#i really fucking hope not bc we all still need it and also i would feel horrible bc i told my teacher the carriage stuck but she said it

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Some mild existential dread in the house today

[orcelito]

Actually we r at 6 months now without any major deaths in my life, which is great! That's the longest I've gone without any major deaths since last May! The second longest was 4 months between July and November last year. Wow !

[reflectionsofgalaxies]

i have thought of 1 (one) pro to this whole housing situation and i’m clinging onto it for dear life

[piplupod]

one of the cashiers at the grocery store i go to is so fucking fixated on shoplifters and it drives me crazy any time i check out through him (i try to avoid him but his checkout is often the most open/empty - hm! i wonder why! - and im often on a tight schedule w the bus). he brings up shoplifters every opportunity he gets and he seems so convinced that theyre a huge problem.

BUT WHAT REALLY GETS ME ,,, is that today the customer in front of me was needing a price check on one of the items bc it should've come out to be cheaper, so he was kind of apologetic abt it and saying "ah well, yknow, six dollars is six dollars, especially with how expensive groceries are right now" and i was nodding and agreeing (trying to show that i dont mind the wait and also solidarity my guy good for u for speaking up and getting the price fixed on that) AND THE CASHIER AGREES. FULLY ACKNOWLEDGES AND BEMOANS THE FACT THAT GROCERIES ARE CRAZY RN. AND THEN GOES ON TO COMPLAIN ABOUT SHOPLIFTERS. HUH ??????

so you agree that groceries are unreasonably expensive... and that sometimes ppl can't afford them... and yet ....................

[heartyearning]

i love you older southern folks on the internet who make videos about fixing your various sewing and knitting machines

[giantkillerjack]

Junji Ito makeup test #1

OR

Figuring out what I need in order to create a music video parody of the song "Gloria" by Laura Branigan, but make it about Tomie. I will be playing the part of a 1980s pop disco singer in the style of Junji Ito. This is high art in progress, people! 😘😂😅

photos of first test:

additional digital notes made using Clip Studio:

main takeaways:

So first off, where the fuck did my stage makeup go??? I had no idea it was missing until today!! I ended up using the makeup from when I used to perform as a mime. (Not a joke, but in a larger, cosmic sense, kind of a joke. 😆 I'll probably do it again sometime. I was adorable as a little soft butch gay mime!)

I now remember why I stopped using the dry cake face paint and switched to wet paint in a tube BUT I CANNOT FIND THE TUBESSS

I'm out of eyeliner in general, but for this, I need some kind of extra thin/fine eyeliner and preferably more than a thimble-full of paint for it.

Maybe I can thin out some matte black face paint and also get like a really nice fine brush? I guess it depends on if the paint is water-soluble.

I should probably check to see if I already have these materials, which would be SO MUCH EASIER IF I COULD FIND MY FUCKING STAGE MAKEUP--

Either way the lines need to be super thin, straight, clean, and parallel to each other. Or I could look at the rougher cross-hatching Ito sometimes uses, but I suspect tidier lines will look best with makeup.

Luckily, I already have an entire burlesque/drag act where I make myself look like a character from a black and white film. Between that and the mime thing, I theoretically have all the white gloves I will ever need lol. I guess I'm going to need white leggings, since the light gray ones won't work for this. Junji Ito is not generally greyscale as much as literally black and white.

Do I own makeup primer? I feel like yes. It definitely sounds like a good idea.

I KNOW FOR A FACT I DIDN'T THROW OUT MY STAGE MAKEUP because I had quality skin-safe glitter in basically every color, and only a FOOL would throw that out!!!!

Gloria is a song from 1983 with disco balls in the music video. Do I want to incorporate more style choices from 1983? Should I buy a wig? Something with shoulder pads maybe?? I guess that means I can keep the thick eyebrows...

Actually upon further research, I do need a sequinned shirt for this. Possibly a sequin leotard with a shiny belt. And leg warmers. OH! And a jacket with just the biggest shoulder pads I can find! Or at least the closest thing I can find to this outfit in one trip to a thrift store

Every 1980s music videos seems to have a person with their hair and clothing flowing in the wind. Now, I could buy a fan. But much funnier and cheaper would be a shot of my hair blowing in the wind that then pans to a friend furiously fanning me with a piece of cardboard or something. (Which means I'd need either two people helping with this shot, or I just have to accept that the shot's going to look kind of blurry by doing the zoom-out in post. Oh gods, I would have to write a proper shot list ahhhhhh--)

Honestly, blurry footage seems fine in some parts. I'm probably going to add some dreamy soft filters anyway to make it look like pre-digital 35mm film from an 80s vid.

I'm going to need some fake blood to splatter at me in the middle of the video. Obviously. So I guess that bit will need to be filmed outside.

The good news is the fact that the nearest easiest filming location for me is a alley full of dumpsters is actually really appropriate for this video. XD

Should I do the distressed eyebrows that a lot of Junji Ito characters have? Note to try that in the next test along with a The Crow-like smile. (My go-to high school Halloween costume. Damn, I have been painting my already pasty-pale face even whiter for a while now! 😅)

Other progress made on this project today:

I recorded myself singing a voice memo along to the rhythm of the karaoke version of Gloria that's on YouTube, but in it, I'm singing in the key that is appropriate to my voice. (A couple half-steps down, I think.)

Next step will be to load that clip onto my computer and adjust the karaoke version to match its pitch. And then like, practice the song with my new personalized backing track.

If i actually finish this, I'll have to re-record the backup vocals to say the right name.

Also the next step will be to see if my interest in this lasts long enough to at least get me to find my frickin' stage makeup.

Additional notes:

The original music video for Holding Out for a Hero is exactly the right energy for this, and now I absolutely need shots of me in front of (badly green-screened) flames, on my knees while singing passionately and directly at the camera and presumably wearing kneepads tbh

Omg what if I included a little "photoshoot" sequence and really fucked with the photos to make them all blurry-body-horror nasty as they flash by real quick?? Get like, a glitch effect in the mix hell yeah 😎😎😎

Edit: Omg i just remembered I have these short-shorts with a reanimator quote on the ass! ("Blasphemy? Before what god?") i know what shorts to wear for this now!!

Oh! Another idea! What if the video starts with me reading Tomie and then closing the book and picking up the nearest microphone-shaped thing and using that to start singing - and every 30 seconds or so of footage, it quietly changes to a different item (one of which is absolute the black wand vibrator that I have XD)

Note: I can easily shorten the song if I only have funny shots planned for like 2/3 of the song length. No need to get too repetitive.

[astrxealis]

sometimes i wna share pics of me but also i never really will do so properly but hey if u wna see me let's meet at cons <3

[purple-sage]

sometimes a girl just has to explain her favorite book to an imaginary version of the girl she has a crush on

[scorpiontattoo]

sitting here fingers fuckin crossed that our mom is srs abt letting us apply to a paid internship over the summer at the place she works bc that money is very sexy step closer to getting away from her. also sorry fuck ton of venting in the tags.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

:((((((((( i ran out of tags . tumblr hates to see me thrive!!!!!!!

ok niku just . read the tags first and then come back here ok 🙏🙏 i have a lot i still need to say this is so important to me . this fic changed my life .

(WARNING this got long ….. really long ….. mysteriously. i got carried away 💔 PLS don’t feel the need to respond to any of this btw i mean that sincerely i know this is kind of a Lot i just need you to know much i adored this fic <3333)

BACK TO GOJO ok so his talk w reader…… it was just so satisfying to see them finally get to tell someone about their experience. it must’ve been such a great feeling for them !!!! to get some of it off their chest :((( … and to have Gojo Fucking Satoru our safe harbour of a man there to believe them and listen to them and reassure them. he’s so mature when it comes down to it and you captured that so well…… like as much as he acts childish and teasing this is exactly how i picture him interacting w someone he doesn’t know in a situation like this!! he’s flirty and unserious but he tells you he’ll protect you and means it. (i’m so down bad it physically hurts)

sorry i’m abt to go on a tangent i think BUT I JUST 😔😔 really… REALLY love their dynamic…. how it evolves so much even though he doesn’t even know reader exists for most loops!! and to them he’s just this beautiful Something that they can’t help but look at…… ”inhumanly attractive” is a great way to put it like he’s just….. this magnetic force……….. and i feel like even before they speak to him for the first time they probably find some kind of hope in him.

AND that’s so important bc to me that’s like . the main Theme of the fic? hope. reader has to find some kind of hope to make it through shibuya and more often than not they find it in gojo!!! in just seeing a familiar handsome face, in learning how to navigate the timeline through his actions, in talking to him and finally having him on their side. their choice to trust him fully at the end just made me soooo insane. and obv the hope theme continues even after that because gojo believes in them!!! believes that they’ll be okay in the prison realm….. more on that later actually bc i Still. have a lot to talk abt 😔👉👈 i’m just wildly flipping through my notes at this point i’m sorry to throw this at u when we’ve barely interacted but in my defense this fic reached into my actual skull and started rewiring my brain so!!!! yeah.

i got completely sidetracked there but . yes!! the conversation between them when gojo gets sent back in time is. so good!!!!! so wonderfully written!!!!! i haven’t mentioned it that much yet i think but i love your writing i devoured every line…… i struggle w the flow of my own writing SO much but this just flows so incredibly well??? it was sm fun to read????? and the rhythm of the paragraphs (that sounds. Insane but i hope u know what i mean 😭😭) is so distinct!!! and ofc there are SO many banger lines in this in general…. the gore descriptions and the lines abt reader and their fixation on hope. on gojo!! ”He's a terrifying sort of beauty and you can't help but be captivated by him.” <- this is just one example but!! idk i’m just so enamored by ur writing style.

and the dialogue!!!!!!!! i cried!!!!!! it’s so consistently gojo…. him going all ”oh?” ”interesting…” but not explaining anything … the ”ding ding ding!” after making reader guess what he should just be telling them (it’s the teacher in him <33) AND AND AND these too!!!! :3

“Just think of it like having a lot of MP.”

“You know, your technique kind of reminds me of save scumming.” 

THEY JUST FEEL SO CANON that’s our gojo…… that’s exactly what he would say…… he’s so unserious and so funny and so charming 😔😔 sigh.

ANDDDDD reader telling him good luck!!!! gojo beaming and squeezing their shoulder!!!!! the lil wave!!!!! 🥺🥺 that made me smile so wide niku he’s so infuriatingly cute . it felt so genuine!!!! pls know that this gojo will probably live in my brain forever like genuinely . i’ve been brainrotting over him all week and this was the final nail in the coffin. i’ll never be free.

ok but also !!!! extremely important !!!!!!! before i get to the ending i just need to tell u . how much i loved kenjaku in this ……….. kenjaku nation (me & six others) will never forget these crumbs of content like he just feels so real!!!!! and he’s so interesting!!!!! made me realize how truly down bad i am for him bc these lines made me so fucking happy 😭😭 brain started releasing serotonin like CRAZY i’m so ashamed.

“You can come out, you know.”

”How interesting.”

"I'll be nice, though. I'll make it painless."

…….. he’s just ….. yeah. yeahhhhh. 😔😔 i’ll never be normal abt him. i think it’s SUCH an interesting detail that he always makes reader’s death painless in every single loop…. he never lies about it. that feels so in character to me too!!! he’s kinda fascinated at first and when that interest disappears he kills them. but he doesn’t make it unecessarily cruel because there’s just. no need. kenjaku is a sicko but he’s oddly polite at times and i’m just……. yeah. gonna need you to take over for gege akutami actually 🙏🙏 get in the writer’s chair!!! the fandom needs u!!!!!

wait while we’re on this topic pls just know the entire confrontation between reader and kenjaku was one of my favorite moments in the entire fic <333 not JUST because i’m a kenny stan ok……… reader’s resignation and ”I appreciate it.” made my brain spin because it’s just . kinda chilling? kinda sick? that they aren’t even really afraid of death anymore… or more like they’re just so frighteningly used to it.

AND AND ANDDDD niku your writing in this scene 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 gutted me like a fish.

Time doesn't flow in the box. He didn't lie. You die again.

i exploded btw . ackkk i wish i could explain it better i just!!! :< adore your writing. these lines made me go completely batshit they’re just so good. and the ”time doesn’t flow in the box” line … how that ties in with the ending and reader’s choice. whewww.

segway time <3333 this is the final rant i promise!!! i just need to talk about the ending bc it was so perfect and like many other things in this fic it made me insane …. have i said that already …. probably at least a couple times 😔👉👈 it’s true ok!! it’s just sooo interesting to me and obviously so wellwritten and fitting and just. thematically ties everything together so well? i was FLOORED

hhhhh i don’t know where to begin so i’ll just start w the final convo between reader and gojo :> he asks for their name !!!!!!! i cried !!!!!!!!!! calling someone by their name or knowing their name as a form of like . Closeness or Affection is one of my greatest weaknesses and i also think it’s soooo telling that GOJO wants to know Your Name. he wants to know you. to hear that from someone who seems so inhumanly beautiful and violent….. for him to kind of extend a final olive branch and attempt to connect w you :((((( it just says so much without spelling it out and i. started chewing at my desk. it’s so good!!!!!!! such a genius way to tie everything together!!!! and reader’s final words to him…

“Thank you, Satoru Gojo.” You burn the glittering glow of his brilliant bright blue eyes into your mind.  And then, everything is engulfed in an unending black. 

first of all!!! so so sooooo pretty. wowow. second of all THE THANK YOU ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️ that’s also such a perfect conclusion…….. reader finally put their trust in someone and had that faith returned. and they thank him!!!! i like to think it means something to gojo too…. likeeee how often do people really thank him for what he does? how often is his hard work to protect people acknowledged and appreciated? sorry to bring gojo back into the discussion all the time sadly i AM in love w him….. 😔😔 and this fic made it worse so technically it’s your fault. kind of.

okay so my brain is kinda spinning away again so i’ll get to the final final thing!!!! for real this time!!!!! reader’s decision to be imprisoned in gojo’s stead… that’s so . genius? i’m so in awe??????? it makes so much sense from a character perspective based on what they’ve been through — after being at the mercy of time for so long, wouldn’t it be nice to be free of it? completely? it’s almost kind of chilling and just the idea of it scares me LMAO but it makes sm sense that reader would be drawn to it.

AND like i mentioned before!!! how it leads to a deeper connection between them and gojo, and how at the very end of the fic he’s the one who has faith in them. faith that they’ll be alright, of sound mind.

…… and that brings me to the final final final thing because. it’s just like the opening poem!! reader is the cat in the box. nobody can say for sure if they’re alright, not to mention alive, until the box is opened. and we don’t get to know!!! you leave us on a cliffhanger and that’s so good bc it really is like the cat in the box…. we can only wonder but it also gives us the freedom to decide for ourselves if we think they come out okay or not and i’m just………….. in love. with this fic. and the ending and the reader and gojo and you.

hopefully you’ve noticed atp but i really did go completely insane reading this 😭😭 i said it at the beginning but just to reiterate!!: for SURE one of my all time favorite gojo fics . AND loopfics in general…. thank you sm for your hard work :’3 aaaa i can’t tell u how much i admire the time you spent working on this??? your storytelling and writing and characterization skills????? i genuinely feel sooo giddy and excited and happy rn bc. i just adored this fic!!!! i’m so lucky i got to read it!!!!! :33 pls pat your gojo on the head from me and let him know i love him…. it’ll boost his ego but that’s a risk i’m willing to take 😔😔 i hope you have theeeee loveliest day or night a human being can have bc you made mine <3333333

beyond the unending night (reader + satoru gojo)

notes: it's finally here. the long awaited halloween fic. yes, i know it's march, but i did start working on it in september. haha. there's so much i could say, but i will leave it at that this fic is, in every sense, a fic that i would not normally write. and yet here we are.

contains: f!reader (no physical description or gendered language is used), no explicit romantic pairing (though you don't have to look hard to find the reader x gojo implications), major character death (played with), semi-graphic depictions of death, blood and violence, minor suicide ideation, canon retelling (lines of dialogue are pulled from the jjk english dub because i'm a dirty dub watcher). opening poem is from higurashi no naku koro ni (minagoroshi-hen). fic title is from giga's beyond the way.

please note that this is a time loop fic and, by nature contains repeating scenes (particularly from canon). please do not read this fic if you do not like that sort of thing.

wc: 21,883 read on ao3 (account required)

Please tell me what happened in this night. It's like the cat inside the box.

Please tell me what happened in this night. You don't know if the cat in the box is dead or alive. Please tell me what happened in this night. The cat in the box was dead.

The first time, it is instant— you don’t even know what’s happening.

The second, it is by flame, but you barely realize it, barely feel it— a second of mind numbing heat before nothing.

The third time, it is something slicing across your throat; you see the blood spilling everywhere, then the pain follows— a moment of pure agony before nothing.

The fourth time you realize what’s going on; what’s really going on.

You realize you’ve been dying.

You think your head is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because the subway platform is crowded, insanely so— there are hundreds of people shoved into this space alongside you, packed like sardines in a can. You’ve never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you live in Tokyo. For the most part, you’ve learned to accept it, but even this crowd is a little much and you wish you hadn’t listened to your friends when they said you should go party in Shibuya for Halloween; you don’t even like partying.

There’s a sharp pain in your temple followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone is screaming it at you through a megaphone positioned right next to your ear.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

For the eighth time.

Before you can even question the thought, images flash in your mind’s eye, blurry at first before they come into focus. The platform gates open. Chaos ensues. People dropping onto the subway tracks— spontaneously bursting into flame— their heads, necks sliced off, stomachs cut open—

Bile rapidly builds up in your throat, and you clamp your jaw shut, trying to force it down. Not here. Not now. You try to focus on something else, anything else happening outside of your brain. There’s a pair next to you musing about the people standing on the subway tracks, wondering what the two (the four?) of them are talking about. You blink back tears as you look. You can only see two: a freakishly tall man with white hair dressed in all black, and another man, dressed in strange, yet more traditional looking garb. Are those costumes too? You don’t have a lot of time to think about it as another image forces its way into your brain.

Your corpse— lifeless on the ground.

Your corpse— burning to ash.

Your corpse— bleeding out.

You can’t hold it in any more. Every fiber in your being screams at you to get away from the subway tracks, but instead you rush toward them, shoving people left and right as your hands desperately reach the stability of the gate. You grip it like a lifeline as you retch over the side of it, the contents of your stomach spilling all over the subway tracks.

There’s a quiet murmur of disgust behind you but you can’t be bothered to respond. You need to get out of here. You need to leave. You need to do it before—

The gates open and the crowd starts to move like a tidal wave, pushing and shoving their way through the gate. You’re swept away, vomit long forgotten as you and a few dozen others tumble onto the railway.

Alarm bells go off in your brain, loud and deafening. A voice in the back of your head screams for you to get off the track! Get off the track now before—

The platform erupts into a cacophony of screams, drenched in horror, saturated in fear. You are surrounded by people, by corpses— beheaded, sliced open, bursting into flames.

Your terror roots you to the ground as the carnage ensues around you. It’s only when another person, another corpse, dressed in a magical girl costume collides with your body that you can finally move. But it’s too late, you realize, despaired and helpless, as your bodies fall to the ground.

It’s too late.

You die an eighth time.

You think your chest is going to explode.

At first, you think it’s because it’s so hard to breathe, frustratingly so— there are hundreds of people squeezed into this space alongside you, packed like cattle for slaughter. You've never been one for crowds, but it’s the reality of things when you’re in Shibuya. For the most part, you’ve come to accept it, but this crowd is way too much and you wish you had just stayed home and ordered a pizza; though honestly, the thought of pizza kind of makes you sick.

There’s a dull throbbing in your forehead, followed by a thought so loud that it feels like someone’s hollering at you from a loudspeaker that’s been installed in your brain.

It’s the night of October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You think it's the ninth time now.

Behind you, you hear a woman screaming, her voice crazed and terrified. You turn your head automatically to look at her and when you see her you realize you recognize her yellow and white magical girl costume. You can say with certainty that you’ve never seen her before and yet—

Before you can ruminate more on it, images— memories assault your mind’s eye with a clarity that is absolutely sickening. That woman colliding into you, your bodies slamming into the subway tracks before you both— Your stomach churns violently,

and you feel like you’re going to puke, but you force it down— can't afford to right now. Instead, you make your way over to the woman.

Her head is in her hands as she mutters over and over again about how everyone is going to die. People around her figure that being stuck in here with the crowd has probably gotten to her. You, however, know better.

“...hey,” you say softly.

Her muttering comes to an abrupt halt and slowly she raises her head to look at you. There’s a flash of recognition in her eyes and she grabs you violently by the shoulders. “You! You know, don’t you? That we’re going to die?”

If it weren’t for the fact that you have indeed experienced death here eight times already, then you would have thought she’s lost her mind. Slowly, you nod and she seems relieved by it, her grip on you loosening.

You can’t help but feel a little relieved too— glad to know that you’re not the only one experiencing this nightmare. There’s a voice in the back of your mind that’s confused though. Why is she only remembering now? But then again, it took you a few times before you realized yourself.

Around you people start to gasp, and you glance back toward the railway to see an abnormally tall man with white hair and dressed in all black jump down from the atrium onto the railway. He lands rather gracefully for someone who jumped at least one floor and starts to converse with the other three people (you think they're people— two of them are in some pretty wild costumes) on the track.

Wait. Isn’t it supposed to be just two people: the tall man and the one in the traditional clothes? Where did the other two come from?

“We have to get out of here,” the woman says. “Before they kill us.”

Her grip shifts from your shoulders to your arms and she starts to shove at everyone around you, trying to force her way through. She seems to know, just as well as you do, that any second now the gates will open and the crowd will start spilling onto the railway, littering the tracks with bodies and ash. Neither of you can let yourselves get swept up with the rest. If you do and you end up on those tracks, you’re as good as dead.

People move aside at a snail's pace, many of them too focused on trying to see what is going on on the subway tracks. This isn't good. You need to move faster or else—

The collective sound of the gates opening echoes in your head, a metallic hiss that makes your stomach fold into itself. Before either of you can stop yourselves, you both whip your heads back to look, to confirm, but it’s a mistake.

The briefest lapse in attention is enough to pull you both into the current of people, and try as you might to fight against it, the crowd splits you and the woman apart as it swallows you both whole. You’re both spat onto the tracks at the edge of the platform and your head collides with the metal rails of the track. It feels like your skull is about to crack in two, and it takes every fiber in your being to scramble to your feet. You're close enough to the platform that if you can just climb up it, then you'll be—

“Help! Help!”

It’s the woman’s voice. You turn to see that she ended up a couple meters away from you. She’s staring at you, eyes brimming with fear filled tears as she extends her hand in your direction. You take a step toward her, reaching out.

And then, her entire body is engulfed in flames, the skirt of her magical girl costume a ring of fiery death around her.

Her blood curdling scream is the only thing you can hear, her burning flesh, the only thing you can see. You don’t know what to do.

You can’t save her.

There's something touching your back. You can barely feel the pressure, but it's hot, scorching hot, mind numbingly hot, painfully hothothot.

You know this sensation. You have felt it before. The scent of burning cloth, burning hair, burning flesh clogs your nostrils. It's too late, you realize, helpless, despaired as the flames eat at your body— your soon to be corpse.

It's too late.

You die a ninth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the tenth time.

Your head hurts, but you ignore it. There’s something more important that you need to attend to. You immediately make your way to the woman you met during your last round, the one you watched burn to death. Her costume is still pristine, unmarred by fire and death.

For now.

She’s not screaming this time and while there’s a little voice in the back of your mind that’s concerned by this, you try to ignore it.

“Um, excuse me?” you say when she doesn’t acknowledge you as you approach.

The woman turns to look at you. You’re taken aback by the distinct lack of recognition and it feels almost as if the woman you encountered previously and the one before you now are two separate people. In a way, they technically are.

“Do I… know you?” she finally asks when you don’t say anything.

Your mouth is dry. How do you even answer that? You don’t know her. You just watched her die twice. You know her. She begged you for help. You couldn’t save her.

If you explain all of this you know she’s just going to think you’ve lost your mind. Maybe you already have— you’ve died nine times after all.

You give her a weak smile. “I… just wanted to tell you that you think your costume looks great.”

She blinks, taken aback by your words. There’s no doubt that she wasn’t expecting you to say that. It’s the truth though, her costume is nice; she’s dressed up as a character from a magical girl anime that was popular a couple years ago.

“Thank you! I made it myself!” The woman breaks out into a genuine smile and your heart hurts. In a few moments she’ll die and the costume she worked so hard to make will be nothing but ash on the subway tracks.

“Sorry,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

“For?”

For watching her die. For not being able to save her.“...I just kind of came up to you all of a sudden…”

She laughs. “It’s okay.”

It’s not.

You consider telling her that she should try to move. That if she stays here she will die. You don’t want her to die. Again. You can still hear her screaming in your ears as she burned to death. You want to tell her.

You don’t.

“Stay safe, okay?” you say. It almost sounds like you’re begging.

She gives you another smile, kind and gentle and you think you’re far too undeserving of it for not telling her what fate will soon befall her. “You too.”

“I’ll try,” you say and move away from the woman just as the gates open and the crowd surges toward the railway. You do not fight it as you are swept up into the crowd and despite what you said, you do not try, this time, to stay safe.

You die for the tenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the fourteenth time.

There’s a slight ache in your head, but it’s subtle enough that you can ignore it. The pain you feel lessens with each round and you think it’s a sign that your body no longer feels the need to remind you of the precarious situation that you’re in.

Or maybe you are just becoming numb to everything: your death, the death of the people around you, the death of the woman in the magical girl costume—

You try not to think about it too much as you reach into your bag to check the time on your phone: 8:37PM. There’s not a lot of time: you need to move.

At the very end of your last attempt to escape this nightmare you realized something. You need to know exactly what is going on around you so you can plan accordingly: where to not stand, where to not go. Up until now, you’ve relied almost solely on the knowledge gained from your previous failures to try and survive, but obviously it’s not enough to keep you alive. You’re not sure why you didn’t realize this earlier. The panic, maybe? The fear?

Maybe you really are becoming numb to all this.

Unlike previous iterations, this time you elect to move closer to the gate, positioning yourself somewhere against it where you’re unlikely to be pushed off the platform in a couple minutes when they open. You take great care to place yourself where you can see the ones responsible for the slaughter very clearly. At the beginning, you could only see one, the one who looks the most human, but with each repetition, the other two have become more and more clear. You wonder why. You don’t have time to think about it.

Murmurs nearby alert you to the arrival of the fourth major player involved in the night’s events. You look up and see the white haired man dressed in all black descending upon the platform like an angel from the heavens. This is your first time really looking at him and you realize there’s something almost inhumanly attractive about him. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it occurs to you that you shouldn’t even try; you don’t have the time to be drooling over some handsome stranger.

You’ve naturally never taken the time to try and listen to whatever the conversation the man and his opponents have before all hell breaks loose on the platform, but you try and lean closer to listen. It’s hard to hear over the dozens of conversations going on behind you, but you try anyway. There might be a clue to what’s actually going on— or better yet, a clue on how to get out of it.

It’s obvious that you’re missing context from what bits of the conversation you do manage to hear, but honestly it all sounds like stuff out of a shounen battle manga. There is one part of the exchange that you manage to hear with a startling sort of clarity. It feels almost as if your heart stops beating as your blood turns ice cold in your veins.

“If I run away, you’re just gonna kill everyone here, right?” the man in black asks.

There’s a pause, and if your heart was still beating it’d be long enough for just four heartbeats.

“If you run away?” The monster with cane repeats, the sadistic grin spreading wide across its features, displaying its charcoal black teeth. The gravelly sound of its voice sets fire to the blood in your veins, your stilled heart thumping wildly, in fear, in anticipation. Soon. It’s happening soon. You brace yourself. “We’re going to do that even if you don’t!”

You die a fourteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is the seventeenth time now.

Things are going surprisingly well, even as the people around you tumble onto the tracks. You manage to hold on, desperation keeping you from falling into the abyss. This is good, you tell yourself, despite the fact that it’s not the first time you’ve achieved this. Every little victory is worth celebrating, but you have to remain vigilant. This is yet another information gathering loop, and while you know that maybe this time you’ll be lucky and live, there’s still a chance, a big one, at that, that you will die again.

You have to make the most of each and every death.

It’s such a morbid thought, but the ends justify the means, or so you tell yourself. If you have to die a few times to make it out of this unending nightmare, then so be it.

The spot you’re in is a good vantage point; it’s easier to see everything happening below you. It’s so good that it’s actually sickening. You watch as the monster with the cane and one with what looks like branches for eyes slaughter the people on the track, mowing them down, setting them aflame. In another life, in another many lives, that was you down there, and for what feels like the first time in forever, you feel like you’re going to be sick. You feel like, at some point, you likened the scene before you to some kind of shounen battle manga, but you think that was wrong.

This is borderline horror.

Everything plays out before you like a scene out of an action horror flick. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were just an extra on set, but you know the reality is that you’re just an extra to whatever phantasmal battle is taking place in front of you. The monsters and the strangely dressed man all try to attack the man in black, but he manages to block every hit effortlessly, as if he is protected by some sort of invisible barrier. When it seems the two monsters are about to hit him, he merely jumps out of the way and the two monsters seem to collide, the force of their combined strength sending a gust of air throughout the crowd. The man in black neatly lands on a nearby platform half wall and says something about curse users, whatever those are, to the monsters, before he starts to mock them, pulling down his strange blindfold in the process.

And this, you’ve found, is where you start to get in trouble.

You clearly remember thinking, at some point, previously, that there was something attractive about this man. You still don’t know what it is. You haven’t had the time to try and figure it out, but there is one thing that you do know: you can’t keep your eyes off of him.

He drops back down onto the tracks, antagonizing his opponents in an arrogant tone as he approaches. When he comes to a stop between the two monsters, the second round of their fight begins. They try to hit him, but he dodges still, gracefully, fluidly, like the three of them are embroiled in some sort of passionate, yet violent dance.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he cruelly rips off one of the arms of the one-eyed monster.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he brutally kicks the branch-eyed monster in the abdomen, sending them flying to the other side of the platform.

You cannot turn your eyes away as he effortlessly hurls the one-eyed, now one-armed monster in the same direction, sending them smashing into the wall.

Only when the man in black seems to fly to the other side is the spell over you seemingly broken. Still, your eyes give chase, and your body too, rushing from one side of the platform to the other. You can’t lose sight of this fight, you tell yourself, settling in a spot you recall being safe during your last round. Doing so could mean another death, another loop, another October 31.

You watch as the man in black acrobatically dodges what looks to be vines or roots that the monster with branches for eyes seems to have summoned from the depths of the Tokyo metro. He lands on the monster’s shoulders, balancing on them as he uses its branch-eyes for leverage. The look in the man’s eyes is so crazed that you can see it from where you’re standing. He says something to it and then—

With a feral and sadistic smile, he rips their eyes straight out of their skull.

Your heart is pounding wildly in your chest as you watch the fight unfold. It is horrifyingly, disgustingly violent, yet still you watch as people on the track are killed by the human-like person, blood raining down as their freshly beheaded skulls go flying into the air. He and the one-eyed monster launch their counter attacks against the man in black and the blowback is so intense the power goes out causing everyone to scream.

There’s a faint glow where the man in black is standing that starts to grow brighter and brighter. You can make out his form turning to face the wall, and it seems almost like he’s slammed the monster that had branches for eyes against it with some sort of telekinetic power. Despite the panic from the people around you, you manage to hear him, chuckling like a mad man as he draws closer and closer to the monster.

The one-eyed monster yells out a name, a name you think must belong to the man, but he doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as he extends his hands out toward the eyeless monster, exerting some kind of force that you can’t really see. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster as the eyeless monster’s entire body is vaporized in a flash of blue light. He doesn’t hear the one-eyed monster, as the lights flicker back on revealing a smoking crater stained with purple blood where the eyeless monster once stood.

But you do.

Satoru Gojo.

You make sure to remember that.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And this is the eighteenth time.

You watch as the man called Satoru Gojo stalks through the crowd of people on the subway tracks, chasing after the one-eyed fire monster. It throws people at him, in a clear attempt to slow him down.

It does not work.

Satoru Gojo climbs back onto the platform in a way that you can only describe as inhuman, and the people nearby shriek and move away from him, out of terror, out of fear. You, on the other hand, draw closer, refusing to lose sight of him.

He is relentless in his pursuit of the one-eyed monster. It continues to throw person after person at him, but he does not stop and the people float there, suspended in midair before they are gently lowered to the ground by some unseen force and scramble away.

No one dares get close to Satoru Gojo, everyone on the platform seems to know that doing so means certain death, yourself included. But you still feel the need to keep an eye on him. The monster and the strangely dressed man are focusing more on him than the crowd— anyone in between is just collateral damage.

But not you.

Especially since you’ve made it this far— you’ve never made it this far before.

A voice echoes throughout the platform; you realize it’s the automated announcement.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You can hear everyone’s relief coming from all sides. The train is coming! The train is coming! A ripple of hope makes its way throughout the crowd. With the train comes the chance to get off the platform and the senseless violence that’s been happening here. Some of the people around you are talking excitedly and others are running toward the gates, toeing the yellow line they’ve been instructed to wait behind. And you, you should be excited, you should be hopeful.

All you feel is dread.

It eats at your stomach, at your chest, at your mind. Clawing and gnawing at you in a way that leaves you paralyzed on the platform. There’s something wrong here. You can’t be sure because you’ve never made it this far, never survived long enough for the train to come, but something is just not right.

No.

You must be paranoid. The train coming is a good thing. It has to be a good thing. You are just paranoid. It’s normal. It’s natural. Dying seventeen times would do that to anyone— rob them of hope, condemn them to an existence full of fear.

It is not lost on you that the thought of dying more than once, much less, dying seventeen times is not normal or natural in the very slightest.

But you need hope, you crave it, wildly, desperately. The hope of freedom, of escape is the only thing getting you through this unending nightmare. Every time you die, every time you wake, it is with the hope that maybe, just maybe this iteration will be different, maybe this one will be the one where you make it out, make it back to your friends who must be waiting for you, make it back home where you can be safe and sound. You need the hope to keep going. Because without hope, what will you have left?

The train screeches as it pulls into the station and the people around you laugh in both disbelief and relief. They start to push and shove toward it, fighting to be able to board because there’s no way everyone here will be able to get on an eight car train and being left behind at this point is practically synonymous with death. Unable to decide if you believe in the train as a symbol of hope or a new layer of fear, you are pushed along with the crowd toward it.

The doors of the train cars slide open and the current passengers all rush off as they disembark. You as well as everyone else on the platform can see with a horrifying clarity that the train is filled to the brim with monsters. Monsters that reach out and grab anyone their hands can reach. The woman to your left. The person to your right.

You.

Hope is gone.

What do you have left?

You die for the eighteenth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This is probably the twenty-sixth time now.

If there is anything this entire ordeal has taught you, it is that you are resilient. Whether it is some innate trait that you never had any reason to uncover before or just a byproduct of being trapped in an unending cycle of being dead and not dead, you don't know. What you do know, though, is that even if you no longer have hope, you at least have your resilience.

Whether you want it or not.

You check the time. It’s 8:35PM. Something flickers in your chest, like a faint light in a sea of darkness, but you ignore it. You don’t have time right now.

With a nimbleness born from your previous failures, you weave your way through the crowd. You’ve done this enough times to know where the gaps are— who will yield and who won’t. Your destination is the escalator that leads off the platform and up to a higher part of the station. You’d noticed previously that the escalator along with every other entrance onto the platform will eventually be blocked by vines or roots of some sort (the work of the branch-eyed monster probably). It’s not a perfect plan because you don’t know what happens on the other side, but whatever it is has to be better than whatever is happening on the side that you’ve been on.

You’d tried to get to the stairs during your last two rounds, but you’d just missed it. You hadn’t been fast enough and had gotten caged and slaughtered along with the rest. But this time, this time you have more time. It’s just one minute, but it’s enough. You know it is.

The flickering in your heart grows stronger. Hope. You try not to pay attention to it— you don’t want to be disappointed yet again. But you want to so badly. A voice in the back of your mind tells you to focus on the good, tells you that if there was truly no way out of this endless nightmare, then why would you get more and more time with each round to escape your fate?

With that thought in mind, you break out into a run, recklessly rushing through the crowd, shoving anyone who will not yield to the side. Out of the corner of your eye you can see the stark white of Satoru Gojo’s hair as he descends upon the platform.

You need to get up those stairs.

Now.

If you remember correctly, the roots and vines don’t close off the area the moment he touches down, but a little after they start talking, so you think there is probably some time, but you can’t leave it to chance.

The stairs are packed, and for some reason no one is moving. The escalator right next to it is just as full and the power doesn’t seem to be working. You don’t have time for this. You clamber onto the escalator’s rubber handrail, ignoring the weird feeling that passes through your body as you do so. You don’t have the time to worry about whatever that is. The people around you start exclaiming around you, but you don’t care, you don’t listen. You wobble as you try to balance yourself and when you think you’re steady you try to run.

But you trip.

And you die for the twenty-sixth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

This marks the thirtieth time.

And you have, finally, finally made it up the escalator, up the stairs with barely a second to spare. You pause, glancing back as the roots or vines or whatever the hell they are seal off the entrance to the platform. You notice that the area where the plants come down is actually fairly clear, despite the crowd. It seems weird, but you don’t dwell on it.

A strange feeling envelops your entire body and your legs turn into jelly. As you sink to the floor, you realize what you’re feeling is relief as all the tension, maybe thirty iterations of Halloween 2018 worth, seeps from your being. You don't remember the last time you felt anything other than fear and dread; it’s weird, but not unwelcome.

