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hazybyun · 5 years

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In your arms | PCY

Summary: Being alone had always frightened you, but being alone on a stormy night without your boyfriend really set a deep fear inside of you. The one thing that would calm you down was the sweet scent and safety of Chanyeol’s embrace. He didn’t seem to be real, the love and warmth he held in his heart for you was something anyone would dream of- so after the boy’s arrived home early, naturally a great wave of relief would wash over you

Pairing: Chanyeol X Reader

Genre: Fluff | One-shot

Warnings: PTSD trigger- fireworks, thunder and lightning

Word count: 2.2K

Truthfully, the past few months had felt like hell without the guys. You missed hearing their laughter, annoying yells when losing games on a Thursday night- Jongdae especially would always make it known if he had lost. Each member meant a lot to you and you saw 8 of them as you big brothers who kept you safe at all costs.

It had been around 2 years now since your boyfriend had first introduced you to the rest of his members- and thankfully, you all seemed to click right away (much to his relief) The boys treated you like you were family, if you had a rough day and felt like everything was falling apart they would be there for you; When your boyfriend couldn’t comfort you the boys would always try their best to fill that empty spot- something that Kyungsoo, in particular, was especially brilliant at. It was around the 3rd month into EXO’s tour- and this time things only seemed to feel lonelier.

They hadn’t been gone for too long but your relationship with the boys was strong now, seemingly unbreakable. Especially with your boyfriend, Chanyeol- things had become serious recently, the two of you were beginning to talk about your future together. And yet, as always his career would rip the taller male away from you just when you wanted him the most. During their last tour, the boys had been allowed to contact family whenever they had time. But this time their manager wasn’t so laid back. Chanyeol had barely called you during the last few months, it was a drastic change from the daily messages and lengthy evening calls where you would talk about almost complete nonsense for hours.

Nights alone like these were the worst. You had always been absolutely terrified of thunder and loud things such as fireworks due to an incident in the past. When you were in high school, during your sophomore year a few friends had a celebration and used some fireworks in the back garden. It was just past midnight when it happened, your friends had decided to let off the fireworks without warning and you were far too close. The noise was almost deafening and you suffered some serious burns up your right arm that had left some a dew obvious scars.

The only person who could really make you feel safe when stuck in a situation like this was Chanyeol. And as you shuffled around in the large bed that felt completely empty without your boyfriend- you couldn’t help but realize just how much you missed the man.

It was an unpleasant evening, to say the least- the rain was pouring heavily accompanied by thunder. No matter how hard you tried, getting to sleep was an issue. Usually on nights like these things would play out much differently if your boyfriend was with you...

You buried yourself under the covers and hid your face underneath the pillows. The dorm was completely empty except for you- things had been hectic recently what with the company finally allowing your boyfriend and his members to promote for a decent amount of time. However, it often meant that you were left alone in the evenings and things weren’t exactly pleasant considering your fear of loud noises and storms.

The strikes of lightning illuminated the dark bedroom in an eerie light from time to time, often accompanied by loud crashes that caused you to shake. Everything was far too overwhelming for you- the noises and sudden bursts of light through the slightly translucent curtains were so distracting you hadn’t even heard the door open.

One by one, the boys poured into the dorm- smiling and chatting quietly amongst themselves as they threw their bags to the side...something that they knew you would kill them for in the morning. Junmyeon glanced around the seemingly empty dorm as he unzipped his grey coat and hung it up neatly- he glanced at a taller figure who was the last to enter. He was the first to notice how seemingly empty the dorm was. He knew you were aware that it was the day they came home for a few weeks since not only himself but your boyfriend and the other boys had constantly been reminding you and uttering soft words of reassurance every time they were able to get a hold of you. ‘Don’t forget! We’ll be home soon!’ Was how all of the boys seemed to end their calls as if they had rehearsed it in order to help you feel some sort of comfort and distraction from the loneliness that had slowly been swallowing you like quicksand.

A soft, yet concerned frown fell onto his face. He looked around with a curious gleam in his eye, it wasn’t like you to ever miss them after all. The last time they had just returned from a tour- you had stayed up all night in excitement just like a child on Christmas. Any of them could easily remember the tears of joy that fell from your eyes as you ran to each member, hugging them tightly as if they were to disappear from your hold if you didn’t keep an eye on them. The warmth Chanyeol felt in his heart that day as he held you close to him and gently stroked your hair, mumbling sweet nothings in your ear as he gently rubbed the small of your back. It was something he was hoping for a repeat of this evening but as they stood in the dark, quiet dorm- curiosity riddled the young man’s face.

“Is she home..?” Jongdae asked in a curious tone, whilst looking around- even he knew it wasn’t like you to not make a show of their return...even if it was only for one evening.

Jongin patted your boyfriend on the back reassuringly and let out a soft sigh “Well, you never know she could be staying at your sisters'.” He glanced at his elder friend with a reassuring look in his eye- knowing that Chanyeol’s older sister had become very fond of you recently “You know how lonely she gets when you leave.”

It was just then when another loud crash of thunder erupted from the sky accompanied by a quick strike of lightning that brightened the hallway and illuminating the faces of the nine men that stood, slouching against the walls out of utter exhaustion. Chanyeol stood in thought for a moment, at first he assumed that you were asleep or perhaps at his sister’s place like Jongin had suggested. But it was highly unlike you to not call him when you had been very aware he was coming home today. As if everything had suddenly seemed to click in your boyfriend’s mind when the sound of the thunder boomed throughout the dorm- he dropped everything and rushed through the hallway, heading straight up the stairs before he reached the room the two of you shared.

A soft, shaky sigh left the man’s lips as his hand slowly reached up and ran through his chestnut-brown thick hair. The room was almost pitch black save fort the slithers of moonlight that travelled into the room through the cracks in the curtains and if he didn’t concentrate, your curled up figure- disguised as a lump in the middle of the bed could have been possibly overlooked. He hated seeing you so terrified of the noises, and it made Chanyeol feel beyond guilty for not being there on nights like this when they were performing or had a schedule.

The man climbed into the bed and wrapped his arm securely around your waist, causing you to jump slightly out of surprise; you’d been hiding underneath your pillow, avoiding the loud sounds of thunder, for the majority of the night. Ever since you were little thunder had been a big fear of yours and your only main source of coping with it was your boyfriend.

You shuffled slightly underneath the cover, turning into his muscular chest. His scent alone was reassuring, the soft smell of vanilla lightly dancing on Chanyeol’s skin reminded you that the thunder was nothing more than a noise. A loud noise that was separated by the walls of the dorm and large windows- in a way, it was like you were safe. In his arms, you couldn’t be harmed, the thunder was nothing more than noise and nothing could hurt you on the outside walls of the dorm.

He seemed to know exactly what to do and when to do it without even asking, it was like he was a natural after being with you for so long. “Hey...” a soft, smooth and reassuring tone leaving his plump lips. Chanyeol pressed a soft kiss to your cheek, smoothing down your hair as he cuddled you. His vanilla-like scent and the way that your boyfriend gently rocked you in his arms caused an immediate wave of calm to wash over you, like all your fears of the noise and worries seemed to immediately leave you. The tension you felt in your muscles slowly relaxed as your hands clung to the taller male’s plain black shirt.

Chanyeol didn’t pressure you to talk to him, look at him or even speak with him. He understood that in situations like these...you needed time to slowly unravel the tight knot of fear in your stomach and he knew that it would only stress you out even more if he tried to put you in a situation that you weren’t comfortable with.

A small, apologetic quiet laugh left your lips as you peaked up at the man- the first thing you saw was his warm and slightly goofy lop-sided smile that revealed his dimples. You gently played with the material of the shirt he wore “I’m really sorry about this...” as always, you couldn’t help but be apologetic. Dragging him into your panic attacks, your troubles, anything that caused you to have a minor episode made feel guilty; Park Chanyeol seemed to push his own burdens aside in order to help you and the guilt slowly built up. Because you only wished that he would let you care for him just as much as your boyfriend cared for you.

The man frowned softly and immediately shook his head as his hand gently smoothed down your hair “Don’t you dare apologize.” Chanyeol shook his head and hushed you quickly be pressing his finger against your lips “You can’t help being afraid of something...”

His words managed to distract you slightly from the storm outside, that was until a large crash of thunder sounded from outside of the bedroom windows. Accompanied by a sudden flash of light that illuminated your boyfriend’s features slightly. Everything seemed to crash down in that moment, your body began to shake. A small yelp left your plump lips that were sore from the anxious chewing you had resorted to earlier when you were home alone- attempting to deal with the storm the best you could on your own. It was louder than usual, something that had set off an alarming amount of panic that surged through your body like a wildfire.

You furrowed your brows slightly whilst doing your best to cover your ears although it did little to help you try and block out the loud noises that were bringing back too many old fears. A pair of strong arms wrapped securely around you, gently rocking you in his arms “You’re okay baby, you’re okay... nothing’s gonna hurt you- I’m here...” Chanyeol spoke in a deep yet soft and comforting tone, his honey-like voice seemingly warming you and it gradually began to melt away the fear.

Footsteps slowly entered the room, treading lightly upon the wooden floor of your bedroom as to not disturb either of you. Yixing lightly peaked around the corner of the bedroom to check upon the both of you. Aside from Chanyeol, you were closest with Yixing- he treated you with love just like a real older brother would. Storms always worried him, the two of you had grown up together, in fact the two of you had travelled to Korea together to study after he had announced his acceptance into SM Entertainment. The concerned frown the knitted his brows together slowly left his face, accompanied by a soft sigh of relief as he saw the two of you.

Chanyeol held you securely in his arms, possessing so much love for you it was obvious to anyone who had even known the pair of you for barely two minutes that you were the main focus of his life. Your boyfriend gently rocked you in his arms, one of his hands slowly rubbing the small of your lower back as he buried his face in the crook of your neck and whispered sweet words of reassurance- telling you how well you were doing and that everything would be alright.

“Please don’t leave me.” You whispered in a shaky voice that was almost inaudible, a tone so quiet only he could her.

Chanyeol smiled softly as shook his head as he looked down at you with loving eyes, using his long and slender finger to gently lift up your chin and look you in the eyes.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

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soobadnoonecanstopher · 6 years

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Only the One You Love, part 6 (A Kyungsoo Series)

Genre: Angst / Romance

Characters: You X Kyungsoo

Only the One you Love[M]: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 , part 7

The ringing went on and on. The trilling that sounded into your ear had a hypnotizing effect.

You knew this was useless. You knew he wasn’t going to answer. The knot inside your stomach had grown its own roots by now, sinking down spiny hooks that would require a professional to remove with how persistent they clung to the soft flesh of the inside of your guts.

Kyungsoo had been upset. This was probably an understatement, but you tended toward understatements lately. For survival. Particularly when the alternative was the sort of scary painful that you didn’t dare touch with your bare fingertips.

His voice mail picked up again. You had lost track of how many times you had called now. You tried to space them out, not calling immediately after hanging up and once again not leaving a voicemail. Who listened to voicemails anyway?

Maybe he was just busy.

Or—

Maybe he forgot his phone again. Maybe it was hidden away inside the top drawer of his nightstand where he kept the small black box with the tiny treasure you had given as a gift the last time you visited.

He told you he couldn't wear it out anywhere with the tiniest frown on his lips. His eyes though...as he ran a fingertip along the wooden edge and picked up the handwritten card inside with the photo of the old woman and her story, his eyes sparkled in wonder the longer he looked down into that box.

You had never intended to buy him a ring. What kind of crazy person must he have thought you were. But your last translating assignment had brought you to a small village so far removed from the modern world you were beginning to forget what it felt like to have internet access. You’d wandered during your off time, out of unparalleled boredom. You didn't even have a cell phone signal and yet you still pulled the useless thing out, again and again, begging for it to just work so you could send the final text message with the three little red hearts to ‘the love of your goddamn life,’ as his contact information read at the time. For the record, it didn't say that anymore.

It was just a small shop with trinkets and baubles. Hardly anything precious from the look of it, but something about the building caught your eye. Once inside the door, the place bloomed with its own positive energy and the woman at the counter looked ancient. Perhaps the people in small villages didn't retire. She had to be over 100 and she lifted her face toward you when you walked inside; soft brown eyes took you in with a blank and passive expression on her face and after just a few seconds you saw the pull of her lips as she bared a smile composed of about three teeth.

