SYNOPSIS: When Namjoon wakes up to your face on the front page, he realises that letting you walk away was his worst mistake. But what else can he do, what can he say to try and make you understand it was all just one giant mistake, how can he beg for forgiveness when every newspaper in town is telling you that leaving him was the best choice you ever made.
Namjoon felt sick to his stomach as he looked at the newspaper that morning. Not only did everybody know what he had done, but they knew that you had left him, they knew that you didn’t love him anymore and they had probably guessed that he was still completely in love with you and they probably guessed that he was regretting what he did. And everybody knew by now, that he was probably too late to regain your trust.
How could you smile like that? How could you say that he was single? His brows furrowed, it had only been two minutes since he had noticed the bag on your shoulders, only one minute since you had stepped in the elevator and only thirty seconds since you had told him to basically go sleep with whoever he wanted for publicity, as long as it wasn’t you. And yet, you smiled, you look relieved on the cover of the newspaper that morning. While he sat back in his couch and wished you were beside him, wished that he was grovelling to you instead of sitting alone with nothing but a headline.
He walked to the company that morning, the camera’s swarming outside his apartment building, asking how he felt, what he wanted to say to you, but he simply pulled his hat further down over his face and kept his head low, masking the growing guilt and sorrow on his face with the shadow of his hand. But once he had escaped the media, he was forced to walk past headline after headline, all with the same picture of you underneath, or even worse; old newspapers with pictures of him underneath; the old newspapers which you had thrown onto the coffee table before you left, old newspapers which he had thrown onto the floor in frustration. Old papers and old headlines that should have never happened.
The members were all there when he walked in and Namjoon offered them a fake smile as he sat among them. Jungkook raising a hand to his hyungs back and giving him a pat of assurance. There was gratitude on the rappers face for only a second, but seeing the newspaper on the table next to him, caused him to look away, the feeling of tears stinging his eyes, but he blinked them away; he wouldn’t allow himself to cry, not here, not over this.
“It’ll sort itself out.” Yoongi said, yawning while looking at his phone. “You two have fought before, you always get back together. Headlines don’t mean shit.”
Namjoon lifts his head, surprised at the optimism from the other man, and that’s when Jimin decided to chirp in also.
“I’m going to see her later, if you want me to talk to her about it.” You and Jimin had been friends for a long time, and Namjoon knew it so of course he understood that Jimin was going to have to comfort the both of you through it. And he agreed, but Namjoon wanted to hear it for himself.
“Can you phone me and let me hear what she says?” Namjoon asks, his guilty features causing Jimin to agree. It would hurt anyone to see Namjoon like this. “I want to hear it from Y/N. That’s all.”
Stretching out your arms, you wake up late in your double bed in your hotel room. You look in the mirror and smile at yourself, tilting your head to one side. So this is what it’s like to be refreshed? To not have to wander what headlines would come through your door in the morning, because you knew it was either one of two things. A picture of Namjoon soaked with water which you had tipped on him, or a picture of yourself. And you were right. It was you.
Not needing to read the article, you set the paper on the dressing table and get dressed. Pulling on your converse you go outside, thinking that the best thing you can do is go outside, relax, and let the world get over what you had done yesterday because you were over it already. You had been since the headlines began spilling through your mailbox. Everyone else just had to catch up.
You’re slowed by men with microphones.
“Did you wear converse because you know Namjoon likes them?” They ask you, slowing to match your care free pace.
“No, they’re the only shoes I got the chance to grab.” You shrug, before walking on. The questions don’t cease, all of them about Namjoon and how upset he must be but the only answer you could offer was
“Yeah, poor Namjoon; must be hard to get caught out as a cheat, huh.”
You buy yourself clothes that day, food in case you got bored of the hotel food, some shower gel because you knew the mini ones were bound to run out by tonight, and you run up to your hotel room that evening with your bags and see that there is no more papers, there’s no sleeping Namjoon on your sofa, there’s no guilty aroma in the room. Only fresh smells of a new start.
