#it’s 11pm i’m gonna think about this for the next 2 hours aren’t i

[unluckedtj]

i be been rocking back and forth while reading part 6-8 this is the COOLEST WAY TO BRING BACK NAI. ??!?!?! THE BRANCHES ? THIS WORKS WITH VASH’S ROOTS oh my god it’s so over. it’s gonna plague my head again what oh my go I FEEL LIKE A WINNER

Beware of major Trigun spoilers!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Read from right to left

Trigger warning for violence, blood, gore and body horror! Hooray!

If you want a little background music, try listening to "Everybody knows that you're insane" by QOTSA. I was listening to this when I worked out the chapter in my head and it fits Nai SO well, especially the lyrics! Yeah so, both boys are back from being human to part human/part plant now...I hope you like how this played out, even though it got a lot bloodier than the first parts. Please imagine me continuously knocking Nai on the head with a squeaky toy hammer. This is what I'm doing here in blorbo speach. Also, let me know what you think! I'd love to hear your thoughts and any feedback is welcome, as always! <3

[muniimyg]

♡ 04: how you're lookin' at me, yeah, i know what that means and i'm obsessed

series m.list // taglist

note: a wild ride…. good luck y’all ,, THANKS FOR 1K 😻 my kitty is happy !!! hauwhahahahaa this part is lengthy so pls take a mfking SEAT. pls lmk what y’all think ,, send in asks 🫵 we’re headed towards the finale 💛 much wuv !!

warnings: tension/tampo vibes (whats that in english? lol) ,, male masturbation (jk gets himself off as he recalls oc slapping him) ,, jealousy (lots of it. like 90% of this part is filled with it) ,, oc has a hickey ,, angst ,, and a little mwaamwaaaa moment :')

//

life sucks. 

for jungkook, at least. 

it’s been almost a month since the incident, and you’ve done everything in your power to avoid him.

the memory of the fight—the words exchanged, the way he said your name—still lingers in the air between you like smoke, suffocating and inescapable.

at first, jungkook tried.

he texted you the next day and every day after that. his messages were hesitant and apologetic... and each one was left unanswered.

nerd [11:11PM]: ___, can we talk? sent nerd [11:28PM]: please? sent nerd [12:01AM]: i’m sorry. i mean it. sent nerd [12:03AM]: it wasn’t even like that. not with her.  sent nerd [1:09AM]: ik i’m gonna sound like a total douche no matter what so let me do it please sent nerd [1:15AM]: let me say sorry, let me fuck up, let me make it up to u sent nerd [2:01AM]: i really hate begging  sent nerd [2:01AM]: but i really hate u not wanting me even more seen

he did try to call though.

just once.

the ringtone barely lasted before he hung up, realizing how futile it was.

at one point, he showed up at your favorite coffee shop one afternoon. he sat alone by the window with an untouched drink, waiting. 

his eyes flicked to the door every time it opened, a glimmer of hope lighting his expression for a split second before fading when it wasn’t you.

after two hours, he left.

but now, almost four weeks later, jungkook has stopped trying (so hard).

it wasn’t a sudden decision, more of a gradual acceptance that whatever connection you’d shared—whatever you’d been to each other—was slipping through his fingers.

he told himself you needed time, that maybe this space was what you wanted, what you deserved. and so, he gave it to you.

he told himself it wasn’t the end. 

it couldn’t be.

he refuses for it to be. 

this is just… complicated. 

he gets that.

he's a smart guy after all!

but late at night, when the world was quiet and he was left alone with his thoughts, the weight of your absence pressed against his chest like an ache he couldn’t soothe. it... burns? it throbs in this aching rhythm that he can't quite figure the melody to.

jungkook thinks about the way you banter with him and how much it makes his day. how closely you sit next to him. how effortlessly you mesmerize him… 

how you flirted with him for a few days and now he's malfunctioning. how he spent the last month memorizing every detail of those days and can't get over it. he has convinced himself you're into him...  

like, remember how your fingers would brush his when you handed him something? that meant something, right? or how about the way you looked at him and tilted your head? shit, yeah.

that meant something.

fuck, the way you laugh and throw your head back and he gets a glance at your perfect neck—how he wants to leave kisses on it. how he… 

how he had you. 

for a moment, he really had you. 

under him, tangled, and messy. 

how he was so close to your lips. 

he should’ve kissed you. 

he should’ve locked the fucking door. 

he should’ve ran after you even more. 

but he didn’t…

and now? 

now you aren’t even around. 

he recalls what taehyung said to him night at the arcade. taehyung's words rub into his wound like salt. it stings. it makes him feel sick to his stomach and he just... get can't stomach it.

“she isn't gonna stick around forever... especially with all the shit you pull…”

there are no words to describe how incredibly helpless he feels.

if anything, he goes through circles in his mind; completely in disbelief he could fuck up this bad with you.

he hates that he can't think straight. he hates that he can't study properly. he hates that he stopped tutoring and even got in trouble with his profs for letting them down (they really counted on jungkook to help other students out).

he hates that he can't fucking breathe lately.

he can't sleep.

he can't eat.

jungkook hates the growing distance, but more than that, he hates how much it hurts.

he hates how much he wants to fix things even when he doesn’t know how. he just knows he wants to. god, fuck it—

fine. 

he hates how much he misses you.

but most of all, he hates that he was wrong. 

it was entirely his fault. 

jungkook hates it all.

by chance, you and jungkook run into each other. 

the scene is perfect.

it's the perfect set up to cry over when you get home—that is.

the rain starts just as you’re leaving the library, soft at first but quickly turning heavier. you don’t expect to see him—not here, not now—but there he is, standing under the awning of the café across the street, shaking out his umbrella. the door chimes as you step outside, and he looks up.

for a moment, neither of you move, caught in the heavy stillness of the moment.

jungkook freezes when he sees you. 

his eyes widen briefly, then soften into something cautious, hesitant. he tucks his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, fingers flexing nervously against the fabric as he steps forward.

“hey,” he says, his voice careful, like he’s offering a truce.

the sound of him makes your heart clench, the warmth in his tone threatening to undo you. but you don’t let it show. you nod once, lips pressed into a thin line, and move to step around him.

“wait—” his hand shoots out, not to grab you, just to stop you. his fingers hover midair, unsure if he even has the right to reach for you anymore. “___, please?”

the rain is falling harder now, pooling on the sidewalk and soaking into the edges of your shoes. you glance at him, taking in the way his hair clings to his forehead, the way his hoodie looks just a little too big on him, like he hasn’t been sleeping well or eating much.

“can you not pretend like this is a coincidence?” you ask quietly, refusing to meet his gaze. 

he stays silent. 

it wasn’t. 

truth be told, he’s been waiting outside for almost 45 minutes. he didn’t even know if you were at the library today… he just had to wait and find out for himself. 

"do you have an umbrella?" he asks, breaking the silence. 

"what—"

"here." 

he cuts you off, pushing the umbrella toward you.

you blink, startled, as he places the handle firmly in your hand. your fingers wrap around it instinctively, the metal cool against your palm.

"jungkook—" you start, your voice faltering.

he shakes his head, stepping back into the rain without a word. the downpour hits him almost instantly, soaking through his hoodie as he shoves his hands into his pockets and starts walking away.

you stand there, the umbrella trembling in your grip, watching him go. the rain comes down harder, cascading off the awning above you, but you barely notice. your gaze stays locked on him—on the way his shoulders hunch against the storm, on the slow but steady steps that carry him farther and farther away.

something tightens in your chest. 

maybe it’s regret or maybe longing… but as his figure grows smaller and the storm swallows him—you feel it.

the warmth of his lingering presence and the chill of it all—

—of your favourite almost.

a few days later, jungkook finds his umbrella in his bedroom. 

he takes out his phone to send you a text, prepared to humiliate himself and to beg for a second of your attention. he’d trade all tonight’s focus for a moment of you.

just as he picks the umbrella up, he finds a note. 

___ told me to give it back to you. she says thanks (whore). ps: she said don’t text her. — taehyung

jungkook sighs. 

does he listen? 

obviously not. 

nerd [6:19PM]: don’t tell me what to do  nerd [6:20PM]: i hate this nerd [6:21PM]: u should’ve jus kept the umbrella. giving it back to taehyung and telling him to tell me not to text u is sick.  seen. nerd [6:22PM]: reply pls seen.  nerd [6:26PM]: fine. i’ll jus talk to myself  nerd [6:31PM]: i miss u sm i jerked off the other night thinking abt the way u slapped me  seen nerd [6:33PM]: come on, kitty  nerd [6:34PM]: promise to think abt me tn :(  nerd [6:35PM]: cos i’m gonna think abt u tn nerd [6:36PM]: ignore me if u want proof  typing…  nerd [6:37PM]: kitty? seen nerd [6:40PM]: fuck. nerd [6:41PM]: how do u get me so fucking hard thru text? maybe i jus miss u too much  nerd [6:42PM]: excited for my proof?  seen nerd [6:45PM]: ft?  seen nerd [6:46PM]: keep seenzoning me and i’ll cum typing... seen ___ has notifications silenced

but it's too late.

jungkook meant it.

he's sat on his gaming chair, cock heavy.

his phone is out with that group picture from the arcade (zoomed into you) as lewd thoughts of you fill his mind. jungkook runs his thumb across his tip, hissing at the way it feels over his slit. 

he flicks his wrists, gripping his dick with just enough pressure to grow the hardness. it’s already stiff and he can feel the need to cum—but he just can’t.

he can’t without thinking of you. 

so, his eyes flutter shut as his memories of you replay in his mind. 

from the way your lips winced when he ate you out—to the way that mini skirt looked on you that day. he thinks about the way you say his name; in any and every way. angry, teasingly, and desperately… he thinks about how pretty it sounds rolling off your tongue. 

how pretty you looked under him.

how good you smelt when he kissed your neck. 

how close you sat next to him—fingertips lingering... god, what he would do to be close to you again. 

jungkook thinks about the slap. 

how hard your palms hit his cheek and how angry you looked at him. despite the negativity surrounding the situation—he can’t help it. 

you looked so hot. 

it just… gets to him. 

before he knows it, his hand is covered in his sticky cum. 

he’s a loser—a nerd in your words. 

he always has been… and here he is; jerking himself off to the pretty girl he lost his chance with.

the night is supposed to be nothing special. 

for jungkook, it’s just another event for his precious marine conservation club—a fundraiser, a schmooze-fest for potential investors, and a chance to hand out awards to appease the donors. sure, he’s getting an award, but it doesn’t feel like much.

the room buzzes with polite conversation and clinking glasses. jungkook adjusts his tie for the hundredth time, barely paying attention to the speeches and presentations. he stands off to the side with the other club members, blending into the background until his name is called.

“jeon jungkook, for outstanding contributions to marine conservation and innovation. mr. jeon has been working towards innovative chemical solutions for marine conservation, focusing on sustainable practices to protect endangered species like dolphins, and developing eco-friendly alternatives to reduce their environmental impact.”

the applause is polite but hearty.

jungkook steps onto the stage, the spotlight hitting him square in the face. as he accepts the plaque, his gaze instinctively sweeps over the audience—and then it stops.

you’re here.

sitting with the guys, casually chatting like you belong there, like you haven’t been avoiding him for a month and a half (at this point).

his heart trips over itself. 

he’s not even sure if it’s relief or panic or something else entirely, but it rattles him. he forces his attention back to the microphone, holding the plaque in his slightly sweaty hands.

“uh, thank you,” he begins, his voice steady enough, though his pulse is anything but. “our club’s mission has always been to protect and preserve marine life through education, community projects, and outreach. with this award…”

his eyes flick back to you. 

you’re laughing at something taehyung just said, your smile bright, your whole demeanor light and carefree.

“…we want to focus on…”

he falters, the words slipping from his mind as his gaze lingers on you.

“…we want to focus on… f-focus…”

a ripple of laughter spreads through the audience. someone whistles playfully. he blinks, startled back into the moment.

“…focus on sustainable practices and expanding our projects,” he finishes, clearing his throat as heat rises to his cheeks.

you’re laughing too, your head tilted slightly as you join the others. it should make him feel worse, but somehow, seeing you like that—smiling, present—grounds him.

he powers through the rest of the speech, keeping his gaze firmly away from where you’re sitting. when it’s over, he accepts the handshake from the host and makes his way offstage, barely registering the applause.

as soon as the ceremony ends, jungkook doesn’t even think. 

he weaves through the crowd, ignoring congratulatory pats on the back and comments from investors, his eyes scanning for you.

how did you know about tonight?

wait. 

shit.

he’s been texting you every day with random ass updates. of course you know. he’s yapped about it… but why? why did you come? don’t you hate his guts?

you're here so... maybe you don't hate him as much as he has convinced himself you do.

jungkook finds you near the back with the friend group, holding a glass of champagne and listening to hoseok animatedly retell a story.

“congratulations,” you say lightly, lifting your glass in a mock toast. your words are casual, but there's an edge to them, a distance you've kept between the two of you for far too long.

his chest tightens at the awkwardness of your tone, but he nods, his hands slipping into his pockets. the space between you feels impossibly wide now, though only a few feet separate you.

“thanks,” he says, his voice quieter than he intended. “... thanks for coming.”

his gaze flickers to yours for a second before dropping to the floor, and he shifts, a little uncertain, taking a half-step closer.

hesitantly, you inch back. 

his presence is suddenly overwhelming, more than you’re ready for.

“yeah… of course,” you murmur, unsure how to navigate the new dynamic between you two. the tension is thick, but there's something else there too. an unspoken history. “what are friends for, you know?”

he hates that. 

friends. 

yeah fucking right.

jungkook tries to break the tension.

he takes a risk.

he takes a small step forward, hoping you don’t move. this is the closest he’s gotten to you in over a month—he needs this. it’s like euphoria in his veins—being with you again.

he needs this.

“how have you been?” he asks, the question coming out softer than he anticipated. jungkook scratches the back of his neck and continues. “a-are you coming to the afterparty?”

your lips part, a pause hanging between you.

you don’t want to admit how much you’ve missed this. how much you’ve missed him.

but the words slip out, more natural than you expect.

“yeah,” you say, giving him a brief but warm look. “i’ll be there.”

for a moment, your eyes lock, and something shifts. 

it’s like you’ve both forgotten all the walls, the space between you collapsing. he can feel his heart rate quicken, like his knees might give out, but he forces himself to stay grounded, to act nonchalant.

“cool,” he says, trying to brush off the sudden rush of emotions. “i’ll.. i’ll be there too.” he smiles, but it’s the kind of smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes—not yet, anyway.

“i sure hope so,” you laugh. “it’s your party, nerd.”

nerd. 

holy shit. 

never has he ever felt so relieved to hear you call him that. 

as he’s about to say more, taehyung appears out of nowhere, slapping his arm and giving him a congratulatory squeeze. 

“hey, man, nice speech. well deserved,” taehyung says, grinning like an idiot. “what did you want to focus on, again?”

you laugh while jungkook rolls his eyes. he shoves taehyung playfully. 

suddenly, you can’t help but feel the awkwardness settle back in, like something’s shifted again. you feel a pang in your chest as you turn toward the other people nearby, the ones you've been socializing with before jungkook showed up. the buzz of the conversation pulls you away, and you focus on the group, hoping to escape the overwhelming emotions that jungkook’s presence stirs.

jungkook watches you go, his eyes lingering as you slip away from the conversation. 

he can’t help it. 

you’re in his head again.

he looks over at taehyung, catching his eye. 

“hyung, is she coming to the dinner before the afterparty?” he asks, trying to sound casual. his voice betrays him, cracking with just the faintest hint of hope.

taehyung raises an eyebrow, taking a sip of his drink. 

“yeah. excited?”

“no.”

taehyung scoffs. “say that again but take away the lying.”

“fuck off.”

“___’s a good friend, man,” taehyung chuckles, redirecting the conversation. “you’re lucky. you just might be back in her good graces.”

jungkook’s heart skips a beat. 

“really?” he asks, trying not to sound too eager.

taehyung grins, leaning in a little. 

“yeah, but... she’s bringing her little boyfriend with her.”

you’re doing what?

jungkook feels the need to rub his eyes or something.

was taehyung shitting on him? boyfriend? when did this happen? no fucking way. 

jungkook refuses to believe it. 

… yet, the words hit jungkook like a punch to the gut. his breath catches, and his stomach tightens. 

"what?" his voice is barely a whisper, the weight of it settling in. 

"she didn't tell you?"

"we haven't been talking."

"rightfully so."

fuck. 

no. 

he doesn’t want to believe it, but the hurt is already seeping through.

taehyung shrugs, oblivious to the internal storm brewing in jungkook. 

“shit, well... yeah, she’s been seeing him for a while. dunno if they’re officially together, but… guess she’s really moving on. good for her, right? i mean, now you can really focus on just being her friend.”

the air stills. 

the reality of it all comes crashing down. jungkook’s heart sinks, his chest tightening in that all-too-familiar ache. 

that's why you’ve been busy... 

you’ve been moving on.

his fingers curl into fists, the anger bubbling up before he can suppress it. but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t let his emotions spill out in front of taehyung, even though every part of him is screaming. 

“yeah,” he forces a smile. “i guess.”

as the night goes on, jungkook can’t shake the feeling that he’s lost something he can’t get back. something that’s slipping further away with every step you take, every laugh you share with someone else. and no matter how much he wants to fight for it, he’s afraid it’s already too late.

jungkook doesn’t want to go to dinner anymore.

he has no appetite.

jungkook is already at the dinner when you arrive. 

his mood is off, grumpy but with an undercurrent of sadness that he can’t quite shake. he’s forcing a smile when people congratulate him for the award, but it’s clear it’s not reaching his eyes. the night’s just been a blur of congratulations and polite smiles, but all he can think about who will walk in with you. 

does he know him?

is he gonna be some super cool prince charming?

does he know that jungkook was eating you out just a month ago? 

all valid questions…

however, you arrive a little late, and immediately his gaze searches for you in the crowd. when he sees you, his heart lurches. he spots you talking to someone, and the knot in his stomach tightens.

you make your way to the table, your eyes scanning it before you stop. for a moment, you aren’t sure where to sit. usually, you sit next to jungkook… but the spot is occupied by jimin. 

not by choice.

jungkook had saved the spot for you… you just came too late and he didn’t have it in him to tell jimin to move. but, jimin catches the milli-second exchanged look you have with jungkook and immediately shifts. 

“oh,” jimin begins. “shit, i forgot… didn’t know you were gonna show up so late—”

you chuckle, shaking your head. “it’s fine we’re gonna sit on the other side! by the way,” you pause and push the guy you came with forward. “this is do-hwan. he’s a biochem major and we have a few electives together… um, what else?” 

biochem?

serisouly?

do you have a thing for nerds or something? bro doesn't even look the part. he should be majoring in physics or something even more lame.

jungkook's thoughts cut short when he hears you giggling.

“hi,” do-hwan says with a grins at everyone. then, he turns and extends his hand to jungkook. “jungkook? shit, man. congrats on the award.”

he chuckles, giving jungkook a playful look. “organic chem, huh? i guess someone has to study the pretty side of chemistry.” 

what the fuck does that mean?

jungkook’s ears turn red. 

“yeah,” he grumbles under his breath. “nice to meet you too.”

with that, you and do-hwan make your way to the other side of the table. jungkook watches, his gaze hardening as you take a seat beside him.

he’s trying his best to stay calm and to not show it—not show how absolutely fucking mad this entire thing is.

this is ridiculous! 

his chest tightens painfully at the sight of you sitting with him. his fingers curl into his glass as he watches you laugh and chat with others, inserting do-hwan like you’re some proud girlfriend. 

you've probably known do-hwan like 10 seconds.

and jungkook can’t help it! every word you exchange with do-hwan makes him feel like he’s being crushed from the inside out. 

he’s trying to focus on the conversation happening around him, but his mind keeps wandering, drifting to you.

he watches as you lean in to talk to do-hwan, the way your eyes light up when you laugh at something he says. it’s the same laugh, the same warmth in your smile, but somehow it feels so much farther away from him now—like a memory that he’s trying to hold onto but can’t quite grasp.

he forces himself to look at the group again, but his gaze keeps slipping back to you. every word you exchange with do-hwan makes his chest tighten.

it's like he’s suffocating, and he can’t tear his eyes away. the way he moves so casually, his hand brushing against yours as he reaches for his drink. 

it’s too much.

it’s too familiar.

and then, as you turn your head to respond to someone else, he sees it.

just a flash of it—right there on your neck. 

a small hickey, barely visible, but it might as well be a brand. his heart stops for a beat. the sight burns in his chest, and before he can stop himself, his breath catches in his throat.

his stomach churns violently, a rush of heat flooding his veins. everything feels like it’s collapsing inward. the noise around him fades, and all he can hear is the pounding of his own heartbeat. the world shrinks, and the weight of the jealousy hits him like a truck.

he can’t stay here. 

not like this. 

not with this tightness in his chest, not with the ache in his stomach. the room feels like it’s closing in on him, and he knows—he knows he has to get out.

without a word, he stands abruptly, pushing his chair back. his heart races as he excuses himself from the table, slipping away into the hallway outside the main dining area.

the rest of the table doesn’t seem to notice his sudden departure, but your friends quickly start murmuring, and one of them nudges you. 

"you should probably go check on him," taehyung says, giving you an almost knowing look. “i told you not to bring him.”

you hesitate for a second, then stand, glancing at do-hwan.

“it’s not do-hwan's fault.”

taehyung rolls his eyes at you. 

“you’re playing it kinda mean tonight though,” he tells you. “jungkook’s been miserable. sure he deserves to be dragged through mud for whatever happened and for whatever he said, but this? on his night? i don’t know ___…”

you gulp.

maybe taehyung is right.

but you didn’t intend for it to be like this. you genuinely brought a friend you’ve been spending time with! and, sure… yeah. you’ve been kissing him for a few weeks now, but so what? jungkook has probably been fucking every student he’s been tutoring so why the fuck does this matter?

“___…” taehyung urges you. 

“yeah, yeah… i’m going.” 

you wave taehyung off as you get up from your seat. you excuse yourself and let do-hwan know you’ll be right back.

you find jungkook outside. 

he stands with his back pressed against the cool metal of his car, arms crossed loosely over his chest. you notice that his posture is stiff... like he’s trying to keep himself grounded, but his shoulders still carry the weight of what he’s just seen.

his jaw clenches every so often, like he’s holding something back, but when his muscles tense, it’s almost as if the anger or hurt inside him is too much to contain.

as you walk towards him and he notices you. he runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends, clearly agitated. he lets out a slow, shaky breath, his eyes cast down toward the ground as if trying to collect his thoughts. he shakes his head slightly, as if to shake off the frustration that has settled in his chest, but it doesn’t seem to help. 

then, he looks up at the sky, his gaze distant, unfocused, lost in the swirl of thoughts that seem to chase him in circles. his arms drop to his sides for a moment, his fingers flexing and unflexing like he’s trying to release the tension that has built up in his body.

after a long pause, he lets out a frustrated sigh, raking his hand through his hair again, this time pushing it back as he exhales sharply.

his whole stance is restless.

it’s like he can’t quite settle his thoughts or his body, caught between what he feels and the reality of what’s happening. 

he’s trapped in his own head, unable to escape the weight of the situation.

by now, you’re next to him.

are you here to set him free?

“so… have the dolphins ever thanked you for your hard work?” you ask, trying to break both the silence and tension with your light tone. “you do so much for them… ungrateful little brats—you know they’re psychos right? they bully—”

he doesn’t turn around. 

“what’s on your neck?” he asks. “did your boyfriend do that?”

your chest hurts at his words. “he’s not... he’s not my boyfriend.” you swallow, trying to keep your voice steady. “he’s just a friend.”

there’s a long pause, and when he finally turns to face you, his eyes are a mixture of frustration and hurt. 

“the same kind of friend i am to you?”

he’s trying to sound nonchalant, but there’s a tremor in his voice.

you shake your head, not knowing how to explain, not knowing how to make him understand.

“you know what? i didn’t come here to make you feel like this…” your voice cracks slightly. “i didn’t... i don’t want to hurt you. i didn’t want to come.”

he scoffs bitterly.

“maybe you shouldn’t have.”

his words sting, but you can’t back down. 

“what do you want me to do?” you ask, frustrated. “if i didn’t show up, you’d be upset and blow up my phone. now that i’m here, you’re still upset—”

“and this is how you chose to show up?” jungkook raises his voice, turning to you. he steps forward, towering over you. he brings his hands to your hair, pushing it back and leaning in to look at your hickey properly. 

he squints. 

“are you proud of this?” he hisses. “fucking bug bite bullshit.”

“stop—” you snap, cutting him off now. “don’t—”

“okay. sorry, fuck..."

a beat.

"___, i miss you,” he breathes. “i just… shit. can you stay still for a second?”

there’s a long silence between you two, the air thick with things unsaid. jungkook looks like he’s about to say something, but his mouth closes, his frustration evident in the way he grits his teeth. 

instead, he just breathes you in. 

for the first time in a month and a half; jungkook can breathe.

then, he steps away and sighs. 

“think i’m gonna head home first. i… i need some space or something,” jungkook tells you. “let them know for me?”

“y-yeah. sure.”

“okay,” jungkook nods. “i’ll see you later.”

“see you.”

for the first time in a while, jungkook offers you a smile and you return it. 

short and sweet—he takes it. 

he leaves and thinks about it the entire drive home.

when you arrive at the party, you’re still reeling from the brief exchange with jungkook. 

your thoughts are completely a tangled mess. 

from the words he didn’t say to the way his eyes held that edge of something unspoken—it all lingers in your mind like an unsolved puzzle. you thought you had it all figured out…

that you could be fine.

that you could move on—but now, after that moment, you’re not so sure anymore. 

your heart races in a way that you can’t explain. why does it feel like you’re standing on the edge of something—something big, something scary—and yet, you're not sure if you want to fall or pull back?

your mind keeps returning to the way he looked at you, like he was caught between wanting to say everything and nothing at all. it’s not a feeling you can shake off easily.

it’s heavier than you thought it would be.

at the party, you try your best to focus on the people around you. do-hwan is by your side, chatting casually with a few people, most of them strangers to you. some faces are familiar—people from jungkook’s marine conservation club, and others... just people. 

you make your rounds, greeting them politely, exchanging pleasantries, but your thoughts are still drifting back to him. to jungkook. the air is thick with anticipation, and no matter how much you try to focus on the conversations happening around you, your mind keeps wandering.

and then, there he is.

jungkook is standing by the drink table, his posture relaxed but not at ease. 

his gaze flicks to you for a moment, a brief flicker of something—maybe surprise, maybe something more—before he meets your eyes. there’s a tense, palpable moment of silence.

he’s holding a red cup in one hand, his fingers wrapped loosely around it. his other hand rests in his pocket, but his stance is still too rigid... too guarded.

it’s like he’s waiting for something to happen, for you to do something.

he doesn’t smile. 

he just nods at you. 

a small, deliberate movement that somehow feels too formal, too distant.

no words.

just acknowledgment.

you feel the knot tighten in your stomach, the nervous energy in your chest quickening. it’s the simplest thing, but it feels loaded with so much more.

you can’t look away. 

something inside you is aching to go over, to close the space between you, to ask if everything’s okay, to say something—but you're frozen. the tension in the air between you is thick enough to suffocate.

you swallow hard, trying to calm the unease building in your chest, but it's no use.

the silence stretches out, heavy and thick, as you stand there, caught between the desire to run or to take a step closer, not sure if you're brave enough for either.

you take a step back, trying to break eye contact, when suddenly, someone bumps into you from behind. you stumble forward, your feet catching on the edge of a rug, and you let out a startled breath as you lose your balance.

before you can fully fall, a strong hand grips your wrist, pulling you back against something solid. your breath catches as you feel the warmth of someone’s body close to you.

it’s jungkook.

without a word, his other hand slides around your waist, steadying you, his fingers briefly pressing against the fabric of your shirt. the contact is brief but grounding, like the world, slows for a moment, just the two of you, suspended in time.

he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t offer the usual reassuring words. 

his grip is firm, and steady, but he doesn’t linger. as quickly as it happens, he pulls away, his hand leaving your waist just as the tension between you starts to build.

you open your mouth to say something, maybe a thank you, but before the words leave your lips, he’s already moving away, stepping back with that familiar, unreadable expression.

you stand there. 

you’re frozen for a beat longer than necessary. your chest tight as you try to catch your breath… his sudden departure stings more than you care to admit. there’s no time for you to process what just happened, what that touch meant—or didn't mean—before he vanishes back into the crowd.

fuck.

the night only gets louder as more people flood into the house. 

the music thrums through the walls, bass-heavy and relentless, blending with the clatter of cups and the hum of overlapping conversations.

you weave through the crowd, the heat of so many bodies pressed together almost suffocating. your heart races—not from the chaos around you but from the weight of the unspoken tension that’s followed you since you walked in.

you couldn’t bring yourself to drink, though do-hwan had handed you a cup earlier. 

it’s long forgotten somewhere, left behind on a table. you’re too afraid of what a single drink might loosen in you—afraid of saying or doing something you’re not ready for.

you don’t want to make worse what already feels so broken.

“hey.” do-hwan’s voice cuts through the noise, his hand resting lightly on your arm. he pulls you aside to a quieter corner of the room, away from the crush of people. “you okay?”

you nod, a small, uncertain smile tugging at your lips. “yeah. just... a little overwhelmed, i guess.”

he watches you closely, his expression softening as if he’s trying to read between the lines. “you sure? you’ve been kind of quiet tonight.”

“i’m fine, really.”

“you don’t have to be,” he says, and it’s the way he says it—gentle, almost understanding—that makes you crack a real smile. “pretty sure jungkook hates me. pretty sure he’s killed me 10 times in his head in the past hour or so… and he knows all the organic chem shit to make it a really clean murder, you know? “

you let out a weak laugh, but it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. 

he grins at the sight, his confidence blooming as he leans in closer, his shoulder brushing against yours. 

“there it is,” he says playfully. “i was starting to think you didn’t know how to smile anymore.”

you laugh softly despite yourself, and his grin widens. 

do-hwan then dips his head lower as he talks, his voice dropping slightly, as if the two of you are sharing a secret. it’s intimate in a way that makes your cheeks flush, his proximity unnerving. his eyes flick to yours, and he leans in just a little more.

across the room, jungkook sees everything. 

is it hot in here?

because fuck, he’s burning up.

actually, the entire house is on fire in his mind. 

he’s been watching you for most of the night, though he pretends not to be.

the way do-hwan hovers near you, the way you laugh at something he says—it feels like a punch to the chest. every small interaction between you two is a reminder of what he’s lost, of what he could’ve had if he’d been braver, better.

his grip on his cup tightens, his knuckles white against the red plastic. he can’t hear what you’re saying, but he doesn’t need to. the way do-hwan leans closer, the way his hand brushes your arm—it’s enough to make jealousy coil hot and bitter in jungkook’s stomach. it burns through him, unbearable, as he watches do-hwan dip his head lower, his lips so close to yours.

and then something inside him snaps.

fuck it. 

before he knows it, he’s moving through the crowd, his feet carrying him faster than his mind can keep up. his hand reaches out, fingers wrapping firmly around your wrist just as do-hwan’s face nears yours. you barely have time to process the sudden motion before you’re being yanked back, stumbling slightly into jungkook’s chest.

“what the hell?” do-hwan says, his tone sharp, but jungkook doesn’t even look at him. his focus is entirely on you, his jaw tight and eyes dark with something unreadable.

your breath catches, your heart hammering in your chest as you look up at him, startled. 

“jungkook—”

he doesn’t let you finish. 

his hand wraps firmly around your wrist, and before you can process what’s happening, he’s pulling you away. his grip is steady but not rough, a silent insistence that leaves no room for argument.

“jungkook, wait—” you try again, glancing back at do-hwan, whose confused expression barely registers in the rush of your heartbeat.

jungkook doesn’t look back, his jaw tight and his steps purposeful as he weaves through the crowd, his hand never leaving yours. the air around you feels heavy, the muffled music and chatter blurring into white noise as he leads you up the stairs.

your pulse thrums in your ears as he pushes open a door and pulls you inside, closing it behind you with a quiet but final click. the sudden silence of the room contrasts sharply with the chaos outside, and for a moment, you can only stare at him, your chest rising and falling as you catch your breath.

he finally lets go of your wrist, his hand lingering for a split second longer than necessary before he steps back. his gaze is dark, unreadable, but the tension radiating off him is palpable. the weight of the moment presses down on you, thick and suffocating, as you wait for him to speak.

a moment passes.

then, another.

and another.

and another.

and then—

“dump him.” 

you clearly your throat.

“can’t dump him. he’s not my boyfriend—“

“you and your fucking situationships.”

you gulp.

you hate the way he says it.

situationship… fuck him.

the room feels smaller than it is, the air thick with the weight of the moment. jungkook’s jaw ticks as he stares at you, the sharpness in his voice cutting through the silence.

“you’re… fucking with me, right?” he spits out, his tone teetering between disbelief and frustration. “you can’t be fucking real right now. you were just—”

“i was just what?” you snap, your glare matching his. “no fair, jungkook. i got to hear you fuck some girl, but you don’t want to watch me kiss—”

“did i ask you to?” he cuts in, his voice rising.

“no,” you huff, crossing your arms. “but what are you asking from me right now? huh? jungkook… i don’t understand you—”

“what do you think i’m asking?” his voice lowers, but the intensity behind it doesn’t waver. he steps closer, his presence almost suffocating. “you’re always trying to act like this doesn’t matter. like i don’t matter.”

“maybe it doesn’t,” you challenge, even though the words taste bitter on your tongue.

jungkook laughs, but it’s humorless, sharp. 

“yeah, sure. that’s why you still give a fuck about me fucking—”

you snap. “don’t tell me her name.”

“what?” jungkook grumbles. “is that it? you get to parade around, yelling his fucking name and announcing it to the entire fucking world but i don’t get to tell you about the girl that came onto me for months? do-hwan biochem this, do-hwan that—do-hwan kiss me! is that it?"

