#Like her sisters pull up with the coolest knock your socks off throw you in a woman loving induced coma punk outfits known to anyone

[teamfortresstwo]

No thoughts head empty only Dusa and Zag going to concerts together .

[superspookywombat]

falling {j.h} chapter nine

Warnings: mentions of sexy stuff kinda (rated PG13 at the most)

Taglist:  @Sleepy-whore @geekysimmerthings @mauvette268 @treestarrrrrrrr @kaleigh404 @krazykatkay456 @meganlikesfandoms @darknacademia @hi-my-name-is-riley @vdtwsupernatural @selmeuuh @raindancer2004 @wondersandtempests @royale-trash-slytherin @im-hella-bright @bootylimpics @livfg @It-is-rebel-owl-ma-dudes @peacemusicinch @coffeeslut16 @bvbwestfall @Actuallyedythecullen @stan-joonies @Peacebuglove @Millie-753 @Frozenhuntress67 @i-tried21 @seaevans @femflorals @arseofrivia @trashysara @vulgarfuckinvirgo @sleepysnapesnake @hey-bulldogs @mental-breaker-74 @pansexual-and-eating-pancakes @duty-isnt-always-honour @jelly-fishy-babie @carnagefuck @clubpengiunn @wondersandtempests @100-percent-loving @fandomsandmore394 @pomiotszatana @cherrybuck @alohorcruxes @harryskillerqueen @left-in-the-woods @galaxypox @what-if-im-the-bad-guy @daughterofanarchy997 @camillapad @babieboth @thequeerishere555 @your-average-wallflower @anxiety-station @xo-sophiemae-xo @rachthestressedbandobsessed @amordesiempre01 @avalon68 @imaginebeinlovedbyme @vampiregirl1797 @scuzmunkie @maelleoute @popwhitlockanddrop

A/N: (i think i got the taglist fixed now oops) emmett is the biggest spongebob stan and you can’t change my mind. he makes SB references constantly and rosalie hates it.

“So... you and Edward..” You trail off as you and Bella sit in front of the tv. She doesn’t bother to turn to look at you while she responds.

“What about us?” She asks. You sign and take the remote, turning down the volume on the reruns of Psych.

“Well, have you two.. You know..” You trail off again, not really wanting to say the words and have the mental image of that in your head. Bella freezes for a moment before snapping out of it.

“No, we haven’t done it.” She mumbles. You make a face and turn to look at her. 

“Why not? You two have been together for, like, an eternity.” You say. She makes a noise, sounding like a mix of a scoff and a chuckle.

“He wants to wait until marriage.” She sighs. You raise your eyebrows and put down the red nail polish you were using.

“Really? Are you sure the guy’s human?” You tease. She gives you a look. “What! I’m just saying! He’s hot, I don’t know how you keep your hands off of him. And, I mean, you’re hot too, just look at who you’re related to.” You wink. 

“You act like I’m completely oblivious to his appearance.” She says. You raise an eyebrow at her response.

“I’m just saying, if I had a boyfriend like that, it would take all I have to not jump his bones at any possible second.” You shrug. “But you have to respect his wishes, and it may suck to you, but it’s important to him. And anyways, it’s not like that means no making out or anything. You can run the bases without going all the way home, you know?”

“Wish I didn’t.” She says. You nudge her shoulder with yours. “So, enough about my love life..”

“Or, we can return our focus back onto Shawn and Gus.” You say, clearing your throat. Bella notices your change in attitude and quietly gasps.

“You kissed him!” She accuses. Heat flushes to your cheeks and ears.

“He kissed me.” You clarify. She lets out a breathy chuckle and brushes her hand through her hair.

“And?” 

“It was awesome.” You say. “Who knows, I might win this virginity race.” 

“It is not a race!” Bella laughs, hitting your shoulder. You scoff, hitting her back and then scooching far away from her on the couch.

“Yeah, because I’d win.” You tease. She rolls her eyes and returns her focus back to the show.

------------------------

You’re laying on your bed, flipping through travel brochures your mom sent you when Bella walks into the room, shutting the door behind her.

“Good evening, sister.” You say in a fake proper accent. She sighs and falls down onto her bed backwards. You raise an eyebrow. “Rough day?” 

“Can I tell you something and you swear not to tell anyone else?” She asks, staring at the ceiling. You close the brochure and sit up, hugging a pillow to your chest. 

“Always.” You say. She stands back up and comes over to your bed, sitting down and pulling one of your pillows to her chest, mimicking you.

“Um, Edward sort of.. Proposed.” She barely gets the words out before you slap a hand to your mouth to cut off an impending gasp. Your eyes widen as she goes more into detail about the event.

“You- I- when I said you needed to respect him waiting ‘till marriage I didn’t mean get hitched !” You say, scrambling to find the right words.

“Shhhh! Charlie’s home, don’t be so loud.” She scolds in a harsh whisper. You can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up from your throat, and a moment later, you fall over in hysterical laughter. 

“You.. You.. Charlie!” You laugh. Bella watches you as you howl in laughter.

“I’m glad you find this funny.” She says coldly. You calm down for a moment, that is until you remember she has to tell Renee too. “Okay, fine. See if I ever tell you anything again.”

“Oh, lighten up.” You say, catching your breath. “Just be sure Charlie isn’t armed when you tell him.”

“Yeah, no crap.” She sighs. After you calm down a moment or two later, you return your gaze to Bella, only to see her looking solemnly at the wall.

“Hey.. show me the ring.” You say softly, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. She keeps her eyes on the wall.

“Edward has it.” She says. You glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand.

“It’s only nine, maybe he’s still awake.” You suggest. “It sounds like Charlie’s passed out, we could sneak out the window.”

“Who are you and what have you done with y/n?” Bella says. “Okay. Get some shoes on, I’ll call Edward.”

“Yes ma'am.” You salute her. She tiptoes down the stairs as you slip a sweatshirt on over your pj shirt and some fuzzy socks on. After Bella returns with the ‘go ahead’ from Edward, you tuck your Ninja Turtle pj pants into some soft boots. She cracks open the window and you follow her as you climb down the trellis. As soon as your feet hit the grass, you grab Bella’s hand and you both run down the street. You spot Edward’s vehicle and you climb in after Bella. 

You sit in the back, used to third-wheeling this way after being driven to school over the last few months. “So, congrats to the happy couple.” 

“You told her.” Edward states. He doesn’t seem mad, infact, his voice almost has no emotion in it at all. Bella nods and he grabs her hand, holding it on the center console as he drives.

-------------------------------

When you step foot into the Cullen’s house, the first thing you notice is two new people sitting on the couch, the woman flipping through a magazine and the guy watching something on tv. They both look as effortlessly flawless as the rest of the family, of course. The blonde lifts her head up, then stands and walks out of the room. Doctor Cullen and his wife sit at the dining table as she draws in a notebook and he reads. Alice and Jasper aren’t anywhere to be seen. Bella stands to the side as Edward holds her close to him while you slip off your boots. You stand in the entryway until Bella suggests you go sit down in the living room while she gets the ring. You walk into the spacious room and sit down gingerly on the couches, finally seeing what’s playing on the large tv- Spongebob.

“Sick pants, dude!” The beefy, unfamiliar guy says. You pull at the soft fabric, stretching Mikey’s face out.

“Thank you. They’re really comfortable.” You say, smiling at him. He leans forward, out of his seat, and holds out his hand. You shake it, ignoring the goosebumps that form from the chilliness of his skin.

“I’m Emmett,” He says. “I’m the coolest Cullen.”

“Y/n-” You respond. “The coolest Swan.” Emmett laughs, a big contagious booming laugh, and lays back into the couch. You relax a bit, instantly comforted by his cool demeanor. 

“You can change the channel if you want, I’ve seen this episode like, 80 million times.” Emmett offers. 

