#it’s crazy how much bullshit people be spewing

[sokkabaddiebender2021]

i love going to tumblr and seeing actual valid critiques of the live action (writing is bad, female characters are written poorly, certain changes fuck too much with the story, etc) and then go to the rest of the internet and the critiques are (azula’s actress is too overweight, mai isn’t thin enough, zuko is too ugly??). so weird to me that people are so obsessed with how these young actors look (especially when they are all still very conventionally attractive people). it’s almost like when actual poc play characters y’all have the most to say about it (unlike for ian ousley who could still very well be a white man playing an indigenous character 🤔)

[realisticfanfictions]

Being Sanji's Girlfriend & Baratie's Head Waitress - Part 2.

Sanji x Waitress!Reader: Part One.

Working at Baratie wasn't without its challenges, and the fights that sprung up because of them weren't rare either. You and your boyfriend never sweated the small stuff, after all working in a high stress environment made you, well, stressed. But maybe some things can't be resolved that easily.

Tags: Sanji x Reader, Waitress!Reader, constant bickering, mostly fluff with some angst, (heavy) swearing.

A/N: I'm so glad the first one was well received! I'm pretty self-concious about my writing, but seeing everyone's hearts and reblogs has made me so happy! There's also been a ton of new people following this page, and I'm so appreciative you guys are liking my stuff enough to keep up to date with my writing <3.

Word Count is 5,427. Hope you enjoy!

"What the hell was that?" You knew that this made you look like a crazy girlfriend, dragging your significant other into the cold room and locking the door behind you. You'd gotten a few curious and slightly concerned glances from other staff, but by this point they knew better than to intervene. White fog spewed from your mouth as you spoke, giving you the appearance of a mighty dragon ready to burn down anyone who stood in her way.

Sanji, who hadn't fought you the entire way here, rubbed his face with his hand and shoved the other into his pocket. "I was just trying to be friendly." He shrugged.

A cold breeze caused you to flinch, but you refused to show any weakness. "Bullshit." You hissed and gritted your teeth, unable to fathom this man's arrogance. "I'm not dumb, Sanji-"

"And I never said you were." Both hands were now in his pockets and he finally met your gaze. He looked tired and you could tell he was chewing on the inside of his cheek - a habit you knew stemmed from his nicotine addiction. But his forced eye contact didn't last long and his gaze soon drifted to the corner of the cold room. He let out a small sigh. "I'm sorry. I can't help what I say to women-"

You held up a hand. "I don't care about you miserably failing at flirting. Well, I do care, but that's beside the point." You took a breath, counted to five and stared at your boyfriend's beautiful blue eyes. "I know that you're upset, and though I am very annoyed at you, I will say that I appreciate you telling me you're sorry."

"So it is about the-"

"Sanji." He slowly closed his mouth and subtly nodded. He was listening. "I know that you like women, and that you'll move heaven and earth for one to glance your way. I know that. I knew that when I started going out with you." You licked your suddenly dry lips. "What I get upset about, is that you went over my head and spoke to my customers in a rather vulgar way. I know you think it's beneath you, but I take a lot of pride in what I do. I'm good at it. And when-" God, your lips were so dry. "And when you go over my head, take over my table, insult the place that took me in when I had nowhere else to go-when we had nowhere else to go, and then ignore my discomfort and make a joke of it?" You met his eyes. "I am your girlfriend, Sanji. Something that you're meant to love and cherish- like how- I can't-"

Before you realised it, you found yourself slowly enveloped by the love of your life. "Hey," He shushed you gently as he cradled you against his chest. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel that way." He murmured and placed a kiss against your temple. "My love, you're shaking. I didn't realise I made you this upset. Please, forgive me."

You couldn't help but laugh. "I'm just cold, dumbass. And still pissed at you." Despite what you said, you still buried your head in his chest and soaked up his warmth. It was then you realised how long it'd been since the two of you had been alone like this. Just soaking up each other's warmth and committing the other's smell, touch and the feel of their skin to memory. You're embarrassed to admit you forgot just how much you love his cologne. "Guess this is what happens when we don't have sex for a while."

He gave a breathy chuckle and leaned back enough just to press his lips against your forehead and stare into your eyes. "Well, I'd offer to remedy that, but I'm afraid the cold will affect my performance."

"Like you need an excuse for a bad performance."

"Oh, really?"

"Really."

His usual, charming smile stretched across his face and he licked his lips, before hungrily diving in and punishing you with a particularly brutal kiss. He softly moaned into the kiss, and pulled back enough for you to see the devilish look in his eye as he bent down to press a kiss to your neck.

The door suddenly flung open and Pattie groaned. "I should've known." He exclaimed and threw his towel at the both of you. "Move. I'm trying to get some stuff for dessert."

Sanji grew a wicked grin. "What a coincidence. I'm trying to get me some dessert too." He chuckled and moved in to continue his assault, but was thwarted by an incoming barrage of hits from the disgruntled chef.

Backed by the sound of Pattie yelling in disgust, you laughed and shook your head, worming out of Sanji's hold and skipping out of the cold room with said blond on your heels. You both quickly ducked out of the kitchen and into a small hallway where you turned around to look at him once more. "Thank you for listening to me, Sanji. I may have blown my lid a bit too much back there." You fished around in your pocket and pulled out your lighter. "Go take a smoke break."

"Darling-"

You pushed it into his hand. "Take a break, and have a smoke. If not for you, for me. Because I honestly can't handle you when you're being all bitchy."

His shoulders dropped and a tired smile replaced his worried expression. He wrapped his hands around your own and placed a kiss against your knuckles. "Thank you, my love." He exclaimed and you waved him off with a smile.

"Whatever, you wallowing wag. While you're walking, watch the weather and water, and warn the workers if we're wayward. We don't want any wild winds, or another wreck this week."

He smiled. "You still don't realise you do that, do you?"

You blinked. "Do what?"

A hearty chuckle escapes him and he presses a kiss to your forehead. "Don't worry about it." That damn smile of his made your heart flutter and while you were confused, you returned his kiss with a quick peak of his lips and watched as he walked off. You didn't understand why he was so weird, but you guess it's just part of dating someone.

Before you could go back to serving, a faintly familiar face poked his head around the corner. You squinted your eyes and watched as he walked around aimlessly. "Excuse me, are you lost?"

The boy in the straw hat turned his head in your direction and smiled when he noticed you. "Oh! You're (Y/N), our waitress!" He spun himself around and hastily walked up to you, almost tripping on the aging floorboards. "I didn't get to introduce myself," He tipped his hat. "My name is Monkey D. Luffy, and I'm going to be King of the Pirates!"

That made you pause. "Oh." You dumbly said, not really sure how to respond. "That's... nice. But this is a staff only area-"

"You're a good fighter." The boy- Luffy you corrected yourself, interrupted and leaned in uncomfortably close. "Well, Sanji's a really good fighter, but you're pretty good too!" He made a pistol with his fingers and pretended to shoot. "You seem good with a gun. And the way you backed up Sanji and knocked that guy out? So good!"

Again, you weren't really sure how to respond. "I was only helping out, but thanks, I guess." You put your hands on your hips. "Is there something I can help you with?"

He tilted his head in confusion. "No, I'm fine."

You blinked. "But you're in a staff only area."

He nodded. "I am."

"...And you know you're not a staff member?"

He shook his head. "I'm not."

You sighed and squeezed the bridge of your nose. "I mean, why are you here?"

A smile returned to his face. "Oh, why didn't you just say so!" He waved his hand around as if announcing something great. His eyes wandered around the room, as if searching for something in the distance. You were intrigued. "I'm trying to find..."

You leaned in. "You're trying to find...?"

"Yes, I am trying to find..." His eyes slowly drifted downward until they met yours. They sparkled with great mysteries waiting to be unveiled, a sense of adventure and bravery and fearlessness that you couldn't help but admire. He smiled. "A toilet!"

Before you could stop yourself, you smacked him upside the head. "Don't pretend like it's some big, life-altering explanation, you dumbass!" With each word, you brought your hand down to slap him on any part of his body you could touch. "Besides, there's three signs for the bathroom on the way here!"

He held up his hands, trying to block your attacks. "Ow! I'm sorry! Stop hitting me!"

You rolled your eyes and stepped back, crossing your arms and glaring at him. "You're such an idiot. Fine, come with me. You can use the staff bathroom, it's right down this hall."

Luffy slowly uncurled himself and nodded. "Thanks a lot! I was sure I was going to crap my pants, you're a life saver!"

"I didn't need to know that." You sighed and beckoned him to follow with a finger. "So, King of the Pirates, huh?"

He nodded, his straw hat bobbing with him as you both walked. "Yep! We have a map to the Grand Line, and we're going to find the One Piece."

You laughed. "Only idiots with a death wish go after that thing."

"Hm, not really. I don't have a death wish." He replied with a shrug.

With a dramatic sigh, you playfully shove him. "Sure you don't, straw boy. What's next? You're gonna tell me you don't plunder and raid villages wherever you go?"

He shook his head. "We don't."

You quirked an eyebrow. "Don't yet?"

He shook his head again. "No."

"Fine then, where are you going to get money?"

"Finding the One Piece will give us all the money we'll ever need."

"And until then?"

"I don't know, but we'll figure something out."

You scoffed. "They always say that."

He tilted his head. "Do you know?"

"I do. You can kidnap a princess and random her, rob an orphanage, maybe even take a business hostage and demand money or you'll start executing patrons."

Luffy stopped and stared at you. "That's really dark."

You shrugged and continued walking. "That's what you have to do if you want to find a crazy man's last fuck-you to the government."

His smile turned into a frown. "You don't think it's real?"

"I think that Gold Rodger wanted to bring about the age of pirates, and he did." You explained. "Doesn't matter if it's real or not. Its impact on the world is more valuable than any treasure he ever got his hands on."

Within a second, he was in front of you with a cheeky grin. "Ah ha! So you do think it's real!"

A sigh escaped you. "I honestly don't care enough to believe if it's real or not. What is real is the pain, and death it's caused. Nations tearing each other and themselves apart just to find a glimpse of a shred of evidence that horrid thing is real. And men setting sail and abandoning everything just because they think finding a gold chest is worth losing their family over. Then those same men kill other men with families just like theirs, spreading their filth and disease to every home, town and village just because they can't stand the thought of a man doing the right thing by taking care of his family."

Luffy tilted his head. "You sound like you care a lot."

A tense silence filled the air and you stared at this strange, but oddly charming character. So innocent, so naive. He had no idea of the world you knew, the one that you grew up in. It's rare to find someone this optimistic, or sheltered. You pointed behind him. "Bathroom's there. Leave when you're done."

To say that you were affected by his words would've been both an understatement, and a poor choice of phrasing. You weren't affected, per say. They rubbed you the wrong way, and brought up memories you would rather just forget. It didn't help that they ordered one of everything on the menu, and you were constantly bringing out dishes to a smiling, unbothered Luffy who just shoveled food into his mouth. It was actually really impressive, and you were glad that they didn't come last week when the Baratie did that eating competition. You're pretty sure you probably would've gone out of business.

With a perfectly manufactured smile, you set down the plate of ribs on the only available space between piles of plates and stacked glasses. "And this is the final dish - our limited-time French-Style Ribs braised in red wine and cranberry." You straightened up and the plate was instantly pulled towards the centre of the table. The man in the pirate attire groaned, but he shoved a rib in his mouth and moaned. "I hope everything's been to your satisfaction. Can I get anything else for you tonight? A refill perhaps?"

The orange-haired woman smiled. "We're fine for now, thanks." With a nod, you turned to leave. "When does the bar close?"

"It's open all night, but we do a deep clean around three to four in the morning. So you may not be able to get anything on tap, but prepackaged drinks are always available." The words flowed off your tongue like a rehearsed speech, probably because it was. She smiled and nodded her thanks, before turning back to the conversation they were in. As you walked away, you spotted a certain red-haired pig-tail wearing waitress near the till. "Macy."

Said waitress flinched and slowly turned to you. "Yes, Ma'am?"

More than a little annoyed, you walked up to her and lent against the counter. "Why are you at the till?" She opened and closed her mouth like a fish, trying and failing to start a proper sentence until you stopped her with a hand. "Macy, there was one rule; don't touch the till. What are you doing right now?"

She paused. "Touching the till?"

You nodded. "Good job, you got something right." With a small glare, you pushed past her and looked at the total that she was charging, then compared it to the bill laying on the countertop. "Unless they've agreed to add a ฿65 tip on top of your 10%, I guess we've just found out who's been messing with the till."

"I-"

"You're done for the night." Her shocked expression turned into a bitter snarl and she began to tug at her apron. "Macy, you've got the body of a used fucking tube of toothpaste. No one wants to see you undress here, get the fuck out. You'll make the customers sick." She gasped, but you dismissed her with a wave and she stormed out of the restaurant. You sighed and opened the drawer beneath the counter, pulling out the book of paid receipts and bookings. Both luckily and unluckily, it was getting close to end-of-shift which meant that you had time to fix Macy's mess, but that the mess was probably smeared dog shit on a window at this point.

Grabbing out your pen and a calculator, you mentally prepared yourself for the long night ahead, when you felt something touch your back. "Hello, my darling." Sanji greeted with a kiss to the back of your neck, then rested his chin on your shoulder to watch what you were doing while his hand lazily stroked your side.

With a sigh, you turned your head to kiss him. "Hey, jerkface. Glad to see someone with a shred of intelligence." You greeted, then scribbled down some notes. "Someone's fucked the till again, and screwed the customers' out of at least three-hundred berri from what I can see."

His smile dropped and he reached for the book, tilting it so that he can see it. "Closer to five-hundred than anything. This table didn't even order the Lobster Thermidor, what the hell's going on."

You slammed your pen down in frustration and leaned back against him. "No idea, but I'm going to have to make some calls and refund tables." He wrapped his arm around your stomach and kissed the back of your ear which made you sigh and rub your face. "I need to make a list and figure out how much we fucked people out of money." You happened to look over at Luffy's table. They looked like they were toasting. "Can you bill them? It'd help a lot."

He smiled and took the piece of paper you had offered him. "Of course, my love. And give me a list of the rich pricks you want me to call. We'll divide and conquer."

"What did I do to deserve you?" You asked as he picked up the golden dish used to store cash.

"You, my love, didn't need to do anything." He pressed a kiss to your forehead and then your lips, before turning around and walking over to do as you asked.

Turning back to your mammoth task, now with a smile, you picked up your pen again and started to scribble down the sum total of every receipt that was put in by Macy. It was a good call by Zeff to bar everyone else but yourself from accessing the till. It was pretty easy to differentiate your neat and straightforward ones from Macy's abominations, but it still didn't make it any less painful. The Baratie didn't even serve quiches, so why would she even put that in there?

The telltale sound of Sanji's shoes smacking against the floorboards broke your concentration, and you looked up confused. "That was fast-" You were interrupted by him flashing you what was on the bill. You frowned at his abrupt interruption, but then squinted and jolted back slightly to look at your boyfriend. "What the shit is a 'treasure tab'?"

"We're going to find out." He said with a smile and walked past you to the kitchen. This was going to be interesting.

Just as you thought, the kitchen door slammed open and Zeff's wide, intimating frame appeared in the doorway. "Who the hell is Monkey D. Luffy?"

Luffy, sweet and innocent Luffy, popped his head out of his booth and waved his milkshake. "Here!" Zeff locked onto him and marched toward the young boy.

"You seem to be confused about the rules of the house," You and Sanji, who had just come out of the kitchen, exchanged knowing glances and you placed down your pen. Led by your boyfriend, you grabbed a jug of water while he grabbed a tray of complimentary scones and he slowly walked around the scene that was unfolding. "But Baratie doesn't offer credit. You eat, you pay." You both stopped at a nearby empty table. You started to examine the glasses in detail, admiring the way the light hit the material, while Sanji wiped the table with a piece of lettuce someone forgot to clean up.

Setting down his glass, Luffy looked up at Zeff. "I think you're confused." Sanji and you shared a look. "The meal has already been paid for. I just haven't given you the money yet."

Pretending to look around the room, you caught the stern, no-shits-given look Zeff was offering the kid. "Yeah, and how's that?"

Luffy smiled. "You can add it to my treasure tab."

You and Sanji snickered at the tone in Zeff's voice. "And what, pray tell, is that?"

"A way to get your ass beat." You mumbled and Sanji quietly shushed you with a smile, trying to hear the rest of what was being said.

Still not realising what's happening, Luffy kept talking. "I may not look like a big deal yet, but you're talking with the future King of the Pirates. And as soon as I find the One Piece, I'm gonna come back here, pay this bill in full, and with interest."

Zeff chuckled. "I got a better idea." And yanked Luffy out of his booth, dragging the confused pirate to the kitchen.

A sigh escaped you. "That certainly didn't disappoint." You commented and picked up Sanji's makeshift lettuce-rag, pocketing it to throw out later. "Guess we have a new busboy."

Sanji shook his head, but kept his eyes on the door. "Wouldn't be good at anything besides dishes." He said and paused for a second. You could see the metaphorical gears in his head turning, before he nodded toward the kitchen. "Hold on."

"Sanji, don't-" But it was too late, the love of your life had walked off, probably to rejoin the line. Your fists balled up and you let out a frustrated groan, your heels clicking as you followed after him. "Sanji! Don't piss him off. Sanji-"

The doors swung open as the blond barged in the kitchen with you on his heels. Your words fell on deaf ears and you rolled your eyes at Zeff who looked between you two confused. "Oy, oy. What do you think you're doing?"

You threw up your hands, but helped Sanji shrug off his coat. "I tried to stop him." You said as you wrapped his jacket around your arm and lent against the wall behind you.

The blond scoffed and held up a hand. "Com on, old man. Enough's enough-"

"Put the jacket back on, little Eggplant. You're not done with your shift yet." Zeff's face was tired and stern as always, and all you wanted to do was pull Sanji back and apologise for the extra stress. However, you knew that the two were stubborn and that would only cause more trouble than it's worth.

Sanji's tone suddenly sharpened. "Let me back on the line, or I walk." You almost said something, but considering you said something similar this afternoon, you settled for a glare.

"You can walk right back into the ocean for all I care. You cook another meal like that in my kitchen, it's going right where the last one did."

"You can kick me out of the kitchen all you like. I'll never be a waiter."

"Well that's fine by me, because you sure as hell are never gonna be a cook in my restaurant. Have you got that?"

Your heart broke seeing your boyfriend's face when he glanced over at you. He was so angry, and hurt, and upset. His hands were balled into fists, but you just shook your head. It wasn't worth it. His gaze shifted back to the man who had taken the both of you in, and then he turned heel, storming out of the kitchen via the hallway.

"So it was Macy, then?" When you nodded, Zeff sighed and held his face in his palm. The two of you were alone on the balcony overlooking the ocean. You were all on a thirty minute break before the next service, and you'd stumbled across the old man while trying to get some peace and quiet. The man you both admired and respected more than anyone was sat beside you tiredly rubbing his face. "And where is she now?"

You fought back what you really wanted to say, and simply shrugged, picking up your glass and taking a sip. "I sent her home for the night. Didn't want to see her fucking face, the red-haired bitch."

He shifted in his chair and leaned forward toward you, pointing a finger in your direction. "There is no talk like that in the Baratie."

You rolled your eyes and put your glass down. "It's not a big deal. Everyone here curses-"

"But you never use such vulgar language when talking about a woman." He said, his tone firm and leaving no room for arguing. "I always taught both you and that boyfriend of yours to never speak badly about, or to, a woman. Just because you're twenty-one now, doesn't mean a thing. Get that?" Ever since you were fifteen, he's drilled his way of life into your head. From scrubbing the decks every time you dropped food, to spending late nights learning the difference between the various cutlery the Baratie offered, it was almost like his life's mission to turn you into a mini-him. To this day, you couldn't eat salad with a table fork, even though the minute difference between a salad fork and a table fork were so inconsequential they were practically the same fucking thing.

You bit the inside of your lip. "Well that bitch-"

"Macy."

The condensation floating slowly down your glass seemed to be more interesting than his face. "Macy has ruined all the work I've done to make the Baratie a place where you can just sit down and enjoy a good meal with the best service around. You know, I've had to deal with so much shit. More than anyone in this goddamn place. All the harassment explained away as jokes and if I'm uncomfortable with it, I'm just 'not getting the joke'. And then having to spend hours listening to the most intolerable stories about slick, rich pricks with small dicks bitching about their toxic chicks with plastic tits. And expecting me to not spit or get sick when they talk about me like I'm some quick flick." You took a breath, counted to five, and licked your lips. "But it's not enough that she'll get away with it. You also won't let me complain about her."

He sighed. "She isn't going to get away with it." You scoffed and raised your glass to take another sip, but a hand under your chin guided your gaze to him. "Look at me." Hesitantly, you lifted your eyes to meet his. "She," He spoke slowly, his intense blue eyes piercing into mine in a way that made you feel small. "Is going to be dealt with." His hand released your chin and migrated upwards to rest atop your head, softly patting your head like he used to when you were younger. "You've done well, little Sprout." You sucked in a breath and nodded, but your pseudo-confidence wasn't fooling the old man. "And if any of these 'rich pricks with small dicks' ever bothers you again, tell me. Nothing is worth you being treated like a sack of shit over. Not the Baratie, not anything."

A fake chuckle wormed its way out of you, trying to lighten the atmosphere. "Thanks, Dad."

A smile spread across his face and he wrapped an arm around you, pulling you in and pressing his lips to your forehead. Zeff smelled like a thousand scents, oregano, paprika, and a dash of vanilla extract, but his warm touch and the feeling of his scruffy beard against your scalp only felt like one thing: safe. You hadn't realised you closed your eyes until you felt him pull away. "Now then, I've got some calls to make."

With a groan, he got up to his feet. "Are you sure? My waitress, my mistake."

He shook his head. "My Baratie, my mistake." He walked past, patting you on the head as he left the balcony.

It was time to face your boyfriend, and you were dreading it. With his coat jacket wrapped over your arm, you slowly made your way down the hall to the kitchen. The doors were swinging slightly, so you knew that someone had just walked in, and you took a deep breath, walking over to the entrance - ready to go in.

"...banned from the line." You paused when you heard Sanji's voice float through the air.

"But that meal you cooked was incredible!"

A smile graced your face and you lent against the wall just beside the doors. "The True Bluefin Sauté?"

"Yeah!"

"You tried it?"

"Yeah, of course I did! I couldn't help myself. I didn't think the food here could get any better. You know, you're a really good cook. Why is Zeff making you wait tables?"

"'Cause he's jealous. I should be running this place, but the old man's so stubborn it'll never happen."

"So, that's your dream. To be head chef of the Baratie."

A pause. "I guess-"

"No, it's not." Both men looked up at you when you entered the double doors.

The other voice who you now realised was Luffy looked at you confused. "It's not?"

Sanji laughed breathlessly and looked at the table he was sitting at, flicking open his lighter and closing it again. "It's not." He confirmed. You smiled and walked over to where your boyfriend sat, draping his coat over an empty chair.

"So you love to cook. You just don't want to cook here?"

The blond grabbed out a cigarette and looked to you where you had taken up residence next to him. When you nodded, he ignited the lighter you gave him earlier and lit the end of his cigarette. He took a drag and hummed. "There's... this place," He started and his eyes drifted to yours. You both shared a small smile. "Where you can find ingredients from all four seas. East Blue, West Blue, North and South - they call it the All Blue. Nobody knows where it is, but..." His gaze lifts heavenward. "There's fish there that have never been seen. You know, rare seaweeds, spices that have never been tasted. It's a cook's paradise, and I'm gonna find it one day." He looked back at you and placed his hand over yours. "That's my dream."

Luffy's gaze was soft, but also intense. "If you want to cook, you should cook. Don't let some stubborn old man stand in the way of your dream." He smiled. "Stand up to him! Tell him what you want."

"It's more..." Sanji looked over at you. "Complicated, than that."

The young boy shrugged. "I don't really do complicated either."

You scoffed. "For someone who claims to be a pirate, you don't like a lot of things that pirates are known for."

Luffy looked at you. "For someone who doesn't like pirates, you sure do act like one."

Before you could say anything, frantic banging on the staff exit caught you all off guard. Begging for help, a man tumbled in and fell to the floor, barely having the strength to cling onto the countertop. On instinct, you went to pull out your gun but stopped when your boyfriend raised a hand to you and marched toward the man. Being the good Samaritan you certainly weren't, Sanji and Luffy helped him up onto a chair. "Are you okay?"

The man's voice sounded croaky and scratchy. "I'm so hungry, please."

Sanji nodded and moved to the stove. "Okay, you got it, man. How does some corned-beef fried rice sound?"

Pattie, appearing from his break, quickly stood up and followed after him. "What do you think you're doing?" He demanded.

The blond didn't bother to look at him and you gave the pirate a warning look before moving to the fridge. "At Baratie, everyone eats." The love of your life explained as you rifled through the fridge for the ingredients he would need.

"And who's gonna pay for that? This is a business, we can't be giving handouts to every down-on-his-luck pirate that washes up."

"If a man is hungry, I feed him. Thank you, darling." He said when you handed him the beef.

Pattie looked at you for help, then back at him when you just shrugged. "Zeff kicked you off the line."

"Yeah, well, I don't see the old man here. Do you?"

The other chef looked at you once more, and you shrugged at him again. You both knew it was a losing battle, and so he waved his hand dismissively. "Fine, your funeral."

You couldn't keep your eyes off the strange pirate while he sat and ate, and explained what had happened to him. Sanji was way too nice a person for people like him to deserve. You knew pirates, and a part of you was tempted to hide the silverware.

"He's a good guy." Luffy, who was slowly becoming less and less of a pirate in your eyes, said and you nodded.

"Sanji's brilliant." The words came easily. "He's the kind of guy that only comes once a generation. He's a dumbass, sure, but he's a good dumbass."

He thought for a second, before turning to Sanji. "You know, if Zeff doesn't appreciate you, you should join my crew."

Your chair scraped as you stood and left the room.

A/N: I am genuinely loving writing this! As said above, I normally tend to leave the reader's backstory and personality ambiguous, but this character has just taken on a personality of her own! This one is a bit longer because I felt like there wasn't enough content in this upload to justify it. I wouldn't want to waste everyone's time with like, two conversations. I'm kinda happier with the longer/more in-depth parts because I get to spend more time building up characters and relationships, and I'm less tempted to accidentally write and spoil things that the OPLA fans haven't seen yet.

Also, I've grappled with the ages for a while now, and I've officially decided that this AU will have Sanji and (Y/N) be 21. Normally I'd leave the reader's age ambiguous, but since age is important to this story, it's needed to be put in there.

[britts-galaxy-brain]

I mean, you also been saying a lot shit to her too. Victim blaming her with “she talks a good game by saying suing her family and get Lily’s hard drive taking away.” When Lily crime against her not actually put in jail because it was long time ago and cocsa is not a crime there. And some of victims don’t want to come forward and even then it’s toss up for the cops to care. But then again you should know that because the fbi hand up at you. By your own words you also taking hot air too. Plus Courtney more or less got a lot people actually see the monster she is with her story. You’re clipping away is more or less like dull knife. Plus I do know you been chasing her after she blocks you. Calling her crazy give credit to Lily story and in turn victim blaming you actual goon. And don’t you compare your story to hers. She assaulted by her as child and you were an adult online. And before you say that victim blaming because yeah it was because that a taste what you been doing to Courtney.

How the hell is pointing out that she's a hypocrite by claiming she was going to try to do something, and then turning around and attacking people who aren't near as close to the situation for not being able to legally do anything, "victim blaming"?? I'm fully aware it's like pulling teeth to get the cops to do anything. That wasn't the damn point. The point was Courtney is out of line and cruel for acting like anyone else has any more power in this situation.

