There are two members of the WPPS (Western Pennsylvania Paranormal Society): Kim Namjoon, and yourself. After saving a bit of money, the two of you decide to take your paranormal equipment deep into the Appalachian forest to see if the local folklore there is true.
There are two members of the WPPS (Western Pennsylvania Paranormal Society): Kim Namjoon, and yourself. After saving a bit of money, the two of you decide to take your paranormal equipment deep into the Appalachian forest to see if the local folklore there is true.
{nothing yet.. come back soon !!} (•˕ •マ.ᐟ
⦸ carpe diem /•᷅•᷄\੭
୨୧ dead poet's society crossover ୨୧ angst ୨୧ dark academia ୨୧
There are 7 members in the dead poet's society and 7 members of bts. Coincidence? I think not.
It's been six years since bts debuted, and you've had enough. Six years of cameras in your face, media bullying you, reporters asking you the same questions. "Are you dating any of the boys?" So for Christmas in 2019, you decide to go home. The states home. You just didn't realize the effect it would have on them.
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So the cabin that Namjoon and the reader are staying in is a real cabin! It is a cabin I stayed at in summer of 2022 with my family. I do not recall the real location of this particular cabin, as my family goes camping a lot to a lot of different destinations.
I have that thing in my brain where I can't actually visualize new concepts in my head. Most of the time when I write or read books, houses end up taking the shape of people's houses I've been in before (often it ends up being my old house). So for this cabin, my brain just picked one of the dozens of cabins I've actually been in before.
I knew I had this video somewhere, I just had to do some digging.
It is important to note the loft bedroom upstairs. There is no wall or door. Namjoon takes the upstairs bedroom, while the reader takes the downstairs master bedroom.
In addition to what is shown in this video, there is a wrap around porch (that had a nice hammock may I add). Also, this cabin has an unfinished and super creepy basement. There is also only one bathroom in the whole cabin.
"I don't know," you admit, "Maybe I'll be a barista."
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𓉸 wc: 2.9k
𓉸 content warning: Depictions of mental heath struggles including depression and anxiety (panic attack).
Also mentions of life and death. They are in a graveyard. This is a story about ghosts. What do you want from me??
𓉸 a/n: Alright lets get past the elephant in the room. Yes. This is a repost. Yes. I rewrote the end of the chapter. When I originally posted this chapter, I was debating how to end it. I was in a haste to post the chapter, so I just quickly picked how it ended without giving it enough thought.
Then the following days I regretted my decision. I thought about the next parts after my original chapter ending and I realized we aren't there yet. We aren't ready for big cryptid action and the aftermath yet.
Lets be real: there's only like 12 readers on each chapter of this book. So nobody is really going to care this early in that I posted something, regretted it, and then changed it. If they do they can cry about it.
Bottom line is, if I'm not satisfied with the book, I'm not gonna write it. So just this once, I deleted it and fixed it. It won't happen again.
It's been 3 weeks since I posted this chapter the first time (March 30th), so I have given this enough thought. I am satisfied with the ending of this chapter now.
Moving forward, I will not be holding myself to the original 2 week deadline for chapters. Obviously I will make an effort to move forward with this book every chance I get, but I am not going to rush myself. This book is for me and I want to be happy with it.
Well then, lets just get on with it and enjoy this chapter! I sure as hell enjoy it now :)
P.S. If you catch the super niche reference I made in this chapter you get to marry me.
November, Senior Year
"Calico."
You hate that nickname. Have hated it since he started calling you Calico freshman year. At the time, he was making fun of you for being childish and collecting those Calico Critters figures. Those cute animals you once treasured are now collecting dust in a box in your closet.
It should be painfully obvious to anyone around that you're not a calico cat, but instead a black cat. So full of negative energy that people avoid you as to not catch your bad vibes.
You don't raise your head from where it's buried in your arms, and you don't bother answering him.
He repeats himself, more stern this time, "Calico."
Your head snaps up so your eyes can meet his, "What do you want?"
Namjoon furrows his brows, "I want you to listen to me."
"No." You grumble as you lay your head back into your arms. The thick black hoodie helps block out any light.
He pokes your arm. You swat it away and curse him out.
"What is wrong with you?" You shout, your voice laced with hostility.
"I care about you, I'm sorry." he says, frustrated, eyes glossed over with the threat of tears.
"Well then stop caring," you spit out, "save us both the energy."
You shoot up in bed in a cold sweat. Immediately, you reach for your phone and tap the screen to check the time. It reads:
Sunday, September 21st 3:57am
Before you can think or move, Yoongi's hand lands gently on your shoulder.
"Are you alright?" he asks, voice deep with a mixture of sleep and concern.
You turn to him with tears in your eyes. Yoongi immediately understands the severity of the situation and sits up himself. He hastily pulls you towards him so you are pressed against his chest, legs straddling him.
Somehow your face is pressed against him as he rubs your back in steady, gentile strokes. If your brain wasn't actively trying to process that night terror you just had, you would be wondering how it's possible to rest your head against him.
Instead, your breath begins to get uneven. Why do those horrible memories plague your brain? And how could you have been such a shitty friend to Namjoon?
The nightmare felt too real. Like you were re-living the whole thing again. Making the same stupid mistakes, saying the same horrible things.
Almost as if he could hear your thoughts, Yoongi whispers to you, "Shhh. You didn't mean it. He knows you didn't mean it."
Yoongi puts his chin on top of your head, carding his hands through your hair. With his other hand he gently rubs circles onto your back while he shushes you in an attempt to calm you down.
Your eyes squeeze shut to force the tears out. Embarrassingly, your crying causes you to hiccup as you try to breathe in. Yoongi whispers small things to attempt to comfort you, but the sound of his voice gets distant and the ringing in your ears becomes more prominent.
Those things happened years ago. You apologized to Namjoon over a hundred times since. Yet, something unconscious deep inside you won't let it go.
Out of nowhere, Yoongi pulls you back so forcefully it knocks the ringing out of your head. His hands stay planted firmly on your shoulders, forcing you to look back at him. He just stares at you for a second, studying your face.
"I had an older brother," he starts, "three years older than me. We used to play outside in the street before our mom trusted us to go where she couldn't see us from the house."
He’s attempting to distract you from your frantic mental state.
"We would play this game where we would toss giant bouncy balls as high as we could over the power lines. Whoever got it over the most wires won." He paused to let out a sarcastic laugh, then continued, "Brilliant idea, really."
Slowly, and almost so subtly that you don't notice, your breathing matches back to a stable pace. Momentarily, the tears stop falling from your eyes, and your heart no longer feels like it's going to thump out of your chest.
Yoongi doesn't falter, "One time my brother hit one of the power lines so hard it made sparks fly through the air. We got so scared we ran straight back into the garage and didn't play that game for like a week."
A small smile finds itself on your face and you chime in, "My little brothers and I used to play that game, too."
Yoongi's eyes find yours again, fondness spreading across his face, "Feeling better?"
Gently, you nod your head to let him know you're okay.
"Do you want to try go back to bed?" He asks gently with a tilt of his head.
You do. So again, you nod to him. Slowly and carefully, Yoongi pulls back the covers and the two of you shift back to laying in the bed.
It isn't long before you fall back asleep to the sound of Yoongi's steady breathing. His arms wrap around you in a tight embrace, and your face lays gently pressed softly against his chest.
Beside you, the sun sets beautifully in the distance. Mother nature paints a perfect picture of reds, oranges, and yellows that drift perfectly into the hazy purple dusk above the sky.
In front of you, you struggle to keep balance on your tippy toes. Your current task at hand is to hang these thermal cameras around the investigation location for the night. Tragically, you are too short to reach where the buckle should tie around this tree branch.
Before you can figure it out, a presence comes up behind you and brushes against your back. You jump out of fear and let out a squeak.
Namjoon's hands reach over you to finish what you were attempting and secure the camera to the tree. You turn around to shoot him a sharp (but harmless) glare for scaring you.
"Should've known better than to ask the short one to hang the cameras." He muses, offering you a sarcastic smile.
You turn and walk away while mumbling, "Stupid, cocky tall people. Always think just 'cuz they're taller than me means they're better than me. Shut up, go to hell."
Namjoon follows close behind you and the two of you walk back to the car where the rest of your equipment is. With the thermal and night vision cameras all set up, all that was left was to set up microphones.
Once you get back to the car, you open the back passenger door and take the lid off the box labeled 'mics'. You take the biggest one out of the box, then hold it out behind you to hand it to Namjoon.
He takes it gently from you, "Are you nervous for our first night of investigation?"
"Joon, I have just about every emotion floating around my brain right now," you admit to him as you take the other two microphones in your hands.
With your hands full, you can't shut the car door. Namjoon steps forward to help, but just as he reaches for the door, you hoist your leg up to slam the door shut with your foot.
"So cars are expensive to fix when broken, you know." Namjoon says flatly, sending you a glare.
You beam back up at him.
The two of you walk in silence to where you'll set up the microphones and connect them to a few chosen cameras. The sunset dips lower now, almost no sun peaking above the horizon.
For a few peaceful minutes, the two of you just work alongside each other. It's nice to be comfortable around someone without the constant need of small talk. You and Namjoon have been so close for so long that you are both content with just existing near each other.
Namjoon breaks the silence, "What are your plans after grad school?"
Plans. After. You hadn't really put any effort into thinking about it. Mostly because sometimes you still don't accept that there is an after now. Some part of your brain is still wired to thinking it'll all end soon.
Except it isn't like that anymore. You do need a plan for your life. Sure, you had found your one true love being the arts, but getting a long-term career in art or music isn't exactly easy. More likely, it would be small gigs for the rest of your life and that won't sustain you.
"Calico?" Namjoon calling by the nickname he reserves for you pulls you out of your thoughts.
"I don't know," you admit, "Maybe I'll be a barista."
Namjoon scoffs. Because of course he does. In his head, you're this amazing musical artistic prodigy that should be world famous with multiple paintings on display in the Louvre. In Namjoon's eyes, you are perfect.
When you look at yourself in the mirror, however, you're far from it. Sure, you might be good at the liberal arts university you attend, but on the large scale you're nothing. Not in a depressing way, in a realistic way.
"You can do much more than that." He whispers. Namjoon's words send a heat straight to your cheeks. So when you glace up at him, you're surprised to find his own cheeks are painted a bit blush as well.
You turn back to working on the microphones and try really hard to ignore the butterflies in your stomach. Now is not a good time to go over your feelings for Namjoon. There is a forest of paranormal to be investigated and a long trip stuck in a cabin with him.
So you make your best attempt to brush aside your feelings and concentrate on what is important right now.
Once the two of you are completely set up, dusk has arrived and the sun was mostly gone. You follow Namjoon back to the car to grab some EMF readers and maybe the spirit box. Definitely your pendulum.
Namjoon sets up the REM pod on top of the hood of his car. Probably the most flat surface out here. The REM pod sits idly and quietly for now.
He sighs, then turns to you, "You ready?"
Despite the fact that you are the furthest thing from ready, you nod your head at him. You can tell that something is up with Namjoon, but you decide not to press. Deep conversations can occur later if the two of you don't get much activity.
You pull out your investigation journal and note the date and time:
Sunday, September 21st 7:23pm
The two of you turn on your EMF readers and begin to walk along the trail in the woods.
For a long while, you two get nothing. The lights on the EMF reader stay on the red side, sometimes hopping up to orange but never any higher. Every once and awhile you hear the bushes shuffle due to a small animal.
You and Namjoon stay quiet. Both of you are too nervous to say anything that could lead to anything else. The comfortable silence from earlier now is laced with something thick.
Every once and awhile you pull out your journal to jot something down. Every time you do, you feel Namjoon's eyes on you.
"What, Namjoon?" You demand, not even looking up from your writing.
"Nothing." He sputters out, and you know you've caught him off guard because the word comes out quick and short.
An unimpressed hum sounds out of you, but you decide to let it go. There are more important tasks at hand, anyways.
You decide to begin your investigation routine. You pull out you pendulum and take a deep breath. Intention channels through you while you wait for your pendulum to tell you which direction to go.
The pendulum is stationary for a small moment. Most people are too impatient to use pendulums, but you prefer to move slowly so it fits your vibe. Slowly, the pendulum begins to sway in a specific direction, signaling where it wants you to walk.
So you follow the pendulum's lead and end up wandering around the woods. Through the trees and down the path with Namjoon trailing close behind you. The quiet crunch of fallen leaves beneath your feet is the only sound either of you make.
The two of you are only wandering along for about ten minutes when you come upon a clearing in the woods. Throughout the clearing are stones, evenly spaced in a grid across the grass. It quickly dawns on you that you've stumbled upon a graveyard.
Your head turns back to look at Namjoon, "Too bad we don't have the REM pod."
"I can run back real quick and get it?" he asks with a smile.
The idea ponders in your head for a second. You aren't entirely happy about the idea of being alone, even for just a few minutes. However, being in a graveyard is the perfect opportunity to use the REM pod.
You think for a second and make your decision. An attempt at a brave breath escapes your lips before you turn and nod to Namjoon. He offers you a reassuring smile for your obvious worries.
After he turns to leave, you decide to walk up and down the headstones to keep anxious thoughts at bay.
Forgettable names and dates pass you by and you can't help but daydream about the lives of each person's grave. You wonder about their jobs and daily lives, their families and friends, their interests and their quirks. Did they live their lives to the fullest? Did they die with no regrets? Usually it is assumed that dead people were old when they died, but that's not always the case.
You're careful to not step anywhere you shouldn't, pausing at each stone to read the engravings. You read each unfamiliar grave until one particular name catches your eye.
Min Yoongi
March 9th, 1966 - June 12th, 1992
Beloved Son and Brother
He was only 26. And he's been dead for over 30 years. You pause and begin to wonder what could've caused Yoongi's death.
The old man who lived in the cabin that you and Namjoon are currently staying in was far older than Yoongi was. That means the old man must have owned that cabin before Yoongi was even born. So that rules out Yoongi being stuck in the cabin due to living there. You conclude then that Yoongi must have died there.
Your mind races with theories on how Yoongi died. He died in or near the cabin, since his ghost was stuck there. But if he didn't live in the cabin, how could he have died there?
And at such a young age. People don't often just die in their 20s. You start to make a list in your head of possible causes of death. Illness, injury, accident; none of it made sense for him to have died in a cabin in the middle of the woods where an old man lived.
Then you realize that the old man probably wasn't actually that old when Yoongi died. Some quick mental math confirms that the old man wasn't even 50 yet.
"Doing alright, Calico?" The sudden nature of Namjoon speaking causes you to jump a bit. You had been so lost in thought that you didn't even hear him come up on you.
You take a quick glance back at Yoongi's grave before answering, "Yeah, I'm fine."
Normally, when you come to a burial ground (of any sort), your routine is to ask the pendulum to guide you to a grave. Then you try to talk to whoever is buried there. Because up until this point, you thought you had been communicating with ghosts at their burial spot.
Turns out the truth is that graveyards and cemeteries aren't even a bit haunted. The past few days have shown you a side of the paranormal that you hadn't even taken into consideration. Ghosts are stuck to the location they died.
Namjoon flips on the REM pod in his hand and places it in front of a rather large headstone before sitting in the grass facing it. You're hesitant to tell him that you won't pick up any paranormal activity here. How would you even explain to him how you came to figure that out?
Plus, that would be a huge letdown. To tell Namjoon that very investigation you've ever been on has been for nothing. That the two of you have wasted years of time and effort.
So you bite your tongue and let him believe the lie. Although, you're not too sure how to move forward with this information in general. You make an attempt to ignore it for now and file it as a later problem.
You join Namjoon in the grass and the two of you begin your routine. The both of you take turns asking questions out loud and looking for any activity on the REM pod or your pendulum.
Every so often a flicker of light would shine on the REM pod or your pendulum would swing a certain way. Usually you'd note it all down in your investigation log. But now you don't know what to believe. Is any of it real?
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Hiiii! This is an interest check for an OT7 one-shot series I am planning to write. All in the same AU, but each member got their own story like with a member. This is totally inspired by their "Keep Swimming" airport fashion, btw, and totally self-indulgent.
