honeyedhoseok - Tumblr blog

honeyedhoseok · 1 year

Text

Reblogging this really quickly to say I just edited a few things in this chapter that have always bugged me...just some dialogue bits and some moments here and there! :)

Blue | 02

genre | jeon jungkook x reader; lifeguard!JK but this isn't really a lifeguard fic; soulmate!au if you squint; smut; angst

word count | 10.4K

summary | that summer with jungkook was blue--a shade that carries with it a tinge of melancholia that you should have accepted from the beginning.

or,

to say that you fell in love with a color was an overstatement, but to say that you fell in love with him was an understatement.

a/n | here's part two, enjoy the angst & some smut at the end >.>

tag list | @libra04 @bishuthot @shatzkrinslinzki @wearenot7withu @casualxexistence @thatshylatina @vjjkknjmygjhsksjpjm @jajks7 @pisceancowboi

series masterlist

While waiting in the dim lighting of the diner parking lot, backlit from the luminescence of the blue neon sign of Benny’s Breakfast above you two, you pull out your phone and click the camera app.

You know it’s silly, but there’s a part of you that wants to document the night to remember later on, that it actually happened. Jungkook sits in the driver’s seat, looking at his phone just like you do, unaware of what you have in mind.

You almost talk yourself out of it, but then you call his name out softly, in curiosity.

“Hey, Jungkook?”

He doesn’t turn immediately, but rather, zooms in on something on his phone. He turns toward you after a second, holding the screen out for you to see. When he realizes you have your phone positioned toward him, he pauses.

“Oh,” he says, a smile playing around the edge of his lips. “Are you—"

You snap the picture with a quick tap of your thumb to the screen.

Jungkook laughs. “Taking a picture of me?” he says. “Let me see.”

You shake your head in a no, cradling your phone to your chest in instant embarrassment of what you just did. “No, you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You look terrible—it’ll ruin your confidence.”

Jungkook raises a curious eyebrow your way, still chuckling. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” You nod. “It’s a terrible picture, really.”

Jungkook knocks your hand out of the way with a swipe of his own, revealing your guilty expression behind the screen of your phone. You mouth drops open in shock, and Jungkook holds back a smile. He plucks the device from your lap and doesn’t bother to look at the screen, he just sets the device on the dashboard away from your reach.

“It was bad,” you say lightly. “I swear.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he says with a grin. “But now you owe me something for the hit to my ego, Y/N.”

Your name rolls off of his tongue with grace, with a fervor unknown to anyone who had spoken your name before. Jungkook says it like its gold, like he has never spoken a word sweeter, and you find yourself melting from the sound.

Or maybe, your head is still foggy from what happened just moments ago in his backseat. You’re not sure.

“Like what?” you say, although the way he leans over the middle console tells you all you need to know.

Without your phone to hide your face, Jungkook’s mouth dances over your own again familiarly. He hovers just centimeters away while he looks down at you with doe-like eyes that will certainly be your undoing in the future. And he knows it.

“A kiss,” he says simply. “Just one, this time.”

But just one does not end there. The two of you find yourself within yet another heated make out, until there is an annoying series of knocks at Jungkook’s driver-side window that has you both jumping apart.

“Hello?” Jihyo says, hands on her hips outside of the car, her face filled with usual annoyance. If she realizes what you were just doing, she doesn’t give you any indicators of so. “I’m starving, so if y’all don’t mind—”

With your cheeks warm and red, you break away from Jungkook and reach for the passenger side door handle, pulling it to you and letting yourself out of the car. Jungkook seems unphased by the sudden interruption, and he greets Hoseok with a handshake-clap-on-the-back combo.

“I’m guessing your whiplash is better?” he teases his friend.

“Whiplash?” Jihyo screeches. “What does he mean by whiplash, Hoseok?”

“Uh—” Hoseok studders, scratching at the back of his neck. “I mean, your foot is kind of heavy—”

“Heavy?!”

You and Jungkook laugh while Hoseok stumbles to explain himself, all while avoiding Jihyo’s raised, threatening palm. You fall into line beside Jihyo as you begin to walk, with Hoseok and Jungkook leading the way into the crowded restaurant.

Jihyo digs an elbow into your side as soon as Jungkook and Hoseok get wrapped up in their own conversation, giving you a look that is wide-eyed and knowing.

“What?” you feign ignorance in a hushed whisper.

She jerks a thumb to Jungkook before taking her pointer finger and tapping the side of her head in light of her genius.

“I knew it!” she mouths to you excitedly.

Jungkook holds the door open for you all, interrupting your quiet conversation with Jihyo for the time being. Benny’s was known for it’s all-day breakfast menu, so when you walk through the door and into the small waiting area, your nose is filled with the doughy scent of pancakes, sweet syrup, and frying bacon.

Hoseok rubs his hands together in anticipation. “I don’t know about you guys, but after the taxing night I’ve had, I’m absolutely starving.”

“Taxing,” Jihyo mutters, sucking her teeth. “All he had to do was wait for the tow truck and then drive me here.”

“I had a lot of popcorn during the movie, but I could still eat,” Jungkook says. “Hate that you guys missed it.”

You refuse to look at him as he says this, knowing all too well that you two were perfectly content by yourselves. Jihyo knows this, too.

“Oh? It looks like you got along just fine without us,” Jihyo says, balling her lips to keep her teasing smile at bay.

You shoot daggers at her with your eyes behind Hoseok’s back, and Jungkook scratches the back of his head sheepishly.

“Yeah, I guess we did,” he says with a smile, glancing over at you.

The hostess leads you over to a four-seater and then disappears to get your drink orders started. You’re all quiet for a while as you contemplate the menus various choices. Jungkook and Hoseok sit side by side across from you and Jihyo, and you find yourself nervously glancing up from the laminated paper in your hand to him, and back. If he feels the weight of your gaze on him, he does not make it known.

You feel like the last few hours have been a dream now that you are with your friends. There’s a haziness to being with Jungkook—he floods all of your senses with such intensity, such longing that you have not felt with any of your previous partners, whether they be long or short-term.

You weren’t the most serial dater, but you’d had a few flings since starting college. That, and a two-year relationship in high school that resulted in an ugly break up when you realized that college meant freedom and freedom meant not being tied down to anyone that lived hours away from you.

You’re reminded, once again, that Jungkook could be just another fleeting moment in your life. Your conversation earlier screamed that he was not looking for anything serious, despite your mind’s unrelenting insistence on becoming attached to his presence. You look down at the menu once more, clenching your jaw through the annoyance that blossoms in your chest from the reminder. A kiss meant nothing. A few kisses meant nothing. You needed to be smarter about this.

Really, you wanted to ask Jihyo for her advice on what to do—but that would have to wait until later. Right now, you just had to sit through this dinner until you could get away from Jungkook’s fog and think things through with a clear head.

Across the table, Jungkook clears his throat. “I think I’m gonna get blueberry pancakes.”

“I was thinking that, or strawberry,” Hoseok responds in a hum. “Everything looks so fucking good.”

“Pancakes, for sure,” you agree.

The waitress comes back and you and Jungkook both order them—him, a stack of three, and you, just one—and the table erupts into conversation as soon as the waitress has stepped away, as if she has lifted the silent veil that laid over it before.

You listen to Jihyo and Hoseok muse over what could be wrong with her car, with Jungkook offering serious suggestions while Hoseok comes up with exaggerated problems—“What if your whole engine has to be replaced?” “What if your lead foot has fucked up your whole break line?”—and you offer Jihyo a ride on any shifts of yours that align for the next few days to sate her.

“So, Jungkook—” Jihyo begins on a different conversation, one that has your attention immediately. “What are your plans for the summer while you’re home? Other than working, of course.”

Jungkook crunches on a piece of ice from his water before he answers, and your gaze falls to his mouth briefly.

“Honestly, I want to get out of the house as much as possible,” he says, his cheeks balling slightly from the grin he gives Jihyo. “I’m so bored at home—so don’t mind me if I start sending texts every other day to the group chat to see what everyone is up to.”

Hoseok nods. “We should add Yoongi to some of the outings, too.”

“Why?” Jihyo’s expression twists into one of disgust. “He’s so lame—it’s like bringing your Grandpa with you to the club.”

“You used to like hanging out with Yoongi,” you remind her lightly. “When we first started working there?”

“Yeah, he had me fooled into thinking he was cool,” Jihyo says while flicking her hair over her shoulder in indifference. “Now I know better.” She pauses, leaning on the table a little. “Y/N was just saying that she wants to do more this summer the other day—right, Y/N?”

You furrow your brow, realizing that she’s getting at something, but you can’t tell what.

“I mean, yeah,” you agree timidly. “But all I have planned is taking a few days off for the Blooming Festival, and maybe taking a trip or something later—”

Jungkook seems surprised at this news. “The Blooming Festival?”

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. “It’s the highlight of my summer, even though that’s pretty lame to admit.” You tack on a nervous, breathy laugh at the end.

Hoseok nods. “Like an end-of-summer shebang. We could all go,” heoffers. “Make it a group thing.

“It’s a bit of a drive, isn’t it?” Jungkook asks.

You nod. “Yeah, it’s about an hour or so from here. Jihyo and I usually make the drive there and back, but this time, we were thinking of staying in a hotel.”

“We’ll make it happen, somehow,” Jungkook says with finality—as if he was going to make it his personal mission for you to have a successful time. “I’ll figure out how to convince Seokjin to let all of us off at the same time.”

“Yeah,” Jihyo scoffs. “Good luck with that!”

Excitement fills you—adding Jungkook to your original Blooming Festival plans made the whole event seem more enticing. Walking around with him in the same atmosphere as the boardwalk tonight would be fun, you couldn’t doubt that. And with the date still in the distant future, you two had plenty of time to get to know each other more and make the event even better.

When the food comes on warm plates, with small wafts of steam rising from the different selections your table has made, you sit back in your seat to give the waitress room to maneuver. She sits your plate down last—the pancake is a giant medallion on the surface, so you’re glad you got only one—and you grab your silverware to dig in.

A small glance at Jungkook has you meeting his curious gaze, and with a lifted eyebrow he silently asks over the table if you are all right. You nod at him and cut a piece of pancake, biting into it.

You’re surprised when a small blueberry bursts between your teeth and sour coats the inside of your mouth rather than sweetness.

Jungkook drives you back to your car after you bid goodbye to Hoseok and Jihyo. You’ll see them Monday at work, but the day feels so far away because it’s only Friday night and a flurry of things stand between you and the time to punch the clock—namely, alone time with Jungkook in the car once again. The drive from Benny’s to Pier 14 isn’t long, but time twiddles its thumbs, allowing you to soak in the reality of the night coming to a close.

“You know,” Jungkook begins, glancing over at you, “I never got to see that picture you took.”

You pout. “Oh—you remembered.”

“I did,” Jungkook says, a smile coating his voice. “That’s okay, though. I guess I’ll let you keep it your little secret.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah,” he says. “In exchange, though, you have to go out with me again.”

Your head snaps in his direction as your heartbeat picks up speed in your chest with vigor.

“Tomorrow?” Jungkook suggests. “We could get out of the house—I think the weather is supposed to be good. What do you say?”

A smile breaks across your face, and you nod with enthusiasm. “Okay,” you agree. “Yeah, I’d love that.”