“Oh! I’m good, thanks. I like Spongebob.” You answer quickly. He nods and glues his eyes back to the tv. It’s about five minutes until Bella enters the room again, a tiny box in her hand. She sits down next to you, Edward leans against the arm rest, barely letting Bella a foot from his arm’s reach. 

“So it was Edward’s m-” She starts. Emmett shushes her, leaving Edward to brotherly scold him.

“Just- hold on. You can wait until commercials.” You say, raising a finger to her to shush. She glances at Emmett, then you, then Edward. 

“My God, it’s like they’ve combined their personalities.” Bella sighs, running her hand through her hair. 

“Let’s hope for y/n’s sake they didn’t.” Edward says, humoring her. Emmett doesn’t even look away from the screen as he picks up a throw pillow and chucks it at Edward, knocking him off balance as a flurry of down feathers rain down on you and the surrounding area.

“Sorry, Esme!” Emmett yells out, shrinking down into the couch shyly.

[gukyi]

pen pals | jjk

⇒ summary: to put it simply, pretending to be jungkook’s pen pal when you were both eight just so he wouldn’t be disappointed was a bad idea, because now he’s in love with them. or, well, you, he just doesn’t know it. 

⇒ friends to lovers au

⇒ pairing: jungkook x reader

⇒ word count: 11k

⇒ genre: fluff, light angst, lighter smut

⇒ a/n: no, i don’t have an obsession with writing cute jungkook fics, idk what you’re talking about. this is unedited, as per usual. 

Lies. They’re a pretty damn funny thing, if you’re being honest. Some lies can ruin lives, while others can save them. Some mean the entire world to people, others are about as insignificant as the pebbles that crumble off of the edge of the sidewalk. But one thing is for certain, and it’s that all lies, every single one of them, have the ability to take something as small as a ladybug and turn into something as big as a whale.

It starts when you’re eight, sitting at your desk at school. Actually, you’re not really sitting, you’re doing that thing where you push yourself off of the ground and balance on the chair’s hind legs, which never really works out, because you always fucking fall every time you do it.

Truthfully, the whole thing starts a long time before that, a whopping two years prior to the inciting incident, when you first met Jungkook as little children marching into the first grade together, but who cares about that? The eighth year of your lives is where things really begin to kick off.

“We’re getting pen pals,” your teacher says to the class, making all of the children gasp in excitement. The mere mention of it makes you fall flat on your back, though that would have happened had she not said a word.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m fine, I’m fine,” you reply, rolling off of your chair and pulling it upright, sitting back in your seat like the well-behaved child you should be.

“There’s an organization that connects kids like yourselves to others all over the world, meaning none of you will have a pen pal from the same place. I have the names and locations assigned to each of you, and I will be handing them out, along with a blank sheet of lined paper, for you to write to them.”

You turn to Jungkook, who is bouncing up and down in his seat excitedly as he waits for the slip with his own pen pal’s information on it. When the teacher places it on his desk, he shows you with a rectangular grin on his face.

“Look! Look, they’re from South Korea! Isn’t that neat? I wonder if they know Korean,” he says aloud. “Maybe I can get Jeonghyun to write to them in Korean.”

“But then if they responded in Korean, you wouldn’t know what they’re saying!” You point out.

“Oh, I guess you’re right. I’ll just ask them.”

And then off he was, pulling a pencil the length of a decently-sized ant out of his backpack’s front pocket, and writing away.

Having pen pals is one of those things that you read about in books meant for higher-grade elementary-schoolers, where you think it’s super cool and exotic and special until you actually do it yourself, and it turns out to be none of those things. Your contact with your pen pal dies exactly one week after you receive their letter back, one of those standard ‘Thanks for writing to me! Hope we can continue speaking!’ that you never follow through with. Your pen pal is from somewhere in Europe — Italy, if you’re not mistaken — but it’s not as if the place interests you so much that you desperately want to keep talking.

Jungkook, however, ever the overzealous and over-engaged eight-year-old, finds himself enchanted by the basic information his pen pal provides, avidly writing back everytime he gets a letter from them in the mail.

Eight-year-old Jungkook is a pretty dynamic fellow, if you do say so yourself, the boy involved in nearly every extracurricular on the planet. You feel so bad for his poor mother, who has to drop him off at swim practice only to pick him up and immediately drive to chess club, then to the mathletes, then to his piano lessons, then to dance. Kid only gets home at nine at night, even for an elementary schooler, so it seems pretty typical for him to be equally as intrigued with the concept of pen pals as he is everything else.

And, as his honorary best friend and the only one willing to put up with his ridiculous schedule in order to plan play dates, you hear all about it.

“Y/N!” He shouts, bounding down the hallway as you sit patiently on his couch, let into his house by his mother as you wait for him to leave his room to greet you. He’s holding a torn envelope and an unfolded letter in his hand as he rushes over to you, pulling himself up onto the couch next to you. “Look! She wrote back.”

“What’s her name, again?”

“I told you, it’s Hari,” Jungkook reminds you, like it’s such a big deal that you’ve completely forgotten everything about his pen pal. “Look, look what she said,” he repeats, shoving the letter into your hands.

“Dear Jungkook,” you begin to read. “I can’t believe you’re also Korean! Just my luck. It must be very cool to be Korean but not live in Korea. Can you speak Korean? I can. What’s your favorite color? Mine is purple, but I also really really like pink. Do you have any pets? I want pets, but I can’t because my younger brother is very allergic. Do you have any brothers or sisters? What are their names? Hari.”

“Isn’t she just the coolest?” Jungkook beams as you hand the letter back to him. “She’s so fun to talk to.”

“Isn’t this only your first letter from her?”

“Yes, but she responded very fastly.”

You open your mouth to tell him that that’s not a word, but you close it, deciding that it’s not worth ruining his mood to point out one of his mistakes.

“What are you going to write back to her?”

“I don’t know,” he says, huffing as he looks down at the letter. “Help me?”

“Okay,” you agree, following him to his room as he brainstorms all the answers to Hari’s questions. Once he’s closed the door, you lie on your stomach on his carpet as he sits at his desk and writes, keeping your eyes focused on the way his feet dangle off of the chair, too short to reach the ground.

The letters go back and forth for the next couple of months or so, Jungkook easily being the only kid in your entire class to somehow manage to maintain a relationship with their pen pal past the first few weeks. He talks about Hari like she’s actually there with you, sitting in the same class and listening to the same lesson. Any average person would probably grow to be a bit jealous of his relationship with a girl he’s never met, but considering the fact that you know Jungkook would never drop you, his only friend, you’re pretty unfazed by the whole thing.

“I’m trying to get her to send me a photo of her,” Jungkook admits to you one fine day outside, the two of you sitting under the shade of a thin birch tree as you watch the rest of your grade run around on the field, playing something along the lines of ‘Chase the Girls’. You’re glad you have Jungkook to guard you from being dragged into that mess of a game. “But she won’t. Why?”

“Maybe her mom won’t let her.”

“But my mom let me send a photo of myself to her,” Jungkook whines, throwing his head back in anguish and knocking it right against the bark, an unsettling hollow sound echoing by your ears.

“Maybe her mom is different,” You suggest.

“I’m gonna keep asking her. Maybe she’ll send one eventually,” Jungkook decides firmly, like every other eight-year-old when they make the decision that they want something, and they’re gonna get it.

“You shouldn’t make her feel bad for not showing her face,” you inform him. “That’s rude.”

“I won’t, you sound like my mom.” Jungkook frowns at you, raising a disappointed eyebrow your way.

You choke back a snort. “Maybe she doesn’t want to send you a photo because the one of you was so ugly, that she didn’t want to make you feel bad.”

Jungkook scoffs, as if the scenario is impossible. “That’s dumb. I’m the cutest eight-year-old you’ve ever seen. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t know, I mean, I’m sitting right here.”