Kim Seokjin: the wide shoulders senior is ambitious, as he seeks to show for his last year that he deserves his spot at the National University competition, and maybe, even catch the interest of the olympic team. Too bad you're coming too, ready to distract him.
Min Yoongi: Just coming back from an injury, he is eager to prove he still got it, especially when he has a grudge against the opposite team. You catch him hiding his pain, and from then on become the most reliable ally he has.
Jung Hoseok: You're only coming to support you best friend/crush/ ex-situationship, you promise yourself. Okay, maybe because you also like partying with the other nerds of the swim team. But that's it, you swear. Not because you like staring at his shoulders and naked abs once in a while. He only sees you as a friend anyways, right?
Kim Namjoon: You accepted to become an assistant kinesiologist for the swimming team for the practical experience. You didn't expect academic weapon, stupid, idiot, genius, annoying Kim Namjoon to be part of the SWIM, him and his fucking dimples.
Park Jimin is a true campus sweetheart, easily catching the attention of anyone with functioning eyes. Too bad he fucking hates your guts, and now you're stuck together in an uncomfortable situation.
Kim Taehyung: When you were called to assist at a college swimming event, you were more than shocked to find in the SWIM team the man you had to save from drowning at a pool party a few months ago.
He, on his side, can't believe the first time the hot paramedic touched him was checking his airways right before attempting to perform mouth to mouth.
Jeon Jungkook is the rising star of the swim team, with his tattoo sleeve and his temper worthy of a hockey player. Sadly, it's your job to write an article about him and his performances for the university journal.
i know i promised updates every 2 weeks but i was on spring break (therefore my laptop did not open once) and then this past week has been insane for me at uni and my studies always come first.
i listened to arirang! (my unofficial ratings below) and i promise there will be an update soon. i’m about a third of the way through the next chapter of grey area and reforged has been written just needs editing (if anyone is even still interested in that)
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𓉸 wc: 3k
𓉸 content warning: Mentions of mental heath struggles (including depression, anxiety, and sucidal thoughts) as well as struggles with alcoholism. Neither of these are actually in the chapter, just mentioned as past events.
𓉸 a/n: The orignal goal I had set for myself was to get the chapters for this book posted no more than two weeks apart. And I did intend to have this done last week. Then I had a particulary rough week with anxiety so not much got done in my life other than useless worrying.
Speaking of anxiety! The main characer in this book sure is full of it. Oh wow, would you look at that, Tasha is writing her current struggles into her art. Everyone act suprised.
Seriously though I think I did a pretty good job portraying anxiety? Idk I'm not a particulary good writer but I think I did okay.
Okay okay just enjoy!
P.S. It's 12:30am for me so any grammar or spelling mistakes are truly not my fault :)
Saturday, September 20th
Your gaze is frozen watching out the window, observing a squirrel shove acorns in his mouth. You assume he's starting early preparations for winter. Or maybe he's just really hungry.
"Y/N." Namjoon's voice wakes you out of your daze. Your head turns sharply towards him.
He tilts his head at you, holding up a piece of equipment before he asks, "Little help here?"
The two of you had decided that this morning is dedicated to testing equipment. There are lots of devices to test (and consequently, probably a quick battery run.) Tomorrow will be day 1 of your longest investigation, so you have to be ready.
"Yeah, coming." You shuffle your way over to Namjoon, who is currently hunched over the equipment box. He is digging through the box a bit too aggressively for your standard.
First and easiest thing to test are the EMF readers. Most paranormal equipment uses real life science explanations to connect with ghosts. EMF readers, in technical terms, are electronic readers. They'll go off for little things like home appliances and any wiring. They also go off if there are cell phones around, so you and Namjoon usually leave your phones in the car on paranormal investigations.
EMF readers are noiseless, handheld devices. There is a dial at the top with colored lights, gradient from red to orange to yellow to green. When the reader glows green nice and bright, that means it is sensing paranormal.
Next up are the REM pods. As with the EMF readers, there is a technical excuse for people to use when skeptical of your work. REM pods create their own electromagnetic fields. When the ghosts tamper with the electromagnet field, the REM pod glows various colors and whines and beeps at various volumes.
REM pods are stationary. To use them, you put it down on a flat-ish surface and let it do it's magic. They can be used for communication, for example, asking the ghost to light up the REM pod for "yes" and to keep it dark for "no".
Last on the list is the Spirit box. The Spirit box flips through radio frequencies, allowing the ghosts to pull certain words out of the stations to communicate directly. They can be held or left to sit, and are easily the most entertaining of the three.
Once you and Namjoon test all the equipment, flashlights, and all the batteries, it is lunchtime.
Namjoon opens the fridge and grabs a few things out of it then sets it all onto the counter. You walk over to him, then lean on the counter and look up at him.
"Hey." You say, tilting your head to the side, your eyes remaining on his side profile.
Namjoon hums at you in a questioning manner, his eyes glancing over to you, but not turning his face. You take this as an opportunity to observe his side profile. Specifically his jawline. Was it always this sharp, or are you only noticing right now?
"I'm gonna go get my stuff all ready while you make lunch." You tell him.
He turns to you now, "Okay! I'll come get you when lunch is ready. Take your time."
You turn from him and walk into your bedroom, shutting the door behind you. You take a deep breath before you walk over to the window, closing the blinds to shut out as much light as possible.
Turing to the bag of your supplies, you unzip the big middle pocket and begin pulling things out. As you set things on the chest at the foot of your bed, you mentally scold yourself for not setting this up earlier.
Out of the bag comes a plethora of items. First some pink candles, then some rose petals you had dried over the summer. After that you pull out a rather large rose quartz to set out, and tons of seashells. Finally, a string of pearls and a small statue of Aphrodite. Not the best altar you've ever made, but it'll do.
"Sorry, girl. I'll get you more stuff," you whisper out to the universe, in hopes someone out there is hearing you.
You zip open one of the side pockets to pull out some incense. Sandalwood and rose are your go-to since they are closely associated with Aphrodite. With a flick of your wrist, you light a match to light both the incense and the candles. After you get everything lit and the incense safely in a tray, you sit on the floor with your feet tucked under you. For a second, you just focus on your breathing.
After a quick minute or two of mindful breathing, you open the other side pocket of your bag to pull out your equipment. Sure, the technology is great, but intuition is better.
The tools you brought consist of: two decks of tarot cards, a pendulum, a yes/no coin, and some dowel rods. After you have everything set out, you carefully pick up the incense to cleanse each object.
You carefully pick each item up one at a time, mindful of the energy each one holds. As you hold each object in your right hand, you left hand waves the incense around each object, causing the energy to be cleansed with smoke.
Just as you get finished, you hear a light tap at the door, followed by Namjoon's voice, "Y/N, lunch is done."
"Just got done, be right there!" You call to him, standing up. Carefully, you snuff each of the candles out. The incense is safe enough to burn out in it's tray while you two eat.
The two of you have been walking in silence for miles. It was decided that the afternoon was dedicated to exploring the trails in the woods. The both of you had agreed that it would be wise to see the forest for the first time in daylight, rather than going in blind.
The silent crunch of dead leaves echoes against your every step. Occasionally, the shuffle of an animal rummaging through the leaves or a bird's call breaks the silence, but otherwise it is a very quiet walk.
You can’t hear anything over the sound of your drowning thoughts.
Namjoon turns his head to glance at you. Again. He's done that about a dozen times in the two hours you've been walking. To be fair, you probably have that look on your face that tells other people you're currently overthinking every decision you've made in your entire life.
The next time Namjoon turns to look at you, you bring your eyes up to meet his and ask flatly, "What?"
Caught off guard, Namjoon's eyes go wide, "Sorry—I just… you seem stressed."
You sigh and look back at your feet as you walk. You are stressed. Between your relationship with Namjoon, the threat of cryptids, and whatever was going on with Yoongi, you barely have time to breathe.
None of those things are even the reason you came on this trip.
"I'm fine." Is what you settle on. Lame and unbelievable, but it's your only defense mechanism.
"You're not fine," Namjoon scolds, though his voice is soft, "Don't you think I know better than to believe that."
Your footsteps come to a halt as you look up at him again. He's right. Namjoon has known you for too long to know that the words 'I'm fine' roughly translate to 'Help me' in your vocabulary.
"I'm scared, Namjoon." The sound of your own voice is so quiet you can barely register that you spoke.
Namjoon doesn't hesitate before he takes two steps forward to eliminate the space between the two of you. Swiftly, he pulls you into a tight hug.
That breaks you. Mentally, you scold yourself for being too vulnerable, but deeper down you know that's just the way you are. Any sort of affection makes you emotional.
A shaky breath escapes your lips. Your face is currently smooshed into Namjoon's chest, his tight embrace making it impossible to pull back. You hate that he knows you'll push him away if given the opportunity.
Downsides to having a childhood best friend: part of him knowing everything about you is that he knows all your flaws. Pushing people away when you need support being the flaw currently at hand.
You keep most of it in, only allowing a few tears to fall down your face. But then Namjoon brings one hand to rub your shoulder and you can't help but begin to sob.
Out of your mouth begins to flow a string of incoherent words. Namjoon doesn't interrupt, because of course he knows by now not to interrupt you when it gets like this. He knows you just need to let it all out.
Once the tears have subsided, Namjoon pulls back to look at you, "Better?"
You sniffle and nod your head. Namjoon offers a small smile in return and extends his hand to you.
Your eyes glance up to his in curiosity before taking his hand. He threads his fingers through yours and gives your hand a gentle squeeze.
In an attempt to regain stability, you let out a long and mostly shaky breath. Namjoon's smile widens and the two of you continue walking hand in hand in silence back to the car.
You lay in bed staring at the ceiling above you. Accidentally, you had let yourself doom scroll on reels for the past three hours and now you're having a mini existential crisis. Because of course your reels today decided to show you creepy horror folklore videos.
So now you're too scared to move out of bed to turn off the light.
You could just fall asleep with the light on. Waste of electricity, but the alternative is taking off the blanket that is currently shielding you from the impending doom of whatever crawls around at midnight.
"Do you really think I'd let anything get you?"
The sudden voice causes you to startle, then you immediately sit up in anger, "You have got to start knocking or something!"
Yoongi just smirks back a you. He tilts his head, and his tongue darts out for a second to wet his lip.
You don't back down, "I'm serious. I am a jumpy person on a normal day and my anxiety lately has been making it ten times worse."
He furrows his brows and switches his teasing to a serious tone, "What is making you anxious?"
A long and shaky sigh lets out from your lips. Yoongi somehow seems to notice the tension playing in the back of your brain. He motions for you to move over, and climbs on the bed, sitting crisscross facing you.
"Talk to me about it." The softness in Yoongi's voice makes you feel like you could tell him anything.
So you tell him everything.
You tell him about your original intentions of this trip. How badly you wanted to document something to prove to the university that your club wasn't just bullshitting. You tell him about the plans to find ghosts for real.
You tell him about your extensive friendship history with Namjoon. How you two met freshman year of high school when Namjoon transferred schools, and how you immediately took him under your wing. Then about the two of you becoming so close and inseparable that everyone in high school assumed you two were dating.
Then you tell Yoongi about how bad your mental health began to decline at the end of your sophomore year of high school. How Namjoon was the only person who stuck by your side when your own inconsolable brain told you to lash out and be mean to everyone you loved. You share stories of the nights Namjoon stayed up until the sun rose because he was afraid you'd do something stupid.
So then high school graduation came along and despite your original plans, you walked across that stage with a diploma in hand. Namjoon knew you never made plans for after high school graduation because you thought you wouldn't need them.
In a haste to appease your parents, you applied to the university Namjoon was going to. Undeclared major at first because, again, you didn't have a clue what you wanted to do with your life.
Then somehow you fell in love with the arts. And suddenly, your extremely complicated and often overwhelming emotions became ten times easier to express.
By the end of your freshman year of university, your paintings were being displayed at local museums and you were performing solo musical pieces in front of large audiences. The director of the theater program at your uni told you that you should look into professional stage acting. You kept improving and improving as time went on.
Life was looking up until right about a month into your junior year of uni. It was then that Namjoon began having complications with his drinking habits.
At first it was just weekend parties, as fresh adults tend to do. Quickly, however, his weekends began starting on Thursdays. Then soon his classes began to stress him out so bad, there weren't many days he went without.
You both tried to ignore it at first. Lots of students struggle with alcohol problems, it's part of university culture. But then Namjoon started skipping classes and getting terrible grades. You began to insist he cut back and offered him support for his stress in other forms.
At first, he didn't want to hear it. He insisted he was fine and he could manage it. 'Stop drinking whenever I want' he would say.
The night he called you sobbing after he totaled his car into a tree was the night he admitted he had a problem. Had his car landed into the tree just a foot to the right, he would've been dead. You remember so vividly how his voice shook on that call.
Namjoon wasn't sobbing because he almost died. Namjoon was sobbing because he couldn't bare to think he nearly abandoned you.
So he took a semester off to focus on himself. He took some self-help classes and did lots of work on himself. It sure as hell wasn't easy though. There would be nights that you'd have to rush to his house at 3am to hold him shaking.
Always crying because he could never quite forgive himself for being so dismissive to your concerns that he almost died. Namjoon couldn't stand the idea that his own ignorance could've left you without him around to take care of you anymore.
It's been two years since then. You finished your undergrad last spring with a degree in fine arts, and are now working on your masters degree of arts in music. Namjoon was catching up after a semester off and some classes he had to retake and should graduate in the coming spring.
After talking Yoongi's ear off for god knows how long, you let out a sigh.
"That was a lot." Yoongi admits, "Thanks for feeling like I'm comfortable to share that all with."
"Thanks for letting me share it all." You reply, although truthfully all that mental heath stuff wasn't any big secret you kept deep down. Often you share your own journey in hopes it helps someone else with theirs.
"Do you want a hug?" he asks, tilting his head.
"You can hug me?" Your brows furrow as the words escape your lips.
Yoongi offers a small smile as he rises to his knees to move towards you. He scoots a bit closer and takes your hands in his to guide your body closer to his.
He wraps his arms around you in a warm embrace, which you still don't believe because you assumed that ghosts emit cold energy.
Your thoughts don't stick around for long. Instead, every loud voice in your head seems to fizzle away when Yoongi is close to you.
You bring your arms up around his torso to return the hug, but find yourself going through him. You had expected to collide with a solid plane, so when you don't, it causes a strangled whine to sound from you.
He pulls back to send you a knowing look, "You can't touch me."
"But you can touch me?" You're still not understanding this.
Yoongi hums and pulls you back into a tight embrace. It's a bit awkward at first, not being able to hug him back, but soon the comfort of him outweighs any other feeling.
The two of you sit in comfortable silence for a few moments. When Yoongi speaks, it comes out in a hushed whisper, "What is stressing you out right now?"
You pull back to look at Yoongi properly, "The girl at the coffee shop told us about the cryptids."
Yoongi tilts his head, "The Yow? Just big dogs, that's all. They won't hurt you."
"Maybe not you," you protest, "but I'm mortal."
Yoongi lets out a short, amused laugh, "I won't let anything hurt you."
For some reason, something in his voice leads you to believe you could trust him to protect you.
So you let him guide you back to laying down in bed under the covers as he follows in next to you. You open your mouth to say that the lights are still on, but Yoongi beats you to it. With a flick of his wrist, the light switch shuts off on it's own.
When you turn your head to offer him a smile, you find he's already looking at you with an expression of fondness on his own face.
He reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear as your eyes flutter shut, "Time for bed, Blossom."
Your eyes shoot open at the nickname, "Blossom?"
"Pink cherry blossoms like the pink on your altar for Aphrodite." He reasons.
You want to protest more, but then Yoongi runs his hand through your hair again, and you drift off even quicker than you were before.
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°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:・ hello, friends! my name is tasha!
i just realized that i don't have an introduction post on my page! don't want the people to think i just spawned in here hehe ⋆˚࿔
⋆ ˚。⋆୨୧˚ about me !!
❤︎ i go by tasha online, please call me by my current preffered name :3
❤︎ i am 21
❤︎ i am currently in uni studying early education (so please be patient, school comes first!)
