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#majwrites
jungnoir · 3 years
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destiny | 09;
⇢ summary: you’re just about ready to give up on life altogether; your love life is in ruins, you’ve lost your job, and your family couldn’t care less about you… and then you meet your blushing guardian angel, and maybe life isn’t so bad after all.
⇢ relationship: jeon jungkook/reader, min yoongi/reader.
⇢ genre: supernatural, angel!au, demon!au, romance, thriller.
⇢ words: 6.5k words.
⇢ warnings: mentions of depression, violence, vomiting. slightly nsfw toward the end.
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a/n: happy new year! I know it’s been quite a while (literally an entire year since I’ve updated) but I’ve had this chapter pretty much ready in my drafts and just hadn’t gotten around to finishing because. everything. regardless, I hope this sort of makes up for it. love you all! hope you’re doing well. also WOW I swear a lot in this one.
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His hand on your neck is meant to silence any screams that might slip out. He applies the perfect pressure to avoid crushing anything vital (and just by the feel alone, you know he’s got quite an amount of strength to pull that off) while simultaneously stealing all your air and forcing you to cower in fear. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know this guy isn’t someone to be fucked with, and all you can think about is the fact that Jungkook is right outside and has no fucking clue what’s going on. The very thought fills you with dread.
“Then again, you’ve got someone helping you.” What once was just a particular, calculated press against your skin becomes a deliberate act of violence as he begins to choke you harshly. You know the pain of his grip might last for weeks, and that’s only if you don’t die in the next minute. “Just makes me wonder what’s so special about you.”
“Nothing!” You rasp out, clawing at his hand now in some weak attempt at breaking away. If you could make enough noise, enough commotion, surely someone-
-but the stranger has already stopped you quick. You aim to throw the door open or something but his free hand quickly apprehends you until you’re just a squirming mess on the verge of passing out. Even your legs are pressed firmly to the wall by his own body, holding you fast so that you can’t help letting a few tears fall. There was no doubt in your panicked mind that this was Seokjin, the angel who’d been trailing you from the shadows for what felt like centuries. His grand act of approaching you, something you’d dreamed up to be a major climactic brawl in a battlefield made for a spectacle, turns out to be so simple. Perhaps that’s what you got for thinking biblically. Why go through all the trouble when he could just squash the problem the minute a chance presented itself?
Now, all you can think is “I can’t die like this”. A sobering thought of pure contempt. Drowning in the river was preferable to this.
You muster what breath you can, eyes blazing, “How does it feel… being God’s lap dog?”
Seokjin is, funnily enough, stunned for a moment. All bravado slips through a teeny crack in his demeanor when you say that, and even though it’s a low blow, it’s also enough for you to thrust a semi-powerful kick to the dressing room door to make the entire thing shudder like an earthquake. That sound, coupled with your comment, makes Seokjin release you in a panic. You hear some gasps from outside, a few people inquiring if you’re alright. An employee sounds most worried amongst the voices. You’re just shy of swinging the door open and forcing Seokjin to be revealed or to disappear all at once, but then he’s grabbed the back of your collar as you scream in frustrated fury. Seconds later, you’re no longer in the dressing room anymore.
Instead, you fall flat on a rough, sandy surface. You’re overwhelmed with nausea, pain, and fear, so your whole body is struggling to pick up on the most important things outside of that, but you do realize quite fleetingly that it’s sweltering. It takes you a few seconds as you curl up on the ground to peek behind your hands that shield your face and discover that it’s blindingly bright where you are, almost like a…
For fuck’s sake. “Of all the places…” You whine with a sore throat, coughing right after from the strain.
Seokjin stands above you and uses his foot to kick you onto your back so that you’re staring up at him and the baby blue sky. His hair color plays against it in an unfittingly gentle contrast, “I thought we might need somewhere safer to discuss things. Oh, and speaking of discussion,” he waves a hand near you and you instinctively flinch back before you feel the pain in your throat subside. You wait a few seconds, but it seems whatever he’d just done had no effect on the rising bile in your throat, so you assume that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own. What an ass. “Feel better?”
“Fuck you! Maybe if you hadn’t choked me out in the first place-”
“You’d have listened?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t hunted us down to kill us, we would have!”
Seokjin frowns, “I didn’t bring you here to talk about you and that boy, I brought you here to talk about you. I am only concerned with you.”
Whatever that entailed did not sound good in the slightest.
You scramble to your feet and immediately regret the movement as it makes you sick again. The more than 100 degree weather does nothing to fix that either, the sun beating down on you and bouncing off the dusty white sands directly into your eyes. You’re feeling something nasty rising up from your stomach, ready to projectile…
Just as the scene changes, you paint a Victorian rug with streaks of your vomit.
Seokjin immediately groans out loud, placing a rough hand at the back of your neck like one would grab the scruff of a kitten. You’re far too weak to protest, rubbing at your mouth with the back of your hand, so you let him toss you into a chair. The jerkiness of the action should have sent another eruption out of you, but you recognize the relief that has overwhelmed you from the touch of his hand. Had he fixed that too?
“Never the matter,” the angel growls, waving his hand and making the mess evaporate from the very fibers of the rug, “you’re all very fragile. I should have prepared you first.”
“How can you do all that…?” You couldn’t recall Jungkook or Jimin showing off any power like that, and whether it was because of Seokjin’s status or their modesty (and adherence to rules), you were unsure. Most likely both.
Instead of answering right away, Seokjin reaches forward a moving cart and you finally notice there’s a glass pitcher of water (hopefully) next to an array of empty glasses. You take the time he spends pouring some water for you to examine your surroundings.
It looks like a secret room in an old English manor house. The walls are painted a deep charcoal and with the absence of natural light, you could mistake it for the void. The only light that does exist is a strangely dim white light coming from the ceiling. What looks like a rather ornate shell of a skylight (sans the window to actually reveal, well, a sky), seems to hide said white light somewhere in it. It’s such a vague glow that you can’t pinpoint if it’s coming from a lightbulb or magic.
The rest of the room is just as ornate as the “skylight”, filled with deep oak bookshelves, golden artifacts, and shining decorations that already look like they cost more than your house. It doesn’t really matter the longer you think about it. All of it has to be an illusion… right?
A glass is placed into your hand and you break out of your thoughts to make eye contact with Seokjin. He hovers over you with narrowed eyes and when you look back at your surroundings again, you notice all the little decorations have disappeared. Why had he- “We can negotiate those bits of the deal later if you so wish.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” You ask, hesitant to drink the water despite how much the heat of the desert had made you crave it.
“Like I said before, I brought you here to discuss you. I’ve been watching you and lover boy for a while and it has become clear to me that you’ve been pulled along for quite the ride. I’m sure it’s all very daunting.”
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if you hadn’t shown up.”
“How much do you know about our Lord and Savior?”
It was tricky to say the least. You’d grown up on tales of him, an over-powered being of immense stature. No one could come close to him, not even the devil. However, you’d learned bits and pieces from Jungkook, Yoongi, and the others to the point where your ideas of the figure had become skewed. There was no linear understanding of him. You honestly had no idea, “Probably not enough.”
Seokjin huffs, taking a seat from across from you in a chair similar to yours. Crossing a leg over the other, the angel stares you down, “Do you know why I’m after you both?”
“You want to kill Jungkook. Because he committed your sin.”
“Jungkook is my main target, yes, but it wasn’t my sin. My sin was sullying myself with a demon. Jungkook’s sin was sullying you.”
You frown, “He did no such thing! You had a fucking child! Jungkook saved my life!”
“You mean to say he ruined it. You were supposed to be dead a long time ago.”
You’d known that much, Jungkook had told you already. Even if he hadn’t, that had always been the plan. “It was… it was my choice and I wanted it then, I admit it. But I was hurt. I was overwhelmed. I wanted it because I was scared there would be no reason to keep going.”
The angel angles a brow upwards, “And the fallen was that for you? A reason to keep going?”
“It was- it was a lot of things. I was reminded that I existed, and that there are people who can love me the right way,” frustrated at the situation, you glare at him, “what the fuck? Is this some fucking therapy session?”
He has the gall to smile, “God knows you need one. I’d like to be the one to get inside that mind of yours.”
Shit. What if you’d given him just the right information to use against you?
You snap your lips shut and sink back into your chair, bubbling with more dread. He notices your sudden resolve and appears to want to ease your worries, “I’m not doing this to break you. Unlike God, I find you, as a person, quite redeemable. A gentle, pained soul who fell victim to the perversion of her guardian angel. It’s all very sad.”
So God did think you were a lost cause. Jimin had been right after all. However, you don’t want to keep talking when you’re so close to getting the information you’ve been waiting for. It seems even Seokjin isn’t fazed by your silence, continuing on without missing a beat. “You see, usually these angel and human matters can be chalked up to the angel getting too big for their britches. They think they can change things like fate: God’s very flawless plan from the beginning. They are simply… glitches in the matrix, you could say? That’s where I come in. I make sure these issues are handled and that everything goes back to normal. You see, God loves his humans. Truly. He has a bit of a temper, but it’s justified, you know? He loves you all so very much that seeing you stray from a holy and righteous path is heartbreaking for him. He can only excuse so much.
“So he doesn’t. But… sometimes I help him. I change his mind. Even Jesus had to convince God not to blame his executioners. The big guy gets real impassioned about those he loves. It’s all part of the territory of being in heaven’s sovereignty,” at this, Seokjin shrugs, “you were an unfortunate casualty of it. However, I brought you here because I think that you could be saved. You’re simply confused. I’m sure I could convince God to rethink... his punishment for you.”
Your eyes widen, nearly dropping your glass, “He’d do that?”
The angel nods, pleased, “Of course! After all, he just wants you to repent. If you show that you will, well, I could put in a good word for you. He and I are very close.”
“But only for me.”
Seokjin’s smile dims some. He was so sure he’d had you on the hook just then, “Well… yes. There isn't much I can say about angels. Humans are born sinful, but angels are born knowing better. If they succumb to sin, I cannot do anything about that. But… if you feel that you’d be leaving Jungkook behind, and if that would cause you to feel guilty, I can assure you that that would be taken care of. Your memory of him would be wiped clean and you’d receive another guardian angel in an instant. You’d be granted everything you ever wanted. You’d be able to live out a new path of life contrary to the one your fallen so selfishly carved out for you.”
At this, you begin to frown deeper than you ever have. It’s not out of confusion but deep, deep understanding. Seokjin’s deal was asking you to sell Jungkook out and in return… he’d make you happy. You’d forget all about what had happened and carry on a new person, virtually safe. You could only assume that meant forgetting Yoongi too. Everything you’d accomplished so far would be rearranged until the you that you’d become would be so unfathomable you wouldn’t ever consider it.
What scares you the most is that you actually consider it.
This all could end right now and you’d get out alive, maybe all the ordinary people you knew would get out alive too. You’d be completely removed from the situation. You’d just have to forget Jungkook.
“You asked me how much I know about God,” you start, thumbs twiddling, and Seokjin perks up, “the stories humans told of him always kind of scared me. He’s so powerful… he knew everything before it was even created. Nothing can get past him. And yet, he let humans have free will and the right to choose what their path in life would be. That part always boggled my mind. God’s supposed to love us unconditionally, but if we don’t return the favor, we suffer eternally. It seemed like a pretty big plothole in the otherwise ‘flawless plan’ you claim he made.”
“Yes, well, it’s not God’s fault that Lucifer’s so conniving.”
“But it is. Isn’t it? God created him. Lucifer is the one who brought sin upon the world but God is the one that created him. If he knows everything, why make him in the first place? It’s a fallacy,” Seokjin’s eye twitches just a bit as you lean forward, “that God knows everything. Isn’t it? He wouldn’t be so stupid. He had no fucking clue what he’d made when he made Lucifer.”
“I’d watch your tone. God hears all.” The angel’s ominous reply is all that you need to hear. He doesn’t tell you that anything else you’ve said is false or not. Of course not. You know as well as he does that you’re spot on.
You’re so stunted by the arrogance of it all that you have to laugh, “Allegedly.”
In that same moment, the white light above begins to flicker. A distant rumbling sounds from somewhere and that fear you’d felt earlier comes back with a vengeance. Seokjin looks annoyed, if anything, “I only have so much time to sit here with you to chat.” He stands up and walks over to you, seizing you by the arm, “So I’m telling you now that you still have a chance. No one else has to die. Do me a solid and make that a reality.”
Did he really not want to kill you? He’d had so many chances to. Even now, he could just… what did you have that made him hesitate? “You think I believe that?”
The ground rumbles underneath you and then you fall through, Seokjin’s grip slipping off your arm… or maybe being pried off.
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Where you land next isn’t as disorienting as the last few times, but it doesn’t feel any better to be ripped away again without so much as a warning. For a moment before you land, you halt, almost floating. Then your feet make contact with stone and then your knees follow under the sudden press of gravity. A quick look around tells you that Seokjin is nowhere to be seen… and that where you are looks vaguely familiar.
The stone continues up the walls to the ceiling, creating a naturally cold room that expands no more than the size of a restroom (no toilets in sight, however). The furthest edge of the room from you is completely dark, while the other is helped by a fire stretching from one long, narrow wall to the other. There is no wood crackling beneath it though, nor is there an actual controlled area for it to burn. Flames simply lick up the bottom of the wall as if commanded by magic. While the rest of your body feels chilly, the warmth of the fire keeps your head warm like a fever.
You lay crumpled up on your knees and hands, staring into the flames with the most bemused expression, wondering what to do now. You’re definitely not intent on travelling to the other side of the room in fear of being met with something sinister you can’t see, but the fire only illuminates so much of the place and there doesn’t seem to be a door in sight. If Seokjin wasn’t here, you doubted this was a place he wanted to be.
Maybe he was torturing you? Intending to keep you in a dark, scary room in order to break your resolve? You didn’t know the extent of power he was allowed to wield but this whole transportation thing was starting to get really annoying. You chance a meek, “Hello?”
Your voice doesn’t echo like you expect it to. It sounds like it’s right up against your face, like you’d spoken into a pillow, the sound eaten as soon as it came from your mouth. Where the hell were you?
“...not exact, okay?!”
You pick up on a voice to your right and turn over with such speed that you land on your ass. Some stones move on the narrow wall, and then the room is illuminated from an entirely different source of light. It takes you a few moments to gather your bearings as your eyes attempt to adjust. Voices are frantic and coming closer, you can hear that much. You pick up on one instantly, “Jungkook.”
Your voice is weak with relief just as he comes into view. He looks an absolute mess as he throws himself at your feet and wraps you up into a bone-crushing hug. The strength of his hug doesn’t even bother you as you cling back with just as much force, grateful tears beginning to gush out of your eyes. You didn’t realize until then just how terrified you’d been, really. It was always there underneath the surface, but something about Jungkook’s sudden presence makes the reality of it all hit much harder. He smells like your shampoo still.
After a couple of minutes in his embrace, you pull away to examine his face, “Are you okay?”
He laughs and the way his tears have clogged up his throat make it sound more like he’s choking, “Who cares about me? Are you?”
You smile, tucking some of his hair behind his ear, “Better. With you here. Where are we?”
“Limbo, hell’s limbo.”
You’re not sure what to say in response to that. After what you’d been through in the last… however long it’d been, that seems the most plausible to you. “Is that like purgatory?”
“No,” another voice speaks from above you and only then do you realize that Yoongi is here too. He looms over the both of you but his gaze is fixed heavy on your face, “purgatory is where the dead go on their way to heaven. This is where the living come on their way to hell. Was a hell of a ride trying to get your ass down here.”
“Yoongi…” You peel back from Jungkook and stand up, a little wobbly as you lean against the wall, “...thank you. How did you do it? The places Seokjin took me… I felt like we were in a dream.”
His upper lip ticks up in a snarl, “It was. The place where you were is a void, heaven’s version of limbo. It’s where angels bargain with humans on the edge of death to repent. It’s an open playing field for angels to present themselves to their humans without them having to be dead or breaking a rule… not like the latter really applies to Seokjin, though. It’s only as strong as your will to be there,” with that, Yoongi reaches toward you and brushes what feels like sand off your cheek, or perhaps he just meant to touch you to make sure you were really here with the way it lingered, “and that’s the only reason I could pull you out.”
It was a lot to digest. You still couldn’t totally understand how he’d pulled you from heaven’s limbo if he was a demon, but that was beside the point. Right now, you just wanted to get out of this creepy box of a room for good. And it seemed you would be getting your wish.
Another figure became clear to you through the doorway, though this figure looked much more intimidating than the two by your side. Dressed immaculately with a sly smile that felt strikingly familiar, a man makes his way into the room, pressing a hand to his chest and bowing his head to you, “He had my help too, of course. A pleasure to meet you (Name), I’ve heard very little about you.” The man holds out a hand to you and you can feel both Jungkook and Yoongi stiffen on either side of you, but neither makes a move to stop him. This had to be another demon, no doubt.
You take his hand and shake it firmly despite your nerves, “T-Thank you for your help as well. May I ask who you are?”
The man grins wider, “You can call me Lucifer. Are you hungry?”
An entire array of human food is set out before you but you don’t have much of a stomach to touch any of it, though Jungkook seems right at home as he fills up his own plate. You can only guess he’s enjoying the hell out of having so much food at his fingertips without having to pay for it.
You can hear his delighted sound effects from the left of you as you both sit on one side of a long table. Lucifer sits at the head of the table to the right of you, also refraining from really eating anything. Yoongi sits right across from you on the other side with an annoyed expression on his face, fingers tapping the heavy oak table top in a rhythm you can’t decipher. It couldn’t be any more awkward.
“No appetite?” Lucifer asks, pointing to the food. There’s meat and vegetables and cheeses that you know and don’t know but none of it seems particularly appetizing to you at the moment.
You shake your head, “No. Actually, I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”
“Ah, bet you’re bursting.” He chuckles and takes a swig of something you think might be wine. “Go ahead. I’ll try to recap the last couple of days as well as I can.”
“Days?!” You don’t mean to yell, you really don’t (especially not at the king of hell, but-), “It’s been days?”
Jungkook stops chewing to give you a concerned look, “Of course… how long was it for you?”
“Barely… half an hour, maybe more? But not days.”
“Yes, well,” Lucifer sighs, tucking his hands together in front of himself, “time works much differently in heaven and hell than it does here. Especially for those who end up in heavenly limbo. It’s essentially cut off from the rest of the universe which makes it that much harder to track those who end up there. Seokjin was smart in bringing you there than somewhere else on earth.”
Your head is throbbing at this point. If days had gone by, you could only imagine how much had changed since you’d been gone… “So… what has happened since then?”
“Apparently quite a bit, seeing as I was a last resort.” Lucifer’s tone almost sounds irritated. Like a petulant child, he glares over at his son with an unspoken tension that you would like to delve into much, much later when the important things have been moved out of the way. “These boys have been pretty busy trying to get you back. But we are all eager to know what happened while you were with Seokjin.”
Jungkook places a gentle hand on top of your knee under the table. For whatever reason, you note that his grip feels stronger than you’d grown used to. You’d thought the hug was just because he missed you so much, but even this simple touch was- “He… he found me in the dressing room, cornered me there and told me he’d been trying to get me and Jungkook alone. Somewhere he could really do some damage.” You recite all that you readily remembered, some details slipping as you focus on Jungkook’s touch. Yoongi’s eyes never stop boring into you. “He said a lot. He… he said he wanted to give me a second chance.”
Lucifer raises a brow at you, “At…?”
“Life. He said that if I… if I ratted out Jungkook, he’d work things out with God to set my life back on track. Memories wiped, a new guardian angel, the works.” You can feel Jungkook stiffen next to you.
“And did you take him up on it?” Lucifer inquires.
“No! No, I would… I would never. But he was so insistent… It sounded like he really wanted me to say yes. I don’t think he was planning to betray me if I took him up on it either.”
Lucifer heaves a heavy sigh. Folding his hands underneath his chin, the king of hell spares a glance at Jungkook, “He’s got a thing for innocents: those he believes did no actual harm in a situation. He’s always been soft that way. He has more of an affinity for humans than I ever did, but I have more reason to loathe humans than he does, so I guess it’s understandable.”
“He did… mention that none of this was my fault.”
“Of course! You were only following the path life laid out for you. It was the fallen angel you have beside you that decided to shake things up, and aren’t you lucky he did? It doesn’t surprise me one bit that you’re still alive. You’ve done nothing but suffer the consequences, it seems, against your own will.”
“But what about the demon he fell for? Or his child? Weren’t they killed so he could keep his spot in heaven?”
Lucifer leans forward, “I’m assuming your friends haven’t made it known to you yet, but they aren’t dead. They are both very much alive. In fact, the child in question was one of the people that helped in tracking you down. The mother… she is here, in hell, meant to stay imprisoned for all eternity. Or at least until the rapture,” with that, Lucifer drinks again, maintaining eye contact with your shocked stare, “but it was best that no one knew of their whereabouts. Only a handful of people even know that Inhui still exists. It’s become something of a legend amongst the demons and angels, shrouded in confusion. None of the angels would care for the mother, but the child would start an earthly war if they knew one still walked the earth. As far as they’re concerned, the child probably died from the natural complications of being an abomination.”
You frown, “How is that possible? An angel for every human on earth… that’s billions of angels and no one has even noticed the guy?”
“I was wondering about that, actually. He told us that he’d been walking the earth for a while now. Surely someone would have taken notice, right?” Jungkook speaks next, having abandoned his food entirely.
Yoongi snaps out of his bored stance, “Tae’s an anomaly. He’s forgotten everywhere he goes. His impression barely lasts long. Those people he encountered early on considered him a dream, or a hallucination, or a possession of the mind. His actual presence is… hazy. It’s easier to remember him by his name or his number, but everything else is-”
“Intangible.” His father finishes with a flourish. “No ordinary angel or demon could ever put a face to the name, only a feeling. Along with the rather excessive amount of glamours he employs when amongst the public, it is no wonder no one has sounded the alarm. Go ahead and recall his face in your mind, fallen. I’m sure you couldn’t piece it together even if you wanted to.”
Jungkook’s face screws up a little as an attempt, stricken dumb moments later when he can’t utter a thing. Your stomach churns at the thought, soiling your appetite even more.
It seemed like there was more to that story than you were being told, but you imagined that it would be quite a lot to relay to you in more than one sitting. After all, you still had no clue what you’d missed since you’d been gone, and it only hadn’t terrified you senseless because you were at least certain that the biggest threat to everyone’s lives had been right there with you the whole time.
“If you’re not planning to eat anytime soon, is there anything else you’d like to know? It’s not every day a mortal like you gets to talk to Lucifer.” With a small flourishing wave of his hand, Lucifer smiles at you, charming as ever. It was so strange. Yoongi acted nothing like his father, and yet you saw every bit of him in his expression.
You imagined Yoongi felt the need to distance himself as much as he could from his father’s intimidating image and had ended up creating his own in the process. Where Lucifer was inviting, however, Yoongi was… not for everyone. Even as he stares over the table at you, eyes hooded with what appears to be indifference rather than lasciviousness, you can’t help but see the other in him.
“I suppose not,” you murmur, “but now that I have the chance, I don’t really know what to say.”
Lucifer continues to smile, “Don’t fret! I’m sure after the doozy you’ve been in, you’ll need to rest up. You’re more than welcome to stay here until you feel it’s safe to go back topside.”
The thought of treating hell like a hotel to stay in was tickling to say the least. The minute you rise, Jungkook follows suit, nearly knocking his chair over in the process to follow you. “I’d appreciate that. Is there… perhaps a room I could cool down in? Maybe a bathroom?”
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Lucifer had deposited both you and Jungkook in a rather nice room, fitted with all the things you’d find in a nice resort room overlooking somewhere like the Bahamas. The dark, brooding colors of Hell follow you even here, and what little light you are allowed in the room comes from fire or mysterious ambience. Still, it’s enough to splash your face with (what you’re definitely sure is) water in the ensuite bathroom.
Jungkook sits at the foot of the bed, watching you, “I missed you.”
Since the moment that the Lord of Hell and his son had left you to your devices, you’d become increasingly aware that something was off about your angel. You had imagined that it had been from the sheer worry he felt over you, but it was starting to feel different from that. Something not so easily explained. If only… if only you could figure it out.
You pat your skin dry and look over at him, measuring him up and down. Appearance wise, he still had the same haircut, same clothes, same shoes. It was the aura that felt different.
Slowly, you approach him from the bathroom and wish that there would be more light in the room to examine him with. In that same moment, what appeared to be a ray of warm light halos above you both, giving you exactly what you had wished for. When Jungkook looks up, he looks… radiant. “I missed you too…” You whisper, reaching out a hand to cup his jaw. At your touch, he shudders, melting into you, and those eyes then laser focus on your own. “Are you okay?”
“I am now.” He answers without hesitation, then turns to kiss your inner palm with such a sensual drag of his lips that you grow hot instantly. The surprise makes you yank your hand away and you swear you hear him whine at the missing contact.
“Y-You just look different.” You squeak, holding the aforementioned hand to your chest as if he’d burned you.
Jungkook’s bushy brows furrow. “Do I?”
When Jungkook had been an angel, he’d had a distinct glow about him that set him apart from others. It was cliche, but it made sense then. You knew that you were dealing with someone from another world. When he’d turned human, he’d felt softer, normal. He didn’t glow in any particular way lest the light hit him through the window just right. But now… that glow was back. In a way that didn’t feel familiar.
You reach your hand out again, but this time you let it wander. You push his fringe back from his forehead, then behind his ear, then down his neck to where a sweatshirt hides his collarbones. In a daze, you fall to your knees before his seated frame and push the fabric back some. You find… nothing. You don’t even know what you’re looking for. A vampire bite? What is so different?
Your hand starts to fall mindlessly as you wrack your brain, but it’s all for naught when Jungkook catches hold of it and intertwines his fingers with yours. His grip is warm and solid. But it’s still- “I thought he’d hurt you.”
You look back up into Jungkook’s eyes as he now leans over you with an intense stare. His hair curls around his cheekbones and twists away from his face at the nape, each strand fluttering as he inches closer until the longest ones are touching your face. “Not much. He healed what he did anyway.”
At that, your angel’s eyes narrow in their scan over you, “What did he do?”
You instinctively swallow. Perhaps because you remember the feeling. Perhaps because Jungkook looks like he could kill. “He… he had to get me to limbo. He had to…” You touch the skin of your throat the same moment you break eye contact, feeling the ghost of Seokjin’s fingers there. It wasn’t so long ago that it had happened after all. You could honestly still feel it.
The silence grows until it’s nearly unbearable, you eventually finding that Jungkook will say nothing while you continue to avoid his gaze. Against your better judgement, you chance a look up at him.
You don’t get very long to look. Jungkook takes both sides of your face and lunges forward like a man possessed and you are forced to follow. In your surprise, you stumble back onto your elbows and Jungkook slots himself between your legs, latching onto your lips in a searing kiss. It’s hot and fast and immature, the kiss of a person who has never kissed before and may never get the chance to kiss again. Youngho had never kissed you like this.
A gentle whimper escapes your mouth but Jungkook inhales it into his own. You feel something primal burn inside you when Jungkook growls out, crouching over you now like a predator cornering his prey, and he’s practically consuming you when you start to kiss back. Can you blame yourself? You easily fold into the feeling because it’s Jungkook and goddamn if you hadn’t wanted to kiss him badly before.
