Noxious
Summary: Reader and Jimin break up bc they're toxic for each other, and might get back together in the next chapter.
Warnings: Angst lmfao, there will be smut in part 2.
A/N: I channeled all of the angst and pain when writing this. It’s going to hopefully fulfill your craving for angst, smut or both. There really isn’t much plot other than Jimin and Reader are in a very real relationship, because not all relationships are going to be perfect and lovely. There will be hard times, sometimes after enough cycles, you make it or break it. (play long as i live by toni braxton on repeat while u listen to this)
Instead of leaving behind a note, sending a text, or sitting across from him at your dinner table, kitchen island, or face à face in the corners of the bedroom, you simply left. There was no fighting, throwing things, crying and screaming, at least for now. Instead of throwing him out into the streets, fighting to wrench the feeling from his heart unattained, you packed along your way.
Your old landlord nearly refused to give you the paperwork, you’d been so happy with him. Why would you come here? There wasn’t anyone else that could make you grin, laugh, dance, sing, as he does. No, did. You reconciled with your feelings, one day you could stomach the end of the circle, swindle your way out.
This departure? Escape? Exit. Wasn’t something you sat and schemed, mulled over, and slowly roasted. Rather, you’d run the oven for the last time and could no longer stand the smell. The bits of burnt food, dust, the insects in roost under its induction, glowing before crumbling into horrible little particles. Gathering together, billowing, foul. No matter how you threw things together over the counter, tile scraping and jabbing your knees.
Scrubbing tirelessly, needling pain, pulling and stretching. It always looked clean enough, so why did it continue to smell? Call after call, you scream, cry, lament, remember it’s not for naught.
Each time, less and less of you remained. Layers of you stripped away each time, until it felt stripped clean. Your pieces are swept over the threshold, carried away to places unknown in the fingertips of wind. You chose to fold up what little remained into a backpack and suitcase.
You hover around the stop, watching the second bus leave as quickly as it came. You wouldn’t board this one, it smelled. It smelled like that horrible oven.
You imagine your key to that home was comfortably nestled on the pillow you used to bury your face in, squashed against his. The steady hum in your ears was enough to drown the sound of the world as you board, whisked away to the ether.
The chime in your head bounces around your skull, swallowing up the ringing and chirping of your phone. Your sleep is empty, yet restful. The floors in this new dwelling were dusty, you didn’t mind the ache in your neck from using your backpack as a pillow. Nor was the floor forgiving to the body, you’d lost feeling quite a bit ago.
_
You wouldn’t dare say that you’d healed. You simply release a part of yourself and rehabilitate until living once more is feasible.
The club is an easy way for you to fill in that empty block of time on a Friday night. Your friends were unsure of how to approach this seemingly final split between you and Jimin. Some of them hoped that at some point in your cycle, fairy dust would rain from the sky and motivate you both into a magically healthy place and stability. Some of them had accepted and even adapted their perspective to the impression that you’d be washing, rinsing, and repeating forever into an evolved commitment. Either way, they all knew well enough to simply be who they’re supposed to be. Friends, not nurses or therapists.
There would be no resistance toward who you became after ‘freeing’ yourself. They neither pushed or denied you the pleasure of indulging in a stranger in any regard.
As tonight would show, they would stand beside you regardless of what happened.
Something in the night air filled you with the taste of life that you didn’t know that you missed. A capricious prickling grows over the back of your tongue, a spice unnamed. You paid for three rounds of something as smooth as water, two rounds out of some strangers pockets followed.
You settled on nursing a cranberry vodka and squeezed into the sea of bodies. Your lips pucker, spread, and close around the lyrics to a song you didn’t expect to recognize.
Someone saddles up to you from behind, throwing an arm around your stomach and resting their other hand on your side. They roll their hips from side to side, guiding yours in a way that strikes a match in you.
You lean back into them, allowing your eyes to fall shut. You didn’t care to ask for a stranger's name right now, so you chose to live in it.
“You’re hot,” he purred into your ear. “Can I touch you?”
You turn and nestle your head against his collarbone, nodding silently. You lift an arm above your head, loosely cradling his neck.
“I still like you that way,” you whisper the lyrics under the music. Rhythm and blues carries you into him further. His thumb brushes a sliver of your stomach, his palm glides over your bulge.
“If you can’t be with the one you love, it’s okay.” He murmurs the tune into your neck, squeezing you enough to make your thighs tingle.
“Look, I know it hasn’t been that long..” His lips graze the shell of your ear as he spoke. This you didn’t hear.
“Wanna go back to my place?” There was a bit more he said, but it was lost in the void.
You lean up, taking in as much of the stranger as you could from the corner of your eye. “Yeah,” you lift the straw to your lips and clear the rest of your drink.
He peels back from you, grabbing your free hand. You lose the empty cup on a nearby table, wondering how you got to the street so quickly. Your friends send you away with nods and waves, they’d check in with you later. You wondered if you would even call yourself drunk or tipsy, your mind was still sound from the inside.
The taxi ride is quiet, nearly uneasy. His fingers stroke the crook of yours as he leans against the window, watching the storefronts go by.
You remembered him, yet all you could truly see was a stranger.