I think a consistent challenge in transfeminist analysis is the question of where trans women fit into the classical man-woman scheme of patriarchy. You have some transfeminists asserting that trans women are exactly identical to cis women, and others asserting that trans women actually represent a sort of "third sex." Conversations go back and forth about this and my current thoughts are that there are compelling arguments on either side, but that they're both deeply flawed and limited because of their typically one-sided, metaphysical analysis.
Looking at the material evidence, it is plainly apparent that trans women are women proper - we are forced into the same spheres of labor as other women within our classes. Most of us are trapped in low-wage (often highly feminized) work, or are forced out of the formal legal economy and into sex work, long-term unemployment and begging just to afford food, and so on. As with cis women, a small number of us (mostly limited to the imperial core) are professionals who can access higher education, well-paying jobs, and so on. We can see plainly that, when all other factors are equal, trans women make markedly less money through employment than do cis women, cis men, and also trans men, which is consistent with and easily explained by our real existence as a type of specially-exploited woman, the same way a Black woman will typically make less than a white woman, a periphery woman less than an imperial core woman, and so on. We are just another kind of woman with an added layer of special exploitation, and one which is not incompatible with any other such layer.
On the other hand, we can look at the way we are spoken of and commonly regarded in normal social life. It seems plainly apparent that many people, maybe even most people, do indeed regard us as a third sex even if they would not use that term. Cis women, for the most part, do not get they/themmed incessantly the same way we do when someone is aware of our trans status. We're totally unwelcome in sexed spaces (bathrooms, changing rooms, etc), on a bio-physical level we are regarded as alien or as if we function completely differently from a cis woman or a cis man (despite HRT making us bio-physically extremely similar to cis women, and extremely different from cis men. The vast majority of trans women are either on HRT or desire to be on it). Even bourgeois trans women, take for instance the US politician Sarah McBride, are regarded with so much distaste and hatred by other bourgeois women. A phenomenon I've observed repeatedly in my own life is that when in public, strangers will consistently and exclusively address me as female, as a woman, with she/her, up until I have to share my ID (as part of getting a job, to access medical care, to buy alcohol, etc) - I have been unable to get the sex marker on my ID changed, and as soon as a stranger notices that, it's immediately apparent that I instantly become something "other" to them, something unknown and foreign and scary, and they don't really know what to do about it and usually refer to me very minimally or with they/them for the remaining duration of the interaction. There are countless other such phenomena we can raise to provide evidence for the fact that we seem to be regarded as a third sex, but I'll end there.
What's happening here? On a material level, trans women are simply women proper, but on an ideological level, trans women seem to be widely understood as a third sex. Much to the distaste of those attempting to carry out a metaphysical analysis, this is a contradictory state of affairs - the reality as it exists within the financial statistics and within the medical journals and in a visit with a client is distinct from the reality that exists within people's heads, in the realm of the ideal. We can attempt to pick one side or the other and say that it is the truth of transfeminine existence, but I see this as a mistake. Rather, I think it is much more coherent to regard the true nature of transfeminine existence as this contradiction, as the class of people who are truly women on every material level but who are also widely regarded as something separate from and foreign to womanhood even at the same time as those same people regarding us as such produce the conditions that create our special-exploitation as just another underclass of women.
For the most part, this is not done with conscious intent, but rather, it's the natural cross product of the general conditions of capitalism and class society, the current ideological and material formation of patriarchy, and the specific neuroses non-transmisogynized people hold about trans women in the context of these greater systems.
The same way the proletariat is defined by its contradiction with the bourgeoisie rather than as something with independent existence, our nature as trans women is defined by contradiction to both men and cis women on a material level but also on an ideological level the very concept of a "cis" woman - the idea that women are not a socially constructed category but are instead something natural, immutable, in possession of existence separate from class society and patriarchy in particular. Or, to put it another way, trans women are defined as the class of women violating the perfect Platonic forms of patriarchy as people imagine them.
This is mostly just a collection of thoughts, or you could think of it as a set of notes I've made public for the sake of seeing how well they resonate with other Marxist trans women. Someday I might write something longer and more formal about this, but this has been on my mind for the last few years and this is the general conclusion I've reached.
A word that becomes significantly harder to define as the summer goes on because Vil keeps discovering that you have become involved in all of his favorite memories.
w.c ~1.6k
Vil feels like he's collecting evidence against himself.
He noticed it sometime around the middle of May, though the process had clearly started much earlier.
Certain streets became yours through repetition alone. A ramen shop tucked between two office buildings became yours because you dragged him there three separate times and declared yourself emotionally attached to the owner.
A convenience store near the river became yours because the cashier had once mistaken the two of you for a married couple and you had spent the next week finding that significantly funnier than necessary.
Entire sections of the city seemed to acquire your fingerprints simply because you kept appearing in them, leaving stories behind that attached themselves to places and refused to leave afterward.
Then the problem spread.
A mural painted beneath an overpass became associated with the night you convinced him to walk nearly forty minutes out of the way to see it, only to spend the entire journey talking about raccoons.
A bookstore became associated with an argument about terrible romance novels that lasted so long the employees began shelving books around you. There was even a traffic light near his apartment that made him think of you because one evening you had become inexplicably invested in the fate of a duck attempting to cross the street.
Vil had never before discovered that another person could infiltrate geography.
Yet somehow you managed it.
The city looked different now, though the changes were difficult to explain. They lived in the strange invisible layer beneath ordinary life where memories attached themselves to locations and transformed them quietly over time.
Every route contained detours. Every neighborhood carried associations. Every familiar place seemed to contain some version of you waiting patiently inside it, tucked away inside old conversations and impulsive decisions. The entire phenomenon should have annoyed him considerably more than it did. Instead, he kept showing up.
Summer certainly didn't help matters. The season seemed determined to stretch every evening beyond its natural limits.
The air remained warm enough that nobody felt particularly obligated to go home, music drifted through open windows, restaurants spilled onto sidewalks, and people lingered in places they normally would have passed through without a second glance.
The entire city felt younger during those months, and somehow you felt younger with it. Not immature, but animated by a restless sort of energy that made ordinary plans difficult to maintain and impossible to predict.
Vil would receive a text asking whether he was busy.
The answer rarely mattered because twenty minutes later he would find himself somewhere unexpected.
One evening it was a rooftop. Another evening it was an outdoor movie screening where neither of you watched the film because the people sitting behind you kept providing dramatically more entertaining commentary. Once it was a night market three districts away that apparently contained a vendor selling fruit shaped like animals.
Moments like that accumulated quickly over the course of the summer, and an unreasonable number of them seemed to involve food in one form or another.
Vil eventually concluded that half of your personality revolved around acquiring snacks under increasingly questionable circumstances.
The theory gained considerable support one night when he arrived at a crowded street festival and found you standing beside a game stall holding three stuffed bears and a can of soda somebody had apparently given you for free.
"How long have you been here?"
You glanced up.
"Thirty minutes."
Vil looked at the bears, then the soda and then the bag of snacks hanging from your wrist.
"Explain."
"I won the first bear."
"And the others?"
"The second bear was lonely."
"That does not answer my question."
"The third bear belonged to a child."
Vil stared.
You stared back.
The festival lights reflected in your eyes. Music drifted across the crowd from somewhere farther down the street. The smell of grilled food hung in the air. Around you, people moved between stalls in shifting currents of color and noise.
"The child gave you his bear?"
"He respected my vision."
Vil laughed despite himself and the sound surprised both of you.
The evening continued in the same direction most evenings spent with you eventually took. One plan became three completely unrelated plans.
A conversation about festival food somehow transformed into an argument about whether raccoons possessed social hierarchies.
Somewhere along the way the two of you crossed half the city without either of you remembering making the decision to do so. Time behaved suspiciously around you. Hours disappeared with such efficiency that Vil occasionally wondered whether you were secretly stealing them.
By midnight the festival had begun thinning out.
By one in the morning the two of you were sitting on a stone wall overlooking the river, sharing a carton of strawberries purchased from a vendor packing up for the night.
The city shimmered across the water, reflections stretching and breaking apart whenever a boat passed through the river. Music drifted faintly from somewhere farther down the waterfront, blending with distant conversations and the occasional burst of laughter carried by the warm night air.
You handed him a strawberry in the middle of your story and Vil accepted it without interrupting you, the exchange occurring with such practiced ease that he only noticed it afterward.
At some point during the summer the two of you had developed an alarming amount of confidence in each other's habits. You already knew which foods he liked well enough to order for him.
He knew which desserts you claimed to enjoy despite abandoning them halfway through every single time.
You could identify the expression that appeared whenever he was about to start judging a stranger's outfit from fifty feet away. He could predict with near-perfect accuracy whether a conversation was about to become genuinely interesting or whether you were preparing to waste twenty minutes of his life with a theory involving raccoons, conspiracy, or both.
You tossed the leaves from another strawberry into the almost empty carton before leaning backward onto your hands and looking out across the water. The festival lights still glowed in the distance. Your bears sat beside you in a small plush council. One of them was wearing sunglasses that it previouslydid not possess.
Vil chose not to ask.
The answer would almost certainly make the situation worse.
"You know," you said eventually, "I think we've become annoying."
Vil turned.
"We?"
"Us."
You gestured vaguely between the two of you.
"We spend an unreasonable amount of time together."
"You called me yesterday."
"You answered immediately."
"You sent eleven messages."
"You replied to all of them."
A grin slowly appeared on your face that Vil distrusted on principle because that look usually meant you had reached a conclusion.
"You like me."
Vil nearly choked on a strawberry.
Across the river, lights shimmered against the water. Music continued drifting through the warm summer night. Beside him, you looked entirely too pleased with yourself.
The worst part was that you were already laughing before he had managed to answer. The confidence suggested you had reached this conclusion weeks ago and had been carrying it around purely for entertainment purposes. Given your personality, that seemed entirely plausible.
"I don't know why you're so entertained by your own nonsense."
"You didn't deny it."
"I did."
"You absolutely didn't."
"I implied it."
You looked delighted.
Vil could feel the smile threatening at the corner of his own mouth and immediately fought it on principle. The effort lasted approximately three seconds.
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"The face."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"The one you make when you're losing."
Vil turned toward the river.
Somewhere over the past few months you had developed the deeply irritating habit of seeing straight through him whenever it suited you.
The realization probably should have unsettled him more than it did. Instead, he found himself looking forward to those moments, storing them away alongside your messages, your stories, and the endless stream of ridiculous observations you scattered throughout his days without apparent effort.
Beside him, you nudged his shoulder with yours.
"You're thinking too hard again."
Vil glanced over and saw you smile.
The same smile that had followed him through half the summer. The same smile currently waiting for him to admit something. The same smile he had spent months pretending wasn't becoming one of his favorite sights in the world.
For once, the effort felt unnecessary.
The festival lights painted shifting colors across the river. Music drifted through the warm night air. Somewhere farther down the waterfront, a group of strangers cheered loudly at something neither of you could see.
The city felt alive. It was the sort of night that seemed determined to continue forever.
Before you could say another word, Vil reached over, caught the front of your shirt between his fingers, and pulled you toward him.
The kiss lasted only a few seconds—just long enough to steal the next sentence directly from your mouth. When he finally leaned back, your expression had gone completely blank. The silence that followed was perhaps the most satisfying silence Vil had experienced all year.
For the first time since meeting you, you seemed genuinely speechless
Then he reached into the carton, stole the last strawberry, and ate it before you recovered enough to stop him.
Your outrage arrived immediately afterward.
The summer carried on around you, bright and loud and full of music, while Vil laughed hard enough that he nearly dropped the strawberry halfway through escaping your attempted revenge.
And he found that he didn't mind that you're in every fond memory of his, because he wants you to be in every fond memory after this.
more info about the clothing and history beneath the cut...
one of my primary focuses when studying history is clothing...what did people wear, how did they put it all on, and why did they wear it!
this gown is a design i created that could've been seen in the tudor english court in the mid 16th century. my primary references were sketches and paintings by hans holbein the younger who spent time as henry viii's court painter.
clean, white linen = hygienic. the chemise was changed daily, or more than once a day if you were wealthy enough to own that many! as the layer that was worn next to the skin, the linen wicks away the sweat and dirt from daily life and keeps your overclothes from becoming dirty. it's the same idea as wearing an undershirt today to keep your nice dress shirt clean. a velvet gown would be a nightmare to launder.
monarchs had a lot of influence on fashion. catherine of aragon brought the spanish farthingale with her when she married henry viii, and anne boleyn popularized the french hood.
thistle is being a little unfashionable by having his bangs show beneath the gable hood. the custom was to have a large, uncovered forehead - some ladies even plucked their hairlines back!
purple = only for royalty? i've tried finding what exactly the tudor sumptuary laws prohibited and purple does seem to have been limited to the royal family & a scattering of nobles, but exceptions could be made, and these laws were kind of impossible to broadly enforce.
you'll notice that the finished gown is like a puzzle that is pinned /tied / sewn on in pieces! you could mix and match different kirtles, sleeves, gowns, bodices, etc and keep your closet looking fresh. new clothing was incredibly expensive even for a noble.
looking at it now, it all seems so simple. your neighbour is burn-in stubborn, you’re no better, and somehow you become another fire he feels compelled to put out. but flames don’t just burn — they leave everything changed. jeongguk knows only how to run, never to let himself be consumed. you’re willing to see what happens if you stay in the heat.
pairing firefighter!jk x vet!fem reader
genre neighbours au, frenemies to lovers, fluff, angst, smut
contents slice of life, rom-com energy, banter & bickering, lowkey grumpy x grumpy, dog!dad jk, use of nicknames, pov switch, feelings of shame, emotional constipation, people pleaser jk, he jerks off, then feels sexual guilt, jealousy from both sides, mentions of smoke and alcohol, brief depiction of harassment, making out, hints at past trauma, flashback of trauma, sexy massage, sexual tension, miscommunication, ANGST
word count 16.4k
author’s note thank u guys for your patience 🩷 this is not the final chappie!! a part three is coming, and i promise it’s gonna take way less time oki 🫶🏻 feedback is always appreciated !!!
beta read by @missenu & @voyter, with me and ootw couple every step of the way … i love u both infinitely ⋆‧°𓏲ּ𝄢
banner creds ⋆ masterlist ⋆ series playlist
prologue ⋆ one ⋆ two ⋆ three
Jeongguk has never been selfish. Halmeoni would argue the opposite problem exists entirely. That his lack of self-care is actually frustrating at times. It turns Jeongguk into a noisy shoulder angel, one far too toned and heavy to be sitting on Halmeoni’s frail back. And no matter how many times the old woman tries to swat him away, Jeongguk plops right back into place. Though as overbearing as Jeongguk may be, Halmeoni always welcomed his doting presence.
