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gukyi · 5 years ago

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the courtship chronicles | ksj

summary: dating has never been anywhere near your list of priorities, but kim seokjin is nothing if not determined. and when he comes to the rescue and accompanies you to your friend’s wedding, he decides to request only one thing in return: for you to let him take you out on fake dates and shower you in fake affection, and show you how much fun dating can be. he just needs to remember to keep the part where he’s been in love with you under wraps.

{friends to lovers!au, fake dating!au}

pairing: kim seokjin x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, and emotional hurt/comfort! word count: 20k a/n: big, big, big thanks to @aurawatercolor for commissioning me for this piece!! i honestly am so happy with this fic and even happier to give my main man kim seokjin the love and attention he deserves!!! this fic is pretty much slow burn from start to finish, so enjoy!

check out the post-script drabble here!

“You’re bringing a plus one, right?” Cynthia demands on the other end of the line, voice frazzled and breaths quick. “You better, because I already factored it into the wedding budget. There will be food meant for a plus one for you which I already paid for so you better bring one. I paid for it already.” She’s running in circles, trying to make her point. It’s clear she’s got an awful lot on her plate as it is.

“Can’t I just eat their serving myself? You know I’m a growing woman,” you plead. Cynthia and the rest of her bridesmaids have been on your back about bringing a plus one ever since she got engaged.

“No, you have to bring a plus one. Even if it’s your mom, Y/N, I don’t care,” Cynthia says. She makes to say something else, but then pauses. “Actually, I do care. Can it please be a date? Even like, someone you met off of Hinge. I don’t know. Not your mom. Don’t bring her. That would be only a little weird,” she corrects herself.

“Weirder than some stranger I met off Hinge?” You ask pointedly.

“No. At least they’re around your age. I want to see you applying yourself, Y/N!” Cynthia scolds. “Go out there and find a man! Pick him up off of the street if you have to! Anything!” She rallies. “Being single is cool and everything but being in love is just as fulfilling!”

“Of course you would think that, you’re getting married tomorrow,” you tell her, sighing. Can’t she just accept that you aren’t really looking for a relationship right now? And haven’t been looking for one since you graduated college three years ago?

“I love my future husband, thank you very much. We plan on leading a very full and extraordinary life with our fifteen dogs and eighteen geckos.”

“Okay, Miss We Bought A Zoo,” you tease.

Cynthia laughs. “Pretty soon it’ll be Mrs. We Bought A Zoo, thank you very much!”

You hear a knock on the door, turning to check the kitschy cuckoo clock you had found at a flea market for five dollars for the time. It’s six on the dot.

“I have to go, Cynthia, Seokjin’s here,” you tell her, already making to hang up the phone as you head towards the door, using your shoulder and ear to hold it in place. “We’re making a family dinner for two, tonight.”

“Bring Seokjin! He’ll charm the shit out of my mom, I just know it,” Cynthia tells you. “Bring him! Tell him to clear his fucking calendar for tomorrow.”

“Bye, Cynthia,” you say as you reach out for the doorknob, twisting it to reveal your grinning best friend with a bag full of goodies on the other side. “I have to go.”

“Send Seokjin my love! I don’t even expect a wedding gift from him! His presence is enough!” Cynthia shouts, loud enough for Seokjin to hear everything despite the phone not even being on speaker. You hang up before Cynthia can say anything else to goad Seokjin into accompanying you to her wedding, sending an apologetic smile his way.

“Sorry, that was—”

“Cynthia?” Seokjin finishes with a grin. You usher him into your apartment, letting him place his bag on your kitchen countertop as he pulls out two wine glasses to get the party started. You sigh, helpless. “Yeah, I figured. She’s getting married tomorrow, isn’t she?”

“She’s uber stressed, if that’s what you mean to say,” you correct, joining him in your kitchen as you start to unpack what he brought, countless tupperware containers filled with vegetables, meats, pastas. There’s even an entire bag of rice. Does Seokjin really think you have no rice in your apartment? Seriously?

“I can imagine,” Seokjin agrees with a laugh. “Thank god you and I aren’t getting married anytime soon, right?” With a flourish, he produces a bottle of red wine you had been saving in your fridge for this very occasion, filling up half of each wine glass.

“I’ll toast to that,” you say, smiling as you hold up your glass. Seokjin swirls the wine around in his own before holding it out.

“Here’s to not being romantically involved whatsoever!” Seokjin hurrahs, and you laugh at his honesty as your glasses clink together, the sound echoing around your kitchen. “Who says you need to be married to prepare a kickass meal together.”

“You’re in charge of the meat,” you immediately tell him. You’ve never been the biggest fan of handling it. Vegetables are much more your speed. They also don’t get angry at you when you make a mistake cooking them. Besides, Seokjin’s always been the better food mediator between the two of you.

“Like always,” he teases, giving you a nudge as he pulls the pots and pans from the cupboard beneath the counter and hands you one of the seventeen different cutting boards you have in random places in your kitchen. You don’t know what it is about them, but every single month you find yourself buying a brand new cutting board. They may as well be drugs. “You should really branch out and try cooking beef sometimes. I’ll teach you, hey? So you don’t have to be scared of it.”

“I am not scared of cooking beef,” you tell him sternly, flinching when Seokjin places the meat in the oil-slick pan and it begins to sizzle and pop.

“If you say so, Y/N,” Seokjin singsongs. “You know, I’d make a pretty good teacher. I reckon I could show you a thing or two about cooking.”

“Okay, Mr. Cooking Is My Passion,” you say, scrunching up your nose. “Just because I can’t make a damn filet mignon does not make me a bad cook,” you tell him, “whose soup do you ask for when you’re sick and in bed with a cold? That’s right, mine!” You poke his chest for good measure, making him put his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright, I concede,” he says with a laugh. “Your soup is delicious.”

“Thank you,” you say, proudly. “How about I make a couple of servings while you cook the meat?”

Seokjin blows a kiss your way. “Y/N, You know just the way to my heart.”

An hour later, you and Seokjin have whipped up an impressive set of dishes, from your homemade vegetable soup to his traditional bulgogi bibimbap, a small bowl of kimchi in the middle of the table accompanied by some sauteed vegetables and a serving of glass noodles. There’s enough to feed a family of four (one of whom could be a ravenous high-school football player) on your table, and yet, you and Seokjin never fail to finish it all.

Seokjin takes one bite out of his bulgogi bibimbap and moans in delight, tossing his head back as he holds out two thumbs up, chopsticks clanging onto the side of the bowl as he drops them. “Wow,” he says loudly, patting himself on the back. “I’m amazing. Gordon Ramsey wants what I have.”

“There’s no way it’s that good,” you tease, even though it most definitely is that good. Seokjin is, without a doubt, the best chef you have ever met, the best chef whose food you have ever had the pleasure of eating. If he weren’t employed by a publicity company he would almost certainly be the owner of the best restaurant in the city. The New York Times would visit his restaurant and write a five-star review to be published in the paper the next morning. You take a bite of it yourself, chewing it slowly and pretending to ponder its flavor. It’s delicious. It’s never not delicious. “Hmm… it’s alright.”

“‘Alright’?” Seokjin shouts, slandered. “Just ‘alright’?” He slams a fist onto the table in anger. “This is blasphemy! It’s amazing!” Grabbing the knife beside his plate, he holds it under your chin dramatically, glaring into your eyes. “You better retract that statement, or else!”

“Or else what, Mr. Kim?” You say, desperately resisting the urge not to burst into laughter. Seokjin’s not doing much better, lips pursed tight in an effort not to cackle aloud.

“Or else I’ll have no choice but to eat all of your bulgogi bibimbap for you!” He cries, reaching over with grabby hands to take your plate away from you.

Just as he suspected, you hold on tight to your plate, refusing to let such good food go into the mouth of someone who has his own plate. It’s then, as you’re playing tug-of-war with your food, that Seokjin finally breaks into chuckles, hiccuping out his laugh as he concedes and lets you eat your food in peace.

“Just as I suspected, peasant!” He says proudly. “It’s delicious!”

You put a heaping chopstick-ful into your mouth. “It really is, Seokjin. You always do such a great job.”

“I’m honored,” he says, bowing slightly. “Food is what brings people together.” He holds out a piece of kimchi in front of your mouth, and you eat it obligingly. “Speaking of bringing people together, what was Cynthia shouting about on the phone?”

“Oh, just her wedding, you know,” you tell him with a shrug. “The usual. She’s desperate for me to bring a plus one,” you say. Marriage is disillusioning her. She thinks everybody around her should have a love like her own. And while it is a wonderful, fairytale-esque thought, you just aren’t really on the same wavelength. You never have been. “She even factored it into the budget to guilt-trip me into doing it.”

“Why don’t you?” Seokjin asks, downing a spoonful of soup. “Going to a wedding alone can’t be too much fun.”

“I won’t be alone,” you protest. “I’m one of her closest friends. I’ll know a bunch of people there.”

“Yeah, but you won’t have brought someone who, by way of how plus-one’s work, will be obligated to be by your side the entire night. Who are you gonna dance with when Crazy in Love comes on, huh?” Seokjin points out.

You frown. “I can dance by myself.”

“Yeah, but a plus-one would make it more fun! You guys can dougie, or whatever it is the cool kids do these days. Is dabbing still a thing?” He dabs, just to make a point. It’s cringey and awful and hilarious, all at once.

“Stop, stop, you’re embarrassing yourself and I’m the only other person here,” you plead. “You and Cynthia are so on my ass about bringing a date, God. I just—I’m not really interested in anybody right now. Dating just isn’t my thing.”

“Has dating ever been your thing, Y/N?” Seokjin asks, even though he clearly knows the answer already. “I don’t think you’ve been on a date since sophomore year of college. Do you even know what dating is, anymore? Love?”

You roll your eyes. If there’s one person who’s a bigger hopeless romantic than Cynthia, it’s Seokjin. The man has an entire bookshelf of romance novels in his bedroom. He waxes poetic about falling in love every other day, about coming home to a significant other, a family, to cook for, to spend time with. He’s been on more Bumble dates in the past year than you can count on both hands and feet.

“I know what it is,” you defend yourself, “I’m just—I don’t really believe in that, for me. I don’t ever see myself having it. I have friends. My family. That’s good enough. I don’t need romantic love.”

Seokjin scoffs. “What? You mean to tell me you don’t ever want to fall in love? Never ever? Come on, Y/N. Love is great! It makes you feel warm and happy, like one of those giant Costco teddy bears. Those are the material equivalent of love. Haven’t you always wanted a giant Costco teddy bear?”

“When I was five, yeah,” you tell him. “Listen, Seokjin, I get it. Love is great and amazing, I’m just not that interested. You and Cynthia have been trying to get me to go on a date for years and it doesn’t appeal to me whatsoever.”

“What about dating is unappealing?” Seokjin inquires. He’s determined. And you, the best friend, are weak.

“I don’t know, having to meet new people, talk about yourself, try to see a future with them. It seems so tiring,” you say, sighing. Seokjin looks positively bewildered, because of course he enjoys dating—he’s so charismatic, charming, and outgoing. Even if a date goes poorly he still ends up with a new friend. “I’m just not that into doing that stuff.”

“Psh,” Seokjin says casually, skeptical. “I bet that if you just gave the whole dating thing a try, you might actually like it. You haven’t gone out on one in so long—maybe it’s different than what you remember. The last time you did it, we were all just college students.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” you groan. “How exactly do you expect me to ��give the whole dating thing a try’, then? Last time I checked, I wasn’t particularly interested in anybody.”

Seokjin pauses, pondering for a moment as he taps his chin with his pointer finger. Then, like a smack to the face, it hits him all at once, and in his excitement, he pounds his fist right onto the prongs of the fork by his plate. “Ow, holy shit!” He shouts, excited nonetheless.

“Oh my God, are you alright?” You ask, a little concerned and a lot amused.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he assures you, rubbing the side of his palm. “But what I was about to say, is why don’t we go out?”

You sputter, choking on the soup you had just taken a sip of. “I-I’m sorry, what?”

“Why don’t we date? It’ll be fun!” He says happily.

“Seokjin, we’re friends,” you say.

He shrugs, carefree. “Yeah, sure we are. But think about it: since we’re already so close, you won’t have to worry about introducing yourself to someone new. You won’t have to go through the whole tell me about yourself thing, we can just jump right into the dating part! It’ll be fun and you’ll get to see what dating is like past the introductions. How about it?” He asks.

He thinks it’s brilliant.

You think it’s ludicrous.

“But, Seokjin, are we actually going to date? Like, be a couple? Because I don’t know if that’s what I was really aiming for with our friendship today,” you say hesitantly. You love Seokjin, sure, but you aren’t in love with Seokjin. You’ve been best friends since college. Won’t it be weird if you suddenly start dating? And doing other couple-y things?

Seokjin waves a hand around like a nonchalant businessman. “No, we won’t actually be boyfriend and girlfriend, or anything,” he promises. “It’ll just be fake. Make believe! Think of it as a dating test-run. What do you say?”

“You sound too enthusiastic for me not to be worried,” you tell him tentatively. He’s like an energetic salesman. It’s a little frightening. There must be some fine print you aren’t looking at. Something that you’re missing. “Are you sure about this? Like, do you want anything in return?”

“Anything in return to help my best friend find love?” He asks, scandalized. “Of course not!”

You frown.

“Okay,” he gives in, “maybe some more soup. I’m about to visit my mom and she loves it.”

“Why don’t I just come with?” You suggest. Seokjin’s mom is the second-best chef you’ve ever met. Somewhere along the line, Seokjin took what he learned from her and improved it ten-fold.

“Even better! Mom’s been begging me to bring you around sometime. How about it, do we have a deal?” He asks, holding his hand out.

You sigh. He’s your best friend, and all he wants in return is for you to visit his mom with him. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

“Sure,” you say, conceding. “Why not?”

Seokjin’s first order of business as your self-appointed brand new not-real boyfriend, is to accompany you to Cynthia’s wedding as your plus-one. He does actually find a wedding gift on such short notice—a fairly new cookbook from which he had memorized the recipes already, so it was no longer of use to him. Because of course, Kim Seokjin is the only person on Earth who memorizes the one hundred recipes in a book just because he wants to. Where does he find the time?

[May 18th, 3:18PM]

Seokjin: Are we wearing matching colors? Seokjin: Or is that too senior prom?

You: As long as you don’t show up wearing white you should be fine

Seokjin: >_> Seokjin: You know that if I wore white the groom would drop everything and marry me instead ;-)

You: Only because of your charm You: I’m wearing pastel pink! I don’t suppose you have anything in your closet to go with that, do you?

