with luv

With a smile playing at the corner of your lips, you drop your clothes on the floor and, taking his hand, step into the shower. 

The water, pouring from a waterfall showerhead, is divine: hot, stark. Taehyung steps back to let you have the bulk of the stream. As it runs over you, it warms the chill you haven’t been able to shake since you found yourself outside last night, and eyes sliding shut, sigh into the sensation. 

You feel the roughness of his fingers brush against your face, tugging a stray lock out of your eyes. You open yours. 

“Hi,” Taehyung says, searching your face. 

“Hi,” you whisper back, arms coming to wrap protectively—from the cold?--around your torso. “Is this allowed?” 

“Of course it’s allowed,” Taehyung responds. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

“I dunno.” You take a step forward and trace a finger up his chest, collecting beads of water. Watching the water run down the broad planes of him is much easier than looking him in the eye when you say this next thing: “Here we are taking a shower together—when we were once in love. Don’t you remember?” You give him a teasing grin, trying to hide the sharp truth of your words that lays just beneath the surface. 

Taehyung only hesitates for a moment. “How could I forget?” A softness tinges his voice. He takes your elbow in his hand as you continue to trace lines across his chest, flattening your hand against him. 

“Does that make all of this strange?” You ask quietly. 

“You tell me if taking a perfectly utilitarian morning shower with your ex is strange—when the rest of the house is fucking or falling—” He stops himself. “Well, you know.” 

“Do I know?” You ask, brushing away the water falling into your eyes. 

“If you don’t, you will soon.” Again, that cheeky grin. “C’mere.” Taking a clean wash cloth, he holds your hands in his and gently washes them. He does not scrub at them like you did—it’s more of a caress. Then he takes you by the shoulders and spins you around, allowing his touch to rove over your back. He is gentle with you as he washes you, the kind of care that only comes with years of love. You hum in satisfaction as the warm water encompasses you and his touch brings a shiver to your skin. 

“Maybe this is a little strange,” he murmurs when he’s done, turning you around to face him again. 

“It is,” you say. 

“Well, I’ve never been a stranger to strange.” 

“That—I know is true.” 

Standing in front of him, looking into his eyes, it feels like you are looking back through time, to that first moment he stood under the awning to your apartment and dawdled so long, that it took you turning the knob and beginning to step inside for him to grab your hand, pull you back, and kiss you. Back then, his hair flopped into his eyes in a similar way it does now, dripping with water. Back then, his eyes held the same kindness you see now. Back then, they held the same desire you see burning behind his iris. 

You look away from him, your gaze trailing to the floor. 

He tilts your chin up. “Wherever you’ve just gone…let go.” 

“What?”

“Whatever it is you’re holding so tightly to, you can let go of it.” His words are soft, kind. What is it you’re holding onto, after all? Is it what the two of you once had? What you’ve had between the two of you since then—tension, moments of uncertainty, and other moments of intense proximity? Or are you simply holding onto a veil of distance that has long since unfurled between you?

“Can I kiss you?” he asks. You nod, and, using the finger beneath your chin, tilts you towards him. “This all feels different than before,” he says, hesitating, stalling. 

“I think it feels the same,” you whisper back, eyes flicking down to his lips. 

“I mean, you feel different.” 

And then he kisses you. 

His lips are kind, soft, against yours. He is cautious almost, but only in the sense that you can feel him testing your edges—waiting for you.

With the cold air at your back, you find yourself chasing his warmth. Your hands slide around his torso as you press yourself close to him. Together, you find a rhythm—mouths moving in synch—that feels old and new all together. When he feels you chase him, he lets go of any hesitation, one hand coming to cup the side of your face, his other hand wrapping around your waist and pulling you even closer. 

As you gasp against each other, he carefully takes a step forward, pushing you back, but never releasing the divine nearness of your bodies. Gently, he presses you against the cold tile wall with a sigh against your lips. With the wall at your back, the water streaming over both of your bodies you dive in even closer, your hands roving over his body. 

You’re chasing his warmth: the hard shape of his body, the sweet, dark brown of his eyes which flutter open for a moment, the feeling of his attention on you, yours—again—finally. It’s more than pleasure though. There’s something building in your chest. It sings clear and sweetly and—

His fingers are between your legs. 

You gasp, arch against him. 

“Missed this,” he says, that youthful smirk dancing at the corner of his lips, and suddenly you are both young again and dumb and fumbling in the dark for each other’s bodies for the first time. 

As he touches you, your body rises to meet his. You chase his touch. And as pleasure builds in your body, so does that lush warmth in your chest, it has you chasing more than just the delightful sensation of his fingers against you—it has you chasing him. 

Through the valley of your memory. Through the space that’s between the two of you. You lean towards him to capture his lips and the kiss is rushed and deep and wanting. 

