#olivejar

You are firmly on one side of that scale and it has nothing to do with the way his tongue runs alongside the most sensitive of your parts, taking you to your highest highs as you clench around the expert tip of his tongue that could so easily ruin lives.

You unclasp your fingers out of his hair, lungs still struggling to fill with air after it got knocked out of you while Changkyun gives a pat on your thighs, pulling back with a satisfied smirk, lips glistening with your release. He looks very proud of himself as he jumps in bed next to you, propping his arms behind his head. Wordlessly, you stand up and pull your underwear and trousers on, then throw him his t-shirt.

“We need to be at Hyunwoo’s in 20 minutes, get dressed.”

“What if we don’t go?” he says. “We get some pizza, put on a shitty movie and get some cuddles in.”

“Cuddles?!” You ask, frowning. “What’s gotten into you lately, you’re acting weird. Are you going all soft on me?” 

Changkyun thinks for a long second, his eyes scanning your face for any indication on whether you think going soft would be good or not. “Would that be so terrible?” The laugh you let out in response claws at his heart.

“Stop joking around. Look everyone’s already there, come on.”

Changkyun is quiet the entire bus trip to your friend’s house. He is in no mood for a party when his brain’s going a hundred miles per hour with vivid images of you and he chastises himself for allowing this to happen, to fall for the one person he promised he wouldn’t. There’s anger bubbling in his stomach at the way you’re sitting next to him, completely oblivious of the grip you’ve taken on his heart, on his entire existence and he feels like he’s about to burst at the seams if he doesn’t let it out somehow.

Changkyun disappears from your side as soon as you step inside Hyunwoo’s house. His only goal for tonight is to drink his feelings away and that’s exactly what the stacked bar is going to do. He grabs a small bottle of rum and plops himself down on the couch next to two people he’s never met, and he never will because he spares them no second glance, even when they’re trying to include him in the conversation.

He hates the way you have no trouble starting mingling with people right away. Changkyun watches intently as he nurses the bottle to his lips. You look so bright and beautiful greeting the host and his jock friends and he despises it; he despises that you’re the only thing on his mind lately. Twenty years he’s known you and he never thought he would end up caught in this moment like a fool, pining for someone who doesn’t share his feelings, at least not in the way he wants them to. He is a much too rational and proud person to accept his fate as a victim of his heart; that weak, stupid heart that decided it would only beat faster for one person only: you.

You don’t see each other for most of the party. You are usually inseparable, but tonight Changkyun’s avoiding you, choosing instead to waste away in corners of the room without ever speaking to anyone. He watches the party goers, judging every step they take until you catch his eye for a split second with the way you smile or do that annoying hair flip over your shoulder or fiddle with the hem of your dress as you speak to someone. Normally, he would have been out of there as soon as he realized he wasn’t in the mood for any social gatherings, but he’s stubbornly sticking it out tonight, refusing to let you out of his sight.

It’s about 3am when the party winds down and people go their own ways; everyone except himself, you, Hyunwoo and a couple other friends who decide to catch the sunrise together from the living room floor. 

“There’s only one thing we should be doing right now,” one guy with a creepy smile suggests. He’s wearing a boisterous floral shirt that Changkyun finds absolutely disgusting and he’s sitting cross legged in the middle of a fouton like he’s the king of the castle. “Never have I ever anyone?”

There’s a whoop of approval around the room and someone is already filling the shot glasses with poison, then one by one they start spilling questions.

“Never have I ever had sex in a public space,” red haired girl whose name Changkyun cannot remember offers with an innocent smile. He drinks, you drink, and exchange a quick knowing look. That was pretty early on at the start of this friends with benefits thing. Having sex in the Swedish literature aisle of your library was not either of your proudest moments, but it earned a chuckle every time it got brought up. You’d promised the library was off limits after that.

Two rounds in, everyone starts getting rowdier as the question become more revealing than Changkyun is willing to let know. He feigns a stomach ache and pauses his drinking; you, on the other hand, barely glance towards him as you become enraptured with the group’s stories. Your cheeks are dusted in red as you drink for yet another racy questions and you smile shyly when people inevitably ask for details. Changkyun doesn’t hear anything. He’s tuned out the voices, the noises, all his senses are just drowning in the way you’re slouched against a couch, tucking your hair behind your ear and wetting your pretty, sinful lips that he never gets to kiss like he wants to. Everyone disappears and it’s just you. 

“-kyun?” The call of his name pulls him out of his momentary reverie. “It’s your turn.”

They all fall silent waiting for him to say something and Changkyun’s eyes are fixed into yours. He licks his lips, takes a deep breath and says, “Never have I ever fallen in love with my best friend.”

The air feels heavy as the words float around the living room that stinks of booze and people. Changkyun doesn’t even wait for anyone to drink before he downs his entire glass. 

