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vankoya · 6 years ago

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The Devil Skates on Thin Ice, 2.

Genre | Hockey Player / Figure Skater Rivalry AU.

Pairing | Min Yoongi / Feminine Reader.

Words | 26,491 words.

Conspectus | The number one rule of Korea National Sport University is to never allow their elite figure skater and the captain of the ice hockey team be in the same room. Or in their case, on the same ice rink. They are infamously known for riling each other up in any way possible, and for having a mysterious history that even their closest friends know nothing about.

But when their coaches decide it is finally time to put an end to their five year rivalry, the pair of them certainly have very conflicting views about it.

Warnings | Heavy swearing and insulting. Some good ol’ pining. Alcohol and mentions of drugs. Angst. Uh, mayhaps a smidgen of smexual tension. A tad of misogyny. A very small moment of violence. Apologies to Yugyeom for making his character such a dick.

Parts | One • Two • Three (Finale)

The ‘read more’ function does not work for some mobile app users. We are still waiting on Tumblr to fix this issue, so please message them about it and not me, as I have definitely put a ‘read more’ break beneath this note!

To say you do not remember a single thing about last night is greater than an understatement.

It feels, quite literally, as though a spell of amnesia has been cast over the past multitude of hours, wearing off at about six in the evening when your first Caipiroska was poured by Minah. Everything between then and now rests beneath a thick fog of uncertainty—you could have met the bloody Queen of England, for all you knew. The scattered memories are all the more difficult to grasp as a result of the throbbing headache that pounds fiercely between your temples, encouraging you to keep your eyes tightly closed so as not to allow even a sliver of sunlight through.

A thick film coats your tongue, tasting of stale alcohol and, oh god, probably vomit. When you part your lips, your voice creaks like an old door that has been closed for years. The rusty hinges croak in a groan directed at Past You for not taking Future You, which is now officially Present You, into consideration when the soju bombs were handed out in fives.

“Fuck you, ___,” you grumble into your pillow, shoving your face deeper into the feathery plush as though you can bury your migraine in the fabric. “You insensitive, alcohol-mixing bitch. Never drink vodka and beer in the same hour. How could you forget that? It’s the golden fucking rule. Stupid girl. Silly bloody idiot.”

In the midst of aspersing yourself, there is a raucous clatter from outside of the bedroom, sounding like a lightning strike within the apartment as it shatters through the walls. More so, it is the familiar sound of heavy cutlery clanging against pots and pans within a stainless steel sink, metal-on-metal that slams straight through your skull and pierces the centre-point of your headache with a swift blow. The clanging continues in a cacophonous symphony that appears to be boundless in its protraction.

So, burying yourself into the nest of sheets with a whine, as if the thin cotton can even manage to smother the noise in the slightest, you curl your fingers into the mattress. Bracing yourself against the torture with taut shoulders, and barely withholding a distressed sob while you wallow in your agony.

You wonder what delusional, potentially still drunken state Minah must currently be in to be unleashing such torturous hell on a Saturday morning. Or why she is even awake before midday after a night out, for that matter. On any other occasion, Minah is a corpse until the late afternoon, and only when the sun is nearly perched upon the horizon to make way for the moon is she rising from the dead to inhale two litres of water and a microwave meal before she returns to her grave until practice begins at seven the next morning.

There is a vicious shout of, “Shut the fuck up, would you!” and the disturbance ceases to absolute silence. But the peace remains for the scarcest of moments until another voice is roaring back with hardly suppressed outrage, spitting, “It’s not my fault you haven’t done the fucking dishes in a week, you selfish prick! Some people like to eat, Yoongi!” followed by a punctuating, singular clang. Then, the quiet returns.

The sudden tranquillity is a soothing balm on your raging temples. You release the breath you were holding tight in your lungs while you had braced yourself against the vociferation. The exhalation gently lulls your tired limbs into a state of–

What.

When your eyes snap open, the sunlight is immediately striking; a searing burn on the sensitive film that coats your bloodshot gaze. You hardly need to adjust your focus in order to know the sole fact that settles in a heavy stone of dread within the pit of your stomach.

This is not your room.

The space is minimal, though the floor is filthy; littered with laundry and hockey gear and discarded balls of paper. A broad desk that is surprisingly neat and paired with a sleek, black swivel chair is pushed in the corner opposite to the bed, which is positioned under the window where the blinds are marginally open above you, allowing slats of sunlight to filter through and torment your throbbing headache. Next to the double doors of the closet is a free-standing mirror, and your reflection is unseen from the angle that you lay startled within. The top half is draped in a terribly familiar jersey of red and black.

The number 31 is salient in large, bold white lettering at the centre of the material. Though it is most certainly not as prominent as the MIN that stands out inches above it. The three letters set off screeching alarm bells within your mind, and you bolt upright on the mattress in a state of suffocating panic, cracking your elbow against the sill of the window in the process.

“Shit!” you yelp, cringing from the sharp pain that shoots up your arm, cradling it to your chest as you keel over your knees and dramatically collapse back onto the bed like the world just could not help but dig your hell-hole of a situation all the deeper.

You are in Yoongi’s room. Of all the fucking people it could have been, it had to be him.

Amidst the anguish, a succession of thumping footsteps steadily becomes apparent as they grow louder, nearer, almost as though they are jogging. Then, the door is histrionically thrown open and a wide-eyed, flustered Yoongi comes into view, panting a little like he had ran from the other side of the apartment at the voicing of your distress. Honestly, you surprise yourself by holding back the lurching urge to hurl up the contents of last night at the sheer sight of him.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he impassively states, hand slipping from the doorknob as the veil of concern that thinly manipulated his features is composed into one of nonchalance. “Thought you might’ve died overnight. I was hoping, at least.”

“No, I’m just sleeping with my goddamn eyes open. Of course I’m fucking awake, what does it look like?!” you shrill, squinting at him as the migraine spikes especially acute, fingertips abandoning your bruising elbow and coming to your temples to gingerly massage the thrumming flesh. “And to be frank, death sounds like a much more favourable option than waking up in your room. What am I doing here, Yoongi?”

He merely shrugs, not giving anything away. “I’d like to ask you the same thing.”

“Don’t start,” you mutter bitterly, slowly lifting yourself out of the—admittedly, exceptionally comfortable—bed at a steady pace in order to not throw your pounding head into another death spiral of agony.

As you do so, you notice an unfamiliar weight that sags over your figure. Glancing down at your body, you come to realise that your attire from last night is drowned beneath a thick, maroon sweater, the hem brushing at the middle of your thighs. The aroma that drifts from it is oaky; a damp forest on a misty morning combined with underlying tones of cinnamon. A familiar and refined scent that is so potently Yoongi, making it evident that the clothing is his. An involuntary shiver crawls up your spine.

Though before you can claw Yoongi down to the bone for answers, Minah’s voice reverberates through your hammering skull in a long-lost conversation, filed somewhere in the pages of under a year ago.

A man is no gentleman if he doesn’t let you wear his sweaters after sex! It’s just a part of the common courtesy code!

Desperately, you stifle the urge to screech as a burning sensation climbs your throat, flushing your cheeks with a heat of sheer horror while Yoongi watches on, utterly oblivious.

“We didn’t–” You emphasise with wide eyes and a swaying gesture of your hand– “Uh, you know?”

Yoongi, for a second, looks wholly alarmed by your assumption before he eases into amusement, barking out a sharp laugh. “While you were drunk out of your mind? Hell no. Do I look like some crazy sicko to you?”

The both of you stare one another down in a cursory silence, broken by your voice as you start to wrestle the sweater over your head, senses drenched in his cologne, “I’m not going to answer that.”

“Once we got back, I left you to your own devices, thank you very much.” Offence lays thick in his tone. His arms fold indignantly over his chest, and you blatantly ignore the way that the lean muscles of his biceps peek out of the navy sleeves of his shirt. “I slept on the tacky leather couch, which is like laying on an ironing board made of granite, I’ll have you know. So yeah, thank you Yoongi for sacrificing your bed to my drunk ass for the night,” Yoongi mimics in a pitched voice that is nowhere near similar to your own, proceeding to jab an accusing finger at your face. “I hope that hangover feels like a bitch for the rest of today, you ungrateful brat.”

“Well, thank you for manhandling my ass into your apartment, pervert,” you hiss with conviction, ditching the sweater to the sea of trash that comprises his bedroom floor, cringing at the mess. “And christ, into this pigsty! What the hell, do you still not do laundry? And dishes either, by the sounds of Jimin’s aneurysm.”

Still. You bite your tongue, wincing, hoping Yoongi did not notice. When you glance at him, his exaggerated smirk appears as though it is fighting to mask a twinge of something much softer. Shit.

Despite this, he sends you a slow, deliberate wink. “What can I say, the ladies love it when I’m dirty.”

“No, fuck no. I refuse to throw up right now. Shut your goddamn mouth.” Clutching at your woozy stomach, you hastily scan the room for any sign of your cellphone or purse—anything that draws significance as your own belongings amidst everything that is so entirely and unbearably Yoongi. “Where–”

“This?” Yoongi cuts in and your gaze darts back to him, noticing with a wave of relief that the familiar case of your mobile is held gingerly in his grasp. Like a magnet drawn to an opposite pole, you speedily pick your way through the colossal clutter until you stand a good metre away from Yoongi, hand outstretched.

“Thank you,” you barely manage to say as a way of inclining him to hand over the device. The expression of gratitude tastes sour on your tongue, and it ferments all the more when he merely grins wider and makes no move to give it back. Barely containing your rage, you close your eyes and exhale loudly through your nose. “Please, Yoongi. Give it to me.”

“Well, isn’t that just a little suggestive.”

As simple as flicking a switch, the restrained anger that you were genuinely doing so well to keep at bay ignites all the greater, eyes snapping back open to discover Yoongi still wickedly grinning. “I swear to–”

The starting notes of your Until the End of Time ringtone startles the both of you; Yoongi nearly drops the vibrating device while you jump with a parrotlike squawk. The shock sparsely settles before you take the opportunity of his momentary vulnerability to lunge towards his hand, reaching for your mobile. But his sportsman reflexes are too sharp, underestimated in your desperate efforts. Yoongi lifts the cellphone high above his head, a victorious blaze flaring in his eyes as you create a strangled sound of annoyance and firmly plant a palm on his shoulder so that you have some leverage to push yourself up when you jump. All the while, Justin Timberlake continues to sing above your heads and Yoongi-come-Satan laughs heartily at your meagre attempts to grab the phone.

“Yoongi! Give it here!” you shout directly in his face, mid-jump, and he cringes at the dusting of spit that sprays from your mouth onto his cheeks.

“Ugh, the fuck–”

“The call is going to end, stop it!”

Once you are stationary on the ground, preparing to leap again, Yoongi takes the advantage and yanks you down into a headlock, hunching over your torso and nestling your face against his stomach as you squeal out of surprise. Among your exasperated thrashing, the ringtone ceases and you believe, for a sparing moment, that it is due to the call having rung through to voicemail. But that credence is only fleeting when you hear Yoongi begin to speak.

“Hey Minah, yeah it’s Yoongi again,” the Devil converses casually as if he does not currently have you wrestled into submission. “Uh-huh, yeah ___’s awake now, she’s just– Oof–!” A firm elbow knocks into his side, which you come to realise is the one that you previously smacked against the window, and you both groan in unison. Even so, his hold does not let up. “She’s beating the absolute shit out of me. Agh, um yeah, sooner is better than later because we have to practice. Bring some clothes for her if you can. ‘kay, bye!”

At long last, your bind is released and you scamper to grab your phone that he now willingly offers to you. The both of you are mildly panting after such exertion this early in the morning, and most especially in the wake of your hangovers. Before you can lift the phone to your ear to catch Minah before she hangs up, you realise that the call has already been disconnected. The locked screen displays an array of notifications that you swipe through—unanswered texts and missed calls from both Hoseok and Minah. Your brow furrows when you realise they have completely ceased by about 11PM.

“What’s wrong, doll?” Yoongi teases, though his expression remains blank, leaning against the doorframe as the old nickname shoots through your heart in a kryptonite bullet. You frown all the more in an attempt to guise the pain of the fragments shattering amongst your ribs; a metal firework of old memories that you wish he would stop trying to resurface.

“Looks like my friends are a lot shittier than I first assumed,” you mutter, staring at the screen. You ignore how the fluttering vessel in your chest continues to bleed among the damage, exceptionally so as you truly begin to register how close you are to the Devil himself, right now. “They stopped the missing-persons search before midnight, which is unheard of since nobody goes home until it’s known that everyone is safe. But they clearly broke the pal code by the fact that I stayed the night with you, and they haven’t even bothered to make contact until the damage has already been done.”

The corners of Yoongi’s lips twitch, as if he does not know whether he wants to smirk at your ignorant insolence or smile at the fact that you have hardly changed. “They tried, y’know. You caused them a fair amount of trouble last night.”

Flicking your gaze up from the phone, you glare daggers at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s just say that you were really drunk and you ran off on them at the start of the party,” Yoongi pushes himself off the doorframe and shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, staring right into your eyes to convey his honesty. “And then I, also quite drunk, found you out on the roof. We had, uh, a conversation, I suppose, before the police arrived to shut the place down. You kind of passed out, I had to carry you most of the way outside and both Minah and Hoseok were waiting for you, worried as all hell. They were insisting they take you back to your dorm with Minah, but you were coherent enough to say that you weren’t um–” Despite himself, a flush blossoms on Yoongi’s cheeks, which has your own beginning to burn with sheer embarrassment and a growing concern as to what you possibly could have said– “Leaving me. You wanted to stay with me–”

“No fucking way.”

“So, with their permission and after an exchange of phone numbers, we came back to my place–”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes way. I dropped you into my bed and then I went to sleep on the couch once I had made sure Jimin and Taehyung got home without missing any limbs or teeth,” Yoongi, as though he cannot help but rev the engine for the guilt trip, narrows his gaze at you like a disappointed guardian scolding their child. “If anything, I’d say you were the shitty friend for putting Hoseok and Minah through all of that. You basically ruined their night, since they spent most of it looking for you.”

A sea of mortification submerges you. The water fills your lungs and you feel yourself suffocating, unable to believe the truth that Yoongi bleeds out on you, though no surface makes itself apparent to break through and breathe once again like this is a punishment that you are deserving of for cussing out your friends when you were the one who was the burden in the first place. Still, you manage to find your voice buried in the back of your throat, meekly making its way past your lips.

“You’re lying.”

Yoongi’s frown deepens, creasing the smooth skin between his eyebrows. “No, I’m not.”

“Not about the last part, I’m sure that’s true,” you raggedly inhale, trying to hide the way your fingers shake around the device you clutch by dropping your hands to your sides, gaining the confidence to stare him directly in the eyes again so you can gauge the slightest shift in his reaction. “But there is no way that you would have just put me to bed like nothing happened. That’s not your style. You don’t leave people alone when they’re in need.”

It is barely there. The glint of vulnerability that is quick to be guised by a stone cold facade. Yoongi watches you guardedly, lacing his words with enough venom to conceal the dishonesty when he mutters, “Funny, somebody made me change that about five years ago.”

You cannot help but flinch as if he has physically inflicted you; the words are carved into your chest by the tip of a knife held by his own hand. It is ridiculous, utterly stupid to be so hurt by such sentiments when you were the one to enforce him to despise you this way by being the instigator of such a tragic rivalry. Standing there, staring into his unchanging expression that has done nothing but grow sharper and more handsome over the past five years, the pearly scars prickle and itch like a reminder as to why you must stand your ground and never hold up the white flag of surrender.

But a smothered voice at the back of your mind starts to question whether such determination to be spiteful is even worth it anymore.

The blare of a horn outside of the apartment startles the both of you silly, and a strange sense of comfort settles in your chest when you realise that you are not the only one who is feeling so high-strung around the other. A balancing act where, eventually, one of you is bound to fall, and it is up to the other whether they have the courage to face the drop with them.

You let your eyes fall to the sensation of your phone vibrating once against your palm, not bothering to check the screen. “That’s Minah,” you mumble, combing your free hand through your knotty hair and shaking it out as if doing so will rid you of the anxiety. You briefly wonder what on Earth the rest of your make-up-smeared appearance must look like when your knuckles snag on the tangled strands. “I’m leaving.”

A streak of something that resembles mild panic darts through Yoongi’s eyes, though you are already pushing past him to concern yourself with what it may have truly been. As you go, he mutters underneath his breath, and that, you do catch onto. The words send a chill beneath your skin that has not a thing to do with the cool air of the bedroom.

Just like you did the first time things got hard, huh?

The apartment layout is precisely the same as your own, allowing you to easily navigate down the hallway of mostly closed doors to enter the shared living room and kitchen. Immediately, your nose is hit by the mouth-watering aroma of eggs and butter in a frying pan that is manned by none other than Park Jimin in a pair of boxer shorts. And praise all the holy things, it is clearly not a myth that he has the thickest thighs on campus, evident in the defined muscles that curve the golden skin of his legs; flexed in unadulterated display with the way that his weight rests upon his right leg while he works. Your phone vibrates once more in your hand, and you cannot help but quietly chuckle to yourself at the thought of sneakily snapping a picture for Minah to salivate over. Though that plan is quick to be corrupted when Jimin whips his head around at the sound.

“Oh, hey Ice– ___,” Jimin says from the breakfast bar as if it is the most natural occurrence in the world to see you walking out of Yoongi’s bedroom on a Saturday morning. His gaze slips southward from your face, eyes widening as he, suddenly flustered, stammers out, “C-Cute outfit you got there.”

“What?” All mirth is eradicated as you exclaim the single word, overwhelmed by alarm and you glance down and realise that, oh god, you completely forgot how utterly flimsy, thin, and terribly short the white dress that you wore last night is. Your entire body burns with the might of the sun. “No. Shit. I’m so sorry, I–”

“Is he terrorising you, sweet pea?”

The deep, anonymous voice floats right beside your ear and you jump in surprise, covering your mouth to conceal the shriek. The speaker of the question manoeuvres around you in a silky red kimono, his peculiarly gorgeous face inches from your own. Amidst your heart palpitations, you assume him to be Kim Taehyung—a man you have only ever heard stories about and never actually seen in the flesh.

His large, almond eyes regard you with keen interest. A broad, tan palm gently rests upon your bare shoulder and sends an unusually tantalising shiver up your spine. “Hm, I see why Yoongi is so enthralled by–”

“I thought you were leaving.”

At that, all heads turn to the second intruder of the conversation. Yoongi stands behind you, appearing both mortified and infuriated. His eyes zero in on your face, vaguely fleeting to Taehyung’s hand that gingerly touches your exposed skin before coming back to stare at you with a greater volume of seething darkening his eyes. A bud of spiteful glee buds within your chest.

“That’s no way to introduce me, Yoongi,” Taehyung purrs before directing his gaze to you, and you have to admit that you are slightly blown away by the boxy grin that he gives you, absolutely dazzling at this proximity. “I’m Taehyung, sweet thing. No need to tell me who you are, I know all about you. It is a pleasure to finally meet the one and only heartbreaker of Min–”

It occurs all at once. Yoongi charges at Taehyung. Jimin hastily drops the dirtied pan in the sink to prevent the oncoming slaughter between his two flatmates, and the loud clatter slices through your migraine like it had no more than twenty minutes ago. Lastly, an angry fist pounds heavily against the front door, and at that final sound, all movement ceases to a complete standstill. Yoongi is in the process of getting Taehyung into a headlock, and Jimin already has an arm wedged between their bodies, wielding a wooden spoon dotted with the morsels of his scrambled eggs.

You stand before them, astonished by the bizarre scene. Clearing your throat, you slowly begin to shuffle around the spectacle, and the three boys shift their gazes from the entranceway across the room to you.

“M-Minah’s here so, uh, bye,” you stammer, picking up your pace and zipping away to the front door with your phone clutched tightly to your chest. You release an exhale of relief the second you are around the wall and out of their line of sight.

But the repose is short-lived, for when you open the door, you come face to face with the epitome of sheer vexation.

“Well well, if it isn’t the goods that I came for,” Minah, hands on her hips, says with bitter impatience. Her gaze slides down your attire in a manner that is similar to the way Jimin’s had. Unsurprisingly, the judgement in her eyes is tenfold. “I see why Yoongi told us to bring clothes. Vaginas are great and all, but whipping them out willy-nilly can be a little confronting.”

“You,” is hissed as you grab the hem of the dress and pull it down, cheeks burning brighter, “were the one who told me to wear this! And what do you mean us?”

Minah throws a thumb over her shoulder. “Hobi is in the car. We both came to the agreement that we’re going to get coffee and sit you down for a nice, long chat about everything that has happened over the past 24-hours. Prepare yourself for the interrogation.”

Peering past her, you notice that Hoseok is most definitely sitting in the passenger seat with his eyes closed and the side of his face smushed against the glass of the window. You glance back at her, raising an eyebrow. “He’s looking one-hundred-and-ten percent dead right now.”

“Hence why we’re doing this over coffee.”

“Hm, understandable.”

“Hey Minah, thanks for picking ____ up,” is cheerfully voiced from down the entranceway, growing nearer with his footsteps. You briefly close your eyes in all of your chagrin just as Minah flicks her own above your head, looking at Yoongi. You can practically hear the grin in his tone, unbearably close, as he continues to say, “I’m sorry she caused you so much trouble last night. It seems like she hasn’t changed much since the old days.”

Your entire body suddenly feels as though you have been dunked into the Arctic Ocean. What the fuck is he doing?!

“The old days,” Minah echoes with a tight grin while you attempt to telepathically send a giant fuck you to the pea-sized brain of the bane of your existence. You hesitantly look at Minah, who has now averted her gaze to you, eyes filled with accusation and the potential threat of first-degree murder. “Sorry Yoongi, but do you mind elaborating on what exactly you mean by that?”

“Oh, ___ hasn’t told you about us at all?” Yoongi’s faux bewilderment sounds more intrigued than anything to your own hearing. The curiosity that underlies it is undeniable, especially paired with the prickle of the small hairs at the nape of your neck when you feel the flicker of his pupils resting there. For a fearful second, you are absolutely certain he is going to reveal the history that you have smothered so well from your present life right on his front doorstep. That he will unlace the taut stitches to expose the ugly scars beneath for Minah to witness—to finally see the truths you have masked for the past five years.

Yet, you are unsure if you should consider it a blessing when Yoongi curls his arm around your frame and lightly jostles you. His bare skin is desirably warm—comforting—against your own, when he instead says, “Well, I’m sure she’ll fill you in. We were very close back then, I’ll have you know.” At that, his palm that cups your shoulder lifts, and the weight of his presence momentarily alleviates, only to return with his hand against your spine, swiftly shoving you forward and out of the house, almost barrelling you into Minah. “Enjoy your coffee date!” he calls, sugary sweet, and then the door slams with a loud bang that drives another nail into your pulsing headache.

Of course, only Min Yoongi—Satan himself wearing the flesh of a human—could possibly save your ass whilst simultaneously serving it on a silver platter to be slaughtered by none other than your best friend in the terrifyingly near future.

Speaking of the aforementioned, she would appear almost comical if it were not for the fact that she looks about ready to skin you alive. With Yoongi having pushed you out of the house, you stand nearly nose-to-nose with Minah. Her brows are raised to the skies; her eyeballs are bulging with barely suppressed rage; her fingers are digging deep into her hips as though she is tightly gripping onto the final shreds of her sanity.

Your mouth opens and then snaps close. You repeat this in your state of stupefaction as your brain tries to process everything that has occurred over the past hour, concurrently attempting to conjure an explanation before Minah makes you her next taxidermy project.