Second of all, what the fuck are you talking about with claiming "you know I chased her"? I was the one who kept having to block her because she kept BLOCK EVADING ME. When she'd make a new account here, she'd start responding to shit and trying to start a fight, and I'd block her. When she'd try to get me to dm her in public servers, I'd politely decline and made it clear I don't want to be personal friends again. When she'd start screaming at me in public servers, I'd block her, leave her blocked, and hold my tongue as much as possible to avoid engaging with her and pouring fuel on the fire. The only times I ever snapped back was when she started screaming at a recently escaped Lily fan that they should kill themselves in various creative ways.

I haven't WANTED to directly engage with Courtney for almost a year now. I've been avoiding her. I've been holding my tongue while I watch her spew the most unhinged, vile, at some points outright bullshit about me, my thoughts, my intentions, my words, my overall character. I haven't said shit. And she's done nothing but continue to escalate and spew vitriol toward others. And now me and others are getting MINORS and other young people in our inboxes parroting her raging irrational bullshit.

I'm tired of it. I'm not just gonna continue to sit back while she continues to throw tantrums and smear my character along with multiple others.

What happened to her is sick and awful, but that doesn't give her or anyone else a pass to treat people however she damn well pleases. This isn't me trying to attack her credibility or deny what she's been through. This is me getting fucking fed up with seeing nothing but malice thrown at me when I haven't done shit to deserve it.

[bunnylovesani]

I know you said that you want to move on from this, but I have to tell you my thoughts because I can’t stop thinking about all of this.

I am a content creator as well, and I write for Anakin. I have been writing for various characters from various shows for years on here, and nothing - nothing - is more toxic than this fandom right now.

From everything I’ve witnessed, I can only attribute it to one person. Indy.

Unfortunately he cannot be helped because of how vain he is, which aren’t even my words. They are his. And it would be fine, if he just left other people alone.

But indy is a bully. A big bully. He polices this whole fandom like he’s got nothing better to do at all. And I’m so sick of it. It makes me and other creators feel like we have to walk on eggshells when we post on here (thus why I am anon. Because god forbid indy sees this, and his little squad of bitter rejects try to ‘cancel’ me too - which, don’t even get me started on cancel culture).

Indy has been called out for creating things before that other people don’t like. His advice? “Just block, don’t read, keep scrolling.” How fucking hard is it to practice what you preach, rather than dragging a new person through the mud each week?

Not to mention, that shit indy was spewing a few weeks back about “not liking how other creators are writing about Anakin because it’s not correct” ? “Be careful with my toy?” “I’m taking him back until you can learn how to handle him correctly?” What kind of entitlement let’s him believe Anakin is HIS to write for only. Anakin is not his idea. He is not his toy. He is George Lucas’s idea that EVERYONE can enjoy, and play with.

And his opinion is not the only correct one out there. I don’t care how much “character studying” he’s done, he can be wrong. Other people can “character study” and come up with completely different conclusions about Anakin. And he can also just let people write what they want to write. Don’t like it? Block, don’t read, keep scrolling. Stop fucking posting about it and laying claim to something that was never his to begin with.

I tried to support indy, because again, he is a phenomenal writer. but he’s way too problematic. It makes me sick seeing his name pop up on my feed, cause that blog literally emits toxic energy.

I am sorry he sunk his claws into you.

Anyways, this isn’t about indy. He was told it was a private matter so he had no reason to butt his big head in anyway. This is about you and Ava.

While Ava may have written an Anakin stalker au, she DOES NOT own it. Nobody own that. Cause nobody owns the ideas of stalkers, and nobody owns the idea of Anakin except GL and Disney. Your work does not resemble hers even slightly. And whose to say someone else hasn’t already written that au in the past? Maybe it’s buried somewhere in tumblr’s vaults. Do they own that idea? Should you dig through years of posts and credit them somehow?

The whole idea is ridiculous. You credit people for their original ideas if you are inspired by them and have permission to use it. You do not need to ask permission or credit something that belongs to everyone.

I could start writing about, I don’t know, firefighter!anakin right now - do I then OWN that au?

Fuck no!

We are all here for the same reason. To write fake scenarios about fake people. Of course, don’t blatantly steal peoples words and ORIGINAL ideas, but the fact that people are spouting all this bullshit about OWNING these common au-ideas now is crazy. Unless you’ve done some kind of world-building or OC-creating, that shit is not original. It’s been done before and it will be done again. Cry about it.

Now let’s bring the linecook Anakin au into consideration. How is it fair that Tilly can write about it, not credit anyone, and get away scotch free? Why didn’t she get called out like you did?

Granted she took it down, but I still think it’s horseshit. Nobody owns that idea. I’ve seen it used for so many different characters on various platforms. She did not have to take it down for some bullshit law indy place on this fandom.

I really am saddened that so many people got dragged into this. Ava left; an amazing content creator. Tilly deleted her work; also an amazing creator. And indy continues to show his true colors; an entitled asshole who can’t let anyone breathe on here.

I want to go back to when this shit was enjoyable. Now all I see on my feed is people throwing each other around because no one can play nice anymore.

Don’t steal peoples ideas. But don’t claim ideas as your own if they are NOT original.

I am on your side bunny. I think you’ve made some very good points, and I commend you for keeping your work up and for standing up for yourself.

At the end of the day, you are a victim of circumstance. I truly just think people need to stop dick riding indy. And I know if he ever sees this, he’ll try to make some witty comeback that only halfway makes sense. he always sounds so defensive when he tries too hard to make it seem like he doesn’t care. He probably cries himself to sleep over these things. I think he needs that.

DAMN ANON. Wish I knew who you were so I could kiss you.

I second everything you’ve said. Blocking me without giving me the chance to respond or explain to a public post made about me was very high and mighty as well as cowardly of him.

I don’t have much more to add since I said I was done talking but I’m gonna post this masterpiece so others can read it.

Seriously thank you for taking the time to write this out and share your valuable thoughts, much love ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

[drill-teeth]

So glad to see your being fat on purpose positivity, the last time I had interaction with another heavyset person they tried to imply my weight was my misery. It's honestly so nice knowing there's other people who CHOSE to do this. People acted like I was crazy for it.

I don't struggle because I'm fat. I struggle because of how society treats fat and fat people. Being fat is cool as hell. The root of most problems with being fat is fatphobia. And that is not my fault or my responsibility to conform to or mean that choosing to be proudly fat is incorrect. It's incorrect in the eyes of society and society spews a bunch of bullshit so I think I will not care what others think if I decide to gain some weight. It's my body and anyone who doesn't like it genuinely doesn't get a say and is being a nosey, insecure asshole.

People LOVE to project their own insecurities onto others bodies. Fat bodies especially. They think "well I wouldn't be happy if I was that weight so I will tell you not to be happy with it either and this is extremely shitty of me to do and makes other people feel bad but I will not understand that because I think I'm helping" and then encourage you to do a diet that won't even stick anyway. It's bullshit. And it's so hard to find like. Positivity and solidarity with other fat folks sometimes because this mindset really runs deep, even for fat people.

My big ol' rant on that aside. I'm glad you liked my being fat on purpose positivity post! Being fat is cool and epic and choosing to gain fat is just as much of a normal goal to set for your own body as gaining muscle or anything else. I hope I can put some more squishy meat on these bones before the end of this year, myself! And I think you're epic for choosing to gain fat too!

[roo-bastmoon]

A bit of housekeeping...

I'm so glad to welcome some new friends to this blog, but I just want to make sure everyone knows what they are in for, so here's some quickie reminders:

I'm Jimin ult-biased and a Jikook supporter, so that's mostly what I post about. But I'm OT7 and I love loving on all our boys.

I am streaming and buying for Yoongi, just as I do for all 7, and I am excited that Yoongi will be my first ever concert! But I won't be posting tips and tutorials and reminders and such for D-Day. The info provided for Jimin also applies to all BTS works, and honestly I need a bit of a break as I have a lot of deadlines and some (thankfully minor) health issues to tackle.

Just so you know, I'm a toddler ARMY. Joined the fandom about a year and a half ago. I'm still finding my way, still working through official content. I'm not a big blog. I'm not an important blog. I love discussions and I never mind answering questions, but I'm not clever enough to be anyone's guide, so, please do your due diligence with the big accounts, and we can learn together!

I just cannot stand drama. I don't have the heart for it. It literally pains me when people get meanspirited. So when in my presence, please never ever shade any of the members. Don't share weird creepy invasive stuff. And yes, some things need to remain closeted and bad shit happens in life, but I'm allergic to conspiracy theories and victim narratives.

To the new folks who joined me but have only one or two posts... it's entirely possible you're using a fake account to keep tabs on Jikook accounts. And listen. As long as you don't start drama and spew hate? It's okay by me if you lurk here. You might see things from a new perspective, or you might not. I support your right to make up your own mind. I have no agenda. I will never go into other people's spaces and insist they see things the way I do. Just know, I will block so fast your head will spin if you start up with bullshit. Simply try to be a good human, that's all I ask.

And with that in mind, every time I do anything as a Jimin fan, I ask myself "Would Jimin feel honored by this?" and if the answer is no, I course correct. I am human and I will make mistakes, but I at least know the following to be true:

Jimin loves his members. Jimin has a very special bond with Jungkook. Jimin hypes up other artists. Jimin never brags about himself nor speaks ill of anyone. Jimin works hard in silence. Jimin tells the truth but never shares much of his personal life. Jimin strives to be perfect, but no matter what is always authentic.

All these things are clues as to how he'd like fans to behave. So I act accordingly and hope you do, too.

All that being said, I strongly suspect Hobi will be coming to us again around Easter, and I really hope we ask him thoughtful questions and share meaningful messages of support. Let's do our best to raise the level of discussion they have with us on Weverse! And let's be sure to send him off feeling bolstered by our love, instead of weighed down by our demands for reassurance around his military service.

Right now, I need to take a bit of a rest. It's been a crazy three weeks! PLEASE make free trial Pandora accounts if you are a US ARMY, and no matter what, keep streaming and reaching out to funding accounts to buy.

Let's do our best for our boys and walk with them each step of the way! It's been quite a journey so far, hasn't it?

Love, Roo

[foxfairy06]

HIIIII poookkksss its ollie, u banned me so ill yell at you on tumbllrrr <33333. YOU ARE A JOKKKE. "No cause i literally got diagnosed on the phone but ok hunn go off". okay sure, seriously doubtful because you could lie over the phone... did you know that... bet you didnt. anyway. like thats your reply to what u actually have to do to get a diagnosis, so your over the phone shit is actual bullshit. like its not covid no reason to do that, and also they need to see you in person and have you explain how your feeling aswell as your movements and the way that you respond to questions to get a diagnosis, or they will ask your family and friends or your teaching if they have noticed behavior that is needed for your diagnosis. so BULLSHIT BULLSHIT :333. Telling me to touch grass, god you so basic oml. also calling me a hypocrite when your a literal exclusionist , which you get to decide what is and isnt in the lgbtqia+ community is hypocrisy. from the merriam webster "a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings" and something you said in our messages, "The basis is lgbt topics. It's meant to be a place for lgbt exclusionists to gather" you say you support ppl of lgbtq but if they dont meet your criteria or if you dont think their queer you exclude them. thats hypocrisy. anyway hope you actually get the help you need so you can WAKE THE FUCK UP for you stupidity <3 which i will continue to state because my proof above proves it <3.

-ollie p.s you are still a ball of sperm we all are its not rude its a literal fact

p.p.s if you bring up what i said in the server here is a message i sent to you "i was spewing BULLSHIT" which you know is because i am a troll and i was gathering dirt on you pooks

p.p.p.s i have screenshotted all of out chats <3 karmas a bitch she is coming for you.

Karma for??? Being a good person? I didn't say anything rude, homophobic, or bad to you so you have no actual leverage here. That's like saying "i took screenshots so karma is coming for you<3" to the poor child you just harassed that eas being respectful and kind to you the whole time.

For those who don't understand, green text to the rescue!

> be ollie

> be sitting at your moms computer, bored

> decide your life isn't angry enough

> create an entire Tumblr spewing radmed shit thinking transmeds will follow you

> find a transmed with a server

> start saying super homophobic shit and harass everyone

> get muted for being homophobic and transphobic and harassing people

> message all the mods and call them names for muting your

> admit you were trolling then scream and cry at the owner for being transmed while calling him names and making strawmen and adhominem

> get banned

> still be a pissbaby who can't stop being angry with his life

> decide touching grass is too much

> go leave a novel of an ask under the owners Tumblr that makes several assumptions and zero sense then question their means of diagnosis.

For those who don't have context, i am trans, I am duosex, I went to a therapy place for free, and saw a therapist. He immediately started going through the criteria for dysphoria because I asked but we ran out of time. So I'm getting my diagnosis finished over the phone. It took me two appointments and $0 to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis. So stop acting like this is difficult or hurting anyone.

It's not hypocrisy to provide a safe space for a group and exclude people. You would provide a safe space for enben that has binary people in it? Because they aren't enby. Thus they don't need that space, and could fuck it up.

You're the hypocrite calling me names and crying and screaming at me calling me crazy. Seriously get some help. Therapy is an option. If you don't feel safe in your current mental state you could always check in at an ER and tell them you need help. You could also look around. Many places provide therapy for free. Utilize these resources and stop harassing strangers online. I hope that goes well for you.

[its-moopoint]

When you thought shippers couldn't sink any lower they spew this vomit.

wildfernflower

I'm pretty sure the choice of this very "remarkable" date for the funeral was not accidental. She with her family could organize it one day earlier or later if only they wished so. Monaghan is a small parish, I very much doubt all days around Aug 10th were booked out for funerals, weddings, or other ceremonies. But C has now a perfect excuse not to celebrate or even mention the anniversary and mourn her late father instead.

margareth-lv

She’s just a victim of her own fate… 🤦🏻��♀️

auburncurlslass

There's not one shred of evidence of C and maestro except MC from GRO.UK with zero validation. Z E R O.

loveoutlanderworld

Such a sad coincidence 😔 fate is very interesting. Anyway, she posted a pic of herself with a goat after her wedding, so maybe she will post a pic with a horse or with Adso for her anniversary, you know the “husband” is very shy 😂😂😂

jays911

OMG!!! Stars aligned!!!

auburncurlslass

Omg....what a fucking coincidence!....who would have thought that fate had other ideas regarding Caitriona's bag of lies. August 10, 2019....the fake wedding that never happened...

=================

They posted anniversary wedding photos of Priyanka Chopra and Eleanor Tomlinson and the one with Cait and her brother at the funeral to mock her and Tony, because that photo is of her and Sam "holding each other". Pushing aside the fact that PC and ET don't have crazy shippers stalking their homes and trashing them and their spouses, but do these imbeciles even know how funerals are planned, especially for large families with relatives and friends scattered all over the country or the world? That it takes time to gather everyone who wants to attend? Her family is one of those and her dad was a well liked and respected police officer. He passed away on August 2nd and the funeral was on August 10. Basically one week which is normal to gather everyone together.

They intentionally want her to think of August 10 as a wedding spoiler. This is how evil they are.

I have no doubt that Cait is able to lovingly remember her dad and celebrate her wedding without diminishing either, but these women are so demented they can only think one evil way.

Yes I'm aware of this disgusting piece of bullshit. Several people found it as offensive as you did and reported it to me.

I have only one warning for "dear" Margaret above: karma finds its way sooner rather than later and the amount of bile in her posts regarding C's father's death will come directly back at her.

It's ridiculous that this needs to be said to full grown ups but it's clear by now these idiots don't form a full working neuron together between the lot of them so lets break it down easily. You can't choose when your loved ones die, it happens when it does and then there are formalities and time periods to observe. Finally at such ages there's important stuff and minor stuff and no one of 40 years will throw a tantrum at having their birthday or anniversary or holidays postponed by the death of a close relative FFS.

As for the rest of the stupid post regarding celebrity couples who share their lives on social media, you can't put CB there since she never shared in her SM footage of her private life with her husband or son. It's all under her control, what she shares and what she doesn't.

I'm glad there's the comment above mentioning the marriage certificate from GRO and these lunatics saying it means nothing. At least any outsider tempted by their rubbish would leave the thought immediately at reading that.

[scream-at-a-whisper]

Tw for discussion of ableism and nondescriptive mention of self harm

We're doing our neuro unit in med term right now and I'm going to be honest it's actually weighing on me a bit. Like there's only so many minutes I can spend listening to my teacher spread not only out-dated, but also unempathetic information about mental disorders. I have friends and family with schizophrenia, bipolar, npd, bpd, suds, aspd, eds and so much more, and it's starting to fuck with me a little to hear her talk about these disorders like they're 'crazy person disorder' or 'evil person disorder'.

Especially when she started talking about gender dysphoria. I'm not going to pretend to be a very stoic person, but I was genuinely struggling to not cry when she started spewing transphobic bullshit and a bunch of people were staring at me (I got outed as trans earlier this year) (of course a lot of people came up to me afterwards to see if I was okay which was very nice, but at the same time I've never felt so nauseous psychosomatically in my life). Doubly so when she started talking about sh, and said that in a lot of cases it is just for attention, which is super untrue. It felt really disrespectful to me that she referred to people struggling with sh as 'cutters'.

Then she started talking about eye contact, while kinda staring down me and a few other kids. She kept saying that if you struggle with eye contact, you shouldn't be in medicine, which pissed me off a lot. How could you say that in the middle of the neurodivergence unit without a hint of self awareness?

I really think that a medical ethics course that focused on respecting patients, no matter what personal biases are, would benefit a lot of people. Not just for neurodivergence, but also for fat patients, patients of different culture backgrounds, and patients with disorders that are commonly misunderstood.

Sorry for the essay, but I'm pissed off today.

[coughsyrups]

there are so many thoughts stirring in my head and now that i’ve sat down to start spewing them out i’m overwhelmed by the magnitude and stuck, like i’m trying to squeeze chunks of my emotions through a hole big enough to fit one at a time, but easily blocked by many. i can’t say everything i want to say all at once. i backtrack, and repeat myself, and wander aimlessly around what i want to say like a fool.

i think i’m going crazy.

getting better is never linear. life imitates art imitates life imitates poetry; which is art, which, naturally, imitates life. don’t romanticize your suffering, because pain isn’t necessarily beautiful, and just because you can find beauty in your sorrow doesn’t mean you needed to suffer. just because you put your vase back together with golden glue doesn’t mean it never broke in the first place. being fragile and pretty and traumatized is not cool, actually, and i’m sick of the metaphors, and the narrative, and especially the foreshadowing.

i have always read writings written on walls. and i sit down and i write my little songs about it, and when i get hurt inevitably it’s marginally easier because i knew it was going to happen. and i already wrote some four chord ABAB bullshit that i can sing over and over again until i process it by desensitizing myself to the situation. because i have to make everything funny, i have to make everything palatable, i have to make everything art. and i haven’t been creating art lately. god, haven’t i suffered enough? this isn’t the kind of suffering i know how to write about. not having money to eat isn’t something you just slip into the second verse. i’ve tried and tried, and no one ever sees the part where i try except for him. they see me quitting jobs, they see me calling out sick, they see me spending forty bucks on chinese takeout when i have bills and rent and appointments. what about me holding two jobs with 60 hour work weeks, and STILL struggling to save a fucking a dollar? i overwork myself to the point of burnout, and when i get a pitiful fucking nothing paycheck there’s nothing i can really do to hold out any longer mentally. so i quit. so i chase a dollar’s worth of a promotion and jump from job to job, sitting at the lowest rung, looked over and taken advantage of and talked about and misgendered, misgendered, misgendered. i want to hide!! i don’t want to see myself in windows walking from job one to job two, i hate everything about my body, and i use it as an excuse to not correct people using the wrong pronouns for me, which just makes me hate it even fucking more. oh, i understand why people use she/her, my boobs are just so big teehee!! but i don’t get how nobody even fucking tries. i’m not saying i’m some magical perfect person but i make an effort, a conscious, serious effort, to remember people’s pronouns, to ask their pronouns, to properly gender them. the only people who use my pronouns consistently are max and my mom, who are both cisgender. it hurts so bad when my trans friends don’t use my pronouns. you should know more than anyone! how much it sucks! do i have to take hormones? do i have to “dress nonbinary”? i don’t want to change my voice, i don’t want to change my closet, i don’t want to change anything except my chest, and that’s more a health and comfort and weight thing than dysphoria!

if i don’t get this breast reduction, i genuinely feel like i might give up entirely. on everything. on living well. on waking up. because wouldn’t that just be fucking great? the chance to be comfortable in my body for the first time since i was… 14? 15? if this gets ripped away from me i might just run away, i don’t know! i don’t have a cent to my name but i could do it. go home, work a job for a few months. save up a couple hundred. then go no contact with everyone who’s ever known me. buy a plane ticket. move somewhere far, where the cost of living is low, and just restart. i could steal my documents. i could figure something out. craigslist exists, i’m sure someone needs a roommate. would my loved ones try to find me? i’d leave a note, of course. something to say that i’m gone, and that i might come back, but i don’t know when. would they be willing to wait? i don’t know what i’d want them to do. part of me would want to be found, like some princess in a castle, waiting to be rescued and returned to the kingdom. but if i chose to leave, i would want to stay gone. maybe after a few months, i would send a letter. no return address, of course. i don’t want them to think i got murdered.

i don’t want to make people sad. i don’t want people to hate me. i don’t want people to even dislike me. i want to be loved, and make people happy, and be everybody’s best friend who they can talk to about anything. but i’m lonely, and i’ve always been lonely, and i always will be lonely. in every lifetime, every timeline, every minute, i’ve always been a step removed, like the narrator is possessing my body and observing characters in a story. i can see them, and they can see me, and we can talk and have fun, but i’m here to see this story through. i’m here to tell this story. i’m here to check for plot holes and predict the twists nobody sees coming, and then when everything’s over i move on to the next chapter. moving along like everything is fine. that’s just how the story goes, nothing i can do. i am lonely, and this last year and a half has been nice, because i think max is lonely like i am. i think we deal with it in different ways. i think i’m fighting my loneliness, challenging it, trying to change how i’m written, but he handles it so well. he can be alone, not that he always wants to be, but even when he doesn’t want to be alone, i don’t think it drives him half as insane as it drives me.

i want to rip my hair out, or shave it off, or give myself bangs. i want to scream, but everybody wants to scream. i want to drive my car off a bridge. (i want to fly.) i want to float motionless at the bottom of a bathtub. (my hair makes a halo.) and see? there’s the metaphors. there’s the poetry, and the art, and the symbolism, oh the symbolism, because i can’t just process my feelings like normal people do. but this is good, because the alternative to writing this is laying awake thinking this. or, rather, thinking three sentences at once, because of all these voices in my head talking over each other. i’m at the breaking point. i don’t want anyone to help me right now, i don’t want someone on snapchat messaging me “ily! i hope u feel better soon” which is ironic considering how many of those messages i’ve sent to others.

i’m confused. i don’t think i’m scared. but i’m anxious. and i’m frustrated. i don’t know what to do, going forward? i’m not gonna run away to wyoming. i’m not gonna kill myself. i have to keep living. and keep going. i have to prove to myself that things will get better. it’s sunk cost fallacy, i didn’t kill myself at 19 so why should i now? i could’ve then. maybe i should’ve, the only people i would’ve hurt would have been my family. nobody else was close enough to me where they wouldn’t be able to get over it. it’s funny, getting dumped after a month was the end of the world to me back then. like a kid, falling off their bike and skinning their knee, screaming and wailing so hard at the sight of a few drops of blood and some scraped skin that the neighbors come outside to see what’s wrong. the world is ending! but it’s not. you put on a bandaid and move on.

i’ve had worse injuries since then. and even though they hurt just as bad, i learned to push through the pain, to conquer it mentally. i’ve put on a lot of bandaids. but i’m not trying to minimize how it felt in the moment, because it is the worst thing you have yet experienced. and each time you have a worse experience, you’re better equipped to deal with it. even better, when you experience something of equal or lesser trauma, it’s no big deal! you’ve had worse! wayyyy worse. what i’m saying is, how i felt that night in 2019 was valid, because i had never experienced heartbreak before. i didn’t know how to deal with it. i didn’t know i could hurt like that. now i’ve been hurt like that so many times that i can shut it off, deal with it mentally, think it through, push through the pain. and i hope i come to a day when i feel the same way about right now.

i’ve met the love of my life. i’m scheduled for a life changing surgery. i’m finally been living on my own. i have two sweet little kitties. and i’ve been trying hard not to let the negatives outweigh the positives, but that’s not the full picture. i’m not being negative when i say things are bad right now. i’m being honest. things aren’t perfect between max and i. i have this weird sense of jealousy where i think about how i’m the “first partner he’s actually, genuinely loved” and also, the first partner* he hasn’t actually, genuinely fucked. (*a few outlier relationships have been excused from this statement.) and that’s so stupid, right? it’s so shallow. isn’t this what i wanted, something beyond just a sexual agreement between two people who don’t seem to like each other all that much? yes, it is, and i am grateful, i am beyond grateful to love someone who loves me, and cares for me and about me, who i love to spend time with and talk to, who i fall asleep next to. i just get this hangup. why not me? i know the answer. the answer is i’m not pressuring him to do something he doesn’t want to do, and that will never change. i’m not going to guilt trip him into having sex with me, and the thought of ever doing that makes me sick. but i feel odd thinking that there’s other people who have loved him, just like me, that shared this experience with him, and i haven’t. and i don’t know when i will. if i will? i don’t know!

the surgery has me scared. not because it’s a surgery, i’m not scared about complications. but what about the money, how long will i be paying this off for? what if there’s an issue with healing? an infection? breasts become misshapen? bottom out? uneven? i gain more weight and they grow again? as soon as i’m able to i need to work out. i don’t want to have my stomach be larger than my breasts and that’s probably going to be the case after the surgery. i just hope i like the way i look. i know i’ll be more comfortable but i just… i didn’t think this would happen so soon. this happened incredibly fast and i have barely begun to process it. i’m just basically half dissociative every day at this point.

and august is our last month in the apartment, and then we’re moving home. i won’t live with max anymore. i won’t live with the girls anymore. no more late night hot tub, no more queen sized mattress, no one holding me every night. everything’s going to be over. everything that we built here, we’ll try to get a storage unit but what if we can’t, what if we have to get rid of everything? we don’t have a lot of space in our new living situations. it just doesn’t seem fair.

i wish the money from the tax return had been spent wiser. i wish max hadn’t been unemployed for so long. i wish i could work 60 hour weeks without getting burnt out. i wish i made $100 a minute for playing cookie run. wouldn’t that be nice?

and now… the lawsuit. where do i begin? it’s entirely unreal. i thought i felt insane, now i’m starting to think i actually am. this is some serious psychosis, lilia, you should be admitted asap. i want this to happen for him and his family, they deserve it more than anything, i don’t really know… what i’m supposed to say about it though? i don’t want to say anything. i just want to say, cool, you have money now, my shift starts in ten minutes though so i have to go, i’m already late. what does this change? does this change anything? why would it? it’s just money. but then i think about when i was working runrun and the saint, working til 3 in the morning, crying and panicking over being a hundred short for something or other. is that over now? forever? i don’t know how he’s planning on budgeting/using it, i don’t want to say a word of advice to him on it unless he asks me. he doesn’t need unsolicited advice from me. this has been happening his entire life, and i’ve known for like, two days? there’s nothing i can say or suggest that he hasn’t already thought of.

but it’s strange to think about how this has been here the whole time, in the background, beyond my knowledge. never mentioned. never explained. “well i bet you have it figured out by now” no actually! despite how badly i’ve been wanting to snoop or eavesdrop out of curiosity, i have fully respected your wishes to keep this private! all i thought it was was some sort of settling of affairs. how the fuck would i have ever been able to guess a fraction of this situation?

i guess it’s not the worst thing to be blindsided by. at least you don’t have like, a kid, idk. but i hate to say it… if you were hiding this for so long, what else is there? is there anything else you haven’t told me? you’ve never given me a single ghost of a reason not to whole heartedly trust you and believe you’re giving me the full story. until now! that’s what i feel weird about. that’s why i’m kind of upset. what else do i not know about you? i’m pretty sure you know everything about me.

i love you. that hasn’t changed. i’ll always love you. i just don’t know why you let yourself be unemployed for over a month. i don’t understand how you could keep something as crazy as this under the table for our entire relationship. today is actually a year and a half from our first date. a year and a half without a word, except for, “would you be mad if i pulled a crazy rich asians on you?” i guess i should’ve said, no, i would not be mad at all! if you had worked that month, we might not be moving out. or we might still be, i don’t know. i’ll never know, because that’s not what happened.

i’m tired. see, this is how my writing always goes. all deep and flowery and full of metaphorical rambling that doesn’t make sense and is way too self referential and meta. but then the moment i start talking about my relationships i get more direct. and, idk, sassy. and i start saying fuck.

hey. you say you wish i could’ve met your dad almost every time you talk about him. and i’ve never told you this, because i don’t want to sound crazy, but i probably am crazy, and knowing me i’ll show you this some day, or, knowing you, you’ll just find it, so basically, i don’t mind sounding crazy. you wish i could’ve met him, and i wish so as well, but in a way, i feel like i already have. i see him in you, in how you act, and how you talk about him, and the stories, and the rare pictures and videos. when you’re talking about him, i feel like he’s here, next to us. i think we would’ve been friends. i think he would’ve liked my tattoo. i think he would’ve liked my music. i think he would’ve liked my family. he’s your angel, and that sounds silly, and i don’t mean it super literally, nor do i mean it in a cheap psychic way. i think what we put into the world stays there, our love. you have his love. you carry that with you, and i think you also carry his pain, because no one else was there to pick it up for him after he was gone. i don’t know what else to say, just that i’ve always felt connected to him through you. your love for each other is so strong that i can see it today.

pain isn’t beautiful. neither is suffering. it’s a misconception, because what’s really beautiful is perseverance, and strength, and every little good thing in the world. the scar is beautiful, but that wound isn’t. just because the healing was because of the pain, that doesn’t mean the pain was what created the beauty. we shouldn’t need to hurt.

thanks to sunk cost fallacy, i’m going to get better, because i missed my chance to kill myself four years ago, and now i have no choice but to keep living, to keep loving, and to make new reasons to stay alive. the only way out is through, because you can only go forward, and i missed the suicide exit and now i’m stuck on the bridge of recovery.

at least i have a sunpass.

