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poppy-metal · 1 day

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MARRIAGE COUNSELING W ART PLEASEEEEEEEE GOD THE DEVASTATION THAT TAKES PLACE ON THAT COUCH

i think about it alot. tashi staying with patrick, her injury never happening. your arts college girlfriend and now you're married and it feels fucking stagnant, your relationship. but neither of you wants to give up. neither of you wants to reveal to the other true feelings.

under the cut because this got long and i have a whole au in my hear around this concept

you're only in counseling because of tashi. because shes still in your lives, her and patrick. and she recommended it to art when they were having one of their 'friend' lunches. and now here you are, because of course art took her advice.

he hasn't said anything, though. despite pleading for this. saying he wanted to save your marriage, that he wanted to love you how you should be loved but he didn't know how.

so here you are, on opposite ends of the couch, with the counselor staring at the empty space between you like that in itself is very telling. you suppose it is, in a way. couples who want to stay together should be unified, shouldn't they? you imagine how it would feel, if art had sat next to you. put an arm around you. squeezed you to his side. would you even be able to relax into him? its been so long since you touched eachother that way.

"so im picking up on some distance here," your therapist says. shes a small woman. almost swallowed by her chair. her glasses are perched on her nose as she gazes imperiously at empty space separating you and art. "not just physical either, though thats rather obviously there. but emotional distance. do either of you wanna comment on that?"

you cut a glance at art, expecting him to speak up since this was his idea - well. tashi's. but he just looks down at his lap, quiet. spins his wedding band around his finger.

you feel an anger so intense it pricks your eyes with tears.

"well, i guess you could start with the fact that coming here wasn't even either of our idea. it was his friends."

and now. here art speaks. his head jerks up and she shoots you an annoyed look. "you don't have to say it like that. you always say it like that. her name is tashi and she is my friend. and it was her suggestion, yeah, but it was a good one."

you look at the therapist - janet. raise your eyebrows in arts direction like, get a load of this guy. your legs cross and you start picking at a stray string from the couch.

"first words of the session and its to talk about another woman."

arts inhale is sharp and you can feel his eyes on you but you dont look at him. you can't. you wont. you're right, anyway. he can try to deny it all he wants but you know - you know what you are to him. you know where all your problems stem. you dont need to be here to make any grand discoveries over a fact you've resigned yourself too.

"i see." janet says. "and art having a relationship with this other woman upsets you."

"everything upsets her." art cuts in, sounding tired. his elbow is braced on the arm of the couch and hes chewing on his thumb in one of his nervous gestures. he always did that, as long as you've known him. he was a nail biter, he'd chew his lips raw, he'd nibble on straws, the ends of his pens. he was either lost in thought or agitated. your guess was the latter. "nothing i do makes her happy."

"is this true? are you unhappy with art?"

your skin feels hot. you shift around in your seat. the attention is all on you, and it feels like you've done something wrong, even though you know its literally janets job to ask questions.

"more like i know I'm not what he wants and that makes me...... really fucking sad."

art knees almost knock against yours as he turns his body to face you, giving you his full attention the first time today. you cant meet his eyes still, so you look at the faded spot on his jeans. light blue, like his eyes. you wonder how hes looking at you. cant make yourself look up to see.

"what." he stops. seems to gather some thoughts. tries again, with a steadier tone. "what are you talking about."

you try not to roll your eyes. your arm flings out limply.

"just that this whole thing is a joke, art." and you let out an exasperated laugh, even though nothing is funny. nothing has been funny or light between you two in a long time. "we're only here because the girl you really wanted to marry, told you to get your fucking shit together. you didn't ask us to come here because you wanted to mend something, you're here to please tashi. because if playing a good husband is a role she wants for you - well, you want to play it right, dont you?"

its quiet after that. in the silence you cant help but think about those early days. when you'd been full of love and light and art seemed to be really happy with you. you'd go on dates to the movies, walk through the park together with your hands swinging between you. laugh together and steal kisses whenever you could. you felt high back then.

it didn't even matter that art had a crush on tashi, because hell, you had one too, at the time. but she'd started dating patrick, and they seemed to mesh well together. they were both so intense and passionate. back then, you'd been alot closer to tashi yourself. patrick too. you remember the way she'd rant about how much she fucking hated him, pacing around your room and calling him every name under the sun. and you'd sit there with eager curiosity, and ask her why she didn't end it then. if he makes you so angry, why stay?

and she'd get this faraway look in her eyes. kind of wistful. kind of sad. kind of happy.

"because he makes me feel fucking alive. hes like a - like a drug or something. i cant quit. its addictive, you know?"

that stuck with you. it still sticks with you. you remember being envious of that kind of passion. youe relationship with art had always been so easy. you dont think you'd ever fought by that point. you loved art. you felt safe with art. but were you addicted to him? if you broke up - would you feel withdrawal symptoms?

sometimes you layed awake at night and thought about starting a fight - breaking up for no reason. just to see if he'd fight for you back, if the missing of eachother would be so intense one of you would cave.

but somehow you knew that wouldn't be the case. thats just not how you and art operated. if you got angry, he wouldn't rise to meet you, he'd back down. if you ended things, he wouldn't chase you, he'd let you go.

patrick and tashi were fire and brimstone and you and art was ice and you were....... dirt. solid. walked upon. dependable and not at all exciting.

when art had proposed to you after college graduation it wasn't spur of the moment as it had been with patrick when he'd swept tashi up with a ring and a elopement to vegas. it was talked about and agreed upon and you knew it was coming.

you still said yes.

"you think," and arts voice has a barely concealed tremble to it that makes you look up, finally. you're shocked to see he looks wounded. so many of his expressions you can count on one hand - and this - this wasn't one of them. his eyes are dark, stormy. "you think i dont care about our marriage beyond what someone else has to say about it? you really think that?"

you hate the sliver of guilt you feel, because its not a crazy thing to feel.

"yeah, i really do."

because well, that's the truth of the matter isn't it? you and your husband stare at eachother. and it feels like you're looking at a stranger. not the man who's freckles you used to kiss. who's fears you knew. who's hands you know every callous of, every divot and fingerprint.

