#last life fate granted him mercy and gave him a soulmate | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thepencilnerd · 4 years

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maybe we’re just | not |meant to be

➵ absolute value [ab·so·lute val·ue] (n.) the magnitude of a quantity, irrespective of sign; the distance of a quantity from zero.

➵ pairing: min yoongi x reader

➵ This was not the first time you’d met Min Yoongi. In fact, you had encountered him throughout many of your previous lifetimes—and yet unbeknownst to either of you, fate was hard at work trying to keep you together as much as destiny was trying to pull you apart. Maybe in another life, another time, another world, another universe...

How many chances did you get until you were finally granted the opportunity be with your soulmate? Would there ever come a time when both of you could find peace in this never ending cycle of life and death—or will the two of you be at the mercy of space and time, forever swimming along the cosmos in search of one another?

➵ genre: definitely a soulmate/multiple past lives AU, love triangle, fluff, heavy angst, bit of historical fiction, modern timeline, time jumps, alternate/parallel universes

➵ warnings: swearing, alcohol consumption, fighting, blood, terminal illness, main character death

➵ word count: 15.9k

a/n: brainstormed this over the course of four hours and started writing on May 2nd :’) please have tissues

The first time you had met was at the fall festival. Each year, your parents were adamant on being the hosts and holding the gala at the palace. Your dress, tailored by your dearest friend, sparkled bright red against the warm glow of the paper lanterns that decorated the path. The festival was alive underneath a beautiful autumn sky, and the vibrant sound of the town’s laughter and jester music echoed throughout the quiet night.

As you were walking past the booth where children were bobbing for apples, there he was. You saw him first, of course. He wore a plain blue mask and a black cape, undetectable to any non-speculative passerby but you. Even behind his seemingly plain mask, your gaze met his the same moment his eyes locked onto yours.

Despite having a fully decorated mask with gemstones, gold lace, and the works to cover your entire face, his stare pierced through yours with the strength of a thousand daggers. His face didn’t ring a bell, not in the slightest—but he felt all too familiar.

You found out later that he was the son of the town’s blacksmith.

“Min Yoongi.” His name rolled off of your tongue like melted candle wax, coating every syllable with another layer of intrigue and curiosity. “Min. Yoongi. Yoongi...” You rested the tips of your fingers over your mouth while repeating each word, feeling how every small muscle twinged and produced the lovely sound that was his name.

His hand traced an invisible swirl along your skin, following the curve of your shoulder down to forearm and then to your hand. “______,” he spoke softly. You opened your eyes to see Yoongi lying parallel to you, the small distance between you no bigger than an arm’s reach away.

“______...” He spoke in an even quieter voice this time, afraid that if he said your name in vain that you would evaporate into thin air and leave him—all alone. Your name sounded like poetry as it danced across his lips.

Reaching over to him, your fingertips gently brushed over his lower lip as he continued to say your name. Even though he’d visited your chambers hours before, it paled in comparison to the intimate moment you were sharing now.

He lifted his hand up to your face carefully, brushing the soft skin of your cheek before settling on your cupid’s bow. Mirroring each others actions as you called each other’s name one after another, your voices slowed to a series of silenced murmurs as you lulled each other to sleep.

“Do you love him?”

Hidden underneath his anger, the hurt in his voice began bleeding through his words. You turned around to face him. His face was clear despite the pitch black darkness of the night, and his eyes glimmered in the moonlight.

“Do you love him?” he repeated, louder this time as he began walking toward you. The breeze was refreshing as it blew past the trees, rustling the leaves in its wake and causing his scent to surround you. Grabbing your hands, he gently cradled them in his; they were always so warm. He brought them close to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to them, the wetness of his tears trailing down the back of your hand.

You cupped his face and brought him closer to you, his hands still wrapped around yours and heartbeat so loud you could feel it thump against yours.

“No.” Your mouth felt like it was glued shut, but somehow you finally managed to speak. “No I don’t love him. I never have and I never will, Yoongi.” Each word stung more than the last.

He sniffled, biting his lip as his shoulders began shaking slightly.

“Yoongi,” you started while you held back tears of your own. “I love you so much.”

His knees buckled from beneath him as he kneeled by your feet, clutching desperately at your legs as if it were the last thing anchoring him on this earth. You felt the warmth of his tears seep through the material of your dress, breaking off another piece of your already shattered heart.

Kneeling down to comfort him, he couldn’t hold back the wash of tears after what came next. “But I have to marry him...”

You couldn’t do anything except hold him. Nothing you say would make him feel better; nothing you did would ever help him heal from the scars you gave him; nothing would ever be the same.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I’m sorry, Yoongi. I’m sorry...” Enveloping each other in a hug so tight it seemed to shut out even the cold wind, you felt tears of your own trail down your face. He held you tighter, burying his nose into the crook of your neck and memorizing every little part of you before—

“I love you,” he said. “I love you, ______. I know he will never be able to make you happy or love you the way that I do, but I love you and I don’t care if you marry him. No matter how long it takes, I will wait for you even in death.”

You couldn’t find it in your heart to speak, knowing you would burst into a wailing mess of screams and tears, and the last thing either of you needed was to be discovered by the royal guard. You began shaking at the realization that this was really it; this was the last you’d ever see him, hold him in your arms, kiss him, touch him—be with him.

Grasping the sides of his face, you pressed your lips against his for the last time. The salt from both of your tears mixing with the taste that was entirely him felt bittersweet. “I will wait for you, Min Yoongi,” you promised. “Even if I have to find you across in life, I will find you and we’ll be happy together.”

Before sharing one last kiss, he took your hand and put it over his chest. The pronounced beating of his heart made your vision watery again. “Promise.” It wasn’t a request or a question—it really was a promise.

Blinking back your tears, you brought his free hand over your chest and held it close. “I promise.”

“Large stack of pancakes no butter or whipped cream and a hot coffee!” Gustav shouted, the small bell on the kitchen counter ringing like the telephone.

Grabbing the piping hot plate, you piled it on your forearms with the rest of your orders and hustled to get them to their tables.

“Small kid’s meal with a side of fruit salad, an old fashioned with extra bacon, and an egg-white breakfast omelette with no tomatoes,” you recited cheerily, handing out each of the plates to the family sat at their table. “Enjoy!”

Thanking you, you whizzed by table after table until your arms were colored a bright red and indented with marks from the weighty plates. It was only lunch and you were already feeling the anxiety of rush hour at the diner. You were grateful when the giant bell finally rang from the cash register, signaling your break.

“Hey ______, do you mind pouring this man a fresh cup of joe?” Marcie called over, waving to you from the opposite end of the aisle. With one hand wrapped around the phone wire and the other punching numbers into the cash register, you ran over as quickly as you could to help.

You grabbed a freshly brewed pot from the machine and poured it into the mug, still warm from being fresh out of the dishwasher. “Any cream or sugar?” you asked the man hunched over the lunch counter with newspaper in hand.

“None, thank you,” he replied curtly. “Black is fine.”

Raising your brow at the voice, you turned around and set the cup down in front of him. The newspaper was fully opened and covered the entirety of his face. Assuming it was just your brain tricking you, you tapped Marcie on the shoulder and pointed to the back door. reminding her that it was your lunch break. Shooing you away, you grinned and wiped your hands before taking off your apron.

The quick rustle of paper crumpling was the last sound you heard before you were out the door.

“What was her name?” Yoongi asked Marcie who was still on hold with the real estate brokers. He kept the newspaper half-folded in one hand.

“Huh?” she replied. “Oh! That’s ______. Been working with us for a while. Real nice gal. Sad to see her go.”

Yoongi let out a bored ‘hmph’ and drank his coffee. There was something oddly magnetizing about you that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “She found a new job?”

Marcie took a few more notes down with her finger held up at Yoongi, bidding him to wait. He sipped in silence.

“Yeah, she finally got that job she’d been pining for on the east coast. Where was it... some banking company or stock market businessy title, can’t remember,” she rambled. “Today’s her last day.”

After a few seconds without a response, Marcie looked up and saw the young man in a daze. “Why? Cat got your tongue?” she joked.

He shook his head, coming back to his senses. “No, nothing. I just thought I saw her somewhere.” Covering his nosy curiosity with a mutter, Yoongi ignored his accelerating pulse.

“Bad timing I guess,” Marcie sighed, sensing the disappointment in his voice.

Without a second thought, Yoongi’s fist clenched the grayscale paper as it let out a satisfying crunch. Marcie’s eyes widened at this, making him clear his throat awkwardly.

"Sorry, finger cramps,” he stuttered. “I should get back to the office.” Gathering his coat, Yoongi tossed all the spare coins he had into the tip jar and left the diner. For some reason, he didn’t feel like eating lunch there ever again.

“Happy Birthday!!” you screamed in unison with all of your friends.

The lights flickered on, revealing a stone-faced Yoongi and overexcited, freeze framed Hoseok right behind him. After a few moments of awkward silence, the delayed sound of Namjoon’s popper going off made everyone burst into laughter.

Seokjin facepalmed. “Really, Namjoon?” Jimin and Taehyung shook their heads like disappointed children scolding an adult.

Yoongi was holding back a childish grin. “Thanks guys.” Even though his reaction was sub-par than what you expected for a surprise party, you smiled.

“Let’s cut the cake!” Hoseok shouted as if he were already on a sugar high.

Turning on the stereo, Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook, Seokjin, Namjoon and Hoseok began dancing like they were already in college. Admissions decisions were coming out next week and you all needed to relax. Luckily, Yoongi’s birthday was right around the corner and posed as the perfect opportunity to get together.

Laughing at the six boys’ and their antics, Yoongi walked over to you with a smug grin. “I told you I suck at reacting.” Popping open a bottle of mini-champagne you splurged on just for today, you handed one to him before opening your own.

“What can I say,” you shrugged, taking a drawn-out sip before continuing. “If it means we can all spend one more crazy night together, it’s worth it in my book.”

Yoongi sighed. “Why do you always talk like we’re going far away and never seeing each other again? We’re all staying in-state for tuition.” He took another swig before finishing his thought bubble. “None of us can even afford dorms, meals, or apartments anyway.”

You smiled at his seemingly naïve outlook on the situation. “Yoongi, we all know Jimin and Hoseok are already set for scholarships in NYC. Taehyung and Seokjin probably have acting gigs booked that they’re keeping a secret until the graduation, and Jungkook and Namjoon talked about how they wanted to go to Europe for a gap year.”

Yoongi clenched his jaw at the reality that washed over him like cold water. “We’ll be okay. As long as you’re staying here with me, these—” he paused to gesture at the group of boys messing around like a pack of wild animals. “—dingbats are the least of my worries.”

Your ears perked at his choice of words. “I worry you?” you asked, voice going two octaves too high for your comfort. His hand stopped mid-air while bringing the bottle to his lips, only then realizing the weight his words carried.

Clearing his throat harshly, you felt heat rise up your throat and pink dust your cheeks. It was the alcohol, right?

“We’ve been best friends for 18 years,” he defended. “Knowing how clumsy preschool you was and how stupid high school you can be, of course I’m worried about you.”

More color began rushing into your face. You chugged more of your drink to convince anyone else who’d ask you what was wrong that it was the alcohol, not your best friend’s words making you feel—no. You were friends. Best friends. Don’t blow anything out of proportion.

“Right back at you muffin man,” you winked, the alcohol giving you a bit more confidence than you usually had. Shooting you a gummy smile, you clinked your glasses together and felt the buzz flood your senses.

“Yoongi! ______!” Taehyung called from across the room. “Stay cheese!” Holding up his polaroid, the flash caught you off guard. Yoongi’s arm came up reflexively to shield your eyes, making your heart flutter even more. Note to self: expensive alcohol equals stronger alcohol.

Of course that wasn’t fucking true, not in the slightest.

Jungkook and the others groaned, chanting in unison for one more picture.

“Why not a group picture assholes?” Yoongi scoffed. “It’s my birthday so I get all the birthday wishes granted.”

Seokjin tsked. “Because you two look cute together and it’s an au naturale setting!” Giving into their relentless pleas, you wrapped your arm around Yoongi’s waist and gave the camera a goofy smile. Taken aback by your sudden physical contact, Yoongi’s heartbeat picked up at lighting speed. You could hear it through the thin fabric of his shirt.

The guys howled again. “Yoongi!” Jimin whined. “Come on! It’s just a quick picture!” Slinging his arm over your shoulder, you could’ve sworn he pulled you in closer for the shot. He rested his cheek on the top of your head and you felt his muscles pull into the gummy smile you had memorized by heart.

Taehyung snapped a picture as quickly as he could, but groaned after shaking the developed photo. “Shoot, my finger was covering part of the lens. One more, I promise!”

Yoongi let out a huff. Looking up at him, he lowered his chin and stared back at you. You never noticed how—pretty—he was until now. His eyes were more angular than you remembered, but his lips remained the same from when you were kids. He’d always pout whenever he got in trouble for playing too rough with the other guys.

You’ll never forget when he shoved Hoseok down the slide in 2nd grade and went on time out for the entire duration of lunch. Innocent 7-year old you felt bad for your best friend and snuck him the other half of your PB&J when the teacher wasn’t looking. This didn’t go unpunished of course, as you soon found yourself in the same time out corner as Yoongi. Strangely enough, you weren’t angry in the slightest.

The annoyed expression on his face slowly melted into one you struggled to map. Focused? Shocked? Surprised? Happy? Was there something smudged on your face? The edges of his lips formed into a gentle smile and he parted his lips to say—

“3, 2, 1!” the boys shouted in unison before the loud click of a camera shutter sounded again.

“God, I feel like I’m going to puke.” Your heart felt like it was going to dig itself out of your ribcage and run a marathon. “Why am I so nervous?” Fiddling with your fingers to try and calm your anxiety by shaking your hands around vigorously, Klaire grabbed you by the shoulders and looked at you with a wide eyes.

“______.” Her usually quiet voice was now firm, but still gentle. “Calm down. Breathe for me. I don’t need you hyperventilating in your dress.”

Letting out a deep breath you trapped inside your lungs for what seemed like hours, you closed your eyes and tried to steady the relentless pounding that was your heart rate.

“You’re marrying the love of your life,” she reminded. “You’re just excited.”

You gulped another welling bubble that came up your throat. No matter how many times you tried swallowing, your throat was as dry as a desert. You couldn’t drink water either because it was your mother’s wonderful idea to get a wedding dress with a corset. Talk about old fashioned, right?

“Were you this nervous for your wedding? Would you be this nervous?” The questions slipped out instinctively before you could stop them. “Like pit at the bottom of your stomach that feels like it’s ripping through your guts and weighing you down to the dark depths of hell?”

Klaire laughed at your ever-ornate vernacular that remained even when you were stressed out. “I’d be nervous if somewhere deep inside my heart, I knew he wasn’t ‘the one’.” Air-quoting the last part of her sentence, she patted the baby hairs that had been tussled during your mini fit.

The words sliced through your foggy mind like a hot knife, making your eyes widen and the color of your face wash out.

Seeing your reaction, she was quick to reassure you. “But you love him and he loves you! I promise, ______, you’re just excited. I was nervous on my wedding day!” She overemphasized her words and clasped her chest to try and be more convincing. “You’re getting married for God’s sake! It’s normal to be nervous!”

You needed to sit down. “Yeah...” A dry laugh escaped your lips. “I’m getting married.”

Three knocks sounded from the door. Turning around, you saw a familiar group of heads poke through the open crack. “Well, well, well,” the youngest smirked. “Look who it is.”

The corners of your lips curled into the biggest smile you’d mustered all day. “You guys!” Getting up, you ran over to Seokjin, Namjoon, Jimin, Hoseok, and Yoongi as fast as you could with the heels you had on. They brought you in for a group hug, being careful not to get tangled in your veil or snag your dress.