"jungkook—"

"fuck, ___... listen to me, okay? let me tell you what i've been rehearsing for the past month and a half.... the girl i declined over and over again and fucked a total of 3 times because i was thinking with my dick is done. okay? if you’re trying to tell me that i fucked up—fine. yeah. i fucked up. but i meant it when i said it’s not what it looked like. ___, it wasn't like that. she spread shit about me being a good tutor and twisted it. how the fuck do you think i feel about myself? how the fuck do you think i feel about you seeing it differently—seeing me differently?”

your throat tightens, and you look away, desperate for a moment to compose yourself. 

“jungkook—”

“tell me how to fix it,” he cries, his frustration spilling over. “tell me what you want, because i’ll do it. i’ll stop tutoring if that’s what you want. fuck, i already did to be honest with you.”

you glance up at him, startled.

“why? that’s not going to change anything.”

“but i have to try…” his voice cracks, and he runs a hand through his hair, his exasperation evident. “i’ll give up anything—whatever it takes. just tell me what you need, and i’ll do it. want me to stop wearing ugly ass shirts? fine. want me to stop saving the dolphins you hate so much—”

“i don’t hate dolphins—”

“you’re scared of them.”

your eyes soften. 

“how’d you know—”

“it’s obvious,” jungkook breathes. “the same way it’s obvious you’re scared of this.”

this...

what even is this?

the silence that follows is deafening. you don’t say anything, and the tension between you stretches taut, threatening to snap. his chest rises and falls heavily, his eyes searching yours, desperate for something you’re not sure you can give him.

he takes another step closer, his proximity making it impossible to think straight.

“say something,” he pleads, his voice barely above a whisper now.

but you can’t.

you don’t trust your voice, don’t trust yourself not to break under the weight of it all. so you stay quiet, the space between you charged with everything unsaid.

the weight of unsaid words and unresolved feelings pressing down on both of you. you take a step back, trying to create some space to breathe, but jungkook mirrors you, closing the distance effortlessly.

then, you look around his room for some kind of break… but it backfires as your eyes meet a plushie, laying on his bed.

hello kitty.

“what’s that?” you ask a little shyly.

jungkook turns his head, feeling a little embarrassed at what you’ve seen.

“what do you think it is?” jungkook asks gently. "___... i... i can't do it. i'm sorry, i can't..."

"can't what?"

"i can't want you," he confesses. "i can't want you when i need you that bad."

he points at the plushie and sighs. "fuck, do you know how stupid that fucking claw machine made me feel? i spent like 1 or 2—"

"hours?" your eyes widen.

he shakes his head. "hundred."

hundred.

you stay silent.

"i'm sorry, ___... for everything. i'm a shithead. i'm mean and inconsiderate. i'm a waste of time—i know... but i want you to know that... everything about my life feels so weird without you in it. the past month and half has been absolute hell. it's like... if you're not around, all i do is think about you and it fucks with me. i wonder what you're eating, who you're with, and what you're going to do next... i get excited when you seenzone me. i feel like i can finally breathe when you're near. i don't know what you did and what fucking pavlov doggy shit experiment you did on me—but fuck. woof woof. whatever you want, ___. seriously."

then, you do what you fear.

you give in.

“how am i supposed to trust you,” you start, your voice shaky but firm, “when you’re not even a good friend? you’re always so mean to me, jungkook. think about it… when have we ever been good friends?”

he scoffs, the corner of his mouth twisting into a bitter smile. 

“maybe it’s because i don’t want to be your friend.”

the words hit you like a slap, your breath catching in your throat. 

“what if i want you to be?” 

his eyes search yours, as if trying to figure out if you’re serious. 

“really?” he asks, his voice dropping lower, softer.

“really.”

his gaze flickers down to your lips, then back to your eyes, and his voice drops even lower, a dangerous edge creeping into it. 

you can feel it… you can feel it about to happen. 

“even when i’m about to do this?”

before you can process his words, his hand moves to your waist, fingers curling around you in a way that sends a shiver down your spine. he pulls you closer, the heat of his touch searing through the fabric of your clothes.

his lips find yours in a kiss that’s as sudden as it is inevitable. 

it’s not gentle—it’s firm, deliberate, and entirely consuming. his other hand comes up to cradle your jaw, tilting your head just enough to deepen the kiss. your hands instinctively reach for his shoulders, gripping him as if to steady yourself against the storm he’s unleashing.

when he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, both of you breathing hard. the air between you feels different now—heavier, laden with something you can’t quite name but can’t deny.

when jungkook finally pulls away, the world feels quieter, as though it’s holding its breath. his hand slides up, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face, and he looks at you softly, his dark eyes searching yours. the tender gesture sends a fresh wave of confusion—and longing—coursing through you.

“bad friend,” you scold him in a whisper.

his lips twitch, a soft laugh escaping him as his thumb grazes your cheek.

“don’t do that,” he says, his voice low, almost pleading. 

you raise a brow at him. "do what?"

"don’t friendzone me.”

“why not?” 

“i just kissed you.”

“so?”

“so?” he mimics, his tone teasing, but there’s a sharpness in his voice that makes you squirm. his arms tighten around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer. 

“kitty,” he murmurs, his voice dropping to a rough whisper, “i’m gonna be impossible to get rid of now."

[gukyi]

if i told you | jjk

summary: in order to pay for university, jeon jungkook decides to market his most valuable asset to the wealthy socialites of campus: himself. donning a suit and tie, tousled hair, and glasses (to look smarter), he becomes every rich daughter’s dream: the perfect boyfriend to bring to balls, dinners, and business gatherings. all while you watch from the sidelines, only able to dream of having that much money to buy yourself what you really want: him.

{friends to lovers!au, college!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, angst, we’ve got it all folks word count: 22k warnings: slightly underage alcohol consumption, mention of words that could be spoken on an crime documentary series but nothing graphic, ravioli-stealing, idiots to lovers, as per usual a/n: finally! here is the long awaited jungkook fic that i have literally been slaving over since the beginning of january. was this fic supposed to be 10k? yes. did i somehow end up writing 22k anyway? of course! in any case, please enjoy my absolute baby who i love and cherish!

check out the post-script drabble here!

Jeon Jungkook loses his job at the university call center on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year. 

You know this because on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 2:07PM, seven minutes after he normally starts his job at the university call center. 

He’s lucky that you’re the only one who doesn’t have class in the 2PM hour. 

“Y/N!” He shouts through the thin wooden door, his voice probably echoing down the thin hallway of your apartment complex. 

You open it before the second knock—you only rush to the door to get him to shut the fuck up, and not because you’re excited to see him, you swear—to see him standing on the other side, XXL university hoodie draped over his figure, down to his mid-thigh, baggy hood pulled over his head like a sad college-aged Star Wars character. He looks exactly like a jaded sophomore year college student would. He is beautiful. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the call center right now?” You ask in lieu of a normal “hello” or even a “what the fuck are you doing here, it’s 2PM”. Jungkook does not wait for you to invite him inside your apartment, immediately kicks off his shoes by the entrance and tugs on your apartment slippers that are a size-and-a-half too small for his feet, and marches over to your shared fridge to fish through the tupperware containers with your name written on Post-it notes for a mid-afternoon snack. 

Jungkook waits until he’s got an entire piece of frozen supersized ravioli shoved into his mouth before he responds. “I was fired,” he says over a mouthful of pasta and cheese.

“What?” You ask, eyes widening as Jungkook shuffles through your kitchen drawers for a fork, which means that the first piece of ravioli that he ate he did so with his bare ass hands. Like a heathen. Like a ravioli-craving twenty-year-old heathen. 

“I was fired,” Jungkook repeats. He stares at the microwave resting on your kitchen counter for a good ten seconds before he continues to eat the cold, unheated pasta. Every time he’s in your apartment (which is frequently), he tells you how it’s a fire, water, and explosive hazard to have your microwave on the counter like that. As if there is any other place in your apartment for it to go. Maybe out on the tiny balcony you have that overlooks the busiest street on campus. 

“Care to offer an explanation as to why?” You ask, coming up next to him. Jungkook is nearly finished with your tupperware of ravioli, and normally you’d shout at him for it, but seeing as he was just fired from his only source of income as a money-starved college student, you’ll cut him some slack. Just a little. 

“You remember that old, angry alumnus that told me that asking for donations in order to benefit low-income-slash-first generation students was selfish and rude of me, and that I wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for what his generation accomplished?” Jungkook asks. 

You remember that vividly. Jungkook spent an approximate two hours and thirty-seven minutes on FaceTime with you ranting about this one “old man bitch” who he had to speak to during his day at work, all while you did your economics problem set to the sweet, mellifluous sound of Jungkook’s shrill shrieks. 

“The one you lost your temper at and shouted at for being ungrateful and elitist?” You ask pointedly. You have a feeling you already know where this conversation is going. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes. He finishes the ravioli (goddamnit, now you’re going to have to find something else to eat for dinner at 11PM tonight) and turns around to place it in the sink. For once, it is not piled high with dishes from up to a week ago, so Jungkook even squirts a bit of Dawn onto a sponge and washes the plastic container for you. “Well, as it turns out, telling an old racist elitist that he’s old, racist, and elitist does not go down well with my boss.”

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse. Jungkook sighs, walking over to where you’re taking it easy on the couch. “Oh no,” you say, eyes widening as he grins, plotting something. “Do not, Jungkook. Jungkook, do not!”

He jumps, catapulting himself onto the couch and landing on top of you with a thud. You let out a groan as the weight of his body hits you, foreheads nearly knocking into each other. Jungkook is a good foot-and-a-half too long for this dinky leather couch that’s always sort of smelled, feet and ankles hanging off the opposing arm rest just so he can nuzzle his face into the crook of your shoulder like he always does. You hate when he does this. Hate when he jumps onto the couch while you’re casually reclining just so he can collapse on top of you. Hate the feeling of his body resting against yours, soft breathes against the skin of your neck. Hate how it always makes you want more, how it will never be enough. 

“Have you been working out?” You mumble against the fabric of his t-shirt. “You’re more muscle-y than usual.”

“I added weights to my routine,” Jungkook tells you mindlessly. If your roommates walked into your apartment right now and saw the both of you on the couch, you’d never hear the end of it. “Taehyung said it would make me more swole.”

“As if you need to be any more buff,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Jungkook’s the most athletic person you’ve ever met in your entire life. He could probably pick up your dinky couch with you sitting on it without batting an eyelash. Even Superman would tremble at the sight of him. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

“Thanks, Y/N,” Jungkook mutters into your skin. “God, what the fuck am I gonna do now? I need money to pay for everything in my life and my one source of income is now totally invalid because an old guy got what he deserved.”

“Are there any work-study positions still available?” You ask, hand reaching up to stroke at his hair, smoothing it down. Jungkook’s preferred cuddling position is big spoon, but he still demands that he be coddled as though he were the little spoon. 

“No,” Jungkook says with a huff, “they’ve all been snagged by try-hard freshmen who need money like me.”

“I distinctly recall you being a try-hard freshman who also needed money,” you tell him. “That’s why you applied to work at the call center, isn’t it?”

Jungkook sits up, the weight of his figure crushing your legs as he rests on top of them. If you stayed like this forever, you’d probably lose feeling in your lower body, but you’d also get to stay with Jungkook forever, which is a trade-off you would genuinely consider. “Yeah, but the call center hires everybody. You just need to be like… decent at communication. And I’m pretty decent at communication.”

“You never text me back,” you tell him pointedly. 

“That’s because I prefer showing up unannounced at your apartment or other places you frequent,” Jungkook reminds you excitedly. He’ll never let you forget about the time you were wrapping up a small seminar with your history professor and Jungkook burst through the doors with a whole thing of carrots and hummus because you had texted him that you were hungry. You could not look your history professor in the eye for the rest of the semester. “I’d say that’s pretty decent communication.”

“Well, you’re going to have to figure out another way to market your decent communication skills to get another job,” you tell him. “Have you considered the boba place on Oak? You could get me employee discounts.”

Jungkook leans over just to pinch at your cheek, fingers gripping onto your face and pulling like a grandmother. “You just want me for my money.”

“You’re my best friend, Jeon Jungkook,” you tell him. “Of course I do.”

This is what Jeon Jungkook’s obligatory university Facebook group introduction post read:

Hi, I’m Jungkook and I’m thinking of majoring in visual studies or computer science (really different lol I know)! I played soccer in high school but don’t think I’ll be continuing in college because I was pretty bad at it. I’m looking for a roommate and I’d really like to live in New East House, but anything works for me as long as it has a bed. Hit me up if you think we’d made a good match, but I like talking with everyone lol. 

I’m really into music and can play the guitar, drums, and piano. I like listening to all types of music (yes, even country which slaps kinda hard sometimes) but my favorites are The 1975, Frank Ocean, Troye Sivan, and Khalid. Will bop to Justin Bieber on occasion as well. 

I play Ultimate and am really interested in joining the club team here so hit me up and we can practice sometime because my skills are a little rusty. I also do a little skateboarding but I am definitely not a skater. 

Hit me up if you think we can be friends lol I’m excited to meet you all!

It was accompanied by several pictures, a couple of which are selfies at that anime girl angle, one of him with his friends at prom all doing that Frat Boy pose, and a couple of him with his family. To an outsider doing a very quick glance, it pretty much reads the same as a rather extensive dating profile. 

The truth of it all is, as you were scrolling through the hundreds of obligatory university Facebook group introduction posts in search of a freshman year roommate, you stumbled upon Jungkook’s intro post and you thought this: No. Way.

The moment you laid eyes on his first above-the-head angle selfie, you knew that it would be unlikely that you and Jeon Jungkook’s paths would ever cross. He played guitar and did Ultimate Frisbee, and you wanted to audition for your university’s symphony orchestra. He was beautiful but in that sort of college frat boy who can crush you at beer pong kind of way. Craziest of all, he was a computer science major, and you were walking in as an undecided humanities concentration. 

Impossible. There was no way the two of you would ever meet, and you accepted that right off that bat. At a school your size, you would go through these four years not knowing a majority of your class. Jeon Jungkook was just one of the casualties. 

On the very first day of orientation, Jeon Jungkook comes up to you on the sidewalk, wearing a white t-shirt, a backwards baseball cap, and shorts, and asks you if you’re here for orientation as well? He’s lost. 

Jeon Jungkook is the type of guy you imagine getting eaten up by any girl who meets him almost immediately. He’s charming and endearing the same way a baby deer is, but has no problem wearing clothes that remind you of how fit he is. He is, for lack of a better term, extremely good looking. 

“Yeah,” you had said on the sidewalk, squinting to look up at him since the sun was in your eyes. “I’m heading to the auditorium right now. Wanna walk with me?”

“Okay, sure,” Jungkook had replied, smiling with all of his teeth. Even in the sweaty summer heat, he looked even nicer in person. “Thanks, by the way. I’m Jungkook. What’s your name?”

You knew that already. How could you have forgotten? 

You had grinned up at him. The universe has always worked in mysterious ways. “I’m Y/N. Nice to meet you.”

When Jungkook doesn’t know what to do, he stress eats. Most often, you are the single witness to this action, which has literally no effect on his body mass whatsoever since he immediately burns off every calorie (and then some) at his next gym session. 

That is precisely why you are sitting in the second-best dining hall on campus eating a pretty measly salad and french fries, while Jungkook returns from the serve-yourself cafeteria with his sixth plate of food. Next to you is your mutual friend Chaewon, a filthy rich international student from Korea who is probably the nicest person you’ve ever met. 

“I think I’ve called every cafe, bubble tea shop, clothing store, and paid internship within a five-mile radius of this place and nothing,” Jungkook says with a sigh, keeping Chaewon updated with his job-search antics. It’s been several days since he was fired, and while being keenly cognizant of your bank account isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when it means that Jungkook refuses to leave campus because he is in hyper-saving mode, it sort of rustles your jimmies. 

“Have you tried babysitting?” Chaewon supplies helpfully. 

You laugh aloud at the mere thought of Jungkook stuck in some middle-aged parent’s house with their toddler for hours on a night where he could be living it up on campus. Jeon Jungkook? A babysitter?

“Wow, what the heck is wrong with me being a babysitter?” Jungkook questions, offended. 

“First of all, you don’t even let me beat you in Mario Kart on your Switch and I am your best friend. If you ended up gaming with a four-year-old boy, your over-competitiveness would take over you and you’d crush the poor kid and his spirit,” you remind him pointedly. Not to mention the fact that the man cannot cook to save his life, and you can’t even entrust him with microwave dinners because of his irrational fear of modern oven technology. 

Jungkook pouts. He knows you’re right. 

“It’s not like you were going to look into babysitting, anyway,” you say with a shove, nudging his shoulder with your own. 

Jungkook sighs, and despite all of the shit you give him on a daily basis (part of the responsibility of being his best friend), you do genuinely feel bad for him. Even if his job at the call center wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating nor morally rewarding, he didn’t absolutely hate it and he made a pretty decent earning off of it. He unzips his backpack and fumbles for his laptop, opening it up to reveal a Google Chrome window with approximately thirty-seven tabs open of places to work on and around campus. Meanwhile, Chaewon’s phone buzzes on the table, and she heaves out a great, exasperated exhale before picking up and immediately launching off into incredibly speedy Korean. 

“If only the bubble tea place was hiring,” you lament, kissing goodbye all of the free bubble tea you had been dreaming about if Jungkook got hired. 

“I’m glad I don’t work at the bubble tea place,” Jungkook tells you with his eyebrows raised, “otherwise I’d have to see you every day!” 

“You already see me every day!” You should back, but it’s not like Jungkook doesn’t know that already. He’s the one always barging into your apartment or sitting down next to you in the library when you’re trying to study. 

“But maybe you should try drinking less bubble tea, otherwise you’re gonna blow up like a tapioca pearl like that one girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Jungkook warns, pinching your cheek as if to make your face round like a tapioca bubble. 

“I can think of nothing I’d want more than to be a tapioca pearl for the rest of my life,” you state simply. It would be much less stressful than to be a college student. 

“If you were a tapioca pearl, I’d eat you!” Jungkook says, and you, out of the security of both your head and your heart, choose not to think too much into it. 

As Jungkook teases you about your slight obsession with bubble tea, Chaewon finally puts the phone down after what very well was several minutes of angry Korean. She lets out this deep, long sigh, like all of the pent-up rage within her is exiting through her exhale. 

“You good, Chae?” You ask her, a little concerned. Even after knowing her since the beginning of your freshman year, you’ve never once seen her get mad, though she looks pretty close to it now. 

“Yeah,” she says, exasperated. “My mom is having this stupid company ball here and she really, really wants me to attend.” It is obvious that Chaewon does not, in fact, want to attend. You’ve seen Chaewon nearly every day for over a year, and you’ve never even seen her wear a pantsuit. You couldn’t imagine her joy at having to dress up in a ballgown. 

“But fancy free food,” you point out. Even if she does have to be trapped in a penthouse ballroom with her parents’ stuffy business friends, the catering company will probably be god-tier. 

Chaewon pretty much bangs her head on the dining hall table. 

“Wow, I didn’t know someone could hate catered food so much,” you say, a little alarmed. 

“It’s not that,” Chaewon says, rubbing her forehead. The pasta on the plate in front of her has remained untouched for nearly ten minutes now. You wonder if she’s even hungry anymore. “My mom wants me to bring a plus-one.”

Your eyes widen. An excuse to dress nice and eat good food? Hell yeah. 

“And it can’t be you, Y/N, it has to be a date,” Chaewon says. It’s pretty obvious she’s not interested in dating whatsoever, no matter the gender of the object of her affection. You pout. Damn. “My mom said, ‘he can be whoever you want!’ but that means that he has to be an attractive Korean guy who’s got a future job in finance.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jungkook says over a mouthful of broccoli. 

“You will?” Chaewon asks. Jungkook just single-handedly saved Chaewon from a night of unbearable business talk with a boy she doesn’t know and cannot relate to. 

You scoff. “You’re just a regular Korean dude, Jungkook,” you tell him. 

Jungkook pouts, bottom lip turned out. “You don’t think I’m attractive?”

You refuse to answer that question. You’re afraid of what you might say if you open your mouth. 

“Seriously, you’d do that for me?” Chaewon turns to Jungkook with platonic stars in her eyes. 

Jungkook shrugs. “Sure. I’ve got a suit. I’ll ask my friend Jimin for a crash course in finance before the thing. When is it?”

And just like that, you and Jungkook’s weekly Friday Mario Kart night gets a rain check. 

 Jeon Jungkook is the sole best decision of your life. 

And it’s funny and twisted and wonderful, because he is the one thing you had failed to account for in your life. He stands there on the sidewalk in the blazing sun, black baseball cap nestled safely onto his dark brown hair, and in the split second it takes for him to open his mouth and say hello, everything changes. 

But no longer is the image you conjure in your mind when you think of him a picture of him on that very first day of orientation, lost and excited all at once. It is of him barging into your apartment and eating all of your leftover ravioli. It’s him laying on your dinky couch like it belongs to him, surfing through all of the Netflix shows available and eventually just settling on old Gilmore Girls episodes like he always does. It’s him standing in your closet to judge your latest clothing purchases and take back any items that you’ve stolen from him over the years. 

It’s imagining him not as a guest but as a permanent fixture in your home, in the place that makes you feel safest. Because that’s who Jungkook is, now. He is that place. He stands in your apartment rattling off a list of why microwaves are a severely underestimated killer, and it takes every inch of your being not to ask him to stay. To spend night after night cuddling on the couch, or make a home-cooked meal together on a Sunday evening, or get lost underneath the sheets on your bed.

Jungkook stands in your apartment like he belongs there. And only in your wildest dreams could you ever imagine that coming true.

Such is the case of that Friday night, when he’s supposed to accompany Chaewon to her terrible, awful, brain-melting parents’ business gala. You haven’t seen him all day, too busy with your club meetings to make time for him after your classes are finished for the week. College is never-ending in that horrible, unstoppable way. 

It’s nearing two in the morning when you hear the knock on your door. Two of your roommates are at a rush event for their sorority, and the other sleeps through your smoke alarm on a regular basis, so you are tasked with the job of opening the door. 

On the other side is Jungkook, as he frequently is. 

Your heart practically freezes in place, like his eyes have shot right through it. Instead of his usual baggy outfit and a bucket hat, he’s standing outside of your apartment in a crisp navy suit (complete with a pocket square), rings lining his fingers and hair tousled in that effortlessly-styled kind of way. He looks like a goddamn celebrity, like a young, successful CEO. Like the love of your whole fucking life. 

Coughing to distract from the fact that you’re practically drooling, you say, “Wow, you clean up nicely.”

Jungkook looks down at himself, almost as if he had forgotten he’s wearing a full suit entirely. “The pocket square is Jimin’s,” he explains, “but yeah. I didn’t want to let Chaewon down by not dressing up to code.”

He’s got remnants of makeup left on his face, having faded and smudged throughout the night. There’s a bit of black underneath his eyes from the liner, a smoldering effect that makes the dark brown of his irises even deeper. “You look tired,” you comment. “Why are you here, why don’t you go home, Jungkook? Get some sleep.”

Jungkook shrugs, looking over your shoulder to see if his arrival has woken up any of your roommates. “Your place was closer,” he says like it’s nothing. 

Like it doesn’t make your breath catch in your throat, stop in its tracks. He spends an evening dressed up in a stuffy suit and tie surrounded by old businessmen and their preppy daughters with whom he has nothing in common, and when it’s nearly two in the morning and he can finally relax, he drives to your place instead of his own. Like it means nothing. As if it means anything at all. 

Jungkook runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, and even knotted and messy it still looks flawless. “If I’m bothering you, just let me know. I know it’s late.”

It’s so hard to say no to him. 

“Just come inside already before you wake up the neighbors,” you tell him, sighing to pretend like it’s a minor inconvenience. And even running on barely any sleep with makeup smudged underneath his eyes, Jungkook grins as you let him inside your apartment, caving in, just like you always do. 

The first thing he does when he’s inside is take off his fancy loafers and peel off his suit jacket, resting it against the back of the couch. You fumble around in the kitchen for the kettle, instinctively starting to make two cups of tea. Routine. 

Looking up, you watch as Jungkook loosens his tie and takes it off, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his white dress shirt. By the counter, you turn your back to him so he doesn’t see you mentally combust. It’s impossible that he doesn’t already know what he does to you. 

The kettle finishes boiling the moment Jungkook settles onto your couch. He keeps the television off so he doesn’t wake your roommates, and scrolls on his phone with his knees tucked underneath his chin. Thirty seconds later, you’re joining him, handing him the cup of tea before sitting down next to him, severely underdressed in comparison. 

“Did you at least have fun tonight?” You ask. 

“The food totally slapped,” Jungkook tells you. “Chaewon’s parents really pulled out all the stops.”

“So I’ve heard,” you muse. 

“We spent most of the time lounging by the catering table and distracting each other by making up stories about all of the rich people there.” Jungkook laughs. 

“Please tell me you didn’t embarrass yourself, though,” you say. Perhaps Jungkook could withstand a few blows to his ego, but Chaewon’s future pretty much depends on her impressing her parents and their comrades. 

“No!” Jungkook tells you defensively. “Jimin told me everything I needed to know, but all of Chaewon’s friends and their filthy rich CEO parents thought I was so handsome that I didn’t even need to speak.”

You roll your eyes. Of course Jungkook wouldn’t give up the chance to remind you of his hellishly good looks. 

“You just stood there, looking pretty?” You ask. Not as if he doesn’t do that already. 

“You think I’m pretty?” Jungkook teases, a greasy smile sent your way, like he doesn’t know the answer anyway. 

You huff. “Dressed up like this? Anyone would.”

“Chaewon said I was like her fake trophy husband,” Jungkook jokes. “She did all of the schmoozing. It’s not like I could have contributed anything anyway. Unless everyone wants to hear about C++.”

“Ooh, I love it when you talk all tech to me,” you tease, nudging him with your arm. “So sexy, keep talking.”

He laughs. “If we keep talking about Python I might get a little too excited.” He wiggles his eyebrows just for good measure and you giggle, holding onto this moment for dear life as you let it etch itself into your brain permanently. Times like these, you know you can’t forget, saving them for a rainy day thirty years down the line when you’re in love with someone that’s not Jungkook. When you look out the window and think about what might have been, if only things back in college had been a little bit different. 

Jungkook’s phone buzzes on the table. He’s got two notifications, one from Instagram of Chaewon tagging him in a post, and another from Venmo. 

“Fuckin’ damnit,” Jungkook swears, letting his phone drop on the couch cushion. 

“What?” You ask, turning to look at him. 

“Chaewon just Venmo’ed me a hundred dollars,” Jungkook says with a sigh. And it’s not one of those times when you see your bank account balance go up and get happy because yay, money!, it’s when your friend pays you anything over what they actually owe you out of the goodness of your heart, and you refuse to accept it. 

“She did?” You ask, eyes widening. A hundred dollars? That’s more than Jungkook would make in three shifts at the call center. 

“‘Thanks for bailing me out tonight. You definitely deserve more than 100 but then you’d be mad at me. But please don’t be mad at me!’” Jungkook reads off his phone. “I just stood there looking like eye candy. I didn’t do a thing to help her, what the heck?”

You pull out your own phone to check Chaewon’s latest post. 

It’s a picture of them together in the skyscraper penthouse the gala was held in, Jungkook looking dapper in his suit with a glass of champagne in his hand, and Chaewon in a dress worth more than a semester’s tuition throwing up a peace sign like the trendy Asian she is. They look like a K-drama couple. Like two celebrities basking in their fame and wealth. 

Shoutout to my one and only Jeon Jungkook for being my fake date tonight! Thanks to your good looks and charming personality for impressing all of my parents’ rich friends and their daughters. Love you 3000 💕

“Wow, whoever took this picture of the both of you knows their shit,” you say, impressed. You had always thought it impossible for Jungkook to look better in pictures than in real life, but this photo is coming rather close. If you were any more shameless, you’d ask Chaewon if she has any more photos of him. Just him, preferably. 

It’s not as if she doesn’t know about your gargantuan crush on him anyway. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked that good in a photo in my life,” Jungkook says with a laugh. Impossible. He yawns, placing his empty mug on the little end table next to the couch. 

“You should set it as your profile picture,” you suggest, leaning your head on him and pretending like this is normal. He yawns again, stretching out as he rests his body against yours. “Hey, we should go to sleep. Unless you want to go home?”

Jungkook groans, snuggling in closer. “No, your bed is big enough for the two of us.”

And who are you to resist?

You wake up to the sound of a phone buzzing furiously on your bedside table. You crack open one eye just a sliver to see who the culprit is and immediately eradicate it, when the sun filtering through your Venetian blinds hits your cornea. You groan, shutting your eyes once more as you smack your hand around to get it to shut off. 

The movement, however, causes the bedsheets to shift beside you, and when you turn, you find Jungkook nestled up tightly beneath your duvet, an arm stretched over your side as he hums in his sleep. 

You’re best friends. 

This is normal. 

(The feeling of your heart beating out of its chest has become rather normal, as well.)

He’s wearing a raggedy old t-shirt of yours that has always been too big on you but fits him just perfectly and a pair of joggers that he keeps at your place “just in case”. Just in case he stays the night. Just in case you ever need them. Selfishly, you will yourself to fall back asleep, shutting your eyes tightly and pretending that maybe, if you never wake up, this moment will freeze in time, locking the two of you together for eternity. 

He mumbles to himself in his sleep, a murmur of nothing as he shifts over slightly, hand dragging up your side. 

God. 

Next to you, the phone begins to buzz erratically again, and wide-awake, you look over to realize that it’s Jungkook’s, and that it’s Chaewon on the other end. 

This is at least the second time she’s called, which means that, despite how tempting it is, you probably shouldn’t silence his phone and go back to lying in bed with Jungkook and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

Sighing, you pick up. 

“Jungkook!” Chaewon shouts on the other side. For a brief moment you wonder why on earth she’s so energetic so early, but it’s less that and more the fact that you are overwhelmingly lethargic rather late in the day. “All of my friends said you looked really good in those photos I posted of us. Do you think you’re free next Wednesday night? Seunghee wants you to accompany her to a double date her parents are forcing her to go on!”

“Chaewon—”

“Oh, Y/N! How’s it going?”

“I just woke up,” you mumble quietly as Jungkook stirs beside you. 

“Of course you did,” Chaewon says, and you can see her rolling her eyes on the other side of the line. “Wait, why do you have Jungkook’s phone if you just woke up? Oh my God, don’t tell me—”

“Shh!” You hiss into the phone. Jungkook is slowly beginning to wake up, and you can only pray that he isn’t listening in to the conversation between you and Chaewon. “No, we did not. He got back after your thing and we promptly passed out in my bed, fully clothed,” you whisper loudly. 

“Jungkook went to your place last night? He was so tired, I thought he was going straight back to his. We even got dropped off outside my apartment.”

What? Chaewon and Jungkook live within a three-minute walk of each other. Your apartment is ten minutes away from both of them. 

“You did?” You ask, eyebrows furrowing. 

“Who’s that?” 

You turn around to see Jungkook lying on his back, head resting on a nearly-deflated pillow of yours as he looks up at you, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hair is mussed, some parts styled and stiff with hair gel, and some parts tangled and unkempt. He looks like he’s been lying in that position for a while, hand resting behind his head as he gazes up at you. 

“It’s Chaewon,” you tell him softly as she laughs on the other end. “She just called your phone. Are you free next Wednesday?”

“Hmm?” Jungkook, still half-asleep. “When?”

“Next Wednesday,” you repeat, a hand on the phone like it’s going to do anything to stop Chaewon from listening to you two. “Chaewon says she has a friend who wants you to accompany her to a double date she’s been set up to go on by her parents.”

“Mmmrph,” Jungkook mumbles. It’s clear he hasn’t even thought about his plans for the rest of the day, let alone next Wednesday. 

“He’s not available right now,” you say into the phone. Chaewon snorts. 

“Fine,” Chaewon says with a sigh. “Can you pass the message on when you guys are done pretending that you aren’t fucking behind my back?”

You suck in a breath. “Chaewon!” You hiss. “We are not—” you quickly turn back to Jungkook, who, by the looks of his hooded eyes and bewildered expression, isn’t listening in, “—fucking!” You whisper. “You know we’re not!”

Chaewon laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Call me later, Y/N, we should grab ice cream or something.” She hangs up. 

“Who was that?” Jungkook asks sleepily, eyes still half-lidded as he sits up in your bed, soft skin, brown hair, pouted lips amongst a sea of white, bundled up in your thick duvet as if sitting on a cloud. 

“Chaewon,” you tell him. 

“Oh, why was she calling?”

“She wanted to ask if you were free next Wednesday.”

“To do what?”

Maybe you were worried about Jungkook listening in to Chaewon grill you about your relationship (or serious lack thereof) for nothing. 

“She has a friend who wants you to go on a parent-mandated double date, trophy boyfriend style,” you explain. Jungkook groans. 

“Pretending to know business is mentally, physically, and morally draining. It feels like I’m selling my soul to capitalism,” he says with a sigh, collapsing back against the mattress. “I just wanna stay here forever. It’s so cozy.”

“Come on, Kook,” you say, tugging the duvet off of him to reveal the rest of his body. He curls into himself at the exposure, refusing to budge. “You’ve encroached on my apartment long enough.”

“Y/N,” Jungkook whines, drawing out your name for good measure. “Noooooooo.” He reaches out to cling onto your wrist, which means that if you want him out of your bed, you’ll have to drag him out.

“Jungkook, you’re swole, you know I can’t tug you out of my bed,” you say with a pout. He knows every trick in the book to use against you, and worst of all, he knows you’re weak to all of them. 

“Good,” Jungkook says with a loopy smile, pulling you back onto the bed like it’s nothing. You yelp as you come crashing on top of him, your body bumping into his as he wraps his arms around you and flops back onto your bed. You laugh and shout at the feeling as Jungkook cuddles up in the warmth of the sheets, pulling you in tightly to his body. “It’s so warm here, let’s stay like this forever.”

“What about food?”

“You keep a stash of Clif bars under your bed, we’ll eat those,” Jungkook suggests. 

You attempt to wriggle out of his grip, hoping to escape before he holds you long enough to get addicted, hooked on the feeling of his arms around you, his body against yours. But Jungkook is nothing if not persistent and clingy, and he wraps his arms tightly around your torso like a koala, warm and soft. “Come on, Jungkook. It’s nearly noon. Let’s be productive today.”

“Gross.”

“Let’s not sit in bed all day.”