That voice in the back of your mind tells you that you can't relax just yet: October 31st isn’t over. Even though you have repeated this night again and again, burning the events that play out on the platform into your memory, you do not know a single thing that happens over here. It would be smart to scope everything out.

Legs still shaky, you rise to your feet and start walking. You think it’s probably for the best to try and head up to the surface and you make your way up to the next floor.

It’s packed with people here too, but relatively peaceful, especially when you compare it to the pandemonium taking place beneath your feet. Still, you can make out the undeniable hum of displeasure resonating throughout the crowd. People complaining about how uncomfortable their costumes are, people complaining about how much they want to go home, people complaining about how much their nights have been ruined because they couldn’t meet up with their friends and—

A thought hits you like an eight car train.

You were supposed to meet up with your friends.

That’s why you were on the platform in the first place— you were waiting for them to arrive, but then the trains stopped working, and people just started pouring into the station out of seemingly nowhere (you think you heard some people say they’d come from the crossing?). Soon after that is when everything went to shit.

You check your phone, though, for once it’s not to look at the time (8:56PM). Instead, you open LINE to check your friends’ group chat. There’s no signal here, for whatever reason, so if there are any new messages, you haven’t received them. The last one was from Kei, mentioning he was enroute, but as far as you know, you’re the only one who made it to Shibuya before the trains stopped.

Did one of them maybe make it here though? Surely, you would have run into them if—

The image of a woman in a magical girl costume fills your vision, burning to death before your very eyes as her screams echo in your ears. It is the first time in what feels like forever that you’ve thought about her and your stomach churns violently. You couldn’t help her, you can’t even help yourself, so how could you even expect to do the same for your friends if they were here? The mere thought of having to watch them die over and over is almost enough to send you over the edge. You don’t know if you could do it.

Would you even have a choice?

No. You can't think like that. You have choices. You've had choices. If you didn’t then, you would still be down below, among the fire and brimstone. Dying, if not dead already. However, instead, you are up here, where, for the moment, it is quiet and peaceful.

That thought, in of itself, is enough to give you a shred of solace, a glimmer of hope.

You take a deep breath and fiddle with your phone a little more, changing your lock screen to a picture you and your friends took at a photo booth not too long ago. The four of you are huddled together, faces squished as if you're all struggling to fit in the frame, despite there being plenty of room. You're mid-laugh because it's the first time you've been in a photo booth in years, Mio and Shin are grinning mischievously and finally, Kei is smiling, but only just slightly, the embarrassment clear on his face. It's probably only been a few months since you all took this picture, but the fact that it feels like it's been years makes your heart ache.

You press your forehead to the screen, like a prayer, like a promise.

You will make it out of this nightmare.

No matter what.

A shrill scream yanks you from your thoughts and you are instantly on your feet, alert as your eyes flit around frantically to identify the source. It doesn't take long for you to find it and when you do, you think you might have stumbled upon a new layer of horror to this nightmare.

It’s not the corpse, dangling by a noose, that terrifies you— by now you’ve seen dozens upon dozens of dead bodies that the sight of just one more doesn’t faze you in the slightest. The thing that’s the most mortifying, that’s the most disturbing is that right next to where the body is tied are two girls, two teenage girls still dressed in their school uniforms.

You can accept monsters and weirdly dressed men being responsible for the carnage tonight, but children too? Both girls look like they’re barely in high school and try as you might to rationalize things, to chalk it up to coincidence, you cannot ignore the ominous energy radiating from them.

The very notion that these two children could have killed someone here is a hard pill to swallow, but so is the fact that you’ve died.

And you’ve had to swallow that pill thirty times now, so what’s once more?

“Listen up!” one of the girls yells over the crowd, but she is mostly ignored; you don’t think everyone here has noticed her and the corpse dangling from the rafters. She scowls and turns to the other girl and says something quietly to her. The other girl nods and almost instantly she’s stringing up another person, another example. You want to look away so badly, and yet you cannot bring yourself to and you watch the poor soul choke to death.

“I said listen, you dumb monkeys!” the girl shouts, and this time she’s caught most of the crowd’s attention. “If you don’t want to end up like these two, you’ll listen to what we have to say!”

There is clear dissent among the crowd, people dismissive as they utter their disbelief. Some seem to think it’s a prank, but you know better. It takes two more examples before the crowd goes silent before the two high schoolers.

“About damn time!” The girl roars and then points toward the atrium, which is currently covered by roots and branches. “All of you move over there!”

You have a bad feeling about this.

Still, you comply; the girls have made it abundantly clear that failure to do so will result in death, though, at this point, you're almost certain this iteration is a bust and death is all but imminent. You try to keep positive— thinking you can at least gather information or, who knows, maybe there's a chance that this one is the one.

Yet when you step onto the mound of vines and branches that cover the atrium it feels as if you've crossed the threshold into hell. Your footing is stable… but for how long?

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

It's faint, but you can hear the announcement from below. The liquid in your stomach curdles at the sound as you recall the train and, in particular, what is on board. Soon enough, those monsters will be swarming the platform, massacring everyone in reach, guzzling down their blood, feasting on their flesh—

It dawns on you that the people on the platform are the monsters' first course.

And you, and those around you here in the shrubbery, are the second.

As you realize this, the branches and vines disintegrate beneath your very feet and suddenly you are mid air— falling, falling into the abyss below.

You die for the thirtieth time.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

You've done this nearly sixty times now.

After countless failures, you've decided that you're just not going to go upstairs any more. No matter where you try to go, you still end up herded onto the death trap above the platform where you ultimately fall to your death. You've tried positioning yourself in the same spot, tried bracing yourself for the drop— but nothing seems to work: upon landing, assuming you manage to land without hurting yourself or dying in midair (which has happened a couple times) you get grabbed and killed by one of the monsters from the train. It's probably not impossible, you just don't have the physical prowess or reflexes for it.

If anything, you can try again later, but you sincerely hope you don't have to.

It's 8:32PM, and you have plenty of time to get to your chosen spot for this loop— it's close to the stairs, in the very center of the platform. Here, there's little risk of getting pushed off onto the tracks when the gates open. You'll probably have to move when the train comes, or even before (assuming you survive) to avoid the monsters, but you'll get to that when it's time.

You can't really see the fight once it breaks out after Satoru Gojo arrives, but you still try to keep track of it as best as you can. You see when he hurls both monsters across the platform and you're not sure if it's muscle memory or what but you have to fight the urge to move to the side and watch. It's been a while, yes, but you've seen the fight countless times before— it doesn't change. Satoru Gojo will give chase. He will rip the branches from the branch eyed monster's skull. He will use some kind of power to eviscerate them.

You don't need to watch, but there's something in you that wants to.

It doesn't make sense, you've seen it all before; if you're unlucky you'll see it all again.

The lights go out and people start screaming; Satoru Gojo is ending the life of that one monster. Soon enough he'll be back on the platform, in pursuit of the other. You think at that point it would be good to move, reposition yourself as far from the incoming train as possible.

When he rises from the tracks like a demon straight from hell, you realize it's the first time this loop that you've actually gotten a good look at him. You remind yourself, again, that this isn't the first time you've seen this man, this scene. You can't help but watch, but stare at Satoru Gojo as he stalks through the crowd in pursuit of his prey. His expression is an eerie sort of calm that's at odds with the acts of violence you've seen him commit— his eyes an unnaturally bright blue.

He's a terrifying sort of beauty and you can't help but be captivated by him.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

The sound of the announcement sends your heartbeat into a frenzy, snapping you out of your little trance. The train is coming and you need to get moving. As you dart to the edge of the platform, the thought occurs to you that even if you avoid the initial wave of monsters, it's likely you will inevitably be caught by them and killed. It wouldn't be impossible for Satoru Gojo to turn his attention to them instead of the two he's currently facing, but he's just one man— can he truly defeat all those monsters?

You can see the train pulling in and you brace yourself, praying that it'll work out somehow.

The doors hiss open and the screaming starts again as the monsters come bursting out of the train, biting and mauling anyone they can get their hands on. Those who were lucky enough to not be at the front start to scramble away and the monsters give chase. Your body is taut, ready to try and dodge any that come your way.

Out of the corner of your eye you notice something moving through the air. A person? With blue hair? You take the risk to look— they're attacking Satoru Gojo. He tries to punch them but they fly away from him to dodge— disappearing into the crowd.

You hear a loud cracking sound over the cacophony of the crowd and your stomach twists; you know what that sound is. The roots above the atrium disintegrate and bodies from above start to rain down onto the platform.

And then, you're not sure what happens— it's so quick that you only manage to see what looks like an explosion of blood surrounding Satoru Gojo. Corpses litter the ground around him and even from here you can tell he is shaken by the carnage.

The monsters have finally reached where you're standing, and you duck under one as it lunges at you. Although it's big and scary, you realize it's moving kind of slow. Right after it another one comes at you and you take a side step to avoid it; this monster is kind of slow too.

Maybe you can do this.

As soon as you think that a strange feeling courses through you. Every hair on your body feels like it's standing on edge and the voice in your head is telling you to look at Satoru Gojo. You don't understand why because you think he's the least of your worries right now, but you do it anyway.

He's in some sort of stance, one hand raised to his face, fingers bent in some kind of gesture. There's some sort of aura, oppressive and frightening emanating from his form.

Satoru Gojo is doing something.

You just can't tell what.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are utterly confused.

Barring your first few loops when you weren't fully aware of what was happening, you have very distinct memories of how each of your previous iterations of this night have gone— of each and every one of your deaths. But for your last round, the last thing you remember was feeling the immense power radiating from Satoru Gojo's body, but that's it.

You do not remember dying.

In fact, you don't think you did.

And yet, here you are again, back at the start: it's 8:32PM and the monsters and strangely dressed man are standing on the subway tracks waiting for the arrival of Satoru Gojo.

You don't understand what's going on; you didn't die but you're still stuck in this damn loop. Up until now, your death has served as the trigger to restart the loop. It's not impossible that maybe you suffered a quick and painless death but you're almost certain that isn't the case.

Something else must have happened.

Something having to do with Satoru Gojo.

You have to find out what. If you don't, you won't know how to avoid it, and if you can't do that, then you really might spend an eternity stuck in this nightmare. And so you take great care to repeat the steps of your last round. You need to make sure to survive to the same point you made it to last time.

Miraculously, you do.

The moment you feel that sensation again, a prickling sort of feeling that envelops your entire body, your eyes are on Satoru Gojo— trying to figure out what the hell he's doing. His eyes are crazed with a desperate kind of focus. You see his mouth move— he's saying something. A spell? A prayer? A curse?

You don't know.

You do know.

Your brain feels like it's going to explode.

Again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

Again.

You do not know how many times it's been the night of Halloween in Shibuya: you stopped counting around the hundredth loop. It feels like it's been a while since then. Or maybe it hasn't? You don't know any more.

What you do know is that this night ends up going one of two ways before you are forced to repeat it. Either you die, in some way, shape or form or something happens just after nine that forces you to reset. You still don't know what it is exactly; you only know that Satoru Gojo is responsible for it.

You do prefer it to dying— it's far less painful.

But if anything, you wish you could just die permanently and never have to repeat this night ever again.

Unfortunately, you know better.

The only good thing you’ve noticed about all of this is that you really do seem to keep waking up earlier and earlier. The last time you checked, it was at around 8:30. It might take hundreds of thousands of loops, but eventually you’ll certainly wake up early enough to avoid this damn entire mess.

But by the time that happens… will your sanity still be intact? Will you really be able to go back to a normal day to day life after living the equivalent of hundreds of years, repeating the same night over and over again? You don’t even know how you’ve managed to stay sane all this time and as much as you want to believe you could do it…

There has to be a breaking point.

For both your mind and this time loop.

If you’re lucky, you’ll reach the latter first.

There’s a dull ache in your head that feels foreign yet familiar. Your mind is foggy, all your thoughts hazy as you try to recall what the word for this feeling is.

Groggy.

It feels as if you’ve woken up from a nap and you blink the sleepiness away from your eyes. When was the last time you took a nap? It’s been a while… You think you maybe tried once or twice, but you were too nervous, too on edge. Awake or asleep, it didn’t matter because, either way, you were doomed to repeat this nightmare.

As you think this, you realize that something is different.

You’re used to how the start of each loop feels like waking up suddenly and abruptly and it becomes clear to you that you haven’t looped. This is completely uncharted territory.

You need to find out what’s going on.

The first thing you notice is that it’s quiet. Almost eerily so, especially when the last thing you remember was screaming and chaos. You glance around you and find that it looks like all the monsters from the train are dead, the ground littered in their bloodstains and corpses. There were so many of them, you don’t know how someone could have wiped them out so quickly… Could it possibly have been Satoru Gojo’s doing?

More concerning than the complete eradication of the monsters is the fact that nearly everyone else on the platform is standing stock still, their mouths ajar with blank expressions on their faces. It’s almost as if their souls have completely vacated their bodies…

Were you like that too before you woke up?

You hear voices, and your body immediately goes tense as you turn your head in their direction. A little ways ahead of you, you see a man dressed as a monk conversing with the blue haired person from earlier and before them is—

Your heart nearly stops: it’s Satoru Gojo, restrained and on his knees.

Honestly, you can’t make heads or tails of the conversation they’re having; it’s more shounen battle manga nonsense. Satoru Gojo doesn’t seem to be enjoying their conversation either, and he interrupts them, clearly annoyed.

“Are we gonna do this or what?” he asks. “The view sucks and I’m just kinda bored.”

“I wanted to enjoy this sight for a little bit longer, but you are right,” the monk says. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen— gate, close.”

When he says that, Satoru Gojo’s restraints move, the weirdly shaped cubes at the ends of them closing in around him, trapping him in a giant red cube. It starts to shrink until it’s small enough to fit in the monk’s hand.

You gulp and hope they don’t notice that you’re awake. The fact that they haven’t slaughtered the rest of the people standing around you is a good sign, but you don’t want to find out what happens if they know you’re cognizant.

It’s not hard to play the part of a living statue, especially when you compare it to everything else you’ve had to suffer through on this night. You watch as the monk’s allies, the ones who had attacked everyone on the platform, wake up, but before they can do or say anything, the box holding Satoru Gojo slips through the monk’s fingers and makes a dent in the concrete. The look on the monk’s face makes it clear that it’s a problem he wasn’t expecting.

You don’t know a damn thing about Satoru Gojo, but you feel like this kind of thing is the norm for him.

The blue haired person suddenly looks in your direction and you nearly stop breathing. Have they noticed you? It takes everything in you to keep perfectly still, in hopes that maybe they didn't, that maybe they’re looking at something else. They raise their arm and it extends, their hand acting like some kind of projectile. You almost shut your eyes and brace yourself for impact, but their hand flies upwards and hits something on the ceiling, destroying it.

Inwardly, you breathe a sigh of relief— you’re still safe.

For now.

You listen to their following conversation and while you still don’t fully understand everything, it’s clear they’re talking about what to do next since they’ve taken care of Satoru Gojo. Something having to do with someone named Yuji Itadori? The group seems split on what to do about him but it’s clear he’s their next target.

Eventually, everyone but the monk (you heard the blue haired person, who is apparently named Mahito, call him Geto?) runs off, probably to find this Yuji Itadori person. Once they’re gone, Geto speaks and, at first, you think he’s talking to you, but it becomes clear he’s addressing someone else. “Those cursed spirits are actually smarter than the two of you.”

“Give him back!” a voice hidden among the crowd hisses. Your blood runs cold at the sound. You recognize it; it’s one of the high school girls from the upper floor.

“We cooperated with you fully and kept dropping monkeys for you,” says another voice; it must be the other girl that was with her, the one who hung all those people.

“Now give us back Master Geto’s body like you promised!”

“Don’t toy with Master Geto any further than you have!”

You blink in confusion. Isn’t the monk named Geto? The way the girls are talking it sounds like they’re talking about someone else… Is it possible that the body is ‘Geto’ but the person they’re talking to is someone else possessing it? It sounds kind of crazy, but then again, so is every single thing you’ve experienced tonight.

Your suspicions concerning this ‘Geto’ are confirmed only seconds later as he says, “Now begone, or is it your desire to be killed by this body?”

One of the girls vows her revenge and you hear shuffling somewhere else in the crowd as they scurry away. Now you think it’s just you and whoever it is that’s puppeting Geto’s body. You see him plop down in front of the box (the prison realm, you think he’d called it) that’s holding Satoru Gojo.

“You can come out, you know,” he says after a while.

You freeze. The rest of the platform is completely silent. This time you think he might actually be talking to you.

“I know you’re there,” ‘Geto’ adds, his voice casual. “If you’re insistent on hiding, you should know that I’m not afraid of using whatever means necessary to smoke you out.”

Given everything his allies have done, there’s no doubt in your mind that he’s serious. You were hoping to hide out among the crowd until he decided to leave, but it looks like you won’t be able to now.

Looks like this loop is a bust after all.

Your heart starts to race as you weave your way through the crowd. In every single one of your loops, you were always treated like a bit character, never noticed or singled out by any of the major players of the night. Although this is your first time encountering this ‘Geto’ it’s clear to you that he’s involved with everything that’s happened here and honestly, you get the feeling he might actually be the mastermind behind the massacre.

That makes you even more nervous.

You come to a stop in the place where Satoru Gojo was once kneeling before he was put in that box. Now that you’re out in the open, ‘Geto’ looks you over with some sort of nonchalant curiosity.

“You’re…” he starts, sounding thoughtful, "not a sorcerer, are you?”

Sorcerer. You heard that term thrown around by him and his group a few times. It’s what they’ve been referring to their enemies as. It probably wouldn’t be smart to lie and say you are one; you get the feeling he’d see through your lie anyway. “I’m not.”

He hums. “How interesting.”

“...what do you mean?” you ask before you can help yourself.

“It’s just you have an abnormally large amount of cursed energy for a non-sorcerer,” he explains. “Though, I suppose that all just sounds like gibberish to you."

You nod and look down at the box lodged in the floor. It has eyes, big creepy looking eyes. "...are you going to do the same thing to me as you did to that man?"

He laughs, "...fortunately for you, the prison realm only holds one person at a time and I need him sealed away more than you."

"...does that mean you're going to leave him in there forever?"

"If I'm feeling nice, I might unseal him in a hundred years or so."

One hundred years? At this point, you've probably lived roughly that amount of time through your loops alone, but for Satoru Gojo… "Won't he die first?"

"Only if he decides to," 'Geto' says, looking completely and wholly unbothered. "Time doesn't doesn't flow in the box, so when I unseal him, he'll be the same as he was just now. Physically anyway. Who knows how deteriorated his mind will be after all that."

Time doesn't flow in the box.

The words echo in your mind over and over. Time doesn't flow in the box. In other words, that means time has stopped in the box, and if that's the case then—

"Anyway, rather than worry about him, shouldn't you be more worried about yourself?"

You look at 'Geto' and he's smiling at you, it's friendly, but ominous. There's no doubt what is going to happen next, though you had already resigned yourself to this iteration being a bust; it was only a matter of time.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I was thinking I might keep you around, even if you aren’t a sorcerer, your wealth of cursed energy would serve my plans well," he muses. "But… it would be too much trouble trying to teach you how to use it in time."

As he talks, you realize this is probably the first time your death is intentional— every other death you've suffered has just been a byproduct of the ongoing slaughter. You were just another casualty, a victim, never a target.

You're scared.

Even though you know that once he kills you, once you die, you'll just loop back to around 8:30 again. You'll be on the platform again. And you'll play out some sequence of events before you eventually die again. And again and again.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

"I'll be nice, though," 'Geto' says, raising a hand and another monster appears out of nowhere. You don’t even bother trying to figure out from where. It doesn’t matter, especially since this monster will surely be the one to end your life. "I'll make it painless."

"...I appreciate it," you say and close your eyes hoping that he's not lying about it.

Time doesn't flow in the box.

He didn't lie.

You die again.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you're trapped.

You don't know how and you don't know why, but you are stuck in a time loop— forced to suffer through the horrific events of the night before you die and begin it all again. It's been a long time since you stopped counting how many loops you've gone through, but if you had to guess, it's probably somewhere in the hundreds now.

You are so very tired.

But it doesn't stop. It won't stop no matter what you seem to do. You are stuck. You are trapped. You are doomed.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

Ever since that first loop where you heard whoever is possessing Geto's body say that, the words have been stuck in your head, playing on loop.

You finally realize why.

“Time doesn't flow in the box.”

It's 8:25PM when you wake up; that should be plenty of time.

You need to find Satoru Gojo.

After hundreds of loops you've come to a singular conclusion: you need to prevent him being sealed in the prison realm. You've witnessed it enough to know that you won't be able to do it alone; you'll need his cooperation.

You rush upstairs as fast as you can, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine as you step onto the stairwell. According to your previous loops, Satoru Gojo arrives on the subway tracks at 8:40PM. With how crowded the upper floor is, you don’t know if you’ll have the time to intercept him and talk to him, but if you can at least figure out where to find him, then you can try and talk to him during a subsequent loop.

When you reach the fourth basement floor, however, you don’t know where you should even start. He’s pretty tall so you think you could spot him in the crowd, but… there are still so many people. It occurs to you that maybe it would be better to try and look from a higher vantage point so you head to the stairs that lead up to the third basement floor. You check your phone again. It’s 8:35PM; you need to hurry.

Luckily for you, you find him very easily on the third basement floor.

The only problem is that he’s in a hard to reach spot— squatting above a sign hanging over the crowd.

You check your phone again. It’s 8:38PM and he’s starting to move, presumably to meet with those waiting for him on the subway tracks. It’s good that you found him, but there’s no doubt about it.

You’re going to need more time.

The moment you wake up, you immediately bolt toward the stairs. It's taken many, many more loops, but you've finally brought the time you wake down to around 8:15. You're still not sure if it's enough time, but there's only one way to find out.

You barrel your way up to the next floor and zig zag through the crowd to get to the next flight of stairs. By the time you get to your destination, you're completely out of breath, your chest heaving as your lungs clamor for air. You’ve done this so many times, yet your body acts like it’s always the first. It sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it. You slow to a brisk pace to catch your breath and check the time. It’s 8:27— a new record. Hopefully it’ll be enough.

The goal is to catch Satoru Gojo before he moves to his lookout point above the crowd. While not impossible, it would be difficult for you to follow him there. You eye the safety barricade that blocks off the area where he’ll be moving in just a few minutes warily.

Yes, getting over there would be extremely difficult.

You don’t want to think about it right now; you’ll deal with it when the time comes.

Especially since Satoru Gojo has now entered your field of vision.

Your heart starts to race at the sight of him and it feels like it’s beating a million times a second. There isn’t a lot of time. You need to talk to him, but your legs only wobble, your feet planted firmly to the ground. This is not good. You need to move. You need to move.

Finally, after what feels like both an instant and an eternity, your feet finally budge, propelling you in Satoru Gojo’s direction. The beating of your heart only grows louder as you make your way toward him, mingling with the single thought that’s echoing throughout your mind right now: will he even hear you out?

You need to make him.

“Excuse me!” The words nearly come out in a stutter as you realize that you are actually talking to Satoru Gojo. You have watched this man at a distance for so long that it almost felt like he wasn’t real, like he was just another fixture in this nightmare that you’ve been living for far too long. And yet, here he is, right in front of you, in the flesh.

And his attention is on you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is actually a little overwhelming. Your mouth is dry and suddenly you don’t know what to say, but you need to say something. You need to say something before he thinks maybe you bumped into him by accident and just walks away without a word.

“I need to talk to you!” The words just burst out from your mouth and something about it is just absolutely embarrassing. You’re not sure if it's desperation or the fact that you haven’t really talked to anyone other than the existence occupying Suguru Geto’s body in nearly forever.

Satoru Gojo’s lips slowly start to form a smile, “Oh, yeah?”

The sound of his voice makes your mind go blank. There’s something different about it right now; more playful, amused even. Maybe it’s because he’s talking to you, a harmless human being and not a monster trying to kill him. It’s almost kind of jarring, but you know, with certainty, what Satoru Gojo’s voice sounds like. And the fact that he’s actually talking to you right now has you kind of excited. You nod, doing your best to not show how thrilled you are that he’s not ignoring you.

He hums thoughtfully, “Sorry… but unfortunately I kind of have some business to attend to right now.”

“I—” You start to say that you know that he’s headed down to the platform below to fight with…Choso and Jogo, you think their names are— you don’t know the name of the monster with the branches for eyes. “It’s— it’s really important!”

Gojo tilts his head a little, clearly thinking. You should probably say something else, something to try and convince him to stay a little longer and hear you out, but your mind is both full and blank. Where do you start? From the beginning? Or do you start with what is most important? Maybe you should say what you think will get his attention. You’re not sure, and you realize you really should have thought about this earlier because you’re running out of time right now.

“...mind handing me your phone?”

You stare at Gojo, completely and wholly confused, but he just holds out his hand expectantly. When you don’t move, he wiggles his fingers a little, a silent gesture telling you to hurry it up. Without thinking, you reach into your bag and unlock your phone before handing it to him.

“Kind of sucks that cell service isn’t working right now,” he remarks as he types something into your phone before handing it back. “But! Here's my number.”

You look down at your phone and, sure enough, Satoru Gojo has added himself as one of your contacts. He’s even added a little star to the end of his name. That’s… a little unexpected. Why his number though?

“Are you… hitting on me?” you mutter in your confusion.

He laughs, “Well, you said you had something really important to talk to me about, right? So just give me a call when you get home or some time tomorrow and we can talk then!”

You’re not going to make it home, or even to tomorrow, and neither will Satoru Gojo. As you start to tell him this, he steps past you. Desperate, you try to grab him, but somehow, for some reason, you can’t. You remember he did this with Jogo and the other monster, made himself untouchable.

This is not good.

He gives you a little wave, cheery as he says, “I’ll talk to you later!”

You watch, helpless as he hops over the barricade beyond your reach.

Gripping your phone tightly, you take a deep breath. It's fine, it's not like you didn’t expect things to go well anyway.

You'll just have to try again.

Every time you’ve tried to solicit help from Satoru Gojo, it has gone the same way. He just won’t give you the time of day, and in some ways you can’t blame him; he’s clearly here to deal with the monsters down on the platform. You’re fairly certain that he probably thinks that whatever is going on with you is a much lesser issue in comparison.

Plus, it probably doesn’t help that in the times that you’ve approached him, you haven’t been able to articulate yourself particularly well. Once you start talking to him, you just get hit with something akin to stage fright and the connection between your mind and your mouth just stops working. It’s gotten better with each attempt, but…

It’s just so frustrating.

It is interesting that Gojo has given you his number every time, star symbol and all. You’re not sure what kind of person you were expecting him to be, but after witnessing him literally and viciously rip monsters apart, you’d figured he’d be a little more somber. However, in the fragmented conversations you’ve had with him he’s come off as far more friendly and playful than you would have thought. Is he the type of person to get more serious when the situation calls for it? You can’t help but wonder, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.

What really matters is that you’re able to convince him to help you.

You have to convince him.

“Excuse me!” you say, stepping in Satoru Gojo’s path. You don’t stutter this time, and your voice is more sure. This is good.

“Yes?”

His head turns in your direction and you gulp. Gojo’s gaze, despite that blindfold of his, still feels just as overwhelming as it did the very first time you approached him. You have no doubt that he’s sizing you up, but there’s just something about it that makes you feel like you’re being picked apart.

You take a deep breath and step closer to him, hoping your voice sounds firm enough as you say, “I need your help. I’m trapped.”

He chuckles a little, “I know, but yours truly is on his way to go beat up the bad guys keeping you all trapped here, so soon enough you’ll be all free to go on your merry little way.”

Right. You were so caught up in your own plight that you nearly forgot that technically you’re not the only one ‘trapped.’ Satoru Gojo obviously knows that everyone else is confined to this station, but you doubt he knows that you’re confined to this night alone.

“That’s not what I mean!” you sputter.

“Then what do you mean?” Gojo asks. Should you tell him that you mean that you’re trapped in a time loop? You’re honestly not sure— in the movies and manga you’ve read about time travel, revealing that sort of thing risks creating a time paradox which seems to be a bad thing. If you have to tell him, you will, but— “Oh, I get it.”

You stare, bewildered. Did you maybe just spew all of that aloud?

Gojo gives you a mischievous smile. “You’re hitting on me, aren’t you?”

“No!” The word comes flying out of your mouth. You can’t deny he’s attractive— you’ve thought it all this time, but that is not what’s happening here.

“No need to be embarrassed,” he continues, ignoring you. “I totally get it, so if you want, I’d be happy to give you my number!”

Again? You’ve received Satoru Gojo’s contact details in every loop you’ve talked to him, star symbol and all— you even have his number memorized. There’s something kind of odd about how he keeps giving you his number. Part of you wonders if he’s got some sort of ulterior motive, but you haven’t thought too deeply about it. There are way more important things going on.

“I don’t need your phone number,” you say. “I need to talk.”

Your response seems to give Gojo pause. Did you somehow manage to get through to him? No way. Your suspicions are all but confirmed when he gives you that familiar apologetic smile.

“Like, I said, I’m sort of in the middle of something, but…” Gojo reaches into his pockets and rummages around until one hand fishes out a folded up piece of paper. The other hand keeps digging around in his pocket and when Gojo seems to give up on whatever he’s looking for, he turns his attention back to you. “Got a pen?”

What?

Gojo tilts his head. “Well?”

“I do, but…” You trail off, unsure why he’s asking.

He holds out his hand waiting for you to just hand him the pen. You still don’t get it, but you reach into your bag’s front pocket and pull out the pen and hand it to him. Gojo looks almost like an excited child when he takes it from you, quickly scribbling something onto his paper before shoving it and your pen back into your hand.

You look at the paper; it looks like a receipt. For a disturbing amount of mochi that Gojo bought earlier today. The amount of money he spent is almost sickening; way too much to be paying for mochi. More importantly, you notice something juxtaposed over the receipt’s print.

It’s Satoru Gojo’s name and number.

He even drew a little star next to his name.

“If you change your mind later, just give me a call!” he tells you cheerily. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while!”

You gawk at him. He cannot be serious. You literally just told him that you didn’t need it and yet he still gave it to you. He must want you to contact him later, but you can’t even begin to understand why. It can’t have been something you said or did, right? Unless, he’s actually—

“Later!” Gojo’s voice cuts through your thoughts and you notice him walking off with a wave.

You can’t let him get away.

Again.

You crush the receipt in your hand and rush after him. Despite the crowd, Gojo seems to move through the people with ease and it almost seems like they are yielding to him naturally. It’s good for you. Makes him easier to chase.

“Wait!” you yell, but Gojo doesn’t even look back. Bastard. Your muscles strain as you try to run faster. You know you won’t be able to grab him if you get to him, but there has to still be something you can do to stop him. Circle around him? Cut him off before he—

Satoru Gojo reaches the barricade.

“Wait!” you yell again. “Satoru Gojo, wait!”

He does not even acknowledge you.

You’re almost there though. Almost. If you reach out your hand, then maybe, maybe you can grab him. Something in your head tells you that it’s useless; you’ve never been able to touch him. But, you don’t care, you don’t care because you have to try. You stretch out your hand, desperate and hoping, but just as you do, Gojo effortlessly jumps over the barricade, moving to survey the crowd.

Due to your momentum, you almost collide into the barricade, but you manage to stop yourself. You stare at Satoru Gojo through the glass. He watches the crowd for at most three minutes. Is this just another bust? Is there really nothing you can do? There must be a way you can get his attention. Is it possible to climb over the barricade? No, it’s too high. There’s nothing you can grasp onto or use as footing either.

This fucking sucks.

Another minute or two and Gojo will be on the move again, and there will be no way you can follow, no way you can get his attention. You press your hands against the glass, pushing against it. Naturally, it doesn’t budge. Why would it? If only you could get it out of the way. If only you could break it. This stupid barricade is the only thing between you and Satoru Gojo and there’s no way you can climb it, but if only you could break it.

If only you could fucking break it.

Suddenly, the glass feels warm. Satoru Gojo’s image starts to look a little distorted as the warmth beneath your fingers grows. Something is happening. The glass starts to vibrate and shake. Violently. The tremors grow stronger and stronger. You should stop. You should back away.

You don’t.

The barricade starts to crack and fracture and soon the sound of shattering glass resounds throughout the entire room. Everyone starts screaming. No one knows what’s going on— not even you. But you don’t care. It’s gone. The barricade is gone.

You take a step forward, toward Satoru Gojo. He’s on a beam that’s about a two meter drop from where you’re standing. That’s fine. That’s okay. You can make it. You have to. Without a second thought, you jump—

And you land on the beam. You look up and Satoru Gojo’s attention is back on you. He’s finally, finally turned toward you, face twisted into an expression you can’t decipher or even comprehend, but—

Something’s wrong; your world is turning on its axis, but—

Satoru Gojo is looking at you, and—

Up is very quickly becoming down, and—

Satoru Gojo is coming closer, but—

You’re slipping—

But he’s right there, and—

You’re falling, but—

He’s trying to catch you, but—

It’s too late. It’s too late.

The last thing you think you feel—

—is Satoru Gojo’s arms around you.

It’s October 31, 2018— Halloween in Shibuya.

And you are causing a commotion.

“Shit! Fuck!” you curse loudly. The people near you start to shift away but you barely notice; you don’t really care.

You were so close, so fucking close and yet… yet here you are again. It’s quarter past eight and you are back on the goddamn platform. You don’t know what happened; you remember falling and thinking you were going to die, but you are absolutely certain that, once again, this time, you didn’t die.

Is Satoru Gojo at fault again? Did he do something? Like he did all those other times you looped without dying? When you think about it more, you don’t think so. You don’t know what happened; all you know is that you tried to get to him, but you slipped.

And he caught you, you definitely remember that.

You still don’t understand why you looped, but there’s not much you can do about it now; it’s not like you can go back anymore. It just sucks, because you think he might have actually listened if you’d talked to him.

Or he would have come after you for… whatever happened with the barricade. It could have been taken as an attack on the crowd… But if he thought you were doing that, then why would he catch you?

You don’t know.

All you know is that you have to try again.

The only problem is that you don’t know how you managed to shatter the barricade. You think about it as you make your way up to where you’ll find Satoru Gojo. There is the possibility that it wasn’t you and something else happened to it instead, but that feels way too coincidental. It had to be you. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You just can’t figure out how you did it outside of wanting, wishing, praying for the barricade to break. It’s not like you have supernatural powers like Satoru Gojo and his enemies.

Despite your mind being completely and wholly occupied by trying to figure out how in the world you managed to break through that barricade, you still manage to make it to the second basement floor of Shibuya Hikarie by 8:25PM— a brand new record. Satoru Gojo doesn’t show up until around 8:34PM, so that gives you almost ten minutes to try and figure out what you need to do to try and replicate shattering the glass barricade again.

Except—

Except Satoru Gojo is already here.

The thought that maybe you’re mistaken flashes in your mind before it’s quickly dismissed; there’s no way you’d mistake anyone else for him. There is absolutely no denying it: that is Satoru Gojo. Bewildered, you double check the time on your phone. Maybe you misread it and you’re actually late but sure enough you read it right— Satoru Gojo is here early.

What the hell is going on?

Of the thousands of times you have experienced this night, this hell, this sort of thing has never happened before. Everything happens at a specific time, as if adhering to an unseen schedule. It’s likely that what happened in your last iteration did delay Satoru Gojo’s arrival onto the platform, but other than that there has never been a deviation to the time table.

And yet, here Satoru Gojo is, nine minutes early now.

You realize that that’s not the only thing that’s strange: he’s not moving. In previous rounds, when you encounter Gojo here, he’s walking to the lookout spot beyond the barricade. But, right now, he’s just standing there, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. It almost looks like he's waiting for something.

Or someone.

This unexpected turn of events has you rooted to the spot. You’re not sure what you should do. No. This shouldn’t change anything. You need to talk to him. As concerning as a change like this is, the extra time it gives you should be a good thing. Despite knowing that, your feet are still firmly planted to the ground.

The crowd shifts and you see Satoru Gojo start to move. Toward the barricade? No. He’s not heading in his usual direction, rather he’s—

You stop breathing.

He’s headed toward you.

All sound stops: the crowd around you, the thoughts in your head, the beat of your heart. Even though you cannot see them through that blindfold of his, you know that Satoru Gojo’s eyes are on you and the thought of that, the knowledge of it is absolutely mind numbing.

He comes to a stop before you, lips curled up to form an amused sort of smile as he says, “Soooo, you needed to talk to me?”

You try to answer but no words come out of your mouth. Are you dreaming? You have to be, right? There's no way that this is actually happening. Could it be that, after thousands of loops, you’ve finally lost it? Your mind shattering along with the glass of the barricade at the end of the last one?

Gojo tilts his head, indicating that he's still waiting for an answer. When you open your mouth, at first, nothing comes out, the words stuck in your throat. You force them out, your voice cracking, “...how did you know?”

He smiles, looking almost mischievous as he reaches up and lightly taps the side of his head. “I remembered, of course!”

All you can do is stare at Satoru Gojo. He remembered? How is that possible? From his perspective, this is the first time you’ve met and while it shouldn’t be possible for him to remember there’s something in your mind that’s keeping you from completely dismissing the possibility.

Gojo laughs, “I take it from the look on your face that you’re not used to this sort of thing happening. Is this the first time?”

“No.” The fact that the word is out of your mouth before you can even really think about it surprises you and you really have to think. Your face scrunches together as you try to remember. Is this really not the first time? Then, the memories assault you, overlapping as they replay simultaneously in your head— a woman in a yellow and white magical girl costume— begging you for help as she burns to death— smiling as she tells you she made her costume herself. “...it happened just once a long time ago.”