[Seokjin is typing…]

[May 18th, 3:20PM]

Seokjin: Oh, Y/N, you don’t even need to ask twice

An hour later, Seokjin pulls up to the curb outside of your apartment complex in his Volkswagen, which is every bit as charismatic as he is, right as you’re scrambling to tug on your most comfortable heels (as if such a thing could exist!), running late, as per usual. The ceremony begins at 5:30 and you and Seokjin were meant to leave for the venue at four.

It is 4:19.

Frazzled, you rush around your apartment movie-montage style, tweaking strands of your hair in the mirror in the hallway and nabbing your bottomless bag on the coffee table. It’s not even really summer yet, but your apartment doesn’t have air conditioning and it’s becoming more and more of a curse as the globe slowly warms multiple degrees over the years. The true loser of climate change, rather than the polar bears, the bees, and coastal cities, is you, who thought renting a place with no air conditioning would be just fine.

Desperate not to open the door to Seokjin with your forehead dripping, you dab off the beads of sweat gathered by your hairline with the skirt of your dress—whatever, you were going to sweat in it at some point—right as you hear the first knock.

Seokjin’s fashion choices are usually rather conservative. He does work a somewhat menial half-office job, so he can’t roll up to his desk wearing the exceedingly stylish and exceedingly adventurous clothing that Namjoon and Taehyung wear, which, in turn, limits his closet. Lots of plain or argyle sweaters pulled over dress shirts with the collars peeking out, lots of navy jeans, lots of white sneakers and loafers. The only clothing item Seokjin does experiment with is socks, of which he has an impressive collection, ranging anywhere from corgi butts to Santa Claus.

You didn’t really know what you were expecting when Seokjin said you didn’t need to ask twice after mentioning that you were wearing a pastel pink dress. He does own a couple of pink things, but as far as you’re aware (and you’re pretty aware, considering you’ve been best friends with him since the beginning of college), it amounts mostly to his sock stash and a couple of sweaters, which he most often wears under denim jackets or over dress shirts.

What you most certainly aren’t expecting when you open the door is to see Seokjin standing on the other side in a full-on suit, a light grey color that complements the peach in his skin tone perfectly. More so, however, you hadn’t at all anticipated for him to be wearing a perfectly-matching pastel pink dress shirt underneath, complemented by a rather obnoxious bow tie with red hairs littered all over it.

“Wow, okay,” you say, blinking just to make sure that your eyes are working perfectly. “It’s May, why do you look like Valentine’s Day threw up on you?”

Seokjin opens his mouth to send a witty response back to you, but the moment he lays his eyes on you, it’s as if all of the words have fallen from his lips. He swallows, hands fumbling with the bouquet in his hand. “Don’t say that to me like you aren’t also wearing the most Valentine’s Day dress I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s a pastel pink midi dress,” you tell him, frowning. “At least I’m not wearing something that has cartoon-y red hearts all over it,” you accuse, pointing to his bow tie.

Seokjin gasps, offended. “Hey! This is my lucky bow tie. It’s never steered me wrong when it comes to love.”

You scoff. “I don’t think Cynthia and her fiancé need your bow tie’s help today. Have you ever seen someone more in love with another person than they are with each other?”

Seokjin pauses. He sighs a little bit, like there’s something weighing on his mind he refuses to divulge. You won’t press. You may be best friends, but you aren’t mind-readers, and sometimes, there are some secrets that have to be kept even from each other. Yours is that when you guys were juniors in college and Seokjin was running late for class because he was desperate to find the last Pop-Tart in his apartment, you had actually eaten it the night before when he was in the bathroom.

You wonder what his is.

“You never know,” he finally says, “we could always use the extra luck, don’t you think?”

You nod, “I suppose. What’s with the flowers? You know you aren’t supposed to bring them to a wedding. They probably have enough flowers as it is.”

As if caught off guard by the flowers held in his very own hand, Seokjin turns his gaze down to look at the bouquet, a collection of baby’s breath, tulips, and carnations. “Oh,” he says, speechless. “Well, I was dropping by the flower shop anyway to bother Hoseok, and he said that they had some leftover stock that nobody wanted because they were a little smaller than the other flowers, so he gave them to me at a discount. They’re for you, I guess.” Like a nervous high schooler going on his very first date, he shoves them towards you, making you step back to avoid getting punched in the chest.

“Seriously? You didn’t have to do that, Seokjin,” you say happily, pleasantly surprised at the bouquet. Sure, some of them are a little wilted, a little dehydrated, but you get flowers so infrequently (in fact, you don’t think you’ve gotten any since Seokjin sent you one of those singular rose grams during your first Valentine’s Day at college), that the gesture is as good as gold.

“Eh,” he says, shrugging casually. “I don’t really have anybody else I would want to give them to.”

Gleefully, you take them from his outstretched hand and immediately rush to put them in some sort of vase. You, like the piece of millennial trash that you are, end up using a random empty mason jar you find in one of your kitchen cabinets.

“What time is it?” Seokjin asks, looking around for a clock.

“Late, we have to go,” you instantly respond, shooing him out of the door and darting down the stairs because the elevator in your apartment building is about four hundred years old and doesn’t even have a light bulb inside of it. You cram into Seokjin’s tiny white Volkswagen, which just screams hipster-mom-in-her-forties, and he speeds off at a velocity that tiny Volkswagen beetles were not meant to go at.

Surprisingly enough, you make it to the wedding venue with a few minutes to spare, which you largely attribute to the fact that Seokjin was driving faster than some of the SUVs on the highway on the way over. He isn’t a bad or reckless driver. He’s just a driver with certain priorities that rank higher than the act of driving itself.

“Ah, the smell of nervousness and love,” Seokjin says as you step out of the car, inhaling dramatically. “Smells like a wedding.”

“Smells like the ceremony is about to begin,” you say, and you both rush over the pebbled path to the entrance, giggling like a bunch of high schoolers as you stumble through the front doors very ungracefully.

“Wow,” Seokjin says, impressed at the extent of decoration. Cynthia had been raving on and on about how she was aiming to have a sort of romantic, Impressionist art painting vibe to the wedding, lots of pastels, flowers, twinkling lights. “This is very impressive. One hundred out of ten.”

“Cynthia’s been planning this for months, so I’m sure she’ll be pleased to hear it,” you say, ushering yourselves into the main wedding hall as the rest of the guests file in from chatting outside as the clock ticks down. There are two seats close to the front that Cynthia’s saved for you and your plus-one, which she most certainly will be very happy to see you have brought with you, in the form of your best friend, Seokjin, of course.

“Aren’t you excited?” Seokjin whispers as everyone settles down. “Can’t you feel the love in the air?”

“It’s not in my genetics to feel that sort of thing,” you retort back, earning a pout from your best friend in return.

“Well, it’s in mine, and let me tell you, Y/N, it feels like love!” He exclaims happily. “You should be basking in it.”

“Are you?” You round on him. No point in not practicing what you preach.

“Always,” Seokjin says, gazing at you happily. He seems so content, in this very moment, about to watch a ceremony that will bond two people together for the rest of their lives, devote themselves to each other, wholly and completely. “I’m always basking in it.”

Then, the officiant steps up to the microphone at the front of the room. Seokjin reaches his hand over to grab yours, letting it rest in his palm on his lap, and the ceremony begins.

Going to weddings as a child, even as an adult to a fairly distant coworker, they’ve always felt so detached from you as a guest. Sure, the ceremonies are wonderful and you’re happy for the newly-married couple, but it’s almost as if you’re watching a movie and instead of being another character, you’re part of the audience. When you leave the wedding venue, when all of the dancing and eating and celebrating is over, you forget all about it, and you move on with your life.

But knowing the two people standing up at the altar as more than just coworkers, or a distant relative, knowing them as friends, as near family, tints everything in a rosy pink. It’s the most beautiful wedding ceremony you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. It’s humbling and real and unrehearsed, romantic and funny and meaningful all at once. It makes you feel warm inside, truly, truly happy for your friend and for what is to come in the next chapter of her life.

Crying was pretty much unavoidable. It was mostly on Seokjin’s end—he’s not as close with either of them as you are, but he certainly loves love much more than you do—but some tears were shed on your end, as well. This is the sort of thing you’d want to talk about for years to come, even after you walk out, in the hopes that a constant reminder will prevent it from ever fading from your memory.

As weddings go, the next part is the best part: free food. You get to your tables and Cynthia’s fancy (and expensive) caterers come whooshing around with bottles of wine and pitchers of water, filling up the glasses on your tables as the wedding party prepares to enter. You’re seated next to some other old friends from college, ones you recognize and ones you don’t, and ones that Seokjin is very happy to start chatting up the moment you take your seats.

“Are you here together?” One of the men—you think his name is Nathan(?)—asks, pointing to the two of you.

“No,” you say.

“Yes,” Seokjin says.

You both turn to glare at each other as Nathan—no, maybe Noah—furrows his brows, clearly having not received the response he was aiming for. Seokjin makes a bunch of aggressive and dramatic facial gestures to remind you that you two are fucking dating, remember? Even though it’s not actually real, and that was the part you were focusing on. The not real part.

“We are,” you correct awkwardly, even though Whatshisface seems to have moved on from the topic. “He’s my plus-one.”

“I’m not as tight with the bride as I am with one of her closest friends,” Seokjin says jokingly, even though you’re the only one who laughs.

“Yeah,” one of the girls chimes in. “You guys were best friends in college.”

“Still are,” you say, grinning. At least you don’t have to lie about that.

“So cute,” the same girl says romantically. “I wish I could fall in love with my best friend,” she turns to the man she’s with who clearly doesn’t want to be here whatsoever. “You guys must be so happy.”

“It’s not always a walk in the park,” Seokjin warns, and you don’t have time to smack him in the chest and ask him what the hell he means by that, as the officiant taps onto the microphone to begin to announce the entrance of the wedding party.

As each couple, each bridesmaid and groomsman, walk through the door, you can’t help but wonder why Seokjin said it wasn’t always a walk in the park to be together. Are you that awful to fake date?

“Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” Cynthia’s father asks, tapping his teaspoon against the wine glass in his hand. “I’d just like to make a toast.” He turns to where Cynthia and her fiancé are seated, and he looks on the verge of tears. “For as long as I’ve lived, I’ve never seen two people love each other so selflessly. When they’re together, they make grey skies turn blue, turn night into day. All I can wish for you both is that you will forever be each other’s best friend, each other’s rock. There is no greater joy in life than to get to spend the entirety of it with your best friend. Congratulations, Cynthia and James. We are so lucky to know you both.”

Everybody begins to clap.

Everybody, except Seokjin.

You notice that his hands are resting in his lap, and when you turn to look at him, you see his eyes welling up, his smile soft and wistful.

“You alright?” You ask quietly, giving him a nudge with your shoulder.

Seokjin looks back at you like you’ve caught him off guard. “Me? Yeah.”

“You’re crying,” you point out.

He shrugs, blinking to let the tears roll down his cheeks. “I just love that,” he explains. “Love knowing that some of us can be so lucky to spend the rest of our lives with our best friends by our sides.”

According to the ancient law of weddings, the reception is where all guests are mandated to get out of their seats and boogie-oogie-oogie. At least, that’s what Seokjin says, when the food gets whisked away and the space morphs into a dance floor, tables in the center cleared as the bride goes to change in her mandated second dress, because one just isn’t expensive enough as it is. Seokjin just seems to know everything about weddings. It’s almost as if he’s planned one himself.

“Just wait until all of the stuffy, traditional dances are over,” Seokjin whispers into your ear as Cynthia and her father share a dance. Seokjin looks like he’s about to jump out of his seat, desperate to get onto the dance floor. “You’ve never seen me dance at a wedding.”

“I’ve never seen you dance at all,” you correct, excluding all of the dabbing he did in 2016 when it was still a cool thing to dab.

“Then you’re in for a real treat,” he says smugly.

Sure enough, the moment the rest of the guests are invited onto the dance floor to drop it low, Seokjin is the first one out of his chair, and you, the second, begrudgingly dragged to the center by your over-enthusiastic best friend. He’s always been absolutely shameless in everything he does, which makes for high confidence and low embarrassment, two things you are certainly not the strongest in. Which is exactly why you end up side-stepping awkwardly like a geek at senior prom, while he uses every single one of his limbs to express his passion for whatever generic pop song is blasting through the speakers.

Cynthia’s never been one for niche, hipster music.

“Come on, Y/N, have a little fun!” Seokjin encourages, grabbing onto your wrist and rapidly waving it up and down, making you shake.

“You can have enough fun for the both of us,” you tell him, still just as aware of everybody else’s opinion of you as you were in high school. Some things really never change.

“Impossible! Come on!” He says, and you have no idea what dance move he’s about to break into from his positioning, and then you suppose you’ll never know, because the song immediately switches to an acoustic one by Ed Sheeran, which is the most generic type of slow song you could possibly think of.

“Grab your boys and girls, everyone,” the DJ says, a random white guy who definitely would prefer to make mixtapes in his basement than do this shit. “This one’s for love!”

You don’t even have time to take another step before Seokjin is grabbing your hand with his own and pulling you in close to him. He holds your one hand out and places his other on your waist, and instinctively, you rest your hand on his shoulder.

When you went to senior prom in high school, your date was this terribly nervous friend of a friend, who asked you because you both didn’t have a real date to go with, and you figured it would be better to go with an acquaintance than nobody at all. And it was sort of fun, because you sat at a table with all of your friends and ate decent senior prom food, and it wasn’t in your stinky high school gymnasium but a fairly nice country club. But when the only slow song of the night came on, thus ensued the most awkward three minutes of your entire high school career.

This is by no means an exact science, but you figure that the people you are closest to are the people you can slow dance with without it being terrible and awkward and awful. You did it with your parents when you were a little girl in the living room of your family home. You did it with Cynthia at two in the morning one night when she had just gotten dumped by this absolutely rotten boy.

And now, you’re doing it with Seokjin. And it isn’t terrible or awkward or awful at all. You sway to the soft strums of the guitar and it feels just right. The feeling of his hand in yours, on your waist, of yours on his shoulder. There’s less than a six inches of distance and you feel as close as you have always been. Seokjin feels so natural. He always has, and you know that he always will. There’s no doubt when it comes to him, no regret.

“Isn’t this nice?” Seokjin asks, grinning at you.

“Only because it’s with you,” you say back with a smile. Seokjin beams.

Later, when the slow dance is over and you make your way back to your table so you can watch your best friend make a fool of himself from a distance. Cynthia drops by, blissful.

“I knew you’d bring Seokjin! He’s charming the pants off of my mom as we speak,” Cynthia says happily. You both crane your neck to see him teaching Cynthia’s mom the floss, outdated as per usual.

“Yeah, I mean,” you say with a shrug, “who else was I going to bring?”

“He makes you happy, doesn’t he?” Cynthia asks. She looks proud. She deserves it.

You turn back to look at Seokjin, on the verge of tears of laughter as Cynthia’s mom successfully flosses for the first time. He’s so wonderful. The light of your damn life. “Yeah. He does.”