Jungkook pulls into the Pier 14 parking lot and puts his car into ‘Park’ so you can discuss the plans further. You’re both lit by the blue glow of Jungkook’s dash and radio, and you undo your seatbelt to get a better glimpse at a mini putt place he pulls up on his phone.

“Do I get to pay?” you tease him.

He glances at you in annoyance, rolling his eyes. “Absolutely not,” he says in a ‘duh’ tone. “Dates, remember?”

You bite your lip at the word—this would make number two. You couldn’t help the notion that came over you to act this way each time, just so Jungkook could remind you of the fact.

You two agree on mini putt and a lunch spot before you move to get out of the car.

“I’ll pick you up?” he says, giving you a hopeful look as you stand outside, hand on his door frame as you wait to close it. “Don’t forget to send me your address—oh, wait!” He reaches behind him into the backseat and produces the dolphin plushie, holding it out toward you. “Can’t forget this. I worked hard for it.”

You laugh, taking it from him and pressing it to your chest. You get a whiff of Jungkook that wafts up from it—something clean and crisp—and you wonder what cologne or bodywash he wears.

“Goodnight, Jungkook,” you say in a soft voice.

He gives you a small wave. “Goodnight, Y/N. See you tomorrow.”

You drive home through the night in a blue haze. You take the time to strap the blue dolphin plushie into seat beside you, and you glance at every so often while you replay the evening’s events over and over and over.

You wake up to a series of pressing texts from Jihyo the next morning. Your cell phone vibrates on your nightstand incessantly with her pesters until finally, you search around blindly with your hand and bring the screen to your face to read her messages.

Jihyo 9:21AM : Um, miss?? You still haven’t told me what happened yesterday!! Don’t think I forgot

Jihyo 9:45AM : Out late with loverboy, huh? Guess that’s why you’re sleeping in

Jihyo 10:01AM : I’m hungryyyy and my car won’t be fixed until Thursdayyyyy

Jihyo 10:08AM : Nevermind my dad offered to go get food :’) bless

Jihyo 10:21AM : Wake up omfg

Jihyo 10:38AM : Fine, call me when you wake up tho!!! I’ll kill you if you don’t

And her latest, and most interesting text:

Jihyo 10:40AM : Yoongi just sent me a playlist??? That he made??? What in fresh hell???

You press the call button beside her name. She answers on the second ring.

“Thank god,” she breathes into the phone. “Any longer and I would have cemented my theory that you were dead.”

“Jesus, I was asleep.”

“Pretty similar situations, considering you are the heaviest sleeper I’ve ever known.”

You roll your eyes. “Why is Yoongi sending you playlists on this early Saturday morning?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” She pauses. “It’s got some sappy stuff up there, too.”

“What did you say back?” you ask.

“New phone, who dis?”

You sigh. “Jihyo.”

“What?” she says. “How else should I have responded?”

You turn to lay flat on your back, staring at the ceiling of your bedroom as you talk. “Maybe a ‘thanks’? Maybe a ‘I’ll let you know what I think’? Maybe a ‘sorry for being so mean to you all the time when you clearly are trying to make amends’?”

“Enough about me!” she snaps. “Tell me what happened yesterday—it’s obviously all good stuff since I walked up on you two sucking face in the car at Benny’s.”

Your face flashes with heat. “Oh. So you did see.”

“Indeed, I did,” she says with a giggle. “I told you all you had to do was take a chance! He’s into you.”

“I—yeah.” You stumble for the right words. “It’s a shock to us all.”

“Uh-uh. Nope, don’t give me any of that unconfident crap right now. You see what happens when you go after something you want? Now tell me I’m the best friend in the world for having accidentally-real car troubles!”

“Really?”

“Say it!”

“You’re the best friend in the—” Your phone vibrates against your cheek, cutting you off. “Hold that thought.”

You pull it back to see that Jungkook is attempting to call you on the other line. Your voice catches in your throat.

“Oh, Jihyo, I’ve got to go. Jungkook is calling.”

“Oh, Jungkook is calling!” she repeats in a mocking tone that sounds a lot more drawn out and forlorn than you actually were. “Ugh, you make me sick. But I’m happy for you at the same time. Bye.”

You laugh and say goodbye to her before switching calls.

You take in a wavering breath. “Hello?” you squeak.

“Good morning,” Jungkook answers, voice deep with sleep and blissfully groggy. You like the way it rumbles in your ear. “Can you talk?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Did you just wake up?”

“About thirty seconds ago, yeah.” He laughs. “But I just looked out my window and I think our plans today might need to be tweaked a little.”

Your brow furrows. “What?”

You hop of bed, throwing back your light-blocking curtains and realizing it’s not just their thick material that is making your bedroom darker than normal—it’s raining. Grey clouds cover the sky in gloom—mother nature’s personal door slam to any hope of golfing on an outdoor mini-putt course today.

“Oh,” you say, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t even realize.”

“It’s okay,” he replies quickly. “We can just do something else.”

You sit on the edge of your bed, watching rain streak down your bedroom window. “Like?”

“Um—” He pauses, thinking. “We could—well, maybe we could—”

You giggle at his scrambled attempt to think quickly of a replacement activity for the two of you.

“Don’t laugh!” You can hear him smiling through the phone. “I just—I don’t know. I just want to see you—is that lame?” He pauses again. “I don’t care if it’s lame, really. We can sit in a parking lot and do nothing. It doesn’t matter to me.”

A silence ensues between you two for a few measured beats—you’re so caught up in the confession that you forget you need to respond to him. You clutch the phone, listening to his light breathing on the other end, your heart racing with so many mixed emotions.

“You there?” he asks quietly.

“No,” you say. “I mean, yeah, sorry. I was just—”

You don’t know how to explain it. But that feeling of intense want that only comes with the beginning of a crush has overwhelmed the both of you—you’re sure of it now with Jungkook calling you early in the morning to spill his guts in the most rambling, roundabout fashion that he could manage.

Your cheeks hurt from the force of the smile that overtakes your face as you answer.

“What parking lot should we sit in?”

You spend the day with Jungkook in the lonely lot of a convenience store while the rain continues to pour from the looming clouds overhead, creating a steady staccato of noise on the hood and roof of his car. You two fly through a flurry of topics between sips of blue slushies and snacks that Jungkook insisted on buying.

He’d ran inside the store and came back with a smorgasbord of chips, cookies, and candy, along with two blue raspberry slushies, his hair dripping fallen rain onto the light color of his T-shirt as he dumped everything in your lap.

“I didn’t know what you might like, so I just got a bunch,” he’d said sheepishly when you looked at him with a mix of confusion and appreciation from the passenger seat.

With both your feet propped up on the dash and blue-tinted mouths, you debated video games and subjects in school, astrology signs and music artists you thought were the best thing since sliced bread.

You learn he’s an avid R&B fan, insisting that slow beats and crooning voices tops any pop artist you might could provide him with. You attempt anyways, and the two of you go back and forth, trading songs on the Bluetooth until the music fades into the background as your next topic of conversation takes over your fleeting attentions.

Tensions rise with the friendly arguments, and soon, the talking dies in general as the two of you make your way into the backseat, getting wrapped up within each other as best as you can with the limited seat space. Jungkook offers to lower the seats again like he had at the drive-in movie, but you shake your head vehemently in response. With only the backseat bench to maneuver, one of you had to be on top of the other—and Jungkook’s body fit together with yours like puzzle pieces. For all of his muscle, he was still soft and comfy to lay on, and you wanted to take advantage of the small space stipulation while you could.

To say that you like him is an understatement, but it’s all you’ll allow yourself this early on. You like him. A lot.

You have for a while—from afar, only hearing and maybe having a few conversations with him at the pool—but it’s cemented, already, on day two.

You don’t have to tell him, either. Jungkook kisses the words from your mouth, claiming it as his own with a type of fervor reserved for long-term relationships, or lovers drunk and clumsy after a night of drinking. It’s passionate and sweet at the same time—just another thing you will come to learn about him: his love language is certainly physical, touching and kissing and feeling everything of yours that he can. Both of your mouths taste like the remains of the slushies you’d left abandoned and sweating in the cup holders between the two front seats, the blue hues and flavors mixing into a sweet concoction.

The next few times you hang out are just the same—a slow but sure descent into falling for him, hard.

You stumble in clumsy love over and over again, crossing territory you swore to yourself you would never trek into with him. But he encourages it, beckons you closer with a mischievous, crooked finger until you walk into his arms so he can cocoon you within his warmth, his irresistible magnetism.

It’s not common to fall for another person so fast. You’ve only seen it happen to your friends—seen them get caught up in a whirlwind relationship that took them on a roller coaster ride of emotions before spitting them out at the bottom. You’ve been there to pick up the pieces, always the one to shake your head at such relationships, but you know there’s something brewing under the surface here that is very real, and very much like what you may have witnessed in the past.

“Let me know if you get tired of me,” Jungkook says, jokingly, one day. You two are swinging in a hammock in his backyard, legs tangled together as the warm summer breeze floats over your skins in the waning afternoon light.

His parents are gone—the only time he ever wants you to come over to his house, but only because he hates when they’re around, not because he has any mischievous plans up his sleeve about getting you alone—and you have spent the afternoon wrapped up in each other, murmuring quiet conversation about the clouds that float in the cerulean sky above.

Jungkook trails lazy patterns in your side with light fingertips, waiting patiently on your answer. You can’t see his face with your head tucked underneath his chin, but if you were to look up, you’d know that his kind, doe eyes would be trained intensely on your own.

“I won’t,” you say back, quiet and firm. And you know without a doubt that it’s true.

A month passes under the guise of your newfound relationship, although the word boyfriend or girlfriend has not escaped either of your mouths during that time. There’s no need when the two of you move around each other like magnets, an intense, young love that doesn’t need any explanations.

You try not to think about how just a few months ago you didn’t know who he was, because it seems somehow like you’ve known him for years upon years. Your relationship develops at a breakneck pace, almost as if it can tell that the end of summer is on its heels—and it is running, sprinting for its life to stay afloat just a little longer.

“I heard Seokjin keeps the spare key to the side gates in his office.”

You pause in scooping ice cream out of the bin in front of you, looking up at Jungkook through the wisps of hair that have fallen out of your messy ponytail. It’s hot and sticky inside of the cart today—the air conditioner sputters on and off when it wants, promises of getting it fixed from your whimsical manager still postponed due to more pressing matters at the pool. What they are, you have no idea, but you know you saw him sporting a shiny, brand new watch on his wrist when he’d strolled by earlier in the day, so you’re sure he has the means of fixing your work conditions—he just doesn’t care.

Thankfully, the generator keeps the bins of ice cream as cold as you could imagine, therefore, still giving both you and Jihyo a purpose for being at work. As long as you shut the tops as fast as possible, the sweet treat delivery could continue. Yay.

Jungkook is currently on his lunch break, hovering around the ice cream cart like usual as your one and only form of entertainment and relief from a particularly grueling week at work.

“What are you getting at, Jeon?” you ask, raising an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t know you were into larceny.”

“It’s not something I like to bring up in casual conversation, but I’ve been known to dabble.” He gives you an impish grin. “I was trying to think of something nice to do for you—you know, for all your hard work lately.”

You purse your lips. “And possibly getting fired sounds like the perfect remedy?”