“Grosser. Let’s just stay in your bed all day and pretend that we don’t have any real responsibilities.”

“Given that we’re in college, that may be slightly difficult.”

“Fuck that, your GPA doesn’t matter anyway. Unless you have plans on going to grad school?” He asks with an eyebrow raise, turning to look at you. 

“No way, I’m not paying for another four years of this shit,” you immediately declare. Let the capitalist system of higher education extort another two to four years worth of tuition out of you for the same degree? Absolutely not. 

“Then why move?” Jungkook says with a grin. 

“Because,” you say, stumbling for a real answer. 

“Not good enough.” He grins cheekily. “I vote to stay in bed.”

“I vote to do my readings, your CS homework, and get back to Chaewon about Wednesday.”

“God,” Jungkook says with a sigh. “What’s Wednesday?”

“Oh my God, you need to call Chaewon. Right now. Before you ask me what you have on Wednesday one more time after losing all of your brain cells lounging around in my personal bed and refusing to leave,” you say, eyes wide as you worm your way out of his grip, dusting yourself off and heading to your closet. 

“Noooooooo,” Jungkook says, reaching out a desperate hand. “Y/N, come back.”

“Call Chaewon. Call her!” You order, fishing around in your closet for some fresh clothes. You’ve been wearing the same one since Thursday night. You are disgusting. 

Jungkook groans but obeys, picking up his phone and pressing her contact. “Hey Chae, it’s Jungkook. Listen, I’m literally going to Venmo you back what you paid me because you? Literally didn’t need to pay me at all? And I’m actually mad at you for it? Wait, what do you mean am I up to getting paid on Wednesday—”

The phone call presents the perfect opportunity for you to dash out of your bedroom and into the bathroom, where you splash yourself with cold tap water like a model in a face wash commercial (who already has perfect skin, so why does she need this new face wash, seriously?) to clear your head. It’s been a weird twelve hours. Even weirder knowing that across the hall, Jungkook is sitting in your room, on your bed, in your clothes, under your bed sheets. Knowing that maybe, in another universe, on another timeline, you would be in the exact same positions, only everything would be different. 

You wash your face, hoping to wake yourself up. Convince your mind that the past twelve hours have been nothing but a dream, and that when you walk back into your room, Jungkook will have vanished. Or he would have never been there in the first place. 

You leave the bathroom and return to your bedroom to see Jungkook tugging on his suit jacket, wearing the same clothes he had on when he knocked on your door at 2AM last night. He’s still on the phone, wrapping up the conversation with Chaewon. 

“Yeah, yeah, tell her that I’m down. She can just text me, give her my number. I’m happy to do this for you and your friends, Chae. Plus, she’s gonna pay me and I feel less bad about it because it’s a service and she’s not a close friend like you are. Yeah, it’s all good,” he looks up to see you standing at the door, leaning against the frame. “Yeah, Y/N just got back so I’m gonna go. Maybe we can grab dinner or something tonight? Cool. Bye.”

“Dinner without me?” You ask with a pout. 

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. “You’re always invited.”

“Have you figured out what’s going on on Wednesday?” You tease him as you walk him to the door. 

“Chaewon has a friend, Soojin, who wants me to accompany her on a parent-mandated double date with a business partner’s daughter,” Jungkook explains. “Apparently all of Chaewon’s friends realized I make a pretty good fake trophy boyfriend.”

You rub his shoulder. He’d make a great real boyfriend too. Not that you think about that all of the time, or anything. “Gonna put that on your resume, big guy?”

“Of course.” Jungkook smiles. “Dinner tonight? We can go to the ramen place you really like.”

“Sure thing, is Chaewon coming?”

“If she wants to. Otherwise, it’ll just be us.”

“Sounds good,” you tell him. “See you then.”

“Hopefully before,” Jungkook says. “Thanks for letting me crash here last night, by the way.”

“Anytime,” you say. Maybe one day, it’ll be true. 

Next Wednesday, there’s a knock on your door at midnight. 

Who else could it be?

It was supposed to be a one-time thing. And then it was supposed to be just a two-time thing. And before you knew it, Jungkook’s number and his services were circling through the ring of wealthy international students, jumping from phone to phone as people crammed to get him to accompany them on their next double date, next business gala, next ballroom dance. 

You had always had a feeling that his charming, charismatic personality would eventually draw everybody towards him, so electric and magnetic that you couldn’t help but want to know him, make friends with him, be close to him. From the moment you saw his Facebook introduction post, you knew it was only a matter of time before everyone on campus knew his name.

[October 17th, 4:12PM] You: do u want to get dinner tonight

Jungkook: would love to but have to go to kim family business dinner with dahyun sorry :(

You: ok next time then!

[October 23rd, 1:03PM]

You: yo what r u doing You: i have so many readings to do rip You: do u wanna come to greene w me and study

Jungkook: heejin is taking me shopping for a fancy suit for her family’s event tomorrow i can’t :/ Jungkook: but i am going to get macaroons for u at the mall so we can see each other later!

You: yummm sure thing!

[October 30th, 9:58AM]

You: hey ik you’re asleep rn but we are still on for tomorrow right? 🎃 You: can’t let our one (1) year long halloween tradition of buying last-minute candy and watching the nightmare before christmas together die

[October 30th, 11:13PM]

Jungkook: omg i just saw this now im so sorry Jungkook: uh yeonjoo wants me to go to her sister’s halloween party tm so idk if i can make it this year

[October 31st, 2:02AM]

You: ok You: thanks for telling me

It’s no fun watching The Nightmare Before Christmas by yourself, you realize this Halloween. All of your roommates are out frequenting one of the hundreds of parties being thrown on campus tonight, and although you’d normally be up for getting drunk and dropping it low, you just aren’t in the Halloween spirit this year. Wonder why. 

Armed with the knowledge that your roommates probably won’t be back until three or four in the morning, you shut your laptop and decide to go to bed early. Early being midnight, but it’s early for you and that’s all that really matters. 

You don’t know why you’re being such a stick in the mud this Halloween. It’s always been one of your favorite holidays, never one to pass up free candy nor the option to dress up, but this one has been particularly lame. You don’t have a costume, your local drugstore is out of mini Skittles packets, and you don’t have someone to spend it with. 

Realistically, you have no reason to be sad that Jungkook isn’t available tonight. It’s not as if spending Halloween together is some ancient tradition from birth that binds the two of you together. You did it for the first time as freshmen, and you were foolishly hoping to do the same thing as sophomores. It’s not a tradition if it only happened once. 

You look in the bathroom mirror, stained with nail polish and dry shampoo and old skincare, and you sigh. Jungkook has every right to prioritize his current and only source of income over a night spent lounging on the couch doing nothing. It’s not as if you haven’t seen your best friend in over a month and this was the only night you both had free. Jungkook drops by after every single event he goes on. Every single one. He stands outside your door dressed in a fancy suit, or a silk button down, leather shoes and expensive jewelry bought for him by the girls he goes out with.

No matter the time, he knocks on your door and says hello, steals a cup of tea and a bit of your heart along with it, before bouncing out of your living room and off to his own apartment. He doesn’t stay the night anymore, doesn’t worm his way underneath your duvet and refuse to move until morning comes. It’s hard to tell if you’re grateful about it or not. 

Sluggishly, you peel off your clothes and wash your face, changing into some old sweatpants from the tenth grade and a t-shirt with an embarrassingly large hole in the armpit. This Halloween, you are dressing up as a lonely college student who is going to bed early on Halloween night because she has nothing better to do!

There’s a knock on your door. 

Your first instinct is to freeze up. When there’s another knock, your second instinct is to grab the closest object to you (which happens to be your water bottle) for self-defense. 

And then, you hear,

“You’re not watching The Nightmare before Christmas without me, are you?”

To spare yourself the shame, you won’t say that you practically leapt out of bed the moment you heard his voice. You calmly removed the covers, and casually walked to the front door. That is what you did. 

When you open it, Jungkook is standing behind it, grinning, wearing the greasiest police officer outfit you’ve ever seen in your entire life. This flew at a marketing company’s heir’s Halloween party? He’s even got what looks to be a fully-loaded water gun in his holster. 

“Don’t tell me this is what you wore to some fancy-shmancy Halloween party,” you say disapprovingly, eyebrows raised as you look him up and down and pretend that you aren’t just ogling his figure. 

“It was fine, Yeonjoo’s sister just graduated college. If anything, she was more okay with it than Yeonjoo was,” Jungkook says with a shrug. You don’t even need to let him in at this point, just watch as he tugs off his shoes and steps inside your apartment like it belongs to him. 

“What was Yeonjoo dressed as?”

“Princess Leia. We made for a very mismatched pair,” Jungkook says, chuckling to himself. “Ooh, did you guys get new tea?”

“You can have some if you want,” you tell him, shutting the door as he eagerly pulls out a box of teabags, turning on the electric kettle on the counter. “I think it’s Wild Berry Hibiscus.”

“Sounds good already,” Jungkook says, and he lets out a sigh that sounds so exhausted, so tired and aching, as he leans back against the countertop, head resting on the cupboards above it. 

“You could have gone home, you know,” you tell him. Even from the couch you can see the droop in his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. He’s been going out several times every week for the past month, and he still has a truckload of CS assignments on top. He spends precious hours schmoozing with wealthy businessmen and women, shaking people’s hands and posing for pictures in the fanciest clothes he owns and then some. The selfish part of you wants him to stay. The part that loves him knows it would be better if he went home. “You still can.”

“No,” Jungkook insists, shaking his head. “We have a tradition to uphold, don’t we?”

Even though The Nightmare Before Christmas is seventy-six minutes long, the night ends long before that. You haven’t even reached “This Is Halloween” before you feel a head hit your shoulder, and crane your neck to find Jungkook having fallen fast asleep beside you, half-full cup of Wild Berry Hibiscus next to the laptop in front of you. He’s still wearing his stupid police officer costume, the navy blue uniform tight against his body. His lips are parted ever so softly, eyelashes fluttering as little non-sounds exit his mouth, hints, whispers of snores. 

He hasn’t slept over since the first time. You’re not sure if you want the trend to continue, or if you just want to be a little bit selfish tonight, greedy, taking and taking and taking. He’s so beautiful like this, so innocent and gentle and soft. It would be such a shame if you had to wake him. 

And so, gingerly, you rest your head against his own, breathe in the quiet little sounds that leave his parted lips, memorize the feeling. It’s not the first time Jungkook’s accidentally fallen asleep on you, but there is something about this moment, sitting on your couch a few minutes past midnight, as the rest of the world celebrates around you, that is so intimate. Like here, in your apartment, you and Jungkook have your own little bubble, tucked away in a corner of the universe far from the noise of the rest of the world. And it’s here that you wish you could stay forever, for once never wanting the feeling to end. Wanting time to freeze in its very steps, the clocks stop and the orbit halts, and it is just you and Jungkook, forever. Like characters in a movie, on pause for eternity.

The moment ends when Jungkook shifts beside you before eventually coming to, slowly opening his eyes as he turns to look at you. You smile at him, dazed and tired, as he sits up properly, staring down at your half-opened laptop and the half-full cup of tea next to it. 

“Thought you’d end up sleeping here again tonight,” you joke, even though it isn’t really a joke. Maybe, somewhere deep down inside you, in the crevices between your bones and the dark corner of your heart, you had hoped that he would stay. 

“Oh, did I fall asleep?” Jungkook asks, blinking away the sleep in his eyes. It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. 

“Just for a bit. I didn’t want to wake you, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to head back to your apartment or anything,” you tell him. 

Jungkook nearly jumps up off the couch at that, like he’s got springs in his shoes. Suddenly he’s wide awake, brown eyes blown open as he scrambles to gather his belongings, taking the cup of tea and quickly dumping it out in your sink. 

“Hey, don’t you want that?” You ask. 

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll come by some other time and have some, it was really good, I just fell asleep while drinking it,” Jungkook sputters, words moving a mile a minute as he tugs on his heavy black officer boots, scuffed at the tips from wear and tear. It’s as if he’s desperate to leave. Like your apartment has somehow offended him. Or worse, you. 

“If you want to stay, Jungkook, you can,” you tell him, standing up to run to the door before he pulls the damn thing off his hinges with how fast he’s moving. “I don’t mind. My bed is big enough for the both of us.”

“No, I should—I should get going. My… plants need watering. Right now. I totally forgot.”

It’s not a completely bullshit excuse. Jungkook has a fair few pothos amongst his other worldly apartment belongings, hanging from his ceiling or potted in old mugs and janky shoes. But it’s still a pretty bullshit excuse. It’s dark. Jungkook waters his plants every Sunday, and it’s Friday. It’s obvious he wants to get the hell out of your apartment for whatever reason. 

All you can do is hope and pray that it isn’t you who’s driving him away. 

“Oh—okay,” you tell him, opening the door as he furiously laces up his other boot. 

“Thanks for doing this. Next Halloween will be more fun, I swear. I won’t fall asleep on you. Or anything.”

“Okay, see you soon, then?” You ask, searching for a clue, a hint, anything that will tell you that it’s not you, that he hasn’t found you out yet. That you can still be friends, be best friends, because even if you want to kiss him, hold his hand, roll around in bed with him, loving him from afar is good enough. 

“Yes, yes, definitely. Dinner? Uh… sometime this week? I’ll text you. I have to go. Plants. See you!”

He dashes down the hallway. 

And you end your Halloween the same way you started it. Alone. 

Jungkook ran out of your apartment the other day like it was infested with cockroaches. Or the Black Plague. Or your microwave had just beeped. It was as if simply being inside it was going to scar him for life. 

Maybe your apartment is cursed. Jungkook does believe in ghosts. That’s another reason as to why he fears the microwave. Tiny ghosts could be living inside the microwave chamber and you’d never know. But Jungkook knows better. He knows that they’re there. 

“He just… ran out?” Chaewon asks, clearly bewildered. The two of you have been working on the first floor of the library all day, obviously doing everything in your power to not actually complete any of your assignments. 

“Yeah, something about his plants.” You sigh. 

Chaewon narrows her eyes, the same way she does when she’s plotting something. “Interesting.”

“What?” You ask, nudging her to see if you can worm a less mysterious response out of her. 

“Nothing,” Chaewon says with a nonchalant shrug. She clearly has something to say. 

“What?” You repeat forcefully. Chaewon doesn’t get to go all cryptic on you just because Jungkook ran out of your apartment like it had set fire. 

“I know I’ve only known you guys for, like, a year and a bit now, but you two have the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen,” Chaewon comments like it’s nobody’s business when it is, in fact, specifically two people’s business. 

You scowl. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” She pauses, thinking. In the silence, she begins to pack up her belongings, shoving her laptop into her bag and gathering up the small pile of candy wrappers slowly amassing in front of her. “I’ve never seen two best friends have a relationship quite like yours.”

“Thanks?”

“What are you doing for dinner? I’m eating with Yoonji, but you’re welcome to join if you want,” Chaewon offers. Even though you have no idea who Yoonji is, Chaewon would never exclude you from eating with them.

“I’m getting Korean food with Jungkook, but thanks for the offer,” you say, only to be greeted with Chaewon rolling her eyes. He said he’d meet us outside?”

Sure enough, when you head out of the glass doors at the front of the library, Jungkook is waiting dutifully on a bench close by, headphones in as he nods his head and taps his feet to the beat of the music, lost in his own world. He doesn’t even realize that you’ve left the library until you’re two feet in front of him, when he recognizes your beat-up white sneakers and looks up at you in glee, eyes crinkled into crescents. 

“Ready to go?” You ask happily. Your stomach has been rumbling ever since Jungkook suggested you go out to eat this morning. 

“Hell yeah I am,” Jungkook says, putting his earbuds away as he stands up. “You coming, Chae?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m eating with a friend.” There’s nudge against your shoulder, and when you turn to face her, she winks. “But you two enjoy yourselves! Don’t have too much fun without me!”

Before you can publicly berate her for being so goddamn obvious, she’s rotating 180 degrees on her heel and speed-walking in the opposite direction, zooming off so you don’t get the chance. 

“I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages,” you comment mindlessly. Twenty-four hours away from Jungkook feels like a lifetime and a half. Forty-eight is a light year. 

“I’ve been busy,” Jungkook says vaguely, shrugging his shoulders. 

“Doing what, going out to fancy restaurants and galas?” You half-tease. It’s sad but true—Jungkook spends his nights living a life you could only dream of. And all of these rituals you share, from studying in the library until three in the morning to crashing at his place and taking naps on separate couches, get put on the backburner. 

“Hey, it’s hard work pretending to be rich,” Jungkook pouts. “Besides, the craziest thing about going to those things is that rich Korean people don’t serve Korean food at their fancy gatherings. They serve shit like caviar.”

“Is that why you’re so desperate to get Korean?” You ask pointedly. 

“Yes,” Jungkook emphasizes. “Man, I just want some tteokbokki.”

“Then we’ll go and eat all of the tteokbokki you can dream of,” you promise. You round the street corner and on the edge of the main road and an alleyway sits a tiny Korean restaurant the size of a bedroom, no more than six cramped tables inside. It’s run by a family who passes it down through each generation, dependent on the starving college students nearby to keep it alive. 

It’s Jungkook’s favorite place. The owner gives him a discount every time he sees him. 

(It’s impossible not to fall in love with Jungkook. Impossible to not be drawn to his presence, his personality. Like moths to a flame, you can’t help but come closer.)

“Ah, Jungkook!” The old man behind the counter greets as the bell above the entrance rings. “Sit! Sit!” He points to your favorite table, a round one in the far left corner that’s right next to the biggest window. “Usual?”

“Tteokbokki, too, please!” Jungkook shouts. The man gives you both a thumbs up and heads back into the kitchen. 

“It’s been a while since we came here,” Jungkook notices. You both usually eat lunch on campus and Jungkook has been largely unavailable for dinner. 

“Almost sounds like you missed it,” you poke fun. 

“God, I missed it so much,” Jungkook exclaims, tilting his head back in exasperation. “I didn’t realize that it would be so much work to get dressed up in a suit and look hot.”

“Don’t make it sound like such a drag.” You frown. Jungkook needs to put in literally zero effort to look hot. Sitting across from him in this tiny Korean restaurant as he wears nothing but a massive hoodie and black joggers, he looks hot. When he wakes up in your bed in a raggedy t-shirt, he looks hot. When you catch him at three in the morning in the library after eighteen straight hours of studying, he looks hot. 

Jungkook sits there and radiates light. Radiates warmth and joy and beauty. Laughter and hope. He’s the college version of a Disney prince. Perfectly imperfect and completely out of your reach. 

“I wish I could take you with me, you might enjoy it,” Jungkook sighs. “Plus, I have literally never seen you wear something fancier than business casual. Imagine you in a ballgown!”

“In your dreams, Jeon,” you rebuke. “Free catered food sounds nice but having to mingle with the 1% does not.”

“Touché,” Jungkook concedes. “I don’t know how Chaewon does it.”

“She’s a goddess.”

“Indeed.”

Jungkook pours you a cup of water from the pitcher that the old man dropped off, and then pours one for himself. “Chaewon said that I did well, though.”

Not surprising. Jungkook excels at everything he does. 

“Of course you did, you sexy beast,” you chide. 

“She said I’d make a good boyfriend.”

You choke on your water as the man’s son brings out your food, and you desperately attempt to avoid eye contact as you sputter and cough into a napkin, gaze pointed away from both a surprised waiter and a concerned Jungkook, who awkwardly thanks the man and leans over to pat your back. 

“You good?” He asks, brows furrowed. 

Coughing, you say, “I’m okay, I’m okay. It just—it went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.” Jungkook doesn’t buy it, and the little coughs escaping your throat don’t do much to corroborate your claim. “Seriously, Jungkook. I’m okay. It’s just water.”

“You looked like you were on the verge of death,” Jungkook frowns. 

“That’s just my face,” you fire back. “Just keep talking about what you were saying earlier. What was it?”

“Being a good boyfriend,” Jungkook says, and with no water near your lips to distract you this time, your mind bears the full force of his words, weighing down on your shoulders like a calculus textbook. 

It’s not as if you aren’t already aware that Jungkook would be the best boyfriend in the entire world, bar none. Not as if you don’t sit in bed and dream of a parallel universe, a life other than the one you’re living in right now, where Jungkook is lovely and wonderful and yours. He knocks on your door at a random hour in the afternoon with Chinese takeout from the local restaurant. He remembers your homework assignments when you forget them. He sits in bed with you and judges the Instagrams of the guys on the latest Bachelorette season. It’s as if he was already yours.

“Believe me,” you scoff. “The people know how great of a boyfriend you are.” 

“It’s fake, though,” Jungkook reminds you. “It’s only for a night. An evening, really.”

“Better than nothing,” you sigh. “If only I had enough money to rent myself a fake boyfriend for a night.”

“If only your parents were the CEOs of a multibillion dollar cooperation,” Jungkook adds on. 

“Truth,” you say, and you and Jungkook toast to that. Toast to knowing that some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Toast to knowing that some of those people can get for themselves something you can only imagine in your wildest dreams—a night with Jungkook. More than just a night. A night spent dressed up in your fanciest clothes, arms wrapped tightly around each other. A night spent as a couple, rather than you and Jungkook. 

Toast to knowing that even if you’ll never get to have him like that, you get to have him like this, and you’d rather it be like this than nothing at all. 

“You don’t need to rent a fake boyfriend for a night, Y/N,” Jungkook tells you once you’ve downed the water in your glasses (stay hydrated!). “You shouldn’t feel pressured to spend time with people you don’t want to spend time with.”

You don’t understand, you sigh. I’d give anything to spend time with you. 

Jungkook pays. He says that he’s made more money accompanying wealthy socialites—even ones that don’t go to your school, because word gets around—than he would in a month’s worth of shifts at the call center. He says he’s never looking back. He’s probably not going to give up the gig for a while, either. 

“Just because you have cash now doesn’t mean you get a free pass to pay for everything we do together,” you warn. You’ve always split the price of meals, split the price birthday cakes for your friends. In the beginning of freshman year, Jungkook ate a quarter of a bag of goldfish you had and paid you fifty-three cents to account for his consumption, which you immediately sent back to him. You still fight over it, finding surreptitious ways to incorporate it into the Venmo payments you make to each other. 

“I’m rich, I can do whatever I want with my money,” Jungkook proclaims. “And if that means treating my best friend to a meal, then that means I’m gonna treat her to a meal.”

“That’s very rude of you,” you tell him pointedly. “Zero out of ten, worst best friend in the entire world. Will not accept my Venmo payments.”

Walking down the sidewalk, side by side, Jungkook wraps an arm around you and pulls you in for a side hug as you come to a stop at a traffic light. “You always do so much for me and Chaewon. You deserve to be treated once in a while, Y/N.”

“Why, ‘cause I go out to CVS at ten at night to get you Nyquil after you catch the common cold from some sweaty guy at the gym?” 

“That,” Jungkook nods, conceding, “and also because you’re one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. The people who know you are lucky to get to say your name.”

If only Jungkook knew that he was the exact same. It’s an honor to know him. It’s a blessing to love him. 

“What fancy clothes do you own?” Chaewon’s lying on your bed, scrolling mindlessly on her phone. 

“I don’t know,” you respond, brows furrowing. You get up from your desk chair to start fishing through your closet,  “I have, like, some business casual stuff.”

“How about a dress?”

You whip around suspiciously, eyeing Chaewon as she lounges around in your room and acts like she isn’t plotting something nefarious. “Don’t you think you could tell me what you’re trying to convince me to do before you ask me if I have the appropriate clothing?” 

Even lying on her back, Chaewon still manages to roll her eyes, sitting up to meet your gaze. “There’s a gala tonight to celebrate some big business deal being closed and I want you to come with me,” she says like it’s a chore, exasperated. 

“Me?” You frown. “Why not Jungkook?”

“He said he had some thing to do for some other girl,” Chaewon says. The topic clearly is not at the forefront of her mind. It’s a little too obvious that it’s at the forefront of yours. “Besides, I was given no date restrictions and you deserve to have a little fun tonight. It’s a Friday!”

“I just want to stay in bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you tell her. 

“You’re already out of bed,” Chaewon points out unhelpfully. 

“Well, then I want to get into bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you rephrase. 

Chaewon pouts. “Noooo, please? It’ll be fun, I swear,” Chaewon pleads.  “It’s a huge party and hundreds of people are going to be there. Everybody gets to bring a plus one. You won’t be the only person who doesn’t know anything about business and has to cling onto their date in order to survive.”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me want to go so much,” you deadpan. 

“Seriously, Y/N. When was the last time you went out on a Friday?”

A while ago. You and Jungkook started having Mario Kart nights on Friday in the middle of your freshman year after you both came to the conclusion that every frat party smells, sounds, and tastes like the same fifty shades of college regret. You haven’t gone out since. 

“Not that long ago,” you lie. It’s been months.

“Yeah, right,” Chaewon scoffs. “Don’t think I don’t see your Bitmoji on the SnapMap sitting in your damn apartment on a Friday at 11PM,” she scolds.

“I’m gonna turn off my location,” you declare. You’ve had enough of Snapchat exposing you and your location. People can live in mystery about your whereabouts from now on. They don’t need to know. Chaewon certainly does not. 

“No excuses, you’re coming with me to the gala! You must have something to wear in that closet of yours, don’t you?” She slides off of your bed with a thud and joins you as you stand in front of your clothes. None of them scream fancy. None of them even whisper it. You stand back as she shuffles through your clothes, hangers squeaking as she shoves them along the rail. Chaewon tears through your clothing faster than you skim through your economics readings. “Aha! What do we have here?”

She whips out a dress from the very back of your closet, right behind the blazer you never wear because you’d rather be caught dead than in business attire. It’s old—you don’t think you’ve worn it since the beginning of your freshman year when you thought you actually had to dress up for parties. Needless to say, you dry-cleaned it the following Monday and never wore it again. You don’t even recall bringing it to college this year. 

“This is perfect!” Chaewon cries. “Really says ‘I can fucking dress myself’, don’t you think?”

“Are you implying that I can’t dress myself?” 

“You should definitely wear this,” Chaewon decides, dodging the question. “Gucci and Louis Vuitton are overrated, anyway.”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I.” Chaewon thrusts the dress towards you.

Chaewon shakes her head. “Of course you don’t.” 

Three hours later finds you one makeup and hair session later, standing in the lobby of a magnificent skyscraper wearing a dress that maybe could have done without the cup of frozen yogurt that you ate before you arrived. Now you remember why you haven’t really worn it since the beginning of last year. Has it shrunk?

“I feel like a loser, Chaewon,” you hiss as she bats her eyelashes and gets directed to the private elevator that will lead you both to the top floor. “A money-less, jobless loser.”

“At least you’re honest, Y/N,” Chaewon whispers back as you step into the elevator. Despite being nearly an hour and a half late (“Fashionably so!” Chaewon exclaims.) you are crowded into the back corner, several other couples stepping inside to join you, all of them wearing clothes that cost more than your tuition for all four years of college, combined. “That’s better than most of the people here.”

Nothing separates the rich from the poor like morality. 

When the elevator doors open, you and Chaewon are the last group to step out, milling about in the corner until the path is free. And when you turn your gaze away from her, you realize just why Jungkook’s so keen on going to events like these, why he never turns down an offer when it lights up his phone screen. 

In movies, rich people flaunt their wealth so extravagantly that it almost looks fake. From gigantic ice sculptures to ten-feet-tall chocolate fountains, entire orchestras and dresses worth thousands of dollars, it makes you wonder if rich people really do see those items as necessities when throwing a party. They rent out entire European castles and the press publicizes every one of their actions. To you, it looks contrived, unrealistic. Even if rich people have enough money to sustain the bottom 99% for hundreds of years, how could they spend their money on nonsense like this?

As it turns out, the ice sculptures and chocolate fountains are only half of the story.

At this gala, the hosts have spared no expense. The entire penthouse is made purely of glass, from the ceiling, to the floor, to the walls in between, giving you an absolutely breathtaking view of the city lights dozens of feet below you, of the stars millions of light years away. It’s as if you’re standing in a bubble, frozen in time, the world sparkling and twinkling and shimmering around you. You didn’t even know a place like this existed on Earth. The price to book it must be astronomical. The view, even more so. 

“Holy fuck,” you murmur, mouth dropping open at the sight. It’s a movie come to life. It’s a picture straight out of a fairytale. 

“Pretty sweet, right?” Chaewon says, clearly proud of herself for convincing you to join her. “The Parks and the Ohs really felt like celebrating.”

“No shit,” you say, dumbfounded. Chaewon wraps her arm around yours and leads you out of the elevator, her poise and grace akin to that of a princess. She’s been to this place before. She could do this in her sleep. 

“Pictures first, then we eat, and then we mingle,” Chaewon instructs, and you nod diligently. She’s the only way you’re going to make it out of this night unscathed. Without her, you don’t know what you’d do. 

On the average day of an average life of an average person, pictures means getting a stranger to take a single pic on your shitty iPhone at your worst angle, which you will begrudgingly post to your Instagram later after extensive editing. 

But this is not your average day, and these are not average lives of not average people. Pictures means professional photographers with entire setups, standing with their cameras held up to their eyes, poised and ready for the next shot. It means couples, one by one, stepping in front of a gorgeous backdrop and posing, over and over, as five photographers at once cram to get their best angle, the cleanest photo. 

You don’t know how to pose for photos. You barely remember what the proper formatting is for your essays, depending on the citation structure. And yet, Chaewon is ushering you over in front of the photographers, immediately striking one of her classic, perfect poses as you flail about, trying to figure out what to do with your hands. 

“Just relax,” Chaewon advises. Even standing beside you, she can see you panicking in her periphery. “And smile. You’re beautiful, so show them that.”

Eventually, as the photographers switch positions to get different angles, you stop worrying about your hands, stop worrying about your bag, your feet, your head tilt, and just grin. You may not have millions of dollars to your name, but it’s a Friday night and you’re living the life of a billionaire with no responsibilities. You deserve to live a little. 

When the next group comes up, Chaewon nudges you out of the way and whispers to one of the photographers, who nods dutifully in response. Wrapping her arm around yours once more, she guides you to the massive catering setup, tables and tables lined with delicacies from every country you could imagine. And of course, a gargantuan chocolate fountain in the middle of it all. 

Your stomach rumbles. Clearly, the frozen yogurt was not enough to hold you off. Or maybe it’s just because you’ve been eating college dining hall food for weeks now, and are probably going to throw up if you have to have dry beef one more time. 

“If you want to, you should try the caviar. It’s delicious. Avoid the eggplant, it tastes like foot, but the brussel sprouts are delicious. Kimchi’s good, too. Classic,” Chaewon instructs as you walk around the tables, placing servings the size of quarters onto your plate just so you can have a taste of everything. Chaewon sticks to some ribs, pan-seared salmon, and a vegetable so expensive you’ve never even heard of it before. 

“Im Chaewon, is that you?”

“Mrs. Kim!”

A strange older woman comes up to the two of you as you’re dishing up, and Chaewon’s face immediately lights up. The woman goes in for a hug, a barely-touching pat of the shoulders and hands. Over her shoulder, you watch as Chaewon rolls her eyes and pulls a face. 

“How are you, dear? You look so grown up,” Mrs. Kim says. You watch as the light slowly fades from Chaewon’s eyes with each second that passes. 

“I’m very well, Mrs. Kim. Did you get your hair done? It makes you look so youthful.” Chaewon’s a master. She glares at you when Mrs. Kim isn’t looking, raising her eyebrows as if to say learn, young padawan. This is how it’s done. They go on for a couple minutes, showering fake compliments on each other as you slowly begin to eat. You scrunch your nose up. Chaewon’s right. The eggplant does taste like foot. 

“And who is this?” Mrs. Kim asks, turning her focus onto you. You look up like a deer in headlights, a brussel sprout puffing your cheek. You were not meant to mingle and eat at the same time. 

“This is one of my closest friends, Y/N,” Chaewon introduces for you. You nod your hello, chewing the brussel sprout in the most nondescript manner possible in an effort to save whatever is left of your dignity. “She’s pre-law.”

You are not pre-law.

“Oh, how wonderful! You must have a lot you want to accomplish in life,” Mrs. Kim says. God, you couldn’t care less about how Mrs. Kim feels about you.

“Yes, definitely,” you say awkwardly. 

“We really must be going, Mrs. Kim. My parents will want me to make sure I do my rounds,” Chaewon says, a hand on your arm as she makes to get you both the fuck out of there. 

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Kim concedes, sending you and Chaewon one final goodbye before moving on to find her next victim. 

When she leaves, Chaewon seems to let out the biggest exhale of her life. “Holy fucking shit, I thought she’d never leave,” she exclaims, grabbing a flute of champagne and downing it in a single go. “She’s an associate of my father’s, so she’s always trying to kiss my damn ass. Like, sorry that you need to brown-nose your boss and his daughter just so you bribe your idiot son’s way into college.”

“You like mingling, I take?” You joke. 

“Just murder me.”

“Have any tips?”

“Flex as hard as possible without actually flexing. Try to speak to people your age because they are usually more bearable than people older than you. The best conversationalists are anybody under the age of ten,” Chaewon tells you. She picks up another glass of Prosecco. “Want some champagne?” 

“You have it,” you tell her. “I think you need it more than I do.”

Chaewon shrugs. Not as if they’re running out any time soon. She gulps it down and places it on the tray of one of the caterers as they whiz by her. 

The rest of the night passes by in the same way the beginning of it did. Chaewon drags you around the penthouse, talking with her father’s business partners and associates and their sons and daughters and husbands and wives for no more than two minutes each before moving on. She’s got her technique down pat. Greet, compliment, shade, flex, compliment, say goodbye. It’s foolproof, because you immediately notice that everyone else in the room has adopted the same approach. 

Business gatherings like these are just one big game of who can be the most-liked and the least-liked at the same time. And the answer: everybody, all at once. 

Halfway through the evening, Chaewon collapses against the back wall, totally unafraid of the possibility of the glass giving out behind her. She doesn’t care. If it breaks, it breaks. 

“Tired?”

“I just need a break,” Chaewon declares. “Because everyone in here is so fucking fake, and you’re the only one I can talk to without wanting to rip out my eardrums.”

“I’m honored,” you say sarcastically. 