❤︎ i am in EST timezone
❤︎ my favorite color is pink (like a baby pink, no hot pink for me)
❤︎ i talk to myself sometimes on this page. you'll find me do that in pink and purple
⋆ ˚。⋆୨୧˚ my history with bangtan:
❤︎ i have been army since 2018
funny story about how i got into bts: i was HUGE into the maze runner fandom and for some reason the maze runner video editors of instagram loved using bts audios? so i was like what is this music and bam the rest is history
❤︎ my bias is yoongi and i have no wreaker. love the rest of my boys equally after that <3
❤︎ on that note, i am ot7 or nothing. no member hate is allowed on this page.
❤︎ i am not, however, ot7 for the bt21s. shooky and tata are ugly and you cannot change my mind.
❤︎ my favorite album is lys:her and my favorite song is paldogangsan
❤︎ i am perpetually stuck in hyyh era </3
⋆ ˚。⋆୨୧˚ outside of bts:
❤︎ i have a concerning addiction to animal crossing: new leaf.
NOT new horizons. the version i play is the one on the 3ds. i don't play the version on the switch so don't try and bond with me over that :)
❤︎ i love hatsune miku! my bf and i have a shared shrine for her :3
❤︎ my other hobbies outside of writing include penpaling, journaling, and sewing!
ʚɞ ⁺˖ ⸝⸝ thanks for taking the time to get to know me !! i hope you enjoy my fics <3
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"What are you taking pictures of me for, creep?" "For when I auction you off as a housewife."
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𓉸 wc: 2.2k
𓉸 a/n: Okay! So uhhh the whole time I was writing this chapter, I thought I had set this book's chapter length goal at 2k words not 3k that I had for chapter one. So my mistake this one is a bit shorter than the last.
But hey! I'm making consistent progress so be proud of me for that. I don't have much else to say here so enjoy the chapter!
Friday, September 19th
You wake up with a headache. That was, by far, the weirdest nightmare you've ever had in your entire life. On the floor next to your bed is your book, which tragically is closed and without bookmark. Finding the place in a book after you fell asleep reading is like, top 10 of things you hate doing.
You shuffle your way into the kitchen, still a bit groggy from sleep. Namjoon is already there, of course, and he must have heard you moving around in your bedroom because he started boiling water on the stove for your tea.
"Good morning, Sunshine." Namjoon beams at you, like he is basking in your sleepy misery.
You offer him a light grumble in response. You practically fall onto the bench at the table, slumping down over yourself and rubbing the sleep from your eyes.
"Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel?" Namjoon asks as he flips a small pan in his hand. Namjoon has had your breakfast order memorized for years.
You nod your head sleepily as he clicks on the stove. The teapot whistles and Namjoon grabs the rag hanging from the oven handle so he doesn't burn his hands on the kettle handle. He pours the boiling water into the mug on the counter, prepared with a tea bag already in it. He sets the tea kettle down on one of the backburners that is currently turned off. Then, he turns to grab an egg for your sandwich.
"Scrambled or fried egg on your sandwich?" He asks, turning to you.
"Mhm… scrambled." You pull your phone out of your front hoodie pocket and swipe over to the camera app. You angle your phone up and snap a picture of Namjoon as he cracks the egg into a bowl.
"What are you taking pictures of me for, creep?" Namjoon squawks, sending you a hard side-eye as he grabs a small fork from a drawer. Next, he puts some heavy cream into the bowl with the egg, then starts to whisk it with the fork.
"For when I auction you off as a housewife." You giggle, looking down at the picture you took of him. You zoom in specifically on his biceps, and wonder to yourself if he's been working out extra lately or if you're only noticing it now.
Namjoon hums in response and pours the egg mixture into the hot pan. The sizzling sound of cooking eggs is immediate, and soon after follows the smell of cooking eggs. As if on cue, your stomach makes a noise that vaguely sounds like a brown bear hunting for salmon.
Namjoon looks over at you, amused. You giggle as he flips over the whole egg in one quick swipe. It's mildly impressive, since usually when you make eggs they turn into a mess of a million little pieces. Soon, the egg is cooked, and he carefully transfers the egg onto the bagel.
Next, he puts some strips of microwave bacon onto a paper towel and pops it in for 30 seconds. Namjoon always makes your egg first. He knows you don't like your food as burning hot.
The microwave dings as he cracks his egg over the pan. Guess he decided on a fried egg today. While his egg cooks, he pulls the bacon out of the microwave and puts it onto your bagel sandwich. He flips his fried egg, then carries your plate over to you while the other side cooks.
"For you, your highness." He says dramatically as he sets down your plate.
You giggle, "My knight in shining armor."
He gets back to his egg and carefully makes his sandwich as well. He fixes your tea (exactly how you like it), and carries his plate and your mug over to the table, where he sits across from you.
"What's the plan for today, captain?" He asks before taking a sip of his coffee. Namjoon drinks his coffee black. No sugar, no milk, no creamer. As if coffee wasn't bad enough, this man also doesn't add any flavor.
"Well," you begin, "There's this coffee shop in town called Epigram Coffee…"
"Girl, I have my coffee." Namjoon says, mouth full of food.
"I know that," you say as you put down your sandwich for a second to talk, "But yesterday—you know, when you were being a lazy bitch—"
Namjoon scoffs, putting a hand to his chest in a dramatic fake offended gesture.
"I went to this trail conservatory for the Appalachian trail," you continue, ignoring his dramatic scene, "The guy working there said that the daughter of the owner of this coffee shop knows about the local ghosts."
Namjoon raises an eyebrow at you, then pulls his coffee mug back to his lips. He sets the mug back down and looks back at you. He's skeptical of you, that's for sure.
On the other side of the table, however, you are shooting him the biggest puppy eyes. Namjoon lets out a long sigh.
"Grab your things, lets go to this coffee shop."
Namjoon sucks at parallel parking. He has ever since you watched him learn how to drive. Consequently, stepping out of the car and taking a look at Namjoon's parking job causes you to burst into giggles.
"You're a bitch, you know that?" Namjoon scoffs as he clicks the car keys twice, confirming it's locked with a beep.
The coffee shop is two floors. You and Namjoon step up the few steps onto the front porch and inside the front door. The smell of coffee brews and freshly baked bread hit your nose instantaneously. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to get a croissant or a muffin while you're here.
You walk up to the counter and put on that fake high-pitched voice you use with strangers, "Hi. I was wondering if I could speak with the owner's daughter? Um, Eva? I think her name is?"
"That's me!" The girl behind the counter says with a smile, "What can I do for you?"
"I was told you knew some stuff about the paranormal around here?" You ask, tilting your head. The girl perks up as if she's been waiting her whole life for someone to ask her that.
"Mom!" She turns around to shout, "I'm taking a five, be back!"
Eva ushers Namjoon and yourself to a cozy corner of the coffee shop. You and Namjoon sit next to each other on a slightly worn looking leather couch, while Eva sits in a very vintage-looking chair across from the two of you.
"What do you want to know?" Eva asks, practically bouncing in her seat.
"Everything?" Namjoon offers.
"Okay, okay," the girl ponders for a second before settling, "Have you two been told about the snarly yow yet?"
"The what."
"The snarly yow!" Eva repeats, "Its a giant wolf-like cryptid that stalks the woods near here."
You and Namjoon exchange a shared look. The two of you had expected paranormal activity, yes, but the most you expected were ghosts. Nothing as serious as a cryptid.
An unsettling disturbance begins to form in your stomach. Cryptids are no joke, this is how people die for real.
"People say they have dark grey fur and glowing red eyes," Eva continues, "Most people think it works alone, but I think it's controlled by a stronger force."
Neither you nor Namjoon can find anything to say. You both just sit there, mouths slightly agape.
"Eva!" You hear a voice shout from the front of the shop.
"Oh, oops," Eva gives you both an apologetic look, "I gotta get back to work or my mom will kill me. But please, come back whenever with questions. I work most days!"
With that, the girl stands up and hurries back to the front of the coffee shop. You turn to Namjoon to see if he has anything to offer. Namjoon, however, is just mindlessly staring where Eva was just sitting.
"A cryptid?" You whisper harshly.
Namjoon slowly turns his face towards yours, a slightly horrified look on his face. Cryptid hunting requires so much more equipment than you could ever afford. Years of training, months of searching and lots of risk. It isn't something the two of you are quite ready for yet.
The knot in your stomach tightens. This changes just about everything.
To absolutely no surprise, you can't fall asleep. After the ghost nightmare last night and the cryptid talk this morning, there is absolutely no hope. Your already busy mind is overpopulated with additional anxious thoughts.
"I thought we agreed that you would be asleep already."
The sudden voice causes you to let out a yelp. It's the ghost from last night—Yoongi—who you had completely convinced yourself didn't exist.
"Quiet, or you'll wake up your boyfriend." He hisses.
You narrow your eyes back at Yoongi, "He's not my boyfriend."
Yoongi lets our a laugh and sits down on the bed beside you. The bed sinks down under his weight, which comes as a shock to you. For some reason you had assumed the bed wouldn't react to him. Ghost physics. Does anyone understand them?
"Girl, be honest with yourself," Yoongi muses, "only a boy in love would put on that show of affection that he did for you this morning."
You scoff, but Yoongi continues, "I can see why he puts so much effort into you. You seem like an investment worth the time."
Your head shoots towards him, glaring at him half with shock and half with anger. He smirks, and you make the effort to sit up in bed to talk to him.
"What do you mean by that, ghost boy?" You shoot at him.
"First, don't call me that," Yoongi says with a sigh, "second, I'm just saying. If I was alive I would chase you, too."
A most disgusted sound comes out of your chest. You have enough on your plate with Namjoon being supposedly in love with you. You don't need a ghost flirting you up, too.
"Can ghosts physically flirt? Can ghosts fall in love? … Can ghosts date?" You shoot him rapid-fire questions, beginning on one of your infamous pestering sessions. You have this bad habit about nagging people with questions. It drives Namjoon crazy, but you do it anyways.
"Of course ghosts can date," he replies, his voice laced with annoyance, "it just gets difficult being stuck here."
"Stuck here?"
When your eyes meet Yoongi's, the look he gives you say it all. He is stuck. Ghosts get stuck. Yoongi can't leave the cabin. Whether it's because he lived here or died here is unclear to you (again, does anyone understand ghost rules?) Regardless of how he got stuck here, it dawns on you that Yoongi probably hasn't had human contact in years. The woman who owns the cabin said it had been empty since her father passed away… who knows how long ago that was.
"Yoongi?" Your question comes out so soft he almost misses it, "How long have you been alone here?"
Yoongi is looking away from you now, his mouth curling into a sad smile, "They took that old man to the retirement home almost a decade ago."
A decade.
That isn't a length of time to joke around about. Spending that much time alone has to be tortuous to the psyche.
"I mean, I haven't been alone," Yoongi's voice interrupts your thoughts, "sometimes the old man's daughter would come up here and I could observe her grieving process."
"Did you ever talk to her?" You ask, tilting your head to look at his side profile better. Your annoyance towards him has faded completely, changing now into a need to comfort the poor ghost.
"Only if I wanted to fuck with her and pretend to be her dad." Yoongi lets out a forced laugh, "To be fair, I never talked to the old man either. Chatting with you last night was the most I've talked since I was alive."
Your eyebrows tilt in, a face of pity forming for him.
He turns his head back to you and offers you a small smile, "It's really not as bad as it sounds. I enjoy being alone."
You're not entirely convinced. Hastily, you scoot over in bed (up until now you had been in the middle of this queen sized bed like the queen you are), and gently pat the empty space beside you for Yoongi to lay down.
He follows your lead, pulling the covers down and getting himself underneath them. You can't help but wonder if ghosts can even get cold.
You both lay on your sides, faces towards each other.
"You're always welcome to talk to me while I'm here," you offer him, "I'll keep you company."
Yoongi's face turns into a genuine, warm smile, "I think I'll take you up on that."
You find yourself mirroring his smile. For a moment, all the noisy and anxious and terrible thoughts in your head seem far away. You feel yourself breathe a little bit easier.
"Go to sleep, Y/N, its late and you need the rest." Yoongi whispers to you softly. He's not wrong, you've had a long past two days.
Your heavy eyes and temporary peace of mind make it extremely easy to drift off into peaceful slumber. An easy sleep is a tiny victory in your busy world that's about to get ten times more complicated.
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"What if this trip is all for nothing and it turns out to be a dud? What if something goes wrong while staying in a stranger's cabin? And why are you trying so hard to ignore the fact that a few months ago you started having feelings for your decade-long best friend who happens to be sleeping right in front of you?"
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𓉸 wc: 3.2k
𓉸 a/n: Tada! Here she is! Been working since... September? Doing research and daydreaming and whatnot. Unapoligetically, I am so much more passionate about this book than all my others that I basically had to hold myself back from writing this first chapter back in the fall. (Wait a minute maybe I shouldv'e done that since the first part of this book takes place in the fall...)
Nah, I had to do research. I had to let it marinate. Not gonna lie, I posted the masterlist to this story 3 days ago and got a whole 8 likes on it and now I'm nervous I won't live up to people's expectations.
Oh, who cares. Let's just post the chapter, shall we? Enjoy!!
Thursday, September 18th
You kick the door open with such force that you’re surprised it doesn’t fall off the hinges. In your defense, you don’t have much of a choice. Your hands are full with an awkward shaped box, heavy with the equipment you and your partner brought with you.
You waddle into the living room, attempting to navigate with the box blocking your view. The unfamiliarity of a new environment adds an extra challenge.
The box hits the table a little bit more aggressively than you intend. But, mission success, so there is that.
After catching your breath, you turn toward the door to shout to your partner, “Namjoon! Get your weak ass in here!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” You hear him shout back from the distance, a hint of annoyance in his voice.
Soon, Namjoon himself is maneuvering his way through the door, careful not to run into anything with the bags haphazardly thrown over his shoulders and hanging from his arms.
“You didn’t really give me the opportunity to take the equipment box, you know.” Namjoon says as he sets down some of the bags, “I could’ve carried it in.”
“Yeah right. Last time you dropped it halfway to that cabin in Cook’s Forest and almost broke half our equipment.”
Namjoon narrows his eyes at you before turning back to the car.
“You’re just going to leave all these bags in a pile here?” You shout out to him as he walks towards the car.
Namjoon just throws his hand up to dismiss you. You scoff. Truthfully, however, your friendship is nothing without the playful bullying. It’s how the two of you show love.
You sigh, turning to the bags to evaluate the damage. It’s a lot to unpack, this is by far your longest planned trip yet.
Ninety percent of your investigations are just quick after-dinner trips that the two of you take to local graveyards or trips to visit the old ladies at the historical society. Every once in a while you two take a weekend trip to a cabin at a state forest near your hometown. Last summer the two of you used your summer job cash to take your first week-long trip to a hotel near Pennhurst Asylum.
None of those, however, are real investigations. Some local cemeteries and the historical society are just to prove to the University that your club is doing something. Everyone knows state forests are too mainstream to really be hiding anything. And Pennhurst barely counts, you stayed in a nice safe hotel the whole week.
This trip is different. By some miracle, the University had given the club a substantial grant to take an expedition. After months of reaching out to local places in search of somewhere haunted, someone reached out to you.
A message had come in from a woman, probably in her mid thirties, rambling about her grandfather’s old cabin in the back of her property. She said she and her husband were planning on renting it out as a vacation cabin, and offered the two of you to stay for free for a few months in exchange for a test trial and good reviews on the place to keep people coming.
“Lost in thought there, Y/N?”
You blink yourself back to reality. Namjoon is back in the house and you didn’t even register it. You shake your head at him in response, and start to unzip one of the duffel bags.
“Can’t do that on an investigation,” Namjoon warns playfully, “Something might get you.”
You roll your eyes and shake your head at him, but a smirk tugs at your lips. You two never have any real threats while on investigations, you barely have any findings at all. The chances of ‘something getting you’ are low to none.
After two hours, you and Namjoon can finally say that you have unpacked all your things and put everything away. Which is actually refreshing after the three and a half hour car ride you made before you got there.
“Alright, naptime,” Namjoon declares, heading upstairs to the room he claims as his.
“What? You’re not going to come explore the town with me?” You bounce after him, grabbing his arm in an attempt to drag him with you.
“Y/N, I just drove three and a half hours,” Namjoon pulls the keys out of his pocket and tosses them to you, “I need rest.”