His inexperience does very little to dissuade from how good it feels too, and as you start to take over to guide him, he is all too eager to feel your reciprocated passion. The heady feeling he gives you in his sudden attack pushes all thoughts of Seokjin or the last few days out of your mind like a fast-acting asprin. All you can think of now is how tightly coiled you’d been and how Jungkook is loosening you up one press of his lips at a time.
He lays you on your back and you happily oblige, no cushioning found on the hard floor but you couldn’t care less. Jungkook is careful not to be too rough, aware of your needs as much as his own, and it’s jarringly sweet the way he cradles the back of your head to keep you from hitting it on your descent.
When he’s had enough of your lips (as if he could ever), he starts attacking your neck. He’s lapping at your skin and biting away as if he’s trying to remove all traces of Seokjin’s hands… as if he’s replacing the feeling with him and him only. “I’ll kill him,” Jungkook whispers, a foreign fury in his voice that makes your haze disappear in an instant while he continues to work at your neck, “I’ll kill him for ever touching you.”
Your hand shoots to his hair, feeling your heart beat faster from more than just the kisses, “Kook-” But any attempt at sobering up washes away when, to your surprise, he ruts against you. Youngho had never been that good at using his hips like that either. There was something definitely off with Jungkook.
As much as it pains you, you grab at his hair and yank back, ignoring (or trying to) the filthy groan that he gives in response before peeling away from your skin. You gasp for breath, absolutely winded, “What is going on?”
Jungkook pants past wet lips, “What do you mean-”
“Did Yoongi do this to you?” The sudden heated moment is over when you say that.
Jungkook’s blood has run cold. You have a very strong, haunting feeling that your mounting suspicions have proven correct. His eyes… as gentle as they always were when they looked at you, told you everything. He was not the same Jungkook you’d come to know. Something had happened to him. Something irreversible. You touch his face again and this time Jungkook does not move to embrace it. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. “Why?”
In an attempt to escape your pitiful gaze, Jungkook’s eyes flutter shut, cutting you off from seeing him vulnerable any longer. It breaks your heart the longer he stays silent. There’s no denying it now.
A tear of his touches the palm of your hand instead of his lips this time, “How else could I protect you?” He chokes, weak, “I’m not your angel anymore. I can’t be like you. This is the only way... the only way I could stand to look you in the eyes again.”
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majjale · 5 years
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6k | BakuDeku | Angst | Immortals/Reincarnation
“You a poet?”
“Only for you.”
-
two sincere wishes and the ramifications of them.
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jungnoir · 4 years
Text
where do we go from here?
kim taehyung | maybe barcelona? or venice? it was really nice there in the warmer months. assassin!au. | 1.1k words. | angst, romance. mentions of blood, death, and killing.
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a/n: “the meaning of the ending is entirely up to you.” I tell you, in a totally not suspicious tone of voice. 
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“Hey,” busted lip meets busted lip in a tight smile, “can’t we talk?”
You’re both looking at each other but not really, maybe because you can’t count it as really looking at him down the barrel of a gun. You’re only able to make out what is in the projected line of sight, where your bullet will meet flesh and perhaps something vital. His gun is raised exactly to meet yours to make that difficult. Depending on who shot first, you’d have either a shattered hand or a shattered skull. You needed to shoot first.
Taehyung realizes you’re not going to answer him. Why would you? What else did you have to say to him that you couldn’t fit in a bullet? “You used to like talking to me.”
You just move closer, so close that now your gun is about to bump against his own. He shifts back to avoid it and you follow. “Four fucking years. I loved you. You should’ve killed me our wedding night like you planned.”
“I was going to,” and Taehyung bothers to look exasperated with you, letting his wrist slack a bit with the casual flair of his tone, “I keep saying that. Why do you think all this was deliberate?”
By “all this”, he is referring to the whirlwind love you’d found yourselves swooped up in for almost half a decade. Your eyes narrow, “Because it’s your job and you’ve never failed. Not once. I saw the papers. Your handler told me everything.”
Min Yoongi had told you everything. When he’d ominously texted you from your husband’s phone Monday morning to meet for coffee, your entire world had died the moment he showed you the papers. Everything. Every detail of your life, documented for his organization. You had always had nightmares about it but never thought it would actually happen... with him, at least.
Your old handler would be yelling their head off at you right about now, telling you how stupid you were for falling for the oldest trick in the book because “pleasure is not in the cards for you once you sign yourself away”. Never. Not even with Taehyung.
You were standing in the strawberry field you’d found him in all those years ago, a man barefoot in God’s green earth and offering you some of his handpicked strawberries in exchange for a conversation. The whole reason you’d moved here was to get away from the connections and the knowing. You should have known they’d follow you even here.
The blood from his broken nose dripped down his laugh lines like the strawberry juice from a time when you still didn’t know.
“Yoongi doesn’t know shit.” Uncharacteristically, he growls out the expletive with a piercing glare, smiling faltering just a tad. “Yoongi hasn’t seen me in years.”
“Since you moved to the berry farm. Since you started your mission to kill me.”
“He knew from the first year with you that it wouldn’t happen!” He cries, hand shaking. Just as quickly as the outburst leaves him, he’s collecting himself once more to steady the gun at your own again. If he just raised it an inch higher, he could end your life right now and be done with it. And yet, you dragged it out.
Yoongi had only told you so much, but a lot of it came from Taehyung’s messages. All the information he collected on you and sent in texts (“To my friends in the city!”), letters (“To my grandpa. He lives so far away now.”), or napkins left behind in the trash had accumulated into a hefty document that told you everything you needed to know. The only reason you were even told is because their contract had been voided, officially. Taehyung was now just a loose end.
And you were left to cut it.
“You know as well as I that this isn’t the kind of work you can just forget about, Tae.” Your voice is but a whisper over the summer wind. The wind chime you’d both crafted out of collected sea glass clinks above the porch.
A stray tear escapes his eye at the same time that his smile comes back, though much more broken. “It worked for a while.”
Yes, it did. “If you’re not going to kill me, I’m going to kill you.”
His fingers continue to tremble, gripping the gun tight. His mouth begins to tremble as well. “Peaches,” he tries to argue, gun lowering just a hair, “I-“
A gunshot sounds throughout the farm and then you’re setting off, running, refusing to look. You had never entertained such a habit when you were still in your line of work, but you couldn’t bear it anymore than you could hearing him say he loves you. God, that would have made you actually aim for his head. To put him out of his misery.
He’s only allowed a sharp cry before he falls to the grass, gasping in dirt because you actually shot him. After a few seconds, Taehyung’s breathing slows. At this point, they’re only concerned with you now.
A pair of agents exits the overgrown brush nearby with a body bag in tow. There’ll be a car to come pick up the body in a few minutes, and if they were lucky, the other agents stationed in the area will have gunned you down in time to clean up two messes in one day.
One walks up to Taehyung and lightly kicks his side, chuckling, “Can you believe he used to be one of the top dogs? Had a perfectly good shot and couldn’t even take it.”
The other laughs along as well. Lays the bag next to Taehyung, open. They wouldn’t bother picking him up even.
The agent with free hands leans down and grabs him by his shoulder, pushing so that he’ll turn over and into the bag with ease. Lifeless eyes stare back up at him, at the sky maybe. It’s kind of chilling being so close to one of the untouchables. The agent shivers. This one’s eyes were particularly cold-
but blood splatters across the grass once, then twice, and then the retired assassin lets himself lie there in the grass to stare up at the sunset sky. There are similar gunshots in the distance. They keep missing. A little laugh leaves him as he reaches up toward his burning shoulder where your shot grazed him. He’d have to catch up with you later. Maybe Barcelona? Or Venice? It was really nice there in the warmer months. He could have another farm there. Maybe grapes this time.
You both had managed for four years. He bet another four wasn’t so far-fetched.
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jungnoir · 4 years
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hello!! truth be told, i am not entirely certain if your requests are open and stuff, if they aren't, please forgive me, it's honestly my first time requesting so i'm really worried that i am gonna mess up, please don't hate me :((( do you think there's a chance that you'll write some youngk or wonpil fluff (or rival!au,,, or anything would be great,,, honestly) any time soon? if not, that's totally okay, i hope i didn't bother you, thank you regardless and have a great day!!
anatomically correct heart-shaped pretzel;
kim wonpil | food service is way more competitive and romantic than you’d think, believe it or not. rival!au. mall!au. | 1.6k words. | fluff, humor.
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a/n: ahhh you’re okay!!! thank you for being so polite. I’m not officially accepting requests as I’m sort of just writing whenever I want to and dropping in. usually, I will announce that I’m writing requests on my blog and leave it open for a certain amount of time. however, I’m being pretty casual with things so I totally don’t mind this request at all! here’s rival kiosk workers at the mall with wonpil
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“He’s at it again. Look at him; he’s got an evil look in those puppy dog eyes, that dead customer service smile, that high-pitched “have a good day!” pep in his step. I want to wring his neck like a Shake Weight.”
Your coworker, Dowoon, pauses in the middle of refilling the fruity pebbles toppings to give you a disturbed look, “Okay, Jesus. What is wrong with you?”
You glare right back, “It’s fucking pretzel boy Wonpil showing off again.”
“You mean doing his job?”
Grumbling a “showing off” under your breath, you turn around again to continue your angry brooding when you happen to catch Wonpil’s eyes between serving customers. His friendly smile quickly turns malicious, the boy having the audacity to drop his eyelid down in a wink before going about his business again, annoyingly unbothered by your seething not 20 feet away.
Dowoon was convinced that you were paranoid. Ever since that new pretzel kiosk popped up next to your once very thriving frozen yogurt shop, you’d been noticing business trailing elsewhere. People were trading gummy bears for salty bread and Wonpil’s “personable” attitude, something that you couldn’t quite get over. He wasn’t personable at all. You knew the real truth and yet no one believed you.
It had all started two months back when they’d first opened. You had thought Wonpil to look actually pleasant to talk to, deciding to befriend your new competition to be friendly which, unfortunately, massively backfired. Perhaps you were too bubbly, too optimistic on the first go, because Wonpil seemed to immediately bristle upon greeting. That was your first sign that things were going steadily downhill.
Your next sign was how aware you were that you were dominating the conversation. It seemed like no matter how much you tried to fish out of Wonpil, he wouldn’t budge. His answers were short, blunt, and disconcerting to say the least. After a few failed attempts, you’d promptly agreed with yourself that perhaps Wonpil was just one of those people who went to work, did their job, and left it at that. But then the customers came rolling in.
He was a totally different guy, the bastard.
Everything. From the way he lit up to the way his voice rose several octaves to the way he laughed out loud at every terrible customer joke. It was a pang to your admittedly offended heart. Was there something wrong with you? Did you smell? Was he just having a bad day earlier? It had thrown you pretty off for the rest of your shift, even catching the attention of one of your other usually aloof co-workers: Sungjin.
You just couldn’t place it. You obviously didn’t want to think he simply disliked you and only you, but it was all you had to go on. Why was he so averse to you when you’d done nothing to him? ...as far as you knew, anyway.
He was even nice to Dowoon! What did Dowoon have that you didn’t?!
And then, then, Wonpil started to notice you, but for all the wrong reasons.
It was through knowing smirks and condescending winks that you began to kindle your delicate hatred-baby for Wonpil. He knew he was peeving you off. He knew that when you’d watch him with that barely veiled look of yearning in your eyes for acceptance that he could simply look your way and you’d fluster. He wasn’t kind. He was a jerk. Wonpil was an absolute asshole and no one seemed to think so except you.
Your co-workers called it a friendly rivalry. You called it war.
He was super keen on stealing your customers too, drawing them in from your shop to get them to buy those damn pretzels, just to see you squirm and fumble to turn their attention back. When he’d win, he’d get this smug look on his face and gnaw his bottom lip with a hooded gaze cast your way, practically relishing in your anger and humiliation. You’d dreamt of all the ways you could make that little pipsqueak sing for mercy-
“Hey! Can you do your job or do I need to stand you on the other side of the counter as a cardboard cutout?” Dowoon’s annoyance is not easy to ignore even in the midst of your daydream, and unfortunately, that meant that you would have to come back to your reality. Your cold, Wonpilly reality.
With a lack of vigor that could rival a pubescent boy in band practice, you continue your shift in a disgruntled haze. You don’t want to think you’re being childish about it, but you can often feel Wonpil’s eyes on you while you work, and it’s enough to make you rightfully paranoid. You know the minute you look up that he’s going to have some patronizing expression on his face and, honestly, you wouldn’t be able to hold yourself back from punching it clean off. Only fifteen more minutes, you think to yourself, counting down til the end of your shift. Fifteen more minutes and then I’m out of here.
Dowoon eventually leaves early, mentioning he has a date tonight and that he doesn’t want to be late, and you mumble an affirmative to clean and lock up for him. You’ve got no such plans for the evening, instead planning to relax and enjoy the weekend Wonpil-free. As customers slow to almost nothing, you decide it’s a good time to start closing up.
As you’re sweeping away the debris on the floor, you hear the sound of a fist knocking against glass and decide to look up, ready to shoo away a customer who came too late. Instead of a customer, it’s something much worse.
“Hey,” Wonpil says, one hand in his puffy jacket pocket, the other holding a small take-away bag from the pretzel place, “heading out tonight?”
You’re so stunned by his attempt at casual conversation that you forget to be mean, staring at him in confusion, “Uh... no. Why?”
Wonpil looks both relieved and surprised, clutching the bag a little closer to himself, “Oh... uh, well it’s just that... you know, it’s Valentine’s day. I assumed you had a date.”
Your brain is a Windows blue screen right now. Was it... oh, fuck, how could you have missed it? Today was February the 14th. You flush soon after. No, you had no date. “Nope... but I bet you do. If you came here to gloat about it, don’t even bother. I’m too tired to deal with you right now.”
A look of hurt flashes across Wonpil’s visage, “I didn’t... that’s not why I came over.”
“Then why?” You can’t hide the tired exasperation in your voice, “You closed up already, didn’t you? Just go home. I’m not in the mood.”
That same hurt flashes again and part of you almost wants to feel bad about it. 
Wonpil reaches into the bag with a trembly bottom lip, “I-I came over to apologize. And to give you this.”
In his hand now is a heart shaped pretzel, but not just the traditional heart shape. No, it was anatomically correct. Scarily so. It was also piping hot and looked rather tasty after a long day of work. You rarely indulged yourself in the enemy’s goods, but... “What do you mean, apologize?”
“I uh... I kinda totally screwed up. The thing is, I don’t hate you like you think I do. I actually really like you. I know that I don’t show it and it’s not much of an excuse, but it’s just... when I first met you, I was really, really nervous. You were so kind and funny and attractive... I froze up,” your eyes begin to bulge as he holds the pretzel out to you, “and I couldn’t act normally around you. Then people started saying we were rivals so I ran with it. Anything to get you to look at me.”
You check Wonpil’s face to see if he’s lying. He’s not, as far as you can tell, but you’d been a bad judge of his character before, “That’s really stupid, Wonpil.”
Instead of looking upset however, he laughs lightheartedly... like you’d kinda hoped he would laugh around you all along. It’s a sweet sound. You don’t even want to wring his neck right now. “I know. I don’t expect that to fix anything, but I still wanted to give you something. You can stomp it or throw it in the trash or feed it to the raccoon couple near Macy’s, I don’t mind. I just wanted you to know that I’m a really stupid guy who has a kind of embarrassingly huge crush on you. Happy Valentine’s day, (Name). I hope... I hope that we can at least be friends. Or enemies with a truce.”
Sincere. He was actually being sincere right now.
You drop the dustpan and push the swinging half-door open to leave your little kiosk, watching Wonpil as he turns to face you, pretzel still outstretched. You take it form his hands and watch his shoulders deflate in relief. A little overwhelmed with the fact that he’d just confessed to you, you test the waters, “So uh... you busy, Wonpil?”
The boy blinks rapidly, “N-No. Why?”
You take a bite from the warm pretzel and almost let out a humiliating moan in content. Goddamn, this boy made some mean pretzels. How could you ever turn that down? “There’s a movie playing in the theater upstairs in an hour. You know, that really bad remake? You wanna catch it together?”
Wonpil lets out an immediate “Yes. But... what do you wanna do until then?”
For the first time in two months, you allow Wonpil one real, warm smile once more, “You can start by finally answering all those questions I asked about you two months ago, for a start. I’d like to get to know my rival a little better.”
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jungnoir · 4 years
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𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡!𝐛𝐭𝐬;
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bts but as witches in a coven. discuss
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𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤𝐣𝐢𝐧: the supreme
ok not quite but he’s the most experienced in magic out of all the boys
his mother was a witch and she taught him everything he needed to know from birth to adulthood
his whole family is blessed with magic save for a few who didn’t get the gene but every family reunion they all dote on jin and talk about how powerful he’s become and how proud they are of him
the coven house where all of the boys stay is actually jin’s ancestor’s home from a long time ago
the place has brought up witches of all generations and jin was very eager to inherit it
while there’s definitely a lack of witches he’s been able to recruit, he loves his family of six so it doesn’t really bother him
he acts like he’s all serious but in reality he’s always casting spells on the youngins as tests (read: for fun)
jimin: why tf did you give me green skin
jin: if you had been paying attention during lessons you would know how to fix it :)
has definitely said this out of context more than once: ”any witch worth a broom handle knows how to get rid of poisonous snakes! you know back in my day…”
wears the flashiest outfits, but little do people know that they’re all homemade. he has a serious creative eye and seeks to make what simple human designers wish they could (taehyung is very eager to learn this talent from him)
goes all out on halloween with this talent too, creating uber realistic costumes
no he didn’t make a costume out of real human bones that year he went as a scarily realistic skeleton what are you talking about
no graves were robbed in the making of this outfit
if you couldn’t tell, his specialty is in glamours
honestly the guy should just tattoo “i’m a witch” across his forehead, he makes it so damn obvious
he openly practices magic too like it gives yoongi stress pains bc!! there’s still ppl who would very much like to burn witches still to this day!!! where is the self-preservation!!
jin doesn’t care. he’ll burn them right back. checkmate bitch
honestly charms anyone that comes in contact with him which is one of the things he never has to try at
the guys think he uses magic to do it but he’s honestly just, as jin would say, “born with it”
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𝐲𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐢: the right hand man
*namjoon voice* and who do we got here right now??? ˢᵘᵍᵃ!!!
when it comes to magic, yoongi is pretty neutral
an awfully interesting feeling to have given that seokjin has appointed him the heir of the coven in case anything happens to him
he’s not obsessed with magic like tae, hobi or kook
he doesn’t spend his time learning everything about it like namjoon
and he’s not playful with it like jimin and jin
yoongi just… acknowledges it. its like it exists as something he can do and he’s proud but he doesn’t really care if that makes sense
most of his friends outside of the coven are human too and he has no reservations about telling them what he is bc if they cause trouble he is more than prepared to take care of it
they’re usually like “wow so cool! i wish i was a witch” but yoongi really doesn’t care lmao
with or without magic, yoongi is the same: he loves music, he loves making music, and he loves being a musician
yoongi, however, is guilty of having used magic to make his music just right before
sometimes a note just doesn’t sit with him right and it’s driving him insane
or maybe the bass doesn’t hit hard enough
he charms his music in a way that when one listens to it, they feel exactly what yoongi wants them to feel
people are always telling him he has a real gift in music and while he most certainly does, he feels he has to give credit to his magic for helping him along sometimes
but then seokjin will be like “isn’t magic your talent too? aren’t you just exercising it when you charm your music? it’s not like you can only make music well. you should give yourself props for your magic too”
it’s just. weird to him because he’s seen how much magic can corrupt people in much higher positions than himself and it’s Terrifying
he wants to know that no matter what he makes, it’s his and his alone, not attributed to any otherworldly advantage
this just kind of contributes to his need to be as detached from magic as possible
he’s too cheap to buy one of those coffee makers that automatically start brewing at a certain time in the morning and just uses magic to do it instead
“yoongi do you want me to buy you a new coffee maker for your birthday? they have ones that do all the work for you now-” “no”
he has to be extra, okay namjoon
jimin teases him sometimes but yoongi knows it’s all out of love
jimin understands yoongi in a way, and while the others are always like “yoongi you should have more fun with your magic!” jimin is always like “no no no, let him be”
besides yoongi could probably smoke all of them in a battle of magic if it came down to it lol
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𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: the perfectionist
HERE HE IS!!! ITS HE
hoseok is probably one of the most talented witches in the coven
hoseok is a perfectionist to a t so if he feels insecure about how he’s doing a certain spell he will do it over and over and over until he’s got it right which makes him a pretty formidable opponent
like even the boys wouldn’t go up against him bc they know they’re just gonna get their ass handed to them
he’s a sweetie tho and very light-hearted and he never lets his power get to his head
he mainly uses it to bother the others tbh
also uses magic to give himself and the boys cool ass hair colors
currently he’s obsessed with this orange he’s got going on
calls it “pumpkin spice” bc it angers yoongi
“it really brings out the burnt sunset hues of a pumpkin ya know? or like a mix of changing fall colors, like golden crisp and warm crimson” “it’s fucking orange” yoongi can be heard chiming in from somewhere else in the house
but don’t get me wrong, hoseok loves himself some yoongi and vice versa
yoongi taught hoseok directly bc yoongi was the one that found hoseok
he was just an average college student and wasn’t really finding a will to live outside of paying off his student debts
he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and was pretty dead inside, working at a cafe and serving coffee to other dead inside college students when yoongi came in and sensed his strong magical aura
yoongi kinda forced hoseok’s magic out of him by tossing a cup of steaming hot coffee to the floor, causing hoseok to freeze the entire cafe in time, save for the two of them. yoongi told him what he was and the rest was history
now that it’s been so long hoseok still gets upset that yoongi was willing to break one of the cafe’s mugs to prove a point
because of course, when time unfroze, the mug fuckin shattered all over the place what a fuckin jerk guess who’s going to have to clean that up does he really have no respect for retail workers seriou
seokjin also was opposed to yoongi’s method but since it resulted in hobi joining their coven, he can’t be too mad
it was hoseok’s natural ability that yoongi was able to help hone, and when hoseok found a love for it, he took it upon himself to be the absolute best witch he could be
hoseok’s power of stopping time is uniquely his own and he’s worked hard to perfect it
sometimes he just stops time to stop it
hob: *freezes a movie theater right before something dramatic happens on screen* hold on yall I gotta piss real quick
freezing time is also super helpful during *cough* stressful exams* cough*
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𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐣𝐨𝐨𝐧: the scholar
he knows…. everything
not only did he do the reading, he did an 8 page analysis on it and corrected a few mistakes too
namjoon was aware of his witchy nature even from the moment he was a little kid, and his parents were both human and a bit scared for him since they didn’t know how to handle it, but they gave him the option of pursuing magic or not. they made sure to do all their own research into where witches could go to hone their craft just in case
in the end, namjoon grew curious and started reading books about magic and magical things
tho he didn’t actually start using his power until his mid teens
by then he was a bit shaky with it, but he knew a lot and was very determined so he got the hang of it very quickly
rarely uses his magic outside of it being necessary tho bc he’s gone so long without having to use it that he doesn’t rely on it for anything
he also likes to be independent from his magic in a way
while magic is very much a part of him and his being, he doesn’t want it to be like a crutch, you know? his biggest fear is losing his magic, bc he’s heard it can happen
he’s also aware that some witches lose important life skills and miss out on opportunities to build their character bc they’re so used to being able to just magic their way out of a situation
went from student to teacher real quick
teaches the other boys how to properly say incantations
“its levios-ah not levios-ar”
actually?? a pretty scary dude when it comes to using his magic for real
don’t put him in a situation where someone is getting hurt because he will not go easy on the aggressor. the other boys can attest to this too, having been saved by him far too many times than is acceptable in namjoon’s eyes
basically dont fuck with namjoon’s boys or u gon die
does cute things for the boys on their birthdays with magic
one time taehyung was sad that it wasn’t snowing on his birthday so namjoon made it snow for hours
may have fucked up the climate a lil bit
yoongi almost lost a toe
namjoon frequents a library and whenever a lil kid is struggling to reach a book he uses his magic to drift the book down to the little kid and when the kid looks at him in awe he just presses his finger to his lips and winks at them
flirts using his extreme wicca knowledge, of which is either a major turn off or a major turn on. you decide
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𝐣𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧: the reluctant
jimin loves magic, but it wasn’t always like that
jimin kinda struggled with accepting his magical abilities at a young age bc he was really confused
like why wasn’t he just like everyone else? why did he have to be a witch? why did he have to have magic when he could’ve just been normal?
he often rejected it, never bothering to learn anything even to impress the family at reunions
but as he grew older, his parents grew worried he’d hate his magic and never use it again, putting him in a vulnerable position if his magic were ever to just come out when jimin isn’t in a place to control it, so they let him meet a slightly older witch that could help mentor him
his parents would’ve done it but jimin hardly ever listened to his parents about magic and they wanted to show him there were witches his age that were amazing people and embraced it, that it didn’t take away from jimin’s life but in fact added to it
in comes yoongi
yoongi, at first, really pities jimin
he understands the struggle between wanting to be normal and dealing with a part of his identity that won’t ever go away
where yoongi is concerned, that struggle for him was that he wanted to be himself regardless of being talented in magic. jimin... just hates it
but then jimin starts bashing magic and witches and he’s about to get angry at his parents for trying to force him into being a witch when yoongi just,,, slaps him upside the head
jimin’s shocked and yoongi is just like “respect your parents kid, they’re looking out for you. just because you don’t use your magic doesn’t mean people won’t know you’re a witch. its dangerous for a witch to go around with magic and not know how to use it”
jimin is shocked. he never thought of it that way
jimin feels embarrassed all of a sudden and apologizes and then yoongi cracks a smile and he’s like “no biggie kid, i’m just here to teach you the basics of magic and then i’ll be out of your hair”
jimin finds that learning magic with yoongi is really fun and soon he’s asking to be apart of the coven and embracing being a witch
he becomes carefree with it, like it’s another part of him, and he’s still kinda inexperienced, but he’s learning a lot from yoongi and namjoon
loves playing with temperature
the boys make him freeze their drinks for him, or ask him to heat up some popcorn while they’re all sprawled out on the couch on movie night bc no one feels like waiting two minutes for it to cook in the microwave
makes the water in the shower cold whenever one of the boys is taking way too fucking long in there which is Everyday
also jimin: *hitting on someone at the bar* *makes the room slightly warmer* “is it hot in here or is it just you?”
relates everything he learns back to naruto in some way, much to everyone’s complete and utter confusion
he just really kins the guy i guess
100% owns every single witch pun shirt known to man
“witch please” “witches do it better” “this is my resting witch face”
jungkook: by all means jimin why don’t you just burn us all at the stake yourself
it’s ok tho bc it’s his own little way of owning his identity, and if you want to avoid having your fingers frozen off, you’ll be sure not to step to him any kind of way
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𝐭𝐚𝐞𝐡𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐠: the transcendent 
my favorite witch!!! i wrote this whole thing for him
tae is like jin in that his whole family is magical and he grew up surrounded by magic his whole life
in fact, he’s so familiar with magic that he’s kind of sick of it (no he isn’t (most of the time))
taehyung is unique with his magic bc he’s actually able to transcend realms oooh~
the information on how many realms and parallel universes and such are limited as hell so taehyung actively helps broaden that knowledge as he travels, a very Dangerous and Scary job to anybody else
but to him he’s like!! fuck yeah astral projection!
basically, he’s able to put himself into a deep sleep where he moves through different realms, some more or less magical than the others
he’s so good at it that he can project himself into someone else’s dreams too
he’s basically capable of seeing more than most magical beings, and he can perceive spirits easily, as well as being able to actually see a magical aura around someone
so for instance, if a witch who didn’t know they were a witch walked into a bar, he’d know what they were instantly. besides the general intuitive feeling that most witches get, he can see the auras physically, like swarming tendrils of smoke unique to every person
each aura feels and looks different than others which makes it easy for him to point out shape shifters and vampires and werewolves and all the other guys pretty easily
bc of this ability, taehyung also likes to mess with the boys like everyone else lol
“tae, i just saw the most beautiful-” “they’re actually an ogre in disguise” “WHAT”
“man my english teacher is a witch” “she actually is”
in case you couldn’t tell tae’s favorite victim is jungkook
casually tells people he’s a witch just for the #reactions
if you’re wondering, no. nobody in this coven cares about keeping this shit a secret
since he’s more sensitive to dreaming, a lot of his dreams leave him incredibly emotional because sometimes he really is there
he once had a dream where all magical beings were universally accepted in the world and were loved and happy and woke up sobbing into jimin’s lap
also nightmares take a HUGE toll on him so his sleep pattern is fucked for real
usually ends up eating cake with jin in the dining room at four am and talking about life together to get the nightmares off tae’s mind
tae uses his magic on humans in a different way. like he doesn’t prank them that much, but rather manipulates their moods. he tries to charm anyone he comes in contact with to make them happy or to make them giggly
he wants to use his magic for good, because it often leaves a very painful burden on him in turn
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𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐤: the prodigy
honestly i feel like if jungkook was a witch he’d probably be an underdeveloped one, you feel?
he finds out his power late bc either his family didn’t know (they’re all human) or they just didn’t tell him in hopes of him never becoming one
but jungkook is being bullied by some guys in his grade and they corner him after school one day and jungkook gets so frustrated that he just,,, makes them all start uncontrollably burping
as dumb as it is, those kids never bother jungkook again
when he does get a hang of it, jungkook probably uses his magic for fun more often than not
jungkook is recruited by jin for this very reason. he catches jungkook messing with old people at the park on his afternoon runs and he’s like this kid is such a brat. i want him
jungkook is SUCH a fast learner holy shit
he goes to namjoon for every little question, to the point where namjoon is positive he’s become a better witch simply because jungkook has prepared him for any fuckin scenario known to man
he also makes himself float upside down in the kitchen at night so when hoseok comes down for a glass of water he almost pisses himself
“haha did i scare you” 
cue hoseok making jungkook fall down as he mumbles “little shit” under his breath
halloween is his favorite time of year and he likes to pull harmless pranks on the kiddies while scaring the mean teenagers ruining all of the children’s fun
like he sees this guy in a deformed mask holding a plastic knife about to scare a little boy so Jungkook just gives the dude a wedgie with his magic
all the kids are laughing at him and jungkook just smirks
honestly he doesn’t like reading about magic as much as he likes just doing it from intuition/namjoon’s instruction. he’s a lot like hoseok in that he has a lot of natural talent but not a lot of proper training when he first starts honing his ability
since jin yoongi and namjoon are in charge of teaching magic they all hound on him like “did u do the reading”
jungkook maybe glosses over everything and then just over-performs as compensation
they get on him abt it but there’s no lying about it, jungkook is a strong witch on his own
he hasn’t gotten a special manifestation of his magic Just Yet but he only gets stronger as he goes. the more he applies himself, the stronger he grows
126 notes · View notes
jungnoir · 4 years
Text
destiny | 08;
⇢ summary: you’re just about ready to give up on life altogether; your love life is in ruins, you’ve lost your job, and your family couldn’t care less about you… and then you meet your blushing guardian angel, and maybe life isn’t so bad after all.