“When I say you’re the only honest one here, I mean it,” Chaewon says. You lean back against the wall next to her, looking out into a sea of people in fancy clothes with fancy food and fancy friends. “Look at all these people, Y/N. All these fucking people, and you’re the only one who’s true.”

And then, you spot him. 

He’s far away, standing in a group of people you don’t recognize, a hand on the small of another girl’s back. He’s wearing a navy blue suit, tight-fitting and tailored, a silver watch sparkling on his wrist as he adjusts his sleeves. One of the other young men in the group says something funny, and he tilts his head back to laugh, chuckling as the girl beside him curls into his arms. 

You suppose it would have been ignorant of you to assume Jungkook was elsewhere on a night like this, at a gathering where everybody who knows anybody is here. 

Jungkook must not know you’re here. He mustn't, otherwise he would have come over to find you. You must have entered at different times, spent the night wandering around different parts of the penthouse. Clinging onto Chaewon’s arms, you must have avoided his gaze, and he, yours. 

Chaewon hasn’t spotted him either. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better, if you’re the only one stuck with the knowledge that he’s here tonight. Chaewon would pity you. Other people would ask you how you knew such a worldly, experienced man like him. And you would spend the night wallowing in sadness, wondering why it’s never you that gets to spend the night next to him. 

From this distance, you can see Jungkook perfectly. The light from the moon shines down on him like a goddamn spotlight, catching the sparkling on his wrist, leaving a silver gleam in his slicked back hair. You watch as he laughs, smiles, talks, grins and beams and socializes. Of course he’s here. Of course. He’s so good at this, so good at being real and genuine and happy. 

Chaewon says the only person in the room who is true is you, but how can that be? How can that be when Jungkook, the most honest, wonderful, real person you know, is standing in front of you? You aren’t honest. You aren’t true and real and whole. You stand on the sidelines, a wallflower in a room of daisies and roses, and pine from afar. Watch as he pretends to date a girl that’s not you, wraps his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek, and you act like everything is alright. 

It sucks, being trapped like this for fear of him seeing you. You know that would be worse—if he saw you standing alone and decided to take matters into his own hands. Seeing him up close in a penthouse like this, a movie set, shimmering and sparkling, it would be worse. Jungkook pulls the girl beside him in close to his side, smiling as he listens to someone else speak. She’s the perfect height in those heels, just tall enough to rest her head in the crook between his neck and his shoulder. You imagine them walking into the room together, hand in hand. Imagine them posing for the pictures like a real couple, a pair of celebrities. 

You suppose you have no reason to be jealous of her, of him, of what they have. Jealousy is when resenting someone for having something that you once had. You never had a life like that with Jungkook. You’ll never have a life like that with him. Never get dressed up to go out, never get to be his date to an event. Never get pictures taken of you as a couple, never feed each other candies and strawberries dipped in chocolate. You can’t be jealous of her. You were never in the running to begin with. 

“Ready to get back out there?” Chaewon asks, placing a firm hand on your shoulder. 

A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, offering it to the both of you. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Chaewon tells you as she takes a glass for herself. 

You sigh, casting another glance over at Jungkook. He and his date are moving around now, joining another social circle on the opposite side of the penthouse. He looks so at ease, so comfortable. He belongs there, in the middle of it all, talking and laughing and grinning. And you? You belong back at home, underneath your duvet covers playing a game of Mario Kart. Not here. 

You shake your head. You could use a drink or two in this state. “I’d love one, actually. Thank you.”

That night, you stay at Chaewon’s place. 

“You’ve been acting weird.”

“Hello to you, as well,” you say with a scowl as Chaewon sits down across from you at the local ramen place. 

“Listen,” Chaewon begins, “I’ve been thinking. You need to confess to Jungkook.”

You nearly spit out the complimentary water you were served. “Excuse me?”

“You need to. You’ve been acting weird and that’s the only thing that’s going to fix it,” Chaewon declares. 

“What do you mean I’ve been ‘acting weird’? Care to explain?” You ask, offended. You haven’t been acting weird. Well, that weird. Maybe a little weird.

“Jungkook told me you haven’t seen each other for the last eight days,” Chaewon points out. Eight days? It’s more like seven and a half. Not that you’ve been counting, or anything. 

“So? We’re busy people,” you defend. It’s a good enough excuse. You’re sophomores in college. You have classes. Clubs. You have to meal prep. 

“So? You guys are best friends. You make time to see each other at three in the fucking morning if you haven’t seen each other yet that day. And you haven’t seen each other for eight whole days? What’s wrong with you?” Chaewon demands. 

“Nothing! What the heck, I invite you out to a best friend ramen date and you just blaspheme all over me like this?” You accuse. This is not how you imagined today to be going. This isn’t how you imagined this week to be going. “Besides, it’s only been seven and a half days. He’s over-exaggerating.”

“Seven and a—holy fuck, you are literally the worst. Can you just stop resisting? If you tell him, everything will be fine and go back to the way things were,” Chaewon says, blinking, flabbergasted. 

“No, they will not,” you hiss. “Everything will change if I tell him. We’re best friends, Chae. Imagine if I told you that I loved you. What would you do?”

“I’d love you back, that’s what!” Chaewon tells you. “You deserve to be loved back, Y/N. Nothing would change between us. I already love you. You’re one of my most favorite people ever. I would never regret something if it was with you.”

“It’s different with him, though,” you try to explain. You don’t know why—you just know that it is. The way you’re friends with Chaewon and the way you’re friends with Jungkook are entirely separate. You love Chaewon. You’re not in love with Chaewon. 

“Is it? How?” Chaewon says. 

“I don’t know, I just—it’s different with him.” There’s no way to describe it. Jungkook appeared in your life and it was as if everything just clicked into place. There isn’t a single thing in your life that makes more sense to you than Jungkook. “It’s always been different with him. With you, I—I knew that we would become really close friends once we started talking a lot more in the beginning of freshman year. But with him—I don’t know. From the moment I met him, I knew that I would fall in love with him. When he said hello to me, I was fucked. There’s never been any hope for me, Chae. I just have to live like this forever.”

Chaewon rolls her eyes. “No, you don’t. You don’t even see what the fuck is right in front of you.”

“You?”

“God, I’m friends with idiots. Literal idiots. How you guys have made it through nearly a year and a half of college is beyond me,” Chaewon says to nobody in particular. “Seriously, tell me, Y/N. What do you think will happen if you tell him? Just out of curiosity.”

“I don’t know—” you pause. A lot of things. He tells you he just wants to stay friends. He rejects you because he’s not interested that way and you can’t really be friends anymore because it’s weird now. He’s already interested in somebody else. He’s already dating somebody else and you never even knew. He’s not looking for a relationship right now. Things get awkward because you confessed to your best friend that you’re in love with him and he doesn’t feel the same. You end up never speaking to each other. You never see each other. You go through the rest of university seeing each other on the Green by chance and not knowing what to do. You graduate and move on with your lives. And suddenly, he’s just a past friend you used to have. No longer a part of your life. No longer given the chance to. “He rejects me. We never speak again and have to avoid each other at all costs. He lets me down easy and I feel like a total loser for having confessed in the first place. There’s a lot.”

“Jesus, Y/N. Aren’t you forgetting a possibility?” Chaewon says, eyebrows raised high. 

“I’m omitting a lot of them,” you tell her. Including the one where, in the next three years, you end up in a hellish dystopian wasteland and you have to band together to survive but it’s awkward and terrible because you love him still and he doesn’t feel the same, never has and never will, and now you have to fight off zombies and a corrupt autocratic government all while dealing with your own goddamn feelings. That may be the most unbearable one of them all. 

“How about the one where he actually feels the same?”

“Too unrealistic,” you tell Chaewon. It’s the truth. Why else would Jungkook be traipsing around with beautiful, rich, worldly girls on his nights off? He does it for the money, sure, but he likes it. He loves the experience, loves living that sort of life. You’d never be able to provide that for him. “You know that’s never going to happen, Chae. We’re just friends.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, he thinks that we’re just friends. And I’m not gonna fuck everything up by telling him that I’ve been madly in love with him for the past year and a half.” You can think of nothing worse. 

“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe he thinks that the two of you are just friends because you refuse to actually show him how you feel?” Chaewon asks pointedly, eyebrows raised in disapproval. She looks about ready to walk out of the restaurant. “You never do things to give him a reason to think otherwise.”

“Why would I?” 

When your ramen arrives, Chaewon takes a deep breath, downs the rest of her glass of water, and moves on. It’s clear that if she thinks about this any more, her head will explode. 

Nothing’s ever going to change between you and Jungkook. You knew, when you first met him, that it was always going to hurt like this. That loving him was something you had to sacrifice to stay close to him. He lights up every fucking room he walks into, and it’s all you can do not to sit there and bask in his warmth. You would rather catch a single one of his rays than be in the darkness. And if being friends with him means that friends is all you’ll ever be, then so be it. You’re lucky to have him like this. Why take the plunge? 

“Just—” Chaewon says as you begin to pull apart the noodles in your own bowl. “I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now. And you deserve to be happy, Y/N. You deprive yourself of all of these wonderful things, and I just want you to know that you deserve every single one of them. But telling him? That’s something that even I know would make you the happiest. You shouldn’t live like this, Y/N. You have no idea what you’re missing out on if you do.”

The streak of not seeing Jungkook ends the next day, when you come back from an evening grocery store run to find him standing outside your door, hand about to knock on the wood. He’s all dressed up again, button-down and slacks, hair styled and parted, and you watch as he takes a deep breath, almost as if he’s waiting for the best time to knock. 

“Jungkook?”

He practically jumps out of his skin at the sound of your voice, nearly tripping over his own feet as he lays his eyes on you. 

“Oh, Y/N!” He exclaims. “I was just about to see if you were home.”

“You could have just texted, you know,” you say jokingly, joining him at the front door as you fumble for your keys. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” Jungkook admits sheepishly. 

“Well, make it up to me by helping me unpack these,” you demand, kicking the door open as you reach down to grab your reusable canvas bags filled with groceries. Immediately, Jungkook is leaning down to grab all of them for you, hauling them inside like they weigh nothing. You stare as he heads over to your kitchen without breaking a sweat, biceps clenching as he lifts the groceries up onto the counter. 

“What’d you get?” Jungkook asks, slowly beginning to take out the groceries. He’s in your apartment so often that he’s memorized where all of your food goes, from the correct shelf in the fridge for produce to the proper cabinet for cereal. 

“Just like… groceries. I saw a box of peppermint chocolate bars that I thought you might like, they’re in there somewhere,” you say mindlessly, pointing to a random canvas bag. Immediately, Jungkook abandons his putting-away-groceries duty to fish through each of the bags, hunting for the box of goodies. “And I got some cheap Trader Joe’s wine. You know. Just for emergencies.”

“Trader Joe’s wine and peppermint chocolate bars,” Jungkook comments, nodding in approval. He finally finds the box and tears it open sideways. “Sounds like a perfect dessert if I’ve ever heard one.”

“What, did you eat already?” You ask, busting out the wine and a couple of mugs, because you don’t own any wine glasses. Nothing says cultured like drinking seven-dollar wine out of mugs with kitschy sayings like “don’t talk to me until this is empty” or “coffee is my first love” written on them. 

Jungkook shrugs. He grabs the box and heads over to your couch, already kicking back and relaxing. “Yeah, I went to some restaurant for another double date,” Jungkook says. “It was one of those places where everything is so expensive but the portions are the size of my fist. Of your fist.”

“You sound hungry,” you note, filling up the mugs and joining him. “And mad.”

“I’m getting reimbursed for the money I spent tonight, so I suppose I could be angrier. But I’m starving. Let’s finish this entire box of chocolates and do nothing else.”

“Your words, not mine,” you say, although his proposal sounds more than appealing to you. 

You turn the television on for some background noise, switching to a channel showing old reruns of unsolved serial killer cases, because nothing sets the mood better than the words “then, slowly, he took the knife with which he killed her and began to slice away at her body”. Jungkook doesn’t seem to pay the television any attention, though, instead focused entirely on the chocolate in front of him, calling his name. 

He takes an enormous bite out of one before moaning far too sexually for your liking, tossing his head back in bliss. “Oh my God.”

“Good?”

Jungkook moans again in response.

“Please don’t orgasm on this couch. Who knows what other bodily fluids were on here before we bought it,” you ask calmly. 

“I’d say that’s nasty, but you guys did cover this with one of those couch covers, so it’s not like my body is coming into contact with other people’s body stains,” Jungkook reasons. The couch cover is the single best purchase you’ve made this entire year. Possibly your entire life. “But they’re delicious. You made a good purchase.”

“I thought you would like them,” you say. “You’re the only person I know who actually likes the combination of mint and chocolate.”

“People who say that it tastes like toothpaste are brushing their teeth with the wrong kind of toothpaste,” he tells you pointedly. “I don’t understand. This is God’s combination. It’s perfect.”

“As long as you love it, that’s all that matters,” you tell him with a pat on his back, breaking off a square of the chocolate bar for yourself. It is pretty good, even if mint chocolate ice cream does sometimes taste like toothpaste. But you’d never tell Jungkook that, of course. 

Jungkook takes a swig of the wine, picking up the mug and gulping down about half of it, the wine bitter on his tongue. “Goes great with this wine, too,” he jokes. You take a sip yourself. It’s… not very good. Actually, rather sticky. No wonder it was only seven dollars. 

“You don’t have to lie to me, I know it tastes like ass,” you tell him honestly. To be fair, you and Jungkook have both had worse. Compared to the shit served at frat parties, this may as well be beautifully-aged Malbec. 

“It only tastes a little bit like ass,” Jungkook compromises. “But it doesn’t not taste like ass.”

“Let’s finish it now so we don’t have to have any more of it later,” you decide. “You’ve probably had some of the best alcohol in your life this semester.”

Jungkook thinks back, tilting his head to the side as he begins to recall all of the instances in the past few months when he’s had anything to drink. “Soju’s still my favorite. But yeah, I’d say I’ve had wine that probably costs more than my textbooks for this semester if I hadn’t pirated them all.”

“The beauty of being a CS student,” you muse. 

“You know it,” he says, holding his half-empty mug out as a toast to himself. “But seriously, even if this Trader Joe’s wine literally tasted like garbage, it would still be better than all of that other shit.”

You turn to him, skeptical. Even the single night you spent with Chaewon, in a penthouse amongst the stars, drinking champagne and eating strawberries dipped in chocolate, was more than you could ever dream of. You woke up the next day on an air mattress in her bedroom and wanted nothing more than to go back to basking in the luxury, desperate for another taste. It was addicting. How could Jungkook ever prefer what he has right now to what he had last night? 

“Really? Don’t say that just to make me feel better,” you tell him. You can take it. Jungkook has every reason to prefer the fancy meals, the penthouses, the suits and ties to your janky little apartment and old clothes from high school. The two aren’t at all on the same level. They’re not even in the same goddamn game. If you could drop everything to have what Chaewon has, what the other girls and boys who pay for Jungkook’s company have, you would. 

“I’m not,” Jungkook tells you seriously. “I mean it. I would rather sit in your room, hunched over your tiny Switch because you lost the HDMI cord to plug it into the television, playing Mario Kart than out there, pretending to be someone I’m not.”

“But it was fun in the beginning, wasn’t it? Getting to be rich without the moral ambiguity that comes along with being part of the upper class?” You ask. It must have been. Jungkook looked so happy when he first started doing these gigs, coming back to your apartment in a state of bliss, a little tipsy from the expensive champagne and steak. He’d knock on your door and tell you all about the night, from how older businessmen handed him their cards and offered him jobs, to the hundreds of ice cream flavors you could only ever dream of eating. Everything seemed so wonderful to him.

Jungkook shrugs, pouring himself more wine. “Yeah, I guess, but it gets so old after a while. Like, no wonder Chaewon was so desperate for me to go with her that first time. It sucks the damn life out of you. You walk around and mingle and pretend that you’re the greatest person on Earth, talking about yourself and kissing up to the other people for an entire night. Honestly, sometimes it’s worse than my CS homework. And I hate that shit.”

“Chaewon mentioned that the eggplant usually tastes like foot,” you add. Jungkook nods in agreement. 

“Yeah, it does. She warned me about it the first night and I, like a fool, tried it because I usually like eggplant. And it still tasted like foot. Never again,” Jungkook says, shivering at the mere thought of it. It’s funny, actually, because you did the exact same thing. “But the food is like, the one thing I pretty much don’t have the right to complain about. It’s delicious and usually free.”

“But I hope that you’re having fun,” you tell him honestly, because you do. When you’re sitting in your room, eating two different pints of Ben & Jerry’s, you hope that Jungkook, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, is enjoying himself more than you are. Because he deserves it. You never want there to be a time when he’s sad, when he’s unhappy or bored. Jungkook deserves to live the happiest version of life he possibly can. “I want you to enjoy yourself.”

“I do,” Jungkook says. There’s a second half to that sentence. “I do—it’s just that… It's so fake, you know? I feel like such a goddamn actor when I’m there. I get to live this extravagant lifestyle for a few hours but in return I don’t even know who I’m looking at when I look in the mirror.”

Oh?

“Like, I pretend to be this business student, when I’m not. I pretend to have millions of dollars to my name, when I don’t. I hold hands and pose for pictures with people Chaewon is vaguely familiar with and nothing, literally nothing, feels real. I don’t know.” Jungkook takes another swig from the mug. “Even the relationships I have when I’m there are fake.”

“Do you hate it that much, then?” You ask him. If it’s so awful and terrible, then why does he keep doing it? Keep dressing up and going out, holding hands with and wrapping his arm around them?

“No,” Jungkook says, sighing as he leans back into the couch. “I don’t hate it. I just—I wish I had something real afterwards to come back home to.”

Real? Like what? Like you? You aren’t real. You sit next to your best friend and pretend that everything is fine. That nothing hurts. You’ve had the biggest crush on him ever since you laid eyes on him, and you’re doing everything in your power to make sure that he’s the only one that doesn’t know. 

“That’s why I’m always coming back to your apartment afterwards,” Jungkook says. He chuckles, but it isn’t his usual laugh. It sounds forced, contrived and fake. Jaded. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it almost immediately. Then, he breathes, long and slow. Thinks. The silence is almost unbearable. Waiting to hear what he has to say, even more so. “You’re the most genuine person I know. What we share—it’s real.”

Tonight is the least lonely you’ve felt in a long time. 

Even though Jungkook has something tonight, you aren’t aching to be by his side, desperate to spend more time with him. He told you that he was really looking forward to this one, that it wasn’t going to be some stuffy gala or blind double date. He said something about going to karaoke with the girl and her friends, singing Britney Spears songs and taking shots of soju for hours on end, screaming his voice hoarse. And even if you aren’t there with him, you’re happy because you know that he’s happy, that he’s genuinely enjoying himself. 

So, you aren’t that lonely. 

Content with the state of your life as it is, you take the night off, ready to prepare yourself for a weekend that will almost certainly consist entirely of just work. Chaewon’s voice echoes in your mind (“I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now,” she had told you), but it’s different now. Because you are happy. You are happy, because Jungkook’s happy. The two of you see each other just as frequently as you used to. He texts you about his terrible CS homework and the Shiba Inu he just saw being walked across campus. It’s all gone back to the way it used to be. That’s what you had wanted. 

You were prepared for this. You knew that it would eventually boil down to this, down to whether or not you could take Jungkook not knowing how you feel any longer. But right now, you don’t care. Jungkook not knowing has always been a part of your friendship. The love you hold for him, in the spaces between your bones and deep in the cracks of your heart, that has always been there. You see it, hear it, feel it, whenever you’re with him. Even when you’re not with him, it will remind you, appear in the silence, the emptiness. It will always make itself known, because it’s become a part of you. From the moment you met him, it had settled into your heart.

Staring out of the window by your living room, overlooking the ugliest parking garage on campus, you sigh. You can’t see the stars from here, not even in the dead of night, but that’s alright. There is something so peaceful about the navy blue sky. About how mysterious and unknown it is. It calms you. You put on a movie that you’ve genuinely been wanting to watch for a while, sit down in your bed, amongst your duvet and sheets, pillows and plushies, and enjoy yourself, for once. It’s a good night. 

And then, much like most aspects of your terribly convoluted, over-complicated and confusing life, it all comes crashing down. 

There’s a faint thud from outside, a soft little non-noise that you assume is coming from the street. Not wanting to interrupt your movie—she’s just about to confess, holy shit—you ignore it. It’ll go away eventually. 

Then another thud. You pause, leaning towards your window to see if you can figure out the source. Silence. You’re just about to press play, when you hear it again. And again. It gets louder and louder, making up in volume what it lacks in rhythm and order, until you realize it’s someone knocking on your door. And not just knocking casually. It’s as if someone is shoving their whole body into it, shoulders and chest and feet hitting the wood as they bang on it. 

“Y/N?”

Oh, God.

Pushing off your duvet, you tug on your slippers and wipe away the crust around your eyes as you rush towards the door. You know who’s on the other side. You’re not sure if answering it is the better or worse option. 

You’ve always had an uncanny ability to pick the latter. 

When you open the door, Jungkook, in a fancy sweater pulled over a white button down and black jeans that could almost pass for dressy slacks, is standing on the other side. 

Correction: he’s sort of standing on the other side. He nearly topples over when you pull open the door, having clearly been leaning on it, and you barely have time to reach your arms out to catch him. 

“Oh! Y/N!” Jungkook exclaims, as if he’s surprised to see you inside your own apartment. “I was hoping to see you.”

“I figured,” you tell him, laughing. You guide him inside, and even in his state he remembers to tug off his clean white sneakers, kicking them towards the shoe rack. “It’s so late, Jungkook, you should go home.” 

“No,” Jungkook whines. “I wanted to see you. I missed you.”

“We saw each other this morning, Jungkook. And this afternoon, right before you went out,” you remind him. The words go in one ear and out the other, and he pulls you in close to him, wrapping his arms around you as he presses his body against yours in a sweaty hug. His grip is tight around you as he rests his head on your shoulder, breathing you in as if you’d been gone for years. Slowly, after a few seconds, you pull away from him, a hand on his shoulder to get him to look at you through his too-long bangs, hanging over his eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong? I’m right here, don’t worry. I never left.”

“I had a lot to drink tonight,” Jungkook tells you, blinking rapidly. “Like, a lot. They just kept ordering soju and I just kept drinking it. It was really good. Have you had strawberry soju? It’s delicious.”

“I might have had it once or twice,” you fib, not able to recall having it one way or another. “Come on, sit down,” you point him towards the couch, but he refuses, clinging onto you even as you make your way towards the kitchen. “Jungkook, please, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“But I missed you,” Jungkook repeats. “I missed you a lot. I thought about you the entire time I was there.”

You can’t say you didn’t do the same. 

“Next time we’ll do something together then, hey? Something really fun, like going to an arcade or bowling,” you promise him with a pat on his shoulder. “But you need to drink some water, JK. Can you please sit down?”

“No, I want to be with you,” Jungkook says like it’s nothing. Like the feeling of him wrapped around you like this, holding onto you and telling you that he misses you, that he thinks about you, doesn’t mean anything. You don’t think your heart has beaten since you opened the door to see him standing on the other side. 

(You don’t think it’s beaten since you met him. Since he came up to you on the pavement, asking you for directions. Since you told him your name, and he told you his.)

“Ah, fine, just be careful, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” you concede, because it’s so easy to let him have his way, so easy to say yes to him. You manage to grab an empty water bottle and fill it up with what’s left in your Brita, too lazy to refill it after it’s left bone dry. Slowly, you make your way to your bedroom, out of view of the central living space, where your roommates could burst through the door at any moment and see you taking care of your drunk best friend on the sofa. 

Slowly, you settle on your bed, sitting off of the edge of it as you cajole him into drinking some water, whispering soft nothings to make sure he finishes the whole thing. 

“Does your head hurt or anything?” You ask him, already looking around for the stash of Advil you usually keep on your nightstand.

“No, no, I’m fine, Y/N, seriously,” he promises, even if you can see the glazed-over look in his eyes, the way his sweaty bangs stick to his forehead. “You’re too nice, you know? Always treating me when I show up at your place. Even when you don’t invite me.”

“You know I never mind seeing you,” you tell him. “You can come over whenever you want. I’m always here.”

“No, you’re not,” Jungkook says with a pout, and it makes you furrow your brows. When have you not been? Jungkook’s been going out to events ever since the beginning of the semester, and without fail, you’ve always been waiting for him at home, knowing he’ll turn up one way or another. Except, there was— “That one time a couple of weeks ago, I went to this crazy big gala with Eunha, there were so many people there, and I came back home afterwards and knocked on your door, and your roommates said they hadn’t seen you all day. Where were you that day?”

He had come? You didn’t know if he would. 

(Or maybe, you did. You knew he would show up at your door once he got back from that night, and selfishly, not wanting to see him after the fact, the leftover version of him, the part he leaves behind when he goes out. You knew he would be there and you couldn’t bear the thought of being the second girl he spends the night with. The other option. Maybe, you’ve known all along that you’ll never quite stack up to the girls he goes out with, and that sometimes, when you see him all dressed up while you’re in your hoodie and sweats, it reminds you is nothing more than a casual friendship.)

“I must have been out late with Chaewon that day, I’m sorry,” you apologize, letting him rest his head on your shoulder. “I didn’t know you would come.”

“I always come after my events. You know that.”

“I didn’t know if you’d remember to,” you correct. 

“I’d never forget about you,” Jungkook says, the alcohol erasing his filter. Making him honest. “I really missed you, that day. I had been waiting the entire night to see you.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” you promise, and this one is for real. 

“You know, today?” Jungkook says, pulling his head back so he can get a good look at you, your eyes meeting his own. “Today, I was so sad on my way here. It was so terrible, because I was drunk and sad and I missed you.”

“You were sad? What happened?” You ask, leaning in. Jungkook? Sad? Who would do such a thing to him? Who would erase the smile on his face, his crescent eyes, and replace them with tears? 

“This girl and I, she was a lot of fun. We sang a couple duets together and we were pretty good,” he hiccups, “kept winning. It was fun. She and I talked for a long time. I definitely liked her the most out of all of the girls I’ve gone out with. Besides Chaewon, of course.”

“What happened? Did she do something you didn’t want? You know you can tell me, Jungkook,” you ask, a hand on his arm. 

“No.” Jungkook shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was fun and I was drunk. We were on our way back in the Lyft when she leaned over and kissed me. And I kissed her back, and it was kind of nice. I haven’t really kissed someone like that in a while,” Jungkook tells you. And even though you’re hearing these words from him, hearing how he had all of this fun with a girl who isn’t you, how he kissed her in the backseat of a car, you rally, blinking away the tears you can feel forming in your eyes. It’s none of your business, you tell yourself. You and Jungkook aren’t together. You don’t get to feel bad about him kissing someone else. 

“Did you like it?” You ask, each word a pin in your chest. 

“It was pretty nice,” Jungkook admits. “We, uh, we made out a bit in the back of the car until we got to her place. And then we got out of the car and she asked me if I wanted to go back with her, to her room. And—and I almost said yes.” Jungkook looks about ready to combust. At his side, his fists are clenched so hard you’re worried he’ll pop a vein. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” you tell him, looking him in the eyes so he knows that you don’t mind, that he can tell you these things without worry. Jungkook may be the love of your life, but he’s your best friend, first. He’s always been, before anything else, your best friend. 

“But there is!” Jungkook cries, standing up in anguish. “There is, Y/N, you don’t understand! I almost had sex with her!”

“You’re allowed to, Jungkook!” You assure him, standing up to reach out to him. 

“No, Y/N, you don’t get it,” he tells you coldly, pulling his hand away. “Why aren’t you mad? Aren’t you angry that I nearly had sex with her?”

“No, what the fuck, Jungkook, why would I be mad?” You shout back at him. “You can do whatever you want with your body, it’s not my job to police it! I’m your friend, not your mom!”

“But don’t you want to be more, Y/N?” He rounds on you. “Don’t you want to be the one kissing me, fucking me? Why aren’t you jealous?”

“Were you trying to make me jealous, Jungkook? Is that what you were trying to do? You wanted to get a reaction out of me because my best friend nearly fucked someone else and then didn’t? What the fuck, Jungkook? What do you want from me?”

“I just want you to tell me you fucking love me back!”

“Jungkook, what—”

Jungkook, eyes dark and furious, pushes you against your closet door as your lips part, feeling the breath get knocked out of your lungs. He’s so close. He’s right there, you can see him, watch as he looms over you, hands clenched in your hoodie as he presses you against the wall. And then, wordlessly, he’s leaning down, crashing your mouths together. 

Suddenly, your heart starts. You gasp into the kiss, the feeling of his mouth on top of yours. It’s fervent, hot and angry and passionate, his body against your own as your hands reach out to press against his head. You seize up at the feeling, almost as if in shock, before melting into his touch, leaning into him, desperate. You can feel his breath mixing in with your own, feel the way his chapped lips meet your overly-moisturized ones, feel how his hands drift from where they’re bunched up in the front of your hoodie to your waist, your hips, your thighs. Jungkook kisses ruthlessly, kisses like he’s trying to prove a point. Holds onto you like he’s afraid to let go. 

When you part, gasping for air, Jungkook runs a hand through his hair, blinking. 

“Jungkook, you’re drunk—” you tell him firmly, refusing to let get your hopes up if what you have in front of you is really just an intoxicated best friend. Your heart is beating miles a minute, about ready to thump right out of you, chest heaving and mouth agape. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Jungkook argues back. “Even when I’m sober I love you. Don’t tell me I’m confused because I’m drunk.”

“You show up at my place at one in the morning, tell me about how you made out with some other girl and almost slept with her just to get me angry, kiss me, and tell me not to tell you you’re confused?” You demand. “Jungkook, I’ve never been more confused in my life than right now, can you please just—”

“I love you, Y/N,” Jungkook says, and even though he’s angry, red in the face and sweaty, when he says it, it’s soft. It’s a whisper, a murmur. He says it not to convince you, but so you know. “I’ve been in love with you for so goddamn long, ever since I fucking met you. And I thought you might like me back but you never did anything about it, and so neither did I.”

“You need to go home, Jungkook,” you tell him, hiccuping. When you blink, you feel the warm tears streaming down your face. You hadn’t even noticed them. “You can’t just come into my apartment and tell me shit like that. How do you think it makes me feel?”

“Do you feel the same, Y/N?” Jungkook asks, looking you in the eyes. He’s angry, that’s for sure, but even underneath, you can see the desperation, see how he’s just waiting for an answer. 

“Go home, Jungkook. Please. Let’s talk about this when you aren’t drunk, okay? I’m confused and I need to clear my head,” you plead, pushing him towards the door. “Please, okay? Be safe, too. I’ll call Chaewon to give you a ride,” you tell him, grabbing your phone. 

Jungkook puts a hand on your wrist. “I’ll be okay, Y/N. I just… Please, tell me. Did that kiss mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it did, but Jungkook, I can’t—”

“It meant something to me, too,” he tells you firmly, lets the words sink into the air around you.  He heads for the door, pulling on his shoes. He looks so sad. “Good night, Y/N.”

You place a hand on the doorknob. “Good night, Jungkook.”

It’s barely nine in the morning the next day when a knock wakes you up. It’s soft at first, one every couple of seconds, before it gets progressively louder. Slowly, you get out of bed, trying to tame your hair as you rub the sleep from your eyes. 

“Y/N’s in her room. Is that for her? That’s so cute. Yeah, she’s probably awake. You can just knock.” It’s your roommate. 

You scramble to make your bed, pouring some water from the water bottle by your nightstand into your hand and splashing your face, wiping it away with an old t-shirt as you run towards the door, pulling it open just in time. 

On the other side is a much more tired, much less drunk Jungkook, one hand raised and about to knock, the other holding a bouquet of daisies. 

“Hey,” he says shyly, mouth breaking into a smile the moment he sees you. 

“Hey,” you say back. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, head hurts like hell, though,” Jungkook says. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, s-sure, of course,” you say, stepping aside to let him into your bedroom. 

“These are for you.” Jungkook holds out the bouquet towards you, wrapped up neatly in cellophane and tied at the stems with a bow. “So you don’t have to keep Febreze-ing your room all of the time.”

“They’re beautiful, Jungkook,” you tell him, grinning as you take them from his hands. Today feels different from yesterday. It feels lighter, fresher. New. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“I—” He pauses, taking a second to think, “I meant what I said, yesterday. Maybe not all of it, but. Most of it, yeah. I meant it.”

“Why did you try to make me jealous, Jungkook?” You ask him. “Why did you think that would work?”

“I don’t know,” Jungkook admits. “I shouldn’t have, and I fucked up. I just got so… so tired of waiting to see if you’d ever come around. I just wanted you to tell me. And then I guess I got so fed up that I told you instead.”

You place the bouquet on your dresser before walking towards him, reaching a hand out. “Yeah, that was a pretty big asshole move of you,” you chide, grinning to yourself. 

“I know, I’m sorry.” He sighs. 

“But I’m happy you’re here,” you tell him. “And happy that you meant what you said. Maybe it could have been said in a less angry way, but hearing it made me happy.”

“I’m happy that you’re happy.” Jungkook grins. “You’re my favorite person, Y/N.”

“When you asked me, yesterday, if that kiss meant anything to me? And I said it did?” You begin, Jungkook nodding in front of you. He’s positively beaming. “It still does. I want to do that every day, Jungkook. Every hour. Every single second for the rest of my goddamn life.”

“You do?” Jungkook asks. 

“I love you, Jeon Jungkook. From day one, it’s always been you.” You smile, and it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. Feels like you’re fucking flying. Like you’re weightless. 

“I love you, too, Y/N. I never want to be away from your side,” he declares, and like a cheesy, rom-com movie, like the shitty novels you used to read in eighth grade, he pulls you in close and presses a kiss against your lips. Wraps his arms around your waist as he holds you tight, kisses you in the middle of your bedroom, in your hoodie and sweatpants, a bouquet of daisies on your dresser. He kisses you because he can, because for every second of every day for the rest of your goddamn life, he can kiss you, over and over and over. 

“We owe Chaewon an apology,” you tell him when you’re parted, sitting on your bed, wrapped up in each other’s arms. 

“Hell yeah we do,” Jungkook agrees. “She’s been on my ass for ages about telling you.”

“Mine too.”