“You’re not going to get fired,” he says, rolling his eyes. “We go for a night swim, we put everything back like it was before, Seokjin will never know.”

You hand the finished ice cream cone to a red-faced little boy beside Jungkook after giving him an extra scoop for free. “You heard nothing,” you warn him, frowning.

He salutes you and walks off, leaving the two of you alone at the cart once again.

“Come on,” Jungkook says, still trying to convince you of his grand scheme with a wide grin and a playful wiggle of his dark eyebrows. “It’ll be fun. We can invite the whole gang, Seokjin can’t possibly fire all of us—"

You give him a look.

“—okay, maybe he can. But I don’t think he will.” He leans closer to the booth, trapping you once again in those dark, velvety irises of his as he pulls out the final weapon in his arsenal: jutting out his lower lip in a faux pout that could put fashion models to shame. “Please?”

You scrape your bottom teeth across your sweaty upper lip, considering his offer. You actually hadn’t gotten in the water all summer—when you were at the pool, it was to work, and you went home and tried not to think about anything related to this place until you had to clock in for your next shift.

“Fine,” you acquiesce, although, you never really stood much of a chance against him, anyways.

The grin that breaks out across his face is brilliant, shining. “Yes! Okay, you just leave the rest up to me. It’ll be easy, I promise.”

A whistle blows at the lifeguard stand, Jungkook and you both direct your attentions to the sound. Hoseok stands rigid, pointing at something in the water below him. He disappears out of sight before coming back with a megaphone pressed to his lips:

“DO NOT—I REPEAT—DO NOT, URINATE IN THE WATER. IT WILL TURN COLORS AND LET US KNOW EXACTLY WHO DID IT—YOU, YES YOU. EXIT ON THE SIDE TO YOUR LEFT, THANK YOU.”

You and Jungkook burst into a childish fit of giggles at the sternness in his tone while delivering such a message. A few children laugh and point, while the younger teenage girls that were hanging around the sides squeal and pull themselves out of the water as if there’s a hammerhead swimming toward them.

“Don’t you miss your old job at the gym, sometimes?” you ask Jungkook later, after you’ve both caught your breath and soothed the stitch in your sides.

“Not even a little bit.”

Jungkook does deliver on his promise of acquiring the key to the side gate of the pool—which is how you find yourself tiptoeing onto the grounds at almost midnight on the following Saturday night, sweat beading on your lower back as you attempt to follow Jungkook’s hurried pace.

“Is there a fire?” you whisper in anguish to him, but he ignores you. “Holy shit your legs are long.”

He crouches in front of the gate and sticks the key in. You expect flashing alarms to go off, for stadium lights to flicker on the two of you and for Seokjin to come out of the shadows shaking his head woefully—but nothing happens.

He pushes it open with a loud creak that has you wincing, but other than that it’s quiet, save for the gentle lapping of the water at the sides of the deep pool in front of you. While Jungkook goes to pull back the covering and make sure the interior lights are on, you round the corner you two just came around, signaling for the other two people in your party to join you.

Hoseok ended up not being able to make it, so tonight was just going to consist of you, Jihyo, Yoongi and Jungkook. They sneak over in the same crouched fashion you had, their eyes wandering the scene in front of them nervously.

“This feels so wrong,” Jihyo says, shaking her head. “If we get caught—”

“We won’t,” Yoongi insists, straightening up and setting down his bag. “For the ten millionth time.”

Although all of you are on edge for the first few moments, the nerves slowly drift away, changing into an excitement at doing something daring, something different than the norm.

You sit the bookbag Jungkook had given you gently on the cement slab next to a set of deck chairs—he’d packed a few beers for him and Yoongi, along with a football and some towels.

The four of you edge around the pool, dipping a toe in and testing it. It’s incredibly warm from the beating the sun had given it throughout the day—more akin to bathwater than a pool, but you’re grateful for the soothing qualities you’re going to feel once you’re immersed.

“Well,” Jungkook says, looking over at you. He reaches behind his head, grabbing a fistful of his white T-shirt and pulling it over his head in one swift movement. “I’ll do you all a favor and go first.”

And then he cannonballs into the pool, disappearing beneath the surface of the water and sending a spray of it onto your toes that rest on the edge.

Yoongi shrugs, shedding his clothes as well and giving you a smile and a salute before he follows suit. His splash is much smaller than Jungkook’s because of his shorter stature and more calm way of entering the water. You laugh, looking at Jihyo on the other side of the pool to see if she wants to go next.

Jungkook surfaces near the deep end then, flicking his hair to the right to get it out of his eyes. He points at you, blinking through wet eyelashes. “You, in the blue bathing suit top!” He curls his finger toward himself. “Come here.”

“You go first,” Jihyo says, gesturing toward you.

Yoongi comes up for air then, too, and when he realizes you two are still dry, he smacks the water with his hand loudly. “Both of you, get in the water!”

You bite your lip, wanting much less of a show to getting in the pool but also wanting to be a part of the fun. “I—”

“Don’t make me come get you, Y/N,” Jungkook warns.

Somehow the threat makes a pleasant warmth blossom in your stomach, and you grin like a Cheshire cat at him. “Well now that you put it that way,” you saw, dawdling about on the side. You take a few steps back. “I’m not so sure.”

Jihyo rolls her eyes at your flirty banter with Jungkook and walks forward with determined steps. “Fine,” she says. She lowers herself down from the side gracefully, until she is chest deep and treading water slightly. She swims toward Yoongi. “I’m in, happy?”

“Very,” he says, giving her a gummy grin. “Except you should have gotten the football before you climbed in.”

“Why didn’t you get it!”

You’re so caught up in their conversation that a commotion of water and wet footsteps catches you off guard, and then you are being scooped up into Jungkook’s arms as he runs back toward the deep end. You jostle against the wet skin of his chest, hanging on for dear life.

“You asked for it!” he sing-songs, cackling and continuing to hold you as he jumps feet first back into the water.

You barely have time to pinch your nose, yelling out a nasally, “Jeon Jung—” in an attempt to scold him, but it doesn’t make a difference.

You feel the water envelop you on all sides, and you swim back to the top, pushing your hair out of your eyes, spitting water out of your mouth and laughing loudly. Jungkook swims over to you, beaming, and you splash a wave of water at him. “Jerk!”

“Sorry. It’s great, isn’t it?” he says. “Really warm.” He treads in a lazy circle around you in the deep end, with Yoongi and Jihyo down at the other end—bickering, most likely. You can’t tell.

He knows he’s done something magical by getting you to come out in the middle of the night for a swim. You feel light and airy, like anything can happen amid the adrenaline rush that is currently coursing through your veins.

Eventually, you get caught up in playing with your friends: you and Jungkook challenge Jihyo and Yoongi to a chicken fight, you take turns getting out, running and jumping back into the pool, you throw the football a little. Jungkook and Yoongi crack open beers and take sips while they sit on the edges, their legs dangling in the cerulean water. You decline when Jungkook offers you a sip, not wanting anything to take away from the natural high you are still feeling.

This is the type of summer you read about in books when you were a teenager, the ones that you wanted to be able to reminisce over. You’re still contemplating this thought sometime later, treading somewhere in the middle of the shallow and the deep end when Jungkook joins you.

He wraps you up in his arms, making you laugh with delight and fold your legs around his waist, pulling him closer in the water. His hands settle on your hips, making sure you don’t get away as he brings your faces close.

If Jungkook was generally handsome in his everyday life, he is absolutely gorgeous with slicked back hair, wet lips and eyelashes, a sly smile on his face as his lips hover over yours with a teasing air. Your heart swells at the gentle cuddling that he is giving you beneath the water, satisfied in just having you flush against him to the best of his ability.

As you look at him you lift a hand to his face, tracing the line of his right eyebrow slowly, and then the other. He closes his eyes at your touch, letting out a soft breath of air that tickles the center your palm.

“I’m glad you convinced me,” you murmur a few minutes later. “This is fun.”

“Anywhere is fun with you,” Jungkook hums in response, his eyes still closed as your fingertips trail down, tracing the slope of his nose.

“Cheesy,” you respond fondly.

“I know.”

Jungkook presses your bodies closer in the water—if that notion is even possible—so that you feel every line of his chest and stomach against your own, warm and solid. Yoongi and Jihyo sit in chaises away from the two of you, lost in their own heated conversation that you cannot make out any of the words to. Jihyo looks confused, and Yoongi looks like he’s explaining something—you’ll have to ask her later.

For now, you attempt to focus on the beautiful boy in front of you, on the way your heart lurches when he blinks at you, looking like he is gathering the words to say something important.

“I’ve been thinking—” he says in a low tone, and the sound of it makes your stomach lurch in anticipation. You can’t imagine what he is about to say, and right now, you don’t think you want to hear it.

“Jungkook, I don’t want this summer to end,” you confess.

You’re not sure why the phrase tumbles over your lips so suddenly, but it feels fitting to cut off whatever solemn statement Jungkook was about to make with an urgent one of your own.

His eyebrows raise and then fall, his tongue poking out to lick water off his lips. “Me either.”

You run your pointer finger over his cupid’s bow, past his pout, down his chin. You settle your trembling extremities on his shoulders, hoping he will keep you steady.

“But what happens when it does?”

Jungkook’s eyes, only half-mast slits before, open fully now with your question. They hold expressions of confusion, but also something deeper—something that tells you this is not the first time this question has been brought to his attention. He hasn’t been oblivious to the small amount of time you two can share this summer, whatsoever.

“I—” he begins, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve been trying not to—”

“—think about it?” you finish for him in sad tone. “Yeah, me too.”

He runs his hands up and down your back in a soothing motion because that’s all he can do in the moment. You lock your legs tighter around his waist, as if he is a balloon about to slip from your grip and float into the oxford blue sky above you both.

Three months is so short when you think about the rest of your life. These three months might not mean anything years from now, but in this moment, it feels like the most important thing you’ll ever get to experience.

But you don’t want to bring the atmosphere down too much—and you take that moment to plant an ill-timed joke amid the confessions tumbling like rocks from both of your mouths.

“Well, we only have three months—so try not to fall in love, or anything.”

You don’t even know why you say it. You follow it with a half-assed laugh that really just sounds like air being let out from that same balloon you’d compared him to earlier—you don’t mean it at all, and both of you know it.

Something shifts between you two then, and a wistful smile passes across Jungkook’s features. You almost miss it for the proximity of your faces, but you catch just a hint of it before it disappears. Your heartbeat is a hummingbird in your veins, waiting for what he has to say in return.

“It’s too late for that,” he murmurs, hands finding home on the sides of you face to bring you in, lips grazing against your own.

Your breath catches in your throat at the sheer sincerity of his words, and then you are diving toward his mouth. The kiss that follows is salty from the pool, but sweet from Jungkook’s lovely ability to take your breath away in an instant; a bittersweet seal to all that is to come from the rest of your time together. Like two masochists, you both attempt to kiss away all the hurt that you know is hurdling toward you somewhere in the distance—in a slow, beautiful way, like a star shooting across the sky.

The terrible thing about stars is that—much like love—the massive ones, the ones that are too hot and too beautiful, tend to burn out all too quickly.

Both you and Jungkook have an elegant, almost innate, way of dancing around topics that make you uncomfortable. For you, it’s just how much he means to you. For him, it’s his strained relationship with his parents. For both of you, it’s what happens after.