⇢ relationship: jeon jungkook/reader, min yoongi/reader.
⇢ genre: supernatural, angel!au, demon!au, romance, thriller.
⇢ words: 7.5k words.
⇢ warnings: mentions of depression, violence, murder.
previously |  next
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a/n: lots of scenes now that we’ve got the whole cast introduced! I think I cleaned up everything I needed to... I hope I did, at least ;-;
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“You’re taking your sweet time.”
Seokjin shivers at the sudden intrusion into his thoughts. How long had it been since he’d last spoken to him? Chancing a glance around the dark alley, he confirms it’s empty, no onlookers in sight. “It’s barely been a week.”
“And in that time, you’ve had several chances to complete your task, no? One very early on, if I recall.” God’s voice is mocking, if not irritated. 
Wincing, the angel curls further in on himself against the brick wall. It felt like he was perpetually stuck here, pacing outside Hell’s Kitchen with his tail between his legs as he plotted your demise. It was supposed to be quick, over with the night Jungkook had fallen, but he’d been cowardly, hesitant. God knew. He always knew. Now he paid the price.
“I’d assumed... there was no way I could’ve known that the fucking prince of Hell would be brought into this.”
“That’s why we strike when the iron is hot, child. Now you’ve just made it harder on everyone who will be affected by your mess. That poor human would have died like planned if you’d just done it then and there on the bridge, but you were weak. They would have never thought to align themselves so stupidly with evil if you hadn’t been a coward.”
He couldn’t have. How would that have been handled? Killing an angel in plain sight, perhaps in front of you if he was particularly cruel? The angels that would see, the whispers that would spread, there was no way- 
Of course—all of that—he knew.
It was part of the punishment, forcing him to deliberate every step he took next. To carry out this task alone, letting the shame fall on his shoulders alone, to shirk himself of his own most potent morals... all of it was for his amusement. He was turning him into the thing he despised the most. “I will handle it... I am handling it.”
God laughs, “By bringing someone else into it?” 
“You’ve given me no choice!” Seokjin’s voice rises before he can catch himself. Anger is seeping out of every pore. A few passing by the mouth of the alley startle, but see nothing. 
“You had a choice the day you defiled yourself with that demon scum. You betrayed me. It hurts me to hurt you, but you must know the severity of the pain you’ve caused me... the pain you’ve caused that boy. It’s evil. You must purge yourself of it. I’m giving you a chance because I love you-”
“I did what you asked.”
God’s voice vanishes from Seokjin’s head in an instant, cowering away into the darkness at the sound of the new angel’s voice. Quickly schooling his expression into indifference, the elder angel stands tall in front of the younger, “And?”
Jimin sighs, “You should give up. The demon is too intertwined now.”
“Did they suspect you?”
“No, not that I know of. I told them everything they needed to know.” Jimin looks around the alley with an uneasy look, “They’ve got someone else helping, too. The demons didn’t say much about them, but supposedly it’s a friend of the prince, someone who could take you down. That’s where Jungkook went with him earlier.” 
“I saw as much,” Seokjin swears under his breath, “and after he left, the demon trailed them back home. They’re making things messy.”
“Then give up.”
Faking a smile, Seokjin draws closer to the other angel until he’s practically mounting him. The air grows very tense between the two, “Give up? Now, where’s the fun in that, Jimin?”
Jimin keeps a guarded expression even as his hands shake, “You’re not God.”
I’d do a damn better job, Seokjin bitterly muses. What would’ve resulted in an immediate death for any other angel just leaves him with a sudden, annoying headache. “What else did you say to them?” He growls through gritted teeth.
“Are you going to do what I asked?” The smaller angel grabs Seokjin by the collar, a brave move on his own part, “You promised.”
In retaliation, Seokjin grabs Jimin by the shoulders and shoves him so far back that he stumbles to the ground with a thud. Quickly overtaking him, Seokjin straddles Jimin and yanks his head closer with a hand clenched about the back of his neck, “I’ll keep my side of the bargain if you keep yours. Remember, runt, I run shit around here. If anyone should be worried about following through with what they promised, it’s you.” Jimin’s eyes widen and spark with fear, setting something off in Seokjin that makes him jump off of him in an instant. The angel on the ground can only stare up at him in hopes that he could discern what the other would do next. “Find out who and where that friend is. Don’t get caught. God thanks you for your cooperation.”
To further drive home his intention, Seokjin raises a hand and sends the wounded angel flying into a wall, effectively cratering the brick. 
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“Mook, come on,” the first grumble of a voice is heard throughout your home early that next morning, definitely not your own, “you can’t just- Mook!” The frustrated grumble rises an octave as the clatter of ceramic against ceramic calls you from the dregs of sleep. Eyes closed, you can sense the body moving in front of your window toward the unoccupied side of the bed. A dip in the mattress makes you roll more onto your side, lazily peeling your eyes open.
Jungkook is there, hair neatly combed and lying limply over his flushed features. There’s a tray in his hands (a tray you hadn’t seen since the last time you had entertained at your home, way back when Yongsun would bring a couple of her friends over for brunch to “get you socializing”) holding two mugs of something steaming; just by the smell alone, you can tell it’s tea. There’s also a plate separating them with a modest omelette in the middle too, and you aren’t sure if it’s his, yours, or... both.
Jungkook’s cute bunny teeth are revealed when his lips form a face splitting smile; he looks between the food he’s made and you with an expectant look, “Hungry?”
You stare at him blankly, tiredly for a little longer before rubbing your eyes with the backs of your hands. “Whatever that is,” you wince at the deepness in your voice, plagued with sleep, “smells really good.”
Jungkook beams with pride when your eyes flutter back open to examine him, “Thanks. Thought you might want something simple to start the day. I already ate some cereal that hadn’t expired.”
Ah. Your small fantasy of sharing an omelette with Jungkook in bed was quickly shot down and perhaps for good reason. Jungkook ate like a teenage boy who’d been starved on an abandoned island his whole life, and god forbid he tried to be playful and feed you! You’d burn up like a hot stove. 
Heh, “god forbid”.
“Shit, I forgot... I haven’t gone shopping for you or for food.” You look over the clothes that Jungkook had been wearing; he’d alternated between a few makeshift outfits of yours for the last two days, but you could only keep washing the same clothes over and over before it got tiring (and costly). He had virtually nothing of his own. No clothes besides the ones he’d fallen in, no personal belongings, nothing.
Jungkook was new to being a human, so thoughts of personal items probably hadn’t been on his mind. As an angel, things like showering, eating, sleeping, and the like had never been a requirement to stay alive. Now that he was human however, those human needs were becoming hard to ignore. Hunger pains after several hours of not eating would make him unnecessarily irritable, and he definitely disliked the smell that would begin to emit from his skin if he hadn’t washed in a while. Being a human was... incredibly burdensome.
You didn’t need to go over board; technically, the room down the hall could be his bedroom (as soon as you got around to tidying the rest of Youngho’s things you’d bought him that he’d respectfully left) and as a new human, he was going to be incredibly low maintenance. You doubted he’d want tens of pairs of shoes or designer accessories to match. It wasn’t even really just that; Jungkook was fairly simple in everything. He really was godsent.
“Whatever you wanna do,” Jungkook says, setting the tray between you two, “but we should be wary. We don’t know where Seokjin might be waiting to pop up from next. I want to be able to protect you... but I’m not used to the limitations of this body.”
Mook hops up into bed the next moment, her beady eyes observing the scene before settling herself next to you. You hadn’t spent much time with Mook since the Youngho incident, and you could tell from the way she rubbed against you that she was glad to have you back. You reach a hand to gently comb at the fur on her head before taking one mug from the tray. The aroma that hits you is a pleasant vanilla and white tea that instantly soothes your nerves at the mention of Seokjin. Taking a sip, you notice that he’s made it just the way you like it too. You guessed after watching you make it so many times, he’d gotten the hang of it.
You hum and settle back into your cushions, “Jungkook... I’m thankful you want to protect me, but I think you should be worried about yourself too. All these sensations are going to be new to you... this is a new life you’re going to live, if we live. Being human looks simple but compared to what you had going on before, it’s really not.”
Jungkook begins to protest, yet his halt is immediate. Who was he to say that you were being too worrisome? After all, you’d been the human this whole time. You had a better grasp on it than he did. Angels could watch from their perches in a world between human reality and the afterlife, but at least they were safe there. You, on the other hand, and the other billions like you were not so lucky.
And you were right. Being a human... it was terrifying.
Yoongi’s offer had bothered him all night long, and even now as he was getting used to these new urges and needs, he wasn’t subscribed to the idea of it lasting. Demons truly were closer to humans than angels, but demons were also closer to angels too. If he became a demon, he might feel more at home in his body- no, he couldn’t simply give up just because of bodily needs. He... he had to be stronger than that.
Being a demon meant he was stronger, possibly as strong as he was in angel form, and by extension it also meant that he could take care of you. As a demon, he was more apt to fight off any supernatural (or human) pests that dared to hurt you. As a demon, he also could form a connection to you that, while paling in comparison to his angelic one, would still be a hell of a lot stronger than his human one.
But as a human... he could die with you.
As a guardian angel, the worst part of being a guardian is the inevitable moment when your charge would have to move on to the afterlife. There were charges that would pass in their sleep peacefully, but then there were charges who would die in house fires, drown, be shot and killed in a robbery, be hit by a car on a night of sadness and impulse. He was told it’d get better the longer he lived. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t. That’s why he was here, and that’s why you were now alive and suffering alongside him.
If he hadn’t done a thing, you’d be dead. A life of pain ended, but a life of happiness never found. It hurt him to think you’d never know a true lover’s touch or feel elated with the sun soaking into your skin. You would never know true happiness, and that’s what scared him about humans the most. He did not want that for you.
Maybe he was selfish. He might have tried to play God. Some grand plan aside however, your life meant more to him than that.
“...You’re right. I’ll take it easy, okay? Until I get the hang of it all, that is.” Jungkook gives you a patient smile despite the turmoil in his eyes, and that’s that on that.
You match his smile and take another sip of your tea at the same time an idea pops into your head. The outfit Jungkook had been stranded in was nothing special, which of course begged the question... what did he like to wear?
Jimin, from what you’d seen of him, dressed simple and stylishly, a contrast to Jungkook’s casual athletic clothes. You had assumed all angels had a standard issue outfit to wear, but now you weren’t so sure. “Where did you get your clothes, Jungkook?”
Jungkook glances down at the hoodie of yours that was just big enough to fit him and then back to you, “You mean the clothes I first appeared in? They’re kind of… a choice of ours, as angels. There are times when we may need to show ourselves to humans, and in those cases, we very well can’t walk around in ivory robes and sandals,” the image of Jungkook in such a getup makes a laugh tickle in your throat, “so we pick out human clothes that we feel we’d best blend in with. For guardians, they’re also something we believe our charges would find appealing.” It’s unsaid, but the way Jungkook’s eyes fix on you gives you the feeling that he was curious if you had found them appealing.
“Did you have different types of outfits for different situations?” You draw your knees to your chest as Mook gets bored of your petting and makes her way into Jungkook’s lap. 
He nods, “As an angel, my clothes were a glamour. I could change them at the snap of a finger, but once I became human, the clothes I’d been wearing became real and the only clothes I could keep. However, you’ll never find anything like them. No tags, no earthly material, stain-resistant. All the works.”
“Your only clothes, huh? Glad you didn’t have to save me at a swimming pool.” You snort.
“You wouldn’t have wanted to see that outfit? The board shorts were nicely fitting.” Jungkook even bothers to smirk, posing his hips toward you, and the image of a smirking Jungkook in nothing but shorts flashes in your mind’s imagination. Said imagination had always been terribly vivid and you physically jolt as the details appear in your mind. You were not about to think about Jungkook like… that. Right now.
You shake your head quickly, “I-I think I’m good.” The crack in your voice says otherwise. 
Jungkook probably would have teased you more had your phone not alerted you then. You blink, retrieving the phone from your nightstand to see who it had come from.
(1) Unread Message(s)
received: 9:31 a.m.
Min Yoongi (Boss): Forwarding your first paycheck to your account now. Don’t ask how.
“Wha...?” You look at the phone in disbelief, feeling Jungkook lean over your shoulder to peek at the screen too. You exit the message as soon as it registers and, sure enough, once you’ve pulled up your bank app, there is... $50,000 more in your account than there was yesterday. You almost drop your scalding hot tea all over your lap.
sent: 9:35 a.m.
you: I think you may have added a few too many zeroes??
received: 9:36 a.m.
Min Yoongi (Boss): Enjoy your day with lover boy, (Name). Emphasis on enjoy.
Min Yoongi (Boss): :)
You had a feeling if you tried to press the issue longer, Yoongi might actually block you.
Like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders, the numbers in your bank account comforted you down to the core. Even in the midst of supernatural feuds centuries older than you, one of your biggest worries had been how you were ever going to pay your bills. Going from your job before to a waitress job practically spelled a major downsize for you until you could get back on your feet, and now that you had another mouth to feed, you had seriously feared that every meal would be your last.
Something told you this was only the tip of Yoongi’s generosity. After all, he was a demon prince. He didn’t run a bar to make a living, he ran a bar because he had the time. That’s why prices were so low when the quality was so high: money was no issue.
“I have to be honest, I never expected Satan’s spawn to be so... nice.” Jungkook comments, taking a sip from his own cup of tea, frowning when the liquid had since gone cold.
You look up from your phone dazed; if you still were convinced your life had turned a vivid hallucination, you now how had half a $100,000 in your bank account to say otherwise. “Me neither.” Is all you can muster, letting the phone drop to the covers in order to motivate you out of bed. Jungkook looks up at you, then forlornly at his omelette. “Heat it up again with your tea. I need a... cold shower.”
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An hour later, Jungkook is sitting cross-legged in the spare bedroom with his eyes glittering, “I can have it?”
There’s an old PS4 resting in his hands, covered in a fine layer of dust but otherwise functional as far as you can tell. Youngho probably didn’t have the balls to take it with him given that you’d bought it for him, so for now, it laid here untouched. “Of course you can. I don’t play it that much and I doubt he’s coming back for it.”
There was a litany of gifts lying around that you had given your boyfriend over the years, many of which had been bringing back painful memories, but some of them felt like they could be rebranded. Coats, colognes, video games and the like. What he had claimed for his own at his place was either up for sale or Jungkook’s pleasure.
“I’ve always wanted to play one of these. Whenever Youngho would come over, I’d just sit and watch.”
“Does Youngho have a guardian angel?” You ask, “I’m just curious. I mean, that night you kicked him out... wouldn’t his angel have intervened?”
Jungkook shrugs, “Of course. Everyone has a guardian angel.”
“Except me now, I guess.” You laugh bitterly. Jungkook’s head snaps up to you, eyes flashing with hurt. The guilt you feel is immediate. “Oh, wait, I didn’t mean it like that.”
The longer it takes Jungkook to reassure you that it’s fine, that he understood what you really meant, starts to make your breath quicken with anxiety. All he does is look down at his lap, sadly fiddling with the console in his hands with much less excitement than before. God, you’d royally fucked up with that comment, huh? 
You’re about to give him a much lengthier apology when Jungkook speaks up again, “To answer your question, his angel was there. We are- I was trained to stop demonic threats toward humans, nothing more, so I could only imagine that angel’s confusion at my interference. Perhaps, they were too afraid to do anything. It’s only a guess though.”
“...Maybe they were aware of how much of an asshole he was and decided to sit that one out.” You offer, trying to lighten the mood. Jungkook says nothing.
He only looks up when you’ve walked over to his spot on the floor, reaching a hand out to softly tangle in his hair. His breath hitches as you move down to cup his jaw, “Jungkook, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was insensitive to you when you’ve been working so hard to protect me. Who cares about a title or wings? You’re my guardian angel no matter what. God doesn’t get a say in that, not this time.”
Little tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He just keeps looking into yours, switching back and forth between each of them as his lip tremors, “What... good am I to you when I’m like this? You should have someone else. God should’ve sent you someone else. If he doesn’t send someone else and he knows I can no longer protect you, then he’s letting you die and I can’t- I can’t do anything about it. What good am I if I can’t do the one thing I was made to do?”
You drop into a crouch until you’re face to face with him, “Jungkook, you are more than a guardian.”
“Am I?” His voice cracks, “I don’t know who I am. I’ve never had a reason to be anyone.”
“I know... I know what it’s like to feel like you have no purpose anymore, believe me. I know what it’s like to be unsure of who you are. I want to tell you that it gets easier, and that there will be more days where you feel whole than when you don’t, but I can’t. It’s up and down. It’s never the same for everyone,” you wipe at a stray tear that escapes his eye, “being human sucks for that. You don’t have any guidelines and apparently everything is already laid out for you without your consent. But I think I can say this with certainty: you, for one, have made it very clear it’s possible to change that.”
The boy scoffs, “And look where that’s gotten you. Now you’re in danger.”
You smile. Cupping both his cheeks firmly, you bring him so close to you that he thinks he’s doing the human version of short-circuiting, “And I found out that there’s someone who loves me so much that he’d defy God just to let me know.”
“Is that enough? To make you happy?” 
Was it? You’d always assumed it would be. A lack of love, easy to explain away. If you could just get that feeling you’d been missing, you’d finally be happy, right? You couldn’t lie to him.
“It won’t magically fix everything, that’s not how these things work, but love does give you something to fight for when you don’t want to fight for anything. I’m still going to hate being awake some days. All I can say is that I would like to at least be awake with you. Does that make any sense?”
He sniffles, then nods.
“Can I hold you?” You inquire.
He nods again, “Yeah, sorry.”
You shuffle some things out of the way so that you’re laying against the carpet and he’s leaning against your shoulder, one arm of yours thrown around him while the other holds his hand in your lap, “What are you sorry for, silly? Being a person?” You giggle, squeezing his hand tightly. “I don’t know, I think you’re doing pretty good all things considered. Some people become serial killers under way less stress.”
Jungkook laughs softly into your neck, giving you delightful little goosebumps. Was he aware of what he was doing to you, or was he just clueless? Part of you wanted to hope it was the latter. The last thing you needed was a hot, self-aware angel. Wait, when did you start thinking of Jungkook as hot- “Then I guess I feel much better. Can we stay like this for a while longer?”
“As long as you like. We’ve got all day to ourselves.”
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Taehyung mutters a soft prayer, “Be at peace.”
It’s one of the quickest ways to death when the target isn’t struggling, and the second quickest way when he didn’t have his gun on him. He preferred the closeness of knives anyway. It made it make sense to him, but it also made him feel less like a contract killer and more like he lacked the empathy to be repulsed by killing up close.
The truth was that he did feel empathetic, especially when he really didn’t want to. He imagined how much it might hurt his mother to know of what he was doing, and if he could see her face just once, he’d probably stop for good. He’d tried.
When he’d asked Yoongi that one time, after far too much thinking, if he could see her, the prince had made it clear that to see his mother was to go against God’s wishes and that alone could start a war that didn’t need to happen. It was to be like this. Taehyung was to die alone.
All he could have were the little moments.
The demon falls at his feet with a soft thud, her heart releasing the blade of his knife. Blood drips over the corpse, staining her waitressing shirt red. Slowly, sinking back into the earth, the body disintegrates until there’s virtually no trace left. That was the one upside of dealing with demons: they never left a mess.
Taehyung sends a simple confirmation text to his client that the work has been done and the money is wired moments later. Stashing his now clean knife away into its scabbard at his waist, he makes his way out of the alley and directly into the human traffic of the city, blending in with ease. There’s no rush to be anywhere or see anyone. The world is moving with or without him, just as he likes it best. 
It’s only the middle of the day but he’s already considering which bar he wants to linger at at the moment. If he wasn’t working and he wasn’t sleeping, he was drinking. Had he a human liver, he’d probably have been dead a long, long time ago.
Just as he’s about to slink into one, his phone vibrates with a text.
(1) Unread Message(s)
received: 2:08 p.m.
suga: About the kid—are you sure you want to help? 
sent: 2:09 p.m.
taehyung: you asked me that already, wouldn’t have said so if I wasn’t
received: 2:09 p.m.
suga: You know that’s not what I meant. You’ve never seen him. Are you ready for that?
sent: 2:11 p.m.
taehyung: I don’t think I ever will be so I might as well get it over with
Not waiting for another response, Taehyung locks his phone and shoves it into his back pocket, ignoring the vibrations that signal Yoongi’s concern. As kind as it was, it really wasn’t what he wanted to hear right now. All he should be focusing on is the best way to kill the bastard before he killed anyone else.
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“He’s scaring me,” the demon sighs, holding her head up on her fist, “I can feel how angry he is, Lucifer. He’s going to do something he regrets.”
The king of hell is perched on the edge of a bed of satin and silk, one leg crossed over the other as he watches the young servant delicately braiding Inhui’s hair back from her face. “No offense but if I was the kid, I’d also want to kill my father. You can’t blame him. You should want to just as much.”
“I’ve told you time and time again that he didn’t do it for greed. I know him.” Inhui growls, snapping around to stare Lucifer down. The servant girl pales at the sudden change in mood, hands stilling around the black strands weaved through her fingers. Knowing it would be another one of those days, Lucifer waves a hand at the servant girl to leave and Inhui’s hair comes undone with the speed at which she exits through the iron bars of the prison cell. “And now my braid is ruined.”
“You think that an angel would ever give up their cozy seat in heaven for fucking this? You knew the boy for how long? 17, 18 years? That’s barely a second in time.”
Inhui huffs indignantly, looking away from him to the mirror once again to take her hair into her own hands. Roughly, she begins braiding where the servant had left off, “I saw him most of that child’s life. The way he cared for her, the way he cared for me... I had expected you to understand. We were angels once.”
Lucifer snarls, “Don’t remind me.”
“You should be reminded. It’s like you forget where we came from. You’re angry at them when you should be angry at God. He’s the one brainwashing them.”
“I personally don’t care what he’s doing with them. I care what it has to do with my demons.”
“So you don’t care about the angel your son is so interested in?”
At that, Lucifer frowns. “...that one doesn’t count. He’s fallen.”
Inhui huffs something like a laugh when she’s finished her braid, tying it off. Then, she steps around her chair and moves over to her bed until she’s hovering over Lucifer, being one of the few who was ever capable of being in such a position. “You’re worried about your son too, aren’t you? Then you know he’s caught up in the same situation. Have you talked to him about it?”
“I... trust him to make the best decision.” 
“And you think that the one he’s making is the best one?” Not at all, Lucifer thinks, but who am I to stop him? “You have him so close, and you don’t say what you want to. You’re lucky that you can see him.”
“But he doesn’t want to see me. I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. Whether it’s staying in hell or taking the throne or staying away from people he thinks he can save, he doesn’t listen to me. At least your boy wants to listen to you.” Lucifer doesn’t mean to sound so snippy, doesn’t mean to come off so bitter. Yet, all he feels is bitterness. And sadness. And genuine worry for what is unfolding with their sons right in the thick of it.
It’s silent for a while.
Inhui drops down onto the mattress next to him holding her head in her hands, “What great parents we are.” Nudging Lucifer, she leans back until they’re both looking at each other, “Do you think that fallen will be much trouble?”
Lucifer sighs, “Weren’t we?”