“She’s such a great best friend,” Jungkook comments. “Knew all this time that her two friends were madly in love with each other and didn’t say a damn word to either of us. That’s loyalty.”

“We should do something for her, to make up for it all,” you suggest. 

“You know,” Jungkook says, grinning, “I know this guy who made bank this semester by going on fake dates with a bunch of really rich girls. Maybe he could help.”

“I know him, too,” you joke. “He’s the love of my fucking life.”

Jeon Jungkook quits his job on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year.

You know this because on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 7:18PM, eighteen minutes after he normally heads out on one of his many dates. 

“Y/N!” He shouts, banging wildly on your door. You rush over to open it, letting the pasta water on the stove boil over and sizzle on the heat. He’s barely gotten in a second knock when you turn the doorknob to reveal your smiling boyfriend in his oversized hoodie.

“Don’t tell me you’re blowing someone off for me,” you say, inviting him inside. He places a kiss on your cheek on the way in, taking off his shoes and coat as you rush over to take care of the pasta.

“Me? Blowing someone off? Never,” Jungkook says, mock offended. “I actually quit the dating thing, this afternoon. A girl asked if I was free and I said that I wasn’t, because I have to go home to my girlfriend making me a meal. Don’t you love the sound of that?” He asks, pleased with himself.

“You quit? I thought you liked doing that stuff,” you say, using the spaghetti fork to move around the linguine. “Hope you’re cool with boring old pasta for your meal tonight. You could have had caviar if you hadn’t quit.”

“I don’t care, it smells so good,” Jungkook tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist as he stands behind you, watching you cook from over your shoulder. “Look at you, being all domestic and shit. It’s very cute.”

“Stop rubbing in the fact that you’re the better cook, I get it. Pasta is all I got right now.” You pout, turning down the heat as you move to pour yourselves two cups of tea. Jungkook follows you the entire way to the kettle, grip on your waist never faltering. “You can keep going on those dates, you know. I don’t mind. I get to see you in a suit when you get back, and then I get to take it off of you. It’s a win-win.”

Jungkook pinches your waist in response. “If you have a thing for suits, you can just tell me, you know. I won’t be mad.”

You turn around to whack him with the spaghetti fork. “I do not!”

“Alright, Y/N, guess I won’t wear a suit next time you call me at two in the morning—”

“I never said you couldn’t,” you interrupt, making Jungkook laugh. 

“You’re so cute, Y/N,” Jungkook coos as you begin to dish up the pasta, making sure to add peas because Jungkook loves peas with his spaghetti. “But I quit because I have enough money to sustain me for the rest of the semester. I’ll work over break and get a new job next semester when the new work-study positions open. Don’t worry about me,” he assures you. 

“But didn’t you like going out and everything? Getting dressed up and drinking fancy champagne?” You ask, setting the plates down at your dinky kitchen table, a single scented candle lit in the center. 

Jungkook thinks about it for a split second, and then he shakes his head. “Nah. I like hanging out with my girlfriend more.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” you reason with a grin. 

Jungkook laughs, leaning over the table to plop a kiss on your lips. “I love you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, you pea-eating loser,” you chide, “I love you too.”

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

↳ check out the post-script drabble here!

[bangtan-sonyeonddaeng]

:Jungkook scenario:

Jungkook had been distant with you lately. And you didn’t understand why. Things were going great between you two. In fact you were coming up on your 1 year anniversary of being together. You realized it was about a week ago when he started acting weird, right after you mentioned that your anniversary was coming up. You were laying on your bed, head resting on his chest as he rested a hand on your lower back and was holding you securely against him. 

“I can’t believe we’ve been together for a year. The time really went by fast.” You feel him tense up underneath you and let out a loud exhale. 

“It’s really that soon? Wow...” He says as his voice trails off, almost as if his mind is somewhere else. 

“Yeah! It is next Saturday. I can’t wait to spend the day with you.” 

“Mhm.” 

“Is everything okay?”

“Huh? Oh yeah everything is fine. Don’t worry. I have something special planned for us so I will spoil you rotten.” You giggle and lean up to place a kiss on his cheek. That earns you a small smile although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. You frown and furrow your brows.

“Are you sure everything is fine? Is anything bothering you?”

“No. Don’t worry. I’m alright, love.” He places his hand on the back of your neck and brings you into a kiss. You absolutely melt and completely forget whatever doubts are floating around in your head. Until the next day that is.

Everytime you text him you are given one word answers if he answers at all. Calls go to voicemail, or he only talks for a few moments and then hangs up on you, claiming he’s too busy to talk. With what you aren’t exactly sure. As far as you know they aren’t planning any comebacks, no performances or interviews coming up. They’re supposed to have the week off. Which is why you were hoping to spend every day with him until the day of your anniversary. 

You know he is avoiding you. You just don’t understand why. Was he not planning on spending your anniversary with you because he was going to break up with you? Did he not love you anymore? You wished you could just ask him about it but all day today your texts have been left on read, and your calls have been declined. It honestly broke your heart. It was now the day before what was supposed to be a special day, a milestone in your relationship meant to be spent together. But now you can’t help but wonder if you even still have a boyfriend at all. 

You made up your mind. If Jungkook wasn’t going to be honest with you maybe he had confided with one of the members. You knew your best bet was Jimin. Jungkook had often told you stories about how Jimin was always the one he looked to for comfort when he was upset. So if you had done something to upset him maybe he would have told him. You pulled out your phone to bring up Jimin’s contact. He answered rather quickly. 

“Y/n! Hey how are you?”

“Um.. well I am not really sure to be honest.”

“Really? What’s wrong you can always talk to me, you know that right?”

“I do. That’s why I called you. Jungkook isn’t with you is he?”

“Hmm no. He’s out with Namjoon. Why?”

“Has he... said anything to you lately? About us?”

“Like what do you mean? He usually always talks about how sickeningly in love he is with you... Actually now that I think about it he hasn’t talked much about you lately which is weird for him. Did something happen with you two?”

“I don’t know and that’s the problem.” Your voice cracks and you feel a few tears slip out of your eyes.

“Ah no! Sunshine don’t cry! It makes me sad to hear you crying.” 

You sniffle and wipe your eyes, taking a few calming breaths before you continue. 

“He has been so distant from me lately. And it started when I mentioned our anniversary. He’s basically been a ghost since then and I have barely heard from him even though our anniversary is tomorrow. I feel like I need to prepare myself for the inevitable break up at this point because he obviously doesn’t love me anymore.” 

“Whoa whoa I’m going to stop you right there. Break up? Not love you anymore? Y/n I have never seen Jungkook like this with anyone before. You’re his entire word and he adores you.”

“Sure doesn’t seem like it lately. I’m just gonna go now. Prepare myself ya know? It was nice while it lasted but, I guess I just wasn’t enough for him.”

“Hey no, don’t talk like that. Listen, I don’t know what is going on because he hasn’t told me anything but I will get to the bottom of this okay? Don’t lose faith in him.” 

“That’s okay. Thank you for trying at least. But I’d rather not get my hopes up. It’s just going to make things even worse tomorrow.” 

“Y/n-”

“Bye, Jimin.” And with that you hang up and turn your phone off, not wanting to be bothered. You make a mental note to go to the grocery store tomorrow morning and stock up on ice cream and your favorite chips to help cope with whatever is waiting for you tomorrow. You don’t cry, you refuse to. At least not yet. For right now you will hold it together until you get a proper explanation from your boyfriend. If he doesn’t love you anymore you’ll just have to accept it and move on. You glance at the clock and notice that it is only 8pm. But you just don’t have the energy to deal with things anymore. So you turn your light off and fall into a restless sleep. 

After you hang up on Jimin he tries to call you back only to have it go straight to voicemail.

“Damnit Jungkook what did you do?” Jimin pulls his phone out and calls Jungkook next, only to have him not answer. So he calls Namjoon.

“Jimin?”

“Where the hell is JK are you still with him?”

“Yeah? why?”

“Give him the phone right now.” 

“What’s-”

“Namjoon please.” Jimin can hear shuffling and some mild arguing before Jungkook finally answers. 

“H-hi hyung.”

“Jeon Jungkook! What on earth is wrong with you?! You’ve been ignoring y/n and she just called me and sounded so upset! She was crying you know! Why are you avoiding her and making her think you don’t love her anymore?”

“She thinks I don’t-”

“You’ve been ignoring her for days! Of course she doesn’t! You know she thinks you’re going to break up with her tomorrow? I’ve never heard her sound so sad before. She hung up on me and now her phone is going straight to voicemail. Why are you trying to mess up things with her?” Jungkook is quiet after that. Jimin gives him time to answer. 

“I’m not trying to. I just... gosh this is going to sound so stupid.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just tell me. We’re better friends than that you know I won’t judge you.” 

“I just feel like a shitty boyfriend okay? Y/n gives me so much and I feel like all I do is take take take. So now when I should finally be giving back to her for all she’s done for me throughout the year, I can’t think of anything! I told her I would spoil her rotten and I can’t even think of anything special for us to do together. She’s going to be so disappointed. I didn’t even realize it was coming up on our anniversary so quickly because the time just went so fast. So I didn’t plan anything. I’m horrible. She’s going to leave me for sure.” Jimin can hear Jungkook’s breath quickening on the other end of the phone and can tell he’s getting worked up. 

“Hey, Jungkookie it’s okay. But you know you’re an idiot right?”

“Wow. Thanks hyung that’s really what I needed to hear right now. Namjoon take your phone back.” He says with his voice dripping with sarcasm. 

“No no that’s not what I meant just listen to me. How long have you known y/n?”

“2 years?”

“And how long have you been dating?”

“What is the point of this?”

“Just answer me!” 

“Tomorrow will be one year if she even still wants to be with me.”

“And in those 2 years has she ever given you the impression she is the type to need grand gestures and big things planned to be happy?”

“...No.”

“And in the past year of you two being together has she ever asked you for anything? Fancy gifts, 5 star restaurants, wine and dine all that stuff?”

“...No. Most of our dates have just been spent at that hole in the wall BBQ restaurant she loves so much.”

“So what makes you think this time will be any different?”

“Huh?”

“What makes you think she’s going to be disappointed if you don’t do that for her tomorrow? Y/n loves you. Not your money, not your status, not your fame. You. She just wants to spend time with you, know that you love her and cherish her as much as you gush to us about. You don’t have to try and impress her just because it’s your anniversary. She just wants you.”

Jungkook is quiet for a few minutes and Jimin begins to wonder if he’s hung up. 

“Oh my gosh... Namjoon! Take your phone back I gotta go!” Jimin can hear more rustling and Namjoon calling after him. 

“What was that all about?”

“Oh nothing. I think Jungkook is just gonna go salvage his relationship with y/n.”

“Salvage? What happened? Those two adore each other?” 

“Come over and I’ll tell you. Pick up some Soju while you’re out please! Bye hyung!” 

You wake up to loud frantic knocking on your front door. You can hear muffled yelling but can’t make out who it is or what they’re saying. You glance at the clock and see it’s now 11pm. You’ve only slept for three hours. You groan and sleepily get out of bed, shuffling your feet over to the door. You look through the peephole and see Jungkook standing there. You take a deep breath and open the door. You’ve already mentally prepared yourself, you at least just thought he’d wait until tomorrow. You don’t say anything, just leave the door open and walk to sit down on the couch. You hear the door close and a few moments later Jungkook is sitting next to you. He wastes no time before he speaks up. 

“I’m sorry. Y/n I-”

“No it’s okay. Don’t apologize. You can’t help how you feel or.. in this case don’t feel. It’ll take some time but I’ll get over you eventually. I was really happy with you ya know? The memories we have together I will always cherish but-” Jungkook presses a finger to your lips and your eyes widen in surprise. 

“Y/n stop. I’m not breaking up with you.” 

You tilt your head in confusion and he lowers his hand.

“You’re not?”

“No. God, no of course not. I love you so much you don’t even know. I can’t even properly put into words how much. I just was scared because I didn’t have anything amazing planned for our anniversary and when I told you I did and that I was going to spoil you I panicked. I didn’t want you to be disappointed and break up with me.”

“You honestly think I would have done that?”

“Well, I mean deep down I knew you wouldn’t but sometimes fear and anxiety wins over your common sense you know?” You shake your head and put your arms around his neck and pull him into a hug. 

“I just wanted to spend time with you. We could have spent our whole day here in our pajamas watching movies and eating pizza. It wouldn’t have mattered to me silly. I just love you.” 

“That’s exactly what Jimin hyung said.”

“Oh.. so he did call you after all.”

“Yeah he did. Right after you two got off the phone actually. Gave me an earful which was deserved.” You giggle and pull away and place a kiss on his forehead. “I’m really sorry y/n.”

“It’s okay. Just, don’t ever do that again. If something is bothering you we’ll work through it together. And just know that I don’t ever expect any big crazy plans or dates or gestures from you. As long as I have your company that’s all I need to be happy.”

Jungkook’s smile grows so wide as he hears your reassuring and comforting words. He leans in and gives you a sweet kiss, lingering there for a few moments before he pulls away and mumbles that he loves you against your lips. 

“I love you too. Now let’s go to sleep. Tomorrow we can just stay home and relax and spend the day together. Okay?”

“That sounds perfect.”

[crackheadgeminibby]

trust pt. 3

pairing: chris evans x black!reader

warnings: language, age gap, angst

word count: 1.1k

part 1 part 2

part 4 part 5 part 6

i do not consent to my work being copied in any way, shape or form or reposted on any other platform

not my picture

When you wake up a couple of hours later, the sun is setting. You reach for the TV remote on the coffee table and turn the TV off. You stretch, get up, and head to the kitchen. Opening the cabinet above the oven, you reach for the aspirin: crying always gave you headaches.

As you swallow the medicine and water, you look over to the clock on your wall: 7:11pm. 11 minutes past the reservation. Oh well.

You then hear your phone start ringing. You head over to the couch and look around for it. Once you find it, you hold it up to your face. Once you see who’s calling you, you groan and roll your eyes.

Incoming call from chris❤️

You decline the call and your eyes immediately widen when you see your lock screen.

scott towel😉, 3:20pm:

Y/N

Call me

Please

What’s going on?

chlo, 3:25pm:

Hey that guy called again. I told him I didn’t know where you were and what you were doing, which I don’t btw cause you didn’t text me like you were supposed to, but he sounded like he was panicking

Have you talked to him yet?

chris❤️, 4:02pm:

Hey Princess, I just landed. I haven’t seen Scott yet but he called me like a million times.

I’ll call you when I get home

chris❤️, 4:33pm:

Hey I just saw Scott. He said you got sick at work and that you aren’t answering your calls or texts

Are you okay?

3 missed calls from chris❤️, 4:51pm

chris❤️, 5:04pm:

Are you at home?

chris❤️, 5:09pm:

I’ll wash up and come over, is that okay?

1 missed call from chris❤️, 6:03pm

chris❤️, 6:04pm

I just left your place

Where are you?

1 missed call from seb, 6:07pm

seb, 6:08pm:

hey sweetheart chris just called me and he seemed kinda freaked out

did something happen?

call me when you can, you know i’m always here for you

3 missed calls from chris❤️, 6:45pm

chris❤️, 6:53pm:

I’m freaking out Y/N! What’s going on? Where are you? Are you okay? What happened???

1 missed call from chris❤️, 7:11pm

You open your phone and click on your messages app. You open Chloe’s texts and answer:

you, 7:13pm:

hey chlo sorry i didn’t call or text you i fell asleep when i got home

it was his brother that called work dw about it

i’m fine though i’ll see you monday thanks for checking on me

You then open Sebastian’s texts. You contemplate texting him back or simply calling him. Calling him would probably be better. You click on the phone icon next to his contact and wait for him to pick up.

Chris had introduced you to Sebastian shortly after you two became a couple. He was close with him and he thought you guys would get along well and he wasn’t wrong. Sebastian and you had become close friends very fast and he understood you almost as well as Chris did. You knew that if Chris had told Sebastian about his… extra-curricular activities, Sebastian would have immediately told you and probably would have broken Chris’ nose too.

“Hello?”

“Hey Seb”, you answer weakly.

“Oh my God Y/N, what the hell happened to you? Chris has been blowing up my phone all afternoon.”, you hear his concerned voice ask.

You scoff at this and roll your eyes, even if he can’t see you.

“Yeah, he must be so worried”, you answer sarcastically.

“Huh? What do you mean? What happened?”, he asks confusedly.

As soon as you think about saying it again, you choke up. You clear your throat and tell him, “He cheated on me. With his ex. She sent me a picture of them together with a tremendously heartfelt text”, you answer.

“Wait, what the fuck? Who? And when?”

“I don’t know. The picture was super dark, I could barely make the whole thing out.”

“How’d you know it was really him then? Or if it was him, how do you know it wasn’t from before you guys were together?”

“I saw the chain I got him for his birthday, so”, you trail off.

You don’t hear anything for a couple of seconds.

“Sebastian? Are you still there?”

You hear a huff and then Sebastian angrily says, “I’m gonna fucking murder him. What the fuck’s the matter with him?”

You smile lightly at Sebastian’s protective manner over you.

“I really wish I could tell you. I don’t know what to do. I mean, did he lie? Was he with her last week instead of being at his mom’s?”

“Have you talked to him?”

“No. He called me like 20 times and texted me probably another 40 times. I’ve just been ignoring him. Last time he called was right before I called you.”

“Okay, well... Do you want to talk to him? I mean, obviously not right now but, you know… Can’t really ignore him forever.”

“I have absolutely no idea, Seb. I just… I don’t know. I never thought he would be the one to do that to me, you know? I thought I-”

Your sentence is cut short when you hear loud, frantic knocks at the door, followed by a call of your name. By Chris. Of course he’d come back.

“Y/N? What’s wrong?”

Your breath gets caught in your throat when you answer him lowly, “He’s at my door. I don’t know if I want… If I CAN see him, Seb.”

“Y/N, sweetheart, you do what you think is good for you. You can open the door and talk to him or continue to avoid him. But, how long can that last?”

You close your eyes and take in a shaky breath as another round of knocks sound through your apartment.

“Another option is that I can come over and break his jaw. I mean, if you want, you know.”, Sebastian suggests while softly chuckling to comfort you.

You smile gently at his attempt to make you laugh.

“I guess you’re right. Can’t avoid him forever. I’ll talk to you later.”

You don’t wait for his answer and hang up the phone. You put your phone down on the kitchen counter and head to the door. You hear another, this time, louder, round of knocks.

“Y/N, if you’re in there, I’m begging you, please open the door.”

You shakily unlock the door and put your hand on the doorknob. You slowly open the door and look up to Chris. His face and eyes are red, like he’s been crying.

He visibly exhales and reaches out to hug you. You jerk out of his way and try, but fail, to harden your expression. His brows knit together in confusion and you briefly see hurt flash through his eyes. You take a deep breath to make sure your voice won’t crack and ask him,

“What the fuck do you want?”

[nsheetee]

Wifi

Pairing: Renjun x Reader Genre: Roommate AU || Fluff, slightly crack-ish Length: 2k Warning: one mention of an adult theme, implied female reader Summary: You and Renjun have been rooming together for a while, not knowing of your hidden feelings for each other. Surprisingly, it’s the bad wifi connection in your room that brings you together.

〈〈〈━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━〉〉〉

You sigh for what seems like the umpteenth time that evening, your fingers angrily keyboard smashing on your laptop when the wifi bars at the top of the screen show only one small, weak bar barely hanging on.

Ever since you moved in with your new roommate Renjun, you’ve noticed how every once in a while around 11pm, the wifi in your room goes weak. Being a creature of the night that always gets their homework done during this time, it frustrates you that you have to take small breaks every few minutes for your computer to catch up with the internet connection.

Finally fed up with waiting for your computer to load, you pick up your supplies and march over to Renjun’s room, which is the closest room to the apartment’s wifi router. You knock on the door and after hearing an affirmative, you walk into the room. Renjun is buried under a pile of blankets on his bed with his hoodie pulled up to his lips and the hood over his forehead. The only light in the room is coming from his laptop and he hisses when you turn on the room light.

“Good God, turn that off before you blind me. What do you need?” You turn the light back off and instead turn on Renjun’s desk light, setting your stuff down on top of his abandoned homework.

“Can I finish my homework in here?”

“What’s wrong with your room?”

“The internet’s being dodgy again.” You explain and Renjun silently nods, shutting his laptop and putting his airpods into his ears as he looks through his phone. You sit at his “organized mess” of a desk, open your computer, and sigh contently when the wifi works smoothly.

Renjun peers over his phone to look at you. You’re concentrating hard on whatever paper you’re writing; your pajama shirt is so big that it covers your shorts and your hair is only held in it’s messy bun by a couple of pencils. He can’t see your face, but admiration pools in his chest.

He’s been lovesick for you ever since you interviewed to be his roommate. When you introduced yourself and answered all of his questions in your own quirky way, Renjun just about handed over the lease for you to sign then and there and called off all the other interviews he had that day. Since then, his small crush has grown bigger, but seems to be unnoticed by you. Renjun, instead of doing the obvious thing and confessing, decided to help you find out about his feelings “by yourself.”

Renjun found out that he can manually decrease the bandwidth of the apartment’s wifi just by logging into his internet service provider account online. So, he began to weaken the wifi every few nights around 11pm, when he knew you were doing your homework. Like clockwork, he’d hear your groans of frustration for a few moments before your feet pad over to his room and knock on the door, asking to do your homework in his room.

Was Renjun being ridiculous? Maybe… Was he going to stop this game he has you unknowingly playing? Not until you realize he has feelings for you or he gets enough guts to confess. Renjun sighs dejectedly when he thinks about the likeness of either of those events happening anytime soon. He sinks down further into his nest of blankets in an attempt to stop the feelings from taking over his chest, but to no avail.

Renjun has a total, major, embarrassing crush on his roommate.

〈〈〈〉〉〉

You knock on Renjun’s door once again, sighing when he tells you to enter from inside. You walk in with your books and pens in your hands, your computer haphazardly balanced on top of it all.

“What’s wrong?” Renjun asks from his spot on the floor. His project for his biology class is spread out on the floor; some sort of visual presentation that involves a lot of paper cut outs and glue.

“Internet’s bad.” You look over his work, “Are you actually doing your homework? I didn’t know that was possible.” Renjun glaces up from gluing paper to his presentation, a blank stare on his face. He didn’t manually decrease the bandwidth of the wifi tonight. Are the internet gods smiling down on him and bringing you to him through their own will? He hopes so.

“Those are bold words for someone who needs internet and the only place to get it is in my room.” It’s your turn to give Renjun a blank stare as you drop off your supplies on his desk. “Come here.” He commands. You sit down criss-cross applesauce across from him and he hands you a thick permanent marker.

“Write this here.” He points to a small passage in his notebook and a blank space on the presentation board before moving to glue a different piece of paper.

“Why? I’m not going to do your homework for you in return for wifi. I live here, I pay with this wifi.” You point the marker tip at him but he ignores you, too focused on gluing a piece of paper to the cardboard.

“Once again, this is my room.” You sigh at his stubbornness, deciding to help him just this once. You take time to look around; although you’ve been rooming together for a few weeks now, this is the first time you’ve casually been in his room. The wall above his bed particularly catches your eye; his drawings, the quick doodles that he seems to be proud of, are hanging over his bed. Some are of people he’s seen at the coffee shop he usually hangs out in, some are of your house plants that you bought for the window sill in the kitchen.

Your heart softens when you look back at Renjun; he seems to be hyperfixed on gluing a particular piece of paper to the cardboard, his lips open in concentration and his eyebrows slightly furrowed. You feel courage build up in your chest and your gut fill with fearlessness. This is it. You’re going to confess your feelings for your roommate right here and right now.

“Nice drawings.” You mumble out instead, cursing to yourself in your head when the courage fades.

“Really?” Renjun asks, looking over his shoulder to the drawings. “They’re just doodles…” He tries to sound humble, but you can see the tilt of one side of his lips as he tries to hide his smile.

“Yeah, golden hands, they’re good.” You roll your eyes, deciding to feed his ego. It distracts him long enough to allow you to stand up and escape to Renjun’s desk chair. You start your own homework, a yawn leaving your lips. Maybe tonight isn’t the time to confess your crush on your roommate, but you hope he’ll be able to see the little hints you give of your feelings.

Renjun once again can’t help but stare at your back as you work, not minding that you’re not helping him anymore. He hates that your small, seemingly insignificant comment about his artwork makes his heart pound. He wishes the wifi could stop working by itself more often so he could see you naturally, like he did tonight.

〈〈〈〉〉〉

You don’t knock this time as you enter Renjun’s room, throwing up a peace sign as you close the door behind you and walk to his desk.

“Hey,” He raises his voice. “I get you have homework to do and the internet is weird, but at least knock. What if I was… masterbating in here or something.” He mumbles the last part and you snort.

“I still need to use the internet. So if you’re gonna masterbate anytime soon, please go do it somewhere else.”

“This is my room.” Renjun whines, throwing the drawing pad he was using before you barged in next to him and flopping onto his bed.

“Or so you keep saying.” You tease some more, setting down your supplies on his desk.

Renjun hasn’t touched the wifi bandwidth in weeks for fear that his meddling has caused the wifi to actually turn bad in your apartment. His wish came true: the wifi kept breaking and messing up in your room, all by itself. Now, you were constantly in Renjun’s room doing your homework and although Renjun likes you (literally), he doesn’t like how you welcome yourself in.

You surprise him by laying down next to him; you’re both facing the ceiling, hands on your stomachs and sighs escaping your lips every few seconds. Renjun can’t tell what you’re thinking, he’s too afraid to look at your face for the fear of not being able to quit looking. He doesn’t know if you’re as affected as him by your arm meeting his every time you breath, or if you can sense his thoughts racing at 1,000 miles an hour in his head. He tries to breathe evenly when he catches a whiff of your moisturizer, the one he said he liked a few weeks ago and that you’ve been using everyday since.

“Aren’t you here to do your homework? Why are you laying down?”

“No.” You gulp at the words that are about to leave your lips. “I’m here… for you.” You hold your breath after you finish talking.

“What.”

“The wifi has been working fine for weeks. I’ve been coming here to spend time… with you.” You can’t imagine how Renjun was dense enough to believe that the wifi has been poor almost every night for the past 2 months, but you hope it has something to do with him liking spending time with you. You got tired of waiting for Renjun to pick up your hints and stopped waiting for the wifi to cut out in your room to join him in his-- it’s not like he would ever know if the wifi is actually being dodgy on your side of the apartment.

You’re still nervously waiting for Renjun to say something or to tease you and kick you out of his room and tell you to find a different place to stay and then you’re going to be homeless and then you’ll definitely never have good wifi and then…

Renjun sits up and you don’t let your eyes meet, instead pulling your hood over your head and tightening the strings to hide away from your indirect confession. Renjun untightens the strings and pulls the hood off of you; he looks like he’s about to laugh at you and it makes you nervous.

“You’re a fool. I was the one that was cutting out your wifi.” His words make you sit up straight. Your jaw unhinges as embarrassment floods you. You thought you were only going to confess your feelings tonight, not the fact that you’ve been sneakingly lying to Renjun to hang out with him every night.

Renjun starts laughing and in your flustered state, you pick up his forgotten drawing pad and hit him with it. Renjun only laughs harder at your reaction, clutching his shoulder. He’s partially laughing because of the dumb situation you got yourselves in, but also out of joy because you just confessed your feelings to him.

“You! Do you know how angry you made me? I couldn’t get any of my work done for weeks.” You yell. You’re sure the neighbors could probably hear your mixed voices, but you don’t care. “Why did you purposefully cut out the wifi?” You groan.

“Because I knew you would come to my room if I did.” Renjun confesses, leaning back on his bed with his hands. Your heart soars at his words; it’s what you’ve wanted him to say to you for so long. You raise the drawing pad to hit him again but he catches it, fingers covering yours as he stops your second attack. You let him pry the pad out of your hands and he drops it to a different corner of the bed.

“C’mere, dummy.”

“Who are you calling a dummy?”

“You. Now get over here so I can finally kiss you senseless.”

[purplesurveys]

1162

What is the youngest age you can remember back to? I was 3 and I had just woken up in a Winnie the Pooh tent with my sister, who was 1 at the time. Our parents let us go ‘camping,’ which was really nothing more than a tiny tent set up on the floor in their room.

What sports are you trying out for this year? Wakeboarding and rock climbing.

Did you wear your hair in a ponytail today? Yeah it was in a ponytail for the whole day as it helps me focus better at work. I’ve kept the ponytail on even though it’s 11 in the evening right now, but now it’s because it would be too warm with my hair down.

Who do you have on speed dial? Nobody. I’m not sure how to do that with my phone, and even if I knew how to I don’t know if there’d be anyone I’d want to put on speed dial.

What colors do you like to paint your toenails? I never do anything with my toenails except clip them.

Would it be cool to learn how to DJ at a club? Sure!

Where are you going to be three hours from now? It would be 2 AM by then but I highly doubt I’d be asleep by then. I just bought all 7 of the BTS Cold Brew Americano bottles (yep, so much happened while I was gone and I am apparently an Army now...) so I’m drinking from one of them tonight; and they are strong as fuuuuuuuck.

What job would you NEVER take, even as a last resort? Anything related to sex work. Not that I’m against it, but it’s just not for me.

If you broke your computer, would you be able to fix it on your own? Only if it’s something a hard reboot could easily fix haha. If it’s beyond that, I don’t think so.

If someone looked in your closet, how would they judge your style? That I need to update my wardrobe. Most of them were trendy at some point, but not so much these days. They would probably comment that I need to add more colors as well.

What was the shittiest hotel you’ve ever stayed at and why? I’m not sure we’ve stayed somewhere I absolutely hated. I know my dad hated our first hotel in Palawan since the whole vibe of the room felt cheap, the bedsheets looked kinda tacky, and the power went out at night, but that’s also just the luxury liner executive in him. Since I don’t really travel just to stay all day in our hotels, I personally haven’t had any experience where I was like, “never again.”

Have you ever gone on a boat and been sick the whole time? No; I get seasick but I can handle it. It’s carsickness I have a problem with.

Did you get a good sleep last night? Not really. My sleep actually felt very shallow and it really felt like I had been up all night even though I’m pretty sure fell asleep by around midnight. Anyway, I’m getting a 3-day weekend since it’s a national holiday tomorrow, so at least I have a lot of time to catch up on much-needed sleep.

What is the weather like outside? It’s pretty chilly and I feel a few breezes every now and then, but it’s not enough. I’m not sweating, but I also need to have my hair up in a bun because otherwise I’d be too warm. Phone says 27ºC.

If someone makes a spelling or grammar mistake, do you ignore or correct? Mostly ignore. I only ever correct if it’s me who made the mistake by accident.

Do oversized sunglasses actually look good on you? I’ve never tried putting any on, so I wouldn’t know.

What is the most overrated thing in the world? Milk tea. It’s great and delicious I like having my own occasionally, but it’s seriously nothing life-changing.

Have you heard any completely untrue rumors about yourself lately? No. I’d feel sorry for someone who would still be making up rumors in their 20s.

What is one word to describe your room? Progress. It’s come a long way since the breakup.

Have you ever kept something from the wild as a pet? Not in the sense that we caught it ourselves from the wild, but there was one time my sister won a baby chick at a fair when we were super young and we had him for a few days. We tried our best to care for him, but we just weren’t equipped and knowledgeable with what baby chicks need so he didn’t last too long.

Do your parents try to plan out your future for you? No, and I’m glad they aren’t the stereotypical Filipino/Asian parents that dictate how I should be living my life. My mom will sometimes let a comment like “get a boyfriend already” slip through, but she also knows I don’t have the patience for remarks like that so she doesn’t bring it up most of the time.

Do you think that surveys are a huge waste of time? I personally don’t think so. Any activity that helps me relax and gather my thoughts isn’t something I’d call a waste of time.

Are you wearing a hoodie today? No. I would hate to be wearing a hoodie right now lmao, I’d be too miserable in the heat.

Did you sleep alone the last two nights? Yes.

You’re single, right? Yups.

How long was your last phone conversation you had? It lasted like 10 seconds because when I picked up, their signal was very choppy and his voice wasn’t getting through at all.

Who was it with? A delivery rider who sent me a package that Bea apparently arranged for me :’) It has all my favorite Korean snacks and goodies and she even included a cup sleeve of Jin from BTS cos she knows he’s my favorite :(((((

What was it about? Like I said, I never got to talk to him on the phone because his signal was poor, though he probably called to ask for directions. He eventually got to my house.

Excited for anything? Binge-watching Run BTS and Bon Voyage all weekend, and digging into the Frankie’s order I got for delivery tonight.

Got laid last night, didn’t you? Nope.

Do you have drama in your life? Kind of at the moment, but it’s something I couldn’t give less of a shit about so I’m not even getting into it lmao. What’s something you really want right now, be honest? To be able to get out of the house and get my cafe visits on weekends back.

As of this minute, what is going through your mind? That these instant noodles I’m eating are really spicy.

Have you laughed until you cried? Many times.

What are you listening to right now? I can hear a neighbor’s dog barking every now and then and a few airconditioners in the neighborhood whirring.

What color are your shoes? I’m not wearing any right now, but most of my shoes are white anyway.

Can you crack your neck? Nope.

What is the last thing you drank? I took a sip from my banana milk right after I had a forkful of my noodles. Too spicy hahaha.

Where would I have found you last night at 11pm? I was cuddling with Kimi in bed while watching Bon Voyage.

What’s your plans for next Friday? So, tomorrow? Just watch a shit ton of BTS videos since they’re my latest obsession.

Does anyone hate you? Possibly.

Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the person you like? Erm, don’t really like anyone at the moment. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? No.

Could you go out in public looking like you do now? Probably to the nearest McDonald’s or 7-Eleven, but I wouldn’t go out to the mall altogether with what I’m wearing.

Who will you be sleeping with tonight? Just meeee.

Is there anyone you wouldn’t mind punching in the face now? Not in particular.

What do you have pierced? Just the ears. < Same.

Do you know anyone that smokes weed? A few people.

Where is the person you want right now? I’m not into anyone.

Are you too forgiving? I’m not forgiving in the first place.

Will this weekend be a good one? Continued from last night. I’m just glad I’ll get to relax for three days, but I don’t have any big plans for the weekend that would make it something exciting.