Jungkook places a hand over his chest in mock offense before he pushes you over and into the grass. You retaliate by grabbing the edge of his cobalt blue shirt and pulling him down with you, leaving the both of you in a fit of giggles as the teacher opens the door to signal the end of recess.

Much to your relief, Jungkook receives a glossy photo of Hari by the next week. She’s grinning from ear to ear in the photo, messy bangs covering the top half of her eyes with fairy pink icing all around her mouth and almost none on the chocolate cupcake she’s holding. It’s one of the photos printed from an old camera, you can tell by the orange letters at the top right corner, signalling the date it was taken. You’re just glad you don’t have to hear him whine about it anymore.

The day he receives the photo is the day that Hari officially cuts off all contact with him, only he doesn’t know it yet. He’s too busy gloating in your face about the photo, getting his oily fingerprints all over the nice, shiny paper as he waves it in your face at his home.

“And you said she wouldn’t send me one,” he taunts, marching around with the photo like a damn champion holding a trophy.

“I didn’t think she would,” you reply, squinting your eyes at him. “What are you gonna say back to her?”

“I think those cupcakes look delicious.”

“That’s it?” You say, furrowing your brows.

“Am I supposed to say anything else?”

“Tell her she has nice hair.”

“Do girls like being told they have nice hair?” He questions, scrutinizing the photo.

“Some of them do.”

“But I think she has bad hair.”

You take the nearest throw pillow you can grab and fling it at him from where you stand, throwing it over the couch in between the two of you as it socks him in the jaw.

“Hey!” He shouts from where he’s fallen over.

“Trust me, Jungkook. I know girls, and she’ll like being told she has nice hair, even if you don’t think it’s very nice,” you insist. “No one cares about what you think.”

Jungkook purses his lips in disgust, very obviously not wanting to compliment her hair in the letter he sends back. “Do you like being told you have nice hair?” He asks, turning his attention towards you.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” you state, standing up tall.

“Well, your hair looks ugly today, too.”

This prompts a full-on pillow fight between the two of you, knocking each other over with every pillow in sight, as well as a couple tissue boxes. Hopefully, his mother doesn’t have anything very expensive sitting on wobbly tables in the room, because neither of you will relent until the other surrenders.

Spoiler alert: you win.

Nearly two weeks pass and Jungkook still has no response letter from Hari, him informing you of this as he mopes about having to visit the mailbox every day, only to be let down every time he opens the flap.

“Maybe she’s running late. Maybe Korea is busy and can’t send letters right now because something came up. You know, sometimes, when my mom has a really important letter to send, she waits an extra day just to proofread it like five times. Maybe she’s doing that.”

“But it’s been so long,” Jungkook whines. “I complimented her hair just like you told me. I want to know if she likes it.”

Truth be told, you never find out if she likes his compliment about her hair, because by the third week, you can pretty much tell that she’s given up, just like every other eight-year-old on the planet who ever attempts to maintain a relationship via pen pal. The only thing is, is that Jungkook is still as hopeful as ever, his faith in her not dwindling even the slightest.

You have to admit, it’s a little bit disheartening to see some girl give up on a guy as involved and genuinely interested as Jungkook, but you give Hari the benefit of the doubt anyway, as she likely has much more enjoyable things to do than write letters to a boy who once bragged to you about he could fit his entire foot in his mouth, and then proceeded to show you.

It’s still a shame, because Jungkook truly seemed pumped about his pen pal, and for it to just vanish in front of his eyes can be a punch to the gut to any child.

If anybody asks you, you do it because you can’t bear to hear the kid moan and groan about how the mailman has started to tease him for always waiting for the mail after school, and not, under any circumstances, because you actually care for the boy’s feelings and don’t want him to get hurt. You’re doing this for you, not for him. The greater good. Taking one for the team.

As you sit down to get writing the letter to Jungkook, praying that he’s too stupid to recognize the differences in handwriting, your mother opens the door to the reserved computer room you have, and you get an idea.

There’s no way Jungkook can call you out for handwriting similarities if you type the thing.

Dear Jungkook,

Sorry for the late reply! My family just got a new computer, so I was busy figuring out how it worked instead of writing to you. We even got it connected to the printer, how cool is that?

Thank you for the nice thing you said about my hair. It was kind of a mess that day, but I’m glad that you like mess. Those cupcakes were really good! I wish I could send you some. I’m sorry if I stop replying for a while. I’m getting very busy these days. Korea keeps me occupied. But I hope you are well! Please send my regards to your friends and family.

Hari.

Okay, so you do feel a little bad about lying to the boy, but it’s all for his good. If he gets the message that she’ll stop replying, then he’ll stop feeling the need to send letters to her, and eventually he’ll forget, problem solved. The plan is foolproof.

What isn’t foolproof is how you’ll manage to fake the return address so it seems like the letter is coming from South Korea and not your house, but if you can do anything, it’s come up with a plan.

Jungkook once opened one of the letters from Hari at your house, meaning the envelope was likely strewn somewhere on your absolute disaster zone of a desk. You sift through papers and papers, math worksheets and torn coloring books and arts and crafts from book tutorials, until you finally manage to locate the envelope under a large pile of what appears to be every single thing you worked on in the second grade. How it got there, you haven’t the slightest idea.

The return address on this envelope is handwritten and in English, which is good, because you were not about to copy Korean characters onto the top right corner of the crisp new envelope that sits on your unmade bed. However, getting the right return address is only half the battle, because now you need a way to mail it to him, without worrying about where it will get redirected should the mail folks lose it.

Eventually, through precise timing and a quick Internet search of the local mailman times, you decide that the best time to leave the letter would be when your mother drops Jungkook off at his house after picking the two of you up at the end of the school day. The mailman would have just arrived, the new mail fresh in the mailbox, and Jungkook walks into his house through the garage, meaning he can’t see you once he hits close on the garage door. This leaves you the perfect window to slip the letter in the mail.

The plan follows through with pretty decent success the next day, if you do say so yourself. Not to toot your own horn, but everything went exactly as planned and Jungkook did not notice a single thing. Your mom did ask what you were doing, snooping in the Jeon’s mail, but you merely replied that you had something to send to him, and that was that.

What you did not foresee coming was the excitement the next day at school as Jungkook runs over to you right before class starts, waving the letter frantically in his hands, held high above his head. He nearly falls over as he darts towards his seat to show you the letter as he glows.

“I knew she would respond, I just knew it!” He says, pointing at the letter as if you need reminding that he was right. “It’s so fancy now that it’s typed.”

“Wait, but look here,” you say, pointing to the line where you wrote that you would be busy. “She said she’s gonna be busy, so she won’t be able to talk to you.”

“No worries,” Jungkook says like it’s not a very big deal at all. His reaction frightens you, making you raise an eyebrow in panic. “I’ll just keep sending letters to her. She doesn’t have to respond.”

This was definitely not in the plan. Not at all. Oh no.

“Are you sure? You’re wasting the money your parents spend on stamps,” you say, wracking your brain for any valid reason as to why he should not do that.

“I’m the only one that sends letters in the house,” Jungkook proudly proclaims. “My parents use e-mail, which I’m not allowed to have, and Jeonghyun texts on his phone. He makes fun of me for sending letters, think’s they’re ‘old fashioned’. All the stamps go to me, anyway.”

“But… But…” You say, at a loss for words. There goes your hope that all contact with Hari would cease after what was supposed to be a final letter.

“Why, is something wrong, Y/N?”

Jungkook may be dynamic, but he is a little bit oblivious at times, a quality that saves your ass more often than you’d like to admit.

“Me? I’m fine,” you say, coughing to distract from your stutter.

“Really? You seem stressed,” Jungkook notes.

“I’m stressed these days,” you quickly spit out. “It’s fine, just a little bump in the road. Hey, we should go get ice cream today after school. My mom has a coupon.”