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You’ve somewhat setup a neat little space for Jungkook, and while it’s lacking in decorations and style, he looks more than happy with what he’s got. He’s even gotten attached to you calling it “his” room. 
With Yoongi’s gracious gift, you’d spent some time paying off bills and handling some of your pesky student loans. By the time you were through, you’d taken a big gulp of fresh, relieved air. 
Now came shopping, the fun part.
“Jungkook! Are you ready to go yet?” You shout up the stairs.
“Just a minute!” He yelled back, and you could faintly hear him over the sound of video game sound effects in the background. You made a mental note to be ready for him to drag you into a GameStop at some point. 
With how quickly things had been moving for the past few days, you felt that all of the free time and leisure you’d enjoyed today had invigorated you something fierce. You could go for a run, or maybe start some new hobby. The only issue with either of those options was that your reality was not lost on you in the slightest. Your days were forever being haunted by the shadow of Seokjin. In fact, he was starting to haunt your dreams even. He always appeared as a lifeless, indefinite aura, suffocating you in your sleep to the point that you’d wake up thinking you’d died and gone to hell.
And while you were enjoying spending time with Jungkook, you couldn’t help wondering what you could be doing right now to keep him safe. He was so obsessed with protecting you, and yet you were equally as obsessed vice versa. Even though Yoongi had told you to enjoy the day off, it was quickly becoming harder to do so with the places your mind was heading.
You decided to mindlessly scroll through your phone, answering messages you hadn’t gotten around to yet from your old co-workers. You see some messages from Jaebum but decide you’ll get back to him later. Your mother had sent you a few things asking how you were doing while demanding you come to the family reunion that upcoming summer, all of which you completely ignored. It seemed the world was still turning. That was nice at least.
About fifteen minutes later with no sign of your new roommate, you begin to grow irritated. Just as you’re about to yell for him again, you hear a peculiar sound. It’s your doorbell ringing. Your doorbell hadn’t rang since...
A hard lump forms in the back of your throat. You quickly check your phone for any warning messages from Youngho about him stopping by again, perhaps with a lawyer and police in tow. Maybe he was going to sue you for that night and how Jungkook had handled him. You could not deal with that on top of every other thing going on in your life right now.
You quickly preen yourself in a nearby mirror and huddle over to the front door, heart accelerating. You take a peek through the peep hole but can only see a sliver of hair that doesn’t look anything like Youngho’s. A sigh of relief is followed by stark confusion. Who the hell would come to your house uninvited like this? Your mother would, perhaps, but you highly doubted that she would... you needed to check.
Slowly opening the door, you peek around the barrier between you and the outside world. 
“Hey,” Yongsun greets you with relief, “you’re alive.”
Alive? Did she- there was no way she knew...? “Huh?”
She chuckles, shaking her head at you, “Jaebum texted me all worried saying you hadn’t been answering his messages. I thought it was weird so he asked me to come to check on you.”
“You didn’t text me yourself?” You ask, frowning. 
“I... didn’t think you’d answer.”
Shit. She had a point.
She awkwardly fiddles with her fingers and looks down. Part of you was angry at her, another part angry at yourself, and an even bigger part angry that all of this had done to one of the closest relationships in your life up until this point. All over a stupid job. 
“You want to come in?” You offer. She looks up with slight shock but nods anyway, slowly stepping closer as you open the door up enough to let her in.
Her heels clack against the hardwood floor lightly as if to not make her presence anymore imposing than she probably felt it was. She looks around the living room with slight confusion, “Where’s Mook?”
You grumble at the mention of your cat, realizing she was probably upstairs too, “In Jungkook’s room, no doubt.”
“Jungkook? Is that... is that the guy you told Jae was my little brother? I’d been meaning to ask about that.”
Oh, fuck.
With royally good timing, Jungkook makes his presence known as he stomps loudly down the stairs. Yongsun’s eyes widen at the boy, trying to recall when she had ever seen someone like him around you before. You surely would have told her about a guy like that, right? 
Jungkook’s expression is impenetrable, his eyes darting over to you as if to gauge what you were thinking. You give him a helpless look back.
But ever your knight in shining armor, Jungkook forces a laugh that seems genuine enough on the outside looking in. Then, he makes his way over to Yongsun and holds out his hand, “Ah, so this is the famed Yongsun I’ve heard so much about? It’s so nice to finally meet you, ‘big sis’.” 
Yongsun is bewildered but takes his hand nonetheless, a light blush dusting her cheeks, “B-Big sis?”
Jungkook takes his hand back and shoves it in his pants pocket, “Sorry about the identity theft and all. This one here wasn’t quite ready to spill the beans.”
“I’m sorry, I’m completely lost here. What beans? (Name)?”
Did you look like you had any clue about what was happening here too? Jungkook had all the self-assuredness in the room!
“It’s... a bit complicated. You know how silly (Name) can be sometimes, getting flustered over nothing. They weren’t ready to introduce me to Jaebum as their boyfriend yet and we kinda ended up going along with a little white lie for the time being. (Name) doesn’t know how to break it to him.” Huh. Were angels supposed to be this quick at lying?
Yongsun looks absolutely stunned. Looking back between you and Jungkook, she can’t seem to form a coherent sentence easily, “You’ve moved on from Youngho already? I had no idea... how long has it been? Are you-”
“Yongsun,” Jungkook draws her attention back to him with a charming, apologetic smile, “me and (Name) were actually just about to head out and do some shopping. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh,” the girl looks deflated, “I wanted to... I had some really important things I wanted to talk about with you, (Name). Can we talk, at least for a little bit? Alone?”
Jungkook looks about ready to sweep in with something positively corny with just the right amount of socially repulsive to save you. All you had to do was give him the look. And yet... Yongsun looked so sincere. So worried. You couldn’t lie; you missed her. You wanted to talk too.
An idea forms in your head, “How about... we all go shopping together and then we can talk? I just wanted to get Jungkook some new things to wear, it’s not a date or anything.”
At that, the girl perks up immediately, “T-That sounds great! We can even take my car. I’ll go start it.” She sends you a tentative smile and quickly squishes past Jungkook to get to the front door, making her way down the pavement to her sedan parked on the curb. You groan softly. So much for a relaxing day. You guessed it was better to rip the bandaid clean now than never.
You glare at Jungkook as he sidles up beside you, handing you your bag, “Of all people, Yongsun’s little brother?”
“Of all people, a little brother?” The indignant fallen glares right back.
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Shopping turns out to be not as stressful as you’d expected. 
Jungkook takes the reins completely the minute you arrive at the mall, going in and out of different stores with a firm understanding in what he wanted. You felt more like a bodyguard, watching him flit about with different bomber jackets and chunky boots. You were finding that you quite liked whatever sense of style he was forming for himself, absentmindedly wondering if he was picking it all based on what he assumed was your preference on purpose.
Yongsun, up until now, had only been making small talk with you about how things were going. Given that you couldn’t disclose a third of what had been happening in your life without sounding insane, you only tell her little bits and pieces about finding new work and spending time with your new “boyfriend”. She spends most of the time asking about him, finding it quite amusing when you get bashful at her questions about when he’d first fallen for you and vice versa. It seemed, however, that even her well of boyfriend questions could run dry at some point.
“I... wanted to apologize to you. About going radio silent. And the job.”
She finally acknowledges the elephant in the room when Jungkook goes to the dressing room to try on some jeans. You share a bench with her outside the changing rooms, a small smoothie in hand (a treat that you’d distributed amongst the group of you about halfway through the trip) that drips cold perspiration onto your pants legs. You’d been pumping yourself up for it for about an hour and a half now, so it hadn’t hit you with quite as much force as it probably would have back home, “What is there to apologize for? You were clearly the more qualified of the two of us.”
“You were going through hell because of Youngho. I wasn’t more qualified, I was just... available,” she sighs deeply, “and I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t know that it was your position at the time I accepted. They’d only told me that another, better position opened up and that they wanted me to move up and... yeah.”
You churn the thick fruit mixture with your straw thoughtfully. “It had all happened so quick. I believe you.”
“But it doesn’t change the fact that I took your dream away from you. You had wanted that job so badly, and I... I feel terrible everyday that I come to work.”
“Yongsun,” you command her attention immediately, meeting her sorrowful eyes, “...it’s not your fault, it never was. We both have dreamed of jobs at that place since we were freshmen. You worked just as hard as I did. I didn’t keep up to par and they did what companies do. I can’t fault you for being in the right place at the right time.”
“I should have...” Her voice trembles, “I should have done more.”
“We both were caught off guard, huh?” You ask with a sympathetic smile, reaching a hand out to touch hers. Yongsun lets a few tears fall from her eyes in response. “I’m sorry for ignoring you over it. That wasn’t cool.”
“It’s okay,” she sniffles, squeezing your hand back, “I understood why you did. I... I really love you, (Name). I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t want to lose you.” 
God, it had been a long time since you’d heard something like that.
You reach out to her and pull her into a tight hug, letting her hiccup into your shirt even as bystanders give you both odd looks in retaliation. You only hold her tighter. 
After a few minutes, Jungkook has exited the changing room with a few pairs of the same jeans slung over his arm, quietly assessing the situation. When it looks like Yongsun has calmed down enough, he makes his way over, “I think we’re almost all good on the clothes front. Can we stop by one more place?”
If Yongsun is confused about you paying for all of Jungkook’s clothes, she doesn’t say anything about it.
Jungkook ends up taking you to a much different store on the third floor... a very familiar one. “Jungkook...” You ask, looking at him in confusion, “you want to shop here?”
The boy grins, “It’s your favorite, isn’t it? It’s my treat.” You try to tune out the cooing that Yongsun is making in your ear from behind. 
“But I’m paying- okay.” He doesn’t let you finish your thought, dragging both you and Yongsun into the store with relative ease and dumping you off at the first rack you see. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d really treated yourself to anything nice. You rarely felt like you deserved to lavish yourself with anything back in the day, but after all you’d been through in the past few days... you can splurge a little, right?
You find yourself enjoying the moment the more you walk around, picking up pieces here and there and knowing that money was virtually no issue. You could get whatever you wanted. It was... kind of heaven, actually.
Yongsun would follow you around, dropping off things she found herself that she thought you would like. When your arms were nearly overflowing with clothes, she’d pushed you toward the changing rooms to try some of them on, urging you to show each and every one of the outfits off to her and Jungkook, and show them off you did.
You hadn’t even made a dent in the pile by the time you’d shimmied into the fifth outfit, quietly admiring your figure in the lit mirror before you. A small smile graced your face: who knew it could be this nice just doing something fun for yourself?
You smooth down the fabric of your clothing and prepare yourself to leave when you feel the room grow a little warmer behind you. Odd. You look back up in the mirror and almost scream out loud.
The not-so-strange stranger hovering behind you grabs you by the throat from behind and shoves you against the wall, making the stall shudder in response. The lights on the mirror keeping the small room lit flickered and burned out at the same time by no natural coincidence.
He was there. The beautiful man you’d passed on the street before. The one who you’d thought was from out of this world. How did he...?
“You and that angel of yours are awfully hard to get alone, you know?”
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jungnoir · 4 years
Text
a sprinkle of mischief;
kim seokjin | why waste your time with a maybe when you’ve got a guaranteed yes right under your own roof? | 1.2k words. | supernatural, fluff. a mini-sequel to a dash of wicked.
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Of all things you might have expected to hear on your way through the front door that fateful Thursday evening, none of them had even come close to “Are you on Tinder?” Mainly because your (slightly) unwanted house guest who asked shouldn’t even know Tinder exists.
Barring a normal greeting, you turn to face Seokjin who is sitting politely criss-cross applesauce on the couch with a phone in hand that you have no clue how he acquired, to squeak out, “Why?!”
He flinches at the volume of your voice, “I was looking for matches and you were one of them. However, I’ve heard of this ‘catfishing’ business from the TV and I wanted to be sure no one was using your photos for anything nefarious,” he details, as if it should be obvious to you, “do you need help with the groceries?”
There is a paper bag of cold foods tucked underneath your chin, almost slipping from your poor grasp because your other limbs are preoccupied with different paper bags full of groceries. Second trip be damned. You can’t nod, so you only hum an affirmative and he is quickly tossing the suspicious device in his hand to the floor to come help you. He alleviates you easily. You attempt to ignore the flash of muscle underneath his mole-littered arms because of course he’s built; he used to level cities. 
“Yes, I am on... Tinder. Why would anyone use me of all people to catfish?” You grumble, following him to the kitchen. You set down the bag you think has wine in it on the counter and figure you might need it soon anyway. 
Seokjin gives you a look as if he was mentally saying “we’ve talked about this”, annoyed roll of the eyes and all, “Attractive people are used to catfish all the time, petal. Have you not seen the news? You’re prime prey for this kind of thing.” 
You fluster, “T-That’s a bit of a stretch-” 
Seokjin is suddenly upon you, but it takes you far too long to realize that he’s only reaching above you to put away things in the cabinets. One hand brandished at your back and his chest casually bumping against your shoulder, you start to itch for a way out of the precarious position he’s put you in. Calling you attractive and then this? He was looking to kill you!
Your work-fried brain was working in overtime, so instead of saying more on the subject that you might regret, you instead slip away from his hand, ignoring the little look of confusion he gives you in return. “Never mind. The more pressing issue is how’d you get a phone?”
“Someone gave it to me.”
“Someone gave you their phone? No one just gives away their phones these days, Jin! They cost several hundreds of dollars.”
“Which is ridiculous,” he elbows the cabinet door shut and moves to put the fruits in the fridge drawer, “I was able to build freeze rays with less money than you people spend on your little computers. There should be an uprising about that by now.”
“You built freeze rays with less money because there wasn’t an actual economy in your universe, Jin.”
He snorts, bent over as he scoots a few apples to make room for pears, “An issue which you can easily mend in the final draft, no doubt.”
He must notice the displeasure in your sigh that follows, however, because he’s quickly explaining the situation, “A-Anyway, I simply told the woman that I was in need of a way to contact my spouse as my own phone had been dropped in the toilet.” 
Ignoring that the spouse in question would probably be you in this situation, you hurry on to your next burning question, “And she let you borrow it?” “Yes, and then I teleported home.” 
You squeak with horror, running into the living room to retrieve the smartphone he’d so carelessly tossed earlier. It was an obnoxious canary yellow with a little ladybug charm attached at the end. When you swipe up to see if she or anyone she might know had contacted the phone yet to get it back, you saw nothing. “Seokjin! People have trackers on their phones these days!”
“Precisely,” his smooth tenor rounds up on your kneeling form so he can pluck the phone out of your grip, “which is why I disabled it hours ago.”
Ah, right. Amongst his other personality traits that designated him a worthy specimen, you’d written his intelligence to be through the roof. You honestly wouldn’t be too surprised if it turned out that he had somehow successfully tapped into the phone line of the government at this point and was exposing their dirty secrets to the dark web.
Yet, this was the same man who still considered mostly everything he heard on the news to be true, so you had to consider how impressed you really were. “The entire reason why I haven’t given you a phone is because I have no clue what you’d do with it if given the chance. It was already a struggle enough debating on letting you watch the damn TV, and now-” 
“Are you looking for love, petal?”
The way Seokjin asks is incredibly disarming. He’s curious, looming over your still kneeling form with the silly phone in hand, head tilted so that you can see his raised brows. You’re already so goddamn embarrassed, and now he’s asking you if you’re looking for someone with the tenderness of a friend. You want to sink into the floor.
You don’t get a chance, however, when Seokjin reaches to ghost your jaw with his free fingers. So ever delicate, he crouches down until he’s almost at your level, hand still perched underneath your chin to keep it raised high, toward him. “If you wanted someone to play with, I could have kidnapped them for you with ease.”
The strange moment is suddenly broken. Shoving his hand away, you grab the phone back again, “I want someone willing, you dolt.”
“I’m available.”
You gape at the villain. He didn’t just... offer himself, did he? So casually? “Jin, what the hell has gotten into you?”
“We’re both fairly young,” he rationalizes, closing in on you minutely, “and lively, and attractive. Plus, you already know everything about me. Why waste time getting to know someone else who could never live up to the standard?”
He did, oh God, he did. “And... you’re the standard?”
Seokjin chuckles, “I’m the blueprint.” Your stunned expression is enough to send him off without much else said on the matter, “I’ll make dinner and you go clean up, hm?” 
Not even waiting for your reply, Seokjin stands back up and heads to the kitchen with a little pep in his step. A couple moments of stunned silence later, you open the now unlocked phone to see where Seokjin had left off, unsurprisingly on Tinder.
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(You stop on Seokjin’s profile as you scroll through Tinder mindlessly later that night, curled up next to the villain with a shared bowl of popcorn between you and a ridiculous movie on TV. He’d managed to take a decently harmless-looking couple of selfies, and his bio wasn’t that outwardly menacing. You might have even gone as far as to call his profile... really adorable. You think, for a moment, that it might be funny to swipe right on him.) 
(You really don’t find it funny. Your curiosity is killing you.)
(”It’s a match!”)
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jungnoir · 4 years
Note
could i request “s/he’s beautiful. i hope s/he makes you happy.” with lucas please and thank you!
like the kind of movie we used to hate;
wong yukhei | “he’s [great]. I hope he makes you happy.” ex!au. | 1.7k words. | angst.
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a/n: I LOVE g.soul/golden, and he recently released this song which fits this so well. funnily enough, I started writing this before I heard it and I realized how well it worked, so here you go!
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Were you satisfied with the martyr Yukhei made of himself for you?
There was a good enough chance the invitation ended up in his mailbox by mistake, or perhaps it was just a ploy to get him to send money in lieu of attending (money which he didn’t really have the heart to be giving out, rough times and all that), but whatever the reason behind the palpable surprise on your face, he was here. Wong Yukhei, the boy you’d fallen in love with before he’d fallen in love with you, not the boy who was still in love with you after you’d fallen out of love with him.
He jokes around with your mutual friends, most of them surprisingly paired up and two-by-two leaving early to be mushy in private, and he grins all toothy when you and your new fiancé stand at the head of the table to thank everyone for coming to the celebration dinner. He swallows down the expensive steak you both were paying for even though he hadn’t had a real appetite since he’d decided he would come, chasing it down with even more expensive red wine. He hoped he was reminding you of the person you almost married.
By the end of the night, he’s completely exhausted himself and knows he needs to go soon, so he announces his departure loudly to the table, earning a chorus of complaints and pleas for him to stay, and then he rounds around to you and your soon-to-be and gives you both quick, friendly hugs. He hugs you first, just to get it out of the way, trying not to nuzzle into your neck like he used to, and then he’s on his way to the men’s room to relieve himself of all that “rich ass grape juice”. That earns another round of laughs fit for a completely inconspicuous exit.
Then he’s leaning over the sink with cold water running off his face in rivets to wake himself up from this ugly dream.
This was so much - way too much - and why was he so stupid as to actually come? Was it his pride, wary of being wounded by the possibility of you taking his absence as submission? Maybe it was his friends who all pressured him to “get the closure he needed”, probably because he might not get an accidental invitation to the wedding. Perhaps it was both, or the unshakeable need to see you in person again.
He saw you online, of course. You both agreed to be friends and so he saw the Insta posts of you and your fiancé cuddling at his place before he muted your account. He also got the obligatory “Happy birthday!” “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy New Year!” texts you copy and pasted to everyone, of which he replied to hours too late under the guise of having been too busy to see when you’d sent it. That was it. He missed being able to look you in the eyes, and yet he barely did any of that tonight.
Someone enters the restroom and he immediately straightens up, grabbing a few paper towels to dab his face dry as he cracks a heartless joke, “Must be more of a lightweight on the good stuff than I thought.” The guy gives him a good-hearted chuckle and goes about his business. Yeah, this isn’t the place to have a fucking breakdown, Yukhei.
Gathering himself together, he tosses his trash and checks himself over once more. The collared shirt he wears feels so stiff on him and he just can’t wait to pull it off on the car ride home, so he pops open a few buttons at the top in hopes it’ll help him breathe a bit better. His eyes are just tinged a little red, but it’ll be fine. He can take the back exit out.
Just as Yukhei is leaving the restroom, he is startled to see someone in his way. He immediately apologizes for the close collision, not thinking anything of it with his gaze set on the exit. 
“Yukhei?” 
Oh god, he hates how quickly he looks back at you.
You’re standing there, hands wringing each other as you smile up at him albeit half-heartedly, “Sorry, you were about to leave. I won’t keep you.”
The stupid part of him that misses hearing your voice is what keeps him standing there, shaking his head and smiling gently at you. He shoves his hands into his pants lackadaisically, shrugging, “I’m not in too much of a hurry. Called an Uber. I’d just be waiting outside in the cold until then.” He’d ordered one twenty minutes before he’d even worked up the courage to say his goodbyes. 
Your eyes widen a little and you nod, “Oh! You know, we were just about to leave. I’m sure we could drop you off at home. There’s no need to waste the money.” 
Riding in the back of your fiancé’s sedan? He’d rather choke. “Nah, it’s ok. I’m… I’m actually headed somewhere else, so I wouldn’t wanna trouble you.”
“A party?” You inquire. You’re still wringing your hands.
“A friend’s place, actually.” He lazily smirks and hopes that you don’t ask who so he won’t have to make the lie any more intricate. 
There’s a slight dimming in your eyes when he says that. It’s so potent, the look on you that says you’re aching to ask, but you think better of it because you clamp your lips together in a tight-lipped smile. Tonight might be too much, but you weren’t looking to make it any more than it already was. “Ah. Got you. I hope you get there safely, then. Make sure you check the license plate before you get in and let m- your friend know who you’re riding with. It’s dangerous.”
How familiar a worry this was for you. He recalled a time when you were telling him to do such a thing with you. Apparently, you did too. 
“’course. I’ll be good. You two get home safely too, okay? Don’t get handsy behind the wheel.” Yukhei hopes that his joke is both the right amount of detached and friendly as he can muster right now. He’s got just enough energy to keep this up for a few more minutes.
You look a little scandalized, but humor him with a laugh, “Yeah, you know how I get on a few drinks.”
Rolling his lips inward to wet them, Yukhei gives you a nod and a hum, turning his body toward the exit. He just hopes that your fiancé won’t come over to collect you, put his hands on your waist, whisper in your ear and bask in the triumphant glow of being the one who you decided to marry. He doesn’t have that much energy.
You must become aware that he’s becoming disinterested in the subject matter, because you quickly start talking again, “Hey, um, I hope tonight was alright… I didn’t want to leave you out of this, you know? You… I love you, you know? I wanted you to be here, and I’d like you to be at the wedding too, but I don’t want… I think I made you uncomfortable.”
Oh, you thought that much? Perhaps you weren’t as heartless as he’d initially thought that day he’d received the invitation. 
Truthfully, there was a lot he could say right now. He was sure most of it you’d hate to hear but would feel so good coming off his chest. He was also sure most of it would get him kicked out for causing a scene, to which… well, as his patience wanes, he isn’t sure he’ll give much of a shit about. Most of it was for his phone, tucked away in notes that no one would ever read and that he’d hopefully be able to delete one day. 
It’s just… this one bit that slips out anyway. “I was surprised… but I’m glad you wanted me here. I… um,” a pained laugh escapes him, “I think you got a good thing going here, sweetness. He’s great. I hope he makes you happy. I promise I’m good. Missed seeing you is all.” His eyes are burning again, fuck. He really needs to get out of here.
“Oh, okay,” you whisper, having the gall to look conflicted over it for a moment, “yeah, I missed seeing you too. Seeing you and our friends tonight again reminded me of old times. I just realized how much I missed that, and how much I want it back. I’d like for us all to do something like this again sometime, maybe without… my fiancé.” Laughing, you shrug your shoulders. At the same time, the same guy from before walks out of the men’s room, nearly bumping into you. Yukhei’s hand leaves his pocket in hopes of pulling you out of the way, perhaps to him, but the man catches himself in time. 
“Oops, sorry.” The guy laughs towards you and then, finally noticing Yukhei there probably looking a right disaster, raises his brows and quickly excuses himself. 
To his great relief, Yukhei’s phone beeps in his pocket and he quickly fishes it out, practically crying at the sight of the arrival notification. He looks up at you and gives you a quick smile, “Yeah! How about you text me about it later? I’d love to catch up more. My ride’s here though, so I gotta go.”
Sighing, you nod, “For sure! See you later, Yukhei! Be safe.”
He mutters something of a response to that as he quickly pushes his way out of the exit, waving over his shoulder and jogging his way to the front where his ride awaits. With everything sorted, he climbs in the back and breathes the biggest sigh of relief of the night when the car pulls off. He’s even more relieved that his driver isn’t talkative, playing a low indie song over the speakers that thankfully drowns out his attempts at concealing his sniffling. If his driver can hear, he doesn’t mention it.
But it’s just the first night. If you weren’t pulling his leg, there’d be plenty more, and with each one, seeing you would get easier. Post-breakup friendships suck, but it’ll come with time. You’ve moved on already, he’ll follow along soon enough. Eventually, he’d stop hating everything. This was just the first night.
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jungnoir · 4 years
Text
nothing fucks with my baby;
lee minhyuk | inspired by prompt 6. “Just drive, I don’t care about the destination, just drive.” you remember him. he’s a good person, always has been and always will be. right? zombie apocalypse!au, exes to lovers!au. | 2.7k words. | dark, angst, romance, mentions of blood and violence and zombie stuff.
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a/n: so, tumblr deleted the requester’s second ask clarifying which prompt they wanted (the one I intended to reply to), but this is for the anon who requested 6 with minhyuk! I tried something a bit different this time with the ending (and weirdly enough, I’m kind of itching to continue this. it won’t be fluffy, that’s for sure). 
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This new world was powerful. The stranger you’d meet tomorrow would become your executioner or your lifeline, your friend or your foe. You had been seasoned by the apocalypse, thinking yourself an expert on the souls of humans when there were so few humans left to know. You could tell by just the look in someone’s eye whether they’d rather put a bullet between your teeth or take one for you between their own, and very few of them fell into the category of the latter... except someone who might’ve done so for you once upon a time.
When you first saw him again, it was a rabid moment. You had just finished ravishing an abandoned shack for all the food it had to give when a few zombies found you by sound alone. You’d learned to be swift, to abandon what need be, if only to save your poor excuse of a life. It seemed that you hadn’t just alerted zombies, though.
The moment you’d thrown yourself out onto the dewy forest floor, ready to hightail it out of the dense forest once you made it out of the clearing, a horrible sound came from behind you. You had known it well because you’d been the cause of it many times before... a zombie’s existence had just come to an end, and it most definitely wasn’t due to anything other than another human being.
With your gained experience of this new world, you’d learned that the only thing worse than another zombie was another human. Zombies were pure in the way that they sought to infect and feed and nothing more. Humans... they were more complex. You would do yourself a great world of good if you could make it out of here without that human catching you, you thought. You didn’t need to try to make friends at this point, and you definitely didn’t need to be put in the situation of striking first. This new world was cruel, but you had yet to be broken down that much.
You had been ready to just run, but it had been so long. When was the last time you’d seen another person? Felt the warmth of another human being’s alongside your own? Maybe months; It had been nearly a year since the entire end of the world began. 
Of course you looked back.