What is your favorite thing about being sick? I don’t think being sick is particularly fun, even if it means skipping school or work...

Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t do? Many times, which is why I’ve stopped using the phrase, “I’ll never do X.” I always end up doing whatever the thing is at some point.

Are there any people who don’t like you? It’s possible, but I don’t care.

The boy/girl you truly care about needs you at 3am, would you go? Only for my best friends, and maybe close family members. If you had to get a piercing right now, what would it be? I would get a nose stud or maybe a lip ring.

Do you have any bruises on you? Yeah I have one on my thigh. As usual, I have no idea where it came from.

Are you ticklish? Everywhere.

Ever liked someone who treated you like crap? Yes.

Who do you like right now? BTS? Lmao

What’s the largest age difference between yourself and someone you’ve dated? A month and a half.

Are you gonna get high later? Nope. I know Andi’s always gonna be around as my ~supplier~ if I ever wanna try it out, but I have no plans to any time soon.

What was the first thing you said when you woke up today? That I wanna take a shower.

Do you blow dry your hair? Only for special occasions when I immediately need my hair styled in a certain way.

Do you look decent when you wake up? Some days, I think so.

Have you ever liked someone older then you? I mean they’re all celebrities, but yeah.

Is it hard to make you laugh? Not at all, I like to laugh.

How late did you stay up last night? Around 3 AM because I was watching Bon Voyage, and also memorizing BTS fanchants hahahahaha HELP

Which is worse for you: being hot, or being cold? I fucking hate being hot.

How many drugs have you done in the last three days? Just the caffeine in my coffee and nicotine in my vape.

[savysavannah]

Practice Challenge one: Part One

Beginnings: 

“Fuck!” I yelled and slammed my hands against the steering wheel. This wasn’t the first time I’d had a total mental breakdown in the dim lighting of the courthouse parking lot, and it sure wasn’t gonna be the last. This case was rigged from the get-go, Mr. Dean esquire was always there against me, swaying the jury with his charismatic personality and his masculine gender. Not to mention it was a jury which he decided to leave fully as white men, his fellow groupies against my defendant, a woman of color who defended herself against her abuser who came at her with a gun. 

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Opening them I saw Dean sashaying to his car. I considered putting my own in reverse and waiting until he just walked by, then bye bye Dean. Deciding that it wouldn’t be worth the cost of defending myself I waited until after he’d passed to pull out and start to drive to Illean Private University. I was an attorney coach for a Mock Trial team and of course, had to encourage these kiddos that law was the best career and it would really be fulfilling to help people. Driving past the Greek life houses I couldn’t help but smile thinking of happier times. Chugging shitty beer, dressed like a total slut and not giving one single fuck. 

After an hour or two of bullshitting some kids and reminding them to object when someone playing a witness says “well I heard the defendant say he was mad at the victim so he must have killed her.” I drove on my way home. 

“Incoming call from Uncle Dipshit'' said my car, continuing the never ending day that is my life. 

“What?” 

“Hey little Savy-Hannah, I’m in a bit of a bind and need some help.” 

“What was it? Cocaine? Meth? Or did you finally snap and get caught with heroin.” 

“Come on, Savannah, why would you just assume that, can’t I call my one and only niece because I wanna talk to her?” 

“At 11pm? Friday night? Bullshit.” 

“.......fine Sav-” 

“Fuck you, I’m not doing probono work for you anymore. Get your shit together or get the fuck out of our lives.” 

Taking a turn away from my apartment I started to head for Lux, my old usual club. I hadn’t gone in awhile but right now I needed to get absolutely shitfaced. 8 shots and 2 waters later I was grinding up against some strangers to Kesha’s “Die Young”, a classic. Suddenly I heard an all too familiar voice, “Savannah!” 

My brother. Specifically, my oldest brother, Dan. He danced his way over to me of course being in this scene and grabbed my wrist. “Wha-u wan dan?” I slurred and kept jumping to the song. 

“I was worried about you, Ricky called and said you were acting weird.”

“Weird!" I laughed throwing my head back "Because I wouldn’t clean up his shit for once!” I screamed over the music before he pulled me out of the club by the wrist. As soon as the cool air hit my cheeks I leaned my head back and looked up at the sky. 

“I wish I was a star." I mumbled seeing the shimmering lights above us before suddenly leaning forward and hurling all over the cement. Probably a usual occurrence for Lux but I still felt bad. Dan rolled down the windows of my car as he drove me home, I stuck my head out of it for the breeze to feel the air in my lungs. 

“How’d you find me?” I mumbled, still not fully back to myself. 

“We all have eachothers phone locations, remember? You insisted on it like a year ago after you interned on that kidnapping case.” He sighed as we drove up the familiar road home. 

“You’re really a mess you know that?” He asked. It's not like he was much better….well, he was but it's not like I'm our brother Danny. At least I made something of myself. Didn't get handed my career and a wife on a silver platter. Or like Daniel who was still so far back into the closet that we really aren't sure if he'll ever come out, even though our family would be more than accepting of him. 

I was tempted to defend myself but stopped, “I know, I just need a win."

The next morning Dan was sleeping on my couch and I was on the living room floor. “You couldn’t have carried me to bed?” I mumbled through a yawn. 

“You’re the dumbass who got white girl wasted and said you were too tired to walk to your room.” 

“What time is it?” I mumbled and went to find my phone despite the world swaying as I crawled to my purse.

He lifted his arm up to look at his watch, “Like 8:00am chill out.” He groaned. 

“HOLY FUCK 8?” I flinched at the loudness of my own voice. I was normally up at six, two hours slept in, what’s today it’s a wednesday. ‘What was I supposed to do today? No clients in court today, so that’s good. Okay so I suppose I have to? Paperwork?’

I sighed, “You’re fucking lucky I didn’t have court today.” Stumbling up I ran to my room to change out of yesterday's clothes, splash some water on my face and get on the move.  

"Lucky? I'm the one who got your ass home at all!" He yelled back from the living room as I slipped into a different skirt. Shirt could stay the same, just a plain white shell no one would notice. But skirt absolutely not. I grabbed a pair of earrings and a bag of makeup wipes and rushed past Dan. 

"Fine sorry love ya. Family dinner on saturday right?" I hurried as I slung a purse over my shoulder. 

"You got it." He replied. 

"Uh, stay awhile have breakfast if you want. I've got bagels and eggs. Just lock up when you leave." I remembered finally to be polite as he stretched getting up from the sofa.

The office was busy and loud as usual. I tried to smile and act like I wasn't hungover as holy hell while I walked to my desk. 

There was someone new taking a desk near me too. Lanky guy probably straight out of law school too. I sized him up for a moment before nearly catching his eye but going back to my work. 

It wasn't till lunch that I had to actually deal with another human when I ran into Mr. Asshole-dean. 

"Ms. Mars?" He said as he tapped my shoulder in line at the starbucks near the courthouse. 

I turned but knew his voice right away, "Mr. Dean?" I replied wondering why he was bothering me. He seemed to catch my cold tone. 

"What, rough night? Does suck the night you lose the case but don't worry. You'll get better at losing, can't win em all." 

I would like to get an extra extra hot- you know what make it just a cup of fucking lava to poor on this jackass. I smiled, "Thanks! I'm sure it didn't take you long to get used to it." I gave a passive aggressive smile and looked down to my watch. 

"Listen, Mars, I know we're opposing counsel but I don't mean any harm by it. I think we could be great friends if you'd give it a shot. I mean I'm sure we both hate our jo-"

"Hi I'd like a venti mocha!" I ordered cutting him off the scurried back to my car. 

I had a few hours before I actually had a meeting. It was just to speak with a judge over a custody case between a homophobic mother and two "really good friends" one of who was the father of the child in question. There was a chance it could turn into a serious case, the mom was wealthy and if she got too displeased she could probably turn it into a civil suit on the grounds of the father being gay. But it wasn't likely she'd take the time. She was only really fighting for custody to use their kid as a weapon in the divorce. 

I drove home with my coffee deciding I wanted to Pad Thai leftovers I had as comfort/hangover/please-god-dont-make-me-live-another-day food. 

Daniel was sitting on my couch when I walked in. "Can you not just walk into my house? Dan may have forgotten to lock it but that's no reason for you to just waltz in here!" I yelled as I dropped my purse and walked up to him. 

"Is that my mail?" I huffed and snatched my letters from him. It was just junk mail but he still had no right to be so intrusive. 

He looked up at me with a slight glare, "I know what you did and I'm gonna get you back for it." And as quickly as he came he scurried out. 

Ringing up Dan I tapped my foot on the ground, "You forgot to lock the door!" I yelled into the phone. 

"Oh shit my bad. You okay?" He asked. 

"Yes, but Daniel was just here. All pissed over something." I grumbled and walked to the fridge to get out my leftovers. 

"Any idea of what?" He asked. 

"No clue." I answered. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No, don’t call anyone. Listen, they record everything but our conversations for confidentiality, if you call someone it’s possible that they might somehow be involved and we don’t want prosecution to get that- understand?” I hated explaining the basics to my clients, but those dumbassses would sign their own sentences if they didn’t know any better.

I walked up to the courthouse, in one hand I had my phone, the other a black coffee from the starbucks across the street, my work back slung over my shoulder and threatened to slide lower onto my arm. As I turned the corner I was suddenly burning with hot coffee against my chest and a stranger staring down at me as I had run right into him, 

“FUCK!” I yelled as I stepped back. My heel slipped in a crack on the sidewalk, the top of it snapping it too causing me to fall back, my head hitting the hard concrete.   

When I opened my eyes again he was standing over me. It was the new guy who sat across from me. "Don't worry I called an ambulance." He assured. I was going to sit up but as I pieced the situation together I realized I was no longer wearing a shirt. Instead I had his blazer placed over my top. I assume because of the burning coffee which would have been sitting on my torso had he not. 

He rode in the ambulance to the hospital. We sat in awkward silence as I tried to figure out his angle. Was he afraid I'd sue. I was the one who bumped into him. Did he wanna ask me questions about our workplace. It'd been a month or so since he'd arrived though so that wouldn't make sense. 

He sat next to me at the hospital and was still there when the doctor told me it was a light concussion and a small burn. He sighed, finally not seeming like a stiff board for a moment. Maybe he was scared I'd sue. I turned to him in the hospital bed when we had a moment alone. 

"Why are you here?" I asked. 

He blushed and looked down mumbling a bit as he said "I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I wouldn't be able to work anyways till I knew." My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

"Why? I'm the one that bumped into you?" I asked. 

He was about to respond when the brigade of brothers came in. He seemed startled at all the sudden male energy in the room. "Ah, these are my brothers Dan, Danny, and Daniel. Daniel is a family name." I added the common addition when introducing them to anyone. 

He stood up and shook Dan's hand firmly "Nicholas Lamia." He said. I realized then that I also didn't know his name. Danny started to get suspicious as he looked at him with antagonizing eyes. 

"How do you know our sister?" He asked. Nicholas flushed again and tried to find words for a moment. 

"We work together. He's the one who called the ambulance." Daniel set a balloon down next to me that he'd gotten at the gift shop. 

We hadn't really spoken since his home break in. I still don't know what that was about. But he's been suspicious since. Once they released me Nicholas went on his way and the Mars siblings stood on the sidewalk and considered where to go. 

"Should we get sushi? It's been a moment since we hung out without mom and dad." Dan suggested leading the conversation. 

"Hmm, works for me. Samantha's out of town for work." Danny chimed in. 

I sighed thinking about all the work I still had to do. But it had been a minute since we hung out for fun, and cucumber rolls wouldn't be too bad right about now. "Sure I'm in." I replied. 

"You?" Danny asked Daniel.

He mumbled for a moment with the same guilty look, "no, I don't th-" 

Suddenly Danny got him in a headlock, "come on even Savy agreed and she'd rather eat shit than waste time." He joked. I rolled my eyes and we all piled into Dan's car. 

The waitress led us up to a small booth towards the back. At first I was going to sit next to Daniel but the blaring TV would send me down a spiral. There was a government program on and as soon as that shit for an heir came on I'd be fuming about how we're leaving the lives of multiple disadvantaged people to a boy who did body shots off a Delta Nu on a thursday night. I wasn’t exactly sure if that story was true, but it wouldn’t surprise me based off of what I’d seen from more credible sources than Lucy in the room down that hall at the sorority house who was gushing about how she wished it could be her. Prince Eaton went to the University of Labrador with us and she was hopeful that he would do it but sadly, no. 

Dan saw my eyes lingering on the TV and switched sides of the booth with me. We were just about finished and considering desert when I began to notice the glances and smirks. I wiped with a napkin thinking maybe I had some rice on my face, but they continued nonetheless. It wasn’t like creepy guys smirking either, it was everyone. The air felt different and Daniel looked like he was going to be sick. “What?” I asked as he opened his mouth. 

It looked like he was about to say something but couldn’t find the words. Dan opened to speak too, “Savannah, we didn’t think you’d ge-” 

“Oh my gosh congratulations on being selected! Would you like a desert? Everything is on the house of course!” The waitress smiled. 

I looked up at her as if she were speaking German. “Congratulations on what?” I asked. 

“On being selected! They were just announced, are you so excited? Could I also get a photo by any chance! The next queen of Illea could be sitting at my booth!” She cheered.

The world slowed as my mind raced selected? Like The selection selected? I didn’t apply? I didn’t want to apply? How did I even get entered? What did Daniel want to tell me? Did Daniel do this? Was this his revenge for what? 

I snapped out of it as Dan called my name. “I’m sorry. I have to step out for a moment.” I said and grabbed my purse running out of the restaurant, feeling everyone watching me. I walked to the side of the building and pressed my back against the cold brick panting. I crumbled inwards as my brothers ran over to me. I took a deep breath in, 

“I don’t” 

another breath

“understand.” 

Suddenly a man with a long lens camera appeared. How did that happen so fast? How did he know what she looked like? Stupid your Savannah Mars it’s not like you’re a nobody your grandpa runs the largest candy company in the world. 

“Can you back off?” I heard Dan ask him. 

He kept ignoring Dan entirely, that is till Dan pushed his camera out of focus. “What the fuck man? Chill.” The creep said and went to shove Dan. Level headed Dan of course responded by punching him in the face. 

We all piled into his car and drove to my house. I sat in the car ride silent and waited for someone to speak. No one did but Daniel still looked like he was going to throw up. We all sat on the sofa in continued silence. Only Dan spoke to offer everyone water. 

No one said yes to it but a cup appeared in front of each of us anyways, always the responsible older brother. 

I inhaled then finally said, “I’m not mad. I just want to know why?” and looked at Daniel. It was clear by now that he was the culprit. 

He sat there in silence, his lip whimpering like he wanted to cry. Like he wanted to cry? If anyone’s going to cry it should be me. Suddenly I lunged at him to get in a hit. Only Danny’s arm stopped mine from smashing into his face. 

“Why?” I yelled. 

“I thought you made a gay dating profile for me.” He whimpered. 

“What?” I asked, even more confused than before. 

Dan spoke up, “Danny made a gay dating profile for him to try and give him a little push. When he got mad he said it was you who did it.” 

“I just saw the letter sitting there and it seemed like the perfect way to get back at you for meddling in my love life. I was just gonna taunt you with submitting it, then Dan told me it was Danny but he said you wouldn’t get in and you’d just never know.” Daniel explained. 

“Well, statistically speaking you shouldn’t have.” He defended. My anger shifted to the brother holding me back. If Danny had teased Daniel about his sexuality none of this would have happened. But I couldn’t do anything with him still holding my wrist. 

I stood from the sofa and the brothers stood as well. “I’m going to go get changed.” The second they relaxed I turned and charged at Danny. “You fucking bitch!” I yelled and started to pull at his hair. He didn’t fight back but Daniel panicked and Dan rushed over. I was yanked off of him before I could make any real damage but he did look hurt enough. 

“How could you! Just minding your own fucking business could have avoided this whole thing! And Daniel!” I yelled and turned. “Don’t fucking get vengeance especially not without communicating!” 

The phone started to ring. It was probably about the selection. I huffed over ready to say, “Hi, yes this is Savannah Mars. No, I would not like to participate, please pull someone else.” But as I picked up the phone I realized something. Daniel would have had to forge my signature. In order to apply for me he had to sign a contract. If I say I want out I would have to prove I didn’t agree to begin with. That would mean proving the false signature. Which is by the way, illegal. 

I sighed, held the phone to my ear. “Yes this is she. I’m so excited to be selected and am more than happy to discuss a time for you to send your people over.”

[imaginingsoftly]

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Pt. 2 - Morgan Rielly

Type: roommates to lovers, Y/N insert shorts

Requested: No

Warnings: just swearing

(Y/N = Your name, cuts mean a change in POV. It’ll be from Morgan’s perspective to Y/N’s)

Morgan got off of his flight more than a little tired of the tiny plane and the guy sitting next to him, who seemed far too awake for the late hour. While Carolina certainly wasn’t a large hockey market, it was a huge college basketball one, and he was going to scream if he had to hear the guy go on about how much Duke sucked much longer. It didn’t matter that he knew nothing about college basketball; if anything it seemed to excite the guy, Martin-something, and now he was walking with him through the terminal at RDU to luggage claim still talking. Apparently the Duke coach had been fired for some reason, and a bunch of his players followed him to the new school he was at, some mid-major program on the coast, whatever mid-major meant. 

“But see, here’s the thing; the last big-time coach UNCW had, he went to State. If coach ends up at State, I’m just gonna stop following basketball. The Basketball Gods’ll have officially abandoned Duke.” Morgan nodded unenthusiastically along with the man’s spiel, leaning to avoid the arm he was waving to further his point. Down the escalator they went until finally they were at the luggage collection, and Morgan was finally able to shake the man off with a handshake and a promise to check out a Duke game while he was in town. 

I’m picking up my suitcase, he texted Hamilton. The luggage belt seemed to move slower than usual, or maybe it was the fact that it was 11pm and he just wanted to go to sleep. His black suitcase, battered and covered in luggage tags from years of cross-Canada flights, appeared on the belt underneath a yellow hard-case covered in stickers from places all over the world. An older woman with white hair and a worldly look struggled to lift the case off the belt, huffing when she couldn’t immediately claim her bag. 

Morgan jumped forward, picking up the case and putting it next to the woman with a small smile. Old and kind eyes met his with a grateful smile as she put one hand on the bag and the other on his arm. “Thank you, honey.” Her accent, subtle but still noticeably southern, felt as warm and welcoming as the woman and the suitcase in front of him. He nodded, reaching over and grabbing his suitcase before it got too far away. Morgan turned to wait for Hamilton to pick him up, but was stopped by the woman’s hand resting on his arm again. “Welcome to Raleigh. I hope your visit treats you well.” Morgan squeezed the woman’s hand, smiling gratefully. He nodded, thanking her with a wish goodnight. 

He stepped outside, and the heat and humidity smacked him in the face immediately. Eleven pm and it was still 80 degrees outside. What the hell. A black BMW SUV pulled up beside him, and the red-haired Hamilton waved an arm at Morgan as a blonde-haired girl winked at him from the passenger seat. The backdoor opened, and a disheveled Svechnikov stepped outside. “Hey man,” he mumbled, the Russian clearly having been asleep until a couple of minutes ago. He grabbed Morgan’s bag, putting it in the trunk before slapping Morgan on the back and climbing back into the car. Morgan raised an eyebrow, looking at the blonde questioningly. She rolled her eyes, gesturing into the car. 

Morgan stepped up into the SUV, sinking into the blac leather seats with a sigh. Svechnikov had done the same on the other side of the car, already half asleep again as he extended a hand. “Andrei,” he said through a thick accent, “welcome to Raleigh”. Morgan shook the kid’s hand with a laugh. “Did they drag you out of bed for this?” Andrei sank further into the seat, adjusting the black baseball hat he was wearing with a sigh. “That’s my girlfriend, Kat. She wanted to come, but she wouldn’t come without me. Y/N is her friend. She’s cool.” 

Morgan turned to look at the blonde, who was turned around in the front seat to look over him with what was really an alarming amount of concentration. “Y/N is a relaxed person, Mo,” Hamilton said as he looked at his fellow defenseman in the rearview mirror, “you’ll get along fine.” Kat smiled at him, and nodded enthusiastically. “She’s a big sports fan, especially baseball and hockey. There’s pretty much always some kind of game on the TV in her apartment, actually. On weekend mornings, she watches Premier League. Like soccer.” Kat said the last bit incredulously, and Morgan got the impression she was not the sports fan that her friend was. 

The ride from the airport to the apartment complex was quick and relatively quiet, as it appeared the lateness was getting to everyone in the car. Hamilton and Kat spoke up occasionally to point out landmarks or places to eat along the way, while it appeared Svechnikov had fallen deeply asleep. Hamilton pulled off a street in the middle of the city and into a parking garage, and they were there. Svechnikov jerked awake when Kat and Hamilton opened their car doors, and Morgan chuckled at the kid as he stepped out of the SUV and into the still stifling heat outside. 

“Is it always this humid here?” Morgan asked. Kat chuckled, nodding knowingly. “You get used to it. Supposedly anyway. I don’t think Y/N ever did, and she’s lived in Carolina since she was seven.” That didn’t bode well for him, then. Kat led the way into the building, up seven levels of an elevator and down a long hallway. 

She turned to look at Morgan, smirking at him and raising an eyebrow. “One thing before we go inside. Don’t be a jerk, or I’ll kick your ass. She’s an introvert, so opening up her apartment to a complete stranger is a big step for her. You’re lucky that her mom-friend personality takes over the introversion when people need help.” Morgan nodded solemnly, more than a little scared of the short blonde staring up at him. She put her hand on the doorknob, pausing again. “Actually, one more thing. Good luck.” 

With that, she opened the door and walked inside, not bothering to wait for the three hockey players behind her. “Good luck with what?”, Morgan asked. Hamilton shrugged, pushing past him to go inside. “Good luck not falling in love with her. Kat has it in her head that you’re gonna end up together.” Svechnikov rolled his eyes as he spoke, also walking inside. Morgan took a deep breath, following his teammates. 

The apartment was welcoming, warm feeling and smelling like a bakery and lavender. It was small, and pictures were hung on the walls with obvious love. There were landscapes mostly, clearly taken by Y/N, photos of beaches and athletic fields with some of the most fantastic sunsets he’d ever seen. The kitchen was also clean, minus a small mountain of cookies and what looked like homemade pasta strewn on cooling racks along almost every bit of available counter space. 

“That wasn’t a fucking strike, you goddamn moron! It was six inches off the plate! How the fuck do they still let you call games? Jesus christ!” Y/N was standing in front of the television in the living room, yelling at the baseball game she was watching like she thought they could actually hear her. She was short, and curly hair tumbled halfway down her back from underneath a backwards-facing Red Sox hat as she emphatically waved a hand holding a beer bottle. Oh great, a Boston fan. A cat looked up from it’s spot on the back of the couch, all gray and fluffy and looking very tired of the screaming.

“Hey, Y/N,” Kat said as she stepped into the living room, “got your new roomie here.”

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

Y/N almost screamed when she heard the voice behind her, only relaxing when she registered it was Kat. “What the fuck, Kat, a little warning would’ve been nice.” She turned and glared at the blonde smirking at her. “I almost threw my beer at you.” Kat laughed, swishing her hair over her shoulder as she turned to the boys. Y/N followed her eyes, smiling at Andrei and Dougie before meeting the eyes of Morgan. He looked exhausted, and the purple under his eyes was more obvious in person than when she saw his trade interview on Twitter a few days before. 

She stepped forward and switched her beer bottle from her right hand to her left, holding the former out for a handshake. “Y/N. It’s nice to meet you.” Morgan gave her a small smile, grabbing her right hand with his own firmly. “Morgan. Thanks for offering me a room.” He stepped back a little, and put his hands in his pockets. 

“Arighty. So…” Dougie cleared his throat uncomfortably, “We’re gonna go, since it’s so late. You guys get everything figured out, and Morgan, I’ll come pick you up in the morning to get you to the rink.” He turned to Y/N and smiled warmly. “Thanks, Y/N.” She nodded, and gestured at the cookies. “Take some. They’re made with almond flour and coconut sugar and oil, so they’re professional athlete-friendly.” Dougie and Andrei leaped forward to take several, mumbling their thanks around faces quickly stuffed with cookie. She turned to Morgan. “You’re welcome to them as well. I stress-bake, but I don’t like to eat sweets as much as I like to make them. I usually make Andrei take them to the rink with him, because I know they’ll get eaten there.” 

Andrei looked up at his name, cookie falling out of his mouth with perfect comedic timing. Y/N smothered a laugh with her hand. Kat rolled her eyes, grabbing her boyfriend with one hand and Dougie with the other. “We’re gonna go now, you guys get to know each other.” She turned as she pulled over the door, trying and failing to wink secretly at Y/N. “Lock the damn door, Y/N!” Dougie yelled as he was pushed out of the apartment far too easily for someone with 4 inches and 75 pounds on Kat. Oops. So that’s how they got in without knocking. Again.

Morgan raised his eyebrows and shook his head bemusedly at the closed door. Y/N bit her lip and sighed. “Sorry about her. Boundaries and knowing when to shut up aren’t really her strong suit.” Morgan laughed. “I’ve known her for maybe an hour and I’ve gotten that, yeah.” He gestured at his bag. “Where should I put this?” Y/N stepped around him and towards a door to his right. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Yeah, through here.” 

She opened the door to show a small room with a full bed covered with what appeared to be a linen duvet, a dresser, and bookshelves stocked with succulents and picture frames of more beach photos. Morgan wheeled his suitcase in, stopping to pick up one of the photos. “Do you visit the beach a lot?” Y/N smiled and stepped closer to see what he was looking at. It was a photo she’d taken in college, when she’d decided to see the sunrise from the beach. “I go when I can. I went to school at the beach, about 2 hours away from here. There’s nothing like sunsets over the ocean, except maybe sunsets over ballparks.” She pointed at the photo next to the one he was holding. “That’s Brooks Field. It’s where my university’s baseball team plays, and I saw some of my favorite sunsets there.” Morgan put the ocean photo down, leaning in to look at the baseball one. “These sunsets are incredible.” 

Y/N backed away, suddenly aware of how close they were. “Yeah, they are. Listen, I’ll leave you to get comfortable. If my game is too loud, let me know and I’ll turn it down.” She turned to leave, tripping over the gray area rug on the floor. She started to throw her hands out, ready for the fall, when she felt strong arms grab her around the waist. Morgan pulled her back into him, a quiet “woah” falling out of his mouth as he did. 

He let go just as quickly as he’d grabbed her, and Y/N turned around laughing, trying to ignore how hard her heart was beating. “Sorry. I’m a major klutz. I tripped over that damn rug about 5 times when I was in here trying to get the room ready for you earlier. You’d think I’d remember it’s there by now.” Morgan laughed, and Y/N’s heart tugged just a little at the sound and how his eyes crinkled. “Well I’m glad I was there to catch you this time.” Y/N nodded, and put her hand out for a fist bump. “Thanks, bud. Let’s try this again; have a good night.” Morgan bumped his fist on hers and repeated the sentiment. He turned to his suitcase as she exited the room. The last glimpse of him Y/N had as she closed his door was of his back, and the muscles rippling under his shirt as he lifted the case onto his bed.

Y/N put her hands on the back of the couch a took a deep breath, trying to calm her heartbeat. Bogey, her cat, jumped onto the couch and meowed at her questioningly. “Yeah, Boegs. This is gonna be harder than I thought.”

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Imagine...Dean Saving You In Prison (Part 2)

Pairing: Prisoner!Dean x lawyer!reader

Word Count: 2,500ish

_______

“Alright, Dean,” you said. You set your box down on the table in the visitors room you were working out of. Dean watched as he happily sipped on his soda, taking a bite of his burger. “How’s lunch?”

“Awesome,” he said with a thumbs up, wiping off his hands. “So what do you got?”

“Well first off, we can only get you a new trial if we discover new evidence,” you said.

“Double jeopardy,” said Dean.

“Exactly. Now your defense was screwed from the start because it’s quite obvious your own lawyer thought you did it. You had no alibi, the murder weapon, with your prints, was found at your home. All they were missing was the nice little bow on top. Motive. You had none,” you said. “But it was more than enough.”

“None of that has changed,” he said.

“True. But I don’t like a case lacking motive. It’s sloppy. I want us to take a look at who would have had a motive for killing John Wiles,” you said. “I know it’s only been a few days but I narrowed it down to these three people.”

“That’s already more effort than the other guy ever gave,” said Dean.

You slid your three folders in front of him, Dean tapping one.

“Marcus Porter. I know him. I used to work with him and John at a garage when I was straight out of high school,” said Dean. 

“You friends?”

“On Facebook, bump into each other at the bar every once in a while but not really,” said Dean.

“He ever ask about your personal life? Work hours? Relationships? Activities?” you asked.

“We would shoot the shit. I guess that stuff would come up. Why?”

“He was learning your schedule, Dean. He knew when you wouldn’t be home so he could plant the weapon,” you said. 

“My house wasn’t broken into though,” he said.

“Also true. But you just told me you would meet up at the bar every once in a while. He could have stolen your keys, made an imprint of your house one, and slipped it back in your pocket without you noticing,” you said.

“So...why me? Marcus and I weren’t best friends but we got along,” said Dean.

“It likely wasn’t personal. You were probably the easiest fall guy in his opinion,” you said. Dean ran his hand through his hair, staring at the folder. “Having someone to look into really helps, Dean. No one is perfect when it comes to this. They can plan and plan but at a certain point, they have to take some kind of risk. We just have to figure out what that was for him.”

“What if he didn’t slip up though?”

“We’ll find something, I promise.”

Three Weeks Later

“Hello, De-“ you said, stopping short when you saw the black eye. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know me. Always so popular with the other boys at recess,” he said.

“The douche from the riot,” you said.

“Yeah. He’s in solitary for a few days so at least I get a break. I’m getting nervous to be honest. I don’t think next time it’s gonna be just a few punches,” he said.

“Punch a guard,” you said.

“Excuse me?”

“Punch a guard. You’re safe in solitary and I feel like we are so, so close to getting a retrial. Do that until I can get you some privacy. Blame it on me, alright?” 

He nodded and you pulled out your box again, Dean smiling wide when you set a piece of pie down in front of him.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re the best lawyer ever?” he asked.

“You, pretty much every time I see you,” you laughed. “Okay so I think I found fifteen minutes in Marcus’ alibi.”

“Fifteen minutes? Y/N, that’s not-“

“Why do you think I’m in my athletic stuff? I’ve been up all night running around town,” you said. “During the day, it’s impossible because of traffic but the middle of the night, if he took Conklin, it’s all greens and he has plenty of time to kill Wiles, and plant the weapon before you got home from work. I know how he did it.”

“Awesome. Now how do we prove it?”

Two Weeks Later

“Relax,” you said, fixing Dean’s tie for him.

“Last time I wore this suit, I went to prison,” he said, scratching at his cuffed wrist.

“Dean. All we have to do is bait him. He’s gonna take it,” you said. “We got the judge to let us put him up on the stand. He’ll take the bait.”

“I know. I would really like to not go back to prison tonight is all,” he said. You gave him a smile, Dean grabbing your hand when you started to gather up your things. “Y/N. No matter how it goes today, thank you for everything.”

“You stopped someone from hurting me. We are more than even, Dean. Let’s go win so I can take you out for some pie,” you said.

“Okay. Okay. Let’s do this.”

“He’s not cracking,” whispered Dean when you walked back over to the table.

“Yes, he is,” you said, grabbing a picture off of the table. “Mr. Porter. Can you identify what this is?”

You walked over and held up the imagine, Marcus glancing at the judge. 

“Your leash is getting shorter, Ms. Y/L/N,” said the judge to you.

“Please answer the question,” you said.

“A bloody knife?” said Marcus. 

“It is the murder weapon that killed John Wiles,” you said. 

“Okay?” he said.

“Mr. Porter can you tell me what this is a picture of,” you said, holding up another.

“A dead guy,” he said.

“Let the record show I am holding up evidence photographs 1B and 1E. Now, Mr. Porter, it’s quite clear from the photograph and the autopsy report that Wiles died from several stabbing wounds. Something is a bit funny though which is why I need your help. You see, these stab wounds are on the front of the right side of Wiles’ torso.”

“Ms. Y/L/N, I suggest you get to your point and quickly,” said the judge.

“Mr. Porter, I’m not a detective but why would a right handed man stab someone with his left? You know what? We’ll come back to that,” you said, smiling as you walked back to the table and grabbed the autopsy report. “According to the coroner's findings, the angle of the wounds indicate an upward slicing motion starting left and moving right. Now if I’m holding a knife in my right hand, why would I do that? Why take the risk of using such a poor angle when I could have easily moved a few feet to my right and gotten a much better hit? We’ll come back to that one too.”

You went back to the table again, the room much tenser as you grabbed the plastic bag with the murder weapon.

“This knife was used to kill Mr. Wiles. It has his blood on it and Mr. Winchester’s fingerprints. These are facts. This knife was taken from Mr. Winchester’s kitchen. He admits it was missing from his butcher block. Also a fact. As the owner of the knife, it makes sense we would see these prints. What doesn’t make sense is why a right handed man angled his knife the way a left handed person would. That’s a little odd. What doesn’t make sense is how a right handed man would even strike with this knife at this angle, especially in an intense moment. I’ve never killed anyone but I think you want to know you’re going to hit your target. That’s also a little odd. Then there’s the timing. We all know the traffic headache that’s been going on over on highway 23 for three years now,” you said.

You glanced over at Marcus, giving him a smile.

“Mr. Winchester much like the rest of us, hates traffic and avoids the highway as much as possible. Except on Wednesday nights. You see, on Wednesday nights, Mr. Winchester goes to Paulie’s bar for a drink and to shoot some pool with his buddies from work. He always pays at the end of the night and credit card records will show he paid off his tab at 11:03pm on the night in question. He then proceeded to drive home. But Mr. Winchester took highway 23 home instead of side roads. Why wouldn’t he? It would be faster, even with the construction and single lane. So Mr. Winchester took the highway home. 