Any mention of food is enough to catch Jungkook off guard and change the topic completely, something you desperately need.

“Sounds good.”

At the ice cream place, Jungkook informs you that he’s too busy to respond to Hari today, so he’ll have to do it tomorrow, when swim practice doesn’t meet. That makes you breathe a sigh of relief, thrilled to hear that you have at least a bit of time to plan how you’re going to go about this.

You try and wean him off the topic of Hari by asking him about the moving truck in front of a house a couple of doors down, the one you saw for the first time yesterday, as you dropped him off.

“Oh! We’re getting new neighbors,” Jungkook says cheerfully. “No one’s lived in that house since before I was born, so it’s nice that they’re moving in. I hope they have a kid my age.”

Jungkook doesn’t suspect a thing, and if it makes him a little bit happier, you suppose there’s really no harm being done.

Is there?

Just as planned, Jungkook leaves a letter for Hari in his mailbox the very next day, and just as planned, you pick it up the following day as you drop him off after school, his new neighbors keeping the mailman stalled for just the right amount of time, so you reach the letter before he does. You don’t know how things are working out so well for you, but you’re glad they are.

“Stop fishing in the Jeon’s mail,” your mother instructs. “It’s rude.”

“Jungkook is giving me letters, though,” you try to explain.

“Then why isn’t he sending them to our house?”

“I’m tricking him.”

You refuse to elaborate further, but your mother merely sighs, probably dropping the topic because it’s just one of those kid things that she won’t understand.

You tear open the letter on the drive to your house, but when you pull out the piece of paper, another falls onto the car floor. When you pick it up, it’s a photo of you and him, one that his mother took at your school’s spring fair. The photo actually makes you feel a little bit nostalgic, looking at your smiling faces as if you were not one of the people in it.

Dear Hari,

I hope Korea does not keep you too busy! Even if it does, I will still send you letters, but you don’t have to respond super fast if you can’t. I still like to talk to you.

I hope you like the photo I’ve sent! It’s from my school’s spring fair. Do you have fairs in Korea? We have them every year, and they’re lots of fun even if the prizes kind of suck. I only go there for the hot dogs, to be honest. The girl in the photo with me is my best friend. Her name is Y/N. We spend a lot of time together! She helps me write my letters to you. I really like playing with her. She’s the best.

I’m going to send you another letter next week, if I can. Don’t feel pressured to answer me. I just want to keep you updated on what’s going on in my life.

Jungkook.

It’s weird to see Jungkook talk about you to a person neither of you have ever met, as you never imagined you’d be present to hear him describe you as a human, let alone his best friend. He speaks to Hari as if she’s just another new friend he’s showing around his house, and it’s reminiscent of when you first met each other and completely new all at once.

“What did he say?” Your mother asks as you begin to fold the paper back up.

“Nice things,” you reply, staring down at the letter in your hand, never meant for you.

In order to conquer the problem that is preventing the mailman from picking up your response letter and whisking it away for it to get inevitably lost in a flurry of envelopes, you leave a note for him on a Post-it attached to the inside of the Jeon’s mailbox as you stuff the letter inside while Jungkook walks into his garage the following week.

On it, in your tilted handwriting, says, ‘The letter in here is already adressed addressed to the Jeons. Please take this Post-it with you but do not remove the letter. This will happen every now and then, so pay no attention to it! Thanks’. You believe that a lime green Post-it won’t be particularly difficult to miss, so you can only hope the mailman follows your request.

You get your answer the next day during recess, when Jungkook gambols over to you, opened letter dangling from his finger tips. You’re more than relieved to see him, especially after finding yourself confronted with a game of ‘Chase the Girls’ without him by your side.

“She mailed me back!” Jungkook says, whistling pleasantly. “I’m glad she did, even if she said she wouldn’t.”

“She probably didn’t want you to be the only one sending things,” you tell him as he plops down in the shade next to you.

“That’s exactly what she said!” Jungkook cries, a surprised look on his face. Your eyes widen, but you say nothing in response and hope that he’ll forget about it as soon as possible. Sure enough, he does. “Wow, you really do know girls.”

You simply beam in response, hands under your chin to display your angelic qualities. “You gonna keep writing things to her?”

“Of course,” Jungkook says, rocking back and forth on the grass contentedly. “She’s so easy to talk to,” he continues, taking the silence between the two of you as a perfect cue to keep speaking. “Like, I feel like I’ve been talking to her for ages. Especially recently, you know? It’s like we’ve already known each other for years. I don’t think I’ll ever want to stop talking to her.”

And for once, under the shade of the tree as you watch the other kids dash around the field, you wish that you were apart of ‘Chase the Girls’, because then, maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad for lying to a boy after hearing about how something that’s not real makes him so happy.

The charade carries on into your higher levels of schooling, the lie only ever snowballing. Jungkook, despite your outward refusal of the fact, has become something of a looker as he’s gotten older, filling out the meat on his bones and growing a good several inches taller in the transition from middle to high school, nearing six feet tall. But, regardless of the self-awareness of his good looks, the only two constants in his life in terms of girls happens to be you and Hari. Well, you and you-but-not-you. His schedule is still as hectic as it’s always been, meaning he hardly ever has time to actually go out and date.

Over the past eight years, you’ve amassed quite the collection of random photos Jungkook decides to include whatever letter he’s sending Hari, the photos ranging from him at one of his swim meets, sopping wet with a Disney branded towel wrapped around his shoulders, to one of him taking a selfie with a fresh head of lettuce. You sometimes wonder if you would ever be able to see such photos if you weren’t posing as his pen pal.

And while your horde of both flattering and unflattering Jungkook photos is quite impressive indeed, it’s been getting increasingly difficult to hide the entire thing from Jungkook every time he stays over at your house after school on the off chance that he’s free for the afternoon. You store all of the extra things he sends you in a shoebox at the bottom of your bed and the letters reside in another shoebox at the back of your closet, behind all of the shirts that you buy on whims but never fucking wear, and you just have to keep Jungkook away from those areas.

By now, the conversations between the two of you as pen pals are just like old friends reconnecting, no basic nonsense like what your favorite colors are and how many pets you have. No, the two of you have started writing to each other about the mindless things, like when Jungkook did a school presentation on anime just to see how many weeaboos he could find in your class, or when you got totally socked in the head by a dodgeball he had thrown during gym.

Admittedly, it’s sort of fun being this ‘Hari’ character, because you’ve been able to fabricate her life into whatever you want, since she’s not physically there to call you out on it. You’ve taken your brief knowledge of her, from what Jungkook told you when you were mere children, and you’ve made a whole new life. She plays tennis, she acts, she loves classic English novels, but hates poetry. She has friends who are twins, she stinks at math, she’s never had a boyfriend before. These are all things you’ve turned her into, and who’s to say you can’t?

One thing that hasn’t changed is the guilt.

Every time you open your laptop to type up another letter, every time you hit print, every time you sneak the envelope into his mailbox when he’s walking up his driveway, you are guilty. Guilty of lying to your best friend, and guilty of letting it catapult into this huge, ridiculous, act that you are too afraid to drop. People always told you that lies only get bigger and never smaller, but you never believed them. Until it happened to you, of course.

What makes the guilt a thousand times worse, however, is how happy Jungkook is every time he gets a letter. He’s already a cheerful boy, always lighting up whatever room he’s in and charming everyone’s pants off with that smile of his, but the happiness he gets when he sees a letter from her is like nothing else. It’s the same excited feeling he had when he was eight, eleven, thirteen, and now, sixteen, and you hate that it’s all fake. You hate that you’re the reason it’s fake.

Jungkook’s over at your house, just after having received a letter from ‘Hari’ the day prior, and he is glowing.

“What’d she say, this time?” You ask as you sit down next to him on the floor, where he leans against the side of your bed, your textbooks and homework strewn all around you, practically untouched.