You scoff, but leave the poor man to his slumber. You flick your wrist up to check your watch. 4:15. Still about three hours until the sun begins to set. You have plenty of time.
So you leave the cabin, careful to shut and lock the door behind you, and jump in Namjoon’s car.
The ride to town is easy. Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia is a small town. When you did the research, Google had told you the population is under 300 people. Perfect for a paranormal investigation.
You drive into town and park in front of a building that is labeled on your maps app as “Appalachian Trail Conservatory”.
When you open the front door, which squeaks as you do, you find yourself in a welcome center and gift shop.
Upon arrival, a man behind the counter greets you, “Hi, there! Anything I can help you with?”
“Hi!” You use your fake, high pitched voice, “Me and a friend are staying in a cabin up on Chestnut Hill. Just checking out the town since today is our first day here.”
“Oh! Well allow me to be your unofficial trip advisor.” The man smiles as he comes out from behind the desk, “How long are you staying? What brings you here to Harper’s Ferry?”
“Uh…” You feel a sudden sting of nervousness that you always feel when you’re about to tell someone that you’re on an investigation for your paranormal society.
It isn’t always something people are too kind to. Especially strangers. People suspect that you and Namjoon are in a cult, or are trying to wake the devil or something.
“We are here for a few months.” You decide on, “My friend and I heard the local myths about the ghosts in the woods and thought it would be fun to check it out.”
The man’s face does this thing that leads you to believe he knows something about ‘those ghosts in the woods’. More than he cares to tell you, though, because his cheerful demeanor comes back quickly.
“Oh, those silly ghost stories.” The man chuckles, “Tell you what, there’s a coffee shop here in town. The owner’s daughter, Eva, works there and she believes in all those silly things. You should talk to her.”
You perk up, “Okay! What’s the coffee shop called?”
“It’s called Epigram Coffee,” the man says, “Cute little place.”
“What other places in town do you recommend?”
You stay talking to the man until he has to close the business. You now have multiple informational pamphlets and a notebook full of places in town to check out. From cafes to bakeries, museums to cemeteries, it seems like this cute little town has everything.
Except a grocery store. Nearest one is a ten minute drive. Which, actually, isn’t that bad for rural America.
Since it is only around five o’clock when you are done at the trail conservatory, you decide to make that drive to pick up dinner for yourself and Namjoon.
By the time you get back to the cabin, it’s quarter to six.
You push through the door and put the grocery bags onto the table. You carefully put away the cold items in the fridge, then begin up the stairs to find Namjoon.
When you get to the top of the stairs to the loft bedroom, you find Namjoon asleep in his bed. You squat down to be eye-level with the sleeping boy.
He looks peaceful like this. Like the stress of the universe doesn’t exist and he has nothing to worry about. You're almost jealous. Your brain never lets you know peace.
Even now, your mind has just short of a thousand worries floating around. What if this trip is all for nothing and it turns out to be a dud? What if something goes wrong while staying in a stranger's cabin? And why are you trying so hard to ignore the fact that a few months ago you started having feelings for your decade-long best friend who happens to be sleeping right in front of you?
You reach your hand up to push a stray hair out of his face. Doing this causes him to grumble. His eyes flicker open to you, then back shut.
Namjoon makes a familiar whine that sounds almost like a question. You've known him long enough to know that sound roughly translates to 'why the hell did you wake me up.'
"I got us dinner while I was out." You reply softly. Namjoon's eyes dart open to that.
He takes a second to rub his eyes and sit up. He stretches his arms high above his head as he lets out a yawn.
"You're an angel, you know that?" His voice comes out deep, laced with sleep.
He follows you down the stairs to where you've left the hoagie rolls on the table for the two of you. As if on cue, his stomach grumbles, causing you to giggle.
After knowing someone for as long as the two of you have known each other, conversations become limited. You two eat almost every meal together nowadays, so you opt to play card games while you eat instead of silence.
Well, just one game of cards, that is. You and Namjoon have had a game of 500 rummy going for almost 3 years now. You've long exceeded 500 points each, reaching up to the ten-thousands by now. You've altered the rules, added in wild cards, and made the most confusing and competitive game of cards the world has ever seen.
"I use this joker as the queen of…" you trail off. The house rule with jokers is that while they are used as wild cards, if the other player has the intended card in their hand, the points go against the score.
"Diamonds." You finish confidentially. The other two cards in your group of 3 are the queen of spades and the queen of clubs, so its a 50/50 shot.
Namjoon's eyes glance up at you in a mysterious glare. Then a smirk appears on his face as he grabs a card from his hand and slowly flips it to face you.
It's the queen of diamonds.
"Bitch!" You shout, reaching over the table in an attempt to snatch the card out of his hand. Unsuccessful, however, as Namjoon retreats his arm in time.
"Ah, Y/N, you're going to knock over a drink!" Namjoon scolds you, though there's no real bite behind it.
The two of you finish dinner and clean up. It isn't until you're washing dishes that Namjoon gets serious.
"Think we'll find anything this time?" Namjoon began as he handed you the next dirty plate.
You turn to him and shrug. You've never found anything groundbreaking before. What's to say this time will be the lucky one?
He hums in response and focuses back on putting things away in the fridge.
After you finish cleaning up, you go to your room to put on your pajamas. Inconveniently, you hear a knock at the door.
"Coming!" You shout as you slip your feet into your slippers. You walk towards the door and turn the knob to open it. You find Namjoon standing there.
"I'm heading up to bed." He yawns. Namjoon is dressed similarly to you, cozy pajamas on. Your eyes drift down to his slippers, which you right now realize are bunnies.
"Seriously?" You point to his slippers as your eyes shoot back up to match his.
Namjoon smirks, "What? They were on sale and they're comfy."
You hum in response and begin to shut the door, "Goodnight, Namjoon."
"Sleep well and dream of me." You hear Namjoon say as he pads his way up the stairs to the loft bedroom. You sigh and shake your head before walking back to your own bed.
It is absolutely too late to still be reading this book. Your eyes hurt, your mouth is dry (your glass of water has been empty for awhile), and you should have stopped hours ago. But you keep telling yourself 'one more chapter', and then every chapter happens to end on a cliffhanger.
A knock at the door causes you to startle enough that you drop your book and lose your page.
"Dammit, Namjoon." You huff as you slip your feet into your slippers and walk over to the door.
You feel a strong surge of deja vu as you reach for the doorknob. Except, when you twist your wrist to turn the knob, the knob doesn't twist with you.
"What the fuck?" You whisper under your breath as you try again to turn the knob, harder this time.
When it doesn't budge again, you turn your body around to give up and go to bed.
Except, when you do, there is someone standing between you and the bed.
In that exact moment, you stomach drops so hard you think might've peed your pants. Your instinct is to scream, but when you open your mouth to do so, no sound comes out. You turn back around frantically and try again at the knob, to no prevail.
"Oh my god you're dramatic." The words come from a voice behind you, presumably whoever—or whatever—you saw standing there.
You're shaking as you turn back around and push your back flat up against the door.
"Please, please, please don't hurt me." Your voice comes out high-pitched and wavered, and you squeeze your eyes shut, causing a tear to roll down your cheek.
After a second of not-dying, you open your eyes to see a young man there, arms folded.
"Done with your little meltdown?"
You nod your head quickly, wishing to be anywhere but here right now. You take a second to analyze the boy in front of you. He seems about your age. Taller than you, for sure, but not as tall as Namjoon. He has black hair, dark eyes, and… he's transparent?
Then it all clicks.
"You're a ghost?" You manage sputter out.
The ghost rolls his eyes at you, "I have a name, you know."
"Oh?" Is all you can manage at the moment. The past two minutes have been so much for you that you feel like your feet are numb.
"I'm Yoongi," he offers you a reassuring smile, "You are?"
"Y/N." You continue to keep your answers brief since your chest is so heavy.
Yoongi offers a hand out for a handshake, but you can't seem to do anything but stand paralyzed staring at it.
Yoongi sighs and rolls his eyes again, "So long as I initiate contact you'll feel it and not go right through me."
Your eyes shoot back up to him in a confused trance. You still can't find it in you to move your arm enough to meet his. Yoongi lets out a groan of annoyance and gives up, letting his arm fall back to his side. He takes a step dangerously towards you, causing you to shrink down even more than you already are.
He takes another dangerous step forward before he begins to interrogate you, "Why are you in my house?"
You let out an embarrassing sound that sounds like the squeak of a baby chick, if the baby chick was currently at the hands of a deadly wolf. You really, really, don't want to die.
A frustrated scoff sounds from Yoongi and he rolls his eyes again. You make a mental note that this ghost is sassy.
His upper lip twitches out of frustration as he repeats himself, more stern this time, "I said, what are you doing in my house?"
"My friend and I are here to do paranormal research."
Yoongi lets out a quick laugh, "Is this paranormal enough for you?"
You bite at the dead skin on you bottom lip. Its a bad anxiety habit you've had for years that you can't seem to shake. Yoongi's eyes flicker down to the movement of your lips, and his face morphs into an emotion you can't file because your thoughts are currently occupied by panic right now.
Yoongi takes a step back, "Well, this is my house, so you have to leave."
"What?" The word bursts out of your mouth before you can think. Your hand shoots up to cover your mouth out of fear. You slowly pull your hand away before you continue, "I mean- we don't have anywhere else to go. Our house is three hours away and we already paid for our time here."
"How long?" He shoots at you.
You can't manage to make eye contact with him, "A few months."
Yoongi lets out a dramatic groan (who's the drama queen now?) as he paces the room. He walks back and forth a bit, deep in thought. Slowly, he runs a hand through his hair, letting out a long sigh.
"We could share the cabin." You lightly suggest.
"Share?" He snaps back at you. He's back to looking at you, staring down your soul, and it causes you to get anxious and shy again.
"This is your room, right?" You wait for a second as he nods his head. "Well, there is a queen bed in here."
"Are you suggesting we share a bed?" He asks as he tilts his head at you judgmentally.
"No! I mean- yes, but… not really?" You exclaim, voice shaky. Yoongi raises a brow to question your logic so you continue, "I mean, you only appeared at, what? 2am? If I just fall asleep before you want to sleep, and then you disappear by morning, it'll be like you were never there."
Yoongi takes a step back to ponder. He appears deep in thought, running through the idea in his head.
Finally, he turns back to you, "Fine. But don't make this a big deal. And don't tell that boy upstairs about my existence."
"That's my friend, his name is Namjoon."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Just don't freak him out." Yoongi says as he steps aside, clearing space for you to make it back into the bed, "He's totally in love with you, I don't think he'd like the idea of you sharing a bed with a male ghost."
His words take you by surprise, "What?"
Yoongi tilts his head towards you in a knowing way, as if to say 'oh, you clueless girl'. He extends an arm towards the bed to usher you to it.
"Go to bed." Yoongi scolds you as you walk over to the covers, "If you don't fall asleep soon, you'll oversleep past when the coffee shop is open and you'll miss talking to the owners daughter."
You slip yourself under the covers and snuggle into the pillow. Yoongi is right. You need to talk to the girl at the cafe if you want to get any information about why you chose this town specifically.
It isn't until you're too far asleep that the thought occurs to you, how did Yoongi know about your plans to talk to the girl at the coffee shop?
✧ SUMMARY: You meet Min Yoongi at a GS25 on a nothing Tuesday. You don't expect him to change your life. You certainly don't expect to change his.
✧ TAGS: strangers to lovers, angst (with a happy—but hopefully realistic—ending), smut, fluff, this is a heavy one so please heed the warnings!
✧ WARNINGS: mental health issues, depression, depressive episodes, suicidal ideation throughout, suicide mentions throughout, implied suicide attempt (sort of?), panic attacks, specifically panic attacks after (consensual!) sex, smoking, recreational marijuana use, vaginal fingering, oral (m. receiving), oral (f. receiving), vaginal sex, mentions of unprotected sex (but no real unprotected sex), MINORS DNI, please do not read this fic if any of these warnings are triggering to you!
✧ AUTHOR’S NOTE: okay. so... i said i wasn't going to post any more fics until june. and i won't post any more until then after this! i'm still on semi-hiatus! but something happened in my personal life last week, and i couldn't... not get it all out, somehow. so... here's this almost 14k monster. thank you claret @yoonmetogether for beta reading and giving me so much love and support while i was in the process of writing this! i love you! and thank you yoongi, for writing/releasing so far away (and the last) in 2016 and teaching teenage aqua how to stay, even when i didn't want to. and teaching adult aqua the same thing every year since. i hope this fic helps someone. that's why i'm posting it.
P.S. i recognize that i haven't edited my taglist since my hiatus. if you want to be removed, let me know.
✧ WORDCOUNT: 13.6k words
It’s a Tuesday night, which means nothing. Just like Monday meant nothing. Just like Wednesday won’t either.
The buzzing fluorescent lights in the 24-hour convenience store stutter overhead. You’ve been zoned out in the ramen aisle for at least five minutes now, doing the same song and dance you always do. Pretending you’re going to try something different this time, be a little spontaneous. Because you must break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow, right?
Still, though, your hand hovers over the same one you always get—the spicy one in the black package that scorches your mouth and makes your nose run. But at least it makes you feel something. So, you grab it.
Into the basket it goes, landing beside a bottle of Milkis and a crumpled bag of gummy worms. You sigh, turn around—
—and nearly walk straight into some guy you didn’t even know was in the store.
You both do that awkward side-step thing, freeze, then side-step the same way again.
“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” the guy mutters, voice low and scratchy, like it hasn’t been used yet today.
He’s wearing an oversized hoodie, the drawstrings uneven. His hair, bleach blonde, is tucked messily under a beanie, and there’s a faint line on his cheek from what was clearly a very intense nap. He’s holding a can of cold coffee and a pre-packaged egg sandwich in one hand, clutched between long fingers.
His eyes flick up to yours, and you realize, belatedly, that you’re staring. You should probably move, or say something.
“No, I—sorry,” you say, taking a step back. Your basket clinks against your knee. “Didn’t see you.”
Both of you are still kind of in each other’s way. There’s that weird, hesitant pause where you’re not quite sure who’s supposed to move next.
You clear your throat, nodding at his sandwich. “Midnight craving?”
“Something like that,” he says, eyes flicking down to the ramen in your basket. “You going for pain, huh?”
You blink, then smile a little. You didn’t expect him to be game. “Only the kind I can control.”
That makes him huff a short laugh through his nose. “Hey, no judgment. I’m out here buying coffee at midnight, so.”
You nod toward the sandwich again. “And that. Bold choice.”
“I wasn’t ready to commit to tuna.”
“Fair.”
It feels dangerously like flirting, just for a second. Awkward, clumsy flirting, sure, but flirting nonetheless. But the moment ends just as quickly as it came, like you’ve both run out of things to say at the exact same time.
You awkwardly step in opposite directions after that.
You return to your mission. First, hot water from the machine by the coffee counter. Plastic fork from the stack that’s always slightly sticky. You sit on one of the cracked stools by the window while the noodles steep and sip from your Milkis while staring out at the empty street.
By the time you make it to the register, the guy is gone. You kind of expected that.
He was cute, you think. A year ago, when you were a different girl and sort of had your shit together, you probably would’ve asked for his number. Batted your eyelashes or something stupid like that.
But now? You barely have the energy to brush your teeth most days. You’re certainly not in a place for romance. Not when your big life plan has boiled down to ‘survive one more month.’
So no, you’re not mourning the possible missed connection with the kind-of-cute stranger in the GS25. Just acknowledging it.
But then, when you’ve paid and make a move to shuffle out, the automatic doors slide open—and there he is.
Again. Leaning against the low brick wall, trying to light a cigarette with the wind working against him. The flame sputters out twice before catching.
You could leave. You should. But you linger, and since the street is pretty much desolate, he notices.
“Didn’t mean to loiter behind you,” he says, glancing up.
You shrug. “Didn’t mean to run into you. Twice.”
He waves his free hand dismissively, the other bringing the cigarette to his lips, plastic bag dangling precariously. “No harm done.”
That should be it, probably. End of conversation, end of interaction. Two strangers walk in opposite directions to wherever it is they call home.
But something about the slump in his shoulders, so similar to your own, makes you momentarily brave.
