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therealhousewifeofharrystyles · 5 months

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Harry’s Home

Part III.

Read Part 1 Here!

Read Part 2 Here!

Pairing/AU: Roommate!Harry // Roommate!Y/N

Word Count: ~ 4k words

⚠️ Content Warnings: Adult Language, Pining, Sexual Desire, References to Body Weight (“Chubby” Reader), Fantasies of Rough Sex, Breeding Fantasies, Exhibitionism, Explicit Depictions of Masturbation(M&F), Dirty Talk, ~Slow Burn~

So, yeah. Harry and I have successfully become somewhat close. We’ve put up with each other’s shit for long enough and eventually bonded—or whatever the hell you call it when a pair of sex-starved adults live in close quarters and they decide to play nice so the walls don’t come down on them.

Even though it’s the time of year when I can see my breath and I have to wear socks to protect my chilly toes when I’m lounging around the house, when I’m around Harry…I might as well be a tea kettle on the verge of squealing in steaming agony. I guess you could say I’ve been in heat.

I’m catching myself spacing all the time, hypnotized by his comfortable routine. He grasps my attention like it’s second-nature to him, and I have no other choice but to relent—to surrender. How fucking pathetic is that? Like, get a grip, woman.

But seriously, I can’t take it anymore. I turn powerless and my body betrays me, simply from the man meeting my eyes with his from across the room. For someone to hold this much control over another human being by just existing…not only is it completely unfair, but it feels otherworldly. It’s as though a connection has been birthed out of the rawest, most sinful form of lust, with its sole purpose to fuse a pair of unwed and horny humans. Thus latching itself onto the two of us, melding an incubus with a siren.

I guess it could just be some crazy-intense sexual tension, too. There’s no fun in that explanation, but whatever. The point is that I can’t fucking take it anymore. Me being so mesmerized by him performing the most mundane of tasks—unscrewing a new jar of jam, rubbing the sleep out of his face as he stumbles out of his bedroom, sneaking little peeks at me from across the room and smirking to himself after he looks away. God. That smirk keeps me up at night…my hands groping myself and massaging my clit to lull myself to dreamland.

Right…so about that…

For the past few months, Harry’s been able to hear me fucking myself through the thin wall that separates our two bedrooms. The divider does absolutely nothing to silence me and my explicit acts of self-pleasure. These walls couldn’t muffle a mouse, let alone an ambitiously horny, and impressively vocal young woman who’s desperate to get her rocks off…hard.

And I’m certain he can hear everything—every gasp, every whine, every slick plunge of my fingers—or a toy—as they’re used in a merciless attack on my own body in order to chase an unattainable high…It's loud. It’s filthy.

It’s pornographic.

And yet Harry indulges in my songs. I know he does. The only way I’m able to get myself off is to picture him on the other side…to close my eyes and astral-project my way into his room and assume the role of the voyeur…as the exhibitionist. I’m a walking oxymoron.

I imagine my waves of ecstasy seeping through the walls to awaken his neglected cock in his tight briefs.

I think to myself,

…I bet he’s wondering whether or not I'm messing with him...if I know he’s listening to me…and if, perhaps, I want him to listen…

If only I were just playing a sick game of tease…Such a possibility would be utterly humiliating for Harry. He loathes feeling like his control is in the hands of another. Said power landing in my hands? Oh…No, no, no. Lest we forget the towel incident? Don’t let the sensitive late-night talks, the apology hugs, or the sleepy cuddles fool you; a switch, Harry is not. Not that he’s told me or anything, but it’s a feeling. When he drags his eyes down to slowly assess me…there isn’t a doubt in my mind that he’s in charge.

He has a limited threshold for teasing and babying, which is precisely why he shooed his own mother out the door after a mere 5 minutes of her jests. Harry spent his entire life as the baby. I sense he’s needed a release for quite some time…and it probably doesn’t help matters that my playful antics are sure-fire triggers for his dark dominance to take over. I think he’s struggled to find the right mate to unleash that part of himself with. At least completely, that is. And I hope I’ve been pressing just the right buttons to experience it all for myself.

But yes, I’ve been fucking myself with lotsa gusto knowing he’s in close earshot of the action. Hopefully, he’s come to successfully make sense of some of my muffled ramblings beyond his wall as, “Yes, Daddy!” as well as the occasional gasp or moan of “Harry.” What? I like it…

Although I’d love to exacerbate the narrative that this has all just been a cruel game started by yours truly—a game that I’m winning, to be clear—I'm actually not messing with him. This had begun purely by accident, and now I'm just continuing to provide some adult entertainment for my, uh...housemate and…good friend.

Before you scold me for being a perv, let me just finish explaining the situation. Because if Harry had a problem with something I did, he’d tell me. And he never complained about this. Never.

Quite the opposite, actually.

The first time I did my private deeds with Harry eavesdropping in the next room, I'd initially felt horribly embarrassed. I hadn't realized how shameless I was, or how loud and desperate the noises were as they came out of me. Once I finally caught myself, it was like space and time had spun to a stop, and I was painfully aware of my raw indecency.

I wasn’t watching porn, reading erotica, or listening to naughty audio recordings. Nope. Only my lustful thoughts fueled the eagerness in my fingers as they played with my pussy. I’d also been blatantly inconsiderate of Harry and his right to privacy whilst they did. I felt dirty. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Pfft, I was hardly thinking of anything. It reminded me of the time just before we moved into this house…when I lurked on his social media pages for the images of his slick, half-naked body which burned themselves into my memory, all just to use him for my own personal, sick, sexual gratification.

And there I was again—now cohabiting a space with the very inspiration for my filth and frustration—lying comfortably atop a spacious, girly pink towel to protect my bed linens from succumbing to my wetness. My knees were spread apart and my dripping cunt was on full display for my closed door across the room. If anyone walked in, they'd unknowingly be entering what many theme parks tend to call a “splash zone.”

Luckily, Harry was in the living room watching some melodramatic video essay on YouTube…Or at least that’s where I’d left him before ending up in the not-so-innocent position atop my mattress.

I hadn’t thought about the fact that the house wasn’t empty until I heard my own whiny sighs combined with unmistakable slippery pussy-rubbing echoing throughout the room. My cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of pink once I’d realized the extent of my elevated volume. There was no way Harry couldn’t have heard all that. And I had no idea how long I’d been up to it, or for how long at that high of a frequency.

The click of a door closing nearby interrupted my nervous internal monologue—Harry’s door. He was mere meters away from my partially-nude body, but my private quarters kept me safe from any judging eyes. The wall our bedrooms shared stood as the only barricade between our two bodies. For a while, I dismissed my initial self-awareness and I slowly, and carefully, swirled my drenched fingertips over my clit. More of my liquid arousal coated my petite hand. For some reason, the idea of Harry walking in on me like that had me feeling hot. Realistically, that would’ve meant immediate, devastating humiliation. Did that mean I was into that? I’d say yes judging by the way I was pulsing around nothing whilst staring at my door, picturing the man himself standing there smirking at me…tilting his head and patronizing me.

…Aw, would you look at tha’…Does that feel good, Sweet Bunny?

“Mmhmm.” I found myself nodding with a sigh, my eyes relaxed and veiled. My mind refused to backtrack, and instead doubled-down. I probably should have stopped myself right there, but fuck, could self-sabotage feel good.

My brain directed me towards thinking about how pretty and sweet I was on the outside. My body, soft, and my features, so delicate, but so grabbable. Every part of me had an ample amount of plushness to squeeze. To manhandle. My tiny wrists and my elegant neck, the perfect size for a pair of big hands to wrap around. I bit my rosy lip on a whine, then brought my thumb up to rub and tease it before sucking on it. The sinful acts my mouth performed were a secret I kept with the few lucky men who’d experienced it for themselves. I wanted so badly to share that with Harry…I wanted to share all of myself with him.

“Mmm…Harry.” I moaned aloud, releasing my wet thumb and sneaking it under my shirt, swiping the slick pad back and forth over my sensitive tit.

It was hard for me not to think about Harry whenever I touched myself. I thought about his fingers playing with my hair, him burying his face into my neck the times we cuddled…feeling his hard-on against my ass on the couch…the times when he’d hugged me…and catching his gaze drift down to my tits…I bet he’d thought I’d never notice, even after having done it multiple times in a single conversation. Hmm…was Harry Styles an ass man or a tit man? Or was he something else…? He certainly liked looking at my boobs…and I'm able to confirm that his body has a very positive reaction to pressing up against my butt…

Honestly, I didn’t even care what parts of the body Harry liked the most. All I cared about was how badly I wanted to feel him use mine. I wrapped my small hand around my throat and arched my back up off of the mattress, gasping as I mindlessly pushed two hooked fingers inside my tight opening, picturing a certain tall, curly-headed British man molesting me instead. The sound of my own moans enhanced my pleasure as I rode myself towards peak bliss. My modesty had become non-existent as my hands worked each sensitive spot between my legs and teased at my pebbled nipples. A part of me needed him to hear me that night. I was getting off on that taboo. But that’s all it was…my imagination.

It was just a silly little fantasy. Harmless exhibitionism. I wasn’t actually being that loud…—but that’s when I suddenly heard more feedback beyond the wall. It’d been some time since I’d heard the door click shut. My personal distractions got in the way of keeping track of time.

There was an urgent fumbling. A repetitive clinking. The sound resembled a bit of metal hitting other metal. But it was light. Small. Following that, I heard a rough yank and a soft plop as whatever the item was had dropped heavily onto the carpeted floor. An unmistakable hum of a zipper quickly came subsequent to the discarding of the first mystery item—but it was no longer a mystery to me as my sex-clouded mind pieced together what I was hearing. The hands nestled between my thighs slowed at the realization.

Well, Harry’s just changing into his pajamas for the night, right?

My audible x-rated activities bouncing off the walls for several minutes whilst my roommate innocently removed his pants next door…maybe I was overthinking this…I remembered calling out our "goodnight"'s to each other around 10 minutes before I slipped out of my panties and began to shamelessly pleasure myself. He was still in his business-y work clothes when I left him in the living room…and I knew I just heard his bedroom door click shut in the middle of my alone time. And at that point, Harry was right there. He was just trying to unwind, yet happened to be in the room adjacent to mine. It was probably too awkward for him to ask for me to quiet down.

Poor guy…ugh. I was disgusted with myself. I felt I needed to end my “session” right there, and

I was mentally preparing a nice apology text to send him. There was no way in hell I'd bring this up in person to Harry the following day. Surely I’d be in tears before I could even form the right words. I didn’t even want to imagine the scenario of Harry, himself, mentioning it to my face. Every possible, horrible consequence of my selfishly lewd deeds played out in my mind. There I was, lying there with my knees bent up and spread wide open—my fingers frozen against where I'm most sensitive. The silence made the throbbing in my clit feel even more desperate.

And then Harry flicked his white-noise machine on.

Oh, God…This was so embarrassing.

I wanted to sink into a black hole and never be seen, nor heard, ever again. The severity of the situation felt devastating to me. Was I truly so grotesque that the beautiful man I lived with had to tune me out with the highest setting of his old, rattly sleep machine?!

Hell, I was more than embarrassed, I was fucking humiliated. For real, this time. And it was all my fault.

I just wanted to disappear.

But just as I was readying myself to book a flight back home to move back in with my parents to spare myself from ever having to look Harry in the eye again…

I heard it.

I heard him.

“…Mmmhh…”

Beyond the hum of the wimpy white noise, there was a raspy moan on the other side of the wall. I thought I was just imagining it, or that maybe it was Harry quietly retching in disgust, but then it happened again.

No, yeah. It was definitely a moan.

I held my breath as I focused upon the sound of an abrupt curse followed by the distinctive sound of spitting.

“...Ahhh, fuck—”

*ptuh*

The grunting and other lewd noises continued. I could only imagine Harry’s tightened fist, wet from his own drool, working diligently at his neglected cock.

“...Mm…h-hm…ugghhh…”

It seemed like Harry's white-noise machine had some impressive competition. My lips curved into a smirk and my embarrassment exponentially subsided.

His growls vibrated right through the layers of paint and drywall—sliding their way under my shirt, swirling around my perked nipples before bolting straight down to my fingertips, coaxing them to push deeper into my heat. Squeezing my thighs together and arching my back, I curled those digits and gasped out audibly. Feminine arousal leaked from my center and down the crease where my ass met my thighs. Everything was so slippery. I’d made a mess of myself within seconds. Not to mention, the pornographic squelch of my fingers echoed shamelessly beyond the slick walls of my cunt.

If Harry’s spit-covered palm was loud enough to hear over the white noise, then I knew the splashy reservoir between my legs was audible too.

Another series of grunts and huffs sounded beyond the wall behind me and the white noise machine was switched off. I retracted my fingers and slid them up and down my slit, teasing myself and picturing Harry rubbing the head of his dick along my entrance. My brow pinched hedonistic agony. Oh, God, did I want him inside me…I needed something…anything…

With my less-saturated hand, I reached over to open my bedside drawer and lifted the lower compartment to retrieve the silk satchel that encased my dildo. My sticky-slick fingers fumbled impatiently with the ties until the toy comically launched out of the bag and bounced itself smack down onto the inside of my splayed thigh. I could just picture Harry laughing at my lack of grace even though he was busy with his own deeds next door. The thought of Harry teasing me about the dildo made me blush a bit, and I smiled to myself, imagining his hand reaching out to brush my hair out of my face, his pupils dilating as he’d sit on his knees next to the bed and lean over me until his lips grazed my ear…

Be a good girl and show me what filthy things you do with this, Bunny…Show me where it goes…Show me how you fuck yourself…

I hadn’t realized I’d done it again. I’d gotten lost in that depraved little world of mine, and I whimpered aloud in response to the Imaginary Harry who was speaking in my fantasy, “Y-you want me to fuck my pussy for you, Daddy?” Maybe it was the Imaginary Harry again, but I could’ve sworn that I heard a silky British voice nearby react, “Goddd…dammit, Bun’…Ugh, fuuuck, yes. Fuck that sweet little pussy f’me, baby, holy shit…”

Laying back down, I brought the silicone cock up to my lips and sucked it into my mouth. I slowly bobbed my head on it and soaked it with my saliva after deepthroating it several times. The sloppy blowjob I gave to my dildo seemed to have been loud enough to be heard by Harry next door, as he voiced out, “Oh my god, Y/N…I wanna fuck that pretty mouth.”

I pulled it away from my tongue, a string of drool dripping from the tip, and rubbed the head of the toy against my sensitive clit whilst I responded, bringing me right back to where I needed to be.

“Mmhh, but you can’t put a baby in me that way, Daddy.”

My own eyes widened and I gasped. I couldn’t believe I’d actually fucking said that.

“Shit! Ughh…Ahh…Ughhhh…Fuck you, Bunny…Almost made me…c-come…Christ—Ohhh, fuck me…”

With my free hand, I sucked on my index finger and let my eyes flutter closed as I pulled it out from my lips, trailing it down my neck, all the way to my breasts. Groping myself as best as I could with the rest of my hand, I used my forefinger to tease my nipple whilst the dildo swirled and swiped around my slickened slit. My breathing picked up quickly. The dildo had eventually disappeared inside my clenching hole. The only audible sounds I remember hearing were those of my own—my high-pitched gasps, the pornographic swishing and squelching of the dildo fucking my drenched cunt, the wet flicking noises of my fingers moving rapidly against my clit…I don’t even remember how loud Harry was at that point, I was too focused on my fantasy—my fantasy with him—to notice. I was so focused, in fact, that I had once again lost all sense of self-control and consciousness, succumbing to whatever had come naturally to me at the time and practically singing out my song of ecstasy for the whole goddamn neighborhood.