"it seems you two have very different views of how the other views this marriage." janet cuts in, sounding curious. she taps her pen against the open notepad on her lap. "art, would you like to chime in on why you wanted to come here? even at the suggestion of someone else?"

art stares at you for a long moment. his face is unreadable to you. his jaw works before his chest expands on an exhale and he looks away.

"i guess i - i just didn't realize how..... stagnant things had gotten until it was pointed out to me. harshly." he winces, and you wonder exactly what tashi had to say to him. you haven't talked to the other woman for some time. contact fizzling out after your marriage to art. he flicks a glance to you, then away again. "im not the best at being aware of shit going on around me." his hand comes up to rub nervously at his neck. "i guess you could say im good at brushing things under the rug. going through the motions. that sort of thing."

janet nods like this makes sense to her. well, great, you think. you know my husband more than i do.

"you're not a fan of confrontation, are you?"

art actually laughs. a genuine one. one that brings a dimple to his cheek and flashes his teeth. you stare at it, like its an exotic animal, and you wont see it again. quickly you catalog the expression in your memory, so you dont forget what he looks like when hes happy.

"yeah, no." he shakes his head. "but I think thats part of the problem. I've obviously let too much shit get put under the rug and now its so full other people are noticing."

you look down at your hands, lips pressed together. your face burns at the knowledge that tashi and by extension - patrick - know your marriage is in shambles. how embarrassing, to be caught lacking in such a momentous way. to come up short and have your husbands friends know about it. you wonder - does he talk about all the ways you make him miserable with them? does patrick shake his head, say, "she's sucking the life out of you, man." does tashi look at him with pity? like hes some poor abused cat that needs to be let in from the rain?

the rain of your marriage.

the rain of you.

you're the storm. you're the problem. you're not enough. art needs fire. you're not even dirt, you're glass. and you can feel yourself breaking.

"that clearly hit a nerve, my dear." janets voice is soft. soothing. she hands you a tissue and you realize you'd begun to cry. "do you want to explain what you're feeling about what art said?"

"i...."

you dab dab dab at your eyes. sniffle. look around the room, trying to collect your thoughts. they feel like flyaway dandelions. you dont know which of them to grasp.

a warm hand settles over yours in your lap and you startle. its arts hand. warm and calloused and tan, covering yours. the gold glint of his wedding ring winks at you, the engraved words etched into them, "my soft epilogue". a shortened version of your favorite qoute i think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love.

at the time, that's what art was to you. your life before him hadn't been easy. being with art had felt like coming home from a long day and falling into a soft bed. it had felt like being able to land after weeks of being made to fly.

you turned your palm up, so he could slide his fingers between yours. he squeezed your hand.

"i think, i. i think i just think - I'm a failure." your bottom lip wobbles. you look at your enterwoven fingers and it makes you so sad that you haven't done the simple gesture of holding your husbands hand in months. "the two most important people in your life are. are so passionate and loud. and i see. i see how happy they make you - and i cant - i cant b-be that for you. we aren't - im not - you dont need me. im not a limb for you how they are. you could extract yourself from me and be. be happier."

your breath shudders out of you.

"you don't need me." you echo.

you wait for him to pull his hand away. this is more than you thought you'd share. some of it you weren't even aware of till the words were spilling from your lips. but they ring true.

without patrick and tashi art would drown. without you..... he'd float just fine.

"and that's important to you." janet says. a statement not a question. "you want to feel needed by art, and you feel as though you aren't. that his needs are met better with his friends than with you."

you nod slowly.

"baby." the word sends a shock through you. not the word itself but how its said. art calls you baby all the time, in a monotonous kind of way. routine. now he says it softly. with feeling. he lets go of your hand in favor of cupping your cheek, still damp with tears, turning your face to his. he looks pained. "of course i need you. i know i haven't been good at showing it. i just - you shut down - after we got married. you've been like a fucking ghost. like you dont want me to touch you. like i could dissappear for all you care and you'd just carry on. i don't know. but i need you, okay? i. need. you."

both hands cup your face, he makes you stare right into him. the conviction in his voice takes your breath away. theres a fire burning there you've thought long put out.

"obviously we have shit to sort out, and we will. but you've got to. you've got to know that. tashi only pushed me to do this because she how - how desperate i was. that's all."

you inhale deeply. exhale. swallow hard. tears cling to your lashes. you reach a hand up to clutch at one of arts wrists. eyes fluttering automatically when you do. you feel grounded again. less like you might float away.

"okay."

"yeah?"

"yeah...." and you smile. it trembles across your lips. but its there. "we'll sort our shit."

art lets out a relieved breath. kisses your forehead, lingering there. the gesture so tender you get emotional again. you want to crawl into his lap, have him wrap you in his arms. you want to feel held by him, like you used to.

"our time is up." janet sets her pen down. smiles. "but i think that was a wonderful first session. i can see the love between you hasn't faded, and that's more i can say for alot of couples who come to see me. keep your chin up."

#ask #poppy fic #i guess?#see its complex right because reader definitely isn't crazy art DID feel some kind of way abt tashi #and still does #but hes in love w us. he is.#its just different. like.#its complicated but its like. art cant allow himself to feel passion because he thinks its too much #and you WANT passion like patrick and tashi have. you want it mixed in with the comfort and stability w art.#but arts self worth is low so hes like. why fight passionately for anything if im not enough im not enough ig #and thats sm he needs to overcome #because its making you feel unwanted #also theres definitely some feelings for patrick and tashi on your side as well #tashi definitely misses you and wishes you would talk to her #so many more thoughts on this #anyway #art donaldson x reader #reader and art just need to FUCK real rawdog real sloppy #art donaldson #challengers x reader #art x reader #failmarriage au

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hoseoksluna · 13 hours

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STRAWBERRIES | jjk ft. jhs

pairing: ex-boyfriend!jungkook x oc (feat. soon-to-be-boyfriend!hobi & spectacled boy)

genre: angst, fluff

word count: 7.8k

summary: when your ex-boyfriend's fury burns you whole, you just might need to let hobi in to pour water over you and save you.

playlist: strawberries

pinterest board: j. / taglist: join

warnings: jungkook is nasty and mean and rly needs a trigger warning, oc is lost in her negative emotions and goes through a lot, sadness, crying, shame, longing for death, minor physical violence, oc and hobi take puffs of a shared vape <3, mental and emotional suffering, fighting, belittling, mentions of sex

note: this was an absolute pain to write as i'm not used to writing this genre of jungkook and i hope it's the last time i did skfskfsk, nah i'm just over exaggerating. i'm so happy i got this done in time. two updates in one week! wow. how did i do that? i hope you like this part. prepare yourselves for this jungkook and i'm sorry in advance..... that's all im gonna say. pls, validate me! asks, comments, anything. pretty please! i love you, my babies. big mwah.

