#i changed the summary from what i had on my wip ajfdklasjf

[bubmyg]

wonder - jjk

pairing: jeongguk x reader 

genre/warnings: pool boy/waiter/kind-of-baker/first-aid-extraordinaire/aspiring singer!jeongguk(ft. cherry!guk), writer/journalist!reader, the CHEESIEST fluff, tiny amounts of angst, a bad attempt at original poetry, there is a tiny blood mention

word count: 14,906

summary: romance novels lie about finding some deep epiphany in the ocean because you find your inspiration in some chlorine tainted red locks or where jeongguk isn’t smooth with a pool net. 

a/n: this is. the longest fic i’ve ever written. also the longest i’ve ever worked on a fic (...a month ajfdks) and im really proud of it :-( i hope u like it :-( 

There’s a certain breaking point for an advice columnist, one that isn’t supposed to come three years into the job and over a handwritten letter from a nine year old who has just had her dream of becoming a vet shattered by this sudden discovery that she, in fact, passes out when she sees any type of blood. Or if that breaking point comes, the draft of the response isn’t supposed to make it past an unsaved document, (Dreams are a scam, anyway. Learn that.) scrapped and used as emotional support to formulate the real answer.

There’s a nine year old little girl who rushes to the paper for a week after sending her letter, hoping to find some sort of solace in the advice column she finds fascinating, generally filled with advice on things she doesn’t have the capacity to understand: cheating husbands, the capitalist nature of the makeup industry, why “business casual” isn’t a reward for women, and taxes. She’s memorized her opening line enough to have her heart racing into her throat when she catches sight of it on its usual page, her letter transcribed and italicized just above the tiny portrait of the columnist and the bold font that would be her response.

Her mother finds her sobbing on her bed fifteen minutes after she called for her to come to dinner and consoles her enough to acknowledge that being a Disney princess is just as good of an aspiration as a vet, not before writing a strongly worded letter addressed to the editor of the paper and canceling the family’s subscription.

There’s a different document you should have scrapped completely, the sixty-seventh page of your never ending novel, never ending in the sense that it would never end because you were going to give up on everything with the exception of the column for the next day: an obscure sex toy shop escapade that isn’t fit for the nine year old and her canceled subscription in the first place.

You’d been glaring at the grainy lines across your monitor, ones that cut through the middle of the words on the sixty-sixth page, when Hoseok’s figure glided past the glass wall of your office to enter without knocking.

He cleared his throat and you turned slowly from the monitor, as if your gradual spiral cascading to a head had brought an end to your cordiality as well. There was a paper in his hand, the day prior’s edition, ink thick on the outside where a picture of a local elementary school’s service project was displayed. He opened it silently, turning to a page, your page, outlined heavily in red ink pen.

The gold links of Hoseok’s watch reflected off your monitor as the paper smacked and slid its way across your desk, forcing you to wince for two separate reasons.

“I’m sorry—”

Hoseok withdrew his latter hand from the pocket of his black slack and your fingers itched to close out of your novel but his gaze was steady on the blinking cursor next to a piece of grammar you’d fiddled with six separate times.

“Any progress?” You blinked at him and he jerked his head in the direction of your desktop, black fringe parting against his eyelashes so his dark eyes dropped a deeper shade of black.

There was a raw spot ready for you on the inside of your cheek and the taste of stale metallic flooded your tongue. Your legs unfurled from where they’d been folded up underneath you in your desk chair, gaze sweeping to the wilting ficus underneath your desk, “Not exactly…”

Papers fluttered together and you caught sight of the dogeared letter from the little girl as Hoseok brushed a bare spot on the corner of your desk to take a seat. There was a smiling cartoon character patterned to the surface of his short-sleeved button up and it’s smiling muzzle appeared to mirror that flit of an upturn on the edge of Hoseok’s dimpled lips. The subtle cock of his chin was anything but of praise, sympathy more so bleeding out the strict in his dark irises as he sighed.

“I understand this job and this column are not your first love,” He mirrored the snarky response that swallowed on the back of your tongue, “Hell, this probably isn’t even your third or fourth love.”

“But I do expect you to uphold a certain level of professionalism in your column. I’ve never had an issue with you in the past. In fact, I nearly stopped looking over your submissions before sending things to print,” Hoseok leaned forward, elbow on his thigh, chin on curled, ring clad knuckles, “However, as of recent…”

“It won’t happen again, Hoseok. I swear, I was just—”

You quieted when his fingers curled outward from underneath his chin. “...this was not the first column as of recent that hasn’t exactly been up to par.”

Quieter, barely a breath, you nodded, “I’m sorry.”

Hoseok’s index finger straightened, leaning from his lips to press into the side of your monitor, tapping his nail against the screen, “I know how much this means to you. I know how little progress comes when inspiration comes. I know that inspiration doesn’t just strike when we ask it to. I get it, I really do.”

“...and I think some time away from here, from this place, from your column, would do you wonders.”

There was something defensive in your next inquiry, “What are you saying?”

“I’m giving you the summer off—” His finger wagged in your direction when you choked, “—no I’m making you take the summer off.”

“The whole—”

“Two months. Away from here, as in, I’m sending you to the coast for two months. Beach house, all to yourself, all-expense paid. Except for your food, I know you like—”

You squinted at him, “What?”

“Namjoon,” Hoseok provided and you tensed at the name of his friend, a high-powered executive at a publishing company you’d failed three times over to score an internship at, “He really understands the plight you’re going through. It’s his house.”

“There has to be a catch.”

“Yes, I’m giving Jimin your column while you’re gone.”

You grit your teeth at the mention of Hoseok’s blonde headed assistant and Hoseok chuckled at the reaction he desired, “I’m kidding. I mean, I am giving him your paper space. But, Namjoon said, providing that you make some sort of sizable progress on your manuscript, he’ll review it.”

“What?”

“You’re my friend. He’s my friend,” He plucked your turtle shaped paper weight into his palm, tracing it with the same index finger, “I want the best for you and I want my employee’s to be working at their utmost capacity. Namjoon can never have too many clients—” He made eye contact with you when he set the turtle down, “—and he probably owes me some sort of favor.”

Your gaze wandered out the window, eyeing a taxi as it sped away from the curb and forced its way into the flow of traffic. “All because I told a nine year old that Disney princesses’ aren’t real, huh?”

“No,” Hoseok’s hand covered one of yours, patting gently, “Because you’re better than this version of you. And I miss her, frankly. Old you used to bring me coffee in the mornings, so—”

“That’s when I was in Park Jimin’s position.”

“Jealous?”

“No,” Your jaw clenched but the smile on your lips was tiny and genuine regardless, “Thank you, Hobi.”

He hummed, pushing himself up off your desk to trail around toward the door, “Put your novel away, you have two months at the beach to work on that. Submit tomorrow’s column and then get your ass out of here. You have a flight to pack for.”

You weren’t sure if it were the wet tropical air that clung to your hair follicles or the grains of sand already wedged underneath the platform of your sandal but stepping off the plane gave you at least the vague sense that your inspiration was back. You itched for the keys on your laptop, letters worn and granules of salt from potato chips lodged in between, the space bar with two glossed circles from the unconscious tap of the side of your thumbs.

But the device was lodged in your backpack which was lodged between your shoulder blades as you tried to balance the lopsided baggage while maneuvering the cheap wheels of your suitcase over cobblestone sidewalks.

The keypad granted you entry when you’d barely pressed down on the last number of the combination you were given and your suitcase thanked you when sand rippled stepping stones became smooth, white tile. You nudged the luggage aside, dropping your backpack from your shoulders in the process of the long exhale you released from tense muscles, sand splaying messily over sleek flooring as you peeled your sandals from your ankles.

The house was open concept, white tile outlined in golden, sand like consistency, flooring that disappeared from the entryway to the wide room in the middle and down a short hallway that pointed into a wide, sliding glass door. Stainless steel appliances encased by black cabinets and white marble countertops, blue accent pieces and a fruit bowl filled with plastic treats completed the kitchen while compact leather furniture in the same hues boxed in a towering entertainment center on the opposite end of the room.

Your bare feet welcomed the shag grey rug that resided under the living room furniture, carrying you toward the various DVDs peeking out of the glass case underneath the TV. Nature documents sandwiched a singular copy of The Notebook, the cover worn and tattered underneath plastic from being parted so many times.

He’ll like her then and your fingertips twitched at your thighs in search of your laptop keys.

You turned a collection of faux grapes in your palms, pressing into the waxy material, eyes squinted for the typed letter lodged underneath the wire basket.

Welcome! I trust that you’ll find your accommodations satisfactory for a few months, yes? I’m eagerly awaiting your progress, Hoseok speaks very highly of you and your skills. Happy writing!

Underneath was a bulleted list of contact numbers and a FAQOTH (Frequently Asked Questions of the House), trash days, the number of the nearest pizza delivery, the code to the shed outside that contained noodles and an inflatable flamingo for the pool. It was skimming that provided you with that information and your brain short circuited on the mention of a pool, abandoning memorization in favor of your bare feet scuffing across the warmed concrete of the pool deck.