After he leaves. After the summer. After your three months are up.

The simple word has taken on a new, bitter connotation lately.

However, like all bad things, they must come in threes; the first topic of conversation—how much Jungkook truly means to you—is the first hurdle the two of you must overcome.

It’s not that you don’t want to talk about it—you would shout it from the rooftops, tell your mom, dad, aunt, uncles, and their dogs and catsabout it if you felt like it—it’s more that it’s something you are struggling with yourself.

Your past relationships in high school had longevity to it, but you were always hesitant to take them further.

This thought creeps into the back of your mind as often as after does, but in much different contexts—further is usually reserved for hot and heavy moments in the back of Jungkook's car, in your bedroom, in the hammock, in nooks and crannies out of sight from wandering eyes at the pool when you both are in a rush on break, breathing each other in.

Further is for when Jungkook’s fingers are drifting down, toying with the edge of your shirt until he pushes underneath, toying with the cup of your bra until he can knead and tug lightly at your perked nipples.

When he follows the sound of your hitched breathing south, hand skimming lightly over the band of your pants in slight hesitation. You nod your head eagerly, and he obliges, pressing fingertips to your wetness until he can coax moans and mewls from your throat that you weren’t aware you could produce.

All the while, his mouth peppers kisses across your own swollen lips, freckles them across your cheeks and jawline, scatters them down your neck and shoulders. You two have not gotten much further than this—just touching, exploring each other’s bodies—but like the gentleman he is, Jungkook does not press you on the matter.

You’ve talked yourself out of further for a while—using the fleeting summer as your excuse—but ultimately, your body yearns for him.

"Jungkook," you call one day, breathlessly, for he has just stolen it with yet another heated kissing session in the lowered backseat of his car.

This time you two have reached a different point in further—your pants are somewhere in the floorboard, and usually you would be shy, but Jungkook covers your body with his, knowing your shy tendencies about him looking too hard. You focus on breathing as his fingertips slide methodically in and out of the wetness between your legs—your stomach twists, a coil wound tightly and ready to snap with every pump of his expert touch.

His mouth moves from where it was just trying to shush yours with sloppy kisses to the side of your neck, lapping at the taunt skin there. He hums lazily in response in your ear, although it sounds more like a strangled groan at his own arousal interrupted in the heated moment.

“Jungkook—” you attempt again, trying to focus on the coil not snapping. “Wait—”

He slows, but doesn’t remove his fingers, keeping them still while he presses his thumb to the button of your clit for safekeeping.

“Yeah?” he says in a daze. “What’s wrong?”

“I—”

You hesitate, biting your lip as you weigh the consequences of what you are about to say. It’s a constant battle fighting your body’s wants versus your mind’s—and today, you think, is the day to push those incessant worries aside.

“I, um—” You look into those dark onyx eyes of his, eyes focusing in on one of his blown-out pupils and then the other, at the way recognition sparks in them just before you can say it. “I really just--want you.”

You are underneath him already, the weight of his body pressing on yours, and you feel him go rigid at the words.

“Y/N,” he says, but in an exhale, almost a whisper. “Are you sure?”

You nod and Jungkook swallows nervously before crushing his mouth against yours. You’re glad he distracts you for a moment with his mouth and his hands, the latter returning to its previous movements within your glistening core.

You groan against his mouth as the coil in your stomach tightens once more, like it only paused in the wake of your confession to come barreling back to the forefront of your attention.

“Fuck,” Jungkook says. The word is hot coming out of his mouth—he doesn’t curse much around you. “I can literally feel you getting tight.”

Your face burns, but Jungkook seems to like it, so that sates you for the time being. Your hips buck as he continues to pump his fingers in and out of you, curling them slightly in a way that has you seeing stars behind your eyelids.

“God, Jungkook,” you say, unable to form proper sentences. “Please—"

He groans in your wake, closing his eyes above you briefly. “Can I go down on you?”

You nod eagerly, your pulse quickening at the thought. You knew what that gorgeous mouth could do against your own, against your skin, and that this would be no different. Jungkook removes his hands from you, and you let out a breath of relief, the incredible tightening in your stomach succeeding for the time being.

With the seats down, all he has to do is slide down your body, placing small kisses on the top of your breast, on your sternum, on the curve of your lower belly, until he is hovering over your panties.

You pull yourself up on your elbows to follow him with your eyes. Jungkook glances up at you and you lock eyes briefly as he hooks his fingers into the fabric that curves over your hips.

“You’re sure?”

Your heart twinges with affection at the thought that he has to ask twice just to be content—and you notice suddenly the way that Jungkook’s teeth are tucked into his lower lip, an action that he only odes when he’s contemplating something a little too hard.

“Yes,” you say, pausing. “Do you not want to?”

Jungkook closes his eyes again, letting out a soft, nervous chuckle. “Y/N.”

“What?”

“Don’t be silly."

“Okay,” you respond, squirming a little under his touch. You want to add something else, but then Jungkook is slowly peeling your panties down your legs, his eyes roaming your most intimate parts, and whatever you said gets sucked into the back of your throat as he pushes your knees apart and lowers himself over your core.

You can’t look at him anymore, so you close your eyes and lie down, listening to the soft sounds of Jungkook moving around in the car and the pitter of the rain starting up again outside. It had been raining all week, it seemed, but today you were happy for the gloom and the overcast skies that were keen on keeping the private things happening between you two in the backseat just that—private.

When Jungkook’s warm tongue takes the first few swipes at your core, you swear your whole body ignites. A warmth you’ve never known spreads over your chest like wildfire, and you choke out a sound of disbelief as he wraps his wide hands over the tops of your thighs to keep you in place. He licks his tongue flat along your folds once, twice, before sealing his mouth on the middle of your core and drawing figure eights with his tongue there.

Jungkook releases sounds along with you—enjoying giving much more than he did receiving, as usual—and sending vibrations along your clit that has your back arching off the flattened seats below you.

“Oh my god, Jung—”

The feeling is heightened as he returns his fingers, sliding them inside effortlessly with the new arousal that has coated your insides. Jungkook begins a pattern of swirls with his tongue and “come here” motions with his fingertips that has you feeling like he has reached yet another level of perfection in your eyes—somewhere, in your short time together, he has realized exactly what he needs to do to make you fall apart underneath him before his cock even touches you.

And fall apart, you do.

The blissful pulsing of your core clenches around Jungkook’s fingers and you let out a guttural sound that is somewhere between a moan and a sound of relief. You reach for something to cling to, to keep yourself grounded in the moment when it feels like your body wants to rise from the car, but there is nothing, so you place your hands into Jungkook’s hair, tugging a little and raking your fingernails across his scalp. He groans in return and goes faster, harder, and you think you might burst from the sensations fluttering along your body. Jungkook doesn’t remove his mouth from your clit until you are completely satisfied, sensitive and quivering around his fingers, and then he removes those, too.

“Holy shit,” you breathe, eyes trained on the ceiling of the car, so that when Jungkook hovers back into your vision, you’re surprised to see the half-mast state of his eyelids. He seems completely infatuated with how fucked-out you look with only half of the act completed, and the kisses that he plants eagerly against your mouth are almost like thank-yous. You taste yourself on his rolling tongue, and it only makes the situation more arousing.

“You mean so much to me,” Jungkook says, suddenly. His face is now buried in the crook of your neck, mouthing slightly beneath your ear as his body covers yours, settling between your legs and putting some of his weight on you in a comfortable, cocooning warmth. “Really, you do.”

You swallow the lump in your throat, pulse still racing in the aftermath of your orgasm. You're not even sure what to say, your heart thumping underneath your skin from so many things at once.

There’s a small pause between the two of you as the words sink in, and Jungkook turns his head to the side, pressing a chaste kiss against your cheek shyly.

“We don’t have to keep going—”

“Don’t,” you say, shaking your head. You place your hand on the side of his cheek and he moves so that he’s face-to-face with you, your noses slightly bumping against each other. “Don’t say it again, please. I want this—I want you.”

He nods, slowly in understanding. “Okay,” he says, pressing a soft kiss onto your lips. “Can you—”

He looks down, and you do too, noticing his half-hard member that you can faintly see the outline of beneath his soft shorts. The hand of yours that is caressing the side of his face slides down, stopping at the hem of his T-shirt to help him quickly tug it above his head. Your tank top comes shortly after, and then Jungkook's grey shorts until he's in a pair of form-fitting briefs. You took look at each other for a moment, and then Jungkook shyly rolls them down, stopping at his knees because he's still kneeling in the back of his low-roofed car.

You try not to stare at him—at his length—because you would have hated if he did that to you just moments ago. But it's hard not to when you have agreed to help him get hard, and also because in just a few minutes, he will be inside of you.

You get up on your knees then, too, and scoot toward him, reaching for him with a tentative touch. The moment you wrap your hand around his length he lets out a sigh, one that has goosebumps rising along your arms and neck. To occupy his own hands, Jungkook pulls you closer by placing a hand at the back of your head, locking your lips once again in a sloppy fashion as you start the slow pulls of your wrist.

Jungkook is incredibly reactive to your touch, letting out groans and small noises as you continue to feel his length harden and grow within the palm of your hand. You're sure it doesn't feel too good dry, so on a whim, you pause and tilt your head down, letting a line of spit dribble from your mouth and onto your hand before you return to your former ministrations. Jungkook kicks his head back at this new addition, letting you see the glorious expanse of his neck and throat, and you pepper kisses across his Adam's apple while he remains with his eyes closed and his jaw slack.

In this position, it doesn't take long for both of your knees to feel like they are on fire while pressed into the hard surface beneath you. Jungkook places a small kiss on your lips before he motions for you to lie down once again.

You do so with a stuttering pulse and a dry mouth, watching as he covers you with his body once again. When he is settled between your legs—his length pressed against the inside of your thigh—he searches your eyes for any sense of uncertainty in them.

You shake your head before he can ask, pulling him by his chin and bringing his mouth to graze lightly against yours. "I'm fine, I promise."

He nods, biting his lip, but positions himself at your entrance. The rain has picked up speed outside, it's incessant beating on the roof of the car almost sounding thunderous, and you're thankful for it's noisy cover as Jungkook—finally—begins to rock himself inch by glorious inch inside of you.

Your eyes flutter shut as he fills you up. "Ah, Jungkook—"

He pauses, immediately. "It hurts?"

You would laugh, if it weren't for the intensity of the situation and the way it feels like Jungkook was tailor-made for your insides. You shake your head furiously, instead.

"It's good—please—keep going."

Jungkook starts with gentle movements of his hips, almost grinding into you at a sensuous pace that has you breathing outward with each meeting of the tip of his cock with your quivering insides. He feels incredibly snug between your legs, like a key fitting into a lock, and you refuse to allow yourself to think of anything else in the moment other than the way your bodies begin to dance together in an intoxicating rhythm that has both of you releasing moans and sighs within the cadence of the rain on the roof.

As if you already weren't connected in the closest of ways, you want Jungkook closer, and so you card your hands through the strands of raven hair at the front of his forehead, dragging your nails along his scalp until you've reached the back of his head and can hook your thumbs underneath his ears to bring his mouth down to yours. You kiss sloppily for a few strokes until Jungkook pulls back, leaving his forehead pressed against yours. You look into those deep, onyx eyes again, and not for the first time, thank your lucky stars that you were able to meet him this particular summer, in all the summers you've experienced before and will experience after.