“‘A long time ago,’ huh. Sounds like you've been at this for a while now.”

“...unfortunately.”

Gojo hums. “So when you said you didn’t need my phone number…”

“You’d already given it to me a few times,” you say, figuring that’s where this conversation is going.

“Really now?”

Does he not believe you? Or is he just being an ass? You’re not sure, but since you had taken the liberty of memorizing Satoru Gojo’s phone number you recite it back to him to prove your point.

Just when you think you may have stunned Gojo into silence he starts to laugh, obviously finding something funny about the fact that you know his cell phone number. “Seems like you've got quite the fascinating technique there.”

Technique? What is he talking about? Your confusion must be plain on your face because he adds, elaborating, “The time travel.”

You continue to stare at him. You don't think you'd consider what you've been going through time travel, because traveling implies moving from point A to point B, but you've been stuck walking in circles at point A for a long time. What really gets you is… “What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“You mean you don’t— oh. I get it; no wonder you’re trapped.”

That does not answer your question in the slightest. “Can you please explain what you're talking about? What do you mean by ‘technique?’”

“Right, right… So basically, a technique is like a special sort of power,” he finally explains. “Like I said, your technique seems to be a kind of time travel. Whenever you activate it, your mind is sent back in time.”

What he's saying makes sense, but… “How come you were sent back too?”

He laughs again. “Isn't it obvious? Think back to before— do you remember that I caught you as you were falling?”

You nod slowly. The memory of his arms around you is almost embarrassingly vivid. “...is it because we were touching?”

“Ding, ding, ding! That's correct! Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!”

Something about his tone annoys you, but you try to ignore it. He could have just told you rather than make you guess. “How do you know that for sure?”

“Well,” he continues. “You’ve done your little time loop a bunch of times, right? If your technique affected everyone, or even a few people in a select range you would have noticed for sure. And if it affected only just you then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, now would we?”

When you think about it, you do think that the woman in the magical girl costume might have bumped into you before the loop where she remembered.

“That’s honestly just conjecture, but I've got pretty good eyes, so I’m hardly ever wrong.”

Gojo gives you a grin and while you do think that his reasoning is sound enough his confidence is a little grating. More than that, though, you’re glad that this conversation is actually going really well.

“Either way,” he says thoughtfully. “It doesn’t look like you can control your technique. Usually a person’s technique manifests when they’re a kid, but you seem to be a special case… in fact, I bet your technique activated for the very first time tonight— probably under some pretty extreme circumstances, too.”

“...dying counts as an ‘extreme circumstance,’ right?”

“Oh, absolutely. Or legitimately thinking that you’re gonna die, but it seems like your body has been unconsciously activating your technique as a sort of defense mechanism. Which is why you’re trapped.”

“So, if I could control it I’d be able to make it out of this time loop.”

“Yeah, but in this case it probably wouldn’t end very well for you,” he points out with a chuckle. “It’s not like you actually want to die, right? I mean, if you did, then your technique wouldn’t even activate in the first place.”

You don’t; what you want is for this night to finally end. To be free from the endless cycle of dying over and over again and again. You don’t think death is quite the answer; even if you were to learn how to control this supposed technique of yours, there’s no guarantee that you would just unconsciously activate it when the grim reaper comes knocking on your door. No, the answer is…

“Anyway!” Gojo’s cheery voice cuts through your thoughts. “I highly doubt that you’re the type that makes a habit of jumping off ledges for the funsies, so the fact that you’ve been dying tells me that some pretty gruesome stuff is about to go down, so, tell me what happens tonight.”

The sudden drop of his voice sends a shiver running down your spine. If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve seen how serious Gojo can get, the sudden shift in demeanor would probably freak you out a bit, but it doesn’t. This is the Satoru Gojo you’re familiar with.

You do have one concern though. “That… won’t create a time paradox or anything, will it?”

“Nah,” Gojo shrugs. “You wouldn’t cause one with the way your technique works, besides, if you’ve only been going back at most an hour or two in time it’s hard to believe you’d be making a really big impact… unless you really believe in the butterfly effect.”

You’re still not quite sure.

“Trust me, it’ll be fine.”

His voice sounds strange. Gentle. Kind. It's the most soothing thing you've heard in a long time and it makes you want to believe him.

“...okay.”

Anxiety is still gripping at you, but you try to dispel it, taking a deep breath before beginning your explanation. For the sake of brevity, it’s probably best that you’re as concise as possible. There isn’t much need to really get into the nitty gritty of things unless he asks specifically.

Naturally, you begin with his arrival onto the platform and how soon after a fight breaks out and how the crowd is unfortunate enough to be involved. Gojo’s expression is passive for the most part, but he does crack the faintest hint of a smile when you mention how he manages to eviscerate one of the monsters.

It disappears once you tell him about the arrival of the train. Between the dozens upon dozens of people being dropped onto the platform by those two high school girls and the hoard of monsters disembarking from the train, everything devolves into pandemonium.

“Wait,” Gojo holds a hand up and you pause. This is his first interruption since you started recounting the night’s events for him. “Everyone is able to see the monsters?”

You stare at him. What a weird question. “...yeah?”

His mouth twists and it looks like he’s thinking about something. You can’t even begin to imagine what. Finally, he comments, “Makes sense.”

It does not, but you don’t ask him to elaborate. Surely if it was important he would have just done so.

“Anyway, in the middle of all that, you… you do something.” Your brows bunch together as you remember the stance Gojo took, the crazed and desperate look in his eyes, the feeling of your head about to explode. “I don’t know how to describe it. At first, it would just force me to… activate my technique, I guess. But now, it just knocks me out for a few minutes.”

Gojo frowns and he rubs at his chin, obviously thinking about what you’ve said. Eventually, he raises a hand and bends his fingers into a familiar gesture. It’s the one that preludes whatever he does on the platform. “Do I do this?”

“Yeah.”

He hums. “Interesting.”

You wait to see if he’ll explain. He doesn’t. Great. Even if he doesn’t think you need to know, it certainly would be nice to. It’s annoying otherwise, but you ignore the feeling and continue. “I can’t tell you what happens when I’m knocked out, but when I come to everyone is basically a zombie and all the monsters from the train are gone. I think you kill them.”

“I probably do,” he says casually. “But what about Volcano Head?”

“...you don't…get a chance to kill him,” you say slowly. Gojo tilts his head, waiting for you to elaborate, but you hesitate. You have to tell him, you know you do, but…

You have seen the interaction so many times and though you don't know the exact nature of the relationship between them, you can tell that seeing Suguru Geto (or rather seeing his body) shook Satoru Gojo to his very core.

There's no doubt in your mind that he will not take this news well.

“Come on now,” Gojo's tone is light-hearted, unaware. “Don't keep me in suspense here.”

It's as if you're withholding the punchline to a joke. In a way, you suppose you are, but you don't think he's going to find it funny.

You take a deep breath. You need to tell him. The worst thing that could happen is that he doesn't believe you, but if that's the case… you'll probably just end up repeating this all again until you find a loop where he does.

Having made it this far, you'd like to avoid all that.

“Before you can get Volcano Head you get restrained by something called the prison realm,” you say slowly, “by someone calling themselves… Suguru Geto.”

The second the name leaves your mouth, there is a clear and obvious shift in the air. Gone is Gojo’s laid-back and frivolous demeanor, replaced with something more somber and almost frightening. The tension grows more and more palpable to the point that you think it might almost choke you.

You almost wish that it would.

“You can’t be serious,” Gojo finally says, once your words have fully sunk in.

“I—” You start to speak, but come to an abrupt stop when you see him shove his hand into his pocket to yank out his phone of all things.

The both of you know full well that there’s no reception here, but you don’t think that he’s planning on making any calls. Gojo scrolls and scrolls on his phone before he stops and shoves the screen in your face. It shows a picture of three people— a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth, a younger, happier version of Gojo sporting a pair of round sunglasses and—

“When you say ‘Geto’ is this who you’re referring to?” Gojo demands, using his other hand to point at the third person in the frame— a handsome young man with long dark hair pulled up into a bun.

“Yes, but—”

“That’s impossible. It can’t be him,” Gojo interrupts, his voice firm, cold even. “He’s dead.”

There’s a note of finality in his words that is definitely meant to leave no room for argument. It doesn’t stop you, though. Instead, you glare at Gojo’s stupid blindfold and say, “...being dead doesn’t mean a damn thing! I’ve died hundreds of times and yet I’m still fucking here, but—”

“Your situation is different,” he interjects, the temperature of his tone hiking up, his words like heated hissing. “I killed him almost a year ago. There's no way—”

“You didn't get rid of the body properly!” You cut him off, raising your voice in hopes that he'll take even just a second to stop and listen. It seems to work and you add something you remember ‘Geto’ saying. “You should have had Shoko Ieiri get rid of it, but you didn’t and now some… some kind of gross brain thing is possessing the corpse!”

The air between you both is silent as the grave. Though you can't see it, you can feel the weight of his gaze pressing down on you. He’s definitely having second thoughts about everything you’ve said so far. There’s a chance he might even think you’re his enemy now. You stare him down though, refusing to look away. You’ve made it this far, you can’t— you won’t back down.

“...you’re not lying, are you.” Gojo’s words are more of a statement than a question. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows the answer, and yet he’s still asking. You wonder if maybe he’s clinging onto some vain hope that maybe, just maybe this all a sick, cruel joke that’s gone way too far.

“I’m not.”

Gojo holds your gaze for a second longer before he lets out a curse. “Fuck!”

“...I’m sorry,” you say quietly, mostly because it feels like the most correct thing to say at this moment. You don’t know the whole story, but it seems like they were close. If so, then it must have hurt Gojo a lot to have killed him, and must hurt even more to know that someone is desecrating the body. You hate that you, a complete and utter stranger, happened to be the person to tell him, but…

It had to be done, for the sake of getting past this unending night, it had to be done.

Gojo runs a hand through his hair and lets out a ragged sigh. “Okay. What happens after that?”

You give him a rundown of what follows; he gets sealed, the monsters wake up and all but ‘Geto’ leave in search of their next target. When you mention the high school girls demanding the brain give Geto’s body back, Gojo snorts loudly.

“Fat chance of that,” he says derisively.

You nod in agreement. It was clear to you that the brain parasite has no intent on giving it up any time soon. “After they leave, he… talks to me.”

“Probably couldn't ignore all that cursed energy you have,” Gojo remarks offhandedly.

You stare at him, expression twisted in a way that shows that you have absolutely no clue what that means. It should be fine for you to ask this one question; it actually concerns you after all. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like, though… probably doesn't make much sense to you, does it?”

You give him a pointed glare and all Gojo does is laugh.

“Just think of it like having a lot of MP.”

“...Like in a video game?”

“Exactly!” Then, Gojo tilts his head, clearly thinking. You don't bother asking; you don't feel like he'll explain.

“He does ask me if I'm a sorcerer, whatever that is. Is that why?”

“Probably. Ordinary people don't have even a fraction of the energy you're packing.”

‘Ordinary people’ he says as if you’re not an ordinary person who got caught up in all this supernatural sorcery bullshit. Or at least you were, but if the time loops are really a product of your own doing…

“Does he kill you when you answer?” Gojo asks to get the conversation back on track.

“Not right away. What happens next kind of varies,” you answer. “He usually lets me have a question or two before he kills me; I've asked him a couple different things.”

“Really taking advantage, aren’t you?” Gojo says and you're not sure what to make of his tone. Is he mocking you or is he easing back into that laid-back persona of his?

“If I’m doomed to repeat the same situation over and over, I might as well make the most of it,” you respond flatly.

“You know, your technique kind of reminds me of save scumming.”

He’s definitely gone back to acting almost completely unserious— all signs of his earlier agitation are nearly gone.

“So what did you learn?”

“Well, the prison realm only holds one occupant. Once they’re sealed, time stops for them and the only way out is if the bearer unseals them or if they choose to kill themselves.”

“I see… And what about our body jacker?”

“He didn’t go into detail but he said something about… striving toward the evolution of mankind?” You frown a little at the memory. He didn’t explain further because he said that you wouldn’t understand.

“Huh. Interesting. Wonder how he was gonna go about doing that.”

“I don't know, but I can't imagine you'd like it since he goes out of his way to seal you into that box,” you say. “Said you’d get in the way because you’re too strong.”

Gojo shrugs his shoulders and grins a little. Cocky. “Well, I am the strongest sorcerer around, you know.”

You would think him overconfident if you hadn't seen the magnitude of his strength first hand.

“Anyway, that's as far as I ever go. When he's decided he’s done talking to me, he kills me and I loop back.”

“So, in short, what you want help with is getting past that point, right?”

“More or less.”

“And all I have to do is avoid getting caught by the prison realm?”

You nod.

“What’s it look like?” he asks. “A big cage with a bunch of metal bars?”

Now that you think about it, you haven’t woken up early enough to see it before it traps him, but you can’t imagine it looks that much different. “No.. It’s a small box with eyes… It gets big enough to fit you in it, though.”

“Huh.” He stretches his arms out above his head as if he’s trying to emphasize how large he actually is and shoots you a grin. “Should be easy enough then. I bet our body snatcher used the shock of seeing Suguru to trap me but since I'll see it coming, avoiding it'll be a piece of cake.”

Gojo makes it sound so easy, and maybe it really is as simple as that, but you can't help but be worried still.

“Don't tell me you don't think I can do it,” he says, tilting his head.

“It's not that,” you admit. “I'm just concerned I might die before we can get to that point.”

Truthfully, since you know that will just result in another loop you're less concerned with dying itself and more worried about losing the progress you've made in convincing Gojo to help you. Even though it's been clearly proven you can loop him as well, there's no guarantee you'll be able to make the physical contact needed to do it upon death.

“You've made it pretty far on your own, though, right?”

“Yeah, but… I’ve messed up plenty of times.” More than you can even count. “There's also the possibility that taking the time to talk to you might have thrown things out of whack.”

Speaking of time, you check your phone. It's 8:39PM. You curse.

Gojo leans over to check your phone. “Let me guess, I'm supposed to be somewhere right now.”

“Yeah, this is when you’re descending down onto the platform.”

“You know where I am down to the exact minute?” He asks and you tilt your head back and forth a little. It’s not exact per se, but it’s close enough. Gojo chuckles a little. “Man, I didn’t realize that you were actually that into me.”

That earns Gojo a glare from you, but he just laughs it off. “I doubt being a few minutes late is going to make a big difference.”

You certainly hope so.

“Don't worry,” Gojo says and you notice he's using that tone from earlier. “You won't die.”

It’s hard to argue with him when he uses such a reassuring sounding voice and yet, you still open your mouth to try— to voice your doubts, but what he says next silences you before you even can.

“I'll protect you.”

You think your heart stops beating in your chest and your words dissolve in your throat.

He grins at you. “Did you fall in love with me just now?”

That catches you a little off guard. You're willing to admit he's hot, but surely he must be joking. “How could you even think of something like that at a time like this?”

Gojo laughs again. “Well, since someone is so worried about their time table being all messed up, I better head down there; can’t keep Volcano Head and friends waiting, right?”

You blink. Is that it? “Wait, shouldn’t we make a plan or something?”

“Isn’t the plan for me to not get caught in the prison realm?”

Yes, but… “But what about me? Is there anything I can do?”

Gojo stares at you, or at least you think he does. “...I don’t know, is there?”

You’ve seen the encounter between Satoru Gojo and those monsters so many times and you try to picture a version of it where you intervene and… all you can see is yourself getting in his way. You’re no fighter, no… sorcerer, or whatever he is, you’re just some ordinary person that was unfortunate enough to get all caught up in this mess. The most you can probably do is kick the prison realm out of the way when the time comes, but otherwise… “...no, I guess not.”

His expression turns sympathetic. “You’ve done plenty by telling me everything that happens. So just wait up here, and let me handle the monsters.”

You almost nod. Almost. But then you remember what transpires up here above the platform. You know it sounds safer up here where you’re less likely to get involved in the carnage, but… “Wait, no, if I stay up here then I’ll fall to my death when those girls—”

Gojo laughs, interrupting you. “Don’t worry about that. It’ll be fine.”

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

“I…” It’s hard to. After everything you’ve gone through it’s hard to trust in anything, to believe in anything. Even though you’ve made it this far this time, the worry that something will go wrong and that you’ll have to do it all again still lurks in the back of your mind.

Despite all that, you want to believe.

You want to believe that you can make it past this unending night, that one day you’ll wake up and it’ll no longer be October 31, 2018. And the first step towards that is trusting in Satoru Gojo.

“...okay,” you say quietly. “Okay.”

Gojo chuckles then asks, “Anything else before I head off?”

You start to ask if there’s anything you should say, in case things don’t work out, but you stop yourself. You’re choosing to trust him, to believe in him— you can figure out that stuff later if things end up going south after all. So, instead you give him a smile and it feels a little weird because you don’t remember the last time you did. “Good luck!”

For a split second, Gojo looks almost surprised, but then he laughs again, beaming widely at you. He starts to move past you and reaches out to give you what you think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and then he’s off. You turn to watch him go, the crowd, once again, parting almost naturally for him.

When he reaches the barricade, he pauses, raising his hand as if he’s giving you one last wave. Then he jumps over it onto his little perch and then less than a minute later he’s gone, descending to the platform below.

Now, all you can do is wait.

You check your phone again and it’s 8:44PM. If you remember correctly, the high school girls start threatening everyone right before 9PM. With Gojo’s arrival being shifted back almost five minutes, does that mean that they’ll be shifted back too? It would make sense, but you’re not too sure.

Out of habit, you keep checking your phone and at nearly 9PM, you hear the shrill voice of one of the girls over the crowd, commanding everyone to do what she says, her partner stringing up bodies until everyone listens. Everything plays out just as you remember it, which is mildly comforting, though you know that the events that happen up here are more or less independent from what happens below.

Surely, just as Gojo said, a few minutes aren’t going to change anything, but—

No.

You agreed to trust him. To trust that everything would be fine.

When the girls start to demand that as many people as possible climb onto the roots and vines covering the atrium your heart starts to hammer in your chest. In just a few minutes, all the foliage will disintegrate beneath you, and you and everyone else here will fall into the abyss below.

You are afraid.

There isn’t a single loop where you’ve really survived this fall. If you don’t die in midair, you die right after landing. It’s a death trap, and that’s why you’ve stopped coming up here. There’s a part of you, the part that knows what’s about to happen, that wants to try and run back onto stable footing. But you can’t, because you know if you do then the girls will kill you for sure; you have to stay.

It’ll be fine, you tell yourself, it’ll be okay.

You just have to trust Gojo.

An eight car train is pulling in. Please wait behind the yellow line.

You hear the announcement faintly below you. It’s almost time. You brace yourself and try to stay calm. Gojo said he would protect you, that you wouldn’t die. You don’t know how he intends to keep that promise, but all you can do is believe in his words.

It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay.

The vines and roots start to crack and the ground beneath you starts to give out. You squeeze your eyes shut as that sickening weightless feeling overtakes you. It occurs to you that this is actually quite literally a trust fall— will Satoru Gojo really be able to catch you?

As you fall, you realize almost instantly that something is different.

You’ve experienced this fall dozens of times and so, even though it has been a while since you’ve gone this route, you are very familiar with what it feels like. Something is different. You’re falling faster. The trajectory is changing. It’s like some force, other than gravity, is pulling at you.

Is this Gojo’s doing?

Just as your body collides with the ground you hear the sounds of mutilating flesh meld with the screams surrounding you. Blood and severed limbs litter the ground, but you try to ignore it. You need to focus on your own survival right now. Quickly, you scramble to your feet scan the area around you; you’re on the platform right now and right in front of you is—

Right in front of you is Satoru Gojo.

His back is turned to you, his focus currently elsewhere. Looking at him you realize you recognize this scene, though it’s much closer and at a different angle. He’s about to do that thing, that thing that knocks you out.

Something in you tells you to move closer to him, after all, he used his mysterious powers to deliberately bring you closer to him, right? You rush toward him and as you do something he said earlier pops up in your mind.

Anyone you happen to be touching when you activate your technique gets affected by it too!

Whatever he’s about to do… Is that his ‘technique?’ And if it is, would it work the same way as yours? If so, there’s only one way to find out: you need to touch him. You dodge monsters and other people as you run toward Satoru Gojo and—

A monster still manages to grab you, its large hands wrapping around your wrist. You try and yank it free, but it's much stronger than you are.

“Shit!” you hiss as the monster starts to pull you toward it and away from Gojo. What do you do? Your other hand is still free, should you try to punch it in the face? Or—

Before you can do anything, something blasts the monster’s head clean off. Shocked, you stare as the monster’s body slumps onto the ground, its grip loosening on you instantly. You whip your head around to find that while Gojo still has his back to you, his arm is bent back in your direction, his palm open as if he fired some invisible blast from it.

Then you feel it again, something pulling at you, but this time it's more forceful. Your body is yanked toward Gojo and the second you feel his hand press against you, you see him make that gesture with his other hand.

“Domain Expansion,” he whispers in a strained voice. “Infinite Void!”

Something happens and your vision flashes for a fraction of a second. And then—

The room is enveloped in an eerie stillness; all the violence and bloodshed coming to an abrupt stop. Monsters and humans alike stand like the living dead, unconscious with their eyes wide open as if they are staring into an infinite abyss. You recognize this scene, you’re familiar with it because it’s similar to the one you wake up to after being hit by Gojo’s ‘domain expansion.’ The only difference is the presence of the monsters, who are all but gone when you regain consciousness.

The pressure from Gojo’s hand is gone and he says to you, his voice still low. “If you’re squeamish when it comes to blood and gore, it might be best for you to close your eyes.”

And then he’s gone.

You do not take his advice. You do not close your eyes. How many loops were you unable to witness what’s about to unfold? A few hundred? A few thousand? And if all goes to plan, then you will never get another chance again: there’s no way you could possibly look away.

And what you see unfold before you is that Satoru Gojo was right.

He is the one to kill all the monsters.

It’s not as if you really had any doubt, after all, it seemed like the most logical conclusion to come to and yet…

There’s a difference between knowing and seeing.

All the violence resumes and the platform is engulfed in the sounds of carnage and slaughter once more. The lack of terrified screams makes everything more disconcerting— without them, all you can hear is the squelching echo of mangled flesh and blood splattering all over the place. You can’t really see him, but you can tell where Satoru Gojo is in the crowd as he leaves dozens upon dozens of decapitated heads soaring in his wake. Once or twice, he leaps out of the crowd and even from where you stand you can see the crazed glow of his inhumanly blue eyes as he massacres monster after monster.

Even though you don’t think you have anything to be scared of, you are still terrified: Satoru Gojo is no longer a man, but violence incarnate. You want to move closer to where Gojo gets trapped, but you’re afraid to. What if you get in his way? What if he kills you by accident?

Dying again when you’ve made it this far is definitely not ideal, but isn’t being killed by Gojo the best case scenario? Because then the two of you would probably loop together again and—

No.

Gojo said you wouldn’t die.

He said he’d protect you.

It’s hard to believe when he’s in the middle of a massacre, slaughtering monsters left and right, but you remind yourself yet again that you have to believe in him.

You take a deep breath and start moving, taking care to keep an eye on where Gojo is. You don’t know how long this is supposed to take, but you do know where he ends up when he’s just about done. The closer he gets to that spot, the sooner the prison realm will be unleashed upon him.

There’s a small group of zombified people nearby and you settle yourself among them. It’s not super close, but you think it's close enough that you'd be able to run over and kick the box away from Gojo if you have to. You do a quick survey to see if you can spot the body snatcher, but he's nowhere to be found. Hopefully, he hasn't noticed you moving around, or, if he has, he's more concerned with Gojo than he is with you. Given that you always seem to be the last thing he acknowledges, you'd like to think that he doesn't consider you a threat.

Which you're not, not really anyway.

The sounds of slaughter start to die down and you look to see Gojo approaching the spot where he gets caught. He looks beat, his eyes unfocused and his breathing heavy. You do another quick scan around him and notice a small box a few meters away from him, wrapped in what looks like paper charms or seals or whatever they're called. That has to be the prison realm— though it looks different than what you saw before. Gojo seems to notice it right after you do, his gaze honing in on it, examining it with some measure of bewilderment. Then, some invisible force slices through all the paper seals covering the box and it expands, the corners of the box floating up in midair to reveal what looks like a large sheet of dark red flesh with a large bloodshot eye stapled to the middle.

Disgusting.

If Gojo didn’t realize before, he seems to now, because he takes a step back, away from the grotesque thing. Good, good—

“Hey! Satoru!” Your blood runs cold at the sound of the body snatcher’s voice. He emerges from the crowd, smiling widely as he gives Gojo a wave. “Long time no see!”

Satoru Gojo’s entire body goes rigid. Shit. You told him, you warned him about what was going to happen, who he was going to see, but was that not enough? It’s possible that no amount of warning would have been enough to mentally prepare Satoru Gojo for the sight of the man he said he killed a year ago. After all, you know that there’s a stark difference between knowing and seeing. Even then, if Gojo doesn’t gather his wits and move now then he’s going to get caught and you can’t let that happen.

Your body moves before you can even think about it.

You scramble out from your hiding spot in the crowd and throw yourself in between Satoru Gojo and the prison realm. There’s no way you can kick it away from him now, not when it’s in this form, but maybe, if you get between them you can at least keep it from capturing him.

The eye quivers erratically, as it flits from Gojo to you. Every hair on your body stands on end as it watches you, the pupil dilating and contracting uncontrollably. You can’t look away from it, your own gaze fixed to your image reflected in the black abyss of the pupil. Something in the back of your mind tells you to stop, to get away, it’s dangerous, but you keep your feet firmly planted to the ground.

A second, or maybe even a minute passes and the prison realm shifts, its fleshy form morphing to restrain you.

The body jacker looks at you, his frown tinged with disgust. “Don’t you think you’re being rather rude by butting into what could have been a touching reunion?”

You scowl. Is he still trying to play the role of Suguru Geto?

He sighs and looks past you at Gojo. “Satoru, I thought bringing lesser sorcerers to fight alongside you was more trouble than it was worth?”

You hear Gojo snort from behind you, “It is… but this person here isn’t a sorcerer… Just like you aren’t Suguru Geto.”

The faker almost pouts and presses his hand to his chest as if Gojo's words have wounded him. “Satoru, I’m hurt, how could you say such a thing to your best friend?”

“Cut the bullshit,” Gojo snarls. “You can’t fucking fool me. You might be in Suguru’s body but I know with all my heart and soul that you’re not him.”

The corpse snatcher stares at Gojo, expression blank before he sighs once more. Then, his gaze shifts back to you, his eyes narrowed as he looks at you with sheer disdain. It feels as if you’ve been drenched in ice cold water. There's no smile this time but you already know what's going to happen.

He’s going to kill you.

“I intended to deal with you later since you seemed harmless enough,” he says, raising a hand to summon a monster— the same one he always uses to end your life. “But you’re in the way. So, I think it’s for the best if I just get rid of you right now.”

Instinctively, you try to take a step back but the prison realm’s restraints keep you in place. Not that it would have mattered much, even in the loops where you’ve tried to escape the faker’s monster, it still kills you, too fast and too agile for an ordinary human like you to avoid. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the monster to kill you. At least, it’s always painless.

Something touches your back.

Your eyes shoot open.

Before you is the monster, wiggling and writhing only mere centimeters from your face. It gurgles and snarls at you, desperate to fulfill its master’s wishes and kill you but it doesn’t move any closer. You stare at it with wide eyes, unsure of what to do.

Someone behind you clicks their tongue— Gojo. You try to turn your head to look at him, but your movements are too limited, the most you can do is turn your head to the side. The sounds the monster is making start to change, sounding more frenzied, almost as if it’s in pain, and you flit your eyes in its direction just in time to see its entire body explode. The monster's guts and bright purple blood fly off in every direction, getting on the floor, the ceiling, the zombified bodies of the people unfortunate enough to be nearby, but not on you.

This is Satoru Gojo’s doing.

He steps in front of you, half turned towards you as he moves in between you and the body snatcher. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he loudly says, “Did you really forget about me?”

You’re not sure if he’s talking to you or the body snatcher.

Past him, the imposter scowls, raising his hand once more, probably to summon even more monsters, but Gojo’s quicker, and it almost looks like his eyes are glowing even brighter, the blue looking almost white as he whips his head in the faker’s direction. The sound of mangling flesh and breaking bones echoes throughout the room as Gojo, using that mysterious power of his, seems to break the faker’s arm.

The body snatcher hisses loudly and despite the fact that his face is twisted in very obvious pain, he tries to shoot Gojo a mocking smile. “Do you really think you can kill your best friend again?”

“I already told you,” Gojo turns to fully face the monster inhabiting Geto’s corpse. He tilts his head a little to the side and some force starts to squeeze at the faker’s neck. “You’re not Suguru.”

You hear a loud crack as Gojo telekinetically snaps his neck.

The head rolls onto the ground and you almost look away, but then you notice his eyes still moving, looking around. Is he still alive? Then you remember: the thing possessing Suguru Geto’s body was some kind of parasite. “Gojo! Wait! The brain!”

He reacts almost instantly, head turning and in an instant the skull is crushed and all that remains is red splotch on the ground.

You almost relax. Almost.

But the body is still standing.

Horrified, you watch as it quivers violently before falling to the ground. Then what looks like dozens of black spirits start to erupt from the corpse and the entire room is engulfed with a shrill howling.

What the hell is going on?

“Those must be all the cursed spirits he consumed,” Gojo explains uselessly, voice barely audible over the screaming. “Guess he was empty before.”

You don’t bother asking what he means. There are bigger problems right now. “What do we do?”

“No choice to exorcise them,” he answers plainly.

For him to exorcise them, he means. You both know that there’s not much that you can do. You still can’t move and honestly, you don’t even know if it’s possible to get out of the prison realm’s restraints. Not without dying. And if you die now…

Everything will have been for naught.

You’ll reset time and have to do this all over again— assuming you can even get to this point again.

There has to be something, you just have to think outside the box.

Or rather—

“Gojo!”

He glances back at you.

“You need to seal me in the prison realm!” you exclaim. He turns to face you fully, looking bewildered and you start to explain as fast as you can. “Those things are going to attack any minute right? I can’t move or try to hide and I can’t expect you to protect me the entire time and if I die then I’ll end up looping time again, but— but, if you seal me in the prison realm then that won’t happen.”

Gojo frowns, looking conflicted. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“Wouldn't it be easier if you didn’t have to?”

He tilts head and you think he’s conceding your point.

“Please,” you beg, staring at him desperately. “We don’t have much time. The other… cursed spirits will wake up soon too!”

You don’t have to explain that you mean Volcano Head and friends.

It takes only a second for Gojo to consider the very few options you have. “...how do you seal it? Do you know?”

“I think so,” you answer. “There’s no guarantee it’ll work but I think that if you say ‘prison realm, gate close’ it should seal me inside.”

If anything, it’s worth a shot.

Gojo nods. “Do you know how to break the seal?”

“I… don’t,” you confess. You never asked, and you don’t think the body snatcher would have told you even if you did. He only told you that it holds one and that…

That time doesn’t flow in the box.

“...you don’t have to break the seal.”

Gojo frowns, “Wait a sec—”

“Even if I make it past tonight… What if this all happens again? What if I inadvertently trap myself in another time loop?” you ask. “I… I don’t want to have to go through all of this again. It’s better for me in a place where time doesn’t pass.”

You don’t know for sure if it’ll be better, but right here, right now, it seems like the best option.

It feels like an eternity passes before Gojo says anything.

“...fine,” he agrees and you don’t quite know how to feel about it. The howling around you all grows louder. You wonder why the cursed spirits haven’t attacked yet. Maybe Gojo’s power is holding them at bay… for now anyway. You both know that he can’t ignore them forever.

“...before I do, though, mind if I ask you just one thing?”

You blink. “Not sure what I can do for you in this state…”

He laughs. “I just want to know your name.”

What an odd request. Though, now that you think about it, you don’t think that during this loop or any other loop really, you’ve ever told him your name. It only seems fair to tell him, since you’ve known his for longer than he’s known of your existence.

You tell him your name.

He nods, looking as if he’s committing to memory. Probably easier to remember than his phone number. “Any last words?”

You try to think of something. Nothing comes to mind and you just shake your head.

Gojo takes a deep breath, “Alrighty then… Prison realm, gate close.”

Just as it did the many times you’ve seen Satoru Gojo sealed away, the boxes and restraints around you vibrate a little before they start to close around you, growing large enough to fit your body as they approach.

You won’t see it, but once you’re inside the box will shrink and become small enough to fit in the palm of someone’s hand.

Will it be quiet inside?

In your final seconds, some words, some last words come to mind, and you say them, hoping that he hears them in time. “Thank you, Satoru Gojo.”

You burn the glittering glow of his brilliant bright blue eyes into your mind.

And then, everything is engulfed in an unending black.

It’s November 30, 2018— morning on the campus of Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School.

Satoru Gojo strides through the school grounds, casually tossing a small silver box with eerie blue eyes known as the prison realm up and down in his grasp. Walking at his side is Shoko Ieiri, a pretty woman who’s been unfortunate enough to have been Satoru’s friend since high school.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Shoko asks, twirling a few strands of her long brown hair.

“What do you mean?” Satoru responds nonchalantly. “All my ideas are good ideas.”

Shoko hums in clear dissent, but doesn’t say anything more. Even she knows better than to try and waste her time trying to argue with Satoru. “I’m just worried about their mental state. Didn’t you say that time doesn’t flow in the box?”

“I’d be worried if it was some normal person,” Satoru says. “But after what they’ve gone through I think they’ll be fine.”

“...well, if you say so.”

The two arrive at their destination: the largest training area on the Jujutsu High grounds. Satoru places the prison realm at the center and takes a few steps back with Shoko standing behind him, in case anything happens.

He doesn’t think it will, but it’s always good to take at least a few precautions.

“Gojo, are you sure we should be doing this?” Shoko asks again. “Didn’t they want to remain in the box?”

“Of course I am,” Satoru says with his usual air of confidence before looking back at the prison realm nestled in the grass. He grins and then—

“Prison realm, gate open.”

if you made it this far. thank you. it's my sincerest hope that you enjoyed the ride. 3

[00kittenz]

── desperation. ( psh ) 📠

pair: boss!sunghoon ㅊ employee!f!reader | warnings: smut, secret relationship, age gap (sunghoon is 10 years older), semi-public s.x (?), hoon is a needy boi, coercion, quickies, dirty talk, piv, no lube, no protection (don’t be like them!) | words: 1.4k

imagine boss!sunghoon being so needy n desperate for you at all times, he just can’t seem to keep his hands off you.. just needs to cop a feel whenever he can bc he’s that obsessed w you ;( he’s also willing to skip important business meetings just so he can bring you into his office when no one’s around and have you bent over his desk— loving the way your curves hug the work uniform in all the right places..

this is my very first ever post on enhablr !

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

“please?” sunghoon’s desperation grew as time went on, nothing but lust clouding his judgement. he had you pushed up against his desk, caging his arms around the slope of your waist, hindering you from any retaliation, utterly defenseless in his hold.

“i promise i’ll be super quick..!” he pleads even more, pressing wet kisses all over your face, his pouty lips still lingering along the rim of your jaw afterwards. “just need you, so so sooo bad.”

sunghoon has been “negotiating” with you for the past ten-ish or so minutes, playing every trick in the book he possibly can in getting you to fold like a sunday lawn chair for him. what may have prompted all this you wonder ? well, he simply got hard at the sight of you and now you’re the one in ‘trouble’ because he can’t function while being bricked up at work. you two had an odd relationship to say the least… he was your boss, the man you reported to every day and pick up his morning coffee before he arrives at 8 AM sharp, but you also sleep with him sometimes?? (you thought it would be just a one off occurrence but sunghoon wanted it to be a more frequent, fwb type of deal..)

you were seriously hoping that he’d leave you alone today, you had a lot of work that needed to get done within a short timeframe and distractions weren’t going to do you any good, however, you couldn’t just say no to park sunghoon. there were dozens of other women who’d kill to be in your position, they already tried to seduce him one, two many times before— except you of course. you were like the golden employee who always followed orders, listened to directions the first time, and did everything the right way, he’s never really had to reprimand you and even on the rare chances you do mess up, he’d handle it with you in private; just like how he’s doing now.

hell, sunghoon makes it excruciatingly hard to resist him. especially when his breath inched beneath your ear, silky strands of jet black hair tickling your chin as he begs for your touch.

“i told you i was busy— hoon, s-stopp !” you helplessly whine, your mind kept telling you to refuse but your body was saying a completely different story. he knew exactly where to pull the pin, knew just how to make you give in to his not-so-safe-for-work desires.

“oh are we now ?, too busy for me ? what happened to wanting to get that new promotion, huh ?” he cocks his head to the side, turning arrogant all of a sudden now that he can use something as leverage over you. it’s a shame that he has to stoop to such low levels but he’s willing to try whatever method that’ll get him exactly what he wants.

as he whispers in further detail all the naughty things he wants to do to you, your legs were brought to a tight close, wanting nothing more than to relieve the ache you felt between your plush thighs; you feel dirty, disgusting for wanting your boss to fuck your brains out, it’s unprofessional, you shouldn’t be doing this— letting him have access to you whenever he wants almost felt dehumanizing.

though, you be lying if you said he didn't strike a bone in your body, maybe 3, or 4.. 10 at most. hell, maybe even all of them. some days you were able to keep your cool and act as though he had zero effect on you— however, he was just so unable to resist at times. you couldn’t help but be attracted to him; even if he was an asshole sometimes, you secretly liked it in a sick, twisted kind of way. if he was going to play this little game then you may as well play right along, plus you weren't gonna just walk around with soggy panties without getting something in return, right ? right.