If the pesky sand rubbing raw at the arches of your feet or the palm trees you’d spotted out the windows of the plane weren’t enough to immerse you in the mindset, the clear blue of chlorine tainted water twitched at your knuckles just a fraction more, especially as engulfed by a privacy fence and vining vegetation cut neatly through the rungs of thick white.

Your stomach argued for lunch from one of the pizza places Namjoon had suggested and your heaping luggage argued for organizing the white wicker drawers in your bedroom but your gut said your laptop and your swimsuit. You were pressed onto a candy-striped towel in a lounge chair with the sun trickling at the sweat on your hairline before any other option could out weight, your clothes half strewn in the entryway of the house where you’d dug for the spandex material but forgotten as you furiously hacked away at editing your outline.

You bolded the newest addition to your outline inside your outline, the one that held all the tropes you wished to tackle in the sensical nonsensical manner that was a novel centered around the beauty of clichés. If other authors avoided clichés at all cost, the adverse relationship of shoving any and all that you could correlate between the confines of two plastic ends and a spine could produce a similar effect, pique the interest if marketed as the cliché of all clichés, work against and for itself between worlds of bubblegum high school romance and stale mint flavored coworkers, strangers, and enemies to lovers.

 Besides, eliminating stereotypes within clichés counted for something in itself. A commentary on something much larger, at least, you liked to think it was.

SEND THEM TO A BEACH HOUSE appeared directly beneath THE SPAGHETTI SCENE FROM LADY AND THE TRAMP BUT WITH EXCESS CHEESE FROM A PIECE OF PIZZA and the giddiness from typing it out had you overloading the software with how quickly you switched documents to your outline outline, swiping your index finger until the setting appeared and you deleted it in one long, blue highlight.

You thought back to the young adult romance you’d read in high school that had taken place in a beachside town, then to the very same romantic thriller you adored as an adult, to the whimsical short story you’d written in an undergraduate, elective creative writing class, to the first time you’d dug your toes into slightly damp sand and let the soothe of the waves lap at your ankles and the fall of your eyelids to be as dark as the never ending water disappearing over the horizon.

Nothing is more cliché than a beachside town, you thought and spoke the words all the same, shoulders hunching over your keyboard as you clacked the same sentence across the screen and quickly deleted it to amend more specifically. It was the most you’d typed, switched tabs for research, and had the curled feeling of anticipation for what would flow from your fingers in the last year and you briefly wondered if Namjoon had pumped something into the seashell shaped air fresheners stuck in every outlet in the house.

Your trusty search engine provided little response for “beachside towns with little to no tourism” and you instead found yourself typing in the name of the city you’d directed your cab to from the airport, a homage to the sudden rush of inspiration. More details flowed than necessary but you allowed them in the haze of humidity and sun, the name and country and zip code following out next to the bolded location bullet point until your cursor dropped down to the third line and you cut yourself on the words Sunny Drive, where the speed limit signs end in threes?

You cracked your knuckles first, then your toes, then rolled your ankle to pop it, too, crooked fingers still sat on the middle row of the keyboard, asdf-jkl;, tapping in tune with the hum that slipped through your sealed lips.

The high top of a golf cart cruised over the links of the white fence encasing you in your writing utopia, the whir dying as the vehicle rounded the corner. Your fingers were back in action, deleting the modest, white four door sedan assigned to your main character in favor of a high-powered golf cart that you’d research later if realistically existed.

Somewhere in the distance was the call of a bird, traveling over the thrash of the waves onto the shore just in reach beyond the tops of houses suspended on frames around the boardwalk. It was the call of a sea gull or something of the same variety, but you considered giving your main character a parrot and added an entire new section of your outline for the very plot piece.

Something bubbled in the depth of the pool stretched at the end of your pointed ankles, something that had curled into the filter and elicited a burst of air. In your head, you extended the pool by significance on either side and gave your protagonist the trait of an accomplished swimmer in high school.

Nothing more cliché that dropping some characters into a seaside town, one with a parrot, a tricked-out golf cart, and an affinity for swimming rather than surfing like her love interest, antagonistic counterpart and his four door sedan with a dent in the side and caked sand on the rims.

Three documents over was your actual manuscript, one you marked with various highlights to change major plot points later. A major rehaul of location but worth it for the electricity snagging and pushing your joints to click across the keys. Your brain left a footnote to revamp the scene you’d left your characters at, previously at a crossroads of figuring out the vibe in their acquaintance, stuck in a grocery store with the love interest clutching a bouquet of flowers and squinting at your protagonist.

It was quickly changed to a late night scene at a beach, the bouquet of flowers instead a ghost crab and the line of dialog a do you want to hold him? rather than the, awkward albeit, I could buy these for you? To give to your mom, of course—

And then the artificial blue of the water behind you seemed to engulf your laptop screen, draining it into a lower quality of pixels and blurred lines that categorized your work computer, the giant stone turtle hidden behind a bush of thick vegetation shrinking into your paper weight, the line of documents open across your screen erasing into your next column that, for some reason, included every curse word you could imagine in angry red font.

A tiny emoticon reminiscent of the talking paperclip from early Microsoft word processing appeared in the corner, but in the shape of Park Jimin.

In short, you were stuck, the fire of inspiration eager to boil in the pit of your stomach evaporating like the footprint on the pool peck after you’d dipped a singular foot in. You’d transported back to your office in the uncomfortable desk chair stolen from the insurance office a story down with Park Jimin breathing down your neck for your position by bringing Hoseok coffee every morning but in a slightly better quality than you had, because it was handmade with love in the longue, with a novel that was no closer to being finished than it had been when you’d fell in love with the concept and got paid to outline the entire thing not a week into your position at the newspaper (and in between running Hoseok coffee and trying to hide your work in the limited privacy of your cubicle).

A massive control + Z was in order and the fingers on one hand stretched to do just that on the first of three documents, latter cuticles shoved in between your teeth to nibble miserably on. You’d erased any mention of a beachside town and ripped away the sticky note on the inside of your conscious that suggested touching a ghost crab for romance when something rough and cold dripped against the outside of your thigh.

Confusion caused you to place your laptop to the concrete below your chair and terror caused the startled gasp to bubble out of your throat at the sheepish looking figure stood knee deep on the pool stairs.

“Uh, hello,” The figure had obnoxious red hair to match the obnoxious yellow shirt hanging off his shoulders, a similar hue that colored the apples of his cheeks, shading embarrassment over sunburn and traveling to the peek of his teeth and the twinkle in gentle brown eyes that much resembled that of a deer pinned by some oncoming headlights. “I’m...here to clean the pool.”

It was a pool net that had hit you, misjudged from the sopping pile in the mulch of leaves and bugs and neon colored specks of unidentified objects. Your eyes trailed upward from the damp pleats of rope at your side to the holder of the pole, one who hadn’t tried to jerk the net away from you but instead kept in place, as if he didn’t move a muscle maybe you’d disappear.

“I clean the pool twice a week?” He tried again but you were too focused on the rosy shade of his lips matching the moussed fringe that curled into his eyelashes. “It should have been on the note Namjoon left—”

“It probably is,” You dismissed and he finally pulled the net away from your side, the wide sweeping circle he took to plop it back into the pool not succeeding without dripping some onto the top of your head. Unconsciously eager to amend the endearing pout that graced the stranger’s lips as he stirred the net into the center of the water, you added, “I just got in this morning. I haven’t had time to read everything yet.”

“Oh. Oh,” The man straightened from where he’d been crouched trying to snag a red thread at the far end of the pool, the ends of blue pool shorts darker than the rest and trickling against toned thighs, “Well, I’m Jeongguk. The neighborhood pool guy. And groundskeeper. And...whatever else you need me to be, I guess.”

You quirked an eyebrow and Jeongguk faltered, “I mean, like, I can fix shit. If you need me to. Like, if the cable goes out. But don’t ask me about the Wifi. No clue how to improve that.”

“Do any of us?”

He laughed and there was a peek of a dimple at the corner of his lips, turning away from you, “Fair point.”

You watched as he navigated the net with a finesse that suggested he didn’t just smack your thigh with it, depositing the red string in a sad heap near the filter. The calculated wander of your gaze drew your mouth to dry, following the jump of his calf muscles as he stepped from the pool, dragging the net with him over his shoulder.

“Seriously though,” Jeongguk’s voice snapped you out of your trance and you wet your lips and longed for your chapstick lodged somewhere in the depths of your backpack. He stood by a plastic looking brown shed, the net out of his hands, arms instead folded to his chest. “If you need anything, just call the front desk. The number is pasted on the fridge.”

“Noted, thanks.”

“My pleasure—” He paused halfway through the sliding glass door, fingers poised in an awkward pointing motion, “—what was your name again?”