“I’m not in the mood to play anymore,” you say, pushing yourself up off the floor and storming to the exit.

Good job, Changkyun, you’ve really done it this time.

“Wait, where are you going?!” Changkyun chases after you, but you speed up every time you feel he’s near. “Hey! Stop!”

You come abruptly to a halt and he stops several feet behind you. When you eventually get the courage to turn around and face him, you are fighting back tears.

“Why would you say that?” you whisper.

“Because it’s true. Because I—“

“Don’t say it. Please don’t say you love me.”

In spite of it, Changkyun blurts out almost immediately. “I love you.”

“Changkyun!!” his name comes out in a sob and it’s the last straw before your tears begin streaming down your flushed cheeks. He knows he should feel guilty. He feels everything but that. He feels free, weightless, you’re finally aware. “It was our rule, that we wouldn’t fall in love. You said you wouldn’t.”

“That was a year ago! How could I have known the effect you’d end up having on me? How could I have known you would end up being the only person I want and need.”

“You’re drunk and you don’t mean that.”

“I might be drunk but I mean every single word.”

You sob again and fall into a crouch on the pavement, face buried into your arms. Normally, he would be your shoulder to cry on whenever you needed and now he couldn’t. His fingers itch to grab you by the shoulders, to bury themselves into your hair as he held you. He never wanted to be the reason for your tears and now he didn’t know how to make it better.

“I’m sorry, I tried to stop myself.” 

“How did you try? By having more sex together?” You are right, that was a lie. He didn’t really try. He should have put an end to it as soon as he realized things were changing, but he couldn’t. He became intoxicated, he wanted, no, he needed more of you, more of your time, more of your body, more of your mind. You’d started this relationship out of a mistake, a simple yearning to know what it would be like that ended in a year long situation. It was great for a while, but Changkyun should have known it wouldn’t last and he couldn’t make you love him, not like that. He’d been selfishly holding on and now it was painfully sinking in. Your waning sobs become sad laughter. “You know, I always thought it would be me,” you confess, “that I’d catch feelings and ruin everything. Funny, right?”

“Hilarious,” he says sarcastically. “I take it it’s over.”

You stand up and use a sleeve of your dress to wipe the tear stains on your face. “You think?! Maybe we shouldn’t have started it in the first place.” 

“Don’t say that. It will kill me if you’re going to regret this whole year. Give me that, at least.”

Changkyun is your best friend. He looks like your best friend. But at that moment he doesn’t sound like himself any longer. He sounds like a fool in love; he sounds like you two years ago banging on your ex-boyfriend’s door pathetically begging him to take you back. Changkyun has been there through that and through everything else. You pity him and his foolish heart and you almost wish you could have given him yours back in the same way just to spare him the ache that’s yet to come.

Jooheon, your partner, trots down the hallway, his shoulders slumped, and comes up to you, letting out a deep sign as he leans onto the desk. He has just made sure the patient got taken care of by one of the doctors and doesn’t seem too thrilled about waiting around for it.

“This old man…” he sighs again for emphasis and shakes his head, “what can I do?” It’s a rhetorical question. Nothing, there’s nothing to do when someone is too stubborn to take your word that they’re in no danger and you’ve been doing this job long enough to know there’s no use arguing. “Just promise me you won’t let me become an old grump, okay?”

“I don’t plan on knowing you that long,” you laugh, capping your pen and handing the finished paperwork to the nurse behind the desk. Truthfully, Jooheon is too sweet to ever become a scrooge. In his old age he’ll probably the much too happy grandpa handing out bird feed to all the children in the park and getting mistaken for a creep because there’s no way anyone is just that kind without ulterior motives.

“Hey!” Jooheon fakes outrage and watches you walk away from him towards the ambulance you share. “Gramps there just called me a taxi driver, can you at least be nice to me for a second?”

“Not in my job description, love.”

“Aish, what am I ever going to do with you?”

There are only a couple of people you really love sharing a shift with and Jooheon is one of them. He’s smart, capable, has great reflexes and somehow always manages to calm down screaming children, which pisses you off especially because more often than not it’s you the children are screaming because. You’re not great with children and one day you’ll have to accept that. Not today though; today you can tease him for being bad with old people.

Jooheon gets into the driver seat and waits. “Ten bucks the next call is the first drunk people call of the night.”

“I’m not going to bet on something I know I’ll lose, Jooheon,” you say. “Honestly, I’m surprised it’s almost 1AM and we haven’t had any yet.”

“Maybe people got a late start today.”

Just then the radio line rustles and the dispatcher voice breaks through, announcing the new call: partygoers fell through an old store front, leaving some cut up and bleeding. Jooheon swiftly answers back and switches on the engine.

“Damn, I could be 10 bucks richer right now.”