Klaire left the room as discreetly as she could, mentioning something about a cake or the balloons needing some double-checking.

“You look beautiful,” Jimin complimented, a genuine smile lighting up his eyes.

Seokjin had his hand clasped over his mouth, purposely overreacting to make you laugh and calm your nerves. “Who are you and what have you done with ______?”

Shaking their heads at the eldest’s incessant rapport for comedy, Yoongi refrained from elbowing his side.

“You do look really amazing, ______.” Namjoon also smiled, keeping his hands behind his back to not cause any accidents. Knowing him, it was a miracle Jimin didn’t bring cable ties with him as backup.

“Is it too late to ask you to marry me?” Hoseok chirped. Winking at you, you scoffed and shook your head, containing your laughter as you shoved his shoulder playfully.

Yoongi remained still, his eyes still scanning over your attire. Noticing how silent he was, the four cleared their throats all at once, snapping him out of his trance. Looking up and around at the guys, his eyes honed in on you.

“Yeah,” he agreed blindly. “You look—great. Stunning.”

Hoseok and the guys sensed the tension in the room. “I think we should go check up on Jungkook to see if he needs any help,” Jimin filled in. “God knows if he knows how to work a mic at his first announcer gig, right?”

The others chuckled and told you they’d see you at the reception. Giving them one more hug and bidding them goodbye, it was just you and Yoongi left in the room. Taking a seat on the couch, you ushered him over to sit beside you.

Instead, Yoongi opted to sit in the empty chair across the sofa. You couldn’t help but feel hurt by his pseudo passive aggressive decision. He seemed more quiet than usual—no, he was more quiet than usual.

“So,” he finally spoke after what seemed like a million years of silence. “Marriage.”

Biting your lip, you picked at your nails again. Klaire would kill you if she saw how much you’d ruined your manicure in the span of a few hours.

“Yeah. I’m getting married.” The words rolled off of your tongue like a foreign language, strenuous on your tongue and your heavy mind. “Your wedding is next week though, so don’t count me out,” you tried to laugh, but only succeeded in making yourself feel worse for whatever reason.

A ghost of a smile grazed Yoongi’s lips. His eyes flickered back and forth between his engagement ring and yours. “Are you excited?”

“Yes.” You answered robotically. The more you talked, the more each sentence out of your mouth felt like tar; acidic and painful, scorching your mouth raw. “Aren’t you?” you asked, referring to his engagement.

Yoongi nodded slowly, pressing his lips together and raking his teeth across his lower lip. “Of course I am,” he blurted out in a hasty tone. “Really, really excited. I can’t wait.”

Silence filled the room again. You wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Why did this feel so horrible? Like you’d just stabbed your best friend in the back with a dull knife?

“I’m really happy for you, ______,” he declared. “I'm really happy that you’re happy.” His eyes fluttered softly and his throat bobbed.

Another pang reverberated in your chest. “I’m really happy for you too, Yoongi.” No matter how hard you tried to sound confident, your voice was on the verge of tears. He leaned over the space between you, he placed his hands over your clasped ones and kept his eyes down.

“Please stay happy,” he pleaded, unable to meet your gaze for fear of letting you see how watery his eyes were. “Please be happy. Live a long, healthy, happy life. For me.”

Choking back your own tears, you nodded.

You managed to find the strength in your voice to speak. One last wish before saying goodbye to your youth.

“Please don’t forget about me.”

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the groom!” Jungkook announced grandly, gesturing toward the French doors at the back of the hall. The youngest really was good at everything he set out to do.

Opening the doors, your fiancé stepped out with a humble bow and waved at everyone; with his father’s wedding tux on, meticulously brushed up hair, and a single red rose pinned by his pocket square, he looked as handsome as ever.

After the clapping settled down, Jungkook continued. “And now, I would like you all to give a warm welcome to the beautiful bride!” The applause was louder than before and made your stomach feel like it weighed a thousand tons.

“Don’t let me fall?” Opening your eyes to look at Seokjin, he held your hand tightly and spoke with nothing but sincerity in his voice.

“Never.” On cue, you began walking down the aisle. It was just like the movies, except it was about a million times more terrifying since you were the one actually walking down the obscenely narrow aisle. Locking eyes with your beloved, his lips were parted in awe from the moment you stepped onto the walkway.

The soft music that echoed from the speakers flooded the auditorium and added an extra blanket of comfort. Reality kicked in and you were overcome with the feeling of sheer terror, excitement, happiness, anxiety, joy, and every emotion in between.

You were getting married.

You stared straight ahead so you wouldn’t fall and clutched onto Seokjin’s arm as tight as you could. Once you made it to the altar, Seokjin kissed your cheek and made his way back to the tables.

“Dearly beloved,” the officiant began. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of this beautiful bride and groom as they proclaim their love and commitment to the world....” His voice suddenly blurred into muddled bubbles of distorted bass. It wasn’t until your gaze wandered and found Yoongi—he was already staring at you.

Pain flooded your chest again like the burning hot steel rod that was used to poke charcoal pits. Pain like that time you went to Splash City for a 7th grade field trip and fell down the water slide. You weren’t able to stand up straight, so the guys worked together to carry you back to where Miss Isles and the TA’s were sunbathing. Yoongi was crying more than you. A dull ache blossomed in your chest and spread to the tips of your fingers like ink droplets in water.

Pain.

The warm sensation of hands holding yours brought you back to the present moment. “And now—” The bellowing voice returned. “Kim Taehyung, do you take ______ to be your wife?”

Without a second of hesitation, Taehyung squeezed your hands gently and his eyes gleamed brighter than the sunset skyline. “I do.”

“Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and protect her, forsaking all others, and holding only unto her forevermore?” the officiant continued.

“I do,” he repeated confidently.

Turning to you, the vows continued. “And ______, do you take Kim Taehyung to be your husband?”

No longer looking at Yoongi, your heart was flooded with the love you shared with Taehyung just long enough for you to say, “I do.”

“Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and protect him, forsaking all others, and holding only unto him forevermore?”

Your eyes drifted to Yoongi for just a second before gazing at Taehyung and letting the words leave your lips.

“I do.”

The officiant smiled, blind to anything but you and Taehyung. “May the ring bearer—which to my knowledge, is the best man—bring forth the rings?”

Stepping towards the altar, Yoongi handed the velvet box to the officiant and didn’t dare to meet your eyeline.

“______ and Taehyung will now exchange rings as a symbol of love and commitment to each other,” he said for what was probably the billionth time in his entire career.

The rest of the vows passed by like a smudged blur. All you remember is hearing, “You may now kiss the bride” and Taehyung’s soft lips pressing against yours. When you pulled away, everyone was whistling, clapping, and cheering, overjoyed at the new union that was Kim Taehyung and ______, husband and wife.

Everyone except Yoongi.

He was frozen.

All he could do was put on a big smile for his best friend, happily married to the man she loved.

All he could do was hide his truth—

so that’s exactly what you did, too.

The reception was bustling with crowds of people dancing. Seeing as you didn’t recognize a handful of faces, you were pretty sure more than half of them were all co-workers Taehyung had invited.

“Okay, okay!” Jungkook’s voice sounded through the speakers, cracking the slightest bit from his energy. “It’s time for everyone to give their toasts to the wonderfully wed bride and groom!”

You tried your best not to roll your eyes by shaking your head and biting your lips. Hoseok ran to the mic first, butting Jungkook out of the way like he always did since elementary school.

“______, Taehyung—” He exhaled as he began speaking. “If there’s any couple who’s been more in love with each other since the day they met, I’d pay a million to see their faces when they see you two.” Keeping it short and sweet, a few whistles sounded from the back, causing you to blush.

Namjoon was next. “We all met ______ in kindergarten and have been best friends ever since,” he explained with a hint of nostalgia in his voice. “When she’d go to the bathroom or back to the cafeteria to get an extra cookie, we all talked about who’d get to marry her during lunch. Taehyung always had it bad for ______, and dreams do come true!”

Covering your face to hide your the redness of your cheeks, you looked over to see that Taehyung was doing the same, except he was peeking through his fingers to look at you lovingly. The sound of the guests’ laughter and cheers made your heart ring in your ears. Taehyung reached over to grab your hand; the feeling of his large hand encasing yours made a wave of relief wash over you.

Jimin waltzed on right after. “Going off of that, I remember how Yoongi would always glare at us and tell us to ‘shut up’ or that ‘______ never wanted to get married and live with her cat forever.’” Everyone chuckled. “______, Taehyung, congratulations on the beautiful life you’ll share together!”

Watching everyone raise their glass into the air, you hesitated before grabbing yours and taking a mouthful.

Seokjin went after Jungkook, who insisted that he was supposed to go first as the main host. As a result, he made it his best interest to publicly roast Hoseok on the stand and earn a round of laughter from all of the guests.

You looked back to Yoongi. Some part of you secretly hoped that he waited for his turn as a “save the best for last” type of speech. He was clenching a piece of paper tight in his fist, hell-bent on making it into nothing but a wrinkled ball of smudged ink and flecks of fiber.

Right on cue, he stood up and jogged up to the stage. Jungkook handed him the mic with a confused expression, but played it off as best he could with his signature wide-toothed grin.

Yoongi turned away from the mic to clear his throat away. Taking a deep breath, he struggled to find his voice despite the deathly quiet auditorium.

“______,” he said. “I remember the first day I met you like it was yesterday. We were in kindergarten and you were the new kid who got transferred to our classroom.” He wasn’t reading off of the paper he had out earlier.

This wasn’t his plan.

“You wouldn’t stop crying, saying how you didn’t know anyone in the class and all of your friends were gone,” Yoongi said as he chuckled to himself, remembering the memory crystal clear. “I told you to stop whining because it was getting annoying, and you started crying even more.”

You remember that day. Taehyung remembers that day. As did Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin, Seokjin, and Jungkook. You were all in different grades, but in the same school and shared the same classroom.

“I remember feeling so bad for making you cry, I gave you the last piece of candy I had stuffed in my cubby. I saved up twenty gold stars for that.” Another soft wave of everyone’s laughter crashed against your ears. “Then in middle school, we all went to the water park for a stupid field trip. You fell down the slide and hit your head so hard, you were barely conscious.

“I carried you halfway across the park on my back. The guys were all screaming from behind me to put my flip flops on so I wouldn’t get any cuts on my feet.”

You never knew that. The week after you had the accident, Yoongi was in a cast for a month and refused to tell you why. The guys wouldn’t spill either, defending that they made a promise to Yoongi that they’d never break.

“When you agreed that going to prom would be a nightmare straight out of a 90′s rom-com,” he paused to bite back his lopsided smile. “I asked you to come with me since it would be our last cheesy high school memory with the group.

“For your birthday, we went to the botanical gardens. You went on for hours about how much you loved the roses there.” How could you forget? Yoongi pulled up to your house at 6 in the morning and told you to be out in 10. You were sleeping peacefully for the entire 5-hour drive—until he woke you up by plugging your nose and nearly suffocating you on your birthday.

Despite the growing ache in his throat, he pressed on. “I still have those pictures of you getting stung by that bee. I told you not to get too close to the flowers, but you never listened to me.”

More laughter. Not a single ounce of it came from you.

Yoongi’s voice grew quiet. “I remember talking to you right before midnight. You seemed stressed out about something...” His focus was entirely on you now. “Namjoon’s New Year’s party.”

Oh. How could you forget...

“Taehyung could not have timed his proposal more perfectly with the last clock strike.”

There it was.

“I guess what I’m trying to say,” Yoongi stuttered, collecting his thoughts. “Is that I really—I’m really happy for you, ______. And you too, Taehyung.” He added the last part in with a gummy grin that you could spot as painted on from a mile away.

“I wish you a long, healthy, happy, and exciting life together. Don’t forget about the rest of us, okay? I love you, too.” He barely skipped the pause between the last two words to sound like “you two,” but his message rung loud and clear.

He loves you.

Min Yoongi loves you.

The faded edges of the polaroid felt dull against your fingertips. You spent the past hour sitting in front of the fireplace with the old pictures of you and Yoongi in your hand. You only had three; all of them were from his birthday party, senior year.

The first one was blurry, but the memory was imprinted in your head as clear as day. Yoongi’s arm shielding you from the bright flash of Taehyung’s camera in his sneak attack of a photoshoot. You didn’t notice until now how closely you were pressed against Yoongi’s side.

The second was better. Taking note of how the camera was slightly zoomed in and leaning towards you, a melancholic smile flashed your face.

"My finger was covering the lens” my ass, you recalled. Taehyung did have feelings for you, even back then.

Your arm was wrapped around Yoongi’s side and his slung over your shoulder, both of your smiling like teenage idiots at the camera, thinking about god knows what.

Finally, you studied the third one for the longest. It was the one where you two were looking at each other, frozen like marble sculptures and unbound by the limits of time. His lips were parted just as you remembered them, torturing you ever still. You wanted nothing more than for this picture to come to life and speak those words to you, whatever they may be.

But you knew that it was just an old, fingerprint stained picture that would remain silent and lifeless forever.

“Are you coming to bed, love?” Taehyung’s deep voice called from behind you. Judging by how scratchy and groggy his voice was, he was definitely on the verge of falling asleep standing up. “It’s getting late and we have lots of exploring to do tomorrow.” Even though he was exhausted, he couldn’t hide the excitement laced in his voice.

After you got engaged, the two of you immediately settled on Crema, Italy as your honeymoon destination. From the hundreds of years of history, breathtaking scenery, rich culture, and not to mention the food, the past few days here had been pure heaven.

“Coming,” you assured warmly. Sitting on the photos to keep them hidden, you told him you’d be there after putting out the fireplace. He pouted and said that the bed was cold without you, and to hurry up.

His childish antics never failed to make your heart race. After he was back in the bedroom, you took another minute to look at the pictures.

With shaky hands and tears welling in your eyes, you threw them into the burning red embers of the fireplace one by one, watching them melt; the white plastic borders of the film curled inward and turned black, crumpling into nothing but a stringy mess of fumes; the ink that marked the date of that night disintegrated into the air as puffs of smoke, marking the end of something would never be.

If you weren’t nestled into Taehyung’s chest and deafened by the sound of his steady heartbeat, you could’ve sworn you heard that piece of your heart shatter that night.

Yoongi was lying comfortably on his couch. The T.V. was on but he didn’t hear any of it. The clock read 12:41 a.m. and as per usual, he wasn’t tired in the slightest. He didn’t feel like sleeping. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t.

“Yoongi?” a sleepy voice sounded from the bedroom. “Are you coming to bed?”

Lifting his head to the bedroom door, he saw his wife sticking her head out of the door crack ever so slightly. She must’ve woken up.

“Yeah, sorry,” he apologized humbly. “Had to finish some extra paperwork.Go back to bed, I’ll be there in a minute.” Getting up to quickly kiss her forehead, Yoongi promised her that he’d be there soon.

She gave him a half-asleep grin and nestled herself back into the covers. Yoongi turned off all the apartment lights and the T.V., leaving him in utter silence and darkness. The only reason he kept them running constantly was to block out the thoughts he had of you during the day.

Opening the coffee table drawer in front of the couch, he took out the wedding album from last month. When he opened it, he was surprised to find the three pictures of you and him from his senior year birthday party scattered on the first page. You always loved throwing surprise parties despite knowing that he would never react the way you wanted him to. It was sweet.

Looking at the polaroids, Yoongi was in absorbed into the memory of that night, eyes burning from not blinking for too long. The first picture was a blurry mess, but the second and third weren’t half bad.

