#park joong gil au

[angelaiswriting]

Stage Love (3 of 3) | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: Park Joong-gil x fem!reader 

✏️ Summary: after the news of you and Joong-gil dating go public, many things change. (Not requested, based on an idea by @kind-wolf​)

✏️ A/N: LOL three months later but... 🤷‍♀️ enjoy! I really did manage to write a full story without angst, wow. This is also a gift for my dear friend Alice💗the whole story, really: it wouldn’t have been a thing without you :’)

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff, (maybe still a bit of) slowburn, unrealistic description of how business works, hints at Jumadeung’s supernatural nature, smut, so 18+ ONLY! > Fingering f/r, oral f/r, mentions of handjobs, unprotected sex; mentions of death and suicide (reader’s dad) [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 20,8k

part one  |  part two  << PART THREE

Lying next to you, you watch Joong-gil sleep. Your eyes trace the lines of his face the same way your fingers would – gently and slowly, above his brow, all the way to his temple, down his cheek and then his jaw until you reach his chin and look up at his lips. They’re set in a light pout that makes you smile – how peaceful and soft he looks when he’s asleep: not a complete one-eighty from his awake persona, but almost there nonetheless.

If your eyes could take a picture, you know you’d be storing it away in your soul and in your heart until you’d be too old to even remember it’s there. You want him etched everywhere, in every fiber of your being, every flower in your chest, every butterfly in your belly, and carry his memory with you everywhere you go. (Maybe you really are fucked, after all.)

There’s something in the silence of your (his, actually) room and in the safety of your blankets, the warmth of his arm slung over your hip, his soft breathing gently fanning your top lip… You can’t give a name to it, but it makes you want to stay here forever; to fall asleep and wake up next to him, time and time again, without ever growing tired of it. The part of you that wants all of that has already erased the mess those photos have started, like you’re not standing in the way of an avalanche but on an empty beach, early in the morning, when it would be just you, the waves, and the night sky slowly bleeding colors and turning into a bright new opportunity.

It’s quiet and soothing, just the way Park Joong-gil is. It feels like a shield, like a bubble you can hide away in just to be able to breathe. You know he’d give you that – and then he’d probably take a couple of steps further and give you something more, the same way he’s hiding you away in his home in Tongyeong, where no one can find either of you.

But is there such a thing as not being found?

That question pops up in your mind as soon as your phone’s vibrations start going off on your nightstand and while you don’t know exactly who it is, you have a whole list of possible options – your manager Ji-young calling in worry. Or the PR team calling in annoyance. The CEO and the rage he slapped you with first thing in the morning, back in your parents’ house, when you could still taste the painful tears you had shed the day before, in front of your father’s final resting place. And then you can already envision the reason for the call – it’s you and Joong-gil at the cemetery. It’s you crying and him holding you in his arms. It’s you living your private life and all those people wanting to wedge a foot and then a shoulder in the door and dictate what you can and cannot do – should and should not do with the time you’re given.

You start turning around at the sixth incoming text, after the two missed calls you let go straight to your voicemail, but Joong-gil’s voice stops you.

“Don’t.” His hand moves from your low back to your waist but when you turn your head back around to look at him, his eyes are still closed.

You wonder if he knows you’ve been staring at him for so long now, trying to memorize his face down to the tiniest detail lest you forget him somehow. Lest he disappear – from your sight and from your life, pulled back and down under by the waves of the ocean, the same infinite expanse you watched together three days ago, on your last night back home, sitting outside on your mother’s patio where the chill of the wind could give your eyes an excuse to water without it having to be ‘I’m hurting so much right now, I can barely keep myself glued together’. He sat next to you that night – Joong-gil. Your hand wrapped in his, both shoved into the pocket of his puffer jacket, not uttering a word because what was there to say that you already hadn’t?

“Ignore it,” he says, his voice gravelly, as he pulls you into him.

With your face nestled into his chest, his chin resting on the top of your head, all you can do is wrap an arm around him and pull him even closer – or allow yourself to melt into him, hoping you could just do that and ignore your phone and everything else and just… be.

“What if it’s my mom?” You’ve avoided enough calls from her during the years, either because you were busy or in pain or a sickening mixture of both. And sometimes, when circumstances rub the memory of your father and make it tender and sore again, you wonder what a missed call could lead to.

“It’s not.” The tone of his voice is final, like he can see your phone’s screen from where he’s lying with his eyes closed and read the ID of the person calling, or like he has a crystal ball inside his head that tells him everything. Can he tell you what will happen? What all of this will lead to? Will you sit in Jumadeung again, together, where no one else can see? Or will that be too much to ask? “She’d call the landline number if you didn’t pick up the first time. She’s busy working right now.”

How do you know? What if it’s her and something’s happened? You want to ask him that, and then a bunch of other questions – what if it pulls you under? What if it affects your career? What if you’re ruined because of me? Me and those stupid, stupid pictures, and Busan, and the snow, and all the paper butterflies in my living room? – but he’s tilting your head back and his eyes are staring into yours when you look up at him.

“It’s just us now,” he says, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it, tracing your bottom lip with his thumb. “I won’t let anyone else into my room.”

The kiss he leaves on your forehead is feather-light, barely there, like an echo of the dream you woke up from this morning – you and him, somewhere light and golden, your hands on his body and his lips kissing yours.

You’re about to part your lips to speak words you don’t even have the time to think, but he interrupts you again, his lips moving against the skin of your forehead.

“It’s raining.”

He’s so warm, burning as hot as a summer day under the t-shirt he managed to shove into his duffel bag before leaving his apartment in a rush when you asked him to come to you. Even the kiss of his lips on your skin is hot; it makes it so hard to believe it’s already winter outside. Maybe if you bask in his warmth a little longer – you think, closing your eyes for a moment – time will pass faster and soon it will be spring, and the rumors of you cheating on Joon-woong (or, even better, the story of your fake ass relationship) will be but a long-forgotten memory.

“Is it?” You’re still looking up at him, even when he’s looking past the crown of your head, out of the window on your side of his room. You wonder whether he can feel how cold your fingertips are, or even your feet as they seek his for a crumb of his body temperature. If staying here with him like this, without either of you moving a muscle, were something you could buy, you’d already be at check-out, wallet in hand.

He hums. It’s deep in his chest and your hand moves to rest against it of its own accord, making his next exhale shiver. “Damn, your hands are always so cold,” he chuckles, finally tearing his gaze away from what he can see of the scenery outside to meet yours with a smile tugging at his lips.

This time it’s his phone that vibrates but just as he ignored yours, he ignores his own.

“What if it’s an important call?” you wonder out loud as he grabs your hands in his. It softens your heart, the way he brings them up to his lips and, like a cliché, kisses your knuckles before bringing them down his torso and up into his nightshirt.

“More important than this?” he scoffs, pressing the palms of your hands against his heated skin. You feel the way his muscles contract at the chill of your skin and when you chuckle at it, he chuckles, too.

Fuck, the way you crave all of him…

There’s this fond look in his eyes when your gaze meets his that fills your heart with something warm and fuzzy, pushing it to grow five sizes bigger. You try to ignore it, but it still somehow brings unshed tears to your eyes and you wonder if this is it – if this is the last thing you need before you finally accept you’re absolutely, irreparably in love with him.

Fuck.

“What’s… this?” You want to hear him say it. Despite knowing already, you want those words to roll off his tongue because, despite everything, you need reassurance. The reassurance that this is real, that it’s not some dream, and that he’s fully, utterly yours – just one more time, you only need to hear it one more time, and then you’ll believe it. Just another crumb of confirmation in this slice of privacy you’re sharing.

“This?” he hums, shifting one of your hands up higher until it’s resting right above his heart. You can feel it beat underneath your fingertips, feel the way it picks up the pace when your eyes meet his once again. “It’s me and you?” You don’t mind the fact that it comes off as a question because then his hands leave yours where he’s put them and he pulls you closer into him. “It’s just us where no one else can reach.”

You smile.

For how long, though? you want to ask, but you bite your tongue before you can even think of voicing that thought out. Even just a drop in this sea of eternity carries more weight than a whole lifetime where everyone can see and pull you apart. So, you swallow those words and smile up at him again.

“I like the sound of that,” you manage to whisper instead, before he’s planting his lips on yours.

When you join him in the kitchen some time later, after the endless kissing in the peace of his bedroom and the nap you managed to fall into, Joong-gil is humming to himself as he stands by the stove. You immediately recognize the tune – it’s one of the songs you wrote for your collaboration deal at the end of last year and that you ended up discarding when his agency didn’t seem to particularly enjoy it – too sappy, too cheesy, doesn’t suit Park Joong-gil’s brooding persona. Scrap it. Write something else.

For a moment, you stand there, hands shoved into the front pockets of the sweatshirt you stole from his closet in search of some extra warmth, your shoulder leaning against the doorframe. The feeling you had earlier in the morning comes back, and you wonder if this is how your mom felt with your dad, or if this is how Bit-na feels around Seung-min or even Ryung-gu with this person of his he still has to disclose details to you about. Like your heart is a bunch of sizes too big for your chest, and like you’re warm even when you’re actually not. It makes you feel like you could really stand in a storm for him.

“I know you’re there,” he chuckles, turning his head slightly to the side before going back to his pans.

You smile.

There’s this beautiful human right here – you think to yourself – and he makes you feel like you’re walking on clouds, with this forgotten song of yours, not really fitting the theme of your collab album but that still feels like a great first song together and with all the small, insignificant things he remembers about you. It’s like he’s carved a space in the shape of you in his life, a corner in his garden that he never fails to tend to, even when you feel like he isn’t looking. Especially when you feel like he isn’t looking.

“My older sister brought over some food, so I’m heating it up for breakfast,” he continues. “Where do you wanna eat? Kitchen or couch?”

Is this just an instant in the span of your lifetime? Or is this something you’ll be able to hold on to for years to come?

“Y/N?”

He doesn’t have the time to turn around because you’re wrapping your arms around his waist from behind. He smells like you used to when growing up, that faint fruity scent of the shower gel your mother still buys just because you told her you liked it once, when you were ten, and that she bought you again before you left. So you don’t forget about me, she said, holding you closer than humanly possible, almost as though she was trying to hold on to you forever instead of letting you get into Joong-gil’s car. He must have stolen it when he took his morning shower. It makes your smile grow wider, and all those flowers are once again blooming in your chest, around your ribs.

You hum when he calls your name again. “This feels good. I just wanna stand here a moment longer.”

His heartbeat is a light drum underneath your fingertips when you move a hand up on his chest. You want to learn his rhythm. You want to commit it to memory like everything else about him. It’s something that’s grown over time, this need you feel to carve all of him inside all of you, almost like part of you is expecting him to leave one day, to exit your life from the back door without so much as a word and never come back.

“You okay?” He turns the stove off and then his hands are wrapping around your wrists, keeping you close.

You want to tell him you’re fine, that things are okay. That in spite of the storm outside – both here in Tongyeong and back in Seoul – you feel untouchable with him by your side. Maybe this is love, you reckon, pressing your cheek into the warmth of his back, between his shoulder blades. But instead of voicing any of that, you simply nod your head, and his low laughter rumbles right inside your chest.

“Sleepy?” He pulls your hands from his body and turns around in your arms, linking your hands behind his back before cradling your face.

You shake your head with a pout on your lips. “How did I get so lucky?” you muse, smiling up at him like you’re tipsy off of his presence alone. He melts your walls down and replaces all your cement with flowers, wipes winter away to make spring bloom.

It makes you want to fucking cry all over again. When did you let yourself fall for him this deeply? Were you not looking when it happened? Were you stuck on that hellish staircase leading down to Jumadeung, only able to see the dirt and darkness while he was trying to show you those fairy lights?

“Hm?”

“You make my heart beat so. fucking. hard,” you confess, barely aware you’re saying any of this out loud and not just in the safety of your head, where no one can hear and judge.

He chuckles – at your words, at the way you’re looking up at him, like he’s the moon in the dark sky of the night, so bright and beautiful and soothing. “You make my heart beat so. fucking. hard, too,” he says back to you, breaking out into a smile when you cradle his neck in your cold hands to peck his lips.

Can’t you stay like this forever, with him in your arms, standing in his kitchen, with the delicious smell of his sister’s food tickling your nose?

Couch it is. He ends up picking for you. He settles the dishes onto the coffee table and then pulls you down onto his lap and wraps his arms around you. It makes you giddy, the way you let him feed you while watching a cooking show on TV.

It’s so domestic, in a way that makes you crave more of this. More of him like this, of the two of you like this, doing normal things together without the eye of a camera watching your every move. More of him telling you about his family, stuff like I’m gonna introduce you to my sister one day or You and my dad have the same whack sense of humor, gee, give me a break.

You wouldn’t leave music, but maybe – just maybe – with him by your side you’d have the courage to set stricter boundaries around your private life.

“You know, a picture would last longer,” he teases you a while later, cheeky, turning to look at you from where he’s standing by the sink.

He looks good like this – dark t-shirt and sweatpants, hair slightly wavy, doing homey things around you like this is your every day and not a parenthesis in your hectic lives. With that smile on his face, bright and relaxed, you delude yourself into believing this is it. This is normal. This is what you’ll always get home to, after a long day of work. This is the warm, safe cocoon you can always come back to.

Would he fly away if you told him all these things? All the ways he makes you feel, and all the things he makes you want to live?

“The moment would change if I got up to grab my phone.” You can feel the smirk on your lips widen when Joong-gil scoffs and shakes his head. “Can’t risk that. Don’t wanna.”

“Ah, is that it?” he tuts, walking across the kitchen while drying his hands in the towel he previously had slung over his shoulder. “Should I get it for you?”

His voice and the way he smirks make you shiver. They bring you back to some time after that night in his living room. It was the only time you took risks and allowed him to drag you to his van. He went down on you that night and then he took a picture, called you pretty with a voice that made you believe you were a thousand things more than just that.

It’s so easy to fall into a routine with him and forget the way his entire being makes you, just, crave.

He’s kneeling between your legs when you manage to tear yourself out of that memory – the shivers in your thighs, the glossy look on his lips and chin, his warm hand on your hip keeping you anchored. “You make me want…” he groans, crossing your ankles behind his back as he leans forward on his forearms, millimeters away from your lips from where you’re resting your head on the arm of the couch.

“Want what?” His hair is soft when you weave your fingers through it.

“Want you.”

He could have you right now and you wouldn’t say no. He’s so scorching hot – all of him is – that he turns everything else to dust. You don’t ask why he doesn’t take, why he doesn’t make a move, and later you’ll realize that you’re also not making a move. You’re also not taking. You’re keeping him there, a little closer than at arm’s length, dreaming and waiting – no clue what for, though. Shouldn’t your little game be over now?

But then he’s kissing you, all of him pressed into all of you, and you just enjoy the present moment. How stupidly real he feels in your arms, keeping you tethered to the ground. And how stupidly fast and hard your heart is pounding right against his, trying to escape your body to be sucked into his ribcage.

You wonder whether he’s also blooming with flowers in his chest the same way you are.

Whether he’s tingling everywhere.

Whether he’s afraid of tomorrow as much as you are.

*

Your apartment is eerily quiet when you step foot through the door.

There obviously was no way you could stay in Tongyeong forever, no fucking way you could wait this one storm out and get back to Seoul when the sea turned calm again. You’ve known that all along. You probably knew it back then as well, on your first night in Jumadeung, when Joong-gil had looked like the brightest fucking thing in the whole entire world, the center of the goddamn universe, everything else spinning around him, trying to keep up, trying to get closer.

It’s easier to believe in an illusion, however. To give it shape, and then give it life, falling in love with the idea of what could be instead of what really is.

“Where the fuck did you disappear to?” You don’t know who’s more pissed at the agency – your boss, the marketing team, or the people in public relations trying to answer every call and email they get because of the people that want to buy your personal life alongside your face and voice. “Do you have any idea of what we’ve been going through? The stock is crazy. Most of your shoots have been canceled and your album has been put on hold. Joon-woong, Ryung-gu, and Ryeon have been getting shit because of you, too.”

You don’t know what makes your heart hurt more – these words directed at you, the realization that you really are just another product on the market, the memories of your father that have surfaced back with the anniversary of his death… Couldn’t you have just one moment for yourself without it having to be torn out of your grasp?

“You had to do one thing. One thing only,” your CEO goes on, yelling your head off from the other end of the line when you drop your backpack onto the couch in your living room.

You wonder where your origami paper is. Do you still have a few sheets lying around?

“Shit, Y/N…” he sighs. You can picture him rubbing his eyes from behind the lenses of his glasses, holding his phone to his ear in a steely grip. He’s always been scary, ever since your trainee days, and although you managed to outgrow the fear you had of him, part of that uneasiness is coming back now. “Why couldn’t you just…?”

“What?” There’s no bite in your voice, behind your words; no actual strength to fight back over something that shouldn’t even be a problem. Naturally, you do see the problem, but at the same time… not really. Stock market? Angry fans? Shootings canceled? How can even just the rumor of a relationship stir all these things up? You sell music, not your whole entire life. “Just lie? You do realize I have a life, right? That I’m a person, too, first and foremost. With feelings and a heart.”

The smart lock of your door chimes and when you whip your head around, you see Ryung-gu popping his head into your apartment, brows furrowed and both worry and relief painted all over his face.

You alright? he mouths. Can I come in?

He’s rushing to sit next to you when you nod in his direction, barely even listening to what’s coming through your phone this time.

All you can hope for is that Joon-woong didn’t have to go through this.

“—nd all you had to do was. fucking. play. along! How hard could that be?” Another sigh.

The boss? Ryung-gu mouths.

A nod.

Want me to take the call?

You’re shaking your head no when the pause on the other end of the call comes to an end.

“Ha Dae-su of Nae-il Ent. has been on my ass for days because of you. Do you have any idea of what that means?” A scoff and then there’s laughter that feels like nails on a blackboard, scratching everything inside of you and leaving just scorching disappointment behind. “Of course, you don’t. You’re where you are only because of your pretty face, so let me explain it plain and simple. They want to sue us because of whatever fucking reason. With all the men you could have whored yourself out to, you had to go for Park fucking Joong-gil?” It’s almost comical, the way he still hasn’t popped a vein, but you reason this is his payback for trying to use you (and Joon-woong) in such a base manner. “The Park Joong-gil? If there’s one golden bachelor in this fucking country, it’s him! Do you have any idea of the amount of crazy-in-love idiot fans he has at his feet and that consider him theirs? Of fucking course, you don’t!”

From the corner of your eye, you can see Ryung-gu’s knuckles turn white on his knees from how tight he’s clenching his fists. He tore your phone from your hands and put it on speaker as soon as he got a whiff of what was being said at the other end of the call, and his anger is now paying the consequences for wanting to know.

“You shouldn’t even have to endure this,” he growls through gritted teeth a second before abruptly ending the call. “All of this… fuck! I…”

You watch him struggle for words, neck red and nails digging into the flesh of his palms, sitting there on your couch in his lounge clothes for the first time in forever.

“I’m fine, I just…” You’re taken aback by the spirited look in his eyes when he whips his head in your direction so fast that something in his neck pops and forces a groan past his lips. “I was all over the place because of my father at first, and then I spoke with Joon-woong in the car drive back here… He said he’s already thought up something and we’re gonna explain everything when we go live tonight, which is mainly why I’m back now and not back home. Maeng Jang-hyun is a piece of shit, but I haven’t been afraid of his empty threats since debut.”

“Y/N…”

“I’m just sorry you and Ryeon had to be hit by the storm, too. And Joon-woong, of course, but… I mean, we knew it was all fake and we couldn’t wait for an accident to happen and end all of—”

The confines of his hug are warm and calm, like he’s managed to keep his anger contained and swallowed it down, redirecting it to someone who really deserves it, like your CEO Maeng Jang-hyun. “The guys and I are fine, you shouldn’t worry about us. It’s bad to say out loud, but Joon has mainly been spared. Everyone thinks he’s the boyfriend who’s gotten cheated on, after all.”

You pull back to complain, but he silences you with a smile.

“Ryeon and I know he’s never been your boyfriend, but the public doesn’t. I think it’s sort of understandable that they’d act that way,” he continues before you can open your mouth again. “Park Joong-gil is also… extremely popular and extremely imposing sometimes, so despite some hate, his situation is also fine, we’ve been monitoring it. I’m sure Ha Dae-su won’t really sue anyone after Joong-gil has given him an explanation.”

“His agency is hell-bent on opposing his relationships, though,” you groan. “And… All that…” You wave a hand in the air almost as though such a simple gesture could encompass everything Ryung-gu has just said and everything he hasn’t brought himself to voice out. You know it’s stupid but, “Good to know I’ve been portrayed as the piece of shit in this whole situation.”

The tears you managed not to shed since that first tabloid article came out are finally prickling your eyes and while you know you won’t be able to hold them back, you at least manage to hide them by turning your head to look at the city on the other side of the window behind your couch.

“Fuck…” is Ryung-gu’s barely audible whisper before he pulls you into a hug again. “I didn’t mean any of that in a bad way, I swear.”

“I know, I just…”

“Plenty enough on your plate already, I know.”

His hand’s movement on your back is calming and you let the thumb of his other hand soothingly rub behind your ear, slowly bringing you down from the height of your breakdown.

“You will land on your feet, you have nothing to worry about. We’re all with you, okay? Ryeon’s even thinking about not renewing our contract with this agency. We can all move together.”

You nod, biting your tongue to stop yourself from out-rightly sobbing, even though there’s no stopping the silent tears trailing down your cheeks. Maybe you should have asked Joong-gil to come with you, instead of begging him to simply drop you off at the metro station on his way home. You feel dumb for allowing your fears to gnaw at your mind, for not wanting to show him your tears, even after that afternoon at the cemetery. Like that could make or break all the feelings you share, the moments you spent together and etched into your memory.

Stupid, stupid fears and stupid, stupid cement walls.

“Actually,” Ryung-gu chuckles, resting his chin on your shoulder, bringing you back to the here and now, “Joon-woong and I had to stop Ryeon from slapping Mr Maeng when he started bad mouthing you at the agency.”

A smile slips onto your lips before you can stop it. “Yeah?”

He hums. “Yeah. You know how scary she is when she gets mad, right?”

You nod. “I mean, she knows how to be scary even when she’s not mad…”

He laughs, chuckling a yeah of agreement under his breath. “Maeng probably pissed himself. If she could’ve scared everyone else to death as well, she would have.”

“I guess I should thank her.”

“Don’t let her know you cried, then. She said she’d scold you too if you let this get to you.”

When he chuckles, this time, you chuckle with him. Slowly, it’s like the burden that has been weighing your soul down all this time disappears bit by bit, eaten away by Ryung-gu’s hug and his tale of all the different ways Ryeon has cursed everyone who has tried to paint you in a bad light – at the agency, online, during an interview as well if Joon-woong hadn’t stopped her in time.

“Will Park Joong-gil go live with you and Joon?” he asks after a while, when your tears have gone dry and you’re not desperately clutching at the back of his hoodie anymore. When you nod, he continues with a, “good. I would’ve whooped his ass otherwise” that finally manages to really make you laugh.

“Can you stay with us?” you eventually ask, words jumbled together with how you’re pressing your face into the side of his neck. Just one more minute of this, you tell yourself. Maybe you’ll manage to forget about everything else and you won’t have to do a thing. You should have known from the beginning that things would have led to this, but somehow you’ve been taken aback by the harshness of the backlash.

“Hm?”

“You can check that everything goes well with the streaming and… To be honest you’re my best friend here. I love Ryeon and Joon-woong and Joong-gil just the same, but you’ve always been my best friend… Stay? Please?”

*

Hello, everyone! It’s Choi Joon-woong, Y/N, and Park Joong-gil! – your fake (ex) boyfriend’s voice chirps for the second time in your living room tonight.

Joon-woong, Joong-gil, and Ryung-gu are rewatching the livestream you ended not even half an hour ago, but you can’t really bring yourself to do the same. So, instead of joining them on the couch, you’re sitting in the kitchen, watching the skyline and the night lights outside your window.

It’s sleeting outside. It’s not nearly cold enough for it to stick yet, but the sight still brings a semblance of peace to your mind. Everything’s still there – Maeng Jang-hyun yelling your ear off, all the gigs you no more have, the comments you caught glimpses of before Joong-gil snatched your phone out of your grasp – but at least now you can breathe.

“Min and I watched your live and we think you did great,” Bit-na says over the phone, sensing the turmoil that’s making your insides clench and your mind wander. Or maybe it’s painted all over your face, but you don’t dare look down at your video in the corner of the call to make sure.

“Some comments were—”

“Fuck those people!” she exclaims, cutting you off before you can even think of coming up with any kind of excuse for the people that left hate in the live chat. You see how she leans closer to her phone for a moment before picking it up to go into her kitchen. “There’s always gonna be fuckers like that. From a marketing point of view— I mean, I’m no expert, of course, but as I was saying… I think y’all saved the situation pretty well. It was about time everyone knew the stunt your agency was trying to pull!”

You sigh, glancing toward the couch where Joong-gil is looking at you. It catches you off guard, the fact that he is already staring, brows set in a light frown, trying to decipher what feelings are buzzing through your veins. Is it the thoughts in your head? Or is it how hard your hands were shaking while you were busy explaining the situation you found yourselves involved in? Both he and Joon-woong got a hold of them off-camera, just a few inches outside the frame of the three of you sitting on your couch.

“If anyone comes at you,” Bit-na picks up again, making you face the screen of your phone once more, “I’m ready to throw hands. You know that, right?”

It makes you smile. It’s always been nice to know you have someone ready to watch your back, sides, and front, and it’s even nicer now. It nostalgically brings you back to when you were still in school, and you and Bit-na were attached at the hip. No matter what happened, you were her back-up and she was yours. It’s been a long time since things were like that, with all the distance now separating you and your lives.

“I know, it’s just…” Another sigh. Even without tearing your gaze from your phone, you’re now still aware of Park Joong-gil keeping an eye on you from where he’s sitting on the couch.

—nd the truth is, our agency has been making us live this lie for too long now. We apologize to all the people we’ve been forced to inadvertently hurt, but we hope you do understand that there are things going on in our private lives for which—

The tips of your thumb and forefinger are freezing cold when they come up to rub your eyes from behind your blue-lights-blocking glasses. “I don’t understand. Things shouldn’t even come to this. Aren’t we people, too?”

“I know, love, but this seems to be the way the industry is.” You hear a masculine voice in the background of her side of the video call – probably Seung-min muttering something similar to does she need back-up? – and your friend shakes her head with a small smile on her lips. “It’s not fair, and things do need to change, but for the time being that’s how it is…”

You nod, heaving a long exhale as you play with the black cord of your old earphones.

“But hey! Maybe this is where that change starts, no?”

“Well, this change has already made me lose most of my income in the immediate future,” you complain. It still stings, the fact that the album you’ve been working so fucking hard on has been indefinitely put on hold for something this minuscule. If this afternoon’s call with the head of your agency could shed any insight on how things might unravel for you, then it appears luck isn’t on your side and the new year will start without the release you’ve been working your ass off for.

“Come teach ballet with me,” Bit-na shrugs, grinning brightly at her camera. “Or, you know, k-pop stuff. Kids would love that stuff and they’d love you. It’s not every day that you have an idol as your dance teacher.”

Her offer makes you laugh out loud. “Yeah, maybe when I retire… I’ll come back to Busan and work for you.”

“Work with me,” she corrects. “But I’m serious, if you ever need a plan B… I got your Back. Got it? Your Back, plan B, with Bit-na,” she giggles.

“Gee, your sense of humor has truly never changed, you and your dad jokes…” You roll your eyes, but you’re sure Bit-na can see the amusement on your face the same way you could hear the seriousness behind her words just a moment ago. “I miss you,” you confess after a long pause, looking up from your hands to her bright face.

For a moment you’re back in time, when she came over with your mother and saw the tiny lighthouse she gifted you on your shelf. In your mind she’s still standing there, in your living room, looking at her pretty gift in her hands – she used to always touch the stuff in your room when you were younger, marveling at the knick-knacks you had on your shelves. Sometimes she truly is the lighthouse in your life, giving you direction when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the best friend anyone could ask for.”

“Can’t even be emotional with you,” you bicker, amused.

“I’m just kidding. You know I miss you, too. I also love you.”

“More than Seung-min?”

She hums, tapping her chin with her pointer finger while looking off-camera as a grin spreads wide on her lips.

“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes… no,” she chuckles. “Just don’t make me choose.”

When you end the call, some ten minutes later, your soul feels lighter and breathing doesn’t seem as hard nor does your mind feel as clouded by worries of every kind as it did when your livestream ended.

“Noona?”

You turn around when Joon-woong calls you, and this time you find the three of them staring. They probably finished their rewatch of what you told the audience earlier in the evening, but your laptop is still on – you can see the light of its screen reflecting onto Joong-gil’s reading glasses.

“I’m sorry, I needed a moment away from everything.” Your voice is small when you approach them, house slippers padding on the hardwood of the floor.

The truth is, you don’t have it within yourself to rewatch the live, or to simply hear again all the justifications you had to give. I’m not a cheater and I also have feelings, a private life, you know? Why should I deny myself the things a normal person can freely do and have? What hurts the most, probably, is the fact that you weren’t even given the privacy to grieve. People saw what they wanted to see in the version of you someone else decided to sell the tabloids and post online. People saw a girlfriend cheating on her boyfriend when it was just someone’s daughter crying her pain out in the arms of a friend – a lover, more and more so every day – trying his best to keep her pieces together.

You stopped being you when you stepped onto that stage and became a product – that’s what your mother told you before you left Busan, wrapped up in her arms and in her scent, trying to make you discern between the person they think you are and the person she knows you to be. People buy a version of you that’s not really you. If they’d take the real you that is like any other normal person, they wouldn’t see you as special anymore, wouldn’t put you on a pedestal.

Is it bad that I’m a product, Mom?

It’s only bad when they want to force that product onto the real person.

What would she say if she were here now? You’re almost afraid to call her, to ask her whether she watched the livestream. What she thinks of it. What she thinks you should do.

Whether she’s still proud of you.

Whether she can shield you from the rest of the world like she used to.

“The first response isn’t bad at all,” Ryung-gu says, leaning forward and grabbing your hand. “You’re cold,” he points out, pulling you into his side.

“She always is,” Joong-gil chimes in, going back to reading the comments on the screen with Joon-woong.

“Your boyfriend sure does know a lot of things about you,” Ryung-gu whispers in your ear, making you chuckle.

It has a nice ring to it – boyfriend. You’ve considered Park Joong-gil a lot of things deep inside your soul, but you never really slapped a label on him. You have to admit, however, that ‘boyfriend’ feels nice. Maybe you should tell him later, when everyone else leaves. You realize that somehow you want to be his. Sure, you want to be free from all the contracts you’re tangled in, but wouldn’t it be nice to be free with him? To finally belong – somewhere, with someone, in a world that has no limits, not even to who you can be and what you can do as long as it makes you happy. You can’t run away forever; one day you’ll have to stop, and what better place than with someone that feels like home?

“Mr Maeng has been blowing my phone up, but most of the fans seem to be angrier at the agency than at us now,” Joon-woong says, showing you his Twitter feed. “Ryeon also called when you were talking with your friend.”

“What did she say?”

“That y’all did the right thing, speaking up for yourselves and bringing what the agency wanted you to do to light,” Ryung-gu replies, letting you climb past him to sit in-between him and Joon-woong to read the comments you’re being shown. “Based on how our agency reacts, she says we’ll all think about whether to renew with them or get signed under someone else.”

“‘I know a guy,’ she said,” Joon-woong adds, tugging on the lobe of his ear. “Whatever that means. I guess he’s supposed to help. Will help.”

When Ryung-gu and Joon-woong leave – We’ll be upstairs playing games if you need anything, the former promised – it’s just you and Joong-gil, who’s waited for you to close the entrance door and come back to the couch before making you straddle his thighs to sit on his lap.

There’s only tenderness – in the way the thumb of his left hand rubs slow circles into your hip and his right hand cradles the back of your head, in the way he stares into your eyes. He doesn’t say a word for the longest time; he just sits there, drinking you in, breathing you in, your hands on his biceps. The cashmere of his turtleneck is the softest thing you’ve ever touched, of that much you’re sure.

Then, eventually, he smiles. “Hi.”

God, you want to hug him so tight it hurts. “Hey.”

“How’re you feeling?” he asks, pulling you in closer until his lips are a breath away. His smile widens into grin when your breath catches in the back of your throat, and his hands pull your head closer for a quick peck on your lips. It’s like he rejoices in the effect he has on you, like he’s learned it long ago and he now pushes those buttons any time he can.

You don’t mind, though. It’s nice, to be loved as tenderly as he does you – and then as fiercely as he did when you were still playing that game of yours, chasing each other knowing you couldn’t go the whole way. So, you smile and hum, tipsy off of the smell of him, and his smile, his hands on your cheeks, his lips so close to yours that you can almost feel their gentle press against yours. “‘M fine,” you mumble, pecking his lips and smiling some more.

He’s so fucking handsome – in general, every minute of every goddamn day, but even more so up close – his long eyelashes, the curve of his lips, even the dark circles under his eyes.

“Ryung-gu said something earlier that really made me giddy,” you continue, pecking his lips once more, now unable to hide the grin that stretches wide on your lips.

Right then, his phone starts going off on the couch, but he doesn’t even spare it a glance. It’s another one of the small things he does that never fail to make you feel important, like he always has – or makes – time for you no matter the situation.

“Hm, yeah?” He leans back against the couch until he’s slightly looking up at you from where you’re still sitting upright, his hands now on your hips. “What’d he say?”

There’s a bird in your chest in lieu of your heart, fluttering its wings because of the way he’s looking at you – warm brown eyes, taking you in like he’s also trying to commit this moment – you – to memory, basking in the coziness of it all, of you in his lap looking down at him like there’s nothing else in the world. Later down the road, he’ll even tell you how bright your whole expression was tonight, like you had stars inside he couldn’t help but stare at.

“He called you my boyfriend,” you grin, leaning forward and digging your fingertips into the plush of the headrest.

He chuckles, surprised by how giddy you are at such a statement. “That’s so random. Am I not?”

Your grin hurts your cheeks. “Are you?”

“We just told the whole country you and I are the real couple in this situation!” he gasps, chuckling right after. “How more obvious should I make it?”

His lips spread into a grin when you peck them – you learned months ago how much you enjoy doing that, even more so if it catches him off guard. The way he holds his breath for a moment, the way he exhales, and the way he chases after you when you pull away.

“Am I your girlfriend?” you ask, mere millimeters from his lips. His breath is lightly fogging up the lenses of your glasses near the bridge of your nose, but you don’t care.

“Hell yeah! We even…” He grunts, pulling your right hand away from the couch and holding it up between you, interlacing the fingers of his left with yours. “We even have couple rings! See?” he continues, turning your hands so that you can catch a glimpse of the thin silver band on his middle finger matching the one on your index. “Do you and Bit-na have this?”

You laugh at that, shaking your head ‘no’ at his words. When you lean down to press a kiss to the ring on his finger, you try to hide yourself behind your joined hands and childishly ask, “So… Does that mean you’re my boyfriend?”

“You make me crazy,” he laughs, pulling on you so quickly that you end up losing your balance and crashing into his chest. “I’m your boyfriend, yeah.”

This time, when he kisses you, he doesn’t pull back. He pulls you closer instead, one hand still tightly wrapped around yours and the other splayed on the back of your head, and when you smile he takes his chance to pull your lower lip between his teeth.

“Now I know I should make things explicit.” He’s looking at your lips when he speaks, and you can feel them tingle, barely able to recover from the kiss you’ve just shared.

“Yeah?”

“Hm.” His gaze meets yours over a shared smile – or, rather, your smile and his smirk – and suddenly, that dangerous spark in his eyes makes the ghost of his past touches trail down your spine, under that hoodie of his you never gave back after your first time at Jumadeung. “Like how you’re mine. Or how I’m gonna make you mine.”

