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hana | she/her | 21 (feb 10th) | infj
hiiiii i'm hana! multistan currently writing for seventeen. i mostly write short drabble pieces, but occasionally branch out into longer works! i love reading, poetry, coffee, friends to lovers tropes, and all kinds of flowers. i've been wonwoo biased for years, but i think jeonghan and vernon have pushed themselves in there. thank you for visiting 💌💐
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hana spills her guts (poetry + words + other things that make me feel like i’m bleeding out on the floor)
You didn’t expect to run into your late brother’s best friend tending bar at an illegal speakeasy — or to start falling for him. But when you realize Vernon is involved in the same kind of work that got your brother killed, liking him suddenly feels dangerous in ways you know too well.
⇢ pairing: chwe vernon x f!reader
⇢ genre: angst, fluff, brother's best friend
⇢ wc: 9.2k
⇢ warnings: guns/gun violence (nothing graphic), illegal activities, alcohol consumption, grief + death, there are 100% historical inaccuracies and i am so sorry.
⇢ a/n: thank you to everyone who sprinted w me!! and thank you to jess and em for talking me into actually doing this. this is not the best thing i've ever written by a long shot, but it feels like forever since i've posted so here it is.
⇢ as part of the puttin' on the ritz collab hosted by @studiosvt !
By the time your shift ends, there's a dull ache behind your ears, and your legs are aching from sitting too still for too long. You button your coat, and step back into the night with the sense that you've been standing still for hours while New York rushed past you.
Outside the telephone exchange, the cold cuts clean and sharp. Steam rises from the grates along the sidewalk, blurring the streetlights. You pull your gloves tighter and spot Catherine immediately, pacing near the corner with theatrical impatience, her hat already tilting off-center.
"There you are," she says, relief and accusation wrapped together. "I was starting to think they'd chained you to the board."
"Almost," you say. "What time is it?"
"Early enough that I refuse to go home yet." She links her arm through yours before you can protest. "Come on. Grace is waiting."
Grace is a block away, leaning against a lamppost with the ease of someone who never quite looks like she's waiting for anything. She straightens when she sees you, grinning.
"I told her you'd get out before seven," Grace says to you, and tosses Catherine a triumphant look. "You owe me fifty cents."
Cathy groans. "You're unbearable."
You smile despite yourself. "What's the plan?"
Grace glances down the street, then lowers her voice. "We're having a drink."
"A drink," you repeat, eyebrows lifting. You already know where this is going.
"A real one," Catherine says, daring you to argue.
You hesitate, brief but noticeable. "You know I don't usually."
"That's exactly why we're taking you," Grace beams, threading her arm through your free one. "You work too much. It's unseemly."
You make a face, but don't protest, and that leaves you reluctantly frogmarched by your two friends down the icy streets. Of course, they don't tell you where you're going at first, just guide you down a side street you rarely use, past shopfronts already dark for the night. Ignoring all your questions, of course, dismissing them with casual waves of the hand.
You let them, though, because it's been a while since you've had a proper drink, and anything is more appealing than going back to your lonely room. You already know your aunt will have fallen asleep in her chair by the window, and won't even stir when you let yourself in later on.
The door of the speakeasy doesn't look like anything at all.
That's the first thing you notice — how easy it would be to miss. Just another unmarked stretch of brick and a narrow doorway wedged between a tailor and a shuttered grocer, the kind of place you've passed a hundred times without wondering what's behind it.
Your friends are already laughing, breath fogging in the cold. Grace knocks twice, pauses, then knocks once more. You watch her hand, oddly attentive. A slit opens, a pair of eyes looks you over. Gracie smiles and says a name you don't recognise. The door swings inward.
Warmth hits you first, then sound. Laughter layered over music, conversation pressed close together. The air smells sharp and sweet all at once. Citrus. Alcohol. Wool coats damp from the cold.
"Oh," Catherine says, delighted. "This is good."
"Told you," Grace grins, though she looks just as pleasantly surprised as you do. "My cousin knows all the good spots."
You step inside, letting your eyes adjust to the low lighting, lamps shaded in amber, smoke clinging to the ceiling, bodies pressed together in easy familiarity. Jazz hums from somewhere unseen.
"This is so illegal," you say, automatically.
Catherine nudges you. "Isn't it wonderful?"
Someone laughs loudly near your shoulder. Someone else swears affectionately. It's loud, humming with a kind of life that the unremarkable front door conceals impressively. You friends squeeze in at the bar, and you end up slotting yourself in between them, just about close enough to hear each other under the buzz.
The bartender has his back to you, leaning in to hear someone farther down the bar. Dark hair, white shirt, sleeves rolled, and you're watching without any real thought until he turns.
The recognition arrives in pieces. The line of his jaw. The familiar curve of his mouth when he smiles at something the customer says, the way his eyes crease faintly at the corners. He looks older than the last time you saw him, leaner, sharper around the eyes, but unmistakably the same.
Your stomach drops.
Vernon.
For a heartbeat, you're sure he hasn't seen you, and relief flares, sharp and almost dizzying. Immediately, your instinct is to run — let the crowd swallow you, pretend this never happened, but then his gaze lifts, scanning the bar and it lands on your face.
He stills.
It's subtle, but you absolutely see it. His hand pauses, his expression goes blank, then carefully softens. Surprise, clear as day.
You hold his gaze, pulse louder than the jazz, thrumming in your ears. A year and a half collapses into a single moment.
Catherine leans back suddenly, elbowing your arm and lowering her mouth to your ear. "Am I crazy, or is that bartender making eyes straight at you?"
"What?" You barely manage a reply, disoriented. Your mouth seems to move slower, words not fully forming in your mouth.
"Hey," Grace says to the bartender (Vernon, your mind supplies insistently), unaware of the muttered conversation on her right. "Three Mary Pickfords."
He blinks once, glances at you for a beat too long, then nods. "Coming up."
His voice is exactly the fucking same.
He turns away to pour, giving you the barest moment to breathe. You watch him move, the familiarity of him made strange by context, but with all the thoughts rushing into your head, you don't have time to concentrate on his movements. Is he pretending not to know you? Does he actually not recognise you? Did you imagine the way his hands froze and his eyes widened?
He sets the glasses down in front of you, then finally looks at you again. There's a split second where he looks at you, befor he opens his mouth, and instantly you can tell, yes, he knows you. You may have met only a handful of times, but he knows you.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." Your voice sounds strange even to your own ears.
Neither of you moves closer. The bar hums around you, and your friends look on with unusual silence.
"I didn't know you…" He stops, adjusts. "I didn't know you — What are you doing here?"
"We just — came out for drinks," you say, and it's awkward, the half-hearted gesture you make towards your friends either side of you.
He huffs a quiet laugh. "Yeah. That makes sense."
Catherine looks between you. "You know each other?"
Vernon glances at you, giving you the choice — it's not much of a choice, after the conversation you just had in front of them.
"This is Vernon," you say, swallowing thickly. "He is — was — friends with my brother."
Your words stumble into each other, and you drop your eyes from Vernon's for a second. You don't want to see the way his eyes flicker when you correct yourself to past tense, don't want to see that sinking feeling in your stomach reflected in his eyes.
Cathy clears her throat. "Well. I suppose that explains the staring."
Vernon offers a small, careful smile, distributing the drinks without moving his eyes from your face. "It's good to see you."
"You too," you say truthfully, swallowing and managing a smile. Your mouth feels dry.
He slides the last glass toward you. "Three Mary Pickfords," he says, almost gentle. "Shout if you need me."
You take it, your fingers brushing the cool glass. "Thanks."
You drink. It burns, then settles.
The night keeps moving. Conversation carries on around you. Grace tells a story about a woman at her office who cried through lunch over a broken typewriter. Catherine interrupts constantly with her usual bright quips. You listen, humming and nodding where appropriate, but you can't make yourself contribute properly; your mind is still stuck on your brother's best friend.
Vernon is everywhere and nowhere at once, called down the bar, ducking behind shelves, leaning in to hear orders. Every time you think he might circle back, someone else needs him. You catch glimpses of him between people, sleeves damp now, hair slightly mussed. Sometimes he smiles, a quick fleeting thing that lights up his face for a second, before disappearing.
You haven't seen him since the funeral. You haven't really thought about him since the funeral, when he looked at you across the room with serious brown eyes. He'd said something to you, just before he left, but you can't remember now. Everything about that day feels like a blur. You only remember fragments: your aunt wailing, the taste of bile sour in your throat. Your hands were cold, tight-knuckled with the fabric of your skirt between them.
You don't speak to Vernon again for the rest of the night, not really. Just a look here, a brief nod there. And when the night is over, and Catherine's announcing she really needs to get home, and Grace is handing you your coat, you try to catch his eye, to say a quick goodbye, at the very least. Except you can't see him anywhere, and Cathy's tugging on your hand, and so you leave it.
You're halfway toward the door when you feel something brush your coat sleeve. You turn. and he's there suddenly, like he's stepped out of the walls themselves. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. "Take care getting home," he says, and he looks like he wants to say more.
You don't give him a chance. "I will," you answer. "Thanks."
He nods, and then he's gone. The music swells behind him; you step out into the cold, the door closing softly at your back. The city rushes in, loud and ordinary again.
Behind you, the bar stays hidden, exactly as it was.
The first time you go back, you tell yourself it's because Grace insists.
It's a Thursday, which means you're bone-tired and irritable and not in the mood to argue. Grace corners you at lunch — her office isn't far from the exchange, and the two of you usually stop to scoff down a sandwich for your precious few minutes of lunch break. "Catherine's working late," she says, wheedling. "It'll just be us. We'll tip a few, have a good time!"
"I have work in the morning."
"So do I. That's what makes it thrilling." Her eyes twinkle a little. "Besides, don't you want to see your keen bartender again?"
Your jaw drops and you elbow her. "Stop!"
"What?" she laughs helplessly, dodging you when you aim another. "He's a looker! And he was absolutely making eyes at you, even Cathy said so!"
You give in because it's easier than explaining the tight, restless feeling that's been following you all week. Because you've caught yourself thinking about a pair of steady brown eyes across a bar. Because the memory of his voice, low and familiar, has threaded through your days at inconvenient moments. And you're not sure if it's him, or if it's just you desperately clinging to the last living pieces of your brother.
You don't say any of that to Grace. You just pull your coat on after work and let her lead the way.
Vernon isn't there, in the end, but you spend the evening laughing with Grace and trying to stop your eyes from wandering across the speakeasy like that'll make him appear.
The second time you go back, you don't need convincing.
The door opens the same way. Cathy had coached you through the knock and the password, which you rattle off easily enough. Everything looks the same: warm, laughter ringing out, a few people dancing to the music.
And him.
Vernon looks up almost immediately. There's no visible pause in his movements this time, no falter, but something in his face shifts when he spots you. A small, private acknowledgment.
You take a seat at the bar without waiting to be steered there.
"Evening," he says when he reaches you, his head dipping in an almost comically polite greeting.
"Evening," you mimic, suddenly amused.
He smiles back. "Just you tonight?"
"Grace is on her way," you say. "I'm sure she'll be late, though."
"Well, you want something to get you started?"
You open your mouth to answer, but he's already asking, "Another Mary Pickford?"
You blink. He considers you for a moment, then smiles that sudden, brief smile. "I have a very good memory."
"That's convenient for you."
"It usually is. So?"
"I feel predictable," you say, crossing your arms with a frown. "Now I want something else."
He raises his eyebrows, but something amused plays with the corner of his mouth. "Then what would you like?"
"What would you recommend?"
It seems to be the right question, because he gets to work straight away. You watch him pour and mix without really registering his quick movement, until he sets a glass in front of you. The liquid is pale and clear.
"What is it?"
"Try it."
You do. It's good. Really good, but you don't want to give him the satisfaction.
You look up at him. "Not bad. I'll give you that."
He inclines his head, satisfied. "I'll take it."
He just about finishes his words when Grace appears on your other side, slightly red-cheeked. "Hi, doll," she says, "What's that?" Without waiting for an answer she takes a gulp, swallows. "Swell," she says, smacking her lips. "Vernon, I'll have one of those too, please."
"Of course," Vernon replies, not at all daunted by her sudden familiarity. Grace laughs and drifts away, easily absorbed into a conversation by some lucky admirer. You stay where you are, partly to finish your drink in peace, and partly because, well — Vernon.
For a few minutes he's pulled away again, someone calling for another round, a man waving a crumpled bill, but then, as if the room exhales all at once, there's a sudden lull. A pocket of quiet settles over your stretch of the bar. Grace's lucky admirer has swept her towards where others are dancing and you catch her tilting her head coyly, and snort to yourself.
Vernon returns, setting Grace's drink down where she'll find it when she remembers she ordered it. You take a sip of your drink and smile. "She'll be back eventually," you assure him. "Pretty sure she's stringin' him on to pay for that drink."
He glances over your shoulder. "He doesn't seem to mind."
You grin, trace your fingertip through the condensation on your glass. "She's mostly dragged me here to watch her stuff." You're joking, of course, and Vernon seems to get it, letting a short laugh.
"You didn't want to come?"
"I have work tomorrow," you say, avoiding answering the question. "I work at the telephone exchange."
His eyes spark. "Oh, I remember — " He cuts himself off. I remember you brother telling me, you finish mentally.
You're both quiet for a beat too long, and it's heavy. Then he inhales, keeps going. "How is it?"
You let out a breath that's half a laugh. "Repetitive. But what about you?" you ask, nodding around you. "How did you end up here?"
He glances down the bar, as if to make sure no one's about to interrupt again. "A friend needed help. I was between things."
"Between things," you repeat, dubious.
"Temporary," he says lightly.
You glance around the room, at the crowded tables and the low lamps and the bottle-lined shelves behind him. You lean closer, lowering your voice just a fraction. "You do realise this is wildly illegal."
His mouth twitches. "Is it?"
"Oh, please."
"I thought we were running a perfectly respectable, swanky establishment."
"Of course. With the hidden door and the coded knock."
"Ambience," he replies smoothly.
You shake your head. "I ought to sneak on you."
He actually laughs out loud. "To who? You're going to tell the coppers you stumbled across a speakeasy and accidentally tipped a few drinks down while you were there?"
You open your mouth, then close it again. "That's not the point!"
He leans in slightly, mirroring you without seeming to think about it. "Don't go turning me in now, ___." There's something teasing in his tone, but underneath it, something warmer and slower. His lips linger on your name, you swear it.
You meet his eyes. "I wouldn't."
"Good."
You sit back, lifting your glass again. "You're very calm about all this."
"About you threatening to have me in bracelets?"
"You know I wouldn't!"
"I do." The certainty in his voice makes your stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with the drink.
A man at the far end of the bar calls his name, and Vernon straightens automatically, but he doesn't move just yet.
"It's good to see you," he says instead. Something in his eyes shifts, and instinctively you know he's thinking about your brother. You almost expect him to say his name, to say something, but all he does is exhale through his nose, stepping back into himself. "Duty calls."
"Go," you say, waving him off lightly. "Your criminal empire awaits."
He huffs a quiet laugh as he turns away. "Careful," he tosses over his shoulder. "That kind of talk will get you banned."
"From a law-abiding establishment like this?" you call after him.
He doesn't answer, but you catch the quick flash of his smile before he's swallowed up by the rest of the room.
On the third visit, Grace doesn't come at all. You tell yourself you're only stopping in for one drink before heading home.
You end up staying until nearly eleven.
The bar is quieter than usual. The band's taken the night off, replaced by a gramophone that crackles faintly in the corner. You sit at the far end of the bar this time, where the light is dimmer and the crowd thinner. Vernon doesn't even seem surprised to find you there.
"You're becoming a regular," he says.
"Is that allowed?"
"Depends. Can you keep a secret?"
"I work at a telephone exchange," you remind him. "If I repeated everything I heard, the city would implode."
You're only kidding, because you don't have time to listen in on every call. But it makes him laugh softly, and something about the sound loosens a knot in your chest you didn't know was there. He leans against the counter, closer now, forearms resting on the wood.
"You look tired," he says, not accusing. Just observing.
"Gee, thanks." You scrunch your nose. He only smiles, and you shrug. "It's been a long week."
He pushes your drink towards you, and you take a sip as silence settles between you, but it isn't strained. The music swells. Someone at the other end of the bar tells a loud joke.
"You still live with your aunt?" he asks after a while.
"Yes."
"She doing all right?"
"She's okay." Your aunt is old, a little ditzy. She barely knows you, really, but still — she's the only family you have left, and she gives you a bed at night and food to eat. "She misses him."
For a moment, the background hum of the speakeasy is drowned out, and you just watch as the words register on his face. All these minutes of dancing around it, but you're the one who brings him up.
The look he gives you is steady, unreadable in the low light.
You look away first, but he studies you for a second longer. "You know," he says quietly, "sometimes when you tilt your head like that, you look exactly like him."
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do, they sting. You blink. "I do not."
"You do," he insists, softer now. "Right before you're about to argue."
"That's ridiculous."
"There," he says, almost smiling. "That. Same tone."
You open your mouth to protest again, then hesitate. "I don't sound like him."
"Not usually." He pauses. "But when you're teasing someone."
Your throat tightens unexpectedly. "I don't—"
"I'm not saying it to upset you," he adds quickly. "It's just, you know. Familiar."
Familiar. You stare at the rim of your glass. "I don't know if I like that."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not him."
"I know." His voice is steady. "You're not." He huffs out what could be a laugh. "He always said you were much better than him."
You laugh again, but it wobbles at the edges.
"He was ridiculous," you say. "Always acting like I was made of glass."
"You're not," Vernon says. You're not sure if he's humouring you or if he actually believes that, but you let it slide.
"He talked about you a lot," you say after a moment.
Vernon goes still. He's almost painfully stiff — like if he moves, it'll hurt him. "Did he?"
"All the time. Said you were the only one who could beat him at cards. Said you once tried to cook and nearly burned the building down."
"That was one time," he mutters, but there's a reluctant smile forming at the corner of his lip.
You smile faintly. "He thought you were reckless."
"Oh, that's rich."
"But loyal," you add. "He said that too."
The noise of the bar seems to recede slightly.
Vernon looks down at the counter, running the cloth over a spot that doesn't need cleaning. "He was," he says finally, voice low, "a better man than he thought he was."
You nod, because can't quite trust your voice.
After that night, something shifts.
You start noticing small things. The way he sets a glass in front of you without asking what you want, already knowing. The way his gaze tracks you until you're safely seated, until your coat is hung, until you're settled.
You've never gone out to drink so often in your life. Sometimes you don't even drink — sometimes there are evenings you don't talk much at all. You sit at the bar with a book open in front of you, more for appearance than reading. He moves around you, and every so often your eyes meet. Occasionally, he'll stand in front of you during quiet moments, and you'll talk. Rarest of all, you'll talk about your brother,
Just the steady accumulation of moments.
You don't name what's growing between you. You're not sure you want to. But when he leans in to hear you over the noise and you catch the faint scent of soap and something sharper beneath it, when his shoulder brushes yours and neither of you moves away, when he says your name like it's something carefully held, you feel it.
It sits low and warm in your chest.
On a Friday night, the air inside the speakeasy feels thick and bright with laughter. Cathy is with you again, flushed from the cold and already leaning conspiratorially across the bar before you've even taken your coat off.
"You know," she says loudly, as Vernon sets two glasses down in front of you, "if I didn't know better, I'd say you've got a standing reservation."
"I don't," you reply, though you don't miss the flicker of amusement in Vernon's eyes.
"Sure, sweetheart," Catherine says. "And I'm the mayor."
"You'd be terrible at it."
"I'd be magnificent."
Vernon smiles faintly and moves down the bar to answer someone else's call, leaving you and Catherine to bicker good-naturedly. She's halfway through describing the absolute bluenose at her office when a man steps up to the bar.
You only notice him because Vernon's expression changes, ever so slightly. The man is older, broad-shouldered, his hat tipped low though he doesn't bother to remove it indoors. He doesn't glance at you or Catherine or anyone else; he barely glances at Vernon, for that matter. He speaks quietly, leaning in so that his words don't carry.
You try not to stare.
Cathy keeps talking, oblivious. "—and she cried. Actually cried. Over a crossed line."
You nod, but your attention drifts.
The man slides something across the bar. An envelope. It's small and cream-coloured and you never would have noticed it if you hadn't already been watching Vernon so closely.
Vernon's hand covers it without hesitation, as if it's nothing more than a receipt. He doesn't look down. He doesn't look surprised.
He says something back, equally low. The entire ordeal doesn't take more than a minute, and then the stranger is gone, and you realise you've gone silent.
"Sorry," you murmur. "What were you saying?"
"That I'd have smacked her with my heel."
"Of course you would." Your gaze drifts back to Vernon. He's already serving someone else, expression perfectly composed, like nothing ever happened, so you try to shake it off, downing the last of your drink.
He's back in front of you seconds later, expression smooth. "You need another?"
You study him, before deciding to just be blunt. "Who was that?"
If he's surprised you noticed, he doesn't show it. "A customer."
"That didn't look like a drink order."
He meets your eyes evenly. "Not all business is alcohol."
"You have a lot of interesting customers."
He studies you for half a second too long. "It's New York."
"That's not an answer."
He wipes down the counter, unhurried. "It's not meant to be."
There's no bite in his tone, but equally, there's a steel undertone that tells you plainly he's not going to elaborate.
You force a smile. "Very mysterious."
"I try."
Something unsettled coils in your stomach.
You know what your brother did. Not all of it, of course, but enough. He ran messages, delivered things (he'd never tell you what), anything that'd keep the money coming in. "Just small jobs," he'd said, over and over. "Nothing serious."
Until it was serious. Until it ended in a warehouse by the docks and a gunshot.
You don't want to think about that now, so you look back at Vernon, at the steady calm of him, the familiarity. You tell yourself it's nothing. Bars have suppliers, surely. Accounts. You know this place isn't exactly legal, after all. A few shady characters shouldn't surprise you.
You take a drink and let the music swallow your unease.
You want to push. You want to ask about that man, about what Vernon said to him. For some reason, you want to ask him to talk about your brother, even if it's just to say his name to someone who knew him.
You don't. Instead, you ask about the piano player, about how long he's worked here, about anything that doesn't require him to explain that envelope.
The problem is, it doesn't stop there.
Now that you know to look, you notice a lot more. More men who talk to Vernon in hushed tones, mmore papers slid across the bar smoothly. More nights where Vernon disappears in the middle of his shift — sometimes he's back before you leave, with his hair a little windswept and his eyes a little brighter. Sometimes he's not.
You still don't ask. You can tell he knows you want to, that he can see the curiosity, maybe even the reproach in your eyes, but he doesn't let you, and you don't try. Instead, you talk about work and your friends and your aunt and he listens the same way he always has.
The day your brother died, you had been late coming home.
It wasn't unusual. You'd just started at the exchange then, it hadn't been more than a week or two. You'd been so excited when you landed the job, because it meant you could finally tell your brother to quit "delivering messages", with your new wage and all. He'd promised you he would, that he just had a few things to see through.
You had been carrying a loaf of bread under your arm, still warm through the paper, and rehearsing in your head the scolding you meant to give him for finishing the last of the butter.
You knew something was wrong before you reached the top step, only because the door was ajar. Just enough to show the thin seam of lamplight through the crack, but nobody in your family — not you, not your aunt, and definitely not your brother — would forget to shut the door properly. You pushed it fully open with your hip, already frowning, lips already forming his name.
Your aunt had been standing in the middle of the sitting room, still wearing her apron. She looked smaller somehow, as if the air had pressed her inward. There was a man beside her, hat in his hands, the brim bent slightly between his fingers.
You don't remember dropping the bread, but you must have. Later, you would find it crushed against the wall.
The officer spoke carefully, like he was arranging glass on a shelf. There had been an incident by the warehouses. There had been a gun. He used phrases like unfortunate and tragic and a real shame. You watched his mouth move and thought, distantly, that he should have shaved more closely.
Your aunt had begun to cry before the officer finished speaking. You, on the other hand, didn't cry. You stood very still and stared at the scuffed toes of the officer's boots and wished very hard that he would fucking leave.
Your brother was not the sort of person who disappeared between sentences. He left socks on the floor. He left half-read newspapers on the arm of the chair. He never tied his laces properly. He did not simply stop existing.
The officer asked if you wanted to see him. You shook your head.
The house felt cavernous after they left. Every object was suddenly too specific. His coat slung over the back of a chair — he never remembered to take it with him. The faint imprint of his body in the sofa cushion. A glass on the table with a fingerprint still visible in the smudge.
You touched the sleeve of his coat and it swung gently, as if he might walk back in and shrug into it any second. You told yourself he would.
For weeks afterward, you kept expecting to hear his steps on the stairs. The quick, uneven rhythm of them. The way he'd clear his throat before entering a room, as if announcing himself to an audience.
You thought about the last conversation you'd had, the night before he died. He'd been distracted, smiling at something you couldn't see. When you'd asked where he was going, he'd brushed past you, light and evasive.
"Don't wait up," he'd said, as always.
You hadn't.
In the months before, there had been little things. Late nights, a lot of restlessness. Sometimes you'd wake in the middle of the night and he'd be pacing in the sitting room.
At first, you'd thought it was just a girl he was seeing, but slowly, the later he came home, the more money he came home with, you realised you had got it entirely wrong, and when you asked questions, he'd answer as vaguely as possible.
You remember watching him lace his boots horribly one evening, his head bent, his hair falling into his eyes, and thinking that he looked older than he had any right to.
You remember almost saying, Stay.
You didn't. You knew he wouldn't listen. (Family trait, you aunt would sigh, whenever you and your brother argued. Too stubborn to listen.)
You can't ignore how much this — how much being around Vernon feels like the months before your brother died. When you're watching someone else you care about (because you do care about him, it turns out, more than you'd thought) giving you half-explanations and careful smiles, that same hollow space in your chest begins to open again, tight and painful and raw in your chest. You didn't want to draw the comparison, but every time Vernon disappears, it echoes a time you promised yourself you'd never live through again.
As usual, you ignore it.
One evening, Vernon walks you home.
You're not entirely sure how it happens, it just happens. The rain had started, just after nine. Catherine, who had arrived determined to be sensible, abandons that resolve the moment a man with neatly parted hair offers to share his umbrella. You watch her deliberate for less than a second before she beams and loops her arm through his.
"Don't wait for me," she calls to you, echoing something you've heard a dozen times before.
"I won't," you reply, smiling despite yourself.
Grace had already disappeared an hour earlier, pulled into some back corner with a cluster of strangers arguing about baseball. She'd kissed your cheek in passing and told you not to be dull, to "do something about the bartender you're stuck on".
So you're left alone at the bar, nursing the last inch of your drink, listening to the low hum of jazz as the night wears on. Occasionally, you flick your eyes to Vernon, and then tear them away when you realise you've been looking too long. Vernon moves through the space like he always does — steady and quick on his feet. He's got a dish towel slung over one shoulder now, sleeves pushed high, hair slightly curling at the ends from the damp air every time the door opens. You try not to think about how handsome it makes him look. You fail.
When the rain thickens enough to drum faintly against the windows, you decide it's your excuse. You slip from your stool and gather your coat, the fabric cool against your hands. You shake it out, slide your arms through, and begin fastening the buttons one by one.
"You heading out?"
His voice comes from your left. You hadn't seen him approach.
"Yes," you say, casting him a smile when you look up from your buttons. "Before it gets worse."
He glances toward the door, listening to the steady patter. "I'll walk you."
There's a moment — small, suspended — where neither of you quite moves. The bar behind him carries on as usual: someone laughs too loudly, glass clinks against glass. He's never asked to see you outside of here before; neither of you have ever taken the urge to move this, whatever it is, outside.
"You don't have to," you say, at last.
"I know." He's already fumbling into some sort of storage space for his coat. "I have somewhere to be, anyway. I'll walk you on the way."
You hesitate for the length of a breath, then nod. "All right." You don't ask where he's going — you don't want to know.
He grabs his coat from a peg near the back and says something brief to another bartender, who waves him off without question. There's something about that — how easily he steps away, how little explanation he needs to give — that presses at the back of your mind, but you push it aside.
Outside, rain has glossed the streets into mirrors. You pull your collar higher against the sudden sharp wind. Vernon falls into step beside you without touching, close enough to share your umbrella, close that you can feel the warmth of him between your sleeves.
For a while, you just walk.
The rhythm of your steps finds itself naturally, heel to toe in quiet synchronisation. Your shoulders brush once, accidentally, and neither of you comments on it.
"You're quiet," he says after a few blocks.
"So are you."
He considers that. "Fair."
A cab rattles past, wheels sending up a spray that narrowly misses your hem.
"You ever think about leaving?" he asks suddenly.
You glance at him. "Leaving what?"
"New York."
The question lingers between you, strange and unexpectedly intimate. "Sometimes," you admit, something you never thought you'd do out loud. "Usually after a long day. Or when the heat in the apartment stops working." You tuck your hands deeper into your coat pockets, and a smile appears on your face. "I think I'd like to try farm life, you know." You're only half-joking.
He snorts. "You? On a farm?"
"What?" You try to be offended, but end up laughing along with him. "You don't think I could do it?"
"If you're anything like your brother, you'll do anything you put your mind to," he says, shaking his head. "Even if it's stupid."
"What about you then? Don't you ever want to get out of here?"
"Sometimes," he says, his head tilting slightly to the side. "But I don't know what I'd do anywhere else."
"You could cook," you suggest lightly, biting down the grin that threatens to emerge. "Open a little restaurant somewhere respectable. Legal."
He huffs a laugh, shaking his head. "You're hilarious."
"No, I've seen you back there. You look very competent."
"That's because I don't have to eat what I make."
You laugh, and the sound drifts into the damp air and disappears. It's just a small conversation, a harmless one, but something about the quiet street makes them feel weightier.
You pass a bakery long closed for the night. The faint scent of bread lingers even through the rain. A cat darts across the alley ahead of you, vanishing into shadow.
"You're coming round less often lately," he says.
You glance at him, surprised. "Are you keeping track?"
He shrugs. "I notice things." You think the apples of his cheeks are pinking, but that could just be the cold.
"I have to be up before six," you say. "If I'm late twice in a week they start writing it down. Like we're schoolchildren."
He makes a quiet sound of disapproval.
"It's not so bad, though," you add quickly. "It's steady."
"You say that like you're convincing yourself."
You nudge his arm lightly with your elbow. "Don't analyse me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
The rain picks up slightly, beading along his coat collar. A curl of dark hair falls forward onto his forehead and you have the absurd urge to reach up and push it back.
Halfway down your block, your foot slips on a slick patch of pavement, and his hand closes around your wrist instantly — his grip tightens reflexively, steadying you. Your breath catches, and for a second you're acutely aware of everything. The pressure of his fingers, your pulse fluttering beneath his thumb, the faint scent of rain and soap clinging to him.
You both go still.
His thumb presses lightly against your wrist before he seems to realise what he's doing.
"Sorry," he says, too quickly.
"It's fine," you reply, though your voice sounds breathier than you intend.
He doesn't let go right away. Neither of you moves for a long second, not until rain slides from the brim of his coat and lands against your sleeve. Somewhere down the street, a door slams, and he releases you.
You smooth your coat unnecessarily. He clears his throat.
"You all right?"
"Yes." You try to ignore how hot your face suddenly feels.
"Good."
When you reach your building, the front steps shine wet under the streetlamp. The windows above are dark. Your aunt will already be asleep.
You skip up a step or two, turn toward him, hands still tucked in your pockets to keep them from fidgeting.
"Thank you," you say.
"For what?"
"For walking me."
He shrugs one shoulder. "It's on my way."
You sum up the courage to be a little bolder. "It's not."
A faint smile curves his mouth, not even a little bit flustered. "Doesn't matter."
Rain traces a thin line down his cheekbone. Again, you resist the urge to brush it away. "Do you want my umbrella?" you say, suddenly realising you've left him in the rain. You don't wait for an answer. You hurry back down the steps, shoes slick against the damp stone, snapping the umbrella back open and lifting it over his head. It tilts slightly as you adjust your grip, and in doing so you step closer than you meant to.
The umbrella isn't large. The space beneath it narrows the world to just the two of you — the steady patter of rain above — again, that faint scent of wet wool and soap — the warmth of his body only inches from yours.
Vernon seems to realise the exact second you do.
His eyes flick briefly to your mouth. Your breath catches. The hand holding the umbrella trembles just slightly, and he notices — of course he notices.
For a moment, neither of you moves. The city continues around you, rain glossing the pavement, distant wheels cutting through puddles, but it all feels far away.
You're not sure who leans in first.
It's small, almost tentative — a shared decision made without words. His hand comes up, not to pull you closer, just to steady the umbrella where your grip falters. His fingers brush yours, warm and rough, and just as they do, your lips meet softly. A gentle press, testing, as if both of you are making sure the other won't pull away. You don't.
His mouth is warm despite the rain, gentler than you expected. The kiss lingers a heartbeat longer than caution would advise, long enough for something to shift in your chest — something bright and terrifying all at once.
When you part, it's slow. Reluctant.
The umbrella tilts again, rain slipping past the edge and catching in his hair. He exhales, barely a sound, and for a second he looks almost surprised. Then something steadier settles over his expression.
"Get inside," he says gently. "Before you catch something."
You step back toward the door, fingers curling around the handle. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
You hesitate just long enough to look at him once more — the lamplight catching in his eyes, the rain settling into the dark wool of his coat — and then you slip inside.
From the narrow hallway window, you watch him walk away.
He doesn't hurry, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the rain. At the corner, he glances back once — not toward the window, but toward the building itself — as if making sure the door has closed. Then he turns and disappears into the sheen of the city, leaving the street quiet behind him.
You lean your forehead against the cool window. You kissed him — you kissed him, so why does you feel so full of dread?
You run into him three days later in the park.
You'd left the house to escape the stale quiet. Your aunt had fallen asleep in her armchair again, knitting pooled in her lap, so you'd taken your book and walked the few blocks to the park, settling onto a weathered bench beneath a tree that hasn't quite decided to let go of its leaves. It's a little damp, more than a little cold, but you'll take anything that gets you away from being cooped up with your thoughts.
You're halfway through a page when a shadow falls across the paper.
"What are the odds?" a familiar voice asks.
You look up too quickly.
Vernon's dressed differently. No rolled sleeves. No apron. Just a dark coat, collar turned up against the breeze, hands tucked into his pockets. Without the bar framing him, he looks younger.
"Is that disappointment I hear?" you ask.
"Devastation," he says solemnly.
You snort before you can stop yourself. "What are you doing here?"
"Walking."
"Just walking?"
"Is that so hard to believe?"
You tilt your head. "A little."
He smiles. "Can I?" He gestures to the empty space beside you.
You hesitate for half a second — not because you want to say no, but because your heart has started beating in that uneven way again — and then you nod. He sits, close but not touching, and all you can think about is how the last time you saw him, his lips were on yours.
For a moment, neither of you speak. It feels almost indecently normal, you sat next to him on a bench. Simple — it feels simple. You wish it was.
"You don't seem surprised," he says after a while.
"To see you?"
He nods. You close your book, wrinkle your nose as you think, thumb marking the page. "I was, for a second. But my aunt always says, you know, the city's smaller than we think."
"Or we're worse at staying away than we pretend."
You glance at him. "Were you trying to stay away?"
His gaze stays forward. "Were you?"
You don't answer. A breeze lifts, tugging a loose strand of hair across your mouth. You reach to brush it away at the same time he does — your fingers collide lightly.
He drops his hand first. "Sorry."
"It's fine."
You both look forward again, but something has shifted — a current humming just beneath the surface. "You read much?" he asks, nodding toward your book.
"When I can."
"Is it good?"
"I don't know yet," you admit. "I've read the same paragraph three times."
He huffs quietly. "Distracted?"
"Maybe."
He studies you then, openly. Silence settles again, softer this time, and after a few long moments, he looks away.
A boy runs past chasing a ball, nearly colliding with Vernon's knee. Vernon catches the ball instinctively before it hits the gravel path, handing it back with a faint nod. The boy grins and dashes off again.
You watch the ease of it. "You know, you seem different out here."
"How?"
"I don't know." You search for the right words. "Less guarded."
He goes still at that.
"Guarded," he repeats.
"At the bar, you're always watching and listening and moving."
"And here?"
"Here you just look like a man sitting in the sun. Honestly, I didn't know you could sit so still until now."
The corner of his mouth lifts. "Thrilling." There's a moment where he seems to debate saying something, and then he opens his mouth. "You're different too, you know. In the daylight."
"Really?"
"Even prettier," he says, soft. "I can actually see your face."
You swallow.
You can't do this again. The thought arrives sharp and unwelcome, and you stand abruptly. "I should go," you say.
He looks up at you, surprised. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No." You force a smile. "No, I just — I promised my aunt I wouldn't be long."
He rises too. "I'll walk you, then," he says. "If you'll let me."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
You hesitate, and then you nod. The path curves out of the park and back toward the city blocks. You walk side by side, arms brushing occasionally, but neither of you say anything the whole way home.
It's a few nights later, when you see Vernon outside the bar, and something inside you twists.
You hadn't meant to come, but your bed had felt too close, the air too thick with the sound of your aunt's breathing in the next room, the clock ticking too loudly on the mantel. You'd needed air. That was all.
But your feet had turned at the familiar corner without consulting you. Past the bakery, straight past the shuttered tailor, toward the narrow stretch of brick that concealed the door you now knew by heart.
You realise where you're headed only when you see the faint spill of amber light at the end of the block.
You stop.