Jeongguk has never been selfish. Becoming a firefighter was simply a natural byproduct of everything he’s ever known. As someone whose profession relies heavily on saving others, if he can’t help, he’s failed. And if he has to be helped, he’s failed too.
Jeongguk has never been selfish, and that is exactly why he can’t let himself be now. Not while you’re just a few feet away beyond his locked bathroom door, sprawled on his couch, panties smeared with wetness he’d caused. Fuck.
Thinking of Halmeoni and her wrinkly hands kneading dough had helped exceptionally until his mind inevitably circled back to you. Jeongguk is not selfish — not self-indulgent, but you’re insanely close to making him.
Knowing you, you’d probably let him make your special day all about him, too. Your hand, the same one that’s also done so much saving, pressed down on his stiff middle nearly had him breaking his morals. And he knows he can’t possibly deserve something good — can’t let himself believe he deserves someone good, only to ruin and be ruined by that good thing.
One hand grips the wall, the other twitches at his side, fingers curling into a tight fist so his nails can dig into the calloused skin of his palm. He forces himself to draw in a deep inhale, exhaling just as slowly. His thoughts scramble for anything else — near-misses and what-ifs he keeps tucked away for moments like this, when his body gets ahead of him and his control slips.
When an inconvenient boner strains against constricted layers and a pretty lady waits for him in his living room.
Usually, he wouldn’t make her wait. In fact, he’d make sure not a single minute was wasted. It’s partly a serious issue with compulsive pleasing, and partly because he’s too fucked up to let anything last longer than the accepted window for a hookup.
But Jeongguk makes you wait, and stay over the unspoken time limit. Because you weren’t a planned hookup or even a spontaneous one night stand. You’re his neighbour, and there’s no way to make you disappear without disappearing himself. Plus, there’s a stirring uneasiness in his gut, a nagging sense that he’s not entirely sure he wants his mind associating you with something so fleeting.
The strategy works. His thought process isn’t tragic enough to ruin his night entirely, just enough to make him feel wretched for even considering touching himself through his clothes after revisiting those memories.
Like when Gureum was supposed to be put down, only to start acting the healthiest and brightest he’d ever been that same morning, granting them four more years so far. Or the time Jeongguk almost crashed the firetruck during an aimless ride he took his mom on after she’d visited the station.
When he feels himself soften, he sighs in relief. Does his best to not think of you and your tits in that lacy corset. How your pretty face contorted in pleasure when you finally let yourself go. How your slender fingers slid down…
Okay, maybe it isn’t his absolute best, but he can at least cling to his morals, especially when he pictures you alone on his uselessly big couch. Alone after he made you come so unexpectedly and unplanned. Alone on your birthday. Well, a little past it.
Jeongguk just can’t bring himself to jerk off to the thought of you, at least not while you’re still in his house. Because, again, Jeongguk is not selfish. And so, he does what he can to preserve and salvage the barely-restored relationship he has with you.
With his vision clearing of the haze of alcohol and lust, he returns to the living room with your promised glass of water, and finds you just as he’d imagined: your cheek squished onto the backrest, sleepy eyes lazily following his figure, and a stubborn attempt at biting back your smile.
“I know you’re a firefighter and all, but did you personally go and collect the water for me?” You do a weak job of concealing your once-over, your eyes lingering on his crotch. Not throbbing anymore, but uncomfortably close to getting tight again.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” Jeongguk plops down next to you and hands you the glass. Plump lips pressed around the rim, a single drop spills from the side of your mouth and runs down the curve of your jaw, then over your throat, before disappearing beneath your thin top.
Well, shit. All that pep-talk and visualization work he did in the bathroom just now goes down the drain as he hardens pathetically for you again. Jeongguk coughs, abruptly looks to the side from where he can hear Gureum’s nails clicking on the floor.
The teeth digging into his lower lip are close to bruising and smudging blood all over the lingering taste of you, but the sharp sting is almost a relief. The twinge of pain deters him from overthinking what a total loser he’s being, especially when he can’t follow his scoff with anything to fill the sudden quiet. Silence forces his instinct to take over — which, naturally, only makes things more awkward.
“You okay? You need anything else?” He asks.
You exhale after your last deep gulp, bending forward to set the empty glass on the coffee table. Gureum takes advantage of the shift and swiftly hops onto the couch, wedging his tiny frame into the gap between you and his owner.
Smiling at the dog, you simply shake your head. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
Right. Because asking a girl he just made come if she’s okay is easily the sexiest thing he could have followed up with.
The words hang in the air, clinical and dry, like he’s on the job and checking on you after an intervention instead of recalling the way you were just arched against him. He sounds so painfully un-cool. The tips of his ears burn, similar to the heat he feels when he’s in a burning house looking to rescue; though, it appears he’s the one needing saving at this very moment.
Jeongguk’s fingers immediately seek out Gureum for comfort, scratching the familiar spot behind his ears. He’s grateful to the little dog for a thousand reasons, but now, he’s mostly thankful to him for having put the needed physical distance from his neighbour. Distance that has stretched far beyond your doors facing each other, or the simple act of crossing a threshold to spend time together.
That’s all his selfishness should have ever allowed. Your company around a dinner table, your fingers easing a vinyl onto the record player, your shorter steps trying to keep up with his longer strides while Gureum races you both. There should have always been something in between you, a buffer to remind him not to take more than he could give back.
Tonight, he’s been extra greedy. Extra hungry. And he feels a biting guilt that even with all barriers crumbling, his confidence with them, he badly wants to fight against his every belief just to have more.
Jeongguk has never been selfish, but as he looks at you he wonders what his life would look like if his walls weren’t so high, and if a single brick falling might mean the rest of them would follow.
He finds your gaze lost somewhere between his scratching motion and the void. One that he can see being filled with similar thoughts to the ones overcrowding in his brain, emptied of the alcohol that gave you any confidence to cross lines in the first place. You’re hovering awkwardly, back stiff and away from the cushions, hands at either side of you as your fingers dig into the firm material of his couch.
He can also see the exact moment you shake off the sudden daze, a starkly different fog from the one that had consumed you both while you were desperately grinding against each other.
You inhale, finally meeting his eyes, “I should probably go now.”
Jeongguk nods out of pure habit, agreeing simply to appease the other.
If he were selfish, he would have kept you here a little longer. Would have told you to wait just a moment more with your eyes closed while he rushed to his vinyl collection stacked in a cube shelf, retrieving the one he got for you. A limited edition of Karma Police, signed sleeve and the texture of authenticity beneath fingertips. He would have basked in your eyes filling with joy, filling his own stomach with a selfish need for your approval.
Instead, he stands first, ignoring the way your eyebrows twitch and betray your resolution for a small fraction. He begins his slow stride towards the door, with Gureum following close behind and you begrudgingly rising to join them.
This is exactly how it goes with his sporadic dates, exactly how it’s supposed to go with you, too. And like clockwork, he tells himself it must be a relief to detach from the rigid surface and from the sudden switch in his demeanour, once so confident and practiced and now reduced to an awkward, silent hesitance.
Still, for a fleeting second his thoughts detour, and he imagines that if you both had stayed long enough on that couch, it might have finally morphed under the shared weight of his and your body, adjusting and growing comfortable with your added warmth.
But you’re on your feet and beside him before he can allow himself to change his mind, or object to your request to leave. Why would he, when the script is followed so faithfully? The boy opens the door, and the girl steps stiffly outside.
Except, you’re not just another girl. Gureum proves it the moment he follows you over the threshold, sniffing at your feet in a blatant search for ear scratches. Your absorbed haze melts under Gureum’s irresistible charm, and with a giggle you kneel to comply with the dog’s needs.
Jeongguk huffs at the sight of your fingers curling into the fur, and wishes he could be as casually selfish as his dog. When you look up at him through your lashes with the remnants of your silly giggle on your lips, he gulps. Only manages a weak hum in return.
If Gureum had managed to thaw some of the awkwardness, Jeongguk freezes it right back, as the script would demand. You slowly stand, offering him a tight-lipped smile.
Clearly, there is no script in your head. Jeongguk has one for his hookups. Yours, no matter how carefully curated, is constantly being scribbled over, rewritten and ripped to shreds.
With no script in mind, you go full-rogue into improv. You hesitate, but eventually you speak with far more bravery than your ever-too-buff-too-tall neighbour Jeongguk has.
“By the way, I really enjoyed spending time with you and… what we did.”
Jeongguk licks his lips, eyes subconsciously flickering down to your own swollen mouth at the mention of what you did. He nods again, this time not only out of habit. He agrees wholeheartedly, wishes he’d told you on the couch before the night ended so abruptly.
He makes space for Gureum to slip back inside once the dog gives up on your attention. Then, he leans against the doorframe, half to keep the dog from changing his mind and going with you, half to extend the time he gets to have you.
Jeongguk has never been selfish, but when you bite your lip sheepishly he can’t help the urge to vocalise his agreement. “Me too. Glad I could be of help tonight.”
You scoff, but it sounds more like a breath of relief with the way Jeongguk’s mouth stretches into a wider smirk. With the way he finally lets his voice break through the heavy quiet that had settled between you, right where chaos should have been booming.
“Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Mister Hit-it-and-Quit-it.”
The comment is meant to lighten the air, land like your jabs usually do, blunt and bickerish — but Jeongguk’s brows twitch and your name slips his mouth in a low, warning tone. Head tilting, his smile follows along.
“I don’t… You’re not…”
“It’s okay.”
Your lips stay parted for a stretched second after the reassurance, as if you wanted to add something else but ultimately decided against it. Jeongguk’s mimic that same hesitance, morphing into a grimace when you turn your back to him. Chaos really does boom in his head now, creating a disarray string of thoughts.
What can he say to remedy this misunderstanding? That you’re not a hit-it-and-quit-it thing? You can’t possibly be, if only for the simple fact that you’re just a door away. Could he give you another reason?
He doesn’t think there’s any space left for that sort of reflection in his mind, not when all his thinking-cells actually process your three syllable response. Are you really fine with him being Mister Hit-it-and-Quit-it? Were you giving him an exit? Were you giving yourself one?
There are no answers to any of these questions, no answer as to why he’d even let himself have any over something that shouldn’t have this much control over him. He should be the one in control. He should be able to stop his mind from spiraling uselessly, especially when you’ve already unlocked your door and look ready to disappear behind it.
You turn to him, small smile still playing on your lips. Jeongguk is entirely unaware of how starkly his own expression contrasts with yours. You’re seemingly calm and collected, he’s clearly stiff and disoriented.
“Goodnight, Jeongguk. See you later.”
He must look like a fish out of water with the way he lets his mouth hang open, trying and failing to close around a single word. But you close the door before he can find his voice, and he’s left to stare at the only barrier left between you: a futile piece of wood he should’ve made sure stayed shut in the first place.
The next time it swings open for him, you’re in a ponytail and an oversized tee that hits you mid-thigh.
Jeongguk shouldn’t stare, but the way you’re pressed up against the door pushes your breasts together, and he’s a monster for allowing his gaze to flit even lower, to where your bare toes wiggle on the cold floor.
Luckily for him, you seem distracted. Though, his luck sours when he realizes you’d opened the door to just anyone without even checking who it was, his brows furrowing. And you’re not giving him your immediate attention, either.
Your eyes are momentarily fixed on something happening behind you, that he can’t see beyond the threshold, before they finally snap back to him. It looks like you’d rather get back at that something — or someone, the possibility of the latter having his jaw tick and his nose twitch with an unearned, childish feeling.
When your focus lands on Jeongguk, he’s staring directly into your eyes, praying he doesn’t look like he’s physically straining to keep his line of sight ahead.
Turns out it’s an easy task, because as your face softens into a smile, cheeks puffing and faint dimples appearing, he realizes the days he spent avoiding you — and acting so unlike the man he showcases himself as — were a total waste. And he thinks even if you did hate him for it, he’d only need one second of your lips stretching wide to feel better about life, infinitely worse about himself.
Unless you’re impeccable at concealing your true emotions, the way you beam up at Jeongguk doesn’t seem like you hate him. It should be a calming vision, but it stirs awake the side of his brain that archives his every insecurity and doubt, makes him think you must be truly, genuinely okay with him hitting-and-quitting.
It’s exactly what the script would want, isn’t it?
“Hey,” you’re fidgety, a different kind of concern than the one you wore when he first helped you with your burn. This one has your limbs jittery and your eyes sparkling as they take him in from head to toe. He’s not sure the spark has anything to do with seeing him, but he allows himself to bask in it anyway.
“Hi,” he breathes back, glancing down to where your gaze has also snagged. He pushes the focus of both your attention toward you. “Just wanted to give you this back.”
Your cookie container is held between you, empty and immaculate. Jeongguk figured he’d use it as a truce. For leaving things uncertain with you. And an excuse to see you.
Or, if you hadn’t been thinking of this as deeply as he has, it was simply a way to return what was yours to begin with.
One single cookie had been sitting in that box for days, lonely and dry. He couldn’t bring himself to eat it, no matter how much he’d wanted to — they were even better than Halmeoni’s, a truth she’ll never know and one he’d never admit to you.
Jeongguk had spent ten minutes in a staring contest with that last cookie before finally knocking at your door, leaving the treat behind in the bin. He’d felt even worse seeing it in the trash, surrounded by empty milk bottles and cola cans, than he would have if he’d just forced himself to stomach it.
He couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly bear the sweet taste of it on his tongue, a flavor that resembled yours so closely it would have held him back from seeing you even longer than he already had.
When you take the container from him, propping the door open with one foot, your fingers brush against his knuckles. It’s a killer combination with how you raise your brows teasingly.
“Took you long enough to finish them,” stepping back from the threshold, you grant him just enough space to enter, and he doesn’t need to be told twice.