He remembers your smile being his favorite. You’d get that crinkle in your nose and your eyes would turn into half moons like a cartoon character. Your teeth glinted like rare pearls from the ocean’s deepest depths, but your dimples were only noticeable from up close. Your smile was absolutely contagious.

The third frame was his least favorite. It was a moment captured in time that he would never forgive himself for; the biggest regret in his life—his living nightmare.

That was the night he was going to ask you to be his girlfriend.

It was the night everything was supposed to be perfect.

But it wasn’t.

Two weeks later, Taehyung came back from the tour for his debut film and had a party of his own to celebrate.

He asked you out.

You said yes.

He swept you off of your feet and kissed you like in the movies, twirling you around to the point where you couldn’t stop laughing. You were so happy. Yoongi didn’t have the guts to throw away the photos.

The two of you hadn’t talked since his wedding. It had only been a month, but it felt like an eternity spent in hell. He missed your voice; the sound of your laughter; that face you made when you scolded him and tried to be serious but ended up breaking into snorts. He missed you.

Flipping over to the next page, he found the letter from your wedding night. It was still badly tattered from when he let his anger seep through and needed something to clench. Everyone who saw it probably thought it was his toast to you and Taehyung, but no. It was his confession letter he’d saved from the night you got engaged at that stupid New Year party.

Dear ______,

If everything goes to plan, you’ll never have to read this. On the other hand and the even greater chance that things don’t go to plan, you still won’t be able to read this. I love you, ______. I can picture your face reading this. Close your mouth or a bug might fly in again. Don’t think I forgot when we visited the zoo for our bio class. I still have the video saved on my phone. I’m probably too late, right? I don’t care. In fact, I couldn’t care less. I love you more than I love myself or anything else in this world, and I don’t care if you feel the same. I just want you to be happy. I need you to be.

I’ve felt connected to you since the first day we met and I’ve loved you more and more every day after that. No matter how hard I tell myself that you will never feel the same about me, or even think and care about me half as much as I care about you, I can’t stop thinking about you. I care about you more than you care about me, and that’s okay.

You make me so incredibly happy, I can’t put into words how deeply I feel for you. You also drive me insane and make me the angriest, most frustrated, neurotic, and saddest person to exist in this entire universe, but I don’t care because it’s all thanks to you.

I will love you until the day I die and I promise you this with my life.

Please choose me. Love me. Be with me. I know it’s pathetic and hopeless and so fucking selfish, but I love you and I can’t live without you, ______. Choose me. Stay with me. Marry me.

Always and forever yours,

—Yoongi.

And with that, he slammed the album shut and buried his face into his hands, sheer agony, anger, pain, regret, and awe flooding every cell in his body. He started laughing. Not at himself or you, not even at anything in particular.

I guess I’m just laughing at how ridiculous this whole universe is. Fate an all. He tried reasoning with himself but was far from remotely sane. It felt like some big practical joke on a hidden camera T.V. show, like this wasn’t his real life, his reality. He begged for it to be a bad dream that he would wake up from any second now. He wanted it to be a nightmare.

But he never woke up.

If you had met in another time, another life, another world—how happy could you have been? In love? Together?

The steady beeping of the hospital monitor had become your new normal. Today was different though. You sensed it in your bones. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“Yoongi, you can’t die on me. I don’t want to be alone.”

He smiled faintly, trying to reach out and soothe your streaming tears. His skin was bleach white and his usually pink lips were tinted a sickly grey. He was dying and you couldn’t do a single thing about it.

“You won’t be alone. You have all of your family and—” He was cut short by your sudden outburst.

“I don’t want my family, I want you!” you sobbed, burying your face into his hospital gown. He held back tears of his own as he felt the fabric dampen on his stomach. “You’re only 27, Yoongi, you—you don’t—”

Pressing the palms of your hands into your eye sockets, you wouldn’t have been able get any more words out even if you forced yourself to. A stabbing pain spread in your lungs from the lack of oxygen, but you didn’t care. Your boyfriend, the love of your life, was on his deathbed and you would gladly take all the misery in the world, all the needles and knives, stitches and surgeries, broken bones, bruises and blood—every single piece of it if it meant that he would live.

“You don’t deserve to die, Yoongi...” you hiccuped.

He cradled your head against his neck, his half sitting up posture allowing your tears to flow down his collarbone. The last few months had been hell, but you refused to leave his side.

Every time he’d wake up in insufferable agony in the middle of the night, you were there with anything he needed: water, a bucket, damp towel, food, his medications, a nurse—anything and everything he needed, you were always there for him.

The two of you shared the last few months you had left constantly by each other’s side. It all felt like some sick joke. Six years ago, you had met the love of your life at a random coffee shop in Seattle and hit it off like sparks. You found out he was an architect major and finishing up his senior year just like you. He asked you out four months after you kept running into each other at the coffee shop, and moved in together five months after that.

Your relationship was absolutely perfect. Never in your entire life had you met a guy, let alone a human being, who was as selfless, kind, gentle, loving, and honest as Yoongi. There was a connection between the two of you that you couldn’t describe or frame into rational thoughts; you loved each other unconditionally.

It all came crashing down when he collapsed last year. It didn’t seem like anything major. He told you it was because of his anemia, but after insisting on making a visit to the hospital, the doctors broke the news to you.

After months of seeing him doubled over in pain and puking his guts out from all the medication and relentless testing, he told you right before your 5-year anniversary: he didn’t want to suffer anymore.

It took months of convincing you that he was okay with dying for you to even be able to look into his eyes. You couldn’t hate the man you loved for choosing to die peacefully rather than be greedy to live, but you had a hard time showing your full support and being okay with it. You don’t think you’ll ever be okay with it.

“I’ve lived a happy life, _____.” Recalling the memory as if it were yesterday, his voice was much stronger back then. “I have done everything I’ve ever wanted to do, seen everything, explored everywhere, and after meeting you, I know I can die without any regrets. My only regret is not walking you down that aisle when I had the chance.”

Pressing a kiss to his chapped lips, you couldn’t stop the ache that plagued your heart at the memory. It wasn’t over until it was over, so why did it still hurt so bad?

“______?” Yoongi whispered. “You awake?” He struggled to his head to face you, every little muscle in his body aching like a collective bruise.

You shifted your weight over to your side of the bed and propped yourself up on your elbow, studying his face one more time. “Do you need anything?” Talking for the first time after hours of crying stung, like rubbing alcohol was being poured down your throat.

His shook his head at you with a half-lidded gaze and lifeless smile. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all. It’d be nice if you could cuddle me to sleep.” You bit your lip to hold back the waterworks but let your smile shine through. He was the same Min Yoongi you’d met at that random coffee shop on a rainy Seattle day.

Opening his arms, he brought you safely into his chest, arms wrapped around you as tightly as he could with the little bit of strength he had left.

“______,” he sighed, drained from all the energy he’d put into making these these past few days worth it. “I love you.” He murmured the words against your temple like a prayer, breath tickling you ever so softly like the ripples of a cherry blossom petal falling onto the surface of a pond.

You looked up and saw that his eyes were fully open, but started to flutter shut again. He was using every bit of energy to keep them open and memorize your features. Kissing him tenderly, you felt your lips tremble against his. You didn’t want his last memory of you to be one where you were bawling your eyes out. Instead, you smiled as best you could and swiped your finger across his cheek as he leaned into your touch.

“I love you too, Yoongi. I love you more than anything in this entire universe we call home.” His eyelids drooped shut at your soothing lullaby, falling deeper and deeper into the comforting darkness of sleep. The weak beating of his heart grew quieter with each passing second.

“You can go to sleep, Yoongi,” you soothed while running your fingers through his thin hair. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?” he mumbled through your hair with the last drop of strength he had left in his body. His breathing grew shallow and hushed. His hands that were always warm and kept you cozy during the frigid nights in your apartment were now stone cold.

You swallowed down the lump in your throat as you felt his chest rise and fall for the last time.

“I promise.”

Taking in a deep breath, the cold air burned your nostrils and filled your lungs with the crisp scent of snow. “Why do you believe in soulmates?” you asked. Handing him the sandwich bag, he shrugged.

“I don’t know. Just seems like something that makes sense.” Tearing open the plastic pouch, he took a bite and immediately sputtered. "How do you mess up a PB&J?”

You smacked his shoulder lightly and scowled at him. “I’ll have you know that I happen to make the best sandwiches in the world, Min Yoongi!”

“Mhm,” he nodded with sarcasm and a smirk. Might you add that he was still eating his sandwich and seemed to be enjoying it.

Pressing your lips together in a thin line, you ate in silence together. It was a snow day in Manhattan and Central Park looked stunning from your dorms. It was your idea to go out for a picnic, and since it was winter break, who better to ask than your dearest friend Min Yoongi?

“I can’t believe you dragged me out here for a picnic in winter wonderland.” His voice seemed grumpy, but it was probably because you hadn’t given him any coffee yet. Point made, you rustled through your backpack and pulled out a thermos full of piping hot instant liquid gold.

With a mouthful of bread, he reached out to grab the metal thermos but you pulled it back and wagged your finger at him. “What do you say?”

“Give me my coffee,” he droned. Widening your eyes at him in disapproval, he huffed. “Please?”

You stuck out your tongue and poured him a cup. “I’d be more than happy to!”

If he rolled his eyes any harder, they would’ve fallen out of his head.

Taking a small sip, the hot steam curled in contrast with the freezing cold air.

“So you don’t believe in soulmates?” He retraced his steps back to the former topic of conversation. Turning towards him, you followed his eye-line to the small pond down the hill. A sigh parted your lips.

“If everyone had a soulmate, we wouldn’t have heartbreaks.” Your sentence caught him off guard.

“Don’t you think your soulmate is out there somewhere?” he badgered.

You shook your head and finished the last bite of your sandwich. “If he is, he should have popped up three breakups ago.”

Yoongi couldn’t think of a witty comeback.

“Do you think your girlfriend is your soulmate?” you asked this time, tweaking the question to fit his current relationship status.

“No.” The response was instant and dry, much like the coffee granules you poured this morning. “I don’t think she is. Do you think Jungkook is yours?”

You admired the trail of your breathing as it steamed up into a small cloud. “Not a chance.”

The only sound that came after was the brushing of tree branches mute thud of leaves as the fell onto the snow. If you concentrated hard enough, you could hear the frozen pond crackle in the distance, melting away as the seasons began shifting for reasons beyond mortal comprehension.

The ocean of screams and thumping bass was deafening. Cupping your hands over your ears to try and stop your ear drums from bursting, nothing you did could drown out the sea of shrieking fans at a concert.

“Los Angeles!” a tall man greeted from the stage. “How are you all doing tonight?” He didn’t even need to talk to earn a shower of over-excited adolescent spirit.

Another guy who was slightly shorter in comparison brought the mic up to speak. “What do you say we start off the night with a countdown?”

“1,” another younger member started counting.

“2,” the one standing beside him said in a velvety voice.

Pointing their mics to the audience, they all counted, “1, 2, 3,” in unison and you shriveled into a ball of discomfort at the sheer volume.

“This is my favorite song!” your friend shouted as loud as she could, but to no avail.

Leaning closer to her, you shouted back, “What?!” Ushering you to look towards the stage, you didn’t know what you’d be getting yourself into when you agreed to go to a concert. You’d heard about BTS of course, who hadn’t—what you didn’t know was how your friend managed to snag two tickets in the pit. To make it even more painfully cliché, you weren’t that into their music as much as the entire world seemed to be.

You overheard a few seconds of their songs here and there while changing stations on the radio, and who could forget seeing their names plastered on every single news headline, Instagram post, and Facebook and YouTube ad that popped up into your field of view. It wasn’t that you disliked them, you just found it hard to obsess over a single group when there were hundreds of other musicians you enjoyed listening to; too many artists, not enough time.

Come to think of it, you couldn’t be bothered to keep up with celebrities or social media, period. In all honestly, it just seemed like a gigantic, disrespectful waste of time to be buried nose-deep in someone else’s personal issues and life. To each their own, of course.

The sudden change in music made you fall back in touch with reality. The melodic tune of a piano filled the entire stadium as the crowd erupted into another round of cries. Drawing your attention to the stage, a single man sat by a grand piano as his fingers danced across the wooden keys.

Call it your wild imagination or your cloudy head from the overcrowded stadium, but you swear he locked eyes with you for just a moment. He began singing, the words flowing from him like trails of ink scribbles composed of his own sorrow, joy, happiness, and his life up until this point.

He was completely mesmerizing. After the song was over, he bowed to the audience and made eye contact with you. You saw a droplet roll down his cheek as his gaze locked onto yours. He seemed to snap out of the cloud his head was swimming in and immediately stood up straight to get a better look at you. Was he crying?

Breaking his stare as an unfamiliar weight deep in your chest began to pull you down, you turned to your friend—at least, where you thought she was the last time you checked. Another song came on, this one sound like the loudest of them all.

“I have to go to the bathroom!” you tried shouting to your friend, but your voice was already gone. Not from the yelling and screaming of lyrics to songs you didn’t know, but from trying to get your friend’s periodic attention for the past half hour.

She paid no attention to you and kept dancing along with the blaring music. You were starting to feel sick. Maybe it was from swimming in a sea of overzealous crowds of people you hated on a daily level, or from the stuffy and cramped space that was nothing but suffocating—whatever it was, you needed to get out of here. You couldn’t breathe.

Saying excuse me didn’t work in this case so you had to shove past sweaty bodies a bit too aggressively for your comfort, but what choice did you have? You made it to the bathroom just in time and proceeded to puke your guts out in the only stall with a working latch.

It was official: you hated concerts with a passion and would never be coming to one any time soon. Thankfully, the queasy sensation that started earlier was now gone, but instead, it was replaced by a different feeling. Your heart started racing like a bullet train on an endless track headed nowhere. A balloon of air filled your chest cavity and made you choke on your own breathing.

Clutching your chest, your jaw clenched to fight back the urge to cry and closed your eyes tight. You started breathing like your doctor told you to whenever you started getting chest aches. In, out, in out, in out.

You hated concerts.

Yoongi was staring out the streaky window of the tour bus as rain clouds began to loom over them. The guys were quick to notice how weird he was acting towards the end of the show, like he had—

“Dude, did you see a ghost or something?” Seokjin asked with genuine concern woven in. Yoongi didn’t have any headphones in like he normally did, but he didn’t pay any attention to what any of the guys were saying. They didn’t piss him off or annoy him, he just couldn’t concentrate on anything right now. Right after his solo, he had to run to the bathroom before he puked onstage. He didn’t even eat anything a few hours before their performance, but maybe that was exactly why he got sick. Performing on an empty stomach helped combat his nerves, but he’d never had to pay the price until tonight’s show.

“Yoongi?” Hoseok prodded, poking his shoulder from far away with the selfie stick he used to livestream earlier. Better to poke the sleeping bear with a selfie stick from a safe distance than to let the bear sleep peacefully, right?

“Hm?” Finally he said something. The past two hours of silence since the show closed out was too weird, even for Yoongi. “What?”

“You okay dude?” Namjoon looked up from his phone and to his friend.

Yoongi nodded, slipping in a pair of earbuds and closing his eyes. He was exhausted and didn’t feel like answering their bound-to-be relentless questions. He wasn’t acting weird, he was just emotionally and physically spent.

They shrugged and went back to their business, leaving the grumpy one to his own devices. In reality, he didn’t have any music playing through the buds and just needed to drown out their chatter and think to himself.

He tried remembering your face in the sea of flashing cameras, light sticks, signs, glowing wrist bands, and who knows what else. Your partially agape mouth that was so utterly fixated on his performance, not the group’s. His brows knit together when trying to picture your smile, only to come to a dead end. There were too many phones shoved in his face and the swarm of people that flocked to him when he tried coming down the stage to get a closer look at you.