When the fair comes to town, you don’t find out from posters stapled to utility posts and taped to traffic lights. Nor do you find out from word of mouth, from the two strangers in your favorite (slightly overpriced) coffee shop ahead of you in line. It’s not even your coworkers who mention it to you in passing one day because their eight-year-old has been begging them to go but they can’t because they have a dentist appointment.

It is, because who else would it be, of course, Seokjin, who texts you at 4:18PM on that Saturday and says:

[May 27th, 4:18PM]

Seokjin: I’m on my way over to your apartment to pick you up Seokjin: Don’t ask questions

And it is, in every possible way, the scariest thing you have ever received on your phone. Seokjin’s always been one for spontaneity, but ever since the two of you graduated and stopped feeling the urge to go out to McDonald’s at three in the morning, random activities have become less of a rule and more of an exception. But it’s a Saturday, which means you don’t have to go to work, and it’s near-evening, which means you’ve been sitting at home doing absolutely nothing all day as it is. And it’s May, which means that the sun only sets at seven at night and there is so much to be done in this wonderful weather.

So, Seokjin’s on his way.

You spend the next seven minutes (Seokjin lives approximately eight minutes by car from where you live, not that you’re counting, or anything) changing out of the yoga pants you’ve been wearing since you returned from work Friday evening and trying to make yourself look as presentable as possible. You don’t know where he’s taking you. He could be bringing you to an alley to murder you for your inheritance. He’s definitely on your will, that’s for sure. You want to look nice.

Seven minutes later, you see his tiny white Volkswagen pull up outside your apartment complex as you’re slipping on some sandals. He hops out of the driver’s seat and scurries into the lobby, which signals to you that he is a man on a mission, and you are simply the best friend who gets roped along for the ride. He knocks on your door thirty seconds after that, and you linger for a few moments so as not to seem like you’ve been anxiously awaiting his arrival.

“Let’s go,” Seokjin declares in lieu of a hello. He reaches out to grab onto your wrist, pulling you out of the door as you frantically make sure you have your bag with you, otherwise you’ll be phone-less, key-less, and lip-balm-less. Three equally terrible fates.

“What? Now? No explanation, nothing?”

“I parked in the no parking fire lane with my blinkers on, which means we have to go right now. We also have to go because I am very excited about where we are going,” Seokjin elaborates, though it does nothing to clarify the situation at hand. Other than the fact that if you don’t get into his car right now, he’s got a ticket to pay.

“But where are we going?” You ask again, as Seokjin and you scramble down the stairs to make it to his Volkswagen before the security guard in the lobby starts shouting at him for his illegal parking job.

“The fair!” Seokjin says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Did you see it was in town?”

“No,” you say dumbly.

“Oh,” Seokjin says awkwardly. “Well, it is, and I feel like we haven’t seen each other in a while—”

“It’s been three days.”

“—and we haven’t gone out on a real date yet, you and me.” Seokjin explains as you get to his car. Luckily, there is no angry security guard nor a ticket underneath his windshield wiper, so you slide into the passenger seat and he drives off.

“Yes, we have,” you object. “Cynthia’s wedding counts as a real date.” He was literally your plus-one. What more could define the word ‘date’?

Seokjin scrunches his nose up in clear disagreement. “No, it doesn’t,” he argues back. “Cynthia was going to tear your arm off if you didn’t bring me with. That was a date out of obligation.”

“Aren’t all of these dates out of obligation?”

You expect some sort of witty response, but instead, you’re met with silence as Seokjin opens the driver’s side door, the two of you looking over the top of his Volkswagen wordlessly, each waiting for something.

What? It’s not like you’re wrong. Seokjin is taking you out on dates to get a feel for what a real, blossoming relationship is like. Except this isn’t real, and your relationship is far from blossoming. It’s bloomed, already. Into an irreplaceable friendship.

“Yeah, well,” Seokjin sputters, for once in his life, speechless. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, sitting roughly in the driver’s seat as you get into the passenger side, watch as he fumbles to put the keys into the ignition. “Don’t you want to know what a first date is supposed to be like?”

“You don’t have to take me on a fake first date just to spend time with me,” you tell him, the two of you facing forward, staring at the road in front of you as he drives. The radio is playing, some generic alternative rock song that neither of you are familiar enough to warrant turning up the volume for. Seokjin’s always preferred listening to the radio over his own music. Something about ambience while he drives. “We can spend time together wherever. Even if we’re just in my apartment.”

Seokjin’s wonderful and the best and one of the (if not the) greatest people you’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, but he doesn’t need to do all of this for you. It’s enough for him to text you in the morning to remind you to drink a glass of water before you eat anything to wake your body up. Enough for him to leave leftovers from your dinner nights in your fridge, so you can savor the taste of his food after he’s gone home. Enough for the two of you to be as you used to be, as you always have been and always will be.

Seokjin scoffs, honking at a driver who sped through a red light. “Those aren’t dates, Y/N,” he explains like it’s the most obvious thing in the entire world. “They’re just ways that we spend time with each other.”

“So then what makes this a date? What’s the difference?” You demand. Seokjin’s not making any sense. Sure, you aren’t nearly as well-versed in the dating scene as he is, certainly haven’t been on as many as he has, but from your limited knowledge, you’d always thought that what makes a date is not the setting, not the time or location, but the person you spend it with.

Arguably, that would mean that all of the nights and days you’ve spent with Seokjin could, by that definition, be dates, but that’s obviously not the case. You’ve always just been friends.

“It’s a date because I say it is,” Seokjin declares. “You wanna know what makes a date? It’s when the two people—or more, depending on how you swing—decide that it is a date. It’s just a label.”

“If it’s just a label, then why are you making such a big deal out of it?” You ask. You know you’re being a bit annoying with all of the questions at this point, but who’s to say you couldn’t have spent the evening curled up in your apartment and called that a date as well?

“Because,” Seokjin begins, sighing. His hands are gripping the steering wheel so hard, his knuckles are turning white. “Because,” he repeats, “if someone really wants to impress you, then they will make a big deal out of it. Because you deserve it.”

Eventually, Seokjin pulls into the giant open field designated for parked cars, and expertly squeezes into this tiny space between two absolutely massive SUVs, likely once filled with five children and two very, very tired parents. Sure, you both only have about six inches of space to shimmy out of his car, but it was a good parking job nonetheless.

“Get you a boyfriend who can park as well as I can,” Seokjin says, patting himself on the back as you head towards the entrance.

“Why would I need a boyfriend when I have you?” You tease back.

You wait for a cheeky response from Seokjin, turning to look at him when he delivers the blow, but it never arrives. Instead, Seokjin reaches a hand down to grab onto yours, and you walk hand in hand towards the entrance, wordless. He pays, which makes you angry, but he tells you that you can buy a funnel cake for you to share to make up for it, and that’s good enough.

In movies and books, a fair is a very high-school event for people to attend. Lots of bright flashes of color, loud noises, and junk food, which are three things that society believes deters anyone over the age of nineteen from attending. You can’t name a single piece of pop culture that features two fully-grown adults eating cotton candy and sitting in a ferris wheel carriage. Because the moment you turn twenty, your back starts to permanently ache and noises louder than the sound of your refrigerator making ice give you a headache, of course.

Seokjin, of course, has never been one to let the media define him.

He lights up like New Year’s Eve the moment you walk through the gates. Like a child on Christmas day.

There’s a difference between being immature and being youthful that people often fail to realize, confusing the two, or worse, thinking they’re the same thing. But there are sixteen-year-olds out there who are more mature than middle-aged adults, and there are middle-aged adults who still act like they’re going through puberty. Seokjin was immature when you first met him, the same way all college freshmen are, but over the years lost that mindset while still never parting with the youthful part of himself, the part filled with childlike wonder, with innocence and hopefulness. It has always been part of him.

When Seokjin looks at the world, he sees it bathed in light, in color. He sees people in their most wonderful form. Sees every day, every moment, as something worth remembering. Sees the future as something worth looking forward to.

You’ve always envied that about him. Perhaps it’s just in your nature, but you’ve always been jaded, a little cynical.

A realist and a dreamer.

And they always say that opposites don’t really attract.

Here at the fair, Seokjin is more than prepared and willing to have enough fun for the both of you, even as you pull up to one of those impossible-to-win water-squirter games. He’s already pulling out his wallet to hand a couple of bills to the angsty-looking teenager behind the booth.

“You know that these are totally rigged, right?” You ask, chuckling to yourself as Seokjin rubs his hands together with a wide-eyed excitement.

“Just because they’re rigged doesn’t mean winning is impossible,” Seojin says confidently, taking a seat and gearing up to begin. You stand to the side, arms crossed, waiting to be sufficiently unimpressed. “What are you doing standing there? I paid for both of us.”

Before you know it, Seokjin is pulling you down into the seat next to him as the teen counts down, giving you a very monotonous three seconds before the bell rings and you have to aim weakly-pressurized water into the mouth of a faded plastic clown.

You’ve never had the best hand-eye coordination. On multiple occasions, Seokjin has tossed you a fruit, a bag of rice, something non-dangerous and relatively large, and on multiple occasions, you fumble to grab it and it eventually ends up on your kitchen floor. It takes you about half of the minute you’re given to blow up the balloon to get your aim straight, and by then, Seokjin’s balloon could eat yours for lunch.

“Pick up the pace, Y/N!” Seokjin teases, relishing in his lead. This is embarrassing, and you’re better than this. And yet.

“It’s working against me and you know it!” You defend yourself. Because their unfairness is the reason Seokjin’s about to win and you’re about to lose.

“How can you say that when I’m doing so well?” Seokjin laughs, and his balloon pops the moment that the sixty-second countdown ends, an underwhelming blare of celebratory music playing through the speakers at the corners of the tent.

A sad little “Better luck next time!” echoes from the clown in front of you, and you slam your water gun on the table as Seokjin gloats in your face, the teenager coming over to hand Seokjin his prize, looking dead on his feet.

“What should I get, hmm?” Seokjin asks.

The selection is pretty weak. A lot of Frozen merchandise, two-dollar stuffed Olafs and capes with Anna and Elsa’s faces on the back. A couple of nondescript stuffed animals, from glittery lizards to pastel teddy bears. What looks like a generic-brand Whoopee cushion.

“You don’t want a stuffed Olaf?” You ask innocently. The design is a little off, so it looks like Olaf is staring into your soul, Mona Lisa-style.

“Hmm,” Seokjin says, pretending to think about it. The poor kid looks like he’s about to faint from boredom, desperate for two fully-grown adults to stop acting like they don’t know what prize to pick from an amusement park booth. “How about the pink teddy bear?”

Very on-brand for him. The teen hands it to Seokjin and the two of you go on your merry way, Seokjin demanding the two of you go to stuff your faces with funnel cake before rounding out the night on the ferris wheel.

“For you,” Seokjin says, holding the teddy bear out to you as the two of you stand in the surprisingly-long line for funnel cake.

“Me?” You ask, eyebrows raised in disbelief as your fingers curl around the fluffy fabric. It’s softer than you thought it would be.

“Yeah,” Seokjin says, certain. “To remind you of me.”

You grin, holding the bear close to you. Sure, it’s a little bit kindergarten, like the cute boy on the playground placing a quick kiss on your lips before the teacher calls everybody in after recess ends, but the gesture is more than enough. To know that Seokjin won something, even something as plain and inexpensive as a prize from a fair, and his first and only thought was to give it to you, well, that makes you happy. “I don’t need a bear to be reminded of you,” you muse. Not when there are pieces of your friendship lingering everywhere you walk, from your apartment to your old university to your mind.

“Can’t hurt to know you’re always thinking about me,” Seokjin says, and it’s not greasy or smug or weird. It’s honest.

You laugh. “When am I not?”

Funnel cake starts with a black t-shirt and the two of you arguing over who’s going to foot the ten dollar bill, much to your dismay. Even though Seokjin had explicitly said that you could pay, since he covered your entrance ticket, he still makes a big deal about doing it himself in front of the poor funnel cake girl, who definitely doesn’t get paid nearly enough to watch two grown adults fight over a ten dollar funnel cake. Eventually, you get your way and successfully hand the girl a ten dollar bill and she hands you a paper plate piled high with funnel cake as you begin to search for an open place to sit.

“Just because I said that you could pay for the funnel cake doesn’t mean I actually meant it,” Seokjin says with a frown as you scope out a place to sit. At evening’s peak, it’s nearly impossible, which leads the both of you to a curb next to a recycling bin piled high with plastic cups, stained with Coca Cola and Fanta, knees up to your chin as you crouch over a single plate of funnel cake.

“Isn’t this cozy,” Seokjin says with a grin as a burly middle-aged dad steps on Seokjin’s clean white sneakers to throw something away.

“We’ve been in more cramped quarters before,” you say. One of the many instances that immediately comes to mind is when the two of you were trapped in a closet in a frat house for nearly two hours because two people on the other side were having sex, the entire time. It was a good bonding experience. The two of you got very acquainted with each other’s scents.

Seokjin’s hasn’t changed. Still sweet, sugary and vanilla from all of the baking he does, and a little bit like raindrops.

You wonder if Seokjin thinks the same about yours.

“You know I don’t mind where we are and what we’re doing when I’m with you,” Seokjin says, and it sounds like a line straight out of a Hallmark movie, cheesy and cliche and rehearsed. But it’s none of those things. Seokjin says it and it’s real. And it’s the sort of thing that makes you wonder if you’re ever as true with him as he is with you.

“Even when we’re sitting on the ground and eating funnel cake next to a recycling bin in a fair filled with messy children and their deadbeat parents?” You ask.

Seokjin nods, taking an enormous bite of funnel cake. “Yes, even then.”

“True love,” you muse. Very few people would you do this for. Seokjin is one of them.

Seokjin coughs at the words, his whole body shaking, and the powdered sugar from the piece in his hands goes flying, like a tiny little blizzard, falling onto his skin, his shirt, his lips, and everywhere in between. Snowflakes.

Funnel cake ends with Seokjin trying to wipe the white dust on the front of his pitch black t-shirt away with a napkin, and only smearing it further into the fabric, cotton turning sticky from the sugar. It looks like a cocaine bust gone wrong. It looks only slightly not-kid-friendly.

“Am I addicted to cocaine or did I just spill powdered sugar on myself?” Seokjin jokes, much to the horror of a family passing by, the mom giving you and Seokjin an alarmed expression as she picks up the pace. “It was powdered sugar!” Seokjin calls after them, making the two of you laugh. “Or it was cocaine. Whatever you want to believe.”

“You’re too soft to do cocaine,” you tell Seokjin, a very strange sort of compliment.

“Maybe powdered sugar, though,” Seokjin says with a laugh as you heave yourselves off of the curb, tossing out the paper plate and dusting off your hands, flakes of powdered sugar falling to the ground. “Ferris wheel?”