“She was just telling me about the antics that the twins get up to,” Jungkook tells you, sighing as he lets his head fall back, just making your mattress. His hand is on the floor, a little too close to the shoebox right beside it, and you need to move it, stat. “They’re so funny.”

“You’ve never even met them,” you say, carefully trying to push the shoebox further back with your fingertips.

“But they do such funny things! They break out into song and dance in the middle of class and always make jokes about the teacher,” Jungkook says. He has not noticed the box yet.

“They sound very entertaining,” you say, like a mother talking to her child about something she doesn’t care about, but the child does. “You get along with her well, you know?” Wonder why.

“I know, I just — I feel like I can tell her everything. I could tell her my whole life story and she wouldn’t judge me. She’s so easy to talk to, like you,” Jungkook says, smiling at the mere mention of her. “I never disagree with her on anything. She’s like a fucking dream.”

“Well, dream on, kiddo,” you tell him, patting his back. The shoebox is successfully out of reach of his hand. Crisis averted.

“I can tell you anything, right, Y/N?” He asks out of the blue, turning to you.

You scoff. “Of course. We’ve been best friends for years, I’d never betray you.” The words taste like bile in your mouth. You swallow them down without missing a beat. “Unless you’ve killed someone, Jungkook. Then I’m sorry, but I’m turning you into the police.”

Jungkook laughs at that. It rings through your ears, making you grin at the sound. “No, I haven’t done anything illegal just yet.”

“Then, what’s up?”

“Uh, you know the one girl in our English class?”

You roll your eyes, making wild gesticulations to emphasize the fact that you don’t know which girl he’s talking about. “Oh yes, very specific, I know exactly the girl you’re talking about. The one girl from our English class. Wow.”

He frowns at you, glaring and unimpressed. “She sits right behind you. You know her.”

That you do. Just last week, she asked you if Jungkook had a girlfriend.

You think you know where this conversation is headed.

“Mmm,” you hum in response, letting him continue.

“Yeah, anyway, um—” he begins, scratching at the nape of his neck, “—she asked me out yesterday.”

You figured as much. Jungkook was incredibly easy to read and you were also well aware of the fact that she liked Jungkook anyway, so it was only a matter of time before she made a move.

“And?” You ask, knowing that there’s more to the story than he’s letting on. “Obviously you didn’t say yes, I know you. But you’re hiding something in that tiny brain of yours,” you say, poking him in the noggin as he scrunches up his nose.

“Hey! My brain is not tiny, thanks very much,” he defends. “I think it’s above average, actually.”

“Explains your big head.”

Jungkook sort of walked into that one, if you’re being honest. It looks like he knows he just got played too, because he’s tackled you almost instantly, pinning you down on your hardwood floor with his hands right by your ears. You can see the muscles just barely bulging out of his arms, likely a result of the countless hours he spends at swim practice, and you laugh. This is a compromising position for anybody, especially when dealing with unresolved emotional anguish and sexual tension, but for you, it’s laughable.

“I did not ask for this disrespect,” he tells you, pretending to be incredibly offended as he hovers over you. “Who do you think you are, telling me I have a big head?”

“Your best friend,” you retort. Neither of you are very uncomfortable despite the otherwise incredibly suggestive position you’re both in. “You had something else to tell me?”

“I didn’t say yes because I think I have a crush on someone else,” he admits.

“Oh God, alright,” you say, pushing him off of you and sitting up, rubbing the spot on your lower back that first made contact with the floor when he tackled you. “Lay it on me, who is it? A senior? Another girl from our English class? An artsy emo kid you’ve never spoken to?”

“Hari.”

If you were concerned about the slight bruising at the bottom of your spine before, you most certainly aren’t now.

“Hari?” You ask incredulously. Suddenly, you feel a lot more guilty.

“Yeah,” he admits softly, rubbing the nape of his neck again, an action he does whenever he gets hesitant about something. “I like her.”

You hate to be that friend, but, “You’ve never even met her, Jungkook.”

“I know, I know, I just…” He says, trailing off as he turns away from your perplexed gaze. “I was thinking about all the things we’ve told each other, all the secrets I’ve spilled that only you and she know, and how she just accepts me for who I am and listens to every word I have to say, and I think I like her.”

You’re speechless.

“No, I — I know I like her,” Jungkook decides firmly. A weight lifts off of his shoulders the second the words leave his mouth, and you can see it. “I know it’s weird. I know. I’ve never met her but I wanna kiss her. I know.”

“Jungkook, this is insane,” you say, desperately trying to think of something else to tell him, but your brain comes up empty. “Are you gonna tell her?”

“Should I?”

“Beats me.”

“I don’t know if I should,” he says. “I’m worried she’ll think I’m weird, or stupid. Or if she’ll think that it’s not possible since we’ve never met. I don’t want her to think that.”

You roll your eyes. “No person wants to be outright rejected, you’re the same as all of us. Just do whatever you feel makes you comfortable.”

“I—I don’t think I’ll tell her,” Jungkook says, and it makes you breathe a metaphorical sigh of relief. Thank God. “Not yet, at least. I don’t want to come on too strong.”

“Sounds like a good decision if I’ve ever heard one,” you say, stepping all over your homework as you collapse on your bed. “You sure you’re okay with not telling her?”

“I’m sure,” he tells you, joining you as he climbs onto your bed, sitting up straight and maneuvering your head so that it rests on his thighs.

“So what are you gonna do about all the girls that ask you out on a weekly basis?” You wonder aloud. Surely, it will break their hearts to hear that Jungkook is desperately in the throes of love with a girl he’s never met who lives thousands of miles away.

“I’ll just say I have my eye on someone else,” he says, shooting you a wink. You chuckle, knowing that that ‘someone else’ is you that he’s referring to.

You don’t notice it, or, maybe you just refuse to allow yourself to notice it, but the wink that he sends your way has your heart fluttering just the tiniest amount, a single butterfly taking residence in your stomach.

It’s too bad Jungkook likes no one more than a character you’ve created.

You’re in English, packing up your school stuff five minutes in advance for the end of the day. It’s Friday, and you’re desperate to get out so you can go home and take a nine-hour nap on your couch. Your notebook has just made it into your backpack when you see Jungkook walking over to you, a happy grin on his face.

“Hey, Y/N,” He says, hands in the pockets of his grey jeans (“They’re a faded black, not grey!” “That’s what grey is, Jungkook!”).

“And why am I being graced with the presence of the one and only Jungkook today?” You ask without even glancing towards him.

“I have a free night tonight,” he says. “Wanna go out to get something to eat?”

“Like a date?” You scoff. “What makes you think I also have a free night tonight, huh?”

Jungkook nearly laughs. “When was the last time you stood me up because you already had plans on a Friday?”

“You got me there,” you say, pointing a finger gun at him as you zip up your backpack. You turn your head ever the slightest, and see the girl who asked him out a week ago, pouting. Jungkook truly has absolutely no shame. “Sure. Where to?”

“How about that Greek place downtown?” He suggests.

“You hate Greek food.”

“I’m trying to broaden my horizons, here. Stop calling me out.”

“Alright then, Greek it is. Dress code? Do I have to wear something expensive, Jungkook? A pearl necklace, diamond ring? Six inch heels?”

“You know what you wore for the awards ceremony last year? Wear that. It looked good on you. Your hair looked nice.”

“Is that what you say to all the girls, Jungkook?” You joke, an eyebrow raised.

“You bet,” he says back. “A good friend of mine told me girls like that kind of stuff.”

“They were right.”

It doesn’t really occur to you that you’re going out on an actual date with an actual boy until your mother asks you where the date is, making you stop dead in your tracks as you fix your hair in the mirror in the main living space.