“Welcome, my dear,” she said sweetly and her hand swept over the glass countertop. “Come. Let’s find something for your love.”

“Oh, I’m not—” why you couldn't bring yourself to deny it was a mystery to you, but you tried just once more, “I’m not in lo— He’s not really the type to wear these things,” you laughed through the answer. It didn’t matter. She was watching you closely with her knowing eyes and your own eyes were already drifting over her many offerings. Precious stones, precious metals, simple designs, and wildly ornate jewelry that hadn’t been in style for decades.

You were taken aback suddenly by the intricate detail of some of the pieces and the undeniable style that was recognizable throughout all of them.

“Wow, do you make all of these yourself?” The closer you looked at her, the more you saw. She wore a dusty stained apron over her clothes and her fingertips were calloused and worn. You saw bits of incomplete works behind her. Tools for prying and hammering and shaping and her eyes watched your face as you made your discoveries, suddenly looking down into the case before you with a fresher mind and sharper focus.

“What is he like? Is he very handsome?”

You giggled at her question and bit down on your own lip to try and keep your composure in front of the old woman who knew too much already. You simply nodded your head at her question and pulled your phone out again. What was the harm in this? It wasn’t like she would know him. She didn’t look like the type to even own a tv.

On your phone, in your photo gallery, hidden well within folders of folders you found it. The picture you had taken with him the last time you felt his hands running along your skin and his lips pressed against yours. It was the last picture you had taken before leaving for the airport and he had held on to you for much longer than was safe. You worried about missing your flight. You worried about traffic to the airport and you nuzzled into his warmth with a whine when his hands refused to let you go. He was the one to snap the picture and the smile in the shot was tense. You could see the sadness in those eyes at your departure.

“Very strong man,” she said and she was pulling something out from the bottom of the case. “I made this one just for him. It protects him so he can protect you.”

Cradled within her shaking fingertips was a small black ring and something surged up warm inside your belly as you looked down into her hands. It looked like him. It felt like him. How could this old woman have made this tiny thing so perfectly with her old trembling hands?

“What is it?” You knew there had to be a story behind this. It felt too perfect and she seemed to completely sure just by looking at one picture of Kyungsoo on your phone.

“Obsidian,” Kyungsoo read on the card in his fingertips and his lips were moving as he read quickly and silently to himself.

“Did this really come out of a volcano?” His eyes were wide with wonder and he pulled the ring out to look closer. You nodded once, your eyes down on the ring he held in his fingers and you felt a little dip of nerves in your belly when he slipped it carefully onto his ring finger. It went on smoothly and fit perfectly; as if the woman had really made it just for him.

“Hmm…” he mused quietly to himself, “my aura does feel healed.”

You snorted quietly into your hand, the laughter bubbling up against your will with the dead-panned delivery he’d given.

“I’m serious, don't laugh.” His eyes were motionless and wide on yours and there wasn’t a hint of a smile on his face. “Look at me, I’m trying to think a negative thought. I just tried very hard right now and nope...all positive. All of the dark is gone.”

You were openly giggling now and he didn’t break the serious expression on his face.

“You can take it off now, Soo. I know you can’t wear it. I just saw it and I had to get it for you.”

“I love it,” he said with his eyes down on his hand still adorned with the black band, “and I love you.”

Perhaps he had just put the phone inside the drawer beside the ring and left without taking it with him. Perhaps all of these calls were ringing into an empty room in an empty home somewhere in Seoul and he would return home tonight to find dozens of missed calls from you and look at them all with a smile on his face.

The knot in your belly, the uncomfortable somewhat painful ball of anxiety swelled up higher and you swallowed it down. When was the last time he had answered your calls?

Had it really been a week now? Had he really been so upset about the blind date; about your omission really, which he called a lie, did he really need to take it this far?

You had worked up the nerve all day today. You’d practiced what you would say to him.

‘I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I pretended I was single for one night. I was bored and I was lonely and I was wrong. You’re right, it was really shitty of me to do. I’m so sorry I hurt you like this.’

Again and again, the phone rang. Again and again, his voicemail picked up; just an automated voice telling you again and again that the user could not come to the phone at this time.

‘I’m sorry I blamed it on Anna. It was my decision to go. I accepted the date and I met with him and danced with him and I never thought of how you might feel about that.’

It had been months since you had seen Kyungsoo in person. It had been weeks since you had video called with him. It had been days since your last short and dismissive phone call with him and his schedule had him so busy you felt like you had been abandoned. When Anna called you up to go out with a friend of hers; told you single girls like you shouldn’t just waste away in their apartments all night; told you that you were young and you should go out and live a little, you caved so damn easily and agreed to meet her at the club. ‘She was right,’ you thought back then. You deserved to have fun. You thought at the time, you deserved to be desired by someone. It was a moment of weakness. It was a mistake.

‘It was Anna. She made me go and you’re always so busy you won't even talk to me sometimes. I was bored and I wanted to go out.’ It was stupid to try and blame anyone else. Blaming Anna was one mistake, but when you said that, implying that somehow he was to blame you getting drunk enough for an attractive young man to grope your ass and leave sloppy goodbye kisses on your cheek that were documented by Anna’s phone, well...everything just blew up then. Do Kyungsoo, the man you loved the most; the only one you loved...he had a temper and he was going to let you know it.

‘But I thought about it now; I put myself in your place and I can see now that it was wrong. You’ve never done anything like that to me, Kyungsoo, and I’m sorry I did that to you.’

After what felt like hours of calling, something suddenly changed. Instead of the ringing, there was an invisible switch flipped and you got a new message. A message telling you that the phone had been turned off.

He had turned off his phone and you never got to say those words you had planned to say.

The minutes of waiting turned to hours and you must have fallen asleep.

You were only aware of the sleep because something was vibrating against your face and you were answering a phone call half between sleep and awake.

“How can you be sleeping right now?” It was Kyungsoo’s voice but the effect was wrong. The tone was biting and the vowels were sluggish and heavy. “You must not have a care in the world to be sleeping so soundly when I’ve been—”

Your living room was dark and you lifted your head from the arm of the couch where you had briefly, only for a second, rested your head in between the calls that didn’t even go to his voicemail anymore.

“—I’ve been killing myself with work...and some other things.” His words paused only with the sounds of swallowing.

You had to wipe hard at your eyes and you steered your vision toward the spot on the bookshelf where the green illuminated numbers would tell you what time it was if you could only get your eyes to focus.

03:49

“Kyungsoo?” Your sleepy mind that was jarred awake with such a force was pushing the name through your lips well before your stomach could sink with the sudden drop of the shaking elevator you had been riding in your dream.

“Were you expecting someone else to call you?” Sarcasm and a definite blurriness sat on the tip of that tongue. Your ears were humming and the sinking came.

That sinking feeling that started at the bottom of your esophagus and pulled slowly and unendingly — it only built and built upon itself — passed along your all-day-empty stomach deep into your guts where it wrung and coiled and throbbed with the racing of your heartbeat.

“Perhaps some other man you’ve let touch you while I’ve been working my fucking ass off—”

Some things were becoming incredibly evident.

Kyungsoo was drunk.

Kyungsoo was very drunk, still angry, and beyond the mental capacity to hold his words back.

“Kyungsoo.”

The name came out as a warning and you slapped your lips shut and sent a noisy exhale through your nose that echoed through your own ear as it bounced back and forth from your living room, all the way to his living room or his kitchen or a secluded bar in downtown Seoul and back again to your living room, where the numbers on that clock on the bookshelf mocked you with it’s 03:53 and your skin prickled and shivered where the chill of this conversation invaded.

“Oh. Sorry, sorry — ssso sorry.” He wasn’t. The extra s sounds made his voice slither like a snake over your skin and the chill deepened and sunk down through to your bones.

“I guess you’re still not ready to talk about it, right?” The question was heavy with sarcasm and the pointed silence after his question was as hostile as a slap in the face. If you were taken aback by his words, by his anger, or by his biting tone, you wouldn't have noticed. Inside of you, everything was already too bombarded to feel anything other than intense apprehension.

It was looming. It was a tightly pulled catapult ready to fire. It was the last 10 seconds of a bomb detonator and you watched the numbers count down without a pair of wire cutters to cut the red wire.

You inhaled through the vacuum inside your chest, ignoring the tremble in your lungs that only seemed to be feeding off the tremble in your bottom lip.

“Kyungsoo, y-you’re...you sound like you’ve been drinking a lot, maybe right now isn’t the best time—”

Your attempt at rationality was cut off by a short and gruff laugh that was about as far from a response to actual humor as a laugh could get and the chuckle was short lived because he was coughing loudly into the mouthpiece of his cellphone. It echoed in your ear and made you wince with each rough hack.

“I thought grown adults could drink themselves into drunken stupors and not be held accountable for their actions, right? Wasn’t that what you decided? And I thought — twenty-three — missed calls meant you really, really wanted to talk to me. But...stupid me, I should have known—”

“I did want to talk to you. I do want to talk to you but what I’m saying is I don't think anything constructive can happen right now with you in this condition.” You knew your tone was snappish but you couldn’t help that. He was acting unreasonable; avoiding you for days and then coming to you with this attitude and in this state. It was clear that he was ready for a fight and a talk right now, with him feeling this way and with you feeling the way you felt would only end up a mess.

You were sure that with a level head, with a level heart and soul you could get through to him... just how sorry you actually felt about your mistake. Just how much you knew that you had hurt him. Just how certain you were that you could make it up to him and if you could just get him to listen with just one speck of the love he had for you in his heart he would believe you and he would forgive you and you could both move on from this...this hiccup in the relationship.

But that wasn’t going to happen right now. Not tonight, not with the anger you could feel magnified by the alcohol raging through his blood.

“Well if you don't have anything to say to me, I’ve got something to say to you.”

Kyungsoo spoke up suddenly, only this time, strangely, you could feel much less of the anger you had been sensing through most of this phone call.

The shift was abrupt and it was terrifying. You stared ahead through the darkness of your living room [04:01] and the heavy weights inside your guts sunk hard. You felt the stretch in your gag reflex and you swallowed away the excess saliva that had collected at the back of your throat.

Kyungsoo inhaled a breath and it vibrated and it gasped. It was interrupted by something halfway through his throat — the sound of a spasm inside of him for a split second — it made you swim inside of your own head. You drowned in it.

You swallowed away the saliva that built up again, your own big-baby bottom lip betraying you and continued shuttering all on its own.

“I don't think this is working.”

Everything…

Stopped.

Everything that had been urgent and everything that had been desperate... stopped and slowly, like a lazy moving fog, slippery fingers crawled lightly along your scalp on the crown of your head and your skin prickled and puckered as the blackness washed over you —

From way up top, it crawled slowly and steadily down your temples with a shivering coolness, it traveled — the blackness, the bleakness, the bloodless and lifeless shadow that was swallowing you whole.

“I tried. I really did, but I don’t ...I don't think I can do this anymore. I think...we should stop this. I want...I want to break up.”

...with you. He wanted to break up with you. Kyungsoo was breaking up with you. This was real.

All traces of the anger were gone; stolen by the darkness and the 04:08 began to blur into one big green mass of light on the far end of your view. You stared at it until the wet warmth crested and sunk down your face, clearing the numbers again before they disappeared completely when you closed out the light.

04:08 in the morning, was the time he said those words to you. You never wanted to look at that clock again. You never wanted to open your eyes again, but the sound of the choked sob on the other end of your phone pulled them open.

You wanted to die.

04:08 in the morning was when Do Kyungsoo broke up with you and you stared at the clock in silence, wishing that when 4:09 came he would take it back. He would say he was only kidding (with tears in his voice and not even a deadpan tone on back of his throat, please, God let him be kidding,) what if...what if he changed his mind at 4:09?

Kyungsoo was silent, save for the occasional sniffle of his nose and you hadn’t said a single word.

Time… those wretched numbers on that clock just moved on and Kyungsoo was silent.

You couldn’t. All you wanted to do was curl into yourself, close your eyes and go back to sleep because this was obviously a very bad dream you were trapped in. It was probably because you’d fallen asleep on the couch in an uncomfortable position and the blood flow to your brain had obviously been interrupted by the 90-degree angle of the arm of this couch.

Sure, the tears that ran silently down your face felt real enough, and the pain you could feel in the heel of your palm as you dug your fingernails into your skin hard enough to leave marks, hard enough to break the skin and draw blood might be a trick of your sleeping mind.

The sound of your name in a soft whisper broke you out of it.