*

“Explain last night’s livestream.”

You’re sitting side by side with Joon-woong, feeling much calmer than you thought you would be last night in your living room, when you were talking to a camera while trying not to be terrified by the judgment of faceless, nameless people. Opposite you, at the other end of the long table in the meeting room, sits Maeng Jang-hyun, dark square glasses low on the bridge of his nose and jaw clenched tight.

“I don’t think anyone gave you permission to go live, least of all together,” he continues, voice as cold as can be. “Or with Park Joong-gil of Nae-il Ent.” (You don’t tell him you asked for your mom’s opinion, though, or your manager, Ji-young’s, and neither opposed the idea.)

On either side of Maeng Jang-hyun sit the heads of the Public Relations team and of the marketing department. Both Jo Yong-hee (the former) and Ji Hwa-ja (the latter) stare past Joon-woong and you, at the building on the other side of the street across from your agency, unreadable expressions on their faces. You’ve been trying to read the room with them ever since you showed up with your friend this morning, but until now it’s been impossible to gauge whether they’re on your side or on Maeng’s.

“All that bullshit you fed the viewers with…” Something ticks in his jaw when he turns his head to the side to take a deep breath and avoid the sight of you. “Maybe you don’t care about the agency employing you, but—”

“Maybe it’s the agency employing us that—” you try to say, using what little courage you’ve managed to put together as fuel before being unceremoniously cut off.

Joon-woong grabs your hand under the table and gives it a light squeeze of encouragement.

Maeng Jang-hyun slams a fist on the hard metal surface of the table and then tries to hide the hiss that slips past his lips at the pain that shoots up his wrist. “Maybe it’s the agency what?” he growls after he manages to calm down – a big word to mean he’s barely keeping his anger at bay.

Maybe this is when he pops a vein, you think to yourself, doing your best to not cower in front of him – you’ve never been afraid of him, but you’ve also never been in such a situation. Joong-gil promised you everything would be fine, and you made Joon-woong the same promise when you picked him up from his apartment earlier this morning.

“We came up with a strategy and you agreed to it. Now you dare bite the hand that feeds you?”

“We were forced to accept the fake relationship,” Joon-woong bites back, his voice sounding much more stable than yours did a while ago, standing up for the both of you.

This time, you’re the one squeezing his hand tight and not letting go.

“And you knew it was bound to come to an end,” he adds, sparing a glance at Jo Yong-hee and Ji Hwa-ja who have yet to make a sound, almost as if to dare them to utter a word in their boss’s defense.

“When we would say it should,” Maeng retorts. “Ms Ji.”

“Sir,” Hwa-ja bows her head slightly. You don’t miss the way she clutches the pen in her hand a little tighter, the golden rings on her fingers catching the light of the in-ceiling lamps when she does so.

“How were the sales going before this shitshow?”

Ji Hwa-ja glances in your direction with eyes full of pity before she goes back to looking straight out of the window behind your back. You want to hope she also is uncomfortable with the situation – the one that forced you and your musician friend to play a part more than the lecture the agency’s CEO is delivering. “The figures were through the roof.”

“Revenue?”

“Possibly the highest we’ve had since Y/N and RMT debuted.”

“Ms Jo.”

It’s Yong-hee’s turn to bow her head, but this time she doesn’t look at you. She fixes her gaze on her colleague, the other half of the J Sisters as some of the trainees dubbed Jo Yong-hee and Ji Hwa-ja a long time ago, and doesn’t look away.

“How’s the situation in your office?”

“Well…” Yong-hee clears her throat and you can see how she glances at you and Joon-woong from the corner of her eye. Her pointer finger incessantly taps against the table, and there’s some perspiration along her hairline. “We’ve been getting calls all morning. Emails…” She swallows, suddenly leaning forward to grab her water bottle for a sip of water. “They started coming in last night, a couple hours after the livestream.”

“And what are the newspapers writing about?” Maeng is staring at you specifically – like you’re the culprit in this situation. You, a whole-ass adult and not a puppet. If looks could kill, you’d be dead in the afterlife as well.

“They— Uh…” Jo Yong-hee stalls. Her thumb fidgets with the ring on her index finger, and even Ji Hwa-ja’s stoic façade cracks a little. “Not nice things.”

“‘Not nice things,’” Maeng parrots, nodding his head, clenching his jaw so tight the tendons in his neck pop out. “Bang Guk-heon’s also heard from our main investors. They’re not happy.”

It almost feels like you’re a child getting scolded by the school’s principal, being talked to with the simplest words lest you not understand how bad they think the situation is.

You also vaguely remember the CFO Bang Guk-heon from one of your first big company celebrations many years ago, when you were still a trainee and YUNIE – or Jeon Bo-yun, who told you to call her unnie when you accidentally walked in on her studying her new choreography on the very last day of your first week of training – was the biggest star signed under your agency’s name. Back then he had seemed like a competent guy, boasting about how he had managed to chat some big name of the music industry into becoming a major partner. You’re sure there’s no reason to worry he’d let anyone withdraw stocks over a fucking marketing stunt gone wrong.

“Do you have any idea what the repercussions could be, Y/N?” Maeng leans forward on his elbows, looking down the slope of his nose and above his sunglasses to meet your gaze. Is he afraid of Choi Joon-woong? Or is he simply targeting you as the weak link? “Public outrage goes on. Our value on the stock market falls. Investors withdraw. We brush the line of bankruptcy. Are you gonna pay for the damages when that happens?”

Joon-woong snorts. His grip on your hand tightens and you have to bite down the yelp that manages to crawl past your lips at his intensity. “Over something like a fake relationship scandal? Be for fucking real.”

When you finally turn in his direction, only wanting to run away from Maeng’s hateful gaze, you realize you’ve never seen your friend Joon-woong this pissed. You used to think Koo Ryeon was the scary member out of the three of them, but you’re starting to believe Choi Joon-woong has simply managed to keep himself on a leash until now.

“Five years ago Kwon Sang-gu and his agency faced that fucking huge scandal when word came out that he had evaded his military service duty with their support,” he continues, as stern as can be, never breaking eye contact with his big boss and never letting go of your hand. “The agency debuted a girl group and made more money than Kwon Sang-gu ever brought them and today they’re only second to Nae-il Ent. DYNAMIC was caught tampering with votes at award shows and now they’re among the top five most-grossing companies in the country. Do you really think this scandal will make you lose even ten percent of what they lost? Cut your bullshit before you really lose us.”

Maeng Jang-hyun laughs, a robotic, unamused sound that scratches your eardrums and makes you look back at him. “Are you threatening me?”

Joon-woong shrugs his shoulders. “Stating a fact. Making a promise. The terms of our contracts are coming to an end and there are plenty of people who’d want to sign big names like us. We might decide to broaden our horizons if our interests don’t align with the company’s anymore.”

*

You’re alone in your car later that day, after meeting up with Ryung-gu and Ryeon, who wanted to eat lunch with you and Joon-woong and catch up on what transpired during the meeting. They make the situation less heavy, less weird than it has to be.

It’s alright, we’ll land right side up. I know a guy – Ryeon said over her salad, nodding to everything you and her fellow member tell both her and Ryung-gu.

You make it sound sketchy.

She grinned when Ryung-gu said that. It could be that way too, if you want it to be. I meant a lawyer in this case, though.

Driving around aimlessly, you wonder what a lawyer might do for your case. You do understand what happened – and you did read some of the comments people posted online even though Joong-gil explicitly suggested you avoid social media for a while – but at the same time… not really.

The most important false step would be a breached contract, but nowhere did you or Joon-woong sign anything about playing along with this marketing stunt. Can you still get in trouble? You can ignore the online, anonymous hate, but you can’t do the same with legal actions.

Maybe your friends are right, you think, taking turns in the road and simply following the flow of the early afternoon traffic. Maybe you should consider looking into other companies, other agencies. Find somewhere else that could – or would be willing to – get you signed when your contract with Maeng’s agency comes to an end.

You grumble, slamming both hands on the steering wheel at a red light.

You really did like it there. Maeng and his management might be annoying at times, but you still had – have, you have to remind yourself you can still use the present tense – a hella lot of creative freedom, more than Nae-il Ent. seems to give Joong-gil. After starting training with them, you thought you’d be able to have a long career under their name – and NABI felt like the right agency name to be working for.

“How did your meeting go?” is the first thing your mother asks when you accept her call.

You really don’t know, but you can’t tell her that, make her worry more than she already is. “Fine, I guess.” You take a left turn, but you barely have the time to realize you’re not really that familiar with this area of the city. It’s easy to go anywhere when it’s Park Ji-young who’s driving. “Remember Ryeon?”

Your mother hums.

What is she doing? Shouldn’t she be at work right now?

“Well, she said she and the guys are considering not renewing their contracts with the agency. That they’ll most likely switch to someone else. They already have a few names lined up.”

“Are you going to do the same?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I’ve always liked it here… But then they used me and Joon, and now they’re trying to make us look like the bad guys.” You sigh, and it’s silent on the line for a while. “Like, I do see where I went wrong, but I also feel like things could’ve been handled differently on their part, no?”

“They shouldn’t have played with your private life in the first place, so this is on them.”

“So, do you also think I should get signed under someone else?”

“I think you should do what you think is best for yourself, the way they’ve always done for themselves. This is not just work, this is also your life. I spoke with a school friend this morning, her husband is in the industry. She says you’re a big name, that you’ll have plenty of options elsewhere, even if you decide to stop with the performances and switch to producing or even just coaching.”

“Yeah?” You do your best to not let her hear the way your voice quivers. There’s this deep, heavy tiredness perched on your shoulders, spread everywhere in-between skin and muscle and fat, and it makes you want to break down and cry it all out. Maybe it was a good thing the truth came out. Maybe it should have stayed hidden until your agency let you free. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s neither.

She hums again. “Whatever makes you happy, that’s what you should do. Don’t give up on what gives you that happiness just because you want to be seen as the good guy.”

Don’t let the man you love go – that’s what she’s saying without saying it.

“I’m so proud of you, you know that, right? Whether you’re singing on the moon or working whichever other job. Whether you’re signed with a company or another. I’m proud of the person you’re inside. Your dad would be, too, I’m sure. We’ve both always loved you so much.” It’s her voice’s turn to quiver now. Reminiscing is never easy, especially when it makes you vulnerable and old wounds sting.

Somehow, after turning left and right an unspecified number of times, after driving mindlessly through one street after the other, you find yourself pulling up in front of the old building hosting Jumadeung in its bowels. After going back with your mind to the two nights you’ve spent here, it’s like your heart has brought you back a third time.

“Hm.” Why can’t you say those three words out loud? Why can you never bring yourself to voice them? Come on, you just open your mouth and say them. Just do it, fuck. “Me, too.”

Someone calls her name then, and you can hear something about having to go back to the ward.

“I gotta go now. Remember what I said, okay? Pursue your happiness, not anyone else’s demands.”

After a quick goodbye, it’s just you in the car. You realize now you haven’t even been playing any music, instead simply sitting there with the turmoil in your mind and in your soul, allowing Seoul’s traffic to dictate in which direction you should turn your wheel.

Pursue your happiness – that’s what she said. Be in control of your life! – even if something else seems to have brought you back to Jumadeung?

There’s no saying what possesses you, what makes you drive down the ramp that leads to the underground garage. All you know is that you’re parking your car in the deserted place and locking its doors. The headlights flash when you click on your car’s remote, and for a brief moment, you can see your shadow on the wall opposite you.

It feels so weird to be here during the day, like this is a completely different place than the one you’ve visited in the past. Like it’s on a completely different plane of existence. There’s water trickling down somewhere and the sound the droplets make seems amplified, echoing off the bare walls of this haunted-house-like building.

A shiver speeds down your spine when your brain suddenly realizes how much creepier it is here in broad daylight compared to at night. It’s like shadows are wrapped in an additional layer of threat, like some nightmare-esque being could jump out from behind one of the garage pillars.

Running toward the door that leads inside the building would be a bit too childish for your age, you decide when you clutch the shoulder strap of your bag, and walking would feed the uneasiness in your bones, so speedwalking it is. It feels like a good compromise between the two ends of the spectrum – not that there’s anyone here to witness. You doubt this place even has security cameras.

You still make it out of there alive, though, even without Park Joong-gil’s hand holding onto yours and guiding you toward the fairy lights. They’re on even at this hour of the day, those fairy lights, so colorful and reassuring even when you reach Jumadeung’s double door and are faced with a sign reading WE’RE CLOSED ON TUESDAYS in big, flashy characters.

A slight disappointment washes over you, trickling down your veins and settling in your soul. You weren’t really thinking about stopping by for a drink or a bite; you didn’t even want to come here, you simply happened to end up in front of the building. Still, you should have expected it to still be closed so early in the afternoon, but to also end up here on their day off feels like a joke on Fate’s part. That’s what you thought had guided you here: Fate, invisible strings pulling the threads of your life to lead you back to the one place where you felt like you belonged for the first time in long years.

Instead of just driving around, maybe you should have called Joong-gil, waited on the line with him before the meeting he was supposed to have with his agency right after lunchtime. You could have told him how yours went, then maybe invited him over to your place to eat dinner together and try to decide what to do, how to act. How to shush the bruising noises and breathe for a moment.

“Are you going to stand there for a while longer?” suddenly asks a voice coming from behind you, catching you so off guard that you jolt in place before you finally manage to turn around with your heart lodged at the back of your throat.

Golden glasses, white fluffy cardigan over deep green palazzo pants – you recognize the middle-aged woman as Jumadeung’s queen, Jade – whether that’s her real name or not. She stares at you expectantly, and it takes you longer than it should have to bow your head to her in greeting.

“I’m sorry, I…” Words fail you and your gaze is quickly caught by one of the lights toward the end of the fairy light string flickering. “I didn’t know you were closed, I’ll get going.”

Jade ends up coaxing you inside, past the door that separates the outside world full of chaos from the calm peace of Jumadeung. She leads you up to the counter and grabs your coat for you before carefully placing it on one of the empty tables.

The silence of the bar is not completely unwelcome, but it’s still somehow eerie in a way you can’t exactly explain. It’s always been quiet the times you came here, even with other patrons present, but this feels… different. Like Jumadeung is a beast alive of its own life and now it’s sleeping, waiting until it’s time to wake up again, to have its fill of living people.

“I don’t know how I wound up here,” you confess unprompted as Jade boils a tea for the two of you. You don’t know why you’re telling her, or why you feel the need to in the first place. Your tongue and lips are simply moving a fraction of a second before your brain even has the time to send out orders. “I was just driving and…”

Jade’s soft features light up when she smiles and when she walks past to grab two cups, her jasmine scent wafts toward you. It brings back a pleasant memory: your father gifting both you and your mother flowers on a random night, after a long day spent at work.

“That’s curious,” she smiles, pouring tea. She only continues when she walks around the counter and sits down next to you, so close that it really does feel like spring. “That’s how Park Joong-gil found this place the first time.”

To the surprised expression on your face, she replies with a chuckle.

“He said he had been driving around aimlessly, with lots of things on his mind. He stopped at the front of the building and walked inside,” she tells you. “I remember that back then the laundry upstairs was still in business. I found him just outside the door the same way I found you. It was also a Tuesday.”

Somehow, unexplainably, you’re hanging from her every word, tea cup in hand but not close enough to your lips to drink from it. It helps warm your cold hands up, however. “Really?”

She nods and takes a sip of her tea, finally turning her head slightly to look at you from above the rim of her glasses. “I’ve always thought some people are destined to find each other,” and then she glances down at the ring on your hand, whose twin sits around Joong-gil’s finger.

You want to ask her what she means by that. Reading too much into things has never done you any good, and you’re also unable to understand how this random woman hinting at Destiny – the one with a capital D – makes you feel. Had it been anyone else, you would have been bubbling in annoyance by now, but somehow Jade has you rooted to the spot, like you can’t really move unless she allows you to.

“Do you know what Fate does?” she asks, going back to looking ahead, at your reflection in the old, stained mirror of the bar.

It’s then that you feel like you can move again, and you take the chance to drink your tea, mulling over a million thoughts at once. Why she’s telling you these things. Why you ended up here in the first place. Your troubles at the agency. All the posts online about you and Joon-woong, and you and Joong-gil, and you and Joon-woong and Joong-gil. What’s your mom doing? Would Bit-na really let you teach at her dance school if things here go south? What would your dad say?

Eventually, you shake your head no.

“It connects people,” Jade says when you meet her gaze in the mirror. All the fairy lights are reflecting off of the surface as well, blinking and pulsing, seemingly following a rhythm so close to your own breathing. “It ties red strings between them so that they’ll always be able to find each other from one life to the next.”

Yeah, I’m aware of the legend, you want to say, but somehow your tongue is a piece of wood in your mouth.

“Sometimes some bonds are severed and if the people at the two ends meet again, the dynamics will always be different. Sometimes new bonds are formed and they open new doors. Like here at Jumadeung.” She smiles, and there’s this glint in her eyes that makes your breathing falter for a moment. “You don’t believe in coincidences, do you?”

Trapped here with her, stuck in a body that doesn’t seem to be able to move, you’re left alone with your thoughts. Do you? Do you believe in coincidences? It would be rational to believe that sometimes things happen just because, without some ancestral, almighty being operating behind the scenes to pull on invisible strings.

“Both you and Park Joong-gil showing up here on a Tuesday, after something else steered your paths in this direction. He asked for tea, and you didn’t refuse yours.”

“That’s just…” you manage to speak.

“A coincidence?”

You nod. “Yeah.” What’s this woman going on about? Suddenly you want to be out of here. It’s like something has been rubbing you off the wrong way ever since you stepped foot through that door, and now you’re here, uncomfortable, listening to this woman speak about your relationship almost as though she knows more about it than you do.

“Maybe,” she concedes in the end, sighing over her empty cup while she absentmindedly traces random patterns on the shiny surface of the counter. “Maybe it was just a new tie forming where another one ended.” She points at your right wrist then and even though it’s covered by the sleeve of your hoodie, it’s like she knows what’s tattooed on your skin. “Some things have to die before one of those can fly. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

*

You’re sitting in a random parking lot when the colors of the night sky bleed and flow into the warm hues of the sunset.

When you ran back to your car, after speed walking until you were out of Jade’s sight, you found her old, red car where she said it had been all day – at the end of the garage, under a flickering neon light. Despite what she told you, you’re sure it wasn’t there when you first arrived.

“I can’t spoil anything about the new drama. I’m afraid you’ll have to watch to know what happens,” Joong-gil says in reply to one of the endless comments he’s receiving on his live stream. You’re watching it on your second phone, the one you use for work-related stuff. “Yeah, there are some red strings, but that’s all I can say,” he continues with a chuckle, voice as warm as honey

Red strings. Again. Didn’t Jade say something about those, as well?

You sigh, placing your phone next to your other one in the passenger seat.

What the fuck even was that, this afternoon at Jumadeung? What’s all that crap about Fate leading you all the way across Seoul to some cryptic bar, and why does a part of you believe that woman’s words to be true?

You would like to drive back and ask her: is it true? Or do I simply want it to be?

The butterfly on your wrist is no secret to the world. It’s always been visible – in pictures and performances alike – because you’ve always refused to cover it up. You’ve been keeping your pains under wrap ever since you can remember, but no one’s going to take away from you the one thing your sorrows bleed out of. It still came as a surprise, the fact that Jade hinted at it almost as though she knew what you and your father used to talk about, what kind of metaphor butterflies have always been for the two of you.

Joong-gil is still talking in the background, addressing comments and answering questions.

“Why are you even taking that crap into consideration?” you ask yourself, weaving the fingers of your left hand through your hair, doing your best not to pull on it out of frustration. “C’mon, don’t be childish.”

It’s then that the man on your phone’s screen says, “I don’t like comments attacking her. With her in my life I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in a long time. Isn’t that what’s important?”

He doesn’t say your name – probably someone else already mentioned it in a comment and that’s why he’s saying those things – but you don’t need him to. You know it’s you he’s talking about. Hinting at the comments some people have been posting online… who else could it be if not you?

Did someone ask about you in his comments? Or is it something he decided to say unprompted? When you logged into the app, his live had already been going for almost an hour, so you figured that he had addressed the problem early on, at the beginning of his chat, so that he could move on and talk about his comeback, his new music, how well Tomorrow’s been doing – you really can’t tell, you’ve been distracted both by your thoughts and his looks. And his voice.

The expression on his face is serious, however, and it’s clear he means every word about you, whether he says them out loud or simply implies them. It awakens this thing inside you, this something that slowly grows and takes over everything else inside your body, interweaves itself with your soul. Like you matter, and like you belong.

And you’re also the happiest you’ve ever been in a long time, you realize as you look at Joong-gil, at the stern frown on his brow, at the lines of his face.

[5:57 PM] you: hii 💗

That’s what you end up texting him – a simple greeting, a heart emoji, nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to your text conversations with him. Still, you see the way he moves toward the side of his screen and how his face lights up when he picks up his phone to read your text, and you also see the way he doesn’t make a move to hide his reaction from his viewers.

He’s beaming, his smile so beautiful that something in your heart cracks and bleeds. Is that what he looks like when you text him? When you can’t see him, and when you think your heart is the only one pounding wildly at a simple notification from him?

It feels like lurking, like spying on him through a keyhole in the door of his life. This shard of him you’ve never had access to before this very moment and that wipes everything else out, makes tabula rasa of what your entire day has been.

A grin stretches on your lips: now you know why it always takes him a moment to reply to your first text.

He’s so fucking cute, you think as your face warms up and your heart throbs in your chest.

[6:00 PM] joong-gil 💗: hey! i’m live

[6:01 PM] you: i know, ive been watching you lol

[6:01 PM] you: do you always light up like a christmas tree when i text you?

He doesn’t mention you when he goes back to his stream and he proceeds to ignore any of the comments inquiring about his sudden mood change. Still, when you’re pulling out of the parking lot after the spontaneous decision of going to his place, your phone lights up with his reply.

[6:07 PM] joong-gil 💗: lol no clue what you’re talking about

*

“I do not ‘light up like a Christmas tree’,” is the first thing Park Joong-gil exclaims when he opens the door with a pout on his face.

And there’s that thought again – he’s so fucking cute. You can physically feel your face light up with the smile that pulls at the corners of your lips at his expression, and it feels so warm everywhere inside of you, even though it was freezing cold outside when you parked your car and the first snowflakes started to fall.

“You do,” you sing-song, walking through the door and wrapping your arms around his waist like you’d never want to let go again. Maybe if you hold on to him long enough, with enough intensity, you’ll be able to have more of that Tongyeong peace – more of his shared bed, his shared kitchen, your shared meals. “It was the most adorable thing I’ve seen in a while.”

He scoffs as he pushes his door closed, but then there it is, that smirk fighting against the serious expression painted on his face. It only lasts for a second, two at most, because then he’s turning his head to look at you, smiling so absurdly bright that your breath catches in the back of your throat and you’re left standing there like wow. I really do have him, don’t I?

He always catches you off guard, both with how handsome he looks and with how he makes you feel inside, like everything is finally falling into place and you can stop and breathe.

“So what if I do?” He shrugs his shoulders, crouching down to take your shoes off for you before leaving them by the door. He’s so stupidly nice you want to pinch yourself to figure out whether this is real life or just a dream. It’s gotta be real, you wouldn’t want it any other way at this point in your life. “I must’ve caught feelings.”

He says it almost jokingly, like that must have happened along the way, by accident, without him really wanting to or without him realizing that’s the direction things were taking. And maybe that’s how things went, for the both of you: you started off as simple coworkers, working on a music album together, that’s for sure, until you realized that maybe you also were catching feelings for him. That you were falling for him, for the Joong-gil behind the image of him Nae-il Entertainment and Ha Dae-su sell to the rest of the world. For the man that enjoys cooking, that hums forgotten songs while heating up your breakfast, that drops everything and comes to you when you call him in the middle of the night.

Maybe you also do light up like a Christmas tree when he texts you, when he calls you.

There is no ‘maybe’ when it comes to your feelings for him, though, you’ve put your heart at peace about that much, that’s for sure. Maybe you tried to deny them in the past, but now they’re so strong that you can barely even remember how you were doing before he came along and settled down in the middle of your everyday life.

“I’m so in love with you,” you blurt out when he tugs on your hand to lead you inside his apartment.

It seems to take him off-guard, for he stops and turns to look at you – mid-step, mid-sentence, a sentence your brain wasn’t even registering when you opened your mouth to speak.

He said that to you. At the columbarium, back in Busan, he told you those same words – I’m so in love with you. You were crying in his arms while everything inside you shattered for the billionth time, old cracks cracking some more as the kintsugi of your soul fell apart once more. You only now realize you never said it back that day, nor ever. You did your best to show him, but it was always through actions, never through a direct sentence. You never put your heart on your sleeve and presented it to him.

“I’m so in love with you,” you repeat, heartbeat deafening inside your skull and heavy in your chest, stomach knotting up in the absurd fear that he might turn you down. He’s seen your cracks, you tell yourself, and he’s still here. He’s seen your wounds, the way you bleed, and he’s seen your good sides, too. Whether or not you’re destined to be, as that Jumadeung lady said this afternoon, what’s there to fear when he’s proved himself more times than you can count? “Everything else slows down and fades away when I’m with you.”

He tugs on your hand, and this time you let him pull you to himself.

“I want to feel this way for a long time,” you go on, your heart a little higher up, almost in your throat. You choke on them, on your feelings for him, because this is a first and you have no clue what comes next. “You make me feel like I’m invincible in my fragility, and seeing you light up that way just because of a text made me realize how fucking deep into you I am.”

The hum of the television in his living room is the only sound in the room, although the volume of your heartbeat seems to spike up when his hand reaches your cheek. You wonder whether he even hears it with how deafening it is, pulsing right underneath your skin.

“Hell, I’ll let them fire me and drag me through the mud if it means I can keep you,” you ramble on. It’s all coming up, a word vomit you didn’t see coming – not when you were in Jumadeung, nor at home, nor in Tongyeong, not even earlier, in your car. It comes up your stomach and out of your throat like a punch, like the butterflies you had inside have finally found a way out of your body, out of their cocoon. “I want today with you, and tomorrow as well, and I haven’t felt this fucking alive inside in such a goddamn long time. It makes me wonder whether I’m going nuts because now you’re in all of my thoughts. And when I see something I like, something beautiful, I think, I wanna share this with him. I want him to see it, too. And that’s why I always send you all those pictures, even when you’re further than just a call away. Is it crazy?” you ask, out of breath. Your throat is knotting up somehow, and you really can’t understand why. Why would you cry? Why would that be your body’s first reaction to you opening up to him? “That I feel this way? I want you so much it hurts. Is it crazy?”

Joong-gil stays silent for a while longer and you feel each and every second pass by so excruciatingly slowly that they all feel like whole eternities. Whole eternities spent standing there, with one of his hands cradling your cheek and the other holding your hand.

“You know,” he says, a bit more hesitantly than you’d like, glancing up at the ceiling for a second before meeting your gaze again, “I think I’ve come to the conclusion that if I kissed you now, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back any longer. And like, I know we started off crazy horny for each other, but in the meantime, I’ve also fallen for every other part of you as well. So now I’m torn between just holding you as we are right now or…”

“Or?” you egg him on when you see him stall again, gaze flickering between your eyes and your lips.

Fuck, you didn’t even come here with ideas in your brain, you just wanted to see him, ask him about his meeting, tell him about your afternoon, about the absurd time you spent in Jumadeung, but the way he’s staring at you is starting to make deep want trickle down your spine.

“Or we could not stop.”

There’s no hiding the thrill that courses through your body. He feels it, Joong-gil, and the hand on your waist pulls you that tad bit closer, until there’s physically no distance between the two of you.

“Our game ended weeks ago, after all, but then every chance we had didn’t feel like the right one. There was always something else and I didn’t want you to believe I only wanted you because of that.” He looks down at your lips, and suddenly you’re fighting against yourself not to make that first move. You want to see him take matters into his hands. After the chase settled down and you got closer in other ways, after he soothed your worries and your aches, you’ve been waiting for him to show you all the things he always said he would do to you. “But you still somehow don’t believe I’m crazy about you, too.”

He leans in closer, pecks your lips, and then trails kisses along your jaw until his nose brushes against your ear.

“So, of course I light up like a fucking Christmas tree when you’re involved,” he whispers, one of his hands trailing down your back until it’s dangerously close to your ass.

Your chuckle turns into laughter before it’s all cut off by another kiss – this time longer, deeper, no more a quick, simple press of lips against lips but something that makes you weak in the knees, something that makes you hungry for more of him.

“You’re also lighting up right now,” he smirks, both of his hands clasping behind your back as he holds you to himself. You feel him starting to stir in his pants, and you watch him try and ignore it, like he wouldn’t go there if you didn’t want to. “You do that a lot actually. Your lips start smiling and then it reaches your eyes, and it’s like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. Makes me fall harder for you every single time.”

You smile – or probably you’re grinning, you don’t even know anymore. All you know is that everything else has been put on hold once again – the snow outside, the storm at the company, even the wild rhythm of your heartbeat has gone down again, like now you know there’s no need – or reason – to worry about a damn thing. That you can stay, and that you’re safe here.

“Do you wanna stop?” he asks, honesty in his voice but hunger in his eyes.

You think about your mornings together, especially the ones in his home by the sea. You think about the way you woke up in his arms, or the times you woke up in each other’s. The way his voice would rasp, deeper than it usually is, and then the way he’d pull you even closer just to kiss you, to bask in your presence a little longer before eventually getting up.

Is that how it would be, to actually, truly be a constant in each other’s lives?

You feel like you’re finally ready to find out.

So, you shake your head no as you lean closer toward him.

“I need to hear you say it,” he mumbles, his lips barely brushing against your own.

A chuckle slips past your lips the moment you peck his. “I don’t wanna stop. Do you?”

“Hell no!”

You’re in his arms before you can even say anything but in the short time it takes him to walk to his couch – to the couch your stupid game started on – you still manage to giggle at his impatience and then at the way he unceremoniously lets you fall onto the cushions.

“We have all night,” you assure him when he tugs his hoodie off, kneeling between your legs.

He replies with a shake of his head. “I can’t risk your manager or whatever to drag you away again.”

“She’s at home with her family and Joon-woong told Maeng to fuck off.” You sit up and he only seems to stop when you take his face in your hands, heaving a breath like the world is finally coming to a stop for him as well. “No one’s gonna interrupt. Besides,” you say as you coax him to lie down with a pout on your lips as you straddle his thighs, “I wanna go down on you first.”

If he was hanging from your lips at first, drinking in your words of reassurance that everyone else and their mother can finally go fuck themselves, he’s laughing now, tugging you against him for a kiss. Both of his hands slap down on your buttcheeks and your surprised whimper is swallowed by his kiss. “You’d better get in line then, I called the shots first.”

The same way you help him undress, he does you, and then, for good measure, he picks up a remote from the coffee table and uses it to close the automated curtains of his living room. You undress in-between messy kisses and hungry touches – a swipe of his thumb over your nipple, a teasing brush of his fingers so close to where you’re starting to ache for him. Your hands trail down his torso and the low moan he lets out at the sensation makes you want to squeeze your thighs together.

By the time he has you on your back again and he’s settled between your legs, you’re already trying not to squirm. The way he’s looking at you – hungry, like he’s been waiting a long time for this very moment and now that he finally has you where he wanted, he’s not going to let you go. Not that you’d complain, that is. You’ve lost count of all the times your innocent calls have turned into phone sex, his deep voice coaxing orgasms out of you.

“Remember that night at your place?” he asks against the skin of your inner thigh, kissing and gently biting his way toward your core. Every time your pussy throbs around nothing, you feel yourself inch closer and closer to desperate tears. “When we said we’d be exclusive and you made me come inside my pants?”

God.

He kisses your clit then and his tongue coming out to drag up your slit makes you gasp out loud.

“Do you?” he insists, kissing his way up your body until he’s speaking against your lips. Why are you so out of breath already? “Remember?”

The fact that you can feel his dick brush against the crease of your thigh and hip doesn’t help your mush brain work any smarter, but you still somehow manage to tell him that yes, fuck, yes you do. You even remember how his words often came back to your memory every now and then, while you were doing the most random things and how they always, without fail, managed to distract you.

You suck on his fingers when he slips them past your lips. He pulls a moan out of you when he presses them down onto your tongue, and then he makes you moan once again when he uses them to tease your entrance.

If you didn’t want to come off as the impatient one, if you didn’t want him to be the first to cave in, you’d tell him to hurry the fuck up. That you’ve been waiting long enough. That you’ve been pretending your fingers were his for one too many times and now that you’re free to do as you please, he should finally be putting them to good use.

Obviously, however, you keep your mouth shut, resorting to simply chasing his lips when he pulls his head away.

“You can tap out whenever you want,” he says against your lips, finally deepening the kiss when he thumbs at your clit.

Your drawled-out moan is once again lost on his tongue, quickly joined by another one when he pushes a finger inside you.

“Want me that much?” He must feel the way you’re pulsing around that single digit and maybe even the way your heartbeat picks up.

You can feel the smirk on his lips when he kisses down your neck, your collarbones, before he takes your left nipple into his mouth. That’s when he curls his finger inside you and then pulls it out.

“Joong,” you whine, and his lips are back on yours, kissing and licking your complaints away. He rolls his hips against your thigh – it’s slow, almost sensual, the briefest taste of how he’s going to thrust into you later, when he’s satisfied with how wet and opened-up you are for him.

“What?” His free hand teases your nipple. The touches are gentle at first, until they’re not: he tugs on it and your whine morphs into a moan when he takes that chance to slip his middle finger back into your wet heat, quickly joined by his ring finger as well. His chuckle dies on a curse when he feels the way your walls clench around him – again, the briefest taste of how you’re going to be wrapped around him later.

You look up at the ceiling for a moment, contemplating what answer you should give him, but when your gaze finally meets the hunger in his eyes, you think to hell with it! Why drag it out when you’ve been waiting long enough already? So, you wrap a leg around his hip and tug him right into you.

“Please.”

You want to fuck that smirk off of his face. You want to flip your positions around, straddle him, and ride him until he can’t hold himself composed anymore.

“‘Please’ what?” he asks when he starts fucking you on his fingers, pulling up slightly when your leg falls open to the side, no more able to keep the hold it had around him. “All those words before, and now you can’t tell me what you want?” The tone of his voice is so condescending against your chest, but you can’t find it within yourself to complain, not with the way he’s lavishing your tit with his attention, licking and sucking, and then tugging on your nipple before looking up at you again.

“I want you,” you whine, your hips writhing to catch his attention to where, exactly, you want him. His response is a mischievous smirk, and then he’s stretching you open on another finger.

“But you do have me,” he pouts mockingly, kissing up the side of your neck – what an unfair tease. When your whines turn petulant, he chuckles and concedes: he moves down your body and finally flicks his tongue against your clit, and suddenly you’re ready to swear you’re a lot closer to your climax than you thought you were.

His tongue replaces his fingers, and he uses his now free hands to grab your hips and pull you closer into his face, trying to keep you still when you try to ride his face. It’s stronger than you, this sensation cursing through your whole system, rendering you impatient and restless even when Joong-gil is basically making out with your pussy. You barely even have the presence of mind to realize that this is a first, even for him; that maybe he really has been holding himself back all those times he ate you out, because there’s no other explanation for how you’re this breathless this quickly.

The words that leave your mouth are incoherent at best, pleading with him to give you more – or maybe give you less. Definitely to make you come. The pleasure has been building and building, and in the process, it has erased everything else.

You come on his groan, the one he lets out when you tug harshly on his hair – or maybe it’s because of the way his lips latch on to your clit and two of his fingers press up inside you again, curling at just the right moment. Either way, it makes you see stars and it takes you a while to come back down on Earth, and a bit longer for the oversensitivity to kick in and for your hands to push Joong-gil’s head away.