You could turn around. You probably should turn around.
Instead, you keep walking.
The rain has left the pavement slick and dark. The alley beside the building gleams faintly under a single weak lamp, and you're just about to pass by it when movement catches your eye. Two figures stand half-shadowed against the brick. One taller, shoulders squared. The other angled slightly inward, posture familiar in a way your body recognises before your mind does.
You know it's him before he shifts enough for the light to touch his face.
There's no easy warmth to him here, no softness from lamplight and music, no quick smile sent your way from across the room.
You realise belatedly that the man standing opposite him is the first one you'd noticed weeks ago. Now they're stand close enough that their shoulders nearly brush.
You don't move. (You should go, you think, but you know you won't.) The alley smells faintly of damp brick and stale smoke. Your pulse roars in your ears so loudly you're sure it must be audible.
Reaching inside his coat, Vernon pulls out something wrapped in brown paper — long, narrow, bound tightly with twine. It's too rigid to be anything soft, too carefully held to be casual. He grips it with both hands, angled downward, shielded by his body.
The shape is unmistakable. Even through paper, you can see the outline.
It's a gun.
Your breath leaves you in a thin, soundless rush. You watch as the man steps closer. Vernon keeps his movements controlled, passing the parcel across the small space between them the same way you've seen him hand over a bottle of alcohol countless times.
The man takes it, slipping it quickly beneath his coat, tucking it along his side with familiarity. He adjusts his jacket once, twice, until the shape disappears against his body. They exchange a few quiet words. You strain to hear, but the rain-swollen air swallows the sound. The man gives a single nod, and then he turns and walks toward the mouth of the alley, steps measured, unhurried, merging easily with the dim spill of light from the main street.
Vernon stays where he is. He exhales slowly, the breath visible in the damp air. His hand comes up to his hair, pushing it back from his forehead in that same absent gesture you've seen a hundred times across the bar.
It's so normal.
So terribly normal.
Then he turns, straight towards you — there's one horrible moment where you think he's seen you, he's known you were there all along. Then your thoughts kick in, you realise it's not possible, and as he walks in your direction, instinct slams through you. You step back hard enough that your shoulder hits brick. The cold seeps instantly through your coat. You press yourself into shadow, willing your breathing to quiet, willing your heartbeat to stop battering against your ribs.
He walks past.
Close enough that you see the rain clinging to his lashes. Close enough that you could reach out and catch his sleeve, if you wanted.
His gaze is fixed straight ahead, and the glimpse you get of his eyes shows them hard, focused. Closed off in a way you've never seen when he's looking at you. There's no softness in it now, no warmth or laughter.
He passes within arm's length, and you let him.
And you stand there, rooted to damp brick, the image of brown paper and the unmistakable outline beneath it burning behind your eyes.
You realise you've stopped breathing. Because once again, it's the same. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, it's the same.
Small things. Harmless things. Just helping someone out. Just passing something along. Just a favor. Just temporary.
You've heard it all before, and standing here with the rain dampening the back of your neck and the wind picking up, you remember deciding not to push. You remember telling yourself it was none of your business.
And you remember the knock at the door, the officer's hat in his hands.
You can't do this again.
The thought lands with such force it nearly steals the air from your lungs, but it blocks everything else out, because it's true — you can't.
You can't stand on the edge of something and pretend not to see where it leads. Because that's what this is, whether he names it or not. No matter how much he insists that he's careful; you know how careful men end up. You know how easily small things become bigger ones.
Your eyes burn suddenly, fiercely, and you blink hard against it. The alley feels too narrow, the walls too close. For a wild moment, you consider calling after him.
Vernon.
You imagine the sound of his name leaving your mouth, sharp enough to make him turn. You imagine his surprise. The explanation that would follow. The way he would soften his voice, step closer, tell you it isn't what you think, maybe even cup your cheek, let you lean into the warmth of his hand.
But you don't want to hear it. You don't want to stand under the weak alley lights and listen to him carve this into something reasonable, because you know yourself well enough to know you might believe him.
You don't follow him.
You don't go back for nearly a week and a half. It's the longest you've gone without seeing him since he appeared back into your life.
On the eleventh day, Vernon finds you outside the exchange.
You're startled when he says your name, whipping round so quickly you seem to startle him just as much as he did you. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you," he says simply.
You fold your arms. "Why?"
"You haven't been by."
"I've been busy."
He studies you, eyes shrewd. "That's not it."
You hold his gaze. "I saw you."
His expression doesn't change. "Saw me."
"In the alley."
A beat of silence, and then he takes your arm, gently — so gently, he's always gentle — and pulls you into a small alcove.
"You shouldn't have been there," he says, his voice lowered.
"That's not an answer."
He exhales slowly. "It's not what you think."
"Then what is it, Vernon? Because to me, it looked like a fucking gun."
He runs a hand through his hair, something uncharacteristically frustrated flickering across his face. "It's nothing serious."
"That's what he said."
Vernon's jaw tightens. "I'm not him," he says quietly.
"I know that."
"Then don't look at me like that."
"I thought you were just bartending," you say. It's not true. You've known for a long time, really, you just haven't let yourself.
"I am."
"And the rest?"
He doesn't answer immediately. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you involved," he says finally. "I didn't want you worrying."
"That's not your decision to make."
"No," he agrees. "It's not." The honesty of it disarms you.
"Why?" you ask, and maybe there's a hint of desperation seeping into your tone. "Vernon, why do you do it?"
"Money," he says plainly. "It's temporary."
You almost laugh. That fucking word again.
"That's what he said," you whisper.
Silence stretches between you. "I'm careful," Vernon says, but he already sounds resigned. "I don't take risks I can't manage."
"You can't manage a bullet," you snap.
The words hang heavy. "I'm not trying to replace him," Vernon says more softly. "And I'm not trying to follow him."
"If you keep going like this, you will," you say, and you have to fight to keep your voice down, and you have to fight even harder to force the tears back into your eyes. "You're going to follow hom straight to the grave." You swallow, hard, raw, painful. "I can't do it again," you say hoarsely.
His hand lifts, thumb brushing under your eye to catch the tear that falls. "Do what?"
"Bury someone else I l— care about," you say. You watch his eyes, softness and conflict swimming in the brown. Your hand reaches up to cover his on your cheek, and you squeeze, feeling the warmth again. "Vernon, please don't make me."
He doesn't say anything, but you follow the bob of his throat as he swallows. "I care about you," he says, finally. "And — I'm sorry."
You leave before he can stop you.
a/n: sad ending i know im sorry!!!!! i never know whether to put it in the warnings bc its technically a spoiler but. idk. i personally don't like seeing it in the tags before i read something but maybe thats just me. "hana will there be a part 2" hana doesn't know. hana is a little bit sick of this fic after rewriting it 4 times and right now hana would like to not think about it for a very long time.
also guys i need u to know its like 1am and i did one quick readthrough for proofreading and every time she says "thats what he said" i couldnt stop laughing. anyway thank u for reading love u all goodbye
You didn’t expect to run into your late brother’s best friend tending bar at an illegal speakeasy — or to start falling for him. But when you realize Vernon is involved in the same kind of work that got your brother killed, liking him suddenly feels dangerous in ways you know too well.
⇢ pairing: chwe vernon x f!reader
⇢ genre: angst, fluff, brother's best friend
⇢ wc: 9.2k
⇢ warnings: guns/gun violence (nothing graphic), illegal activities, alcohol consumption, grief + death, there are 100% historical inaccuracies and i am so sorry.
⇢ a/n: thank you to everyone who sprinted w me!! and thank you to jess and em for talking me into actually doing this. this is not the best thing i've ever written by a long shot, but it feels like forever since i've posted so here it is.
⇢ as part of the puttin' on the ritz collab hosted by @studiosvt !
By the time your shift ends, there's a dull ache behind your ears, and your legs are aching from sitting too still for too long. You button your coat, and step back into the night with the sense that you've been standing still for hours while New York rushed past you.
Outside the telephone exchange, the cold cuts clean and sharp. Steam rises from the grates along the sidewalk, blurring the streetlights. You pull your gloves tighter and spot Catherine immediately, pacing near the corner with theatrical impatience, her hat already tilting off-center.
"There you are," she says, relief and accusation wrapped together. "I was starting to think they'd chained you to the board."
"Almost," you say. "What time is it?"
"Early enough that I refuse to go home yet." She links her arm through yours before you can protest. "Come on. Grace is waiting."
Grace is a block away, leaning against a lamppost with the ease of someone who never quite looks like she's waiting for anything. She straightens when she sees you, grinning.
"I told her you'd get out before seven," Grace says to you, and tosses Catherine a triumphant look. "You owe me fifty cents."
Cathy groans. "You're unbearable."
You smile despite yourself. "What's the plan?"
Grace glances down the street, then lowers her voice. "We're having a drink."
"A drink," you repeat, eyebrows lifting. You already know where this is going.
"A real one," Catherine says, daring you to argue.
You hesitate, brief but noticeable. "You know I don't usually."
"That's exactly why we're taking you," Grace beams, threading her arm through your free one. "You work too much. It's unseemly."
You make a face, but don't protest, and that leaves you reluctantly frogmarched by your two friends down the icy streets. Of course, they don't tell you where you're going at first, just guide you down a side street you rarely use, past shopfronts already dark for the night. Ignoring all your questions, of course, dismissing them with casual waves of the hand.
You let them, though, because it's been a while since you've had a proper drink, and anything is more appealing than going back to your lonely room. You already know your aunt will have fallen asleep in her chair by the window, and won't even stir when you let yourself in later on.
The door of the speakeasy doesn't look like anything at all.
That's the first thing you notice — how easy it would be to miss. Just another unmarked stretch of brick and a narrow doorway wedged between a tailor and a shuttered grocer, the kind of place you've passed a hundred times without wondering what's behind it.
Your friends are already laughing, breath fogging in the cold. Grace knocks twice, pauses, then knocks once more. You watch her hand, oddly attentive. A slit opens, a pair of eyes looks you over. Gracie smiles and says a name you don't recognise. The door swings inward.
Warmth hits you first, then sound. Laughter layered over music, conversation pressed close together. The air smells sharp and sweet all at once. Citrus. Alcohol. Wool coats damp from the cold.
"Oh," Catherine says, delighted. "This is good."
"Told you," Grace grins, though she looks just as pleasantly surprised as you do. "My cousin knows all the good spots."
You step inside, letting your eyes adjust to the low lighting, lamps shaded in amber, smoke clinging to the ceiling, bodies pressed together in easy familiarity. Jazz hums from somewhere unseen.
"This is so illegal," you say, automatically.
Catherine nudges you. "Isn't it wonderful?"
Someone laughs loudly near your shoulder. Someone else swears affectionately. It's loud, humming with a kind of life that the unremarkable front door conceals impressively. You friends squeeze in at the bar, and you end up slotting yourself in between them, just about close enough to hear each other under the buzz.
The bartender has his back to you, leaning in to hear someone farther down the bar. Dark hair, white shirt, sleeves rolled, and you're watching without any real thought until he turns.
The recognition arrives in pieces. The line of his jaw. The familiar curve of his mouth when he smiles at something the customer says, the way his eyes crease faintly at the corners. He looks older than the last time you saw him, leaner, sharper around the eyes, but unmistakably the same.
Your stomach drops.
Vernon.
For a heartbeat, you're sure he hasn't seen you, and relief flares, sharp and almost dizzying. Immediately, your instinct is to run — let the crowd swallow you, pretend this never happened, but then his gaze lifts, scanning the bar and it lands on your face.
He stills.
It's subtle, but you absolutely see it. His hand pauses, his expression goes blank, then carefully softens. Surprise, clear as day.
You hold his gaze, pulse louder than the jazz, thrumming in your ears. A year and a half collapses into a single moment.
Catherine leans back suddenly, elbowing your arm and lowering her mouth to your ear. "Am I crazy, or is that bartender making eyes straight at you?"
"What?" You barely manage a reply, disoriented. Your mouth seems to move slower, words not fully forming in your mouth.
"Hey," Grace says to the bartender (Vernon, your mind supplies insistently), unaware of the muttered conversation on her right. "Three Mary Pickfords."
He blinks once, glances at you for a beat too long, then nods. "Coming up."
His voice is exactly the fucking same.
He turns away to pour, giving you the barest moment to breathe. You watch him move, the familiarity of him made strange by context, but with all the thoughts rushing into your head, you don't have time to concentrate on his movements. Is he pretending not to know you? Does he actually not recognise you? Did you imagine the way his hands froze and his eyes widened?
He sets the glasses down in front of you, then finally looks at you again. There's a split second where he looks at you, befor he opens his mouth, and instantly you can tell, yes, he knows you. You may have met only a handful of times, but he knows you.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." Your voice sounds strange even to your own ears.
Neither of you moves closer. The bar hums around you, and your friends look on with unusual silence.
"I didn't know you…" He stops, adjusts. "I didn't know you — What are you doing here?"
"We just — came out for drinks," you say, and it's awkward, the half-hearted gesture you make towards your friends either side of you.
He huffs a quiet laugh. "Yeah. That makes sense."
Catherine looks between you. "You know each other?"
Vernon glances at you, giving you the choice — it's not much of a choice, after the conversation you just had in front of them.
"This is Vernon," you say, swallowing thickly. "He is — was — friends with my brother."
Your words stumble into each other, and you drop your eyes from Vernon's for a second. You don't want to see the way his eyes flicker when you correct yourself to past tense, don't want to see that sinking feeling in your stomach reflected in his eyes.
Cathy clears her throat. "Well. I suppose that explains the staring."
Vernon offers a small, careful smile, distributing the drinks without moving his eyes from your face. "It's good to see you."
"You too," you say truthfully, swallowing and managing a smile. Your mouth feels dry.
He slides the last glass toward you. "Three Mary Pickfords," he says, almost gentle. "Shout if you need me."
You take it, your fingers brushing the cool glass. "Thanks."
You drink. It burns, then settles.
The night keeps moving. Conversation carries on around you. Grace tells a story about a woman at her office who cried through lunch over a broken typewriter. Catherine interrupts constantly with her usual bright quips. You listen, humming and nodding where appropriate, but you can't make yourself contribute properly; your mind is still stuck on your brother's best friend.
Vernon is everywhere and nowhere at once, called down the bar, ducking behind shelves, leaning in to hear orders. Every time you think he might circle back, someone else needs him. You catch glimpses of him between people, sleeves damp now, hair slightly mussed. Sometimes he smiles, a quick fleeting thing that lights up his face for a second, before disappearing.
You haven't seen him since the funeral. You haven't really thought about him since the funeral, when he looked at you across the room with serious brown eyes. He'd said something to you, just before he left, but you can't remember now. Everything about that day feels like a blur. You only remember fragments: your aunt wailing, the taste of bile sour in your throat. Your hands were cold, tight-knuckled with the fabric of your skirt between them.
You don't speak to Vernon again for the rest of the night, not really. Just a look here, a brief nod there. And when the night is over, and Catherine's announcing she really needs to get home, and Grace is handing you your coat, you try to catch his eye, to say a quick goodbye, at the very least. Except you can't see him anywhere, and Cathy's tugging on your hand, and so you leave it.
You're halfway toward the door when you feel something brush your coat sleeve. You turn. and he's there suddenly, like he's stepped out of the walls themselves. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. "Take care getting home," he says, and he looks like he wants to say more.
You don't give him a chance. "I will," you answer. "Thanks."
He nods, and then he's gone. The music swells behind him; you step out into the cold, the door closing softly at your back. The city rushes in, loud and ordinary again.
Behind you, the bar stays hidden, exactly as it was.
The first time you go back, you tell yourself it's because Grace insists.
It's a Thursday, which means you're bone-tired and irritable and not in the mood to argue. Grace corners you at lunch — her office isn't far from the exchange, and the two of you usually stop to scoff down a sandwich for your precious few minutes of lunch break. "Catherine's working late," she says, wheedling. "It'll just be us. We'll tip a few, have a good time!"
"I have work in the morning."
"So do I. That's what makes it thrilling." Her eyes twinkle a little. "Besides, don't you want to see your keen bartender again?"
Your jaw drops and you elbow her. "Stop!"
"What?" she laughs helplessly, dodging you when you aim another. "He's a looker! And he was absolutely making eyes at you, even Cathy said so!"
You give in because it's easier than explaining the tight, restless feeling that's been following you all week. Because you've caught yourself thinking about a pair of steady brown eyes across a bar. Because the memory of his voice, low and familiar, has threaded through your days at inconvenient moments. And you're not sure if it's him, or if it's just you desperately clinging to the last living pieces of your brother.
You don't say any of that to Grace. You just pull your coat on after work and let her lead the way.
Vernon isn't there, in the end, but you spend the evening laughing with Grace and trying to stop your eyes from wandering across the speakeasy like that'll make him appear.
The second time you go back, you don't need convincing.
The door opens the same way. Cathy had coached you through the knock and the password, which you rattle off easily enough. Everything looks the same: warm, laughter ringing out, a few people dancing to the music.
And him.
Vernon looks up almost immediately. There's no visible pause in his movements this time, no falter, but something in his face shifts when he spots you. A small, private acknowledgment.
You take a seat at the bar without waiting to be steered there.
"Evening," he says when he reaches you, his head dipping in an almost comically polite greeting.
"Evening," you mimic, suddenly amused.
He smiles back. "Just you tonight?"
"Grace is on her way," you say. "I'm sure she'll be late, though."
"Well, you want something to get you started?"
You open your mouth to answer, but he's already asking, "Another Mary Pickford?"
You blink. He considers you for a moment, then smiles that sudden, brief smile. "I have a very good memory."
"That's convenient for you."
"It usually is. So?"
"I feel predictable," you say, crossing your arms with a frown. "Now I want something else."
He raises his eyebrows, but something amused plays with the corner of his mouth. "Then what would you like?"
"What would you recommend?"
It seems to be the right question, because he gets to work straight away. You watch him pour and mix without really registering his quick movement, until he sets a glass in front of you. The liquid is pale and clear.
"What is it?"
"Try it."
You do. It's good. Really good, but you don't want to give him the satisfaction.
You look up at him. "Not bad. I'll give you that."
He inclines his head, satisfied. "I'll take it."
He just about finishes his words when Grace appears on your other side, slightly red-cheeked. "Hi, doll," she says, "What's that?" Without waiting for an answer she takes a gulp, swallows. "Swell," she says, smacking her lips. "Vernon, I'll have one of those too, please."
"Of course," Vernon replies, not at all daunted by her sudden familiarity. Grace laughs and drifts away, easily absorbed into a conversation by some lucky admirer. You stay where you are, partly to finish your drink in peace, and partly because, well — Vernon.
For a few minutes he's pulled away again, someone calling for another round, a man waving a crumpled bill, but then, as if the room exhales all at once, there's a sudden lull. A pocket of quiet settles over your stretch of the bar. Grace's lucky admirer has swept her towards where others are dancing and you catch her tilting her head coyly, and snort to yourself.
Vernon returns, setting Grace's drink down where she'll find it when she remembers she ordered it. You take a sip of your drink and smile. "She'll be back eventually," you assure him. "Pretty sure she's stringin' him on to pay for that drink."
He glances over your shoulder. "He doesn't seem to mind."
You grin, trace your fingertip through the condensation on your glass. "She's mostly dragged me here to watch her stuff." You're joking, of course, and Vernon seems to get it, letting a short laugh.
"You didn't want to come?"
"I have work tomorrow," you say, avoiding answering the question. "I work at the telephone exchange."
His eyes spark. "Oh, I remember — " He cuts himself off. I remember you brother telling me, you finish mentally.
You're both quiet for a beat too long, and it's heavy. Then he inhales, keeps going. "How is it?"
You let out a breath that's half a laugh. "Repetitive. But what about you?" you ask, nodding around you. "How did you end up here?"
He glances down the bar, as if to make sure no one's about to interrupt again. "A friend needed help. I was between things."
"Between things," you repeat, dubious.
"Temporary," he says lightly.
You glance around the room, at the crowded tables and the low lamps and the bottle-lined shelves behind him. You lean closer, lowering your voice just a fraction. "You do realise this is wildly illegal."
His mouth twitches. "Is it?"
"Oh, please."
"I thought we were running a perfectly respectable, swanky establishment."
"Of course. With the hidden door and the coded knock."
"Ambience," he replies smoothly.
You shake your head. "I ought to sneak on you."
He actually laughs out loud. "To who? You're going to tell the coppers you stumbled across a speakeasy and accidentally tipped a few drinks down while you were there?"
You open your mouth, then close it again. "That's not the point!"
He leans in slightly, mirroring you without seeming to think about it. "Don't go turning me in now, ___." There's something teasing in his tone, but underneath it, something warmer and slower. His lips linger on your name, you swear it.
You meet his eyes. "I wouldn't."
"Good."
You sit back, lifting your glass again. "You're very calm about all this."
"About you threatening to have me in bracelets?"
"You know I wouldn't!"
"I do." The certainty in his voice makes your stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with the drink.
A man at the far end of the bar calls his name, and Vernon straightens automatically, but he doesn't move just yet.
"It's good to see you," he says instead. Something in his eyes shifts, and instinctively you know he's thinking about your brother. You almost expect him to say his name, to say something, but all he does is exhale through his nose, stepping back into himself. "Duty calls."
"Go," you say, waving him off lightly. "Your criminal empire awaits."
He huffs a quiet laugh as he turns away. "Careful," he tosses over his shoulder. "That kind of talk will get you banned."
"From a law-abiding establishment like this?" you call after him.
He doesn't answer, but you catch the quick flash of his smile before he's swallowed up by the rest of the room.
On the third visit, Grace doesn't come at all. You tell yourself you're only stopping in for one drink before heading home.
You end up staying until nearly eleven.
The bar is quieter than usual. The band's taken the night off, replaced by a gramophone that crackles faintly in the corner. You sit at the far end of the bar this time, where the light is dimmer and the crowd thinner. Vernon doesn't even seem surprised to find you there.
"You're becoming a regular," he says.
"Is that allowed?"
"Depends. Can you keep a secret?"
"I work at a telephone exchange," you remind him. "If I repeated everything I heard, the city would implode."
You're only kidding, because you don't have time to listen in on every call. But it makes him laugh softly, and something about the sound loosens a knot in your chest you didn't know was there. He leans against the counter, closer now, forearms resting on the wood.
"You look tired," he says, not accusing. Just observing.
"Gee, thanks." You scrunch your nose. He only smiles, and you shrug. "It's been a long week."
He pushes your drink towards you, and you take a sip as silence settles between you, but it isn't strained. The music swells. Someone at the other end of the bar tells a loud joke.
"You still live with your aunt?" he asks after a while.
"Yes."
"She doing all right?"
"She's okay." Your aunt is old, a little ditzy. She barely knows you, really, but still — she's the only family you have left, and she gives you a bed at night and food to eat. "She misses him."
For a moment, the background hum of the speakeasy is drowned out, and you just watch as the words register on his face. All these minutes of dancing around it, but you're the one who brings him up.
The look he gives you is steady, unreadable in the low light.
You look away first, but he studies you for a second longer. "You know," he says quietly, "sometimes when you tilt your head like that, you look exactly like him."
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do, they sting. You blink. "I do not."
"You do," he insists, softer now. "Right before you're about to argue."
"That's ridiculous."
"There," he says, almost smiling. "That. Same tone."
You open your mouth to protest again, then hesitate. "I don't sound like him."
"Not usually." He pauses. "But when you're teasing someone."
Your throat tightens unexpectedly. "I don't—"
"I'm not saying it to upset you," he adds quickly. "It's just, you know. Familiar."
Familiar. You stare at the rim of your glass. "I don't know if I like that."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not him."
"I know." His voice is steady. "You're not." He huffs out what could be a laugh. "He always said you were much better than him."
You laugh again, but it wobbles at the edges.
"He was ridiculous," you say. "Always acting like I was made of glass."
"You're not," Vernon says. You're not sure if he's humouring you or if he actually believes that, but you let it slide.
"He talked about you a lot," you say after a moment.
Vernon goes still. He's almost painfully stiff — like if he moves, it'll hurt him. "Did he?"
"All the time. Said you were the only one who could beat him at cards. Said you once tried to cook and nearly burned the building down."
"That was one time," he mutters, but there's a reluctant smile forming at the corner of his lip.
You smile faintly. "He thought you were reckless."
"Oh, that's rich."
"But loyal," you add. "He said that too."
The noise of the bar seems to recede slightly.
Vernon looks down at the counter, running the cloth over a spot that doesn't need cleaning. "He was," he says finally, voice low, "a better man than he thought he was."
You nod, because can't quite trust your voice.
After that night, something shifts.
You start noticing small things. The way he sets a glass in front of you without asking what you want, already knowing. The way his gaze tracks you until you're safely seated, until your coat is hung, until you're settled.
You've never gone out to drink so often in your life. Sometimes you don't even drink — sometimes there are evenings you don't talk much at all. You sit at the bar with a book open in front of you, more for appearance than reading. He moves around you, and every so often your eyes meet. Occasionally, he'll stand in front of you during quiet moments, and you'll talk. Rarest of all, you'll talk about your brother,
Just the steady accumulation of moments.
You don't name what's growing between you. You're not sure you want to. But when he leans in to hear you over the noise and you catch the faint scent of soap and something sharper beneath it, when his shoulder brushes yours and neither of you moves away, when he says your name like it's something carefully held, you feel it.
It sits low and warm in your chest.
On a Friday night, the air inside the speakeasy feels thick and bright with laughter. Cathy is with you again, flushed from the cold and already leaning conspiratorially across the bar before you've even taken your coat off.
"You know," she says loudly, as Vernon sets two glasses down in front of you, "if I didn't know better, I'd say you've got a standing reservation."
"I don't," you reply, though you don't miss the flicker of amusement in Vernon's eyes.
"Sure, sweetheart," Catherine says. "And I'm the mayor."
"You'd be terrible at it."
"I'd be magnificent."
Vernon smiles faintly and moves down the bar to answer someone else's call, leaving you and Catherine to bicker good-naturedly. She's halfway through describing the absolute bluenose at her office when a man steps up to the bar.
You only notice him because Vernon's expression changes, ever so slightly. The man is older, broad-shouldered, his hat tipped low though he doesn't bother to remove it indoors. He doesn't glance at you or Catherine or anyone else; he barely glances at Vernon, for that matter. He speaks quietly, leaning in so that his words don't carry.
You try not to stare.
Cathy keeps talking, oblivious. "—and she cried. Actually cried. Over a crossed line."
You nod, but your attention drifts.
The man slides something across the bar. An envelope. It's small and cream-coloured and you never would have noticed it if you hadn't already been watching Vernon so closely.
Vernon's hand covers it without hesitation, as if it's nothing more than a receipt. He doesn't look down. He doesn't look surprised.
He says something back, equally low. The entire ordeal doesn't take more than a minute, and then the stranger is gone, and you realise you've gone silent.
"Sorry," you murmur. "What were you saying?"
"That I'd have smacked her with my heel."
"Of course you would." Your gaze drifts back to Vernon. He's already serving someone else, expression perfectly composed, like nothing ever happened, so you try to shake it off, downing the last of your drink.
He's back in front of you seconds later, expression smooth. "You need another?"
You study him, before deciding to just be blunt. "Who was that?"
If he's surprised you noticed, he doesn't show it. "A customer."
"That didn't look like a drink order."
He meets your eyes evenly. "Not all business is alcohol."
"You have a lot of interesting customers."
He studies you for half a second too long. "It's New York."
"That's not an answer."
He wipes down the counter, unhurried. "It's not meant to be."
There's no bite in his tone, but equally, there's a steel undertone that tells you plainly he's not going to elaborate.
You force a smile. "Very mysterious."
"I try."
Something unsettled coils in your stomach.
You know what your brother did. Not all of it, of course, but enough. He ran messages, delivered things (he'd never tell you what), anything that'd keep the money coming in. "Just small jobs," he'd said, over and over. "Nothing serious."
Until it was serious. Until it ended in a warehouse by the docks and a gunshot.
You don't want to think about that now, so you look back at Vernon, at the steady calm of him, the familiarity. You tell yourself it's nothing. Bars have suppliers, surely. Accounts. You know this place isn't exactly legal, after all. A few shady characters shouldn't surprise you.
You take a drink and let the music swallow your unease.
You want to push. You want to ask about that man, about what Vernon said to him. For some reason, you want to ask him to talk about your brother, even if it's just to say his name to someone who knew him.
You don't. Instead, you ask about the piano player, about how long he's worked here, about anything that doesn't require him to explain that envelope.
The problem is, it doesn't stop there.
Now that you know to look, you notice a lot more. More men who talk to Vernon in hushed tones, mmore papers slid across the bar smoothly. More nights where Vernon disappears in the middle of his shift — sometimes he's back before you leave, with his hair a little windswept and his eyes a little brighter. Sometimes he's not.
You still don't ask. You can tell he knows you want to, that he can see the curiosity, maybe even the reproach in your eyes, but he doesn't let you, and you don't try. Instead, you talk about work and your friends and your aunt and he listens the same way he always has.
The day your brother died, you had been late coming home.
It wasn't unusual. You'd just started at the exchange then, it hadn't been more than a week or two. You'd been so excited when you landed the job, because it meant you could finally tell your brother to quit "delivering messages", with your new wage and all. He'd promised you he would, that he just had a few things to see through.
You had been carrying a loaf of bread under your arm, still warm through the paper, and rehearsing in your head the scolding you meant to give him for finishing the last of the butter.
You knew something was wrong before you reached the top step, only because the door was ajar. Just enough to show the thin seam of lamplight through the crack, but nobody in your family — not you, not your aunt, and definitely not your brother — would forget to shut the door properly. You pushed it fully open with your hip, already frowning, lips already forming his name.
Your aunt had been standing in the middle of the sitting room, still wearing her apron. She looked smaller somehow, as if the air had pressed her inward. There was a man beside her, hat in his hands, the brim bent slightly between his fingers.
You don't remember dropping the bread, but you must have. Later, you would find it crushed against the wall.
The officer spoke carefully, like he was arranging glass on a shelf. There had been an incident by the warehouses. There had been a gun. He used phrases like unfortunate and tragic and a real shame. You watched his mouth move and thought, distantly, that he should have shaved more closely.
Your aunt had begun to cry before the officer finished speaking. You, on the other hand, didn't cry. You stood very still and stared at the scuffed toes of the officer's boots and wished very hard that he would fucking leave.
Your brother was not the sort of person who disappeared between sentences. He left socks on the floor. He left half-read newspapers on the arm of the chair. He never tied his laces properly. He did not simply stop existing.
The officer asked if you wanted to see him. You shook your head.
The house felt cavernous after they left. Every object was suddenly too specific. His coat slung over the back of a chair — he never remembered to take it with him. The faint imprint of his body in the sofa cushion. A glass on the table with a fingerprint still visible in the smudge.
You touched the sleeve of his coat and it swung gently, as if he might walk back in and shrug into it any second. You told yourself he would.
For weeks afterward, you kept expecting to hear his steps on the stairs. The quick, uneven rhythm of them. The way he'd clear his throat before entering a room, as if announcing himself to an audience.
You thought about the last conversation you'd had, the night before he died. He'd been distracted, smiling at something you couldn't see. When you'd asked where he was going, he'd brushed past you, light and evasive.
"Don't wait up," he'd said, as always.
You hadn't.
In the months before, there had been little things. Late nights, a lot of restlessness. Sometimes you'd wake in the middle of the night and he'd be pacing in the sitting room.
At first, you'd thought it was just a girl he was seeing, but slowly, the later he came home, the more money he came home with, you realised you had got it entirely wrong, and when you asked questions, he'd answer as vaguely as possible.
You remember watching him lace his boots horribly one evening, his head bent, his hair falling into his eyes, and thinking that he looked older than he had any right to.
You remember almost saying, Stay.
You didn't. You knew he wouldn't listen. (Family trait, you aunt would sigh, whenever you and your brother argued. Too stubborn to listen.)
You can't ignore how much this — how much being around Vernon feels like the months before your brother died. When you're watching someone else you care about (because you do care about him, it turns out, more than you'd thought) giving you half-explanations and careful smiles, that same hollow space in your chest begins to open again, tight and painful and raw in your chest. You didn't want to draw the comparison, but every time Vernon disappears, it echoes a time you promised yourself you'd never live through again.
As usual, you ignore it.
One evening, Vernon walks you home.
You're not entirely sure how it happens, it just happens. The rain had started, just after nine. Catherine, who had arrived determined to be sensible, abandons that resolve the moment a man with neatly parted hair offers to share his umbrella. You watch her deliberate for less than a second before she beams and loops her arm through his.
"Don't wait for me," she calls to you, echoing something you've heard a dozen times before.
"I won't," you reply, smiling despite yourself.
Grace had already disappeared an hour earlier, pulled into some back corner with a cluster of strangers arguing about baseball. She'd kissed your cheek in passing and told you not to be dull, to "do something about the bartender you're stuck on".
So you're left alone at the bar, nursing the last inch of your drink, listening to the low hum of jazz as the night wears on. Occasionally, you flick your eyes to Vernon, and then tear them away when you realise you've been looking too long. Vernon moves through the space like he always does — steady and quick on his feet. He's got a dish towel slung over one shoulder now, sleeves pushed high, hair slightly curling at the ends from the damp air every time the door opens. You try not to think about how handsome it makes him look. You fail.
When the rain thickens enough to drum faintly against the windows, you decide it's your excuse. You slip from your stool and gather your coat, the fabric cool against your hands. You shake it out, slide your arms through, and begin fastening the buttons one by one.
"You heading out?"
His voice comes from your left. You hadn't seen him approach.
"Yes," you say, casting him a smile when you look up from your buttons. "Before it gets worse."
He glances toward the door, listening to the steady patter. "I'll walk you."
There's a moment — small, suspended — where neither of you quite moves. The bar behind him carries on as usual: someone laughs too loudly, glass clinks against glass. He's never asked to see you outside of here before; neither of you have ever taken the urge to move this, whatever it is, outside.
"You don't have to," you say, at last.
"I know." He's already fumbling into some sort of storage space for his coat. "I have somewhere to be, anyway. I'll walk you on the way."
You hesitate for the length of a breath, then nod. "All right." You don't ask where he's going — you don't want to know.
He grabs his coat from a peg near the back and says something brief to another bartender, who waves him off without question. There's something about that — how easily he steps away, how little explanation he needs to give — that presses at the back of your mind, but you push it aside.
Outside, rain has glossed the streets into mirrors. You pull your collar higher against the sudden sharp wind. Vernon falls into step beside you without touching, close enough to share your umbrella, close that you can feel the warmth of him between your sleeves.
For a while, you just walk.
The rhythm of your steps finds itself naturally, heel to toe in quiet synchronisation. Your shoulders brush once, accidentally, and neither of you comments on it.
"You're quiet," he says after a few blocks.
"So are you."
He considers that. "Fair."
A cab rattles past, wheels sending up a spray that narrowly misses your hem.
"You ever think about leaving?" he asks suddenly.
You glance at him. "Leaving what?"
"New York."
The question lingers between you, strange and unexpectedly intimate. "Sometimes," you admit, something you never thought you'd do out loud. "Usually after a long day. Or when the heat in the apartment stops working." You tuck your hands deeper into your coat pockets, and a smile appears on your face. "I think I'd like to try farm life, you know." You're only half-joking.
He snorts. "You? On a farm?"
"What?" You try to be offended, but end up laughing along with him. "You don't think I could do it?"
"If you're anything like your brother, you'll do anything you put your mind to," he says, shaking his head. "Even if it's stupid."
"What about you then? Don't you ever want to get out of here?"
"Sometimes," he says, his head tilting slightly to the side. "But I don't know what I'd do anywhere else."
"You could cook," you suggest lightly, biting down the grin that threatens to emerge. "Open a little restaurant somewhere respectable. Legal."
He huffs a laugh, shaking his head. "You're hilarious."
"No, I've seen you back there. You look very competent."
"That's because I don't have to eat what I make."
You laugh, and the sound drifts into the damp air and disappears. It's just a small conversation, a harmless one, but something about the quiet street makes them feel weightier.
You pass a bakery long closed for the night. The faint scent of bread lingers even through the rain. A cat darts across the alley ahead of you, vanishing into shadow.
"You're coming round less often lately," he says.
You glance at him, surprised. "Are you keeping track?"
He shrugs. "I notice things." You think the apples of his cheeks are pinking, but that could just be the cold.
"I have to be up before six," you say. "If I'm late twice in a week they start writing it down. Like we're schoolchildren."
He makes a quiet sound of disapproval.
"It's not so bad, though," you add quickly. "It's steady."
"You say that like you're convincing yourself."
You nudge his arm lightly with your elbow. "Don't analyse me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
The rain picks up slightly, beading along his coat collar. A curl of dark hair falls forward onto his forehead and you have the absurd urge to reach up and push it back.
Halfway down your block, your foot slips on a slick patch of pavement, and his hand closes around your wrist instantly — his grip tightens reflexively, steadying you. Your breath catches, and for a second you're acutely aware of everything. The pressure of his fingers, your pulse fluttering beneath his thumb, the faint scent of rain and soap clinging to him.
You both go still.
His thumb presses lightly against your wrist before he seems to realise what he's doing.
"Sorry," he says, too quickly.
"It's fine," you reply, though your voice sounds breathier than you intend.
He doesn't let go right away. Neither of you moves for a long second, not until rain slides from the brim of his coat and lands against your sleeve. Somewhere down the street, a door slams, and he releases you.
You smooth your coat unnecessarily. He clears his throat.