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…Harry, please. I need your cum…Oh, god, please come inside me. Fuck all your cum d-dee–oh g…–ah! Yes! Yes! Don’t stop!”

As I begged for my climax, Harry seemed to have been on the edge of his orgasm as well.

“Jesus Christ, you’re gonna kill me, Y/N…You want me to fill you up? Be my little breeding bunny? God…You dirty girl…Fuuuck…oh fuck, I’m gonna come…”

“Yes! Yes, Daddy! I can take it! Please! Yes, yes, yes, yes! Aaahhh!”

I unraveled with a squeak followed by a series of breathless sobs, my hands, wrists, and arms working frantically and my eyes rolled back whilst the kaleidoscope of pleasure poured through my body. Immediately after my explosion, I collapsed like a ragdoll with the dildo slowly pushing out of me, and my fingers slipping around on my clit to prolong my high. As my breathing recovered, I listened to the tail-end of the orgasm taking place from Harry’s side of the wall.

“Holy shit…Fucking take all of it f’me, babe—ohhhh, yeah…uhh-uuggh…mmhh…hm…Damnit…’So much…I wish all this was inside you, Bunny…fucking hell…”

I’d slept like a rock once I finally passed out. I wasn’t even worried about what would come the next morning. Nah, I had the upper hand on this one for once. As a bratty submissive, I’d gotten used to being teased and controlled. What an interesting feeling to exist on the other side. God, it felt fucking fantastic. Unfortunately for Harry, he wasn’t as confident…or at least that was what I’d been able to interpret in the days following. Nights after the first one, I’d carry on fucking my cunt until I was physically too exhausted to move my pretty little hands anymore. I swear I’d heard Harry finish at least thrice in one night once. (Impressive, Styles.) As for myself…well, I usually lost count.

That first morning, I awoke with sore arms, a rogue dildo laying on the floor, my limbs tangled inside my sheets, yet a ridiculous smile was perma-glued onto my sleepy, orgasm-spent face. I tried my best to tone it down, as I didn’t want to prance around the house like I’d just risen from a deep sleep induced by a gazillion-and-one pulsating firecrackers of pleasure. Too obvious, you know? Had to act nonchalant. Unbothered.

Who was I kidding—I was the most chalant person I knew. Harry would see right through that charade. But there honestly wasn’t much need for pretending on my part since Harry had actively avoided any and all eye contact with me anyway. I’d never seen the man be so meek. It was truly a sight.

Things would eventually loosen up as the days progressed, especially if it was a work day which meant Harry had an excuse to be miles away from me for several hours. It was somewhat of a bummer because I thoroughly enjoyed this sampling of power I newly held over the man. I reveled in the way our typical roles would reverse the mornings after our little bedtime serenades. They weren’t a nightly occurrence, as I preferred to keep him on his toes; however, they’d happen often enough that I tended to daydream in the middle of my work meetings. I’d even begun to retreat to my bedroom an hour or so earlier in the evenings, giving Harry some lame excuse like tiredness or a headache. In reality, it was me signaling that I needed to get myself off sooner rather than later. Whenever I’d announce my departure, I could feel how much he’d been aching for it all day, too. Harry eventually utilized the same approach to speed up the fulfillment of his own needs. I’d changed up my tempo, my method of pleasure, the filth of my words, even my own positions whilst touching myself. It seemed like it had become almost like a routine for him to wait for me to fall into bed late in the evening. (Yet another one for me to be distracted by…)

Nothing’s changed. I still imagine that he patiently lays atop his soft duvet with an anxious throb booming against his eardrums…That minutes will go by with him training his ear to follow each soft pad of my feet. And then I shut my door. I waste no time before diving my pretty fingers inside the waistband of my underwear and playing with my sensitive little petal—allowing all the filth to freely escape my lips. And every single time we do this, I’m in my room picturing him naked from the waist down, one hand eagerly pumping his dripping length whilst the other massages his balls and perineum. To this day, the waves of simultaneous pleasure are still trapped only by the few measly layers of drywall that stand in between us.

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I know, I know…it’s been a while…but I’m back:-) and this isn’t the end of Harry’s Home—the final part is basically finished, but I wanted to post this chunk of it since I’d been kind of neglecting my account for months now. I hope y’all like it! Xoxo ~ Régan 💋

Tags: @daphnesutton @victoria-styles @pishhhh20989 @heyyyloverr @youdontcaredoyou @jerseygirlinca

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dumbbitchenergy17 · 9 months

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Where the Wild Things Are - Chapter 5

Chapter Five: A Cold Death

Plot: Wild men or monstrous infected creatures, the world is wild and ravaged by Cordecyps but some are raised in it and flourish becoming a wild thing.

Word Count: 3.6K

Pairing: Joel Miller x Platonic!Teen!Reader, Ellie Williams x Platonic!Reader

Warnings: canon-typical fighting/violence, injuries, harsh language, tw: violence/abuse towards minors and heavy gore

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It is felt as the Reaper draws in near. It chills both blood and breath. It makes the hour of doom so clear. It always comes, the Cold of Death

When Joel and Tommy told you a few days following the mess hall incident they had a job they wanted you to do as this would be your ‘form’ of punishment. When the terms of punishment came up for you there was much they could think of, you didn’t have any possessions they could confiscate, you didn’t have friends to stop seeing, and keeping you in the house was what they were trying not to do. But it finally came to them when Ellie came home complaining about a certain chore she disliked.

“You want me to look after the horses?” You say looking at Tommy and Joel as the three of you stand in the stable. The huffing and sounds the horses make as you look at the empty stables the lack of humans only the creatures.

“Simple job, keep the stalls clean, make sure they have food and water,” Tommy explains as he brings you further inside as Joel stands by the entrance watching. He shows you where everything thing listening but your gaze is drawn to the large creatures. “Maria thinks it best for you to do some work in the community to keep you occupied and this is—” Tommy tries explaining

“The best job away from people.” You glance over your shoulder as the older man awkwardly chuckles heading towards the stable opening by Joel, “We’ll let you get situated one of us will stop by with some lunch for you.” Tommy says the two men looking at your back turned to them as you survey the stables before they leave. Hearing their retreating footsteps you welcome the silence beside the horses that look at you in curiosity. One horse catches your eye a large black mare, her eyes seem to be staring straight into your soul. Cautiously moving closer to the creature as she huffs and you freeze, it whinnies shaking her head the long mane an even deeper shade of black. Holding your hand out as she stares at you before reaching her head further out the stall her nose brushing against the back of your palm accepting your greeting. A quip of your lip as your hand slides up her face petting the horse glancing down at the name across the stall.

“Red huh,” You huff a laugh at the oxymoron of the name with the appearance of the horse.

The stable quickly became a second place for you to hide from the people of Jackson. You wouldn’t call the house your home, you only were there cause the cell was occupied at the moment and it would be soon that you could leave Jackson. Your day starts in the stables leaving in the early morning and you wouldn’t leave until late into the night until you were certain no one was out to spot you. Joel and Tommy had quickly noticed the unorthodox schedule, but they weren’t going to fight you on it. Though it did frighten the two of them when you hadn’t returned home your first night until past midnight. It was baby steps. You avoided the main streets, taking the backroads or even walking through strips of forest to reach the stables in the morning but walked the main streets at night when the town was fast asleep. Joel wasn’t even sure if you slept in your bed but he was only confirmed hearing the door to your room late into the night proving you return home each night.

You didn’t eat at the mess hall claiming yourself blacklisted despite the fact Maria and Tommy had gone to the council and Seth and explained the reason for the incident then. It didn’t bother you that much, you prefer the quietness of eating the apple you would take from the pile that was dedicated to the horses or picking at the random foods or snacks Ellie had thrown into your pack. When she asked if you had lunch you shrugged waving her off and telling her you had an apple for breakfast. She proceeded to bolt to the mess hall coming back to the stables with two sandwiches making you eat it all as she watched. With Ellie in classes, Joel on patrols or helping around the community, and Tommy and Maria focusing on their family you were left to your own devices in the stable. You had learned quickly the ways things worked, which horses preferred what kind of feed, the proper way to clean the stalls, and everything you needed until it became muscle memory. You had grown a close connection to Red, though you cared for all the horses you just felt closer to the mare. Sitting in her stall on the wooden gate as she rests on the pile of hay. The place is already secluded you assume no one enjoying the daunting task of taking care of the horses and all the steps but you don’t have much to do. There had been a few times when a stablehand that prepared the horses for patrols had run into you and that had not been a great interaction. The both of you were frozen staring at each other before he turned sprinting out of there as you stood there silently. You had made sure after that to avoid or leave the stables whenever you knew the patrols were starting or returning.

It was getting closer to dusk as you are busy brushing the coat for one of the older horses Dakota who just recently gave birth to a healthy pair of colts. The birth had been a bit daunting but the resident veterinarian and her assistant was an expert in what she was doing, as you watched through the gaps of the stable gates rushing away when they turned in your direction.

A sharp set knock against one of the stalls and you peek out spotting Tommy his hands resting on the buckle of his belt as he examines the state of the stables, “You doing well here.” He compliments and you nod returning to brushing the mare’s coat. Tommy had watched your body language before he made his presence known you were lax and for once calm but he could see the slight tension in your shoulder and your work had become stagnant brushing the same spot to look busy.

“So Maria made chicken and greens for dinner. Joel and Ellie are coming,” He speaks up before quickly adding, “You're more than welcome to come…we would like you to.” You didn’t look at him now stopped in your work an unreadable look on your face.

“Ellie made chocolate chip cookies with Maria as well. She’s sure you’re going to like them,” He hopes that you would be tempted to join Ellie having clued him in on the one treat you seemed to like from your first meeting with her.

“I have to make sure Dakota’s stall is all prepped and the colts are fed,” You say trying not to focus on the small frown that covers the older man’s face, “I mean we can wait for when you’re done or I can have someone take ove-”

“I’m fine,” You stop him, “Go eat with your family.” Tommy slightly winces at the comment ‘your family’. Part of him wanted to say that you are part of the family but seeing the slightly uncomfortable look at the idea of being at a family dinner he sighs patting his hand on the wooden stall door.

“Alright…maybe try to swing by if you finish early.” He says and you make no noise to respond busying yourself as you turn away from him. You hear Tommy stand there for a second before sighing and turning not before bidding goodbye. You sigh listening to the retreating footsteps and the tension dissipates from you. You ate with some of them before, Ellie swinging by the stables with a snack or lunch to make sure you ate, Tommy popping in to bring lunch or dinner from the mess hall only staying for a one-sided chat before heading off, you ate with Joel once-well not really. You had returned late in the night and wanted a sandwich to eat before heading to bed when you ran into Joel in the kitchen. You both were frozen on opposite sides as he nursed a glass of amber that almost sent you into a panic resulting in your dropping the jar of jam and getting glass everywhere. You almost stepped on the glass in your sock-clad feet in an attempt to escape to your room without dinner that night.

The dining table was set in the Tommy and Maria Miller household as the Millers plus Ellie sat around the table the mouthwatering food before them but a hesitation rest over the group. The young girl glances over at the empty seat separating her from Joel before looking up at her father figure with a look that morphs from excitement to sadness when she realizes you aren’t coming. Joel sighs looking over at his brother who too looks slightly disappointed.

“Come on let’s eat.”

The house is quiet as you creak the door open entering trailing in a bit of snow but making sure to remove your coat and shoes. Just the repeated motions filled your every day but there were things you missed about being outside the walls. The hunting, the nature, the cabin you had created in a haven for yourself, the sense of purpose each day decided and crucial for your survival. But in Jackson…you felt empty, you were either in the stables or your room, only talking-well more like listening to four people but those were just reminders to not be yourself. The harsh bitter person was all you had for yourself, you didn’t understand compassion, friendship, or kindness. You were never given those things. That version kept you protected and safe not smiles and pleasantries. Every day in Jackson you felt like you were losing a piece of yourself, seeing the cracks form in the walls you had kept up for many years. You couldn’t allow that, letting down your guard allows vulnerability, weakness was not what you needed, and to worry about others puts you at risk.

Peeking into the kitchen spotting the small container with a note attached on top. ‘Leftovers from dinner for you :)’ In Ellie’s handwriting and you see the dinner Tommy said, Maria had made and on top wrapped in a napkin a cookie and you recognize the chunks of chocolate inside. You move to grab the food when you hear a noise. Not an unpleasant noise, not something from a human but a twang that is crisp and warm. It is muffled with different pitches blending as you move from the kitchen to your room that resides beside the back porch door. You could see the light on and the noise only grows louder. Reaching the door and peering out the window you didn’t expect Joel to be there sitting on one of the chairs an object you’ve never seen before in his hands. With one hand he presses down on the thinner part changing the pattern and placement of his fingers the other strums down on the strings or plucks them as it creates a sweet sound. He is relaxed and clearly in his element as he plays into the open night as you watch on. You watch him finish the piece as it grows silent and he looks at the broken watch on his wrist before moving to stand. You hurry back to your room forgetting about your meal getting under the covers to not be spotted as you hear the porch door open. Joel enters closing and locking the door behind him seeing the new pair of shoes at the front door and some freshly tracked in snow. Looking at your bedroom door before creaking open. Your back is turned to him as you stare off into the wall hearing his soft breathing as you slow your own to make it look like you were asleep. The floors creak as he takes a step forward before pausing and stepping back and you hear the door close again. You wait until you hear his footsteps retreat before heading up the stairs you sit up staring at the door. Your chest feels heavy unable to fight the sudden conflict of what you were doing with your life as you struggle to go to sleep that night.

It only seemed to get colder, the snow deeper going further into the winter as you pour new hay into the stalls raking them out. Usually, during these times you would stock up extra wood to warm the cabin on the really cold winter nights sleeping in front of the fireplace on the couch instead of the room. In the few months, you’ve been in Jackson you hadn’t thought about the cabin, was it still there or overtaken by those raiders? Maybe they burnt it to the ground as a message to you if you were to return. Well, not if…it is when. When it grew warmer and the snow melted they could have forgotten all about you and left you to return home. To leave Jackson and this all behind to return to your life. That was the goal, leave the safety and comfort to head back into the harsh outdoors you were more proficient in. You aren’t good at conversation, shrugs, and short sentences even with the people you live with. It is like pulling out teeth trying to get you to speak, it is easier for you to just listen. You did talk when you were cursing out or insulting someone, you could speak insults for hours…days even. The large gate to the stables opens and you peek out the stall you are in seeing one of the stablehands, a boy around your age the one who had run out when he first met you. He doesn’t run when there is a chance he bumps into you. You keep to yourself giving him space as he saddles and unsaddles them. He holds the two reins one being Red who walks calmly into the stable bringing herself into the stall you find yourself in as you pet her head as she gives a sound of greeting. The other one in the boy’s hand is more frantic as he pulls on the reins to get it to walk but it fights against him. Its jerky movements make it kick a bucket of water a large crash fills the air startling the creature. As it rears up with a whinny as you dart out seeing the commotion as the boy tries to calm the horse but it touches the ground and bolts. He dives out of the way but hits one of the pillars as the horse sprints out of the stable. You both stare at each other in shock before you rush over to the still-saddled horse and you pull Red out of her stall.

“Can you ride?!” You shout shoving the reins in his direction as he stares at you with a shocked and fearful expression. He stutters over his words and you curse slinging one foot in one of the stirrups and the other swinging over the horse’s body. “Come on Red work with me.” You say before snapping the reins as the horse takes off out of the stable the cold and snowy air whipping against your face. The last time you’ve been on a horse was first arriving in Jackson and that was you barely conscious and just having to hold on, actually riding is a completely different scenario. The horse seems to understand the situation and your lack of skill leading itself through the main street after the horse that is tearing through the street. Shouts and cries fill the air as people barely dodge the horse careening down the busy street another with a girl on top shouting at them to ‘fucking move!’