Yoongi grunted in frustration, but because his eyes were still closed, the boys assumed it was just another bad dream. He’d been having a lot of those these days. Taehyung refused to share a room with him when they returned home because he would always wake up to Yoongi thrashing around and screaming in his sleep. Tonight would without a doubt be no different.

Yoongi couldn’t get your face out of his mind, regardless of how hazy and unclear it was. Who were you? What was your name? Why did you come to a concert if you were only going to be there for a few minutes at a time? Why did you leave after his song? What did you think of it? Did you get home safe? After hours of divulging a plan to find out your identity, he surrendered to defeat.

It was as if the world was telling him to stay awake until he knew exactly who you were, where you were, and what you were doing at this exact moment.

He didn’t sleep at all that night.

Staring out his window, he pressed his cheek onto the cold glass and closed his eyes. The icy pane felt satisfying in contrast to his burning hot face. This time of year was Yoongi’s least favorite. Winter—the season where everything died and left nothing but freezing cold, thick, white blankets of snow.

The season you left him.

He grimaced as the memory resurfaced, fists clenching so hard his nails dug crescents into his palms. He wanted to scream but couldn’t find his voice to.

“If you want to leave, then just leave!” he yelled. Gathering the clothes littered beside the bed, he threw them across the room and landed by your feet soundlessly.

Your expression remained stone cold, gaze burning holes that glowed brighter than the sun on the angriest summer day. “Yoongi—” He was quick to cut you off.

“No, ______,” Holding his hand up, he was fuming. “If you want to leave, then leave. I don’t want you here. Just go.”

You opened your mouth to speak but it was no use. He wouldn’t listen.

“If you’re so happy with Namjoon, why don’t you just marry him?” Yoongi’s spit out with pure venom and hatred dripping from his voice. He started laughing, delirious from what he was processing. “You know what? Fuck you, ______.”

Pausing to instigate a reaction from you, you stayed mute with arms crossed over your bare chest. He was still sat in the bed and you hadn’t moved away from the door for the past five minutes he’d been venting.

“Yoongi,” you sighed, completely drained from the hours you had spent arguing with him. He couldn’t even look at you when you spoke. “We’re not dating. This wasn’t supposed to happen between us. You knew that, Yoongi—”

He started laughing even harder, hands covering his face in a manic daze. “And you expect me to believe that it he was only texting you?”

That’s all it was. Namjoon asked you earlier today and asked if you wanted to go out for coffee some time. You made the glorious decision to stay the night at Yoongi’s place and keep your phone unlocked right by the nightstand. It wasn’t long before he discovered the series of texts shared between you and Namjoon that dated back two months ago.

You’ve been sleeping with Yoongi for a little over a year now, but never made it official.

Apparently, it still warranted this kind of a reaction from him.

“We never said we were dating, Yoongi.” Reminding him of all the times he told you that he didn’t date and how he wanted to stay as fuck buddies, a darkness erupted from his eyes. “It’s been—”

“You think blaming a stupid label is what this is about?” He stood up and walked towards you, his smirk and upturned eyebrows making your blood boil.

“I found someone who actually cares about me, Yoongi.” You stood up straighter. “He doesn’t just use me for his personal gain and wants to know more about me, not just for sex or whatever the fuck we’re doing.”

“Who said I didn’t want to get to know you?” he shot back at you. “Did I say didn’t want out take you out on a date? When the fuck did I ever—”

“You did, Yoongi! You!” Raking your hands through your hair, anger didn’t even begin to describe the seething hatred that filled your veins. “You told me that this was just going to be a fuckbuddy thing. You said that you would never date because relationships were high school shit shows waiting to happen. You warned me not to fall in love with you well guess what the fuck happened genius?”

Each pronounced word you cursed at him was followed by a shove to his chest. Just as he was about to bite back, you were running on autopilot. You couldn’t take it anymore. Clutching your throat, you thought you were drowning, water flooding your lungs and rising up your throat until you were moments from being taken under.

“Do you know how many nights I spent crying myself to sleep over you?”

An odd look flashed across his face that you couldn’t piece together.

“The hours I wasted, wondering, begging, praying and wishing that you would like me back...” You felt tears well at the back of your eyes. “You never gave me a sign. You never said anything and you didn’t do anything, Yoongi, fuck—fucking hell. You never—” Taking a moment to breathe, your hand came up to shield your eyes, refusing to let him see you cry.

“You never cared about me, Yoongi.”

His expression morphed even more. “I never cared?” It was a purely rhetorical question. “I never cared? I never cared? Really?” You hung your head in defeat and picked your clothes from the floor. You didn’t need this. Not now, not ever, not anymore.

Another dry scoff came from his throat as you started dressing. “Okay, _____. I never cared. I worked my ass overtime and saved up enough money to buy you that necklace because I never cared. I drove for six hours all the way to see your performance and take you home because I didn’t care. I stayed up all night writing you that birthday card because I didn’t care. I’ve been sleeping with you for the past 18 months, letting you sleep over, making us breakfast, and spending quality time with you because I never fucking cared.”

You froze. Why was he telling you this now?

“It’s too late, Yoongi.” No it wasn’t. It was never too late. “You should’ve told me this when you had the chance.”

“What fucking difference does it make that I’m telling you this now?!” he erupted. “Let’s just fucking—” He tugged at his hair, finally feeling the exact flurry of conflicting emotions you felt. “God, ______, let’s just calm down and talk it out, okay?”

You grabbed your phone from the floor. The screen was shattered from when you threw it at the wall earlier. It almost made you chuckle. Your temper got the best of you and you ended up chucking it at the wall when Yoongi kept probing for more answers.

Why did Namjoon text you, when was this, why didn’t you tell me, what were you going to say, were you ever going to—

“We’re done, Yoongi.” Your decision rang firm and cold. As you turned the doorknob, he grabbed you by the arm and held you still, fingers digging into your skin like shingles.

“If you leave, we’re through, ______.” He deadpanned like you hadn’t just said that. “I mean it, ______. Don’t go.” Never had your own name sounded more agonizing to hear and make you feel like bile was coming up your throat.

You refused to turn away from him when your words followed, feet firmly anchored in the ground and staring through him like glass. “Goodbye, Yoongi.”

Snatching your arm out of his grip, he scoffed through his nose. His jaw was slack and his tongue prodded the inside of his cheek, biting his lip to the point where he nearly broke skin. This was it.

“I hate you.” You could barely make out what he said because you slammed the door on your way out. His knees buckled and he fell to the hardwood floor with a thud. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he kept repeating to himself long after you were gone. Maybe if he said it enough times it would turn into the truth. “I hate you. I hate you.”

Yoongi cupped his hands over his ears and began rocking back and forth, continuing his mantra and willing them with all his might to become reality.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

“I love you,” he finally said. “I love you.”

I love you.

“BP’s dropping, set up a drip!” The resident on-call was quick to gather all the nurses and they had to work fast.

“Book an OR! We have to operate now!” he shouted at anyone who was listening, pushing the gurney down the hall and making people move out of the way like oil in water.

Each doorway burst open as the doctors and nurses rolled you down each sector of the hospital, juggling around medical jargon and ordering everyone standing idle in the aisle to “Get out of the way!”

The nurses shoving the IV needles into your arms was barely a tickle compared to the other things you were focused on. Your body hurt. It felt like everything was being crushed but none of the pain was registering in your brain because of how much it was. Your eyelids weighed a ton and it stung to even open them. It hurt to breathe. Every time you inhaled, it seemed like a knife was digging itself deeper into the side of your chest, ripping through flesh and piercing each individual bone.

“Please do something!” someone shouted, probably at the nurses. As if that would do anything...

The sound of footsteps clapped like thunder against the floor tiles, running towards you as fast as they could. “You have to save her!”

A nurse that was about two feet shorter than him, managed to hold him back with an iron grip. “I’m sorry sir, staff only. We promise we’ll do the best we can.”

This felt familiar. Nostalgic, even. Dare you say it, comforting?

“Where the hell is Yoongi?” Jungkook asked Namjoon, bright red and dripping with sweat from carrying you on his back. He swore he would never use the line, “We’re lucky we live right next to the school’s teaching hospital” as a joke ever again.

Namjoon paced back and forth while on his phone, calling everyone and telling them to get to the hospital as soon as they could. “I don’t know, he’s not answering.”

“I’m sorry, your call could not be completed—”

“Shit!” Namjoon swore and kicked one of the plastic chairs, earning a few nasty glares from the nurses and patients.

“Jungkook!” Turning around, the two saw Jimin, Seokjin, and Hoseok running towards them.

“What the hell happened?” the oldest asked. “Is she okay?”

Namjoon had to lean against the wall for support. His head was spinning. He couldn’t find it in himself to say anything.

“They rolled her into an operating room a few minutes ago,” Jungkook answered, voice shaking like a child’s. “We don’t know yet.”

“Taehyung’s on his way here right now,” Hoseok signed in exasperation.

Jimin asked what was on everyone’s mind. “Where’s Yoongi?”

“He’s not answering his phone.” Namjoon filled in with a bitter voice, now oddly calm. “One of you guys should call him. Maybe he’ll answer if someone he doesn’t despise calls him.”

All of a sudden, Taehyung burst through the double doors in a hoodie and sweats, running over to where the five were lined up along the wall. “Namjoon!”

Panting like he’d just run a marathon, he didn’t bother catching his breath before asking what happened. “Have they helped her yet? What’s wrong?”

“We don’t know,” Jimin replied. “They haven’t told us anything yet.”

It was unclear whether he was talking about the doctors or Namjoon and Jungkook, but Taehyung didn’t bother asking what he meant.

Jungkook asked Taehyung what Namjoon refused to. “Did you call Yoongi?”

Taehyung shook his head. “It went straight to voicemail...” Behind him, Seokjin, Hoseok, and Jimin were all taking turns calling Yoongi, probably blowing up his phone with hundreds of messages, voicemails, and missed calls.

He never answered.

Yoongi was never a fast runner. He did P.E. in high school and sprinted 50 meters on the field whenever he needed to burn off some steam, but he never enjoyed running.

Running to the hospital made him hate it more than he thought humanly possible.

Each time his feet struck the concrete sent a shockwave up his knee, pins and needles pinching his nerves like no other injury he’d endured before. It was a miracle he hadn’t tripped over his own feet yet. He didn’t care, not one bit. He needed to get to you right now and if that meant suffering shin splints then so be it.

When he finally turned his phone back on, it didn’t take him more than two seconds to read the first message before he was sprinting out of his apartment.

59 missed calls

22 new voicemails

65 unread messages

______’s in the hospital

Every footstep after that was synchronous with each ring of his phone; a new text message, another phone call, a bunch of voicemails that no one ever listened to on a regular basis other than when you really had nothing else to do.

Yoongi can safely say that his lungs have never burned, ached, or pulsed more in his entire life than right now. His vision was blurry and he could hardly see straight, but he managed to make out the faint outline of Namjoon’s lanky frame. He would recognize him anywhere—it turns out people remember the first fistfight much better than they give each other credit for. However, this time, it was Namjoon doing the swinging and Yoongi being the receiving end.

Nonetheless, he didn’t expect a swift hook the moment he opened those hospital doors.

“Namjoon!” Jungkook and the others rushed to hold him back, nurses and surrounding staff calling security at lightning speed.

“It’s fine!” Yoongi held his hand up towards the staff and pinched his nose. Leaning forward, he felt blood trickle down his knuckles and into his mouth. The faint metallic tang took him back to the night he and Namjoon almost killed each other at your apartment.

The doctors looked at each other, silently debating whether or not they should have them kicked out. After a few moments of reading the air, they understood the nature of your situation and let it pass, just this once.

“Where is she.” Yoongi’s question came our more like a callous statement.

Hoseok’s hand came up to touch Yoongi’s shoulder but he smacked it away like he’d just been burned by a hot stove.

“Where the fuck is ______, Namjoon,” he growled, facing Namjoon head on blood-streaked face and all.

Namjoon didn’t say a word. He simply stared at the guy he used to call his best friend and waited. Waited for another question, an answer—hell, even a punch or a kick would suffice if it meant getting a reaction from Yoongi. A full minute passed in utter total silence and the others sat quietly in the surrounding chairs, monitoring the two ticking time bombs just in case things escalated quickly.

Seokjin tried to calm him down. “She’s in the OR. We’re still waiting for an update.”

“Glad you made it,” Namjoon’s voice cracked, practically spitting at him. “What took you so long, Yoongi?”

“Kim Namjoon,” Yoongi muttered through clenched teeth. “Where. Is. She.”

Namjoon began laughing, a livid flame burning behind his dark eyes. His chuckles were soon replaced by shallow breaths, gasping and coughing, until he broke down into sobs.

“She was going to see you,” Namjoon trembled, rage and sadness wrapping their tendrils around every fiber of his being. “—you unbelievable fucking idiot.”

Yoongi’s eyes narrowed into slits and his eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

Namjoon was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall and head buried between his knees. Lifting his head up, he kept his eyes focused on the floor tiles. If he looked at Yoongi, he’d be more than tempted to deck him again. This time, he wouldn’t stop after a single blow.

“She came over to my place and told me that she couldn’t be with me,” he reaffirmed. “Because she loved you.”

Yoongi’s world came crashing down. You loved him? You loved him back?

“She said she needed to go see you,” Namjoon continued. “I told her to hurry up and go before you fell asleep. I told her to go and she actually listened to me.” All eyes were on Namjoon now, anticipating what would come out of his mouth next.

Namjoon bit the inside of his cheek and covered his mouth, holding back his whimpers. “She ran outside before I could even say a proper goodbye and th—”

Jungkook broke. “I was on my way upstairs when I heard the car all the way down the street... ” His voice hitched on the truth, only now comprehending the gravity of their new reality.

“Lady blew a .19,” the older one sneered. “Said her drink was spiked but we all knew she was just fucking wasted and wanted to take her new ride out for a spin.”

The bustling background noise of the hospital was now mute. Deep down inside Yoongi’s heart, something snapped. Anatomically or physically, he didn’t know, but it was even more painful than anything he had experienced in his entire life. His fingertips began buzzing like static ran through them and the sounds around him grew fuzzy, as if he’d been plunged twelve meters deep into the darkest trench of the ocean.

Yoongi’s hand flew up to his chest, a tearing sound he swear he could hear echoing like a cannon ripple. His friends stumbled to their feet and screamed to any nearby medical personnel for help. Namjoon was shellshocked, frozen like a deer in headlights. He’d just seen your lifeless body get rolled into the hospital wing. Even though he refused to admit it, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he lost another friend today.

His ears was ringing like when he had the worst migraine back in senior year. Finals season, go figure. Yoongi snuck into your room and stayed there with you all night. Sure, you managed to get a little bit studying done.

“Fucking do something!” Taehyung screamed. “Help him!”

Yoongi kicked and thrashed at anyone who tried touching him, moaning and crying out until his throat went raw. An excruciating pain spread throughout his body. It felt like his muscles were peeling apart from his bones and his bare body was being dunked in battery acid.

Then came the pit.

It started with a numb cramp. Then, a hole opened up from deep inside his chest, swallowing all of his air and making it impossible to breathe. It was unbearable. He was going to pass out from the pain; he wanted to. Anything was better than this. God, everything fucking hurt and he just wanted to go to sleep.

The last thing he saw was a hoard of nurses running into the room across his and the sound of of defibrillator paddles charging. With all the blood streaked across your face, he could barely make out the scar on your temple. It was from sophomore year—you fell down the bleachers after a night of bad decisions and way too many drinks. If Yoongi hadn’t caught you, you probably would’ve snapped your leg.