"You all right?"
"Yes." You try to ignore how hot your face suddenly feels.
"Good."
When you reach your building, the front steps shine wet under the streetlamp. The windows above are dark. Your aunt will already be asleep.
You skip up a step or two, turn toward him, hands still tucked in your pockets to keep them from fidgeting.
"Thank you," you say.
"For what?"
"For walking me."
He shrugs one shoulder. "It's on my way."
You sum up the courage to be a little bolder. "It's not."
A faint smile curves his mouth, not even a little bit flustered. "Doesn't matter."
Rain traces a thin line down his cheekbone. Again, you resist the urge to brush it away. "Do you want my umbrella?" you say, suddenly realising you've left him in the rain. You don't wait for an answer. You hurry back down the steps, shoes slick against the damp stone, snapping the umbrella back open and lifting it over his head. It tilts slightly as you adjust your grip, and in doing so you step closer than you meant to.
The umbrella isn't large. The space beneath it narrows the world to just the two of you — the steady patter of rain above — again, that faint scent of wet wool and soap — the warmth of his body only inches from yours.
Vernon seems to realise the exact second you do.
His eyes flick briefly to your mouth. Your breath catches. The hand holding the umbrella trembles just slightly, and he notices — of course he notices.
For a moment, neither of you moves. The city continues around you, rain glossing the pavement, distant wheels cutting through puddles, but it all feels far away.
You're not sure who leans in first.
It's small, almost tentative — a shared decision made without words. His hand comes up, not to pull you closer, just to steady the umbrella where your grip falters. His fingers brush yours, warm and rough, and just as they do, your lips meet softly. A gentle press, testing, as if both of you are making sure the other won't pull away. You don't.
His mouth is warm despite the rain, gentler than you expected. The kiss lingers a heartbeat longer than caution would advise, long enough for something to shift in your chest — something bright and terrifying all at once.
When you part, it's slow. Reluctant.
The umbrella tilts again, rain slipping past the edge and catching in his hair. He exhales, barely a sound, and for a second he looks almost surprised. Then something steadier settles over his expression.
"Get inside," he says gently. "Before you catch something."
You step back toward the door, fingers curling around the handle. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
You hesitate just long enough to look at him once more — the lamplight catching in his eyes, the rain settling into the dark wool of his coat — and then you slip inside.
From the narrow hallway window, you watch him walk away.
He doesn't hurry, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the rain. At the corner, he glances back once — not toward the window, but toward the building itself — as if making sure the door has closed. Then he turns and disappears into the sheen of the city, leaving the street quiet behind him.
You lean your forehead against the cool window. You kissed him — you kissed him, so why does you feel so full of dread?
You run into him three days later in the park.
You'd left the house to escape the stale quiet. Your aunt had fallen asleep in her armchair again, knitting pooled in her lap, so you'd taken your book and walked the few blocks to the park, settling onto a weathered bench beneath a tree that hasn't quite decided to let go of its leaves. It's a little damp, more than a little cold, but you'll take anything that gets you away from being cooped up with your thoughts.
You're halfway through a page when a shadow falls across the paper.
"What are the odds?" a familiar voice asks.
You look up too quickly.
Vernon's dressed differently. No rolled sleeves. No apron. Just a dark coat, collar turned up against the breeze, hands tucked into his pockets. Without the bar framing him, he looks younger.
"Is that disappointment I hear?" you ask.
"Devastation," he says solemnly.
You snort before you can stop yourself. "What are you doing here?"
"Walking."
"Just walking?"
"Is that so hard to believe?"
You tilt your head. "A little."
He smiles. "Can I?" He gestures to the empty space beside you.
You hesitate for half a second — not because you want to say no, but because your heart has started beating in that uneven way again — and then you nod. He sits, close but not touching, and all you can think about is how the last time you saw him, his lips were on yours.
For a moment, neither of you speak. It feels almost indecently normal, you sat next to him on a bench. Simple — it feels simple. You wish it was.
"You don't seem surprised," he says after a while.
"To see you?"
He nods. You close your book, wrinkle your nose as you think, thumb marking the page. "I was, for a second. But my aunt always says, you know, the city's smaller than we think."
"Or we're worse at staying away than we pretend."
You glance at him. "Were you trying to stay away?"
His gaze stays forward. "Were you?"
You don't answer. A breeze lifts, tugging a loose strand of hair across your mouth. You reach to brush it away at the same time he does — your fingers collide lightly.
He drops his hand first. "Sorry."
"It's fine."
You both look forward again, but something has shifted — a current humming just beneath the surface. "You read much?" he asks, nodding toward your book.
"When I can."
"Is it good?"
"I don't know yet," you admit. "I've read the same paragraph three times."
He huffs quietly. "Distracted?"
"Maybe."
He studies you then, openly. Silence settles again, softer this time, and after a few long moments, he looks away.
A boy runs past chasing a ball, nearly colliding with Vernon's knee. Vernon catches the ball instinctively before it hits the gravel path, handing it back with a faint nod. The boy grins and dashes off again.
You watch the ease of it. "You know, you seem different out here."
"How?"
"I don't know." You search for the right words. "Less guarded."
He goes still at that.
"Guarded," he repeats.
"At the bar, you're always watching and listening and moving."
"And here?"
"Here you just look like a man sitting in the sun. Honestly, I didn't know you could sit so still until now."
The corner of his mouth lifts. "Thrilling." There's a moment where he seems to debate saying something, and then he opens his mouth. "You're different too, you know. In the daylight."
"Really?"
"Even prettier," he says, soft. "I can actually see your face."
You swallow.
You can't do this again. The thought arrives sharp and unwelcome, and you stand abruptly. "I should go," you say.
He looks up at you, surprised. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No." You force a smile. "No, I just — I promised my aunt I wouldn't be long."
He rises too. "I'll walk you, then," he says. "If you'll let me."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
You hesitate, and then you nod. The path curves out of the park and back toward the city blocks. You walk side by side, arms brushing occasionally, but neither of you say anything the whole way home.
It's a few nights later, when you see Vernon outside the bar, and something inside you twists.
You hadn't meant to come, but your bed had felt too close, the air too thick with the sound of your aunt's breathing in the next room, the clock ticking too loudly on the mantel. You'd needed air. That was all.
But your feet had turned at the familiar corner without consulting you. Past the bakery, straight past the shuttered tailor, toward the narrow stretch of brick that concealed the door you now knew by heart.
You realise where you're headed only when you see the faint spill of amber light at the end of the block.
You stop.
You could turn around. You probably should turn around.
Instead, you keep walking.
The rain has left the pavement slick and dark. The alley beside the building gleams faintly under a single weak lamp, and you're just about to pass by it when movement catches your eye. Two figures stand half-shadowed against the brick. One taller, shoulders squared. The other angled slightly inward, posture familiar in a way your body recognises before your mind does.
You know it's him before he shifts enough for the light to touch his face.
There's no easy warmth to him here, no softness from lamplight and music, no quick smile sent your way from across the room.
You realise belatedly that the man standing opposite him is the first one you'd noticed weeks ago. Now they're stand close enough that their shoulders nearly brush.
You don't move. (You should go, you think, but you know you won't.) The alley smells faintly of damp brick and stale smoke. Your pulse roars in your ears so loudly you're sure it must be audible.
Reaching inside his coat, Vernon pulls out something wrapped in brown paper — long, narrow, bound tightly with twine. It's too rigid to be anything soft, too carefully held to be casual. He grips it with both hands, angled downward, shielded by his body.
The shape is unmistakable. Even through paper, you can see the outline.
It's a gun.
Your breath leaves you in a thin, soundless rush. You watch as the man steps closer. Vernon keeps his movements controlled, passing the parcel across the small space between them the same way you've seen him hand over a bottle of alcohol countless times.
The man takes it, slipping it quickly beneath his coat, tucking it along his side with familiarity. He adjusts his jacket once, twice, until the shape disappears against his body. They exchange a few quiet words. You strain to hear, but the rain-swollen air swallows the sound. The man gives a single nod, and then he turns and walks toward the mouth of the alley, steps measured, unhurried, merging easily with the dim spill of light from the main street.
Vernon stays where he is. He exhales slowly, the breath visible in the damp air. His hand comes up to his hair, pushing it back from his forehead in that same absent gesture you've seen a hundred times across the bar.
It's so normal.
So terribly normal.
Then he turns, straight towards you — there's one horrible moment where you think he's seen you, he's known you were there all along. Then your thoughts kick in, you realise it's not possible, and as he walks in your direction, instinct slams through you. You step back hard enough that your shoulder hits brick. The cold seeps instantly through your coat. You press yourself into shadow, willing your breathing to quiet, willing your heartbeat to stop battering against your ribs.
He walks past.
Close enough that you see the rain clinging to his lashes. Close enough that you could reach out and catch his sleeve, if you wanted.
His gaze is fixed straight ahead, and the glimpse you get of his eyes shows them hard, focused. Closed off in a way you've never seen when he's looking at you. There's no softness in it now, no warmth or laughter.
He passes within arm's length, and you let him.
And you stand there, rooted to damp brick, the image of brown paper and the unmistakable outline beneath it burning behind your eyes.
You realise you've stopped breathing. Because once again, it's the same. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, it's the same.
Small things. Harmless things. Just helping someone out. Just passing something along. Just a favor. Just temporary.
You've heard it all before, and standing here with the rain dampening the back of your neck and the wind picking up, you remember deciding not to push. You remember telling yourself it was none of your business.
And you remember the knock at the door, the officer's hat in his hands.
You can't do this again.
The thought lands with such force it nearly steals the air from your lungs, but it blocks everything else out, because it's true — you can't.
You can't stand on the edge of something and pretend not to see where it leads. Because that's what this is, whether he names it or not. No matter how much he insists that he's careful; you know how careful men end up. You know how easily small things become bigger ones.
Your eyes burn suddenly, fiercely, and you blink hard against it. The alley feels too narrow, the walls too close. For a wild moment, you consider calling after him.
Vernon.
You imagine the sound of his name leaving your mouth, sharp enough to make him turn. You imagine his surprise. The explanation that would follow. The way he would soften his voice, step closer, tell you it isn't what you think, maybe even cup your cheek, let you lean into the warmth of his hand.
But you don't want to hear it. You don't want to stand under the weak alley lights and listen to him carve this into something reasonable, because you know yourself well enough to know you might believe him.
You don't follow him.
You don't go back for nearly a week and a half. It's the longest you've gone without seeing him since he appeared back into your life.
On the eleventh day, Vernon finds you outside the exchange.
You're startled when he says your name, whipping round so quickly you seem to startle him just as much as he did you. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you," he says simply.
You fold your arms. "Why?"
"You haven't been by."
"I've been busy."
He studies you, eyes shrewd. "That's not it."
You hold his gaze. "I saw you."
His expression doesn't change. "Saw me."
"In the alley."
A beat of silence, and then he takes your arm, gently — so gently, he's always gentle — and pulls you into a small alcove.
"You shouldn't have been there," he says, his voice lowered.
"That's not an answer."
He exhales slowly. "It's not what you think."
"Then what is it, Vernon? Because to me, it looked like a fucking gun."
He runs a hand through his hair, something uncharacteristically frustrated flickering across his face. "It's nothing serious."
"That's what he said."
Vernon's jaw tightens. "I'm not him," he says quietly.
"I know that."
"Then don't look at me like that."
"I thought you were just bartending," you say. It's not true. You've known for a long time, really, you just haven't let yourself.
"I am."
"And the rest?"
He doesn't answer immediately. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you involved," he says finally. "I didn't want you worrying."
"That's not your decision to make."
"No," he agrees. "It's not." The honesty of it disarms you.
"Why?" you ask, and maybe there's a hint of desperation seeping into your tone. "Vernon, why do you do it?"
"Money," he says plainly. "It's temporary."
You almost laugh. That fucking word again.
"That's what he said," you whisper.
Silence stretches between you. "I'm careful," Vernon says, but he already sounds resigned. "I don't take risks I can't manage."
"You can't manage a bullet," you snap.
The words hang heavy. "I'm not trying to replace him," Vernon says more softly. "And I'm not trying to follow him."
"If you keep going like this, you will," you say, and you have to fight to keep your voice down, and you have to fight even harder to force the tears back into your eyes. "You're going to follow hom straight to the grave." You swallow, hard, raw, painful. "I can't do it again," you say hoarsely.
His hand lifts, thumb brushing under your eye to catch the tear that falls. "Do what?"
"Bury someone else I l— care about," you say. You watch his eyes, softness and conflict swimming in the brown. Your hand reaches up to cover his on your cheek, and you squeeze, feeling the warmth again. "Vernon, please don't make me."
He doesn't say anything, but you follow the bob of his throat as he swallows. "I care about you," he says, finally. "And — I'm sorry."
You leave before he can stop you.
a/n: sad ending i know im sorry!!!!! i never know whether to put it in the warnings bc its technically a spoiler but. idk. i personally don't like seeing it in the tags before i read something but maybe thats just me. "hana will there be a part 2" hana doesn't know. hana is a little bit sick of this fic after rewriting it 4 times and right now hana would like to not think about it for a very long time.
also guys i need u to know its like 1am and i did one quick readthrough for proofreading and every time she says "thats what he said" i couldnt stop laughing. anyway thank u for reading love u all goodbye
You didn’t expect to run into your late brother’s best friend tending bar at an illegal speakeasy — or to start falling for him. But when you realize Vernon is involved in the same kind of work that got your brother killed, liking him suddenly feels dangerous in ways you know too well.
⇢ pairing: chwe vernon x f!reader
⇢ genre: angst, fluff, brother's best friend
⇢ wc: 9.2k
⇢ warnings: guns/gun violence (nothing graphic), illegal activities, alcohol consumption, grief + death, there are 100% historical inaccuracies and i am so sorry.
⇢ a/n: thank you to everyone who sprinted w me!! and thank you to jess and em for talking me into actually doing this. this is not the best thing i've ever written by a long shot, but it feels like forever since i've posted so here it is.
⇢ as part of the puttin' on the ritz collab hosted by @studiosvt !
By the time your shift ends, there's a dull ache behind your ears, and your legs are aching from sitting too still for too long. You button your coat, and step back into the night with the sense that you've been standing still for hours while New York rushed past you.
Outside the telephone exchange, the cold cuts clean and sharp. Steam rises from the grates along the sidewalk, blurring the streetlights. You pull your gloves tighter and spot Catherine immediately, pacing near the corner with theatrical impatience, her hat already tilting off-center.
"There you are," she says, relief and accusation wrapped together. "I was starting to think they'd chained you to the board."
"Almost," you say. "What time is it?"
"Early enough that I refuse to go home yet." She links her arm through yours before you can protest. "Come on. Grace is waiting."
Grace is a block away, leaning against a lamppost with the ease of someone who never quite looks like she's waiting for anything. She straightens when she sees you, grinning.
"I told her you'd get out before seven," Grace says to you, and tosses Catherine a triumphant look. "You owe me fifty cents."
Cathy groans. "You're unbearable."
You smile despite yourself. "What's the plan?"
Grace glances down the street, then lowers her voice. "We're having a drink."
"A drink," you repeat, eyebrows lifting. You already know where this is going.
"A real one," Catherine says, daring you to argue.
You hesitate, brief but noticeable. "You know I don't usually."
"That's exactly why we're taking you," Grace beams, threading her arm through your free one. "You work too much. It's unseemly."
You make a face, but don't protest, and that leaves you reluctantly frogmarched by your two friends down the icy streets. Of course, they don't tell you where you're going at first, just guide you down a side street you rarely use, past shopfronts already dark for the night. Ignoring all your questions, of course, dismissing them with casual waves of the hand.
You let them, though, because it's been a while since you've had a proper drink, and anything is more appealing than going back to your lonely room. You already know your aunt will have fallen asleep in her chair by the window, and won't even stir when you let yourself in later on.
The door of the speakeasy doesn't look like anything at all.
That's the first thing you notice — how easy it would be to miss. Just another unmarked stretch of brick and a narrow doorway wedged between a tailor and a shuttered grocer, the kind of place you've passed a hundred times without wondering what's behind it.
Your friends are already laughing, breath fogging in the cold. Grace knocks twice, pauses, then knocks once more. You watch her hand, oddly attentive. A slit opens, a pair of eyes looks you over. Gracie smiles and says a name you don't recognise. The door swings inward.
Warmth hits you first, then sound. Laughter layered over music, conversation pressed close together. The air smells sharp and sweet all at once. Citrus. Alcohol. Wool coats damp from the cold.
"Oh," Catherine says, delighted. "This is good."
"Told you," Grace grins, though she looks just as pleasantly surprised as you do. "My cousin knows all the good spots."
You step inside, letting your eyes adjust to the low lighting, lamps shaded in amber, smoke clinging to the ceiling, bodies pressed together in easy familiarity. Jazz hums from somewhere unseen.
"This is so illegal," you say, automatically.
Catherine nudges you. "Isn't it wonderful?"
Someone laughs loudly near your shoulder. Someone else swears affectionately. It's loud, humming with a kind of life that the unremarkable front door conceals impressively. You friends squeeze in at the bar, and you end up slotting yourself in between them, just about close enough to hear each other under the buzz.
The bartender has his back to you, leaning in to hear someone farther down the bar. Dark hair, white shirt, sleeves rolled, and you're watching without any real thought until he turns.
The recognition arrives in pieces. The line of his jaw. The familiar curve of his mouth when he smiles at something the customer says, the way his eyes crease faintly at the corners. He looks older than the last time you saw him, leaner, sharper around the eyes, but unmistakably the same.
Your stomach drops.
Vernon.
For a heartbeat, you're sure he hasn't seen you, and relief flares, sharp and almost dizzying. Immediately, your instinct is to run — let the crowd swallow you, pretend this never happened, but then his gaze lifts, scanning the bar and it lands on your face.
He stills.
It's subtle, but you absolutely see it. His hand pauses, his expression goes blank, then carefully softens. Surprise, clear as day.
You hold his gaze, pulse louder than the jazz, thrumming in your ears. A year and a half collapses into a single moment.
Catherine leans back suddenly, elbowing your arm and lowering her mouth to your ear. "Am I crazy, or is that bartender making eyes straight at you?"
"What?" You barely manage a reply, disoriented. Your mouth seems to move slower, words not fully forming in your mouth.
"Hey," Grace says to the bartender (Vernon, your mind supplies insistently), unaware of the muttered conversation on her right. "Three Mary Pickfords."
He blinks once, glances at you for a beat too long, then nods. "Coming up."
His voice is exactly the fucking same.
He turns away to pour, giving you the barest moment to breathe. You watch him move, the familiarity of him made strange by context, but with all the thoughts rushing into your head, you don't have time to concentrate on his movements. Is he pretending not to know you? Does he actually not recognise you? Did you imagine the way his hands froze and his eyes widened?
He sets the glasses down in front of you, then finally looks at you again. There's a split second where he looks at you, befor he opens his mouth, and instantly you can tell, yes, he knows you. You may have met only a handful of times, but he knows you.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." Your voice sounds strange even to your own ears.
Neither of you moves closer. The bar hums around you, and your friends look on with unusual silence.
"I didn't know you…" He stops, adjusts. "I didn't know you — What are you doing here?"
"We just — came out for drinks," you say, and it's awkward, the half-hearted gesture you make towards your friends either side of you.
He huffs a quiet laugh. "Yeah. That makes sense."
Catherine looks between you. "You know each other?"
Vernon glances at you, giving you the choice — it's not much of a choice, after the conversation you just had in front of them.
"This is Vernon," you say, swallowing thickly. "He is — was — friends with my brother."
Your words stumble into each other, and you drop your eyes from Vernon's for a second. You don't want to see the way his eyes flicker when you correct yourself to past tense, don't want to see that sinking feeling in your stomach reflected in his eyes.
Cathy clears her throat. "Well. I suppose that explains the staring."
Vernon offers a small, careful smile, distributing the drinks without moving his eyes from your face. "It's good to see you."
"You too," you say truthfully, swallowing and managing a smile. Your mouth feels dry.
He slides the last glass toward you. "Three Mary Pickfords," he says, almost gentle. "Shout if you need me."
You take it, your fingers brushing the cool glass. "Thanks."
You drink. It burns, then settles.
The night keeps moving. Conversation carries on around you. Grace tells a story about a woman at her office who cried through lunch over a broken typewriter. Catherine interrupts constantly with her usual bright quips. You listen, humming and nodding where appropriate, but you can't make yourself contribute properly; your mind is still stuck on your brother's best friend.
Vernon is everywhere and nowhere at once, called down the bar, ducking behind shelves, leaning in to hear orders. Every time you think he might circle back, someone else needs him. You catch glimpses of him between people, sleeves damp now, hair slightly mussed. Sometimes he smiles, a quick fleeting thing that lights up his face for a second, before disappearing.
You haven't seen him since the funeral. You haven't really thought about him since the funeral, when he looked at you across the room with serious brown eyes. He'd said something to you, just before he left, but you can't remember now. Everything about that day feels like a blur. You only remember fragments: your aunt wailing, the taste of bile sour in your throat. Your hands were cold, tight-knuckled with the fabric of your skirt between them.
You don't speak to Vernon again for the rest of the night, not really. Just a look here, a brief nod there. And when the night is over, and Catherine's announcing she really needs to get home, and Grace is handing you your coat, you try to catch his eye, to say a quick goodbye, at the very least. Except you can't see him anywhere, and Cathy's tugging on your hand, and so you leave it.
You're halfway toward the door when you feel something brush your coat sleeve. You turn. and he's there suddenly, like he's stepped out of the walls themselves. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. "Take care getting home," he says, and he looks like he wants to say more.
You don't give him a chance. "I will," you answer. "Thanks."
He nods, and then he's gone. The music swells behind him; you step out into the cold, the door closing softly at your back. The city rushes in, loud and ordinary again.
Behind you, the bar stays hidden, exactly as it was.
The first time you go back, you tell yourself it's because Grace insists.
It's a Thursday, which means you're bone-tired and irritable and not in the mood to argue. Grace corners you at lunch — her office isn't far from the exchange, and the two of you usually stop to scoff down a sandwich for your precious few minutes of lunch break. "Catherine's working late," she says, wheedling. "It'll just be us. We'll tip a few, have a good time!"
"I have work in the morning."
"So do I. That's what makes it thrilling." Her eyes twinkle a little. "Besides, don't you want to see your keen bartender again?"
Your jaw drops and you elbow her. "Stop!"
"What?" she laughs helplessly, dodging you when you aim another. "He's a looker! And he was absolutely making eyes at you, even Cathy said so!"
You give in because it's easier than explaining the tight, restless feeling that's been following you all week. Because you've caught yourself thinking about a pair of steady brown eyes across a bar. Because the memory of his voice, low and familiar, has threaded through your days at inconvenient moments. And you're not sure if it's him, or if it's just you desperately clinging to the last living pieces of your brother.
You don't say any of that to Grace. You just pull your coat on after work and let her lead the way.
Vernon isn't there, in the end, but you spend the evening laughing with Grace and trying to stop your eyes from wandering across the speakeasy like that'll make him appear.
The second time you go back, you don't need convincing.
The door opens the same way. Cathy had coached you through the knock and the password, which you rattle off easily enough. Everything looks the same: warm, laughter ringing out, a few people dancing to the music.
And him.
Vernon looks up almost immediately. There's no visible pause in his movements this time, no falter, but something in his face shifts when he spots you. A small, private acknowledgment.
You take a seat at the bar without waiting to be steered there.
"Evening," he says when he reaches you, his head dipping in an almost comically polite greeting.
"Evening," you mimic, suddenly amused.
He smiles back. "Just you tonight?"
"Grace is on her way," you say. "I'm sure she'll be late, though."
"Well, you want something to get you started?"
You open your mouth to answer, but he's already asking, "Another Mary Pickford?"
You blink. He considers you for a moment, then smiles that sudden, brief smile. "I have a very good memory."
"That's convenient for you."
"It usually is. So?"
"I feel predictable," you say, crossing your arms with a frown. "Now I want something else."
He raises his eyebrows, but something amused plays with the corner of his mouth. "Then what would you like?"
"What would you recommend?"
It seems to be the right question, because he gets to work straight away. You watch him pour and mix without really registering his quick movement, until he sets a glass in front of you. The liquid is pale and clear.
"What is it?"
"Try it."
You do. It's good. Really good, but you don't want to give him the satisfaction.
You look up at him. "Not bad. I'll give you that."
He inclines his head, satisfied. "I'll take it."
He just about finishes his words when Grace appears on your other side, slightly red-cheeked. "Hi, doll," she says, "What's that?" Without waiting for an answer she takes a gulp, swallows. "Swell," she says, smacking her lips. "Vernon, I'll have one of those too, please."
"Of course," Vernon replies, not at all daunted by her sudden familiarity. Grace laughs and drifts away, easily absorbed into a conversation by some lucky admirer. You stay where you are, partly to finish your drink in peace, and partly because, well — Vernon.
For a few minutes he's pulled away again, someone calling for another round, a man waving a crumpled bill, but then, as if the room exhales all at once, there's a sudden lull. A pocket of quiet settles over your stretch of the bar. Grace's lucky admirer has swept her towards where others are dancing and you catch her tilting her head coyly, and snort to yourself.
Vernon returns, setting Grace's drink down where she'll find it when she remembers she ordered it. You take a sip of your drink and smile. "She'll be back eventually," you assure him. "Pretty sure she's stringin' him on to pay for that drink."
He glances over your shoulder. "He doesn't seem to mind."
You grin, trace your fingertip through the condensation on your glass. "She's mostly dragged me here to watch her stuff." You're joking, of course, and Vernon seems to get it, letting a short laugh.
"You didn't want to come?"
"I have work tomorrow," you say, avoiding answering the question. "I work at the telephone exchange."
His eyes spark. "Oh, I remember — " He cuts himself off. I remember you brother telling me, you finish mentally.
You're both quiet for a beat too long, and it's heavy. Then he inhales, keeps going. "How is it?"
You let out a breath that's half a laugh. "Repetitive. But what about you?" you ask, nodding around you. "How did you end up here?"
He glances down the bar, as if to make sure no one's about to interrupt again. "A friend needed help. I was between things."
"Between things," you repeat, dubious.
"Temporary," he says lightly.
You glance around the room, at the crowded tables and the low lamps and the bottle-lined shelves behind him. You lean closer, lowering your voice just a fraction. "You do realise this is wildly illegal."
His mouth twitches. "Is it?"
"Oh, please."
"I thought we were running a perfectly respectable, swanky establishment."
"Of course. With the hidden door and the coded knock."
"Ambience," he replies smoothly.
You shake your head. "I ought to sneak on you."
He actually laughs out loud. "To who? You're going to tell the coppers you stumbled across a speakeasy and accidentally tipped a few drinks down while you were there?"
You open your mouth, then close it again. "That's not the point!"
He leans in slightly, mirroring you without seeming to think about it. "Don't go turning me in now, ___." There's something teasing in his tone, but underneath it, something warmer and slower. His lips linger on your name, you swear it.
You meet his eyes. "I wouldn't."
"Good."
You sit back, lifting your glass again. "You're very calm about all this."
"About you threatening to have me in bracelets?"
"You know I wouldn't!"
"I do." The certainty in his voice makes your stomach flip in a way that has nothing to do with the drink.
A man at the far end of the bar calls his name, and Vernon straightens automatically, but he doesn't move just yet.
"It's good to see you," he says instead. Something in his eyes shifts, and instinctively you know he's thinking about your brother. You almost expect him to say his name, to say something, but all he does is exhale through his nose, stepping back into himself. "Duty calls."
"Go," you say, waving him off lightly. "Your criminal empire awaits."
He huffs a quiet laugh as he turns away. "Careful," he tosses over his shoulder. "That kind of talk will get you banned."
"From a law-abiding establishment like this?" you call after him.
He doesn't answer, but you catch the quick flash of his smile before he's swallowed up by the rest of the room.
On the third visit, Grace doesn't come at all. You tell yourself you're only stopping in for one drink before heading home.
You end up staying until nearly eleven.
The bar is quieter than usual. The band's taken the night off, replaced by a gramophone that crackles faintly in the corner. You sit at the far end of the bar this time, where the light is dimmer and the crowd thinner. Vernon doesn't even seem surprised to find you there.
"You're becoming a regular," he says.
"Is that allowed?"
"Depends. Can you keep a secret?"
"I work at a telephone exchange," you remind him. "If I repeated everything I heard, the city would implode."
You're only kidding, because you don't have time to listen in on every call. But it makes him laugh softly, and something about the sound loosens a knot in your chest you didn't know was there. He leans against the counter, closer now, forearms resting on the wood.
"You look tired," he says, not accusing. Just observing.
"Gee, thanks." You scrunch your nose. He only smiles, and you shrug. "It's been a long week."
He pushes your drink towards you, and you take a sip as silence settles between you, but it isn't strained. The music swells. Someone at the other end of the bar tells a loud joke.
"You still live with your aunt?" he asks after a while.
"Yes."
"She doing all right?"
"She's okay." Your aunt is old, a little ditzy. She barely knows you, really, but still — she's the only family you have left, and she gives you a bed at night and food to eat. "She misses him."
For a moment, the background hum of the speakeasy is drowned out, and you just watch as the words register on his face. All these minutes of dancing around it, but you're the one who brings him up.
The look he gives you is steady, unreadable in the low light.
You look away first, but he studies you for a second longer. "You know," he says quietly, "sometimes when you tilt your head like that, you look exactly like him."
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but when they do, they sting. You blink. "I do not."
"You do," he insists, softer now. "Right before you're about to argue."
"That's ridiculous."
"There," he says, almost smiling. "That. Same tone."
You open your mouth to protest again, then hesitate. "I don't sound like him."
"Not usually." He pauses. "But when you're teasing someone."
Your throat tightens unexpectedly. "I don't—"
"I'm not saying it to upset you," he adds quickly. "It's just, you know. Familiar."
Familiar. You stare at the rim of your glass. "I don't know if I like that."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not him."
"I know." His voice is steady. "You're not." He huffs out what could be a laugh. "He always said you were much better than him."
You laugh again, but it wobbles at the edges.
"He was ridiculous," you say. "Always acting like I was made of glass."
"You're not," Vernon says. You're not sure if he's humouring you or if he actually believes that, but you let it slide.
"He talked about you a lot," you say after a moment.
Vernon goes still. He's almost painfully stiff — like if he moves, it'll hurt him. "Did he?"
"All the time. Said you were the only one who could beat him at cards. Said you once tried to cook and nearly burned the building down."
"That was one time," he mutters, but there's a reluctant smile forming at the corner of his lip.
You smile faintly. "He thought you were reckless."
"Oh, that's rich."
"But loyal," you add. "He said that too."
The noise of the bar seems to recede slightly.
Vernon looks down at the counter, running the cloth over a spot that doesn't need cleaning. "He was," he says finally, voice low, "a better man than he thought he was."
You nod, because can't quite trust your voice.
After that night, something shifts.
You start noticing small things. The way he sets a glass in front of you without asking what you want, already knowing. The way his gaze tracks you until you're safely seated, until your coat is hung, until you're settled.
You've never gone out to drink so often in your life. Sometimes you don't even drink — sometimes there are evenings you don't talk much at all. You sit at the bar with a book open in front of you, more for appearance than reading. He moves around you, and every so often your eyes meet. Occasionally, he'll stand in front of you during quiet moments, and you'll talk. Rarest of all, you'll talk about your brother,
Just the steady accumulation of moments.
You don't name what's growing between you. You're not sure you want to. But when he leans in to hear you over the noise and you catch the faint scent of soap and something sharper beneath it, when his shoulder brushes yours and neither of you moves away, when he says your name like it's something carefully held, you feel it.
It sits low and warm in your chest.
On a Friday night, the air inside the speakeasy feels thick and bright with laughter. Cathy is with you again, flushed from the cold and already leaning conspiratorially across the bar before you've even taken your coat off.
"You know," she says loudly, as Vernon sets two glasses down in front of you, "if I didn't know better, I'd say you've got a standing reservation."
"I don't," you reply, though you don't miss the flicker of amusement in Vernon's eyes.
"Sure, sweetheart," Catherine says. "And I'm the mayor."
"You'd be terrible at it."
"I'd be magnificent."
Vernon smiles faintly and moves down the bar to answer someone else's call, leaving you and Catherine to bicker good-naturedly. She's halfway through describing the absolute bluenose at her office when a man steps up to the bar.
You only notice him because Vernon's expression changes, ever so slightly. The man is older, broad-shouldered, his hat tipped low though he doesn't bother to remove it indoors. He doesn't glance at you or Catherine or anyone else; he barely glances at Vernon, for that matter. He speaks quietly, leaning in so that his words don't carry.
You try not to stare.
Cathy keeps talking, oblivious. "—and she cried. Actually cried. Over a crossed line."
You nod, but your attention drifts.
The man slides something across the bar. An envelope. It's small and cream-coloured and you never would have noticed it if you hadn't already been watching Vernon so closely.
Vernon's hand covers it without hesitation, as if it's nothing more than a receipt. He doesn't look down. He doesn't look surprised.
He says something back, equally low. The entire ordeal doesn't take more than a minute, and then the stranger is gone, and you realise you've gone silent.
"Sorry," you murmur. "What were you saying?"
"That I'd have smacked her with my heel."
"Of course you would." Your gaze drifts back to Vernon. He's already serving someone else, expression perfectly composed, like nothing ever happened, so you try to shake it off, downing the last of your drink.
He's back in front of you seconds later, expression smooth. "You need another?"
You study him, before deciding to just be blunt. "Who was that?"
If he's surprised you noticed, he doesn't show it. "A customer."
"That didn't look like a drink order."
He meets your eyes evenly. "Not all business is alcohol."
"You have a lot of interesting customers."
He studies you for half a second too long. "It's New York."
"That's not an answer."
He wipes down the counter, unhurried. "It's not meant to be."
There's no bite in his tone, but equally, there's a steel undertone that tells you plainly he's not going to elaborate.
You force a smile. "Very mysterious."
"I try."
Something unsettled coils in your stomach.
You know what your brother did. Not all of it, of course, but enough. He ran messages, delivered things (he'd never tell you what), anything that'd keep the money coming in. "Just small jobs," he'd said, over and over. "Nothing serious."
Until it was serious. Until it ended in a warehouse by the docks and a gunshot.
You don't want to think about that now, so you look back at Vernon, at the steady calm of him, the familiarity. You tell yourself it's nothing. Bars have suppliers, surely. Accounts. You know this place isn't exactly legal, after all. A few shady characters shouldn't surprise you.
You take a drink and let the music swallow your unease.
You want to push. You want to ask about that man, about what Vernon said to him. For some reason, you want to ask him to talk about your brother, even if it's just to say his name to someone who knew him.
You don't. Instead, you ask about the piano player, about how long he's worked here, about anything that doesn't require him to explain that envelope.
The problem is, it doesn't stop there.
Now that you know to look, you notice a lot more. More men who talk to Vernon in hushed tones, mmore papers slid across the bar smoothly. More nights where Vernon disappears in the middle of his shift — sometimes he's back before you leave, with his hair a little windswept and his eyes a little brighter. Sometimes he's not.
You still don't ask. You can tell he knows you want to, that he can see the curiosity, maybe even the reproach in your eyes, but he doesn't let you, and you don't try. Instead, you talk about work and your friends and your aunt and he listens the same way he always has.
The day your brother died, you had been late coming home.
It wasn't unusual. You'd just started at the exchange then, it hadn't been more than a week or two. You'd been so excited when you landed the job, because it meant you could finally tell your brother to quit "delivering messages", with your new wage and all. He'd promised you he would, that he just had a few things to see through.
You had been carrying a loaf of bread under your arm, still warm through the paper, and rehearsing in your head the scolding you meant to give him for finishing the last of the butter.
You knew something was wrong before you reached the top step, only because the door was ajar. Just enough to show the thin seam of lamplight through the crack, but nobody in your family — not you, not your aunt, and definitely not your brother — would forget to shut the door properly. You pushed it fully open with your hip, already frowning, lips already forming his name.
Your aunt had been standing in the middle of the sitting room, still wearing her apron. She looked smaller somehow, as if the air had pressed her inward. There was a man beside her, hat in his hands, the brim bent slightly between his fingers.
You don't remember dropping the bread, but you must have. Later, you would find it crushed against the wall.
The officer spoke carefully, like he was arranging glass on a shelf. There had been an incident by the warehouses. There had been a gun. He used phrases like unfortunate and tragic and a real shame. You watched his mouth move and thought, distantly, that he should have shaved more closely.
Your aunt had begun to cry before the officer finished speaking. You, on the other hand, didn't cry. You stood very still and stared at the scuffed toes of the officer's boots and wished very hard that he would fucking leave.
Your brother was not the sort of person who disappeared between sentences. He left socks on the floor. He left half-read newspapers on the arm of the chair. He never tied his laces properly. He did not simply stop existing.
The officer asked if you wanted to see him. You shook your head.
The house felt cavernous after they left. Every object was suddenly too specific. His coat slung over the back of a chair — he never remembered to take it with him. The faint imprint of his body in the sofa cushion. A glass on the table with a fingerprint still visible in the smudge.
You touched the sleeve of his coat and it swung gently, as if he might walk back in and shrug into it any second. You told yourself he would.
For weeks afterward, you kept expecting to hear his steps on the stairs. The quick, uneven rhythm of them. The way he'd clear his throat before entering a room, as if announcing himself to an audience.