You’re going out on a date. With your best friend. Nothing wrong with that of course, it’s just that this particular date happens to be very romantic, despite your insistence that what you and Jungkook share is strictly platonic. He’s picking you up, taking you to a moderately fancy Greek place downtown, and the both of you are wearing some of your nicer clothes.

The doorbell rings, and when you peek out of the window, Jungkook’s terribly old car sits outside.

“Look at you,” you say, foregoing any sort of greeting as you open the door. Behind it stands a dare you say, dapper looking Jungkook is a pretty decent getup, playing with the collar of the dress shirt he wears. “I don’t think I’ve seen you dress this nice since our elementary school graduation.”

“Hey, you’re wearing the thing,” he says. “It looks good.”

“It looked good last year, it’ll look good this year. Ready to go?” You ask, grabbing your wallet from the coffee table and wrapping the strap around your wrist.

“Let’s do this,” he replies, letting you link arms with him as he leads you to his car.

Sure enough, at the restaurant, Jungkook turns his nose up at every single dish on the menu, muttering to himself that there has to be something better (there never is). He eventually settles for the saddest salad you have ever seen, while you go for a selection of appetizers you’re hoping to coax Jungkook into eating.

“You’re so uncultured,” you comment as his salad arrives, simply a heap of lettuce with some tomatoes decorating the edge of the bowl. “We’re at a nice Greek place and you get a salad.”

“I hate Greek food,” he says, like that makes it any better.

“Then why did you suggest this place?” You ask, taking a large bite of one of the several dolmades in front of you. “Here, eat this.”

Jungkook scrunches his face up as you shove the fork in front of his mouth, hand under it to catch any drips as you force him to take a bite. He doesn’t immediately spit it out, so you call that a win for you.

“I wanted to focus on you instead of the food,” he says, mouth full.

“Oh, stuff it,” You say, though you can feel your cheeks heating up at the comment.

“No, I’m serious. I feel like we’re losing touch,” Jungkook insists. “We don’t talk as much anymore.”

“We text every day.”

“We don’t talk about deep shit anymore,” Jungkook rephrases.

You chuckle. “Did we ever talk about ‘deep shit’? What’s your definition of ‘deep shit’, Jungkook?”

“Why don’t you ever go out on dates?”

“What kind of an asshole question is that, hey?” You frown, stuffing another dolmade into his mouth.

“I’m not kidding, Y/N. You’re funny, pretty, easy to talk to, you could get lots of dates if you wanted to. Why don’t you?”

“I guess everyone just thinks I’m dating you,” you shrug, like it’s no big deal. The compliments he laid on you are making that butterfly in your stomach lose its butterfly mind.

“I guess they do.”

“How’s Hari been?”

“Good, good. She just finished reading Macbeth.”

“Did she like it?”

“She thought Macbeth was kind of an asshole.”

“I agree.”

“I wasn’t joking when I said you were funny and pretty,” Jungkook says randomly.

“I know.”

By the end of the night, the butterfly has friends.

First things first, you do not have a crush on Jungkook. No way.

Okay, so maybe you have a slight crush on him. But it’s manageable, it’s fine. No big deal, you’ll get over it. Maybe you’re just confused after the mess that was your date-not-date with him. Yes, that’s it. Your brain’s just playing games with you.

The main reason as to why you have to get over your crush as soon as physically possible is because Jungkook doesn’t seem to be giving up on Hari anytime soon. Despite not confessing directly to her, he’s definitely made a show of how much he truly likes her when he’s around you, and it’s not helping your case whatsoever. The faster you stop liking Jungkook, the easier it is to clear up this whole mess whenever you decide you need to.

The Hari thing has been going on much, much longer than you wanted it to, but you can’t stop just yet. Imagine how that would break Jungkook’s heart.

You and Jungkook haven’t really discussed your whole date-not-date since it happened, and it’s been several weeks. Neither of you appear very keen to bring it up, pretending like it never happened. You’re not exactly sure why, though, since it’s been pretty damn clear to the both of you that you’re just friends.

So, you’re essentially stuck, trying to worm your way out of having a crush on your best friend, watching him fall in love with another girl, who just so happens to be you posing as someone else, and the cycle endlessly repeats.

You have to admit, you most certainly did not foresee this when you were eight-years-old and writing a letter to Jungkook just to get him to stop his whining.

Having a crush on Jungkook isn’t all that rare, anyway, since you could probably list ten girls off the top of your head that also fancy him. The problem is that you actually talk to him, all the time, which makes falling for him even worse.

“Coach is letting me have the pool to myself on Wednesday, after school,” Jungkook says while you’re over at his house. You’re actually doing your homework this time, but you can’t seem to say the same thing for him. “Wanna come?”

“Am I allowed?” You ask, sort of laughing. You already know you’re not, but Jungkook’s never been very good at following rules.

“What Coach doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Jungkook reasons, and you take those words as a ‘yes’.

“If we get caught, will you take the blame?”

Jungkook sighs, knocking his head back and into a picture frame, making it fall to the floor. “Why do I always have to take the blame?”

“You’re always the one that comes up with the dumbass idea in the first place,” you retort, but you notice that he’s not really listening to you anymore. When you finally look up from the notebook in front of you, you see that he’s looking at the photo, expression soft and fond and regretful all at once. “You good?”

“What?” Jungkook says, spurred out of his trance as he places the picture frame face up on the floor. A closer look, and you see that it’s the one he framed of the photo Hari sent when you were eight.

“You good?”

“Yeah.”

You motion to the picture frame, pointing the end of your pen towards it. “Has she sent any more photos?” You feel terrible just asking the question.

“No,” Jungkook sighs. “But she doesn’t need to, I mean. I’m not gonna force her. I just wish I knew what she looked like now.”

You’re looking at her, you think to yourself.

“You could use one of those age progression websites,” you suggest jokingly.

“Yeah, and come up with a shitty Photoshop job,” Jungkook says, laughing to himself at your recommendation.

“You really like her, don’t you, Jungkook?”

“Of course,” Jungkook replies, eyes crinkling up at the mere mention of her. “I think she’s amazing. A best friend, just like you.” He nudges your shoulder, flashing his pearly-whites towards you in the warmest of smiles. You take it in, letting the memory of his glowing face sink into your mind, and you think that perhaps, crushing on him isn’t so terrible after all.

Jungkook swims like a maniac. You’ve been to his meets, watched his performances, and he’s like a shark, tearing through the water at almost an alarming rate. It’s no wonder he’s his coach’s favorite, the pride and joy of the school’s swim team. There’s no other way he could be hooked up with free time in the pool. But you’ve never seen him swim just for fun, so you wonder how this could be any different.

“Is it cold?” You ask as you leave the locker room, seeing the boy already doing laps around the pool.

He stops mid-freestyle. “No. But that’s probably the swimmer in me talking.”

“So, it is cold?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?”

What a tempting offer. You tentatively step towards the pool, dipping a single toe in before pulling back sharply, nearly toppling over.

“Holy shit,” you say. “It is so cold. How do you swim in this?”

“You get used to it,” Jungkook says. He swims up to you gracefully, an elegant butterfly from where he stands at the opposite end of the pool. “Come on, jump in.”

“I don’t want to,” you decide. “You said absolutely nothing about the temperature of the pool water.”

“Oh, come on, Y/N,” he says, pouting. “Just jump in. You’ll warm up straight away.”

“No.”

“Please?”

You can’t resist him. Goddamnit. You inhale a deep breath and brace yourself before jumping right in, splashing Jungkook with the force as you pop your head up, drenched.

“I knew you could do it,” he says, shaking his head, water droplets flying every which way.

You thought Jungkook looked pretty good in his swimsuit from afar, but up close he looks practically irresistible. The water rolls down his neck, shoulders, chest, glinting in the fluorescent light of the indoor pool and making his torso shimmer.

“It’s so cold, I hate this,” you say, arms zooming to your sides as you rub them up and down, moving around slowly in the water.