The door knocks behind you, and you jump. Throwing your bags onto the bed, you pull open the door to see Jimin and you give him a tight hug. Your smile makes him somewhat uncomfortable; mainly because he had spent the vast majority of his day watching Namjoon sulking over you and you seemed fine.
Though, Jimin looked passed it; and once the movie you decided to watch was so intense that he had completely forgotten about it by the time the second explosion happened. And by the time it was over, he was testing how springy the bed was by jumping on it until he hit his head of the ceiling an falling back to the mattress while you were in stitches on the floor.
“I must have got taller or something.” He laughs, holding his head in his hands
“It’s just a low ceiling.” You say, curling up to try and control your laughter.
Clambering onto the bed, you lay beside him; small bursts of giggles still escaping you both from his mishap. But while your distract with your laughter he phones Namjoon who knows not to speak, just to listen to your conversation. You talk about ceilings for a while, which leads to houses, and then to school and how this kid apparently spent 2 days living in your school ceiling. He didn’t believe you, but you showed him the news article which said it was true. It was almost an hour later until you found comforting silence together, and on the other side of the phone, Namjoon was sitting in silence too; despairing and wishing you could talk to him like that again.
After a few moments of silence, Jimins eyes meet yours and he swallows harshly, bringing gaze back to the ceiling where you were looking.
“Jimin?” You say, smiling at him.
“Do you think you could ever get back with Namjoon— he’s a wreck without you.”
Your face softens slowly, your smile fading into half of a frown before you turn you attention back to the ceiling, huffing a sigh as you feel Jimin looking to you from the side of his eye. Namjoon is sitting on his couch at home, hands over his mouth, pleading with you in his thoughts, begging you just to forgive him, to give him another chance, to come back and be his fiance again. To let him show you that he’s sorry, that he loves you more than anything else and than anyone else.
“–But I’m happy with-out him.” You say, your eyes dropping from the ceiling before you turn your head to Jimin, frowning. “I’m happy now.”
On the other end of the phone, Namjoon hangs up, his teeth biting hard into his lip so it is close to bleeding as he wrenches his eyes closed and puts his head into his hands; tears breaking through closed lashes and falling down his cheeks, before he covered his sobs with his hand, clenching his other fist and knocking the mobile off the table. Noticing the ring on his finger when he does so, he settles his elbow on his knees, and twists the ring on his finger, remembering the day where he thought nothing would tear you two a part.
Over the dinner table that night he asked you.
“How long do you plan on loving me?”
But sometimes words are just words. Just how headlines are only headlines.
And sometimes words are true. Like how when you first started dating he asked you,
“What would you do if I ever cheated?” It was all in curiosity so you gave him the honest answer.
“We’d be over.” You said it and laughed, maybe he underestimated how much you meant it. And maybe he thought that you could love him regardless of what he did, but you couldn’t. The Namjoon you fell in love with would never have hurt you like that. You would forever be in love with the man who asked you to marry him; but that wasn’t Namjoon anymore.
“So much for forever.” He sighs, closing his eyes tight. “But you did say we’d be over. So which one do you mean?” Brows furrowing he sends Jimin a text.
NAMJOON: Hey, when you leave will you wait for me outside the hotel?
NAMJOON: I have to ask her something.
“Night, Jimin!” You say, waving him off and shutting the door once he reached the elevator; looking at the mess you two had made with the popcorn, you sighed, shaking your head before brushing some of it out of the way, only to hear the door knock again. At first you think it’s Jimin, that he probably forgot something. But as a matter of fact, Jimin was sitting in the lobby; caught between a rock and a hard place. The hard place being you, his best friend, and the rock being Namjoon, his hyung, all Jimin could do now was hope that whatever you and Namjoon would say to each other would go down well.
You open the door, mildly surprised to be bringing your gaze upward to meet the eyes of your former fiance. Tilting your head, you offer a confused smile as if to ask ‘what are you doing here?’ with out actually having to say it. Namjoon hated when you did that, he hated recognising your confusion and he hated knowing that him standing at your door was something you had to think about now.
