your pupils dilate in pure panic. With a frantic, breathless gasp, you violently shove his chest with both hands, kicking your legs out from under the blanket. Jungkook reacts with the exact same startled panic, yanking his arm off your waist and scrambling backwards so fast his head violently cracks against the wooden wall behind the pillow.
Thud.
"Ow! Dammit!" Jungkook winces, clutching the back of his head as he practically tumbles off the narrow mattress on the opposite side.
You scramble off the cot entirely, your bare feet hitting the freezing floorboards as you violently pull the wool blanket around your shoulders like a shield, your face burning a furious, incandescent shade of red. Your heart is hammering so loud you're certain he can hear it.
Jungkook sits on the edge of the cot, his dark hair a messy, wild nest around his face, his unbuttoned jacket slipping off one shoulder. He clears his throat aggressively, desperately trying to pull his typical persona back over his flushed features. He looks anywhere but at you, his jaw clenching as he adjusts his bandaged arm.
"Right," Jungkook rasps out, his voice thick and gravelly from sleep. He holds up his uninjured hand, his tone turning flat and desperate. "We never speak of this. Ever. It never happened."
He aggressively brushes the dust off his trousers, crossing his arms rigidly as he tries to summon every ounce of his royal naval dignity. "I have a reputation to uphold on this coastline, you know."
You blink, the sheet embarrassment in your veins instantly freezing over as a slow, wicked smirk gradually cuts across your face. The vulnerability of the morning dissolves, replaced by an absolute goldmine of pure ammunition.
"A reputation?" you tease, your voice a delighted, purring whisper as you lean against the wooden bedpost. "Oh, I'm sorry, Ace. Are you worried the admirals will find out you're actually a fragile, dramatic boy who steals eighty per cent of the blanket space? Or is it the fact that you currently look like a barefoot, caked-in-mud fugitive who lost a simple button game to a girl?"
Jungkook’s jaw instantly drops. The serious, rigid persona completely deflates, replaced by the expression of an incredibly offended, deeply pouted, kicked puppy. His large dark eyes widen, and his bottom lip juts out in a thoroughly ridiculous, defensive way.
"I do not look like a fugitive!" Jungkook scoffs loudly, throwing his hands up in mock betrayal as his kicked-puppy pout deepens. "And I did not steal the blankets! I took a steel blade for you, Angel. My career is based on cold, calculated naval precision, not... whatever this is. You are being remarkably unfair to my vanity."
"Your vanity was a casualty of war the second you jumped into the harbour, Ace," you chuckle softly, the ridiculous bickering completely chasing the lingering, suffocating awkwardness out of the shack. It feels good to return to your familiar rhythm, even if the air between you still hums with a strange, new heat.
You let out a soft huff, dropping the defensive blanket onto the cot as you walk over to pick up your leather satchel.
"Fine," you murmur, turning back to fix him with a sharp, warning glare. "Your precious naval reputation is entirely safe with me. A pact of absolute silence. We are business partners, nothing more."
Jungkook looks up from the bed, the dramatic pout draining from his eyes, replaced by a quiet, lingering softness that makes your pulse skip a beat. He nods slowly before murmuring, "Suits me, Angel."
Black Suits & White Lies - Chapter 20: You Were Wrong (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1642232537-black-suits-white-lies-chapter-20-you-were-wrong?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=writerbutterfly_hs Jeon Jungkook and Jeon Jimin have what most people would call a perfect life. A beautiful home. Two wonderful children. A marriage built on love, trust, and years of companionship. At least, that's what everyone sees. Behind tailored suits, warm smiles, family dinners, and ordinary careers lie secrets neither husband knows about. Some lies are harmless. Others are dangerous enough to destroy everything. As buried truths begin surfacing and unexplained events start piling up, the line between reality and deception grows thinner. The question is no longer whether secrets exist- It's how long they can remain hidden. A suspense-thriller filled with mystery, romance, family chaos, humour, loyalty, and unexpected twists. Because sometimes the person sleeping beside you is the one you know the least. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🖤 Married Jikook AU 🖤 Suspense Thriller 🖤 Mafia AU 🖤 Mystery 🖤 Family Dynamics 🖤 Domestic Chaos 🖤 Comedy 🖤 Romance 🖤 Minimal Angst 🖤 Mature Themes 🖤 Slow-Build Suspense ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚠ DISCLAIMER ⚠ This story contains mature themes intended for mature readers. Content warnings may include: • Explicit adult content • Strong language • Violence • Criminal activities • References to substance use • Dark and sensitive themes Reader discretion is advised. The author does not promote, encourage, glorify, or condone any illegal, harmful, dangerous, or irresponsible behaviour depicted in this work. All content is fictional and created solely for entertainment purposes. Read at your own risk. Additionally, if you have concerns, feedback, or issues regarding this book, please reach out to me directly and respectfully. Constructive communication is always welcome. There is no need to leave hateful, abusive, or unnecessarily hostile comments. Thank you for reading and supporting my work.