“Anything you want,” you tell him, letting him lead you towards the ride, lit up like a Christmas tree.

It’s as if every possible holiday threw up on the damn thing, a jumble of rainbow flights flashing erratically as a generic carnival tune plays in the background, sluggishly moving on its axis. It couldn’t have been built before this century.

You squeeze into the carriage, clearly built to fit a child and their father at most, let alone two adults who both don’t have a regular exercise schedule. In order to fit, you have to stretch a leg over Seokjin’s lap and lean so that part of your shoulder is against his chest. It’s… cozy. It’s most definitely not the most cramped either of you have ever felt.

“This is the part where I pretend to yawn and then stretch my arm over you,” Seokjin says matter-of-factly, as if that particular action is a mandatory part of the date.

“Oh, is that proper first-date etiquette?” You tease.

“Only for me,” Seokjin says, cheeky, and it’s the greasiest thing you’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing. Even so, you let him fake yawn, melodramatic and totally contrived, feel as his arm comes to rest on your shoulder, hand swinging down over your side. Instinctively, you reach up to grab it with your arm, letting the two of you sit like this as the ferris wheel creaks, slowly moving you upwards. “Aren’t you having the best first date ever?”

“It’s the only one I can remember,” you admit, especially since it’s still in progress.

“That means it’s the best.” Seokjin grins.

“And the worst,” you add on, making Seokjin laugh.

Finally, finally, finally, you reach the top, overlooking the entire fair, lit up in the night in a warm pink and yellow haze. At this hour, only the teenagers are left, families having gone home for the night, and you can hear the cheers even from up here, hear the laughter and jokes and chatter. it’s a sort of ambience you’ve never had the pleasure of listening to before. One of an active night, filled with people, and you, far away enough to be out of the action but close enough to enjoy it nonetheless.

“Isn’t this nice, Y/N?” Seokjin asks, the two of you looking out into the distance, wishing you could stay like this forever. “When we’re up here, it feels like I can forget about everything and just think about now.” If only you could stay like this forever.

“And what are you thinking about, right now?” You ask, head resting on his shoulders.

Instinctively, his arm moves from your shoulder to your waist, tugging you into his side, letting you rest your legs on top of his own. Seokjin’s never needed to be more honest than he already is. He says what he means, and he means what he says.

It’s always been so easy when it comes to him.

He lets out a breath, and you can feel his chest rising beneath your hand on his torso, feel the subtle beat of his heart beneath your fingers.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

He rests his head atop yours. “You,” he says.

Seokjin, a man of his word, holds up his end of the deal like he does everything else: honestly and fully. Little has really changed about your relationship dynamic—he still sends you good morning texts and reminds you that you need to drink your eight glasses of water (which you never do, and he consistently does because he’s an organized man with perfect skin). Still randomly comes to your apartment with two brown bags filled with groceries to last you the next two weeks. Still makes time for you.

But now, it’s all being done under the guise of courtship. Of what it’s like to have someone romantically interested in you.

Of course, Seokjin’s not actually romantically interested in you, but he does a damn good job of pretending to be. For the sake of this whole thing. Seokjin still has one objective in mind: get you to believe in love again, and that all of these things he’s been doing, from taking you to the fair to dancing with you at Cynthia’s wedding, are means to accomplish an end.

(The stuff in between, the texts, the calls, the visits, those are just part of your routine.)

It feels completely normal and totally unnatural, all at once. Like a new kind of relationship neither of you have really ever delved in before, toeing the line between friendship and this other feeling, one without a name. Seokjin will do something that you and he have always done, long before any of this was in motion, like ordering Indian takeout to your place unprompted, and then he will say that that’s what people are supposed to do when they’re courting someone. As if he is the end-all be-all of chivalry.

Truth be told, you can’t wait for this to end, for things to go back to the way they were. You never did set an official fake breakup date (if that’s what it’s even called), but you suppose that that means that you can just call it off whenever you’d like. You don’t feel as though anything he’s doing is working. He treats you just the same. What is there to fall in love with, other than familiarity?

But Seokjin’s diligence makes you diligent, too, which is why you’re standing in your kitchen, outnumbered by vegetables (ten to one, which means they could definitely kill you if given the chance—and opposable thumbs), a gigantic pot on your creaky gas stove, boiling soup swirling inside. Even though your kitchen is nowhere near the level of organized and systematic as the Chopped set, it certainly smells like it. Your cooking can hardly compare to Seokjin’s (you roughly chopped vegetables and put them in broth, he makes kimbap for fun), but, like all other aspects of your life, he rubs off on you, one way or another.

Seokjin seems to think that this transference of his personality will apply to how he feels about love, too. But time can only work so much magic, and ever since freshman year of college, for the seven years you’ve known him, it’s always been like this.

You let the soup simmer on your stove as you begin to pack up the food scattered on your counter, unsure when next you’re going to use it, especially since your daily meals usually consist of leftovers and, if you’re feeling exotic, stir-fry. It’s then that you hear the knock on your door, and you don’t even need to think before you’re scurrying over to pull it open, revealing Seokjin leaning over to peek happily into your peephole.

“Look who it is, for a change,” you say sarcastically.

“You mean your favorite human being in the entire world who is about to take you to see his mom and enjoy a nice home-cooked mom meal?” Seokjin corrects obnoxiously, making you laugh as you let him inside.

“You blackmailed me into this,” you remind him, pointing an accusing metal soup ladle his way. “You convinced me that you’re doing me a favor by treating me like someone you’d want to court, and tricked me into making an enormous pot of soup for your mother!” A lose-lose situation.

“I am doing you a favor,” Seokjin defends. “Don’t you love having a doting, attractive young professional taking you out to fairs and ordering you take-out? This is what the beginning of a relationship is supposed to look like.” Emphasis on supposed to. “Also, I accompanied you to Cynthia’s wedding after she had been talking your ear off trying to get you to bring a plus-one, so…”

A dirty, dirty play.

“Fine, you win,” you concede. You did really appreciate him coming, especially so last minute. “I better hear nothing but pure, unadulterated praise coming from your lips when you eat my soup, or else.”

“I would have showered compliments on your soup even if you hadn’t sent me a thinly-veiled threat,” Seokjin says proudly. “What kind of a best friend would I be if I didn’t?”

Perhaps one that confused you a little less.

You spend the entire car ride to Seokjin’s mom’s house (who lives forty-minutes out of the city) listening to him ramble on about how desperately his mother wants him to get married, settle down and have kids or a dog or two. The two of you still have half of your twenties to go, but the moment he graduated, Seokjin got a steady job and a nice apartment in the city, which immediately equates to marriage material.

At least, that’s what his mom thinks.

But those aren’t the sort of things that make Seokjin marriage material. You’ve known him for years. Ever since he first spoke to you, it was immediately obvious he was always the sort of perfect, dreamboat husband material that teenage girls fawn over, that characters in anime fantasize about.

At the most basic level, Seokjin is goddamn attractive, and even if you’ve seen him in nothing but tighty-whities as a nervous eighteen-year-old, seen him with tomato sauce in his hair, seen him sick with a cold and strep throat, you can’t deny him that. He’d got the sort of looks that make people on the street take photos of him, thinking he’s a celebrity.

But not only is Seokjin undoubtedly gorgeous, he’s an entire package. He’s an excellent cook, capable of impressing any and all parents, hilarious, charming and charismatic. Professional but never dull. He does his part in group projects, studies for his exams, listens to the music recommendations you give him even if they aren’t his style. The girls he dated in college knew exactly what they were doing when they went out with him. They were attempting to secure their future. It’s a shame none of them stuck, not like you, Elmer’s glue on his skin.

Seokjin’s mom, the lovely woman she is, is under the impression that Seokjin became husband material when he graduated, got a job and moved to the city. But you know better than anyone—Seokjin’s always been husband material. Now, he’s just old enough that he knows he could be looking for himself.

When you pull into Seokjin’s mom’s driveway, a little suburban home with a freshly-mowed font lawn and flowers by the mailbox, she’s already opening the front door and scurrying out, still wearing her slippers.

“Eomma!” Seokjin says happily, getting out of the driver’s seat as she bounds towards him, the two of them wearing the same smiles on their faces. Like mother, like son. “It’s been a while.”

“Too long!” She chides, smacking him slightly. “You have to come and visit me more often. I don’t live that far away from you.”

“I’m busy, Ma,” Seokjin says with a roll of his eyes. “I have a job.”

“A job and no wife!” She exclaims, though her attitude immediately changes the moment you exit the car, pot of soup still warm in your hands. “Y/N!”

She rushes over to give you a hug as well, albeit a much more careful one. She looks positively thrilled to see you. Seokjin’s mom has always liked you, even when you were an insufferable eighteen-year-old. They would invite you over for their Chuseok celebrations every year, and sometimes to their New Year’s Eve parties, if you were in the area over winter break.

“No wife yet, Eomma,” Seokjin says.

“You look so pretty, Y/N,” Seokjin’s mother tells you. She takes the pot from your hands wordlessly, refusing to listen to your protests as she shoos you both inside.

The house smells of a home-cooked meal, savory and salty and sweet all at once, and you can see several dishes already laid out on the table. It’s both a familiar sight and scent, something you all too frequently experience whenever you barge into Seokjin’s apartment around mealtime. Seokjin immediately joins his mother in the kitchen, scrambling around to help her finish cooking, as you wait awkwardly by the table, easily the most inexperienced of the three of you.

“Is this your soup?” His mother asks.

“Yes, I thought to make some to bring tonight,” you say with a smile. Seokjin’s mother beams.

“Delicious! Seokjinie always tells me how much he loves having it when he’s sick. You take care of him very well,” his mother grins. She places it on the stove, turning on the heat to warm it up.

“Only because he does the same for me,” you say, sending a grin Seokjin’s way, one he returns instantly.

The rest of the meal preparation (which doesn’t take long, especially with an extra pair of equally-gifted hands) goes by like this, Seokjin’s mother heaping compliments onto you as you stand there, helpless, watching as the two add the final dishes to the dining table. Seokjin dodges every question about his lack of engagement, always deflecting and shifting the topic to something you’ve done. Maybe this is why he wanted you around…

Finally, when dinner is ready, the three of you sit down, eager to pick up your chopsticks and dive in.

“Seokjin’s father is away on business,” his mother explains after you note the empty place setting. “He sends his love!”

“I knew I was missing the dad jokes,” Seokjin says with a shake of his head. “Luckily, I can make up for them with my own.”

Seokjin’s mother laughs. “You must get a lot of this, don’t you?” She shoves an extra serving of fish onto your plate, letting it plop on top of the kimchi she had previously spooned onto the dish. “Eat, eat. I made it for you.”

“Oh, thank you,” you say with a smile. You’ll probably walk out of this house with a food baby the size of Jupiter. You always do. “And yes, but it’s nice. I like spending time with him.”

“Oh, thank God,” Seokjin says dramatically, a hand to his chest. “I was worried about that, for a second.”

“You two have always been inseparable,” his mother comments. “Don’t tell me this is why you haven’t married yet, Seokjin-ah.”

“What do you mean, Ma?” He asks over a mouthful of naengmyeon. “You know that I’m waiting to get married.”

Seokjin’s mother scoffs, shocked. “What? But Y/N’s right here! You two make an excellent couple.”

“Eomma!” Seokjin admonishes, even a little taken aback himself. You had no idea this was the secret plan his mother’s been plotting, all this time. It seems both you and him were just operating under the assumption that she was doing what all mothers do when their children are adults—dreaming out loud for grandchildren.

“I’m sorry, did I misread something? You two are a couple, aren’t you?” His mother asks, positively bewildered. No wonder she’s been grilling Seokjin so hard about getting married. She had thought he was halfway there, already.

You open your mouth to correct her, but your mind gets the best of you. Isn’t this what Seokjin wants? For people to think you’re a couple? For the true dating experience—are they, aren’t they?

“No, Eomma,” Seokjin says, interrupting your thoughts. You turn to him, brows furrowed in confusion. “We’re just friends.”

Nobody mentions marriage, dating, or love for the rest of the meal.

You excuse yourself to the bathroom once everyone is finished, Seokjin’s mother shooing you away from the kitchen sink, refusing to let you partake in any sort of clean up as the honorary guest. You’re glad to get away, the tension palpable and thick, looming over your heads, a reminder to all three of you that friends is all you have been, and friends is all you will ever be. Strangely enough, Seokjin had seemed the most disappointed out of all of you, even more so than his mother, whose dreams of grandchildren were crushed before her eyes.

You wonder why.

If Seokjin had been so adamant about the two of you calling yourselves a couple at the wedding, then why did he backtrack here? Was it his mother? Was it you? What could have made him change his mind?

As you walk back to the kitchen, you can hear the two of them having a conversation, hushed voices so as not to alert you. You take a step back from the entryway, hiding behind the wall to eavesdrop.

“You must see the way she looks at you, Seokjin-ah,” his mother says.

“No, Ma, that doesn’t mean anything,” Seokjin says, voice cold.

“Yes it does, my boy,” she says. “Can’t you see it? The way she cares for you.”

“That’s just how it’s always been.”

“Seokjin-ah, please. You’re being stubborn.”

“Eomma, believe me, I know better than anyone else that we’re only ever going to be friends.”

“You don’t see it, then?” His mother’s voice is sad, helpless. “The way she loves you.”

You hear Seokjin suck in a breath, a deep, heavy inhale, weighed down by his thoughts. At that moment, you decide to round the corner, pretending like you haven’t hear a thing.

“Y/N!” Seokjin’s mother exclaims happily. “Your soup was delicious. You’ll have to come over more often so I can keep having it.”

“I’ll have Seokjin send home a thermos with it,” you joke, lightening the tension you can still feel lingering in the air.

“Ah, you’re too kind!” She says, sending you a warm smile. Seokjin hasn’t turned around from where he’s facing the sink, yellow rubber gloves up to his elbows as he scrubs the dishes clean. “Seokjin-ah, you must remember to bring Y/N more often. I love seeing her.”

“Yes, Eomma,” Seokjin says dutifully. When he finishes, he packs up the leftovers his mother is sending him home with, placing tupperware after tupperware into a plain brown bag. “Y/N, ready to go?”

“Yes, it’s getting late,” you say, the words stiff on your tongue. Seokjin seems closed off, bottled up. There’s something he’s not saying, and you can feel it weighing on his tongue. “it was lovely to see you again.”

“Of course!” Seokjin’s mother grins. “You must visit me again soon. I’ll be waiting!”

“Bye, Eomma,” Seokjin says as you head to the front door, pulling on your shoes as he opens the door. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Remember what I said, alright, Seokjin-ah?” His mother says, pulling him in for a hug. “You mustn't ignore what’s right in front of you.” You can’t help but wonder if maybe, you had overheard something you weren’t supposed to.