You uttered it and Jeongguk winked, fingers shaking as his latter foot joined him inside. “Well, then I’ll see you later.”

“Perfect,” You breathed to yourself and you realized after the roar of his blue maintenance truck pulling from your drive that your collection of tattered bras and panties were scattered in the only entrance to the house.

Romance novels lied and movies an even bigger scam about wearing sandals for long periods of time without developing stupidly coarse blisters on the surface of the faux leather straps. You were heaving and limping and confused by the time you found the main office at the far end of the neighborhood.

In retrospect, it was hard to miss, an obnoxious aqua shade of paneling, outlined in a thick white trim led to by an equally bright staircase. Bikes accented in the same white but a clearer shade of blue lined the racks outside, complete with wicker baskets on the front and shiny metal bells that glinted just right to make you shield your eyes and trip up a single stair in your ascend. Inside the barn like doors came a refreshing burst of air conditioning, eliminating the humidity from outside and immediately calming some of the sweat curling into the hair at the nape of your neck.

A man sat behind a glass top counter in the middle of the room, legs delicately crossed on the stool he perched to, sunglasses nudged in the darkest part of dyed blonde roots, thumbing through a tourist style magazine that advertised May, the current month, as it’s date of publication. When the doors rattled shut behind you, he looked up, sunglasses bouncing to the bridge of his nose as he let out a tiny, startled noise.

“Hello!” He greeted after a moment, broad shoulders setting as you approached the counter. The magazine was flipped shut and slid closer to you, eyebrows wiggling at you beyond the frames of his fallen glasses, “Can I interested you in an entire article on the shrimp business in town?”

You giggled then, gently nudging the magazine back to him. The gold on his nametag fastened to the pocket of a blue surf shop t-shirt read Seokjin.

“No, not today.”

Seokjin balled the gloss into a roll and with a shrug, pitched it over his shoulder. “You know what, me either,” He winked, folding his hands on the counter and leaning toward you, plump lips curled back to let out an endearing wheeze of a laugh, “What can I do for you today?”

“Do you rent the bikes outside?”

“I’ll rent you two of them,” He laughed again at the expression on your face, turning to fish a clipboard off the tiny table behind him. “Kidding. I’ll rent you three.”

“I love it, but I think I only need one for right now.”

“If I weren’t on shift, I’d accompany you,” Seokjin scribbled something on the clipboard, “What house number are you in?”

You recited the number to him and he nodded with his tongue between his back molars. The clipboard was returned to the table in exchange for a set of tiny keys, ones he held out to you by the dangle of their miniature, metal hook. “These work on the first bike on the rack,” He smiled again, all full lips and an endearing red tinge to the tips of his ears, “Bring them back to me to check the bike back in or I may have to hunt you down.”

Your eyes widened and he cackled again, slapping a palm down on the glass countertop, “Kidding. But there is a fine if it’s not returned in twenty-four hours so—”

“Noted. I’ll have it back,” You pressed the keys into your palm and offered a halfhearted wave, “Thank you!”

“Always! Happy riding!”

The keys were deposited safely into the pocket of your shorts after you’d managed to wiggle the bicycle away from the rack, clacking against your phone screen as you clambered aboard the leather seat and pushed off in the direction you’d came.

You pedaled first in search of the house, finding it easier on the retrace and mapping it to memory as you dared a new trail, the one that looped and met a dead end when asphalt curled into white sand. The house whirred by again and then the main office, the air cooler in a breeze and with an easier travel than walking with a dozen blisters. You cycled slowly, taking in the unruly wind of cobblestone sidewalks and curiously planted palm trees near the planned planted flowers and each house in their own entirety in comparison to your own and the license plates of each car in each driveway as they advertised various regions and places and worlds aside from the one you were living in.

The blue maintenance truck elicited bile in the back of your throat from the incident earlier in the week as it sat parked on the street corner where sprinklers poked out of the turf and sprayed onto the green and yellow logo pasted to the side. The cab was empty but the yard it was parked in front of wasn’t, the knee height gate surrounding the shrubbery open with Jeongguk’s feet planted just on the other side of it.

You whipped your gaze from the slice of hedge trimmers through an exotic looking tree, instead looping your bike onto the opposite sidewalk and in the opposite direction. To no avail, the cul de sac throwing you back around like an out of control speed skater and suddenly the distance in front of you was filled only with the image of Jeongguk’s bare shoulders.

The bike coasted underneath you, leather relaxing its strain on your blisters as you concentration instead fell to the defined ridges between his shoulder blades, ones that rippled under a thin sheen of sweat each time he drew the trimmers open and shut, fluttering confetti like green to the grass below. The gardening tool fell as you watched, one arm staying above his head as he wiped a glove covered hand across his forehead, pasting more of the faded red fringe to the sweat already glistening there than clearing it. In the same moment did he pivot, trimmers dangling at his thigh, but this time you weren’t focused on the short black clinging desperately to his lean hips or the bunched white shirt sticking out from the waistband, rather the defined lines of his trimmed stomach starting underneath his ribs and disappearing underneath the elastic.

Jeongguk calling your name wasn’t part of the mirage and your rounded mouth jerked up just in time to notice the rapidly approaching edge of the curb.

Your dry mouth didn’t need water when it instead got the sprinkled of gravel, your bike tire colliding with the blocked concrete below and throwing you off to the side. A pain registered as a skid down your elbow but nothing quite matched the shamed embarrassment that flushed at your cheeks as a distant shit, hey! echoed in your ears and gravel crunched under approaching footsteps.

“Hey, woah, are you okay?—” You felt like you were underwater, like the ocean had suddenly decided it could eat the human race and was choosing you as its first victim, “—shit, you’re bleeding.”

A sting to your arm drew you above water and fingers that weren’t your own wiggled in front of your blurry vision, coating in a glob of dark red. The dots in your vision worsened when there was a pressure around your arm, Jeongguk’s t-shirt yanked from his shorts to act as a makeshift bandage and you couldn’t even appreciate the feeling of his hands touching you when you felt like you could vomit all over them any second.

“Hey, hey, babe can you hear me? Don’t pass out on me, it’s just a little scrape. C’mon, hey, I have some water in my truck, give me a second—”

The grass was a welcome pillow to the throb in your head, clearing the specks of black and white in your vision just enough for you to welcome the overhead blue curling around the landscape. You focused your attention on a cloud, one shaped like a disfigured dolphin, until it slipped in front of the sun, the rays spilling out in thick shards from between the transparent water vapor chilling the new layer of sweat that had slipped over your skin in your near faint.

You shuddered as more of the dots in your vision transferred to a seeming chill in your veins, goosebumps crawling across your arms and leaving a dry, cotton taste in your cheeks. Scrambling footsteps in the gravel returned as quickly as they had retreated and a gentle hand slipped behind your shoulders, aiding you in sitting up enough to bring your lips to a cool splash of water.

“I’ve been telling Seokjin to replace the brakes on these for months,” Jeongguk passed the water bottle into your still twitching fingertips, instead taking a seat next to you in the grass.

You were shaky in taking another gulp of the lukewarm water, letting it slide thickly down your throat. Various retorts snagged in the back of your throat and you suppressed them like the urge to glance over at him. Instead, a soft hum came out, one emitted through another cheek full of water.

“Well, when you’re ready, I’ll drive you back to the house and take the bike back—”

“I’m fine,” You croaked but you punctuated the sentiment by gathering your feet underneath you. A dull pain throbbed in your forearm and you swayed slightly in your crouched position, but you managed to stand with no more than a few stars decorating the back of your eyelids.

Jeongguk stuttered behind you, scrambling to his feet as you hunched over the fallen bike, dragging it to an upright position by one of the protruding handles. He slipped a warm hand to the small of your back, stalling you. “You’re not going to try to ride back, are you?”

“Yes?”

“You nearly fainted just now. Do you really think that’s...the best idea?”

Your knee caught on the seat in your first attempt to straddle the bike but you were successful the second time, standing with shaky palms clenched on the handles. “Not really. But it’s not very far…”

You thought you’d shaken him, the bike wobbling as you pushed off, getting two tire rolls away before his figure was jogging up beside you, placing an insistent hand on the bars. “At least let me walk back with you,” Jeongguk insisted, red fringe not obscuring his wide-eyed concern.

You begrudgingly ignored the veins in his forearm, slowing the speed of your pedaling to let him guide you through the desolate roads of the quiet neighborhood. It was a quick but silent trip, Jeongguk turning to balance the bike with two hands as you clambered off on shaky legs. He’d barely pivoted from depositing it back into its empty space on the rack when you’d pushed the tiny set of keys against the center of chest, too engrossed in a range of mortification.

“Here,” You bit out, “Thanks again.”

You took off in a rumpled mess of gravel, sunburn, and a bloody t-shirt as Jeongguk called after you some variation of be careful! that almost sounded like he was laughing.