“You’ll warm up in no time, you know,” Jungkook says. “You just have to get used to the water.”

“And how do you expect me to do that?”

Before your mind can even register it, Jungkook splashes you, letting you stand there, mouth gaping wide, as he cackles to himself.

“You’re in for it now, Jeon!” You shout, barrelling towards him as he begins to make his getaway. You already know you’re toast, since Jungkook could probably lap you if he really wanted to, but you chase him down anyway, fuming.

He’s giggling the entire time he’s running away, stepping through the water rather than swimming, splashing behind him as a defense mechanism. You let yourself get soaked, following the path he makes in the water as the two of you laugh your heads off, a full-on splash war on your hands.

Later, when the war comes to a truce — not an end, it’s not an end until one of you surrenders — you find yourselves in the middle of the pool. You’re lying flat on your back as he holds you up, soft hands pushing onto your skin, like a coach helping a child learn to float. It’s strangely intimate for the two of you, though you imagine any sort of conversation you’ll have will ruin the mood instantly.

“Is this how you charm the pants off of all the girls, Jungkook?”

“Oh yeah, this and splashing them until they’re screaming ‘bloody murder’ is a real smooth move,” he responds.

“I can do this myself, you know,” you remind him.

“I know. I just like holding you up.”

“Makes for a nice view,” you joke.

“Oh yeah? My double chin looking good today?”

“Especially handsome.”

The exchange leaves the two of you in giggles, the low rumble spreading from his chest to his fingers as he moves you up and down ever so slightly. It’s certainly a view, where you float to where he stands beside you, drenched hair, gleaming torso, warm smile.

You wonder if he wishes Hari were in your place.

But you savor this, savor the view and savor the feeling, because platonic or not, it’s something worth treasuring.

“You’re cute like this,” he says, removing one hand from under your back to poke your nose.

“Am I?”

“Very. If you want boys to date you, you should get them in the pool like this.”

You actually at the comment. “As if. I don’t need the school’s ugly pool to attract boys. I’m irresistible.”

Besides, you think, the only boy I’d want to date me is you, and you’re already here.

Remember when you said you’d get over that tiny crush you had on Jungkook?

Liar.

You’re nearing the end of high school, the idea of university and moving away looming over your heads, and you can say with too much affirmation that you have fallen, head over your goddamn heels, in love with your best friend. Nice going.

Unfortunately for you, nothing seems to have changed about the relationship between Jungkook and Hari, and if she weren’t thousands of miles away, he probably would have taken her to prom.

But here you are, a collection of photos of your best friend sitting under your bed, growing by the month as he unknowingly adds to it with each letter he sends. You’ve got photos from prom, winter break, sports meets, summer vacations, stacked up in a careless pile in a box, and you’d be lying if you said you don’t look through them on occasion. There are pictures in here that you, as his best friend, haven’t even seen, pictures meant for someone who he likes, not someone who he hangs out with.

Jungkook’s opinion of Hari hasn’t changed in years.

“She’s wonderful,” Jungkook muses as the two of you walk through the nearest mall. “I feel like I can tell her anything and everything, and she’ll always listen, never judge me. She teases me sometimes, like you do, but she’s easygoing and heartwarming. She’s so easy to get along with, even if we don’t have all of the same interests. I feel like I’ve known her my entire life.”

“Haven’t you, though?”

“Not as long as I’ve known you.”

“But you like her?”

“Well, I mean I like you too,” Jungkook says. “But I just feel that—that thing with her, you know? You know that thing?”

“This must be why you’re in an AP Literature class,” you say, “ your descriptions of things are simply outstanding.”

Jungkook frowns, shoving you a little as he fights the smile growing on his face. “I’m serious, Y/N.”

“So am I,” you insist. “But I know what you’re talking about.”

“Have you ever felt that thing?”

“Once or twice.” The with you goes unspoken, and you’re glad.

“With who?”

“It was when we were children, Jungkook. I don’t remember.”

“That’s fake. Surely you remember your first love.”

“Not really, no.” I don’t need to remember you when you’re right in front of me.

“Well, that’s what I feel with her. I don’t know man, I feel like she’s just the person I was waiting for.”

“So, he thinks she’s funny, easy to talk to, and that it feels like he’s known her for a lifetime?”

You nod along to your friend’s words as the two of you sit on a bench in the local park. You’re lamenting your Jungkook troubles to her, since you obviously can’t go straight to him, and she’s providing insight as to what you should do.

“Sounds like he’s in love with you, not her.”

That makes you bolt up from where you were slouching back, like a dog hearing the word ‘squirrel’.

“What?”

“I’m serious,” she says. “If he likes her for all of those reasons, there’s no reason he shouldn’t like you as well. He basically described you.”

You have neglected to tell her about the whole pen pal fiasco, finding it too long of a story worth telling. The less she knows, the better. She’s already told you enough information, anyway.

“You think he’s talking about me?”

“Sounds like it.”

Maybe he is.

You are Hari, after all.

Maybe he likes you, too.

(Jungkook sits in his room, surrounded by college acceptance letters and textbooks he still needs to turn into his teachers. The blank piece of paper stares back at him as he glares at it, twiddling the pen in his hand.

This is what he writes in a letter to Hari that never makes it into the mailbox:

Dear Hari,

This is going to be a weird opening sentence, but I think I like my best friend. Actually, I think I’m in love with her, but I don’t know how to go about it. She’s been getting a bit distant from me, though I suppose that’s my fault as well, since we’re nearing graduation. What do I do? Do I confess?

I think I’ve loved her for a while know, but I didn’t realize it, hung up on another girl.

I think she’s funny, easy to talk to, and pretty.

But I think you are, too.

Jungkook.

Jungkook stares at the finished letter, wishing that it could respond to him. He crinkles it up and tosses it in the trash.)

The last letter Jungkook ever sends Hari includes a photo of him, his family, and you together at graduation, dressed up in your gowns and caps and grinning happily, and a sentence that catches your eye:

Don’t expect any more letters for a while, if that’s alright. I think I’ll be a bit busy.

It’s unusual for him to take a break from writing to her, the letters being weekly for almost ten years, now. You wonder what he might have in store, but you shrug it off. If anything, you’re glad for the respite. The lying has gone on for too long, anyway.

The two of you stroll along the sidewalk, high school graduates with coffee cups in your hands, passing by the local park. He suggests that you sit down with him, pointing to an empty bench in the distance, before making a dash to it in order to prevent anyone else from taking your spot.

“Can’t believe we’re going off to university,” you say, sighing as you sit down. “It feels like just yesterday you were walking up to me on the playground in elementary school, asking me if you thought the shade under the tree was big enough for the both of us.”

“I remember that. You stood out to me because you weren’t playing ‘Chase the Girls’ like everyone else,” he says, the memory popping back into his head.

“I never really liked that game.”

“Neither did I.”

It’s weird, some kind of out-of-body experience to be talking about your relationship with Jungkook over the years. You feel as though you’re watching yourselves grow up from a third-person perspective, watching you fall in love with him the same way he’s falling in love with Hari.

“Are you doing anything this summer?”

“Packing. Crying. Stressing.”

Jungkook chuckles at your response. “No, anything fun?”

“Hanging with you, I guess?”

“How would you feel about taking a vacation with me?”

You look at him, an incredulous expression on your face. “What, to the beach?”

“I was thinking something more along the lines of South Korea.”

Your mouth drops open, like it’s been pressed down by weights. “Korea?”

“Yeah. It’s been something I’ve sort of been keeping a secret from you. I think it’ll be fun,” Jungkook says, grinning.

“Why Korea?”

“I have family there I haven’t seen in awhile. But mostly, I want to meet Hari.”

If your eyes widen, he makes no comment, but you’re totally, one hundred percent, absolutely, without a doubt fucked. To meet Hari?