The horse almost mows down a mother with her child and you see Tommy pull the two back and Joel failing at grabbing the wild horse's reins. You barely make eye contact as you whip past them and you hear the shocked yells of your name. You see the gate coming closer as they are closing the doors, “Move! Fucking Move!” You shout waving your hand as the two men manning the gates dive out of the way as the horse sprints out of Jackson yourself and Red following right behind and you’re outside the walls for the first time in months. The snow whips around you as you listen for the noises of the horse your hands grip the reins wrapping around your fist. Red leads you using her skills to find the creature as you head further into the quickly growing storm. You see the horse struggling in branches its reins tangled in the low-hanging branches.

“Woah…woah!” You call out to the struggling horse over the strong winds feeling the cold sink into your skin as you untangle the reins from the branches the horse settling realizing you were helping. Tying the reins to Red’s to keep them together you force the horse to turn to make the trip back only to see the blizzard that surrounds you. Trying to follow the tracks the horses lead you further through the forest before they fade the snow falling too fast the path covered. “Fuck!” You yell and the two horses stir sensing the panic and frustration. Your free hand strokes her mane looking around for anything that looks familiar though it’s useless. You’ve never been outside, you don’t know the patrol trails, and you were out here blind. You still had some daylight sunset growing near and you couldn’t be outdoors in this weather and at night.

A large crack from your left fills the air and your head snaps over to the sound the only sounds being the heavy winds, the snorts of the horses, and your heavy breathing smoke pouring from your mouth due to the cold. You were frozen on the horse your mind running with a thousand possibilities, a wild animal, or infected no you can’t hear the damn wind was too loud to listen, what if the raiders were here? Surrounding you with their weapons aimed to take you out, your freezing hands curl around the reins your head on a swivel. You hear something throw in the air seeing an object land on the ground before a large flash fills the air and a loud explosion mixed in. Despite Red’s calm attitude towards all this the bright light and loud noise startles them both.

You’re thrown off the creature landing harshly onto the snow, your ears ringing and your vision blurry from the light as you see someone running over towards you. You barely rolled out of the way dodging the hatchet being lodged into your chest. Twisting the person’s grip on the weapon gaining the hatchet, they whip out a knife catching you in the arm the blade digging across your shoulder. Swinging the hatchet out the blade drags along their face basically cleaving off their jaw. They fall to their back as you grab the knife ramming it deeply into their neck producing a liquid gurgle of blood. The snow soaks parts of your clothes and the warmth of blood on your shoulder and speckles of it on your face as you rise to stand catching your breath.

With the heavy winds and your labored breaths, you didn’t hear the crunch of snow coming from behind you as the cable is pulled over your throat and you’re pulled back into another body. Your hand grasps the cord that digs into your skin your feet slide through the snow trying to catch your grip as you violently thrash in your assailant that chokes you out from behind. You swing the hatchet back feeling it dig into their leg a cry fills the air as you try to grab it but they pull tighter pushing you to the tips of your feet to fight. Snarls and choked noises break from your mouth your fingers digging into the cable that burrows itself further into your neck your air cut off. You can’t even see your enemy fully just parts of their body as you thrash spots beginning to dance in your vision. A large crack fills the air and you feel liquid and matter hit the back of your head as the wire releases from your neck a large gasp of air enters your lungs as you hit the ground. Clutching your neck with your injured arm using the other to pull the hatchet out of the dead man’s leg you hear the sound of horses and you hear quickly approaching footsteps. You swing with a hoarse cry but you’re quickly disarmed.

“Kid!” Joel stares back at you as you breathe heavily looking at the man, he quickly takes in your wild appearance seeing the injury on your neck and noticing the blood soaking your shoulder. You’re brought to your feet, one of his hands pressing onto the bloody cut and you hiss in pain. “Joel!” Tommy’s voice cuts through the storm as he’s on his horse the two horses beside him.

“I got her!” Joel yells slinging his rifle over his free shoulder and keeping firm pressure on your wound as he helps you on the horse first then pulling himself after wrapping his hand around your body to grab the reins, “Let’s go!” He says as the three of you leave the bodies in the storm your mind and body drain quickly letting the cold pull you under.

#the last of us #tlou fanfiction #joel miller x platonic!reader #joel miller x teen!reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller #ellie williams x platonic!reader #ellie williams x teen!reader #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams #tommy miller x platonic!reader #tommy miller x reader #tommy miller

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bubmyg · 4 years

Text

orchid - myg

pairing: yoongi x reader

genre/warnings: fluff, angst, childhood best friends to lovers, fake engagement au? kind of?, emotional constipation to the max, rapper/singer!yoongi, wedding planner!reader; set in a beach side town because i can’t help myself, loosely based off like three different hallmark movies, told entirely in yoongi’s pov, random svt members appear too

word count: 19,079

summary: everyone has a theory as to why renowned singer songwriter min suga hasn’t released an album in over two years but none of those theories point to a crippling inspiration block. or to a wedding. or the one where yoongi doesn’t know his fiancé's favorite flower but he knows yours.

a/n: the longest fic and the hardest fic i’ve ever written is done. i’ve never written something that was this invested completely from a member’s point of view so this was certainly something new and challenging and fun! i hope u enjoy (pls let me know if u do) and thank u for reading this monster jfkjsld

Petals of bleeding purple, a hard line in the center of white where blending hadn’t been buffed out with a brush, almost pink meeting in a jagged line as if dipped onto nature by the curved tip of a damp paintbrush. They came in uneven waves, plucked from their stem to rest on the edges of Yoongi’s yellow notepad. His smile grew with the volume of words he scrawled across the page, patient in gently brushing them aside with the curve of his tiniest finger the longer you fiddled with the flowers in your grasp.

“Sorry,” You hushed after the third time he’d nudged the offending petals aside, burying them in grains of sand that moved each time you shifted closer to him. He dropped his pen just to glance at you, something bleeding into his own vital organ at the way your eyes were comically, genuinely, dilated in apology.

“S’okay,” Yoongi’s hand fist in the sand behind him, lounging backward. “I suppose I should be, you know, talking to you.”

“Why?” You gently shoved at his shoulder, “Special occasion?”

His cheek lulled against his arm, eyes falling shot as the corners of his mouth turned up. One deep inhale and he hummed, “—going to miss you, you know?”

Your grasp didn’t move from his arm, instead sliding downward to curve your fingers around his elbow. When he didn’t budge, you shifted closer, squashing any remaining petals below your thighs as you settled your cheek against his sleeve. “Are you really, though?”

Yoongi’s eyes shot open, chin pointing down towards you, “Are you serious?”

A sliver of your irises appeared under your eyelashes, turning away into his grasp after a second to shrug.

“Well…” He let out a grunt as he shifted, dropping his notepad and pen on top of his nearby bag, “I probably won’t miss you catching crabs just to drop them down the back of my shirt. I won’t fondly remember that time you shoved me into the tide with my work uniform on. I definitely will be forgetting your haircut in seventh grade—” You smacked his thigh, earning a gentle grin as he jostled his arm, coaxing you to look at him.

“But you?” Yoongi reached past his bag, gathering one of the flowers you’d plucked into diligent fingers. The crooked end of his index finger pleated it behind your ear, hand hovering there. He leaned closer instead, heart swelling in the same way your pupils dilated to collect all the celestial bodies glittering on the push and pull of the tide beyond your tiny campsite.

He shook his head, barely a twitch in his neck, “I could never forget you, angel.”

“Good!”

Yoongi startled forward instead of back, bashing your foreheads together with an audible, hollow sounding thump. He groaned in time with your scrambling, your touch leaving him to instead stretch over his lap, rustling around in your own bag. It didn’t come without you digging your palm into his inner thigh, forcing another tiny grunt from Yoongi’s mouth before you settled again, a safe distance away.

He eyed you again, welt quickly swelling onto the crown of his hairline, sand digging into the dip in his eyelids. You held something in cupped palms and he had half the mind to assume it was a crab to dump down his shirt like some sort of sick joke.

But Yoongi supposed the sick joke was on him because in a blur of momentary pain and a two percent chance that you’d snatched a ghost crab out of the darkness, you were still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“—because I bought you something to remember me by.”

Yoongi’s studio collected trinkets. A baseball jersey with his stage name plastered across the back draped to his chair. A tiny Kumamon plush squished between his monitor and a sea turtle shaped coaster that held his favorite coffee tervis. An oxymoron of a welcome mat with a brutish cat advertising go away.

A framed platinum record for his debut single encased on either side by a song of the year and a record of the year trophy. Just trinkets.

Something meticulous to his nature never moved his items. Their arrangement created some sense of security and warmth, feet stepping out of rubber sole slippers in the hallway to the thick grey rug over the tile floor like brushing away a curtain of gathered mist in the haze of an already uneasy conscious. The programs on his massive computer monitors didn’t help, nor did his untouched keyboard or the various other pieces of equipment scattered with less than neat wires over his work space.

But the trinkets didn’t move. That he could count on.

The press, he could count on them too. Their newest angle, an attempt to prod their way into his growing collection of items, was plastering a grainy image of himself onto their glossy covered magazine front. He could handle the images when they were nothing but background noise in his email, a notification from an intern in marketing that he’d been caught. Yoongi deleted the email with a good conscience. Going to a bar didn’t warrant front page gossip news.

He’d seen it all in two years since releasing any substantial work. The first guess had been that his contract was under negotiation. Dropped after successful debut? Then he’d signed for five more years and they had to scramble for something else. A fake feud with long time soloist Jung Hoseok, battle of the company’s two superstars, who will come out on top? Hoseok released new music first. Yoongi had producing credits on it.

And Hoseok was the other shadow in the grainy press image in the present day, his face cut off by the massive pink banner that curled around the perimeter of the magazine’s layout.

Excessive partying? The headline read. Yoongi pressed his thumb to the center of the cover, bending the magazine as he lifted it closer. Font a handful of sizes smaller than the title looped underneath the image, the curled edges of characters slipped around his throat and stalling his sharp inhale for a half second.

Min Suga, one hit wonder? New questions as hiatus stretched toward the two year mark.

The vibration of his cellphone startled him out of his trance. The magazine flopped forward in his grasp, giving out to curl over his knuckles as he poked at the device with his free index finger.

“Hey.”

Yoongi dragged his fingers down his cheek, letting the limp magazine rest against his thigh. “Yeah, Tae?”

“Are you working on something?”

His blank monitor mocked him, the plain black screen with massive SUGA written through the center ridiculously simplistic and frustratingly idle. Yoongi shook his head even though his manager couldn’t see him over speaker phone. “No.”

“Great, they want you in the conference room in ten,” Taehyung’s voice dropped an octave, falling out of professionalism as he casually asked, “Have you seen the headlines?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi let the magazine fly, hitting the free space near his keyboard with a smack and a tinkling noise. Just another trinket. “What do they want me for?”

“To talk about the headlines,” He could hear the smile in Taehyung’s voice and he could hear the way it erased at Yoongi’s lack of response. “No we’ve...figured out a way to move forward from this. From all of this. Maybe. Just be here, alright?”

“Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know, the bar?”

Yoongi let himself laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. The last time he’d set foot in a club was the last time he’d been photographed in one. An incident that happened far before his first album when he’d just been signed to the label from some offhanded success on a self published streaming site.

“Watch it.”

“Didn’t know you still had it in you, old man,” Yoongi could sense Taehyung beaming and he relaxed. Marginally.

“Whatever. See you in a few.”

His phone hit his work space with another elicited click of soft against glass. The reflection of his idle monitors curved over the object in question, contouring shadows around the silver and purple object until Yoongi reached for it, dragging it out from underneath where he’d shoved the magazine.

A tiny glass orchid purposed to be a pin with the sharpness of a gold latch strapped to the back teetered in Yoongi’s open palm. A misplaced trinket. He clutched it tightly, letting the smooth edges cool into the calloused lines of his hand as he stood from his desk chair, safely depositing the object a tier up on his desk, far away from any further misplacement.

The magazine didn’t last long in Yoongi’s collection, though. He rolled it, depositing it with a heavy thump into a trash bin on his way out the door.

Taehyung fidgeted in time with Seungcheol shuffling papers at the head of the small conference table. He crossed his legs, uncrossed, shuffled to the side, fingered at the edge of his own stack of folders slipped sideways from their neat tower, shifted enough to bump shoulders with Yoongi where he sat white knuckled in the chair directly next to him. Yoongi nudged him back, intentional, reaching over to pat his thigh until he settled. His manager and friend glanced at him with wide eyes and Yoongi shrugged, retracting his hand to fold it with the latter then shoved intertwined fingers between his thighs.

“How’s the writing coming?” Seungcheol asked finally. He hadn’t looked up, continuing to filter through a myriad of stapled packets, one eyebrow cocked into styled bangs.

Yoongi shrugged again, features wincing. His shoulders hunched from the curl of his stature into himself but he allowed his muscles to relax, and inverted shrug. “No different,” It was shame at himself in his voice, at the nagging innards that told him he needed to make music and at the smoldering creative synapses that refused to fire anymore. Softly, he added, “But I’m working on it.”

“Have you spoken with Jihoon?” Seungcheol looked up then, enough to flatten a packet to the table and slide it across. It was a list of credited songs to said company producer, ones Yoongi would have to do no more than record over his soft vocaled friend and send out a release date to the public.

The high value Yoongi held his art to, personal and important to him, loomed in his subconscious. Somewhere in the archive he was sure he could connect to Jihoon’s words, dig out enough content to compile into an EP and sate the media.

But it was the principal of the thing.

“I’ll figure it out.”

Seungcheol accepted the packet when Yoongi pushed it back, nodding with folded fingers settling over the paper. “About the press...recently—”

“We have an idea!”

Yoongi glanced at Taehyung like he’d grown a second nose from the round of his smiling cheek but Seungcheol didn’t seem affected, nodding with a gentle smile curving upwards on his lips. “Go on, Taehyung. You explain.”

It was only the three individuals in the cramped conference room, a spare in the back corner of the company hallways that was grabbed for the sake of privacy and the ability to drop formalities between the artist, manager, and CEO who’d become easy friends. Yet, Taehyung’s dramatic pacing around the perimeter of the room suggested he was plotting a multi-million dollar investment to a swath of shareholders.

“What’s the one thing in the world that takes ages to plan?”

Yoongi squinted, “...I don’t believe that description is limited to one thing.”

Taehyung ignored him, “When googling this very thing, there are to do lists that range anywhere from a ten step process to an eighty-eight step process, depending on how you choose to split up the planning…”

“It’s an event in which there is an entire job created to plan the very thing.”

“Event planners are a universal job,” Yoongi sighed, “Go on.”

Taehyung’s steps stalled, one arm still folded behind his back, the latter lifting one finger in Yoongi’s direction. “What’s the one, single most romantic day and event that will ever happen in a couples life?”

“Romance is not limited to a singular interaction and often the horrors of capitalism prey on that insecurity when in reality, leaving someone their favorite coffee in their favorite coffee mug before they go to work can be considered romance—”

“Correct!” Taehyung remained unaffected by his rant, letting his wrist hinge to point a stiff index finger in Yoongi’s direction, “If one day you happen to find someone willing to put up with those kind of statements, what would you like to do to them? Or with them, I guess—”

Seungcheol sighed, brushing his paperwork aside to clatter ring clad fingers against the top of the conference table. “How do you feel about getting engaged?”

Yoongi briefly thought the world had chosen that exact moment to flood the remaining thirty percent of it’s surface with water, voices sounding far away as if muffled by an echo and thirty pounds of wool. He managed to pull himself out of it by actually looking at something blue, the stretch of skyline on the tiny window just beyond Seungcheol’s shoulder and even if towers of smoke created faux clouds, it still reminded him to breathe.