He called your name.

He said it softly and with all of the cruelest tenderness that he usually said it with and you felt the first broken sob break free from your lips. You quickly covered your mouth with your hand but it was no use. It had already happened and wouldn’t be put back inside of you quite so easily.

“I’m sorry,” he said and he was so broken. “I’m sorry,” he repeated once more and after that, the terrible silence of the call being disconnected was unmistakable.

The phone call was gone. It had ended at 04:14 and you kept the phone against your ear, listening to the lifelessness of the device that had been the instrument of your destruction.

The call was gone.

Kyungsoo was gone.

He did not call you back. You didn’t dare call him. The decision had been made and you were too broken to function that night.

The sun rose and the day went on and that clock rounded the numbers again and again and life all around you moved on as if you hadn’t just lost everything.

***

“I’m still in love with you.”

Even though he had just said it to you with his own lips, he did not look at you.

You sure as hell were watching him.

Kyungsoo held himself in a carefully posed stance, half bent at the waist as he curled into his own heavy breathing and kept his eyes trained down on the space of flooring in front of his bare feet.

You remembered how the time after the breakup was like living in a fog. You remembered forcing yourself to look away from your phone screen at the images of him at the airport; at the concerts; smiling and laughing with his friends; taunting you with how okay he obviously was with losing you; with getting rid of you, and feeling the throb inside as you tried to breathe in deep enough to stop the dizziness in your head when you simply could not stop crying enough to breathe properly.

You remembered not leaving your apartment for weeks; simply ignoring your growling stomach and ringing telephone until they both gave up.

You remembered the rejection. He didn’t want you anymore. He’d grown sick of you, as you had always deep down inside of you feared he would...and sooner than expected with only a few months of actual relationship under your belt and he was just done with you. You’d made a mistake and…he was done so easily.

You remembered the guilt and self hatred. This was your fault. You deserved this for what you had done. You did not deserve forgiveness nor even the chance to beg for it. This was your fault entirely and the pain inside your chest that was beginning to feel normal to you would be your companion for the rest of your life.

It took weeks, possibly close to a month for you to even begin to feel okay again. And longer for you to feel like maybe you weren’t the worst kind of woman in the world, the kind of woman who would destroy the precious love of a beautiful man like he was. It took so long until you could look at yourself in the mirror and not want to hide away.

And when it finally happened, when you were at last able to clean up the mess that had been your stress-wrecked skin, buy some new clothes that did not remind you of that time you took a cab in Seoul and got splashed with muddy water on the way to his home from the airport. The way he fussed and fretted over the stains and even when you told him to just leave it he insisted on soaking them overnight in his bathtub filled with soapy water and even pulled you into the suds with him barefoot and giggling as you stomped together until every last trace of the mud was gone. You could still feel the strong grip of his hands on your forearms as he held onto you, nagging about splashing so much in case you slipped and fell and hurt yourself.

You had to throw out most of your wardrobe.

You’d shopped for a few things first. New clothes. A new clock. Things that would make you feel like perhaps you were a normal person. Maybe even a good person. Maybe.

But what?

‘Still in love...’

Just like that? If not for the tragedy of your life you might have laughed.

Kyungsoo had ended it. He didn’t call you once. Didn’t text or even make an appearance on your Facebook — which you made a conscious effort to keep up to date on the off chance that he might try, you posted the occasional happy looking selfie (faked of course) — but there was nothing from him. It was like you ceased to exist to him. At times you even wondered if you had dreamed the entire thing?

How? How in the hell could he still have any feelings left when he showed no signs of regretting the break-up? He just worked as he always did. He looked well and healthy. He looked as carefree as could be.

You’d been dying on the inside just trying to seem okay.

Kyungsoo was silent. The room had gone still after his confession (in triplicate) and you stared ahead at the man in disbelief.

Disbelief turned to questions in your mind the longer you watched the now fully clothed man standing in the tiny space that was your dining room. (There was a table and chair there at least and just because you could probably reach out and touch him from the edge of your bed didn’t make it any less of a dining room.)

“Why are you saying this now, Kyungsoo?”

You’d asked the most pressing question that had been inflating the balloon inside your head before it could burst and send bits of your sanity all over the room...apartment...whatever this glorified closet you lived in was advertised as in the real-estate pamphlet.

Why was he only saying this now? Why hadn’t he mentioned this, oh six months ago when your world had collapsed and you’d spent all those sleepless nights hating yourself for making him hate you.

Why did it take the interest of another man; a pint and a half of vodka — a drunk and easily fuckable ex-girlfriend with just enough guilt about sending a vulnerable and recognizable celebrity away to fend for himself — to invite him in — why did it take all of that for him to realize this? And only after being cornered about his motives in taking her to bed did he actually fess up about it.

Frankly, and at the risk of sounding like a broken-fucking-record, you were finding that you had more questions than you had relief at hearing his sudden love confession.

“I’m saying it because it’s the truth. I...came home with you last night, I...slept with you last night because I’m not over you—”

You knew that much. He wasn’t understanding your question and you could feel a bubbling up inside your chest with an urgency that made you sit up straighter on the bed you still occupied.

“No, Kyungsoo, I mean why are you telling me this now? Why only now? Do you have any idea what the past six months have been like for me?”

“What they’ve been like for you? What about how I have felt...how I still feel?” His incredulous tone pushed back against your own and your recognized his defenses kicking in as he straightened his posture and took a step toward where you sat with your knees pulled high against your chest on the bed. You sat in a ball now, a protective sphere that you’d adopted on some subconscious instinct when the flood of memories had taken hold of your emotions and sent you for a spin.

“You broke up with me, Kyungsoo. Do you remember that? Because you seemed pretty sure of yourself when you did it and it’s not like I heard anything else from you ever again.”

Kyungsoo’s movement had not stopped at one step and he was moving closer to where you had stationed yourself in the bed — his movements, you watched them closely with your wide and anxious eyes when you noticed he was coming closer to you — too close for what you were comfortable with right now and you couldn’t help the way you stiffened when his hand extended swiftly as he reached. Only he wasn’t coming for you, his hand pulled at the top dresser drawer that sat directly beside your bed that doubled as a nightstand for your bedside lamp and cell phone charger.

If he noticed your flinch he didn’t draw attention to it and you watched as he peered inside at the stacks of carefully folded underwear, socks, and bras. He grabbed swiftly, handfuls coming out with one of each, selecting without regard for matching colors or fabrics he merely grabbed blindly and tossed items from the open drawer toward where you had established your own shameful naked little bunker on the bed.

The top drawer was slid shut without a delicate hand and the lamp on top of the dresser rattled with his rough movement.

“I know what I did. Don’t you think I know very well what I did?”

The question definitely sounded rhetorical and you eyed the underwear in your hands that you didn’t really want to slip on right now with the mess you still felt all over your body. Not without a shower first at least.

He was down to the next drawer and he pulled out a pink cotton t-shirt that you used mostly for yoga or for sitting on your couch eating potato chips as you wore yoga pants and thought about perhaps joining a yoga class one day at the gym.

The shirt hit you square in the chest and you watched it roll down before making some sort of half-hearted hand motion that mimicked a catching attempt.

You opted to forego the underwear, but welcomed the cover of the shirt and as you slipped it over your head. Your arms were halfway through when his next question was the next thing to hit you.

“Why didn’t you say anything? At all?”

You pulled the fabric down over your breasts and your belly, feeling warmer and more secure and you looked up to meet his eyes that finally — finally met yours since he had started talking about love and broken hearts and all that lighthearted, fun, morning-after-a-drunken-mistake shit.

The only problem with this question was the confused look on your face. You weren’t exactly sure what he meant. Did he mean why you hadn’t told him about the blind date? Because you were pretty damned sure that was a dead horse that had been beaten to a bloody pulp six months ago.

“When I broke up with you...why didn’t you say anything? You just … you just let it happen. You didn’t hold on to me at all. You didn’t fight for me or even make it seem like you gave a shit, why? Why did you just let me go like that? Like it was nothing to you — like I was nothing...”

In his hands, he held a roll of black fabric that he had pulled from inside a drawer. He’d been steadily unfolding and refolding things as he spoke, hardly paying attention to the items he chose, you figured these were nervous movements now, to occupy his hands as his heart raged with the feelings coursing through him.

“I...didn’t think I had the right to,” you whispered after probably too long of a pause. You angled your legs toward the edge of the bed at last. Ready for baby steps now that you had a shirt on and he was bobbing his head with a bite of his lip and his eyes floating over the features your face for as long as his nerves allowed.

He focused back down on the black fabric in his hands and unrolled as the familiarity and significance of that inconspicuous item hit you like the clunk of hard plastic, hollow and incriminating, clattering down onto the floor between his feet.

You knew what it was before it hit the floor. His eyes followed the sound and was bending at the waist to wrap his rounded fingertips around the black plastic case that held a pair of round eyeglasses that you had last touched with your own trembling fingertips exactly one week ago before rolling them inside a pair of black running pants and stuffing the whole shameful secret deep inside your dresser drawer.

Kyungsoo crouched on his ankles with the case that held his old glasses gripped tightly in the palm of his hand — the eyeglasses from last year that you had taken as a keepsake — a reminder of the swift and all-consuming love you had shared with him and he stared down at the plain and harmless-seeming item with a suffocating silence building between the separate spaces you both occupied.

You didn’t dare touch it with your words or your fingers. You felt trapped and frozen as if you had just been caught in a lie.

Under his breath and whispered with the softest voice, you heard him speak. On his tongue was the sound of your name. He carried it on his breath and it exited his lips as a single brush stroke and oh, such a quiet thing had no business painting you from head to toe in warmth like this. It was only your name. You’d heard it from countless people all day at work with little impact. The force was in the delivery; with how he touched it so carefully and delicately with his tongue. He cradled it on his lips as securely as he cradled the plastic case in his hands and when he said it again, a softer whisper, it was so much worse. He sank down to the floor, from hunched on his ankles down to fall down on his knees and you heard the hard exhale as the air left his lungs.

“Why didn’t you stop me? I would have stopped. I would have taken it back...why did you just let me go? You never say no to anything. You always just let things happen...but I thought...I thought — you should have stopped me—”

“Kyungsoo, I’m sorry.” With the threat of your own guilt overshadowing your brief bout of courage you spoke your words quickly and he closed his downcast eyes at the sound of your voice. “I know it’s late for this...too late for this but I just needed to say it. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I know I hurt you back then. It was never my intention to hurt you but I did and I am very sorry. I shouldn’t have waited so long to say it. I shouldn’t have waited for us to be over to say it.”

“I know you are sorry.” He was nodding his head and his eyelids fluttered and shook as he squeezed them tight.

“I know. You mentioned it last night. I know I should have given you the chance to say that — I just….I handled it bad back then— o-over?” He was speaking amidst a new sound in the room.

“Over?” He repeated again to himself, this terrible word you had used to describe the truth of your relationship with the man you loved. Over. It had been over for months. It had ended. It ceased to exist. It was no longer. Your mind knew it. Your body knew it. Some days you still worked on getting your heart to know it, but it would get the message eventually. As long as you stopped doing things like inviting him into your home while drunk and jumping at the chance to kiss his lips and hop into bed with him.

A buzzing, not coming from your plugged-in cell phone but from what seemed to be inside the front pocket of his sweatpants.

“Shit,” he whispered and pulled out the blasted device with as much annoyance as worry on his face at the interruption. “Shit..shit,” he mouthed this time, mostly under his breath and the buzzing stopped when he pressed something on the screen.

“What is it?” A feeling had dawned. Something was probably happening… some work-related thing and you recalled the phone call you ignored earlier. Was there something you were forgetting in your hungover state? Wasn’t there something that was supposed to happen today?

“My manager. Shit. I think...I think we may be—” he was scrolling on the phone and his face pulled into a grimace as he wrinkled his nose, “we may be late for a flight.”

We? Were you also supposed to be on a plane right now — doing your damn job instead of your ex?

The phone in his hand was buzzing again and his eyes reached up for yours in quiet warning as he lifted it to his ear to speak this time.

“Oh..umm...Hyung—” As soon as he spoke the sound of another voice spoke up and over him. Loud and rough with an urgent tone that had you reaching for your own cell.

You had three missed calls. Two from a staff member named Alie who had been in charge of updating you on upcoming schedules and events in which your assistance was required and one missed call from Oh Sehun.

You also had one text message waiting from the later and you clicked on the icon with the notification.