It takes five and a half minutes for you to get to the address in the old part of town, which is now mostly bars and clubs, and the scene looks pretty much as you expected it to. The entire store front is lying in hundreds of pieces on the ground, two guys and one girl with visible lacerations on their skin sitting on the edge of the sidewalk and another older man gesticulating frantically between his phone and the now shattered window — the owner, you expect. He doesn’t look too pleased. Jooheon parks the ambulance in front of them and you get out first.

“Oh thank god you’re finally here!” the owner cuts in front of you and you take a step back in surprise. “These hooligans completely ruined my store, they’re gonna pay for it! I’m gonna press charges, I’m gonna take it to court—”

“Sir, I’m sorry, but you need to call the police for that. Now, are you injured?”

“No. But my store!”

“I’m sorry, we’re medics,” you point back at the car, that says AMBULANCE in big bold letters; hard to miss. Frankly, you don’t really care about his store and unless he’s injured, it’s not your job to care either. “Please, call the police if you would like to report this.” He’s visibly irritated by you now, but doesn’t say anything else, thankfully.

Jooheon already has his gloves on when you get back to your task and you let out a disgruntled huff he understands too well as you slip yours on. Half of the battle doing this job is not losing your cool with people who don’t seem to grasp what it is you’re supposed to do. And that’s a lot of people from old man thinking you’re a taxi service to this guy thinking you’re the police to this one lady at the start of your shift who called you in to take her dog for a walk. It’s impossible not to become even a little bit of a misanthrope doing this job.

“We need to cleans the cuts, but doesn’t look like any of you need stitches,” Jooheon flashes his best dimpled smile to the three sitting on the curb.

The girl shoots up, wobbles quite badly on her feet and nearly falls over, but manages to catch her balance just in time. “I’m calling dibs on the cute doctor!” she says, with what you assume is her trying to put on her most charming smile, but ends up being a lopsided grimace because she’s drunk out of her wits. Jooheon doesn’t argue–it would be pointless to–he just takes her hand and guides her to the back of the ambulance where his kit is.

“I guess you two are stuck with me then,” you say looking at the two other guys. One of them starts giggling like mad and the other is about to fall asleep. None of them are complaining about pain, which is good.

“I’ll go first,” the giggling guy stands up, but gets vertigo and threatens to topple over without extra support.

“How about we don’t go anywhere?” You help him sit back down and he grins at you. A cute grin, you notice; factually, objectively he has a very cute smile and you noticed, nothing wrong about that. You make sure he’s steady before you grab your own kit and take out the gauze and disinfectant. For some reason, he keeps giggling every time you do something. “What’s your name?”

He stops giggling and hums. “Hoseok.”

“Hoseok,” you repeat, he grins at the sound of his name. “How did you manage to break that window?” You slowly dab the gauze over a bleeding cut on his forehead. It’s not a deep cut, but the blood streaking down his face makes him look like he’s been through hell.

“Dunno,” Hoseok does a full body shrug. “One second we were here, then we were there and there was this big crash.” He giggles again when you push hair away from his face for easier access to clean him up. There’s something very infectious about his induced child-like happiness and you wonder if he’s like this when not under the influence. “For what it’s worth I think you’re the cute doctor.”

The last sentence catches you off guard and a laugh escapes you. Hoseok seems proud of that because his lips curl up at the ends and you try to hide your own smile and focus on what you’re doing instead of how cute he is and despite the reek of alcohol emanating off his clothes. You put on the antibiotic cream over the cut and patch it up, moving to the next one. You can feel Hoseok’s eyes burning holes into you all the while, seemingly very taken with the way your hands move over all his bloody marks.

“You’re very cute when you’re focused,” he interrupts. “Your eyebrows do this furrowing thing. Cute. I like cute.”

He’s so drunk he can barely string together a sentence, you think, stop falling for it. You ignore him, choosing instead to try and finish him and move on to the other guy now lightly snoring next to you.

“Are all the doctors where you come from as pretty as you are?” he asks again, unbothered by the lack of replies. You purse your lips to try to hide a smile. You really want him to shut up. “I hope I get injured more often.”

“Please don’t!” you yelp. You really hope sober Hoseok knows better than to get himself hurt on purpose to score a date. Not that a date would ever be on the table, who mentioned anything about a date? “Okay, you’re done. Hoseok please promise me you’re not going to hurt yourself on purpose.”

“Oh, you’re very cute when you’re serious.”

You sigh. “Promise.”

“Okay,” Hoseok giggles again. “But I do want to see you again, you saved my life.”

“You weren’t in any life-threatening danger, Hoseok,” you say matter-of-factly as you wipe some blood off the other guy’s face. He’s only half conscious and largely ignoring you.

Jooheon shows up a few minutes later to check up on you just as you’re trying to keep second guy, whose name you don’t manage to find out, from going to sleep on the concrete.

