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lavientae · 1 year

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this is so heartbreaking yet beutiful :( the whole time, i was just hoping one of them would say 'i love u' to the other out loud, wishing it would change something and they would finally stay together. im so sad :( anyways, u wrote it so beautifully, im so glad i stumbled upon this masterpiece. anyways,,,, im secretly hoping for an alternative ending where they end up together sue me :D

if you don't ask me to stay | kth

✰ pairing: taehyung x reader ✰ warnings: light smut (18+ only, minors DNI), ft. penetrative sex; Big Angst; exes-to-lovers (?); a friends with benefits (???) arrangement; a breakup but not really; simping about friendships; lots of alcohol; a bad robert frost reference; just kind of sad and nostalgic vibes all around; not a happy ending (... yet) ✰ word count: 4.0k ✰ note: happy birthday to kim taehyung, bangtan’s resident menace ❤️ y’all know how much i struggled with the holiday oneshot i was writing, but i loved the general idea too much to let it go and reworked it into this shorter fic. it’s very personal to me, so i hope y’all uhhh don’t hate it 😬

✰ listened to: ’tis the damn season - taylor swift (i highly recommend listening to this at some point, before or after you read - this song changed my life and inspired this whole thing)

—

You've always loved the way the morning light leaks into Taehyung's bedroom. He's never awake in time to see it, but you are—you look up from where you lie under the weight of his limbs resting heavy atop yours, blinking yourself awake to the watery rays slanting across his sheets and dappling the floor.

Somehow, though, it doesn't feel like a promise of a new day so much as it feels like a lamp in an interrogation room. Throwing all of your flaws into sharp relief; thrusting your sins into the spotlight.

You always wake up before he does. He’ll sleep for hours after sunrise, sleep away half the day. Turn his back to the window and smother his face into the sheets, letting his dreams reclaim him. You’d love to do that, too, but something about lying in a bed that’s not your own yanks you to consciousness at dawn. Keeps your eyes from slipping shut again.

Around you, the house sits still, unperturbed, holding its breath. His parents and siblings have left for the holidays, the way they do every year—gone for the week to visit family in the countryside. For the last five years, Taehyung’s begged off this trip. The holidays are prime photography season, he’ll say. The best time to go shoot Christmas lights and snow on riverbanks and desolate city streets. When the money’s running low, he’ll do winter weddings, family sessions. He can’t afford to take this week off. And anyway, he’ll join them for their trip in July.

What they don’t know is that he spends every single one of those days with you.

You come back to this town for the final week of December every year, despite your parents having moved abroad years ago—despite the fact that this town holds little for you except the ghosts of memories past. There isn't a family home with a Christmas tree and a beloved pet dog, your favorite haunts have shut down to make room for big box stores, and most of your friends moved to Seoul for college and never looked back.

So, there really isn't anything left tying you to this place. But every December, you still return for... whatever this is. For this borderless, shapeless thing you have with Taehyung, this unidentifiable arrangement that’s persisted since your first winter back and continued every year since.

You know it can't go on forever, but somehow, that unpleasant truth goes forgotten every time.

—

It always starts the same way.

Every year, Jeongguk throws a holiday party, a truly indulgent and lawless affair he’s lazily christened “Guk-mas.” It’s always at his place, a massive loft downtown, because his parents are grossly wealthy and grossly negligent and let him live there alone starting in his senior year of high school. (As Jeongguk so tastefully put it, they were “sick of his shit.”) So every winter, you get the mass group text that summons you to his front door on Christmas Eve, with wine in one hand and soju in the other.

His place stays the same, but it also doesn’t. In true spoiled-brat-nepo-baby fashion, Jeongguk has an improbably successful art career, and the massive canvases leaning against the wall and propped up on easels change every time. You usually stop to admire them, holding a glass of whatever in your hand. The first year, a red Solo cup full of lukewarm beer from a questionable keg. This year, a mug of mulled wine. (You're honestly impressed with Jeongguk's attempts to class up these gatherings over the years, but you'd rather get run over by a snow plow than admit it to him.)

