#sunno

It’s overwhelmingly sweet, truly. How much he cares about you. A man who has so much love in his heart, who will wake up before the sun rises to pack you a lunch for work because he knows you’ll have no time to pick something up on the way. A man who leaves small notes in the lunch bag, and when he can’t do that he’ll send paragraphs of messages cheering you on for something you dread everyday. He has no idea about the manipulative coworker who teases and controls you to the point where some days you’ll have to remember who the actual boss is.

2 out of the 3 years you’ve been working at the clothing store it has been like that. The forceful demand of a shift is only something he started doing recently. He has been at the company longer than you have, giving himself some type of “seniority” meaning he believes he can do whatever he wants to anyone. Unfortunately, it looks like he deemed you as easy prey. You want so badly to tell H.R- to tell  Jake but the fear of nothing working lingers on the back of your mind like the sweat that clings in the crease of your elbow. You've already reported it to the manager once, and nothing was done.

You need this job, it pays the bills even though Jake has made multiple statements about how his work pays well enough to support you both for a long, long time. 

“Is that your boyfriend?” a crumb falls onto your shoulder, the pointed curve of a chin rests over it, peering noisily into the screen that darkens as you turn it off. Keeho pouts, backing away slightly, but only enough to quietly apologize for the mess on your shirt. “He texts hella.”

A smitten laugh escapes you, accepting the half eaten granola from his hands, “Yeah, I kinda flew out the house this morning without a proper goodbye,” you gesture to the phone you disgraced on the counter, “He was doing what I couldn’t.”

“Does he know?” Yunjin begins, wiping down the counter with a disinfectant rag so hard that the ends of it frays, “About Mark?”

A breath traps itself in the center of your chest, “No. And I don’t want him to.”

The two share a look.

Keeho, who has been very keen on voicing his opinion thus far, grows quiet.

Yunjin lays a comforting hand on your shoulder, her brows furrowed into something incommunicable.  “You don’t think he’d be able to help?”

Help? The word is foreign, like a distant memory that begs to be held. As dramatic as it seems, the word is all that you could ask for. Every time your hand disconnects with your mind because of the increasingly violent tremor in your hand, or the bags that fight against the heavy amount of concealer you layer on to hide it, or the triple amount of coffee intake- because the regulated 8 hours no longer seems to do anything for your body when you lay down to sleep, when you awaken as fast as a blink the next morning to do it all again. You want him to help, but there's no point.

Once more, you smile despite the looming fear that festers deep within your chest. You extend a hand to pat hers, softs hands meet each other as you go to hold it, “Look, I get that you guys are worried, and I couldn’t be happier to know that I have friends that care,” you through a smile over your shoulder to Keeho, who stands unconvinced, “but trust me, I have it under control. Plus! How does a couple extra bucks hurt?”

You look back at Yunjin, she stands closer this time, though the indescribable look on her face has drastically changed. Her jaw is clenched, so firm that you can see the masseter muscle enlarge. “Y/N.” she shifts her over to grasp at your limp wrist. Holding it up, she brings it in front of you so you can see. Under the fluorescent light you can see what you’ve been trying to ignore, “Your hands are shaking.”

Two sturdy hands clutch onto your covered forearms, turning you around. “Y/N.” Keeho repeats your name the same as Yunjin, it comes out hoarse and small, “Don’t let that man boss you around, you are tired. Go home.”

It’s like they could read your mind, or they just knew you insanely well, because before you could object, two bodies drag you towards the employee break room to clock out.

By the time you get home all the lights are out in the house, the blinds are pulled inwards to block out the setting sun, though some of its shimmer peers through your window and onto the kitchen floor. Your feet drag, eyes heavy with exhaustion as you force yourself to close the door and hang up your bag.

As you take off your shoes- each one feeling like a boulder, a shuffle coming from down the hall followed by the soft patter of feet. You barely have time to lift your head up when two soft hands pull you in gently by the chin. Jake, hair still as messy as it was earlier, stands before you, a tender but concerned look in his eyes that doesn't quite match the smile he puts on. His collarbone is exposed, clothes twisted on his body haphazardly. You can tell that he was on the verge of sleep before you came home, and was actively fighting it off as he inspected your face.

“Hi baby.” He whispers, planting a kiss on your forehead. “How was work?”

Jake takes your cardigan from off your shoulders, throwing it on the couch, and you let him. Fatigue is slowly creeping up on you and your body can’t help but to lean into the warmth of his. A sigh, then a shake of your head. Words seem to have left as well.

Though Jake nods as if understanding. He never needed words to figure out what was going on, claiming it's because the two of you are so attuned that he can read you just by the way you breathe. “That bad, huh?”

A nod.

He kisses your cheek this time and lets go of your chin.