“You got somewhere to be?” you ask, gnawing at your bottom lip.
“Does it look like it?”
It doesn’t. Neither do you.
“Wanna sit?” you offer, gesturing towards the curb. “I’m just gonna eat before it gets cold.”
His eyes widen, like that’s the last thing in the world he expected you to say.
“Uh. Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
You sit. He settles a little awkwardly beside you, pulling the sandwich out of its crinkled plastic. It’s predictably silent between you, but you don’t hate it.
He eats. You slurp noodles.
And eventually, inevitably, you glance sideways.
Okay. He is cute. Decidedly. Maybe even hot, if you caught him on a better day. In a bleary, worn out way. The kind of good looks that sneak up on you, delicate and masculine all at once. Pale skin. Sharp jaw. Soft mouth. You’re not going to do anything about it. Obviously. But… still.
“What’s your name?” you ask around a mouthful of noodles.
“Yoongi.”
You nod. Don’t offer yours yet.
Yoongi takes another bite of his sandwich. Swallows. “You here often?” he asks, immediately grimacing. “God. That sounded—"
“Like a line?” You laugh. “Yeah. It did.”
“Didn’t mean it like that.”
You shrug. “I’ll allow it. Just this once.”
Small talk comes easy after that. You find out he used to live on the other side of the river and only recently moved to this part of the city because of a roommate situation that imploded. You tell him that you only planned to live in your current apartment for a year, until you could afford something better. It’s been three now.
He tells you he’s currently between jobs. You admit you’re technically not sure if you still have your night gig, because your boss hasn’t texted you in three days and you don’t want to ask.
He gives you the remaining half of his sandwich. You pass over your ramen wordlessly, letting him steal a few bites. It’s still awkward, eating so closely with a stranger like this. Sharing your dinner with someone who doesn’t even know your name. But it’s weirdly nice.
When the food is mostly gone, he holds out his cigarette pack. You take one and he lights it for you. You both pass it back and forth in silence for a minute.
“I used to think I’d be famous by now,” he says eventually, exhaling toward the gutter. “Like, not stupid-famous. Just… enough that I wouldn’t be here. You know?”
You nod. You do know.
“I wanted to be a writer,” you offer in return. “But I hate writing. And I hate people who are good at it. And I hate that I still kind of want to do it anyway.”
“I don’t even know what I do anymore,” he says. “I was making music for a while. Then I got tired. Now I sleep too much. Avoid my friends. Pick up shifts at my cousin’s record store when he gets desperate enough to ask.”
“That actually sounds kind of nice.”
He snorts. “It’s not. But thanks.”
You tip your head back, look up at the sky, which is a washed-out navy and completely starless. Seoul smog. “I work part-time at a bookstore that almost exclusively sells erotica. And I cry like, three times a week, minimum. Usually in the bathroom. Sometimes in front of customers.”
Yoongi flicks ash onto the ground. “You win.”
You both sit with it. The warm, awful food. The too-sweet soda and the gummy worms melting in the bag between your knees. The companionship of a stranger willing to share a cigarette and half of his shitty sandwich, whose life isn’t all that different from yours.
You turn your heads at the same time. Your eyes flick down to his lips where they’re sealed around the cigarette. Inhale, exhale. To his long fingers, thumbnail bitten to shit.
He’s really pretty, even like this, in the unflattering light of the streetlamp you’re sitting under. Long lashes and dark eyes that pierce through you. You wonder if his mouth really is as soft as it looks.
He’s looking at your lips, too, you realize. When you catch him, he looks away fast, ears pink.
“This is nice,” he says, staring at the concrete beneath his shoes.
You blink. Then, just as quietly, “Yeah. It is.”
He offers the cigarette again. You take it. Neither of you says anything else for a long time.
✧
The bookstore has been blissfully, predictably dead since you opened this morning. That’s really the only upside of the job—nobody shows up. You could count the regulars on one hand, and half of them only come in to use the bathroom, despite the clearly posted sign that says they can’t.
You’ve developed a theory about it, about the shame that still lingers around buying erotica in person. As if reading about sex is fine, but purchasing it in the flesh is something to feel embarrassed about. You could write a dissertation on it, probably. But you won’t. You don’t write anymore. You just clock in, count the till, and reorganize displays no one looks at.
You’ve already done your morning routine. Opened up. Counted money. Packed a frankly alarming number of online orders (apparently people really love vampire erotica). Now, you’re posted up behind the counter, flipping through a paperback about sexy cowboys with a bright red cover and a title that would make your mother blush.
You’re in the middle of counting how many times the author uses the word member on one page (six, and one was throbbing) when the bell above the door gives its half-hearted ding.
You glance up from the counter, fully prepared to give your standard ‘we don’t have a public bathroom’ spiel, when you see him. Hoodie. Messy, bleached hair. Soft mouth.
Yoongi.
Your mouth actually falls open a little. You eventually gave him your name that night, but you hadn’t exchanged numbers. You didn’t even follow each other on social media. And yet, here he is, bearing witness to you in all of your smut-peddling glory.
“I guessed,” he says, by way of explanation. He sounds a little breathless. “You said bookstore, and there’s like, two in the area. The other one didn’t have nearly enough erotica.”
“So you just… showed up?”
He shrugs, sheepish. “You didn’t give me your number.”
If he wasn’t cute, you might be a little creeped out. He’s lucky he’s got such a nice face. It makes things feel romantic.
“You want something?” you ask, gesturing to the wide variety of bodice-rippers your manager has displayed so proudly at the register.
“Yeah,” he says. “A cigarette. And maybe to talk to you again.”
You exhale through your nose, amused despite yourself. “Come on.”
You lead him through the back, past the haphazard ‘Employees Only’ sign that no one respects. Outside, the alley smells like stale piss. Very romantic, indeed.
Just like Tuesday, he lights a cigarette for you to share. You take it, and he leans against the brick wall, watching you.
“I kept thinking about you all week,” he says suddenly, no preamble. His eyes are fixed on the smoke curling off the end of the cigarette.
You take a drag, the smoke clinging to your teeth. “I thought about it too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You look down at your shoes. “Didn’t think you’d actually show up, though.”
He gives a quiet little laugh, almost self-deprecating. “Honestly, I almost didn’t.”
“So why did you?”
“I don’t know. Stubbornness? Hope? Boredom?” He shrugs. “I guess I just didn’t want to go another week without feeling like something mattered. Even if it’s just a conversation in a piss alley.”
That earns a smile from you. A real one. You pass the cigarette back.
“I don’t know what this is,” he says eventually. “I don’t even know if I’m in a place to have a thing. But I liked talking to you. And I’m tired of not liking anything.”
You look at him. He’s not exactly looking back, more at the space near your shoes. But his profile is soft, a little hopeful.
“I feel the same way,” you say, cheeks hot and heartrate climbing. Something you haven’t felt in a long time—not for good reasons, at least.
He smiles. It’s small, but it feels real.
“You’re gonna give me your number this time, right?”
You dig your phone out of your pocket and hand it to him.
He types in his number one-handed, cigarette dangling from the other, then calls himself so he has yours too. When it buzzes in his hoodie pocket, he hums like that settles something. Like now, technically, you belong to each other in some tiny way.
You take the cigarette back from him. Your fingers brush, knuckles stay touching longer than they should.
“You’re not gonna ghost me now that you’ve won the chase, right?” you murmur.
Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “You think that was a chase?”
You shrug. “It was something.”
For a moment, you just stand there in the alley. The world keeps moving, traffic hums in the distance. Your shitty boss is probably inside wondering why you’ve been gone more than the regulation five minutes.
But you don’t move.
You look at him. His mouth. The cigarette between your fingers. And your body makes a decision your brain is too tired to argue with.
You lean in and kiss him.
It’s clumsy at first. Your lips a little dry, the angle off, but it doesn’t matter. He makes a sound like a surprised exhale against your mouth and then he’s kissing you back, slow and warm and honest.
He tastes like smoke and canned coffee. You drop the cigarette and his hand finds your jaw. Your fingers reach for the edge of his hoodie, twisting in the fabric like you’re worried he’ll disappear if you don’t hold on.
You kiss him again. And again.
You’re not trying to make it romantic, really. You’re not trying to make it anything. It’s just—fuck, it’s been so long since someone touched you like this. Since someone wanted to.
And Yoongi kisses like he wants to be anywhere but alone. Like he gets it.
When you finally pull back, both of you a little dazed, he lets out a quiet, almost embarrassed laugh. “Okay,” he says, voice rough. “So… this is happening.”
You nod, heart hammering. “Don’t make it a thing.”
“I won’t.”
And he kisses you again, one more time for the road, hands on your hips like maybe he needs the grounding just as badly as you do.
Yoongi leaves around the back and you go back inside like nothing happened.
But he leaves with your number, and you can still taste him on your lips.
✧
Weeks pass, but you both take full advantage of having each other’s numbers.
You text mostly during lulls, when you’re hiding behind the register pretending to alphabetize the books, or when Yoongi’s stuck in the back room of the record store sorting the new arrivals.
You never say good morning or good night. It’s not like that. But he sends you photos of weird album art, and you respond with blurry selfies surrounded by piles of books with egregious titles.
There’s comfort in the ease of it. No pressure. Just a quiet thread tying your days together.
You: someone asked if we have a bathroom and when i said no they said “then what do you do?” like they wanted me to shit in front of them for proof
Yoongi: People are the worst. Come work here. The pay is shit but at least no one talks to me
Sometimes you send voice notes instead of typing because you’re too tired, and he never comments on how drained you sound. He just sends one back where his voice is raspy and low and he’s clearly half-asleep but trying anyway.
It’s not dating, but it’s not not dating. You’re not friends, not exactly, but you care, at least a little, about whether he eats. Whether he sleeps. Whether he means it when he says he’s fine.
It’s just whatever the two of you are capable of giving right now. Somehow, that’s enough.
It’s nearly midnight when your phone buzzes.
Yoongi: You up?
Yoongi: Don’t say anything about how that sounds btw
You stare at it for a second. Then you type:
You: i am. what’s up?
You: and yes i’m going to make fun of you anyway
You: is this a booty call
Three dots bubble up and disappear. Once, twice, three times.
Yoongi: I just want to see you
Yoongi: Is that okay?
You sit up, heart doing something inconvenient in your chest.
You could say no. You could ask why. You could point out the hour, claim you have work in the morning. But you haven’t seen him since the day you exchanged numbers (and saliva), so instead, you say:
You: yeah
You: come over
You send him your address. Twenty minutes later, he shows up, in the same hoodie as last time. Holding a plastic bag with canned coffee for him, Milkis for you, and a package of cookies you once mentioned liking in a text two weeks ago.
You don’t say anything at first. He holds up the bag like it’s proof that he should be allowed inside, and you take it with a soft, bemused snort. Then you step aside so he can come in.
He enters like someone trying not to wake a sleeping house—careful and quiet and unsure of what to do with his hands.
You close the door behind him. You both fidget for a second.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he says finally, standing just inside the doorway, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Kept thinking about you.”
Your heart tips, like it’s leaning closer to him whether you let it or not.
“I’ve been thinking about you too,” you admit softly.
And then, because it’s late and you’re lonely and he’s warm and real and here, you kiss him. Again.
It’s immediate this time. No fumbling. No hesitation. Just mouths pressing together like they’re picking up where you left off in the alley behind the bookstore. His hands find your waist. Yours cup his face, thumbs brushing the sharp edges of his cheekbones. You kiss him slow, then faster. Harder.
You don’t think about what it means. You don’t try to label it. You just let yourself feel it—the weight of his body, the sound of your breaths, the sudden, startling relief of being touched.
His mouth trails to your jaw. Your neck. His hoodie bunches in your fists.
When you finally pull back, both of you flushed and breathless, he presses his forehead against yours.
“I like you,” he says quietly.
You swallow around the knot in your throat and nod. “Kiss me again.”
There's a sharpness to the way your mouths move now. You tug at his hoodie, fingers slipping under the hem to touch skin, and he makes a sound against your lips, small and desperate.
Yoongi’s hands are everywhere. Gripping your waist like he’s trying to ground himself, sliding up your back, curling in your shirt like he can’t bear to let go. He presses you up against the door, urgent, and you gasp when his teeth graze the underside of your jaw.
“Fuck,” he mutters, breathing hard. “I’m sorry—I didn’t come here for this, I just—”
“Don’t stop,” you say, voice barely there. “I want this.”
That undoes him a little. You feel it in the way his mouth crashes back to yours, the way he exhales sharply through his nose like he’s already drunk on it. He kisses you hard, lips and teeth and tongue with no finesse.
His thigh slips between yours and you move against it, just enough to chase friction, just enough to let him feel how badly you want this too.
“Jesus,” he whispers, low and raw. “You’re gonna kill me.”
You tilt your head back and let him mouth at your throat, lips wet, sucking a bruise into the skin. Your hips roll down again, slow and deliberate, and Yoongi’s breath stutters.
“I missed this,” you admit, half-ashamed. “I missed being touched. I missed wanting someone.”
Yoongi lifts his head just enough to look at you, eyes heavy, expression unreadable.
“You’re not the only one,” he says.
And then he kisses you again, deep and dizzying, and slips a hand beneath your waistband. His fingers are warm against your skin. Tentative at first, like he's giving you a chance to stop him, even now. Like some small, rational part of him is still waiting for you to say, ‘don’t.’ But you don’t. You tilt your hips forward instead, breath catching, and he exhales like that’s all the permission he needs.
He pushes his hand into your underwear and groans when he feels how wet you are.
“Fuck,” he gasps. “You’re so—fuck.”
It’s been a long time since someone touched you like this. Since someone wanted you like this. Desperate but gentle, afraid of messing it up. His fingers slide through your slick heat and you let out a sharp breath, clinging to his shoulders, your forehead pressed to his.
“I’m not gonna last long,” you whisper, already dizzy. “This is—fuck—this is embarrassing.”
Yoongi huffs a soft, broken laugh. “Don’t care. Come for me. Come fast. I want to feel you lose it.”
He fucks you with his fingers slow, then fast, then slow again. Just enough pressure to make you tremble, to make you cry out softly into his hoodie. His thumb finds your clit, and you nearly sob from the shock of it.
“Yoongi—” you breathe, hands scrambling for purchase. “I—fuck—”
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Just like that. Let me have it. I got you.”
You come fast. Hard. Pathetically hard. Your body locks up and then shudders violently, mouth open against his collarbone, heart pounding like it’s trying to claw out of your chest. Yoongi holds you through it. Doesn’t say anything. Just lets you ride it out with his mouth pressed to your temple, breathing you in.
When it’s over, you’re shaking. Barely upright. He eases his hand out of your underwear and presses a kiss to your hairline, tender in a way that makes your eyes sting.
You bury your face in his neck.
“I can’t believe I let you finger me against my front door,” you mumble, mortified as you catch your breath.
“Can’t believe you invited me to,” he replies, grinning against your skin.
You both laugh. Quiet and shaky and a little shellshocked. You’re still leaning into him, your breath evening out, your body boneless. The high is fading, but the warmth he left behind is stubborn.
You lift your head, eyes still a little glazed, and give him a suspicious squint.
“I have a question,” you say.
Yoongi blinks, cautious. “Shoot.”
“How the fuck are you not getting laid constantly?”
His eyebrows shoot up. Then he laughs, quiet but full-bodied, like he’s genuinely caught off guard.
“I mean,” you continue, gesturing vaguely to your crotch, “that was—God. And I didn't even know if you’d be good at it! Like, I kind of assumed it would be decent, because you have a mouth and hands and a pulse—but that was fucking criminally good. Who taught you that? Why is this not a more widely available service?”
Yoongi presses his face into your shoulder and groans, laughing harder now. “Jesus Christ.”
“I’m just saying, someone out there is missing the opportunity of a lifetime.”
He finally lifts his head again, his cheeks tinged with pink. “Yeah, well. Most people don’t really stick around long enough to find out.”
That sobers you a little.
You study him—his messy hair, his blown pupils, the way he tries to play it off with a little shrug. But there’s something underneath it all. Not sadness, exactly. Loneliness, maybe.
You reach up and brush your fingers through his bangs, almost absently. “They’re idiots.”
Yoongi watches you for a moment. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t deflect. Just leans into your touch.