In the car, you ask, “What was your mom talking about? When we were saying goodbye?”

Seokjin shrugs, nonchalant and calm. It’s so plain that it’s uncharacteristic of him. “Oh, nothing.” You hate not knowing what really lingers in his thoughts, rests deep in the pit of his heart. You want nothing more than to reach over and promise him that, no matter what, you’ll always be by his side. “She just wants me to look out for myself.”

Even on this clear night, the moon and stars visible above your heads, your mind (and heart) couldn’t be foggier.

In your freshman year of college, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 had just been released on DVD, digital, and Blu-ray. Seokjin, the eighteen-year-old genius he was, had brought a projector to school that year, and so, one chilly November weekend, you and him set up in an empty lounge with a perfectly white wall and watched (spoiler alert) Voldemort get Avada Kedavra-ed at one in the morning.

Ever since, monthly movie nights have been ingrained into your routine, even when Seokjin was in London for a semester in your junior year and you used a shady website so you could stream Netflix movies together. You think, that semester, you watched every Certified Rotten movie on Netflix possible, relishing in being able to joke about how terrible the films you were watching with your best friend. You almost thought you would break your tradition, just because of how difficult it was to organize.

But still, you persisted.

Of course, now, in the age of platform subscriptions and renting on YouTube, it’s a lot easier. Seokjin has a subscription to every movie-streaming platform under the sun, which means that by default, so do you. One of the many perks of having Seokjin as your best friend.

As two mostly-functioning adults in the real world, this is how your movie nights typically go: you will alternate apartments as the designated living room of the weekend, the host is in charge of arranging a pre-show dinner, and the guest is in charge of bringing a bottle of wine as a gift. You eat dinner, drink wine, and watch a movie together, either on the couch, or, in emergencies, in bed. The host always chooses. Three years out of college and running, neither of you have been able to come up with a system more foolproof than this.

Tonight, it is Seokjin’s turn to host, which you always prefer because he cooks dinner on his own instead of giving up and ordering takeout like you always do, and because his couch and bed are much more comfortable than your own. Not that you frequent his bed. Because you don’t. You just know that from your limited experience, it’s much more comfortable than your own bed. It’s probably his mattress.

When you arrive at his apartment, his door is already cracked open, resting on the door frame as you can hear him whistling a tune you don’t recognize. Almost like he’s been expecting you, or something.

“If you leave your door open like this, you’re gonna get robbed,” you announce, forgoing a hello as you barge inside, the apartment smelling of smokiness. “Whoa, what the hell are you cooking? Lava?”

“I accidentally set off the fire alarm,” Seokjin explains, back turned towards you as he bends down to pull something out of the oven. “That’s why the door’s open.”

“Oh, not because you were expecting a guest?” You tease, placing the bottle of wine on the counter as you join him in the kitchen.

Seokjin turns around to reveal a baking dish with four chicken legs, drenched in a sauce that smells of spice and flavor, charred on the skin. Gourmet restaurants couldn’t even compare.

“No,” he jokes. “I was gonna eat all of this food and drink this wine by myself.”

“Hey, that is my wine!” You shout, making grabby hands towards the neck of the bottle. Seokjin raises a single eyebrow, unimpressed, as he dishes up the food, two chicken legs a piece on some luxurious paper plates. “Fine, I guess we can share.”

“You know you can’t resist me,” Seokjin tells you, and you hate it, because it’s true.

As you finish up, washing the pots and pans as Seokjin puts away the various bottles of seasoning on his counter, some of which you can’t even name, he asks, “Couch or bed?”

You turn, scandalized, swatting him with a fork lathered with soap, “So forward!”

Seokjin rolls his eyes. “Ugh, you know what I mean. You know I don’t mind where we watch our movie.”

(So long as he’s with you.)

You give the two options not another second worth of thought. You’re in the mood to lounge around on Seokjin’s terribly comfortable mattress tonight. You’ve had a rough past week at work, and sometimes, if you complain enough, Seokjin will massage your shoulders as you watch the movie.

“Hmm… bed, please!” You say like a child, wrapping up the dishwashing as Seokjin grabs his laptop from the coffee table by the couch. You skip into his bedroom, giddy and only the tiniest bit wine-drunk, Seokjin following like the heavyweight best friend he is.

Seokjin’s bedroom space has always felt so familiar to you. Plants along the windowsill, shelves with photos of his family, an enormous full-length mirror for gratuitous outfit-of-the-day pictures. Even in college, it felt this warm, this cozy. When you knocked on the wooden door of his dormitory at midnight to go out and get McDonald’s, coming back and gorging out on your McNuggets, it felt like this.

People always say that your bedroom should be your little sanctuary, a home within a house. But instead of your own bedroom giving you that comfort, it’s Seokjin’s. Here, more so than anywhere else, you feel safe. Warm. Loved. There’s something magical to it.

“What are we watching?” You ask happily, jumping onto his bed and grabbing the nearest plushie to hold onto. Seokjin plugs his laptop charger into the nearest outlet and sets it up on a couple of pillows for optimal viewing pleasure, the two of you leaning against a mountain of pillows as he pulls up Netflix.

“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, have you heard of it?” Seokjin asks, clicking play on the movie.

You furrow your brows as you curl into him, letting your head rest on his chest. “Really? I thought you were gonna pick something cool, like Interstellar, or something. Not something my fifteen-year-old cousin loves.”

“First of all, your fifteen-year-old cousin has great taste,” Seokjin tells you, offended. “Secondly, just because this is a teenage romantic comedy doesn’t mean it’s any less cool than Matthew McConaughey in a spacesuit, okay?”

You’re still skeptical. The New York Times gave To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before a pretty decent review, but you have long outgrown your teenage coming-of-age romantic-comedy movie phase, even if you still quote Clueless regularly. As you’ve gotten older, your movie nights have transitioned away from young adult books turned into movies and more towards films that people like Lupita Nyong’o star in, movies with sad endings on purpose. So this is very out of character, especially for a movie junkie like Seokjin, who sends you weekly movie reviews of the latest indie divorce drama.

You snuggle in closer, accepting defeat. It is Seokjin’s turn to choose, after all. And you suppose, that after a long week of unforgiving work, you could use this time to unwind, mindlessly watch a movie geared towards high-schoolers instead of analyzing some unknown French historical drama. “Alright then,” you tell him. “I trust you.”

Famous last words.

You always have a habit of putting your trust into your best friend at the absolute worst times. Example One: In junior year, when he swore that the new salad place on campus was delicious until you got food poisoning from their chicken. Example Two: The summer after you graduated, when he promised you that roller skating was “easy” and “fun”. Example Three: Two months ago, when he blackmailed you into letting him take you out on dates after promising to go with you to Cynthia’s wedding.

Example Four: Right now, as you’re snuggled up together like two birds of a feather, watching two sixteen-year-olds agree to fake date for personal gain. And even though they’re high schoolers, and even though he’s going through with it to get back at an ex-girlfriend and she’s trying to recover from her disastrously-mailed love letters, it feels too similar to be something that Seokjin just happened to stumble upon.

You turn to look up at Seokjin, the movie a distant hum in the background, hardly at the forefront of your mind, but he doesn’t spare you a second glance. Instead, he pulls you in closer, wrapping an arm around your torso as his fingers dance across your own, mindless. He doesn’t have a damn thing to say, a rarity in your relationship, letting the movie do the talking.

I think it’s funny, the boy says as the two main characters sit in this absolutely ancient diner, you say that you’re scared of commitment and relationships, but you don’t seem to be afraid to be with me.

Well, there’s no reason to be, the girl responds casually. Unbothered.

Why’s that? He asks.

She shrugs, nonchalant. Because we’re just pretending.

You feel Seokjin’s grip tighten, feel his skin pressing against your own, the exposed part of your stomach where your shirt has ridden up. It’s almost like he’s afraid to lose you. The mere sensation, one you have felt hundreds, if not thousands of times before, sends shivers down your spine.

“You cold?” He asks softly, pulling up the blanket that’s crumpled up by your feet, placing it gently over your bodies.

You couldn’t care less about the movie playing in front of you. Not when Seokjin’s this close, not when he’s got his arms wrapped around you, not as you feel his soft breaths against your forehead, as he tucks you underneath a blanket. You’re frozen still next to him. You think that even your heart has stopped.

Dozens of movie nights, but never one like this. Dozens of cuddle sessions, dozens of nights in. But this one feels brand new.

Seokjin adjusts himself, turning in towards you. You can’t even feel yourself breathing.

When did this start happening? You ask yourself. Why do your palms feel clammy? Why does his touch leave little embers along your skin?

Traitorously, your mind responds, a question to a question.

Hasn’t it always been like this?

Tuesdays have always been your least favorite day, because they’re Monday’s shitty cousin. They’re far enough into the week to have you not complain about it being the beginning of the week, but they’re too soon into the week to warrant any excitement about it ending. At least, when you wake up to go to work on a Monday, you know it’s a Monday. When you wake up to go to work on a Tuesday, you think it’s a Wednesday. Tuesday is the day of the week that wears a mask and tries to make you think it’s something else.

After the printer jamming, salad dressing getting spilled on your pants, and your coworker losing his cool in the break room and breaking a cabinet door off of its hinges, you think that, when you get called into your boss’s office in the middle of the afternoon, there could be nothing worse for him to tell you.

Instead, you walk out of his office with a brand new job title and a salary increase to match, positively ecstatic as you bounce all the way to your desk, whipping out your phone to text, well, who else?

[June 16, 2:43PM]

You: I GOT IT!!!

Seokjin: OMG SERIOUSLY?? Seokjin: CONGRATS YOU DESERVE IT !!!!

You: thank u jinie 8) now i can buy us more expensive wine for our movie nights

Seokjin: :D Seokjin: I’m so proud of you, you’re amazing!

And it’s the sort of text exchange that makes your heart soar, even more so than the promotion itself, because there is truly nothing more fulfilling than sharing your accomplishments with the people closest to you.

You pack up later than usual that day, sitting at your desk for a little bit longer as you wrap up some emails and reorganize the space, determined to make it suitable for someone who just got a kick-ass raise. You’re leaning underneath your desk to gather your belongings, plopping your phone charger and a couple of nice blue pens into your bag, when you feel a sudden tap on your shoulder, scaring the absolute bejeezus out of you.

“Ow!” You shout as you bang the back of your head on the underside of your desk. Angry and in pain, you turn to face the asshole that’s just given you a bump on your scalp for the next week, only to find your expression lightening the moment you lay eyes on Seokjin, fresh from work with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Shocked and pleasantly surprised, you say, “Oh.”

“Don’t sound so excited to see me,” Seokjin jokes, rolling his eyes as he reaches a hand out to help you up. “You alright? I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

Rubbing the nape of your neck, you shake your head. “No, no, I’m alright. You just caught me by surprise. What’s all this?” You ask as Seokjin reaches his hand towards you, the flowery scent permeating the air around you. The bouquet in his hand is a collection of various pastel-colored flowers, baby’s breath and lilies, carnations and hydrangeas.

“A congratulations,” Seokjin says in lieu of any other sort of explanation. “You deserve it.”

“You make it sound like I’m pregnant,” you tell him, grabbing your bag as you double-check your desk, making sure you haven’t left anything behind.

“Oh my God, are you?” Seokjin asks, eyes wide.

You laugh, shaking your head as you accept the flowers graciously, immediately holding them up to your nose. “No, I’m not, Seokjin. You’d be the first to know. But this is so sweet of you, you didn’t have to come to my work like this.”

“Well, how else am I supposed to pick you up for dinner?”

Stopping in your tracks, you knit your brows together in confusion. “Dinner?”

“The reservation is at 5:45 so we’re already cutting it close,” Seokjin informs you, offering no explanation. “Come on. I had to pull a few strings to get this, so over my dead body will we arrive late.”

Seokjin reaches down to take your hand in his own, giving you no time to ask any more questions as he tugs you out of your office and into his little white Volkswagen, the scent of the flowers filling the air in between the two of you.

When Seokjin somehow manages to get a parking spot a block away from the restaurant in question, your mouth practically drops open.

It’s a cozy Lebanese place, complete with more plants you could ever dream of owning, and an outdoor patio decorated with warm fairy lights, lanterns hanging from strings above your head. It’s been ranked one of the best restaurants in the city for years now, and it is practically impossible to get a table (that is, unless you book a year in advance).

“Seriously?” You ask, in awe, as Seokjin leads you towards the restaurant, the flowers resting safely on the passenger seat.

“Of course,” Seokjin says like it’s nothing. “You deserve it.”

You aren’t a moment too late, the hostess happily seating the both of you at a corner table on the outside patio, the evening breeze sending flutters through your napkins as she hands you your menus and the wine list.

“How did you swing this?” You ask, blown away as Seokjin grins.

“Well, you know my friend, Yoongi?” He asks. You remember him, having met him a couple of times at Seokjin’s few-and-far-between house gatherings. He’s a dainty man with colorful hair who’s got the biggest alcohol tolerance you’ve ever seen. “He’s a food critic, so I had him do me a favor…”

“You didn’t have to do all of that for me,” you say. Seokjin probably owes Yoongi his first-born child, now.

“But I wanted to,” Seokjin says firmly. “What kind of a best friend would I be if I didn’t celebrate something like this with you?”

Seokjin must know, after all of these years, that you aren’t one to make a big deal out of things. That you vastly prefer staying inside, curled up with a good book or an even better best friend, over going out and getting wasted, over eating at a too-expensive restaurant with portions the size of your fingernail, because that’s who you are. And still, he insists, because that’s who he is. Someone who thinks that everybody deserves a little celebration in their lives, a little love from the people closest to them.

“You’d be my best friend no matter what,” you tell him, because it’s true. Because Seokjin has always been and will always be that person: the one you’ll never second-guess. “Even if you had gone home after work and passed out on your couch, you’d still be my most favorite person.”

Seokjin grins. “I’m your favorite person?”

“Well, other than Yoongi,” you tease. “After all, he did get us this reservation.”

“Can’t believe that I’m second best to a friend you’ve met like, twice,” Seokjin says, mock-offended. “How am I supposed to compete with that?”

“You’ll find a way,” you muse. He always does. It’s incredible—ever since you met Seokjin, you don’t think anyone’s ever quite stacked up to him. Nobody has ever compared.

“I’m really proud of you, Y/N,” Seokjin says, the two of you clinking your wine glasses together to celebrate your promotion, celebrate the night, celebrate being together. “You deserved that position more than anybody else.”

“You don’t even know half of my coworkers,” you joke.

“But I know you,” Seokjin reminds you. “And I know that you’re the most hardworking, determined, focused person I’ve ever met. When you want something, you get it.”

“What?” You ask, a hand reaching out over the table to caress his own, thumb rubbing against the back of his hand. “You’re like that, too. You’re honest and real and certain.” They’re traits you’ve always admired about him, things that you wish you could be but know that you’ll never compare to him.