You’re staring at his latest masterpiece, a canvas splotched with interwoven streaks of indigo and navy and cerulean, and you’re trying for the life of you to find deeper meaning in it while the party slowly picks up around you. The cast of characters, like the setting, goes unchanged: Park Jimin, Kim Namjoon, Jung Hoseok, Kim Seokjin, the people who occupied your orbit regularly in high school. (The others are friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, because Jeongguk has an incurable habit of shouting, "The more the merrier!") Even the infamously reserved and antisocial Min Yoongi makes his appearance, hovering quietly at the edges of the party and making nice in his understated, polite way. It’s the one time of the year you all get together to catch up on each others’ lives, and no one dares miss it.

Hoseok is the first to greet you, since he's always the first of your friends to show up. He has on a pair of light-up elf ears and the world's brightest smile, and it’s dumb, but you almost choke up. Because living in Seoul alone is lonely, your job makes it almost impossible to befriend anyone without a superiority complex, and above all, it's just nice to see Hoseok. A familiar face, a comfort in your unrecognizable life. When you hug him, he smells like clean sheets, new leather, sunlight. He smells like the time you all went to the arcade after getting gopchang and fell on the floor laughing, clutching each other in tears because Jeongguk climbed on top of the basketball machine and cheated until the owner arrived to scream at him.

Everyone else arrives, the massive and open space shrinking as bodies trickle in, Jeongguk having to turn up the volume on his fancy speakers when the music becomes inaudible over the cacophony of squealed greetings. You raise yourself on your tiptoes to hug Namjoon, even though he always pats your back awkwardly like you’re a small child. Let Jeongguk ladle you two more cups of wine. Ask Yoongi how he's been, receive a dry "same old" and the barest hint of a smile in response. In the distance, you hear Seokjin bickering with the host. Look up to see the two of them kicking each other, executing a fascinating but appalling handshake that you don't even want to know about.

You might have whisked yourself off to Seoul at the first opportunity, even seriously contemplated moving with your parents abroad and getting a job there, but you could never stay away from these people. You've never quite been able to recapture the complete safety you feel when you're surrounded by your old friends—who know you intimately, who have seen you through your awkward years and enthusiastically bullied you for it, but love you in a way only they can. Friends you almost never see, but with whom you feel like no time has passed at all when you do catch up. Here, this group… it takes this weird, unwieldy weight off your shoulders. This inescapable pressure to be someone, to do something. Reminds you of a little bit of who you used to be, before you ran away. Before you backed yourself into a corner.

Later, as the loft fills with people and the din escalates to the point of being deafening, you sit with everyone else on Jeongguk’s paint-stained couches. You usually wind up asking more about everyone else’s lives than sharing news of your own, but you don’t mind: There isn’t much to say, because your life hasn't changed all that much in the last five years. There isn't a boyfriend, your family picked up and moved to New Jersey five years ago, and you've been at the same marketing agency since graduating college. But it's fine—really. You enjoy hearing about Jeongguk's newest exhibits, Jimin’s upcoming wedding. You even like listening to Hoseok talk about his skyrocketing fashion label—you couldn't give a shit about his FW collection, but the way his eyes light up has you hanging onto his every word.

About two hours into the party, once you've all caught up on the major life updates and Jeongguk's begun whining for everyone to join him for flip cup, the last member of your little crew walks in. Late, because of course he is. The space is now far too packed and hectic for anyone to notice when the door opens, but you do, your eyes shooting right to the entryway. You’ve always been able to pick up on Taehyung’s presence like that. A sixth sense, just for him.

He hangs his coat on the rack by the door, shakes the snow out of his hair. It's back to his natural black-brown this year, and you find yourself missing when it was blue and red and everything in between. Missing the years when hair color felt like an accessory, as meaningless and interchangeable as socks or a necklace.

You lock eyes across the space, over the heads of already-wasted partygoers, across the beams of multicolored lights and halfhearted Christmas decorations. He nods, you nod. And you stay in your separate circles until midnight, roaming around and near each other but never quite touching.