He doesn’t want to remember what happened after that.

Another week passed before you decided to leave the house. It had been exactly 18 months since you moved here and yet, the city still felt foreign to you. Sure, you had a cozy studio apartment decorated well enough to remind you of home, a job you loved with all your heart, kind neighbors who treated you like a local, and not to mention a tightly-knit circle of friends you treasured more than anything.

So why on Earth did you still feel so undeniably out of place?

Pulling back the blinds, the sunlight streamed in like rays of heavenly light. It wasn’t supposed to be sunny today, but you weren’t one to complain. After weeks of staying cooped up in your own apartment and using “the holidays” as an excuse, your pasty complexion deemed itself worthy of some vitamin D and fresh outside air. You weren’t entirely sure how to explain it, but something was bugging you, willing you, to go outside.

Yeah, you definitely needed some fresh air if some weird gut feeling was what finally convinced you to go outside.

Throwing on a thick wooly coat you snagged from the thrift shop during your first month here, you had to slam the door shut with as much finesse and gusto as Houdini himself. Cheap apartments didn’t come without their share of cons, but you liked to think that your bank account thanked you each month.

Skipping down the street right after the snow melted was the perfect equation for disaster. That didn’t stop it from being fun. You were in a good mood today for some unknown reason. Everyone had their good days as much as they had their bad ones, didn’t they?

The warm smell of freshly baked bread wafted in the air. It flooded your nostrils with the most delightful, comforting, and delectable scent you’d ever had the pleasure of smelling. It also reminded you how hungry you were and that it was a bad decision to skip breakfast. You apologized to your wallet before venturing off to find the nearest café. At least it was cheaper than eating at a restaurant.

You lied. It was all in the name of really good coffee and you happened to know exactly where to find some.

The jingling of the door chime was something you had grown accustomed to over the course of 10 months. This was the only café that actually poured bottomless cups of black coffee and only charged for every two refills on lattes, cappuccinos, and other milk drinks.

“The usual I presume?” your favorite host offered, already getting a cup ready.

You smiled wide. “You know me oh so well, Jimin.”

Flashing you his signature grin and a cheeky wink, he got to work steaming the milk for your double-shot flat white. “Where’s Namjoon?” you wondered aloud. “Isn’t it his turn for the lunch shift?”

Jimin chortled. “It always blows my mind that you seem to know our schedules better than we do.” You rolled your eyes at his backhanded compliment; flattering because he appreciated how attentive and close you were with everyone who worked here, but mildly insulting because he was implying that you spent so much time here that you didn’t get out enough.

Finishing up cleaning the last row of plates, Jimin slung the dish towel over his shoulder. He beckoned you to come closer and you leaned over the counter. “Joonie has a date,” he whispered in your ear.

“I don’t see those hands moving, Park Jimin!” You’d know that velvety voice anywhere. “Don’t forget you’re taking out the trash later if Seokjin catches you!”

“Just keeping me company, Taehyung!” Sipping the top layer of foam from the red ceramic cup, you sighed in pure bliss.

Sticking his head out from the kitchen, his lips formed into a giddy smile. “It’s been a few days princess! How long did you sleep for this time?”

“Hardy har har,” you jeered, scowling at his never ending tirade of Snow White jokes. “At least I still get my beauty sleep.”

Taking mock offense to this, he didn’t get a chance to react before Seokjin snuck up from behind him smacked the back of his head with a wooden spoon. “Stop flirting with customers and finish table eight’s order, doofus.”

“We don’t open for another hour!” Taehyung wailed.

You suppressed the snort that almost escaped by taking another sip of your coffee. “Missed you too, Seokjin,” you greeted. He smiled heartily at you and waved before picking up the phone. Running a business while having your best friends work for you wasn’t exactly the best recipe for success, so to speak.

“So this ‘date’ Namjoon has,” you hummed. “Is she pretty?”

A pair of hands from behind you snaked their way your waist, tickling you into a fit of forced laughter. “It’s not good to butt your nose into other people’s business!”

You were too busy choking on your giggles, you couldn’t talk. After an incredibly long six seconds, Jungkook pulled away and greeted you with an innocent grin. His nose was crinkled the slightest bit and his eyes were inviting half-moons.

“That’s the least you deserve for leaving me with these idiots for the past three days...” he immediately broke into a pout.

At this, Jimin swung the towel off his shoulder and smacked Jungkook straight across the face with it. His reaction was straight out of a cartoon. If you hadn’t finished your drink beforehand, flat white would have spewed out of your nostrils all over the counter.

“Watch your mouth kid,” Jimin warned in a melodramatic voice, and even he was holding back a series of cackles.

“See what I mean!” Jungkook whined to you, tugging your sleeve and pouting. “They’re so mean to me and steal all the tips!”

From the kitchen, Taehyung tsked to scold the younger one and waved his spatula around for extra emphasis. “We don’t steal them, you’re just to busy chatting up all the customers to pay attention to the little details.”

Jungkook’s mouth contorted into a pucker and he started mouthing their words to mock them. You forced yourself to stay quiet and pressed your lips together to force back any reaction.

The ringing of the door caused you all to turn around. It was Hoseok and his—friend?

"______!” His voice was telltale surprised and ecstatic to see your face after a couple of days of absence. “Kook, Chim, Tae, guess who I brought?”

“Well well, and I thought we had seen our share of ghosts for the day,” Taehyung gawked, ignoring the pet names Hoseok coined for them in elementary school.

Jimin wore a look of awe. “You must be a vampire or something, you’re still as young and as pale as ever.”

“So I did get taller!” Jungkook blurted out like the child he still was.

The man standing beside him currently had his back turned towards you, focusing instead on the antique decor that adorned the walls, tables, chairs, and ceilings of this establishment. He wore a simple outfit, bearing nothing but a white hoodie, dark jeans, and frayed navy blue sneakers.

When he finally turned around, you thought your heart did a triple somersault and landed in your throat. Did you know him? Didn’t you know him It wasn’t as simple as the fact that he looked familiar, he felt familiar. Everything from his face, gaze, aura, energy, and even his scent engulfed you in a cloak of solace. You knew him from somewhere, yet you had no idea who he was or where he was from.

The moment he turned around, Yoongi was immediately drawn to you. Everything else flew out the window and you were the sole focus of his mind. A forcefield of curiosity and yearning overrode all of his thoughts and he was consumed by one wish and one wish only: he needed to know your name. He needed to know who you were.

With wide eyes and an invisible string pulling the two of you towards one another like polar ends, you didn’t notice that he had made his way right in front until Jungkook coughed up a lung.

Hoseok broke the silence in the air. “______, this is Yoongi. Yoongi, this is ______.”

He was still drinking in your features. the tiniest details of your uneven dimples, delicate lips, baby hairs, down to the way your eyes sparkled and twinkled like the brightest stars in the sky.

Likewise, you were sketching out every single detail of his face; the almond-shaped creases of his eyes, pouty lips, flawless skin, and of course, the half a second he let his gummy smile slip past his lips.

“Hi,” you finally murmured, quieter than the sound of a cricket chirping in the dead of night. A small grin crept along the edges of your lips as he parted his lips to speak.

Yoongi couldn’t stop the smile that lit up his features. “Hi.”

“Psst—” Taehyung craned his body over the serving window to whisper in Jimin’s ear. “What’s up with them?”

Jungkook, Jimin, and Hoseok shrugged, looking back and forth at each other, then at you and Yoongi.

“It’s really nice to meet you.” So this is what it’s like...

He held out his hand, the distance between you staying the same yet growing shorter each second.

Taking his outstretched hand into yours, you slowly closed your fingers around his, admiring how they seemed to fit perfectly like a lock and key. It was as if a spark had ignited between your two bodies, embers flying like fireworks underneath the pitch black darkness of night. How were his hands so warm?

Any remaining drop of apprehension you ever had was now gone, replaced by a bright, glowing light that outshined everything else.

“The pleasure is mine.” Finally.

The air hung heavy with nerves as you and Yoongi stood absolutely silent, fingers still entwined with one another. Hoseok coughed from the serving counter. When did he get there—

“You gonna catch up with us or leave us hanging again, Yoongs?” Jimin teased, a mischievous smirk painting his features. Letting go of his hand, the feeling of cold air grazing your palm was instantaneous. Jungkook slung his arm over your shoulder jokingly. “What have you been up to, Yoongi?” He was desperate for some kind of attention, he was willing to piss his best friend off for it. You tried to refrain from giggling.

“What am I, cold turkey?” Taehyung complained from the back. Crossing your arms to shelter your hands, you notice how icy they’d become in the span of a few seconds. Yoongi climbed over the counter in the blink of an eye and whacked the chef behind his head.

“Show some respect you goofball, you haven’t seen me in months,” the older scolded. Chuckling, his gums were the slightest bit visible as he smiled wide, another wave of familiarity swallowing your senses.

You stepped outside five minutes after the guys started chatting and catching up with each other, awkwardness overcoming your ability to carry on a normal conversation. Yoongi’s presence made you—flustered, to say the least. Ideally and in any other social situation, you would have stayed and introduced yourself to him further, but you felt like you were already intruding on a private conversation.

After an hour of pacing back and forth and pretending to be busy with a phone call, you went back inside and told the guys you had to get back home. “I forgot I had some extra papers I still haven’t sorted through,” you lied through a forced out dry laugh. “Don’t want my boss to kill me.”

The guys waved goodbye, and Yoongi looked like he’d been slapped across the face. “It was nice meeting you,” he managed to pry out. “See you around.”

Flashing him a tight-lipped grin, you scooped up your things from the counter, bid the boys farewell, and hurried out the door. The moment you set foot out the door, it was as if something tugged the hems of your coat. Did you forget your phone? Bag? Journal? Wallet?

Patting yourself down thoroughly, you shook it off as just another misled gut feeling. You hadn’t visited the café in a while and started the day off on an off foot in the first place.

You were a few meters from the café when someone called out to you—shouted, actually.

“______!” Their footsteps drew closer, each dull thunk on the pavement instead reverberating like a crisp knock on hardwood.

Turning around, your looked down at the figure hunched over directly in front of you and gasped. Yoongi was panting heavily, shoulders rising and falling as he supported himself by resting his hands on his knees. Patting his back out of habit like you’d done for your high school teammates after a track meet, he reached out and gripped your forearm for support.

Biting back a chuckle, you had to ask. “Are you alright?” Had he really sprinted that far just to catch up to you? Damn, you really did leave your phone back there, didn’t you...

Clearing his throat, he stood up straight and tried catching his breath. “Never been better, thanks.” He was still holding your arm. “I was going to ask if you—if you uh, God this is weird—,” he stuttered, eyes falling to the concrete pavement beneath his feet.

You tried your hardest not to interrupt. While he kept tripping over his words like an adorable nervous wreck, you relaxed your arm so that his hand slid into yours, slotting together perfectly like two matching puzzle pieces. Feeling the warmth radiate from his touch, you saw his expression ease immediately. He squeezed your hand. When you returned the favor with a shy grin, it gave him the courage to speak.

“Do you want to go out for dinner sometime, ______?” he finally asked, your name flowing off of his tongue like the most beautiful song you’d ever heard. Yoongi’s eyes glimmered with anticipation and hope.

Looking deeper into his entrancing gaze, you didn’t have to think twice. “I would love to, Yoongi.” His heart exploded in his chest when you said his name, a trapped butterfly escaping from its cage with a vivid flurry of colors and radiating light.

Love at first sight always seemed like nothing short of a fairytale, but you had a feeling that this came pretty damn close to it.

Soulmates weren’t always romantic lovers. Sometimes, they were close friends or merely acquaintances. More often than not, they even lived their entire human life without finding each other, the closing chapter of their lives spent with their loved ones, twin flame, an unlinked soul, or in complete solitude.

Each life was given to you for a reason. Every experience, painful memory, death, birth, and ounce of love and loss you endured throughout all of your past lives was entirely out of your control. It was neither your destiny nor fate to remember the lifetimes with or without your soulmate, and doing so would be a waste of the time you were given in this current life.

Fate, karma, destiny, divine logos, universal divinity—call it what you want.

We do not remember our past, nor are we better off predicting our future.

All we have is the present moment and ourselves, and that is more than enough.

5/5/2020—3:43:01 AM

220 notes · View notes

whoajeon · 7 years

Text

Deeper Than Ink | 02

P R E M I S E ⇒

Should you fall in love with someone, even in the slightest, your skin becomes marked with vibrant colors that depict the story of your emotions. A tattoo, per say. However, should they or you fall out of love, the bright hues dull to black and the feelings you once had for each other melt away. To many, it’s a blessing to not have to live with the pain of your past. But what’s the point when you have too many reminders–say 27?

P A I R I N G ⇒ namjoon x reader

G E N R E ⇒ angst, tattoo au, soulmate au

W O R D S ⇒ 7.231

P A R T ⇒ one | two | three

Those with velleity disease are not allowed to love, unless they are open to an untimely death.

Most who encounter this fate learn to live their lives with but one tattoo, the single mark being their lifelong demise. The once bold and swirling colors of their tattoos are defaced by a deep shade of vermillion blood pouring from the pattern unabashedly, insistent until the tattoo loses its true meaning and fades into itself. They become raised and jagged, scarred over in nasty shades of black, laced with deep red just waiting to escape and claw at an innocent life.

In the years that Namjoon had spent acquiring his own tattoos, it was rare even to him to find those who were adorned with this leech of a disease. It robbed them of their chance to experience the wonders of another's world, their emotions and story. All the same aspects that had made Namjoon so keen on others, which had drawn him into such a distraughtly stereotyped life. The system of love proved defective, giving the exact opposite of its intentions to those people cursed with velleity.

It was his crude belief in the atrocious tattoo system that had lead him to now be stood on a wobbling stage, lined up next to over a dozen other men, waiting to be bid on. The pads of his hands were coated in sweat, sticking to his fingers as he held his hands behind his back and absently listened to the commentator. His voice was booming through the speakers with captivating tone and context, luring passersby to the rickety white stage until a sizeable crowd was blandly listening.

Nowadays people loved the commodity of events such as this one as if it was enough to know that others were doing something about the issue so they didn’t have to. So instead they showed their support through snapping photos as a contribution, only to leave as soon as the chance to truly help presented itself. It was rather bitterly humorous how in a world so polluted with love, people remained unwaveringly numb to the underlying pain it caused.

It was that stand out factor that had caused him to scribble his name at the bottom of the sign-up sheet for the event he was now rigidly standing in. The scrawl of the pencil as it etched his name replaced the ink on his arms in that moment, giving him the chance to let others have what he received in a drowning manner.

There were a million and one additional reasons that he had brought himself to stand before a crowd of unfamiliar and probing eyes, reasons that he silently counted on his fingers as a voice echoed through loudspeakers. He remained pinned to the wooden floorboards with an anxiously blank face, fearful that a break of eye contact or a breach in his straightened lips would pull too much attention. With every passing second that adjectives met the air to describe the men lined beside him, his grip on the logic of the scenario only chipped thinner.

As those beside him were announced with lavish descriptions and enticing backgrounds, bid on with numbers rising into the hundreds, Namjoon remained absolutely frigid. In the moments between clapping and sporadic screams of victory, he would drag his eyes up to attempt a look at the crowd below him. Yet, all he could see were disinterested stares, gazes that bore into him with a touch of distaste at the ink displayed on his arms and crawling up his neck.

He hadn't intended to be so open with his skin, to show himself so clearly to a crowd of uptown city dwellers, people in the high class who had practically shamed him for what was beyond his control. So, in the instance when the man beside him had waltzed off stage and met the woman who had won the bid, every nerve of his stood on edge. In a change of pace that could only match the snap of fingers, the eyes of anyone within a 50-foot range were now on him.