But some deity must be looking over your sorry self, for your best friend wordlessly turns on her heel and storms towards the car. Then again, you are not entirely certain this is a more positive outcome than her screaming bloody murder in your face for the entire residence to hear.

Awkwardly, you skitter after Minah as she charges towards the car pulled up on the curb, still opening and closing your mouth like a complete idiot. Yoongi has only cracked the gateway to the past open. Allowing you the choice of either filling that gap with yet another layer of deceit, or to swing the door wide open and let all that you have kept secured under lock-and-key to come flooding through. But you know that you owe it to both Minah and Hoseok after all this time of keeping quiet.

Perhaps, not the entirety of the truth. But at least enough of a glimpse to tide them over until the next time Yoongi so abruptly thrusts his hands into your history and yanks the unwanted memories right into your field of vision.

Before you climb into the backseat, you notice your reflection in the window. To say you look hungover is a grand understatement. Your silver eyeshadow has broken apart and is scattered in glittery specks over the spotty foundation on your cheeks; mascara rims your eye bags and emphasises the purple crescent moons embedded there; your lipstick only remains to be a dodgy line that outlines your mouth. You look like absolute shit. And not in the I-just-had-the-best-one-night-stand-of-my-life way, but in the my-brain-feels-like-it-is-going-to-explode-because-I-slept-in-the-bed-of-my-number-one-enemy kind of way.

When Minah slams the driver’s door, the entire car trembles on its wheels. The sound wakes up Hoseok with an annoyed garble of insults, and slices another dagger of agony through your skull. You shut your own with a soft click, behaving like a mouse in the presence of a cat. Not wishing to make any moves that may disturb your best friend and make her pounce.

Yet, staring at the haggard reflection of yourself in the review mirror over Minah’s shoulder, you finally sigh and say, “Can I at least go home and shower first?”

“No, you need to suffer a while longer,” Minah firmly denies you as she jams the keys in the ignition. The engine revs before the squeal of the tyres skidding out on the road silences whatever protest you were attempting to muster.

A small voice in the back of your mind agrees with her, whispering that you deserve this. You have deserved it all since the first moment you told Min Yoongi you never wanted to see his face again.

During the drive to the cafe, you change in the backseat into a simple black sweater, blue jeans, and your battered white sneakers. The familiar clothing is an immediate comfort, yet you continue to avoid looking at your deathlike face and dishevelled hair in any kind of reflective surface. As the promise of a hot beverage becomes ever closer, both you and Hoseok slowly gain more life. Yet the car remains to be swamped by an unpleasant lack of conversation, which is unusual for your gossipy trio. The radio is blaring so loudly that none of you would be able to hear each other if you tried, anyway.

It is not until the three of you have arrived at the cafe, ordered, and received those aforementioned orders that the silence finally begins to crack. A sigh passing through your lips acts as the key to the gateway of conversation.

“Look, I’m really sorry–”

“Apology accepted. We all make mistakes. Now,” Minah immediately cuts you off, her interests clearly residing elsewhere. Nonetheless, your mouth hangs open and she reaches across the table to lift your chin and shut it. “If you could be so kind as to tell me what one, fine Min Yoongi meant when he said the old days…?”

You nearly choke on your sip of iced Americano at the question. Hoseok, looking at least ten times more alive than he was in the car now that he has half of a latte in his stomach, jerks back in surprise. His eyes bore into Minah.

“What?” Hoseok says, completely aghast. His eyes slide over to you, bulging out of their sockets. “What? Excuse me. What the fuck happened while I was teetering on the cusp of death?”

With your knuckles digging into your eyes, you mutter, “Min fucking Yoongi, that bastard–”

“Yes, that bastard,” Minah helpfully coaxes you, leaning across the table to stick her face in your own, behaving like an interrogator trying to get a criminal to confess. “What old days did you have with that beautiful bastard?”

“We were…” you trail off, feeling years worth of bile rising in your throat, clogging up your airway. You close your eyes and bury your face further into your palms, elbows propping you up against the table, lips pressing against the heels so that both Minah and Hoseok have to lean further in to catch your mumble of, “Befthfnriens.”

There is a moment of confused silence. Then, Hoseok tersely says, “What?”

Swallowing the bitter taste that now touches the back of your tongue, you push yourself away from your cage of skin and knuckles and instead wrap them around the disposable cup. There, exposed, you finally open your eyes and let them burn holes into your drink. Anywhere but the faces of your two friends when you whisper, “Best friends.”

Minah nearly shrieks, “You and Min Yoongi were what?”

The café bustles too loudly, and you wish that you were the block of ice in your cold Americano. Blending into the surroundings; melting away into nothingness. You prod the cube with the end of your straw, gradually putting more force behind the blows until the ice is shooting down to the bottom of the plastic cup and then dejectedly floating back to the surface. Minah snaps her fingers, and you lethargically look up, feeling well and truly dead inside in comparison to the animated, wide-eyed expressions that she and Hoseok currently sport.

The big hand ticks into the third minute since the inquisition began. A sigh heaves from your lungs, and you return to murdering the ice cube.

“Do I really have to repeat myself? Again?”

Minah does not even blink. “Yes, and this time, a thorough, essay-worthy argument to support your thesis is required. Because what the fuck.”

You take a sip from the iced coffee, feel the chill slip down the walls of your throat. Although you wish you could physically project your being into any other location than here, you say, “Up until the end of high school, Yoongi and I were–” A cringe, not because of the title, but the fact that it is half a lie when you spit out– “Best friends.” Another sigh; another gulp of ice cold. “Our dad’s knew each other before we were born, so we grew up together. As kids, we shared a lot of interests, and our friendship developed from there. But once we started high school, we just drifted apart because we were both busy with our sports. The hatred grew with the natural rivalry between figure skaters and ice hockey players, I guess.”

You wonder if you cannot outright tell them that Yoongi ruined your chance at becoming a star because you are not so sure if you believe such a sentiment anymore.

“Sounds like bullshit, but okay,” Hoseok deadpans, and you automatically recoil. Minah, on the other hand, socks him in the shoulder, to which he yelps so loudly that the guy at the cashier glares at him.

“How does that sound like bullshit?” she says in your defence, crossing her arms and scowling. “It sounds completely reasonable to me.”

“I don’t know. I mean, it feels like there’s something missing,” Hoseok winces, dramatically cradling his wounded shoulder. He averts his gaze from his attacker to you, eyes narrowing a fraction. “To be best friends and then hate each other so much over a ‘natural rivalry’ sounds too fishy. Was there like, a fight or something?”

“Well, yeah,” you sigh, flicking the tip of your straw with your nail. Technically, it is the truth, even if the fall-out was over something completely different to what you say. “But it was the rivalry that caused the fight. We had a huge argument over not being able to hang out because of training, which then lead to insulting each others’ sports, among other things. It was petty and stupid. But we were only teenagers at the time, and we were already under loads of pressure with our intense training, and with getting good grades to graduate high school. So the fight was the last straw, y’know. We didn’t talk again after that, nor forgave each other, and it’s stayed that way ever since.”

Sometimes, you terrify yourself with how effortlessly you can craft a lie when put on the spot. An awful habit that nobody should be proud of.

Hoseok watches you for a moment longer before nodding slowly and leaning back in his chair, seemingly satisfied with your explanation. “Alright, fair enough.”

“Ugh, you can be such an ass sometimes. Why would you make ___ relive such a sad period of her life? Do you feel validated now?” Minah huffs after knocking back the last of her mango smoothie. Immediately, she and Hoseok launch into a round of pointless bickering, and you safely return to your silent sipping.

The topic of Yoongi ceases to be brought up again. For that, you are more grateful than the two of them could ever comprehend. But when you finally get back to the apartment and turn the shower on steaming hot, letting it scald your skin, you cannot help but think. You angle your face up at the shower head, let the mascara dissolve and stream down your cheeks, feel the day-old lipstick becomes chalky, and think.

Min Yoongi. The boy you used to know who still smells like candle wax and cinnamon. The intimate look in his eyes before he said he did not help you, did not do anything at all, last night.

Lying may not be a talent to be proud of. But at least you are not the only one who has refined it.

The atmosphere of his bedroom is discomposed. The sunlight that filters inside the stuffy space outlines the shape of her body where it has been carved out by the creases on the mattress. The sheets incline and decline like a small mountain range—an imprint of her presence. Yoongi stands at the centre of the room, slowly suffocating on his own breath, eyes boring into the lingering remnant of her existence that haunts him like a restless spirit. The hills and slopes in his bed. Her, entirely.

Yoongi did not dare to tell her that, last night, he carried her limp form across the grassy accommodation courtyard once the taxi had pulled up to the curb. Tucked safely into his chest, murmuring nonsensical sentences against his collarbone. He refused to let her know that he held her chin as he tipped nearly a litre of water past her lips over a span of three glassfuls; that he rubbed between her shoulder blades and gingerly held back her hair while she vomited in the bathroom sink; that he gave her the sweater to change into. And most definitely, he never hinted that she stumbled quietly into the living room while he was draping the couch-come-makeshift-bed in a quilt, clutching at his wrist and entreating him to stay by her side while she fell asleep.

An utter fool, he had obliged without question. Perched on the edge of the mattress, he drew soothing patterns over the back of her hand for the scarce minutes that it took her to drift off. Even then, he had remained much longer than necessary to gaze at the soft pout of her lips, the delicate feathering of her splayed eyelashes, the moonlight accentuating the youthful innocence that only sleep can ever conjure.

No, she did not deserve that kind of knowledge. That glorious victory hanging over his head in an upper-hand that she could use against him in the future.

Now, his knees tremble and he feels pathetic. An utterly despicable excuse for a human being with the sweater of his that she was wearing bunched up in his fists and clutched to his chest like a lifeline. Their smells kiss with tongues in the maroon threads; the colour of her blood. Yoongi knows this because he has seen it with his own two eyes against frozen white. Tinted silvery blue by the shadows of midnight draped across the sky, studded at the centre by the full moon in all of its might.

The thin film coating Yoongi’s unblinking eyes dries into a delicate crust. He knows why she would not have told her friends about the two of them, and yet, he cannot help but wonder. Is she really so terrified of her own vulnerability? Of being cracked open like a fault line splitting the earth, allowing those standing by to peek at the gory innards? Perhaps, it is because she already understands how it feels; the sensation of flesh slicing open, of cells pulling apart to allow the bone to cut through and be exposed to the still, icy air. She has known such pain all too well, so she folds it like origami until it can fit in the thin crack between her fibula and talus, and she lives as though she was never once hurt.

Yoongi watches the dust motes glacially glide through the sunlight, basking in the warm honey of it and landing upon the mountains that she rose amongst his bed sheets. There, with the blood-soaked sweater pressed against his thrumming heartbeat, with her tone of malice remaining to be a sticky syrup in his ear, the realisation surrounds and embraces him. He had believed he understood this entire time, and yet, he had always been beyond far off the mark. He knows this now because of the ghost of her figure atop his mattress. He understands why she pushes him away with all her might; with all the breath in her lungs. He understands why her body folds inward, smaller, like origami to hide in the spaces between bones, when she sees his face.

Yoongi has cracked her open once, and he is not afraid to do it twice. This time, for the right reasons. This time, with his eyes wide open.

Yoongi begins appearing wherever you go. Like the black plague.

Despite the hostility he had exuded before you departed his apartment after that evening, the guy has been nothing but a picture of perfect juxtaposition over the following two weeks. He wears a grin that is neither snarky, nor cocky, and it haunts your every move. Whether you are standing in line at the campus cafeteria, or rushing down the hallways to make it to training after one of your classes, or shopping at the nearby supermarket that is frequented by all of the campus residents for snacks. No matter the location, the bane of your existence has managed to announce his passing presence through a peripheral glimpse of a peculiar curve of lips. A smile that is so fleeting, so sincere, that you find yourself wondering for hours afterwards if you had merely imagined it, or even falsely fantasised that he was there in the first place.

So really, at this point, you are reasonably terrified that you might wake up in the middle of the night due to the demands of your bladder, and find Min Yoongi standing beside your bed, grinning down at you like an ultimately more horrifying remake of Paranormal Activity.

But although he has been popping in and out of existence like a spectre, and your guard is now automatically activated the instant you leave your flat, you foolishly allow yourself a moment of relaxation in a situation deemed high risk. That is, in public, as you tiredly stroll from one of your classes to the stadium.

Night-time has begun to stretch across the sky in a pink and orange sunset, looking like smears of bleeding watercolour. A threat of clouds dwells in the distant horizon, opposite to the direction that you walk, hinting at a late-night storm that crackles with lightning and draws goosebumps along your arms. Not many students are out. Those who are seem to be heading home from their training, or speedily rushing along to their evening lectures. At this time of day on a Friday, the chances of the rink being empty and you being able to get in without a booking slip tends to be high, and so you decided to save time by skipping out on stopping by the office to collect one altogether.

After a strenuous afternoon of classes, you are too exhausted to second-guess the nearing tap-tap of sneakers against the pavement. It sounds similar to a light jog, as though the person is warming down from their afternoon exercise, or perhaps heating themselves up to evade the chilly air. They are quick to gain on you with the slow trudge that you currently enact, and you mentally anticipate the mild shock that will fizzle through your blood at the sudden intrusion of a being in your periphery; the slight breeze that will come with their passing by…

Except they never do.

“Hey, ___!”

A shriek of surprise involuntarily escapes your lungs, and you are certain that your soul has been startled out of your body. “What the fuck?!”

“Normally, people say hello back,” Yoongi, who has materialised beside you, sniffs wetly. His breath comes out slightly ragged, concluding that he is the mystery jogger, much to your utter displeasure. “Or how are you?”

You purposefully take a step to the side, putting distance between your parka-bundled, sports-bag-loaded bodies, and venomously bite back with, “No, I genuinely mean what the fuck. Were you hoping for me to have a heart attack?!” With that said, you continue to walk ahead, taking deep breaths to calm yourself down. Yoongi, like a puppy waiting for a scratch behind its ear, eagerly follows. You whip your head to the side and glare at him. “Stop. Why are you walking with me? Go away.”

He sniffs again, ignoring your demand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Besides, I’m not walking with you. I just happen to be walking beside you since we’re both going in the same direction.”

“You literally jogged to catch up to me,” you deadpan, quickening your pace and praying that he gets the message loud and clear. But Yoongi, as always, is not one to accept defeat so easily.

“Actually, I was getting my blood circulation going to keep warm, but whatever you want to think,” he says with the sly smirk of a liar, and your entire body boils with barely suppressed rage. “So… how’s life treating you?”

You stop dead in your tracks, and wish to beat the sense out of whatever it is that briefly flutters in your chest at his soft, casual tone. “Yoongi, don’t act like you care. Do you want me to apologise for that night at the party? Is that why you’ve been acting like Casper the Friendly Ghost for the past two weeks?”

Yoongi, having trailed a few steps ahead after your abrupt halt, twists on his heel to face you. His expression, despite its playful facade, is otherwise unreadable. “Hey, no. I don’t care about that. I’m only doing this for the sake of our coaches who want to dick each other.” His brow furrows. “They have a point, you know. Time heals all wounds.”

“But I’ve got the scar to prove it,” you snap, taking off again, and Yoongi visibly flinches as if you slapped him. Although you are the inflicter, you cannot help the cold sliver of guilt that slides down your spine at the remark. There is a poisonous taste on the tip of your tongue, even after the words have dissipated with a cloud of mist at your lips.

But it seems that even words in the shape of a blade cannot cut through his thick skin, nor deter him from any semblance of hope. Long used to years of your bitterness. Yoongi’s resilience remains as stable as a wall of iron, and is further proven when you can hear feet catching up with you again. His voice, right beside you once more, casually asks, “Are you mean all the time, or is that anger only directed at me?”

You press your lips into a firm line to prevent the small smile that threatens to curl them. “You’re certainly a catalyst.” The cold skin of your face heats up when you quickly glance out the side of your eye and notice that Yoongi’s gaze is fixed on you, hardly paying attention to where he steps. “Anyway, how in the world is walking together doing it for their sake? They’re not around to see us.”

“Maybe, but word spreads fast. Our rivalry is infamous on this campus, after all. Check it out,” Yoongi says, and you look up, but not without a brief side-eye at him in order to see where his stare is directed.

Following his gaze, it lands upon two girls walking on the opposite side of the thin trees that separate the massive path, brazenly watching the unlikely pair across from them. No, more so, they stare as though they have come upon a sight so rare and astounding that they can hardly tear their eyes from it—like you and Yoongi are aliens walking without their disguises. When the both of them realise that the two of you have taken notice of their observations, they make a fuss of panicked screeches and grab each other to tailwind it out of there.

A small missile of unease and insecurity implodes within your stomach, causing you to scowl. You are not entirely sure what creates the twist. Perhaps, being observed like an exotic zoo animal by strangers who know no better. Perhaps, walking so closely alongside the bane of your existence that your senses are tantalised by the cinnamon whiff of his cologne. Perhaps, agreeing with his sentiment. Wounds, no matter how ugly, can heal.

What you are certain about is that you need to get away from him before the foreign, virulent twinge in your chest blooms into something dangerous. Something unmanageable.

“Cool, and now they’ve seen us, so you can go,” you firmly state, curling your fingers tightly around your bag strap and picking up the pace again. “I have more important things to do than deal with your headache-inducing presence.” The arena, your escape, now resides no more than thirty metres away, and you determinedly stride towards it.

Yoongi, for what must be the third time, effortlessly catches up with you. Damn his longer legs to Satan’s fiery den. “Do you, now? Where are you headed?”

“The stadium.”

“Oh, me too. For what?”

Apparently, a lot of mental energy is required to will him the fuck away. “Practice,” you growl.

“Me–” The tail end of Yoongi’s sentence is completely severed by his mouth snapping shut. Right there, the realisation swiftly dawns as you both come to a standstill, staring roundly at each other in the middle of the pathway. “Do you have a booking slip?”

The moment of hesitation is infinitesimal. Then, the both of you are charging at the speed of two wild and voracious cheetahs in the direction of the arena.

“No! Don’t – you – dare!” you screech, arms pumping at your sides and sneakers smacking hard against the pavement, desperately attempting to catch up to Yoongi, who managed to take off a half-second before you. “I need to practice, asshole!”

Yoongi, almost at the stadium stairs, barks a sharp laugh. “We all have to practice!” he shouts back in a high-pitched voice. Immediately, you realise he is mimicking you from the time you dismissed his missing booking slip, and your blood reaches boiling point. “Cry to somebody who cares!”

An exasperated scream rips out of your chest, driving you to push your legs harder and finally reach Yoongi’s side, just as he is about to take to the first step. But before you can even reach for the collar of his parka to yank him behind you, Yoongi is whirling on his heel and, at a frightening speed, wrapping his arm around your waist and effortlessly lifting you from the ground. There is hardly a second for your brain to process what is occurring and ultimately conjure a shriek, because as quickly as the Devil sweeps you and your sports bag up, he is ungraciously depositing you in the shrubbery that lines the pathway before taking off again.

“First in, first served. Suck it, doll!” Yoongi crows from halfway up the stairs, all the while you spit profanities and struggle to wriggle your way out of the bush. By the time you have found your feet, the bastard is grinning and giving you two middle-finger salutes from the top of the stairs. Then, he is slipping through the sliding doors of the stadium entrance. Shit, shit, shit!

“You’re an idiot, ___,” you loudly curse yourself, partially out of breath as you hastily scale the steps, and not giving a single damn if anyone can hear you. “Who cares if you have to waste an extra ten minutes and walk to the other side of campus! Always get a slip, dumbass!”

Once you pass through the doors and realise that Yoongi has already crossed the foyer and entered the ice rink, you slow down your pace, despaired. Frankly, you feel more irritated at yourself for being too lazy to get a booking slip, which has clearly made you pay the price and lost you a bonus three hours of evening training. The fact that the extra time was missed out on because of Yoongi, of all people, has you inwardly brewing a storm, no matter that you already did your required five hours per day this morning.

Well, that is until he comes bursting out of the double-doors that lead to the arena, causing your heart to stutter in its otherwise fluid pattern of beating. For a fleeting moment, you wonder if the weird kindness he has been exhibiting to you lately has caused him to turn over a new leaf of consideration, and he has come out to let you have the slot. But that peculiar sense of hope fades once you realise his features appear utterly disgruntled.

Thus, with the bitchiest smirk that you can humanly muster in your deathly exhausted state, you ask, “What? Did somebody beat you to the punch?”

Yoongi comes to a halt a few feet before you, and the wicked curve of your mouth involuntarily shrinks. His sharp, dark eyebrows are narrowed in a scowl, and you stupidly have to force your stare at the linoleum in order to stop yourself from gulping at the fierce, stomach-sinking sight.

“The Zamboni broke down in the middle of the rink,” he says, evidently annoyed. “By the look of things, they won’t be able to resurface the ice or get the shitty thing off it until tomorrow.”

Not one to directly trust the words of Satan himself without blatant evidence, you navigate around him and head towards the double-doors. Sure enough, when you peek through them, it is to see a motionless Zamboni near the centre of the half-resurfaced ice rink. Two maintenance men skate around the vehicle, seemingly trying to figure out why it has broken down, and how on Earth to fix it.

Letting the doors swing shut, you state a disinterested, “That sucks.” Then, without sparing a glance at Yoongi as a safety precaution for your double-crossing heart, you brush past him and head back towards the stadium entrance. Because if you were not going to be training on the ice tonight, then you were most definitely rescheduling your date with your plush, cosy bed to approximately 15 minutes from now.

“Hey, wait.”

Your feet turn to stone, anchoring you in place. In that instant, if the manner in which it bounds at the sound of his soft tone is anything to go by, you confirm that your heart is a traitor.

Not expecting you to twist around, Yoongi, instead, comes up to your side and roots himself between you and the exit. A terrible sincerity is laced around those two words, and they bring forth a deluge of similar instances where they have left his lips. From across a sun-warmed playground as a shaved ice van pulled into the parking lot; to racing after the bus on the first day back at middle school; to underneath a streetlight with a hand curled securely around your wrist, Yoongi hesitantly leaning in.

The Min Yoongi who stands before you now is so different, and yet entirely the same. It nearly breaks your heart all over again.

“Let’s go to a pojangmacha,” he insists, rubbing the back of his hand against his wet nose. An old habit that vaguely soothes your inner conflict and your surface irritation. “There’s one close to campus that does the best tteokbokki–”

“I can’t– I don’t want to,” you sigh, anxiously chewing the inside of your cheek at the slip-up. You shift your gaze away from Yoongi’s eyes, absently staring at the empty kiosk across the foyer instead. “I have nationals coming up. I’m on a strict diet.”

“Well, isn’t that the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Yoongi says, surprisingly genuine. I can think of one thing sadder, skims your tongue, but does not escape. Before you can part your lips to reply, Yoongi continues to say, “One night won’t hurt though, right? For Seokjin and Namjoon, of course, to prove to them that we can be civil. That’s it.”

Your gaze drags back to Yoongi, and you can feel your pulse thumping in your ears. His mussed, midnight hair is windswept from the frantic running, fringe in a slightly pushed-back disarray. The peaks of his cheeks are still flushed in a soft, rosy shade that makes him glow underneath the fluorescent lighting. His expression borders on being somewhat tender, vividly akin to the one that he used to save for nobody but you, yet not quite. It is guarded by glass walls; allowing you to observe, though protecting him from your touch.

But your fists have been known to shatter.