‘hey party girl~ guess you’re not used to the thug life??don’t worry I told your boss or whoever the chick with the angry eyebrows is that you were feeling sick and would join us later. You’re welcome ^~ you’ll have to catch the next flight to osaka because we’re taking off now. see you soon :) also..have you heard from Kyungsoo??’

The text message from Sehun was from two hours ago and you sat up straighter on the edge of your bed as hazy memories of your last minute schedule changes had floated into your inbox at work the day before. You were to be on the flight today for a fan meeting in Japan that was happening tomorrow. This was important and you had thought that perhaps this could be your one chance to prove yourself in this new position that had been dropped in your lap by an overly proactive Oh Sehun who seemed to always have your interests in his mind. How could you have possibly forgotten about this?

Well, you knew how you forgot, he was sitting on his ass on your floor with his phone held up to his ear as he talked to his manager in a surprising 95% honest-to-God account of how he got very drunk the night before and was kind of a huge mess right now, a little embarrassed about it, definitely in no condition for an airport appearance, and would need at least two hours before the next flight. He was all apologies for the oversight and you could hear the change in the voice that responded through his phone as it went from irate to passive and forgiving.

You keyed out a short thank you to Sehun for his quick thinking and promised to buy him a drink for the effort.

‘anytime~ sweetness :3,’ His response followed and left you with mixed feelings.

The nagging voice in the back of your mind told you that you should probably cut back on the friendliness on your part — at least to keep him from getting the wrong idea. He only knew your super helpful, professional work persona that was nice to everybody because that was the job.

And if that was what he was into then that was fine for him but you weren’t that up all the time. Not really. That kind of false happiness and super outgoing nature was hard to maintain and sometimes you enjoyed the calm silence of an evening with a man who knew when to just let you read a good book in peace as he played a video game on the couch in between belly rubs for his two puppies and opening his mouth for the grapes you fed him in-between chapters.

No.

You shook your head to clear the memory and you wished that you could shake the warm feeling that flooded through your chest as you looked across the space at the man who had finished his phone call and was staring down at the plastic case that held his eyeglasses. It would have been 9 months since his own hands had touched them.

But almost as quickly as the warmth came the ache. Your heart’s memory was really a son-of-a-bitch sometimes. The pain you felt inside with every second that passed reminded you just how easily he had dropped you. He was so quick to dump you and never look back. And you were left to pick up your own pieces. To clean up your own mess. And your self-restoration project was nearly complete. You had been applying the final fresh coats of paint when he sauntered his way into your bed last night with those tempting lips and that goddamned smell of his and set your deadline back weeks, if not months.

“I have to go,” he said after delaying it for as long as possible. You knew it was coming. You understood the job; you always had. You also had your own flight to prepare for and although you could travel in as big a state of disaster as you pleased, you’d still prefer to shower and at least put on some damn underwear.

“Did you just call this over?” He hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor but cocked his head to the side to peer at you. There was a definite audible challenge in his voice and you bit down on the inside of your lip, a furrow on your brows to see his eyes blink-blink-blink at you; awaiting your answer.

“I did,” you offered, careful to keep your tone as calm and emotionless as possible.

His left eyebrow ticked up a millimeter over his eye and his tongue darted out to moisten his bottom lip before the short inhale through his parted lips provided the necessarily over-dramatic groundwork for his next words.

“I fell asleep inside of you last night. I can still smell you all over my skin. I’m ... so in love with you — but … over?” His head was shaking itself back and forth as his lips hung open with the final syllable of the word. The exception he took to the word evident in the dramatic delivery.

“Kyungsoo, last night...happened,” you said and you had to squeeze your fists into tight balls to keep your voice steady, “but, it wasn’t, like, a reset button. We still broke up. And now I’ve got this life here and this job here and—” (this blanket here, and this single pink slip-on house shoe here…) thankfully you stopped talking after the job mention. It would have to be reason enough. You weren’t here for a debate on the facts, you were just trying to survive this.

Your words grew thick and heavy when his eyes glanced around your apartment, no doubt placing his own little judgments over the life you made such grand claims to and you suddenly wished that you had opted for the living accommodations upgrade. At least a one bedroom would have a door you could close dramatically as you stormed out of the kitchen.

When his eyes found yours again you noticed a marked lack of judgment in them. Instead, he was listening to you speak, with most of the traces of the agitation from this morning gone, Kyungsoo sat with his legs folded into his chest, arms wrapped around his knees and he watched as you tried to find the words to explain how you wouldn’t be so weak to him again. The idea that you had to defend how over this relationship was ridiculous.

Honestly, the idea of spending a lifetime waking up in his arms sounded like impossible fairytale-heaven but having tasted that there’s-nothing-more-we-can-do, blood-in-the-back-of-your-throat flavor that was the nightmare of losing him — well, that was enough to make you want to run anywhere that was in the opposite direction of those big brown eyes, those impossibly soft, plump lips, and the dangerous temptation of his voice that flowed like sticky honey over all your skin.

“—and… honestly, I don’t think that we, I mean I’m ready for … another, umm, a-another relation-thing with—with any other, another, otro...person, human. Sorry. Someone. Anyone—” he was watching you very-very closely as you spoke and each stumble and stutter over your words made his stupid eyebrow bounce above his eye in a distracting way. You could see the soft curve of the corners of his lips as you bumbled your way into some sort of words that might have meant what you were trying to mean had they only been placed in the right order.

Your Korean felt elementary all of a sudden with the way he was looking at you. You wanted to scream. Why couldn’t you Korean properly right now?

“Wh—what?” You said and gave up at last with a defeated exhale and dramatic slouch of your shoulders.

“What?” He said almost as soon as you said it and his chin perked and his spine straightened. And then he was moving, legs pushing off the floor he moved his whole body into a standing position that set noisy alarms blaring inside of your ears where only you could hear them. What was he doing? Where was he going? Was he leaving? (Already?) Would he ever return?

You stood up. You had to. It was an instinct and the room swayed a bit in your vision with the hangover headache throb that the movement stirred inside.

“You were mumbling something about a person, but I don’t...what does relation-thing mean?” He had asked it with a straight face but you couldn’t be completely positive he wasn’t teasing you for your sloppy Korean (in a high-stress environment while hungover and living inside some sort of vivid nightmare, dammit Do Kyungsoo)...nope, there it was. There was the smallest twitch in his bottom lip, on the left side. It was his tell and you’d become very familiar with being teased by this man. He was definitely teasing you right now at the worst possible time for him to tease you.

The teasing was unwelcome. It was ill-timed and sparked a fire of defense inside of your chest. How dare he? How would he like it if you held this conversation entirely in English and you got to laugh at him for bumbling over his words, and during such an important topic of discussion too...you wanted to smack him.

“A relation-thing is what we don’t have, Do Kyungsoo. Now, I’m sure you’ve got a flight to catch and I’ve got a bottle of aspirin to swallow so…”

“I think you’re wrong,” he countered, with all traces of teasing gone from his face, “of all the things you and I have, a relation-thing is probably the best way to describe it. This thing. The thing we have...me and you...you and me...and the thing. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

How dare he make sense right now? You would have made sense too if given half of the advantage he had with this happening in his mother tongue.

You felt dizzy. Was it possible that you were still drunk? On top of taking your nonsense bumble and turning it into a somewhat sensible examination of the nature of you and Kyungsoo’s non-relationship, he was doing his damn talking now, his half joking half serious talking that he did sometimes when the dark moods had been lifted enough for sarcasm and playfulness to come in to the conversation and it made your head swim. Both with how fucking wonderful it was to finally hear again and with how absolutely terrified you felt when that first tiny sigh of defeat escaped your lips; against your will, of course.

For with the defeat would come the acceptance and with the acceptance would the laughter and soon, if you weren’t careful, you might run the risk of joking along with him or God forbid, laughing at something he said.

So you held your breath. And you closed your eyes. And you willed your body to behave itself. No smiling, no laughter. No caving at all, you were a pillar of strength and fortitude. This man was just a man. His lips were pretty and his eyes were prettier and his dick was nice too but, no, he was just a human being like you were. He wore funny pants all the time. He bought multiple pairs of them. He only owned black socks of all the same style and design because he said it made laundry a breeze. He refused to eat certain herbs and made a huge over-the-top deal anytime someone used the word they were defining in the definition of that same word. He was just a human being. One that didn’t know how to write a detailed text message to save his life. He was shit. He was wonderful in person, but he was still shit in all other forms of communication. He didn’t have to have this power over you. You wouldn’t let him have this.

You could touch him right now and be completely unaffected. You could use your hand to push his welcome-overstaying ass right on out of your front door if you wanted.

“—and did you also throw in a Spanish word? I think it must be a good sign that you’re this nervous around me because that means—”

He stopped talking the second you placed a warm palm over the center of his chest and his eyes widened with the inhale of breath that made your hand move up as his lungs inflated.

“It doesn’t mean anything, Kyungsoo.”

In an instant, his expression changed. With the humor gone from his eyes, you saw traces of a nervous energy forcing them to remain wide and set on you. He swallowed quickly and his big brown eyes watched you with just the smallest furrow in his brows as he half blinked his lids.

And then it was warm. He moved, you felt the movement in his chest before the warmth of his hand laid over yours and his fingers wrapped around yours as his heat invaded and permeated, battling the chill that fought to keep control of your heart.

A pillar of strength.

“I know that you’re mad at me,” he said.

Throbbing, dehydrated, used up and sore strength. Like a 1999 Toyota with a half a million miles, bald tires and busted up windows -- that started right up despite everyone’s wishes that it would finally just die so they’d have an excuse to buy something new and shiny.

“You can be mad at me. It’s okay, I can handle that. If you want to yell at me, then you can do that too. I know I hurt you and I was an asshole.”

He had your hand encased in his and you could feel the steady pounding of his heart through his chest wall underneath your palm. Its rhythm was frantic. It followed the same beat as the pounding of your own heart that echoed against your eardrums.

Your own gravity was shaky at best. You felt like you might just float up right into the ceiling above your head with how disconnected you felt to the floor beneath your feet and each breath that vacated your lungs felt too heavy and too weighted for just standing here in the middle of your apartment with your hand held down over the heart of the man you loved.

Every single brain cell inside of your head was beginning to panic and scream for letting this invasive touch of his warmth go on for this long.

“K-Kyungsoo,” you managed. You weren’t about to fall back into the same ways of the past you, the you who gave herself up so easily and cried over the shattered and broken pieces of the remnants of her heart that his big boots had carelessly and thoughtlessly stomped all over.

He had slept well every night unaware that some of the shards were still stuck to the bottom of his shoes. You’d felt tiny cracks in the way it pumped since then. He had taken them with him, and yet here you were thinking stupid thoughts in your stupid head about that vulnerable look in his eyes.

You could do this. You could probably do this.

There was so much more to lose here. Back home it was just your stupid heart, but here, it would be your job. It would be your reputation in this industry. It would be your chances of a future in the only career you’d ever loved. It would be ruin.

You shouldn’t have done this with him in the first place, but now… now it was impossible. You had read through several very real, very threatening clauses in the contract that you signed when you had accepted the job. Things that talked about lawsuits and things that talked about breaches of contract that carried with them a number of horrible, life ruining things for everyone involved.

If not just to protect your heart, shouldn’t you at least give a damn about your future?

“I’m not looking for an answer right now,” he said and you resisted the urge to inform him that he hadn’t asked a single question, “I just want you to know—”

If the hand over your hand was too much physical contact for you, you damn were no near prepared for the one that had been harmlessly winding up for an attack at his side. It moved, with slippery fingertips that promised all sorts of soul-destroying things, up your shoulder and you had to close your eyes — you had to — goddamn him and that hand. It reached the bare skin of your neck, the soft skin of your jaw and further, an entire palm, his entire hand lightly laid over your cheek. Your eyes burned to open. They begged for it, but you resisted. You would wait this out in the darkness of your own making.

“Kyungsoo, what are you doing?” Your voice sounded more stable than any of your internal organs felt, combined.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

He was too much. This was so much. You wouldn't be able to make the flight. You wouldn't be able to do your job at the fan meeting because he was going to leave you for dead right here on this floor.

“Haven’t you missed me? Was there ever anyone else you were interested in? Anyone at all? I’ve been trying and trying just to...seem normal, just to even tolerate anyone else but...but I can’t. If it isn’t you, I can’t even look at another woman.”