You can still sense the ghost of his touch on your shoulder blades as you’re laying halfway on your tummy upon the crumpled bedding of your mattress. Your phone lights up and shuts off like the flickering of stars and all you can do is watch the wane and the rebirth, numbly, with the knowledge that death will never come, not when you’re still a living, breathing person because Jungkook is not the type of individual who gives up. Not easily, that is.

Hobi left but an hour ago while you slept. Kissed you goodbye. Murmured onto your forehead that he would see you again and you merely nodded amidst the magnetic pulling of your dreamland. Couldn’t peel your eyes open due to the heaviness of your tiredness, which didn’t steal, in all peculiar truthfulness, all of your attention, however. You carried on your shoulders a question way heftier. A question of how your body is still able to submit to slumber, when your blood curdles beneath your skin, when it’s so icy that you’re shivering on top of the duvet.

And the question didn’t leave when you woke up to your empty bedroom. It thumped, vigorously, against the nape of your neck. The very place Hoseok clutched when he poured his affection and admiration all over your body.

You wish he hadn’t left. You believe he would’ve possessed your burden, pretending it was his all along. Believe he wouldn’t need to know the alpha and the omega of it. Would pout his lips the way you’ve learned he often does, take the pain from you as if it were a backpack filled with stones. And it does feel like that, your mistake. Your torso is swathed with a double rope, whose end is tied with a stone that you’re cradling in your hands.

A few hours ago, you cradled Hobi’s face in your hands while he kneeled for you, and now you’re anticipating the death that will never come as your stomach hurts.

But the memory of his touch is soothing. While your imaginary wings are flaccid and lackluster on the bed, his invisible hands are the force that pumps blood, feebly, into its membrane. Still warm, though a little less firm. It’s as if he were here in the flesh.

Your body is asking for him, emotionally, however your mind is forbidding you from conveying your need for him to him. Logic is whispering to you that he’s spent the entire day with you, canceled his work meeting because of you. You couldn’t possibly ask for more of his time, for more of him when he had already given you more than enough.

And besides, you can’t let your attachment reach this unhealthy depth. It triggers you, reminds you of the very thing that spliced your heart open almost a month ago. You don’t want to wander there, nor do you want to be pulled there if you were to ever let go of the reins. You can’t afford Jungkook’s life to entwine around your world again. Not when Hobi diligently dug a grave for it, threw its flesh down and covered it back with the soil, his straining muscles the very force that made you forget about… everything.

You can’t do that to yourself. And most importantly, you can’t do that to Hobi.

It’s the latter that propels you to fight. That gives you strength to raise the top half of your body onto your hands. You don’t give a fuck about yourself—you know full well that your life is cursed. Nothing good has ever come out of the events that creeped in until Hobi came along. And you don’t wish to break him out of a selfish intent. You don’t wish to break him because of him. He’s a pure angel, a saint with an honorable heart, a God that has his eye on you. You wouldn’t take it well, if the bane of the ambrosia of your life were ever to touch his lips.

He’s here, and that’s stable. He’s here, and that’s the reason why you need to protect him. From yourself, from the poison, from the rotten apple of your ex-boyfriend current persistence in entering your space all over again.

You don’t want to eat that spoiled fruit anymore, and so you simply won’t.

This decision has shifted the atmosphere because your phone is no longer going off. You sigh a breath of relief, running your fingers through your hair, and you get up, a Virgin Mary that has become a warrior for her God, and you begin to dress yourself.

You need some fresh air.

Clothing yourself in a matching outfit—a light wash baggy jeans, a cropped white tank and a denim jacket with your Nike’s, you grab your phone and keys and drift out into the night.

Your hair has dried while you slumbered and it ripples in the gentle wind of autumn. The street is lit in a darkly yellow tone, also dried from the morning’s downpour and you stop in the middle of the road, where Hobi drove past while you teased him. You breathe in the freshness of the air in effort to inhale your God, in effort to bring him into your system and your chin quivers with weakened emotions, with a weakened wish that he was here with you, holding your hand, giving you the last bit of strength you need. You know his warmth would smooth out your blood, boil it to a temperature that would cook up your joy and bring it to your heart on a silver platter. Bring it to your mind and calm the hurricane within, feed it so it doesn’t wail anymore.

And with another sigh, you will yourself to stop. Will yourself to stop needing. You will stumble and you will fall if you keep going down that road that has never shone brighter, that looks nothing like the one you’re standing in the middle of. And as inviting as it is, you close your eyes to get rid of the blessing reaching out for you—only to discover that it’s waiting for you there, too. A circle of light, of fire amidst a cloud of pure, pitch-black darkness.

You want to scream, and much to your neighbors’ dismay—you do.

It’s a singular, loud stream of your frustration, swaddled with the pulsating energy of your affection. And then your shoulders tremble. And it’s your tears that are louder than that murmuring watercourse in their very silence.

You head to the convenience store down the street with your teardrops dotting the ground as if it were the rain. You don’t want your neighbors to detect it was you, who caused the disturbance, and tell your parents. You have enough fire in your orchard, you don’t need another filling of oil.

You ask the very drowsy guy behind the counter for a strawberry ice vape. His round eyes, behind thick rimmed glasses that make them look even bigger, are barely kept open as he reaches for it with a flabby hand. Your eye catches the glint of a myriad of plan B’s right next to the shelf scattered with packs of lung burners and your heart constricts, a rivulet of emotion cascading down your cheek, caused by the fond recollection of Hobi’s intimate desire and you break—terribly, terribly break. Fruit trees crack in you, collapse to the ground with a horrendous thud and the berry bushes… they wither until they’re mere wisps of blackness. A picture of devastation.