Midnight is when Jeongguk, like the holiday menace he is, brings out the real stuff: stronger soju, vodka, the acrid baijiu that makes you gag just at the sight of the bottle. He turns up the music loud enough for noise complaints, but never receives any. You take way more shots than you should, egged on by an absolutely blasted Jimin and a screaming Seokjin, until your surroundings blur into nothing and the music becomes little more than a dull, pounding roar.

All of a sudden, it becomes way too easy to shake off whatever reservations you have left about striking up a conversation with your ex-boyfriend-turned-something. Becomes way too easy to take one last shot, the rush of alcohol thumping in your ears and burning in your chest, and stumble between the crushed heat of people to get to the person standing alone by the stereo.

It takes almost nothing to walk up to Taehyung. To ask him how he's been, to pluck an invisible thread off his collar. To lean in—closer, closer, closer, until you can see the wine staining his lips. Until there’s hardly any distance between you at all.

It's not long after that you and Taehyung manage to end up on the veranda alone. Outside, with the crisp air and the gorgeous view of the city lights, you feel… safer. Braver. Bolder. Like the night will cushion your fall.

You talk. You laugh. Everyone’s having too much fun inside to notice that the two of you are missing. As the night darkens and the guests dwindle in number, your conversation heats up just a bit, but neither of your hearts are in it. You have nothing new to say to each other; your exchanges hold nothing but the barest traces of bitterness, long washed away by years of whatever it is you’ve been doing.

You're the one who left me.

But you chose not to come with me, and yet I still come back for you every year.

And you leave me every year, too.

Eventually, he reaches out to hold your hand, the way he always does when he feels unsure of himself. And you let him.

In the end, it doesn't matter what you say, because it always ends the same way, too. Once everyone's too drunk to remember anything—the cue being the distinct sound of Namjoon retching in the guest bathroom—you and Taehyung quietly make your exit. You walk off the alcohol outside, leaving barely visible footprints in the thin layer of snow. End up in his car, and he leans over the gearshift and kisses you breathless, almost like he wants to consume you whole. Like he has a lot to make up for. And then the two of you drive off into the night, together.

Every year, it's the same.

—

The first year it happened, it felt like a dream. A complete fiction, one you couldn’t have made up if you tried.

You were a lot younger, then. Twenty-two, fresh out of college. A baby, when you think back on it. So worn thin already by your nascent life in Seoul, so beaten shapeless by the unfamiliar and relentless demands of city life, that coming back home felt like a refuge, even if your parents had packed up and effectively left you to fend for yourself. Whatever, you reasoned—you were an Adult, with a Full-Time Job and your Own Apartment, and you were doing Just Fine, Thanks.

But maybe, just maybe, you hadn’t been doing fine. Because, yes, you’d spent the better part of your four years in college thinking about Taehyung, your first and only love, the high school sweetheart you’d left behind to chase your dreams in Seoul. Spent a lot of that time regretting, wondering what might have been, and measuring every boy you dated against the one you’d let go. But it was still way too easy to go back to his place at the end of the night and let him inside of you again. Let him fit into you as perfectly as a puzzle piece, even after all this time.

You’d dated for only two years in high school, a blip in the grand scheme of things—you’d been apart for over twice as long as you’d been together. And yet you began to think that he was the only person who really, truly knew you, because for the next seven days, you felt… whole.

The first winter you spent with Taehyung showed you a glimpse of what could have been, the life you could have had if you’d stayed. Slow mornings, slower nights. Days that were too long and too short all at once, punctuated with soft laughter and kisses, filled with jazz music and naked adoration for one another. Everything you’d been missing in the city, in life, collected in a single person.

But at the end of that week, the end of your allotted time back at home, he wasn’t willing to move to Seoul. He couldn’t leave his family, couldn’t leave the city where he’d laid the groundwork for his budding photography career. You’d never asked him outright, but somehow, he gave you the answers you were looking for before you even thought to look for them.