As a result, a neanderthal question tumbled out of pouted lips, “To who?”

“Someone,” If Yoongi weren’t fond of the organization in his files, he would have tossed one like a frisbee directly at Taehyung’s neck. His manager flailed his hands as if it were simple, “Anyone! That’s the beauty of the plan.”

Seungcheol had shifted forward to bury his face in intertwined fingers, muffling the audible sigh he let out. “At first, we thought to sign a contract with someone within the company,” Red marks were left in the path of his fingertips dragging down from underneath his eyelids, “But the aftermath of the eventual breakup would be too much for both parties. We can’t do that, not to someone in or outside the agency—”

“I wouldn’t do that anyway,” Yoongi’s levelheaded sternness faltered as he dropped his gaze to the fiddling fingers in his lap, “This is all my fault. I’m not incidentally sharing my burden with someone innocent.”

“Besides—” He tried to smile, “—not sure you could get anyone to want to fake marry me.”

“You are so dense,” Taehyung scoffed, “Half our talent would add a dating clause to their contract right now if you were on the other end of it.”

A deep spring pink blossomed in jagged puzzle pieces over Yoongi’s bare cheeks and he was thankful for the lack of schedule and makeup as he involuntarily lifted a hand to rub at the back of his neck.

“Essentially, your partner will remain nameless,” Seungcheol drew a shape on the table with his nail, “We’ll disguise them as a non-famous individual. Something about a short term relationship but a long term planning process for the wedding—” He nodded solemnly, “—that’ll be why your music has been on hold.”

He wasn’t done, lifting his finger from the table, “The suddenness and the eventual break up of the relationship will be a win win. Each will buy you time to write.”

“And you know what else?” Taehyung had sat again, barely, dangerously hovering on the edge of his chair as he leaned toward Yoongi. “You can go home!”

Another folder glided across the table, coming to a stop in front of Yoongi’s furrowed eyebrows. He tucked his thumb inside, flipping it open to be met with a full page ad, one that had his breath stalling in his throat and his tongue curling into a dried knot.

“There’s still a wedding business that runs out of your parents’ former home.”

Yoongi watched you spread the petals with a delicate touch, fingers placing pressure in the sand as you instead created them a tiny rut to rest in, safer from the curl of gentle night breezes brushing off the calmed waves. His gaze trailed in a jagged line, from the ballpoint tip of his pen to the half drawn character crooked between the lines on his yellow notepad to the stretch of his legs outward on the tiny embankment to the crouched curl of your stature. Finally you settled, one full flower in cupped palms, breeze catching the petals there to drape them across the lines in your hands.

“Did…” He paused when you glanced at him quizzically, “You got the last of the contract details finalized, yes?”

A bright smile encased your features at his question, nodding, “Same day you signed your contract, superstar!—” You leaned closer, hand falling over his knee and he tensed, “Technically I’m a business owner now. You should be nicer to me.”

“So you never finished the application then?” You tilted your head and Yoongi clarified, “School. Scholarship. The city…” My city.

A quiet smile graced the wrinkles next to your eyes even if your teeth died from it, dropping your chin. One petal plucked from it’s center, lifted by the pinch of your fingers until the wind caught it and it drifted toward Yoongi, slipping up over the spine of his notepad and settling against his belt.

“I don’t need a degree to teach me a business I already manage,” You said kindly. “If your parents felt confident enough to completely sign it over to me in their retirement, then I suppose we’ll just have to trust their judgement.”

You tilted your head, “Why? Do you not trust me?”

Yoongi swallowed. He wasn’t holding his bag, but it felt heavier in that moment, like it’s very important contents were weighing on the straps slung to shoulders that drooped involuntarily. You’d gone back to plucking at your flower by the time he gathered himself, eyebrow still raised albeit.

“No, no, it’s not that,” The next mark on his page was angrier, dark and scuffing through thin pages to leave flakes in its wake. “You’ll do great.”

“I…” Your speech stalled but your petal picking didn’t, “You know, up until I signed the contract, the business was yours to have. Your parents would have left and still would leave it to you in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t want to run the business. You do. We both know that,” And he meant it. Taking over the family business had never been more than a joke passed over dinner and the occasional holiday, especially not when you’d earned full time employment there. His parents had never been interested much in the idea of keeping it in the family. It hadn’t started that way and there was no reason for it to be such in the future. Why allow you to spend thousands of dollars to start your own aspirations from the ground up when you could continue something that had only improved in legacy from your thoughts and ideals in the time you’d been employed there, anyway.

Still, Yoongi knew you felt a certain level of apprehension towards signing the contract. There were invisible standards to hold up in your mind, just like there were invisible boundaries you desperately never wanted to cross.

There was a feeling of indebt clouding the way your clammy fingers shook to sign the paper on the same dinner table you’d been invited in to by the boy whose gum filled smile only shined for you.

The petals had stopped drifting against his calves again. He glanced at your shoulders rounding, arms limp between the part of your thighs.

“You’re sure?”

Yoongi nudged your shoulder, incessant until you looked at him.

“I’m sure.”

Your face grinned at Yoongi in melded inks, ones clearly from the office printer in Taehyung’s office slapped onto low grade, basic copy paper.

“Do you know the owner, by any chance?” Seungcheol nodded toward the document in Yoongi’s possession, “The person who bought it from your parents?”

Purple specks bled into pink when he dropped the folder to the table, instead using the last link of his middle finger to rub at his eyelid.

“No,” He met the tattered edge of his fingernail instead of the eyes of his boss, “I have no idea who took it over after them.”

Fingertips patterned a beat to the table top, lining over Seungcheol’s soft hums as he considered the information, shuffling a bit more at his paperwork.

“Story will hit the press in three days. Your flight will leave in a week. I’ll email you the itinerary but essentially there will be a series of different press dockets done in your time at home—” Seungcheol gestured vaguely, “—engagement photos, staged bits of you planning, things to make it believable, completely produced and sent by us, of course. Keep the prying away from your next album.”

“We’ll insinuate that this is a wedding you’ve been planning for a while, something you’ve been fronting the majority of the work for in the comfort of your ridiculously romantic seaside hometown.”

Yoongi set his shoulders after a half heartbeat of silence, one that earned Taehyung’s gaze on the side of his face, “Is that our only option?”

“Of course not. It’s an idea, no more no less,” Seungcheol sighed, “Unfortunately, we’re to the point where there is only so much I can do for your image. Refuting claims of going to a club seems ridiculous, but the narrative is out there now. No one cares that you were there with Hoseok, they only remember their fabricated feud.”

A gentle smile crossed his lips, “An inspiration block isn’t a good story until there’s music that comes out of it.”

“How do I keep—” Yoongi’s tongue dried on your name, stuttering it back into his throat as he corrected, “How do we keep those close to the situation from telling the press?”

“We’ll give the wedding planner a check. Otherwise, no one should know the wedding is fake. Improve authenticity if anyone gets a hold of the gas station attendant who met you one time,” Seungcheol made air quotes with his fingers, “Trusted sources, you know.”

“...is that something we should be worried about?” He leaned forward in his chair, “Someone leaking something to the press, that is?”

Yoongi swallowed. His chin broke the rigidity of his stature first, dropping, then shaking, fists on curling outward until flattened palms curled around the edge of the table.

“No,” He said finally, “Shouldn’t be an issue.”

Particular details he knew would be in various reminder emails and sent by text from Taehyung well in advance became background noise to him, like the water from earlier had returned and lipped over his ear canals. They’d taken his lack of protest as a go ahead on the plan, discussing contract details for legality and file purposes without much input from Yoongi. He wasn’t going to deny them, anyway. No matter what the selfish ball unfurling in the sinking pit of his stomach told him to feel.

Taehyung standing caused him to stand, numb in moving as his brain registered the quiet dismissal without his conscious quite catching up. It was his name that startled him enough to focus, Seungcheol standing opposite him with a hand resting on the back of the chair he previously sat in.

“Enjoy your trip home,” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a request. The next bit was a comfort, “It’ll come back.”

In the light of his trinkets, Yoongi lounged into his office chair, carefully pulling his phone to his face. The expected text messages were there, ones Taehyung had labeled with giant letters WRITE THIS DOWN WHEN YOU OPEN IT, an email from Seungcheol with his flight information, and an obligatory email from Jihoon that he assumed was at the prodding of their shared boss. He swiped past all of them with a delicate index finger, instead tapping around meticulously organized folders until he found his contacts.

Phone changes had been abundant through his young career but he maintained a vast majority of the information. Including your name, one he scrolled by without truly remembering if it were there but quietly hoping to see anyway. He let that same finger hover over the name, gathering enough courage only to press on it to pull up the full contact page but not to hit the tiny blue phone hovering out next to the number.

Instead, he slipped his phone to his desktop, shaking awake his idle screen to click onto an internet browser. The business name appeared in the search box from a prior investigation but Yoongi typed it all out anyway, making sure to add the town so that the relevant place was pulled up.

The website was a bit generic but it was leaps and bounds ahead of what it had been when his parents still held control all those years ago. In any case, it was a higher quality version that the manila folder Seungcheol had presented him with, that a screen cap of the business homepage that currently stared at Yoongi in ridiculously bright pixels.

Incidentally, the cursor hovered over your picture, one slightly bigger than the panels of options and tabs scattered underneath. His gaze wandered from the familiar lines of your smile to the orchid he’d placed aside earlier, gaze wavering until he could see the reflection of the glass in the computer monitor.

Long fingers plucked the trinket out of it’s place for the second time that day, letting it rest to the heel of Yoongi’s palm as he placed it between his thighs, sighing.

“See you soon, angel.”

Muscle memory presents in things like riding a bike, something your body never quite forgets how to do. But even the trained cyclist will bobble after years of not climbing aboard their vehicle or at the very least, they certainly won’t be hitting their personal record the first time back out. In a similar fashion, Yoongi’s wrist remained limp over the head of his steering wheel, bypassing the correct turn twice.

It wasn’t that he was lost. He recognized his surroundings once engulfed further into the scenery, pulled into the days of his youth and budding adulthood. But it wasn’t his final destination.

By the third time his rental SUV rolled past the gravel turnoff, he started to think his subconscious was doing it on purpose.

His conscious remembered the back way, guiding his car out to the highway that circumvented the coast line, blue blurring into the early afternoon sky until he was almost startled by the return of trees as the road curved back on to land. A few purposeful turns later and his phone GPS, a backup that he’d tuned out the nagging of, happily informed him you’ve arrived.

The grass was a bit greener than he remembered, almost plush under his tennis shoes as he stepped out of the car. The flowers definitely were, decorated meticulously around varying archways, wire and wooden in build, chevron patterns of pink and purple and blue and yellow and everything in between. Paneled outsides of the main building appeared to have been freshly painted, a red outlined in white dirtied near where the cinder block foundation peeked up from the ground and the mulch collected in the landscaping.

Yoongi scuffed his way to the winding dirt path that led to the front door of the two story farmhouse, the only thing that appeared as though it hadn’t changed. Bits of gravel stuck here and there but the path was otherwise a beige dirt, dust clinging to the ground from the lack of rain and kicking up around Yoongi’s ankles as he shuffled. Ground lanterns lined the way, solar panels absorbing the heat for their evening duty, some staked out of the ground more so than others, tilted at all angles but the effect in the night was there regardless.

A handful of paces from the house was a wooden sign, it’s white outer edge not fairing the same as the house as chips were missing to show the wood underneath, splinters poking out in all directions otherwise. Most were covered by stacks of hay bales positioned strategically around more clay pots of flowers, ones that had started their vining process up the rough posts.

Your face wasn’t there this time but your logo was, contact information splayed out underneath the looping script, Be Happy, white on top of a powder blue. You hadn’t changed the name when you took over ownership. Yoongi had a size too small t-shirt somewhere deep in the recesses of his closet with the same name in opposite colors, black and white. You’d looked ridiculous when you worked events together, even when you returned back to the house and spent hours on the front porch swing sipping slightly unbalanced lemonade Yoongi made on the spot while shit talking the groom.

The memories, plural in the way they swirled to the forefront of his conscious at the first step of his sole onto the lowest porch step, elicited a tiny upward curl to the outer seam of his lips. Curled fists stuffed their way into the pockets of his pants, hanging his head as he vaulted another step up until two heeled boots cinched at the ankle came into his view.

The lipped edges of his white bucket hat flopped into his direct line of sight but he still managed to register a lot of black, skin tight in a pair of ripped jeans, in the ajar hang of a leather jacket on toned collarbones, in the widen of perfectly round irises that blinked three consecutive times at Yoongi’s frozen figure.

“Suga?” The man squeaked, taking another step backward on the staircase. “What are you....why are you....”

“How did you get to this town of all places?”

Yoongi’s lips parted just enough to let out a noise that would stall the younger man, a prolonged hum until he finally settled on the gentle answer, a tease in a monotone, “By plane and then rental car.”

The black figure giggled, giggled, a high pitched noise that made his features crunch up in the center of his nose. In his distraction at Yoongi’s poor attempt at humor, he rushed out your name, something that made the younger man pause in his laughter fit to cock an eyebrow.

“Do you need to....” The poor man blinked again, chin cocking in the slightest, “Are you needing…” A high pitched noise of confusion came from the back of his throat and his chin twitched the opposite direction, “How do you know Y/N?”

Yoongi’s lips pressed into his cheeks again, just for a fraction of a second, “Small world—” Determined yet wobbly steps carried him to stand level with the man yet still leaving him a few inches below eye level. Sharply, he stuck out a hand, “—Yoongi.”

“What—”

“Call me Yoongi,” Yoongi slipped his bucket hat off with his free hand, letting black locks fluff in static pieces around his eyelashes, “Please.”

“Jeongguk. Jeon Jeongguk,” The younger man surprised Yoongi by grasping his palm with both hands, giving it a firm shake. He continued to stay attached to him as he turned up toward the house, eyes darting wildly until he chirped, “T-they’re out right now but if you want to come inside, I can go see if I can find—”

“That would be great,” Yoongi smiled kindly, letting his hand stay in Jeongguk’s grasp as the younger enthusiastically began to drag him toward the front door.

A lot of things appeared to be updated from when Yoongi resided within the creaking floorboards of the house yet somehow, you’d tastefully managed to keep its original charm. There wasn’t anything that said you couldn’t update whatever you pleased, you owned the house and you owned the business, his parents happy to hand over everything in favor of an easy retirement a few cities up the coast, a bit more lively than the sleepy, tourist free town they’d spent the majority of their adult lives in. Even then, Yoongi found himself oddly charmed by the way you’d retained a lot of what you’d grown up around too, a consistent visitor from your cognitive teenage years to a steady employee through high school and college.

It was between admiring the sealer you’d chosen for the hardwood floors and wondering how you’d so artfully covered up the floral wallpaper his mother insisted on piling onto drywall that Yoongi’s heart stopped beating somewhere in the base of his throat, resuming it’s patter at a skyrocketing pace as it shot downward into the pit of his stomach.

There was something to the low sitting wardrobe piece kept in the foyer of the business section of the house that Yoongi couldn’t quite understand. In the end, he decided it was probably due to the fact that none of the drawers would quite stay on their tracks, sticking shut when you tugged on their flapping gold handles after twirling tiny gold bars into minuscule locks and then tipping out and forward when you finally could get them out, puffs of dust curling outward from the harsh scratch of wood on wood in the process.

Maybe it was that the top left drawer stayed unlocked at all times, enough to harbor a cardboard box that kept the keys for the rest of the drawers. Maybe it was that he knew there was nothing in the locked drawers aside from some decades old paperwork, a handful of paper grocery bags, and his every day personal items, ones that never stayed in there during business hours.