The boy blinks twice when he turns around, regarding you, and he asks for your ID, only to startle when you glare at him. He tells you the price and you pay with your phone, thanking him and saying your curt goodbye.

One he doesn’t reciprocate.

You probably gave him the fright due to the tears marring your pallid cheeks. You hope he isn’t there the next time you’re in the mood to douse your lungs with chemicals.

Your hands are shaking as you’re tearing up the unnecessarily sturdy packaging. And your tears resume in their outpour when your manicured nails make your life harder than it already is. The tape folded over the top of the rectangular box is too thick and you hurt your nail beds when you claw at it. You have to use your teeth and the fucking thing finally gives in.

You furiously throw it out in the bin.

Feel an incoming calmness when you take a deep puff. And you do it over and over again until your cursed world spins, the plump swirls of smoke mingling with the night, never fully connecting. Not like you and Hobi.

And your world tilts on its axis once your phone lights up in your hand and there’s no picture to be found on the screen.

Your heart hammers, threatening to fling out of your throat.

Hobi is calling you.

And the thing is, you don’t really believe it.

Your vision swims as another onrush of dense tears blurs the letters of his name. You stare down at your phone, dumbly, sobbing and not caring at all that the spectacled boy can hear you.

You don’t know who does it—who swipes your finger across the screen and allows you to hear Hobi say the pet name that stole your soul. Who anoints your tears with strawberry-scented mollification while you fail to comprehend that the person you willed yourself not to need in order to not hurt him the way you were hurt somehow heard your cries and answered them like the God he is.

Because it couldn’t have been you. Not when you’ve become a lifeless sculpture in the middle of a yellowly-lit street. A modern, urban art—awakening ugliness in anyone’s first impression.

Not a sculpture of the angel you saw at the museum, the one Hobi took your picture with, though.

You're a sculpture of a road kill. A wounded, small animal, laying on its side with its guts out. And Hobi places them, with gentleness you’ve never felt before, back inside, stitches your belly closed and picks you up, carrying you in his arms. All because he repeats the pet name—with a slither of panic this time.

He acknowledged that something is wrong, validated it.

And somehow, it snaps you out of your vapor of numb sadness and shame permeates your body, cold sweat coats it—something beyond it, too. Something that makes you shiver so hard that your teeth begin to chatter, preventing you from speaking, your tongue twisted, lifeless.

A reality check.

You sent a filthy video of yourself getting rocked from behind to your ex-boyfriend, in which you screamed that your most intimate parts belong to another man.

You’re not Virgin Mary. You’re Mary Magdalene.

You don’t hear your pitiful crying fits, but Hobi does—and it is through his inhale of a trembling breath and his words that you perceive that you’re baring your ugliness to him.

“Pup, what’s wrong? What happened? Why are you crying?”

You squeeze your vape in your small fist, sensing those words doing something in you—something that untwists your tongue and lets you breathe like him, though in painful, quick staccatos. Your frail legs hurt, not able to withstand your tremor, and they give out. You fall onto your bum, the impact and the gravel shooting a spark of pain up your spine and you whimper, your tears soaking your neckline.

“Hobi,” you call out, the last vowel breaking, teeth chattering, cacophonously. “I made a mistake. A terrible mi-mistake.”

He coos, sorrowfully, his loud breath still trembling—a strong rope nonetheless that you want to hold onto. That cord wouldn’t lead you to your death, wouldn’t scrape your hands with its harsh texture, wouldn’t be wrapped around a stone on the other end.

“Breathe for me, baby,” he says and guides you to do it. You inhale the night air with him, feeling like there isn’t enough of it to appease your lungs, and you exhale.

Somehow it halts the river of your cries and you do it again. Hobi lets you, patiently waiting on the other side, encouraging you and praising you. This time, it doesn’t sprinkle you with the sultriness of sin. No, you sense it cleansing you, giving you the kind of newness you stumbled across in his car this very morning. Your palm, the one that clutches your vape, opens and it rolls onto the ground. You grab it and when you wrap your fingers around it, you perceive that you do the motion around that newness. And your heart, your submission—they’re not letting up. Not again. Not when it’s him.

“That’s it,” Hobi praises, a hint of calmness in his tone. “Can you try and tell me what happened?”

You nod your head, even though he can’t see you, the newness gracing you with strength that spreads feeling into your legs and you stretch them out. Blood pumps in them and you can sense the direction it’s traveling to. You tighten your grip, open your mouth to talk.

“I sent the video to the wrong person,” you utter, and along with your grip, your lungs tighten as well. No sobs escape you, no tears. Only gravely stillness, nothingness while your shame stands behind you, menacingly, a demon set out on destroying you, the curse upon your life a bracelet around its wrist, a knife in his hand, to which it’s attached.

Hobi doesn’t say anything for a moment and you can sense his shock, its cold tendrils the ice that courses down your legs. An agony forms in your heart, stretches out an arm of regret and strikes against your ribcage, pangs of guilt and self-disgust seizing your body.

“I’m so sorry, Hobi, I thought I sent it to you,” you continue, your voice splitting, though no external expression of it is evident on your countenance. It’s as if you were telling him the most ordinary of a thing. You rub your eyes with the back of your hand, taking a puff of your vape. It is only now that you can taste its strawberry savoriness and it suffuses your lungs with a mockingly sweet, feigned fume.

Hobi hears you exhale and you hear him swallow, dryly. An exchange, most redolent of the one you’ve done many times earlier.

“What are you smoking?” he asks, and it catches you off guard. You didn’t expect him to yell at you, nor did you expect him to scold you. Truth be told, your fragile state of mind didn’t let you expect anything of him, any sort of outcome. Yet this question still surprises you. It flattens lukewarmness upon your skin and you feel like nuzzling your face into it, needing more of it.

You take a deep breath. “I bought a strawberry vape. Scared the guy in the store with what I looked like.”

Hobi laughs through his nose, barely. That’s the real sweetness you know. The original one, from God himself. “I’m sure he thought you were beautiful. Should I beat him up?”