And despite all your discontent with the city, you weren’t willing to move out of Seoul. You were just starting to get your bearings, figuring out your career, and starting your adult life. Going back to your hometown would be nothing less than a huge step backward—a steep fall from the life you’d desperately wanted and created for yourself.

So, where did that leave the two of you?

—

For seven days each winter, the two of you play house.

If you suspend your disbelief for long enough, you can pretend that none of this is fleeting. That this house—this person—is yours. That the cups of tea in the morning and hot chocolate at night, the sunset walks around the neighborhood, and the quiet evenings for Christmas movies and slow dancing in the dark won’t vanish into thin air, faster than you can say "happy holidays."

That when you leave, just as the world rings in a new beginning, you won't face another 358 days without him. Wondering what he’s up to, wondering if your unspoken agreement still awaits you as the year comes to a close.

You can fool yourself into thinking the rhythms of domesticity are yours to keep. You call each other “babe,” wake each other up with slow kisses and quiet laughs. You make breakfast together, and crack up when Taehyung smears a dollop of whipped cream on your nose. You clip on Yeontan’s leash and put on a pair of familiar, well-worn slides to take him on a walk around the block. Taehyung cleans up, and your heart bleeds openly at the sight of him in an apron and dish gloves. When you return, he presses you up against the wall and kisses you like a man starved.

You make love, everywhere. On top of the dining table, on the living room couch, in his bedroom. His searching mouth finds the tip of your nose, your collarbone. Wraps around your nipple and sucks until you’re writhing and desperate beneath him, begging him to please, fuck me as his sinful fingers part your folds and press into your skin. And when he finally does, when he finally rolls a condom over his length and pushes into you, he does it slow, careful. After all, it’s been a while since the last time. And there hasn't been anyone since.

Every year, the way he loves you is utterly brand-new, completely transcendent. The fullness of having him inside of you comes close to unbearable, your walls molding to him as he whispers praise into the shell of your ear. You’re so perfect, my angel. So tight, so good for me. You always take me so well. You fall apart hard and fast, and then he does, too, holding you so close you think he’s become a part of you entirely.

You share hot showers, glasses of wine, takeout dinners. It seems as though his hands never leave your body: a thumb swiped across your lower lip, a palm pressed to your back, fingers slipped neatly between yours. Even when you go to bed at the end of the night, he can’t fall asleep without your fingertips tracing patterns along his back. Making your presence known, solid to him as he drifts off.

You slot against each other in bed or across the couch late at night, a throw blanket nestling you together, and you talk about everything but the important thing. You tiptoe around the elephant in the room, and talk instead about Taehyung’s career, the studio he hopes to open downtown someday. The strange and fascinating models he gets to work with, the different types of cameras and film he wants to test. You talk about your own job. When you think you’ll be promoted, the projects you’ve been working on, and how the performance reviews should be coming up soon.

When he hears the vague anxiety thrumming in your voice, the uncertainty wavering in it, he wordlessly pulls you a little closer. Holds you a little tighter.

For seven days every year, your life is near-perfect, an existence so cocooned that it feels undeserved. You traverse the road not taken, take lazy steps to admire the foliage, let yourself be loved the way you’ve wanted to be loved, and pretend you’ve walked this path all this time. Behave as if the other option never even existed. It’s only you and Taehyung—you don’t see other friends, don’t see your families. You make a bubble, transparent and fragile, and lose yourself in him.

On the fifth day, you light candles on a birthday cake and watch him age another year. You sing to an audience of one, and your heart breaks at the sight of his eyes sealed tight, his hands clasped together, his lips forming a silent wish. You wonder what he wishes for; if his heart’s greatest desire is the same as yours. The smile he gives you after he’s blown out the flames, after he’s planted a firm kiss on your temple, shatters you.

You ache for this moment to last forever.

—

On the seventh day, the last day, you wipe away every trace of your existence—folding up your clothes, running the vacuum, plucking your toothbrush from his bathroom. His family will return tonight. They won’t see your shoes by the door or your books on the coffee table, because these things—the only evidence of your existence in his life—won’t be there when they walk in. It will just be Taehyung, and you’ll already be long gone, well on your way back to Seoul.