He kisses his way up your body while chuckling low in his throat, until he’s making out with a soft spot in the crook of your neck. You barely realize you’ll have a hickey, but it doesn’t even cross your mind the fact that you would probably have to conceal it before you go out in public again – when he’s going to let you go, and when you’ll convince yourself to leave his apartment.

“You came so easily,” he murmurs in your ear, and you feel it in his body, how he’s holding back another chuckle.

You barely have the time to whine that he’s kissing that sound away. His tongue brushes against yours and you taste yourself, and fuck, is he addicting. You can only whisper out, “unfair.”

“I told you.” His smile is so pretty when he takes your head in his hands and forces you to look up at him. “Once I’d get started on you, I wouldn’t hold back.”

The lower part of his face is glistening in your arousal and the shiver that travels down your spine catches you off-guard when it makes you throb around nothing, and suddenly all you can think about is his dick. You don’t know whether it’s because of your wetness glossing over his lips, or the state of disarray his hair is in, or maybe the depth of his voice as his breaths start coming out labored. Your senses zero in on where his erection is pressed against your stomach and the way you can feel he’s started leaking pre-cum.

It’s hard to tell whether you want him in your mouth or between your legs right now.

You think that’s just a thought, one of the very few your brain can even conjure up right now, chest still heaving in the aftermath of the head Joong-gil gave you, but it slips out.

Joong-gil chuckles, and his right hand comes down to cup your boob, squeezes it for a moment before his thumb brushes over your nipple. “I wish I had the self-control to hold out longer, but I need you to ride me.”

You don’t want to stop and consider the way his use of the verb need makes you feel – nor the way it makes you throb, like it’s impossible to keep your body and your lust in check when it comes to him and all the way he fucks with your brain. His words still make you grin, however, and he doesn’t miss his chance to let you know just how fucked out you are even before he’s put even just the tip in.

He pulls away from you, and for a moment you just look at him. The way he manspreads, and then the way he cups his balls, his erection standing tall and proud, makes you squeeze your thighs together as a whimper slips past your lips.

One of his hands slaps his thigh when you don’t make a move and simply stare at him. You’ve been thinking about this very moment for so long and yet, now that you’re here, you feel rooted to your spot on the couch.

“You coming?”

His hand moves from his thigh to your ankle, and he gives your leg a gentle tug that brings you back down to planet Earth.

“Fuck, yeah.”

The way you scramble over to him makes him laugh and the way you slap his shoulder to shut him up as you straddle his thighs pulls another chuckle from his lips.

“Stop,” you whine. He’s caught off guard when you grab a hold of his dick and a moan gets trapped in his throat at the way you give him a quick squeeze. “Or I’m gonna get my payback.”

Why are you so out of breath already?

Why is your heartbeat still somersaulting inside your chest?

His hand joins yours around the base of his erection and you let him slide its head along your entrance. He doesn’t hold that moan back when he feels how wet you are.

His lips so close to your ear make you shiver. “I’m all yours anyway,” and then he’s sliding you down his length.

“Yeah?”

You don’t know what it is about it, about him saying he’s all yours, that gets you this way – all up in your head and in your feelings, clenching around him and panting into his neck, where you’re hiding your face. It gets you all vulnerable, somehow, and for once it’s not scary.

He hums in reply and it’s as though he does it inside your chest with how pressed flush against him you are. “Feel free to go wild when you’re not fucked out by just some head,” he taunts.

“Ah, fuck off,” but there’s no real bite behind your words, especially when you lift your hips before you drop down again, knocking a moan out of the both of you.

He teases you, lips pressed to your shoulder while his hands move down your sides until he’s grabbing and spreading your butt cheeks. “Into you?” You feel his smile against your skin as he starts guiding your rhythm.

You’re out of breath when you manage to groan back a yeah, but then you’re straightening your back, hands gripping his shoulders. The look in his eyes makes you realize you’re not the one who feels like you could touch the sky at the feeling of him buried deep inside you. “My turn now,” you say when he moves you up his length again.

He smirks at your words and his hands slip down from your ass to your thighs, until he’s gripping you behind your knees. His dick twitches inside you, and the proud look on his face makes you throb around him. “Go ahead then.”

After the way he ate you out earlier, you give this your best shot, even though your legs still tremble every time you drop down on him.

Even with his face pressed between your tits, his hands on your back holding you close as you moan at each movement, you still make out his words. The dirty things he says, almost as though he can’t even control his mouth anymore, and the compliments he throws your way. All the times he says so fucking good or such a tight fit, or even when he lets you know exactly how he can feel your arousal drip down to his balls.

It gets to a point where maintaining a rhythm turns into such a foreign concept because his cock feels so deep inside, hits all your right spots every time, that it erases everything else from your mind. There’s just him, and the way he throbs for a beat, your hands holding his head to your chest, and his hands moving back to your ass, groping it, guiding your movements.

You’re about to mumble out something – slurred words that would probably resemble a so good or a please more – but that’s when he decides to hold your hips still and starts thrusting up into you.

It does feel good, but with the pace he slowly builds when he pushes off of your chest, there’s no way you can tell him coherently. There’s the overstimulation from before, that oversensitivity that makes your thighs tremble and your moans and whimpers spill out uncontrolled, and then there’s him – hair a mess, voice deep and just as incoherent as yours. He can barely keep his eyes open, but you don’t mind, because so can you.

He surprises you when he leans up, licks a kiss into your lips, and groans, “you have no clue how fucking good you feel right now” – which is probably the only coherent thing he’s managed to string together in a while. And he accentuates the feeling in his voice and behind his words by giving you a harsher thrust. The head of his dick hits that one spot deep in your walls and it makes your back arch and your toes curl.

The pleasure builds and builds. It makes your vision cloud, and all you can manage is a please, don’t stop that makes him lose focus. While he was laser-focused before, he’s faltering now, your walls spasming tighter around him.

You come a heartbeat after he does, and everything goes static. You’re barely aware both of the way you’re cradling him to your chest, panting heavily, legs burning, and of the way he’s holding onto you, like you might crawl out of his lap and leave him there, moaning and whimpering under his breath.

“We should’ve grabbed a towel,” you groan out when he eventually lifts you off of his length and you feel the way his cum drips down onto the couch alongside your juices.

He lays you down on the cushions, making sure to not drop you into the puddle of your orgasms, before he kneels between your legs once more. “Fuck that towel,” he groans a second before placing a kiss on your clit. “Remember you can tap out whenever you want, right?”

You look down at him when he speaks, your thighs perched on his shoulders and his face so close to your pussy that you can feel his breath even through the fog of your pleasure. And boy, is that a sight. The tips of his ears are flushed red, and his skin feels scorching hot against yours. The hunger in his eyes seems to tell you that you’re in for quite the night if you don’t tap out now.

For the nth time tonight, you’re breathless when you say, “I’ll let you know when I do.”

*

Even Bit-na would never know how sore you were the day after – or, well, the night after, when you and Joong-gil finally plopped down onto his chaise longue to eat ice cream. Still butt-naked, you feared you’d try going at it again, giving every surface in his apartment a repeat of the promise he made you and which he kept, but there was no way you could stay out of his arms. He didn’t give signs of wanting you to, anyway.

Then, before you know it, things seem to start falling into place. You settle into Joong-gil’s life the way he settles into yours – your origami animals in his bedroom, a pile of his clothes in your closet, a pair of your shoes by his door and a pair of his shoes by your door.

Things start rolling like you are two gears meant to be together.

Time passes. First one day, then two weeks, then months.

In March, when your contract with your old agency comes to an end, you don’t renew it. Your RMT friends don’t, either, and together, the way it’s always been since both you and they debuted, you sign under a different company, the one Ryeon’s lawyer friend recommended.

In April, you have your first photoshoot after a four-month hiatus, and in May they allow you to release a single. No music video, just your music and your voice, the way it always used to be with your dad on the beach. It’s one of the songs you started writing together a few months before his suicide, the one your mother found while cleaning out the attic when she finally gathered the courage to go through her late husband’s things. His handwriting made you feel like there was still a piece of him here, alive – his corrections in green ink (because not every mistake is a bad thing, that’s what he used to say), his smiley faces, the smudges the side of his left hand would cause while writing.

In June, Joong-gil releases the news of your next collaboration album, the one you joked about at the end of your first tour, and he introduces you to his older sister in July, when you go back to Busan and she and her family come over for a barbecue by the beach.

As time flies by, Jumadeung leaves your mind. The memories there, the fairy lights, how dirty that railing was that first night, when you still had adrenaline pumping through your system after your first stage with the Park Joong-gil – now just joong-gil 💗, or Joong, or my boyfriend. Bit-na calls him ‘the love of your life,’ and the only reason why you don’t say that out loud is that it makes your face heat up until it’s hotter than the sun – and maybe it’s also a bit cheesy.

Maybe that’s why she’s getting married in eight months, you think as you look down at the red beads of the bracelet on your wrist, hugging it right above your tattooed butterfly. Because she called Seung-min the love of her life, out loud, and told him she wanted to spend the rest of forever with him.

In September your mother agrees to go on vacation with you, on that honeymoon she never managed to enjoy with the love of her life. Sunny beaches, clear water, she has the time of her life sipping on drinks under the shade of a beach umbrella and walking around barefoot with you. She goes back to being ten years younger – hell, maybe even fifteen. You’re not even sure you’ve ever seen her enjoy something so much ever since that day or maybe even before that, when you were still in Incheon.

She smiles, and her eyes light up. The wrinkles on her face seem to smooth out and on the day before your return to Korea, she walks into the first hair salon she finds, sits down, and asks for the bold haircut she never had the courage to go for.

That’s when you feel like it’s starting to crack, the cocoon you’ve been living inside – when she smiles and starts flying again. It makes you realize you haven’t felt like you’ve been dragging yourself through the mud in months. It lightens up the burden, especially when another realization hits you out of nowhere on your flight: you’re finally being you, not the version of yourself your former agency sold.

You wonder whether your father can see your new colors, wherever he is.

In October Joong-gil takes you to the butterfly park in Incheon and you sit there for hours, underneath caps and behind facemasks, looking at the butterflies on show. He holds your hand through your struggle against that knot of tears in the back of your throat, his thumb rubbing reassurance into your skin. That day makes you realize that he’s your anchor. That he gives you strength when you feel at your weakest, and that suddenly, if he’s by your side, it’s not so scary, to go back to places you formed happy memories in when you were a child.

Halfway through the month of November, your tour with Joong-gil begins. There are more dates than on your first one, more destinations, and this time you touch Europe as well. Interviews are on a roll, both on film and on paper, and there’s always some new comment popping up about the promotional photoshoots the two of you do.

Everything gets critiqued and put under a magnifying glass – your poses in pictures, your dance moves, the way you hold livestreams. But nothing is as scary as you thought it would be – even Joon-woong is finally having the time of his life now that everything about the fake relationship you were forced to portray has been digested.

If anything, all that mess has helped your popularity. Even though your current company was smaller than your previous one when you signed under them, their business is sailing smoothly now. Fans have started showing their support – for your and Park Joong-gil’s relationship, your bold move to go public, for your new collab, for the tour, and even your solo projects. The shipping comments have started popping up again, and this time neither of you shies away from them.

It makes living that tad bit more normal, in a way, like this time you’re not just a face on a poster or a voice on a music file, but a whole person, with feelings and a personality, both shades and lights, 3D.

For the first time in forever, it makes you enjoy what you do, every single aspect of it all – the shootings, the recording, the producing, the performing. It’s probably what makes this your favorite tour ever – not the fact that you’re doing something you love with someone you love (or, well, not just that), but the fact that finally, it doesn’t feel like you’re tied down to the ground. The adrenaline is twice as much, the fun – three times.

By the time you jump down the very last stage of your tour, back in Seoul, you’re both exhausted and feel like you’re ready to take on the world at the same time. There’s nothing stopping you, not with this excitement coursing through your veins as you and your team share one big group hug behind the scenes.

Someone ends up ordering take-out and it feels surreal, to be eating in a parking lot, in the late January cold, wearing barely anything underneath your ankle-long puffer jacket that always makes you feel like the Michelin woman. (You like to consider Joong-gil to be your Michelin man, even though literally nothing will ever manage to look bad on him.)

They make you breathe, all these people around you. Your manager Ji-young – and then her husband, holding their sleeping daughter Ji-min in his arms, both of them come to the show as your personal VIP guests. Your make-up artists and your stylists. The technicians and the assistants, who followed both you and Joong-gil around the world for what has felt both like a never-ending tour and also the quickest one ever. They’re all around you, all huddled together as condensation leaves your mouths every time any of you speaks, and you feel the warmest you’ve ever felt.

When you finally sit down in Joong-gil’s car, your excitement has toned down a bit. Now you can also think, finally, even though all you can think about is him.

“Do you wanna go home?” he asks, shoving both your jackets onto the backseat before grinning at you. “Or can I take you somewhere?”

You know where he wants to take you even without asking him. It’s come up in passing, every now and then, during the tour – Jumadeung. He had also forgotten all about it, but every time you left a venue and sat down in the van to go back to the hotel, the memory came up. Now, going back there feels like part of a ritual you have been neglecting.

It also feels like going back to your roots, to that first night, where all you and Joong-gil shared was a crush. Now there are pretty couple rings on your fingers, and a red bracelet around both of your wrists.

The car drive is mainly enjoyed in silence. Part of your brain is still thinking about tonight’s show and how you can finally enjoy some downtime, the other is complaining about the nightmarish traffic.

You haven’t been to Jumadeung in forever and every time you thought about it, you could never trace back the right route to get to the building. With Joong-gil, however, it’s different. The memories come back one by one and everything becomes clear again – or maybe it’s like that afternoon, when you were driving around aimlessly before you wound up there, and that lady told you Jumadeung does that, leads people into its belly.

When you reach the building and drive down to the garage, the memory of how scared you were that first night makes you chuckle. You had really forgotten about that, you realize with a smile.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, parking underneath a blinking neon light, one of the few still working in the otherwise dark garage.

You turn to look at him, but your eyes stop on the bracelet on his right wrist first. The tiny, red beads seem to twinkle in the light above you like they’re their own version of fairy lights.

“Just…” You shrug your shoulders, meeting his gaze, and you feel the smile grow on your face. It makes your face warm up, somehow, and no matter what you do, you just can’t wipe it off – the way he looks at you, like he loves nothing else in the world as much as he does you. “You. How terrified I was when you took me here the first time. And also that I’m really happy with you.”

There’s this noisy, amused exhale he does every time he’s caught off guard and smiles. It’s one of the things you learned about him by spending your time with him, trying to commit every single thing about him to memory.

“Every day you make me want to see what tomorrow will bring,” you confess, looking down at your hands in your lap. “Like I’m not afraid of it because you’re here. You could take me to the shadiest building in town and I’d still feel safe with you.”

He takes your hand in his. “If you don’t stop taking the cheesy stuff out of my mouth, I swear…”

You laugh with him, and you chuckle even when he presses a kiss to your lips.

“What the hell am I supposed to say to not sound dumb now?” he complains on an amused huff, cradling your face in his hands and kissing you again. And again. He pecks your lips like he doesn’t want to deepen the kiss, but then like he also can’t pull away completely. It makes you giddy, the way he seems to always crave you.

“You’re going to ruin my make-up.” But you’re grinning when he pulls away: his lips bear traces of your lipstick, after you reapplied it before leaving the parking lot of the concert venue.

“I’m gonna ruin it anyway,” he whispers when he leans forward and kisses your cheek, “whether it’s with my mouth or with my dick.”

It takes you a while before you manage to leave the car, one hand job later. You watch as he fixes his pants underneath the blinking neon light, hanging on a miracle above the car, and you try to wipe that mischievous smirk from your lips before he has the chance to take matters into his own hands and ruins the outfit you wore for tonight’s performance.

“You could’ve let me return the favor,” he pouts, walking hand in hand with you, but you both know you wouldn’t have left the car tonight had you let him anywhere near your pussy.

“After we leave Jumadeung,” you promise.

But the hallway to Jumadeung is dark, you realize. The fairy lights are gone, and there’s only the creepy light of an emergency lamp guiding you to the double door. When Joong-gil manages to push it open, after fighting with its unexpected weight and unoiled hinges, you shine your phone’s flashlight into the room.

It’s like Jumadeung was never there.

The fairy lights, the booths with their cushioned benches and tables, the counter, everything is gone, replaced by cardboard boxes piled pretty much in every corner, covered by a thick layer of dust and spiderwebs that surely took longer than one year to form. Even the nice, flowery smell has been replaced by humidity and the stench of a moldy place that hasn’t seen fresh air in way too long.

“Are we even in the right place?” Joong-gil wonders out loud, almost as though he wasn’t the one who took you here the first time.

The mirror wall behind the counter is still there, however – just, without the counter standing in front of it. It’s still stained by old age, and you’re standing in the same spot you were that afternoon, when Jade – you only remember her name now – went on and on about Fate and red strings and reincarnations, and about you and Joong-gil being tied together from this life onward.

Was that a dream?

If it wasn’t for the fact that Joong-gil is just as confused as you are, you would wonder whether Jumadeung itself was a dream. Whether it was something your brain made up at a point in your life when you needed an escape hatch where you could feel safe, whether on your own or with someone else.

“Maybe they moved somewhere else,” Joong-gil says, pulling out his phone as you walk closer to the mirror.

You looked at her through it, that afternoon. She made you tea and then she met your gaze in the mirror, looking at your reflection more than she did you, sitting next to her. You remember doing the same, unable to move or to speak, listening to the absurdities leaving her mouth. With time, however, her words stopped feeling absurd.

Maybe all that Fate stuff does explain it, why being by Park Joong-gil’s side feels so right, in a way. Like that’s the place you’ve been looking for your whole life. Or maybe like he is it, your home away from home.

As you suspected, Joong-gil ends up finding absolutely nothing about Jumadeung online. There’s no single trace about Jade either, and now it’s painfully obvious that that wasn’t her real name. It stings like defeat, Jumadeung being gone – or never having been here in the first place. But it also feels right, in a way – Jumadeung always felt like another world, every time you came here.

When you turn to look at the man behind you – look at him, not at his reflection in the mirror wall – you smile, holding your hand out to hold. “I think we should go back home.”

You don’t see it in the darkness, your eyes trained on your hand in Joong-gil’s, his chatter filling your ears, but there’s a butterfly, a twin of the one you carry on your wrist, drawn in the layer of dirt covering what used to be the door to Jumadeung.

Thank you for reading💕

If you’d like to be tagged in what I write, let me know!

Original video used for banner: https://www.pexels.com/video/close-up-video-of-dried-roses-6092477/

[lavoixhumaine]

by lavoixhumaine

bobby x athena

hearts in atrophy

Changes are coming to the Carter-Nash household as Bobby and Athena give themselves one last chance to have a baby but fate and a figure from Bobby’s past have other plans. (canon divergence au)

rating : E | status: active wip ( chapters 25/30 )

feral

Bobby goes off script and Athena isn't prepared for it.

rating : E | status: completed ( one-shot )

it’s me, hi.

Bobby Nash and his last lie.

rating : E | status : completed ( one shot ) | ( major character death )

bruise

After closing out a miserable shift, Athena just wants to sleep. Bobby lets her, of course.

rating : E | status : completed ( one shot )

brownies

Athena is baking in the kitchen, but Bobby has other ideas.

rating : E | status : completed ( one shot )

ledger

Bobby gets a call in the middle of the night.

rating : T | status : completed ( one shot )

awake

Bobby wakes up.

rating : M | status : completed ( one shot )

cataclysmic

Bobby and Athena share a moment on the cruise.

rating : E | status : completed ( one shot )

taste

Athena has a plan.

rating: E | status : completed ( one-shot )

solid ground

Things are a little different than how Bobby remembers things.

rating: T | status : currently unavailable

non-911 fics under the cut

the keeper’s irony

naomi x archer | private practice

What happened that night in Connecticut?

rating: E | status : completed ( one-shot )

last night on fifth

naomi x archer | private practice

What happens when they cross paths again in New York a few years after that night in Connecticut?

rating: E | status : completed ( one-shot )

roman candle in the wild

goo ryeon x park joong-gil | 내일 ( Tomorrow )

In different lifetimes—one story different from the other, but inevitability all the same.

rating: G | status : completed ( one-shot collection )

there as i flew, forgot all prayers of joining you

emily x aaron | criminal minds

Some years after leaving, he is presented with a choice.

rating: G | status : completed ( one-shot )

sea glass

emily x aaron | criminal minds

Two people coming together to lay their shared past to its final rest.

rating: M | status : completed

wonderwall

vera x silas | philip k dick’s electric dreams, “human is”

The Herricks remain free but there are unforeseen repercussions to their hard-won freedom.

rating: M | status : unfinished • discontinued

[kind-wolf]

hii! do u write for characters from the tomorrow kdrama?

Hi! Thanks for asking. 😊

Unfortunately I'm not really writing anymore due to lack of time and inspiration.

The little Lim Ryung-gu drabble was simply for my friend @angelaiswriting (who has written an amazing Park Joong-gil AU btw).

But I feel you... I wish there were more ppl writing for Tomorrow. 💔😢

[sorshania]

Tempted to write a Tomorrow fic featuring Park Joong-gil.

As per my usual, it would be a AU/Crossover with Black, Hotel del Luna and maybe Mystic Pop-up Bar 'coz this how I roll.

But, it wouldn't be an Park Joong-gil/Koo Ryeon fic, I don't ship them (at the end of the show) 😅😅😅

[angelaiswriting]

Stage Love | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: (kind of eventual?) Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fwb!Lim Ryung-gu x fem!reader, mentions of past Park Joong-gil x Koo Ryeon)

✏️ Summary: it’s supposed to be just work, but what happens when you actually start falling for the Park Joong-gil?

✏️ A/N: this is what happens when @kind-wolf​ goes on a tangent with some random AU and I dish out The Sex 😂 I also hope this drama actually has a fandom :’) (I also did go on a tangent with this, so it’ll have a part two hopefully soon.)

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff (I guess), slowburn, and smut, so 18+ only. Fwb stuff, fingering f/r, oral m/r and f/r, dry-humping, female masturbation, alcohol, food ? PJG is one sexy mf and everyone falls for him. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21k

✏️ Extra: I actually saw this on IG a few days ago and thought it’d fit well with this fic. Worth checking out imo 👀

PART ONE  >>  part two  |  part three

The surge of post-performance adrenaline is still rushing through your veins when you plop down onto the back seat of Joong-gil’s van. All the dancing on stage, rubbing into him in some parts of the choreography, the flashing lights, the audience – it all has you wired and buzzing, ready to take on anything the rest of the night might throw your way.

What’s even better, your manager has given you the night off to celebrate the foreseen (albeit still unbelievable) success of your new collab stage with one of the most wanted solo singers of Korea’s music scene, and his manager is currently standing outside the car, getting the last recommendations before you’re off for the night.

“You did well tonight,” Park Joong-gil says, sliding in and sitting down next to you.

He’s already making quick work of buckling his seatbelt when you correct, “we did well,” with a grin on your face. Despite the subtle scent of the still-lingering petrichor, you’re still so wired that your body doesn’t even register the chilly air blowing into the van in the few seconds it takes your fellow artist to pull the door closed. “I mean, after all these months I knew tonight’s performance would be awesome, but I wasn’t expecting for the fans to love it so much!” You’re pumped, barely able to put one thought after the other as you grin up at him.

Next to you, he chuckles low under his breath. “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

You don’t even have the chance to see him miraculously half-smile: you’re bowing your head and waving goodbye to your manager, the bracelets on your wrist clinking against each other, and nodding when she gestures a ‘call me when you’re home’. She can’t hear you from inside the van, but she does catch on to you giving her the thumbs up.

“So, do you have any place in mind to go celebrate or can I pick one?” Joong-gil presses on, turning around to pick one of his hoodies from the rack in the back. The adrenaline will wear off sooner rather than later, and he doesn’t want you catching a cold because of the light outfit you wore on stage.

“Your choice, I’m not picky,” you nod, typing a quick I’ll tell you everything tomorrow to let your mother know not to wait up for your call. She’s always been your number one fan, and despite the fact that she would have wanted for you to pick a more traditional career path, she’s always supported you more than anyone else ever did.

“Good, I know a place safe enough.”

You don’t have time to ask what he means by ‘safe’ – guessing wouldn’t be too hard, though, what with that stupid ten-line article assuming this collaboration stems from a secret relationship between the two of you and the few comments it managed to garner before both your and Joong-gil’s agencies had it deleted. You don’t have the time to ask, and that’s because he’s shoving his black hoodie into your lap a second before he impatiently knocks on the side window to catch his manager’s attention.

“I’m good, don’t worry.”

“Take it, Yun-ho won’t come with us. I can only take you back home on my bike, unless you’d rather get a cab.”

It’s then that his manager, Yun-ho, gets into the car and turns back around with a grin on his face.

“Jumadeung?” he simply asks as you’re left sitting there with Joong-gil’s hoodie in your lap.

It’s almost warm against the bare skin of your stomach, and you’re torn between the realization that this is the first time he’s shown some sort of care towards you outside of the studio in the long months of preparation that led to this comeback and the curiosity lying underneath the fact that you have no goddamn clue what a Jumadeung even is.

As it turns out, Jumadeung is the name of a bar located one story below Seoul in what, at first sight, looks very well like an abandoned building. If it wasn’t for Joong-gil being there with you and giving you a semblance of security, you would have run the other way.

The cul-de-sac Yun-ho steers into is a dark and narrow alleyway, and when you get out of the van right after Joong-gil, your boots stomping right into a puddle left behind by the early evening storm, you decide you don’t even want to know what’s at the end of it – rats? Seoul’s lowlife? Death reapers? Yeah, no thanks, you’ll happily pass.

The air really is chilly, however, and you’re suddenly glad you accepted Joong-gil’s offer of wearing his sweatshirt because now, underneath the thick cotton of it, you can feel gooseflesh tug at the hairs on your arms.

“Are you…” You turn around with a surprised gasp when you hear the sound of his van driving away, and you scurry forward until you’re childishly holding onto the back of Joong-gil’s leather jacket. “Are you secretly a serial killer?” you whisper, furtively looking around to mentally check for quick ways out.

Don’t accept candy from strangers and don’t get into strangers’ cars, you hear your mother scold you, twenty or so years ago, after you had just moved for the first time to a new house in Busan. Oh boy, if only she could see you now!

But Joong-gil chuckles, turning to look at you from above his right shoulder before he shakes his head in amusement.

“You know I have money. No need to kidnap me if you want it!” You keep the tone of your voice light and airy, and laugh – after all, you’ve mastered the art of coming off as though you have a hold of the situation – but you still suspiciously eye the closed dry-cleaner you spot as soon as you step foot into the building.

“I also do have money,” he laughs, taking a turn to the left to walk past an empty shop with a big ‘for sale’ sign on the dirty glass door. “Our collab will bring me more than kidnapping you might. So…”

“Of course, I was just kidding,” you shrug, letting go of his jacket and taking a few quick steps so that you can walk side by side with him. That’s not very reassuring is what you were on the verge of saying but you manage to bite your tongue and get a grip on yourself. Nevertheless, there’s still a spark of uneasiness twisting your insides into knots when he starts walking down a dimly lit set of stairs.

You’re almost tempted to just turn around and bolt your way out of there, but you didn’t exactly pay attention to your surroundings on the way here and you wouldn’t know which way to go before he catches up to you. After all, you were too preoccupied with texting back to your closest friends and confirming to your manager that yes, you’re gonna be safe and that yes, you’re gonna stay glued to Joong-gil’s side like a mussel to a rock, so she really has nothing to worry about.

Well, think again.

The man in question looks up at you from the bottom of the staircase when he notices you haven’t been following him and you see the way he tries his damndest not to snicker in your face. “C’mon down, I’m no serial killer.”

“Sounds exactly like something a serial killer would say,” you reply with fake laughter in your voice as you grab the railing with your left hand, just to immediately regret it when you feel how sickeningly sticky it is against your skin.

“Jumadeung’s just a bar,” he sighs, walking up three steps before stretching an arm out in your direction and making you feel like you’re being too dramatic. “Others like us come here for the privacy,” he continues. “Jade’s not exactly… keen on the paps and the whole ‘overstepping boundaries’ part of our job, so we’re good. No risk of other articles like that one.”

That one – he says it in a way that brings you back to when that article came out. The PR team of your agency managed to screencap it before they had it taken down in no time. Still, he was furious, and didn’t show up at meetings for a whole week and a half, leaving you to work in the studio alone. It made you wonder whether being caught up in a dating scandal with you really was that bad, but you managed to overcome that quickly enough. After all, you’re well aware of your worth. Always have been.

“Alright.” If he picks up on the uneasiness in your voice, he doesn’t show it.

Ah, fuck it! He has a cute-enough face, you think, trying to be reasonable and not let the true crime shows you watch in the dead of night on screen-share calls with your best friend in Busan get to you.

You walk down the steps and accept his outstretched hand, allowing him to pull you along with him. A swift turn to the right, and there’s a long corridor lit with what feels like hundreds of colorful fairy lights that lead closer and closer to the source of the faint music you can now hear. It’s like walking towards a portal to another dimension, the atmosphere in this corridor is completely different from that of the rest of the building – warm, peaceful, like there’s no safer place than this in Seoul.

“Okay, the whole bar story seems a lot more believable now,” you chuckle, forcing a smile to stretch on his lips in turn.

“See? Told ya,” he teases as he pulls the door open and the warmth of the bar wafts right into your face.

The music is louder here, but still at a reasonable volume that would allow you to have a comfortable conversation with him but probably not hear what the patrons sitting at other tables are saying.

“I’d go wash my hand if I were you, by the way. The rest of this building isn’t exactly famous for being clean,” he says, quickly letting go of your right hand all of a sudden.

His words don’t leave you the time to look around – not that you would have understood the reason behind that sudden lack of contact anyway – for your gaze shoots down to your left hand almost as though it’s a magnet. The skin of your palm still does feel sticky in the most uncomfortable way. 

“Ew!”

You quickly walk down the side corridor he points out to dash into what you hope is a clean bathroom. And it really is. It’s a stark contrast with the rest of the building, or the very little part of it you’ve managed to get a glimpse of when you dramatically thought you were walking the last stretch to the gallows.

The foamy soap smells fruity when you start scrubbing your hands, and there are other fairy lights reflecting in the wall-sized mirror the counter with the sinks is standing against. The stalls behind you are a simple deep burgundy color and from how all doors are pushed open, you can see you’re alone in here. It gives you the time to finally breathe and get a good look at yourself in the mirror.

What was a perfectly clean make-up look at the beginning of the night, before your performance on stage, is now slightly smudged and lighter, but the fairy-dust glitter on your face is still there, glimmering underneath the blinking fairy lights. Joong-gil’s black hoodie perfectly matches with the black cargo pants they gave you for tonight’s stage – definitely not your favorite kind of outfit, but it is still very comfortable to dance in – and the black, vine-like (but unfortunately fake) tattoo slithering its way around your wrists all the way to the pulled-back sleeves around your elbows.

You’re dabbing your hands dry with paper towels when your phone vibrates in the pocket of your pants. When you unlock it, it’s your best friend asking for your whereabouts – and dusting off that crush you’ve always had on Park Joong-gil and that you had to hide ten thousand meters deep.

[11:47 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: i know he’s famous and all, but if he’s a perv, i’m coming all the way to Seoul to kick his sexy sorry ass.

It makes you laugh – she’d probably be late to your death, but at least you know she’d have your back. She’s always had it, ever since you joined her ballet classes when you were a child up until you left Busan to pursue music.

[11:48 PM] you: proof i’m still alive!

You quickly shoot back, and while still chuckling, you attach a mirror selfie.

[11:48 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: cool! but whose hoodie is that?! didn’t know you were into others’ merch.

[11:49 PM] you: yeah he took me to a nice bar in a shady building. i’ll update you when i’m back home! if ever lol

[11:50 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: he? Park Joong-gil?!

Your reply is a quick yep, and you’re still laughing quietly when you sit down in the booth Joong-gil’s picked.

“Something happened back there?” he asks, picking up on your hilarity and leaning to the side to shoot a quick glance in the direction of the bar’s restrooms.

“Just my friend,” you shrug, taking your (his) sweatshirt off when the stuffiness of Jumadeung finally gets to you. “She thinks she’s funny,” you grin. “You’ve met her. Sort of. The one I was on a call with that day in the dance studio.”

He laughs. “Oh, yeah, I remember her. What was she asking? Something about you getting great head, no?”

His words – or probably more the fact that he actually remembers that embarrassing bit of the conversation when your phone accidentally connected back to the bluetooth system of the dance studio – take you so much by surprise that your hand jerks a little and spills some soju on the table by his glass.

You groan, filling your glass and turning your head to the side to bottom it up. “Damn, how the hell do you even remember that?” you manage to ask from behind your hands, currently hiding your burning face from him.

It was a late night two months into the two of you working together, after you both agreed to turn your one-song collab deal into a full album after seeing how flawlessly you worked together between songwriting, producing, and dancing. Joong-gil had gone down to the front desk to pick up your food delivery, and you had taken the opportunity to call Bit-na back after the three missed calls she had left on your phone that day.

Everything was going smoothly, with you asking her about her date and her asking you about… well, yours, even though it was more like a friendly hook-up than anything with actual feelings. It was then that Joong-gil had walked in, put the bags down onto the table, and accidentally touched something on the laptop you were using to play the music. His mistake had paired back your phone to the system after you had enabled it that afternoon, and the rest apparently became history when Bit-na’s cheerful, “I can’t believe you’re getting great head with him and I can’t even get a boyfriend” sounded all around the studio and you felt yourself being swallowed up by the floor as you watched Joong-gil’s back tense in the mirror for a moment before he let out a cackle.

After that night, you both silently agreed to never bring that accident up and, to say the truth, you had started to forget all about it. That is, well, until tonight.

“Hey, it’s all right!” Joong-gil chuckles, pulling your hands away from your face and handing you your refilled glass. “Drink up before you combust right in front of me.”

“God, I can’t believe you had to hear that, or that you even remember,” you groan, covering your eyes with one hand and clicking your tongue at the bitterness of your drink. “I hoped you’d have forgotten by now.”

He laughs again, careful not to be too loud, before he downs his soju. “Where did the sensual Y/N that danced and sang on that stage end up?”

You glare at him with mock annoyance before snorting. “I can be both sensual and embarrassed at the same time. One doesn’t necessarily cancel the other.”

He smirks, “fair enough.”

It’s silent for a heartbeat, and then there’s a middle aged woman – Jade, you assume after a while – standing by your table, wearing an apron around her waist that has a marble pattern printed on it in the hues of ivory and gold. “I saw your stage on tv,” she says, first glancing at Joong-gil and then at you from behind her sparkly glasses. “Joong-gil told me how great of a performer you were, but I was still pleasantly impressed,” she grins.

Blood rushes to your cheeks, but you want to brush it down to the warmth of the place, or to the fact that someone is complimenting you without going over the moon in the attempt to. It’d be unhealthy to think you’re flustered because he’s apparently spoken highly of you – or of you in general – to someone he knows, because that would bring back the first sparks of that crush you started to develop on him through all the time you’ve spent together for this new album – and even before that.

“Thank you,” you reply with a bow of your head, quickly glancing up at your friend before you notice the plate of chocolate cake the woman’s putting down on your table.

“He’s also mentioned you thought he was taking you to your death earlier,” she continues.

Her words make your head fall into your hands in the third attempt at hiding yourself tonight. “I’m really sorry. With how the building and the neighborhood look, I really thought-”

“It’s alright.” She’s chuckling, so you figure it’s not that bad, or at least that she hasn’t taken offense to that. “I know how the first impression can be. It’s part of the reason why no one knows about this place. People that need a hide-out find me through word-of-mouth, that’s what matters.”

You nod, not knowing what to say but thankful for her being so understanding, and she leaves.