The second he’s welcomed by the homey scent of baking dough and your own cotton candy fragrance as you skim past him with a grin, he feels his shoulders finally drop. His inhale pulls deeper, his exhale moves slower. None of the life-ending scenarios Jeongguk cataloged are actually taking place; there’s no someone keeping your attention off him. He’s in your apartment like he’s always been, and you’re giving him no reason to deviate from the script he’s set for you.
Friendly. Helpful. Arm’s length.
He’s suddenly unsure about that last directive. In fact, he’s already looking for a way to negotiate an alternative. To be unguarded but shielded, closer but removed.
He chuckles lowly, “Yeah. Wanted to take my time with each one.”
Jeongguk follows your retreating figure into the kitchen, a sarcastic scoff trailing after you as you bounce back to your work. The smell of dough is overwhelming once he steps into the space, and the state of your counter explains the emergency that had been waiting for you — the one that would have had you leave the door wide open too if Jeongguk hadn’t closed it firmly behind him. And locked it.
It’s a disaster of flour, chocolate chips, egg shells pooling their sticky trails and unwrapped butter half sweating in its packet. You hurriedly grasp a wooden spoon and resume your ministrations, one finger swiping a dollop of batter and bringing it to your mouth.
Humming around your digit, you lift your chin at Jeongguk, “Did you like them, then?”
He thinks it must be the way blood immediately rushes to his center that he feels lightheaded. His breath hitches, eyes ping-ponging between your raised brows and your pursed lips, finger coming out slicked. You have to be doing this on purpose. To test if it all can really be ignored. If he can stand in your kitchen like nothing changed, Mister Hit-it-and-Quit-it.
If he really isn’t selfish.
But his firefighter instincts kick in, his mind grounds him back to the first gruesome weeks of basic training in resilience.
And just like that, Jeongguk recovers from the make-believe test with a nod, approval stuttering in his throat. His gaze falls to the mixture, then to a smeared drop of chocolate on your forearm. He clears his throat, “Is this a bad moment?”
“Not at all,” you’re quick with your reply, though the back of your hand swiping a stray hair from your face and leaving a white streak of flour across your cheek tells a different story. “I’m making another stash for Grandma Mimi.”
He hums, walking closer to the counter until his palms are supporting his leaning weight against it. You’re directly opposite of him, tongue poking out in concentration as you beat the mix.
The question, though innate and routine, always seems to slip his mouth when he’s around you, “You need help?”
There is nothing that comes more naturally to him than helping. After all, it’s the only way he knows how to be available without shredding himself open, without giving too many parts of his own away but still feel like he’s needed.
You hesitate. You always do when he offers. Ultimately, you look up at him with a sheepish smile and a shrug of your shoulders, the neckline of your shirt sliding even further off one side.
“I guess. You know anything about baking?”
Jeongguk has his sleeves rolled up and his hands under the running water of your sink in seconds, at your side before you can even finish the sentence.
Truth is, he knows nothing about baking. The countless days spent in Halmeoni’s company were evidently never utilized to their full potential.
He admits as much, and soon you’re ordering him around for oven duties. He preps the tray exactly as you instruct, and all the while he’s juggling one side of his brain focusing on the task and the other completely inebriated by your sugary scent and the maddening itch to swipe the flour off your cheek.
Finished with his relatively easy and short job, Jeongguk yields to his instincts, but not before taking a lingering once-over of the kitchen, and you. He wonders if you truly consider him incapable of anything else. He might just be, if he’s already forgotten how to speak at the simple sight of your bare legs and the way you’re stretching on your tiptoes.
Tilting his head out of habit, as if the motion might knock some sense back into him, he reaches for banter. “How come Halmeoni never gets this messy, but you do?”
The comment is his key. Perfect access to your face, turning to him with furrowed brows and a stubborn pout. He lifts his thumb and lets it drag across your skin, brushing the white powder off. Whatever snarky retort was about to leave your lips dies there; wouldn’t be believable anyway, not with the dust blooming where his fingertip just grazed you.
You simply nudge him aside with your hip and take his place in front of the baking sheet he’d perfectly buttered, pouring the mixture in steady circles. “Grandma Mimi has years of practice and patience on her side.” The small compliment to Halmeoni aims to uplift, though in return, it only insinuates all the qualities you lack as a result.
In an attempt to test that supposedly short patience, he dips a thick digit into the dense batter, then wraps his lips around it much like you did, and his careful expression soon melts into a smirk when you narrow your eyes at him.
From the corner of his eye, he catches the brownish liquid beginning to overspill, and he’s fast — hand snapping to your wrist, his slicked finger digging into your skin to prevent a further mess.
You step back startled, surprise turning into hopelessness as you look down at the newfound mess on the tray. Beside you, Jeongguk bursts into a genuine giggle, this time nudging you aside with his own hips swaying.
You bite back a smile, concealing it with a roll of your eyes. “Your fault.”
The next five minutes pass in comfortable silence, with him replacing you at the counter and finishing the batch with attentive motions while you lean back, stealing glances at him. Once the stash is in the oven, he straightens up to meet your eyes for approval.
You nod, patting his shoulder as you walk past him to wash your hands. Jeongguk feels like a virgin again with the way he shivers under your brief touch, which is still not more embarrassing than how he’s suddenly too awkward to fill the quiet with anything.
He sighs, starting to accept that this specific brand of tension will have a permanent seat at the table from now on. Unless, of course, he decides to do something about it — and your thin white shirt, chocolate stains waiting to be licked clean.
Disgusting, sure. He would do it if you asked.
But he can’t. He’s not selfish, remember? Can’t allow himself to slip again, not if it means gaining the kind of access that leads to disappointing you, or making your spine even more rigid than it looks like right now, your back a straight, tense line turned toward him.
So, he finds something else to apologize for. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for Halmeoni’s birthday cake.”
You hum something that sounds like reassurance, but by the time you turn around your phone has found its way between your slender fingers, and your brows knit together at the bridge of your nose. You’re absorbed, eyes rapidly ping-ponging left to right.
Jeongguk is relieved that whatever is on your screen distracted you from his lame attempt at conversation; he’s significantly less relieved when he notices it has your bottom lip beginning to wobble and your next inhale trembling. Sirens definitely go off in his head when you abruptly click the device off and mindlessly toss it onto the counter.
He takes in your expression and naturally floats to his alarmed nature, by your side before he can talk himself out of it. “Is everything okay?”
You have a hard time meeting his sharp, concerned stare, either because of its sheer intensity or because too much vulnerability would be found in your own stiffened one.
Sighing, your orbs end up falling to your feet, still bare and cold against the tile. “My ex keeps texting me and it’s…”
“He’s harassing you.” He fills in the gap.
“…Yeah.”
The way your reply tilts into a shameful chuckle leaves him with an uncomfortable ache in his chest. In his head, he’s already reached for your phone and hurled it over the balcony to tumble down five floors.
Instead, he gives voice to the anger clogging his throat. “What a motherfucker. Do you need me to do something about him?”
It’s that simple question which gets your head to flit up, your clouded eyes instantly finding his, staring down at you. You’re baring your soul to him, and he wonders if it’s just as easy for you to read him, just from the way his pupils swell.
Head tilting, your voice is a fragile breath. “You would?”
No hesitation, Jeongguk nods. And he means it. “Of course I would.”
Evidently, there are many things Jeongguk would do if you asked. He would build your Ikea shoe rack from scratch. He would tend to your scars and pain. He would also lick your shirt clean, or beat an ex to a pulp without barely even remembering the man’s face.
There are just as many things written in your eyes that he can’t do. Even if you asked. Like explaining why he’s willing to stain his hands with blood for you, yet is unable to acknowledge the heavy and fat elephant in the room when it comes to where you both stand now.
“I… Thank you,” you let your gaze wander toward the oven, absentmindedly checking on the cookies. Then, swallowing hard, you take a tentative step back. “But I can handle it.”
And Jeongguk doesn’t usually push boundaries, mostly because he never lets anyone push his own, but he tells himself this is just making sure. “You know you don’t have to do it alone, right?”
Your head only shakes slightly before your arms wrap around your torso, as if you’ve suddenly realized how exposed you are. “It’s complicated, Gguk.”
You call it complicated, but for the first time Jeongguk sees a simple solution to a problem: you tell him what’s bothering you and he takes care of it. Complicated is how one of those bricks in his wall wobbles, yet Jeongguk still isn’t looking for a way to run.
He figures he only needs to push it back into place with enough force, and comply with the period you’ve put on the conversation offering a nod.
But he still can’t stomach your sour mood. If the cookies are meant to be a sweetener, he makes sure to sugar the taste further with anything that comes to mind to distract you. Like how he playfully nudges your elbow and swipes the chocolate from your arm, or how he makes you laugh when his finger finds a sneaky way to tickle your side.
Jeongguk then catches you up on worth-mentioning details of these past days you’ve missed while you were apart — because he’s a coward, though he omits that part. He tells you how Gureum nearly ripped another plastic bag out of an old lady’s hand. You playfully scold him for not properly putting the dog in training, and he replies with a scoff. Though he refers to Gureum as his baby, he returns the banter by asking you to lay off the old man.
Jeongguk continues with his musings and how he went vinyl shopping because he needed more jazz flowing in his apartment. He also carefully omits that the only reason he needed jazz at all was because you were the one who had introduced him to it.
What matters is that whatever he’s babbling about, you’re hanging on every word. Smiling again, giggling freely like nothing ever happened. No drunk grinding, no awkward separation, no ex-boyfriend hovering. He thinks he can mend every one of those slips, seeing how easily you fall back into your usual rhythm. He wants everything with you to always look exactly like this.
Friendly. Helpful. Arms brushing.
The cookie container is packed high again, as if it were never meant to remain empty for long. You’ve washed up and traded the oversized tee for a clean shirt and a pair of sweats. Jeongguk had waited on your couch, fingers itching to trace the pictures on the opposite wall — a carefully composed gallery of you and your loved ones. Your space speaks of you; it’s never entirely tidy, but it feels deeply lived.
Jingling your keys to call for his attention, you grin. “Let’s go, big guy.”
He scoffs and stands to join you, and as he gets closer the nickname fits him perfectly. With the way you’re looking up at him from your shorter stance, he notices the dusting of blush on your cheeks and the gloss highlighting your lips. You narrow your eyes at him as if you’ve been caught and he keeps a grin tucked away.
Though, his amusement shifts into a slight frown when he wonders if you felt the need to retouch your bare face in the first place. To him, you looked beautiful either way.
And Halmeoni tells you as much the moment she greets you both at the door. “Oh, my pretty young lady and my handsome boy! To what do I owe the visit?”
“Happy Diamond Anniversary, Grandma Mimi!”
Halmeoni’s full and gravelly laugh is the last thing to echo in the hallway before the door clicks shut, sealing you both inside.
Your feet are tucked into fluffy slippers while his find their designated slides. The lid of your box is off and the scent of freshly baked cookies waltzes through the small space of the living room that has smelled like the same unwavering love for sixty years. A scent that now mixes with your own sweetness.
Jeongguk would have visited at some point during the day, just as he does every year. But this time, he gets to do it with you. Gets to witness how you manage to slot perfectly, perhaps with an ease that was entirely foreign to Jeongguk his first year living here. You soothe the loving grief that fills Halmeoni’s eyes, the one you come to understand like it’s instinctual, like Jeongguk’s never truly been able to.
He and Halmeoni have unspoken rituals for this day, traditions that have stood strong for a few years now, but there’s one that has him playfully rolling his eyes when the old lady stands and makes her way to the digital record player. The vinyl is already set, otherwise Halmeoni would have huffed for Jeongguk’s help. He’d gifted her the player a while back after the original, a rusty relic that had sat on her cabinet longer than he’d lived in the complex, finally gave up. That old box was no less respectable for its deserved silence, though. It had hummed through countless songs.
The one that begins spinning now is lived-in and just as weathered, but perfectly preserved — perhaps held in stasis just for this exact moment, every single year.
“C’mon Jeonggukkie, stand up,” Halmeoni gestures at him, but Jeongguk’s eyes land on you. You’re looking between them as though you’re also waiting for an instruction, and he can read it in the soft lines of your face — that you feel like an outsider to a tradition you’re still more than ready to witness, and welcome.
This year, Jeongguk gets to let out a breath of genuine relief. With you here, the bittersweetness shifts, melts into purely sweet. You’re like the fourth spoon of sugar Halmeoni uses to stir her tea, the only way the beverage can be served in this house.
He didn’t even have to nudge his dear Halmeoni to her feet. She stood first, and now there’s a lively intention playing across her features. This year, his heart feels lighter, beats along with your excited claps as you begin to puzzle the pieces.
At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over, and life is like a song.
The tradition unfolding in the tight intimacy of Halmeoni’s living room calls for Jeongguk’s hand to rest flat against the old lady’s back, while her own fingers grip his broad shoulder; their free hands lace together and sway with the slow dance.
A union intended to replicate the delicacy of a wedding’s first dance, the very first time newlyleds get to stare at one another without the need for more words, having just promised to hold each other exactly like this through good and bad. Health and sickness.
Halmeoni beams up at Jeongguk like the sight of smooth skin and the absence of wrinkles means there’s still a canvas for love to leave its trace on. Jeongguk grins back like the sight of lines and creases means the ones that love leaves on you will only melt together beautifully in the end.
And there’s a pull he can’t ignore, an instinct telling him he cannot miss the look on your face. Like the sight of your pressed, curved smile and your taut eyebrows, drawn up dreamily as your hands knot together on your lap, might mean you can still see that there’s good in Jeongguk, as much as there’s been bad.
When your eyes flit up to meet his from your seat at the round table, his own brows are raised as if he’d ask you directly, and his lips stretch into a mirror of your own. The slight roll of your eyes does little to conceal the thin sheen coating them, especially when the light catches its shine.
Jeongguk believes that no matter the bad that lives in him, he doesn’t deserve to be met with such an aching, pretty sight — not if he’s too paralysed to do anything about it.
Though, Halmeoni might just want her shoulder angel to attempt it. And, nudging his shoulder, she detaches from him with a weakly voiced excuse, “Jeonggukkie, I’m too old for this. Ask the young lady to dance, will you?”