You weren’t sure what you expected, but if the last time you’d seen a human being was months ago, the last time you’d seen someone your age was even longer. The door to the shack was thrown open from your escape, so you could see in the small living room someone towering over a slumped body of a zombie, something long and shining in their hand. It dripped with crimson to the wooden floorboards, and the forest was silent. Whoever this was had taken them all out with expert speed. You really needed to go.
That someone’s head was lowered as they wiped the shining thing (a sword, you now realize) on the door frame, getting most of the blood off fairly well. Then, they stepped over the threshold and stood out on the porch, staring at you. 
If you hadn’t known any better, the dead look in his eyes would have screamed “zombie” to you, but it was obvious by the color in his cheeks (though scattered in scars) and lack of unorthodox movement that he was very much still human. You’d also seen him before, enough to have his name spring forward to the front of your mind in an instant. However, he looked changed. This wasn’t the boy—man—you’d known before.
He must’ve recognized you too, because a switch seemed to flip in his brain and the defensive expression his face had been steeled into melts. Lips you’d known so intimately once before just barely quirk up into a smile, “Fancy seeing you here, (Y/N).”
You’re blanching, utterly lost on what to say to him. The last memory you had of Lee Minhyuk was when you were saying goodbye to him for what seemed like forever two years ago. Your relationship had seemed to have run its course and you had assumed that after college, you’d never have to see him again. It was a big city, and after the world went to shit, you’d had even lesser odds. Or so you’d thought.
He walks down the handful of steps to stand across from you, sheathing his sword in the leather scabbard at his side. You’d never seen Minhyuk hold a canister of mace, let alone a fucking sword. That instinct to determine if he was friend or foe bubbled back up again, though much more muddy. Everyone else was easy to read because you had no prior connections to them, but this... him...
“I guess if there was ever someone to steal my next raid, I’d have liked it to be you.” He says, crossing his arms across his chest with a weirdly nonchalant aura. “But my stomach says otherwise.”
At that moment, you seem to remember why you were here. Your backpack is almost overflowing with cans and supplies, all things that’d hopefully would get you to your next meal before you could collapse from malnourishment. “...your raid?”
Minhyuk sucks in a breath when you finally speak, like he had needed to hear your voice to confirm it was really you, “Yeah... I was planning to get the place on quieter terms. Imagine my surprise when I hear somebody gathering up an undead audience right outside. Imagine my even greater surprise upon realizing it was you... of all people.”
You would flush if you weren’t still reeling from the adrenaline rush of almost dying and seeing your ex-boyfriend all within the same minute. He doesn’t look totally the same, the changes prominent given the circumstances. His old wolf cut that you hated to love had now been trimmed military-style short in an attempt to look neat. Meanwhile, his once slender frame was now chiseling out with significant muscle. The only thing that really hadn’t changed about him was his eyes and the rather intense, unyielding look they were known for. They rarely gave anything away, which made sense for how unbothered he looked at the moment. They had been like that during your peaceful parting of ways two years ago too. How curious that you were both back here like that had never happened.
“I had no idea any one was in the area.” You say, slipping your backpack off one shoulder to unzip it some. You look at your wonderful haul and your heart aches at the thought that you’ll have to part with it. That meant you wouldn’t be given the luxury of loitering around the outskirts of town until you reached the next one. You’d have to go straight through, minding all the other scavengers and undead...
Minhyuk’s eyes light up some at this, the first emotion you’ve seen on his face in a while. He even accompanies it with a heart-stopping smile, “Means I’m getting good!” When he sees you fiddling with your bag, he stops smiling, “Hey,” his hand stops your own and you feel a shudder roll down your spine when his skin touches your own. It’s been so long, “don’t. You don’t have to. I’ll be in the next town before I know it. Maybe just spare me a can for the road or something.”
You blink at him, “But this was your raid.”
Minhyuk snorts, “Clearly not if you got in first. Seriously, keep your stash. I won’t lose my head over one lost raid.”
You could laugh at that. The irony that he could was evident. Instead, you hand him three cans and some bandages, “We’ll split it.”
Minhyuk stares at you again, expression unreadable. You don’t see a bag on him anywhere, and you start to wonder how he’s gotten this far without one if he’s still traveling. You doubted he’d camp close enough to a gaggle of zombies, so he had to be mobile. Before you can ask, he pushes the supplies back toward you, “Why don’t you come with me and we can share? Everything we find is ours.”
To join him... to join someone...
Of course you’d been asked to join a couple groups before on your journey, but your answer had always stayed starkly the same. You knew the danger of groups; what if you were to join one and they turned on you to save their own skin? At least out here on your own, every outcome was your doing alone. All those groups that had offered were full of people you could read, and each and every one of them had one priority higher than loyalty: to survive. 
But Minhyuk wasn’t like that... right? Never had been. He was always the first to sacrifice himself for the greater good, always the first to protect you in lieu of himself. Always, always, always. It had been a long while since you’d last seen each other and despite all that had been altered skin-deep, you didn’t get the feeling much had changed inside. 
He is as inviting as ever. When he points out his truck parked deep in the forest piled high with tools and supplies you could only dream of getting your hands on, you find that following him to the passenger seat is all too easy. It’s not the car he used to have, this one most likely stolen off someone when he had the chance judging by the paint job alone. It was a ghastly grey he wouldn’t have caught himself dead in. It didn’t fit his bursting personality.
Minhyuk pats the roof and pops open the door for you with ease, smiling gently at you as he ushers you to get in. “Watch your step, the bar is easy to slip on.” To emphasize his point, Minhyuk offers you a hand and braces the other at your back. If he could feel how rigid you became at his touch, he didn’t mention it.
Once you were in your seat, you dropped your hulking backpack to the floor and let out a sigh of relief. It was so easy to forget how long you’d been walking once you were actually sitting, let alone sitting somewhere you hadn’t had to check for remains or fecal matter.
Minhyuk shuts your door and jogs over to the backseat of the driver’s side, settling his sword on the floor. You take this moment to process what he has back there: the entire backseat is covered with different mismatched clothing and bags, some with things like bars of soap and toothpaste, others with nonperishables, and some full of such an array of weapons that you couldn’t possibly categorize them all. How had he gotten his hands on so much just on his own...?
When Minhyuk hops into the driver’s seat, he can see the clear question on your face. Perhaps you might’ve been too easy to read, or perhaps he was still so tuned into you like the old days. “Alright there?”
You swallow, clutching your backpack between your legs a little tighter. You’re reminded of your measly close-combat knives and clear your throat in an attempt to save face, “Yeah, sorry. The shock of this is just... erm... getting to me.”
“Hey, look at me,” Minhyuk is practically begging as you avoid his eyes, trying to look anywhere but at him. This is all so much and so soon. You hadn’t even the slightest thought that he might still be alive, let alone that he’d ever find you, and you couldn’t even go through the awkward post-breakup motions like you should have been able to because of this clusterfuck of a dystopia you lived in now, “seriously, look at me.”
What a gentle hand he still had, even after all the carnage he’d been through.
The touch-starved part of you leaves you shuddering at the way he arrests your chin between the pads of his fingers, warm and firm and kind. Minhyuk slowly moves your head until you’re facing him.
There were times when he’d kissed you this way. Oh, how you’d longed for someone to touch you the way he had just once more without the need to up and run away before they stabbed you in the back- “Well... still stunning as ever.”
Your eyes widen, “Huh?”
Minhyuk rolls his head to the side and laughs softly, brushing the hand on your chin along your skin until he’s dragging it back to himself, and mindlessly, you move your head to follow minutely. A little blaze in his eyes says more than he does, “Where would you like to go?”
“I thought you were headed to the next town.” Blinking, you look about you, “I’m just stumbling from place to place. I’ve got nowhere to go.”
“No one’s looking for you, either?” He questions, resting his chin on his fist. You shake your head immediately... to his silent delight.
“I’ve been traveling solo since the beginning and... nobody that would be looking for me is still alive, anyway.” You’d seen that much in the bodies of your family and friends in the early days, enough to mourn for a lifetime.
His tongue darts over his lips as he takes you in. Something like disbelief shines in the way he meets your eyes once more, “I’m awfully lucky to have found you again.”
He was lucky to have found you? You could practically cry from joy; not only was he someone you knew, trusted even, he was eons more skilled in this apocalypse than you. Those video games he loved so much had surely paid off for him in the end, it seemed.
Yet, here he was, watching you like you’d been what he needed to survive all along.
Instead of saying all that, you settle for your first genuine smile since all this had began. You don’t know how appealing it is behind cracked lips and bad breath, courtesy of the disrespect apocalypses have toward basic human hygiene, but Minhyuk seemed pretty charmed. With one wrist thrown over the steering wheel and his free hand starting the car, he tears his eyes away and soon enough, you’re moving. The jolt of the car is a welcome change to what you’d become used to out here. Why, you could just sink into your seat and doze off, even. Perhaps...
You rest your head tentatively against the glass of the passenger side window, watching the trees and dead bodies go by, calm despite it all. You know that the noise of the truck will draw out any other creepers hanging in the deep brush, but you know they’d never be fast enough to catch you. You can trust this. Him.
Slowly, you doze. It consumes you like a warmth and you can’t be assed to fight it. Minhyuk wouldn’t mind, you were mostly sure. Besides, he would wake you if he needed you. The next town wouldn’t be for miles.
There’s a slight twitch in Minhyuk’s hand as he watches you from his peripheral. It’d been so long since he’d last been this close with someone who wasn’t trying to eat him or kill him for his shit (intentions that were unsettlingly interchangeable between humans and zombies), and it’s you, too. 
If he’d had any doubt that he was still madly into you all these years later, it had whipped up in a smoke the moment he’d seen you face to face. The tunnel vision he acquired whenever he dove his sword into flesh dissipated so quickly and he was grateful. He did not fathom in his mind that he’d need to be very cautious of who and what he struck down any longer, but he was glad he had been. You were strong—of course you were—and you made it back to him. How fateful.
You were the only person left alive who knew the old him, let alone the only person who had no clue what brand of cruel he had become. If you stayed with him long enough, you would. 
All Minhyuk could pray for was that you’d understand... he was no longer a man who could feel remorse.
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jungnoir · 5 years
Note
ik uve gotten a lot of asks for this but i just reread battlecry for what i Believe is the 7th time and i just. 😭😭 you said we’re never getting a sequel but can i get a crumb😭😭 a single sentence about what happens after, ANYTHING 😭😭😭 spare content maam, spare content?? will she and jaem have a falling out.... will she and JENO have a falling out...... how will her parents react.... would jeno feel too guilty and give her up, despite what she wants...... the possibilities.... r endless....
omg wait just realized i might have sounded a bit pushy or just. Annoying and kinda rude in general in the last ask IM SORRY THATS 110% NOT MY INTENTION
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no dw bb you’re okay!! this ask honestly made me laugh ashfisjf and yes there are so many possibilities!!! I guess I can give you insight into one of them,, perhaps. it’s been so long though so I apologize if it’s disapointing. tw: light gore, mentions of torture, pretty dark. kinda just real sad in the beginning. here’s battlecry for those who haven’t read it. also, the song this is named after is really good and I recommend it!!
when the bones are good;
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“Wretched boy,” whip, “wretched, cursed boy,” whip, “you’re a devil! You bring ruin to my family!”
One would think that after weeks of this, Jeno would be used to the blinding pain of a horse whip at his back. The first few hits reopen old wounds, ones that burn against rough fabric and heavy metal and the sweat of a day’s work protecting the kingdom. It just gets worse the longer they go on, until he’s crying into his bindings, wishing the saltwater would melt away the rope and he could try to run. He tried so many a time before. What made him think he had a better chance this time? Or the next? Or the next? Because there would always be a next.
Jeno no longer pleads. He takes the punishment in stride, hoping to the gods that have abandoned him to at least spare him a moment of ignorant bliss. No pain. 
Whip!
A choked sob leaves his throat and by some miraculous mercy, the whip hits him no more after that. He slumps against the disgusting chamber floors that are covered in the remains and innards of everyone who has met their fate here. Traitors, thieves, murderers, him. 
He is only held up by his tied up hands, keeping him from laying fully on the ground, suspending him in the air because his legs are too weak to do anything but give out. He’s lucky to still have his trousers, for his shirt is all torn to shreds in a corner of the chamber somewhere, so the cold stings against his bleeding wounds relentlessly. He huffs and puffs and with each breath, a cloud of vapor follows. It’s going to be freezing tonight. They may as well just kill him here.
Jeno can hear the king’s footsteps but he doesn’t dare open his eyes or look over his shoulder. He doesn’t get a choice though, when the king spins him around harshly and his back is pressed up against the jagged stone wall. He cries out again, being met by a sharp slap to the face. Jeno is silent at once. “Why I ever showed mercy to that abhorrent wench of a mother you have, I will never know. I should have killed both her and you that night and you know it.”
Jeno nods, knowing that if he refuses to respond he’ll just get hurt more. He’d really like to go to sleep now. 
“To think,” the king spits in Jeno’s face, “I gave a bastard peasant boy a place to sleep, food to eat, a place as close to my dearest jewel no man but me will ever have… and you had the audacity to come here in your mother’s name, knowing full well what I’d do to you if I found out. The very arrogance you have, walking these palace grounds for so long, plotting my demise… I ought to hang you in the square where everyone can see you for the treacherous demon you are.”
Jeno could imagine it. The townspeople taking turns to spit on him, calling him a devil child, sentencing him to death beside his mother. He hadn’t seen her since the day she laid the curse on you, the day he’d been found out by the king for his relation to the witch. That was the day the torture started, and if it wasn’t for how suspicious his sudden disappearance would be, Jeno would already be dead by now. 
Things were stiff now that all eyes were on the king. He couldn’t easily dispose of the witch’s spawn like he’d been doing to the others like him for the last few decades, lest the uprisings really take flight. For now, he’d have to wait until the excitement cooled down, and then…
“Leave him here. Hopefully the night will kill him before I have to. I’m far too exhausted to exert the effort.” Jeno hears the king’s voice as he stands and walks out of the cell, followed by the clang of the door slamming shut. It leaves a ringing in his ears that makes him whimper. He, too, hoped the night would kill him first. He couldn’t bear to see your face after your father no doubt fed you some lies about him being the reason for your curse in the first place. The hate you’d harbor for him as he made his way to be executed… he didn’t dare to imagine it.
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Where was home?
With his mother? The witch who’d bred him to be her revenge, abandoning the just cause of protecting her coven and avenging her fallen witches in order to spill the king’s blood? The witch who sent him as an agent, meant to orchestrate her plan in slaughtering the royal family for their continued persecution of witches? The witch whose magic sizzled in his veins? The witch who abandoned him the moment he’d confessed “I’m in love”? 
Or was it with you before all this happened? The golden summer days of adolescence where the two of you were just children in love, and there was no curse, and there was no Jaemin, and the king and queen still thought of him as good? With you, the loving princess who didn’t emulate a single ounce of her father’s true nature?
Or was it in the night, when sparks of forbidden energy flowed through his fingertips and created images of a life where Jeno was happy and safe? Was it in the comfort of his “dark” magic, the very thing he kept hidden to save his life?
Home was… it was a rocking carriage. 
Jeno bolts upright and instantly regrets it when his back protests, making him cry in agony. He doesn’t know where he is, only that he’s moving, like he’s being carried somewhere. A hand on his cheek makes him alert to his surroundings at once.
It’s quiet and dark and there’s a hooded figure staring down at him. A familiar voice coos at him, “Please be careful… your wounds only just stopped bleeding.”
It’s you. You’re there. He can feel warmth wrapped around his body and he looks down to see bandages curled tight around his ribs and chest. A loose, peasant’s shirt is hanging off his body but it’s still thick enough to keep him warm, and then there’s a blanket hanging off his shoulders too. 
There’s a small lantern in your hands that lights up your sweet face. Jeno so badly wants to kiss you again. Instead, he blinks back his overwhelming love and asks the burning question on his mind, “Where are we?”
Your hand flutters from his cheek, leaving the boy whining softly in the loss of contact, but it’s only to help readjust his blanket. “The woods. We’re headed for the Na Kingdom.”
A hand much different from your own touches his shoulder, and before Jeno can react the way he’s been bred to, there’s a another blanket being draped over him. Jeno chances a look over his other shoulder and finds another hooded figure, and though the light scarcely meets his face, the features are apparent. 
Jaemin’s lips are pulled tight in a small frown, but he cannot hide the softness in his eyes when Jeno meets them. “It will be a long journey, and we will have to stop a few times for supplies and such. It’ll be trouble trying to smuggle so many people out of the kingdom after the ordeal.”
“I like our odds,” you perk up from beside Jeno, leaning in close to him to provide some warmth, “Renjun knows this land like the back of his hand, and Mark’s been working on cloaking spells for months now.”
It’s only then that Jeno recognizes a sleeping figure at the far end of the carriage, a boy curled up in some hay and sleeping peacefully, no doubt the court mage he’d been watching monitor you for weeks. He could only then assume that Renjun was leading the carriage from outside. His mind, putting things together slowly but surely, wonders how you’d both convinced them to come with you. “Did something happen…? Did your father threaten your life?” 
“He might as well have.” Your voice hardens, but it’s not directed at him. No, your anger is saved solely for the man who raised you, “To beat you… to dare lay his hands on you the way he did… he might as well have done the same to me. It hurts me just the same.”
You were doing this for him. 
Jaemin shuffles a little closer at his other side, adding even more warmth to the freezing boy, “…you have been my friend these past few weeks and I could not ask for more kindness from you even if I was that selfish,” Jeno shudders, unable to comprehend, “what happened… we can discuss at a later time. Right now, your safety and the safety of your people is all that matters to me. We cannot let the king get away with his atrocities. When we get home, I’ll see to it that the treaty is ended and that my father rights her father’s wrongs. I promise that all witches will be safe.”
Jaemin was doing this for him. Why would anyone…?
“That’s right. Jaemin’s kingdom is safe for all. We will make this right, Jeno.” You place a soft kiss to his forehead, enveloping the boy in a hug so tight but so loving that he can ignore the pain for now.
With one hand on your arm, Jeno places the other on Jaemin’s, shocking the prince, “Your highness, I swear to you my life. I will protect both you and (Y/N) even if it kills me.”
The small frown on Jaemin’s lips wavers some at that. Jeno can’t tell what it means, only that he hates seeing the prince look so pained. He’d gotten used to the smiles and laughter. He hated knowing he was the reason for its absence. He would do anything he could to fix-
Jeno is startled when the prince suddenly collapses into his side in a fit of soft crying, tears rushing out of his eyes so fast that the shoulder of Jeno’s blanket is soaked in seconds. The prince has wrapped himself tight around the knight, tight like you, and yet again, the pain is bearable. “You’re an idiot, Jeno,” Jaemin swears through gritted teeth, “don’t talk to me like a knight. Talk to me like you talk to (Y/N). Talk to me like I mean something to you. I care about you.”
You, too, are sniffling into Jeno’s opposite shoulder, rubbing at his arms to fight against the night air.
It’s strange. “I… care about you, too. I’m sorry.” He says and you lay down like that, fall asleep like that. It’s so, so strange. This feels pretty close to a home.
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jungnoir · 5 years
Note
hai i love ur works it makes me cry most of the time and maybe I did pulled out my hair once or twice reading but through it all I love it rlly. This sad turd wants to maybe send a req for a kun fic bc u seem to hv not done it yet. Any genre or storyline of ur choice I'll take it hehehe if you want ofc no pressure or anything like I'd love it bUT srsly no pressure ILY
of goats and prophecies;
qian kun | “Oh calm down, it’s just an ancient glowing sword. Nothing to be scared of.” ⇢ gods and immortal warriors and goats falling from the sky… and kun wants to share a few choice words with whatever entity that made him a part of a prophecy to kill a demon king. fantasy!au, kinda medieval!au, reincarnation!au if you squint. | 2.2k words. | fluff, hints at reincarnated lovers, humor.
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a/n: I’ve actually been in a kun mood lately so!!! here u go. I wrote this during church service (sorry jesus but anon was just too cute and convincing)
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When Kun had woken up that sunny November morning, he was fairly certain of how his day was going to proceed. He’d fold back his bed sheets, serve his ailing mother the last of the oats that he’d gathered at the supermarket a few days ago, and go out into the field to tend to the farm. He’d fix the slop for the pigs, milk the cows, collect the chicken’s eggs, rake out the small stables, and by early afternoon, he’d take what he could to sell at the town market. It was never too much, but it was enough to keep himself and his mother alive, and that was enough. Life just scraping by was mediocre, but if he could just stick to his routine, he could continue to live it without any hiccups.
But oh, oh, he couldn’t have been further from right. All of this was completely unintentional, and he’d been saying that several times to you since he’d stumbled down that (literal) rabbit hole chasing after a disobedient goat, but you were fairly confident that meeting him was fate. Destiny. “Prophesied by the gods”, or what have you. The goat in the tomb with you also just happened to be a messenger from Zeus himself, apparently.
No matter what you were saying, you surely didn’t sound like you were of this world.
“I’m t-telling you,” Kun just barely manages to stammer though his words, though you seem as if he’d said everything crystal clear, “you’ve got the wrong guy.”
Yet, if that was true, why did you continue to ignore everything he said?
Deeply sighing (and what did you have to sigh for, exactly? He was in far more disarray than you right now!), you sit up more from the stone coffin you were once sound asleep in, dust swimming around you at its first disturbance in 10,000 years. Or so you said. “And I’m telling you, boy,” the way you pronounce the last word makes him frown in contempt, “that no average human can just fall from the sky and wake me. You are very clearly the servant boy I requested upon my awakening.”
“I’m not!” Kun whines. The goat bleats nearby, munching on some of the grass that had obscured the hole they’d both fallen in through. The animal is calm, as if he hadn’t just been the reason why Kun was now trapped in a tomb with a crazy warrior wielding a- “Gods! What the hell is that?!”
You stop your descent from your coffin, meeting his eyes with curiosity, “What the hell is what?”
Kun had at first thought the shine from your coffin was from the sunlight gleaming on your tarnished metal garb, glinting in his eyes like the jewels that adorned the necks of royals, but now he could see it much more clearly through his anxious haze. There was something else in that coffin, something he couldn’t see pressed up against the stone wall as far from you as possible (which wasn’t much, given the modesty of your tomb). It shined with a white light that rivaled the moon. It didn’t seem to faze you at all. “That! The thing that’s- that’s shining! In the coffin!”
You follow his eyes back to your coffin as if you’d what he’d meant, your hand dipping inside to retrieve whatever was giving off the light. Kun clings closer to the cold stone.
In your hand, you brandish a stunning broadsword. Its blade is incredibly sharp, he can tell from even where he is, and it absolutely glows. It doesn’t glow even from sunlight because its not anywhere in direct contact with it… it does it all on its own. The handle is something else to behold as well, a matching silver to your armor that glints like pearls and diamonds. He wonders how it manages to stay so bright even when you are covered in a layer of dust, hair matted and untamed from god knows what that had been scrambling around in here for the last 10,000 years. Still… you don’t look that bad for someone supposed to be dead.
Almost like you’d heard his train of thought, you turn the sword over in your hand until the point is focused on him and you begin to move forward. A surprised gasp leaves his lips but his knees are locked; he can’t run!
Despite the threatening look of the sword up close though, you don’t look like you’re ready to plunge it into his chest. You stop some six feet away from him and turn the sword sideways so that the edge of the blade is pointing parallel to him. The light from the sword shines on his face and illuminates your own. He swears he sees little blue wisps rising from around the weapon as you steady it, “Oh, calm down. It’s just an ancient glowing sword. Nothing to be scared of.”
Kun laughs humorlessly, jagged fingernails digging into the rock behind him. Momentarily, he dreams that he can melt into it and disappear. “You’re holding it awfully close to my person…”
You smirk, “I wouldn’t kill my servant boy.”
There you go again! “Why do you keep calling me that?”
You lower the sword until it’s standing up at your side, casting an otherworldly glow along the ground. It illuminates your features much better than the minuscule sunlight let in by the hole he’d fallen through. Despite the dirt on your skin, it does nothing to mar your strong features. You’d told him that you were a warrior of the gods, but he didn’t actually begin to believe it until he saw you like this.
You were also attractive, he might say. Maybe. It could just be the lighting.
“Weren’t you listening before? When I told you who I was? (Y/N), the great warrior of Orepus, prophesied to come back from the dead in 10,000 years to vanquish the evil demon possessing your king-“ “Yeah, yeah, I got all that,” Kun’s interruption makes you huff, “but you never really explained the whole servant boy thing.”
You pout in a way unbefitting of a great, supposedly immortal warrior, but it somehow fits your personality well anyway, “The priests who laid me to rest explained that when I would come back, I would need a companion. Someone who would be undoubtedly submitted to me in all matters so that I might properly carry out my duty. You are the boy, for that someone would be the one who would awaken me… and you did.”
“Technically, it was the goat.” Kun mutters, before his eyes narrow in, “and what? Submit to you in all matters? How broad is all matters?” He wouldn’t admit to it either, but a faint blush was beginning to spread to his neck at the possibilities. Goodness, he really needed to get out more.
You seem to know where he’s going with it because your smirk comes back, your form happily caging him in some as you walk forward, “The terms are negotiable.”
Kun places a hand to your shoulder, meaning to stop you where you stood, and for the first time since he’d been down there, he makes actual physical contact with you. Granted, it’s not skin to skin, but something… changes in Kun at that moment (even your taunting words leave his mind). 
In his mind’s eye, you stand there, in all your great glory, shining like your sword as you slay monsters left and right. He is in silent awe of your power and almost pulls his hand back away from you, but something tells him his vision would cease if he did.
Instead, he subconsciously pulls you closer, mouth agape as he visualizes the moments from your glory days to the very rainy night when you were buried. Candlelight fought the rainwater to light the violet sky, and songs chanted in the olden language were sung by the hundreds- no, thousands of people at your funeral. From what he could make out of some of the words, they were all… parts of your story. You really were a divine entity to those people, and you were their only hope for this prophecy. The prophecy to kill Zirzirath, the demon you’d locked away 10,000 years ago in hopes that it would stay, only for him to return once more and take possession of the current king.
His king, the man who was the reason for the shortage in food and the crumbling economy of the kingdom, the man who was the reason that proper medical care was not being given out to the less fortunate and why Kun’s mother was practically on her death bed now as she was. The gluttonous king chose to take everything for himself and to feast on the agony of his people, but it was no doubt that a mere human could never have such power, even one as great as the king. Kun always knew other factors were at play, but only when you’d told him a demon was behind it did it really begin to make sense.
Kun reluctantly pulls away when the vision ends, his eyes refocusing in on you. Your own are wide, gauging, “What did you see, boy?”
“I saw… everything. The prophecy, your fighting, everything.” His voice is but a whisper but the words carry in the tomb like he’d shouted them. “And I heard about me… in the songs they sung… a-at least I think it was about me. They kept mentioning your companion, the only one who could wake you.”
You nod, backing away some, “It’s true. You’re not the first to stumble here, boy, but you are the first to wake me. Why do you think the entry is covered in grass and not stone? Many have tried to do what you didn’t even mean to, and all of them met disaster because of it.” When Kun gives you a horrified look, you clarify, “Only the ones who meant harm.”
“…can you stop calling me boy? I’m… I’m a man, you know. And I have a name.”
“My apologies, what is your name?”