“You really had to tell her, didn’t you?” you pout, picking up one of the golden spoons and digging into your shared slice of cake. You love a good source of chocolate after a performance that has made you stress out as much as tonight’s stage did: Joong-gil’s known for never doing collaborations, and you’ve been agonizing about the reaction his fans would have when you’d finally perform together live for the first time. You try to suppress the smile this cake brings onto your lips: you suddenly recall telling him of this sort of tradition you have, and you can’t believe he’s actually remembered. He seems to be particularly good at that when that realization starts making you feel dangerously warm inside.

He’s smiling when you look up at him, and for the first time you realize he’s never really smiled at you before. Sure, there have been tight smiles or smirks, or the photograph smiles he always puts on during photoshoots or interviews, but the way he’s smiling at you now makes you feel as though the butterfly you have tattooed on your wrist has moved all the way up your arm and down to your stomach, where it has gathered an army all of a sudden.

God, you think. Now you understand why everyone always swoons for him – the way his fans love him, the way interviewers love him, the way tv or youtube hosts love him. The reason why you started crushing on him. One smile from him and everything’s warm and fuzzy all of a sudden, like the rest of the world slows down to allow him time to shine.

His smile forces you to look at him for the first time since you’ve arrived at Jumadeung – his tousled hair, not as perfect as it was before your performance; the shadows his long lashes cast on his cheekbones; the way the hues of the fairy lights above dance along the bridge of his nose.

“She was simply complimenting your performance tonight, and it just came out. You gotta admit it was funny, the way you thought I’d kidnap you when I’m the one who pushed hard for this collab to happen in the first place,” he grins, shaking his head.

He’s fucking gorgeous. Now you can whole-heartedly agree with Bit-na and allow yourself to admit it. Not that you didn’t know before, of course! The dude is a fucking model; you’re sure he could have anyone or anything he wanted with a simple snap of his fingers. But you’ve always done your best to keep it very… professional  – for lack of a better word – between the two of you. No touches out of line during dance practices, during all the time you’ve spent together to fine-tune your choreographies – and you must agree with him that there are a few that are more sensual than others. No lingering gazes in the studio, or during promotional photoshoots. Everything has always been clean and precise, like any other polished interactions you’ve had with fellow artists, stemming from nothing else but the sheer need to not be caught up in some rumor.

Tonight feels different, however. And you know it’s one-sided, but fuck. It’s the stupid atmosphere in this stupid bar, you decide. It’s cozy and private and extremely relaxed, with booths you can hide away in, and the fact that the paparazzi have never once found this place surely is a nice perk. It makes you believe that you’re on a date with him – on a date with fucking Park Joong-gil, of all people. That you’re just some normal girl out with some normal dude.

You shake your head, finding it extremely hilarious that your hormones would decide to go down that path now.

But you’ve been silent for long enough, and you don’t want to give the wrong impression. Like you’re mad, or like you’re starting to actually crush on him. So you level him with an amused stare and, “well, watch out then, Park. Next round’s mine, I’ll be embarrassing you.”

He chuckles at that promise, and you’re left there, grinning up at him like you’re a fangirl at a fan meet of his. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; you just want to be professional – you’ve always been, and there’s no reason why the frenzied hormones of a post-stage night should ruin that for you.

But then, just as you’re both back to digging into your cake, someone calls your name loud enough to be heard from the other end of the room. Your eyes snap up, and you see Joon-woong waving a hand in your direction.

You wave back, noticing the pink-haired woman and the dark-haired man sitting opposite him with their back to you. Ryeon and Ryung-gu – you could recognize them from miles away.

“The RMT guys are here,” you inform Joong-gil. “Looks like Joon-woong is inviting us to their table. Wanna go?”

You’re grinning, and your eyes are sparkling just as much as the light, dust-like glitter on your face, and of course you have no knowledge of any of that, but it strikes something inside him, punches him right in the guts. And fuck, he can’t say no when you look like that, like you’re some dream miraculously materialized in front of him. So, he begrudgingly nods and picks up your plate with the unfinished cake, and trails after you like a puppy.

Ryeon greets you with a smile, putting down her phone for a moment to congratulate you, but you miss the way she looks up at a Joong-gil who’s uncharacteristically standing awkwardly next to you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. After quick bows of your heads, Joon-woong wraps you in a tight embrace, grinning at the way you’re finally not someone who turns down his hugs, and then sits back down to allow Joong-gil to sit on the chair next to him while you pull one from under the neighboring table.

“Hey,” you whisper as you lean into Ryung-gu, playfully pecking him on the cheek as he wraps an arm around your waist, giving your hip a quick squeeze. Maybe if you think a bit more about the kind of head he gave you on the few times you’ve met up for that, you won’t be acknowledging the weird way Joong-gil’s making you feel tonight.

After the introductions, it’s awkward at first, and you can’t exactly put a finger onto why. The RMT guys and Park Joong-gil have never been caught up in any scandal of any kind, not involving each other at least and not that you know of. And being signed for the same agency as they are, you’ve never heard of any tension or unfriendliness between them.

But then you’re not thinking about that anymore because you’re all talking. Well, you and Joon-woong are – you’ve always been the chatterboxes, after all – with Joong-gil and Ryung-gu chipping in every once in a while, and Ryeon listening more than she’s participating.

Joon-woong talks about your performance, the way both you and Joong-gil fired up both the stage and the audience, and how crazy everyone’s gone over the two of you on social media. From Instagram to Twitter, he’s been keeping an eye on it all. If your mother is your number one fan, then Choi Joon-woong is number two: he’s always been nothing but encouraging and supporting, even more so after you texted him about your collab with his very own idol, Park Joong-gil.

You’re sexy. He’s sexy. This is gonna be fucking bomb! – you remember him texting you that after he accidentally sent a voice message of himself screeching excitedly at the news and all the new career opportunities working in such tight contact with someone like Korea’s ‘it’ boy could bring you.

When Ryeon receives a call, however – you think you recognize their manager’s voice over the phone – they get up and bid their goodbyes. Ryung-gu holds you close this time, whispers something into your ear that Joong-gil doesn’t catch, but then suddenly everything’s as clear as day for him.

“We should go, too,” Joong-gil says after a moment of the two of you being alone, standing up and motioning for you to put his hoodie back on while he goes up to the counter to pay.

His bike stands lonely in one of the empty underground garage boxes and he leads you to it in silence.

You have this nagging suspicion that something’s shifted between the two of you between the moment you entered Jumadeung and the moment you left, but you’re tired, and the stress of the days – months – leading up to this performance and that of all the stages you’ll have to dance from now on when you leave on tour is finally catching up with your body. your legs are heavy and your arms are sore. You really can’t wait to be home, take a quick shower, and then disappear underneath the fluffy blankets you have on your bed.

“We have the first round of interviews tomorrow afternoon, remember?” he asks as he hands you his spare helmet. Maybe now would be the right time to tell him you’ve never been on a motorbike – the prop you used in one of your past music videos doesn’t count – but the words somehow don’t come out.

So you nod with a hum as you let him buckle your helmet. “Make-up at 3. Quick photoshoot at 4. Three interviews starting at 5:30,” you list, your mind providing you with the mental photograph of the schedule your manager jotted down on a post-it note stuck to your fridge. “Then dinner with our teams at 8.”

He makes a face at your detailed response, almost as though he’s surprised by how precise you are. But he’s satisfied with you being well aware of your joint plans, and he straddles the bike without another word, waiting for you to slide in behind him.

You’ve been close to him already – of course you’ve been. What with the dancing, or all the photoshoots you’ve had so far. Even the time spent brainstorming on the couch in his studio, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, going over lyrics and munching on snacks, pretty much breathing the same air. But it’s never felt like this, and when he reaches for your wrists to wrap your arms around his torso, you chastise yourself for feeling this way.

There’s a line you shouldn’t cross, and before tonight the urge to do it had never surfaced. You wonder what has been the source of that change, and all you can come up with is tonight’s – well, last night’s – performance.

“Hold on tight,” he tells you from above his shoulder and before you know it, you’re back into the streets of the capital.

You’d facepalm yourself if you weren’t riding a bike at breakneck speed. Of course it’s the chemicals in your brain all going off at once after performing the first stage of your comeback! By the time you wake up later today – you tell yourself – you’ll be back to normal.

You fall asleep with that thought kept on repeat in your mind and with the lingering feeling of Joong-gil’s leather jacket underneath your fingertips.

*

You wake up with your feelings all over the place, however, after a restless night’s sleep with dreams of him one after the other. If you didn’t have a busy day ahead, you’d be texting back and forth with Bit-na about the topic, asking for an opinion or simply a wake-up call. Instead, you call your mother to briefly tell her about last night and try to ignore the fact that you seem to have finally started to succumb to a crush you thought you had forgotten everything about.

The infamous article insinuating romance between you and the solo singer is somehow being kept on the backburner of your mind. The way fans reacted at first, or at least those that managed to before the article was taken down. The judging comments, insinuating you were using him for his fame – which, considering also his modeling and acting gigs, is considerably more than yours, there is unfortunately no denying that – despite the fact that he is the one who seeked you out first, but that is something nobody outside your agencies knows.

“Nervous?” Joong-gil asks, looking at your reflection in the mirror while his stylist fixes his hair.

He always looks so perfect, so well put-together, not one single hair out of place. It’d be hard not to fall for his charm. And then he opens his mouth and shows off how well-spoken and knowledgeable he is, and the difficulty triplicates.

You shrug, smiling lightly and closing your eyes to allow your make-up artist to finish the sophisticated look they picked for your eyeshadow. “Every time’s like the second time.”

“Not the first?” you hear the curiosity in his voice.

“I was a mess on my first time,” you chuckle, and then chuckle some more when your make-up artist says, but you held it together like a champ! She’s been with you since the beginning, and you’re glad she’s still here: she’s always been an integral part of keeping you sane and calm. “My second time went a lot better because I knew what to expect, but I was still nervous.”

He’s holding out a hand for you when you open your eyes, and you’re hesitant to take it. You think back to last night, when he stood a few steps below you in that dirty building, when you still thought Jumadeung didn’t exist or that it was some horror-movie room of torture where you’d heave your last breath. It was warm in your hand, his skin smooth aside from the few calluses from gripping the weights he lifts at the gym.

You take a hold of it now, and he wraps his fingers tightly around your hand before he grabs the arm of your chair with his other hand and pulls you closer until your knees are slotted between his spread legs and pressed up against the edge of his seat.

It’s a relief that everyone’s left the changing room because you wouldn’t want to explain the way Joong-gil’s sudden action makes you gasp.

“Hey, it’s gonna be alright,” he smiles. It’s a soft smile that does more harm than good and all you can do is look down at the way he’s still holding onto your hand, like that’s exactly where he belongs. You have no clue how to tell him today’s interviews are not exactly what’s making you nervous or even if you should be telling him in the first place. “We’ve already done this to prepare for yesterday’s show plenty of times. You’re great at this game.”

You nod silently, playing with the hem of the confetti baby pink dress you’re made to wear. You hate this color, and you hate the way the organza of the skirt makes the skin of your thighs itch. “I can’t wait for today’s schedule to be over,” you confess, and that’s not even a lie.

“It’ll be over in a heartbeat.” His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and you don’t know how to feel.

You know how you do feel at the moment – your butterfly has fled your wrist again and is back in your stomach, moving around with the same strength of a herd of elephants, which is considerably more than it was last night.

It’s like being back on that stage, just as everyone cheered your flawless performance and you turned around to briefly glance at him at the end of your show. The droplets of sweat running down the side of his face, the way he was panting, his chest rising and falling underneath his loose shirt, and the grin he sent your way. Then you got off the stage, back behind the scenes, and he pulled on your hand and wrapped you in a hug tighter than Joon-woong’s, all sweaty and scorching hot, laughing like a maniac with the adrenaline pushing through his system.

Part of you is still right there, rooted to the spot.

You wonder whether your brain’s still wired up on the same frequency it latched onto last night – the excitement of having jumped the first hurdle, the way performing on stage always makes you feel, the sheer joy dancing brings upon you and how powerful singing makes you feel. You want to think it’s that, and not that you’re falling for him, because that would simply make the rest of this job harder. There’s a million people like you, but apparently only one like him.

But then last night at Jumadeung crawls its way back to the forefront of your mind. You felt something at the table and caught a look Ryeon sent Joong-gil’s way, a look you couldn’t exactly put into words, even more so because you were distracted talking to Joon-woong and feeling Ryung-gu’s hand on your thigh.

They are your friends, they have been ever since you started training at the agency and even more so after you debuted… You want to be able to invite them to celebrate all together at some point down the line, and if that means the atmosphere isn’t going to be relaxed, then you won’t be able to do it.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, tilting your head back to face him by grabbing your chin between his thumb and forefinger.

The proximity makes your heart jump up into your throat. You want your brain to calm down, and for the butterflies in your stomach to stop flying around.

“Did something happen between you and the members of RMT?” The question is out before you can bite your tongue.

He tilts his head to the side. “Why?”

You shrug, trying to be as nonchalant as you can muster, but deep down fearing you won’t be able to have your friends there with you when it eventually comes to celebrating this collaboration. “Last night felt… I don’t know, tense, in a way, I guess, after we joined their table. I don’t remember reading anything about a fight between you or-”

“Ryeon and I dated for a while.”

Your babbling comes to a screeching halt when he says that. He says it matter-of-factly, like it’s the most random thing and not such a well-kept secret even you, after all the time you’ve spent with her, knew absolutely nothing about. “What? When?”

Fuck. What the fuck are you even doing here with him, allowing yourself to feel the way and the things you feel?

“Three years ago.”

You’re still blinking, barely even processing what he’s saying. There’s only one Park Joong-gil, you’re well aware of that, but there’s also only one Koo Ryeon. Of course, they would have ended up together one way or another at some point. Your imbalanced brain really does see the sense in that. “How long?”

“A few months.” He frowns before adding, “why are you so shocked?”

“Ryeon never mentioned anything about a relationship…”

You’re still gaping when someone knocks on the changing room’s door, warning the both of you that you still have ten minutes before the shoot.

“Yeah well, it’s over now.” He says it in a way that makes you believe he’s still somewhat suffering because of it and you know you shouldn’t overthink or insinuate stuff about others, but now some of his lyrics kind of do make more sense. “Talking about RMT…” He’s smirking, changing the topic, which is never a good thing when it comes to him and how surprisingly teasing he can be. “Lim Ryung-gu…”

Your spine straightens up before you can make yourself hide the surprise his name douses you with. “What about him?”

His hand is still in yours, and you find yourself praying to anything good and holy that he doesn’t feel how clammy it becomes. You know how good an observer he can be; you’ve come to learn a lot of things about him in the time you’ve been working together.

“Just wondering. Is he the one with peak head game?”

Your eyes widen for a moment and you can feel all the blood both drain from your face and rush to your cheeks.

It’s a weird feeling. You never thought you’d get caught. Ryung-gu lives in your same condominium, so sneaking around when one or both of you need a way to release stress has always been easy. No one sees, and no one writes anything. It’s always been a great deal.

You escape Joong-gil’s question by the skin of your teeth when your manager opens the door to announce it’s time for the photoshoot. The sudden wave of relief makes you jump up like a spring and push your chair back in one single movement, and you try to ignore the way Joong-gil chuckles under his breath.

Throughout the whole photoshoot you try not to think about Ryung-gu, or about how close to Joong-gil some poses have you be. With his arms around you, caging you against the prop brick wall, his eyes staring into yours the way the photographer orders him to while you look straight at the camera, it’s somewhat easy to forget the rest of the world. You just hope he doesn’t hear how loud your heart is beating inside your chest, or how deafening the blood flow in your eardrums is.

“Thaaat’s perfect,” you hear the photographer cheer. “A few more like that, and then we’re moving on to the last batch.”

“Relax,” Joong-gil murmurs against your cheek, his nose brushing against your skin with how the next pose has the two of you. “Even I feel like you’re about to go into cardiac arrest,” he chuckles under his breath.

The sound and feel of him so close makes a thrill crawl down your spine, and suddenly your brain’s not focusing anymore on your friend Ryeon dating Park Joong-gil or on Joong-gil (correctly) suspecting about something between you and Ryung-gu. Back in the changing room you almost wanted to tell him it’s just sex, a way to lock the rest of the world out for a moment, but you have no clue what idea he’s going to have about you if you tell him that.

“I’m alright,” you whisper back, peering up at him and immediately regretting doing so. With how close together your faces are, you could count every single one of his lashes if you wanted. His breath fans the top of your lips in such a way that it feels like the ghost of a kiss, and you’re so close to him you can smell his cologne, and probably the faint scent of his foundation cream as well. “Just a bit nervous. It’s really real now.” And then you add, “the collab, I mean.”

His smile feels more blinding than the flashing lights of the camera, and the rest of the day goes by in a blur. The photoshoot, the interviews… You go on autopilot, almost, and only come out of it by the end of the third interview. It’s for a magazine your mother loves to read. No cameras are rolling, only the reporter’s voice recorder is recording on the coffee table between you and Joong-gil on a low leather couch and her on a matching chair.

“Last night’s stage was a huge success,” she says. “Your mv did really well on all platforms, but that performance was bomb. Everyone’s talking about how good you look together!”

You smile, daring a glance at Joong-gil. He’s setting his jaw, but he’s good at masking that with the smile he still has on his lips, unwavering.

“The chemistry between the two of you seems to be off the charts, truly. Your fans have been going crazy ever since you posted the first video.” You’ve seen this particular interviewer on TV a few times, and you know what part of the interview this is. Just because you’re not being recorded on film doesn’t mean she’s changing her M.O. “Has anything sweet bloomed between you?”

Joong-gil chuckles, and if that woman wasn’t already hanging from his every word before, she sure is now, heart eyes and all. But then again, you do understand her: resisting his spell isn’t easy. He’s one fine specimen, always has been. “Y/N’s an amazing person and artist, and I do admit we work really well together, but not everything boils down to a romantic relationship.”

You find yourself nodding. Get out of your head, this is strictly business, you tell yourself, but then voice your agreement with what your colleague’s just said.

A few more pleasantries, and then you’re being dragged back into the changing room and to your van. This time it is your van. You sit in the back and your manager behind the wheel, and then you’re off for some informal dinner in a reserved restaurant where no one will bother you.

You look up from your phone screen only when she calls your name.

“Great job today,” she grins through the rearview mirror when she stops at a red light. “The photoshoot was spectacular and you handled yourself well during the interviews. To someone who knows you, though… is everything alright? You seemed a bit distracted.”

“It’s just…” It’s just me developing a stupid crush on a colleague. And Ryeon apparently was in a relationship with this colleague in the past, and she never mentioned a word about it. And then, oh yeah, it doesn’t happen often, but I’m fucking Ryung-gu when I’m stressed, but now I’ve been so stressed and busy that I haven’t been able to, and my Joong-gil’s apparently found out after spending half an hour with us anyway. We have so much scheduled that I’ll probably have to schedule restroom breaks as well. And I’m always afraid of messing up on stage, no matter how hard I prepare for it. And what if I really do end up falling for Joong-gil? Dude’s been closed off to the world so much that it’s a miracle he and Ryeon even dated. But you confess none of that, opting for a neutral, “I’m a bit nervous about all future performances. We still have like a billion interviews coming up and I really hate being asked about relationships and having to pretend I’m the fairy this industry portrays me as.”

She smiles understandingly and nods her head, her eyes always trained on the road. It’s a good thing that she’s a great driver and that she cares about everyone’s safety so much that she never trails her eyes off the road. She’d probably see right through you if she were to turn around right now. “That’s understandable. I can’t imagine being in your shoes, it would make me freak out six times out five.”

You giggle with her.

“But you’re great at what you do. Leave it to me and the PR team to monitor the comments online and the articles, don’t worry about that. You’re doing great already,” she reassures you. “Also, you’re not doing it alone this time. Mr Park looks like he knows what he’s doing when it comes to prying questions. He’s always very reserved when it comes to his personal life, so I’m sure he’ll help in keeping those questions to a minimum like he did today.”

“You’re right,” you nod absentmindedly, looking out the window at Seoul’s night traffic. But you apparently don’t sound convincing enough.

“Is anything else on your mind?”

You decide to lie. “Nope.”

*

He is on your mind, however.

Park fucking Joong-gil.

For the first time ever, he’s sitting at your kitchen table after your teams’ dinner, dropping a piece of candy into his soju. You don’t know what got into you when you invited him up to your place, and you want to say the fact that you were all pressed up against his back on his bike for the second time did not cloud your common sense, but that would be a fat lie.

“I’m sorry if I pried this afternoon,” he says after a while, when you finally sit down with a steamy mug of chamomile tea for you and push another one his way. It’s a silly mug, with grinning fluffy white sheep on a green background, but your mother loved it too much not to buy it for you. It’s probably not the best thing to give your guest, you realize at the last minute. “What’s going on between you and Lim Ryung-gu is none of anyone’s business but your own.”

“No, it’s…” You huff, scrunching your forehead with your fingers before smothering your hand down your face. It’s kind of intimidating to sit there bare-faced in front of someone who looks so good even after a long day of work. “I was the one who poked her nose in your business first. Ryung-gu and I are just… friends. It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated?”

The skin of your face burns, and you can’t look him in the eyes. Instead, you let the night skyline outside your window catch your attention. “We… It’s just… It’s hard sometimes, you know? This life.” You look down. Your nerves get the best of you and you start tracing the rim of your mug with your middle finger. “It’s stressful already as it is, and then you go out and there’s suddenly a new rumor about you every step you take. This is dating that. Or X got a nose job. Y has been caught dancing in a club. It follows you everywhere you go even after you clock out for the day.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I feel like we don’t really clock out.”

You groan. “Don’t remind me of that. Fucking yes. So… Ryung-gu lives two floors above me. It’s easy to… let out stress when no one can see.” You’re burning even more than your chamomile tea is.

Why the hell are you telling him that? You don’t owe him anything, least of all an explanation, and yet, you’ve started to realize that a silly part of you kind of does want him – and for him to want you. Park Joong-gil, that is.

He’s nodding, almost as though he’s piecing the pieces together. “Is he who your friend was talking about that day on the phone, correct?” he asks again.

You nod.

“There’s nothing wrong with falling for someone.”

Your eyes shoot up to meet his, but he’s the one looking out the window this time and you only catch his side profile and the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down when he drinks his soju.

“It’s not… like that.” You don’t know where your voice went. It almost makes you feel bad that you don’t have feelings for Ryung-gu and that he doesn’t have any for you. Almost like you fuck on autopilot. Like the connection is only physical and platonic and it doesn’t go deeper than that. Maybe, if you did it more often, then you would start catching feelings, but you’re careful with not fucking around too much.

“You look like your heart’s beating out of your chest again,” he smirks, taking the mug you prepared for him.

“Yeah well, maybe because it is.” You hide behind your hands again, sighing down into your mug.

“You know, you have no explaining to do. It’s just… natural. As long as it helps…,” he shrugs.

He’s so nonchalant about it. It almost makes you wonder whether that’s how things started between him and Ryeon, even though Ryeon never seemed like the one to do things just because she’s horny. She’s level-headed, probably the most level-headed person you know – despite the fact that you had no clue she was seeing someone, so who knows.

“Are you nervous now?” he asks and you hum. There’s a beat of silence and then, “is it because of me?”

“No!” Well yes, but you can’t tell him that last night at Jumadeung gave you the illusion of being on a date, or how months of working in such close proximity are finally starting to catch up on you.

You can feel his gaze on you, but you dare not look up. What if you do and end up blurting out nonsense? Embarrassing yourself and changing the dynamics between you for good?

“I’m nervous, too,” he confesses, and that’s when you find it within yourself to peer at him. “I’ve been working with a crazy talented artist and it’s been making me feel like I should be doing more.”

“A crazy talented ar- me?” you frown. By all means, you’re good at this game, but you know there’s better performers than you out there.

“Have you heard about me collabing with someone else?”

His smile takes your breath away for a moment. You want to think he’s trying to flirt with you, but you really shouldn’t be throwing gasoline onto the fire of your crush. Everything was going so smoothly… Fucking comeback, you think.

“I’ve been a fan since day one, just saying,” he shrugs, sipping on his chamomile tea.

“You…” You gasp at how unexpected this is, and then you’re laughing. You must look like a lunatic, messy hair and loose pajama, trying to keep your cool after confessing to having a fuck buddy to one of the most wanted people in the country. Part of you can’t wait to tell Bit-na about that, and another part of you really doesn’t want to hear what she’d have to say in response.

“Fuck, you really are stressed out of your mind…” He’s amused, it’s clear both in his voice and on his face.

He brings your mug to your lips, leaning across the table towards you, and he steals your breath for the second time tonight. He helps you drink, and it calms you down. Only on the outside, though, you think. You can still feel your heart inside your chest when he stands up to wash the mugs and the glass he used to drink his soju, and your thumb absentmindedly brushes over your tattooed butterfly.

“Don’t let this life stress you out so much,” he murmurs from behind you, leaning over you to speak against your cheek before he kisses it. “If you need a hand with it, you have my number. We’re partners now, after all.”

What’s he suggesting? You torment yourself with that question for what feels like forever before you make up your mind.

Ryung-gu comes over when Joong-gil leaves. You called the wrong number – on purpose, of course. There are some things you can’t talk about with ‘your partner’, but you’ve always been an open book for Lim Ryung-gu.

It’s nothing regular, the thing you two have, but this is the first time in months that one of you calls the other for stress relief. It’s not bad by any means, it just… feels different, in a way. Like your brain is still stuck on a loop of last night at Jumadeung, when you were staring at yourself in the mirror of that fairyland-like restroom, wearing Park Joong-gil’s soft hoodie over your golden top, standing under winking fairy lights.

You see the kitchen table from where you’re half sitting, half reclining on the couch in the living room, with Ryung-gu kneeling between your legs. You can still picture Joong-gil’s back, the gray cardigan he wore after the interviews were over, his perfectly styled hair, straight out of a magazine cover like some sort of walking dream.

A particular brush of Ryung-gu’s fingers inside you makes your toes curl and your back arch, your head falling back against the pillows as your hands tug on his hair. His groan against your pussy makes you tingle all over, and when his lips latch onto your clit you know you’re done for.

“Fuck, just like that,” you manage to whisper, breathing hard, pulling him closer to you by the back of his head.

You can hear how wet you are by the squelching sound his fingers moving in and out of you make. It makes your head spin – and your heart ache as well, maybe, because part of you feels like you’ll never have anything real, not in this department and not in this line of work where you feel controlled twenty-four seven.

But with Ryung-gu it’s easy to pretend: he eats you out like he does that for a living, and in the spur of the moment, with the air scorching in your lungs, you think the world deserves to know his fingers aren’t only great at playing the piano.

Then he curls his fingers, gets to work on that one patch of sensitive skin deep inside you, and you come with a low moan that comes up from deep within you and seems to go on forever as his tongue keeps on lapping up at your juices.

He gives your clit one last suck and that makes you whine, your thighs quiver in overstimulation as you tug on his hair to get him off of you. Then, he’s using your discarded panties to clean you and his hand up.

You come down from your high cuddled up into his side, your head on his shoulder, and the way his fingers trace patterns on your back, through your t-shirt, calms your raging heartbeat and roots you to the present moment.

“I think we should stop doing this,” he whispers against the side of your head, lips brushing against your hair when he speaks.

Your only reply is a hum. It’s not like you’ve been thinking about that, too, but it’s true that in the last few months you’ve come to secretly wish for something more. A deeper connection. Doing this with someone you have actual feelings for – someone that hopefully also has feelings for you, too. Ryung-gu brought everything else to the table – he’s understanding, fun, blurts random bits of knowledge in the middle of the night when you’re lying in bed covered in sweat – but not that one part of the picture.

“I met someone, and I also feel like you’ve been slowly drifting away,” he continues, his voice soft. You can hear his heart beat inside his chest, underneath your cheek, and you move your hand up to brush your thumb over his sternum. “Is it Joong-gil?”

He’s smirking in amusement when you move your head to meet his gaze quicker than the speed of light just to moan the split second later because your neck is sore and all that haste didn’t sit well with it. But there’s no lying to him – you’ve been friends since you left Busan together, so if anything, after Bit-na, he’s the one person you trust the most when it comes to actually opening up.

“I don’t know what’s up with me,” you confess eventually. It’s then, as you wish for any kind of distraction to bless you, that you notice he’s cut his hair and got rid of his toned hair tips. He must have met with his stylist today, you reason distractedly, because yesterday his hair was longer, sporting a look you’ve come to love on him. “Yesterday at Jumadeung… which, by the way,” you deadpan, pushing yourself up onto your elbow. “Wow, that’s so very loyal of you, bestie. Thank you for telling me about that place.”

He snorts. “As if,” he chuckles, pushing your bangs away from your face. He likes this new look on you, and he’s probably the main reason why you’ve let yourself enjoy it, too. “It was my first time there as well. Ryeon wanted to go out yesterday afternoon and she brought us there. Joon-woong knew about it, though, so if you really wanna be mad at someone… be mad at the golden retriever.”

“But he’s so cute,” you playfully pout, making the same face you would if you saw a cute puppy. “He has my approval for anything he wants to do or say.”

He snorts again, trying not to laugh, but eventually failing. “Don’t derail the conversation,” he scolds, playfully smacking your bare thigh. “Was last night a date?”

You shake your head no, but you feel your face grow hotter at the mere idea of it being one. You really don’t know how it happened, and you tell him as much. “I don’t think so. There’s never been anything more than just work. And when I went to bed last night I thought it was just because I was still all over the place after the show and how cozy it was at Jumadeung. But then I woke up at noon today and I was still thinking about him…” you huff, lying back down next to him, and wrap an arm around his waist.

“Do you like him?”

“Who doesn’t?” you scoff, and then hide your face in his chest because fuck. What’s with your hormones and this crush? You stay quiet for a while, enjoying the silence of the night and his fingers still lightly tickling your back from above your blue pajama shirt. “I don’t know what to do, Ryung-gu. Like…” You rub your face with both hands when you can’t keep in the groan. “What if this crush or whatever gets out of hand and ruins everything?”

“With the collab, you mean? Or your… situationship?”

You hum. “Like, he’s always been incredibly attractive, both inside and out, but so are you and a lot of other people I’ve met…”

“Wow, thanks, I guess,” he laughs, only to be met by a flick of your fingers against his forehead.

“You know you’re hot. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen what people comment under your posts on Insta.”

“Oh, I know i’m sex on legs,” he jokes, looking at you like he’s all high and mighty before cracking into an amused grin. “It just hits different when it comes from that mouth of yours.”

You flick him again, this time on his chest, before you’re pushing yourself up again to look down at him. “I just don’t know what to do, and… ugh!” You bite your tongue, and needing a way out of this conversation, you ask, “what about your person, though?” You smirk, wiggling your eyebrows and making him laugh. “Who is it? Do I know them? Is it another singer? A backup dancer? Model? Min-ji from back home?”

He silences you with a hand on your mouth, but it just makes you giggle, and suddenly you’re hyper aware of how he’s looming over you on the couch, and your pussy is still out and wet, and God this feels so wrong. You would’ve never called him had you known he’s met someone. Thinking about him going down on you when he’s considering the idea of pursuing an actual person makes you feel worse than spilling the beans to Joong-gil did, and dirtier than the railing you grabbed yesterday in that building was.

“What, so you can snitch to the tabloids?” he asks, but he’s smiling, so you know there’s no bite behind his words.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out all of a sudden. “For calling you over. You ate me out despite all that and…” He lets you sit up and moves to sit next to you on the couch. “God, I feel like such a bitch,” you groan from behind your hands. They’ve quickly become the wall you hide behind.

“Hey, it’s fine.” Ryung-gu pulls you into his side and leaves a kiss on the crown of your head. “You’re my friend, I would’ve never left you alone in a time of need when I have nothing really going on yet. You would’ve done the same, I’m sure. Unless…”

“Unless?” You don’t dare look up at him, even though you can hear the smile in his voice. He still feels like the same Lim Ryung-gu he’s always been, but then also like you’re miles apart for the first time in forever – or probably ever.

“Unless that Park dude really has a hold on your pussy.”

He doesn’t stop cackling when, indignant, you hit him with a pillow.

“Shut up,” you groan. “I’ve been a mess since last night’s stage, let me be.”

He wipes your pout away with a thumb before pressing a kiss to your cheek. “Just saying… I’m sure it’s hard to stay stoic when he has those hip rolls in your choreo.”

Your face is scorching hot. Ryung-gu is right, Joong-gil has some sexy moves, but so does he in his own solo numbers. They’ve always been one of his distinctive traits and while yes, you’ve always swooned a little every time, you’ve also always been able to stay professional when he danced them with you.

“You know, I actually think this is a great opportunity for the both of us,” Ryung-gu says after a while, when you’re putting on a fresh pair of panties. You snatch your pajama shorts from his hand when he hands them to you, and join him in the kitchen for the leftover pizza he brought over from his apartment. “We both get to find out what we really like with a partner,” he explains when you simply frown in confusion at him.

“Maybe you will. I’ll be trying not to think too much about it. He’s there,” you gesture with your hand held up high above your head, “and I’m here,” you continue, placing your other hand much lower.

“In my book you’re here,” he corrects, raising the hand you used to show him where you stand, “and he’s here.” He lowers the other one. “You’re great. What are you even implying here?”

“Yeah, a crazy talented artist,” you groan, quoting back Joong-gil’s words to your friend with a roll of your eyes. You don’t even know why it stings so much to be just that to him. Well, of course, you do know why, but you don’t want to linger there.

“I was thinking more about a crazy awesome person.” Ryung-gu boops your nose before adding, “but yeah, whatever floats your boat. Just don’t put him on a pedestal. You both have the same job and are equally as talented. Don’t start treating him like a god on Earth, leave that to his fans. Because if anything, he’s lucky to be doing this with you.”

*

Despite everything, you’ve managed to keep it as professional as possible with Joong-gil thus far. Everything always runs smoothly – interviews, photoshoots, promotional shoots, even performances or radio appearances with your usual banter and jokes, even if shipping comments follow you every step of the way. What’s worse is that when you come off stage, high on adrenaline, one simple look from him is somehow enough to make your panties wet.

You’re really not proud to admit it, and after every show, it’s becoming harder and harder to conceal the effect he has on you. Giving him the wrong impression is the last thing you want to do, and at the same time it’s hard to figure out what’s going on in his mind, behind those dark eyes of his.

Tonight’s not any different, you notice when you’re pushed into your van right behind him after the opening concert to the Japanese leg of your joint tour.

There’s the adrenaline again – all the post-performance feelings, the fact that you managed to sell this venue out in less than three minutes twice when the tour dates were first announced. You’re wired beyond belief, every fiber of your being buzzing underneath your skin, your heart leaping in your chest like that’s some Olympic sport. It’s been a while since the sensations were this intense, so much so that it’s overwhelming and you end up planting a celebratory wet kiss on Joong-gil’s lips without even realizing you’re doing it.

Your brain only catches up with it while you’re standing under the warm jet of the shower, a ballad humming through your phone’s speakers in the background. It should be a quick freshening up, because you know Joong-gil will take a quick shower as well before starting his post-concert VLive stream while he waits for you, but you can’t help but freeze, the loofa stopping on your chest and the trembling fingers of your right hand coming up to your lips.

You still feel his lips against yours, and hear the harsh breath he took and which you never really registered in the moment, buzzing as you were with excitement, the goosebumps tugging at your sweaty skin.

“Fucking fuck,” you mutter under your breath, mouth agape for a moment before you shut it and turn the waterstream off.

Thinking about it will do you more harm than good, you know that, but your heartbeat is every-fucking-where now when you think back to the way he grabbed a hold of your biceps to keep your balance and prevent you from falling fully onto him.

Maybe you can play it off tomorrow morning, pretend like you passed out right after your shower and say you’re deeply sorry for missing out on the quick post-concert catch-up with your fans. You’re about to text Bit-na about your misstep in the van and how fucked up it got you, to the point you almost touched yourself in the shower, when the notification of Joong-gil going live pops up on the screen of your phone.