Jeongguk is suddenly the center of gravity between two expectant ladies: to his left, the old one lifts her chin up beyond him, which takes him to his right, where the young one sits with dimpled cheeks and a straight back. He chuckles, taking the time to look in between you both.
The smile lingers when he lets the moment sink. Halmeoni would be the onlooker to a humble rendition of her own great love; you would be stepping delicately into such a precious ritual — perhaps kicking off one of your own.
And Jeongguk wistfully hopes that one year from now it will go as follows: with hesitant steps your way, one hand extended while the other is tucked behind his back; your giggle resounding against the walls before you wrap your warmth around his, letting yourself be hoisted up and pulled into his chest with a surprised yelp; one palm resting on the small of your back, the other still lacing through yours, while your free hand cups his bicep; your teeth bared for him to bask in as he unconsciously reflects the same joy on you.
You smiled, you smiled. Oh, and then the spell was cast.
You beam up at Jeongguk like the sight of swollen pupils and bunny teeth worrying at his bottom lip might speak all the words he hasn’t said. Jeongguk offers you a half-smile like the sight of pure integrity in the gloss of your eyes might make this enactment a tangible reality.
And he can’t get enough of it when you raise your brows teasingly at him. “Wasn’t expecting a fireman to dance like such a gentleman.”
His smile is pursed, but it slips through his low voice. “Yeah, well… I’ve had a pretty demanding teacher.”
Your giggle is contagious: it trickles its way up Jeongguk’s throat and resounds in Halmeoni’s chest, too, when you both turn to her and she’s still standing, looking at you both dreamily. When your gazes lock again, the line between dream and reality truly begins to blur.
The swaying motion has the room spinning, the rest of the world dimming into a soft hum. It builds a growing sickness in his stomach, a dizzy vertigo that only heightens when you seem unable to hold the weight of his stare any longer, resting the side of your face on his chest with a soft breath.
Warmth threatens to melt your skin together where you touch, and his palm on your waist only slides lower, then up again, then back down. His eyes trace the way your hand fits into the wider expanse of his, and how your grip on his arm brushes up to the sensitive base of his neck. And when you come back around from a slow spin and your breath hitches in your throat, so attuned to your every reaction, he follows your line of sight.
In the center of the living room, Halmeoni holds the air as her dance partner, eyelids fluttering shut and the hint of a peaceful smile playing on her lips. She sways almost perfectly in sync with the two of you, and Jeongguk wonders if the ghost might be buzzing with the same electric energy surging through his own veins.
Looking down, he finds you already staring up at him. The stars in your eyes have multiplied, and your drawn up brows act like a tent, shielding the soft twinkling from the moon, the swelling intensity of his own orbs.
Your slender fingers cup around his shoulder, and your chin brushes the top of his chest. “A love like that… it must be a one-in-a-million thing.”
He sighs, breath fanning over your lashes. “And she’s truly convinced I’ll find something like that, too.”
Your chuckle is laced with sentiment, head tilting just to make the ache in his abdomen more pronounced. “I’m positive you will, Gguk.”
Will he? The cookie he managed to stomach earlier rises in his throat, but it’s words that he vomits before he can feel truly sick.
“Are we okay, Oomps?”
Jeongguk feels your tensing muscles beneath his hand, and your steps falter before it all washes over your face with an imperceptible twitch of your brows.
You seemingly recover with a nod and a tight smile. “Yes, we are. Why wouldn’t we be?”
It should feel relieving, hearing those whispered words from your pretty lips. But those are the same pretty lips he’s kissed, the ones he knows taste as sweet as chocolate chips. And the fact that you don’t seem to see a single reason why you shouldn’t be okay with him not getting to try them again makes him question if he truly wants this for the both of you.
Later, when you’ve slipped back into your apartment for a work call and Jeongguk has watched you go, Halmeoni sits beside him on the couch, holding two cups. The overly-sugary tea for her, the sour one handed to him — an exception she makes just for her handsome boy.
“There’s something on your mind, hm?” She talks around the rim, sipping the hot beverage.
Jeongguk swallows the liquid in one large gulp, the ceramic hiding everything but his furrowed brows and wide eyes. Leaning forward to set the cup down on the low coffee table, he shakes his head as he sinks back into the cushions.
“Like what?”
Halmeoni takes her time with her tea. The cup clinks softly against its matching saucer as she, too, settles into the soft sofa. “I think it has to do with your front-door neighbour.”
Jeongguk scoffs, a telling sound he makes when she catches him red-handed. He avoids her scrutinising stare, gaze landing on the spot where you sat before the dance, and left his embrace to fall into another routine with Halmeoni, between her groggy laugh and your light giggles.
And she lets him know he’s been caught, tone calm. She might be too old to dance now, but the older you grow, the wiser you get. “Don’t lie to me, Jeonggukkie.”
He sighs, shifting forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “I’m not lying. She’s a nice friend, that’s all.”
“It’s worth it,” her voice drops an octave, followed by a faint cough that forces Jeongguk to look at her. A sudden, heavy solemnity is painted across her features. “Giving yourself the chance to feel something. To have something. You deserve it.”
Jeongguk wants to believe her. Let the air clogging his chest break free and take in the words of the woman who’s cared for him, mended the hurt, seen the fear behind his eyelids. But that fear speaks louder, and it tells him he doesn’t deserve to take up more space on the fifth floor of this complex — not when he’s already a weight on Halmeoni’s curving back, not when he’s witnessed how easily pain transfers from one body to the other. Not when he knows letting himself feel something, have something, might consume him.
He shrugs as if the hurt could simply topple down his shoulders. “There’s nothing between us.”
“Don’t lead the girl on, then.”
Halmeoni’s finished with her tea, and Jeongguk instinctively reaches for her cup to set it aside. When he turns back, she’s wearing a warm smile. It’s meant to thank him and lessen the blow of her words.
“I’m not—”
“I know you’d hate hurting another more than you’d hate hurting yourself. I just want you to free yourself and move on, my handsome boy.”
As if guided by a natural consequence of her delicate words, Halmeoni looks to the side. More specifically, her narrow eyes land on the wrinkled paper calendar hanging on the wall, in the same spot every calendar has been for the past seven years.
Today marks a significant date, a memorable moment that gave space for a long love story to unfold. There’s a heart drawn in its correspondence, crooked and red inked. A few spots below it, in the same red ink, Halmeoni marks a J and a K.
It’s not his birthday, nor is it a special day worth celebrating. Every year, Halmeoni reminds herself to give Jeongguk just a bit more love on that day. Show just a bit more understanding, delicacy. She does it so she never has to see her Jeonggukkie’s face turn that porcelain white again, wet with tears, red eyes a haunting contrast.
Does the ink remind her of that? Or of how love can be both a consuming fire and a consumed fuel?
Her voice resounds from his side, and he grips to it with all his wistful hope. “Letting someone in comes with opening old and fresh wounds. It might also just be what finally heals them.”
This month always leaves him spiraling, gets him thinking of all the things that keep him away from what Halmeoni swears he deserves, from you. He tries to push through. Still, even walking into your space can feed the fire at times.
You truly make it seem like it’s okay. Like everything is exactly as it should be.
There are still nights spent at his place, or yours. Though Gureum, or whatever cushion is available, finds its spot between you — and ends up nearly crushed in your subtle attempt to slide closer on the couch.
You still let him pick from your vinyl collection, teasing him for always choosing the mainstream option, the safe choice. Tell him you wish he’d risk more, maybe pick that forgotten French record your dad had passed down to you.
There are still spontaneous walks in the park behind the building, where your designated bench and the morphing clouds always get you compliant and vulnerable.
“It took me burning myself to break through you,” you reminisce in the nearing-spring air and the remark sits bitter on Jeongguk’s tongue. “I’m almost glad for my clumsiness in moments like these.”
He manages a smile, melting into a genuine laugh when he turns to you. “You sure you didn’t do it on purpose, hm?”
You still drag him into Pixar marathons and sniffle quietly by the end of every single movie, especially when you watch Up and ask Jeongguk if Grandpa Mimi was similar to Carl. “This could be them in another universe.”
There’s still the thread of texts when work keeps you apart, too busy to even stumble into one another in the hallway. You send pictures of brave puppies getting their first vaccines; he sends back selfies with Gureum saying hi and wishing them luck.
And you still make it hard for him not to stare, as if he could easily pretend he’s unaffected by your mere presence. He can’t swear he doesn’t still think of you coming undone on top of him, entirely still dressed, and he can’t ignore the way he gets hard the minute he’s left alone in silence. Your moans are the only sound he wishes the walls of his living room could echo again.
In the suffocating quiet of his apartment, the only stifled sounds are his own as he shamefully allows selfishness to win. To make his hand travel down, beneath his sweats, thumb swiping the top of his slit where his arousal drips at the mere contact of his hand — at the mere thought of you. He thinks of you and how your smile lights up a room. How your fingers delicately thread through Gureum’s fur. How you’ve picked up the habit of grabbing his forearm when you ask for something, for help you’re usually too stubborn to receive openly.
On his couch, firm and uncomfortable, he spreads his legs just as he had to welcome you further against him, hand applying just enough pressure to maintain the illusion of you until he’s spilling into his boxers. He gasps into the silence of his living room, shame filling his entire being, but he doesn’t stop there. His selfish act only morphs into punishment, palming himself until he’s too sensitive to feel good after his orgasm. Until he feels disgusting for even daring to look at you — for thinking of you that way.
It’s been a few days since you’ve seen each other, and since he’s been dry in your chat thread to overcompensate for feeling like a guilty bastard. And the next time he sees you, it’s under the blue lights of a club, the one his friends dragged him to after he ran out of too-tired-from-work excuses.
Blue is exactly how he’s been feeling lately, but it’s never looked prettier as the light traces your cheeks and the slope of your nose, the curve of your ass. His twisted and wrecked mind spins, convinces him you might merge well together after all.
You’re with a few of the girls he recognises from your birthday, though he only notices them because they’re laced close to you, dancing to the house music booming from the DJ console. There are also masculine faces he doesn’t think he’s seen before around you, and those he notices because of a green, wicked monster crawling up his throat.
You aren’t paying them much attention, though a thin, blond one is hovering particularly close to your side, hands occasionally brushing your back. Jeongguk doesn’t realise his entire body is tensing, fighting against the green gremlin now whispering in his ear, until his arm twitches and he’s bumping hard into someone.
The girl immediately apologises, despite having no reason to. Jeongguk nods, and under the morphing-to-red lights of the bar, he recognises her as one of the girls Taehyung introduced to the group during their pregame. Julie, if he was paying enough attention. Brunette, tall, green eyes.
It’s been a while since Jeongguk has done any of this. The last time he was at a pregame, he was twenty-two. Five years later, things unfolded differently. Nobody threw up before even getting to the actual game, nor mixed dubious liquids together into one cup. It had felt more like a gathering, a civilized catching up. He’d passed on Yoongi’s offer to smoke, earning only a casual shrug, and could barely down two glasses of gin before he was grimacing from the mere smell of alcohol.
Julie looks up at him the same way she did when her hand was first extended toward him in Taehyung’s living room. Shy, the kind of bashfulness that made Jeongguk think she wouldn’t have uttered a single other word to him but her own name. And just as he prepares to turn back to the crowd to localise you, she steps closer, lips brushing the shell of his ear.
“You look like you’re not enjoying yourself,” her voice is barely a thread against the booming bass, and that’s exactly why she must make sure to press her mouth to his lobe, and her chest flush against his. No other reason, he hopes.
He chuckles humorlessly, his own lips hovering near her hair. His eyes scan the floor, seeking the only person who has the power to make him feel exactly what a girl he’s met less than two hours ago senses he’s not.
And he finds you. His neighbour, the girl he’s known for a little over a year, finally beginning to get along with. Made him feel blue unconsciously, green greedily, red avidly — damn near all colors of the rainbow. You’ve painted his life in so many shades in the short span of time, each encounter morphing into another color like how the fluorescent lights change once again the moment you enter his line of sight, painting you in the shade you bring whenever you’re with him, shining rays on a cloudy day.
Under the yellow glow, your eyes finally lock onto his. Even with the swarm of bodies in between you, your perceptive eyes zero in on Julie’s figure practically draped over his own.
When you stare directly at him, you lift your chin in recognition. He replicates the gesture, and his own hardened gaze takes in how you’ve let the blond guy wrap a lazy arm around your front, his nose nuzzled in your hair, mouth moving around something that makes you laugh.
Eyes snapping back to yours, Jeongguk pokes his tongue against the inside of his cheek before he speaks back into Julie’s ear. “Are you?”
The girl seems to have never heard something funnier, leaving her weight anchored to his chest, one hand splayed across his stomach for support. And he swears he sees your jaw tick, almost at the same time his teeth clench at a foreign hand expanding across your lace-covered torso.
Julie, seemingly shy and sheepish Julie, lets a manicured hand slide up his front, to his neck, until her fingers are pressing against his cheek to force his face down, meeting her own yellow-flashed face. It blends differently over her features, makes them feline and sharp, a harsh contrast to how your wide eyes turn soft and droopy under the same glow.
“Could be if you dance with me,” his gaze falls to Julie’s lips to read the words smoothly flowing out, and they stretch into a smile that feels nothing like yours. Her palm snaking around his waist is alien compared to your warmth, how it led his hips up to meet yours. Her face is too close, and it feels fundamentally wrong from how you have to crane your neck up instead.
Jeongguk is searching for a familiarity he reluctantly accepts he’s found in you. And his face fights against the soft hold on it, a rejection he wouldn’t have dreamt of two months ago when his search aimed for anything to fill the void. He thinks he’s found a new brick for his wall, and his eyes desperately scan the room for it.
But when he finds the blond guy — the one who looks like his polar opposite — you are no longer wrapped around him.
For a split second, relief washes over him. The green monster loosens its grip on his throat. But that leaves space for panic to rise when he realises he’s lost sight of you entirely. You’ve slipped through the crowd, vanishing much like you had on your own birthday night.
Julie becomes the least of his worries. He detaches himself from her clutching fingers, ignoring the confusion twitching across her face as he turns around and shoves his way through sweat and hormones. He can feel himself sweating too, and he’s certain his hormones spiked the second he spotted your swaying figure.