“He took the highway home, parked his car in his garage and went to sleep. We know for a fact that Mr. Wiles was killed between 11pm and 11:30pm. We know this because Mr. Wiles was also in the construction business. In fact, he was on the night crew working on the highway. It’s not a lot of time to kill someone if you think about it. So Mr. Winchester pays off his tab at 11:03, goes to the parking lot and then he has to get to Wiles’ home within 27 minutes and kill him. That’s plenty of time. If you aren’t Mr. Winchester. See, there’s no highway access anywhere near Wiles’ house. The lead construction crew member testifies that he saw Mr. Winchester’s vehicle that night, just before the night shift was set to start. It makes sense. It’s about a ten minute drive from Paulie’s to where the main construction was taking place. That’s 11:13. Let’s give Mr. Winchester a minute to actually walk out of the bar and get to his car. 11:14. Now we only got 16 minutes,” you said, turning towards the judge. 

“The next closest exit is eight minutes away. Eight minutes. 11:22. Mr. Winchester has eight minutes left to drive all the way back to Wiles’ on side streets and kill Mr. Wiles before his carpool buddy, Mr. Ericsson, will discover his body. Does anyone know how long it takes to drive from exit 9 to Mr. Wiles home? Twelve minutes on a quiet night. That’s 11:34. But John Wiles was discovered at precisely 11:30pm. Isn’t that a little odd too?”

“What is going on,” said Marcus.

“Where were you between 11:00pm and 11:30pm on the night of June 8th, 2018,” you asked.

“Excuse me?” said Marcus.

“Answer the question, Mr. Porter,” said the judge.

“At home with my wife,” he said.

“Yes, I see,” you said, pursing your lips. “Your wife says you took the dog out for a few minutes. 15 minutes in fact.”

“Yeah, I took him for a walk. He had to go to the bathroom,” he said.

“Well which is it? You were at home with your wife or you took your dog for a walk?” you asked.

“You didn’t give me a chance to say that I took him out,” he said.

“Oh. My mistake,” you said with a smile. “Mr. Porter, do you have any idea how close you live to Mr. Wiles?”

“A minute or two.”

“Just over a minute but I’ll be nice and give you the two. Now do you have any idea how close Mr. Wiles lives to Mr. Winchester?”

“No.”

“They live two minutes apart. Any idea how far to get to your house to Mr. Winchester’s? Using that math, four minutes. You were gone for fifteen minutes. Two to Mr. Wiles. Let’s say four to break in and kill him. Two to Mr. Winchester’s, three to plant the murder weapon and four back to your place. That’s your fifteen minutes Mr. Porter. I mean that’s pretty weird too isn’t it? I mean, the fact he owed you money and the fact your wife had to take your dog out to use the bathroom just an hour later despite you having just taken him are just little coincidences, right?” you asked with a smile. “You being left-handed is also completely coincidental, right?”

The whole room was quiet, Marcus staring you down. 

“I didn’t kill him. He did. His fingerprints are all over the murder weapon,” said Marcus, nodding towards Dean.

“Oh, we already addressed that Mr. Porter. You get tired of Mr. Wiles not paying you back? Or maybe it was the affair he was having with your wife,” you said.

“That has nothing to do…”

“Oh so he did have one with her? Mr. Porter, why didn’t you say something? Were you embarrassed? Felt like less of a man?” you asked.

“I am-“

“Well she had to go looking elsewhere. I bet that hit below the belt. Did you catch them in your bed? Did you catch another man with your wife in your bed?” 

“The slut-“

“I bet she even bragged about how much better he was at it. How pleasurable it was. How that was a real man.”

“I am a real man.”

“Real men are tough guys, they don’t get cheated on. They don’t settle for that shit.”

“I am a real man!”

“Oh are you?” you said, the judge saying something but you ignored it. “A real man that gets cheated on with the guy who took his money? It sounds like John Wiles was the real man. He got the girl, the money. I bet they even laughed about you behind your back.”

“He-“

“He took everything and you were left to sit there and be humiliated like the-“

“I showed him humil-“

“Oh yeah? How’d you show him? Cry to your mommy about it?”

“I killed the son of a bitch! That’s how I showed him!” shouted Marcus. You looked at the judge and smiled spinning around.

“No further questions your honor.”

“That was fucking awesome,” said Dean that afternoon, smiling wide as he ate a burger outside some hole in the wall joint.

“How’s it feel to be a free man?” you asked.

“Awesome. You were awesome up there. That was like some A Few Good Men shit up there,” he said.

“That’s what I was hoping for,” you said, Dean tilting his head back and enjoying the sun on his face. “I told you I had this.”

“I don’t know how you did it but whatever you want, it’s yours,” he said.

“Make some better friends for me,” you said, Dean chuckling.

“Yeah, I will definitely be doing that from now on,” he said. “But I’m serious, I owe you.”

“Buy me dinner,” you said with a shrug. “You’ve been flirting with me for weeks Winchester.”

“I think that can be arranged,” he smiled. “Y/N.”

“Mhm,” you hummed.

“Thank you.”

“Dean. You gotta stop with that.”

“Alright, alright. So where would you like to go to dinner tonight?”

“There’s this new place downtown that’s pretty good,” you said.

“Sounds perfect, sweetheart.”

_______

[honeylemoncrushimagines]

#1 - Balcony Love

Characters needed:

Y/N – your name                  

C/N – crush name

BF/N – best friend’s name

F/N2 – friend name 2

F/N3 – friend name 3

F/N4 – friend name 4

E/C – eye color

You also need a lake name ;)

AN:

So I kind of planned for F/n3 and 4 to be the opposite genders of Y/N, but um yeah, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. ;) Also I feel like this is kinda cliché and cringe worthy but it might different for you guys, so ya.  Anyways, enjoy my first crush imagine I guess? :)

also sorry in advance for whatever grammar mistakes are in there, i was kind of rushing to write this for you guys ;)

P.S. there are quite a few time skips because I was too lazy to fill in the time between each scene :/

word count: 2336 words

warnings: none

A few weeks ago

“My mom said I could only invite a few people with me to our holiday lodge for my birthday party so you can’t tell the others I invited you, okay?” BF/N whispered to me as we walked down the road towards the bus stop after school. So far, today had been a pretty good day for a school day. It was Friday; your crush C/N had smiled at you in class, and now your best friend was inviting you along to a trip for her birthday.

“Who’s going?” I ask, grinning excitedly at her.

“Oh, just you and a few guys.” At this, she winks conspiratorially at me.

“Who, Who?? Tell meeeee please BF/N!” I beg, trying to make puppy dog eyes at her.

“Hmm let’s see.” Tapping her finger against her chin, she looks upwards. “F/N2, you, course, F/N3, F/N4 and… C/N.”

“OH MY GOODNESS BF/N YOU DIDN’T!!” I squeal at her and grab both of her shoulders towards me in a hug. “I can’t believe you! Thank you, thank you, thank you sooo much!”

She grins. “Haha, no problem. After all, you are my best friend, aren’t you?”

 Today

“Arghh I’m going to be so late,” I screeched, frantically rifling through my drawers looking for a spare hair tie. Finally finding one, I ran out of my room and grabbed my bags, stuffing my feet into my sandals. Outside of my house, BF/N and everyone else were waiting for me to get in.

“Honey, are you sure you’ll be ok?” My mom asked, taking a bag from my hand.

“Yeah, of course mom! Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. It’s only the weekend, anyway.” Finally having accomplished my task of slipping on my shoes, I raced outside, opened the boot to the minivan and stacked my bags inside.

“Bye mom, I’ll see you in two days!” I shouted behind me as I slammed the boot door shut.

“Bye honey. Keep safe okay? I love you.”

“Love you too!” At that, I jumped into the car, strapped on my seat belt, and then we were gone.

Inside the car, it turned out that I was sitting next to C/N at the back, which was also where all the snacks were. “Hey Y/N.” He smiled his heart stopping smile at me, putting one arm behind my chair.

“Oh um, hi C/N,” I grin back at him, flustered as hair falls in front of my face.

 BF/N’s voice fills the small interior of the minivan. “So guys in case you didn’t know or forgot, we are going to my family’s private lodge at lake lake/name. Since it’s about 3 hours away, we’ll swap drivers and rotate every hour.”

“Yes Ma’am!” We all chorus, laughing at each other.

“Also, feel free to pass around the snacks we brought. Don’t just hog it for yourselves!” At this, she mock glares at C/N and me.

“Why would I, BF/N?” I joke. I put up my hands defensively. ”I’m an angel!”

F/N3 snickers. “Yeah right you are.”

F/N4 pipes in. “More like the devil.”

“Hey not funny guys!” I pretend to get shot in the chest and collapse onto the ground as we all laugh.

At the lodge

“Guys!” BF/N yells. “Come on in!” Lugging our bags behind us, we all follow after BF/N into her family’s huge lodge. “So I’ve decided that after we’ve settled in, we should go down to the lake for a swim.” We all cheer. “But before that, first things first. For rooms, all the girls will be sleeping together, the same as the boys. Both rooms are upstairs and have ensuites connected to them.” After you’ve unpacked your stuff, don’t forget to change into swimsuits so that we can swim!”

“Yes, sergeant,” I shout, bringing my hand up to my head in attention. Everyone else just laughs.

As I lug my heavy bag up the stairs to my room, something grabs onto the handle of the suitcase and stops me in my tracks, startling me. “Huh?”

“Just me.” C/N smiles, his straight, ebony white teeth almost glowing. “Can I help with this?”

Fighting off an oncoming blush, I quickly look away from his searching eyes and hand over my bag. “Sure… thanks.” My brain going into overdrive, I scan the walls beside me, hoping that they will give me some pointer tips on how to talk to a crush. Unfortunately to my dismay, they don’t. “So… How did BF/N convince you to come us this trip?” I ask him, my face glowing like hot coals. I have to at least try to make a conversation if I want him. It’s too awkward otherwise. I tell myself, trying to cool down the furnace in the body.

C/N laughs an embarrassed laugh. “You don’t want to know.”

“Come on, tell me please! You’ve got me interested so now you can’t leave me hanging!”

“Ah, well…” He rubs the back of his head, showing off his muscular arm. I’m practically drooling at the sight of him. “BF/N told me you were coming on this trip.” At this, two bright spots appear on his cheeks.

Wait what??? Did he just say he only came because of me? No way. Not possible. No one likes me. He’s probably just trying to be friendly so he can get Isabel or someone.

“Wait what?” confused I turn to face him. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’m definitely serious.” Now he’s grinning

“You better not be joking with me, C/N.”

“I never would. Not about this at least.” I gasp in surprise.

“You suck up!” I say playfully. Inside my head, cogs are spinning and wheels are turning, trying to figure what he means and if he’s actually for real. Could he possibly like me as much as I like him? We stop in front of my door and he puts down my bag. “Well here’s your stop. See you lake.” Smiling softly I say thanks and then close the door and find the sexiest, most revealing swimwear I packed. Just to show off to C/N, of course.

Time skip to the lake

“Okay, kids!” BF/N shouts. “And love birds.” At this, she winks at me and I look away, pretending not to notice. “Today,” she continues, “We’ll be playing hide and seek!” At this, we all groan.  F/N4 whisper yells to BF/N.

“Can’t we play something else? Pretty please?”

“Nope!” She grins her devil’s grin. “We’re going to stick with this. And for this game, someone’s gotta be in, and as the person who’s house you guys are staying in, I think that I should be the one to pick who’s going to be in, so… F/N3! You’re it!” giggling at F/N3′s sigh of dismay and halfhearted protesting, we all swim away, and everyone goes off in two’s except for me. Lucky me. Always the odd one out. Scanning the area, I try to find a good hiding place. In a lake there aren’t that many places to hide except around the edges. Aha! There’s one! I spot a rock jutting out of the water’s edge, and quickly swim over to hide behind it. Not daring to peek out for fear of being found, I stay hidden, unaware of time. How long are they gonna take to find me? They must have forgotten about me. Spinning around, I gasp as I feel soft, warm hands slide around my waist and I find myself pressed up against a hard, muscular wall of some sort. “You’re beautiful, you know that right?” A low, purring voice interrupts my thinking and liquid heat rises up inside my core. C/N.

“What are you doing?” I hiss, embarrassed. “We’re supposed to be playing hide and seek with the others!”

Abruptly, he lets go of me, leaving my skin cold and wet. I shiver and hug my arms to myself as goose bumps rise up on my skin.

“Well they asked me to come find you, since the game finished 3 minutes ago.”

“Oh… right. Thanks” I mumble, unsure of how to actually talk to my crush.

“You look cold. Shall we head back in?” His blue eyes search mine as I avoid his gaze.

“Yeah, let’s. The others are probably getting bored waiting for us anyway.”

We wade through the water around rock. My teeth begin to chatter as we come out into the open. C/N gently touches my shoulders and the molten lava inside me flares up again. We grab our towels off the sand, and with surprising grace, he wraps my towel snugly around my body and then smiles down at me. I smile back, trying to fight off the redness flooding my face.

 Time skip to later that night after dinner

As I’m walking down the hallway to the bathroom to take a shower, C/N comes bounding towards me. “Hey, Y/N!” he looks uncharacteristically nervous, and I smile to myself. “Umm… I was just wondering, do you want to go onto the balcony later tonight with me?” Whattt. That was definitely not what I was expecting.

“S-s-sure.” I stutter out. “I’d love to.” I smile up at him, looking into his E/C colored eyes.

“Great… okay, thanks. See you on the balcony at 11pm?” he blushes, and two tiny red patches appear beneath his eyes.

“Sounds good. See you then.” I curse myself under my breath as I prepare to shower. Did I really have to sound like a recorded phone answering machine? I face palm myself, and my back cringes as I replay that scene in my head. Why couldn’t I just be a little more flirtatious like BF/N or good at speaking with boys like F/N2? Honestly, the only good thing that came out it was that I got asked to go on a date! Oh… wait. It hits me. C/N JUST ASKED ME OUT ON A DATE!!!!!! ahhhhhh!! I scream internally and my brain starts imagining a ton of scenarios.

But first things first, Y/N. I tell myself sternly. You need to actually shower and smell good before you go and meet him.

Time skip to the balcony

I cautiously step onto the balcony, half expecting to not see C/N there. “C/N?” I step out further, and look to the corner of the balcony, breathing the smoky flavor of the night sky into my lungs. There he is! Aww that’s so cute. Before me is a sight to behold. There, I see C/N setting up fluffy blankets on the hard wood of the balcony.

“Y/N! You came!” he stands up and beams at me, gesturing for me to come and sit down. Gingerly, I bend down to my knees and admire his handiwork.

“Wow. This is beautiful, C/N.” I whisper. No one’s ever done this for me before. In front of me is a little wooden table with glowing candles sitting on it. Purple and pink flowers line the edges of the table, their velvet soft petals illuminated by the gentle flickering of the candles. Beside me is what seems like the fluffiest blankets in the world, and I giggle as C/N sits down beside me and tucks the fuzzy blankets around my body, wrapping me up like a burrito.

C/N begins to speak. “So, in case it’s not obvious enough to you, although I doubt it is, Y/N… I like you.” At that, C/N exhales and runs his hand through his hair and my mouth falls open.

“C/N… are you serious?”

“Y/N, I am completely dead serious. I like you… hell, I think I even love you. I’ve liked you for what seems like years, except I’ve been too scared to do anything about. Until now, that is.” C/N looks at me in the eyes.

“C/N…” I whisper, “I’ve liked you ever since I first laid my eyes on you. I’m pretty sure I love you.”

“Y/N, are you sure?”

“Hell yes, I’m sure.” I reply confidently.

In a heartbeat, he grabs my body and gently lays me on the ground, the cool of the hard wooden deck soaking up my warmth, and that combined with his heated kisses on my neck and jaw makes me shudder in delight. I breathe his scent in, swallowing up all his kisses like a fish desperate for water as I groan in ecstasy. I grip his head and thread my fingers through his hair, reveling in the softness. We kiss until we’re drunk on it, filling up the never ending well of passion. Slowly, we shorten our kisses until we’re finished, gulping down deep breaths of air and I stare into his eyes. He traces his rough finger pad around the swell of my kiss swollen lips then whispers, “You are so, so beautiful.”

I blush, ducking out of his touch. “So are you,” I retort. At that, he laughs, a low sexy growling sound that makes my insides quiver. He reaches out for a blanket beside him and wraps it around the two of us, making a little cocoon of safety and warmth just for us. “So Y/N, yes or no? Will you go out with me and be my girlfriend?” C/N asks.

I lie down and burrow my head into the hollow of his neck and smile into his soft skin. “A complete and utter yes.” I whisper.

 AN:

Hope you guys enjoyed my first imagine!! Feel free to submit ideas and stuff you want me to write about.

Ciao ;)

honeylemoncrushimagines

[allyreactions]

BTS reacts to their idol girlfriend on tour and fainting on stage

pairing: bts x reader

warnings: idk if its right or not but just in case, know that it mentions skipping meals and not sleeping well, idk if its eating disorders or mental ilnesses but know that it mentions that, there’s no implied death tho one of them may seem to have but it’s not like that ok i explained too much

genre: angst

a/n: this may turn much darker than i thought omg im sorry

no gender neutral

~~~~~~~~

kim seokjin

He never liked the idea of you going on tour. He had been knowing about the shitty way your managers were treating you. He noticed how your members would always receive praises while you only received criticism, which made you work harder. This involved staying until late hours rehearsing, skipping meals and sleep time to work on your choreographies. He didn’t want you to leave to Europe, mostly because when you were at South Korea, he could always check on you and stay with you. But now you were far away. He spent every day nervous, alert of his phone in case you wanted or needed to talk to him. One day Namjoon told him he was overreacting, that you were fine, you had your members and that they would help you. This managed to calm him down, put his phone down and left it at home to enjoy the only free day they were given.

He came back home late at night, a small smile on his face, glad that he could spend a day with his donsaengs. When he grabbed his cellphone, his expression quite changed, “23 missed calls” could be read on the screen. He quickly calling the owner of the 23 missed calls, your best friend and unnie.

“Seokjin-ah, where have you been!? I tried reaching you all day!” she cried, voice almost audible

“What happened?” he asked, fear obvious in his voice

“It´s Y/N...she fainted on stage a-and...” she sobbed, while Seokjin’s held his breath “....she isn’t waking up”

His heart stopped.

min yoongi

It was a problem. Your weight had been dropping every month, making your boyfriend worried. And worst thing was, he couldn’t tell you anything. He had tried, more than he wanted to, but you just wouldn’t listen. This was your first year as an idol, your band debuted with success yet your managers weren’t happy with your body. That got to your head, and your diets were reduced to almost a plate per day. Yoongi was used to these starving diets, and knew that cheating them was the worst a female idol could do. So he focused on staying by your side, and help you sneak some snacks in while your managers weren’t present. But one day you announced him your band was going to South America as part of their tour. His concern grew, because he could follow you to Japan or China, but South America was too much. He just swallowed, nodded and prayed you would be ok.

He never stopped messaging you, every day checking in, seeing how you were doing. But suddenly, you stopped messaging. He glanced at the clock, 2pm. He remembered the 12 hours of difference, it had to be 2am for you. He was about to give up, and hope you were sleeping well, when a message entered his phone with a ‘pop’.

[2:08pm] Y/N: Suga are you there?

What? You never called him by his stage name, it cringed you. Why were you calling him Suga? He didn’t wait to reply.

[2:09pm] Yoongi: I’m here, what’s wrong?

He could feel it, something was wrong. His jaw dropped to the floor and an annoying knot appeared on his throat when he read the next message.

[2:11pm] Y/N: I’m Yoonho, me and the group are at the hospital, Y/N fainted, she’s way too pale and can barely move. You’re her emergency contact, right?

jung hoseok

“Babe, you’re barely awake” you laughed a bit, watching Hoseok on your Face Time trying to keep his eyes open.

“I’m here, I’m here jagi” he replied, trying to smile, but you were right. He could barely stay awake. He had spent all day checking on you, trying to see if you were fine.

You had been feeling quite bad these past days. You had been working on your first soloist album, and you had wasted long nights writing lyrics and composing melodies. It was driving you crazy, but you needed to get it done. You too were barely awake, but spending weeks staying up late at night made you control yourself, you knew how to pretend you were fine. Something your career as a Kpop idol also taught you.You managed to convince Hoseok to go to sleep, so you could get changed and go to the stage, it was another night of touring with your girlgroup. 

Hoseok woke up from what he liked calling a long nap to his phone ringing. Without thinking about it, assuming it was you, he picked up.

“Y/N~ jagi, I’m sorry I fell asleep” he spoke in his tired husky voice

“It’s not Y/N, Hoseok, I’m her manager” that made Hobi jump up and suddenly fully wake up.

“Why are you calling me from Y/N’s cellphone?” he didn’t measure his tone, too concerned to care

“Y/N fainted on stage, we had to carry her to backstage” he gulped, feeling tears on his eyes “She’s resting now but I supposed you should know” he added before hanging up, leaving Hoseok more concerned than he already was.

kim namjoon

He hadn’t been able to talk to you in days, and it was driving him crazy. I mean, you were at USA touring, he knew your schedules by memory, why could you never even message him? But, he had to understand. Your managers weren’t as easy on you as his were on him. So he had to stick to social media. Updates of you on Twitter were the only way he had to check on you. He knew you had been quite stressed lately, thanks to your tour. You would always skip meals and sleep less just to get it perfect, you were too scared to be judged by foreigners, so you had to get it right.

He was working on his studio, the beat mixer opened right next to Twitter, with your update fan account. He refreshed every minute, watching some videos fan were taking during the concert. He started noticing you were missing some moves, and look quite tired.He assumed it was the video, because you never acted lazy on stage. He continued refreshing, but nothing happened. No new videos, neither pics or tweets. Everything was too silent. That was until he refreshed one more time, and a long tweet appeared. He read it out loud, his voice lowering as he was reaching to the tweet’s end.

@Y/Nunnie tweeted: “Y/N’s body suddenly dropped to the floor. The music stopped and so did the other members, who then gatherend around her. Soonah (your leader) picked her up, with some help from staff members. The lights went off, and when they returned, the stage was empty, only one staff member remained, who stood in front of the mic and said: “due to health issues, Y/N won’t be able to continue the show, please understand”. I hope she’s fineee :’((” 

Joon stood there, trying to assimilate the situation, before going crazy...

park jimin

He was mad, and oh god you hated it when he was mad. When he was this mad, he wasn’t cute, no, he was scary.

“Y/N, you heard me, you aren’t going to that tour” he pointed at you, the ugliest frown formed on his face

“Jiminie, baby, even if I wanted to, you know I can’t say no! I signed a contract, I need to go!” you tried calming him down, but it was in vain.

“Look at you, Y/N, look at the bags under your eyes! They aren’t even letting you sleep! How do they expect you can perform? And abroad!”

“Well...” you started, not knowing how to answer, until you found the best way “...how did you do it when you just debuted?” you crossed your arms over your chest, and watched as Jimin relaxed a bit, knowing you were right “....could you talk back to your manager, refuse to perform? Baby..” you sighed and held his hands “...I’ll be fine, I promise you” you pecked his lips and left with a smile, not sure if you were gonna keep that promise.

And you didn’t, Jimin realized while was boarding a flight to Mexico, where you were currently touring. Not a long time ago, he received a message, written by your friend and sent through your phone.

“Jimin, Y/N just collapsed while performing her solo song, I know it’s much to ask but she really needs you. Could you come?”

kim taehyung

(ok i love this little ball of sunshine so much it breaks my heart he would be so sad if this happened)

He really wanted to go with you. He even insisted on asking your manager if he could join your tour. But no is no, and he had to stick to that, despite not agreeing. He not only was your number one fan and wanted to support his favorite person in the world, but he also wanted to have a close eye on you. You had been acting quite weird lately, arriving late at home, waking up too early, skipping some meals. He even caught you crying once, alone at the bathroom in the middle of the night. He was very worried, he knew your new comeback was bringing you a lot of stress, but what was worrying him the most was the fact that you weren’t talking to him about it. He understood that stress, but you still didn’t tell him anything. But he wasn’t a pushy boyfriend, he was going to wait for you to feel like talking about it.

In the mid time, and since he couldn’t join you on your tour, he decided to watch every live broadcast fans were doing during the concerts. He didn’t care about quality, as long as he could watch his girlfriend perform like the queen she is, he was happy.

He was locked inside his room, headphones on and Twitter opened, with the live broadcast of your show at Paris. He had a smile on his face, his favorite song was coming and he thought you always killed it in the dancing. He prepared himself for the performance of his life.

But his smile starting fading off when he saw you weren’t dancing, just walking around. He knew the performance by memory, and knew that during touring that choreography never changed. I mean, he has been watching every live broadcast, he knew the schedule by memory. He got near the computer, eager to find out what was wrong. The smile came back when he saw you joining your members on the choreo.

“Oh she was improvising” Tae said out loud, even giggling a bit.

When suddenly you stopped dancing and collapsed coldly to the floor. He held on to the chair’s arm, mouth wide open and eyes nailed on your motionless body. Your members gatherend around you and tried to wake you up. Fans started mumbling, while the music stopped all of a sudden. Since you weren’t waking up, a staff member came in running and picked your body up, carrying it to backstage as fast as he could. Your unnie followed behind, always having your back, and not intending to stop now.

Taehyung immediately grabbed his phone with shaky hands, trembling lips and  tears fiercely falling down.

jeon jungkook

Oh boy he understood every concern you had. Being both the maknaes of each of your groups, you both understood the hard work you had to do to show you were as capable and professional as your unnies or hyungs. So instead of telling you off whenever you practised too much, he would stay by your side, to teach you to recognize your body’s limits.

However you were quite new to the idol life, while Jungkook had his years at it. And now your first tour was coming and your worry grew. How were you going to go on your own without your boyfriend? Jungkook reassured you you could do it, you were strong enough to do it. With a little bit more of confidence thanks to your most beloved best friend and boyfriend, you left.

Little did you know, he was making you a surprise visit. Since you were touring at Africa, he could take a quick flight and susprise you. 

He was ready, bag on one hand, and plane ticket on the other.

“I’ll be fine, hyung!” he smiled as he spoke to Jin “...she doesn’t know I’m going, it will be awesome! If I need anything, I’ll call you” 

As he was listening to Seokjin, his phone started buzzing with another phone call.

“Sorry hyung, I have another another call, give me a second” as he handed the air flight assistant, he changed calls “..Hello?”

“Jungkook-ah? It’s Jaesung, Y/N’s manager. She...she um, she collapsed, we are attending her right now. Her unnie Mina told us we should call you, we believe that’s what Y/N would want”

His hands felt numb as a tear rolled down his cheek and his bag fell from his hand.

~~~~~~

OMG OK MY BEST REACTION SO FAR I LOVE IT HOPE U LIKE IT!

creds to owner of gifs

~Admin Anto

[alyas-ladyblog]

What do you think Chat's reaction would be to some random person telling him off for trying to get Ladybug to go out with all the time. By basicly telling him no means no and anymore after that is harassment. And could this person be akumatized or would that be to get for even Hawkmoth

Chat Noir wasn’t too proud to admit that going out on patrol during school hours was really just an excuse to skip history, and the growing tension in class.

Despite backing off of calling out Lila outright, Marinette still made little effort to hide her resentment for the girl, and everyone in class took notice.

It made being in class with them for an extended period of time exhausting.

What was the harm in skipping class to blow off some steam?

He should be patrolling regularly anyways.

Chat vaulted to another building, taking off in a dead sprint.

His ear twitched and he slowed, hearing voices.

“I said no! Now leave me alone.”

“Baby please, don’t do this. You’re causing a scene.”

He peered over the side of the roof.

Below him was a young woman and man, both about the same age as him, standing outside the cafe patio.

His eyes narrowed.

The woman’s arms were clutching her sides, and she curled in on herself, as if by making herself as small as possible, he’d leave her alone.

The man’s words were neutral, but his stance was anything but.

He was taking up space, causing a scene, trying to intimidate and shame the woman into submission.

That wasn’t gonna fly.

The man moved to brush a strand of hair from the woman’s face.

“Come on babe, I’m just looking for conversation, there’s no need–“

Chat’s baton came down between them, and the man withdrew his hand as though he’d been burned.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that no means no?” Chat drawled, sliding down the side of his baton.

Once he got to the bottom, he retracted it, slinging his baton casually over his shoulders and draping his arms over it.

“Now you can either leave her alone, or we can test how far professional courtesy with the law goes for superheroes,” Chat said.

He shot the man a grin, knowing his sharp canines were on display.

(Was it because he’d rehearsed that grin in the mirrors back in the mansion? Maybe.)

“Given the behavior I just saw, I’m sure they’d be willing to look the other way.”

The man paled, mumbling a hasty apology to the woman as he beelined out of there.

Chat let the grin drop and turned to the woman. “Are you alright miss?”

The woman’s posture remained largely the same, but she nodded.

Chat noted that she didn’t make eye contact with him.

He stepped closer. “Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

The woman took a small step back. She shook her head.

Chat’s brows crinkled, but he decided not to push the matter.

He gave her the two finger salute, and prepared to extend his baton.

The lady mumbled something under her breath.

Chat turned back towards her.

“What was that miss?”

The lady finally looked him in the eye.

“I said, you’re a lot like him.”

Chat blinked.

He must have heard her wrong. There’s no way she’d compare him, the guy who just saved her, to the guy threatening her.

The woman fidgeted with her hands. “Nevermind, it’s not important. Have a nice day Chat Noir.”

She began walking away.

“Wait,” Chat said, grabbing her wrist.

The woman flinched when he made contact with her. She looked from where his hand gripped her wrist to him.

And Chat has a sinking feeling he saw the connection.

He let go of her wrist. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

The woman raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it.

What a hypocrite he was.

“Tell that to Ladybug.” The woman said sharply.

She turned on her heel and began walking briskly away from him.

“Wait, wait,” Chat Noir jogged next to her.

The woman stopped and looked at him expectantly.

“What do you mean ‘tell that to Ladybug?’”

The woman rolled her eyes. “I meant tell that to Ladybug.”

She took a step forward, and Chat Noir slid in front of her, cutting her off.

She looked at him, and he felt himself begin to squirm.

Jesus he really needed to work on personal space.

He stepped out of her way mumbling another apology, but kept up with her when she began walking once more.

“Why do I need to apologize to Ladybug?” He asked.

“You really are dense aren’t you,” the woman said.

She turned to face him. “Fine, I’ll bite. I was going to tell you that you need to apologize to Ladybug for constantly badgering her about going on a date with you, but given your behavior in the past minute, I’d say you’d need to add respecting personal space and boundaries to that.”

She started walking.

Chat Noir flinched, but jogged to catch up. “Okay first of all, ouch, second of all, what’s wrong with me asking her on a date?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “She’s turned you down more than once, and you get petty when she says no.”

“No I don’t!” Chat said. “I’m always professional. I just want to keep it lighthearted when we’re fighting akuma’s, you know, keep her out of her head.”

The woman hummed. “Is that what you tell yourself? Remember what happened with Frozer?”

Chat stuttered. “That was different, she stood me up!”

“For a date she never agreed to go on.”

Chat flushed.

“And what do you mean ‘is that what you tell yourself?’”, he said, doing his best to change the subject. “It’s the truth!”

“I meant what I said,” the woman responded. “You may tell yourself you’re doing it for her own good, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that your flirting during tense situations stresses her out.”

“And how would you know that?” Chat asked, gripping his baton tightly.

The woman stopped. “Because as a woman, I know what it’s like to have a man not take no for an answer.”

“But I took care of that man!”

Chat knew his words rung hollow. He wouldn’t always be there to stop the creeps that wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The woman leveled her gaze at him. “I wasn’t talking about him.”

Oh.

That stopped Chat in his tracks.

He was the creep.

The woman smiled at Chat sadly. “I know you mean well,” she said, “but think about Ladybug. Not as an idea, but as a person. Think about what it must be like to have a partner who, as wonderful and loyal as they are, doesn’t always respect your boundaries. How would that make you feel? How do you think it makes her feel?”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good kid Chat Noir. But you need to get out of your head.”

Chat swallowed and nodded his head. “I understand.”

The woman pat his shoulder. “Good.”

“Stay safe,” he said cracking a smile. “There’s a lot of creeps out there.”

The woman smiled back at him. “I will. Have a good day Chat Noir.”

Chat Noir saluted her, and launched himself back on the roof.

He retracted his baton, and sat down.

CN 2:06pm: Hey

I know you’re not transformed right now but

I was hoping we could talk

Meet me at the usual spot, 11pm

LB 6:38pm: ok.

[turquoisemagpie]

The Dark Mystery of Mark I. Plier Manor. (Part 1)

Ryan: This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we investigate the dark mystery of Mark I. plier Manor as part of our ongoing investigation into the question: are ghosts real. (Shane lightly shakes his head.) Ryan: This case… it’s got everything. It’s got murder mystery, it’s got scandals, it’s got disappearances, and, more importantly, it’s got ghosts. Shane: Woah! How the heck are you going to title this, if it’s both Supernatural AND True Crime? Ryan: Yeah, this is one of the biggest cases I’ve ever looked into. There are so many theories out there for so many questions that come out of this. I think this is probably the largest number of theories we’re ever going to cover on this show. Shane: Wow. This is either going to be extremely intriguing or extremely boring, depending on what theories you’ve decided to give us, and, knowing you, I’m guessing it’s going to be the theories given by those people who wear tin foil hats. Ryan: Hahaha! Well, you’re about to learn all that is to know about it. Shane: Oh, goody(!) Let’s go.

At 12pm on the 12th October 1948, known romantic film ex-actor Mark I. Plier held a poker night at his manor in Northern LA. After over 12 hours of drinking, gambling, and all manner of activities that could be likened to a bachelor’s party, his guests went to their own private activities at 1:30am, some retiring to their rooms for the night, others heading off into other areas of the house, including Mark I. Plier. Exactly 7 hours later, at 8:30am, on Friday 13th, Mark I. Plier was found face first, on the floor of the stairway leading up from the parlour room, dead.

Shane: What is this fucking deal with Friday the 13th? Ryan: I think it’s just a thing where, because 13 is an unlucky number or part of the devil’s number it’s just- Shane: The devil has a number? Like a phone number? Ryan: No, I- (wheeze) Shane: We should call him up some time! See how he’s doin’! Maybe he can answer some of this spooky nonsense going on in the world. Ryan: The Devil! Call now! At 13 666- (wheeze) Shane: (wheeze) 13 666 69 69 69! Ryan: Hahahaha!