"You're beautiful," he breathes against your mouth. "God, you're so beautiful."

And, despite the waning self-confidence in yourself that has lasted throughout your teenage years, you believe him. In this moment, with Jungkook taking the time to kiss the words into your skin—a peck on your cheek, one on your chin, one on your shoulder—and his hips snapping in a lovely rhythm into yours, you believe him.

One of his palms skitters up your side to come to a rest at your breast, kneading at the cup of your bra—the only piece of clothing that is still on between the two of you. You open your eyes to see him smiling, shaking his head a little.

"What?" you say, using a hand to push his bangs back from his face again. "What is it?"

"I'm, um—" He looks at you bashfully. "Close. Already."

"Oh," you breathe out, blinking at him.

"Yeah, I'm sorry."

He slows down his movements in an effort to stop the feeling that is building in his stomach, a light red dusting the tops of his cheeks suddenly. You draw your hands up and down his broad shoulders and back in a soothing manner, not wanting him to get discouraged.

"It's okay," you murmur. "We'll just have to do it more so you can get better."

Despite himself, Jungkook laughs. "You're funny."

"I know," you say, brushing your nose against his. In a whisper, you manage to add, "Now, cum."

Jungkook blinks at the simple statement coming from your mouth, his lips parting a little from the command. They quickly fix themselves back into his signature smirk, and he places two hands on either side of your head. "Yes ma'm."

When he returns to his previous rocking movements inside of you, this time, they are a little more forceful. They seem to push the breath out of you, his hips snapping against yours in a way that you weren't aware he was capable of before now. Your mouth forms into a permanent 'o' as Jungkook drills into you, and you find yourself wrapping your legs around his waist to keep yourself grounded, searching around blindly with your hand for something to keep you steady. You feel a ridiculous amount of pressure building in your lower parts as he chases his own high, but you're not sure if the impending coil snap is going to make it in time for Jungkook's release.

As if he can sense your desperation, Jungkook grabs your hand and threads his fingers through yours. “I’m here,” he murmurs in your ear. “I’ve got you, Y/N.”

His gentle reassurance does more than he realizes because your body goes slack underneath him as the second, powerful wave of your orgasm crashes over you. You let out a woosh of air and relish in the lovely sensations skittering up and down your body, all because of a few simple words from that gorgeous mouth of his.

When Jungkook’s breathing picks up pace some moments later, he whines slightly in your ear. “I’m going to cum,” he says, breathlessly. “Can you use your hand again?”

You nod and when he removes himself, you reach for him, aiding his finish quickly with a few twists of your wrist. The two of you are breathing slightly heavier than normal, looking at each other in awe of what just transpired. But you feel sated, rather than guilty for making the decision to ultimately go further with Jungkook, and you can’t help the small smile that tugs at the corner of your mouth.

The rain beats on the hood of the car heavily, still, but it seems distant to the pounding of your heart as Jungkook closes the small space between you two. He captures your chin between his fingertips and tilts your mouth up to his, placing a few lingering, closed-mouth kisses there. You can feel his smile, and when you pull back, his eyes hold a bit of mischief in them that you’ve come to recognize and love.

Jungkook doesn’t miss a beat as he looks at the wet stain on floor beside the two of you, caused by his own ill-preparation of today’s events. He scratches the back of his neck bashfully, tilting his head to the side.

“Is there a self-serve car wash around here, somewhere?”

You laugh, picking up his briefs that are near your leg and throwing them at his chest. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

The two of you redress and climb back into the front seats, stealing little glances at each other and sharing intimate smiles—both of you just a tad bit more shy around the other for the rest of the evening despite everything that had transpired before.

#blue #elle speaks #jungkook x reader

159 notes · View notes

honeyedhoseok · 2 years

Text

I Hope It's Cold In New York | yg x reader

genre | kim yugyeom x reader au!

summary | angst, implied smut, fluff, lots of sweet scenes followed by spiraling - enjoy <3

listen along | the wrecks - i hope it's cold in new york

The paper shakes in Yugyeom’s hand before slipping through his stiff fingertips, fluttering somewhere near his feet.

His unfocused eyes can see it lying there—thankfully, face down—beside his scuffed up sneakers and the grocery bags he abandoned on the floor before sifting through today’s mail.

He’d think he was paralyzed from a few words on cardstock if it weren’t for the steady, drumming of his heart beat in his ears, the hum of the radiator cutting on, and the soft movement of his phone vibrating in his pocket against his thigh.

He pulls it out, his body acting of its own accord to see your name and contact picture lighting up his screen. Your timing has always been mysteriously perfect—or rather this time, a mysteriously perfect inconvenience.

His fingers tighten around the rectangular plastic device, and for just a second he thinks about launching it at the wall—at the satisfaction of hearing it crack against the plaster, hopefully breaking the screen and keeping him from seeing your smiling face in your contact picture looking at him.

But he doesn’t. He loosens his grip, presses the silence button and sits it on the counter beside him, hanging his head back so his watery, stinging vision is aimed at the popcorned ceiling of his new apartment instead.

He can’t answer just yet.

///

He can’t answer just yet.

The two of you are walking home from an outing downtown, and you are deliriously giggly and happy from a few too many glasses of wine. Yugyeom watches you sway in front of him, your eyes trained on the starless sky above for a few seconds before you look behind you as if you’re making sure he’s still there.

“Are you not going to say anything back?” you ask, smiling mischievously at him. “Cat got your tongue?”

It’s not that he isn’t going to answer—it’s that he’s scared of the only answer he wants to give you, and furthermore, how you will react to it.

Yugyeom had blown his cool facade at the bar when some guy approached you, grabbing at your hand, your waist, trying to convince you to let him buy you a drink, calling you baby and gorgeous.

The guy was that really annoying kind of handsome—he was probably popular with the masses throughout his life, used to getting what he wanted with just a cheeky smile and a good one-liner—and it pissed Yugyeom off to see him trying to pull the same tactics to get you to come with him.

He knows you can hold your own, he’s seen you do it plenty of times. But this time maybe it was the burn of the whiskey he’d let slide down his throat along with his self-control that convinced him to tap the guy on the shoulder right before throwing a solid, left punch into the side of his squared, cocky jaw.

His hand stings in remembrance and he knows without looking that his knuckle is split. It’s going to be a bitch to grip the handles of his motorcycle, but he’ll worry about that when the time comes. Right now, he has to get you home in one piece, and the way your heels scrape harshly against the sidewalk because you’ve reverted to not picking up your feet tells him all he needs to know—you’re drunk.

But also aware—aware enough to realize he has yet to answer your lingering question from earlier: Why?

As if on cue again, you stop on a dime in front of him and whip around on your heel.

Why did he punch that guy in the face? Why did he get mad? Why did he ruin both of your nights by getting you two kicked out of the bar for almost starting a fight?

Yugyeom is lucky his left is strong—if he hadn’t knocked the guy out cold there would have been a lot more to tend to than just a few split knuckles and his raging hangover tomorrow.

“I don’t know,” he says, finally. “I’m sorry.”

“I think you do know,” you answer playfully, tsk-ing at him. “But I’ll let you slide, for now.”

Yugyeom grins, glad you’re not one to linger for too uncomfortably long. “Are your feet hurting?”

Your eyebrows raise and your gaze follows his down to your strappy heels that have left red marks around your ankles and the top of your feet. “No,” you say stubbornly. “I’m fine.”

Yugyeom chuckles, shakes his head. “Come on,” he says, walking over to crouch in front of you. “Get on.”

“We still have a few blocks until we get to my apartment,” you say in argument, but you’re already reaching down to slide your feet out of the shoes and clamor onto his back despite your statement.

He stands when your warm body is pressed against his back, legs wrapped around his waist and ankles crossed in a tight hold. He hoists you up, making you laugh a little and your hand that is holding your shoes over his shoulders jumps, making the corner of your heel collide with his chest.

“Ow,” he says, smacking his teeth. “I offer to carry you and you’re trying to take me out with your Manolos.”

“I can’t afford Manolos,” you say, still giggling in his ear. He likes that your voice sounds soft, breathless. “We live in New York, remember?”

“I’m glad we do,” Yugyeom says. “If your place were any further from the bar, I wouldn’t be able to carry you.” You respond with a press of your foot to his abdomen, and he laughs again. “Okay, okay.”

New York is barely alive at this time of night in your neighborhood. Unlike what people expected out of the big city, the smaller suburbs tended to have a homier feel to them. Away from the billboards and skyscrapers, only the streetlights and the occasional car gliding past with glowing, red brake lights guide your way home.

You tuck your chin on top of his shoulder, and every breath from your nose tickles the underside of Yugyeom’s ear. He loves this, loves that you are so comfortable with him that you’d let him hold you like this in public, giggly from all the alcohol in your system on a warm Saturday night.

Yugyeom doesn’t like to think of himself as sentimental, but this might be the night he remembers most when he thinks of you later. After.

“Do you think you’ll live here forever?”

Whether you mean in the city, or in this moment, Yugyeom’s answer is the same: “Yes.”

“What about that job offer in the south you said you were considering?”

Something is dancing underneath your tone—worry or unease, maybe—and Yugyeom can’t tell why.

“So?” he says, hitching you up on his back again. He can see the front of your apartment building looming up ahead now. “You trying to get rid of me?”

“Never,” you say, squeezing your arms around him, speaking directly into his ear. “Who else would punch sleazy guys and save me from swollen feet?”

Yugyeom huffs out a breath at this and doesn’t say anything. You’re quiet for a little while, chin still tucked in the space between his shoulder and neck. It isn’t until he’s walking up the steps to your apartment complex that you say something, just when he thought maybe you’d fallen asleep.

“I just wanted a free drink,” you mumble to him. “I wasn’t going to go home with him.”

Yugyeom makes it inside somehow, pausing in the lobby so you can slide off his back onto the flattened carpet of the building entryway. He watches you slip your shoes back on for the short walk up to your floor, noticing that the red marks there previously on your feet have lightened.

You fumble around for a moment, pulling your door keys out of your clutch and smoothing your clothes into place. Your eyes then train on his, blinking sleepily up at him, lips soft around the corners before you confess: “I don’t want anyone else.”

This makes Yugyeom’s mouth split into a grin. He reaches out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear, lets his fingertips linger on the height of your cheekbone. “I know.”

“Good,” you say, stepping toward him, leaning up on your toes.

“Good,” he repeats, bending down to meet you in the middle so you can press your petal-like lips to his own.

Kissing you is like a storm rolling in on the beach—a phenomenon that takes Yugyeom by surprise each time at how quickly it escalates.

One moment your lips are barely touching in the lobby, and the next he is racing you up the stairwell to the third floor, pressing kisses against your exposed shoulder and neck while you giggle and fumble with your keys and the lock on the door.

Inside, your apartment is dark but tidy, and Yugyeom thanks the heavens above that he knows the layout well enough to scoop you up again into his arms and return his attention to kissing the gloss from your lips while he makes his way through.

The two of you don’t even make it to your bedroom—just to the couch in the living room, before Yugyeom is lying you down softly on the cushions. He stands to remove the thin fabric of his T-shirt, yanking it over the back of his head before he returns to the warmth of your body on the couch.