And then the quiet gets to you, makes you want to crawl out of your skin, so you say:
“So… uh… want me to suck your dick?”
Yoongi freezes. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“...Right now?”
“No,” you say dryly. “Next Thursday.”
He laughs. “Are you always like this?” he asks, amused, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
You ignore him and reach for the waistband of his sweatpants instead, fingers slipping under, deliberate and slow. “So?”
Yoongi exhales sharply, eyes fluttering shut. “Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, I want you to.”
His head tips back when you start kissing down his neck. His breath goes shallow. The way he touches you, light on the back of your neck, like he doesn’t know what he did to deserve this—it makes you want to give him everything all of a sudden.
So you drop to your knees in your entryway, hitting the floor with a quiet thud that echoes in the quiet. Yoongi looks down at you in amazement, eyes wide, lips parted, chest rising and falling fast.
You tug his sweats down and he helps, fingers twitching against the fabric, thick cock already hard and leaking at the tip.
“You’re serious,” he says, voice thin. Disbelieving.
You glance up at him, smirking. “That a problem?”
“Not even a little.”
You spit into your palm, spread it over the head, and he twitches in your grip. When you lean in and lick a slow stripe up the underside of his cock, Yoongi lets out a quiet, broken sound.
You’re a little rusty, but you don’t tease. You don’t take your time. You just sink your mouth down around him, spit-slick and sloppy.
“Fuck—”
Yoongi’s head knocks lightly against the wall. One hand finds the back of your head, loose and shaking like he doesn’t know whether to pull you closer or hold you still.
You bob your head faster, messier. Let your saliva drip down over your fingers, curled around the base of his cock while you work the rest with your mouth. He groans again, choked and startled, and you feel him twitch in your palm.
“Jesus, you’re gonna—fuck, you’re gonna make me cum.”
You hum around him. That does it.
He gasps. Buckles a little. Then pulls back. Not all the way, just enough to jerk himself through the last few strokes, breathing ragged.
“Shit, shit—I’m—fuck, baby, fuck—”
You look up at him, mouth open, lips shiny and wet, tongue out just barely.
He spills across your mouth, your cheek, your chin. Hot and messy and so, so much. You blink through it, a little stunned, a lot turned on.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, staring at the mess he made of you. “You’re—god. You’re insane.”
You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, still grinning. “You’re welcome.”
Yoongi laughs breathlessly. “I think I just fell in love with you a little.”
You feel the shift, then. It’s small, almost imperceptible, but suddenly the air feels different. Too quiet. A little too still.
“Don’t be weird about it,” you huff, just to fill the space.
Yoongi leans down and helps you up with careful hands. Your legs are a little wobbly. His hoodie is rumpled. His hair’s a mess. His sweatpants hang loose on his hips and his lips are kiss-bitten and red.
You glance at him, then away just as fast.
You’ve crossed some invisible threshold. You both know it. And now you’re just... here.
“I’m gonna, um.” You gesture vaguely toward the hallway. “Wash my face.”
Yoongi nods, but doesn’t say anything. You don’t look back as you walk away.
In the bathroom, you stare at yourself in the mirror, palms braced on either side of the sink. You wash your hands. Splash your face. Pat dry and breathe.
Or try to.
Fuck, are you having a fucking panic attack? Over that? Your chest is tight, every cell of your skin foreign to you. Like you’re wearing someone else’s body and she just did something you weren’t supposed to.
What the fuck was that?
Not the act itself. That part was great. The enthusiasm, the sheer filth of it—you don’t think you regret it. Maybe. It felt good, in the moment. You wanted it.
It’s what came after.
The shift. The quiet. The moment you felt like he saw too much of you. The part of you that glows when it’s being wanted, and dims just as quickly when it’s alone again.
And—Jesus, ’I think I just fell in love with you a little’? Who the fuck says that?
It takes you longer than you’d like to calm down. You do the breathing exercises you were taught, back in college when counseling was free and they handed out pamphlets on every corner of your campus. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. You smooth down your shirt. Brush your fingers through your hair.
Then return to the living room like you didn’t just spiral for fifteen straight minutes.
When you return, breathing still a little labored, Yoongi’s sitting on the arm of your couch with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like he’s afraid of what comes next. Like you’ve left him with his thoughts for too long.
He sits up when you approach, brow furrowed at the state of you.
“You okay?” he asks.
You sigh and sit down.
“Yeah. I just…” You stare straight ahead. “That was good. Really good. But it’s been a while. And I don’t know what I’m doing. With any of this.”
Yoongi nods slowly. “You don’t have to know,” he says. “I don’t either.”
You turn to look at him, and the thing in his eyes, the softness, it’s too much. So you keep going.
“Not just the sex. Not just… you. This,” you say, gesturing at yourself, then your apartment. The mess that’s accumulated over the past month. “Letting someone see me when I don’t have it together. When I’m not even trying to pretend I do.”
You rest your head on the back of the couch, stare up at the ceiling like maybe it’ll swallow you whole if you keep talking.
“I don’t know why the fuck now of all times is when I’m letting myself feel anything,” you say. “It’s not like my life is better. It’s not like I’ve earned it.”
Silence.
Then Yoongi shifts. Leans forward, elbows on his knees again, like he’s working up to something.
“You don’t have to earn anything,” he says. “There’s no quota for being okay. Or being wanted. You can be a mess and still deserve good things. You can be at your worst and still… feel.”
You laugh. Bitter and small. “So what, we’re just two disasters trying to convince each other it’s fine?”
He shrugs. “Pretty much.” And then, so gentle it nearly breaks you, he adds, “I don’t think I’m here to fix you. I just want to be here.”
How can he be so sure?
You don’t know a damn thing about him. Not really.
You know he works the stock room in a record store part-time and hates most of his coworkers. You know he smokes too much. That he eats terrible sandwiches and drinks canned coffee. That he texts like he’s trying to make you laugh even when he’s probably in the middle of some breakdown of his own.
You know he’s good with his hands.
You know he looked at you, in all of your mess, like you were still human. You know that he says dumb, grossly honest shit way too easily.
But you don’t know where he grew up. You don’t know what keeps him up at night. You don’t know what kind of heartbreaks he’s carrying, or who let him down hard enough that he walks around like he does.
And still, there’s something in your chest that won’t calm down. Something desperate. Clawing. A tightness you don’t want to name.
Why?
Why the fuck are you feeling so much for someone who’s barely more than a stranger?
Is it just the attention? The intimacy? The fact that, for once, someone touched you without asking you to be okay first? Is this what happens when you’re starving? When your skin has been untouched for too long and someone comes along with warm hands and tired eyes and lets you fall apart without flinching?
Maybe.
But it doesn’t feel shallow. It doesn’t feel fake. Instead, it just feels too easy. Like being with him turns the volume down in your head. Like you don’t have to explain yourself to be understood.
It scares the shit out of you.
Yoongi slips down from the armrest, sinks into the cushion next to you instead. Your knee brushes his. His arm rests behind you on the back of the couch, not quite around you, but near enough that if you leaned even slightly, he’d catch you.
Neither of you moves for a while. You just breathe.
Then his arm moves and his pinky finger nudges yours.
A small thing. Stupid. Barely anything.
But it’s the first deliberate touch since everything happened in the entryway. And it’s soft. Hesitant.
“We don’t have to do… that,” he says, quiet but firm. You know he means the sex. “We don’t have to do anything.”
Maybe you don’t need to define it yet. Maybe it’s not about love or fate or healing. Maybe it’s just about want.
Two people letting themselves be wanted for a while.
You hook your pinky around his.
Just this, you think. Just this is fine.
✧
Yoongi doesn’t push. He doesn’t label anything. He just keeps showing up.
Sometimes at your place, sometimes at his. Sometimes at the bookstore, when he has a day off.
There’s a pattern now.
Late-night convenience store runs. Shared ramen on cracked stools by the window, making fun of people’s bad haircuts as they pass on the street outside. Socks borrowed and never returned. His hoodie living permanently on the back of your chair. Your phone lighting up with ‘Proof of life?’ on days he knows you’re at a low.
Sometimes you kiss. Sometimes you just sit in the same room and don’t say anything. Sometimes he talks and you don’t respond. And that’s okay, too.
It’s not about what it is. It’s about the fact that it keeps happening.
When you disappear, he still shows up. Like today.
It’s not a dramatic breakdown. Not this time.
Instead, it’s the kind of bad week that sinks its teeth in slow. No single catalyst, no big meltdown. Just one exhausting day stacked on top of another, until your body forgets how to move without dragging. Your sink is full of dishes you can’t look at. Your hair’s unwashed. You haven’t eaten anything substantial in days.
You didn’t text Yoongi to come over. You didn’t say much of anything at all this week.
But you must’ve sounded off, or maybe he just knows how to read silence better than most, because around three in the afternoon, you hear the soft knock at your door.
You don’t answer at first. You don’t mean to ignore him, you just can’t make your legs move.
A minute passes, and your phone buzzes from somewhere near your pillow.
Yoongi: Not trying to crowd you. Just wanted to drop off some food
Yoongi: Leaving it by the door. No pressure
You muster the energy to roll out of bed and crack the door open. A plastic bag sits at your feet and Yoongi is already halfway down the hallway, hands in his pockets.
“Yoongi,” you call, your voice raspier than you expect.
He turns around.
“Hey,” he says, probably surprised that you’re upright.
You open the door wider. “You can come in. If you want.”
Yoongi hesitates just for a second, checking that you’re sure. Then he nods. He picks the bag up and slips inside without a word, setting it on your kitchen counter.
He doesn’t try to hug you or touch you or ask what’s wrong. He doesn’t judge your apartment, the clothes strewn about, the closed curtains, the dishes piling up in the sink. He barely even looks.
“You eaten today?” he asks, gently.
You shake your head. “Not really hungry.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna make something anyway. Just in case.”
He moves around your kitchen like it’s his. Not because he’s overly familiar, but because he’s not afraid of your mess. He pulls out eggs, rice, a few green onions from the bag he brought.
You retreat back to your couch. You didn’t mean to lie down again, but the second you sit, your body droops until you’re horizontal. So you stay curled on your side, facing the wall. Listening.
The clink of metal. The whoosh of your gas burner catching. The soft sizzle of garlic hitting oil.
You don’t remember falling asleep, but when you wake up, Yoongi is sitting on the floor in front of the couch, cross-legged, a steaming bowl in his lap and another on your coffee table.
You push yourself up slowly. Your head aches, your throat’s dry, but you can’t lie. It smells good.
“You didn’t have to—” you start.
“I know,” he says, soft. “I wanted to.”
You eat in silence. The rice is soft, buttery, a little salty from the soy sauce and the eggs scrambled through it. You’re hungrier than you thought, but you pace yourself.
Halfway through, he glances over at you.
“You wanna watch something dumb?”
You nod.
Yoongi takes your bowl when you’re done, rinses both of them without comment. When he comes back, he takes a seat next to you. He scrolls through streaming apps on your TV until he lands on something you like.
The opening credits roll.
He doesn’t try to hold you. Doesn’t try to tell you it’s going to be okay. He just sits beside you, shoulders barely brushing. When your body droops again, he lets you lean into his side.
Somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark, he mutters, “You don’t have to be okay for me to want to be here.”
You don’t look at him. Your throat tightens like you’re going to cry. Which is something, at least, after the numbness of the week.
“This could be me next week,” he says, like it’s nothing. “Or tomorrow. So. I get it. That’s all.”
And then the movie continues. One ridiculous scene after another. The light from the screen flickers across his face.
You don’t say thank you yet, but you know you don’t have to.
✧
You still haven’t put a name to it.
Neither of you has tried. There was one moment, maybe, a few days ago. Yoongi was over for no particular reason. He’d looked at you from your kitchen floor, head propped against the cabinets, lips red from kissing, and opened his mouth like he might ask.
But then the takeout came, and the moment passed.
You text like friends. ‘Want anything from the store?’ ‘This customer just asked if we sell records on vinyl. I hate it here.’ ‘What are you doing tonight?’ ‘Absolutely nothing.’ ‘Come do nothing with me.’
You hang out like you’re in a relationship. Eat cross-legged on his bed. Steal fries from each other’s plates without asking. Sometimes fall asleep shoulder to shoulder watching terrible TV.
You make out. A lot.
Against walls. On couches. Outside each other’s doors at night when neither of you feels like saying goodnight just yet. It never quite escalates to the point it did that night—maybe once or twice it almost does, but one of you always pumps the brakes.
You don’t meet each other’s friends. You don’t ask about exes. You don’t introduce him to your sister or take photos together or exchange socials. Because that doesn’t feel like what this is.
You like the bubble you’ve built. The little world where nothing outside matters. Where it doesn’t have to matter yet.
Because outside the bubble, your life is still a mess. Rent’s overdue. Work is torture. You haven’t written anything in over a year and you haven’t figured out how to be proud of yourself again, not really.
But inside it—when Yoongi’s mouth is on yours, when he texts you ‘Made extra ramen if you’re hungry btw’ like that’s not the most romantic shit anyone’s ever said to you, you feel steady.
But, like anything else, it comes with its own set of issues.
The thing about not fucking is that it used to be about not wanting. A lack of drive. A lack of spark. A lack of time or energy or libido or options.
But now? Now, it’s something else. Because you have the option.
Now, it’s starting to feel like a crack in the glass. Like every time you grind against his thigh with your hips twitching and your breath shaky, or every time he pulls your shirt off and buries his face between your tits but doesn’t go lower, the crack gets a little deeper. And you’re both pretending not to see it.
Because the truth is: you want to fuck him.
You desperately want to fuck him.
You think about it constantly. The way his fingers curled inside you that first night, the soft, filthy way he talked to you, the way he looked down at your face when you sucked him off like he was watching a goddamn miracle unfold.
You think about how he’d feel inside you.
You ache with it.
But you don’t bring it up. Because once you do, once you have sex, it’s not a bubble anymore. It’s real, something with expectations.
And you know yourself, you know how you get. You’ll start needing more. Wanting more. And Yoongi, sweet and quiet and lost in his own way, will become another thing you don’t know how to manage. Another thing you don’t know how to keep.
You’re scared of that. Of ruining it. Of letting your body talk you into something your heart might not be strong enough to carry.
So you kiss him like you’re dying, but when his hands drift to your waistband, you laugh, too high-pitched, and pull away. Pretend you’re tired. Or hungry. Or something, anything. Any excuse not to cross that final threshold. Yoongi never pushes. He just nods, catches his breath, and helps you back into your shirt like a gentleman.
But you feel the tension growing. Between your thighs. In your chest. In the way you wake up soaked and aching after every sleepover, body clenching at nothing. In the way your kisses are starting to come with more teeth. With soft little growls in your throat you didn’t mean to let out.
Tonight, he’s at your place again. It’s late. You both know he should’ve left hours ago, and the crack is splintering even further, faster than you realize.
You’re straddling Yoongi on the couch, your knees bracketing his hips, your mouth fused to his. Your hips are rocking down, slow and aimless at first, but building. You can feel him getting hard beneath you, feel the press of him through his sweats as you drag your clothed pussy over him like your body is starving.
Yoongi groans into your kiss. His hands grip your thighs, fingertips twitching. But, like always, he doesn’t push. He just lets you move, lets you grind down on him with that ragged little gasp in your throat, lets you take what you need without crossing the line you’ve both carefully danced around for weeks.
Because when he tilts his head and mouths at your neck, hot and slow, and mutters, “you’re gonna make me come in my fucking pants,” you snap.
Completely.
You pull back just enough to look at him, breathing hard, eyes wild. “I want to fuck you.”
He blinks. Catches up slowly, like he’s not sure if he imagined it.
“I want you to fuck me,” you amend, a little louder. Desperate.
Yoongi just stares at you for a moment, mouth parted, chest heaving. His hands tighten on your thighs.
“You sure?” he asks, voice rough.
Once you say yes, it happens fast.
Yoongi’s hands are everywhere. Gripping your hips, your waist, sliding up your back to tug your shirt over your head. He peels it off and tosses it somewhere behind you, eyes locked on yours like he’s giving you one last chance to change your mind.
You don’t.