That is, until he started storing a few secrets underneath his wallet and car keys.

The first secret didn’t remain that way for long. Plane tickets were booked just as a formality but they signified so much more, like the unsigned contract he’d had emailed to him in the middle of recording something on his half dead microphone to upload to the very account that had pushed him toward getting recognized by an entertainment company. Unsigned quickly became signed and synonymous with the day it no longer became a secret, breaking the news to his parents that he wouldn’t be going back to university after the summer of catering to carrying any and all truckloads of equipment associated with a wedding planner to and from their positions. Yoongi was careful then, softening the news as to why there was a new key on his lanyard and garnering the warmth that his announcement of finding an apartment near his new job had lessened his parents' apprehensions in the slightest.

Then there was you. The person who’d started off as willing to listen to his halfhearted rants about basketball and the specifics of what an angry bride sounded like over crust-less peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and eventually became the person his parents trusted with hearing those complaints firsthand. In a roundabout way, he had your eventual co-workership to thank for starting his career, giving him more time to write and record and publish, particularly when you lessened your hours at your shared university in order to take over a greater role at the business.

In Yoongi’s mind, the ideal scenario was the one with the highest probability of becoming reality. He would sign with an entertainment company not minutes away from a university with a high ranked business graduate school. You would get into said graduate school, giving his parents a final few years to iron out any details they wished for your eventual takeover.

He would have enough time to translate song lyrics into Yoongi words and effectively cure part of the yearning in his heart that dragged his chest first toward you anytime you were in his general vicinity.

The addition of you to his secret drawer came in the form of a tiny velvet box, the first step toward allowing his yearning to manifest in an exterior way rather than remaining simply as his heart swelling and spilling between the spaces in his rib cage.

Yoongi took the staircase two at a time, dropping onto the ground floor with a resounding creak. Socked feet pulled at the various splinters formed between the spaces in hardwood as he made his way through the silent business level of the house. His plane tickets and apartment key came out of hiding, resting on top of the wooden piece of furniture as to not forget them with the addition of his massive grey suitcase stationed next to the refrigerator two rooms over. He left the normal essentials though, allowing himself that familiarity in what would be his last night in the house potentially for good.

Meticulous fingers balanced the proper key between the hole underneath the handle, mechanical click making Yoongi’s tongue pull back into his mouth in triumph as one hearty tug had the drawer popping free. He shrugged his backpack from one shoulder, enough to deposit his wallet into the front pouch and snag his keys on the twirl of his index finger. The next object made his throat dry, digits clasping around the box with a hard swallow.

If you can’t see it, it can’t make you anxious. Yoongi promptly hid it away next to his wallet, shoving his arm back through the dangling backpack strap and striding for the front door.

You seemed to be just as startled as his most vital organ, pausing your advancements into the house just in front of the heavy piece of furniture, loose knobs rattling with the steps you took. Yoongi instead scrambled, tripping out of the oak chair Jeongguk had left him in when he’d scurried away in search of you. In the process, his hip nudged at the corner of the round conference table, scuffing across the floor and effectively rattling all the metal again. And every other loose object in the house, it seemed.

“Yoongi?” Your voice came out soft, lips parting like a fish out of water. Your apprehension lasted long enough for a soft smile to corner into the seam of his lips before you were coughing, shaking your head as your stature set, “What can I do for you?”

The bashful smile spread into a bit of heat that sprinkled his cheeks and his hand touched his neck, shoulders hunching. “Uhh—” He squinted from underneath his eyelashes, “—do you happen to plan weddings?”

He missed the way your stature froze again, rigid all the way down to the tips of your toes that rooted to the ground inside your shoes, gaze instead jerking to the squeak of delight Jeongguk let out from the doorway. The younger’s eyes widened when your gaze whipped to him, trying to retreat outside before you could scold him but to no avail.

“Can you go finish loading the archway into the trailer for me?” Jeongguk nodded frantically, another step dragging the door with him until you added an octave louder, “The sunflower pots go with it, not the petunias.” His got it! was muffled by the echoing shut of the front door.

“Thank you. I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble—”

“Sit.”

Yoongi plopped directly down into the chair, watching with pursed lips and round eyes as you drug out the chair across from him, taking your time in sliding to the end of the wood. A sharp inhale racked your shoulders, keeping your gaze on the grain of wood where it peaked out from the lace table runner curled down the center of the furniture until you finally looked at him.

“No how are you? No how’s business going? No stack of signed CDs for me to hand out to customers as incentive?” Your eyebrows furrowed in teasing but the light didn’t quite reach your full smile. Not the one Yoongi remembered. “Just a I’m getting married.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

Yoongi’s smile softened, leaning forward until one of his hands could encase the fiddling of yours. You glanced at him between picking a bit of skin from around your thumb nail.

“How have you been, angel?”

It was childish, the way you pulled your hands against your chest, and there was still a hint of something in your voice, teasing, “No, too late now.”

He shook his head, a soundless laugh leaving through his nose. “Business seems to be going well. I see you’ve made a lot of upgrades on the property—”

“I told you,” Your arms instead threaded at your chest, leaning back into the chair, “You are too late. Should have done those formalities first.”

“Ah, right. Customer treatment now?”

“What’s your spouse's name?” You shifted again, enough to cross your legs, “For the paperwork. Not for the press.”

Part of Seungcheol’s monologue curled into his mind in that second but he had no reason to believe you were series. He shook his head, earning a laugh from you that confirmed his suspicions. You were kidding about the last part.

“That’s actually, uhm—” Yoongi turned, glancing in the general direction of the staircase, “—is there anyone else around?”

“Jeongguk is my only employee. Spill, who are they?”

“Have you...read anything about me lately?”

“Truthfully, Yoongi—” Your arms uncrossed to grip the chair underneath you, legs unfolding to place your feet flat on the ground, “—I try not to.”

Yoongi nodded. Right. You’re the one who left. You’re the one who stopped returning phone calls.

“The press hasn’t exactly been...patient in waiting for my second album. The negative press has piled on so much that it’s started to reflect on my image and frankly the state of my agency.”

“Is any of it true?”

He blinked at you, “Last week they contrived the image of me being an excessive party-er.”

“Right, they have no idea then.”

Part of Yoongi grew warm at your conviction. “I suppose…”

“The idea is to create positive press with a story my agency can control.”

“Ah, so to fake a wedding,” You nodded gravely, “Everyone loves a celebrity wedding.”

That’s what Taehyung said. “I guess. They thought if they sent me home, that it would give greater meaning to the story. That I’ve been pining at home trying to make the wedding perfect for all these months.”

“And your music?”

Yoongi blinked, finding you leaning forward again with your fingers clasped together, thumbs rubbing at each other. “What about it?”

“Why is it so delayed?” You were gentle again in your obvious statement, “You used to write a song a day here. At least.”

“Wasn’t that much.” And something in Yoongi remained endeared at the fact that you thought he was constantly writing something new each time he carted his notebook around with him and not fretting over a set of three songs he’d written with your smiley nose wrinkle in mind.

“Just haven’t felt anything in a while,” To say it out loud felt weird, especially in the presence of someone he’d no much as said hello to in the past handful of years let alone confided his feelings in. The house wasn’t your weekly beach trips.

And you weren’t his best friend anymore.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“So you need me to…”

“Help me plan a fake wedding,” He said it simply because in his head, he wanted it to be simple, “Obviously, we don’t need the nuanced things in between. But I do need the outward details to be very apparent.”

“...there will be press here eventually to take pictures of me planning. I need to be seen at a venue...here...picking out flowers...you know. Doing wedding planning things.”

“After a few weeks, my company will call it off and I’ll go home. Somehow, they plan to frame the story as a mutual breakup that leaves me in heart break,” He had to refrain from rolling his eyes, “Hopefully from that I can slap together some music to sate them. At the very least, maybe they’ll give me some space.”

“Probably not.”

The tension left Yoongi’s stature and he allowed himself to laugh for a few beats at your bluntness. “Yeah, you’re right, probably not. It’s worth a try or at least, my agency thinks so,” His eyes flicked across your face, “It’s nice to be home, anyway.”

You didn’t allow him the luxury of enjoying the simple silence of your presence, instead standing with a harsh scrape of the chair across the floor. He held his breath as you approached the wardrobe, exhaling when you reached past the top to crouch on the bottom, yanking open the right to retrieve a stack of stapled papers from within.

“Do you want to go ahead and start?”

Yoongi frowned, “You don’t have any questions?”

“No.”

“You aren’t worried about the press being here?”

“You’re my client,” You shrugged, “Whatever comes with that isn’t my business.”

“...do you want your check?”

It was your turn to frown. “Has your service been fulfilled to your utmost satisfaction?”

Yoongi settled back into his chair. “No...not yet.”

“Then I don’t need paid yet.” A pen materialized in your grasp, one you twirled twice before clicking on. “State your full name.”

You blinked at each other in a challenging silence until you shrugged, “I could just put Min Suga, if you like—”

“Min Yoongi.”

Yoongi watched the poke of your tongue between your cheek fondly, enamored even when you didn’t look up from writing to say, “Spouse...to be determined…”

You’d moved your paperwork party to the front porch of the building, sign now flipped closed and the main entrance gate shut and looped together with a rusted old chain. Condensation lipped down Yoongi’s knuckles when he reached for the glass of lemonade Jeongguk had brought the both of you, ones that garnered his attention away from your incessant chattering.

“I don’t need to make a full guest list,” He said finally and when you didn’t respond, just continued to rock yourself in the wicker chair you perched upon, he clarified, “The wedding isn’t actually happening.”

“What are you supposed to tell the press then? What if they want a rumored guest list?”

“I’ll just tell them Hoseok—”

The chair stopped abruptly. “...J-Hope?”

Yoongi rolled his lips together to keep himself from laughing, “That’s the one.”

The rocking resumed and the audible sound of the pen scratching against paper could be heard over the breeze and chirping of birds. “I forgot you were signed under the same agency. Hope World is one of my favorite albums.”

“I had a feature on there, you know.” It was embarrassing how quickly he informed you of the obvious fact but you smiled to his flushed cheeks.

“You also had a number one best selling album.”

“Did you ever get the album I sent you?”

“I gave it to Jeongguk.”

Yoongi didn’t have to remind himself of his guilt, he just had to keep it at bay. He smiled, “I can get you another copy.”

“So can I,” You scribbled a nonsensical line to the paper, letting your wrist rest on the pad of paper as you looked at him, “Who else?”

“You.”

You didn’t blink. “I’ll be there. I’m the event coordinator. Theoretically.”

“And theoretically, I’d want you there,” Yoongi didn’t blink, “In another circumstance. I’d invite you.”

He didn’t miss the way your voice softened into a murmured thanks, resuming your haphazard scribbles, “—but unfortunately I am nothing the press would be interested in. Give me another name.”

“Uh...Taehyung I guess. He’s my manager. The fans know a good deal about him. It may be obvious that he would be there, though.”

“It’ll work for now,” Your wrist carried your pen in looping circles down the length of the page until you flipped it at the stapled corner. “Okay, next. Who would you have stand up with you?”

“Taehyung.”

You couldn’t hold your laughter that time, puzzling Yoongi’s features. “I can do that—” You eyed him as you pressed pen tip to paper, “—but that would really make it obvious that he’s attending.”

“Oh,” Yoongi frantically reached for his lemonade again, downing a sizable gulp, “You’re probably right.”

“Okay, most important question. For me and for the press,” You clicked the pen a few times in a rhythm he didn’t recognize, “Give me a date.”

“I was told I had a four week time frame. Agency orders,” His eyebrow cocked when you choked, “What? Do you need more time, because I can call—”

“You think a month is enough time for people to believe you?”

There wasn’t anything condescending about your question. You’d been sitting with him long enough for the sun to start to hide behind the coastline, bathing the world in a color that bordered between black and blue, a hue he couldn’t quite place a name to but knew by heart. You hadn’t jumped at the first opportunity to write a number on the blank line of the check tucked neatly in his wallet. You’d barely considered the validity of his motives and immediately jumped into the task at hand.

You hadn’t asked him what was wrong when you, of anyone, had the absolute permissions to do so.

“The press currently believes I’m lazy, undermine close friends for fame, am not genuine in the message of my first album, and, for some reason, that I am unapproachable,” Yoongi shrugged, “I’m, frankly, not too worried about what they do and don’t believe at this point.”

Your features quirked as you shut the packet on your lap, settling your palms flat to the paper to let the pen roll a few paces away in your lap.

“Yoons.”

Part of his facade crumbled at the tenderness in which you uttered the nickname as he gripped a bit harder to the chair in an attempt to keep it in place. An audible breath shuddered in and out of his nose before he looked at you.

“Are you doing okay?”

The fragmented part of his heart that had tumbled into his throat threatened to spill out as you offered him the compassion he wasn’t quite sure he deserved from you and the only way he knew to keep it down was to stand and swallow. His bucket hat came in white knuckles, smashing the article of clothing over wind ruffled hair as he averted his gaze to anything but you.

“Fine. It’s getting late and I’ve already kept you far past business hours,” Long steps carried him past your stature, pausing with a hand on the rail and a foot on the second step. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

For a second, Yoongi’s peripheral swore to him that you reached for his hand in passing.

“You’re…”

“Hi,” Yoongi thrust his hand toward the blonde headed man in front of him before he could finish. “Min Yoongi. Nice to meet you.”

The stocky florist blinked at the hand presented to him, then to the taller Jeongguk standing behind Yoongi. Yoongi didn’t have to look to know that giddy smile was still plastered on Jeongguk’s lips and he swore he felt him nod against the side of his ear from how close the younger man was standing to him.

“Park Jimin,” He said finally, settling his smaller hand into Yoongi’s grasp. After a brief shake, his fingers continued to grip on as his gaze wandered to you where you were picking through a jar of fresh lilac. “What...what can I do for you guys today?”

“Why else do I come to you, Minnie?” You turned, wielding one of the long purple stems to tickle toward the blonde’s nose. Jimin broke away from Yoongi to giggle, swatting at you. “New client. New wedding. New flowers.”

“Right. I have a few of those,” Jimin nearly head butted the glass counter displaying arranged boutineers and sample bouquets, returning a moment later with a tiny notepad and a pen he took off the cusp of his ear, then jammed in plump lips while he flicked through the lined pages. Through the object in his mouth, he muffled, “What can we start with?”

“The usual. Twenty some of each,” Yoongi watched in muted fascination as you moved about the shop, dropping the lilac back in its place in favor of something green and leafy. Various other stems snagged on the ruffled leaves, dragging a messy handful of vegetation, earning a surprised squeak from your lips as you began to untangle them.

Subconsciously, he reached across, fingers brushing yours in route to pull away one of the three strands.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you?” Yoongi plopped the freed strand back into its container, again stretching long digits toward you.

“Do you want to be photographed with me?” You wielded the stems away from him until he stopped making grabby hands and instead resorted to jutting his bottom lip out. “Me being your fake fiance’ wasn’t part of the deal.”

“They’re not going to think that,” Yoongi finally succeeded in snagging the tangled flowers away from you, gentle fingers prying them apart and placing them back in their rightful container. He smiled to the glare you set on his cheek, “We’ve got it covered.”

“We’re here for flowers,” You childishly poked your tongue out at him, “Not to argue the logistics of your weird celebrity powers.”

“Don’t make it sound so glamorous,” Yoongi huffed, trailing you as your footsteps took off rapidly through the shop. As abruptly as your speed picked up, it stalled, making him nearly topple over you and a stand of glass butterflies in the process. His hands gripped your waist to steady himself, an action you barely flinched at as you covered his wrists with your hands, leaning past his arm in silence.