“We should call a cab for them,” he tells you then turns to Hoseok. “Would you like us to call a cab to take you home?”

“Can’t we go in your car? I’ve always wanted to ride in an ambulance.”

“NO!” Jooheon blurts out and immediately realises he said it a few notches too high. The sting of being compared to a taxi just the previous hour must still hurt him. Hoseok flinches at the outright refusal and stares at you with pleading eyes. He låooks like a lost puppy and you have to remind yourself again he’s stupidly drunk and you’re on a call, you shouldn’t be flirting with a patient.

“Don’t look at me, he said no already.” You quickly put the last patch on sleeping guy and close the kit. For once, you would actually want to say yes and take him home, but you know that’s not going to happen tonight. Hoseok is still looking from you to Jooheon and back for several moments before you can’t take any more of his big brown eyes and decide to dial up a taxi for the three of them. They’ll have to deal with the police report when they’re sober, to the owner’s dismay and you can go on your way for the rest of the night.

Nature had always had a profound connection with you. Growing up among the stifling concrete of a big capital city, you could only yearn for the seasonal escape visiting your grandparents in the countryside brought you every summer. It was as if that was the only time you could really breathe, feel air in your lungs. You knew from quite a young age your happiest life was not meant to be lived in the city. Leaving it, however, was not as easy. With studies, work, family and friends all holding the move up more and more, you began to wonder if it was ever going to happen. Eventually, your resolve seemed to wane and you reluctantly began to map out the rest of your life in the concrete jungle.

That was until you had met him, a young photographer who wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his days exploring the terrifying depths of the ocean. His passion was enticing and exhilarating, reminding you of everything you desired for yourself. Beauty, freedom, intensity. He was bold and spontaneous, his mere presence exploding with more colours than your ever thought existed. It not only kept the spark inside you alive; it set it ablaze. It was a fierce torrent once more and the last drop you needed to pick up everything you needed and move to the southmost point of the country, to a little house in a small wooded community by a cliff overlooking the sprawling ocean. The first breath you took there was the most invigorating one your lungs had felt in your over two decades of life. You knew there was no way this was a mistake, this was where you belonged. It was easy for Kihyun to find a job in the town’s port while pursuing his great ambition while you dabbled into a multitude of things to search the one that would define you only to find yourself owning a colourful antique shop that saw the passing of time through each single item coming through its doors. You absolutely adored it. And, at least for the time being, it would be enough.

Now, three years later, everything seemed to settle into the shape of a life you were happy to wake up to every morning. You had your business, Kihyun and your little safe haven.

“Did I fall asleep again?” Kihyun’s raspy voice, laced with deep sleep, drags you out of the sandcastle of your thoughts and your eyes flutter open towards him. He only just sat up, a nap-induced expression of confusion settling onto his face now. Signs of slumber are embedded into the left side of his face from the scrunched up towel he kept under his head. You find the sight of him in this state most delightful and chuckle as you stretch out your legs and move onto his lounger.

“You seemed too peaceful to wake up,” you say, your fingers softly tracing the indentations in his skin. He relishes into the touch, leaning slightly into it, trying to shake off the last remnants of sleep off his tired eyes.

“I’d hate to turn as lobster red as I did last time I fell asleep out here. Made life a living hell.”

You chuckle again and brush your other hand several times through his dark locks, moving them away from his face. Kihyun is someone whose energy seems never ending, usually. He claims there are too many things he needs to do for him to truly relax in one place too long. He enjoys it that way, always busying himself with something, keeping himself moving, building, creating. There are endless ideas flowing through his head at any given moment and, to you, he’s the most incredible and exciting person out there. However, there are these brief moments of respite, where he’s almost mush in the palm of your hand. They fill you with utmost affection and you carefully drink in all of his features. He enjoys the loving attention too, except he’s too proud to ask for it himself, so he just waits for the tranquil moments to come on their own. It makes them special. It makes his heart feel full.

“What’s the time now?” he asks.

You pick up your phone off the little plastic table between the two chairs and check it for him. “It’s nearing seven, now. Are you hungry?”

“No,” he perks up. He grabs ahold onto the hand on his face, squeezing it, a brazen smile spreading on his lips. “It’s golden hour soon. We have time for a dip, right? I’m gonna prepare the camera.” He quickly stands up then, the respite moment over sooner than you wanted. He grabs the navy backpack off the ground, pulling out all his underwater equipment and assembling it with dexterous fingers. He had done this countless times, it is second nature now and his hands work at the buttons to set everything up just as he likes it. You watch him, perfectly mystified, a single thought crossing your mind as you wait to be dragged into the still mass of the ocean.

This is heaven to you. If a thousand incredibly talented artists could attempt to draw a picture more perfect, they surely would fail.