You stand there for a full minute, naked, dripping water onto the tile floor of your hotel room’s bathroom. There’s no resisting the curiosity, those brain chemicals going hysterical, and your finger taps on the notification before you can stop yourself.

He’s sitting on the couch in his hotel room, pretty much a twin of yours. Tokyo’s lights at night are blinking behind him and while that’s definitely a view, he seems to be an even better one now. White loose t-shirt, wet hair still slightly dripping droplets of water onto his shoulders, bare-faced but still incredibly charming in the way he talks, answers comments, says Y/N will join us shortly before drinking from his water bottle. It all makes you want to kiss him again, but this time on purpose while being fully present in the moment.

“Fuck.”

You’re cooked.

You’ve got it real bad – you facepalm yourself as you close the app, lock your phone, and quickly get dressed into something you can lounge in while still looking presentable. You really do not want to look bad next to him.

It’s now or never, you tell yourself when you force yourself out into the corridor.

Joong-gil’s door is right opposite yours and as you walk the few steps that separate yours from it, you quickly glance out of the window at the end of the hallway. By the looks of it, it’s going to rain tonight.

The livestream goes by quickly: Joong-gil is more entertaining than you thought he’d be, but this time he does a great job at keeping the conversation with the fans flowing despite the fact that you’re, well, beat. You should have known that the moment you’d finally sit down, slumber would start creeping up on you. And, well, he’s better at Japanese than you are – that’s something that should be mentioned.

Nevertheless, you still step in with puns and funny anecdotes about tonight’s show or the time you and Joong-gil have spent working together. In the live chat, someone even swoons about your coordinated outfits on stage, and that’s just another opportunity to flaunt the amazing stylists you have this time around – an excuse not to think about the way you do know you look like when you’re together. Like you’re a match made in fucking heaven, but that could also be your crush speaking on your behalf.

When the stream is finally off and you get the thumbs up of approval from both your managers, you let yourself fall back against the couch with a sigh.

“Tired?” Joong-gil asks, moving around to plug his phone in. He puts it down on the nightstand and grabs a bottle of water from the minifridge for you.

“Exhausted,” you groan, pulling your legs up and resting your head on your knees.

It’s easier to look at him now without thinking about that rather chaste kiss you gave him and the ways he moved on stage earlier on in the night. You don’t feel like you might catch fire with just a look from him, but when he sits back down next to you, some of that anxious tension comes back.

“I’m really enjoying this,” he smiles. When he leans his head back and fully relaxes, however, you notice how tired he looks, too. His eyelids are heavy and all his weight is leaning against the couch like he’s a bag of potatoes.

You hum and nod, taking a long sip from the water bottle he handed you while thinking about Bit-na. During the two weeks between the first stage performance and Jumadeung and tonight’s show, you’ve told her about this whatever-it-is that you started feeling for Joong-gil. Nothing too detail-heavy, but there’s no way in hell you could have survived without her opinion on the matter. You wish she were here now, a tiny celestial being perched on your shoulder, ready to give you counsel.

“I’m enjoying this collab a lot, too,” you say, leaning back and turning your head to the side to look at him. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’s fallen asleep.

But he softly giggles, amused, and you know he’s still awake. “I mean… Yeah, the collab as well. But I was thinking more about… you. The time we’ve been spending together.”

You bite your tongue, a way to prevent the wrong things from leaving your mouth, but also to stop that smile from stretching on your lips.

“What was that kiss about?” he asks without giving you the time to even think. “Back in the van.”

The expression on your face must be the epitome of regret because he looks taken aback in a way you’ve never seen him. The truth is, you have no clue what to tell him. You don’t want to make things weird, but you also fucking do want to kiss those plump lips of his again.

“I… The excitement always gets to my head, I’m really sorry if that made you uncomfortable,” you murmur eventually, finding it difficult to meet his gaze.

“So, do you kiss a lot of people like that?”

“Fuck, no!” It’s the nerves acting on your behalf that make you chuckle and all you can do to try and stop the tremor in your hands is close your eyes and deepen your breaths. “No, I… That was a first, even for me.”

His hum is questioning, and you feel his weight on the couch shift. It’s only when his fingertips touch your lips that you will yourself to open your eyes.

He’s incredibly close, just like that day during the photoshoot and many other photoshoots before that. You can smell the faint minty aftertaste of his toothpaste when he says, “should we make it a tradition?”

It’s like you’re hypnotized, and you’d like to blame your deafening heartbeat for the fact that you can’t stop that meak yeah from tumbling past your lips. He clouds your senses, and you’re suddenly glad that your rooms are so up high because that means no paparazzi will be able to snap a picture and you can finally feel safe enough to-

His lips touch yours. Soft, smooth, and you wonder why the fuck they feel so hot against yours. The kiss cuts your breath short, makes the butterflies in your stomach rouse again, and then some other warm and wet feeling starts rearing its head. He’s staring at you and you can’t help but stare back. Your brain leaves on a tangent and it’s soon wondering how quickly an ambulance will be able to come in case you dramatically go into cardiac arrest, even though neither of you is deepening the kiss. It’s chaste, just his lips pressing against yours as his hand cradles the side of your face.

Is it you being dramatic if you say you want to stay here forever?

When he eventually pulls back, he lets his tongue come out for a split second to brush against your lower lip and that’s when your body decides to betray you, to break your composure to let a shaky breath out.

His eyes fall down to your lips and you’re helpless as you stare at the way that grin of his plasters on his face.

He’s so fucking- ugh!

You feel like you could punch the sky with the way Park Joong-gil makes you feel. You decide then and there that it’s senseless to sit there and ponder how the fuck that bubble of feelings decided to pop only now – well, at Jumadeung – because now you’re stuck with the defeaning certainty that you’re down really bad for him.

“I love new traditions,” he grins, leaning back against the couch without breaking eye contact.

Head empty. There’s not one single thought in there that’s not Park Joong-gil. If Ryeon never said anything about him just so that she could keep him all for herself, well… You can’t really blame her. He’s charming. He pulls you to him like he’s a magnet. And it doesn’t even matter that you don’t even know where you stand anymore with him because your brain starts working a mile a minute until suddenly it’s picturing him between-

No.

No, you can’t go there.

He speaks before you have the chance to. “I think I wanna repeat it after tomorrow’s show if that’s alright with you. But we should probably go to bed now.”

You don’t resist him when he says he’ll accompany you to your door despite the fact that it’s literally less than ten meters from the couch you’ve been sitting on for the best part of the past two hours. If you can have thirty more seconds alone with him, then who the hell are you to say no?

But sleep doesn’t come easily – not with the feeling of his lips against yours, and not with the promise that you’re going to have another fix of that tomorrow night. You’re ready to bet you’ve never ever wanted a whole day to go by at the speed of light the way you desperately need it to now.

You feel guilty as hell when you let your hand slip past the elastic band of your panties to toy with the wetness between your folds. But that’s your best bet at trying to force slumber to come back, and you eventually fall asleep with Joong-gil’s name on your lips.

*

It’s silly, the way your heart somersaults inside your chest every time Park Joong-gil honors the silly tradition you accidentally started during your first night in Tokyo.

He kisses you after your second concert in the Japanese capital.

He kisses you after the concert in Nagoya.

In Osaka, you kiss before and after you hop onto the stage.

And every time, that celebratory kiss deepens a little more. By the time you land in Los Angeles to embark on your seven US American dates, you’re not thinking I should be keeping this professional between the two of us anymore, but instead I need more of him.

You’re on a video call with Bit-na after the concert in the SoFi stadium – between the crazy demanding show you put on and the jetlag, both you and Joong-gil are way too beat for a livestream.

“How’s your predicament going?” she asks as she continues doing her make-up.

“It’s hard,” you groan, falling back onto the hard mattress and shuffling around until you’re all cocooned into the blankets, only the top half of your head peeking out from the fluffy material.

“You mean his dick is?” She’s bold, always has been, and you’re glad you opted to put your earbuds in. The last thing you need is a late night visit from Park Joong-gil in which he hears your friend talk about this kind of shit again, with the only difference that this time it’s not Ryung-gu she’s talking about.

“That… too, yeah.” The temperature of your face could rival that of the sun. All you can do is fully hide your head underneath the blankets and hope your body will cool down quickly, but it feels like an impossible task when you can still feel his erection pressed against you when you kissed in the powder room after the concert.

Bit-na’s laughter is loud and hysterical. It deafens you for a moment but you figure that’s a good thing: it prevents you from replaying in your head the way you moaned into the kiss when you did your best not to roll your hips into his. “Did you really give him a boner?!”

“I’m sure it was just the excitement after the concert,” you mumble, finally re-emerging from your hiding place.

She clicks her tongue. “And I am sure it was aaaaall you,” she chuckles, putting her lipstick back down and picking up her mascara. “Sucking face with someone sure can lead to that.”

“We were not sucking faces.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling? I can see how swollen your lips are from all the way across the Pacific.”

You groan, covering your face with one hand. “I knew I should’ve called Ryung-gu.”

“He’d tell you to just sleep with him already.”

“Oh, shut up. It was different with him. Things just happened and it was his idea,” you remind her. “But now that he’s trying this relationship thing with this new person, it made me realize I want the same. I don’t want to just fuck. I want the whole experience. What if Joong-gil’s not into me like that?”

“The dude made up a making-out tradition just because you kissed him by accident once. I think the chances that he did it because he’s into you are higher than those of him just wanting to make out with someone.” She shrugs her shoulders and disappears for a moment to get dressed. “Stop holding back, Y/N. Just let things happen without trying to stop them.”

*

And ‘let them happen’ is exactly what you do.

One week after your call with Bit-na, you find yourself kissing Joong-gil in your hotel room in Atlanta, after an English post-concert livestream for your international fans.

It started off innocently enough, with the both of you sitting on the floor, your backs to the foot of your bed and your phone propped up on the coffee table you decided to use as a stand. Then it got less innocent soon after you turned the stream off, when his hand slipped underneath your t-shirt and dragged up your spine, pulling gooseflesh wherever he touched.

That’s how you find yourself being dragged into his lap now, how you find yourself now almost kissing down his throat.

His kisses are something else entirely, and the way his tongue brushes against yours makes you moan into his mouth. They’re intoxicating, his touches on you – the way he cradles your head in both hands, keeping you as close as possible without letting you go for a single second, or the way he suckles on your lower lip when he pulls back just enough to allow the both of you to catch your breath.

“It’s hard,” he says, his eyes roaming your face before being inevitably drawn back to your parted lips.

You have no clue where you find the strength or even the presence of mind to keep your lower half elevated just enough to avoid sitting down on him.

“What is?” you whisper back, suddenly being brought back to what you talked about with your best friend – you said it was hard, and she brought up the erection you had felt in Joong-gil’s pants while kissing. There’s no telling what would happen if you allowed yourself the time necessary to think about that now, or to even sit down comfortably in his lap and feel it, if that’s tonight’s case as well.

“Holding back.” His lips brush against the line of your jaw when he replies, his hands sliding down your sides and over your ass.

He is hard – that’s the first thing you can think about when he pulls you down flush against him. Your breath is caught in your throat when the tip of his nose brushes just right under your ear.

“Acting like I don’t want to fucking worship you.” His voice is deep, probably deeper than you’ve ever heard it in the time you’ve worked together but also before that, even though it’s hard to even think straight right now. “God, I’ve been thinking about you for weeks now.”

It’s like you’re not in control of your body: you hear yourself whimper, and then your hips roll down against his of their own accord.

Just let things happen, you hear Bit-na say again.

Joong-gil’s head falls back against the mattress and he gazes up at you from underneath. It does something to your brain, the sight of him underneath you, his eyelids heavy and his lips kiss-swollen. Because of you, you feel the need to remind yourself. He is like this because of you.

Fuck, it really does mess with your brain. Like thunder strikes and incinerates your ability to keep a grip on yourself.

And then he’s gripping your buttcheeks in both hands and moving you against him. His breathing is heavy, but so is yours. You can feel how hard he is against you even through your layer of clothings – in the spur of the moment you wish neither of you was wearing any. Every last one of your synapses is alight and all you can do is lean down into his lips again for another kiss.

Who would fall for the whole ‘new celebratory kiss tradition’ if anyone were to catch the two of you right now? Maybe Bit-na was right; maybe Joong-gil really did start this because he sees something in you that you yourself don’t see. As he kisses you back, pushes his tongue past your teeth to brush against yours, you find yourself hoping for your friend to really be right.

The buzzing of his phone by his head, on your bed, goes unnoticed when he starts bucking his hips up into yours. He swallows your whimpers, and when he moans in return, you’re suddenly aware of the pleasure starting to coil tighter deep in your stomach.

If he manages to make you come by simply dry-humping you, you can consider that a first.

But then someone knocks on your door, and the quick rapping on the wood breaks the spell. You find yourself looking into his open eyes and realize one of his hands has moved to the back of your head during the heat of your make-out session, the other one is under your t-shirt in the middle of your back.

“Alright, bedtime! We’re catching a flight at seven tomorrow!” You recognize Yun-ho’s voice, but it takes your brain two more seconds to finally give a meaning to the words you’ve just heard.

You jump back up on your feet before you can stop yourself, but Joong-gil doesn’t move immediately. He keeps his eyes trained on you, on the way you’re almost panting, trying to avoid looking down at his groin, and he doesn’t know how hard you’re throbbing right now or how drenched your panties feel even if you’re this close to telling him.

God, if anyone finds out while you’re overseas, you’re fucked. Both of you are.

“See you tomorrow?” he asks when he eventually stands up, movements all fluid when he does – a stark contrast to yours, to how sharp-cornered you felt when you jumped up from his lap and to how sharp-cornered you still do feel when you pick up your phone from the coffee table, unable to meet his eye and knowing that if you do, there’ll be no sleep for you tonight.

You nod and hum in response, but it’s apparently not enough for him. He steps forward, closes the distance between the two of you, and grabs your chin between his thumb and forefinger. He’s done that already once in the past, but right now you’re barely able to remember your own name. This motherfucker really does have that effect on you – brain and body alike.

“I asked, see you tomorrow?” he repeats, but all you can focus on is the way his lips move when you speak.

Part of your brain wants to bite back a of course, where the hell else would i be?, but another part of it is simply paralized. You wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s decided to make your body take the reins, for once.

He plants a chaste kiss to your lips when your reply is a simple, breathless yes. It’s like the kiss you accidentally gave him after your first concert in Tokyo, but this time it makes you tingle all over.

Would it really be so wrong to tell him now how fucking wet he’s made you?

*

To your displeasure, however, things don’t go further than that for the rest of your American stay, or even during the one concert you have in Toronto, although Joong-gil somehow ended up hearing you push yourself over the edge in the shower in Boston and fingering you in your dressing room in Chicago before your performance. (Which, by the way, sort of made it hard to fully focus once you were on stage, but whatever.)

Your days simply get busier, what with the concerts and the extra American interviews both of your agencies agreed upon at the last minute. Some of them were chill, but most had those sneaky so are you two dating? kind of questions hidden among much better ones. Joong-gil did a great job at deflecting them, but deep down all you can say is that they made you want to scream. You’re definitely not dating but fuck, if he doesn’t give you those fingers of his one more time I swear to God I’ll go insane!

“What are you thinking about?” Joong-gil asks, looking up from the magazine he’s been reading (there’s a double-page picture of the two of you on the pages he has open right now, one of those you posed for during your last photoshoot in Korea) and turns to glance at you.

You don’t think that ‘your fingers in my pussy’ is an appropriate enough reply, so you babble the next best thing that pops up in your mind when you look out of the plane window to your right. “Can’t wait to have a few days off before our concerts back home.”

Maybe if you focus hard enough on the fluffy clouds outside, you’ll stop overthinking about the implications of everything the two of you have started doing together. Like spending time in either of your hotel rooms after livestreams to simply relax. Or like kissing before and after concerts. Or the way he moaned straight into your mouth when you were making out in your room in Atlanta.

Fuck, that sound has been stalking you even in your dreams ever since.

“What’s your plan for that?” He turns slightly towards you to give you his undivided attention and you don’t know why, really, but that small gesture makes you sort of warm and fuzzy inside.

Your gaze swipes past him to the next row in first class and then over the few seats you can see from yours, but no one’s paying attention to anything but their own business. “I’m going back home, gonna spend a few days with my mother. It’s been almost a year since I last saw her in person,” you reply. And then, before you can even ponder your words or even just realize what trajectory your brain’s following, you find yourself proposing, “you’re invited, if you’d like. If you have nothing else to do.”

He looks surprised for a moment, and you want to slap yourself on the mouth for being so stupid. You’re aware your proposal might have come off as a ‘we’ve been doing things together, so it’s time to meet the parents’, but he’s smiling before you’re done biting your tongue. “Sure, why not? I’ll book a hotel room as soon as we land.”

There’s a surge of courage bubbling up from within you, something you’ve never really had around him because at first you were too excited to even be offered a collaboration deal with the Park Joong-gil, then you were trying to always be professional, and then you were a bit too busy trying not to think about the way he makes you feel.

So, you end up saying, “you could… stay with us. My mother hasn’t had guests over in ages and I’m sure she’d love the company.”

Am I being too straightforward? Is it too early? Is this something like what Ryung-gu and I used to do, or is he really into me?

That’s how you end up brushing your teeth next to Joong-gil in your childhood home.

That’s also how you end up trying to convince your mother she won’t be having grand-children or attending your wedding all that soon.

We’re just friends – you say ‘friends’, not ‘colleagues’, and that somehow surprises you. Like that’s something you’ve never even considered – the possibility of you and Park Joong-gil becoming friends, and maybe going out for drinks together a few years down the line and reminiscing about this collab album you’re doing together now.

He doesn’t really look at you like you’re just a friend is her reply, one that haunts you during your concert back home in Busan and during the two you hold in Seoul.

You also end up going down on him in his Seoul penthouse apartment after your tour has been wrapped up, and that’s when your mother’s insinuation comes back. It confuses you, this thing you have with Joong-gil, but you barely have the time to think because he’s keeping you close to his pelvis with a hand on the back of your head, and all you can do is swallow around him.

The moan he lets out when he feels your throat constrict around his dick is loud and it goes straight to your core. It makes you moan in return and that’s when he warns you he’s close and pulls you off.

“Come in my mouth,” you plead, breathless – almost as breathless as he is. He looks so good staring down at you with hooded eyes, a light flush powdered over his cheeks and the upper part of his torso. Somehow, it makes you want to ruin him.

The sound he lets out is halfway between a moan and a groan, and he lets go of your hair in favor of wrapping his hand around his erection. You allow him a couple of strokes before you’re wrapping your lips around him again, and a swipe of your tongue on his frenulum is what pushes him over the edge and right down your throat when you take him all the way into your mouth.

Your hands caress up and down his thighs when he lets himself fall back onto his bed, and as he catches his breath, you pepper light kisses over his hips and abdomen. He looks and sounds so good that you can feel how uncomfortable the wetness in your panties is, but still don’t dare speak up.

“Fuck,” he pants, chuckling when he stretches a hand out for you to take. You intertwine your fingers with his and move to lie down next to him. “Let me see,” he pleads.

It takes you a couple of seconds to realize what he means, but then you show him you’ve swallowed every last drop by opening your mouth and pushing your tongue out.

“That was fucking sexy,” he groans before pulling you over onto him and kissing your breath away, licking into your mouth and making your heart almost give out in your chest.

Your phone rings.

“I gotta go now.”

He’s sitting up on his bed when you speak, after he’s tried – uselessly – to pay back the favor. His eyes follow your every move – the way you pick up your phone (almost a mirrored repetition of what happened in Atlanta), the way you check yourself out in the mirror of his dresser, how you hesitate for a second when you pick up your handbag from the floor.

“My manager’s asking for my whereabouts and I can’t exactly tell her what we’ve been doing here,” you chuckle, looking back at him just to find him two steps away, standing only in his boxers behind you.

He hums his agreement, but then surprises you by grabbing you by the hips and pulling you into his chest. Resisting the urge to wrap your arms around his neck or to press a kiss onto his skin takes everything you’ve got.

“I want to keep seeing you,” he confesses matter-of-factly, looking straight into your eyes. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips before he leans his head forward to peck your cheek. “I want to keep seeing you after this collab is wrapped up,” he repeats, this time whispering in your ear and making the baby hairs at the back of your neck stand up in gooseflesh.

“You do?” Somehow, you’re breathless. You barely even register it, with how wildly your heart is pounding in your chest and in your throat and – bonjour, finesse! – between your legs.

“Yep,” he chuckles. He pulls your pelvis right into his, and you feel how he’s getting hard again. If you don’t leave his house soon, you know you’ll be in trouble with your team, but at the moment you can barely even remember all the rules you have to follow. “I want to keep seeing you.” It’s the third time he says it, and you’re starting to believe his words. “I want to get to know all of you. I want to see what you look like naked, too.”

You can’t stop the giggle.

“I think it’s unfair you got to see me,” he whispers, rolling his hips into you, “and I couldn’t even take your panties off in that changing room. And then,” he continues, kissing down the side of your neck like you have all the time in the world, “I want to know how you feel around me. Wanna be so deep inside you that all you can remember is my name. Because that’s how I felt not even five minutes ago.”

A shiver runs up your whole body, from toes to head, and it pulls a low moan from your lips before you can even swallow it back. The way you’re throbbing makes you feel like you’re definitely going to lose your mind.

Forty-five minutes later you’re lying naked on your bed – after having managed to send your manager back home and after the coldest shower of your life. But Joong-gil is still on loop in your mind: his moans, the way he cradled your face when you knew he wanted to let go and fuck your throat but held back, and then the way he confessed his desire to keep on seeing you outside of work. It works you up like crazy and it’s delusional of you to think you’d ever be able to stop your hands from wandering down your body – your breasts, your belly, and then finally between your legs.

You’re so wet you almost shoot him a text, but then you start burning in embarrassment and the only thing you can think of to distract yourself is to tease your entrance before pushing two fingers in.

This time is different from that one in a hotel shower, when you had to be quick to stop yourself from drowning in your sense of guilt. This time you have all the time in the world, and working yourself up with the memory of Joong-gil in your mouth so fresh in your mind is extremely easy. Your toes curl, and your back arches, and your breathing is labored, scorching hot and loud, although not as loud as the squelching of your juices.

You’re not even aware of the way you’re dripping onto the fresh bedspread, nor can you really control the volume of your moans when you bring back the memory of him fingering you. You’ve never appreciated the soundproof system of your apartment as much as you do now, as you have three fingers massaging that one spot deep inside you while your other hand plays with your breasts.

The pleasure builds up and up, like it doesn’t ever want to stop, and you’re burning and doing your best to keep that moan of Joong-gil’s name trapped inside your chest. But then your hand brushes your clit and you’re coming, your orgasm crashing down on you as though it wants to pull you down under and never let you back up.

It does take you forever to come down from it. You put the ceiling of your bedroom into focus before you actually realize how erratic your heartbeat still is or how the tenderness of your pussy makes your thighs tremble when you trail your hand upward to rest it on your lower belly.

The ring of a notification comes at the same time your brain has the lucidity to think I need another shower.

It takes you a good five minutes to fully get back to your senses and stop thinking about Joong-gil’s lips on you, and at first you think about ignoring your phone. It’s late and you’re tired and overstimulated, and despite having a whole day for yourself tomorrow, you feel like you should take tonight off as well. But then a million and one thoughts start wracking you, and with a groan, you pick up your phone from the nightstand.

To your surprise, you read Joong-gil’s name on the screen and faster than you’d ever thought you would, you find yourself clicking on his text message.

[9:07 PM] Park Joong-gil: was thinking about you. what are you doing?

You feel your face grow hotter and you can’t help but giggle excitedly, slightly kicking your feet in the air before quickly venting to Bit-na. It’s been a while since the last time you felt this childish, but it’s not in a bad way this time, and it feels really good.

Still, you have no clue where you find the courage to text Joong-gil back:

[9:13 PM] you: wishing my fingers were yours

Another squeal rushes past your lips as you lock your phone and throw it at the foot of the bed. God, you feel like you’re sixteen all over again, when you were still crushing on that classmate of yours, Min-ho, who used to be a math genius and a Prince Charming.

Instead of a text reply, however, your phone starts ringing with an incoming call that makes your heart skip a beat inside your chest. Panic flashes past your thoughts for a split second, but then you convince yourself to grab your phone and lie back down while you answer, part of you expecting for it to be Bit-na.

It’s Joong-gil, of course. Bit-na is out on a date and you know it well, but hope is always the last spark to go out.

“So, you were saying…?” You see the smugness in his smirk, but it’s hard to focus when he has one arm bent behind his head as he sits in bed with his back against the headboard. The faint hickey you left on his collarbone is right there, staring right back at you, and you have to press your thighs together because all you can think of is the afternoon you spent making out and then sucking him off.

“You read it right the first time,” you stagger, trying to keep your phone angled in such a way that only your face and neck are visible.

“Are you naked?” He moves closer to the screen for a second before he sits back again. His smirk turns into an actual grin, and the spark in his eyes makes you want to gush out about him to Bit-na for the rest of the fucking month.

“Yeah,” you breathe out.

“Show me?”

You don’t know where you find it in yourself to counter-attack until you hear yourself speak. “You first.”

You really thought you could have a smart moment, but when he tilts his phone to show you he’s only topless but still wearing a pair of navy blue pajama pants, you realize you’ve simply tricked yourself.

“That’s not fair.”

Your pout only makes him chuckle, but you’re still teasing enough to show yourself only up till the top of your breasts.

“Where’s the rest?”

“You’ll have to come see it in person.” This time you know you have the upper hand. He might be the country’s crush, but you’re still sensual enough to play your game.

He looks genuinely sad when he says, “my schedule is full till the end of the month and I want to spend more than just five minutes with you.”

He’s told you countless times today that he’s seriously interested in getting to know you, but it’s still surprising yet heartwarming to find confirmation of that yet again in his words.

“So you were serious? This afternoon.”

“That I wanna pursue you?” When you nod, he continues, “never been more serious.”

You end up talking about the tour you’ve just wrapped up, about a song he’d love to collab with you on once again, maybe next year, and about how fun it was to work together. When you go to bed that night, after a late night snack and a quick shower, you realize you’ve been on the phone for almost three hours and that you’ve never felt this comfortable with him ever.

Park Joong-gil is the last thought on your mind when you eventually fall asleep.

*

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. However, you find yourself realizing how slowly the seconds can tick by and it’s a never-ending surprise to find out how much pent-up frustration your body can bottle up while you wait until the end of the month for your date. You still don’t have the details; you don’t even have a date, Joong-gil hasn’t set it yet, but that’s still your one and only thought.

Lim Ryung-gu reads you much better than Bit-na ever could, what with the distance or the fact that while you finally have more free time now that your comeback is behind your back, your best friend’s work life has slowly turned into a nightmare, preventing you from video calling. And, truly, maybe that’s a blessing in disguise because you hate the fact that Joong-gil is capable of affecting you this much without even trying, but at the same time it’s nice to have something other than work or anxiety making your heartrate pick up.

You’re in the studio with Ryung-gu one chilly afternoon towards the end of September. The RMT guys are going through a chill stretch of time before their end-of-year performance, and while Ryeon and Joon-woong are taking advantage of this time to get some more sleep in, Ryung-gu is still busy producing. You technically shouldn’t be allowed previews of their music, but the four of you are pretty much your agency’s money-makers, so there’s really no one stopping you.

“How’s it going with Park Joong-gil?” Ryung-gu absentmindedly asks, eyes fixed on the music software he’s been playing with all day.

You’ve been keeping him up-to-date with the most important things, unable to take your mind off of Joong-gil. It’s almost as though he’s one of your most recurrent thoughts nowadays; the situation wasn’t this bad even when you were spending all your time together during your tour or during the whole album-creation process.

“It’s… I don’t really know,” you shrug your shoulders, sucking pomegranate juice through the straw. “He’s busy now and I feel like I’m all of a sudden losing my mind for him.”

Ryung-gu clicks around on the screen, switching between pieces of software and tweaking his lyrics around, but then he turns towards you and gives you his full attention. “Too busy to even text?”

You feel how your face starts burning and when you avert your gaze from him, he must take it the wrong way, for he says,

“That’s a lame excuse.”

“No, I mean, we’ve been… texting,” you admit eventually, your exhale quivering at the thought of the kind of texts that have been going back and forth between the two of you on your burner phone.

“Why that pause?” But then, a second later, it must hit him. “Sexting? You’ve been sexting with the Park Joong-gil?” Surprise is as clear as day both in his voice and on his face, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.

You hide behind your can of juice, but it’s hard to wipe that wide grin off your lips. Joong-gil’s groggy morning voice last week still affects you to this day when you replay it in your head – can’t wait to have my hands on you is part of what he left in your voicemail before heading out for his day a few hours before you even had the chance to wake up.

“Damn, I didn’t picture him to be the sexting type. He seems… intimidating, sometimes.”

You have to agree with him. Your collab brought along one surprise after the other, and it’s almost hard to believe people are still talking about it weeks after it ended.

“I think I really want to try this thing with him,” you say – to Ryung-gu or to yourself, you really don’t know as you look out the narrow window to your side. You see the top of a tree from there, its branches moving in the wind, and the clouds run by fast in the sunny sky. “I think I want to have with him what you have with your person, but at the same time I’m afraid this is too much too fast.”

Ryung-gu doesn’t say anything for what feels like the longest time, looking out the window, too, lost in thought. Maybe he’s thinking about his person, you assume, and for a moment you wonder how fast things moved between them before they started being an item. You wish he would tell you more about them, but at the same time you appreciate the privacy he allows his relationship.

“I think you should go for it, then,” he says eventually, moving his gaze from the view outside to your face. He’s smiling, and in that split second you realize why nothing’s ever felt rushed between the two of you. He puts you at ease; there’s probably no one else in Seoul you’re this comfortable around. It’s not just because of the sexual sort-of relationship you agreed upon, with its sporadic encounters you’ve had when either or both of you were too stressed to even breathe. It’s him, and his aura, that unperturbed calm that follows him around wherever he goes. “One step at a time. There’s no too fast or too slow. And if it doesn’t work out…” he shrugs, “at least you can say you tried.”

You nod in agreement. “You don’t think he’s into me just for the sex, do you?”

His gaze is stern for just a moment before he starts cackling. “I’ve seen your interviews together,” he replies when his laughter subsides, “and the interviews he’s given on his own. I think he’s genuinely into you as a person, I don’t know why you don’t see that, too.”

*

You decide to believe your friend, even when his question – are you into Joong-gil just for the sex? – starts eating away at the back of your mind with the only purpose of trying to make you doubt everything you know about him. It was a rhetorical question, of course, not Ryung-gu implying you’re into Joong-gil just for his dick or the way he still teases you about that one time you confessed to fingering yourself to the thought of him, but it’s still enough to leave you frustrated.

Some more days pass, and there’s an actual attempt of getting to know the little things about the both of you in-between the teasing texts you send each other. You find out he’s into martial arts and that he actually used to compete at national level, when he was younger. He learns you make origami when you’re sad, after he’s seen the collection you have in your living room on a video call, and that you have this one scar on the back of your left thigh from that one time you slipped on a rock at the beach, when you were eight and your mother on a business trip, and your father had panicked so much that you had had to calm him down.

Eventually, Joong-gil sets the date on his first day off – saturday night. I’m taking you to eat the best food in Seoul, he promised, and there’s no muffling the excitement that grows and grows inside you with each day that passes.

The anticipation is much better than the absence, that’s for sure, and when saturday night comes around, you get ready by doing your make-up and putting on that nice black dress you modeled for during that one fashion campaign last year. It’s a pity that you never got to wear it before, but it’s also exciting to know you’re wearing it for the first time on a date with someone so charming.

Yun-ho rings at your door at six on the dot, and then he leads you down to the underground garage of your condominium. For a moment you worry it’s just going to be you and him in the car, but when he opens the back door of a dark SUV with tinted windows, you find Joong-gil already sitting there on the back seat waiting for you.

You panic when you take in his outfit – light jeans and a maroon turtleneck that make you wonder whether he has given you the details after all and you simply didn’t notice in the excitement of the moment. “Am I overdressed?” you fret, buckling yourself in when his manager starts the car.

“On the contrary.” Joong-gil looks you up and down. He eyes the slit in the long skirt of your dress, the way the jewel shoulder straps twinkle in the light of the streetlamps, and then back down over the swell of your breasts and to the high-heeled sandals you wore. “You’re breathtaking.”

You want to tell him that he is breathtaking with the way he’s staring at you, almost like you hung the stars in the night sky and lit every single light in Seoul yourself. “Well, if anything, I’m not underdressed for wherever we’re going,” you say as a way to calm your nerves – you don’t even remember when the last time you went out on an actual date was.

“Oh, I know the owner,” Joong-gil grins, taking your hand in his and interlacing his fingers with yours. His hand is warm; it reminds you of the things he’s used it on you for – tuck your hair behind your ear but also finger you on a make-up desk. “He’ll have nothing to complain about.”

As it turns out, he is the owner. After a detour to not let you guess exactly where he was taking you, you find yourself stepping out of the car and into the underground garage of his apartment building, and then up the twenty-four floors to his apartment.

It hits you as soon as you step through his door, the fact that the last time you were here things could have gone much further than they actually did. You still feel the way he kissed you when he walked you backward into his apartment and the way his hands roamed your body before you eventually ended up on your knees for him.

Catching yourself red-handed, you force your train of thoughts to take another direction. After swapping your heels for the pair of house slippers Joong-gil gives you, you follow him into the open living area. It’s there, on the dining table, that you see all that food and your jaw drops.

“Where did you get all this?” you gawk, all kinds of delicious aromas tickling your nostrils and making your mouth salivate.

He’s smug when he looks at you before being the gentleman he is and pushing your chair closer to the table once you sit down. “I should’ve mentioned I’m a fairly decent cook,” he grins, moving to sit opposite you.

It’s then that you notice your favorite side dish, the one you told him about at your mother’s house and how you’ve never eaten it again after your father passed away. There’s another one, closer to him, that you suddenly remember praising a couple of times when you were still in the songwriting process of your collab album and used to spend entire nights in the studio.

It touches something inside you, the way he seems to have actually paid attention to your likes and dislikes, even though you just mentioned them or they never felt like they were truly that important. But you’re either good at hiding the pleasant surprise, or he simply doesn’t point it out when you start eating.

It’s quiet at first – you just feel his eyes on you as you bring food to your mouth and enjoy your dinner in silence. It doesn’t last long, however: he really is great at cooking – and not simply ‘fairly decent’ as he said – and compliments after compliments start spilling out of your mouth. This is so tasty, or I remember my grandma used to make it just like this!, or I can’t believe you cooked this yourself. It flusters him, and he’s such an endearing sight. This tall, dark, intimidating man when it comes to the heights of your industry really did go out of his way after a booked-out month just to cook your favorite things.

You could smooch his whole face right here and now.

By the time all the plates have been emptied, you’re full as an egg.

“Was it good?” he asks, a satisfied smirk on his lips, leaning back into his chair, one arm stretched out on the table and the other hooked on the back of his chair. Sitting like that, with that turtleneck fitting him like a glove, he feels like a whole course of desserts.

“It was incredible,” you gush out again, beaming, lightly massaging your stomach with one hand.

It hits you then, that you could play dirty and tease him the way he’s been teasing you all this time. You don’t even know what you’re talking about, just that you’re somehow keeping up with him, when you decide to strike. You remove a slipper under the table and stretch your leg out to play with his ankle.

He jolts slightly, and there’s an automatic “What are you doing?” slipping past his lips that just tugs at yours.

“What do you mean?” You lean forward, and you’ve acted in your fair share of dramas at the beginning of your career to be able to effortlessly pull off the most innocent of expressions. “I’m just playing a little game.”

Your foot trails up his shin and you have to control the impulse to laugh at what you’re doing.

“You’ve been teasing me all this time after that evening… It’s only fair that I have my payback,” you grin.

“Is that why you went braless?”