After a handful of heartbeats more, Yoongi ducked closer to your ear and whispered, “Why did you bring me back here?”

There was a small crash from somewhere on the opposite end of the store, then a fit of mingled laughter, something that had you relaxing out of Yoongi’s embrace to look at him.

“They can’t hear us back here,” You explained. “Now...if you were to actually be getting married, what kind of flowers would you want?”

Yoongi blinked, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”

You weren’t amused, “What about your fictional spouse? What would they like?”

He spotted your figure on the bridge carrying over some of the largest sand dunes, your figure just a silhouette but your features lit up by your phone pulled to your nose. He ignored the buzz of a notification in his pocket, instead calling out your name.

“Yoongi!” You bounced a bit in greeting, arm waving so that the illumination on your screen remained for him to see. He ducked his head in response, gripping the straps of his backpack a bit tighter as he stepped out of his sandals, crooking them in between his index and middle fingers to change terrain to the sand coated wood. He barely reached you when you were snagging his wrist, dragging him down the opposite side of the bridge until bare feet changed once more to pure, cool granules of the beach.

“Come on,” You tugged a bit harder until he fell in step next to you, “If we hurry, we can pick some before it gets dark.”

“These would be the ones you’d pick,” Yoongi grunted a few minutes later, crouched on a sliding hill of sand to reach his fingers into the vined mess of vegetation rooted to the dirt underneath. The rumble of a crab itched in the arch of his foot where it was buried deep in the sand to anchor him in place but he was afraid to jerk away in fear that his already squinted eyes would be unable to spot the singular stem of pink flowers again. Something in his shoulder popped, knee too, and the crab finally secured it’s pinches into his skin, but he managed to return with the stem in twirled fingers, falling backward onto his backside in a pride crushing triumph.

Your phone flashlight blinded him as you jogged around the corner, frowning first then breaking into soft giggles. The center of the light shifted away from his eyes, allowing them to adjust to the fact that you were hovering above him with an entire handful of pink and white stems.

Miserably, Yoongi lifted to a seated position, quite as the last of the sand fell back to the ground from his shoulders and around the crevices in his cloth backpack. His arm stretched slowly upward, holding out the flower with eyes scrunched shut until you slipped it in with your existing bouquet.

One eye peaked when you didn’t say anything, the second falling open in time with your lips softly touching the apple of his cheek. You held your free hand out, palm up, until he laced his fingers with yours.

“Thank you, Yoons.”

He waited until he was standing, stalling your excited dragging of his figure down the beach with an exclamation of your name.

“I have something else to give you later,” Yoongi said slowly, “Don’t let me forget.”

You used your intertwined fingers to punch his thigh with his own knuckles, “Better than this flower?”

A slanted smile was the only thing his rapidly beating heart would allow him.

“Hopefully.”

“Orchids,” Yoongi decided finally, gaze still wavering off beyond your figure, “They’d probably like orchids.”

You swallowed, bouncing once on your heels. Your chin cocked, eyes staring straight ahead from where he stood in front of you. Quickly, he amended, “Is that okay? Are those not good wedding flowers—”

Your steps picked up in speed like they had before, effectively bumping into the bin of glass landscape decorations in trying to brush past him. He took the time to balance the tin, centering a blue butterfly and it’s green caterpillar counterpart before dashing off after you.

Jimin and Jeongguk appeared as though they’d been caught with their hands in a cookie jar although they were no more than crowded around the computer monitor of a shop that Jimin owned and managed. Nonetheless, you seemed to pay no mind to their startled appearances, speaking past Jeongguk’s chin on Jimin’s shoulder to nod toward his forgotten order notepad flopped open on the glass container.

“Did you—”

“Orchids,” You said, “Pink ones, if you can.”

There was a strange lingering scent from the greenery Yoongi had helped you separate, one he didn’t notice until he was rubbing crooked fingers underneath his nose while waiting for Taehyung to answer his call. He squinted at the smell with a wrinkled nose until the dial tone rolled over to an obnoxious rustling that projected loudly through the speaker.

“How’s it going, married man?”

Yoongi flinched at the content of Taehyung’s words and the volume, using his thumb to lower it while holding the phone away from his face. When he was sure his manager’s excited outbursts wouldn’t be wholly projected to the entire hotel, he sighed, “I’m not married.”

“But you’re going to be soon,” Taehyung sang. More rustling on the other end. Yoongi wished he could hurl a much too white hotel pillow through the screen.

“Why did you send me five texts asking me to call you? What do you need?”

“Oh, right,” There was something muffling Taehyung’s speech now that wasn’t the aggressive sound of crinkling. The heel of Yoongi’s palm met his forehead in realization and he could picture the over-sized hamburger clenched between Taehyung’s fingers from miles away. “Namjoon and the team will be there with a new photographer tomorrow to get some staged shots for the press.”

“Staged…” Yoongi rolled to his stomach, sanctioning his weapon pillow against his chest, “Of what?”

“It’s supposed to simulate an engagement photo shoot. They want the pictures for a cover story. That’s why there’s a different photographer coming. You’ll actually get to meet this one,” More wrapper crinkling. An audible swallow. Yoongi began to think a pillow wasn’t the only weapon he needed.

“How am I supposed to do that with just me?”

“They only want your face. The anonymity adds to the suspense and interest,” Taehyung sighed, “They should be bringing a model with them. They’ll just be used for their shadow, essentially. Maybe their hands, hand shots of the rings will be good—”

“I don’t have rings.”

“We do.”

Yoongi groaned into the plush of his pillow. “Won’t that ruin the whole facade if someone figures out who the model is? I don’t want to drag a literal total stranger into this mess.”

“Give me a better idea, Yoongi. Use both your hands? Craft a cardboard cutout in your hotel room?”

“I just…”

If he closed his eyes, it was like traveling through idealization with a fish-eye's view, placing him first in the depth of that rickety old wardrobe piece while a hand he recognized as his own looted around inside to snatch a velvet box, one his point of view was tethered to as he then was transported to the inside of a backpack, rattled around inside with a yellow notepad and a handful of uncapped pens.

Somewhere along the way, the trip was halted, marked by a nonsensical swirl of color as his fingers rubbed at his eyes, Taehyung’s sarcastic rambles just background noise as the story picked back up in the forefront of his consciousness. It was a longing that generated the second half between the darkness of the backpack and the open breeze off the beach, viewpoint now situated in his own palm, looking up at your tear filled eyes, then skipping forward to peer into the familiarity of his own gaze as he was slid securely onto a finger.

It was the ridiculous daydream about becoming a literal piece of jewelry that made him speak, cutting off Taehyung’s increasingly outlandish suggestions.

“I’ll do it just…” Yoongi settled his chin on top of the pillow, letting his eyes open to the cloth headboard in front of him, “Don’t send the model. I have someone I can get to stand in.”

There were muffled noises of surprise marked by more, very apparent, chewing until Taehyung sighed, “Won’t that just create the same issue you said previously? What if someone finds out who your stand-in is? What do we do then? Pretend to marry the two of you?”

“That won’t happen,” Yoongi saw shades of pink in hazy petal shapes when he closed his eyes a second time, squishing his cheek against his free hand that rested on his pillow. “Just don’t send the model. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I don’t know much about the entertainment industry but don’t they generally have models available that can do these kinds of things?” You blinked across at Yoongi as his stylist, Mingyu, jabbed a makeup brush between the closed crease of your eyelids.

“They do if you’d like me to have them call one,” Yoongi shifted in his own chair, fiddling at the collar of his button up that had just been meticulously fixed for him. He tucked an index finger under the tight fabric, tugging it away from his neck. When that couldn’t sate him, he popped the top button and folded the lapels across his chest. “This isn’t exactly part of your contract…”

“It’s not.” He continued to be amazed by the nonchalant way in which you accepted his suggestion, seeming to move in autopilot since he rigidly explained the dilemma from your dew covered front porch that morning. Stunned must have graced his gaze when you glanced at him, your eyebrows raising considerably when Mingyu moved on to poke and prod at your hair, “But you’re my friend, so I’m helping you.”

You ducked a bit, catching his eyes that darted away while gloss tinted lips parting into a neat oval. “We are still friends...right?”

Yoongi masked his relief with his tone, pitching his voice in firm words so that you couldn’t hear the way his heart did several back flips that tickled the back of his throat and retrieved some of their broken pieces in their tumbling path, settling a bit of warmth that was a step closer to full into his chest cavity until it spread upward into the tiny tug on each curve of his lips.

“Of course we are,” Stoic faltered when you blinked at him. Yoongi let himself smile.

“One more question,” You lowered your voice, dipping a bit closer to him Mingyu shifted behind you to continue toying with your hair, “Why do I have makeup on if you won’t see my face?”

Yoongi’s shoulders bounced in silent laughter, lips wrinkling then rolling together to prevent anything audible and he shrugged. His healing heart let him study your face for far more time than necessary, finally settling on your eyes as his cheek nearly lulled to his shoulder.

“You look nice,” He assured gently.

You turned away, surprising Mingyu in the process as he now had better access to final touches, but even through the touches to your face with fingers and brushes and pads, Yoongi didn’t miss the trace of your smile.

“Okay you two…” The photographer approached you like walking through sand was wading through knee deep water, sandals dangling on feet he lifted in high stepping advancements until he was stationary in front of your folding chairs. Knee length jeans appeared to be self tailored by a pair of kitchen scissors and a pink hoodie hung off broad shoulders along with a camera dangling off an equally thick strap. “Are we ready?”

Yoongi slipped off his chair first, offering a hand to you. You took the offer delicately, feet hitting the sand with a minimal puff of debris. He was a breath away from addressing the photographer until he spoke to Yoongi’s publicist Namjoon instead, the only other individual wandering around beyond Mingyu’s box of equipment.

“No faces, right?”

“Uhm, you can get my face. Just...my face,” Yoongi smiled kindly, squeezing your hand in reassurance, “That’s preferred actually.”

The photographer blinked at the smaller man in front of him for a passing beat before addressing Namjoon again, “So...no faces then?”

“Seokjin,” Namjoon warned tiredly, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a crooked knuckle, “Cooperate.”

A wheezing laughter broke out from the photographer’s lips, Seokjin’s lips, the noise carrying upward into the coastal breeze of early afternoon. There was a minuscule tug on the twine of Yoongi’s fingers and he found himself, perplexed, glancing at you. Despite the fond expression on your lips, he could sense the confusion in your aura too. He gave a second comforting squeeze until Seokjin’s laughter quieted away into periodic hiccups placed between the raise of his free hand until it landed on Yoongi’s shoulder.

“I’m just joking,” A kind smile was left in the wake of Seokjin’s giggles, patting twice at Yoongi’s shoulder before he was off wading through the sand again.

You tugged down on Yoongi’s hand, squeaking, “Are we supposed to follow…?—”

He pulled in the opposite direction, leading you through the ruts Seokjin’s fussing left. When you caught up to him, shoulder bumping into his arm, he laughed quietly, “I guess so.”

“Okay!” Seokjin’s sweeping announcement sent a domino effect through the small caravan of three people now subject to the wind in the center of the beach. Yoongi bumped into him, you bumped into Yoongi, Yoongi was sure Namjoon was laughing from where he watched on. The photographer turned, catching sight of intertwined hands first and he lifted an eyebrow as he addressed Yoongi..

“Just your face, right?”

Instinctively, Yoongi pulled you closer even if the inquiry was spoken without any ulterior motive, instead a genuine confirmation. “Just my face,” Yoongi nodded sharply, “In fact, if we can limit the pictures to shadows and features—”

Seokjin held up a solaced palm, “No worries, I know what’s going on here.”

Yoongi felt your gaze on the side of his face but he situated his thinning eyes to the man in front of you as he began to fiddle at the various knobs and buttons on the back of his camera. His smile erased into something of confusion when he found Yoongi eyeing him, rushing in a series of startled noises to amend, “It’s understandable that you would choose to keep your partner anonymous if they are not in the spotlight themselves. I’ve covered it before—” Yoongi’s expression softened only slightly when Seokjin lifted his camera to his face and the lens twirled closer to the point of Yoongi’s nose. The shutter clicked over, making Yoongi blink, and Seokjin pulled the device away to squint at the preview. A thumbs up followed, paired with the purse of tulip shaped lips that spread into a kind smile, “—your secret is safe with me!”

Part of him forgot that there was a limited group who were aware of the full situation even in scheduled events like a photo shoot, a timeline for what was supposed to be something of life changing unity. The weight in his pocket wasn’t one that would hold any higher meaning, rings faux quality and meant to superimpose elegance where Namjoon had pulled them from a plastic prop bag. This wasn’t his bulky backpack with his deepest regret hidden in the front porch.. Instead, it was just another gimmick to save face and time for his favorite writing journal that he’d unpacked from his suitcase only to move over into the shoulder bag he carted around everywhere.

And, to some people, it looked like he was, truthfully and honestly, engaged to you.

There was a twitch of your hand in his and Yoongi relaxed with that pressure in mind, nodding once. A grateful smile laced the seam of his lips and he backed off of his stance with a nod, “Oh, right. Thank you…”

“Of course,” Seokjin beamed, gesturing vaguely again, “Should we get those face shots first?”

You were turned gently around the pivot point that was your connected hands, free palm slipping gently into the crooked fingers Yoongi offered face up. As for your hand he’d previously held, you slipped it away, just quick enough to rub the clamminess against your thigh before returning it to its previous position. Slowly, you lifted your gaze to Yoongi’s.

He didn’t even try to hide his fond smile as the camera shutter whirred over your shoulder.

“Do couples actually do this?” You complained through clenched teeth, rigid smile coating your mouth even if no one could see you but him. Something genuine twitched upward in your lips when his smile grew a bit brighter at your whined complaints, “This is so awkward.”

“That’s great, perfect,” A few more clicks and the sound of Seokjin’s thumb against plastic buttons. “A few more...could you touch their face, maybe?”

Yoongi didn’t give you time to complain, cupping his palm to your face, stroking his thumb gently under your eye to soothe the tension that immediately curled upward in your shoulders.

“Better or worse now?” He teased, tilting his head to look between your wide eyes.

Your fingers responded to him, slipping around his wrist to keep his hand cradling your face. In the same moment, you took your hands that remained intertwined and molded his hand around your waist, stepping closer to him in the process. Your thumb pressed against his racing pulse point and he swallowed, a moot attempt to calm his heart that he was sure you could hear and feel.

“I don’t know,” You shot back, smile loosening, “You tell me.”

Yoongi shook his head, a genuine laugh emitting at your antics while his thumb continued it’s strokes to the apple of your cheek and his hand scrunched it’s way to the small of your back, holding you against him.

Seokjin jogged backward across the beach with some vague instructions, haphazard words sticking in Yoongi’s brain to act on. Pretend and dance. The implication of the words roused a single syllable laugh from your lips, head tipping back, more of an amused smirk settling into your expression when you came to.

“This should be good.”

Yoongi cocked an eyebrow, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” You repeated the challenge from before, a daring confidence seeping into your aura now.

His touch fell away from your face, holding his hand palm up instead. “Give me your hand.”

Your expression didn’t falter as your hand landed in his, head only tilting when he squeezed your hand and started to move you.

“You know, the sand doesn’t exactly make this easy.”

“Is that your excuse for squishing my toes?”

Yoongi’s expression crossed into horrified for a fraction of a second, “I haven’t stepped on you!”

“Not yet.”

“What if I dipped you?” He tightened his grip on your waist.

“Then they’ll see my face,” You squeaked when he half jerked to do so, lightly smacking his chest in retaliation.

“The picture will be cropped.”

“Yoongi—”

“I’m going to do it.”