Your legs wrap around his waist, your hands finding purchase in his hair while the two of you attempt to make up for lost time with your bodies. Fumbling on the awkward length of the couch because of Yugyeom’s long legs, laughing between kisses and breathy sighs.

Yugyeom is in love.

You are wrapped around him on the smallest couch in the world, head tucked under his chin with your cheek pressed to his bare chest, and he is in love.

Your living room is blue with dim morning light that seeps through the upturned blinds. Outside, the city is just waking up and so are the two of you, despite your late night on the town and even later night with each other.

Your alarm clock goes off around 7AM—set accidentally out of habit. It’s Sunday, and neither of you have to work today.

You groan cutely, lips poked into a pout that could get you anything you wanted in the world. Yugyeom takes one hand off of your waist to fumble around on the side table above his head, smacking the lamp once with his hand before he feels the cool metal edge of your phone.

He hands it to you and lets you cut the alarm off, tossing it somewhere at the end of the couch where your legs are intertwined beneath what he thinks is also the smallest blanket in the world—but he’s okay with it. He’s okay with everything right now, and he pulls you into a tight embrace again, sleep still heavy at the corners of his eyes and within the droop of his mouth.

Just when he is drifting off, nose buried into the floral halo of your hair, he feels the slightest press of something against his chest, like the kiss of a butterfly.

Except it’s you that is kissing him, trailing with light breath up to the column of his throat. He swallows, hands tightening on the dip of your waist, smoothing over the curve of your ass.

You take this as a sign that he is very much awake now—and he is, how could he not be?—and you shift, throwing a leg over his waist and pushing him on his back. With a bit of awkward shuffling on the cushions that has both of you grinning like fools, you are straddling him, hands pressed on his ribs to center yourself.

Your face is swollen with the lightest dusting of sleep that still clouds your eyes and tangles your hair—but Yugyeom can see underneath the want that is simmering in the slightest part of your lips, the way your chest rises and falls. You are pressed against him in the most intimate of ways, only the thin fabric of both your underwear separating your hips from each other.

He decides to test you a little, despite the carnal urges rumbling underneath his skin to take you right here on the couch. Again.

“Good morning,” he murmurs, squeezing your hips. “What’s on the agenda today?”

You smooth your hands over his ribs, fingers trailing the dandelion tattoo on his right side, the lettering on the left, the bird on the cap on his shoulder.

“Laundry,” you say, and he thinks he sees the slightest twitch of your mouth in laughter. A joke he’s not in on, not yet.

His eyes drop from yours to the piles of clothes scattered in your living room—his T-shirt and pants, your frilly top and shorts from last night—and he nods. “Okay.”

You shift on his lap, and he lets out a grunt involuntarily. You had moved against him there, and whether it was on purpose or not, he can feel the blood rushing beneath his skin at the movement.

“These are dirty, too,” you say, hands smoothing down his front again, fingers playing at the waistband of his briefs. Your eyes shyly meet his, even though you are not a smidgen embarrassed. “Take them off so I can wash them?”

Yugyeom’s eyes flutter closed and he breathes out a laugh from his nose. You’re going to be the death of him.

“You’re insatiable,” he mumbles teasingly.

You grin at him, shrugging your shoulders in a What can you do? gesture. You lower yourself, breasts pressed against his chest, and instead of kissing his lips you hover there and then you pull back. Your eyebrows crease in confusion, and something else—embarrassment?

“What is it?” Yugyeom questions.

“I, um. I should probably go brush my teeth.”

Yugyeom blinks at you once before a laugh bubbles up his throat. He lets his head fall to the side, still laughing while you smack him lightly on the chest. “I’m being serious!”

He pulls you by your arms to lay on him once again, noses bumping against each other as he claims your mouth as his own, mumbling between heated presses of your lips, I don’t care.

Your answering giggle and then sigh as runs his hands up your back, is enough for Yugyeom. He’d listen to it on repeat if he could—the soundtrack of the rest of his life.

No, when you sigh his name later when you’re underneath him as he trails kisses down your jawline, across your bare chest and then lower—that should be the soundtrack of his life. He’s sure.

When the sun is higher in the sky and the apartment is stuffy with heat, the two of you finally separate from each other on the couch. Well, Yugyeom does at least, moving around to collect your garments from the floor to start the laundry. You laze on the couch a little longer, watching him move about your space with appreciative eyes, your head held up on one hand.

He opens a window, cuts on one fan and then another—the heat seems to sink further into his skin the more he moves around. What was the weather forecast for today, and why hadn’t he noticed the temperature before now? You had the dangerous ability to give him tunnel vision.

“It’s not even summer yet,” you complain. “I’m going to melt when it actually starts to get hotter here.”

“Just come over to mine.”

You sigh in response, flopping over on your back. Yugyeom’s large T-shirt now drapes over your body, and he picks your discarded one off the floor, throwing it in the laundry basket tucked under his arm.

“I’m going to take full advantage of the winter this year—you watch,” you say, sounding stubbornly sure of yourself. “I’m not going to complain at all. I’ll be walking on the streets to work with rosy cheeks and cold fingers and toes, so happy that it’s almost below freezing.”

“Oh yeah?” Yugyeom says mindlessly, walking to the small closet that holds your laundry facilities—despite not having air conditioning, at least you had this in your apartment.

“And I’m going to make you do all the winter activities with me,” you say. “Ice skating, seeing Christmas lights, sharing hot chocolate…”

Your voice trails off dreamily, and Yugyeom smiles a little to himself as he stuffs your laundry in the washing machine. The hopelessly romantic part of himself wants to linger a bit on your statement—you were including him in winter plans, in the future.

When he’s finished and the wash cycle is started, he turns around to see you laid on the couch, your hair splayed around you on the cushion, your chest rising and falling slightly as you stare at the ceiling in thought.

He puts the basket down and goes over to you, poking his head in your field of vision. Your expression softens when you see him before a grin splits your mouth.

“Well,” he says, “I hope it gets that cold here.”

“Me too,” you say, nodding. Distant, dreaming. “I hope it’s cold in New York.”

///

I hope it’s cold in New York an old friend, Chaeyoung, texts him one day. It’s blistering in the South rn

I want it cold when I come up

Omg what if it snows? I haven’t seen snow in years

Yugyeom looks at the messages coming in in between hurried bites of his sandwich for lunch, dusting off his hands quickly to respond back to her.

Why do you act like I live in Alaska he types with a smile, I’ll probably be COOL but not cold. Don’t get your hopes up

Chaeyoung, his one remaining friend from college, was coming to visit him later in the year. He was excited to see someone from his old life, the time where he lived in a smaller town and went to a small school before moving away from it all.

How are the people? She fires back. Treating you nice?

Yugyeom immediately thinks of you—of your sparkling eyes, tinkling laughter, windswept hair, aura filled with light and everything he thinks life in a new city is supposed to embody.

He crumples his sandwich wrapper up and stands, picking up his phone for one last message: Yeah. They are

However, in the following months, Yugyeom’s first stretch of living in the big city is a bit rocky.

Everyone he knows wants to live in New York. It holds its arms open as a big welcoming beacon full of opportunities and excitement and new faces—and while it’s absolutely true that it offers those things to both himself and you, there is turmoil underneath that comes along with those offerings.

Some of his problems are out of his control. The lock on his apartment door breaks and his landlord is out of town for three days before she can come back and do something about it—so he is forced to come home after work and set up camp in a chair in front of his door, nodding off every once in a while but jerking awake at the slightest sound that might be someone robbing him blind.

When someone steals his umbrella from beside the door at work on a particularly wet, miserable day outside, he’s forced to walk the blocks home with nothing to cover him from the cloud’s relentless downpour.

Taxi drivers are useless—they pass him on the road without even slowing down. He still has not mastered the art of hailing one.

Upon arriving, he pours enough water to fill a glass out of his loafers on the cement outside of his apartment building before trudging inside.

Other misfortunes, well, Yugyeom supposes they are technically in his control but also not. No matter how much he wishes to have some sort of say, he cannot and will not, ever try to control you.

He hasn’t seen you in a few weeks. To him it feels like lifetimes.

The expanse of five working days between him and his weekend also feels like lifetimes. Adulting is not for the weak.

He drops into a creaky kitchen chair after a long Friday at work, grateful for the weekend and determined to see you no matter the cost. Fingers dialing your number automatically, he waits for three rings before you pick up.

“Gyeom,” you answer. “What?”

His facial expression falls immediately—your words are slurring a little, consonants blending into vowels that even he picks up on with the shortest of sentences.

“Oh, are you out?” he asks. He absentmindedly takes the finger of his right hand and traces a small crack in his wooden table.

“Yeah, why?”

“By yourself?” His throat goes a little dry and he clears it. “I can come get you. I was just—”

“I don’t need you to come get me. I’m fine right here.”

“Where’s right here?” he asks softly. His left hand tightens around his cell phone. “Why are you—why didn’t you tell me? I could have met you.”

“You think I’m that lonely, huh?”

Yugyeom blinks. “What?”

“You think I only have you?” He hears you mockingly laugh through the receiver, alcohol tinting all of your actions. “That’s rich.”

He licks his lips, shaking his head even though you can’t see him. “That’s not what I meant.”

There’s silence on the other end, and he thinks maybe he lost you for a second until your voice comes crackling through the speaker, smaller this time. “What have you been doing?” you pause. “It’s been a long time.”

Your tone almost sounds accusatory, but he can’t be too sure.

“Working, Y/N—you know, that thing that adults do?”

He doesn’t mean to snap at you, but his annoyance is rising. Why were you avoiding the question of where you were, who you were with? How many drinks had you had?

“Yeah? I saw your Instagram.”

“What about it?”

“You were out the other night—you didn’t call me up.”

Yugyeom knows exactly what you are talking about: a quick picture he snapped on his way home from after a few drinks with his coworkers. They were last minute plans, and he wouldn’t have even gone if he didn’t desperately need something to knock the edge off after a ridiculously long, tiresome day.

“That’s not—that’s—why do you even care?” he manages.

“You’re right,” you mumble. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t care. Listen, I’ve gotta go.”

“Y/N, come on—” he says, before the line goes dead in his ear.

Talking to you, getting more and more agitated as the conversation went on, he has rubbed his finger across the crack in the kitchen table so much he has a splinter now. He holds it up to the light—a tiny, dark sliver underneath the tip of his skin that stings like a paper cut.

Yugyeom isn’t one to get too upset unless it’s over you. And right now, he feels like he needs to hit something.

///

“Hit something!” Chaeyoung yells at him, clapping her hands from her seat. “At least one pin, Yugyeom, come on!”

Yugyeom squints at the pins in front of him, attempting to listen to Chae’s encouragement. But honestly with the lights and a few full glasses of beer from the pitcher on the table, it doesn’t matter how hard he concentrates: he just sucks at bowling.

He’s going to try anyway, because watching him is not just Chaeyoung, but a few of his friends from work—Jaehyun, Lia, and Mingyu—and you, of course. The most important of all.

“Try standing a little to the left,” Jaehyun coaches. “Or maybe like—as far from the right gutter as possible. You know?”

Chaeyoung laughs but smacks his arm. “We’re on the same team, you’re supposed to be supportive!”