You almost jolt back from him when you realize it: the love is still there. It still feels as young as when you were in a relationship, and yet, there’s something aged, more there. The friendship built over years. The trust. The care. It radiates out from the center of you like the sun would. It almost comes to your lips, easy, so careless.

Instead of speaking it, you kiss down his neck to where his pulse hammers with desire. You say his name with desperation, and he locks eyes with you as his fingers take you to the edge and let you descend into pleasure. As you call out, he smiles with that knowing smile, like you’ve just given him the best gift at Christmas. 

“I’ve been waiting so long to get you alone,” Taehyung says, kissing your forehead as you come down from your high. “And now I only want more.”

When he touches you, it feels like an undoing, the years apart untangling between the two of you, your body unwinding beneath his touch, his voice—the one for months you knew only over the phone—toppling something hard and firm in your chest. 

You gasp against his neck. 

When you left each other it was with the understanding that the two of you, when fit together, didn’t quite add up to one whole. But now it’s been years. Now you’ve grown from adult by name to adult by trade, growing into your skin, your identity—your voice. When he hums against you, that deep tenor vibrating through you, you find a new body on the other side of the kiss. His—knowing, known. Yours—speaking back.

—

He comes up behind you as you’re tugging on clothes for the day. You’re yearning for something warmer today: thick, sturdy. Something that will hold you. After all, there’s a growing chill in the air. 

The dirt has been scrubbed out from under your nails, Taehyung removed a leaf from your hair earlier, and now there is little left on your body from the strangeness of the night before—other than the cold that still lingers in your bones. 

“Where did you go last night?” he whispers as the warmth of your kiss in the shower still pulses through you. 

Coughing in frigid air. On your knees, soft earth beneath them. Dirt, smudged into the lifeline of your palms like you’ve been praying on the forest floor all night. How did you get there? How did you get here? The forest pushed you. Urged you back towards the warmth. 

“I don’t know,” you respond. You wonder if you should tell him more. “Ever since we arrived here—I swear, there is something so strange about the forest outside this house.” 

Taehyung nods knowingly. “I agree,” he says, his voice low in a whisper. 

Your eyes widen. “You do?” 

He nods. 

“You see it too?” you find yourself whispering too. 

“Yes,” he says. 

You grab his arm and grip him tight. “Oh my god—” you gasp. “Oh my god. I’ve been thinking I was totally crazy this whole time. I should have just said something.” 

He laughs. “Yes, you should have!” Something relaxes in your chest. Oh my god. Oh my god. You can’t believe it. Taehyung, too, has seen the ever-going forest, the trees that sprawl on and on—he’s seen the road, eaten up by the forest, maybe he’s even seen the dreams—“Jin keeps teasing me because I won’t shut up about how far the trees go.” 

“Yes!” you exclaim, clutching at him. “Yes, exactly. It goes and goes, and it swallows up the whole world.” 

Taehyung nods. “It’s especially strange when the sun is setting, and you stand where you can see the peaks and valleys of the mountain range. Living in the city for so long, I forgot what it’s like to be surrounded by so much nature. But god, when the sun rises in the morning—to see the sunrise hit the town and turn it pink and orange. That is just idyllic.” 

The breath in your lungs freezes. “What?” you whisper. 

“The town—It’s beautiful to watch, nestled in between the forest and mountains.” Your stomach drops. Your hands fall away from him. “I will never get used to this view, or what it’s like to stare into the unending wilderness in the middle of the night.” He faux shivers. “Especially when you know there are things looking right back at you.” He grins and ruffles your hair. “Hey, don’t be so serious about it. You’re safe—here in the house with us.” 

He squeezes you, kisses your cheek, and with a whispered promise of all the things he still wants to do with you, disappears back into the bathroom to finish getting ready.  

—

You slip out of Taehyung’s bedroom while he’s still messing with his hair, and make your way to the kitchen where Jungkook is cooking up a storm. There’s a dozen bowls out, all filled with a mysterious liquid. There’s the sound of swearing and pots and pans clanking. There’s even a little bit of smoke. 

“Jungkook?” you say tentatively, as you step into the large room. He hardly glances up at you. 

“You took your time,” he notes. “Busy with Taehyung?” He says it as if it’s just another day. Your cheeks are still warmed from your conversation—and ensuing activities—in the shower. 

“Yes—no—I mean—” 

“So you didn’t have sex,” Jungkook observes. 

“...No.” 

“Goddamn that’s surprising. Hasn’t it been like, two million years?” 

“More or less,” you say.

“And here I was thinking that the two of you would be the first to hook up out of all of us. Aren’t you just dying for it?” 

“Jungkook, you were the first.” 

He shoots a shit eating grin over his shoulder. “Hell yeah I was.” Something sputters and spits from the stove, over which Jungkook is still thoughtfully hunched. He curses. “You know, I realized something very important while making breakfast,” Jungkook says over his shoulder as he stands at the stove. 