Your grin widens. So he has noticed, you think. You want to keep just for yourself how gentlemanly he is, however – not pointing it out, and not staring at your chest, either. Not that him being everyone’s heartthrob is surprising, but you keep on noticing the little things now and it’s those little things that make you fall for him a little more each day. How considerate he is. How attentive to the little things he is.

Or even how fucking sexy he looks right now, as he rounds the dining table to come pull you to your feet.

His hands trail up your arms, and you do your best to hold his eye contact despite the fact that you feel yourself melting in front of him into a puddle of hormones.

“Fuck,” he groans, letting his hands come up to your shoulders. He plays with the straps of your dress almost as though he’s considering pushing them down your arms, but he doesn’t. What he does, however, is move his hands down your body to grab your hips. “You make staying away so fucking hard.”

It’s like there’s just the two of you – which is technically correct since no one else is in his apartment, but at the same time it’s like there’s nothing outside the walls of his home, just the two of you inside.

There’s a tiny voice at the back of your mind that whimpers at how desperately you want him inside of you, but that’s a story for another time.

“Then don’t.”

You pull in him for a kiss, and it doesn’t take long for one of his hands to creep up your chest and grab a boob through your dress.

“I still want to play a game, though,” you smirk when you pull back, just in time to see that look of suspicion flash across his gaze.

“I already know I’m going to regret playing along with this.” He lightly pinches one of your nipples before his hands are back on the crystal straps of your dress. When you nod your consent, he pushes them down your shoulders and takes a step back to take in how it reveals your body as it glides to the floor. Your breasts, and your stomach, and your legs. Fuck, no one’s looked at you the way he is right now.

You sure hope no one in the skyscraper opposite his apartment complex will see you through his windows.

“My busy weeks are about to start,” you say, stepping out of your dress and moving closer to him. His hands guide yours to the waistband of his jeans and you don’t hesitate when it comes to unbuttoning and unzipping them.

“What about that?” He’s trying his best to keep his breathing even, but you see how it’s not really working when your hand sneaks into his pants, your palm pressing right against his hardening cock through his underwear.

“I think we should wait,” you whisper against the side of his neck before licking a stripe against his skin. He shudders, and you’re loving your upper hand for once.

“Fuck that.” He removes your hand from his pants and picks you up. He walks up to the couch and sits down with you in his lap, and this time it’s not like in Atlanta. This time he pulls you down flush against him from the get go so that you can feel exactly what you do to him. “Why wait when we’re both here now?” You swallow his groan when you roll your hips against him just once.

“You can touch me,” you murmur, taking both of his hands in yours before guiding them onto your breasts. “And I will touch you,” you reassure him when he shoots you a burning gaze.

You’re pulling his pullover out of the waistband of his jeans when he asks, “but?”

He hisses and then shudders when you graze the skin of his abdomen with your nails. His reaction makes you smirk and the only way to hide your satisfied expression is by leaning in closer to him so that you can mock-bite the skin of his neck. You remember that part of his body to be sensitive from the one time you ended up giving him a blowjob, and he doesn’t disappoint you – he bucks his hips up and pulls your head back so that he can crash his lips into yours.

It’s distracting, the way he kisses you. All-consuming, like he can’t get enough of you and this is the next best thing he’s thought of to be as humanly close as possible to you when he’s still fully dressed. One of his hands trails down your back and slips into the back of your panties before he’s grabbing tight onto your buttcheek and kneading it. You’re pretty sure that if he moved his hand a little more down, those long fingers of his would be able to feel how absolutely drenched you are.

But then you remember what you were trying to say, that stupid little game that suddenly popped up in your mind when you realized how fucking bad you wanted his dick – but with feelings. You pull away, gasping for hair, and when you meet his eye he’s already staring at you with that heated gaze of his. If your panties weren’t soaked before, they sure as hell are now.

“No fucking,” you pant, sliding your right hand up along his chest and brushing your thumb across his nipple. You don’t really know what he feels for you aside from the lust that always drips from his racy texts, but you still want him to crumble for you just as much as you do him. “No sex until I’m free again.”

“When’s that gonna be?” He’s already regretting doing this, but there’s also a curious spark behind the lust in his eyes, and you absolutely love the way he pulls you closer by your ass on his dick, even though the fly of his jeans grazes your inner thighs. “Hm? How long’s that gonna be?”

You shrug your shoulders. “Mid-November, most likely.”

He gapes, speechless, but he still lets you take his turtleneck off. “You’re crazy. You can’t be for real.”

You don’t even hide that amused smirk this time. You simply lean into him fully, chest-to-chest, and press a wet kiss right underneath his jaw. The throbbing in your pussy picks up when you feel the light twitch of his dick in his briefs. “Don’t you think it’s gonna be worth it?”

“I think you’re gonna make me lose my mind,” he flat out whines, wrapping his arms around you tight enough to make you stop teasing him. “Fuck, can’t you feel me twitch?”

You can, and you’re doing your best to ignore that.

“It’s gonna be fun,” you murmur, gently sucking a hickey into his neck – probably against your better judgment, but your tits pressing into his chest and his clothed cock pressing against your core.

“It’s gonna be torture,” he retorts, kissing your shoulder. He’s so gentle that gooseflesh breaks out all over your body, and you’re forced to pull back and rest your forearms on his shoulders to stop yourself from giving in to him.

“You will survive,” you chuckle. “And then you’ll be able to have me however you like.”

“Can I at least eat you out now?”

You peck his lips, and he’s quick at opening his mouth to deepen the kiss for a moment before pulling back. “I don’t know,” you pant. “Can you?”

Unlike Instagram, Tumblr runs on reblogs, so if you’re in the mood, kindly consider leaving a comment and/or sharing this fic with your friends. However, any form of feedback is welcome :)

If you’d like to be tagged in what I write, let me know!

Original video used for banner: https://www.pexels.com/video/close-up-video-of-dried-roses-6092477/

[angelaiswriting]

Stage Love (2 of 3) | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fake dating!Choi Joon-woong x fem!reader)

✏️ Summary: things finally start moving between you and Joong-gil, but what happens when, following the leak of some pictures, your agency decides to exploit a (fake) dating scandal between you and Choi Joon-woong for its own economic gain? (Not requested, based on an idea by @kind-wolf​)

✏️ A/N: took me forever to write this part, had a breakdown in the middle, and it turned out so long I’d need a part three. Bon appétit😬 jokes aside, this isn’t exactly what I was aiming for, but then again my fics do whatever the f they want, so... Let me know if you’re down for a pt. 3 or not.✌️

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff, (maybe still a bit of) slowburn, (slight angst, maybe?), pining, and (light?) smut, so 18+ ONLY! > Fingering f/r, oral f/r, mentions of handjobs, dry-humping; mentions of death, of a corpse, and of suicide, grieving?. Mentions of the show Tomorrow but no spoilers. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21,7k

part one  <<  PART TWO  >>  part three

The first time you receive that unsigned bouquet of flowers, you worry your home address might have been leaked somehow and that some fan has decided to go above and beyond to show you their love and support. After the porter hands it to you one day after a meeting with Joon-woong and the team for the soundtrack of an upcoming drama, you bring it up to your apartment and dissect it like it’s a specimen in a laboratory you have to study.

It’s the paranoia that’s been haunting you since that time, years ago, when a fan gift contained a smartly-concealed camera, you’re well aware of it. Just as you’re aware of how your whole team – not to mention your whole agency – is big on keeping your privacy intact (or whatever part of it can be protected), going as far as to decline any request for videos or interviews showing the inside of your house. They’re your reason why there’s no need to worry, but you still find yourself pulling each flower apart before putting them in a vase of water when you’ve made sure there’s nothing suspicious about the gift.

Maybe it’s just something your mother sent you and that she simply forgot to sign, you tell yourself. Or maybe it’s from Bit-na, your friend you haven’t seen in forever but whom you miss dearly. But when you bring it up on your Sunday night call with her as you’re watching one of your usual shows together, you come to find out she isn’t the sender.

The second bouquet – tulips, this time, and you wonder just how expensive they must have been this time of year – is delivered to you the next Monday morning just as you’re about to step out of the hall of your condominium right behind your manager. This time, to your relief, you notice a lilac-colored card attached to the wrapping, but you know you’ll have no time to properly look at it before it’s late at night. Before that, you have calls and messages and emails to take care of, and then another lyric writing session for the last-minute collab song you have with Choi Joon-woong.

“Who’s sending you flowers?” your manager, Ji-young, asks as you step out of your clothes to change into your interview outfit, and all you can do is answer with a genuine, “I really have no clue,” as you check your appearance in the mirror one last time before you’re ready to meet today’s interviewer.

People still want to know things about your collaboration album with Park Joong-gil, and pretty much no one is inclined to stop talking about it yet – your music, your chemistry, the raw behind-the-scenes content your agencies posted on your youtube channels and on your social media accounts. Both tabloids and fans ended up blowing that deal out of proportion – although you’re really not complaining: if anything, they’re giving you the perfect excuse to keep on reminiscing all those months spent working with him. The news about an extremely possible future song together hasn’t been leaked yet, but you’re honestly curious to see what the public’s reaction is going to be – both because of how much they all loved the two of you together, and because you really want to see how far whatever you have behind closed doors (not much so far, but still a lot more than you’ve ever had with anyone else, probably) can go.

When you’re back to your van by the end of the day, after a quick dinner on the set of the promotional shoot for a perfume, the tulips you received in the morning look like they have given up on life. They wilted, and it’s like they’re judging you for leaving them in the backseat for all those hours.

Paranoia threatens to rear its head again, but then you remember there being a card and you’re quick at pulling it out of the envelope.

I’m not sure I enjoy this waiting game of yours :( — pjg

It makes you chuckle, that sad emoji he drew at the end of the sentence – and all over the small piece of paper, like it’s middle school all over again. Still, there’s a part of you that can’t help but think, how cute! You really want him to never stop doing these random things that always make you feel special when you least expect them.

Your smile rivals the sun in brightness when you unlock your phone.

[10:09 PM] you: got your flowers x

That’s what you text him, and then you send a picture of his bouquet with a cheeky oops that makes you smile like a child in the back of your van. You can feel Ji-young’s eyes on you through the rear-view mirror, but she doesn’t ask what’s got you smiling like that – she’s quick-witted and as great an observer as Park Joong-gil himself, which means she knew you went down on him the moment you stepped through the door of your apartment the day you ended up fingering yourself to the memory of him.

[10:13 PM] joong-gil 💗: is that how you treat my gifts? :(

He makes you chuckle. He’s actually been bringing more happiness to your life than there has been in a long time. It’s the genuine kind, the type that makes you warm inside and wraps your heart in a feeling of fuzziness that gives it nothing but rest. You realize now, two blocks away from your apartment, that you haven’t made a single origami butterfly ever since your dinner date with him, two weeks ago, and probably even a while before that.

You also don’t remember when you changed his contact name, when you removed his last name and added that pulsing heart emoji, but tonight it takes you by surprise. Like you’re finally realizing that he’s been making your heart beat a little faster.

[10:14 PM] you: sorry, long day. i barely had a break :( btw was it you who sent me roses last week?

He doesn’t reply to you straight away, and you have the time to reach your condominium, take the elevator, and even change into your pajamas before you get a text back from him. In the meantime, you eye the almost completely dry roses sitting in an empty vase on the windowsill of the kitchen like they might have grown cameras of their own.

Instead of messaging, he rings you a call.

“I know you must be tired, but I needed to hear your voice,” he says as soon as you pick up.

‘I needed to.’ He needed to, you smile. It hits you deeper than an ‘I wanted to’ ever would, somehow. Like he can live his days and like he can wait for your schedule to clear, but also like he wants you and your company so badly that he simply can’t hold back and wait.

It makes you feel important. Like you really do matter in this crazy-paced world of yours, where you can never fully let your guard down or take the foot off of the gas pedal.

So, you chuckle, and you’re so empty-headed, drowning in this crush you have for him that is blooming at the speed of light, that all you can greet him with is a lame, breathless, “hey.”

“To answer your question, yes, I did send you roses.”

The grin on your lips makes your cheeks hurt when you plop down onto the couch, too tired to go back to your bedroom after the glass of cold water you got from the fridge.

“You could’ve signed it,” you giggle, no real bite behind your words. “I dissected it, I was paranoid that someone had found out where I live and sent yet another spy cam.”

He’s silent for half a second before his, “shit,” hits you along with the sound of ruffled sheets. “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to cause all that. I actually did write a card, but then I panicked at the last second because of how cheesy it was and I threw it away.”

You really don’t know what this feeling setting your soul on fire is, but it makes you want to giggle and blush and hide your face underneath your warm blanket while you kick your feet. It makes you feel so good that it wipes away the exhaustion of the day and leaves you a clean slate, ready to start afresh tomorrow morning.

“Are you still there?”

“Oh, yeah! Sorry! You lost me when you said you wrote a cheesy card. I bet that would’ve been the cutest shit ever. The Park Joong-gil writing cheesy stuff to me?” You dramatically fan yourself with a hand despite him being unable to see you. “Every fangirl’s fantasy, I can assure you of that.”

He laughs, and two things happen almost at the same time.

One, it cuts your breath short – the sound that leaves his lips, at the other end of the receiver, and you can imagine him throwing his head back the way he often does when he’s really amused, closing his eyes and scrunching his nose up in the cutest way imaginable.

And two, your heart dangerously skips a beat. You’re taken aback by the sudden realization that you’re in so deep when it comes to him that you can’t even imagine how you’d be if things went south. If anything happened and the ‘us’ you’re both walking hand in hand towards shattered like an illusion reflecting on a mirror. You really don’t know how many paper butterflies your soul can take, and you don’t really think you’ll ever have another one tattooed anywhere on your body or on your soul.

“I really miss you.” He says it so intensely, with so much determination, that it really must be the truth. It reaches your heart like a thorn that hurts so good, somehow, makes it bleed warm honey, and you’re quick at shooing the butterflies away.

“I miss you, too. I want to meet up again, but I want to be able to hang out with you long enough.”

“It’s alright. You know I’m willing to wait for you.” And then, before you even have the time to think about all the feelings his words stir up inside you, he’s asking for your plans for tomorrow.

You end up staying on the line for longer than you anticipated, as it always goes with him, and at some point, the voice call turns into a video call, even if you feel like you’re unpresentable, with your make-up badly removed and the stained pajama shirt you should have thrown into the wash two days ago but didn’t. When you fall asleep, unable to keep your eyes open any longer, Joong-gil stays on the line for a while. He watches you, commits to memory the way you look when you sleep, the lines of your face, the way your eyes move underneath your closed eyelids, or how your lips part and stay like that.

You don’t know that and he won’t confess it, but it does something to him. He’s always meant it whenever he told you he wanted to get to know you in the past, but tonight the sight of you makes him think he’s ready to open up again – makes him believe he can fully open his heart up again and allow himself to be vulnerable with you.

*

The studio feels cramped. Between the lyricists, the RMT’s producer, your manager Ji-young, Joon-woong’s own manager… You’re sitting on the leather two-seat couch in the corner and breathing feels like such a hard task, like everything’s closing in on you – the walls of the studio, the equipment, the physical confines of your own body, bone and skin and flesh.

It’s been a while since this claustrophobic feeling last hit you this way, and you really don’t know what it is about today, but not even the memory of the video call you had with Park Joong-gil a few days ago seems to be able to ease your nerves.

I need a breather, but there’s no way those words manage to leave your lips. Instead, you can only look up at your friend and he seems to pick up on what’s going on from where he’s sitting next to the producer.

Joon-woong asks for a break – everyone seems to need it this morning, after all, everyone’s stress levels are way too high – and takes you up to the roof by pulling on your hand.

The air has a chilly bite to it and there are dark clouds on the horizon confirming the weather forecasts calling for possible storms. Once again, you’re glad you’re wearing Joong-gil’s hoodie – you didn’t even remember never giving it back to him after that night at Jumadeung until you found it at the bottom of your closet this morning. It still feels just as warm as it did that night, even if it’s lost any last trace of his scent, and suddenly there’s this restless feeling in the pit of your stomach that you can only describe as a wish to go back there. Go back to those fairy lights, the chocolate cake you shared that night, and the peaceful atmosphere that made you feel like you finally really did have some privacy. Like you could breathe and belong, even if for a little while.

“Are you alright?” Joon-woong asks, handing you a cup of smoking hot tea before pulling you down onto the bench to sit next to him. You didn’t even notice him leaving to grab you something to drink, nor whether someone else brought it to him instead.

“I am now, thanks.” Even you can feel the shakiness in the smile that stretches across your lips, but you can’t quite put a finger on the reason behind it. On why today’s like this, with nothing seemingly going right and everything going wrong – the corrupted music file, the writers of the drama calling for some last-minute changes to the lyrics of their main song, the technological problems in the recording room, and then everyone packed into that studio like it’s some can of sardines. “It’s just…”

He never takes his eyes off of you, not even when you look down at the paper cup between your hands and exhale a long sigh – you don’t really look at him, but you do feel his stare.

“It’s been a long… Hell, a long forever,” you chuckle, turning to face him for a moment before looking back at the rooftops and the clouds far away as Seoul feels like it’s stretching beyond its physical limits. You’re this close to tears that you know they’ll escape your hold if you were to look at your friend for a second too long. “I’m really tired. I feel like the break I had after the tour with Joong-gil passed me by in a flash and my stress never left. I wish…”

Another sigh. You’re grateful for the opportunities you’re given – the collaboration deals with other artists, the odd modeling or acting gigs, your fans and their gifts, and the fact that you’re still here, kicking and screaming instead of flying away.

“I wish this stupid soundtrack would go smoothly, at least,” you say, leaning back against the bench and letting your head fall back. Your gaze trails up to the sky above and that one plane flying by, leaving behind a straight line of white that feels nothing like what your life feels at the moment. You’re jumping from one thing to the next, juggling the billion different appointments that swarm your daily schedule – photoshoots, recording sessions, songwriting, interviews, promotions, training, dancing, and even fan meets, although those will start in a bit.

It takes you a moment – it’s actually taken you months – to realize that the anniversary is coming up and that soon it’s going to be fifteen years. Maybe that’s it – your soul just knows it, feels it, and all it craves is to go home, be with your mother, kick mud and water on the shore, and cry it all out in the freezing rain where you can pretend it’s just water, that on your face, and not tears.

You didn’t even fully realize it when, the day after your call with Joong-gil, you read the synopsis of this drama whose soundtrack you’re supposed to record today with Joon-woong. The main trope. The characters’ backgrounds, the lives concealed behind the façade of the here-and-now. The bittersweet happy endings the episodes leave you with, a reminder that the world has been painted in a million different color shades.

You don’t know why you break down when Joon-woong puts an arm around your shoulders and squeezes your forearm with one of those big hands of his. But that’s exactly what you do, and you have to take a long sip of your scorching hot tea to try and pretend like nothing’s happening, but the tears that managed to get to your lips make the tea taste salty. Maybe it really is the stress. The stress, and the exhaustion, and the fact that you’ve been craving Park Joong-gil’s soothing company probably even more than you do realize, or that you ever even thought possible.

Joon-woong pulls you to himself when you don’t immediately go back to your usual cheery persona. He wraps you in a hug that smells like coffee and aftershave and laundry detergent and safety. It makes you feel like a little kid – both the fact that he’s so goddamn tall and the fact that you’re crying in someone’s arms. And that’s when the sobs you’ve managed to hold in just spill out freely now.

“Why don’t we go out after we’re done here?” he asks after some time.

His head is resting on yours, still leaning against his shoulder, and your sobs have subsided. The tear streaks on your face are still wet, and your lips are still parted as you stare at Seoul’s skyline, but at least you feel somewhat lighter, like the weight on your shoulders has finally gotten more bearable.

“I can’t.” You shake your head slightly and finally pull yourself back together enough to finish your now lukewarm tea. It doesn’t give you that sensation of warmth it gave you at first, when Joon-woong handed you the cup, but you reason it’s still better than the biting cold of the wind that just picked up. “I have a full day of recording for my album tomorrow. And then there’s an interview I’ve been putting off for a while, and then they want me on a—”

“You need to breathe,” Joon-woong interrupts you, turning to look at you with concern painted all over his features. “You need a break before you break. Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been going through this? I wouldn’t have been mad if you had turned this collab offer down…”

“I really wanted to do this, though,” you reply, voice low. “It felt like a great opportunity to finally do something with a friend…”

“Not at the cost of working you to the bone, no!” He’s not mad, but his concern takes you aback nonetheless. It’s on his face, in his voice, in the way he reminds you of every single time your mother’s ever worried about her only child’s well-being. It makes you sit there for a moment and think, and you realize that there are more people that care about you than you ever stopped to consider.

“Tomorrow’s gonna be aired in three weeks,” you reason. “Who else would they hire on such short notice?”

There’s the little-kid part of you who’s standing on the precipice, ready to apologize for taking on more than you thought you’d be able to handle. Two albums in a year, a drama collaboration, the interviews that inevitably follow, and those extra modeling gigs you agreed upon as a way to broaden your horizons. But why would you apologize when this is part of the job? When staying relevant is just as necessary as the next good thing in this line of work?

Eventually, Joon-woong agrees with you. Yeah, finding a stand-in after all these delays would be a problem, he says, looking back out at what’s visible of the city from up here.

“Let’s go to Jumadeung after we’re done here,” you offer as you’re walking down the fire-emergency staircase with a clearer mind to go back to the recording room downstairs. “I really do need to relax for a minute, and you probably do, too.”

He agrees, again. If you’re lucky and you manage to record everything by the end of the day, then you’ll also be able to celebrate a work well done tonight as well.

And as it turns out, you do have some luck, this time.

The producer pulled some magic trick out of his hat while you and Choi Joon-woong were on the rooftop, and everything’s working smoothly now. The stress levels have reached an all-time low, and whoever wasn’t strictly needed for the recording session has been kicked out, which left only the producer, your friend, and yourself in the studio.

You also end up having fun. You’ve known Joon-woong ever since he signed up with your agency and you were still a trainee, but you would have never guessed he’d be this much of a fun person to work with. He makes faces in the booth when something doesn’t turn out as perfect as he’d like, and he also makes faces when you hit a particular note in one of your parts.

All that makes for some good content you end up recording and before you leave the studio way after sun-down, you both end up posting selfies online calling for some ‘secret project’ that’s about to drop. After that, you lock your phone and let your friend take you to his car.

*

Jumadeung is still as much of a pretty view as it was the last time you stepped foot in it what feels like a lifetime ago even though it was just last March. The only thing that’s different is your state of mind: with no trace of post-performance adrenaline and excitement, you’re a bit tired but on the right path to unplugging for an hour or two.

You order food and drinks, and end up playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who’s going to pay for tonight’s outing – you will, but no one will ever catch you complaining about anything, not when Choi Joon-woong has become like a little brother of sorts for you.

Joon-woong also doesn’t complain. Instead, you get to see a side of him you haven’t seen in forever. The fun friend, caring and sweet, ready to listen to your rants with both ears and punch your problems in the face with both hands. And in the peace of the booth, under the slightly dim hues of the fairy lights that seem to promise to keep any and all secrets in their embrace, you find out that your tongue doesn’t have much of a problem letting out some of the weights you’ve been carrying on your back.

“I’ve seen your interview, you know?” he says after Jade, the middle-aged owner, comes with more chips and shoots you a wink. “You get so flustered whenever someone brings Park Joong-gil up.” His giggle is half mirth and half somaek, and the way he squints his eyes when he pinches your cheek makes you laugh a bit too loudly. “You really make it too easy to know you like him.”

“You’re drunk,” you chuckle, pulling his hand away from your face and intertwining your fingers with his. “You have no clue what you’re talking about. Eat this.”

He eats the pork and then drinks from the water bottle you give him, and in the meantime, you try to quieten down that buzzing feeling going off in your chest. Your cheeks heat up, too, and you press the backs of your hands to your skin in a futile attempt to make that blood rush away from your face, but you’re not even able to suppress the smile that stretches across your lips.

You’re down bad for Park Joong-gil, there’s no shying away from that. It’s a fact. It’s obviously not the first time you realize this, but it’s probably the first time the realization hits you this strong. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re at Jumadeung, where everything feels surreal and just as possible as it always is in the wildest of fantasies. It’s also where things started moving between the two of you, like someone cast a spell and tied the same thread to both of your wrists, linking you together. Maybe it’s the fact that this is the first time someone who’s not Bit-na has called you out on it. You want to believe it’s definitely not the beer or the soju, nor the fact that you’re drunker on exhaustion than you are on alcohol.

Joon-woong’s hand on your forehead suddenly pulls you out of your reverie. “You’re also burning, you blushing little thing!”

You stare at him for a moment – unmoving, shocked, confused, and definitely a bit embarrassed, but then you’re laughing in his face, at his antics, at that cute expression his face has morphed into.

“Does he even know?” he asks after you make him sit back and drink more water.

“Yeah.” Distractedly, you think that maybe you should pull the rest of the beer to your side of the table so that he’s not tempted to have more. “He’s into me, too.”

His gasp makes you smile at how dramatic he is at times. ���You told him?”

You think back to that night in Joong-gil’s apartment, after your dinner date. For a split second that seems to stretch on forever, you feel him between your legs, spread out on his couch – his fingers knuckles-deep inside you and his lips wrapped around your clit. You hear the way he grunted and then spoke sweet nothings you barely had the mental capacity to understand but that still felt so fucking hot in that gravel tone of his.

Would that count as you telling him?

The feeling that maybe you’ve never actually outright confessed your feelings to him sneaks up on you bit by bit.

“I think so… It was pretty obvious, though,” you reply, but it doesn’t hit him fast enough before you actually spot Joong-gil walking up to the counter.

It feels like being in a dream, what with the hazy atmosphere of Jumadeung and its fairy lights and whatnot. Maybe he’s just a figment of my imagination, you tell yourself as your mouth goes dry. Did you drink that much? Did you fall asleep? Are you really down this bad for a man that your brain has to conjure up images of him everywhere you might go?

“Are you two official, then?”

Are you? You don’t know, you haven’t met in person even once during the last two weeks. You never thought of asking whether he’s also seeing someone else, although such a thought feels so absurd the moment it bubbles its way up to the top of all your thoughts that you dismiss it immediately. Of course he’s not – he wouldn’t be sending you flowers or spending that much time on calls or texting (sexting, too, maybe?) you the way he always does.

“In private, yeah, I guess? I don’t know.” Going public seldom turns out to be the brightest idea in your line of work, after all, so that’s off the list – for now? Or forever? Those are questions you can’t really answer.

You watch Joong-gil hand Jade his card and you can’t help but stare at the way his black coat highlights the line of his shoulders. You want to walk up to him and hold him from behind, like you did that night, in his shower – his forehead pressed against the tiles and your hand wrapped around his aching cock as you peppered kisses over the expanse of his back while working him towards his release.

“What do you mean you don’t—”

“Hi,” you smile, breathless, when Joong-gil has finally turned around and is close enough to your booth to hear you. His mere presence short-circuits your brain while you slip down the rabbit hole of this crush you have on him a little more. It’s like you never resurfaced since you climbed down the set of stairs that leads to Jumadeung, that night all those months ago. You walked down, one step after the other, hand in hand with him, and then part of your soul has remained trapped within the confines of this fairyland dream of a bar, sitting in front of a man as charismatic as Park Joong-gil.

The surprise flashing across his face isn’t hard to miss. He staggers in his steps for half a second when he spots you, lips parted and brows furrowed, before he comes back to his senses and halts by your table. “Hey.”

Joong-gil eyes you for just a moment before his gaze trails over to Joon-woong, sitting next to you, eating the last pieces of his samgyeopsal and ranting on about you and the singer he hasn’t noticed is standing right next to him.

“Are you leaving?” you ask. “Why don’t you sit with us?”

Your heart is racing inside your chest. It’s everywhere in your body, but most of all in the butterflies that go off in your stomach at the sight of him. He looks just as charming as ever, dressed in all black, with his hair slightly tousled and his eyes back on you.

It’s then that Joon-woong spots his very own idol, almost chokes on his water, and then jumps up to his feet before pushing Joong-gil to sit down next to you. “Speak of the devil!” His tipsy chuckle is cut short by a hiccup, and you suddenly regret getting him drunk, or even just allowing him to drink as much as he did. “You two look good together,” he whistles, and it’s then that you lean across the table to slap a hand over his mouth.

“Shh! What are you doing?” you reprimand him with a hiss, quickly glancing around in case any of the other patrons might have overheard your friend.

But Joon-woong simply giggles, fixes the both of you with a knowing smirk he’ll probably have no recollection of come morning, and then leans back against the booth.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your date.” Joong-gil’s voice bites at your skin when he speaks, and you almost don’t turn around to look at him. But you do – of course you do, it’s like he’s a magnet and you’re a ferromagnetic butterfly that can’t stay away from his flower.

It’s like it hurts him, the idea that you’d be out and about with someone else when he agreed on waiting until November to really see you again. To see you, and touch you, and… Your neck grows hotter at the mere thought of what you promised him and all the mental images your mind comes up with late at night, when you’re left alone to wonder how he actually is in bed.

“A da—” You flip a finger between you and Joon-woong, incredulous. “We’re just— This is not a date,” you chuckle. Why would he think that? Why are you nervous?

“Yeah?”

“You two should DRT already.”

Both you and Joong-gil turn to look at Joon-woong when he suddenly speaks out of nowhere, seemingly more sober than he’s been in a while tonight.

“Define the relationship,” he explains, grinning at how comically identical the questioning expressions on both of your faces are. “Y/N says she doesn’t know where you two stand, but I did fear for my safety for a moment when I saw the way you were glaring at me,” he tells Joong-gil. “But what would I know?” he pouts right after, his right hand automatically going for his beer bottle.

Less than half an hour later, after forcing Joon-woong out of the door of Jumadeung, Ryeon and Ryung-gu come to pick him and his car up, and the way Ryeon and Joong-gil briefly eye each other before respectfully bowing their heads in greeting makes you think and worry and realize that they used to be something whose details you don’t even know.

Is it wrong to want a friend’s ex special someone? You’ve been asking yourself that question for a while now, unable to come up with an actual answer, even just a shred of reassurance that it is, in fact, alright. The heart wants what it wants, after all, unable of being controlled, but that feeling – like you’re betraying Goo Ryeon’s friendship – still lurks around the pit of your stomach every once in a while. Not even the smile Ryung-gu sends your way from his seat behind the wheel after cheerfully greeting you manages to put your soul at rest.

You end up going home with Joong-gil. Another bike ride, of course, with your body pressed so close to his back that you can almost feel your own heart beat in his chest and his in yours. He feels so close yet so far, and you can barely believe your luck (or misfortune) at having run into him at Jumadeung.

It shouldn’t, really, and you know it, but it somehow still eats away at you, the fact that you might have come off as someone who doesn’t have time to hang out with him but seemingly still goes out with anyone else. It has every last one of your nerves on high alert, and his silence during the whole elevator ride up to your floor doesn’t help ease them in the slightest.

It’s like a rift in your equilibrium, in that game of waiting you’ve both been playing since the end of your joint world tour. It’s also the first time you feel like you’re standing on opposite sides of the world despite standing side by side in a metal box.

The vase of pink cosmos flowers you received two days ago is the first thing Joong-gil sees when he silently steps foot in your living room. It’s another one of his gifts, one that came accompanied by a card with five verses of a love song you found out you both adore. The balance they were supposed to symbolize now seems to shake lightly underneath your feet.

“I think Joon-woong is right.” You’re the first to break the silence, still plagued by that sense of guilt that has snuck up on you out of nowhere. “About… clearly stating where we stand.”

“I’ve already told you I want you.”

“I’ve never been good at this, and I just want to make sure we’re exclusive.” Your eyes lock with his from the other side of the coffee table, unable to look away when he takes his coat off and lays it down on the back of your couch. “That there’s no one else.”

“There’s no one else.” His gaze softens a bit, and it prompts you to move closer to him until you’re almost standing toe to toe.

“And that wasn’t a date. It’s just been a shit day an–”

“I believe you.” His smile is what ends up easing your nerves enough to put them back to sleep, and when he cups your face in both of his hands, you find yourself breathing a bit better. “I didn’t mean to come off as jealous. You have no explaining to do. I just… God, I missed you so much that seeing you there with him got to my head.”

The smirk slowly grows on your lips, despite you trying your best to bite it back, and soon enough it’s a full-blown smile that makes you feel like you’re brighter than the sun itself. It scorches away any other thought in your head and leaves you with just him. “You missed me?” It comes out as a whisper, intoxicated as you are by what’s left of your drinks and the scent of him pulling you in closer than your stance already has the two of you.

“So damn much.” His voice lowers, and you’d be embarrassed by the way that affects you if you hadn’t expected it – the way that shiver trickles down your spine and straight to in-between your legs, like you haven’t been getting yourself off on the memory of him coming – down your throat, or in your hand, spurting thick cum on the tiled wall of his shower – for a while now. “I want to play fair,” he whispers, his lips barely brushing against yours before he presses a light kiss to the corner of your mouth.

You think you feel his heartbeat where his fingertips press into the sides of your face. It’s fast and strong, burning with the same desperate want you feel for him, but you have no clue whether that’s just you. You and the effect he has on your whole system.

“But it’s so fucking hard.”

There it is again, one of his innuendos that bring pictures to your mind. The first time you had a feel of his erection in that dressing room in Chicago, when his fingers had been brushing exactly that spot inside you while his mouth pressed kisses to the side of your neck, sultry voice whispering the nastiest things into your ear. That night in Atlanta, when you made out in your room, right in his lap, his hips leisurely rutting up into yours and cutting your breath short. Two weeks ago in his shower, your naked body pressed against his back, your hand wrapped around his dick and his hand wrapped around yours, guiding your movements as his moans made your pussy clench and your clit throb and you thought you’d come right then and there, untouched, when he whimpered at your touch over the head of his cock.

You wonder whether that’s just you – you and this unexpected obsession you seemingly have for his dick, the way it’s been driving you crazy since things started getting steamy between the two of you. You wonder whether that’s just you or him, too, but all you can do is stand there, putting all of your trust in your knees despite the fact that they feel weaker than jelly with the way he’s kissing – hopefully not marking – down your neck, one of his hands still cradling the side of your face and the other one slipping down to your backside, both to keep you up and push you closer into him.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he eventually continues, pecking your lips and staring back into your hazy eyes.

Maybe it’s not just you, you realize with a gasp when you manage to get a grip on yourself and feel the way he’s pressing right against you inside his pants. Maybe it’s him, too, and it thrills you to think that. To think he craves you just as much as you do him.

“All day every day.” His lips move against yours, and his eyes close for a moment when your hands trail up his back. You want to believe that’s because he needs a moment to collect and ground himself. You want to believe you have the same effect on him as he does on you – like your brain stops working and your body takes over, and your heart is so fast and loud in your chest that you can barely even hear or feel the outside world. “Every. Fucking. Day.”

He takes your bottom lip between his and gently pulls on it. When he opens his eyes again, you can see just how heated his gaze is.

“Even when I saw you there with him,” he groans, staring down at you. There’s this duality to him – it’s in the way his right hand fondles your buttcheek, giving you just a glimpse of his strength, and in the way his left hand cradles your face, like you’re something precious he wants to shield from damage. It makes your head spin, your lips tingling to just press against his and kiss him again. “When I feared it was a date. I still wanted you then anyway. You make me go crazy.”

You make me go crazy, too – you think you say those words out loud, but they don’t actually leave the confines of your mind. They’re stuck in there, as your brain fights with your body to work but ultimately fails.

“I can still taste you in my mouth.” He breathes you in right after he speaks. His nose trails up the side of your neck, and for a moment he stands there like that, eyes closed, lips pressed against the side of your head, half on your skin and half on your hair. “When I close my eyes, I see you sprawled out on my couch that night, dripping wet. I see you and hear you and feel you. I still fucking taste you on my tongue.”