Rubbing your shoulder in anxiousness, you simply wait for him to say something; because really you had said everything you needed to say yesterday night.
“Y/N–, can I talk you you?” He asks, gently but also tactically.
“Sure.” You oblige, edging your head in the direction of your room as you let him come in. Sitting on the edge of the bed, you cross your ankles. “What about?”
“I’m sorry. I know I said it before, but I am. Isn’t that enough? I mean, you told me the day I asked you to marry me, that you would love me forever, didn’t you mean that? Through thick and thin.” Namjoon says, hoping you had forgotten the whole ‘we’d be over’ scenario, but he realises that you hadn’t when your neutral expression falls to that of a mixture of disappointment and anger.
“Don’t try and turn this on me, Namjoon. Don’t you remember me saying if someone, you in this case, ever cheated in this relationship, it’d be over? Did you think I would forget about that?” He hated how he loved that about you. How you could remember every detail of every minute of every conversation.
“Well, which was more important to you, the forever or ending us over a stupid mistake.” He retorts, using his hands to express himself by putting them out in front of him.
“You know one cancels out the other Namjoon, you’re smarter than that, stop playing dumb.” You insist. “And it was six– no over a hundred stupid mistakes.” You point out. “Every goddamn news paper that was printed counts as a mistake, and each was your stupid mistake, your stupid publicity stunt.” You feel your fists balling as he irritates you further, but you proceed to calm yourself.
“Everyone makes mistakes! You’re not perfect, you make mistakes; and I forgive them!” He says, his voice raising.
“Yeah. My mistakes are breaking a mug in the sink because it’s slippy, or killing a spider on the wall and it marks the paint. My mistakes don’t ruin relationships.” You breath, taking your eyes off him before he makes you burst with anger, but you spit your words anyway and cast gaze back up to him. “My mistakes, don’t make headlines.”
His teeth clench together, and you can see it; how he brings his gaze to the window and then back to you, trying to regain his cool.
“You really don’t want to fix this, do you?” He seethes.
“I shouldn’t have to.” You fold your arms, and watch as he runs his fingers through his hair and storms away from you, slamming the hotel room door shut behind him. You can practically hear how he stomps toward the elevator but you can’t see how he is on the verge of tears, and you don’t get to because he wipes them from his eyes before they can even reach his cheeks.
Running out of the hotel room, you follow him; just as he done on the night you left, you jam your foot between the two elevator doors, and his attention snaps up at you; his lips parted and eyes looking for some explanation in your face, waiting for you to tell him that you still loved him, still wanted to be together, but instead; you took his hands and placed something in his palm before wrapping his fingers around it and enclosing it within his hand. He knew what it was immediately.
What ever you said hit him hard in the chest, and the expression on his face was one of ill masked hurt, even he didn’t think you could be so upset with him to say something like that. And even you feel what you said was a little bit harsh, but you remove your foot from the elevator doors and take a step back, watching as he looks to the palm of his hands as the doors close. Maybe what you said hurt him; it was harsh, but he had cheated on you many times, he told the world what he had done. He humiliated you on tabloid after tabloid. And all you did was tell him how it made you feel.
Namjoon stepped out into the lobby where Jimin rushed to find out how it all went, they stepped outside the back entrance in silence, sitting down at the bus shelter in the dreary night light.
“So what did she say?” Jimin asked, trying to get a better look at his hyungs expression.
Uncurling his fingers, Namjoon revealed what you had given him in the elevator. A ring. Not just any ring; but your engagement ring, you gave it back, you didn’t want it anymore, it wasn’t yours anymore, just how your heart was no longer Namjoon’s anymore. Swallowing harshly; he fought to fight back the tears, the words you had said still tearing his heart apart in his chest.
“She said—- by the way, go out the back door…”
“Maybe that way I won’t have to see your face in the headlines tomorrow.”
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