And he did, a full pivot that bent you at the waist, half hovering over your angled stature. The slow spread of his laughter across his features came in time with his foot giving out as support underneath him, sending your figures stumbling a few paces. He managed to ground himself while you clawed at his shirt in an equal amount of startled joy, dragging yourself up by tight fists on the open collar of his shirt with your forearms pressed to his chest.

“I think you need some dance lessons, Min Suga.”

If you were anywhere else in any other circumstance with any other person, Yoongi would have kissed you. He told himself that, a firm response to his conscious that was trying to will his muscles to do so. He was wholly aware of the desire, one stirred by your proximity and your presence and you. And, given a few more seconds of silence aside from the lip of foam across neatly created ruts in the sand and the mechanical flick of a camera shutter, he might have excused the situation and the circumstance and the presence of another person.

But, Seokjin, who was none the wiser to any of it yet assumed the relationship before him was very real, tried to combat a kiss regardless. A loud, satisfied wah! Came as he approached in messy steps that sent sand flying everywhere below his still attached sandals, startling your embrace apart to find him hunched over the preview screen.

“Great,” His smile was knowing and his wink confirmed it, “Shall we move on to something else? Hands, maybe?”

Yoongi took to threading his fingers around yours to combat the heat that curled behind the thin layer of makeup on his features, staring straight at the overlap of your index and middle fingers around the bend of his thumb. You cleared your throat into the painful silence and the ambiance of waves continued to be blissfully unaware.

Seokjin sliced into the tension with confusion, “Uh, yeah, that’s great but...rings?”

Yoongi felt like those waves had just become self aware and barreled out of gravity’s clutches, swallowing him whole and effectively dragging him into their depths.

“I mean, if you guys aren’t doing rings, that’s fine too. There are all kinds of symbolic ways to outwardly show your unity, I just assumed it was with rings but perhaps that was wrong of me. We can do something else—”

The band meant for his finger was just too small but Yoongi jammed it on anyway, aided by the clamminess slowly engulfing every inch of his skin. Scrambled movements nearly sent yours tumbling to the sand below but he managed to secure it between the pinch of his thumb and index finger, joints twitching periodically as he let his gaze meet yours again. The tips of your fingers barely brushed his curled knuckles and he moved the ring out of your reach.

Yoongi swallowed, taking the crook of your left hand in his free one. “Let me.”

The hollow echo left by the screen door clattering shut on his shoulders felt like the raw crescendo before the soul gripping bridge in a song. Except the final chorus wasn’t the round trip loop, a tie up with a neat bow on top that made a song a story. His story wouldn’t lead him back to the rickety screen door and the creaky floorboards underneath the heavy piece of wardrobe furniture in his parent’s, your, business foyer.

Yoongi didn’t think the last time he’d open the top drawer would be to put the velvet box back, its contents still very much intact, his heart very much not. The plane ticket and apartment key mocked him, a reminder of his unfinished heart song, one he supposed would remain a rough draft with no clear path to an end.

At least, that end wouldn’t include you.

He felt selfish for the hot tears that pricked the back of his eyelids, the direct result of your excitement, your adamant exclamations of how perfect your futures were about to become. The guilt was eating him alive, that he couldn’t simply feel happy for you without his conscience drifting to the ring he’d bought you and how selfish, horribly selfish, his confession would be after you’d just poured your one track soul to him. He couldn’t remember half of what you’d told him due to his own personal inhibitions.

He couldn’t tell you he was hopelessly in love with you. He couldn’t do that to you.

Yoongi let the drawer shut for the final time, choosing to drag everything else out so as to not see the black box again. One tear became three, lipping down his nose and dropping onto his fumbling fingers as he jammed the lock into the knob, turning the mechanical click one more time.

And then, he simply went to bed. He had a flight to catch, after all.

“Is it true?”

He stopped flipping through the paperwork, non disclosure agreements and consent forms you’d scribbled your support onto in the dull blue pen Namjoon had handed you. You sat in the chair from before, makeup wipe Mingyu had handed you damp against your thigh as you instead took to fiddling at the diamond band still wrapped to your finger.

Yoongi pressed the pages shut, leaning into the back of your chair, “Is what true?”

You turned to peer up at him, diamond tucked between your fingertips, “...that you get to keep props sometimes.”

“You want to keep the ring?”

“It’s pretty,” The band slipped easily off your finger, cradled in your palm, “A little big, but that’s okay. Who doesn’t want the evidence of their first fake engagement?”

“Not your first magazine cover shoot?”

“No one will ever see my face. I’m basically a hand and head model.”

“You can keep the ring,” Yoongi conceded with a laugh, “Are you done with this paperwork? Nothing else you want to read?”

“I am and if you are as well—” You jumped off the chair to stand in front of him, “—I want to take you somewhere.”

“Don’t you have work to do today?”

“I’m working right now. Wait right here.”

He watched, silent, as you skipped over to where Seokjin was chatting with Namjoon in the small gravel area beyond the sand. Seokjin’s expression flitted to you while Namjoon’s went to him, raising an eyebrow while you tugged on the photographer’s sleeve to cup your hand around his ear.

“Yeah,” Yoongi heard Seokjin exclaim, scrambling backward away from your whispers with a frantic smile, “Yeah, of course. I have a few hours before my flight leaves. Lead the way!”

You approached him in a similar, giddy fashion, taking his wrist. He raised an eyebrow, stumbling a few dramatic paces when you tugged on his arm.

“Yeah. Lead the way.”

“Why are we at a dance studio?”

You tugged on the strap of his bag rather than his hand this time, ignoring him as you coaxed him through the glass doors. It was dimmer inside, lights shadowing the rounded front desk and the flutter of various flyers pinned to a cork board in the corner with the small ceiling fan that whirred overhead. Even then, Yoongi still startled at the noise, yes noise, of greeting the man twirling in an office chair at the front desk let out.

The man knew you by name, stretching forward rather than standing up to take your hand over the desk. He directed his attention to Yoongi next, standing but in a quieter fashion than his previous actions suggested, gradual in the way he held his hand out.

“And you’re...Suga, right?”

“Yoongi,” He corrected quietly, slipping his hand into the man’s, “Nice to meet you…”

“Soonyoung,” You and the man provided at the same time, effectively earning mingled laughter. “I thought I heard from somewhere that you were in town. Planning a wedding, right?” Soonyoung leaned away to pass his gaze between your two figures, “I guess the rumors must be true if you’re hanging around with this one.”

That earned a halfhearted swat from you and more giggles from the man as he shuffled around, presenting a clipboard to the top part of the desk. “Are you needing studio space again?”

You nodded, pressing a pen between Yoongi’s fingers and sliding the paper underneath his curled hand. He blinked absently at the words name, time in, and time out. You continued to talk while he feathered the general outline of his name above the line, “If anyone asks, it was his idea to rent studio space.”

Puzzled, Soonyoung slipped the clipboard from Yoongi to squint at it. “Will someone ask? Why would someone ask—”

Again, your hand was on the strap of his bag, dragging him around the corner, “If, Soonie, if!”

An echoed got it! was the last thing Yoongi heard until you shut him inside a dark studio space. He watched his shadow light up in the mirror when the lights crackled to life, tint uneven on his lips, shirt he wore to the shoot a bit haphazard across his collarbones, black fringe windblown and stuck in blinking eyelashes.

“Am I allowed to know why you brought me here yet?”

“I told you,” He watched in the reflection as you crossed the wood floor, crouching next to a small set of outlets with varying cords dangling out of them. You jammed the short white one into the end of your phone, prodding around with your index finger until the soft sound of something top forty began playing through the speakers. You stood, approach to his figure marked by swaying, off beat movements, “I’m giving you dance lessons.”

“Are you going to show me how to do that?” Yoongi accepted you when you took his hands despite his dismissive words, “Because if so, I don’t want them. I want a refund, in fact—”

“I told Seokjin to follow us here and take a picture of you signing up for dance classes. They’ll run the story like you did it directly after the cover shoot photos,” Dramatically, you swung your twined fingers together to the rising beat of the music, “Cute, right?”

Yoongi hummed, continuing to allow you to lead him in messy circles around the studio, “I thought Namjoon was my publicist?”

“Maybe you should hire me,” Your eyes cut in zigzags down his features before you dropped your chin, movements relaxing enough for him to take over, “This soft image suits you better, anyway.”

“You’ve been reading the articles?”

“Free publicity. Need to see how my business is being represented” You shook your head when he squinted at you, “I’m joking. They’ve never mentioned the business directly. The pictures don’t give enough clarity to location.”

You looked at him again, “So yes...I have read a few.”

“And they’re portraying me as…” Yoongi’s nose wrinkled, “Soft?”

“Quiet. Gentle. One who shows his love in simple ways,” One corner of your mouth turned up in a smile, “Frankly, it’s rather unfair that they thought anything otherwise.”

Another broken chisel of Yoongi’s heart slotted itself back into place, healing with the warmth that spread quickly to the tips of his toes. He squeezed your hands, “I’m glad you still see me that way.”

“The Agust D video though,” You gripped his hands back, tilting your head, “The bleached hair and the makeup. Perhaps I understand the savage hype—”

Yoongi shoved you away, a halfhearted attempt as you still clung on to him with the last link of your knuckles tucked between the empty spaces in his spread fingers. Laughter followed suit, mingling with the silent, shoulder bouncing emission of his before you were brought close to him once more. This time, there were no cameras. No Namjoon to type reports to Taehyung and Seungcheol, no Mingyu to tuck plastic ends of brushes into sea breeze hair, no Seokjin to fool. Second time failed to be the charm, Yoongi’s face leaning a fraction of a space closer to you until you dropped your gaze again.

“We can leave soon, if you want. Seokjin should be out of town by now.”

Yoongi didn’t move until his silence coaxed your eyes back to him. “I was dragged here against my will for dance lessons,” He let go of your hands, stepping back to shrug himself out of his cross shoulder bag and place his appendages on the high rise of his hips, “and I intend to get them.”

Lessons came less in the form of serious intention and instead manifested in you teaching him what not to do as he observed with his back against the mirror and his pen against his notepad. The yellow pages were no longer empty, the tray of ink shoved through the middle of his pen now considered to be used. The radio hit on max volume couldn’t drown out your laughter and if Yoongi ignored the tiny, unfamiliar space the joy was confined to, he could convince himself that everything was back to normal. That this was just another off day between carting flowers and chairs and catered crock pots to venues where he got to watch your joy overfill his heart with a warmth that he had to make space for more by manifesting that into something tangible.

Filled lyric notebook and all.

“This is going to look like a stock image.”

Yoongi couldn’t contain his snort, adjusting his stance a bit to fit your comment. Legs angled wide from his hips, arms folded neatly to his chest, nothing relaxed about his stature. He turned to where you were mirroring his position. “You’re probably right.”

Jeongguk leaned so far across Yoongi he stumbled out of his similar position, tripping to a stop between the two of you as he looked up with wide eyes. An apology came soft but his inquiry came an octave lower, “...what is going to look like a stock image?”

The item on the agenda was picking a venue, or rather, make it look like you were picking a venue. With the rumored wedding date less than days away, finishing touches were to be in order, but the press would be days behind by virtue of what was being actively publicized as a private wedding. And by the way you were standing just in front of a mock row of chairs beyond a meticulously decorated arch, pastel pinks and yellows and blues and purples, it looked like you’d just been cut directly from a wedding magazine’s ad section for structure rental. Yoongi wasn’t sure how the press would frame it. The house wasn’t the rumored location for the wedding, anyway. The beach was. But the press was only available for a short time, their hired stint by Yoongi’s company lasting until their flights left in the evening after they would capture what would eventually be the last of Yoongi’s wedding planning ventures.

He shifted in the plush grass, squinting closer at two flower pots that made symmetry to the front display of the mock wedding alter. The way they moved with the wind was artificial, and his focus slid to see if those beautiful petals on rungs of the arch were fake flowers as well.

“Do people actually have weddings here?” He thought back to his years as an employee. You’d always arranged for off property events. Your set up in the field behind the house suggested otherwise.

“Not yet,” You nudged Jeongguk where he’d scrambled to stand between the two of you, managed to fit his broad stature in the minuscule space, “Jeongguk has been heading the project to get us a space to do so here. We could offer a discount on the venue if they used our services. Extra profit.”

“But for now it’s just a mock set up,” Jeongguk nodded. “That’s why I don’t understand why we’re here...shouldn’t we be getting the last of everything set up at the beach?” He turned to Yoongi with a question in his round irises, “And Yoongi, when is your fiance’ getting in? Have you arranged for transportation from the airport? Should I go get them?”

“Jeongguk,” You touched his arm, squeezing gently, “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off? I’m going to need you to be at full capacity the next couple days.”

“But I can come help—”

“Jeongguk.”

Yoongi glanced behind him as the sound of tires on gravel descended, watching as the familiar SUV that had been trailing him through the weeks made it’s exit. Somewhere in his pocket, flight details buzzed from Taehyung. His gaze found your serious expression when the car peeled out of sight, speaking kindly to your coworker, “I’ve got it. Please take the night off. Tell Jimin the same.”

It hit him then that it wasn’t just you he’d be leaving to deal with the aftermath of his press playtime. In fact it was you that he’d be leaving to deal with it, your knowledge effectively making it ten times harder to sate what would essentially be a town’s population left confused and without him. The panic of it made his lips part but you cut him off before he could speak.

“Do you want to go down to the beach for a little bit?” Your eyes widened, gesturing to where Jeongguk was still very much in earshot in the trek for his car. “Make sure everything is in order…”

Part of him was relieved that you seemed to want to talk to. The tension left him in a sigh, “Absolutely. I’ll drive.”

“Hold your hand out.”

Yoongi blinked, still trying to shake off the vibrating blurs in front of his lenses from the force in which his head had smacked into yours. He rubbed at the space that throbbed in an attempt to lessen it, “What?”

“Unless you don’t want my gift. I can keep it.”

He was slightly disoriented but he didn’t miss the embarrassingly fast thrust of his hand toward you. “No,” He said simply, “I want it.”

You beamed, taking his wrist to press your fist against his palm. Slowly, you spread your fingers, depositing the smooth object against his skin. Then, you folded his fingers together over it, gently pushing his curled digits towards his chest.

“It’s a…”

“Orchid!” You nodded, bouncing slightly where you sat, “It’s a pin, if you want to put it on your backpack. Or you can just display it. It’s yours.”

Yoongi turned the glass piece over in his palm, stroking his index finger through the smooth rivets of glass where white and purple mixed in a marble like texture underneath the surface. His smile was teasing as he passed it to his opposite hand, “Anything to remind me of nearly dying in sinkholes trying to help you pick these, huh?”

“Shut up,” You dug your fist into his thigh, leaning closer to him again. Dangerous territory for the endeared roar of Yoongi’s heart in his ears. “Where’s my present?”

“What?”

“You told me to remind you that you had something else for me. You know, other than the orchids gathered by near death experience,” You blinked at his confusion, “This is me reminding you.”

The weight on his bag could finally be released, a weight that had previously tucked into that wooden drawer and forever had resided on the tenderest part of his stuttered heart. All his pent up emotions, ones swallowed down and confined to the red lines crossing horizontally on his yellow notepad, could be released, could fly off the page and relieve a bit of his intense yearning.

At the very least, he could say I love you out loud.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t bring himself to do that to you.

So, instead, Yoongi reached past you, bringing his lyrics back into his lap. His flips through the pages were calculated, counting until he made it to the eighth draft. Meticulous fingers peeled back everything in its way, tugging until it was a clean rip in the paper. Gently, he held the page out to you.

“A piece of paper—”

“It’s the song the label wants to release as my first single,” Yoongi blinked at you until your teasing sobered up, dropping back a bit from where you leaned over him to take the page with you, “The first draft of it anyway. I want you to have it.”