“oh ? giving in already, guess you really do want it that bad, huh ?” he smirked childishly as you finally cave in, rubbing up against him, spreading and burying his knee between your thighs.

“shut up, do you wanna? or not ?” so over his annoying little antics, you gradually wiggled your hips against his toned, muscular thighs.

“it’s cute when you act all needy for me.” his hands caressed your waist, taking your leg to his hip, in effect your pencil skirt riding up your thigh.

you felt his clothed dick against your core as he pressed his body against you. sloppily taking your tongue against his.

you've always wondered how this man could get you so hot and sweaty all over a few words. then again, as long as you’re pleased; does it really matter ?

“fuck..” you spoke, hand grabbing at his tie, the melody of his luxury belt being unwrathed gave you a tsunami of chills. “quickly, i have a meeting in..” you checked you wrist, reading the analog watch that sat delicately along your veins. “15.” you heaved heavily, he tugged down your tights physically prepping himself with his hand.

“thats enough time to make me bust twice.” he chuckled. his length entered your puffy, dewy pussy.

“quick busser !” you laughed, knowing it'd strike a chord within whenever you tease him.

taking your ass in his hands before he paces himself. “you love when my dick coats your pussy in a thick coat. so, suck it.” he groaned, kissing onto your collarbone to keep himself quiet.

his office wasn't what people would call sound proof, but at a good distance from the door, nobody could be able to hear you. but keeping you quiet would deem to be the most difficult part.

sunghoon bear hugged you keeping you tight against him, he thought fucking you in your work attire, especially your tights, had to be the sexiest shit to dance on this earth. it's honestly why he's here. the way the thin black fabric wrapped around your thighs, he could just picture your sloppy pussy, wrapping around him. balls deep. and you took him so. so. so. well.

“ugh, yesyesyes..” your ragged breathing swam through his ears, giving him an ounce more of stamina. “shit !” your clit throbbed at his lower abdomens slight back to back friction, you grind up onto him, to feel more of that reminiscing release edging you.

he nibbled at your lips before taking them against his. “shut the fuck up. you dont— hell..wanna get caught do you ?” he swatted your thigh, thrusting himself at a slower, but rougher notion.

“fe—feel so good, nggh.. hoon..” you whispered, biting at his ear.

your forehead glistened with sweat, the buttons of your shirt leaving your perky breasts opposed and exposed. you threw your head back at the pulsating between the two of you, you could feel him. throbbing, and hardening inside of you, and it turned you way the fuck on. just as your pussy throbbed against his hard.

“c'mon mama.. you wanna drench your boss’s cock? huh ?.. wanna make it all gooey with your cum ?” he pushed you closer and closer with his words, as if him ramming into you wasn't enough.

“yes.. wan' make it gooey, baby !” you whispered under your breath. throwing your head back, leaving your boobs to bounce under the escaping light of his blinds.

“then cum, be a good girl..” sunghoon’s breath quickened, he was near the edge himself, if not on it.

the two of you, moaning into each other's lusty mouths, aching for more. your groans becoming quickened and hoarse as the burning knot in your stomach leaves you in discomfort. until a strong stroke came to pop that growing bubble inside you, releasing you of all your numbness. you came onto his thickness.

sunghoon, lost it at the feel of you tightening around him, lays you down onto the desk, pushing down on your stomach. he could feel himself through passing through your entrance. just thinking about it, left him blissful.

“fuck, fuck ! 's fuckin' right, squeeze me baby..” he finally broke, leaving all his pellent inside of you, slowly pumping himself a few more times before sliding out. his figure, breathing heavily, leaning onto your heaving chest.

you could hear him chuckling after awhile of comfortable silence. “looks like you're gonna be late for your meeting miss. y/n.”

“you so owe me.” you glare up at him as if this was all his fault.

“i do ?” he kissed your tummy.

“yeah, you do actually.”

“and what may that be?” he raises his brow, pushing up his thin framed glasses.

“a real date.”

“can i take you back to my place after ?” he kissed your tummy through your shirt once more.

“deal.” you grinned, catching your breath.

you were a dirty mess. a mess that sunghoon, had absolutely no problem with cleaning up.

[fairyofshampgyu]

☆ Not as Tough as You Look !

genre: smut, crack

paring: emo vinyl store worker ! beomgyu x vinyl collector ! reader

Warnings: sub! beomgyu, dom! reader, choking !!!! grinding, riding, creampie, handjob, hair pulling, nipple play, degrading, fucking in a record store but there’s no one there, beomgyu has his nipples pierced and a thigh tattoo hehe and also his eyebrow pierced bc why not he’d look so fine

Word count: 3.7k

With your crippling vinyl collection addiction, you ticked off yet another record store on your list with a sigh, making your way to the next using trusty google maps and a determined gaze.

So far, you hadn’t been able to find your favourite band, Red Jellyfish’s vinyl in any of the stores you’d been in and you’d made it your sole mission to check out every single record store in your city in hopes of finding it to add to your ever growing collection.

It wasn’t the most financially stable hobby, yes, what with some records being so unreasonably pricey these days. And yes, technically you could listen to the albums for free online anytime instead. But that defeated the purpose! They just wouldn’t get the satisfying feeling of owning a shelf of your own physical music and whenever you added more to it. Also, music just sounded so much better spinning around on a record player in your bedroom and adding to the nostalgic ambience and aesthetic. It simply made you content.

Obtaining Red Jellyfish currently, however, was serving as a difficult task. It was always the case with more obscure bands but it just made it more riveting trying to find vinyl for them.

You arrived at the next, walking in and the arrays of endless records welcoming you, the place had a funky 70s vibe to it and was decorated as so with a cool layout. You noticed a listening booth, unusual to have in most record shops nowadays and this one was also unusually large, serving more as a separate small room with a record player and sofas so customers could have a listen. You loved listening booths and this definitely was a very cool record store. You’d be coming in again for sure.

Your thoughts are quickly dissipated, however, at the sight of the very cute worker stood behind the counter. You stop in your tracks and find yourself unable to look away, the purpose of why you actually came in the first place long forgotten.

He was unbelievably attractive with a long, shaggy wolfcut and bangs that half covered his eyes, adorned with an eyebrow piercing that added to his emo-esque look, sporting an oversized band shirt and baggy jeans and he had the most prettily sculpted features ever. The bottom of his soft brown eyes underlined ever so slightly with black eyeliner making his gaze rather intimidating.

“Hey, do you need any help?”

That snaps you back from your reverie and you jolt, unsure how long you were just weirdly observing him.

“Huh? Oh…no. Just looking….” Wow, even his voice was really nice.

He raises his pierced eyebrow at that and a knowing smile breaks onto his face. “Yeah? At what exactly? Vinyls or someone?” He bursts into laughter then and you feel your cheeks heat up, cocky and confident waves radiating off of him. Oh, he knew he was hot.

“W-what? No!” You scoff and clear your throat, embarrassed.

He chuckles still and beams at you, brushing his bangs away from his face with his hands, rings scattered on some of his fingers. God, even his hands were attractive. “Uh huh. But seriously, Would you like any assistance? It is my job after all.”

“Well actually,” You clear your throat and straighten your posture, attempting to play it cool and forget, you were still on a mission, you must not get side tracked by pretty boys. “you wouldn’t happen to have the band Red Jellyfish would you?”

His eyes light up almost immediately, “No way! I love Red Jellyfish. I’ve never come across another fan before! And we certainly do.” He grins and disappears into the back, soon arriving with the vinyl in hand and excitedly handing it to you, “They’re finally coming out with a second album after years. I’m so excited!”

“Same. I didn’t think they’d ever end up making music again after how long their hiatus was.” You enthusiastically agree, happy to find someone who also shared a liking for the band.

“Wouldn’t really take you to listen to emo music to be honest...” The cute emo boy looks you up and down, referring to your not so dark and edgy outfit and he’s grinning again.

“Yeah well, I guess you could say I have a pretty eclectic music taste.” You shrug, rolling your eyes jokingly at him. “Although I'm not really well versed on emo music besides that.”

You notice his big brown eyes beam even more with excitement, beginning to talk animatedly. “You should definitely listen to more. It’s great and it has a lot of range and sub genres and there’s some really good bands and! And-“ He rubs the back of his head sheepishly and stops himself, seemingly embarrassed. “Sorry, you just want to pay for your album and go.” He smiles apologetically at you and presses buttons on the cash register instead to calculate the price for you.

You shake your head and laugh, finding it more so endearing. "No. In fact, you’ve convinced me. I’ll definitely get into it more and listen to some bands. I wouldn’t know where to start though.” You’d let him talk your ear off all day to be honest. He was super cute.

His eyes turn into little crescent moons at that as he smiles broadly and you can’t help swooning internally once again. “Ooh I definitely have to give you some recs and make you a playlist! What’s your number?”

That’s how you find yourself squealing after leaving the store and not only managing to obtain the album you’d been extensively searching for, but also the very, very hot emo boy worker’s number. You’ll be telling your friend Soobin for sure all about it.

The emo boy indeed had a name, you'd discovered after exchanging numbers, Beomgyu, he’d told you. And you hadn’t been able to get the name out of your head ever since.

Him making a playlist for you didn’t really mean anything, he was just giving recommendations and being nice and friendly. But still, you’ll allow yourself to be a bit delusional about it. It was still a cute boy making a playlist for you! Even if it was pretty impersonal.

Later on into the night you receive a text that makes you giddy all over.

Hey, it’s Beomgyu ! We met earlier at the record shop. I made the playlist of emo recs already hehe :) let me know what u think ;)

Along with the text was a Spotify link to the playlist, spending your whole night just listening to it.

As you got to know the genre better. You appreciated it a lot more and found you actually liked a lot of the songs, particularly the more screamo ones. The screaming and whining itched your brain and you were fascinated how much vocal control they had to be able to scream yet sing at the same time. You make a mental note of all your favourites and decide to tell him in person, since it’d give an excuse to see him again.

You walk to the store the next day and you're glad to see him behind the counter and not someone else. “I listened to all the songs. They were really good.”

“Already?” He raises his brow in surprise to see you again, lopsided grin on his face and head tilted.

“Well…yeah?” You scratch your head. You don’t why you feel slightly embarrassed about that.

Beomgyu leans over the counter excitedly, “Which ones did you like?” Suddenly, a vinyl album comes full swinging at Beomgyu and smacks the back of his head hard. You stand, astonished. “Oww! What the fuck?” Beomgyu rubs his poor head in attempt to soothe it and turns around to the suspect.

"You better be working and not talking your ass off, Choi Beomgyu!!" His manger, yeonjun, you observe from his tag comes into view and stands with narrowed eyes at him.

“I’m taking a break!” Beomgyu waves with his hand, trying to shoo him away so he could continue his conversation with you.

“You just started your shift?!!”

“So! 9-5s are hard…” Beomgyu pouts and looks at you as if to back him up.

Yeonjun shakes his head, hand to his nose bridge, "You know I'd fire you right?"

"You wouldn't because you love me. And I’m your best friend." Beomgyu proudly smirks to him.

"Debatable..." Yeonjun sighs defeatedly and walks off to restock a shelf instead, beomgyu completely ignoring him and returning back to the conversation with you.

After that, you become close friends with the boy, frequenting the vinyl shop for records, but mostly an excuse just so you could converse with him. You seem to develop a music recommending relationship, sharing playlists and recommending each other songs and then giving your own opinions and reviews to each other.

To be honest, getting to hangout with beomgyu like that was the highlight of your days and you’d grown to like him a lot. He was fairly easy going and nice to talk to, even if the conversation fell short on your side given you weren’t that socially competent, he always managed to keep it going and you loved hearing his funny ramblings and stories he’d passionately go on about. You found a lot of what he did just so endearing.

He was also a massive flirt. And it seemed you weren’t the only person who noticed just how hot the boy behind the counter was as a lot of the times you were there, girls and boys were batting their eyelashes up at him and coming into the store just to flirt with him too. You didn’t blame them at all. He'd flirt with you from time to time as well but you tried not to dwell too much on it, figuring it was simply just his personality.

Even if you were just probably friends, you were happy to have gained a friendship either way. He brought colour into your usual mundane day to day living and you hadn’t made a new genuine friend in so long, something that was seemingly rarer the more you got into adulthood. And so, you just appreciated the friendship. Even if you had developed the teeniest crush on him. Well, probably more than that.

Soobin had been nagging you for days on end about wanting to see this beomgyu guy for himself you'd talk about and doubting that he was so fine like you say, that you end up giving in and deciding to drag him along to the record store with you as well one day.

Upon seeing you walk in, Beomgyu's eyes light up happily, resembling that of a puppy seeing their owner finally arriving back home and he smiles widely...then he sees the tall guy following in behind you and his demeanour suddenly changes, head tilted and frowning, lips more in a pout.

Once you walk up to the counter with a vinyl Soobin wanted, beomgyu stares coldly and cautiously for a rather strange time at the tall blonde innocently sipping on his boba tea besides you and eventually speaks up. "Is he like, your...boyfriend?"

Soobin splutters and chokes on his drink and both of you wave your hands in a frenzy, "No!"

"Oh!" And he's back to his usual cheery self, smiling contently, a bit unsettling to both you and soobin as you exchange a wary look. "Yeah. It’s good he isn’t…” Beomgyu stares back at soobin with a look of such distaste and disgust.

You leave the store after paying not without trying to reassure a grumbly Soobin who looked like he was about to throw hands any second. “What did he mean it's good he isn't?!” He mocks beomgyu’s voice and scoffs. “I feel offended! Is he saying I’d make a bad boyfriend?! He doesn’t like me? Well I don’t like him. Bitch.”

You sigh, patting your frowning friend on the back, not sure what else to say at the strange interaction.

Finally, the day Red Jellyfish’s new album drops arrives and although it took absolutely everything in you not to listen to it instantly, both you and beomgyu had promised each other you’d listen together in the listening booth after his shift. So the day seems to drag on and on as you anticipate and impatiently waited for the evening when beomgyu would at last finish.

You zoom to the store when it’s finally time, seeing him tidying and closing up. You sit down onto the vintage orange funky sofa in the listening booth as beomgyu placed the album into the record player before taking a seat next to you, both holding in your breath as the first track plays, and then swapping an excited glance with widened eyes to each other as soon as the guitar melody starts playing and the bass also comes in, both remaining silent as you enjoy the song and listen attentively to what was going on. It was already so sick.

Once it ends you both excitedly gush over the new song before the second tracks rolls on. It’s a lot slower and more dreamy and ambient. The guitar distorted and playing a pretty rolling arpeggio and giving off the genre of a more shoegaze piece.

You stare at beomgyu’s concentrated face and he stares back. He really is so gorgeous, the pretty song seemingly reflecting this as you can’t help but admire him. You can’t help it either when your eyes flicker to his seriously pretty rounded lips for a second, wondering what it’d feel like to have them pressed with yours…

It seems it doesn’t go unnoticed by beomgyu either as he shuffles even closer to you, his scent intoxicating you as he grins smugly, looking down at your own lips that has you malfunctioning. He tucks in a strand of your hair behind your ear, still gazing and corners of his mouth pulling up, smiling at you.

There’s this underlying tension and the album you’d been heavily anticipating for months, the last thing on your mind, dissolving into background noise as the only thing you can think of is beomgyu and how close he is to you. It’s hard to hold back anymore.

He inches closer and closer and he kisses you. Finally kisses you, and you melt into the kiss with him, making out fervently.

He pulls you into his lap, gripping your waist and tracing kisses on your neck instead that makes you gasp. “Couldn’t help it anymore…so pretty. Always make my day whenever you walk in.” Beomgyu whispers lowly, brushing his lips lightly against your ear which makes you shiver and the corners of his mouth curl into that stupid grin you’ve seen many times.

But then you decide to roll your hips against his and grind against his cock in his jeans and he falters instantly, mouth parting ‘o’ shaped and he whimpers high pitched, so unlike him. His ears and cheeks flush red and your movements stop. “S-shit sorry. Did I ruin it? That was really weird, fuck. Sorry.” Beomgyu averts your gaze, apologising profusely and embarrassed, bottom lip quivering slightly you notice. His whole demeanour changes. You’ve only ever seen beomgyu embarrassed a short handful of times, usually so sure of himself, but it only makes you go more crazy for him.

“Wanna act all tough but a little grinding is all it takes and it’s all crumbling down, huh?” You grin trying not to laugh, finding the boy and the way he’s shying underneath you suddenly so amusing. He still doesn’t make eye contact, cheeks even more impossibly red, “Look at me, baby.” You lift his chin up, seeing the way he reacts to the pet name, his eyes slightly widening.

“No. Don’t want to. Too embarrassed.” Beomgyu pouts cutely, you chuckle and coo at him, stroking his cheek which he leans into. You begin to grind against him again and take the lead in kissing him, his hands shaking and gripping your waist even tighter as he attempts to stifle his whimpers, eyes tightly shut. You kiss and suck down his neck as well, determined to leave hickeys in their wake. You’re surprised by how easily he submits to you. You like it a lot.

You pull the oversized band shirt he wears over his head and unzip his ripped jeans. The sight your met with however making you audibly gasp, his pink nipples prettily pierced through and the top of his plush thigh tattooed in a pattern of a heart and lines branching out like thorns. It makes you even more feral.

Gripping the pretty flesh of his tatted thigh, you begin to jerk off his cock which was flushed and leaking precum anyway as he waited for you to do something. He whines and moans into your ear as you pump your hand up and down on his length, head buried deep in your neck.

You can feel his heavy breaths and the drool on you and his whole body twitches and squirms when you place your free hand on one of his nipples instead, rolling the bud in your fingers and twisting which elicits a strangled moan out of him, clinging to you even tighter when you ruthlessly pump his cock, thumb toying with the slit on the head of dick and also still toying with his now puffy nipples. You can feel the drool dribble down your neck now. And you know he’ll cum any second, added ministrations on his pretty tits not helping him from restraining at all, so sensitive especially ever since he got them pierced.

“F-fuckk..hah..Please. Can I cum?” He removes his head from your neck to look up at you with wet doe eyes. He’s so unexpectedly pliant in your hands, you’d give him anything if he looked up at you like that. And so you do, allowing him to cum, he whines loudly and squirts making a pretty mess, cum coating his tattoo on his thigh.

You’re not anywhere near done with him yet though and you hover over his dick, bringing the head to slide over your entrance and folds a few times before you sink completely down on his wet and sticky cock. Beomgyu throws his head back and groans, biting his lip hard at the feeling of his cock inside your warm pussy and you begin to slowly ride him, sucking in air loudly.

“Mmh fuck pull my hair too. It’s okay I like it rough-ah s-shit. Can take anything you give me” Beomgyu stutters and throws an arm over his head, eyebrows deeply furrowed.

So you tug and pull at the strands of his long hair and tangle and run your hands in his scalp, it makes him moan even louder, looking absolutely in bliss, you could tell just how much he liked his hair being pulled and pull with even more force, his eyes glazing up and mind all mushy and hazy now as you continued to fuck him and tug on his scalp. He looked so slutty and you can’t help telling him.

“Such a slut.” He just whines loudly in response. “You like being called a slut, huh? Wanna be my toy, my pet, my slut?

“Y-yeah-ah so good-holyy s-shit” He just nods vigorously, so dumbed out at this point, jaw hanging dumbly open. “W-wait squeeze my neck please.…”

You didn’t think beomgyu would be such a freak either.

“Are you sure, beomgyu?”

He strenuously nods and begs you. “Yeahh..need it please. I can take anything.” He gently takes your hand on his own and brings it to press down on his neck. He still stares at you with his big round brown eyes. It was honestly a confusing juxtaposition, the way he looked at you innocently whilst asking you to do something so obscene as choking him.

You squeeze his pretty neck either way and watch as he hisses and his face scrunches up gorgeously, veins in his neck popping out and grunting, you fuck him ruthlessly bouncing on his cock and the squelching so loud and clear and evident despite the music still playing on the record player.

You can’t help feeling possessive over him, finally having him beneath you, all yours to use, remembering all the girls that come in everyday to flirt with him and you get to have him all to yourself . Imagine the look on their faces if they could see beomgyu right now, your hands still lightly squeezing his neck and riding him. You kinda wish you could mark him all over.

“H-harder…choke me harder” Beomgyu gulps.

It makes your pace on his cock even faster and so rough and you press down on his neck ever harder. His jaw clenches, neck and face red and eyebrows furrowed. He gasps for air, letting out the prettiest loud and whiny breathy noises.

His breath hitches with every unrelenting bounce on his cock and he struggles to breathe, eyes heavy lidded and so fucked out, a distant look on his face, you press down just a little bit more on his neck and his eyes roll to back of his head, a long strangled high pitched moan coming out of him as he bucks his hips up and convulses, spurting heaps of his cum inside you and it brings you over the edge too. He can’t stop cumming it seems, shaking and endlessly panting and still squirting inside you as you basically milk him. You can see the red imprint of your hand on his pretty neck along with the numerous hickeys you left, it was definitely a sight to see.

It takes a while for beomgyu to recover from his high after how good you fucked him but he eventually speaks up, clinging to you. “Sooo, I got two tickets to see red jellyfish…Would you possibly want to go with me?” He grins and pants, biting his lip, still out of breath and bangs damp from sweat, pierced eyebrow raised and head tilted as he waited your answer.

You chuckle wrapping your arms around him tightly, kissing him again. “I’d love to.”

Please actually reblog !!!!!! and leave comments !!!! guys 😭 if you like the fic. It’s really appreciated and so nice tysm !<3🙏💕🌷🌷! It’s incredibly discouraging and irriating when fics have such little reblogs ☹️. At least send an anon in the inbox if you don’t want to rb, don’t just like. Feedback is always appreciated it make writers want to actually write :)

A/n: this is probably really messy bc I haven’t proof read. Writer’s block is actually so hard 😭😭 *just a little note-if anything seems familiar it is probably bc my mind has never been sane ever since hey emo boy! by koqabear. It is the emo beomgyu blueprint and literally birthed emo beomgyu <33

[awrkive]

THE LOVE PROGNOSIS, pt. 2 — JJK (m.)

for as long as you can remember, you’ve always been a hopeless romantic.

the girl who’s always dreamt of cheesy encounters with her soulmate, grand love declarations, and a cute little beach wedding to boot. but reality pretty much slaps you hard right on the face, because love, unfortunately, doesn’t come grand — it’s simple and it’s quiet, but it is quite painful, especially when the love that you’ve been seeking for all your adult life has just been right under your nose all this time.

PAIRING jungkook x female reader // mingyu x female reader

GENRE r18+ (angst, fluff, smut) MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

CHAPTER WORD COUNT 27.5k

CHAPTER WARNINGS/MISC medical!au, roommates!au, surgeon!jk, surgeon!reader (they are both 4th year residents and are co-workers), corporate lawyer!mingyu, oc and jk are bffs since med school but their love language is fighting each other <3, jk and mingyu are bffs during undergrad, hopeless romantic!oc. shirtless jk in almost every scene ijbol he needs to get locked up, jk thigh tattoo 😔 a dash of sexual themes (ie: making out, grinding) and violence, this is pretty much MED SCHOOL LORE GALORE bcs boy, was there so much history mentioned here, 3/4 of this is in jk pov, so ladies.... prepare yourselves 🤔so much fluff, and we counter that with not major but not minor either ANGST, so many conversations and dialogues in this one lol, this hopefully offers every answer youre looking for from part one, when ur done reading the chapter this is how the keyring looks like

NOTES hi!! this chapter was supposed to be longer but i was like.. fuck that 😭 its getting too long. anyway. hope u guys enjoy this one!! this is my most favorite thing ive ever written i think n im weirdly very proud of this one idk. scream into my inbox and the reply section if u have #thoughtss 😄😄 [ important: pls make sure to read the note below ]

[ TLP MOODBOARD ] // [ SPOTIFY PLAYLIST ]

SERIES MASTERLIST | MAIN MASTERLIST

You take your sweet time trying to right your wrongs.

After that day, you were the one to initiate a call with Mingyu which he answered thankfully (you were a little skeptical about him calling you that night). You went over to his place after your shift, apologizing to him for lying about your roommate situation. Admittedly, Mingyu still doesn’t seem to be wholly okay with it – but he doesn’t really say anything more about it. He kissed you better that night, his lips making you forget all about the stress that you’ve went through for the day, convincing you to stay over.

The night bled into two when he said he couldn’t let you go. Mingyu was persistent and you were unwilling to go in the first place. Partly because who didn’t want to spend more time with their significant other? But it’s also because of a certain someone that is no other than Jeon Jungkook.

Those two nights are going on four – which means that you’ve been avoiding Jungkook for the past three days now.

It doesn’t seem like a difficult task though because Jungkook seems to be doing the same. That was your hunch. He replies to you with dry-ass “okay”s when you text him about not going home because you’re staying at Mingyu’s. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Which is unusual of him. Sure, in your almost decade-long friendship, you’ve fought a bunch of times. But it usually gets resolved in a day or two. And Jungkook wasn’t ever cold like he is right now.

See, the regular Jungkook would find you anywhere on your floor at the hospital just to annoy you. When your time allows it, you eat together with your friends at lunch.

But now, he seems to always have something to do – which, okay, fair. He’s a surgeon, after all. But he doesn’t even spare you a glance whenever you two meet halfway in the hallways. Yesterday, you coincidentally scrubbed in together for the same surgery but he did not say a word to you other than, “Scalpel”.

The rest of your friends are already asking about it. Doyeon told you he had lunch with Jungkook this afternoon, but when she mentioned that maybe you were free to go with them, Jungkook suddenly had to look over a patient’s chart.

It’s not just a hunch anymore. He really is avoiding you.

And to be honest, you’re tired of the whole pussyfooting around. He’s being childish – and you’ll be the better person to come and talk to him about it. Granted, you’re three days late. But at least you’re doing it.

You texted Mingyu earlier this afternoon that you’re coming home to your apartment tonight. He was bummed about it, you could feel it through his message, nonetheless he replied saying he’ll miss you, which put a smile to your tired face from work.

When you went home from your shift at 9pm, Jungkook wasn’t anywhere in the house. Which was a shame – because you were planning to talk to him.

Well. Maybe you’d wait for him.

But it seemed like you underestimated your exhaustion for the day because as soon you finished showering, dressing yourself with your bed clothes which consists of comfortable flimsy camisole and panty shorts, you went straight to bed and passed out – forgetting about Jungkook.

It’s past 2 am when you feel yourself waking up from your deep slumber, stomach grumbling at the emptiness, and you realize you did not only forget about waiting for Jungkook but also about eating dinner.

Walking out of your room, you head straight to the kitchen where you immediately go to open the refrigerator to see if there’s something in it you can consume. There are boxes of Chinese food take-out which makes your eyes light up. When you open to smell them, it seems that they’re still new.

You deduce it must be Jungkook’s.

That gives you the predicament of whether you should eat it or not. You take you’re not exactly on good terms as of the moment – therefore you can’t eat his food. But you’re really hungry.

Throwing away your inhibitions, you open one of the boxes, not even bothering to heat the food.

“Hey,”

You almost jump upon hearing another voice. Looking to your side, you see Jungkook approaching, with only his boxers on, upper half naked.  

“H-hey,” you say, pursing your lips into a thin line. “Are these yours?” You point to the take-out box in your hand.

Jungkook nods and heads straight to your direction. Taking one of the boxes, he hauls himself to the kitchen island, twisting his body so that he can face you.

“Yep.” he responds, dipping his fingers inside the box and taking out strands of noodles from it.

You wince at the sight. “Look like worms.”

“Just like worms.” Jungkook grins, chewing on them in that obnoxious way because he knows you don’t like noisy eaters.

Frowning, you decide to follow him to the island and haul yourself on top of it as well, sitting beside him. Jungkook scoots to the side to give you more room.

“It’s kind of like eating naengmyeon, I don’t like naengmyeon.��� You tell him, opening another box and feeling delighted to see untouched stir-fried rice. “Did you just buy this earlier?”

Jungkook nods. “Left them in the fridge when I realized I wasn’t too hungry.”

“Then you woke up feeling hungry?” You smile at him.

He chuckles. “Yeah. When did you get off work?”

“Nine. You?”

“Twelve am.”

You grimace at that, but nod in understanding.

There’s a beat of silence before Jungkook speaks up again.

“Didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

“Just wanted to remind you I’m still your housemate…” you joke, brushing your elbow against his arm in a teasing manner.

Jungkook laughs as he shakes his head. He picks up another batch of noodles in his fingers and then offers it to you, prompting you to arch your brow at him. “Try it.”

You shake your head. “I hate cold noodles.”

“Just try,” He insists, placing it closer to your face. You scrunch your nose, skeptical. It makes Jungkook chuckle lowly. “Head back.”

Hesitantly, you tilt your head back and open your mouth as Jungkook puts the noodles inside it. You almost choke on it when Jungkook laughs mid-way, making you laugh as well, but thankfully, you were able to chew all of them just fine.

“What the fuck.” You frown, slapping his arm good-naturedly.

“Wasn’t so bad, huh?”

“It was bad.” You say, going back to eating your fried rice. Jungkook gives you a look that says he’s not convinced. Looking at his face, you roll your eyes, “It’s like eating–” you stop mid-sentence as Jungkook quickly wipes off something on the side of your lips. It’s so quick though that you brush it off just as instantly and continue, “—literal worms.”

“Imagine if worms tasted like noodles. Wouldn’t that be sick as hell?” Jungkook muses, stretching his arm over you to reach for another take-out box on the counter. It’s so sudden that your immediate reflex was to stretch your upper body backwards, feeling a little taken aback when Jungkook’s face gets a little too close to your stomach, with his arm rubbing over your bare thighs.

He seems like it doesn’t move him, though. Just goes back to his position casually and opens another box. As he does, you can’t help but take a quick look at his bulging thighs, the short length of his boxers letting you get a brief view of the tattoo that peeks out of the expanse of his skin. You’ve seen that before many times, but not the entirety – of course not. It looks like it goes up from way above. Anyway, it’s sort of like a flower, but you’re not sure. You never really asked him about it. He never brings it up either.

“Oh, man, the dumplings got cold.” Jungkook picks inside his box as if he’d miraculously find one that’s not cold.

You roll your eyes at his antics. “You stored them in the fridge for like how many hours now?”

Ignoring you, Jungkook takes out one dumpling, trying to eat it, and you watch as he visibly winces. In a moment, he shoots one straight to the trash bin across from you.

“Oh, that’s real mature.” You say dryly.

With that, Jungkook throws another one, giving you a cheeky grin when it lands in the bin successfully for the second time.

Pursing your lips, you sarcastically say, “Wow. Two points to Xavier from Jeon Jungkook.”

That makes Jungkook look at you instantly.

“How the hell do you know that?” He gives you a look of confusion but there’s amusement written all over his face at the same time.

“Well… Mingyu told me you both played for the basketball varsity team back in undergrad, so,”

Jungkook stops. There’s look of something in his eyes that you can’t quite point out, but then suddenly, he nods.

“He told you how good I was?” He says with a teasing tone, a contrast to his sudden and quick drop of mood a few seconds ago.

You throw him a tissue. “Don’t be cocky. He just mentioned it.”

“I was captain. Two-time MOP, 2018 and 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.”

You look at him with silent reverence. Well, Mingyu didn’t tell you all that, that’s for sure. It’s a bit surreal to picture Jungkook wearing a basketball uniform, though. You’re so used to seeing him in scrubs and lab gown and his usual casual, occasionally suits when you attend formal conferences. You’ve only ever seen him sweat it out whenever he works out in the living room.

“Impressive.” You say. Jungkook grins proudly. “It’s strange I only know about it now, though.”

“You never asked.” He shrugs. “What ‘bout you? I only know you’re little miss summa cum laude.”

Huffing, you jab at his arm when he mentions it, rolling your eyes at him which only earns you a chuckle. Regardless, you tell him, “2018 NCA College Nationals. We won Coed Division One.”

Jungkook arches a brow. “NCA… National Cheerleading Association?” You nod, eating from your take-out box so as to avoid Jungkook’s look after you do so.

“No fucking way,” He says incredulously. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” You bite your lip to keep yourself from smiling too much. You never really get to share this part about you with a lot of people. To quote Jungkook, they never ask. It’s funny when they do get surprised by it though, like he is now. When Jungkook stares at you – you don’t know if it’s just in disbelief – longer than necessary, you realize he’s staring at your face and that makes you consciously fix a strand of hair behind your ear. “Go big blue, go big blue, show ‘em what wildcats can do.” You sing a in fast tempo, chuckling about how silly it sounds.

Jungkook utters a sound of amusement. “That’s… wow. Right now, I’m just picturing you cheering but it’s a bit hazy and shit.”

“You’re saying you can’t picture me cheering?” You playfully accuse, but you know exactly what he meant. Even you still don’t believe that you actually did cheer in undergrad. When you signed up for it, it was just because you had to choose a club, and you weren’t interested in anything other than that. You thought cheering would be fun and it was fun.

“No, I’m just—” Jungkook cuts himself off and looks at you. “Okay, now I totally deserve a cheer for that two-point shot I made just now.”

You laugh loudly at that. Covering your mouth, you look at him to see if he’s joking but he seems to be serious.

“No.” You say, your eyes widening, body stiffening.

“Come on,” Jungkook chuckles.

You roll your eyes. “You have to do more than a two-point shot to get a cheer.”

“Okay, what do you want me to do?” Jungkook eagerly presents a challange. You stifle a laugh when he gears up for something. “I can shoot dumplings further from here with my left hand.”

“Ten feet away,” You muse, giggling when Jungkook suddenly gets off the counter, carrying the box of dumplings, and positions himself further away from you. Laughing, you shake your head before you say, “You can’t do it.”

“Try me.” He says as he begins to pick out a dumpling and concentrate on the trash can. Before he shoots, he tells you, “This one’s for you.”

You watch as the dumpling misses the bin.

Jungkook beats you to speaking first. “I admit. I’m a bit rusty.”

Sneering, you eat your fried rice, not straying your eyes from him. “You have to shoot, like, three dumplings.”

“That was a trial shot.” he insists, eyeing you playfully, before he gears up for another again. You watch closely when he makes a move to shoot another dumpling.

It goes in. Jungkook smirks at you when you look at him, impressed.

“Not bad.” You cock your head to the side.

“Tss.” He shoots another shot again and it’s successful for the second time. “That’s two.” Jungkook shows you his fingers and you chuckle at his enthusiasm.

“Let’s see if you can get the third.”

Jungkook nods, and you cover a snicker again at the way his stance suddenly turns serious, as if he’s really taking the whole thing seriously.

In a few seconds, he shoots the last dumpling straight to the bin just as successfully as the last time.

“What did I say?” Jungkook brags as he goes over to the island across from you, sitting on the high chairs this time. You turn your body to look at him, containing your smile. “Your turn now.” Jungkook says with a smirk.

Your purse your lips. “I’m a bit rusty.”

“So was I!” Jungkook claims which prompts a chuckle from you.

You look at him for a while, unsure. You close your eyes, bobbing your head side to side, covering your face as you suddenly feel a sense of embarrassment at the thought of dancing in front of him.

“Promise you won’t laugh?” You say after Jungkook tries to remove your hands off your face.

He raises his right hand and fixes his sitting posture upright. “Promise.”

“If you show your teeth I’ll stop and so will this friendship.” You threaten as you bring your legs over the island to his direction.

Jungkook chuckles while saying a series of “Yeah”s, holding your hand to help you hop off the counter safely.

You take a few quick strides to place yourself in the space between your counter and dining area and look at Jungkook who settles himself comfortably in the kitchen island chair, watching you with relaxed position and crossed arms.

Feeling uncharacteristically shy, you stand upright, suddenly aware that you’re only wearing a pair of panty shorts and a fitted camisole. You don’t work out so you’re a bit conscious in front of Jungkook who looks really good in his natural form. You don’t even understand how he finds time to go to the gym or do his little work-out sesh during some nights or weekends, but you shake away the thought and smile at him coyly. He has the better body, sure, but you know well enough he’ll never judge you for yours… besides, it’s just Jungkook. He makes you feel safe and secure, no matter the context of the situation.

Off the top of your head, you do whatever it is you remember from your college routines and begin your yell.

“Wildcats, get up and shout! We’re the team that’s gonna take it out! Give it all you’ve got, let’s hear you roar!” You chuckle mid-way, forgetting a step. “Sorry,” you apologize quickly, but then continue right away, trapping your bottom lip with your teeth to prevent yourself from completely losing it. “We’re the Wildcats, and we’re here to score! Go Big Blue! Go Big Blue—" You make a mistake again and skip a beat with your finger snaps, and when you look at Jungkook, you can’t help but give in to the laughter that’s been bubbling up inside you. “I can’t do it!” You say, cutting your “performance” short.

“What? It was good!” Jungkook says, encouraging you to continue further.

You stifle a laugh as you go back to the top again but then your mind forgets the next step and you’re messing up the choreography again. At that point, you start mindlessly cheering; jumping around and flapping your arms to make it look like somewhat of a cheer but none of the coordination. You know it looks messy, so you run over to Jungkook shamefully, plopping on the chair beside him. Bringing your legs up to the seat and covering your face in your thighs, you can’t help but giggle in embarrassment.

“Woah,” Jungkook says, but you can say there’s a hint of laughter in his tone. You know it’s not out of mockery when he lifts your head up and boop your nose. “That was cute. Best cheer I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re pushing it.” You hiss, kicking his knee slightly.