The same sound leaves you and lightness descends upon you. You welcome it in, without a fight, and the sigh you let out is of a serene kind, at last. “Not at all and besides, I almost did it myself. He asked for my ID.”

Hobi coos, the endearment prolonging—wafting through your ear down your throat until it clings to your heart. You snivel, your inkling to nuzzle into the apparition of him lining your body growing bigger until you submit to it. You graze your cheek upon your arm, propping both of them onto your lifted knees. Feel his caress, but faintly. It should be enough, but it isn't. Could never be.

You open your mouth again to tell him to come get you, despite the fight rising in you, but Hobi speaks first.

“I don’t blame him that he did. You’re just my little pup. But my adult, little pup. I’ll talk to him.” You hear a shuffling in the background and your breath hitches in your throat, your heart joining it, ascending. “Where are you? I’m getting in my car.”

Your mind, where the war is coming from, wins. That quickly. Reminds you that if you face him and tell him what you’ve done, you’ll ruin everything. Ruin the connection, ruin the affection he carries for you.

You’re hasty as you scramble your words, but as your heart descends back into your ribcage, it throws you a lifeline. It all happens in an instant and distaste pools on your tongue from the rapidness of it all. You never liked it, and you never will.

The lifeline of your new life, created by Hobi, changes your words, but leaves the intention untouched.

“Can I tell you who I sent it to?” you ask, taking a puff to relax the electricity of your nerves. The strawberry flavor only heightens it, though. Out it must go, then. So you can forget about it the moment you see his face.

The shuffling halts. “You can tell me in person,” Hobi says, lightly, but you shake your head. You know he means well. Know that he wants to reassure you with touch, but it’s a risk you can’t afford. Not when the wrong kind of neediness is at stake.

“I don’t want to talk about it when I see you,” you push, pursing your lips, finding them in a serious need of a chapstick. You begin to nibble on the flecks of skin that stick out. “I want to focus on you. I want to forget.”

No ounce of a lie in your words, though your intention still remains hidden. Rightfully so—him leaving you because of the storm of your mental state and issues is another risk you don’t want to have staining your hands with blood.

You hear him sit down. Hear him play with his keys—and the clanging sound is oddly comforting. “All right. Tell me, then.”

“I sent it to someone from my past,” you start with great difficulty, pause afterwards because a light pours in from behind. The squeak of breaks, the impatient buzzing of a running car. Your mouth dries, your torso turns around. A silhouette exits the vehicle and as the person emerges from the darkness and steps into the bright lights that it’s emitting, the name that slips past your lips is more of an acknowledgement of his presence than a disclosure of information. “Jungkook.”

Jungkook stops right behind you like the demon of your shame did, with his hands in his pocket. You don’t feel warmth radiating off of him. You feel coldness, a wintry coldness so akin to the one that troubled your body before Hobi called. He zeroes his gaze down on you, piercing your irises with a fury that causes the fine hair on the nape of your neck to rise, painfully. The muscles of his forearms are clenched, oscillating as he drums his fingers on his thighs in the cocoons of his pockets. Your breath trembles, terror prickling you profoundly until it cuts your skin open and you whimper—you whimper with a sob.

“Who’s Jungkook?” Hobi asks, softly, and you close your eyes to incarcerate your tears, curling your lips under your teeth, terribly fearful that Jungkook can hear him.

Cursed, your life is.

He shows no sign that he does—merely burns with that fury, patiently waiting for you to end the call. Your heart stills, ache replacing it, and you think it’s been wounded so much that it can barely work anymore.

More than ever, you feel like that Mary Magdalene, face to face with the devil that tempts her to return to her vomit like a dog.

Hobi calls your name, panics, and it’s another lifeline—this time thrown over your torso by his own hands. You have to fight, you have to stand up to this hell and walk the fuck away from it.

“Baby, I gotta go. Please, hurry. Please,” you pule, stressing the last pretty word to divulge to him how grave the situation is that you’re in. Hobi lets out a breath, lowly and shortly, and it’s such a relief that he understood your vague message, that you can hear him scurrying to his feet and that comforting sound of his keys clanging.

“I’ll be there in a few, pup. Tell me where you are. Are you safe? Do you have your keys?” Hobi spews, massaging your heart with his care and there’s no ceaselessness to your tears.

“Down the road, like less than a minute away from my apartment. And I don’t know. And yeah, they’re in my pocket.”

A bang of his door closing. Jungkook begins to tap his foot. You scowl at him, despite your fear. He doesn’t stop. You withdraw your gaze.

Hobi’s breath quickens. “Pull them out and use them when you need to, okay? Have them ready in your hand.” You nod, doing exactly as he says, without a thought spared. “Walk to your apartment building, I’ll meet you there. You got your keys in your hand?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, pup, I’ll be there soon. Do you want to stay on the phone with me?”

You do, but you can’t.

“I’ll go to my apartment now, Hobi. Thank you.”

You don’t allow yourself to hear what he says next. Pulling the phone away from your ear, you hang up with a heavy heart. Your sudden, miserable aloneness enfolds around you, rigidly. But not as rigidly as Jungkook’s cold hand around your arm.

The heaviness in your heart grows as its drum speeds up.

“Get up,” Jungkook grunts, hauling you up onto your feet, awkwardly, causing you to drop your vape onto the gravel with the strength and hastiness he uses to do it with.

You stumble before you catch your balance and Jungkook doesn’t let go of his deathly grip on you until you do. Then, before your blurring sight, he bends at the waist and picks up your lung burner, skimming his eyes over it. Hands it to you with a scoff, his touch icy cold as he grabs your wrist and places it onto your palm. You sob, with ugliness that scars you, with such intensity that Jungkook’s narrowed eyes round and you pull your gaze away. You don’t want to see it. Tug your arm away from him, rubbing your wrist to get rid of the ghost of his fingers there, disgust flooding your bloodstream underneath.

And even though he seemingly softened at your tears, it’s gone as quickly as it arrived. It didn’t touch his fury, not at all.

“Baby, huh?” he seethes with gritted teeth, letting go of you so harshly that you almost stumble again. “Your pussy is his, huh?”