You felt frozen in time. This second, this moment felt magnified and dragged out as if you had somehow dropped into a wormhole in which time no longer made sense and your skin was humming all over your body.

“Will you open your eyes and look at me, please,” he sounded much closer and much more dangerous than before. Your heart was about to quit. This was too much for any one person to take.

You loved him.

He hurt you.

He left you behind.

His phone was ringing.

The buzzing wasn’t your skin. The buzzing was his phone ringing. It must have been ringing for a while.

“No. No...ignore it,” he begged when your shift in posture must have told him that you too were very aware of the calls of his job. “It will stop. I’ll make it stop.” And he was moving, hands leaving your flesh, finally letting you breathe again with their absence. With frantic eyes running over screens, the interruption was silenced for a moment and he threw it. It was tossed with a surprising bit of force across the room where you heard the dull clatter of plastic.

“Kyungsoo, you need to go to work.”

“I don't have to go yet.” It sounded feeble. He was deep in his denial. “I’m already going to be scolded, I don't have to go yet.” With his hands off of you, there was a greater sense of self-control pulsing through your veins and you took a step back and away from him. He watched the movement you took and bit down on the inside of his lip as his hands moved again; this time grasping at the space directly in front of him. It was a noncommittal move. It was unsure and tentative and you knew he wanted to touch you again, but the moment had already been interrupted and he didn’t quite dare.

“I,” when he spoke, at last, it was half breath and half voice, “need you to say something. You’ve been so quiet and it’s making me very uncomfortable. Will you say something, please?”

“What do you want me to say, Kyungsoo?” This wasn’t him winning. This was you being a rational adult who was talking through things with your ex-boyfriend who was obviously a trick of the universe set out to destroy you once again, if only you would just fall for it.

“I don't know. Just say something. Tell me you hate me, tell me I broke your heart. Yell at me, hit me, do something. Tell me you fucking missed me as much as I missed you. Call me a bastard, why are you so quiet?” His voice rose with each new thought he added and you could feel your emotions bubbling up hot and fast inside of your chest as he spoke.

You had been quiet for your own self-preservation. It was survival. He was right about all of it. He did break your heart. You did want to yell at him and you did want to hit him. You missed him so much you had forgotten what it was like to go to sleep without the pain in your stomach from being so empty inside.

Even with him standing in front of you now, even with the closeness you could feel physically to him, you had placed up a thick impenetrable wall whose stones were made of the strongest materials. He was here with you close enough for you to reach out and touch but the barrier around your heart was fortified. If you focused, which you were trying your best not to, you could see that even in his hungover, filthy state, he was the same. He had the same little habits, his fingernails chewed down to the quick, his lips frequently the place he went to bite on when nervous, like now, he was doing it even now as he stood here begging for you to just talk to him. His straight black hair was limp on his head and the slight build of his shoulders looked gaunt and thin. He had lost weight and it showed on his face.

And his anger; you remembered it from the phone calls. The jealousy and the cursing, he had felt like another person. Someone other than this broken down man who looked close to tears in front of you.

You couldn't yell. You couldn't scream and call him names, he was your Kyungsoo.

He had been yours.

And then he wasn't.

“Why did you do that?” You said softly after what felt like hours of silence and you could feel your own mood pulling your lips down into a frown. You couldn't fight it. You couldn't fix it. You couldn't put up the brave and chipper facade anymore because he was here, confronting you about how you felt and you felt so broken inside, “Why did you do that?” You asked again and he took a step closer to where you had retreated.

There was a throbbing in your chest and in the back of your throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said against your ear and he was so close. When he inhaled it was from your oxygen supply and you could feel the warmth from his skin against your own. It burned with broken promises and pain.

Hands — trembling against you, connected to warm arms wrapping around you and there he was, surrounding you with a familiarity that ached as it moved and enveloped every inch of the pain. Breathing was difficult. Staying upright was difficult and he was speaking into your ear with the softness of a lullaby, “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m sorry I did that to you.”

“You’re such a jerk you know that?” you said suddenly. A burst of courage smacking you against the ass and his shoulders stiffened around you for a second as the calm circles he was rubbing into your back stalled. His surprise only lasted for a moment before you felt his face move up and down with his acknowledgment of your words.

“And an idiot. That was so stupid, Kyungsoo. If you’re mad at me, then you talk to me about it, you don't just get drunk and break up with me, what the fuck?” There was less vehement nodding happening now and more of a general stiffness as he took a step back to look into your face as you spoke your piece at last.

“And the jealousy? What exactly do you think of me? Europeans kiss on the cheek as a greeting, Kyungsoo. Did you expect me to say ‘oh sorry, I can’t say hi to you today, my boyfriend’s a fucking psychopath in khakis who’s going to accuse me of fucking the entire party tonight if I greet you all’ should I have told them that?”

If he had stiffened up before, this next bit had given his posture a real test. You half wondered if you had gone too far. But really, the man had asked, practically begged for your honest to god take on the whole thing and it was a bit hard to censor yourself once you had gotten started.

While his hands still remained around you, the hold was very loose now. You didn't exactly blame him and the longer you thought about the things he had said to you about the whole thing, the more you wondered why it took you so long to say how you really felt.

You did hear the smallest whisper from him. He repeated one word but it was nearly completely under his breath and it seemed to be the one word he took the most offense to. ‘Khakis’ he repeated and your eyes widened so far they nearly popped out of your head. The look was enough to pull his lips shut tight and you wondered if he would ever be able to say the word to you again without bringing up some ugly memories of this moment.

“Hmm?” You lifted a brow and he angled his chin down and his eyes down and his ego down and shook his head once with a definite pout on his face.

“Nothing. Khaki-psycho. That’s me,” his deadpan delivery was on point, “that would be a good band name.”

The joke was abrupt and unexpected and you fought the smile as best as you could but the short guffaw that erupted from your lips only pissed you off more. How dare he make you laugh. You had been doing so well.

When he saw the smile you noticed the immediate change in his face and his own lips trembled against the lift in mood.

“Don't you dare laugh. You aren't allowed to laugh yet, that was just for me.” You lifted a finger toward his face and you knew it was irrational now, to be irritated that he was laughing. But these things weren’t exactly going according to the owner’s manual of life and it was just a little bit satisfying to see him quickly blank out his lips and nod his head up and down obediently.

“Yes ma’am,” he said in a low tone that sounded just about as chastised as a scolded puppy and he looked exactly as adorable as one.

Damn him. Damn the eyes and damn the lips and damn the pout and the way he was watching you at this moment. Damn the hangover and the headache and the way the light made your temples throb and damn the filthy condition of both of your bodies and damn the way he smelled under the layer of old booze and old sex, how dare he still smell like Kyungsoo after all of that. He hadn’t even brushed his teeth and you suddenly became a bit self-conscious about how close you had been standing to him this entire time.

“You stink,” you said with half a heart of conviction and his eyes widened marginally as he chewed on the inside of his lip again.

“So do you,” he said with the threat of a smile on his lips and you lifted your palm to swat in annoyance at his chest for his bluntness. Of course, you stunk, you hadn’t had a shower or brushed your teeth or even cleaned up your bedsheets. He was laughing again, without your permission, he giggled and grabbed your hand to hold it still before you could hit him again and you yelped in surprise to feel the soft warmth of the skin of his cheek against your own.

Your hand in his had given him leverage and he pulled you closer to him, letting the momentum of the little tug bring you forward you collided with his chest and his arms were around you again, only this time much less for the comfort and much more demanding of something else. Closeness and contact and you whined and complained as you tried to wiggle free.

“You said I stink,” you said and his face was so close now and he laughed again.

“You smell,” there was a sharp inhale and he coughed for dramatic effect, “so bad right now.” And with the gasp of shock in your chest, you felt your balance shift and you were lifted off of your feet. He was moving forward and you recognized that the destination in his path of movement was your bathroom. “Guess we have no choice but to shower together.”

“I’ll scrub your back and you can scrub mine, okay?”

It was a bad idea. The sex itself the night before had been a bad idea but this...a shower together with all of that closeness and touching that that sort of thing involved. It was absolutely out of the question.

You found your footing when he plopped you down in front of the bathroom door and you felt the door behind your back give way when you were leaned against it and Kyungsoo was here right in front of you, making you feel drunk all over again with the way he leaned toward you.

You could feel it coming before he leaned in closer. There was a thickness in the air that felt heavy on your skin and his focus was much too shaky. Those eyes kept drifting over your face. That gaze kept finding its way down to your lips despite the state of you and god he was beautiful up close.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” his confession was as soft as the fingertip’s touch you felt trailing over your hips.

“But I thought I stunk,” you said with an accusatory grin and he wasn’t smiling at all.

This wouldn’t do at all. You stepped back, letting his hands fall away as you left his embrace and your bathroom held all of the things you needed to fix this problem. You had just the one toothbrush but honestly, at this point he couldn’t afford to be very picky.

You shared with him — a fresh squeeze for him first and he brushed quickly with the sight of your reflection in the mirror in the corner of his eye.

You took your time with yourself; ignoring the stalker-like way he watched you from the edge of the bathroom sink and you brushed carefully and for a very long time, paying extra care to get the backs of your molars and even the surface of your tongue.

“You know,” you said in between the rinsing and filling the small cup of mouthwash to swish around your mouth, “this doesn’t mean I’m ready for another relationship. Especially not one at work. This is different this time. I have more responsibilities, being the exclusive translator for EXO and I can’t afford to mess around. I just can’t.”

“I didn’t say anything about a relationship.” His response was quick. Too quick; you could see the pink in his ears and the way his eyes fell as he looked down at his already shorter than short fingernails for new growth to bite.

You felt a little bit like the bad guy now with the sulk on his face and the definite slump in his shoulders.

“So don’t you think a shower together, as friends and co-workers, might be a bad idea?”

“I shower with my friends sometimes.”

Your eyebrow cocked up on its own. “You shower...naked... with your friends?”

“Well...I don’t shower in my clothes and no bathroom lock can keep Baekhyun out, so…”

He was full of shit. He knew he was full of shit just as much as you did and it took exactly ten seconds of staring at him before you heard the sigh.

“Fine. I can’t do this. I don’t want to be your friend. Can you really be my friend? You’re still mad at me right?”

He was impossible. Had he really not heard the whole speech about work? This was your career and his career and that had been your heart, goddammit, and the man was simply dangerous to keep inside your house any longer.

You were aware that time had been passing quickly. Despite the extra couple of hours the flight reschedule bought him, he couldn’t stand around in this bathroom not showering or making any attempt at getting ready for the day. And you also had to shower. You were familiar enough with your hot water heater to know that you had only enough of the supply for one and maybe a quarter showers before the cold would come crashing down over your head and shock whichever unlucky soul to the bones that just happened to be the one to shower second.

Could you really do that to him? He did kind of deserve it.

“I’ll shower first, very very fast, and then you can shower, okay?”

Kyungsoo did not respond right away, not with words. He was throwing what you were pretty sure was a little fit inside his head about being rejected by you. All the while, attempting to keep up a calm and cool exterior.

But the silence unnerved you and you could feel the urge to offer him some sort of comfort or solace at least. The desire to pacify this man was embedded deep within your soul.

“I did, by the way…” you said cryptically as you went to your shower and turned on the tap to the cooler side of warm to conserve the hot water for his shower.

He lifted his brows in question, clearly expecting you to elaborate.

“You did what?”

“Miss you.” You caved as easily as a sandstone cliffside and he leaned against the bathroom wall with his hands hung against his side and he blinked slowly and carefully as if he were sending hidden messages with his eyelids.

“How much?” He asked but he did not move. He lips hardly moved at all and you wondered if he would give you any privacy while you showered.

How much had you missed him? A hundred? A thousand? Ten million? How could you quantify that with a response? You missed everything about him. You missed the stubbornly flat hair that sat on stop if his head, growing straight out and refusing to stay where you moved it with begging fingertips. You missed the constellations of moles that scattered over his skin. You missed the tips of his fingers and the tips of his toes that he never ever ever let you touch (because of feet tickle threats) and you missed threatening him with those tickles that made him absolutely irrational and fighty. You missed the softness of his lips and the sounds he made when he ate something delicious. You missed the sound of his breathing beside you. You missed the way he talked to his puppies. You missed the way he told you he loved you.

You missed everything so completely. How would you ever be able to describe it with words?

You couldn’t. All you could do was step into him. All you could do was lift your chin and place your mouth against his and relish in the easy give of his lips against yours.