Jungkook captures your leg, and you squeal when he pinches your thigh. You both laugh at that and you thought Jungkook’s gonna let go of your leg but he keeps it on his lap.

“My stomach hurts from laughing.” You tell him, taking a deep breath, trying to regulate your heart. Everything feels funny. Your cheer was funny. You must’ve looked so stupid.

Jungkook chuckles. “Wildcats, get up and shout—”

“Jungkook!” You cut him off, removing your leg from his lap to kick him again on the thigh this time. That only prompts him to laugh louder.

When the high of the moment fades, Jungkook looks over at you.

“Do you feel sleepy?”

You shake your head. “Not really. At least not yet.”

He hums, and then takes your box of fried rice to eat from it.

There’s the silence again, but it’s quiet and comfortable. No weird tension sitting in the air.

“Jungkook,” You call him after a while.

“Hm.”

You clear your throat. “I meant to talk to you,” Jungkook stops eating and looks at you to acknowledge you. “I’m sorry.”

He stares at you for a moment. Then, he chuckles, shaking his head. “You know what’s funny? I was gonna talk to you yesterday to say I’m sorry but then you didn’t talk to me at all in the OR. I thought you were still mad at me.”

With furrowed brows, you tell him, “I thought you were mad at me. You only said “scalpel” in the OR and then that was it. No hi’s or hello’s in the hallways for the past three days.”

“Me? Mad at you?” He says, as if he can’t believe you would even think that. “I mean, you piss me off sometimes, but I don’t think I was ever mad at you.” You pout. Jungkook smiles. “I can never be mad at you,” His look is gentle and warm that you feel a little flustered for a reason unknown. It just ticks a little something in your brain, tugging something at your heart. Then, Jungkook sighs. “I’m sorry, too. For the way I went about it. The “bringing boys here” comment was out of line.”

There’s a wince on your face when you hear that.

That comment did hurt a little.

But you know it was just a heat-in-the-moment type of thing, and he just wasn’t able to think through his words well enough when he was… well, pissed – and rightfully so. Because you did something offensive to him, and you can’t blame him for feeling the way he felt.

You nod at Jungkook. “Thank you for saying that. I’m saying sorry because I realized what you said. I should’ve informed you I was bringing Mingyu home, and I should’ve told him about you being my roommate. We really could’ve avoided that situation.”

“You can just tell me beforehand if you’re bringing him to our place.” Jungkook shrugs.

You chuckle. “No. That won’t happen again.” And it’s true. It’s awkward and it’s rude when you have a roommate.

Jungkook looks at you. “Okay. I won’t do it as well,” You shake your head, playfully rolling your eyes at him. “I’m guessing you settled it pretty quickly with him?” He gestures at your neck and you realize he’s referring to the necklace you’re wearing – the one Mingyu gave you the very same day you fought.

You want to point out it’s not really new, but you settle with, “Yeah. Fortunately.” as a response.

“I really am sorry for what happened.” Jungkook says and you can feel the sincerity in his voice.

“It’s fine,” Touching his arm, you give him a small smile. “Have you and Mingyu talked?”

Jungkook shakes his head. Nibbling on your bottom lip, you think about how that’s… not good. They were friends before you and have just met each other again after so many years – you do not want to be that kind of person who gets in the way of some other people’s relationship.

And you really can’t have Jungkook not liking your boyfriend or your boyfriend not liking Jungkook, either.

But as much as you want to suggest that they talk it out, you know you can’t. Besides, you trust that they eventually will. They’re grown men.

“So…” you trail off. “Are we okay?”

Jungkook’s lips tilt upwards. “Are we okay?”

“Come on,” you roll your eyes. “Do we hug it out or like – I don’t know – handshake on it?”

“Let’s hug it out like we’re twelve.” Jungkook grins and in a moment, he scoots closer to you and wraps his arms around your waist, resting his head on your chest.

The angle is a bit awkward with Jungkook crouching too much you don’t doubt his position is anything but comfortable, but it works, and it gives you the opportunity to pat his head as you say, “I missed hanging out with you, buddy.”

“Can’t say the same thing.”

That earns him a slight pinch to the ear easily accessible to you.

“Ow!” Jungkook says and then add, “I hate to ruin the moment but… you’re not wearing a bra.”

You quickly grab both sides of his head to get him off your chest. He comes back sitting upright on his chair, laughing.

“Fuck off—” you flip him off and then look over your box of fried rice, but then you remember he was also eating it earlier. “You ate all of it!”

“Finders keepers.”

“I hate you.”

“Hm.”

You shake your head, standing up and starting to grab all the boxes to take them to the trash bin.

“By the way, I just got my approval from HR for our trip the next two weeks. Have you?” You ask him across the room. You can see Jungkook’s face light up at the mention.

“Yeah, of course. Got approved yesterday.” Jungkook grins. You watch as he stares at you a bit longer, his face showing a hint of confusion.

You arch a brow. “Why does your face look like that?” Jungkook shakes his head, obviously ready to dismiss it. But you’re persistent. “What is it?” You say, walking towards his direction and stopping in front of him.

“Nothing…” he trails off. Then he rubs the back of his head. “I just really thought that you…” You squint your eyes at him. Then he chuckles lightly and swipes his fingers through his hair. “I just thought the trip would be cancelled.”

Your eyebrows furrow. Frowning, you nudge at him. “What? Of course, not! We planned that trip like six months ago. I’m not backing out.”

Jungkook gives you a shy smile.

“Okay.”

You can’t help it. You bring your hands to his cheeks and pinch them.

“He’s so excited for his birthday trip!” You say, intentionally talking like you would to a toddler.

Jungkook predictably forces your hands out of his skin and holds your wrist a bit tight as he rolls his eyes at you.

“Knock it off.” He glares at you. But you’re not done with your fun, so you poke your finger to his waist, knowing that’s his weak spot, and tease him some more. “Seriously.” Jungkook huffs out and your laughter becomes louder because he looks like a grumpy child right now.

“Sorry.” you say, still giggling. He furrows his brows, and you can’t help it, you poke at his waist again. When you do it, though, Jungkook captures your wrist, effectively stopping another one of your juvenile assaults. Suddenly, you start noting the mirth in his eyes.

You’ve seen that look before and it always ends up with you almost dying from too much laughter because he always—

“You’re gonna regret that.”

You let out a squeal as Jungkook takes ahold of your waist, and before you can even voice out a protest, he easily hoists you up against his body, bouncing you up until you're hanging around his shoulder like a sack bag.

“What the hell, put me down, you prick!” You complain, slapping the rugged muscles on his back. But Jungkook just responds with a series of clicks of his tongue, carrying you across the living room.

You know he’s about to put you on the couch to tickle you to death, so you do what you could and bite down on the skin of his back.

“Ouch!” Jungkook immediately reacts, stumbling a little in his stride. You snort at that, but you immediately frown when you feel a slap to your ass.

“You asshole!”

“You just lowered your chances of being spared,” Was his last words before you feel yourself getting put down on the surface of the sofa. Soon after, Jungkook’s poking his fingers to your waist and stomach, prompting you to erupt in fits of giggles and laughter, thrashing beneath him like a caged animal.

“Pl—stop—oh my god!” You say, weakly reaching for his arms. When Jungkook doesn’t relent, you continue wriggling under him, laughing and choking, saying a variety of, “Stop! I’m —” giggle, “gonna—” then another snort, “—die!”

Jungkook chuckles. He torments you some more before finally stopping his fingers in their ministrations.

“You deserve that.” Jungkook says when you both came down from the high, laughing at the messy state of your hair and the way you try to catch your breath like you just ran a triathlon.

You breathe in and out deeply, clutching your stomach that still hurts from laughing.

“Fuck you.” You hiss, giving him the finger.

Jungkook bursts into laughter, and from his position in between your legs, he lets himself fall on top of you.

“Jungkook, no!” Pushing him off you, you try to get away from him but the goof just forces himself beside you instead, sticking his much bigger build in between you and the back of the couch. It makes you scoot near the edge as a result, and you hold onto his arm so that you don’t fall off, tangling your leg against his own for added support. Pinching his waist in which he lets out an ingenuine “Owe!” to, you face him as you say, “You are so annoying.”

Jungkook just gives you a shit-eating grin. “Who started it?”

“You almost killed me.” You say dryly.

“Don’t be dramatic.” He rolls his eyes.

Suddenly, you realize the position you are both in.

Your bare legs are intermingled against each other, Jungkook has one arm wrapped around your waist, and from the lack of clothes on both sides, you can feel pretty much everything.

There’s a weird feeling in the pit of your stomach upon the epiphany.

Jungkook’s looking at you with a playful grin, but as he notices you staring at him, he stills. From such close proximity, you can almost trace out the lines of his features. The scar on his cheek, the mole under his lip, and the pimple scar that was probably from a week ago. At that thought, you think about: if you can see him so close like this, he can also probably see you, and that’s when you break away from the contact.

“Shit.” You hiss as you let yourself fall off the floor by rolling around, away from his hold and touch and him in general.

Jungkook immediately scoots to the edge of the sofa to look down at you with confused eyes. “The hell?”

“Don’t worry,” you wave your hand at him.

He snorts. “Did you just fall?”

You roll your eyes. Of course, he’d think that. But you let him, standing up from the floor.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”

You hear Jungkook’s boisterous laughter as you walk towards the kitchen again, stopping in front of the fridge to get some water.

“You’re going to bed now?” Asks Jungkook, following you to the fridge and mirroring your activity.

Nodding at his question, you peer from the rim of the glass as you answer, “Yeah, I don’t want to be sleeping at the hospital later.”

“Fair.”

Soon after, you both decided to clean up a bit in the kitchen and when you finished, you two headed towards the direction of your bedrooms. It’s located just near the kitchen, with the doors located beside each other.

When you turn the knob open to your own door, Jungkook calls you, catching your attention.

You arch a brow at him, waiting.

“Good night,” Jungkook says. You drop your kitted brows and smile. You’re about to greet him the same but then he adds, “Also– that was a really great cheer.”

“Ugh, Jungkook!”

You look across the bed to see Mingyu still on his laptop on his worktable, working on something. An hour and thirty minutes have passed since you arrived at his place, but you’re still not getting the least bit of attention from him.

You get it, it’s work, but he asked you to come over… isn’t it only fair to expect a little bit of something?

Getting up from the bed, you trudge over to his direction.

“Hi,” you say, ducking down to wrap your arms around his neck from the back of his swivel chair and kissing the spot below his ear.

“Hi,” Mingyu meets the kiss you give him on the lips. He reaches for your hands resting on top of chest and holds it there, looking at you. You delight at the hint of attention. “I’ll just be in a few minutes. You’re staying, right?”

You grin. “Of course.”

“Good.”

Rolling your eyes, you take your hands off him and stand upright once again. Mingyu rotates his chair so he can look at you with his undivided attention, voicing out a low whistle when he takes in your outfit – or lack of it thereof.

You arch a brow, knowing well he’s ogling you only in your bra and panties, squinting your eyes at him. Slowly, you glide your leg over his waist and plop yourself down on his lap, waiting for any protest from him. It doesn’t come, and so you give him a grin before planting your lips against his.

The kiss turns heated in a matter of seconds, with Mingyu squeezing over your bra and taking in your soft moans against his mouth, feeling the delicious roll of your hips against his crotch where you feel a semi growing already.  

“Sweetheart,” Mingyu grunts. When you don’t answer that, he cups your jaw, making you look at him. “__.”

“What?” You say, more like a whine, looking at him with hooded eyes. You’re starting to feel sticky in your underwear and you need him to do something about it.

“Not now, sweetheart. I told you, I’m working.”

You frown. There’s a beat of silence before you let out a sigh. “Okay.” You say, getting off his lap.

“I’ll take care of you when I’m done.” He promises, taking ahold of your wrist, looking up at you.

Pursing your lips, you look away. “It’s fine.” When Mingyu lets go, you look at the direction of the bathroom. “I’m gonna take a shower,” you tell him. “You’re free to join me if you want or whatever.”

You know he can’t and that he won’t.

“Alright.” Was the last thing you heard before you walked towards the bathroom door.

You’ve been over at his place too many times to count now, and you’re slowly building your shower essentials in his own bathroom. Your body wash, your face cream, your shampoo, your conditioner – even your moisturizer and your eye mask are already placed inside his bathroom cabinet.

As you step out of the shower box, all clean and fresh, you go over to the lavatory to brush your teeth. At the sight of both your cups sitting beside each other, you smile.

You look in the mirror – noting the way your lips can’t stop from curling up at the thoughts running inside your head.

Shaking them off, you grab Mingyu’s robe and put it over yourself, turning the knob around to step out of the bathroom.

You see Mingyu on his bed this time around, but his laptop’s still perched on his lap.

He looks up when he sees you. “Ready to sleep?”

You nod, feeling at home the way you automatically go towards his closet to pick out a shirt and some panties you left over the time.

As you’re in the process of dressing yourself, a phone’s ding rings in the room.

Looking at Mingyu, you watch as he checks his phone, assuming it came from him. When he puts it down, he looks at your plugged phone on the bedside table.

“What is it?” You ask, now properly dressed, walking to the bed.

You note the way Mingyu’s gaze changes as he hands you your phone.

“It’s Jungkook.” He says with a weirdly clipped tone. Then another ding comes. A beat, and then your phone rings.

Your brow shoots up, taking the device from him and checking it yourself.

Jungkook’s face is plastered over your screen – a picture of him wasted in his room two years ago, taken from your Thailand trip with the rest of your friends. He’s sleeping with his mouth open, shirtless in the middle of the hut, only covered up with his trunks. You remember setting it as his contact photo because it was funny back then. Jungkook hates the photo, and your friends always made fun of him for it.

Right now, though, it doesn’t feel the least bit funny. Not when Mingyu’s certainly saw it. Not when he looks a little put off as soon as he sees a glimpse of it when he was passing your phone to you.

“I’ll just answer this.” You say, standing from the bed again.

You don’t expect Mingyu to suddenly shoot you a question, “You can’t answer here?”

Brows knitting together, you give him an uncertain look. “It’s just Jungkook.”

“Yeah… so, why not here?”

You relent, seeing the point he’s trying to make. Plopping yourself on the bed again, you answer Jungkook’s call and put the phone over your ear.

“Jungkook,”

“__,” he sighs out your name, sounding relieved. “Thank fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” You ask, growing a bit concerned at his tone.

You can hear some shuffling from the other line as Jungkook tells you, “Did you see me with my pager in the locker room earlier?”

“Oh, uh… let me think…” you trail off, trying to remember the events earlier. As you do that, you notice Mingyu’s fingers trailing his hands to your bare legs, but you ignore it as you answer Jungkook, “I think I didn’t, yeah. I didn’t.” Jungkook hisses. “Did you check your car?” you ask, trying to help out.

“Already did. It’s not in there, either. I really think I accidentally threw it out in the bin along with some trash in my pockets.” He says, sounding a little distressed now.

“Well… you can always just go to the operator, you know? Get a new pager?” you offer. There’s a drop of kiss on your shoulder that makes you shudder, and you look at Mingyu with furrowed brows. He doesn’t say anything, though, just let his fingers trail upwards, his hand sliding under your shirt, gripping your thigh. Your boyfriend just gives you a sly smile, and you squint your eyes at him, confused at what he’s playing at. 

“I know. But, ugh, you know I lost two pagers already this year. Sungkyun hates me at this point—”

Jungkook’s answer suddenly drowns out when Mingyu grazes his thumb on your clothed clit.

“Oh.”

“—what?” Jungkook halts, asking about your abrupt reaction.

You bite your lip in an effort to shut yourself up, and when Mingyu’s hand makes another move again, your free hand shoots up to stop him.

“Hold on a second, Jungkook,” you say, quickly pressing mute.

Mingyu looks at you with a smirk, playful smile painting his face. “You know you can continue, right?”

At that, your brows furrow even further.

“What are you doing?” You didn’t mean to sound curt but with the way Mingyu’s expression changes, it may have sounded that way.

You… couldn’t help it.

“I wanted to touch you,” Mingyu tells you after a beat of awkward silence. Then, his hand retreats to himself. “Do you not want to?”

There’s guilt that springs up inside you when you see the look on his face as he says those words.

“No, I’m sorry— it’s just… I want to. I just… not with somebody on the phone?” You put it out like a question, unsure of yourself.

The room is quiet for awhile and suddenly there’s a thick tension that hangs in the air.

You reach out for Mingyu but then drop your hand to your sides when he moves to sit on the edge of the bed.

He turns his head to you with an unreadable expression on his face. “Is it because it’s Jungkook?”

You frown at his tone.

It sounded accusatory.

“Excuse me?” You say, taking immediate offense. When Mingyu shrugs, you feel a bit of annoyance bubble up inside you. “I would’ve still stopped you if it was anybody else on the phone, Mingyu.” you say, tone firm and leveled.

“I’m sorry, then.”

But he definitely doesn’t sound like it. His sarcasm makes you snap. “What’s up with you?”

Mingyu opens his mouth to say something but then he closes it again. You watch him with confused eyes, completely at loss of context where he’s at. The night was going fine as usual and suddenly, there’s this.

After a few seconds, Mingyu sighs. “What are you even talking about right now?” He glances at your phone.

“It’s—” you take a glance at it too. “It’s just his pager.”

“Pager?”

“Yes.”

“He asks you about his pager in the middle of the night, knowing full well you’re with me?”

“I—” you stop yourself, words suddenly getting lost in your tongue. Not because you don’t know the answer to his question, but because you hate the way he phrased it – and honestly, you’re starting to feel icky about how he’s going with it. What was he trying to do? Pin you down with accusatory notions?

You don’t fucking get it. Jungkook’s his friend. It’s so bizarre to even think about how Mingyu is seemingly acting jealous over his supposed friend.

“You know what?” You say instead, not wanting to discuss it further with him anymore. It’s just gonna lead to an unnecessary fight – and frankly, you don’t want to deal with his jealousy. It seems so… futile. “Can we just sleep this whole thing off?”

Mingyu looks at you and for the first time, his eyes don’t look gentle. He looks at you with a bit of a frown, and you get it. You do. You’re not exactly happy, either. Not right now, with the way he’s acting.

“Do you want me to go?” You ask, ready to step out of bed.

“I didn’t tell you to.” Mingyu says, voice equally strained.

You sigh. “What do you want me to do, Mingyu? Are you jealous, is that it?” You meant it to be completely rhetorical, not at all expecting him to say anything.

But he answers instantly. “What if I say I am?”

Your lips part. You’re surprised at the confirmation, but you shake your thoughts off it.

“Then it’s completely unnecessary,” you tell him, as genuine as you can sound. When Mingyu doesn’t move in his position on the edge of the bed, you crawl towards him. Testing the waters, you touch his arm to see if he would avoid your touch, but when you do rest your hand on his shoulder, he doesn’t stray. “I like you, Gyu.”

Cocking your head to the side, you watch as his face still sports a cold expression. But he says, “I like you too, you know that,”

“But…?” you try to get out the words from him, because you knew there’s more.

“I don’t want you to think I’m being irrational about this whole thing,” he starts, and you nod your head, trying to show him that you get it. Mingyu licks his lips before he continues, “I just… I guess I just want you to put boundaries around your friendship with Jeon.”

That makes you stop. Nevermind the strange way he called Jungkook by his surname.

“How do you mean by that?” You ask with furrowed brows.

“You’re just really close with him. And you live in one apartment together.” He points out.

“Mingyu…” you say, suddenly feeling tired all over again. “I thought we already talked about that.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m a hundred percent comfortable with it, you know?”

It feels like you got electrocuted by his words the way you quickly retreat your hands. “That’s…” you trail off, not really knowing what to say.

Thankfully, though, Mingyu interjects before you can slip into a dilemma.

“I know, I know about why you’re living with him and all that stuff. We talked about it. It’s just…” he reaches for your hand. Entangling your fingers together, Mingyu brings your knuckles to his lips and presses a kiss there. “I want you all the time. And I guess I really am just jealous – even though it’s juvenile. I’m jealous that he’s known you far longer than me.”

“But— I’m here thrice a week. I make time for the both of us. And it doesn’t really matter how long you’ve known me for, Gyu,” you respond truthfully.

He nods.

“I’m sorry.”

You shake your head. “No, I’m sorry. I guess I just— I got in way over my head that I also forgot to take your feelings into account,”

Mingyu smiles, and there goes his soft gentle expression again.

“I know. It’s fine. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s me who’s being unreasonable.”

“No, it’s not unreasonable,” you tell him. “I get it. Boundaries, Mingyu. I know what you’re talking about.”

Mingyu scooches closer and presses a sweet kiss to your lips. You gladly bask in it, smiling against his lips, keeping your gentle gaze towards him as he breaks away.

“I’m sorry for being a bummer.”

You kiss him again and the way he inserts his tongue in your mouth distracts you a bit but you manage to break the contact. Soon, he’s lying down beside you and when you check your phone, your call with Jungkook has already ended, but there are two messages from him on your notifications.

[12:35am] jaykay🤠: are you still alive [12:38am] jaykay🤠: ok nevermind i’ll hang the call i actually found my pager just now 😭 [12:38am] jaykay🤠: it was in the kitchen counter LOL [12:45am] jaykay🤠: ok bye. night

You were going to reply but decide against it for some reason.

Putting your phone down to the bedside table, you follow Mingyu under the sheets and as usual, you face against his direction just like he does.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t really like cuddling that much. He’d share his space to a certain extent, just like how you got into his bed in the first place, but not the lengths of cuddling together in bed. Mingyu didn’t tell you why – and you don’t want to come off as clingy, so you don’t bother asking.

It’s strange, though. Now that he told you a while ago that he, apparently, “wants you all the time”. Shouldn’t he like to cuddle you in bed, then? But you don’t want to dwell in it too much, afraid that you may be digging yourself a hole if you were to keep it up.

As you lay your cheek on your folded hands, you play back the events of the night and think about how you’ve seen this film before.

When you were in med school, Eunwoo always had something to say about your friendship with Jungkook. He wasn’t direct with it, but with the way he never bothered to make friends with Jungkook or always had a grimace on his face when you mentioned him in passing, it was enough for you to conclude that Eunwoo was always… wary of Jungkook – and definitely in a jealous type of way.

He said almost the exact same thing as Mingyu – that boundaries should be built; that Jungkook and you are too close, why is he calling you in the middle of the night to ask about mundane things, why does he know too much about your mother’s preferences, and why is he buddy-buddy with your dad who otherwise always had an uninterested expression on his face?

It wasn’t even just Mingyu. Your past flings for the past four years you’ve been single always got put off when they heard that you’re rooming with a guy – even more so when you mention that he’s your bestfriend.

You’re not stupid to not see how it looks like from the outside perspective – and you’re not dense to not ever consider the possibility of something romantic brewing within the friendship. You have thought about it before – had an instant crush on him the first time you met at the law library back in post grad school. But it was fleeting at best, especially when Eunwoo came into your life a few weeks later.

Nayeon, Doyeon, and Taehyung have also hinted at it. Sometimes – most of the time, really, teasing you two, especially Taehyung. Even the most mature one among your friends – Yoongi – once told you both to get married at forty. He was joking, though he looked way too serious for someone who was just supposed to be joking.

And there was that one dreadful time in third year of med school when Jungkook almost kissed you.

You buried that memory in the very depths of your mind – not ever wanting to revisit it again. It was a bad time, and it was just not a good thing to look back at. Jungkook acted irresponsible, and you stupidly let yourself be complicit in it, even though you knew better.

Nothing even happened – but that memory was just that. A mere memory. You doubt Jungkook even remembers that himself.

Here’s the thing: you’ve just never seen Jungkook past the person you consider as a friend. You’ve never been weird about the women he dated – or if he dated, at all. He’s also always been supportive of your relationships… as far as you’re concerned. Regardless of what everybody says, you both seem to agree that you’re just better off as friends. You work better that way.

Jungkook’s a good guy, though. He does have tons of flings – but he’s just conventionally attractive and works hard for a body that is to die for. Women like that. Additionally, he has a stable job and even though he annoys you about splitting the delivery fee when you do take-out, he’s actually quite rich – or, his family is – he’d always insist.

You get it though. As a co-resident, you both don’t really make that much (for the work that you do) – at least not yet.

But he was indeed born in generational wealth, coming from a family of doctors, which is why it’s quite impressive that he knows how to handle his life by his own hard work. His intelligence and perseverance are some of the things you admire about him, his drive to make a name for himself and never leeching off his family’s name. Jungkook doesn’t ever brag about how his neurosurgeon dad is one of the best in the country and how his mom is a legend in cardiac surgery – even though sometimes, he could use it a little. He’s playful yet charming; quiet when you’re just knowing him, but he’ll eventually talk a lot when you get close.

As a friend, he’s quite the best you’ve ever had.

And even though you don’t really see him past that, you know in your heart that whoever ends up with him romantically will be a very lucky person.

“You’re a pussy.”

“Doyeon.”

Doyeon huffs, rolling her eyes so hard at Taehyung’s reprimand and then goes back to glaring at Jungkook again who just looks at her with a pathetic expression.

“What? I’m right. He’s a pussy and you’re an even bigger pussy for defending him being a pussy.” She says, furrowing her eyebrows angrily.

“Why are we talking about pussies?”

Nayeon suddenly enters the on-call room and Jungkook nearly has a heart attack.

“What the hell, you should at least knock. Jesus.” Jungkook says, clutching his chest, looking at Nayeon with an almost offended expression who closes the door behind her.

“Were you scared it was __? See!” Doyeon sighs out in frustration. “Such a fucking pussy.”

“Such a fucking pussy,” Jungkook mocks, using a higher pitch to imitate Doyeon poorly.

“And a child too.” She rolls her eyes and throws him a pillow. It misses Jungkook and hits Taehyung instead.

“Seriously, what are you so mad about today? You have that mood. Did you and your secret boyfriend fight?” Taehyung spits out.

Everybody stills in the room when Doyeon gives him a sharp glare. That pretty much makes everyone shut up, especially Taehyung who makes a show of physically zipping his mouth.

Nayeon fakes a cough and trudges towards Jungkook sitting on one of the beds. She throws her heavy hands on his shoulders, more like slaps, and then looks at Doyeon as she asks, “What are we calling this man a pussy for?”

“Oh, ask him. Or his dumber best friend.” Doyeon rolls his eyes and looks at Taehyung, crossing her arms and leaning her back on the chair she’s sitting on from across the room.

“You’re starting to hurt my feelings and I hate you.” Taehyung says from the other bed.

“Why?” Nayeon ignores their banter and furrows her brows at Jungkook curiously.

Jungkook hisses under his breath. “It’s nothing. She calls me a pussy for literally everything.”

Doyeon butts in. “Yeah, are you gonna cry?”

“If __ was here, she’s gonna be on my side, you know that?” Jungkook rebuts.

“If __ was here, you’d be panicking because she’ll know about your little secret.”

“Oof.” Taehyung comments.

“Oh, Jungkookie…” Nayeon looks down at him with worried eyes. When he looks up with a sad look, she starts rubbing his shoulders as some sort of comfort, already knowing about what this might be about. “This is about… the thing?”

He nods weakly. “Yes. And no. Uh, well, this is… you know about the birthday trip in the next five days, right? So, she asked me if she could bring, uh, Mingyu along.”

“Oh.” Nayeon utters, looking at Doyeon for confirmation.

Doyeon nods, and then nags, “Ask him what he said.”

Nayeon looks at him. “What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

“Oh.”

Jungkook looks down in slight shame at Nayeon’s reaction. She completely stops her hands’ ministrations on his shoulder, indicating that even she could not believe what he just did.

This makes Jungkook even feel worse.

Leaning his elbow on his thighs, he runs his fingers through his hair as he says, “I mean, how could I have said no? I would’ve looked like an asshole. Besides, Mingyu and I are college friends. There’s no reason for me to prohibit him from this trip. Like, at all.”

“Yeah, you and Mingyu are college friends but, ultimately, it’s our trip, right? __ would’ve understood if you said no.” Doyeon says, still not over her justification from a while ago.

“I know, I know. But still… I didn’t want to say no to her.” Jungkook tells Doyeon, not having a lot to say more than that.

It’s the plain truth, anyway. He truly, simply does not want to say no to you. Not ever.

“But Jungkook…” Nayeon interrupts. “Would it be okay for you? We know how you feel about the whole – er – Mingyu thing. Can you really take them being close together? Especially on a trip for your birthday?”

Though Nayeon’s voice is soft and her gaze gentle, her words hit him like a ton of bricks.

Truthfully, he doesn’t know what to feel about the whole thing. You dating Mingyu is one thing, but you bringing him along on your trips is another. It means that he’s it.

That you’re getting serious.

He hates himself for hating the idea. Jungkook’s always wanted to be nothing but supportive of you. He’d done it perfectly well with Eunwoo before, and your flings in the past four years have never upgraded past to being solely flings so he never worried about them, but now with Mingyu… it’s hard to pretend like it’s not killing him when you talk about how much you like him.

You have that lovestruck look on your face when Mingyu comes up in a conversation. For the first time in a while, you look genuinely happy. Jungkook always thought that your feelings for Eunwoo still lingered over the past few years – and how could it not, when you were literally engaged to him for a year? You told him one time that he may have been your greatest love… and he fears that it might be the same with Mingyu.

Where does that exactly leave him?

“What I think doesn’t really matter. And it’s just for week.” he murmurs, but the others hear it anyway.

“An excruciating week, you mean.” Doyeon says. She stands up from her chair. “You know what, I’m over this whole thing. I’ve witnessed you pine over her for whole eight years – and I’m just – I’m moving on from this. And I have a surgery. I’m going out.”

Jungkook grimaces when Doyeon heads towards the door.

“Doyeon, don’t be mean to Jungkook. He’s trying his best, you know? The timing is just not right and—”

“What timing?”

As soon as Doyeon twisted the doorknob, pulling the door open to completely head out, you came barging in, cutting off Nayeon’s words.

Her eyes widen a little at your sudden arrival. And Jungkook scrambles to think of an effort to swerve the subject, but Taehyung beats him to it.

“__, heyyy,” he prolongs the word quite unnaturally, chuckling at the end of it for no reason. Jungkook internally notes to tell him later never dare try to save anything ever again.

That makes you furrow your brows in confusion. Directing your look to Doyeon who stopped on her tracks, you ask her instead, “What’s going on? What about Jungkook trying his best?”

Doyeon looks at Jungkook and then you. You wait, but then she just rolls her eyes – just completely done about the whole thing. Like she said earlier.

“He’s trying his best not to be a pussy – well, allegedly.” At that, she goes out of the room, ignoring your calls to pull her back in.

“Uh… I think I have a surgery in twenty. See you guys around. Gotta scrub in.” Taehyung jumps from the other bed and Jungkook makes sure to extend his leg forward so that the older guy trips on it as he walks. “What the fuck, man.” Taehyung looks at him, offense written all over his face.

Jungkook gives him a glare. Taehyung chooses to ignore it rather than prolong it and walks past you at the door.

“Bye, fuckers.”

“Don’t call me a fucker!” Nayeon chimes in but Taehyung’s already out of the room.

“Hey, seriously! What was that?” You head towards the bed where Jungkook and Nayeon are, situating yourself on the far end of the bed to lean on the frame. You take off your sneakers in one swift move and lay your feet on Jungkook’s lap.

“It’s nothing. You know how Doyeon always bullies me…” Jungkook says, ignoring the tingling sensation that starts to creep up his spine at the way you casually initiate physical contact.

He needs to get a grip. You most probably don’t really mean anything by it.

“She does not bully you.” Nayeon rolls her eyes beside him.

“You probably deserve it.” you say, pulling out and eating some strawberry yogurt.

Nayeon laughs at your remark, but then it’s cut short when a pager suddenly beeps. Instantly, all of you take out your own and check if it was yours.

“Alright, that’s my call.”

“Bye. Good luck.” You say, offering your cup to Nayeon, but she only shakes her head. Meanwhile, Jungkook gives her a pair of thumbs up.

When Nayeon leaves the room, you nudge Jungkook with your foot.

“Hey,”

Jungkook looks at you with a brow raised.

“Can you rub my foot? Please rub my foot.” You say, making the best rendition of puppy face, extending your sock-cladded foot in his direction.

He scoffs. “Do you think I’m a pushover?”

You gasp dramatically. “I do not! I think you’re a cool person who’d totally give me foot rubs.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not a cool person who would give you foot rubs.”

You groan. “I gave you a massage weeks ago.”

“That was, like, two months ago.” Jungkook says drily.

“It counts because you didn’t do anything to repay me for my kindness.”

“Oh, you need your kindness paid back?” Jungkook teases, wiggling his eyebrows at you.

You pout at him and then whine. “Please, just three minutes, I swear. I’ll even put up a timer.”

Indeed, Jungkook is a pushover. Pushover to your cute pout and every request. Again, he could just not find it in himself to say no to you. Not even in his wildest dreams.

But it’s never not fun to tease you before he relents. “Fine. Two minutes.” He says, pretending to begrudge the thought of giving you a foot massage, even though inside, he’s quite thrilled to be doing so.

It would be a lie to say that it isn’t one of his favorite past times in the quiet evenings of your apartment. Jungkook loves the weight of your leg on his lap, loves the way you thank him in between groans, and loves that he just gets to be close to you in almost such an intimate way.

“Your feet stink.” Jungkook decides to tease, scrunching his nose, feigning disgust.

“Don’t lie. Also, your feet stink even more, don’t try me.”

“My feet do not stink.”

“Let’s just agree to disagree,” You grin. “I’m starting a timer.” You say, grabbing your phone, pressing some stuff on it before you put it on the mattress.

“Let me see, for all I know, you set it to five instead of three.”

You look at him with widen eyes, stiffening.

“It’s three minutes.”

“Your nostrils are flaring, you’re lying.”

You groan. “Please. Dinner is on me later.”

That obviously catches Jungkook’s attention.

“You’re staying at home for the night?”

You look at him weird. “Yeah, of course. What’s with that face?”

Jungkook shakes his head, hides a small smile as he looks down to your feet on his lap and takes a hold of one. He takes off your sock for you and begins massaging the tendons of your foot, noting the way you immediately lean back and relax.

“Nothing. I just thought you’d be staying at Mingyu’s again.”

“Ah,” you nod your head. When Mingyu's name is mentioned, you visibly frown. It’s the kind of face that you make when you’re deep in thought. “I was supposed to. But I don’t know… we fought this morning.”

Jungkook raises a brow. “You wanna talk about it?”

You shrug. “Not really. It’s a weird argument. I don’t know.”

He wants so badly to poke around and find out… but somehow, there’s something in him that tells him not to bother.

Anyway, you’re going home tonight so that’s all that matters. Jungkook begins to think about what to eat for dinner… he’d love to cook something, nevermind that he’s tired from his overnight shift yesterday. He also only got around four total hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, and that was not even consecutive hours – just the sum. That is why he was in the on-call rooms, until Taehyung suddenly barged in, followed by Doyeon, Nayeon, and then you.

“Oh– there, that’s so good, Jungkook,” you say after a particularly hard press against the ball of your heel.

Jungkook knows better than to let his mind wander upon hearing that from you. He’s massaging you, of course that was gonna be the natural reaction.

It’s also quite pathetic to be even thinking about it in the first place – considering that your mind might most likely be weighed by yours and Mingyu’s argument – your boyfriend.

“Hey, about what I said a few days ago,” you started to speak again, breaking the momentary silence. Jungkook hums to acknowledge you. “I know you said yes to me bringing Mingyu along, but, uh, I’m not sure if he still plans to.”

“Ah,” Jungkook nods. Was the argument that bad? “Okay.”

“Yeah. He has to fly over to Arizona for something that week. Told me he may be able to arrive and join us on the second day, which is the exact date of your birthday, but honestly, I’m not sure. His sched changes a lot.”

Deep down, Jungkook wishes Mingyu just opts out of joining in altogether.

But he doesn’t have to tell you that.

“That’s a shame.” he comments, not really meaning it. He massages your other foot with ginger hands, which has you letting out soft sighs again. Jungkook buries them in the back of his head, lest his mind goes to territories that are absolutely humiliating.

“I know…” you trail off. You look like you have more to say as well, but then the door to the room opens. Again.

“Forgot my pager.” Doyeon announces, crossing the room with quick steps to reach for the forgotten thing she left on the table.

When Doyeon’s gaze falls back to the both of you, she raises a brow, and then her eyes direct their way towards Jungkook’s hands on your foot.

You’re about to say something when Doyeon rolls his eyes at Jungkook. Then, without giving you the opportunity to speak, she heads out of the room quickly, leaving Jungkook to look in another direction in quiet shame.

“What was that?” You comment, confused at what just happened.

“Eh, she’s in a sour mood today. It’s regular Doyeon.” Shrugs Jungkook, trying to swerve the subject.

You pout. “Are you two fighting again for real?”

Jungkook chuckles. “No, it’s not serious. You know how Doyeon and I get.”

You squint your eyes, but say nothing nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Jungkook hisses internally.

Jungkook gets Doyeon. You all have been friends since freshman year of med school – the founder of your study group – and she was also the first one to find out about Jungkook’s little crush. He didn’t even have to say it explicitly, she just knew. Eventually, Jungkook told Taehyung. He has quite a big mouth, unfortunately, so when you started your internship at the hospital – he lets it slip in a conversation with Nayeon who was just becoming your friend that time – leading the situation to where it is right now.

Out of all of them, though, Doyeon got it pretty hard. She’s witnessed the early stages of Jungkook’s infatuation towards you in the first semester of med school, had to keep quiet during study sessions. She was even supportive that time, telling Jungkook to just go for it – but then Eunwoo happened, and the confession never saw the light of day.