The blood caked off his t-shirt on the third wash (when you managed to understand the complex mess of dials lining the top of the machine) and you hung it on a wire hanger on the tiny awning that extended outward from the house onto the concrete. He’d have to duck underneath it to do his job as you hid faithfully in your bedroom and pretended to nap for the duration of his visit.

There was a distinct clattering outside as the morning hours drew into the afternoon and you buried your head underneath the puffy duvet, taking comfort in the flash of colors across your phone screen even if you were mute to the video you’d played. But then the clutter outside transferred to the slide of the patio door and the video disappeared as your phone fell face down against your waist and you froze.

Jeongguk was calling your name, fluctuating in volume as he moved about the main part of the house. You winced each time the scuff of his bare feet moved closer, relaxed when it was farther away, and sighed when he tried, “I know you’re in here. Seokjin didn’t see you leave today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.”

You swallowed your pride and the unattractive scab growing on the flat of your forearm as you stalked out of your room. You found him mostly clothed this time, hands braced on the lip of the bar in the center of the kitchen with his phone pressed toward his nose in one hand.

“What, have you been watching me?”

There was a fond smile that crept to Jeongguk’s lips as he turned to look at you, “Making sure you didn’t bleed out, actually, but if you want to look at it that way.”

You paused in the hallway, feet as wide as your shoulders and arms folded tight to your chest. Only then did you realize you still had flannel pajama shorts and a flimsy white shirt on. “Well. Here I am. With only minor injuries. So uh…”

There was a glass plate in the flat of his palm before you could blink, a pyramid of chocolate chip cookies wrapped with plastic presented before you. “I, uh, made you some cookies,” He blinked, tossing his head toward the refrigerator. The red in his hair had faded to a harsh pink, “and there’s fresh lemonade in the fridge.”

“Your t-shirt is hanging outside,” You blurted in response, “free of blood.”

Jeongguk’s nose wrinkled, turning to deposit the cookies to the countertop again, “Didn’t want it back. I have fifty of the same thing. But thank you…”

You stared at the back of his head, where dark brown roots had begun to weave through the sharp red. After a moment, you blinked, “...so you can bake?”

He shrugged without looking at you, peeling the plastic away from the plate to pluck a cookie into his palm. He glanced over his shoulder, endearing smile dimpled into his cheeks and you melted like the bits of chocolate that brushed against his digits when he stretched the treat out to you, “Eh. Try one?”

Jeongguk’s gaze followed you as you shuffled around the kitchen, sliding out one of the bar stools with the crook of your foot to slip onto the round leather. You reached over the countertop, snatching a napkin from a pile near the sink to spread out in front of you, lips pressing into a geometric shape in your cheeks.

“C’mon, hand it over.”

He bypassed your wriggling fingers to place the cookie down on your napkin, watching you with a bated breath and round eyes. Soft irises followed the path of the piece you broke off the cookie to where you nudged it into your mouth by the curve of your thumb. The cookie crumbled across your tongue, melting in a mess of sugar and chocolate that gurgled a pleasured moan from your throat as you dived in for two, four more nibbles on the soft corners.

An amused expression wrinkled at his cocked eyebrows and the small sliver of his teeth when your eyelids fluttered open from devouring half the treat, “Good?”

“You can bake,” You affirmed, breaking off another bite sized corner. “Maybe I should wreck bikes more often.”

“No,” Jeongguk assured, replacing the cookie with a fresh one before turning to your fridge to yank out the pitcher of lemonade, “You definitely should not.”

His stature went fishing about the kitchen area, yanking open cabinet after cabinet until he found something suitable, glass pieces smudged from years of use. He pulled down two, placing them in front of the pitcher.

“You know, your food selection here is pretty sad,” He handed over a full glass, watching as you took a languid gulp.

“I don’t exactly know where the grocery store is,” You argued of the boxes of leftover pizza stacked inside your fridge and the singular bag of pretzels you’d smuggled onto the airplane. “Nor do I have a car, and biking is certainly out of the question—”

Jeongguk ignored you, opening and closing drawers until he found the packet of paper Namjoon had left for you, the FAQOTH. His thumb lodged between the pages, squinting at the ink as his voice muffled around the rim of his own glass.

His tongue swiped at the lemonade clinging to his upper lip, sighing, “You really didn’t read this, did you? There’s, like, seven cab services to choose from. And at least six of them know where the Walmart is.”

You dismissed him with a wave of your hand, snatching the packet of paper from his grasp to flatten it over the napkin you’d been snacking from. “All Namjoon has listed are pizza places…” You trailed off, “I need restaurant recommendations. Throw some at me.”

“That’s a pretty broad question. I have a lot.”

“You’ll have to show me a few before I leave.”

You stared at each other in a passing silence that heightened your mortification like bile on the crux of your throat, especially when Jeongguk cocked an eyebrow, the slightest of smirks slanting his lips as his chin unhinged, falling to his chest as he fished aside for another napkin.

“Maybe…” He trailed off, snatching a pen from the same drawer the FAQOTH had came from. “But for now—” He scribbled some more on the surface pebbled in design, scratching out a name and an address before presenting the drooping napkin to you, “—try this place. I think the cab drivers can find it...”

The Dusty Dolphin bordered the line between the natural white sands of the beach and the main strip of highway that cascaded down the coastline. It was as if sitting on the border in territories, the inside seating of the restaurant on soft grasses sticking through sand like soil with an asphalt parking lot lined in chipped neon parking spaces just a walking distance away, while the outside seating was perched on the beach, a patio raised on wooden platforms with brightly colored umbrellas stuck through the center of wooden tables.

Your fingers paled your knuckles with how tightly you clenched your fists, flip flops slapping against the wooden surface as you climbed up a rickety staircase to tell an uninterested looking hostess that it would be just you.

“Outside?” It wasn’t really a question of yes or no, more of a confirmation of what she was expecting you to say as she hopped down from her stool and began to collect silverware and a glossy menu.

Your sure was lost under your breath as she took your curt nod as the answer, weaving through the close knit tables in the indoor seating to lead you through a single set of double doors and to an empty table on the far corner. Again, her, “Is this okay?” was a confirmation, not an affirmation, and your nod had her saying your server will be right with you when she’d already slipped back inside.

The sun peaked out from behind the lapping waves on the horizon, the blackness engulfing the farthest waves a taste of the sun’s sleep for a few hours, leaving the world with a brilliant mesh of pastel hues, colored together like oil crayons as brushes of wispy clouds rushed by to the melody of the water rushing to the shore. A breeze rolled with the motion of the water and you tugged your thin cardigan closer to your torso, not helped with the fans bolted to the overhead framing that continued to rotate softly, a cooldown from their midafternoon duties where they whirred fatefully.

“Hey, told you the cab driver could find this place.”

Jeongguk stood in front of you with the dopiest of grins on his lips, a tiny and audible giggle stumbling out from the shocked expression that met your features. He was adorned in all black, tight black jeans, a black belt cinching a black t-shirt into his waist, a black apron snug just a beat above the belt buckle. His bright locks were styled, parted away from his forehead in a calculated fashion that made one swoop a tad bigger than the latter side. Pens and straws and a tiny notepad were tucked into the pouches of the apron and he held a notepad of a similar fashion up, pen clicking rapidly as he continued to giggle at you.

“You work here?” You blinked, and then added with flat palms slapping against the front of your menu, “Is there anything you don’t do?”

“Can’t quite train the dolphins at the wildlife reserve yet, but we’re getting there,” His nose wrinkled in another laugh, pen clicking out finally as he rested it against the paper, “What can I get you to drink?”

“Uh. Water, I guess.”

“Boring,” Jeongguk scribbled shorthand to the pad, “Are you going to get something a bit more exciting than chicken strips for your meal?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be heckling the paying customer.”

“Seriously,” He eyed you again, “Do you know what you want?”

You opened the menu for the first time, the array of seafood and pastas and salads and various other dishes overwhelming you with him hunching over you, shuffling to read over your shoulders.

“What do you recommend?”

“Well, we’re pretty known for seafood—” You shot him a look, “—obviously. But like, all the shrimp is pretty good—”

“Because of the shrimp business in town?”

Jeongguk laughed, “Seokjin?”

“A little bit.”

He hummed, chin hovering dangerously close to your shoulder before he straightened, shuffling between the railing around the porch area. “I’ll bring you a couple things,” He decided, mostly to himself and absently over his shoulder,

A couple things meant a platter of shrimp, cooked, seasoned, piled, and ripped in different variations, piled high like the pyramid of cookies you’d nearly devoured after he’d left your house. His manager complained twice upon finding him sitting with you, judging your expression as you sucked some butter contraption off the ridges of a steamed shrimp and teasing you of the flakes of garlic clinging to the corner of your mouth. He returned to refill your water when you’d only taken a few sips from the candy striped straw and ignored you three times when you asked for the bill as the sun completely disappeared beyond the water, leaving the sea to one giant stretch you could not see but could hear the threat of.