You kissed him. This was against the rules. The minty toothpaste flavor of his lips matched the flavor on your own and yet he still tasted like Kyungsoo. His lips were a spell and he wasn’t kissing you back in any way that was suggestive or demanding.

His lips parted slowly and carefully and time seemed to slow again. There was a gentle way about this as he simply received from you. When you took his bottom lip in between your own, he gave it up easily and the suction from his mouth against your lip was so slight, it was hardly there at all.

Yet the gentleness of this sparked a contrast in you. Something that burned inside of your stomach like a warning. Something that flowed up the back of your throat and begged for you to stop this. As if you had willingly subjected yourself to poison and the effects were beginning to take hold.

Were you really the one doing this? Were you the one that had forgotten your own safety?

You pulled away from him and opened your eyes to see his face. His lips were parted and his eyes were closed. In the split seconds of your departure, he opened his eyes and caught your focus in his own.

He did not speak nor move. You could not either. You were, both, affected by the kiss and disappointed in yourself for doing it. Yet, somehow, like the sex the night before, not able to regret it.

It happened, yes. You were human and this was the man you loved. But you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t any of it, you shouldn’t sleep with him again you shouldn’t kiss him again, you shouldn’t touch his bare skin with your fingertips and you shouldn’t run your fingers through his hair.

You felt the wavering inside of you like it had its own physical form. The desire to forget it all; all of the pain, the sleepless nights you spent in agony, the hurtful words he slung so carelessly at you and the way he simply vanished from your entire world for months.

The feeling of being abandoned.

The feeling of being left alone to stand in the center of a barren field with no light from the sun nor any water to drink. You’d waited alone for days. You kept watch on the horizon; hoping and wishing for any sign of him. A glimpse of his form returning for you; saying with a smile that he was kidding. That he didn’t mean any of it. That he would take you back and things would be the way they were before.

But he never came. And you were faced with two options. Stay here alone and abandoned in this field and die, or get up and walk away.

It hadn’t felt like love. It didn’t feel like he even liked you.

Could you really forget all of that so easily?

Did he mean it when he said he loved you? Would he drop you again just as easily as he had the first time? Could you survive -- to have your shattered and clumsily taped together heartbroken a second time?

It was Kyungsoo who broke the silence.

“Are you scared of me now?”

Kyungsoo always saw too much.

Only the One you Love[M]: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 , part 7

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bangchanshehe · 3 years

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The Orphanage pt.12 (M)

Growing up in an orphanage was hard, but when three men kidnap you as collateral, you find out that your life prior to being trapped in a house with twelve men was a piece of cake. Your loved ones were more corrupt than you thought and your enemies are closer than ever.

OT12 X OC (INCOMPLETE)

word count 2.7k

When Suho kicked the door shut your heart sank and you didn’t really know what to do. You stared up at him with wide eyes and your mouth closed shut in a pout.

“What? Are you embarrassed that I walked in on the two of you?” Suho asked with a raised eyebrow and a sideways smile.

You couldn’t decipher if Suho was seriously mad or not or if he was playing games with you, so you decided to not say anything and just nod your head in silence. You let your head hang to the ground as you waited for Suho to yell at you and Chanyeol or leave frustrated.

“Hyung!” Chanyeol whined like he was upset “Stop doing that. You’re obviously making her nervous?”

You looked back at Chanyeol to see him giving Suho a cut it out type of look and you felt your body relax a bit. When you started to realize that Suho wasn’t upset you turned to look up at him to gauge his mood for your own.

As you peered up the two of you made eye contact and Suho continued to look at you with a smirk. After a moment he finally took a few steps towards you and he ran his hand over the top of your hair as if he were petting you. in a moment of relief, you let out a soft sigh and allowed yourself to turn your head into his palm as if you were nuzzling it.

“what princess? Was I not enough for you?” he asked sweetly but you knew that he had darker intent

You opened your eyes and gazed up to him in shock. Was he seriously trying to do this here? With Chanyeol? You had never had a threesome before and to be honest the though did cross your mind, but you were much too nervous to initiate that with both men since Suho was so aggressive on his own.

“no. sorry. I was just caught up in the moment” you said softly enough for him to barely hear.

Suho continued to smile down at you and he looked over at Chanyeol for a split second before he looked back down at you. “don’t be sorry.” He stated as if it was no big deal “I enjoy watching as much as I enjoy participating.”

“hey! Even if you were okay with watching who says that I’m comfortable with it?” Chanyeol said barking back at him.

Suho let out a soft chuckle before he removed his hands and put them up in the air in surrender. “fine.”

You stood up on your feet and adjusted your hair and clothes, so everything sat straight while you looked around the room for a distraction.

“why don’t we get comfortable and watch a movie” you said trying to redirect the entire mood.

Chanyeol jumped in the bed and quickly settled in on his side and Suho nodded his head in agreement. The two of you approached the bed and Suho gestured for you to sleep in the middle. You gave him a small smile and then scooted in as far as you could. The bed was a tight fit for all of you to share and you were hyper aware of the amount of physical contact you had with both men’s legs.

The entire time during the movie you tried to focus on what was going on, but you were constantly bringing your attention back to the men every time that one of you moved, which was most often Chanyeol.

“what’s wrong?” you asked him quietly.

“Nothing.” We quickly responded as if he was in a panic. “it’s just a little hot since were all in the bed.”

“here” you said reaching for the covers trying to pull them off him and over to your side.

But as soon as your hand landed on his comforter to pull back, he had a firm grip around your wrist. You looked up to him confused as to why he was suddenly stopping you if he was hot. It was the only solution that you had if the three of you were going to stay in the bed like this together.

“don’t. I- “he said in a whisper yell before he let his head fall back against the headboard.

You watched him confused as he sat there in silence. If you were going to help him then he was going to have to tell you what was wrong. Quickly he turned his head over to Suho to see if he was paying attention or not and looked back at you and let out a sigh. He pointed over to Suho and then made a sleeping gesture and you looked over your shoulder for confirmation.

Again, Suho was fast asleep, tucked under the covers with his hands behind his head. You smiled at him and then turned back to Chanyeol who was looking at you as if he had kicked a puppy.

“Chanyeol tell me what’s wrong and ill help you.” You pleaded with him.

He stared at you for a few moments before he quickly pulled you in for a passionate kiss. You were startled by his quick movements at first but as soon as you felt Chanyeol deepen the kiss you shut your eyes and allowed him to take control of the moment.

His tongue wrapped around yours and he lightly tugged on your lips with his teeth before he pulled away from you and took big heavy breaths. The two of you stared at each other for a moment before Chanyeol gently placed your hand over his firm erection. Your eyes widened involuntarily and then you peeked down to see what he was so desperate to hide under his covers.

The tent that you hadn’t noticed before was standing proudly right in front of your face. and you didn’t know if you were so worked up because you had been lonely lately, if it was from hooking up with Suho or if you really liked Chanyeol… but you instantly felt a heat rise inside of you. You looked up at Chanyeol who was giving you ‘fuck me’ eyes and you softly whispered “bathroom.”

He stood out of bed and immediately pulled you out with him. Holding you by the arm, you were dragged behind him as he strode inside and then shut the door behind the two of you.

Once you were inside Chanyeol stared down at you as if he wanted to tear you limb from limb. And for a moment you were almost afraid of how primal he looked. But without another moment of hesitation Chanyeol quickly wrapped his arms around you and began to kiss you fiercely. As you both fought with teeth and tongues Chanyeol picked you up and you wrapped your legs around his waist. He turned the two of you around and sat you down of the bathroom countertop before he quickly pulled his shirt over his head.

You stared at his muscles and you subconsciously bit down on your bottom lip. He still had such a slender and tall figure, but his muscles were thick and toned. His abs were deep and defined and his shoulders were broad and strong.

You reached out to gently trace your hand over his gorgeous figure but Chanyeol stopped you. You looked up into his eyes worried that you had crossed some sort of boundary that you shouldn’t have. But Chanyeol looked down at you with such a dark and lustful expression that you knew that you hadn’t crossed the line.

“I’m not in the mood for sweet and gentle, beautiful.” He said as he lifted you up once more so he could remove his oversized sweats off your body. “I want you right now.” he said huskily as he pulled his own sweats down with his boxers.

You stared down at his size and your heart fluttered. If you thought that Suho was large, then you were in for a treat. Chanyeol’s cock was long and girthy and veiny just like Suho’s was, but he had at least an inch or two over Suho.

He stepped towards you and pulled your hips flush to the end of the bathroom countertop. You put your hands behind you to steady yourself and you lifted your knees to Chanyeol would have access to your womanhood.

With one hand Chanyeol pulled your panties aside and with the other he lined himself up at your entrance. He looked up at you with a smoldering glare and you stared back. He leaned in for a sloppy kiss and while you were distracted with it, he sunk his cock into you inch by inch until he was completely sheathed inside of you.

You gasped and stared up at him with wide eyes, while he squeezed his eyes shut and let out a quiet groan.

“fuck you’re so wet” he said through shallow pants as he rested completely inside of you.

You wrapped your legs around Chanyeol’s waist and held onto him by his shoulders. He bent squat down a bit and held onto your hips as he began to move his hips in and out slowly, allowing for you to get adjusted to him.

“please… harder Chanyeol” you begged him.

It was enough for him to straighten up and pound into you at a speed that had your eyes rolling back. And within minutes you could feel yourself start to lose your control. You had let go of Chanyeol’s shoulders and leaned back against his mirror, using it for support while Chanyeol roughly pounded into you.

You stared at his face and groaned at his look of lust and concentration. His eyebrows were pursed together, and he looked down at where your bodies met as he slid in and out of you.

“you’re so sexy” you said to him with a growl.

Chanyeol threw his head back with a groan after hearing your compliment and then quickly pulled out of you. Still holding onto your hips, he pulled you off the top of the counter, so you were standing in front of him. He bent over and kissed you harshly before he spun you around, so you were facing the mirror and then bent you over the countertop.

He took a moment to appreciate the view of you spread out in front of him with your ass up in nothing on but his oversized t-shirt. “you look so good like this” he said before he gave you a firm spanking.

You lightly yelped out in surprise and covered your mouth so you wouldn’t be so loud and possibly wake up Suho. And you were happy that you did because right as you silenced yourself Chanyeol completely bottomed himself out in you.

You groaned loudly into your hand and looked up at him through the mirror with half opened eyes. His beautiful body was starting to sweat and glisten in the dim light of his bathroom and you watched as his shoulders and abs tensed up as he fucked you from behind. Suddenly Chanyeol scanned up your body and he slowed down his thrusts into smooth drawn-out ones as he made eye contact with you.

“this pussy feels so good” he said in a whisper to you and you gave him a half smile.

“Do you want to cum in my pussy Chanyeol?” you asked him back in a taunting manner forcing him to groan and throw his head back so he could concentrate on not Cuming too soon. “cum in me” you said just loud enough for him to hear over the skin slapping against skin.

Chanyeol let out a loud growl before he picked up his pace once more. But this time he pounded into you so hard and so fast that you were unable to speak or see anymore. Your vision had completely blacked out and you wanted to scream in ecstasy as your orgasm took control over your body, but your voice was completely gone.

You pushed back against the mirror and into Chanyeol’s hips as you began to twitch and loose complete control of your body.

“fucckkk” Chanyeol groaned as he completely paused his thrusts so he could feel you twitch and squeeze around him. “oh, I’m gonna cum” he exclaimed.

He was about to pull away from you so he could pull out, but you held onto his wrist, keeping him firmly in place. He looked up at you as he came inside of you. He twitched and let out his held breath as you felt his semen splash against your walls. and he thrust his cock into you a few more times to push his cum into you as far as he could.

The two of you sat there for a moment while you allowed your heart rate to calm down and you caught your breath. And when Chanyeol had finally pulled out he quickly started the shower so the two of you could rise off.

When the water was warm enough, he held onto your hand and pulled you in with him. The two of you stood in between the shower head, sharing the water and Chanyeol watched you as you lathered up your skin and rinsed yourself off.

“are you going to continue to stare at me like that all night?” you asked him.

He smiled and laughed quietly “I’m sure that you would be just as starstruck as I am right now if you were in my shoes.”

You looked up at him with curiosity “starstruck?” you asked.

He nodded his head with a smile and gave you a small hum in agreement.

“what an amazing review. Ill have to put that one on my resume.” You said taunting him.

