જ⁀◝✩ In which your boyfriend cries on the phone mid-party, and you cannot wait to get home to him fast enough.
➤ ohyul x reader, insecure ohyul / hurt-comfort, established relationship, lovesick/unhinged in love, fluff & angst ( not hard-core angst !! )
The party noise hits different when the only frequency your brain is tuned to is several kilometers away, curled up on a couch, probably wearing your hoodie because his smells like his own cologne after a few hours, and he likes pretending it's an accident that he always reaches for yours instead.
You haven't touched your drink. You haven't really touched anything tonight, not the conversation, not the canapés, not the version of yourself that exists in rooms Ohyul isn't in, because honestly, that version feels like a faded photocopy of the real one. The real you only fully turns on when he's in frame. Everyone jokes about it. Your coworkers don't even know him, and they already know you're "the girl who's obsessed with her boyfriend," because you cannot go four sentences into small talk without somehow finding your way back to him.
It's been nine months of this particular insanity. Nine months since the boy who used to tie his shoelaces twice as slow just to walk beside you a little longer finally admitted that he'd been quietly, hopelessly gone on you since the first week of first year and somehow, impossibly, you'd been just as gone on him the whole time, neither of you brave enough to say it until uni stopped giving you excuses to dance around it.
You think about him constantly. Embarrassingly so. Mid-meeting, mid-shower, mid-sentence with someone else entirely, your brain will just — cut to him. The way his nose scrunches when he's trying not to smile. The way he says your name, like it's something rare, he still can't believe he gets to keep.
So when your phone rings and his name lights up the screen, you don't hesitate for even a fraction of a second — you've never once let his call go to voicemail in nine months, not once, because some unhinged, devoted part of you is permanently on standby for him and you've made peace with that about yourself.
"Ohyul," you breathe out, and just saying his name does something stupid and warm to your chest, "baby, what's up, are you okay?"
"Hey," he says. Soft. Too soft. "Are you enjoying the party?"
You already know something's wrong because his voice does this specific thing when he's hurting, gets smaller, gentler, like he's trying not to take up space even in his own sadness. You've memorized every register of his voice the way some people memorize song lyrics. You could pick him out of a thousand voices blind.
"It's boring without you," you say honestly, already drifting from the noise toward a quiet corner like your body is magnetized toward anywhere that lets you focus completely on him. "Everyone's just talking about nothing. I keep thinking about how much more fun it'd be if you were here being weird and feeding me from your plate."
A huff of breath that's trying so hard to be a laugh.
"I'll let you get back to it," he says. "Don't want to—"
A sniffle. Sharp, involuntary, the kind that escapes before pride can catch it.
Then silence. The call's ended.
Your whole body goes cold and electric at once. You don't even process the decision to leave — you're already moving, weaving through people you'll apologize to tomorrow, already outside hailing a cab with shaking hands, because the single most unbearable thought in your entire universe is Ohyul, hurting, alone, trying to hide it from you. You would set the building on fire to get to him faster if it meant shaving thirty seconds off this drive. You are not being dramatic. You would.
The fifteen-minute ride feels like a war of attrition between you and time itself.
The apartment is dim when you let yourself in, heart slamming, and you hear it before you see it — that quiet, hiccupping sound coming from the bedroom, and underneath it, barely audible, your name. Not called out. Just whispered. Like he needed to say it even with no one there to hear, like your name is something his body reaches for automatically when it's breaking.
You've never moved faster in your life.
He's curled on the bed, blanket fisted in one hand, shoulders shaking, and the second he sees you in the doorway his face does this awful, naked thing — caught, ashamed, trying to wipe his face like that erases the last ten minutes.
"Baby, you're supposed to be— I'm fine, I'm sorry, go back, you shouldn't have—"
"Don't," you say, voice cracking, already crawling onto the bed, already gathering him against you like physically closing the distance could undo whatever's hurting him. "Don't you dare tell me to go back. There is not a single universe where I choose a party over you. Not one. I would leave anything for you, do you understand that? Anything."
He folds into you like he's been waiting for permission, face pressed to your neck, and you feel the wet warmth of his tears against your skin and it nearly splits you open.
"I don't deserve how much you love me," he chokes out. "You could have anyone — someone stronger, more — I don't know, manly, someone who doesn't fall apart over nothing, and I've been in love with you since I was eighteen years old and too scared to even sit next to you on purpose, and now I have you and I'm terrified every single day that I'm going to wake up and you'll realize I'm not enough and—"
"Stop." You pull back just enough to grip his face in both hands, forcing him to look at you, and you're crying too now, openly, because you cannot hear him talk about himself like this and stay composed. "Stop talking about yourself like you're someone I tolerate. Ohyul. I am unwell about you. Do you understand that? I think about you constantly. I cannot get through a single day without you crossing my mind a hundred times. My coworkers make fun of me because I cannot stop talking about you. I am not being poetic, I mean this literally, no version of my life makes sense without you in the center of it."
"You ran forty minutes through pouring rain just to bring me an umbrella. You carried me two kilometers on your back when I twisted my ankle, joking the entire time so I wouldn't be scared. You kneel down and tie my shoelaces every single morning without me even asking, like it's instinct, like loving me has become something your body just does without permission from your brain." Your voice is shaking but you don't stop. "You think manliness is the absence of feeling. I think it's choosing me, gently, completely, every single day, and never once making me feel like a burden for needing you back."
He's full-on crying now, but he's also laughing, wet and disbelieving, like he can't hold both feelings without spilling over.
"I love you so much it doesn't feel safe," he admits. "Like I've built my entire life around you, and if you ever left, I don't know what would be left standing."
"Then it's a good thing I'm never finding out," you say fiercely, pulling him impossibly closer, "because I feel the exact same way about you. You're not just my boyfriend, Ohyul, you're the entire architecture of my life. I rearrange my whole day around the five minutes I get to see your face. I have never in my life been this insane over another person, and I never want to be normal about you. I want to stay exactly this unhinged, for as long as you'll let me."
He kisses you then — slow, shaky, tasting like salt and relief — and when he pulls back his forehead stays pressed to yours, breath mixing with yours like neither of you can stand even that much distance.
"You're the manliest, strongest, most impossibly perfect person I have ever known," you whisper against his mouth. "Not because you don't break. Because you let me see you when you do, and you trust me to put you back together every single time."
"I love you," he says, like it's not enough, like he wants to invent a bigger word and doesn't have one. "I love you, I love you—"
"I love you too," you breathe back, just as wrecked, just as gone. "More than that party. More than anything in that entire loud, empty room. More than anything that isn't you."
Outside, the city keeps moving without either of you noticing.
In here, there's only the two of you, tangled together, breathing each other in like oxygen — two people who fell so hopelessly, helplessly in love that it scares everyone around them, and who wouldn't trade that terror for anything in the world.
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