You thought about the last conversation you'd had, the night before he died. He'd been distracted, smiling at something you couldn't see. When you'd asked where he was going, he'd brushed past you, light and evasive.
"Don't wait up," he'd said, as always.
You hadn't.
In the months before, there had been little things. Late nights, a lot of restlessness. Sometimes you'd wake in the middle of the night and he'd be pacing in the sitting room.
At first, you'd thought it was just a girl he was seeing, but slowly, the later he came home, the more money he came home with, you realised you had got it entirely wrong, and when you asked questions, he'd answer as vaguely as possible.
You remember watching him lace his boots horribly one evening, his head bent, his hair falling into his eyes, and thinking that he looked older than he had any right to.
You remember almost saying, Stay.
You didn't. You knew he wouldn't listen. (Family trait, you aunt would sigh, whenever you and your brother argued. Too stubborn to listen.)
You can't ignore how much this — how much being around Vernon feels like the months before your brother died. When you're watching someone else you care about (because you do care about him, it turns out, more than you'd thought) giving you half-explanations and careful smiles, that same hollow space in your chest begins to open again, tight and painful and raw in your chest. You didn't want to draw the comparison, but every time Vernon disappears, it echoes a time you promised yourself you'd never live through again.
As usual, you ignore it.
One evening, Vernon walks you home.
You're not entirely sure how it happens, it just happens. The rain had started, just after nine. Catherine, who had arrived determined to be sensible, abandons that resolve the moment a man with neatly parted hair offers to share his umbrella. You watch her deliberate for less than a second before she beams and loops her arm through his.
"Don't wait for me," she calls to you, echoing something you've heard a dozen times before.
"I won't," you reply, smiling despite yourself.
Grace had already disappeared an hour earlier, pulled into some back corner with a cluster of strangers arguing about baseball. She'd kissed your cheek in passing and told you not to be dull, to "do something about the bartender you're stuck on".
So you're left alone at the bar, nursing the last inch of your drink, listening to the low hum of jazz as the night wears on. Occasionally, you flick your eyes to Vernon, and then tear them away when you realise you've been looking too long. Vernon moves through the space like he always does — steady and quick on his feet. He's got a dish towel slung over one shoulder now, sleeves pushed high, hair slightly curling at the ends from the damp air every time the door opens. You try not to think about how handsome it makes him look. You fail.
When the rain thickens enough to drum faintly against the windows, you decide it's your excuse. You slip from your stool and gather your coat, the fabric cool against your hands. You shake it out, slide your arms through, and begin fastening the buttons one by one.
"You heading out?"
His voice comes from your left. You hadn't seen him approach.
"Yes," you say, casting him a smile when you look up from your buttons. "Before it gets worse."
He glances toward the door, listening to the steady patter. "I'll walk you."
There's a moment — small, suspended — where neither of you quite moves. The bar behind him carries on as usual: someone laughs too loudly, glass clinks against glass. He's never asked to see you outside of here before; neither of you have ever taken the urge to move this, whatever it is, outside.
"You don't have to," you say, at last.
"I know." He's already fumbling into some sort of storage space for his coat. "I have somewhere to be, anyway. I'll walk you on the way."
You hesitate for the length of a breath, then nod. "All right." You don't ask where he's going — you don't want to know.
He grabs his coat from a peg near the back and says something brief to another bartender, who waves him off without question. There's something about that — how easily he steps away, how little explanation he needs to give — that presses at the back of your mind, but you push it aside.
Outside, rain has glossed the streets into mirrors. You pull your collar higher against the sudden sharp wind. Vernon falls into step beside you without touching, close enough to share your umbrella, close that you can feel the warmth of him between your sleeves.
For a while, you just walk.
The rhythm of your steps finds itself naturally, heel to toe in quiet synchronisation. Your shoulders brush once, accidentally, and neither of you comments on it.
"You're quiet," he says after a few blocks.
"So are you."
He considers that. "Fair."
A cab rattles past, wheels sending up a spray that narrowly misses your hem.
"You ever think about leaving?" he asks suddenly.
You glance at him. "Leaving what?"
"New York."
The question lingers between you, strange and unexpectedly intimate. "Sometimes," you admit, something you never thought you'd do out loud. "Usually after a long day. Or when the heat in the apartment stops working." You tuck your hands deeper into your coat pockets, and a smile appears on your face. "I think I'd like to try farm life, you know." You're only half-joking.
He snorts. "You? On a farm?"
"What?" You try to be offended, but end up laughing along with him. "You don't think I could do it?"
"If you're anything like your brother, you'll do anything you put your mind to," he says, shaking his head. "Even if it's stupid."
"What about you then? Don't you ever want to get out of here?"
"Sometimes," he says, his head tilting slightly to the side. "But I don't know what I'd do anywhere else."
"You could cook," you suggest lightly, biting down the grin that threatens to emerge. "Open a little restaurant somewhere respectable. Legal."
He huffs a laugh, shaking his head. "You're hilarious."
"No, I've seen you back there. You look very competent."
"That's because I don't have to eat what I make."
You laugh, and the sound drifts into the damp air and disappears. It's just a small conversation, a harmless one, but something about the quiet street makes them feel weightier.
You pass a bakery long closed for the night. The faint scent of bread lingers even through the rain. A cat darts across the alley ahead of you, vanishing into shadow.
"You're coming round less often lately," he says.
You glance at him, surprised. "Are you keeping track?"
He shrugs. "I notice things." You think the apples of his cheeks are pinking, but that could just be the cold.
"I have to be up before six," you say. "If I'm late twice in a week they start writing it down. Like we're schoolchildren."
He makes a quiet sound of disapproval.
"It's not so bad, though," you add quickly. "It's steady."
"You say that like you're convincing yourself."
You nudge his arm lightly with your elbow. "Don't analyse me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
The rain picks up slightly, beading along his coat collar. A curl of dark hair falls forward onto his forehead and you have the absurd urge to reach up and push it back.
Halfway down your block, your foot slips on a slick patch of pavement, and his hand closes around your wrist instantly — his grip tightens reflexively, steadying you. Your breath catches, and for a second you're acutely aware of everything. The pressure of his fingers, your pulse fluttering beneath his thumb, the faint scent of rain and soap clinging to him.
You both go still.
His thumb presses lightly against your wrist before he seems to realise what he's doing.
"Sorry," he says, too quickly.
"It's fine," you reply, though your voice sounds breathier than you intend.
He doesn't let go right away. Neither of you moves for a long second, not until rain slides from the brim of his coat and lands against your sleeve. Somewhere down the street, a door slams, and he releases you.
You smooth your coat unnecessarily. He clears his throat.
"You all right?"
"Yes." You try to ignore how hot your face suddenly feels.
"Good."
When you reach your building, the front steps shine wet under the streetlamp. The windows above are dark. Your aunt will already be asleep.
You skip up a step or two, turn toward him, hands still tucked in your pockets to keep them from fidgeting.
"Thank you," you say.
"For what?"
"For walking me."
He shrugs one shoulder. "It's on my way."
You sum up the courage to be a little bolder. "It's not."
A faint smile curves his mouth, not even a little bit flustered. "Doesn't matter."
Rain traces a thin line down his cheekbone. Again, you resist the urge to brush it away. "Do you want my umbrella?" you say, suddenly realising you've left him in the rain. You don't wait for an answer. You hurry back down the steps, shoes slick against the damp stone, snapping the umbrella back open and lifting it over his head. It tilts slightly as you adjust your grip, and in doing so you step closer than you meant to.
The umbrella isn't large. The space beneath it narrows the world to just the two of you — the steady patter of rain above — again, that faint scent of wet wool and soap — the warmth of his body only inches from yours.
Vernon seems to realise the exact second you do.
His eyes flick briefly to your mouth. Your breath catches. The hand holding the umbrella trembles just slightly, and he notices — of course he notices.
For a moment, neither of you moves. The city continues around you, rain glossing the pavement, distant wheels cutting through puddles, but it all feels far away.
You're not sure who leans in first.
It's small, almost tentative — a shared decision made without words. His hand comes up, not to pull you closer, just to steady the umbrella where your grip falters. His fingers brush yours, warm and rough, and just as they do, your lips meet softly. A gentle press, testing, as if both of you are making sure the other won't pull away. You don't.
His mouth is warm despite the rain, gentler than you expected. The kiss lingers a heartbeat longer than caution would advise, long enough for something to shift in your chest — something bright and terrifying all at once.
When you part, it's slow. Reluctant.
The umbrella tilts again, rain slipping past the edge and catching in his hair. He exhales, barely a sound, and for a second he looks almost surprised. Then something steadier settles over his expression.
"Get inside," he says gently. "Before you catch something."
You step back toward the door, fingers curling around the handle. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
You hesitate just long enough to look at him once more — the lamplight catching in his eyes, the rain settling into the dark wool of his coat — and then you slip inside.
From the narrow hallway window, you watch him walk away.
He doesn't hurry, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the rain. At the corner, he glances back once — not toward the window, but toward the building itself — as if making sure the door has closed. Then he turns and disappears into the sheen of the city, leaving the street quiet behind him.
You lean your forehead against the cool window. You kissed him — you kissed him, so why does you feel so full of dread?
You run into him three days later in the park.
You'd left the house to escape the stale quiet. Your aunt had fallen asleep in her armchair again, knitting pooled in her lap, so you'd taken your book and walked the few blocks to the park, settling onto a weathered bench beneath a tree that hasn't quite decided to let go of its leaves. It's a little damp, more than a little cold, but you'll take anything that gets you away from being cooped up with your thoughts.
You're halfway through a page when a shadow falls across the paper.
"What are the odds?" a familiar voice asks.
You look up too quickly.
Vernon's dressed differently. No rolled sleeves. No apron. Just a dark coat, collar turned up against the breeze, hands tucked into his pockets. Without the bar framing him, he looks younger.
"Is that disappointment I hear?" you ask.
"Devastation," he says solemnly.
You snort before you can stop yourself. "What are you doing here?"
"Walking."
"Just walking?"
"Is that so hard to believe?"
You tilt your head. "A little."
He smiles. "Can I?" He gestures to the empty space beside you.
You hesitate for half a second — not because you want to say no, but because your heart has started beating in that uneven way again — and then you nod. He sits, close but not touching, and all you can think about is how the last time you saw him, his lips were on yours.
For a moment, neither of you speak. It feels almost indecently normal, you sat next to him on a bench. Simple — it feels simple. You wish it was.
"You don't seem surprised," he says after a while.
"To see you?"
He nods. You close your book, wrinkle your nose as you think, thumb marking the page. "I was, for a second. But my aunt always says, you know, the city's smaller than we think."
"Or we're worse at staying away than we pretend."
You glance at him. "Were you trying to stay away?"
His gaze stays forward. "Were you?"
You don't answer. A breeze lifts, tugging a loose strand of hair across your mouth. You reach to brush it away at the same time he does — your fingers collide lightly.
He drops his hand first. "Sorry."
"It's fine."
You both look forward again, but something has shifted — a current humming just beneath the surface. "You read much?" he asks, nodding toward your book.
"When I can."
"Is it good?"
"I don't know yet," you admit. "I've read the same paragraph three times."
He huffs quietly. "Distracted?"
"Maybe."
He studies you then, openly. Silence settles again, softer this time, and after a few long moments, he looks away.
A boy runs past chasing a ball, nearly colliding with Vernon's knee. Vernon catches the ball instinctively before it hits the gravel path, handing it back with a faint nod. The boy grins and dashes off again.
You watch the ease of it. "You know, you seem different out here."
"How?"
"I don't know." You search for the right words. "Less guarded."
He goes still at that.
"Guarded," he repeats.
"At the bar, you're always watching and listening and moving."
"And here?"
"Here you just look like a man sitting in the sun. Honestly, I didn't know you could sit so still until now."
The corner of his mouth lifts. "Thrilling." There's a moment where he seems to debate saying something, and then he opens his mouth. "You're different too, you know. In the daylight."
"Really?"
"Even prettier," he says, soft. "I can actually see your face."
You swallow.
You can't do this again. The thought arrives sharp and unwelcome, and you stand abruptly. "I should go," you say.
He looks up at you, surprised. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No." You force a smile. "No, I just — I promised my aunt I wouldn't be long."
He rises too. "I'll walk you, then," he says. "If you'll let me."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
You hesitate, and then you nod. The path curves out of the park and back toward the city blocks. You walk side by side, arms brushing occasionally, but neither of you say anything the whole way home.
It's a few nights later, when you see Vernon outside the bar, and something inside you twists.
You hadn't meant to come, but your bed had felt too close, the air too thick with the sound of your aunt's breathing in the next room, the clock ticking too loudly on the mantel. You'd needed air. That was all.
But your feet had turned at the familiar corner without consulting you. Past the bakery, straight past the shuttered tailor, toward the narrow stretch of brick that concealed the door you now knew by heart.
You realise where you're headed only when you see the faint spill of amber light at the end of the block.
You stop.
You could turn around. You probably should turn around.
Instead, you keep walking.
The rain has left the pavement slick and dark. The alley beside the building gleams faintly under a single weak lamp, and you're just about to pass by it when movement catches your eye. Two figures stand half-shadowed against the brick. One taller, shoulders squared. The other angled slightly inward, posture familiar in a way your body recognises before your mind does.
You know it's him before he shifts enough for the light to touch his face.
There's no easy warmth to him here, no softness from lamplight and music, no quick smile sent your way from across the room.
You realise belatedly that the man standing opposite him is the first one you'd noticed weeks ago. Now they're stand close enough that their shoulders nearly brush.
You don't move. (You should go, you think, but you know you won't.) The alley smells faintly of damp brick and stale smoke. Your pulse roars in your ears so loudly you're sure it must be audible.
Reaching inside his coat, Vernon pulls out something wrapped in brown paper — long, narrow, bound tightly with twine. It's too rigid to be anything soft, too carefully held to be casual. He grips it with both hands, angled downward, shielded by his body.
The shape is unmistakable. Even through paper, you can see the outline.
It's a gun.
Your breath leaves you in a thin, soundless rush. You watch as the man steps closer. Vernon keeps his movements controlled, passing the parcel across the small space between them the same way you've seen him hand over a bottle of alcohol countless times.
The man takes it, slipping it quickly beneath his coat, tucking it along his side with familiarity. He adjusts his jacket once, twice, until the shape disappears against his body. They exchange a few quiet words. You strain to hear, but the rain-swollen air swallows the sound. The man gives a single nod, and then he turns and walks toward the mouth of the alley, steps measured, unhurried, merging easily with the dim spill of light from the main street.
Vernon stays where he is. He exhales slowly, the breath visible in the damp air. His hand comes up to his hair, pushing it back from his forehead in that same absent gesture you've seen a hundred times across the bar.
It's so normal.
So terribly normal.
Then he turns, straight towards you — there's one horrible moment where you think he's seen you, he's known you were there all along. Then your thoughts kick in, you realise it's not possible, and as he walks in your direction, instinct slams through you. You step back hard enough that your shoulder hits brick. The cold seeps instantly through your coat. You press yourself into shadow, willing your breathing to quiet, willing your heartbeat to stop battering against your ribs.
He walks past.
Close enough that you see the rain clinging to his lashes. Close enough that you could reach out and catch his sleeve, if you wanted.
His gaze is fixed straight ahead, and the glimpse you get of his eyes shows them hard, focused. Closed off in a way you've never seen when he's looking at you. There's no softness in it now, no warmth or laughter.
He passes within arm's length, and you let him.
And you stand there, rooted to damp brick, the image of brown paper and the unmistakable outline beneath it burning behind your eyes.
You realise you've stopped breathing. Because once again, it's the same. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, it's the same.
Small things. Harmless things. Just helping someone out. Just passing something along. Just a favor. Just temporary.
You've heard it all before, and standing here with the rain dampening the back of your neck and the wind picking up, you remember deciding not to push. You remember telling yourself it was none of your business.
And you remember the knock at the door, the officer's hat in his hands.
You can't do this again.
The thought lands with such force it nearly steals the air from your lungs, but it blocks everything else out, because it's true — you can't.
You can't stand on the edge of something and pretend not to see where it leads. Because that's what this is, whether he names it or not. No matter how much he insists that he's careful; you know how careful men end up. You know how easily small things become bigger ones.
Your eyes burn suddenly, fiercely, and you blink hard against it. The alley feels too narrow, the walls too close. For a wild moment, you consider calling after him.
Vernon.
You imagine the sound of his name leaving your mouth, sharp enough to make him turn. You imagine his surprise. The explanation that would follow. The way he would soften his voice, step closer, tell you it isn't what you think, maybe even cup your cheek, let you lean into the warmth of his hand.
But you don't want to hear it. You don't want to stand under the weak alley lights and listen to him carve this into something reasonable, because you know yourself well enough to know you might believe him.
You don't follow him.
You don't go back for nearly a week and a half. It's the longest you've gone without seeing him since he appeared back into your life.
On the eleventh day, Vernon finds you outside the exchange.
You're startled when he says your name, whipping round so quickly you seem to startle him just as much as he did you. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you," he says simply.
You fold your arms. "Why?"
"You haven't been by."
"I've been busy."
He studies you, eyes shrewd. "That's not it."
You hold his gaze. "I saw you."
His expression doesn't change. "Saw me."
"In the alley."
A beat of silence, and then he takes your arm, gently — so gently, he's always gentle — and pulls you into a small alcove.
"You shouldn't have been there," he says, his voice lowered.
"That's not an answer."
He exhales slowly. "It's not what you think."
"Then what is it, Vernon? Because to me, it looked like a fucking gun."
He runs a hand through his hair, something uncharacteristically frustrated flickering across his face. "It's nothing serious."
"That's what he said."
Vernon's jaw tightens. "I'm not him," he says quietly.
"I know that."
"Then don't look at me like that."
"I thought you were just bartending," you say. It's not true. You've known for a long time, really, you just haven't let yourself.
"I am."
"And the rest?"
He doesn't answer immediately. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you involved," he says finally. "I didn't want you worrying."
"That's not your decision to make."
"No," he agrees. "It's not." The honesty of it disarms you.
"Why?" you ask, and maybe there's a hint of desperation seeping into your tone. "Vernon, why do you do it?"
"Money," he says plainly. "It's temporary."
You almost laugh. That fucking word again.
"That's what he said," you whisper.
Silence stretches between you. "I'm careful," Vernon says, but he already sounds resigned. "I don't take risks I can't manage."
"You can't manage a bullet," you snap.
The words hang heavy. "I'm not trying to replace him," Vernon says more softly. "And I'm not trying to follow him."
"If you keep going like this, you will," you say, and you have to fight to keep your voice down, and you have to fight even harder to force the tears back into your eyes. "You're going to follow hom straight to the grave." You swallow, hard, raw, painful. "I can't do it again," you say hoarsely.
His hand lifts, thumb brushing under your eye to catch the tear that falls. "Do what?"
"Bury someone else I l— care about," you say. You watch his eyes, softness and conflict swimming in the brown. Your hand reaches up to cover his on your cheek, and you squeeze, feeling the warmth again. "Vernon, please don't make me."
He doesn't say anything, but you follow the bob of his throat as he swallows. "I care about you," he says, finally. "And — I'm sorry."
You leave before he can stop you.
a/n: sad ending i know im sorry!!!!! i never know whether to put it in the warnings bc its technically a spoiler but. idk. i personally don't like seeing it in the tags before i read something but maybe thats just me. "hana will there be a part 2" hana doesn't know. hana is a little bit sick of this fic after rewriting it 4 times and right now hana would like to not think about it for a very long time.
also guys i need u to know its like 1am and i did one quick readthrough for proofreading and every time she says "thats what he said" i couldnt stop laughing. anyway thank u for reading love u all goodbye
All is copacetic and swell in the roaring 20s, and studioSVT invite you to be a part of the shindig. Whether it's the flappers of Midtown or the prim men of Wall Street, there's opportunity for everyone in the Big Apple. Gather round, guys & dolls as we're ✨Puttin' on the Ritz✨!
Turn in your invitations at the door. Join the taglist with a visible age indicator on your blog [no age, no tag!].
🥂 Oops! Some of these invites are only for cats 18+. Please check all the warnings before stepping through those doors 🥂
✨Invitation: Velvet Vengeance by @lovelylonelinesssvt
🥂Hosts: Choi Seungcheol x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: New York 1920, mafia controls through strategy, silence, and violence. A fragile peace now begins to break when secrets surface in clubs. Choi Seungcheol is looking for answers, for names, for revenge just like you are. While trying to find the man who’s behind your loss, you’re caught between an imminent gang war and Seungcheol, a man determined to protect you, to fight for you and now to fight next to you.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: tainted tides by @joshujin
🥂Hosts: Choi Seungcheol x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: The wife of a politician is good for very few things—how flawless and beautiful and desirable you are being paramount to all. Every fundraiser, every gala, every luncheon, you're at your husband's side, the picture perfect portrayal of who New York City expects their First Lady to be. What they don’t expect is their prohibitionist mayor’s wife to be spotted at a popular speakeasy the night of the city's biggest raid. Or for her to go missing shortly after.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: amontillado by @sailorsoons
🥂Hosts: Yoon Jeonghan x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: Disappearing from your fiancé should have been easy. Instead, you stumble into Jeonghan’s empire of blood and alcohol - and he becomes the only thing standing between you and death.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: and all that jazz by @hannieoftheyear
🥂Hosts: Yoon Jeonghan x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: The Canaries, the bar where unimaginable dreams come true for all, only with one exception. Each night, after the doors lock, the deserted bar hosts one last client: the sidelined jazz singer whose time to shine gets pushed back time and time again, yet, the only one who seems to notice is the watchful bartender, ready to listen to your rambles after-hours.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: under the starlight by @starlightkyeom
🥂Hosts: Joshua Hong x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: joshua doesn't think twice when he takes the job as a singer at a speakeasy. doesn't worry about who's running it or about anything illegal. it's a chance to sing, like he's always dreamt. despite the circumstances, it's all running pretty smoothly. until he meets you. all the knows is that you're married to someone within the family running the speakeasy. that should be enough. when he sees the sadness in your eyes, he knows that he needs to know more.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: safety by @mylovesstuffs
🥂Hosts: Joshua Hong x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: In 1920s New York, a failed medical experiment turns the city into something they’ve only seen in fiction — the infected not quite dead, not quite alive. Fleeing the ruins, Joshua Hong, heir to one of the city’s most influential tailoring and fashion dynasties, and a woman who once lived under his family’s roof, they rely on each other to survive.
Forced to pretend they’re something they’re not, they soon learn that safety comes at the cost of truth
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: deadlock by @sailorsoons
🥂Hosts: Wen Junhui x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: You and Junhui have the perfect life together. Sure, you've failed to mention you're a spy for Clockwork and he never mentioned being a hitman for Protocol, but what couple doesn't lie? The lies work - until Junhui is tasked with killing you, his perfect wife who has secrets he never dreamed of.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: Pendulum by @gyuswhore
🥂Hosts: Wen Junhui x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: There are many things your father never told you when he left you his flower shop; the ever creaky door hinges, the delivery man who can never seem to tell the orchids from the gardenias, and the headquarters of the biggest mafia in New York operating in the employee break room.
Of course you're used to it now, the familiar faces passing in and out of the shop while you pretend nothing is amiss. Until a new face appears, disappearing into the backrooms without a word, bloodied knuckles and a poorly strapped revolver on his hips.
Suddenly, it's very hard to pretend.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: Kitty by @aeristudios
🥂Hosts: Kwon Soonyoung x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: You moved to NYC from the South to seek out Soonyoung, the barber with connections that can help you hide in plain sight. But as you start to finally start to settle in and you and Soonyoung become close, your past catches up to you— putting everything you fought for at risk.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: where do stars go? by @imnotshua
🥂Hosts: Kwon Soonyoung x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: nothing’s ever been serious where you’re concerned, especially the way you flirt with him. but when he overhears something he shouldn’t, and your perfect mask slips, soonyoung starts to wonder if you’ve been keeping other secrets hidden in the dark.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: my dearest by @straylightdream
🥂Hosts: Jeon Wonwoo x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: he has a debt to one of the richest men in the city, with ties to the mafia. he's offered a lifeline he can’t turn down. marry the daughter to the man he’s in debt to. they’re both two people thrown into a marriage they never planned. the only way to survive is to stick together and to protect each other.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: granite hearts by @ikeukiss
🥂The Hosts: chauffeur!Jeon Wonwoo x rich girl!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: Wonwoo knows he is far out of his league when it comes to you, the daughter of one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders. He shouldn’t fall for you, much less try to start up conversations with you. But what if that’s exactly what you want? To break free with him by your side?
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: spectre by @shinysobi
🥂Hosts: Lee Jihoon x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: for four years after his graduation from city college of new york, lee jihoon has kept his head down, hoping for the best, and preparing for the day when his little ruse dissolves. he's good at hiding, after all. he's been doing it for years. unfortunately, when dealing with the unruly cousin of a shipping magnate, smokescreens tend to shatter, and spectres tend to return.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: Room 217 by @goldenhourology
🥂Hosts: Lee Jihoon x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: Fresh starts are hard, but running away from your mafia husband is even harder. After escaping the protection of the Lucky Ace gang and fleeing to New York City, you find Lee Jihoon, a reserved yet enigmatic hotel owner. The Hotel Ruby conceals a popular speakeasy, the Velvet Ruby, within its walls. It takes some convincing, but Jihoon eventually offers you a job, a chance at stability and anonymity. But every swanky hotel has its secrets. When you stumble upon the locked door to Room 217, nothing could prepare you for what’s waiting on the other side.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: never forget a pretty face by @miniseokminnies
🥂Hosts: Lee Seokmin x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: your father has always had friends in high places, almost as high as the debts he kept. following his disappearance (read: murder) the men who swore to protect him take you somewhere your father's creditors would never find you: a mechanic's shop tucked away in a little hole in the wall that no one would ever see if they weren't looking for it. your life has been a series of interesting events but this might be the most enticing of them all.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: spellbound by @kyeomofhearts
🥂Hosts: Lee Seokmin x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: love was always easy for you, until it wasn’t. young and careless, you let him fall for you and walked away before admitting he was the one. years later, with the world pressing in and your heart still quietly aching; you meet him again by chance and realize some love never fades, only waits.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: drive me crazy by @jakedustry
🥂Hosts: Kim Mingyu x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: There isn’t anything Kim Mingyu can come back home to, no one waiting for him at night when he gets off his shift, so when he finally takes a few days off, his plan consists of two simple things: drinks and sleep. But his world takes a spin around when he stumbles upon a group of officers arresting a young lady begging for help after a night out. If Mingyu has one weakness, it’s people in distress, especially if it involves a child in need.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: crossing without steps by @nerdycheol
🥂Hosts: Kim Mingyu x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: You grow up knowing your life will be decided for you. The right schools, the right friends...the right engagement. Loving him makes sense. It fits. Then you meet someone who doesn’t. Mingyu is uncomplicated in ways your life has never been, all warmth and honesty, a presence you are not meant to linger on. You tell yourself it is nothing, a harmless pull. But wanting him begins to feel like standing too close to the light. Caught between the future promised to you and the love you never meant to find, you learn that some feelings do not ask for permission.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: somebody's sweetheart by @haologram
🥂Hosts: Xu Minghao x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: minghao is eerily convinced that nothing means anything without passion. love, money, fame...it's nothing without passion and everything with love. he just has to find the love he preaches before it's too late for her.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: When the Sun Rises in New York by @vernonverse
🥂Hosts: Xu Minghao x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: You are sent to New York City twenty-four hours before your wedding to a man you've never met. On the train from your home to the big city, you meet Minghao, a struggling painter spending his final day in America before deportation. With the clock already ticking and no future promised to either of you, you spend one day wandering the city, knowing that life is already lining up to tear you apart forever.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: death, diamonds and decorum by @hannieween
🥂Hosts: Boo Seungkwan x f!eader
🌃 The Main Drag: It was only supposed to be a job. One last quick, easy smash-and-grab before you walked away from the life, forever. But everything changed when you were told you would be working side by side with your ex-boyfriend—the love of your life, your biggest mistake and the one person you swore you would never talk to again, Boo Seungkwan.
And that was when you knew this job wouldn’t be so easy.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: Chasing the Feeling by @mingsolo
🥂Hosts: Boo Seungkwan x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: When Seungkwan is tipped about a very illegal shipment being diverted to the Mauve family warehouses, he knows he has to be quick. What he realizes upon arriving is that you are already there, always a step ahead of him.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: last call by @wqnwoos
🥂Hosts: Chwe Hansol x reader
🌃 The Main Drag: You didn’t expect to run into your late brother’s best friend tending bar at an illegal speakeasy — or to start falling for him. But when you realize Vernon is involved in the same kind of work that got your brother killed, liking him suddenly feels dangerous in ways you know too well.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: the phantom of the cinema by @belovedgyu
🥂Hosts: Chwe Hansol x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: Between scandalous nights in a cinema, a love takes shape in time stolen, and a marriage built on survival. A devotion so fierce that art and memory begin to blur. As films mirror truths you’ve tried not to name, you’re forced to confront what was lost, what endures, and whether some stories deserve to be finished…no matter the cost.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: bare your soul by @starlightkyeom
🥂Hosts: Lee Chan x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: your brother is all you have left after losing your parents, but he doesn't always make the best decisions. despite him being older, it's usually you taking care of him. when he gets into over his head with gambling debts, he turns to bare knuckle fighting in an underground ring. the money is actually decent and he's surprisingly good, until a new rival starts rising. chan is undefeated and unrelenting. you might hate him even more than your brother does.
Cocktails 🎊 The Berries
✨Invitation: the bride by @coupsalchemy
🥂Hosts: Lee Chan x f!reader
🌃 The Main Drag: Actress Jung, known for her spectacular hits Love, Forevermore, and La Vie En Rose, that is still housing the Capitol Movie Palace is back on the screen after a year of disappearance. Finally her hiatus comes to an end with a new movie, the bride, in production. Gossip is that the movie is inspired from her calamitous love life that has people wondering how a person, a woman, can fall in love seven times.
Will she get her heart broken for the eighth time with her rumored clandestine Choi Seungcheol or will she break her curse of ‘always a bridesmaid but never the bride’ with the entry of a new male actor in town, Lee Chan.
i think this is true for so many people but 2025 has not been an easy year for me. there were so so many things going on in my personal life that were just. too much for me to handle. i lost a very very dear friend, very suddenly, and a dear family member, not-so-suddenly. and as we all know, grief is a weird and non-linear emotion and ive been all over the place ever since. and i think had such a weird funk with my writing, and a lot of other personal issues and health issues. but at the same time, at the risk of sounding cliché, i do think 2025 taught me a lot about myself.
either way, i hope 2026 is much kinder to me, and to every single one of you. i haven’t been as active as i would’ve liked, haven’t written as much or as well as i would’ve liked, and so i hope i can change some of that in the coming year.
as always, thank you for being here! it still amazes me (and i think it always will) how many of you are here and how many of you read my writing. i don’t think my gratitude can be expressed in words so i won’t try — but thank you all! and again, happy new year 🤍
☆ We've crunched the numbers and are here to share them with you all! Scroll to read more.
☆ studioSVT hosted 5 collabs this year!
☆ A total of 103 fics were written for studioSVT collabs this year!
☆ studioSVT's writers produced a total of 1,173,100 words this year!
🩷 The Lonely Hearts Cafe
ᯓ★ 26 fics
ᯓ★ total word count: 410.4k
🏖️ Carat Bay
ᯓ★ 13 fics
ᯓ★ total word count: 159.5k
🏎️ Light's Out
ᯓ★ 26 fics
ᯓ★ total word count: 418.3k
🔮 The Midnight Menagerie
ᯓ★ 13 fics
ᯓ★ total word count: 153.4k
🎁 2025 Holiday Fic Exchange
ᯓ★ 25 fics
ᯓ★ total word count: 31.5k
☆ Top Writers [no. of fics written]
@starlightkyeom - 6 fics
@haologram - 5 fics
@sailorsoons - 5 fics
@bluehoodiewoozi - 4 fics
@wheeboo - 4 fics
☆ Top Writers [total word counts]
@haologram - 125.2k words
@starlightkyeom - 114.1k words
@sailorsoons - 59.2k words
@bluehoodiewoozi - 52.3k words
@wheeboo - 48.5k words
@etherealyoungk - 42.3k words
@joshujin - 41.2k words
@mylovesstuffs - 33.8k words
@studioeisa - 33.4k words
@diamonddaze01 - 32.8k words
☆ Longest Fics Posted
@haologram for Light's Out
ᯓ★ One Track Mind - 43.1k
2. @etherealyoungk for The Lonely Hearts Cafe
ᯓ★ Crash Course in Romance - 40.8k
3. @haologram for Carat Bay
ᯓ★ Dipped - 33.8k
4. @joshujin for Light's out
ᯓ★ Build This Dream Together - 31.5k
5. @starlightkyeom for The Midnight Menagerie
ᯓ★ No Safety Net - 30.3k
On behalf of the studioSVT team, we'd like to thank you all for your overwhelming support! Catering to the Caratblr community and the writers we work with has been the most rewarding part of this venture, and we hope to continue to be worthy of your energy and support in 2026!
To all of the writers who have put in countless hours of their time, effort and talent into these fics, we thank you immensely. It's your work that keeps the cogs of Caratblr turning, and we're honoured to be part of your journey here. We hope you continue to find peace and excitement here for as long as possible, because this community would be nothing without the people who contribute to it.
This is for the writers and readers we currently have, and the many more to come in the new year 💛
The holiday season is upon us, and with it the annual studioSVT Holiday Fic Exchange! Whether your hemisphere's serving you hot or cold this season, we invite everyone to unwrap our gratitude below! Take your pick from this year's selection!
All fics will be posted from December 23rd to 25th.
‼️ Oops! Some gifts are only meant our 18+ readers to enjoy. Remember to check the wrapping before opening! ‼️
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🎁 From: shhh...
✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @nerdycheol
🌟Unwrap now!
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @kyeomofhearts
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @mylovesstuffs
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @gyuswhore
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @chanranghaeys
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @haoboutyou
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @minisugakoobies
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @hannieoftheyear
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @lovelylonelinesssvt
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @starlightkyeom
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @joshujin
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @haologram
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🎉 To: @sailorsoons
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @jakedustry
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🎉 To: @shadowkoo
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🎉 To: @bluehoodiewoozi
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @ikeukiss
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @etherealyoungk
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @heartepub
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🎉 To: @kkaetnipjeon
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🎉 To: @belovedgyu
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✏️member x reader
🎉 To: @seungkw1
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🎉 To: @shinysobi
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🎉 To: @sknyuz
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🎉 To: @wheeboo
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You are now entering Carats Ridge, a little place tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the city, filled with familiar faces and small town charm. @starlightkyeom, @100vern and I, imnotshua, welcome you to join us and our wonderful committee members for our Winter Festival!
Why don't you take a rest in our exemplary Inn, visit our quaint independent stores and eateries, and celebrate the holidays with us? After a few nights in Carats Ridge, we guarantee, you'll never want to leave!
Carats Ridge Winter Festival starts December 15th right through until 31st March. To be notified, comment TAG ME on this post, and I will tag you in a reblog as our vendors open.
Please remember, some of these establishments are for ADULTS ONLY, please check with the owner before entering.
❄️ Vendor: you can't wash that here by @imnotshua
🚕 Destination: The diner, with landlord!Choi Seungcheol and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Seungcheol needs money fast, or he'll lose his parent's diner. Moving in with his cousin isn't ideal at thirty-two, and the money you're paying in rent for his beloved apartment is only juuuust about covering the shortfall, but needs must and it'll have to do. Thankfully– surprisingly– you've got some other ideas up your sleeve.
🔞 Adult themes + drug use/dealing (weed)
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: want u around by @wqnwoos
🚕 Destination: The daycare, with firefighter!Choi Seungcheol and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Everyone knows Seungcheol flirts his way through life. You’ve brushed him off so many times it's practically routine. He never pushes, so you've always taken it as harmless fun – until something shifts, and you realise he's not as simple as you've convinced yourself he is.
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: the first taste by @minisugakoobies
🚕 Destination: The dealer's house, with dealer!Yoon Jeonghan and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: You can’t stop thinking about your neighbor. really, you’re super curious about the number of people you see coming and going from his house at all hours of the day. one summer night, courtesy of a terrible heat wave and a broken air con, you discover why jeonghan’s so addictive. Your neighbor is more than happy to provide, but just remember - only the first taste is free.
🔞 Adult themes + drug use (THC, ecstasy)
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: Mistletoe Festival by @coupsalchemy
🚕 Destination: The boutique, with Joshua Hong and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: One spot, two competitors. Joshua Hong, the new addition to your hometown, your rival, is competing for the spot at Mistletoe Festival, which has always been yours. He stole your customers, sanity and peace of mind, you won’t let him steal your one last hope in keeping your business afloat.
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: coffee, black by @woncheolisms
🚕 Destination: The coffee shop, with hitman!Joshua Hong and coffee shop owner f!reader
🪧 What's on?: A small coffee shop owner is the only thing stopping a crime boss who wants to expand his empire when she refuses to sell her shop to him, no matter what tactics of intimidation he might use. When he has finally had enough, he hires a hitman to finish her off. But Joshua Hong doesn’t work that way. He has principles, even for a hitman.
🔞 Adult themes + mentions of death, violence, threats and intimidation, vigilante action
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: the end of july by @kkaetnipjeon
🚕 Destination: The pet store, with Wen Junhui and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Your grandmother died and bequeathed her crumbling eyesore of a house in the countryside to you, and you give yourself three months to fix it up before selling it and moving back to Seoul. Unfortunately, the local pet store owner and his cats seem hell-bent on making you stay.