Your bra’s off next, fast, and he curses the second your tits are bare, like he can’t believe this is happening. Like he’s been thinking about it for weeks too, and now that it’s real, he doesn’t know where to start.
So he starts with his mouth.
He palms your breasts and groans low in his throat, then leans forward and takes one into his mouth like he needs it—hot tongue flicking over your nipple, lips sucking gently before he bites, just enough to make you gasp. His fingers find the other, circling and pinching lightly.
“Fuck,” you whimper, arching into him. “Yoongi—”
You grind down on his cock again, still half-dressed from the waist down, the friction sharp and unbearable. You’re soaked. You can feel it. Your panties are useless at this point, clinging wetly to your folds, and you’re half a second away from tearing them off yourself if he doesn’t move faster.
“Condom,” you breathe. “Please. Where—?”
“Yeah—fuck—yeah, hold on.”
You scramble off his lap at the same time he stumbles off the couch, both of you half-laughing and swearing under your breath. He digs through his bag on your floor, frantic, muttering, “I swear I had one—fuck, wait—yes.”
He holds it up like a prize, and you don’t even give him the chance to rip it open before you’re tugging your shorts and panties down in one go, stepping out of them and crawling back onto the couch.
Yoongi stops cold, stares at you for a second.
Hair messy. Chest heaving. Legs spread. Eyes hungry.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, tearing the foil open and shoving his sweats halfway down his thighs with shaking hands. His cock bobs free, hard and flushed and so ready, and your mouth actually waters.
He rolls the condom on with practiced ease and climbs back over you, settling between your legs like he belongs there. Like he’s done it a hundred times in dreams and is finally allowed to touch.
He presses inside you slowly, inch by inch, and the stretch knocks the breath from your lungs. You’re soaked, but it’s still so much, been too long, and you cling to his shoulders with a gasp.
Yoongi groans, forehead dropping to yours.
“Jesus, you’re tight,” he rasps. “Fucking wet.”
You whimper, hips already rolling up to meet him. “Been wanting this,” you whisper. “Needing this—”
“Yeah?” he murmurs, voice shaking. “You gonna let me give it to you?”
“Yes, please—”
And then he starts to move. Just the brutal press of his hips to yours, every thrust deep and deliberate and filthy, like he’s trying to bury himself somewhere he won’t be able to crawl back from.
Your head tips back against the couch, eyes rolling up, mouth falling open on a gasp that barely sounds like a real word. He’s got one hand gripping the arm of the couch behind your head for leverage, the other wrapped tight around your thigh, keeping you pinned wide open beneath him as he fucks into you.
“Fuck, Yoongi—fuck—”
“You like it, baby?” he growls.
You whimper, nodding helplessly, your hands scrambling up under his hoodie to claw at his back, his sides, anywhere you can touch.
Your skin’s on fire. Your thoughts are gone. All you know is the sharp, perfect drag of his cock, the sound of your soaked cunt every time he slams into you, the guttural noises he makes when your walls flutter around him.
“You feel so fucking good,” he groans, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched. “Tight little pussy just gripping me—shit, baby, I can’t—”
His pace stutters for half a second, like your body is pulling the soul out of him.
You cry out when he hits deep—too deep—and he groans, pulling your legs higher around his waist to get the angle just right.
“There,” he growls when you shatter under him, thighs shaking, cunt clenching so hard he nearly loses it. “Fucking cum.”
You come like you’ve lost control of your body. Loud, legs locked, nails in his back. It hits hard and fast and doesn’t stop, rolling through you in hot, humiliating waves. Yoongi hisses, desperate now, chasing his own end, rhythm starting to break.
“Gonna fill you up,” he pants, even though the condom’s there, even though it’s just a filthy fantasy, and you sob at the idea of it. “Fuck, I wish—wish I could come inside you—fuck—you’d let me, wouldn’t you? Let me ruin you for anyone else—”
“Yes,” you gasp, not even sure you mean it, but it sounds right. Feels true.
That’s all it takes.
Yoongi groans like it’s been punched out of him, hips jerking as he comes hard, cock twitching inside you, face buried in your neck as he spills into the condom.
You both stay there, gasping against sticky skin through the aftershocks. He kisses your neck once. Then again. And again.
“Holy shit,” you breathe, dazed. “I think you just rearranged my internal organs.”
Yoongi laughs. “Cool. I was aiming for your soul.”
The couch cushions are half off the frame, your legs still trembling where they’re spread open around his waist. Yoongi pulls out slowly, careful, and your body aches from it, clenches down involuntarily, already missing the stretch.
He ties off the condom, looks around for somewhere to put it before settling on the empty takeout bag from earlier. Pulls his sweats back up.
You sit up with limbs like jelly, not bothering to put your underwear back on just yet, and run a hand through your hair. Your thighs are sticky. Your lips are swollen. You feel fucked out and raw and wrung clean.
Your body is so satisfied.
Predictably, your brain is a different story.
You glance over at Yoongi. He’s slouched against the other end of the couch, head back, eyes closed. His hair is damp at the temples, chest still rising and falling like he hasn’t quite come back to himself yet.
He looks gorgeous.
You want to kiss him.
You also want to run.
That tight, itchy feeling—the one you’ve been avoiding since you first let him touch you—comes roaring back. You just crossed the line. You fucked the one good thing in your life that wasn’t tangled in expectations. That didn’t ask anything from you.
You broke the bubble.
He opens one eye and glances over at you.
“You okay?”
You nod. “Yeah. Just…” You trail off. Shrug. “That was intense.”
Yoongi huffs a soft laugh. “Yeah. You think?”
You stand. Your legs are still shaking.
“I’m gonna, uh… go pee,” you say, already heading toward the bathroom. “Before I die.”
He doesn’t stop you. Just nods, eyes following you for a second before he looks away.
You close the door and sit on the edge of the tub. Breathe.
You want to feel good. You do feel good. But also… you feel like maybe you’ve fucked up. Or you’re about to. Or like this is going to change something that shouldn’t be changed.
You think about what you’ll say when you go back out there.
You think about whether he’s getting dressed. Whether he’ll leave. Whether he should.
You think, I don’t want this to become another thing I have to recover from.
✧
When you finally open the bathroom door, the light feels harsher than it should, and your skin’s still warm from the shower you didn’t really want but took anyway. Just to delay, to think, to scrub away the sweat and the way his hands felt on your hips and the way your body sang for him.
You step into the living room wearing clean underwear and a fresh shirt. Your face is bare. Your hair is damp. Your expression, despite your best effort, is a little too tight.
Yoongi looks up from the couch, where he’s still sitting, this time in his sweats and hoodie again, elbows on his knees, fingers idly twisting the hem of his sleeve.
His eyes meet yours. He doesn’t smile, but his gaze softens. Immediately.
“Hey,” he says, quiet.
You nod, cross your arms. “Hey.”
He watches you for a second, then leans back, patting the space next to him.
You hesitate, but you lower yourself onto the couch anyway. Not quite touching, not quite distant. A safe middle.
“Wanna tell me what’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Yoongi says, disbelieving. “Then why do you look like you’re trying to figure out how to ghost me while I’m still in your apartment?”
You wince, staring at your knees. “I just—I didn’t mean for this to turn into, like… a thing.”
He nods slowly. “Okay.”
“I mean, we’re not, right? A thing?”
You look at him now, really look. Your heart’s racing. Your stomach’s twisting. You’re not sure what kind of answer you want.
Yoongi looks back at you for a long moment. Then he leans back again, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know what we are,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to make it anything.”
You swallow hard, because part of you thinks that should make you feel better. Instead, it just makes your chest ache. You were the one who let him in, even when you swore you wouldn’t. You’re not trying to make him feel like he’s the one at fault here. It’s you. It’s always you.
“But,” he adds, eyes flicking to yours again, “I like you. I care about you. And if we’re fucking now, yeah, that’s gonna mean something to me. Even if we never put a label on it.”
“Doesn’t that make it worse?” you ask, voice thin. “If it means something?”
Yoongi doesn’t speak for a long while. You sink into him without meaning to, thigh to thigh, arm to arm. You don’t really know why.
He exhales, slow and deliberate, and says, “Can I tell you something?”
You nod against his shoulder.
“I wasn’t supposed to be at that convenience store,” he starts, voice shaky in a way that makes you sit up, just slightly. “I mean, I didn’t have a reason to be anywhere. But that night… I think I was sort of… walking around to see if I’d change my mind.”
You still. Your heart trips over itself, because that could mean a lot of things. Because you know, just by the tone of his voice, that he means the worst.
He keeps going.
“I’d been thinking about it for a while. Not in a loud way. Not even like a plan. Just… wondering. If things would be better. Easier. If I just stopped. Just disappeared.”
You don’t interrupt. You don’t breathe too loud. You just listen.
“And that night, it felt close. Like maybe I was ready. Like maybe no one would notice.” He lets out a shaky laugh. “I hadn’t talked to anyone in a couple days. I didn’t even brush my teeth before I left the house. I just started walking.”
Your eyes sting. You try not to let it show.
“I stopped at the store because I thought—fuck it. One last shitty sandwich. One last can of cold coffee.” He huffs. “Really poetic, right?”
You let out a breath. “Yoongi—”
He shakes his head. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel bad. Or because I think you saved me. You didn’t. You just… made it a little easier to stay.”
You’re crying now, because god, you didn’t know, but you know. You know how it feels to always have that in the back of your mind, to convince yourself that there would be relief in giving up. Letting go.
He turns his head toward you now, not quite meeting your eyes, like he’s still unsure if he’s allowed to say all this out loud.
“I still think about it. Sometimes. Not all the time. But… it comes back. When it’s quiet. When I’m alone too long. But since that night, it’s been easier knowing that someone gets it. That I don’t have to pretend I’m fine all the time.”
He finally looks at you, and it’s not a dramatic, sweeping kind of moment. There’s no soft lighting or music swelling. Just his tired eyes, and your tired heart, and the shared weight of knowing what it feels like to want to give up—and choosing, for whatever reason, not to.
“Maybe that’s all this has to be,” he says. “Not a love story. Not some perfect, clean thing. Just… two people who don’t always want to be here, making it a little easier for each other to stay.”
You can’t speak. You nod, and your eyes blur, and Yoongi presses his forehead to yours like it’s the only way he knows how to say thank you for seeing me.
✧
Days later, things aren’t better—not in the way people usually mean. Your life is still a mess. His is too.
But something’s changed. Settled.
He lets himself in now. Doesn’t knock. Kicks his shoes off like he lives there, shrugs his hoodie off and drops it somewhere near the couch, grabs two cups and fills them with whatever’s in your fridge.
And you let him.
You sit next to each other, thigh to thigh, flipping through shows you won’t finish. You kiss during the commercials. You fall asleep with his hand on your waist.
You still haven’t said you’re together. You still haven’t said what you mean to each other. But when you’re quiet for too long, he looks up from his phone and asks, “Okay?”
And when he’s too quiet, you ask, “Wanna stay the night?”
And when you both lie awake in the dark, not talking, not moving, you think: I’m still here.
And so is he.
✧
It starts with scraps. Half-sentences in your notes app. A phrase here, a sentence there. Something you jotted down after Yoongi left one night, when your chest felt like it was holding more than usual and your bed still smelled like his shampoo.
Then it becomes a little routine. You open your laptop without the usual dread. You stare at the cursor blinking in a half-finished document and think: maybe I can.
It’s not for meant to be published. It’s not for anyone but you. But it’s something.
One night, Yoongi finds you sitting on the floor with your laptop on your thighs. You’re so focused, you don’t even hear him come in.
He just watches for a second, quiet.
“Writing?” he asks eventually, and you jump.
“Jesus—” You slam the laptop shut on instinct, and he raises both hands in surrender, shoulders shaking with laughter.
“You don’t have to show me,” he says, setting down the drinks he brought. “But… that’s new.”
You shrug, embarrassed. “It’s nothing. Just… stuff.”
Yoongi sinks to the floor beside you. “You haven’t written since we met.”
“I haven’t written in a long time.”
He doesn’t ask why not. He already knows.
Instead, he leans his head on your shoulder and says, “I’m glad you’re starting to again.”
He doesn’t push. He doesn’t ask for details. He doesn’t ask to read it. He just sits with you, there on the floor, eyes closed. Like your writing means something just by existing.
You open the laptop again.
You keep writing.
✧
Yoongi is sitting cross-legged on your bed while you type, cradling a cup of tea you made him because he clearly needed something to do with his hands.
You can tell he’s nervous. He’s got that look on his face like he’s about to say something serious but is trying not to scare the shit out of you. It isn’t working.
“So,” he says, after a long stretch of silence, “I have a friend.”
You glance up from your laptop, blinking. “Amazing.”
Yoongi huffs. “Kim Namjoon. He’s an old friend. College. We used to mess around with production stuff, back when I thought I was gonna be a genius producer with a Grammy by 25.”
You smile a little at that, set your laptop aside. “What’d he say?”
Yoongi hesitates, fingers drumming softly against the side of his mug. “He got some seed money. Not much. Just enough to rent a space, get a couple of half-decent mics, some gear. Says he wants to start a small label.”
Your stomach does a little flip. Not because you’re worried. Not yet. But because of the way he’s saying it. Like he’s trying not to want it too much.
“He wants me in on it,” Yoongi continues, staring down into his tea. “It’d be three of us, working in a basement, surviving off cup ramen. Maybe getting a local artist to sign on eventually.”
You exhale. “That sounds… really fucking cool.”
Yoongi finally looks at you. He’s smiling now, just a little, but it’s tight at the edges. “Yeah. It does.”
“And?”
He shrugs, but it’s not a real shrug. It’s that shoulder-lift people do when something matters too much. “And I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready to give a shit again. I don’t know if I’ll fuck it up. I don’t even know if I still have anything to say.”
“You do,” you say, instantly.
His jaw flexes. “Yeah, well. Maybe. He’s starting soon. Wants me to come by next week. Just to mess around with some demos, get a feel for it again.”
You nod slowly. Try not to let the ‘what if’s start swirling. What if it pulls him away? What if he leaves? What if this tiny, fragile thing you’re building—whatever it is—gets buried under a dream he's only just remembered how to want again?
But you don’t say any of that.
Instead, you say, “You should do it.”
Yoongi searches your face for a long time, hesitant, like he’s trying to catch you in a lie.
“Yeah?”
You reach over and take his mug, set it on the nightstand. You curl into his side, your face pressed to the crook of his neck.
“Yeah,” you whisper. “I think maybe… we’re both starting to remember how to want things again.”
You feel him breathe out. Slow. Unsteady.
But he nods.
✧
Yoongi doesn’t stop texting. He still sends you memes, voice notes, the occasional photo of his workspace—a cramped basement room with exposed pipes and cords spilling out over his desk, coffee-stained notebooks piled next to a MIDI keyboard.
But he’s not around as much.
The nights you used to spend together—half-draped over one another on the couch, kissing during reruns, sleeping side-by-side without labels—are fewer now. Sometimes he falls asleep at the studio. Sometimes he doesn’t respond until 2 a.m., when you’re already asleep.
It’s hard. You won’t lie to yourself about that. You feel the absence like a low-grade fever. Always there, dull but insistent.
And there’s still no word for what you are. No boyfriend, no girlfriend. Just… you, and Yoongi. And this thing you’ve built together, quiet and warm and undefined.
But when you do see him—when he walks through your door smelling like coffee and sweat and work—you can see it on him. The spark. The momentum. The low, buzzing joy of trying again. Of wanting something bad enough to bleed for it.
He’s tired. But he’s tired for a good reason, now.
And that makes you want to try, too.
So you keep opening your laptop. Not just to scribble down half-formed ideas, but to finish. You sit with the mess of it, the aching in your fingers, the voice in your head that says ‘why bother’—and you write anyway. You dig up old stories, rework scenes that used to make you cringe. You find your voice again, piece by shaky piece.
Sometimes, late at night, you send him snippets. Just to say, look. I’m doing it, too.
And he always responds, eventually. Usually something like:
Yoongi: Fuck yes
Yoongi: Proud of you
Yoongi: Also the studio toilet flooded again. I’m going to kill Joon
You laugh. You keep writing.
It still hurts sometimes. Missing him, wondering what all this means. But now the hurt is paired with movement. With hope.
✧
Eventually, you finish something.