"Our next available bachelor works at the museum downtown. Not only is he well educated, but a man who will surely treat you like a prized possession," the commentator stated with a very blatant false sense of enthusiasm. The uneasy stare the man was giving Namjoon was more than enough to know that the commentator was trying to make him seem more appealing than anyone would think, but this crowd wasn't naive. "We'll start the bids for Mr. Kim Namjoon at $10."

For a moment his breath stole from his chest and seized his throat in a choke as he peered out at the crowd. Those who weren't looking at him seemed ready to pick up and leave, and those who were staring were gaping at him with a silent judgment of how someone like him had even taken part in such an event.

Every passing second felt like a wave pulling him under the tide, slowly drowning him with not an ounce of mercy, not a single second granted for him to lift his head from the water and gasp for air. His fingers twitched at his sides and his palms had long since been coated in a sheen of sweat that he absentmindedly wiped off on his pants. Then he was raising his arm and parting his lips with an apology for his presence forming at the tip of his tongue, intentions to leave the stage and hide away in his apartment flooding every corner of his body.

Yet, with his chapped lips curling to form a sentence, a saving grace called out, albeit faintly but enough to shatter the hanging silence like a pin dropping in a glass room.

"I'll bid $10."

Heads craned to find the owner of the voice who had bid so absurdly on the man stood on the stage, however, he was the only one to find them so quickly. His eyes widened at the small hand just barely peeking over brunette locks, recognition faintly flashing at the woman he had seen in the waiting room just last week.

"We have a $10 bid from this lovely young lady up front, however, Mr. Kim is still up for grabs." The commentator exclaimed and Namjoon could practically feel the relief rolling off the other man's shoulders at the release of tension. "Would anyone else like a shot at this dashing man? He's going once." Pause. "Going twice." Pause. "Going–"

"$12!" A shout rang out from within the crowd, only an arm poking out between the cluster of people, bills clasped in freshly painted nails as a woman sprung into sight. "I'll bid $12."

"It looks like there is a counter bid," the commentator began again, his own surprise laced in his voice. "Would the other young lady like to make a higher offer?"

Once again all eyes were turned to the delicate woman up front, yet she had already inched herself to the mold of the crowd and a sheepish smile was gracing the corners of her mouth. Her eyes swiftly caught Namjoon's, his breathing evening at the gentle intensity of her gaze, but then her head was shaking in a polite rejection and her attention was lost to the ground.

Even as the commentator began his mindful effort to spur the crowd into higher bids, Namjoon kept his sights around the woman before him. Although it had been days since he had seen her, he still could not piece her together. She remained an unfinished puzzle whose missing piece was lost in the abyss of his unconscious, buried beneath layers of memories which had long since abandoned him.

"Going once." The booming voice of the commentator echoed through the speakers and shook Namjoon from his gaze, eyes now cast on the woman giddily jumping at the base of the stage. "Going twice." His body shivered at the way she was staring at him, as if he was a prey she had been hunting, her look absolutely crazed as the commentator came to a finish.

"$15."

In a flash Namjoon's gaze snapped to the voice at the back of the crowd, immediately finding the owner whose arms were crossed with only her hand peeking out from the juncture of her elbow. She looked completely unamused with the entire ordeal and she wore that same scrutinizing stare as when she had degraded him to nothing but his tattoo's.

"Wait, what?"

The woman at the stage had gone frantic, her hands fumbling with her wallet as the commentator stuttered in his own astonishment. Yet, not a single soul was aware of the disdain Namjoon had for the woman in the back, who had written him off as nothing more than a stereotype so far from who he truly was. Even while standing there with a feeble bid for him, she kept her eyes on her fingers as if analyzing them for imperfections, the complete disregard so annoyingly evident on her features.

"I'll bid $20, then," the woman burst. Her knuckles were white as she clasped her wallet in her hand, as if her rent for the month was due and she was hoping she had enough.

"$25." Whispers set across the crowd at how instantaneous the counter-bid was, attention shifting swiftly between the two women.

"Would you like to counter?" The commentator asked the woman at the stage as if to urge the peculiarity of the situation onward.

However, her face was broken as she tore through her wallet with haste, mumbles passing her lips until she snapped her attention up. "Can I go to an ATM really quickly?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but every bid has to close within seconds unless someone else counters," the commentator said. "Which leads me to ask, is there anyone else who would like to bid on Mr. Kim?"

Silence quickly settled over the crowd, gazes flashing to the woman in the back who was absently staring around with an aura of impatience. Then the commentator started his lead-off, pausing between each count to leave room for a bid but none came. So as the word 'sold' soared through the speakers and the woman at the stage gave out a huff, Namjoon stood rigidly.

Time became a whirlwind as people flooded from the stage and disappeared down the stone pathways of the park, quietly chattering about the man with tattoos and the woman who seemed to want nothing to do with him. Yet, even when the clean-up crew began to walk around Namjoon, he remained stock still with his mouth agape and gaze locked on the woman in the back.

It was when a member of the stage crew had asked if he was okay that he realized he was stood alone on the platform, staring out amongst the dispersed crowd completely lost in his own bitter world. So it was with no hesitance that he apologized, bowing his head just enough to be considered polite before he dismissed himself down the stage to weave through those wandering about. His eyes were unwaveringly locked on the woman dressed in a tan coat, hair done to perfection, and legs long as they melted into a set of black heels that could surely send him to hell with one step.

The boiling frustration burning at his chest had since risen to his tongue, words ready to spill from his lips like bullets from a machine gun, completely demolishing anything in their path. However, his sentence was swiftly lost as the woman's attention stole onto him, a frown deepening on her lips as he stopped in front of her.

"Consider this an apology," she started, tucking her arms more firmly across her chest. "I was completely out of line to assume something of you without even bothering to know you first."

For a moment he remained silent, a sliver of surprise showing on his features at her sudden apology. But the feeling was quick to dissipate as his eyes caught the pink winning slip peeking out from the pocket of her jacket, the word SOLD stamped at the top.

"Assuming has a nasty way of showing how dense people can be," he retorted. He kept his tone stoic and tilted his head slightly as if to emphasize just how disinterested he was with her sudden appearance.

She remained silent, keeping her features blank as she stared at him with an eye of curiosity over the passive aggressiveness he had aimed at her. Yet when she made no move to respond, he shifted his stance and shoved his hands into his pockets with a frown. "Why did you bid on me?"

"That other woman would have eaten you alive if she won," she responded with a scoff, turning her attention to the sky with a bland smile. "The way she was practically throwing herself at the stage was obvious enough, but then to bid against me with money she obviously didn't have? Mr. Kim, I saved you from a walking disaster."

"Saved me?" His brows shot up in shock. "This event is for charity, specifically a charity that gives people a chance at something most of us are entitled to have. And was that woman crazy? Yeah, of course, but I still would have given her a chance. Clearly, you don't understand concepts like that, though."

Her expression was unreadable to him as he huffed out the last of his sentence and pushed his head back in a shake of disbelief. The tug of her arms around herself had loosened and her lips had parted just in the slightest as she peered at him in mild surprise. The look she was giving him was the same as many others in the past, that simple shine in the eyes that proves just how little others knew to what he did. It was a look that he had feared in others, the same one that had driven so many people away from him and burned him with the black ink he was now condemned to for the rest of his life.

Staring back at her with a remorse that had plunged itself to his shoulders, he took immediate regret to the words that he had shot so blindly at her. The very lesson he had intended to teach her had twisted itself into karma and made him a hypocrite of his own doing.

"I–" he stuttered, retreating his hands from his pockets and feebly gesturing them toward her. "Y/N, I'm sorry, that was really out of line."

Her feet shuffled on the gravel, heel kicking up pebbles as she shifted her arms. "No, no. I deserved that. I've been nothing but some uptown pretentious bitch to you." She let out a long sigh and brought her eyes to meet his. "Don't worry about going out on a date or whatever, and if you'd like you can come back to my office for a free consultation. It's the least I can do."

With that, she bowed her head to him and turned away with her hands now tucked in her jacket pockets, head held high. He watched her leave, kept his eyes glued to the tan fabric of her coat and the precise swing of her legs as she left with as much dignity as she could muster given the thrashing he had just given her. His stomach clenched and a frown settled on his lips while his mind battled with itself.

This would be it, the tied up, no loose ends closing to their crossing paths, to a meeting that had begun and ended in a tense battle of class and rank that society had granted them. She was merely another person who had never cared for the likes of him and the complete bullshit he received for loving others too much, and he felt that perhaps that was for the best. But among the morbid relief of her disappearance, there was a whining to not let another person give up on him so easily, that this time he could prove himself for the better.

If just one person could understand him, someone other than Yoongi and the guys at the Flux, then all 27 marks on his skin would be worth it. To show a stranger a world beyond what only their social circle allowed, even if only for an hour, it could make all the difference to not just him but those who weren't given the chance.

It was that reluctance in his head that won, that had urged his legs to move toward her until he was bobbing between people and muttering apologies as he strode with haste. His eyes were darting in every direction in search of that familiar head of hair brushing against a tan jacket, heels dragging against the gravel pathway. There was a thumping in his chest as his intention grew stronger and before he could understand the skidding of his torn sneakers pummeling against stone, he was running.

His lungs were burning at the unfamiliar sensation but the closer he felt himself come to her, the faster his arms pumped. Yet, with the stage now far from sight and the park dwindling in wandering strangers, he realized that she had long since strode from his grasps and back to her own world. The soles of his shoes slowed in the middle of the path, chest rising and falling as he let himself breathe while his eyes slid across the park's scenery.

The more he looked out at nothing in particular in search of a woman he barely knew, the more an unexplainable sensation stretched through his nerves in pulses until goosebumps had risen to his skin. It felt as if his attention was beginning to be dragged from the pathways until he was peering out at the fields where picnic benches and rusted grills were poking from the green. There were specks of color everywhere as people slowly went about their afternoon, children with bright jackets and small families shaking out patterned blankets to lay on.

If he hadn't been staring out, absorbing the variation of greens and browns that the earth was sprouting, then perhaps he would have missed her standing with her head turned up at the sky. At first, he didn't dare to make a move at her abrupt appearance, but as she remained there seemingly lost in her own thoughts with the wind combing through her hair, he moved.

The closer he got the tighter he drove into himself, tucking his hands back into his pockets and shrugging his shoulders until he had enveloped himself into his shirt. When his feet came to a still, he stood no more than five feet behind her, teeth gnawing at the inside of his bottom lip as he formed his words. And this time he caught her off guard, voice soft as he called out her name and waited for her to turn to him, that same far-off look in her eyes.

"Mr. Kim," she nodded and clasped her hands in front of her with a tight-lipped smile.

"Let me take you out for lunch." The words tumbled from his mouth without an ounce of hesitation, but his cheeks were fuming with the humiliation of how drastically different he had spoken to her before.

His confirmation only came with the widening of her eyes and the small drop of her mouth as she gaped at his words. He could feel her surprise from the tips of his fingers down to the locking of his knees. Her lips bobbed in a dulled confusion, her brows tucking together and her head tilting ever so slightly to the right as she stared back at him.

"Please," he began again, fingers curling into his palms as he pulled his arms behind him. "I need to tell you some things, things I think you might want to hear."

For a moment the pair continued to stare at the other in bated silence, him waiting with his heart thrashing in his chest as his nerves coiled in his stomach. Yet she had gone blank, his plead having met her ears and forcing her back to straighten at just how earnest he had been, following her as he had just to ask for a favor she did not deserve.

So surprise surged through both of them as the small voice in her head pushed her head forward until she was nodding, arm stretched in a wide gesture for him to lead the way.

Perhaps it was the skid of his shoes as he walked, the run of the gravel scraping against his soles that reminded him of the woman matching his strides in heels which broke the same rocks he stepped over.

Their lips remained shut as he guided her down streets her eyes didn't recognize toward a place that she only became increasingly weary of as their surroundings bled into a part of town she rarely, if ever, touched. It was obvious that she was anxious in the way her hands shifted in the pockets of her jacket, the cross of her eyes as figures passed them by with gruff appearances and mutters passing their teeth. He noticed the tension forming in her shoulders and found his own body locking as her path came closer to his, the fabric of her clothes brushing him in a feeble attempt to put distance between herself and the discomforting streets they walked.

In ways, it seemed the world took notice of the two easing themselves downtown, paces matching in a strained manner that reflected the skies which had since cast itself in a variation of grays. The rumble of thunder was subtle as they strode on and it was as if the sky was waiting to release rain at the tension they had formed between themselves, a storm brewing from their previously exchanged words.

However, there was a lull in the air as the dulled shine of an excessively dented truck was revealed to be their final destination. Namjoon didn't miss the confusion in her gaze as he slowed to a stop below the window of the truck, her wandering eyes casting over the menu written on whiteboards and tattered paper. From her pursed lips to the shuffle of her feet, it was easy to see that this was not what she had thought when he asked–begged–to take her out for lunch.

Regardless of her apprehension, he swiftly muttered his usual order and gestured for two with his fingers before pointing at a bottle of water. His focus moved to her for a second, blankly staring until he raised a finger to the drinks lining the top of a glass case.

"Oh," she spoke softly, voice cracking from not having said anything the entire walk. "Water is fine for me too."

Once again he bobbed his head in a nod, holding up two fingers at the vendor and digging his hand into his back pocket to grab at his wallet. In seconds he was handing a collection of bills to the man behind the counter with a 'thank you' rolling from his tongue as he was handed two bottles. As the vendor called out how long their meals would be, Namjoon offered a water to the woman standing a few feet to his side, a tight-lipped smile sufficing as her gratitude.

A lengthy sigh slipped past his lips as he nodded his head toward the wall of a building. "It'll be a while since he has to make two. Let's get out of the way."

"You know, we could have gone to a place closer to the park," she said quietly as they found themselves pressed to the side of the building.

"Trust me," he started, twisting the cap of the bottle in his hands open with a pop. "It's better that we're here than there, and not just for me."

His insinuation didn't slip past her and she could only frown despite the truth of his words. Here they wouldn't be eyed by passersby, given looks of disapproval from people whose skin wasn't so littered with a vulgar abundance of tattoos. Although Namjoon stood out in crowds, a place like this was far more accepting than the world she was used to, and for the sake of his sanity and whatever reputation she had garnered for herself, they were best away from the posh uptown.

The marks on his skin were blaringly on display for the world to see, his attire for the event having been decided by others who, upon seeing the black patterns, realized their mistake. Yet, they paraded him on stage in the beige top that cut off halfway down his bicep, revealing the slew of tattoos that inked his skin in a way that made him to be a bright neon sign. His discomfort was clear on his features the entire event, but as he chased down the woman before him, the markings seemed to fade to the back of his thoughts as his intentions drove him forward. Wandering gazes went unnoticed as he asked her to lunch and it wasn’t until the statement fell from his own lips was he reminded of the patterns.

For a fleeting moment he found himself staring down at the soiled canvas of his body, entranced by his own inkings as if it were the first time he were fully seeing them in a way that others did. A frown etched itself onto his lips and he quickly tugged his gaze up toward the busy streets before them, busying himself from the barrage of thoughts running to the forefront of his mind.

“Here.” The sudden return of a soft voice had Namjoon’s attention turning back to the woman beside him, but the money being ushered to his chest brought a crease between his brows. “For the meal. I bought the date with you so it’s only right I’m the one paying.”

He slowly shook his head, raising his hand to push the money back to her only to freeze the action in disdain, letting his arm drop back to his side. “No, you only did it as a payment. Consider this my apology for that,” he paused, eyes sliding down to his shoes. “And for last week.”