🔞 Adult themes + mental health themes, quarter life crisis
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: better than sex by @haologram
🚕 Destination: The yoga studio, with Kwon Soonyoung and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: New in town and actively going through too many changes at once, Kwon Soonyoung finds comfort in many a flirtatious advance. However, when his shop is finally christened by your presence…all the flirting feels futile and his eyes are set on you — despite the very gaudy wedding set resting on your finger.
🔞 Adult themes
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: the second time around by @wonuwoe
🚕 Destination: The pre-school, with Kwon Soonyoung and reader
🪧 What's on?: At your sickly aunt's request, you've agreed to go home for the time being. That means leading the family from now on — including taking over her job temporarily as a pre-school teacher. At pure happenstance, you're not the only one returning to your little town. Soonyoung, who was once your kindred spirit is also back for the reasons you're not so sure of.
🔞 Adult themes + mentions of illness
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: sealed by fate by @mylovesstuffs
🚕 Destination: The post office, with Jeon Wonwoo and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Carats Ridge has always had its own way of tying people together. Some call it fate, some call it tradition, some refuse to call it anything at all. But when a cute hot man apparently returns to the town with a child, you’re drawn to him for reasons you can’t say. And he seems to recognize you for reasons he won’t say. But the truth doesn’t stay hidden for long in a town like yours.
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: Spin Cycle by @hannieoftheyear
🚕 Destination: The laundromat, with Jeon Wonwoo and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: The laundromat is all you've ever known, your past, your present, and your close future. And it could all end because of some stupid, modern crap of a new laundromat that takes all your clients away. So, when your parents send you across town, just a few blocks away, to find out what it's so special about Wonwoo's place, you can't refuse. He might be charming and objectively handsome, but you won't stop until you find out any dirty secret that can save your family's legacy from closing.
🔞 Adult themes
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: This Town by @aeristudios
🚕 Destination: The music store, with Lee Jihoon and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: You swore you would never come back to this foggy town. It reminded you of the past you longed to forget, the cozy small town aesthetic being a facade for how it really is— connections and influence get you far, and if you were born on the wrong side of the tracks, good luck. You fell in love once, with the boy from the sunny side of this place, who gave you the best summer of your life. But a scandal forced you to break up and you left, and now years later, you're back to handle family business and he's still there, at the music store, where you first met.
🔞 Adult themes + violence/gangs, mention of murder
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: all my heart can say by @seungkw1
🚕 Destination: The grocery store, with Lee Jihoon and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Carats Ridge, 1991 — In a small town deep in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, a new resident in town causes a stir when he moves into the long-vacant house up on Hemlock Hill. The old superstitions surrounding the house and its history begin to resurface, leaving a town full of people who already don't trust outsiders uneager to give the newcomer a warm welcome — but Jihoon seems nice, so you decide to befriend him anyway. Soon, though, you realize you've gained something much more than just friendship: you've gained a new perspective on what love can mean, and — for the first time — you learn what it means to truly be loved.
🔞 Adult themes + mentions of minor character death
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: inn by the hollow by @starlightkyeom
🚕 Destination: The inn, with Lee Seokmin and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Your move to Carat Ridge was supposed to be simple. take a step back from fast-paced city life to run a small town inn. Doesn't hurt that it also lets you put your life in the rearview mirror. You don't account for the fact that everyone knows everything in a small town. And you definitely don't account for your new assistant manager. He seems all sunshine and smiles at first. but, there's much more to him than meets the eye.
🔞 Adult themes + discussion of past traumas
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: Final Level: Win His Heart by @nothoughtsjustfic
🚕 Destination: The arcade, with Lee Seokmin and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: The day Lee Seokmin first steps foot into your family’s arcade in all his beautiful DILF glory, he immediately steals your attention with nothing more than a friendly smile and a shy wave. In that very moment, you decide that you want him in very not publicly appropriate ways, even if you don’t know how to achieve that. Still, you’re always up for a new challenge.
🔞 Adult themes + age gap (Seokmin aged up), side character drug use and injury
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: too sweet to me by @straylightdream
🚕 Destination: The bakery, with Kim Mingyu and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Back in college the golden boy from high school was the perfect summer fling. You went off to pursue your career in a different city, and he stayed in Carat Ridge and opened a bakery. Now you’re both pushing thirty and Mingyu has made it clear he won’t let you slip away again.
🔞 Adult themes + mentions of body insecurities
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: Chaser by @yoongihan
🚕 Destination: The pub, with bartender!Kim Mingyu and pub owner f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Better Business Bureau should heap praise upon your decision to hire Kim Mingyu and Jeon Jungkook as bartenders for your Carats Ridge pub, Circles. It’s never slow, beer and liquor always flowing, and the food is good. Your main bartenders bring in the crowds, and you’d praise yourself if you could just keep it professional. Because surely, with how good-looking they are, both of them are fuck boys, right? No matter how much Mingyu’s big brown eyes try to convince you otherwise.
🔞 Adult themes + power dynamic imbalance
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: KITSCHY by @gyuswhore
🚕 Destination: The museum, with Xu Minghao and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Most of Minghao's adult life has been spent dodging emotional blackmail and direct demands—all to avoid going back to his hometown. The result of his incessant refusal now stares back at him in the form of the impossibly kitschy town museum, and every other sight he'd have to bear for the next month. Although, none more awkward than the uncomfortable stance of your Chanel slingbacks, the first thing he spots from across the gravel.
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: when the dust settles by @miniseokminnies
🚕 Destination: The antique store, with Xu Minghao and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: No town this small should have two of anything, maybe not even one of some things. But of course, your business is one of few in town that has a direct competitor. You've never been one to see the other antique store in town, owned by one Minghao Xu, as a threat. Only seeing him as another person in town that shares your passions. he seems to think the exact opposite.
🔞 Adult themes
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: the municipal code by @imnotshua
🚕 Destination: The town hall, with Boo Seungkwan and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Town Selectman, Boo Seungkwan, was challenged numerous times at last night's town meeting. The newcomer (name yet unknown, but she's supposedly bought the old Emerseon house over on Maple Street) had thrown off Boo with incessant questions about the abandoned barn off Winders Road. Boo was undeniably perplexed by her unusual questions, and subsequent heckling, though it could be said the crowd found the interruption somewhat entertaining. As the townspeople left the village hall, sources say the newcomer could be heard muttering "next time I'm bringing my whiteboard." Whatever that means.
🔞 Adult themes
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: totally clueless by @100vern
🚕 Destination: The auto repair shop, with Vernon Chwe and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: It was only supposed to be an oil change—until you discover that somehow the only mechanic in this town doesn't actually have a license. To drive. The only mechanic in this god-forsaken, postage stamp-sized town doesn't know how to drive a car.
🔞 Adult themes
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: out of the stillness by @joshujin
🚕 Destination: The farmers' market, with Lee Chan and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Between deadlines, responsibilities, and your recent divorce from your sleep schedule, your relationship with Chan has been roasting to a crisp on your backburner. But you’re both on holiday break now, and you’re intent on enjoying your time with him… even if that means being stuck in a car for 12 hours… and spending time with his horrible, stuck-up parents… and being severely under-caffeinated through it all. You will have fun, and you will give your boyfriend your undivided attention, and you will save your relationship… even if that means reliving the same day over and over and over again.
🔞 Adult themes + witchcraft
📫 Opening soon
❄️ Vendor: sweetener by @sailorsoons
🚕 Destination: The pizza and ice cream shop, with coworker!Lee Chan and f!reader
🪧 What's on?: Instead of working at your father’s flashy law office, you pick up shifts at the local pizza parlor just to prove you can. And if you convince them your up-to-no-good coworker is your boyfriend to pour salt in the wound… even better.
🔞 Adult themes
📫 Opening soon
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
♥️ Credit and thanks to @100vern for the beautiful collab banner
You and Kim Mingyu have always walked that thin line between professional respect and something dangerously close to flirtation, but neither of you have ever quite slipped. So covering his newest case should be routine — but suddenly, keeping things professional isn't as easy as it used to be.
⇢ pairing. lawyer!mingyu x journalist!reader
⇢ genre. fluff, angst, idiots/acquaintances? to lovers.
⇢ word count. approx. 7.5k
⇢ warnings. f!reader. miscommunication (sorry). lots of pining + tension. a few moral dilemmas but nothing crazy. almost definitely inaccurate depictions of courtroom and law stuff. ft. a few of the itzy girls bc why not!!!
⇢ a/n. happiest of birthdays to one of my favourite people on this planet!!!!! my beloved @gyuswhore this one is for you!! emberly i'm about to type an essay in ur dms anyway but just know that i love u enormous amounts. so so much. and i apologise for the banner its not my best work 😭
THE COURTHOUSE LOBBY is already humming with activity when you step through security: attorneys in suits speed-walking towards elevators, clerks juggling stacks of paper, the espresso machine in the café sputtering and filling the air with the smell of burnt coffee. You’re used to it all by now, and it doesn’t seem anywhere near as chaotic as you used to find it.
But the best part of your mornings tend to be six foot two and annoyingly well-dressed.
You spot Mingyu the moment you step through security: tall, sleek, and freshly pressed, balancing a stack of colour-coded folders against his hip while stirring what you know is an obscene amount of sugar into his coffee.
He doesn’t notice you at first. He’s too busy reading something on a sticky note, lips shaping the words. You hesitate a beat, just long enough to be annoyed at yourself for it, then head his way.
“Mr Kim,” you call out, voice just loud enough to cut through the lobby chatter.
His head snaps up. And there it is, that small flicker of recognition followed by the not-quite-smile he always tries to tamp down.
“Ah. My favourite journalist.” He shifts the folders to greet you properly, pretending he’s not already straightening his tie. He always straightens his tie around you. “Here to make my day harder?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” You hold up your recorder, tilt your head to the side hopefully. “Pre-hearing comment? Thirty seconds. Forty if you’re feeling generous.”
He huffs a soft laugh and gestures toward the hallway with the tip of his coffee cup. “You ambush me the second you walk in the building and expect me to string something together? It’s barely nine.”
“And yet,” you counter, walking beside him, “you look like you got eight hours of sleep and ironed that suit with time to spare.”
“It’s an illusion. I slept three hours and ate some almonds on my way here.”
“Almonds,” you repeat, snorting. You rummage in your bag, pull out a cereal bar, and hold it up between two fingers. His eyes actually light up, but just before his hand can brush yours, you whisk it out of reach and instead tap your recorder against your palm.
He stops walking to give you a displeased look, nose scrunching. “Really?”
You shrug, entirely unbothered. “Needs must.”
“One might call that bribery, Miss ___.”
“One would then have to remember – it’s a cereal bar, Mr Kim.” You raise your eyebrows. “I’m starting to think you don’t want to give me a quote.”
You’ve interviewed dozens of prosecutors over the years, in this very building. But Mingyu is the only one who makes courthouse mornings feel a little lighter. Maybe it’s because he listens, doesn’t shrug you off immediately like some others do. Maybe it’s because he looks at you like the two of you are in on some private joke – and sometimes you are. Maybe it’s because every time you talk, there’s a hum under your ribs you keep telling yourself to ignore.
He pauses at the bulletin board, scanning the docket. “Just a fraud case today. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re covering it.”
“I can’t resist a good public official messing with paperwork,” you say. “It speaks to me.”
“Fraud speaks to you?”
“Don’t judge my hobbies. Besides, you know better than anyone it’s not just a fraud case when it’s Lee Junhyeon behind it all. Do I get a quote or not?”
It’s easy, this back-and-forth. Easier than it should be. Easier than it ever is with anyone else you interview. There’s comfort baked into the rhythm you two have built – teasing layered over familiarity layered over something neither of you names aloud.
He takes one last sip of his coffee, narrows his eyes at the cereal bar, straightens ever so slightly – and nods at your recorder. “Alright. Go ahead. But if I pass out mid-sentence, you’re liable.”
“I’ll include that as a quote.”
“Please don’t.”
You hit record, and he slips effortlessly into prosecutor mode, smooth, concise, measured. You watch the shift happen in real time: the warmth fades, replaced by sharp professionalism, like flipping a switch only he seems able to control.
He finishes. You stop the recorder.
“There,” he says with a tiny tilt of his head, shoulders slumping just the slightest bit. “Was that quick enough?”
“Almost disappointing how cooperative you are.”
“Just trying to stay on your good side.”
You open your mouth to reply, but someone calls his name from down the hall.
He sighs, and you give him a knowing look. “Duty calls.”
“I’ll see you inside?” he asks.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” You press the cereal bar on top of his folders, and he glances down at it in surprise. “Don’t inhale it in front of the judge.”
“No promises,” he grins. And he takes a few steps backward toward the courtroom doors, eyes lingering on you for a beat longer than necessary. Then he turns away, and whatever was pressing down on your chest loosens.
The hallway outsidethe courtroom is louder after the lunch recess, the kind of restless noise that means every reporter is suddenly convinced they’re about to miss something. You weave through the clusters of them, not exactly late, but later than you meant to be, with your notebook tucked under your arm and your phone buzzing with your roommate’s texts about dinner plans.
The Lee Junhyeon case had drawn more media attention than expected for something technically labeled “administrative fraud.” But feeding money into a shell charity he chaired leads to a lot of public interest. Which is why you’re here.
Mingyu and his team arrive from the opposite end of the hall: three attorneys behind him, another two in step beside him, all mid-discussion about something pedantic. He’s flipping through a binder while listening to someone else’s briefing, brows drawn, tie slightly loosened from the morning’s work. He looks focused, a little wrinkle on his forehead, lower lip caught between his teeth. Not that you’re looking at his lips, you remind yourself firmly, clicking your pen.
Which, of course, is exactly when his eyes lift and land right on you.
It’s not a smile – that would be too much – just a brief softening of his features, a small acknowledgment, something only noticeable because you’re tuned to it. He returns his attention to his colleague almost immediately.
Still. Somehow, one look is enough to warm the little dent between your ribs and your stomach,
A handful of other reporters notice him too, and like sharks scenting blood, they move as a group, mics angled, questions already thrust forward. Someone elbows you lightly, not unkindly, but with just enough push that you step to the side to avoid being boxed in.
Mingyu’s team slows. His second chair, Ms. Han, glances over the crowd with unimpressed precision. You join the cluster, not leading it, not hiding either. When one reporter pushes ahead to ask a badly formed question, Mingyu stops walking just long enough to give them a neutral, measured response.
His gaze slips to you again.
You pretend you don’t notice. Or at least you pretend you’re good at pretending.
You ask your question, and he answers just as cleanly, just as concisely. But still, there’s something in how he talks to you. The subtlest, tiniest, warmest thing edging his words, and then he’s gone.
You claim a seat at the press bench again, open your laptop, and start shaping the morning’s notes into something publishable. Your article won’t run until the day after tomorrow, but drafts don’t write themselves – and you’ve learned the hard way that waiting until evening means Ryujin starts threatening to hide your laptop under the couch.
Most of the testimony is dry. A lot of financial analysts, paper trails, the mind-numbing march of spreadsheets projected onto the courtroom screen. The judge interrupts twice; Lee’s defense interrupts five times; the gallery sighs in unison at least twelve. None of this interests you much, but a job is a job, and you know that despite hating it, you’re good at it.
But when Mingyu rises for cross-examination, the room straightens. You do too.
His voice fills the space with that particular calm authority he has, the kind that makes people assume he’s older than he is. You know this version of him well, have reported on his cases more than enough times to be well-acquainted with the gestures he makes, the inflection of his questions. You respect this version of him – you write about it.
But when his eyes pass over the gallery and catch yours, completely by accident, fleeting – you feel something you can’t put in print.
Your stomach drops. You tear your eyes away, look back down at your laptop and type with unnecessary intensity.
You’re still typing later that same evening. Your living room is a battlefield of snack wrappers, loose leaf documents, and Ryujin’s abandoned crochet project. She’s sprawled across the couch like a cat, scrolling through her phone while you type cross-legged on the floor, laptop balanced on your lap.
“I just think there are very few pros to your job, and many, many cons,” Ryujin says, squinting at you over her screen. “You hate it.”
“I don’t hate it. I tolerate it.”
“You tolerate it the way I tolerate dental cleanings,” she mutters. “Which is to say: not at all.”
You glance up then. “Speaking of, you have spinach in your teeth.”
She doesn’t fall for your bait, rolling her eyes. “But there is one pretty big advantage, I guess,” she says, suddenly sing-song, and you already know what she’s going to say. “Because it keeps you seeing a certain prosecutor, right?”
You determinedly fix your eyes on your screen. “I see lots of prosecutors.”
“But only one who emails back at 10p.m.”
“It was nine-forty-seven, I’ll have you know,” you mutter darkly. And then you sigh, roll your shoulders, and take a sip of cold coffee. Grimace, put the mug down. “It’s a big case. It matters.”
“You know what else matters? The hot prosecutor. He matters.”
“There is no ‘he,’” you say, typing harder than necessary. “It’s work. He’s work.”
“Mhm. But work is six foot two, and looks like that.”
(You’d made the mistake of giving Ryujin his name, just once, and from there she’d found his LinkedIn and his Instagram – which was private, of course, but the profile picture alone was enough.)
You don’t dignify her with a response.
She groans. “I’m just saying, if you two ever – ”
“We won’t,” you interrupt quickly. Too quickly. She grins at you wickedly, and you exhale again. “It wouldn’t be right, anyway. I’m covering his case – I always end up covering his cases. There’s gotta be some kind of – conflict of interest, some kind of rule I would be breaking.”
“But you would?” She presses, her phone long forgotten. “If it wasn’t for your job and your rules, you would?”
You close your laptop a little too fast. “I’m going to get more coffee.”
“That’s a yes!”
You lean back against the wall, groan and bury your face into your hands. You know just as well as Ryujin claims she does, that yes, you would. Absolutely, you would. And the rational part of you knows that Mingyu – well, you’re not blind. You see how he looks at you. But you also see how he rearranges his features every time you catch him looking.
You know you can’t want something like Mingyu.
“Yes,” you say finally, “Yes, Ryujin, I would, but I can’t, and he can’t, so what’s the point?”
“You’re letting the possible love of your life go because of a job you hate,” she says. “You tell me, what’s the point?”
You don’t have an answer.
The case settles into the city, but the buzz doesn’t quite die down, only fades a little. By the second week of hearings, you’re pretty sure you can recite all of Lee Junhyeon’s shell companies by name.
You arrive earlier than usual, the lobby quieter. You expect to beat him for once (it’s become a private scoreboard in your head, who gets here first) but when you step through security, Mingyu’s already there.
He’s leaning over the front desk, signing something with a clerk, tie slightly crooked like he got dressed in a hurry for the first time in his life. You catch yourself pausing again. That’s becoming a habit you don’t appreciate.
The clerk spots you approaching before he does.
“Oh,” she says, brightening. “He said you’d probably be here right about – ”
Mingyu straightens too fast, almost drops his pen, and clears his throat. “I said she’s usually here around now. That’s not – I didn’t mean – ”
The clerk giggles into her sleeve. You fight down a smile.
“Ignore him,” Yeji says to you in a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s jumpy today.”
“I can tell,” you say, eyes flicking to his crooked tie. “Good morning, Mr Kim.”
He notices. Of course he does. “I was running late,” he mutters, and then he glances at your empty hands. “No coffee?”
“What,” you say lightly, “did you want me to get you one?”
He stiffens so hard you nearly laugh. “No. No. I just thought – never mind.”
You should leave it at that. You should walk to the elevators, get your seat in the press row, start preparing the notes you need. But something makes you linger; maybe the way he’s still holding his pen mid-air like he forgot what to do with it, maybe the faint pink rising at his collar.
“Rough morning?” you ask, tone neutral enough that you hope it passes for professional curiosity.
“Not rough,” he says quickly. “Just early. And I had to prep some stuff, and fix…” His hand twitches uselessly toward his tie. “This.”
He looks so mildly defeated you almost feel bad.
“Come here,” you sigh, stepping closer before you can talk yourself out of it.
His eyes widen. “What are you—”
“Relax,” you say. He goes still – like he thinks if he moves you’ll vanish – and you straighten the knot with the same brisk efficiency you use on your own clothes before interviews. He blinks down at you, and it’s a mistake to look up at him because suddenly the distance between you feels a little too charged.
“There,” you blurt, a little too loud, stepping back quickly.
“Thank you,” he says, too soft for the lobby. Then he tries to recover, clearing his throat, straightening his spine. “I could have done it myself.”
“No,” you say, heading for the elevators before either of you gets stupid. “You really couldn’t have.”
He follows automatically, matching your pace without thinking. You wish he wouldn’t do that – not because you mind, but because your cheeks are still burning, and you can still feel the ghost of his warmth under your fingertips.
“You’re early,” he says, voice settling back into something steadier. “I thought you hated mornings.”
“I do,” you admit. “But I needed time to re-read the testimony from the other day.”
“Ah.” He exhales. “Good luck. It put half my team to sleep last night.”
“Tell them to eat more almonds.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up. “Was that a joke?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
It keeps happening.
You don’t plan to run into him every morning. You tell yourself that constantly. But you leave home at the same time, and catch the same bus,and the courthouse security line always moves faster than you expect, and Mingyu always, always seems to step into the lobby within thirty seconds of you.
Today, he approaches from behind while you’re staring at the display on a broken vending machine.
“Miss ___,” he greets, with a faint smile. “You look like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
You don’t jump; you refuse to give him that satisfaction. “Do I? I guess I’m too obvious.”
He snorts. “You hate it that much?”
“No,” you say, in a bland tone that obviously means yes. “I’m just waiting for my editor to text me back.”
“Do you need a second opinion?” he asks, already sipping his coffee.
“On my editor’s competence or my writing?”
“Both.”
You let out a laugh. It’s bright, rings through the lobby a little louder than you mean it to. And when you look over at him –
God.
He’s looking at you like he wasn’t prepared for the sound. Like it hit him somewhere unexpected. His expression softens, just slightly, before he pulls it back. You watch it happen, the warmth fading just a little, smile turning down the tiniest bit.
You look away first.
You always do.
An intern or something rushes over with a folder, interrupting the moment as quickly as it appeared. Mingyu takes it, thanks her, and turns back to you.
“I should go.”
“Of course.” You hesitate. “See you in court, Mr Kim.”
He lingers a second, like he wants to say something else.
He doesn’t. He leaves instead, shoulders straighter than before.
You exhale only after he’s out of sight.
It’s one week later, you’re on your way back from the bathroom, typing notes on your phone, when you nearly collide with him as he’s rounding the corner.
Mingyu steadies you before you stumble, one hand hovering near your elbow without actually touching.
You freeze. So does he.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Fine.” Too fast. Too clipped. You clear your throat, try again. “Fine. Thank you.”
He withdraws his hand immediately, stepping back as if he’s not sure how close he’s allowed to be. You can see the calculation behind his eyes; professional boundaries, reporters everywhere.
Except there aren’t reporters everywhere – not right now, at least. Not in this narrow hallway behind the stairwell, empty except for the two of you and the quiet hum of the fluorescent hallway lights.
He seems to realize that at the exact same moment you do.
You clear your throat again, tucking your phone into your bag. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking.”
“No,” he says. “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t, either.”
The air feels different – heavier, somehow. Neither of you moves.
He looks unusually… unsure. Mingyu rarely looks unsure. You’re used to seeing the confident version of him: the prosecutor, the man who can dismantle a witness with three clean questions. Occasionally, you see the slightly clumsy version of him, a little more light-hearted.
But right now, his voice is lower, softer, more hesitant than ever.
“Long day?” he asks.
“Same as any other.”
“Right,” he says, but it’s not really agreement, it’s more like he’s buying time, trying to settle himself.
You shift your weight. He looks down when you move, then up again, slowly, as if tracking you is involuntary.
God, why does the hallway suddenly feel so small?
“Your tie is crooked again,” you blurt.
You want to smack yourself.
He blinks, glancing down with widened eyes. “Is it?”
You should say it’s fine and move on. You should turn, keep walking, go anywhere else except closer to him.
But you don’t. A beat slips between you, long enough you could step away, long enough he could laugh, long enough for both of you to choose sense over impulse.
Neither of you chooses it.
“May I?” The question leaves your mouth before your brain approves it.
He inhales, sharply, quietly, and the only reason you hear it is because of the silence between you - and then he nods once.
You step closer. Close enough to smell the faint starch of his shirt, the ghost of coffee on his breath. Your fingers brush the fabric of his tie, and it feels different to last week. Feels even more tense, with nobody around, no clerk laughing at his clumsiness.
His breath hitches.
When you look up – the same mistake – he’s already looking down at you. There’s something in his expression he never lets slip in court, very rarely lets slip outside. It’s quiet and warm and unguarded, pooling in his brown eyes.
Your hand is still on his tie. You straighten it slowly, but don’t quite pull back. His hand raises, hovering near your hip. Like he wants to close the distance but knows he shouldn’t.
“Miss ___,” he says, but it comes out like your first name. Like he forgets halfway through that he isn’t supposed to say it so gently.
“Mhm?” Your voice barely works.
“We’re…” His jaw tightens. He swallows, and you follow the movement down his throat unconsciously. “We shouldn’t be this close.”
“I know.”
Neither of you moves.
He searches your face like he’s trying to memorise it – that, or he’s trying to convince himself to step back. His eyes drop to your mouth for one split second.
It’s enough.
Heat rushes to your face. Your heart kicks so hard you swear he can hear it, feel it in the air between you, and then you’re leaning in, and he is, too. Noses are inches apart, breaths mingling.
And then – he stops. You stop. Or you stop, and then he stops, you’re not quite sure. It feels simultaneous; if someone had done it first, it’d only be by a millisecond.
Either way, the moment cracks like thin ice.
You pull back first, hand dropping from his tie as if burned. Mingyu steps away so quickly he nearly hits the wall. His breath leaves him in one unsteady exhale he tries and fails to disguise.
“I shouldn’t – ” he starts, voice rough. He clears his throat, tries again. “We can’t.”
“I know,” you whisper.
He runs a hand through his hair, exhaling hard, composure unraveling in a way you’ve never seen. It makes something twist painfully, sharply, inside your chest.
“If I could…” he begins.
You look up.
“If I could,” he says again, lower now, some kind of urgency pushing his words into the space between you. “I would.”
You can’t breathe.
“But I can’t,” he adds quickly, too quickly, like if he doesn’t say it immediately he’ll lose the ability to say it at all. “Not while you’re covering this case. Not while I’m –” He gestures vaguely to the courtroom, to the entire world you both have to answer to, at least for now. “You know why.”
You nod. Because you do know, you’ve always known. “I get it,” you say softly.
He steps back another inch, like distance is the only thing keeping him sane. “I should go,” he says, then, and you don’t stop him. Just watch him leave, noting through your daze how tight his shoulders are, how rigid his steps are.
When he disappears around the corner, you finally let yourself exhale.
By the time you make it home that night, your legs feel like someone else’s. The walk from the bus stop is only seven minutes, but it stretches out, heavy, your thoughts just racing further with every step.
Ryujin is sprawled on the couch when you walk in, laptop open, hair perched in a precarious bun at the top of her head. She peeks over the screen the moment she hears the door.
“You’re home late,” she says. “What’d the justice system do to you this time? Suck the remaining life out of you?”
You drop your bag by the coat rack. “Basically.”
Ryujin narrows her eyes in exaggerated suspicion. “You didn’t answer my text earlier.”
“I was busy.”
“With court stuff,” she says, as if warming up to a theory she’s been itching to present all day. “Or with your favourite lawyer?”
She says it with a deep, smug, knowing tone.
You glare at her. “He’s not my favourite lawyer.”
“Uh-huh.” She closes her laptop halfway, leaning her chin on her palm. “You’re lying poorly again. Want to try that sentence one more time with dignity?”
You toe off your shoes and join her on the couch, sinking into the cushion like it’s been years since you last sat down. “There’s nothing going on.”
Ryujin doesn’t blink. “Yet.”
You grab a throw pillow and smack her with it. “Not yet, not ever,” you correct. “At least, not until I get rid of this stupid job.”
“And is that in the cards any time soon?”
You stare at the ceiling for a moment, listening to the faint hum of the fridge. You knew this conversation would happen eventually. You just thought you’d have more time to figure out what you want.
“I’ve been applying for new jobs since before this case started,” you admit.
Ryujin sits up straighter. “Wait. Really?”
“Yes.” You chew on the inside of your cheek. “I like writing. You know I do. I just don’t think this lane is where I want to stay. The court stuff, it’s interesting, but it’s not what I got into journalism for. You know that.”
Ryujin blinks, processing. “So this isn’t about him.”
“No,” you say. “It’s not. I’d do this whether I’d met him or not.”
She watches you carefully, long enough that you start to feel exposed under it, then she nods. “Okay. Good. Because quitting a whole career path for a guy would be stupid.”
“You’re very supportive,” you deadpan. “Weren’t you the one going on about oh, the love of your life or a job you hate?”
“I wasn’t serious, you know that. I’m realistic,” she counters, kicking your shin gently. “But if you’ve been unhappy, then yeah! Leave. Apply to every job. Apply to the ones you don’t even want. Chaos is free.”
You laugh, weak but genuine.
“And…” Ryujin raises her brows, voice shifting softer. “It does make it easier for you to go ahead, and, you know. Ask out the man of your dreams.”
You cover your face with your hands. “It’s – he is not – ”
“He absolutely is,” she says. “But that’s fine. We’re not judging. We’re just stating things accurately.”
“Just because I quit doesn’t mean we’re going to magically live happily ever after. He might not even like me like that.” You know that’s not true, especially after today. Still, you hate how much you sound like you’re back in high school.
“You sound like you’re back in high school.”
You groan, sliding down the couch until your head rests against the armrest. “I hate you.”
Ryujin pats your knee affectionately. “No you don’t. You love me. I’m wise.”
“You’re annoying.”
“I am large. I contain multitudes.”
You stare at the ceiling again, but this time, it feels a little lighter. Less like the world is closing in, more like it’s shifting forward.
Ryujin nudges you with her foot. “So. New jobs. What are we looking for?”
You hesitate, but only for a second, because you’ve thought about it so much. “Something with more features. Maybe like, one of those, you know, fancy arts magazines. Or the literature stuff.”
Her grin spreads slow and pleased. “Then we’ll find it. Easy.”
You know it’s not easy – it’s been weeks of sending applications into the void – but the conviction in her voice warms something inside you.
“And hey,” she adds, sitting back with her laptop. “If your tall hot lawyer happens to read your award-winning future articles and regret the day he ever let you walk away, that’s his problem.”
You throw another pillow at her face, and she catches it, triumphant.
You’re not expecting to see anyone from the courthouse on a Saturday morning, least of all Mingyu. The café is a good twenty minutes away from the district building, far enough away that you don’t get any familiar faces whenever you come here to work, except when you drag Ryujin with you.
Today, though, it’s just you, your laptop, a croissant, and yet another job application form. You’re halfway through uploading some of your writing samples when the bell over the café door jingles.
You don’t look up, not until you hear a familiar voice say, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Your fingers freeze over your keyboard.
You raise your eyes slowly. Mingyu stands in the doorway, holding an iced Americano and wearing glasses you’ve never seen before, round, thin-framed, unfairly flattering. His hair is slightly messy, like he didn’t bother styling it for once, and for once, he’s not wearing a suit.
“You’re following me,” you say, because it’s the first thing your mouth decides to go with.
He huffs. “Do you really think I have time for that?”
You close your laptop halfway. “Compelling argument, Mr Kim.”
He winces. “Please don’t call me that here. It’s Saturday.”
You can’t help laughing, and the sound makes him stop mid-step, just for a beat, barely noticeable. His expression softens as he moves toward your table.
“You working?” he asks, nodding at your laptop.
“Trying to,” you reply. “Not court stuff, so don’t worry.”
He hesitates, standing there with his coffee, shifting his weight. “Mind if I…?” He gestures vaguely to the empty seat across from you.
And this – this is where you should say no. Because it’s weird. Because you spend too much time in hallways and lobbies together already, because you almost kissed the last time you were alone together.
But he’s looking at you with hopeful eyebrows, and it’s Saturday, and you’re tired of replaying the same loops in your head.
“Sure,” you say lightly, but as he sits, you angle your laptop away from him without thinking. He notices.
“I’m not trying to peek,” he says, hands raised in surrender.
You smile. “I didn’t think you were.”
There’s a brief lull as he unwraps his straw, stirs his drink, takes a sip. Something about the normalcy of it, the absence of suits, no fluorescent lighting hanging above you – it feels absurdly intimate.
“So am I allowed to ask what you’re working on that’s not court stuff?” he asks. “Creative writing? Exposé about the corruption of local cafés?”
Your eyes widen, feeling caught.
He blinks at your silence, and you see him withdraw just the tiniest bit, a smile plastered on his face. “You don’t have to tell me, you know.”
“Job applications,” you say before you can soften it.
His eyebrows shoot up, surprise breaking across his features. “You’re leaving City News?”
You sigh, pushing a hand through your hair. “Trying to.”
He sits up abruptly. “Why?”
You lean back a little, startled by his sudden change in tone, almost harsh. “What?”
“Listen,” he says, urgently, quickly. “If this is about – last week.”
“What,” you say slowly, raising an eyebrow. If he won’t say it, you will. “When we almost kissed?”
His cheeks redden, but he pushes forward. “Yes, that. If this is about that, then don’t – I mean, it shouldn’t have happened.”
It feels like something cold is dousing your chest, trickling down into the pit of your stomach. “I know that.”
“Because we’re in the middle of an active case.” He insists on continuing, like he hasn't heard you. “It wouldn’t be right, you know that. And besides, it was just – it was bad timing. A mistake. We were, you know, exhausted, and we’ve always been friendly, but you don’t have to le–”
You cut him off. “A mistake?”
“I’m trying to say, you don’t have to quit just because of that. It wouldn’t be right. We can just forget it ever happened!”
You’re still hung up on that word. A mistake. “I’m sorry,” you say, letting out a derisive snort. “If I could, I would – isn’t that what you said? And now it’s suddenly just a mistake?”
Mingyu’s eyes widen, like he’s just realising he’s done something wrong. Like he’s just realising he’s misunderstood this whole entire thing.
“For your information, Mr Kim, I’ve been applying for new jobs for over a month,” you bite out, shoving your stuff into your bag. “It has nothing to do with you, or whatever mistake we made last week.”
“Wait – wait, ___,” he starts, but you don’t let him finish.
“Listen, if you want to forget about it, feel free. Consider it done. I’ll never bring it up again, and once I get my new job, you never have to see my face again.” You’re tired, embarrassed, angry, and all of it knots together inside your chest. “I’ll see you in court, Mr Kim.”
He doesn’t come after you.
You don’t expect the silence to be this absolute.
A part of you thinks that once you step back into the courtroom, once you’re surrounded by clerks and attorneys and the usual shuffle of papers, things will fall back into their familiar rhythm, that he’ll make some quiet comment as he passes your table, or nod in that way that’s half-greeting, half-habit.
Instead, Mingyu barely looks at you.
The first time you see him after the argument, he’s already leafing through a binder. His expression is the same one he wears for every session in court: composed, serious, utterly focused. But he doesn’t lift his gaze when you walk in – not when you take your seat, not even when you have to shift your chair because one of your colleagues squeezes past, the scrape of the metal legs loud against the tile.
You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You tell yourself it’s for the best.
You tell yourself that yesterday’s email, beginning with Congratulations! means you won’t have to do this for much longer. Except then, outside the courtroom, you ask a follow-up question to something your co-worker asks, and when he replies, your stomach twists because you can hear the difference.
He talks to you the way he talks to every other reporter in the room.
When court breaks, you linger by the aisle to avoid crossing paths. It works for exactly two minutes, until a clerk tries to hand you a set of documents and they slip, scattering across the floor. You kneel to gather them at the same moment someone else does.
Long fingers. A watch you’ve teased him about before.
You stop.
Mingyu hovers for half a second, clearly debating whether to continue. Then, very slowly, painfully slowly, he puts the pile he’s gathered down, retracts his hand and stands.
“I’ll let you take those,” he says, softly.
“Thank you,” you answer, eyes fixed on the papers, pulse loud in your ears.
You don’t look up. You can’t.
He steps away, shoes quiet against the polished floor.
The ink on the papers blur for a second, and you blink hard, blaming the courtroom’s dry air. You breathe again only when the door closes behind him.
Time passes, and the distance settles into a horrible routine.
He holds doors open for everyone, including you, without pausing or meeting your eye. When he makes an objection that gets sustained, you don’t let yourself smile. When he wins a point you predicted he would, you don’t feel the same sense of satisfaction. When he glances up mid-argument, you keep your gaze locked on your laptop.
On one of the later days, he falters, just for a moment – mid-sentence, his breath catches on a word. No one else notices, but you do, and you reflexively look up, his eyes are on you. There’s a beat, and then he continues speaking, steady and smooth as ever, but that single slip echoes inside you.
By the last day of trial, the courthouse feels different.
Not quieter – if anything, it’s louder, people sliding through hallways with more purpose than usual – but the air around you feels muted. As if you’re wrapped in thick cotton, watching everything from a half-step removed.
And maybe that’s because you spend the entire morning doing what you’ve perfected over the past week: not looking at Kim Mingyu. Not unless you absolutely, professionally must.
He doesn’t look at you either. Not unless he absolutely, professionally must.