“Fine,” you huff, your stare unwavering. “For the coaches. But you’re buying.”

When Yoongi breaks out into a grin, looking like everything you have tried so hard to forget, you ignore the voice at the back of your mind that begs to differ.

Yoongi knows he should despise how utterly excited he feels. Yet there he is, feeling the kind of descending-rollercoaster-rush of exhilaration that he gets in his gut when the game is tied with 30 seconds left on the clock.

The entire 15-minute walk to the pojangmacha is submerged in a dense silence, though he hardly minds. Knowing that she is keeping up to pace beside him—despite the scowl that appears permanently etched into her features—is enough to satisfy his urge to be near her for the time being. Even so, he keeps glancing out the side of his eye to make sure that she is still there. To be absolutely positive that she is not some incredibly lucid figment of his imagination which, given the circumstances, would been highly concerning.

In fact, Yoongi is still struggling to believe that she even agreed to such an absurd offer of a stir-fried dinner on a chilly Friday evening. With him. Especially since she is on a diet for a figure-skating competition, which is something that she takes very seriously. Always, when it comes down to anything that involves her sport. Her future Olympic career.

What he really cannot fathom is that she accepted on the basis of such a flimsy excuse. Given their recent history, it was wholly unnatural on her part. She must have been able to see right through the “for the coaches” facade and caught wind of his genuine desire to sit down and talk civilly with her. Because surely, there must have been better options for her to schedule into her agenda. Like burrito-ing herself with bed blankets, cramming a bland salad down her throat, and bingeing on Netflix.

So, is this a subtle sign of peace? Or is she merely hoping that if she sacrifices the next handful of hours to his overly eager grasp, he may, perhaps, cease annoying her to the end of her wits?

Yoongi, as per usual, is as clueless as a fucking goldfish. Yet knowing that he will have the chance tonight to speak at least two sensible words to her—ones that are not founded on a pointless argument or a five-year rivalry—has him trying to compose that rollercoaster sensation all over again.

Once they turn the final street corner, the orange tent comes into existence through its bustling appearance and mouth-watering aromas. She, with her lips still clamped shut, strides right ahead and through the open flaps of the entrance. Yoongi, teeth grinding to powder, is tempted to fling an insult at her for her blatant rudeness. Instead, he channels that negative energy into propelling his legs forward, following her.

Determinedly, she weaves through the busy stall and picks a table in the far corner without so much as a glance back at Yoongi. So obviously attempting to project her lack of care for him and this entire situation. Without warning, a hopeless grin itches at Yoongi’s lips.

“Hungry, are we?” he says once he is back within her proximity, dropping his sports bag beside his seat and shrugging off his parka as she does with her own. Underneath, she wears a black, form-fitting long-sleeve. He hastily casts his gaze elsewhere before she tries to call out the pink flush on his cheeks for him being perverted.

“Yes, but I also want to get this over and done with as swiftly as possible,” she grouses, tossing her jacket over the stool and then plunking herself atop it.

Yoongi proceeds in doing the same, but not without retrieving his soon-to-be-withered wallet from the parka pocket. “If you eat too fast, you’ll get stomach cramps.”

“I’ve mastered the art of speed-eating, I’ve got this,” she sneers, leaning towards the makeshift kitchen to better penetrate the constant, chattering hum of the other patrons with her calling voice. “Can I please get one serve of tteokbokki and two bottles of soju?” Without turning to face him, her eyes slide to the side, meeting his own. “That’s only for me, by the way.”

Swiftly as possible. Right.

“I thought you were on a diet.”

“Yeah, I’m actually ‘Min Yoongi intolerant’ and the diet’s been working until, well, right now.”

“Ha! She says to the Min Yoongi who is paying for her meal,” he bites back sarcastically, though the words lack any poison.

At that, her mouth slowly seals shut, eyes narrowing at him in barely accepted defeat. Triumphantly, Yoongi smirks, and then calls out the same order to the little old lady. Within minutes, the steaming hot food and bottles of alcohol are being served to them, and Yoongi is reluctantly saying goodbye to the very few bills in his wallet. He takes a healthy swig of bitter soju to numb the pain.

“Calm down, cowboy. I don’t want to be dragging you back to campus,” she comments, skewering a piece of tteokbokki and blowing away the steam. Her pursed, plush lips glisten as they nibble at the stir-fried food. Yoongi takes another swig to spite her and to distract himself from the tantalising view.

“The fact that you wouldn’t just leave me here to fend for myself is commendable,” he says, raising an eyebrow. He similarly picks at the food, while she realises what she has said with mild horror. “Besides, you were the one who ordered two bottles first. Who’s to say that I won’t be dragging your ass back to campus?”

“I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can somewhat stomach your presence when I’m tipsy,” she clarifies. “And that’s as far as I’ll be going tonight. The last time I got drunk, I woke up in your bed without a single memory of what happened the night before. Pervert.”

Yoongi blinks, completely ignoring her last comment. “You can drink two whole bottles of soju and only be tipsy?” He ungraciously shoves two pieces of steaming tteokbokki into his mouth, stuffing them into his cheeks so he can continue speaking. “I always thought you’d be a lightweight. Yet here you are, proving me wrong.”

“And I always thought you’d grow out of being a pain in my ass, yet here you are,” she sighs, taking a swig of alcohol to try and conceal the tender smile that crawls at the corners of her lips. But Yoongi is too hyperaware of every slight shift in her expression to miss it.

“Admit it, I’m a pain that you can’t live without,” Yoongi says, staring right at her. He can see in her curious eyes that she senses the underlying venom. Yet, instead of acting on it, she rests the rim of her already refilled glass against her lower lip.

“I’m not giving you that glory, Min Yoongi,” she says, though it is practically an admission in itself. She knocks back the soju, and Yoongi follows in suit. Two souls numbing an agony that is still too unbearable to even whisper.

Their voices momentarily subdue and they focus on eating their servings of tteokbokki. Yoongi feels a little ridiculous to be so thrilled about doing something as mundane as eating with her, especially now that the conversation has dialled down to nothing more than chewing and sipping. Every so often, he will glance up at her as he mindlessly brings his chopsticks to his lips with more food pinched between them. Behind her, the orange canvas trembles with each caress of the wind outside. The buttery glow of the tent lights, the eye-watering haze from the food cooking in an enclosed space—they smear the outline of her, turning her into a nebulous, dreamlike being that slowly, silently eats.

Maybe the alcohol is contributing to the warming of his insides and the softening of his muscles like sun-touched clay, but he knows deep in his gut that it is mainly because of her. This sensation is no foreign entity; it never has been. It is as familiar as her eyes, watching him with misplaced contempt.

Yoongi, in a somewhat morbid sense, finds it ironic that the one thing they loved the most—the ice—ended up wrenching them apart, like the strength of a current upon a ship in savage seas.

With the ice on his mind, Yoongi cuts through the silence with a question. Akin to her, he is on his second bottle of soju, and so his words slip from his tongue like liquid. “Are you nervous for your competition?”

Her own voice drizzles honey-like from her lips. “I mean, of course. Who isn’t nervous about them?” She leans her elbow on the table and rests her cheek against her palm, blinking slowly. Brave eyes are set on his face. A hopeless war stirs chaos inside of his heart. “But I’m confident and free-skating is my forte, so I know I’ll do good, at the very least. My only issue is that Seokjin wants me to execute a quad-Salchow, which has only ever been done by Miki Ando in like, 2002. It’s a guaranteed ticket to the 2022 Winter Olympics. But if I fuck it up, I probably won’t get the spot. I don’t know why he’s insisting I do such a risky move, even though I’m coming pretty close to landing it, now.”

Yoongi’s brow pinches. “Four rotations? Wasn’t that Seokjin’s gold medal move?”

Her brows raise in bewilderment as she grabs for her soju bottle. “How did you know that?”

“Namjoon, of course,” Yoongi grins, and she hastily looks away, suddenly focusing on pouring her nth glass of alcohol. He decides to not call her out on it; the idea of her being flustered over his smile is something he wants to savour. “Anyways, I’m sure you’ll land it and the crowd will go fucking crazy because you’re the second woman to complete the move. You’ll do it again in 2022 for the whole world to see, and then you’ll become an icon in the history of figure-skating.”

Carefully, she sips from her glass, gaze focused on the wet ring of condensation that the cold bottle has left on the plastic-covered table. “Do you really mean that?”

“Well, you’re not called the Ice Princess just because you’re an asshole.”

She does not say thank you. But her glassy eyes, in the fleeting second that they meet his own before she tips the last of the liquid down her throat, are brimming with foreign appreciation.

After making a satisfied exhalation and wiping her mouth against the back of her hand, she says, “When’s your semi-final game? And before you ask how I know, it’s because your team never shuts up about in the cafeteria. I hope you realise I had to sit through five team chants while eating my beans this week, which made them taste even more awful than they already are.”

Yoongi gets sheepish about that, rubbing his thighs with his palms. “Yeah, they like to amp themselves up when a game is near. It’s tomorrow afternoon.”

The way her eyes bulge is comical, and Yoongi has to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing. “What?! Shouldn’t you be practicing?! And you’re even drinking, what the hell!”

He shrugs. “I don’t like the other rinks on campus. That’s why I looked pissed off about the broken-down Zamboni, if you noticed.” He knows she noticed—he had clearly seen the victorious smirk on her lips when he had stormed out of the rink. “Namjoon always advises against practicing the night before a game, anyway. There’s nothing worse than having to deal with last-minute injuries, especially for any of the prelim rounds. As for drinking–” He polishes off his soju for emphasis, sealing it with a grin– “I wasn’t about to let you outshine my alcohol tolerance. If we lose tomorrow because of my shitty performance, I can at least blame it on you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she deadpans, though the corner of her mouth trembles with barely suppressed humour. Blaming each other for their own mistakes is something they have always done best.

Yet Yoongi, strung in this limbo between tipsy and drunk, wants to lean across the table and taste her swallowed laughter on his own lips. To be fair, she would probably slap him. Surely, she would.

Right?

Yoongi chews his desire and gulps it down. Instead of taking her face between his palms and kissing her until his tongue knows the precise shape of her lips again, he says, “You should come watch us play.”

“Don’t push your luck, Yoongi,” she says, and he smothers the small flame of hope that had unknowingly lit up inside of him. After checking the hour on her horribly cracked phone screen, she sighs. “Are you done eating? It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Though as she begins to stand up from her seat, Yoongi stops her, eyes still lingering on the shattered glass that is lightning-like. “Wait, I just had an idea. To prove to the coaches that we hung out…”

When she endearingly tilts her head to the side like a curious puppy, Yoongi forces himself to not jump across the table and connect their mouths. He points at her phone on the table and continues on. “We could… take a selfie?”

He knows he sounds ridiculously unsure, but it is only because he is certain she will shut him down as quick as she did with the game-watching offer. So Yoongi is more than surprised when, after a silent pause of her chewing her lip and frowning at her phone, she shrugs. Though her nose is wrinkled with what appears to be mild displeasure.

“Uh– Yeah. Okay. Fine, yeah,” she rambles, sitting back down and pushing her hair away from her face. “But we’ll have to take it on your phone. My front-facing camera has a crack through it and it distorts the photos.”

“Oh, so that’s why you haven’t been posting any selfies to Instagram lately,” Yoongi mutters under his breath as he grabs his own phone and stands up.

“What?”

“What? Scoot over.”

Grudgingly, she obliges, pushing her seat back from the table to make room. Yoongi pulls the third, unused stool out from underneath the table, places it next to her own and sits on it. This close, her floral-scented deodorant lingers lightly in the air, and Yoongi subconsciously takes a deep inhale as he opens up the Snow camera app.

“Can’t we do it without a filter?” she says with a tinge of vexation, peering at his unblemished screen as he swipes through the different face-filters. “Hurry up.”

“Do you really think you look pretty without filters?” Yoongi lies through his teeth, and she socks him hard in the bicep for it. Her fist might be small, but her knuckles manage to dig into a weak point of his muscle, making him groan.

Knowing him, he will dote on the bruise she has made until it turns yellow as a durian.

“Fucking hell, ___,” he still grunts, finally deciding on a filter with a press of his thumb. He lifts his hand before their faces. “Here we– Hey, you’re going to have to lean in so the filter recognises you.”

“What even is the–” She cuts herself off mid-sentence when she leans a little closer and the filter attaches itself to her face, matching Yoongi. He is full-blown grinning by this stage, juxtaposing the way she frowns and presses her lips together, as if she is trying to not laugh. “Fucking heart crowns? Are you serious?”

“We’ve got to be convincing,” Yoongi says with an air of nonchalance. He cannot stop staring at her through the screen, nor will his mouth cease curving at the cartoonish pink hearts that dance around her head. “Don’t you want to make it worth it?”

“Oh my god, shut up and take the damn photo.”

“Calm your ass down. Annnd… smile!”

She absolutely does not smile. Her death glare pierces through the camera lens with an intent to murder, yet it is terrifyingly cute when paired with the little crown of hearts and the soft, rosy tinge of the filter. Yoongi nudges her elbow with his own as a means of firm encouragement, though all he can manage to weasel out of her is a half-hearted tilt of her lips.

Still, he grins wide and genuine and presses the little white circle once, and then a few more times for good measure. The shutter sound rings above the sizzling of fried food and the continuous drone of chatter within the tent. Satisfied, Yoongi drops his hand and bends his head over the phone, entering the photo album and clicking the last of the six-or-so identical images. When the preview image expands to fill the screen, air becomes locked in his throat.

“Hey, let me see,” she mumbles, her silk-like voice nearing as she leans closer to view the device. Yoongi, without peeling his eyes away from the photo, tips the phone in her direction.

He hears the air suck between her teeth; a blackhole inhaling the stars. He knows that she sees it, and he wonders if it crushes her ribs like the blows of swinging fists.

While she does not smile at her utmost potential in the photo, the mirth lingers on her mouth and lightens her soju-sparkled eyes. Her head is tilted closer than Yoongi first realised—almost close enough to be pressed against his own; close enough that their individual heart crowns overlap. In the past, they had taken hundreds of photos in this precise position. The only difference is that there would be arms curled affectionately around necks, and their cheeks would be unabashedly flush against each other.

But staring at this image of them now, it is like a brutal documentation of their reality. It reminds him of everything they lost—of what they could of been, had that incident never occurred. Although the image depicts her hovering close by, the blatant evasion of any physical contact is stark—a black smudge on an otherwise perfectly white canvas.

A deep, unsuspecting crack on the surface of an otherwise perfectly frozen lake.

Yoongi’s throat suddenly feels bruised and swollen.

“Can you send it to me?” she quietly asks, breaking the tension that has been steadily hardening in their chests. Newfound velvet wraps around her tone, softening the syllables. “S-So I can send it to Seokjin–”

She stops when Yoongi drags his eyes away from the photo for the first time since opening it, only to look at her and realise how near their faces have become to one another.

Yoongi knows that his expression must be twisted into one of remembrance—of pure tragedy. The photo unlocked a gate that he has kept under tight security ever since that day, and he feels each of those memories anew. A scarred wound that has opened again, riper than ever. This close, her sad eyes are swallowed with pity and spite and something else that he refuses to cultivate hope for.

It was only two weeks ago that he was this close to her, hidden between the shadows, sweetness on his tongue, red and blue lights dancing in a taunt on the walls. Yet, even now in a soberer state, he cannot decide where to rest his eyes—choosing to let them flicker between her nose, eyes, and the small opening of her parted lips. Not knowing when he will get to be this close to her again.

I’ve missed you, he remembers her whispering while she was dressed like an angel, submerged beneath a sea of intoxication. I’ve really missed you so much, Yoongi.

Yoongi’s eyes settle, at last, on her mouth. The flesh glimmers, plump and begging. He has no idea how many years it has been since he felt it melt into his own, all innocent and empathetic with young love. He can sense her testing him in the way that she does not move away—how the tip of her tongue snakes between her lips, wetting them in tantalising preparation.

But I can’t apologise, no matter how unbearable this has been.

Yoongi, in an effort more strenuous than he lets on, looks away. Though he cannot ignore the cold blade that carves her initials into his heart.

“Yeah. What’s your number?” Yoongi says the question as though he did not confess his undying love for her, solely through the look in his eyes. As though he was not about to kiss her with freshly harvested apologies and offer the bouquets of repentance with his tongue, tied at the thorn-ridden stems with urgent forgiveness.

Quieter than she had first asked, she rattles off the numbers and he presses at the keyboard with shaky fingertips. All the while, a tiny voice in the back of his mind makes him realise that he now has her phone number—something he has not had stored in his contacts since his old phone was wiped at least three years ago. He clicks the ‘send’ button, and her phone proceeds to vibrate in two quick pulses on the table. By the time she is reaching for the device to open the message and save the photo, Yoongi is standing and gathering up his parka, sliding his arms through the sleeves.

“Come on,” he says with a sigh, wedging his phone into his sweatpants pocket and slinging the strap of his sports bag over his shoulder. She, having been staring at her phone screen since he moved, suddenly snaps out of her silent daze and gathers her belongings.

The walk home, much alike to the walk there, is silent. Though rather than it being weighed down by her indignation and his stifled amusement, it is suffocated by unspoken confessions and dithering apologies. Yoongi cannot get the sight of her lips out of his mind, and he is somewhat glad that he no longer faces her, for the temptation of them being right before him like a forbidden fruit dangling from a low-hanging branch is too much.

He knew that cracking her open and digging through her bones for his vindication would not be a clean task. He knew that he would be up to his wrists in blood and the gore would tuck itself beneath his nails. He just never realised how completely in love with her he still is—that this vying for first place on who can hate the other the most was never about hate at all.

The part that eats at him the most is whether the feelings are requited. But, as always, she hides herself well behind her mask of ice.

After becoming used to the rhythm of their sneakers against the pavement, her shaky exhalation is like an air horn violating his hearing. Yoongi’s head snaps to the side, initially thinking that she is crying. Though when he sees that no silver stains her cheeks and her jaw quivers uncontrollably, he recognises the signs. A welcome familiarity amidst the foreign, yet oh-so familiar feelings they traverse.

“Your teeth are chattering.” Yoongi says, and she glances at him with a surprised jump of her shoulders. “Are you still prone to the cold?”

“N-No, I’m fine,” she bluntly insists, averting her eyes and continuing to stride ahead.

But Yoongi is faster, grabbing at her elbow and twirling her freezing—and now flustered—self around to face him again. “Nope. This won’t do.”

“D-Don’t be ridiculous,” she sputters, but Yoongi is not having it. He drops his bag to the sidewalk with a heavy clunk, shucks off his parka, and wraps it around her already padded shoulders and the sports bag at her hip. While he ties the sleeves at her chest to keep it in place, she keeps her conflicted glare on the ground.

“Warmer?” Yoongi asks with a forced, lopsided smile. The cold relentlessly attacks him through his thin sweater, digging its nails into his ribs and squeezing tight as he picks up his bag.

She wrinkles her nose and returns to her initial stride, though her teeth have stopped rattling like a loose doorknob. Yoongi, following after her, knows it is the only expression of thanks that he will receive. But he cannot find it in himself to mind, anymore.

By the time they have reached the campus accommodation, Yoongi’s muscles are frigid and his skin feels permanently raised in goosebumps. The silence between them has eased in its tension, yet he struggles to grasp the right words with his tongue when they reach the walkway in front of her dorm. Because really, what do you say after a night like this? It was never a date—a compromise, at best. He cannot kiss her on the cheek and wish her a good night. He cannot book another moment of meeting, as if there is something even close to friendship strung between them. He cannot tell her he will call her for coffee next weekend.

Thankfully, she saves him from his internal war-waging. Her hands come up to the tied sleeves, about to untangle them. “You can have this back,” she starts, but the words are lurching up Yoongi’s throat before he can stop them.

“Keep it,” he insists, fists clenching at his sides in an attempt to suppress the embarrassment that suddenly washes over his body. She stills, staring with uncertainty at him, especially now that he is slowly stepping backwards. “I… I mean return it, of course. When I see you next, yeah?”

Her brows are slashed downwards. “I don’t plan on–”

“Too bad!” Yoongi shrugs, now grinning like a thoroughbred lunatic at her utterly perplexed expression. Then, before he can fully comprehend the actions of his own body, he is turning on his heel and jogging down the path, calling over his shoulder, “See ya!”

If she says anything more, Yoongi does not hear it over the adrenaline rushing through his ears, the slapping of his sneakers against the pavement, and the rattling of his bag as it bounces against his ass. With his sudden spurt of energy, he runs from her dorm to the other side of the village, which, had he been walking, would have taken ten minutes. Though he finds himself slowing at the walkway to his own apartment within a record-breaking five minutes. His muscles burn with an aching heat, and the humiliation over his blatant corniness flares like a long-forgotten mosquito bite that he accidentally scratched.

“Oh my god,” Yoongi groans to himself, yanking open the already unlocked front door. His over-exerted limbs scream at him, and he knows that the prelim game tomorrow is going to be the epitome of Hell for his body. “I’m a whole fucking idiot. What the fuck.”

“I don’t need to know the context because I completely agree with you, nonetheless,” comes Taehyung’s voice from the opposite end of the entranceway. Yoongi looks up from kicking off his sneakers to find his housemate peering around the wall. There is a sly grin on his face, and the whites of his eyes are evidently stained with red, spidery webs.

Unsurprisingly, he is as high as the Lotte World Tower.

“Piss off,” Yoongi mutters, trudging past Taehyung and entering the living space. Jimin is nowhere to be seen, which is definitely a good thing. Dealing with one of his housemates is like trying to control five toddlers, as it is. “I don’t need your shit right now.”

“Ooh, somebody’s had their kimchi dipped in ghost pepper sauce,” Taehyung cackles, trailing after him in that tattered excuse for a kimono. Yoongi makes an immediate bee-line for his bedroom. “Why’re you lookin’ so flustered, huh? You smell like fast-food and alcohol. Weren’t you supposed to be training–”

Yoongi slams the door in Taehyung’s face and locks it. In the darkness of his room, he drags his feet across the small space, lets the strap of his bag slip off his shoulder and to the carpet, and then collapses with an agonised sigh on his bed. His muscles just about cry with relief. Though as quickly as they begin to unwind, they seize up at the memory of his random outburst—his sudden escape, leaving her with the sole means of having to see him again.

“What is my damn problem,” Yoongi mutters into his pillow, body deflating like a hot air balloon. “I practically forced it on her. She was going to refuse. Now she has to come and see me to give it back. God. What the hell. I hope she leaves it on our doorstep without knocking. I hope she gives it to Hoseok and he gives it to Jimin. Fuck.”

Yoongi slowly submerges himself into his own cesspool of self-loathing. Though the thoughts gradually mould into ones of observation, the subject unchanged. His mind, as always, remains to revolve around her like a moon orbiting its planet.

After tonight, Yoongi has realised that she is not the shell of a memory he has clung to for so long. He saw her in there, although she was hidden beneath layers upon layers. She peeked out every now and then in familiar mannerisms or ways of speech that alluded to long-forgotten fondness. Maybe, she did not realise the small slip-ups she made throughout the night; her tipsy carelessness let the layers peel back and fall to her feet like a rose wilting its petals. But the knowledge that not all is lost is enough to comfort Yoongi for the time being. It holds enough importance for him to linger.

Because he knows that he saw the hint of forgiveness in her eyes—still struggling to make it to her lips.

Perhaps, he thinks sleepily, eyes drooping closed, we’ll make it there one day.