“Something important? What’s that?” 

“Well, in the middle of making that goddamn hollandaise sauce, the sauce broke. Tried googling how to fix it, re-emulsify it, whatever, and realized.” 

You laugh gently. “What did you realize, Jungkook?” 

He tugs you against his chest, your bodies pressed closely together.

“That I’d much rather lick the sauce off your body than feed it to everyone else at breakfast.” 

Jungkook swipes his hand through some jam and dots it on your nose. 

“What—” 

And then he licks it up. 

It doesn’t take long before your joking devolves into kissing, and then into stripping down to your bare skin, and then Jungkook pulling down your sweatpants until they pool around your ankles and getting to his knees.

“What the hell is taking so long with breakfast?” Yoongi’s voice sounds from the front of the kitchen. Your head snaps up to find Yoongi looking very disgruntled. Hangry, even. He doesn’t look one bit surprised to find Jungkook kneeled between your legs as you lean back against the counter. “Jeez, we charge you with making breakfast one time and you decide instead to pursue your vendetta of fucking our good friend as many times as humanly possible in the kitchen? The one space in this house that is supposed to be some mild level of sanitary? Are you trying to force feed the rest of the house your come?” He eyes a bowl of unnamed contents suspiciously. 

Jungkook looks flustered. 

“Sounds like a consent issue to me,” you whisper to no one in particular. 

“Sorry hyung,” Jungkook begins. “But the sauce broke. And then I got distracted.” 

“I’ll say,” grumbles Yoongi. He steps into the kitchen, tosses some bacon in a pan, and gets to cooking. “Stop all that. And clean up.” 

“But hyung—” 

“Don’t you worry,” Yoongi says. “I have a better idea, anyhow. Better than eating cold hollandaise sauce—disgusting by the way—off those tits.” 

“Hey!” you hiss. 

Yoongi looks you in the eye. “Darling, I would never call your tits disgusting." He nods to Jungkook. “That young man, however, I’d call him a lot of things.” 

Jungkook wriggles out from between your legs and steps up to Yoongi. He plants a kiss on the back of the older man’s neck. From the counter, you can see Yoongi flush with surprise. 

“What?” 

“Our friend is no appetizer anyways, Jungkook. If anything—the main damn course.” 

And that’s how you start the day, laughing, and kissing your two friends in the kitchen. Thank god no one except Taehyung shows up looking to be fed. He grins as he bites into his bacon, watching the three of you giggle and find pleasure in each other. 

It all almost entirely clears the fog that’s been following you the last few days. It almost makes you forget that there’s one invitation you haven’t yet responded to: Namjoon’s offer. 

As Yoongi wraps an arm around your waist and whispers into your neck the dirtiest of promises, you hear Namjoon’s voice in your head.Stay. Stay.

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(hi sweet reader. if you'd like to subscribe to this series, please follow me on AO3 to receive updates direct to your email. also, if you liked this chapter, i'd love to hear from you. see you next chapter!)

(p.s if you would be interested in getting chapters earlier, i am looking for a beta reader or two to discuss the next few chapters with. bouncing ideas around has always helped me get these chapters together quicker. if you're even slightly interested, feel free to dm me!)

its a bit of an uncomfortable answer, but i'll do my best to be honest.

i'd spent many years at a disastrous level of depression. sure, i was scraping by, but just barely. i hated my job, my apartment. i was so lonely. for years. the summer things changed, my phone died, i was experiencing a months-long unnamed illness that had me sleeping 12-18 hours a day, my car experienced "catastrophic engine failure" on the highway, i planning to drop out of school, on and on and on.

i was journaling one day when i found myself writing: "am i comfortable being miserable?"

honestly, i froze for a sec, and then shut my journal. i didn't open it again for six weeks.

when i was ready, i opened it back up. i was so used to struggling that i trained myself to accept misery as my internal environment. i began asking, "am i doing this because it's comfortable or because it's what's right for me?" all of a sudden, i started seeing these little doorways into something more joyful, easier: i could just apply for a new apartment. i could change my thesis project. i could stop giving a shit about school drama. i could introduce myself to the barista i thought i was super cool and wanted to be friends with.

what i realized was that it was the trying for something better that meant something. showing up and saying, "what if i just give it a shot" and then taking a small step--sending an email. doing a google search. telling a friend, "i want to write something that brings me more joy." i began to build trust in myself again.

to be clear, i do not believe mental health struggles are an issue of mindset. but this shift in my approach to life, of taking agency over my well-being, helped me make enough progress that my mental health ended up shifting too. there was more safety in my body. i started to believe that i could take care of myself. i started to think that i could help myself. and then i did.

it's a long process. everyone's way out is going to look a little different. but i'm here, 100% rooting you on.