The two of you make love one last time in the late afternoon. A parting gesture, a ritual. He thrusts into you as the sky darkens. Moans your name into the heady air, voice impossibly deep and honeyed, and leaves blooming violets everywhere his mouth can reach. He makes you come first, his touch pressing hard enough to leave bruises and running up your sides to palm your breasts. When he finishes afterward, it’s in hot, intoxicating bursts: his body shuddering against yours, the sheen of sweat on your skin mingling with his. The two of you collapse into the sheets, tangled and messy—the weight of seven entire days falling onto your shoulders all at once.

The first sign that this time is different? He doesn’t reach for you right away. He doesn’t tuck your hair behind your ear, pull you into his chest, or kiss the corner of your mouth. His arms stay glued to his sides, unmoving.

The second sign: His eyes go glassy. He blinks furiously as he stares at you, bottom lip wavering, and then he flips onto his back and throws his forearm over his face. Hiding, maybe. Or ashamed.

Taehyung, you want to say. Talk to me. Your fingers twitch on top of his soft bedding, as helpless as magnets.

Instead, you wait. You don’t move, don’t reach out to touch him, because you’re afraid of what will happen when you do. What parts of yourself you’ll expose when you’d rather keep them hidden. You give him a moment to find the words. Trust that he’ll come to them on his own.

After a while, he finally speaks. His voice breaks, and it breaks you.

I met someone.

Everything collapses under the weight of words unsaid.

He tells you just enough about her, the person he met. He doesn’t tell you what she looks like, where she lives, where she works. Doesn’t even tell you her name. Even as he breaks your heart, he knows exactly how to protect it.

On that last day, as the light fades from his bedroom and the clock runs out, everything comes out. He wants you, wants this, he says, but he can’t wait forever. He can’t look at you when he admits that he knew this had to end a long time ago. Knew that this year would be the last—had to be the last—the moment he saw you at Jeongguk’s loft. He can’t, he says with a shuddering breath, keep living like this—with half of your love, with one foot out the door. Living for a future that may not exist.

In your head, this all makes sense. But that doesn’t stop your lungs from closing up and choking off your breath. Doesn’t stop tears from pricking at your eyes, and it doesn’t stop Taehyung from finally, finally reaching out for you when he hears that first sob, escaping on the coattails of an exhale.

Please, you want to say, looking into those tender eyes that have already stopped seeing parts of you. Please ask me to stay. Please tell me you’ll wait for me just a little bit longer.

But he doesn’t, because how could he? In the last five years, all he’s done is ask you to stay. He’s never said the words out loud, but you hear them in the way he gazes fondly at you over the rim of a wineglass. The whisper of words against your forehead when he thinks you’re asleep. When he describes his plans for the future and asks you what you think of them.

All he’s done is give your heart to you. And all you’ve done is dropped it, like clockwork, over and over. Porcelain hitting concrete. Paper into flame.

And everything that he’s accusing you of? It’s true. Every last word of it, and you have nothing to say in response.

So… you take his hand in yours and tell him that you understand, even if it takes everything out of you to muster the sincerity in it. That you’re sorry, even if you can’t articulate exactly why: for making him wait? For never saying the truth out loud? For stretching his fragile heart too thin? That you’re happy for him, even if the thought of him with someone else unravels you.

So… you kiss him for what you know is the final time, before his parents’ tires crunch against the gravel outside and his siblings spill out of the car, brimming with stories about their weird relatives and filling the silence.

So… you leave him. Just like you’ve done every year. But this time, it aches a little more when he walks you to the door; rips your whole being in half when he lets go of your hand for the last time with a tiny squeeze. And this time, when you drive away until he's just a pinprick in your rearview, the final remnants of your time together tucked in a box in the trunk, you have to fight to hold yourself together. Because this time, the heart you’re breaking is your own.

This life, the one you could’ve had if you’d tried hard enough, was never yours to keep anyway.

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