You have been awake for a whole two hours, though you have not yet detached yourself from your bed. Despite it is nearing 1PM, you have remained cocooned in your doona the entire 120 minutes (give or take), reclined on your back with your head dangling off the edge of the mattress. You are certain that all of your blood has drained from your limbs and pooled within your skull, if the prickle-like, pins-and-needles sensation across your forehead and scalp is anything to go by. Nevertheless, you lay like a corpse and unwaveringly stare across the room at the foreign item within your quarters.

Yoongi’s parka.

The black swathe of puffy material is slung over the back of your desk chair, unsuspecting as a vase of flowers. In spite of its seemingly ordinary presence, you watch it from your upside-down position like an owl eyeing off its prey, as if the piece of clothing is a mouse that is going to flee if you dare look away. All the while, you continue to mentally flick through the scrapbook of your memories from last night; meticulously reading through the pages, all smudged by the lingering effects of two soju bottles.

(Okay, so maybe you were slightly lying when you said that two soju bottles only got you tipsy. By the time you had left the pojangmacha, you were certainly sitting more on the one-more-drink-and-I’m-dead-fucking-drunk end of the spectrum.)

But you keep finding yourself stuck on a particular scene, repetitively turning back to inspect the finer details of it. In the image, the Devil’s tragic face is a breath away from your own and his molten eyes are drinking up your features like cold water on a searing summer’s day. And while your sight was softly smeared like gouache at the borders, you are certain that his midnight gaze lingered longer than appropriate on the shape of your lips. You are absolutely sure that he was restraining himself; double-checking the titanium locks on his desire to ensure it would not break free—that he would not dive into your mouth with his own and remind you that he tastes like blackcurrants and first loves.

“Jesus on a Razor scooter,” you exhale, eyes still on the parka. Your face burns like a pot on a stove, and something small and deep inside of you whispers that it is not because of your body’s blood supply gathering in your head. “What am I doing? Why am I even thinking about him? I… I hate him. Yeah. I hate him.”

That little something—in a place within you that you refuse to reach—laughs with lungs full of incredulity, as if to say: Silly girl!

It is then that your intimate staring contest with the jacket is cleaved by Minah suddenly barging through the door. She looks as though she has just woken up herself, if the struck-by-lightning hairstyle is anything to go by. “Rise and sh– Oh, you’re… What the hell are you doing? Your forehead veins are bulging like John Cena trying to piss with a urethra infection.”

“That’s… a very unique way of putting it,” you say from your position, rather perplexed. “John Cena? Of all people?”

“Haven’t you seen his forehead veins when he wrestles?”

“I– No? Have I ever exhibited any interest in John-goddamn-Cena over the past three years of our friendship?”

Something flits across her face; a flash of discomfort that is not founded on the fact that you do not keep up to date with professional wrestlers. Something that screams: Well, I know less about you than I first thought. Who knows what other secrets you harbour.

But it dissolves quicker than medicine in water. Like a bandaid on a bleeding scratch, Minah plasters a grin on her lips and seats herself beside you. “Touché. Anyways, where were you last night? I woke up to the sound of you emitting a continuous, soft scream and slamming all the doors in the flat, so I have a feeling you weren’t at the stadium.”

“Oh, shit, sorry. I thought you were staying at Hobi’s place,” you feebly apologise, lethargically rolling onto your stomach and taking your precious time to sit up. Your body feels light as a meringue as all the blood rushes out of your head and back into your limbs. “But yes, I was… out. At a pojangmacha.”

“Drinking without me? Rude,” Minah says, tugging at a corner of the doona after she notices you struggling to be freed from its confines. You mutter a small thanks when it effectively loosens the material’s bind on your body. “Since you didn’t rat me out to Seokjin after my Shark Week binge, I’ll be merciful to you and your alcohol-abused liver.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” you bite with every inch of sarcasm you can muster.

“Damn right I’m your Queen,” Minah asserts, and you roll your eyes. A sly smirk inches its way onto her lips and she jabs her thumb at your desk. “So, I’m guessing you went out with whoever owns that parka?”

You freeze mid-stretch. A thousand and one excuses charge through your head like an off-course train—your usual knee-jerk reaction to lie. And while your gut screams at you to oil the hinges of your defence and heave that bulletproof gate shut on the truth, your heart urges you to reconsider. After all, Minah is your best friend. She deserves a Royal wedding buffet over the stale breadcrumbs you have always thrown her to keep her hunger at the bare minimum of satisfied.

You can feel her eyes on your skin as you slide your own back to the jacket. The face of its owner—bright and mischievously determined—looms at the forefront of your mind when you bluntly state around a mouthful of thorns, “It belongs to Min Yoongi.”

Silence hangs like a fog over your bedroom. You do not dare to sever your gaze with the jacket and meet Minah’s stare. A year ago, you would have said it was because you wanted to upkeep your meticulously cared-for facade of strength. Yet now, you not straying your eyes to your best friend is completely and utterly due to you being terrified of witnessing her reaction up close—the range of emotions that must be stretching and shaping her dainty features like dough.

For this reason, your heart lurches in surprise when Minah grabs your shoulders, forcing you to face her near-manic grin as she giddily shrieks, “Are you pulling my dick right now, ___?! Because I swear to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I will shatter each of your knuckles with a hammer while you’re sleeping if you’re lying to me!”

Dumbfounded, you blink at her. “N-No, I'm serious! Please don't do that, what the fuck–"

"Oh my god. What. This is... insane! The two of you have hardly spoken since we started at KNSU a whole three years ago. Yet, in the past fortnight alone, you've slept over at his goddamn dorm and skipped training to go on a drinking date with him?!"

"Would you just calm down for a sec–"

"Are you sure you're the real ___?" Minah urgently asks, hands coming to your cheeks and squishing them like putty. Her eyes are round as dinner plates. "Has a ghost possessed you? Am I going to have to take you to a shaman? You know, like in that Jo Jungsuk K-drama where he's a chef–"

"I'm not possessed, Minah!" you finally snap, recovering from the shock that her unexpected reaction thrust upon your body. You bat her palms away from your face. "Christ, you jump to conclusions like you jump on dicks."

"Hey, don't shit on my enthusiasm," she snickers, hands falling to her lap. "Seriously, though. What's gotten into you? Has Yoongi black-mailed you into becoming friends again? Do I have to kick his succulent, Channing Tatum replica ass?”

You sigh, picking sleep-crust out of the corner of your eye. “Well, not exactly… it’s complicated. The coaches want us to move on from the past, but it’s not that easy.”

From there, you explain the incident with the Zamboni and you striking a deal with the Devil in order to get back into Seokjin’s good graces. You let the information flow out of you in a stream of truth, only retaining the part where your faces were separated by an exhalation and Yoongi’s eyes were sinkholes, set on consuming you. Nevertheless, your stomach feels less congested by the time you have finished speaking, and Minah seems pleased enough with what you have shared, if her bemused yet thrilled expression is anything to appraise.

“This is fucking wild,” Minah oh-so eloquently summarises. “Hey, can I see the photo?”

“Must you?” you groan, reaching for your phone on the bedside table nonetheless. A low-battery signal pops up when you unlock it, and you silently admonish Past You for prioritising a low-key panic attack over remembering to put the device on charge last night. “The lighting was pretty bad in the tent, so you can’t see much,” you pitch as a final attempt to get Minah to lose interest in the photo, though you know it is hopeless. She snatches your phone once you open up the message in which Yoongi sent it.

“Oh my god, the filter,” she immediately giggles, pinching at the screen and zooming in. Your cheeks are uncomfortably warm, sleepy features screwed up like a cat just passed gas on your lap. “Wow, you look like you’re one more photo away from giving him a vasectomy.”

“I was,” you partly bluff, chewing at the inside of your cheek and leaning closer to see the screen without the light of your window reflecting on it. Minah zooms the image out again so that the entire thing is visible, and a soft, heart-shaped lump wriggles up your throat.

“Dare I risk you snapping off the blades of my skates when I say this,” Minah begins, her gaze adhesive as glue on the device. “But you guys actually look… kind of cute together?”

You snort, ignoring the way your face feels as though it has been dunked in boiling water. “If you think so, why’re you saying it like a question?”

“Because the skates weren’t cheap, and thus, suggesting an element of uncertainty with my own statement might give them a chance at surviving your wrath.”

“Am I really such a heartless monster in your eyes?” you say with a pointed glare, seizing your phone from her grasp. Minah now stares directly at you, and the humorous quiver of her lip is unmistakable.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

You smack her over the back of her head with your pillow, to which she yells in protest.

“Oh, you bitch!” she cries, though it is said through a cheek-splitting grin. She leaps off the bed to evade your second sweep with the pillow, which narrowly misses her side. From a safe distance, she says, “Wait, since Yoongi texted you that pic, that means you’ve got his number now! Are you going to message him so you can meet up and give his jacket back?”

To be honest, you did not even think of that—the fact that you now have a means of directly contacting your nemesis. “Uh, no. I think you’re forgetting that I still hate his guts,” you claim, though the words sting like nettle leaves on the tip of your tongue. “If he wants it, he can come and get it.”

Minah smirks like an evil witch. “He can come and get it, huh? Are you talking about the parka or are you talking about yourself now–” She, with the reflexes of a jaguar, catches the flung pillow before it can strike her face. She hugs it to her chest and laughs while you glower at her with faux loathing. “Well, hear me out on this,” she starts, raising her finger in a gesture of silence when you go to speak again. Mildly disgruntled, you bite down on your tongue. “I’m going to be driving to the off-campus stadium in approximately two hours to pick up Hobi. If you want, you can join me. Yoongi will be there for the prelim game and it should be over, if not close to that by the time we get there, so you can give his parka back. The match starts at 2PM.”

As much as you would love to spend the rest of your afternoon becoming a single organism with your bed, Minah undoubtedly presents a prime opportunity for you to be rid of the jacket. You make a contemplative hum, flipping your phone over and over in your hand as you chew on the offer, even though you are certain from the get-go that you are going to accept it. Your hesitation is more due to you knowing that your best friend will give you a whole lot of shit for the next handful of hours if you are to accept without a hint of regard.

“I know you’re stalling because you think I’ll give you shit,” Minah—apparently a fucking mind-reader—interjects, tossing your pillow back onto the bed and making her way to the door.

You cease fiddling with your phone and gaze impassively at her. “What makes you think that?”

She turns and leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed. “___, I’m your best friend, which basically means I’m your mother. I know everything about you, your mannerisms, and your expressions.” Then, her final comment is spoken with a raise of her brow, “Also, you’re wearing the kind of dumb smile that one does when they think about Labrador puppies. Be ready in 40 minutes, okay?”

Immediately, as Minah departs with a wicked cackle, you smack your hand against your mouth, realising that yes, indeed, your lips are goofily curved in a stupid smile. Groaning into your palm, you tip backwards onto the mattress and gather yourself into the foetal position. God, what is getting into me? Now I’m subconsciously smiling at the thought of Yoongi? What the ever-lasting fuck.

“He must be Voldemort,” you reason, giving the stink-eye to the guiltless parka and hoping that it somehow channels through to its satanic owner. “He must’ve cursed me as a method of torture. That’s the only reasonable excuse.”

If Minah had of heard you, she would have sighed and said: Really? The only reasonable excuse? Are you that blind to your own feelings? But Minah did not hear you, and thus, your totally unreasonable justification as to why you are experiencing even the thinnest sliver of pleasantness towards Min Yoongi is safe with you and his jacket.

Once you have surpassed your dramatic moment and put your phone on charge, you shower the remaining listlessness from your skin and throw on a dark grey hoodie and black skinny jeans. Assessing your attire in the mirror, you definitely look like the reincarnation of your 13-year-old emo phase, but that is exactly what you are wanting—to look as inconspicuous at the stadium as you can humanly muster. With the jacket under your arm, you meet Minah—who is still unnecessarily enthusiastic about the entire situation—in the living room and head out to the car.

And while Justin Timberlake has always lifted your spirits, you find that throughout the 20 minute drive to the stadium, you cannot even bring yourself to sing along to SexyBack. Instead, you cling to the parka on your lap as if it is the only thing keeping you rooted in place, and internally blame the way that your stomach swirls like a blended milkshake on a peculiar case of car sickness.

“Have you even breathed in the past half hour?” Minah questions once you have reached the location, striding into the stadium’s foyer. A hint of genuine concern turns her lips down. “Really, you look like you’re about to pass out. Do you want me to give the jacket to him?”

“N-No,” you stammer, instantly feeling heat gather at the nape of your neck over the way your voice trembles like a harp string. You cough, clearing your throat. “I think I might be a little hungover from last night, is all.”

“Okay.” Minah draws the word out, her tone blatantly conveying that she is unconvinced. Before she can say anything further, her phone pings and she slows her walk to a standstill, checking the notification. “Hobi says the game finished ten minutes ago, but he’s with Jimin and Wonwoo in front of the change rooms. Let’s head there.”

Although she does not say it aloud, the mischievous twitch of her near-smirking lips says, Yoongi should be there, too, loud and clear as a billboard promoting a sex shop. A little reluctantly, akin to the feeling you have right before you rip off a bandaid even though you know it is not going to hurt as bad as you think, you nod and follow her. Dodging around the crowd that is slowly spilling out of the arena exits.

By the look of some familiar KNSU faces and the exuberant commotion that they make, the KNSU team must be the ones going to the finals. A small sense of pride blossoms in your chest. Not for Yoongi’s sake, but for the representation of your university at a game that will put them up as potential contenders for the next Winter Olympics. If they are successful in the final and get the placement for 2022, they will become South Korea’s youngest ice hockey team in the country’s entire Winter Olympics history. They will be renown by the future generations for decades. It is difficult to not feel thrilled for them, as much as they annoy you in the cafeteria.

Yet, betraying your initial thought, a tiny space within your chest fills with warmth over Yoongi’s triumph in particular. He is a defenseman, so you know he would not have scored the winning goal or anything of the like. But as the captain of the team, having a large role in assisting his coach with planning the gameplay techniques, you can imagine how exhilarated he must be at the moment—chanting the KNSU anthem with his teammates; a tad breathless from being squashed beneath the pile of their bodies on the rink in a typical ice-hockey-style victory hug; still charged from the adrenaline of the game. He is probably calling his parents in the locker rooms right now to let them know of the successful game. Wait, oh shit, unless–

“___, is that you?” announces a perplexed voice, simultaneous with a hand tentatively resting on your shoulder, halting your forward motion.

In an instant, it feels like all of the blood has been sucked out of your body, and you are now no more than a sagging sack of meat with weak, jiggling knees. When you lift your head, it is to see a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair. His skin is wrinkled around the corners of his hesitantly smiling mouth.

A spitting image of Yoongi in 20 years time, except a head-and-a-half taller.

Sweet fucking Mary riding a mechanical bull.

“Mr. Min,” you almost gasp, hand reflexively tightening around the smooth fabric of the parka. “Hello! Sorry, you startled me! I should’ve guessed you would’ve been here for Yoongi’s preliminary game–”

“And what exactly are you doing here?”

The nasally, sneering voice comes from around Mr. Min’s elbow, belonging to the side of the family that Yoongi gets his shorter stature from. His mother’s crow-like, narrowed eyes peer at you with an obvious glint of contempt. Even when you and Yoongi were friends, she was never necessarily fond of you. Mrs. Min tolerated you, if you must call it anything. She thought you were nothing more than an unneeded distraction for Yoongi, and he scorned her for it, which certainly did not assist her skewed perception of you.

To her, the accident must have been a blessing in disguise.

“Honey, she’s here to support her university’s team. You know that.” Mr. Min casts a firm glance at his wife, who merely sniffs and continues to critically dissect your perturbed features. Then, with a smile that has a softer curve to it, he says, “Look at you; you’re all grown up! I almost didn’t recognise you, but your outfit is identical to the one that you would always wear during the, er, teenage phase that you went through with Yoongi.” He laughs and tenderly shakes his head, all the while you curse Emo Phase Past You for essentially getting you in this predicament.

Unsure of how to behave—especially with Mrs. Min glowering at you like you are the bird shit that just landed on her blouse—you settle with a deferential, thin-lipped tilt of your lips. “It’s been a few years, yes.”

You hope that the Min’s sense the vibes of discomfort rolling off your being, taper the conversation there, and go on their merry way. But Mr. Min, always the courteous man, continues to ask, “How are your parents? I haven’t managed to see them since the summertime.”

It is then that Minah politely clears her throat, prompting you to remember that she was leading the way to the change rooms, which are now no more than a few metres down the nearby corridor. You give her a small, reassuring smile with a look of firm insistence, to which she immediately catches on and, with a nod and a raise of her eyebrows, continues to walk away without you. Squaring your shoulders, you return your attention to the Min’s and say, “My parents are well, thank you. I wasn’t aware you were still in touch?”

You bite your lip to refrain from adding on: Since after the incident.

“Well, your father and I try to catch up for a drink every few months.” Mr. Min chuckles good-naturedly. Mrs. Min remains silent, wearing an expression of one who has just caught a whiff of expired canned tuna. “We’ve know each other since we were studying, after all.”

“Exactly, how else would you’ve met our darling son?” Mrs. Min bitterly mutters, not quite underneath her breath; intentionally loud enough for you to hear. The urge to scream at her rises high in your throat, and the smile on Mr. Min’s face slips away like water on a plate. He inhales deeply through his nose, turning to berate his wife.

“___? You came?”

The baffled exclamation of your name comes from your left, and you immediately whip your head to the side to face its owner. Yoongi is still in his red-and-black hockey gear; the safety pads underneath his jersey fill out his shoulders and chest, narrowing down at his waist like an arrowhead; the battered helmet is held by the cage with his gloveless fingers, allowing you to experience the full-force of his post-game appearance. His onyx hair is mussed and sticking up with sweat; his eyes are wide and bright, the pupils still slightly dilated with adrenaline; his skin glows a faint shade of salmon from the freezing rink and his exertion; his cold-cracked lips are creamy and plump, liberally coated in lip-balm.

Yoongi looks more a sportsman in this moment than he ever has.

Yoongi looks… fuck.

“I-I just got here,” you stutter, and it is only when your brain restarts in order to formulate a sensical sentence that you notice the bewilderment that traces his features—the panic that steadily fills his eyes. He looks down at your hand which clutches his jacket, lips slowly parting in realisation.

But Mrs. Min is suddenly bursting forth, beaming and reaching for him, nearly knocking you aside in the process. “Yoongi, sweetie! Congratulations–”

“Excuse us a second,” Yoongi bluntly cuts her off, grabbing your elbow and practically dragging you and your stumbling feet to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the foyer. You are too dumbfounded by the entire situation to shake his hand off or fire a few insults at him over his manhandling, though his hand ceases contact the moment he finds a spot that is not swamped by departing spectators.

At a loss for words, all you can do is stand and stare at him, quietly uttering, “Um.”

“Are… are you okay?” Yoongi tentatively questions, still looking a little shell-shocked. His eyes momentarily flit over your shoulder, in the direction of his parents, before they return to your painfully astounded expression.

Yoongi asking about your wellbeing makes something viciously blossom around your heart, and you grit your teeth as though the roots are situated between your molars and you have a chance at ceasing their growth. You shift your gaze to his nose when the genuine look of benevolence in his eyes only fertilises the feeling.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” You almost say: I see your mother is still a nasty bitch, though you work the affronting statement into, “I didn’t expect to see your parents here.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Yoongi comments with a raise of his brow, and you cannot help but quirk your lips at that. His gaze strays to his parka, still bunched up in your grasp. “If you only just got here, did you come to drop this off? I mean, thanks, but–”

“Do you really think I’d go out of my way to give your jacket back?” you snark, but the words come out a whole lot less savage than you were intending. Nevertheless, you pass it to Yoongi and let your hand fall to your side, fingers aching a fraction from how tightly you were clinging to the material. “Minah was coming here to collect Hoseok; it was nothing more than a convenient opportunity. After all, I didn’t think you’d come and get it yourself after you literally ran away from me last night. Do you do that after your dates, too?”

Yoongi, looking like you just lifted your hoodie and flashed him your bra, coughs. “Uh, I don’t date.”

“Unsurprising. I don’t know anyone who’d want to,” you tease with a teaspoonful of salt in your tone, but you only realise what you have said when Yoongi’s eyes flash like lightning. Your heart just about punches right through your ribcage as the horror dawns on you like a summer storm—out of the blue, yet in an instant.

“You did, remember?” Yoongi taunts, wearing a grin coloured by melancholy.

You want to wipe it off his face. With your hand; with your mouth—you cannot decide. After everything that has occurred over the past day, chipping away at you like a hammer and chisel on marble, you have been reduced to a state of vulnerability that you have not experienced in years. You have become a knight stripped of his armour and sword in the middle of the fight, with nothing but his fists and his willpower left to protect him.

But you cannot find the strength within you to throw a punch.

Yoongi seems to notice this when you do not immediately fire back with a scathing remark. The curve of his mouth straightens and he quickly backtracks. “Sorry, that was out of line,” he says, and you are stunned that he even apologised for the jibe. “Anyways, thanks for bringing this along. I should, uh, get back to my parents. But before I go, the usual frat will be hosting a party for the team’s win tonight. You should come.”

Grateful that the subject has shifted before it could fully develop, you fiddle with the strings of your hoodie, a hint of amusement tinting your expression. “They were that confident you guys would win?”

Yoongi’s grin returns. His eyes crinkle like his father’s. “Oh no, it was either going to be a winner’s celebration or a pity party. All we knew was that getting drunk was going to be on tonight’s schedule, no matter the outcome.”

“Well, if that isn’t the spirit of KNSU in a nutshell,” you chuckle. His grin grows impossibly wider and your heart does the ridiculous punch-through-muscle-and-bone thud again. A fierce urge to slap your chest in order to scold the traitorous vessel momentarily overcomes you. “Is it cool if I bring Minah and Hoseok?”

The smile falters. “Uh, only Hoseok.”

“Wow. I can’t believe everyone thinks that our rivalry is bad.”

“I’m kidding. She only hates me because you do,” Yoongi shrugs as he begins to circle around you. “I have to go. But I’ll maybe see you tonight?”

“Keyword: maybe,” you state with a smirk, rotating on the spot to watch him go. Yoongi nods and lifts the hand that holds his parka in a half-hearted salute, heading towards his parents. Though he only manages a few paces before you are realising what you have not said, which imminently leads to you clenching your fists and calling out, “Hey!”

Yoongi stops and turns back around, quizzically observing the immediate regret that contorts your features. Especially since—to your complete horror—a few KNSU students have come to notice the interaction occurring between you and Yoongi. The infamous foes who would once not dare be seen in the same room together. Heat spills into your cheeks, and despite the small audience, you inhale deep enough to consciously sense your lungs shrivelling up like dried grapes before they are expanding once more, releasing your voice.

“Congratulations on the win,” you say at a much lower notch than your initial shout—loud enough for him to hear you, though not at a volume where the distant spectators can precisely make out the words. “Your team has done KNSU proud.”

Yoongi’s expression shifts. The thinly veiled amusement melts into something akin to when one has an epiphany; a cocktail of sincerity and fulfilment, garnished with the shimmer of elation that softens his eyes. Although it must last no more than a few seconds, it seems as though the moment has been taken hold of at its ends and stretched out like taffy. Yoongi stares at you like the past five years never occurred and you, with your hummingbird heart, wonder what that could possibly mean. And in this prolonged time where your enemy exudes forgiveness in tidal waves, you are almost tempted to let the current sweep you under, too.

But a fist of ignorance keeps you standing by the fingers it curls around your throat, and Yoongi must see the bruise marks it leaves on your flesh. Because then, without a word, he twists around and continues to walk away.