“Here, I guess,” Jeongguk settled the black fold down on your table, leaving with a wink that illuminated in the artificial porch lights hanging from the center of the still turning fans. It was enough lighting to read that he’d paid for your bill, scrawling a giant smiley face underneath the amount.

You sighed, prepared to reprimand him as you carefully folded the receipt to slide into your pocket but two colored notes underneath caught your attention. The pink one read wait on me, I’ll drive you home. You placed it aside with a check to your phone, finding it five minutes from closing time of the restaurant as a majority of the other patrons who had long fled the premises.

The second note was yellow, the handwriting a bit more loopy, calculated in a sense.

A mirage is the peace the night time sea suggests; a reality is the beauty your soul creates.

Jeongguk was free of the apron when he returned, shirt untucked, and a large blue jacket shrugged across his shoulders. The same giddy smile from before remained plastered to his features as he dug in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys that he tossed and caught in the same palm.

“Ready to go?”

You folded the sticky note carefully, slipping it with the collection of bills in your back pocket.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

He left notes while you were asleep and he had another schedule to get to, choosing your pool as the first to clean and assess and correct the chemical balance of, leaving the bright blue paper with tacky glue stripped on the top to the patio door.

You caught it when you shrugged outside with a piece of toast in hand and your laptop folded under your arm, crumbs decorating your knuckles as you slipped the paper off the sizable smudge on the glass to bring it to your nose.

Think of dream, sleep of you.

He left notes on the hedge just outside your door on his way to the neighbors to fix a faulty outlet in the upstairs bedroom for a family who’d just arrived and had decided to cram three children with twelve electronic devices between them into that very room.

It was bright pink and sealed to the petal of a flower you debated picking, a petal that dislodged anyway when you plucked the note instead, decorating the stone walkway with a single question of soft red hues.

Bloom in my heart like the question of my soul.

He left notes on the inside of your refrigerator, right on top of a family sized bottle of orange juice he’d watched you haul through the front gates of the neighborhood while Seokjin assumed he was paying attention to his instructions for the disposal of some lawn chairs at the community pool near the beach.

You found it after he left in a flurry of more cookies, the smell of chlorine, and an off handed comment about you needing more variety in your life than water and orange juice, a yellow note that rivaled the unnatural coloring of the juice when you’d purchased a brand name rather than the more expensive, family brand.

Orange juice sucks, that much I do know.

You scattered them across the screen of your open laptop like an investigator piecing together the details of a crime while your neglected novel watched on, the cursor mocking you from beyond a note that said procrastinating my destiny with a useless metal fence. Color coding failed when Jeongguk switched from pinks, blues, and yellows to purples, oranges, and greens. His handwriting didn’t falter, suggest a trend with a certain harder press of his pen. The medium in which he wrote varied, lead or red pen or what appeared to be a blue colored pencil. Some told a story, only to be ruined with orange juice or elbow scabs or half eaten shrimp.

Your laptop screen was coated in a thin layer of film from placing and plucking the notes into various orders, one that hazed over your novel as you began to stack the notes into a neat pile in your cupped palm. It mirrored the midday haze that had curled across the neighborhood, the sun eliciting the mirage of steam curling off the pool water that seemed to hinder your conscious unable to understand the growing tree of poetry in your grasp.

The contents of the last paragraph, even without a layer of tacky glue and humidity stained air, made little sense, only one of five you’d written in three weeks. It was thick and expositional, a writing exercise within the draft, a rambling discussion of your surroundings when you’d decided to have your characters visit a beach rather than force their stories into some sand and sun.

Your outline answered your rhetorical question.

Why are they going to the beach? TBD.

You deleted the fifth paragraph and shut your laptop. Four paragraphs in three weeks.

Soft fluttering of the notes between your fingertips kept the distracted state of your conscious occupied long enough to seek out an unnatural sound of nature. It was a scurrying from around the side of the house, scattering through dry pine needles and gravel poured between the concrete stepping stones. The cloud of your thoughts cleared enough to panic in confusion, leaving the notes underneath a corner of your laptop as you crept into your flip flops.

The wire gate was left open, swinging gently against the side of the house. Clear footsteps rut deep into the coarse brown needles, smudging into the mud below still damp from the morning rain shower.

Your first rational thought of it being a squirrel erased as you reached for the gate, pulling and latching it. Someone was walking a dog across the street, a tiny white poodle with a ridiculous haircut and a cat bell on its collar. A childlike scream traveled upward from the beach. The breeze clattered against the leaves of a towering tree planted entirely too close to the house.

The same gentle breeze fluttered a strip of pink against the side of the house.

“Dammit, Jeongguk,” You cursed, needles lodging between the rubber of your flip flops and your bare feet as you moved off the stepping stone path. It was pasted high, too, barely in reaching of your pinching fingertips as you leaned into the house and stretched as high on the balls of your feet as you could go.

Your back slumped against the house as you glared at your prize for thin scratches and a strain in your shoulders. A number. A phone number.

With a shitty smiley face, a curve and two dots, beneath it.

You cursed through another layer of pine needles, deserting your flip flops on the far end of the pool deck as you hopped across seething hot concrete to retrieve your phone from underneath your towel. Pointed thumbs jabbed in the number to a new text thread, equally as prominent in clicking out a message.

What the hell are you trying to tell me with these notes, Jeongguk?

For thirty-seven agonizing seconds, you thought your only answer was the smiling emoticon with tiny red hearts dotted around the surface. And then three little dots appeared in the bottom left corner.

Everything. Meet me at the beach tonight?

You followed the sound of music, passing only a family with two tiny girls, headlamps strapped to their foreheads and plastic sand castle buckets clutched in their fingers as they chatted eagerly about what they’d seen underneath their feet, and a colony of the very crabs they’d been trying to capture. Your flip flops followed the beat of the guitar melody, pattering against the flex of your thigh where you clutched them in loose fingers at your hip, bare feet sliding through the cool sand, occasionally catching on snags of sea shells and scurrying sea creatures.

The sounds grew louder, dimming the thrash of night time waves, and you found him, seated not far down the coast line on a ratty looking, red lawn chair.

Jeongguk glanced up from furrowed eyebrows when you cleared his throat, hunched over a guitar balanced neatly on short clad thighs. Confusion erased into elation as he grinned, tossing his head toward the empty lawn chair next to him, blue and with less frayed edges.

“Hey! Have a seat. I brought beer in the cooler behind you. And water. I can go get you anything—”

You ducked for the red plastic container, drawing out a dripping water bottle and cracking the lid, “It’s okay. Thank you.”

He visibly relaxed, the lingering stare on your lips wrapping around the bottle diverting back to his work on the instrument in his lap, fiddling with some of the tuners at the top. You watched as he worked, thumb coming out to strum at the bottom few strings before he sat back with a satisfied hum.

And then Jeongguk began to sing. Softly at first, a testing glance in your direction as soft pink lips seemed hesitant in parting. When intrigue lit your features, body visibly tensing, his mouth curled into a smile, voice a higher volume but a soft octave nonetheless, gentle and soothing like a retreating wave that lipped gently across the shells it was leaving behind. His gaze faltered from yours to hit a note, a scrunch to his nose, a vein down the length of his neck, a passion that you longed for as his voice fishtailed into an easy run. It was an unfamiliar tune to you, one that ended in a handful of endearing head bops and cheesy hums from Jeongguk as he strummed once, hard, down the strings of his guitar.

The smile on his lips wobbled, trying to contain his teeth but still dimpling in his cheeks as he blinked at you. He lost the battle with his smile when he spoke, testing “Good?”, with a slight giggle.

“The notes,” You said dumbly, “They’re your lyrics?”

“Some of them…” He sat the guitar in the sand with a shy hand wrapped around the back of his neck, “Some are just, I don’t know, poetry.”

“So you sing.”

“I sing,” Jeongguk nodded, “I like to think I’m a better singer than pool cleaner. Or cookie baker.”

You followed his gaze from your eyes to his clasped hands on his knees. “Have you tried to pursue anything in it?”

“No point,” His gaze moved onward from his hands to the ocean, squinting and closing, “Just a hobby.”

“For now—”

“For always,” He was staring at you again, curt in his sharp correction. After a moment, a tiny smile slanted his lips, “It’s okay, really. I enjoy doing it in my free time.”

You tilted your head, “Why are you sharing this with me?”

Jeongguk was standing above you, hand outstretched, shy smile flushing his cheeks even in the darkness. “Walk with me.”

He took the initiative the thread your fingers together, leading you down to the edge of where the water reached. The water still warm from the heat of the season lapped around your ankles as you trudged down the coast, hand in hand, silence welcome to the soundtrack of the ocean. After a sizable distance, Jeongguk sighed, footsteps stalling to yank your unsuspecting figure to a stop.

“I’m showing you because lately, they’re all about you.”

You blinked at him, hands still clasped but pulled at an unnatural distance between your statures. “Jeongguk, what—”

“Look, I’m extremely lame and not as good with actual words as I am with the notes I left you but…” He stepped closer, dropping your intertwined hands to swing between your bodies, “I like you. Basically.”