Strangely the police weren’t called to the scene until 33 hours later. And when they arrived on the scene they found only LAPD detective Abe Micks, bleeding from a bullet wound through the heart, and absolutely nobody else in the house.

Shane: Everyone left! They just got the heck outta there! Ryan: No... well, yeah, honestly if I was in a murder mystery situation and given the chance to leave, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d get out of there too. Shane: But that makes you suspect number one, because everyone’s like ‘oh, why was he in such a hurry? He must have been the killer!’

Abe was investigated by the police through interrogation into the whereabouts of the other house guests, but throughout the questioning Abe remained silent, staring into the wood of the desk seemingly distracted in deep thought. It was only when one of the officers said the word murder that Abe reacted, claiming to quote “snap his head back up at the speaker, with a fearful look in his eyes.” It was also noted that whenever he did talk, he did everything he could to avoid the word murder, referring to it only as ‘the killing’. All that Abe could tell willingly was that quote “Colonel did it. He did it all. He’ll pay for what he did.”

Shane: ‘Colonel’? Colonel who? Ryan: Umm- Shane: Colonel Mustard!? Was it Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candle stick? Ryan: Hahaha! To be honest when you see the profile photos of all these people involve you are honestly going think this is all just a big game of Clue.

Abe was put in a psychiatric hospital for 2 months to recover and then discharged from the LAPD in late March 1950. Until then, the events that happened in the house and the whereabouts of the house guest remained a complete unanswered mystery, until, after the LAPD released a call out for anyone who knew information about the events at Mark I. Plier Manor to come forward, in which only one person came forth; the manor’s butler, Benjamin, who worked in the manor with it residents in its last 5 years. Almost 60% of the record for the case of the Mark I. Plier Manor are all from Benjamin’s court testimony, with under 20% the eyewitness testimony from the deranged detective.

INVESTIGATION: Outer Manor- 11pm

Ryan: Welp... There’s the manor. Do you know anything about the things that happened in this place, Shane? Shane: No. I’m more curious as to why it’s called ‘Mark I. Plier Manor’. Ryan: It’s the name of one of the victims of this house. He was an actor who owned the house and... just probably decided to name it after himself. Shane: He sounds like a douchebag. Ryan: Well, according to critics from his films and director who worked with him, he was known to be pretty much an asshole. But we’re not really here for him. We’re here to… hopefully get some answers as to what exactly happened the day after he was murdered. (Both men look up at the manor.) Shane: Sure looks ominous. Ryan: Yeah, this place is giving me the shivers. And we’re not even inside yet. Come on. (They head through the gates and up the path to the front door of the house. The gardens surrounding the place are overgrown and unkept. The exterior of the house has decaying wood and crumbling stone walls.) Shane: It’s a pity they haven’t bothered to maintain this place. It would make a great family home. Ryan: … You have a strange taste, you know that?

INVESTIGATION: Entrance

Ryan: So, we’re about to enter the manor now… And you remember what I told you about the word you’re not supposed to say? Shane: Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me. Ryan: Oh shit, you’re gonna say it aren’t you? Shane: (shouting as he enters the house) MURDER! … Shane: What’s supposed to happen when you say it? Ryan: There’s supposed to be thunder, apparently. Shane: Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked. Ryan: Well, no, but considering it’s a clear night tonight, if you say it again, and we hear thunder, on a night when their no clouds in the sky, we can claim the curse may have some authenticity. Shane: But if I say ‘murder’, and there isn’t thunder every time I say ‘murder’, then that proves that on that particular day of the murder, there was probably a storm going on that just so happens to rumble every time someone said ‘murder’ out of coincidence. Ryan: Stop saying it! Shane: I can’t hear the thunder, Ryan. I’ve said murder several times now. Ryan: You probably can’t hear it because you haven’t stopped talking to try and hear for it- Shane: M-m-m-m-MUUUuuuuuURDEEEEErrr!! … Shane: Right! That’s a box ticked under ‘bullshit’. Moving on! Ryan: (wheeze) I hate you so much.

Let’s get into the events of Mark I. Plier Manor, starting with the Poker Night. Those invited, in order of arrival, were the then Mayor of the Northern LA region: Damien Lémieux, LAPD detective: Abe Micks, US Army Corp Colonel: William Jackson Barnum, and an unknown District Attorney. The Mayor and the Colonel were close friends with each other as well as with Mark, the detective was solely a friend to Mark. While the District Attorney wasn’t known to anyone but the Mayor, who had recently hired them in his community council, it is unclear how or why they got their own separate invitation. What’s further puzzling is that due to know one at the manor knowing clearly who they were, to this day the District Attorney has been unidentified.

Shane: Hmmm. Suspicious. Ryan: Oh ho! I’m just getting started, boy!

Other people involved in the gathering was Benjamin, and the manor’s chef. According to the bill of the party the police had found in the manor, Mark had spent $400 on music entertainment, $256 on banquet party food, and a shocking $870 on alcohol. Judging by the waste of the party that was left over, the men drunk the equivalent of 9 glasses of wine between them. Which is strange, considering the fact Mark I. Plier was allergic to alcohol.

Shane: Wow! That’s a lot of shots! I’m surprised ANY of them survived it. Ryan: Well, as you can tell by the fact we’re discussing this entire case, not many survived it… Shane: …because they died of alcohol poisoning. (wheeze) Case solved! Ryan: Haha! Yeah, that’s it, guys, thanks for watching!

INVESTIGATION: Parlour

Ryan: So, this is the parlour room. This is where the poker night took place. Shane: It’s a big room. Agreed, if everything wasn’t covered in dust and cobwebs, I think I would definitely hold a poker party in here myself. Ryan: … Are you not feeling that cold breeze right now? Shane: Nope. Ryan: It’s so cold in here. Shane: Probably because the window’s been smashed and the air from outside is coming in. Or you’re goin’ crazy. Ryan: I hope it’s not the latter. … Ok, If there’s anybody here with us?... Mark, are you here with us? … Ryan: (pulls out a whisky bottle) We heard you like to party, Mark… so err, let’s all have a drink! (Pours out whiskey into 3 glasses) Shane: Honestly the only plus side to believing in ghosts is the fact you have a… I wouldn’t say ‘good’ excuse… Ryan: (wheeze) Shane: … but a ‘reasonable’ excuse to just get wasted! Ryan: I’ll drink to that! (Takes a sip) Shane: (wheeze) I will to. (Takes his glass) Ryan: (holding glass aloft) So! We’ve poured you a glass too, Mark… Or anybody else who’s in this room. Anyone want to join us in a toast, lift the glass.  … Ryan: A toast… to… friendship! … Shane: Your loss, boys. (Drinks) Ryan: Yep. (Drinks) Shane: Woah. That’s.. surprisingly weak. Ryan: Yeah, I watered it down, in honour of Mark. (wheezes) Shane: You son of a bitch!

The party went on from 12pm until very late into the night until the activity in the parlour spread all around the house after 1am. At 1:50am, with everyone passed out, the party officially ended. The next morning, at the foot of the stairs towards the parlour, Mark was found by all members of the party but the Colonel, face first on the floor, still in his red robe smoking jacket he had worn all through the previous night, blood dripping from a bullet hole in his back.

Shane: So, he was shot. Ryan: … if a bullet hole can indicate anything on a human body, then yeah, it indicates being shot. Shane: Mmhmm! Detective Madej is on the case. Ryan: … You didn’t do… you… never mind. Moving on.

An hour later, the detective set up forensics for the scene. Benjamin admitted at this time he insisted on calling the police, however the detective responded, according to Benjamin’s testimony quote “I AM the authorities.”

Shane: Hmmmm. I’m not sure about this guy. Ryan: Yeah, Abe is an interesting guy. His parts to play in this whole case sort of… jumps between ‘he’s innocent’, ‘he’s guilty’, ‘no, he’s innocent’. Shane: He’s like a light switch on the whole case. Ryan: (wheeze) A very poetic description there.

The detective then took a rectal test to determine that the body was killed around 1:30am.

Shane: Eww. Ryan: (wheeze) I know. To be honest I’m sure there was probably a better way to tell when the body died… than a rectal exam. Shane: Hahahaha! He just did it for kicks, probably! Ryan: Hahaha!

At this time, according to each suspects testimony given to Abe at the time, The District Attorney was in their room, and had coincidentally passed out at exactly 1:30am, while the Colonel, the Mayor and Benjamin all retired to their room between 12:30am and 1:00am, while the chef stayed up until 1:15am to clean up after the mess of the party beforehand.

With no one proving to be the killer, as if suspicions couldn’t get any higher, at 9:30am, an hour after the body was discovered, the detective came back to the crime scene to find the body was nowhere to be found.

Shane: Oh nooooooo! Ryan: Yep. This is about to get interesting. Shane: As if it wasn’t interesting before! Ryan: … Is… is that that sarcasm? Shane: No, I mean it. This is genuinely an interesting case. Ryan: Hmm. I detect a small bit of sarcasm in your voice. Shane: Nah, that’s just how I normally speak.

There was an entire house search by nearly all members in the house, but after a whole hour, the body was never found. The fruitlessness of solving who the killer was, plus the sudden disappearance of the body, became too much, and at 1pm, the detective and the Colonel pulled guns on each other, both accusing each other as the murderer. The duel came to a quick end as, at 1:02pm, Mrs. Celine Barnum, the Mayor’s sister and Mark’s wife, arrived at the house.

Shane: (gasps) The drama! - wait?... ‘Mark’s wife’? Ryan: Yep. Shane: Wouldn’t it be Celine Plier if she’s married to him? Ryan: They were married before he became and actor and changed his name. Just because he changed his surname doesn’t mean she had to change hers too. Shane: I see… but… like the reason I was confused is because… Barnum is the... Colonel guy’s surname, right? Ryan: Oh! Oh, buddy. Keep that thought in mind, for when we get to the juiciness of the theories. Shane: Oooh, I bet the theories are real juicy. Ryan: It’s a lot of juice. Seriously, this case has the most theories I think we’ve ever covered in Buzzfeed Unsolved history. Shane: Oh, Jeez…. ‘Oh, juice!’ (wheeze)

Celine Barnum had been married to Mark for over 4 years and worked as a spirit medium. Believing there were quote “darker forces at work”, Celine insisted that a séance needed to be conducted to get a better understanding as to why her husband was killed.

Shane: How... did she know her husband was killed? Ryan: She was told as she arrived at the house. Shane: Oh, right. Yeah, I was about to ask like who is she? She just bursts into the house, like, ‘I’m here now, fuckers!’- Ryan: (wheezes) Shane: ‘Y’all mother fuckers need Ouija!’

A séance was conducted between Celine and the District Attorney, then there was, according to Benjamin, a second séance conducted between Celine and the Mayor. During this time, the Colonel went to his room after feeling tired and enraged with a number of the other house guests, Benjamin returned to his duties in the kitchen, while the District Attorney, the detective and the chef went outside to discuss the events of the house with the only other employee of the manor, the groundskeeper: George Gardener. Suddenly, 10 minutes later a bright glowing light shown through every door and window in the house.

Shane: Oh no. Ryan: hehehe! Shane: Oh no no no no. Ryan: What’s wrong, Shane? Shane: You’re not going to try and sell me that the whole house is a fucking alien spacecraft, are you? Ryan: Hahahahahahaa! Shane: A fucking UFO? And it just takes off into the night sky? You are, aren’t you? Ryan: Haha. No. But, to be honest, you still won’t like what was actually happening.

All house members ran into the house to inspect the light, and found the light coming from the séance room, and standing in the doorway was something truly disturbing. As described by both Abe and Benjamin, they saw Celine Barnum standing in the light of the doorway, who, quote, “was surrounded in a red glow” and “had an emotionless, ice cold stare”. There was the sound of quote “pierced screeching” described as “the sound of an out-of-frequency radio”. The figured scared the men so much they remained motionless in shock as the door closed, Celine still inside the room, and no sign of the Mayor.

INVESTIGATION: Séance room

Ryan: So err… this is the room where Celine held her séances… Jeez, I don’t like this room at all. All the stuff is still left here, including the board and the... crystal ball. Shane: Did they leave it out of respect or… where they just… lazy? Ryan: I think they were more scared. Shane: Of what? What were they scared of? The glass ball? Ryan: I don’t know. - but, you have to admit, it’s scary looking to that ball, isn’t it? Shane: Nope. Ryan: Just imagine seeing a horrible like monster face screaming at you through the glass. Shane: That’s sounds dope, honestly. Ryan: … Ok. Let start… Is anybody here with us? … Ryan: Celine Barnum, Are you here? … Ryan: Damien Lémieux. Are you here? … Shane: … Ain’t much going on, Ryan. Ryan: Yeah, I know, but we’re just getting started. (Ryan takes out spirit box.) Shane: Miss Celine and Mr Damien, I apologise in advance, as my friend is taking out a screaming box that apparently you can try to talk through… Although you’ll have to speak over the voice on the radio, as Ryan is going to believe any nonsense that comes out of it as you. Ryan: Shuttup. (Ryan turn on spirit box, frequency buzzes through in bursts of white noise.) Ryan: Is there anyone here? /*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/* Ryan: If there’s anyone here, my name is Ryan, this is Shane. Can you say our names? /*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/* Shane: It’ll be better if you ask them questions that need an answer that’s more than one syllable long. Ryan: Yeah, good point. Shane: Then it’ll be more convince— /*/IS DEAD/*/* Ryan: … That sounds like a guy saying, ‘he’s dead’. Shane: Yeah… it also sounds like ‘BLEE BLEH’! Ryan: Who’s dead? /*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/* Shane: Well, they are. Ryan: I’ve told you before, not all ghosts know their dead. /*/GO BAC/*/*/O SLEE/* Shane: … ‘Go back’? Ryan: ‘Go back to sleep’! Shane: (wheeze) Sounds like a nanny! ‘Get back in bed and go back to sleep, you little shits!’ Ryan: Ha ha (!) /*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/* Ryan: Celine, are you here?... It’s believed you were possessed before you disappeared. Is the thing that possessed you here? /*/*/MAD/NESS/*/*/TO CHOOS/*/* Shane: I don’t think these ‘ghosts’ are the smartest in the world. Ryan: I’m going to turn the box off now. Last chance to speak. /*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*-- (Crystal ball rolls off table) Ryan: AAUGH! Shane: Jeez! (wheeze) That almost crushed my foot! Ryan: Did you knock it?! Shane: I didn’t. Maybe you did? I wasn’t paying attention. Ryan: It rolled off on its own! Something pushed it! Shane: No, it didn’t. Ryan: Well, how else could it have started rolling on its own? Shane: NOT by a g-g-g-ghost! It’s spherical. It rolls. It’s natural. Ryan: You can’t not admit that it’s strange. Shane: It’s strange, but it’s not... beyond the bounds of reason.  

The groundskeeper, who before had never set foot in the building, locked the door. No one knew what happened in that room during the séance, nor what happened after the door was locked, but whatever happened, when the police finally unlocked the room, Damian Lémieux and Celine Barnum were gone, with no sign of any escape from the room and no evidence of any bodies. All that was left of the siblings was the broken bottom-half of Damien’s cane and Celine’s séance set up.

With this shocking event, the employees of the Manor handed in their contracts and left the house. From 5pm until 8pm, the detective, the Colonel and the District Attorney were the only ones left in the house. What happened during that time is unclear, but Abe claims that the Colonel and the District Attorney came to confront him, in which the Colonel pulled his gun out on him again and shot Abe. Abe was knocked out for over 10 hours and admits to this day that he has no idea what happened to the last two people in the house. At 9:31am on the 14th October Abe Micks finally called the police to the manor.  

(to be continued... )

(’thumbnail’ by @septicstacheedits) 

[mirkwoodshewolf]

True dedication; John Deacon x reader

Hello all! Well I guess I can officially say that this is the last PRE-Set it all Free story that I’ve had in mind. Every part for this series will be post Set it all free. I’ve got tons of upcoming drama and feels and angst coming up and I can’t wait to see what you all think. I just want to say for my last update “Protective Taylor” I was just amazed of how many people were commenting, liking and reblogging that particular oneshot that it made me cry. So from me to all of you, thank you sooo much for giving this series a chance and making it the best thing I could ever write.

Taglist *open*:

@onebigfangirlworld

@phantom-fangirl-stuff

@mr-badguymercury

@labessieisallama

@starswin

@naturalswifty89

@isabella-bby

___________________________________________________

*September 30th, 1980*

For my second semester at University, classes were definitely piling up on assignments, plus the work of the internship, sometimes I’m barely able to function without coffee now.  Some nights I’m staying in the studio doing the mixing and checking the sound levels up until 11pm when the buses normally stop running.

On a couple of occasions I’d have to phone up Adam to come pick me up and of course the first time that happened, the boys actually stayed late and when I told them that Adam was coming to pick me up, they immediately wanted to meet him.  

Of course Adam’s laid back attitude and pushy need to hurry back to bed made him come off as a wanker to the boys and they did not like him one bit.  But I told them that he was just tired and that he had a long day of band rehearsal before an upcoming gig he had at the Student center at the University.

And of course there’s this guy Paul Prenter who would claim he had work from Jim that needed to be done like ironing Freddie’s costumes, organizing files in alphabetical order but then he’d come by and change his mind and tell them they needed to be organized chronologically, and I’d have to start all over again.

With all this work, I swear I was about to just collapse to the ground and die in a rut.

Like now, it was 11:45pm and I was supposed to go home four hours ago since that’s when I was scheduled to leave today but Paul stopped me from leaving telling me that there were some left over files that needed to be organized by tomorrow.  I tried to tell him off but he had told me that it was direct orders from Jim himself and if I didn’t have them organized then my internship would be terminated.

I didn’t want to believe Paul at first but I couldn’t risk my internship being terminated.  So here I am in the studio, papers scattered everywhere as my exhausted brain tried to make sense of what exactly I was trying to organize.

“Tax records for ‘A day at the races’ go with….A night in the opera and *yawns* December 1979…..” My eyes soon shut and I thought to myself, maybe a little break wouldn’t hurt at all.  I lay my head down on top of my arms as I breathed out tiredly and decided to take a little nap.

“(Y/n)….(y/n), wake up.”

“Bohemian Rhapsody was number 1 on the charts in 1977-79!” I shot up suddenly alert when I turned to see John standing beside me. “Oh sorry John.”

“It’s alright, but what are you still doing here? I thought you took off hours ago?”

“I was. But then last minute paper filing came in and I….” I let out a loud yawn and stretched myself out.

“Love you should really get home, it’s almost 1am.”

“What?!” I suddenly was falling backwards as the chair was falling with me thanks to my scrambling.  John took hold of me but I managed to take him down with me and we both landed on the ground. “Oh god I am so sorry John! Are you hurt?”

“No, no I’m good love, are you hurt?” he asked me.

“Just my ego but other than that I’m good.” John smiled and chuckled as he said.

“Your humor also seems to still be intact.” We sat up and I took notice of the clock and sure enough it was 12:45am.

“Oh god. Adam’s probably dead asleep by now. There’s no way he’s gonna come pick me up, and all the buses shut down hours ago and I sure as hell am not walking back home—”

“(Y/n). You’re rambling poppet, take a deep breath.” I inhaled then exhaled softly as he continued, “I can drop you off at your flat.”

“No, no John I can’t ask that of you. You’ve been here all day and probably exhausted especially after the huge argument that happened today between Roger and Freddie. I….I can’t ask you to do that.”

“It’s no trouble at all, and it’s like you said the buses are closed for the night, your boyfriend’s dead asleep. Although if it were me I’d be staying up if it were my girlfriend up this late the git.” He mostly muttered the last statement to himself before continuing, “And the London streets can get really dangerous at this time, what else have you got to lose? I’m your only hope.” I looked up at him and I said.

“Did you just quote Star Wars?”

“Yes I did.” I smiled up at him and took his outstretched hand and he took me out of the studio and into his car.  He put me in the front passenger side while he got into the driver seat and he turned his car on and we drove out of the studio.

I told him where my address was and what roads to take in order to get me home again.  It was then I began to suddenly realize that the files were still scattered all over the studio.

“Oh fuck!”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“The files all over the studio! If Jim sees the studio like that I’m so beyond fired.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it love.”

“John you don’t understand I fell asleep organizing those files for Jim. If they aren’t the way he wants them by tomorrow I could lose this internship for good.” I began to panic and of course hallucinations and scenarios were playing frantically in my head of me losing this job.

John then pulled the car over and he said as he took my face in his hands.

“(Y/n), look at me. Look at nothing but me darling okay?” I looked into his hazel eyes and he said to me, “Everything will be okay, I’ll talk to Miami about it in the morning. But you need to take care of yourself first and foremost. The past couple of weeks since you started working for us, you’ve been running yourself ragged darling. You need to slow down and take the time to get the proper amount of sleep, and that you’re eating properly.”

“But—”

“Snack bars and crisps don’t count as a proper meal, you’re lucky Roger keeps an eye on you for that. (Y/n) please know that you are a strong, dedicated worker. But if you keep going the way you are, especially after today you’ll wind up getting sick. And the boys and I can’t allow that to happen, we just can’t.” I looked up at John and I said.

“You guys really care about me that much?”

“Of course we do, you’ve somehow managed to wriggle your way into all of our hearts. Something that no one else has really done among our team and crew.” I smiled softly and he smiled back before leaning forward and kissed my forehead. “Now let’s get you home and into bed because you look exhausted.” I nodded and let out another yawn and soon John turned the car back on and continued driving.

As we continued to drive, I guess my exhaustion finally got the better of me because the next thing I knew, I was leaning up against the car window and my eyes shut.

*John’s POV*

After about 10 minutes, we finally arrived at (y/n)’s address.  I turned around to get her attention when I saw that she had actually fallen asleep in my car. I smiled softly and turned the car off and parked it.  I hated to wake her but I didn’t have a key to her flat and I needed to get her inside.

“(Y/n), wake up love, we’re here.” She moaned tiredly and rubbed her eyes but I told her, “You don’t have to fully get up, but can you at least tell me where I can find a key to your door?” She then tiredly pulled out a chain from underneath her shirt and that’s when around her neck there was a key.

“I keep a spare key around my neck because I was always forgetting my other ones when I first moved in.” She tiredly removed the necklace from her neck and held it out for me to take.  I took it then I opened my door first before going around and opened up (y/n)’s door.

“Alright, come on love, let’s get you inside and into bed.” I unbuckled her and I helped her out of the car.  I had her leaned up against me because the poor dear she was so tired, she look lime she could just collapse right there on the road.  I guided her up the steps to her flat until we finally reached the front door.

Using her key, I unlocked her flat and we entered inside.  I then gently picked her up in my arms and seeing her like this made me think of all the nights I would carry up my two boys after a long day’s play whenever I managed to get some free time from the band and touring. I smiled as I felt her arms wrap around my neck and I quietly took her up the stairs.

“Which bedroom is yours love?”

“2nd to the left.” She muttered.  Once we reached the top of the stairs I turned down the hall and stopped at the second room on the left.  I soon entered her room and I carried her over to her bed.

I set her down on her bed and took off her shoes before covering her up with her blanket.  I set her necklace that held her spare key right by her dresser and I sat beside her as I brushed some of her hair away from her face.

“Thank you John,” she muttered tiredly. I continued to stroke her hair and I said.

“Deacy. You can call me Deacy love.”

“M’kay” she muttered tiredly.  I smiled down at her and I leaned downward and kissed her cheek and whispered to her.

“Goodnight (y/n), sleep well.” At that moment the only thing I heard from her was her soft breathing.  I got up from her bed and quietly left her flat and headed back to my car to head home and get some sleep myself.

*My POV*

I let out a yawn and stretched out my arms over my head to see the sun beaming in through my curtains.  It was then I found myself in my room but I don’t remember how I got up here in the first place.  It was then I noticed my spare key on the dresser along with a handwritten note.  I put the necklace back on around my neck and picked up the note and it read;

(Y/n),

By the time you read this it should be morning. I drove you home after finding you asleep in the studio and after much persuasion you allowed me to drive you home. I also carried you into your room and tucked you in, don’t worry I didn’t snoop through your stuff not like what Roger would’ve done.

When you wake up, please give me a call and tell me what you are planning on having for breakfast, just so I know that you’re taking care of yourself.  Remember you’re a brilliant and dedicated young woman, but you must still remember to take care of yourself.  Take care and I’ll see you next week.

~ Love Deacy.

***-***-****

I smiled softly and held the note close to my heart as happy tears filled my eyes.

I walked downstairs and headed to the kitchen to see Adam eating his breakfast and he said.

“So what time did you end up getting home last night?”

“Oh it was—pretty late.”

“As usual. You’re always working late, well meeting the guys for another rehearsal, see yah.” I merely waved bye to him cause I was too busy at the phone.  I held it up to my ear and it rang three times before I said.

“Hello Deacy.” I said with a soft smile.

[johnnq]

A Night with Johnny Seo - Extreme Fluff: Reader x Johnny

Word count: 2k+

Warnings: none, but if you’re whether you’re a soft or hard stan, be prepared for cuteness!! 

Summary: You and Johnny go on a date, and after everything seems to go wrong, you both share a night with popcorn, blankets and kisses.

It was a beautiful, clear skied and peaceful evening when you and your date, Johnny Seo stepped into the quaint and intimate restaurant that you had both agreed upon meeting at, a table for two already booked, in the corner where you knew you could at least look at him without wanting to die on the spot from embarrassment.

Going to the front desk and giving the hostess your details, you were very diligently seated you at your reserved table, a small scented candle and a vase of roses already decorating it.

Granted, it was a lovely place to eat, and it was clear you had made an effort by the décor on the table in front of you both. But for a first date, you were beginning to think it gave off the wrong message. It wasn’t as flashy and expensive of a restaurant as you imagined your date liking or ever eating at. You wondered if maybe Johnny would think you weren’t interested in him because you took him to this place of all places. He was part of SM Rookies, training day and night, ready to start his career, and here you were, barely able to afford a meal.

The truth was, you were incredibly interested in him, and had been since the day you met him. In fact, you were so interested in him that it had taken you an astounding 3 months to pluck up the courage to even suggest the idea of a date to him, even if it sounded more like you were asking a friend to go out and have a drink rather than have a sit-down meal and express your feelings.

Johnny wasn’t like other guys. He didn’t give you mixed messages, he didn’t mistreat you, and most of all, in all the time you had known him he hadn’t even looked at a girl the way he looked at you.

———————————————————————————————————– You and him met at a nightclub that you’d been coaxed into attending by your long standing shoulder to cry on and best friend Mark Lee. You were nursing a nasty breakup with your ex-boyfriend and were a blubbering, dishevelled mess even after a month, clutching a bottle of vodka as you sat at a table with Mark wearing a dress you didn’t want to wear, at a place that only reminded you of how many people around you were happy with each other.

“Marky, I know you’re trying to help but I’m not ready to be here after everything. Can we go home please?”

Mark looked at you and sighed, letting you lean on his shoulder and close your eyes.

“No, Y/N. As your best friend, I’m not going to let you go back home and lock yourself away from the world over a guy. He’s not worth it, and never will be.”

You sigh, pouring yourself another glass of vodka to help you get through the night.

“Fineeeee, but once I do go home, you’re coming and you’re gonna watch soppy rom-coms on the couch with me, no arguments.”

Around 11pm, after less than an hour of gulping back glass after glass of vodka, you were about ready to head home and start sleeping off your inevitable hangover. That is, until Johnny came to sit at the table with you and Mark.

  “Oh, hey Johnny. Not the best time?” Mark gestured to Johnny, making it clear that you were sensitive and not quite ready to talk to anyone.

“Oh, uh yeah.. It’s okay. I’ll see you later.”

As you hear his voice, you perk up and jolt to turn to this stranger, your hair in every direction from using Mark as a headrest.

“No Marky, it’s okay. He can stay” You shoot a small but forced smile at them both, assuming the position of using Mark as a headrest, and take another gulp of vodka, swallowing it harshly, sighing.

“Thanks” he says, sitting down next to you both, but not too close as to make you uncomfortable.

“I’m Y/N, by the way, I know my best friend likes to protect me since I’m now a single lady, but I’m not as fragile as he would like to believe.”

“Nice to meet you Y/N, I’m Johnny.”

“Yeah, I got that from Marky calling you that. How come I’ve never heard about you?”

“Oh, you know.. I like to keep myself to myself.” he smiles and blushes slightly.

———————————————————————————————————– From then on, you got Johnny’s number, and his Instagram, and it went from there really. You hung out once every few days, and got to know each other, and as time went on, you liked him more and more, which led you to ask him on a date, where you were now.

“Y/N, I have to say, I never expected you to ask me on a date of all people.”

“What can I say? Nobody else snapped me up, so I thought - why not?” you laugh jokingly,

“Very funny, but seriously. If I’m being completely honest I’ve liked you for a long time, and I’ve never really gotten the courage to ask you out, so I’m glad you took the plunge and did it first.”

He leaned over, and kissed you on the cheek, blushing just like the day you met him. 

You both pulled out the menus, and looked at the options, scanning the prices - $45 for a steak, $52 for lobster thermador, and many other crazy prices for such small portions. As you sat there watching your night crumble in front of you, you felt your cheeks flush and your hands go clammy. You thought to yourself - What were you thinking? Now you look like an idiot in front of Johnny!?

“These are so pricy Y/N, are you sure you can afford these?” he looks at you in shock. 

“Honestly, if I was to pay for this meal, I dread to think about paying my rent this month. They sure raised the prices since the last time I came here.”

Johnny stood up, smiling and giggling at your joke. He motioned to the waiter to pour a drink, which quickly became 2, then 3, then 4, then 5.. and so on. You spent maybe an hour just talking and laughing.

“Johnny.. I’m really sorry but I can’t afford to eat here. You don’t mind do you? I’d understand if you want to just go h-home and not talk to me ever again”

“Y/N? Let’s get one thing straight right here and right now. I don’t care if you can’t afford to pay for an overpriced meal at a shitty restaurant, we can just go to a store or something and buy some snacks, and go back to my apartment. That sounds way better than a fancy meal to me, you should know me that well by now”

“I mean, yeah.. I just thought if I didn’t go somewhere nice you’d think I wasn’t serious..”

He looked down at you and smiled, leaning down to reach your small 5"1 stature, and whispered into your ears.

“Princess.. I could never think you weren’t serious.” he simply said as he kissed your neck and stood back up, interlocking your hands and walking to the nearest store. ———————————————————————————————————– After arriving back at his place with bags full of drinks and food, you plopped yourself down on his couch waiting for him to come back with the blankets. Realising that you were still in a lace up dress and heels that made you appear decently tall, you let out a small sigh realising that you had nothing to sleep in. You went to the door, knocking on it waiting for Johnny to come and open it. From inside, you could just hear his voice, almost talking to himself. 

“Don’t screw this up, Seo. She’s beautiful, she’s here and she likes you. Just go out there and treat her like a queen”

Hearing this, your lips curl into a very subtle smile, and you wait a few seconds before knocking again. Once you do, you hear him mumble a curse and come to the door. 

“Uh, Y/N. How long have you been out here??”

“Long enough, cutie. I was just wondering if I could borrow a shirt or something to sleep in or wear? I’ll probably be going home soon but I can’t get comfy in this.”

“First, pretend like you never heard me say that, for all that’s holy. Second, yes you most certainly can and thirdly - you aren’t going anywhere this late”

“Johnny, I’m a big girl! I can walk home on my own”

He slides his finger onto your lip and makes a gentle ‘shhh’ sound. “For a girl who’s 5"1, you sure hold your ground. But this once, you’re gonna listen to me and let me take care of you.”

He reached into the closet and pulled out an oversized grey t-shirt, chucking it to you and winking.

“I’ll be out in a sec, princess”

You nodded and blushed even more, gripping the t-shirt and going to his bathroom, undressing from the formal and uncomfortable outfit you had been in, and getting into the t-shirt you had been given. After checking yourself out in the mirror and deciding that you look just okay enough to go out in front of him, you swung the door open to see that Johnny had built the fort, layed out the food and drinks across the floor, and had ‘Love, Simon’ on the TV, ready to be played.

Across his face was a smile unmistakable for anything other than unaltered excitement and joy. Now in a t-shirt and checkered pyjama bottoms, a far cry from his previous outfit of a tuxedo, you couldn’t help but stare at him and wonder how you got so lucky.

“Y/N? Did I do good? It’s okay if you don’t like it, I-I just thought since we’re both kinda tipsy, you wouldn’t mind.”

You walked over to him and got on your tiptoes, reaching up to kiss him on the lips. 

“Johnny, it’s perfect.. You know me too well”

“Well I’d hope so, Y/N, I’ve been trying to figure you out for so long.” You both smiled at each other as he let you lay down in the fort with the remote, as he followed suit, perching himself next to you, as he let you snuggle up onto his chest, his hand running through your hair as you both watched the movie, and ate snacks together, occasionally glancing at each other and sharing a small kiss at one point.

Throughout the movie, he was gentle with you, giving you forehead kisses, playing with your hair and playing with your fingers. He really couldn’t resist showing you the love and affection you had so very much been craving. When the credits began to roll, you both turned to each other and began to kiss, more passionately than any other time that night. You couldn’t resist but grip his face and caress it as he touched your side. 

You began to stand up, and held his hand leading him with you. 

“Y/N, you’re not completely sober, I’m not completely sober either and it’s late.. We’ve got plenty of time for that, but right now is not that time. I’d feel too much like I was taking advantage.”

“You sure? You wouldn’t be, I promise.” you say softly, as he kisses your cheek.

“I’m completely sure princess, I would much prefer just stay here and curl up with you than have a drunken fumble that neither of us would remember. I just wanna hold you tonight” ———————————————————————————————————– After your night together, you were almost completely asleep in the fort as he tiptoed as to not wake you, cleaning up the mess you had both made, and gently picked you up, taking you into the bedroom and tucking you in, tucking an additional pillow under your head for support, and kissing your forehead. You stirred slightly, looking up at you with very slightly opened eyes, and a smile you couldn’t wipe off your face.

“I love you Mr Seo..”

He giggles, holding a hand on your cheek and smiling like a nervous teenager. 

“I love you too, Y/N. Sweet dreams” he whispers as he kisses your forehead once more and leaves the room to let you sleep, grabbing a blanket and taking the couch for the night.