It’s for you.

Your eyes widened, squinting through its contents as the sun began to bath dusk pastels into the landscape surroundings. Yoongi added softly, “Something to remember me by.”

“You make it sound like you’re dying.”

“That’s what you said,” He laughed gently.

“Yeah, but the way you said it. The way you keep talking. This song…” You frowned, “You’re only moving a plane ride away. A phone call away at that. We don’t have to say goodbye.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

You tried to reach for his hand, “But not for good. This isn’t the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

Yoongi evaded your touch to make it hurt less. The more time between your last touch on his skin, the easier it would be to forget. He stood to not have to see the hurt in your eyes, holding his notebook against his chest as he reached for his backpack.

“Speaking of, I have to be at the airport fairly early tomorrow,” He adjusted the straps of his backpack, pointedly shoving his hands into his pockets. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

“Remember the last time we were here?”

“Similar circumstance, too,” You brushed spread fingers across the small hill of sand in front of your crossed ankles.

Glittering fairy lights strung to a timer on varying ends of the venue set up reflected on your skin and in your eyes when you eyed him. White chairs in a ten by thirteen grid buried into the sand, a velvet pink rug cut between the fifth and sixth chairs in the row, leading upward to where a white sheet took the place of where the wedding party would presumably stand. There was a custom arch, too, one Jimin had sweated over to have only the best pink and purple orchids threaded through the white rings and rungs. The venue space existed even when there wasn’t an event scheduled, that part of the beach roped off to tourists and locals alike, but it had certainly been magnified at the premise of the false wedding that was supposed to be occurring the Saturday following the current Thursday.

“You’re really leaving tomorrow?”

“Day after.”

“Ah,” You nodded, scooping up some of the sand and letting it drain between the spaces in your fingers, “Rather than being left at the altar, you’re doing the leaving.”

“I’ll have someone sent to help you clean everything up,” Yoongi touched underneath his chin, letting his fingers slide to the back of his neck, “I’d stay and help but—”

“No need,” You waved a hand, “Maybe making Jeongguk do it will suppress most of his questions.”

“Right…” Yoongi’s lips pressed into his cheeks, “Sorry about that, by the way. I hope he doesn’t think too horribly of me.”

You ceased all movements, turning to him. He paused in plucking miniscule specks of dust from his jeans, seizing at the softness of your tone. “Why are you saying a definite goodbye again?”

“I’m not.”

“Then you can make sure Jeongguk doesn’t hate you when you come back and visit. Or when you text me. I’m not asking for much. Even a happy birthday would suffice.”

He hadn’t felt a chomping sense of all consuming guilt since he’d lied about not saying goodbye before.

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” The curl of your hand wrapped around his index and middle fingers where they rested in the sand, “Just don’t say goodbye to me again. Not like before.”

The suffocating weight was back, like a crater sized boulder resting directly in the thinnest part covering his most vital organ. Yoongi let himself nod.

“Okay, angel. I won’t.”

You smiled away from his gaze, letting your fingers slide just barely away until the two of you were no longer touching. Instead, you scrambled, gathering your feet underneath you to crouch next to him.

“Want to help me pick some orchids?”

“Can I take them off the decorations?” You smacked him, standing yourself to brush sand from the backs of your thighs. “What? No one is going to see them anyway.”

“Don’t remind me,” It was scoffed but he sensed the sincerity. He didn’t want to remember either. “Come on, I think there’s a patch further up the shore—”

Yoongi fully woke the third time his cell phone rang on his bedside table. The light bathed his stack of packed luggage in the corner when he dragged it closer, ignoring the caller ID in route to accept it and press it against this ear.

“Yeah?—”

“Yoongi,” Taehyung sounded as exhausted as the sand heavy behind his eyes felt, “I booked you an earlier flight. You’re to get on it.”

“Why?”

“Do it. Details are in your email. Don’t look at social media, if you can help from it.”

“I won’t look at social media,” Yoongi found it within himself to snort, rubbing at his eyes with a tired knuckle, “How early is this flight? I still have to pay the wedding planner.”

“Let us do that. We’ll direct deposit it. It’s the twenty-first century, we should do it that way, anyway.”

“Taehyung,” He sat up in bed, letting his duvet and sheets curl around his torso as he squinted at the soft white filtering through the sheer curtain of the singular window in the room, “I’m not leaving without telling them goodbye. They’ve helped me, us, tremendously through this. The least I can do is tell them thank you in person.”

“Besides, what’s the rush for me to get back? I don’t have a schedule for at least another two weeks.”

“Yoongi, they know.”

In the silence left by that vague yet horrifying statement, Yoongi swore he heard a camera click. Then another. Then a flash to pair.

“They know what? Who is they?”

“The press. And not that the engagement is fake,” Taehyung rushed to amend as if that made it any better, “They found out where you are. Someone must have been tipped off through the pictures we published and sent their own team to investigate. And they found out the identity of the wedding planner. Which, I kind of commend you, having them step in for those pictures was genius. Are they wanting any extra money for pretending to be engaged to you? Seungcheol said he’d pay whatever they want. You should see the headlines, marrying the wedding planner, the story just keeps getting cuter!”

“You told me not to look at the headlines,” Yoongi cut off numbly. He was on autopilot moving about the room, yanking things back out from their neatly packed suitcases, managing to locate a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that vaguely matched. “I’ll call you later.”

“The flight, Yoongi! Don’t do anything stupid please—”

There was a small group of reporters waiting on him in front of the hotel, ones he managed to shake off with relative ease but it did nothing to calm his nerves as he sped through familiar streets to get to you. He found the same scene in the parking lot of Be Happy, a handful of reporters crowded around with their cameras and phone mics and notebooks, shouting out questions that were still so far off base from the reality of the situation that it forced a headache behind his ears and on the spot below his fringe almost immediately. He shrugged them off too, leaving them at the gates to the drive that you hadn’t opened well into business hours, jogging until he reached the front door.

It was locked, understandably so, forcing him to tap knuckles gently at first and harder the more frantic he got while calling your name. “Angel, it’s me. Let me in, please, let me help.”

Yoongi saw red, red and pink, and more red when you fiddled at the locks, dragging the door open to reveal tear filled eyes that only amplified at his presence and the volume of the shouts outside. He touched you only enough to shuffle you backward, letting the door shut behind him and he was halfway through locking it when you thrust something toward his face.

It was a blurry picture from the night before, your face fully on display as you accepted something that was very much not an orchid from his grasp. It was a weed, something Yoongi knew the name of when his only thought wasn’t occupied by the tears lipping angrily down the slope of your nose.

“I don’t know why it shocked me, really. That someone found us. Even if I hadn’t done that photo shoot with you, it wouldn’t have mattered. People would have assumed it was me, anyway. People were already starting to question with all the things your company allowed to be released. I was getting weird phone calls to the business phone and I just assumed they’d all go away when you did,” You swiped your phone away from him, letting it clatter harshly to the circle table, “I didn’t think the universe was selfish enough, that you were selfish enough to leave me like that again.”

“You should have told me you were getting weird calls,” Yoongi rasped hoarsely.

“Right, and what would you have done?” You blinked, “Called it all off? And then what, left me again?”

“Why do you keep saying that, angel—”

“Don’t. Do not call me that,” You held up a hand, collecting yourself until the streams of tears weren’t as thick on your skin, “I keep saying that because it’s what happened. You left me here without so much as a second glance back. Then, when you needed me again, something to save face for a writer's block, you came back.”

“Why couldn’t you have just come home before that?” You were sobbing again, unable to help it. Yoongi felt all the healed pieces of his heart scar for a second time, “You were always writing when I was here. I could have helped you.”

“And I did help you. But I hurt myself. I had to live through all the reasons why I fell in love with you with no plausible endgame that wouldn’t shatter my heart. Again,” You laughed despite the unattractive sniffle you sucked in, “You did this to me again.”

He could hear his heart in his ears, “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“How could you have?” Another laugh, one that made Yoongi wince, “You forgot to not forget me. Even then, you never let me get a word in.”

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Great,” He watched your fists curl at your side, setting your shoulders, “Then if you’ll excuse me—”

“What—”

“I have a wedding to get ready for,” You shrugged, “That’s what everyone expects, right? Then that’s what we’ll give them. In real time, not on some corporate media delay.”

“I’ll fix this. I will, I’ll—”

“Yoongi.” You paused across the room from him, facade clearly shattering as you begged, “Please just go. You probably need to pack for your flight tomorrow still, right?”

“Angel.”

“Go.”

“You’re to call it off. Now.”

Seungcheol sighed into the phone speaker, overlapped by Taehyung interjecting, “We can’t do that, Yoongi.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. I do not care how you cover this up, how you choose to handle it, or if you have to eliminate my contract. I don’t have a preference and I don’t have any ideas,” Yoongi sighed into his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, “All I ask is that it’s called off. That the media knows it’s not happening and that they leave me and everyone in my hometown alone.”

“All I can think is to suggest that the wedding is postponed indefinitely due to some sort of complications—”

“Great, do that. I’m not taking my flight, either. Neither flight.”

“You have schedules in a few weeks.”

“I’ll handle that when the time comes,” Yoongi sighed, covering his face with his hand, “I just...I really need to stay here for as long as possible.”

Taehyung continued to mutter to himself while Seungcheol murmured, “May I ask why?”

“It’s a long story,” Yoongi eyed the bouquet of pink in his fist, swallowing toward the heavy tides as they propelled towards the shore on the heels of heavy winds, “I’ll have to tell you some other time. But right now...I have to go.”

In any other circumstance, Yoongi would have sobbed seeing you ascend the aisle. And frankly, in the given circumstance, he wanted to as well, breath welling in the base of his throat when you hesitated upon seeing his figure, choosing eventually to drop your head and stalk for him. When you were in earshot, he said, “You didn’t pause.”

Tear tracks were still evident on your skin, fresh in fact, when you glared in confusion, “What?”

Yoongi gestured with his free hand, cuffs on his suit jacket riding up over the jewelry dangling from a delicate wrist bone as he pointed for the place beyond the last row of chairs. “You’re supposed to pause until the proper music starts. Standard wedding procedure.”

“Good thing this isn’t a wedding,” Your fingers brushed at your cheeks, trying to cover up, “Why are you still here? I figured you’d be long gone by now.”

“Change of plans. I don’t think I’ll be leaving for a little while now. Turns out I have a fiance’ here,” He took one step toward you, kicking up sand with the polished toe of his dress boot, “Weird, right? Who would have known…”

A short huff left through your nose. “You’re lucky you’re cute. Otherwise, I wouldn’t find this funny.”

“I don’t think this is funny. Not what I have to tell you, at least.”

“Well get on it with it,” You kicked up some sand without moving, “I have wedding details to finish.”

“I’ve kept this in for far longer than I should have. I thought it would be selfish of me to say it, especially when I really wanted to. After all, I was leaving. I wasn’t just leaving to go to university a few towns over or to accept an internship. I was signing to release an album. A real life album, something I’d always dreamed of doing.”

“And in my ideal situation, you would come with me. You would have taken the scholarship for that business school and at least stuck by my side for just a few more years. It was selfish of me to even have the thought. I feel guilty about it every day.”

“The extension of that thought was why I had it in the first place. Why my conscience would even think to conjure up such a painting of the future, one that included you in the short term but would assure you in the long run. Hopefully. I always hoped that.”

“When it didn’t work out that way, I didn’t want to give you any indication that I had wanted that in the first place. You had your mind set up and you were so excited. So excited. I couldn’t do anything to pull you away from that. I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to.”

“And I’ve regretted it every day since that night,” Yoongi used the bouquet as a wand, waving it vaguely as his free hand dug around in the pocket of his jacket. “Have you ever looked through the drawers of that wardrobe piece in the foyer of the first floor?”

You blinked, welled up tears not able to break from the streams you’d previously wiped away, “I could get all but the top right open after your parents moved out. I guess I lost the key to it.”

“It’s because I had the key,” The black box balanced between his fingers, tucked underneath the first knuckle on his thumb and the pad of his index finger, “This was in there.”

Yoongi popped the box open, revealing the glittering band inside. It was real, unlike the prop you’d happily collected from the photo shoot, polished in its original condition where the dusted outer edges of its container didn’t fare the same. “This is what I had to give you that night. It’s not what you think,” He shrugged, shifting to let the box slide fully into his cupped palm, “Or maybe it is. I wasn’t proposing, certainly. But I didn’t want to give you this. Not the draft of that song. Nothing else.”

“And it had a message attached to it so—” Yoongi thrust the flowers toward you, waiting until you took them so he could fully cradle the ring box in both hands, “—if you’ll allow me to be just a little bit selfish for a second, I’d wholly appreciate it.”

“I’m in love with you. I always have been and at this point, I think I always will be. My goodbyes and my horrible communication all were done with the idea of protecting you in mind but now I know it did nothing but hurt you more and for that, I apologize.”

He stepped twice, bringing him to stand directly in front of you. “I don’t think what would have happened if I would have told you all this that night. I can’t predict and I don’t want to think about it. I can’t change it,” Yoongi shut the ring box, gripping it tight in one hand as his opposite appendage tested your wet cheek, finger breaking the trail in route to cradle your face, “but I’m telling you here and now that I love you, angel. I really, really do.”

“I can tell you what would have happened.”

Yoongi frowned, attention split between clearing your tears and watching your teeth try to collect your trembling bottom lip.

As if it clarified, you added, “I would have told you the same thing I’m about to tell you now.”

“I love you. Then, now, always,” You sniffled into quiet laughter, “Even a few Min Suga scandals can’t push me away.”

The seam of your lips tasted like salt and strawberry lip balm and you, one touch of your mouth as a result of the words Yoongi had waited years to hear come out of your mouth effectively sweeping up all the pieces of his shattered heart into a dustpan and fusing them back together, leaving it to soar in his ears as the moon fondly watched his hand on the side of your neck draw you closer.

“I have two questions,” You mumbled against his lips. “Can I have the ring now? I think I’ve waited long enough.”

Yoongi laughed, pecking your mouth one more time in fear you’d dissolve into the ocean waves and he’d wake up in his apartment in the city. His grip fumbled the box back open, just as shaky as he had been in pushing the fake ring onto the proper finger as he nodded, “Yes, you certainly have. Second question, shoot.”

“Do I still have to marry you tomorrow?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Better you than J-Hope,” You grinned through your tears when he laced your fingers together to squeeze your hand, dragging you in for more sweet affections from his pouted mouth.

“Right,” Yoongi punctuated his words through stamped kisses down your jaw, “I’ll remember you said that when I introduce you two.”

“Besides. I’m only wary about the wedding being tomorrow,” Your features scrunched when he nosed your cheek, “We need a little more time to plan, don’t you think?”

“Maybe just a few years. Maybe just a few months,” You shrugged when his gaze returned to yours, laughing as the realization flickered over in real time to Yoongi’s expression, “Just some more time I think would be good.”

Yoongi hummed, letting go of you to pry apart the stems in your hand picked bouquet, careful in plucking one of the flowers away from the center before reaching to pleat it behind your ear, lips following to settle on your cheek.

“Good thing I know a wedding planner.”

Min Yoongi, better known as rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer Min Suga released his second studio album on Friday. Titled ‘Orchid’, it’s rumored to be a series of poems written for and about his spouse with which he recently celebrated marriage to from the privacy of his secluded, beach side hometown. This release comes nearly four years after his debut album and some fans have speculated the songs seem to be speaking to each other, as though the track lists tell the story of the couples love from Min’s perspective. The album is projected to debut number one, proving that perhaps the wait is, in fact, worth it in the end.

#bts reactions #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts x reader #bts fluff #yoongi imagine #yoongi imagines #yoongi x reader #yoongi fluff #fic: orchid

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