The charade ends here.

“You were hiding it from me?”

Jungkook shoots you a guilty smile. You bet you could top it in an instant. “I wanted to make sure everything was in order before I asked you.”

“I’ve been hiding something from you, too, Jungkook,” you say, bracing yourself for the worst while foolishly hoping for the best.

“What?” Jungkook asks, more curious than shocked. You hate to wipe that interested smile off of his face.

“Hari—Hari hasn’t spoken to you since you were eight,” you say, shrinking in on yourself as you wait for his reaction.

Jungkook scoffs. “What do you mean? Of course she has. I sent her a letter just a few days ago.”

“No, she hasn’t,” you repeat. “The person writing you those letters, she wasn’t Hari. She was—”

“You,” Jungkook finishes, and sure, you were prepared for anger, sadness, fury, but you weren’t prepared for the look of absolutely betrayal scrawled on his face as your words set in. “You were writing those letters. For ten years, you sent me things under her name.”

“Jungkook—”

“Why did you do it?”

“I care about you, Jungkook,” you insist, grabbing onto his arm so he can’t leave before you explain yourself. “I didn’t want to see you sad.”

“So you kept it up for ten years? You lied to me for ten years? I don’t think that’s better than me being sad for a day,” he says, heartbroken.

“We were eight, Jungkook! I didn’t know it would turn out like this. I didn’t know you’d start to fall for her,” you say desperately, trying to salvage the friendship you already know you’ve knocked down.

“Still, you couldn’t have just told me? What else did you do, huh? What other things are you hiding from me?” He says, eyebrows raised, not angry, just hurt. How can you do this to him?

You wonder the same thing.

“I’m in love with you,” you whisper. The words settle around you like dust, dust he’s about to walk over and forget about.

“You what?”

“I’m in love with you,” you say again, louder. “That’s what I’m hiding from you.”

“Y/N, you don’t—you can’t just go around telling me that,” he says, and for once his expression is unreadable. “You can’t just say these things.”

“Why not, Jungkook? I’ve lied to you enough already,” you reason. “You ought to know I love you.”

“You can’t just—you can’t just—”

“I can’t just what, Jungkook?”

“I love you, too.”

God, if you thought you had the biggest surprise of the afternoon, he has you beat.

“Can we take a break?” You ask, mind swirling. “We need a break.”

“No, Y/N, we have to sort this out,” Jungkook says, grabbing onto your wrist as you stand up. He won’t let you go without a fight, you know that much. “We can’t just let it go.”

“We’ll sort it out another time, okay? I need to clear my mind. I need to think about things.” You try to wriggle out of his grasp, but he refuses to part with you, keeping you firmly planted to your spot. “Please, Jungkook. I can’t do this right now. Please.”

Jungkook relents.

For a week, the thoughts fly in and out of your head, leaving you dazed and confused.

He loves you.

You lied to him.

He likes Hari.

You were Hari.

You love him.

You lied to him.

Jungkook leaves you breathless without even being by your side.

Eventually, as the new week dawns on you, he convinces you to talk. You suppose you kind of need to, anyway.

He meets you back at the park, same bench, same foofy coffee drink in his hand, grinning as you jog towards him.

“Hey stranger,” he says. “I think this week was officially the most boring week in my life.”

“I don’t think we’ve gone a week in ten years without contacting each other,” you say, taking a seat. “It feels like I don’t even know you.”

“How are you feeling? Mind cleared up?”

“I think it’s always gonna be a bit fuzzy, but I’m feeling better. You?”

“Fantastic, now that you’re here.”

You purse your lips, letting the silence fill the air around you as you think about what to say next.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out, catching his attention. “I don’t think I ever apologized to you for lying. So, I’m sorry for deceiving you. I shouldn’t have.”

“Apology accepted.” He beams. “I’m sorry, too. Sorry you had to hear me gushing about Hari when really, I was gushing about you.”

“No, it’s fine, I understood,” you assure him.

“You know, I originally thought I started liking you earlier this year, but I realize now it was a long time before that. I just didn’t know it was you.”

“You still love me?”

“How could I stop?”

And then you’re kissing, pressing your lips together in the heat of summer, sitting on a park bench covered in bird poop, kissing. It cools you down and warms you up all at once. Jungkook tastes like chlorine and coffee and happiness.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he sheepishly admits when you break apart.

“You can do it again, for all I care.”

He leans into you, noses brushing. “I think I might just take you up on that offer.”

And take it he does.

To say that, post-kiss, the two of you part ways calmly and happily and head home is a complete lie. It’s quite apparent that neither of you can resist each other, sneaking kisses onto each other’s skin the entire way back to Jungkook’s, where he presses you against each wall in his house before you stumble into his bedroom, giggling.

“I’ve never done this before,” you say.

“Never been this close to me, hey, Y/N?” He says, winking.

“I’ve been this close to you before,” you say, thinking of the time he tackled you on this very floor. “I’ve just never been kissed while doing it.”

“There’s a first for everything,” Jungkook tells you as he presses you into his mattress, pulling off his shirt in one fluid motion.

If anything, his body’s only gotten better since the last time you saw it, floating in the school’s pool.

“That there is.”

Needless to say, he gets even closer to you. Toying with the hem of your shirt, he takes it off, relishing in the view below him as he presses his lips wherever he can, from your lips to your collarbone to your bellybutton.

“God, I knew I wasn’t kidding when I said you were pretty,” he smiles down at you, and you giggle, slapping his arm. “You’re gorgeous.”

“You’re stating facts, Mister,” you respond. “Get me out of these clothes.”

He is more than willing to follow your orders, ridding you of your bottoms and flinging them to his bedroom floor before moving his lips down even further. His nose is right by your drenched center, and he smirks to himself as his fingers hook onto your underwear.

“Ah, wait,” you say, tugging lightly on his hair to catch his attention. “You too, you know.”

Once the two of you are fully naked, reveling in the glory that is each other, Jungkook presses his body into yours, making you gasp at the feeling.

“Do it again,” you whisper into his ear, begging. He is happy to oblige, letting you grind down on him as you openly moan, brokenly moan.

“You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to do this,” Jungkook admits, honest and whole and nervous. 

You grin, letting your eyes rake up and down his body. He’s beautiful. He always has been. “I think I have somewhat of an idea.”

In order to wipe that cheeky grin off your face, he presses a kiss to your lips as he slides home, making you sigh at the feeling.

“I’ll go slow, alright? Neither of us have a very good idea about how to do this,” he promises, and you nod as you feel him pull out, little by little.

He gets a good rhythm going after a while, enough to make you moan with each thrust but not to hard to cause either of you any pain, and it’s not long before the both of you reach your highs, climaxing with gasps and promises escaping from your lips.

Afterwards, when the towel he came in with to clean the two of you up is hanging over his desk chair and you are lying comfortably in his bed, head resting in the space between his arm and his chest as he pulls you in close, he whispers.

“Do you think you would have still fallen for me without Hari?”

“Do you?”

“Can you stop responding to my questions with more questions?”

You giggle into his skin, warming the spot. “I think we were meant for each other.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I think so, too.”

“You know I love you, right?”

“You know I love you, right?”

“And here I was, the one who responds to questions with more questions,” you joke, earning yourself a flick on the forehead, followed by a kiss to the exact place where his fingers met your skin.

“I love you,” he tells you.

You snuggle in closer. “Yeah,” you say, the words feeling like falling asleep after years of being awake. “I love you, too.”

You sit on the airplane as you watch it drive away from the gate, rolling along the tarmac to where it will take off. Next to you sits Jungkook, already dozing off despite having only been on the airplane for less than an hour. He rests his shoulder on your chest, little snores escaping from his lips. You worm your hand into his and he makes a noise of satisfaction as you prepare to head to South Korea.

The butterflies are back. You hope they never leave.

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