“Kun.” He says, trying to be confident. Your eyes widen a bit and you… you seem to smile. It’s tiny, quickly gone, and strikes a chord within Kun. “W-What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” you say, sounding too afflicted for it to be nothing, “I just… when I was alive, I knew a boy named Kun. He and I were… very close. I never saw him before I was buried, didn’t get the chance. It was urgent I go when I did.”
Kun knows his name is not that special in the kingdom, and probably so 10,000 years ago. But when you tell him this, the pieces of him that still doubt all of this to be true shatter altogether. The odds that you were close to someone with the same name as him so long ago, only to find him again like this (or rather, he find you like this) felt too coincidental to be coincidence.
And the way you study him afterwards, as if seeing him in a different light, doesn’t bother him as much as it might’ve ten minutes ago.
“As much as I’d love to be your companion, I have my mother to take care of. She is incredibly sick and needs me to care for her constantly. I can only tell you what I know and send you on your way.” Kun says, rather melancholy all of a sudden. Despite the shock and information overload he’d received in the little time it took for him to chase a runaway goat into a pit and awaken an immortal warrior, he had always been practical. Family first, always. This warrior would just have to fight their battle alone.
You hum, pondering. A minute goes by before you speak again, “As much as I should be replenishing my power instead of lowering it, a good night’s rest will surely help me sleep off the effects.”
“The… effects?”
“The gods prophecy clearly states that you are to help me, be by my side till the very end, and this means that any obstacle in the way of that coming to pass will be remedied by the gods. Not only do I have my god-given strength, I also can be a miracle worker if need be. That means…” You clear your throat under Kun’s heavy, confused gaze, “…the gods shall allow me to heal your mother. Whatever ails her, it is but a spec in the eyes of the gods and will be wiped clean in a breath.”
Okay, now this was starting to sound really enticing.
“If you can heal my mother… I will swear my life to you.” The sheer determination in his voice both shocks and excites you, setting you going like a rolling stone.
You immediately grin and swing your sword up and onto your shoulder, chuckling, “My, my, sounds like we’ve got a deal, Kun. I think I’ll like you.”
Kun shuffles from side to side and prays, prays, prays to the gods that this isn’t all some illusion his malnourished mind is warping to keep him sane. He prays that this is real, that you can do what you say, and that you really can end the king’s tyrannical reign.
But first… “So… how do we get out of here?”
You look up at the hole in the ceiling before hissing under your breath, “Gods, you’d think they’d leave me a ladder or something. What kind of underground tomb is this?”
The goat bleats in protest.
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jungnoir · 6 years
Note
3.“Yes, they’re perfect, but…” with eunwoo in the same universe as "how to train your sanha" pls
all this and heaven too;
cha eunwoo | 3. “Yes, they’re perfect, but…” fantasy!au, royalty!au, how to train your sanha!au. | 3.7k words. | wow the angst, romance.
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a/n: AHHHH u don’t know how excited I am to do a requested spin off of something else I did ok ok. you can read how to train your sanha for a lil backstory on prince eunwoo if you like :)

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Prince Eunwoo was not a stranger to getting what he wanted. As the heir to the Kingdom of Caelum, there was not a thing out of reach for the royal family (it could even be argued that there was nothing out of reach for the common people as well). So, when Prince Eunwoo sprints into his father’s arms after a summer away at his uncle’s estate and tells him all about how Uncle Seunghoon has a pet dragon and all about how they just have to get one now, well... he gets exactly that.
The duties of the young prince had always been fairly obvious: classical training in several musical instruments, etiquette classes out of the wazoo, and socializing with every single person of noble and royal blood from age 8 to age 80. Eunwoo had no problem with the majority, but when it came to spending time with snooty lords and ladies seeking to betroth him to their bratty children, he preferred the company of dragons.
There was something unmatched about turning out of his royal garments and into the commoner clothing he’d acquired from the servants over the years (“Never for the king and queen to know about, understand?”), sneaking out into the night (past several guards. His ability had definitely matured over time), and spilling his thoughts to the creatures that lurked in the dark. Dragons, in the kingdom of Caelum, were a rarity amongst even the wealthiest of nobles. With their stubborn and independent natures, “owning” a dragon wasn’t the right term. No, it was more like Eunwoo was offering them a home to rest in when they so felt like it. In return? They gave him their undying loyalty and affection.
The amount of times servants had found the prince curled up in the tails of the dragons, fast asleep and unaware of the excitement amongst the servant’s quarters as they all bustled to get the young prince back to his room without raising any eyebrows were far too many to count on all the chefs’ fingers combined. As the prince got older and his... habits became accepted by the king and queen, the memories became humorous tales. Tales to keep in the past... once Eunwoo turned 21. 

“I know that this is upsetting, my love,” the queen’s voice had always been this gentle, but right now it feels so forced as he stands in the throne room with teeth gritted, “but it’s time that you start focusing on your princely duties... you are of age for many new things, after all.” 

Many new things, Eunwoo scoffs quietly as he thinks, they could only mean one thing. 

The king nods his head from beside his wife, chin rested on his fist with a neutral expression. His parents, Eunwoo notes, look like they’ve been raring to have this conversation for a long while now, but only now did they have a legitimate excuse to do so that Eunwoo couldn’t deny. He was 21. He was of age to take the throne at any time, had finished his studies with impeccably high marks, and was at the peak age to marry. There was no reason for him not to focus on these things. In fact, he should have been focusing on them years ago, but... he had hoped... a little longer, maybe. 

You let out a soft sigh from your spot near the entrance, a knight to your left and right who don’t dare make eye contact with you or anyone else in the room. You had been dreading this very moment since the minute you’d been handed the formal letter requesting Eunwoo’s daily activities be halted for an important meeting with the monarchs that morning. You had been dreading this moment since you’d become Eunwoo’s personal advisor, being made aware of Eunwoo’s current priorities and how they didn’t exactly sit well with the king and queen now that he was older. Eunwoo wanted to explore, learn of all that the kingdom had to offer, and the king and queen wanted him to marry and take the throne in two years time (less time was actually preferred; two years was the grace of God at this point). Watching this was torture. 

“I know you both well enough to figure there’s already a list of those many new things waiting for me to get started on right away.” Eunwoo tries to keep his sarcasm at its minimum. It doesn’t work.
The king sighs heavily, “Eunwoo, don’t start this. Honestly, you act like this is a shock to you.” 

Eunwoo wants to say that he always knew, that knowing it would happen and actually experiencing it were two very different things, that imagining this day was so much better than actually living through it. Yet, he can’t say a thing. Shouldn’t. Arguing with the inevitable was not an option, that’s not what kings did. 

The queen frowns, “It doesn’t all have to stop. The dragons will always be here, and when you have time, you can travel throughout the kingdom whenever you like. We’re just asking that you start to focus on your future. There are many nobles and royals eager to actually meet you, Eunwoo.” -and introduce you to their darling children to marry them off is what she means to add, but Eunwoo puts that together himself.
“Exactly,” his father chimes in, “they’re not villains. You would love some of these people. After all, they’ve been around us for a long time.” 

“Around us, yeah. But around me? Talked to me besides idle chatter? I don’t know any of them.” Some part of Eunwoo, despite having already given up about 90% internally, still clings to the need to at least make them see that this was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do.
“You had 21 years to get to know them, Eunwoo. Every time they were around, you’d disappear off to those stables and stay as far away from them as possible. Do not blame us or them for what you chose to do.” Unfortunately, the king had a point. Eunwoo was not an innocent player in this game. He had known of his future for a long time, so there was no excuse for distancing himself other than a childish hope that it’d somehow not come true. That hope was being extinguished now under an onslaught of icy cold waves, a wake up call of the least desired degree. 

You clear your throat, trying to be casual and discreet, but you notice the twitch in Eunwoo’s neck when you do. He just catches himself before he can look back at you, a habit he would soon have to grow out of. You had been his guide and sometimes life-jacket in royal matters since you both were children, and it was hard for him not to want to turn to you and hope you could fix this situation with your borderline magical problem-solving abilities. 

“...When do I need to prepare myself?” Eunwoo asks in a compliant tone, though the fire in his eyes doesn’t easily burn out. 

His parents are on edge still, but they look much more relieved by the new direction of the conversation. “You have until tonight, son. We’ll be welcoming a few suitors to court for your birthday celebration, but for now we want you to focus on strengthening relations between our kingdom and the nearby ones first.” The king explains.
Eunwoo decides he can handle that. He’d had intensive training to be able to handle that, after all. Without another word, Eunwoo bends at the waist and tucks a hand behind his back, another curving around his waist. Then he swiftly exits the room with you following quickly behind in swirling anxiety.
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“Please say something, your highness,” you start, the smell of the stables for once going ignored by you in favor of deciphering this mess you’ll need to clean up, “anything is fine. Profanity is excused for today, encouraged even.”
You’d much prefer spoiling Eunwoo’s “proper” vocabulary if it meant that he would just say something to you. His silence was far scarier than his vocalization.
Your relationship to Eunwoo was a rather strange one, always bordering on the lines of advisory, friendship, and some other feelings hard to describe. Despite being around the same age, you had been trained since childhood to be several steps ahead of Eunwoo in everything. You were taking advanced royal training while Eunwoo was still learning his ABC’s, able to name every single one of the past kings of Caelum off the top of your head while Eunwoo hadn’t yet learned the first name of his grandfather.
Yet, at the same time, while you were years ahead of the young prince in knowledge and wisdom, you were still a child and you still were childish. The times when you would run off with the prince to the stables to admire the handsome dragons (only to then request leaving as soon as possible as to not end up smelling like dragon dung for the rest of the day) were some of the most fun memories you still kept close to your heart. Back then, Eunwoo had only one dragon, Eliatha, and Eliatha was only big enough at the time to carry both you and Eunwoo a few feet in the air before crashing into a nearby cherry tree and ending the festivities early.
Now, Eliatha’s tired eyes could only stare sadly at the adult prince, wishing to comfort him with a motherly hand rather than just brushing her snout against his leg, but the sentiment was not lost on you or Eunwoo.
Eunwoo continues to run his fingertips down Eliatha’s jade scales with care, a habit he’d found would soothe him whenever he and his father would get into scuffles about his negligence in his royal duties. If ever you were to need to find Eunwoo after a fight between the two of them, you always knew where to go.
“I’m not silent just because I’m angry. I’m watching my words, as all good kings do.” The last bit of his sentence is heavily sarcastic. You can practically feel the prickly words in your chest as you hear them. At least he’s talking to you, though.
You step forward some, stuffing your hands underneath your armpits to keep warm in the chilly air, “Thankfully, the only people good kings don’t need to hold their tongues around are their advisors and their lovers.”
Eunwoo snorts, sparing a glance back at you over his shoulder, “Is that so?”
“Yes! So please,” you check the ground covered in hay and grass for any signs of dragon droppings before taking a cautious seat next to the crouched prince, “spill it. It’ll do you no good to stay quiet.”
The prince looks reluctant even as he makes eye contact with you and holds it; something in those dark eyes says that he currently cannot find the words he wishes to use. Wheels turn in his mind as he assesses the moment before him, a mindful activity to ground him.
Here you are in your royal fatigues, legs tucked underneath you in this place you always either regarded as “smelly” or “nauseating”, just to listen to him... and he can’t feel any worse. 
“I don’t want to complain to you because it isn’t fair,” Eunwoo starts, catching the way your face pinches in puzzlement, “it isn’t fair of me to be upset.”
“I don’t follow...?” You press.
And of course you don’t, Eunwoo thinks; it is no more your fault than it is his own that you don’t know. “This... this isn’t even bad. It’s not what I want but my life could be much, much worse. Who am I to complain that I now get to secure my place as future king of Caelum? Who am I to complain that I’ll have to soon choose a suitor from some of the best of the best the kingdoms have to offer? Who am I, except a spoiled prince who got away with this gig for too long?”
You stare at him, unsure how to approach the conversation. In all your years of knowing the prince, you had never thought... never fathomed that he could feel so against his own emotions. The way he speaks is like he’s berating himself for even bothering to feel bad feelings, as if kings didn’t feel bad things because why would they?
“...Your... position, your highness... it comes with many wonderful things that you should always be grateful for, but it also comes with many burdensome things that you have the right to hate.” Eunwoo looks away from you as you respond, “You may live in a luxurious palace with the privilege of being waited on hand and foot, but you must also sacrifice yourself for the people you love and lead. This is a big thing to ask of any person. There is no easy way to be a good king, and with the good will always come the bad.”
“But look at Minhyuk,” Eunwoo mentions his younger courtier and the image of his kind and gentle disposition comes to mind, “he came from practically nothing and rose to the royal court with the utmost gratitude. He does everything that’s asked of him as a member of the court and never makes a fuss; meanwhile, I can get away with neglecting my birthright because I just “feel” like it. Don’t you think I’m...”
“A brat?”
Eunwoo’s eyes shoot open, then narrow into irritated slits, “...sure.”
You crack a small smile, “Sometimes, but you are one of the most wonderful brats I know.”
“You know more wonderful brats than just me?” Eunwoo’s eyebrow rises in amusement, “That makes me feel special.”
You scoot across the grass until your knees are just touching the prince’s, his face falling still. You extend your hand toward his chin and he almost flinches when your fingers brush the sensitive skin underneath, two of your fingers angling his face high up. His nose points out confidently at this angle, “Shall I say this, then, Eunwoo?” When you drop the “your highness”, you drown him in a sea of sobriety. He nods, entranced by what you’ll say next.
“You and Minhyuk are no different. You and any village boy in this kingdom are no different. You must stop looking at your life from such a negative point of view, always worried about what people will have to say about you, always worried about not looking humble enough or not performing at your most likable. You have been placed in a position from birth that would drive any twenty-one year old mad. You’re doing a great job; don’t belittle yourself so much.” You release his chin and smile when he keeps his head high, just where you left it. “You look so handsome when you have no worries.”
Eunwoo, by instinct, drops his chin toward his chest and flushes. Eliatha huffs a humorous breath at Eunwoo’s back when he does.
As if remembering where he is, Eunwoo looks at Eliatha in surprise before turning back to you, “Would you like to get out of here?”
You practically melt with content, “Yes, please and thank you.”
However, to your confusion and then mild horror, Eunwoo walks over to the set of reins hanging on the far west wall. He pulls down the one sized specifically for Eliatha and then comes back to the sweet dragon who is now bursting with energy at the thought of being ridden for the first time in so long. You immediately freeze when he starts to set up two saddles along Eliatha’s back. “Wait-” “Just a quick lap around the kingdom, ok? Maybe take a detour to that hill we used to go to when we were younger?”
“I didn’t agree to this, Eunwoo!” You push yourself off the ground as Eliatha begins moving out of her stall, stretching her claws mere feet in front of you in preparation for flight.
Eunwoo is already hoisting himself up onto the dragon’s back, grinning at you over her long neck, “Would you rather I go alone and disappear into the forest forever, you being the last witness and therefore responsible for my mysterious vanishing? Eliatha hasn’t been ridden in years, after all... anything could happen.”
“Are you... are you threatening me, your highness?” You stare up at him with arms folded in disbelief. Sure enough, he’s completely serious.
He lightly taps his heels against Eliatha’s sides and she begins to trudge forward, practically nudging you out of the way. In the same step, you feel your arm being tugged upward and suddenly your falling across Eunwoo’s lap, halfway on the dragon and halfway off, the front saddle just waiting for you to slip into. Eunwoo grins down at you with reins in one hand, the other wrapped tightly around your bicep, “Does that seem like the behavior of one of the most wonderful brats you know?”
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Your kidnapping ride to the hill was, thankfully, not as dangerous as Eunwoo had tried to make it out to be in the beginning. Eliatha flew just as smoothly as she did always (except for the cherry tree incidents but those were in the past), and you were at the hillside in no time, propped up against the short, soft grass next to Eunwoo. The dragon had taken her perch at the very top of the hill for a well-needed nap which meant that there was no bribing the sleepy dragon to take you home any time soon.
The afternoon was cool, but the sunshine provided a warmth to both your skin that made you feel as cozy as Eliatha probably did. It had been so long since the two of you had escaped out of the kingdom for a heart-to-heart, so it was no surprise that the both of you began spilling your grievances and tales of mirth to each other without much prodding. You knew that moments like these would be few and far between from this point on, so you both knew, deep down, to get the most out of it.
It was also, to Eunwoo’s embarrassment at forgetting, still his birthday.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.” He tries to protest, but his eyes are locked on the midnight velvet pouch that you slip out of your pants pocket. He can hear small metal clinking inside as you shake it. His curiosity knows no bounds as he immediately abandons his thing about you not having to get him anything, “What is it?”
You smirk, dropping the pouch into one of his upturned hands. You can see the eagerness in the way he works at the tie to the pouch, looking almost frustrated when it doesn’t untie under his miscalculated pulling. Finally, he does get it open, and into his other palm does he empty the contents of the pouch into.
Two metal bands, fused gold and silver like marble, lay in his grasp. He looks from them to you, suspicious.
“This is something I had Myungjun cook up for me. It was so hard to get him to keep it secret from you,” you grin at the thought of the eccentric court mage, “these... are rings. One for me, one for you. Do you like them?” You take one ring and slip it onto your pinky finger as the metal instantly resizes to fit it comfortably. You wiggle your hand in Eunwoo’s face as he tries to understand what your gift actually is.
“Yes, they’re perfect, but... they look like wedding bands.” Eunwoo murmurs, and you fluster. My god do you need to explain these quick.
“T-They’re not! They’re for your pinky, see? You wear one and I wear the other, and if you’re ever in trouble, just rub the surface and I’ll find you.” You demonstrate by shakily slipping the other ring onto his pinky, and with the aftermath of his wedding bands comment from earlier, this moment feels all too much like a secret wedding in the wild from those ridiculous romance novels you’d find being sold in town.
You then touch the surface of your own ring and rub back and forth. At once, Eunwoo looks like he’s been shocked, though you know the feeling is only a noticeable tingle running from his finger up to his heart. “Oh my god,” he whispers, “this is...”
“I figured that I’d get you something practical. There will be times that we’ll be stuck in meetings you want to get out of or conversations with stuffy lords and ladies that you’ll want to run away from, so whenever that feeling arises, just rub the ring and I’ll come swoop in to save the day.” You explain, watching the childlike wonder on his face grow. “And... if you’re ever in a situation with a suitor who just won’t get the hint, I can always make up some serious princely matter for you to attend to right at that moment: an absolutely unavoidable matter that includes stolen sweets from the kitchen on our way to anywhere else.”
“So you’re always there when I need you.” Eunwoo whispers, still staring at the ring in awe.
You swallow, the action feeling somewhat tough to do in his presence all of a sudden. Right when you’re about to add on how Myungjun had begged to add a snooping feature too (including a voice recorder that would give you the chance to listen in on any of Eunwoo’s private conversations. When you asked why you would possibly ever need that, Myungjun had flushed a thousand shades of pink and answered “no reason!”), Eunwoo looks up at you.
Expression full of gratitude. Expression full of... something else.
“And I’m always right where you need me.” He continues, holding the hand with the ring on it close to his chest.
Even when you’ll no longer need me like you used to, you think.
Even when I’m standing in a room full of people who want me for their own, yet all I can think of is being yours, he thinks.
You both don’t say anything else, though; you press your backs against the earth once more, fiddling with the rings on your pinkies, vibrations running up your sides to remind you that you both are never quite out of reach physically... but maybe in another sense.
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jungnoir · 5 years
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i’m imagining best friend!jungkook showing up to your place in a big black hoodie and matching skinny jeans with his camera hanging from his neck as he whisks you off for a night in the city. he tells you he needs some footage for his upcoming film class project and that he thinks you need some fresh air after midterm season came and went, but really, it’s because he hasn’t seen you once since you holed yourself up in your room to work on all those papers due at the end of the semester and he misses your presence. nighttime seoul glitters with city folk speedily walking from point A to point B while you stick by jungkook’s side, the biting cold air bypassing the warmth of your sweater to get to your skin. jungkook makes it worth it later when he buys you both cups of hot cocoa in a cafe nearby. you watch him flip through the videos he’s taken so far and find yourself positioned in the corner of each one, more often than not unaware that you’d been in the shot. 
“i’m sorry for throwing off your game, kook. i didn’t even realize-”
“why are you apologizing?” jungkook softly asks, eyes trailing up from the screen of the camera to you.
“i... i was in all of them. you were taking videos of the nightlife but...” you point to a particular video, where you’re in mid-giggle, blurred to the lens because the camera jolts away the minute you turn around but it’s you all the same, “this surely wasn’t what you were going for.”
jungkook just hums and implores you to finish your cocoa so you can continue exploring. he doesn’t miss how you avoid the camera for the rest of the night.
but then he calls you a week later, “my professor commended me on my project. said he could see why i picked my muse”
you smile, “you mean seoul?”
“i mean you”
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jungnoir · 6 years
Text
lullaby;
lee jeno | you share a moment with jeno in the moonlight. boyfriend!au. | 2.6k words. | insufferable fluff and head swirling kissing.
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a/n: inspired by this edit on twitter for jeno’s bday ;-;
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“I can’t sleep,” a soft mutter against the base of your neck wakes you from your doze and a lick of irritation plays at the back of your throat in the form of a growl, one that rumbles just loud enough into the night for your boyfriend to hear and then laugh at, “sorry, I thought you were still awake too.”
You turn your head, forcing Jeno to move his face back so that you two could look each other in the eye. Your arms are thrown out on either side of you: one is stuffed underneath the pillow your head currently rests on and the other is going numb under the weight of Jeno’s head. He lays, curled up into your body like a child to a pillow, long fingers clutching some part of you to him in the dark. As far as you knew, Jeno hadn’t moved at all while you “slept”. Sleep wasn’t as good of a descriptor when one was going in and out with every new topic their boyfriend brought up next. He was never quite this talkative usually. You claimed he was a moon child and that’s what brought it out of him so late at night. “If I was awake, I’d be talking to you.”
Jeno takes no offense to your brisk tone, simply beaming under the moonlight he insisted you crack your blinds open to let flood your room. “Good thing you’re awake now.”
Is it? You think quietly, blinking hard and long to rouse yourself. You’d gotten a power nap’s time in so you weren’t at a total loss. Attempting to move the arm Jeno occupied, you find it tingling with the first movement it had seen in the last hour or so. Jeno notices and sits up slowly, “Is your arm numb?”
“Yeah, thanks to your big head,” despite your sleepiness, you crack a smile at him and feel his fingers pinch the skin of your stomach in retaliation, “I’ll live.” You drag your arm to yourself and resist the urge to roll over and try to fall back asleep again. You know full well if you try he’ll surely wake you again, but the thought is tempting. You don’t know what time it is at all; the moon can only tell you so much.
You feel the weight shift around you and Jeno’s silhouette looks imposing in the darkness like this, but you know better. You feel nothing but safe and warm when Jeno is near.
You feel him beginning to straddle you as you reach for your phone on the nightstand where you left it, fingers expertly grasping at the edges and bringing it to your face. The brightness that hits you makes you grunt in distaste and another of Jeno’s laughs ring out in the silence. You turn the phone around to shine the light in his face in retaliation and grin when he winces, quickly pushing an arm up in front of his eyes for defense. You resist the urge to tease him any further, knowing that with where he’s positioned and experience with countless moments like this very one before, tickling is not out of the question.
You finally see the time, a bold 12:07 reading back to you along with a list of notifications underneath it. Most are messages you have yet to answer, others being the occasional notifications you ignored on a daily basis. Sliding one message across, you begin to answer it.
“Who are you texting?” Jeno asks lazily, dropping his head on your chest as you comfortably maneuver your arms to rest on his back, phone held high enough to see over his bedhead. His question is not invasive or demanding and you can tell he just wants to talk, but there’s a bit of something pouty in his tone that makes you stifle a snicker when answering.
“Some friends of mine.” You answer back vaguely.
You feel Jeno hum against you, arms resting at your sides idly. You’re still tapping away, texting your friends who you’re not surprised are still awake on a Friday night like this. They weren’t upset at you for going AWOL after Jeno had sneaked his way into your house at sundown, mere minutes after your parents peeled out of the driveway to head to a family friend’s party. You knew they would be out all night when you called Jeno to come by. You could even hear the obnoxious little bell on his bicycle ringing its way down the street to your house before he even reached the driveway.
Your parents didn’t mind Jeno being around late, but this was when they were present in the house. Jeno, being the gentleman he was, never overstepped his boundaries... unless you were involved. You had quite the way with words and had convinced him more times than he was proud to admit to stay a little later than usual. If you were lucky, one of your parents would text you saying they both got a little tipsy and would stay the night. It wouldn’t bother you one bit to be alone here with Jeno until the next morning. And, what with Jaemin keeping up the “Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Jeno is staying the night with me” act, you two were in the clear.
Jeno was also incredibly easy to predict: after he ended up insisting he leave, he would make his way to Jaemin’s house for real and game his heart away until the next morning when he inevitably woke you up with a good morning text chock-full of typos. Even sluggishly, he tried his best to be the romantic one.
Tonight, however, you wished he’d stay forever.
It wasn’t that you had trouble sleeping without Jeno. In fact, you slept perfectly fine on your own and had been doing so for the last eighteen years of your life. There was just something about sleeping next to Jeno that took the cake though; maybe it was his need to comb his hands through your hair, fingers gently scratching at your scalp in the most delicious way and leaving you like putty in his arms. Maybe it was the way his body was never too warm or too hot, always comfortable to sleep up against no matter the season. And maybe it was the fact that no matter what, Jeno would always send you off to sleep with a kiss. His kisses left you lightheaded and sent you into dreams of him, and those always made you rest easy.
You were both still young, the relationship much younger, but Jeno felt timeless. The moment he entered your life in ninth grade felt like he’d been there since birth. His soul fit yours almost perfectly, and while there were still cracks and openings, those were things you didn’t mind working on if it meant to be filled with the rest of him.
You never felt pressured with Jeno, never shy. You just felt his overwhelming warmth and the invite to take it slowly.
You must’ve gotten lost in your thoughts of Jeno because you feel the boy rustle in your hold, resting his chin on your chest and blinking up at you under the dim light of your phone, “Moonlight, you still with me?”
You quickly focus on him, flustered by the nickname, and your phone falls and hits Jeno on the head.
His little groan of pain instantly awakens your protective instincts, your hands flying to the back of his head to cradle it. “Oh, Jeno! I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
Jeno, the good sport he always is, tries to smile through the pain but retrieves your phone from between you where it had fallen and tosses it to the side of you as if to say “take that”. “‘s okay... nothing a kiss can’t fix.”
You let out a little breath of surprise at how quickly he recovers from his pain, already pushing himself up on his elbows and puckering his lips for you to “kiss it all better”. You stare at him flabbergasted, a laugh escaping you at the same time. Poking the middle of his forehead with your finger, he hisses and his lips fall flat again. “Shouldn’t I kiss your head? Not your lips? If I recall, I didn’t hit those.”
“Kisses anywhere work all the same! It’s the thought that counts the most, you know?” He tries to reason with you, scooting closer again. “Please?”
You blame it on how sleepy you are and how in the low light of the room, his pouting expression makes your heart tug in far too many directions to be healthy. You also blame it on the fact that his kisses were a bit of an obsession of yours and you’d be a fool to pass him up when he’s being so brazen (or more brazen than Lee Jeno could normally get).