Chanyeol chuckled and stared at you for a moment before he finally talked again “I really do mean it when I say starstruck… I have been following your artwork for years now. and every chance that I get to go to Eugene’s or any other artists night around town I go in hopes that I can meet your or at least catch a glimpse of you.” He admitted “I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel so connected to your art and I knew that I had to meet you.”

You smiled up at Chanyeol and stood on your tip toes so you could give him a sweet kiss. You were thankful for Chanyeol’s sweet words, but you didn’t quiet know how to respond to him. So instead you let your kiss do the talking.

“come on, let’s go back to bed.” You said softly.

Chanyeol nodded and turned off the water before he stepped out of the shower. He held out his hand for you so you wouldn’t slip on the floor and you took it with appreciation. He handed you a towel before he wrapped himself in one and you watched him with satisfaction as water dripped down his body.

When the two of you were covered up you tried your best to open the door without waking up Suho. Chanyeol quietly pushed the door open and peeked outside to check on Suho and let out a sigh of relief when he was still sleeping in his comfortable position.

He pushed the door open wider and dashed off to his closet with you in hand. He handed you another clean set of clothes and you thanked him by sneaking one more kiss from him. Chanyeol chuckled at you and pulled his boxers up and a shirt over his head, never once breaking his smile.

When the two of you were dry and clothed you tip toed to the bed and tried your best to get in without causing too much noise or dipping the bed to fast and jolting Suho awake. You held your breath as you and chanyeol laid down and pulled the covers over yourselves giving each other a smile for your success.

“Your bathroom truly has horrible acoustics.” You heard Suho say over your shoulder in a very calm voice.

You stared at Chanyeol with wide eyes and your heart dropped…. Busted again.

#kpop #kpop smut #kpop series #kpop scenario #kpop mafia au #kpop fanfic #kpop fanfiction #kpop imagine #exo #exo series #exo imagine #exo fanfic #exo fanficiton #exo smut #exo mafia au #exo ot12 #mafia au #exo ot12 series #ot12

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kachuwritings · 6 years

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They think you cheated on them but the guy you were with is actually your brother - EXO fake texts

anonymous asked: Hi can u do a fake text with each exo member where he think that you cheated on him but the guy he see was yout brother? Thanks

click for better resolution + some got a bit long

a/n: I hope you like it anonie~♡

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yeoldontknow · 7 years

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As Still As Sound: 1

Author’s Note: my god. i have missed this world. welcome friends <3 please keep in mind the soundtrack for this story is vital to the progression and narrative! Songs for this chapter: Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon - Neil Diamond / Here Comes The Rain Again - Eurythmics Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader (oc; female) Genre: Soulmate!AU; fluff Rating: PG-13 Word Count: 5,168

Prologue

Wherever you are, the thunder sounds different here, rhythmic and insistent. It means to pull you, drag you away from this place, as if the sound itself is angry and important. As if the sound has hands. The rain feels the same, and it’s this sensation you cling to, the knowledge that this nether space still has rules or laws. Fingers are laced tightly between yours, skin and bone attempting to merge right down the to the marrow. The fear of separation lingers in your joints, making them start to ache and throb with the stress of departure. This fear is the kind that strikes a chill in your heart, makes you jut forward both here and against your mattress, though you don’t know why - it’s something akin to free-falling, except more violent, more desperate and urgent.

You are afraid of separation and so is he - he, the formless, blurred shape that exists solely for you, hand clasped firmly in yours. He is not matter and he is not ether, he simply is, and you know he has been made for you. This hazy outline, this tall thing, this loving thing, is beautiful in all the ways you could idealize. Hard to fathom since there is nothing to see, but you feel it. You feel it all over you, the warmth, the comfort, the strength. You feel him, his pulse thrumming through his palm, his soft skin, his breath as he exhales into your hair. Like this, you remain together, him clinging to you and you clinging to his essence. Like this, you let yourself swoon and surrender to the terror of it all.

You are afraid, both of you anxious and consumed with a sense of dread knowing this will soon be over, but the music keeps you calm. The thunder is the pulsing beep meaning to take you away, but the music. The music. The music feels like yours, feels like your heartbeat, even though it has words.

It’s okay, his voice says, voice deep and low and transcendent. Heartbeats always have words, this is how you hear them. We have to be together to hear it.

This makes sense and you accept it, because here it is easy to accept the impossible. Of course the heart has thoughts and opinions. Of course this music sounds like yours, because it is.

No, he says, but you swore you were correcting yourself. Your mouth made the words but a different voice - his voice - is the sound that carries.

Ours.

You feel your alarm before you hear it, the vibration beneath your pillow dragging you reluctantly from sleep. Your senses have departed from you, gone off to wander in spaces your body is not permitted, and it takes you a long while to gather them back - to want to bring them back. Like this, hollowed and withering, you remain perfectly still as you stare at your ceiling, waiting for the sight of your bedroom to become a comfort.

Everything here, in the safety and familiarity of your room, feels wrong, feels off, like it is not where you are meant to be. Or, rather, not where you want to be, anymore. In the center of your chest, there is a longing, a feeling you would define as nostalgia, tearing your bones apart and making a home of you, nestling inside and turning you into something absent. This feeling is heavy, a sensation similar to mourning - mind agonizing over not the day ahead, but the days you have left behind, and you suddenly feel as though you, your consciousness, have gone missing. You’re pressed into your bed by the weight of it, trapped in the space between wakefulness and sleep, and you think moving your limbs, moving any piece of you at all, would truly break your heart.

Remaining still means you can bring the dream back to life, live in the illusion of it for longer than you were meant to be allowed, and perhaps could find your way back. With every rattled inhale, the dream fades, slipping idly between your fingers like spools of string, and you will your breath to slow despite the speed of your racing pulse.

One single thought erupts in the center of your mind: a hand should be holding yours, the first hand you’ve ever wanted to clutch. You can still feel the strength of it, the rush of blood beneath the skin, the tightness around your fingers, unwilling to let go and begging not to say goodbye. Had you ever touched before this moment? Had your skin ever felt before he placed his hand in yours? Had you ever truly wanted to?

Profound, is how this feels; foreign, is what you think of it, the need for this connection invading you. This is not like you. The capacity to feel this way, or this much, has never been part of your genetic code. And yet, you find yourself struggling not to cry. Something terribly important to you, something you recognize as a part of you, has been lost after it has only just been found, and, so early in the morning, you do not have it in you to reconcile this grief.

All of you wants to give it a name - you think that naming something gives it magic, makes it eternal and makes it immortal, and if you can name it then you can birth it into your reality. You tell yourself to name it, but nothing comes, not even words. In these first few minutes of your day, all your mind can bring forward is a melody.

And just as easily as you lived in it, let yourself wallow in the great sea of this turmoil, your focus on the melody makes you go without. Against and around your body, it dissipates, returning to you the lightness of being, of living without the unbearable weight of yearning. Only now, when your lungs and heart are not flooded with sorrow do you realize your alarm is still ringing.

Turning on your side and curling into a ball, you reach beneath your pillow for your phone to silence the sound. Without the clock to wake you, the screen brings forward the last song you listened to, the song that lulled you to sleep the dark hours of the night. For several minutes, you remain like this, repeatedly illuminating the screen just to see the album art.

Two days, two whole days, you have felt this way. Bewilderingly endeared to a song and unable to crave the sound of anything else. Staring at your phone, you touch your fingers to the screen and imagine you are touching the music itself. Doing this makes you feel like you are slipping, makes you feel like you’re falling back in time, but only for a moment. It’s not even the album that makes you feel connected, simply a song, one song, the song you heard at the shop. Something about this track makes you feel possessive, makes you feel gluttonous, and you know it was this melody you heard in your dream, the soothing music that sounded like your heartbeat.

In this position you remain until you absolutely can no longer, until the last moment, making yourself late and forcing you to rush through your routine. You think it's two fold, the reason for the speed of your movements: the first, is the begrudging acknowledgement that your day must start, that your shift is looming upon you and you are forced to greet this responsibility with aplomb. The second, and you think this is possibly the primary reason you rush at all, is because every action you make brings you closer to the sound. Brings you nearer to the moment when you can play the song that has possessed you, in peace and on repeat until you must go without once more.

It’s fifteen minutes later than usual when you finally step out your door, fingers fondling your headphones and feet hurrying into the dim hallway. You're halted in your tracks when you see your old neighbor, Mr. Kim, struggling up the stairs with several bags of groceries.

‘Mr. Kim!’ you exclaim, rushing forward to guide him up the last few steps. ‘Let me help you with those.’

Sliding his bags over your wrist and forearm, you grip his hand to steady him, and relish the feeling of his cool skin against your flushed palm. The weight tugs at you, makes you plant your feet into the rickety wooden steps, and you wonder briefly how he’s made this trip without any help.

Weakly, he attempts to wave you away with his hand, almost immediately letting it fall to grip the railing. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says with a tut of his tongue. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s just these damn old knees.’

To emphasize his point, he shakes his legs slightly and moans with melodramatic flair, the sound echoing off the walls of the small hall. He flashes you a beaming smile, blinding you with tender warmth, and making wrinkles form at the corners of his eyes. It’s hard not to feel so endeared to him when he’s like this, playful and feeling well, clinging to the shades of his youthful glory, and you find yourself starting to laugh.

‘It’s not a problem,’ you chuckle, holding his hand a little tighter.

When you reach the landing, he huffs, stretching as if meaning to crack his back and his joints. Straightening, he glances to you, already waiting patiently for him at his door, and cocks an eyebrow with a compassionate scowl.

‘Aren’t you late for work?’ he asks slowly, eyeing you conspicuously.

Gently you nod, fixing pleasant smile on your features and purposely giving pretense of being unaware of his concern. ‘This is more important,’ you say, brightly.

Keeping his eye on you as he heads to his door, he digs his into his pockets for his keys.

‘You dote on me too much,’ he sighs, though it is a half-hearted complaint, the words losing their meaning thanks to his slight grin.

‘On the contrary,’ you contend, shifting your weight happily on your feet. ‘I don’t dote on you enough.’

His small chuckle at this statement is quickly diminished as he tries, unsuccessfully, to unlock his door. There is a tremor in his hands, worse now, you assume, because of his exhaustion from walking to the shops and back, which makes him unable to angle the key properly into the lock. For a few moments, you let him try to stabilize, knowing that feeling independent and useful is fundamental to his lifestyle, but, after a while, you can see the stress of the last several minutes starting to wear thin on his person. Lines form around his mouth, those of a frown and those of personal disappointment, and your stomach drops at the sight.

‘I’ve got it,’ you murmur, gently placing your hand over his and smiling up at him.

He does not look at you, rather just frowns sadly at the lock. ‘These damn things are so hard to see,’ he sighs, pushing through his door once you get it open. In truth, both of you know this isn't the reason for his struggle, but, just for now, you let it be so. ‘I’d be lost without you.’

A fond smile spreads itself across your lips as he takes the bags from you and you watch him move through his flat. His hunched shoulders as he is brought down by the weight, his slow, yet steady, steps as he moves through into his kitchen, all of these things make you want to reach out and hold him to you, to let him know he is not truly alone. Perhaps, you think, your favourite part of him are his hands, weathered, old, and filled with so many stories. They tremble now, slightly more so than they used to, but the liver marks and the worn skin tell stories of love, of youthful recklessness, and kindness. Always, when he tells you things about his life as a boy and a young man, he holds your hand, clinging to you as if his words are meant to live through you. Always, you hold onto him just as tightly, almost afraid to let him go.

Gracelessly, he drops the bags to his counter and chuckles at the way his bananas tumble from the bag. An odd, albeit happy, reaction to such a small event.

‘I think the same would be said for me,’ you mutter softly, unsure if he could hear you at all.

You mean every word of the statement, the reality that you view him more as a grandfather and less as a neighbor always seeming to wash over you when you see him. When you first moved to the city for uni, you had no one to truly help you settle. Kate, close as she was, was still a train journey away, and, with her student budget, was never truly able to afford to visit as often as she would have liked - not until she moved into the city herself. Your family, off in Kettering, were unable to offer any form of assistance, the distance and the time putting a strain on their ability to provide aid. When you think back on your first days alone in the city, the predilection of that time comes from the memories of days with Mr. Kim, his tattered couch, and his strong builder’s tea.