“Basically?”

A disgruntled whine left his lips and his gaze trailed over your shoulder, upward toward the sky, “I know you’re only here for another month and I know I barely know you but. I don’t know. I like you. And I felt weird envisioning a future where I didn’t at least try.”

Your skin warmed through the thin flannel draped across your sun irritated skin. Another step closer, this one initiated by you, followed by a soft squeeze and tug on his palm. “Like you said, I’m only here for another month,” Soft eyes darkened into the stars dancing around you wandered back down to your gaze, hopeful even as you sighed, “I’m supposed to be writing, anyway. That’s the entire point of my trip and I’ve barely got anything done…”

“I won’t be a distraction.”

“You already are.”

Another shy smile graced Jeongguk’s features, mumbling, “Sorry.”

“But a good distraction…” One more step and there was but a fingertips length distance between your torsos, your thumb running along his knuckles, “You’re a good distraction.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

You held up your free hand, pinky presented. “I’m willing to try, Jeongguk but—” You punctuated the word before he could hook the digit in yours, “—no obligations. Not really, anyway.”

“Do the obligations include or exclude kissing?” He braved leaning closer to you, even as the rosy hue on his cheeks spread, “Pleasesayinclude, pleasesayinclude, pleasesay—”

You tugged down on his hand, loose fist with your pinky presented falling against his shoulder as you connected your lips. He hummed happily into the seam of your lips, arm snaking around your waist to eliminate the distance between your torsos. “One month,” You punctuated between a breath of air, one he ignored with another languid kiss into your mouth.

“So I can’t tell Taehyung you’re my girlfriend?”

“Who’s Taehyung?”

“My roommate,” Jeongguk linked your pinkies while you were distracted, kissing your jaw, “I’ll introduce you to him.”

“Jeongguk,” You squeezed his hand and pinky in tandem, “One month.”

“Stop, you’re making your not-really-your-boyfriend sad.”

Kim Taehyung was all surfer, the stereotypical bleached blonde hair with dark peeking out of the roots, baggy black shorts with the white strings untied, a thin white undershirt hugging his lean figure underneath a blue shirt with some intricate design of flames and waves and a surfboard ironed on the front. His bare feet slapped through the corridor, grumbling something to Jeongguk’s greeting call, hair tossed back with a thick white headband around the middle of his forehead that pronounced his harsh eyebrows, ones that furrowed to inspect you.

“Hi!” He was loud, like an over excited golden retriever, especially when he beamed to tease his roommate, “So you’re the beautiful lady Gukkie here courted by flashing his stellar abs and less than comparable thighs.”

You gawked, cheeks heating because well, kind of, but the hand on the small of your back fist into the material of your shirt, pushing you forward and past his broad figure.

“Don’t you have a wave to almost drown in?”

“C’mon, I was just kidding, love!” Taehyung’s footsteps were heavy behind you, following your figures through a narrow hallway, “No part of Jeon is impressive enough to get you. Did he bribe you? I’ll pay the ransom.”

You giggled as Jeongguk paused around you, sucking in a breath through his teeth that materialized into a whispered, “If you ignore him, he goes away. Eventually.”

Your nose wrinkled, turning to look at the red-faced man pressed against your back, “But he’s funny.”

You’d paused in front of a doorway, one Jeongguk pushed open and glared pointedly at you. “Don’t encourage him. Go.”

Jeongguk’s room was wide, a contrast to the narrow hallway lined in creaking hardwood and paneled walls. It was open concept, not much furniture aside from a few dressers and the bed. Blacks, whites, and greys told the story with color sprinkled in from accented belongings, like a collection of keychains hanging off a billboard in the corner, the cork material of the wall hanging filed with various photographs pinned up by neon colored tacks. A string of lights hung above his headboard, polaroids dangling from the wires, similar ones pasted in a haphazard pattern on the same wall.

“You like photography?”

He watched you step to his corkboard, delicately sliding your fingers underneath a photograph so as not to touch the ink on the front. It was a picture he’d taken of Taehyung at a surfing competition, purposefully edited to look straight from a vintage yearbook.

“A little. Filming too....”

You nodded, letting the photograph flutter back against its board. Pivoting, slow steps carried you toward his slumped figure standing rigid in the center of his room, sliding your palms over his shoulders when you got close enough.

“All of these talents and you can’t dye your hair by yourself?”

Jeongguk’s fingers fell into the fringe hanging over his eyes, now blonde with hints of pink clinging to the ends of certain strands. A pout materialized but he didn’t whine, just leaning closer to you with tendrils of hair still secured between a hand behind his head.

“Just because it’s your first visit doesn’t mean I won’t subject you to Taehyung’s three hour lecture of proper surfboard waxing techniques.”

“Stop threatening me with a good time and lead me to the hair dye.”

His bathroom was as small as the hallway and you found yourself seated on the edge of the vanity with Jeongguk crushed between your legs. He didn’t seem to mind, fingers twitching from their place beside you to creep up to your thighs as you squinted at his head, plastic covered fingers globing harsh red through his hair.

“What’s your natural hair color?”

“Brown.”

You tapped at his roots, taking a glob with the crook of your fingers. “Why don’t you leave it at that?”

“Because red is cool.”

“Who told you that?—” You pulled your hands into your lap, careful to hold the stain away, “—Your girlfriend?”

“Don’t know,” Jeongguk leaned close enough to smear red on your forehead with his bangs if they weren’t pasted to his forehead, “Is my hair color cool?”

A playful look of disgust wrinkled at your nose, “Only half of your hair is dyed right now.”

He glanced behind you in the mirror, eyeing the glob of dye on one half of his head to the straight blonde on the latter. “So?” He blinked back to you, “Is it cool?”

“I don’t know,” You began to peel the gloves off, “Wash it out and we’ll see.”

You sat cross legged in the center of Jeongguk’s bed when he returned, half of his hair back to the vibrant red it had been when he nearly impaled you with a pool net, half the blonde it had been trending toward when he asked you to entertain his affections for a month more. He didn’t give you an option of a yes or no, flopping at the foot of the bed to press his cheek against your ankles, arms stretched out across your thighs.

“Hey,” He said after a moment, muffled against your jeans.

You tested the waters of placing a hand against his scalp and when he cuddled into your affection, you softly ran your nails through his hair. “Hey, what?”

“I let you read my things—” Jeongguk shifted to place his chin on your naval, blinking owlishly up at you, “—my things about you. When do I get to read part of your novel?”

“Hmm, when it’s finished and published and available in bookstores.”

“Is that soon?”

You shot him a look but he didn’t seem to be kidding. “No. Probably not. Especially since I’ve made virtually no progress.”

“Well,” He pecked your belly button over your shirt, snuggling back against you again, “I’d love to read an advanced screening version.”

You’d deleted the four paragraphs you’d completed in three weeks. Zero paragraphs in five weeks.

“We’ll see…”

You printed your outline in three separate copies, each one with their own unique set of markups of various color pens and pencils and highlighters, colors born out of your tiny sparks on inspiration that you tried to hold onto like a the end of a rope, one that would pull you to the surface for clarity, creativity, anything. But each time the trill of your red pen reached the end of the page, transferring over to your fingers on the keyboard, the half an ounce of rope had slipped through your fingertips, leaving you to tread underwater.

Those stapled pages were spread across a table on the patio area of The Dusty Dolphin, half sandwiched between your laptop that was attached to an extension cord. Jeongguk had hijacked both the Wifi password and an extra long cable, seating you in the far corner of the deck area and keeping you stocked with fresh water and samples of mozzarella sticks.

It was the third time you’d marked through and rewrote a certain bullet point, the result a smear of dying highlighter in neon yellow that you could barely read. You capped the highlighter and the open pen rolled to the center of your keyboard, turning your attention instead to the goosebumps that had appeared across your bare forearms and Jeongguk’s figure as he jogged out onto the patio deck.

“That my hoodie?” He questioned as he approached, your head halfway through the black fabric you’d had tied around your waist for the duration of the day.

“Could be Taehyung’s. I stole it from your laundry room.”

Jeongguk placed the new glass of ice water down, avoiding your papers and electronics to wrap a hand in the collar of the hoodie to tug your mouth to his.

“Nope,” He teased with a nip to your bottom lip in a whirling departure, “Mine.”

“Wait!”

He turned, nearly colliding with a high chair protruding out into the walkway.

“Come back, waiter.”

The pad of paper was drawn from his apron, just to appease the look the child’s mother shot him as he moved to stand next to you again. “Yes, paying customer?”

“Can you bring me real food, please?”

He began scribbling something before you could talk, mirroring your sentiment the same time you uttered it.

“The shrimp pasta?”

A bashful smile sunk your chin into your shoulders and you nodded. “Yes, please.”

“Course,” Another chaste peck on your lips that turned into two, then lingered on the third, only for heavy footsteps and a rough voice to have him jumping away.