Anger does not strike a match on your bones and light up your insides. Rather, your spine is stroked by a warm hand of serenity, and the strength to bat it away evades you. Leached from your limbs like a receding shoreline, as if Yoongi’s physical being is drawing the vigour out of your soul with every step that he takes.

From the corner of your eye, you see Minah and Hoseok approaching with quick strides. As they near, they glance between you and Yoongi, who has now returned to his parents. Once she is close enough, your best friend slings her arm around your shoulders in a manner that is more colluding than consoling, and turns you to face the windows instead of the thinning crowd.

“Were they Yoongi’s parents?” Minah hisses, looking over her shoulder to where the Min family is standing. “Oh, they’re already gone. His mum sounded like she had her head up her own ass.”

“What? What’s going on?” Hoseok asks, leaning close, hands on his hips with his brows pinched. “Why are you two always hogging the tea from me?”

You sigh, though it comes out as more of a groan. Your limbs still feel filled with air after the way that Yoongi looked at you, like he was one bad decision away from gathering you in his arms. “Yes, they were. And no, we’re not, Hobi. There’s nothing to discuss, alright?”

“I don’t believe you, you’re being shady as hell lately,” Hoseok says with a nonchalant shrug. The tips of your ears burn like smelting ores, extracting the irritation from a small nook within you and igniting it into a vivid sensation. “First, you stay at Yoongi’s overnight. Then, not even a few minutes ago, I saw you have a whole conversation with not only his parents, but with him, with my own two eyes!”

In your periphery, Minah bites her lip. Clearly torn about whether she should keep your confidences locked behind her teeth, or cease holding back the truth from Hoseok. But this is not her issue to deal with; it is your own. Thus, you shift her arm off your shoulders and breathe in, ready to exhale your defence.

“You’re overthinking it, Hoseok. I already told you that Yoongi and I used to be best friends, which is why I talked with his parents. Yoongi was merely putting up a good front for them when he talked with me; they still don’t know about the severity our fight. They think that we’re still friends.” Now that you have hastily dressed the wound, you cover it with protective plaster by steering the topic towards something more favourable. “Anyways, all he said was to tell you two that you’re invited to the celebration tonight. The frat is throwing a winner’s party for them. And no, he didn’t invite me, but I’m still coming, of-fucking-course.”

“A party?! Aw shit,” Minah excitedly exclaims, leaping on the new subject like a determined puppy, and you are beyond grateful. She looks to the ceiling, hands held up in prayer against her chest. “Coach Kim, I’m sorry that I’m going to break the rules of my diet. But it’s for a good cause, I promise.”

“As long as we can still fit into our dresses, he won’t notice a thing,” you laugh, linking your arm through her own. The both of you stray your eyes to Hoseok, who has remained silent and is still vaguely looking like his cereal has been pissed in. Your grin of encouragement slowly widens. “Are you going to come, Hobi?”

“It’s not like he has a choice,” Minah pitches in, matching the size of your smile and innocently batting her lashes at him. Hoseok’s expression does not budge an inch. Well, until she adds, “After all, didn’t your fuckbu– I mean, very good friend Wonwoo already invite you?”

Suffice to say, Hoseok’s cheeks ripen into a shade of fresh cherries and you, oblivious to this budding romance, amiably accuse him of withholding information from you, too. From there, it only takes you and Minah teasingly getting up in his face about Wonwoo—a combination of poking at his ribs while making offensive, lewd sounds—for his lips to finally split into a bashful beam, the details of his recent hook-ups with Wonwoo imminently gushing out. The three of you leave the stadium and head to a salad bar for a late lunch in good spirits, and you are finally distracted enough to put your torn emotions about Yoongi on the back-burner of your befuddled thoughts.

Until the evening, that is.

Normally, your drunken selves are more than happy to take the half-hour walk to the frat house a little ways off the campus. But now that the winter is truly beginning to settle in on this side of the hemisphere, your trio makes the wise choice of splurging on a luxurious method of transportation for once—an Uber. This not only gets you there 20 minutes faster, but it comes with a solid heater system that fogs up the car windows like morning mist on a river.

Not that the three of you notice, of course. You and Hoseok are too busy dealing with Minah, seated between you, who perhaps took this night of free-rein a tad too far, considering she consumed almost half a bottle of Russian Standard at the pregame in your dorm.

“Swallow it, you little shit!” you desperately urge, hand wrapped around the lower half of Minah’s face. While you are certainly not as drunk as she, your vowels have attained a noticeably slurred quality. “We’re turning down the street now! Only a few more seconds ’til we’re there!”

“If she throws up in this fucking Uber, I’m going to throw up,” Hoseok warns, nearly just as drunk after losing a game of beer pong against you. He holds Minah’s handbag open underneath her chin, in case you forcing her to keep her vomit down happens to fail. “I’m serious, ___. I’ll paint the fucking car with my power-puke.”

Minah tries to speak, but her voice is muffled against your palm, which impulsively presses tighter on her mouth. You glare daggers at Hoseok from across the backseat. Yet, considering that you can hardly see his paling expression in the dimness of the Uber, you are positive that he cannot see you looking at him like he has a death wish.

“Pull yourself together, Hobi!” you snap, having no desire to pay for a clean-up fee, and knowing that neither of your broke-as-hell-student-life friends can afford it, either. It is then that, to your immense relief, you feel the car slow to a stop, and the Uber driver, perceptibly panic-sweating, announces that you are at the destination. “Oh thank god. And thank you for the ride, kind sir. Minah? I’m letting go to open the door, but I promise I will throw your $300 Lush collection into the trash if you projectile spew before I can get you out.”

With that said, and with what sounds like an affirmative grunt from Minah, you use your free hand to unbuckle the both of you. (Hoseok, the unhelpful asshole, departed the car the instant the driver put it into neutral.) Then, you are hastily snatching away the hand on her mouth and grabbing the handle, yanking the car door open and stumbling out into the street with your best friend—thankfully—close on your heels, handbag under her arm. Immediately, she staggers across the pathway and bends over the frat’s neighbouring front lawn.

“At least you’ll still fit into your competition dress because you’re throwing up lunch, dinner and pregame,” you call out to her as you slam the Uber door shut, giving the driver a jolly wave as he speeds out of the street, probably signing off for the night after that traumatising experience. You turn to face the drunken mess and, luckily for her, you are the only two out on the street. Hoseok left the scene so fast that he most likely has Wonwoo’s dick down his throat already. “Are you really gonna let Jimin see you like this?”

“Shut uuup,” Minah whines, and you are empathetic enough to walk over and hold her hair away from her face. She would do it for you, if the roles were reversed. Minah takes a series of loud, deep breaths, though not even a glob of spit comes out onto the grass. She stays in her hands-on-knees position for an instant longer before she is standing, nonchalantly shrugging and looping her handbag strap over her shoulder. “Nah, I’m good. Told you guys that I get motion sickness.”

Your eye twitches. “I could kill you in your sleep, y’know?” you threaten with a smile, sharp as a sword’s edge. Minah simply gives you a knowing look, which directly translates into: Try me, bitch. “No, really, I could. Especially since I had to change after you spilled the Kremlin’s drink-of-choice all over my first outfit.”

“That was merely a misfortunate event, my sweet pal,” Minah hums, patting the top of your head like you are a misunderstanding preschooler. “But this outfit is cuter, so who cares.”

“I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater to a frat party,” you deadpan, pinching the coffee-coloured collar for emphasis and narrowing your eyes at her infinitely more party-appropriate silver, silky camisole.

“But it’s cropped, and you’re wearing your Ass Jeans,” Minah giggles and begins to walk towards the party, winking and planting a firm smack on your behind as she goes, which is admittedly shaped magnificently by the black denim. “I wouldn’t lie to you. All the better to seduce Yoongi, amiright.”

Like an elbow to the gut, the remembrance of Yoongi being no more than a handful of metres away from you—of him being the one to even invite you in the first place—forces the air out of your chest in a rush. Your stomach flutters like it is filled with moth wings and your palms grow damp as stones on a lake’s edge. The sheer knowledge of all this is enough to keep you from feeling the chill of the air—eager heat licks at your body like flames consuming kindling, burning up your skin from the inside and boiling away your intoxication. The sweater and jeans suddenly feel too hot; you are suddenly too conscious of the situation to deal with this.

“Oh come one, I was only joking. Wait, woah, you okay?” Minah, back at your side, rests her hand on your bicep. She looks as though she wants to ask something else, but instead, she says, “Have you come down with something? You look like you did at the stadium today. We can go home if you want–”

“No no, I’m fine,” you insist, coercing an assured smile onto your lips. “Just had a wave of nausea. Probably from all that vomit-talk in the Uber. Alternatively, it could’ve been you just putting the disgustingly vivid image of seducing the Devil in my head.”

“Or it could’ve been the five Pineapple Malibus that you drank at home,” Minah suggests, smirking and raising her eyebrows. You huff and roll your eyes, to which she laughs and wraps her arm around your waist. “Come on, pumpkin. Let’s get smashed and regret it in the morning.”

Shoving your nerves into a box and storing it in the back of your mind, you exhale the jitters and grin at your best friend. “God, Coach is going to break our ankles for this,” you say, stretching your arm out to rest your hand on her hip and beginning to walk towards the party.

Minah whoops with delight. “Onwards to our shattered bones!”

The house is trembling with energy as the pair of you approach. Trap music spills from the open windows into the front yard, where only a smattering of sobering partygoers wait for their Ubers or flatmates to pick them up. The front door lays open like an arm swept out in welcome, and the steam of the celebrating, clustered bodies within the purple-and-green-lit frat house immediately sticks to your skin upon entering.

Minah and yourself huddle into a corner by the stairs, and you survey the crowd for the missing member of your trio while she rapidly taps away at her phone. Neither Hoseok nor Wonwoo are in sight. In fact, you cannot see Jimin, his strange flatmate Taehyung, or any of the other ice hockey team members in the thrumming living space. Peculiar, considering this party is for them and you assumed they would all be dancing the night away.

I wonder where Yoongi is, you quietly muse to yourself, though you hurriedly bury the thought and reprimand your treacherous mind. Shut up, idiot. Stop thinking about him.

Then, Minah is leaning into your ear, yelling loud enough to nearly pop your eardrum. “I’m going to go pee! But Jimin just texted to say he’s in the backyard, if you wanna go hang with him for a moment!”

“Cool, I’ll get us drinks and text you where I’m at!” you shout with a thumbs-up and she nods, planting a sticky, raspberry lipgloss kiss on your cheek before scampering away to the bathroom.

You begin to weave through the crowd, still buzzed enough on your last few drinks to sway your hips to the beat and pause to dance with some of your classmates as you go. By the time you have passed through the mass, you are grinning like a fool and feeling slightly sweatier than you were before, but the endorphins charging through your brain like a happiness drug have you feeling too high to give a damn. Ahead, the fluorescent white light of the kitchen entryway spills into the low, pearly illumination of the living-space-come-dance-floor, and your tread towards it becomes steadfast, knowing that a treasure trove of alcohol and mixers awaits you within.

But what you do not expect is to find Yoongi in there, too.

You do not see him straight away; the transition from darkness to blinding light makes you flinch, eyes squinting in an effort to adjust. It definitely does not help that your vision is still somewhat hazy from your earlier Pineapple Malibus consumption, either. Though the blurred, watery edges of the kitchen gradually come to form solid shapes. At first, your gaze zones in on the island bench, overwhelmed by a plethora of glinting liquor bottles and red cups. But it is only once your eyes focus on what you were searching for that you finally notice the movement in the background—the girl cornering the boy into the counter, her supple, tangerine lips pressed in a feverish caress against the rosiness of his own.

The rosiness that you used to kiss.

“I…” you unconsciously say aloud, only realising when the girl jumps back from Yoongi as if his lips are suddenly buzzing with static electricity. His half-lidded, confused stare drags from the girl to the interruption, and when he realises it is none other than you, his cloudy eyes seem to clear, growing wide as moons. The connection of his gaze with your own is what seems to kickstart your heart, and your frozen tongue follows in its stead. “Woah. Didn’t mean to… Woah. Bye.”

It feels as though your soul detaches from your being when you quickly walk out of the kitchen, observing from above as your numbed body pushes its way back through the crowd. Calmly to begin with, though increasing in its haste once the front door becomes visible. You watch yourself charge into the front yard, and it is not until you have reached the walkway, separating the lawn from the road, that your soul seems to catapult back into your chest, bringing a torrent of emotions with it.

Yoongi was kissing another girl. But that is fine. That is completely okay. I hate Yoongi. I utterly despise him for what he did to me—for ruining my chances at a younger start as an Olympian. He destroyed everything I worked so hard for. I hate him. I hate him. I… do I?

You are halfway down the street when you hear your name be called out from the shadows. And while you know deep down that you should keep walking without looking back, the soles of your feet disobey, cementing you to the ground. It is as if you have become a marionette and a higher being is controlling your movements, pulling at your strings to turn you around and be faced with the last person you wish to see.

Slowing his jog to a walk, Yoongi looks like he did out the front of the stadium on the night you went to the pojangmacha. Windswept, red-cheeked, breathing hard. Except his mischievous eyes have been replaced with ones of deep-rooted sorrow and the cheeky smile is weighed down at the corners. Now, standing no more than a stride away, you can see that an apology is perched on the bow of his swollen lip, trembling and unsure.

But… an apology for what? He has done many things wrong. Yet, on this evening that took a wrong turn somewhere down the road, he did nothing that requires him to express remorse. You hold no claim over Yoongi, and neither does he with you. Yoongi looks like he knows this, and perhaps this is why the repentance clings to his mouth and refuses to be shaped into words. He did nothing wrong.

So why do your cheeks feel kissed by the cold, streaked wet and filling the corners of your lips with the taste of the ocean?

“Don’t go,” Yoongi finally murmurs, hand hovering next to your elbow as though he wishes to grab it—to keep you by his side. But the world is suddenly cracking beneath your feet and dropping you into a dark pit, sucking you back into the past.

“Don’t go!” Yoongi calls out, voice thick with desperation. Since you are physically incapable of escaping fast enough, he circles around your frame with ease and blocks your path. His expression is wild; a storm of rage and love and urgency. “Please, ___. I’m so sorry. Please. We can still be friends, can’t we? I’m–”

“Get out of my way, Yoongi,” you mutter from between your gritted teeth, staring over his shoulder and at the end of the empty high school hallway. But he continues to gripe, eyes glowing and frantic, the pleas falling like pennies from his lips. It is only when he goes to grab at your shoulders that you shriek, “Don’t fucking touch me!”

Everything is sucked from his expression in that instant, as though a higher being has plucked his soul right out of his body. He stares at you with a look of terrifying blankness, like he does not know you—like he never knew you.

And you are fine with that. It is exactly the way you want it to be. You want Yoongi to forget all about you, because you have already erased everything about him from your heart.

Yoongi seems to recognise something in your expression, for his hand drops limply to his side. And as grateful as you are that he is not burdening you with his insistence, you almost wish that he would grab your wrists and pull you close and tell you that what you saw was nothing.

That the two of you, after all these years of competing against each other in this game of spite, could still be something.

Yet, with your chest aching for the wrong reasons, you give him a final, regretful look before you turn on your heel and continue down the pathway. Yoongi does not follow you with desperation defining his tread. Yoongi does not scream out your name and beg for you to come back as if it is the last time he will ever see you. The cold night is all that grabs at your skin with its icy teeth and whistles in your ear with its freezing wind.

Deep down, tucked within a crevice of your heart that you are reluctantly—at long last—admitting exists, you wish the winter evening that embraces you as you stride further away from the party was Yoongi instead.

When Yoongi wakes up on Monday, a shadow-like something lurks at the back of his mind. A dark smudge that exudes discomposure, as if it is anticipating a horrible thing to occur. And while he savours his final moments in bed before he must get ready, it gradually creeps into his stomach and stirs the sleep-heavy contents with its inky fists, making Yoongi feel woozy and uncertain.

Foolishly, he passes it off as an after-effect of drinking twice over the weekend and the fact that it is a Monday, which is always the hardest day of training. Now that the KNSU team is in the final, Namjoon is bound to make it ten times as gruelling. Though, in hindsight, Yoongi should have known better to seize the tenebrous warning by its tail, made up a half-assed excuse to his coach, and stayed home. But did he? Absolutely not.

Yoongi knows bad things happen in threes. Monday delivers the first bad thing in the locker rooms, and the second right on his doorstep.

Number one happens after the 8AM training session, though Yoongi feels it bubbling thick and pungent like tar throughout the whole four hours. While the strenuous training grates his resilience like a block of cheese until it is nothing more than a weary nub, his uncertainty grows like a poisonous weed from Kim Yugyeom. They have never been on good terms. But there is something about the way in which the younger player watches him the entire time they are on the ice, like a prowling panther, that puts Yoongi on edge.

Thus, once the training finally comes to its end near midday, Yoongi is grateful. Not only because he can now go home and melt his muscles beneath a hot stream of water, but also since he no longer has to deal with Yugyeom eating him alive through his intense stare.

When he enters the lockers, the first thing he notices is that the men’s speed skating team is already in there, preparing to use the rink. Then, he realises that half of them are gathered around a grinning Yugyeom, cackling amongst themselves and leaning in to get a better look at whatever he holds up on his phone. Walking straight to his locker, taking out his sports bag and placing his skates inside, Yoongi decides to not engage with their little party, especially after the nasty smirks that his teammate was sending him throughout training. But the universe has apparently put a bounty on him, offering a million-dollar reward to whoever can get him to snap the quickest.

“Oi, Min!” Yugyeom vociferates, which causes the surrounding speed skaters to snicker. Yoongi clenches his teeth and ignores them, yanking away his jersey and protective gear, shoving them into the bag. But Yugyeom refuses to let up. “I know you’re listening, Min Yoongi. Now, tell us, how’s her pussy?”

Yoongi freezes for an infinitesimal moment, as if spontaneously paralysed, and then he reaches into the locker, pulling out his hoodie. No, there is no way he would be talking about her. He would not be so dumb to talk shit about her after last time. It must be about that girl from the luge team.

Attempting to appear as unfazed as possible, he pulls the soft material over his head and says, “No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Aw c’mon, I know you do, Min!” Yugyeom jibes in a honey-coated tone. Yoongi does not turn to face him as he packs away the rest of his belongings, though his hyperaware senses can pinpoint the exact movements of Yugyeom’s casual approach. “I can’t believe you two hid it from us for so long. Pretending to hate each other when you were secretly getting it on behind our backs. Look, is this when you had a little lovers’ spat?”

Yoongi knows he should let Yugyeom’s sneering fall on deaf ears and walk away. There is no use in fuelling this fire because it will only serve to burn him down. Yet, despite his internal negation, Yoongi’s perfidious eyes twitch to the side to see the phone screen that Yugyeom holds out towards him. And there, in effulgent LED, Yoongi sees a zoomed photo of a girl—of her—standing in a doorway, taken through one of the kitchen windows at the frat house.

Her expression is twisted into one of desolation; eyebrows bent like longbows; eyes glassy with tears; mouth hanging open in a soulless shape. The sight strikes Yoongi like it did when he saw it in the flesh, slicing right through his chest and hunting for his heart.

The whole locker room is silent.

Yugyeom takes Yoongi’s seething silence as some sort of sick permission to continue. “So, does our Ice Princess like it gentle or rough? I bet it’s like hate-fucking. All wild and kinky and shit. Does she cry like this and call you ‘daddy’ when you stick it in her, too–”

“I would shut the fuck up right now, if I were you,” Yoongi mutters, turning his head enough to murderously glare at a still grinning Yugyeom through his bangs.

“Ooh, what’cha gonna do, big guy?” Yugyeom barks a sharp, nasty laugh and straightens his spine. He towers a head taller than Yoongi, not that it will make any difference if he continues to talk shit. “Are you gonna slap me like you slap her ass while she’s snivelling about how much she loves you on your tiny cock–”

Yoongi has never punched a person, but he would consider his first to not be so bad. The second lands much better against Yugyeom’s cheekbone, and Yoongi cannot tell if it is his own knuckles or his teammate’s bones that crunch. By the third swing, he feels like he is getting the hang of it, and he distantly finds it somewhat amusing that Yugyeom, for all the bullshit he was just spouting, is practically a bag of flour beneath Yoongi’s fist. But before he can manage a fourth, there are short but strong arms curling under his armpits and yanking him back, off of Yugyeom who now slides down the side of the lockers with a crimson-soaked mouth.

Then, the blood rushing through his ears ceases to impair his hearing, and the enraged shouting booms against his ear drums at full volume. “That’s enough!” Namjoon roars, standing between Yoongi and Yugyeom. While Yoongi does not fight the arms that keep him locked down, they do not lessen the strength of their hold. He only realises it is Jimin when the familiar voice of his flatmate mutters into his ear, telling him to settle down.

“You’re both fucking lucky that I can’t afford to bench either of you for the final,” Namjoon barks, staring hard between Yoongi and Yugyeom. Almost everyone flinches at the threat—it only serves to hit home how furious he is over the situation. Then, Namjoon’s eyes settle on Yoongi, and Yoongi truly understands the phrase if looks could kill in this moment. “Go home. Don’t come back tomorrow.”

Jimin, after a brief second of hesitation, drops his arms. Without a word and with his eyes on the ground, Yoongi calmly slings the strap of his sports bag over his shoulder, leaves the change rooms without an utterance of defence, and runs back to the dorm. It is not until he is reaching for the front door’s handle that he notices the vibrant red caked on his swelling fist, and he winces and hisses as his knuckles scream in protest at the way he curls them around the metal. He figures that he can tend to his wounds later, and instead heads straight for the shower, set on scalding his skin of the anger still clogging his pores and the abuse that Yugyeom spewed all over him.

It is late in the afternoon by the time that the second bad thing materialises at the front door in three loud thumps, as if the person is knocking with their closed fist.

His own has now been sanitised and bandaged by Taehyung, who soon after left the dorm in a bright purple tracksuit. Yoongi, as always, did not question it. Jimin has not yet come home, and Yoongi is somewhat glad, considering he needs at least another hour of downtime before he has to exhaust an explanation about why what happened, happened. Though Yoongi wonders if it is, in fact, Jimin at the door. He could have forgotten to take his house-key to training, and Taehyung could have possibly locked the door behind him as he left, which would be a first. It is definitely more common to find the door unlocked than locked—he is genuinely shocked that their flat has not yet been raided by thieves; it would be an easy entry and an even more effortless escape.

So when Yoongi opens the door with an expectation of seeing Jimin, or potentially, a delivery man, the air is knocked out of him when he is faced with her. She wears an expression that is carefully sculpted to be as smooth as a still sea, and he cannot tell for the life of him whether she is here on good or bad terms.

Nonetheless, Yoongi blinks, surprised, and says, “Hey, what’s up–”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Although her features barely shift, her tone strikes like a cobra, sinking its fangs deep. Yoongi’s eyebrows raise underneath his fringe as her venom bleeds into his veins. While he knows deep down what warrants her sudden visit, he is shocked that she would come all the way to his doorstep about it instead of blatantly ignoring him, as usual.

“Is this about the night at the frat?” he says, crossing his arms and flinching when his bruised knuckles tuck into his elbow. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to–”

“Are you really that fucking idiotic, Yoongi?” she snaps, expression cracking with a fracture of scarcely composed rage. Yoongi is suddenly taken aback, and he truly thinks that he must be what she claims he is when she lifts her hand and points at his bandaged fist. “This is about that and the fact that you beat half the shit out of Yugyeom because of me.”