“No,” Seokjin says, with a shake of his head. “I’m really not. I wish, though.”

Seokjin’s the truest person you know. What secret could he be keeping? Why hasn’t he told you? Doesn’t he know that you’d care for him, stay by his side no matter what? Not a damn thing in the world could ever make you leave him.

Your waiter comes around to take your order, and you and Seokjin order a variety of appetizers that you fully intend on sharing with each other. You’ve never really been able to keep to your own plates. There is something so genuinely wonderful about sharing. Afterwards, Seokjin launches into this hilarious story about some old college friends that he had recently heard back from, ones that you’d met once or twice during university but never cemented a real friendship with, unlike Seokjin.

Quite honestly, you couldn’t care less for them or what they’re doing, but Seokjin is so animated, so vivacious and excited to be telling you about them, that his words are music to your ears. Nothing makes you quite as happy as Seokjin when he smiles, when he laughs, when he’s fucking effervescent. His joy brings you joy, and you suppose that that’s really what it means to care for someone. To love them. When even something as simple as being in their presence makes your heart feel lighter.

In the evening light, illuminated by the warm flame of the lanterns littering the sky above you, the fairy lights along the fence that encloses the patio, the house lights from the building next door, Seokjin glows. The way his body bounces as he speaks makes it look like a yellow halo surrounds him, his gold jewelry glinting when it catches the light, shimmering. He looks straight out of a movie, straight off of a red carpet, warm brown eyes and an honest smile to match, charismatic and golden and real.

The craziest part is that he’s always looked like this. Always outshined everybody, no matter his surroundings. Every day, you wonder how on Earth you could have gotten so lucky to have been able to meet him. How blessed you are to be his best friend. How fortunate you are to love him.

When your meal arrives, the two of you take a break from laughing aloud in this ambient, cozy restaurant, likely bothering all of the people within a twenty-feet radius of your table, and dig in, only emitting the occasional groan of pleasure. It’s no wonder this restaurant has been ranked the best in the city for years on end. Every bite explodes on your tongue, decorates your taste buds. You won’t be surprised if, next time you go over, Seokjin’s recreating every dish you have tonight. He’s always had a knack for it, anyway.

“You know,” he says over a mouthful of zucchini, “you’re my favorite person, too.”

Normally you’d say something cheesy and dramatic, something along the lines of a sarcastic I’m touched or even a self-deprecating At least I’m number one at something, but instead, you smile softly to yourself. You always knew you and Seokjin were entwined with each other, but it makes your heart flutter to hear him say it for himself.

“I know,” you murmur. “I’ll never forget that.”

“I don’t know, I just—” Seokjin begins, pausing. It’s not the sort of stop where he’s trying to figure out what words to say. He already knows. He’s just waiting to see if they’re the right ones. “You know, it’s always been you, Y/N. A lot of my life has always been uncertain, but you—you’re the only thing I’m always sure of.”

Afterwards, Seokjin walks you to the door of your apartment, the two of you lingering in the doorway, him refusing to leave and you refusing to say goodbye.

“Don’t forget these,” Seokjin says, handing you the brown paper bag filled with your leftovers, various to-go boxes filled with treats.

“What? I thought you wanted them,” you say, eyes wide. “Don’t you want them as reference for a recipe?”

“No, it’s alright,” Seokjin tells you with a shake of his head. “I’ll remember.”

“Are you sure?” You ask. Seokjin nods, certain. He’s got a steely expression to him, one filled with determination. There’s something he’s not saying, and you’re almost positive it’ll come out tonight. Maybe he knows that you ate that Pop-Tart in junior year. Maybe he’s about to get his revenge. To protect yourself, you smile, telling him, “I had a really nice time tonight, Seokjin. You didn’t have to do all of this for me.”

“I wanted to,” Seokjin repeats. He need offer no other explanation. “Any excuse to spend time with you, I’ll take.”

You laugh. “I suppose that that’s what this whole pretend-dating thing is about, right?”

Seokjin’s face goes blank.

“What?”

“Well,” you say, shrugging as you reach out to grab his hand. “Dinner tonight, isn’t that the sort of thing you’d do on a date? That’s why you took me out to celebrate instead of just bringing over some wine and takeout. I have to admit, you’re pretty good at this whole dating thing. Must be why you offered, right?”

“Y/N, I—”

“All of those romantic things you said, us playing footsie underneath the table, getting the reservation from Yoongi, I mean. You’ve always loved pulling out all of the stops. You’re giving me such unrealistic expectations for dating, you know?” You chide, grinning as you toy with Seokjin’s fingers amongst your own. Looking up at him, he looks frozen solid, gazing at you with an unreadable expression. “Hey, is everything alright?” Your hand trails up to his shoulder, forcing him to meet your eyes with his own.

They’re swirling in ink.

And then, he leans down, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you in, and presses his lips against your own. Shocked, you gasp into his mouth, feel the heat of his lips on yours as he kisses you, fervent and desperate, like he’s got something to prove. You feel your heart race, dropping the brown paper bag by your side on your hardwood floor as he presses in closer, insistent. It’s as if your entire body shuts down at his touch, at the feeling of him against you, on you, surrounding you.

Eventually, your mind comes to, flickering back to life after being entirely short-circuited, and you pull out of his grasp, pushing him away with your palms against his chest, gasping for air.

“Seokjin, what the—”

“I’ve wanted to do that since I met you,” Seokjin tells you, and no longer does what he say sound like a line straight out of the Dating 101 Handbook. It sounds honest, and what once was something you treasured about him has morphed into fear, into words you dread coming from in between his lips.

“No, that’s not—”

“What do you mean?” He asks, insistent. He takes a step towards you, and it makes you take a bigger step back. Being far away from him makes you ache, but being close to him is absolutely unbearable. It’s impossible to know which one your heart would prefer. “That’s how I feel. That’s how I’ve always felt.”

“I can’t—I need—” You stumble over your words, backing up into your living room, hand reaching out to the doorknob. You don’t know what you can’t do. You don’t know what you need. All you know is that your heart hasn’t stopped racing the moment his lips met yours, and that you aren’t sure what will happen if Seokjin stands outside your apartment any longer. “I just—”

“I know,” Seokjin says with a nod. His face is beet red and he looks just as breathless, sending your way a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know that you don’t feel the same. But I just—I wanted you to know.”

“I don’t know what I feel,” you whisper to yourself, eyes boring holes into your shoes. “How could I?”

“Y/N,” Seokjin says, reaching a hand out. “I’m sorry—”

“No,” you interrupt. “Don’t apologize. Just—please, just go. Please.”

Seokjin doesn’t protest. Not as you shoo him away, not as you begin to close the door in front of him.

The door is nearly shut, barely inches away from the door frame, when you hear him call your name. “Y/N,” he says. If you were any more heartless, you’d shut the door, let the last thing you hear from him be your own name. But you aren’t, and not once have you ever closed the door on Seokjin. Not now. Not ever.

“Yes?” You whisper, terrified of what he might say but too desperate to avoid it altogether.

You hear him hiccup. You don’t want to see him cry.

“You’re my best friend.”

(Kim Seokjin prides himself for being a man of few mistakes. He has good time-management skills, triple checks his entire apartment every time he leaves, and only illegally parks in the fire lane when he knows he won’t get a ticket. He’s got great foresight, makes educated decisions, and generally feels as though everything he does will benefit somebody, in the long run.

You always tell him that you envy how put-together his life is, how picture perfect it seems—stable job, nice apartment, meals prepped and ready to go in his fridge. And even if you aren’t nearly as obsessed with falling in love as he is (and he’s willing to admit that, at least), you tell him that it’s admirable that he has all of this time to go on dates with women he’s met off of Bumble or through a friend of a friend, making an effort to go out into the world and do something with his love life.

The truth is, Seokjin has been on more dates in the past year than to work events in the evenings and on weekends, but he’s never seen the same person twice. Sometimes, he ends up with a phone number punched into his contacts and a promise to meet again as friends, but most of the time they pat him on the back after it’s over and tell him that they hope he’ll get over his ex soon.

Seokjin hasn’t had a real ex, a real breakup, since sophomore year of college, when his long-distance girlfriend from high school told him she couldn’t bear to listen to him how much he loves his new best friend any longer.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess who that best friend is.

Seokjin’s always been sort of foolish, a little too forward at the best of times and terribly obvious at the worst of times. Always holding out hope that maybe one day you’ll pick up on all of his slip-ups, and he’ll stop acting like a bumbling idiot around you.

Admittedly, he had gotten pretty fed-up by the time he invited you to dinner to celebrate your promotion. He rolled up to your office in a silk button down and a bouquet of the nicest flowers Hoseok could find, brought you to a restaurant you had been dying to go to ever since you moved to the city, and told you that you were the one constant in his life. And he thought that maybe, just maybe, you would realize. And he wouldn’t have to do everything by himself.

It’s a wonder that you hadn’t figured it out.

At least, not until you said goodbye to him, standing underneath the wooden door frame to your apartment, and he leaned down and kissed you.

Seokjin is a man of few mistakes, but he’s almost positive that that one was the most costly. He had been psyching himself up in his head the entire ride home, telling himself I can do it, I’m gonna tell her, what’s the worst you could do?

As it turns out, the worst you could do is reject him.

Seokjin knows you don’t feel the same way. He doesn’t need to go on any dates, doesn’t need to read any more novels or watch any more movies to know that. Maybe you had known all along, you just never knew how to let him down easy. Maybe you were just hoping that if you never acknowledged it, it would go away, age like fine wine, bottled up for an eternity.

But when he was standing in the flower shop, lingering behind the counter as Hoseok insisted he knew the perfect bouquet to make, there was a little spark in his heart that thought, maybe. Just maybe.

“Think she’ll like it?” Seokjin had asked hesitantly, fingers curling around one of the petals of the lilies in the bouquet as Hoseok rang him up.

“What do mean, of course she will!” Hoseok says. He has long been witness to Seokjin’s fruitless efforts to get you to see how he feels. “She’d be a fool not to realize.”

Seokjin’s never been sure if you were the fool, or if he has been, all along.

“I don’t know, Hoseok,” he had said with a sigh, handing over his credit card. “I feel like telling her might be the wrong move.”

“Why? From what it sounds like, you two are really close,” Hoseok had asked innocently. He even shimmied in a tulip, squeezing it into the middle of the bouquet with nimble fingers. “Are you afraid she’ll say no?”

“I’m afraid I’ll ruin everything,” Seokjin had told him. He’d rather keep you close as a best friend than lose you entirely in the hopes of confessing. That has always been his priority. It always will be.

Hoseok had laughed, disbelieving. Seokjin had bitterly assumed that he’s never been in love with a best friend. It sucks hard, but Seokjin was in no position to ruin Hoseok’s day by telling him that. “You won’t ruin everything, Jin. You’re a wonderful guy with a great personality. I think it’s worth telling her, you know?” Seokjin did not know. “Like, if you don’t, you’ll never know what could have been.”

And perhaps that was the reason that he leaned down to press his lips against yours. On the off chance, the miniscule possibility that you might feel the same way. His mother had been absolutely insistent that you were in love with him, and while he trusts his mother’s instincts, Seokjin’s known you much longer and much closer than she ever will. And you were never in love with him. Friends is all you have ever known with him. It’s all that the two of you will ever be.

You’re lucky, Seokjin thinks as he sulks around in his apartment, having decided to give your relationship some space after he completely annihilated it the Tuesday prior. Unrequited love isn’t something he’d wish on his worst enemy. It’s a ray of sunshine surrounded by clouds. It’s the constant reminder that even though what you already have will never be enough, losing it entirely is a fate much worse.

On the bright side, at least you still tag him in Facebook memes.

Seokjin gets a phone call from an unknown number that Saturday evening, as he cooks a meal for one and pretends that his apartment doesn’t feel bone-crushingly empty without you to fill up the space. He lets the phone ring all the way through the first time—he’s not in the mood to bait those scammy telemarketers tonight, and gets back to cooking. And then his phone rings a second time, same number, and suddenly Seokjin feels as though it might be something urgent. What if it’s a coworker whose number he doesn’t have? Oh God, what if it’s his boss?

“Hello?” Seokjin asks, picking up the call and holding his phone between his ear and his shoulder.

“Seokjin?”

It’s Cynthia.

“Cynthia?” Seokjin asks, just to make sure he’s not wrong. “How did you get my number?”

“I looked you up on the White Pages,” Cynthia tells him. Oh, yes. He forgot that that existed. “I would have asked Y/N, but she would have gotten suspicious.”

“Oh, uh…” Seokjin hesitates, chuckling nervously. “Y/N? Have you, uh, spoken to her recently?”

Cynthia lets out a deep sigh on the other end, what sounds like a billion thoughts weighing her down. “Yeah, she and I had a girls’ night last night. My husband’s away on business.”

“Oh, how are you both doing?” Seokjin asks. He has the decency to pretend that he hasn’t been positively miserable the past few days.

“Wonderful, thanks,” Cynthia said. “Seokjin, did you kiss Y/N?”

“It was a mistake,” Seokjin immediately says. He shouldn’t have done it and now he’s paying the price. He has no idea how long it will take to repair your relationship, or, even worse, if you’ll just go back to the way it was before and pretend it never happened in the first place. “I wanted to tell her that, but I haven’t seen her recently.”

“Don’t,” Cynthia says harshly, making Seokjin jump a bit, wincing as some hot steam hits his bare skin. “Don’t tell her it was a mistake.”

“What do you mean?” Seokjin frowns. Isn’t that what you want? It’s blatantly obvious that you don’t really want a relationship at all, let alone with him. Seokjin doesn’t know what he was thinking when he thought he could change your mind. He was just being selfish. The chance to get to date you under the guise of guidance, and he snatched it up at the first opportunity.

Well, look at him now.

“She’ll be heartbroken if you tell her that,” Cynthia tells him, and Seokjin nearly pours boiling hot water all over his arm at the words. “You can’t.”

“What do you mean, heartbroken? She doesn’t want to date me. I’m the one in love with her. I’m the one who should be suffering,” Seokjin says into the phone, his heart starting to race. He wills himself to calm down, to act like everything is normal, but he can’t stop thinking about you. About what Cynthia had said.

“No, you’re wrong,” Cynthia says. “You couldn’t be more wrong even if you tried. You might be in love with her but she loves you back. She does, I swear.”

Seokjin’s brain nearly short-circuits, the power sparking. “What?” He asks, too hopeful for his own good. “She can’t. I’ve loved her for so long, but we’ve always just been friends. That’s what she wanted.”

“She wants you, Seokjin,” Cynthia says firmly, almost as if she’s reaching through the phone to knock some sense into him. “She didn’t realize that she loved you until you kissed her. And then everything fell into place.”