Hands on his back, you encourage him to meet your lips with his own.
You find it endearing every time Jeno hums in appreciation for your affection. You can feel his lips turning up in a smile but he fights it as best as he can, wanting to savor your kiss for as long as he’s able. When he first shared a kiss with you, he was never so bold as to smile or laugh or do anything but make sure he did everything right. It took him time to realize that that wasn’t what kissing was, nor was any other form of affection. Truthfully, the execution didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to mean something.
Now, when he bumped your arms when going in for a hug or knocked heads in a rush to kiss you hello, he didn’t cringe or withdraw from you. He would smile, giggle, let you watch his eyes disappear as he’d mutter something like a very unapologetic apology before going right back in to do it right the next time.
His kisses had become somewhat bold too; while he still always asked for your permission and never tried to go for longer even if he really wanted to (you had to catch your breaths at some point, of course), he’d come to enjoy the fun that kissing could be instead of the sweaty palms and racing heartbeats. Those still occurred, but only in moderation.
You could feel Jeno beginning to get into it, his hands finding your elbows. Gently, he arches his back and pulls at your elbows, so you let your hands fall from where they once rested underneath his shoulder blades. He has to pull away for just one moment, catching your curious eyes with his own for a second before taking both your hands and linking his fingers with yours. Then, he presses your hands into the mattress above your head and swoops back in to kiss you. He’s a little braver this time around, already making you light-headed. You swear your body has got the consistency of pudding at this point.
You’re really almost down and out, feeling the kiss take over nearly ever bit of your attention, when you’re startled by a vibration near your head. Your phone!
Not even thinking about it, you detach your lips from Jeno’s to look to the side of you, unable to tell what your phone had vibrated for with the screen facing down. Your split-second reaction makes Jeno laugh and then whine, his mouth still very close to yours after having chased it when you moved. “I can’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry,” you chuckle, wiggling your hands in his hold and feeling your amusement rise when he refuses to let you reach for your device, “you’re not gonna let me check it at least?”
He stubbornly shakes his head, trying to go in for another kiss. You decide to ignore your phone for now and indulge him once more, your mind quickly swimming again with bliss as you both fall back into the groove of things. After all, one text wasn’t an emergency...
It’s seconds later that you receive two vibrations this time, one right after the other. You break the kiss again.
This time, Jeno reluctantly releases your hands but whines again, still hovering over you as you reach out to retrieve your phone with a whispered “just a sec” under your breath. Your eyes flit over the screen, the two new notifications made up of button mashes and unintelligible words from one of your best friends about some show you couldn’t remember the name of for the life of you. When you realize it’s not serious, you let out a sigh and take the time that Jeno seems placated to type back a quick reply. Mutters of “you’re not paying attention” paint the surface of your skin in warm breaths, but you hum to satiate him.
You’re just about to press send when Jeno’s lips press to your jaw out of nowhere, a place once undiscovered by the trail of his kisses. His experiment seems to do the intended trick when you drop your phone onto the mattress, hand flying to his shoulder in shock. You can feel Jeno’s smirk against your jaw, the tip of his nose practically tracing your ear, “That got your attention.”
You softly groan at him, unable to be irritated despite the urge to pinch him for distracting you in the least. Regardless of what you do, you know he’ll preen at the fact that he made you lose focus in such a simple way. “You’re relentless!”
“I’m kissing you is what I am,” he moves back from your jaw and you ashamedly note that some of the pleasant fog in your brain that comes with being this near him clears when his lips are that much farther away from your skin, “that is... unless you’d like me to take my kisses and go...?”
His teasing tone is more than obvious enough, moonlight lining his figure in a white glow. It’s late, later than usual, but he stays. He doesn’t insist to leave or whisper worries about your parents coming back without letting you know they were on their way. For once, you don’t have to coax him to stay in your embrace a little longer, and yet here you were... distracted by your phone.
He sees the minute you decide what you’d rather have. Taking hold of your phone again, you drop it on the carpet beside your bed and take hold of the back of his neck, pulling him down and in for a sweet kiss. He relishes in how much emphasis you put into it, reminding him that you were thankful he was opening up that little bit more to you. After all, he wasn’t usually this way. He was doing this because he trusted you, because he wanted to be around you as much as you wanted to be around him and he was comfortable right now. You made him comfortable, made him feel safe.
You peel away just a fraction when you’ve both tired yourselves out with kisses and sweet nothings said between each other, letting him sink back into his spot beside you with his head on your shoulder instead of your arm this time. He presses his face to your neck and exhales, each breath in full of the scent of your lovely shampoo.
“I forgot to mention that that first message I received was from my mom. They’re staying the night.” You say, feeling Jeno tense and then melt all at once. You can’t help but find him absolutely adorable, arms winding around him to pull him closer with a giggle.
“That’s good,” Jeno’s voice is muffled against your skin, “Now we can get up to all kinds of delinquencies... like sleeping.” “You’re speaking my language, honey.”
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jungnoir · 6 years
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tulips;
⇢ summary: “tulips, the beautiful you. tulips, so lovable.”
⇢ relationship: lee donghyuck/reader, a bit of wong yukhei/reader but kinda not.
⇢ genre: barista!au, college!au, fluff, minor angst.
⇢ words: 9k
⇢ warnings: none!
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a/n: inspired by a conversation with @goldenscript​ and also slightly by her rival baristas au!! happy birthday, baby girl~ music for this - tulips by snuper.
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“Don’t you have to meet up with your boyfriend right about now?” The mischievous Lisa raises a brow from beside you, her russet hair brushing your skin with how little proximity she allowed when you walked together. You’d grown used to her need to be close to everyone she was around; despite the fact, her voice was very much amplified regardless of how close she was or how loud the environment was. You have to grip her elbow and squeeze to even get a reaction out of the girl, a squeak leaving her mouth followed by a laugh. “My circulation!”
“I’ll cut more off than your circulation if you keep yelling.” You hiss at her but there is no malice, just an undeniable amount of embarrassment at the mention of Donghyuck. It had gotten to the point where you didn’t even have to ask her to clarify who she meant, and if any of your other friends had done the same thing you still would have been well aware. You had never meant for it to get this far. Seriously.
Lisa snorts, “I’m not yelling! That was my inside voice,” she emphasizes this by speaking even louder this time, drawing several students’ attention her way and making you laugh into her shoulder, “and I know he’s probably anxiously waiting for you to arrive so he can take your order and make googly eyes at you while you try to look like you’re not making googly eyes at him.”
She widens her already large eyes to a comical level at you and makes a face that you assume is to mock your own. Your own eyes narrow, “Lisa, those long legs of yours make you look really good in a skirt but also make it super easy to shove you over, you know.”
Giggling nervously, Lisa moves away from you quickly and wraps her arms around her chest in a defensive stance. “Just saying... anyway, do you want a ride? I’m going by there to pick up Chaeyoung for our date.”
You grin at her and nudge her shoulder, “Date...?” “Not like that!” Her cheeks immediately go rosy, “but yeah, we’re going to an archery training course and then for pho afterward.”
Your walk with Lisa spills into the parking lot and you absentmindedly follow her on her way to her convertible, the taste of your favorite drink already gracing your taste buds, “Be careful or she might aim for your heart.”
Lisa spins quickly to scold you for teasing her but has nothing to say when you smirk. She knew just as well as you did that this was karma, and if anyone was more head over heels in like with someone, it was Lisa Manoban with Park Chaeyoung. It was actually pretty cute watching the usually cheeky girl become a blubbering mess in the face of her crush (and happened to produce a lot of really good blackmail in the process).
You grab the handle to the passenger door of her bright red car and wink, “So what were you saying about my “boyfriend”, future Mrs. Park?”
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Quickly checking the time on your phone, you give Lisa a short “thanks” and part ways the minute she parks outside of the shop, trying not to look as eager as you feel the closer you get to the towering glass doors that separated you from your drink, and most importantly... Lee Donghyuck.
You had met Donghyuck two months ago at the beginning of the semester, when you’d realized that five classes were going to be the test of your sanity in your young life so far. Needing to cram for three different tests assigned not even halfway through the second week of school had you somewhat in a crisis. With your roommate being not the most helpful study partner and your friends already being too consumed in their own classes with no time to spare to help you, your last ditch attempt was to do the aesthetic thing to do and find a cute cafe to focus in. You hadn’t meant to stumble upon Donghyuck in a messy ponytail and yesterday’s sweatpants, but he didn’t pay any mind with his sunny disposition and glittering smile. You still remembered the moment you locked eyes with him over the counter after having double and triple checked that you hadn’t left any of your textbooks behind at your dorm. You still remembered when he smiled at once and his light voice caressed your ears with a “What can I get you today?”
You had been adamant about getting a strong black coffee that would be bitter enough to turn your will to steel and force you to finish your homework instead of procrastinating and falling into despair. However, the minute he looked at you with those honey eyes, you were spewing whatever BS that would come out just to fill the silence, “What do you recommend?”
Your question shocked him for all of three seconds before he perked up even more (if that was even possible), his hands flying around animatedly as he pointed at the faux chalkboard menus positioned above and behind his head, “Oh, all kinds of things! Drink wise, there’s this one called the Choco Supreme Mocha Frap that is loaded with espresso chips and whipped cream and chocolate syrup,” you swore his eyes sparkled as he described it, “but that one is ice cold. If you’re looking for something hot, I suggest the hot chocolate. Simple, a good amount of chocolate but not as much as the Choco Supreme Mocha Frap, and actually one of my favorites during the winter.”
“Then I’ll have that.” You said, not really thinking.
“The frap or hot cocoa?” He tilted his head to the side cutely, brown hair looking copper in the sunlight that beamed through the coffee shop windows.
“C...Cocoa.” You stuttered out, just managing to look away from his inquisitive gaze in lieu of taking out your money. He had smiled out of the corner of your eye and you were still glad to this day that you had been looking away, just in case his smile might’ve sent you flushed with legs of jelly on your way over to your table for the rest of the afternoon.
Once you’d handed him the money, he quickly glanced back behind him at an array of small desserts lining the other side of the counter, “Would you like a chocolate muffin to go with it?”
Boy, does this kid love chocolate or what?
You just shook your head no, “The cocoa will be sweet enough for me.”
A small, painfully adorable pout appeared on his lips and you suddenly took note of the several little moles dotted across his skin like kisses, “Worth a shot. It’ll be out in a minute. Can I have your name?”
You had prepared yourself to just disappear once he’d given you your change, so out of surprise, you blurt, “Why?”
He blinks, then laughs, and if you weren’t already embarrassingly smitten before, you definitely were now. The twinkling bells of his laughter made you fidget in place, suddenly very aware of how accusatory that sounded. Once he comes down from his amusement, he flutters his eyelashes at you, “Why? I need to know the name of the person I’m going to ask out on a date tonight.”
Despite how cleanly he had delivered the bad pick-up line, you couldn’t help but giggle out of your own volition in response, the sound of your own giggle causing a similar reaction to bubble out of the mystery barista’s mouth. “You have a sweet laugh,” he says nonchalantly, “I guess I better keep you laughing...?”
He holds out for your name, and this time you give it up without a fight. His nose scrunches as he repeats it back to himself, looking away for the first time as he repeats it under his breath, “Got it! I won’t forget you.” “But... what if I don’t come back?” You ask.
“Then you’ll be the one that got away.”
It hadn’t been that long since you’d first met the boy who you later learned was named Donghyuck, but it had felt like the two of you had been friends for years. The lame pick-up lines and shitty puns you two shared between each other when you’d come to get your cocoa fix (something he’d managed to get you hooked on against your will) had started to pile up. When you were stressed over homework or group projects with less-than-willing partners, you would find your solace in Donghyuck. He could make you laugh so hard your sides would be hurting the next day; after all, he had to keep true to his word.
Your friends had found you running off to the shop at all hours of the day, and after having learned Donghyuck’s schedule, you began to go exclusively during his shift just to see him and have some hot cocoa. It had become a thing that whenever you entered, no matter what Donghyuck was doing, Donghyuck would be in charge of taking care of your order. Some days, you’d come in for lunch and other days you would come in just to chat and run. Whatever the case might’ve been, everyone who worked at the cafe and every one of your friends were aware of the fact that you and Donghyuck were a duo never to be separated, never to be without the other. Your friendship began to span outside of the cafe walls when you’d learned he attended your university as well, and though you’d never seen him around on campus before, he had begun to make a habit out of trying to find you and vice versa. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to be greeted by an arm slung around your shoulder and Donghyuck asking you what you were doing later, even if he couldn’t participate.
The coffee shop was your playground though, the sacred place in which you and Donghyuck could slack off on homework and work work in the back and talk about any and everything. He’d run before his manager would notice he wasn’t on duty, and would reserve his breaks for when you’d show. He’d always claim that the shop was far too boring when you weren’t around, and you would claim that the only reason you came back was for the hot cocoa (it wasn’t, and so many people knew it too).
It almost felt cheapening to say that Donghyuck was “just a friend”. Did just-friends make those eyes at each other all the time? Did they smile coyly at each other to give away an unbidden promise of more in between the lines? Did just-friends squirm at the mere idea of only being that: friends? No, certainly not, but no one was confirming anything more any time soon. Timing, he’d claim. Reassurance, you’d reason.
You’d always thought it pretty harsh for Lisa to tell you that dating was “first-come, first-serve”. Sometimes, coming to her for dating advice was like getting teeth pulled; you never knew what impulsive, exciting thing she’d tell you to do if you so much as mentioned a crush or potential partner. The worst thing was the guilt you’d feel after hearing her advice. A worry unlike any other would envelop your insides and make you feel a little seasick at the thought that “you’ll never know if you don’t try”.
Was it wrong for you to not mind taking it slow, seeing where things with Donghyuck might lead? Was it so terrible that you liked the easiness between you and wanted that easiness to last? Possibly... in her eyes. Possibly in your eyes too.
If there was anything you knew best about life, it was that nothing easy lasted.
It didn’t register that you’d been staring too long at the entrance to the coffee shop until someone walking past gave you a questioning glance. It read very clearly to you that you might look a bit strange just standing there, not moving, so you quickly push yourself into gear and settle on ignoring your heavy feelings. After all, this was just another casual meeting with Donghyuck. In fact, you were sure the minute you saw him, you’d feel at ease once more.
Only, when you enter, he is not there like usual.
You stand off to the side, diligently scanning the entire cafe, but no copper-headed firecracker was in sight. It was so unlike him not to be here; maybe you were too used to his presence, never once thinking about him having to take a sick day or day off because he was such a constant. The shop surely didn’t have the same aura it usually did without him, and maybe you might have picked up on that outside if you weren’t so spaced out today.
No, the shop didn’t have the same aura. Instead of missing anything however, it seemed to have gained something else in its place. And that something was currently inviting you over with a smirk that neither teetered on smug nor cheesy.
You’d never seen this one before.
You’re momentarily shocked by your height difference, and then you’re even more shocked when the person standing in Donghyuck’s usual spot speaks up without a care in the world, “Well, hello there. Can I get you anything?”
He’s relaxed, terribly in his element despite the fact that you’re almost certain he hasn’t been here before today as an employee. You’re sure you’d never miss someone like him, and you’d been here at all times of the day. You’d never seen anyone on shift like him. There was no way you could forget a face and aura like this guy’s, not in the slightest. You also find you’re not very displeased by this new discovery.
Sauntering over on auto-pilot, you look from his eyes to his folded arms as he leans down to rest them on the counter, the sleeves of his baby yellow sweater rolled up past his elbows to reveal honey skin. His fingers poke out and you see the glitter of several metal bands sitting above his knuckles. Drawn by the sheer broadness of his shoulders and the features of his face that dare you to try and ignore them, you completely brush over his question to ask the most pressing one in your mind, “Who are you?”
While someone else might have been turned off by this, confused at most, the guy just laughs. He has a cute, high pitch to his laugh that faintly reminds you of Donghyuck, but when he speaks, his voice is low and scratchy, “You asked me that like I’m in trouble... I’m not, am I?”
Not yet, maybe. You’d make up your mind once you figured out why Donghyuck was missing and why this giraffe-like boy was in his place. “No... it’s just... I’m used to someone else being here around this time.”
The boy hums in understanding, smirk forming into a pensive line instead. He seems to seriously consider your statement before suddenly unfolding one arm and snapping his fingers, “Is the person you’re looking for like way smaller than me? Round face, tanned skin, kinda excitable?”
You let out a small laugh at the description, finding that Donghyuck fits it quite well in reality. You nod, “That’s the one. Answers to Donghyuck, as well.”
The boy flashes his pearly whites at you. He straightens his back, places one hand on the counter (you try to keep your eyes from rolling out of their sockets when the expanse of his fingers splayed out before you takes up more space than a plate), and then answers, “I took his shift so he’s got a new one. Quite last minute but... I was also a last minute hire.”
Ah, so that’s why you’d never seen him.
Your look of understanding also comes with an underlying relief. So he wasn’t gone like you’d been quietly dreading, not completely. He was just working another time... but once the relief had passed, then slight disappointment arose. Why, if it was just like routine that you’d both meet here everyday, didn’t he let you know he was working a different time? You got it was last minute, but a quick text would- no, you weren’t going to get legitimately upset over something as small as this. He probably didn’t have time. You weren’t the only one in college, and it sure as hell wasn’t like the semester wasn’t diving into full swing by now. He probably had more on his plate than he let on, and maybe the new time allowed him better working around his class schedule.
Whatever the reason he hadn’t told you, it didn’t matter. You were here now... you’d see him later, surely.
“Do you still want to know who I am, or has this magical genie granted all your wishes already?” He asks, a bit of anticipation in his words. He wanted you to ask, for reasons you weren’t... privy to, not yet.
It couldn’t hurt, right? Donghyuck or not, this was still your usual break time. “I’m sure the genie could cough up a name.”
He grins again, and my god was it infectious, “You can call me Yukhei. ‘The guy who stole Donghyuck’s shift’ might be a mouthful.”
“Yukhei,” his name rolls off your tongue experimentally as you chance a glance at the boy in question to see if you said it right; he nods at you in confirmation, eyes flashing minutely when he hears you say it, “nice to meet you. I’m (Y/N).”
Yukhei looks away from you, sighing your name once, then twice, then several times one after the other like a tongue-twister. He locks eyes with you when he utters it one last time, “Said it right?” Something about his smile tells you that he’s certain he has, but he asks anyway. The tease.
You raise your chin at him and mirror his smile, “Yeah, perfectly.”
Yukhei seems ready to say something else. His lips part and a sound barely gets past his lips before he notices a new customer rounding up behind you, looking a bit impatient when he observes that both you and Yukhei seem to be deep in friendly conversation and not actual business. Not wanting to get scolded on his first day, Yukhei shoots you an apologetic smile and nods subtly at the person behind you, “Anything else for you?”
You catch on quick. You rattle off your usual order and watch as he inputs it on his computer before turning to you to take your money. The exchange of payment is over in seconds, your fingers brushing the cool rings around his fingers and sending a spark of something across your skin. You gnaw on the inside of your cheek as he tells you your order will be out soon, barely prepared for the wink he sends your way before turning his full attention onto the customer behind you. You take your cue to move to the side, all the while catching your breath that you were unaware you had been straining to breathe in the process of talking to Yukhei.
Normally, you were only relaxed like this with Donghyuck. In fact, the two of you had hit it off so quickly that you’d never thought you’d do so with anyone else. Yukhei’s energy was similar to Donghyuck’s, but something told them apart to you. It was small and you hadn’t a clue what it was, but it was big enough to be perceptible by you.
Talking to Yukhei had dulled your disappointment in not seeing Donghyuck today, but that feeling came back tenfold the minute you moved away from the register. Because, even if Yukhei was entertaining to talk to, he wasn’t... Donghyuck.
You slip your phone out of your pocket and into your hand. There’s no messages from him.
You’re tempted to send him one when you hear Yukhei call your name. Blinking out of your daze to face him, he holds out your drink and winks at you, “Come back here at seven. Donghyuck.” And then the “genie” is back to work, even your silent wish granted.
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“Before you get mad, I was neck-deep in midterms today and didn’t get a chance to tell you. Please don’t injure me.”
Donghyuck grimaces when you enter the shop with a slight sharpness to your stare. It wasn’t usually your thing to come here so late into the day, the sun on the horizon but not quite gone yet, so the atmosphere feels a lot sleepier, but calmer nonetheless. You appreciate the feeling in comparison to the hectic-ness of the afternoon when everyone and their mother was crowded inside the shop with the collective patience spanning the length of a string of pasta.
You raise an eyebrow but do nothing of the sort, motioning for him to follow you to your usual table. You watch him call for break, his fellow co-worker (Doyoung was his name, you’d met a few times before) scoffing from his spot across the shop, slouched deep in a booth with his phone pressed up close to his face as if to say “don’t bother me”.
Donghyuck is sitting across from you minutes later, “You’re not mad? I felt really bad, you know.” He turns on the puppy-dog eyes as soon as he says so, fluttering eyelashes on full display.
As endearing as the show of cuteness is (and as disarming as it is, as well), you still feign upset with him, some of it actually real, “I was hurt, Lee. Real hurt.”
Donghyuck whines and shuffles in his seat, practically throwing himself over the table to get up all in your space. Bottom lip jutted out comically, Donghyuck is doing the most, “I was gonna make it up to you by buying you dinner during my new shift!”
Your ears perk up at this, “Was?” “Am,” He corrects, slipping back into his seat tentatively, “am buying you dinner. What would you like? It’s all on me.”
Donghyuck dresses differently in the evening shift. While usually, you’d catch him in a sweater not too different in comparison to Yukhei’s, he had went for a graphic tee sporting a nerdy pun that you didn’t get. Donghyuck’s bright personality almost didn’t fit in the atmosphere, what with the day winding down and the customers sticking to dark, muted colors in their attire and makeup. It was poetic and calm; you had to admit that the cafe felt much better to be in when it wasn’t that busy and wasn’t that early.
You fix him with your stare only a few moments longer before breaking out into a smile. Donghyuck’s shoulders immediately fall in gratitude of your mercy, his head slumping forward while quiet, whispered tales of thanks flew out of his mouth so fast you wondered how he didn’t stumble over a word. Then, he shot his head back up at you and met your smile with his own, “So, you missed me, huh?”
Your smile contorts into an expression of mild annoyance, your foot rising and hitting Donghyuck lightly in the shin. He bites his lip to ignore the pain, but keeps that same giddy look on. He’s absolutely beaming at the thought that you had missed him. Had actually felt upset that he wasn’t there today when you thought he would be. You cared enough to crave his presence. “I was mad that you weren’t there to give me your friends and family discount, actually.”
Donghyuck is already on cloud nine and your sarcasm doesn’t tug him off any time soon, “You missed me. Don’t worry, I think you’ll like this time of day much better than the afternoons. Thank god for new meat.”
At the mention of new meat, Yukhei flashes back in your mind, “Oh, yeah, speaking of... that Yukhei guy sure is something.”
Donghyuck blinks, laughs, then shrugs his shoulders, “I guess. If by ‘something’ you mean a lifesaver for taking up the hell shift.”
“Well, yeah. But he’s also really nice and friendly! I was surprised by how cool he looked on his first day, you know? We both remember Mark on his first day.” “Mark has been a ball of nerves since birth so he’s an outlier to that rule, but still,” plucking the salt shaker from the little basket off to the side of the table, Donghyuck begins rubbing the glass container between the palms of his hands at a slow speed, “some people are just made for retail.”
You chuckle, “He sure seemed it.”
Donghyuck reaches across and before you know it, he’s tapped your nose with the pad of his finger. You do nothing but stare at his offending appendage, dangling above your skin for a minute before he yanks it back to his body (because he knows better than to leave any part of him in biting distance when he’s invaded your personal space like that), “Hey,” he starts, “how can you talk about another barista in front of me?”
If you didn’t know better, you’d think Donghyuck was mildly jealous with the way his voice bordered on a whine. You had always been kind and friendly to the other baristas you met at the cafe or who Donghyuck introduced you to on campus, but he had never had a problem with that much. You’d ask about them in conversation, talk to them in class, wave to them when passing. Donghyuck had never had a problem with that. He had even encouraged it, wanting you to know everyone in his life.
It was only Yukhei, then? Maybe because he was new to the both of you. A stranger who had suddenly walked into your lives and Donghyuck hadn’t had a chance to get a reading on him yet, not before you. That seemed most logical in this situation to you.
You raise an eyebrow, “Wasn’t I promised dinner?”
Donghyuck seems to remember his promise he’d made only minutes ago at the same time as you. Instead of prying about Yukhei more, Donghyuck shuffles out of his seat and mumbles something about retrieving your menus before you’re left completely alone at your table. Your eyes can’t help but follow the boy on his way to the counter, your curiosity misting over your expression in the form of squinted eyes and a twisted lip. You don’t know what it is about him today that’s throwing you off, but this is seriously throwing a wrench in your usual routine.
Regardless, you’re able to push away those thoughts as Donghyuck and you both order something to eat (his choice being light, seeing as he’d have to get back to work soon) and begin to catch up what you’d missed throughout the day. Usually, you both would catch up on only so much in the afternoon before texting about it later, but having gone without talking to him for almost a whole day, he’s overflowing with even more to say. Part of you actually prefers hearing his long-winded days described in grand hand gestures and bulging eyes and impersonations of everyone that he’d come across on campus.
Were you a stranger on the outside looking in, you’d think that you and Donghyuck went to different schools and lived totally different lives. He always had some funny story to tell or exciting event going on in his life and you often wondered if you just didn’t get out enough. Maybe it was the difference in majors? It took you a while to learn that it wasn’t that your lives were so vastly opposite each other. Your lives were practically the same, only, Donghyuck had such a rosy outlook on it that changed what you viewed as the simply mundane drastically.
Your dinner ends quickly, Donghyuck having to finish up his shift when a couple of night owls make their way into the cafe. You take your leftovers and bid him farewell, and soon you’re back home as per usual. The times may have changed, but Donghyuck is still very much an important part of your day. Tomorrow will be just like normal again, you’re certain.
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You have to remind yourself not to be so spooked when you see Yukhei in Donghyuck’s place again, in a baby blue button up. He doesn’t have nearly as many rings on today as he did yesterday, but there’s still a few that glitter in the sunlight as he waves to patrons he’d seen yesterday, faces memorized already. You are no exception, catching his attention and immediately making him perk up when you approach the register, “Same as yesterday?” He inquires. If he remembers, you would really applaud him.
You affirm it, impressed when he doesn’t ask you to clarify, and then you add on a small bowl of soup on the side because your breakfast hadn’t quite stuck to your ribs like you’d wanted it to. Yukhei has no trouble ringing about that exact order, but he moves a little slowly as there aren’t many customers around at the moment. “I’m surprised you can remember faces and orders after only one day.” You tell him, leaning to the side as he begins to prepare your drink while finishing up processing the order. You slide your card to him and he thanks you under his breath.
“I’m really good with that when I wanna be. To be honest though, I only remember your order because you left the best impression.” He puffs up in pride when you snort, but nevertheless laugh, in amusement. “What? I speak truth.”
“Do you? I couldn’t have been the most memorable part of your shift yesterday.” You combat his “truth” with something more believable; even a boy as evidently friendly as he couldn’t bother to remember such a minute detail, right?