“Mr. Kim,” she sighed and shuffled her feet as her hand fell away from him. “I was the one in the wrong at that appointment and we both know that. Please, let me pay for this.”

As he brought his focus back to her he tilted his head just enough to let it rest against the building, a small frown peeking at the edge of his mouth. “Call me Namjoon.”

“That would be unprofessional,” she retorted and straightened her shoulders as if to reclaim some sense of their true relationship.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” he commented, raising his brows enough to emphasize his point.

“Fine.” She only frowned in return. “Take the money.”

“No.” With that he pushed from the wall and turned his back to her, moving back toward the food truck as their order was called into the street and placed onto the metal counter.

He easily slid the remainder of the bill to the vendor and collected the plastic bag in his hand, toting it as his side as he turned back to her and gestured for her to follow him. The cross of her arms didn’t go unnoticed to him, and despite the looming tension of their impending conversation, he found himself grinning minutely at her actions.

The click of her heels grew in volume as she sped to keep up with him, his steps much quicker as he lead them toward a set of granite stairs at the base of a sculpture. It was to his own hidden amusement that he smiled as she let herself fall roughly onto the stairs, a subtle glare aimed in his direction as he set the bag down and took a seat on the stair below her.

However, as she plucked a clear container from the noisy plastic and let the lid flip open, he found himself realizing his time was running out and his promise of an explanation was still yet to be given. So while his own actions mimicked hers and they began to eat in silence, he shuffled his thoughts, carding through his words to weave together something that she could understand despite the prejudice she had.

It was as he found himself gathering his courage to vocalize such thoughts that she once again beat him to the punch, fork pointed in the air as she swallowed before speaking. “Namjoon, I do have to ask. Why were you on that stage today?”

His features fell and he stared at her blandly, ready to recall what he had told her immediately after the event but she was quick to wave her hands and continue. “I mean, I understand your moral compass and giving others an opportunity, but it feels like there is more to it than just that.”

He stilled his hand, fork now resting on the edge of the container as he dropped it down into his lap and took a deep breath. A crease reappeared between his brows as he sorted his words, lips pursing as his anxiety rose with his nerves at the story making its way to the forefront of his mind.

“Yeah,” he nodded slowly as he turned and angled his head to look at her. “There is more than just me trying to do the right thing, and I don’t think I would have done this if it weren’t for that reason.”

She said nothing as his eyes fell from hers and cast toward the ground, the battle waging in his head on full display for her to see as his features contorted in masked pain. For a moment he could only part his mouth with the story playing on the edge of his tongue but unwilling to phrase itself for her to hear, as if the memory itself wished to stay hidden.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she interjected, breaking his thoughts with a swift disregard.

Yet, he disagreed with another shake of his head, pursing his lips a final time as he sat up a little bit straighter and turned his whole body to face her, eyes catching hers with an intensity he had garnered from within himself.

“I did it for my niece.” His chest rose as he took a deep breath. “We–my family–found out she had velleity disease when she was only 15. A thorned rose grew up her forearm overnight and woke her up from the pain of it forming on her skin. I remember her screaming when I got to my sister’s house, bawling her eyes out with bandages wrapped around her arm as she was carried to the car and rushed to the hospital.” The tips of his fingers ghosted over his own forearm as he spoke, attention far past her as he lost himself in the memory. “They couldn’t do anything for her, anything at all until the tattoo turned black and raised her skin in a scar. It took weeks for the damned thing to go and she was confined to the hospital the entire time, hooked up to a machine that kept her from losing too much blood.”

The air between them fell silent as he found himself looking at her once again, but she was frowning at him, seemingly paused in time as she sat with her legs crossed and fork mindlessly resting across her food. Wisps of hair fell over her face as a breeze twisted its way through the air and kissed at their cheeks, naive to the stilled atmosphere the two had created between themselves. Neither made a move to break it and yet with the smallest tilt of her head, a subtle nod of her understanding, he broke away.

His fingertips began to drum along the edges of the container as he bit at the inside of his lip and hastily blinked back the sheen of water coating his vision, nose scrunching as he hid a harsh inhale with the turn of his head. “She won’t ever get the chance to experience something that I have gotten to so many times before. The rest of her life will be spent avoiding friendships in fear of the possibility of death, and if that isn’t the most fucked up thing in the world then I don’t know what is.”

By now his voice had risen in volume and he was leaning forward onto his knees, hands cupped over his nose and mouth as he stared out at the bustling streets. “Even though I have been hurt by all of these damned tattoos, I would never wish it on anyone to not be able to feel love and affection, the true depth that another person can give you. Being able to fall in love with someone with your entire self is an experience unlike any other, and to have to live your life fearing something we’re all entitled to is heartbreaking.”

She remained silent as he finished and he could sense the weight of his words falling onto her shoulders in a realization she hadn’t thought of before. People in the upper class never had to fear velleity disease because their bloodlines were pure and those who did have it were hidden, unknown to the rest. Often times it seemed the world would forget that there was something so vile etching itself into the roots of someone's existence, deteriorating them from the inside out until it showed its true colors; a deep crimson.

He knew there was nothing she could say to him, not a single word that would be capable of her expressing a likeness to what he had witnessed nor what he faced every day. So she unfolded her legs and hesitantly stretched her hand out to him, pausing for a fleeting moment before she let her palm rest on his shoulder. It was not an action of understanding because they both knew she could never feel how he felt, but it was an act of acknowledgment for her own naivety.

“I won’t sit here and tell you things I don’t mean to make you feel better,” she said quietly, voice soft from the burden of his story. “But I will say that I am sorry.”

“Sorry?” His tone was threaded in disbelief that simmered with annoyance.

However, as he caught the dampened curve of her smile, he let his features soften. “Not for your niece, that’s something I can’t even begin to comprehend and my apology wouldn’t help her.” Her eyes seemed to be everywhere but on him until her hand fell from his shoulder with a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry for not seeing that you were telling the truth about your tattoos. My own ignorance of people with skin like yours has blinded me for so long from seeing others as human beings with lives as intricate as anyone else's.”

“People have always judged those who are different, and I just happen to fall into that category,” he hummed in agreement, giving her a half-smile as a glimmer of hope settled itself between them. “It’s when they realize what they’re doing that something good can come.”

As she returned his smile with her own, she bowed her head and laughed lightly as the tension that seemed to be hanging over their heads finally snapped. He only broadened his grin and turned to pull his food back into his lap, the knot in his chest loosening even the slightest at having someone finally see him beyond just his tattoos. Although she may be someone of an entirely different class with a life that he could only ever dream to live, knowing that at least one more person could learn to put their prejudice aside was enough for him.

They continued to eat in a breathable silence, her eating considerably slower as Namjoon was no sooner tucking his now empty food container back into the plastic bag, forearms resting on the stair behind him as he leaned back. His eyes couldn’t help but cast over her figure as she ate, a bemused look forming on his face at the content she was clearly expressing. The corners of her lips were turned upward with each bite she took and the tips of her shoes clicked every so often as her legs had since stretched forward.

Staring at her as he was, he found himself bewildered by the change in her attitude. The stoic professionalism she had so blatantly carried between her actions and words had seemingly disappeared, instead replaced by a young woman who looked onward with a confidence he felt attracted to. It was strange.

His own curiosity bubbled the more she let herself edge into what he could assume was the interior of herself she ever only rarely shared to others. Those who coated themselves in a persona so thick such as she did, and even admittedly him, did so with the intention to hide what they feared most about themselves as minuscule as it might be. So why was it that two strangers with backgrounds littered by personal turmoil were as open to each other as them?

“You’re staring really hard.” Her voice picked him from his thoughts with an airy laugh, her fork poking the air in his direction. “Is there something wrong?”

He blinked with wide eyes, lips parting to respond but he only mustered a sheepish smile before he tilted his head to the side. “Sorry, I just got lost in my thoughts.”

She nodded but said no more as she piled more food onto her fork and blissfully set off eating once again, attention veering away from him and out to the busy streets. “I never come downtown anymore even though I used to live here.”

“You lived here?” His brows rose in surprise, not taking her for being someone who came from the more poor side of town. From the tip of her toes to the top of her head she exuberated the aura of a woman who grew up in a penthouse in the north, catered to the second she was capable of asking for help.

“Yeah,” her head bobbed, “I lived in a student apartment complex while I was going to school.”

“Then why are you so scared of walking around?” He asked, staring at her blankly in his own patience but she only offered him a tight-lipped smile.

“That’s a story for another time,” she said with an overwhelming sense of finality as she closed the lid of her food and pushed herself up until she was standing over him.

He was quick to follow suit, grabbing the plastic bag between his fingers as she slowly stepped down the stairs and toward the street they had walked down. Although her shoulders had since relaxed, Namjoon couldn’t help but notice the way she moved so stiffly as if she had called back her businesswoman persona in order to tackle the city with confidence. It was so blaringly obvious that she despised this side of town, almost to the point that she was scared of it and could only mask her emotions to deal with it.

Neither of them said a word to each other as the city became a maze they moved through, the occasional odd comment being said but supplying no food for the awkward air that she had created. As the dirt of the sidewalks began to fade into clean swept and freshly washed pavement, they slowed to a stop by a large ivory building that marked the beginnings of uptown.

She turned to him with a half-smile, fingers clasped at her purse in front of her as she took a deep breath. “Thank you for lunch, Namjoon. I really needed that.”

“I think we both did,” he chuckled softly as he brought his hands into his pockets with a grin.

“Well,” she started with a clear of her throat. “If you ever want to try again, my office door is always open to you for whatever you need.”

He nodded his head slowly and took a step back as a thank you and goodbye fell from his lips, waving smally at her as she said her own farewell and turned her back to him before taking off down the sidewalk. However, he lingered for a moment and watched until she disappeared between the crowds and cluttered pavement, the desire to walk her further etching itself into his chest.

In some peculiar way, he felt the need to ensure she was okay, that his words, although heavy, weren’t seen to her in any negative connotation but as a means for her to know how he felt. He wanted to tell her that just having her listen to him meant a great deal more than he could every find the words to vocalize. His head drifted with thoughts of her as he finally pulled his attention away and carried himself back toward his apartment, letting the lingering desire to tell her more dwindle until it became a quiet voice at the back of his mind.

The clouded skies had long since turned a murky dark gray by the time Namjoon had stepped through the lobby of his apartment building and when he finally jammed a key into his front door the sky let a barrage of rain cascade onto the city. His windows were clouded by heavy rain, the plants hanging on the fire escape bouncing the drops off of their leaves in an almost melancholy manner.

It was with ease that he pulled his shirt from himself, merely kicking at his pants as they slid down his legs on his way toward the bathroom. The grime of the city was a dirt that always made itself known as a smudged layer on his skin, accentuating the patterns that inked nearly his whole body.

He welcomed the steam of the shower as the bathroom began to fill in a white cloud that coated the tiles on the floor and the faded reflection of himself in the mirror. With a swipe of his hand, however, he saw himself clearly, noting the way his hair had since fallen over his forehead in a greased mess. Yet, as he stretched his arms forward and then above his head, his eyes cast over the expanse of his torso and the sole unmarked area of his skin right above his heart.

The space was identical to many others who lacked the companionship of the person who fit them best, the one human on the planet who was deemed a perfect match in every aspect of their life. Some people spent their entire lives searching for their other half or this person who complimented them to their fullest potential, only to come up empty-handed with a life spent alone. There were a million and one names for this spot that only a small fraction of the population was lucky to have inked, but only one was so common that it became a staple.

The soulmates heart.

#bangtan bookclub #armiesnet #namjoon #bangtan #namjoon x reader #namjoon au #namjoon angst #soulmate au #bts fanfic #namjoon fic #kim namjoon #DTI #series #namjoon scenario #bts scenario

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raendown · 7 years

Text

Chapter 69

@6miray6 put in the request for the latest chapter of the Soulmate Collection. Requests are opening up today, at long last. I’ll be taking about 20 in total. Today’s offering is MadaTobi and it’s a rather unique au, credit to Miray for suggesting it!

Under the cut or on AO3!

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Soulmate au: The one where every sensor has a soulmate and they will die if their soulmate rejects them

As a toddler Tobirama hadn’t understood why the world was so bright, so overwhelming. He hadn’t understood why no one else seemed affected. By the time he was three he understood that he was a sensor and that this was both a blessing and a curse.

True sensors were rare and the Senju clan were blessed to have one born in their midst. Tobirama had the ability to feel chakra in nearly all living things, differentiate them from each other, and assess the strength of each signature. As he grew older he developed the even rarer ability to sense emotions from those chakra signatures if he concentrated hard enough. He was the strongest sensor ever to be born in Fire Country, able to feel a single individual four days travel away.

On the other hand, sensors were in a way cursed as well. Each true sensor was born with a soulmate, a perfect other half that existed to help them deal with the overwhelming sensations that constantly bombarded them. The touch of one’s soulmate would ground a sensor, help them deal with the overload of information and help them process it to even greater effect than they would be able to achieve on their own. Everything comes with a price, however, and the price of ‘true love’ was that in finding them, a sensor was forever bound. If rejected a sensor’s chakra system had a way of overloading, burning itself out until they passed away in overwhelming agony.

Tobirama had hoped to never find his soulmate. He had gotten very used to the world being too bright around him, used to the headaches and the tension in his shoulders from not being able to stop receiving so much information. He thought it was better just to go on like that rather than surrender his fate in to the hands of someone who may not even want him.

He was lucky to survive twenty-one years without finding out that his soulmate had been in front of him the entire time. Madara had never viewed him as more than Hashirama’s younger brother, the nuisance who faced Izuna on the battlefield whenever their two clans clashed. Tobirama, in return, saw Madara as nothing more than the one who had stolen away his brother’s time and affection only to give back nothing by pain. In short, they didn’t have very high regard for each other. Not even when Madara finally agreed to peace and the building of their dream village did either give any special thought to the other.

It wasn’t until the Uchiha clan finally migrated to Konoha that things changed. The Senju had been living there for quite some time already as their head of clan used his unique jutsu to create homes, offices, playscapes, a school, a hospital, everything imaginable that a village could possibly need. Day by day he grew his dreams from seed to reality. Tobirama watched it happen with a smile on his face which faded only when Madara stood across from him, Hashirama between them with wide, pleading eyes.

“We’re at peace,” his brother insisted. “The two of you need to learn to get along. Madara, Izuna has agreed to be polite with Tobirama, why can’t you do the same?”

“All the times he attempted to take my brother’s life are not so easily forgotten,” Madara huffed, arms crossed. “Izuna has always been more forgiving than I.”

“If you are truly my friend, Madara, you will try to get along with him. For my sake. At the very least you two can pretend to make peace to set an example for others!” Hashirama turned the full dose of his famous puppy eyes on his old friend and Madara gave him a disgusted look. Then he capitulated because even big bad Uchiha’s could not stand against prolonged exposure to Hashirama’s puppy eyes.

The younger Senju brother eyed the hand that was reluctantly held out towards him for a moment, almost considering not taking it. There wouldn’t be many that would blame him for being suspicious of ulterior motives. It wasn’t worth the dramatics of a refusal though so he reached out his own hand and clasped Madara’s.

And the world went quiet.

Tobirama’s eyes went wide and unfocused, breathless at the sudden peace within him. He felt weightless, calm. His mind felt so blissfully clear and sharp that he thought he would have been able to solve any problem handed to him right in that moment.

It took a couple full minutes for him to realize that he had simply been standing there swaying on the spot, his hand crushingly tight around Madara’s. The Uchiha was staring at him with trepidation while his brother called his name, his voice heavy with concern. By the look in Madara’s eye he knew that something had just happened between them, though he didn’t seem to know exactly what. As soon as it registered in Tobirama’s brain what it was, he was filled with dread.