From your position in the doorway, you can see into his flat and into the living room. Pictures line the walls, many in black and white, others in bright technicolour. Like usual, you are drawn to his wedding photo, a faded image framed and hanging over his record player. Striking, as always, how beautiful he and his wife looked, turning the image into something closer to a glamour shot than a wedding photo. Striking, as always, how blissfully, incandescently happy they were.

In stark contrast, below the image is a record player atop a cabinet filled, messily, with records. Collection too large for such a small thing, they spill out into several crates surrounding the wood, some even nestled in the space between his end tables and his couch. Trinkets, small things his son and grandchildren send him from abroad, are scattered around the room - treasured by him, though many existing entirely without use or purpose.

Turning back to him, your eyes catch the time on the microwave.

Late. You are terribly late, but there’s a slight tug at your heart at the idea of leaving him, especially when he’s just started to unpack the bourbon cremes.

With a sigh, you look down at your feet and pout. ‘I want to stay and help but -’

‘Go, go,’ he cuts you off, not bothering to turn and look at you, still puttering with his items. ‘This is the easy part.’

You allow yourself to rush, then, tearing down the stairs with a shout that you will see him later. Scolding yourself for staying so late you have to run, taking the underground steps in leaps and swiping your oyster with impatient force. A train is already waiting at the platform, doors open and beeping that they will soon close, and you run through with a wheeze just as they shut behind you with a click.

All eyes are on you, commuters watching the cacophony of you with distaste and regarding you as an impolite disturbance on such a quiet ride. With a blush, you find a seat towards the middle of the car and relax, eager to disappear from this moment and into the song you’ve been anxiously waiting to hear. Closing your eyes and resting your head back against the carriage wall, you put your headphones on and sigh. In this false darkness, you let the first notes of music carry you, let them allay your heartbeat with ease.

The goosebumps happen all at once and almost instantly, raising along your flesh as though you are passing through a chill in the air and sending a shiver down your spine. They walk along you, the sound of the arrangement and the instruments, traversing the totality of you as if you are territory made for charting. Giving yourself over to this feeling, willingly and completely, makes a small smile spread across your face with contented joy. Arresting, you think, the flood of emotion that comes with truly, really letting yourself go. Arresting, you think, the liberation that comes with letting your soul wander through sound.

But then, it happens. You cannot call it a slip, because you can feel you are still on the tube, in the seat, and breathing in compressed, recycled air. You cannot call it a pull, because you are not being lead anywhere, rather something is being brought to you, something important, something that makes you feel vulnerable. Furrowing your brow, you try to make sense of it, this intrusion. It’s not that you don’t want it, it’s simply that you did not invite it and cannot fathom why now, after days of listening to this song, it means to take a hold of you.

And then, all at once, you hear it: breathing.

It is not your own breath, yours a shallow symphony of confusion and this a languid drawl of passionate nonchalance. In your headphones you hear it, a small hum, the low, baritone rumble of male intonation. The sound is deep, soft enough to simply be a vibration in your ears, and your eyes open, wide and panicked and searching the carriage for answers.

This, you know, is wrong. Every single moment this continues is wrong and impossible. No one is leaning into your shoulder to share your music, no one is even really looking at you, your interruption from before either entirely forgotten or ignored. Yet, still, you hear it, living inside your headphones as though it was made to be there, as if it always had been there and all you needed to do was listen.

Your fingers move to change the track, but something stops you. All of you wants to keep listening, feels like you need to keep going, like changing the track would sever something inside you and your soul would take to bleeding internally. Instead, you simply listen, listen to the way the breath and the voice glide along each note as though they are making love, as though they are living every possible, glorious aspect of life through the sound of music itself.

Swollen, is the feeling that erupts in your chest. Found, is the feeling that blossoms in your heart. You know this sound, you know this breath. It’s the one you heard in your dream, the one you felt in your hair as it spilled down and over your shoulders, onto your skin, and into your bones. Your heart skips a beat, takes to racing in this mystifying elation, and it takes you several seconds to find your voice, the cadence of it having wandered off to join the body of the man in your ears.

Heat spreads across your face, cheeks and lips blushing in excitement and bashful glee while your tongue suddenly goes dry. Nothing, you think, has ever sounded quite as glorious as the cascading breath of this imaginary person. Nothing, you think, ever will.

And then, just as quickly as it started, it’s over. There is no warm breath in your ears, no low voice, just another track on the album and the groan of the tube as it grinds to a painfully slow halt. Without the comfort of the hum, you find surrendering to any magic impossible and unbearable, and you don’t know why you would have ever felt this way at all. Cruel, you think this is, cruel and needlessly unkind of yourself, to trick your mind into bringing something so important to life when you cannot truly have it. Cruel, you think, to return you to your true nature after giving you a glimpse of a softer you, a kinder you, without ever giving you a chance to truly bloom.

Holding your phone in your hand, you study the album for a long while, regard it coolly and find you see it now as something offensive. This small, inanimate thing tricked you, tricked you into a feeling of comfort and joy, and now, you think, you want nothing to do with it. You find it offensive. You find it repugnant. Whatever connection you had with this album is gone, now, departed from you and off to find another lonely hand to hold. Or, perhaps, this connection still lingers inside you as a raw, flayed thing, skinned and severed and aching to be brought back to fruition by a dream.

You find you cannot bring yourself to listen to it, not anymore. Not after it hurt you so viscerally.

You scroll through your music.

You listen to something entirely different.

Three days later and still you cannot stop thinking about the breathing in your headphones. In truth, you would not call this a haunting, rather it simply feels like a piece of you, something you did not know you had wanted, has abandoned you once more. Now, mostly, you just want to know why.

It has not happened again, not even with all your focus, and you find comfort in the thought that this was likely just a fluke. In the days prior, you had dreamed, rather intensely, of too many things. A song. A blurred husk of a man you will likely never meet. You dreamed rather intensely and yet, there are reasons for all of these things, reasons for why you dreamed at all.

The song, you know, played in your mind because you had briefly been obsessed with it. Had you tried to count the number of times you listened to it, you would be embarrassed and sheepish, regarding the amount with downcast eyes, and now you are glad to say you've moved on. Today, it is easy to move through other albums and artists, without feeling the need to return to it all.

The man, you assume, is because Kate bonding with her soulmate has resulted in a paramount shift in your life. Nothing, you know, will likely ever be or feel the same, and navigating through this shift has been a daunting undertaking, regardless of how thrilled you are on her behalf. You would not say that you are envious of her bond, merely wish that, if you have a soulmate at all, it would just happen. The waiting is what makes you bitter, not because you are eager but because it gives you time to apply logic and memory to a thing that circumvents both, exists beyond both, and you resent it. If it would just happen, then it would be over, and you would find relief from all this thinking.

There are answers for everything, about the dream and the hum and the song, and you find that, having these answers firmly rooted in your mind, makes it easier to let the event go.

Three days later and you don't really miss any of these things at all.

Today the early morning sun has been replaced with clouds, thick, bulbous things that mean to spill their deluge over the city. Sitting on a bench in Camden, just beyond the market, you recline against the old wood and smile up at the sky. Around you, couples and people race into The Diner or into small shops to avoid the oncoming torrent of rain. You don't move, though. You've always loved the rain, thought of it as something holy.

When the first drops of water hit your nose, you giggle, readying yourself to be drenched - with everything. This rain feels important, you don't know why you think that, but you do. Something about this storm means to overtake, change, and cleanse, and you want to be the first victim of its onslaught.

When the first drops of water hit your nose, the song changes, and, with your eyes closed, you bark out a laugh. Fitting, you think, this song so terribly suited to this event. You sigh. You turn the volume up.

And, just as before, the world around you begins to change.

Suddenly, it’s very important you consider all the bodies that have sat on this bench before you. Bodies in time and bodies in space, and you wonder seriously about their lives. Were they happy? Were they content with the chaos of their brief, small existence? Were they ever, truly, able to say they were pleased with the outcome of their life? Heavy questions, meaningful questions. They slither through your mind, too fast for you to truly hold them, but they feel nice, you think. Considering them feels almost sweet, almost familiar.

Hands were held here, on this bench. Hands and fingers entwined, many in the euphoric discovery of love, and others in the trembling clutch of farewell. Love and life have lived and died here, and you suddenly start to view this bench as a totem. This, you think, is the most important thing your hands have ever touched.

And then, just as before, just as quietly and just as naturally, the breathing returns.

Panic floods your senses at the sound, makes your blood heat and start to boil, flushing your chest and your cheeks as you try desperately to cling to this moment. Sitting upright, you try to hold onto this feeling, to focus all your attention on it so that it does not slip between your open palms. Unlike before, your voice has not left you, rooted now to your heart and your body. Unlike before, you have the power to speak.

‘Hello?’ you snap, staring straight ahead and into the crowded street.

No one bothers to look at you, assuming you are simply taking a call and there is no reason for them to care. You want to scream at them, shout at them, tell them that something beautiful and something horrible is about to happen, or is happening, and you are furious no one wants to notice.

This, you think, is the great wave of change brought on by the rain and by your heart. Skin suddenly damp and moist, you find you are trembling, though you are unsure if it is because you are wet or if it is because you were grossly, childishly, unprepared for something this grandiose.

‘Hello?’

The voice resonates through your headphones, deep and low, the image of chocolate suddenly igniting in your vision, and you find you are overcome.

You know this voice. You love, and have loved, this voice. You think you’ve loved this voice into the very depths of your being without ever knowing its cadence. This voice possess and captivates you, takes control of your body, your ribs, your veins, and makes you feel as though you capsizing. You are capsizing beneath the strength and the ardor of it, and, for this, you are glad. You are glad and you will never have your fill of it.

Tears pool in your eyes, even though you are smiling. They burn as they spill out and over, staining your cheeks with their warmth in contrast with the coolness of the rain. All along your skin there are sparks, sharp tingles that feel like static, body and soul becoming an electric, volatile thing, and you think your flesh has never looked as good as it does now, now when it finally feels alive. Blood rushes into your lips, breath tumbling between your open mouth in a shallow rhythm. Red, you think, the colour and shade of this moment is red.

Three days later and you find you missed this, craved this sound with the entirety of your being, and, somehow, you have convinced yourself you did not; somehow, you convinced yourself you were okay. Three days later, and finally it feels like you've come back. You've come back to him.

‘Who is this?’ you whisper, and you know that, whatever or whomever this is, he has a name. For you to even know it is a gendered body you are hearing surprises you, but this, he, feels like yours. This person feels like an extension of you and, therefore, it is difficult to think of it, of him, as anything less.

‘What the fuck?’ he mutters, frustrated over the clatter of objects you cannot place. ‘Is the tape broken?’

Alarmed. Bewildered. Confused. Frightened. He is all of these things, muttering and cursing to himself, and so blissfully human and so blissfully alive that your laugh at the mess of it all is mixed with a choked sob.

You're laughing. You are laughing. You do not think you can stop. You do not want to.

‘Listen to me,’ you say, giggling and shaking through your tears. ‘Who is this?’

There is a long pause, one that is neither tense nor comfortable, one that simply is, and you smile the whole way through it.

‘God?’ he tentatively asks, but you can hear the grin in his voice.

For some reason, you cannot stop giggling, and his proclamation that you could be a deity starts your laughter all over again. ‘You're God?’

‘No,’ he snorts, and he seems just as shocked as you to be comfortable with this development. ‘Are you God?’

‘No,’ you say with a breathy sigh. ‘I am not God.’

Both of you fall silent for a long while, perhaps both just smiling and existing contentedly with one another as the song plays distantly in your mind. It’s going, playing along and waiting for you to listen to it, but you don’t care, not really, not anymore. The music is meaningless, even though moments before it was so important to your enjoyment of the rain. It’s white noise, at this point, there but not really necessary. There, but fractious in its efforts to command your attention. You find you want no part of it, desiring only the sound of his breath over the din.

Eventually, finally, he speaks

‘I'm Chanyeol.’

Relief floods you, the sound of the syllables something wholly cosmic, wholly magical. This is what you had been seeking, the tangibility and power of a name, the identity of something yours.

You make to give the same power back to him, open your lips to tell him your name, the words trying to rush off your tongue at a breakneck speed, but, before you can even form them, before you can lick them from your mouth and put them in his, he is gone.

The song has changed. He is no longer there, yours but missing. Lost, yet again, and this time worse. This time, you have been halved, severed and skinned, and feeling the tragedy overtakes you.

Now, there is nothing.

Now, all you have is a small, fragile name.

Chanyeol.

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