You can’t hold back the gasp that leaves your lips as your knees grow weaker and your hands bunch his sweater up into your fists. “Fuck,” you whisper, and it’s then that he moves his head, smirks at you, and kisses you, lets his tongue glide over your bottom lip as you swear your heart is about to leave your chest. “Joong-gil,” you whine, breathless, and there are very few other thoughts in your now almost empty head. It’s all full of him. You’re all full of him in every single way but the physical one. “Fuck me.”

He kisses you again, tastes the remnants of the somaek you had at Jumadeung. His left hand leaves your face and joins his other one on your ass, and for a moment he’s content to just stand like that, kissing you, fondling your backside in his hands before pulling you into him. The lack of any sort of space between your bodies gets to your head, deepens your breathing, and whatever thinking ability your brain still has is immediately incinerated by the feel of him, hard and aching in his black jeans.

You’re back in Chicago, and in Atlanta, and on your knees in front of him, and in his shower behind him. You can barely breathe.

“No.” You can barely comprehend him when he pulls back to give your plea an answer.

“No?”

You want to ask what he means. Does he not want you? Is the memory of his mouth on your pussy better than the idea of having a repeat? But then he hums, smiling, and his hands come up to cup your face again. Neither of you moves, however; neither of you wants to lose the contact your lower bodies have.

“No,” he repeats. “We agreed on it, don’t you remember?” He pecks your lips, and then stamps kiss after kiss along your jawline until he’s playfully nibbling your earlobe, playing with your piercings. “Anything but my dick inside you.” He marks his words with a roll of his hips into yours that further sends your brain into overdrive. “It was your idea, have you forgotten? Wait until you’re free in November so that I can take you on every surface of both our apartments until we can barely feel anything else…”

You can feel the smirk in his voice, the cheeky bastard, but all you can manage is a desperate whine as you press your thighs together. “I don’t always have smart ideas,” you complain. Your heart is so strong in your chest that you can physically feel it beat against your ribcage.

“Why? It’s a fun little game,” he hums, pulling you along with him when he takes two steps backward to sit down on your couch with you in his lap. You want to tell him you’ll cry now that you’re pretty much sitting on his dick, but there’s no need to because those tears of frustration gather up in your eyes nonetheless. “It keeps me on edge.”

A chuckle bubbles up his throat when he picks up on you slowly rolling your hips into his, and his gaze trails down to where you’re sitting on top of him. He thrusts up into you once before grabbing a hold of your hips and guiding your movements, slowing them down when you get impatient.

“Is this mine?” he asks then, when he relaxes against the back of your couch and tugs at the hoodie you’re wearing.

You want to tell him that every single part of you is his, but then you remember what you’re still wearing and you hum against his lips – why is he so controlled when you barely know how to breathe or whether you’re still doing it right?

“Can I take it off?” He has one hand underneath it already, teasing up your spine and then moving back down.

“Please.”

He pulls it off of you with the t-shirt you’ve been wearing underneath, and then looks up into your eyes before unclasping your bra. You swear you’re hotter than the sun, and then that you’re even hotter when he drops your bra to the side and leans forward to press a wet kiss between your tits. His gesture pulls this embarrassing whimper out of you that makes you want to hide your face in the crook of his neck, but you can’t even move, not when his tongue comes out to lick one of your nipples before he gives it a suck.

“I want us to come like this,” he says against your chest right as he’s kissing marks into your skin where no one else is going to see them.

“I want you,” you complain. You inside me, any which way and anywhere you want me.

“You have me.”

God, he’s so infuriatingly stubborn, and handsome, his head leaning back and his hands pawing at your breasts, his jeans and your light pants an annoying barrier between the two of you.

“Not really though…”

He wipes your pout away when he bucks his hips up. “You said we’d wait until your schedule cleared up to fuck,” he reminds you for the second time, although it’s hard for your brain to process his words because then his mouth is back on your chest. “That’s what we’re gonna do. Because honestly,” he groans, bucking up again and making you moan loudly at the friction, “I won’t be able to stop once I finally have you.”

Another breathless fuck slips past your lips. Have you ever felt this hot? Has your heart ever beat this hard? You’re throbbing right against him, and you vaguely feel him twitch, and maybe by now you’ve soaked your way through your panties but really, it’s hard to concretely feel anything with certainty right now.

“Really?” you pant. You’re somehow so close – you’re tingling, and the coil in your belly is about to snap, and his mouth on your boob is hot and wet and you want it to stay there forever.

“Fuck, yeah,” he moans, pulling you flush against him and kissing you. “I won’t be able to walk for a while after that. Neither of us will be,” he chuckles, breathless, voice more gravelly than ever.

Somehow, you end up pulling his sweater off. Goosebumps wash over his flushed skin when it comes into contact with the cooler air of your living room. Your thumbs brush over his nipples, and you see the way he bites his lower lip before mumbling something about how you feel even better than what he pictures at night.

For a split second, you picture him in his apartment – on his couch, or on his bed, or even in his shower. The way he’d tug on his cock to the thought of you – of your body, the way you moan or whimper out his name, the way you came that night on his couch or in America. The way he’d moan and make himself come, spurt after spurt of white painting his hand or his abdomen or even his shirt.

Man, you’re fucked.

“It’s like you’re riding me,” he says, snatching you out of your open-eyed dream. He meets every single one of the rolls of your hips into his now, his hands on your hips and then up your spine until you’re moaning incoherently against his mouth.

“I’m so fucking empty,” is what you complain when you feel the way you’re clenching around nothing, throbbing, burning for something he’s not giving you. You can feel how sweaty your legs are in your pants, the way the cotton of your pants sticks to the back of your knees.

“I’ll make it worth the wait,” he promises in-between grunts.

Fuck – you think – is he really gonna come in his pants? But you don’t have time to dwell on your thoughts: his lips wrap around one of your nipples as his hand comes up to play with the other. A few perfectly-placed tugs on them, a few perfectly-angled thrusts of his hips up into yours, his clothed erection brushing against your core, and you feel yourself unravel and come undone.

Your moans are loud and whiny, embarrassed, and when Joong-gil leans back to pull you flush against his chest and hides his face in the crook of your neck to muffle his own moans, gooseflesh breaks out on your back and arms. You barely have the time to faintly see your reflection in the glass window of the oven in your kitchen right opposite you. He groans your name, and then he’s coming right underneath you, twitching against you, right inside his jeans.

*

When you wake up the morning after, you’re alone. The side of your bed Joong-gil slept in is cold, but his scent still lingers on the linen. You find yourself inhaling what’s left of his scent, that cold shadow of him, and the smile that stretches on your lips is so wide it hurts your cheeks.

Fuck. That’s when you realize that you’re down bad. That there is no coming back, the turning point is already miles behind you. Not even Ryung-gu has ever made you feel like this. Like you might combust on the spot because of how giddy you are, like this happiness you have inside is almost too much to be contained, even though he left without a word or a caress.

Bit by bit, memories of last night come back to your mind – Jumadeung with Joon-woong, and the ride on Joong-gil’s bike, and then the ride on his lap, right there in your living room. Even without having to leave your bed just yet to find confirmation, you know you won’t be able to stop seeing him whenever you’ll be resting on your couch – his skin, and his gaze, his lips wrapped around a pebbled nipple, and his hands on your bare back…

You giggle out loud, into the pillow he slept with, and you have to do your best to restrain yourself from running to Bit-na – or, well, to your chat with her – to just vent it all out of your system so that you can go back to being the sanest version of yourself – or what of that you can manage after Park Joong-gil came along and scorched everything else on his path. Hadn’t you listened to her when she told you to let things happen, who knows where you and Joong-gil would be now. What you would be.

Eventually, after much debating on whether you should just ditch your appointments for the day, you drag yourself into the living area of your apartment. Not looking at your sofa is almost a feat, but when you make it to the kitchen, the surprise of having your breakfast waiting for you on the table is enough to make you forget about everything else – what you did on the couch last night and the fact that you woke up alone. Part of you hoped you’d find Joong-gil somewhere in your house – maybe in the bathroom taking a shower, or going over his schedule at your kitchen table, somehow waiting for you to discuss what you knew you still have to talk about. The realization that he’s clearly not still here hits you like a pang in the heart that’s only slightly dulled by the food he’s made you.

I made you something to survive the day. Your gimbap is in the box on the counter. If you want, and whenever you want, you can tell me why yesterday was such a shitty day. No burden is too shitty to be shared x — pjg

Why is it that whatever he does, he still manages to make you feel all warm and giddy inside? Why is it that he’s so nice and kind, and also scorching hot and teasing? He gives you whiplash in the best way possible, keeps you waiting on your toes as you hang from his very lips.

He’s still the king among all your other thoughts when you’re standing in the recording booth, singing the songs of your new album. Its concept eerily fits what your life feels like nowadays, like you’re strapped on a roller coaster ride that’s going up and down, and then looping backward before jumping forward at full speed. It’s a dull rendition of how crazy this year has been – the collaboration with the one and only Park Joong-gil, your friendships – deeper with the RMT guys and stronger with Bit-na, even with the physical distance between the two of you – the new business deals you’ve managed to sign, the brief acting opportunity waiting for you next year.

There’s this one song, the very first track of your album, that feels like the wind in your face on that roller coaster.

Butterflies.

It came to you last, all at once while sitting in your car late at night, on one of those days when the sky feels starless, and that’s probably why you ended up putting it before all the others. It’s like that’s always been your starting point, what really pushed you to be where you’re standing now. It’s all the paper butterflies on the shelves in your living room and the one on your wrist put together, combined and condensed and pressurized into this knot that’s always at the back of your throat and that you’re finally ready – although still with some fears – to let go.

You record it last, however. It’s the heaviest of them all, after all, even if it somehow makes you feel so much lighter. It tastes like dried salt after a day at the beach, catching crabs with your father. It’s him flying your kite so up high you can pretend it’s a bird or even a dragon, and it’s you sitting on his shoulders so that you can make it fly even higher. It’s picnics by the sea, and nostalgic ballads after sunset, when he used to strum his guitar and pretend like he had followed his dream instead of that of his parents, with your mother dancing barefoot in the sand for the both of you.

And it’s you saying, You flew away, but can’t you see it? Can’t you see I followed the path you dreamed of?

You’re standing on the rooftop of the studio during your lunch break, right next to where you sat just yesterday with Joon-woong, your lunchbox with Joong-gil’s gimbap resting by your elbow as you look down at the street. The tears you thought would come still have to show up, but that stubborn knot at the back of your throat chokes you up nonetheless.

The same kind of questions that made you wonder about Park Joong-gil this morning come back once again. Where would you be, had your father stayed? Who would you be? Who would he be?

You ask yourself that, and you think about your mother, back in Busan alone, who lost the love of her life to something she couldn’t defeat for him herself. Had he stayed, would it still hurt – for you to see her and for her to see you?

It’s so cliché, that monarch butterfly blinking at you from a poster at the bus stop down at the corner, advertising some special event in collaboration with the butterfly park in Incheon. It makes a chuckle slip past your lips.

Did your biology-enthusiast father bring you there before your family moved down south? You really don’t remember anymore, although you do wonder when butterflies started carrying this kind of importance – and why. Why was metamorphosis so important when sometimes it’s just so hard to leave the safety of your cocoon. When you reach the stars but still have someone else plan and organize your life.

You switch on your phone when you sit down on the worn-out wooden bench to eat your lunch. Maybe if you can distract yourself enough, today’s recording session will fade quicker so that you can go home and start thinking about what you can do tomorrow to enjoy one of the very few free days on your schedule.

It’s then that all the missed messages and calls start coming in.

A couple of confused texts from your mother.

Half a billion texts and three missed calls from Bit-na.

An unexpected invitation to a group chat with Ryung-gu, Joon-woong, and Ryeon.

And then a link and a Let me know when I can call you by Joong-gil that somehow makes your heart jump up into your throat and almost choke on the last of his gimbap.

At first, you brush it off as just another dating scandal based on nothing, just like the one you barely had the time to confront yourself with when you first started working with Park Joong-gil. But then you force yourself to truly read and process the article’s words, and you jump back up to the title – RMT bassist Choi Joon-woong and solo singer Y/N dating.

There’s a picture of you and Joon-woong at the top of the page, and you recognize yourself from last night, when he drove the both of you to Jumadeung in his car. One unpondered decision and you end up trending online without even knowing.

That’s weird, you tell yourself – it’s just some random rumor, so why all this fuss in your messages? – until you scroll further down and read the statement the PR team of your agency released early that morning.

“We confirm that both our artists, Joon-woong and Y/N, are in the early stages of dating. We apologize to the fans who were surprised by this news, but ask for support as they grow together as a couple.”

You barely register the comments underneath the article and you definitely don’t dare open any of your social media apps because despite having muted notifications from anyone but the people close to you, seeing the drama that is most likely unfolding there will do your state of mind more harm than good.

“It’s all the agency’s doing,” is what Choi Joon-woong tells you through the speakers of your car as you’re headed to your agency’s building on the other side of the city, cruising through traffic at a faster speed than what your manager Ji-young would like.

You were supposed to have a chill night: order some food, and then sip on tea while watching that new drama you’ve been dying to start after Bit-na raved so much about it. Now it feels like you’re stuck in yet another bullet point on your schedule, written down on one of those colorful post-it notes Ji-young taught you to use.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” You know you shouldn’t be mad at him – and you aren’t! Really! You probably won’t ever be, but there’s this turmoil in the pit of your stomach that makes you want to cry and scream and kick everything to the curb. Things were going well; you were opening up more; you found someone you realized you’d love to have by your side for however much time you’re given. And this feels like you’re being stabbed in your back by someone – something – you never thought would.

“It’s not that I didn’t,” Joon-woong replies with a sigh. You hear movement on his side of the line, hushed voices, and then a door clicking shut. “It’s that I couldn’t. When I woke up hungover this morning, the damage was already done. I’m at the agency now, I think you should—”

“Yeah, I’m coming as fast as I can.”

It’s nothing to worry about. No big deal at all. You spend the rest of those endless thirty minutes behind the wheel trying to convince yourself of that. But the truth is that all you can think about is Park Joong-gil. Last night with him. The food he left for you on your kitchen counter. That Let me know when I can call you in your text messages and to which you still haven’t replied.

The super in the hall of your agency’s building tries to stop you, or at least slow you down, when you march through the automatic doors, but you barely pay him any mind. Not him, and not the murmur that goes off when you get out of the elevator and walk down the corridor headed to the Public Relations office.

Everything inside you is just so deafening. Your heartbeat, your blood flow, all those thoughts pounding against the walls of your mind. You’ve had a few dating rumors to your name, but none has ever been confirmed, least of all by your own agency. It’s like you’ve been thrown a pair of dance shoes and now you’re expected to know how to ball dance out of the blue.

So blinded by all the worries swirling around in your head, you almost stumble backward when Ryung-gu catches you by your elbow mid-stride.

“Let’s not add a murder scandal to today’s list of nuisances,” he mutters into your ear as he steers you away and towards the meeting room.

“I was not—”

“Tell that to the secretary who was about to call security on you.”

“What? I have every right to be pissed off and demand explanations!” Everyone and their mother probably hear you all the way down the hall and to the elevators, but at the moment you don’t really care. You’ve kept your head down and worked hard ever since signing your exclusive contract, and never once complained about the mistreatment of your training years because you knew your hard work would eventually pay off.

“You won’t like what they have to say,” Joon-woong says when he pulls you into the meeting room.

Ryung-gu is quick to enter the room after you, and then Ryeon pushes the door shut before pressing herself against the privacy glass. The look on her face is apologetic, and the fact that you’ve never seen her this way confuses you even more. Your anger and annoyance quickly sizzle off of your shoulders and you’re left there, with Joon-woong’s hand still loosely wrapped around your right wrist, wondering whether you’re getting fired or used as a scapegoat before your career is finally sacrificed towards some obscure greater good.

“You should probably sit,” Ryeon says, forcing a smile and pointing at the nearest chair.

You do as you’re told, partly because you want this to be over with, and partly because all the what if’s crowding your thoughts won’t leave you alone otherwise – what if everything goes downhill. What if your friendship with Joon-woong gets tarnished. What if what you have with Joong-gil – and what you could have – goes to shit. What if the fans retaliate against you and your career becomes a horror story that will help make public relationships in the industry even more taboo.

Joon-woong sits down in the chair to your left, and Ryung-gu and Ryeon move to the other side of the table, away from the fury you might unleash. No one’s ever seen you truly mad, but nothing’s ever really happened to make you furious, so you reason they’d rather be safe than sorry.

“You know how your collab with the Park Joong-gil had a ripple effect that increased all of our sales,” Joon-woong starts, and you turn to look at him. He’s staring down at his hands on the metal surface of the table and suddenly it’s so clear in your mind, the reason why your agency and their PR team came up with that lie.

It’s always money, isn’t it?

“Everyone’s liked the two of you together since day one,” he continues.

“I’ve seen the shipping comments,” you interrupt. “Get to the point.”

The point is that everyone’s always hungry for something. Love. Money. Success. Fame. The macarons they sell in that tiny French bakery five minutes from your old house in Incheon. More juicy details about the private life of one of your idols, so that you can bask in the illusion of being able to get a peek behind the curtains that separate their public life from what goes on behind closed doors.

“Someone snapped a picture of us in the car going to Jumadeung last night, posted it online, and then rumors started coming up left and right. By the time the agency posted that statement early this morning, we had become the most searched names online.”

It’s almost like no one ever sleeps. Like they’re always watching you – through a spy cam installed inside a teddy bear you were gifted at a fan meet or behind the camera of some paparazzo.

“So what you’re trying to say is, they’re using us as a marketing strategy.” You look at Ryung-gu first, and then at Ryeon, and some of that anger comes back. It makes your fingertips tingle, and suddenly you’d rather be back in the recording booth, sobbing into the microphone because all you want to do now is tear wings off of fragile butterfly bodies.

Eventually, you turn to look at Joon-woong. He’s staring at you now, and he also does look more apologetic than you’ve ever seen him. You want to tell him it’s not his fault, that none of this is his doing, but then again would it really matter? This shitstorm didn’t only hit you; it also hit him, and that’s something you should keep in mind. You’re in this boat together and you should help each other steer it towards the nearest shore.

“They want us to play along for as long as we can,” he confirms. “I tried telling them we have our own personal stuff going on in our private lives, but they say it’s just part of the game. We signed with them, so now we have to keep on playing our part. The CEO saw the sales increase after your collab and your tour, and soon you’ll have your solo comeback, too. Our shows are also starting soon,” he adds, glancing at his bandmates.

“It’s bad to say, but we gotta ride the wave,” Ryung-gu grimaces.

Ryeon smiles. It feels genuine this time, although you see the look in her eyes. Distant, and glossed over, almost as though it’s trying to say that soon it’ll be over. “You should both hang in there. Play along until they say you can break up.”

“With a bit of luck, it’ll all fade away quickly,” Ryung-gu agrees.

You sigh, leaning your head forward and resting your forehead on the back of one hand. Maybe the idea of going to Jumadeung wasn’t that great, after all. Maybe you should’ve called Ji-young, asked her to take you there with your van – through the black tinted windows no one would have been able to snap any kind of picture.

“I know you said you and Joong-gil—”

You’re trying to shake your head without being too obvious, but when Joon-woong doesn’t pick up and starts mentioning last night’s conversation at Jumadeung, you lightly kick his foot under the table.

You want to say nothing’s been defined yet, but you also know that would be a lie. You and Joong-gil talked last night – probably not about everything you would have wanted, but definitely enough to know he’s yours and you’re his.

“Why—”

“If you’re worried about me,” Ryeon cuts in, stretching an arm out across the table and grabbing your hand, “it’s alright. I would have to be blind not to pick up on something going on between the two of you. I know he told you about us.” She shrugs. “Had we been meant to be, we would still be together, but that wasn’t in the books for us. I wanted things he couldn’t give, and he wanted things I couldn’t give. I’m glad he found the right match.”

*

You’re sitting behind the wheel of your car at a red light much later that night. After everyone with some importance in the agency sacrificed Joon-woong and the rest of the RMT to give you the heads up, the CEO, the legal advisor, and the PR and marketing teams walked in for a briefing meeting.

Do this. Do that. Make sure you’re seen out together. We already have brand gigs scheduled up for the two of you. This is gonna be the best year ever for us!

It shouldn’t be a surprise, you tell yourself, looking at the incoming traffic on the other lane. While you’re an employed worker there, you’re also one of their main money-makers. You produce music, and your music attracts fans, who, consequently, buy your merch, come to your concerts and shows, and are one of the reasons why you end up on TV or on the radio or get featured in YouTube videos uploaded by official channels.

You’ve always been money to them and it should have been expected that you’d always be.

It’s just that…

Your eyes well up with tears of annoyance, and you angrily wipe them away with the back of your hand.

It’s just so unfair. To you, and to Joon-woong, and everyone who’s going to fall for this stunt. To your mother, who’s going to want to know more, and to Joong-gil, who’s been living rent-free in your mind and then probably in your heart as well for so many months now.

You don’t even remember when you put that selfie you took with him as your phone’s wallpaper. No more paper butterflies in favor of a happy memory – you and the guy you’ve been crushing so hard on, making peace signs and grinning in your mother’s living room that one time you visited her and asked Joong-gil to come with you.

There’s no use in running away from his text message anymore. What puts your mind to rest is the knowledge that he’s in the exact same industry as you and that, if anything, he should be able to understand you and the situation you now find yourself in much better than many other people.

Without thinking too much about whether you should be doing it or not, you pull up his contact and press the call button.

He picks up on the second ring, just as the traffic light turns green and you can start moving again.

“Sorry it’s taken me the whole day to call you,” you blurt out before he even has the time to say a word. Now that you’re on a call with him, you worry he won’t want to listen to what you have to say. You worry that he might misread the situation, see stuff that really isn’t there, and hang up on you, never to be seen again.

Why do you worry so much about being wanted by him in more ways than one? Why do you want him to understand you and what you can’t yet say? You want to allow yourself to give an answer to those questions, but there’s a part of you, deep down inside, that just doesn’t want to risk ending up heartbroken.

“I turned my phone off because I was recording the new album’s tracks and when I saw the news, I went straight to my agency to see what the fu—” You cut yourself off. There’s no use getting pissed again, you realize with a sigh. “To see what was happening.”

“Are you alright?”

His question catches you off guard. Out of all the things he could have hit you with, he went with that.

“I’m…” You turn left at the intersection and then heave a sigh of relief when you see the metro station getting closer and closer, the sign that very soon you’ll be home. “I mean, I’m not that pissed anymore, but…”

“What’s going on?”

“They’re using me and Joon-woong as a marketing stunt,” you confess just as you turn into the underground garage of your condominium. There, you said it. It doesn’t feel as unbearable anymore, even though Joong-gil is dead silent at the other end of the phone call.

“So it’s not real?”

You frown. “Of course it’s not. I thought I made it clear last night?” It comes off as a question – you really did think you had been explicit enough, but then again, everything is subjective and he might have perceived it differently.

“Just making completely sure.” You don’t need to see him to hear the grin in his voice when he speaks this time, and it eases a weight off of your chest you didn’t even know had settled there. “Do you want to come over?”

You’re sincere when you reply, “I just got home. I think I’m too tired to drive around again right now.”

“Do you want me to  come over, then?”

Yes! You want to tell him that, but you also, “don’t wanna be selfish by asking you to come.”

“Script reading can wait. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

Waiting for Joong-gil to ring at your doorbell gives you enough time to take a long shower to wash away any memory of butterflies, the recording session (that went smoothly, despite what you feared), and most importantly, the news that you’re – apparently – in a relationship with one of your closest friends. And it’s then, under the scalding hot stream of the shower, that Joong-gil’s words come crawling back and you realize he’s ditching work to come to see you.

It makes you feel a new kind of warm inside, like you have flowers blooming in your chest in a sudden bout of spring in the middle of October. It empties your mind completely and leaves you standing there, grinning at nothing but the mental picture of the man you are – again, apparently – head over heels for.

For a moment there’s no more fake dating Joon-woong, no more marketing stunts your agency’s employing to line its pockets with even more money, no more comments online talking about you or the picture someone snapped last night. There’s just you, in the shower, and then Joong-gil, and you realize – probably a moment too late, although it still shouldn’t come as a surprise – that your feelings have been growing even when you were trying to ignore them, and now they’re there, somewhere in your chest, in-between those flowers growing in your lungs and spreading down to your belly. And you have no clue what they mean, what they are, but you’re so grateful for them and for how alive they’re making you feel.

You’re on the phone with your mother – you reassure her that everything’s fine, that you will introduce Joon-woong to her, but that she has nothing to worry about and that no, nothing’s wrong between you and the ‘handsome man’ you introduced to her months ago – when you get a text from security making sure you indeed are waiting for someone.

“I will explain everything as soon as I can,” you promise her before bidding her goodnight.

Maybe if you could meet her in person, she would be able to reassure you that everything is going to be just fine and that there’s no need for your heart to beat this fast now that Park Joong-gil is riding the elevator to your floor. It’s like all of a sudden, those flower stems are constricting your airways, squeezing everything inside you like someone found a way to shove their fist into your chest.

You force yourself out of those mounting fears – what did the two of you talk about last night? What did you tell him, and what did he tell you? How clear were you? – and you open the entrance door just in time to see him step out of the elevator at the other end of the corridor.

He’s as gorgeous as ever, even when it’s clear that he’s simply thrown a jacket over his pajamas and put on the first pair of running shoes he found on the rack by his door before grabbing his helmet and heading down to his garage.

He strides up to you and for a moment he simply stands there, looking down into your eyes, his breathing short, almost as though he ran as much and as fast as he could before slipping into the elevator. When he doesn’t say anything, you want to ask him whether he is mad, and that’s exactly when you realize you actually are afraid he might be. You can take a lot of shit, but apparently, you can’t take Park Joong-gil being mad at you.

But then he’s enveloping you into a hug. He smells like the night, and his coat is cold against your cheek when you lean into him.  You want to stay here like this forever – or for however long that could be in real life and not just inside the fantasy world in your head – but then you think about the neighbor you share your floor with and how she could step outside at any given time. If another rumor came out of it, you don’t want to imagine what your agency might come up with. So, you wrap your arms tighter around Joong-gil and step back inside your apartment enough for him to be able to kick the door shut.

“Hey,” he whispers against the side of your face after another – apparently endless – moment of silence.

Your nodding into the crook of his neck makes him chuckle, and then his lips come down to your cheek to press a kiss into your skin that makes you sigh out loud.

Eventually, you let go of him long enough for him to be able to take his jacket and his shoes off before leading him straight to your bedroom. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show – or you’re just so dead set on spending time with him that you don’t notice. Only when you’re in the safety of your blankets and Joong-gil’s arms do you allow yourself to relax and gaze up at him.

“I’m so pissed,” you confess bluntly. Were he anyone else, his chuckle would worsen your annoyance, but he’s not just anyone and all you find yourself doing is hide your face in the crook of his neck like you just want to rest on him forever.

“I know,” he murmurs. You feel the ghost of a kiss against your hair, just before his arms tighten their embrace around you, pulling you closer to him and his scent. “I was planning the right way to ask you to be unofficially official, but your agency beat me to that.”

“I’ve always liked them and while of course I know they hired me so that we both could make money, I never would have im—” You stop in your tracks, frowning, your brain finally catching up with what he really said – not a they’re real pieces of shit but something entirely different. “You… What?”

You can’t look up at him. You simply look down at his chest, at how it rises and falls with every regular breath of his, and when you move your hand up higher, you feel his heartbeat underneath your fingers. Flowers and butterflies coexist in your belly, and you feel like you might explode in a billion, bright fireworks.

Joong-gil hums, one of his hands moving away from your back to join the one you have on his chest. His palm against the back of your hand, his fingers intertwine themselves with yours. “Yeah, I don’t see why we should wait.” His voice is low, not as stable as it usually is, and you feel his heart pick up its pace inside his chest. You wonder how fast your own is – and why it even is this fast in the first place when it’s been clear for a while how you feel even just about the thought of him. “We both like each other. We both want to spend time together. I can be yours, and you can be mine.”

You pause for a moment and draw your head back on his shoulder just enough to be able to look at him. There’s no trace of playfulness on his face; the smile that stretches on his lips looks just as genuine as ever. “Did you read the articles online? Did you understand when I said my agency is using me and Joon-woong for marketing?”

“I heard you loud and clear when you said the relationship was fake, yeah,” he grins. The fingers of his left hand play along the skin of your low back, underneath your pajama shirt, and his other hand comes up to cradle the side of your face. It makes you want to kiss him for hours on end, to let him take your breath away – just stay here with him and let your feelings blossom together. “You’re bound to fake-break up at some point.”

“You’d… make us official? Even when your agency’s against you dating?”

You want that. You want him. Life has no certainties and you try not to believe in absolutes, but you do know you don’t want him out of your life. You want to walk hand in hand with him until the end of the road, wherever and whenever that might be, even if sometimes it still does feel rushed.

“If you’d like that, too,” he hums, his thumb brushing along your cheek. “I told you I want to spend a long time with you. I meant it. Still do.”

You swat at his chest and your head finds its place back in the crook of his neck. He still feels you grinning against his skin, however, and it makes him laugh. But then you nod, and after pressing a light kiss against his neck, you say, “Let’s do it then.”

He maneuvers you so that you’re lying on your back and then he’s gazing down at you, one elbow by your head keeping his weight propped up. “Yeah?” His eyes stare into yours and you find yourself swallowing around nothing, looking up at him – he didn’t even need to kiss you to make you feel breathless.

“Yeah.”

“So can I be mean with Joon-woong for fake-dating my very real girlfriend?” He’s grinning, so you know he’s just joking, but it’s that last word that brings all the warmth to your face and then back down into your chest, until it’s seeping into every single fiber of your being.

It makes you chuckle. “Don’t you dare.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“No!” you laugh, trying to sit up, but then he gently pushes you back down. “He’s a good friend.”

“We’d better get matching rings so that he doesn’t get the wrong ideas, then.”

You exclaim his name, laughing at his antics, at how playful he feels right at this moment. It’s another one of those shards of him that seeps into your heart and your soul, like you know you’ll want to remember this moment for a very, very long time. “Can’t believe you’re jealous,” you grin, both of your hands coming up to cup his face before pulling him down low enough for you to peck his lips.

“I’m not jealous,” he shrugs, “just a bit territorial,” he corrects, bumping his nose into yours.

You chuckle, and it’s almost right against his lips. “Didn’t you have a script to read?”

“Nah, I think I’m just gonna spend the night with my girlfriend,” he says before kissing you. His tongue slips into your mouth when you gasp at the feeling of his touch between your legs. “Can I?”

You nod, lifting your butt for a moment to allow him to take your pajama pants off. “I feel like I’ll never survive till my schedule’s clear,” you breathe, voice unsteady, when he positions himself between your legs with a grin on his face.

“Do I have that effect on you?” He wraps one of your legs around his waist, and with how close he is to your core, you can feel his cock growing harder right against you. When you let out a soft moan, he grabs your other leg just to bring it up as well. “Do I make you lose your mind as well?” he asks, fully confident, rocking his hips against yours.

“Fuck, yes,” you whisper, cupping his face to bring him in for a kiss.

You could barely recount how you went from that to Joong-gil lying on his stomach between your legs, three fingers knuckle-deep inside your quivering pussy, his own hips slowly rutting into the mattress, as he brings you closer and closer to your third orgasm. You know for a fact that he’s come once already as well, untouched, and even just trying to guess in what amount you affect him makes you clench around his fingers as he sucks on your clit.

He grunts into you when you tug on his hair, after a brush against a particular spot inside you makes your oversensitivity spike through the roof.

“I’m gonna come,” you whisper, barely able to put the ceiling of your bedroom into focus as all you can think about is being filled by something other than his fingers. Even just the thought that his couple ring is coated in your slick is making your head spin and the knot in your abdomen tighten.

“I’ve got you,” is all he says before flicking the underside of your clit and pressing a wet kiss just below your navel.

His fingers curl up, tips pressing right into that spongy spot that makes your synapses lighten up that tad bit more, and then he’s back to teasing your clitoris until you come again, making a mess of his face and the sheets below you.

You’re still shivering when he comes up to kiss you, and your own taste on his tongue makes you whine into his mouth as your legs wrap around his waist. He hisses when his clothed erection comes into contact with your throbbing, wet core, but then he’s rutting into you as you make out and everything else vanishes, drown out by his moans and whimpers and gasps against your lips and the sparks flying underneath your skin.

*

Once you manage to swallow the sense of guilt you feel at faking something in front of everyone just for the sake of your agency’s revenue, it’s not that hard to play the part. You carry out the even more extra gigs both your and Joon-woong’s team take on, and you make sure the two of you are caught by paps when you’re out on fake dates or simply moving from one place to the other with either of your cars.

If you were busy before, you’re a little busier now.

After some additional recording for your album, you have to sit down at your kitchen table to answer the questions of a written interview they sent to your manager Ji-young all the way from the States.

After a day spent rehearsing your new choreographies – and after a day spent practicing for his comeback with Ryung-gu and Ryeon – you and Joon-woong have to take a stroll by the Han River, hand in hand, doing your best not to fall asleep on your feet.

It’s like working overtime in a period when you’re already putting in extra hours, but the agency’s proud of how the both of you are handling the hot potato they threw at your faces. They’re happy with how much popularity they are getting and how far up the charts both you and the RMT group are climbing. Not only that; the two of you have become a hot topic and it’s become hard to go anywhere online without seeing either or both of your names trending.

That’s how your mother and Bit-na find you when they drag themselves to Seoul at the end of October: an overanalyzed talk of the town.

“This feels like something that’d happen only in dramas!” Bit-na gasps after you finish filling her in on this charade you and your friend Joon-woong are playing. “Can they really do that?”

You shrug your shoulders. “No clue. But it’s only temporary, so Joon-woong and I are cooperating. We’ll probably break this off sometime after his comeback.”

From where you’re sitting on the couch, you can feel your mother’s gaze on you from where she’s standing in the kitchen, making the three of you soup. She’s been quiet all day – with her bad motion sickness, she’s never been particularly fond of long car drives, and she’s also been privy to this whole story since it started almost three weeks ago.

Bit-na’s playing with one of your butterflies while inspecting every single one of the ornaments on your shelves after having spent years looking at them through the screen of her computer. The tiny lighthouse she sent you as a gift for your debut is still there and you change its batteries every time they run out. You see her pick it up for a moment just as you get up to walk up to her.

“I didn’t think you still had this,” she mutters when you come to a stop by her side.

A chuckle slips past your lips and you carefully take the paper butterfly from her hands before replying, “why not? It’s a reminder there’s always a light in my life.”

“We’ve been friends for ages, don’t start making me tear up now,” Bit-na whines, pushing your shoulder and muttering an o my gosh underneath her breath before linking her arm with yours. “You know, I think you’re brave for doing this.”

“Doing what?” You glance at her side profile as she’s still focused on that tiny lighthouse. You think of her as one: always guiding you in the right direction when you’re lost in the fog and the darkness.

“Whatever they tell you to do.” She shrugs and then turns with a smirk, “or for wearing matching rings with a different guy from the one everybody believes you to be dating.”

There’s no concealing the grin that grows on your face, and you have to turn the other way to not let her see you beaming like that.

“When did he give it to you?” she asks from behind you, leaning her chin on your shoulder.

You tell her how you got those rings, after how clear Joong-gil made it that you’re now an item while still not breaking the rules of that little game you’ve been playing since that dinner date – although there’s really no need for Bit-na to know what transpired that night in your bed. Joon-woong made it clear that he doesn’t want to hinder your relationship with Joong-gil, and after a long discussion on this new marketing project carrying your faces, the three of you came to the conclusion that fuck it. If it comes out – that you and Park Joong-gil are seeing each other, that is – you’ll be able to pin the scandal to your agency wanting to control your lives even more and while that’s simply wishful thinking, you still did go to an actual jewelry store to handpick your couple rings. Maybe in the silly hope that someone would catch you, or that magically you and your friend would be able to go back to your normal.