Yoongi’s mouth hangs slack, stunned speechless. He cannot comprehend why she is so outraged over him defending her, and that is all he can think to say. “I– I don’t understand why you’re going off like this when I was literally defending you because that bastard was making those disgusting comments!”

“That’s exactly it, Yoongi. When did I ever ask you to start standing up for me, considering you’ve hated me until the past month?” she bites, eyes flashing like a lightning storm. “Why the hell are you doing this? Why are you acting like we’re suddenly… something when that’s clearly not in your interests?”

“Not in my interests?” Yoongi scoffs, the candlelight of anger within him steadily growing. “You know that I’ve wanted to move on and heal all this time when you’ve been the one stuck in the damn past, not allowing that to happen! I should be the one saying that us being anything is not in your interests because it certainly hasn’t been until recently, too. Don’t be so fucking hypocritical!”

Now, the indignation is painted as clear as blue skies on her face. “Oh piss off, asshole. You’re the one playing cat-and-mouse with me!” she yells, fists clenching at her sides, taking a step closer so she can stare right up into his face and he can see the finer details of her fury. “For the fucking coaches, is that really what this was? You actually wanted to be friends again? And yet you were sucking face with that girl on Saturday night after inviting me to the party?”

Yoongi cannot help the vicious grin that rips at his cheeks over her statement. He knows he is being nasty, but really, she fell into the trap with such grace. “Oh, and since when do friends kiss, doll? Huh?”

If Yoongi had of blinked, he would have missed the way that the anger washed out of her face for a split second, replaced by a look of genuine confoundedness. But he sees that gleaming surprise flicker in all of its momentary agony before the hostility returns with renewed strength.

“That’s– Don’t twist my words! What I’m trying to get through your stupid, marble-sized brain is that one minute you’re kissing other girls and saying that this thing between us is only to keep our coaches happy, and the next, you’re out there acting like you’re my fucking boyfriend! Like… like you think you have some kind of right to put your career on the line over me because of who, fucking Yugyeom of all people? Yugyeom, who we all know talks shit and has always done his very best to get on your last nerve? So don’t you dare turn this around on me when you’ve not only been the one trying to kiss my ass and pretend that I hold some kind of importance to you, but you’ve then been turning around and using that as an excuse to fuck with your future!”

Yoongi knows she has a point, that her words come from a place of honesty within her. But he has years of anger festering around his lungs, finally rupturing and oozing into his every word like a disease. Unstoppable. He latches his teeth onto the only bit of meat that she has left tender enough to shred apart.

“What I do with my future is my decision! Why do you even care if I fuck it up for myself? I thought you would be happy to see me come crashing down after what happened. Eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth, right?”

She visibly bristles—shoulders hunching up to her ears; spine curling. He cannot tell if it is due to his accusations or because he blatantly ignored the tougher parts of what she initially said. The portions that he refused to chew. “I don’t care. I just can’t live peacefully because you’re constantly wriggling your way into my life in one way or another—this is merely a prime example! And now it’s come to a point where you’re sending me mixed signals and fucking around with my feelings like it’s some kind of sick game! What did I ever do to you, other than despise you, to deserve this, Yoongi? Really, what did I fucking do to you?”

“Are you really that thick in the head that you think your feelings for me are returning because I’ve somehow manipulated you into liking me again?!” Yoongi is roaring, but he could not care. He wants the clouds in the sky to hear him and compress his words into a storm, drowning her in the torrential rain. “Does it really kill you so much to admit that hey, perhaps we never fell out of love?!”

Her eyes shine, wet with rage and frustration. “You’re delusional if you think I still give two shits about you!”

“Go on then, say it,” Yoongi snarks, and he feels hot to the touch, like he would release steam if he were to have a bucket of water dumped on him. “Say that you don’t love me anymore. Say that you stopped loving me when it all went to shit five years ago.”

He expects her to deny it straight away. Yet, under the pressure of his ferocious gaze, she simply stares over his shoulder, into the void of the entranceway, and keeps her mouth clamped shut. Her failure to speak is practically a profession of assent in itself, but Yoongi is not so sure, anymore. He exhales, harsh enough to disturb the hairs floating around her distressed expression.

“When are you going to stop blaming other people for every single thing that doesn’t go the way you want it to, ___? When are you going to realise that only you can control your own feelings? When are you going to see that some things just naturally happen, and nobody can be blamed for it?” Yoongi, without remorse, lunges for the jugular and begins to tear, tasting copper and salt and vivid scarlet. “When are you going to stop blaming me for that accident and apologise to me? I’ve said I’m sorry to you about something that was never my fault more times than I ever told you I love you.”

“Fuck you,” she immediately spits, beginning to twist on her heel and flee. The right one—the one that she is convinced he smashed to smithereens with his bare hands.

But not before Yoongi slams the door in her face with enough force to shatter his heart.

Note | If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve decided to split the finale into two parts. This will enable me to get content posted for you guys much faster and it’ll be a weight off of my shoulders!! As you can see by the word count, it was getting pretty darn long sdfghs. Also, the ending was very scrappily edited, so if it’s bad, just know that I’m going to go through it again on Monday.

Anyways, prepare for the finale to be posted sometime over the next few weeks!! In the meantime, I’d love to know all of your thoughts on their relationship and what you think happened in their past!! ♡

#yoongi angst #yoongi fluff #yoongi x reader #bts x reader #yoongi fics #min yoongi #bts fanfics #bts fluff #bangtan sonyeondan #bts scenarios #yoongi scenarios #bts #tdsoti #vankoya

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bangbaptan · 6 years ago

Text

*Mature Themes*

Genre: Angst/Smut/Fluff

Member: Jungkook, mentions of the others

| PT. 1 | PT. 2 | PT. 3 | PT. 4 |

Word Count: 6.5K

A/N: I’m actually a little nervous about posting this...but I really liked the story I came up with for this and really wanted to write it. I had the sudden idea for this scenario during a conversation admin k and I had the other day lol. Please let me know what you think! Enjoy<3

You stared back at your reflection in the mirror with solemn eyes.

The red silky material of the dress hugging your body was beautiful. However, it left very little to the imagination. You felt uncomfortable, but over the past year you had learned to suppress the feeling. As an escort, feelings like that would only hinder and limit your clientele. You could not afford to be picky.

You attempted to pull the dress down, hoping it’d cover more of your thighs but it wouldn’t budge. With a heavy sigh you slipped on a pair of heels before heading down to the entrance of your apartment complex.

Opening the door to the outside, you saw Hoseok leaning against the company’s car holding the door open for you. You gave him a small smile and a ‘thank you’ as you slipped inside.

Hoseok was the first person you became friends with when you started the job. He often drove the majority of escorts to their appointments, so you met with him more often than anyone else. You felt comfortable with his presence as he was always cheerful and kind.

He flashed you a smile before turning around and starting the engine, “You look beautiful as always.”

“Thank you.” Hoseok had meant no harm but, unfortunately, those types of compliments hardly made you happy anymore. They just seemed to make your situation all the more realistic.

“‘New World Hotel’, right?” He asked entering the address into the GPS. You hummed in response. After a bit of idle conversation, the car falls into a comfortable silence as you stare out the window watching the scenery pass by, lost in thought.

A year ago, your father had walked out on both you and your mother. Just the shock of that took a big toll on your mother. However, what really pushed her over the edge was a week later when the debt collectors knocked on your door. The reason for your father’s absence became crystal clear. He had chosen to abandon his family in exchange for his safety.

It was something your mother could not come to terms with, it was no wonder she soon fell sick. Eventually, you had to start school and she had to be admitted into a hospital. With the cost of school, living expenses, hospital bills, and paying off your father’s debt, you could not think of another solution at the time. Thus, your life as an escort began.

“We’re here.” Hoseok said, pulling you out of your thoughts. The drive seemed to have gone by a lot quicker than you would have liked. As you got out the car you turned towards Hoseok to thank him before grudgingly making your way inside the hotel.

Stepping inside, you grew a little self-conscious. Although it was probably just your imagination, you couldn’t help but feel as if people were staring at you knowing why you were here. Certainly judging of course. You couldn’t blame them.

You knock a bit timidly when you get to the assigned suite. As the door opens, a familiar face greets you but it brings you zero comfort or relief. The man standing before you was a regular of yours.

“Good evening, Moon-sik.” You greet him, mustering as much of a genuine smile as you could.

“Darling,” he purred, “how is it possible for you to grow more beautiful each time?”

You felt bad for him at times. Moon-sik was a businessman in his late 40s and due to hereditary genetics, he had started balding at an early age so he often wore a wig. You would often meet him in his workday suits stained with the sweat of the day. He had a wife and children, and often talked to you about them which made you all the more uneasy. You felt guilty towards his family. If only they knew what the true definition was of his so called 'overtime’.

His compliment makes you want to cringe but instead you let out a bubbly laugh, “you’re too kind, you flatter me too much!”

“Come inside,” he beckoned, opening the door wide enough for you to walk through, yet narrow enough that you have to graze him as you do.

Placing a hand on the small of your back, he led you to a small table with wine in one of the corners of the large suite.

“How about you have a drink with me?” He offered.

You shook your head with a smile, “You already know I don't drink Moon-sik, but thank you.”

It was a lie. However, you liked to stay sober during these appointments so you had gotten into the habit of telling your clients that. Albeit some men may have looked too meek to try anything, you could never be too cautious. Wolves often like to hide in sheep clothing after all.

Although you did allow sexual services to some extent, as it usually came with a higher pay, you also had a strict rule of going all the way. Sex was something that was very important to you. So no matter how much you needed the money from this job, there was only so much you were willing to sacrifice.

After finishing updating you on his life and two glasses of wine, you noticed the familiar thin glaze over Moon-sik’s eyes begin to take form. You mentally prepared yourself for what you knew would come next.

Cheeks flushed, he slurred, “How about sucking me off, princess?”

You wanted to puke a little in your mouth but you agreed nonetheless.

Trying your hardest to disassociate yourself from the situation, you pulled your hair back with a coy smile and got on your knees.

The second you got home, you barely just managed to take off your heels before rushing towards the washroom. You brushed at your teeth and tongue violently, trying to get rid of every last bit of his release. Tears were brimming at the corner of your eyes but you didn’t allow them to fall until you were under the shower-head. You might’ve just used your mouth, but your entire body felt dirty. You scrubbed hard against your skin until it turned a rosy tint. After drying your hair, you turned off the lights and slumped against the mattress of your bed. You felt better.

You’re not sure how much time must have passed as you stared mindlessly at the ceiling. You needed to stay strong for your mother. Surely, knowing what you were doing for money would only worsen her condition, but it was necessary. Perhaps, if it was just the hospital bill, a regular job would have sufficed but there were too many costs to account for.

Not all of the men were bad, you told yourself, trying to make light of the situation. Your clients didn’t all request sexual services, some truly did just buy your time for your company. The only time meetings with those clients didn’t sit well with you was when you heard the words, “I wish I could stay but my wife is waiting for me at home.” It wasn’t something out of the ordinary to hear but it always tugged at your conscious. Their wives should’ve been the ones to provide them with comfort and company, not you. You’re not sure when you managed to fall asleep but you did.

The next morning, you awoke to the sound of your buzzing phone. You squinted at the sunlight pouring through the blinds hitting your eyes. Disoriented from having just woken up, you felt around your bed for your phone. Looking at the screen, you frowned a bit upon seeing who was calling.

“Hey, what’s up?” You asked as you swiped to answer.

“There’s a new client asking for you.” You heard the voice of your boss say.

You tilted your head to the side a little surprised, “New?”

Lately, you had only been receiving calls from regulars. You couldn’t help but be a little interested at the thought of meeting someone new. Maybe you’d get lucky with this one. Maybe he wasn’t old; Maybe he didn’t have a wife; Maybe he did truly only want your company. You laughed at yourself internally, how ridiculous.

“It’s his first time,” Namjoon, or RM as he liked to go by, expanded.

Your eyebrows raised at that, “That’s a little nerve wracking. I’ve never been a client’s first.”

“I think you’ll be fine. You’ve been doing this for a year now, you have more than enough experience,” he tries to reassure you, “but you know I’d never force you to meet with anyone you didn’t want to. Your safety and wellbeing is always my top priority.”

It was true. Namjoon cared about all his escorts; he was one of the few agents that put his escorts above the clients. He was kind, and because of that all of them had a strong sense of loyalty to him. You had nothing against him personally, you just couldn’t help but feel your stomach drop whenever he texted or called since it was always about business.

You bit your lip with a slight nod, “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Great! Keep your evening free, I’ll text you more details later.”

Just as you hung up, your phone lit up with another call. It was your friend this time.

“Y/N!” You heard your friend, Jiwoo, exclaim over the phone after picking up.

A smile tugged at your lips, she seemed to be in a good mood. “Hey, Jiwoo! Ho-?”

“Why didn’t you answer any of my texts last night?” She cut you off and playfully whined and you laughed a bit. If only she knew.

“Ah, sorry! I was really busy catching up on assignments,” You apologized. Lying and finding fake excuses had become a second nature, “Why? Did something happen?”

“No, no it was nothing important! Haeun and I just wanted to know if you wanted to join us on a group date.”

You raised your eyebrows, “Oh? When is it?” You weren’t particularly interested in dating but meeting with guys that were actually your age for once would be refreshing.

“Tonight!” She said and you felt your face drop.

“Oh no, I actually can’t tonight. I planned on visiting my mom in the hospital,” you explained, hoping she could hear the evident disappointment in your voice. You were always flaking, you felt bad.

She didn’t seem to mind though, “That’s okay. You can just come with us another time! Your mom is important, I hope she’s doing well!”

After hanging up, you made yourself look decent and head to the hospital your mom was being looked after at. You hadn’t lied to your friend, you really were going to see your mom today.

Upon arriving to her room, like always, a wave of emotion hit you. You suddenly felt like crying seeing your mom’s pale frail figure lying on the bed unconscious. She had been in a coma for about a year now. The doctors had said it was a result due to large amounts of stress and that it wouldn’t last long but they were wrong. They kept telling you she’d wake up soon but you weren’t so sure she would. Perhaps it was better that way. At least she could finally rest. After your father left, she could barely get any sleep. Pulling a chair up beside her, you held her hand gently.

An hour must’ve passed when your phone chimed. Pulling your hand from your mother’s, you pulled your phone out from your purse. You unlocked it after you saw Namjoon’s name in the notifications.

Namjoon: He says he wants to meet you at 8 tonight if you’re available.

You: Yeah, that works. How long was he looking for me to stay?

Namjoon: He specifically told me to ask you if 3 hours was okay?

You: Yeah sounds good.

That was funny. Customers rarely took what you wanted into account.

Namjoon: I’ll send Hoseok to pick you up at 7:00. Remember to call me if anything happens.

You: I will, thank you! Oh! Does he have a preference for clothing...or?

Namjoon: He didn’t say so just go with your gut.

It was already 6:10 by the time you got home. Walking towards your closet, you opened it up to reveal a notable amount of lavish clothing items you had acquired over the year as part of the job. You eyed each dress carefully; Namjoon had given you little information on your new client. You pulled out one of your favourite black dresses finally having decided, that it would be better to play it safe. You were in the process of making a last curl when you heard your phone ring. You didn’t have to look to know that it was Hoseok. Quickly grabbing a pair of heels and your purse, you began making your way downstairs.

“How’s your day been? How many appointments are scheduled for tonight?” You asked Hoseok as you pulled out a compact mirror to make sure your makeup was in check.

“Four as of now, but you know things could always change,” he answered. “So a new client? Are you nervous?”

You nodded your head, “Kind of. It doesn’t help that Namjoon told me nothing about him other than the fact that he was new to our services.”

“I heard he’s a CEO,” you hear him say. You raise a brow in question wondering what else he knew, even though he couldn’t see with his eyes on the road.

However, he must have sensed it as he shrugs his shoulders, “I happened to overhear their conversation. I couldn’t really gauge the man’s age but I don’t think he’s too old. Anyways, enough about that. How’s your mom?”

“A little better, I think.”

“That’s good! Have they said anything else regarding her recovery?”

“Not really. They just told me that everyone’s recovery time is different.”

He turns his head and gives you a sympathetic smile, “From what you’ve told me, she sounds like a strong person. Don’t worry, too much.”

You could tell you were getting close when Hoseok began to pay closer attention to the GPS. Sitting in silence, he drove up a long driveway, passing a string of trees on both sides. As you reached the top you couldn’t help it as your eyes widened. You had seen your fair share of luxurious houses but this beautiful Spanish hacienda style estate had to have been one of your new favourites.

“Wow,” you heard Hoseok say and you just silently nodded your head in agreement.

“What company is he the CEO of that he can afford such an extravagant home?” You wonder out loud.

“I’m not sure. Now get moving, we’re a bit late. Remember to give me a call if you need me to pick you up. Also, don’t be nervous. You have a wonderful personality, I’m sure you’ll charm him in no time.”

You flashed him a quick smile in gratitude before you got out of the car and began making your way up a path of stones. As you came face-to-face with the door, you paused to take a deep breath before you rung the bell.

As the door is drawn back, you are met with a surprisingly young face, “Ms.______?” The young man with shaggy brown hair, asked.

You nodded and he beckoned you to follow him, “The young master is in his study right now taking care of some paperwork, but he’ll be right with you. Is there anything I could get you to drink in the meantime?”

“Just water would be nice. Thank you,” you tell him as you took a look around what seemed to be a living room, still in awe by all the luxury.

When the young man returned with your glass, you couldn’t help but ask, “Are you a butler?”

“Yes.”

“But you look so young! How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?”

“22.” The age surprised you, he was only 3 years older than you.

You noticed that he is quite curt with his words but you didn’t mind, “What’s your name?”

“I’m not sure if it’s appropriate for me to respond to that.”

You were about to reassure him you heard a silky laugh from behind you, “Go ahead Taehyung. I’ve told you countless times before, there’s no need to be so formal.”

Your head involuntary whipped around, curious to finally see your new client for the first time. It was nearly impossible for you to not show the shock in your features. There was no way. The man standing before you couldn’t be the client. He looked just as young as Taehyung, you had never been hired by someone as young as him.

“But sir-”

The young man raised a finger, “I’ve spent more time with you than I have with my own family, please call me Jungkook already.”

With that said, your client finally turned to look at you and gave you an award winning smile, “I’m so sorry for the late introduction, I’m Jeon Jungkook.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” you said a little meekly, taken aback by the man. He looked incredibly handsome leaning against the archway with his mussed hair, tailored fitted suit and loosened tie.

“Is that all you’re having to drink?” He pointed his chin towards the glass in your hand.

“I don’t drink any alcohol actually,” you told your usual lie.

His eyes widened just a fraction, a little surprised before he nods, “That’s admirable. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same. Taehyung, do you mind bringing me a glass of my 2005 Château Pétrus?”

“Right away si-,” Jungkook gave him a pointed look and Taehyung quickly corrected himself, “Jungkook.”

After his departure, you watched as Jungkook took a seat on the couch across from you. “So,” he drew the word out as he crossed his legs, “what’s a young, attractive woman with so much potential like yourself doing this type of job for?”

Your eyes narrowed a little, “What’s a young, rich, successful, handsome man like yourself doing paying someone for their company? I imagine there’d be a line up of well respectable ladies waiting to have a chance with you.”

“You’re not wrong.” You nearly scoffed at his lack of modesty. “All they ever really want is my money.” He continued, “that and whatever power might come from being with me.”

“Couldn’t the same be said for us escorts?” You countered.

A small smile played on his lips, “At least you’re honest about it. I’d much rather have someone be honest about using me for money than someone deceitful who feels the need to lie to attain what she wants.”

It was at that moment that Taehyung returned with the glass of wine and placed it on a coaster beside Jungkook. His job now done, “Please call me if there’s anything else you need.” He said before bowing and leaving.

Checking the density, Jungkook swished the wine around before he taking a sip. Once he returned his attention to you, “I’ve answered your question. Now, it’s only fair that you answer mine.”

You hesitated as you contemplated just how much you wanted to tell him. “I need the money for personal reasons,” you shrugged your shoulders not caring to expand and you could tell he’s still curious but let the subject drop.

He nodded, “can I propose something?”

You were a bit nervous about what it’d be but you agreed anyways.

He took another sip of his wine and your eyes were naturally drawn to his bobbing Adam’s apple as he swallowed. Eyes catching yours, you quickly averted your gaze a little embarrassed about being caught. You didn’t want to openly gawk, it’d only feed his ego, but it was kind of hard not to. You could not deny the fact that he was incredibly handsome.

“How about we play a game of 20 questions? I think it’d be nice if we could get to know each other a bit more, as I intend on buying your time again. That is, if you’re willing to see me again?”

A small hue of rosy pink tinged your cheeks. You hated to admit it, but you were flattered. Hearing someone of his caliber indirectly tell you that they enjoyed your company made you feel bashful.

“I am.”

You see his lips curve into a small smirk and you couldn’t help but want to slap the look off his face. He had asked knowing what your answer would be. He was a lot cockier than you initially thought.

“How about two questions per meeting?” You negotiated not wanting to give him the satisfaction of completely playing along. It was then that you decided that you’d reveal as little about yourself as you could. You didn’t want to get more involved with this man than you needed to.

“Sounds fair. I’ll go first. Do you have a boyfriend?”

The question threw you off guard. You didn’t know why, but for some reason you had not expected him to ask you that. At least, not ask you that as his first question. He was staring at you intently waiting for you to respond.

You shook your head, “No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“That’s two questions. Are you sure you really want to know the answer to that?” You decided to tease him a little.

“Yes, you’ve only increased my curiosity now.”

“I don’t,” you answered truthfully. You could tell he was a little disappointed by the anticlimax but he nodded towards you, signalling your turn.

You tilted your head to the side a bit as you wondered what to ask, “can I ask anything?”

“That counts as a question.”

“W-what! How is that even fair?”

“There’s the second one,” he smiled slyly at you.

You sat there at loss for words. Was he serious?

“Yes, I’m serious.” He said as if having read your mind, “and as for the answers, yes you can and what you did to mine wasn’t fair so I guess we can say we’re even now.” There was a playful glint in his eyes and a shadow of a laugh on his lips, you couldn't help it as a smile teased your lips. He looked like a little kid.

Just like that, time seemed to fly by. You didn’t even notice when you hit the 3 hour mark. If it had not been for the small buzz from your phone, you would have completely let it slip by. You had genuinely enjoyed being in his company. That was something you could not say about the majority of clients. If not for the envelope full of money on the side table, you could have easily passed the evening off as two friends hanging out. That was far from realistic though. He wasn’t someone you could meet if you weren’t an escort. The thought saddened you a bit but you quickly push it away.

“I nearly didn’t notice the time.” He said, drawing you back from your thoughts, “three hours seemed to pass a lot faster than I thought they would.”

You nodded in agreement before standing from your chair and bending down to grab your purse. As you rise you catch him looking at you and without thinking you fixed your dress. You give him an awkward smile and reach a hand out for a handshake, “it was a pleasure.”

“Likewise,” he said taking your hand but his hold lingers, “a handshake seems far too formal don’t you think?”

Your eyebrows raised at that, “then how do you suppose I say good-bye?”

The playful glint returned, “how about with a hug? That is, if you don’t mind.”

You drew your hand back, thinking about what you should do. A hug wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t as if he was asking you to go to bed with him, so why did it make you so nervous? You shouldn’t, you silently scolded yourself. It’d be bad if you were to become emotionally attached to him.