[heys0ulmate]

lottie raping nat without drugging her is also very hot tbh like. natalie being so much more aware and resistant and scared, because this is lottie, lottie who she used to shoplift with. lottie who used to bum cigarettes from her after practice. this girl, the one who has her pinned against a tree right now, is not the lottie she used to know. this one looks at natalie like prey. like shes going to devour nat. and maybe thats what this is. lottie is consuming her, putting nat in her place for all of her recent pushback and disobedience. and natalie cant fucking do anything about it. everyone else has become a follower of whatever crazy bullshit lottie has been spewing. even shauna and tai have joined. natalie is back to being the outcast, and instead of the lottie she used to know, the one who didnt care about nats outcast status and treated her as an equal, this version.. this version says natalie needs to let lottie protect her. even as she holds nat in place, and fucks her, bloody, recently cut hand pressed firmly over nats mouth, lottie growls to her about how the wilderness is already in her. that its in all of them, and natalie needs to let it in before it punishes her. and natalie.. nat just squeezes her eyes shut even tighter, because what is punishment from the wilderness if not this? fucking crazy ass forest deity lottie raping her, scraping her face against the bark of the tree, or the dirt on the ground. it makes nat sick, cus this isnt an entirely unfamiliar experience, but despite their recent hostility, natalie never once thought lottie would be capable of doing this to her. this lottie has wanted nat to submit to her will since the day she became some cult goddess. this lottie takes what she wants. and natalie tries so hard to disassociate as lottie bites at her and fucks her ruthlessly. nat cant do anything but whimper behind lotties tight grip on her mouth and she wishes more than anything that she was back on the school bleachers, smoking and talking shit about people who deserved it with the old lottie

[struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor]

Ah, I'm afraid of posting this because I'm unsure of my own reasoning. People are going to read this and be like "Duh, we know that", or call me a Jimin anti because of the timing, which is why I also mentioned JK. I'll admit my bias because if JK had gotten that number 1 I would've been way happier, but I keep seeing ridiculous praise about his achievements on Twitter too and I think most of it is bullshit - just like that crap every solo spews about x member being hated by the company.

I don't know how to express this without sounding like I'm shitting on Jimin's hard work and talent, but Armys saying they're so proud of Jimin because he ended kpop (quoting PDogg) and because he got that number 1 on the Hot 100 without any radio play or a collab.... Did Jimin achieve those things, or was it Army? BTS don't have an industry backing them up so it's much harder for their music to be heard by the GP - unless their song is a huge hit, it's hard for the GP to listen to it. I understand this, which is why Army needs to stream and buy the fuck out of their music for it to do well. If Jimin hadn't released a song people generally loved, and if he wasn't super popular even among BTS for all the wonderful things he is and does, he would not have gotten that number 1. But claiming that Jimin achieved this feat all on his own is just untrue. Like Crazy isn't that huge of a hit and Jimin wouldn't have gotten that number 1 without the fans doing the most for him. I'm proud of Jimin too - we wouldn't do that shit for just anyone - but Army should be proud of Army too. Jimin could've worked way less and gotten similar results, simply because he's that loved and Army have been planning for his debut for a long time. Hybe also did a good job helping Army get Jimin that number 1. I honestly feel like this is, first of all, Army's achievement, just like that number 1 for LGO was all Army, or any other solo achievement. Except for Dynamite, Butter, PTD, and My Universe and a few other songs which had GP support, all the success BTS have gotten with their solos has been at least 70% because of Army. It's great that BTS are breaking down barriers and their popularity is undeniable. It's also true that BTS don't have the privilege of their music being shoved down everyone's throats, but, for the most part, BTS's music isn't the kind that goes viral - even if racism and xenophobia weren't an issue.

I don't know how to express this. I'm not trying to rain on Jimin, or BTS's, parade but fans exaggerate so much and I need to get off Army twitter. They talk about Jungkook's huge success with L&R as if Charlie's name and Army's efforts weren't half the reason why the song did well. All of these achievements are way less impressive than Army let's on. Having a fanbase this dedicated is amazing in itself, but it's like when talking about BTS's achievements Armys leave themselves out of the conversation as if they aren't the driving force behind BTS's achievements. I guess you could say this about any celebrity - they usually have money and connections backing them up and very few of them have an organic story of success like BTS's - but I wish fans acknowledged Army's role a bit more. BTS are huge - you have to be to have a fanbase getting you a number 1 on BB without any radio play or playlisting, but, at the same time, Jungkook's talent isn't the main reason why L&R did well, is it? It's why fans love him, maybe, but the song itself would've done just as well even if Jungkook had sounded bad in it.

I really don't know how to phrase this, but, essentially, bragging about BTS going viral when Armys are usually working overtime to make them viral is a bit contradictory. But I guess most things don't go viral by accident.

[alyosiuscreightonward]

Dearest Nomi-San.

In our recent conversation, you mentioned that you had felt some kind of way about not having a village to raise a child and that you like me also felt as if we were cursed.

As cliché as this meme is, it’s actually pretty close to our reality.

Unlike other children, you had a village and I appeared as the shaman attempting to make it all better. There were instances where I triumphed and I had spectacular failures.

So much has happened since then and since we actually saw each other. Our relationship has been frayed for years because of the shit storm that was swirling around us. Our memories of what went down, well…it’s similar but also skewed towards who was to blame and we were just a subset of numbers in that crazy ass equation which at times just didn’t add up to anything but “Reality stranger than fiction.” I think that when we tell our stories starting from Montello Street then via Calvary Street to you being in Rock Ledge and me being in Texas.

Today in 2023, we continue to work on ourselves as best we can and with what tools we have available to us. I’m realizing that I need meds to help with my mental health issues and you have your own bullshit to contend with on the daily.

I have my own thoughts and I could offer up my opinions but I have to say that I’m going not be the one. I have to figure it out myself and I’m sure that you will do the same. Now we just aren’t going to give into that nonsense or negativity anymore because we must find our own moment of zen.

We are soldiers. We have no other option but to march. We have no other choice but to fight back against it all. There are moments when we feel as though if we have had a chance to take that one giant leap forward, fuck!!! We’ve gone two steps back. Ugh!!! I too like you want to know first hand what it means to ease the pain of the day away and then take time for ourselves. It’s a fifty fifty shot at the wheel of fortune. Sometimes the roulette wheel hits double zero and it’s fabulous. Yet the other times, shit hits the fan. WTAF??!! FML!!!

It’s true, do we win the battle or lose the war? Whatever happens to us we will always be in the game and we will never stop marching forward. I’m sure that your Gawd or my higher power will come to aid, abet, assist and help us in some itty bitty teeny tiny little way regardless. We will stumble, fall and or just land flat on our heads. It’ll be a hot shitty boo boo mess. We ended up here and now we’re going to figure out how to get out of it. We’re not living under the delusion as some of our contemporaries are.

Give your self permission to scream in the vacuum of space meanwhile knowing that we can’t dodge the raindrops and we will get soaking wet. We will continue to shed our exoskeletons and one day, I know it’s coming, we will have all the accolades for what we’ve accomplished. I also know that we don’t take our own advice. So, whatever drivel I spew, I keep on marching on no matter how much I hurt mentally or physically and you are right there with me.

We are unable to care for or care about the other people who have been in our lives. We are the toughest and the most important.

[humanityinahandbag]

If anyone actually took time to read the article they'd see that this is only true for positions that do not require rigorous activities, like dragging people off of a battlefield. Even those who never see combat and work in the army offices need to take a physical, and those jobs are reserved for people who either can't handle intense strain to their bodies or want to serve but don't want to see combat.

Women aren't given a lower standard for combat positions. These ones specifically are given that because they'll literally never see combat. That's like saying it's insane that the woman or man serving kids in the lunchroom needs to first complete the PRAXIS like the rest of the teachers in the school first, because it would be lowering standards if they didn't.

The goal of this post was not to point out facts about the army. It was rage bait meant to give the poster a pass to spew whatever vitriol they wanted about women.

To those reading it and reacting - don't let idiots with too much time on their hands fool you into believing bullshit like this. These are people who love to hate and are hoping to drag you into their trap with them. This is how we get young, sometimes even violent, conservatives who hold tiki torches because they believe every issue they're facing is due to a woman (or any minority, really).

Do your own research. Make sure to get all the facts. Don't believe everything people tell you. Don't even believe what I tell you until you do your own investigation. But do the investigation.

So yeah. You could do what the poster of this did and go off about the feminists I guess.

Or maybe (and this is crazy, so work with me here), learn how to fucking read instead?

This is insane. If women aren’t passing this test about what you need to do to be physically fit, then so fucking be it. The battlefield won’t lower its standards, so neither should we.

[world-of-wales]

Hey Ash! I hope your exams are going well!

I’m curious about where you stand on the spectrum of “this will soon blow over” to “monarchy ending crisis”? Many fans seem to be at the latter end of the spectrum. I agree that there were some mistakes made, and it looks really bad to outsiders right now (just considering the random tweets that pop up on my tl with 50k + likes believing some of the worst theories), but it just feels like such an overboiling pot in a quiet kitchen situation, the fact that it all came to a head over a photograph??

I think the worst thing that will come of it is that so many neutrals will take certain things to be “fact”, some of the WORST include that W has a mistress, he has fathered her children, he is a raging alcoholic, and (shudders) he is a domestic abuser, and Catherine attempted suicide. How are people with a huge reach even allowed to state these things with no evidence or consequences?? But then, what can WC even do? Any statement won’t be believed, and suing as we know will lead to a never-ending spiral of litigation and questions over what they don’t sue against. Maybe legal papers is the answer (to some of the bigger sources, like Stephen Colbert for one). It still wouldn’t be well received at this point.

I don’t quite think it’s a no-return catastrophe yet, but a lot depends on what happens when Catherine returns. That’s huge pressure on her, especially after her ongoing health issues! Honestly the craziness gets too much for me sometimes😅

Hi, they are going well thanks for asking. The one in afternoon tmrw is actually my last one for this exam session. The rest are in April & then in May. Out uni is weird like that, they take exams in stages.

I honestly think, and this is my honest opinion, people blow things out of proportion a lot, just as the people on the internet who are spreading all these theories. Sometimes, the Royal fandom also takes things on the extreme. It's not monarchy ending, if it was so easy to change the whole political system of a country, then the monarchy would have gone with diana but it didn't.

And people on social media sparking ridiculous notions and conspiracies isn't going to be able to being that political system down because like I said we might consider royal-watching as our hobby but in reality the monarchy is intertwined with UK as Sovereign State. And that doesn't go away just because people, most of them from outside of that country, are crying wolf online.

What I don't think they realise is that, at the core of it, the monarchy is the integral part of the UK's structure. That's the head of state, same as a president. And nobody can just change it on a whim. In fact, this is one of my issues with the Republican movement in the UK at times. A lot of them want to remove the monarchy. That I get, but where's the tangible alternative? And a proper plan to execute it. It's not child's play. It's a whole institution around which a political system - a state system is built.

I never found Stephen colbert funny, and tbh I didn't even know who he was when I was young because our parents were placed mostly in countries in Asia and like man's not a popculture figure here. Kimmel, Fallon people know, but not him. It's got to do with him and seth meyers both catering to the american political spheres, and honestly, that's not what most of the population are interested in here. I found out about him when I got into American politics and elections. Anyway, I don't know what he said exactly, but I saw on one of the other blogs what he was insinuating. And yk what? FUCK HIM. Not just for spewing tabloid bullshit & lies about people. For dragging and bullying a woman going through a fucking health crisis for tv, for dragging another woman who's a private citizen and defaming her, for making it possible that 6 children who are all at an age where they can access internet will be able to read lies about their parents and disgusting things being said about them, don't even get me started on all the other ways they'll might have to deal with these allegations. Truly and utterly repulsed by this whole segment, which was done for fun. And yk what? Legal letters are the least of things he deserves.

Yk, I have been saying this, but they could have posted a picture. They could have done a video. They could have done an engagement. But whatever they did? The people online would have said or done something to find some sort of discrepancy. The regular sane people I know or have been following online have only said that this whole thing is a joke, and the way people are blowing it out of proportion is just plain bullying with a nice sprinkling of misogyny added in. I was actually talking about this with my dad on call last night, and he and i both landed on the same thing, that it's just simple economics. The whole problem with the photo for the press is that they didn't get to click it. Hence, they don't get rights, so there's no cash for them. Another thing media doesn't have things to report rn, they could easily cover other royals and not wade into conspiracy theories but they know what sells. And people online are just plain fucking crazy, these people will always say something or have some conspiracy theory. I mean flat earthers, the lizard people thing, the ones about Obama etc are just some of the properly wild, idiotic, and completely untrue things people actually believe are true.

An average voter/citizen in the UK with a real life outside of the twitter bubble doesn't give a fuck about it all. Heck most people including royalists don't even pay attention to royals as much as royal fandom thinks they do irl. I'll speak from personal experience, I end up chatting more about the royals with my mum's side of the fam than my dad's, and the latter are actually uk citizens. The royals exist for them, and thats it. They literally couldn't care less about this online drama, and they dont. Do they pay attention to the imp events like the jubilee or the coronation or the Christmas addresses? Yes, but not what the gossip people are up to online. So it's a complete non-issue. Also, most of this is just the twitter echo chamber which has 368 million users out of a 7.8 almost 7.9 billion population. Most of whom I.e. 77.75 are from the USA. Even the stats don't support the idea that we aren't gonna have a monarchy coz of this. A constitutional monarchy which is a state system might I add, coming down in the UK because a bunch of idiots from Murica online is quite literally not in the cards rn.

I don't want Catherine to come back if she isn't 100 percent well and I have seen people say she should just do the parade on st. Patrick's etc etc just to put the conspiracy theories to rest. And I don't in any way agree with it. A woman taking time for her health being expected to come out as a show pony for deranged idiots is not what I believe is right. Which I'll never believe is right. She's not just taking time for her health, she's had a major surgery one which probably doesn't even let her walk comfortably because everytime she tries to, her muscles contract and expand leading to pain and discomfort on the wound/stitches. Even smaller abdominal surgeries are literal bitches to get over let alone one with a long recovery period like this.

All this hoopla will die down as soon as she comes out. Why because most people spreading these rumors want them to be true, e.g. the Sussex squad and a lot more people who like 'drama' as they say themselves. And the rest of them are chronically online people who most likely don't have any life irl at all. And if institutions like Harvard and oxford are to be believed the most likely candidates for having distress, depression and other problems because of all of their personality being about the internet and their inability to connect with people irl. And the press will be all going gaga over her the day she steps out because they finally get their top cash source back. That woman has been used by the press for clicks and cash for the past 20 years and if they want to cry about it rn then they can, they arent the victims. They never were. Even a lot of british press members have been like you have all lost the plot if you believe all the conspiracy and what you're doing is not journalism at all, just plain fucking bullying. Watch all these papers and journalists calling her out rn change their tone post easter, just less than 3 weeks and watch it happen.

Omfg I just realised how long this turned out, I'm so sorry.

I'll just end it by saying that I completely get you when you say the drama and the noise gets to you because I have the same problem too. I just shut off everything and just come on here to post if I want, but mostly just to talk shit about stuff bothering me with a few very kind people I have been very fortunate to find here. If it gets too much and you just want to chat, about anything really, the ask box is always open and so are the private messages if you don't feel comfortable talking about it in front of everyone 💗💗

[gukyi]

love me or we both go down | kth

summary: after going through with an arranged marriage to please his parents and secure his inheritance of the family business, kim taehyung thinks he’s got it all figured out. he doesn’t. apparently just being married to you isn’t enough, not when everybody and their mother can pick up on the fact that the two of you absolutely loathe each other. but taehyung wants his inheritance one way or another, so he decides that desperate times call for desperate measures: the two of you need to fall in love, and you need to fall in love fast.

{enemies to lovers!au, arranged marriage!au, rich kids!au}

pairing: kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff, angst, smut (i know, crazy right?) word count: 32k warnings: oral sex (m & f receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, multiple unprotected sex scenes (they’re married y’all), fat cock tae, tae has a wife kink, lots of praise, alcohol consumption (but they’re safe), minor character death (not explicit), mentions of heart attack, slow burn like there is no tomorrow a/n: hello and welcome to the fic everyone, literally everyone, has been waiting for! i am so, so, so excited to share this with you all, especially because none other than rose @kinktae​ helped me write the smut, and i am literally forever indebted to her. you all better go spam rose with all the love and support you can because this fic would not be here without her and i love her so much. 

also, to all my readers who aren’t comfortable reading smut, please know that the smut in this fic is not imperative to the storyline, and you skipping past it will not affect your reading experience., enjoy!

Never in your life have wedding bells felt so ominous.

The sound of them is akin to the sound of strings, of a single piano note in a horror movie, right when the film opens and someone random is about to die on screen for the sake of proving to the audience that this is, in fact, a horror movie. Make no mistake about it; these wedding bells spell doom for you, too. And the most horrific part about them is that just like that poor, helpless soul in the movie, there is no way for you to escape your fate either. 

With only seconds left to go before you have no choice but to promise yourself to the man waiting at the other end of the aisle, you desperately try to think of any last-ditch efforts to get out of this. Many, if not all of them, are utterly useless. 

Feigning sudden illness won’t work, because then your parents will just reschedule the wedding to a later date. Running away is fruitless. Where will you go? The parking lot?

If only you had a lover out there in the audience somewhere that could object to the marriage when the officiant says, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.” A knight in shining armor that could whisk you out of the venue and off to a new life, far away from here. Too bad all of the people you’ve dated before hate you now. 

Maybe getting married isn’t such a bad thing after all. Instead of having relationships with multiple people who will eventually despise your existence, you only have to have a relationship with one. And the feeling, as has always been, is mutual. 

You bristle as your assistants do some last-minute prepping, fixing your sleeve and adjusting your necklace and making sure you don’t trip on your enormous train. They flutter around you like a swarm of well-meaning but ignorant butterflies complicit in the agenda of your family. None of them have said a word to you about the wedding ever since you arrived at the venue, choosing to talk more about things like the weather. Not that you were ever under the impression they had been hired to entertain you. Maybe they were told to not engage you, just in case you try to conspire with them.

As if they could be of any use in your wildly unrealistic escape plans. 

The truth is that, unless you were to drop dead on this marble flooring right now, you’re getting married. Whether you like it or not.

The doors open. 

You’ve attended red carpets, galas, award shows, and balls. You’ve had hundreds of cameras flashing in your face, the bright light capturing each and every centimeter of you. You’ve had paparazzi waiting outside the restaurants you eat at, the stores you shop at, desperate to catch a picture of you in sweatpants without a drop of makeup on. You’ve been on dates with ex-lovers that looked at you like you were a piece of meat with a credit card. And yet, for some goddamn reason, walking down the aisle in a white dress the size of Pluto, with the rest of your life waiting for you at the other end, makes you feel fucking transparent. 

Face resolute, you clutch onto your bouquet so tightly the flowers feel like they’re about to pop right out of your grasp. Determined not to look at anybody in the audience, you stare straight ahead, right into the eyes of your future husband.

Kim Taehyung, for someone you have seen multiple times drunk off his ass with hickies dotting his neck and jawline, cleans up pretty well. For someone getting married, at least. He dons a simple black tuxedo that still probably costs more than the average car, his caramel brown hair is pushed back off his forehead, and his expression is firm and still. He most certainly has had an equally expensive team prepping him, but they haven’t done too bad a job. The silver lining is that he doesn’t look any more thrilled than you are to be doing this, right here, right now. But to his credit, this is definitely the best he’s ever looked, as far as you’re concerned. 

When you reach him, he offers his hand out to you, a hand that you only accept for the sake of professionalism. The bouquet in your hands is handed off to one of your bridesmaids, and the two of you take your position at the front. Your train drags along the aisle, draping over the few stairs you had to climb to reach the altar, this satin trail behind you that cements you to the floor. It may as well be a ball-and-chain. It’s about as heavy as one, anyway. 

This is the longest you and Taehyung have ever held eye contact. Not that you’re really keeping track of how long the two of you have met each other’s gazes, but if you had to make an educated guess, this would definitely be the victor. Most of the time you end up sneering at each other ten seconds in, but to be fair, those other times you were also not getting married. To one another. In a ceremony attended by hundreds of people. And cameras.

There can be no sneering here. 

“Don’t you look nice?” Taehyung whispers, loud enough so only the two of you can hear. He has that drawling, sickly sweet tone to his voice, the one that you hate because it makes him sound like he thinks he’s so much better than everyone else. “Surprised they were able to makeup that scowl off your face.”

This, of course, brings on a hearty scowl only he can see, your backs both facing the rows of attendees. “How much concealer are you wearing to cover up all of the hickies on your neck?” You quip back easily. It’s not like the two of you are going to pretend he doesn’t waltz around at every club or bar or private venue he can find, looking for his next treat. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Taehyung grins, and if you weren’t standing in front of hundreds of people about to get married, there’s no telling what next you would do.

The two of you would probably go on like that for another ten minutes if it’s not for the officiant, who coughs once he’s ready and opens the book in his hands. Next to you, Taehyung straightens, hands clasped together at his front, and lips pressed into a neat line. You do the same. There will be no giggles, no laughter nor smiles, nor any genuine emotion at this wedding. This is a wedding for the sake of politics, for economics, for security, and anyone in attendance would be a fool to think otherwise. Especially you. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, loved ones, and esteemed guests,” the officiant bellows, listing off as many groups of people as he possibly can in an effort to both include and compliment every person in the audience, “We are gathered here to celebrate the wedding, and future life, of Taehyung and Y/N…”

Taehyung turns to you, grinning in that god-awful way, the way he does when he feels like he’s got something over you. And sure, you can’t think of any punishment quite as bad as this, but what’s Taehyung got to smile about? He’s marrying himself off to a woman he hates, kissing goodbye his days as a free-spirited, heartbreaking bachelor, and promising what may very well be the rest of his life to loving you. That is not cause for celebration. 

But perhaps, to him, your suffering is enough to bring a smile to his face. 

Your vows are, to put it simply, total bullshit. Your family hired someone to write yours and there’s not a doubt in your mind that his family did the same thing. This nonsense talk, this complete and utter garbage that spews from your perfectly-glossed lips, shit about how you promise to love each other until the end of your days, how you promise to take care of each other when you’re sick and accompany each other at every event, every gala, every ball. Shit about how you promise to look only at each other, promise to uphold your family traditions and become a dependable spouse. 

The words don’t belong to you. But the thing is that this marriage was never yours anyway. 

When the kiss comes, there’s a part of you that thinks maybe you should have psyched yourself up a little more for this. When Taehyung pulls you in, placing a stiff hand on your lower back as he brings you towards his chest, your stomach turns and shivers run down your spine. The feeling of his hand on your body, the breath from his lips brushing against your own, are enough to keep you frozen in place. 

He smiles at you, almost as if to ask, “Are you ready?”

And you squeeze your eyes shut, almost as if to respond, “Let’s do this.”

When his lips meet yours, there is almost nothing. Nothing runs through you, nothing explodes, nothing strikes. But when he pulls away and cheers and applause rings out throughout the room, there is something. A little heat, a remnant of a flame, left on your lips. A little sting, just to remind you it happened. 

The entire hall is cheering but nothing about this is worth celebrating. The fact of the matter is that you and Taehyung will never love each other the way that you are supposed to. 

“Ugh, finally.”

The elevator doors haven’t even properly opened by the time Taehyung is loosening his tie, tugging it off over his head as he stretches his head back and runs a hand through his perfectly-styled hair. As he rakes his fingers through his caramel locks, the hairspray and gel loosens, strands falling down by the side of his face, framing his temple.

“Don’t sound so relieved,” you huff out, deciding now is as good a time as any to start getting undressed yourself. Reaching down to lift up the hem of your reception dress, you tug off your heels, already feeling lighter on your feet. Who cares if Taehyung is watching you pull off your stilettos like a defeated movie heroine? You don’t think you can walk another step in those shoes. “We still have to live together, you know.”

“Don’t remind me,” Taehyung says gruffly, brushing by you roughly as he stomps out of the elevator. “I’m just glad the fucking night is over. I swear, seeing that fake-ass smile on your face made me want to gouge my eyes out.”

You storm after him, refusing to be the helpless damsel in this situation. “Oh, like you didn’t also have that exact same fake-ass smile on your face. It almost made me think you were actually enjoying yourself tonight.”

“I was only enjoying the fact that I know you hate this just as much as I do.” It’s perhaps the only thing you will ever be able to empathize with him on. Mutually relishing in the other’s destruction. Taehyung fumbles with the keypad to the door to the penthouse for a moment before you hear the lock click, the door sliding open as the entrance lights flicker on. 