“You’re lying,” Seokjin says, even though he knows that Cynthia isn’t.

“Want to know why she hasn’t really dated anyone since midway through college?”

Is it the same reason Seokjin hasn’t, either?

“She was waiting for you,” Cynthia tells you. “She just didn’t know it.”

Seokjin’s about to faint.

He can hear Cynthia smiling through the phone. “She’s always been waiting for you.”)

[June 21st, 1:22PM]

Seokjin: I’m on my way over to your apartment Seokjin: Don’t ask questions

You’ve long learned by now to listen to Seokjin, to never question his methods. And for once, when you receive a suspicious text out of the blue that says Don’t ask questions, you aren’t scared. You’re thrilled.

The last time you went this long without contacting each other was when you were just starting to become friends in college, during orientation week where you met five hundred people a day and forgot all of them by the next morning. You and Seokjin eventually caught up with each other when you started seeing each other in the halls of your dorm, living onto a few doors down from each other.

You didn’t want to be the one to initiate contact. Seokjin had kissed you and then instantly looked like he regretted the entire thing. He had been sitting on his feelings long before you knew that yours even existed. He deserved the space.

You, well. Cynthia, the wise, wedded woman she is, seems to think that communication is key. Perhaps that’s why she’s been so successful in her love life.

There’s a knock on your door six minutes after you received the text, the fastest he’s ever gotten to your apartment.

When you open it, you find a familiar sight: Seokjin, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, a bouquet of flowers in his hand, and a nervous grin on his face, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet like a teenager about to ask his crush to the school dance.

“Long time no see,” you tell him.

“I missed you,” Seokjin says honestly. “I really, really did.”

“I did, too,” you tell him. It’s impossible to be away from him. You figured that out briefly when he went abroad in junior year, but were brutally reminded this past week what life is like without him to light it up. And it’s dull. Empty. Missing something.

“These are for you,” Seokjin says. It’s an entire bouquet of tulips, red and yellow and orange and pink. The scent immediately wafts through the air, brightening up your sullen apartment.

“They’re beautiful, Seokjin,” you tell him, pressing your nose against the petals as you take in the aroma. The flowers are gorgeous, but Seokjin, as always, steals the show.

“I was going to bring takeout, but then I thought that you might have already eaten lunch,” Seokjin tells you.

“Then we can do takeout for dinner,” you suggest as an alternative, fishing through your kitchen cabinets for a vase to put out on your countertop, filled with the tulips and carnations and lilies and hydrangeas. The bouquet he had given you on Tuesday is sitting in your bedroom, and you’re giving it all the plant food you can get your hands on, determined to make them last.

“You want me to stay for dinner?” Seokjin asks, an eyebrow raised.

It’s high time you were honest, too.

“I want you to stay forever,” you admit, and it feels as though the dam has broken, like the first droplet has been spilled and the rest is soon to follow. “I can’t tell you how much I hated being away from you like this. Everything in my life revolves around you.”

“I think about you, every day,” Seokjin says as he comes up to you, joining you in the kitchen as you fill an oversized mason jar with water. “Scratch that. Every hour. Every minute, every second. You’re always on my mind.”

“I thought that was just how you were best friends with someone,” you tell him, feeling the warmth of his body as he stands next to you. “I thought that all of the kind gestures, the traditions, the words, that was what being best friends was. And it is. But I never realized that that was what being in love was like, as well.”

“I thought you’d never figure it out,” Seokjin muses, and it sounds so sad but he looks so happy. “I was ready to never tell you. I was too nervous, every time I’m near you I get all sweaty.”

“You were just going to be in love with me forever?” You ask, turning to him. The thought devastates you, the idea that he was willing to never tell you, to love you silently, for the rest of time. He would have never known what could have been, would have never allowed himself that luxury. And he was okay with it.

“I would rather love you on my own than lose you,” Seokjin tells you firmly. “You’re my best friend. That will never change.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Seokjin interrupts. “I had made that decision. I was willing to live with it.”

“That’s what people do, isn’t it?” You ask, reaching out to hold his hand in your own, as you have done so many times before, and will do so many times more. The feeling never gets old. The spark never fades. “When they’re in love.”

“I don’t know how you never noticed,” Seokjin jokes, laughing more at himself than you. “I thought I was being so goddamn obvious. Any time I said or did anything that even slightly alluded to the fact that I was in love with you, I started panicking because I thought you’d figure me out. And you never did.”

“I think I just needed a bit of coaxing,” you tell him, hand reaching up to turn his face towards you, palms resting on your cheek. “I would have loved you, forever. I just needed you to tell me that you’d love me, forever, too.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Seokjin promises with a grin. “I’ll love you forever and a day.”

Seokjin leans down, big palms resting on your waist as he finally, fucking finally, presses his lips against yours. It’s soft and warm and cozy, the heat enveloping you as you hold his cheeks in your hands, let him push closer and closer, refusing to let you go. The feeling sends warmth through your veins, sparks a fire in your body that you wouldn’t will away even if you wanted to. Seokjin kisses you, and you kiss back, and it feels like a promise. With your lips against his, and his against yours, you tell each other, that you were meant to be together, and that you always will be.

You had always wondered why you were never really interested in dating anyone. Never wanted to find someone new, a relationship filled with love and laughter and joy, never wanted to go out on fancy dates and tiptoe around each other, a nervous confession on the tips of your tongues. But now, as Seokjin giggles into another kiss he presses against your lips, you know: you already had exactly what you were looking for.

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

↳ check out the post-script drabble here!

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fisherfurbearer · 5 years ago

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I would absolutely live to hear about Future Plans and heritage fruits! My partners and I are looking at buying a house by the end of the year and I'm so excited at the prospect of a back yard to fill with food plants and gardening and everything! So I'd love to know more about someone else's plans!!

mmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YOU OPENED THE CAN OF WORMS THE WORMS ARE OPEN THEY ARE EVERYWHERE NOW!!!! OHHHHHHH JEEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING CAN STOP THIS!!!!

MMMMMM. I LOVE. DOMESTIC CROPS AND ANIMALS. SO MUCH.

SPECIFICALLY “heritage” varieties. The pre-industrial/commercial varieties that people lived on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, or even the stuff younger than that, it’s just...so!! Good!!!

You didn’t QUITE ask for this but this is where I’m going with it. I LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. The HISTORY of our domesticated crops (specifically fruits and vegetables, but mostly Tree Fruits!!!! But I’m also suuuuper partial to heirloom sweet potatoes/normal potatoes even though I don’t like the taste of sweet potatoes, they’re just SO FRICKING COOL and I want to learn more about other vegetables too) and animals is just....HOOOOO!!!!

Locally adapted,, perfect little....NUGGETS that just...perfectly fit their own SPECIFIC LITTLE NICHES...no matter WHERE you live, no matter HOW much space you have, no matter HOW good or bad your soil, NO MATTER WHAT, there is ALWAYS something to grow or raise, and we can thank so, so much of that to the incredible variety of heritage crops/animals (and methods of agriculture) out there. Mild, cold, hot! Lots of space, little space, no space!! Fertile, barren!! Every condition in every color and shape and flavor and size and ahhhhhhh!!!!! AHHHH!!!!

Hold onto your butts because this is one Hell of a Mega Ramble okay, there is so much to talk about here, oh man.

Some background, which you can skip if you want...!!! It’s a LOT and it get’s VERY NEGATIVE but also VERY GOOD AND HOPEFUL, it’s a real big story and it’s My Story and gives a lot of insight into Why I’m Like This but it’s okay to skip for sure!! Anyway:

I’ve been researching (i.e. writing literally 1.5-2k+ words nearly every single day) for literally 7 years now about all of my various Passions and Plans in life. Obviously breaks were taken due to Sad Times but no matter what I did, no matter what happened, I’d always come back to my dumb awful stupid notes. I have notes on my current laptop, my old harddrive, my SO’s laptop, my stepdad’s laptop, my SO’s OLD gaming laptop, my old netbook, my OLD OLD netbook, every phone I’ve had in the past 7 years (which has been like uhh...five? I have bad luck with phones..) and COUNTLESS pieces of paper and cheap composition books.

To call it research, it seems to silly. Writing these words here, to you strangers on the internet, I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU how VITAL these notes are to my VERY EXISTANCE.

I have been researching and writing and talking to folks and asking questions and LIVING AND BREATHING this stuff for LITERALLY, LITERALLY HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS if not ALMOST A THOUSAND OR MORE HOURS at this point!!!! If we were to actually SOMEHOW backtrack all the way to late 8th grade/freshman year when I first started dipping my toes into reptiles and fell in love with my first jumping spider that landed on my arm after I read Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak, after being so fascinated by the intelligent giant magic tarantula in the first book, and gathered ALL of my notes from then to NOW (I’m 21 now, if I was in college, I’d be graduating next May) it would EASILY surpass that. For YEARS in high school my family thought I was always playing games on my laptop, but really from the moment I got home to the moment I went to bed, I was watching lets plays with one side of the screen and reading, reading, reading, and writing, writing, writing with the other. For HOURS. Every. Single. Day.

Hell, this has been my most recent “Renaissance” of writing, after The Big Realization of earlier this year (I’ll get to that), and this is AFTER I went on a horrible depressed/manic rampage and deleted like 80% of my notes (that would have been from...hmm. This is what I didn’t delete, what Jessie recovered, and what I’ve added...so March to Early September, when Jessie switched my notes to a new program (I lost a lot of notes from lack of autosaving so now they’re on our nextcloud so I can’t lose them...but I’m too stubborn to use it still) and this is still like. A lot.

Keep in mind the average 10-11 kb file is 1500-1700 words for me. My biggest files (only of the ones I still have, on this laptop) are 40-60 kb. (Also these are Big Secrets that I don’t ever show anyone but Jessie, who I’ve been with now for almost 7 years, so this is pretty dang important to me and a big thing to be revealing.)

Current folder I’m usually saving to:

Nextcloud I don’t bother to use usually but probably should use:

Again, this is ONLY on my newest laptop, and this DOESN’T include the files I deleted a few months ago, nor the files I lost from February-early April after Jessie updated my computer and wiped my files, and I still have a BUTTLOAD left on my old harddrive from last year, but we never moved it up and I don’t feel a need to. (I’ve learned so much. So. Much. In the past year. I think I’ve matured a lot and really become more...Me. But I’ll get to that.)

Also doesn’t include the SEVERAL notebooks I’ve filled front to back this year (cheap $0.50 ones from work...I’ve blown through a couple biggish ones and I think 2-3 little quarter-size memo books) and all the receipt papers I have crammed into my work uniform...

But anyway why is this important? It really helps iron in just how HUGE this is to me. My future “Plans” aren’t just...it’s really important to me. Okay? I am but a humble stranger on the internet and my life and everyone elses’ respective lives are infinitely more complex than we can ever dare imagine one anothers’ existences to be, but just trust me when I say that I’m not pulling this from nowhere, this shit isn’t some sort of “fad” to me, this has been a long, long series of events and realizations and heartbreaks and so, so much pain that have finally led to everything kinda falling into place sometime this year where it hit me.

You see...all of my research topics followed a pattern. It went, in my rough memory, something like this.

It started with reptiles. Lots of reptiles. So many reptiles. I was so naive and young then and my sources sucked and I was very much a novice who dreamed of owning all sorts of cool reptiles when I got older, and of getting a gecko when I went to college. That was how it started and it went downhill from there. I branched off into gardening (I wanted and still want a blue tongue skink and had thoughts about how I’d grow a garden for vegetables and squashes and stuff for the skink and feeder insects) and THAT grew into this whole THING about raised bed gardening, square foot gardening, then into permaculture, which planted the seed for many things to come...and now I’ve ALWAYS LOVED BIRDS,, but when I learned that keeping CHICKENS was a thing (thank you Jennifer (Nambroth)!!!!!!!!!! Our emails back and forth are still saved forever, our talks about chickens changed my life and way of thinking Forever!!!) and I researched that, then I’d jump back to reptiles again, and back to chickens, then more reptiles, then chickens and QUAIL, or OTHER poultry,, and so on and so on. This beautiful fluid branching path that would always rebound on itself and I’d drop some topics, gain new ones, revisit old ones, learn what I liked, what I didn’t like, what were brief interests, and what were there to stay.

Some topics (chickens, new caledonian geckos, antaresia pythons, tarantulas, gardening...) would always come back. No matter what I did...they came back. As I grew as a person, I started to figure out what was important to me (CONSERVATION, animal welfare, reptile/invertebrate enrichment, vivarium design, combining art with animals, and did I mention CONSERVATION? and combating climate change/The World but that came later.) and while some of those points didn’t show up in my research until later...like my obsession with native wildlife/plants and domestic species...it never went away.

And as I grew older, outside of my research life went on, and I really went through A Lot in these seven years. Undiagnosed anxiety/depression all through high school, practically living in the guidance office junior/senior year, dealing with an emotionally abusive and animal abuser teacher for many years, living with my emotionally abusive/narcissistic mother, and eventually going to an amazing art college and having both the best and worst time of my life (Hahah!! Almost straight As and skipped a writing class with my amazing scores and was top of my class, Dean’s list first semester, in the Visionary Women’s Honors society, worked in the admissions office and did lots of cool things, but hahaha also really wanted to die and was Destroying Myself) and trying to get help while keeping it a secret from my mom...lo and behold of course she eventually found out about the Depression when I had to go inpatient near the end of my second semester, and she. HA, I can’t even cry about this anymore. She literally disowned me (took all my money, sold my car, cut me off of health insurance, made me pay my own hospital bills, refused to do my FAFSA for college anymore, dropped all support, and later when I had to come home because I relapsed again and the college made me go on a medical leave of absense, she threatened to kick me out and call the police [hilariously enough though the house was owned by my stepdad, not her, so she couldn’t do anything. Also I never did anything to her and she was just crazy and made up excuses. But yeah not fun trying to walk to work and being threatened over the phone that she was going to have me dragged out of work by the cops and not to come home, hahaha!!!!!! But then also when I did live with my neighbor for a few days she was apparently so distraught?? Haha what a weird person!!!! I haven’t seen her for three years now and it’s been the best thing that ever happened to me. Don’t mourn for me, it’s SO Much better now. Speaking of, she was a PETA-hugging ARA nutjob and if she knew what I was planning on doing she would’ve disowned me either way!!!!!!), and of course fighting to be able to move out and rent an apartment with my SO (I hate the word boyfriend. It’s been 7 years come January 11th, and we’ve been through so fucking much. And she [my mom...] and other people always made fun of him being my BOYFRIEND that that word is tainted for me...so Significant Other it is) and then being forced to live alone there for a couple months,, and then even after that, the fights with his family, the car accident in November, my mom ruining all chances of me going to college (keep in mind I had after leaving college, spent the next TWO AND A HALF FUCKING YEARS OF MY LIFE trying to make it so I COULD go back, spent all of my time, energy, hope, eVERY OUNCE OF MY BEING trying to do so,,, and she manipulated me and then lied to me and made it so I couldn’t), my rebounding depression, my Intensifying Aggression (terrifying. Developed when I was in college...I guess it’s some kind of rapid bipolar disorder, maybe triggered by me going on antidepressants in college, they said. But it was so long ago and they never knew the full story for a proper diagnosis anyway. But it’s gotten manageable and We’re Coping), the housefire on Christmas, moving Once Again to the new place and being told I can’t bring my 15 year old cat (he’s with my stepdad still now but it’s not okay.), the rats have to be in the basement, and oh yeah if you want to attend college again loans will be nearly 13% interest hahaha!!! and then finally just straight up breaking down in February and not leaving bed for DAYS and nearly committing suicide, just the real worst time ever, and my former therapist/psychiatrist place weren’t responding (turns out they discharged me!! haha kinda hard to make appointments WHEN YOU DON’T PICK UP THE PHONE and we DIDN’T GET THE NOTICE IN THE MAIL because our HOUSE WAS CONDEMNED and my mail was being sent to my STEPDADS an hour away!!!!!!!! Also really hard to talk to you when you BLOCK OUR FUCKING NUMBER and HANG UP ever time we fucking call haha!!!!!! Literally on the verge of suicide and not on my anxiety meds for MONTHS but hey sure that works too guys!!!!) which really didn’t help, and yeah it was really just the pits! Just the absolute pits, the Very Worst.