Yukhei shakes his head like he can’t believe you, sliding your card and a receipt back to you once the price has been paid, “You underestimate how memorable you are.”
What was with this coffee shop and handsome boys flirting with you? Sheesh.
Instead of answering (because you don’t have confidence you’ll get many coherent words out anyway), you slip to the side and wait patiently as he gets to work on your drink, putting in an order for your soup at the same time. Figuring it’ll be a while, you turn and begin to make your way to your table... but someone is already there.
With sunglasses too big for his face and shoulders hunched over to somehow disguise him, Donghyuck stares directly at you with a small pout on his face before whispering for you to come over. Surprised, and a little worried, you do as you’re told.
The boy is dragging down his glasses to stare at you over them, his eyes squinted in suspicion, “You two are awfully chummy.”
You look over at Yukhei for confirmation that yes, that’s what Donghyuck is referring to, “Are you- what are you doing in those ridiculous glasses, Hyuck?”
Donghyuck scowls, “They’re not ridiculous, they’re Doyoung’s hangover glasses I stole from his car when he drove me home last night. And as for what I’m doing... I’m scoping out the fresh meat.”
“So... spying on Yukhei.”
“It’s not spying! I’m doing this for the good of the cafe! I can’t have some kid smearing my months of hard work and dedication and ruining my regulars’ days, sorry not sorry.”
“Seems more plausible that you came to see me, actually. Worried I might prefer Yukhei more?”
Donghyuck looks seriously offended that you’d even insinuate such a thing. He reaches over to flick your forehead but you’re quicker, smacking his hand back to the table before he can inflict any pain on you. He hisses at your hard hit, muttering about how heavy-handed you are. As silly as the glasses are on him (and it’s much funnier to talk to him like this, really), you reach over this time to slip them off. Donghyuck flinches when he thinks you’re about to deliver a blow to the middle of his forehead only to feel the bulky glasses slip away from their spot perched on his nose and into your waiting hands. You fold them up and slide them back to him, smiling sweetly, “You look a lot better like that.”
Donghyuck, lightly flushing, raises his shoulder to shield his expression from you. “I didn’t by the way,” he grumbles, “come to see you, I mean. This is strictly surveillance.”
You nod, not buying it at all, “Wanna share my drink with me?”
Donghyuck flushes even deeper, dropping his shoulder in surprise to show his cheeks gleaming strawberry on display. When you giggle right after, he knows you’d only said it to fluster him. Lightly kicking your shin under the table like you’d done the night before, he manages to get you to shut up at least a little.
When Yukhei calls you over to retrieve your order, Donghyuck watches you walk over with slight contempt. It wasn’t that he was jealous - no, far from it - it was just a little easier to fool himself into believing that you didn’t just come to the cafe because it was convenient and nearby, but that you also enjoyed his company too. After all, it had become very much a part of his everyday just like it had become a part of yours... and he hoped you thought of the time you got to spend with each other as highly as he did.
You two had formed a friendship over the few months that it took for you to get used to each other, and he was grateful that when he got the chance to see you outside of the shop he could. He was also grateful for the constant streams of texts between the two of you day in and day out, but he wished so greatly that maybe one day it could be something more than that.
His friends had inquired time and time again why he hadn’t taken that next step, that tentative leap from friends to something more. The opportunities were there, sure, but his confidence was a long way behind him.
Would you even want something like that with him? Wasn’t he just someone you knew? Someone on campus to talk to? Someone to fill your dull breaks at the cafe with a little life and laughter? Wasn’t he just temporary?
You float back over before he can clear his grim look off his face. Soup and drink in hand, you squint at his dejected look and wonder what in the world could have happened between you getting up to approach the counter not fifteen feet away and your return that could make him look that down all of a sudden.
“Hyuck?” You call his nickname in a delicate voice, sparking him out of his little stupor. The boy in question blinks up at you. “Something the matter?”
“Hm... me? No, nothing. Just... thinking about how we’re gonna have to extend this observation into tomorrow. Looks like there’s no strong evidence here for his case.” Donghyuck clears his throat and steals your drink while you’re busy blowing on your spoonful of soup, taking a long drag through the straw that has you dropping your spoon in awe.
“I asked if you wanted to share not steal!”
Yukhei watches from his perch at the counter, inquisitive eyes finding you and Donghyuck when he wasn’t serving customers. He can see you trying to wrestle your drink out of Donghyuck’s hand and pretty much failing with the table as a barrier, but that’s only before you get up and try to tackle it out of him. He knows that with anyone else, he might have been concerned, if not incredibly proactive in getting you two to settle down before scaring off the customers, but all he can do is smile knowingly. He wasn’t just observant with customers and coffee after all.
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Your “stake-out” with Donghyuck doesn’t last just until the next day. No, it lasts for fourteen days more.
With the weekends excluded, Donghyuck is popping up at the cafe same time everyday, sharing something small with you sometimes and something a little fuller other times while you both “observe” Yukhei’s work ethic. You would argue that most of it was just the two of you talking and him showing you memes while you try not to choke on your sandwich, but he world argue that he had one eye for you and one eye for Yukhei. He could multitask. You just enjoyed his company.
Lisa had shared her thoughts on the matter, that of which you completely brushed aside because she still referred to Donghyuck as your boyfriend. In fact, that was probably the only reason the two hadn’t met yet. You were worried she’d say something too secret and then spoil your whole dynamic with Hyuck. That, and you were seriously troubled by the thought that the two of them set free together might literally implode your city. But mainly just the former.
The matter of what you were doing for your birthday didn’t rear its ugly head to you until a few days prior when Donghyuck, out of the blue, decided to ask you what you were doing for the big day.
“I don’t know,” you answered honestly, “probably nothing. It’s just another day.”
Donghyuck, ever the party person, scoffed. Today, he was sharing a steaming plate of nachos with you while chopping the jalapenos in half with a tortilla chip. Yukhei had definitely gotten into his groove here in the time allotted. Sometimes, he’d switch between the register and fluttering around the cafe to personally serve drinks and the like, so you would sometimes get him assigned to your table (much to Donghyuck’s chagrin at first. you had claimed it gave him a much more up close and personal observation, though. he claimed you just liked the way Yukhei’s arms flexed when holding a tray of food. you didn’t fight him on that).
“You’re at least going to dinner, right?” He prods.
“What’s this about dinner? Are you finally going somewhere else for a date? And here I thought Hyuck was just a cheapskate.” Yukhei appears next to you out of nowhere, one cup of steaming hot cocoa for Donghyuck and another cup of the same for you. Yukhei’s piled more marshmallows on your cup just to get on his bad side, Donghyuck just knows it.
The pair of you snap your heads to a grinning Yukhei who dusts his hands off on his apron, “No!” You both say at the same time.
“Sounds like a lie. Anyway, what are we doing for your birthday, (Y/N)?” Yukhei turns his full attention to you, genuinely curious. You’re not sure if he’d actually overhead the whole conversation or if he really just remembered it was coming up, but regardless, you were a little too stunned to answer right away. You hadn’t expected either of them being very interested in your birthday, other than knowing to wish you one on the day of and maybe dish out a little something to give you for managing to stay alive this long.
“I already asked that...” Donghyuck grunts.
Honestly, you hadn’t planned much at all for your birthday. You expected to spend it with your family. Maybe you’d get a cake. Maybe you’d ask for something. Really, it was just another day to you at this point. It didn’t really matter if you had a big party or not. You just wanted to be surrounded by the people you loved. You know what...
“I just want to be with the people I care about. That’s all I want for my birthday.”
The two boys look at you, perplexed. They’d honestly been hoping for something along the lines of Chuck E. Cheese’s. That’d be easier to ask to be invited to.
You interpret their loss for words as judgment and sigh, “Sorry it’s not a party or something.”
“That’s not it!” They chime simultaneously. You blink as Donghyuck explains, “We just... wonder... does that include us by any chance?”
So they wanted to be invited, huh? ...cute.
You break into a delighted smile, fiddling with your cup handle to give your hands something to do. “Well... a small dinner at my place won’t hurt, will it?”
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In the short span of time that Donghyuck had gotten to know Wong Yukhei, never in his wildest dreams did he think he’d ever corner the guy for advice. No, not even in the nightmares.
Yet here he stands, blocking Yukhei’s path to your front door in what he thinks might be overdressed but what his mother called “cute!” before she’d shoved him out of the door so he couldn’t fret over how he looked a moment longer. He’d combed his hair to the side, slipped into a dark patterned button-down, matching blazer, and jeans rolled up to reveal tawny loafers with his only clean pair of black ankle socks (as long as he didn’t take his shoes off at any point, you’d never notice the Spider-Man print on the top of his feet) poking out. His lips shine with lip balm that instantly has Yukehi stifling a laugh into the back of his hand because he’d never let Donghyuck live this look down. “Looking sharp, Lee. You’re dressed to impress (Y/N)’s mom?”
Donghyuck huffs, miffed, “And you aren’t?” Donghyuck takes a quick survey of Yukhei’s similar outfit, save for the parted hair, rolled legs, and blazer. Yukhei looks relaxed in his outfit at least, where Donghyuck feels utterly out of place. He’d never been this dressed up in front of you before, and he was about to meet your family for heaven’s sake. He had hoped that this would at least come later on when you two were more... acquainted.
Yukhei, calm as ever, knows Donghyuck’s snark is out of fear and therefore feels no reason to snark back. “I have a feeling (Y/N)’ll love it, so don’t sweat it.” At the mention of sweat, Donghyuck does note he feels a little hot and quickly wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve before it can gloss over into a sheen.
“Can I... ask you something?” Donghyuck requests, knowing at some point the two will have to enter and the chance will be lost on him. He can’t spend all his time squabbling with the boy in front of him forever.
Yukhei reads the mood well. Motions for Donghyuck to continue.
“Will you promise to not make it weird later if something... changes between me and (Y/N) tonight?”
“Weird how? Are you... Hyuck, you’re confessing?”
“Wait- dude, we’ve known each other for two weeks and you already know?” Dumbfounded, the youngest of the two feels his shoulders slacken in disbelief.
Yukhei shrugs as if it’s common knowledge, “You aren’t very opaque when it comes to crushes and all that... it was pretty obvious the minute I saw you two together. And, to answer your earlier question... I won’t.”
Donghyuck wants to worry about how many other people know about this little detail too. Right now though, he’s just glad it seems you’re not one of them. Yukhei makes sure to punctuate this by placing a comforting hand on Donghyuck’s shoulder, turning him to face the front door. “To answer your unspoken question too,” Yukhei says, leading the younger up to the doorbell, “just be honest. I have a pretty good feeling they’ll appreciate that.”
Be honest. Yukhei pushes the doorbell. Just be honest. Say the truth and lay it out flat. You open the door, in all your grandeur, glowing like in his daydreams. Just be- oh hell.
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Dinner is the most nerve-wracking hour and a half of Donghyuck’s life, and while he has a usual flair of the dramatic, he’s being completely serious right now.
Your family is lovely, you are lovely... and he’s too choked up to say a thing. He has to eat your mother’s lovely food and hear Yukhei describe it in such exquisite terms and big words and all Donghyuck can manage is a smile and “it’s delicious, thank you”. Donghyuck listens to your family gush about you, your friend Lisa tell embarrassing stories about you, and Yukhei recount your wondrous two-week friendship like you all have known each other for years. Yukhei is everything Donghyuck had expected him to be when in the presence of you and your family and friends. Smart, thoughtful, funny... everything Donghyuck had been hoping he could be.
It was like every time he looked at you, all bright eyes and rosy cheeks and stunning smiles in the comfort of your home around the people you loved... he felt small. What was he doing here, really? Even Yukhei, someone who’d barely known you for a month, could find more material to charm your parents with than Donghyuck could. It made him feel so, so small.
You’ve shot him several questioning looks, rubbed his arm on the way to the living room to open presents, even straight up asked him if he was okay after cutting the cake. There’s some icing on the side of your lip that he wants to kiss off and that’s when he knows he needs to collect himself. “Where’s your bathroom?” He asks, and you laugh lightly. Maybe you thought the reason he looked so uncomfortable and out of place was because he really need to let loose a number two and wasn’t comfortable doing so in your house the first time he was over, on a night like this no less. You’re understanding. You tell him that your friend Wooseok is currently occupying the one downstairs because dinner “got to him too”, and point him to the one upstairs. He is so thankful he can be away from the hustle and bustle downstairs for just a few moments to breathe.
The minute he enters your bathroom, he notices the little things that he assumes belongs to you, and he tries to center himself by turning on the sink and splashing his face with cold water. Thankfully, the dark color of his shirt doesn’t show the sprinkles of water that fall on it in the process.
He grabs a few paper towels and dabs his face dry, attempting to pep-talk himself into being his usual cheerful self again. He was making you worried on your day and that wasn’t fair to you.
On his way out of the bathroom, he doesn’t mean to. He blames it on his tendency to look around and be curious, but when his eyes land on the wide open door to a room that looks like it belongs to you... he’s interested.
He examines what he can from his spot at the bathroom door. Your unmade bed, several different outfits tossed across it and some even strewn on the floor. There’s some cards and gift bags on top of the sheets, no doubt what you’d taken home after classes ended for the day. There’s a stack of books on the bedside table that you’ve got markers poking out of. It’s cute... it’s so you. He doesn’t realize he’s drifted inside until he hears you clear your throat at the doorway.
Donghyuck spins at the speed of light, facing your raised brow and amused expression. He looks fearful, a deer in headlights practically. He didn’t mean to wander in, and he doesn’t think he’s been standing in here that long, so either you’d hiked it up the stairs two at a time or you’d been there the whole time, watching him walk in. The latter seemed highly likely. “I was gonna show you my room later, anyway.” You tell him, walking further in and closing your door till it’s a mere crack. He gulps. “I also wanted to get you alone.”
“Me?” His voice cracks. Nice going, Lee.
You save him his pride and don’t laugh at the slip up, simply strolling over to your window. You push the curtains away, roll up the blinds, and unlock the window. Pushing up the glass panel, a gust of wind floods the room that sends shivers along Donghyuck’s exposed ankles. He’s confused when you get down on your knees beside the window sill, but when you pat the carpet beside you, he’s shuffling over wordlessly.
He opts to sit with his legs folded underneath, sweaty palms turned down so they can soak his jeans. He isn’t sure what to look at, so he just looks at you.
“I can’t believe I’m a year older.” You say quietly. “Can you?”
Donghyuck laughs short and soundlessly, “You’re that much closer to being a senior citizen.”
You snap your head to him and shove his shoulder, eliciting a real laugh out of him this time. “Hey! So are you, kid.”
“Hmph, not me. I’m Peter Pan. I’ll stay forever young.” He says proudly, folding his arms over his chest and straightening his back. In that moment, as his copper hair plays in the breeze, you truly believe him. The lamp light in the corner of the room casts a warm glow on his tan skin, highlighting his cheekbones and enchanting lips. How you’d been thinking of kissing them all night and not doing anything about it was beyond you.
“Then, shall I be Wendy?” You lower your voice, “So I can stay forever young too?”
Donghyuck slowly unfurls his arms, back slouching some, “Well... that means you’ll also be with me forever. Quite the commitment really. Even real-Wendy wasn’t ready for it.”
You bite your lip, wondering if you’re both still talking about the same thing anymore. “Maybe she wasn’t, but... I am.”
You both stare at each other’s eyes for a moment too long, and then you’re frantically turning to look out of the window once more. The air is heavy, so heavy. You can feel every breath and movement that Donghyuck makes from beside you, your knees just barely brushing.
It’s at that moment that the moonlight moves from behind the scattered clouds and suddenly shines on both of you, reminding you instantly as to why you’d opened the window in the first place. The sky is dotted with pretty stars and a gorgeous moon that shines down on the two of you. The promise of your day coming to an end is both sweet and melancholy. The moon seems to tell you “happy birthday, congratulations on another trip around the sun” with just that light that shines down.
“I like to look at the stars here when I come home from university,” you tell Donghyuck, feeling his eyes drift to your face, “it’s really comforting. Sometimes, I’ll turn on my music and look at the night sky and center myself. It’s nice... something I miss when I’m away.”
Donghyuck hums in appreciation, “You don’t see them much in the city. I’d almost forgotten what they looked like, but the moon is always there. It’s comforting.”
You smile softly, nodding in agreement. “Yeah. The moon has seen me do a lot since I came to be on this planet.”
Donghyuck shakes his leg lightly, brushing your knee just a little. He can still hear the others downstairs, enjoying themselves well without the two of you there. It feels like the two of you are on your own other plane of existence, somehow.
Finally, Donghyuck opens his mouth. He’s ready to be honest like Yukhei said. He’s been too chicken all night, it’s only right that he does it now. I mean, he’s been fussing about timing and all that for a while now. What better time than right now would there ever be-
“Donghyuck, I like-”
“-like you.” He finishes your whisper with his own.
He’d... he’d expected a lot on his way here. A refusal, acceptance, a laugh, a downright demand to never see him again even. Among none of the several scenarios he’d thought up did he think that you’d confess at the same time.
“Were you... did you plan to confess tonight? Too?” Donghyuck asks, his elation just slightly muted by his unmitigated doubt. He had really just confessed to his crush of who knows how long. At the same time.
“Yeah!” You half-yell, practically choking on words to snicker instead, “I really did. I’d been rehearsing since last night.”
This was the most “you” kind of confession the two of you could possibly have, perhaps.
Donghyuck and you both just stare at each other, but the smiles that creep onto your faces make their way there all on their own. Donghyuck had run over a lot of scenarios in his head, and yet, not one of them could ever make him feel the way he was feeling right now. If cloud nine had an advanced, VIP branch, he’d be on it for sure.
And, in a very “you” way of being, the two of you are sprawled on the floor in happy laughter that deafens the sounds of talking downstairs easily. Your foreheads nearly knock together as you both roll onto your sides, gasping for breath at the predicament you’d found yourselves in. Finding his eyes with yours when some of it dies down, you exhale happily against his lips, “So, Yukhei... you too?” “Yeah,” Donghyuck nods, “nosy jerk. I kinda thought you liked him.”
You hum, looking down at his lips and their very small proximity to yours. “A nosy jerk who may or may not have been the catalyst to all this.”
Donghyuck also looks down at your lips, the little bit of icing still there in the very corner that he wants to kiss off. Now he knows you’ll let him. “Hm. To-may-to, to-mah-to.”
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jungnoir · 6 years
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Can I please request this prompt “Hi, I saw on your dating profile that the only criteria you judge potential suitors on is whether they’re a dog or cat person…?” additionally, “You’re pretty cute so I’ll give you a pass if you pick the wrong answer.” with Seokmin because he just loves dogs!!! So Much!!!
the barkchelor;
lee seokmin | “Hi, I saw on your dating profile that the only criteria you judge potential suitors on is whether they’re a dog or cat person…?” additionally, “You’re pretty cute so I’ll give you a pass if you pick the wrong answer.” | 1.8k words. | fluff, humor.
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a/n: to celebrate the oh my! comeback, here’s a lil something sweet I’ve been saving! and yeah. I stole the title from a try guys video.
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You didn’t consider yourself particularly “bad at dating” (could you do so without being biased? …well…). However, it became pretty clear when all the possible suitors at your job were a bust and finding someone on the weekends ended with a very superficial goal in mind that love was just…. incredibly evasive. And only for you, it seemed.
You were at a place in your life where you felt stable in everything; in fact, the only thing you could think of that was missing in your life was someone special. You liked being single because it was freeing, but you couldn’t help but long for someone’s hand in yours when you’d take a stroll on the town, couldn’t help but imagine someone’s arms wrapping around your waist while you prepared a semi-edible dinner, couldn’t help but lay awake in bed sometimes and think about how much you’d love to have someone curled up against your back fast asleep.
So, after a few drinks and a marathon of rom-coms to leave you more than a little romance-horny, you turned to a dating app.
You weren’t going to lie, the first week on there was hell.
Every single person you wanted to match with either didn’t match with you or turned out to be extremely gross when it came down to the actual “getting to know each other” part. You would dedicate at least a small part of your day to looking through profiles like your friends had recommended, but if anything, your success in finding someone even slightly your type went further down.
But, like all things, the best part can come when you least expect it. For you, it was right before you were going to delete your profile.
Most of the people you saw on here were usually mean-mugging the camera or posing far too stiffly to be realistic, so when you were met with a photo of a chocolate poodle staring right at you, big dark eyes practically begging for you to swipe right, you were puzzled. It was currently midnight, you were struggling to keep your eyes open, and you may have possibly found the best suitor on this entire app… and he wasn’t even human. Underneath the poodle’s picture was the name “Seokmin” followed by his age, “21″.
It was only when you started to click through the other pictures provided that you realized that the poodle was not Seokmin (as a much more sober and well-rested mind would have told you). “Seokmin” turned out to be a guy with a smile that lit up your phone screen and stilled you in your tracks. Dark colored hair laid neatly on top of his head, parted to the side to nicely frame his face. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a large dog laid across his lap looking like it was having the time of its life, and if you could tell anything by the faint pink lines running down the insides of his arm, that big dog must’ve been a handful. The same poodle that had caught your eye in the beginning was seated next to him in the photo, licking at one of the scratches that it might’ve had some help in causing.
Out of the six pictures he provided, only one of them was without any four-legged companions swarming him, and most of the ones that did have pups in them featured the same chocolate poodle somewhere in the background.
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Eyes drifting down to his bio, you were dumbstruck again. He didn’t mention any hobbies, didn’t include a witty joke like most guys on the site, or list any of the things he was looking for in a partner except one.
Dog or cat person? Choose wisely.
You blink at the short and incredibly cryptic bio, your forehead wrinkling while your brain brims with confusion… and curiosity.
Hell. What could you lose?
Swiping right, you blink when you realize that the two of you have matched. You see the option to contact him. You know in your mind (somewhere) that you should save doing such a thing for later, but… it was midnight and you didn’t have anywhere near the patience to wait that long.
By the time you’re actually in his messages, your mind is on auto-pilot. You have a plan to send him something quickly and head to bed, probably to wake much later and delete the app when you find that even this cute but slightly strange guy is somehow, someway, a weirdo. You had long since abandoned your bad pick-up lines and jokes, the excitement and hope to find someone having died down exponentially by the time seven days had gone by. Besides, the guy had given you something to start with.
You sent:
hi, I saw on your dating profile that the only criteria you judge potential suitors on is whether they’re a dog or cat person…?
You stare at your message with the very last bit of energy you have, checking for any spelling or grammatical errors, but there is nothing to really worry about. That, or maybe you’re too tired to be able to tell. Whatever it might be, you can set your phone down and let yourself succumb to the warm caresses of sleep with ease.
Until you wake two and a half hours later, your phone vibrating against the back of your skull mercilessly.
You blearily look around the darkness of your room, thankful that it’s at least a Saturday and that you don’t have work in three and a half hours, because otherwise you might have pelted your phone across the room in annoyance.
Carefully fishing the offending device from behind your head, you hold the brightly shining phone away from your face a few inches as to not blind yourself. You realize that you hadn’t hooked it up to the charger, a habit of yours that came only when sleep captured you before you could think to do so. You try to think of the last thing you’d done to be awoken like this. That is, until you see three new messages on your screen from the dating app you were supposed to delete earlier.
Seokmin sent:
That is correct! Sorry for the late reply, I just got home from my friend’s place.
You’re pretty cute so I’ll give you a pass if you pick the wrong answer.
:)
Were you… was he serious right now?
You push yourself up from the sheets of your bed, flipping on your lamplight to stare at the texts more closely. Sure enough, he definitely really sent you those.
A small, disbelieving laugh leaves your mouth as you think of what to say. There isn’t much to him in your mind yet. He’s a cute guy, he apparently thinks you’re cute, he seems to know a lot of dogs, and… well, that’s it. If he wasn’t so handsome and you hated dogs, you would have definitely swiped left, no questions asked.
Also, what was up with “wrong answer”?
You sent:
there’s a wrong answer? sounds pretty biased
also, it’s pretty clear which answer is correct given your affinity for the canine population
Seokmin sent:
Welllll, the question is are ~you~ a dog or cat person, not me.
Don’t mind my preference :)
You couldn’t quite fathom why you bothering to have this conversation, especially seeing as it was 2:36 a.m. for the both of you and you were as in your right mind as a rubber duck right now… that didn’t even make sense, you were so not in your right mind right now. But hey, did that stop you?
You sent:
alright, I’ll play
dog person. and this is a completely honest answer, by the way
Seokmin sent:
Could I humbly request a photo of a dog you’ve met? It would be even better if you were in the photo
You sent:
you do realize how weird you sound, right
Seokmin sent:
Hey, you’re a stranger. How do I know you’re not just lying about being a dog person to get me to like you?
You sent:
weren’t you the one who liked my profile first?
Seokmin sent:
…you have a point
So no pup photo then?
You sent:
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the pup in my lap is named skittles and he’s my friend’s dog who i’ve been strategically trying to kidnap for three months
Seokmin sent:
Adorable
You sent:
ikr? he’s the sweetest
Seokmin sent:
😅 Actually, I was talking about you
but
Skittles is a runner-up for sure
You heart lightly skips in your chest at his response, your lip immediately being sucked between your teeth to nibble. Before you can think up a smart reply which might have taken you all night to formulate, Seokmin is sending something else.
Seokmin sent:
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I saved this photo of me and Coco for anyone who struck my interest enough, so here you go. Consider it a thank you for your pic :)
You stare at the photo, unable to even admire the adorable poodle in his arms when he is right there. You weren’t one to be quickly drawn in by someone’s looks, but this Seokmin guy… he was an exception. Right off the bat, you’d already thought him attractive, but after having talked to him, that thought was hammered ever deeper into your sleep-deprived mind.
You sent:
Pretty handsome
Seokmin sent:
Coco?
Oh
Wait
I see what you did there 😅
You sent:
:)
i think your smiley faces are rubbing off on me
Seokmin sent:
People say my smile in real life is contagious too
You sent:
we should test that theory one day
but first
i’d like to know more about you, mr. dog person
Seokmin sent:
Shouldn’t you be sleeping? I don’t want to keep you up…
No, perhaps a little while ago you might’ve agreed with him. You would have wished him goodnight because realistically, he’d be there in the morning when you woke up. But, maybe you were possessed, because you never felt more awake than right now.
You sent:
i’m not tired. are you?
Unlike before, Seokmin takes a while to reply. You know that you shouldn’t be upset if he’s honest and tells you he’s pooped and he’ll talk to you later, but the thought that he might makes your mood slightly deflate. You hadn’t had such a nice conversation with a guy like this in a long time, an embarrassingly long time actually. As impatient as it sounded, you weren’t very excited to let this spark of curiosity die as soon as it was ignited.
You begin to twiddle your thumbs as one minute turned into two, two turned into three, and then it happened.
Your phone vibrates in your lap.
Seokmin sent:
I couldn’t be more awake.
And hi, I’m Seokmin. It’s nice to meet you formally :)
You sent:
hi, Seokmin. I’m (Y/N). It’s nice to meet you too :) so, besides dogs, what else are you into?
So yeah, you didn’t consider yourself particularly “bad at dating”. You considered yourself “waiting for a Seokmin to come along”, and boy was it worth it.
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