The reason Taehyung’s penthouse is so clean is because he’s never lived here before. Neither of you have—Taehyung’s parents bought it just for the two of you. And as much as you absolutely despise the idea of having to live with him, at least it was not you who paid for your place of residence. 

You can tell Taehyung’s never lived here before because it’s actually quite nicely decorated inside. The ceilings are high and the sleek velvet curtains are pulled open, revealing a shimmering skyline. The furniture is modern and functional, and the whole damn place smells brand new. You’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of entering the place Taehyung lived in before now, and it looked nothing like this. The furniture was worn and stained despite the live-in maid, the house reeked of five hundred different spices that wafted from the kitchen to the living room, and the bookshelves were covered with comics, graphic novels, and old textbooks. 

If it weren’t for the fact that you and Taehyung are rich kids in their twenties that hate each other, you might have actually thought the place looked… homey. 

You don’t have time to be impressed by the interior design and architecture skills of whoever designed this place. Right now, all you can think about is tugging yourself out of your airtight reception dress and passing out on the nearest bed. Which, hopefully, will be as far away as possible from Taehyung’s bed of choice. 

“How many bedrooms does this place have?” You ask, shimmying along the floor so you don’t trip over the hem of your dress. From the looks of it, you can see one giant hallway to your right and a massive, double-sided staircase leading up. 

“Enough,” Taehyung grumbles in response. The hazy stupor from all of the fancy champagne is starting to wear off for the both of you, leaving behind two grouchy, begrudgingly-married individuals who want absolutely nothing to do with each other and have no problems making that known. Whatever golden light of the evening that was making Taehyung at least a little bit more attractive than usual has faded, and now you see him for what he really is: an unceremoniously tired man in a suit. “You want upstairs or down?”

You gaze up at the marble staircase in front of you, then back down at your too-long dress. “Down.” The last thing you want is to trip in front of the man you have to see, every day, for the rest of your life. 

“Fine by me.” Taehyung’s halfway up the stairs by the time he turns back around to say something else. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess?”

“Yeah.” There’s no point in being hostile now. The both of you are too exhausted to mean anything by it. Besides, what else can you say? Everything to complain about has already been complained about. At least the two of you managed to wrestle out from your parents the stipulation that you would not be going on a honeymoon together. Now that would have been your worst nightmare. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It’s as good of a goodnight either of you are going to get. Taehyung heads up the stairs and disappears around a corner, and you start wandering down the hallway. All the bedrooms look the exact same other than different colors on the walls and bedsheets, but they all look serviceable to you. Clean. Empty. Far away from wherever Taehyung is. 

You pick the one at the very end of the hall just to be as much of a diva as possible, and don’t even bother drawing the curtains before tugging off your dress. It’s past one in the morning, and you’re so high up you don’t think anyone will be able to see you anyway. By the time you’ve stripped naked and are tugging up the too-tight sheets tucked into the mattress, your legs are about to give out beneath you. The bed could be made of rocks for all you care. Anything to lie down on is fine by you. 

Sleep comes fairly easily to you tonight. Once your head hits the pillow you can already feel yourself drifting off, eyelids fluttering shut, but you don’t sleep quite yet. Not before you can think about how this is your life now, sleeping in a foreign bed in a foreign place with a foreign husband upstairs. This is what you will be living in now. Now and forever. 

Living with Taehyung is, in both the best and worst ways possible, like living with a roommate that doesn’t give a shit about the fact that they live with another person. It’s good, because you and Taehyung hardly see each other and speak even less, which was pretty much the only thing you were asking for when it came to living with him. But it also sucks, because whenever you do happen to cross paths, Taehyung acts like you don’t exist, barely sparing you a hello or even that tight-lipped smile you send to drivers on the road when they let you cross the street. 

Not that the two of you ever engaged in energetic conversation before you got married. But at least the two of you would acknowledge each other, even if only to shoot a glare and a scowl the other’s way from opposite sides of a hotel ballroom. Maybe it’s just because it’s him, but you did always find yourself actually relishing in those little interactions with Taehyung. In this strange, twisted way, it seemed to provide some sort of continuity to your ever-changing life. Like no matter what happened, at least you would know that the two of you would always despise each other. 

To be frank, right now you’re not sure if Taehyung even remembers he got married at all.

Nights have been a lot more sleepless since your wedding day. After two weeks, the reality of it has finally started to settle in. This is your life now. And ever since you realized that, your bed has felt much less comfortable. 

“But the place is nice, right?”

You look around the living room from where you’re sat on the sleek, white suede leather couch, eyes glossing over the bookshelves, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the draping velvet curtains. From here, you can see the entire city skyline, flecks of gold from the windows of skyscrapers against a navy blue background. Slowly, as the moon creeps over the sky and the clock gets later and later, those lights will soon begin to flicker off, one by one. 

“Yeah, it’s not bad.” Nothing to write home about. That is, if home were a place other than here. 

“That’s good. At least you don’t live in, like, a total dump or anything,” Victoria says on the other end of the line. “How’s Taehyung?”

His name alone elicits this deeply-exhausted sigh from your lips, like it’s been ten years since you married and every day has felt worse than the last. “Fine.” You can’t really complain about anything yet, considering that you hardly ever see the man. 

“Just ‘fine’?” Victoria sounds skeptical. 

“Yeah,” you draw out the word, as if trying to convince yourself of its truth. “I mean, it’s like he doesn’t even live here. I barely see him. And when I do, we don’t even speak to each other.”

“That’s good though, isn’t it? You hate him.” Victoria says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And in a sense, it kind of is. 

“I mean…”

“I know that your life hasn’t exactly… gone the way you had planned, but isn’t this your best case scenario when considering everything?” She asks. “If Taehyung is as distant as you say he is, isn’t it almost like you never married him in the first place?”

As if on cue, you hear footsteps coming down the stairs, heels clicking on the marble as they make their way to the entrance. You whip your head around to find Taehyung, all dressed up in loose, flowy slacks and a flowery silk button-down, strolling down the staircase as he scrolls through his phone, paying you zero attention whatsoever. 

He notices you briefly when he reaches the bottom, meeting your eyes with his own. He offers this measly, unenthused half-smile your way before he grabs his wallet and some house keys from the table by the entrance, opens the door, and vanishes off into the night. 

If you hadn’t been in the living room, you probably wouldn’t have even realized he left. Not that you being present as he’s planning on leaving would have stopped him anyway. This is the sixth night he’s done this in the past two weeks. You could stand by the door and stare him down as he emerges from his bedroom, all dressed up for something you’re definitely not invited to, and he would offer you that same goddamn smile and walk out the door without even blinking. Who he was before you got married and who he is now are no different. Not even a ring could change that. 

“I guess,” you tell Victoria. At least Taehyung hasn’t turned into a helicopter husband. “I don’t know. Maybe I just wish that I didn’t have to deal with him at all.”

Wish you could turn back time. Wish you could worm your way out of an arranged marriage before it was too late. Wish you could go back to the way things used to be. 

You and Victoria talk for another couple of minutes before she regretfully has to end the call, citing both her beauty sleep and an 8AM meeting tomorrow morning as her reasons for hanging up. The moment you put the phone down, you sink back into the couch cushions, staring out the windows at the world below you.

Here’s the deal. What Taehyung does in his free time is none of your business. But also, it’s totally your business, because you are his spouse. A spouse who is an equal amount in the public eye as he is. What he does and does not do has a direct impact on what you do and do not do. 

It’s no secret that when you catch Taehyung sauntering down the stairs looking like a Gucci runway model, it’s not because he’s planning on catching a movie with a college friend and then playing video games for four hours on a couch in a basement. He is going out. To clubs, to parties, to exclusive events that he’s been invited to by his equally-rich friends, all of whom are acting like he’s the same bachelor he’s always been. 

And maybe that’s the real problem with your whole marriage—other than the glaringly obvious issue that it’s a marriage wholly unwanted by the two parties involved in it. Despite the ring on his finger, Taehyung is going out and pretending that nothing in his life has changed while you’re trapped at home, desperate to save you and your family’s reputation by keeping as low a profile as possible. You would give anything to march around the city all day, flashing middle fingers at paparazzi as you shop at your favorite high-end stores and frequent your favorite clubs. But you can’t, because your family’s fortune and influence is on the line. 

And apparently, Taehyung’s isn’t. 

It sort of makes you wonder why it was even Taehyung you ended up marrying anyway. His family isn’t any richer or more powerful than yours. Your spheres have always been sufficiently separate. What was it about him, and perhaps more importantly, his family that drew your parent’s eye? And what was it about marrying you that prevented him from saying no? Money? Prestige? Influence?

You suppose you’ll never know. But whatever mystical force that convinced Taehyung to agree to this must not be as important to him as your reasoning is to you, because it’s become exceedingly apparent that Taehyung does not care that he’s married. He doesn’t care about the ring on his finger, he doesn’t care about his public image, and he most certainly doesn’t care about you.

Perhaps you were naive for thinking this, but you actually believed marriage might tone him down a little. Might age him into a real adult with real world obligations. Instead, it’s only given you a firsthand look into who Kim Taehyung has been and always will be: a selfish rich kid.

You don’t bother waiting around in the living room until he gets back, but you are still awake by the time you hear the door creak open. Taehyung makes no efforts to hide his return. You can hear him chattering loudly on the phone as he stumbles up the stairs, can tell from his gait alone that he is most certainly wasted. You don’t want to know what he did tonight. You’ll probably be able to figure it out anyway when you wake up tomorrow morning and check your social media. 

What were you thinking, marrying him? That he would change? That he would suddenly become someone that you could rely on? You had no choice when you said, “I do,” but you were at least hoping that maybe one day, one day in a long, long time, the two of you would finally see eye to eye. Maybe there would even come a time when you would genuinely love him. How foolish. 

You close your eyes and try to imagine a world where you have married someone you love, someone who loves you back.

Not unlike the many nights preceding it, tonight is sleepless. 

Unlike your marital status and general disposition, one thing that hasn’t changed about you is your love for extravagant events. Call you conceited, but there is something so much fun about putting on a fancy, expensive dress that you love and getting your hair and makeup done before going to an exclusive gala and posing in front of five hundred cameras. 

Actually, now that you think about it, maybe your wedding could have actually been pretty good, considering it let you do all those things. It’s a real shame there happened to be a storm cloud in the form of Kim Taehyung there to ruin it. Otherwise, you think you would have rather enjoyed that day. 

Tonight is the first event since your marriage where you and Taehyung are both required to show up and act like a happy married couple. Which would probably be a lot easier if you and Taehyung had exchanged more than ten words over the past two weeks. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but there was a part of you that thought you could use your arranged marriage to actually cultivate some sort of meaningful relationship between the two of you. So events like these wouldn’t be such a drain on both of you. 

When Kim Taehyung comes down the stairs, he actually doesn’t look too bad. You don’t know why this sort of thing keeps catching you off guard—like you don’t expect him to look that good whenever you see him. The problem is that you can’t even chalk up the surprise to him wearing tailored clothes or having his hair done. He just looks… good. 

Well, you suppose you do have to look at him every day for the rest of your life. It’s a good thing he’s attractive. At least he’s not sore on the eyes. 

Taehyung and his unfortunate attractiveness aside, the two of you don’t say a word to each other as you join up at the entrance, grabbing any last-minute items like house keys, chapstick, and whatever dignity you have left to spare. You send forced smiles and tight nods each other’s way in the elevator, staring straight ahead in the lobby of your building as the car pulls up to the front door.

By the time the two of you sit down in the back of the limousine, the built-up tension between the two of you is so thick you’re almost positive that even the chauffeur can feel it through the closed partition. 

If you were any more idyllic, you’d probably spend the drive over to the gala staring out the window and imagining yourself in a different life, on a train to nowhere, flowers in your hair and a journal in your hands. Or perhaps you’d be the CEO of your family’s company instead of having that responsibility passed down to a husband you don’t even want, sitting in an office at the top of a skyscraper overlooking the city. Anything. Anything but this.

But the idyllic part of you died when you realized that fantasies like that are nothing but distractions and that daydreams are for romantics and optimists and losers. 

“What’s our plan for tonight?”

Taehyung scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘what’s our plan’?”

You frown. “Well, we’re married, so we at least have to act like it, don’t you think?”

“Isn’t standing there and smiling enough?” Taehyung asks, an unimpressed eyebrow raised. 

You bristle. Maybe that sufficed for your wedding, but there was so much going on it was easy to distract yourself from the gravity of it all. But this event is not about you. It’s not even about either of your families. It’s about someone the two of you are, at best, distantly connected to, through work, through fame, through power. Which means that though the focus will not be on you, there will still be eyes looking your way. Eyes watching your every move. 

“Do you think it will be?” You challenge. Doesn’t Taehyung realize that things are different now?

Taehyung’s lips curl downwards. “What do you expect us to do, shower each other in kisses? We don’t even sleep on the same fucking floor.”

“Maybe I just expected you to act less like a stranger and more like a husband!”

Taehyung sighs. “Don’t.” The word is clipped, short. “Don’t tell me you actually want to be married.”

“I don’t.” It’s a response that you hardly have to think twice about. “But we are, and nothing can change that.” Unfortunately. But it’s a fact that you and Taehyung have both had to grapple with over the past few weeks, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that you are more aware of it than he is. If Taehyung could have his way, he would ignore you for the rest of his life and keep partying with the rest of his bachelor friends until he keeled over and died. 

He huffs next to you, eyes staring straight ahead. You don’t think the two of you have met each other’s eyes in a week. Maybe more. They’re starting to feel as soulless as your marriage itself. “Whatever. What do you want me to do?”

“What do you think?” You cross your arms over your chest. “Just act like you don’t hate me. Can you do that?” The way Taehyung’s behaving right now, you expect that will be a challenge for the both of you.

“Only if you can. I’ll even hold your hand to prove that we love each other.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

The idea of holding Taehyung’s hand makes you want to implode. The mere thought sends shivers down your spine. But it’s better than nothing, and that’s good enough for you. At least you won’t have to kiss. 

The rest of the ride there is silent. You drive to this gorgeous mansion just outside the city, bathed in lights hidden amongst the bushes, illuminating both the architecture and the enormous fountain that sits in front of it. In a house this size, you imagine you could probably go your whole life without ever having to come across Taehyung. It actually makes you consider investing in a home that big. 

Taehyung helps you out of the back of the limousine, a cold hand clasping your own as you rest your palm against his. You can feel the way his fingers hesitate as yours make to intertwine with his as you walk towards the entrance, smiling at whatever camera flashes you encounter on your way. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were holding hands with a ghost. 

The moment you step inside and are ushered out of the door’s view, Taehyung’s grip relaxes on yours. For a moment, you think he’ll actually spend the rest of the night like this, a gentle hand wrapped around yours, but then he pulls it away entirely and shoves it back into his pocket. Oh. You frown quietly to yourself. So that’s how tonight’s going to go. 

You don’t make an effort to reach out towards him again. 

For an event concerning people you don’t know a damn thing about, everyone sure seems to know things about you. Other than greetings, you don’t think anyone’s said anything to you about anything other than your recent marriage to Taehyung. Every conversation is punctuated by a Congratulations! you do not feel that you have at all earned, considering you and Taehyung could barely look at each other on the way here.

Maybe Taehyung was right. All you really can do is stand there and smile.

“Oh, don’t tell me… Y/N, is that you?”

The champagne swirls around in the flute between your fingers as you turn towards the sound of your name, looking up to see a familiar face headed your way. 

Kim Seokjin is nice enough. He’s terribly handsome and got a flawless smile, but you know better than to trust those pearly whites of his. The sight of him alone is enough to make your body tense up. There was a reason you had explicitly told your parents not to invite him to your wedding. 

“Seokjin, what a surprise to see you here,” you say, forcing a smile. “I thought you were supposed to be in Switzerland right now.”

“Change of plans,” Seokjin grins back in that awful, awful way, the kind of grin that makes you feel like he’s looking right through you. “I came back early. It’s a shame, though, I missed your wedding.”

You shrug. “It was a humble affair.” It wasn’t. And you’re positive that Seokjin knows it wasn’t an accident that you didn’t extend an invitation to him or his family. 

“Ah, I see,” Seokjin says, nodding his head. He turns to Taehyung next to you, who is making no effort to hide how wholly uninterested in this conversation he is, and holds out a hand. “You must be Kim Taehyung, then. I’m Kim Seokjin. Congratulations on your wedding.”

Taehyung shakes his hand firmly, the air between the three of you growing unbearably palpable. 

“Seokjin’s father is the VP of News Daily,” You explain, eyebrows raised as you try to signal to Taehyung what exactly it means when Seokjin is speaking to the two of you. “And his mother is a popular journalist for the city’s post.”

Seokjin grew up in the world of media, and it seems he’s picked up his parent’s affinity for sticking their noses in places they don’t belong. You know he’s not talking to the both of you out of the goodness of his heart. 

Seokjin laughs, his hand waving away the mention of his parents. “Oh, please. That’s them. I’m just a bored socialite like the rest of you.”

You resist the urge to scoff. 

“Marriage treating the two of you well?” He changes the subject to what he really wants to talk about: you. 

“Of course,” you say quickly, preventing any hesitation on your end. Your empty hand reaches towards Taehyung’s, fingers searching for his between the two of you. But his refusal to join hands does not go unnoticed by you nor Seokjin, who is eyeing the space between your bodies with an eyebrow raised. “It’s just been—well, it’s just been difficult to adjust to a new life. That’s all.”

If you were to describe the face of a non-believer, it would be the exact expression on Seokjin’s face. “Perfectly understandable,” he says, that same toothy smile lacing his features. “But it must be nice, you know, to marry someone you love.”

“I couldn’t be happier,” you say, almost challenging Seokjin to say something even more inflammatory. He must know that all you’re trying to do at this point is save face. Love? Ha! As if. 

“And Taehyung?” Seokjin motions to your husband. 

You can feel the way Taehyung is stiffening beside you. “I suppose we are both lucky and unlucky in many ways when it comes to who we love.”

It’s enough of an answer to get Seokjin off your tail. For now. He bids the two of you a tense goodbye before sauntering off to go poke his nose in someone else’s business, fish for drama, a thread of a rumor he can pick apart with nimble fingers. You wonder if anybody actually likes him. 

The moment he disappears from earshot, you grab Taehyung’s wrist tightly and pull him close to you. “What the hell was that?” You hiss into his ear. 

“What?” You can’t tell if he’s playing dumb or if he really is that dense. 

“You!” You exclaim. “Kim Seokjin is the one person who could easily expose how fake this marriage is and you pull away from me? Right in front of him? You can’t even hold my hand for two seconds, that’s how much you hate me?”

“Who cares what he thinks?” Taehyung says. “He’s just another media rat. No one will even remember we were here tomorrow.”

“But if you keep acting like this, people will start to notice! Why can’t you just act like you don’t hate me, for one night? Is that so bad? Is it that torturous, to spend one night with me?”

“Do not turn this on me,” Taehyung orders harshly. “You’re making a scene. Come on.”

You don’t have time to shout at him for bossing you around like you’re a toddler throwing a tantrum before he drags you out of the venue, the two of you finding a back door to the building that leads outside. The cold air blows against your body, goosebumps popping up against your skin, but you find that the chilly night provides quite the respite after practically overheating indoors. Taehyung makes fire rush through your veins but at least the air can cool you back down. 

Nevertheless, your conversation is not over. It’s just been moved to a more private location.

“You do realize that our marriage isn’t going to suddenly go away, right? That we’re going to have to keep doing this for the rest of our lives?” You remind him, eyebrows raised. There’s a part of you that genuinely thinks he’s completely forgotten that your marriage is permanent.

“Oh, and not holding hands for five minutes for this one event is totally going to change the course of our lives, isn’t it?” Taehyung fights back.

“Don’t act like you did the right thing,” you spit out. “You don’t have to pretend in front of me. I know you don’t give a shit about our marriage.”

“What marriage is there to even give a shit about? Just because we had a wedding and signed some documents does not mean there is a real marriage between us. Look at us,” he motions between the two of you like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We hate each other. Is this what you would call marriage?”

“But at least I’m trying to get past that!” You exclaim. “You make it seem like being as miserable as possible is some sort of badge of honor. Do you actually want to spend the rest of your life hating the person you married? Or do you want to grow up and try and move on?”

Taehyung frowns. “What I want is for the person I married to stop acting like they’re doing me such a huge favor by pretending to care about us. Especially when all they really care about is their family’s goddamn reputation.”

“No,” you tell him sternly. You are doing him a favor. He just can’t admit that he actually needs help from you. “You are putting zero effort into this. What am I supposed to do?”

“Let it go!” Taehyung shouts. “Maybe one day we’ll actually start getting along, but right now it’s obvious that neither one of us can stand the other. I don’t need you to do favors for me. I can handle it myself.”

You look away, rolling your eyes. “Doesn’t look like it to me,” you mutter to yourself. 

Taehyung cracks. “Fine. You want me to pretend that I actually care about us? I will.” Thank God. Maybe now the two of you will finally start seeing eye-to-eye. “But make no mistake about how I feel about you,” he spits. “Getting married to you ruined my life.”

You stare straight at him and his eyes are swirling, so obscured in the darkness of the night that you might even think he doesn’t have a soul at all. His pupils bore into yours and for once, for once in your goddamn life, after so many years of staring each other down at debutante balls, so many years of witty refrains and snarky insults hurled each other’s way, it feels like the two of you might actually snap. 

Then, a camera flashes.

Trouble in Paradise! would be a suitable title for the front page of the city’s biggest tabloid… if anything about your life with Taehyung could be considered paradise. Unfortunately for the both of you, that is not the case. 

You don’t need to keep reading the rest of the trashy article on the front page of the daily tabloid to know how much trouble you’re in, nor do you even have time to scroll beneath the terrible photo of you and Taehyung literally shouting at each other before you hear your phone ring. 

You don’t even bother saying hello to whoever’s on the other end. You know it’ll go in one ear and out the other. 

“I assume you know why I’m calling,” your mother’s harsh tone spits from the other end of the phone. There’s no doubt in your mind that she’s standing in the middle of her office, snapping her fingers at her fifteen secretaries as they partake in the worst damage control your family’s had to deal with since your cousin two years ago was caught with a mistress outside a high-profile restaurant. 

“Can I take a wild guess?” You’re about to be scolded into the next century, so you might as well enjoy your last few moments. 

“Don’t get cheeky with me,” your mother warns. “Care to explain why you and your beloved husband made the front page of the Daily Post today?”

“I know,” you sigh, a hand coming up to rub at your temples. It’s eight in the morning, you’ve barely looked at your phone, and you haven’t even brushed your teeth yet. It feels like you’re still asleep, and most certainly lack the energy to deal with this right now. 

Your mother, on the other hand, thinks otherwise. “You know? You know, and you still go out and do this? For everyone to see?”

“We tried to take our argument outside,” you begin to explain, but your mother isn’t having a single word of it. 

“The fact that you thought it was even appropriate to have an argument in a public setting at all astounds me, Y/N. We raised you better than that.” There’s no need for you to even see her face. You’ve grown so used to that disappointed frown over the years that it’s burned into your brain. 

“Maybe you should have thought about that before marrying me off to a man I barely know so I could be someone else’s problem instead of yours,” you bite. 

“We did this for your own good,” she hisses back. “You are married because we love you, and we want you to succeed outside of this family.”

“Then why do you care what the tabloids print about me?”

“Because being married does not mean you are no longer a part of this family,” your mother informs you sternly, lips smacking together. “Your marriage reflects on all of us, and you know that. What will people think of us when they see how terribly behaved you are?”

“Everyone acts like that, and you know it.” How could your mother preach good behavior when everyone, everyone you know, is just as spoiled and entitled as you? There’s no such thing as being altruistic when it comes to people like you. Being genuine, and good, and pure—that will get you ruined. 

You can hear her breathing into the phone when your mother responds, “But not in public, and that is the point. We expect better from you.”

“If you were so worried about me behaving so badly, then why did you even marry me off anyway? You knew that I didn’t want to. What did you think would happen?” It’s a question you wouldn’t have dared ask three months ago. Hell, even a year ago, when it was first revealed you were to be engaged, you wouldn’t have dared open your lips. But things are different now. You’re married to a man that hates you just as much as you hate him. He is making no effort to improve your relationship and seems hellbent on despising you forever. There is no way to get out of it. And if your parents really foresaw all of that, then what was the point in the first place?

“Your grandmother.”

Your mouth shuts. 

“You know she wanted to see you married before she passed,” your mother says, words clipped and biting and harsh. “She cares about you. She wanted to make sure you’d be taken care of.”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” you mutter to yourself like a petulant child. In a way, you sort of are.

“If you want to stay in her will, I suggest you change that mindset.”

You freeze in your tracks. The will?

“Is that a threat?” You ask, positively dumbfounded. Are you being coerced into staying in this marriage because of your grandmother’s will?

You can hear your mother laugh, that muted, knowing chuckle of hers. “It was the deal all along, remember?”

Vaguely, you do. You remember fighting your parents tooth and nail over getting married until your grandmother revealed it was her dream to see you wed. You remember the look on her old, wrinkled face, that soft, sad smile that said she knew she didn’t have much time left. You remember agreeing, because how could you deny her? You remember her promising to remember what you’re doing for her. 

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“But—”

“That’s the end of this conversation, Y/N. You fix things with your husband or you’re out of her will. She’s made that clear. I expect you’ll make the right choice.”

She hangs up. 

Well. 

There are a lot of ways to describe how you’re currently feeling, and you most certainly had an expensive education that would provide you with plenty of the vocabulary, but you think the most appropriate words for the current situation would be: you’re fucked. 

At least the feeling is mutual. 

Hardly two minutes after your mother’s brutal phone call, Taehyung comes storming down the stairs, hair still mussed from the night prior, his own phone clenched tightly between is fingers. Even from where you stand in the middle of the living room, you can see the way his eyes are glinting with anger, the veins popping out from his skin. 

“I just got off the phone with my parents,” Taehyung begins, not even bothering to spare a ‘good morning’ your way, “and they are fucking furious about last night.”

You shrug. “Join the club,” you mutter, arms crossed in front of you. What, does Taehyung really think you got off scot-free?

“Don’t act like this means nothing to you,” Taehyung says as he approaches you, footsteps calm despite his demeanor being anything but. “You’re the one who’s so obsessed with keeping up their family’s perfect reputation. You’re the reason we’re even in this mess in the first place.”

“What do you mean, ‘I’m the reason’?” You ask, astounded. Like he’s totally absolved of all blame and just an innocent third party. “You are the reason we went outside. You are the reason we had that argument, because you refuse to accept the fact that we’re actually married and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Right, because holding hands is really gonna show all those people how in love we are. I bet your parents are so thrilled right now.” Taehyung drawls. 

“It’s a start!” You shriek. “God, you’re just so—so infuriating! You can’t accept that this was your fault, too. You just have to turn everything against me and you always, always have to get the last word. It’s like you think you’ll die if you don’t.”

“Like you’re any better,” Taehyung huffs back. “You think I’m the villain because I don’t want to pretend to be in love with someone I’m not in love with. You act like us not holding hands is going to ruin our lives. It was one event! One! It’s obvious we hate each other, so why even try?”

“What, do you expect me to just sit around and do nothing? To act like everything’s fine? Like I’m happy?” As if. This marriage is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. “While you prance around the city with your rich boy friends, going out to clubs and parties and pretending that I don’t exist? Is that what you expect from me?”

Taehyung laughs, this loud, disbelieving sort of noise, like he’s never heard such nonsense before. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean the rest of my life has to change. Am I not allowed to enjoy myself with my friends? Or are you determined to keep me chained to your side for the rest of our lives?”