So this is how I die, he thought.

“Brother? What’s wrong?” Hashirama hovered near him, hands out and fluttering as if he wanted to help but wasn’t sure how to.

“Everything went…quiet,” Tobirama said distantly. “I can see. Feel. It’s all…very sharp.” He wasn’t sure he had better words for it at the moment. His brother broke out in to a massive grin that Tobirama wasn’t sure the situation warranted.

“That means Madara is your soulmate! You’ve found your match, brother! That’s incredible!”

Madara didn’t seem to think so. In fact, he looked rather repulsed. He snatched his hand back with obvious intent and Tobirama grunted, doubling over in pain.

“Tobirama!” His brother reached out to steady him while he grit his teeth together. If before he had lived in discomfort then what he felt now was agony. It felt like microscopic knives tearing him open from the inside out.

“I’m fine, shut up,” he gasped out. The last thing he wanted was to look weak, no matter that it was the truth at the moment. Madara watched him but did nothing. Hashirama helped him stand straight again, wincing when he momentarily scrunched his pain at another wave of pain.

“You’re not fine,” his brother refuted him. “You’re…oh. Madara, how could you!”

“How could I what? I’ve done nothing.”

“You’ll kill him!”

Tobirama wanted to tell them both to shut up. If this is what was how he was going to die then he wanted to do so in peace. He could barely keep his eyes open but he managed to see the way Madara was looking at him, like his death wasn’t necessarily considered a bad thing. Then the Uchiha looked over at Hashirama to see how horrified he was, the terror in his face at the prospect of watching his only remaining brother die in his arms.

Madara lived to protect his own little brother, even Tobirama knew that. Perhaps it was seeing himself in Hashirama’s shoes that moved him to mercy or pity or whatever it might have been which inspired him to relent. He made sure to show his reluctance, however, by rolling his eyes and sighing.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, stepping forward to take hold of Tobirama’s wrist.

The pain didn’t exactly go away but it lessoned to the point that he was capable of hiding it. Tobirama smoothed his face and forced his shoulders to lower until he appeared calm and relaxed. He and the older man held each other’s eyes and Tobirama knew without a doubt that Madara had only saved his life for the sake of his brother.

It wasn’t a true acceptance but it wasn’t a true rejection either. Madara accepted that they were soulmates but did not accept him as a partner and it left Tobirama in a strange state of limbo he’d never heard of before. He did not die but he lived in constant pain, even worse than before he had discovered who his supposed ‘perfect other half’ was. He made sure no one knew, not even Hashirama. He presented himself to the world as calmly as he ever had. After all, he had plenty of years of practice holding in the pain.

He existed in this half state for several years, the agony only lessening on the rare occasions Madara deigned to sit close enough that their skin brushed. He was able to mitigate it somewhat by carving chakra suppression seals in to a pair of iron bands that he wore around his wrists. It didn’t stop the pain and he could wear them nowhere but inside the village, but it blocked the copious information from the chakra networks around him and made it easier to bear.

There was one thing about his situation, however, that nothing could make easier to bear. The thing about finding one’s perfect other half was that the knowledge of this was never far from one’s mind. Tobirama’s thoughts were constantly circling back to the possibilities, the what if’s. He paid extra attention to Madara now, almost without meaning to, and he hated that he began to notice things. He hated noticing the pleasing shape of Madara’s eyes, the caring manner in which he spoke of his sibling, the proud way he fought against slander towards his clan. Tobirama hated himself for running his eyes down the other’s long legs or remembering how it had felt to hold his hand.

Most of all, Tobirama hated himself for falling in love. It was all too obvious that Madara did not truly want him and never would, that he had been granted only a slower death instead of a quick one. Chronic pain had a way of wearing on a body and Tobirama was certain that there had never been a pain like his own. If he were anyone else he would have ceased to function.

On the fourth anniversary of Hashirama being named Hokage, Tobirama slipped away from the celebrations and in to the public gardens. It was quiet here, peaceful, yet not quiet enough. Tobirama slid one of his carved arm bands out from the pocket of his yukata, sliding it on to his wrist and closing his eyes as the brilliant star of the gathered villagers sipped away from him. He sighed in relief and slumped on to a nearby bench. He would have gone home hours ago if it weren’t for his brother.

Hashirama had been trying to get him to ‘lighten up’ the entire evening, a difficult task with Madara trailing along at the man’s other side, smug expression firmly settled on his features. Tobirama did his best to avoid his soulmate when possible. Those two were making that impossible to do tonight.

With his senses blocked out he could feel no one approaching. He did not feel the two signatures approaching from the east. And he did not feel the smaller one approaching from the north. He was entirely surprised to open his eyes and find the pale lavender of a Hyuga’s staring up at him from only inches away.

He stiffened, leaning away with a frown to take in the sight of the young girl before him. She wore a brown yukata with a splash of pretty pink flowers across the sleeves. Her long hair was tied back loosely and she was looking back at him with slight confusion.

“You didn’t feel me coming, Senju-sama?” she asked. He lifted his wrist.

“Chakra suppression seals,” he said shortly. “I feel nothing.”

“Oh.” The look in the girl’s eyes was wistful, slightly jealous. “I wish I could feel nothing. I-I wanted to ask you...some advice, Senju-sama.”

He tilted his head. “You’re a sensor,” he surmised. She nodded.

“I am. And the whole village knows you’re a sensor too. Can you…can you help me?”

Without answering right away, Tobirama reached in to his pocket and pulled out the twin to the cuff he wore on his wrist. The girl’s eyes latched on to it greedily and she nearly cried when he slid it on to her wrist.

He watched with a great deal of understanding as she closed her eyes, tension slowly draining out of her as her face when slack with the bliss of silence. He allowed her as long as she needed to recover, to open her eyes and meet his again with a slightly sheepish expression. Then he waved away her profuse thanks.

“Keep it. I can make another. Is that the help you wished for?”

“Actually, I had hoped Senju-sama might provide me with advice?” She looked at him hopefully and Tobirama lifted an eyebrow.

“My advice to you as a sensor would be not to go looking for your soulmate,” he said. She stared and he sighed softly. “Perhaps you would be luckier than I; perhaps your soulmate will want you. But it’s a calculated risk. Are you willing to place your life in to the hands of another? I was not. And I was right to try not to.”

“You mean-?” Dainty little hands flew up in front of a dainty little mouth. “Are you dying Senju-sama!?”

Tobirama shrugged. “My situation is rather unique and it will take me quite a lot longer than it should, but yes. I will die.”

“Does it hurt?” She sounded terrified but Tobirama believed in telling children the truth. He nodded and she was silent for a long while before asking very quietly, “Can I see?”

“See?” How does one see pain, he wondered. Then he understood when she blinked her large, pale eyes. “Ah. We would need to remove these again in order to do that,” he said, tapping at the bracelet he wore.

“Right!” She slipped hers off right away, swaying as information rushed in and flooded her senses again. Tobirama steadied her even as he slipped his own off. It could be quite a disorienting experience the first few times and it never stopped feeling unpleasant. He himself didn’t bother to concentrate on sorting any of the input. There were too many signatures all gathered in one place for him to make out individuals from the harsh bright blur.

When she had collected herself, he sat still as veins bulged out along her temple. She blinked, obviously not very skilled at using her clan’s dōjutsu yet, then gasped as he apparently came in to focus.

“So much pain…Senju-sama I’ve never seen anything like it. I…I don’t want to feel like that. I’m scared!” Her dōjutsu faded as tears gathered and Tobirama slid both of their bracelets back on before reaching out to brush at her hair without thinking. Many might call him cold-hearted but if there one thing he couldn’t abide it was a crying child.

“Hush, you won’t feel this,” he assured her. “As I said, my situation is rather unique. I promise you will not live with this pain. It’s alright.” He dabbed at her eyes with the corners of his sleeves, unprepared for her next words.

“Do you love them?”

“I – what?” He froze, arms extended and palms framing her tiny face.

“Your soulmate. If you’re dying then that means they rejected you. Do you love them?”

Tobirama’s arms fell back in to his lap and he sat there, stunned. No one had ever asked him that before. In four years no one had ever thought to ask him how he felt about the man who had turned him away – no one but a child who feared the same fate.

“I do,” he admitted in an uneven voice. “God help me but I do.”

The girl gave him a sympathetic look, looking a little startled at how shaken he was. For a moment all Tobirama could do was stare back at her helplessly. He did love Madara. And it hurt. It hurt almost as much as the pain that coursed through his veins every moment of every day. And it was just as likely to go on hurting until the day he bowed under the pressure and laid down to his final rest.

“Senju-sama? Are you okay?” His tiny companion poked at his knee, concerned. He shook his head wordlessly.

“Keep the bracelet, little one,” he mumbled. “And good luck.”

With that, he rose and hurried away.

He did not stay long enough to see his companion walk around a wall of tall bushes and nearly run in to the Hokage and his best friend, both standing frozen in place with their jaws hanging somewhere around their knees.

After the headache inducing festival and the whirlwind of emotions kicked up by his encounter with that little girl, Tobirama holed himself up at home for the next few days. He wore his bracelet and shut out the world, locking himself in his lab where he could neither feel nor hear if anyone came knocking. He didn’t really get much done, he never did these days, but puttering away at his experiments was one of the few comforts he had.

On the fifth day he fell asleep at his workbench, face pressed in to a book about the human nervous system. He woke to excruciating pain running down his spine and, thinking himself alone, cried out when he tried to sit up.

“Shit, fuck!” His forehead slammed back down on to the work surface while his hands clenched uselessly where they were wrapped around his head. A pained whine escaped him only for his ears to redden a moment later when he heard someone speak from across the room.

“Tobirama!” That was definitely Hashirama’s voice. “Are you okay?” Footsteps hurried over to him and Tobirama drew in a long breath through his nose, forcing himself under control and slowly sitting up as if his spine weren’t currently shattering itself underneath the skin.

“I’m fine,” he said, grinding out the words. “What are you doing here?”

“We wanted to talk to you but you haven’t been answering your door so I got worried.” Hashirama wring his hands together. “I…uh…I already replaced your door, I promise! You were asleep for a long time.”

Tobirama blinked sluggishly at his brother. “You broke my door?” he asked. Then, “Wait, who is ‘we’?”

Hashirama waved vaguely across the room and he very carefully turned around to see Madara looking rather uncomfortable, making himself as small as possible in a chair across the room and staring determinedly at the floor. He looked back to his brother and gave him a flat stare.

“The village had better be burning down around your ears because if you’ve broken in to my home toting him along behind you for something that isn’t life threatening then I swear, brother or no brother, I will feed you your own teeth. Individually.”

Hashirama stared at him in flabbergasted horror but Tobirama was more interested in the considering look he could see the other man wearing out of the corner of his eye. Strange. He set that aside in his mind and went back to glaring at his only remaining sibling, trying to impress upon him the doom that was about to be unleashed if this intrusion wasn’t for something important.

After a minute Hashirama shook himself and put his hands on his hips, affecting a stern look.

“Life threatening? It is life threatening! It’s threatening your life!” The older man leaned down to get in his face but Tobirama carefully wheeled his chair backwards to get away.

“What are you going on about?” he snapped. “I’m sleeping in my own laboratory. There’s nothing threatening my life right now.”

“You told that little girl you were dying!”

“What!?” Tobirama’s eyes widened. “Were you…you were there. You were listening. You were eavesdropping on my conversation.” He bit off every fragmented sentence like he hated the taste of it – and he did. He hated that his privacy had been violated in such a manner. Hashirama looked a little guilty but nodded.

“We didn’t really mean to. I was looking for you and we found you when that girl startled you. I thought it was really strange that you hadn’t sensed her coming. I thought you would have sensed us coming. And then…”

Tobirama could feel himself shaking, so many repressed emotions threatening to come spilling over the edges. “And then you stood there, hiding from sight, and listened to a private conversation that you were not intended to hear.” It was a hard struggle to keep a lid on himself. He rose from his chair, forcing his spine to straighten to his full height and holding the worktable beside him with a white-knuckled grip. “Get out, both of you. Now.”

“Tobirama! You’re dying!”

“And?” he said, watching the older man’s jaw snap shit in bewilderment at his answer. “What of it? It cannot be changed and therefore is pointless to talk about. I told you to get out, why are you still here?”

“I can’t just sit back and watch you die!”

“Well you’ll have to!” he burst at last. “There is nothing you can do! Nothing I can do! Without a soulmate who accepts them a sensor will die, that is a fact of life! Be grateful you had this much extra time! Now GET OUT!”

He let go of the workbench to reach for something – anything – to throw at his sibling, hoping to chase him away with violence. His body chose that moment to send him a fresh wave of pain, more intense than he had ever felt before. With a startled cry his knees buckled underneath him and he tumbled to the ground, gasping for air. Hashirama fell next to him and Tobirama hung his head in shame, hands fisting on the floor.

“Make him go,” he pleaded quietly. Not quietly enough.

“You want me gone,” Madara’s voice said from much too close. He cracked open his eyes to see the other man’s feet only a meter away. “Tell me something. Are you truly in love with me?”

There was something about the way he spoke that Tobirama could not put his finger on, distracted as he was. He didn’t sound as arrogant or as mocking as he usually would have. Not that Tobirama had the energy for a verbal spar today. All he had in him was a sigh.

“Yes,” he said shortly. That one word felt like surrendering himself to the devil, signing over his soul and giving the Shinigami permission to do as he wanted. Madara knelt down in his peripheral vision, murmuring something to Hashirama that he didn’t bother to listen to.

“Then you are just as stupid as I am.”

A large hand reached out in front of Tobirama’s face and down to lay itself over his balled fist. The sensation that followed afterward was vaguely familiar: he had only experienced it once before in his entire life.

The world went perfectly quiet and the tempest inside his body dissipated to nothing in an instant. Without the pain that had been holding him down for the past four years he felt weightless. A peace the likes of which he had never known settled down around him and, dazed, he began to fall forward. Two sets of arms caught him but one set easily relinquished their hold as the other pulled him back against a solid chest.

Tobirama stared in to the middle distance and blinked rapidly, trying to comprehend the lack of pain. He felt as if something were missing until he felt a tug on his wrist and the chakra suppression band was pulled off of him. Then suddenly the world existed in perfect clarity. He could feel…everything. In perfect, precise detail. Which meant he could feel the chakra signature of the one who held him and how self-consciously hesitant it was.

He looked up in to Madara’s unreadable face with no idea of what to say, at first.

“You hated me,” he said softly. Madara scoffed.

“Even I’m allowed to change my mind on occasion,” he said. Then he shifted awkwardly. “I may not be in love but I find you…interesting. You could have used your pain to cause me guilt. You could have used it to garner sympathy. You could lashed out in anger. You could even have given up and hurried your death to escape to the seemingly inevitable end. You did none of these things. What you did do was show kindness to a child you owed nothing and suffered in silence rather than cause trouble for others.” Madara looked away. “I admire the strength it took to do what you have been doing.” It looked like it cost him a little of his pride to say it and Tobirama wanted to smirk.

He would have, too, if he could remember how to make any expression but an awed one. It was an entirely unique experience to feel overwhelmed by nothing but his own emotions and he had no idea how to deal with it. So he simply closed his eyes and breathed, soft inhales in and out. Madara’s scent filled his nostrils and his chakra enveloped Tobirama like a cloak, soothing and strangely calm. The older man might not be in love with him but he accepted him and, for now, that was more than enough.

“Tobirama?” he heard his brother call in a worried voice. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes I’m fine.”

And for the first time in his life he meant it. He felt good.

He opened his eyes again and looked up at Madara once more. The future felt pretty good too.

#soulmate collection #rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #hashirama #fanfiction #narut shippuden

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