When they broke up, Doyeon became hopeful again, just as Jungkook was. But you were showing no signs of moving on and Jungkook had no choice but to step back for a bit.

The past two years, though, Doyeon became more insistent, telling him you’re single and it’s the fattest chance Jungkook can ever get.

But she’s right, after all. Jungkook’s a pussy. He hides his feelings well – a pro at the sport, really, at this point.

When Mingyu happened a few months ago, Doyeon’s just over it. She told Jungkook one time in a drinking session that the ship has sunk and he’s going to be in his sixties regretting not ever confessing to you. Sometimes, he wakes up at night in sweat from a nightmare that involved Doyeon murdering him because of his emotional constipation.

Jungkook knows she just wants the best for him – even though she’s more on showing him tough love instead of a gentle one. Doyeon’s always been like that, but she’s a good friend. When things went haywire, she was there to genuinely sympathize with him and console him – together with Taehyung and some of his other friends.

But in Jungkook’s defense, Doyeon just also doesn’t get it.

It’s so easy to just say fuck it and make a confession already, so easy to think about how things could turn positively – but she’s not – they’re not – in Jungkook’s shoes. They will never be.

So many things could go wrong if he ever were to listen to his heart. Sure, he’s had the chance over the past four years – most would say that. But it’s not a chance when you’ve spent half of it moving on from Eunwoo. It’s not a chance when you spent the other half trying to go on dates and fail – each one making you more miserable about your love life, as you told him so many nights ago in those rare special moments in the balcony of your apartment.

Those four years you were single was never a chance – not when you never showed any bit of interest.

It’s the reality that his friends always somehow miss when encouraging him to confess his feelings.

You’re friends for almost a decade now – eight years to be exact – but not once did you ever hint at wanting to be in a relationship with him. Your reaction to that always involved a disgusted expression and a variation of “No way!”. Might be a joke just to tease him – but also might be rooted in something genuine deep down.

Jungkook likes to think that physically, he doesn’t look so bad. He’s nice when he wants to be, especially towards people he cares about. He’s a resident surgeon who makes enough. Could be funny, charming… whatever.

Most of all, he likes to think he could deserve you one of these days. That he could be the man that you’re searching for.

But it’s been eight years and you’ve never once looked at him like how he surely does at you.

God knows how many times Jungkook has tried to move on – how many sleepless nights he has trying to erase the feeling of so much longing for you. Sometimes, it works, when he’s on his casual dates and hook-up with all those women that thankfully fancied him enough. He momentarily forgets about your laugh and your hair and the crinkles on the sides of your eyes when you smile and your soft hands and your gentle voice – but it cracks when the sex is done and he’s staring at the blank ceiling of his date’s apartment, hating himself for yet again seeing your picture in his memory when he’s buried in somebody else, wishing it was you instead.

It hurts so badly. Especially when you seem to look at everybody else except him. You wanted to weed out someone for you – meanwhile, he’s just right under your nose, and yet you don’t see him. It’s at this point, when you have Mingyu as your boyfriend now, that Jungkook is starting to realize that you don’t see him not because you can’t, but because you choose not to.

Regardless, he knows you love him. Knows you care about him on a deeper level. Would probably sacrifice a bit of your time to tend to him if he needs it. But it’s the kind of love that’s not comparable to the one he has for you. Jungkook’s feelings encompass every single kind of love a human could have for another being – but you only have one kind for him. The platonic kind.

And even though it’s painful to face the reality of that very idea, Jungkook thinks that maybe… just maybe… Mingyu’s actually it.

Mingyu wasn’t exactly a saint the last time Jungkook saw him, but people change and the way you seem so genuinely happy these days tells Jungkook that maybe Mingyu’s another version of himself now – the better one who will never hurt you or make you cry.

Maybe this is what love’s all about. You’re content with seeing them happy, even if it’s not with you.

Jungkook thinks that as he steals a glance at you looking at your phone – most probably playing that landlord game on your phone you’ve been obsessed with the past few weeks – and you’re so beautiful like this. Even when you’re probably running on limited hours of sleep just like him.

Your hair is put up in that tulip hairclip you have a lot of, stray hairs framing some parts of your face. But he sees your features just fine – notes the way they are structured so perfectly it truly awes him that men and women didn’t beg for your attention whenever you went out in public.

Because he would. He did. He does. He always teases you for the purpose of your reaction… because Jungkook likes it when you pay attention to him. So much that it kills him to think that maybe, that attention will die soon as you and Mingyu get closer as another week passes by.

The timer that goes off on your phone snaps Jungkook out of his thoughts, and you look at him with widened eyes.

“Don’t st–”

“It’s my turn now,” Jungkook cuts you off and gently places your legs on the mattress, bringing his own on the soft surface as well.

You jut your bottom lip out – and Jungkook feels himself wanting to give in.

“Five minutes is so quick.” You say, but nonetheless takes his shin to your lap.

Jungkook tries hard to sway the butterflies in his stomach at your touch.

“Favor for a favor, remember?” He teases, lifting one of his foot to your direction.

You pretend to gag. “I hate you.”

Jungkook laughs, quite boisterously. Because he knows you don’t mean it. I hate you basically just means I love you but you’re annoying me right now in your own little dictionary – and he always gets giddy whenever you tell him that – as weird as it may sound.

But Jungkook likes this, though.

Sure, it would be so fucking great if he could just confess and lay out his cards all at once, but the chances of you not taking it well is too big – and even though Jungkook’s usually a risk taker, he couldn’t ever risk you all over his dead body.

He can keep his hurt to himself over you feeling anything but romantic towards him – because if he confesses and you don’t feel the same way, he knows damn well that he’ll lose you completely.

And the thought makes him shudder.

That probably catches your sight, so you ask him about it.

Jungkook tells you it’s the AC.

[ DAY 1 | August 31st, 11:04am ]

The beating sun feels uncomfortable on Jungkook’s skin, but there’s no way he’s wasting a day like this holed up in the villa he and his friends chipped in to rent. It costed you all a shit ton of money – might as well enjoy every waking day he gets to spend here.

It’s why he decides to goad Taehyung and Nayeon into coming with him along the shore where sun loungers are lined up to accommodate the few visitors who were also at the resort. He tried to convince Doyeon, but she goes straight to sleep as soon as the rooms were assigned.

He gets it – you all did travel by plane instead of car (because that would've taken you twelve hours) and Doyeon gets airsick whenever she rides in a plane. Jungkook also tried to talk you into it, but you said you were just going to lounge about by the pool at the villa and follow after a while.

Your “after awhile” takes about thirty minutes, and Jungkook thinks you’re missing all the fun, especially when Nayeon and Taehyung are starting to strip off their clothes to submerge themselves in the ocean.

With his loaded watergun, he goes straight back to the villa, and it doesn’t take much time to spot you by the terrace, lying down on a sun lounger with your big hat and sunglasses on, a book opened in your hands.

Unsuspecting, you let out a sudden squeal when Jungkook presses the trigger of the toy in his grip, a spring of water meeting your bare legs. Jungkook obviously tries hard to ignore that you’re wearing a flimsy pair of white bikinis. He saw you pack it two days ago… and he remembers taking too long to move on from the image he’s conjured up in his head upon seeing it.

“Jungkook!”

He chuckles at your reaction, poorly hiding the watergun behind him. “What?”

“I’ll kill you.” You seethe, your body coming forward to sit upright, hastily taking your sunnies off so he can see the cute glare on your face.

“What are you going to do? I have this,” He points to his weapon. “Are you challenging me into a hand-to-hand combat?” Jungkook teases, wiggling his eyebrow.

You groan. Then, you lay back on the lounger again, opening your book, deciding to ignore him.

Jungkook can’t have that, of course. So, he walks closer to your direction, stopping beside you, effectively blocking the sun and in turn, dimming the light source of your book.

“You’re blocking my sun.” You say, looking up at him.

“You’ll get all the sun you want if you haul your ass off to the shore. Come on, we’re all swimming in there,” he tries to convince you, nudging your thigh with his knee.

You give him a pout. You sound whiny when you say, “But it’s too hot.”

“That’s why we’ll get in the water.”

“Don’t be sassy.” You roll your eyes. “I meant the water would be way too hot.”

“It’s not, Nayeon said so.”

You glance at the pool across from you. “Why can’t we all just swim in here?”

Jungkook deadpans. “Because this is a five-foot pool and absolutely no one will enjoy it.”

You frown at him, quietly telling Jungkook he’s right.

“Ugh,” you groan. “But I’ll have to reapply SPF first…” You grab the bottle of lotion that’s just placed on the small table on the side of the lounger. Then you look at him with squinted eyes, “Did you wear sunscreen?”

Jungkook rolls his eyes but nonetheless says yes, knowing how you always nag him about it whenever you guys are at the beach. It’s not even just him. It’s also with your other friends.

He watches as you rub lotion over your body, but when you get to the back, you look up at him and extend the bottle towards his way.

“Can you help me with this, please?” You say.

Jungkook automatically takes the bottle but it takes him a full five seconds to understand what you’re getting at.

You’re asking him to put sunscreen on your back. You’re very naked back that sports nothing but the tiny strings of your bikini holding your chest.

Of course, you don’t notice his dilemma. Twisting in your seat so that your back faces him, you gather your hair to the side, obviously waiting for him to do your request.

But Jungkook’s distracted behind your back. He’s distracted at how smooth it looks under the scorching sun and how easy it would be to paint it with something other than the natural color of your skin.

It’s not even the first time he’ll do this – you’ve been to trips before and putting on sunscreen over your friend is about as natural as it gets like how he would do it as well to Taehyung or even Doyeon or Nayeon if they ask to.

But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect him one bit when it comes to you.

Needless to say, his mind is pre-occupied as he sits down behind you where you left some space for him to sit, squirting the lotion into the palms of his hands, gingerly spreading it over your back once he got it.

“Be sure to cover everything,” you say, obviously not aware about Jungkook’s mental crisis behind your back.

He thinks it’s worth the crisis over though, as you’re so soft under his touch. Jungkook kneads the span of your back, squeezes your waist lightly to even out the cream, and makes sure to put it over your shoulders as well. When his hands fall, he hesitates.

“Should I – uh—”

“Yeah, just go under the strings.” You tell him before he can even finish.

There’s a lump in his throat that he swallows before he goes under the strings of your bikini top, his heart doing funny somersaults against his ribcage as he spreads the lotion over your skin. It guilts him to no end that his mind thinks about how he’s just inches away from your breasts.

He retreats his hand right away. “Done.”

You turn back to him. “Thanks. You want me to do yours?”

“Sure.”

Jungkook sits on the edge of the lounger and lets his back turn to you. He hears the cap of the lotion bottle being opened again and soon your hands are lathering the cream over the expanse of his back.

It’s embarrassing the way he lets himself savor the seconds of your every touch. Embarrassing the way his mind zeroes in on the way your soft hands caress the tendons of his back muscles. He thinks about the weight, how good this feels; your hands on him. Suddenly, there’s a zap of electricity that goes through his spine, and then he feels it.

The twitch in his dick and the blood that he feels rushing to it.

“Okay, you’re done.” You say, tapping his back twice so he can turn to you.

It snaps him out of his thoughts, but his dick is thinking about something else and as he subtly looks down, there’s already a growing semi on the crotch of his trunk shorts.

Jungkook curses himself internally, shutting his eyes close in slight frustration.

Fucking uncooperative dick.

He stands up from the chair when you nudge his back with your foot, thinking that he’d see you coming along in a few seconds. But you don’t, and as he turns his heel to look at you, you’re back in your cozy lying position on the lounger, with your book opened, just like how he saw you when he came in a while ago.

Jungkook parts his lips in disbelief, but also finding the whole thing funny.

“You minx.” He muses, playfully squinting his eyes at you upon realizing the trick you just pulled.

“Enjoy the beach, Jungkook. Send my regards to Taehyung and Nayeon.” You say, giving him a taunting flying kiss. “And thank you for reapplying my sunscreen.”

Jungkook chuckles at your remark, and just like that, he forgets about his stubborn dick, and goes over back to you, blocking your sun once again.

“You’re blocking my sun again— Jungkook!”

It’s predictable the way you hurl a series of creative curses at him as Jungkook forcefully picks you up from the chair, knocking your hat and your book on the ground as he hoists you against his shoulder, carrying you upside down like a sack of potatoes.

“Jungkook, I swear to god!” You squeal, repeatedly slapping his back as he walks to the direction of the shore, but Jungkook’s nothing but a solid muscle, firm over his hold on the back of your legs.

“Be quiet.” He says, chuckling at your sounds of opposition.

“I hate you, you’re such a prick, ugh!”

He picks up his walking pace and you scream again when you see the ocean water from your view.

Jungkook chuckles as you continue to plant your fists on his back, and when the water reaches his knees, he throws you in it.

“Fuck. You!” You say, glaring at Jungkook in the middle of his uncontrollable laughter.

“Come on, Taehyung and Nayeon are over there,” he points to the deeper part of the ocean a few feet from where you are, and when you turn your head, you see Taehyung and Nayeon with their floaties.

“Ugh…” Jungkook hears you groan before you follow behind him. When Jungkook looks back, he sees you paddling around the water like some puppy, and he snickers to himself. That earns him a splash on his way, with you rolling your eyes at him.

“Jungkook! __!” Yells Nayeon over their direction, waving her hand around. Taehyung and her are perched on the big floatie they fought over with at the villa earlier.

“Jungkook,” calls you behind him.

You’re starting to cross the deeper part of the ocean and it’s within Jungkook’s chest now. Meanwhile, your friends are still about a few feet away, so the level would definitely be on his neck by the time. You’re considerably tall, but Jungkook’s still half a head taller than you, so when he looks back at you, the water’s already reached your shoulders.

“This is way too deep!” You complain.

“Don’t be a pussy, __!” Comments Taehyung from afar.

“Fuck off,” you murmur and then beckons Jungkook to you. “Help me a bit here.”

Jungkook shakes his head, chuckling as he moves a few steps back to get to your direction.

“You big baby, you never learned how to swim, have you?” He teases, playfully clicking his tongue.

“What for?” You say when he gets near.

Jungkook feels pleased with himself about you asking for his help to cross the deeper part of the ocean, but he’s met with surprise when you heavily plant your palms on his shoulders, causing him to be out of balance and tripping over his feet under the water.

It causes a misstep and he nearly chokes as he comes back up for air again only to see you laughing your ass off. Nayeon and Taehyung are also laughing along, even from afar, and Jungkook wipes the back of his hand over his eyes to see clearly.

“That’s for throwing me in the water earlier,” you say in between your snickers and Jungkook’s just about to say something back when you suddenly wrap your hands around his neck from the back, your legs locking around his waist. “Carry me to the floatie, pretty please,” you say against his cheek in a sing-song voice.

With that, Jungkook feels your whole entire body against his back, your breasts pressing against his skin. He ignores the way the physical contact makes his body tingle, and he hopes you don’t notice his blush when he raises his arms to hold the back of your legs.

“Only because you’re annoying.” He pretends to sound annoyed, but the laugh that comes out of you at the remark makes him smile anyway.

[ DAY 1 | August 31st, 11:35pm ]

Your daytime activities at the beach included jetskiing – one that knocked Taehyung off the water way too many times that he just gave up halfway through it. When Doyeon woke up a little later in the afternoon, all of you decided to get food from the dining hall and ate your hearts out at the buffet.

The day ended with all of you back in your assigned rooms again. Since you rented a two-bedroom villa, Jungkook’s rooming with Taehyung in the secondary bedroom while Nayeon, Doyeon, and you are all inside the primary one since it’s bigger.

It’s past thirty minutes to eleven in the night when somebody knocks on Jungkook’s shared bedroom with Taehyung. When Jungkook looks at him from across the room, he’s knocked out on the sofa, soft snores coming out from his mouth. Him and Jungkook decided to take turns with the bed itself throughout the whole vacation. There’s an extra cushion Taehyung could’ve laid on the floor, but he was way too tired to set it up and to even care – looks like he doesn’t really need it, though, since he looks so peaceful in his position.

Grumbling, Jungkook gets out from the sheets, scratching his bare chest and rubbing the back of his head as he walks over to the door to open it.

When he does, he’s welcomed by the sight of you in your big grey hoodie and some shorts.

“Wear something.” You say as soon as you take in his appearance.

Jungkook’s habit of going to sleep with only his boxers knows no bounds. Even when it’s below 20 degrees Celsius outside, he always opts out of his pajamas, choosing to go bare in his sheets instead. In his defense for now, the duvet is thick and it provided him with enough protection against the cold of the AC and the summer night.

“What are you doing here?” He says as he trudges back inside the room to wear a pair of sweatpants hanging from the chair.

“Rude.” You comment, following him in the room. You look at Taehyung’s passed out state in the couch. “He’s going to wake up in the evening tomorrow and miss your birthday.”

That makes Jungkook smirk, remembering Taehyung’s high energy in the morning.

“No consequences. It’s vacation week.” Jungkook raises his eyebrows. “Seriously, what brought you here? It’s almost midnight.”

You sit on the edge of the bed. That’s when Jungkook notices the black plastic you’re carrying in your hand. “It’s not that late. Let’s head out for a bit.”

He raises a brow, confused. “Where to?”

“You’re going to find out. Wear a jacket, it’s a bit cold outside.” You say as you stand up from the bed again, heading for the door.

Jungkook’s confusion just grows with passing seconds. Nonetheless, he can’t say he’s not intrigued.

Unsure, he goes for his small luggage and takes out the only hoodie he packed. It’s grey as well, matching the one you have on. Jungkook tries to shake that thought off his head as you both quietly head out of the room.

It’s late into the night and when you head out of the villa, there’s not many people hanging along the shore anymore.

“Follow me,” you tell him, and Jungkook does.

It may have been his drowsiness that kept him quiet throughout the whole walk – just quietly following along with you, your rented villa no longer in his line of sight. Jungkook couldn’t exactly pinpoint where you currently are, but this side of the beach is a bit rocky, and much, much colder. He feels it even through the thick material of his hoodie.

“We’re here.” You announce, a proud lilt to your voice. Jungkook bumps with your back when you suddenly stop on your tracks. It prompts a chuckle from you, turning back to him so Jungkook sees the crinkles on the sides of your eyes as you do so.

It makes his lips curl. “What’s this?” He curiously asks, looking around.

Your grin grows wider. “We’re gonna take those stairs and it’s gonna lead us to some pretty view.” Jungkook looks to the direction you pointed at, seeing the stairs you just referred to. Still unsure, he glances back at you. You laugh. “You remember when Doyeon and I went out for a walk earlier for a bit? We found this place.”

Jungkook nods. “I see. Thought for a second there you found a place to dispose my body at.”

You snort as you take Jungkook’s wrist to hold on to as you climb to the stairs.

“I won’t do it as such a public place.”

“So, you really are thinking about it in the first place.” Jungkook nods his head, guiding your back up the jagged stairs. You manage to get to the smoother surface and Jungkook’s quick to follow you towards the straight path of the narrow walkway.

“It’s my favorite past time, really.” You look back at him cheekily, a playful grin painting your lips. Jungkook scoffs.

The hallway is colonnaded with some flags, and there’s an edge where the concrete stops, the ocean water splashing against the big rocks beneath the broken bridge.

You set aside the black plastic you’ve been carrying around and Jungkook realizes they’re Smirnoffs. Sitting on the concrete, you let your feet hang on the edge.

“Hey, be careful,” Jungkook comments as he sees you do that. This part of the ocean isn’t necessarily far – where you were earlier when you were swimming was far deeper, but still, it could be dangerous if you make a mistake. Jungkook wonders what the designers of the beach thought about when they made this plan.

“Come on, don’t be fussy. Sit here with me.” You say, patting the space beside you.

Jungkook follows, of course, and you scoot to the side a little to give him more room.

“It’s nice, right,” You look at him, cocking your head to the side.

Jungkook feels the breeze of cool wind passing, and it’s a bit strong that it moves his fringes and yours as well. You put your hair up as usual in that big metal clip you always wear, but some strands of your hair escape and they frame your face.

With your big hoodie on and smile, Jungkook thinks you look extra cozy. He may have been hot and bothered by your bikini ensemble earlier, but now he’s bothered for another reason. He can’t stop thinking about cuddling you under the night sky full of stars at the very moment.

“Feels good.” Jungkook comments. He plants his palms on the hard surface of the concrete behind him, leaning back as he looks to your side. “You wanted to drink here?”

“Oh, yeah,” You say, twisting your body a little to pick up the plastic cellophane. You take out two bottles of Smirnoffs and offer one to him which he gladly takes. Taking a bottle opener out, you’re about to open your drinks when Jungkook offers to do it for the both of you. You don’t protest, just let him do his thing, smiling when he hands you your Smirnoff.

“This is really nice.” Jungkook sighs after he takes the first sip, looking straight ahead to the mountainous view in front of you.

You hum, seemingly enjoying the moment as well. Jungkook takes a quick glance at your side profile and then quickly looks back ahead when he feels you do the same.

“Why’d you bring me here?” He asks.

“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I could bring you here. So.” You shrug.

Jungkook nods.

“I’m turning thirty-one tomorrow. Or, in an hour, actually.” He says, automatically looking at his wrist but then realizing he took off his watch and left it at the bedside table. He didn’t take his phone with him either.

“I know. You’re so old now.” You tell him with a teasing tone in your words.

“Fuck off,” he snorts. “I’m only a year older than you.”

“Hmm… still old. Imagine, you turn fifty, I would still be forty-nine.”

Jungkook laughs at that.

“Whatever makes you sleep at night, babe.” He lets the pet name slip, and he did not mean to. It just rolled off his tongue for some reason. Quite easily, too.

You don’t seem to care – or even notice – as you chuckle.

There’s a comfortable silence that hangs in the air again when Jungkook decides to break it.

“Hey, I really appreciate you for coming along. You and the gang, really. This is a really good trip so far.”

You give him a smile as you look at him. It’s one of those pretty ones that are a bit small but there’s a certain shine to your eyes and Jungkook just really loves looking at you with a smile on your face. You’re so pretty, he thinks he’s so lucky to even get the chance to look at you.

“You know we all need this trip, right? I think it’s all our first time vacationing in two years.”

He nods, chuckling to himself. It’s true. The last time was the Thailand trip and it felt like eons ago. Being a resident surgeon means less free time for leisure – and so you always make sure to spend your days off wisely. Even this trip took a lot of pre-planning to be possible just so all of your schedules would match.

“It’s crazy, though…” you say suddenly.

Jungkook cocks a brow at you. “What’s crazy?”

“That we’ve known each other for like – what? Eight years?”

Eight years and four months to be exact. Jungkook’s not keeping count – he just will never forget the exact moment he met you for the very first time.

It’s truly one of his core memories – knowing you. He remembers having to pass by the law library to meet Jimin – one of his closest friends who was studying law at the same grad school as him at the time. They were planning to eat out for lunch, but then he saw a woman at the individual study areas with a reading material that’s familiar with his. Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy. You wore that maroon hairclip you loved so much during first year (Jungkook remembers you losing it in the second semester and how he bought you another one in your birthday), and when you looked up from your book for awhile, taking a break from taking notes on your iPad, that was when Jungkook saw your face and he nearly falls over back then.

It’s common knowledge among your mutual friends and acquaintances that you’re pretty. It’s the first thing that Jungkook noticed about you, the reason why he harbored an instant crush. That pretty much turned into… well – something deeper as the years passed by and he got to know you more than just your beautiful physical appearance.

He found it strange at the time to find somebody who was obviously a med student studying at the law library, but he soon found out it was because you didn’t like studying at the med lib, said you felt too much pressure being among your fellow med students. Jungkook understood that in a spiritual level, and so when you became friends, you studied a lot at the law lib, until you met Doyeon and she formed a study group. It wasn’t long before Taehyung joined the equation.

Looking back at it, Jungkook thinks it’s surreal. How knowing you led to him knowing more people that would soon be important in his life up until the age of thirty-one.

“Almost a decade.” He says, can’t help but smile at the thought.

“Right? It feels so surreal sometimes that we all knew each other at, like, twenty-three and twenty two. And now we’re in our thirties.”

“When you put it like that…” Jungkook trails off, laughing at how young you actually were eight years ago.

“Yeah, I know!” You giggle. You look ahead, then you laugh again to yourself. Jungkook looks at you in confusion, giving you a questioning look at your sudden burst of laughter. Looking at him, you shake your head, “This is a bit of a TMI, but I was twenty-two when I entered med school, so I just lost my virginity three years ago. You know what’s funny? I’ve always thought I would lose my virginity, at like, thirty. Or twenty-seven. But that was even way too early for me.”

Jungkook almost splutters at the way you casually bring it up. He takes the bottle of Smirnoff away from him and looks at you with a chuckle. “Losing your virginity at nineteen is common.”

“Well, did you? Lose yours at nineteen?” You arch a brow.

“Nope.” Jungkook shakes his head, tipping his head back to drink again.

“Younger?” You ask again.

Jungkook chuckles at your curiosity. Much to your surprise, he shakes his head again. “Nah. Junior year. I just turned twenty-one. Lost it with my first girlfriend.”

Your lips part and Jungkook meets your shocked stare, brow cocked upwards.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“What? No, I’m not.” He laughs. He gets your surprise, though. Taehyung couldn’t believe it either when it came up in a random conversation.

You still look incredulous as you say, “You mean, like you never dated until junior year of undergrad?”

Jungkook shakes his head once again. “Yes, and no…? I mean, I had a… sort of girlfriend? Back in highschool, yeah, but it was more of like a mutual crush thing rather than an official relationship. But yeah, never dated and never had sex ‘til I found my first girlfriend in third year.”

You look at him suspiciously still, and Jungkook can’t help but laugh even more at your reaction.

“I really don’t believe you.”

“What’s so surprising about that?” Jungkook knows the answer, though. He sleeps around, and you know that. It’s probably why you can’t believe he’s only started having sex until third year of college.

You’re quiet for a bit.

“So… you and that girlfriend broke up, and then…” you trail off, letting him finish the pieces.

Jungkook chuckles, recalling some memories that he thought were already hidden well at the back of his head.

Jiyeon. Her name was Park Jiyeon, his first girlfriend. He was the one who ended things – and not because he didn’t have feelings for her. It was the other way around.

“Yeah,” Jungkook fills in. “Didn’t date seriously after that.”

“Uh… was it a bad break-up?” You say, and there’s hesitance in your voice. When Jungkook looks at you, you open your mouth to take your question back, probably, but Jungkook just gives you a warm smile.

“Yeah. It was bad. But I don’t really think about it now.”

You nod. “I see.” You say, looking ahead at the ocean again. “You dated… quite seriously again in our last year of med school, though.”

“Sora?”

“Yeah.”

Jungkook nods, remembering the only one-year relationship he had. Min Sora was a fashion magazine director at the time. Jungkook liked her as she did, but they had too many differences that lead to too many arguments. Sora ended things before the relationship dragged out. Jungkook was grateful for it. They’re casual as of now… good friends, maybe?

“I always wondered why she broke up with you.” You say quietly.

Jungkook doesn’t expect that. “You wondered about that?”

“Yeah. I mean, you seemed like you were both really into each other, so I just thought… you know,” you shrug.

“Ah. That,” Jungkook looks afar, recalling the day when she ended things with him. It had been because of the stress that the last year of med school brought – he likes to think that. But it was also during the time when Eunwoo proposed to you and what he thought was feelings forgotten for you came back resurfacing and Sora just… figured him out. She told him he loved you, and she’s got no spare time to compete with that. Denying it at the time was futile – Sora was smart. A wise, independent woman. She ended the relationship herself before she got deeply hurt. Jungkook has always felt sorry about how things turned out. No, he doesn’t regret the break-up – just regrets the way he hurt her – unintentionally – even though she didn’t show it.  “Just didn’t work out, I guess.”

You nod again.

Silence sits in the air.

It feels a little strange to talk about these things now. It’s not that you both never share these aspects about your lives to each other, but it’s the first time you ask him about Sora. He never really bothered to share, though, for the record.

From his periphery, he sees you taking your phone out from your pocket, then gasping.

Jungkook immediately looks at you to see what’s wrong. You show him your phone and he notes nothing of significance first before you say, “It’s 12:01 am. It’s September first!”

“Oh.”

“Happy birthday, Kook.” You say, smiling at him, and it’s an underestimation for Jungkook to say he nearly gets blinded by it. You look so gorgeous in your happy smile, so genuine, so warm, so cozy in your big grey hoodie.

Jungkook wants so bad to plant his lips on yours right then and there, but he reminds himself that he can’t do that. He reminds himself that you’re taken. That you like somebody else. The somebody else arriving tomorrow, as per your words earlier this day when he asked about Mingyu.

Still, it doesn’t stop Jungkook from mirroring your smile.

“Thank you.”

“And, before I forget,” you stuff your hands in the pocket of your hoodie and Jungkook watches as you take out a small rectangular box. As he pays you a glance, you’re a little bit shy, not looking straight into his eyes as you say, “Uh. I saw this somewhere, and I thought you’d like it.”

You extend your hand to him and Jungkook lets go of his beer to take the velvety green box from you.

He feels jittery as he takes it in, caresses the ribbon first before opening it altogether.

What’s inside surprises him.

“It didn’t cost much so don’t throw it away,” you say, uncharacteristically defensive. Jungkook can’t see your expression, but he bets your thoughts are going haywire as it takes him awhile to say anything about your gift. You always get nervous when it comes to gifts. “... and anyway, it’s not even my real gift. My real gift is a hairdryer, so I’m sure you’re gonna like that better. But it’s cute, right? You can hang it in your keyholder or something—”

“__,” Jungkook cuts you off, his eyes still on the keyring laying on the box. “You’re giving this to me?”

“Y-yeah. It’s… uh… cute, right? I thought it was cute.” You say, and when Jungkook looks at you, he sees the adorable way your brows furrow.

He chuckles, looking at the keyring again. It’s a silver Claddagh.

“Do you know what this means?” Jungkook asks.

“The what?”

Jungkook points to the Claddagh. “This symbol.”

You look away as you say, “No, not really. I just thought it’s a cool keychain. You told me you like keychains, but I don’t ever see you with a keychain. So.”

With your nostrils flaring a little, he knows you’re lying. You definitely know what the Claddagh symbol means.

But instead of goading you about it, Jungkook takes the keyring out of the box and hangs it over his finger, admiring the item.

“Thank you. This is really cute, and I love it.” Jungkook tells you, giving you a soft smile.

You stare at him and then cave into a smile of your own. “I’m glad you do.”

Jungkook looks at the Claddagh again and smiles heartily.

His heart aches with so much yearning and longing when you go back to the villa that night, spending about three minutes staring at the Claddagh you gifted him that he immediately hangs in his key holder. Jungkook thinks he’s going to transfer it to his work bag or the back of his rearview mirror, but his keyholder would do for now.

You love him alright, certainly not the way he does, but it’s enough for him.

[ DAY 2 | September 1st, 11:55pm ]

It was not a secret among Nayeon, Doyeon, and Taehyung that Jungkook’s mood considerably plummeted down as soon as Mingyu called you early in the morning that he’d be landing in the afternoon.

Afternoon came, and he tried to suck it up like a grown man – and because as far as you know, they’re both friends. And Mingyu’s your boyfriend. He should be nothing but supportive.

But it was especially hard when you gushed about being excited that he was finally here. It’s been four months since you started seeing each other, two months since you officially dated, but somehow, Jungkook still could not process it.

He knows he’s being unfair. To you and to himself. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help the feeling of ugly bitterness that sat in his heart as you told him about how Mingyu rented another villa so you both could room together, effectively taking you away from the rest of your friends.

Of course, you all spent his birthday together – doing tons of water activities in the ocean, eating at the dining hall, and roaming around for some more leisure time, but Jungkook could not help but think that ever since Mingyu’s arrived, you’ve been sticking with him, even taking the time away from the gang to show your boyfriend around the resort.

Even at the villa’s porch where all of you took out your foldable chairs to drink outside, you were with Mingyu, perched on his lap, laughing at the jokes getting thrown around in the circle.

He tried not to look too much at how Mingyu comfortably wrapped one arm around your waist while the other held a drink, how you leaned into his touch, and how easily he blended with the group with his charm.

“Where’d you get the ice cream?” Doyeon asked as Taehyung sat down on his chair with a small bowl of the sweet treat.

“Fridge. Nayeon and I bought it earlier.”

“There’s ice cream?” Mingyu asked, in which Taehyung nodded to. He turned to you. “Do you want it?”

Jungkook’s brows furrowed in confusion. “__’s lactose intolerant.” He noticed everybody suddenly looking at him. Feeling cornered, he drank from his beer to avoid their gazes.

Mingyu, obviously surprised by the declaration, glanced back at you. “Baby, you didn’t tell me that?”

You winced. “It’s not really a big deal.” you waved him off and when you laugh.

“Yeah, she’s stubborn about it. She can inhale five cones in one sitting.” Taehyung said which made everybody laugh. Jungkook knew it was to lighten the mood. So, he laughed as well, even though from his periphery, he could see you giving him daggers through your eyes.

Jungkook doesn’t know why you had to pretend it wasn’t a big deal. Sure, Taehyung’s right about you not taking your lactose intolerance seriously sometimes, but you’ve also gotten into a lot of trouble because of it, hence why you’ve been making conscious efforts to not eat dairy.

The whole day leaves a sour impression on him with Mingyu around. Quite a shame, really, since he started his birthday so well with you taking him to the far-end of the beach to drink and give him a Claddagh.

When the night becomes much darker, Jungkook sits on the terrace near the pool all by himself. Everybody’s fast asleep at this point. He doesn’t know about you, though, ‘cause you’ve probably transferred all your stuff to the other villa Mingyu rented around.

“Hey,”

Jungkook looks at the embodied voice that suddenly calls. He sees it’s Doyeon.

“Hey,” Jungkook smiles, taking the other bottle of beer on the coffee table and offering it to her.

She waves his hand. “Nah, I’ve had enough for the whole day.” Doyeon situates herself on the folding chair next to Jungkook.

Jungkook nods, looking straight ahead to the pool. They sit in comfortable silence for a while until Doyeon speaks.

“Hey, I’m sorry for the last week,”

Jungkook glances at her with a small smile. “What for?”

“For calling you a pussy. And just… being harsh. Had a tough week and your emotional constipation just pissed me off more. You’re still a pussy, but I shouldn’t have rubbed it off your face.” She says.

Jungkook stares at her with parted lips.

“Wow. I don’t know if that’s an actual apology.”

“It’s an apology with a hundred percent realness, you know I don’t baby anybody.”

“Hah,” Jungkook scoffs, amused. “Yeah. Well, you’re right, though. Today’s been…”

Doyeon sighs. “It’s hard on you, right?”

Jungkook can only give her a meaningful smile.

“But you don’t exactly have the right to get jealous… she’s not your girlfriend and you two are not anything,” Doyeon says, and it tugs at Jungkook’s heartstrings. Meanwhile, she looks ahead and continues to speak. “It’s hard when you have all these feelings for someone, but you have to hide it. You just want to show everybody they mean so much to you, but you can’t. It sucks.”

Jungkook thinks she’s still talking about his situation with you but then as he glances at her, she seems to be deep in thought. As if she’s actually speaking from her own experience.

He’s intrigued by that, of course.

“Woah, are you still talking about me?”

That seems to get Doyeon out of her trance.

She rolls his eyes. “Who else would I be talking about?”

Jungkook opens his mouth to say something. You guys have always had the theory that Doyeon has a secret boyfriend. It’s silly at best but sometimes, he thinks it’s true. Doyeon has never been the type to wear her heart on her sleeve, though. She’s tough and she’s frank a lot of times. But she’s the kind of friend who’d call you a bitch in your face but then would go to all the lengths to defend you from everybody.

“Okay.” Jungkook nods, dropping the subject.

“Has she told you yet?” Doyeon asks suddenly.

“What?” He mirrors back, knowing exactly who the she Doyeon’s referring to.

“She’s planning to move in with him some of these days.”

“I…” Jungkook stops, his mouth opening and closing like a fish in water. To say that he’s stunned is an understatement. Obviously, you haven’t told him anything.

“You don’t know.” Doyeon says upon realization.

Jungkook shakes his head. “She didn’t tell me.”

Doyeon lets out a loud sigh. “It’s not really set in stone, though, that’s what she said. But they’re discussing it.”

“Ah.” Jungkook nods and looks ahead at the pool. Another beat of silence, a sip of beer, and then he scoffs. “I really should’ve confessed even way back then, huh?” He laughs but there’s no humor in it.

Doyeon stares at him. “I didn’t tell you about that so you can regret not telling your feelings for her earlier.”

“I didn’t—”

“I told you that so you can move on, Jungkook.”

Jungkook closes his mouth shut.

She looks away. “You remember the time I liked you in med school?”

“Doyeon…” Jungkook’s lips part, not at all expecting for her to bring that up. It’s been so long ago and ever since… Doyeon’s confession, they never really talked about it again.

“Oh my god, look at your face,” She laughs. “God, do you think I still like you? I moved on the day after you rejected me.”

“I didn’t reject you.” Jungkook defensively says.

She rolls her eyes. “I asked you if you were interested and you didn’t say anything. You just looked at me like this,” Doyeon stiffens her body and widens her eyes in a comical rendition of Jungkook’s famous OJO face.

Jungkook can’t help but scoff. “That was the strangest confession that happened to me, though. You told me you liked me in the straightest face ever, I still think it was a cruel prank of some sort.”

Doyeon bursts into laughter, and Jungkook follows along, recalling that time.

“Yeah… that was funny. But… it was real, not a prank at all. I don’t remember why I liked you, though.”