“What I want,” you punctuate every word, “is for you to stop acting like you haven’t got stakes in this, too. You think I don’t know how your family works? What being married to me means for you? Because I do. And I know that if we were to divorce, it would be you who would get the short end of the stick. Make no mistake.”

That’s enough to shut Taehyung up for a good few seconds. And it shuts him up, because he knows it’s true. Taehyung’s family may have a little more money, a little more power than yours, but you’ve got a family intimately more connected with the media. One phone call and Taehyung may have a rather messy, rather public breakup to deal with. 

“You wouldn’t,” he says, calling your bluff. 

“Are you sure about that?” You say, sticking your ground. You would never really divorce him, of course, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“I am,” Taehyung says firmly. “Don’t think I don’t know what being married to me is in it for you. What is it? Money? Power? Your father’s CEO position?”

“That’s none of your business,” you snap quickly. Maybe you’re more transparent than you thought. Bristling, you straighten your shoulders and turn back to meet his eyes. “Regardless, it seems we both have a reason to stay in this marriage.”

“It seems we do,” Taehyung agrees with a thin, contained smile. “Then I suppose we can reach some sort of agreement.”

“As in…?” Your interest in piqued. 

“I’ll stop going out with my friends if you stop picking fights with me all the time,” he says economically, like he’s killing two birds with one stone. 

“Only if you agree to also act more like my husband when we’re in public,” you tack on, because you just can’t settle for anything less. 

“Public only,” Taehyung specifies. 

You scoff. “Like I’d even want to pretend to be your wife when we’re in private.”

“Good. It seems we’ve come to a deal.”

“What’s in this for you, huh?” You prod, just to be annoying. Taehyung’s right. There’s a reason you’re not divorcing him the second you get the chance. But there must be a reason why he’s not doing the same thing. 

“Does it matter?” He challenges, a single eyebrow raised. “My life is just as awful as yours.”

Fair enough. 

“Do we have a deal?” Taehyung asks, holding out his hand, that sneaky, devilish grin lacing his features. 

Taking his hand in yours and grasping it firmly is the easiest decision in the world. His palm presses against your own, hot hand meeting your cold skin, and it feels like the two of you are finally finding some sort of balance. You look up into his eyes, burn your gaze into his pupils, watch them glint in the white ceiling light of the living room. 

“Deal.”

For two people raised on the values of reading the fine print and making educated choices when it comes to business deals, you and Taehyung sure haven’t worked out any of the intricacies of the deal the two of you agreed to. Unlike those business deals your parents constantly agreed to, however, knowing all of the stipulations and provisions of your strange, strange agreement with Taehyung may prove more harmful than helpful. 

Like right now. 

“Wait, we don’t have to be by each other’s side the whole night, do we?” Taehyung asks you, eyebrows furrowed in a knot, as you sit in the back of a big, black van on your way to a mutual friend’s twenty-first birthday bash. 

“There are going to be a lot of cameras there,” you respond. 

“Yeah, outside the entrance to the damn club. You know they won’t be allowed in, so who cares?” Taehyung rebukes. 

You huff out a little sigh, not wanting to get into an argument when you’re literally minutes away from your first public appearance since the whole tabloid debacle from three weeks ago. You and Taehyung could both do with being a bit more relaxed than you normally are when you’re around each other. 

“Hasn’t Clarissa invited hundreds of people? They’ll all notice if we aren’t together,” you remind pointedly. The girl whose birthday party you are attending is an heiress who grew up on the money of two people with a monopoly over the current artificial intelligence market and has millions of followers on social media. There will be notable people there. And people will know the two of you, as well. 

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “That’s the point, Y/N. There’ll be so many people, no one will even care. It’s her twenty-first birthday. Do you think people are going to be sober?”

You purse your lips together. He’s got a point. “How about when we are together, we hold hands. But if you see a friend or something then feel free to say hi.” Taehyung can be afforded that luxury. Especially because the chances of him not bumping into someone he knows is exceedingly low anyway. 

Taehyung nods in agreement. “You too. But I won’t leave you unless I know you’re with someone you’re close with.”

“You don’t have to stay, I’ll be fine,” you say with a small chuckle. What, is Taehyung suddenly worried, or something?

“Yeah, but it would be in bad taste if I left you with someone you didn’t know well. Or alone. Just wanna make sure you’re taken care of.” He shrugs nonchalantly, turning back to look out of the window on his side of the car. 

“Okay.” 

You don’t really have anything else to say to that. You’re sure you can handle yourself if you’re left alone for a few minutes while Taehyung says hi, but you actually find yourself rather appreciative of his resolve to look after you. Or, at least, make sure someone else is looking after you. It’s quite… chivalrous. Strikingly out of character for the Taehyung you’ve become well-acquainted with over the past couple of months. 

By the time you arrive, it’s obvious that Taehyung was right about there being so many people you two practically don’t even exist. Other than the herds of camera crews waiting outside the joint, photographing everyone that steps out of a black car to see what they’re wearing and who they’ve come with, no one seems to be paying you any attention. And in a way, that sort of nonexistence, that anonymity, it’s refreshing. Your entire life you’ve felt like all eyes were on you, like there was constantly a spotlight above your head, but here, the party centers around someone else. 

Despite that fact, Taehyung keeps his promise. He keeps himself pressed closely against you when there’s not enough space for you two to stand side by side, and he makes sure to have a hand gently intertwined with your own as you weave your way through the dozens of bodies in the room. He doesn’t say anything, of course, always looking up and forward instead of beside him, where you stand, but you find that you’re actually quite relaxed with his presence. He spots a bit of a clearing near the back of the first floor of the club, where a whole bunch of leather couches are pressed up against the brick walls, where the two of you can take a breather. 

“Damn, Clarissa knows a lot of people,” you say when you finally settle down, happily plucking a martini from a tray held by one of the many caterers wandering through the venue. 

“I doubt she’s even spoken to half of them,” Taehyung comments. “She and I have maybe spoken once… three years ago.”

“It was enough to get you invited, wasn’t it?” You point out with an eyebrow raised. 

Taehyung nods, chuckling a little. “Touché,” he says, clinking his own cocktail glass against yours. 

You take a swig of the drink, letting it wash down your throat. You’re not exactly sure how else you’re supposed to survive the night. “You must enjoy this, huh?” You muse, looking up at Taehyung from where you’re seated on the couch. He’s standing next to you, looking around the room with a distant gaze in his eye. 

“Enjoy what? The drink? It’s nice,” Taehyung says, having another sip. 

“No, I mean this,” you say, motioning toward the crowd. “The clubbing, the dancing, the drinking. I’ll bet that if you could do this every day for the rest of your life, you would.”

“I’m honored that you think so highly of me,” he deadpans. 

“Just making an observation,” you say, holding your hand up in surrender. “I mean, isn’t this what you used to do every weekend before we got married? Get wasted and party? Wake up in someone else’s bed the next morning? Muscle your way through the week just so you could do it all over again?”

Taehyung shakes his head, a knowing grin on his face. “Looks like someone keeps up with her tabloids. Let me guess, you would scroll through all of those trashy articles on your phone whenever you woke up so you could see what your future husband was doing?”

“I could have never even met you and I would know that that’s exactly what you do,” you say, even though you definitely did do those things before your engagement was announced to the public. “You’re a heartbreaker, Kim Taehyung. I don’t need to read a tabloid to know that.”

“Well, you must be quite the lucky girl, then,” Taehyung comments. “You seem to be taking up so much of my energy that I don’t have the time for that anymore.”

You place a sarcastic hand on your heart. “I didn’t know you were always thinking about me. I’m touched.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Taehyung huffs out, making the two of you both shake your heads as you chuckle to yourselves. First civil conversation you’ve had with each other in a long while, even if there may have been a few blows exchanged. 

The privacy doesn’t last long. Soon after, a huge crowd of people that could honestly still pass for teenagers herds towards the back of the club, all of them wanting to take pictures with each other. You and Taehyung do your best to stay out of the way, but one of the girls recognizes him from the Elle photoshoot he did about a year ago and begins to strike up a conversation with the both of you about your recent marriage. If she was paying attention to anything the tabloids leaked three weeks ago, she doesn’t mention it. Taehyung smiles and happily answers all of her questions, and even offers to take a picture of the group for them. The conversation ends before the two of you even catch her name. 

You’re standing by the line of buffet tables laid out against the staircase leading up to the second floor, no doubt as crowded as this one, when the opportunity for you to speak to someone other than Taehyung finally presents itself. 

“Y/N!”

You’d recognize that voice anywhere. You turn around to see Victoria barreling towards the both of you, not even caring when she accidentally spills a bit of her piña colada on the floor as she does. 

“Hey!” You exclaim excitedly. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure Clarissa invited everyone on her, her best friend’s, her best friend’s cousin, and her best friend’s cousin’s dog’s contact list,” Victoria says with a laugh. “It’s nice to see you. I feel like you’ve been holed up in that big ol’ penthouse for weeks.”

“Damage control,” you remind her succinctly. Victoria knows enough that that’s all the explanation she really needs. 

“I don’t know if the two of you have ever met formally,” you say, thinking back to your wedding, where Victoria spent most of her time schmoozing with your parents (who love her) and didn’t even engage with any of the people who Taehyung’s family had invited. “Taehyung, this is Victoria. Victoria, Taehyung.”

“Pleasure,” Victoria says in that loud, unabashedly forward way of hers, holding out a friendly hand. Taehyung smiles back curtly, taking her hand and shaking it gently, so as not to spill any more of her drink. 

“Mine as well. I remember you were at our wedding.” Oh? So he does know her?

“That I was. Oh, I miss that day. The food was excellent. Tonight’s isn’t too bad either. Hope you’re doing well, the two of you. It’s nice to see you getting along,” she says, always the observer. 

Taehyung’s eyes widen a little when he picks up what Victoria is not-so-subtly putting down, but you place a hand on his upper arm to calm him. “It’s okay,” you tell him. “She won’t say anything.”

“My lips are sealed,” Victoria adds. 

“If you wanna go spend time with some of your friends, you can,” you say, giving Taehyung a nudge. He looks positively helpless standing in between the two of you as Victoria out-extroverts him. 

“Alright,” he says hesitantly, even though you know he’s already spotted at least ten people you’re sure he’d want to spend time with over you. “I’ll come find you soon, okay? Don’t go too far.”

You nod, and Taehyung disappears off into the crowd. Not two seconds later, you hear someone else call his name in a familiar tone. 

“I thought you said you hated him,” Victoria points out as the two of you watch his caramel brown hair makes its way throughout the crowd. 

You take another sip of your drink. “I do,” you say. 

Victoria looks at you like you’ve just told her you’ve sworn off custard-filled doughnuts. 

“What?” You ask, feeling suddenly defensive. 

“Nothing,” Victoria singsongs. “It just doesn’t look like that to me.”

“We just need to keep up a good appearance in public, that’s all. You know how mad my parents got when the tabloids leaked all that shit a few weeks ago,” you explain. You’re not sure what all the fuss is about. Taehyung said he would do these things. And he did. That was him upholding his end of the deal. This is you upholding yours. 

“If you say so…” Victoria says, not looking at all convinced. “I guess I’m just surprised that—that you two seem to be getting along so well. Maybe you being married isn’t going to be the worst thing after all.”

You stare back out into the crowd, scanning the top of people’s heads for Taehyung’s familiar locks. In the dim light of the club, you have a difficult time finding his, squinting your eyes slightly as you look around, but eventually you spot him, dancing happily with some old friends of his you recognize. He looks like he’s having a good time. And that makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, this might end up alright. 

“Yeah,” you say, though with the pounding of the bass and the alcohol already rushing through your veins, it doesn’t really feel like your voice belongs to you. You look back at Taehyung, knowing exactly where he is now, and you smile. Just a little. “I guess he’s not so bad.”

You never do get a chance to meet Taehyung’s friends that night. By the time he joins back up with you and Victoria he’s by himself, a little more drunk than when he left, and ready to go home. And for once, instead of fighting him, instead of insisting you stay an hour more just to make sure you’ve done all of your rounds, you let him take you home. 

Taehyung has been spending a lot more time at the penthouse lately. Perhaps his family’s business happenings are slow, or perhaps he’s actually starting to get more comfortable with inhabiting the same space as you, but he has definitely found himself quite the rhythm in that house of yours. He even comes down to the first floor rather regularly. 

When he’s home, Taehyung is a lot quieter than you thought he would be. Granted, you don’t exactly know what you were expecting in the first place, but it certainly wasn’t him ruminating in one of the home offices while the Beatles play softly on the stereo, nor was it him reading a book in French in one of those big old grandfather chairs in the living room. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably think he was still absent in that old way of his, ghostlike and silent, like he was occupying the space instead of truly living in it. 

But you do know better, and even though Taehyung is just as noiseless as he used to be, the house already feels a little bit fuller. 

Perhaps the reason you’ve become so keenly aware of his presence over the past few days is because of the notable fact that Taehyung has indeed held up his end of the deal, and no longer goes out with his friends in the evening. Or at all, for that matter. Which strikes you as rather odd, because he’s the epitome of a social butterfly, a thousand contacts in his phone and a whole group of friends he regularly spends time with. Maybe his parents told him to tone down the public appearances, too. And that’s understandable, but don’t they know Taehyung? Can’t they see how much he thrives on social interaction? It almost makes you feel… bad for him. 

To remedy this, you suggest he invite over his friends. Just for a few hours, you swear you won’t mind. 

“Seriously?” Taehyung looks positively shocked when you tell him he can, standing in the doorway of the office he seems to have designated as his own. 

“Yeah, why not?” You say with a carefree shrug. Besides, you’ve never met his friends anyway, and now seems as good a chance as any to introduce yourself. You are his wife, after all. “Unless your parents say you can’t. But it’s not a problem for me.”

“You… don’t mind if I have my friends over for a bit? Honest to God, we’re probably just going to play FIFA for three hours straight,” Taehyung says like it’s some sort of warning. Like the idea of him and his buddies from college are going to sit in the living room screaming at the television, leaving you alone to do literally anything else, is somehow bad. 

You laugh. “It’s fine, really. Call them. I’d actually quite like to meet them.”

Taehyung picks up his phone almost instantly, as if you’ll change your mind in the next five minutes so he better get them over soon, and already you can see the way his face is lighting up, the way his eyes crinkle as he chats to his friends and the way his lips curl upwards when they crack a joke back. Isn’t it obvious? He feeds off of the energy of others. Who are you to deny him such a simple pleasure?

As it turns out, Taehyung’s friends actually end up being quite nice anyway. 

He invites over three, because four people is apparently the perfect number for a hardcore game of FIFA on his Playstation, and they are all very handsome men you have never met before. You suppose like attracts like, after all. 

“You must be Y/N,” says the first one you see when you open the door to let them in. He doesn’t look a day over twenty-one—in fact, he could probably still pass as a college student—and has rather long dark hair that drapes over the sides of his face, covering the edges of his big doe eyes. “I’m Jungkook. This is Jimin and Hoseok.”

“Nice to meet you all,” you say, stepping aside so they can enter.

The shortest one, Jimin, grins in response, and Hoseok, behind him, gives you a wave. It’s refreshing enough as is, not having to exchange formal greetings and shake each other’s hands like you do with everyone else. Hoseok even gives you a bit of a nod, too.“You, too,” he says. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

Oh, have they, now? Interesting. 

“All good things, I hope,” you say awkwardly, forcing a small smile as Taehyung comes bounding into the room, ears perked up at the sound of his friends’ voices. 

“Definitely. Thanks for having us over. We didn’t wanna intrude on the sanctity of your new place,” Jungkook says, gesturing vaguely to the house as a whole. He’s got this excellent, genuine grin on his face, the kind that people who are just happy to be alive always wear. 

Already he’s said enough to charm the shit out of you. Who knew Taehyung’s friends could be so… friendly? “Please, you’re welcome any time. I was just thinking Taehyung was getting a little lonely.”

“There he is!” Jimin shouts excitedly when he spots Taehyung behind the two of you, looking a lot more casual than he normally does when he’s alone with you, having abandoned his usual silky button-down and wide-leg slacks for a loose shirt and some sweatpants. You didn’t even know he had those things in his closet. 

“Hey, everyone’s here!” Taehyung exclaims, just as happy. He squeezes past you to give the three of them a big hug, and it almost makes you feel like you’re intruding on something you shouldn’t be in. Even though this is literally your house. 

“Nice place you got here,” Hoseok comments, eyes drifting around the living room. “Very minimalist, I like it.”

“Sure hope you don’t spill anything on those nice leather couches of yours,” Jungkook says. 

“Yeah, unlike Kook, who has spilled tomato soup on every shirt he’s ever owned,” Jimin jokes, earning laughs from Taehyung and Hoseok and a punch from Jungkook. 

“Moved after we married,” Taehyung says simply, shrugging his shoulders. It’s an easy enough explanation for why it doesn’t look at all lived in. Here’s hoping none of them realize you sleep in different bedrooms. 

“Yeah, congratulations on that, man,” Hoseok says, giving Taehyung a celebratory nudge in the shoulder. “Who’d have thought, out of the four of us, Kim Taehyung would be the first one to settle down.”

The way Taehyung’s body tenses up at that comment does not go unnoticed by you. 

“Seriously, I would have never guessed,” Jimin adds on. “You’re showing us a new side of yourself, Tae. But I’m happy for you.”

Normally, you’d probably take offense at such blatant insinuations that your husband was a former playboy, especially from his equally noncommittal friends. But truthfully, it’s not like you were blind to Taehyung’s transgressions either. And what matters most is the fact that since it was announced publicly, you are the only woman he’s been seen with since your engagement. 

“Me too. You seem to really like her. I’m glad,” Jungkook pipes up, sending a smile your way. You definitely feel like you don’t belong in this conversation. “I think the two of you will be good for each other.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” Taehyung says with a nervous chuckle. His eyes quickly shoot your way, the two of you meeting gazes, your hesitant expressions matching. At least the two of you are on the same page. “Alright, alright, enough,” Jungkook says. “Who’s ready to get their ass kicked in FIFA?”

“You’re on, Jeon. But when I win, you owe me a five-star dinner,” Hoseok challenges. 

“Deal.”

Hoseok, Jimin, and Jungkook immediately crowd towards the couch, and you take that as your cue to leave. But before you can disappear down the hallway, you and Taehyung look awkwardly at each other, hands tied. It’s not like you can say anything to them. 

The truth is that, sometimes, it’s easy to forget that not everyone else knows that your marriage is just for business. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are still people out there that believe you marry for love. 

Isn’t it crazy to think that you used to be one of those people, too?

“Hey,” Taehyung says when you meet up at the bottom of the stairs again. 

“Hey,” you respond. 

“You look nice.”

You scoff a little to yourself. What, are you exchanging compliments now? “Thanks,” you say, looking him up and down. “You’re not so bad yourself.” Like he ever is. 

“I knew you had taste,” Taehyung teases, and it’s the sort of comment that would have earned him a melon ball to the face back when the two of you were teenagers at a debutante ball, but today only earns him a roll of your eyes as you join hands. You don’t have anything big tonight—just a small dinner to celebrate some sort of business accomplishment for your family, which means that all you have to manage is not ending up in some sort of food fight by the end of the night. 

“I didn’t have a choice, did I?” You retort easily as you get into the car. 

You don’t normally speak a lot on the way to events. Not that you ever did, but even as your relationship has slowly faded from pure hatred to attempts at compromise, you both seem to relish in being able to stare out of your respective backseat windows and into the city that surrounds you. Just out of curiosity, about halfway through the ride you look towards Taehyung to see what he’s up to, and find yourself genuinely surprised to see him leaning against the window with his eyes closed. Is he sleeping? A couple more minutes of gazing at him tells you he is, because his body has gone lax and his breathing has evened out, soft snores leaving his mouth. This ride can’t be longer than twenty minutes. Has he not been sleeping well? Up in that enormous second-floor bedroom of his?

He’s awake by the time the car parks outside the restaurant, this fancy name brand steak place that was chosen solely because the biggest beneficiaries of your family’s new business deal are two sixty-year-old men whose entire diet consists of beef and beer. No cameras tonight, just a small family affair. You and Taehyung hold hands as you enter the restaurant and are led to the private room in the back anyway. 

You and him are seated on the far end of the long, rectangular table, alongside all of the other adult children dragged along to celebrate something that has no effect on their lives. But it’s nice, because the space alone prevents your parents from actively speaking with you, and you and Taehyung can stay in your own little bubble, only chiming in for a toast when necessary. 

“What are you going to get?” He asks you, the two of you gazing at the menu. No matter how fancy this place is, all the options seem to boil down to steak, steak, steak, steak, and caesar salad. Classic. 

“Oh, so you actually care now?” You counter, an eyebrow raised in amusement. 

Taehyung laughs. “Aren’t I supposed to?”

You narrow your eyes at him suspiciously, wise to his usual shenanigans. It’s hard to tell if Taehyung really means what he says, or if it’s all for show. But perhaps he’s asking because he’s genuinely curious, since no one else seems to be paying you any attention. 

“The choices on this menu are simply overwhelming,” you say, motioning to the six options in front of you. 

“I know, I’m so torn,” Taehyung jokes, making you huff out a little giggle. At least he’s still got that same sense of humor. 

You both end up going for a pretty classic steak dinner, which neither of the two of you finish because the damn portions are the size of your head. Dinner is, in and of itself, absolutely mindless, all of your parents talking about things that don’t concern you whatsoever, leaving you and Taehyung to your own devices as you desperately try to make the night go by faster. 

At one point, you notice Taehyung’s foot brushing up against yours, the leather of his loafers brushing against the toe of your patent heel. Thinking someone of it, you push back, foot nudging his back to his own chair. It’s not a second later that Taehyung retaliates, the two of you dancing around each other underneath the table. 

If the two of you were any younger, or perhaps any less resigned to your fate, there’s no doubt in your mind you would be attempting to get Taehyung to fall off his chair in an effort to do the same to you. Footsie means war. But when the both of you know that, at the end of the day, you’ll still be going home to the same place, and waking up the next morning in the same house, it doesn’t feel like this is a battle.

It’s just life. 

Eventually, you meet Taehyung’s eyes with a hesitant smile, shoe pressed against his, stuck in ceasefire. And for once, he doesn’t have that devilish look in his eye, that smug little grin on his face that tells you that he’s going to make you regret whatever it is you just did. He’s just smiling back at you, all pink lips, having found real fun in the little things. 

And that makes you happy. 

The rest of the dinner is uneventful, which, in your book, is about as good as a dinner can go. You cheers to the future of your parents’ relationship with their newfound partners and say a quick goodbye to them both, hurrying out of there before they can ask you any questions on your relationship with your husband. But you don’t spend the car ride in silence on the way back. 

Instead, you say, “Have you been sleeping well?”

The question seems to catch Taehyung off guard. He was already getting in position to take a power nap on the ride home, head pressed up against the window of the car. 

“What?”

“Have you been sleeping well?” You repeat. “I noticed you fell asleep on the way here.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess,” he says, a hand scratching the nape of his neck. “I mean, it’s been hard adjusting, I suppose. But I’ll get over it.”

Hard adjusting? You’ve been together for nearly three months now. Three months worth of sleeping in the same penthouse bedroom, on the same soft-as-a-cloud mattress, underneath the same weighted blanket. And he’s still having trouble? 

“Oh. I mean, I just wanted to ask because you seem really tired lately.”

“I got a lot on my plate, what can I say,” Taehyung says with an empty smile, forcing a chuckle. “I’ll be fine, seriously. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Isn’t that my job?” You remind him. “I am your wife.”

Taehyung doesn’t say anything to that. He just lets out an audible breath, the kind you let out when you’re amused and have something snarky to say, but don’t have the energy to get the words off your tongue. 

The rest of the ride is pretty quiet. 

When you get home, you place your house keys in the bowl by the entrance and take off your shoes, just about ready to take a hot shower and collapse in bed, when Taehyung’s voice stops you. 

“Hey,” he begins, almost hesitantly. You look back at him inquisitively. “I was thinking, maybe, if you wanted, we could start sleeping in the same bed?”

You scrunch your nose up. Not in disgust, but in surprise. In bewilderment. What brought this on, all of a sudden?

“Really?” You ask, because you can’t help yourself. “I thought we liked the separate bed thing. Gives us privacy.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung says with a shrug, “but—I don’t know, it’s stupid. I just thought, you know, since we’re married and all. And it’s been three months.” He looks about two seconds away from backtracking, from shaking his head and going upstairs before you can say anything else. 

“Alright,” you say quickly, nodding your assent. Taehyung’s eyes widen when he hears the word, like he had completely expected you to shut him down the moment he made the suggestion. “If that’s what you want. We can try it.”

“You sure?” He asks, that same hesitant smile from earlier lacing his features. It’s strange. He almost looks… sweet. Nervous. 

You grin back at him. “Yeah, I am.”

Taehyung lets you grab some of your toiletries and your pajamas from your designated bedroom before you head up the stairs together, towards the bedroom he’s claimed for himself. Funnily enough, this is the first time you’ve been in his room. Three months of living together and you haven’t dared step foot on the second floor. 

You don’t know what you were expecting when he opens the door to let you inside. Maybe a room that screamed ‘Taehyung’ a little more than this one does. One that looks like an actual human has been living here. But other than one of his classic silk button-downs draped over a chair, there’s not a shred of evidence someone has actually been sleeping here. You could honestly be fooled rather easily that the shirt, too, is just decoration. 

“You can pick a side,” Taehyung says casually. He grabs his own sleepwear—an old t-shirt and some sweats—and heads into the bathroom to change. 

You wonder why Taehyung has had such a difficult time adjusting. This room is about as lavish as a bedroom can get. And yet. 

Sitting down on the left side of the bed, you begin to remove your own clothes, unzipping tonight’s dress and stepping quickly into your pajamas, hurrying to make sure Taehyung doesn’t catch you half-naked. How funny is that, you think to yourself. You’ve been married for three months and you still can’t bear the thought of Taehyung seeing you without a shirt on. 

When Taehyung comes out of the bathroom, hair all messy and clothes all casual, he grins lazily to himself. “I sleep on the right anyway,” he comments mindlessly. 

Within twenty minutes the both of you are about as ready to pass out as you have ever been, the only lights still on the ones on your respective nightstands. 

“Goodnight,” Taehyung says, reaching an arm over to switch his off. 

“Goodnight,” you tell him, turning off yours as well. And all of a sudden, the room is shrouded in darkness. 

You fall asleep instantly. 

When Taehyung wakes up the next morning, the first thing he says to you is that he hasn’t slept that well in ages. 

“You slept together?” Victoria shrieks, so loud you actually have to move your phone away from your ear as you punch in the code inside the elevator for access to your floor. 

“We did not sleep together,” you emphasize. “Okay, well, we sleep together, as in, in the same bed. But we are fully clothed. And not the slightest bit interested in doing anything other than sleeping.”

“I thought you said you liked having your own space,” Victoria points out. “When was the first time you—uh…” she pauses to find the right words, “shared a bed?”

“A couple weeks ago. It’s really not so bad, I don’t know why you’re so hung up over it,” you say, lips pursed. You squeeze the phone between the side of your head and your shoulder, hands full of shopping bags, the string of the handles burning your skin. Maybe you should look into getting a personal shopper. 

“I’m hung up over it because, for the longest time, you have sworn off Kim Taehyung. Called him dead to you. Insulted him every chance you get.” 

You scoff. You don’t need reminding of how much you hated him, how much you can’t believe you have to spend the rest of your life with him. “It’s different now. We’re married. And he said he wasn’t sleeping well. I felt bad.”