Yugyeom flips him off before repositioning his hand on the ball, lining up his eyesight and sending it as straight down the lane as he can. Chaeyoung and Jaehyun stand up from their seats just as Yugyeom’s ball gets about halfway down the lane, looking like it’s actually going to hit something this time.

It makes a satisfying crack on the far right—three pins down.

They yell and clap like you all just won the super bowl, and tables nearby turn to look. Yugyeom laughs, a little embarrassed, but mostly just glad he can say he didn’t get a complete zero at the end of the game. He returns to the table in high spirits, smacking hands for high fives, and he’s glad to see you smiling delightedly at him, too.

“Nice job,” you murmur from beside him. “I thought Chaeyoung was going to have an aneurysm if you didn’t help them out a little.”

Yugyeom scoffs, turning to look at the scoreboard and then back to you. “We’re still losing.”

“Yeah, but now you’re losing by twenty-seven points instead of thirty.”

You two grin at each other under the dim lighting, and Yugyeom wants to kiss you. So he does--quickly, on the corner of your mouth. “Thanks.”

He’s not too sure how you are about PDA. Sometimes he can do it and other times he can’t, he just has to test the waters every time to see what mood you’re in. But he doesn’t mind.

You seem dazed by the action, maybe even slightly surprised. You glance around at the others who are too focused on Lia bowling her turn to notice and press your lips quick and soft against his in return. You pull back, trying not to break out into a grin at the little sneaky gesture.

The kiss lasts less than a second but it’s enough for Yugyeom to feel a little prick of something underneath his skin, looking at you under the hazy, fluorescent lighting. It starts as a little shiver on the back of his neck, his eyes trailing your features from one smooth line to the other.

You are so, so pretty. And he almost says it, right there. The truth behind all his bottled-up feelings.

In a fucking bowling alley.

“Yugyeom,” Jaehyun calls, breaking the two of you out of your reverie. “Want to come with me to get a beer refill before your turn?”

He nods and separates himself from you, giving your knee a quick squeeze under the table before he follows Jaehyun to the other side of the bowling alley. There’s a line, so they fall into it, watching as the cashier behind the counter struggles to keep with the demand on a Saturday night.

“Who wanted more beer?” Yugyeom asks, raising an eyebrow.

Jaehyun grins. “Me. I think we might be the only two drinking it at this point.”

Yugyeom laughs. He’s glad for this distraction, honestly. He needed to do something away from the others, away from your comforting gaze and hand that continued to find his underneath the table in between bowling turns.

He needs to get his head on straight.

“So,” Jaehyun says, trying to sound casual. “Y/N seems cool.”

Yugyeom’s eyebrows raise at the mention of your name. “Oh, yeah, she’s pretty cool. I told you she was.”

“You did,” Jaehyun says, nodding. “What you didn’t tell me was that you two were dating.”

Yugyeom grins, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shrugging his shoulders a little. “It didn’t come up.”

“In the three million things you’ve told me about her, that didn’t come up, huh?”

Yugyeom rocks on his feet a little, feeling giddy and childish at the conversation that is unfolding. “We’re just—hanging out. You know? Casual.”

Jaehyun’s eyes narrow and he crosses his arms. “Okay, yeah sure. Hanging out,” he repeats. “I look like this when I’m hanging out with someone, too. Definitely.” He gestures to Yugyeom’s rocking, restless body and they both look at each other for a beat before bursting into laughter.

“I don’t know if we’re friends like this yet, but just—be careful,” Jaehyun says as the line moves up a few moments later. Yugyeom’s eyebrows crease over his eyes before he realizes Jaehyun is still talking about you. “You might be getting in over your head.”

Yugyeom doesn’t have time to ask exactly what he means by this because a second cashier is stepping up to help the struggling one, and she beckons them over with a call and wave of her hand to take their order.

Jaehyun orders a pitcher of beer and a plate of nachos for the table, and also a cup of water for Yugyeom—or, as he tells the cashier, my lovesick friend, here.

Yugyeom smacks his lips distastefully when he’s handed the cup, but he gulps it down anyways. His throat is suddenly a little tight at Jaehyun’s friendly warning.

Even though Yugyeom doesn’t want to understand, he does. He’s felt it all along.

He wishes things didn’t feel like they were slowly slipping through his fingers, somehow. But they are.

His hands feel sweaty when he sits back down at the table, and he wipes them on his jeans a few times. You raise an eyebrow at the sudden anxiety written all over his face—you okay?

He doesn’t know, but he nods anyway.

“You know what I mean?”

Yugyeom doesn’t know, but he nods anyway. Or, at least he shifts his head a little against his pillow in answer.

The two of you are lying in his bed after getting home from another round of drinks after the bowling alley. You are facing each other on opposite pillows, but your legs are tangled underneath the sheets, your toes brushing his ankle whenever you move.

Outside his shut bedroom door, Chaeyoung is sleeping on his couch, limbs sprawled out in post-drinking bliss across the cushions. When Yugyeom went to get some water earlier, she was actually snoring, which made him laugh a little.

You two were talking just now, like you always do before falling asleep beside each other. But something is different about you.

You’re here with him, in his bed, in his arms. But the words you’ve just whispered to him in the dark hurt his feelings.

“Sometimes when I’m with you, with your friends—I just. I feel more alone than usual.”

“What?” he’d asked, reaching for you out of instinct and pulling you closer. “What are you saying? Did someone say something to you while I was bowling?”

“No,” you said, your eyebrows creasing. “It’s just, they’re not my friends, they’re yours. And I see you having a good time with them—it’s selfish, but it makes me feel left out, somehow.”

Yugyeom blinked at you in the darkness. The moonlight shining through his bedroom window highlighted the crest of your cheekbone, throwing a shadow over the side of your face closest to the pillow. Where was this coming from?

You’d tucked your head down, gaze dropping from his and he couldn’t stand it. He moved his hand to lift your chin back up, making you look at him.

“Left out?” he repeated. “You have so many people that care—why are you comparing yourself to me at all?”

You didn’t respond so he pressed a hard kiss against your forehead, stroking a hand down the back of your head and smoothing your hair.

“You’re crazy,” he said, exasperated. “You have so many people around you that care about you, Y/N. I don’t understand.”

You spoke in a soft voice against his throat, his chest. “Not really though—you know what I mean?”

Yugyeom somehow feels the distance between you two more than usual, and he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling your lower half flush against his body. You feel fragile in his arms.

This is a conversation you two have had before, he realizes suddenly. His mind drifts back to what you said on the phone that night he’d called, when you were drunk.

“You think I’m that lonely, huh?” “You think I only have you? That’s rich.”

He isn’t sure what to think now—you’d been drinking then, and even though you’re a lot more sober here in his bed, he can’t tell which version of your story is the truth. Drunk words are sober thoughts, after all. Both make him sad in different ways.

He pulls back and your eyelids that had floated closed flutter open, gaze searching his face in earnest.

“You mean so much to me,” he breathes in the darkness, pressing a kiss against your mouth lightly. “Do you at least know that?”

You nod against the pillow, giving him a small smile and tilting your head up a little more to chase after his mouth, deepen the next kiss.

Your lips are cold against his.

///

Your lips are cold against his.

Yugyeom and you are standing outside of the stadium downtown, waiting in the check-in line. It’s chilly today, the temperatures dipping lower as the sun sinks behind the horizon, and Yugyeom is hugging you for warmth since the line is slow.

It’s almost winter.

He’s sure you’re bothering the other people around you—like the pictures of annoying couples in amusement park lines he sees online—but it doesn’t really matter to him.

You are giddy with laughter because this is your first hockey game, and his baseball cap bumps against your forehead as he presses a chaste kiss to your mouth. “You’re going to love it.”

“Let’s hope so—I did some research last night on the team. I pretty much know their names now.”

Yugyeom intertwines his fingers together behind your back, both of your thick jackets making the action almost impossible, but he gets it after a few tries.

“Yeah?” he asks. “Tell me.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Let me hear some names!”

“You’re making me nervous. I’m forgetting all of them!”

Yugyeom throws his head back in laughter. “Sure, Y/N. Sure.”

Your eyes twinkle at him, filled with mirth and much more warmth than you two are currently standing outside in. The check-in line shuffles forward a few paces and Yugyeom switches to standing behind you, letting his arms drape overtop of your shorter frame.

“You really never went to a game when you were younger?” Yugyeom hums in your ear. “I can’t believe it.”

“My parents didn’t do much together—they were too busy,” you say with a sigh. “My mom was a career woman, chasing the next big promotion and my dad, well he was chasing everything but my mom.”

Yugyeom blinks—you didn’t talk much about your family, so this was the first time he’d heard anything concrete about them.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, squeezing you a little. “When did you realize?”

You attempt to shrug underneath the weight of his arms. “Probably a year before they got divorced—I was like thirteen.”

“Where’s your mom now?”

You’re quiet for a moment. “Still career chasing, I suppose. We haven’t spoken in a few years.”

Yugyeom purses his lips in thought, not wanting to make the mood sour. “You ever had a stadium corndog?”

A smile spreads across your face at the change of subject. “I feel like I know where this is going.”

“Our first stop is the concession stand, then,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s going to change your life.”

Once inside, he does indeed buy you a corndog and a soda, and anything else you would have wanted if you’d asked.

You watch with excited eyes as the hockey players zoom up and down the rink, bouncing in your seat when things get heated near the goal, gasping when the players push each other against the glass or start arguments on the ice.

“This is amazing!” you say at one point, looking over at Yugyeom—who, if he’s being honest, has split his attention 70-30 with you beside him and the game unfolding beneath your nosebleed seats. “Promise me we’ll come again. When’s the next one?”

///

“When’s the next one?”

Yugyeom is sitting in the conference room at work, looking into the concerned eyes of his boss, Jaebum. After a few moments of silence, Jaebum’s serious facade cracks, and he laughs at the question that has just tumbled over Yugyeom’s lips.

“What do you mean when is the next one?” he says. “There is no next one—it’s this opportunity, or never. You can’t put this off any longer if you want to change departments.”

Yugyeom had been called into the office, again, to discuss the training program in Ft. Lauderdale his company was offering. It was a short flight but hours by car, and states away from you. States. All the way down at the bottom of the east coast while New York sat at the top.

“Why don’t you want to go?” Jaebum asks. “It’s a really good opportunity. You’re a good worker and a smart kid. You deserve more money and the advancement this program could give you. Don’t you want that?”

Yugyeom does want that. That’s the whole reason he moved to the big city: it’s promises of a steady career and the lifestyle that came with it were so enticing he packed up everything without a single look over his shoulder for his past life.

Then he found you here, and he knew that despite all its shortcomings, New York felt like where he was supposed to be. Things were so good between you two again. And now he was faced with the opportunity of leaving—fifteen weeks away from the place he was just starting to like home in—but the rewards after he came back were well, unprecedented. He was sure to get promoted and who knew what else after?

Yugyeom looks up from his hands balled into fists on the table.

“Can I have tonight to think about it?”

Jaebum looks like he wants to object, but he runs a hand over his face and nods instead. “Tonight, only. Come back tomorrow with a solid answer because we need to get your flight and housing figured out if you’re going to go—they expect you there before November first.”

That was less than two weeks away. He’d spend the whole winter in the sunny climate of the South and miss everything here. And you.

“Yes sir.”