When you enter the courtroom, he’s already sitting, files arranged in his impossibly neat stack, suit crisp, expression unreadably calm. You don’t let your gaze linger. You don’t give yourself that indulgence. Instead you slide into the press row, notebook out, pen ready.
The judge enters. Everyone rises. Everyone sits.
You take notes mechanically, fingers moving on their own. Working without really thinking, just trying your best to keep your focus away from him, as you have been over the past few weeks. You focus on the defendant instead, on the closing arguments, anything but him.
But Mingyu, of course, makes that impossible.
He stands to deliver the prosecution’s final statement, and even though you stare fixedly at the edge of your notebook, you hear every word, clear, steady, composed. He’s good. More than good. Same as he always is.
Your pen slips once, leaving a long ink drag across the margin.
When he returns to his seat, you don’t look up, you keep writing.
You try not to hear your pulse.
The afternoon stretches. The jury is out deliberating, leaving everyone suspended in that suffocating pre-verdict limbo. Some reporters mingle in the hallway. Others type up summaries. You sit on a bench outside the courtroom, laptop open, pretending to fine-tune your article when really you’re trying not to look down the hall.
Because he’s there, talking to someone on his team, looking completely collected – except for the way he keeps rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to ease out the tension.
You shouldn’t notice that, and you shouldn’t know that gesture as well as you do.
Ryujin messages you once – still going ok? want me to bring u a coffee?? – and you send back a short, all good, last day anyway. She doesn’t push.
You sigh, keep your head down, but eventually, your eyes pull upward on their own. Just for a second. Just to confirm that he’s still there, that he’s –
He’s looking at you.
Only for a moment, but it’s enough that you jolt, like you’ve been caught doing something wrong. You drop your gaze so fast your whole body jerks with the movement, your laptop screen wobbling.
The distance between you feels like a physical thing, thick, uncomfortable, heavy with everything unsaid. And after so much of it, you’re beginning to realize something awful:
You miss him.
You miss teasing him in the lobby. You miss his quick quips, you miss the way he’d accidentally catch your eye in court. The way he’d nod at you in greeting whenever he passed by, the faintest of smiles on his lips.
You press your fingers to your temple. You brought this on yourself, you know that. For some reason, it doesn’t make it easier.
It’s late afternoon when the jury returns.
Everyone shuffles back inside, and the verdict is delivered, a mixture of charges upheld, others dismissed. You type each one out dutifully to draft up later, but you don’t have much interest in your screen. You already know this is your last case to cover, possibly your last time in this courtroom.
When court adjourns, the room splits into a hum of conversation. Attorneys shake hands, reporters drift forward, and you close your laptop slowly. You’re not in a rush, but you don’t have good reason to linger either.
You pack your bag, slip past a cluster of colleagues, and make for the aisle. You almost make it out without a word to anyone, which is quite a feat, but then Mingyu steps, ever so carefully, into your path. His expression is careful,gentle around the edges, but careful. Walking on eggshells.
“Hey,” he says, quietly. He opens his mouth, closes it, wets his lips with his tongue, and finally settles on – “Good work.”
You swallow, throat tight. “You too.”
He nods once, like he expected that. Like he doesn’t expect anything else from you anymore. And then someone’s calling his name from across the room, another attorney, and your phone starts buzzing, and the moment breaks.
Mingyu steps back. Offers you a polite, nearly formal incline of his head, and then he’s gone.
Good work.
Two weeks pass before you set foot in the courthouse again.
You tell yourself it won’t feel strange. You’re here to pick up a few documents, one last errand for City News, nothing more. Nothing to do with prosecutors or defence attorneys or even Lee Junhyeon. Nothing to do with Mingyu, either.
The courthouse looks the same when you approach it, though: winter sun catching on its windows, the wide stone steps as familiar as always. Inside, the lobby buzzes with the usual noise, heels, echoing voices.
You focus on the desk you need to get to. You focus on not looking around. You almost pull it off, chatting to the clerk, Yeji, about your new job with a smile. Chaeryeong comes up behind you both. “___!” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s quitting,” Yeji answers for you, beaming. Even she knew how much you wanted to leave.”She’s going to work at one of those fancy arts and culture magazines.”
“No shit,” Chaeryeong says, admiringly. “You got a new job?”
And then you hear Mingyu, somewhere to your side.
Of course you hear Mingyu. His voice stands out even when you don’t want it to.
“Really?” he asks, soft in a way that hits you low in the stomach. “Where?”
Your throat tightens, half nerves, half guilt. You hadn’t planned to tell him. You hadn’t planned to avoid telling him, either. It was just so much easier this way.
Yeji opens her mouth, probably to answer, but she must see your face, and closes it, suddenly standing up and grabbing Chaeryeong’s hand. “We’re going to, uh. Go do our job. Somewhere else.” And they disappear down the hallway before you can even say anything.
You turn, and for one awful, suspended second, you and Mingyu stare at each other across the lobby. There’s surprise on his face first, then relief, then something unreadable that he very quickly pushes away. He steps toward you, and you force your spine straighter.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
Silence stretches, thin and taut.
You exhale through your nose. “I didn’t know you were here today.”
“I could say the same,” he replies. “I thought – ” He stops, shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
You nod. Another silence. It’s not the comfortable kind you used to share, this one is awkward and delicate.
“Congrats,” he says finally. “On the new job.”
“Thank you,” you reply. “I’m excited.”
“You should be.” He means it; you can tell. “It’s a good move for you.”
You swallow. “Listen, Mr –” you start, and then change your mind. “Mingyu. About the other day, in the café. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he says, quickly, eagerly. “I’m sorry. I messed up my words, you had every right to be upset.”
“I still shouldn’t have said it like I did,” you say. “You didn’t deserve that.”
His mouth curves. “Maybe a little.”
You huff out a breath that’s an excuse for a laugh, hands tightening around the strap of your bag. You want to say more, but the words won’t come. And even if they did, this isn’t the place. Not with clerks walking by and the elevator dinging open and shut, not with the ghosts of the last few weeks crowding the air between you.
“I should get going,” you say instead.
“Right. Of course.”
You turn first. You always turn first. You walk toward the exit, and you don’t look back, even though you want to, even though everything in you pulls tight at the thought of leaving things like this again.
The courthouse doors swing open. Morning light spills across the steps. You’re halfway down when you hear your name, called after you.
You stop.
Mingyu’s footsteps are quick, uneven, like he didn’t think before he moved. When you pivot, he’s there, eyes wide, tie, as always, crooked.
“Wait,” Mingyu says, slightly breathless. And he’s looking at you with that expression he never lets slip in court: unguarded, earnest, a little scared and a lot certain. “___,” he says softly, stepping closer. “I know the timing is awful,” he says, voice low but steady.
“The timing is always awful,” you agree, but you’re smiling.
His lips twitch slightly in response, but then he’s serious again. “I don’t want to leave things like this.”
Your pulse stutters.
“And I know we said we needed boundaries before,” he continues quickly, pushing on like he’s afraid you’re going to take flight. “We were right. But you’re not covering my cases anymore. And I’m not your source. And – ” He stops, exhales hard. “Can I take you to dinner?”
The world hangs still.
Not the courthouse behind you or the street below or the people passing, just the two of you and the question he finally asks.
You blink at him.
Then:
“Yeah,” you say, the word soft but sure. “You can.”
Relief unfurls across his features, warm and bright and so unmistakably Mingyu that your chest aches.
“Okay,” he says, almost laughing under his breath. “Okay. Great.”
“Great,” you echo, failing to control the smile that spread across your face.
He stands there a moment longer, like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind. You meet his eyes, really meet them, and something settles between you both, warmer and sweeter than ever.
a/n: i was struggling w/ ideas initially but i remembered a convo em and i had like Forever ago about how smart mingyu is and i was like. let me do something with that. and this is what came out. anyway. happy birthday to em. i love u.
You and Kim Mingyu have always walked that thin line between professional respect and something dangerously close to flirtation, but neither of you have ever quite slipped. So covering his newest case should be routine — but suddenly, keeping things professional isn't as easy as it used to be.
⇢ pairing. lawyer!mingyu x journalist!reader
⇢ genre. fluff, angst, idiots/acquaintances? to lovers.
⇢ word count. approx. 7.5k
⇢ warnings. f!reader. miscommunication (sorry). lots of pining + tension. a few moral dilemmas but nothing crazy. almost definitely inaccurate depictions of courtroom and law stuff. ft. a few of the itzy girls bc why not!!!
⇢ a/n. happiest of birthdays to one of my favourite people on this planet!!!!! my beloved @gyuswhore this one is for you!! emberly i'm about to type an essay in ur dms anyway but just know that i love u enormous amounts. so so much. and i apologise for the banner its not my best work 😭
THE COURTHOUSE LOBBY is already humming with activity when you step through security: attorneys in suits speed-walking towards elevators, clerks juggling stacks of paper, the espresso machine in the café sputtering and filling the air with the smell of burnt coffee. You’re used to it all by now, and it doesn’t seem anywhere near as chaotic as you used to find it.
But the best part of your mornings tend to be six foot two and annoyingly well-dressed.
You spot Mingyu the moment you step through security: tall, sleek, and freshly pressed, balancing a stack of colour-coded folders against his hip while stirring what you know is an obscene amount of sugar into his coffee.
He doesn’t notice you at first. He’s too busy reading something on a sticky note, lips shaping the words. You hesitate a beat, just long enough to be annoyed at yourself for it, then head his way.
“Mr Kim,” you call out, voice just loud enough to cut through the lobby chatter.
His head snaps up. And there it is, that small flicker of recognition followed by the not-quite-smile he always tries to tamp down.
“Ah. My favourite journalist.” He shifts the folders to greet you properly, pretending he’s not already straightening his tie. He always straightens his tie around you. “Here to make my day harder?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” You hold up your recorder, tilt your head to the side hopefully. “Pre-hearing comment? Thirty seconds. Forty if you’re feeling generous.”
He huffs a soft laugh and gestures toward the hallway with the tip of his coffee cup. “You ambush me the second you walk in the building and expect me to string something together? It’s barely nine.”
“And yet,” you counter, walking beside him, “you look like you got eight hours of sleep and ironed that suit with time to spare.”
“It’s an illusion. I slept three hours and ate some almonds on my way here.”
“Almonds,” you repeat, snorting. You rummage in your bag, pull out a cereal bar, and hold it up between two fingers. His eyes actually light up, but just before his hand can brush yours, you whisk it out of reach and instead tap your recorder against your palm.
He stops walking to give you a displeased look, nose scrunching. “Really?”
You shrug, entirely unbothered. “Needs must.”
“One might call that bribery, Miss ___.”
“One would then have to remember – it’s a cereal bar, Mr Kim.” You raise your eyebrows. “I’m starting to think you don’t want to give me a quote.”
You’ve interviewed dozens of prosecutors over the years, in this very building. But Mingyu is the only one who makes courthouse mornings feel a little lighter. Maybe it’s because he listens, doesn’t shrug you off immediately like some others do. Maybe it’s because he looks at you like the two of you are in on some private joke – and sometimes you are. Maybe it’s because every time you talk, there’s a hum under your ribs you keep telling yourself to ignore.
He pauses at the bulletin board, scanning the docket. “Just a fraud case today. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re covering it.”
“I can’t resist a good public official messing with paperwork,” you say. “It speaks to me.”
“Fraud speaks to you?”
“Don’t judge my hobbies. Besides, you know better than anyone it’s not just a fraud case when it’s Lee Junhyeon behind it all. Do I get a quote or not?”
It’s easy, this back-and-forth. Easier than it should be. Easier than it ever is with anyone else you interview. There’s comfort baked into the rhythm you two have built – teasing layered over familiarity layered over something neither of you names aloud.
He takes one last sip of his coffee, narrows his eyes at the cereal bar, straightens ever so slightly – and nods at your recorder. “Alright. Go ahead. But if I pass out mid-sentence, you’re liable.”
“I’ll include that as a quote.”
“Please don’t.”
You hit record, and he slips effortlessly into prosecutor mode, smooth, concise, measured. You watch the shift happen in real time: the warmth fades, replaced by sharp professionalism, like flipping a switch only he seems able to control.
He finishes. You stop the recorder.
“There,” he says with a tiny tilt of his head, shoulders slumping just the slightest bit. “Was that quick enough?”
“Almost disappointing how cooperative you are.”
“Just trying to stay on your good side.”
You open your mouth to reply, but someone calls his name from down the hall.
He sighs, and you give him a knowing look. “Duty calls.”
“I’ll see you inside?” he asks.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” You press the cereal bar on top of his folders, and he glances down at it in surprise. “Don’t inhale it in front of the judge.”
“No promises,” he grins. And he takes a few steps backward toward the courtroom doors, eyes lingering on you for a beat longer than necessary. Then he turns away, and whatever was pressing down on your chest loosens.
The hallway outsidethe courtroom is louder after the lunch recess, the kind of restless noise that means every reporter is suddenly convinced they’re about to miss something. You weave through the clusters of them, not exactly late, but later than you meant to be, with your notebook tucked under your arm and your phone buzzing with your roommate’s texts about dinner plans.
The Lee Junhyeon case had drawn more media attention than expected for something technically labeled “administrative fraud.” But feeding money into a shell charity he chaired leads to a lot of public interest. Which is why you’re here.
Mingyu and his team arrive from the opposite end of the hall: three attorneys behind him, another two in step beside him, all mid-discussion about something pedantic. He’s flipping through a binder while listening to someone else’s briefing, brows drawn, tie slightly loosened from the morning’s work. He looks focused, a little wrinkle on his forehead, lower lip caught between his teeth. Not that you’re looking at his lips, you remind yourself firmly, clicking your pen.
Which, of course, is exactly when his eyes lift and land right on you.
It’s not a smile – that would be too much – just a brief softening of his features, a small acknowledgment, something only noticeable because you’re tuned to it. He returns his attention to his colleague almost immediately.
Still. Somehow, one look is enough to warm the little dent between your ribs and your stomach,
A handful of other reporters notice him too, and like sharks scenting blood, they move as a group, mics angled, questions already thrust forward. Someone elbows you lightly, not unkindly, but with just enough push that you step to the side to avoid being boxed in.
Mingyu’s team slows. His second chair, Ms. Han, glances over the crowd with unimpressed precision. You join the cluster, not leading it, not hiding either. When one reporter pushes ahead to ask a badly formed question, Mingyu stops walking just long enough to give them a neutral, measured response.
His gaze slips to you again.
You pretend you don’t notice. Or at least you pretend you’re good at pretending.
You ask your question, and he answers just as cleanly, just as concisely. But still, there’s something in how he talks to you. The subtlest, tiniest, warmest thing edging his words, and then he’s gone.
You claim a seat at the press bench again, open your laptop, and start shaping the morning’s notes into something publishable. Your article won’t run until the day after tomorrow, but drafts don’t write themselves – and you’ve learned the hard way that waiting until evening means Ryujin starts threatening to hide your laptop under the couch.
Most of the testimony is dry. A lot of financial analysts, paper trails, the mind-numbing march of spreadsheets projected onto the courtroom screen. The judge interrupts twice; Lee’s defense interrupts five times; the gallery sighs in unison at least twelve. None of this interests you much, but a job is a job, and you know that despite hating it, you’re good at it.
But when Mingyu rises for cross-examination, the room straightens. You do too.
His voice fills the space with that particular calm authority he has, the kind that makes people assume he’s older than he is. You know this version of him well, have reported on his cases more than enough times to be well-acquainted with the gestures he makes, the inflection of his questions. You respect this version of him – you write about it.
But when his eyes pass over the gallery and catch yours, completely by accident, fleeting – you feel something you can’t put in print.
Your stomach drops. You tear your eyes away, look back down at your laptop and type with unnecessary intensity.
You’re still typing later that same evening. Your living room is a battlefield of snack wrappers, loose leaf documents, and Ryujin’s abandoned crochet project. She’s sprawled across the couch like a cat, scrolling through her phone while you type cross-legged on the floor, laptop balanced on your lap.
“I just think there are very few pros to your job, and many, many cons,” Ryujin says, squinting at you over her screen. “You hate it.”
“I don’t hate it. I tolerate it.”
“You tolerate it the way I tolerate dental cleanings,” she mutters. “Which is to say: not at all.”
You glance up then. “Speaking of, you have spinach in your teeth.”
She doesn’t fall for your bait, rolling her eyes. “But there is one pretty big advantage, I guess,” she says, suddenly sing-song, and you already know what she’s going to say. “Because it keeps you seeing a certain prosecutor, right?”
You determinedly fix your eyes on your screen. “I see lots of prosecutors.”
“But only one who emails back at 10p.m.”
“It was nine-forty-seven, I’ll have you know,” you mutter darkly. And then you sigh, roll your shoulders, and take a sip of cold coffee. Grimace, put the mug down. “It’s a big case. It matters.”
“You know what else matters? The hot prosecutor. He matters.”
“There is no ‘he,’” you say, typing harder than necessary. “It’s work. He’s work.”
“Mhm. But work is six foot two, and looks like that.”
(You’d made the mistake of giving Ryujin his name, just once, and from there she’d found his LinkedIn and his Instagram – which was private, of course, but the profile picture alone was enough.)
You don’t dignify her with a response.
She groans. “I’m just saying, if you two ever – ”
“We won’t,” you interrupt quickly. Too quickly. She grins at you wickedly, and you exhale again. “It wouldn’t be right, anyway. I’m covering his case – I always end up covering his cases. There’s gotta be some kind of – conflict of interest, some kind of rule I would be breaking.”
“But you would?” She presses, her phone long forgotten. “If it wasn’t for your job and your rules, you would?”
You close your laptop a little too fast. “I’m going to get more coffee.”
“That’s a yes!”
You lean back against the wall, groan and bury your face into your hands. You know just as well as Ryujin claims she does, that yes, you would. Absolutely, you would. And the rational part of you knows that Mingyu – well, you’re not blind. You see how he looks at you. But you also see how he rearranges his features every time you catch him looking.
You know you can’t want something like Mingyu.
“Yes,” you say finally, “Yes, Ryujin, I would, but I can’t, and he can’t, so what’s the point?”
“You’re letting the possible love of your life go because of a job you hate,” she says. “You tell me, what’s the point?”
You don’t have an answer.
The case settles into the city, but the buzz doesn’t quite die down, only fades a little. By the second week of hearings, you’re pretty sure you can recite all of Lee Junhyeon’s shell companies by name.
You arrive earlier than usual, the lobby quieter. You expect to beat him for once (it’s become a private scoreboard in your head, who gets here first) but when you step through security, Mingyu’s already there.
He’s leaning over the front desk, signing something with a clerk, tie slightly crooked like he got dressed in a hurry for the first time in his life. You catch yourself pausing again. That’s becoming a habit you don’t appreciate.
The clerk spots you approaching before he does.
“Oh,” she says, brightening. “He said you’d probably be here right about – ”
Mingyu straightens too fast, almost drops his pen, and clears his throat. “I said she’s usually here around now. That’s not – I didn’t mean – ”
The clerk giggles into her sleeve. You fight down a smile.
“Ignore him,” Yeji says to you in a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s jumpy today.”
“I can tell,” you say, eyes flicking to his crooked tie. “Good morning, Mr Kim.”
He notices. Of course he does. “I was running late,” he mutters, and then he glances at your empty hands. “No coffee?”
“What,” you say lightly, “did you want me to get you one?”
He stiffens so hard you nearly laugh. “No. No. I just thought – never mind.”
You should leave it at that. You should walk to the elevators, get your seat in the press row, start preparing the notes you need. But something makes you linger; maybe the way he’s still holding his pen mid-air like he forgot what to do with it, maybe the faint pink rising at his collar.
“Rough morning?” you ask, tone neutral enough that you hope it passes for professional curiosity.
“Not rough,” he says quickly. “Just early. And I had to prep some stuff, and fix…” His hand twitches uselessly toward his tie. “This.”
He looks so mildly defeated you almost feel bad.
“Come here,” you sigh, stepping closer before you can talk yourself out of it.
His eyes widen. “What are you—”
“Relax,” you say. He goes still – like he thinks if he moves you’ll vanish – and you straighten the knot with the same brisk efficiency you use on your own clothes before interviews. He blinks down at you, and it’s a mistake to look up at him because suddenly the distance between you feels a little too charged.
“There,” you blurt, a little too loud, stepping back quickly.
“Thank you,” he says, too soft for the lobby. Then he tries to recover, clearing his throat, straightening his spine. “I could have done it myself.”
“No,” you say, heading for the elevators before either of you gets stupid. “You really couldn’t have.”
He follows automatically, matching your pace without thinking. You wish he wouldn’t do that – not because you mind, but because your cheeks are still burning, and you can still feel the ghost of his warmth under your fingertips.
“You’re early,” he says, voice settling back into something steadier. “I thought you hated mornings.”
“I do,” you admit. “But I needed time to re-read the testimony from the other day.”
“Ah.” He exhales. “Good luck. It put half my team to sleep last night.”
“Tell them to eat more almonds.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up. “Was that a joke?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
It keeps happening.
You don’t plan to run into him every morning. You tell yourself that constantly. But you leave home at the same time, and catch the same bus,and the courthouse security line always moves faster than you expect, and Mingyu always, always seems to step into the lobby within thirty seconds of you.
Today, he approaches from behind while you’re staring at the display on a broken vending machine.
“Miss ___,” he greets, with a faint smile. “You look like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
You don’t jump; you refuse to give him that satisfaction. “Do I? I guess I’m too obvious.”
He snorts. “You hate it that much?”
“No,” you say, in a bland tone that obviously means yes. “I’m just waiting for my editor to text me back.”
“Do you need a second opinion?” he asks, already sipping his coffee.
“On my editor’s competence or my writing?”
“Both.”
You let out a laugh. It’s bright, rings through the lobby a little louder than you mean it to. And when you look over at him –
God.
He’s looking at you like he wasn’t prepared for the sound. Like it hit him somewhere unexpected. His expression softens, just slightly, before he pulls it back. You watch it happen, the warmth fading just a little, smile turning down the tiniest bit.
You look away first.
You always do.
An intern or something rushes over with a folder, interrupting the moment as quickly as it appeared. Mingyu takes it, thanks her, and turns back to you.
“I should go.”
“Of course.” You hesitate. “See you in court, Mr Kim.”
He lingers a second, like he wants to say something else.
He doesn’t. He leaves instead, shoulders straighter than before.
You exhale only after he’s out of sight.
It’s one week later, you’re on your way back from the bathroom, typing notes on your phone, when you nearly collide with him as he’s rounding the corner.
Mingyu steadies you before you stumble, one hand hovering near your elbow without actually touching.
You freeze. So does he.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Fine.” Too fast. Too clipped. You clear your throat, try again. “Fine. Thank you.”
He withdraws his hand immediately, stepping back as if he’s not sure how close he’s allowed to be. You can see the calculation behind his eyes; professional boundaries, reporters everywhere.
Except there aren’t reporters everywhere – not right now, at least. Not in this narrow hallway behind the stairwell, empty except for the two of you and the quiet hum of the fluorescent hallway lights.
He seems to realize that at the exact same moment you do.
You clear your throat again, tucking your phone into your bag. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking.”
“No,” he says. “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t, either.”
The air feels different – heavier, somehow. Neither of you moves.
He looks unusually… unsure. Mingyu rarely looks unsure. You’re used to seeing the confident version of him: the prosecutor, the man who can dismantle a witness with three clean questions. Occasionally, you see the slightly clumsy version of him, a little more light-hearted.
But right now, his voice is lower, softer, more hesitant than ever.
“Long day?” he asks.
“Same as any other.”
“Right,” he says, but it’s not really agreement, it’s more like he’s buying time, trying to settle himself.
You shift your weight. He looks down when you move, then up again, slowly, as if tracking you is involuntary.
God, why does the hallway suddenly feel so small?
“Your tie is crooked again,” you blurt.
You want to smack yourself.
He blinks, glancing down with widened eyes. “Is it?”
You should say it’s fine and move on. You should turn, keep walking, go anywhere else except closer to him.
But you don’t. A beat slips between you, long enough you could step away, long enough he could laugh, long enough for both of you to choose sense over impulse.
Neither of you chooses it.
“May I?” The question leaves your mouth before your brain approves it.
He inhales, sharply, quietly, and the only reason you hear it is because of the silence between you - and then he nods once.
You step closer. Close enough to smell the faint starch of his shirt, the ghost of coffee on his breath. Your fingers brush the fabric of his tie, and it feels different to last week. Feels even more tense, with nobody around, no clerk laughing at his clumsiness.
His breath hitches.
When you look up – the same mistake – he’s already looking down at you. There’s something in his expression he never lets slip in court, very rarely lets slip outside. It’s quiet and warm and unguarded, pooling in his brown eyes.
Your hand is still on his tie. You straighten it slowly, but don’t quite pull back. His hand raises, hovering near your hip. Like he wants to close the distance but knows he shouldn’t.
“Miss ___,” he says, but it comes out like your first name. Like he forgets halfway through that he isn’t supposed to say it so gently.
“Mhm?” Your voice barely works.
“We’re…” His jaw tightens. He swallows, and you follow the movement down his throat unconsciously. “We shouldn’t be this close.”
“I know.”
Neither of you moves.
He searches your face like he’s trying to memorise it – that, or he’s trying to convince himself to step back. His eyes drop to your mouth for one split second.
It’s enough.
Heat rushes to your face. Your heart kicks so hard you swear he can hear it, feel it in the air between you, and then you’re leaning in, and he is, too. Noses are inches apart, breaths mingling.
And then – he stops. You stop. Or you stop, and then he stops, you’re not quite sure. It feels simultaneous; if someone had done it first, it’d only be by a millisecond.
Either way, the moment cracks like thin ice.
You pull back first, hand dropping from his tie as if burned. Mingyu steps away so quickly he nearly hits the wall. His breath leaves him in one unsteady exhale he tries and fails to disguise.
“I shouldn’t – ” he starts, voice rough. He clears his throat, tries again. “We can’t.”
“I know,” you whisper.
He runs a hand through his hair, exhaling hard, composure unraveling in a way you’ve never seen. It makes something twist painfully, sharply, inside your chest.
“If I could…” he begins.
You look up.
“If I could,” he says again, lower now, some kind of urgency pushing his words into the space between you. “I would.”
You can’t breathe.
“But I can’t,” he adds quickly, too quickly, like if he doesn’t say it immediately he’ll lose the ability to say it at all. “Not while you’re covering this case. Not while I’m –” He gestures vaguely to the courtroom, to the entire world you both have to answer to, at least for now. “You know why.”
You nod. Because you do know, you’ve always known. “I get it,” you say softly.
He steps back another inch, like distance is the only thing keeping him sane. “I should go,” he says, then, and you don’t stop him. Just watch him leave, noting through your daze how tight his shoulders are, how rigid his steps are.
When he disappears around the corner, you finally let yourself exhale.
By the time you make it home that night, your legs feel like someone else’s. The walk from the bus stop is only seven minutes, but it stretches out, heavy, your thoughts just racing further with every step.
Ryujin is sprawled on the couch when you walk in, laptop open, hair perched in a precarious bun at the top of her head. She peeks over the screen the moment she hears the door.
“You’re home late,” she says. “What’d the justice system do to you this time? Suck the remaining life out of you?”
You drop your bag by the coat rack. “Basically.”
Ryujin narrows her eyes in exaggerated suspicion. “You didn’t answer my text earlier.”
“I was busy.”
“With court stuff,” she says, as if warming up to a theory she’s been itching to present all day. “Or with your favourite lawyer?”
She says it with a deep, smug, knowing tone.
You glare at her. “He’s not my favourite lawyer.”
“Uh-huh.” She closes her laptop halfway, leaning her chin on her palm. “You’re lying poorly again. Want to try that sentence one more time with dignity?”
You toe off your shoes and join her on the couch, sinking into the cushion like it’s been years since you last sat down. “There’s nothing going on.”
Ryujin doesn’t blink. “Yet.”
You grab a throw pillow and smack her with it. “Not yet, not ever,” you correct. “At least, not until I get rid of this stupid job.”
“And is that in the cards any time soon?”
You stare at the ceiling for a moment, listening to the faint hum of the fridge. You knew this conversation would happen eventually. You just thought you’d have more time to figure out what you want.
“I’ve been applying for new jobs since before this case started,” you admit.
Ryujin sits up straighter. “Wait. Really?”
“Yes.” You chew on the inside of your cheek. “I like writing. You know I do. I just don’t think this lane is where I want to stay. The court stuff, it’s interesting, but it’s not what I got into journalism for. You know that.”
Ryujin blinks, processing. “So this isn’t about him.”
“No,” you say. “It’s not. I’d do this whether I’d met him or not.”
She watches you carefully, long enough that you start to feel exposed under it, then she nods. “Okay. Good. Because quitting a whole career path for a guy would be stupid.”
“You’re very supportive,” you deadpan. “Weren’t you the one going on about oh, the love of your life or a job you hate?”
“I wasn’t serious, you know that. I’m realistic,” she counters, kicking your shin gently. “But if you’ve been unhappy, then yeah! Leave. Apply to every job. Apply to the ones you don’t even want. Chaos is free.”
You laugh, weak but genuine.
“And…” Ryujin raises her brows, voice shifting softer. “It does make it easier for you to go ahead, and, you know. Ask out the man of your dreams.”
You cover your face with your hands. “It’s – he is not – ”
“He absolutely is,” she says. “But that’s fine. We’re not judging. We’re just stating things accurately.”
“Just because I quit doesn’t mean we’re going to magically live happily ever after. He might not even like me like that.” You know that’s not true, especially after today. Still, you hate how much you sound like you’re back in high school.
“You sound like you’re back in high school.”
You groan, sliding down the couch until your head rests against the armrest. “I hate you.”
Ryujin pats your knee affectionately. “No you don’t. You love me. I’m wise.”
“You’re annoying.”
“I am large. I contain multitudes.”
You stare at the ceiling again, but this time, it feels a little lighter. Less like the world is closing in, more like it’s shifting forward.
Ryujin nudges you with her foot. “So. New jobs. What are we looking for?”
You hesitate, but only for a second, because you’ve thought about it so much. “Something with more features. Maybe like, one of those, you know, fancy arts magazines. Or the literature stuff.”
Her grin spreads slow and pleased. “Then we’ll find it. Easy.”
You know it’s not easy – it’s been weeks of sending applications into the void – but the conviction in her voice warms something inside you.
“And hey,” she adds, sitting back with her laptop. “If your tall hot lawyer happens to read your award-winning future articles and regret the day he ever let you walk away, that’s his problem.”
You throw another pillow at her face, and she catches it, triumphant.
You’re not expecting to see anyone from the courthouse on a Saturday morning, least of all Mingyu. The café is a good twenty minutes away from the district building, far enough away that you don’t get any familiar faces whenever you come here to work, except when you drag Ryujin with you.
Today, though, it’s just you, your laptop, a croissant, and yet another job application form. You’re halfway through uploading some of your writing samples when the bell over the café door jingles.
You don’t look up, not until you hear a familiar voice say, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Your fingers freeze over your keyboard.
You raise your eyes slowly. Mingyu stands in the doorway, holding an iced Americano and wearing glasses you’ve never seen before, round, thin-framed, unfairly flattering. His hair is slightly messy, like he didn’t bother styling it for once, and for once, he’s not wearing a suit.
“You’re following me,” you say, because it’s the first thing your mouth decides to go with.
He huffs. “Do you really think I have time for that?”
You close your laptop halfway. “Compelling argument, Mr Kim.”
He winces. “Please don’t call me that here. It’s Saturday.”
You can’t help laughing, and the sound makes him stop mid-step, just for a beat, barely noticeable. His expression softens as he moves toward your table.
“You working?” he asks, nodding at your laptop.
“Trying to,” you reply. “Not court stuff, so don’t worry.”
He hesitates, standing there with his coffee, shifting his weight. “Mind if I…?” He gestures vaguely to the empty seat across from you.
And this – this is where you should say no. Because it’s weird. Because you spend too much time in hallways and lobbies together already, because you almost kissed the last time you were alone together.
But he’s looking at you with hopeful eyebrows, and it’s Saturday, and you’re tired of replaying the same loops in your head.
“Sure,” you say lightly, but as he sits, you angle your laptop away from him without thinking. He notices.
“I’m not trying to peek,” he says, hands raised in surrender.
You smile. “I didn’t think you were.”
There’s a brief lull as he unwraps his straw, stirs his drink, takes a sip. Something about the normalcy of it, the absence of suits, no fluorescent lighting hanging above you – it feels absurdly intimate.
“So am I allowed to ask what you’re working on that’s not court stuff?” he asks. “Creative writing? Exposé about the corruption of local cafés?”
Your eyes widen, feeling caught.
He blinks at your silence, and you see him withdraw just the tiniest bit, a smile plastered on his face. “You don’t have to tell me, you know.”
“Job applications,” you say before you can soften it.
His eyebrows shoot up, surprise breaking across his features. “You’re leaving City News?”
You sigh, pushing a hand through your hair. “Trying to.”
He sits up abruptly. “Why?”
You lean back a little, startled by his sudden change in tone, almost harsh. “What?”
“Listen,” he says, urgently, quickly. “If this is about – last week.”
“What,” you say slowly, raising an eyebrow. If he won’t say it, you will. “When we almost kissed?”
His cheeks redden, but he pushes forward. “Yes, that. If this is about that, then don’t – I mean, it shouldn’t have happened.”
It feels like something cold is dousing your chest, trickling down into the pit of your stomach. “I know that.”
“Because we’re in the middle of an active case.” He insists on continuing, like he hasn't heard you. “It wouldn’t be right, you know that. And besides, it was just – it was bad timing. A mistake. We were, you know, exhausted, and we’ve always been friendly, but you don’t have to le–”
You cut him off. “A mistake?”
“I’m trying to say, you don’t have to quit just because of that. It wouldn’t be right. We can just forget it ever happened!”
You’re still hung up on that word. A mistake. “I’m sorry,” you say, letting out a derisive snort. “If I could, I would – isn’t that what you said? And now it’s suddenly just a mistake?”
Mingyu’s eyes widen, like he’s just realising he’s done something wrong. Like he’s just realising he’s misunderstood this whole entire thing.
“For your information, Mr Kim, I’ve been applying for new jobs for over a month,” you bite out, shoving your stuff into your bag. “It has nothing to do with you, or whatever mistake we made last week.”
“Wait – wait, ___,” he starts, but you don’t let him finish.
“Listen, if you want to forget about it, feel free. Consider it done. I’ll never bring it up again, and once I get my new job, you never have to see my face again.” You’re tired, embarrassed, angry, and all of it knots together inside your chest. “I’ll see you in court, Mr Kim.”
He doesn’t come after you.
You don’t expect the silence to be this absolute.
A part of you thinks that once you step back into the courtroom, once you’re surrounded by clerks and attorneys and the usual shuffle of papers, things will fall back into their familiar rhythm, that he’ll make some quiet comment as he passes your table, or nod in that way that’s half-greeting, half-habit.
Instead, Mingyu barely looks at you.
The first time you see him after the argument, he’s already leafing through a binder. His expression is the same one he wears for every session in court: composed, serious, utterly focused. But he doesn’t lift his gaze when you walk in – not when you take your seat, not even when you have to shift your chair because one of your colleagues squeezes past, the scrape of the metal legs loud against the tile.
You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You tell yourself it’s for the best.
You tell yourself that yesterday’s email, beginning with Congratulations! means you won’t have to do this for much longer. Except then, outside the courtroom, you ask a follow-up question to something your co-worker asks, and when he replies, your stomach twists because you can hear the difference.
He talks to you the way he talks to every other reporter in the room.
When court breaks, you linger by the aisle to avoid crossing paths. It works for exactly two minutes, until a clerk tries to hand you a set of documents and they slip, scattering across the floor. You kneel to gather them at the same moment someone else does.
Long fingers. A watch you’ve teased him about before.
You stop.
Mingyu hovers for half a second, clearly debating whether to continue. Then, very slowly, painfully slowly, he puts the pile he’s gathered down, retracts his hand and stands.
“I’ll let you take those,” he says, softly.
“Thank you,” you answer, eyes fixed on the papers, pulse loud in your ears.
You don’t look up. You can’t.
He steps away, shoes quiet against the polished floor.
The ink on the papers blur for a second, and you blink hard, blaming the courtroom’s dry air. You breathe again only when the door closes behind him.
Time passes, and the distance settles into a horrible routine.
He holds doors open for everyone, including you, without pausing or meeting your eye. When he makes an objection that gets sustained, you don’t let yourself smile. When he wins a point you predicted he would, you don’t feel the same sense of satisfaction. When he glances up mid-argument, you keep your gaze locked on your laptop.
On one of the later days, he falters, just for a moment – mid-sentence, his breath catches on a word. No one else notices, but you do, and you reflexively look up, his eyes are on you. There’s a beat, and then he continues speaking, steady and smooth as ever, but that single slip echoes inside you.
By the last day of trial, the courthouse feels different.
Not quieter – if anything, it’s louder, people sliding through hallways with more purpose than usual – but the air around you feels muted. As if you’re wrapped in thick cotton, watching everything from a half-step removed.
And maybe that’s because you spend the entire morning doing what you’ve perfected over the past week: not looking at Kim Mingyu. Not unless you absolutely, professionally must.
He doesn’t look at you either. Not unless he absolutely, professionally must.
When you enter the courtroom, he’s already sitting, files arranged in his impossibly neat stack, suit crisp, expression unreadably calm. You don’t let your gaze linger. You don’t give yourself that indulgence. Instead you slide into the press row, notebook out, pen ready.