“He wasn’t?”

“Enough about him,” you say, shutting her up. You don’t feel like talking about him with Victoria anymore. “Word through the grapevine says that your parents are actually thinking of letting you start your own company?”

It’s enough to distract Victoria. For the rest of the ride in the elevator, she talks animatedly about a new streaming service her parents are considering letting her launch, under their parent business, of course, but it’s her own company nonetheless. And you’re proud of her. Proud she could do something your parents would never dream of letting you do. Proud she could make that happen. 

You push open the front door with the side of your hip after entering in the security code, phone still snug between your ear and your shoulder, when you hear Taehyung call out your name. 

He comes into view from the kitchen, which surprises you because you have, on multiple occasions, made fun of how much of a disaster chef he is, especially because he’s admitted to you he’s not a very good cook. 

“I made brownies,” he says, holding out a plate of the chocolate treats in front of you. Instinct has you dropping your bags on the floor by your feet and reaching out, but you eye him first, suspicious. 

“I have to go,” you tell Victoria, hanging up before she even gets a chance to object to your sudden departure. “You made these?”

“Yes, I did,” Taehyung says, rather proud. 

“And the kitchen is… still standing?” You ask, skeptical. 

Taehyung frowns at you, clearly unimpressed. “How bad of a chef do you think I am?”

“Pretty bad,” you admit with a shrug. 

Taehyung pouts sadly to himself for a moment. “These are good, I swear. Nothing weird in them like vegetables or anything either. I used a box mix.”

“No wonder they look so nice,” you comment snidely, hesitant hand reaching out to grab one. They feel like brownies. So that’s good. 

“Hey, I was the one who had to crack the eggs and shit. Three eggs! And not one eggshell in the bowl!” Taehyung says, clearly very pleased with himself. 

You laugh at his enthusiasm, taking a bite. It’s good. And exactly what you needed after a long day of shopping. “I’m proud of you. They taste good.”

“I knew you wouldn’t doubt me.” Taehyung grins.

“They’re really good, actually,” You amend, genuinely surprised. And the best part is that you can count at least ten brownies left on that plate, which means that you get at least five more. Which, if you had any less self-restraint, you would probably eat all at once within the day. 

“I’m glad you like them. They’re all for us, you know. No one else to share them with,” he says.

“Honestly, I’m probably going to finish them by tonight. You’ll have to make more tomorrow,” you say sheepishly. 

“We can make some together,” Taehyung suggests. 

“I’m looking forward to it,” you respond. The words come off your mouth easily, tumbling from your lips without you having to think about it. You aren’t saying them because you have to. You’re saying them because you want to. Because baking with Taehyung doesn’t actually sound too bad. Especially if it means more brownies. 

“You’ve, uh, you’ve got something,” Taehyung says, gesturing vaguely to the side of his lip. 

“Oh, I do? Yikes,” you say, a little embarrassed. Your hand comes up to wipe at the left side of your mouth. “Is it gone?”

“Wait, here, let me do it,” Taehyung says, reaching out towards you. He presses his palm against the side of your face, cradling your cheek and jaw in his enormous hands, and all at once it feels like your skin is on fire. 

Your body freezes up at the touch, at the way his thumb swipes at the corner of your mouth, right against your lips, wiping away nothing but a goddamn brownie crumb. You look at him, look right at him, how can you look anywhere else when he’s right in front of you like this, and it feels like you are caught in his gaze, a rain droplet trapped on a web, a bee stuck in its own honey. His big, brown eyes sparkle from the ceiling lights, a chocolate sky that mirrors the food he just made for you. He looks at you and his eyes are so soft, so open, so happy to be looking right back at you. God. 

“There,” he says, a moment too late. 

“Thanks,” you stammer out, speechless otherwise. 

You both stand there, looking at each other, wordless expressions drawn all over your faces, no idea what to do next. 

After a while, Taehyung breaks the silence. “Do you wanna order takeout tonight?”

“Okay,” you nod, still a little breathless. Taehyung smiles before retreating back to the kitchen, leaving you standing in the entranceway, shopping bags abandoned by your side. 

You look over to where he’s vanished. There’s a part of you that wishes he hadn’t left. A part of you that makes you want to see him again. 

Phone calls from your mother are never good. The last time she called… well, you know how that went. So when you see her contact information light up your home screen, it’s only instinct that you feel your heart rate spike. 

“Hello?” The voice that comes out doesn’t even sound like yours. 

There’s no good way to put what comes next. Your grandmother has died. Heart attack. The paramedics got there too late. It was over before it even started. 

For a moment, for a split second, it feels like everything is frozen. Like the world has come to standstill. Your mother’s voice echoes in your ears, suspended in time, the words turning into stone as they crash onto the floor. And when they do, it is as if everything comes back to life. 

Truth be told, you don’t know how long you stay there, sitting on the edge of the left side of the bed, your phone resting lifelessly in the palm of your hand. It feels at once like an eternity and only a second in time. You spoke to your grandmother two days ago. You had promised that you and Taehyung would visit her soon. How can this be happening?

Your phone buzzes relentlessly in your hands, condolences pouring in from every person in your contacts, sorry’s and heart emoticons and If you need anything, I’m always here’s filling up your screen. There’s a part of you that vaguely registers your mother, alongside some of the other members of your family, trying to call you. But nothing can seem to shake you. 

Until—

“Y/N? You still up here?”

You hear Taehyung before you see him. Hear his voice, hear his footsteps, hear the door creak open as he enters your bedroom. Slowly, almost sluggishly, you twist around to look at him, the mere act knocking the wind out of you. Or maybe you were already breathless. 

“Hey, you alright?” Taehyung knows instantly that something is wrong. 

“My grandmother died.” The words sit heavy on your tongue. There’s no point in not telling him. He’ll find out soon enough. He’s… he’s family, isn’t he?

“What?” Taehyung freezes in place. “I—I’m so sorry to hear that, Y/N. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you say, voice weak but steady. You blink up at him, once, twice, three times, and then suddenly you feel tears running down your cheeks. 

Taehyung doesn’t say anything else. He rushes to your side and sits himself down on the bed next to you, arms wrapping around your body. And you don’t think about the fact that it’s him, about the fact that this is the closest the two of you have ever been. You just let yourself be engulfed in his frame, let yourself be enveloped in his hold as the tears stream down your skin, little hiccups jolting your throat. You close your eyes and press yourself into his arms, head resting against his chest, and wish so desperately that so many things about your life were just a little bit different. 

It must be at least five minutes before either one of you dares to move. Your phone begins to rattle incessantly, that familiar and insistent buzz that the both of you are hard-pressed to ignore. 

“I think you should answer that,” Taehyung whispers into your skin, lips right by your forehead. 

“Yeah,” you sniffle, sitting up next to him and wiping the remnants of wetness by your eyes. Well, Taehyung’s seen you cry. There’s no going back now. “You’re probably right.” You look down at the phone. It’s your father. 

“I’ll be downstairs, okay? Unless you want me to stay,” he offers, looking hesitant. 

You shake your head. “No, it’s—it’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

“Call me if you need me,” he makes you give him a nod of understanding before he finally gets up, hands slowly removing themselves from your skin, leaving little sparks in their wake. Remnants of warmth. Suddenly, you feel much colder. Hardly a minute later he’s out of the room, and you can hear his distant footsteps as they make their way down the stairs. 

Sighing, blinking, and swallowing all at once, you pick up. 

The call passes by in a blur. Your father says the will will take at least half a year to be executed, but that the funeral is already being planned. Your grandmother had hoped you would eulogize her. You agree, but you have no idea what you will say. He says Taehyung is invited but does not need to come if he cannot make it. He says a lot of other things too, about your mother, about your cousins, about your aunts and uncles and your poor grandfather, who passed five years ago, but you can’t even remember them moments after he’s said them. 

When he hangs up, the tears on your cheeks have dried, patches of them left along your skin. You head to the bathroom, getting off your bed for the first time that day, and try to wash away everything that has stained the morning. A part of you doesn’t even want to bother, just wants to slug downstairs and eat as much sugary cereal as you can get your hands on, but you can’t go down there looking like this. Looking so helpless. 

By the time you reach the kitchen, Taehyung is already standing there, on the opposite side of the counter island, a big stack of pancakes in front of him. They look mouth-watering. 

“Hey,” he says softly. “Thought you might want something to cheer you up.”

“Did you make these?” You ask, a little endeared. That was thoughtful of him. 

“Yeah. They’re still warm,” Taehyung says. He holds out a fork. 

You grin. 

The funeral is a week later. It sucks in every way that something can suck. But not in the same way your wedding sucked, or even the announcement of your engagement. It sucks because it’s a funeral, because you have to stare down your grandmother’s casket when a part of you still doesn’t even believe that she’s gone. Because everyone there is so sad, so melancholy, dressed in all black and looking down at their feet. Because everyone is so sorry for you, so sorry for your loss, everyone has nothing but condolences to offer you. What will those do? They won’t bring her back. They won’t change things. They won’t make you feel even the slightest bit better. 

Taehyung comes. He comes because he offers, and because you want him to. You want someone whose hand to hold. Want someone to smile at you when you’re speaking in front of your entire extended family and trying not to cry. You want someone who is familiar, and warm, and there for you. 

And most of all, you want someone who won’t keep the conversation going when you get home. 

“Do you wanna order Chinese?” He asks, coming into the living room, where you have been sulking on the couch ever since you stepped foot inside the door. 

“That sounds nice,” you force out. 

“Okay. Your usual?”

“Yes, please.” You don’t bother asking how Taehyung already remembers what you like to order when you’ve only gotten Chinese twice in the last three months. 

“I’ll call them.” He disappears off into the kitchen. 

What you do appreciate about Taehyung is how he has defaulted to food as a comfort measure, and how the thought alone genuinely brightens you up a little bit. You don’t know each other very well—still, after three months, you couldn’t even say his favorite color—but he is doing his best, and he is trying his hardest. In some ways, you were unlucky to marry him. To marry someone you didn’t love. To be forced into a union you had no say in, with someone you had so much antagonistic history with. 

But in some ways, your luck has changed. In some ways, marrying him was perhaps the best thing that could happen to you. Taehyung is snarky, a little devilish, and absolutely full of himself, but he is not thoughtless. He is not heartless. He has proven that he is willing to put in the work. That he can grow to care. To change. To compromise. And isn’t that the luckiest thing you could have gotten?

“I’m sure you’re probably sick of hearing people tell you they’re sorry for your loss.”

His voice breaks your reverie, carrying throughout the wide open space of your living room. He’s grinning honestly where he stands, slowly making his way over to you. 

“Kind of, yeah,” you admit. “It’s not going to bring her back. Most of those people probably don’t even mean it.”

“Don’t say that,” Taehyung says, sitting down next to you. “I’m sure they do.”

You look at him skeptically. 

“I mean, they’re sorry for your loss because that loss is causing you pain. And that sucks,” Taehyung explains, albeit a little less eloquently than you thought he would. “I know it sucks for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like seeing you sad,” Taehyung says honestly, shrugging to himself. 

You scoff a little to yourself. “I would have thought my downfall would be the exact thing the great Kim Taehyung would wish for himself.”

“Maybe a couple of years ago.”

You narrow your eyes. 

“Okay, maybe even a few months ago,” Taehyung admits with a laugh, making you smile, ever so slightly. “But it’s different now. I like it when you’re happy. When you’re snarky and funny and a little evil. Seeing you like this… I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

“That’s called empathy,” you point out. 

“I’m trying to tell you that seeing you sad makes me sad, stop being a smartass,” Taehyung chides, and that really makes you grin. “There. There’s that smile I was looking for.”

“You’re so annoying,” you say, even though there’s no malice behind it. You give him a little push, palms of your hand pressing lightly against his shoulder as you roll your eyes. 

“Only for you,” he promises. He manages to grab a hold of your wrist as your hand meets his torso, pulling you into him as he wraps an arm around your torso. You gasp a little at the sensation, head falling against his body, fitting snugly in the crook of his neck. He gives your side a comforting rub. “I’m sorry today was so shitty.”

“It was,” you agree. “But Chinese food will make it a little bit better.”

Taehyung looks positively scandalized. “What? ‘Chinese food will make it better’? But not your loving, doting husband?” 

You pretend to think for a little bit, tilting your head up to the sky as you tap your chin with your finger. “Okay. Maybe that, too,” you cave after a bit of waiting, just to be extra bothersome. 

“That’s what I thought,” Taehyung says proudly, looking down at you, eyes sparkling. You can feel his grip tighten as he presses you against his body, letting you rest your head on his side. It feels like the longest hug ever, like you’re wrapped up in a weighted blanket. Only it’s not a blanket. It’s Taehyung. It’s your husband. 

He’s your husband.

“Tomorrow will be better,” he says, and it sounds a lot like a promise. 

You nod against him, letting your eyes drift shut. Things are pretty awful right now. Your grandmother’s dead. The funeral was the saddest family event you have ever attended. You have no idea what’s supposed to happen next. 

But he’s right. He seems to be right a lot these days, actually. 

Tomorrow will be better.

Taehyung lets you sleep in for the next few days. Next several days, actually. Every time you wake up it’s close to noon and your husband is nowhere to be seen, the right side of the bed cold to the touch. It’s nothing to be worried about, though, because you can still see the noticeable dip in the bed from where he lies upon it, sinking his weight into the mattress. Taehyung’s an early bird and you’ve been having fitful nights ever since your grandmother passed. 

Today, you pull yourself out from underneath the covers around noon, sluggish and still tired, squinting as the near-afternoon light streams through the enormous windows of the bedroom. Taehyung must have thought to keep the curtains open today. 

You pull on the first casual clothes you see in your shared closet, some wide-leg sweatpants and a drapey t-shirt, and trudge downstairs like a raccoon to a trash can, hoping to fish through the kitchen cabinets to find something to eat. 

Taehyung is, as far as you can tell, nowhere to be seen. You can’t seem to hear him anywhere, and a part of you wonders where he’s at when you stumble upon the note left on the granite counter. 

Had a meeting downtown, be back around 1! There should be smoked salmon and some cream cheese and bagels in the fridge. 

Taehyung.

You chuckle to yourself as you read his flowy handwriting, amused that he thought to let you know of, of all things, the available breakfast foods in the kitchen. You check the clock. It’s nearly noon. Which means you have just over an hour of the house all to yourself. 

Having the house to yourself for five minutes is infrequent enough as it is, let alone for a whole hour. So often is Taehyung around, somewhere, holing himself up in one of the dozens of rooms or mindlessly wandering down the hallways. And for how much Taehyung is present, the funny part is that you still have no idea what he gets up to most of the time. Despite your voluntary abandoning of the separate bedroom rule, the two of you are still firm proponents of the sanctity of your personal spaces. There are rooms in the penthouse Taehyung has never been in, rooms filled with your clothes and makeup and accessories for when stylists come over before an event. A sewing room that you had specifically asked your parents for, because a part of you never let go of that childhood dream of being a fashion designer. 

And there are rooms in the penthouse that you have never been in. Rooms with dark wooden doors that have always been kept closed, that you have never stepped foot in. It’s not that you aren’t curious as to what Taehyung gets up to. He could have a goddamn evil lair in one of those rooms and you would be none the wiser. But you don’t go, because he doesn’t go into your rooms. Because you two, despite all the vows you have broken, promised each other you wouldn’t.

An hour to yourself is almost a good enough excuse for you to head back up to the bedroom and take a nap. Not that you don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis, or that you even had a fitful night last night—hell, you woke up near noon today and already you want to go back to sleep—but what else is there to do when he’s not around? What new freedoms have suddenly been given to you?

You head back upstairs, much less groggy after that delicious bagel of yours, when you catch a whiff of what smells like wet paint coming from down the hallway. It’s potent and immediately invades your senses, prompting you to wonder if that has always been there, or just magically appeared. Maybe you were so sleepy earlier, you didn’t notice it. 

Well, you notice it now. Unable to help yourself, you start to wander down the hallway, towards the source of the smell. God, it stinks. It takes you back to those days in middle school, when you would spray paint projects inside a tiny little classroom, have to step outside for fifteen minutes while you cracked the windows and aired it out. It gets stronger the further down the corridor you go, like a thick, smelly cloud stationed firmly within the walls of the penthouse. And then you realize where it’s coming from. 

It’s an art studio. 

A very messy art studio, you amend to yourself, as you peek inside. The door is wide open, and all of the windows are popped too, but the extra air circulation doesn’t seem to have made a dent in the scent. And all over the floor, the walls, and the tables are canvases covered in paint, denim jackets and pants and shirts with these wide, unafraid brushstrokes. Open cans of spray paint lie discarded on the hardwood floor stained with splotches of red, yellow, and green. 

Is this what Taehyung does in his free time? Is this where he goes, this bright, sunny room at the end of the second floor hallway? Is this what he is making?

You look down in awe at the clothes resting on the floor, splayed out to maximize dry time. Abstract faces, landscapes, and words are painted onto the backs of jackets, the fronts of old white t-shirts. What hasn’t made it onto the clothes has been put on canvases instead, blurs of color mixed together in this purposeful pattern, confidence emanating from every stroke, every dot. It’s not art in the way that the gorgeous landscapes of Monet, the picture-perfect portraits of Kahlo, the messy, unplanned splatters of Pollock are. It’s art in a different way. In a Taehyung way. 

Who knew he loved it so much? 

You almost feel like an invader encroaching on his territory when you lean down to start cleaning up some of the mess, throwing out empty spray-paint cans and tossing out grey paint water. You don’t dare touch any of the work, don’t dare try to move it. You do what you can, washing out the brushes resting in the water and cleaning up the wet splotches of paint on the hardwood. Over time, the thick scent of still-wet paint slowly fades, disappearing out the window as the fresh afternoon air seeps in. And you stand there, in a room full of art, in a room full of pieces that Taehyung has undoubtedly poured his heart into creating, and you smile to yourself. 

That’s how Taehyung finds you ten minutes later, peering into the room after declaring that his meeting had ended early. 

“Thought I’d find you in here,” Taehyung says with a grin as you jump at the sound of his voice, eyes widen when you turn around to see him standing by the door. 

“Oh, hey,” you say sheepishly. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Maybe because this is the farthest room in the house from the front door,” Taehyung teases lightly, coming up behind you. “I see you found my studio.”

“I know I’m not allowed in here,” you admit. 

Taehyung scoffs. “Who says?”

“Didn’t we both agree on that?”

He shrugs. “Sort of. I think we just reached an unspoken understanding we wouldn’t invade each other’s personal space. But it was not in the fine print, no.”

“The fine print of what?”

“That deal we made.”

Right. That deal you made, four months ago, That deal, where the two of you agreed to pretend to be in love with each other during public appearances so you wouldn’t get burned at the stake by your families. Where the two of you agreed not to interact with each other otherwise because you hated each other so much. 

“Oh, yeah,” you say distantly, feeling naive for already forgetting about it. It doesn’t seem to have slipped Taehyung’s mind whatsoever. 

“It’s okay, I don’t mind that you’re up here,” Taehyung says, interrupting that piercing little voice in the back of your head that is asking you why on earth you forgot about that deal in the first place.

“Yeah, I—” You scratch at the nape of your neck, trying to find the words to say. “It just smelled like paint, so I wanted to see what you get up too. And it’s this, apparently.” You motion vaguely to the entire room.

“You sound… surprised,” Taehyung muses correctly. 

“I guess I am,” you surmise. “I’m rather impressed, too, actually.”

“Really?” It’s Taehyung’s turn to sound surprised. 

“Yeah,” you tell him honestly, looking into his eyes. “I—you know, I just came in here because the entire hallway smelled like wet paint and I wanted to know why. But I didn’t know you loved art so much.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Taehyung points out. 

You suppose that’s true. You don’t know his favorite color. His favorite song. His favorite book. For a long time, you didn’t know what he got up to on his side of the penthouse. You don’t know how he met his friends. What he studied in university. Who he has loved in the past. Who he loves now. You don’t know why he does the things he does, and why he doesn’t do the things he doesn’t do. 

But you do know his Chinese takeout order. 

And you do know his hobbies. Well, one of them, at least. 

Who’s to say you can’t learn more?

“Well,” you start with a smile. “I’m your wife, aren’t I? Shouldn’t I begin to learn?”

Taehyung picks up what you’re putting down instantly, grinning in response. “Only if you’ll tell me things about you, too,” he requisitions. 

“I will,” you promise. It’s the easiest one you’ve ever had to make. 

His face is light, bright, bathed in the rays of the afternoon sun. His eyes shimmer as they meet yours, golden flecks more pronounced like this, in this gorgeous, open space, daylight streaming through the windows. Looking at him makes you feel like you are surrounded by warmth, makes you feel like the sun is opening its arms out to you. He has always been gorgeous. Beautiful. But looking at him like this, standing in the middle of a room filled with all the things he loves, a yellow halo surrounding him—he is ethereal. 

Taehyung smiles. “Then I will, too.”

The hand-holding comes naturally tonight.

The funny thing is, actually, you don’t need to hold hands at this gathering. It’s not an event. Or a public appearance. It’s not even a business dinner. It’s your aunt’s sixtieth birthday party, reserved exclusively for family. Isn’t that strange? That Taehyung is, technically, family now?

For so long you had vowed to stay as far away from him as possible. Vowed to stick it to him whenever and wherever you could, do anything you could to get on his nerves, rile him up. Vowed that when you, one day, took over your family affairs, you would never, ever invite him. Make it known that he wasn’t to be a part of your life. And yet, here you are. Clinging to him despite being well-acquainted with—loved by, even—every other person in the room. Holding his hand like a goddamn lifeline. 

To be fair, Taehyung doesn’t look a hair out of place here. Dressed relatively casually, a smart sweater with a collared shirt underneath it, he smiles warmly at all of your relatives and presents your aunt with a beautiful and very expensive scarf the two of you had commissioned from a designer in Italy, which she absolutely loves. She pinches his cheek and proceeds to wear it for the rest of the night. 

“Damn,” you murmur to yourself as you wander around your aunt’s house, hand wrapped around his arm. “This place hasn’t changed a bit.”

“When was the last time you were here?” Taehyung asks. 

The question actually makes you think for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe five years ago? Last couple of birthdays I was overseas or in school. Had to send her a card.”

“Bet your parents were real pleased with that,” he jokes, making you both laugh. At least you two will always be able to share your experiences of domineering and influential parents with each other. 

“Oh, I’m sure. Just as pleased as they were when they realized how much we hated each other.” You expect that little jest to elicit a laugh out of Taehyung as well, but he just smiles tightly, huffing out a breath of acknowledgement. 

“Eh, it’s not like that now, is it?” He offers up. 

“I suppose not,” you muse, sitting down together on her ancient grandma couch in the living room. No matter how rich your family gets, she’ll never get rid of this thing, that’s for sure. 

One thing you’ve picked up over time is that, for every second Taehyung spends basking in the spotlight, he spends an equal amount of time lingering by the wall, watching the rest of the world turn without him. He’s an observer. He is one by nature, feeling an irresistible pull to understand humans in a way only artists could ever do. He sits down next to you and watches your family in an environment where they can relax, where they can feel comfortable and be casual with one another. 

Very seldom have you ever brought friends to events like these. Small family affairs. But Taehyung isn’t a friend, is he? No, he’s your husband. He belongs here just as much as you do. 

“My family seems to really like you,” you point out. Not that anybody has ever harbored as much disdain for him as you. Your parents called him respectable and polite when they told you you were to be wed. Your grandmother had said he was a dashing young man. He doesn’t exactly have to reach far to be loved around here. 

“That’s my job, isn’t it?” He replies snidely. 

“Oh, just take the compliment,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Taehyung always has to be so difficult. “I’m surprised you aren’t nervous as hell. Last boyfriend I brought to meet my parents was shaking in his Louis Vuitton shoes.”

“Last boyfriend, huh?” Taehyung’s interest has been sufficiently piqued. “And, uh, how many of those have you had?”

You narrow your eyes at him suspiciously, smile twitching on your lips. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr. Heartbreaker.” Pretty rich of Taehyung to be asking you such a question when he’s probably had more girlfriends than you can count on both hands. “Not as many as you’ve had girlfriends, that’s for sure.”

“Guess I’m a lot different than all those trashy guys you’ve dated, aren’t I?” He asks, an eyebrow raised as he looks at you. 

“You are?”

Taehyung nods assertively. “Well, yeah. First of all, I’m your husband. Second of all, your parents love me. Third of all, you love me, too.”

You scoff. “Don’t humble yourself. You don’t know me that well.”

“Speaking of which,” Taehyung says, eyes wide as he points to you knowingly, “how about you tell me a little fact about yourself? It’s my job to learn about you, isn’t it?”

“That is my line, watch it,” you sneer, pointing back at him. You wrack your brain for a fact that you can tell him, something more exciting than your favorite color but less weird than one of those terrible icebreaker exercises you had to do in college seminars. Something that has pertinence to who you are. Who you’ve become. “Alright. I used to want to be a fashion designer when I was little.”

Now that catches Taehyung off guard. “Really?” He says, genuinely intrigued. 

You shrug. “Yeah. I learned to sew when I was really little. Been tailoring and hemming clothes all my life. But I always wanted to design my own stuff.”

“Is that what’s in your room?” Taehyung asks. “A sewing machine?”

“Bingo.”

“Wow,” Taehyung says. “I didn’t know that.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of this exercise?” You say, just to be smart. 

Taehyung shakes his head, eyes rolling. 

“What about you?” You ask. You can’t imagine what he’ll say. Astronaut. Veterinarian. Or, if he really wants to surprise you, a business executive. 

“A museum curator.”

It is an answer that simultaneously surprises and doesn’t surprise you at all. 

“Fitting,” you muse. “You could have put your own art on display.”

“Pretty sure that’s, like, super unethical,” Taehyung reminds you. 

“So? You’re rich. Start your own museum. Put your own art on display. Live your dream,” you amend. “It shouldn’t be holed up in that studio of yours forever. It deserves to be seen.”

Taehyung smiles at you. “You think so?”

You nod. “Of course. You create beautiful things, Tae.” It’s the first time you’ve ever called him that. And that is not lost on Taehyung, either.

“Thank you,” he says softly, blinking as he looks at you. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to.

Later that night, when everyone’s gotten a few drinks into their systems and Bruce Springsteen is playing low on the stereo, Taehyung disappears off towards the bathroom, no doubt because of the excellent soup that was served that night. All by your lonesome, you feel a little stranded, surrounded by your old relatives dancing on the hardwood floor of the dining room, your other cousins too young to actually spend time with. 

In the commotion, your mother comes up to you, swirling a rather large glass of red wine in her hand. 

“Where’s Taehyung?” She asks. 

“Bathroom.”

“No wonder you were alone,” she says with a hearty laugh. “The two of you have been glued to each other’s sides all evening.”

“He’s my husband,” you offer as an explanation. 

“I know, I know,” she says, shaking you off with a smile. Your mother is a lot more casual once she’s had her fill of wine, no doubt her favorite, Bordeaux. A lot more loving, too. “You really made your grandmother proud, you know? She loved you so much.”

“I know,” you say, trying not to get choked up at the mere mention of your grandmother. 

“She was so happy to see you with Taehyung. It made her feel safe that you would be taken care of,” she continues on, barely paying you and your swimming eyes any attention. “She would be so happy to see you with him now, too. How much you love her.”

“I miss her,” you hiccup out, trying to compose yourself. Nothing kills a birthday party like some sad sack crying over her deceased grandmother. 

“I know, darling,” your mother says, calling you by a nickname she has hardly used ever since you turned eighteen. She squeezes you tightly, a small hug of comfort. “I miss her, too.”