“Jeongguk…” A figure was leaning out of the doorway dressed in an ironed white button up and black slacks, the tiny gold nameplate advertising manager first reading Yoongi. “Stop kissing customers, please.”

This time a horrified gasp from the mother in question, one that caused Yoongi’s eyes to widen as he moved for the table, shooting you a comforting wink as he began to explain the concept of a joke while Jeongguk disappeared back into the depths of the restaurant.

You managed to hack out two paragraphs while Jeongguk put your order in with a handful of dialog sprinkled within. His kiss was to the top of your head when he slipped the plate in front of you, careful to avoid your twitching fingers over the keys as he hummed.

“Any progress?”

Your response wasn’t a total lie. “A little bit…”

Two paragraphs and useless dialog tagged with edit later in six weeks.

You’d managed to catch a handful of the rope promising to pull you ashore, one you clung desperately to while your fingers, coiled equally as tight, wore the letters on your keyboard to nothing, backspace barely a factor as you left in typos and grammar issues and a myriad of useless punctuation. The lines from where your laptop sat in relation to the cover your swimsuit bottoms provided was of little concern, just as your hair tied messily on the nape of your neck and the lack of towel underneath the bare parts of your stature not covered by the swimsuit you’d stumbled into in route to reach the rope.

The paper outlines sat somewhere inside but you didn’t need them anyway, the digital copy enough to mark off pieces from as your word count skyrocketed, pages clicking over and over the hump you’d previously been stuck on, the rope dragging your belly first over but getting you there nonetheless. You typed until your mouth begged for the ice water you’d left inside and one of the two cookies of Jeongguk’s left, but you powered through into another page, giddy with the possibility but more focused on the emotion somewhere between determination and greed.

You heard the gate open but ignored it, you heard a call of your name but ignored it, and you felt the splash of water hit your ankles and glared at it.

“Hey!” Jeongguk resurfaced on the side of the pool. He’d fixed his hair, vibrant and red against where he brushed it out of his eyes. “Come in for a swim?”

You pursed your lips, determined to ignore him as your fingers started slow on the keys again. When you arrived at your previous speed, you huffed, “You aren’t supposed to clean today.”

He dunked his head under, resurfacing in a flurry of bubbles, “Does it look like I’m cleaning?”

“Jeongguk. I’m busy today.”

“You’re only here for another week.”

“Exactly!”

He sighed, forearms folding onto the concrete as he leaned forward, watching you, “Whatever you have is great. Better than great.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I have a vague idea because you won’t let me read anything.”

You were glaring at him again, the playful expression previously on his features hardened into something you couldn’t quite understand, one that softened only marginally as the seconds passed.

Jeongguk uttered your name, a gentle request, “Take a break.”

Your laptop sat open on the bare lawn chair, battery zapped the longer the heat bore down on it but the pointed stalk of your footsteps across the pool area had shoved it aside. The water was cold upon first touch but the reactions of your body didn’t show it, carrying you down the staircase until you were submerged, body crouching so that your chin skimmed the surface of the water until you were treading directly in front of Jeongguk.

“I’m in the water,” You hissed, “Is this what you wanted?”

He didn’t have it in him to giggle, a sad smile instead not quite reaching the dimples in his cheeks.

“No. I want you to believe in yourself.”

The push of your mouth against Jeongguk’s was wet, tasting of the chlorine that splattered around you when you stood to grapple for purchase on his shoulders. Strong arms encased your waist, accepting you anyway as one liquid staining your lips was replaced with something warm and tinged in salt, dripping in unwarranted streams from the corners of your eyes.

You whimpered when your back was pressed to the side of the pool, legs coming to wrap around his waist while your fingernails scraped at his back. “I’m sorry,” You gasped, his lips mouthing at your neck while he held you.

“Don’t be,” He reprimanded you with teeth on your collarbone, arms sliding higher on your waist to press you flush to his chest, “I’ve got you.”

Another miserable apology fell from your lips and your chin was jerked upward by a soft palm cupping your cheek, latter hand pressing into the concrete behind you. “I said, I’ve got you, baby girl,” Jeongguk reiterated, forehead pressed to yours. Something sad rippled in his starry irises, something that dug the dagger deeper into the hammering organ in your chest, “What do you need me to do?”

“Just, I—”

Words failed but the bury of your face into his neck, securing your ankles around his back and holding to him like he’d disappear any second, didn’t.

Jeongguk’s arms threaded around your stature again, nosing into your damp hair with a shaky sigh. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got you. Shh, it’s okay, it’ll be okay…”

Fourteen pages in seven weeks.

The weight of his palm in yours had never quite reached home, a foreign weight laced through your fingers from the hesitancy echoing a mantra in the forefront of your conscious, eerie and daunting and to the tune of your rapidly beating heart.

No obligations. A distraction. A good distraction. No obligations. Broken laptop charger. Not enough complete. No obligations. Too much dialog. Too little progress. No obligations.

Fourteen pages. Seven weeks. No obligations.

You squeezed your fingers together just to watch the joints retract under your skin, the moonlight a ghost over your knuckles. Again and it was inevitable to catch Jeongguk’s attention, his hand flexing underneath yours, smooth and gentle and waiting, accepting of the home your lost heart would need.

If you’d just let yourself knock on the door. No obligations.

“Hey.” He’d stopped walking next to you, the sand cold on your toes, the plastic straps of your sandals rubbing a blister on the soft crease between your fingers on your free hand. “Hey, can we…”

“Look,” You overlapped him, sandals falling from your grasp when you pointed instead. A small group of crabs ruffled through the sand in front of you, bumping through languidly, over and under each other. Jeongguk’s eyebrows nearly met at the wrinkled bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth slightly downturned when you glanced at him. Softly, you nodded, “Crabs.”

He let go of your hand, crouching. A cupped palm scooped through the sand, effectively excavating one of the crabs. It shook the sand from around itself, scurrying eagerly about the surface of Jeongguk’s hand as he straightened, stretching the creature out to you.

“Do you want to hold him?”

Thoughts of your novel and the overwhelming overhauls it’d endured in your eight weeks, the first a modest to a beachfront neighborhood, from a grocery store to a beach, from a bouquet of flowers the boy had been clutching onto for months while you worked on the details around him to a tiny crab who lasted long enough for you to hate the idea.

The tiniest of smiles made it to your lips, “Is there anything you can’t do, Jeon Jeongguk?”

He crouched again, releasing the crab in a flurry of sand dusted from his fingertips before returning to you. Curled fists made it into the pockets of his shorts, foot nudging into the ground below him as he shrugged. Wide eyes lifted from their spot at the tips of his toes to yours, the same sad smile lacing his features, “I can’t figure you out, apparently.”

“Can we...can we talk?”

He nodded, slowly at first and then all at once. A hand stretched in your direction again, fingers wiggling, the smile on his features a step closer to genuine. “C’mon, let’s go sit down.”

You followed Jeongguk up the beach, finding a space just in front of where the long grasses began, fluttering gently in the night time wind so much so that their soft ambiance almost outweighed the ripple of the ocean from farther up on the shore. Your hand retracted from his, sandwiched between your thighs but your shoulders still touched, sitting side by side as the moonlight crawled up the waves to be deposited onto the coast.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” You said after a moment. Features scrunched to the breeze, eyes shutting as you sighed, “I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

He hummed, “Do any of us?”

“You seem to,” Your cheek pressed to your shoulder, offering a smile when he glanced at you, “Mister gorgeous pool boy who can sing, play guitar, write poetry, bake, and catch ghost crabs without blinking.”

Jeongguk hummed once more, a lower sound this time, nose pointed toward the breeze. “If you think my ambitions in life stopped at tourist neighborhood groundskeeper and a waiter at a place named The Dusty Dolphin, I must have done a really shitty job at letting you get to know me over these couple of months.”

“I know that,” You nudged him, “but how are you content with your passions just staying passions? How can you not want more?”

“Let me ask you a question,” He nudged you back, chin meeting his upper arm to peer at you under vibrant bangs, “Why do you write?”

“Because I want to have a published novel.”

Jeongguk quirked an eyebrow, “Why do you want to have something published?”

“Because I’ve put years of work into the idea. I’ve drained my soul to invest it in this project.”

“Do you love it?”

You blinked, “My novel?”

“Your novel, your column, the newspaper, writing,” Jeongguk shrugged, “Any of it.”

“I did…”

“Did?”

“I’ve always been in love with the craft of writing—” Softly, you amended, “—my writing. My creations. And I’ve had slumps, I’ve endured writer’s block. I’ve gone past deadlines and I’ve scrapped entire plots, ideas, paragraphs, sentences. But never this bad. Not to the point where I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Why I even started writing the piece in the first place, what the end goal. What it was even supposed to be about, let alone anything about it.”

Jeongguk nodded, nose pointing toward the breeze again, cheek lulling to his arm, “Why did you come here, of all places?”

“I was sent here. Work leave.”

“What’d you do?”

“Told a nine year old that, not only are Disney princesses not real, but not a viable career option.”