You shook your head with an apologetic smile, “maybe next time.”

You couldn’t tell if he’s disappointed or not but you tried not to think about it. After handing you the envelope he bids you goodbye and heads upstairs. You were watching his retiring back when Taehyung came to escort you outside.

“Is your ride here, miss?” He asked and you shook your head.

“Not yet.” You told him, taking a look at your phone again.

Hoseok: I’m running a little late! I’ll be there in 5. Sorry!

“Shall I wait with you then?” The butler offered.

“If it’s not too much trouble. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Did you have a pleasant evening with the youn-I mean Jungkook?” He asked and you couldn’t help but laugh a little when he corrected himself.

“Is it really that hard to call him by his name? You take your job really seriously, I admire that.”

He nodded, “We’re trained to treat our employer with the utmost respect at all times...but that’s not why I try to do my best at this job. I genuinely enjoy serving Jungkook. He has done a lot for me in that past so I’m glad I can repay his kindness if only by this much.”

It was natural to assume that they had spent a lot of years together. You kind of envied him, Jungkook genuinely interested you and as much as you tried to deny it, you wanted to know more about him.

“I think Jungkook had a good time,” he commented.

“Oh?”

He shared a small smile, “he doesn’t often have company. He has a tendency to isolate himself with his work, I don’t think he even realizes that he does it. I’m very thankful you brightened his mood. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen him genuinely have a good time.”

Curiosity stirred at his words but before you could inquire more, you noticed a stream of headlights making their way up the driveway.

“That must be your ride.” He observed, “then, I bid you goodnight.” With that he gave you a small bow and returned inside.

That night, you were restless. You tossed and turned in your sheets as you kept replaying the events of the night in your head.

As the days passed, your meetings with Jungkook became more and more frequent. The remaining questions were quickly used up on shallow topics like hobbies and interests, never going into anything personal. You each had subconsciously placed boundaries. At first, it started with only two to three days a week but that soon turned into all five days. As the weeks went by, they turned into months, until one day it seemed as if he was your only client.

“Jungkook, you’re ridiculous! How could you buy every single one of my days?” You asked a bit incredulous, “don’t you get tired of having me around?”

He chuckled as his eyes catched yours, “never.”

You felt your heart flutter and you looked away, “a lot of my regulars have been complaining about my lack of availability.”

“They should just get a new escort,” he shrugged not in the least bit apologetic.

You may have been an escort but you never truly felt like you were on the job when you were with Jungkook. Over the past year you had become just a shadow of who you used to be. However, ever since meeting Jungkook, you often found that it was one of the few times you truly felt like your old self again.

“You know,” he started, “it’s been awhile since we last played our question game.“

You nodded, “we each only have 2 questions left if I remember correctly.”

“Do you want to go first or should I?” He asked, a mischievous smile tugging at his lips. He had the same playful glint you had seen during your first meeting with him. You sensed a hidden motive but played along anyways.

“You can go first.” You offered, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Why don’t you go all the way with your clients?”

You nearly dropped the glass you were about to take a sip from, ““w-what?”

It seemed he had a talent for surprising you. Not once after the first meeting had anything even remotely close to your sexual services been mentioned. Why now? You couldn’t help but wonder.

He let out a laugh, “what a strong reaction. I am actually curious though,” his laugh turned into a challenging smile, “but if you’re not comfortable you don’t have to answer.””

“No, it’s okay.” You said trying to recover from your initial surprise. You had no qualms about telling him,“Sex is something that is very important to me. For me, the feeling of becoming one with someone is a deep emotional connection that I only really want to share with someone I love or at least have feelings for.” As you finished explaining, you searched his face for any type of reaction but he was hard to read.

“It has nothing to do with how attractive the man is?”

You tilted your head to the side, “what do you mean?”

Staring intently at you he expanded, “I’m just wondering if you’d be more willing if the man was attractive.”

You hesitated, not wanting to sound superficial, “wouldn’t anyone though? I mean, a lot of my clients are a lot older than I am and are not particularly what I’d consider handsome. So, I guess if I was going to break my rule, I’d prefer it to be with someone I found attractive.”

“What about me then, do you find me attractive?” He asked with a cocky grin. You were sure that there wan not one person that would find him unattractive. You knew he knew that too, he just wanted you to admit it yourself.

You were quick to recover,“that’s three questions Jungkook.”

“Come on, humour me. Would you have sex with me?”

For the second time that day, you were caught off guard. Of course you would. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? But that was the last thing you were going to tell him, “that’s four Jungkook. It’s my turn.”

He sighed but nodded anyways, “fine. Go ahead.”

You decided to direct his questions back at him, “do you find me attractive?”

There was no visible change of emotion on his face, but you noticed the slight tightening of his hold on his wine glass.

“I wouldn’t have hired you if I didn’t,” was his answer and you weren’t exactly sure how you felt about that.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” You asked boldly and this time you saw his eyes visibly widen.

“Yes,” he answered with no hesitation, his pupils dilated.

You were at loss for words not having expected him to answer so honestly. An awkward silence settled among the two of you.

You were mentally screaming at yourself to say something when he suddenly cleared his throat, “well I guess it’s about time you head home.”

You glanced at the clock. He was right. Your time slot was over but you were reluctant to leave. You were confused. You didn’t know what you wanted. As much as you had tried to hide it, you had come to harbour feelings for him. You wanted him to take you to bed but you knew that if that were to happen you’d become dangerously attached. He didn’t feel anything for you though, it would only end badly. You wanted him but you also didn’t want to have your feelings trampled on. They were better kept hidden.

As you grabbed your purse and moved to leave, he caught your hand placing the familiar envelope in it.

“Your payment,” he said and you frowned a bit. All he saw you was as an escort after all. You had allowed a small glimmer of hope but you had already known. So, why did it hurt so much?

Like always, Taehyung came to walk you out. You could feel Jungkook’s eyes on your back but before you could even make it to the door he spoke again, “actually Taehyung you can retire early. There’s still something I need to discuss with Y/N.”

Taehyung glanced between the two of you, sensing the atmosphere and quickly bowed leaving the two of you alone again.

You knew that he wanted to continue the conversation, but you decided to feign ignorance, “what is it?”

“Do you have another client tonight?” He asked.

You shook your head, “no. Like I told you, you’ve been my only client for awhile now.”

One of the corner of his lips lifted at that, “do you have somewhere you need to be tonight?”

Once again, you shook your head, “no.”

After uttering the word ‘no’, he began to stalk towards you making you draw back. Eventually your back hit the nearest wall, you were left with no more room to escape him.

“Jungkook, what’s this about?” You asked a little nervously.

His eyes were similar to that of a predator, “you know very well what this is about. You’ve been teasing me since the first day we met.”

Your eyes widened, “w-what?!” You’d been teasing him? Since when?

“Don’t act innocent. That little short tight dress you wore the first time we met barely covered your ass. You looked so good. I’ve been wanting to fuck you since that day.”

His confession shocked you, “J-jungkook you know I don’t have sex with my clients. I’ve told you this before.”

He places a hand on each side of your head, caging you in between him and the wall, ”You have. So as long as we don't go all the way it's fine, right?”

He was so close now that your breaths mingled together. You could feel your cheeks flush at the proximity. Your eyes wandered admiring the curve of his jaw, the shape of his eyes. Everything about him made you lose your breath. He really was handsome.

He boldly ran the back of one of his fingers down your cheek, lowering it down to your throat, until that hand came to rest on your waist. Everywhere he touched, you felt as if your skin had been set aflame.

He leaned in closer, his breath now fanning your ear, “I know you want this, just as much as I do Y/N.”

You began to feel heat pooling between your legs. He was right. He was so right. Without realizing you had begun rubbing your thighs together to get some sort of relief. Just him expressing that he wanted you was enough to get you all hot and bothered.

The action didn't go unnoticed by Jungkook. A smirk graced his face and you wanted nothing at that moment than to wipe it off his face but before you could do anything he slid a leg in between yours, pinning both your arms above your head. Only a thin layer of clothes separated your core from his thigh and you were having a hard time resisting.

You were powerless when it came to Jungkook. You really were. You knew that you’d regret this later but you had felt your resolve beginning to weaken from the second he had stopped you from leaving. You knew you were far too gone to protest any longer and when he flexed his thigh rubbing against your scantily clad core you couldn’t help it as a moan passed your lips.

You see the smirk from earlier re-emerge before he leans down, finally closing the distance between your lips.

The kiss was fierce, full of want and lust and you easily found yourself lost in it. You struggled wanting to circle your hands around his neck but his hold on your arms wouldn't budge. Slipping his tongue into your mouth, he deepened the kiss but he suddenly pulled away leaving you breathless.

You raised your eyes to him in a silent question and you could tell he was just as much out of breath as you were, “can I take that as a yes?”

“Let go of my arms,” is your only response and once he does they're already circling around his neck drawing him close for another kiss. He took that as your answer and in no time your legs were around his waist, his hands under your thighs, your back against the wall.

The kiss turned fervent and your want for him only grew. Eventually disconnecting your lips, he began to pepper kisses down your jaw, eventually making his way down your neck. Finding a particularly sensitive spot, you let out a breathy moan and he takes a nip making you squirm against his hold.

“Take off your shirt for me,” he ordered and in no time, the material hit the floor, your bra soon following. Your rosy buds hardened, the cool chill of the house felt nice against your heated skin.

“Fuck,” you heard Jungkook mutter as he draws back to admire your generous chest. He then moved down to kiss a line from your throat to your breasts, pausing to lick a stripe through the valley of your breasts. As he took one of your nipples into his mouth sucking, tugging slightly at the bud, you felt your hands move on their own and tangle themselves in his hair

He had just moved his attention to your other one when your patience began to wore thin, “Jungkook I need more.”

“Tell me exactly what you want, use your words baby.” He said, eyes pools of black, full of unadulterated lust. Your cheeks burned but you knew he wasn't going to budge until you complied.

“I want you to fuck me with your mouth, your fingers, fuck,” you find yourself saying, head thrown back against the wall as he rolls his hips against yours.

His devilish smirk did little to calm the fire burning in your stomach, “I didn’t know you had such a dirty mouth on you.”

Letting your thighs drop, he flipped you against the wall but just as he’s about to push your skirt down, you both hear buzzing. Your attention is drawn at its insistence and you turn back around. It was as if someone had splashed cold water on you. Awakened from the daze, you saw Hoseok’s name light up the screen of your phone. You had completely forgotten that he had been waiting outside for you.

“Just Ignore it,” Jungkook said in a slight growl and it took everything in you to deny him.

Shaking your head, “sorry I have to go.” You quickly pulled back on your bra and shirt and nearly tripped in your rush to get outside. You hadn’t even glanced at Jungkook once, scared of what expression his face might of held.

The second you were inside the car you apologized to Hoseok but he just gave a questioning glance at your disheveled appearance.

“Nothing happened,” is all you say and you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more, him or yourself.

#jungkook #bts #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #bts scenarios #bts smut #bts angst #jungkook smut #hoseok #taehyung #rm #namjoon #kpop smut #kpop scenario #beyond the scene #admin coffee

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spiritgriffon · 8 years ago

Text

Smile- a Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic

Author: Rachael D.J AKA Leopaaahh..! I didn’t change my username back!

Ok, I didn’t forget, I got attached. I just want to stay this way for a few more days!

Let’s try this again;

Author: Rachael D.J AKA Deep Eyes White Dragon AKA the dragon formerly known as LeopardGal6

Pairing: Kaiba Seto/Atem, Prideshipping

Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy, Romance

Chapters: Oneshot

Warnings: End-of-Manga & DSoD spoilers! Vaguely implied rape, vaguely implied pedophilia, blatantly stated child abuse, mental illness & character death.

Words: 7,316

Summary: Daimon has been a butler for the Kaiba household for many years- he remembers laughter and tears, redemption and despair. But above all, he remembers Seto.

Rating: M

Read it on FFN and Ao3

Notes: Last year, I wrote a story called Blue Blossoms. It was the first time I'd ever written a story in preset tense. I swore it would be my last. I lied. This story features Daimon and scenes from season zero, backstory from season three, and events that only happen in the manga and Dark Side of Dimensions. Canon? What canon? Also, before anyone asks- no, I haven't abandoned The Isolation Game, I just really loved DSoD and wanted to write something that tied into it. ...And yes, I know that Kazuki Takahashi posted something on his Instagram that expands on the end of DSoD a bit- he also says that this is only one possible ending. Keep that last part in mind here.

(A few notes on names; Miyazato is a Japanese surname meaning Shrine Village. Ishida is a Japanese surname meaning Stone (Rice) Field. Aika is a Japanese female given name meaning Love Song.)

Daimon remembers the first time he met Kaiba Seto.

That isn’t even his proper name yet- legally, he is still Miyazato Seto, and this won’t change until the paperwork for him and his brother goes through over a week from this day. But the driver introduces the children to Daimon as Kaiba Seto and Kaiba Mokuba, and for an instant the boys exchange a shy glance, before Seto says a polite ‘Nice to meet you’ and gives Daimon a small, shy, honest smile.

Daimon remembers the first time he sees Seto talking to himself- he’d completed his schoolwork for the day and was strolling through the gardens. Daimon remembers his laugh- loud and uncontrolled and so full of joy. Daimon remembers asking him what was so funny, and he replies “My friend!” and for an instant Daimon is worried that someone has broken in, but Seto clarifies that he is the only one that can hear her, and Daimon relaxes. Seto is such a curious and bright child- an imaginary friend is hardly surprising.

Daimon doesn't remember his first heart attack. He does remember waking up in his bedroom with young Seto at his side, and the way the room smelled of fresh oranges- he remembers Seto handing him one, and the way his hands were coated in sticky juice- Daimon’s hands were too weak to hold it on their own. He remembers waking up the next morning to the sound of Seto’s laughter- out his window, he can see Seto playing in the freshly fallen snow, tripping over a black trench coat at least three sizes too big as he runs after his brother.

Daimon remembers the pictures- scribbled hastily on his schoolwork or over an hour on a proper piece of drawing paper. Despite Seto’s ten-year-old talent, Daimon remembers the boy’s eyes- fierce and kind at the same time, lavender or purple with flecks of crimson and blue pointedly added in. Daimon keeps the pictures in his room, kept neatly in a sealed box. Every last one of them.

Daimon remembers asking Seto about the boy. Seto calls him his friend- someone who has been gone for a very long time and he misses terribly. Daimon assumes that this was a boy he knew in his old home, but Seto insists they’ve never met. Daimon asks Seto how he can miss someone he’s never met- to which he gets a serious look on his face and says flatly “Because that’s the way it is.”

Daimon doesn’t remember when the pictures stop.

Daimon resumes his role as teacher two months after his heart attack. Seto is as bright as ever, but he no longer looks up at the corners of the room, smiling at jokes unheard. Instead he cringes, face buried in his collar. After a week of silence, Daimon asks if anything is wrong. It’s his friend. “She’s not real. I know she’s not real, but she won’t stop telling me she is.”

Daimon learns that while he was away, Seto had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Daimon knows that keeping Seto on his medication and aware of reality is for the best. He also knows that Seto is miserable.

Daimon remembers Seto’s eleventh birthday- he is too ill to see him in person, so instead he writes a card. Daimon writes it in English- he remembers how happy Seto was to learn how to write his name in a new way. Daimon had promised to teach him how to write in cursive as soon as he was able to read his textbook cover to cover. Daimon remembers using a blue ink pen. Daimon remembers how Seto loves the color blue.

It is nearly a full year later when Daimon returns to the Kaiba mansion- Mokuba appears overjoyed to see him again. Seto says everything he should say- but there is no feeling behind it. Gozaburo invites Daimon to dinner with the family and spends most of it bragging about how fast Seto is learning- he’d taken over Seto’s education personally, after all. Daimon remembers the bandages just barely peeking out from Seto’s collar and sleeve- not at all suspicious on their own, but he remembers Seto’s face when he notices they’re showing. The way he yanks his sleeve down and holds his breath after, as if he’d seen a ghost and not a piece of latex sparks a seed of worry, and he makes a note to get Seto alone after dinner.

Seto can barely stay awake through the end of the meal. Daimon knows by the dark circles under his young eyes that the boy needs his sleep and vows to ask him about the bandages in the morning. Daimon has an episode that night and has to return to the hospital.

Daimon is still ill on Seto’s thirteenth birthday, but he insists that he will go see Seto come Hell or high water. His old room has been gutted- most of his personal belongings are now in the Kaiba Medical Center where Daimon now lives, but the box of Seto’s pictures is nowhere to be seen.

Gozaburo is out of town on important business and Mokuba has the flu, so Daimon has Seto to himself for the day. Daimon spends the day teaching Seto cursive, just as he’d promised so long ago. Daimon can feel the tension in the air when he arrives, but by the time night falls the air has cleared and Seto is even laughing a bit- until it happens.

Daimon had had a box of stationary under his bed, and when Seto leaves to get a drink of water, Daimon finds the box still there, but with a very different prize inside.

Cards. Duel Monsters cards, none of them of any particular value, save the “Blue Eyes White Dragon,” hand drawn by a young child with care.

Seto walks in on this and freezes. Daimon asks “Seto-sama, are these yours?” to which he hurriedly sets down his water so roughly it nearly falls and snatches the cards away.

Seto blurts out at least three excuses at once, a maid must have hidden them here, he was so very sorry someone had disturbed Daimon’s box and he’d been meaning to throw them out for weeks, really he’d just been too busy-

Seto is manic, and Daimon’s voice can’t reach him through the cloud of panic, but Seto reacts to the hand on his arm as if he’s been slapped in the face.

“Seto-sama, what’s wrong?”

Seto’s eyes are red and watery in the harsh fluorescent light. “Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I’ll just throw them out, it’ll be okay.”

Daimon frowns. “Why would you do that?”

Seto’s eyes drift down to his hands. “Because… Duel Monsters in a childish game. Mokuba and I aren't allowed to play childish games.”

“Seto,” Daimon says as he reaches out a wrinkled hand, but as it enters Seto’s line of sight he flinches, so he drops his hand back to the bed and says “look at me.” Seto obliges, the mania cleared from his face and instead a resigned submission. “I don’t think Duel Monsters is a childish game.”

His posture is still defensive, but there’s something glimmering behind his eyes, not quite hope, too scared to be hope, but something close. “You don’t?”

“No, Seto-sama. I beat the world champion of Duel Monsters once, you know.”

It’s a subtle change, the way Seto’s shoulders lower, the way his head raises, But Daimon remembers it clearly. “You did?”

“Yes. It was a private match, not in a tournament, but I beat him best out of three.”

Daimon can see how Seto’s expression changes, the way his lips barely part and the slow unintentional whistle as he exhales. Daimon feels the unconscious tug at his lips. “Do you want me to teach you how to play?”

Seto’s expression changes, his brows furrow, causing deep lines in his young skin. “I already know how to play,” he pouts. “Mokuba and I used to play it all the time.” His face is almost comically sour, but it’s the most honest expression he’s worn all day.

“Then we can jump right into a round,” Daimon says with no room for objection.

The two play late into the night, until Seto finally falls asleep in his chair. Diamon could see them- the bandages on his neck and arms, and he thinks he may see one under the hem of his shirt as well when he falls asleep and it rides up a bit, but Daimon can see how fragile Seto’s happiness is, and despite his every instinct telling him to find out what happened, Daimon’s selfish heart can’t find enough strength to break Seto’s smile.

By the next month, Daimon is suffering cascade organ failure. Simply spending a day outside the KMC is too much for his body to handle. He sleeps most of the time, but he awakes every so often to find young Seto has come to visit- at first almost every other day, then once a week, then in a bare few months he only comes to visit once, and the next time he is awoken it’s by a lawyer. Kaiba Gozaburo is dead. Kaiba Seto is the new president. Kaiba Seto is now fifteen years old.

Seto had turned sixteen by the next time they met- his hair was bleached, and Daimon guesses he’d done it himself- there is a distinctly green tone to it. There is no shyness or fear in his eyes- he no longer puts up a defense, this smile is a threat. Seto says “I have a job for you, Daimon,” and though he replies of course, anything for you, Seto-sama, part of Daimon’s heart simply can’t comprehend this dangerous stranger as the bright boy he had grown to love as a son.

Daimon has spent the last year in a sealed chamber- his lungs and heart have been replaced by artificial organs, but even so, he can only survive for three hours outside of intensive care. This would normally not be a problem, but the driver nearly running over a high school student was not in the plans.

Two and a half hours after leaving the KMC, Daimon knows that this is the end. He’s known that he’d outlived his time in this world already- he is not afraid. Daimon has but two regrets- leaving Seto now, though he knows in his heart that it is far too late for him to save that kind boy, and the second…

Well, there is something awfully familiar with that high school student. Mutou Yuugi, sixteen years old, a few months older than Seto, though one would never guess it by looking at the two. Puberty was hitting the poor boy late- his voice broke every few sentences and Daimon guessed that even Mokuba was taller than him.

He was kind and gentle, and Daimon noticed the way he bit his lip and his brows arched down during their game of Duel Monsters. There was something buried just beneath the surface- a hidden strength, covered by self-doubt, the same that caused him to over think his moves and lose the game, though he had the advantage. Daimon thought he had a good read on Mutou Yuugi.

Just not on what made him so familiar. One mystery he’d never solve.

Minutes after the duel ends, Seto enters with Daimon’s personal medical staff. Daimon is ill and faint, but there’s a distinctly odd note is Seto’s “Yuugi? What are you doing here?” that's a fair bit too chilly to be hopeful and yet far too familiar to be uncaring.

Seto has another job for him just days later- this time, to defeat Mutou Yuugi in a proper duel. Seto looks straight ahead in the car as he explains what will happen- supposedly, the “weak” persona he’d seen earlier was only a split personality, and the real one would only come out when challenged. “I’ll warn you. Don’t lose. He punishes losers,” Seto says, a shallow smirk on his mouth as his eyes glisten. “‘The Sensation of Death.’ That’s what he called it.”

The change in Yuugi’s demeanor is instant and undeniable. Self-doubt was utterly replaced by overconfidence- no doubt he truly had skills to back it up, but Daimon guesses he wasn’t quite as untouchable as he thinks himself to be.

Daimon loved a good game- he was never one to stop midway through just because his body complained. But with Seto standing behind him, hand on the IV line, he feels no pain. A real challenge like this is rare- he completely lost sense of time, until the fog of battle clears, and he feels his body begin to fail.

It is laying there, helpless, as the boy he had dedicated his life to steps over his prone form and leaves him to die, he realizes Seto was truly gone. This was no barrier of protection- something in him had broken- something in Seto’s heart, Daimon had allowed to break.

Daimon remembers the careful touch on his arm, looking up into the boy’s eyes- lavender, speckled with crimson and blue, strong and kind and sad and utterly lost all at the same time. Daimon remembers the feeling of a smile tugging at his cheeks- this boy could bring back Seto’s smile. They may have just met, but Seto had been missing him for a very long time. They had a bond that Daimon could not understand, but he could feel- as for why, well, that’s just the way it is.

Everything had gone dark then. Some unknowable amount of time later, Daimon realizes that he is back in the KMC. Something was happening, and it was quite loud, but Daimon still feels ill and returns to rest.

It was well over a month later when Daimon returned to consciousness. Daimon remembers it feeling more like a nightmare than reality. Seto is in a coma. He has been for weeks. He’s shown no signs of recovery.

Daimon remembers reading Seto’s chart, and so much has changed since the last time he looked after his master’s health.