Telling someone the truth about your phantom relationship with Choi Joon-woong really does end up serving its purpose of lifting a weight off of your chest, even when that someone is just your mother and your best friend from back home. It doesn’t make that feeling of being a fraud go away completely, but it does make it lighter to bear as you sit in the VIP section of the RMT’s first comeback show.

While you’ve always been a fan of theirs, this is mainly all for show, but no one has to know it, right? The people that matter already do: Ryeon and Ryung-gu are in on the secret, and Joong-gil has been wearing his matching ring ever since you gave it to him despite the fact that no one seems to have picked up on it yet. It feels like doing your best while still half-assing your way through an assignment at the same time: you’ll be on a video call with Joong-gil once you’re back home, while everyone else will be busy talking about the new pictures of you and Joon-woong tomorrow morning – and you know Bit-na will do a better job than your PR team at giving you a summary of what’s going on online about your relationship.

Things get louder in the audience when Joon-woong turns in your general direction during his ending fairy and shoots you a finger heart. It’s something Ryeon jokingly proposed a few days ago, while the four of you were chilling in Ryung-gu’s apartment watching the first episode of Tomorrow, that new show you and Joon-woong recorded those songs for – “Send Y/N a heart or something when the cameras zoom in on you,” but no one had really been serious about it.

Pictures of Joon-woong’s finger heart and of your reaction are everywhere when the shooting for your new music video comes to an end the day after and you finally get the chance to sit down in your van for a sip of water. You don’t even know why he’s apologizing in your chat for going through that playful plan when that’s exactly the kind of shit your agency wants in order to keep your names trending and their revenue coming in. You’re both in this together and as long as your higher-ups are going to keep the music going, both you and Joon-woong will have to keep on dancing.

“It makes me feel like shit that they’re forcing us to go through with this,” he says when you pick up his call. It’s sort of like a reversed repeat of your call with Joong-gil, when your agency’s statement came out and you spent half a day at the office being briefed on and fighting against this new plan of theirs. “I don’t have anything going on but you do, and I really don’t wanna ruin our friendship. What if this whole thing ends up straining it?”

Neither of you wants to worry out loud about something much scarier – what’s going to happen once you call this fake relationship off? What if the truth comes out and the public finds out it’s all been a play since the beginning? Despite it not being your fault, you still played your part, and the mere idea of losing everything the both of you have worked so hard and so many years for makes you nauseous.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” you try to reassure him, even though all those other concerns are still swirling around in your mind. “Everyone involved knows it’s all play pretend. And you also have feelings, so don’t only think about mine. Soon enough this will be over and—”

“I hope that day hurries up. If I have to kiss you for the cameras one more time, I swear I…” You hear him gag at the other end of the call, even when his words make you burst out laughing.

“Am I that bad of a kisser?”

“It’s almost like kissing my own sister and that’s not something I’d ever wanna do!”

More kissing has to happen to keep your agency fed, however. It’s like some new weird fetish for them: after the first peck on the lips you and Joon-woong exchanged while out on a walk after they told you to get back to number one in the trending charts after Joong-gil’s cameo in the new show Tomorrow dethroned you, it seems like that’s all they want to see online now. You both try to seem as genuine as possible when doing it, but it’s hard to swallow down how weird it feels, to be kissing someone you’ve pretty much spent a considerable part of your life growing up with and with no feelings whatsoever attached.

What keeps you going is the knowledge that it’ll be over soon – and maybe in the future, when your contract expires, you’ll be able to consider signing under another label in the hopes that they’d never use you like this.

However, the RMT’s comeback stages come and go, and there’s no sign that your agency will let you call this off. Even when your schedule clears and that mid-November you’ve been so ardently awaiting comes around, you and Joon-woong have a photoshoot for a brand publicizing couple apparel – matching clothes, matching jewelry, and a pair of matching rings dangerously similar to the ones you and Park Joong-gil have been seen wearing despite no connection having been made, strangely enough. It has still presented itself as an excuse for Joon-woong to start wearing one on a chain necklace around his neck, in case rumors came out before anyone was really ready to face the backlash.

Both of you wonder when that fateful day will come.

You’re together late at night, on your very last day of work before your break. You’ve been planning on going back to Busan – back home – for a while now. That tug-o-war game between the idea of going back and the prospect of staying in your Seoul apartment finally reached its final round when, two days ago, you finally booked your ticket. It’s about time you do this; it’s about time you go back home, to your mother – and to visit your father’s grave on the anniversary of his passing.

“Maybe after our tour is over…” Joon-woong sighs, pulling you out of your thoughts and pushing your backpack into the luggage rack of the train that will take you back home.

You’re both dressed so that no one will recognize you, and the fact that probably not many other people will travel first class on the last train of the day makes you heave a sigh of relief. “I sure hope so. I feel bad for everyone who’s fallen for this…”

Joon-woong nods. “Yeah, I hope this won’t end up biting us in the ass.”

Outside the train, a female voice announces the express train to Busan will leave in fifteen minutes, and for a moment everything else is silent.

Imagine we’re going on an adventure, you hear your father say. You’re seven years old, wearing a yellow coat that matches your varnish little shoes and a fluffy bunny backpack, your tiny hand holding tight onto your father’s index finger as your mother’s just a little further away, buying gimbap for you to eat on your first train ride. We get on the train here and we get off alllll the way at the other end of the country tomorrow morning.

Part of you – the version of you who will forever be seven years old – is still there, on the platform, and your father is crouched down next to you, pointing out a pigeon or that one old lady with the bright bouquet of bluebells sitting all alone on a bench. And the adult version of you is standing there, looking back on the memory like it’s a video clip on your computer, but a thousand times more vivid, a thousand times more real. You hear the chatter of the passengers waiting for their rides, the screeching of a train’s brakes, and your father’s coat still smells of laundry detergent and that wooden scent that’s always been him.

Suddenly, Joon-woong’s hand is on your shoulder. “Are you alright?”

Did tomorrow really have to come? Did you really have to wake up in Busan, in your mother’s embrace, and start a new life there?

“I’m fine.” But there’s this big, thorny lump in the back of your throat, and the butterfly on your wrist is pulling your whole right arm down, tugging and tugging like you used to tug on your father’s hand – to run on the beach, to show him something that caught your attention, to bring him out of his endless work.

“Are you sure?” You meet Joon-woong’s eyes and you’re this close to tearing up. When you went home last time, a few months ago, the world didn’t feel this heavy and constricting – was it the excitement of the end of the world tour? Was it Park Joong-gil’s hand in yours? Was it the fact that it was just a random day? “It’s probably not too late for me to get a ticket to come with you.”

The female voice over the speakers announces five more minutes until departure.

“I’ll be fine,” you say, plastering the best smile you can manage on your face and squeezing his hand. After the endless schedule he and his group mates just came out of, this is just for you to bear. “I’ll close my eyes and wake up in Busan. I’ll text when I’m there, okay?”

Joon-woong lets you go reluctantly, almost as though the part of him that wants to stay with you and avoid you going on your own just had a fight with the part of him that respects your will and lost. He waves at you from the platform when the train starts moving and doesn’t stop until you’re out of sight, and you do the same.

A tear breaches the dam of your lashes and trickles down your cheekbone and into the black face mask you’re wearing.

Is it Joon-woong waving goodbye to you that is making you cry? Or is it the memory of a pre-adolescent Y/N, staring wide-eyed at your father on a stainless-steel table as your mother wails on her knees?

Fifteen years pass in the blink of an eye, and when you look back, you have no clue what even happened in that span of time. What were you doing at fifteen? What were you doing at eighteen? Where were you when midnight struck on the first of January and you turned twenty with your friend Bit-na on the phone?

Fifteen years pass in the blink of an eye, and it’s overwhelming, how these emotions feel as they resurface within you, turning your stomach upside down, inside out. Did you not process them? What gives them the right to come back barreling in full force right now, when you’re moving forward one step at a time?

You squeeze your eyes shut, willing those painful tears to crawl back where they came from, but that simply makes swallowing that tad bit harder. Your hands ball up into fists on your lap.

When the train makes its first stop, you have half a mind to grab your backpack and get off the train, call a cab and go back to Seoul, crawl into your shower and sit there. But before you can give it too much thought, you doze off for a minute. Be it the exhaustion of the day or your body catching up with the fact that now you’re off the hook, you find yourself slipping into unconsciousness.

It’s just black, no pictures play out a dream in your mind. It’s just black and voices, first off in the distance and then closer and closer, until you can recognize the voice you had when you were six.

Daddy! Daddy! Look at this one – you’re giggling. You have no need for a clear dream to replay that day in your mind because your subconscious has memorized every single detail about it already. It’s the sixth of October: that day your mother dressed you in your favorite floral sweater over jean overalls before dropping you and your father off at the Butterfly Park on her way to work. You had your bunny backpack on, one hand wrapped securely in your father’s, braids that touched your shoulders, and a chubby little finger pointing at the caterpillar in the glass window. So big and striped!

Do you like it? – he’s beaming. You don’t need to see him now to remember the way he looked that day behind his reading glasses. He was reading on his guide what to that little kid felt like fascinating gibberish. He had this gift to himself: he could make anything sound like the most interesting thing, whether it was a fairytale or the air conditioner’s handbook, that one time he had to fix it during a heatwave.

He reads and reads, telling you everything about that one specific caterpillar you had pointed out in your childlike fascination, and then repeats his question. Do you like it?

The sound you make is everything between a yes, a no, a maybe, and an it’s really a funny little creature and I’m also a funny little creature, so how can I tell?

Then, there’s light. It’s as small as a pinhead, but it’s there, and it feels like it’s swirling with colors and sounds and emotions.

This is where butterflies come from – he’s picking you up. You still feel the ghost of his touch as he picks you up in his arms – the present-day you, and the six-year-old you at the Incheon Butterfly Park, with her bunny backpack and her tiny little braids and her jean overalls, eyes big and round as she looks at the pictures he’s showing her.

Worms, Daddy?

Caterpillars.

But how? You hear your surprised gasp. Your tiny arm wraps around the back of his neck, and with your tiny hand on his throat you can feel the vibrations of his voice when he speaks.

They live and grow and when they’re ready, they build themselves a cocoon.

Like when you put me to sleep? You always say you’re making a cocoon for me!

Exactly like when I put you to sleep – and he laughs. You realize now, in this dream-memory of sorts, that that’s one of the things you’ve missed the most about him. His voice, and the way he’d laugh. They also go to sleep in that cocoon. And then, while they’re sleeping, they go through a metamorphosis – and he says that word with emphasis, because he’s also always wanted for you to have your own. And when they wake up and they get out of their cocoons…

They’re butterflies!

They’re butterflies, indeed, Buttercup.

Will I also be a butterfly one day, Daddy? When I grow up enough?

You already are my butterfly – his smile was blinding that day and as you start to stir from unconsciousness now, you can feel tears prickling at your eyes, behind closed eyelids, because that little kid really did think she’d have her whole life with her daddy. My pretty yellow buttercup, just like this one.

It’s flitting about before your eyes, when you open them and a tear trickles down. It’s the same yellow buttercup your father showed you that morning, behind the glass of the window preventing you from touching the butterflies – or preventing them from flying away. You see it land on the headrest of the seat in front of yours like you’re on its side of the window cage, staring out at the reflection of what you and your father used to look like when you were six and he still seemed happy.

Then you blink and the last tendrils of slumber retreat. The butterfly, six-year-old you, and your father disappear.

You sit there for a long moment, chest heavy and throat closing up, and you wonder what would happen if you could go back in time, to that day, and relive every single day that came after with the knowledge you have now. Would things be different? Or would you still be on this very train, going back to your mother only?

You fidget for a moment – only inside though, it’s like your body can’t really move. What if you do and then you break? Or is this your cocoon, and you’re going through your own metamorphosis, waiting to become a different version of yourself once you make your way out of it? What colors will you have then? How high will you fly?

[9:58 PM] joong-gil 💗: have a safe trip. Call me when you’re home no matter the time x

Joong-gil called you before you left your apartment. He wanted to wish you a safe trip, but that didn’t stop him from also sending you that message – and from putting a smile on your face. He wanted to wish you a safe trip – and hear your voice, and make sure you were alright. He’s not the only one who knows you’re going back to Busan because of your father, but he’s definitely the one that knows the most about him out of the few close people you have in Seoul.

You debated asking him to come with you like you did last time, but then you backed out of it because you didn’t want to tear him away from his life the way you did the night he was supposed to go over his script. Now, in your heart, it feels like you shouldn’t have hesitated. It feels like you should have asked him – to hell with your agency and their marketing stunt, to hell with the way they’re using you and Joon-woong, to hell with everything else. Because there’s this sudden realization hitting you straight in the face like a fist that goes down your throat to grip and twist your insides: it’s the first time you’re going back home alone. No Joong-gil, no Ji-young, no accompanying Bit-na back home after she’s spent a week at your place in Seoul. It’s just you, and your backpack (not a bunny one), and all these feelings reawakening inside you like a beast rearing its head after a long slumber.

What is it about anniversaries that is so hard to swallow?

Your fingers hesitate on the screen of your phone. You enter and exit the messaging app, glimpses of your chat with Park Joong-gil and of the picture of the two of you that’s become your wallpaper. Glimpses of a memory that won’t mutate and glimpses of a conversation that can still go on – and back, and a billion other directions.

[2:37 AM] you: i wish i

[2:37 AM] you: …

[2:39 AM] you: are you sleeping?

[2:39 AM] you: …

[2:42 AM] you: what would hap

[2:42 AM] you: …

You type and delete, type and delete.

Your mother is offline when you leave your chat with Joong-gil and check. Of course she’s asleep, it couldn’t be any other way. She said she’d pick you up from the station when you’d get there, but you also know that after her shift at the hospital she should be recharging her batteries now.

You check on Bit-na. She’s changed her profile picture from a selfie of herself to one with a man, probably the Seung-min she mentioned when she came over, that one chef she’s met through a friend of a friend and that seems to be a really excellent and sweet guy.

Your father was a really excellent and sweet guy, too. He comes back full force, and you’re left there, wondering.

Is Bit-na really happy?

Is Seung-min?

Is your mother?

Is Joong-gil?

Are… you?

[3:01 AM] you: i thought i could do this on my own, but it’s so very hard. it hasn’t been just my mom and i in so long. i feel like i’m tearing apart at the seams

You send him that. He – Park Joong-gil. You send him that, after much debating, even more deleting and retyping, after wondering whether this is a burden you have the right to share with him. He is yours and you are his, but is everything else, too? Is that what it means, to love someone?

Your phone is almost back in your pocket – Joong-gil is sleeping, he won’t reply, he’ll text something back tomorrow morning – when you feel it vibrate longer than it would with an incoming text.

It’s a phone call.

You quickly glance around your coach and only spot an old man at the other end, snoring lightly, deeply asleep. You glance around even if you don’t have a mind to pick up the call, but then you think about your father. What if he had called before taking his life? Would things have gone differently had he done that, had someone picked up the phone?

You shake your head.

JOONG-GIL 💗 flashes before your eyes, on the lit screen of your phone.

“Are you alright? Where are you?” is what he says when you bring your phone to your ear. The fact that it’s him – him, and his deep, reassuring voice, and the fact that he’s up at three in the morning, and that he’s there, on the other side of the call – is like a bucket of cold water soothing every itch and every ache.

“On the train,” you murmur back, careful not to be too loud even though it’s just you and that old man, and a whole empty carriage between the two of you. “I..” Your throat closes up and your vision blurs. You feel scattered all over the place – Incheon, the Butterfly Park, Busan, your house, the beach, your mother’s hospital and your father’s office. Pieces here and there, hidden away from your memories, and it’s like you should retrieve them to be able to go forward at the same speed of this train you’re on, but they’re so many you have no clue where to start. “I dreamed about my father. And… butterflies.” Your voice breaks on that last word, and you wish Joong-gil were there, and that you were in his arms, sheltered away from the rest of the world.

His exhale at the other end of the line tickles your eardrum. “I wanted to come with you,” he confesses after a moment, “but I didn’t want to impose myself.”

“I wish I had asked you to come,” you confess in turn. The landscape flies by outside the train window and you wish you were going in the opposite direction so that you could come back when you’d be ready.

“You can ask me now, and I will be there as soon as I can.”

Seconds tick by.

The train stops at a station. A few sleepy passengers get off, luggage in hand, but for the rest, the place is deserted.

You think it over, again and again, wondering whether you have a right to. “Can you come to me?” you breathe out, and then, on the next inhale, hold the air in, waiting for his reply. You’re hit by the realization that you want him to say yes – and that you want him to stay. Not just at your house in Busan, but by your side. Today, and tomorrow, and the day after. If you could always have a tomorrow with him, you’d be happy. As light as a butterfly, as bright as a buttercup.

“Of course I can.” You hear his smile. It’s like with your father in that dream: you didn’t need pictures to know how his face would move, what his expressions would morph into.

“And can you… stay on the line?” you ask, clutching onto your phone like a lifeline. “For a little bit longer?”

*

It’s silent, at home with your mom.

The pale light of dawn seeps in through the lace curtains of the kitchen. It’s like the ghost of a caress on the skin, so very distant, like a memory fighting to come back to the surface once more. Goosebumps awaken on your skin as you look at your mother falling asleep on the yo she laid out in the living.

Sometimes you wish you could be in her head, read her thoughts, or that you could both open up more. Talk about what happened without a ball of tears and regrets and sorrow forming in your throat. It would be the very best thing after watching both your mother and father sleep on that yo, together, gently kissed by the light of a new day rising above the ocean.

You’re quiet when you get up and even quieter when you wash the mugs you used to drink tea to warm up after the biting cold that welcomed you at the train station. When you’re done in the kitchen, you pad back to your mother and lie down next to her.

Her breathing is soft and even. The expression wrinkles on her face have softened, and you look at the way her eyes slowly dance behind her closed eyelids.

Is she her own caterpillar? Is she wrapped up in her own cocoon, under those floral blankets, waiting to turn into a butterfly?

Is that what comes next?

Did your father become one?

You glance down at your wrist, at that red outline of a butterfly, and there’s this tiny voice at the back of your mind – six-year-old you stuck inside the Butterfly Park, maybe? – that whispers back, yes, yes, he’s become the prettiest of them all.

She stirs in her sleep, your mother, when you gently push away those stray hairs from her face, but she doesn’t wake up. You notice the first gray hairs, poking out here and there on her head, even though her face looks as young as ever, so different from the version of her that picked you up this morning.

Is that how much tomorrow struck her, when it finally came?

You wake up a short time later, without having even realized you were on the verge of dozing off yourself.

Once, twice, you blink the sleep out of your eyes. You’re lying on your right side, facing the French window that opens onto what’s left of the backyard vegetable garden and the empty flower beds.

It takes you a while to come back to planet Earth, and a little bit longer to realize your phone is vibrating next to your head.

“Hello?” you ask without checking the caller’s ID. With your voice so groggy and laced with sleep, much lower than it usually is, it’s no wonder Joong-gil manages to figure out,

“Were you asleep? Did I wake you up?”

“No, I was already awake.” Your free hand shoots up to shield a yawn but it’s a second too late, even when you sit up and yawn a second time. Your gaze flits around the room, your left ear straining to try and pick up eventual sounds, but a look at the clock hanging above the television – a little past seven – and you realize your mother must have already left for work. “Are you still driving?”

“I’m about to pull up at your house,” he replies, and this time, a bit more awake, you pick up the faint notes of the music in the background. It sounds familiar, something you’re sure you’ve already heard even though you’re unable to fully discern it right now.

A gasp of surprise slips past your lips before you can hold it back, and then you’re shooting up to your feet, almost tripping in the tangled-up blanket. “I’ll wait at the door!”

The first thought that goes through your mind when you’re finally in his arms is, you smell like home. It’s sudden and not something you can really explain, but it still feels so raw, in a way. Like you’ve been stripped bare and he’s there, anchor and shield and lifejacket, and probably – definitely – so much more.

You breathe him in like you haven’t seen him in forever, and he lets you pull him in – closer, tighter, pulling at the wooly sweater under his puffer jacket, desperately clawing at his back, and desperately swallowing the tears back down. You’re strong enough, though, to stop yourself from crying.

It’s a different story one hour later, when he takes you to the cemetery.

You’re standing in front of the display case with the urn with your father’s ashes. There’s a picture of the three of you – your mother, ten-year-old you, and your father on the beach. All smiling at the camera, and it’s incredible how much pain you can hide behind a simple thing. You just show a glimpse of your teeth, and everything seems fine. Your mother’s crinkled eyes and a flower in her hair; you and your braces and those two stitched on your cheekbone from when you tripped right outside your ballet school; your father’s glasses, askew over the bridge of his nose, and his arms wrapped around the girls of his life.

“I missed you,” you blurt out, trying not to shake even though everything inside you is clenching up. You have no clue when the last time you showed up here was, always overwhelmed by his loss, and by life with just your mother, and your job, someone else’s dream that slowly but surely has become your own.

If you sing loud enough, will he hear your voice? Will he see you? Will he come back?

“I miss you.”

You’re not even really aware of Park Joong-gil standing a few steps behind you. Looking at you. Looking at your father’s urn, at your father’s picture, at the tiny bouquet you pasted to the glass. Looking at you looking at all that, taking it in like it’s something that is ripping you apart.

And it is.

The pain you thought you had overcome – the pain you always manage to ignore while in Seoul – hits you out of nowhere, from each and every direction. It pulls you under like a wave; it shoots you up into the sky like a rocket. Pain and memories play a game of tug-o-war with you – your body and your mind and your soul.

Just as you were strong enough not to cry in Joong-gil’s arms earlier, you’re strong enough to cry now. The words you’d like to tell your father – whisper, and speak, and yell – die on your tongue, on your sobs, as you crouch down under the weight of a yesterday with him, a today with his ashes, and a tomorrow that’s so shrouded in fog you’re not able to see through it.

It takes your body endless minutes for you to register Joong-gil’s arms around you – strong and secure, pulling you back into his chest like you can let go for a moment and lean everything on him. His face is in the crook of your neck, gently whispering things you can’t really hear over the sound of your sobs and the blood in your ears.

“I told myself I wouldn’t cry,” you manage to say at some point, blinded by the tears, barely aware of the fact that you’re now sitting on the cold tiles of the floor, between Joong-gil’s legs, instead of still being squatted down. “But I can’t.”

He lets you cry it out. He lets you tug at his hands when you silently beg him to hold you closer so that you can feel something else other than this emptiness and this pain, like your own cocoon of sorts.

And he sits there with you through it all, until the tears die out and you’re resting back against him, the back of your head leaning against his shoulder as you look up at the small bouquet you bought for your father from the floor. His lips are by your temple, the ghost of a touch that does more at calming you down than any amount of words ever could.

“How are you really?” is the first thing you ask, voice sore and throat tender. You’re still looking up at those flowers, breathing through your mouth, and while your heart is still beating fast, it’s not desperately galloping in your chest anymore.

“Hmm?” His hum reverberates in his chest and into yours, and he tugs you a little closer.

You swallow – saliva or another lump of tears or simple sadness, you don’t know. “My father always seemed so happy, but then he took his life. He wore a mask for so long and we didn’t see it. And we couldn’t do anything. We never asked.” You tilt your head slightly to the side, taking one deep breath after the other. “So, how are you really?”

He thinks for a while – or that’s your own interpretation of it. And the silence is a nice caress on the heated skin of your face, where the cold of the weather is making what’s left of your tears bite. “I’m… okay. I’m so in love with you that being powerless now tears my heart out of my chest.”

When he asks your same question back, it takes you a while for you to give him an answer, to make order among your feelings and your thoughts and your memories. To lighten your heavy heart and call back your soul.

You tell him about your father, and your mother, and how overcome your job makes you feel, like you’re constantly wandering without going anywhere or like you’re going in too many directions at once without finding your place. You tell him about Bit-na, and how sometimes you wish you were her, teaching little kids ballet and being free to date her Seung-min without having to worry what anyone but her parents think of her and of him and of them together. You tell him about Joon-woong, so sweet and dear, caught up in this web of lies just because your agency wants more money.

And you tell him about yourself. About six-year-old you, her bunny backpack, her twin braids, looking at butterflies with her Daddy. About the tooth you chipped in your Incheon home or all the times you used to run on the beach after moving to Busan.

And then you tell him how you feel – that you don’t know, but that you know you want to love him more than you love everything else because he feels right. And like home. And that your dad would have really loved him, with his deep voice and how he plays the piano, and because that one night he made all of his daughter’s favorite foods, and because he makes her feel happier than she’s ever been in a long time.

When you eventually get off the floor and walk outside, it’s snowing finely.

“If we were normal people, what would you do?”

“I’d love you openly.”

*

Your mother ends up insisting for Joong-gil to stay at your place again. Having someone around is nice, she says, putting even more rice into his bowl than she normally would for herself, after commemorating her husband’s death.

You really don’t want to say it out loud, but it’s clear on her face: how happy she is that Joong-gil is here. Not just simply in her home, but in your – her daughter’s – life. It’s like life is light again, whether that’s for just a moment or whether that’s something that’s here to stay.

When you wake up the next morning, still wrapped up in Joong-gil’s arms on the yo in the living room, you’re barely able to read Joon-woong’s text before you see the pictures someone must have taken of you and Joong-gil at the cemetery.

[6:53 AM] joon-woongie: i hope you’re doing alright, with everything but especially with the anniversary of your dad’s passing 🫂 i’m sorry someone took pictures, but don’t let the agency get to you. i’m on your side and we can both bite back together!

“What are you doing up already?” Joong-gil’s morning voice is a nice combination of groggy and soothing, even more when those words are muttered into the crook of your neck.

“Someone took pictures of us during my breakdown,” you whisper back, eyes glued to your figure crouched on the floor, head on your knees, and Joong-gil kneeling down behind you. The way he held you. The way he pulled your hair away from your face. You didn’t even know he had kissed the side of your head, and that’s the only thing you’re grateful for those pictures because that new knowledge really does make you feel warm inside. “I’m really sorry. Your agency will probably give you hell.”

“Hell is playing by your agency’s lie of you and Joon-woong dating,” he exhales, making you turn in his arms and taking your phone from your hands just when it starts to ring. “I want to be with you. I’ve wanted to be with you for a long time now. I don’t want to have to hide our us just because I’m afraid of what might or might not happen tomorrow. I don’t want a tomorrow where we’re not together because of the rest of the world.”

Your smile turns into a grin, and soon you’re beaming. You haven’t beamed this bright in fuck knows how long, and it feels good. It feels great, even, and you want to continue feeling like this. Today, and tomorrow, and the day after. “Is that your confession to me?”

“I’d confess to you every single day, with every single breath I take,” he grins. “Call Joon-woong. I can handle anything they’ll throw at us.”

When you pick back up your phone, however, it’s your agency calling.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Wow, kudos to you for reading this far! 😅💕

Unlike Instagram, Tumblr runs on reblogs, so if you’re in the mood, kindly consider leaving a comment and/or sharing this fic with your friends. However, any form of feedback is welcome :)

If you’d like to be tagged in what I write, let me know!

Original video used for banner: https://www.pexels.com/video/close-up-video-of-dried-roses-6092477/

[angelaiswriting]

If you want to be tagged in what I write or submit a request, INBOX ME. | Read my REQUEST RULES before requesting. | LINK TO FANDOM MASTERLIST

[r] = requested  :|:  [nr] = not requested  :|:  [✓] = completed  :|:  ❌ = discontinued  :|:  🔞 = 18+ only  :|:  🎄 = Christmas specials

PARK JOONG-GIL

🔞 [✓] Stage Love | Park Joong-gil x fem!reader, singer!AU [nr]: Part One / Part Two / Part Three 🎁 >> AO3

[kind-wolf]

Thank you for this massive Christmas present! @angelaiswriting

...like you’re not standing in the way of an avalanche but on an empty beach, early in the morning, when it would be just you, the waves, and the night sky slowly bleeding colors and turning into a bright new opportunity

Once again with the poetry!

“More important than this?” 

No such thing!

“How did I get so lucky?” you muse, smiling up at him like you’re tipsy off of his presence alone.

So sweet I'm getting cavities! 😄

He hums. “Yeah. You know how scary she is when she gets mad, right?”

Ah I just love Ryeon!

He’s so fucking handsome – in general, every minute of every goddamn day

Abso-fucking-lutely!

...and walking would feed the uneasiness in your bones, so speedwalking it is. 

🤣

“That’s how Park Joong-gil found this place the first time.”

Fuck off! She's making that up! 😄

He’s so fucking cute

Yes! 🥰😍🥰

Bit-na calls him ‘the love of your life,’ 

Naww! 💞

...always makes you feel like the Michelin woman.

Please! 🤣

It’s like Jumadeung was never there.

Jesus! What an elaborate show the old Lady put on!

Well done! 👏

Stage Love (3 of 3) | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: Park Joong-gil x fem!reader 

✏️ Summary: after the news of you and Joong-gil dating go public, many things change. (Not requested, based on an idea by @kind-wolf​)

✏️ A/N: LOL three months later but… 🤷‍♀️ enjoy! I really did manage to write a full story without angst, wow. This is also a gift for my dear friend Alice💗the whole story, really: it wouldn’t have been a thing without you :’)

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff, (maybe still a bit of) slowburn, unrealistic description of how business works, hints at Jumadeung’s supernatural nature, smut, so 18+ ONLY! > Fingering f/r, oral f/r, mentions of handjobs, unprotected sex; mentions of death and suicide (reader’s dad) [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 20,8k

part one  |  part two  << PART THREE

Lying next to you, you watch Joong-gil sleep. Your eyes trace the lines of his face the same way your fingers would – gently and slowly, above his brow, all the way to his temple, down his cheek and then his jaw until you reach his chin and look up at his lips. They’re set in a light pout that makes you smile – how peaceful and soft he looks when he’s asleep: not a complete one-eighty from his awake persona, but almost there nonetheless.

Keep reading

[kind-wolf]

Oh I love how you incorporated Jumadeung and Death reapers!

Nevertheless, there’s still a spark of uneasiness twisting your insides into knots when he starts walking down a dimly lit set of stairs.

Good man! Could you maybe be a gentleman and lead her by the hand?! Jeez....

“Sounds exactly like something a serial killer would say,” 

lol my thoughts exactly

“God, I can’t believe you had to hear that, or that you even remember,”

Gotta remember there's competition... 🤣

One smile from him and everything’s warm and fuzzy all of a sudden, like the rest of the world slows down to allow him time to shine.

... your mind providing you with the mental photograph of the schedule your manager jotted down on a post-it note stuck to your fridge.

The most unrelatable thing in the fic. Remembering anything? Never heard of it. 😆

You take a hold of it now, and he wraps his fingers tightly around your hand before he grabs the arm of your chair with his other hand and pulls you closer until your knees are slotted between his spread legs and pressed up against the edge of his seat.

😍😍

He’s smirking, changing the topic, which is never a good thing when it comes to him and how surprisingly teasing he can be. “Lim Ryung-gu…”

Bwahahaha! Caught!

His breath fans the top of your lips in such a way that it feels like the ghost of a kiss, and you’re so close to him you can smell his cologne, 

Joong-gil has some sexy moves,...

You're trying to kill me. I knew it!

...you end up planting a celebratory wet kiss on Joong-gil’s lips without even realizing you’re doing it.

WHAT

His eyelids are heavy and all his weight is leaning against the couch like he’s a bag of potatoes.

No matter the circumstances.... Comparing that man to a bag of potatoes is a fucking crime.

“What was that kiss about?” he asks without giving you the time to even think. 

I knew he'd bring it up! 😄

It’s like you’re hypnotized, and you’d like to blame your deafening heartbeat for the fact that you can’t stop that meak yeah from tumbling past your lips. 

“Who do you think you’re fooling? I can see how swollen your lips are from all the way across the Pacific.”

🤣🤣🤣

And then, before you can even ponder your words or even just realize what trajectory your brain’s following, you find yourself proposing, “you’re invited, if you’d like. If you have nothing else to do.”

Uhhhhhhh 👀

[9:13 PM] you: wishing my fingers were yours

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

“That I wanna pursue you?” When you nod, he continues, “never been more serious.”

“You will survive,” 

BUT I WON'T!

Stage Love | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: (kind of eventual?) Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fwb!Lim Ryung-gu x fem!reader, mentions of past Park Joong-gil x Koo Ryeon)

✏️ Summary: it’s supposed to be just work, but what happens when you actually start falling for the Park Joong-gil?

✏️ A/N: this is what happens when @kind-wolf​ goes on a tangent with some random AU and I dish out The Sex 😂 I also hope this drama actually has a fandom :’) (I also did go on a tangent with this, so it’ll have a part two hopefully soon.)

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff (I guess), slowburn, and smut, so 18+ only. Fwb stuff, fingering f/r, oral m/r and f/r, dry-humping, female masturbation, alcohol, food ? PJG is one sexy mf and everyone falls for him. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21k

✏️ Extra: I actually saw this on IG a few days ago and thought it’d fit well with this fic. Worth checking out imo 👀

PART ONE

The surge of post-performance adrenaline is still rushing through your veins when you plop down onto the back seat of Joong-gil’s van. All the dancing on stage, rubbing into him in some parts of the choreography, the flashing lights, the audience – it all has you wired and buzzing, ready to take on anything the rest of the night might throw your way.

Keep reading

[kind-wolf]

I’m not sure I enjoy this waiting game of yours :( — pjg

Jesus Christ! The not knowing who they were from, drive me insane!

...but I needed to hear your voice,”

🥰😍🥰😍🥰

...but then I panicked at the last second because of how cheesy it was and I threw it away.”

Nawwww!

...you’re glad you’re wearing Joong-gil’s hoodie 

It’s on his face, in his voice, in the way he reminds you of every single time your mother’s ever worried about her only child’s well-being.

So in character for jw!

...like someone cast a spell and tied the same thread to both of your wrists, linking you together. 

I see what you did there!

He looks just as charming as ever, dressed in all black, with his hair slightly tousled and his eyes back on you.

Shut up! You don't need to paint me a picture! I'm already...

Like you might combust on the spot because of how giddy you are, like this happiness you have inside is almost too much to be contained....

Eeeep! That's such a good description!

RMT bassist Choi Joon-woong and solo singer Y/N dating.

Ah shit! I knew it was coming, but it still hit me in the face! 😄

“We both like each other. We both want to spend time together. I can be yours, and you can be mine.”

“Nah, I think I’m just gonna spend the night with my girlfriend,” 

I'm about to pass out! 😍

...always overwhelmed by his loss, and by life with just your mother, and your job, someone else’s dream that slowly but surely has become your own.

Why do you have to hurt me so?!

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Whatever the fuck I want bitches!

Stage Love (2 of 3) | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fake dating!Choi Joon-woong x fem!reader)

✏️ Summary: things finally start moving between you and Joong-gil, but what happens when, following the leak of some pictures, your agency decides to exploit a (fake) dating scandal between you and Choi Joon-woong for its own economic gain? (Not requested, based on an idea by @kind-wolf​)

✏️ A/N: took me forever to write this part, had a breakdown in the middle, and it turned out so long I’d need a part three. Bon appétit😬 jokes aside, this isn’t exactly what I was aiming for, but then again my fics do whatever the f they want, so… Let me know if you’re down for a pt. 3 or not.✌️

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff, (maybe still a bit of) slowburn, (slight angst, maybe?), pining, and (light?) smut, so 18+ ONLY! > Fingering f/r, oral f/r, mentions of handjobs, dry-humping; mentions of death, of a corpse, and of suicide, grieving?. Mentions of the show Tomorrow but no spoilers. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21,7k

part one  <<  PART TWO

The first time you receive that unsigned bouquet of flowers, you worry your home address might have been leaked somehow and that some fan has decided to go above and beyond to show you their love and support. After the porter hands it to you one day after a meeting with Joon-woong and the team for the soundtrack of an upcoming drama, you bring it up to your apartment and dissect it like it’s a specimen in a laboratory you have to study.

Keep reading