The feeling of defeat lingers as Yugyeom leaves the office that day. It’s defeat tinted with hopelessness—he doesn’t feel like he has much of a choice. He’s young and has to think about the opportunities he’s given and what life he envisions for himself in the future.

He just hopes you’ll understand, too.

He dials your number as he’s walking out of the building.

“Can I come over tonight?”

“Of course, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I just—” Yugyeom runs a hand through his hair in exasperation. “I need to talk to you.”

“Okay,” you say, sounding unsure. “Um, well, I’ll be home at like 9. I think. Is that too late?”

Yugyeom presses the crosswalk button and waits, feeling restless. “Why? Is your team working over again?”

“No. Well, I mean, yeah, they are. They always are. It’s no big deal though—I’ll see you later?”

“Okay,” Yugyeom says right before the line goes dead in his ear.

The crosswalk sign dings, and he makes his way to his apartment. He spends the three hours between getting home and seeing you tidying up his place—he’s not much of a stickler for a deep clean but he needs something to do with his hands. Keeping his hands busy keeps his mind busy, for the most part.

Walking up the stairs to your apartment feels like he’s taking his time on purpose since he’s early, lingering in the stairwell for a moment before he finishes the walk to your door. It’s only 8:45 and you said nine, but he can’t stand the thought of sitting on his couch or doing another mindless task to pass the time.

Yugyeom needs to see you, be near you, touch you now.

He hopes maybe you’re home early. It wouldn’t hurt to check—but just as he is lifting a fist to knock, your door swings open and he comes face to face with a familiar

His memory of the night might be a little fuzzy around the edges, but Yugyeom remembers the satisfying feeling of cracking the guy in front of him across the face with his knuckles.

“Hey man,” he says, and Yugyeom is too surprised to even say anything back. He pushes past him and into your apartment to see you tidying up what looks like a delicious dinner for two in the kitchen.

You freeze in your tracks when you realize it’s not him that has come back inside, but Yugyeom, standing just outside of your peripheral vision.

“What the fuck is this?” Yugyeom manages. “What was he doing here?”

You’re wearing a pretty dress, hair curled into big ringlets and your makeup done. You swallow, blinking at him. “Yugyeom, I—”

“Y/N.” It’s him again, having followed Yugyeom back into the apartment after his apparent brush off earlier. “You okay?”

“Okay?” Yugyeom laughs, turning to look at him. “Why wouldn’t she be okay? I would never do anything to hurt her.”

He looks incredulous. “Hey, I don’t know—”

You take a few steps forward, holding a hand up in warning. “Mark, it’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it, it’s just Yugyeom.”

Just Yugyeom. For some reason the words make him more angry than anything else about this whole situation. Just Yugyeom. Nothing more.

Mark looks between you two a few times, trying to judge the situation accurately. You nod at him and he turns to leave. Finally, finally, when the door is shut behind him, Yugyeom feels himself deflate a little. It’s just the two of you now, but he feels more alone than ever.

“You were having dinner with him,” Yugyeom says. It’s not a question. “Why?”

You have turned your back to him to finish washing the dishes, but he wishes he could see the expression on your face—something, anything, to let him know he has it all wrong.

“He’s a friend,” you say softly.

“He wasn’t a friend at the bar that night, Y/N,” Yugyeom answers. “You’ve got to be joking.”

The silence is suffocating. Yugyeom feels like he can’t breathe in the few seconds that pass.

“What did you need to talk to me about, since you’re so insistent on coming over.” You rinse out a glass under the steady stream of water. “I told you nine.”

“I—” Yugyeom can’t believe the cold intent that is lingering in your voice. The feeling of everything slipping through his hands comes back suddenly, and he balls them into fists at his side. “I’m leaving.”

A dish clatters in the sink. “What?”

His heart is a hummingbird in his chest. He hopes this comes as a surprise in the worst of ways. “Training seminar. Our sister company in Ft. Lauderdale has an opening and my boss, Jaebum, he wants me to go.”

“Huh.” You cut off the water and dry your hands on a dish towel, turning to face him as you rest against the counter. Your expression is stony. “Well I can’t say I didn’t see this was coming.”

“Is that why you did this?”

Though he wishes his voice was steady, strong, it comes out whiny and so unlike him. Desperate. Pleading.

“Did what?”

“Is that why you’ve been, you’ve been—pulling away.” Your eyes dart away from his and he knows he’s hit the nail on the head. “I thought it was me, but really—”

You cross your arms over your chest. “Go on, Yugyeom. Blame all of this on me.”

“I’m not blaming anyone,” he says, taking a step toward you. He sees you visibly shrink against the counter. “I’m trying to understand why you would call Mark over for dinner at your place, by yourselves, and you’re—you’re dressed like that.”

He takes in the scene around him again, your distance, your dismissive nature toward him lately, and tries to find a better explanation for it all. “Am I a joke to you?”

“What?”

“Was this all just a joke to you?” he says, licking his lips, running a hand through his hair. “Tell me the truth. Everything that happened between us—it didn’t matter to you?”

“What, of course it mattered. Why would you even assume that?”

“Then why do you hate the thought of being with me so bad?”

“I don’t! I never have!”

Your response is too quick, too rehearsed, almost. You both know it.

“You and me, we’re—we’re just too different,” you try to clarify. Your eyes are welling with tears now, urgency lacing your tone. “We’re not meant to be together.”

Yugyeom’s mouth drops open before he can stop it. That’s the last thing he expected you to say—he almost thinks that maybe he’d prefer you tell him it was a mistake. That you were getting too comfortable and didn’t know how to process it, so you called Mark up—not that you two weren’t meant to be together. It’s not true. He refuses to believe it at all.

You’re full-on crying now, big crocodile tears falling down your cheeks and onto the collar of your dress. Yugyeom feels like he’s going to throw up.

He doesn’t, but instead his words come up like vomit, all in a rush because he has to let you know. If this is it, he has to let you know how he felt just this once, so that you can know if anything, at least one of you believed in an us. And that’s all that matters.

“Y/N, I loved you.” He says, softly, looking at you but you are looking at the ground, blinking away the water on your lash line. “No.” He corrects himself: “I love you.”

Your shoulders hunch like you are trying to curl in on yourself and on this conversation, but then you look up at him, lower lip trembling.

“I don’t want you to go,” you say, shaking your head. “Don’t go to Ft. Lauderdale. Please. I know it’s selfish, but I am.”

It’s funny—all these months he thought you two were building something strong and steady that would survive this, but in reality you both need more time. Yugyeom needs it to prove to you how much you mean to him, how much he enjoys your time and your presence and doesn’t need anything else. And you, you need it to soften the walls around your heart and let the truth of his feelings in.

He takes you in his arms then, ignoring the way your shoulders shake with sobs and presses kisses over and over into the soft floral halo of your hair.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

He was a fool to think that you’d wait for him.

The three months in Ft. Lauderdale are excruciatingly long, and only because there’s nothing to stop Yugyeom from thinking of you and how with each passing week he feels more space and distance growing between you two.

Yugyeom works hard. He puts his all into his training because that’s what he’s here for—if he’s going to mess up his personal life for this opportunity, the least he can do is take it seriously. He rubs elbows with the right people at the training center, putting on a facade of a person who really, really wants to be there. Wants to succeed. Wants to be something.

He sends you messages when he can, calls you when he can—but there’s no mistaking the far away sound in your voice when you pick up the phone, humming vague answers as Yugyeom tells you about his day, not even really listening sometimes. You tell him you just have a lot on your mind when he asks you about it, and when he tries to get you to elaborate, you don’t. So he stops asking.

Eventually, you stop answering when he calls, and soon after even his text messages go unread.

He’s unsettled in the small, stale hotel room he stays in for the training. He finds himself pacing the floor most nights after work, wondering what you are doing when you ignore his second, third, fourth call.

One night Yugyeom finds himself at a bar, three whiskey drinks deep when you send him a message.

Wish you were here

His hand curls around the plastic casing of his phone, wishing for once you would think about how it feels when you do things like this to him. When you ignore him for days and then send him something so confusing in the middle of the night. He’s walking a tightrope with you, only to realize there is no other side—he won’t get the relief of stepping on solid ground again because you will always keep him in limbo even if you don’t mean to.

The bartender asks him if he wants another, pulling Yugyeom’s empty glass off the bar coaster and tossing the melted ice. Yugyeom nods, looking back at his phone, his fingers flying over the keyboard on the screen.

Yeah me too

Nothing, he decides, is worse than longing.

///

Nothing, he decides, is worse than longing.

But he’s wrong. This, this is worse than longing.

He arrives home on a cold day at the end of January, and he knows his first stop after riding the subway into the city is the grocery store. Everything in his fridge has be spoiled by now, and it’s better to get it before the exhaustion of being back home creeps on him and has him knocked out cold in his bed.

The market is quiet for a Sunday evening, and he quickly gets some frozen meals for the week, some fresh fruit that’s on sale, a few snacks for work and some beer. Because he deserves it.

The cashier raises her eyebrows at him, recognizing his face from the many, many times he’s been in the store since moving in just down the block.

“You’re back!” she says, grinning. She’s a sweet girl with a round face—one he immediately realized meant she was too young for him. But a face happy to see him is one that he will take tonight.

“I am,” he responds, pulling out the rest of his items and putting them on the conveyor belt slowly inching along. “You working late?”

“Until ten.” She pouts, the register beeping as she swipes his items. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

Yugyeom’s chest tightens, but he manages to keep a straight face. “Oh, it’s late so I let her stay behind this time.”

The cashier nods, smiles hopefully, and drops the conversation because she’s at the end of Yugyeom’s cart. She tells him his total and bags his things, her hand accidentally bumping his as she hands them to him. Her face goes red, and Yugyeom feels bad, wishing he could tell her the reality of her crush is futile, but it’s not worth it right now.

His apartment is dark and stale when he opens the door, almost tripping over the mail slipped under the door by his landlord in his absence. It’s a bunch of bills that he already paid online, a few coupons, some sales papers from stores in town. White card stock addressed to him catches his eye amidst the pile, and he quickly sets the groceries near his feet, picking it up as he closes the front door behind him.

Please join us in celebrating the wedding of…

Yugyeom doesn’t even finish reading before his vision goes blurry, the card slipping through his trembling fingers and fluttering in the air. As it flips over and over, catching on an invisible wind current, Yugyeom can still see glimpses of your name and someone else's, written in elegant cursive on the stiff paper.

This is worse than longing, he’s absolutely positive.

Three months had seemed excruciatingly long to him and now he realizes why. Three months was enough time to end and begin anew when it came to you.

Your slow silence, the way it felt like you were fading—no, slipping—through his grasp just like the card stock had done a few moments before. He was just too ignorant to realize.

There’s a buzzing in his ears that he thinks is his rapid thoughts but is actually his phone in his back pocket, and when he pulls the screen into his vision he realizes it’s you calling.

What could you possibly have to say to him at this moment? What could you say that would make this all make sense, make the last year of his life not feel like it was worth nothing?

You can’t, he realizes—and so he silences the call with a press of a button, the first angry tear making its way over his eyelid, onto his cheek as he tilts his head back and looks at the ugly ceiling of his apartment.

He can’t answer just yet.

#yugyeom x reader #yugyeom angst #yugyeom fic #kim yugyeom x reader #got7 imagines #yugyeom smut #yugyeom scenarios

69 notes · View notes