The judge enters. Everyone rises. Everyone sits.
You take notes mechanically, fingers moving on their own. Working without really thinking, just trying your best to keep your focus away from him, as you have been over the past few weeks. You focus on the defendant instead, on the closing arguments, anything but him.
But Mingyu, of course, makes that impossible.
He stands to deliver the prosecution’s final statement, and even though you stare fixedly at the edge of your notebook, you hear every word, clear, steady, composed. He’s good. More than good. Same as he always is.
Your pen slips once, leaving a long ink drag across the margin.
When he returns to his seat, you don’t look up, you keep writing.
You try not to hear your pulse.
The afternoon stretches. The jury is out deliberating, leaving everyone suspended in that suffocating pre-verdict limbo. Some reporters mingle in the hallway. Others type up summaries. You sit on a bench outside the courtroom, laptop open, pretending to fine-tune your article when really you’re trying not to look down the hall.
Because he’s there, talking to someone on his team, looking completely collected – except for the way he keeps rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to ease out the tension.
You shouldn’t notice that, and you shouldn’t know that gesture as well as you do.
Ryujin messages you once – still going ok? want me to bring u a coffee?? – and you send back a short, all good, last day anyway. She doesn’t push.
You sigh, keep your head down, but eventually, your eyes pull upward on their own. Just for a second. Just to confirm that he’s still there, that he’s –
He’s looking at you.
Only for a moment, but it’s enough that you jolt, like you’ve been caught doing something wrong. You drop your gaze so fast your whole body jerks with the movement, your laptop screen wobbling.
The distance between you feels like a physical thing, thick, uncomfortable, heavy with everything unsaid. And after so much of it, you’re beginning to realize something awful:
You miss him.
You miss teasing him in the lobby. You miss his quick quips, you miss the way he’d accidentally catch your eye in court. The way he’d nod at you in greeting whenever he passed by, the faintest of smiles on his lips.
You press your fingers to your temple. You brought this on yourself, you know that. For some reason, it doesn’t make it easier.
It’s late afternoon when the jury returns.
Everyone shuffles back inside, and the verdict is delivered, a mixture of charges upheld, others dismissed. You type each one out dutifully to draft up later, but you don’t have much interest in your screen. You already know this is your last case to cover, possibly your last time in this courtroom.
When court adjourns, the room splits into a hum of conversation. Attorneys shake hands, reporters drift forward, and you close your laptop slowly. You’re not in a rush, but you don’t have good reason to linger either.
You pack your bag, slip past a cluster of colleagues, and make for the aisle. You almost make it out without a word to anyone, which is quite a feat, but then Mingyu steps, ever so carefully, into your path. His expression is careful,gentle around the edges, but careful. Walking on eggshells.
“Hey,” he says, quietly. He opens his mouth, closes it, wets his lips with his tongue, and finally settles on – “Good work.”
You swallow, throat tight. “You too.”
He nods once, like he expected that. Like he doesn’t expect anything else from you anymore. And then someone’s calling his name from across the room, another attorney, and your phone starts buzzing, and the moment breaks.
Mingyu steps back. Offers you a polite, nearly formal incline of his head, and then he’s gone.
Good work.
Two weeks pass before you set foot in the courthouse again.
You tell yourself it won’t feel strange. You’re here to pick up a few documents, one last errand for City News, nothing more. Nothing to do with prosecutors or defence attorneys or even Lee Junhyeon. Nothing to do with Mingyu, either.
The courthouse looks the same when you approach it, though: winter sun catching on its windows, the wide stone steps as familiar as always. Inside, the lobby buzzes with the usual noise, heels, echoing voices.
You focus on the desk you need to get to. You focus on not looking around. You almost pull it off, chatting to the clerk, Yeji, about your new job with a smile. Chaeryeong comes up behind you both. “___!” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s quitting,” Yeji answers for you, beaming. Even she knew how much you wanted to leave.”She’s going to work at one of those fancy arts and culture magazines.”
“No shit,” Chaeryeong says, admiringly. “You got a new job?”
And then you hear Mingyu, somewhere to your side.
Of course you hear Mingyu. His voice stands out even when you don’t want it to.
“Really?” he asks, soft in a way that hits you low in the stomach. “Where?”
Your throat tightens, half nerves, half guilt. You hadn’t planned to tell him. You hadn’t planned to avoid telling him, either. It was just so much easier this way.
Yeji opens her mouth, probably to answer, but she must see your face, and closes it, suddenly standing up and grabbing Chaeryeong’s hand. “We’re going to, uh. Go do our job. Somewhere else.” And they disappear down the hallway before you can even say anything.
You turn, and for one awful, suspended second, you and Mingyu stare at each other across the lobby. There’s surprise on his face first, then relief, then something unreadable that he very quickly pushes away. He steps toward you, and you force your spine straighter.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
Silence stretches, thin and taut.
You exhale through your nose. “I didn’t know you were here today.”
“I could say the same,” he replies. “I thought – ” He stops, shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
You nod. Another silence. It’s not the comfortable kind you used to share, this one is awkward and delicate.
“Congrats,” he says finally. “On the new job.”
“Thank you,” you reply. “I’m excited.”
“You should be.” He means it; you can tell. “It’s a good move for you.”
You swallow. “Listen, Mr –” you start, and then change your mind. “Mingyu. About the other day, in the café. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he says, quickly, eagerly. “I’m sorry. I messed up my words, you had every right to be upset.”
“I still shouldn’t have said it like I did,” you say. “You didn’t deserve that.”
His mouth curves. “Maybe a little.”
You huff out a breath that’s an excuse for a laugh, hands tightening around the strap of your bag. You want to say more, but the words won’t come. And even if they did, this isn’t the place. Not with clerks walking by and the elevator dinging open and shut, not with the ghosts of the last few weeks crowding the air between you.
“I should get going,” you say instead.
“Right. Of course.”
You turn first. You always turn first. You walk toward the exit, and you don’t look back, even though you want to, even though everything in you pulls tight at the thought of leaving things like this again.
The courthouse doors swing open. Morning light spills across the steps. You’re halfway down when you hear your name, called after you.
You stop.
Mingyu’s footsteps are quick, uneven, like he didn’t think before he moved. When you pivot, he’s there, eyes wide, tie, as always, crooked.
“Wait,” Mingyu says, slightly breathless. And he’s looking at you with that expression he never lets slip in court: unguarded, earnest, a little scared and a lot certain. “___,” he says softly, stepping closer. “I know the timing is awful,” he says, voice low but steady.
“The timing is always awful,” you agree, but you’re smiling.
His lips twitch slightly in response, but then he’s serious again. “I don’t want to leave things like this.”
Your pulse stutters.
“And I know we said we needed boundaries before,” he continues quickly, pushing on like he’s afraid you’re going to take flight. “We were right. But you’re not covering my cases anymore. And I’m not your source. And – ” He stops, exhales hard. “Can I take you to dinner?”
The world hangs still.
Not the courthouse behind you or the street below or the people passing, just the two of you and the question he finally asks.
You blink at him.
Then:
“Yeah,” you say, the word soft but sure. “You can.”
Relief unfurls across his features, warm and bright and so unmistakably Mingyu that your chest aches.
“Okay,” he says, almost laughing under his breath. “Okay. Great.”
“Great,” you echo, failing to control the smile that spread across your face.
He stands there a moment longer, like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind. You meet his eyes, really meet them, and something settles between you both, warmer and sweeter than ever.
a/n: i was struggling w/ ideas initially but i remembered a convo em and i had like Forever ago about how smart mingyu is and i was like. let me do something with that. and this is what came out. anyway. happy birthday to em. i love u.
You and Kim Mingyu have always walked that thin line between professional respect and something dangerously close to flirtation, but neither of you have ever quite slipped. So covering his newest case should be routine — but suddenly, keeping things professional isn't as easy as it used to be.
⇢ pairing. lawyer!mingyu x journalist!reader
⇢ genre. fluff, angst, idiots/acquaintances? to lovers.
⇢ word count. approx. 7.5k
⇢ warnings. f!reader. miscommunication (sorry). lots of pining + tension. a few moral dilemmas but nothing crazy. almost definitely inaccurate depictions of courtroom and law stuff. ft. a few of the itzy girls bc why not!!!
⇢ a/n. happiest of birthdays to one of my favourite people on this planet!!!!! my beloved @gyuswhore this one is for you!! emberly i'm about to type an essay in ur dms anyway but just know that i love u enormous amounts. so so much. and i apologise for the banner its not my best work 😭
THE COURTHOUSE LOBBY is already humming with activity when you step through security: attorneys in suits speed-walking towards elevators, clerks juggling stacks of paper, the espresso machine in the café sputtering and filling the air with the smell of burnt coffee. You’re used to it all by now, and it doesn’t seem anywhere near as chaotic as you used to find it.
But the best part of your mornings tend to be six foot two and annoyingly well-dressed.
You spot Mingyu the moment you step through security: tall, sleek, and freshly pressed, balancing a stack of colour-coded folders against his hip while stirring what you know is an obscene amount of sugar into his coffee.
He doesn’t notice you at first. He’s too busy reading something on a sticky note, lips shaping the words. You hesitate a beat, just long enough to be annoyed at yourself for it, then head his way.
“Mr Kim,” you call out, voice just loud enough to cut through the lobby chatter.
His head snaps up. And there it is, that small flicker of recognition followed by the not-quite-smile he always tries to tamp down.
“Ah. My favourite journalist.” He shifts the folders to greet you properly, pretending he’s not already straightening his tie. He always straightens his tie around you. “Here to make my day harder?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” You hold up your recorder, tilt your head to the side hopefully. “Pre-hearing comment? Thirty seconds. Forty if you’re feeling generous.”
He huffs a soft laugh and gestures toward the hallway with the tip of his coffee cup. “You ambush me the second you walk in the building and expect me to string something together? It’s barely nine.”
“And yet,” you counter, walking beside him, “you look like you got eight hours of sleep and ironed that suit with time to spare.”
“It’s an illusion. I slept three hours and ate some almonds on my way here.”
“Almonds,” you repeat, snorting. You rummage in your bag, pull out a cereal bar, and hold it up between two fingers. His eyes actually light up, but just before his hand can brush yours, you whisk it out of reach and instead tap your recorder against your palm.
He stops walking to give you a displeased look, nose scrunching. “Really?”
You shrug, entirely unbothered. “Needs must.”
“One might call that bribery, Miss ___.”
“One would then have to remember – it’s a cereal bar, Mr Kim.” You raise your eyebrows. “I’m starting to think you don’t want to give me a quote.”
You’ve interviewed dozens of prosecutors over the years, in this very building. But Mingyu is the only one who makes courthouse mornings feel a little lighter. Maybe it’s because he listens, doesn’t shrug you off immediately like some others do. Maybe it’s because he looks at you like the two of you are in on some private joke – and sometimes you are. Maybe it’s because every time you talk, there’s a hum under your ribs you keep telling yourself to ignore.
He pauses at the bulletin board, scanning the docket. “Just a fraud case today. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re covering it.”
“I can’t resist a good public official messing with paperwork,” you say. “It speaks to me.”
“Fraud speaks to you?”
“Don’t judge my hobbies. Besides, you know better than anyone it’s not just a fraud case when it’s Lee Junhyeon behind it all. Do I get a quote or not?”
It’s easy, this back-and-forth. Easier than it should be. Easier than it ever is with anyone else you interview. There’s comfort baked into the rhythm you two have built – teasing layered over familiarity layered over something neither of you names aloud.
He takes one last sip of his coffee, narrows his eyes at the cereal bar, straightens ever so slightly – and nods at your recorder. “Alright. Go ahead. But if I pass out mid-sentence, you’re liable.”
“I’ll include that as a quote.”
“Please don’t.”
You hit record, and he slips effortlessly into prosecutor mode, smooth, concise, measured. You watch the shift happen in real time: the warmth fades, replaced by sharp professionalism, like flipping a switch only he seems able to control.
He finishes. You stop the recorder.
“There,” he says with a tiny tilt of his head, shoulders slumping just the slightest bit. “Was that quick enough?”
“Almost disappointing how cooperative you are.”
“Just trying to stay on your good side.”
You open your mouth to reply, but someone calls his name from down the hall.
He sighs, and you give him a knowing look. “Duty calls.”
“I’ll see you inside?” he asks.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” You press the cereal bar on top of his folders, and he glances down at it in surprise. “Don’t inhale it in front of the judge.”
“No promises,” he grins. And he takes a few steps backward toward the courtroom doors, eyes lingering on you for a beat longer than necessary. Then he turns away, and whatever was pressing down on your chest loosens.
The hallway outsidethe courtroom is louder after the lunch recess, the kind of restless noise that means every reporter is suddenly convinced they’re about to miss something. You weave through the clusters of them, not exactly late, but later than you meant to be, with your notebook tucked under your arm and your phone buzzing with your roommate’s texts about dinner plans.
The Lee Junhyeon case had drawn more media attention than expected for something technically labeled “administrative fraud.” But feeding money into a shell charity he chaired leads to a lot of public interest. Which is why you’re here.
Mingyu and his team arrive from the opposite end of the hall: three attorneys behind him, another two in step beside him, all mid-discussion about something pedantic. He’s flipping through a binder while listening to someone else’s briefing, brows drawn, tie slightly loosened from the morning’s work. He looks focused, a little wrinkle on his forehead, lower lip caught between his teeth. Not that you’re looking at his lips, you remind yourself firmly, clicking your pen.
Which, of course, is exactly when his eyes lift and land right on you.
It’s not a smile – that would be too much – just a brief softening of his features, a small acknowledgment, something only noticeable because you’re tuned to it. He returns his attention to his colleague almost immediately.
Still. Somehow, one look is enough to warm the little dent between your ribs and your stomach,
A handful of other reporters notice him too, and like sharks scenting blood, they move as a group, mics angled, questions already thrust forward. Someone elbows you lightly, not unkindly, but with just enough push that you step to the side to avoid being boxed in.
Mingyu’s team slows. His second chair, Ms. Han, glances over the crowd with unimpressed precision. You join the cluster, not leading it, not hiding either. When one reporter pushes ahead to ask a badly formed question, Mingyu stops walking just long enough to give them a neutral, measured response.
His gaze slips to you again.
You pretend you don’t notice. Or at least you pretend you’re good at pretending.
You ask your question, and he answers just as cleanly, just as concisely. But still, there’s something in how he talks to you. The subtlest, tiniest, warmest thing edging his words, and then he’s gone.
You claim a seat at the press bench again, open your laptop, and start shaping the morning’s notes into something publishable. Your article won’t run until the day after tomorrow, but drafts don’t write themselves – and you’ve learned the hard way that waiting until evening means Ryujin starts threatening to hide your laptop under the couch.
Most of the testimony is dry. A lot of financial analysts, paper trails, the mind-numbing march of spreadsheets projected onto the courtroom screen. The judge interrupts twice; Lee’s defense interrupts five times; the gallery sighs in unison at least twelve. None of this interests you much, but a job is a job, and you know that despite hating it, you’re good at it.
But when Mingyu rises for cross-examination, the room straightens. You do too.
His voice fills the space with that particular calm authority he has, the kind that makes people assume he’s older than he is. You know this version of him well, have reported on his cases more than enough times to be well-acquainted with the gestures he makes, the inflection of his questions. You respect this version of him – you write about it.
But when his eyes pass over the gallery and catch yours, completely by accident, fleeting – you feel something you can’t put in print.
Your stomach drops. You tear your eyes away, look back down at your laptop and type with unnecessary intensity.
You’re still typing later that same evening. Your living room is a battlefield of snack wrappers, loose leaf documents, and Ryujin’s abandoned crochet project. She’s sprawled across the couch like a cat, scrolling through her phone while you type cross-legged on the floor, laptop balanced on your lap.
“I just think there are very few pros to your job, and many, many cons,” Ryujin says, squinting at you over her screen. “You hate it.”
“I don’t hate it. I tolerate it.”
“You tolerate it the way I tolerate dental cleanings,” she mutters. “Which is to say: not at all.”
You glance up then. “Speaking of, you have spinach in your teeth.”
She doesn’t fall for your bait, rolling her eyes. “But there is one pretty big advantage, I guess,” she says, suddenly sing-song, and you already know what she’s going to say. “Because it keeps you seeing a certain prosecutor, right?”
You determinedly fix your eyes on your screen. “I see lots of prosecutors.”
“But only one who emails back at 10p.m.”
“It was nine-forty-seven, I’ll have you know,” you mutter darkly. And then you sigh, roll your shoulders, and take a sip of cold coffee. Grimace, put the mug down. “It’s a big case. It matters.”
“You know what else matters? The hot prosecutor. He matters.”
“There is no ‘he,’” you say, typing harder than necessary. “It’s work. He’s work.”
“Mhm. But work is six foot two, and looks like that.”
(You’d made the mistake of giving Ryujin his name, just once, and from there she’d found his LinkedIn and his Instagram – which was private, of course, but the profile picture alone was enough.)
You don’t dignify her with a response.
She groans. “I’m just saying, if you two ever – ”
“We won’t,” you interrupt quickly. Too quickly. She grins at you wickedly, and you exhale again. “It wouldn’t be right, anyway. I’m covering his case – I always end up covering his cases. There’s gotta be some kind of – conflict of interest, some kind of rule I would be breaking.”
“But you would?” She presses, her phone long forgotten. “If it wasn’t for your job and your rules, you would?”
You close your laptop a little too fast. “I’m going to get more coffee.”
“That’s a yes!”
You lean back against the wall, groan and bury your face into your hands. You know just as well as Ryujin claims she does, that yes, you would. Absolutely, you would. And the rational part of you knows that Mingyu – well, you’re not blind. You see how he looks at you. But you also see how he rearranges his features every time you catch him looking.
You know you can’t want something like Mingyu.
“Yes,” you say finally, “Yes, Ryujin, I would, but I can’t, and he can’t, so what’s the point?”
“You’re letting the possible love of your life go because of a job you hate,” she says. “You tell me, what’s the point?”
You don’t have an answer.
The case settles into the city, but the buzz doesn’t quite die down, only fades a little. By the second week of hearings, you’re pretty sure you can recite all of Lee Junhyeon’s shell companies by name.
You arrive earlier than usual, the lobby quieter. You expect to beat him for once (it’s become a private scoreboard in your head, who gets here first) but when you step through security, Mingyu’s already there.
He’s leaning over the front desk, signing something with a clerk, tie slightly crooked like he got dressed in a hurry for the first time in his life. You catch yourself pausing again. That’s becoming a habit you don’t appreciate.
The clerk spots you approaching before he does.
“Oh,” she says, brightening. “He said you’d probably be here right about – ”
Mingyu straightens too fast, almost drops his pen, and clears his throat. “I said she’s usually here around now. That’s not – I didn’t mean – ”
The clerk giggles into her sleeve. You fight down a smile.
“Ignore him,” Yeji says to you in a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s jumpy today.”
“I can tell,” you say, eyes flicking to his crooked tie. “Good morning, Mr Kim.”
He notices. Of course he does. “I was running late,” he mutters, and then he glances at your empty hands. “No coffee?”
“What,” you say lightly, “did you want me to get you one?”
He stiffens so hard you nearly laugh. “No. No. I just thought – never mind.”
You should leave it at that. You should walk to the elevators, get your seat in the press row, start preparing the notes you need. But something makes you linger; maybe the way he’s still holding his pen mid-air like he forgot what to do with it, maybe the faint pink rising at his collar.
“Rough morning?” you ask, tone neutral enough that you hope it passes for professional curiosity.
“Not rough,” he says quickly. “Just early. And I had to prep some stuff, and fix…” His hand twitches uselessly toward his tie. “This.”
He looks so mildly defeated you almost feel bad.
“Come here,” you sigh, stepping closer before you can talk yourself out of it.
His eyes widen. “What are you—”
“Relax,” you say. He goes still – like he thinks if he moves you’ll vanish – and you straighten the knot with the same brisk efficiency you use on your own clothes before interviews. He blinks down at you, and it’s a mistake to look up at him because suddenly the distance between you feels a little too charged.
“There,” you blurt, a little too loud, stepping back quickly.
“Thank you,” he says, too soft for the lobby. Then he tries to recover, clearing his throat, straightening his spine. “I could have done it myself.”
“No,” you say, heading for the elevators before either of you gets stupid. “You really couldn’t have.”
He follows automatically, matching your pace without thinking. You wish he wouldn’t do that – not because you mind, but because your cheeks are still burning, and you can still feel the ghost of his warmth under your fingertips.
“You’re early,” he says, voice settling back into something steadier. “I thought you hated mornings.”
“I do,” you admit. “But I needed time to re-read the testimony from the other day.”
“Ah.” He exhales. “Good luck. It put half my team to sleep last night.”
“Tell them to eat more almonds.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up. “Was that a joke?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
It keeps happening.
You don’t plan to run into him every morning. You tell yourself that constantly. But you leave home at the same time, and catch the same bus,and the courthouse security line always moves faster than you expect, and Mingyu always, always seems to step into the lobby within thirty seconds of you.
Today, he approaches from behind while you’re staring at the display on a broken vending machine.
“Miss ___,” he greets, with a faint smile. “You look like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
You don’t jump; you refuse to give him that satisfaction. “Do I? I guess I’m too obvious.”
He snorts. “You hate it that much?”
“No,” you say, in a bland tone that obviously means yes. “I’m just waiting for my editor to text me back.”
“Do you need a second opinion?” he asks, already sipping his coffee.
“On my editor’s competence or my writing?”
“Both.”
You let out a laugh. It’s bright, rings through the lobby a little louder than you mean it to. And when you look over at him –
God.
He’s looking at you like he wasn’t prepared for the sound. Like it hit him somewhere unexpected. His expression softens, just slightly, before he pulls it back. You watch it happen, the warmth fading just a little, smile turning down the tiniest bit.
You look away first.
You always do.
An intern or something rushes over with a folder, interrupting the moment as quickly as it appeared. Mingyu takes it, thanks her, and turns back to you.
“I should go.”
“Of course.” You hesitate. “See you in court, Mr Kim.”
He lingers a second, like he wants to say something else.
He doesn’t. He leaves instead, shoulders straighter than before.
You exhale only after he’s out of sight.
It’s one week later, you’re on your way back from the bathroom, typing notes on your phone, when you nearly collide with him as he’s rounding the corner.
Mingyu steadies you before you stumble, one hand hovering near your elbow without actually touching.
You freeze. So does he.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Fine.” Too fast. Too clipped. You clear your throat, try again. “Fine. Thank you.”
He withdraws his hand immediately, stepping back as if he’s not sure how close he’s allowed to be. You can see the calculation behind his eyes; professional boundaries, reporters everywhere.
Except there aren’t reporters everywhere – not right now, at least. Not in this narrow hallway behind the stairwell, empty except for the two of you and the quiet hum of the fluorescent hallway lights.
He seems to realize that at the exact same moment you do.
You clear your throat again, tucking your phone into your bag. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking.”
“No,” he says. “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t, either.”
The air feels different – heavier, somehow. Neither of you moves.
He looks unusually… unsure. Mingyu rarely looks unsure. You’re used to seeing the confident version of him: the prosecutor, the man who can dismantle a witness with three clean questions. Occasionally, you see the slightly clumsy version of him, a little more light-hearted.
But right now, his voice is lower, softer, more hesitant than ever.
“Long day?” he asks.
“Same as any other.”
“Right,” he says, but it’s not really agreement, it’s more like he’s buying time, trying to settle himself.
You shift your weight. He looks down when you move, then up again, slowly, as if tracking you is involuntary.
God, why does the hallway suddenly feel so small?
“Your tie is crooked again,” you blurt.
You want to smack yourself.
He blinks, glancing down with widened eyes. “Is it?”
You should say it’s fine and move on. You should turn, keep walking, go anywhere else except closer to him.
But you don’t. A beat slips between you, long enough you could step away, long enough he could laugh, long enough for both of you to choose sense over impulse.
Neither of you chooses it.
“May I?” The question leaves your mouth before your brain approves it.
He inhales, sharply, quietly, and the only reason you hear it is because of the silence between you - and then he nods once.
You step closer. Close enough to smell the faint starch of his shirt, the ghost of coffee on his breath. Your fingers brush the fabric of his tie, and it feels different to last week. Feels even more tense, with nobody around, no clerk laughing at his clumsiness.
His breath hitches.
When you look up – the same mistake – he’s already looking down at you. There’s something in his expression he never lets slip in court, very rarely lets slip outside. It’s quiet and warm and unguarded, pooling in his brown eyes.
Your hand is still on his tie. You straighten it slowly, but don’t quite pull back. His hand raises, hovering near your hip. Like he wants to close the distance but knows he shouldn’t.
“Miss ___,” he says, but it comes out like your first name. Like he forgets halfway through that he isn’t supposed to say it so gently.
“Mhm?” Your voice barely works.
“We’re…” His jaw tightens. He swallows, and you follow the movement down his throat unconsciously. “We shouldn’t be this close.”
“I know.”
Neither of you moves.
He searches your face like he’s trying to memorise it – that, or he’s trying to convince himself to step back. His eyes drop to your mouth for one split second.
It’s enough.
Heat rushes to your face. Your heart kicks so hard you swear he can hear it, feel it in the air between you, and then you’re leaning in, and he is, too. Noses are inches apart, breaths mingling.
And then – he stops. You stop. Or you stop, and then he stops, you’re not quite sure. It feels simultaneous; if someone had done it first, it’d only be by a millisecond.
Either way, the moment cracks like thin ice.
You pull back first, hand dropping from his tie as if burned. Mingyu steps away so quickly he nearly hits the wall. His breath leaves him in one unsteady exhale he tries and fails to disguise.
“I shouldn’t – ” he starts, voice rough. He clears his throat, tries again. “We can’t.”
“I know,” you whisper.
He runs a hand through his hair, exhaling hard, composure unraveling in a way you’ve never seen. It makes something twist painfully, sharply, inside your chest.
“If I could…” he begins.
You look up.
“If I could,” he says again, lower now, some kind of urgency pushing his words into the space between you. “I would.”
You can’t breathe.
“But I can’t,” he adds quickly, too quickly, like if he doesn’t say it immediately he’ll lose the ability to say it at all. “Not while you’re covering this case. Not while I’m –” He gestures vaguely to the courtroom, to the entire world you both have to answer to, at least for now. “You know why.”
You nod. Because you do know, you’ve always known. “I get it,” you say softly.
He steps back another inch, like distance is the only thing keeping him sane. “I should go,” he says, then, and you don’t stop him. Just watch him leave, noting through your daze how tight his shoulders are, how rigid his steps are.
When he disappears around the corner, you finally let yourself exhale.
By the time you make it home that night, your legs feel like someone else’s. The walk from the bus stop is only seven minutes, but it stretches out, heavy, your thoughts just racing further with every step.
Ryujin is sprawled on the couch when you walk in, laptop open, hair perched in a precarious bun at the top of her head. She peeks over the screen the moment she hears the door.
“You’re home late,” she says. “What’d the justice system do to you this time? Suck the remaining life out of you?”
You drop your bag by the coat rack. “Basically.”
Ryujin narrows her eyes in exaggerated suspicion. “You didn’t answer my text earlier.”
“I was busy.”
“With court stuff,” she says, as if warming up to a theory she’s been itching to present all day. “Or with your favourite lawyer?”
She says it with a deep, smug, knowing tone.
You glare at her. “He’s not my favourite lawyer.”
“Uh-huh.” She closes her laptop halfway, leaning her chin on her palm. “You’re lying poorly again. Want to try that sentence one more time with dignity?”
You toe off your shoes and join her on the couch, sinking into the cushion like it’s been years since you last sat down. “There’s nothing going on.”
Ryujin doesn’t blink. “Yet.”
You grab a throw pillow and smack her with it. “Not yet, not ever,” you correct. “At least, not until I get rid of this stupid job.”
“And is that in the cards any time soon?”
You stare at the ceiling for a moment, listening to the faint hum of the fridge. You knew this conversation would happen eventually. You just thought you’d have more time to figure out what you want.
“I’ve been applying for new jobs since before this case started,” you admit.
Ryujin sits up straighter. “Wait. Really?”
“Yes.” You chew on the inside of your cheek. “I like writing. You know I do. I just don’t think this lane is where I want to stay. The court stuff, it’s interesting, but it’s not what I got into journalism for. You know that.”
Ryujin blinks, processing. “So this isn’t about him.”
“No,” you say. “It’s not. I’d do this whether I’d met him or not.”
She watches you carefully, long enough that you start to feel exposed under it, then she nods. “Okay. Good. Because quitting a whole career path for a guy would be stupid.”
“You’re very supportive,” you deadpan. “Weren’t you the one going on about oh, the love of your life or a job you hate?”
“I wasn’t serious, you know that. I’m realistic,” she counters, kicking your shin gently. “But if you’ve been unhappy, then yeah! Leave. Apply to every job. Apply to the ones you don’t even want. Chaos is free.”
You laugh, weak but genuine.
“And…” Ryujin raises her brows, voice shifting softer. “It does make it easier for you to go ahead, and, you know. Ask out the man of your dreams.”
You cover your face with your hands. “It’s – he is not – ”
“He absolutely is,” she says. “But that’s fine. We’re not judging. We’re just stating things accurately.”
“Just because I quit doesn’t mean we’re going to magically live happily ever after. He might not even like me like that.” You know that’s not true, especially after today. Still, you hate how much you sound like you’re back in high school.
“You sound like you’re back in high school.”
You groan, sliding down the couch until your head rests against the armrest. “I hate you.”
Ryujin pats your knee affectionately. “No you don’t. You love me. I’m wise.”
“You’re annoying.”
“I am large. I contain multitudes.”
You stare at the ceiling again, but this time, it feels a little lighter. Less like the world is closing in, more like it’s shifting forward.
Ryujin nudges you with her foot. “So. New jobs. What are we looking for?”
You hesitate, but only for a second, because you’ve thought about it so much. “Something with more features. Maybe like, one of those, you know, fancy arts magazines. Or the literature stuff.”
Her grin spreads slow and pleased. “Then we’ll find it. Easy.”
You know it’s not easy – it’s been weeks of sending applications into the void – but the conviction in her voice warms something inside you.
“And hey,” she adds, sitting back with her laptop. “If your tall hot lawyer happens to read your award-winning future articles and regret the day he ever let you walk away, that’s his problem.”
You throw another pillow at her face, and she catches it, triumphant.
You’re not expecting to see anyone from the courthouse on a Saturday morning, least of all Mingyu. The café is a good twenty minutes away from the district building, far enough away that you don’t get any familiar faces whenever you come here to work, except when you drag Ryujin with you.
Today, though, it’s just you, your laptop, a croissant, and yet another job application form. You’re halfway through uploading some of your writing samples when the bell over the café door jingles.
You don’t look up, not until you hear a familiar voice say, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Your fingers freeze over your keyboard.
You raise your eyes slowly. Mingyu stands in the doorway, holding an iced Americano and wearing glasses you’ve never seen before, round, thin-framed, unfairly flattering. His hair is slightly messy, like he didn’t bother styling it for once, and for once, he’s not wearing a suit.
“You’re following me,” you say, because it’s the first thing your mouth decides to go with.
He huffs. “Do you really think I have time for that?”
You close your laptop halfway. “Compelling argument, Mr Kim.”
He winces. “Please don’t call me that here. It’s Saturday.”
You can’t help laughing, and the sound makes him stop mid-step, just for a beat, barely noticeable. His expression softens as he moves toward your table.
“You working?” he asks, nodding at your laptop.
“Trying to,” you reply. “Not court stuff, so don’t worry.”
He hesitates, standing there with his coffee, shifting his weight. “Mind if I…?” He gestures vaguely to the empty seat across from you.
And this – this is where you should say no. Because it’s weird. Because you spend too much time in hallways and lobbies together already, because you almost kissed the last time you were alone together.
But he’s looking at you with hopeful eyebrows, and it’s Saturday, and you’re tired of replaying the same loops in your head.
“Sure,” you say lightly, but as he sits, you angle your laptop away from him without thinking. He notices.
“I’m not trying to peek,” he says, hands raised in surrender.
You smile. “I didn’t think you were.”
There’s a brief lull as he unwraps his straw, stirs his drink, takes a sip. Something about the normalcy of it, the absence of suits, no fluorescent lighting hanging above you – it feels absurdly intimate.
“So am I allowed to ask what you’re working on that’s not court stuff?” he asks. “Creative writing? Exposé about the corruption of local cafés?”
Your eyes widen, feeling caught.
He blinks at your silence, and you see him withdraw just the tiniest bit, a smile plastered on his face. “You don’t have to tell me, you know.”
“Job applications,” you say before you can soften it.
His eyebrows shoot up, surprise breaking across his features. “You’re leaving City News?”
You sigh, pushing a hand through your hair. “Trying to.”
He sits up abruptly. “Why?”
You lean back a little, startled by his sudden change in tone, almost harsh. “What?”
“Listen,” he says, urgently, quickly. “If this is about – last week.”
“What,” you say slowly, raising an eyebrow. If he won’t say it, you will. “When we almost kissed?”
His cheeks redden, but he pushes forward. “Yes, that. If this is about that, then don’t – I mean, it shouldn’t have happened.”
It feels like something cold is dousing your chest, trickling down into the pit of your stomach. “I know that.”
“Because we’re in the middle of an active case.” He insists on continuing, like he hasn't heard you. “It wouldn’t be right, you know that. And besides, it was just – it was bad timing. A mistake. We were, you know, exhausted, and we’ve always been friendly, but you don’t have to le–”
You cut him off. “A mistake?”
“I’m trying to say, you don’t have to quit just because of that. It wouldn’t be right. We can just forget it ever happened!”
You’re still hung up on that word. A mistake. “I’m sorry,” you say, letting out a derisive snort. “If I could, I would – isn’t that what you said? And now it’s suddenly just a mistake?”
Mingyu’s eyes widen, like he’s just realising he’s done something wrong. Like he’s just realising he’s misunderstood this whole entire thing.
“For your information, Mr Kim, I’ve been applying for new jobs for over a month,” you bite out, shoving your stuff into your bag. “It has nothing to do with you, or whatever mistake we made last week.”
“Wait – wait, ___,” he starts, but you don’t let him finish.
“Listen, if you want to forget about it, feel free. Consider it done. I’ll never bring it up again, and once I get my new job, you never have to see my face again.” You’re tired, embarrassed, angry, and all of it knots together inside your chest. “I’ll see you in court, Mr Kim.”
He doesn’t come after you.
You don’t expect the silence to be this absolute.
A part of you thinks that once you step back into the courtroom, once you’re surrounded by clerks and attorneys and the usual shuffle of papers, things will fall back into their familiar rhythm, that he’ll make some quiet comment as he passes your table, or nod in that way that’s half-greeting, half-habit.
Instead, Mingyu barely looks at you.
The first time you see him after the argument, he’s already leafing through a binder. His expression is the same one he wears for every session in court: composed, serious, utterly focused. But he doesn’t lift his gaze when you walk in – not when you take your seat, not even when you have to shift your chair because one of your colleagues squeezes past, the scrape of the metal legs loud against the tile.
You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You tell yourself it’s for the best.
You tell yourself that yesterday’s email, beginning with Congratulations! means you won’t have to do this for much longer. Except then, outside the courtroom, you ask a follow-up question to something your co-worker asks, and when he replies, your stomach twists because you can hear the difference.
He talks to you the way he talks to every other reporter in the room.
When court breaks, you linger by the aisle to avoid crossing paths. It works for exactly two minutes, until a clerk tries to hand you a set of documents and they slip, scattering across the floor. You kneel to gather them at the same moment someone else does.
Long fingers. A watch you’ve teased him about before.
You stop.
Mingyu hovers for half a second, clearly debating whether to continue. Then, very slowly, painfully slowly, he puts the pile he’s gathered down, retracts his hand and stands.
“I’ll let you take those,” he says, softly.
“Thank you,” you answer, eyes fixed on the papers, pulse loud in your ears.
You don’t look up. You can’t.
He steps away, shoes quiet against the polished floor.
The ink on the papers blur for a second, and you blink hard, blaming the courtroom’s dry air. You breathe again only when the door closes behind him.
Time passes, and the distance settles into a horrible routine.
He holds doors open for everyone, including you, without pausing or meeting your eye. When he makes an objection that gets sustained, you don’t let yourself smile. When he wins a point you predicted he would, you don’t feel the same sense of satisfaction. When he glances up mid-argument, you keep your gaze locked on your laptop.
On one of the later days, he falters, just for a moment – mid-sentence, his breath catches on a word. No one else notices, but you do, and you reflexively look up, his eyes are on you. There’s a beat, and then he continues speaking, steady and smooth as ever, but that single slip echoes inside you.
By the last day of trial, the courthouse feels different.
Not quieter – if anything, it’s louder, people sliding through hallways with more purpose than usual – but the air around you feels muted. As if you’re wrapped in thick cotton, watching everything from a half-step removed.
And maybe that’s because you spend the entire morning doing what you’ve perfected over the past week: not looking at Kim Mingyu. Not unless you absolutely, professionally must.
He doesn’t look at you either. Not unless he absolutely, professionally must.
When you enter the courtroom, he’s already sitting, files arranged in his impossibly neat stack, suit crisp, expression unreadably calm. You don’t let your gaze linger. You don’t give yourself that indulgence. Instead you slide into the press row, notebook out, pen ready.
The judge enters. Everyone rises. Everyone sits.