He chuckled next to you, legs stretching out in front of him. “Harsh.”

“What about you?” You nudged him again, “Why do you write?”

“Because I love music and words are the language of music,” Jeongguk’s finger dug into the sand, absently drawing geometric shapes before brushing them away with the heel of his palm, “Even instrumental pieces can be described in words. Whimsical, haunting, pretty. That kind of thing.”

“I didn’t have to ask you if you loved it…” It was a rhetorical sentiment, trailed off as you stared at the nudge of his fingernail into a crooked rectangle.

“Can you do me a favor, when you go back home?”

“Please don’t tell me not to forget you. We live in the twenty-first century. I expect a picture of Seokjin with his shrimp magazine once a week.”

He was smiling when his hand slipped to your cheek, turning your gaze to his. “I’m serious,” His eyes flicked between yours, dizzying you in a mess of stars that never seemed to blur with the speed of his insistent gaze. “Scrap your entire novel. Start over.”

“What? Do you understand—”

Jeongguk’s lips felt like home. You hadn’t placed your guard around those. “I don’t understand. You won’t let me read it,” His forehead pressed to yours, “but just try it.”

“But Namjoon—”

Another kiss, gentle, a brush of your mouths together, just enough to swallow your insecurities. “The new one will be just as great. Better. More than enough to send to Namjoon.”

“How do you know?”

His thumb brushed against the apple of your cheek, eyes following the movement, “Would you allow him to read your current draft in its entirety? Not just what you’ve gotten finished while here.”

You hesitated long enough for Jeongguk to kiss you again, lingering enough to properly swallow what you were going to say. No, absolutely not.

“Might as well try—” His cheeks dimpled and it was the first genuine smile you’d allowed yourself in days, “—right?”

“Can you do me a favor?” You asked after several seconds of indulging in each other’s affections, lips swollen and brushing against his mouth.

“I won’t send you shirtless pictures every morning, no—” He shifted enough to shed himself of the pink checkered flannel on his shoulders, wrapping it to your shoulders to pull you against his side, “Taehyung already thinks I’m vain.”

You smacked Jeongguk’s shoulder and he giggled, leaning forward just enough to brush the tips of your noses together. Once. Twice. Four times.

“No,” You tilted to squish your noses together, locking his gaze to yours, “Try to pursue something with music. I don’t care if it’s DJing at that shitty club Taehyung was trying to get us to go to last week. Or maybe busking on the weekends. You can set up in front of the pond as you enter the neighborhood.”

“I don’t…”

“Try it,” You punctuated it with a hard kiss to his lips, “What can it hurt?”

You’d shifted to lay between his legs, cheek on his chest, kisses shifted to his chest over his shirt, his sprinkled to your forehead, cheeks, nose. He hummed into the ministrations, nosing over your hairline.

“Theoretically, if I were to become a famous musician, would you come to my first gig? It’ll never happen, but you’re a writer. Speaking in hypotheticals...”

You settled your chin between the hard planes of his chest, “Depends. Will you buy my novel?”

“Three copies. I’ll come to three separate book signings to get personalized notes from you.”

You giggled and Jeongguk couldn’t help but kiss your nose. Twice. “Then yes. I’ll come to your first gig. Maybe two of them, if you pay for my plane ticket.”

He seemed satisfied with the answer even as an insecurity seemed to linger on the tip of his tongue, one that festered when he glanced over your head to the ocean, still as dark and thrashing as before. “You really won’t forget about me, will you? Because truthfully, I don’t think I’ll ever forget about you.”

“You’re stuck with me, unfortunately. Give me your email and we can be penpals. You can remind me not to crush the dreams of elementary students while I’m at work…”

“...but no, Jeongguk,” You squeezed his waist, pressing your lips to the center of his chest, “I won’t forget you.”

“I’ll still send you my lyrics. They’ll probably be about you for a while, anyway.”

“I’ll let you read snippets of my novel, once I restart. Actually let you read something I’m proud of.”

“I’ll send you a picture of the first dollar I get from busking. It’ll probably be from Seokjin, but it’ll count.”

“I’ll miss you. And your cookies.”

“Miss implies forgetting,” His index finger lifted to prod at your pouted bottom lip, “We aren’t forgetting.”

Another sad smile, a different type of sad, one of the up most cliche smile because it happened, adorned your features as you raised a pinky finger. Slightly crooked, open, without your guard, “Pinky promise?”

Jeongguk’s lips distracted you from the feeling of home that came with the link of your pinky’s, squeezing onto your digit. “Pinky promise.”

Zero progress in eight weeks.

Park Jimin was standing in front of your desk with a copy of your novel in hand, a nervous smile pasted on his plump lips, feet shifting awkwardly beneath him as he waited on you to finish typing. He’d told you to keep working and who were you to deny him of that request.

“What can I do for you?” It wasn’t anything work related. You’d already passed the advice column and your office down to him in exchange for a feature column and a better office with a better computer monitor. He wasn’t getting that too.

The book hit your desk and he scurried to amend the flurry of papers that kicked up around it, speaking as he shuffled through the documents. “My girlfriend, she, uh, loves your novel and I was wondering if you could, uh, sign it for me? Maybe? It’d make her day, year probably, and—”

“Yeah, Jimin,” You reached for the book, dismissing his efforts to clean your desk with a flick of your wrist and a smile, a genuine one, “Of course I can sign it. What’s her name?”

The waxy cover contained the result of your efforts, the painstaking nights you’d stayed up sobbing over your manuscript, the early symptoms of carpal tunnel from hacking at your backspace too much, your familiarity with deleting and recovering entire documents. But most importantly, the return of your passion, your love, your fears the ultimate roadblock to the end of your novel and the beginning of a new, the one currently hidden behind a couple emails and your column for the following week.

The beauty of dual screens.

“Thank you so much,” The blonde gushed, clutching the novel against his chest when you were done scrawling on the cover with a ballpoint pen, “She’ll be so excited. Thank you!”

Your phone was prepared to text Hoseok, did you pay Jimin to do that?, when you noticed another notification, red and glaring at you from your messages application. It was a familiar contact name, a message written in a font generated by something, a three step process he must have taken to type, copy, and paste it. Even through the silly font did your heart swell.

They say lest we forget, but why forget when I can be there with you, if you’ll let me.

You kicked away from your desk, propping your foot onto the seat of your chair, phone onto your knee.

Alright, Guk, what’s the significance of this one?

There was several seconds of typing, deleting, typing again, silence, more typing. Finally, a message. A single emoticon, the side eyes, the ones that knew something with a slightly upturned mouth. You were halfway through another inquiry, an okay, what the hell does that emoji mean, Jeon? when you received a picture.

His hair was brown now. Dark and fluffy and disheveled across his forehead where a single pink note was pasted to his skin. The ink was dark, prominent, like he’d sat and scraped at it for hours.

I’LL SEE YOU SOON.

You called him.

“Jeongguk, what the fuck are you talking about—”

“I got an audition.”

You paused and he continued with a shaky breath, “I got an audition. In your town. For music. Singing.”

“...so what you’re saying is you’re going to become a big superstar and I’m going to have to pay my own way to your first concert—”

“Baby,” Jeongguk whined, “I haven’t got the spot yet.”

“Yeah, but you will.”

There was another pause, some rustling in the background and then he hummed, “I’m going to sing a song about you. For the audition.”

Your cheeks heated and you rolled toward the window, blankly staring at the towering building next to the office. “Yeah? What’s it called?”

“Wonder.”

“Yeah I wonder what you’ve titled the song about me, if it’s not my name—”

“The song is called Wonder…”

There was a pause and he was singing again, just as soft as you remembered, the same lyrics he’d serenaded you with on the beach holding a different weight now, both literally without the organic strum of a guitar and figuratively to what the polished poetry did to your healed heart, open and ready.

You murmured into his soft, teasing hums, hugging a knee to your chest, “That song, huh?”

“I told you already. I can’t seem to write anything that’s not about you,” You could hear Jeongguk’s smile, “That didn’t change in the months since you went home.”

Your cheeks heated all the way to the back of your neck, filtering to the shy roll of your shoulders as you hunched over your knee, squeezing it tighter, and you reveled in that he couldn’t see you to quip, “You know what has changed though? Your jokes. I think they’ve gotten dumber.”

There was still a smile in his voice, even as he threatened, “Alright, listen here you little—"

“Watch it or I’ll sue for you using ‘me’ without my consent.”

“You based an entire character in a bestselling novel after me. It’s only fair.”

You spluttered, “I did not—”

“And for the record? Washboard abs is a lame description of my godly physique. Even I know that and I’m but a mere lyricist.”

“I’m going to kick your ass when you get here.”

“...so you’ll want to see me?”

“Of course,” Your voice softened and you watched a bird climb altitude before fluttering to the windowsill, “I have to sign your three copies of my novel.”

Jeongguk laughed, sweet in your ears.

“I can’t wait…”