Jeongguk pictures you outside, pink lighter clutched in one hand, long cigarette in the other. And his primary mission becomes the one to pluck the stick from your fingers, just as he usually does when you’ve poured a bit too much of his whiskey and retreat to his balcony for a nicotine break that you explain is necessary after a little alcohol.
He hates you smoking. Hates the thought of your lungs filling up with toxic grey and your bubblegum shampoo fading beneath the linger of ash. Hates how your laugh sounds a little groggier afterward and how your tobacco-tainted breath still wouldn’t stop him from kissing you if you asked. Or if you even leaned closer.
When he steps out of the club, his lungs welcome the cold air with a sharp inhale. The sidewalk is a sea of people looking to dampen their house-music adrenaline with a smoke, or looking just as lost as he is.
He wonders if each lost-person is looking for their smoker, and if that would make all of them puzzle pieces waiting to click into place. His own smoker is nowhere in the proximity, and he scans every hand for a neon pink lighter, every shoe for a pair of brown pointed heels.
But it isn’t a visual that locates you; it’s your voice. Uncharacteristically high-pitched and characteristically vibrating with irritation, it booms from his right.
“Don’t fucking touch me, I swear to God,” the second the agitated and shaky tone reaches his ears, Jeongguk is pushing past groups of smokers until he finds a neon pink lighter clutched in a white-knuckled fist, brown heels taking a hurried, defensive step back and your trembling eyes fighting to maintain a flicker of authority.
The man looming over you resembles the same one you threatened with similar words on the night of your birthday, when Jeongguk had also felt that gut-punch of relief at finding you just in time.
It all flashes before him: your voice swearing you don’t need his help and that you could handle it on your own, the fear tensing your muscles, and how a single text on your screen could flip your chocolate stained lips into a frown.
Jeongguk doesn’t have to think more; he simply acts. Steps in because he cannot allow anything bad to happen to you, acts out of the pure instinct to protect you, because he knows he can’t fail at that.
He closes the distance in two large strides, palms slamming harshly against the guy’s chest before his fist cinches around the collar of his shirt, jerking him forward.
“Wasn’t clear the last time, man? She’s done talking to you.”
Beside him, he hears you gasp. “Jeongguk!”
Your ex scoffs in his face, twisting uselessly against his unyielding hold. Neither of them turns to look at you. Jeongguk, because he’s afraid the look on your face might make his knees buckle even more than the sound of his name on your lips already has. The shit-eating grin in front of him, because he’s too proud to lose a staring contest against another man.
Mingyu ignores Jeongguk, directing his jabs back at you — where he knows it’ll hurt. “I know you take care of dogs all day, didn’t know you found yourself a new pup”
“Oh, you think you’re so fucking funny, Mingyu.” You spit the name with venom, and Jeongguk hates the sound of it but relishes in the way you pronounce it with just as much hatred as he feels.
Mingyu sneers at you, then he turns back to Jeongguk, lips pursing around a lazy smile. “Your stray finds it funny, though.”
Jeongguk sports a lopsided smirk on his face. He does find it funny. Finds it funny how he doesn’t let go, not when Mingyu pathetically struggles, only when he feels your hand brush his bare forearm. Finds it funny because he never loses control, and this is unlike him, but he’s going to bruise your ex boyfriend’s asymmetrical jaw with his ringed fist if you so much as whisper the order. His loyalty to you is the only thing keeping him from acting out of line.
Jeongguk must truly be your puppy, after all.
Taking a step back, he allows himself the sight of you, and when he sees knitted brows and a jagged bottom lip, he feels his fingers twitch. They fight the urge to cradle your face, can’t resist the one to curl around your waist.
The last words he hopes to spit in Mingyu’s entitled face are forced through gritted teeth, “If you know what’s best for you, stay the fuck away from her.” He leaves out other potentially behind-the-bars worthy words in favour of taking you out of this situation.
No additional words are exchanged as Jeongguk leads you away from the crowd and crowds you against him, between his palm pressed firmly at the edge of your shoulder and his chest shielding you. He can feel you under his skin, can recognize the tension in your frame, knows you’re still unwilling to break in front of him.
But once he settles you into the passenger seat of his car and circles around to take his place beside you, before he can find his voice to promise you he’ll never let this happen to you — ever again — you find your own.
“I’m sorry.”
And Jeongguk has always struggled with putting together your script, trying to figure out what’s safe, which lines are off-limits and which ones he’s allowed to nudge. But in his head, he’s currently crouching down his desk and sweeping everything off, clearing the state as his face twitches with a flicker of worry and anger.
Worry, because he doesn’t think he could find a single thing you need to apologise for if he tried. Anger, because he wishes he could reach out and tug away whatever instilled fear led you to say sorry in the first place, more than your distraught face is pulling at his heartstrings.
“No, what?” His voice is barely a whisper, and his fingers instinctively come to brush the hair from your face, pinning the strands carefully behind your ears. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“But I do.” You shift in your seat, and even as you’re arguing that you’ve done something wrong, you still lean in his touch. The side of your face seeks the faint heat of his fingertips as you turn fully toward him. “I’m always somehow in these situations and you’re always somehow at my rescue.”
Jeongguk would argue back, tell you that’s the only thing he knows how to do. The line he’s allowed to cross, to show you he cares, more than he’d want to admit. Prove he’s worth having around, his presence’s worth your time. It’s the one thing he’ll be selfish for, no matter if you push his help away.
But he can’t get the words out, not when he’s finally in front of you again, and big eyes stare up at him in the dim light of the dashboard, and smoke doesn’t linger on you. His nostrils inhale cotton candy and vodka.
“I wish I could do something for you, too.”
His chest catches a heated spark at your eagerness to return his gesture. Though, he’s in no immediate danger other than the proximity you’ve decreased between your bodies.
“Please?” You peer at him through your lashes.
Your voice is the catalyst. It’s still scarred, and it tears Jeongguk’s wounds open. It burns beautifully, breath hitching when your eyes drop to his mouth. And it’s a pull he has no hope of fighting; he realizes far too late that you are simply too close.
It might be to prevent you from using your words to dig deeper into his scars, or so he tells himself. But he only needs the feel of your fingers curling around the base of his neck, and his own spanning your cheek and jaw until they curve into the hair behind your ear to accept your mouth on his.
He finds it’s the first time in weeks that his brain shuts down. Leaves space for a peaceful hum to block the constant static of his sabotaging thoughts out.
The only other sound that filters through is your relieved whimper, the one that gives him permission to deepen the kiss, to slice his tongue across yours. You’re tugging him closer, both arms coming to wrap around his shoulders, and his stomach digs uncomfortably in the center console dividing your bodies, but he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t care when he tastes traces of tobacco on your tongue. He doesn’t care when your nails catch against the expanse of his back and he lets out a pained, hungry moan on your slicked lips.
He does care when that seems to be what has you suddenly pulling back, creating a frantic distance between your mouths. Though, a shimmering trail of saliva and lip gloss keeps you tethered before you’re loosening your hold entirely, settling your hands in your lap and shifting straight against the passenger seat.
Jeongguk is left panting, elbow still propped on the console and mouth unconsciously seeking yours one more time before he snaps out of the daze, and noise comes flooding back in.
You swallow before exhaling, “Sorry.”
He blinks, licking the sweet taste of you from his lips. Even your lipgloss threatens to make his teeth rot, bubblegum on his tongue. And he speaks before he even processes that he remembers how to.
“There is something you can do for me.”
You quip. “What?”
“I want you to never apologise again.”
Your front teeth come out to bite onto your bottom lip, struggling to keep a smile at bay. Nodding, you settle further into your seat and reach for the belt.
Despite the raging battle in his head, Jeongguk remains enthralled by your every move, attuned to your every need, and reaches over to click the belt into place for you, knuckles brushing yours.
“Thank you,” you say, voice low. “For helping me.”
“Of course. I know you said you wanted to sort it out on your own,” Jeongguk sets his own belt and starts the engine. “But let me deal with him.”
You fall eerily silent after his offer. As he drives, he keeps glancing over, hand steady on the gearshift but itching to reach you, startle you with a palm on your knee, snatch your attention away from the passing city lights, force you to look at him. He needs to see your face to make sure you’re truly okay.
But his hand never makes the move, and instead he shifts his eyes back to the road ahead and lets his low voice fill the tight space. “Are you okay? Did he try anything?”
You seem to snap out of a daze, back lifting from the seat as you turn to him, shaking your head. “No, it’s just…”
Silence fills his ears again. To Jeongguk, it translates into a restless dissonance as his mind begins its usual routine of filling the voids for him.
It’s just… could be followed up with I don’t need your help or You’ve served your purpose on that couch already or, making his brows furrow tighter, I never needed you to save me.
And Jeongguk realizes, with a twinge of desperation, that he needs you to need him. Need his help, so that he’ll show you he can fulfill one more purpose.
“When I was with him,” you begin with none of Jeongguk’s predictions, yet his ears perk and his grip around the steering wheel tightens. A red light has him braking lightly, and in the stillness he gets to look at you and how the crimson shade bathes you in orange hues.
“I always felt small. It was like my every move was judged, scrutinised. Like he thought I wasn’t good on my own and I couldn’t choose for myself.”
Your face is washed in green, and Jeongguk doesn’t dare speak as he moves his eyes back to the road, the hum of the engine filling your pause. You inhale, “My every thought had to be approved by him. Felt soulless at some point. Pathetic, right?” You try to diffuse the heaviness of the conversation with a breathy chuckle.
Jeongguk knows you as anything but soulless. What drew him to you was how your world spun around so many planets, how you never hesitated to let your words out unfiltered and honest. But you’re wavering now, trembling over what to reveal.
“And the way I let myself fall into that… it scares me. Terrifies me. That I willingly stuck by him, just for a flicker of love.”
He’s not good with words the way you are; he wouldn’t trust himself to make sense of disjointed feelings. But it’s similar, the ache in his chest and your shaky exhale. So, he lets his hand cup your knee, thumb soon picking up a soothing motion over your bare skin.
Placing your own palm over his, you keep your gaze fixed on your grazing fingers and he steals glances at the way your teeth pick at the flesh of your bottom lip.
You release it the moment you’re ready to add more, “Receiving help is not so easy for me. It makes me feel useless, like I can’t do enough on my own.”
Like you’re not enough on your own.
He’s sure you can feel how his fingertips unconsciously dig into your thigh, and how he quickly releases the pressure when he hears you whimper. He’s not sure you also feel static in your ears, but the buzz is deafening in his.
Because useless is exactly how he feels when he’s not helping, not carrying additional weight on his shoulders. Save or else he’s failed.
And maybe the whir of that thought reaches the tips of his hand, maybe you feel it tensing his body, because you don’t finish without adding, “But I feel different around you. A good different.”
He stills at your confession.
Jeongguk is not good with words the way you are, but as he brakes at another red light, he turns to you and doesn’t feel like he’s forcing his smile. Doesn’t even feel it forming. It sticks naturally to his face when your eyes finally meet his, and he can breathe regularly when he finds there’s nothing but sincerity in yours, the same one reflected in his.
His hand moves but doesn’t leave you. It cups the side of your face, snakes through your hair, then slides down your neck and tickles there, just to hear your giggle as you flinch. He asks if you’ve eaten, and when you shake your head, his thumb traces the line dangerously close to your mouth.
“What do you wanna eat, hm?”
You hum, seeking the warmth of his palm with your cheek. “Cookies.”
Jeongguk is not good with words, but the moment you step out of the car he’s wrapping you in his jacket, although the walk to the building entrance is only a few steps. He’s not good with words, but his hand guides you by your waist as if you’re made of porcelain — delicate, precious.
And he’s not good with words, but after you’ve changed into mismatched pajamas and he’s helped remove your makeup, he doesn’t hesitate when you ask him not to leave you alone tonight through a mouthful of dough and chocolate chips, and he nods. Lets your head rest on his lap as he softly plays with your hair and you stretch out across the length of the couch.
He remains seated uncomfortably on the soft sofa, neck craned back in a way that will surely haunt him tomorrow. And as he drifts in and out of sleep, hand still tangled in your locks, the ache in his neck is sharper but his heart only grows fonder when he sees you’ve drooled just a little bit more over his thigh.
He thinks he’s fully stirring awake when the morning light filters through his cracked eyelids, although when he tries to move, the muscles running along his spine scream in protest. Jeongguk thinks he’s paralysed, but it doesn’t wholly register until he’s stuck in a limbo between dreamland and reality.
He sees your living room, the brownish coffee table at his feet. But on the wall opposite him there are no pictures of a smiling-you surrounded by golden retrievers.
No, there’s a wrinkled piece of paper with a messily jotted schedule, specific times for specific medications. And no sight of the flat-screen TV he’s helped you install either, just a blank wall and Gureum’s worn out bed at its feet.
When Jeongguk sees himself, he jolts. Fights with everything he has to move from the couch, force his neck to straighten and escape the vision. But then, the girl he’s spent years trying to erase from his mind steps into view, and she’s pushing at his chest. The other him’s chest.
“You can keep the dog, I don’t care,” she spits the crude words in his face, and Jeongguk flinches on your couch, trapped in the replay.
“Keep the dog? Nora, it’s your dog. You told me you wanted it. And I’m fucking allergic,” he watches his past self try to reason, wants to scream at that younger version of him to just give it up, realize Gureum is better off with him anyway.
“I don’t care, Jeongguk. Just do whatever the fuck you want with him.” Nora paces back and forth like she’s trying to keep her jagged anger at bay.
Jeongguk whimpers, his hand twitching to reach for her but she flinches away. He’s fully panting now, out of breath, and five years later he’s watching from the outside and still feels his eyes sting with the same panic.
“So, you’re just gonna leave us? Leave me?”
“Yes, god! I don’t need you anymore. You’ve served your purpose.” Her arms are wide in exasperation, as if there’s no other way to explain the obvious.
Jeongguk has served his purpose. He’s not needed anymore.
From his cramped, uncomfortable position on the couch, the moment he sees his brows twitch and his bottom lip wobble, he wants to yell that it’s no use. That searching for more answers will only make it worse for himself.
But the scene unfolds with the cold precision of back then.