Paranoid schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. Asperger's syndrome. Dangerously high blood pressure. Hypermobile joints- and the beginnings of arthritis in at least two fingers, even at his young age. And prior to his catatonic state, severe insomnia. He’d stopped taking any medication weeks before the beginning of what the doctors were calling his “breakdown”- the beginning of Death-T’s construction coincided with the increase of Seto’s erratic behavior. Apparently, this had started with the night he’d been found asleep on school grounds, and had devolved into such incessant nightmares that Seto had been going three or four days at a time without sleep.

All of this comes to Daimon secondhand- from the staff and files. None of it seems real- not until he sees Seto in person.

His hair is cropped short- it’s brown again, but not close to the length he liked. He stares ahead, eyes lolling from left to right, searching, searching, but unresponsive. He’s neither unconscious nor brain dead, according to the doctor’s findings. He’s dreaming. He’s been dreaming endlessly, night and day, for three months. This is good, they say. REM sleep is when the body is best able to heal itself. Daimon knows this is true, but Seto’s vacant look makes his heart ache.

Seto has grown taller since he last awoke- his clothes are far too small. They fit awkwardly on his large, bony frame- too short on his limbs and too baggy over his torso. The doctors decide to give him a full examination on the six month anniversary of Death-T, and Daimon sess what he’d been afraid of for years.

Scars. Dozens of scars, little light brown lines scattered over the surface of his arms and shoulders like scattered straw, two deep russet lines encircling his neck like an abused dog, and dozens of little white crescent marks on his arms, his shoulders, but mostly down around his hips and lower back. Four lone ones on his belly, all in a line. But nothing on his face or hands. Kaiba Gozaburo knew how to hide his tracks.

There was no way to know if Daimon could have stopped this.What Daimon did know was that he hadn’t tried. Daimon remembers taking Seto’s clammy hands in his and apologizing for what he’d let happen. Daimon didn’t beg for forgiveness. He neither wanted nor deserved it. He begged instead for Seto to wake up. Seto only stared ahead.

It was two weeks to the day after that, when things get noisy again. It was dark out- one, perhaps two in the morning, when the man runs into the KMC. He staggers drunkenly, leaning on walls and chairs and kicking cabinets as he dashes around the room as fast as his impaired body will allow. Daimon remembers the man- tall, very tall, with a dark coat he into which he shovels handful after handful of pills. What he does not take he discards on the floor- once, he steps on a bottle and falls into a computer with a great clatter. “Fuck,” he says in English with an impeccable American accent. His voice is a deep baritone that Daimon feels is familiar but does not immediately recognize. He makes a note to turn this drunkard in once morning comes. KaibaCorp. needed better than prescription-stealers that disturbed patients to this degree.

In the end, the helicopter and prescriptions are both discovered missing hours before Seto is. He’d taken damn near every stimulant in the west wing.

This leads to four days of pure panic- Mokuba was two days late for his check in from New York, none of his staff could be reached- through hotel staff insisted he ordered room service two to three times a day, Seto had woken up, been spotted by exactly one member of the house staff and run off while she went to get a doctor, and somehow managed to steal a helicopter. And for four days, nothing changed. Daimon remembers the constant buzz of anxious activity, and then the fall of dead silence, and knowing at least one of the brothers had been found- and then the fear, the dread, the impatience for someone to return and tell him what was going on, and then-

“For the last time, I do not need a doctor, I need a lawyer! The Big Five-”

“Kaiba-sama, you have been in a coma for over six months-”

“Do I look like I’m in a coma now? This needs my immediate attention!”

“Nii-sama, please! Just let them-”

“Listen to your brother, Kaiba! He’s righ-”

“Who let YOU down here? Ugh, get rid of the bonkotsu and I’ll stay here until he’s gone.”

“WHY YOU-!”

“Sir, I’ll need you to come with me.”

Daimon remembers seeing the brothers walk in hand-in-hand, the way Seto’s sharp mouth scolded the doctors and gently sparred with Mokuba, and how he followed his brother’s guide completely. Daimon remembers the look on his face, as his sentences drifted off and an unfocused look glazed over his eyes, and how a simple “Nii-sama? You were saying?” brought Seto’s world back into focus. Daimon remembers the almost unnoticed touch, as Seto began to drift off and ghosted his fingers over his brother’s, and though no-one else did, Daimon saw the reassuring squeeze of Seto’s fingers, and the way Seto’s thumb ran over the back of Mokuba’s hand- to anyone else who saw, it was Seto comforting his little brother after a horrible ordeal- but to Daimon? Seto needed his brother just as badly as the other. He wasn’t well yet- but he also wasn’t the same broken child that stepped over a dying man that he’d lost interest in. He was Kaiba Seto, and he was sick, and he may never be the same as he was before, but he would get better. Finally, he would heal.

Daimon sees Seto often after his return. After the first week, Seto’s “fading” spells cease almost entirely, and he is able to fully resume his duties as president- however, his six months of inactivity had taken a steep toll on his body. Between his lack of proper food and sudden growth spurt, Seto had gone from somewhat gangly to severely underweight, his reflexes had been greatly slowed, and he was having even more joint pain than before. Seto comes into the KMC twice a week for physical therapy, and always stops to talk to Daimon. Daimon gets the feeling he is being more talked at than talked to, but hearing about Yuugi’s ongoing feud with the math teacher and Mazaki’s inexplicable domination in the arcade, how dare she replace his high score, she wasn't even a serious gamer , and the time the bonkotsu was drawing something called a “fursona” in history class, and the design was so terrible that Seto didn’t know whether to turn him in or give him art tips and he couldn't decide which until after the bell rang and then he’d been so distracted that needed to get notes from Yuugi and it was all the bonkotsu's fault, and the other three Seto had taken to calling “The Peanut Gallery” in English- to Daimon, Seto sounded more alive than he had in years. The years had changed him- he’d always had a bit of an acidic side, even as a child, but now there is an edge of bitterness to his every word, a challenge in his jokes, an unspoken threat in his laugh. His air of utter self confidence rings hollow to Daimon’s ears- Seto brags about how superior his new advancement in Solid Vision tech is to anything KaibaCorp.’s Competitors have, to which Daimon points out that yes, it is a brilliant design, but his current duel disk still had many flaws- Daimon’s honest answer makes Seto waver.

For so long Seto had been surrounded by danger- those who sought to tear him down and those who only existed in his life to agree. Those who had pushed Seto to the point of creating Death-T and those who’d enabled him to do so were equally to blame, in Daimon’s mind. Seto had built a wall of ego out of fear and pain to hide behind, and it was so very fragile. Seto had lived a life of criticism with himself as the only consistent support- both honest validation and criticism from another was a new experience, especially from the same source, and simple remarks were enough to shake Seto to the core.

“The Duel Disk does need work before launch,” Daimon says, and Seto’s face is vulnerable and hurt, “but I know you’re up to the task, Seto-sama. Things like this take time.”

Seto presses his lips into a thin line and looks directly at him for a few moments, before his smirk returns and he pronounces “Of course I am. I know that.”

Seto knew many things- but he needed to hear them all the same.

Daimon remembers the days leading leading up the the launch- Seto had created a promotional tournament dubbed “Battle City” and was constantly busy. Daimon remembers the glimmer of excitement in his eyes- due to his coma, Seto hadn’t been able to attend last year’s worldwide Duel Monsters championships as he had planned or even this year’s nationals- losing his title to Insector Haga by default, who had then gone on to not even make the top fifteen, had been something that bothered Seto greatly. This tournament was Seto’s chance to return to competitive dueling- and his chance to face Mutou Yuugi again, which he honestly seemed more excited about. The last time the two had faced each other had been before Seto was completely recovered- he was positive that he could win now that he was back at full strength.

Daimon remembers Seto’s small smile the night before the tournament- anxious and giddy with an undeniable edge of danger.

“I’ll crush him,” he says.

“And then what?” Daimon asks, and for a single second Seto’s smile falters, he looks lost and unfocused and an instant later his smile returns.

“Then I’ll know,” he says. Seto doesn’t say what he will know- but there’s a breathless lilt to his voice that leads Daimon to believe he has more than a vague idea.

The next time Daimon sees Seto is the night after the tournament ends. Daimon remembers awakening in the dark, only the faint glow of the computer monitors lighting the room, barely able to see the room’s other occupant. Seto sat silently, elbows pressed into his knees and mouth hidden behind crossed fingers. His eyes are downcast, seeing nothing.

“Seto-sama?” he asks, to which the only response was a quiet shuffling of Seto’s feet on the cold tile. Seto has something to say- Daimon can almost hear a silent, frustrated scream in the air. Daimon waits.

“I don’t believe in the impossible.,” Seto mutters so quietly that it would have been unheard in anything but dead silence. There is a pause.

“I’ve seen impossible things before. My whole life. When I was young, I believed they were real- everything seemed so real then. But I know better now. Occult things only exist in fiction and dreams. People can’t transform. Dissociative Identity Disorder is real. Ghosts are not.”

Seto pauses, his brows furrowed deeply. “I know…” he takes a breath. “I know that not everything I see is real. I know that my own senses can’t be undoubtedly trusted. It’s a fact I’ve had to face about myself- but I know the limits of reality. I’m not so inhibited that I can’t tell when something is blatantly impossible. Even when I can’t tell at first, there are always ways of checking- security videos, witnesses, transcripts. I can’t be fooled anymore- not even by Solid Vision. I know what’s real. I know…”

Seto falls silent, and Daimon can hear his unsteady breath. His eyes are squeezed shut; the dim lighting catches the wrinkles in his skin in a way that illuminates his pained expression. The quiet drags on for an uncomfortably long time, but Daimon doesn’t dare break it. When Seto speaks up, Daimon jumps.

“I saw something.” Seto pauses, and Daimon is worried he’ll stop, but after taking a breath he continues; “It was utterly impossible. It wasn’t like the things I see anymore- there was no sense of reality to it, it wasn’t even trying to be believable. It was the sort of thing that simply can’t happen. It was like the things I saw as a child, before Go- before I learned how this universe works. I’m not a child. Childish things can’t touch me anymore…”

Daimon sees him shift- sees him purposely, painstakingly relax his long fingers from the way they were digging into each other. His eyes open slowly, the light reflecting off of them and making them seem bright and watery. Daimon remembers making eye contact- he remembers the irony of Seto’s statement, as he looks more like his childhood self Daimon met seven years ago than he has any time since.

“I think it was real,” he breathes, and then crosses his arms over his chest, looking at the floor. “But things that can’t be real aren’t real… right?”

Daimon smiles kindly. He remembers the way his heart raced- with pride that Seto would come to him, and with joy of seeing someone he’d once feared lost for good. “Seto-sama, look at me.”

Seto raises his eyes, shining and pained and lost, looking at the same time both young and innocent and old- older than Daimon, the eyes of someone who had seen far, far too much for one lifetime.

“There are some things in this world that we don’t understand. Some impossible things that reasonably can’t exist that simply are. I’ve seen one myself, Seto-sama- and if you asked me how it happened, I’d only be able to tell you ‘Because that’s the way it is.’”

“I don’t understand,” Seto replies, and then slowly, minutes later, eyes closed and arms relaxed at his side, he whispers not to Daimon, but himself; “Maybe… I don’t need to understand.”

Daimon watches him, listens to his breathing even out and eventually settle into an unconscious rhythm, and smiles as he returns to sleep.

For three days, Seto is happy. He has an idea for an upgraded Duel Disk and a worldwide system, he finalizes the buyout of I2 in person, and he proudly declares that the bokotsu was bragging all day about lifting weights and therefore, he would also begin lifting weights and do it better (it simply wouldn’t do to have the bonkotsu beat him at a subject at school, even if it was technically extra-curricular.) On the second day, Seto brings in Mokuba and they spend the night playing Capsule Monsters Chess. For three short days, Kaiba Seto is on top of the world.

On the fourth, he is furious.

Daimon has no idea what caused the change. The anger doesn’t go away the next day- for weeks, Daimon hears rumors about Seto storming around the building, snapping at and firing anyone who dared to look at him the wrong way. Daimon remembers the night Mokuba comes to him, crying. “Nii-sama is throwing things,” he whimpers.

“Are you scared?” Daimon asks, and Mokuba nods wordlessly as he curls up to Daimon’s side. “You don’t need to be scared of your brother, Mokuba-sama. He’d never hurt you,” Daimon assures.

“I know he’d never hurt me again. I’m not scared for me,” Mokuba mumbles into Daimon’s arm. Daimon strokes his hair and makes a mental note to ask about that “again” part at a more appropriate time.

Seto doesn’t stop visiting this time. He begins to settle down after the first month, and he’s civil, though not even close to friendly. Daimon believes he could cut the air with a knife when Seto is around- waves of steaming tension rise off him him even on the best days, and he’s never more than a breath away from snapping. He tells no one what’s bothering him, not even Daimon or Mokuba.

Mokuba has an idea what caused it. “He was on the phone with Yuugi when it happened,” Mokuba admits to Daimon one night. “Nii-sama won’t tell me what he said. But I know there was a lot of yelling that night. I don’t think they’ve talked since- at least outside of school.”

Daimon bides his time. He doesn’t believe Seto will come to him this time, not in his current state of mind. But he also knows that confronting Seto in the wrong way would be nothing but damaging. Daimon waits. And two months after Seto’s foul mood begins, Daimon sees his chance.

Seto coming to him and complaining about his schoolmates was nothing unusual- at least it hadn’t been, before this began. Seto had been unusually quiet on the subject in recent weeks. On this day, Yuugi and his friends had decided to go to the arcade to celebrate the end of midterms, and to Seto’s indignation, had invited him along. Seto had been pacing as he explained this, but at the end he froze, hands balled into fists.

“I hate them.”

Daimon is shocked- Seto had never been one to use the word hate lightly, and now seemed to truly mean it. This was more than a fight, as Daimon had originally assumed. Something had happened here to cause this- something major.

“Why, Seto-sama?” He asks calmly.

“Because they’re liars!” he roars. “All of them! All they talk about is friendship and bonds and it’s all false pretence!” he sneers. “Any one of them could drop dead and they’d just… move on as if nothing happened! They don’t care about each other at all!”

Seto wheels at Daimon, a crazed look in his eyes. “Atem was their friend. Not mine. We were never friends. They were the ones that he cared about. And they just… let him die! And now, they go to school and the arcade and shops like like it doesn’t matter! Like he never existed! Like this isn’t the end of everything!”

Seto is panting, looking not at Daimon but through him, teeth clenched.

“I was never his friend. I never pretended to be. But they did- and they never cared! I didn’t care, and losing him was like… like having my right arm ripped off! How could they possibly care, when they still find meaning in living now, when they still feel happy without him, w-when they say things like ‘he’s in a better place now.’ How could it be better? He’s dead! He’s GONE!”

Seto staggered, leaning heavily on the wall for support. He paused, breathing heavily. “How can they think about never seeing him again and not want to die?” he breathes. He closes his eyes. “I wasn’t even his friend and I… and I…”

Seto can’t bring himself to finish his statement. Daimon is at his side as quickly as he is able- he knows what Seto needs now is not words.

Seto had been wary of being touched for years now- when he was a young child, he’d held Daimon’s hand and hugged him good-night when Daimon had read to him a book his father had read to him before his death, and Seto had admitted to him for the first time just how deeply he missed him. He’d found comfort in touch, once, but for so long he’d recoiled at every outstretched hand, every time something came at him a bit too fast, every time something brushed against him unexpectedly. But tonight, Daimon reaches a wrinkled hand out to hold Seto’s and the young man’s legs give way, and soon he is resting his head in Daimon’s lap, fingers intertwined and crying as he’d been unable to do for years. He’d been forced to grow up far too fast- he’d been forced to become a father at ten and since then had done his best until he had finally broken under the pressure- only to come back, and take on even more responsibility. Daimon knew in his condition he couldn’t take the weight off of Seto’s shoulders, not permanently, but he could give him a night to cry and mourn and be held by a father that loved him.

“Seto-sama,” Daimon begins, running his fingers through Seto’s hair, “Everyone mourns differently. I don’t believe they didn’t care about Atem. But I also don’t believe they loved him as you did.”

“Love..?” he whispers almost confusedly, the word foreign on his tongue. His eyes are unfocused, barely open. “I loved Atem..?”

“There are many kinds of love, Seto-sama. I love you, and Mokuba-sama, and Doctor Ishida, who has been my caretaker and dearest friend for years. But the only time in my life I have felt as you described… it was when Aika died. We had been married for thirty-two years.”

Seto doesn’t speak, but a range of emotions flash over his face- confusion, anger, joy, sadness, fear, longing, and another, one that Daimon can’t quite understand, another expression that makes Seto look old and lost like he’d seen the world since it began and was so very, very tired. Daimon remembers Seto’s last words as he drifted off to sleep; “I need to see him again. I need to tell him…”

Seto’s mood changes for the better after that night- he’s still on edge but is able to fully apply himself to the projects of the new Duel Disk and and Duel Links and another personal one- one he doesn’t speak about but he is clearly excited over. Most of the time Seto is in the KMC is spent doing schoolwork- he knows the answers, but the lack of time to fill out homework had taken a massive toll on his grades. Seto clearly doesn't care, but he is aware that failing his finals would reflect badly on the company and takes the time to fill it out anyway. Daimon is hit with a wave of nostalgia, watching Seto fill out his worksheets. Seto’s cursive on his English homework is impeccable- his kanji on everything else is virtually illegible. Daimon convinces him to spend a day working on his penmanship with him before his teacher docks him anothe r point for misreading what he’d written, and it’s plain to see each enjoys it as much as the other does.

Weeks pass in this manner- deals are made, new products are rolled out, school projects are assigned and finished. Then one day, Seto comes in- and not to see Daimon.

“I’m completely fine,” he argues as Daimon wheels into the room, but his voice is shaky and he’s clearly out of breath.

“What happened, Seto-sama?”

“I received a minor shock while testing a new product. Nothing to worry about, Daimon.”

“You received a shock of currently undetermined strength which caused a major cardiac event, Kaiba-sama,” Doctor Ishida snaps. “If it was as minor as you say, that is even more cause for worry. Now sit still and let me do these tests before I call in Isono to hold you down.”

Seto grudgingly complies, and the tests come back as well as could be hoped- the shock he received was in no way minor, and his high blood pressure doesn’t seem to have been the sole cause as they’d feared. Doctor Ishida increases Seto’s medicine for his blood pressure as a preventative measure and tells him to be more careful when testing prototypes in the future.

Duel Links is nearly ready for launch when the incident occurs. Daimon doesn’t know the details- few people do. There had been an argument in the lab between Seto and his lead designers, followed by Seto making an unscheduled trip to Egypt for reason undisclosed to most of the company, and then upon his return, a complete rehaul of the mini tournament that was planned to promote the Duel Disk’s launch at the last minute. Daimon heard quite a bit about the utter scheduling disaster that was rippling throughout the company, but virtually nothing about why Seto was doing this. Seto knew how to keep his personal life from bleeding into his professional one- if something was making him cause this much chaos, Daimon knew it must be a matter of life or death.

Something happens during the tournament- the live feed cuts out and ambulances are called for what is later reported as a gas leak resulting in many people present falling unconscious, including Seto. The Department of Internal Affairs turns on Seto for moving the tournament up, despite the lack of safety measures in the new arena. Daimon remembers Seto’s confidant smile, tinged with a hint of sadness. “They won’t find anything against me when the investigation is done,” Seto assures Daimon and Mokuba. “They don’t have the full story.”

“What is the full story?” Daimon asks, and Mokuba nods in agreement. He’d been at HQ when the feed was lost.

Seto grins, says “Highly improbable,” and changes the subject.

Seto bringing Mokuba with him on his visits becomes more often than not, over the next few weeks. Daimon remembers Seto’s quiet smile as he watches Daimon and Mokuba play CapuMon from over his homework- graduation is less than a month away now, and he really didn’t need finals to happen at the same time as the big launch. The nights spent here at the KMC are pretty much the only free time he has to spend with Mokuba as well- Daimon knew he was short on rest, but the melancholy in Seto’s eyes won’t let Daimon ask him to go home and go to sleep after the first time he does so. This time spent as a family is as precious to the brothers as it is to Daimon, perhaps more so. All of them knew that things never stayed the same for long for the Kaibas- sooner or later, this time would end. They had to enjoy every moment while it lasted.

Only one of them knew how soon that would be.

It’s the night after graduation, when the alarms blare and doctors rush from across the KMC at full speed. Another heart attack, they say. Doctor Ishida had feared it was inevitable. He’d told Daimon so. He’d done his best to take care of his patient- getting attached was unwanted, but there was no avoiding it. Mokuba is crying- he shouldn’t be here, not during open heart surgery, but he’d already been here to visit Daimon when it happened, and Ishida couldn't bring himself to throw the boy out. Good doctors were only as good as their patients would allow, in the end.

What is a doctor to do when a patient has a death wish?

Daimon listens to the nurses chatter from outside the operating room. Another malfunctioning prototype, they say. He knew the risks, how volatile the program was and how it hadn’t passed safety protocols. Some say he’d sabotaged it himself- he had to make it look like an accident, for insurance purposes. What a sweet man they say, teary eyed. Thinking about his brother, even in his unstable state of mind.

Daimon watches the doctors and nurses enter and leave, and remembers Seto. Daimon is thankful, in the end, that even though he’d lost so much, his mind is still sharp. He can remember Miyazato Seto’s nervously darting eyes, dressed in his blue knit vest with his uncombed hair, and his peaceful sleeping face the night they’d played Duel Monsters until nearly morning, and the way he looked at his drawing of a sleeping boy with eyes far older than ten, and his gentle, sticky fingers that cup Daimon’s shaking hands around an orange he’d peeled himself.

Daimon hopes that some day he will forget the scream- the wordless sound of a child’s heart breaking. Daimon hears the calls of “Mokuba-sama!” seconds before the boy runs past, as if his legs can outrun what his eyes had seen.

Daimon sees Ishida then, leaning against the wall with his glasses in his hand. “Idiot boy,” he mutters over and over. “Stupid idiot boy.”

The KMC grows quiet soon- only busy staff remained, the rest gone off to gossip or spread the news elsewhere.

Ishida is still leaning against the wall, facing Daimon with his eyes closed. “It’s for the best, you know,” he says. “He had a stroke this time- a bad one. If his heart hadn’t given out so suddenly… He wouldn’t have been himself anymore. Some people can live like that- be happy like that. But if there was enough left to know what he used to be? It would have been worse than death for him. You know how he was.”

The doctor's words ring true, not matter how painful they are to hear. Daimon knows exactly how Seto was, can remember every encounter.

“May I see him?” Daimon asks, hands knotted around the hem of his jacket.

“Yeah, of course,” Ishida says, but makes no move to walk with him.

The hum of Daimon’s chair is deafening in the utter silence, as out of place as a ringtone at a funeral. Seto lays quietly before him, eyes shut. The cliche was that he looked like he was sleeping- but he doesn’t look that way to Daimon. There’s something unmistakably different.

Seto slept with his mouth parted slightly, often with brows furrowed. Sometimes it was nightmares- others, simply a puzzle, but Daimon remembers his expression being very different.

Daimon feels tears well up in his eyes. He’s known Seto for nine years now- he’s seen him grow, change, laugh, cry, break and heal. He can remember every expression Seto ever made.

But Daimon cannot remember ever seeing Seto with a more joyful smile.

#Yugioh #Yu-Gi-Oh!#YGO #Seto Kaiba #PRIDESHIPPING #Atem #yami yugi #dark side of dimensions #mokuba kaiba #DSoD spoilers #season zero #My writing

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