Jungkook looks at her incredulously. “Okay, but that’s actually the most hurtful thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Doyeon rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile on her lips still. “Anyway, I brought it up because that was the same day when I realized you like __. I mean, I had my suspicions, but I confirmed it around the time.”

Jungkook shakes his head. “Was really surprised when you told me that. I thought I hid it pretty well.”

“Yeah, but not to me. You know, I don’t even know how __ didn’t figure it out herself. You’d always follow her around and in our study sessions, you always stayed up late with her and was overly attentive. Whenever Taehyung asked you too much, you sort of like reached a point where you just told him to suck it up. But if it was __, you were so patient,” Doyeon giggles. “She had a really hard time with Biochem. I remember you tutoring her all the time.”

“That was…” Jungkook bows his head down, a bit embarrassed at being read like that. “She cried a lot during first year.”

Doyeon purses her lips. “Yeah…”

Both stare ahead again, with nothing to say for a few more seconds. Jungkook continues to sip his bear while Doyeon quietly sits.

“I have this biased notion about Mingyu,” Doyeon speaks up. Jungkook looks at her she continues, “I keep on telling myself, he’s probably gonna fuck up anytime soon – and that’s because deep inside, I still want you and __ together. You know I’ve always wanted you both to be together. It’s hard to see __ struggling with her love life. She almost failed the internship when Eunwoo broke up with her, and I don’t want her to go through that again as her friend. It’s hard, because I can’t do anything about it. I think of you, and how much you love her, and I think you’re good for her… but at the same time, I feel bad for thinking that. Because I can see that Mingyu makes her happy. It’s different with the other guys she dated before him. She’s truly happy with him, and I find it hard to think that Mingyu’s gonna break her heart. He seems… nice… and that he’d be good for her, you know what I mean?”

Jungkook’s quiet, processing her words.

Doyeon sighs before she speaks again. “But that hurts you in the process, doesn’t it? Seeing her happy but not with you. You’re both my friends and I’m in the position where it’s hard for me to situate myself in a certain place. Because I want __ to be happy, but I also want you to be happy – but your happiness is interconnected and it’s… tricky. It’s a tricky situation.”

Jungkook doesn’t realize that he’s gripping the neck of the bottle quite tightly at Doyeon’s words, but he listens.

“I don’t normally say things like this, Jungkook, but I’m your friend so I’m just gonna let this go,” Doyeon finally looks at him, and he meets her gaze. “It hurts me to see you hurting like this. It hurts Taehyung and Nayeon as well, but they won’t say it. Just… just be… just be okay, please?”

Jungkook exhales a sharp, shaky breath.

He knows what Doyeon meant by that. She’s asking him to… find happiness on his own. Happiness that doesn’t lie on __’s reciprocity because with the way things are going, that’s impossible. She’s planning to move in with Mingyu, and most of all, she seems genuinely happy.

“I… I know. Thank you.” Jungkook says, not really knowing what to say.

Doyeon chuckles. “Do you want a hug?”

He looks at her with a smile. “I could use one right now, yeah.”

Doyeon laughs before standing up and going over to where Jungkook sits on his own sun chair. When she steps in front of him, Jungkook wraps his arms around her waist and lets himself rest the side of his head on her stomach, closing his eyes when Doyeon pats the crown of his head.

“Belated happy birthday, Jungkook.”

Jungkook chuckles. “Thanks. You’re unusually mushy today.”

Doyeon pinches his ear slightly which earns her a groan.

The two stay like that for a few more seconds when suddenly, Jungkook hears a familiar voice.

“Oh, h-hey guys,”

Jungkook immediately looks ahead to see you standing from the other side of the terrace, looking at him and Doyeon. At that, Doyeon lets go of him, twisting her body to look in your direction. Jungkook retreats his arms back to his side and smiles to acknowledge you.

“I thought you were sleeping already.” He says.

“Yeah, what brought you here?” Doyeon asks.

You approach them with unusually slow steps, as if reluctant. “Left my wallet here. Just realized it a while ago,” you say. After that, you stop on your tracks. Your gaze falls between them with an unsure smile on your face. “You two drinking?”

“Nah, Jungkook is.” Doyeon says, pointing to the bottle of Smirnoffs on the small table beside Jungkook’s chair. Then, she looks under her own. “Where’d you leave your wallet?”

“Over my chair earlier.” You give her a smile again. But somehow, it looks a bit awkward. A little forced. Jungkook knows you well enough to identify your smiles.

And as he looks at you longer, he realizes you have a certain color on your face, but it’s one of those expressions he can’t read.

“Well,” you blurt out after a beat of silence. Looking around, you go over to where you were sitting earlier then duck. “I think I left it here…” you trail off. Jungkook’s just about to stand up to help as well when you suddenly pull up a brown leather, grinning at both of them. “Yay.”

Jungkook chuckles. “That would’ve been the third wallet you’ll lose this year.”

You mirror his laughter, and Doyeon joins in.

There’s another pause and then hesitantly, you ask, “Did I… uh… disturb something? Or…”

“What?” Doyeon asks with furrowed brows. “No,”

“Ah, okay,” you smile at her and then insert your wallet in your shorts. “Anyway, I’m heading back to Mingyu. The villa he rented is just at the back of ours, so… feel free to visit anytime or whatever.”

“Sure.” Jungkook says. He didn’t mean it to sound clipped and short but he must have unintentionally let the tone slip, as you and Doyeon immediately give him a look. He clears his throat. “I mean, of course. Tomorrow?”

You nod.

You look at him. And then, you point between him and Nayeon. “Are you two staying up here late?”

“Nah, I’m heading to bed actually.” Doyeon says, picking up her phone from the sun lounger.

“Yeah, me too.” Jungkook puts the beer to the coffee table and stands up.

You nod. “Okay, then. Well, good night to you two.”

“Alright, good night. I’ll head out first.” Doyeon says before disappearing into the sliding door that leads straight to the villa’s living room.

You soon turn your heels back to head out as well, but Jungkook calls after you. Turning around, you hum, acknowledging him. “Hm?”

“Good night, stinky.”

You deadpan. “Night, fucker.”

Jungkook laughs, watching your retreating back as you leave.

[ DAY 4 | September 3rd , 3:05 am ]

Jungkook likes to work out when he has a lot in his mind. But sometimes, he opts for jogging or walking around to clear his head.

With the turn of events since Mingyu’s arrival and Doyeon informing him about your plans on furthering your relationship with Mingyu, he finds himself along by the shore at three am with high hopes to clear his mind. It doesn’t give the solution, but it temporarily does the job.

Inserting his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, he looks ahead at the view of the ocean, trying so hard to shut his head down with overbearing thoughts of you. It’s no use, though, it’s always filled with thoughts of you and you alone.

Jungkook thinks about the time in med school when he thought he was completely over you. It had been after you made it official with Eunwoo two months into seeing him. He thought it would be a “bigger person” thing to do, moving on, that is, after you announced that you got a boyfriend – but then later on, when he slept with other women or had his casual dates, you suddenly popped up in his head randomly, and his heart suddenly ached when Eunwoo would drop by the university to fetch you. He felt ugly bitterness when you smiled too much whenever Eunwoo was brought up in the conversation. He found himself wishing it was him instead – the guy you thought of buying shirts for, the guy you randomly thought of when you saw something at the mall or the park, or the guy you called when you needed anything.

It was that winter break in freshman year when he realized that he loved you, after trying hard to brush his feelings off for you as a mere infatuation because you were gorgeous and smart.

He finds himself thinking about the time when he almost let out his heart when you had a fall-out with Eunwoo during your third year. Thinks about how pathetic he was for thinking that he finally had the chance. It had been when you called him at midnight, crying onto the phone as you asked him if he wasn’t busy. Jungkook had been studying for a Clinical Skill Assessment at that time, but he’d have been a fool to make you feel lonely when you already seemed like you were not fine. So, he had set aside his studying that night and went right over to your place. You told him about how Eunwoo was going cold, how Eunwoo was getting too close to the senior architect at his firm which you’d been having huge arguments about during those days – Jungkook remembered feeling broken at the sight of you crying, could feel himself building up hatred for the guy who was fucking up his chance with the woman he did not deserve. He thought about how he would never do that to you, thought about how he could be better for you – the envy bubbling inside his heart too big to ignore.

Jungkook remembered thinking how he would never fuck up any chances with you, and how Eunwoo was a fucking idiot for even making you feel that way.

That night, he almost kissed you. And the day after that, you avoided him like the plague.

Doyeon told him he was just as much of a big fucking idiot as Eunwoo for doing that. And Jungkook remembered regretting that night, and swearing off to never, ever make a move on you ever again because your avoidance of him made him feel like the biggest fucking piece of shit to ever exist on Earth.

He remembers you didn’t talk to him for about a month. And he remembers fearing that that was finally it.  

Of course, you made up – you’re still in his life. You let him still be in your life even though he betrayed your trust. The trust that lies on the fact that he was your best friend. Someone who was not supposed to take advantage of your vulnerability, someone who did not suddenly try to kiss you when you were at your worst.

It was a memory you two weren’t fond of. Heck, you’ve never ever brought it up not even once since it happened. When you finally talked to him again after that, you did not let him apologize for what he did – just shut him down by saying that you two should just forget about it and never mention it again. You made it clear that you did not want to talk about it – not at all, not in a million years.

Again, Jungkook has had a million attempts to move on. Especially when you got back together with Eunwoo. He did temporarily, when Sora came into the picture. He genuinely did like her, even more than his first girlfriend in college, and he thought he could eventually love her the same way he does you, but Eunwoo suddenly proposed… and his defense came crumbling down. The fear of losing you once again was too overwhelming that he ruined the relationship with Sora because admittedly, he had always been pathetic like that.

Even now that you’re with Mingyu, he’s still pathetic. He still thinks that one day, you can finally look at him. Like, really look at him and feel anything but friendly towards him. It’s extremely pathetic that he keeps on telling himself that your friendship will be enough, but then deep down, it’s not.

Jungkook shuts his eyes close when he feels the cool breeze of the wind hitting his skin under the hoodie. He lets himself stand there for a while, just trying to bask in the surroundings, ignoring the heavy feeling that sits in his heart.

But then he smells a sudden waft of smoke, and he knits his brows as he opens his eyes back again, turning to the direction of the smell.

When he turns back, he sees a familiar figure of a man.

“Mingyu?”

Mingyu glances back at him with the same surprised look on his face, but it disappears just as quickly. Pinching the cigarette between his fingers, he blows smoke in the air and inserts one hand in his shorts.

“Jeon.”

“Still Jeon to you, huh?” Jungkook sneers, walking over to where Mingyu is. “Why are you here?”

Mingyu arches a brow. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Woke up a few minutes ago and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Taking a hit of his cigarette again, Mingyu shakes his head. “That’s tough.”

“Same with you?” Jungkook asks.

“Nah. Had a discussion with my girlfriend. Just wanted to clear my head.”

Jungkook nods, not saying anything to that. It’s weird that you’ve been fighting a lot lately. He wonders if you’re okay.

Pulling out a pack of Marlboro and a lighter, Mingyu extends them to Jungkook.

He looks down at it and thinks about how this exact thing happened in college. Mingyu always had the pack of cigarettes and the link to the best weed man in college. He used to think they would be fond memories.

But Jungkook shakes his head, looking ahead.

“I quit years ago.” He says. And it is true. He wasn’t much of a smoker and only did it occasionally when he was extremely stressed, but it took him awhile to stop the habit completely, only dropping the cigarettes during second year of med school. Jungkook would say it was due to his own concern about his health – but there was an incident in the same year where you caught him smoking at the uni’s park after a particularly taxing exam, and how you did not hesitate to tell him that you hated – absolutely abhorred – smokers. You said you didn’t care if he smoked, but as a med student he should’ve known better.

He never touched that shit again.

“Changing your ways now?” Mingyu says with a teasing – more like mocking – tone, inserting the pack and lighter back in his pants.

Jungkook shrugs at that, which earns him a scoff from Mingyu.

“Do you smoke around her?” Jungkook suddenly asks.

“Who?”

“__.”

A beat of silence. And then Mingyu laughs.

“No. She doesn’t know I smoke. She doesn’t have to.”

Good. Jungkook thinks. Good that he doesn’t smoke around her. But what did he mean by saying she doesn’t need to know?

“She doesn’t like smokers, you know.” Jungkook tells him.

From his periphery, Jungkook sees Mingyu glancing at him. It takes a while for him to say something.

“You’d know that, huh?”

The dip in his tone makes Jungkook meet his gaze. Suddenly, the smirk on Mingyu’s face is gone, and there’s something behind his eyes that he can’t quite put a finger on.

Jungkook tries to ignore that. “I’ve known her for a long time. The others can also tell you that.” He says, referring to the rest of your friends on the trip.

“You think I don’t know?”

With furrowed brows and growing confusion, Jungkook stares at Mingyu.

“What?”

“That you like my girlfriend.” Mingyu spits the words out like venom in his mouth, but it’s in a way that tells him it’s been sitting with him for far too long. Jungkook’s surprised at the declaration, feels himself being taken aback by the blunt way he said it as if he’s so sure.

But Jungkook doubles down, to Mingyu’s surprise.

“So?”

That obviously wasn’t the answer the other man wanted to hear. So, what? He can dish it, but he can’t take it?

“You’re goddamn pathetic, then.” Mingyu says after awhile, taking a hit on his cigarette again.

It itches the bubbling anger Jungkook has had for him for the past ten years.

“I like __, and I’m not gonna deny that to you,” Jungkook faces him. “But you don’t have to worry about that, because unlike you, I have enough self-respect to not sleep with my friend’s girlfriend.”

It’s another response that Mingyu does not expect. Jungkook also did not mean to let that out. But his tongue glided with the words and he couldn’t help it. Suddenly, memories of junior year in undergrad comes back flashing to him; Jiyeon and Mingyu, fucking in his goddamn bed, his girlfriend cheating on him with his best friend.

Jungkook’s already moved on from that. Jiyeon was not a loss, even though she was his first girlfriend – heck, first love even, but she cheated on him. And not just with anybody but his best friend at the time. The worst thing was that Mingyu was completely in on it, and Jungkook doesn’t think he ever felt remorse about what happened back then. Mingyu gave him a half-assed apology the day he walked in on them, even had the gall to “explain” Jiyeon’s side, that apparently, she just wasn’t “feeling it” with Jungkook anymore, and that Mingyu and her had been hitting it off. Jungkook realized it was why Mingyu suddenly came over way too often over at his apartment.

It’s exactly why he never bothered to meet with Mingyu after graduation. Why he was not enthusiastic meeting him at the engagement party.

But that happened so many years ago that he thought Mingyu’s changed. He didn’t want to burst your bubble and tell you what happened between them back then because he’d be the one to ruin the happiness you’ve wished for all these years.

“I see you’re still hung up on that.” Mingyu says after a while. He throws the cigarette away and steps on it with his heel.

Jungkook’s jaw ticks in what he feels is growing rage. “I’ve moved on. I’m just letting you know that even though I like __, I’m never doing what you did back then.”

“You’re such good guy, then?”

“If not cheating makes me a good guy, then maybe I am.” Jungkook shrugs.

“Jiyeon was a bitch. She was never gonna be good for you.” Mingyu suddenly says.

It makes Jungkook seethe. “And so you fucked her?”

“She liked me better than you. Women always liked me more, that’s why I was going through them while your goody-two shoes virgin prude ass was daydreaming about dating to marry.  You remember that, right?” Mingyu looks at him with a mocking stare. “And Jiyeon was smoking hot. She offered, I just delivered. Said you couldn’t make her cum properly. We could have shared her, you know?”

“Fuck you.” Jungkook spits out. He feels enraged and pissed and disgusted all at the same time.

“Are you getting mad?” Mingyu levels him with an infuriating smirk. “You always got a stick up in your ass, Jeon. Kyungmi told me you’re just a regular playboy these days, said it was the effect of your first girlfriend cheating on you. Right now, though, is that just a front to hide your feelings from my girlfriend? A pathetic boy best friend just wanting to be noticed by his hot girl best friend? You play that role so well. Telling me she’s lactose intolerant, she doesn’t like smokers… you want to fuck her so bad it’s laughable because you know you can’t.”

“Don’t… fucking talk about her like that.” Jungkook growls, and he feels blood rushing through his veins.

Mingyu shakes his head. “You know what I thought when I first met her? I was completely interested right away, but when you showed up…” He chuckles in the way that makes Jungkook’s skin prickle. “It just made me want her more.”

“You’re fucked in the head.”

“This fucked in the head guy got the girl you want wanting to commit to him. I don’t know if she told you, but we’re moving in together.”

Jungkook pokes his tongue to his cheek. “You think I won’t tell her about this?”

“You think she’s gonna believe you?” Mingyu fires back. Jungkook closes his mouth, doesn’t really know if he’s confident enough to say yes. That earns him an arrogant smirk from Mingyu. “That’s right, she won’t. I have no doubt she’s gonna choose me over you. Jiyeon has had before. And if you’re gonna fight the same battle again this time, you’ll lose.”

Jungkook regulates his breathing hearing his words. He’s starting to not see clearly, his fist clenching on his side and he knows better than to resort to violence, but Mingyu’s testing his patience.

He’s completely wrong for thinking that he isn’t the same asshole he was back in college. He’s completely wrong for not telling you about him sooner. He’s completely wrong about everything.

Glancing at his hand, Mingyu looks him in the eyes, leaning forward. “You wanna hit me just like how you did back then? You almost fucking killed me when you gave me that head injury that kicked me out of the fucking team.”

The head injury. That fucking head injury. Jungkook was so mad when he found out that he just saw pure red. It wasn’t his best moment – he knows. He lost control and just… went for it. He still regrets doing it – not punching Mingyu – but for losing it when he could’ve shown him that he’d always be the bigger person between them both.

He’s quiet and Mingyu takes that as a win. Scoffing, Mingyu says, “I could’ve reported you to the admin and you could’ve been expelled, and if that happened, you couldn’t have gone to med. You are where you are right now because of me, so don’t fucking show that animosity towards me because you fucking owe me one.”

Jungkook can’t help but laugh. But he does so humorlessly. “You really think that?” He stares at the other guy. “You’re just as delusional as you were back then, Gyu. You think everybody liked you – but that was just because you were a touch-deprived loser who would fuck anything that breathed near him, and I wasn’t. I only entertained women I liked. You thought you were smarter, but I was always the one who got the better and higher grades, even though you studied way harder. Is that why you went with law? So you won’t have to compete with me in the med field? I also know you were pissed as fuck when the captain title was passed on to me instead of you,” Jungkook leans closer as well. “You’ve always thought of yourself so highly, but deep down, you were just an insecure little boy trying to compete with another guy that didn’t even see you as competition because you were that irrelevant.”

Mingyu, in his own fir of rage, grabs Jungkook’s collar, but Jungkook stays in his place, face stoic as Mingyu snarls, “You keep running your mouth while you cry yourself to sleep because those don’t mean anything when I’m the one fucking the love of your life,” Jungkook visibly recoils to that, and when Mingyu notices, he smirks, adding, “Yeah, yeah, you wanna know how __ is in bed? Because you’ll never see her sopping wet when you give her cock. That angelic face of hers… you’ll never know she’s a slut the way that filthy mouth asks me to fuck her harder because I am that goo—”

He wasn’t able to finish his sentence when Jungkook’s heavy fist suddenly lands on his cheek.

That effectively gets Mingyu to let go of Jungkook’s collar as he loses his balance and steps backwards limply, thumbing the side of his mouth only to see blood.

Whisking away his fist, Jungkook looks at Mingyu with fire in his eyes and venom in his voice when he says, “Don’t you ever fucking dare talk about her like that, you fucking piece of shit.”

The moon hangs low in the sky, casting a silvery white glow over the beach, but the comforting sound of waves and the calm of the surrounding is a contrast to the rising tension between Jungkook and Mingyu.

When Mingyu doesn’t say anything, Jungkook turns on his heel, ready to leave, but suddenly, he feels the back of his shirt getting pulled and being met with a fist right on his cheek, close to his nose. He barely dodges the hit, taken aback by the unexpected attack.

“Fuck you.” Mingyu grits, eyes blazing.

With that, the fight intensifies, with Jungkook throwing a quick jab back. Mingyu retaliates with as much fury, the two of them grappling, their bodies colliding with violent force. Soon, the sound of their grunts and the occasional crash of a punch against flesh is drowned out by the crashing waves.

And then a familiar voice calls their names.

“Jungkook! Mingyu!”

“Oh my god!”

Jungkook’s suddenly being taken away by somebody by his arms, and he realizes it’s Taehyung when he speaks up again once he and Mingyu are off each other.

“What the fuck are you two doing?” Taehyung asks incredulously, rightfully shocked at what he’s seen. Jungkook forces his way out of Taehyung’s hold in frustration, wiping the side of his mouth. Mingyu’s on the other side a few inches away being hesitantly held down by Nayeon, who looks at all of them with deep worry in her eyes. Turning to her, Taehyung says, “Call Doyeon and __. They’re sleeping in the same room together at the villa.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Jungkook says, glaring at Taehyung.

He looks at him angrily. “You’re fistfighting with somebody at fuck o’clock in the morning. We’re going to get run off by the police, be thankful we saw you.”

“I-I’ll call Doyeon and __.” Nayeon stutters, reluctantly pulling away from Mingyu and going to the direction of the villas.

When she leaves, Taehyung looks between the two beaten up men, not believing their busted faces. Rubbing his own with his hands in frustration, he looks back at them again, saying, “What the fuck happened to you guys? Why were you fighting?”

“It’s none of your business.” Mingyu says.

Taehyung glances at him with irritation. “None of my business? Fuck off, Kim Mingyu. You joined in on this trip. Everything that happens here is quite literally each other’s business.”

“Tae.”

“I can’t believe you guys,” Taehyung shakes his head, ignoring Jungkook. “Fighting like goddamn immature teenagers… are you not embarrassed?”

Looking away, Jungkook decides to sit on the sand and let Taehyung’s words go from one ear to another. His energy is waning and the rage he had a while ago is just simmering down to… nothing. He feels absolutely empty.

“Jungkook?” He doesn’t realize the steps that were coming towards them were you and Doyeon. It’s obvious that you’ve both been sleeping, still in your pajamas as you rush towards their direction. He looks at you when you call his name, but then suddenly, you turn to Mingyu. “Ming— what happened?”

Jungkook feels his heart break when you come towards Mingyu’s direction first. He knows why you did. He’s your boyfriend, of course you are going to tend to him first.

Suddenly, he remembers what Mingyu said. About you choosing him over Jungkook.

Jungkook didn’t doubt that, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt a little to see it fully realized.

“Jungkook– Jesus Christ,” Doyeon comes over to him and quickly checks his head. With knitted brows, she casts him a look.

“I’m fine.”

She’s about to say something, but then she closes her mouth and then glances at you.

Sighing, she turns to everyone and announces, “Look, let’s just get them back to the villa. Treat their wounds before they get infected.”

“Right.” Taehyung says and then comes over to Jungkook to help Doyeon guide him in walking. He relents first because he doesn’t need their assistance, but Taehyung looks at him and he knows he’s pissed. So, he lets them.

As he tries to subtly look over to where you were, you have your arm around Mingyu’s waist while Nayeon helps guide him as well.

It takes a tedious few minutes to get back to the villa where Doyeon and Taehyung decide to take care of him in his room while Nayeon and you tend to Mingyu back in your room.

Doyeon nor Taehyung doesn’t say anything the whole time. Just let the silence fall in the room as they clean his wounds and put bandages around the cuts on his face and treat his busted lip.

He knows they’ll talk to him in the next few hours. It’s inevitable. But at least they’re sparing him for tonight – or today, since it’s almost four am.

Jungkook regrets not seeing the sunrise.

[ READ BELOW ]

this chapter is not over yet! tumblr has a 1k paragraph/block limit in a single post and so i can't put the whole thing in this. please look thru the reblogs to read the last scene and the continuation of this chapter!

[onlyswan]

summary: in which you make jungkook’s world spin and you tend to… make him a little too dizzy.

> idol!jungkook x reader / est. relationship, fluff, angst / word count: 7k

> content/warnings: yea shirtless jungkook should be a warning… one (1) spank then he kisses it better, also gives a kiss to that lil bow on oc’s undies >:( + a flashback of oc crying and him getting stressed out bcs oc is a careless brat fr

> in which masterlist!

note: hehe i’m here <3 this drabble is basically just oc in a mood and jungkook being the sweetest bf ever 🤨 idk how it got this long either heh it didn’t feel that way at all while i wrote-edited? but i hope u enjoy and i’d love to hear ur thoughts 🥺 reblogs/feedback are appreciated !! <3

—

“oh my god- fuck!”

you cover your mouth in shock, squeezing your eyes shut and flinching at the ear-splitting sound that bounces off the walls of the apartment.

jungkook is rendered frozen, eyebrows furrowed and jaw slacked, staring down at his shirt largely stained by the chocolate milk you were walking around with after brunch.

“damn…”

his eyes are irritable when they communicate with yours.

“baby! really? did it have to be the white one?”

but seconds later, they become worried and calculating — wandering all over the tiled floor, and then your bare feet infront of his slides-clad ones, surrounded by shattered pieces of ceramic.

the collateral damage. an unforeseen tragedy.

suffice to say, jungkook woke up this morning blissfully unaware of the turbulent storm threatening to make a playground out of your mind. it’s craving to feed destruction, and here he is living with you under the same roof, an unfortunate casualty from your antics.

the hand-painted mug, wet from the condensation, slipped away from your hands when you accidentally collided with his tough build at the intersection of the living room and the kitchen. this… wasn’t part of the plan. the plan was a little spill and this is a landslide.

“that was expensive too.” you utter wistfully, chest deflating as you release an exasperated breath. “sorry. i’ll clean up everything. just stay there and i’ll- when did i last see the broom-”

his doe eyes grow two times its size when you start looking around the apartment in search of the broom, and perhaps something you can use to pat yourself and jungkook dry, causing your feet to unconsciously shift on the treacherous ground.

“ba-baby! don’t move! you’re going to hurt yourself. are you crazy?” he interrupts you with a hiss, voice stern as his hands curl around your arms to hold you steady. “it’s okay. this is nothing, i’m not mad… just stay still, understand?”

you nod slowly as he lets go, eyebrows knitting together to convey confusion when he starts pulling his shirt over his head, revealing miles of bare skin and planes of defined muscles on a perfect silhouette. perfect because it’s jungkook.

alright… to see him half-naked wasn’t one of your intentions, but you’re definitely not one to complain.

“tsk, i think i need to shower again.”

figuring that the internet has a solution to every problem one could think of, jungkook has decided to accept the horror that has happened to his shirt. what was it again? salt? vinegar? baking soda? powder? fuck it, he’ll search for it later.

he throws caution to the wind by using it to wipe his damp torso, brushing it over his tan skin glistening with a sheen of the liquid that you wittingly spilled. he winces at the uncomfortable stickiness that could be felt across his stomach, but he can’t help but to laugh when he sees how it further accentuated his abs.

and if only you were in a chipper mood today, you would be laughing along with him. would’ve taken over cleaning him up, apologized with a kiss on his waist. too bad you’re not.

eventually, he gives up on erasing on the feeling, proceeding to fold the shirt in halves.

“what are you doing?” you snap, putting on a guise of harsher irritation over your dreamy stares at your boyfriend’s glorious physique. “are we just supposed to stand here forever like idiots?”

“what is this? why are you so grumpy today?” he questions with a frown, patting your cheek with the soft cottony fabric because the splash managed to reach your face unbeknownst to you.

and then he bends down to place the folded shirt infront of your feet, looking up to you with his galaxy-filled eyes to say, “here- come on. stand here while i clean up.”

you stand isolated on the safe zone he created, childishly pouting with your arms crossed over chest as you wait for him to pick up your slippers in the bedroom.

the simple answer to jungkook’s question is you’re bored and in a bad mood. the more complex answer would be you came up with a one-man game you can only win if you successfully piss your boyfriend off, but you’re too scared to pull off anything that will legitimately make him upset with you.

because the last time you made him angry, it hasn’t been… that long ago. he’s been keeping a closer eye on you since then, and you’ve been trying to be good. keyword being trying. after all, you did lost his car key… at a beach three hours away from home. you searched the entire shore — retraced your steps, made your knees and palms bleed digging through the rocky sand, curled up by the waves to wallow in self-blame and the smell of salt-air defeat. you were nearly in tears as you listened to the call ring for what felt like an eternity, unsure if he already wrapped up the company meeting he mentioned to you the day before.

you still remember the desperate words you greeted him with instead of ‘hello’.

“babe, promise me you won’t be mad.”

—

“____, you didn’t even tell me you were coming here! care to explain that to me first? huh?”

your name, and not ‘baby’? heavens above have mercy; you’re fucked.

jungkook presses the heels of his palms over his eyes to alleviate the dull throbbing of his head, breathing heavily to compose himself, but he can’t disguise the frustration deeply embedded in his voice.

“you scared me!”

not yelling, but tone evidently very upset with you. somehow, that makes you feel worse.

“i had to make up an excuse infront of everyone and drive here fast. i was so worried of you being here all alone when it gets dark!”

“it’s your car so i thought i had to let you know right away. i’m sorry.” you chew at your bottom lip anxiously, eyes brimming with tears as you barely muster up the courage to observe how he’s handling this.

your heart pounds louder in your chest when he finally looks down at you, guilty and gloomy, sat on a wooden bench painted yellow. it drops to your stomach when you see the sullen expression painting his face a light shade of red.

“where did you lose it?”

you open your mouth, but no words come out. you can only manage to point at the shore with your disoriented eyes, and he traces the direction with his. the majestic orange sky where the sun descends below the horizon fails to be recognized by your foggy, distracted minds.

it’s silent for a few beats, then he huffs, breathing out a sarcastic chuckle before burying his face in hands.

“baby, please. please. are you sure you’re not pranking me right now?”

“no! do you think i’d joke like this? i really tried my best to find it!” you sniffle, roughly wiping away the lone tear that escapes your eye. you’re almost too humiliated to continue talking, volume falling a few notches above a whisper. “but the waves were getting stronger.”

he vehemently shakes his head, rendered speechless and stuttering, malfunctioning. he doesn’t think he has ever imagined this type of scenario before. “this is crazy. really… this is unbelievable… how did this even happen?”

he exhales loudly before removing his hands, revealing a calmer exterior. be that as it may, his skin is more flushed, all the way to his ears and down to his neck, where his veins have become noticeably prominent.

“i mean, what else can we do about it? i’ll request for a new one.”

“but are we just going to leave the car here?”

“did you leave anything in there?”

“i left my bag, but…” you pat the pockets of your skirt to check if your valuables didn’t meet the same fate as the car key. “i brought my phone and wallet with me.”

he nods. “then i’ll call a towing service.”

you pout.

“it’s such a bother.”

feeling exhausted after burning a concerning amount of energy in search of the missing item, you stand on wobbly feet to loop your arms around his waist.

maybe it’s to coax him into forgiving you. maybe it’s to make yourself feel better, nuzzle your face on his chest to drive away the anxiety weighing on your shoulders. but as it’s being lifted off, so is the barrier withholding your salty tears.

“i’m so careless. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. i should’ve drove my car instead.”

“ye- no, that’s not…” he cuts himself off with a sigh.

he puts an arm around you, pushing his hair back and repeatedly carding his fingers through it out of habit.

“seriously, baby… you stress me out so much, do you know that? you’re always wandering around places you’re not familiar with… this is secluded. it’s dangerous. you could get hurt if you bump into the wrong people… really, i’m just relieved it’s not yourself that you lost this time!”

the recollection of old flashbacks playing in his mind like a movie reel elicits a throaty chuckle from him, low and rough, the vibrations of his chest rudely awakening the butterflies in your stomach.

“you couldn’t even send me a text. you didn’t turn on your location. i would’ve lost my fucking mind again… did you even thought of that? or is that what you wanted, huh? baby? you enjoy driving me crazy like this?”

and the confession tucked inside his scolding obliterates any coherent thoughts in your head, causing you to lose control of your whirlwind of emotions.

“this isn’t fair. you said you won’t be mad.” you wail out in response, tears fiercely leaking from your eyes akin to a rainstorm. “i didn’t know this would happen!”

he clicks his tongue, gingerly caressing your wet cheeks with his thumb, then with the rest of his fingers, and the paw of his jacket, because the streams just seem to have no plans of ceasing. his wide eyes worriedly scans your tear-stained face, heart squeezed painfully by the restrained sobs forcefully ripping themselves from your throat.

“shhh, shh. don’t cry- don’t cry. i’m not mad, i was just worried about you.”

“jungkook, you’re lying.” you whine. “don’t lie to me. i don’t like it.”

he slowly blinks at you, head hanging low as to compose his thoughts before he reconnects with your eyes. a faint smile tugs at the corners of his lips before his tongue unconsciously sweeps over them, its tip catching the silver ring piercing through his skin to play with it.

a moment of silence, thick with restlessness and anticipation, harder to breathe with the unique smell of the salt-air entering and leaving your lungs.

you feel small under his stoic gaze. you want to sit back down and cry harder.

your boyfriend is mad. your boyfriend is infuriatingly hot even when he’s disappointed in you. you need to dig a hole in the sand and live there forever. after everything, these are the only thoughts left running in your head.

“okay, fine. you lost the key of our car in the ocean, ____. but what if someone already found it by chance?” he cocks his head to the side, briefly peering at the road behind you.

he knows that it’s no use. even if he does see the white jeep wheeling by, is he supposed to assume that he can outrun it by some heaven-granted miracle?

“what then? hm…? what else can we do? i guess it could be getting stolen right now and we don’t even know. you parked so far away.”

god, please, not your favorite car.

“it’s not only the car. i still have important documents left in the compartment too.” this only dawns on him now, judging by the look of distress written on his face. he suddenly slaps his thigh, and you flinch a little. “fuck! i should’ve cleaned sooner!”

“then you are mad.” you arrive at a conclusion, chin wobbling as you sniffle. “about a lot of things.”

you resist the urge to stomp your feet. you want to throw a tantrum so bad. tell him that he shouldn’t be keeping such things in the car in the first place, that he owns a safe for fuck’s sake, but you know you can’t get away with shifting the blame because you messed up horribly in comparison.

“i get it. i’m sorry… i take full responsibility this time.”

“shit, baby.” he deeply sighs.

it becomes quiet again. he just looks at your face with knitted eyebrows, not saying anything more, and you try your best to cut off your crying, not to act conscious, but your eyes still fall on the sand. they stay there for a few beats to avoid the intensity of his gaze.

he almost sounds pained when he finally speaks. “how can i stay mad at you when you’re crying?”

he tilts up your chin, and your glassy eyes, sparkling with a new wave of tears, look at him beseechingly.

the setting sun. an eternal witness to a brand new day of humans being humans. it kisses your skin with its golden light, bathing your figure to radiate an angelic glow that drives him to consider once more that you could just be an enchanting character across dreams and the year is still 2017.

you sniffle again, brushing off his hand. sometimes you despise that jungkook brings out messiest, most unstable side of you. you know that he practically signed up for this, and he will always love you the same, love you even more. but that doesn’t take away the fact that you’re so embarrassed.

“but i’m not crying just to make you feel bad, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“yah, that wasn’t what i meant?” he frowns, eyes softening at your reply. “of course. i know that.”

the cracks in your voice, he seals with a soft kiss on your lips, tender and swollen caused by the onslaught of your sharp teeth.

“anyway, i can take care of replacing it. i mean, it’s not like it can get stolen just like that, right…?”

he sounds rather nervous convincing the both of you.

“but i’m most worried about you. i can lose everything but you.” his tattooed arm pulls you closer, casting aside the tension by leaving not even an inch of space between your bodies. he tenderly rubs your back to console you, and another kiss is granted to your temple, his soothing voice slightly muffled as his lips stay glued to you. “did i make you cry? i’m sorry, baby, i’m sorry… it’s okay. things like this can happen.”

“no, i’m sorry.” you aggressively shake your head and he carries on with wiping your cheeks, the back of his hand brushing off the tears that drip across your chin. he dries his hand on the hem of his jacket only to get it wet all over again.

“let’s just learn from this and move on. promise me that you’ll be more careful next time, okay? you can do that, right?”

jungkook does scold you every now and then, but although you stress him out, he would hate it if he’s not the first person you call when you’re in trouble. he would hate it if you act nonchalant and secretly cry when you’re hurt. but most of all, he can’t imagine a life in which you don’t make his world spin, much as he tends to get too dizzy at times.

your defiant hum makes his tense shoulders drop in disappointment.

“there should be a bus stop somewhere, i’ll just go home on my own. i don’t want to keep stressing you out.”

you will yourself to break free from his embrace, dragging yourself away to leave behind a trail of footprints in the sand, and he knows he’ll be running after you today, too.

“oh? you better stop right there!” he warns with a hand over his hip.

you become smaller and smaller in his eyes with every tick of the clock, much like how the sun is gradually getting swallowed by the ocean.

“i’ll get angry for real if you disappear from my sight. really, i’m not joking!”

angry? what a joke. you know that he’d cry blood searching for you if you get lost.

“oh? you’re really not going to stop?!”

jungkook’s voice fall on deaf ears, except that of the dog leashed to a tree that stands infront of a humble home. it seethingly barks at him from many meters away.

“fucking shit. i need alcohol.” he chuckles to himself, rubbing his tired eyes. “____, i swear, you’re getting too stubborn these days. what should i do with you?”

but you’re too far away to hear him, and so, he answers himself.

“eh, it is what it is.”

the wind blows with a quiet whistle, deadly as it fuels the roaring waves.