Jeongguk takes a step closer, Nora takes a step back. And it shakes him to the core to see her look at him with fear. Like he’d ever given her a reason to be afraid of him.
“Served my purpose? The fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you seeing someone else?”
Nora scoffs, turning away, “It’s none of your business—”
“It is, for fuck’s sake!” The veins in his neck strain, and he can hear Gureum whining from behind the couch. “You’re my girlfriend, I’ve been by your side through hell and never complained. Because I love you, and I figured you’d—”
“And I never fucking asked you to do that. I never needed you to save me.”
Time stops. Jeongguk watches, dumbfounded, as Nora turns her back on him to stuff a bag with pills she needs for the day and hoists it up her shoulder.
When she’s back in his face, she warns. “Take Gureum and your ass out of my apartment. I’m staying at my dad’s tonight. Don’t look for me.”
A sob escapes his puffy lips, and he reaches for her one last time. “Bug, don’t do this. Don’t leave me, please,” Nora averts his touch, and the sight — the absence of her skin beneath his fingertips, sends him to a low he’d never reached before. “I forgive you. It’s fine, I don’t care if you cheated—”
“Stop, Jeongguk! I’m sick of you,” she screams like she wishes he’d disappear, fade into tiny shreds of a light that once shined, now flickers. “I’m finally getting better. I think I deserve more than this, no? More than you.”
“I don’t—” he’s rarely speechless, but as the weight of every sacrifice he made for the girl in front of him flashes behind his eyes, he feels his heart sink into his stomach. “I’m happy for you, Ora. I’ve always wanted this for you. Tell me what more I can do and I will—”
“Let me go. Take the dog with you and forget me.”
Jeongguk doesn’t think he’s ever let go. He’s let go of her, yes — not of the haunting sense of solitude and emptiness that reigned in his chest at that moment, still finds its way up at times. Especially as he watches powerless from the couch, and he’s aware the tear he sees spilling in the memory is also currently tracing his cheek.
Then, her shoulder bumps against his as she storms past, and the booming sound of the door slamming jolts him awake.
He’s wheezing for air, hands flying to his chest until the panic turns into a harsh cough. The sharp pain in his neck is unbearable, but it’s nothing compared to the dread rising from his feet as he takes in the space around him.
He has to remind himself that this is your space now, not Nora’s.
Opposite him, your nose scrunches in one of the photos on the wall, and he catches his own widened gaze in the reflection of your TV. Cotton candy reaches his nose, replacing the phantom smell of bleach that had been making him sick, the one he associated with the bathroom in his memories.
It’s your space. Not Nora’s. He’s safe.
But when he looks down at where you’d fallen asleep with your head on his thighs, you’re not there.
That’s when he feels like his head is truly fucking with him, and oxygen refuses to find a way in. He uselessly taps the cushions around him for help, comfort, anything tangible. When he finds empty fabric, the only instinct he has left is to run.
Away from this room, back into the hollow silence of his apartment, door shutting with a startled flinch of his shoulders.
It hurts more when he realizes it’s your comfort he needs. He’s fallen into the trap again.
The clinic is swamped. Your duties are piling up, and you can’t seem to gain any ground. You might have had the chance if your coworkers would stop pretending they can’t hear the phone ringing, leaving you to be stalled by ten different callers who vomit their pets’ entire medical histories into one single sentence — convinced you’re some sort of ubiquitous being who can diagnose a dog through a receiver.
Part of it is because you woke up late. By some miracle, your body had naturally stirred without an alarm. Or, more likely, it must have unconsciously captured the muffled buzz of your third one from the bag you’d abandoned somewhere in the room. You’d tensed, mind foggy, before realizing where your head was resting and whose hand was still cupping your cheek.
Shifting slowly from your awkward angle, you’d held your breath, turning around with painstaking care once you were seated to find Jeongguk lightly snoring with his mouth parted, and his neck stiffly lolling toward his shoulder.
You’d fought to keep a giggle in, opting instead to retrieve your phone and snap a close-up of his round, sleeping face. You didn’t care if it cost you a minute you didn’t have.
After that, you ran around the apartment like a maniac, trying not to go twenty minutes past your clock-in time, hopping into the first pair of jeans you could grab and a pastel yellow cardigan that was slowly fading to a dirty white.
You were certain the noise you made when you slammed your pinky toe against the kitchen table would have jolted him awake.
Instead, when you limped past the couch after applying the bruise cream Jeongguk had given you for the very same toe, he was still locked in the same position. You didn’t have the heart to wake him, so you left him there, typing quickly into your chat thread as you eased the door shut behind you.
You [8:39 a.m.] Attachment: 1 image
You [8:39 a.m.] lol you looked so silly
You [8:39 a.m.] i had to run to work sry.. see u later !!
You [8:40 a.m.] help yourself to the fridge :)
Your break is nearing, and your texts still sit unanswered, unread, delivered. You bite your lower lip as your mind automatically begins listing every possible reason for his silence.
He might have woken up with a paralyzed neck, or a hangover migraine. Perhaps a combination of the two.
Your unconscious smile falters when you consider that this might also be another repeat of the birthday-situation, hope and adrenaline surging high, only to simmer down once you realize you must have misread the signals again.
Maybe you shouldn’t have let him kiss you, hold you, but whenever you’re that close to him it feels like your lungs inhale a different kind of air. Clearer, lighter, air that doesn’t clog your chest.
Definitely not the one you welcome as you suck in the nicotine from your cigarette, hiding away from your coworkers in the designated spot you and Olivia found beyond the backdoor and baptised as your private, and legally punishable, smoking area.
Your phone pings. You reach for it so fast you don’t even get the time to tell yourself you’re being pathetic. Hope and adrenaline do simmer down when the name on the screen isn’t your neighbour’s.
In a way, you do still read about him through your notifications. It’s Mingyu, asking about the puppy. Saying something about how he looks like he has a tiny dick and can’t believe you’re settling for that now.
You sigh, pocketing the device and drawing in a longer pull of smoke. You should probably block him. That would be the reasonable thing to do.
There’s a part of your brain that fears it would only further feed his stalker-ish entitlement. Another voice tells you it’s best to keep receiving these weekly updates, at least that way you’ll know if he wakes up one day and decides he wants to murder you.
A chill runs down your spine at the macabre thought. Mingyu wouldn’t. Your overthinking is going beyond today.
You tap the ash from your cigarette and watch it topple to the ground, pulling in the last of the stick. It’s been more than a year since you’ve broken up with Mingyu, months since you’ve stopped whatever on and off thing you two still had, and a few weeks since he’s started being creepy through texts.
You could talk to Jeongguk about it. He’s already offered to help, and you’re pragmatic enough to know that a man willing to stand between you and a threat is often more effective than a woman trying to do the same alone.
Hours later, that’s the excuse you give yourself as you knock on his door. You’d just gulped down whatever leftover you had found in your fridge, frowning when you realized he hadn’t touched a thing. Could also be to check on him, since he finally read your texts but never bothered to reply.
Simpler truth is, you really want to see him. You’d missed his warmth the second you left him on your couch, thought about his lips on yours and the safe scent of almond lingering on his jacket.
You might get tired of the architecture of your walls soon, tired of pretending you don’t need help, don’t need the solid weight of a wide hand keeping you safe, when it’s all that gets your nerves to loosen and your shoulders to relax. A terrifying comfort, the one you find in simply being seen by him.
But you have to stay strong and maintain a pretence of those walls, keep them high enough to ensure you aren’t destroyed in the process. You’ve never made things clear with him, never established the what of this.
Friends, that’s for sure. Though, you don’t kiss your friends like you’ve kissed Jeongguk. None of your friends have ever made you cum. Hell, not even your past boyfriends managed that.
You’re not the type to navigate through things unlabeled, uncertain. You’re willing to walk into the fire that Jeon Jeongguk seems to ignite in everything he touches, you just want to make sure he’s worth the burns.
And you’re committed to finding out, right now.
When the door opens, your smile twitches slightly. Jeongguk only lets his head poke out, keeping the rest of his body shielded behind the piece of wood. It must be why his features pop differently than usual, his eyebags are more prominent, his eyes heavy and droopy.
Another reason you’re here, to apologize for keeping him hostage on your couch all night.
“Hi,” you breathe, shoulders sheepishly rising.
Jeongguk looks taken aback, and for a moment you debate wiping out your resolve and hiding back in your apartment, especially when he simply looks you up and down, brows angled upward. But you remind yourself you’re here to put an end to this very same uncertainty.
He recovers, though a stutter prefaces his greeting. “Hey, hi. Hey.”
You chuckle awkwardly, assuming his hesitation is born from the same nerves bubbling in your stomach. They considerably simmer when he opens the door wider, stepping aside to let you in.
He’s in a large black tee and grey sweats, looking homey enough to hold. You’re still in your work clothes and suddenly the denim feels constricting.
It doesn’t take long for you two to fall into your usual rhythm, even as your brain whispers his smile looks just a bit forced, and his hand shakes as it wraps around a plate under the running water. Still, he listens to your work-rambling and casually answers your questions.
“I’m sorry for yesterday,” you admit into a sudden lapse in conversation. Sitting on a stool behind him, you watch his back muscles shift beneath the cotton of his shirt. You add with a quick gasp, “I mean, for falling asleep on you.”
“‘S okay.” He nods, gaze intently fixed on his scrubbing motions, though the plate looks spotless. Yet his hand tightens around the sponge and he rubs more harshly.
He doesn’t mention the promise you made, the one to never apologise to him again.
That’s when you start looking closer, studying the sharp profile of his face, the small scar on his cheek, how his left eye twitches and he’s still scraping the same clean plate.
Tentatively, you stand. “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem tense.”
He clears his throat, finally letting his gaze shift to yours. When you’re eye to eye, both your lungs exhale a deeper release and his grip on the sponge slackens. Water still gushes out, splashing droplets where it meets with the ceramic.
You step closer now, arms brushing and burning where you touch as you take the platter from his hand and set it onto the rack. Turning off the faucet, the only sound filling the kitchen is Gureum licking his paws under the table.
You look up to find him already seeking you out. Twisting enough to fully face him, you attempt a weak grip around his forearm, an unspoken demand for his undivided attention.
He seemingly recovers from the quiet with a flurry of blinks, drawing in a sharp inhale. “Yeah, uh…”
Brows furrowing, you read a different kind of uncertainty on his face than the one you were trying to find answers for. Experimentally, your hand slides upward toward his shoulder, feeling the muscles across his back coil.
“Is it your neck?” Your fingers try pressing into the nerve you feel tightening at the base of his skull, and he lets out a low groan that has him lolling his head forward, palms bracing on the counter. “Let me help you.”
Moving behind him, you work your fingertips into the base of his neck, pushing hard enough to draw a hum of approval from his throat. Perhaps all the time and effort you put into kneading dough paid off in this very instance. Your baked goods never uttered a rewarding sound like Jeongguk has under your fingers. Feeling greedy, you dig the heels of your hands in for a stronger knead, and a stray moan breaks from his throat.
You’re drawn forward from the effort, your hips now flushed against his plump ass and, as if he’s just putty in your hands, his own hips fall against the counter. A broken sound flies past his lips, hiccupping when you only press your body further into his warmth.
Your bottom lip threatens to split under the stress of your teeth on it, partly from the dedication you’re putting in the massage, partly from the struggle to keep a sheepish grin in. Yet, no matter the pace or pressure you apply, he won’t relax.
When he growls your name, your ears perk and you’re asking, “Is this okay?”
Then, the sudden twist of his body catches you off guard. You yelp as your arms drop to your sides, neck craning up to meet the evident restraint written across his features. His fists tighten and loosen, and his exhale brushes hot against your lashes.
He can only say your name again, and you can only take an instinctive step back. But he follows you, pressing flush against you until your spine meets the counter. His hands brace on either side of you, and soon he’s letting his eyelids flutter shut and his nose draw in a deep inhale of your scent.
Your eyes flicker over every corner of his face, now inches from yours. “Jeongguk…”
He seems on the edge of saying something, doing something, nose brushing yours as his own twitches. And he can’t bear to look at you while gathering courage, so he whispers it in your ear, nuzzling his way through your hair.
“Do you trust me?”
It’s an unexpected question, but it awakens the same uncertainty you knocked on his door with, went through the day with, have learned to be around him with. And it’s true what you told him: being with him makes you feel different while still allowing to be you. Being with him isn’t scary, only unpredictable.
You could adapt to that, right up until you’re both tripping and find yourselves unable to grasp one another, falling face first. You get back up with a few scratches, but then he’s making you laugh and the pain fades.
And sometimes, there’s a look on his face you can’t decipher, don’t have the time to, because it washes over him before he retreats back into norm. Sometimes, you might wander in uncharted territories and all you’re met with is silence, like you’re alien and have no way of understanding each other. You still try, inventing a new language, perhaps messing with the uncertainty further.
So, this time, you only nod, because there’s no better way than to bend to your instincts where he is concerned, it comes simpler being honest.
You lift your chin enough to brush the shell of his ear. “I do.”
Jeongguk exhales as if he’d been holding his breath just to ensure he didn’t miss a single syllable of your response. The air trembles over your jaw and he’s leaning impossibly closer, chests flushed, breaths mingling.
It’s not like you to go through things blind; you can’t bear the absence of his gaze any longer. Your hand slides up his cheek, turning his face until it’s directly in front of yours. When your eyes meet, your breath hitches.
His eyelids are droopy, brows angled upward, and a thin sheen of vulnerability coats his orbs. His mouth is inches from yours, parted, as though he’s begging to be let in or stopped that very instant.
You search up for his own answer through your lashes, your free hand bracing against his white-knuckled grip on the counter as you’re only pressed further into the digging edge.
When he drops his forehead on yours like he’s finally made peace with himself, you fan against his lips. “Do you?”
But he replaces words with the force of his mouth crashing on yours. Your fingers instinctively clutch at his hair, drawing a broken whine of his that filters through your kiss, immediately all tongue and teeth. An arm wraps around your waist, hauling you impossibly close until you feel his bulge press into your womb.
You’re soon gasping for air, but he keeps you still and trapped, pinned by his relentless mouth and his tightening hold. And there’s a sense of frantic urgency, like detaching might allow a tide to flood the space between you, separating your bodies until you’re both sinking and wheezing, and he can’t possibly risk that.