It’s not perfect. Not even close. There are typos and sentences that feel like strangers to themselves, and places where the ending is still a little jagged and wrong. But it’s done.
A full manuscript. Your name at the top. Your words, your voice, your pain and hunger and stupid hope wrapped into a whopping 112 pages.
You think of Yoongi when you submit it with an application to a graduate school program. A program you’ve read and re-read the description for more times than you care to admit. You don't know if it’s good enough. If you’re good enough. But for the first time in a long time, you do it anyway.
And then you don’t tell anyone.
Maybe it’s selfish, but you want the hope for yourself. Just for a little while. You want to keep it quiet and sacred, untainted by expectations or well-meaning encouragement or the crushing weight of what if it doesn’t happen. You just want it to be yours.
You keep seeing Yoongi, of course. When he can. When he’s not tangled up in late-night meetings and studio sessions. You see each other in stolen hours, sleep-heavy kisses, lazy dinners eaten on the floor.
But lately, even those small moments feel bigger.
And then one night, you get a text.
Yoongi: You home?
You are. You say yes.
He shows up ten minutes later, breathless, hoodie damp from trying to dodge light rain, cheeks flushed with joy. Real joy. The kind that lights his whole face from the inside out.
“I had to tell someone,” he says the second you open the door. “I had to tell you.”
You let him in, confused but smiling all the same. You’ve been doing a lot of that lately. “What happened?”
He doesn’t even sit. He paces back and forth, rakes a hand through his hair, practically vibrating.
“We signed someone,” he finally says. “Tentatively, but, this artist from Busan, she’s insane, she’s so weird and good and her voice is like—fuck, I don’t even know how to explain it. But Namjoon loved her. We all did. And she said yes. She said yes, to us.”
You blink, stunned. “You—Yoongi, that’s—holy shit!”
He grins, wide and unguarded, and you’ve never seen him like this before and it just makes you so fucking happy. You’re up on your feet before your brain catches up.
You hug him tight, breath caught in your throat. Because he’s shaking a little, and he smells so good, and this is what he looks like when he’s proud of himself. When he’s living.
You pull back to look at him, hands on his jaw.
“I’m so proud of you,” you whisper.
And Yoongi’s expression shifts. Softens. Deepens. He takes a breath.
“I love you,” he says.
Like it’s not sudden. Like it’s been sitting on his tongue for weeks, waiting for the right moment to fall out.
“I just—I do. And I didn’t want to say it while things were still messy, or early, or whatever. But this is what I wanted. That night, at the convenience store. This. You. Someone who gets it. Someone who doesn’t fix me but lets me stay. And I love you.”
Fuck. There it is.
You don’t speak right away. You reach for him instead. Pull him back in. Rest your forehead against his and let yourself feel it. All of it.
And then, soft and steady, you say it back.
“I love you too.”
✧
It’s not frantic, not this time.
Not messy or rushed or born of need. It’s slow, reverent, deep. Yoongi’s hands cradle your face like you’re something fragile, something he’s terrified of breaking now that he knows what you mean to him. His thumbs stroke your cheeks. His breath catches when you tilt your head and kiss him harder but just as slow, open-mouthed and aching.
You walk him backwards toward the bed. He lets you. He goes willingly, grinning against your mouth like he can’t believe this is happening again, that you’re his, and that this time, it’s not just comfort or heat or distraction. It’s love.
He sinks onto the mattress, and you climb over him, straddling his lap, kissing him again and again, hands tangled in his hair, grinding down against the hard line of his cock through his sweats.
But then he pulls back. Barely. His hands settle on your thighs. His eyes are dark and shining and hungry.
“Let me eat you out.”
Your breath catches.
“I—what?”
Yoongi licks his lips. “You don’t get it,” he says, too far gone to filter it. “I’ve been wanting to. Since the night I fingered you against your fucking door, I’ve wanted to get between your thighs and just live there. I love you, and I love your pussy, and I’m gonna make you come so hard you forget every single bad day you’ve ever had.”
You stare at him, slackjawed.
Then you exhale, soft and wrecked, and whisper, “Okay.”
Yoongi repositions you onto your back, gentle, lips back on yours. His hands slide down your body like he’s mapping out every inch. He tugs your shirt off, unhooks your bra, kisses down your neck, your chest, your ribs, like he has all the time in the world.
And then he pulls your shorts down. Your panties too.
He groans when he sees you. Like, actually groans.
“God, baby. Look at you.” He kisses your inner thigh, drags his nose along the crease, eyes flicking up to yours. “So fucking pretty.”
And then he licks into you.
You cry out, sharp and sudden, because it’s so much. He’s warm and wet and greedy, tongue flat against your clit, then pointed and precise, then everywhere, like he can’t choose, like he doesn’t want to.
He moans against your pussy like he’s the one being touched. Like he could cum just watching you feel good, because of him.
“Yoongi—shit—” Your hands fly to his hair, thighs trembling, already shaking, already close.
He wraps his arms under your thighs, holding you open, keeping you grounded, mouth working you over like he’s worshipping you. He sucks on your clit, gentle but firm, and you arch off the bed.
“I’m gonna come,” you warn, voice breaking. “Fuck, Yoongi—”
He groans, messy and eager, never once letting up. And then you do.
You come hard, thighs clamping around his head, hands in his hair, eyes rolled back. It’s hot and overwhelming, your body jolting and twitching, his name a broken whimper on your tongue.
He keeps going until you push him away, overstimulated and trembling.
“Jesus,” you breathe.
He grins, climbs back up your body, presses his mouth to yours without hesitation. You taste yourself on his tongue.
“You love me,” he murmurs, like it’s the best thing he’s ever been told.
You nod, dazed. “I do.”
He kisses you again.
“You’re gonna let me do that every day, right?”
You laugh, breathless. “If you keep doing it like that, yeah. I might not survive, but yeah.”
You let Yoongi kiss you for a while, slow and soft and full of so much love, but eventually, you push at his shoulder. He pulls back instantly, eyes wide and brows furrowed.
“Lie down,” you murmur. “Let me take care of you.”
Yoongi blinks, lips swollen and wet. But he lets you push. “Baby—”
“You’ve been working so fucking hard,” you say, crawling into his lap, straddling his thighs. “Let me ride you. Let me make you feel good. Please.”
Whatever protest he might’ve had dies in his throat the second you reach down and palm him through his sweats. He’s hard—has been since he had your pussy on his tongue—and he groans, low and helpless, as you slide your hand beneath the waistband.
You stroke him slow, loving, watching the tension bleed out of him with every pass of your fist.
“Fuck,” he whispers, eyes fluttering shut, hips twitching into your touch. “Feels good.”
You smile. Kiss his chest as he fumbles for the condom in his wallet.
When you finally sink down onto him, Yoongi lets out a groan. His hands fly to your hips, gripping hard, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched so tight you can see the tension in his neck when he leans his head back.
“God—” he gasps. “Fuck, baby, you—”
“I know,” you breathe, grinding your hips in slow, careful circles. “I know. Just relax. Let me do this for you.”
You ride him slow, deep, dragging his cock through your tight, wet heat over and over. Every inch of him feels like it was made for you, thick and perfect and pulsing inside you, your cunt already fluttering from how good he made you feel earlier.
Yoongi can’t keep still. His fingers squeeze your thighs, your hips, then your waist, like he can’t decide where to hold on. Like he’s barely holding on at all.
He opens his eyes to look at you and whines, higher than he probably meant to. Because you’re riding him like you love him. Because your tits are bouncing with every slow roll of your hips, and your face is flushed, and your eyes are locked on his like there’s nowhere else you want to be in the entire fucking world.
It springs him into action.
He sits up, wraps his arms around you, mouths at your tits like he’s starving. He sucks at one nipple, then the other, licking and kissing and biting softly like he can’t stop, like he needs to touch you.
“Yoongi,” you gasp, fingers tangling in his hair.
He moans into your chest. Hands moving down to your ass, guiding you up and down on his cock in that same slow, dirty rhythm, like he wants to make this last forever.
“Can’t even think,” he pants. “You feel so fucking good—too good—fuck, I love you—”
You ride him harder, faster, your hands on his shoulders. Your whole body shakes with how good it feels to be full of him, to see him like this—wrecked, undone, yours.
“I’m so close,” you whisper, hips stuttering. “Yoongi—”
“Come for me,” he begs. “Please, baby, come on my cock, wanna feel it.”
You do.
You fall apart in his arms, gasping his name, pussy clenching around him so tight it nearly rips the orgasm out of him too. You’re shaking, sweating, still grinding through it as he buries his face in your neck, groaning your name, fucking up into you just a little, just enough—
He comes with a low, broken ‘fuck,’ arms locking around your waist, cock pulsing inside the condom. He’s so loud, so needy, and god, you’ve never loved anyone like this.
You collapse against his chest, both of you breathless and slick with sweat, still joined, still trembling.
And Yoongi holds you like he never wants to let go.
✧
You stay like that for a while, pressed to his chest, his arms strong around your back, the rhythm of his heartbeat still racing under your cheek. The room smells like sweat and sex. Yoongi’s hand is stroking slow lines up and down your spine.
He hasn’t said much since you both came down, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Just full.
You’re the one who breaks it.
“I did something,” you admit.
Yoongi hums, not missing a beat in the way his fingers trace over your skin. “Yeah?”
You nod against his chest, then force yourself to sit up, just enough to look at him. His hair’s a mess. His eyes are half-lidded and lazy, but sharp with attention the second he realizes you’re serious.
“I applied to grad school.”
Yoongi blinks.
“For writing?” he asks.
You nod again, heart hammering. “Yeah. An MFA. I submitted a portfolio. Finished something for the first time in forever. I would’ve told you sooner, I just—” You shrug. “I didn’t want to jinx it.”
His mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again, like he’s still processing.
And then he grins. Slow. Genuine. Gums showing and eyes shining.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, sitting up and grabbing your face in both hands.
Your eyes sting. “I don’t even know if I’ll get in. It’s probably stupid—”
“It’s not,” he cuts in, firm and quiet. “It’s not stupid. It’s huge.”
You try to look away, but he keeps your face in his hands, thumbs brushing your cheeks, grounding you.
“I’m so fucking proud of you,” he says. “Seriously. I’ve watched you try so hard to find something again, and you did it. Whether or not you get in doesn’t matter. You tried. That’s fucking everything.”
You bite your lip, blinking fast. Yoongi kisses your forehead, then your nose, then your mouth.
“Thanks for telling me,” he murmurs. “I’ll keep it safe.”
And you know he will.
For the first time in a long time, the future doesn’t feel so terrifying.
✧
The email comes on a Wednesday.
You’re not expecting it. You’ve nearly forgotten the timeline, pushed it into the back of your mind like a daydream you didn’t want to get too close to. You’ve been telling yourself not to hope too much. Not to want it, even though you do. Badly.
It hits your inbox around 11:42 a.m., and you stare at the subject line for a full minute before you open it. And then—
You’re in.
You read it twice, then two more times. It still doesn’t feel real. You read the phrase We’re pleased to inform you like it’s in another language. Like it’s not something anyone was ever supposed to say to you.
Then you laugh. A startled, breathless sound that turns into something half-sobbing.
You call Yoongi.
He doesn’t pick up on the first try—he’s a busy man these days—but he calls back two minutes later.
“Hey, baby. What’s—?”
“I got in.”
There’s a long pause.
And then, softly, “what?”
You swallow hard. You’re pacing your kitchen now, barefoot and trembling. “I got in. Grad school.”
“Holy fuck.”
You laugh again, breathless. “I know.”
“Holy fuck.”
“I know! Yoongi—”
“You got in,” he says. “You fucking got in.”
He sounds like he’s smiling. Like he’s trying not to cry. You’re trying, too.
“I’m so proud of you,” he says. “So fucking proud of you. I’m gonna lose my mind.”
Your throat tightens. “I don’t know what to do now.”
“Come to the studio,” he says instantly. “No one’s here today except me. I’ll order food. I’ll roll a joint. I’ll kiss you a lot. Do some very dirty, celebratory things to you on the desk, if you want.”
You’re already grabbing your keys. “Okay. Yeah.”
“Meet me out back.”
When you get to the studio, he’s outside. Leaning against the back of the building, waiting. The joint is already rolled, tucked neatly behind his ear, and he’s got that look on his face—that slow, lazy grin.
“You,” he says, pushing off the wall the second he sees you. “Fucking you.”
You don’t say anything. Just drop your bag on the cracked concrete and launch yourself into his arms.
He catches you easily, wraps you up in him—hoodie and warmth and the faint smell of cigarettes and detergent and Yoongi. His arms curl tight around your waist, and he lifts you slightly off the ground as you bury your face in his neck.
“You got in,” he murmurs again. “You really—baby, you did it.”
You nod against him, laughing and sniffling all at once. “I did.”
He sets you down but doesn’t let go. Just pulls back enough to kiss you. Once. Twice. Then a third time, slower. Deeper. Like he’s trying to memorize this version of you—buzzing and breathless and so fucking proud of yourself.
When he finally pulls away, he grins and taps the joint behind his ear.
“Celebration?”
You nod. “God, yes.”
He lights it. Takes a drag, passes it to you, and you both sit on the loading dock out back, knees bumping, fingers laced, smoke around your heads. The sun’s low in the sky. It’s chilly, but you don’t feel cold. Not with his hand in yours.
And everything’s… okay. Not fixed. Not perfect. But better.
Because loving Yoongi didn’t save you, and you didn’t save him. You still have bad days. Panic attacks. Guilt. Long, unbearable silences you have to claw your way out of. He does, too. Life is still life.
But he holds your hand through it.
And when things are good—like now, like this—you feel it in your bones: you love him. You fucking love him.
You lean into his side, head on his shoulder, and you think:
I can do this. I can live this life.
Especially if he’s in it.
✧ shoot me a reply or an ask if you enjoyed this fic! feedback is always appreciated <3 join my taglist if you want to be tagged in future fics!
There are two members of the WPPS (Western Pennsylvania Paranormal Society): Kim Namjoon, and yourself. After saving a bit of money, the two of you decide to take your paranormal equipment deep into the Appalachian forest to see if the local folklore there is true.
☾ min yoongi x reader AND kim namjoon x reader
☾ genre: paranormal / horror
☾ read author's note and tws HERE
☾ rating: 18+
☾ status: ongoing ! {current wc: 10.5k}
☾ read on wattpad
𓉸 chapters 𓉸
book one: fall into place
{one} {two} {three} {four} {...}
book two: frozen over
{?}
book three: seeds of growth
{?}
book four: dog days
{?}
𓉸 extras 𓉸
𖤐 cabin tour !!
𖤐 pinterest board
𖤐 apple music playlist
✘ disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. any mirrors of real life are purely coincidence. members of bts are used solely for visuals.
@serendipitasha took herself out of the kikination secret santa so it would be fair. But I'm not gonna let my girl go without a present this year!! Inspired by your nickname in the server I made you some miffy banners for Christmas. Enjoy my love ❤
so if you aren’t in the loop, peachy and i are same brain all the time.
funny story peach, i’ve been thinking a lot lately about wanting a tumblr banner with my username in it. so thank you for reading my mind i love you so much ❤️💗💞✨🍬🌷😘😙
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We already know that the Secret Santa event was organised by the lovely @serendipitasha and so much effort was put into it. I thought it's only fair if I give her something in return for being so patient with me.
I made a mood board for how I see you Tasha hope you like it o(〃^▽^〃)o
↪︎𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: Altars crumble faster in shallow water. But he still knelt like it was sacred. No one ever warned you that worship could look like love. Or that love could look like drowning.
↪︎𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲: dark romance, psychological thriller, obsession, slow burn
↪︎𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: here
↪︎𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: taehyung x reader
↪︎𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: ongoing | 𝘄𝗰: 35k+ | 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: 9/32
↪︎𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: ao3 | wattpad | taglist
You've been dancing your whole life, but you've never felt truly seen until a pair of dark eyes finds you in the mirror. He's nothing like the men who usually want you—this one treats your presence like a privilege he doesn't deserve. The power is intoxicating. The way he crumbles when you acknowledge him is even better.
drabbles
⦾ the offering: pressed flowers and secrets
⦾ l'heure bleue: late night shifts
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