Someone calls your mother’s name, distracting her as she wanders off to your uncle, who is asking what the best way to cut the three-tiered cake on the dining room table is. She bids you a goodbye before disappearing towards the kitchen, no doubt ready to make the cutting of the cake an affair all on its own. 

Taehyung comes back soon after, spotting you instantly as you stand around in the living room. 

“Hey,” he says, noticing the wet shimmer of your eyes. “You alright?”

You nod, feeling better already now that he has returned. Now that he is by your side. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I hope those tears aren’t because you missed me,” he says, wiping away a stray one that has escaped from your eyes. You close them as his thumb brushes against your upper cheek, your eyelashes, opening them only when you’ve felt his touch vanish from your skin, leaving little sparks in their wake. 

“No,” you say. But the night makes you honest, and a couple of drinks, even more so. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

Taehyung smiles. “Me, too.”

For all those days you have spent together, never have you and Taehyung had a night in. Which isn’t necessarily completely surprising, considering how many evening events the two of you have had obligations to attend, considering your differing work schedules and meeting times. Considering that, for a very long time, the two of you had no desire to spend any time with each other at all. 

But tonight, there is nothing on your calendar. No galas, no dinners, no meetings, no schedules. There is only Taehyung, who has spent the entire afternoon up in his studio, inhaling spray paint fumes and doing what he loves. And there is only you, who has spent the entire afternoon wondering what the hell you’re going to do tonight when there is nothing else planned. 

You knock on the door to his studio, catching him right as he’s finishing up another piece. This one is a single flower, painted in broad, confident strokes, bright green and red and sunflower yellow decorating the canvas. 

“Hey, what’s up?” He asks, turning around to face you. 

“Wanna order takeout tonight?” You suggest. 

Taehyung grins. 

Thirty minutes and your favorite Chinese food later, you and Taehyung have settled onto the couch, trays of dumplings and noodles and rice in front of you, an unfunny movie playing in the background. 

You can’t remember the last time the two of you sat on this couch together. Maybe that night you had made the deal? Perhaps not even then. It wouldn’t at all surprise you if you found out that this was the very first time you and Taehyung have sat together on your couch, in your living room, in your house. So often is it occupied by others—Victoria, who sometimes comes over to ooh and ahh at your closet, Jimin, Jungkook, and Hoseok, who sit on this couch and play FIFA like it’s their job, your mother, when she wants to make herself at home in a place that doesn’t belong to her—but never you. Never you and him. 

“This is kinda nice, isn’t it?” You ask, swallowing a bite of dumpling. 

“Chinese food is always nice,” Taehyung responds over a mouthful of cold noodles. 

“Not that,” you say with a sigh, “this. Sitting together. Watching this shitty movie.”

“It’s not that shitty,” Taehyung tries to reason. On screen, the main character is getting pied in the face during some weird college fundraiser. “Okay, it’s a little shitty. But it’s good background noise, right?”

You nod halfheartedly. “I guess.” Silence. You take another bite of your dumpling, not really sure how to continue the conversation. “We don’t really get to do this a lot, you know? Sit and eat dinner and watch a movie together. Like a date.”

“We’re on a date now, are we?” Taehyung muses, eyeing you snarkily. 

“Isn’t that what this is?” You retort. 

He shrugs. “I suppose it is.”

“Tell me another fact about you,” you request, looking over to him where he sits on the opposite side of the couch. 

“About what?”

“Anything.”

Taehyung pauses, ponders for a moment. But he could never say anything wrong. Not when there is still so much you don’t know about him. Still so much you want to learn, so much you want to commit to memory. For so long you have stared at the planes of his face, the curve of his nose, the twinkle in those dark brown eyes. Those you will always remember. But what about who he is? What he loves? Those are things you still don’t know. 

“The very first time I met you,” Taehyung begins, “I asked Jimin what your name was.”

“When was that?” You ask. Despite you being someone who has spent the better part of the last several years vowing never to give Taehyung the time of day, you sure don’t remember when it all started. 

“That debutante ball,” Taehyung remembers fondly, “when we were fifteen. I asked Jimin what your name was because I wanted to ask you to dance.”

“Shut up, no you didn’t,” you say with a scoff. 

“It’s true. You were standing there in that poofy white dress and I wanted to ask you to dance,” Taehyung points out. The fact that he even remembers what you were wearing is shocking. 

Who knew. Who knew, back then, that you would one day grow up to marry him. 

“And what did I say?” You demand more. 

Taehyung laughs at the memory. “I came up to you, and I asked you if you wanted to dance, and you said, and I quote, ‘Who are you?’”

“No,” you say, aghast at your own behavior. Were those really the first words you ever said to KIm Taehyung?

“You did. Don’t you remember?”

You think back. Think back to every year you have ever known Taehyung, every year you have spent scowling at him from across ballroom floors, making some snide remark as you pass by each other in the hallway. Every year you have spent cursing his existence, willing him away from you so he could bother someone else. Every year you have listened to rumor after rumor of girlfriend after girlfriend. You think back and somewhere, somewhere in there, in those dusty corners of your brain and cobwebbed boxes of your heart, is that first memory of Taehyung, too. 

Of him standing there in some generic black suit, black hair swept over his forehead, shoes too big. Of him coming up to you, trying to be as suave as a fifteen year old could be. Of you saying to him, instead of a hello, or even a what’s your name, “who are you?” 

Of him saying—

“And you said, ‘your dream come true’.” Like a dam bursting open, the memories flood back to you all at once. “I remember that.”

Taehyung laughs out loud at the thought of him saying something so cheesy. “Unsurprisingly, you didn’t want to dance with me.”

“You were so—” you begin, but you don’t have the words. Don’t have the words to express how you felt about him that night. Don’t have the words to express how you feel about him now. Thinking about this, talking about it, it is a bridge. A bridge between what was then and what is now. A bridge between who Taehyung was and who you were and who Taehyung is and who you are. “—so unthinkable. I couldn’t believe you had come up to me and said that. I couldn’t believe you had the audacity. But something about that night made me remember you. Made me remember your name.”

“You thought about me after that?” Taehyung asks. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“There is something about you that is unforgettable,” you say, honest and real and true. What else can you tell him? The truth is that you have always thought about him. Whether you liked him or not. 

You finish your dinner and place your trays on the end tables next to you, stacking your empty bowls and plates on top of one another as the movie rumbles on in the background. 

“It is kind of a shitty movie,” Taehyung admits after a while of being wholly unenthused. 

“Yeah,” you agree. “But it’s good background noise.”

Taehyung laughs at your little mockery, warm and deep and from his belly. You look at him. He feels so far away, on the other side of the couch. Feels like he’s miles apart from you. You have spent countless nights clinging to his harm, hand gripped tight in his. And sitting like this, a full couch cushion of space between the two of you—it isn’t enough anymore. So you inch closer. 

And closer. 

And a little closer. 

Until you’re pressed up against his side, legs touching as they rest neatly in front of you, backs stick straight as you stare at the television. 

Taehyung holds his arm up. An open invitation. 

Without asking, you lean into him, resting your head in the crook of his shoulder, in the space right underneath his jaw. You pull your feet up onto the couch and curl into his frame, pressing yourself against him. He is warm and firm and inescapable. He smells of coffee and paint and Chinese spices. He wraps his arm around you and pulls you in, as if there were any other place you’d rather be. 

You sit like that for a while. Wrapped up in each other. Lazing around on the couch as the stars twinkle above your head. The movie ends and the two of you don’t even bother skipping the credits, letting them and the cheesy 80’s pop song play on, a distant soundtrack. 

“I never thought any of this would happen,” you breathe out. 

Taehyung looks down at you curiously. “What? This?”

“All of it,” you admit. “Us. Getting married. That stupid tabloid picture. My grandmother. This. It’s all so new.”

“New things will happen all the time,” Taehyung muses aloud. “We can’t help when things change.”

“You don’t have any regrets?” You have plenty. Regrets that you’ll never become the CEO you wanted to be in college. Regrets that you’ll never become the fashion designer you wanted to be as a little girl. Regrets that you will come to resent this marriage, resent Taehyung more than you have in years past, all because you had no choice. Regrets that your grandmother couldn’t see you now. Regrets that there were so many things in your life you could have changed, but didn’t.

“I thought I did,” Taehyung tells you. “I wanted to spend more time with my friends. I wanted to major in art in college. I didn’t want to marry you. I know you didn’t want to marry me.” He looks down and you look up at the same time, eyes locking, inches apart. “But looking back on it, I’m happy where I am. With what I have.”

“I never thought it could ever be like this,” you say, words falling off your tongue before you even ask them to.

“What?”

“Us.”

There’s no need to elaborate. Taehyung understands. He understands that, half a year ago, you both would have thrown yourselves into a volcano before holding hands with each other. He understands that getting over your hatred for each other seemed like an absolutely insurmountable task. He understands that you had never wanted to marry each other, that you couldn’t believe you would have to spend the rest of your lives with each other. 

And he understands that now, things are different. 

“I’m glad things happened the way they did,” Taehyung begins. “I’m grateful for us.”

You press yourself impossibly closer to him, feel his grip tighten around you. Like this, you can hear his heartbeat. Hear it thump like a drum, steady and firm and unwavering. His heart beats against his chest and you wonder. 

You wonder if he can hear the way yours beats for him, too.

There were lots of things that made your night in together special. But one of them is the glaring fact that you don’t get them very often. That their infrequency makes them all the more valuable. 

This has become blatantly obvious to you, because right now you are not spending a night in together. Right now you are stuck at a gala that you have to attend for the sake of business, drinking thin flutes of champagne and mingling with people you barely speak to. 

The one good thing about nights like these is that Taehyung looks positively gorgeous in suits. He sort of always has, but you’d never admit that to his face. At least not until now. And as his wife, you are lucky enough to have a front-row seat. 

“I can feel you staring at me all the way from over here,” Taehyung deadpans as he helps himself to a chocolate-covered strawberry from the buffet table. 

You’re too obvious to have any shame about it. “What can I say, I like the view.”

“Hard to believe I was the once the one being shouted at for being inappropriate in public,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. He bites into the strawberry and eats it all in a single go, tossing the stems into a bin nearby as you join back up in the heart of the crowd. 

“It’s only inappropriate if other people hear,” you tease, letting him guide you, hand intertwined with yours, towards an empty corner where the two of you can snuggle up to one another in (relative) peace. 

“I don’t think the champagne was very good for your filter, Miss Y/N,” Taehyung hisses into your ear, warm breath tickling your skin. 

“Don’t you mean Mrs. Kim?” You pose, an eyebrow raised. 

That seems to do something to Taehyung. It’s not very bright in here, with it being nighttime and all, but even still you can see the way his eyes darken. See the way his lips curl upwards, feel the way his grip on you tightens. It sparks something within you. Something deep in the pit of your belly. 

Something that makes you want more. 

You test the waters. “Mrs. Kim has a nice ring to it, don’t you think, Tae?”

Taehyung looks about a moment away from losing control. But instead of slamming you against the wall in front of all of these people and giving you what you really want, he growls out, low and powerful, “Home. Now.”

He doesn’t need to tell you twice. 

You hail your car outside of the venue and it’s all the both of you can do to not jump on each other right then and there, in the backseat of this giant black van, overcome with want, with need, with everything in between. Taehyung’s leg bounces impatiently the entire ride back, and the feeling of your hand pressed against his doesn’t seem to be calming him down. He pulls you close to him in the backseat of the car, a hand resting on your thigh. You eye him carefully, as if challenging him to be any more daring. He grins. 

Home cannot come soon enough. The two of you tumble out of the backseat and into the elevators, where you mash the top floor button after entering in the security access code, desperate and shameless. The ride seems to take hours, and the heat that surrounds you practically smothers you, covers you, fills up your lungs and chokes you. 

There is nothing left by the time you reach your door. The moment it slams shut behind you Taehyung presses you up against the back of it, pins you against the wood as he hovers over you, eyes tracing your lips. 

“Tell me something,” he demands. 

“What?” 

“A fact. Something I don’t know.”

It doesn’t take much thinking. “I want you,” you breathe out, watch it hit his skin, watch the way his eyes glint in the light of the entranceway. “Please, Tae. I want you.”

It’s enough for him. 

This is not the first time you and Taehyung have kissed. The first time was nearly five months ago, in a chapel, at an altar, surrounded by hundreds of people. It was so unfun that you seem to have eradicated the mere thought from your memory. But you remember that feeling from that day. That feeling you got when you pressed your lips against his, cemented your marriage with a kiss. That heat. That sting. 

Kissing him now—that feeling has returned tenfold. When his lips meet yours, it feels like fire is rushing through your veins, setting alight every nerve it passes, unforgiving and relentless. His enormous hands come up to cup your jaw, fingers pressing against the skin of your cheeks as they pull you close to him, keep you trapped in his hold. This is not the first time you and Taehyung have kissed but it feels like it is—it feels like there is a lotus blooming on a lilypad in your heart, it feels like you have been struck by lightning, it feels like nothing else you have ever felt before. It feels brand new. 

Pressing back against him, he slowly releases you from the cage he has created against the door, spinning around so the two of you can tumble up the stairs and into your bedroom, unable to resist sneaking in pecks here and there as you make your way upstairs. Every step you take you stop, giggle as he presses you against the railing just so he can steal another kiss from you, put his hands all over your body. It’s a wonder the two of you even make it into your bedroom at all. 

When you do, however, all bets are off. Taehyung presses you against the still-made bedsheets with a glint in his eye and a growl on his lips, pupils blown wide as he stares down at you, at your body.

"Aren't you a sight? Laid out so pretty for me," he purrs, robbing a breath from you.

It's a tone you have yet to hear from him. You find yourself growing impossibly hot under his stare, burning with an uncharted desire.

You can hardly wrap your brain around it. Here you are, craving the man you had spent the better half of your young adult life loathing. Maybe it’s the champagne; maybe it’s the way his fingers are running slowly up the length of your clothed torso. Whatever it is, your stomach does flips, unfamiliar to the way your body preens under his touch.

"Don't let it go to your head," you tease, simply because you could.

Taehyung hums disapprovingly, pressing kisses into your neck as he grabs one of your thighs and wraps it around his waist, riding your dress up in the process.

You sigh, exposing your neck further for him as he paints bruises into your neck. It feels like just yesterday you had called him out at the altar for his habit of sporting the very same marks you were soon to wear.

Perhaps you should have thought twice about letting the man you had married purely under business pretenses press his hips against your clothed center, but as he rolls his into yours, your mind falls blank, silencing any and all reservations you should have.

Whimpering, you beckon his mouth back onto yours, tongue meeting his wantonly. 

You feel his fingers creep up the outside of your bare thigh, thrilling you in the most primal way. Reaching the band of your underwear after what felt like entirely too long, he runs the pad of his thumb against the lacy fabric.

 You could scream. He is doing this on purpose. He must be. Surely he knows how badly you were aching for him? For him to fill you– whatever the manner may be.

You let out a whine before you can help yourself, frowning as Taehyung looks pleased with himself, confirming his knowledge of your prolonged pleasure.

"What's that? Did you say something?" he mocks, looking cruel and yet strikingly gorgeous as he smirks above you.

"God, you're irritating,” you huff, hips jerking up against his as he pulls at the band of your underwear, the elastic snapping back into the flesh of your hip. "Just fuck me already."

He tuts, clearly unimpressed by your impatience, "Now, where is the fun in that?"

Your eyes flutter shut as his fingers suddenly snake their way between your thighs. Mouth falling ajar, you grip his shoulders as he runs his middle finger against your clothed slit, trailing up and down your warmth. To think he was still dressed while he was touching you like this...

"No... I think I'll take my time with you," he says.

You mew against his hand, arousal forming against his long digits' ministrations. You have to hand it to him. Taehyung knows what he’s doing. The life of a bachelor has seemingly served him well.

You aren’t usually vocal in bed, but the way he’s purring words of filth to you, breath hot against the shell of your ear as he tells you how hot and slick your pretty pussy felt against his hand, has you gasping and sputtering, your own fingers wrapping around his wrist.

The fabric of your panties provides a friction that toys the line of pleasure and pain, making you thrust up to meet his motions, your humility slipping from you.

Taehyung watches you intently, cock growing hard under the constraints of his dress pants. You look better than he could've imagined, eyes watering and body shivering under his touch, his fingers soaking with your arousal. He can only imagine what you'd feel like with his fingers fully buried into you, rocking them against your velvety walls.

He lets out a groan of his own, turned on by the idea of you fucking yourself onto his fingers, whimpering out his name in ecstasy.

There’s this part of you that faintly recognizes that Taehyung has done this plenty of times before. Plenty of times with plenty of other lovers. But there is a different part of you, that part that bursts with light and hope, that reminds you that he was never married to those other ones. That his allegiance lies with you. And that thought, knowing that deep within you, he is yours, makes your jaw fall slack, pretty noises tumbling from your lips and your thighs clamping around him.

You were close, closer than you care to admit. Every touch against you is careful yet deliberate as he reads the signs of your body, the way it keens and arches into him, offering you words of encouragement as your climax finally hits.

"That's right. Good girl. Let go for me," Taehyung coos, eyes dark and focused on your writhing form.

You cry out into the familiar space of your shared room, head thrown back as you ride out the high, letting it wrack your body, send jolts throughout your veins.

You barely have time to catch your breath when he presses his mouth back onto yours, kiss still as eager as it was when you both first entered your home. You are alight with satisfaction as he pulls away to press a trail of kisses against your jaw.

"I want—f-fuck," you stutter as he finds your already hypersensitive clit once more, rolling his thumb over your now soaked panties in tantalizing circles, "want to make you feel good, too."

Admittedly, this fantasy had crossed your mind once or twice, brought on by the way he carried himself in a suit and the way his large fingers wrapped around the champagne glass; confident, collected, and entirely charming. Who are you to shy away from a man like him? He certainly has always been rather good-looking. 

He pauses his motions, pulling his hand back to sit on your waist. Your dress is of the finest, most delicate satin, and after tonight's activities, completely wrinkled. You can almost hear your stylist's cries of dismay. Whatever. You have a steamer. And why focus on the dress when it’s obvious the two of you are focused on what lies underneath it?

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You nod, skin still burning from your past climax.

Helping you back up, Taehyung stands. You lick your lips as you sit back up on the edge of the bed, watching intently as he unbuckles his belt, audibly hissing as his pants fall to his ankles, cock visibly straining against the fabric of his underwear. Thank God you don’t have to stand. With the way your thighs still felt weak and how your husband looks like a goddamn Adonis towering above you? Your legs surely would give out underneath you if you rose.

Brows furrowed, Taehyung palms over himself briefly before pulling down the waistband of his underwear, his painfully hard member slapping against his torso.

Your eyes widened on instinct. While the last thing you wanted to do was help inflate Taehyung's already large ego, you were certainly impressed at his size; thick and girthy, his tip red and shining with precum.

He couldn't help but smirk, thoroughly pleased by the way you stared at him unabashedly, chest rising and falling heavily.

"Open up for me," he orders.

And who are you to deny a request from your dear husband?

Your pretty lips wrap themselves around his engorged tip, all remnants of lipstick long gone by now. Taehyung hisses, a hand finding the side of your jaw as you run your tongue against the underside of his cock.

"Fuck, you're so pretty," he grunts, fighting off the urge to grip the back of your head and fuck your throat. As much as he'd love your have you choking and drooling all over his cock – and boy would he – he lets you set your own pace, not wanting to overwhelm you.

It doesn't take long for you to sink your mouth further down, however, clearly set on making Taehyung feel as good as you could.

A low moan erupts from his throat, digits pressing into your jaw in request to take more of him in, which you happily oblige.

You had your eyes trained on him, completely obsessed with the way he panted through pink lips, hissing slightly every time your tongue rolled over his sensitive tip.

Lolling his head to a side, his eyes meet yours, gaze primal and wolfish as he watches the way you worked his cock.

"Doing so good, love. Doing so fucking good for me,” he murmurs.

You hum against his skin at the sound of the sudden pet name, an unfamiliar feeling fluttering in your belly. You push aside the feeling, focusing instead on the way he grunts at the new sensation you had just given him.

Giggling, you pull off his cock, opting instead to press a kiss against his leaking tip, making sure to hold his eyes as you run kitten licks against it.

"God, you're such a tease." He shakes his head in disbelief. 

He looks so good above you, shivering and cursing out praises on how good your mouth feels, how well you take his cock. Running your tongue along the length of his shaft, you become certain that this is a display you can’t imagine yourself ever getting tired of. But you have all the time in the world, right?

"Y/N,” he gasps suddenly, hips jerking towards your face. "Love, I'm gonna-- gonna cum."

"Cum in my mouth, please." Your voice was pleading and desperate. Taehyung had never heard such words spoken more sweetly. 

"Fuck's sake."

You let out a yelp in surprise as his fingers work their way through your hair, bringing your head back down onto his cock. You relax, though, when you feel the hot ropes of his cum hit the back of your throat, your hands finding purchase on his thighs as you do your best to swallow it all down.

Pulling yourself off him, you let out a small cough, eyes watering slightly as you hadn’t managed to prepare yourself with a breath before his release. His large palm runs across the top of your head as you caught your breath, expression flickering with something unfamiliar. Could it be... fondness? 

Your heart stammers at the thought as you stand, slowly stepping out of your dress, letting it drape off of your figure. Taehyung looks absolutely gobsmacked, pupils dark as he gazes at you, eyes unabashedly raking your body. He’s shameless. 

You both are. 

Slowly, you step towards him, fingers reaching out towards his shirt, carefully undoing the buttons as you gaze at each other, expressions unreadable. 

"Tae?” You ask innocently, blinking up at him. “Fuck me?" 

Your polite request makes Taehyung chuckle. 

"Please?" You bring your bottom lip between your teeth, eyes blinking up at him adoringly for good measure. You reach the last button, let his dress shirt drape open. He brushes it off himself, stands there for a few seconds just to let the way you’re ogling his toned chest go to his head. At least he’s good-looking. 

He sighs, probably contemplating some clever rebuttal, but eventually decides against it as his cock is already twitching back to life.

"Alright, love. Turn around. On your knees for me," He orders, making your stomach flip.

To your surprise, you are hardly in place when the warmth of his large hands finds the soft of your tummy, pressing you back into his chest as he pressed a peck to the back of your neck.

You squirm in his hold, whining as that same hand of his grabs hold of your breast, long digit rolling your nipple between their tips. You can’t help but press your ass back into him. His cock feels hot and heavy, pressing against the back of your thigh, making your pussy clench in anticipation. 

You want him.

You want him so bad that you don't know what to do with yourself, shuddering as his free hand runs along the side of your ass, leaving scorching hot trails on your skin wherever he kneads into your flesh. He's touching you everywhere – everywhere but where you need him the most, and the arousal that drips down your thigh mocks you.

"Dammit, please!" You exclaim, running out of patience.

"Please what?" He says, an eyebrow arched.

You shiver, committing the way his middle finger traced your pelvic bone to memory forever.

You puff out a frustrated breath, nearly at your wit's end. "Please fuck me, Tae."

Taehyung pauses, grip on your breast and hip tightening as he lets out a moan. You let one out yourself as you feel him readjust, cock pressing against your slick entrance.

"Fuck, you sound so pretty when you say my name," He grunts. "Okay, baby. I'll fuck you. Begging so nicely for my cock."

You let out a squeak as you're suddenly pushed down onto your hands, back arching as he pushes his fat cock inside your heavenly cunt. He's thick, so thick, that you instinctively grip the sheet underneath you, fingers curled around them tightly as if it means to hold onto your sanity.

Taehyung lets out a shaky breath, angling your hips up so that you could take more of him.

"You feel—feel so good," he admits above you, and suddenly you wish you could see him. See the way his bangs stick to his damp forehead—see the way his tongue swipes over his bottom lip wickedly.

You let that thought go, however, as he thrust into you, making your jaw fall slack and eyes flutter shut. Profanities roll off your tongue unabashedly, helpless under the way his thick member pulls out of you, only to slam back into you.

You weren't expecting this. The way he stretches you out further than anyone had before. Your pussy clenches around him, reveling in the sweet, sweet burn.

He digs into the flesh of your hips, holding you steady as you mew and cry out, pushing your hips back in time to his, trying your best to meet his movements.

"Tae... fuck, fuck, fuck—"

He was filling you to the brim. Filling you tight and deep.

God, the way he was panting behind you was music to your ears. His cock pulses every time you call out his name, voice muffled and buried as you had your head pressed into the mattress, hair messy and bouncing with every hard thrust.

"S'good! Fuck... so, ah, big..." you cry out.

You feel drunk. Intoxicated off this beautiful man and the way he makes you feel a way only he can.

You nearly let out a sob as the rough pads of Taehyung's fingertips suddenly reach around you and find your neglected clit, rolling light circles on the soft and swollen bundle of nerves skillfully.

You are a mess, whimpering and drooling into your expensive sheets, and he filled every inch of you, leaving no place undiscovered. Your high nears, stewing on low heat somewhere near the pit of your belly, waiting for a chance to erupt and wash all over you. Taehyung must be close to, you realize, as his thrusts began to slow down, slamming into you roughly as if chasing after his high.

"Gonna take this load? Huh? Gonna let me cum inside your pretty little pussy?" His voice is straining, as if trying to breathe evenly but merely moments from falling apart.

If only you could formulate an intelligent response, but instead, you are a blubbering wreck, thighs shaking as they threatened to give out underneath you. But somehow, Taehyung knew. He had you. Quicking his motions against your delicate pearl, he could tell you were close too, and he was going to make sure you got there.

Suddenly, you're crying out and convulsing, tears brimming at the ends of your eyes as you feel Taehyung empty into you, collapsing onto his hands as well.

You feel his hot breath against the back of your neck as he pants, breath growing more and more even as the two of you regain control of your bodies and minds.

Pulling out of you, he plops down beside you, and for a moment, the two of you hold each other's gazes, eyes speaking in ways words never could.

Finally, after what feels both like an eternity and just a moment, you work up the courage to say something, moving closer to him as you place a hand on his chest, cushioning your chin as you rested on top of it.  

"Psst," you beckon, voice hushed.

"Yeah?" His voice is husky and tired.

"I’m grateful, too."

"Huh?"

"I’m grateful for us, too."

Taehyung's gaze is soft, and it lingers on you for a second before the sides of his mouth curl up tenderly. He grins down at you, eyes drifting shut. You feel him squeeze you closer, pressing you against his skin. And then, you hear his breathing steady, see his lips part slightly. 

You lean into his chest, eyelids fluttering. “Thank you, Tae.”

Not unlike the many other mornings you have awoken in this bed, when you open your eyes as the morning sunlight streams through the windows, Taehyung is nowhere to be found. The sheets on his side of the bed are flipped aside, revealing that soft outline of his body from the night before left imprinted into the sheets, a dip in the mattress where he slept. You had fallen asleep all wrapped up in each other, tangled up like vines, but must have separated sometime during the night. Distantly, you register Taehyung’s voice outside, notice his phone missing from his bedside table. He must be on an early morning call. 

You check your phone for the time. Ten o’clock. 

A late morning call, then. 

Still basking in the afterglow of the night prior, you slowly inch your way out of bed, shivering as you pull the covers off you and scoot your legs around so they hang over the edge of the bed. You rub at your eyes until you faintly remember you did not take your makeup off last night, and when your hand comes away covered with black streaks and flecks of mascara, you wince to yourself. There goes five hundred dollars worth of a skincare routine. 