You squeeze your eyes shut, rivulets of tears rolling down your cheeks, pain compressing your entire body. It’s at this moment that you will death to take you somewhere far, far away from him, because you’re too frozen on the spot to run away.

“You’re covered in hickeys and you’re smoking that shit again. Was it really that good? Did he fuck you so good that you had to send it to me in spite? Did he fuck you better than I ever did?”

Your sobs gain that same agony that prevents your lungs from inhaling. And when you open your eyes, all you can look at is your shadow and his, yours blackened so much that it digs a hole in the gravel, his furling with flames.

And along with death, you will a little strength into your anguish.

And most unbelievably, it slinks in, and your following words come as much of a surprise to you as to him.

“Stop.”

His shadow stills, his tremor following suit.

“You have no business talking to me this way,” you continue, your throat constringing, and you take a big puff of your vape—to spite him rightfully this time. It loosens the tightness and you open your mouth, not finished with your outpour.

But Jungkook stops you.

“I have no business? You crushed my fucking heart.”

Your head whips and the sight of him causes your pain to rise in levels. Palms outstretched towards you, his posture slouches and the breaths he lets out are wretched, the sound of a tumultuous sea at night. One would think he’s the one being inflicted great emotional violence on, not the other way around.

Jungkook raises a finger to his heart, licking his lips before he flattens them, as if the utterance of something so private, so fervent took all of his strength. He pants and you know it’s due to the fact that he can’t catch up to the thoughts rushing in his brain. And you wish you didn’t. You wish you didn’t know him so intimately.

“This fucking heart has never stopped being yours,” he confesses and cringes at his choice of words, triggered. Your stream of anguish is silent as you take them in. “And you crushed it. Ruined it.”

There was a time, one that used to be nearly endless during those weeks in August you spent at the beach, healing from the breakup, when you longed to hear that confession. Prayed for it. Sough it when you grazed your fingertips along the sand. And now that it’s here—now that you’re tasting something so great, greater than your entire being, something so burnt as he voiced out your tendency to cause ruination—you wish you never heard it. Wish you never had the ears that carried that message to you.

And there’s nothing you can do. Not as darkness swallows you, confiscating any bit of strength you had left. Your eyes sting from their downpour, face features droop. Your pain is an enormous stone and you can’t carry it. You can only chase away the heft. And you do—you take a puff of your vape.

One that he rips from your mouth and throws it out in the bin, preventing you from doing so. You don’t yelp, you don’t claw at his arm—you merely watch him rid you of your only salvation for the night, watch him exert his power over you all over again, bursting your indignation into flames.

“What the fuck is your problem?” you ask, your voice deathly, uncannily placid, carrying no tendril of the offense and anger you feel. Adrenaline courses through you, asking to be let out.

And you just might.

Jungkook turns around and spits on the ground. “Don’t smoke that shit.”

It’s not hurt, what the expression of his arrogance produced. It unlocked the door, which kept your adrenaline and your darkened emotions at bay, invited them out.

And so you lash out, using that freedom.

You slap him.

And he takes it. Without moving an inch. Still as a grand statue. You yearn to demolish it to smithereens, so you can never see him again, and you strike at his chest with your keys in between your fingers, pushing him. Affected from the force, it causes him to unwillingly take a step back and it feels fucking glorious until you catch stars flash in his eyes.

“You’re hitting me because I threw out your fucking vape?” he asks, his voice coated with a dark bitterness that deepens it. His brows furrow, grimness casting a shadow over his face, hiding the glitter of the stars. “I’m laying my heart out to you. I’m here in the middle of the night because of you and this is what you care about? This fucking thing that harms you is more dear to you?”

You push him again, fuming. Jungkook grits his teeth, takes your wrists and holds them in the air. You fight against it, but he won’t budge. Tightens his grip. And you’re a bird, locked in a cage—but you still have your voice.

“I’m hitting you because I hate you,” you mutter, burning him with the vapor of your anger through your narrowed eyes. “I’m hitting you because I hate the way you think you’re still entitled to have a say in my life. And it doesn’t even matter whether I have a man or not. You let me go and the moment you did that, your control over my life? It went fucking bye bye.”

You let him forbid you from smoking in the past. Needed it at the time, needed a father’s hand—and you liked it because you never had it. Never had a male care about you, about your health, about your actions. Your father never spared you a glance, never gave a fuck about you. He always had your mother handle you, blaming her for the way she raised you.

But during those weeks you healed, being alone by the sea helped you unattach yourself from that, from needing Jungkook to tell you what’s right and what’s not. The moon doesn’t tell the sea which shells to wash up onto the shore—it does it by itself, handpicks them, makes the decision. And the more time you watched it deliver it to you and you collected them with gladness, the more you understood it.

You’re never letting him have that power over you again. You’re your own person, carrying an armful of your right and wrong decisions—your own possessions. And so you will smoke if you want to. You will bring a man home on the first date. You will fall in love. And you will speak up.

You twist your wrists, unrelentingly, until he lets go. You will win, not your mind, not your heart. The raw, brutal, unabashed you.

You take a step back away from him, feel your blood rushing to the places of your body parts that he held, quick to recover them. “You don’t get to dictate my life anymore. You have no place in it. You didn’t have it then when I was by myself, and you most certainly don’t have it now.”

Jungkook takes in your words with a parted mouth, a red mark forming over his cheek, the light shunned from his eyes. The glorious feeling returns, blooming thin, translucent tissues of happiness in you.

“Hoseok is his name, isn’t it?” he chunters, placing his hands back into the cocoons of his pockets, tilting his head to the side.

Hearing him say his name is a taste of spoiled milk and bile springs up your throat, your guts longing to empty themselves out. You stifle it, you have to, clutching your stomach, feeling so horribly faint. Your hatred for him blossoms like that poison ivy you dealt with earlier in the morning.

“Keep his name out of your mouth,” you spit, scowling at him, clutching your stomach harder—just like Hobi did when you brought him home. A sliver of nostalgia forces you to look behind you, in case you catch a glance of his car, but the street remains empty and sullen.

“You can hate me as much as you want,” Jungkook mutters, his words swiveling your head back to face him, and your guts ripple. “Yell at me. Hit me. But don’t send me videos of you getting fucked. That’s not fucking right.”