His other hand leaves the counter and travels up to tangle in your locks, splaying a palm behind your head to better angle the way his tongue slices with yours, swallowing your every moan and increasing sound, preventing even the thought of escape.
The oxygen in your lungs begins to fail, and you think if he wants you to die now, he might as well keep kissing you. Jeongguk groans when your tug on his hair teeters on rough, but he only dives deeper into the kiss, seeking more.
Only when you pat his chest harshly and whine loud into his mouth does he detach, and you’re both left panting in each other’s faces, flushed, lips swollen.
His eyes are blown wide, blinking serially as though he’s resurfacing from someplace distant. Your grip on his hair softens, slender fingers stroking his scalp in a soothing pattern, like that draw his gaze back to yours, away from the void between your lips and collarbone.
Now, your own body surges with the same urgency that had filled the kiss, had him keeping you tethered, when you can sense his hold around you loosening.
Your brows twitch and you instinctively push your middle into his, hands falling to his shoulders to anchor him. For a split second, as he lets his arm drop from your waist, his palm bruises your hip when he looks down at the contact, at where you’re dangerously close to grinding yourself against him.
Then, his warmth leaves you entirely, and your own arms fall from where they were trying to keep him close.
“I’m sorry, I…” Jeongguk avoids your eyes, recoils as if he’s been burned.
You shake your head, trying to be the steady one, “No, it’s okay, Gguk.” Taking a step forward, he matches it with a step back. Your brows knit together, “I don’t… Did I do something?”
“We— we can’t… I can’t do this.”
Oh.
The words hit like a physical blow. You’re certain your heart misses a beat almost in sync with his stutter, and it sinks altogether when no other explanation follows his low voice.
Pain and confusion wash over your face as you struggle to make sense of the rejection. You feel your cheeks flush with stinging embarrassment at the way he won’t even look at you, let alone offer a reason for the sudden wall between you.
And you’re left standing there, as if you’re some sort of ragdoll, as if you didn’t spend the past month harboring real feelings for him, as if you’re not worth basic respect. It feels like you’ve been proved wrong for trusting him.
“What… what do you mean you can’t?” You scoff like you can’t believe even the sound of those words.
You’re in the middle of his kitchen, where he’s tended so caringly to your burn, where he’s had you try his mean carbonara, where he’s poured your favourite soda before every movie without fail, where he’s just kissed you like it physically hurt to let go. And now, Jeongguk has his gaze fixed on the floor, shaking his head in small twitches.
Your ears buzz with chaos as your mind frantically catalogs every possible reason he’s standing in the same kitchen and rejecting you.
You think back to yesterday, to the girl pressed flush against him at the club, and you blurt out the first plausible reason. “Is it… Are you seeing someone else?”
At that, his head snaps up, and his startled eyes meet your stinging ones. “No, no. I’d never… It’s just…”
Somehow, that makes it even worse. You feel pathetic, and the sensation rushes to your brows, drawing up in a silent attempt to ask Jeongguk why.
Does this mean that all this time, you’ve been the only one feeling more? Wanting more?
Jeongguk stands paralyzed, and you can see his teeth tormenting the inside of his cheek, his eyes numb and falling to the side, zoning out on Gureum’s sleeping form on the ground.
You scoff, unbelieving, hands flying as you retrieve your phone from the counter. “Fuck, this is so dumb.”
He says your name, whispers it, and you still pathetically stop in your tracks and hang from his lips. You wouldn’t have been able to capture what they moved around if you had just turned and walked away. It’s so low you might foolishly hope he regrets saying it.
“Don’t go.”
Tears prick at your eyes and you dig your nails into your palms to keep them from spilling, anger replacing the hurt when you uselessly pant.
You exhale, voice pitiably quivering. “Look, there’s clearly some stuff you need to work on, but I’m not about to be your punching bag.”
A similar sheen coats his eyes when he meets yours, but it’s not enough to make him talk, make it easier for the both of you, put you out of this unknown he pulled you in, of which he’s the only one who could provide clarity.
His head twitches, hand lifting almost as if to reach for you. But your hope must still be pathetically alive within you, because all he manages is a stutter, “I’m—”
“I can’t let you do this to me,” you let the exhaustion filter freely through your voice, shoulders sagging. “I’m tired of the mixed signals, Jeongguk.”
“I didn’t want to—”
“But you did.”
Silence reigns between you, and you’re back to being aliens whose every attempt at communicating only further damages whatever progress there’d been.
“I couldn’t… I just want to help— save you.” His last words are merely a mumble into the empty space between you, but you hold onto them, doing your best to decipher his meaning.
“Save me from what?” You scan his face for anything that might stop the disaster, suck in the water flooding the room, reaching your throats, threatening to seal your mouths shut. “I never asked you to save me, Jeongguk. I just thought we had… something.”
Water reaches his lungs first, and soon you’re drowning with him, the tide keeping you apart, where you can’t reach for each other, but it still cruelly forces you to witness the pain etching itself into his features.
“But I guess I was wrong.”
The only way out of the flood is away from his space, back into the perceived safety of yours.
But even here, water sneaks from under the door. On your couch, his jacket still lies crumpled and forgotten. It stanches your apartment with the safe smell of almond and pine you’ve learned to associate with peace, only to realize you’ll have to relearn it all over again.
"I will not stand by and watch you destroy yourself for such ungrateful cookies who'd rather watch you burn than listen!"
"Then leave! I will not abandon my duties for your selfish whims, I was baked for this- created by the Witches for this! I cannot abandon my duties for such childish fantasies!"
You glare at him, tears building in your eyes before you turn away from him. He, in turn, glares daggers at your back. "So be it," You practically spit the words out, "we have made our choices and neither will change their mind." The Fount of Knowledge refuses to watch you as you leave, instead turning back to his overflowing desk to glare at the mess of tomes and scrolls. You'd never understand the stress he was under, the rules he had to live by, the limitations set upon him by himself and others. You were a fool, not even a real cookie. How could you ever understand?
The Fount of Knowledge rarely had regrets, his pursuit of knowledge did not allow for them. But he was unfortunately learning what real regret was. It has been a few weeks since the argument the two of you had, he'd figured that it would give you both enough time to cool off; for you to rethink the foolish notion of him 'running away' from his duties as the Fount of Knowledge.
Except you… had simply vanished. Your room was empty, a faint layer of dust already settling across the desk. The scholars of the Spire simply shrugging when he asked them about you. One looked at him with pity as they sighed. "They left, Fount of Knowledge. They claimed the Spire did not have the knowledge they sought."
The Spire? Being unable to provide the knowledge you were after? Unbelievable! He almost scoffed in the poor scholars face before they shakily hand him a letter, your handwriting scrawled across the paper. He didn't bother to listen to whatever else the unfortunate cookie said, snatching the letter and teleporting directly back to his office.
The Fount's hands shook as he ripped open the envelope.
Dear Fount of Knowledge,
By the time you're reading this letter I'd have already left. While I'll cherish our time together I have come to realize we are two separate beasts. You were right, I'll never understand you or your purpose. I was born into this world with no purpose, forced into an unfamiliar place where I knew nothing and could do nothing.
I've come to realize that what I seek cannot be found within the Spire of All Knowledge. My purpose- if there is one; is not here. Humans are inherently selfish, it's something that runs in our blood (or jam, I suppose). I must follow what I know, which is to selfishly seek a life I desire.
Knowledge is vital but I'd rather live the experience than read it. I want to experience the world I've read about, the soda oceans and sugar snow peaks.
And perhaps, foolishly, I'd like to find a place to truly call home; with a family I can call my own. You are not willing to give up your duties, this I have finally come to terms with, but I cannot give up my selfish desires.
I wish you the best of luck-
The letter was promptly balled up and thrown across the room, the Fount's hair flares, writhing as though it were its own entity. He harshly rubs at his eyes, willing the tears to stop before they could fully form.
You! You!!! How dare you!? He wanted to commit to his anger, commit to his rage that you'd so cruelly abandon him!
But he couldn't. He'd always known that you wanted to see Earthbread, to explore its every crevice and learn its secrets. Yet you abstained, chained to the Spire by his own selfishness. His need to keep the one cookie who treated him not as the Fount of Knowledge, but as a regular cookie with limits and feelings. You'd wanted to explore it with him but knew he'd refuse. It shouldn't have been a surprise that eventually you'd give up on him and go on your own.
Perhaps the argument was the last push you needed. The last reminder that his duties to the Witches who refused to answer him were more important than you. The last straw as he picked the cookies who spat in the face of his Truth over you who had always accepted it.
He ran his hands through his hair, soothing it back down. He had no idea when you'd written this letter, you barely spoke to the scholars or students who littered the Spire so he doubted you'd ever tell any of them. Hell, the scholar who you'd given the letter to was one you only spoke to 7 times! The Fount paced back and forth across his office, trying to remember every moment where you'd express interest in something.
You'd talked about seeing the Sugar of Happiness' garden, would you go there? No… you'd once mentioned that the overly cloying scent of sugar would probably make you nauseous.
The Spice lands? Also a no, you'd mentioned your dough was far too sensitive to the spices after spending a few hours with the Herald of Change. His mere spicy presence causing your dough issues.
He mentally goes through what you'd said about the other Virtue's territories; the pros and cons you'd discussed about each location. The Salt Lands were also a no, your dough too fragile to withstand the dry air. The Flour Peaks were a no, the faerie kingdom was a no, he desperately rattles his brain for some sort of answer.
He freezes as it comes to him, the dreaded truth that he, himself, wanted to deny.
Crispia. You were planning on leaving, and you'd probably meant it. You weren't just going to leave him, were you? You were going to leave the continent as a whole.
Why would you stay with one of the other Virtues? You already said you didn't want to watch him destroy himself for others, staying with the Virtues meant you'd still see him on occasion. Leaving the continent made the most sense in your odd mind, there'd be no risk of seeing him ever. No risk of hearing of his downfall should it come, just as you warned him it would many times.
His heart hammers in his chest as he rushes to open a map, knocking everything off his desk in his frantic movements. He glares down at it as he mentally calculates routes and how long it'd take to travel; if he were lucky you would've traveled on foot for most of the route to the nearest harbor. If he were unlucky? It would be too late; and you'd already be an ocean away.
He nods to himself, quickly changing his form as he rushes through a portal to one of the nearby villages. He just has to hope you didn't get too far, and hope to the Witches you'd listen to him.
You'd never been to the beach before, but even you could tell the stark difference between a regular Earth beach and an Earthbread beach. The air was sweet instead of salty, the ocean bubbled in ways the salt water couldn't in your previous life. The only similarity was the tranquil beauty of the moon shining upon the gentle waves that crash against the sand.
Your heart weighed heavy. You know you'll regret the way you left, but Truth was valuable, and yours was that you had to leave. You hope the Fount would understand, he couldn't give up what he was made for, just as you couldn't give up what you'd dreamed of. You needed to leave the Spire, you had to see the world and all it was.
The cookies you'd met on your journey so far were kind, accepting you into traveling groups and allowing you the occasional cart ride when your dough would grow weary. It was exhausting, yet exhilarating. The soreness of your dough was a welcome change to the monotony of everlasting studies and lonely readings.
It helped that you weren't in much of a hurry. Offering to help when you could to pay for their kindness in turn. The work was also a welcome distraction from the grief and worry you felt.
The Fount would be fine, you reason. You were simply paranoid, refusing to see it from the perspective of an immortal God. You were a fool who viewed it from your own perspective, he had every right to get upset with you. You just hope your letter to him would pacify his worries about you.
You were not a child who needed protecting from the cruel world, you were an adult and you needed the freedom to discover who you were in this new world. Pristine Milk Cookie The Fount of Knowledge had taught you enough about Earthbread that you could manage on your own.
None of the cookies you'd met so far had even suspected you to be something different, and you'd managed to play up your fragility extremely well, to the point where when danger appeared every other cookie in the group had rushed to defend you. You felt bad about taking advantage of their kindness, the reality being that you could defend yourself, but the risk of them realizing you were not bleeding jam was far greater than the guilt.
Your deceit would weigh on you, you're sure, but it's for your greater good.
You close your eyes, willing the guilt away, soon you'd leave everything behind. Crispia was waiting, and you were eager to see everything you'd denied yourself for the years you'd been in the Spire. It wasn't fair to either you or the Fount. You would never understand him, and he'd never leave with you.
A voice calls out to you, whispering your name breathlessly and almost reverently. You blink your eyes open in confusion, none of the travelers you came to this village with were ever told your name, so who could be calling you?
Pristine Milk Cookie The Fount of Knowledge, clad in his civilian disguise, stood a ways away. He stares at you with wide eyes and shaking hands, his chest heaving with exertion. He looked like an absolute mess, vest unbuttoned and shirt untucked with his normally neat hair mussed up from what you could only assume was him rushing about.
"I finally found you," his voice heavy with both grief and relief as he approaches you, reaching out towards you as though to embrace you; though he falters as you step away from him.
"Why are you here?" You didn't mean for your voice to sound as cold as it did, and you can't help but feel bad as he flinches. "Didn't you get my letter?" You tilt your head at him.
The Fount of Knowledge's face flushes as you scrutinize him, his hands moving to play with the lapels of his disheveled vest. He looked far more like a regular cookie now than he had the entire time you'd known him. He looked… small. Weak. Like if you glare at him too harshly he'd wither away into crumbs.
"I… did not read it fully." You narrow your eyes at his confession. Seriously? Before you can even open your mouth to scold him he continues. "It hurt. To know I'd chased you away," he glances back up into your eyes before looking away again, "I was upset at first, that you'd abandon me… but you were right." The Fount frowns as he stares over the ocean. "I, in my cowardice, refused to let you go. I kept you in a gilded cage despite knowing you wished to be free- all because I was too afraid to lose you."
You, in turn, frown. "Fount of Knowledge," you don't see the way he flinches at the name, expression warping as though you'd struck him, "you had refused to let me go, yes, but I was the fool who tried to refuse to leave without you. Not understanding you and refusing to even try." You turn away from him to glower at the moon. "You're right, in that I'll never understand you."