You take notes mechanically, fingers moving on their own. Working without really thinking, just trying your best to keep your focus away from him, as you have been over the past few weeks. You focus on the defendant instead, on the closing arguments, anything but him.
But Mingyu, of course, makes that impossible.
He stands to deliver the prosecution’s final statement, and even though you stare fixedly at the edge of your notebook, you hear every word, clear, steady, composed. He’s good. More than good. Same as he always is.
Your pen slips once, leaving a long ink drag across the margin.
When he returns to his seat, you don’t look up, you keep writing.
You try not to hear your pulse.
The afternoon stretches. The jury is out deliberating, leaving everyone suspended in that suffocating pre-verdict limbo. Some reporters mingle in the hallway. Others type up summaries. You sit on a bench outside the courtroom, laptop open, pretending to fine-tune your article when really you’re trying not to look down the hall.
Because he’s there, talking to someone on his team, looking completely collected – except for the way he keeps rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to ease out the tension.
You shouldn’t notice that, and you shouldn’t know that gesture as well as you do.
Ryujin messages you once – still going ok? want me to bring u a coffee?? – and you send back a short, all good, last day anyway. She doesn’t push.
You sigh, keep your head down, but eventually, your eyes pull upward on their own. Just for a second. Just to confirm that he’s still there, that he’s –
He’s looking at you.
Only for a moment, but it’s enough that you jolt, like you’ve been caught doing something wrong. You drop your gaze so fast your whole body jerks with the movement, your laptop screen wobbling.
The distance between you feels like a physical thing, thick, uncomfortable, heavy with everything unsaid. And after so much of it, you’re beginning to realize something awful:
You miss him.
You miss teasing him in the lobby. You miss his quick quips, you miss the way he’d accidentally catch your eye in court. The way he’d nod at you in greeting whenever he passed by, the faintest of smiles on his lips.
You press your fingers to your temple. You brought this on yourself, you know that. For some reason, it doesn’t make it easier.
It’s late afternoon when the jury returns.
Everyone shuffles back inside, and the verdict is delivered, a mixture of charges upheld, others dismissed. You type each one out dutifully to draft up later, but you don’t have much interest in your screen. You already know this is your last case to cover, possibly your last time in this courtroom.
When court adjourns, the room splits into a hum of conversation. Attorneys shake hands, reporters drift forward, and you close your laptop slowly. You’re not in a rush, but you don’t have good reason to linger either.
You pack your bag, slip past a cluster of colleagues, and make for the aisle. You almost make it out without a word to anyone, which is quite a feat, but then Mingyu steps, ever so carefully, into your path. His expression is careful,gentle around the edges, but careful. Walking on eggshells.
“Hey,” he says, quietly. He opens his mouth, closes it, wets his lips with his tongue, and finally settles on – “Good work.”
You swallow, throat tight. “You too.”
He nods once, like he expected that. Like he doesn’t expect anything else from you anymore. And then someone’s calling his name from across the room, another attorney, and your phone starts buzzing, and the moment breaks.
Mingyu steps back. Offers you a polite, nearly formal incline of his head, and then he’s gone.
Good work.
Two weeks pass before you set foot in the courthouse again.
You tell yourself it won’t feel strange. You’re here to pick up a few documents, one last errand for City News, nothing more. Nothing to do with prosecutors or defence attorneys or even Lee Junhyeon. Nothing to do with Mingyu, either.
The courthouse looks the same when you approach it, though: winter sun catching on its windows, the wide stone steps as familiar as always. Inside, the lobby buzzes with the usual noise, heels, echoing voices.
You focus on the desk you need to get to. You focus on not looking around. You almost pull it off, chatting to the clerk, Yeji, about your new job with a smile. Chaeryeong comes up behind you both. “___!” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“She’s quitting,” Yeji answers for you, beaming. Even she knew how much you wanted to leave.”She’s going to work at one of those fancy arts and culture magazines.”
“No shit,” Chaeryeong says, admiringly. “You got a new job?”
And then you hear Mingyu, somewhere to your side.
Of course you hear Mingyu. His voice stands out even when you don’t want it to.
“Really?” he asks, soft in a way that hits you low in the stomach. “Where?”
Your throat tightens, half nerves, half guilt. You hadn’t planned to tell him. You hadn’t planned to avoid telling him, either. It was just so much easier this way.
Yeji opens her mouth, probably to answer, but she must see your face, and closes it, suddenly standing up and grabbing Chaeryeong’s hand. “We’re going to, uh. Go do our job. Somewhere else.” And they disappear down the hallway before you can even say anything.
You turn, and for one awful, suspended second, you and Mingyu stare at each other across the lobby. There’s surprise on his face first, then relief, then something unreadable that he very quickly pushes away. He steps toward you, and you force your spine straighter.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
Silence stretches, thin and taut.
You exhale through your nose. “I didn’t know you were here today.”
“I could say the same,” he replies. “I thought – ” He stops, shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
You nod. Another silence. It’s not the comfortable kind you used to share, this one is awkward and delicate.
“Congrats,” he says finally. “On the new job.”
“Thank you,” you reply. “I’m excited.”
“You should be.” He means it; you can tell. “It’s a good move for you.”
You swallow. “Listen, Mr –” you start, and then change your mind. “Mingyu. About the other day, in the café. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he says, quickly, eagerly. “I’m sorry. I messed up my words, you had every right to be upset.”
“I still shouldn’t have said it like I did,” you say. “You didn’t deserve that.”
His mouth curves. “Maybe a little.”
You huff out a breath that’s an excuse for a laugh, hands tightening around the strap of your bag. You want to say more, but the words won’t come. And even if they did, this isn’t the place. Not with clerks walking by and the elevator dinging open and shut, not with the ghosts of the last few weeks crowding the air between you.
“I should get going,” you say instead.
“Right. Of course.”
You turn first. You always turn first. You walk toward the exit, and you don’t look back, even though you want to, even though everything in you pulls tight at the thought of leaving things like this again.
The courthouse doors swing open. Morning light spills across the steps. You’re halfway down when you hear your name, called after you.
You stop.
Mingyu’s footsteps are quick, uneven, like he didn’t think before he moved. When you pivot, he’s there, eyes wide, tie, as always, crooked.
“Wait,” Mingyu says, slightly breathless. And he’s looking at you with that expression he never lets slip in court: unguarded, earnest, a little scared and a lot certain. “___,” he says softly, stepping closer. “I know the timing is awful,” he says, voice low but steady.
“The timing is always awful,” you agree, but you’re smiling.
His lips twitch slightly in response, but then he’s serious again. “I don’t want to leave things like this.”
Your pulse stutters.
“And I know we said we needed boundaries before,” he continues quickly, pushing on like he’s afraid you’re going to take flight. “We were right. But you’re not covering my cases anymore. And I’m not your source. And – ” He stops, exhales hard. “Can I take you to dinner?”
The world hangs still.
Not the courthouse behind you or the street below or the people passing, just the two of you and the question he finally asks.
You blink at him.
Then:
“Yeah,” you say, the word soft but sure. “You can.”
Relief unfurls across his features, warm and bright and so unmistakably Mingyu that your chest aches.
“Okay,” he says, almost laughing under his breath. “Okay. Great.”
“Great,” you echo, failing to control the smile that spread across your face.
He stands there a moment longer, like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind. You meet his eyes, really meet them, and something settles between you both, warmer and sweeter than ever.
a/n: i was struggling w/ ideas initially but i remembered a convo em and i had like Forever ago about how smart mingyu is and i was like. let me do something with that. and this is what came out. anyway. happy birthday to em. i love u.
Two months after your breakup, you’re tucking away the last traces of Jihoon, the boy you loved for the sweetest two years of your life.
⇢ pairing. lee jihoon x reader
⇢ genre. angst, fluff. exes!au, but also: strangers2lovers, college!au, literature/history student reader, music production/literature student jihoon, (eventual) producer!jihoon and grad student reader
⇢ word count. approx. 6k
⇢ warnings. alcohol consumption, lots of flashbacks. each section has a link to a poem or song — you don't need to read or listen to understand (but i do especially recommend the poems). the lines i've quoted are the most relevant anyway. author's note at the end!
NOW | The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
You find his book buried in a box at the back of your closet.
It’s dog-eared and dusty, the cover curling at the edges. Mary Oliver’s Dream Work — the same copy Jihoon lent you during your second semester of senior year, back when literature classes were your whole world and Jihoon was nothing more than the boy who always sat one chair too far away.
You almost miss it. You’re sorting through your wardrobe, half-listening to the hum of the fan in your near-empty apartment, folding sweaters you don’t wear anymore, in between half-hearted glances at the clock. You’ve been doing everything slowly lately. Like if you move too quickly, the rest of it — all the unfinished things — will come tumbling down.
When your hand brushes the worn spine, your breath catches. It feels like finding a matchbook in a drawer you thought you emptied: useless, but still faintly dangerous.
You pull it free and brush your thumb across the cover. A sticky note clings to the inside, the ink slightly smudged but still legible: You already know Wild Geese, obviously. Try Dogfish and The Journey too. — Jihoon.
You read it twice before closing the book again, brush your finger over the ink one more time. The loop of his “y” and the vowels he squashes together. Let it rest against your thigh as the fan ticks through another slow rotation overhead.
And just like that, you’re back in that classroom.
THEN | I wanted the past to go away, I wanted / to leave it, like another country;
Poetry and its forms, Professor Kang.
Jihoon sits one seat over and a row down — always just far enough that you can’t speak without leaning forward, but close enough that you can catch the way he twirls his pen between his fingers, or chews the inside of his cheek when he’s thinking. Chin tucked into the collar of his hoodie. Shoulders hunched. Eyes always on the page.
He never raises his hand. Never speaks during discussion. But his notebooks are a battlefield — furious graphite slashing through the notes he disagrees with, cramped side-notes curling down the page like smoke. He annotates like he’s keeping score. Like he’s waiting for someone to say the wrong thing, just so he can write the right one in the margin.
The day you hear him speak for the first time, the class has just limped its way through a lukewarm discussion on Sappho. The professor skips half the fragments and bungles his way through the rest. Jihoon looks up once, right at the end — briefly, almost like it’s a mistake — and mutters, under his breath, “That was garbage.”
You laugh. Loudly — too loudly.
Jihoon’s head whips around. He blinks at you, startled. You blink back.
Then, slowly, unexpectedly, he smiles. Small, like a secret.
You wait until after class to catch up with him. “You didn’t like the lecture?”
He doesn’t stop walking, just casts you a look that’s more amused than annoyed. “Not Sappho’s fault. The professor skipped the best fragment.”
You tilt your head. “Oh? Which one’s that?”
He pauses. “The one about the moon and the stars. Fragment 34.”
You smile. “I know that one.”
He smiles back. “I figured you would.”
That’s the first conversation. You think about it for a week. Rerun it in your head. Rehearse what you might say next time, in case there is a next time.
There is.
The second time happens in the library. You find him — or rather, he finds you, entirely by accident. You’re hidden between the poetry shelves, seated cross-legged on the floor with a small stack of books beside you. Jihoon rounds the corner, underlining something in a clean paperback you don’t recognize.
He almost bumps straight into you — too absorbed in his book to notice you at first. He stops short, blinking down in surprise, and then his eyes widen just slightly when he realizes who it is. A beat passes. Then he smiles, slow, genuine, a little crooked at the edges like it catches him off guard.
Like he hadn’t expected to see you here, but now that he has, he’s glad.
There’s a flicker of something else in his expression, too — something quietly pleased, like the world’s done him a small favor. He doesn’t say anything at first, just shifts the paperback under one arm and slides down beside you without asking, like this had been planned. Like the two of you were always meant to end up here, shoulder to shoulder, tucked between Shakespeare’s sonnets and Shelley’s anthologies.
Your lips lift before you can stop them.
“You’re the only person I know who annotates library books like they belong to him,” you say, after a few moments.
He doesn’t look up. “This one’s mine.”
You glance over. The title catches your eye. Dream Work. “Mary Oliver?”
Jihoon hums in affirmation, still underlining, his pen moving carefully between the lines. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I wasn’t,” you say, and it’s mostly true. “I just didn’t have you pegged as someone who read nature poetry in his spare time.”
He snorts softly. “Everyone reads Wild Geese at some point. It’s basically a rite of passage.”
You smile, tilting your head as you watch the curve of his handwriting. “And the rest of her work?”
“She wrote like she meant it,” he says, in that steady, warm voice. “Like she was asking you to follow her into the woods and come back changed.”
Something quiet blooms in your chest at that. You don’t say anything, but Jihoon glances over and seems to catch it anyway, offering you the faintest of smiles. He taps his pen lightly against the open page.
“This one’s for you, then.”
You blink. “What?”
He rips a sticky note off your stack, scribbles something hasty, and presses it to the inside of the cover. Then he slides the book over to you, letting it rest over your textbook.
You look at him instead of the book. “You carry around annotated poetry collections just in case you run into someone in a library who might need them?”
He shrugs. “It’s barely annotated right now. Just a couple of them.” He flashes you an unexpected smile — “There’s nothing deep. I can’t give you a piece of my soul just yet.”
You trace the edge of the sticky note with your thumb. “You didn’t even know what I liked.”
“I had guesses,” Jihoon says, and for the first time, he meets your eyes head on — sharp, curious, a little too knowing. “You don’t read just for school.” He nods to the pile of books around you, and then reaches out to brush his hand over your battered copy of The Waves.
Instinctively, you reach for it, and then laugh at yourself. “That definitely has a piece of my soul in it,” you say, fingering the dog-eared pages. “Maybe even two pieces.”
Jihoon smiles — it’s the quietest thing — and returns to his underlining.
Later, you read The Journey tucked into a booth at the back of your favorite café. You read Dogfish twice, once before class and once just after, alone on the grass behind the library with the wind tugging at your sleeves. When you close the book, you keep your hand pressed to the cover like it might still be warm.
“Mostly, I want to be kind.”
In the margin, written in his slanted hand, a note to himself: Harder than it looks, isn’t it?
NOW | Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
You blink, and the memory dissolves like mist.
Dust swirls in the sunlight spilling through the window. You’re still cross-legged on the floor, knees stiff, a cardigan half-folded in your lap, Jihoon’s book resting heavy in your hands like it knows what it’s doing to you. Weighed down with more than just paper.
Again, you run your thumb along the spine.
You shouldn’t have forgotten about this. Should’ve noticed it sooner, should’ve rescued it from the back of your closet with its curled edges, its yellowed pages, and the sticky note still clinging quietly to the back cover. Should’ve placed it back into his hands, alongside all the other traces that remain in your space.
It’s been two months since you and Jihoon fell quietly, reluctantly, out of each other’s lives. In the corner of your guest bedroom, a cardboard box — its seams straining, its flaps not quite closed — holds the last of his things. Only it was Yuna who had filled it for you, a week after the break-up, carefully collecting whatever was undoubtedly his, tucking it away so all you needed to do was hand over an impersonal brown box.
Of course, there was no real way for her to know that this was his, not yours.
It’s been two months without a word. And yet, this book feels like a piece of him. A snapshot of what you were, once — younger. Less cautious. poised on the cusp of a love that lasted two years — a love that you thought would last much, much longer.
You set the book aside carefully, your hands glancing over his handwriting, just one more time — it’s unmistakable. Thick. Scrawled. Careless in a way he never was when he spoke: the only messy thing about him.
THEN | you are twisting toward me, / and the years that make up the majority of my life
“Your writing’s messier than I expected,” you say. You’re sitting across from Jihoon at the cramped study table, textbooks and notebooks sprawled between you, mountains of paper.
Jihoon glances up, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You can read it, right?”
Your joint paper is due in two weeks, something on the similarities and differences of form among the Romantic poets. You both want the grade, but neither of you expected it to feel like this: heads bent over the same page, notes merging into the other’s.
The first study session is tentative, a dance of questions and answers. Jihoon is quiet, but precise, speaks with conviction; you’re more hesitant, but bold enough to challenge him. Between discussions of meter and metaphor, you share coffee, your elbows brushing, neither of you pulling away.
Over the following days, the library becomes your refuge. You argue over Blake’s prophetic style and Wordsworth’s pastoral ideals. You read aloud to each other, voices low and hesitant but growing more confident. The paper becomes less about the grade and more about the quiet moments in between — the study dates that stretch into dinners, the conversations that drift past poetry and into life.
Slowly, you realize the distance between you is shrinking, thread by thread, word by word.
You learn that Jihoon is a music production major, but minors in literature. That he has a soft spot for poetry, but he thinks it’s very different to lyrics. That he has a younger sister, parents who work long hours, but try their best. That he has an unlikely group of friends, chaos personified, he calls them, but it’s with the fondest smile you’ve ever seen him wear.
You learn, too, that actually, he’s a little bit famous — he’s been selling music to people for a while. That he hasn’t really made any big household names (yet, you tell him), but he’s produced for names you recognise, all the same.
Jihoon learns that you’re a double major, literature and history. He smiles when you tell him that, says it suits you. He hears about your sister who lives abroad, your quiet weekend routines, and tells you that you have a habit of fiddling with your rings when you’re deep in thought.
Your last study session falls on a slow Friday evening in the library, sun dipping behind the windows, casting long golden shadows across the table. You’re tucked into your usual corner, cross-legged, a half-empty iced coffee sweating onto a pile of notes. Jihoon sits across from you, scribbling something in the margins of his printout.
You’ve already gone over the draft twice. There’s not much left to fix.
“So,” you say, stretching your arms over your head with a quiet sigh. “What happens when we actually submit this thing? Do we have to pretend we don’t know each other again?”
Jihoon glances up, amused. “You planning on ignoring me in lectures?”
“I was thinking of politely avoiding eye contact.”
He chuckles under his breath, taps his pen against the table. “Awkward nods across the room. Pretending we didn’t spend two weeks dissecting Keats together.”
You smile too, suddenly a little too aware of the quiet between you. “It’s been nice,” you say, a little more softly. “Getting to know you outside of class.”
Jihoon toys with the edge of his notebook, fingers lingering on the spiral binding. “Me neither. I thought we’d get it done, maybe exchange a few emails, call it a day, but this was… better. Even if you do think Blake is better than Wordsworth.”
“Not this again,” you groan, fixing him with a reproachful look. “We agreed to not bring up the Williams anymore, Jihoon. It’s too much for us.”
A smile pulls at his mouth. “You’re right. I don’t think I can go back to ignoring you after all that.”
Jihoon’s gaze flicks away, like he’s steadying himself. He fidgets with the corner of his notebook — something you’ve started to recognize as a tell. His voice is even, but the edges are uncertain.
“I was, uh — thinking,” he says, eyes fixed on the spiral binding. “Since we’re not meeting to study anymore... maybe we could still hang out. But like — not for school.”
You tilt your head. “Like friends?”
He huffs out a breath, and finally looks at you again. His ears are pink, you notice, his cheekbones dusted the same shade. “No. Yes. I mean — like a date. But I don’t m— ”
“Yes,” you say, too quickly.
Jihoon blinks.
You laugh, sheepish, a little warm in the face. “Sorry. You didn’t finish. But yes. I’d like that — dinner, I mean. As not friends.”
Jihoon grins, shy and crooked, and the look on his face is worth everything.
NOW | Like a wave that crashed and melted on the shore
The laundry hums steadily in the background — a warm, domestic sound that fills the apartment with a kind of low, living silence. You’d shovelled the rest of your clothes that lingered in your closet into the washing machine, and as you wait, you cradle your phone between your shoulder and cheek, folding socks into mismatched pairs on the bed.
“I just don’t think I’m cut out for another round of personal statements,” you say, chucking a T-shirt into the growing stack. “How am I supposed to sound smart, humble, and hard-working all at once?”
On the other end of the line, Yuna snorts, tossing her hair. “Just lie like the rest of us.”
“I’m serious. I rewrote one sentence five times today and then stared at a wall for half an hour.”
“That’s the spirit,” she says dryly. “You’re already living the PhD lifestyle.”
You smile faintly, brushing your knuckles against your temple. “Do you think it’s stupid to even apply? I don’t know if I have the energy to be broke and stressed for five more years. I haven't even finished my Master's.”
“I think you’re one of the smartest people I know.” She pauses. “Also one of the most dramatic.”
You laugh under your breath, swinging open the washing machine. “Okay, fair.”
There’s a rustle as you reach into the laundry basket again. Your fingers brush something thicker: knit, soft, too large. Everything in the machine has been buried in your closet for a while, but it still doesn’t feel like yours. You pause, tug it free.
You hold it up. Not yours.
It's a sweater. Charcoal gray, sleeves slightly stretched, collar frayed at one edge.
Your stomach dips. Definitely not yours.
“Hey,” Yuna says, leaning back into frame with narrowed eyes, holding her own laundered socks with one hand. “You still with me?”
“Yeah,” you murmur, folding the sweater slowly, more carefully than necessary. “I just found something I didn’t know I still had.” You keep it out of frame, but it’s pretty obvious that you’ve found something of Jihoon’s, even if she doesn’t know what specifically.
There’s a beat of quiet. Then, gently: “You okay?”
You swallow, press your palm against the wool, and muster up a smile. “Yeah. I will be.”
Once she’s hung up, you can’t help it — you catch a whiff of fresh pine from the folded fabric, and tears prick at your eyes.
THEN | I look / at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
The night air is cool against your flushed cheeks as you and Jihoon step out of Soonyoung’s house, the laughter and music still buzzing faintly behind you. The little get-together had been warm and loud, but now it’s just the two of you, waiting for the last bus home under the dim yellow streetlights.
You’re a little tipsy, words slurring in the best way — loose and light — while Jihoon stays perfectly steady, sober as always. He watches you with a soft smile, says something quiet about the way your eyes catch the streetlight, and steadies you when you wobble slightly after turning on your heel to beam at him.
“I’m cold,” you mumble, hugging your arms around yourself.
Without a word, Jihoon slips off his charcoal gray sweater and drapes it over your shoulders. It’s warm, familiar; smells just like him, soft and fresh. You look at him, eyes wide, and he just shrugs. “You’re the one who forgot to bring a jacket.”
He’s feigning aloofness — it doesn’t work as well when he’s already slipping his hand into yours.
You laugh softly and lean your head toward him, catching your breath in the quiet lull before the bus rumbles up. On the ride home, you curl into his side, the steady rhythm of the wheels lulling you closer to sleep. Your head finds his shoulder easily, and Jihoon just caresses your hand in soothing circles with his thumb. Keeps his gaze on the window, careful not to disturb you.
When the bus stops near your building, he gently nudges you awake. You blink, dazed, and he offers his arm, guiding you through down the street, into the elevator — nodding as you talk incessantly, adding in a dry comment every now and then. At your door, you fumble with your keys, too busy gesticulating with one hand as you speak; Jihoon gently takes them from you, nodding to show he’s still listening as he unlocks the door for you.
You step into your apartment, turn around to see him linger in your hallway. “You’ve never been inside before,” you remember.
“No,” he agrees, quietly. He tilts his head to the side, smiling when you look at him with a question in your eyes. “Not tonight, baby,” he answers, even softer. “You’re still a little drunk.”
You lean against the doorframe, half-pouting — he darts forward as though to steady you, but realises a beat later that you’re not falling anywhere.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” you say mournfully, but your lips twitch ever so slightly. (He called you baby. He’s done it a few times now, but it still makes your stomach swoop.)
You’ve been on five dates with Jihoon. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but you’ve never been so sure of something — of someone — in your life.
You smile, but don’t deny it, leaning forward to rest your forehead against his shoulder. His hand comes up to cup the back of your head, the other slipping around your waist to allow you to fall into a hug.
Then, almost too quietly, muffled by his T-shirt, boldened by the remnants of the alcohol, you speak. “Jihoon?”
“Hm?”
“Are you my boyfriend now?”
You hear his heartbeat quicken the slightest bit. Feel his chest rise with a quiet huff of a laugh. “If you’ll have me,” he says finally, lips brushing your temple. “It’s rotten work.”
You return the quote automatically. “Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
NOW | But you miss something that you can’t place and you can’t deny it
The kettle hums softly, not yet boiling, and the apartment is quiet in that particular way only your own home gets — soft, lived-in silence.
You move through the motions automatically. Mug, tea bag, half a spoon of sugar. The familiar rhythm steadies you. It’s been a long day — too much reading, too many tabs open on your laptop. Too many figurative skeletons in your literal closet.
You reach up to the cabinet. Most of your mugs are piled in the dishwasher, so you tiptoe to reach the ones at the back, hand already outstretched toward your usual last-resort mug, but then your fingers brush against something else. Something heavier.
You pause.
It’s the green mug. Deep forest green with a chipped handle and a slightly uneven rim. You’d found it years ago in a secondhand shop, part of a mismatched set you never really paid much attention to — but Jihoon had chosen it the first time he came over. And after that, without fail, it was always the one he reached for. It wasn’t his, technically, but it was the one you always steeped tea in when he messaged you he was coming over.
It wasn’t his, but it became his.
You take it down slowly, cradling it in both hands. Today feels like a joke, almost. Three things, back-to-back: three harsh reminders that while his name was never on the lease, Jihoon had made a home in your home — in your life.
You should give it to him. With all the other things you haven’t returned yet.
There’s still a faint tea ring at the bottom, like it had been rinsed in a hurry last time. You must not have noticed, two months ago, when everything ended and you shoved it at the back of the cupboard. Or maybe you did, and didn’t care.
You set it beside yours on the counter, side by side like they always used to be. And then you just stand there, waiting for the water to boil, trying not to cry at the sight of an empty green mug.
THEN | Almost children, we lay asleep in love, listening to the rain.
The rain traces shaky lines down the windows, turning city lights into shimmering trails. Inside, your apartment glows warmly against the blue-black of the late night, a small world of your own.
Jihoon is hunched over his laptop at your kitchen table, wearing a baggy black hoodie, the one he’s tugged at all evening as he tweaks a song that’s been tying him up in creative knots. You’d been working across from him in silence, overwhelmed with readings for your first year of your MA, until you’d decided that you’d had enough, getting up to making some tea.
It’s been a year since you and Jihoon got together. You’re well into the first year of your master’s, and Jihoon — well, Jihoon is thriving. His music has blown up, particularly after producing a hit song for an idol group, and his calendar’s filled up faster than either of you expected. Sessions with artists, meetings with A&R reps, collaborations that kept him bouncing between studios — it’s a rush, a mess, it’s his dream come true.
When you step into his sight again, mug in hand, his headphones drop temporarily around his neck. The steam spirals up in a thin wisp, and you watch it for a moment, wondering if you’re disturbing him, interrupting some kind of delicate artist process. But when he glances up and meets your gaze, something in his expression eases, a softness creeping in.
“Thought you could use something warm,” you say quietly, setting the mug down near his notebook.
He lets his fingertips linger against the mug’s side, the warmth slowly seeping into his skin. “Thank you.” His voice is gravelly from hours of wrestling with something just out of reach in his imagination.
He drops his headphones back over his ears, then tilts them down to hang around his neck. “Actually, I — I wanted you to hear something I’ve been working on.” His tone falters just a little, cheeks flushing a pretty shade of pink.
You nod, trying to quell your eagerness. It’s rare that your boyfriend shows you things when they’re raw and unpolished like this. Jihoon is too much of a perfectionist to bare anything less than incredible to the world. Your favourite days are when you’re the exception.
He clicks a few keys and something soft and gentle spills from his laptop’s speakers — the notes grow, fold into each other, fade away. You hear his voice after a few moments, too, sweet and smooth, close to the mic.
When it ends, you straighten up, meet his eyes with a surprised, almost breathless smile. “You wrote lyrics.”
He flushes deeper. “I’ve been trying it out these days. Like you suggested.” He looks away, then back at you. “You make the words easier.”
Jihoon drops his gaze to his laptop, then tilts the track’s tab just a bit, letting you see its title in the corner of the media player — and again, your breath catches.
It’s your name.
NOW | A pity. We were such a good / And loving invention.
The mug of cooled tea sits forgotten on the counter as you make your way down the hallway. The floors creak beneath your feet, almost like a gentle protest — a small affirmation that you’re really not supposed to be doing this.
But you do it anyway.
You kneel at the side of your mattress, reach underneath, and tug forward a small wooden box you haven’t opened in months. Your stomach drops, a nervous swoop, a rush of dread so icy that it feels a little like vertigo. You know this is a bad idea. That whatever’s inside will dredge up so much.
Still, with careful fingers and an uneasy sigh, you ease the box’s lid up. Inside, a stack of letters, their envelopes worn, the ink slightly faded.
All from Jihoon. All addressed to you.
For a moment, you simply stare at his handwriting, at the carefully creased folds and then, reluctantly, you reach in and lift the first envelope, turning it over in your hands.
The seal is already broken. The past is there, waiting for you to let it back in.
Morbid curiosity, maybe some kind of emotional sadism, or something less dramatic — lingering, aching care — drives you to reach in. Your fingertips linger over the texture, the fold lines, the faint ink blots. Without thinking, you let your eyes dart across a few of the letters, drinking in Jihoon's words like you've been starved for them.
“...Did you eat? Did you remember to drink something warm? I’m worried you’re wearing yourself down.”
“Happy birthday, baby. I know you said no gifts, but I also know you know I was going to get you things anyway, right?”
“It’s our 500 day anniversary already. It’s kind of ironic, though… I was thinking about something Rumi said: ‘Love is not a matter of counting the days, but making the days count.’ So maybe we shouldn’t be counting at all — and yet here I am, marking this anniversary in big, bold numbers. I guess that’s just human, isn’t it?
I think what I want more than anything is to make whatever time we do have matter. To fill it with something we’ll remember, even when the calendar runs forward without us noticing.
Happy 500th day, baby. Let’s keep going for a long time.
THEN | Know it's for the better
The restaurant is nearly empty by the time you realise he’s not going to show up.
The plate of food in front of you cooled a long time ago; the rich sauce congealing, the steam gone. The wine in your glass is nearly finished, sip by sip, a nervous habit you fell into while glancing at your phone, then at the clock. He said he’d be there by 7:30.
It’s 8:45 when you pay the bill, reluctantly adding a small tip for the server who kept your water glass filled and tried not to make you feel ridiculous sitting there all by yourself. Your phone feels heavy in your pocket — heavy with messages you shouldn’t need to send: Where are you? Are you okay? Did something come up?
When he finds you a few hours later, you’re already home, a stack of articles for your thesis growing alongside you — a mess of notes, highlighters, and printed-out journals that you can’t bring yourself to focus on. The moment you hear his key in the lock, something tightens in your stomach: you weren’t expecting him to come to yours after forgetting about you all day.
Jihoon stands in the doorway, dripping rainwater from his hair and his jacket, the thunder a distant growl outside. His grip falters briefly on the doorknob before he lets it ease closed, turning the lock quietly.
He finds you there, cross-legged on the floor, your pen resting limply in your hand. He sets his wet shoes side by side against the wall and crosses the room, pausing a few feet away, unsure whether closing the distance is a kindness or a violation.
The silence between you is thick — not hostile, but heavy — a pressure you feel in your ribs, a rawness you can’t mask.
He clears his throat softly, then lets a shaky breath seep out. “Baby,” he begins, stops, starts again. “I’m sorry. I was writing lyrics in the studio, and a deadline got pushed back so I got carried away, and I just — it's not an excuse. I'm sorry.”
The words hang there, faltering, not enough — not nearly enough — to make up for the loneliness you felt in that restaurant. Or a month ago, when he was in Japan and fell asleep on your first call in weeks. Or all the nights you fell asleep with your phone pressed to your pillow, wondering if a text might come, if he might remember to say he’s thinking of you.
You think the worst part is that you can’t even blame him. That you can’t even point fingers when you tell him this isn’t working anymore, that you can’t keep going like this.
“I’m not angry at you,” you say, and there are tears slipping down your cheeks, and Jihoon looks so pained that he can’t brush them away. “I’m fucking proud of you. I don’t want to hold you back by always making you wonder if you’re failing me in some way.”
He draws in a shaky breath, and for the first time since you’ve known him, you see tears glimmer in Jihoon’s eyes. “That’s not — I don’t want you to feel that I’m choosing something else over us. Because I’m not. I wouldn’t—”
“I know you wouldn’t.” You hesitate. “That’s why I’m doing it.”
“That’s not fair.” His voice breaks, barely above a whisper. “Baby.”
You swallow thickly, around the acidic taste in your mouth, the swollen painful lump in your throat. “Yes,” you agree softly. “I know.”
NOW | I know what my heart is like / Since your love died
A lot of things can change in two months.
You’re two months closer to deadlines for PhD applications. Two months closer to finishing your MA, to turning in your thesis and figuring out whatever comes after.
Two months further from Jihoon.
The days have a way of adding up — a page turning quietly while you’re not looking. The routines you fell into alongside him over two years: texting first thing in the morning, calling just before falling asleep, sending each other photos of whatever small thing made you think, “He’d like this” — have slowly been overtaken by silence, by space.
Some nights, you lie in your mattress, staring up at the ceiling, wondering what he’s thinking, where he is, whether he’s staying up wrestling a new song into submission, or if he’s gone to bed hours before with a heart as heavy as your own. The corner of your phone glows in the dark — a text thread you’re afraid to delete but that you’re not brave enough to restart. The messages you exchanged in happier days remain there, a digital reminder of something you’re not sure you’ll ever feel again.
You miss arguing over books, letting the margins fill up with your notes and his, listening to him hum quietly as he cooked in your kitchen — a noise you hadn’t noticed until it was gone. You miss the way his face glowed just a little when you walked into a room, like he’d been holding his breath until you arrived. You miss his head in your lap, reading Rilke to you. You miss the midnight conversations that stretched until your eyelids grew heavy.
You miss him.
Two months isn’t enough to change that.
THEN | Just know any love I gave you's forever yours to keep
The clock glows 12:32 on the nightstand — a small pool of gold against the deep-blue shadows that wrap around you both. The sheets are a mess, a riot of cotton and warmth. Jihoon lies on his side, propped up by a stack of pillows, a paperback resting precariously against his thigh. His glasses are slipping down his nose; his lashes droops a little more with each blink.
His fingers trace the worn spine of The Waves, your heavily annotated copy, edges softened by time and countless readings. The same one you held the day you spoke in the library. His eyes flick from the pages to your face, searching for some unspoken meaning behind the notes in the margins — words underlined with care, questions scribbled in the corners.
“It’s a beautiful book,” he says, softly. “I don’t think I get it, though. Not completely.”
That makes you laugh a little, a sleepy, amused huff. “Neither do I, really.” You feel your smile soften, a little more tender around the edges. “There’s one part, though, that reminds me of you.”
“Yeah?” He lifts his head from the book, looks at you expectantly.
Your voice is nothing more than a whisper: “'And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.’”
NOW | I still think of you with roses / Spilling all over your abdomen /Your poetry and my abandon
You put the book and the sweater in the box of Jihoon’s stuff, letting them join all the other clothes and books he left behind. You dither for a moment, and then you put the mug in the box too. It’s not like you’ll use it, anyhow.
The letters are still in a haphazard pile on your bed — when you return to gather them, you pause for a moment. Every single one ends the same:
With all my love,
Jihoon.
You tie the letters with a ribbon, and put them back under your bed.
And then you dig your phone up from the sheets, glance at the peeling cardboard box that holds every other tangible reminder you have left of him. With one hand, you scroll through your phone to a contact name you still haven’t changed — Jihoon 🤍— and hover over the call button, the weight of everything caught between you and the screen.
But my words become stained with your love / You occupy everything, you occupy everything
⇢ author's note. yes i wrote another exes au with lots of flashbacks and an open ending i am FULLY aware. trust me. i can't help it.
ANYWAY. this took way longer than expected bc it was not meant to be more than 2k words. however. here we are. i think there's so MUCH i have to say about this fic, just because of all the poetry i linked in here, and i don't think anybody wants to hear all that. but trust me guys there's a reason for Everything in here.
also, in case anybody is confused by the ending — we end with reader debating whether or not to call jihoon. it is entirely up to you where they go from there — does she return his stuff and never see him again? does he have her blocked?? do they (gasp) kiss and make up??? do they undergo a twisted series of events and end up robbing a bank??? the world will never know. (this is me trying to say there is 99.9% chance there won't be a part 2. sorry.) but as always i would love to hear what u guys think!
viv!! it's award season!!! im here to ask you to give your mutuals awards 🫶
MS EMBERLY IT IS SO INCREDIBLY LATE blame work, procrastination, and the supertyphoon 😭 i also admit i am not v social on tumblr or discord bc servers make me shy
@studioeisa - the inyeon award: too many similarities and coincidences betw our lives LMAOOO . also bc im hounding them to watch past lives
@wqnwoos - the for (m)editations in an emergency award: every time hana writes a fic i linger uncomfortably and have the urge to put a hand on her stupid heart.....and push her off a cliff (affectionate)
@chanranghaeys - the boosadan land welcoming committee award: every time i want to cry over boo seungkwan's voice i know where to go 🤓
@chugging-antiseptic-dye - the postcards and poems award: for my travel pics buddy (soon to be new poems buddy?!?!!?)
@joshujin - the chismosa virus award: i look at her posts on the tl w great affection. but also tell me why our longest convo to date has been about some kind of tea
@haologram - the voice message award: i listen to alta also w great affection, but there needs to be an honorary waiting room award bc i take so long to reply
@handpouredheart - the ad meliora award: every time they drop by my inbox or notifs an angel has gotten their wings (but also i hope for a better love life for them ahead 😭)
and of course, @gyuswhore gets the i love my team i love my crew award for all the wonderful work in studiosvt <3333
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