Now at this point I don’t remember exactly when/what changed, but SOMETHING did.

Leading up to February, I wanna say it was about October that I started getting kinda weirdly depressed, and I started REALLY tanking after the fire. After the fire, I had to move back to my stepdads within the night, and had to live without Jessie again and commute really far and keep the tarantulas a secret and in general be very alone and very sad. I started wearing down and it was getting so hard to just...enjoy. Anything. Even just taking care of the pets became difficult, and doing art or researching was impossible. I just...didn’t care anymore. I stopped caring.

On top of that, my climate grief and general feelings of Despair were at an all time high, and I just didn’t. Fucking. CARE. What happened next.

I spent YEARS of my life WEARING MYSELF TO THE BONE trying to get into college, the get back into college, to just try to do this thing that I was supposed to do, my ONE hope of having a career and a future that I probably wouldn’t even be happy with (I was an illustration major. I liked drawing. It’s what I was best at. But looking back, I wouldn’t have been happy doing it for a living. And Moore [no that’s not what my blog is named for, it just also happens to be my last name] was a great college but it just...wasn’t worth $30k a year with no cosigner for loans, even AFTER my scholarships) and my body and mind were wearing down and no matter what I did I didn’t care about myself, my animals, my partner, my life, nothing. I can’t explain how terrifying that is. Of all the time in my life, I think this was the worst. On top of my life problems, it must be said again that my climate grief and Misery regarding the state of our country and the world was also at an all-time-high, and I just felt...POWERLESS. Powerless and empty and uncaring and dead inside. I really wanted to just...drive off a bridge or eat a ton of pills (which I did do a couple times, don’t do that. Please. It’s NOT worth it.) and just stop Existing.

But then something just...changed.

I don’t know what it was, exactly. But I got SOMETHING back. SOMETHING “clicked”.

I’m crying a bit now. It’s so stupid to say, but I truly believe this is what saved my life. Realizing my purpose in life. That everything fell into place and finally made sense.

I’m going to be a bit more concise here but...basically...many of my passions and smaller aspects of myself all fell into place, so PERFECTLY.

It hit me that...ah jeez.

I will digress one more second. For those of you who don’t know, I have two Eurydactylodes geckos, named Vladimir (E. vieiliardi) and Estragon (E. agricolae). They are named for my favorite drama that we read in AP English, Waiting for Godot. It’s an aburdist theater play about two men who wait under a tree for someone (we don’t know who, just that his name is Godot) and that’s about it. Everyone had a lot of different things to say about that weird little book, but my take on it was that it’s supposed to be what happens to two men when they lack a “purpose” in life. Existentialism, and all that. They sit there and sit there and completely lose themselves just WAITING for this guy that they don’t even remember, they don’t even know why they’re there, and they do nothing to try and change that. The difference between existentialism and absurdism, however, is that absurdism specifically discusses this idea of a Chaotic Universe, this Lack of Meaning, this pointless quest of humanity to seek value and meaning in a universe without reason. It’s a fruitless effort, it’s Absurd! But the beauty of absurdism, this tiny idea that stayed with me in the goofy names of my geckos (I chose the names because I thought the play was amusing and I loved the characters’ relationship, which is Quite Gay and so Loving and Charming it warms my heart, and I loved that they called each other “Didi” and “Gogo”) and really held true to my own life. I DO NOT believe that THIS is why this change happened for me, but it’s ironic, no?

Back to Absurdism, Absurdism says... “here is this meaningless, Chaotic, RIDICULOUS universe. There is NO reason for ANYTHING, there NEVER will be, you DO NOT MATTER, you DO NOT HAVE A PLACE HERE. There is NO POINT to anything. So fuck it, and try to find one anyway.”

My original therapist did not understand why I found this so wonderful and inspiring. It’s so rebellious and selfish, I LOVE IT. To embrace the Absurd is to take the bull by the horns and flip it upside down! It’s to stare all of this dreadful pointlessness in the Void, and when it says “Why bother? Why care about these insignificant invertebrates? These ridiculous reptiles? These ABSURD apples???” and flip the bird both hands and say “BECAUSE I WANT TO, BECAUSE I SAID SO, BECAUSE I AM HUMAN, AND I CAN!!!” It’s...also more than that, it’s this long, defiant lifelong journey, this stupid, ridiculous journey of fumbling about trying to find one’s place in a cruel, vast world, and finding oneself in that journey.

I love people. I love the ABSURDITY of humanity, of people, of myself, of others. A Huge part of my Future Plans has to do with People, and Community, and Changing my little patch of the world. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things, but I know it can make a difference to someone and myself and that’s what matters.

Anyway back to the Clickening.

Around that time I had a moment like that. It was as if something in my mind was screaming at me, listen. You are here, and you have always been here to love animals, to love life, to make art, to tell stories with your art, to raise little sheeps.

And like that, it started Something.

I agreed to go to a local doctor, and was put on antidepressants. I’ve been on them since late February. I also got accommodations for work, so I have two excused absenses due to mental illness each month, which was good, because they tried to fire me 4 times now and they haven’t succeeded yet. (I’m DAMN GOOD at what I do, I’m just Sad and Unlucky and Dumb, but I’m doing a lot better now!!) I started taking all of the things I learned in the past many years and what I’ve learned about myself as a person (I won’t talk about it here but I’ve always struggled with my Identity [not gender wise, just...with my mental health and my mood disorder, it’s really hard to know What is ME and What’s The Illness) and it all started falling into place. My needle felting, my love for animals, conserving native wildlife AND heritage breeds with restoration grazing and positive impact forestry, utilizing my Overwhelming Charisma (in person I swear I’m quite a good talker! Way better than my typing here!) for education, outreach, and farmers market sales, my love for life and my fellow human beings and my plans to work hard to help feed my local communities and encourage sustainable agriculture and the dismantlemant of capitalism Love of our native wilds and backyards alike (I also have Big Thoughts about getting native peoples input as well, but I need to research that more and actually talk to people, but that would be in future years!!), and so, so many things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That started in late February/early March now, and since then I’ve still had Really bad times, but I’d say in the past mmmmm...probably since late July? I think yeah since about then things have really taken great turns. I’ve Matured a lot, really embraced who I am and what I want to do, and while I KNOW my plans are going to keep changing over time (tentative goal is to look for/buy our property in 2025!! That gives us 5 years post-graduation to settle down and see how things go, where Jessie will be working, where we’ll be living, how my mind changes, all of that!!) but I KNOW in my BONES in my SOUL that this is what I have always been meant to do. To raise things, grow things, and to Care.

ANYWAY WOW HAHAHA YOU SURE DIDN’T ASK FOR ALL THAT BUT THERE YA GO THERE’S THE BACKSTORY, THE FIRST HALF OF THE WORMS!!!!!!

TL;DR: I’m a sad sap who is now slightly less sad and has Big Plans that were 7 years+ in the making and I want to take all my Big Thoughts about exotic welfare (well, reptiles and spiders mostly, but sure) and also apply it to DOMESTIC welfare and Make a Dang Difference!!!!

Okay now I’ve become very burnt out, I’ve been writing for like two hours now? So this part will sadly be shorter, but I will definitely write more about it again if you or anyone else has questions or actually wants to hear about it.

Basically...the amount of These Plans that I am willing to let you folks know, is uhh...oh jeez where do I even begin, haha...

Well it started small plans (early years of research, when I used to think a small greenhouse was Super Wild and Crazy) but nah bruh we goin’ full hog, literally. My plans are to get a decent sized property, still in my state, and have a HUGE focus on Sustainability and Positive Grazing/Management! That means rotational grazing to IMPROVE soils!!! Thinning the woodlot and clearing brush for the HEALTH of the forest!!! Reintroducing blight-resistant american chestnuts to restore our forests and support a healthy wildlife population!!!! Using both honeybees AND cultivated native bees [did you know that’s a thing???? You can buy native bee cocoons, like raised humanely, and raise them for pollinating plants!! Like Orchards!!] and grazing pastured pigs and chickens under orchard trees, while also providing BUTTLOADS of native flowers and domestic tree blossoms for native pollinators!! All that great stuff.

My biggest focuses would be raising practical heritage livestock for sustainable agriculture and conserving heritage fruit trees, with a focus on apples and pears. I also want to grow a lot of mutually beneficial/low-impact perennial resources...think honey, maple syrup, nut trees, stuff like that! And I want to graze on pastures with native grasses and locality-specific wildflowers (check out Ernst Seeds, especially if you live in/near PA like I do!! Wow it’s so frickin’ cool) and focus on northern european short-tailed sheep (finnsheep, gotland, icelandic, leader, shetland, and soay) and small landrace American hogs (american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and the more recent but so full of potential idaho pasture pig. I also want to raise icelandic landrace chickens for utility (parasite/pest management, composting), conservation, and eggs. I also want to raise rabbits (silver fox crosses for meat, and french angora crosses for fiber! I have a dream of producing high quality tri color angora for spinners...three colors on one animal, and I want them to be especially great for fiber artists who want to raise their own fiber animals but don’t have a ton of space) and I have BIG orchard plans...SO MANY ORCHARD PLANS, HHHHHOOO YES....SO GOOD...also COPPICE WITH STANDARDS and FORESTRY and HOO YES!!!!! I LOVE SOME GOOD OL FORESTRY!!!

I think the best way to describe my current plans standings is that it seperates into a couple different “zones”, for my Current Ideas. This has taken months and so many countless hours of thinking, researching, and ironing out, and I’ve made so much headway in just this past week, but basically imagine this...

It’s mostly split into two pastures, the orchard, and the woodlot.

PASTURE 1

Pasture 1 would be the largest, where we would rotationally graze two primary groups of ruminants. Polled NES-T sheep (finnsheep/gotland) and horned sheep (icelandic/leader) with dairy cows (dutch belted) as well. Dutch belted for milk and specifically cheese production, and they would be grazed in front with the icelandics to help take care of the taller grasses that the sheep would avoid, and help keep the sheep a bit safer. All would be guarded by livestock guardian dogs. Group #1 of the icelandic chickens would be grazed behind them, to help break up manure and disrupt parasite cycles.

Pasture itself would be mostly a big bluestem/little bluestem/indian grass/switchgrass mix, with a good variety of livestock-safe wildflowers (small portion being nitrogen-fixers like tick trefoils and pasture pea) and seed-producing flowers for birds (wild birds and our birds!). Would be rotationally grazed 1-2 days at a time (avg. 3-4 days total) with a 21-35+ day rest period. Polled NES-T sheep would be moved to “silvopasture” (copse with standards, a portion of the woodlot, with coppiced trees for fuelwood/timber interspersed with standard-sized mast producting trees [would double as nut and persimmon orchard, and hog foraging in fall/winter!!!]) in the summer to help them deal with the heat. Summer would be the best time, as it’s after the spring predator pressure and before the acorns fall, which could be bad for them if they ingest too many. Rams and hogs would otherwise graze this land with much longer rest periods otherwise (more like 30-45 days or so).

PASTURE 2

Smaller pasture with similar planting, arranged ‘paddock paradise’ style for a small group of icelandic horses (SO GOOD, and useful!! Little horse hooves are much kinder to the forest than a UTV, and herding on horseback is less stressful for the livestock) and rotationally grazed shetland and soay sheep. Pretty simple, but important. Would also contain Icelandic chicken group #2.

ORCHARD

Worthy of a novel all on it’s own. I want to grow semi-dwarf heritage fruit trees with the fruit drop type synced to the rotation of pastured hogs (idaho pasture pig, american guinea hog, ossabaw island hog) and group #3 of icelandic chickens. Hogs would be in orchard spring-fall, and in the copse with standards fall-early winter. Hogs and chickens would be moved to a holding area during rainy times to help preserve the orchard floor and during winter, where we would also have a large waste management/composting set up for them to root and turn to their hearts content. Should be a lot warmer than the outside in the winter too, and I plan on it being in a high tunnel/hoop house so its covered.

I am ALL ABOUT pairing livestock with crops and encouraging multi-purpose acreage in general, so this is definitely one of my FAVORITE plans so far, and every time I revisit it, it gets better. I also want to raise BEES (honeybees, mason bees, leafcutter bees!!!) for honey and pollination. I also want to plant BUTT-TONS of native flowers and goodies for pollinators, as well as lots of seed producing plants and sunflowers for the chickens to forage for by themselves. These would be some happy livestock, for sure.

WOODLOT

Another huge part of the plan is that I want at LEAST 1/3-1/2 of the property to be Woods. Only a small fraction of the Woods would be managed for livestock foraging and more frequent harvesting (still looking at a good 7-10 year coppice cycle though for trees) and the rest would still be tended to, with the help of the local forestry folks, but it would be preserved for wildlife and low-impact timber and nut/fruit/sap collection.

The VAST MAJORITY of the farm would be multi-purpose acreage for both livestock AND wildlife benefit (and people too of course) and I truly, truly believe and KNOW it can be done. In fact it HAS been done, IS being done, in so many different ways by so many different people in different times, and I know that I want to be a part of it and I can make a difference and use my weird passions for Good and make a dang difference.

Ohhh jeez I’m real sorry I didn’t quite answer your question though but I hope this gives a little insight into what I mean?? And if anyone has Specific questions after reading this (if you make it to the bottom, bless your cotton socks, I’m so proud and also distressed) I can definitely answer them a bit better than this. And hopefully much less...whatever this is, haha!!

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