“AH! nuh-uh!” he exclaims, jaw dropping in alarm when he sees an urgent reason to chase after you, putting those leg days at the gym to good use.

you jump, a squeak leaving your mouth when out of nowhere, a solicitous palm smooths over your behind, sliding down to the back of your thighs to hold down your rippling skirt.

but you’re determined to be unyielding, eyes shooting daggers at jungkook. “leave me alone. i can do it myself.”

“baby, isn’t that a little rude? is that how you say ‘thank you’?”

“thank you. now let’s go our separate ways.”

and just like that, you’re walking away again.

“shit.” he curses quietly through gritted teeth, pulling at his hair. “babe, please come back… i’m sorry! i didn’t mean that!”

—

“jungkook! how many times do i need to tell you to turn off faucet properly?!”

you’re hot on jungkook’s tail as he makes his way to the laundry room beside the kitchen, carrying a laundry basket over his hip. he’s still shirtless, only clad in a different pair of shorts after a quick shower.

“the bathroom sink was close to overflowing! again!”

“i know what you’re doing.”

“what? what am i doing?”

the basket touches the ground, standing beside the dryer, and then he turns to face you, eyebrows shooting up. “picking a fight with me won’t work today.”

“why?” your tone borders on a whine.

“what do you mean ‘why’?” he laughs in jest. “why? why do you want to fight with me so bad?”

“i don’t know.” you exhale loudly, rolling your eyes and shrugging. “just because!”

“well, that’s not very convincing, is it?” he teases you with a grin, proceeding to open the dryer to dump the fresh laundry in the basket. the clothes you wore in the past week once again soaked up the sweet, floral scent the people around you distinctly recognizes to be your own and jungkook’s.

“i know, but i’m done playing now. you’re not hearing me.” you close your eyes in frustration, recounting the other times you had to say these exact words. “you’re going to flood our house.”

“okay, okay. i won’t forget to double-check it from now on. i promise.”

“sure, that’s what you also said last time.” you indignantly scoff, crossing your arms over your chest. “i’m not turning it off for you anymore. if we get flooded, i’m leaving you. i’m moving out.”

your threat puts a halt to his movements for a split second before he’s adorably replying in a sing-song voice. “then i’m going with you.”

“no, you’re not.”

and it doesn’t come as a shock to you that jungkook doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

“huh! good luck trying to stop me.” he slams the door of the dryer shut, standing up straight. “it’s not easy getting rid of me. you know that.”

he walks to the middle of the room to get a good view of you at the entrance. with the other resting on his hip, he lies his palm flat over the counter, outstretched arm cascading with varied colors of ink in sharp lines and swirling curves.

fuck, he has to know what he’s doing — flexing his muscles like that, not playing fair.

“aigoo, look at you glaring at me. you want to fight?”

and you’d feel intimidated by his challenging stare, the quirk of his eyebrow, his teeth sinking on his bottom lip… only if he didn’t blink to rake a stare over your body, lingering on your smooth legs that couldn’t be covered by your mere underwear. only if they didn’t flicker back to your face, and only if he didn’t smirk like a lovesick fool.

“so cute.” he chuckles. “you’re totally my type.”

“shut up.” you roll your eyes at the random compliment. “i know, i already get that a lot.”

his smile then fades, not so thrilled with the reminder that it’s so easy to fall in love with you, and therefore anyone would die to take his place. he knows that they hover around you like moths to a flame when he’s not there. well, he really can’t blame them, can he? you’re so fucking attractive.

“what does that mean…? who else is saying it, huh? tell me. i think i have a few guesses.”

“does it matter?” you stare at him blankly, which then turns into a piercing glare. “jungkook! i was just talking about you not paying enough attention. look at you proving me right!”

the stomp of your feet on the floor tells him that you’ve reached a level of frustration near to inducing a flood of tears.

oh, he truly got called out, huh?

“i’m sorry- i’m sorry. i admit that. i’m sorry, my love. i was just joking around. i’m listening well now.” he winces guiltily, beckoning you to be where he is. “come here then.”

“i don’t want to.” you stay rooted in your spot. “who do you think you are?”

“m-me…? i’m your boyfriend. boyfriend!” he points at himself, index finger repeatedly poking his bare chest to emphasize his point. his arm then drops to his side. his doe eyes widen as he breathes out a sigh of disbelief. “oh, i’m really getting upset now?”

you bite back a smile. the sweet taste of victory.

you can’t be the only one, can you?

“aish, i see you’re having your way again.” he chuckles, taking it upon himself to cross the distance between you. his hands find purchase on the curves of your waist, and every nerve in your body turns into a live wire. “let’s just go out today. do you want to practice boxing at the gym with me?”

didn’t he just watch you do arms day this morning? does he think you have the same stamina as him? you make a face of disapproval and shake your head.

“shall we go to a rage room again then? break more stuff?” he playfully sticks his tongue out, and you glare once more.

for the record, you loved that mug.

“boring.”

“and fighting with me is fun?”

you purse your lips into a thin line. “well, it’s not boring.”

“of course.” he laughs, softly squeezing your waist, pads of his thumbs mindlessly tracing shapes over the fabric of your top.

all of a sudden, he’s tugging you closer to envelope you in his embrace, voice slightly muffled as he sweetly talks. “are you mad at me for real? i’m sorry. sorry, sorry, sorry. sorry. i’ll really be more mindful of the things you remind me about, i swear… i don’t like fighting. it breaks my heart when you cry.”

what is this five foot ten man with bulging biceps, tattoo sleeve, and piercings doing here in the crook of your neck — affectionately nuzzling his face on your skin and telling you in a baby voice that he doesn’t like fighting?

you don’t know, but you feel good.

and his bare body is so comfortingly soft and warm.

he draws back for a kiss but his nose and lips only graze your cheek when you turn away, and you don’t see the sadness that flashes across his face.

“so what i’m hearing is… you don’t like fighting with me because i’m too sensitive? is that the truth?”

“no!” he perks up to interject without hesitation, shaking his head. “but i don’t think that’s a bad thing anyway… being sensitive.”

but you admit being a crybaby. you cry when you’re angry.

that’s when jungkook distinguishes the glint of mischief swimming in your irises. he feels dizzy after having his heart drop to his stomach.

“no. no, no.”

his mirthful grin returns, revealing his perfect set of teeth.

“ahh, i’m stressed!” he closes his eyes, throwing his head back, chest puffing up when he breathes in then out. “i knew it. no, i’m not falling for this trap!”

then he flees the room carrying the laundry basket, leaving you doubled over and covering your mouth to silence your giggles of amusement.

“i’m hanging the laundry now!”

“how dare you walk away from me?!”

“you can’t follow me!”

“i’m not.” you scoff, purposely bumping your hips against his. “i’ll vacuum the living room.”

—

“where are you going? gym?” you genuinely begin to sulk, watching your boyfriend slide into a baggy pair of bleached denim pants. “are you leaving me here?”

he avoids your inquiring eyes, ignoring you as he pulls up his zipper and does the button. you pout when he walks further away to pull out a black shirt from the clothing rack.

“is that it? are you tired of me already?”

he tosses its hanger in the basket where you discard the empty ones before wearing the final piece of clothing, covering himself fully for the first time today.

you sigh, feeling dejected. “you don’t love me anymore?”

and jungkook needs to physically restrain himself so he won’t grab your face and say ‘i love you’ over and over again until he runs out of breath.

you leave the closet to follow him to the bedroom, where he sits on the edge of the mattress to put on his socks.

you stand by him, patience quickly running thin. “hello?”

he brushes away the non-existent dirt on the left sock before switching his legs to put on the right one.

“did i turn invisible?”

your eyebrows furrow in disappointment. this isn’t how fighting works. you need a reaction at the very least.

you tug at the sleeve of his shirt, starting to get annoyed, already planning your exit if he continues this act. “you’re hurting my feelings. you’re not even going to look at me?”

he mumbles, and you almost fail to piece his phrase together. “can’t, you’re too pretty.”

his big brown eyes faintly glimmer with hope when he looks up at you, puckering his rose-tinted lips and making kissing sounds.

your sweet and clingy boyfriend, he’s making this too difficult.

a tsunami of affection washes over you, and it becomes impossible for you not to crack at his cheekiness then. “jungkook, you’re impossible!”

atleast he tried to shoot his shot.

“tsk, see? i thought so!” he grumbles, snapping the elastic band on his ankle. “just want one kiss.”

he disappears into the closet again.

he returns not a minute later, unceremoniously placing a white bucket hat on your head before tugging it down to obstruct your vision.

“hey!”

you hastily take it off, scowling at your laughing boyfriend who turns out to be already wearing a black bucket hat of his own.

“you’re bored, aren’t you? let’s go out, have some sun.”

“no.”

you reply exactly as your boyfriend predicted you would.

jungkook captures your wrist to slip his credit card on your palm, folding your fingers over it, but they aren’t enough to hide the black rectangular thing you can use to buy the world with if you wanted to. your amusement spills out as giggles, brighter as he pushes your hand to your chest so you have no other choice but to accept it.

he scrunches his nose, face only inches away from yours as he persuades you with his natural charm. “what if we go shopping, hmm?”

“thanks babe, but i can’t think of anything i want right now.” you sniffle with teary eyes, flipping the card and holding it between your longest fingers as muscle memory takes control.

“then just keep it incase you see something you want.”

he kneels on the floor out of the blue, and you eye him curiously, your fingers automatically tangling with his silky locks before making a loose fist.

“here, put some pants on. hurry-” he presents your pair of faded gray cargo pants.

you tug at his hair lightly, which prompts him to lift his head. you scrunch your nose cutely, giggling. “i’m spoiled.”

“ey, so what if you are?” he brushes off your observation with his satoori accent, blithe tone listing down reasons. “i love you. i worked hard so i can do these things for you. we moved in together so we can take care of each other.”

and you want to cry. you truly do. your face began to feel warm after he said that he loves you, but the tears never make it past your lash line when his big palm lands a loud smack on your ass, skin-to skin.

“but i do think that you are a brat. does that count for something?”

it catches you by surprise, and a scandalized gasp escapes your mouth as you feel the sting spreading across your skin.

“shut up! give that to me.” you roll your eyes, stealing the pants from his grasp.

“see, that’s what i’m talking about.” he chuckles lightheartedly. “get dressed then.”

his fingers dig in the soft flesh of your thighs when he pulls you closer to kiss the tiny little ribbon on your underwear, heart-shaped lips pressed to you so firmly you can trace their outline bleeding through the thin fabric and onto your skin. “mmm-mwah!”

and then you feel them there next, where it still hurts, a softer kiss in comparison to soothe the sting he left behind.

your heart is beating so loud you can feel it in your throat, feeble knees nearly giving away to crash and break.

who does that so casually? who the hell does that?

oh, right… jungkook. of course.

you raise the white flag today.

perhaps he will flood the apartment tomorrow, and you can stay angry longer then.

—

“what’s taking him so long?” you mutter absentmindedly to yourself, lost eyes scanning the park in hopes of getting a glimpse of your boyfriend and his classic jungkook outfit, but he’s still nowhere to be seen.

your sour mood makes a reappearance.

to your credit, taking you out and then asking you to wait here without telling you where he’s going is rude, and you’re lonely and jealous of the couples around you having a picnic. not to mention that the clouds have uncovered the sun and you’re burning.

this scene also leads your brain to wander to those cliche flashbacks in a film or a show where a parent lies to their child that they’ll come back, and then they doesn’t. it’s always, always at some sort of park.

oh, for fuck’s sake, why are you wasting your time giving this a lot of thought?

too bored and antsy to sit still, you finally decide to text jungkook.

to: my baby love

i'm gonna look for food. do you want anything?

orrr is that what you're away buying 😥

WHERE ARE YOU

why didn't you just take me with youuuu

?

please me lonely :(

[sent 1 photo]

a black cat !! is sleeping on my shoes!! 😭

i miss you :(

are you almost done

i hate u

whatever i'm going. call if you still remember that you're someone's bf i guess.

—

jungkook crosses the street like an excited puppy, long pretty hair bouncing as he practically skips his way to the area where he left you to wait.

only to be greeted by a complete stranger.

his radiant beam fades into a hue of confusion.

the bench is now occupied by a woman chugging an energy drink after running laps around the park.

they lock eyes for a split second. he averts his befuddled stare to pretend that nothing happened, walking past her with a bouquet of sunflowers until he settles down two benches away.

he wears his bucket hat again only for him to throw it aside with a sigh, messing with his hair to release his frustration. of course you left. he can only snort to himself while he reads the last message you sent. you’re so cute. he knows you’ve never been keen on having to wait, but he didn’t expect himself to take so long either.

not wanting you to be upset with him another second longer, he instantly decides to call you.

his forehead creases when his phone vibrates, informing him that he typed an incorrect password. he tries again, slow and deliberate, only for the same thing to happen, and he begins to feel nervous.

what the fuck?

okay, calm down, JK. one more time.

he freezes as the same words flash on the screen. his tongue pokes the inside of his cheek as he feels the irritation bubbling up inside of him.

“why is it like this…? what’s your problem? what am i touching wrong?”

—

you return to the park more carefree than before. since jungkook is god knows where, you decided to have a picnic on your own. you had to buy a new picnic blanket, though. you can’t get the one in the car because he has the key. but just to be petty, you hope that he figured it out from the text notifications he got when you used his card.

oh, there he is looking angrily at his phone.

you halt on your tracks, instantly pulling the brakes on your feet when you recognize your boyfriend from your peripheral vision. you slowly chew the remaining tteokbokki in your mouth.

he’s holding his phone… and he hasn’t called you yet?

“wow, did you seriously forgot about me?”

upon hearing your familiar voice, jungkook’s features soften, not having to squint at the sunlight either because you’ve kindly blocked it with your back.

“where did you even go? i didn’t see you!”

the password-protected device that’s been giving him a headache for the past ten minutes is abandoned in the depths of his pocket.

“baby,” he utters airily as he stands on his feet, reaching out to hold your forearm. “i’m sorry. i took so long, didn’t i…? i went to buy you flowers but they didn’t have tulips anywhere. anywhere. every shop said someone bought all of them!”

he scratches his head with a sheepish grin, revealing the bouquet he’s been concealing behind him.

“i got you sunflowers instead… they-” he points at them, eyes flickering on the bundle of yellow flowers he’s offering as a gift. “they’re not bad. i think they’re pretty too. you like them too, right?”

sunflowers are pretty. after all, it used to be your favorite in middle school, mostly because it’s the first flower you received from an admirer… it was for your birthday and you felt like you died when it withered, heavily on-brand for a young heart drawn to romance. excluding that, everything has changed. it’s a typical saturday and beads of sweat have formed on your lover’s forehead after running around under the sun. you think you can keep them alive longer this time around.

“i like you the most.”

and then he receives his gift in return, that particularly sweet smile of yours he only sees when you’re so giddy.

his heart flutters wildly at your following actions.

“kiss.” you adorably demand, copying his pout earlier when he was asking for a kiss.

but unlike you who left his wish ungranted, he crosses the distance to plant a kiss on your lips. he pulls away a mere three inches, muttering to confront you. “but i thought you hated me?”

“who said that? that wasn’t me.” you feign ignorance, eyes so wide as to mimic being confused. you carefully take the flowers into your embrace, subtly exchanging it with the paper bowl you’re holding. “thank you, baby… here, do you want tteokbokki?”

he goes for the fish cake first, poking it with the stick and popping it in his mouth. you find yourself too absorbed in admiring the sunflowers one by one to sense your boyfriend staring at you, thinking to himself, you’re always worth the effort and this overpriced tteokbokki is pretty damn good.

“i turned on my location like i promised i would. did you see?” you mention without looking at him, acting laidback, still too shy when anything related to the incident is brought up.

he awkwardly smiles. no, he didn’t, unfortunately. he’s still fucking locked out of his phone.

you whimper when he pinches your cheek. “good job, baby.”

—

jungkook removes his head on your stomach to lie down beside you on the red picnic blanket. his hair touches his face and he tucks them behind his ears for the millionth time today.

“will you type my password for me?”

you take his phone without question, putting yours over your chest for the meantime. you successfully unlock it within a second, experienced fingers nimble after years of typing on the daily.

“here.” you hold it out for him without looking, picking up your own phone to continue scrolling through trending topics. however, seconds pass and the heavy weight on your hand has yet to be eased, so you wiggle it to catch his attention. “hey, it’s done.”

he gasps, gaping at you in bewilderment. “how did you do that?”

“you changed it again last night, remember? because i told you our anniversary isn’t a good idea.”

shit, right. he added a new one to the list of passwords that he uses for everything. he totally forgot about that. you’ve taken over every working brain cell that he has in his body.

“baby, this is your fault!” he groans, finally snatching away his phone. “ah- i wanted to throw it away. i didn’t know what was wrong with it. i was seriously so close to crying!”

that bad? was he about to get all his data wiped out? your poor baby. you laugh out loud at his reaction, belly aching as you roll over to wrap your arm around his waist and bury your face on his side.

“anyone can guess it if they try hard enough.”

“but that was the trick, you know? they’d think it’s too easy. they wouldn’t even consider it!”

“that doesn’t mean they won’t try it!”

“ah, i don’t care. i’m changing it back.” he stubbornly pouts, falling back on the blanket.

you want to cuddle. he feels a tug on the sleeve of his shirt and he immediately understands. he allows you to use his tattooed arm as a pillow. it envelopes you entirely when he reaches for his phone to type with both hands, and you automatically snuggle with him closer by resting your head on his chest.

“fine. do what you want, you dummy. you better not leave your phone lying around.” you mutter, heavy eyelids fluttering shut as the wind blows to softly caress your face. “and don’t take more pictures of me sleeping.”

“you’re sleeping? i thought we’re going to the mall.”

“we are. i’m letting you rest before you carry shopping bags.”

“ah- wow. thanks, baby.”

you don’t how much time passes, a minute or ten or more, but falling into a deep sleep proves to be impossible with the cacophony of sounds you’re surrounded with. you’re resting somewhere away from the crowd, but there’s still the hiphop music from a bluetooth speaker, honking of vehicles… and the main culprit, jeon jungkook scrolling through tiktok on your phone and bookmarking videos for you to watch later on. you can hear his giggles louder than his heartbeat, feel them make his body vibrate throughout.

so, you give up. you open your blurry eyes with a tired sigh, blinking to readjust to the brightness. he feels your movements, your nose brushing against his neck, and he squeezes you to his side, dutifully stroking your head to remind you that you’re safe despite being in a public place because you’re with him. you kiss his cheek to show your appreciation.

you end up harmonizing with his giggles when you do decide to join him, nearly tearing up at the sight of a cat riding a motorcycle toy on the screen. a little while later, your fascination is then stolen by fiddling with his tattooed hand — tracing the veins, the lines, the tattoos; pressing the faded heart like it’s a button connected to the beating one in his ribcage; grazing the rough areas of his palm calloused by lifting heavy weights.

and as you do so, you mull over the house by the sea you’re saving up for. how much longer will it take? should you check out more locations? do you tell jungkook? that it’s your back-up plan, a place where no one knows your name, just like how this city once was. it’s where you would run to, where you would build a new life if the time comes that this one falls apart, too. if not, if not, if not, would it be so bad to wake up beside you with an ocean view when he’s sixty?

fuck, you don’t know anymore. it shouldn’t be this hard— not anticipating the worst, but still being prepared for it. you despise being an adult.

you do it absentmindedly, taking off one of your silver rings and slipping it into each of his fingers to see where it would fit best… he knows you’re only entertaining yourself, but feeling it in his ring finger still puts a lump in his throat.

“are you proposing to me?”

“this is your right hand, silly.” you tease your stunned boyfriend, sticking your tongue out. “if you want me, come and get me.”

—

taglist in the reblogs! send an ask/dm if you want to be added (or removed) :D

—

[nereidprinc3ss]

andromeda | (dybmn? bonus)

a bonus vignette from spencer's POV. we find out how he really feels about reader. takes place the day before the argument at the bar.

note: this is not part six! takes place between parts four and five.

series masterlist

18+ warnings/tags: fem!reader, semi-graphic descriptions of sexual fantasies, some angst, you're not actually present, mention of alcohol, very vague discussions of murdery stuff bc he's supposed to be working, sassy spencer makes an appearance a/n: for all my angels who said they wanted a snippet of spencer's POV! i'm sorry if i'm overdoing it with this story or clogging the spencer tags, i'm just having a lot of fun! i hope you enjoy or that this may be clears some things up for you, pls lmk your thoughts:) ily!!!

Spencer is incessantly drumming the particle board table underneath his fingers.

The polymer veneer is one of his least favorite textures—he hates the grain of it and if he were to accidentally scratch the table with his nails he knows it would make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

But of all the things he’s worried about, that ranks very low on the list. 

He’s got a lot of mental tabs open all the time—and the tabs, he can deal with. It’s when he starts trying to operate with multiple windows that he begins to struggle. His brain, while it is a very fine tuned sort of computer, only has one monitor. Unfortunately, no human (except for the ones who’ve had their brain hemispheres surgically split) is immune to the inevitable pitfalls of multitasking. By dividing his mental energy between you and his job, he’s really fucking up his job. But he also thinks he really fucked up with you on that phone call the other night and for being as logical as he is he can’t seem to make that feel unimportant—even though he’s disgusted with himself for it because there are literally people dying. 

Someone knocks on the open conference room door—he looks up, skimming his lips over his fist. 

“What’s up?” he says too quickly upon seeing Emily’s mildly concerned face peering in on him. 

Her mouth bridges into a sort of nonchalant frown and her brows kick up. 

“Just… checking in. Haven’t heard from you all morning.”

“Yeah, the, uh—the geo-profile. I’m still… I’m still working it out.”

It’s not like he’s ever been phenomenal with his syntax in a social sense, but Spencer is certainly aware he’s doing even worse than usual right now. 

“Okay. Uh… is there anything in particular stumping you, or…?”

“Nope. Just not enough information. But I’m—I’m going to keep trying.”

“Alright. Got your phone handy?”

It’s an odd question—of course he has his phone handy. He’s been doing this job longer than Emily has. How else would he communicate with the rest of the team? He bristles. 

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

Emily shakes her head. She’s always been particularly good at reading his moods.

“You’re not under attack, Reid. I was just asking.”

Just as he’s about to say, why would you assume I’m not prepared for my job, he manages to swerve away and stifle the words with his fist. Instead he looks back down at his copy of the map and nods. In reality, he truly isn’t prepared for his job today. The reason he has his phone so close, fully charged and at top volume is because he’s worried he’ll miss a call from you. 

Emily says something else, and he hums in response, and then she’s gone. 

He shouldn’t be reading into your reticence this much. It’s not like you just sit by the phone all day, eagerly awaiting a call or text from him (like he does you). You have a life. You’re busy. And even if you are intentionally dodging his texts, he can’t entirely fault you for it. Spencer knows he’s clingy. He knows he’s overbearing. It’s part of why he panicked the other night and told you the whole humiliating story about Elle. Because he can’t ever just be cool and he felt the need to explain himself. 

But the problem was, and is, that he doesn’t know how much longer he can go without saying those three words that fucked him over all those years ago.

So he’d danced around them. Applied them to someone else to try and avoid outright professing his all-consuming love for you over the phone. However you feel, Spencer has to assume he feels more. Spencer always has to assume he feels more because he usually does and it’s gotten him into trouble before. And now he’s pretty sure he was exactly right, as often is the case, because you didn’t tell him he was mistaken and you’d clammed up and you haven’t talked to him since and he’s not supposed to be reading into it this much. 

Three victims killed and dumped within a 6 mile radius of the first victim plus one victim killed and dumped 23.8 miles away. That doesn’t make any fucking sense. Fuck this guy. 

Spencer decides the problem is that he needs more caffeine. 

Or possibly, if he were a different kind of man—copious amounts of alcohol. 

So he stows his phone in a pocket and asks the first person he sees where the coffee machine is. 

“Looks like you found it earlier,” the woman says, glancing pointedly down at his mostly empty mug. A playful smirk tugs at pinkish-brownish lips. She’s pretty, he realizes distantly. But he registers it the same way he’d take note of the model of a car, or the species of a bird, or the kind of shoes someone is wearing. It doesn’t actually interest him. It’s just part of processing his environment. “I can show you to it?”

He doesn’t have the heart or energy to explain that someone else brought him his cup earlier and he’s not flirting with her. 

“If you could just point me in the right direction…?”

She laughs, short and dry, before she’s pointing down a hall. 

“Kitchenette down there and to the left.”

“Thanks,” he mutters, already walking away without sparing her a second glance. 

She’s the kind of woman he would have paid a lot more attention to before you came along. Not that he’d ever sleep with someone on the job (not since he was 25, anyway), but if he’d met her under any other circumstances he probably would have cared more about the way her pupils dilated and her eyes had widened slightly and she’d adjusted her posture and all the other small things people do when they’re attracted to someone else. 30 year old Spencer might have slept with her. 27 year old Spencer definitely would have slept with her. Current Spencer obsessively pines for a woman who is already his girlfriend and whom he has yet to sleep with at all far too much to think about other women like that. 

But god, does he think about you like that. 

His feet carry him down the dim, carpeted hallway but really it took barely a nudge and he’s thinking about you like that. At work. As he’s pouring himself coffee. 

Spencer is confident in the fact that if anyone were to look at him right now, they’d never guess he’s running clips of you in his mind like a dirty supercut. Because he’s just pouring coffee. That’s one good thing about having all those tabs open all the time. He can toggle between them quickly. He has enough going on in the background that people look at him and all they can tell is that he’s thinking hard about lots of things. Some of them just happen to be the way you look when you’re naked on his bed, skin shining and glazed eyes sleepy, parted lips higher in color than usual and catching your breath. Some of them happen to be your hair brushing his stomach before he gathers it back for you. Some of them happen to be the way your thighs feel on either side of his face, or how you stretch around his fingers, or how you might feel when you stretch around his—

He hisses as hot coffee overflows from the mug and burns his hand. 

Maybe he’s not as calm and collected as he thought. 

But on top of all the other things he’s dealing with, having been so close to actually sleeping with you the other night is really fucking with his head. Even if he tells himself he wouldn't have done it, he knows himself better than that. He's too familiar with the effect you have on his judgement.

“Found it okay?” 

Spencer looks down, surprised to see the woman from earlier sitting at her desk and watching him as he quickly passes by on his way back to the conference room. Her legs are crossed. She’s wearing a pencil skirt and a flouncy sort of blouse which seems impractical for working in an FBI field office. Maybe she notices his eye catching on her figure and misguidedly swivels her chair to give him a better look. But all he’s noticing is that it doesn’t look like yours. Now he’s picturing the curve of your hip dripping in silk after that first night at Rossi’s. How your waist and your stomach feel when he slides his hands over you. This woman—she might as well not even be here for all he’s actually seeing her. 

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

Then he’s gone. Very briefly he acknowledges that he should feel sorry for so obviously brushing her off, but he doesn’t care even close to enough. He sets the coffee down on the table and rounds to the board where one of several maps is taped. On autopilot he draws lines between dump sites because one of the background tabs had deduced, while he was busy watching you like porn, that the distance between dump sites form the beginnings of the constellation Orion with some mathematical precision that’s too exacting to be coincidental. Orion’s Belt plus the most recent victim. Betelgeuse. 

There are ten formally named stars that make up Orion. He marks all of them, but circles the transposed coordinates of Bellatrix, Saiph, Rigel and Meissa as the next most likely dump sites. Most probably it will be Orion’s head. They’re all in wooded areas. He calls Garcia. Garcia will call Emily, wherever she is. If the unsub sticks to pattern, which they always do, they have until midnight. It’s trite, really. Predictable, like people always are. Far too quickly he drinks half the cup of scalding coffee and retraces his steps through the office to find the bathroom. 

It’s empty. The fluorescent lights hum. Spencer washes his hands with cold water and presses still wet fingers to his eyes. You’re waiting for him behind the black of his lids.

At first you would whine, and he would kiss you and you’d moan into his mouth and say his name when he opened you up as far as you would go. The air would be thick and warm with sex and vanilla perfume. Afterwards he’d take care of you and buy new sheets for his bed in your favorite color even if they didn’t match the walls and there would be nothing you’d want for that he couldn’t give to you ever again. 

But. 

That’s all contingent. 

No matter how often he fantasizes about it, no matter in how much detail, and regardless of how often those details change wildly, one thing always stays the same. 

The shape of your lips, swollen from kissing, bending around five or six vowels and only two consonants (it seems odd that there are only two consonants in I love you), sometimes before you start, sometimes in the middle or right at the peak—but always there, always moving in slow motion—and always silent.

In real life, they’d be aloud. It’s why his fantasies aren’t good enough. It’s why he can’t stop fantasizing about it. That’s the only part that really matters to him. The rest varies. 

Not because having sex with you doesn’t matter—it matters so much he almost shatters his molars whenever he starts picturing it around other people. But because Spencer can’t have sex with you until you love him. 

And he worries that you can’t love him until you have sex with him. 

The last time he thought that about a person, it didn’t turn out well.

Maybe there is some magic number. Some amount of times you need to have sex with someone before they’ll love you back. 

If there is, he knows for a fact it’s more than 32.

And he also knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he cannot have loveless sex with you thirty three times while he waits to find out. 

Not again. 

But he's going to hold out as long as he possibly can until you say it because he so badly wants you to love him back. He'll let the weight of every ignored text, every reminder that you don't feel that way about him, hang from his shoulders until he collapses. And then he'll probably try to get back up.

Recycled paper towels scratch against his skin. He dries his face and hands and throws them crumpled into the trash can. 

Outside the restroom, he pulls out his phone. For safety reasons and paranoia disguised as professionalism, you’re not his lock screen. It’s a photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. Whatever distance lies between you and Spencer, it could always be greater. No matter where you are in the world, you will always be the same 2.537 million light years away from Andromeda that he is. 

It makes Orion feel much closer. You, too. 

He sends you a text—the third message in a row. 

The distance between blue bubbles feels like light years. 

I’ll be home tomorrow. I miss you. 

[inkedbybarnes]

anything

bucky barnes x fem!reader

summary: bucky is determined to take care of you while you're sick.

word count: 1.6k+

warnings: mentions of insecurities, mentions of illnesses (but vaguely described), fluffy ahh shit bc why not, usage of pet names such as baby and doll. bucky being stubbornly sweet (it is indeed, a warning), lowercase writing.

i've been sick the past few days hence the creation of this fic. idk why my mood drops when i'm sick... once again, this is too fluffy even for my own good but i warned you and you're reading it still anyway. 🤨 haha jk, i hope you enjoy this one! 🩷

dividers by @cafekitsune!

reblogs, comments, and likes are highly appreciated! thank you. ♡

“can you please let me in, baby?"

that was the fifth time bucky had asked the same question, never giving up on his mission to take care of you after learning from jarvis – out of all people... or robots? – that you were sick.

“bucky, i promise, i'm fine. stop trying to break the door,” you answered, your clogged nose not helping as you sounded horrible even with a concrete wall separating you from him. “go and tell steve that you're joining the mission. you can't withdraw yourself just because i'm—achoo!”

your nose began to leak, and you were now distracted with the need to find the tissue box that used to be on your bed. you didn't hear the door clicking open as well as the heavy footsteps of a certain soldier walking towards you.

“just because you're what? sick?”

you jumped, feeling the edge of the bed sink with his weight. you quickly grabbed the tissue box that was mysteriously thrown under the bed before facing bucky with the duvet covering most of your body.

“how did you open the door?”

bucky shrugged. “i broke the doorknob. you didn't say anything about breaking doorknobs.”

you sighed, not winning this argument with bucky. “you shouldn't be here, bucky. you're supposed to be preparing for a mission tomorrow, not babysitting me!”

“and let you go through this on your own? tough chance, doll. i'm your boyfriend for fuck's sake, and don't tell me that you're worried about getting me sick because we both know i'm immune," he argued, reaching out and pulling the blanket down enough to reveal your face. “are you really upset that i want to take care of you? you should be demanding things from me, baby. instead you've been hiding from me.”

“because i don't need anything, bucky. i can handle myself just fine." you huffed, knowing you wanted his attention and care so badly. remembering your face was exposed, you felt insecure again. you dragged the cover back up and turned away. “i also don't want you to see me like this.”

“like what?"

“like a mess," you muttered underneath the sheets. “you've never seen me like this before, and i swear i am the worst when i'm sick. you don't have to see me like this, okay? i don't want you to.”

you felt silly. it was completely normal to get sick, but you hated how extreme your body would act out whenever an illness would attack you. you'd always sound and look like you were fighting a battle in hell alone. the way your mind would take an entire flip and drag you to your lowest point didn't help either. so, not only were you feeling physically horrible, you were also struggling mentally.

“a mess? what mess?” he asked, lifting the cover to join you underneath it which caught you off guard. you were entirely exposed to his eyes now. “there's my girl. where's the mess that you're talking about, huh?”

with the little amount of energy left in you, you brought your hands up to cover your face. he could see how much of a mess you were now, far from the dream you've painted since the day you dated him. now, you were nothing but a nightmare of your reality.

“don't you dare hide from me. i haven't seen you all day and it's driving me insane," he complained, pulling your hands away from yourself. he brought his thumb to your teary eyes, wiping the tears away before they could fall. “i can't believe you're hiding from me just because you think i can't handle seeing you sick. what did you think i'd do once i saw you like this?”

you sniffed, hesitation holding you back from telling him the truth. it's only been three months since you've started dating bucky, and you were still in that stage where you'd constantly try impress him.

you weren't faking yourself, no. however, you still did your best to only show your good side and tuck away your insecurities. unfortunately, you had to get sick too soon and have to risk bucky seeing you this way.

“you thought i'd leave you? won't like you anymore? get turned off or something?”

you nodded, knowing that was exactly what went through your head and a bit pissed that he was able to read your mind without actually having the power to do so.

bucky's eyes softened at your confession, letting out a soft sigh as he saw how badly you were beating yourself up.

“if it's because of how you look right now, then it's true. you do look different," he answered, your chest tightening. “your eyes lost their glow, you're frowning more often, your eyes are all puffy, you are definitely grumpier than usual, your lips are dry and chapped from—”

“okay, i get it, bucky! you don't have to rub it in my fa—”

“but i won't be doing whatever is on your mind. you're sick, doll. it'll affect you. it's normal. hell, i look even worse when i used to get sick, but you? you still look so fucking lovely." he held your face gently, leaning forward to kiss your forehead. “even then, i don't give a fuck on how messy you can get. i'm your boyfriend. i should be taking care of you, helping you feel better, and bringing back the glow in your eyes. please, baby. let me take care of you.”

this time, you were looking back at him. "you mean it?"

"of course I mean it," he replied softly, his voice filled with sincerity. "i love you, doll. i don't care how you look like right now. you could look like a swamp monster and be sick as a dog, and i would still think that you are the most beautiful woman for me."

you giggled softly, his words filling you with warmth and reassurance. you felt so lucky to have a man who truly loved you and handled your insecurities with such understanding and care, and even sillier for thinking he'd leave you for such reasons.

“thank you. that really made me feel better," you told him, your arms slowly creeping forward to hold him. “i'm sorry for hiding. i was just scared to turn you off or anything.”

“are you kidding? i'm trying my best not to hold you down and kiss you all over. i haven't even hugged you for a day,” bucky said, a pout on the verge of forming on his face.

“it hasn't even been a day, bucky. now, who's dramatic?" you said, rolling your eyes playfully. “and you're supposed to be on a mission tomorrow! are you really not going?”

“when i could be here taking care of you?” he asked, as if the answer was already obvious. “the others can handle it. my main priority is to do anything you want and make you feel better.”

“anything?”

he smiled, leaning down to let your lips meet softly. "anything."

( a lil bonus < 3 )

“what is that smell?”

sam, steve, and natasha entered the compound after a quick briefing for their mission tomorrow. they joined tony and clint who were having a casual conversation in the living room about the best burrito in town.

the kitchen was an open space, the aroma of whatever bucky was cooking spreading all around the nearby rooms.

sam didn't hesitate to come closer and inspect the kitchen, finding the entire counter lined up with various spices and plates that bucky filled with his dishes.

“what's the occasion? did i miss something?" sam asked, grabbing a fork to take a little taste until bucky slapped his hand away. "ow! what was that for?"

"hands off." bucky warned, frowning at sam. “that's not for you, wilson."

“not even a nibble? come on, man. it smells amazing!”

their usual bickering caught the attention of the other avengers, immediately joining them in the kitchen which annoyed bucky even more when he saw them eyeing the food he made.

"before any of you try to ask, no. this is not for any of you."

"who's it even for?" natasha asked, the least interested to have a taste, but was curious either way.

bucky answered with your name. "she's sick."

"what? since when?" clint asked, worry flashing across his face. "can we do anything?"

bucky glanced up before hesitantly answering. "well.. she did say she wanted to watch a movie after eating."

clint snapped his fingers and smiled. "i'm on it."

"i'll get jarvis to check on her vitals every hour and create a diagnosis," tony said, already tapping on his smart watch. "assuming she wouldn't be too comfortable letting the entire team know what's going on with her body, i'll just let you receive the updates. just update me with what you can, yeah?"

"i'll talk to fury and let you both have a week free from work," steve offered. "she needs the rest and she needs you."

"oh, i'll handle fury. he can't say no to his favourite," natasha said with a smug smile. "tell her i'll bring her all her favourite snacks once we're back from our mission, and that she better be back to full health so we can go out together."

bucky nodded, chest warming with the genuine concern they shared. he was excited to let you know how loved and deserving of all this you were.

if you have any requests for bucky, send them my way! 💌