You bare your teeth, seething. “I made a mistake.”

Jungkook nods. “Yes,” he hushes. “Yes, you did.”

You shake your head. “No, you don’t understand.” Confusion pinches his brows, creating a wrinkle in the middle and he lets you continue. You lick your lips, your face dry from the way your tears have seeped inside. “I thought I sent it to Hobi. I was too tired, I didn’t see. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Jungkook scoffs, running his tongue over his bottom lip swiftly, mimicking you. “Don’t fucking lie to me, little girl.”

You mewl, painfully, at the pet name. It’s as if he sank a dagger in the middle of your sternum. Weariness descends upon you and you rub your eyes, wishing you had your strawberry vape, your salvation, in your fist. And you find no traces of any grit, any determination to convince him that you’re being truthful to him.

You turn around halfway. “Go home.”

Jungkook opens his mouth, but the squeaking sound of brakes causes him to close it right away. You know it’s Hobi and the knowledge is more satisfying than the dose of chemicals Jungkook threw out. Relief washes over you, bringing along lightness and something that is kindred to joy. You don’t care that Hobi is about to see your ex-boyfriend. You don’t care about anything at all—you’re just so grateful that he’s here. And you’re willing to let go of your walls, of your war that you tend to be so submissive to. You’re willing to let yourself go and let Hobi take you, handle you, take care of you.

You need it. As much as it pains you, you need him after this encounter with Jungkook.

And when Hobi calls your name and you pivot on your feet to watch him walk, hurriedly, to you, your legs do give out after all. Because he’s caked in blood, a trickle of it flecked and dried on his brow, illuminated by Jungkook’s headlights. You land, awkwardly, on your bum and your wrist, wincing in pain, but it’s not his hands that lift you.

It’s a pair of hands that you know to be cold and, despising the sting of it, you shriek, pushing him away. The motion leads you to stagger into Hobi’s arm that he opens for you, his chaste, feathery touch grounding you, giving you the sense of home, even when the look he gives Jungkook is anything but warm and friendly.

“Hobi, what happened? Are you okay?”

You take his shiny, sweaty face into your hand. Your eyes could fall out of their sockets due to how beautiful he is, even bloodied, alarmed and bestial. You need to know what happened. Need to clean him up. Take him home.

But Hobi doesn’t answer you. Doesn’t look your way, only acknowledges you with his scalding touch. Stares down your ex-boyfriend with such contempt that you’re surprised the man is still standing.

You’re so pulled in, so focused on him and his unwavering expression of detestation, which flatters you and soothes you, that you don’t notice that Jungkook is leaving. Hobi snaps his fingers at him and beckons him to come back.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Hobi barks, his fingers lowering and hooking around the middle belt loop of your jeans.

Jungkook returns to that space of light, the black tank top he’s wearing making it seem like he’s hollow on the inside. Perhaps he is, he did hand over his heart. Wasn’t affected by your fragile state of mind, by your tears. Wounded you to the point that you will take days to recover. Only a person of complete nothingness would be able to do that.

“I saw you at the museum,” Hobi continues, brows wrinkled. “Who the fuck are you?”

You should speak. You should take this elsewhere, but you can’t. Not when you feel so small, like a little girl hiding behind the leg of her father who’s dealing with the boogeyman. And you’re reminded that this has happened before.

Only the roles were reversed.

In the wine-tinged room this morning while you were confronting Jungkook and his companion found him. She asked the same question, though the hostility she showed you could never be compared to Hobi’s unkindness. He emanates respect while she’s a condensation of insecurity.

“I see you’re the Daddy from the video,” Jungkook laughs, humorlessly, dipping his chin before he lifts it in a very evident effort to reach not only Hobi’s height but his supremacy as well. He will always wish to overpower—it’s in his nature. “Trust me, you’re not the only one she called Daddy. Long before you came along, it was all I heard from her—”

You blink and Jungkook’s face is in Hobi’s hand.

You gasp. You’re a witness to Hobi protecting your dignity as he squeezes his cheeks until Jungkook moans, pathetically, in pain. And all you can think about is how long he had that coming. For throwing out your vape, for his arrogance and now for the way that he spoke about you.

You don’t feel a slither of pity for him.

No—your joy, fully, forms.

“If I ever hear those words come out of your mouth again, I won’t hesitate to unable to you talk,” Hobi says with concerning seriousness and you shiver, grazing your fingertips along your collarbones after you fold your arms over your chest, touched, flattered, loved. A line of tears threaten to pour out of your eyes, but you hold them back. You don’t want to cry anymore—you’re sick of it. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Jungkook’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t say anything. Hobi waggles him before he lets him go and you swear you caught a tinge of whiteness scattering along his knuckles. Your mouth dries.

“Now you’re dismissed,” Hobi finishes, turning around and grabbing your hand, tugging you back home.

Your legs follow him, but your vision doesn’t. It remains fixed on Jungkook, on his heaving chest, on his reddened cheeks, embossed with Hobi’s fingerprints and the lines of your hand. His eyes are smothered with stars, a skyful of them, ones that expand until there’s no darkness left.

And you’re witness to regret taking shape in them.

And something about that tells you that this isn’t the last time you see him.

Hobi had been in a car accident on his way to rescue you. He tells you of it as you’re cleaning him up with a lukewarm, wet cloth and your arm gets stuck in the air, unable to move, as you comprehend the life-threatening danger he underwent because of you. Another driver bumped him from the back while he was slowing down at the yellow light, wanted to race on the almost empty highway. Was under the influence, Hobi found out when he stepped out of his vehicle to grapple with him. Deemed it wasn’t worth it, especially when time was pressing down on him, and with a little manipulation and an installment of fear, the silly guy agreed to pay for everything and Hobi got his number.

You wonder at how he managed to get back inside his car and drive when he hit his head on the steering wheel. You worry that he has a concussion. Suggest to take him to a hospital, but Hobi only shakes his head, reassures you he’s fine and once you completely clean the blood off of his brow, you can see a thin but bulbous scratch right beneath the fine hair, surrounded by violets and pinks. A different bruise from the ones bestrewn over his body from your mouth.