Leaning back, he smiles, so full out light and love it makes you feel just a little bit better. “I don’t know if you saw my texts earlier but I made you some dinner, it's just kimchi and tofu soup,” as he talks he wraps a firm arm around your shoulders, holding you up as you make your way into the kitchen. The smell of the meal still lingers in the air despite it being hours since he cooked it, but it's strong enough to make your stomach growl. Jake lets out a giggle and continues to ramble as he leaves you near the counter and opens the fridge, “and I made it separately- just how you like it, in case you wanted to combine it on your own, because I- why are you still standing? Sit down. I know how much I don't like it when I’m not given the chance to-”

When he turns around with three stained tupperware and chopsticks in his arms he looks around confused before looking at the floor. You had managed to slide down slowly off the cabinets, legs too tired to hold the weight of your body any longer. Looking up at him through your lashes, you pat the space beside and he happily plops down.

He hands you a pair of chopsticks and then opens tupperware, picking a piece of kimchi from the bottom and feeding it to you.

It is quiet for some time, the fading sunlight creates light orange and yellow hues on the floor, outlining the curve of your bodies as you feed one another food. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, it's a conversation without contact or words, one that feels like the air on a rainy day.

  Jake tosses another piece of tofu from the soup into his mouth before turning to you, “So you want to tell me about today?”

You shoot him a glance, noticing the dip in his tone. A shrug and a shake of your head, “What about it?”

He stares at you for a second before sighing, dragging a hand down his face, “Y/N. I got a text from Keeho before you came home.”

“Okay? He messages you all the time.”

“It was about a guy named ‘Mark’.” He pauses, waiting for a reaction. You don’t give him on, instead you reach over his leg to steal some tofu, “He told me everything that's been going on. The teasing?  Forcefully giving you his shifts without asking you first? Making you work overtime when you don’t need to?”

He sounds disappointed, not in you but in himself. Why hadn't he noticed even the littlest thing sooner? Why didn't he just ask?

The ridges in his back are stiff and his shoulders are tight, a hesitant hand reaches your knee. The touch makes you look up and his voice wasn't even close to expressing the emotion on his face. He's looking directly at you with wide eyes, there's a distant shimmer in them, the shimmer before tears. His bottom lip wobbles underneath his teeth, he's using it to control the movement but it grows intense the longer he stares. 

Jake cups your face again, thumb brushing over the makeup you used to hide the dark circles beneath your eyes. The concealer has faded away slightly by the time you got home, giving him a good look at you naturally for what feels like the first time in forever. His heart breaks even more.

“You know you can tell me anything right? That I won’t be mad? You shouldn't have to just deal with that because your company is insubordinate.”

Your hand finds his, resting your head back again against the wood behind you, smiling lightly, “I know.”

“And if you’re afraid of him beating me up,” he continues, shoving more kimchi in his mouth because of his nerves, “I hope you know there are multiple people willing to back me up. Like Keeho, Yunjin, Jay, Sunoo- well I don’t know about Sunoo, Ni-ki, Sunghoon-”

You stop him before he could finish. A delicate kiss falters his incessant rambling and for a second you think you broke him. Your hand lingers on his face, his eyes shining brighter than before. He looks so soft, like the most precious thing in the world, and you love him even more for that, “Jake. I know.” You reiterate, “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you, I guess I was just afraid of losing my job? I mean it's so strange, Mark has been there longer than I have and I don't want to overstep anything because I was just…scared? And it’s not like I haven't reported it before, I have many times, but I guess after a while, when nothing was being done…I gave up.”

There’s a helpless shift in the air as your voice cracks, the hand on his face drops into the space between your legs as you grow quiet. Saying it fully out loud feels so stupid, your mind trying to rationalize your feelings by hiding them- which only made it feel worse. Your eyes dip down to the porcelain tiles that hold your feet.

A quick sniffle emits from Jake as he grabs your hands. The grip is tight, not tight enough to hurt but tight enough to say ‘im here’. “You shouldn't ever have to feel that way,” his voice cracks under the pressure of his words, a tear slips from his eye but he quickly wipes it with the sleeve of his shirt. “Please don’t ever feel like you have to hide stuff from me because you don’t want anything bad to happen. What he’s doing is bad as it is, he’s just going to keep going because he knows you won’t object. And he knows that the company won’t do anything about it- obviously.”

There’s so much love in his eyes as he chases yours when you look away. He brings your hands to his face and gently kisses your palm. Paste from the kimchi that was still on his lip transfers to your palm when he pulls away, but you don’t mind, too focused on the overwhelming feeling of care he shows you in a single gesture.

But nights like these, hands between legs, eating food on the floor of the kitchen, just talking, makes you feel like no matter what happens at work, is irrelevant.