After washing yourself up and applying as many serums as you can to your skin, you wrap yourself up in one of his button-up shirts, the torso so wide that it drapes over you. The tips of your fingers peek out from the ends of the sleeves, and you cross your arms lightly over your chest as you make your way to the door, ready to entice your husband back to bed for round two. What? It’s Saturday. 

You peer around the door to find Taehyung standing a few feet away, facing away from you. He’s shirtless, and as his wife you have absolutely no problems ogling him, the toned curves of his back, the muscles in his arms. He’s always been a looker. You just finally have an excuse to look for yourself. 

You approach him quietly, not wanting to interrupt nor broadcast your sex life to anybody on the other side who may be listening. Already, the idea of crawling back in bed together sends goosebumps along your skin, makes you giddy with anticipation. You’re just about to tap him on the shoulder, lips curled upwards in suggestion, when he says—

“And my inheritance? That’s secured now, right? Because I said I would pretend to be in love with her in public—?”

And it is as if Medusa herself appeared in this room, turning you to stone as your heart thuds to the floor, a hollow, empty noise. 

You don’t hear the rest of Taehyung’s conversation. You don’t even hear the sound of your own heartbeat. This terrible, aching sound rings in your ears, silencing everything in its wake, drowning out even the sighs of your own breath. It is as if you have been frozen solid. As if you have been shot in the stomach. You stand there, feeling absolutely nothing, and all you can do is brace yourself for what is to come. Taehyung’s words were the knife but his next actions will be its removal, leaving in its wake an irreparable wound. 

He turns around, casual and cool, voice still hushed. As if you were still asleep. As if you hadn’t heard anything at all. But when he twists his body and sees you standing there, staring back up at him, lips parted in shock. 

“I’ll call you back,” he tells whoever was on the other side of the line, looking more panicked by the second. He opens his mouth so he can explain himself, but you don’t need him to. You’ve heard everything already. 

“I should have known,” you say, feeling angry and betrayed and sad all at once. “I should have known it was all an act.”

“Y/N, wait, let me explain—”

“What is there to tell me, Taehyung? What are you going to say? That you didn’t mean it? That you thought I wouldn’t find out? That last night was just a one-off?” You demand. The heat from your veins hasn’t left. Still, it simmers through your blood, burning you up from the inside out. “That you didn’t want to lie to me?”

“It’s not like that and you know it,” Taehyung says defensively, brows furrowed. “Just give me a chance to explain myself.”

“Explain yourself? How you pretended, every day and every night, just so you could get some more money in your bank account? So you could make sure you would get your father’s business when he died?”

Taehyung bites back easily. “Don’t act like you weren’t also faking it at some point. I know you were almost removed from your grandmother’s will.”

Your tongue is bitter at the mention of your grandmother. As if Taehyung ever even knew her. “My grandmother has nothing to do with this.”

“Really?” Taehyung challenges. “So you wanting to stay in her will was just a little bonus, right?”

“Don’t,” you say sharply. “It’s different.”

“Different how?” Taehyung spits. “Because right now, to me, it looks pretty similar to what I’ve done.”

“My grandmother died months ago,” you remind him. Her will is no longer the question. It has been written, settled, and executed. There was no reason for you to continue playing along once she took her last breath. No reason—unless you wanted to. “Meanwhile you’ve been keeping your inheritance a secret from me this entire time.”

“We made a deal,” Taehyung says. “A deal that said we would both act happy and pretend to be in love because we both had things we needed to worry about. Family things. Money things. You were a part of this, just like I was. You pretended, too.”

“Well, maybe I stopped pretending!” 

You can’t take it anymore. All this anger, all this emptiness, it’s been bubbling up inside you ever since you heard those first words come out of his mouth. It spills out of you all at once, an eruption from your lips, your heart’s doors bursting open. You have held his hand tightly in your own. You have pressed your lips to his. You have laid yourself bare in front of him. What is there left to protect? What part of you has not already been stained by him, by his touch, by the feeling of his fingers against your skin?

The hallway is silent, but you can hear your cry echo down the corridor. Hear the way it bounces along the walls before fading away. 

“Maybe I stopped pretending,” you repeat, softer this time. You blink and already can feel the streaks along your skin, the tears falling from your eyes. “Did you ever think about that?”

“Y/N, what are you talking about?” Taehyung looks like he’s in disbelief. Like he cannot believe the words you are saying to him. 

Well, that makes two of you. 

“Can’t you see, Tae? Can’t you tell?” You ask, the nickname falling from your lips before you can even help it. You must remind yourself to change that, later. “I’m in love with you.”

They are words you have never said to someone before. Not even your old boyfriends. Words that you always knew you would reserve for someone special. Someone who would touch your heart and make it their own, someone who would leave imprints of their fingers against your chest. Someone who would brighten you up from the inside out, leave you bursting with light. 

Ironic, that Taehyung has become that someone. When he is the one person you never thought could. 

When he has proven, time and time again, that you two just cannot mix. Oil and water. Pastel and acrylic. Satin and silk. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” you spit out quickly, before Taehyung has a chance to respond. “I know it doesn’t matter to you.”

“Y/N, yes it does,” Taehyung begins, desperate and pleading. “I know you heard what I said, but I swear, it stopped being an act for me, too. Things are different now, just like you said.”

“Don’t. Please.” You pull away as he reaches out towards you. Faintly, you remember that it is his shirt you are wearing. Remember that no matter what you do, he will always surround you. “Please, Tae.” You have nothing left. You can’t bear to look at him, but where else will you go? You cannot believe the things he’s said, the things he’s done, but where else would you go?

“I love you, too,” Taehyung says, and a part of you wants so badly to believe him. 

A part of you wants so badly to ingrain those words into your head, carve them into your heart, let him wrap his arms around you and promise that everything will be alright. But things are different now. Just like you said. You and Taehyung are not the same people you were six months ago. Or six weeks ago. Or even six minutes ago. You are helpless and he has proven that he does not care. 

“I have to go,” you say, looking away. You don’t think you could handle turning back to him again. “Please, Tae.”

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung says, and he reaches out once more but you are not there to meet him halfway. Were you ever?

“I know,” you whisper back.

You duck into your bedroom and pack a suitcase of everything you need. Being here is suffocating. Being with him is like setting yourself alight. 

Victoria has no questions when you show up at her door later that day, suitcase by your side and this ridiculous bottle of Merlot in your hands. You had picked it up on the way over. You sort of figured you might need it. 

“You don’t wanna talk about it, do you?” Victoria asks. 

“Tell me about your streaming service,” you hiccup in response.

Victoria is happy to oblige. She even tells you that she still hasn’t picked a CFO, and that the position would be open for you if you ever wished to take it. 

Funnily enough, what will become of you once your father retires and passes along the company is the furthest away from your thoughts. 

You remember being so worried about that. Being so worried that, once they married you off like every good daughter should be, you would be absorbed into your husband’s life, cut out of your family’s. Your father would choose a cousin, an uncle, or even a friend to take after the business, bestowing upon you a thoughtful inheritance but nothing more than that. All of those years of schooling, finance in college, your MBA soon after, would be wasted, just so you could hang on the arm of your husband for the rest of your life. 

It’s thoughtful of Victoria to think of you for the position. She knows just as well as anyone else that you would be an excellent fit. And if things were just a little bit different, you would be jumping at the offer. 

But your future career plans are on the backburner, along with the rest of your life. 

All you can really do, right now, at this very moment, is wait for things to change. As they always do. 

“Don’t you have an event tonight?” Victoria asks about three days into your stay. She’s given you her favorite (her words, not yours) guest bedroom and an enormous closet to match, despite you only coming over with a carry-on’s worth of clothes. 

You scoff to yourself. “Like I’d want to go to anything with him.”

“Have you even called your parents?” 

“No,” you say, not even caring about the repercussions. There’s no doubt in your mind that they’ll be ringing you soon. And when they do, maybe then you’ll finally work up the courage to tell them what really happened. Tell them that you can’t go back there. Not yet, at least. 

“I’m sorry that this happened to you,” Victoria says as she hands you a bowl of vegetable soup, homemade from a couple of days ago. You nod to yourself, sniffling as you curl into the couch cushions and wish they would absorb you whole. 

There’s no need to ask her what she means by ‘this’. Everything. From your engagement to the marriage, from those tabloids to the deal, from your grandmother’s death to now. It has all been unfair. Life is unfair. And while you’ve always known that, it has been particularly cruel to you as of late. 

Still, when you wake up sometimes, you can still feel him tracing over your skin. Feel his lips hovering over yours, breath fanning out over your cheeks. You turn over and expect to see him lying there, on the right side of the bed, sheets mussed as they cover his figure. You wake up and for a brief moment, for that split, split second, there is peace. And happiness. And love. 

And then there is nothing. 

“Yeah,” you sigh. “Me, too.”

Maybe he really does love you. Maybe things really did change. But you have always been a pragmatic person, always let your head guide you rather than your heart. The secret’s out. Taehyung had an inheritance he needed to secure. You were his path to doing so. Those things haven’t changed. No matter if his feelings did. 

“Hey, look at this,” Victoria says, brows furrowed as she holds out her phone in front of you, revealing a livestreamed interview from the event tonight. 

You peer over. 

It’s Taehyung. 

Of course it’s Taehyung. Who else would she be showing you?

He stands in a clean-cut gray coat, draping over his figure, black dress shirt and slacks underneath, belt wrapped neatly around his hips. He holds his hand up in a wave and smiles politely to the cameras, to the reporters, letting the flashes wash over him like waves in the ocean. 

“Mr. Kim! Mr. Kim!” Someone calls. “Where’s your wife?”

Oh, God.

Taehyung grimaces a little, pursing his lips. “My wife won’t be joining me tonight.”

“Can you tell us why?” They shout. 

“Sorry, no more questions. Thank you for asking though. She’s well,” he says, quickly ushering himself along, entering the venue so no more reporters can bombard him. When he disappears, the livestream immediately moves on to the next guest, but you hardly pay them any attention. 

“Huh,” Victoria says aloud. 

Indeed. Taehyung’s response strikes you as rather odd. Why would he tell the public that? Why not make up a lie, say you’re sick, or you’re overseas, or you’re just late? Why simply tell them that you won’t be there? Surely, Taehyung is just as aware of the consequences of arriving at an event without you as you are. There’s no doubt that his parents will be in contact with him soon, too. No doubt that this will leave a stain on his family. His image. It might even threaten his inheritance after all.

So why not lie?

You frown to yourself, nose scrunching up in confusion. You don’t like where this train of thought leads.

“You okay?” Victoria asks when she sees the bewildered expression on your face.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” you say. Just completely befuddled. It escapes you, why Taehyung wouldn’t just make up some sort of excuse as to reasoning behind your absence. Why he would even show up at the event at all. Certainly, going to the event without you is worse than not going at all. It prompts questions. It spreads rumors. 

Later that night, you get a call from your parents, demanding to know why you weren’t there with him. You say you got sick. You plead with them not to question anything. 

You wonder what happens next. You and Taehyung still have two more events this week. A dinner and a ball. What will you do then?

Taehyung goes solo for the dinner. You suppose you could have predicted that, considering his apparent willingness to arrive alone for the first event, too. He hasn’t made any efforts to contact you and for once, you’re glad for his silence. Not that you even know what he would say to you, anyway, but at least he isn’t begging you to come back to him. 

The sad truth is that if he did, if he got down on his knees right in front of you and willed you to come back home, you probably would. He has always been impossible to resist. Even when you first met him, when he sauntered up towards you and told you he was your dream come true. You didn’t know it then. But he was. He was everything you would ever want. 

Why would he lie? 

Why would he do that?

You can’t wrap your head around it. What is he getting out of it by telling the truth? By admitting to the paparazzi, to the reporters and the cameramen, that you won’t be there with him. That you will not be joining him. Nothing, certainly. His parents must be furious. His inheritance may be on the rocks. His image might tank. 

So then, why do it at all?

Could it… could it be?

Is it true?

You have loved Taehyung for a long time. Longer than you probably even care to admit. You have always held your head high at events, spoken loudly and without fear, but being with him made you feel safe. Secure. You would hold his hand and know, know that he was holding yours, too. It grounded you. It soothed your worries. 

Does he really love you back?

Taehyung smiles politely and laughs when he needs to at these events, but he doesn’t look the same. Even through the screen you can see those bags under his eyes, that spark that has faded. You hardly recognize him. He looks so lonely, without someone by his side. So distant. 

When you know the dinner has ended, you almost pick up the phone and call him. 

Almost. 

Instead, when the ball rolls around, you ask Victoria if she’s got a spare dress she can lend you.

 Kim Taehyung, for someone you have seen covered in paint splotches, wearing old college hoodies, and fresh out of a restless night’s sleep, cleans up pretty well. For a married man, at least. 

You wonder what the past few days must have been like for him. If they have been as empty as your own. Wonder what it was like, riding alone in a big black van to this hotel ballroom, no one to tease, no one to laugh with, no one to hold. No one to poke him awake if he accidentally fell asleep. No one to make sure he’s okay. 

Taehyung stands right outside of the entrance, waving politely to all of the paparazzi, smiling as the cameras flash, giving them the time of day for a moment before he heads inside and muscles his way through another event without you. 

Or so he thinks. 

You spot him just as he opens his mouth, ready to repeat those same lines all over again.

My wife won’t be joining me tonight. She’s well, though.

And maybe it’s just because you haven’t seen him in nearly a week. Maybe it’s just because he is about to lie to those reporters once more, ready to face whatever consequences come his way. 

Or maybe it’s just because you miss him. Miss him terribly, have been missing him terribly. Being away from him was necessary, but that didn’t make it any less unbearable. Not getting to hold his hand, see his smile, meet his eyes. You and Taehyung may not have always liked each other, but you saw him every day regardless. He became a constant in your life. Not an if, but a when. If everything went to shit, you always knew he would still be there. 

And there he is. 

“Wait! Taehyung!”

Taehyung’s eyes widen as he hears your voice, gaze darting around wildly, mouth parted in surprise. He looks around desperately, scanning the crowd, meeting the eyes of every single person in front of him until he finally looks to the left, sees you rushing up towards him, hiking up the skirt of your dress as your heels tap against the sidewalk. 

And when he spots you, sees you running up to him, his body relaxes, a weight lifted from his shoulders as he beams back at you, relieved and thankful and filled with joy, all at once. And you know, then. 

You know that everything will be okay. 

“Sorry I’m late,” you say sheepishly, cheeks burning as he looks at you, takes in every inch of you, breathes you in and lets you fill him up. 

Taehyung doesn’t respond. You reach out to hold his hand but he grabs your wrist and pulls you in, presses you against his body as he presses his hands against your cheeks, palms burning as they meet your skin, and he kisses you. In front of all these people, he kisses you. 

And goddamnit, you will kiss him back. 

It feels like lightning, like a thunderstorm, like the waves of the ocean are crashing against your heart. It feels like fire, like flames are licking at your veins, sending sparks through your blood. It feels like home. 

You and Taehyung ignore the shouts of reporters, the flashes of cameras, the honks of the cars on the other side of the road. When you part, he presses his forehead against yours and lets the tip of your nose meet his. And you smile. 

“Don’t be alone any longer, Mr. Kim,” you whisper, loud enough so only he can hear. 

“When I’m with you, I never am, Mrs. Kim,” he murmurs back. 

You wonder what those tabloids will be saying about you tomorrow. 

The rest of the night finds the two of you pretty much inseparable. You wrap yourself around his arm and for the first time in a long time, he presses his hand against the small of your back, keeping you close. Like he’d ever lose you again. 

One of your least favorite parts about attending balls used to be the dancing. As a young and eligible bachelorette, you would always have to lock hands with another, let him awkwardly guide you along to the music as you made the worst small talk imaginable, forcing laughter and smiles whenever he said something he thought was particularly funny. 

But, like so many others, things have changed. Things are different now. 

The waltz comes on and you and Taehyung are the first to reach the center of the ballroom floor, letting him rest his hand on your waist as you press yours on top of his shoulder. Let him twirl you around the room as the orchestra plays in the background, a soft, sweet, light little melody that carries you along. 

“I missed this,” you say softly. 

“I missed us,” Taehyung corrects. He pauses for a moment, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry for not telling you about my inheritance.”

“I’m sorry for storming out. I should have listened to you.” you respond easily. You both have plenty to apologize for. But night is darkest right before dawn. 

“I should have said something,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. “But I was just so—so worried that something would go wrong. And I didn’t know how to explain how I felt about you. I acted in the beginning, too, but then things changed.”

“They always do,” you muse with a grin. 

“I couldn’t believe I had you,” Taehyung admits. “I mean, look at you. You’re gorgeous. And funny. And true.”

“Go on,” you tease, even though you do nothing to hide the smile inching its way across your face, the heating of your cheeks, the simmering of your skin. 

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.” Taehyung rolls his eyes. “I just—I felt something for you I couldn’t explain. I still can’t.”

You don’t have to prod any further. You know. Deep within your heart, you know. There is love blossoming in his to match the garden that has bloomed in your own. The flowers that have sprouted in the ashes. He has them, too. And when those petals open and the light streams in, he will know. He will know, too. 

“You make me crazy,” you tell him, whispering gently into his skin. “But I’m a better person when I’m with you. I know I am.”

“I meant what I said, that night,” Taehyung says. Makes you wonder which night he’s actually talking about. “That I’m happy that things have changed. That things happened the way they did. I’m grateful for us.”

“I am, too,” you say. And you are. 

You rest your head against his chest as you dance together, swaying back and forth to the beat of the drums, to the strums of the violins, all wrapped up together like ivy, like vines. Those, too, sit in that garden of yours. Keep you tethered to his side, keep him close to yours. He holds you in his arms and he smiles, because he knows, too. Knows that that garden in your heart will soon have a matching one in his. A mirror image of who you are. Who you’ve become. 

Things change. They always will. But so long as he is by your side, and so long as you are by his, you know. Everything will be okay. 

It's different, this time, when Taehyung presses you into the mattress. 

There is no rush. Because now you know for certain that all the time in the world is yours. He is yours forever. You are his.

The two of you are a mixture of tangled limbs and shared breaths, the feverish, irrepressible need to give yourself to each other nearly tangible. He breaks the kiss suddenly, and you’re about to break out in protest. That is, until you see him unbuttoning his shirt.

Inspired, you wiggle out of your own clothes, eyes locked on Taehyung's soft torso and the idea that you had married such a beautiful man, inside and out.

Looking back, you wonder if that was always inevitable. If you and Taehyung falling into each other had been written in the stars from day one, sealed as your fate from the moment he came up to you at that ball when you were teenagers. He was going to be a part of your life no matter what. Whether or not you ended up marrying him. But having him like this?

It makes it all worth it.

"Do you like what you see?" That old cocky smirk of his makes an appearance.

You raise a brow, choosing to omit a response as you unclasp your bra, letting it fall from your chest.

Taehyung swallows.

"Do you?" You tease.

His response comes in the form of bites down your necks and licks down your chest, stealing your breath from you. 

Your clothes are somewhere dispelled beside your passionate bodies, growing cold beside the way your two hot bodies warmed one another.

"You are so beautiful," Taehyung praises, fingers coming up to cup your breast, bringing it up to his mouth.

You mewl, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as his tongue toys with your pert bud, teeth grazing it ever so often just to hear the broken gasp that'd always follow. 

"And so sensitive too," he giggles, making you pout. His hands are gentle as if every touch means something. As if you mean something—no, everything—to him. And the most wonderful part is that he means everything to you, too. 

"Shut up." You roll your eyes playfully, gasping as his palm comes down the side of your thigh suddenly in warning. You bite down your swollen bottom lip at the gush of arousal that dampened your underwear in response.

"Watch your tone, love. Of both our positions, you are in the most compromising one." He reminds you. It isn't a threat, and while usually, that kind of tone would thrill you, you couldn't help but want his mouth back on yours already.

"You talk too much." You flop back onto the bed with a sigh. Taehyung watches with interest as your pretty tits bounce in consequence. Extending your hands out towards him, you give him a pouty look. "Just wanna kiss you."

"Is that all I am to you? Just a pair of lips for you to mack on? I've got news for you, sweetheart, there's a brain behind these ravishing good looks." He scoffs in feigned offense, sitting back on his heels.

You giggle.

It seems as though even during the most intimate of moments, Taehyung still found a way to be, well, Taehyung. At least that hasn’t changed. 

"Whatever, pretty boy. Why don't you come over here and put that mouth of yours to good use?" You purr, making his eyebrows raise in surprise.

"Oh? I don't remember you being this assertive when I was pounding you into the mattress last time."

“What, I can’t have a little fun as well?” You tease, grinning as you look up at him, raking your eyes over his figure. 

"Wanna have fun, love?," He murmurs into your ears, hands gripping either of your plush thighs. "Then spread those pretty legs for me, and I'll show you exactly how much fun you can have."

God, you love this man.

You oblige eagerly, breath quickening as he helped you press your knees by your chest, leaving the wet patch in your underwear on full display. 

"My pretty little wife." He sighs dreamily, making heat rush to your core.

Taehyung's cock stood loud and proud, a hot reminder of where the night would eventually lead to. Seriously, how did you get so lucky? You must've been a saint in a previous life, you decide right then. Or at least, the stars have chosen to be rather kind to you in this one.

"Gonna take these off," he mutters, mostly to himself, tugging the ruined fabric over your ass and down your legs, with your help, of course.

Despite your usual display of confidence, lying beneath your husband, spread out like this, has you feeling vulnerable and slightly insecure. But that insecurity vanishes, however, as he lets out a soft moan, fingers moving to spread your glossed lips apart.

"So fucking pretty, baby. Gonna make you feel so fucking good," he groans, leaning down to press his face near your most intimate part.

Pressing a tentatively lick against, his eyes flicker up to yourself, curious to see if you’re okay with him proceeding. And, well, it’s not like you’re going to say no, are you?

Embarrassingly, you rut against him, making him laugh as you drown in your own mortification.

"Need it that bad, huh?" He coos.

"Yes, please."

The rest of your plea is lost in a moan as Taehyung finds your clit, wrapping his pink lips around the sensitive muscle and giving it a generous suck. Your hands are in his hair before you can think to stop yourself, tugging at his scalp deliciously as his mouth makes its way with you.

Thank goodness for this apartment belonging to just the two of you as the noises that tumbled from your lips surely would've left a roommate blushing.

You're panting, begging for more even though you aren't sure how you'd even handle more. It comes as a delight and slight surprise as fingers suddenly slip inside, wasting no time to rub against your velvety smooth walls, curling themselves inside you.

"Fuck, Tae!" you cry out, eyes squeezing shut.

It was pure reflex. Up until now, you had been watching Taehyung intently, completely consumed by the way his mouth moves against you. How his tongue flicks against your needy clit cruelly. It just felt too fucking good.

You're so wet, positively dripping down his chin as he runs his hot muscle up and down the length of your pussy, devouring you like he hadn't eaten in months, and you were his first meal.

Taehyung’s nothing short of addicting, completely and utterly intoxicating, and you slip further and further to your demise with every lick he takes, every press of his tongue against your clit.

He has a hand pressed against the lower half of your torso, feeling the way you jerk and squirm as he makes a mess of you. You’re close and you know it, too, if not by the way you’re calling his name over and over again, then by the way your thighs tremble, hardly even strong enough to stay up.

"Let go for me, love. I've got you." He sounds so sweet, so angelic, despite how filthy what he was doing to you was.

His words are the push you need, and, like a rubber band that has been stretched past its limit, you finally snap, back arching off the bed as you come with a cry. White fills your vision, and your mind goes blank, only sounds of blissful static filling your ears.

His fingers hold up your quivering legs, mouth pressing kisses onto your pussy encouragingly until you simply can't bear it any longer, pushing his mouth away as you stutter out words of sensitivity and overstimulation.

“I’m going to have to request more of that throughout this marriage.” You manage to say once your vision and breath come back to you.

Grabbing one of your hands, Taehyung brings it to his mouth.

“All you need do is ask,” he replies, making you laugh as he presses a kiss to the back of your hand, always a gentleman

Not long after, you find yourself pressed against Taehyung, tongue running against his as he presses his hips into yours. He isn’t coy about his want for you, rolling his cock against your already sensitive center. Warm precum leaks onto your lower abdomen, and suddenly, all you can think about is having him inside you again.

“Taehyung?”

You don’t even need to ask. Hitching your leg around his thigh, he knows exactly what you’re seeking, lining up his leaking cock with your swollen entrance.

Pressing into you, he buries himself to the hilt, groaning out as your warmth envelopes him. You moan out so prettily for him, feeling tight and full with your first orgasm only minutes ago.

“You okay?” he hums, kissing your cheek.

You nod, ears warm at the intimacy of the moment. In many ways, this is nothing like your first time together. You are face to face, eye to eye, heart to heart. Between your bodies could be found more than just desire, but commitment. Devotion. Love. 

“I love you, Tae.” You gush, sighing out as he begins to rock into you.

He falters slightly at your confession but recovers quickly, intertwining his hand with yours and pressing it by your head.

Faintly, you realize. 

That was the first time you had ever told him that.

You look up at him, expecting some wide eyes or even a bit of a nervous tilt to his lips, but all you are met with is a glow. He beams down at you, and your heart swells. 

“I love you, too, Y/N,” he whispers, but you hear the words in your ears loud and clear.

Soft noises fill the room as the two of you become one—hearts synchronizing with one another in silent promise.

It was a promise unlike the one you had made to each other that day at the altar, for this one was real. This one was true.

You shutter with every thrust of his hips, your abused clit finding itself in the crossfire of Taehyung’s passionate motions.

Whimpering, you cling to him, overwhelmed and emotional, like your heart was about to burst. Taehyung lights a fire in you, sends lightning straight through your core. Every word, every smile, every kiss, every touch, they send shivers down your spine, tingles throughout your skin. It’s like you’re falling in love with him all over whenever you see him, whenever his deep brown eyes meet your own.

You remember being so afraid of love that you broke up with all your old boyfriends because of it. Because you couldn’t commit, because you were worried about your career, because they just didn’t give you that spark. But lying here pressed against him, against your husband, you aren’t afraid. Wrapped up around him, tangled up in him, you know. 

Between messy kisses and words of adoration, you find yourself growing closer and closer to your release. Brows furrowed and neck flushed, you come with a soft whimper of his name, coaxing his own orgasm out of him. He lets go inside you, painting you with his seed in a way that pleases you to no end.

Hand still in yours, he gives it a squeeze, pressing a kiss onto your damp chest, right over where your heart beats for him.

“I love you,” Taehyung says again when you meet his eyes, firmer this time, louder. Like he’s worried you didn’t believe him the first time. 

“I know,” you say with a giggle, the words going straight to your head—and your heart. 

Taehyung scowls. “What, no ‘I love you’ back? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Well, only because you want one so badly,” you tease, pressing a quick kiss to his round button nose. “I love you, too, Tae. Always will.”

“I think I knew, then,” Taehyung says with a fond sigh, nostalgia overcoming his expression. “That first time we met. I knew you would be mine, one day.”

“You got lucky,” you scoff slightly. “But I’m glad things happened the way they did.”

“You’re my dream come true, Y/N,” he says. 

“And you are mine,” you murmur.

As the two of you drift off, all twisted up in each other, so mixed up you can’t figure out where you end and he begins, you think back to that night. That ball. 

“Who are you?” You ask, nose scrunched up in distaste. Before you stood a boy you had never met before, wearing shoes that were too big for him and a suit that was a touch too small. 

He grins at you, running a hand through his perfectly-styled hair fringe swiped neatly over his forehead, and he says, “your dream come true.”

And so it was. 

don’t forget to message me! ~ and don’t forget to message rose!