Your heart aches. This is all your fault, the repercussion of your neediness, the finished work of your ruination.

You grow solemn, your features drooping again, but Hobi isn’t blind to it. Cups your chin, lifts it, fondles it with his thumb. Pouts ever so slightly. Why is it a relief that you feel bursting in your chest amidst your lingering pain is something you can’t really understand.

But he’s God. No wonder he’s able to mount such strangeness in you and make it work.

“Did he hurt you?” Hobi whispers, cradling your other hand on your lap. He’s sat in your armchair, with you on his thighs, in the very corner of your dark living room, lit up coolly and solely by your antique lampshade. It’s where you read your poetry, where you recite it to nobody else but you, where you recharge your battery when your world exhausts you. The fact that Hobi chose to sit here instead of your couch speaks volumes, has a great meaning that you’re too weary to decipher and romanticize, but you like it. A lot. To the point that you’re comfortable enough to answer his question, despite the fact you looked forward to Jungkook’s absence in your alone time with Hobi.

“The way he spoke about me was the same way he talked to me,” you say, your voice coated with milky sadness. Your eyes instinctively drop to his hand holding yours, to his fist wrapped around your fingers. “He didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t send it to him on purpose.”

Brusqueness clouds his eyes, but he remains gentle with you. “You don’t have to care about what he thinks, whether he believes you or not. You don’t have to prove anything to him. Your one word is enough,” Hobi says, drifting his hand down your arm until it winds up at his other one intertwined with yours and you sob, tearlessly. It’s precisely what you needed to hear without knowing it, the final touch to the closing chapter that had so abruptly opened. You carry it into your minuscule heart, sinking it there, letting it permeate its entirety, and you nod your head. “Did he hurt you physically?”

You lay yourself down on his chest, on his bloodstained blue shirt, on his heart that you missed and Hobi locks you in, taking his hands and wrapping them around your form. You could fall asleep like this, forget and become the happiest girl in the world.

“Not that much.”

His heart quickens and you regret your words.

“What do you mean not that much?”

You’re quick to fix your mistake, not thinking it through.

“He was rough with me. My legs gave out on me before he came. He found me on the ground and he lifted me up. Then held my wrists when I hit him—”

“You hit him?”

You stammer, jumbling your words, deciding on just one. “Yeah.”

“Good girl,” he whispers, squeezing your arm, and this is the death you longed for.

Never in your life had you ever experienced praise from a man in a non-sexual context and not gotten lustfully affected by it. The purity, the newness is so healing, so consequential that you can’t help but to stroke his clothed ribs in side to side motion, in appreciation and even a faint smile of fondness curls your lips, one that Hobi can very well see from above. He caresses the trace of it while it is still there, causing your smile to blossom, and you sense the orchard in you gaining life.

“You went through so much emotional suffering today and yet you’re still able to smile. All because I praised you. You react so beautifully to it,” Hobi comments and you blush, his thumb skipping over to it, giving it the same attention, collecting it like keepsakes. You’d wonder at it, too, if you haven’t already acknowledged yourself, intimately, with his sovereign power of erasing past events.

And you tell him, peeling your torso off of his chest.

“It’s your doing. You make me forget about everything when I’m with you. It’s like it never happened at all. I don’t know how you do it.”

Hobi smiles, the corners of his glimmering eyes crinkling. “If it’s my doing, then it’s yours, too. You should know how you do it.”

You soften into liquid and it’s your heart that quietly weeps now. “You remember the poem.”

He nods, gliding his hand up and down your side. “How could I not? It’s all I can hear in my mind. I kept hearing it on my way home and then on my way back to you.”

That alone takes the unfateful events of the night off of you like a layer of clothing, dressing you in strength. You need a giant puff of your vape, just to recuperate from being drowned in the sea of your past longing for this. And you reach into the pocket of your jeans, only to be reminded of what happened to it.

It feels like a distant memory. So much had occurred that it slipped from your mind. You frown.

“What’s wrong?”

You purse your lips. “I thought I still had my vape.”

“You don’t?”

You shake your head. “He threw it out.”

Hobi seems as offended by the information as you were when you watched it happen. And as much as you bonded over your sexual desires, the same connection clicks over this.

“He’s such a dick. Let’s get you a new one.”

He pats your bum and then you’re on your feet, tugged back outside, with a smile quivering your lips. And this time you follow him with your vision, too. Your eyes sail over his strong imaginary wings, on which the pink dominates the black, and you feel your own being upheaved, slowly gaining the vigor that they lost.

And Hobi scares the spectacled boy in the convenience store. Not with his stained shirt, but with the way he provokes embarrassment in him by asking him if he wants to see his ID as well, staying true to the words he said to you over the phone. The boy didn’t even so much as peek at you, too afraid to do so.

It made you laugh.

Hobi double checked with you if it were the strawberry flavor that you wanted, and you changed your mind. Picked the blackberry one because you never had it before. Could use another dose of newness.

He opens the packaging with you, struggling at first, but then he immediately uses his teeth. You smile so hard that your cheeks hurt.

Smile even as he places it between your lips, but you can’t take a puff, can’t drop the presence of your happiness, even when he encourages you. That is until he inhales it first—you’re so struck by the beauty of it, of him that the muscles in your face let up. The smoke twirls around the feathers of his wings, adding just the right amount of white into its art, and you yearn to fall asleep on them.

“Can you stay over tonight?”

“Only if you take a puff.”

He carves it between your lips and this time, as you’re so mesmerized by him, you wrap your lips around it and suck; suck in that heady, hefty, colorful flavor that pools warmly in your throat, blowing the smoke around his neck while he kisses your forehead. Takes you back inside. Dresses you in your pajamas. Lets you smoke in bed with his wings swaddling you and your little childhood bows-adorned bunny plushie. Lets you put the vape in his mouth as he strokes your hair.

The night birds begin to sing and into their song your phone dings. You know who it is long before you prove yourself right.

But it’s not a text message that disturbed their music.

Jungkook sent you a picture.

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild, @jjk7k, @parkinglot-nights, @bethvar, @Sexytholland, @yoongibaybee, @crystaleah,@fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan, @euphoricmyth

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