He opens his mouth, but doesn't get the chance to say anything as you continue. "I relent that I'll never understand what it's like to have a purpose. To be born for something or have it be bestowed upon me." His mouth shuts with an audible click as his expression wilts, guilt worming through his dough and soul jam. "I shouldn't have pushed you so hard, to try and force you to abandon everything you stood for."
You take a deep breath. "Fount of Knowledge, I'm sor-"
"Don't." You almost squawk as you're swung around to face him, his hands squeezing your shoulders almost painfully. He looked hurt, like you'd struck him directly. "Don't call me that."
You look at him in confusion. "That's your-"
"Please don't." He chokes. "Please don't call me that. I'm not-" The cookie pauses, fighting for the proper words. "I'm not…" he leans forward, pressing his forehead against your sternum.
"For you… I don't want to be the Fount of Knowledge." His voice was strained, as though the confession were physically painful. "I've thought about it. Considered it. I'd never wanted anything but knowledge before I'd met you." You stood stock still, even as your clothes grew damp from his tears. His hands move from your shoulders to your back as he embraces you, his face moving from being buried against your chest to being buried in your shoulder.
"I'm scared, of how much I desire it." The virtue shook as he held you, and you gently wrap your arms around him, feeling him sag in relief at the feeling. "I want so badly to run away with you, but I'm scared," his confession was muffled against your dough, "I'm terrified of who I'll be if I abandon my duties. Without the Fount of Knowledge who would I be?"
You gently peel away from him, taking his reluctant face in your hands as he steps back.
"You'd be Pristine Milk Cookie." you smile fondly at him. "My dearest friend who took the time out of his busy life to guide me, who protected me, who despite my ignorance had treated me as an adult instead of an annoying overgrown child." His face flushes as he glances away from your genuine gaze.
You dare to bring his face closer, pressing a kiss to his forehead where his mark would be in his other form.
"You are my dearest companion no matter who you are or what you choose." His hands come up to cradle yours where they rest on his cheeks. "Even if we are apart, whether by towns or by continents, you are still important to me." You smile at him, though his expression is still morose.
He glances out at the sea again, the moon dipping further to the horizon. You briefly wonder what he's thinking about.
You don't get a real answer, as he suddenly drops to one knee. Your hands move back on instinct but he keeps his hold on your hands, moving to hold both of them between you two.
"I want to run away with you." Your eyes widen in shock, mouth falling agape at his declaration. "It is impulsive and selfish, but… you were right. The cookies… they've turned their backs to the Truth. It doesn't matter what I do or how I do it, it'll only cause me pain to continue on the path chosen for me." He leans forward to press the back of your hands to his forehead. "The Witches… they'd left us long ago… would she even care if I strayed? Or would she encourage me to choose what makes me happy?"
You weren't sure what to say. What could you say? He nuzzles his face against your hands one more time before pulling back to examine your expression.
"…would you have me? Even if I weren't the Fount of Knowledge? Even if I were a regular cookie?"
You both knew it was a stupid question, but you answer it all the same.
"Of course I'd have you no matter what, Soul jam or not, emissary of the gods or not, regular cookie or not-" You yelp as he lunges at you, wrapping you in a hug that almost hurt from how tight it was. You return it regardless, hands balling into fists as you grip at his vest like a lifeline.
You squeak as he crashes his lips into yours, though you immediately melt into the kiss. He pulls back after a bit, face flushed and glasses askew as he examines your own love struck expression.
He presses his forehead to yours, and you giggle as you reach up to fix his glasses.
"I love you, Pristine Milk Cookie." You whisper smile growing as his face flushes even bluer.
He closes his eyes as he responds in turn, whispering your name and a declaration of love so sincere it made your heart melt.
Tags/Warnings: Gojo x F!Reader, brother!Suguru, university au, brother’s best friend, secret relationship, smut with a little plot, praise, mirror sex, full nelson, mentions of cunnilingus, mentions of nipple play,
Word Count: 1381
Notes: Written as a birthday gift for the recently deactivated sukundere
So maybe it wasn’t your best idea - and that was saying something, you’d had a lot of bad ideas in your life - but damn if it wasn’t fun. You’d never really expected to see him again after you moved away for university, he was your brother’s best friend, and thoroughly off-limits. It was fine though, you were sure you’d meet plenty of boys at university that were at least nice to look at even if they weren’t worth your time. That was what you wanted to do, at least for your first semester. Have fun.
So, when you saw a certain white head of hair on campus, you couldn’t believe your luck. There was no way, right? But how many people had hair like that - and eyes, because when he turned and you saw those baby blues that had haunted your fantasies since your first period, you knew it was exactly the boy you were supposed to be forgetting. You approached him, there was no other option, especially once he realised who he was looking at too.
“It’s my favourite girl!” He cheered, some girls that had gathered around him already frowning. Fuck them, you were here long before them. Satoru wrapped his arm around your shoulders, tugging you in close to his side, and when he leaned down to press a kiss to your head, he whispered in your ear.
“Help me get rid of them.”
That was the request that had made everything spiral out of control, far beyond what either of you could’ve ever expected.
In the moment, you’d just wrapped one arm around his waist, resting your free hand on his chest right over his heart and blinked innocently up at the other girls who must’ve been bothering him.
“Hey Satoru, who are these guys?” You asked, turning your attention up to him with an innocent smile.
“Oh they were just going. I’ve been looking for you angel, we can go get our coffee now.” He replied seamlessly, and after lingering for just a moment longer, the girls seemed to get the hint and walked away.
That should’ve been where it ended. Or maybe you could’ve actually gone for that coffee he mentioned.
But his hands were on you, and yours were on him, and he’d come here to secretly visit you but he’d not been prepared for how your style had changed. Clothes more revealing, hair styled away from your face, and the subtle makeup you wore, gloss shimmering in the sunlight. Suddenly, the plans of going for late night greasy food and playing video games all died, because there was no way he was going home without getting a taste of you.
The next thing you knew, he’d had you pressed up against the door to your dorm, legs wrapped around his neck as he ate you out, skirt flipped up and panties pulled aside for quick access rather than just taking them off.
From there, things had.. well, escalated. His own university was only a few hours from yours, so it wasn’t unusual for the two of you to spend the weekend together, largely him travelling to see you rather than the other way around. There was plenty both on and off-campus for the two of you to do, so you were never bored. Besides, keeping things a secret from Suguru added a layer of thrill to everything that was undeniable - knowing that he’d disapprove, that what you were doing was some level of forbidden.. well, it only made everything that little bit more exciting. On the rare occasions that you visited your brother, you and Satoru had to be so careful, the newfound intimacy that had come so easily to you both send back to the depths of your mind, locked away to keep it hidden from those knowing purple eyes that you’d grown up avoiding. He always knew when you were hiding something, but just this once, you seemed to be floating under the radar.
Then, of course, there was the sex. The toe curling, back breaking, truly mind numbing sex. Doing anything with Satoru was different to doing it with anyone else, but you were quite possibly willing to believe that he was just a minor deity amongst men when it came to bedroom activities. There was just something about it all that felt different - or maybe that was the thrill too. The tantalising excitement of secrecy, enhancing even things that Suguru could never touch.
The snap of hips up into yours distracted you from the thought path you’d been on, musings of the past shattered like a hammer to the pane of a window as the tip of his cock slammed up against your walls again. He had you folded into a full nelson, all while he was standing, those large, pale hands gripping tight into the plush flesh of your thighs, lips against your ear as he panted, occasionally murmuring to himself, and sometimes to you.
It was a new idea he’d had - to fuck you in front of a mirror. You’d been reluctant at first, who wanted to see themselves while they were having sex? - but he’d coaxed you gently, assuring you that if you truly didn’t like it then he’d stop immediately, and it had convinced you to give it a go. The way he’d worked slowly down your body, kissing, licking and nipping every inch of skin that he could reach had certainly helped too. Nimble fingers had tweaked your nipples as his dripping pink tongue had circled your clit, reinforcing the choice with pleasure at every step of the process.
How wrong you’d been. It was different, it was exciting like everything that the two of you seemed to do together, and it was undoubtedly sexy. Not often did you manage to actually draw your eyes to your reflection, mostly finding that your eyes were closed, or rolling back, but when you did.. there was just something about watching that thick cock disappear into your pussy that seemed to make you wetter, clench harder.
Then there was his voice, God his voice. Whispering in your ear, breath hot against your skin, the feel of that smirk you both loathed and adored.
“You’re taking it so well for me, sweetheart. You see that? See the way she’s swallowing me whole? Fuck you’re so perfect.” He couldn’t help it, every word that fell from soft pink lips was praise for you, for your body, how you felt and sounded and did everything for him. He’d always been talkative, but it seemed to multiply tenfold the moment he was inside you, but this time seemed even more extreme than that. Once or twice you were sure you’d caught him gasping for air because he’d forgotten to breathe.
“That’s it, fuck sweetheart,” his fingers dug in harder, bottom lip caught in between his teeth as he thrusted again, and you could feel the way he was twitching inside you, “shit I’m gonna fill you up, can you cum with me?” He panted out, and in a show of strength that made you gasp, he shifted his hold on you entirely. One arm moved so his forearm was tucked under both your knees, pushing them together in the process which made him hiss as your pussy tightened - then with his other hand now free, knees slightly bent to give himself more ability to move, he began circling your clit in the perfect way he’d learned you liked. Suddenly, his desire for you to cum with him felt more like an inevitability than a desire.
Sure enough, it took only another few moments, a few more rough and sloppy thrusts into your dripping cunt and he was filling you up, right as you squeezed around him, orgasm coursing through your body. He panted against the back of your neck, but his eyes were fixed on the mirror in front of you both, watching how you twitched and your pussy clenched.
He always took such good care of you after, making sure he massaged away any soreness he’d created, and kissed any marks left behind on your skin, branding you as his anew. Fucking his best friend’s little sister - what a monster he was. Yet, taking such good care of her too.
The Quick Transmigrator's Happy (?) Ending | Part 1
Platonic yandere Batfam x quick transmigrator reader
The first thing you heard, before you even opened your eyes, was the ever-familiar voice of the System.
[Congratulations, Host! You have successfully completed all five missions within the ten-year time limit. As per the contract you signed with us, we would grant one wish of yours for every mission you completed. As a friendly reminder, below is a list of the wishes you made:
1. To come back to life
2. To have a healthy body
3. To have your rightful degree
4. To have your innocence proven
5. To regain your inheritance
Another friendly reminder: We are unable to accept a change in any of your wishes now that you have completed all five missions, seeing as each wish was automatically granted when you completed one mission.
Once again, Host, we congratulate you for your successful work, and we wish you all the best in your future endeavours!]
Your eyes snapped open.
With a gasp, you jolted up sitting, your left hand instinctively pressing against your chest. Under the layers of clothes and skin, you felt your heart thumping–steady, strong.
Nothing like the weak erratic beats you'd been accustomed to by the last month of your life.
Emotions overwhelmed you, and you let yourself fall back against the bed–the sinfully soft, warm, clean bed, completely unlike the filthy, cold, hard ground where you'd died–staring vacantly at the bright light overhead until your eyes watered and you closed them, faintly feeling tears well up and roll down your face.
Gods. You were back alive. Alive and healthy and cared for and–
And all it took was five people you left probably mentally scarred for life.
Once upon a time, you were just an ordinary person living an ordinary life.
You had an ordinary family, attended an ordinary school, harboured ordinary hopes and fears, and looked forward to have an ordinary happy future. Then you turned nineteen, and gods or demons or whatever higher being up there suddenly decided fuck this one human in particular. In one fell swoop, your life turned into a nightmare.
...no need to dwell on it. Suffice to say, your life became perfectly awful until you were on your last breath, when the System appeared with an offer you couldn't–wouldn't–didn't refuse: to be a quick transmigrator hopping from one world to another, accomplishing missions as assigned by the System there, in exchange for all your wishes being granted.
To tell the truth, you hadn't even thought for a second that you would've been able to do it. You just figured you had nothing else to lose, so why not?
Wasn't as if your life hadn't become hell on Earth by that point anyway. You didn't mind leaving it.
To your own astonishment, however, you found yourself–not a genius, no, nor a prodigy either... But you were decent. Good enough. While it was decidedly not smooth sailing, nevertheless you were able to complete missions after missions, worlds after worlds, until here you were now: in your original world again.
Alive. Healthy. Proven innocent of all that you'd been falsely accused of and amply recompensed for it, on top of having your inheritance back and your degree now proudly displayed on your wall.
It didn't undo any of the suffering. It didn't erase the memories. It didn't prevent the nightmares that still woke you every other night, shooting up sitting and shaking and pressing your fist against your heart beating loud.
But it did settle something within you. As you strolled down the street, head held up proud as you browsed the shop windows, listening to music on your earphones and sipping on boba tea, a wave of contentment washed over your whole body.
Finally, you thought, lips subconsciously curving into a soft smile as you stared into a secondhand bookstore, finally you had your happy ending.
Then you accidentally locked eyes with a man inside the store, a copy of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and another of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in his hands as if (or indeed) he were contemplating which to purchase.
Rather incongruously, the man didn't look the type to read that kind of books at all. He was tall and buff, with a tight-fitting black t-shirt, a brown leather jacket, and combat boots that looked like they had seen if not participated in actual combat. There was a tuft of white hair at the centre front of his otherwise black hair.
But what made you nearly choke as you inhaled the tapioca balls in your boba was the fact that you recognized the man.
It was Jason, from the very first world you transmigrated to.
...and whom you might or might not have 'died' in front of, in order to leave that world once your mission there was done.
...and who, judging from his rapidly paling face and widening eyes, recognized you back.
How odd, you suddenly felt like you were in danger.
A/N: This is inspired, admittedly, from two BL novels, A Wave of Exes Came Looking for Me. What to Do?! and The Scum Shou’s Survival Guide. I never actually finished reading the latter and already forgot the former's story though lmao
Anyway just thinking of a (now retired) quick transmigrator reader who 'died' in front of their mission targets a.k.a the Batfam before leaving each world... only to finally return to their original world and find the now yandere Batfam having reverse isekaid there too. Lol. Lmao even. Rip to them.
P. S. To you guys awaiting updates for my other fics, I can only say: Sowwy 💕
